POMEGRANATE.
Ceres, disconsolate on account of the loss of her daughter, to whom Pluto destined the sceptre of Hell, implored the ruler of Olympus to restore Proserpine. Jupiter promised that the favour should be granted, provided that she had not partaken of anything in the infernal regions. Now, she had eaten some grains of a pomegranate; very few indeed; some serious authors have said three; others, quite as respectable, say nine. The fact is, however, Proserpine had broken her fast; therefore she might think herself fortunate in being allowed to pass six months on earth and six months in the abode of darkness.[XIV_42]
This little mythologic story informs us that the pomegranate tree was known to antiquity, and that the garden of the Elysian fields contained most excellent fruit for the use of its melancholy inhabitants.
The pomegranate, whose acidulated flavour is so pleasing to the inhabitants of hot climates, was first cultivated in the east, then in Africa, but especially in the environs of Carthage, from whence the Romans brought it into Italy, where it was commonly called the Carthaginian apple;[XIV_43] it was also named Granatum, on account of the number of its seeds.[XIV_44]
Pliny distinguishes five different species of promegranate;[XIV_45] Columella teaches the way to rear this tree;[XIV_46] and Apicius treats of the preservation of its fruit, to do which it is only necessary to plunge it in boiling water, take it out immediately, and suspend it from the ceiling.[XIV_47]
The Greeks were very fond of pomegranates. The finest came from Attica, so celebrated by the genius of its inhabitants; and from Bœotia,[XIV_48] that privileged soil, where agriculture and stupidity flourished together.[XIV_49]
XV.
ANIMAL FOOD.
Bread, vegetables, and fruit for a long time provided man with a sufficient and easy alimentation.[XV_1] Wandering with his flocks in search of cool pasture, he only exacted their wool wherewith to make the clothing requisite for his migratory life;[XV_2] their services to assist him in hollowing a difficult furrow;[XV_3] and their first-born as a most agreeable offering to the all-powerful master of heaven and earth.[XV_4] We may also suppose that, in the pastoral ages, the wandering tribes of Asia added to their vegetable food the milk of their ewes, goats, or cows, although it is not mentioned in the Book of Genesis[XV_5] at a very early period, it is true, but which forms a nourishment nature seems to point out as proper to infancy and old age;[XV_6] mankind, therefore, abstained from animal food during many centuries.[XV_7] Ecclesiastical and profane writers seem to agree on this point.[XV_8] Habit had not yet produced disgust, and curiosity, the fatal mother of experience and sensuality. To eat was for them the most natural and simple action of life. The art of cookery tries, makes choice, and improves: that art did not exist.
The frightful cataclysm which overthrew the world, and of which the history of every nation gives proofs more or less confused, came to modify this state of things. “Men were obliged to be fed with more substantial food,”[XV_9] and our forefathers were allowed to add to vegetables and the herbs of the country, “animated beings, and all that which had life and motion.”[XV_10]
The magiric science, therefore, began in the year of the world 1656.
From that period, indeed, the cooking of meat, however little complicated it may have been, required an attention, care, and study, which prepared the development of that marvellous faculty to which no possible limit can be assigned—the last to disappear, and to which, in fact, are related nearly all the actions of human life—the sense of taste.
Heathen authors, guided by the lights of reason, some gleams of tradition, and perhaps not absolutely strangers to the writings of Moses, agree pretty well on the diet of the Golden Age;[XV_11] that age of innocence, acorns, and happiness,[XV_12] when everywhere were seen streams of milk, and nectar, and honey, flowing from the hollow oaks and other trees of the forests.[XV_13]
But when the question is to point out the time at which the use of animal food was introduced, ideas become clouded, and highly intelligent minds, bewildered by the obscurity which envelops the subject, have frequently appealed to absurd legends and ridiculous fables, invoking the aid of their false and contested authority.
Xenocrates pretends that Triptolemus forbad the Athenians to eat animals.[XV_14] Man must, then, have been still frugivorous for four centuries after the Deluge.
This opinion found contradictors, who maintained that man contented himself with fruit only because fire was wanting to cook meat; but Prometheus came, and taught him how to draw the useful element from the flint which concealed it, and was the first to venture on the sacrifice of an ox.[XV_15] This happened in the year of the world 2412.[XV_16]
All this is a mistake, say other and very sensible writers; here is the truth on this difficult point: The goddess Ceres had sown a field, and the wheat came up as desired, when a pig entered, tumbled about, and caused considerable damage, which so irritated the lady that she punished him with death. Now, as a pig is good for nothing except to eat, this one was eaten; and from that day, so fatal to the swinish race, mankind learnt to appreciate the flesh of animals.[XV_17]
At the same time, Bacchus killed a goat he found nibbling at the tendrils of his darling vines;[XV_18] and Hyberbius, son of Mars, and a slasher, like his father, amused himself by killing another, in order to become familiar thus early with scenes of combat.[XV_19] These goats were roasted; and as experience had as yet furnished no rule of comparison, and formed no taste—that exquisite sentiment of the beautiful in the plastic arts, and of the good in the culinary science—it was decided that this dish was very tolerable.
Hitherto the bovine race had only lost one individual: its sad destiny began in the year 1506, before our era, under the reign of the fourth king of Athens, Erichtonius, on a day of great solemnity, when an ox, pressed probably by hunger, came near the altar, and devoured one of the sacred cakes which heathen piety had dedicated to Jupiter. The zealous Diomus rushed forward, and pierced the heart of the sacrilegious quadruped.
It might be supposed that the anger of the god was immediately appeased; but no! the terrible Jupiter knitted his brows; Olympus was in great agitation; and pestilence came, and spread its ravages amongst the Athenians.
“All did not die, but all were struck;”[XV_20] and, to propitiate the implacable scourge, they thought of nothing better than to institute the Buphonic Feast, which happily re-established their health, and which they continued to celebrate every year. They sacrificed an ox,[XV_21] offered a piece to Jupiter, and the faithful divided the rest among themselves.
At Tyre, in Phœnicia, meat was consumed on the altar, but the gods had the profit of it, and nobody else. Some fruit and a few vegetables were sufficient for the frugality of people enjoying innocent and primitive customs. But it happened, in the time of Pygmalion,[XV_22] that a young sacrificer having perceived that a piece of the victim had fallen, hastened to pick it up and replace it carefully on the fire of the altar. In the performance of this operation he burned his fingers, and instantly put them into his mouth, to lessen the pain. As he could not help tasting the fat with which they were covered, the greedy young man experienced a new sensation, which tempted him to swallow a mouthful—then a second—a portion of the victim was eaten; he put another piece under his cloak, and, with his wife, made the finest supper in his life. All went on very well until the prince, being informed of this profanation, loaded them with reproaches, and condemned both to the punishment of death.
Gluttony, however, is rash: other sacrificers ate—at first in secret—of this forbidden food; then they were imitated; and, at last, by degrees meat passed from the altar of the gods, who did not taste it, to the tables of mortals, who feasted upon it.[XV_23] People may or may not believe this anecdote, which informs us in so satisfactory a manner of the epoch at which man, from being frugivorous, became carnivorous; but one thing is certain, that in the time of Homer (there is only eighty years between him and Pygmalion), the flesh of animals was then much in fashion, for we read of his giving to his heroes, as their principal food, a whole hog, three years old, and oxen roasted—not even jointed.[XV_24]
Some ideologists and dreamers have risen against the use of meat; their declamations, often very eloquent, have been read; but, from Pythagoras, a sublime and honest enthusiast, down to the whimsical J. J. Rousseau—who, by-the-by, was very fond of mutton chops and bœuf à la mode, although he exclaimed against the cruelty of mankind, whose hands were stained with the blood of animals—no nation has yet determined to adopt the patriarchal diet of the first ages of the world.
Plutarch was a vegetarian; and we possess one of his treatises, in which he endeavours to prove that flesh is not the natural food of man.[XV_25] As a conclusive answer—meat was eaten. So, when an ancient philosopher one day denied the movement of matter, a person reduced him to silence by walking.
But, if animal diet has, from time to time, met with a small number of detractors, what an immense crowd of apologists and adepts has it not also found! It would signify nothing to name individuals; let us point out whole nations. Who is not acquainted with the delicacy and luxury of the Assyrians and Persians? Who is not aware that the genius of the Greeks improved the culinary art, and that their cooks were famous in history? What of the Syracusans, whose dainty and curious ideas passed as a proverb; and of the Athenians, who were so passionately fond of the pleasures of the table; or of Naples, Tarentum, and Sybaris, so celebrated for their good cheer? The Romans surpassed even these refinements and sumptuous repasts: theirs is the honour of the pontiffs’ feasts, the excesses of Capreæ, the profusions of Vitellius, of Galba, Nero, and Caligula. They have the honour of the banquet of Geta, which lasted three days, and ended by exhausting the alphabetic list of all the dishes that the universe could supply.
May heaven preserve us from imitating such prodigies of intemperance and gluttonous folly; but let us, at least, be allowed to use with moderation the good that Providence has granted us, and which it has not forbidden us to make agreeable and savoury. The inhabitants of the air, earth, and water, entered within our domains, as well as the fruits of the fields, on the day when the Creator condescended to say to his creature:
“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”[XV_26]