[271]. Hehn, op. cit. pp. 439-40.
[272]. Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, pp. 293, 301.
[273]. Iliad, viii. 306; cf. ante, p. 166.
[274]. Dierbach, Flora Mythologica, p. 117.
Vegetables figured very scantily, if at all, at Achæan feasts. One species only is expressly apportioned for heroic consumption. Nestor and Machaon were avowedly guilty of eating onions as a relish with wine.[[275]] Some degree of refinement has indeed been vindicated for their tastes on the plea that the Oriental onion is of infinitely superior delicacy to our objectionable bulb; but we scarcely wrong the Pylian sage by admitting the likelihood of his preference for the stronger flavour; nor can we raise high the gustatory standard according to which wine compounded with goats’ cheese and honey was esteemed the most refreshing and delightful of drinks. The same root, moreover, in its crudest form, seems to have recommended itself to refined Phæacian palates. There is persuasive, if indirect evidence, that ‘the rank and guilty garlic’ was privileged to flourish in the sunny gardens of Alcinous.[[276]] Socrates, indeed, eulogised the onion, whereas Plutarch contemned it as vulgar, and Horace did not willingly permit onion-eaters to come ‘between the wind and his nobility.’ The company of Nestor would not, then, have been agreeable to him.
[275]. Iliad, xi. 629.
[276]. Buchholz, Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 216.
Peas and beans keep out of sight in the Odyssey, but are just glanced at in the Iliad. The following simile explains itself:
As from the spreading fan leap out the peas
Or swarthy beans o’er all the spacious floor,