Soon as liquid milk
Is curdled by the fig-tree’s juice, and turns
In whirling flakes, so soon was heal’d the wound.[[287]]
[286]. Kruse, Hellas, Bd. i. p. 368.
[287]. Iliad, v. 902-904. (Lord Derby.)
The patient on this occasion was Ares himself, and the rapid closing of the gash inflicted by the audacious Diomed was brought about by the application of Pæonian simples, unavailable, it can readily be imagined, outside of Olympus.
Although the keeping of bees was strange to Homer’s experience, the product of their industry was pleasantly familiar to him. The ideal of deliciousness was furnished by honey, and Homeric palates reached their acme of gratification with things ‘honey-sweet.’ But Homeric bees were still in a state of nature, their ‘roofs of gold’ getting built in hollow trees or rocky clefts. Artificial dwellings were provided for them, by interested human agency, considerably later. The use of bee-hives in Greece is first attested in the Hesiodic Theogony; and in Russia and Lithuania, wild honey was still gathered in the woods little more than a century and a half ago.[[288]] Alike in the Iliad and Odyssey, honey figures in a manner totally inconsistent with our notions of gastronomic harmony. We, in our unregenerate condition, should seek to be excused from partaking of the semi-ambrosial diet of cheese, honey, and sweet wine supplied by Aphrodite to the divinely brought-up daughters of Pandareus;[[289]] nor do we envy to ‘Gerenian Nestor’ and his wounded companion the posset brewed for them on their return from the battle-field by the skilful Hecamede. The palates indeed must have been hardy, and the constitutions robust, of those upon whom it acted as an agreeable restorative. The process of its preparation was as follows. In a bowl of such noble capacity that an ordinary man’s strength scarcely availed to raise it brimming to his lips,
Their goddess-like attendant first
A gen’rous measure mixed of Pramnian wine;
Then with a brazen grater shredded o’er