The Greeks and Romans were acquainted with partridges, and eat them.[XX_21] The red, at first very rare in Italy, were, however, advantageously replaced by the white, which true amateurs procured at a great expense from the Alps.[XX_22]
The Athenians were fond of seeing them fight, and raised them for this cruel sport.[XX_23] Alexander Severus also sought in these sanguinary struggles relief from the cares of royalty.[XX_24]
Aristippus, a more humane, perhaps a more luxurious, philosopher, gave as much as fourteen shillings for a fine fat partridge,[XX_25] which, passing from the aviary to the kitchen, escaped the fatal vicissitudes of a desperate combat.
In Greece, people who knew how to enjoy life thought much of the leg of this warlike bird.[XX_26] It was fashionable not to touch any other part. At Rome, when politeness was not of so much consequence, they sometimes ventured on the breast. We, barbarians, eat the entire partridge.
THE QUAIL.
The dead may be raised by the means of a quail, said the ancients. Now for the proof: Hercules having been killed in Lybia, Iolaüs took one of these birds, which fortunately happened to be at hand, and placed it beneath his friend’s nose. The hero no sooner smelt it than his eyes opened to the light, and Acheron was forced to give up his prey.[XX_27]
The learned Bochart denies this prodigy.[XX_28] He affirms that Hercules was subject to epileptic attacks, and that, during a fit, they caused him to smell a quail, whose odour quickly cured him.[XX_29]
The Phœnicians insisted that he was quite dead, and they all cried out, “A miracle!”[XX_30] The reader must decide between them and Bochart.