And thy pretty wife we’ll bear away;
She is small, and of no great weight.
Open, open, then we say.
Not old men but boys are we,
And the swallow says,—“Open to me.”
It was seldom, however, that the indigent in Greece could enjoy the luxuries here enumerated. Antiphanes[[378]] describes a poor man’s meal as consisting of a cake (μαζα),[[379]] bristling with bran for the sake of economy, with an onion, and, for a relish, a dish of sow-thistle, or of mushrooms, or some such wretched produce of the soil, a diet producing neither fever nor phlegm. However, where meat is to be got, no man, he thought, would be contented with thyme, though he might pretend to rival the Pythagoreans.[[380]] Mention, nevertheless, is made of two philosophers who voluntarily subsisted all their lives on water and figs, and grew very healthy and robust upon this fare, though their perspiration had so ill an odour, that every one avoided them when they entered the public baths. Pythagoras forbade his abstemious followers the use of the mallows, upon which the humbler classes in Greece were accustomed to feed, together with the roots of the day-lily, the nymphea nelumbo, the nettle,[[381]] and various other wild plants. The Kapparis,[[382]] plentiful in Athens, was very commonly eaten by the indigent, and hence “to gather kapparis” was at length considered synonymous with “to be in want.”[[383]] Alexis furnishes us with a curious account of a poor Athenian family’s provisions.[[384]]
Mean my husband is, and poor,
And my blooming days are o’er.
Children have we two,—a boy,
Papa’s pet and mamma’s joy;