[331] This piece of kitchen furniture was known in the middle of the sixteenth century. Montagne saw one at Brixen, in Tyrol, in the year 1580, and wrote a description of it in his Journal, as a new invention. He says it consisted entirely of wheels; that it was kept in motion by a heavy piece of iron, as clocks are by a weight, and that when wound up in the like manner, it turned the meat for a whole hour. He had before seen, in some other place, another driven by smoke.—Reise, i. pp. 155, 249. The latter kind seem to be somewhat older. Scappi, cook to pope Pius V., gave a figure of one in his book Opera di M. Bartolomeo Scappi, printed at Venice 1570, which is exceedingly scarce. I lately saw a copy, which, instead of eighteen, had twenty-four engravings. It was printed twice afterwards at the same place, viz. in 1571 and 1605, in quarto. The third edition says, “con due aggiunte, cio é il Trinciante et il Maestro di casa.” Bayle seems to confound this book with that of Platina De Honesta Voluptate, or to think that the latter was the real author of it. This however cannot be, as there were more than a hundred years between the periods when Scappi and Platina lived. Platina died in 1481, and not in 1581, as we read in Bayle.
[332] De Mundo. cap. vi.
[333] Herodot. ii. 48. p. 127.—Lucian. de Syria Dea, 16, ed. Bipont. ix. p. 99.
[334] Recueil des Antiquit. iv. p. 259.
[335] Doppelmayer, p. 285.
[336] Iliad, xviii. 373. It deserves to be remarked, that there were also such τρίποδες αὐτόματοι at the banquet of Iarchas. See Philostrat. Opera, ed. Olearii, pp. 117, 240.
[337] Polit. i. 3.
[338] In his Menon, p. 426.—Euthyphron, pp. 8, 11.
[339] Introd. in Philos. Nat. i. p. 143.
[340] Physiologia Kircheriana, fol. p. 69.