71. Then, too, there are blackbirds.—Nicostratus or Philetærus says—

A.What then shall I buy? Tell me, I pray you.
B.Go not to more expense than a neat table;
Buy a rough-footed hare; some ducklings too,
As many as you like; thrushes, and blackbirds,
And other small birds; there are many wild sorts.
A.Yes, and they're very nice.

Antiphanes also reckons starlings among the eatable birds, numerating them in the following list—"Honey, partridges, pigeons, ducks, geese, starlings, jays, rooks, blackbirds, quails, and pullets."

You are asking of us for a history of everything, and you do not allow us to say a single thing without calling us to account for it. The word στρουθάριον (a little bird) is found in many other authors, and also in Eubulus. He says, "Take three or four partridges, and three hares, and as many small birds as you can eat, and goldfinches, and parrots, and finches, and nightjars, and whatever other birds of this kind you can come across."

72. Swine's brains, too, was a not uncommon dish. Philosophers used to forbid our eating these, saying that a person who partook of them might as well eat a bear, and would not stick at eating his father's head, or anything else imaginable. And they said, that at all events none of the ancients had ever eaten them, because they were the seat of nearly all sensation. But Apollodorus the Athenian says, that none of the ancients ever even named the brain. And at all events Sophocles, in his Trachiniæ, where he represents Hercules as throwing Lichas into the sea, does not use the word ἐγκέφαλον, brains, but says λευκὸν μυελὸς, white marrow; avoiding a word which it was thought ill-omened to use:—

[[109]] And from his hair he forces the white marrow,
His head being burst asunder in the middle,
And the blood flows:

though he had named all the rest of his limbs plainly enough. And Euripides, introducing Hecuba lamenting for Astyanax, who had been thrown down by the Greeks, says—

Unhappy child, how miserably have
Your native city's walls produced your death,
And dash'd your head in pieces! Fatal towers,
Which Phœbus builded! How did your mother oft
Cherish those curly locks, and press upon them
With never-wearied kisses! now the blood
Wells from that wound, where the bones broken gape;
But some things are too horrid to be spoken.

The lines too which follow these are worth stopping to consider. But Philocles does employ the word ἐγκέφαλον—

He never ceased devouring even the brains (ἐγκέφαλον).