81. Diphilus says that "the stalk of the lettuce is exceedingly nutritious, and more difficult of digestion than the leaves; but that the leaves are more apt to produce flatulence, and are still more nutritious, and have a greater tendency to promote the secretions. And as a general rule the lettuce is good for the stomach, cooling and wholesome for the bowels, soporific, full of pleasant and wholesome juice, and certainly has a great tendency to make men indifferent to love. But the softer lettuce is still better for the stomach, and still more soporific; while that which is harder and drier is both less good for the stomach and less wholesome for the bowels; that, however, is also soporific. But the black lettuce is more cooling, and is good for the bowels; and summer lettuce is full of wholesome juice, and more nutritious; but that which is in season at the end of autumn is not nutritious, and has no juice. And the stalk of the lettuce appears to be a remedy against thirst." And the lettuce when boiled like asparagus in a dish, if we adopt the statement of Glaucias, is superior to all other boiled vegetables.

Among some of the other nations Theophrastus says that

[[116]]beetroot, and lettuce, and spinach, and mustard, and sorrel, and coriander, and anise, and cardamums, are all called ἐπίσπορα, things fit to be sown for the second crop. And Diphilus says that, as a general rule, all vegetables have but little nutriment in them, and have all of them a tendency to make people thin, and are devoid of wholesome juices, and moreover stay a long while in the stomach, and are not very digestible. But Epicharmus speaks of some as summer vegetables.

82. Artichokes were often eaten. And Sophocles, in his Colchian Women, calls an artichoke κινάρα, but in his Phœnix he writes the word κύναρος, saying—

The artichoke fills every field with its thorn.

But Hecatæus the Milesian, in his Description of Asia, at least if the book under this title is a genuine work of that author, (for Callimachus attributes it to Nesiotas;) however, whoever it was who wrote the book speaks in these terms—"Around the sea which is called the Hyrcanian sea there are mountains lofty and rough with woods, and on the mountains there is the prickly artichoke." And immediately afterwards he subjoins—"Of the Parthian tribes the Chorasmians dwell towards the rising sun, having a territory partly champaign and partly mountainous. And in the mountains there are wild trees; the prickly artichoke, the willow, the tamarisk." He says moreover that the artichoke grows near the river Indus. And Scylax, or Polemo, writes, "that that land is well watered with fountains and with canals, and on the mountains there grow artichokes and many other plants." And immediately afterwards he adds, "From that point a mountain stretches on both sides of the river Indus, very lofty, and very thickly overgrown with wild wood and the prickly artichoke."

But Didymus the grammarian, explaining what is meant by Sophocles when he speaks of the prickly artichoke (which he calls κύναρος), says, "Perhaps he means the dog-brier, because that plant is prickly and rough; for the Pythian priestess did call that plant a wooden bitch. And the Locrian, after he had been ordered by an oracle to build a city in that place in which he was bitten by a wooden bitch, having had his leg scratched by a dog-brier, built the city in the place

[[117]]where the brier had stood. And there is a plant called the dog-brier, something between a brier and a tree, according to the statement of Theophrastus, and it has a red fruit, like a pomegranate, and it has a leaf like that of the willow.

83. Phænias, in the fifth book of his treatise on Plants, speaks of one which he calls the Sicilian cactus, a very prickly plant. As also does Theophrastus, in his sixth book about Plants, who says, "But the plant which is called the cactus exists only in Sicily, and is not found in Greece: and it sends forth stalks close to the ground, just above the root. And the stalks are the things which are called cacti: and they are eatable as soon as they are peeled, and rather bitter; and they preserve them in brine. But there is a second kind, which sends up a straight stalk, which they call πτέρνιξ; and that also is eatable. The shell of the fruit, as soon as the outer soft parts have been taken away, is like the inside of a date: that also is eatable; and the name of that is ἀσκάληρον." But who is there who would not place such belief in these assertions as to say confidently that this cactus is the same as that plant which is called by the Romans carduus, or thistle; as the Romans are at no great distance from Sicily, and as it is evidently the same plant which the Greeks call κινάρα, or the artichoke? For if you merely change two letters, κάρδος and κάκτος will be the same word.

And Epicharmus also shows us plainly this, when he puts down the cactus in his catalogue of eatable vegetables; in this way—"The poppy, fennel, and the rough cactus; now one can eat of the other vegetables when dressed with milk, if he bruises them and serves them up with rich sauce, but by themselves they are not worth much." And in a subsequent passage he says—"Lettuces, pines, squills, radishes, cacti." And again he says—"A man came from the country, bringing fennel, and cacti, and lavender, and sorrel, and chicory, and thistles, and ferns, and the cactus, and dractylus, and otostyllus, and scolium, and seni, and onopordus." And Philetas the Coan poet says—