12. About the time of Tiberius there lived a man named Apicius; very rich and luxurious; from whom several kinds of cheesecakes are called Apician. He spent myriads of drachms on his belly, living chiefly at Minturnæ, a city of Campania, eating very expensive crawfish, which are found in that place superior in size to those of Smyrna, or even to the crabs of Alexandria. Hearing too that they were very large in Africa, he sailed thither, without waiting a single day, and suffered exceedingly on his voyage. But when he came near the place, before he disembarked from the ship, (for his arrival made a great noise among the Africans,) the fishermen came alongside in their boats and brought him some very fine crawfish; and he, when he saw them, asked if they had any finer; and when they said that there were none finer than those which they brought, he, recollecting those at Minturnæ, ordered the master of the ship to sail back the same way into Italy, without going near the land. But Aristoxenus,

[[11]]the philosopher of Cyrene, a real devotee of the philosophy of his country, (from whom, hams cured in a particular way are called Aristoxeni,) out of his prodigious luxury used to syringe the lettuces which grew in his garden with mead in the evening, and then, when he picked them in the morning, he would say that he was eating green cheesecakes, which were sent up to him by the Earth.

13. When the emperor Trajan was in Parthia, at a distance of many days' journey from the sea, Apicius sent him fresh oysters, which he had kept so by a clever contrivance of his own; real oysters, not like the sham anchovies which the cook of Nicomedes, king of the Bithynians, made in imitation of the real fish, and set before the king, when he expressed a wish for anchovies, (and he too at the time was a long way from the sea.) And in Euphron, the comic writer, a cook says:—

A.I am a pupil of Soterides,
Who, when his king was distant from the sea
Full twelve days' journey, and in winter's depth,
Fed him with rich anchovies to his wish,
And made the guests to marvel.
B.How was that?
A.He took a female turnip, shred it fine
Into the figure of the delicate fish;
Then did he pour on oil and savoury salt
With careful hand in due proportion.
On that he strew'd twelve grains of poppy seed,
Food which the Scythians love; then boil'd it all.
And when the turnip touch'd the royal lips,
Thus spake the king to the admiring guests:
"A cook is quite as useful as a poet,
And quite as wise, and these anchovies show it."

14. Archilochus, the Parian poet, says of Pericles, that he would often come to a banquet without being invited, after the fashion of the Myconians. But it seems to me that the Myconians are calumniated as sordid and covetous because of their poverty, and because they live in a barren island. At all events Cratinus calls Ischomachus of Myconos sordid.

A.But how can you be generous, if the son
Of old Ischomachus of Myconos?
B.I, a good man, may banquet with the good,
For friends should have all their delights in common.

Archilochus says:—

You come and drink full cups of Chian wine,
And yet give no return for them, nor wait

[[12]] To be invited, as a friend would do.
Your belly is your god, and thus misleads
Your better sense to acts of shamelessness.

And Eubulus, the comic writer, says somewhere:—