They also call myrtle-berries Phibalean. As Antiphanes does in his "Cretans"—

. . . . . But first of all
I want some myrtle-berries on the table,
Which I may eat when e'er I counsel take;
And they must be Phibalean, very fine,
Fit for a garland.

Epigenes too mentions Chelidonian figs, that is, figs fit for swallows, in his Bacchea—

Then, in a little while, a well-fill'd basket
Of dry Chelidonian figs is brought in.

And Androtion, or Philippus, or Hegemon, in the Book of the Farm, gives a list of these kinds of figs, saying—"In the

[[127]]plain it is desirable to plant specimens of the Chelidonian fig, of the fig called Erinean, of the Leukerinean, and of the Phibalean; but plant the Oporobasilis, the queen of autumn, everywhere; for each kind has some useful qualities; and, above all, the pollarded trees, and the phormynian, and the double-bearers, and the Megarian, and the Lacedæmonian kinds are desirable, if there is plenty of water.

8. Lynceus, too, mentions the fig-trees which grow in Rhodes, in his Epistles; instituting a comparison between the best of the Athenian kinds and the Rhodian species. And he writes in these terms:—"But these fig-trees appear to vie with Lacedæmonian trees of the same kind, as mulberries do with figs; and they are put on the table before supper, not after supper as they are here, when the taste is already vitiated by satiety, but while the appetite is still uninfluenced and unappeased." And if Lynceus had tasted the figs which in the beautiful Rome are called καλλιστρούθια, as I have, he would have been by far more long-sighted than ever his namesake was. So very far superior are those figs to all the other figs in the whole world.

Other kinds of figs grown near Rome are held in high esteem; and those called the Chian figs, and the Libianian; those two named the Chalcidic, and the African figs; as Herodotus the Lycian bears witness, in his treatise on Figs.

9. But Parmeno the Byzantine, in his Iambics, speaks of the figs which come from Canæ, an Æolian city, as the best of all: saying—

I am arrived after a long voyage, not having brought
A valuable freight of Canæan figs.