It is no great hardship, if it must be so,
To buy and eat the boil'd feet of a pig.

And Aristophanes speaks of tongue as a dish, in his Tryers, in the following words—

I've had anchovies quite enough; for I
Am stretch'd almost to bursting while I eat
Such rich and luscious food. But bring me something
Which shall take off the taste of all these dainties.
Bring me some liver, or a good large slice
Of a young goat. And if you can't get that,
Let me at least have a rib or a tongue,
Or else the spleen, or entrails, or the tripe
Of a young porker in last autumn born;
And with it some hot rolls.

50. Now when all this conversation had taken place on these subjects, the physicians who were present would not depart without taking their share in it. For Dionysiocles said, Mnesitheus the Athenian, in his book about Comestibles, has said, "The head and feet of a pig have not a great deal in them which is rich and nutritious." And Leonidas writes, "Demon, in the fourth book of his Attica, says that Thymœtes, his younger brother, slew Apheidas, who was king of Athens, he himself being a bastard, and usurped the kingdom. And in his time, Melanthus the Messenian was banished from his country, and consulted the Pythia as to where he should dwell: and she said wherever he was first honoured by gifts of hospitality, when men set before him feet and a head for supper. And this happened to him at Eleusis; for as the priestesses happened at the time to be solemnizing one of their national festivals, and to have

[[161]]consumed all the meat, and as nothing but the head and feet of the victim were left, they sent them to Melanthius.

51. Then a paunch[161:1] was brought in, which may be looked upon as a sort of metropolis, and the mother of the sons of Hippocrates, whom I know to have been turned into ridicule by the comic poets on account of their swinish disposition. And Ulpian, looking upon it, said,—Come now, my friends, whom does the paunch lie with? For we have now been minding the belly long enough, and it is time for us now to have some real conversation. And as for these cynics, I bid them be silent, now that they have eaten abundantly, unless they like to gnaw some of the cheeks, and heads, and bones, which no one will grudge their enjoying like dogs, as they are; for that is what they are, and what they are proud of being called.

The remnants to the dogs they're wont to throw,

Euripides says, in his Cretan Women. For they wish to eat and drink everything, never considering what the divine Plato says in his Protagoras, "That disputing about poetry, is like banquets of low and insignificant persons. For they, because they are unable in their drinking parties to amuse one another by their own talents, and by their own voices and conversation, by reason of their ignorance and stupidity, make female flute-players of great consequence, hiring at a high price sounds which they cannot utter themselves, I mean the music of flutes, and by means of this music they are able to get on with one another. But where the guests are gentlemanly, and accomplished, and well educated, you will not see any flute-playing women, or dancing women, or female harpers, but they are able themselves to pass the time with one another agreeably, without all this nonsense and trifling, by means of their own voices, speaking and hearing one another in turn with all decency, even if they drink a great deal of wine." And this is what all you Cynics do, O Cynulcus; you drink, or rather you get drunk, and then, like flute-players and dancing-women, you prevent all the pleasure of conversation: "living," to use the words of the same Plato, which he utters in his Philebus, "not the life of a man, but of some mollusk, or of some other marine animal which has life in a shell-encased body."

[[162]] 52. And Cynulcus, being very angry, said,—You glutton of a man, whose god is your belly, you know nothing else yourself, nor are you able to keep up an uninterrupted conversation, nor to recollect any history, nor to begin anything which may tend to throw a charm on any discussion. But you have been wasting all the time with questions of this sort, "Is there such and such a statement? Is there not? Has such and such a thing been said? Has it not been said?" And you attack and examine closely everything which occurs in anything which is said, collecting all your thorns—living continually

As if among thistles, or plants of rough borage—