And seeing there a tray before me full
Of smoking oven-loaves, I took and ate them.

[[181]] There is another kind called escharites (or the hearth-loaf), and this is mentioned by Antidotus in the Protochorus—

I took the hot hearth-loaves, how could I help it?
And dipp'd them in sweet sauce, and then I ate them.

And Crobylus says, in his Strangled Man—

I took a platter of hot clean hearth-loaves.

And Lynceus the Samian, in his letter to Diagoras, comparing the eatables in vogue at Athens with those which were used at Rhodes, says—"And moreover, while they talk a great deal about their bread which is to be got in the market, the Rhodians at the beginning and middle of dinner put loaves on the table which are not at all inferior to them; but when they have given over eating and are satisfied, then they introduce a most agreeable dish, which is called the hearth-loaf, the best of all loaves; which is made of sweet things, and compounded so as to be very soft, and it is made up with such an admirable harmony of all the ingredients as to have a most excellent effect; so that often a man who is drunk becomes sober again, and in the same way a man who has just eaten to satiety is made hungry again by eating of it."

There is another kind of loaf called tabyrites, of which Sopater, in his Cnidia, says—The tabyrites loaf was one which fills the cheeks.

There was also a loaf called the achæinas. And this loaf is mentioned by Semus, in the eighth book of his Delias; and he says that is made by the women who celebrate the Thesmophoria. They are loaves of a large size. And the festival is called Megalartia, which is a name given to it by those who carry these loaves, who cry—"Eat a large achæinas, full of fat."

There is another loaf called cribanites, or the pan-loaf. This is mentioned by Aristophanes, in his Old Age. And he introduces a woman selling bread, complaining that her loaves have been taken from her by those who have got rid of the effects of their old age—

A.What was the matter?
B.My hot loaves, my son.
A.Sure you are mad?
B.My nice pan-loaves, my son,
So white, so hot. . . . . .