84. After all this conversation it seemed good to go to supper. And when the Uræum was carried round, Leonidas said, "Euthydemus the Athenian, my friends, in his treatise on Pickles, says that Hesiod has said with respect to every kind of pickle—

* * * * *[192:1]

Some sorrily-clad fishermen did seek
To catch a lamprey; men who love to haunt
The Bosporus's narrow strait, well stored
With fish for pickling fit. They cut their prey
In large square portions, and then plunge them deep
Into the briny tub: nor is the oxyrhyncus
A kind to be despised by mortal man;
Which the bold sons of ocean bring to market
Whole and in pieces. Of the noble tunny
The fair Byzantium the mother is,
And of the scombrus lurking in the deep,
And of the well-fed ray. The snow-white Paros
Nurses the colius for human food;
And citizens from Bruttium or Campania,
Fleeing along the broad Ionian sea,
Will bring the orcys, which shall potted be,
And placed in layers in the briny cask,
Till honour'd as the banquet's earliest course.

Now these verses appear to me to be the work of some cook rather than of that most accomplished Hesiod; for how is it possible for him to have spoken of Parium or Byzantium, and still more of Tarentum and the Bruttii and the Campanians, when he was many years more ancient than any of these places or tribes? So it seems to me that they are the verses of Euthydemus himself."

And Dionysiocles said, "Whoever wrote the verses, my good Leonidas, is a matter which you all, as being grammarians of the highest reputation, are very capable of deciding. But since the discussion is turning upon pickles and salt fish, concerning which I recollect a proverb which was thought deserving of being quoted by Charchus the Solensian,—

For old salt-fish is fond of marjoram.

[[193]] I too myself will say a word on the subject, which is not unconnected with my own art.

85. Diocles the Carystian, in his treatise on the Wholesomes, as it is entitled, says, "Of all salt-fish which are destitute of fat, the best is the horæum; and of all that are fat, the best is the tunny-fish." But Icesius says, "that neither the pelamydes nor the horæa are easily secreted by the stomach; and that the younger tunnies are similar in most respects to the cybii, but that they have a great superiority over those which are called horæa." And he says the same of the Byzantine horæa, in comparison with those which are caught in other places. And he says "that not only the tunnies, but that all other fish caught at Byzantium is superior to that which is caught elsewhere."

To this Daphnus the Ephesian added,—Archestratus, who sailed round the whole world for the sake of finding out what was good to eat, and what pleasures he could derive from the use of his inferior members, says—

And a large slice of fat Sicilian tunny,
Carefully carved, should be immersed in brine.
But the saperdes is a worthless brute,
A delicacy fit for Ponticans
And those who like it. For few men can tell
How bad and void of strengthening qualities
Those viands are. The scombrus should be kept
Three days before you sprinkle it with salt,
Then let it lie half-pickled in the cask.
But when you come unto the sacred coast,
Where proud Byzantium commands the strait,
Then take a slice of delicate horæum,
For it is good and tender in those seas.