Since then, on this account, these wise men guard against the lentils, at all events cause some bread to be given to us, with a little plain food; no expensive dishes, but any of those vulgar lentils, if you have them, or what is called lentil soup. And when every one laughed, especially at the idea of the lentil soup, he said, You are very ignorant men, you feasters, never having read any books, which are the only things to instruct those who desire what is good. I mean the books of the Silli of Timon the Pyrrhonian. For he it is who speaks of lentil soup, in the second book of his Silli, writing as follows:—

The Teian barley-cakes do please me not,
Nor e'en the Lydian sauces: but the Greeks,
And their dry lentil soup, delight me more
Than all that painful luxury of excess.

For though the barley-cakes of Teos are preeminently good, (as also are those from Eretria, as Sopater says, in his Suitors of Bacchis, where he says—

We came to Eretria, for its white meal famed;)

and also, the Lydian sauces; still Timon prefers the lentil soup to both of them put together.

51. To this our admirable entertainer, Laurentius himself, replied, saying,—O you men who drive the dogs, according to

[[258]]the Jocasta of Strattis, the comic poet, who in the play entitled The Phœnician Women, is represented as saying—

I wish to give you both some good advice:
When you boil lentils, pour no perfume o'er them.

And Sopater, too, whom you were mentioning just now, in his Descent to Hell, speaks in these terms:—

Ulysses, king of Ithaca—'Tis perfume
On lentils thrown: courage, my noble soul!