Figs after figs grow old, pears after pears.

[[41]] On which account also he calls those trees which bear fruit beauteous:—

There many a beauteous tree appears—
Pomegranates, apples, figs, and pears.

And those which are adapted for being cut down for timber he calls tall, distinguishing the epithets which he applies to each by their respective uses:—

There tall trees adorn the grove,
The ash, and pine that towers above.

And the use of these trees was older than the Trojan war. And Tantalus, even after he is dead, is not cured of his fancy for these fruits; as the god, to punish him, waves such before his eyes (just as men lead on irrational animals by holding branches in front of them), and then prevents him from enjoying them, the moment he begins to entertain a hope of doing so. And Ulysses reminds Laertes of what he gave him when he was a child: "You gave me thirteen pears"—and so on.

46. And that they used to eat fish, Sarpedon proves plainly, when he compares the being taken prisoner to fish caught in a large net. Yet Eubulus, jesting in the way that the comic writers allow themselves, says—

I pray you, where in Homer is the chief
Who e'er eat fish, or anything but beef?
And, though, so much of liberty they boasted,
Their meat was never anything but roasted.

Nor did those heroes allow the birds the free enjoyment of the air; setting traps and nets for thrushes and doves. And they practised the art of taking birds, and, suspending a dove by a small string to the mast of a ship, then shot arrows at it from a distance, as is shown in the book describing the funeral games. But Homer passed over the use of vegetables, and fish, and birds, lest to mention them should seem like praising gluttony, thinking besides there would be a want of decorum in dwelling on the preparation of such things, which he considered beneath the dignity of gods and heroes. But that they did in reality eat their meat boiled as well as roasted, he shows when he says—

But as a caldron boils with melting fat
Of well-fed pig;