First cut the gourds in slices, and then run
Threads through their breadth, and dry them in the air;
Then smoke them hanging them above the fire;
So that the slaves may in the winter season
Take a large dish and fill it with the slices,
And feast on them on holidays: meanwhile
Let the cook add all sorts of vegetables,
And throw them seed and all into the dish;
Let them take strings of gherkins fairly wash'd,
And mushrooms, and all sorts of herbs in bunches,
And curly cabbages, and add them too.
15. The next thing to be mentioned is poultry. And since poultry was placed on the gourds and on other scraped (κνιστὰ) vegetables, (and this is what Aristophanes in his Delian Woman says of chopped up vegetables, “κνιστὰ, or pressed grapes,”) Myrtilus said,—But now, in our time, we have got into a habit of calling nothing ὄρνιθας or ὀρνίθια but pullets, of which I see a quantity now being brought round. (And Chrysippus the philosopher, in the fifth book of his Treatise on what is Honourable and Pleasant, writes thus—"As some people insist upon it that white pullets are nicer than black ones.") And the names given to the male fowl are ἀλεκτρυόνες and ἀλεκτορίδες. But anciently, men were accustomed to use the word ὄρνις, both in the masculine and feminine gender, and to apply it to other birds, and not to this species in particular to the exclusion of others, as is now done when we speak of buying birds, and mean only poultry. Accordingly, Homer says,
And many birds (ὄρνιθες πολλοὶ) beneath the sun's bright rays.
And in another place he uses the word in the feminine gender, and says—
A tuneful bird (ὄρνιθι λιγυρῇ).
And in another place he says—
As the bold bird her helpless young attends,
From danger guards them, and from want defends;
In search of prey she wings the spacious air,
And with untasted food supplies her care,[25]—
again using ὄρνις in the feminine gender. But Menander in his first edition of the Heiress, uses the word plainly in the sense in which it is used at the present day; saying—
A cock had loudly crow'd—"Will no one now,"
He cried out, “drive this poultry (τὰς ὄρνιθας) from our doors”
And again, he writes—