16. But, on the other hand, the ancients sometimes also used the word ἀλεκτρυὼν in the feminine gender for a hen. Cratinus, in his Nemesis, says—
This is your work, O Leda. Take you care
To imitate the manners of a hen (ἀλεκτρυόνος)
And sit upon this egg, that so you may
Show us from out this shell a noble bird.
And Strattis, in his Men Fond of Cold, says—
And all the hens (αἱ δ᾽ ἀλεκτρυόνες ἅπασαι),
And all the pigs are also dead,
And all the little birds around.
And Anaxandrides says, in his Tereus—
They saw the boars their species propagate
With joy, and likewise all the hens (τὰς ἀλεμτρυόνας).
And since I have mentioned this comic poet, and as I know, too, that this play of his, namely Tereus, is not reckoned one of his best, I will also bring forward, my friends, for your judgment, what Chamæleon of Heraclea has said about him in the sixth book of his treatise on Comedy; where he uses the following language:—"Anaxandrides once, publishing a dithyrambic poem at Athens, entered the city on a horse, and recited some lines of his Ode. And he was a very fine, handsome man to look at; and he let his hair grow, and wore a purple robe with golden fringes, but being a man of a bitter disposition he was in the habit of behaving in some such manner as this with respect to his comedies. Whenever he did not get the victory he took his play and sent it to the frankincense market to be torn up to pack bunches of frankincense in, and did not revise it as most people did. And in this way he destroyed many clever and elegant plays; being, by reason of his old age, very sulky with the spectators. And he is said to have been a Rhodian by birth, of the city of Camirus: and I wonder therefore how it was that his Tereus got preserved, since it did not obtain the victory; and I feel the same wonder in the case of others by the same author. And Theopompus, in his Peace, also uses the word ἀλεκτρύων for hens, speaking thus—
I am so vex'd at having lost the hen (ἀλεκτρυόνα)
Which laid the finest eggs in all the yard.
And Aristophanes, in his Dædalus, says—
She laid a noble egg, like any hen (ἀλεκτρυών).