Though I am aware that he too makes the genitive with a χ, saying—
But yet by all the birds (ὀρνίχων).
17. The next thing to be mentioned is the pig, under the name of δέλφαξ. Epicharmus calls the male pig δέλφαξ in his Ulysses the Deserter, saying—
I lost by an unhappy chance
A pig (δέλφακα) belonging to the neighbours,
Which I was keeping for Eleusis
And Ceres's mysterious feast.
Much was I grieved; and now he says
That I did give it to th' Achæans,
Some kind of pledge; and swears that I
Betray'd the pig (τὸν δέλφακα) designedly.
And Anaxilus also, in his Circe, has used the word δέλφαξ in the masculine gender; and moreover has used it of a full-grown pig, saying—
Some of you that dread goddess will transform
To pigs (δέλφακας), who range the mountains and the woods.
Some she will panthers make; some savage wolves,
And terrible lions.
But Aristophanes, in his Fryers, applies the word to female pigs, and says—
PIGS.
The paunch, too, of a sow in autumn born (δέλφακος ὀπωρίνης).
And in his Acharnians he says—