And make some ματτύη quick.
MATTYH.
But Alexis, in his Pyraunus, has used the word in an obscure sense:—
But when I found them all immersed in business,
I cried,—Will no one give us now a ματτύη?
as if he meant a feast here, though you might fairly refer the word merely to a single dish. Now Machon the Sicyonian is one of the comic poets who were contemporaries of Apollodorus of Carystus, but he did not exhibit his comedies at Athens, but in Alexandria; and he was an excellent poet, if ever there was one, next to those seven[107] of the first class. On which account, Aristophanes the grammarian, when he was a very young man, was very anxious to be much with him. And he wrote the following lines in his play entitled Ignorance:—
There's nothing that I'm fonder of than ματτύη;
But whether 'twas the Macedonians
Who first did teach it us, or all the gods,
I know not; but it must have been a person