Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/228

 shape; then, having pounded some white sesame, soften that too with boiled honey, and draw it out into two cakes, placing one beneath and the other above, so as to have the black surface in the middle, and make it into a neat shape." These are the recipes of that clever writer on confectionary, Chrysippus.

58. But Harpocration the Mendesian, in his treatise on Cheesecakes, speaks of a dish which the Alexandrians call [Greek: pankarpia]. Now this dish consists of a number of cakes mashed up together and boiled with honey. And after they are boiled, they are made up into round balls, and fastened round with a thin string of byblus in order to keep them together. There is also a dish called [Greek: poltos], which Alcman mentions in the following terms—

And then we'll give you poltos made of beans ([Greek: pyanios]), And snow-white wheaten groats from unripe corn, And fruit of wax.

But the substantive [Greek: pyanion], as Sosibius tells us, means a collection of all kinds of seeds boiled up in sweet wine. And [Greek: chidros] means boiled grains of wheat. And when he speaks here of waxy fruit, he means honey. And Epicharmus, in his Earth and Sea, speaks thus—

To boil some morning [Greek: poltos].

And Pherecrates mentions the cakes called [Greek: melikêridôn] in his Deserters, speaking as follows—

As one man smells like goats, but others Breathe from their mouths unalloy'd [Greek: melikêras].

59. And when all this had been said, the wise Ulpian said,—Whence, my most learned grammarians, and out of what library, have these respectable writers, Chrysippus and Harpocration, been extracted, men who bring the names of illustrious philosophers into disrepute by being their namesakes? And what Greek has ever used the word [Greek: hêmina]; or who has ever mentioned the [Greek: amylos]?" And when Laurentius answered him, and said,—Whoever the authors of the poems attributed to Epicharmus were, they were acquainted with the [Greek: hêmina]. And we find the following expressions in the play entitled Chiron—

And to drink twice the quantity of cool water,— Two full heminas.

And these spurious poems, attributed to Epicharmus, were, at all events, written by eminent men. For it was Chry