cooks who above all men knew how to dress and season such things. Laurentius, therefore, asked whether the ancients were acquainted with this vegetable, or with this way of dressing it. And Ulpian said—Nicander the Colophonian, in the second book of his Georgics, mentions this way of dressing the vegetable, calling the gourds not [Greek: kolokyntai], but [Greek: sikyai]; for, indeed, that was one of their names, as we have said before. And his words are:—
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.
POULTRY. 15. The next thing to be mentioned is poultry. And since poultry was placed on the gourds and on other scraped ([Greek: knista]) vegetables, (and this is what Aristophanes in his Delian Woman says of chopped up vegetables, "[Greek: knista], or pressed grapes,") Myrtilus said,—But now, in our time, we have got into a habit of calling nothing [Greek: ornithas] or [Greek: ornithia] 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 [Greek: alektryones] and [Greek: alektorides]. But anciently, men were accustomed to use the word [Greek: ornis], 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 ([Greek: ornithes polloi]) beneath the sun's bright rays.
And in another place he uses the word in the feminine gender, and says—
A tuneful bird ([Greek: ornithi ligyrê]).
And in another place he says—
