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Cookery Among the Ancients: Sicilian

Mithæcus, another famous Hellenic guide to epicurean delights, wrote a book entitled "The Sicilian Cook," which has been mentioned by Plato; but this was written in prose, and was the product of a former native of Sicily, whence Greece was largely accustomed to draw her supply of culinary masters. Among the most distinguished of Sicilian craftsmen was Trimalchio, whose cunning is said to have been so great that when he could not procure scarce and much coveted fish he could counterfeit their form and flavour so deftly as to deceive even Neptune himself. The cook of Nicomedes, King of the Babylonians, was accustomed to serve him with anchovies, made in imitation of the real fish, at such times as his majesty expressed a desire for anchovies on a sea voyage. A turnip, disguised by oil, salt, poppy-seed, and other seasonings, was the basis of the plat, the king, as Euphron, the comic writer, records, smacking his lips over the dish and saying that cooks were equally as useful as poets, and even more skilful. That, with the aid of olives, salt pork, onion, parsley, condiments, and stuffing, with veal as the medium, an accomplished cook can prepare a fair semblance to an overdone quail is proverbial. But how a turnip can be made to counterfeit anchovies is not so apparent. The celebrated repasts of Socrates, at which the guests were seated on chairs, were an exception to the luxury of the times; these entertainments were extremly frugal, the cheer being of an intellectual more than a corporeal nature a mere collation, " • • light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine."

Epicurus, the Athenian who flourished three hundred years before the Christian era, is wrongly supposed by many to have been one of the dediti ventri -a slave to appetite and living only for epicurean pleasure: a supposition that his name naturally implies. But it should be recollected that in proposing pleasure or happiness as the supreme good, he qualified this doctrine by the maxim that temperance is necessary in order to enjoy the noble and durable pleasures which are proper to human nature.

However varied the fare and splendid the appointments, the position of the ancients at table-resting on their left elbows and reclining on couches as the gnomon and clepsydra noiselessly marked the lapse of the hours-must have been not only irksome, but one greatly furthering stomachic maladies. Besides, it must be borne in mind that the ancients ate with their fingers, while the use of emetics, first in vogue among the Egyptians, and later on among the Romans in order to forefend satiety and enable them to prolong their saturnalia, was extremely common.