Book 14
76
The TromilicanThere is a dispute whether this word ought to be written Tromilican or Stromilican. The city of Tromilea is mentioned nowhere else. cheese also has a high character, respecting which Demetrius the Scepsian writes thus in his second book of the Trojan Array—"Tromilea is a city of Achaia, near which a delicious cheese is made of goat's milk, not to be compared with any other kind, and it is called Tromilican. And Simonides mentions it in his Iambic poem, which begins thus— You're taking wondrous trouble beforehand, Telembrotus: and in this poem he says— And there is the fine Achaian cheese, Called the Tromilican, which I've brought with me. And Euripides, in his Cyclops, speaks of a harsh-tasted cheese, which he calls ὀπίας τυρὸς, being curdled by the juice (ὀπὸς) of the fig-tree— There is, too, τυρὸς ὀπίας, and Jove's milk. Eur. Cycl. 136.
76
But since, by speaking in this way of all the things which are now put on the table before us, I am making the Tromilican cheese into the remains of the dessert, I will not continue this topic. For Eupolis calls the relics of sweetmeats (τραγημάτων) and confectionery ἀποτραγήματα. And ridiculing a man of the name of Didymias, he calls him the ἀποτράγημα of a fox, either because he was little in person, or as being cunning and mischievous, as Dorotheus of Ascalon says. There are also thin broad cheeses, which the Cretans call females, as Seleucus tells us, which they offer up at certain sacrifices. And Philippides, in his play called the Flutes, speaks of some called πυρίεφθαι (and this is a name given to those made of cream), when he says— Having these πυρίεφθαι, and these herbs. And perhaps all such things are included in this Macedonian term ἐπιδειπνίδες.. For all these things are provocatives to drinking.