Book 3
29
Now if any one disbelieves this, let him learn from Theopompus the Chian, a man of the strictest truth and who expended a great deal of money on the most accurate investigation of matters to be spoken of in his History. For he says, in the thirty-eighth book of his History, while giving an account of Clearchus, the tyrant of the Heracleans who were in Pontus, that he seized violently upon a number of people and gave a great many of them hemlock to drink.—And as, says he, they all knew that he was in the habit of compelling them to pledge him in this liquor, they never left their homes without first eating rue: for people who have eaten this beforehand take no harm from drinking aconite,— a poison which, they say, has its name from growing in a place called Aconæ, which is not far from Heraclea. When Democritus had said this they all marvelled at the efficacy of citron, and most of them ate it, as if they had had nothing to eat or drink before. But Pamphilus, in his Dialects, says that the Romans call it not κίτριον, but κίτρον.
30
And after the viands which have been mentioned there were then brought unto us separately some large dishes of oysters, and other shell-fish, nearly all of which have been thought by Epicharmus worthy of being celebrated in his play of the Marriage of Hebe, in these words:— Come, now, bring all kinds of shell-fish; Lepades, aspedi, crabyzi, strabeli, cecibali, Tethunachia, balani, porphyryæ, and oysters with closed shells, Which are very difficult to open, but very easy to eat; And mussels, and anaritæ, and ceryces, and sciphydria, Which are very sweet to eat, but very prickly to touch; And also the oblong solens. And bring too the black Cockle, which keeps the cockle-hunter on the stretch. Then too there are other cockles, and sand-eels, And periwinkles, unproductive fish, Which men entitle banishers of men, But which we gods call white and beautiful.
