Book 3
32
Diodes the Carystian, in his treatise on the Whole- somes, says that the best of all shell-fish, as aperient and diuretic food, are mussels, oysters, scallops, and cockles. And Archippus says, in his poem called Fishes, — With limpets and sea-urchins and escharæ, And with periwinkles and cockles. And Diocles says that the strongest of all shell-fish are cockles, purple-fish, and ceryces. But concerning ceryces Archippus says this— The ceryx, ocean's nursling, child of purple. But Speusippus, in the second book of his Similarities, says that ceryces, purple-fish, strabeli, and cockles, are all very nearly alike. And Sophocles makes mention of the shellfish called strabeli in his Camici, in these words:— Come now, my son, and look if we may find Some of the nice strabelus, ocean's child. And again Speusippus enumerates separately in regular order the cockle, the periwinkle, the mussel, the pinna, the solens; and in another place he speaks of oysters and limpets. And Araros says, in his Campylion— These now are most undoubted delicacies, Cockles and solens; and the crooked locusts Spring forth in haste like dolphins. And Sophron says, in his Mimi— A. What are these long cockles, O my friend, Which you do think so much of? B. Solens, to be sure. This too is the sweet-flesh'd cockle, dainty food, The dish much loved by widows. And Cratinus also speaks of the pinna in his Archilochi— She indeed like pinnas and sea oysters. And Philyllius, or Eunicus, or Aristophanes, in the Cities, says— A little polypus, or a small cuttle-fish, A crab, a crawfish, oysters, cockles, Limpets and solens, mussels and pinnas; Periwinkles too, from Mitylene take; Let us have two sprats, and mullet, ling, And conger-eel, and perch, and black fish. But Agiastos, and Dercylus, in his Argolici, call the strabeli ἀστράβηλοι; speaking of them as suitable to play upon like a trumpet.
