Book 9
48
But Eupolis uses the word in its diminutive form, and in his play called Cities, calls them ὀρτύγια, speaking as follows:— A. Tell me now, have you ever bred any ὄρτυγεσ? B. I've bred some small ὀρτύγια. What of that And Antiphanes, in his play called The Countryman, speaks as follows, using also the form ὀρτύγιον·— For what now could a man like you perform, Having the soul of a quail (ὀρτυγίου)? It is an odd expression that Pratinas uses, who in his Dymænæ, or the Caryatides, calls the quail a bird with a sweet voice, unless indeed quails have voices in the Phliasian or Lacedæmonian country as partridges have; and perhaps it is from this, also, that the bird called σίαλις has its name, as Didymus says. For nearly all birds derive their tames from the sounds which they make.
