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Do you really think, said Periander, that Hesiod ever had any such idea in mind? Do you not rather think that, since he was always sounding the praises of frugality, he was also summoning us to the simplest of dishes as being the most pleasant? For the mallow is good eating, and the stalk of the asphodel is luscious; but these no-hunger and nothirst drugs (for they are drugs rather than foods), I understand, include in their composition a sweet gum and a cheese found among barbarian peoples, and a great many seeds of a sort hard to procure. How, then, can we concede to Hesiod his Rudder on high in the smokeHesiod, Works and Days, 45, 46; quoted also in Moralia, 527 B. Cf. also Hesiod, Works and Days, 629. suspended, and All the labours of oxen and stout-toiling mules be abolished,Hesiod, Works and Days, 45, 46; quoted also in Moralia, 527 B. Cf. also Hesiod, Works and Days, 629. if there is to be need of all this preparation? I am surprised at your friend from abroad, Solon, if, when he was recently carrying out his great purification for the people of Delos,Does Plutarch connect Epimenides with the purification of Delos by Peisistratus (Herodotus, i. 67; Thucydides iii. 107)? he did not note the memorials and examples of the earliest forms of food being brought into the temple there, including, among other inexpensive and self-propagated foods, mallow and asphodel, whose plainness and simplicity it is most likely that Hesiod recommends to us.
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Not merely that, said Anacharsis, but both are commended as herbs that contribute to health also in greatest measure.
