Kitap 2
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Fish, goats' flesh, and a scorpion between them;
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Then there were eggs in half, looking like stars.
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On them we quickly laid our hands, and then
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Speaking to me, and giving me a nod,
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The host began to follow our example;
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So we'd a race, and never did I stop
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Till the whole dish was empty as a sieve.
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With respect to Mushrooms.—Aristias says— The stony soil produced no mushrooms. And Poliochus has the following passage— Each of us twice a day received to eat Some small dark maize well winnow'd from the chaff, And carefully ground; and also some small figs. Meantime some of the party would begin And roast some mushrooms; and perhaps would catch Some delicate snails if 'twas a dewy morning, And vegetables which spontaneous grew. Then, too, we'd pounded olives; also wine Of no great strength, and no very famous vintage. And Antiphanes says— Our supper is but maize well fenced round With chaff, so as not to o'erstep the bounds Of well-devised economy. An onion, A few side-dishes, and a sow-thistle, A mushroom, or what wild and tasteless roots The place affords us in our poverty. Such is our life, not much exposed to fevers For no one, when there's meat, will eat of thyme, Not even the pupils of Pythagoras. And a few lines afterwards he goes on— For which of us can know the future, or The fate that shall our various friends befall Take now these mushrooms and for dinner roast them, Which I've just picked beneath the maple shade. Cephisodorus, the pupil of Isocrates, in the treatise which he wrote against Aristotle (and there are four books of it), reproaches the philosopher for not having thought it worth his while to collect proverbs, though Antiphanes had made an entire play which was called Proverbs: from which play he produces these lines— For I, if I eat any of your dishes, Seem as if I was on raw mushrooms feeding, Or unripe apples, fit to choke a man.
