Kitap 2
64
The next vegetable to be mentioned is Onions.—In the Amalthea of Eubulus, Hercules is represented as refusing to eat them; saying— Whether it's hot, or whether it is dry, Or whether it is something 'tween the two, Are points of more importance than old Troy. But I have not come here to fill myself With cabbages, or benjamin, or other Impious and bitter danties, or with onions. But that which tends the most to vigorous strength And health is food which I delight in chiefly. Meat of beef, boil'd and fresh, and plenty of it, And a large well-filled dish of oxen's feet, Three roasting pigs besides, sprinkled with salt. Alexis, while explaining the efficacy of onions in aphrodisiac matters, says— Pinnas, beetles, snails, muscles, eggs, calves'-feet, And many other philters, may be found More useful still to one who loves his mistress. Xenarchus, in the Butalion, says— A house is ruined which has a master Whose fortune's gone, and whom the evil genius Has struck. And so the once great house of the Pelops Is weak and nerveless. Nor can earth-born onion, Fair Ceres' handmaid, who contracts the neck, Even when boiled, assist to check this evil. Nor e'en the polypus, who swells the veins, Born in dark eddies of the deepest sea, When taken in the net of stern necessity By hungry mortals, fill the broad deep bosom Of the large dish turn'd by the potter's wheel. And Archestratus says—
64
I love not onions, nor yet cabbages,
64
Nor the sweet barberry-tree, nor all the other
64
Dainties and sweetmeats of the second course.
