Then there are pomegranates. And of pomegranates some kinds are said to be destitute of kernels, and some to have hard ones. And those without kernels are mentioned by Aristophanes in his Farmers; and in his Anagyrus he says—
Except wheat flour and pomegranates.He also speaks of them in the Gerytades; and Hermippus, in his Cercopes, says—
Have you e'er seen the pomegranate's kernel in snow?And we find the diminutive form ῥοΐδιον, like βοΐδιον. Antiphanes also mentions the pomegranates with the hard kernels in his Bœotia—
I bade him bring me from the farm pomegranatesAnd Epilycus, in his Phoraliscus, says—
Of the hard-kernell'd sort.
You are speaking of apples and pomegranates.[p. 1041] Alexis also, in his Suitors, has the line—
He took the rich pomegranates from their hands.But Agatharchides, in the nineteenth book of his History of Europe, tells us that the Bœotians call pomegranates not ῥοιαὶ but σίδαι, speaking thus:—“As the Athenians were disputing with the Bœotians about a district which they called Sidæ, Epaminondas, while engaged in upholding the claims of the Bœotians, suddenly lifted up in his left hand a pomegranate which he had concealed, and showed it to the Athenians, asking them what they called it, and when they said ῥοιὰ, But we,' said he, ' call it σίδη..' And the district bears the pomegranate-tree in great abundance, from which it originally derived its name. And Epaminondas prevailed.” And Menander, in his Heauton-Timorumenos, called them ῥοΐδια, in the following lines—
And after dinner I did set before themThere is, however, another plant called sida, which is something like the pomegranate, and which grows in the lake Orchomenus, in the water itself; and the sheep eat its leaves, and the pigs feed on the young shoots, as Theophrastus tells us, in the fourth book of his treatise on Plants; where he says that there is another plant like it in the Nile, which grows without any roots.
Almonds, and after that we ate pomegranates.
