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With respect to Cucumbers.—There is a proverb—
Eat the cucumber, O woman, and weave your cloak.
And Matron says, in his Parodies—
And I saw a cucumber, the son of the all-glorious Earth,
Lying among the herbs; and it was served up on nine tables.1
And Laches says—
But, as when cucumber grows up in a dewy place,
Now the Attic writers always use the word σίκυον as a word of three syllables. But Alcæus uses it as a dissyllble, σίκυς; for he says, δάκῃ τῶν σικύων from the nominative σίκυς, a word [p. 124] like στάχυς, στάχυος. And Phrynichus uses the word σικύδιον as a diminutive, where he says—
εντραγεῖν σικύδιον, to eat a little cucumber.
[From this point are the genuine words of Athenœus.]2
I will send radishes and four cucumbers.
And Phrynichus too used the word σικύδιον as a diminutive, in his Monotropus; where he says, κἀντραγεῖν σικύδιον.

1 This is parodied from—

καὶ τίτυον εἶδον γαίης ἐρικυδέος υἷον
κειμένον ἐν δαπέδῳ ὁδ᾽ ἔπ᾽ ἐννεὰ κεῖτο πέλεθρα:
translated by Pope:
There Tityus large, and long in fetters bound,
O'erspreads nine acres of infernal ground.

2 The whole of the first two books of the genuine work of Athenæus are lost; as also is the beginning of the third book; and a good deal of the last. What has been translated up to this point is an epitome or abridgement made by some compiler whose name is unknown. Casaubon states that he is ignorant of the name of this compiler; but is sure that he lived five hundred years before his own time, and before Eustathius; because Eustathius sometimes uses his epitome in preference to the original work. But even before this abridgement was made the text had become exceedingly corrupt, according to the statement of the compiler himself.—See Bayle, Diet. voc. Athenœus.

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.

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