Now when all this conversation had taken place on these subjects, the physicians who were present would not depart without taking their share in it. For Dionysiocles said, Mnesitheus the Athenian, in his book about Comestibles, has said, “The head and feet of a pig have not a great deal in them which is rich and nutritious.” And Leonidas writes, "Demon, in the fourth book of his Attica, says that Thymœtes, his younger brother, slew Apheidas, who was king of Athens, he himself being a bastard, and usurped the kingdom. And in his time, Melanthus the Messenian was banished from his country, and consulted the Pythia as to where he should dwell: and she said wherever he was first honoured by gifts of hospitality, when men set before him feet and a head for supper. And this happened to him at Eleusis; for as the priestesses happened at the time to be solemnizing one of their national festivals, and to have con- [p. 161] sumed all the meat, and as nothing but the head and feet of the victim were left, they sent them to Melanthius.
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.
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