But that it was the fashion for liver to be wrapped up in a caul is stated by Hegesander the Delphian in his Memorials, where he says that Metanira the courtesan, having got a piece of the lungs of the animal in the liver which was thus wrapped up, as soon as she had unfolded the outer coat of fat and seen it, cried out—
I am undone, the tunic's treacherous foldsAnd perhaps it was because of its being in this state that Crobylus the comic poet called the liver modest; as Alexis also does in his Pseudypobolemæus, speaking as follows— Take the stiff feelers of the polypus, And in them you shall find some modest liver, And cutlets of wild goats, which you shall eat. But Aristophanes uses the diminutive form ἡπάτιον in his Tagenistæ, and so does Alcæus in the Palæstra, and Eubulus in his Deucalion. And the first letter of ἧπαρ and ἡπάτιον must be aspirated. For a synalœpha is used by Archilochus with the aspirate; when he says—
Have now entangled me to my destruction.
For you do seem to have no gall ἐφ᾽ ἥπατι (in your liver).There is also a fish which is called ἥπατος, which Eubulus himself mentions in his Lacedæmonians or Leda, and says that it has no gall in it—
You thought that I'd no gall; but spoke to meBut Hegesander, in his Memorials, says, that the hepatos has in its head two stones, like pearls in brilliancy and colour, and in shape something like a turbot.
As if I'd been a ἥπατος: but I
Am rather one of the melampyx class.
