For lentils are a tragic food,
said Archagathus . . . . to have written; which also
Orestes ate when he had recover'd from his sickness,
as Sophilus the comic writer says. But it is a Stoic doctrine,
that the wise man will do everything well, and will be able to
cook even lentils cleverly. On which account Timon the
Phliasian said—
And a man who knows not how to cook a lentil wisely.
As if a lentil could not be boiled in any other way except ac-
cording to the precepts of Zeno, who said—
Add to the lentils a twelfth part of coriander.
And Crates the Theban said—
Do not prefer a dainty dish to lentils,
And so cause factious quarrels in our party.'
[p. 255]
And Chrysippus, in his treatise on the Beautiful, quoting
some apophthegms to us, says—
Eat not an olive when you have a nettle;
But take in winter lentil-macaroni—
Bah! bah!
Lentil-macaroni's like ambrosia in cold weather.
And the witty Aristophanes said, in his Gerytades—
You're teaching him to boil porridge or lentils.
And, in his Amphiaraus—
You who revile the lentil, best of food.
And Epicharmus says, in his Dionysi—
And then a dish of lentils was boil'd up.
And Antiphanes says, in his Women like one another—
Things go on well. Do you now boil some lentils,
Or else at least now teach me who you are.
And I know that a sister of Ulysses, the most prudent and
wisest of men, was called
φακῆ (lentil), the same whom some
other writers call Callisto, as Mnaseas of Patra relates, in the
third book of his History of the Affairs of Europe, and as Lysimachus also tells us, in the third book of his Returns.
