Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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And when some sucking-pigs were carried round, and the guests made an inquiry respecting them, whether they were mentioned by any ancient author, some one said—Phe- recrates, in his Slave turned Tutor, says—

I stole some sucking-pigs not fully grown.

And in his Deserters be says—

Are you not going to kill a sucking-pig?

[p. 625] And Alcæus, in his Palæstra, says—

For here he is himself, and if I grunt
One atom more than any sucking-pig . . .

And Herodotus, in his first book, says that in Babylon there is a golden altar, on which it is not lawful to sacrifice anything but sucking-pigs. Antiphanes says in his Philetærus—

There's here a pretty little cromaciscus
Not yet wean'd, you see.

And Heniochus, in his Polyeuctus, says—

The ox was brazen, long since past all boiling,
But he perhaps had taken a sucking-pig,
And slaughter'd that.

And Anacreon says—

Like a young sucking kid, which when it leaves
Its mother in the wood, trembles with fear.

And Crates, in his Neighbours, says—

For now we constantly have feasts of lovers,
As long as we have store of lambs and pigs
Not taken from their dams.

And Simonides represents Danae as speaking thus over Perseus—

O my dear child, what mis'ry tears my soul!
But you lie sleeping,
You slumber with your unwean'd heart.

And in another place he says of Archemorus—

Alas the wreath! They wept the unwean'd child,
Breathing out his sweet soul in bitter pangs.

And Clearchus, in his Lives, says that Phalaris the tyrant had arrived at such a pitch of cruelty, that he used to feast on sucking children. And there is a verb θῆσθαι, which means to suck milk, (Homer says—

Hector is mortal, and has suck'd the breast;)

because the mother's breast is put into the mouth of the infant. And that is the derivation of the word τίτσθος, breast, from τίθημι, to place, because the breasts are thus placed in the children's mouths.

After she'd lull'd to sleep the new-born kids,
As yet unweaned from their mother's breast.