There were also very often kids brought round by the servants, dressed in various ways; some of them with a great deal of assafoetida, which afforded us no ordinary pleasure; for the flesh of the goat is exceedingly nutritious. At all events, Chitomachus the Carthaginian, who is inferior to no one of the new Academy for his spirit of philosophical investigation, says that a certain Theban athlete surpassed all the men of his time in strength, because he ate goat's flesh; for the juice of that meat is nervous and sticky, and such as can remain a long time in the substance of the body. And this wrestler used to be much laughed at, because of the unpleasant smell of his perspiration. And all the meat of pigs and lambs, while it remains undigested in the system, is very apt to turn, because of the fat. But the banquets spoken of by the comic poets rather please the ears by sweet sounds, than the palate by sweet tastes; as, for instance, the feast mentioned by Antiphanes, in his Female Physician—
A. But what meat do you eat with most delight?And in his Cyclops he says—
B. What meat?—why if you mean as to its cheapness,
There's mutton ere it bears you wool or milk,
That is to say, there's lamb, my friend; and so
[p. 635] There's also meat of goats which give no milk,
That is to say, of kids. For so much profit
Is got from these when they are fully grown,
That I put up with eating cheaper kinds.
These are the animals which the earth produces,
Which you will have from me: the ox of th' herd,
The goat which roves the woods, the chamois which
Loves the high mountain tops, the fearless ram,
The hog, the boar, the sucking-pig besides,
And hares, and kids . . . .
Green cheese, dry cheese, and cut and pounded cheese,
Scraped cheese, and chopp'd cheese, and congeal'd cheese
