ferable to such an odious sight.' We learn from the Purpura of Xenarchus that insolence was not the only characteristic of the venders of fish. An Athenian statute, it seems, forbad these persons to water their wares, when they had once become dry: to evade this, it was usual for two brothers of the trade to pretend a quarrel blows ensued; one of the combatants fell down among the articles of their common trade, as if lifeless; water was thrown over him to recover him from his fainting fit, and thus the fish partook of the ablution in spite of the statute book! The Busybody of Diphilus introduces us to the knowledge of another trick, practised by these cunning dealers. When a purchaser asked them the price of a fish, he was answered ten obols; but obols were Æginetic or Attic, and the former were much more valuable than the latter. As the fishmonger took care not to specify which he meant; in receiving, he demanded the obols of Ægina, in paying, he gave the Attic; and thus the unfortunate purchaser was cheated both ways.

Persons of this cast would, of course, be great politicians, and take care of the state as well as their own shops. When Aristophanes therefore indulges in a laugh at the ridiculous cry so common in Athens, that a tyranny was on foot, and that the democracy was in danger, he takes care to put it into the mouth of the fishmonger, and the herb-woman whose stall supplied the fishsauce of the day.

A tyranny!-
For so it is: no matter what th' offence-
Be't great or small, the cry is- tyranny!'
Conspiracy!'-the word had near grown obsolete :
Full fifty years and we have miss'd the sound of 't.
And now it stinks within the very nostrils!
Salt fish is cassia to't:-'tis bandied every where.
The very markets fling it in your face.

Does one prefer a sea-bream there to loaches?
Straight cries the vender, whose adjoining stall

Holds loaches only- Slight! my mind misgives me;
Surely this man is catering'-for what?-

A tyranny forsooth! Has any bought him

Anchovies, and needs leeks to dress them with?
(And your green leek is pickle for a king,

A very royal food, I grant ye, Sirs,)

The herb-woman with eyes askew regards him;

And what!' says she, 'you want a leek, friend, do ye?

Marry come up! you are not for a tyranny,

I hope!-what! Athens brings her condiments,
Tribute, belike, for you!'-

The reader will perhaps, after all this, think it no exaggeration in

Antiphanes

Antiphanes to apply to the fishmongers one of the most powerful of the Greek mythical tales, and to declare that the sight of a fishmonger had the same effect upon him as the Gorgon's head; and that he became a petrifaction and not a man, at the very aspect of one of the craft.

The way is now cleared for the consideration of two articles intimately connected with Grecian dinners, and which, from their intrinsic elegance, will repay a little attention,-perfumery and flowers. We congratulate ourselves upon getting on such decent ground; for some of the Athenian customs are not very cleanly, and a fear has perpetually haunted us, lest in our wish to impress the reader with the strong predilection entertained by that polished people for some of the dishes which we have recorded, we should be led too far, and suffer him to purchase his knowledge too dear. Of the different perfumes used by the ancients, and the places producing the best of each kind, a sufficient account has been left by Apollonius, Herophilius, or, as some call him, Apollodorus scholar of Herophilius. He adds to his list the wholesome admonition, that the materials and the workmanship constitute the merit of things, and not the mere place producing them and the truth of this important distinction he proves by numerous examples. Of all perfumes, the most grateful to the Athenian taste was that which had in it the odour of their favourite flower, the violet. That made from the rose, was said to be useful in potations; the lethargic and men of weak stomachs were recommended to use the unguent extracted from the quince. The white violet, besides its fragrancy, assisted digestion; flowers, leaves and roots, respectively supplied different essences. Every part of the body had its appropriate unguent. To the feet and legs the Greeks applied Ægyptian ointment; the oil extracted from the palm was thought best adapted to the cheeks and the breasts; the arms were refreshed with balsam-mint; sweet-marjoram had the honour of supplying an oil for the eye-brows and hair, as wild thyme had for the knee and neck. 'The Baccaris, the Brenthium, the Royal, the Psagda, the Plangonium, the Megallium, the Nardinum, the Sagdas, and lastly the Stacte, made wholly of that which entered more or less into the composition of all the ancient ointments, viz. myrrh, had all their separate eulogists. The room, where an entertainment was given, was commonly perfumed by burning myrrh or frankincense in it. A nice distinction divided perfumes into two kinds; the first were of a thicker sort, and applied more as salves or wax (Xpipara); the latter were liquid and poured over the limbs

* Vide Athenæum in lib. xv.
R 4

(αλείμματα).

(aresμμata). To indulge in the liquid ointment was thought to evince a feminine and voluptuous disposition; but the sober and the virtuous, it was allowed, might use the thicker sort without any impeachment of their good qualities. The suppliers of perfumery occupied a very considerable place in the list of artisans, who contributed to the embellishments of a Grecian lady of fashion. The article itself bore a high price, but this did not hinder voluptuaries from using it profusely; not however without an occasional admonition from graver men of the mischief arising from its abuse. The old people referred to a statute of Solon, forbidding the sale of perfumery, by the male sex at least; and the grammarians found in the etymology of its name an argument against the use of a luxury, composed with so much toil and labour. Sophocles significantly described Venus as sprinkled with perfume, and looking in a mirror: and Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, as moist with the *olive oil, and practising the exercises of the palæstra. Socrates objected to the use of perfumery altogether-There is the same smell,' said he, in a gentleman and a slave, when both are perfumed.' In his opinion, the only odours worth cultivating, were the odours arising from honourable toils, and the smell of gentility.'

The elegant taste of the Athenians led them to make use of flowers upon all occasions. When they invoked the gods, it was with a garland on their heads; when they offered a sacrifice, they wore the same ornament. No one spoke in their public assemblies without first crowning his head with a garland; on the door of every beauty in Athens might be seen suspended the votive chaplets of her lover. From the parsley offered on the tomb,' (says one of that class of persons, in whom premature death is a subject of regret to all,) to the rose, which has always been the emblem of purity and love, there was no flower to which some meaning was not affixed, in the imagination of the Greeks.' But it was more particularly at the banquet and over the wine that the Athenians added the perfume of flowers to their other enjoyments. The head, in which sensation resides, the temples and the breast, as being the seat of the heart, were crowned with them; even the throat had its chaplet, with an appropriate name. Most of the customs among the Greeks being founded upon some romantic story or other; the practice of wearing flowers at feasts had its peculiar tales. Eschylus referred it to a

* A difference of expression marked, whether the olive-oil was used unmixed or with water. In the first it was termed Engaλap, in the second xurda The former word also applied more particularly to the unction used preparatorily to wrestling: the second to that, subsequent to bathing or fatigue.

↑ The Hon. F. Douglas.

grateful

grateful memento of the chains worn by Prometheus, as a punishment for his endeavours to benefit mankind. Sappho ascribed the custom to a religious feeling: for flowers,' said she, are agreeable to the gods, who turn with aversion from those whose heads are uncrowned with them.' Philonides gives a less lofty, but perhaps a more true reason of its origin; and as his opinion, by a long introductory narrative, illustrates another practice common in the Greek symposia, it will be of service to mention it. According to this learned physician, the vine was first introduced into Greece from the shores of the Red Sea by Bacchus, and its first consequences were not of the most salutiferous kind. The liquor, extracted from it, was drunk immoderately, and unmixed. Madness and stupor, making men look more like dead than living people, ensued. A fortunate accident corrected all this. As a convivial party were quaffing by the sea-side, a sudden storm came on, which dispersed the symposiasts, who left behind them a goblet, with a large portion of liquor in it. At the conclusion of the storm the guests returned to the old spot, and found there a liquor, tempered with water, which afforded a beverage agreeable to the taste, and without any future unpleasantness. As Jupiter was evidently the author of this mixture, a practice grew up at feasts, of drinking a cup of mixed wine immediately after supper, in honour of JUPITER the PRESERVER; while the pure wine circulated to Bacchus, the GOOD GENIUS. The practice of wearing flowers, according to the worthy physician, was only a palliative before this invention of Jupiter offered a much more effectual cure.

In the pains and headaches arising from the powerful effects of unmixed wine, a compression of the head by the hands was found to convey considerable relief. This gave rise to more permanent ligatures. Ivy, as the most ready at hand, was the first herbaceous plant used for the purpose; the myrtle, the rose, and the laurel soon followed, each having some physical qualities to recommend it, besides its external beauty. By the time of Theophrastus, a much larger assortment had been pressed into the service of the chaplet. The violet, both the black and the white,-the lily, the anemone, the hyacinth, the helichrysus, deriving its name from the nymph who first gathered it, the hemerocallis, which dies away at night and revives with the rising sun, the cosmosandalus, from the wearing of which in their chaplets Clearchus dates the ruin of the Lacedæmonians, the lychnis, born of the water in which Venus bathedthese were a few among the flowers, the arrangement of which belonged to the tasteful and lucrative employment of the nose

gay

*

gay-woman. Chaplets had also assumed both variety and appropriate names and services. There was the Choronon, worn by dancers in the theatrical chorus; the Calcha, whose principal flower resembled one, which, according to Nicolaus, borders, all the year through, a lake near the Alps of some miles in circumference; and the Pothos, formed principally of the flower scattered on Grecian tombs, and signifying by its name, regret. The Struthia, whose beautiful flower was supposed to pine for spring and for the nightingale, formed part of the chaplet worn by bridegrooms. Chaplets of every kind, carried by women, were called Epithymides. Besides these, more strictly belonging to the Athenians, may be mentioned the Corona Ellotis, made of myrtle, and twenty cubits in circumference. At the Corinthian festival called Ellotis, it was carried in solemn procession, and within it were said to be the bones of Europa. The Corona Thyreatica, made of palm, served to remind the Spartans of a victory gained at Thyrea. In the public procession, where the youths of Sparta danced naked, to the sound of the martial songs of Thaletes and Aleman, and the sacred pæans of Dionysodotus, this chaplet was worn by the leader of the chorus.

After these details, we cannot venture to look very closely into an Athenian cellar: but wine and a Greek are articles too much in unison not to make a few short allusions indispensable.

When the courtiers of the King of Persia dissuaded him from attacking Greece, they adduced, as the most powerful of their arguments, that it was a country where the inhabitants drank water, and had no figs to eat. This was one of those speeches which republicans delight to represent kings as hearing from their courtiers. Homer knew the practices and the dispositions of the Greeks long before the time of Darius; and he accordingly lavished his powers in describing the wine-cup of Nestor, and the shield of Achilles. We have seen the introduction of the vine into Greece referred to a very early origin in a preceding paragraph, and history justifies us in considering the account as a true one Amphyction, one of the first kings of Athens, appears to have had a just presentiment of what would be the consequence of its

A pretty story told of Pausias, the celebrated painter of Sicyon, may not impro perly find a place here. In his youth he became enamoured of a beautiful nosegay. girl of the name of Glycera, who had a singularly elegant taste in the arrangement of flowers into chaplets. Pausias, painting after nature and his mistress, became highly distinguished for his skill as a painter of flowers. The last effort of his pencil was a picture of Glycera herself, seated, and in the act of arranging a chaplet: a production, in the creation of which love, genius, and gratitude equally assisted, necessarily became a master-piece: it was called the Garland-twiner,' and a copy of it sold for no less a sum than two talents.

introduction