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

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While Ulpian went on jesting in this manner, Cynulcus cried out—I want some bread; and when I say bread (ἄρτος） [p. 180] I do not mean Artus king of the Messapians, the Messapians, I mean, in Iapygia, concerning whom there is a treatise among Polemo's works. And Thucydides also mentions him, in his seventh book, and Demetrius the comic writer speaks of him in the drama entitled Sicily, using the following language—

From thence, borne on by the south wind, we came
Across the sea to the Italian shore,
Where the Messapians dwelt; and Artus there,
The monarch of the land, received us kindly,
A great and noble host for foreigners.

But this is not the time for speaking of that Artus, but of the other, which was discovered by Ceres, surnamed Sito (food), and Simalis. For those are the names under which the Goddess is worshipped by the Syracusans, as Polemo himself reports in his book about Morychus. But in the first book of his treatise addressed to Timæus, he says, that in Scolus, a city of Bœotia, statues are erected to Megalartus (the God or Goddess of great bread), and to Megalomazus (the God or Goddess of abundant corn). So when the loaves were brought, and 'on them a great quantity of all kinds of food, looking at them, he said—

What numerous nets and snares are set by men
To catch the helpless loaves;

as Alexis says in his play, The Girl sent to the Well. And so now let us say something about bread.