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

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Now with respect to Eggs.—Anaxagoras, in his book on Natural Philosophy, says that what is called the milk of the bird is the white which is in the eggs. And Aristophanes says— In the first instance, night brings forth a wind egg. Sappho dissolves the word ὦον into a trisyllable, making it ὤϊον, when she says—

They say that formerly Leda found an egg.

And again she says—

Far whiter than an egg:

in each case writing ὤϊον. But Epicharmus spelt the word ὤεα; for so we find the line written—

The eggs of geese and other poultry.

And Simonides, in the second book of his Iambics, says—

Like the egg of a Mæandrian goose;

which he, too, writes ὤεον. But Alexandrides lengthens the word into a quadrisyllable, and calls it ὠάριον. And so does Ephippus, when he says— [p. 95]

And little casks of good wine made of palms,
And eggs, and all other trifles of that kind.

And Alexis, somewhere or other, uses the expressidn, “hemispheres of eggs.” And wind eggs they called ἀνεμιαῖα, and also ὑπηνέμια. They called also the upper chambers of houses which we now call ὑπερῶον, ὦον; and accordingly Clearchus says, in his “Erotics,” that Helen, from having been born and brought up in a chamber of this sort, got the character, with a great many people, of having been born of an egg (ὠοῦ). And it was an ignorant statement of Neocles of Crotona, that the egg fell from the moon, from which Helen was born: for that women under the influence of the moon bring forth eggs, and that those who are born from such eggs are fifteen times as large as we are: as Herodotus of Heraclea also asserts. And Ibycus, in the fifth book of his Melodies, says of the Molionidœ—

And they slew the two young Molions, youths alike in face,
Borne on white horses; of the same age; and
Alike, too, in all their limbs, for both were born
On one day, from one single silver egg.

And Ephippus says—

Cakes made of sesame and honey, sweetmeats,
Cheese-cakes, and cream-cakes, and a hecatomb
Of new-laid eggs, were all devour'd by us.

And Nicomachus makes mention of such eggs—

For when my father had left me a very little property,
I scraped it so, and got the kernel out of it
In a few months, as if I had been a boy sucking an egg.

And Eriphus makes mention of goose's eggs—

Just see how white and how large these eggs are;
These must be goose eggs, as far as I can see.

And he says, that it was eggs like this which were laid by Leda. But Epænetus and Heraclides the Syracusan, in their book on Cookery, say that the best of all eggs are peacock's eggs; and that the next best are those of the foxgoose; and the third best are those of common poultry.