The next vegetable to be mentioned is Onions.—In [p. 105] the Amalthea of Eubulus, Hercules is represented as refusing to eat them; saying—
Whether it's hot, or whether it is dry,Alexis, while explaining the efficacy of onions in aphrodisiac matters, says—
Or whether it is something 'tween the two,
Are points of more importance than old Troy.
But I have not come here to fill myself
With cabbages, or benjamin, or other
Impious and bitter danties, or with onions.
But that which tends the most to vigorous strength
And health is food which I delight in chiefly.
Meat of beef, boil'd and fresh, and plenty of it,
And a large well-filled dish of oxen's feet,
Three roasting pigs besides, sprinkled with salt.
Pinnas, beetles, snails, muscles, eggs, calves'-feet,Xenarchus, in the Butalion, says—
And many other philters, may be found
More useful still to one who loves his mistress.
A house is ruined which has a masterAnd Archestratus says—
Whose fortune's gone, and whom the evil genius
Has struck. And so the once great house of the Pelops
Is weak and nerveless. Nor can earth-born onion,
Fair Ceres' handmaid, who contracts the neck,
Even when boiled, assist to check this evil.
Nor e'en the polypus, who swells the veins,
Born in dark eddies of the deepest sea,
When taken in the net of stern necessity
By hungry mortals, fill the broad deep bosom
Of the large dish turn'd by the potter's wheel.
I love not onions, nor yet cabbages,
Nor the sweet barberry-tree, nor all the other
Dainties and sweetmeats of the second course.
