feed on unwholesome
meats. The flesh of young foxes about autumn, when they fed on grapes,
is praised by Galen; and Hippocrates equals the flesh of puppies to that
of birds. The humorous Dr. King, who has touched on this subject,
suspects that many of the Greek dishes appear charming from their
mellifluous terminations, resounding with a _floios_ and _toios_. Dr.
King's description of the Virtuoso Bentivoglio or Bentley, with his
"Bill of Fare" out of Athenaeus, probably suggested to Smollett his
celebrated scene.

The numerous descriptions of ancient cookery which Athenaeus has
preserved indicate an unrivalled dexterity and refinement: and the
ancients, indeed, appear to have raised the culinary art into a science,
and dignified cooks into professors. They had writers who exhausted
their erudition and ingenuity in verse and prose; while some were proud
to immortalise their names by the invention of a poignant sauce, or a
popular _gateau_. Apicius, a name immortalised, and now synonymous with
a gorger, was the inventor of cakes called Apicians; and one
Aristoxenes, after many unsuccessful combinations, at length hit on a
peculiar manner of seasoning hams, thence called Aristoxenians. The name
of a late nobleman among ourselves is thus invoked every day.

Of these _Eruditae gultae_ Archestratus, a culinary philosopher, composed
an epic or didactic poem on good eating. His "Gastrology" became the
creed of the epicures, and its pathos appears to have made what is so
expressively called "their mouths water." The idea has been recently
successfully imitated by a French poet.[122] Archestratus thus opens his
subject:--

I write these precepts for immortal Greece,
That round a table delicately spread,
Or three, or four, may sit in choice repast,
Or five at most. Who otherwise shall dine,
Are like a troop marauding for their prey.

The elegant Romans declared that a repast should not consist of less in
number than the Graces, nor of more than the Muses. They had, however, a
quaint proverb, which Alexander ab Alexandro has preserved, not
favourable even to so large a dinner-party as nine; it turns on a play
of words:--

Septem convivium, Novem convicium facere.[123]

An elegant Roman, meeting a friend, regretted he could not invite him to
dinner, "because my _number_ is complete."

When Archestratus acknowledges that some things are for the winter, and
some for the summer, he consoles himself, t