mixed with a little meat cut into small pieces. On
special occasions, however, a whole sheep is placed on the
festive board; but during several of the hottest months of the
year, the richest restrict themselves entirely to a vegetable
diet. The poor are contented with a little oil or sour milk, in
which they may dip their bread.

212. PASSING FROM AFRICA TO EUROPE, we come amongst a people who have,
almost from time immemorial, occupied a high place in the estimation of
every civilized country; yet the Greeks, in their earlier ages, made
very little use of fish as an article of diet. In the eyes of the heroes
of Homer it had little favour; for Menelaus complained that "hunger
pressed their digestive organs," and they had been obliged to live upon
fish. Subsequently, however, fish became one of the principal articles
of diet amongst the Hellenes; and both Aristophanes and Athenaeus allude
to it, and even satirize their countrymen for their excessive partiality
to the turbot and mullet.

So infatuated were many of the Greek gastronomes with the love
of fish, that some of them would have preferred death from
indigestion to the relinquishment of the precious dainties with
which a few of the species supplied them. Philoxenes of Cythera
was one of these. On being informed by his physician that he was
going to die of indigestion, on account of the quantity he was
consuming of a delicious fish, "Be it so," he calmly observed;
"but before I die, let me finish the remainder."

213. THE GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION OF GREECE was highly favourable for the
development of a taste for the piscatory tribes; and the skill of the
Greek cooks was so great, that they could impart every variety of relish
to the dish they were called upon to prepare. Athenaeus has transmitted
to posterity some very important precepts upon their ingenuity in
seasoning with salt, oil, and aromatics.

At the present day the food of the Greeks, through the combined
influence of poverty and the long fasts which their religion
imposes upon them, is, to a large extent, composed of fish,
accompanied with vegetables and fruit. Caviare, prepared from
the roes of sturgeons, is the national ragout, which, like all
other fish dishes, they season with aromatic herbs. Snails
dressed in garlic are also a favourite dish.

214. AS THE ROMANS, in a great measure, took their taste in the fine
arts f