were really so, the German writer would have succeeded in
preparing for us a most disagreeable and warlike kind of food; but my
astonishment has not been small, upon turning to the passage, to find
that "R.O.'s" authorities had misled him, and that _Pollux_ really says
nothing of the kind. His words (I quote from the edition 2 vols. folio,
Amst. 1706) are these,

[Greek: "O de melas kaloumenos zomos Lakonikon men hos epi to poly to
edesma. esti de hae kaloumenae haimatia. to de thrion hode eskeuazon,
k.t.l."]

The general subject of the section is the different kinds of flesh used
by man for food, and incidentally the good things which may be made from
these; which leads the writer to mention by name many kinds of broth,
amongst which he says towards the end, is that called [Greek: melas
zomos] which might be considered almost as a Lacedaemonian dish; adding
further, that there was a something called haematia (and this might have
been a black pudding or sausage for anything that appears to the
contrary); also the thrium, which was prepared in a manner he proceeds
to describe. Now the three parts of the sentence which has been given
above in the original do, to the best of my judgment, clearly refer to
three different species of food; and I would appeal to the candid
opinion of any competent Greek scholar, whether, according to the idiom
of that language, the second part of it is so expressed, as to connect
it with, and make it explanatory of, the first. We want, for this
purpose, a relative, either with or without [Greek: esti]; and the
change of gender in haematia seems perfectly unaccountable if it is
intended to have any reference to [Greek: zomos].

It may not be unimportant to add that the significant silence of
Meursius, (an author surely not to be lightly thought of) who in his
_Miscellanea Laconica_ says nothing of blood broth at the Phiditia,
implies that he understood the passage of Pollux as intended to convey
the meaning expressed above.

Another lexicographer, Hesychius, informs us that [Greek: Bapha] was the
Lacedaemonian term for [Greek: zomos]; and this, perhaps, was the genuine
appellation for that which other Greeks expressed by a periphrasis,
either in contempt or dislike, or because its colour was really dark,
the juices of the meat being thoroughly extracted into it. That it was
nutritive and powerful may be inferred from what Plutarch mentions, that
the older men were content to give up the mea