For I am just come home, and have not bought
A living thing of any kind. I've bought
Some fish, but they were dead, and splendid fish.
Then here are joints of well-fed household lamb,
But he was kill'd last week. What else have I?
Oh, here's some roasted liver. If there be
A man who can this liver prove to have
Or soul or voice or animation,
I will confess I've err'd and broken the law.
So now after all this let us have some supper. For just see, while I am talking to you, all the pheasants have flown by me, and are gone out of reach, disregarding me, because of your unseasonable chattering. But I should like you to tell me, my master Myrtilus, said Ulpian, where you got that word [Greek: olbiogastôr], and also whether any ancient author mentions the pheasant, and I—
Rising at early morn to sail. . . .
not through the Hellespont, but into the market-place, will buy a pheasant which you and I may eat together.
37. And Myrtilus said,—On this condition I will tell you. Amphis uses the word [Greek: olbiogastôr] in his Gynæcomania, where he speaks as follows:—
Eurybates, you hunter of rich smells,
You surely are the most well-fed ([Greek: olbiogastôr]) of men.
And as for the bird called the pheasant, that delicious writer Aristophanes mentions it in his play called The Birds. There are in that play two old Athenians, who, from their love of idleness, are looking for a city where there is nothing to do, that they may live there; and so they take a fancy to the life among the birds. And accordingly they come to the birds: and when all of a sudden some wild bird flies towards them, they, alarmed at the sight, comfort one another, and say a great many things, and among them they say this—
A. What now is this bird which we here behold?
Will you not say?
B. I think it is a pheasant.
And I also understand the passage in the Clouds to refer to birds, and not to horses as many people take it—
The Phasian flocks, bred by Leogoras.
For it is very possible that Leogoras may have bred horses and pheasants too. And Leogoras is also turned into ridicule as a gourmand by Plato in his Very Miserable Man.
