<blockquote>Indeed, “Lentil soup is known to the tragic stage; they say that Agatharchus once painted a picture of Orestes guzzling it when he had recovered from his disease.” So speaks the comic poet Sophilus. It is a Stoic belief, too, that the wise man will do all things rightly, even to the wise seasoning of lentil soup. Wherefore Timon of Phlius speaks of one “who had never learned wisely to make a Zenonian lentil soup,” as if a lentil soup could not be made otherwise than according to the Zenonian prescription. For he said: “Into the lentil soup put the twelfth part of a coriander seed.” And Crates of Thebes said: “Exalt not the dish of stew above a plate of lentil soup and so set us to quarrelling.' In like manner Chrysippus, in his essay On the Good, introduces to us certain maxims in these words: 'Never eat an olive when you have a nettle. In the winter season, a bulb-and‑lentil soup, oh me, oh my! For bulb-and‑lentil soup is like ambrosia in the chilly cold.' And the witty Aristophanes, in Gerytades, has said: 'Are you teaching him to make barley gruel or lentil soup?' And in Amphiaraus: 'You, who dare insult lentil soup, sweetest of delicacies!' Epicharmus, in The Dionysi: 'A kettle of lentil soup was simmering.' Antiphanes in Just Alike: 'It proved to be a piece of good luck, that one of the natives was teaching me how to make lentil soup.' I know also that the sister of Odysseus, most prudent and sagacious, was called Lentil, though others name her Callisto, Das recorded by Mnaseas of Patrae in the third book of his European History; my authority is Lysimachus, in the third book of his Returns.”
The Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus published in Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1928
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