TODAY'S QUOTATION
– Literary Menus
– Alphabet of Recipes
– Historical Prescriber
– IFAQs
Bacchus Extra
– Dangerous Tastes Extra
– Dictionary of Languages Extra
– Food in the Ancient World Extra
– Guide to World Language Dictionaries Extra
– Notes in the Margin Extra
HOME – THE BOOKSHELVES – THE DICTIONARY – LANGUAGE INDEX – WORK BY ANDREW DALBY – LINKS – WEB SEARCH
Look up highlighted words in the dictionary (and please tell me if definitions need correcting!)
The Roman love poetry of Ovid (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.) reminds us of the ways in which food can serve an erotic or aphrodisiac purpose. He talks of signals exchanged between secret lovers across a dinner table, and of messages written with a finger in spilt wine. He imagines a lover carefully mixing wine for his girl friend, and selecting the tastiest morsels from a serving dish for her to enjoy [...] In a tongue-in-cheek didactic poem on love and seduction Ovid makes fun of aphrodisiacs, conscientiously listing several that Romans believed to be really effective:
Sunt qui praecipiant herbas, satureia, nocentes
Sumere (iudiciis ista venena meis)
Aut piper urticae mordacis semine miscent
Tritaque in annoso flava pyrethra mero;
Sed dea non patitur sic ad sua gaudia cogi
Colle sub umbroso quam tenet altus Eryx.
Candidus, Alcathoi qui mittitur urbe Pelasga,
Bulbus et ex horto quae venit herba salax
Ovaque sumantur, sumantur Hymettia mella,
Quasque tulit folio pinus acuta nuces.
Ovid, Art of Love book 2 lines 415-424.
Some will advise you to take dangerous herbs and salep (I judge these to be poisons), or will mix for you pepper and stinging-nettle seed and pellitory chopped into vintage wine. But the Goddess [Venus] who owns lofty Eryx under its shady peak does not permit her pleasures to be forced in that way. One may try the white [grape-hyacinth] bulb that comes from the Pelasgian city of Alkathoos [Megara, Greece], or the lascivious [rocket] leaf grown in gardens, or eggs, or honey from mount Hymettus, or the nuts that are found on the sharp fronds of pine trees.
Translation by Andrew Dalby.
Adapted from a sidebar published in Encyclopedia of Food and Culture ed. Solomon H. Katz (2003)
CLICK
HERE TO BUY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE FROM AMAZON.COM
TODAY'S QUOTATION
– Literary Menus
– Alphabet of Recipes
– Historical Prescriber
– IFAQs
Bacchus Extra
– Dangerous Tastes Extra
– Dictionary of Languages Extra
– Food in the Ancient World Extra
– Guide to World Language Dictionaries Extra
– Notes in the Margin Extra
HOME – THE BOOKSHELVES – THE DICTIONARY – LANGUAGE INDEX – WORK BY ANDREW DALBY – LINKS – WEB SEARCH