Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 - Various - Страница 3

If your readers are not already as much disgusted with Spartan Black Broth as Dionysius was with the first mouthful, I beg leave to submit a few supplementary words to the copious indications of your correspondents "R.O." and "W."

Selden says:—

"It was an excellent question of Lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe, which was Moses's or Noah's, and wondering at the strange shape and fashion of it: 'But, Mr. Cotton,' says she, 'are you sure it is a shoe?'"

Now, from the following passage in Manso's Sparta, it would seem that a similar question might be put on the present occasion: Are you sure that it was broth? Speaking of the pheiditia, Manso says:—

"Each person at table had as much barley-bread as he could eat; swine's-flesh, or some other meat, to eat with it, with which the famous black-sauce2 (whose composition, without any loss to culinary art, is evidently a mystery for us) was given round, and to close the meal, olives, figs, and cheese."

In a note he continues:—

"Some imagined that the receipt of its composition was to be found in Plutarch (De Tuendâ Sanitate, t. vi. p. 487.), but apparently it was only imagination. That ζωμος signified not broth, as it has been usually translated, but sauce, is apparent from the connection in which Athenæus used the word. To judge from Hesychius, it appears to have borne the name βαφα among the Spartans. How little it pleased the Sicilian Dionysius is well known from Plutarch (Inst. Lacon. t. v. 880.) and from others."

Sir Walter Trevelyan's question is soon answered, for I presume the celebrity of Spartan Black Broth is chiefly owing to the anecdote of Dionysius related by Plutarch, in his very popular and amusing Laconic Apophthegms, which Stobæus and Cicero evidently followed; this, and what is to be gathered from Athenæus and Julius Pollux, with a few words in Hesychius and the Etymologicon Magnum, is the whole amount of our information. Writers since the revival of letters have mostly copied each other, from Coelius Rhodiginus down to Gesner, who derives his conjecture from Turnebus, whose notion is derived from Julius Pollux,—and so we move in a circle. We sadly want a Greek Apicius, and then we might resolve the knotty question. I fear we must give up the notion of cuttle-fish stewed in their own ink, though some former travellers have not spoken so favourable of this Greek dish. Apicius, De Arte Coquinariâ, among his fish-sauces has three Alexandrian receipts, one of which will give some notion of the incongruous materials admissible in the Greek kitchen of later times:—

"JUS ALEXANDRINUM IN PISCE ASSO.

"Piper, cepam siccam, ligusticum, cuminum, orignum, apii semen, pruna damascena enucleata; passum, liquamen, defrutum, oleum, et coques."

This question Vexata it seems had not escaped the notice of German antiquaries. In Boettiger's Kleine Shriften, vol. iii., Sillig has printed for the first time a Dissertation, in answer to a question which might have graced your pages: "Wherewith did the Ancients spoon" [their food]? Which opens thus:—

"Though about the composition and preparation of Spartan Black Sauce we may have only so many doubts, yet still it remains certain that it was a jus—boiled flesh prepared with pig's blood, salt, and vinegar, a brodo; and, when it was to a certain degree thickened by boiling, though not like a Polenta or other dough-like mass (maza offa), eaten with the fingers. Here, then, arises a gastronomic question, of importance in archæology; what table furniture or implements did the Spartans make use of to carry this sauce to their months? A spoon, or some substitute for a spoon, must have been at hand in order to be able to enjoy this Schwarzsauer."

It is certain at least that spoons and forks were unknown to the Spartans, and some have conjectured that a shell, and even an egg-shell, may have served the purpose. Those who are desirous of knowing more about the Table-Supellectile of the ancients, may consult Casaubon's Notes on Athenæus, iv. 13. p. 241.; "Barufaldo de Armis Convivialibus," in Sallengre's Thesaurus, iii. 741.: or Boettiger's Dissertation above referred to. How little ground the passage in Plutarch, De Sanitate Tuendâ, afforded for the composition will appear from the passage, which I subjoin, having found some difficulty in referring to it:

Οι Λακωνες υξος και 'αλας δοντες τω μαγειρω, τα λοιπα κελευουσω εν τω ιερειω ζητειν.

This only expresses the simplicity of Spartan cookery in general.

To revert to the original question propounded, however, I think we must come to the conclusion that coffee formed no part of the μελας ζωμος.

S.W.S.