MATTYH. Athens, but in Alexandria; and he was an excellent poet, if ever there was one, next to those seven[1] of the first class. On which account, Aristophanes the grammarian, when he was a very young man, was very anxious to be much with him. And he wrote the following lines in his play entitled Ignorance:—
There's nothing that I'm fonder of than [Greek: mattyê];
But whether 'twas the Macedonians
Who first did teach it us, or all the gods,
I know not; but it must have been a person
Of most exalted genius.
85. And that it used to be served up after all the rest of the banquet was over, is plainly stated by Nicostratus, in his Man expelled. And it is a cook who is relating how beautiful and well arranged the banquet was which he prepared; and having first of all related what the dinner and supper were composed of, and then mentioning the third meal, proceeds to say—
Well done, my men,—extremely well! but now
I will arrange the rest, and then the [Greek: mattyê];
So that I think the man himself will never
Find fault with us again.
And in his Cook he says—
Thrium and candylus he never saw,
Or any of the things which make a [Greek: mattyê].
And some one else says—
They brought, instead of a [Greek: mattyê], some paunch,
And tender pettitoes, and tripe, perhaps.
But Dionysius, in his Man shot at with Javelins (and it is a cook who is represented speaking), says—
So that sometimes, when I a [Greek: mattyê]
Was making for them, in haste would bring
(More haste worse speed). . . .[2]
Philemon, also, in his Poor Woman—
When one can lay aside one's load, all day
Making and serving out rich [Greek: mattyai].
But Molpis the Lacedæmonian says that what the Spartans call [Greek: epaikleia], that is to say, the second course, which is served up when the main part of the supper is over, is called
- ↑ Who these seven first-class authors were, whether tragedians or comic poets, or both, or whether there was one selection of tragic and another of comic poets, each classed as a sort of "Pleias Ptolemæi Philadelphi ætate nobilitata," is quite uncertain.
- ↑ This passage is abandoned as corrupt by Schweighauser.
