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In Greece and Italy: Aristophanes

We must not overlook a certain thin cake made of sesame and honey which has had the honor of being mentioned by Anacreon, Aristophanes, and Sophocles.

Philetas in his "Miscellanies" speaks of cakes of honey, made and sold by a regular baker.

At the Copis, a Spartan feast, every one receives " a portion of goat's flesh, and to each a little loaf made of oil and honey, a newly made cheese, a slice of paunch, and black pudding, and sweetmeats and dried figs, and beans and green kidney beans."

Ephippus makes the following confession : - "Cakes made of sesame and honey, sweetmeats, Cheese-cakes, and cream-cakes, and a hecatomb Of new-laid eggs, were all devour'd by us."

There must be mentioned sesamides, cakes made of honey and roasted sesame and oil, of a round shape, not unlike the sugar cookies of our childhood probably; and there are the encrides, which are frequently alluded to. These are cakes boiled in oil, and after that "seasoned with honey." These certainly are the classical progenitors In Greece and Italy of our New England "doughnuts," our oil for boiling being from another source than the "fat olive," and our external "seasoning" being of powdered sugar instead of honey. "Groats and encrides, And other cakes, and fresh sweet honey."

And Aristophanes speaks of encrides thus : - "And not be a seller of encrides."

Honey was used, as we know, in the making of honeyed wine, and upon this point Athenæus presents Theophrastus, who says that "the wine at Thasos which is given in the prytaneum, is wonderfully delicious; for it is well seasoned; for they knead up dough with honey, and put that into the earthen jars: so that the wine receives fragrance from itself, and sweetness from the honey."

Martial in one of his epigrams speaks thus enthusiastically of honeyed Falernian wine : - "Attic honey thickens the nectar-like Falernian. Such drink deserves to be mixed by Ganymede."

But honey itself was used as an antidote to the effects of wine, and we find it referred to in this capacity. In a poetical fragment of Sopater, the parodist of Alexandria, quoted by Athenæus, we read the following: - "'Tis sweet in early morn to cool the lips With pure fresh water from the gushing fount, Mingled with honey in the Baucalis, When one o'er night has made too free with wine, And feels sharp thirst."