Home › In Greece and Italy › In Greece and Italy: English

In Greece and Italy: English

He tells us : "There were rivers With tender pulse and blackest soup o'er flowing, There too were cakes of groats well steep'd in milk, In large flat dishes, and rich plates of - beestings!" We are enabled to recover our serenity, however, through Martial, who in one of his epigrams elucidates the mystery. The name of the epigram in the English translation is Beestings, and it reads thus: - "We give you, from the first milk of the mothers, sucklings of which the shepherd has deprived the dams while yet unable to stand."

In Greece and Italy From this it would appear that the dish of the terrifying name is in reality composed of perfectly innocent and extremely young lambs or kids. In short, the whole misapprehension arises from a somewhat unfortunate word used in the English translation. For beestings or biestings, as it is more properly written, in English means the first milk from a fresh milch cow or other milk-giving domestic animal, and is derived from the Anglo-Saxon. Evidently it has at times been used of the new-born animals themselves, and is so used in the present case. Besides its very agreeable use at the table, honey, as in all other parts of the world, was valued as a medicine by the Greeks and Latins, and also as a medium for administering medicine, particularly to children, for it would seem that the infants of antiquity, although they doubtless acquired the Latin tongue with ease at an early age, did not differ in other respects from modern children.

One can but hope in mercy to them that the honey in their wormwood was sweeter to their palates than the learning their wise ones prepared for them is to the modern mind. Quintilian thus enlightens us upon both subjects in his "Institutes of the Orator," a work which treats of the education of children in a manner that justifies the fear he expresses in the last paragraph: - "Hitherto we have endeavored to embellish our work with something agreeable, not for making an ostentatious show of wit, as for that purpose we could have chosen a more copious matter; but in order that young persons, induced by some pleasure in reading, might the easier receive the instruction we judged necessary for helping their studies; which, if it had been conceived in a dry, hungry manner, there was reason to fear it would beget loathing in their minds, and grate with harshness on their delicate ears. In a finer view, Lucretius says, he delivered the precepts of philosophy in verse, and therefore uses this familiar comparison: - 'Physician-like, who when a bitter draught Of wormwood is disgusted by a child, To cheat his taste, he brims the nauseous cup With the sweet lure of honey.' And, indeed, I am apprehensive that this Book may seem to have little honey in it, and a great deal of wormwood, that is, may be more salubrious than sweet to studies."