Book 2
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Mushrooms are produced by the earth itself. But there are not many sorts of them which are good to eat; for the greater part of them produce a sensation of choking: on which account Epicharmus, when jesting, said— You will be choked, like those who waste away By eating mushrooms, very heating food. And Nicander, in his Georgics, gives a list of which species are poisonous; and says— Terrible evils oftentimes arise From eating olives, or pomegranates, or from the trees Of maple, or of oak; but worst of all Are the swelling sticky lumps of mushrooms. And he says in another place— Bury a fig-tree trunk deep in the ground, Then cover it with dung, and moisten it With water from an ever flowing brook, Then there will grow at bottom harmless mushrooms; Select of them what's good for food, and not Deserving of contempt, and cut the root off. But all the rest of that passage is in a mutilated state. The same Nicander in the same play writes— And there, too, you may roast the mushrooms, Of the kind which we call ἀμάνιται. And Ephippus says—
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That I may choke you as a mushroom would.
