Book 2
83
And Epicharmus also shows us plainly this, when he puts down the cactus in his catalogue of eatable vegetables; in this way—The poppy, fennel, and the rough cactus; now one can eat of the other vegetables when dressed with milk, if he bruises them and serves them up with rich sauce, but by themselves they are not worth much. And in a subsequent passage he says—Lettuces, pines, squills, radishes, cacti. And again he says—A man came from the country, bringing fennel, and cacti, and lavender, and sorrel, and chicory, and thisles, and ferns, and the cactus, and dractylus, and otostyllus, and scolium, and seni, and onopordus. And Philetas the Coan poet says—
83
A fawn about to die would make a noise,
83
Fearing the venom of the thorny cactus.
