_disagreeable_, at least to Dionysius, and the Lacedaemonians, who
observed to him that he wanted that best of sauces, hunger, convey a
confession that their broth was not easily relished.

The same story is told with a little variation by Stobaeus, _Serm_.
xxix., and Plutarch, _Institut. Lacon_., 2. The latter writer says, that
the Syracusan, having tasted the Spartan broth, "spat it out in
disgust," [Greek: dyscheranunta apoptusai].

It would not have been unlike the Lacedaemonians purposely to have
established a disagreeable viand in their system of public feeding. Men
that used iron money to prevent the accumulation of wealth, and, as
youths, had volunteered to be scourged, scratched, beat about, and
kicked about, to inure them to pain, were just the persons to affect a
nauseous food to discipline the appetite.

R.O.

_Lacedaemonian Black Broth_.--I should be glad to know in what passages
of ancient authors the Lacedaemonian black broth is mentioned, and
whether it is alluded to in such terms as to indicate the nature of the
food. It has occurred to me that it is much more probable that it was
the same _black broth_ which is now cooked in Greece, where I have eaten
of it and found it very good, although it looked as if a bottle of ink
had been poured into the mess.

The dish is composed of small cuttle-fish (with their ink-bags) boiled
with rice or other vegetables. Edinburgh, Jan. 13. 1850.

W.C. TREVELYAN.