famous black-sauce[2] (whose composition, without any loss to
culinary art, is evidently a mystery for us) was given round, and
to close the meal, olives, figs, and cheese."

In a note he continues:--

"Some imagined that the receipt of its composition was to be found
in Plutarch (_De Tuendâ Sanitate_, t. vi. p. 487.), but apparently
it was only imagination. That [Greek: zomos] signified not broth,
as it has been usually translated, but _sauce_, is apparent from
the connection in which Athenæus used the word. To judge from
Hesychius, it appears to have borne the name [Greek: bapha] among
the Spartans. How little it pleased the Sicilian Dionysius is well
known from Plutarch (_Inst. Lacon._ t. v. 880.) and from others."

Sir Walter Trevelyan's question is soon answered, for I presume the
celebrity of Spartan Black Broth is chiefly owing to the anecdote of
Dionysius related by Plutarch, in his very popular and amusing _Laconic
Apophthegms_, which Stobæus and Cicero evidently followed; this, and
what is to be gathered from Athenæus and Julius Pollux, with a few words
in Hesychius and the _Etymologicon Magnum_, is the whole amount of our
information. Writers since the revival of letters have mostly copied
each other, from Coelius Rhodiginus down to Gesner, who derives his
conjecture from Turnebus, whose notion is derived from Julius
Pollux,--and so we move in a circle. We sadly want a Greek Apicius, and
then we might resolve the knotty question. I fear we must give up the
notion of cuttle-fish stewed in their own ink, though some former
travellers have not spoken so favourable of this Greek dish. Apicius,
_De Arte Coquinariâ_, among his fish-sauces has three Alexandrian
receipts, one of which will give some notion of the incongruous