Thursday, March 28, 2013

 

Simple Fare

Martial 13.7 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):
                            Beans

If pale beans froth for you in a red pot, you can often say no to the dinners of the high-livers.

                            Faba

Si spumet rubra conchis tibi pallida testa,
  lautorum cenis saepe negare potes.
Latin conchis (Lewis and Short, "kind of bean boiled with the pods") comes from Greek κόγχος (Liddell-Scott-Jones, sense III = "soup of lentils boiled with the pods"). According to Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 252, it means pea soup. Dalby says, "There is no evidence for the usual translation of conchis as 'beans cooked with the pods'."



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