.
Their most famous dish was the black broth, which was so much valued that the elderly men fed only upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger.
They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this black broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to make him some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, “Sir, to make this broth relish, you should have bathed yourself first in the river Eurotas.” Plutarch Lycurgus
The Spartan melas zomos, or black soup, was a staple soup made of boiled pigs' blood and vinegar.
According to legend, a man from Sybaris, a city in southern Italy infamous for its luxury and gluttony, said he understood why the Spartans were so willing to die after having tasted their black soup.
No recipe for the Spartan black soup has survived, but blood soups are still eaten in various countries today.
Forty Centuries of Ink, by David N. Carvalho:
The ancients used also a number of tinctures as ink, among them a brown color, sepia, in Hebrew tekeleth. As a natural ink its origin antedates every other ink, artificial or otherwise, in the world. It is a black-brown liquor, secreted by a small gland into an oval pouch, and through a connecting duct is ejected at will by the cuttle fish which inhabits the seas of Europe, especially the Mediterranean. These fish constantly employ the contents of their "ink bags" to discolor the water, when in the presence of enemies, in order to facilitate their escape from them.
The black broth of the Spartans was composed of this product. The Egyptians sometimes used it for coloring inscriptions on stone. It is the most lasting of all natural ink substances.
| Ancient Greece
Science, Technology , Medicine , Warfare, , Biographies , Life , Cities/Places/Maps , Arts , Literature , Philosophy ,Olympics, Mythology , History , Images Medieval Greece / Byzantine Empire Science, Technology, Arts, , Warfare , Literature, Biographies, Icons, History Modern Greece Cities, Islands, Regions, Fauna/Flora ,Biographies , History , Warfare, Science/Technology, Literature, Music , Arts , Film/Actors , Sport , Fashion --- |
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
