was a native of the country, Mæson; but if he was a foreigner, they called him Tettix. And Chrysippus the philosopher thinks the name [Greek: Maisôn] is derived from the verb [Greek: masaomai], to eat; a cook being an ignorant man, and the slave of his appetite; not knowing that Mæson was a comic actor, a Megarian by birth, who invented the mask which was called [Greek: Maisôn], from him; as Aristophanes of Byzantium tells us, in his treatise on Masks, where he says that he invented a mask for a slave and also one for a cook. So that it is a deserved compliment to him to call the jests which suit those characters [Greek: maisônika].
For cooks are very frequently represented on the stage as jesting characters; as, for instance, in the Men selecting an Arbitrator, of Menander. And Philemon in one of his plays says—
'Tis a male sphinx, it seems, and not a cook,
That I've brought home; for, by the gods I swear,
I do not understand one single word
Of all he says; so well provided is he
With every kind of new expression.
But Polemo says, in his writings which are addressed to Timæus, that Mæson was indeed a Megarian, but from Megara in Sicily, and not from Nisæa. And Posidippus speaks of slaves as cooks, in his Woman Shut out, where he says—
Thus have these matters happen'd: but just now,
While waiting on my master, a good joke
Occurr'd to me; I never will be caught
Stealing his meat.
And, in his Foster Brothers, he says—
A. Did you go out of doors, you who were cook?
B. If I remain'd within I lost my supper.
A. Let me then first. . . . B. Let me alone, I say;
I'm going to the forum to sacrifice:
A friend of mine, a comrade too in art,
Has hired me.
78. And there was nothing extraordinary in the ancient cooks being experienced in sacrifices. At all events, they usually managed all marriage feasts and sacrifices. On which account Menander, in his Flatterer, introduces a cook, who on the fourth day of the month had been ministering in the festival of Aphrodite Pandemus, using the following language—
Now a libation. Boy, distribute round
The entrails. Whither are you looking now?
Now a libation—quick! you Sosia, quick!
