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Blame the Boletus? Demystifying Mushrooms in Latin Literature1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
Keeping in mind Emily Gowers's dictum that ‘food, for the Roman writer who chose to discuss it, was simultaneously important and trivial’, let us go on a mushroom hunt through the fragmented habitat of Latin literature, with some preliminary nosing about in the Greek. We are looking for μύκαι and μύκητες in Greek, and fungi in Latin, and we are keeping an eye open for one kind in particular, the boletus, although we also will stumble upon the occasional interesting fungus suillus (‘pig fungus’). We are not truffle hunting: tubera (Greek ὕδνα) are a topic for another day. Although no survey, however comprehensive, of the appearances of one foodstuff in Latin literature can do full justice to the individual sources, we can still gain something from an overview of the tradition; and although what we learn may be trivial, even the trivial can make its own small contribution to our understanding of a larger matter, in this case the representation of time and change in the Roman world.
Ahead of us with knife and collecting basket roams the ghost of the Reverend William Houghton M.A., F.L.S., Victorian parson, Rector of Wellington parish in Preston township, Shropshire, a man with time on his hands—and at least two cats—who in 1885 compiled a list titled, ‘Notices of Fungi in Greek and Latin Authors’. Dr Denis Benjamin, author of Mushrooms: Poisons and Panaceas, says that ‘it would take the persistence of another classical scholar to discover if he [Houghton] missed or misrepresented anything’. Persistence, in the form of the TLL—in its infancy when Houghton was doing his research—the RE entry ‘Pilze’, Maggiulli's Nomenclatura Micologica Latina, and the PHI database, has indeed added to the good Rector's basket a few more specimens on the Latin side, some of which are useful for our inquiry.
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Footnotes
1.
My title comes from AroraD., Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi (Berkeley1986). I want to thank the 2010 Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest audience for its response to the initial presentation of this paper, Catherine Connors and Stephen Hinds for advice on a more advanced version, and Ramus editor, Helen Morales, for seeing it through to publication. Special thanks to Cristina Calhoon for allowing me to see proofs of her essay on poisons. The anonymous readers have helpfully corrected me where I went astray; all remaining errors are my own.
References
Notes
2. Gowers, E., The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford 1993), 2Google Scholar.
3. On the use of μύκης and fungus to indicate a swelling that is not a mushroom, see Maggiulli, G., Nomenclatura micologica latina (Genoa 1977), 11–13Google Scholar. Other Greek words for fungi are ἀγαρικόν, ἀμανῖται, ἀσχίον, βωλίτης, ἴτον, κεραύνιον, μίσυ, πέζις and σπόγγος. Latin words include those taken from the Greek: agaricum, ceraunium, misy, pezicae, as well as, possibly, heluella. In Latin, fungus (from σπόγγος or σϕόγγος) has the broadest range of meaning. Modern attempts to identify ancient mushrooms are guesses, and developments in scientific nomenclature have caused a great deal of confusion: e.g., the boletus of ancient Rome may be the modern amanita caesarea; the ancient fungus suillus may be the modern boletus edulis; the ancient ἀγαρικόν/agaricum may be polyporus officinalis; and κεραύνιον/ceraunium may be a kind of truffle. On Greek and Roman words for various kinds of fungi, see (in addition to Maggiulli) RE 20.2.1372-1386 and Imholtz, A.A. Jr., ‘Fungi and Place-Names: The Origin of Boletus’, AJP 98 (1977), 71–76Google Scholar. For general information and bibliography, see Dalby, A., Food in the Ancient World: From A to Z (London and New York 2003Google Scholar), s.v. ‘Mushrooms’, as well as Dugan, F.M., Fungi in the Ancient World(St Paul 2008Google Scholar).
4. Gowers (n.2 above), 12, reasonably enough, given the purposes of her pioneering book, limited her discussion to fictional texts. On food and the history of Roman historical consciousness, see Purcell, N., ‘The Way We Used to Eat: Diet, Community, and History at Rome’, AJP 124 (2003), 329–58Google ScholarPubMed.
5. Houghton, W. M.A., F.L.S., ‘Notices of Fungi in Greek and Latin Authors’, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History 15.5 (1885), 22–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. We learn of his cats in a note to pp.32f.:
Cats are sometimes fond of fungi: I have a white Persian cat which I have tried with the following species of edible fungi, all of which it eats with evident relish:– Agaricus pratensis (mushroom), A. melleus, A. personatus, A. uirgineus (Hygrophorus), A. oreades, A. comatus, A. butryaceus, Boletus edulis and scaber, Hydnum repandum. Some known unwholesome and poisonous kinds, as A. semiglobatus, A. aeruginosus, A. muscarius, some of the Cortinarii, boletus luridus, &c, the cat refuses. Another of my cats (common variety) refuses all mushrooms and other fungi, and seems to say to its Persian companion “Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,” when such “apparatus” is a fungus.
6. Benjamin, D., Mushrooms: Poisons and Panaceas: A Handbook for Naturalists, Mycologists, and Physicians (New York 1995), 30Google Scholar. The bibliography on mushrooms, even ancient ones, skews towards the scientific rather than the humanistic, and towards the philological rather than the literary. See also Dugan (n.3 above), with bibliography. Magiulli (n.3 above) gives a thorough review of the sources.
7. These are: four references in Plautus (see below); some additional references in Cicero's letters and in the younger Seneca (see below); a passage on mushrooms in Scribonius Largus 198; another in the later medical writer Q. Serenus 22.420; and a brief reference in a letter of the younger Pliny (Ep. 1.7). Houghton (n.5 above), so far as I can tell, did not misrepresent anything. He did, however, contradict himself, when he said (at 24f.) that ‘the word μύκης occurs neither in the Greek poets, tragic or comic, nor in the historians’, and went on to point out that Athenaeus ‘has preserved to us a few quotations’ on mushrooms, which in fact use the word μύκης and come from Greek comic poets (Poliochus and Antiphanes), a tragedian (Aristias) and a historian (Eparchides).
8. Nicander Alex. 521-26; Theophrastus HP 1.1.11 (who points out that mushrooms and truffles lack the features the characterise most plants: stem, root, leaves, flower, etc.); Dioscorides Mat. Med. 4.82-83, Galen, Alim. Fac. 6.655-666 K.
9. Nicander Alex. 521-26 (tr. Gow, A.S.F. and Scholfield, A.F., Nicander: The Poems and Poetical Fragments [London 1997]Google Scholar):
Let not the evil ferment (ζύμωμα κακόν) of the soil injure a man; it will often swell up in his chest, at other times it will choke him (ἄλλοτε δ' ἄγχον), when it is fostered over the Viper's coil deep in its lair, sucking up the monster's venom and the noxious breath from its mouth. This is the evil ferment which they call Fungi (μύκητας) in general, for to different kinds different names have been assigned.
See also Dioscorides Mat. Med. 4.83; Plin. Nat. 22.95.
10. Galen (having just mentioned the βωλῖται): ἀβλαβέστατοι μὲν οὖν τῶν ἄλλων μυκήτων εἰσὶν οὗτοι, δεύτεροι δὲ μετ' αὐτοὺς οἱ ἀμανῖται. τῶν δ' ἄλλων ἀσϕαλέστερόν ἐστι μηδ' ὅλως ἅπτεσθαι (‘these, then, are the least harmful of all the mushrooms; and second after them are the amanitae. But it is safer not to touch the rest at all’, Alim. Fac. 6.656 K).
11. Fragments of comic works, Ath. 2.60b-d. All Athenaeus quotes and references are from Olsen, S.D. (ed.), Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters (7 Vols.: Cambridge MA 2006–2011Google Scholar).
12. Ath. 2.61b (= FGrH 437F 2 and FGE 560-3).
13. κεἴ τι πνίγει βρῶμά τι (‘and whatever food chokes’, Ath. 2.60e); see also 2.60f, πνιξεῖσθε; 2.61a, πνιγόεντα; 2.61b, ἀποπνιγείσης. The belief that mushrooms kill by ‘choking’ persisted at least into the 17th century. John Gerard, writing on poisonous mushrooms, says that ‘most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater’ (Gerard, J., The Herball or Generall Histoire of Plantes [London 1597CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 2nd ed. rev. Thomas Johnson 1633], 1386). One mycotoxin, muscarine, can cause difficulty in breathing. For basic information on mycotoxins, see Arora (n.1 above), 892-96.
14. The expression nil sapit allows a nice play on the multiple meanings of sapere: to taste of; to have taste; to show intelligence. See OLD s.v. sapio).
15. There is also the remark at the end of the Stichus (773), where the speaker compares his thirst for wine to a mushroom's need for water.
16. Cic. Fam. 7.26. Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, [Cicero] Epistulae ad Familiares (2 vols.: Cambridge 1977Google Scholar; hereafter SB), ii.374, says that the sumptuary law in question is Caesar's and dates the letter to between October 46 and February 45 BCE.
17. ita ego, qui me ostreis et murenis facile abstinebam, a beta et a malua deceptus sum (‘and so I, who easily restrained myself from the oysters and eels, was taken in by a beet and a mallow’, Cic. Fam. 7.26.2 = SB 210).
18. puto <te> nunc dicere: ‘oblitusne es igitur fungorum illorum, quos apud Niciam, et ingentium †cularum cum sophia septimae†?’ (‘I think <you> now are saying, “Have you forgotten those mushrooms which [we had] at Nicias' and……?”’, Cic. Fam. 9.10.2 = SB 217). Shackleton Bailey (n. 16 above), ii.383, pronounces the words after ingentium ‘hopeless’.
19. Suet. Jul. 43.
20. Leach, E.W., ‘Ciceronian “Bi-Marcus”: Correspondence with M. Terentius Varro and L. Papirius Paetus in 46 B.C.E.’, TAPA 129 (1999), 139–79Google Scholar.
21. Leach (n.20 above), 170, points to Cicero's references in Fam. 9.15 to the old-fashioned (Lucilian) nature of Paetus' wit, and concludes, ‘[t]hat is to suggest that Cicero sees in Paetus something lingering from a lost world’.
22. Leach (n.20 above), 170, notes how Cicero puns in these letters on the double—legal and culinary—meaning of ius: ‘While Paetus enjoys ius Haterianum at Naples, he is enjoying the ius Hirtianum at Rome.’
23. Whether by the words fungi pratenses Horace meant the same item as the modern Italian psaliota campestris, commonly called prataioli (French champignon, Linnean agaricus campestris), is impossible to tell (cf. Maggiulli [n.3 above], 5-71, with Rudd, N., The Satires of Horace (Berkeley 1982), 211Google Scholar, who calls Horace's remarks on mushroom safety ‘more sensible than Pliny's’. (Horace is more sensible simply because he says less. In the Satire he is interested in provenance, not botanical identification: more than one kind of mushroom grows in a field. See also André, J., L'alimentation et la cuisine à Rome (Paris 1961), 43fGoogle Scholar. On the foods mentioned in this poem, see Gowers (n.2 above), 135-61. Although Gowers does not discuss these mushrooms specifically, she lists male creditur among Horace's puns that ‘focus on the parallels and the discrepancies between philosophy and gastronomy’ (137). See also: Classen, C.J., ‘Horace—A Cook?’, CQ n.s. 28 (1978), 333–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freudenburg, K., The Walking Muse (Princeton 1993), 47f.Google Scholar; Griffin, J., Latin Poets and Roman Life (Chapel Hill 1986), 82Google Scholar. Anderson, W.S., Essays on Roman Satire (Princeton 1982), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, commenting on Hor. S. 2.4, notes that ‘scholars have convincingly shown that the recipes and dishes recommended by this didactic “philosopher” do not violate good taste: they are not extravagant or exotic. Indeed, the reasonable satirist would be likely himself to partake of such food.’
24. ‘I was imposed upon by Messrs Beet and Mallow’ (W. Glynn Williams's 1943 Loeb translation). ‘Note the personification,’ says Shackleton Bailey (n.16 above), ii. 374, on Fam. 7.26.9 = SB 210.
25. unde et quo Catius? ‘non est mihi tempus…’ (‘Whence and where, Catius? “I've no time to stop…’”, S. 2.4.1, and ipsa memor praecepta canam, celabitur auctor, (‘I shall chant you the rules from memory, but their source will remain concealed’, 2.4.11). On the Platonic ideas in Catius' speech, see Gowers (n.2 above), 138-40. Gowers (140) observes: ‘The precepts seem biased towards the distinction between appearance and inner worth…or trustworthiness and deceit (male creditur, 21), and concern for the guest's well-being.’
26. There is insufficient evidence to tell whether Ovid's fungi albi are the same as Horace's fungi pratenses. Cf. Maggiulli (n.3 above), 65-70. With uirides, albos makes a nice visual contrast, one which offers readers an image of freshness and coolness, if not botanical precision.
27. On the connection between poison and change, see Calhoon, C., ‘Is There an Antidote to Caesar? The Despot as Venenum and Venificus’, in Turner, A.J., Chong-Gossard, J.H. Kim On and Vervaet, F.J. (eds.), Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden and Boston 2010), 271–94, esp. 277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28. It is not my purpose to review the issue of what, precisely, killed Claudius. The question has been discussed by many scholars of both classics and medicine, yet the identity of the poison is no more certain than the identity of Thucydides' plague. Grimm-Samuel, V., ‘On the Mushroom that Deified the Emperor Claudius’, CQ n.s. 41 (1991), 178–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues for the amanita phalloides; Marmion, V.J. and Wiedemann, T.E.J., ‘The Death of Claudius’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95 (2002), 260f.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, argue for death by cerebrovascular disease; for other theories see, e.g., Valente, W.A., Talbert, R.J.A., Hallett, J.P. and Mackowiak, P.A., ‘Caveat Cenans’, The American Journal of Medicine 112 (2002), 392–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moog, F.P. and Karenberg, A., ‘Neurognostics Question: An Apoplexy, a Murderess, Poisoned Mushrooms, and the Death of an Emperor’, Journal of the History of Neuroscience 14 (2005), 230f., 254-56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the boletus in general, see Maggiulli (n.3 above), 35-59. On mushroom-poisoning in general, see Grmek, D., ‘Intoxication par les champignons dans l'antiquité grecque et latine’, LMS 4 (1982), 17–52Google Scholar.
29. These are in Book Seven of Apicius, which contains recipes for politeles (‘luxury dishes’). For boletus-recipes, see Apicius 7.13.4-6. At 7.13.1-3 he lists methods for preparing fungi farnei (‘ash-tree fungi’); and at 7.14.1-6 he gives recipes for tubera (‘truffles’). See Grocock, C., and Grainger, S., Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and an English Translation of the Latin Recipe Text (London 2006), 254fGoogle Scholar.
30. As J. Griffin (n.23 above), 82, observes, ‘the higher genres, not only elegy but also lyric, were happy to accept mention of drinking, but would not allow discussion of food’.
31. That Claudius' departure introduces a new and happy age, is, of course, a major theme of Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (see, e.g., initio saeculi felicissimi [‘at the beginning of a most happy era’, 1.1], and the pompous spoof of time-references in 2.1-4).
32. Sen. Ep. 77.18, 95.24, 108.15.
33. Sen. Ep. 108.15. The self-cancelling futility brought about by eating food that comes up easily, and chasing hot mushrooms with cold water, finds its most perfect expression in the Neronis decocta (‘Nero's boiled-down water’) which was simply water, concentrated by boiling, then chilled with snow. See Suet. Nero 48.3 and Plin. Nat. 31.40. On the metaphor of ‘decoction’, see Gowers, E., ‘Persius and the Decoction of Nero’, in Elsner, J. and Masters, J. (eds.), Reflections of Nero: Culture, History, and Representation (Chapel Hill 1994), 131–50Google Scholar. The boletus appears again with oysters in Martial 3.60 (the host eats oysters and boleti, while his guest receives lowly mussels and fungi suilli).
34. Satyrica 38.4. That the word boletus appears first in the works of a Spaniard, and reappears in works of other Spaniards (Martial, Juvenal), might well, as August Imholtz has argued, indicate a Spanish origin for both word and fungus in the name of the town of Boletum (modern Boltaña), in Hispania Tarraconensis (where Pliny was procurator in 73/74). See Imholtz (n.3 above), 71-76. The Spanish origin makes Trimalchio's claim to import spore from India sound all the sillier.
35. Sen. Ep. 95.25 places the boletus among other luxury foods. As a uoluptarium uenenum, it falls into the same category as, e.g., Helen, a kalon kakon. Marchetti, S.C., Plinio il Vecchio e la tradizione del moralismo Romano (Pisa 1991), 69f.Google Scholar, cites this passage, together with Plin. Nat. 16.31, as examples of the internal contradictions in these authors' treatments of a luxury item as both evil and a source of pleasure for their readers.
36. The fungus suillus appears only in Pliny (Nat. 16.31 and 22.96), and in Martial 3.60.
37. In Pliny mushrooms appear after the condrion, or condrille, and before silphium. Quotes and references from this section of Pliny are from Jones, W.H.S., Pliny: Natural History Vol. VI: Libri XX-XXIII (Cambridge MA and London 1951Google Scholar).
38. familias nuper interemere et tota conuiuia, Annaeum Serenum praefectum Neronis uigilum et tribunos centurionesque (‘they recently killed off entire households and all the guests at banquets; Annaeus Serenus, for example, Prefect of Nero's guards, together with his tribunes and centurions’, Nat. 22.96).
39. adductus in crimen: compare Cic. Fam. 7.26.1, in honorem adducere (‘bring into good repute’).
40. Altered only slightly, Agamemnon's denunciation of Clytemnestra in Odyssey 24 fits the boletus well (Lattimore tr.): ‘A song of loathing will be its among men, to make evil the reputation of mushroomkind, even for one whose acts are virtuous.’ On the role of precedent and prejudice in the endurance of a mushroom's bad reputation, see Rubel, W. and Arora, D., ‘A Study of Cultural Bias in Field Guide Determinations of Mushroom Edibility Using the Iconic Mushroom, Amanita muscaria, as an Example’, Economic Botany 62 (2008), 223–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41. Possibly the deadly amanita phalloides, instead of amanita Caesarea. See Grimm-Samuel (n.28 above), 178-82.
42. They seem also to anticipate Suetonius' description of Nero at Nero 51: corpore maculoso et fetido (‘with blotched and stinking body’). See Calhoon (n.27 above), 281.
43. Asellio Sabino sestertia ducenta donauit pro dialogo, in quo boleti et ficedulae et ostreae et turdi certamen induxerat (‘he gave Asellius Sabinus two hundred sesterces for a dialogue in which he had introduced a competition between a boletus, a figpecker, an oyster and a thrush’, Tib. 42.2). This may be the same man as the Asilius Sabinus whose witticisms (sales), some having to do with food, are reported by Seneca at Con. 9.4.17-21.
44. E.g., the Tigris oritur (‘arises’, Nat. 6.127-28); Nilus…originem…habet (‘the Nile…has its…origin’, Nat. 5.51). See Murphy, T., ‘Pliny's Naturalis Historia: The Prodigal Text’, in Boyle, A.J. and Dominik, W.J. (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text (Leiden and Boston 2003), 301–22Google Scholar.
45. Murphy (n.44 above), 317.
46. Murphy (n.44 above), 301.
47. Murphy (n.44 above), 322.
48. adeoque cuneta max pernotuere ut temporum illorum scriptores prodiderint infusum delectabili boleto uenenum (‘all the details presently became so generally known that writers of those times have handed it down that the poison was inserted into a delicious boletus’, Tac. Ann. 12.77.2). Suetonius too marks it as tradition: quidam tradunt epulanti in arce cum sacerdotibus per Halotum spadonem praegustatorem: alii domestico conuiuio per ipsam Agrippinam, quae boletummedicatum auidissimo ciborum talium optulerat (‘some say that the poison was given him as he dined with the priests on the citadel by Halotus the eunuch, his taster; others that it was by Agrippina herself, who had offered him a drugged boletus because he was most greedy for such foods’, Claud. 44). On the Greek side, Cassius Dio said that Agrippina ἔς τινα τῶν καλουμένων μυκήτων ἐνέβαλε (‘put it in one of the things called mushrooms’, 61.3.2-3), offered Claudius the biggest and best looking, then ate the rest of the dish herself.
49. Both Nero and Caligula were explicitly compared to poisons. See Calhoon (n.27 above), 274. On poisons in general, see Cilliers, L. and Retief, F.P., ‘Poisons, Poisonings and the Drug Trade in Ancient Rome’, Akroterion 45 (2000), 88–100Google Scholar, and now Mayor, A., The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton 2010Google Scholar), with extensive bibliography, although only a few remarks on mushrooms.
50. et boletis quidem ortus occasusque omnis intra dies Septem est (‘and indeed the entire rise and demise of boleti occurs within seven days’, Nat. 22.95). On brevity as a trait of Nero's reign, see esp. Gowers (n.33 above), 133-39. Gowers uses vegetable analogies to explain Nero's ‘fast-burgeoning, quick-withering growth’, and points out that the ‘contrast between normal growth and sterile precocity is what shapes the mythology of Nero's reign into the polar opposite of that of Augustus’ (135). The mushroom reinforces this sense of speedy growth and decay.
51. Tac. Ann. 12.66.4-5; 12.67.1-3.
52. Writing of the Flavian period, Connors, C., ‘Imperial Space and Time: The Literature of Leisure’, in Taplin, O. (ed.), Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective (Oxford 2000), 492–518, at 515Google Scholar, observes that ‘again and again in the literature of leisure, the public story of historical transformation is called down to a private story of dining’. This particular story of Claudius’ dining represents the other side of the same coin: the imperial dinner cannot be private, because what the emperor eats affects the empire. Calhoon (n.27 above), 277 with n.28, points out that in legal terms uenenum was quod adhibitum naturam eius, cui adhibitum esset, mutat (‘that which—applied to something—changes its nature’, Dig. 50.16.236). The application of Nero changed the nature of the empire.
53. On solitary dining as a trait of a tyrant, and on the importance of this image in the political thought of the early empire, see Braund, S. Morton, ‘The Solitary Feast: A Contradiction in Terms?’ BICS 41 (1996), 37–52Google Scholar. Braund shows how solitary dining is ‘an important manifestation of auaritia, selfish greed’ (42).
54. Fitzgerald, W., Martial: The World of the Epigram (Chicago 2007), 84–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has shown how the juxtaposition of Epigrams 1.20 and 1.21, both of which involve a spectacle and spectators, draws a sharp contrast between an ignoble feat of gourmandise performed before an invited crowd and the exemplary image of Mucius Scaevola's courage. Vallat, D., Onomastique, culture et société dans les épigrammes de Martial (Bruxelles 2008), 486f.Google Scholar, notes the word play that results from placing Caecilius, whose name stems from caecus, ‘blind’, in the midst of a watching crowd.
55. sunt tibi boleti, fungos ego sumo suillas (‘you are served boleti; I receive pig-fungus’, Mart. 3.60.5). Martial's other references to boleti link them to other luxury foods such as turdi and ostrea. Only 1.20 refers specifically to the boletus that killed Claudius, but it is the epigram which introduces boleti to the collection; and it is likely that the influence of that first boletus extends to the rest.
56. Fitzgerald (n.54 above), 37-43.
57. Courtney, E., A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London 1980), 248Google Scholar, points out the ellipsis of talis: ‘sed (talis) quales…’. Braund, S. Morton (ed. and tr.), Juvenal and Persius (Cambridge MA 2004Google Scholar), translates accordingly: ‘The insignificant friends are served fungi of dubious quality. The master gets a mushroom of the kind Claudius ate before the one his wife gave him—after which he ate nothing else.’ On the parallel menus served to patrons and humble clients in Satire 5, see Braund, (ed.), Juvenal: Satires Book I (Cambridge 1996), 307fGoogle Scholar.
58. rumpimus altricem tenero quae uertice terram/tubera, boletis poma secunda sumus (‘we who split our nourisher, the earth, with our tender heads are truffles, a fruit second only to boleti’, Mart. 13.50).
59. cum mihi boleti dederint tam nobile nomen,/prototomis–pudet heu!–seruio coliculis (‘though boleti gave me so renowned a name, alas for shame! I'm now used for cabbage-sprouts’, Mart. 14.101). The nobility's bad experience with one boletus makes this ‘descent’ to holding a humble vegetable (of the kind mentioned by the elder Cato, Agr. 158.1) seem both morally laudable and prudent.
60. minus ergo nocens erit Agrippinae/boletus, siquidem unius praecordia pressit/ille senis tremulumque caput descendere iussit/in caelum et longa manantia labra saliua (‘less harmful, then, will be Agrippina's boletus, seeing that it squeezed the vitals of one old man, and ordered his quivering head, and his lips dripping strands of saliva, to descend to heaven’, Juv. 6.620-23).
61. On the general resemblance of the ideas in the Juvenal passage to those of the Apocolocyntosis, see Eden, P.T., Seneca, Apocolocyntosis (Cambridge 1984), 17fGoogle Scholar.