_Lacedaemonian Black Broth_.--Your correspondent "W." in No. 11., is
amusing as well as instructive; but it does not yet appear that we must
reject the notion of coffee as an ingredient of the Lacedaemonian black
broth upon the score of _colour_ or _taste_.
That it _was_ an ingredient has only as yet been mooted as a
_probability_.
Pollux, to whom your correspondent refers us, says that [Greek: zomos
melas] was a Lacedaemonian food; and that it was called [Greek:
aimatia], translated in Scott and Liddell's _Lexicon_, "_blood-broth_."
These lexicographers add, "The Spartan black broth was made with blood,"
and refer to Manso's _Sparta_, a German work, which I have not the
advantage of consulting.
Gesner, in his _Thesaurus_, upon the word "jus," quotes the known
passage of Cicero, _Tusc. Disp_. v. 34., and thinks the "jus nigrum" was
probably the [Greek: aimatia], and made with an admixture of blood, as
the "botuli," the _black_ puddings of modern time, were.
Coffee would not be of much lighter colour than blood. A decoction of
senna, though of a red-brown, is sometimes administered in medicine
under the common name of a "_black_ dose."
As regards the _colour_, then, whether blood or coffee were the
ingredient, the mess would be sufficiently dark to be called "_black_."
In respect of _taste_, it is well known, from the story told by Cicero
in the passage above referred to, that the Lacedaemonian black broth was
_disagreeable_, at least to Dionysius, and the Lacedaemonians, who
observed to him that he wanted that best of sauces, hunger, convey a
confession that their broth was not easily relished.
The same story is told with a little variation by Stobaeus, _Serm_.
xxix., and Plutarch, _Institut. Lacon_., 2. The latter writer says, that
the Syracusan, having tasted the Spartan broth, "spat it out in
disgust," [Greek: dyscheranunta apoptusai].
It would not have been unlike the Lacedaemonians purposely to have
established a disagreeable viand in their system of public feeding. Men
that used iron money to prevent the accumulation of wealth, and, as
youths, had volunteered to be scourged, scratched, beat about, and
kicked about, to inure them to pain, were just the persons to affect a
nauseous food to discipline the appetite.