At all these public meetings they used a great deal of moderation, they being designed only for schools of temperance and modesty, not for luxury and indecency ; their chief dish and only delicacy being a sort of pottage (called by them their blaek broth, and made of some little pieces of flesh, with a small quantity of blood, salt, and vinegar), and this the more ancient among them generally preferred to any sort of meat whatsoever, as the more pleasing entertainment and of a more substantial nourishment. The younger sort contented themselves with flesh and other ordinary provisions, without tasting of this dish, Avhich was reserved only for the old men. It is reported of Dionysius, the Sicilian tyrant, that having heard of the great fame and commendation of this broth, he hired a certain cook of Lacedaemon, who was thoroughly skilled in the make and composition of it, to furnish his table every day with so great and curious a dainty ; and that he might have it in the greatest perfection, enjoined him to spare no cost in the making it agreeable and pleasant to his palate. But it seems the end answered not the pains he took in it ; for after all his care and niceness, the king, as soon as he had tasted of it, found it both fulsome and nauseous to his stomach, and spitting it out with great distaste, as if he had taken down a vomit, sufficiently expressed his disapprobation ofit. But the cook, not discouraged at this dislike of his master, told the tyrant that he humbly conceived the reason of this disagreeableness to him was not in the pottage, but rather in himself, who had not prepared his body for such food according to the Laconic mode and custom. For hard labors and long exercises and moderate abstinence (the best preparatives to a good and healthy appetite) and frequent bathings in the river Eurotas were the only necessaries for a right relish and understanding of the excellency of this entertainment.