Quinta: venatio.
The Three Branches of Hunting
Hunting is divided into three kinds—wild game, bird-catching, and fishing—each practiced with its own array of tools and methods.
Hunting is divided into three kinds: hunting wild game, bird-catching, and fishing. Hunting wild game is practiced in many ways: with nets, snares, nooses, pitfalls, bow, javelins, spear-point, a beating of feathers, by scent, with dogs, and with hawks. Bird-catching is done with nooses, snares, nets, bow, birdlime, and hook. Fishing is done with seine-nets, nets, fish-traps, hooks, and javelins.
From the Hunt to the Table
The discipline of hunting extends to the preparation of all foods, seasonings, and drinks, with bread holding a central place at every table.
This discipline includes the preparation of all foods, seasonings, and drinks. The name, however, was taken from just one part of it, because in ancient times people were more accustomed to feeding on hunting, just as in certain regions today, where bread is very rare, they have meat instead of bread and mead or water instead of drink. Food is divided into two: bread and a side dish. Bread is so called, perhaps as if from ponis, because it's placed before every table, or from the Greek pan, meaning 'all,' because no feast is considered good without bread.
The Many Kinds of Bread and Side Dishes
Bread and its accompaniments come in countless varieties, from unleavened loaves to meats, stews, dairy, vegetables, and fruits.
Bread comes in many kinds: unleavened, leavened, baked under ashes, a rust-colored loaf, sponge bread, cake, oven-baked, sweet breads, made from fine wheat flour, amolum, fine flour, and many other varieties besides. Obsonium is, as it were, something added to bread — what we can call a side dish. This too has many kinds: meats, stews, honeyed drinks, vegetables, fruits. Meats are prepared in different ways: some roasted, others fried, others boiled, others raw, others salted. Others are called salt pork, and also lard — or taxea, ham or pork leg, axungia, fat, suet. Stews likewise come in many kinds: Lucanian sausage, minced-meat dishes, a kind of stew, a prepared dish from Galatia, and whatever else the foremost cooks could dream up. Honeyed drinks contain milk, colostrum, a type of curd, butter, cheese, and whey. As for vegetables and fruits — who could list all their names?
Flavors, Drinks, and the Full Scope of the Hunt
Foods and drinks are classified by flavor and nourishment, and hunting ultimately encompasses the work of bakers, butchers, cooks, and innkeepers.
Some flavors are hot, others cold; some bitter, others sweet; some dry, others moist. Some drinks are strictly drinks—that is, they only moisten and don't nourish, like water—while others are both drink and food—that is, they moisten and nourish, like wine. Again, among those that are food, some are naturally food, like wine and any fermented drink, while others are accidentally food, like beer and mead.1 Therefore, hunting encompasses all the work of bakers, butchers, cooks, and innkeepers.
Read the original Latin
Venatio dividitur in ferinam, aucupium et piscaturam. ferina multis modis exercetur, retibus, pedicis, laqueis, praecipitiis, arcu, iaculis, cuspide, indagine, pennarum odore, canibus, accipitribus. aucupium fit laqueis, pedicis, retibus, arcu, visco, hamo. piscatura fit sagenis, retibus, gurgustiis, hamis, iaculis. ad hanc disciplinam pertinet omnium ciborum, saporum, et potuum apparatus. nomen tamen accepit ab una parte sua, quia antiquitus plus venatione vesci solebant, sicut adhuc in quibusdam regionibus, ubi rarissimus usus panis est, carnem pro cibo et mulsum vel aquam pro potu habent. cibus in duo dividitur, in panem et obsonium. panis dictus est, vel quasi ponis, quia omnibus mensis apponitur, vel a Graeco pan, quod est omne, quia nullum convivium bonum sine pane ducitur.
panis multa sunt genera, azymus, fermentatus, subcinericius, rubigus, spongia, placenta, clibanicus, dulcia, siligeneus, amolum, simila, et cetera multa. obsonium dicitur quasi adiunctum pani, quod nos cibarium dicere possumus. huius multa sunt genera, carnes, pulmenta, mulsa, holera, fructus. carnes aliae sunt assae, aliae frixae, aliae elixae, aliae crudae, aliae salsae. aliae dicuntur succidia, lardum quoque sive taxea, perna vel petasunculus, axungia, arvina, adeps. pulmenti item multa sunt genera, Lucaniae farcimen, minutal, afrotum, mortisia Galatiae, et cetera quaecumque princeps coquorum excogitare potuit. mulsa habent lac, colostrum, babdutam, butyram, caseum, serum. holerum et fructuum nomina enumeret qui potest?
sapores alii calidi sunt, alii frigidi, alii amari, alii dulces, alii sicci, alii humidi. potus alii tantum sunt potus, id est, qui humectant tantum, non nutriunt, ut aqua; alii potus et cibus, id est, qui humectant et nutriunt, ut vinum. rursum, qui cibus sunt, alii naturaliter sunt cibus, ut vinum et sicera quaelibet; alii accidentaliter, ut cervisia, medones. venatio igitur continet omnia pistorum, carnificum, coquorum, cauponum officia.
Notes
- 1 ↩The forms 'sicera' and 'medones' are morphologically ambiguous; 'sicera' is rendered as 'fermented drink' (from Hebrew shekar/sicera) and 'medones' as 'mead' based on contextual and etymological evidence.
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