The cock-stone and the athlete’s meal

Athletic contest. All those skilled in these things praise the stones found in the bellies of noble cocks as co-workers of virtue and victory. Worn either in leather, or carried under the tongue, they keep soldiers and athletes and gladiators well set, lasting, and not thirsty. Others tell another form and color of them: some crystal-like and rough, some black — those who speak truly. They are found in the winner when he is cut up, as if not the virtue of the bird but the nature of the stone had become the cause of prevailing.

Since then, whether worn under the mouth or about the arm, the stone either falls out or is cut round by an antagonist, one must use an unsuspected wrapping of much power. Let the cock that has won, prepared as is the custom, be eaten whole by the contestant, so that the flesh is stripped, all of it, and the bones kept whole and unbroken; then after the table let it be purified by fire. The bird, no longer of day but a messenger of victory that will be, making the eater successor of its own unbeatenness, migrates into the man as by virtue.

The son of Neocles used the stone and the food when fighting the Persians; and from there he legislated the cock-fights in Athens when it had been raised, and the Athenians after the Median victory led a victory-feast of cocks.