Athenaeus - Deipnosophists Book IX
Book IX. 393 b - c
The middle syllable of the name for quail is prolonged in Attic Greek, just as in doidyka (pestle) and in keryka (herald); so Demetrius Ixion states in his treatise On the Alexandrian Dialect. But Aristophanes made it short in The Peace, for the sake of the metre: “Home-bred quails (ortyges). The so-called chennia (it is a small quail) are mentioned by Cleomenes in his Letter to Alexander, writing as follows: “Ten thousand smoked coots, five thousand thrushes, ten thousand smoked quails (chennia).” And Hipparchus in The Egyptian Iliad: “And I liked not the life which the Egyptians lead, for ever plucking quails (chennia) and slimy magpies.”
Book IX. 398 e - f
Learning that that was the name given to the bird* among the Moesians and the Paeonians, I recalled it in the verses of Aristophanes. I thought too that the creature must have been deemed worthy of mention by the learned Aristotle in that costly treatise of his; for the story goes that the Stagirite received eight hundred talents from Alexander to further his research on animals; but I could not find anything said about it, and I was most glad to have the witty Aristophanes as a most trustworthy witness.”
* A bird called a Tetrax.
Book IX. 401 b
Theopompus, in the twentieth book of the Histories, says that in the neighborhood of Bisaltia* hares occur which have two livers.
* Bisaltia, a region in the eastern part of Macedonia, extending south into the Chalcidic peninsula.