With barley, too, the food called ptisan149 is made, a most substantial and salutary aliment, and one that is held in very high esteem. Hippocrates, one of the most famous writers on medical science, has devoted a whole volume to the praises of this aliment. The ptisan of the highest quality is that which is made at Utica; that of Egypt is prepared from a kind of barley, the grain of which grows with two points.150 In Bætica and Africa, the kind of barley from which this food is made is that which Turranius calls the “smooth”151 barley: the same author expresses an opinion, too, that olyra152 and rice are the same. The method of preparing ptisan is universally known.