Cibus Hilleli, "Hillel's 'sandwich'" is an Internet hoax to the effect that "Romans referred to the sandwich as a 'cibus Hilleli,' or Hillel's Snack". An accompanying note offered the seemingly erudite assertion "...and so we find in a fragment of Varro, preserved by Nonnius, that cibus Hilleli est illa caesna quo panis sive caseum sive carnem sepit buturoque saepe operitur".
The hoax, widely reported on the Internet, was perpetrated from a computer at St. Andrews University, Fife, Scotland. It has been innocently quoted around the Internet by those who do not stop to wonder how much of Publius Terentius Varro (died ca 35 BCE) is actually quoted in Nonnus' elaborate early fifth-century epic Dionisiaca, nor how a delicatessen description of a sandwich— sive caseum sive carnem "either of cheese or of meat"— might properly fit into Nonnus' epic structure. The approximate dates of Hillel the Elder are late first century BCE to early first century CE: he was writing after Varro was dead, so a Varro quote of Hillel is an anachronism.
|
