Pliny the Elder, in his _Natural History_, book 13 chapter 9,
http://goo.gl/m5a4OM
mentions a kind of date that has to be cooked before it can be eaten.
'The date of Thebais is at once packed in casks, with all its natural heat
and freshness; for without this precaution, it quickly becomes vapid; it is
of a poor, sickly taste, too, if it is not exposed, before it is eaten, to
the heat of an oven.'

In the same chapter he says that
'... those [dates], however, of Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, and Seleucia in
Assyria, will not keep: hence it is that they are much used for fattening
swine and other animals.'
Might such dates, which will not keep if allowed to dry naturally, have
been roasted in later times to preserve them?

RH

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