Satire, Greek -- Translations into English; Voyages, Imaginary -- Early works to 1800
They keep their feast without the city in a field called Elysium,
which is a most pleasant meadow, environed with woods of all sorts,
so thick that they serve for a shade to all that are invited, who sit
upon beds of flowers, and are waited upon, and have everything brought
unto them by the winds, unless it be to have the wine filled: and that
there is no need of: for about the banqueting place are mighty great
trees growing of clear and pure glass, and the fruit of those trees are
drinking-cups and other kind of vessels of what fashion or greatness
you will: and every man that comes to the feast gathers one or two
of those cups, and sets them before him, which will be full of wine
presently, and then they drink. Instead of garlands the nightingales
and other musical birds gather flowers with their beaks out of the
meadows adjoining, and flying over their heads with chirping notes
scatter them among them.
They are anointed with sweet ointment in this manner: sundry clouds
draw that unguent out of the fountains and the rivers, which settling
over the heads of them that are at the banquet, the least blast of
wind makes a small rain fall upon them like unto a dew. After supper
they spend the time in music and singing: their ditties that are in
most request they take out of Homer's verses, who is there present
himself and feasteth among them, sitting next above Ulysses: their
choirs consist of boys and virgins, which were directed and assisted
by Eunomus the Locrian, and Arion the Lesbian, and Anacreon, and
Stesichorus, who hath had a place there ever since his reconcilement
with Helena. As soon as these have done there enter a second choir of
swans, swallows, and nightingales; and when they have ended, the whole
woods ring like wind-instruments by the stirring of the air.
But that which maketh most for their mirth are two wells adjoining to
the banqueting place, the one of laughter, the other of pleasure: of
these every man drinks to begin the feast withal, which makes them
spend the whole time in mirth and laughter.
I will also relate unto you what famous men I saw in that association.
There were all the demigods, and all that fought against Troy,
excepting Ajax the Locrian: he only, they told me, was tormented in
the region of the unrighteous. Of barbarians there was the elder and
the younger Cyrus, and Anacharsis the Scythian, Zamolxis the Thracian,
and Numa the Italian. There was also Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian, and
Phocion and Tellus the Athenians, and all the Wise Men, unless it were
Periander.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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