Sec. X. As the conversation was going on, our father said that a friend of
Pisias came galloping up from the town to report an act of marvellous
audacity. Ismenodora, it appears, thinking Baccho had no personal
dislike to the match, but only stood in awe of his friends who tried to
dissuade him from it, determined that she would not let the young fellow
slip through her fingers. Accordingly, she sent for the most active and
intimate[80] of her male friends, and for some of her female cronies,
and instructed them as to what part they should play, and waited for the
hour when Baccho was accustomed regularly to pass by her house on his
way to the wrestling-school. And as he passed by on this occasion with
two or three of his companions, anointed for the exercise, Ismenodora
met him at the door and just touched his cloak, and her friends rushed
out all together and prettily seized the pretty fellow as he was in his
cloak and jersey,[81] and hurried him into the house and at once locked
the doors. And the women inside at once divested him of his cloak and
put on him a bridal robe; and the servants ran about the town and put
olive wreaths and laurel garlands at the doors of Baccho's house as well
as Ismenodora's, and a flute-girl went up and down the street playing
and singing the wedding-song. And some of the inhabitants of Thespiae and
the strangers laughed, others were indignant and tried to make the
superintendents of the gymnasium move in the matter, for they have great
power in Thespiae over the youths, and pay great attention to their
actions. And now there was no more talk about the sports, but everyone
left the theatre for the neighbourhood of Ismenodora's house, and there
stood in groups talking and disputing about what had happened.
Sec. XI. Now when Pisias' friend had come up like an _aide-de-camp_ in war,
"bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," to report this news that
Ismenodora had seized Baccho, my father said that Zeuxippus smiled, and
being a great lover of Euripides repeated the line,
"Lady, though rich, thou hast thy sex's feelings."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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