The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 1 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
General
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
Here Pythodelus comes, who is surnamed
Isoballion, greediest of men,
And on his steps does follow that wise woman
Ischas, bearing a drum, and very drunk.
And Anaxandrides attacks Polyeuctus, turning him into ridicule in the
comedy called Tereus--
_A._ You shall be call'd a bird.
_B._ Why so, by Vesta?
Is it because I ate my patrimony
Like that most fashionable Polyeuctus?
_A._ No, but because you, though you were a man,
Were torn in pieces by the women so.
And Theopompus, in the tenth book of his account of the Exploits of
Philip, (a book from which some separate the conclusion, in which there
is the mention made of the demagogues at Athens,) says that Eubulus the
demagogue was an intemperate man. And he uses the following
expressions--"And he so far exceeded the whole nation of the Tarentines
in luxury and extravagance, that this latter is only immoderate in its
indulgence in feasts; but he spent on his luxury even the revenues of
the Athenian people. But Callistratus," he continues, "the son of
Callicrates, who was himself also a demagogue, was very intemperate in
his pleasures, but still he was very attentive to the business of the
state." And speaking of the Tarentines, in the fifty-second book of his
Histories, he writes as follows--"The city of the Tarentines sacrifices
oxen nearly every month, and celebrates public festivals; and the chief
body of private individuals is always occupied in banquets and drinking
parties. And the Tarentines hold some such language as this: That other
men, because they are fond of personal exertion, and because they devote
themselves to actual labour, prepare their subsistence in this way for
the future: but that they, by means of their banquets and pleasures, are
not about to live, but are living already."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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