Spirit divine! whose exhalation greets The sense of gods with more than mortal sweets.[28:1] He speaks, too, of splendid beds; and such is the bed which Arete orders her handmaids to prepare for Ulysses. And Nestor makes it a boast to Telemachus that he is well provided with such things. 30. But some of the other poets have spoken of the habits of expense, and indolence of their own time as existing also at the time of the Trojan war; and, so Æschylus very improperly introduces the Greeks as so drunk as to break their vessels about one another's heads; and he says-- This is the man who threw so well The vessel with an evil smell, And miss'd me not, but dash'd to shivers The pot too full of steaming rivers Against my head, which now, alas! sir, Gives other smells besides macassar. And Sophocles says in his banquet of the Greeks, He in his anger threw too well The vessel with an evil smell Against my head, and fill'd the room With something not much like perfume; So that I swear I nearly fainted With the foul steam the vessel vented. But Eupolis attacks the man who first mentioned such a thing, saying-- I hate the ways of Sparta's line, And would rather fry my dinner; He who first invented wine Made poor man a greater sinner, And through him the greater need is Of the arts of Palamedes.[28:2] But in Homer the chiefs banquet in Agamemnon's tent in a very orderly manner; and if in the Odyssey Achilles and Ulysses dispute and Agamemnon exults, still their rivalry with one another is advantageous, since what they are discussing is whether Troy is to be taken by stratagem, or by open-hand fighting. And he does not represent even the suitors as drunk, nor has he ever made his heroes guilty of such disorderly conduct as Æschylus and Sophocles have, though he does speak of the foot of an ox being thrown at Ulysses. 31. And his heroes sit at their banquets, and do not lie down. And this was sometimes the case at the feasts of Alexander the king, as Dures says. For he once, when giving a feast to his captains to the number of six thousand, made them sit upon silver chairs and couches, having covered them with purple covers. And Hegesander says that it was not the custom in Macedonia for any one to lie down at a banquet, unless he had slain a boar which had escaped beyond the line of nets; but with that exception, every one sat at supper. And so Cassander, when he was thirty-five years of age, supped with his father in a sitting posture, not being able to perform the above-mentioned exploit, though he was of man's estate, and a gallant hunter.