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
That, the green banks in summer's heat o'erflows,
Like crystal clear, and cold as winter's snows.
And he often speaks of men newly wounded being bathed in warm water. In
the case of Agamemnon he says--
With his warm blood still welling from the wound.[67:4]
And in the case of a stag fleeing after it had been wounded, he says,
in a sort of paraphrase--
While his warm blood and mighty limbs were strong.[68:1]
The Athenians call χλιαρὸν, which is properly _lukewarm_, μετάκερας, as
Eratosthenes uses the word, saying, "Watery by nature, and lukewarm,
μετάκερας."
15. And of other waters, those which come from rocks he calls "dark," as
being quite useless; and he prefers to all others the waters of springs,
and those which rise to the surface from a great depth, and through rich
soil. As also Hesiod says--
A ceaseless spring of clear untroubled flow.
And Pindar says--
Ambrosial water, like fresh honey sweet,
Which from Tilphossa's lovely fountains flows;
(Tilphossa is a fountain in Bœotia;) and Aristophanes says that
Tiresias died from drinking of it, as at his advanced age he was unable
to bear its extreme cold. And Theophrastus, in his book on Waters, says
that the water of the Nile is the most productive and the sweetest of
all waters, and that it is also very relaxing to the bowels of those who
drink it, as it has in it a mixture of nitre. And again, in his book on
Plants, he says that there is in some places water which has a
procreative tendency; as for instance at Thespiæ: and at Pyrrha there is
a water which causes barrenness. But it happened once when there was a
drought in the district around the Nile, that the water of that river
became unwholesome, and many of the Egyptians died. Theophrastus states,
moreover, that not only do bitter waters sometimes change their nature,
but that salt water does so too, and sometimes whole rivers do so; as in
the case of the fountain in Cithæron, near which there is a temple of
Jupiter; and of that in Cairo, near which there is a temple of Neptune:
and the reason is, that many thunderbolts fall in those countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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