The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
45. And when he had conquered his competitors at Sicyon, he set up a
trophy in the temple of Æsculapius, and wrote upon it, "Stratonicus,
conqueror of those who played badly on the harp." And when some one had
sung, he asked what tune he had been singing; and when he said that it
was an air of Carcinus,[16] "More like that," said he, "than the air
of a man." He also said, on another occasion, that there was no spring
at Maronea, only heat. And once at Phaselis, when the bathing-man
was wrangling with his boy about the money, (for the law was that
foreigners should pay more for bathing than natives,) "Oh, you wretched
boy!" said he, "you have almost made me a citizen of Phaselis, to save
a halfpenny." And once, when a person was praising him in hopes to get
something by it, he said, "that he himself was a greater beggar." And
once, when he was teaching in a small town, he said, "This is not a
city (πόλις), but hardly one (πόλις)." And once, when he was at Pella,
he came to a well, and asked whether it was fit to drink; and when
those who were drawing water from it said, "At all events we drink
it;" "Then," said he, "I am sure it is not fit to drink:" for the men
happened to be very sallow-looking. And when he had heard the poem of
Timotheus, on the subject of Semele in Labour, he said, "But if she had
brought forth an artisan, and not a god, what sounds would she have
uttered!"
And when Polyidas was giving himself airs, because his pupil Philotas
had beaten Timotheus, he said, "That he wondered at his being so
ignorant as not to know that he makes decrees, and Timotheus laws."
And he said to Areus the harp-player, who was annoying him, "Play to
the crows."[17] And once he was at Sicyon, when a leather-dresser was
abusing him, and he said to the leather-dresser (νακοδέψης), "O you
κακόδαιμον νακόδαιμον." And Stratonicus himself, beholding the Rhodians
dissolved in luxury, and drinking only warm drinks, said, "that there
were white Cyrenæans." And he called Rhodes itself the City of the
Suitors,[18] thinking that they were in no respect different from the
Cyrenæans in debauchery, but only in complexion; and also because of
the devotion to pleasure of the inhabitants, he compared Rhodes itself
to the city of the Suitors.
[Sidenote: ARISTOTLE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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