The ancients, also, were acquainted with the banquets which are now called dole-basket banquets; and Pherecrates mentions them in his Forgetful Man, or the Sea, saying— Having prepared a small dole-basket supper He went away to Ophela. And this clearly points to the dole-basket supper, when a man prepares a supper for himself, and then puts it in a basket, and goes off to sup with some one. And Lysias has used the word σύνδειπνον for a banquet, in his speech against Micinus, on his trial for murder; for he says that he had been invited to a σύνδειπνον: and Plato says—"Those who had made a σύνδειπνον:" and Aristophanes, in his Gerytades, says— Praising great Æschylus in his σύνδειπνα, on which account some people wish to write the title of Sophocles's play in the neuter gender, σύνδειπνον. Some people also use the expression συναγώγιμα δεῖπνα, picnic feasts; as Alexis does, in his Man fond of Beauty, or the Nymphs, where he says— Come, sit you down, and call those damsels in; We've got a picnic here, but well I know That your's is but a skin-flint disposition. And Ephippus says, in his Geryones,— They also celebrate a picnic feast. They also use the verb συνάγω for to drink with on another, and the noun συναγώγιον for a drinking party. Menander, in his Angry Woman, says— And for this reason now they drink (συνάγουσι) alone: and presently afterwards he says— And so they ended the entertainment (συναγώγιον). And probably the συναγώγιον is the same as that which was also called τὸ ἀπὸ συμβολων δεῖπνον. But what the συμβολαὶ, or contributions, are, we learn from Alexis, in his Woman who has taken Mandragora, where he says— _A._ I'll come and bring my contributions now. _B._ How, contributions? _A._ The Chalcidians Call fringes, alabaster, scent boxes, And other things of that kind, contributions. But the Argives, as Hegesander tells us in his Commentaries, (the following are his exact words)—"The Argives call the contributions towards an entertainment which are brought by the revellers, χῶν; and each man's share they call αἶσα." 69. And now, since this book also has come to a not unsuitable end, my good friend Timocrates, let us stop our discussion at this point, lest any one should think that we were formerly fishes ourselves, as Empedocles says that he was; for that great natural philosopher says— For I myself have been a boy, a girl, A bush, a bird, and fish which roams the sea. FOOTNOTES [Footnote 9: From δίνη, an eddy.] [Footnote 10: There is a punning allusion here to κάραβος, a crawfish, and to Callimedon's nickname, Carabus.] [Footnote 11: This was a parody on the first words of the crier's usual proclamation,—Ἀκούετε λαοὶ,—Hear, O people. Ναοὶ means temples.] [Footnote 12: Κῆρυξ means, not only a crier, but also a prickly instrument of torture.]