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
72. Chamæleon of Pontus, in the sixth book of his treatise concerning
ancient Comedy, says—"Hegemon of Thasos, the man who wrote the
Parodies, was nicknamed The Lentil, and in one of his parodies he
wrote—
While I revolved these counsels in my mind,
Pallas Minerva, with her golden sceptre,
Stood by my head, and touched me, and thus spake—
O thou ill-treated Lentil, wretched man,
Go to the contest: and I then took courage.
And once he came into the theatre, exhibiting a comedy, having his robe
full of stones; and he, throwing the stones into the orchestra, caused
the spectators to wonder what he meant. And presently afterwards he
said—
These now are stones, and let who chooses throw them;
But Lentil's good alike at every season.
But the man has an exceedingly high reputation for his parodies, and
was exceedingly celebrated for reciting his verses with great skill
and dramatic power; and on this account he was greatly admired by the
Athenians. And in his Battle of the Giants, he so greatly delighted
the Athenians, that they laughed to excess on that day; and though on
that very day the news of all the disasters which had befallen them
in Sicily had just arrived, still no one left the theatre, although
nearly every one had lost relations by that calamity; and so they hid
their faces and wept, but no one rose to depart, in order to avoid
being seen by the spectators from other cities to be grieved at the
disaster. But they remained listening to the performance, and that too,
though Hegemon himself, when he heard of it, had resolved to cease his
recitation. But when the Athenians, being masters of the sea, brought
all the actions at law concerning the islands or the islanders into the
city, some one instituted a prosecution against Hegemon, and summoned
him to Athens to answer it. And he came in court, and brought with him
all the workmen of the theatre, and with them he appeared, entreating
Alcibiades to assist him. And Alcibiades bade him be of good cheer, and
ordered all the workmen to follow him; and so he came to the temple of
Cybele, where the trials of prosecutions were held; and then wetting
his finger with his mouth, he wiped out the indictment against Hegemon.
And though the clerk of the court and the magistrate were indignant at
this, they kept quiet for fear of Alcibiades, for which reason also the
man who had instituted the prosecution ran away."
73. This, O Ulpian, is what we mean by pelting (βαλλητὺς), but you,
when you please, may tell us about the βαλλητὺς at Eleusis. And Ulpian
replied,—But you have reminded me, my good friend Democritus, by
your mention of saucepans, that I have often wished to know what that
is which is called the saucepan of Telemachus, and who Telemachus was.
And Democritus said,—Timocles the comic poet, and he was also a writer
of tragedy, in his drama called Lethe, says—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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