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
And, in his fiftieth book, Theopompus makes this statement about the
Methymnæans: "And they live on the most sumptuous kind of food, lying
down and drinking—and never doing anything at all worthy of the expense
that they went to. So Cleomenes the tyrant stopped all this; he who
also ordered the female pimps, who were accustomed to seduce free-born
women, and also three or four of the most nobly born of those who
had been induced to prostitute themselves, to be sewn in sacks and
thrown into the sea." And Hermippus, in his account of the Seven Wise
Men, says Periander did the same thing. But in the second book of his
History of the Exploits of Philip he says, "The Illyrians both eat
and drink in a sitting posture; and they take their wives to their
entertainments; and it is reckoned a decorous custom for the women to
pledge the guests who are present. And they lead home their husbands
from their drinking-parties; and they all live plainly, and when they
drink, they girdle their stomach with broad girdles, and at first they
do so moderately; but when they drink more vehemently, then they keep
contracting their belt. And the Ariæans," says he, "have three hundred
thousand slaves whom they call prospelatæ, and who correspond to the
Helots; and they get drunk every day, and make large entertainments,
and are very intemperate in their eating and drinking. On which account
the Celtæ when making war upon them, knowing their intemperance,
ordered all the soldiers to prepare as superb a feast as possible in
the tent, and to put in the food some medicinal herbs which had the
power to gripe and purge the bowels exceedingly. And when this had
been done . . . . And so some of them were taken by the Celtæ and put
to death, and some threw themselves into the rivers, being unable to
endure the pains which they were suffering in their stomachs."
61. Now, after Democritus had uttered all this long uninterrupted
discourse, Pontianus said that wine was the metropolis of all these
evils; and it was owing to this that drunkenness, and madness, and all
sorts of debauchery took place; and that those people who were too much
addicted to it were not unappropriately called rowers of cups, by that
Dionysius who is surnamed the Brazen, in his Elegies, where he says—
And those who bring their wine in Bacchus' rowing,
Sailors through feasts, and rowers of large cups.
And concerning this class of men, (for it is not extinct,) Alexis, in
his Curia, speaking of some one who drunk to excess, says—
This then my son is such in disposition
As you have just beheld him. An Œnopion,
Or Maron, or Capelus, or Timoclees,
For he's a drunkard, nothing more nor less.
And for the other, what can I call him?
A lump of earth, a plough, an earth-born man.
So getting drunk is a bad thing, my good friends; and the same Alexis
says, with great cleverness, to those who swallow wine in this way, in
his Opora, (and the play is called after a courtesan of that name,)—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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