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 we may make use of this observation in opposition to those who
pronounce the sigma-less ode of Lasus of Hermione to be spurious, which
is entitled The Centaurs. And the ode which was composed by Lasus to
the Ceres in Hermione, has not a σ in it, as Heraclides of Pontus says,
in the third book of his treatise on Music, which begins—
I sing of Ceres and her daughter fair,
The bride of Clymenus.
83. And there are great numbers of other griphi. Here is one—
In a conspicuous land I had my birth,
The briny ocean girds my country round,
My mother is the daughter fair of Number.
By the conspicuous land (φανερὰ) he means Delos (as δῆλος is
synonymous with φανερὸς), and that is an island surrounded by the sea.
And the mother meant is Latona, who is the daughter of Coius, and
the Macedonians use κοῖος as synonymous with ἀριθμός. And the one on
barley-water (πτυσάνη)—
Mix the juice of peel'd barley, and then drink it.
And the name πτισάνη is derived from the verbs πτίσσω, to
pound, and ἄνω, to bruise. There is also the one on the snail, which is
quoted in the Definitions of Teucer—
An animal destitute of feet and spine
And bone, whose back is clad with horny shell,
With long, projecting, and retreating eyes.
And Antiphanes, in the Man who admires himself, says—
Coagulated, tender-bodied milk.
Dost understand me not? I mean new cheese.
And Anaxandrides, in his Ugly Woman, says—
He's lately cut it up; then he confined
The long, unbroken portions of the body
In earthen vases, wrought in crackling fire,—
A phrase, my men, invented by Timotheus,
Who meant to say in dishes.
And Timocles, in his Heroes, says—
_A._ And when the nurse of life was taken away,
Fierce hunger's foe, sweet friendship's guardian,
Physician of voracious hunger, which
Men call the table . . . .
_B._ How you tire yourself,
When you might say "the table" in a word.
And Plato, in his Adonis, saying that an oracle was given to Cinyras
concerning his son Adonis, reports it in these words—
O Cinyras, king of hairy Cyprians,
Your son is far the fairest of all men,
And the most admirable: but two deities
Lay hands upon him; one is driven on
By secret courses, and the other drives.
He means Venus and Bacchus; for both of them loved Adonis. And the
enigma of the Sphinx is reported by Asclepiades, in his essay on the
Subjects on which Tragedies have been written, to have been such as
this—
There is upon the earth an animal
With two feet, and with four, and eke with three,
And with one voice; and it alone, of all
The things which move on earth, or in the heavens,
Or o'er the boundless sea, doth change its nature;
But when its feet are of the greatest number,
Then is its speed the slowest, and strength least.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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