The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
My mistress is the fair Archaianassa
From Colophon, a damsel in whom Love
Sits on her very wrinkles irresistible.
Wretched are those, whom in the flower of youth,
When first she came across the sea, she met;
They must have been entirely consumed.
[Sidenote: COURTESANS.]
And did not Pericles the Olympian (as Clearchus tells us in the
first book of his treatise on Amatory Matters) throw all Greece into
confusion on account of Aspasia, not the younger one, but that one
who associated with the wise Socrates; and that, too, though he was a
man who had acquired such a vast reputation for wisdom and political
sagacity? But, indeed, Pericles was always a man much addicted
to amorous indulgences; and he cohabited even with his own son's
wife, as Stesimbrotus the Thasian informs us; and Stesimbrotus was
a contemporary of his, and had seen him, as he tells us in his book
entitled a Treatise on Themistocles, and Thucydides, and Pericles.
And Antisthenes, the pupil of Socrates, tells us that Pericles, being
in love with Aspasia, used to kiss her twice every day, once when he
entered her house, and once when he left it. And when she was impeached
for impiety, he himself spoke in her behalf, and shed more tears for
her sake than he did when his own property and his own life were
imperilled. Moreover, when Cimon had had an incestuous intrigue with
Elpinice, his sister, who was afterwards given in marriage to Callias,
and when he was banished, Pericles contrived his recall, exacting the
favours of Elpinice as his recompense.
And Pythænetus, in the third book of his History of Ægina, says that
Periander fell violently in love with Melissa, the daughter of Procles
of Epidaurus, when he had seen her clothed in the Peloponnesian fashion
(for she had on no cloak, but a single tunic only, and was acting
as cup-bearer to the young men,) and he married her. And Tigris of
Leucadia was the mistress of Pyrrhus king of Epirus, who was the third
in descent from the Pyrrhus who invaded Italy; but Olympias, the young
man's mother, took her off by poison.
57. And Ulpian, as if he had got some unexpected gain, while Myrtilus
was still speaking, said:—Do we say ὁ τίγρις in the masculine gender?
for I know that Philemon says this in his play called Neæra:—
_A._ Just as Seleucus sent the tiger (τὴν τίγριν) here,
Which we have seen, so we in turn ought now
To send Seleucus back a beast from here.
_B._ Let's send him a trigeranum;[45] for that's
An animal not known much in those parts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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