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
And such another circumstance, they say,
Took place in Samos: there a man did fall
In love with a fair maiden wrought in marble,
And shut himself up with her in the temple.
And Philemon mentions the same fact, and says—
But once a man, 'tis said, did fall, at Samos,
In love with a marble woman; and he went
And shut himself up with her in the temple.
[Sidenote: LOVE.]
But the statue spoken of is the work of Ctesicles; as Adæus of Mitylene
tells us in his treatise on Statuaries. And Polemo, or whoever the
author of the book called Helladicus is, says—"At Delphi, in the
museum of the pictures, there are two boys wrought in marble; one of
which, the Delphians say, was so fallen in love with by some one who
came to see it, that he made love to it, and shut himself up with
it, and presented it with a crown; but when he was detected, the god
ordered the Delphians, who consulted his oracle with reference to the
subject, to dismiss him freely, for that he had given him a handsome
reward.
85. And even brute beasts have fallen in love with men: for there was
a cock who took a fancy to a man of the name of Secundus, a cup-bearer
of the king; and the cock was nicknamed the Centaur. But this Secundus
was a slave of Nicomedes the king of Bithynia; as Nicander informs us
in the sixth book of his essay on the Revolutions of Fortune. And,
at Ægium, a goose took a fancy to a boy; as Clearchus relates in the
first book of his Amatory Anecdotes. And Theophrastus, in his essay
on Love, says that the name of this boy was Amphilochus, and that he
was a native of Olenus. And Hermeas the son of Hermodorus, who was a
Samian by birth, says that a goose also took a fancy to Lacydes the
philosopher. And in Leucadia (according to a story told by Clearchus),
a peacock fell so in love with a maiden there, that when she died, the
bird died too. There is a story also that, at Iasus, a dolphin took a
fancy to a boy (and this story is told by Duris, in the ninth book of
his History); and the subject of that book is the history of Alexander,
and the historian's words are these: "He likewise sent for the boy from
Iasus. For near Iasus there was a boy whose name was Dionysius, and he
once, when leaving the palæstra with the rest of the boys, went down to
the sea and bathed; and a dolphin came forward out of the deep water to
meet him, and taking him on his back, swam away with him a considerable
distance into the open sea, and then brought him back again to
land." But the dolphin is an animal which is very fond of men, and
very intelligent, and one very susceptible of gratitude. Accordingly
Phylarchus, in his twelfth book, says—"Coiranus the Milesian, when he
saw some fishermen who had caught a dolphin in a net, and who were
about to cut it up, gave them some money and bought the fish, and took
it down and put it back in the sea again. And after this it happened to
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