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
12. But as he made no reply, and pretended to be considering the
matter, Democritus said:—Aristarchus the grammarian, my friend, when
interpreting this passage, said that the ancients used to wear crowns
of willow. But Tenarus says that the willow or osier is the rustics'
crown. And other interpreters have said many irrelevant things on the
subject. But I, having met with a book of Menodotus of Samos, which
is entitled, A Record of the things worth noting at Samos, found
there what I was looking for; for he says that "Admete, the wife of
Eurystheus, after she had fled from Argos, came to Samos, and there,
when a vision of Juno had appeared to her, she wishing to give the
goddess a reward because she had arrived in Samos from her own home
in safety, undertook the care of the temple, which exists even to
this day, and which had been originally built by the Leleges and the
Nymphs. But the Argives hearing of this, and being indignant at it,
persuaded the Tyrrhenians by a promise of money, to employ piratical
force and to carry off the statue,—the Argives believing that if this
were done Admete would be treated with every possible severity by the
inhabitants of Samos. Accordingly the Tyrrhenians came to the port of
Juno, and having disembarked, immediately applied themselves to the
performance of their undertaking. And as the temple was at that time
without any doors, they quickly carried off the statue, and bore it
down to the seaside, and put it on board their vessel. And when they
had loosed their cables and weighed anchor, they rowed as fast as they
could, but were unable to make any progress. And then, thinking that
this was owing to divine interposition, they took the statue out of the
ship again and put it on the shore; and having made some sacrificial
cakes, and offered them to it, they departed in great fear. But when,
the first thing in the morning, Admete gave notice that the statue had
disappeared, and a search was made for it, those who were seeking it
found it on the shore. And they, like Carian barbarians, as they were,
thinking that the statue had run away of its own accord, bound it to a
fence made of osiers, and took all the longest branches on each side
and twined them round the body of the statue, so as to envelop it all
round. But Admete released the statue from these bonds, and purified
it, and placed it again on its pedestal, as it had stood before. And on
this account once every year, since that time, the statue is carried
down to the shore and hidden, and cakes are offered to it: and the
festival is called Τονεὺς, because it happened that the statue was
bound tightly (συντόνως) by those who made the first search for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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