The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3) — John Shaqi
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 to such a degree did they carry their dissoluteness and their
unseemly drunkenness, that some of them never once saw the sun either
rise or set: and they passed a law, which continued even to our
time, that the female flute-players and female harpers, and all such
musicians and singers, should receive pay from daybreak to midday, and
until the lamps were lighted; but after that they set aside the rest
of the night to get drunk in. And Theopompus, in the fifteenth book of
his History, says, "that a thousand men of that city used to walk about
the city, wearing purple garments, which was at that time a colour rare
even among kings, and greatly sought after; for purple was constantly
sold for its weight in silver. And so, owing to these practices, they
fell under the power of tyrants, and became torn by factions, and so
were undone with their country." And Diogenes the Babylonian gave the
same account of them, in the first book of his Laws. And Antiphanes,
speaking generally of the luxury of all the Ionians, has the following
lines in his Dodona:—
Say, from what country do you come, what land
Call you your home? Is this a delicate
Luxurious band of long and soft-robed men
From cities of Ionia that here approaches?
And Theophrastus, in his essay on Pleasure, says that the Ionians, on
account of the extraordinary height to which they carried their luxury,
gave rise to what is now known as the golden proverb.
32. And Theopompus, in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs
of Philip, says that some of those tribes which live on the sea-coast
are exceedingly luxurious in their manner of living. But about the
Byzantians and Chalcedonians, the same Theopompus makes the following
statement:—"But the Byzantians, because they had been governed a
long time by a democracy, and because their city was so situated as
to be a kind of mart, and because the whole people spent the whole
of their time in the market-place and about the harbour, were very
intemperate, and in the constant habit of feasting and drinking at the
wine-sellers'. But the Chalcedonians, before they became members of the
same city with them, were men who at all times cultivated better habits
and principles of life; but after they had tasted of the democracy of
the Byzantians, they fell into ruinous luxury, and, from having been
most temperate and moderate in their daily life, they became a nation
of hard drinkers, and very extravagant." And, in the twenty-first book
of the History of the Affairs of Philip, he says that the nation of
the Umbrians (and that is a tribe which lives on the shores of the
Hadriatic) was exceedingly devoted to luxury, and lived in a manner
very like the Lydians, and had a fertile country, owing to which they
advanced in prosperity.
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