20. Having learned profitless luxuries from the Lydians, while as yet they had no experience of hateful tyranny, they proceeded into the market-place, no less than a thousand in number all told, with purple garments completely covering them, boastful, proud of their comely locks, anointed with unguents of rich perfume. 21. For now the floor is clean, the hands of all and the cups are clean; one puts on the woven garlands, another passes around the fragrant ointment in a vase; the mixing bowl stands full of good cheer, and more wine, mild and of delicate bouquet, is at hand in jars, which {5} says it will never fail. In the midst frankincense sends forth its sacred fragrance, and there is water, cold, and sweet, and pure; the yellow loaves are near at hand, and the table of honour is loaded with cheese and rich honey. The altar in the midst is thickly covered with {10} flowers on every side; singing and mirth fill the house. Men making merry should first hymn the god with propitious stanzas and pure words; and when they have poured out libations and prayed for power to do the right (since this lies nearest at hand), then it is no unfitting {15} thing to drink as much as will not prevent your walking home without a slave, if you are not very old. And one ought to praise that man who, when he has drunk, unfolds noble things as his memory and his toil for virtue suggest; but there is nothing praiseworthy in {20} discussing battles of Titans or of Giants or Centaurs, fictions of former ages, nor in plotting violent revolutions. But it is good always to pay careful respect to the gods. 22. For sending the thigh-bone of a goat, thou didst receive the rich leg of a fatted bull, an honourable present to a man, the fame whereof shall come to all Greece, and shall not cease so long as there is a race of Greek bards. 23. Nor would any one first pour the wine into the cup to mix it, but water first and the wine above it. 24. Already now sixty-seven years my thoughts have been tossed restlessly up and down Greece, but then it was twenty and five years from my birth, if I know how to speak the truth about these things.[42] 25. Nor is this (an oath) an equal demand to make of an impious man as compared with a pious man. 26. Much more feeble than an aged man. 27. Bacchic wands of fir stand about the firmly built house. 28. From the beginning, according to Homer, since all have learned them.[43] 29. If the god had not made light-coloured honey, I should have said that a fig was far sweeter. 30. Holy water trickles down in thy grottoes. 31. As many things as they have made plain for mortals to see! SAYINGS OF XENOPHANES. Arist. _Rhet._ ii. 23; 1399 b 6 (Karsten, _Fr._ 34). Xenophanes asserts that those who say the gods are born are as impious as those who say that they die; for in both cases it amounts to this, that the gods do not exist at all.