of Naucratis Athenaeus

“ Now the author of the Cyprian poems, whoever he was, says—
No better remedies than wine there are,
O king, to drive away soul-eating care.
And Diphilus the comic poet says—
O Bacchus, to all wise men dear,
How very kind you do appear;
You make the lowly-hearted proud,
And bid the gloomy laugh aloud;
You fill the feeble man with daring,
And cowards strut and bray past bearing.
And Philoxenus of Cythera says—
Good store of wine which makes men talk.
But Chæremon the tragedian says, that wine inspires those who use it with
Laughter and wisdom and prudence and learning. ”

“ For Antiphanes says:—
For why should any man wealth desire,
And seek to pile his treasures higher,
If it were not to aid his friends in their need,
And to gain for himself love's and gratitude's meed?
For all can drink and all can eat,
And it is not only the richest meat,
Or the oldest wine in the well-chased bowl
Which can banish hunger and thirst from the soul.
And Xenophanes of Chalcedon, and Speusippus the Academic philosopher, and Aristotle, have all written drinking songs. ”

“ Amphis, the comic writer, says:—
A man who comes late to a feast,
At which he has nothing to pay,
Will be sure if in battle he's press'd,
To run like a coward away.
And Chrysippus says:—
Never shun a banquet gay,
Where the cost on others falls;
Let them, if they like it, pay
For your breakfasts, dinners, balls.
And Antiphanes says:—
More blest than all the gods is he,
Whom every one is glad to see,
Who from all care and cost is free. ”

“ We wish our barley-cakes should white appear,
And yet we make for them a dark black sauce,
And stain pure colour with a deeper dye.
Then we prepare to drink down melted snow;
Yet if our fish be cold, we storm and rave.
Sour or acid wine we scorn and loathe,
Yet are delighted with sharp caper sauce.
And so, as many wiser men have said,
Not to be born at all is best for man;
The next best thing, to die as soon as possible. ”

“ There are but few so happy as to know
This godlike food, nor do men covet it
Who have the silly souls of common mortals.
They fear because it is an animal
Which living preys on man. But every fish
Loves human flesh, if it can meet with it.
So that 'tis fit that all who talk such nonsense
Should be confined to herbs, and should be sent
To Diodorus the philosopher
And starve, and so pythagorize with him.
But this Diodorus was by birth an Aspendian; but desiring to be thought a Pythagorean, he lived after the fashion of you Cynics, letting his hair grow, being dirty, and going barefoot. ”

“ But the young men who had come to Menelaus's court, the son of Nestor and Telemachus, when over their wine, and celebrating a wedding feast, and though Helen was sitting by, kept quite quiet in a decorous manner, being struck dumb by her renowned beauty. But why did Socrates, when to gratify some one or other he had tolerated some female flute-players, and some boy dancing and playing on the harp, and also some women tumbling and posture-making in an unseemly manner, refuse perfumes? ”

“ For, according to the Pseudheracles of Pherecrates—
Suppose a man who thinks himself a genius
Should something say, and I should contradict him,
Still trouble not yourself; but if you please,
Listen and give your best attention.
But do not grudge, I entreat you, said Ulpian, to explain to me what is the nature of that Bull's water which you spoke of; for I have a great thirst for such words. And Cynulcus said,—But I pledge you, according to your fancy; you thirst for words, taking a desire from Alexis, out of his Female Pythagorean,
A cup of water boil'd ”

“ And vegetables which spontaneous grew.
Then, too, we'd pounded olives; also wine
Of no great strength, and no very famous vintage.
And Antiphanes says—
Our supper is but maize well fenced round
With chaff, so as not to o'erstep the bounds
Of well-devised economy. An onion,
A few side-dishes, and a sow-thistle,
A mushroom, or what wild and tasteless roots
The place affords us in our poverty.
Such is our life, not much exposed to fevers;
For no one, when there's meat, will eat of thyme,
Not even the pupils of Pythagoras. ”

“ So when the mighty sophist of Rome had enunciated these precepts of Aristarchus, Cynulcus said—O Ceres, what a wise man! It is not without reason that the admirable Blepsias has pupils as the sand of the sea in number, and has amassed wealth from this excellent wisdom of his, beyond all that was acquired by Gorgias or Protagoras. So that I am afraid, by the goddesses, to say whether he himself is blind, or whether those who have entrusted his pupils to him have all but one eye, so as scarcely to be able to see, numerous [188] as they are. ”

“ And virgins also, some in wooden curved chariots, called canathra, beautifully made, and others in crowds of large waggons drawn by horses, make a procession; and the whole city is in a state of agitation and of delight at the spectacle. And they sacrifice great numbers of victims all this day. And the citizens give a banquet to all their friends, and to their own slaves; and no one omits attending the sacred feast, but the whole city is evacuated by the whole body of citizens flocking to the spectacle. ”

“ But you who never go out of Athens think yourself happy when you hear the precepts of Theophrastus, and when you eat thyme, and salads, and nice twisted loaves, solemnizing the Lenæan festival, and the Potfeast at the Anthesteria. But at the banquet of Caranus, instead of our portions of meat, we carried off actual riches, and are now looking, some for houses, and some for lands, and some of us are seeking to buy slaves. ”

“ And bids us think and say,
That all the world is ours.
The man who drinks plenty of wine,
Will never for wealth be wishing;
For his cellar's a ceaseless mine,
And an undisturb'd heart he is rich in.
And Sophocles says—
Drinking is a cure for woe.
And other poets call wine—
Fruit of the field, which makes the heart to leap.
And the king of all poets introduces Ulysses saying—
Let generous food supplies of strength produce,
Let rising spirits flow from sprightly juice,
Let their warm heads with scenes of battle glow, [65:1]
and so on. ”

“ Socrates then, a man who had nothing but his ragged cloak and his stick, must have been one of these picked men. But what historian or poet has mentioned this fact? Or where has Thucydides made the slightest mention of Socrates, this soldier of Plato's? And what is there in common between a shield and a philosopher's staff? And when was it that Socrates bore a part in the expedition against Potidæa, as Plato has said in his Charmides, where he states that he then yielded the prize of preeminent valour to Alcibiades? ”

“ And when Pausanias beheld the appointments of Mardonius's tent, and his tent itself all furnished with gold and silver and embroidered curtains, he ordered the bakers and confectioners to prepare him a supper exactly as they had been in the habit of preparing for Mardonius. And when they had done as they were commanded, Pausanias, beholding the couches of gold and silver all ready laid and covered, and the silver tables, and the superb banquet which was prepared, marvelling at what he saw, by way of ridicule ordered his own slaves to prepare a banquet in the Lacedæmonian fashion. ”

“ For they wish to eat and drink everything, never considering what the divine Plato says in his Protagoras, "That disputing about poetry, is like banquets of low and insignificant persons. For they, because they are unable in their drinking parties to amuse one another by their own talents, and by their own voices and conversation, by reason of their ignorance and stupidity, make female flute-players of great consequence, hiring at a high price sounds which they cannot utter themselves, I mean the music of flutes, and by means of this music they are able to get on with one another. ”

“ And oftentimes I sit by Venus,
With marplot none to come between us.
And Alcman says—
Nectar they eat at will.
And Sappho says—
The goblets rich were with ambrosia crown'd,
Which Hermes bore to all the gods around.
But Homer was acquainted with nectar as the drink of the gods. And Ibycus says that ambrosia is nine times as sweet as honey; stating expressly that honey has just one-ninth part of the power of ambrosia as far as sweetness goes.
9.
One fond of wine must be an honest man;
For Bacchus, for his double mother famed,
Loves not bad men, nor uninstructed clowns,
says Alexis. ”

“ To raise a brazen statue to Callimedon
At the Panathenaic festival
In the midst of the fish-market; and the statue
Shall in his right hand hold a roasted crab,
As being the sole patron of their trade,
Which other men neglect and seek to crush.
But the taste of the crab is one which many people have been very much devoted to; as may be shown by many passages in different comedies; but at present Aristophanes will suffice, who in the Thesmophoriazusæ speaks as follows—
But by broad squills he must have meant what we call astaci, a kind of crab which Philyllius mentions in his Cities. ”

“ And among other things Plato says that Chærephon asked the Pythian priestess whether any one was wiser than Socrates? and that she replied, No one. But Xenophon does not agree with all this; but says—"For when Chærephon once asked at Delphi about me, Apollo replied, in the presence of many witnesses, that no man was either more just or more temperate than I was." And how can it be either reasonable or probable that Socrates, who confessed that he knew nothing, should allege that he had been called the wisest of all men by God who knows everything? ”

“ And Herodotus, the most wonderful and sweet of all writers, says in the first book of his Histories, that figs are of the greatest good, speaking thus:—"O king, you are preparing to make war upon men of this character, who wear breeches of leather, and all the rest of their garments are made of leather; and they eat not whatever they fancy, but what they have, since they have but a rough country; moreover they do not, by Jove, use wine, but they drink water; they have no figs to eat, nor any other good thing." ”

“ But in the Dionysiac procession first of all there went the Sileni who keep off the multitude, some clad in purple cloaks, and some in scarlet ones. And these were followed by Satyrs, twenty in each division of the stadium, bearing gilded lamps made of ivy-wood. And after them came images of Victory, having golden wings, and they bore in their hands incense-burners six cubits in height, adorned with branches made of ivy-wood and gold, clad in tunics embroidered with figures of animals, and they themselves also had a great deal of golden ornament about them. ”

“ But also the banquet of Xenophon, although it is much extolled, gives one as many handles to blame it as the other. For Callias assembles a banqueting party because his favourite Autolycus has been crowned at the Panathenæa for a victory gained in the Pancratium. And as soon as they are assembled the guests devote their attention to the boy; and this too while his father is sitting by. "For as when light appears in the night season it attracts the eyes of every one, so does the beauty of Autolycus attract the eyes of everybody to itself. ”

“ Now some people, perverting the proper name, call this flattery ἀρέσκεια, complaisance; as Anaxandrides does in his Samian, where he says—
For flattery is now complaisance call'd.
But those who devote themselves to flattery are not aware that that art is one which flourishes only a short time. Accordingly, Alexis says in his Liar—
A flatterer's life but a brief space endures,
For no one likes a hoary parasite. ”

“ But Chares of Mitylene, in the seventh book of his Histories of Alexander, says—"There is caught in the Indian sea, and also off the coast of Armenia, and Persia, and Susiana, and Babylonia, a fish very like an oyster; and it is large and oblong, containing within the shell flesh which is plentiful and white, and very fragrant, from which the men pick out white bones which they call the pearl. And they make of them necklaces and chains for the hands and feet, of which the Persians are very fond, as are the Medes and all Asiatics, esteeming them as much more valuable than golden ornaments." ”