Sybarites

“ It is reported that the Sybarites used to invite their neighbors' wives a whole twelve-month before to their entertainments, that they might have convenient time to trim and adorn themselves; for my part, I am of opinion, that he who would feast as he should ought to allow himself more time for preparation than they, it being a more difficult matter to compose the mind into an agreeable temper than to fit one's clothes for the outward ornament of the body. ”

“ The luxurious and lazy Sybarites, who felt they had broken their bones if they but saw another digging, and suffered not a cock in the whole country, lest he should mar their slumber, were so passionately addicted to Eels that all persons catching or selling them were exempt from taxes and tribute. ”

“ CHORUS Ah! the left leg too will have its fling; well, 'tis but its right. I am so happy, so delighted at not having to carry my buckler any more. I sing and I laugh more than if I had cast my old age, as a serpent does its skin.
TRYGAEUS No, 'tis not time for joy yet, for you are not sure of success. But when you have got the goddess, then rejoice, shout and laugh; thenceforward you will be able to sail or stay at home, to make love or sleep, to attend festivals and processions, to play at cottabos, (1) live like true Sybarites and to shout, Io, io! ”

“ Dyer, Ruins of Rome.
Sybaris was a town of Lucania, situated on the banks of the Bay of Tarentum. It was founded by a colony of Achaians; and in process of time became very powerful.
The walls of this city extend six miles and a half in circumference, and the suburbs covered the banks of the Crathis for seven miles.
Historians and orators, of all ages, have been guilty of praising heroes. “For my own part,” says Mr. Swinburne, “I cannot help feeling pity for the hard fate of the Sybarites, to whom we are indebted for the discovery of many most useful pieces of chamber and kitchen furniture. ”

“ Sybarites bathe in wine, and Nonconformists drink water; but we are not concerned with these frantic exceptions. ”

“ With regard to remote times, the numbers of people assigned are often ridiculous, and lose all credit and authority. The free citizens of Sybaris, able to bear arms and actually drawn out in battle, were 300,000. They encountered at Siagra with 100,000 citizens of Crotona, another Greek city contiguous to them, and were defeated. This is Diodorus Siculus’s account, and is very seriously {p144} insisted on by that historian. Strabo also mentions the same number of Sybarites. ”

“ Rather, this venerable fellow is the companion of the advanced Sybarite. He is a product of extreme artificiality; he has nothing in common with nature. Moreover, he induces, so his enemies assert, the fell Podagra or gout. ”

“ In most abject consternation, P. Sybarite turned and fled.
Weathering the end of the glove counter and shaping a course through the aisle that paralleled it, he found himself in a channel of horrors, threatened on one side by a display of most intimate lingerie, belaced and beribboned distractingly, on the other by a long rank of slender and gracious (if stolid) feminine limbs, one and all neatly amputated above their bended knees and bedight in silken hosiery to shame the rainbow ”

“ Draping himself elegantly over Mr. Wimper's desk, George regarded P. Sybarite with an indulgent and compassionate smile and wagged a doggish head at him. From these symptoms inferring that his fellow-employee was in the throes of a witticism, P. Sybarite cocked an apprehensive eye and tightened his thin-lipped, sensitive mouth.
"O you—!" said George; and checked to enjoy a rude giggle.
At this particular moment a mind-reader would have been justified in regarding P. Sybarite with suspicion. But beyond taking the pen from between his teeth he didn't move; and he said nothing at all. ”

“ The Sybarite, whose night's rest was disturbed by a doubled rose leaf, deserves to be pitied almost as much as the young man who, when he was benighted in the snow, was reproached by his severe father for having collected a heap of snow to make himself a pillow. ”

“ P. Sybarite enquired.
"Not so's you'd notice it," the boy returned bravely.... "First time anything like this ever happened to me," he went on. "Funny sensation—precisely as if somebody had lammed me for a home run—with a steel girder for a bat ..."
"Must be tough!" said P. Sybarite blankly, experiencing a qualm at the thought of a soft-nosed bullet mushrooming through living flesh.
"Guess I can stand it.... Where are we?"
P. Sybarite took observations."
"Forty-seventh, near Sixth Avenue," he reported finally.
"Good: we'll be home in five minutes." ”

“ Er mebbe yo'd perfuh—"
"Enough!" said P. Sybarite firmly. "A mere bite and a glass are enough to sustain life."
"Ain't that the troof?"
Chuckling, the negro waddled away, returned, and offered the guest a glass brimming with amber-tinted liquid.
Poising the vessel delicately between thumb and forefinger, P. Sybarite treated himself to one small sip—an instant of lingering delectation—another sip. So only, it is asserted, must the victim of the desert begin to allay his burning thirst; with discretion—a sip at a time—gingerly. ”

“ At once, like a demon of exceptional malignity, a breathless and overpowering rage possessed P. Sybarite. Without the least hesitation he stretched forth a hand, snatched the pistol from the grasp of the woman—who seemed to relinquish it more through surprise than willingly—threw himself halfway down the stairs, and took a hasty pot-shot at the man—almost invisible in the darkness as he rounded the turn of the next flight. ”

“ Siberia has in common with Europe, seems hopeless. Such forms as Arion hortensis, which has been obtained in Siberia, and which, as we have seen, must have originated in Western Europe, migrated in pliocene or miocene times, possibly along the shores of the Mediterranean and across Asia Minor. We have evidence, therefore, of an eastward migration among the land and freshwater mollusca in later Tertiary times, but not of a westward one from Siberia.
A very different view is presented to us by the coleopterous fauna of Europe. Many of our European Beetles are Siberian migrants. ”

“ The fossil ivory beds of Siberia excel everything of the kind in the world. From the days of Pliny, at least, they have constantly been undergoing exploitation, and still they are the chief headquarters of supply. The remains of mammoths are so abundant that, as Gratacap says, 'the northern islands of Siberia seem built up of crowded bones.' Another scientific writer, speaking of the islands of New Siberia, northward of the mouth of the River Lena, uses this language: 'Large quantities of ivory are dug out of the ground every year. ”

“ Later stage in the development of Sigillaria; Syringodendron with Stigmariopsis. (After Grand’Eury.)
The next stage is that in which the undifferentiated bulb becomes swollen at the base and develops four primary roots (fig. 207 B, C) which grow obliquely downwards and produce numerous rootlets. Meanwhile the parent rhizome gradually decays, finally setting free the aerial stems which are now provided with spreading and forked roots (fig. 208) such as we are familiar with in English specimens as Stigmaria ficoides, but which in the French specimens show the features of Stigmariopsis. ”

“ And P. Sybarite looked up with blank eyes in a pallid, wizened face in time to see Shaynon bare his teeth—his lips curling back in a manner peculiarly wolfish and irritating—and snarl a mirthless laugh.
It was something inopportune; the man could have done no better than keep his peace; left to himself P. Sybarite would in all probability have floundered and blustered and committed himself inextricably in a multitude of hasty and ill-considered protestations. ”

“ He left two children—a young leddy who mis-spells her name M-a-e A-l-y-s—keep still!—and Peter, yersilf, me cousin, if it's not mistaken I am."
"The Lord save us!" said the boy. "You're never Percy Sybarite!"
P. Sybarite winced. "Not so loud!" he pleaded in a stage whisper. "Some one might hear you."
"What the devil's the matter with you?" ”

“ He was an indolent, dreamy Sybarite, this pale young baronet, who liked his rose-leaves unruffled under him, full of artistic tastes and inspirations, and a great deal too lazy ever to carry them into effect. He was an artist, and he had his studio where he began fifty gigantic deeds at once in the way of pictures, and seldom finished one. Nature had intended him for an artist, not a country squire; he cared little for riding, or hunting, or fishing, or farming, any of the things wherein country squires delight ”

“ The person who represents the sibyl seats herself, dressed in character, under a tasteful canopy, with a table in front, and her sibylline leaves scattered over it, with the green side upwards. Then as individuals enquire their fate of the oracle, let her move about the leaves, muttering some incantation, and let each one select his or her own leaf. ”

“ Thus, too, the squirrels of Siberia, which, in ordinary years, undertake, at the most, only short excursions, assemble in vast armies, hurry in troops or companies from tree to tree, in compact masses from forest to forest, swim across rivers and streams, throng into towns and villages, lose their lives by thousands; but suffer no obstacle or hindrance—not even the most obvious dangers—to delay them or divert them from their path. The soles of their feet become worn and cracked, their nails ground down, the hairs of their usually smooth fur rough and matted. ”

“ But now the grating seemed to have receded at least three feet from its position as first judged—to be hopelessly removed from the grasp of his yearning fingers.
Yet that mad attempt must be made. Why die fighting when a broken neck would serve as well?
Gathering his slight person together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints—and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. ”

“ and thus a Sybarite would be worth at least thirty Lacedæmonians. ”

“ With but one thought, he hurled on, swung round to the head of the stairs, saw his man at the bottom, pulled up to aim, and....
Beneath him a small rug slipped on polished parquetry of the landing. P. Sybarite's heels went up and his head down with a sickening thump. He heard his pistol explode once more, and again visioned a reeling firmament fugitively coruscant with strange constellations.
Then—bounding up with uncommon resiliency—he saw the street door of the house close behind the fugitive and heard the heavy slam of it. ”

“ Among the suitors was the exquisite Smyndyrides of Sybaris, the most luxurious man of the most luxurious Hellenic city. It was he who was said to have complained of the crumpled rose-leaf on his couch, and to have fainted when he once saw a man hard at work in the fields. ”

“ It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches; as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the first sip? That I do not know as yet, but the foregoing experiment seems to show that the newly hatched larva is in greater haste to burrow deep into the soil, so as to obtain shelter from the coming winter, than to station itself at the roots encountered in its passage downwards. ”

“ The segmentation of the body is very clear, especially on the abdomen. The whole body is perfectly smooth, without the least suspicion of hair.
What name are we to give to this initial phase of the Cigale—a phase so strange, so unforeseen, and hitherto unsuspected? Must I amalgamate some more or less appropriate words of Greek and fabricate a portentous nomenclature? No, for I feel sure that barbarous alien phrases are only a hindrance to science. I will call it simply the primary larva, as I have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax. ”

“ There is undoubtedly considerable confusion, which can be cleared up only by further research, as to the precise relation between Stigmaria and Stigmariopsis on the one hand and the different types of Sigillariae on the other. The main contention, and this is the most important point, of Renault, Grand’Eury and Solms-Laubach as to the manner of formation of the aerial shoots from rhizomes and the subsequent production of forked roots and their ultimate separation from the parent rhizome is, as I believe, correct. Williamson held that Stigmaria must be regarded as a true root ”

“ Had those afflicted ones, who so deeply commiserated the forlorn lot of this poor widower, been enabled at that moment (Asmodeus-like) to look upon his saddened face, and form their own opinions, unbiassed either by prejudice or pity, they could hardly have decided that the events of the past month had told very severely upon this young British Sybarite. ”

“ The "fables" of Sybaris seem to have been of a similarly philosophical cast to those of Æsop. The following specimen is given in the Vespæ, 1427.
"A man of Sybaris fell from a chariot, and, as it happened, had his head broken—for he was not well acquainted with driving—and a friend who stood by, said, 'Let every man practise the craft, which he understands.'"
We observe that these fables are not carried [Pg 50] on through the assistance of our four-footed friends. ”

“ But their city lies in a hollow, and in summer is liable to excess of cold both morning and evening, but in the middle of the day the heat is intolerable, so that the greater part of them believe that the rivers contribute a great deal to the health of the inhabitants; on which account it has been said, that "a man who, living at Sybaris, wishes not to die before his time, ought never to see the sun either rise or set." ”