The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Part 2

_A._ But how can you be generous, if the son Of old Ischomachus of Myconos?

_B._ I, a good man, may banquet with the good, For friends should have all their delights in common.

Archilochus says:--

You come and drink full cups of Chian wine, And yet give no return for them, nor wait To be invited, as a friend would do.

Your belly is your G.o.d, and thus misleads Your better sense to acts of shamelessness.

And Eubulus, the comic writer, says somewhere:--

We have invited two unequall'd men, Philocrates and eke Philocrates.

For that one man I always count as two, I don't know that I might not e'en say three.

They say that once when he was ask'd to dinner, To come when first the dial gave a shade Of twenty feet, he with the lark uprose, Measuring the shadow of the morning sun, Which gave a shade of twenty feet and two.

Off to his host he went, and pardon begg'd For having been detain'd by business; A man who came at daybreak to his dinner!

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, b.a.l.l.s.

And Antiphanes says:--

More blest than all the G.o.ds is he, Whom every one is glad to see, Who from all care and cost is free.

And again:--

Happy am I, who never have cause To be anxious for meat to put in my jaws.

I prepared all these quotations beforehand, and so came to the dinner, having studied beforehand in order to be able to pay my host a rent, as it were, for my entertainment.

For bards make offerings which give no smoke.

The ancients had a word, ???fa?e??, applied to those who eat alone. And so Antiphanes says:--

But if you sulk, ???fa???, Why must I, too, eat alone?

And Ameipsias says:--

And if she's a ???f????, plague take her, I'd guard against her as a base housebreaker.

15. Dioscorides, with respect to the laws praised in Homer, says, "The poet, seeing that temperance was the most desirable virtue for young men, and also the first of all virtues, and one which was becoming to every one; and that which, as it were, was the guide to all other virtues, wis.h.i.+ng to implant it from the very beginning in every one, in order that men might devote their leisure to and expend their energies on honourable pursuits, and might become inclined to do good to, and to share their good things with others; appointed a simple and independent mode of life to every one; considering that those desires and pleasures which had reference to eating and drinking were those of the greater power, and of the highest estimation, and moreover innate in all men; and that those men who continued orderly and temperate in respect of them, would also be temperate and well regulated in other matters.

Accordingly, he laid down a simple mode of life for every one, and enjoined the same system indifferently to kings and private individuals, and young men and old, saying:--

The tables in fair order spread, They heap the glittering canisters with bread, Viands of simple kinds allure the taste, Of wholesome sort, a plentiful repast.[13:1]

Their meat being all roasted, and chiefly beef; and he never sets before his heroes anything except such dishes as these, either at a sacred festival, or at a marriage feast, or at any other sort of convivial meeting. And this, too, though he often represents Agamemnon as feasting the chiefs. And Menelaus makes a feast on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Hermione; and again on the occasion of the marriage of his son; and also when Telemachus comes to him--

The table groan'd beneath a chine of beef, With which the hungry heroes quell'd their grief.[13:2]

For Homer never puts rissoles, or forcemeat, or cheesecakes, or omelettes before his princes, but meat such as was calculated to make them vigorous in body and mind. And so too Agamemnon feasted Ajax after his single combat with Hector, on a rumpsteak; and in the same way he gives Nestor, who was now of advanced age, and Phnix too, a roast sirloin of beef. And Homer describes Alcinous, who was a man of a very luxurious way of life, as having the same dinner; wis.h.i.+ng by these descriptions to turn us away from intemperate indulgence of our appet.i.tes. And when Nestor, who was also a king and had many subjects, sacrificed to Neptune on the sea-sh.o.r.e, on behalf of his own dearest and most valued friends, it was beef that he offered him. For that is the holiest and most acceptable sacrifice to the G.o.ds, which is offered to them by religious and well-disposed men. And Alcinous, when feasting the luxurious Phaeacians, and when entertaining Ulysses, and displaying to him all the arrangements of his house and garden, and showing him the general tenor of his life, gives him just the same dinner. And in the same way the poet represents the suitors, though the most insolent of men and wholly devoted to luxury, neither eating fish, nor game, nor cheesecakes; but embracing as far as he could all culinary artifices, and all the most stimulating food, as Menander calls it, and especially such as are called amatory dishes, (as Chrysippus says in his Treatise on Honour and Pleasure,) the preparation of which is something laborious.

16. Priam also, as the poet represents him, reproaches his sons for looking for unusual delicacies; and calls them

The wholesale murderers of lambs and kids.[14:1]

Philochorus, too, relates that a prohibition was issued at Athens against any one tasting lamb which had not been shorn, on an occasion when the breed of sheep appeared to be failing. And Homer, though he speaks of the h.e.l.lespont as abounding in fish, and though he represents the Phaeacians as especially addicted to navigation, and though he knew of many harbours in Ithaca, and many islands close to it, in which there were large flocks of fishes and of wild birds; and though he enumerates among the riches of the deep the fact of its producing fish, still never once represents either fish or game as being put on the table to eat.

And in the same way he never represents fruit as set before any one, although there was abundance of it; and although he is fond of speaking of it, and although he speaks of it as being supplied without end. For he says, "Pears upon pears," and so on. Moreover, he does not represent his heroes as crowned, or anointed, or using perfumes; but he portrays even his kings as scorning all such things, and devoting themselves to the maintenance of freedom and independence.

In the same way he allots to the G.o.ds a very simple way of life, and plain food, namely, nectar and ambrosia; and he represents men as paying them honour with the materials of their feasts; making no mention of frankincense, or myrrh, or garlands, or luxury of this sort. And he does not describe them as indulging in even this plain food to an immoderate extent; but like the most skilful physicians he abhors satiety.

But when their thirst and hunger were appeased;[15:1]

then, having satisfied their desires, they went forth to athletic exercises; amusing themselves with quoits and throwing of javelins, practising in their sport such arts as were capable of useful application. And they listened to harp players who celebrated the exploits of bygone heroes with poetry and song.

17. So that it is not at all wonderful that men who lived in such a way as they did were healthy and vigorous both in mind and body. And he, pointing out how wholesome and useful a thing moderation is, and how it contributes to the general good, has represented Nestor, the wisest of the Greeks, as bringing wine to Machaon the physician when wounded in the right shoulder, though wine is not at all good for inflammations; and that, too, was Pramnian wine, which we know to be very strong and nutritious. And he brings it to him too, not as a relief from thirst, but to drink of abundantly; (at all events, when he has drank a good draught of it, he recommends him to repeat it.)

Sit now, and drink your fill,

says he; and then he cuts a slice of goat-milk cheese, and then an onion,

A shoeing-horn for further draughts of wine;[15:2]

though in other places he does say that wine relaxes and enervates the strength. And in the case of Hector, Hecuba, thinking that then he will remain in the city all the rest of the day, invites him to drink and to pour libations, encouraging him to abandon himself to pleasure. But he, as he is going out to action, puts off the drinking. And she, indeed, praises wine without ceasing; but he, when he comes in out of breath, will not have any. And she urges him to pour a libation and then to drink, but he, as he is all covered with blood, thinks it impiety.

Homer knew also the use and advantages of wine, when he said that if a man drank it in too large draughts it did harm. And he was acquainted, too, with many different ways of mixing it. For else Achilles would not have bade his attendants to mix it for him with more wine than usual, if there had not been some settled proportion in which it was usually mixed. But perhaps he was not aware that wine was very digestible without any admixture of solid food, which is a thing known to the physicians by their art; and, therefore, in the case of people with heartburn they mix something to eat with the wine, in order to retain its power. But Homer gives Machaon meal and cheese with his wine; and represents Ulysses as connecting the advantages to be derived from food and wine with one another when he says--

Strengthen'd with wine and meat, a man goes forth:[16:1]

and to the reveller gives sweet drink, saying--

There, too, were casks of old and luscious wine.[16:2]

18. Homer, too, represents the virgins and women was.h.i.+ng the strangers, knowing that men who have been brought up in right principles will not give way to undue warmth or violence; and accordingly the women are treated with proper respect. And this was a custom of the ancients; and so too the daughters of Cocalus wash Minos on his arrival in Sicily, as if it was a usual thing to do. On the other hand, the poet, wis.h.i.+ng to disparage drunkenness, represents the Cyclops, great as he was, destroyed through inebriety by a man of small stature, and also Eurytian the Centaur. And he relates how the men at Circe's court were transformed into lions and wolves, from a too eager pursuit of pleasure.

But Ulysses was saved from following the advice of Mercury, by means of which he comes off unhurt. But he makes Elpenor, a man given to drinking and luxury, fall down a precipice. And Antinous, though he says to Ulysses--

Luscious wine will be your bane,[16:3]

could not himself abstain from drinking, owing to which he was wounded and slain while still having hold of the goblet.

He represents the Greeks also as drinking hard when sailing away from Troy, and on that account quarrelling with one another, and in consequence peris.h.i.+ng. And he relates that aeneas, the most eminent of the Trojans for wisdom, was led away by the manner in which he had talked, and bragged, and made promises to the Trojans, while engaged in drinking, so as to encounter the mighty Achilles, and was nearly killed.

And Agamemnon says somewhere about drunkenness--

Disastrous folly led me thus astray, Or wine's excess, or madness sent from Jove:

placing madness and drunkenness in the same boat. And Dioscorides, too, the pupil of Isocrates, quoted these verses with the same object, saying, "And Achilles, when reproaching Agamemnon, addresses him--