The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Part 64

And formerly 'twould have been hard to see One single flagon vow'd unto the G.o.ds.

_B._ That is rare now. For if one man should vow A gift like that, some other man would steal it.

And Alexis, in his Little House, introducing a young man in love displaying his wealth to his mistress, represents him as making her some such speech as this--

_A._ I told the slaves, (for I brought two from home,) To place the carefully wiped silver vessels Fairly in sight. There was a silver goblet, And cups which weigh'd two drachms; a beaker too Whose weight was four; a wine-cooler, ten obols, Slighter than e'en Philippides' own self.

And yet these things are not so ill-contrived To make a show . . . .

And I am myself acquainted with one of our own fellow-citizens who is as proud as he is poor, and who, when all his silver plate put together scarcely weighed a drachma, used to keep calling for his servant, a single individual, and the only one he had, but still he called him by hundreds of different names. "Here, you Stromb.i.+.c.hides, do not put on the table any of my winter plate, but my summer plate." And the character in Nicostratus, in the play ent.i.tled the Kings, is just such another.

There is a braggart soldier, of whom he speaks--

There is some vinegar and a wine-cooler, Thinner than thinnest gauze.

For there were at that time people who were able to beat out silver till it was as thin as a piece of skin.

18. And Antiphanes, in his Lemnian Women, says--

A three-legg'd table now is laid, and on it A luscious cheesecake, O ye honour'd G.o.ds, And this year's honey in a silver dish.

And Sopater the parodist, in his Orestes, writes--

A silver dish, bearing a stinking shad.

And in the drama ent.i.tled Phace he says--

But at his supper he does sport a cruet Of s.h.i.+ning silver, richly chased with figures, And bas-reliefs of dragons: such as Thibron Used to display, most delicate of men, Stripp'd of his wealth by arts of Tantalus.

And Theopompus the Chian, in his Letters of Advice to Alexander, when he enters into a discussion about Theocritus his fellow-citizen, says--"But he drinks out of silver cups and out of golden cups, and uses other vessels of the same kind upon his table. A man who formerly not only did not drink out of silver vessels, but who had not brazen ones either, but was content with the commonest earthenware, and even that very often cracked and chipped. And Diphilus says, in his Painter--

A splendid breakfast then appear'd, consisting Of all that was desirable or new; First every kind of oyster; then a phalanx Of various side-dishes, and a heap Of broiled meats fresh from the gridiron, And potted meats in silver mortars pounded.

And Philemon says in his Physician--

And a large basket full of silver plate.

And Menander, in his Heautontimorumenos, says--

A bath, maid-servants, lots of silver plate.

And in his Hymnis he writes--

But I am come in quest of silver plate.

And Lysias, in his Oration on the Golden Tripod, if indeed the speech be a genuine one of his, says--"It was still possible to give silver or gold plate." But those who pique themselves on the purity of their Greek, say that the proper expression is not ??????ata and ???s?ata, but ???????? ??s?? and ???s??? ??s??.

19. When aemilia.n.u.s had said this, Pontia.n.u.s said--For formerly gold was really exceedingly scarce among the Greeks; and there was not indeed much silver; at least, not much which was extracted from the mines; on which account Duris the Samian says that Philip, the father of the great king Alexander, as he was possessed of one flagon of gold, always put it under his pillow when he went to bed. And Herodotus of Heraclea says, that the Golden Lamb of Atreus, which was the pregnant cause of many eclipses of the sun, and changes of kings, and which was, moreover, the subject of a great many tragedies, was a golden flagon, having in the centre a figure of a golden lamb. And Anaximenes of Lampsacus, in the first of those works of his, called Histories, says that the necklace of Eriphyle was so notorious because gold at that time was so rare among the Greeks; for that a golden goblet was at that time a most unusual thing to see; but that after the taking of Delphi by the Phocians, then all such things began to be more abundant. But formerly even those men who were accounted exceedingly rich used to drink out of brazen goblets, and the repositories where they put them away they called ?a??????a?.

And Herodotus says that the Egyptian priests drink out of brazen goblets; and he affirms that silver flagons could not be found to be given to all the kings, even when they sacrificed in public; and, accordingly, that Psammetichus, who was later than the other kings, performed his libations with a brazen flagon, while the rest made their offerings with silver ones. But after the temple at Delphi had been plundered by the tyrants of Phocis, then gold became common among the Greeks, and silver became actually abundant; and afterwards, when the great Alexander had brought into Greece all the treasures from out of Asia, then there really did s.h.i.+ne forth what Pindar calls "wealth predominating far and wide."

20. And the silver and gold offerings which were at Delphi were offered originally by Gyges the king of the Lydians. For before the reign of this monarch Apollo had no silver, and still less had he gold, as Phanias the Eresian tells us, and Theopompus, too, in the fortieth book of his History of the Transactions of the Reign of Philip. For these writers relate that the Pythian temple was adorned by Gyges, and by Crsus who succeeded him; and after them by Gelo and Hiero, the tyrants of Syracuse: the first of whom offered up a tripod and a statue of Victory, both made of gold, about the time that Xerxes was making his expedition against Greece; and Hiero made similar offerings. And Theopompus uses the following language--"For anciently the temple was adorned with brazen offerings: I do not mean statues, but caldrons and tripods made of bra.s.s. The Lacedaemonians, therefore, wis.h.i.+ng to gild the face of the Apollo that was at Amyclae, and not finding any gold in Greece, having sent to the oracle of the G.o.d, asked the G.o.d from whom they could buy gold; and he answered them that they should go to Crsus the Lydian, and buy it of him. And they went and bought the gold of Crsus. But Hiero the Syracusan, wis.h.i.+ng to offer to the G.o.d a tripod and a statue of Victory of unalloyed gold, and being in want of the gold for a long time, afterwards sent men to Greece to seek for it; who, coming after a time to Corinth, and tracing it out, found some in the possession of Architeles the Corinthian, who had been a long time buying it up by little and little, and so had no inconsiderable quant.i.ty of it; and he sold it to the emissaries of Hiero in what quant.i.ty they required. And after that, having filled his hand with it he made them a present of all that he could hold in his hand, in return for which Hiero sent a vessel full of corn, and many other gifts to him from Sicily."

21. And Phanias relates the same circ.u.mstances in his history of the Tyrants in Sicily, saying that the ancient offerings had been bra.s.s, both tripods, and caldrons, and daggers; and that on one of them there was the following inscription--

Look on me well; for I was once a part Of the wide tower which defended Troy When Greeks and Trojans fought for fair-hair'd Helen; And Helicon, brave Antenor's son, Brought me from thence, and placed me here, to be An ornament to Phbus' holy shrine.

And in the tripod, which was one of the prizes offered at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus, there was the inscription--

I am a brazen tripod, and I lie Here as an ornament of Delphi's shrine.

The swift Achilles gave me as a prize What time he placed Patroclus on the pile, And Tydeus' mighty son, brave Diomede, Offer'd me here, won by his speedy coursers In the swift race by h.e.l.le's s.p.a.cious wave.

22. And Ephorus, or Demophilus, his son, in the thirtieth book of his Histories, speaking of the temple of Delphi, says, "But Onomarchus and Phayllus and Phalaecus not only carried off all the treasures of the G.o.d, but at last their wives carried off also the ornaments of Eriphyle, which Alcmaeon consecrated at Delphi by the command of the G.o.d, and also the necklace of Helen, which had been given by Menelaus. For the G.o.d had given each of them oracles: he had said to Alcmaeon, when he asked him how he could be cured of his madness--

You ask a precious gift, relief from madness; Give me a precious gift yourself; the chain With which your mother buried, steeds and all, Your sire, her husband, brave Amphiaraus.

And he replied to Menelaus, who consulted him as to how he might avenge himself on Paris--

Bring me the golden ornament of the neck Of your false wife; which Venus once did give A welcome gift to Helen; and then Paris Shall glut your direst vengeance by his fall.

And it so fell out that a violent quarrel arose among the women about these ornaments--which should take which. And when they had drawn lots for the choice, the one of them, who was very ugly and stern, got Eriphyle's necklace, but the one who was conspicuous for beauty and wanton got the ornaments of Helen; and she, being in love with a young man of Epirus, went away with him, but the other contrived to put her husband to death.

23. But the divine Plato, and Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian, not only forbad all costly ornaments to be introduced into their model states, but they would not permit even silver or gold to be brought into them, thinking that of the products of mines, iron and copper were sufficient, and banis.h.i.+ng the other metals as injurious to those states which were in good order. But Zeno the Stoic, thinking everything unimportant except the legitimate and honest use of the precious metals, forbad either praying for or deprecating them; but still he recommended chiefly the use of those which were more commonly accessible and less superfluous; in order that men, having the dispositions of their minds formed so as neither to fear nor to admire anything which is not honourable on the one hand or discreditable on the other, should use only what is natural as much as possible, and yet should not fear what is of an opposite character, but abstain from such in obedience to reason and not to fear.

For nature has not banished any of the above-mentioned things out of the world, but has made subterranean veins of these metals, the working of which is very laborious and difficult, in order that they who desire such things may arrive at the acquisition after toil and suffering; and that not only those men themselves who work in the mines, but those also who collect what has been extracted from the mines, may acquire this much wished for opulence at the expense of countless labours.

Therefore a little of these metals lies on the surface just to serve as a sample of the rest which is beneath, since in the remotest corners of the earth also there are rivers bearing down gold-dust in their waters; and women and men dest.i.tute of bodily strength scratching among the sand, detach these particles from the sand, and then they wash them and bring them to the smelting-pot, as my countryman Posidonius says is done among the Helvetians, and among others of the Celtic tribes. And the mountains which used formerly to be called the Rhipaean mountains, and which were subsequently named the Olbian (as if happy), and which are now called the Alps, (they are mountains in Gaul,) when once the woods upon them had caught fire spontaneously, ran with liquid silver. The greater quant.i.ty of this metal, however, is found by mining operations carried on at a great depth, and attended by great hards.h.i.+p, according to the statement of Demetrius Phalereus, in consequence of the desire of avarice to draw Pluto himself out of the recesses of the earth; and, accordingly, he says facetiously that--"Men having often abandoned what was visible for the sake of what was uncertain, have not got what they expected, and have lost what they had, being unfortunate by an enigmatical sort of calamity."

24. But the Lacedaemonians being hindered by their national inst.i.tutions from introducing silver or gold into Sparta, as the same Posidonius relates, or from possessing any in private, did possess it nevertheless, but then they deposited it among their neighbours the Arcadians. But subsequently the Arcadians became enemies to them instead of friends, as they had been; picking a quarrel with them with the express view of seizing on this deposit without being called to account for it, by reason of the enmity now subsisting. Therefore it is said that the gold and silver which had formerly been at Lacedaemon was consecrated at Delphi to Apollo; and that when Lysander brought gold publicly into the city he was the cause of many evils to the state by so doing. And it is said that Gylippus, who delivered the Syracusans, was put to death by starvation, having been condemned by the Ephori, because he had embezzled some of the money sent to Sparta by Lysander. But that which had been devoted to the G.o.d and been granted to the people as a public ornament and public property, it was not decent for any mortal to treat with contempt.

25. But that tribe of Gauls which is called the Cordistae, does not introduce gold into their country either, still they are not the less ready to plunder the territories of their neighbours, and to commit injustice; and that nation is a remnant of the Gauls who formed the army of Brennus when he made his expedition against the temple of Delphi. And a certain Bathanatius, acting as their leader, settled them as a colony in the districts around the Ister, from whom they call the road by which they returned the Bathanatian road, and even to this day they call his posterity the Bathanati. And these men proscribe gold, and do not introduce it into their territories, as a thing on account of which they have suffered many calamities; but they do use silver, and for the sake of that they commit the most enormous atrocities. Although the proper course would be, not to banish the whole cla.s.s of the thing of which they were formerly plundered, but the impiety which could perpetrate such a sacrilege. And even if they did not introduce silver into their country, still they would commit excesses in the pursuit of copper and iron; and even if they had not these things, still they would continue to rage in war against other nations for the sake of meat and drink, and other necessaries.

26. When Pontia.n.u.s had delivered his opinion in these terms, and while most of the guests were endeavouring to solve the questions proposed by Ulpian, Plutarch, being one of those who was attending to the other subjects of discussion, said,--The name parasite was in former days a respectable and a holy name. At all events, Polemo (whether he was a Samian or a Sicyonian, or whether he prefers the name of an Athenian, which Heraclides the Mopseatian gives him, who also speaks of him as being claimed by other cities; and he was also called Stelocopas, as Herodicus the Cratetian has told us,) writing about parasites, speaks as follows--"The name of parasite is now a disreputable one; but among the ancients we find the word parasite used as something sacred, and nearly equivalent to the t.i.tle Messmate. Accordingly, at Cynosarges, in the temple of Hercules, there is a pillar on which is engraven a decree of Alcibiades; the clerk who drew it up being Stepha.n.u.s the son of Thucydides; and in it mention is made of this name in the following terms--'Let the priest perform the monthly sacrifices with the parasites; and let the parasites select one b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and one of the sons of the same, according to the usual national customs; and whoever is unwilling to take the place of a parasite, let the priest report him to the tribunal.' And in the tables of the laws concerning the Deliastae it is written--'And let two heralds, of the family of the heralds, of that branch of it which is occupied about the sacred mysteries, be chosen; and let them be parasites in the temple of Delos for a year.' And in Pallenis this inscription is engraved on the offerings there found--'The Archons and parasites made these offerings, who, in the archons.h.i.+p of Pythodorus, were crowned with a golden crown;[370:1] and the parasites were, in the archons.h.i.+p of Lycostratus, Gargettius; in the archons.h.i.+p of Pericletus, Pericles Pitheus; in that of Demochares, Charinus.' And in the laws of the king, we find the following words--'That the parasites of the Acharnensians shall sacrifice to Apollo.' But Clearchus the Solensian, and he was one of the disciples of Aristotle, in the first book of his Lives, writes thus--'But now they call a parasite a man who is ready for anything; but in former times he was a man picked out as a companion.'" Accordingly, in the ancient laws, most cities mention parasites among the most honourable of their officers; and, indeed, they do so to this day. And Clidemus says in his Attic Women--

And then they chose some parasites for Hercules.

And Themiso, in his Pallenis, says--"That the king, who from time to time fills that office, and the parasites, whom they appoint from the main body of the people, and the old men, and the women who still have their first husbands, shall take care of such and such things."

27. And from this you perceive, my good friend Ulpian, that you may raise another question, who the women are who still have their first husbands? But (for we are still speaking about the parasites) there is also an inscription on a pillar in the Anaceum to the following effect--"Of the best bulls which are selected, one-third is to be appropriated to the games; and of the remaining two-thirds, one is to go to the priest, and the other to the parasites." But Crates, in the second book of his treatise on the Attic Dialect, says--"And the word parasite is now used in a disreputable sense; but formerly those people were called parasites who were selected to collect the sacred corn, and there was a regular Hall of the parasites; on which account the following expressions occur in the law of the king--"That the king shall take care of the Archons that they are properly appointed, and that they shall select the parasites from the different boroughs, according to the statutes enacted with reference to that subject. And that the parasites shall, without any evasion or fraud, select from their own share a sixth part of a bushel of barley, on which all who are citizens of Athens shall feast in the temple, according to the national laws and customs.

And that the parasites of the Acharnensians shall give a sixth part of a bushel from their collection of barley to the guild of priests of Apollo. And that there was a regular Hall for the parasites is shown by the following expressions in the same law--"For the repairs of the temple, and of the magistrates' hall, and of the hall of parasites, and of the sacred house, they shall pay whatever sums of money the contractors appointed by the priests think necessary." From this it is evident that the place in which the parasites laid up the first-fruits of the consecrated corn was called the Parasitium, or the Hall of the parasites.

And Philochorus gives the same account in his book ent.i.tled the Tetrapolis, where he mentions the parasites who were elected for the temple of Hercules; and Diodorus of Sinope, a comic poet, in his Heir, (from which I will cite some testimonies presently,) says the same. And Aristotle, in his treatise on the Const.i.tution of the Methoneans, says--"Parasites were two in number for each of the archons, and one for the polemarchs. And they received a fixed allowance from others, and they also took dishes of fish from the fishermen."

28. But the meaning which is now given to the name parasite is one which Carystius of Pergamus, in his treatise on the Didascaliae, says was first invented by Alexis, forgetting that Epicharmus, in his Hope or Plutus, has introduced one in a drinking party, where he says--

But here another stands at this man's feet,

Seeking for food which shall not cost him anything, And he will drink up an entire cask, As if it were a cupfull.

And he introduces the parasite himself, making the following speech to some one who questioned him--