Quaestiones Convivales

But Lucanius, with a smile looking upon me, cried out: Good God! here’s a deal of learning. But others have taken advantage of our ignorance and unacquaintedness with such matters, and, on the contrary, persuaded us that the pine was the first garland, and that afterwards in honor of Hercules the parsley was received from the Nemean games, which in a little time prevailing, thrust out the pine, as if it were its right to be the wreath; but a little while after the pine recovered its ancient honor, and now flourishes in its glory. I was satisfied, and upon consideration found that I had met with a great many authorities for it. Thus Euphorion writes of Melicertes,

They mourned the youth, and him on pine boughs laid

Of which the Isthmian victors’ crowns are made.

Fate had not yet seized beauteous Mene’s son

By smooth Asopus; since whose fall the crown

Of parsley wreathed did grace the victor’s brow.

And Callimachus is plainer and more express, when he makes Hercules speak thus of parsley,

This at Isthmian games

To Neptune’s glory now shall be the crown;

The pine shall be disused, which heretofore

In Corinth’s plains successful victors wore.

And beside, if I am not mistaken, in Procles’s history of the Isthmian games I met with this passage; at first a pine garland crowned the conqueror, but when this game began to be reckoned amongst the sacred, then from the Nemean solemnity the parsley was received. And this Procles was one of Xenocrates’s fellow-students at the Academy.

SOME at the table were of opinion that Achilles talked nonsense when he bade Patroclus mix the wine stronger, subjoining this reason,

For now I entertain my dearest friends.

But Niceratus a Macedonian, my particular acquaintance, maintained that ζωρόν did not signify pure but hot wine; as if it were derived from ζωτικός and ζέσις (life-giving and boiling), and it were requisite at the coming of his friends to temper a fresh bowl, as every one of us in his offering at the altar pours out fresh wine. But Socicles the poet, remembering a saying of Empedocles, that in the great universal change those things which before were ἀκρατα, unmixed, should then be ζωρά, affirmed that ζωρόν there signified εὔκρατον, well tempered, and that Achilles might with a great deal of reason bid Patroclus provide well-tempered wine for the entertainment of his friends; and it was not absurd (he said) to use ζωρότερον for ζωρόν, any more than δεξιτερόν for δεξιόν, or θηλύτερον for θῆλυ, for the comparatives are very properly put for the positives. My friend Antipater said that years were anciently called ὧροι, and that the particle ζα in composition signified greatness; and therefore old wine, that had been kept for many years, was called by Achilles ζωρόν.

I put them in mind that some imagine that θερμόν, hot, is signified by ζωρότερον, and that hotter means simply faster, as when we command servants to bestir themselves more hotly or in hotter haste. But I must confess, your dispute is frivolous, since it is raised upon this supposition, that if ζωρότερον signifies more pure wine, Achilles’s command would be absurd, as Zoilus of Amphipolis imagined. For first he did not consider that Achilles saw Phoenix and Ulysses to be old men, who are not pleased with diluted wine, and upon that account forbade any mixture. Besides, having been Chiron’s scholar, and from him having learned the rules of diet, he considered that weaker and more diluted liquors were fittest for those bodies that lay at ease, and were not employed in their customary exercise or labor. Thus with the other provender he gave his horses smallage,

and this upon very good reason; for horses that lie still grow sore in their feet, and smallage is the best remedy in the world against that. And you will not find smallage or any thing of the same nature given to any other horses in the whole Iliad. Thus Achilles, being skilled in physic, provided suitable provender for his horses, and used the lightest diet himself, as the fittest whilst he lay at ease. But those that had been wearied all day in fight he did not think convenient to treat like those that had lain at ease, but commanded more pure and stronger wine to be prepared. Besides, Achilles doth not appear to be naturally addicted to drinking, but he was of a haughty inexorable temper.

No pleasant humor, no soft mind he bore,

But was all fire and rage.

[*](Il. XX. 467.)

And in another place very plainly Homer says, that

Many a sleepless night he knew.[*](Il. IX. 325.)

Now little sleep cannot content those that drink strong liquors; and in his railing at Agamemnon, the first ill name he gives him is drunkard, proposing his great drinking as the chiefest of his faults. And for these reasons it is likely that, when they came, he thought his usual mixture too weak and not convenient for them.

AT my return from Alexandria all my friends by turns treated me, inviting all such too as were any way acquainted, so that our meetings were usually tumultuous and suddenly dissolved; which disorders gave occasion to discourses concerning the inconveniences that attend such crowded

entertainments. But when Onesicrates the physician in his turn invited only the most familiar acquaintance, and men of the most agreeable temper, I thought that what Plato says concerning the increase of cities might be applied to entertainments. For there is a certain number which an entertainment may receive, and still be an entertainment; but if it exceeds that, so that by reason of the number there cannot be a mutual conversation amongst all, if they cannot know one another nor partake of the same jollity, it ceaseth to be such. For we should not need messengers there, as in a camp, or boatswains, as in a galley; but we ourselves should immediately converse with one another. As in a dance, so in an entertainment, the last man should be placed within hearing of the first.

As I was speaking, my grandfather Lamprias cried out: Then it seems there is need of temperance not only in our feasts, but also in our invitations. For methinks there is even an excess in kindness, when we pass by none of our friends, but draw them all in, as to see a sight or hear a play. And I think, it is not so great a disgrace for the entertainer not to have bread or wine enough for his guests, as not to have room enough, with which he ought always to be provided, not only for invited guests, but strangers and chance visitants. For suppose he hath not wine and bread enough, it may be imputed either to the carelessness or dishonesty of his servants; but the want of room must be imputed to the imprudence of the inviter. Hesiod is very much admired for beginning thus,

A vast chaos first was made.[*](Hesiod, Theog. 116.)

For it was necessary that there should be first a place and room provided for the beings that were afterward to be produced; and not what was seen yesterday at my son’s entertainment, when, as Anaxagoras said,

All lay jumbled together.

But suppose a man hath room and provision enough, yet a multitude itself is to be avoided for its own sake, as hindering all familiarity and conversation; and it is more tolerable to let the company have no wine, than to exclude all converse from a feast. And therefore Theophrastus jocularly called the barbers’ shops feasts without wine; because those that sit there usually prattle and discourse. But those that invite a crowd at once deprive all of free communication of discourse, or rather make them divide into cabals, so that two or three privately talk together, and neither know nor look on those that sit, as it were, half a mile distant.

Some took this way to valiant Ajax’ tent,

And some the other to Achilles’ went.

[*](Il. XI. 7.)

And therefore some rich men are foolishly profuse, who build rooms big enough for thirty tables or more at once; for such a preparation certainly is for unsociable and unfriendly entertainments, and such as are fit for a panegyriarch rather than a symposiarch to preside over. But this may be pardoned in those; for wealth would not be wealth, it would be really blind and imprisoned, unless it had witnesses, as tragedies would be without spectators. Let us entertain few and often, and make that a remedy against having a crowd at once. For those that invite but seldom are forced to have all their friends, and all that upon any account they are acquainted with together; but those that invite frequently, and but three or four, render their entertainments like little barks, light and nimble. Besides, the very reason why we invite teaches us to select some out of the number of our many friends. For as when we are in want we do not call all together, but only those that can best afford help in that particular case,—when we would be advised, the wiser part; and when we are to have a trial, the best pleaders; and when we are to go a journey, those that can live pleasantly and are at leisure,—thus to our entertainments we should call only those that are at the present agreeable. Agreeable, for instance, to a prince’s entertainment will be the magistrates, if they are his friends, or chiefest of the city; to marriage or birth-day feasts, all their kindred, and such as are under the protection of the same Jupiter the guardian of consanguinity; and to such feasts and merry-makings as this those are to be invited whose tempers are most suitable to the occasion. When we offer sacrifice to one God, we do not worship all the others that belong to the same temple and altar at the same time; but suppose we have three bowls, out of the first we pour oblations to some, out of the second to others, and out of the third to the rest, and none of the Gods take distaste. And in this a company of friends may be likened to the company of Gods; none takes distaste at the order of the invitation, if it be prudently managed and every one allowed a turn.

AFTER this it was presently asked, why the room which at the beginning of supper seems too narrow for the guests is afterwards wide enough; when the contrary is most likely, after they are filled with the supper. Some said, the posture of our sitting was the cause; for they sit, when they eat, with their full breadth to the table, that they may command it with their right hand; but after they leave supped, they sit more sideways, and make an acute figure with their bodies, and do not touch the place according to the superficies, if I may so say, but the line Now as cockal bones do not take up as much room when

they fall upon one end as when they fall flat, so every one of us at the beginning sitting broadwise, and with a full face to the table, afterwards changes the figure. and turns his depth, not his breadth, to the board. Some attribute it to the beds whereon we sat, for those when pressed stretch; as strait shoes after a little wearing have their pores widened, and grow fit for—sometimes too big for— the foot. An old man in the company merrily said, that the same feast had two very different presidents and directors; in the beginning, Hunger, that is not the least skilled in ordering and disposing, but afterward Bacchus, whom all acknowledge to be the best orderer of an army in the world. As therefore Epaminondas, when the unskilful captains had led their forces into narrow disadvantageous straits, relieved the phalanx that was fallen foul on itself and all in disorder, and brought it into good rank and file again; thus we in the beginning being like greedy hounds confused and disordered by hunger, the God (hence named the looser and the dance-arranger) settles us in a friendly and agreeable order.