Quaestiones Convivales

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. III. Goodwin, William W., editor; Creech, Thomas, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

AMMONIUS, captain of the militia at Athens, would show Diogenianus the proficiency of those youths that learned grammar, geometry, rhetoric, and music; and invited the chief masters of the town to supper. There were a great many scholars at the feast, and almost all his acquaintance. Achilles invited only the single combatants to his feast, intending (as the story goes) that, if in the heat of the encounter they had conceived any anger or ill-will against one another, they might then lay it aside, being made partakers of one common entertainment. But the contrary happened to Ammonius, for the contentions of the masters increased and grew more sharp midst their cups and merriment; and all was disorder and confused babbling.

Therefore Ammonius commanded Erato to sing to his harp, and he sang some part of Hesiod’s Works beginning thus,

Contention to one sort is not confined;[*](Works and Days, 11.)
and I commended him for choosing so apposite a song. Then he began to discourse about the seasonable use of verse, that it was not only pleasant but profitable. And straight every one’s mouth was full of that poet who began
Ptolemy’s epithalamium (when he married his sister, a wicked and abominable match) thus,
Jove Juno called his sister and his wife;[*](Il. XVIII 356.)
and another, who was unwilling to sing after supper to Demetrius the king, but when he sent him his young son Philip to be educated sang thus,
  • Breed thou the boy as doth become
  • Both Hercules’s race and us;
    • and Anaxarchus who, being pelted with apples by Alexander at supper, rose up and said,
    Some God shall wounded be by mortal hand.[*](Eurip. Orest. 271.)
    But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus:
    Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell.[*](Odyss. V. 306.)
    For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept, and gave all the free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty. And some mentioned the wife of Theodorus the tragedian, who refused his embraces a little before he contended for the prize; but, when he was conqueror and came in unto her, clasped him and said,
    Now, Agamemnon’s son, you freely may.[*](Soph. Electra, 2.)

    After this a great many sayings were mentioned as unseasonably spoken, it being fit that we should know such and avoid them;—as that to Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at this line,

  • Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain,
  • My wish had been complete;
    • [*](Il. III. 428.)

    and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son’s dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said: Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you neither knew nor had read this line,

    For no report is wholly false?[*](Hesiod, Works and Days, 763.)
    And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this,
    Fly from the island, worst of all mankind,[*](Odyss. X. 72.)
    either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this discourse quieted the tumult.