Deipnosophistae

You appear to me, my good friend Timocrates, to be a man of Cyrene, according to the Tyndareus of Alexis—

1. For there if any man, invites another
2. To any banquet, eighteen others come;
3. Ten chariots, and fifteen pairs of horses,
4. And for all these you must provide the food,
5. So that 'twere better to invite nobody

For enjoyment is connected, in the first instance, with appetite; and in the second place, with pleasure. And Sophocles the poet, being a man fond of enjoyment, in order to avoid accusing old age, attributed his impotence in amatory pleasures to his temperance, saying that he was glad to be released from them as from some hard master. But I say that the Judgment of Paris is a tale originally invented by the 'ancients, as a comparison between pleasure and virtue. Accordingly, when Venus, that is to say pleasure, was preferred, everything was thrown into confusion. And that excellent writer Xenophon seems to me to have invented his fable about Hercules and Virtue on the same principle. For according to Empedocles—

1. Mars was no god to them, nor gallant War,
2. Nor Jupiter the king, nor Saturn old,
3. Nor Neptune; Venus was their only queen.
4. Her they propitiate and duly worship
5. With pious images, with beauteous figures
6. Skilfully carved; with fragrant incenses,
7. And holy offerings of unmix'd myrrh,
8. And sweetly smelling frankincense; and many. .
9. A pure libation of fresh golden honey
10. They pour'd along the floor.

1. He was to music much devoted, and
2. Sought ever pleasing sounds to gratify
3. His delicate taste.

And yet some people say that the desire of pleasure is a natural desire, as may be proved by all animals becoming enslaved by it; as if cowardice, and fear, and all sorts of other passions were not also common to all animals, and yet these are rejected by all who use their reason. Accordingly, to be very eager in the pursuit of pleasure is to go hunting for pain. On which account Homer, wishing to represent pleasure in an odious light, says that the greatest of the gods receive no advantage from their power, but are even much injured by it, if they will allow themselves to be hurried away by the pursuit of pleasure. For all the anxiety which Jupiter, when awake, lavished on the Trojans, was lost in open day, when he abandoned himself to pleasure. And Mars, who was a most valiant deity, was put in chains by Vulcan, who was very powerless, and incurred great disgrace and punishment, when he had given himself up to irrational love; and therefore he says to the Gods, when they came to see him in fetters—

1. Behold, on wrong
2. Swift vengeance waits, and art subdues the strong.
3. Dwells there a god on all th' Olympian brow
4. More swift than Mars, and more than Vulcan slow?
5. Yet Vulcan conquers, and the God of arms
6. Must pay the penalty for lawless charms.[*](This is a blunder of Athenæus. Mars does not say this but it is the observation made by the gods to each other. ῟ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε ἰδὼν ἐς πλήσιον ἄλλον.Odys. viii. 28. )

But Plato, in his Philebus, says—

Pleasure is the most insolent of all things; and, as it is reported, in amatory enjoyments, which are said to be the most powerful of all, even perjury has been pardoned by the Gods, as if pleasure was like a child, incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

Is not the desire to eat enough for health and strength of body, and for bread and meat to that extent, a necessary desire?—I think it is.—At all events, the desire for food for these two purposes is necessary, inasmuch as it is salutary, and inasmuch as it is able to remove hunger? —No doubt.—And the desire for meat, too, is a necessary desire, if it at all contributes to a good habit of body?— Most undoubtedly.—What, then, are we to say? Is no desire which goes beyond the appetite for this kind of food, and for other food similar to it, and which, if it is checked in young people, can be entirely stifled, and which is injurious also to the body, and injurious also to the mind, both as far as its intellectual powers are concerned, and also as to its temperance, entitled to be called a necessary one?—Most certainly not.

But Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, speaks as follows—“Tyrants and kings, having all kinds of good things in their power, and having had experience of all things, place pleasure in the first rank, on the ground that pleasure makes the nature of man more magnanimous. Accordingly, all those who have honoured pleasure above everything, and who have deliberately chosen to live a life of luxury, have been magnanimous and magnificent people, as,

1. For what kind of human life
2. Can be worth desiring,
3. If pleasure be denied to it?
4. What kingly power even?
5. Without pleasure e'en the gods
6. Have nothing to be envied for.

1. Never obscure fair pleasure in your life;
2. A life of pleasure is the best for man.

1. How sweet the products of a peaceful reign,—
2. The heaven-taught poet and enchanting strain,
3. The well-fill'd palace, the perpetual feast,
4. A loud rejoicing, and a people blest!
5. How goodly seems it ever to employ
6. Man's social days in union and in joy;
7. The plenteous board high heap'd with cates divine,
8. And o'er the foaming bowl the laughing wine.

living at ease.

at ease

without labour;

On which account Megaclides finds fault with those poets who came after Homer and Hesiod, and have written about Hercules, relating how he led armies and took cities,— who passed the greater part of his life among men in the most excessive pleasure, and married a greater number of women than any other man; and who had unacknowledged children, by a greater number of virgins, than any other man. For any one might say to those who do not admit all this—“Whence, my good friends, is it that you attribute to him all this excessive love of eating; or whence is it that the custom has originated among men of leaving nothing in the cup when we pour a libation to Hercules, if he had no regard for pleasure? or why are the hot springs which rise out of the ground universally said to be sacred to Hercules; or why are people in the habit of calling soft couches the beds of Hercules, if he despised all those who live luxuriously? Accordingly, says he, the later poets represent him as going about in the guise of a robber by himself, having a club, and a lion's hide, and his bow. And they say that Stesichorus of Himera was the original inventor of this fable. But Xanthus the lyric poet, who was more ancient than Stesichorus, as Stesichorus himself tells us, does not, according to the statement of Megaclides, clothe him in this dress, but in that which Homer gives him. But Stesichorus perverted a great many of the accounts given by Xanthus, as he does also in the case of what is called the Orestea. But Antisthenes, when he said that pleasure was a good, added—

such as brought no repentance in its train.

But Ulysses, in Homer, appears to have been the original guide to Epicurus, in the matter of that pleasure which he has always in his mouth; for Ulysses says to Alcinous—

1. . . . . . . . . Thou whom first in sway,
2. As first in virtue, these thy realms obey,
3. How goodly seems it ever to employ
4. Man's social days in union and in joy I
5. The plenteous board high heap'd with cates divine,
6. And o'er the foaming bowl the laughing wine,
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7. The well-fill'd palace, the perpetual feast,
8. Are of all joys most lasting and the best.

1. To dress, to dance, to sing, our sole delight,
2. The feast or bath by day, and love by night;

1. Remember thou, my son, to always dwell
2. In every city cherishing a mind
3. Like to the skin of a rock-haunting fish;
4. And always with the present company
5. Agree, but when away you can change your mind.

1. As the wise polypus doth quickly change
2. His hue according to the rocks he's near,
3. So change your mind and your apparent feelings.

1. Imitate the wary cunning of the polypus.

1. And now Olympus' shining gates unfold;
2. The Gods with Jove assume their thrones of gold;
3. Immortal Hebe, fresh with bloom divine,
4. The golden goblet crowns with purple wine;
5. While the full bowl flows round the Powers employ
6. Their careful eyes on long-contended Troy.

1. Nor then should aught but death have torn apart
2. From me so loving and so glad a heart.

1. We sat secure, while fast around did roll
2. The dance, and jest, and ever-flowing bowl.

But of all nations the Persians were the first to become notorious for their luxury; and the Persian kings even spent their winters at Susa and their summers at Ecbatana. And

But Clearchus the Solensian, in the fourth book of his Lives, having previously spoken about the luxury of the

that the institution of the Melophori was adopted by the Persians from the Medes, being not only a revenge for what they had suffered themselves, but also a memorial of the luxury of the bodyguards, to indicate to what pitch of effeminacy they had come. For, as it seems, the unseasonable and superfluous luxury of their daily life could make even the men who are armed with spears, mere mountebanks.

And accordingly, while he gave to all those who could invent him any new kind of food, a prize for their invention, he did not, while loading them with honours, allow the food which they had invented to be set before them, but enjoyed it all by himself, and thought this was the greatest wisdom. For this, I imagine, is what is called the brains of Jupiter and of a king at the same time.

But Chares of Mitylene, in the fifth book of his History of Alexander, says—

The Persian kings had come to such a pitch of luxury, that at the head of the royal couch there was a supper-room laid with five couches, in which there were always kept five thousand talents of gold; and this was called the king's pillow. And at his feet was another supper-room, prepared with three couches, in which there were constantly kept three thousand talents of silver; and this was called the king's footstool. And in his bed-chamber there was also a golden vine, inlaid with precious stones, above the king's bed.

But Xenophon, in the eighth book of his Cyropædia, says—

They still used at that time to practise the discipline of the Persians, but the dress and effeminacy of the Medes. But now they disregard the sight of the ancient Persian bravery becoming extinct, and they are solicitous only to preserve the effeminacy of the Medes. And I think it a

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good opportunity to give an account of their luxurious habits. For, in the first place, it is not enough for them to have their beds softly spread, but they put even the feet of their couches upon carpets in order that the floor may not present resistance to them, but that the carpets may yield to their pressure. And as for the things which are dressed for their table, nothing is omitted which has been discovered before, and they are also continually inventing something new; and the same is the way with all other delicacies. For they retain men whose sole business it is to invent things of this kind. And in winter it is not enough for them to have their head, and their body, and their feet covered, but on even the tips of their fingers they wear shaggy gloves and finger-stalls; and in summer they are not satisfied with the shade of the trees and of the rocks, but they also have men placed in them to contrive additional means of producing shade.

But now they have more clothes laid upon their horses than they have even on their beds. For they do not pay so much attention to their horsemanship as to sitting softly. Moreover, they have porters, and bread-makers, and confectioners, and cup-bearers, and men to serve up their meals and to take them away, and men to lull them to sleep and men to wake them, and dressers to anoint them and to rub them, and to get them up well in every respect.

The Lydians, too, went to such a pitch of luxury, that they were the first to castrate women, as Xanthus the Lydian tells us, or whoever else it was who wrote the History which is attributed to him, whom Artemon of Cassandra, in his treatise on the Collection of Books, states to have been Pionysius who was surnamed Leather-armed; but Artemon was not aware that Ephorus the historian mentions him as being an older man than the other, and as having been the man who supplied Herodotus with some of his materials. Xanthus, then, in the second book of his Affairs of Lydia, says that Adramyttes, the king of the Lydians, was the first man who ever castrated women, and used female eunuchs instead of male eunuchs. But Clearchus, in the fourth book of his Lives, says—“The Lydians, out of luxury, made parks; and having planted them like gardens, made them very shady, thinking it a refinement in luxury if the sun never touched them with its rays at all; and at last they carried

On which account the Lydians, wishing to soften the bitterness of the transaction, call the place the Woman's Contest —the Sweet Embrace. And not only were the wives of the Lydians exposed to all comers, but those also of the Epizephyrian Locrians, and also those of the Cyprians—and, in fact, those of all the nations who devote their daughters to the lives of prostitutes; and it appears to be, in truth, a sort of reminding of, and revenge for, some ancient insult. So against her a Lydian man of noble birth rose up, one who had been previously offended at the government of Midas; while Midas lay in effeminacy, and luxury, and a purple robe, working in the company of the women at the loom. But as Omphale slew all the strangers whom she admitted to her embraces, he chastised both-the one, being a stupid and illiterate man, he dragged out by his ears; a man who, for want of sense, had the surname of the most stupid of all animals: but the woman . . . . .

And the Lydians were also the first people to introduce the use of the sauce called caruca; concerning the preparation of which all those who have written cookery books have spoken a good deal-namely, Glaucus the Locrian, and Mithæcus, and Dionysius, and the two Heraclidæ (who were by birth Syracusans), and Agis, and Epænetus, and Dionysius, and also Hegesippus, and Erasistratus, and Euthydemus, and

1. A. And, besides this, we now will serve you up
2. A dish whose name's candaulus.
3. B. I've ne'er tasted
4. Candaulus, nor have I e'er heard of it.
5. A. 'Tis a most grand invention, and 'tis mine;
6. And if I put a dish of it before you,
7. Such will be your delight that you'll devour
8. Your very fingers ere you lose a bit of it.
9. We here will get some balls of snow-white wool.
10. You will serve up an egg well shred, and twice
11. Boil'd till it's hard; a sausage, too, of honey;
12. Some pickle from the frying-pan, some slices
13. Of new-made Cynthian cheese; and then
14. A bunch of grapes, steep'd in a cup of wine:
15. But this part of the dish is always laugh'd at,
16. And yet it is the mainstay of the meal.
17. B. Laugh on, my friend; but now be off, I beg,
18. With all your talk about candauli, and
19. Your sausages, and dishes, and such luxuries.

1. For I have all these witnesses in the city,
2. That I'm the only one can dress a sausage,
3. A candaulus, eggs, a thrium, all in no time:
4. Was there any error or mistake in this?

1. A man who could not even dress black broth,
2. But only thria and candauli.

1. Here comes a very rich Ionian,
2. And so I make a good thick soup, and eke
3. A rich candaulus, amatory food.

But Heraclides of Cumæ, who wrote the History of Persia, having said in his book entitled The Preparation, that in the country which produces frankincense the king is independent, and responsible to no one, proceeds as follows:—

And he exceeds every one in luxury and indolence; for he stays for ever in his palace, passing his whole life in luxury and extravagance; and he does no single thing, nor does he see many people. But he appoints the judges, and if any one thinks that they have decided unjustly, there is a window in the highest part of the palace, and it is fastened with a chain: accordingly, he who thinks that an unjust decision has been given against him, takes hold of the chain, and drags the window; and when the king hears it, he summons the man, and hears the cause himself. And if the judges appear to have decided unjustly, they are put to death; but if they appear to have decided justly, then the man who has moved the window is put to death.

And among the Tyrrhenians, who carry their luxury to an extraordinary pitch, Timæus, in his first book, relates that the female servants wait on the men in a state of nudity. And Theopompus, in the forty-third book of his History, states,

that it is a law among the Tyrrhenians that all their women should be in common: and that the women pay the greatest attention to their persons, and often practise gymnastic exercises, naked, among the men, and sometimes with one another; for that it is not accounted shameful for them to be seen naked. And that they sup not with their own husbands, but with any one who happens to be present; and they pledge whoever they please in their cups: and that they are wonderful women to drink, and very and some. And that the Tyrrhenians bring up all the children that are born, no one knowing to what father each child belongs: and the children, too, live in the same manner as those who have brought them up, having feasts very frequently, ad being intimate with all the women. Nor is it reckoned among the Tyrrhenians at all disgraceful either to do or suffer anything

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in the open air, or to be seen while it is going on; for it is quite the custom of their country: and they are so far from thinking it disgraceful, that they even say, when the master of the house is indulging his appetites, and any one asks for him, that he is doing so and so, using the coarsest possible words for his occupation. But when they are together in parties of companions or relations, they act in the following manner. First of all, when they have stopped drinking, and are about to go to sleep, while the lights are still burning, the servants introduce sometimes courtesans, and sometimes beautiful boys, and sometimes women; and when they have enjoyed them, they proceed to acts of still grosser licentiousness: and they indulge their appetites, and make parties on purpose, sometimes keeping one another in sight, but more frequently making tents around the beds, which are made of plaited laths, with cloths thrown over them. And the objects of their love are usually women; still they are not invariably as particular as they might be; and they are very beautiful, as is natural for people to be who live delicately, and who take great care of their persons.

And all the barbarians who live towards the west, smooth their bodies by rubbing them with pitch, and by shaving them; and among the Tyrrhenians there are many shops in which this trade is practised, and many artists whose sole employment it is, just as there are barbers among us. And when the Tyrrhenians go to these men, they give themselves wholly up to them, not being ashamed of having spectators, or of those who may be passing by. And many of the Greeks, and of those who inhabit Italy, adopt this practice, having learnt it from the Samnites and Messapians. But the Tyrrhenians (as Alcimus relates) are so far gone in luxury, that they even make bread, and box, and flog people to the sound of the flute.

The tables of the Sicilians also are very notorious for their luxury.

And they say that even the sea in their region is sweet, delighting in the food which is procured from it,

And Timæus relates concerning them, that a citizen of Sybaris once going into the country, seeing the husbandmen digging, said that he himself felt as if he had broker his bones by the sight; and some one who heard him replied,

I, when I heard you say this, felt as if I had a pain in my side.

And it is a custom among them that even their children, up to the age when they are ranked among the ephebi, should wear purple robes, and curls braided with gold. And it is a custom with them also to breed up in their houses little mannikins and dwarfs (as Timon says) who are called by some people στίλπωνες; and also little Maltese dogs, which follow them even to the gymnasia. And it was these men, and men like them, to whom Masinissa, king of Mauritania, made answer (as Ptolemy relates, in the eighth book of his Commentaries), when they were seeking to buy some monkeys:

Why,—do not your wives, my good friends, produce any offspring?

1. For is it not, I pray you, better far
2. For one man, who can well afford such acts,
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3. To rear a man, than a loud gaping goose,
4. Or sparrow, or ape—most mischievous of beasts?

Archytas of Tarentum, who was both a statesman and a philosopher, having many slaves, was always delighted at his entertainments when any of them came to his banquets. But the Sybarites delighted only in Maltese puppy dogs, and in men which were no men.

The Sybarites used to wear also garments made of Milesian wool, from which there arose a great friendship between the two cities, as Timæus relates. For of the inhabitants of Italy, the Milesians gave the preference to the Tyrrhenians, and of foreigners to the Ionians, because they were devoted to luxury. But the cavalry of the Sybarites, being in number more than five thousand, used to go in procession with saffron-coloured robes over their breastplates; and in the summer their younger men used to go away to the caves of the Lusiades Nymphs, and live there in all kinds of luxury. And whenever the rich men of that country left the city for the country, although they always travelled in chariots, still they used to consume three days in a day's journey. And some of the roads which led to their villas in the country were covered with awnings all over; and a great many of them had cellars near the sea, into which their wine was brought by canals from the country, and some of it was then sold out of the district, but some was brought into the city in boats. They also celebrate in public numbers of feasts; and they honour those who display great magnificence on such occasions with golden crowns, and they proclaim their names at the public sacrifices and games; announcing not only their general goodwill towards the city, but also the great magnificence which they had displayed in the feasts. And on these occasions they even crown those cooks who have served up the most exquisite dishes. And among the Sybarites there were found baths in which, while they lay down, they were steamed with warm vapours. And they were the first people who introduced the custom of bringing chamber-pots into entertainments. But laughing at those who left their countries to travel in foreign lands, they themselves used to boast that they had grown old without ever having crossed the bridges which led over their frontier rivers.

But it seems to me, that besides the fact of the riches of the Sybarites, the very natural character of their country,— since there are no harbours on their coasts, and since, in consequence, nearly all the produce of the land is consumed by the citizens themselves,—and to some extent also an oracle of the God, has excited them all to luxury, and has cased them to live in practices of most immoderate dissoluteness. 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

an man who, living at Sybaris, wishes not to die before his time, ought never to see the sun either rise or set.

1. You shall be happy, Sybarite,—very happy,
2. And all your time in entertainments pass,
3. While you continue to th' immortal gods
4. The worship due: but when you come, at length,
5. To honour mortal man beyond the gods,
6. Then foreign war and intestine sedition
7. Shall come upon you, and shall crush your city.

But they had carried their luxury to such a pitch that they had taught even their horses to dance at their feasts to the music of the flute. Accordingly the people of Crotona,

And Charon of Lampsacus tells a similar story about the Cardians, in the second book of his Annals, writing as follows:—

The Bisaltæ invaded the territory of the Cardians, and conquered them. But the general of the Bisaltæ was Onaris; and he, while he was a boy, had been sold as a slave in Cardia; and having lived as a slave to one of the Cardians, he had been taught the trade of a barber. And the Cardians had an oracle warning them that the Bisaltæ would some day invade them; and they very often used to talk over this oracle while sitting in this barber's shop. And Onaris, escaping from Cardia to his own country, prompted the Bisaltæ to invade the Cardians, and was himself elected general of the Bisaltæ. But all the Cardians had been in the habit of teaching their horses to dance at their feasts to the music of the flute; and they, standing on their hind feet, used to dance with their fore feet in time to the airs which they had been taught. Onaris then, knowing these things, got a female fluteplayer from among the Cardians. And this female fluteplayer coming to the Bisaltæ, taught many of their fluteplayers; and when they had learnt sufficiently, he took them in his army against the Cardians. And when the battle took place, he ordered the fluteplayers to play the airs which they had learnt, and which the horses of the Cardians knew. And when the horses heard the flute, they stood up on their hind feet, and took to dancing. But the main strength of the Cardians was in their cavalry, and so they were conquered.

And one of the Sybarites, once wishing to sail over to Crotona, hired a vessel to carry him by himself, on condition that no one was to splash him, and that no one else was to be taken on board, and that he might take his horse with him. And when the captain of the ship had agreed to these terms, he put his horse on board, and ordered some straw to be

I have already stipulated with the captain of the ship to keep along the shore.

I should have had great difficulty in complying with your wishes if you had been going to walk along the seashore, much less can I do so when you are going to sail along the land.

But Phylarchus, in the twenty-fifth book of his History, (having said that there was a law at Syracuse, that the women should not wear golden ornaments, nor garments embroidered with flowers, nor robes with purple borders, unless they professed that they were public prostitutes; and that there was another law, that a man should not adorn his person, nor wear any extraordinarily handsome robes, different from the rest of the citizens, unless he meant to confess that he was. an adulterer and a profligate: and also, that a freewoman was not to walk abroad when the sun had set, unless she was going to commit adultery; and even by day they were not allowed to go out without the leave of the regulators of the women, and without one female servant following them,)— Phylarchus, I say, states, that

the Sybarites, having given loose to their luxury, made a law that women might be invited to banquets, and that those who intended to invite them to sacred festivities must make preparation a year before, in order that they might have all that time to provide themselves with garments and other ornaments in a suitable manner worthy of the occasion, and so might come to the banquet to which they were invited. And if any confectioner or cook invented any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make this for a year; but he alone who invented it was entitled to all the profit to be derived from the manufacture of it for that time; in order that others might be in- duced to labour at excelling in such pursuits. And the same way, it was provided that those who sold eels were not to be liable to pay tribute, nor those who caught them either. And in the same way the laws exempted from all burdens those who dyed the marine purple and those who imported it.