Deipnosophistae

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.

They, then, having carried their luxury and insolence to a great height, at last, when thirty ambassadors came to them from the people of Crotona, slew them all, and threw

The Sybarites having put down the tyranny of Telys, and having destroyed all those who had exercised authority, met them and slew them at the altars of the gods. And at the sight of this slaughter the statue of Juno turned itself away, and the floor sent up a fountain of blood, so that they were forced to cover all the place around with brazen tablets, wishing to stop the rising of the blood: on which account they were all driven from their city and destroyed. And they had also been desirous to obscure the glory of the famous games at Olympia; for watching the time when they are celebrated, they attempted to draw over the athletes to their side by the extravagance of the prizes which they offered.

And the men of Crotona, as Timæus says, after they had destroyed the people of Sybaris, began to indulge in luxury; so that their chief magistrate went about the city clad in a purple robe, and wearing a golden crown on his head, and wearing also white sandals. But some say that this was not done out of luxury, but owing to Democedes the physician, who was by birth a native of Crotona; and who having lived with Polycrates the tyrant of Samos, and having been taken prisoner by the Persians after his death, was taken to the king of Persia, after Orœtes had put Polycrates to death. And Democedes, having cured Atossa, the wife of Darius, and daughter of Cyrus, who had a complaint in her breast, asked of her this reward, to be sent back to Greece, on condition of returning again to Persia; and having obtained his request he came to Crotona. And as he wished to remain there, when some Persian laid hold of him and said that he was a slave of the king of Persia, the Crotonians took him away, and having stripped the Persian of his robe, dressed the lictor of their chief magistrate in it. And

But Clearchus, in the fourth book of his Lives, says that the people of Tarentum, being a very valiant and powerful people, carried their luxury to such a height, that they used to make their whole body smooth, and that they were the first people who set other nations an example of this smoothness. They also, says he, all wore very beautiful fringes on their garments; such as those with which now the life of woman is refined. And afterwards, being led on by their luxury to insolence, they overthrew a city of the Iapyges, called Carbina, and collected all the boys and maidens, and women in the flower of their age, out of it into the temples of the Carbinians; and building tents there, they exposed them naked by day for all who chose to come and look at them, so that whoever pleased, leaping, as it were, on this unfortunate band, might satiate his appetites with the beauty of those who were there assembled, in the sight of every one, and above all of the Gods, whom they were thinking of but little. And this aroused the indignation of the Deity, so that he struck all the Tarentines who behaved so impiously in Carbina with his thunderbolts. And even to this day at Tarentum every one of the houses has the same number of pillars before its doors as that of the people whom it received back of those who were sent to Iapygia. And, when the day comes which is the anniversary of their death, they do not bewail those who perished at those pillars, nor do they offer the libations which are customary in other cases, but they offer sacrifices to Jupiter the Thunderer.

Now the race of the Iapygians came originally from Crete, being descended from those Cretans who came to seek for Glaucus, and settled in that part of Italy; but afterwards, they, forgetting the orderly life of the Cretans came to such a pitch of luxury, and from thence to such a degree

But the Spaniards, although they go about in robes like those of the tragedians, and richly embroidered, and in tunics which reach down to the feet, are not at all hindered by their dress from displaying their vigour in war; but the people of Massilia became very effeminate, wearing the same highly ornamented kind of dress which the Spaniards used to wear; but they behave in a shameless manner, on account of the effeminacy of their souls, behaving like women, out of luxury: from which the proverb has gone about,—May you sail to Massilia. And the inhabitants of Siris, which place was first inhabited by people who touched there on their return from Troy, and after them by the Colophonians, as Timæus and Aristotle tell us, indulged in luxury no less than the Sybarites; for it was a peculiar national custom of theirs to wear embroidered tunics, which they girded up with expensive girdles (μίτραι); and on this account they were called by the inhabitants of the adjacent countries μιτροχίτωνες, since Homer calls those who have no girdles ἀμιτροχίτωνες. And Archilochus the poet marvelled beyond anything at the country of the Siritans, and at their prosperity. Accordingly, speaking of Thasos as inferior to Siris, he says—

1. For there is not on earth a place so sweet,
2. Or lovely, or desirable as that
3. Which stands upon the stream of gentle Siris.

But the Milesians, as long as they abstained from luxury, conquered the Scythians,

1. Once on a time Milesians were brave."

1. My heart is grieved for the defenceless Gergithæ,
2. So helplessly destroy'd; and for the fate
3. Of the poor pitch-clad bands, and for the tree
4. Which never more shall flourish or bear fruit.

Keep at home your native Milesian wares, and publish them not.

And concerning the Scythians, Clearchus, in what follows these last words, proceeds to say—-"The nation of the Scythians was the first to use common laws; but after that, they became in their turn the most miserable of all nations, on account of their insolence: for they indulged in luxury to a degree in which no other nation did, being prosperous in everything, and having great resources of all sorts for such indulgences. And this is plain from the traces which exist of it to this day in the apparel worn, and way of life practised, by their chief men. For they, being very luxurious, and indeed being the first men who abandoned themselves wholly to luxury, proceeded to such a pitch of insolence that they used to cut off the noses of all the men wherever they came; and their descendants, after they emigrated to other countries, even now derive their name from this treatment. But their wives used to tattoo the wives of the Thracians, (of those Thracians, that is, who lived on the northern and western frontiers of Scythia,) all over their bodies, drawing figures on them with the tongues of their buckles; on which account, many years afterwards, the wives of the Thracians who had been treated in this manner effaced this disgrace in a peculiar manner of their own, tattooing also all the rest of their skin all over, in order that by this means the brand of disgrace and insult which was imprinted on their bodies, being multiplied in so various a manner, might efface the reproach by being called an ornament. And they lorded it over all other nations in so tyrannical a manner, that the offices of slavery, which are painful enough to all men, made it plain to all succeeding ages what was the real character of

a Scythian command.

Therefore, on account of the number of disasters which oppressed them, since every people had lost, through grief, all the comforts of life, and all their hair at the same time, foreign nations called all cutting of the hair which is done by way of insult, ἀποσκυθίζομαι.

And Callias, or Diocles, (whichever was the author of the Cyclopes), ridiculing the whole nation of the Ionians in that play, says—

1. What has become of that luxurious
2. Ionia, with the sumptuous supper-tables?
3. Tell me, how does it fare?

1. A. I do rejoice when I behold an army
2. From o'er the sea,—to see how soft they are
3. And delicate to view, with flowing hair,
4. And well-smooth'd muscles in their tender arms.
5. B. Have you heard Abydus has become a man?

1. Then all the other eminent foreigners
2. Who were at hand, kept following steadily,
3. And much they press'd him, begging he would take
4. The boy with him to Chios, and there sell him:
5. Another hoped he'd take him to Clazomenæ;
6. A third was all for Ephesus; a fourth
7. Preferred Abydus on the Hellespont:
8. And all these places in his way did lie.

After you had been considered by your guardians old enough to be your own master, you, receiving your property from their hands, went away by sea to Abydus,—not for the purpose of transacting any private business of your own, nor on account of any commission of the state respecting any public rights of hospitality; but, led only by your own lawless and intemperate disposition, to learn lascivious habits and actions from the women at Abydus, in order that you might be able to put them in practice during the remainder of your life.

The Magnesians also, who lived on the banks of the Meander, were undone because they indulged in too much luxury, as Callinus relates in his Elegies; and Archilochus confirms this: for the city of Magnesia was taken by the Ephesians. And concerning these same Ephesians, Democritus, who was himself an Ephesian, speaks in the First book of his treatise on the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; where, relating their excessive effeminacy, and the dyed garments which they used to wear, he uses these expressions:—

And as for the violet and purple robes of the Ionians, and their

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saffron garments, embroidered with round figures, those are known to every one; and the caps which they wear on their heads are in like manner embroidered with figures of animals. They wear also garments called sarapes, of yellow, or scarlet, or white, and some even of purple: and they wear also long robes called calasires, of Corinthian workmanship; and some of these are purple, and some violet-coloured, and some hyacinth-coloured; and one may also see some which are of a fiery red, and others which are of a sea-green colour. There are also Persian calasires, which are the most beautiful of all. And one may see also,

the garments which they call actææ; and the actæa is the most costly of all the Persian articles of dress: and this actæa is woven for the sake of fineness and of strength, and it is ornamented all over with golden millet-grains; and all the millet-grains have knots of purple thread passing through the middle, to fasten them inside the garment.

But Duris, speaking concerning the luxury of the Samians, quotes the poems of Asius, to prove that they used to wear armlets on their arms; and that, when celebrating the festival of the Heræa, they used to go about with their hair carefully combed down over the back of their head and over their shoulders; and he says that this is proved to have been their regular practice by this proverb—

To go, like a worshipper of Juno, with his hair braided.

Now the verses of Asius run as follows:—-

1. And they march'd, with carefully comb'd hair
2. To the most holy spot of Juno's temple,
3. Clad in magnificent robes, whose snow-white folds
4. Reach'd to the ground of the extensive earth,
5. And golden knobs on them like grasshoppers,
6. And golden chaplets loosely held their hair,
7. Gracefully waving in the genial breeze;
8. And on their arms were armlets, highly wrought,
9. . . . . . . . . . and sung
10. The praises of the mighty warrior.

But the Colophonians (as Phylarchus says), who ori-

1. They learnt all sorts of useless foolishness
2. From the effeminate Lydians, while they
3. Were held in bondage to sharp tyranny.
4. They went into the forum richly clad
5. In purple garments, in numerous companies,
6. Whose strength was not less than a thousand men,
7. Boasting of hair luxuriously dress'd,
8. Dripping with costly and sweet-smelling oils.

that a thousand men of that city used to walk about the city, wearing purple garments, which was at that time a colour rare even among kings, and greatly sought after; for purple was constantly sold for its weight in silver. And so, owing to these practices, they fell under the power of tyrants, and became torn by factions, and so were undone with their country.

1. Say, from what country do you come, what land
2. Call you your home? Is this a delicate
3. Luxurious band of long and soft-robed men
4. From cities of Ionia that here approaches?

And Theopompus, in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip, says that some of those tribes which live on the sea-coast are exceedingly luxurious in their manner of

But the Byzantians, because they had been governed a long time by a democracy, and because their city was so situated as to be a kind of mart, and because the whole people spent the whole of their time in the market-place and about the harbour, were very intemperate, and in the constant habit of feasting and drinking at the wine-sellers'. But the Chalcedonians, before they became members of the same city with them, were men who at all times cultivated better habits and principles of life; but after they had tasted of the democracy of the Byzantians, they fell into ruinous luxury, and, from having been most temperate and moderate in their daily life, they became a nation of hard drinkers, and very extravagant.

But speaking about the Thessalians, in his fourth book, he says that

they spend all their time among dancing women and flute-playing women, and some spend all the day in dice and drinking, and similar pastimes; and they are more anxious how they may display their tables loaded with all kinds of food, than how they may exhibit a regular and orderly life. But the Pharsalians,

are of all men the most indolent and the most extravagant.

But concerning the Aetolians, Polybius tells us, in the thirteenth book of his History, that on account of their continual wars, and the extravagance of their lives, they became involved in debt. And Agatharchides, in the twelfth book of his Histories, says—

The Aetolians are so much the more ready to encounter death, in proportion as they seek to live extravagantly and with greater prodigality than any other nation.

But the Sicilians, and especially the Syracusans, are

1. But after that I sent you, you did not
2. Learn this at all; but only learnt to drink,
3. And sing loose songs at Syracusan feasts,
4. And how to share in Sybaritic banquets,
5. And to drink Chian wine in Spartan cups.

It was with this intention that I went to Italy and Sicily, when I paid my first visit there. But when I got there, the way of life that I found there was not at all pleasing to me; for twice in the day they eat to satiety, and they never sleep alone at night; and they indulge also in all other such practices as naturally follow on such habits: for, after such habits as these, no man in all the world, who has been bred up in them from his youth, can possibly turn out sensible; and as for being temperate and virtuous, that none of them ever think of.

But Posidonius, in the sixteenth book of his Histories, speaking of the cities in Syria, and saying how luxurious they were, writes as follows:—

The inhabitants of the towns, on account of the great fertility of the land, used to derive great revenues from their estates, and after their labours for necessary things used to celebrate frequent entertainments, at which they feasted incessantly, using their gymnasia for baths, and anointing themselves with very costly oils and perfumes; and they passed all their time in their γραμματεῖα, for that was the name which they gave to their public banqueting-rooms, as if they had been their own private houses; and the greater part of the day they remained in tem, filling their bellies with meat and drink, so as even to carry away a good deal to eat at home; and they delighted their ears with the music of a noisy lyre, so that whole cities resounded with such noises.

The Arycandians of Lycia,

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being neighbours of the Limyres, having got involved in debt, on account of the intemperance and extravagance of their way of living, and, by reason of their indolence and devotion to pleasure, being unable to discharge their debts, placed all their hopes on Mithridates, thinking that he would reward them with a general abolition of debts.

And Polybius, in his seventh book, says, that the inhabitants of Capua in Campania, having become exceedingly rich through the excellence of their soil, fell into habits of luxury and extravagance, exceeding all that is reported of the inhabitants of Crotona or Sybaris.

Accordingly,

they, not being able to bear their present prosperity, called in Hannibal, owing to which act they afterwards suffered intole- rable calamities at the hands of the Romans. But the people of Petelia, who kept the promises which they had made to the Romans, behaved with such resolution and fortitude when besieged by Hannibal, that they did not surrender till they had eaten all the hides which there were in the city, and the bark and young branches of all the trees which grew in the city, and till they had endured a siege for eleven months, without any one coming to their assistance; and they did not even then surrender without the permission of the Romans.

And Phylarchus, in the eleventh book of his History, says that Aeschylus says that the Curetes derived their name from their luxurious habits—

1. And their luxurious curls, like a fond girl's,
2. On which account they call'd him κουρῆτες. [*](From κείρω, to cut and dress the hair.)

1. At least (say they) we cut and dress'd our hair,
2. To be an evidence of our luxury,
3. A lovely action of a cheerful mind;
4. And thence we gain'd the glory of a name,—
5. To be κουρῆτες, from our well-cut (κούριμος) hair."

But of individual instances I have heard tile following stories:—Ctesias, in the third book of his History of Persia, says, that all those who were ever kings in Asia devoted themselves mainly to luxury; and above all of them, Ninyas did so, the son of Ninus and Semiramis. He, therefore, remaining in-doors and living luxuriously, was never seen by any one, except by his eunuchs and by his own women.

And another king of this sort was Sardanapalus, whom some call the son of Anacyndaraxes, and others the son of Anabaxarus. And so, when Arbaces, who was one of the generals under him, a Mede by birth, endeavoured to manage, by the assistance of one of the eunuchs, whose name was Sparamizus, to see Sardanaplus; and when he with difficulty prevailed upon him, with the consent of the king himself,—when the Mede entered and saw him, pointed with vermilion and adorned like a woman, sitting among his concubines carding purple wool, and sitting among them with his feet up, wearing a woman's robe, and with his beard carefully scraped, and his face smoothed with pumice-stone (for he was whiter than milk, and pencilled under his eyes and eyebrows; and when he saw Arbaces, he was just putting a little more white under his eyes), most historians, among whom Duris is one, relate that Arbaces, being indignant at his countrymen being ruled over by such a monarch as that, stabbed him and slew him. But Ctesias says that he went to war with him, and collected a great army, and then that Sardanapalus, being dethroned by Arbaces, died, burning himself alive in his palace, having heaped up a funeral pile four plethra in extent, on which he placed a hundred and fifty golden couches, and a corresponding number of tables, these, too, being all made of gold. And he also erected on the funeral pile a chamber a hundred feet long, made of wood; and in it he had couches spread, and there he himself lay down with his wife, and his concubines lay on other couches around. For he had sent on his three sons and his daughters, when he saw that his affairs were getting in a dangerous state, to Nineveh, to the king of that city, giving them three thousand talents

But Clearchus, relating the history of the king of Persia, says that—

in a very prudent manner he proposed prizes for any one who could invent any delicious food. For this is what, I imagine, is meant by the brains of Jupiter and the king. On which account,

Sardanapalus was the most happy of all monarchs, who during his whole life preferred enjoyment to everything else, and who, even after his death, shows by his fingers, in the figure carved on his tomb, how much ridicule all human affairs deserve, being not worth the snap of his fingers which he makes . . . . . . . . anxiety about other things.

However, Sardanapalus does not appear to have lived all his life in entire inaction; for the inscription on his tomb says—-

1. Sardanapalus
2. The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes,
3. In one day built Anchiale and Tarsus;
4. But now he's dead.

1. I was the king, and while I lived on earth,
2. And saw the bright rays of the genial sun,
3. I ate and drank and loved; and knew full well
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4. The time that men do live on earth was brief,
5. And liable to many sudden changes,
6. Reverses, and calamities. Now others
7. Will have th' enjoyment of my luxuries,
8. Which I do leave behind me. For these reasons
9. I never ceased one single day from pleasure.

1. Sardanapalus
2. The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes,
3. In one day built Anchiale and Tarsus.
4. Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth e'en this,—

this