Deipnosophistae

Athenaeus of Naucratis

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

But whence could Ulpian know what Stratonicus the harp-player said about Propis the Rhodian harp-player? For Clearchus, in his book on Proverbs, says that Stratonicus, when he had seen Propis, who was a man of great size, but a very inferior artist, with a mind much less than his body, said to some one who asked him what sort of player he was,

οὐδεὶς κακὸς μέγας ἰχθῖς·

speaking enigmatically, and saying, first of all, that he is οὐδεὶς, no one, or good for nothing; secondly, that he is κακὸς, bad; and, in addition to this, that he is μέγας, great; and, lastly, ἰχθὺς, a fish, as having no voice. But Theophrastus, in his book on The Laughable, says that this was a proverb originating with Stratonicus, but applied to Simmychas the actor; for that he uttered the proverb, dividing the words distinctly—

μέγας οὐδεὶς σαπρὸς ἰχθῦς.

And Aristotle, in his Constitution of the Naxians, speaks thus of this proverb—

Of the rich men among the Naxians, the greater part lived in the city, but the remainder lived scattered about in the villages. Accordingly, in one of these villages, the name of which was Lestadæ, Telestagoras lived, a man of great riches and of very high reputation, and greatly honoured by the people in other respects, and also with daily presents which they used to send him. And whenever people from the city, going down to the market, wanted to drive a hard bargain for anything they wished to purchase, the sellers would say that they would rather give it to Telestagoras than sell it for such a price as was offered. So some young men, buying a large fish, when the fisherman made this speech, being annoyed at hearing this so often, having already drunk a good deal, went to his house to sup; and Telestagoras received them in a very friendly and hospitable manner, but the young men insulted him, and his two marriageable daughters. At which the Naxians were very indignant, and took up arms and attacked the young men; and there was a great sedition, Lygdamis being the leader of the Naxians, who, having got the chief command in this sedition, became the tyrant of his country.

And I do not think it unseasonable myself, since I

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have mentioned the harp-player Stratonicus, to say some- thing also concerning his readiness in repartee. For when he was teaching people to play the harp, and as he had in his school nine statues of the nine Muses, and one of Apollo, and had also two pupils, when some one asked him how many pupils he had, he said,

Gods and all, twelve.

And once when he had travelled to Mylassa, and saw thee a great number of temples, but very few citizens, standing in the middle of the forum, he cried out—

ʼἀκούετε ναοί.[*](This was a parody on the first words of the crier's usual proclama- ion,—ʼἀκούετε λαοὶ,—Hear, O people. ναοὶ means temples.)

And Macho has recorded some memorials of him in these lines;—

Once Stratonicus travell'd down to Pella,
And having heard from many men before
That the baths of that city were accustom'd
To give the bathers spleen; and finding, too,
That many of the youths did exercise
Before the fire, who preserved their colour
And vigour of their body unimpair'd;
He said that those who told him so were wrong.
But finding afterwards, when he left the bath,
A man whose spleen was twice his belly's size,—
This man,
said he, "appears to me here now
To sit and keep the garments of the men
Who go to bathe, and all their spleens beside,
That all the people may have room enough."
A miserable singer once did give
A feast to Stratonicus and his friends,
And, while the cup was freely going round,
Exhibited his art to all the company.
And as the feast was rich and liberal,'
Poor Stratonicus, wearied with the song,
And having no one near him he could speak to,
Knock'd down his cup, and asked for a larger.
And when he'd drunk full many a draught, he made
A last libation to the glorious sun,
And then composed himself to sleep, and left
The rest to fortune. Presently more guests
Came, as good luck would have it, to the singer,
To feast with him; still Stratonicus slept,
Heavy with wine; and when they ask'd him why
A man so much accustom'd to drink wine
Had been so soon o'ercome by drink this day,
This treacherous, cursed singing man,
said he,
"Treated me like a bullock in a stall;
For first he fed me up, and then he kill'd me."
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Once Stratonicus to Abdera went,
To see some games which there were celebrated;
And seeing every separate citizen
Having a private crier to himself,
And each of them proclaiming a new moon
Whene'er he pleased, so that the criers were
Quite out of all proportion to the citizens,
He walk'd about on tiptoes through the city,
Looking intently on the ground beneath.
And when some stranger ask'd him what had happen'd
To his feet, to make him look so gravely at them:—
He said, "I'm very well all over, friend,
And can run faster to an entertainment
Than any parasite; but I'm in fear
Lest I should tread by hazard on some κῆρυξ, [*](κῆρυξ means, not only a crier, but also a prickly instrument of torture.)
And pierce my foot with its spikes and lame myself."
Once, when a wretched flute-player was preparing
To play the flute at a sacred festival,
Let us have only sounds of omen good,
Said Stratonicus; "let us pour libations
And pray devoutly to the mighty gods."
There was a harper, and his name was Cleon,
But he was nick-named Ox; he sang most vilely
Without th' accompaniment of the lyre.
When Stratonicus heard him, then he said,
"I've often heard of asses at the lyre,
But now I see an ox in the same case."
The harper Stratonicus once had sail'd
To Pontus, to see king Berisadæs.
And when he'd staid in Pontus long enough,
He thought he would return again to Greece.
But when the king refused to let him go,
They say that Stratonicus said to him—
Why, do you mean to stay here long yourself?
The harper Stratonicus once was staying
Some time at Corinth; when an aged woman
One day stood looking at him a long time,
And would not take her eyes off: then said he,
"Tell me, I pray you, in God's name, good mother,
What is 't you wish, and why you look thus on me?"
I marvell'd,
said she, "how 'twas your mother
Held you nine months, without her belly bursting,
While this town can't endure you one whole day."
Fair Biothea, Nicotheon's wife,
Once at a party with a handmaid fair
Made some strange noise; and after that, by chance,
She trod upon a Sicyonian almond.
Then Stratonicus said,
The noise is different.

But when night came, for this heedless word,
He wash'd out his free-speaking in the sea.
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Once, when at Ephesus, as rumour goes,
A stupid harper was exhibiting
One of his pupils to a band of friends;
Stratonicus, who by chance was present, said,
"He cannot make himself a harp-player,
And yet he tries to teach the art to others."

And Clearchus, in the second book of his treatise on Friendship, says,—

Stratonicus the harp-player, whenever he wished to go to sleep, used to order a slave to bring him something to drink; 'not,' says he, 'because I am thirsty now, but that I may not be presently.'

And once, at Byzantium, when a harp-player had played his prelude well, but had made a blunder of the rest of the performance, he got up and made proclamation,

That whoever would point out the harp-player who had played the prelude should receive a thousand drachmæ.

And when he was once asked by some one who were the wickedest people, he said,

That in Pamphylia, the people of Phaselis were the worst; but that the Sidetæ were the worst in the whole world.

And when he was asked again, according to the account given by Hegesander, which were the greatest barbarians, the Bœotians or the Thessalians, he said,

The Eleans.

And once he erected a trophy in his school, and put this inscription on it—

Over the bad harpplayers.

And once, being asked by some one which was the safer kind of vessel, the long one or the round one,—

Those,

quoth he,

are the safest which are in dock.

And once he made a display of his art at Rhodes, and no one applauded; on which he left the theatre, and when he had got into the air he said,

When you fail to give what costs you nothing, how can I expect any solid pay from you?

Let the Eleans,

said he,

celebrate gymnastic contests, and let the Corinthians establish choral, and the Athenians theatrical exhibitions; and if any one of them does anything wrong, let the Lacedæmonians be scourged,

—jesting upon the public scourgings exhibited in that city, a Charicles relates, in the first book of his treatise on the Cit Contests. And when Ptolemy the king was talking with him in an ambitious kind of way about harp-playing,

Te sceptre,

said he,

Oking, is one thing, and the plectrum another;

as Capito the epic poet says in the fourth book of his Commentaries addressed to Philopappus. And once being invited to hear a flute-player, after he had heard him, he said—

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The father granted half his prayer,
The other half denied.

And when some one asked him which half he granted, he said,

He granted to him to play very badly, and denied him the ability to sing well.

And once, when a beam fell down and slew some wicked man,

O Men,

said he,

I think (δοκῶ) there are gods; and if not, there are beams (δόκοι).

Also, after the before-mentioned witticisms of Stratonicus, he put down besides a list of these things following.

Stratonicus said once to the father of Chrysogonus, when he was saying that he had everything at home in great abundance, for that he himself had undertaken the works, and that of his sons, one could teach[*](There is meant here to be a pun on διδάσκω, which means to teach, and also to exhibit a play. ) and another play the flute;

You still,

said Stratonicus,

want one thing.

And when the other asked him what that was,

You want,

said he,

a theatre in your house.

And when some one asked him why he kept travelling over the whole of Greece, and did not remain in one city, he said—

That he had received from the Muses all the Greeks as his wages, from whom he was to levy a tax to atone for their ignorance.

And he said that Phaon did not play harmony,[*](There is an allusion here to Harmonia the wife of Cadmus.) but Cadmus. And when Phaon pretended to great skill on the flute, and said that he had a chorus at Megara,

You are joking,

said he;

for you do not possess anything there, but you are possessed yourself.

And he said—

That he marvelled above all things at the mother of Satyrus the Sophist, because she had borne for nine months a man whom no city in all Greece could bear for nine days.

And once, hearing that he had arrived in Ilium at the time of the Ilian games,

There are,

said he,

always troubles in Ilium.

And when Minnacus was disputing with him about music, he said—

That he was not attending to what he said, because he had got in above his ankles.

At another time he said of a bad physician—

That he made those who were attended by him go to the shades below the very day they came to him.

And having met one of his acquaintances, when he saw his sandals carefully sponged, he pitied him as being badly off, pretending to think that he would never have had his sandals so well sponged if he had not sponged them himself. And as it was a very mixed

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race of people who lived at Teichius, a town in the Milesian territory, when he saw that all the tombs about were those of foreigners,

Let us begone, O boy,

said he;

or all the strangers, as it seems, die here, and none of the citizens.

And when Zethus the harper was giving a lecture upon music, he said that he was the only person who was utterly unfit to discuss the subject of music, inasmuch as he had chosen the most unmusical of all names, and called himself; Zethus[*](Zethus was the name of the brother of Amphion.) instead of Amphion. And once, when he was teaching some Macedonian to play on the harp, being angry that he did nothing as he ought, he said,

Go to Macedonia.

And when he saw the shrine of some hero splendidly adorned, close to a cold and worthless bathing-house, when he came out, having had a very bad bath,

I do not wonder,

said he,

that many tablets are dedicated here; for every one of the bathers naturally offers one, as having been saved from drowning.

And at another time he said—,

In Aenus there are eight months of cold and four of winter.

At another time he said,

that the people of Pontus had come out of a great sea

—as though he had said (great) trouble. And he called the Rhodians White Cyrenæans, and the city he called the City of Suitors; and Heraclea he called the Man- Corinth; and Byzantium he called the Arm-pit of Greece; and the Leucadians were Stale Corinthians; and the Ambraciotes he called Membraciotes. And when he had gone out of the gates of Heraclea, and was looking round him, when some one asked him what he was looking at, he said that

he was ashamed of being seen, as if he were coming out of a brothel.

And once, seeing two men bound in the stocks, he said—

This is suited to the disposition of a very insignificant city, not to be able to fill such a place as this.

And once he said to a man who professed to be a musician, but who had been a gardener before, and who was disputing with him about harmony,—

Let each man sing the art in which he's skilled.

And once at Maronea, when he was drinking with some people, he said,—

That he could tell in what part of the city he was, if men led him through it blindfold;

and then when they did so lead him, and asked him where he was,

Near the eating-house,

said he, because all Maronea seemed

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a mere eating-house. And once, when he was sitting next to Telephanes, and he was beginning to blow the flute, he said,

Higher, like men who belch.

And when the bathing-man in Cardia brought him some bad earth and salt water to cleanse himself with, he said that he was being besieged both by land and sea.

And when he had conquered his competitors at Sicyon, he set up a trophy in the temple of Aesculapius, and wrote upon it,

Stratonicus, conqueror of those who played badly on the harp.

And when some one had sung, he asked what tune he had been singing; and when he said that it was an air of Carcinus,[*](καρκῖνος is also Greek for a crab.)

More like that,

said he,

than the air of a man.

He also said, on another occasion, that there was no spring at Maronea, only heat. And once at Phaselis, when the bathing-man was wrangling with his boy about the money, (for the law was that foreigners should pay more for bathing than natives,)

Oh, you wretched boy!

said he,

you have almost made me a citizen of Phaselis, to save a halfpenny.

And once, when a person was praising him in hopes to get something by it, he said,

that he himself was a greater beggar.

And once, when he was teaching in a small town, he said,

This is not a city (πόλις), but hardly one (μόλις).

And once, when he was at Pella, he came to a well, and asked whether it was fit to drink; and when those who were drawing water from it said,

At all events we drink it;

Then,

said he,

I am sure it is not fit to drink:

for the men happened to be very sallow-looking. And when he had heard the poem of Timotheus, on the subject of Semele in Labour, he said,

But if she had brought forth an artisan, and not a god, what sounds would she have uttered!

And when Polyidas was giving himself airs, because his pupil Philotas had beaten Timotheus, he said,

That he wondered at his being so ignorant as not to know that he makes decrees, and Timotheus laws.

And he said to Areus the harp-player, who was annoying him,

Play to the crows.

[*](ψάλλʼ ἐς κόρακας, parodying the common execration, βάλλʼ ἐς κόρακας. ) And once he was at Sicyon, when a leather-dresser was abusing him, and he said to the leather-dresser (νακοδέψης),

O you κακόδαιμον νακόδαιμον.

And Stratonicus himself, beholding the Rhodians dissolved in luxury, and drinking only warm drinks, said,

that there were white Cyrenæans.

And he

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called Rhodes itself the City of the Suitors,[*](Alluding to the intemperance of the suitors of Pen lope, as de- scribed in the Odyssey.) thinking that they were in no respect different from the Cyrenæans in debauchery, but only in complexion; and also because of the devotion to pleasure of the inhabitants, he compared Rhodes itself to the city of the Suitors.

And Stratonicus was, in all these elaborate witticisms, an imitator of Simonides the poet, as Ephorus tells us in the second book of his treatise on Inventions; who says that Philoxenus of Cythera was also a great studier of the same pursuit. And Phænias the Peripatetic, in the second book of his treatise on Poets, says—

Stratonicus the Athenian appears to have been the first person who introduced the system of playing chords into the simple harp-playing; and he was the first man who ever took pupils in music, and who ever composed tables of music. And he was also a man of no small brilliancy as a wit.

He says also that he was eventually put to death by Nicocles, the King of the Cyprians, on account of the freedom of his witticisms, being compelled to drink poison, because he had turned the sons of the king into ridicule.

But I marvel at Aristotle, whom these wise men, my excellent Democritus, are so incessantly speaking of and praising, (and whose writings you also esteem highly, as you do those of the other philosophers and orators,) on account of his great accuracy: and I should like to know when he learnt, or from what Proteus or Nereus who came up from the depths he found out, what fish do, or how they go to sleep, or how they live: for all these things he has told us in his writings, so as to be, in the words of the comic poets,

a wonder to fools;

for he says that the ceryx, and indeed that the whole race of shell-fish, are propagated without copulation; and that the purple-fish and the ceryx are longlived. For how could he know that the purple-fish lives six years? and how could he know that the viper takes a long time to propagate his species? or that of all its tribe the longest at that work is the pigeon, the next the œnas, and the quickest is the turtle-dove? And whence did he learn that the horse lives five-and-thirty years, but the mare more than forty? saying, too, that some have lived even seventy-five years. And he also states that from the copulation of lice there are

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born nits; and that from a worm, after its change, there is produced a caterpillar, from which comes the humble-bee, and from that the larva of the silk-worm. And he also says that bees live to six years of age, and that some live even seven years; and he says that neither bee nor wasp have ever been seen in the act of copulation, on which account no one can ever tell whether they are male or female. And from what did he learn that men are inferior to bees? for these latter always preserve an equal condition of life, being subject to no changes, but employing themselves without ceasing in the collection of honey, and doing that without having been taught by any one to do so: but men are inferior to bees, and as full of fancy as bees are of honey: how, then has Aristotle observed all these things? And in his treatise on Long Life, he says that a fly has been seen which had lived six or seven years. But what proof is there of this?

And where did he ever see ivy growing out of a stag's head? And again, owls and night-jars, he says, cannot see by day; on which account they hunt for their food by night, and they do this not during the whole night, but at the beginning of evening. And he says, too, that there are several different kinds of eyes, for some are blue, and some are black, and some are hazel. He says, too, that the eyes of men are of different characters, and that the differences of disposition may be judged of from the eyes; for that those men who have goats' eyes, are exceedingly sharp-sighted, and have the best dispositions. And of others, he says that some men have projecting eyes, and some have eyes deeply set, and some keep a mean between the two: and those whose eyes are deeply set, he says, have the sharpest sight, and those whose eyes project, must have the worst dispositions; and those who are moderate in these respects, are people, says he, of moderate dispositions. There are also some people whose eyes are always winking, and some who never wink at all, and some who do so in a moderate degree: and those who are always winking are shameless[*](Schweigh., referring to the passage here alluded to, (Hist. An. i. 10,) proposes to transpose these characteristics, so as to attribute shamelessness to those who do not wink, and fickleness to those who do.) people, and those who never wink at all are unstable and fickle, and those who wink in a moderate degree have the best disposition.

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He says also that man is the only animal which has its heart on the left side; and that all other animals have it in the middle of the body. And he says that males have more teeth than females; and he affirms that this has been noticed in the case of the sheep, and of the pig, and of the goat. And he says also that there is no fish which has testicles, and there is no fish which has a breast, and no bird ether; but that the only fish which has no gall is the dolphin. There are, however, some, says he, which have no gall in their liver, but they have it near their bowels; as the sturgeon, the synagris, the lamprey, the sword-fish, and the sea-swallow. But the amia has its gall spread over the whole of its entrails: and the hawk and the kite have theirs spread both over their liver and their entrails; but the ægocephalus has his gall both in his liver and in his stomach: and the pigeon, and the quail, and the swallow have theirs, some in their entrails, and some in their stomach.

Moreover, he says that all the molluscous fish, and the shell-fish, and the cartilaginous fish, and all insects, spend a long time in copulation; but that the dolphin and some other fish copulate lying alongside the female. And he says that the dolphins are very slow, but fish in general very quick. Again he says that the lion has very solid bones, and that if they are struck, fire comes from them as from flint stones. And that the dolphin has bones, but no spine; but that cartilaginous fish have both gristle and spine. And of animals he says that some are terrestrial and some aquatic; land that some even live in the fire; and that there are some, which he calls ephemera, which live only one day: and that there are some which are amphibious, such as the river-horse, and the crocodile, and the otter. And that all animals in general have two forefeet, but that the crab has four; and that all the animals which have blood are either without feet t all, or are bipeds, or quadrupeds; and that all the animals which have more than four feet are destitute of blood: n which account every animal which moves, moves by what he calls four tokens,—man by two hands and two feet, a bird by two feet and two wings, an eel and a conger by two fins and two joints. Moreover, some animals have hands, as a man has, and some appear to have hands, as a monkey does; or there is no brute beast which can really give and take, and it is for

v.2.p.558

those things that hands are given to men as instruments. Again, some animals have limbs, as a man, an ox, an ass; and some have no limbs, as a serpent, an oyster, the pulmo marinus. There are also many animals which are not always visible, such as those which hide in holes; and those which do not hide in holes are still not always visible, as swallows and cranes.