Symposium

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 1. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.

Most of the

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company were drunk by then, and the room was full of uproar. Dionysodorus the rhetorician was making speeches, pleading first on one side and then on the other, and was getting applauded by the servants who stood behind him. Histiaeus the grammarian, who had the place next him, was reciting verse, combining the lines of Pindar and Hesiod and Anacreon in such a way as to make out of them a single poem and a very funny one, especially in the part where he said, as though foretelling what was going to happen:
  1. They smote their shields together,
Iliad 4, 447. and
  1. Then lamentations rose, and vaunts of men.
Iliad 4, 450[*](Ausonius’ Cento Nupiialis, an epithalamium composed of tags from Vergil, illustrates Lucian’s meaning perfectly.) But Zenothemis was reading aloud from a closely written book that he had taken from his attendant.

When, as often happens, the service of the waiters was interrupted for a while, Aristaenetus planned to prevent even that period from being unentertaining and empty, and ordered the clown to come in and do or say something funny, in order to make his guests still merrier. In came an ugly fellow with his head shaven except for a few hairs that stood up straight on his crown. First he danced, doubling himself up and twisting himself about to cut a more ridiculous figure; then he beat time and recited scurrilous verses in an Egyptian brogue, and finally he began to poke fun at the guests.

The rest laughed when they were made fun of, but when he took a fling at Alcidamas in

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the same way, calling him a Maltese lapdog, [*](The joke here lies primarily in the play on κύων (Cynic), but it should also be borne in mind that the Greek name Melite was given not only to the island of Malta, but to the deme in Athens in which the worship of Heracles, the patron of the Cynic sect, was localised.) Alcidamas got angry: indeed, for a long time it had been plain that he was jealous because the other fellow was making a hit and holding the attention of the room. So, throwing off his philosopher’s cloak, he challenged him to fight, or else, he said, he would lay his staff on him. Then poor Satyrion, for that was the clown’s name, stood up to him and fought. It was delicious to see a philosopher squaring off at a clown, and giving and receiving blows in turn. Though some. of onlookers were disgusted, others kept laughing, until finally Alcidamas had enough of his punishment, well beaten by a tough little dwarf. So they got roundly laughed at.

At that point Dionicus, the doctor, came in, not long after the fray. He had been detained, he said, to attend a man who had gone crazy, Polyprepon the flute-player; and he told a funny story. He said that he had gone. into the man’s room without knowing that he was already affected by the trouble, and that Polyprepon, getting out of bed quickly, had locked the door, drawn a knife, handed him his flutes and told him to begin playing; and then, because he could not play, had beaten him with a strap on the palms of his hands. At last in the face of so great a peril, the doctor devised this scheme: he challenged him to a match, the loser to get a certain number of blows. First he himself played wretchedly, and then giving up the flutes to Polyprepon, he

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took the strap and the knife and threw them quickly out of the window into. the open court. Then, feeling safer, he grappled with him and called the neighbours, who prised the door open and rescued him. And he showed the marks of the blows, and a few scratches on his face. Dionicus, who had made no less of a hit than the clown, thanks to his story, squeezed himself in beside Histiaeus and fell to dining on what was left. His coming was a special dispensation, for he proved very useful in what followed.

You see, a servant came into the midst of us, saying that he was from Hetoemocles the Stoic and carrying a paper which he said his master had told him to read in public, so that everybody would hear, and then to go back again. On getting the consent of Aristaenetus, he went up to the lamp and began to read.

PHILO I suppose, Lycinus, that it was an address in praise of the bride, or else a wedding-song? They often write such pieces.

LYCINUS Of course we ourselves expected something of the sort, but it was far from that: its contents were :

"Hetoemocles the philosopher to Aristaenetus.

“How I feel about dining out, my whole past life can testify; for although every day I am pestered by many men much richer than you are, nevertheless I am never. forward about accepting, as I am familiar

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with the disturbances and riotous doings at dinnerparties. But in your case and yours only I think I have reason to be angry, because you, to whom I have so long ministered indefatigably, did not think fit to number me among your friends : no, I alone do not count with you, and that too though I live next door. I am indignant, therefore, and more on your account than on my own, because you have shown yourself so thankless, For me, happiness is not a matter of getting a wild boar, a hare or a cake— things which I enjoy ungrudged at the tables of other people who know what is right. Indeed, today I might have had dinner with my pupil Pammenes (and a splendid dinner, too, they say), but I did not accede to his entreaties, saving myself for you, fool that I was.

You, however, have given me the go-by and are entertaining others. No wonder, for you are even yet unable to distinguish between the better and the worse, and you have not the faculty of direct comprehension, either. But I know where all this comes from—those wonderful philosophers of yours, Zenothemis and the Labyrinth, whose mouths I could very soon stop, I know, with a single syllogism, Heaven forgive me for boasting! Just let one of them say what philosophy is, or, to go back to the elements, what is the difference between attribute and accident.[*](More literally, ἕξις means a permanent state, σέσις a transient state.) I shall not mention an of the fallacies like ‘ the horns,’ ‘ the heap,’ or ‘ the mower.’ [*](The Stoics devoted a great deal of study to the invention and solution of fallacies. “The horns” ran thus: “All that you have not lost, you have; but you have not lost horns, ergo, you have them.” In "the heap” the philosopher proves that one grain of corn makes a heap; in “the mower,” that a man who says he will mow a field will not and cannot mow it. Several other fallacies are illustrated in "Philosophers for Sale,” 22. )

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“Well, much may your philosophers profit you ! Holding as I do that only what is honourable is good, I shall easily stand the slight.

But you need not think you can afterwards take refuge in the plea that you forgot me in all the confusion and bother, for I spoke to you twice to-day, not only in the morning at your house, but later in the day, when you were sacrificing at the temple of Castor and Pollux, “I have made this statement to set myself right with your guests.