The Carousal, or the Lapiths (10-12)

PHILO

Heavens, Lycinus, it’s a learned academy, this dinner party that you are telling of! Philosophers almost to a man. Good for Aristaenetus, I say, because in celebrating the greatest festival day that there is, he thought fit to entertain the most learned men in preference to the rest of the world, and culled the bloom, as it were, of every school, not including some and leaving out others, but asking all without discrimination.

LYCINUS

Why, my dear fellow, he is not one of the common run of rich men; he is interested in culture and spends the better part of his time with these people.

LYCINUS

Well, we dined peacefully at first, and were served with all sorts of dishes, but I don’t suppose there is any need of enumerating them—the sauces and pastries and ragouts. There was everything, and plenty of it. Meanwhile Cleodemus bent over to Ion and said: “Do you see the old man?””—meaning Zenothemis: I was listening, you know. “How he stuffs himself with the dainties and has covered his cloak with soup, and how much food he hands to his attendant standing behind him! He thinks that the others do not see him, but he forgets the people at his back. Point it out to Lycinus, so that he can testify to it.’ But I had no need of Ion to point it out, for I had seen it all from my coign of vantage some time ago.

LYCINUS

Just as Cleodemus said that, Alcidamas the Cynic romped in uninvited, getting off the commonplace joke about Menelaus coming of his own accord. [*] Most of them thought he had done an impudent

thing, and they slyly retorted. with the first thing they could think of, one growling under his breath,

Menelaus, thou’rt a fool!

Iliad 7, 109. another:

But Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, was sorely vexed,

Iliad 1, 24. and others other remarks that, in the circumstances, were to the point and witty. But nobody dared to speak out, for they all feared Alcidamas, who was really “good at the war-cry,” [*] and the noisiest of all the Cynic barkers, for which reason he was considered a superior person and was a great terror to everybody.