The Carousal, or the Lapiths (11-15)

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.

LYCINUS

Aristaenetus commended him and bade him take a chair and sit beside Histiaeus and Dionysodorus. “Get out with you!” said he. “What you tell me to do is womanish and weak, to sit on a chair or on a stool, like yourselves on that soft bed, lying almost flat on your batks while you feast, with purple cloths under you. I shall take my dinner on my feet as I walk about the dining-room, and if I get tired I'll lie on the floor, leaning on my elbow, with my cloak under me, like Heracles in the pictures they paint of him.” “Very well,” said Aristaenetus; “if you prefer it that way.” Then Alcidamas began to circle about for his dinner, shifting 1o richer pasturage as the Scythians do, and following the orbits of the waiters.

LYCINUS

But even while he was eating he was not idle, for he talked of virtue and vice all the time, and scoffed at the gold and silver plate; for example, he asked Aristaenetus what was the use of all those great goblets when earthenware would do just as well. But he had begun to be a bore by

this time, so Aristaenetus put a quietus on him for the moment by directing the waiter to give him a big bowl and pour him out a stiffer drink. He thought that he had had a good idea, little realising what woes that bowl was destined to give rise to. On taking it, Alcidamas kept quiet for a little while, throwing himself on the floor and lying there halfnaked as he had threatened, with his elbow squared under him and the bowl in his right hand, just as Heracles in the cave of Pholus is represented by the painters.

LYCINUS

By this time the cup was going round continually among the rest of the party, there were toasts and conversations, and the lights had been brought in. Meanwhile, noticing that the boy in attendance on Cleodemus, a handsome cup-bearer, was smiling (I must tell all the incidents of the feast, I suppose, especially whatever happened that was rather good), I began to keep special watch to see what he was smiling about. After a little while he went up to Cleodemus as if to take the cup from him, and Cleodemus pressed his finger and gave him two drachmas, I think, along with the cup. The boy responded to the pressure of his finger with another smile, but no doubt did not perceive the money, so that, through his not taking it, the two drachmas fell and made a noise,.and they both blushed very noticeably. Those near by them wondered whose the coins were; for the lad said he had not dropped them, and Cleodemus, beside whom the noise was made, pretended that he had not let them fall. So the matter was disregarded and ignored, since not

very many saw it except surely Aristaenetus, for he shifted the boy a little later on, sending him out of the room unobtrusively, and directed one of the full-grown, muscular fellows, a muleteer or stable-boy, to wait on Cleodemus. So the affair turned out in that way, whereas it would have caused Cleodemus great shame if it had been speedily noised about among the whole company instead of being hushed up on the spot by the clever manner in which Aristaenetus treated the silly performance.