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.

 
Just as Cleodemus said that, Alcidamas the Cynic
romped in uninvited, getting off the commonplace
joke about Menelaus coming of his own accord.
 Ihiad 2, 408. 
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,”
 Like Menelaus: Iliad 2, 408. and the noisiest of all the Cynic
barkers, for which reason he was considered a
superior person and was a great terror to everybody. 
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. 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.

 

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.