The Cynic Alcidamas, who was tipsy by this time, enquired the name of the bride, and then, after calling for silence in a loud voice and fixing his eyes on the women, he said: “Cleanthis, I pledge you Heracles, my patron.” Since everybody laughed at that, he said: “Did you laugh, you scum of the earth, that I gave the bride a toast to our god Heracles? I’d have you to know that if she doesn’t accept the bowl from me, she will never have a son like me, invincible in courage, unfettered in intellect and as strong in body as I am,” and with that he bared himself still more, in the most shameless way. Again the guests laughed at all this, and he got up in anger with a fierce, wild look, clearly not intending to keep the peace any longer. Perhaps he would have hit someone with his staff if just in the nick of time a huge cake had not been brought in; but when he set eyes on that, he became calmer, put away his wrath, and began to walk about and stuff himself.

Most of the 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: They smote their shields together,Iliad 4, 447. and Then lamentations rose, and vaunts of men.Iliad 4, 450Ausonius’ 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.