The Carousal, or the Lapiths (16-20)

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

They smote their shields together,

Then lamentations rose, and vaunts of men.

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

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