The Carousal, or the Lapiths (34-36)

LYCINUS

While all this was going -on, Philo, various thoughts were in my mind; for example, the very obvious one that it is no good knowing the liberal arts if one doesn’t improve his way of living, too. At any rate, the men I have mentioned, though clever in words, were getting laughed at, I saw, for their deeds. And then I could not help wondering whether what everyone says might not after all be true, that education leads men away from right thinking, since they persist in having no regard for anything but books and the thoughts in them. At any rate, though so many philosophers were present, there really was not a single one to be seen who was devoid of fault, but some acted disgracefully and some talked still more disgracefully; and I could not lay what was going on to the wine, considering what Hetoemocles had written without having had either food or drink.

LYCINUS

The tables were turned, then, and the unlettered folk were manifestly dining i in great decorum, without either getting maudlin or behaving disreputably; they simply laughed and passed judgement, perhaps, on the others, whom they used to admire, thinking them men of importance because of the garb they wore. The learned men, on the contrary, were playing the rake and abusing each other and gorging themselves and bawling and coming to blows; and “marvellous” Alcidamas even made water right there in the room, without showing

any respect for the women. It seemed to me that, to use the best possible simile, the events of the dinner were very like what the poets tell of Discord. They say, you know, that, not having been asked to the wedding of Peleus, she threw the apple into the company, and that from it arose the great war at Troy. [*] Well, to my thinking ‘Hetoemocles by throwing his. letter into the midst of us like an Apple of Discord had brought on woes quite as great as those of the Iliad.

LYCINUS

The friends of Zenothemis and Cleodemus did not stop quarrelling when Aristaenetus came between them. “For the present,’ said Cleodemus, “it is enough if you Stoics are shown up in your ignorance, but to-morrow I will pay you back as I ought. Tell me, then, Zenothemis, or you, Diphilus, you pattern of propriety, why it is that although you say moneygetting is of no import, you aim at nothing in the world but getting more, and for this reason always hang about rich people and lend money and extort high interest and teach for pay; and again, why is it that although you hate pleasure and inveigh against the Epicureans, you yourselves do to others and suffer others to do to you all that is most shameful for pleasure’s sake; you get angry if a man does not ask you to dinner, and when you are actually asked, you not only eat quantities but hand over quantities to your servants,’—and with that he tried to pull away the napkin that Zenothemis’ slave was holding. It was full of meats of all kinds, and he intended to open it and throw its contents

on the ground, but the slave clung to it stoutly and did not let him.