LYCINUS 
Well, Crato, this is a truly forceful indictment
that you have brought, after long preparation, I
take it, against dances and the dancer’s art itself,
and besides against us who like to see that sort of
show, accusing us of displaying great interest in
something unworthy and effeminate ; but now let me
tell you how far you have missed the mark and
how blind you have been to the fact that you were
indicting the greatest of all the good things in life.
For that I can excuse you if, having been wedded to
a rude creed from the first and considering only
what is hard to be good, through unacquaintance
with it all you have thought that it deserved indicting.
 CRATO 
Who that is a man at all, a life-long friend of letters,
moreover, and moderately conversant with philosophy, abandons his interest, Lycinus, in all that
is better and his association with the ancients to sit
enthralled by the flute, watching a girlish fellow play
the wanton with dainty clothing and bawdy songs and
imitate love-sick minxes, the most erotic of all
antiquity, such as Phaedra and Parthenope and
 

Rhodope, Parthenope, the beloved of Metiochus the Phrygian, was the heroine of a lost romance; on the extant fragment, see New Chapters in the Hist. of Greek Lit., III, 238-240. Rhodope is probably the Thracian mentioned below in § 51, who married Haemus, her brother; they insolently likened themselves to Zeus and Hera, and were turned into the mountains known by their names. every bit of this, moreover, accompanied
by strumming and tootling and tapping of feet ?? See p. 285, n. 2, below. 
—a ridiculous business in all truth, which does
not in the least become a freeborn gentleman
of your sort. So for my part, when I learned that
you give your time to such spectacles, I was not
only ashamed on your account but sorely distressed
that you should sit there oblivious of Plato and
Chrysippus and Aristotle, getting treated like people
who have themselves tickled in the ear with a feather,
and that too when there are countless other things
to hear and see that are worth while, if one wants
them—flute-players who accompany cyclic choruses,
singers of conventional compositions for the lyre, The reference is to the citharoedi, soloists who played their own accompaniment on the lyre; of their songs, called nomes, the Persians of Timotheus is the only surviving specimen, and
in especial, grand tragedy and comedy, the gayest
of the gay ; all these have even been held worthy to
figure in competitions.
 
“You will need, therefore, to do a great deal of
pleading in your own defence, my fine fellow, when
you confront the enlightened, if you wish to avoid
being eliminated absolutely and expelled from the
fold of the serious-minded. And yet the better course
for you, I suppose, is to mend the whole matter b
pleading not guilty and not admitting at all that you
have committed any such misdemeanour. Anyhow,
keep an eye to the future and see to it that you do
not surprise us by changing from the man that you
were of old to a Lyde or a Bacche. That would be
a reproach not only to you but to us, unless, follow-





 

ing the example of Odysseus, we can pull you away
from your lotus and fetch you back to your wonted
pursuits before you unwittingly fall quite under the
spell of these Sirens in the theatre. But those other
Sirens assailed only the ears, so that wax alone was
needed for sailing past them; you, however, seem
to have been subjugated from top to toe, through
the eyes as well as the ears.
 LYCINUS 
Heavens, Crato, what sharp teeth there are in this
dog of yours that you have let loose on us! But as
for your parallel, the simile of the Lotus-Eaters
and the Sirens, it seems to me quite unlike what I
have been through, since in the case of those who
tasted the lotus and heard the Sirens, death was
the penalty for their eating and listening, while in
my case not only is the pleasure more exquisite
by a great deal but the outcome is happy; I am not
altered into forgetfulness of things at home or
ignorance of my own concerns, but—if I may speak
my mind without any hesitancy—I have come back
to you from the theatre with far more wisdom and
more insight into life. Or rather, I may well put it
just as Homer does: he who has seen this spectacle

 Goes on his way diverted and knowing more than
aforetime. Odyssey, XII, 188. 

 CRATO 
Heracles, Lycinus! How deeply you have been
affected! You are not even ashamed of it all but
actually seem proud. In fact, that is the worst part of
it: you do not show us any hope of a cure when you
dare to praise what is so shameful and abominable.


 
 LYCINUS 
Tell me, Crato, do you pass this censure upon
dancing and what goes on in the theatre after having
seen it often yourself, or is it that without being
acquainted with the spectacle, you nevertheless
account it shameful and abominable, as you put it?
If you have seen it, you have put yourself on the same
footing with us; if not, take care that your censure
does not seem unreasonable and overbold when you
denounce things of which you know nothing.
 CRATO 
Why, is that what was still in store for me—with
beard so long and hair so grey, to sit in the midst of
a parcel of hussies and a frantic audience like that,
clapping my hands, moreover, and shouting very
unbecoming words of praise to a noxious fellow who
doubles himself up for no useful purpose ?
 LYCINUS 
This talk is excusable in your case, Crato. But if
you would only take my word for it and just for the
experiment’s sake submit, with your eyes wide open,
T know very well that you could not endure not to
get ahead of everyone else in taking up an advantageously placed seat from which you could see well and
hear everything.
 CRATO 
May I never reach ripeness of years if I ever
endure anything of the kind, as long as my legs
are hairy and my beard unplucked! At present I


 

quite pity you; to the dismay of the rest of us, you
have become absolutely infatuated !