Lycinus. Lexiphanes. Sopolis

Ly. What, our exquisite with his essay?

Lex. Ah, Lycinus, ’tis but a fledgeling of mine; ’tis all incondite.

Ly. O ho, conduits — that is your subject, is it?

Lex. You mistake me; I said nothing of conduits; you are behind the times; incondite —’tis the word we use now when a thing lacks the finishing touches. But you are the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears.

Ly. I beg your pardon, my dear fellow; but conduit, incondite, you know. Well now, what is the idea of your piece?

Lex. A symposium, a modest challenge to the son of Ariston.

Ly. There are a good many sons of Aristons; but, from the symposium, I presume you mean Plato.

Lex. You take me; what I said could fit no other.

Ly. Well, come, read me a little of it; do not send me away thirsty; I see there is nectar in store.

Lex. Ironist, avaunt! And now open your ears to my charming; adder me no adders.

Ly. Go ahead; I am no Adam, nor Eve either.

Lex. Have an eye to my conduct of the discourse, whether it be fair in commencement, fair in speech, fair in diction, fair in nomenclature.

Ly. Oh, we know what to expect from Lexiphanes. But come, begin.

Lex. ’Then to dinner,’ quoth Callicles, ‘then to our post-prandial deambulation in the Lyceum; but now ’tis time for our parasolar unction, ere we bask and bathe and take our nuncheon; go we our way. Now, boy, strigil and mat, towels and soap; transport me them bathwards, and see to the bath-penny; you will find it a-ground by the chest. And thou, Lexiphanes, comest thou, or tarriest here?’ ‘Its a thousand years,’ quoth I, ‘till I bathe; for I am in no comfort, with sore posteriors from my mule-saddle. Trod the mule-man as on eggs, yet kept his beast a-moving. And when I got to the farm, still no peace for the wicked. I found the hinds shrilling the harvest-song, and there were persons burying my father, I think it was. I just gave them a hand with the grave and things, and then I left them; it was so cold, and I had prickly heat; one does, you know, in a hard frost. So I went round the plough-lands; and there I found garlic growing, delved radishes, culled chervil and all herbs, bought parched barley, and (for not yet had the meadows reached the redolency that tempts the ten toes)-so to mule-back again; whence this tenderness behind. And now I walk with pain, and the sweat runs down; my bones languish, and yearn for the longest of water-swims; ’tis ever my joy to wash me after toil.

I will speed back to my boy; ’tis like he waits for me at the pease-puddingry, or the curiosity shop; yet stay; his instructions were to meet me at the frippery. Ah, hither comes he in the nick of time: ay, and has purchased a beesting-pudding and girdle-cakes and leeks, sausages and steak, dewlap and tripe and collops. — Good, Atticion, you have made most of my journey no thoroughfare.’ ‘Why, sir, I have been looking round the corner for you till I squint. Where dined you yesterday? with Onomacritus?’ ‘God bless me, no. I was off to the country; hey presto! and there we were. You know how I dote on the country. I suppose you all thought I was making the glasses ring. Now go in, and spice all these things, and scour the kneading-trough, ready to shred the lettuces. I shall be of for a dry rub.’

‘We are with you,’ cried Philinus, ‘Onomarchus, Hellanicus, and I; the dial’s mid point is in shadow; beware, or we shall bathe in the Carimants’ water, huddled and pushed by the vulgar herd.’ Then said Hellanicus: ‘Ah, and my eyes are disordered; my pupils are turbid, I wink and blink, the tears come unbidden, my eyes crave the ophthalmic leech’s healing drug, mortar-brayed and infused, that they may blush and blear no more, nor moistly peer.’

In such wise conversing, all our company departed. Arrived at the gymnasium, we stripped; the finger-wrench, the garotte, the standing-grip, each had its votaries; one oiled and suppled his joints; another punched the bladder; a third heaved and swung the dumb-bells. Then, when we had rubbed ourselves, and ridden pick-a-back, and had our sport of the gymnasium, we took our plunge, Philinus and I, in the warm basin, and departed. But the rest dipped frigid heads, soused in, and swam subaqueous, a wonder to behold. Then back we came, and one here, one there, did this and that. Shod, with toothed comb I combed me. For I had had a short crop, not to convict-measure, but saucer-wise, deflation having set in on crown and chin-tip. One chewed lupines, another cleared his fasting throat, a third took fish soup on radish-wafer sippets; this ate olives, that supped down barley.

When it was dinner-time, we took it reclining, both chairs and couches standing ready. A joint-stock meal it was, and the contributions many and various. Pigs’ pettitoes, ribs of beef, paunch and pregnant womb of sow, fried liver lobe, garlic paste, sauce piquante, mayonnaise, and so on; pastry, ramequins, and honey-cakes. In the aquatic line, much of the cartilaginous, of the testaceous much; many a salt slice, basket-hawked, eels of Copae, fowls of the barn-door, a cock past crowing-days, and fish to keep him company; add to these a sheep roast whole, and ox’s rump of toothless eld. The loaves were firsts, no common stuff, and therewithal remainders from the new moon; vegetables both radical and excrescent. For the wine, ’twas of no standing, but came from the skin; its sweetness was gone, but its roughness remained.

On the dolphin-foot table stood divers store of cups; the eye-shutter, the ladle, slender-handled, genuine Mentor; crane-neck and gurgling bombyl; and many an earth-born child of Thericlean furnace, the wide-mouthed, the kindly-lipped; Phocaean, Cnidian work, but all light as air, and thin as eggshell; bowls and pannikins and posied cups; oh, ’twas a well-stocked sideboard.

But the kettle boiled over, and sent the ashes flying about our heads. It was bumpers and no heeltaps, and we were full to the throat. Then to the nard; and enter to us guitar and light fantastic toe. Thereafter, one shinned up the ladder, on post-prandial japery intent, another beat the devil’s tattoo, a third writhed cachinnatory.

At this moment broke in upon us from the bath, all uninvited, Megalonymus the attorney, Chaereas the goldsmith, striped back and all, and the bruiser Eudemus. I asked them what they were about to come so late. Quoth Chaereas; ‘I was working a locket and ear-rings and bangles for my daughter; that is why I come after the fair.’ ‘I was otherwise engaged,’ said Megalonymus; ‘know you not that it was a lawless day and a dumb? So, as it was linguistice, there was truce to my calendarial clockings and plea-mensurations. But hearing the governor was giving a warm reception, I took my shiniest clothes, fresh from the tailor, and my unmatched shoes, and showed myself out.

‘The first I met were a torch-bearer, a hierophant, and others of the initiated, haling Dinias before the judge, and protesting that he had called them by their names, though he well knew that, from the time of their sanctification, they were nameless, and no more to be named but by hallowed names; so then he appealed to me.’ ‘Dinias?’ I put in; ‘Who is Dinias?’ ‘Oh, he’s a dance-for-your-supper carry-your-luggage rattle-your-patter gaming-house sort of man; eschews the barber, and takes care of his poor chest and toes.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘paid he the penalty in some wise, or showed a clean pair of heels?’ ‘Our delicate goer is now fast bound. The governor, regardless of his retiring disposition, slipped him on a pair of bracelets and a necklace, and brought him acquainted with stocks and boot. The poor worm quaked for fear, and could not contain himself, and offered money, if so he might save his soul alive.’

‘As for me,’ said Eudemus, ‘I was sent for in the gloaming by Damasias, the athlete many-victoried of yore, now pithless from age; you know him in bronze in the market. He was busy with roast and boiled. He was this day to exdomesticate his daughter, and was decking her out for her husband, when a baleful incident occurred, which cleft the feast in twain. For Dion his son, on grievance unknown, if it were not rather the hostility of Heaven, hanged himself; and be sure he was a dead man, had I not been there, and dislocated and loosed him from his implication. Long time I squatted a-knee, pricking and rocking, and sounding him, to see whether his throat was still whole. What profited most was compressure of the extremities with both my hands.’

‘What, Dion the effeminate, the libertine, the debauchee, the mastich-chewer, the too susceptible to amorous sights?’ ‘Yes; the lecher and whore-master. Well, Damasias fell down and worshipped the Goddess (they have an Artemis by Scopas in the middle of the court), he and his old white-headed wife, and implored her compassion. The Goddess straightway nodded assent, and he was well; and now he is their Theodorus, or indeed their manifest Artemidorus. So they made offerings to her, among them darts and bows and arrows; for these are acceptable in her sight; ............