This profane song was sung in a voice so clear and melodious, that Tithonus exclaimed, "You err, O Plato, in saying the tuneful soul of Marsyas has passed into the nightingale; for surely it remains with this young Athenian. Son of Clinias, you must be well skilled in playing upon the flute the divine airs of Mysian Olympus?"
"Not I, so help me Dionysus!" lisped Alcibiades. "My music master will tell you that I ever went to my pipes reluctantly. I make ten sacrifices to equestrian Poseidon, where I offer one gift to the Parnassian chorus."
"Stranger, thou hast not yet learned the fashions of Athens," said Anaxagoras, gravely. "Our young equestrians now busy themselves with carved chariots, and Persian mantles of the newest mode. They vie with each other in costly wines; train doves to shower luxuriant perfumes from their wings; and upon the issue of a contest between fighting quails, they stake sums large enough to endow a princess. To play upon the silver-voiced flute is Theban-like and vulgar. They leave that to their slaves."
"And why not leave laughter to the slaves?" asked Hermippus; "since anything more than a graceful smile distorts the beauty of the features? I suppose bright eyes would weep in Athens, should the cheeks of Alcibiades be seen puffed out with vulgar wind-instruments."
"And can you expect the youth of Athens to be wiser than their gods?" rejoined Aspasia. "Pallas threw away her favourite flute, because Hera and Aphrodite laughed at her distorted countenance while she played upon it. It was but a womanly trick in the virgin daughter of Zeus."
Tithonus looked at the speaker with a slight expression of surprise; which Hermippus perceiving, he thus addressed him, in a cool, ironical tone: "O Ethiopian stranger, it is evident you know little of Athens; or you would have perceived that a belief in the gods is more vulgar than flute-playing. Such trash is deemed fit for the imbecility of the aged, and the ignorance of the populace. With equestrians and philosophers, it is out of date. You must seek for it among those who sell fish at the gates; or with the sailors at Piræus and Phalerum."
"I have visited the Temple of Poseidon, in the Piræus," observed Aspasia; "and I saw there a multitude of offerings from those who had escaped shipwreck." She paused slightly, and added, with a significant smile, "But I perceived no paintings of those who had been wrecked, notwithstanding their supplications to the god."
As she spoke, she observed that Pericles withdrew a rose from the garland wherewith his cup was crowned; and though the action was so slight as to pass unobserved by others, she instantly understood the caution he intended to convey by that emblem sacred to the god of silence.
At a signal from Plato, slaves filled the goblets with wine, and he rose to propose the usual libation to the gods. Every Grecian guest joined in the ceremony, singing in a recitative tone:
Dionysus, this to thee,
God of warm festivity!
Giver of the fruitful vine,
To thee we pour the rosy wine!