Music, from the adjoining room, struck in with the chorus, and continued for some moments after it had ceased.
For a short time, the conversation was confined to the courtesies of the table, as the guests partook of the delicious viands before them. Plato ate olives and bread only; and the water he drank was scarcely tinged with Lesbian wine. Alcibiades rallied him upon this abstemiousness; and Pericles reminded him that even his great pattern, Socrates, gave Dionysus his dues, while he worshipped the heaven-born Pallas.
The philosopher quietly replied, "I can worship the fiery God of Vintage only when married with Nymphs of the Fountain."
"But tell me, O Anaxagoras and Plato," exclaimed Tithonus, "if, as Hermippus hath said, the Grecian philosophers discard the theology of the poets? Do ye not believe in the Gods?"
Plato would have smiled, had he not reverenced the simplicity that expected a frank and honest answer to a question so dangerous. Anaxagoras briefly replied, that the mind which did not believe in divine beings, must be cold and dark indeed.
"Even so," replied Artiphernes, devoutly; "blessed be Oromasdes, who sends Mithras to warm and enlighten the world! But what surprises me most is, that you Grecians import new divinities from other countries, as freely as slaves, or papyrus, or marble. The sculptor of the gods will scarcely be able to fashion half their images."
"If the custom continues," rejoined Phidias, "it will indeed require a life-time as long as that conferred upon the namesake of Tithonus."
"Thanks to the munificence of artists, every deity has a representative in my dwelling," observed Aspasia.
"I have heard strangers express their surprise that the Athenians have never erected a statue to the principle of Modesty" said Hermippus.
"So much the more need that we enshrine her image in our own hearts," rejoined Plato.