43. This is what I had to say, my friends and messmates, O men far the first of all the Greeks, being what I know concerning the banquets of the ancients. But Plato the philosopher, in the first book of his treatise on the Laws of Banquets, speaks in this manner, describing the whole matter with the greatest accuracy—"And you would never see any where in the country or in the cities which are under the dominion of Lacedæmon, any drinking parties, nor any of their accompaniments, which are calculated to excite as much pleasure as possible. Nor is there any one who would not at once impose as heavy a fine as possible on any one whom he met carrying his revely to the degree of drunkenness; and he would not even excuse him if he had the pretext of the Dionysiac festival of Bacchus. As I have known to be the case among you, in the case of men carried in carriages, and at Tarentum among our own colonists, where I have seen the whole city drunk at the time of the Dionysiac festival. But at Lacedæmon nothing of the sort ever takes place."

44. And Cynulcus said on this,—I only wish that you had played at that Thracian game and been hanged yourself. For you have kept us in suspense till we are almost famished, as if we were waiting for the rising star, till which arises, those who have invented this beautiful philosophy say that it is unlawful to taste of any food at all. But I, wretched man that I am, according to the words of Diphilus the comic poet—

Am almost become a mullet from the extremity of hunger.

And you yourselves also have forgotten those admirable verses of the poet, who said—

For it is not a bad thing to eat supper at a proper season.

And the admirable Aristophanes has said in his Cocalus—

But it is now, O father, altogether noon,
When it is right for the young men to sup.

[[252]] But for me it would be much better to sup as the men are represented as supping in the banquet given by Parmeniscus the Cynic, than to come hither and see everything carried round us as if we all had fevers. And when we laughed at this, one of us said,—But my most excellent fellow, do not grudge giving us the account of that Parmeniscean banquet. And he, raising himself up, said—

I swear to you most solemnly, my friends,

according to the words of the sweet Antiphanes, who, in the Woman given in Marriage, said—