he then added these lines, which do not properly belong to this place—

While this gay friendly troop the king surround,
With festival and mirth the roofs resound;
A bard amid the joyous circle sings
High airs, attemper'd to the vocal strings,
Whilst, warbling to the varied strain, advance
Two sprightly youths to form the bounding dance:—

transferring them with the error in the reading and all from the eighteenth book of the Iliad, where he relates the making of the arms of Achilles; for it ought to be read not ἐξάρχοντες, the dancers beginning, but ἐξάρχοντος (τοῦ ᾠδοῦ, that is to say,) when the poet began to sing. For the word

[[296]] ἐξάρχω has peculiar reference to preluding on the lyre. On which account Hesiod also says in his Shield of Hercules—

The holy goddesses, the Muses nine,
Preluded (ἐξῆρχον) with a sacred melody.[296:1]

And Archilochus says—

Himself preluding (ἐξάρχων) with a sacred pæan
Set to the Lesbian flute.

And Stesichorus calls the Muse the Beginner of Song (ἀρχεσίμολπος). And Pindar calls Preludes the Leaders of the Dance. And Diodorus the Aristophanian enclosed the whole account of the wedding in brackets; thinking that the first days only were alluded to, and disregarding the termination and what came after the banquet. And then he says we ought to write the words δοίω δὲ κυβιστητῆρε κατ' αὐτοὺς with an aspirate, καθ' αὑτοὺς, but that would be a solecism. For κατ' αὐτοὺς is equivalent to κατὰ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς, but to say ἑαυτοὺς would be a solecism.

10. But, as I said before, the introduction of this kind of music into this modest kind of entertainment is transferred to this place from the Cretic dance, of which he says in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, about the Making of the Arms—

A figured dance succeeds; such once was seen
In lofty Cnossus, for the Cretan queen
Form'd by Dædalean art; a comely band
Of youths and maidens bounding hand-in-hand;
The maids in soft cymars of linen dress'd,
The youths all graceful in the glossy vest.
Of those the locks with flow'ry wreaths enroll'd,
Of these the sides adorn'd with swords of gold,
That glittering gay from silver belts depend.[296:2]