And what followed after was very inconsistent with his austerity. For Critobulus, a very well-bred young man, mocks Socrates, who was aged and his tutor, saying he was much uglier than the Sileni; but he discusses beauty with him, and selecting as judges the boy and the dancing woman, makes the prize to be the kisses of the judges. Now what young man meeting with this writing would not be corrupted rather than excited to virtue?

14. But in Homer, in the banquet of Menelaus, they propose to one another questions as in ordinary conversation, and chatting with one another like fellow-citizens, they entertain one another and us too. Accordingly, Menelaus, when Telemachus and his friends come from the bath-room, and when the tables and the dishes are laid, invites them to partake of them, saying—

Accept this welcome to the Spartan court;
The waste of nature let the feast repair,
Then your high lineage and your names declare:[300:1]—

and then he helps them to what he has before him, treating them in the most friendly manner—

Ceasing, benevolent he straight assigns
The royal portion of the choicest chines
To each accepted friend; with grateful haste
They share the honours of the rich repast.

And they, eating in silence, as it becomes young men to do, converse with one another, leaning forwards gently, not about

[[301]]the food, as Homer tells us, nor about the maid-servants of him who had invited them, and by whom, they had been washed, but about the riches of their entertainer—

Soft whispering thus to Nestor's son,
His head reclined, young Ithacus begun:
View'st thou unmoved, O ever honour'd most,
These prodigies of art, and wondrous cost?
Such, and not nobler, in the realms above
Are the rich treasures in the dome of Jove.[301:1]

For that, according to Seleucus, is the best reading; and Aristarchus is wrong when he writes—

Such is the palace of Olympian Jove.