44. And when he saw the shrine of some hero splendidly adorned, close to a cold and worthless bathing-house, when he came out, having had a very bad bath, "I do not wonder," said he, "that many tablets are dedicated here; for every one of the bathers naturally offers one, as having been saved from drowning." And at another time he said—"In Ænus there are eight months of cold and four of winter." At another time he said, "that the people of Pontus had come out of a great sea"—as though he had said (great) trouble. And he called the Rhodians White Cyrenæans, and the city he called the City of Suitors; and Heraclea he called the Man-Corinth; and Byzantium he called the Arm-pit of Greece; and the Leucadians were Stale Corinthians; and the Ambraciotes he called Membraciotes. And when he had gone out of the gates of Heraclea, and was looking round him, when some one asked him what he was looking at, he said that "he was ashamed of being seen, as if he were coming out of a brothel." And once, seeing two men bound in the stocks, he said—"This is suited to the disposition of a very insignificant city, not to be able to fill such a place as this." And once he said to a man who professed to be a musician, but who had been a gardener before, and who was disputing with him about harmony,—
Let each man sing the art in which he's skill'd.
And once at Maronea, when he was drinking with some people, he said,—"That he could tell in what part of the city he was, if men led him through it blindfold;" and then when they did so lead him, and asked him where he was, "Near the eating-house," said he, because all Maronea seemed a mere eating-house. And once, when he was sitting next to Telephanes, and he was beginning to blow the flute, he said, "Higher, like men who belch." And when the bathing-man in Cardia brought him some bad earth and salt water to cleanse himself with, he said that he was being besieged both by land and sea.
45. And when he had conquered his competitors at Sicyon, he set up a trophy in the temple of Æsculapius, and wrote upon it, "Stratonicus, conqueror of those who played badly on the harp." And when some one had sung, he asked what tune he had been singing; and when he said that it was an air of Carcinus,[16] "More like that," said he, "than the air of a man." He also said, on another occasion, that there was no spring at Maronea, only heat. And once at Phaselis, when the bathing-man was wrangling with his boy about the money, (for the law was that foreigners should pay more for bathing than natives,) "Oh, you wretched boy!" said he, "you have almost made me a citizen of Phaselis, to save a halfpenny." And once, when a person was praising him in hopes to get something by it, he said, "that he himself was a greater beggar." And once, when he was teaching in a small town, he said, "This is not a city (πόλις), but hardly one (πόλις)." And once, when he was at Pella, he came to a well, and asked whether it was fit to drink; and when those who were drawing water from it said, "At all events we drink it;" "Then," said he, "I am sure it is not fit to drink:" for the men happened to be very sallow-looking. And when he had heard the poem of Timotheus, on the subject of Semele in Labour, he said, "But if she had brought forth an artisan, and not a god, what sounds would she have uttered!"
And when Polyidas was giving himself airs, because his pupil Philotas had beaten Timotheus, he said, "That he wondered at his being so ignorant as not to know that he makes decrees, and Timotheus laws." And he said to Areus the harp-player, who was annoying him, "Play to the crows."[17] And once he was at Sicyon, when a leather-dresser was abusing him, and he said to the leather-dresser (νακοδέψης), "O you κακόδαιμον νακόδαιμον." And Stratonicus himself, beholding the Rhodians dissolved in luxury, and drinking only warm drinks, said, "that there were white Cyrenæans." And he called Rhodes itself the City of the Suitors,[18] thinking that they were in no respect different from the Cyrenæans in debauchery, but only in complexion; and also because of the devotion to pleasure of the inhabitants, he compared Rhodes itself to the city of the Suitors.
ARISTOTLE.
46. And Stratonicus was, in all these elaborate witticisms, an imitator of Simonides the poet, as Ephorus tells us in the second book of his treatise on Inventions; who says that Philoxenus of Cythera was also a great studier of the same pursuit. And Phænias the Peripatetic, in the second book of his treatise on Poets, says—"Stratonicus the Athenian appears to have been the first person who introduced the system of playing chords into the simple harp-playing; and he was the first man who ever took pupils in music, and who ever composed tables of music. And he was also a man of no small brilliancy as a wit." He says also that he was eventually put to death by Nicocles, the King of the Cyprians, on account of the freedom of his witticisms, being compelled to drink poison, because he had turned the sons of the king into ridicule.
47. But I marvel at Aristotle, whom these wise men, my excellent Democritus, are so incessantly speaking of and praising, (and whose writings you also esteem highly, as you do those of the other philosophers and orators,) on account of his great accuracy: and I should like to know when he learnt, or from what Proteus or Nereus who came up from the depths he found out, what fish do, or how they go to sleep, or how they live: for all these things he has told us in his writings, so as to be, in the words of the comic poets, "a wonder to fools;" for he says that the ceryx, and indeed that the whole race of shell-fish, are propagated without copulation; and that the purple-fish and the ceryx are longlived. For how could he know that the purple-fish lives six years? and how could he know that the viper takes a long time to propagate his species? or that of all its tribe the longest at that work is the pigeon, the next the œnas, and the quickest is the turtle-dove? And whence did he learn that the horse lives five-and-thirty years, but the mare more than forty? saying, too, that some have lived even seventy-five years. And he also states that from the copulation of lice there are born nits; and that from a worm, after its change, there is produced a caterpillar, from which comes the humble-bee, and from that the larva of the silk-worm. And he also says that bees live to six years of age, and that some live even seven years; and he says that neither bee nor wasp have ever been seen in the act of copulation, on which account no one can ever tell whether they are male or female. And from what did he learn that men are inferior to bees? for these latter always preserve an equal condition of life, being subject to no changes, but employing themselves without ceasing in the collection of honey, and doing that without having been taught by any one to do so: but men are inferior to bees, and as full of fancy as bees are of honey: how, then, has Aristotle observed all these things? And in his treatise on Long Life, he says that a fly has been seen which had lived six or seven years. But what proof is there of this?
48. And where did he ever see ivy growing out of a stag's head? And again, owls and night-jars, he says, cannot see by day; on which account they hunt for their food by night, and they do this not during the whole night, but at the beginning of evening. And he says, too, that there are several different kinds of eyes, for some are blue, and some are black, and some are hazel. He says, too, that the eyes of men are of different characters, and that the differences of disposition may be judged of from the eyes; for that those men who have goats' eyes, are exceedingly sharp-sighted, and have the best dispositions. And of others, he says that some men have projecting eyes, and some have eyes deeply set, and some keep a mean between the two: and those whose eyes are deeply set, he says, have the sharpest sight, and those whose eyes project, must have the worst dispositions; and those who are moderate in these respects, are people, says he, of moderate dispositions. There are also some people whose eyes are always winking, and some who never wink at all, and some who do so in a moderate degree: and those who are always winking are shameless[19] people, and those who never wink at all are unstable and fickle, and those who wink in a moderate degree have the best disposition.
ARISTOTLE'S NATURAL HISTORY.