The Ionic dialect also supplies us with poems of Sotades, and with what before his time were called Ionic poems, such as those of Alexander the Ætolian, and Pyres the Milesian, and Alexas, and other poets of the same kind; and Sotades is called κιναιδόλογος. And Sotades the Maronite was very notorious for this kind of poetry, as Carystius of Pergamus says in his essay on Sotades; and so was the son of Sotades, Apollonius: and this latter also wrote an essay on his father's poetry, from which one may easily see the unbridled licence of language which Sotades allowed himself,—abusing Lysimachus the king in Alexandria,—and, when at the court of Lysimachus, abusing Ptolemy Philadelphus,—and in different cities speaking ill of different sovereigns; on which account, at last, he met with the punishment that he deserved: for when he had sailed from Alexandria (as Hegesander, in his Reminiscences, relates), and thought that he had escaped all danger, (for he had said many bitter things against Ptolemy the king, and especially this, after he had heard that he had married his sister Arsinoe,—
He pierced forbidden fruit with deadly sting,)
Patrocles, the general of Ptolemy, caught him in the island of Caunus, and shut him up in a leaden vessel, and carried him into the open sea and drowned him. And his poetry is of this kind: Philenus was the father of Theodorus the flute-player, on whom he wrote these lines:—
And he, opening the door which leads from the back-street,
Sent forth vain thunder from a leafy cave,
Such as a mighty ploughing ox might utter.
MAGODI.
14. But the Hilarodus, as he is called, is a more respectable kind of poet than these men are; for he is never effeminate or indecorous, but he wears a white manly robe, and he is crowned with a golden crown: and in former times he used to wear sandals, as Aristocles tells us; but at the present day he wears only slippers. And some man or woman sings an accompaniment to him, as to a person who sings to the flute. And a crown is given to a Hilarodus, as well as to a person who sings to the flute; but such honours are not allowed to a player on the harp or on the flute. But the man who is called a Magodus has drums and cymbals, and wears all kinds of woman's attire; and he behaves in an effeminate manner, and does every sort of indecorous, indecent thing,—imitating at one time a woman, at another an adulterer or a pimp: or sometimes he represents a drunken man, or even a serenade offered by a reveller to his mistress. And Aristoxenus says that the business of singing joyous songs is a respectable one, and somewhat akin to tragedy; but that the business of a Magodus is more like comedy. And very often it happens that the Magodi, taking the argument of some comedy, represent it according to their own fashion and manner. And the word μαγῳδία was derived from the fact that those who addicted themselves to the practice, uttered things like magical incantations, and often declared the power of various drugs.
15. But there was among the Lacedæmonians an ancient kind of comic diversion, as Sosibius says, not very important or serious, since Sparta aimed at plainness even in pastimes. And the way was, that some one, using very plain, unadorned language, imitated persons stealing fruit, or else some foreign physician speaking in this way, as Alexis, in his Woman who has taken Mandragora, represents one: and he says—
If any surgeon of the country says,