So they, having now become rich women, built a temple to Venus, calling the goddess καλλίπνγος, as Archelaus also relates in his Iambics.
And that the luxury of madness is exceedingly great is very pleasantly argued by Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, where he says—"Thrasylaus the Æxonensian, the son of Pythodorus, was once afflicted with such violent madness, that he thought that all the vessels which came to the Piræus belonged to him. And he entered them in his books as such; and sent them away, and regulated their affairs in his mind, and when they returned to port he received them with great joy, as a man might be expected to who was master of so much wealth. And when any were lost, he never inquired about them, but he rejoiced in all that arrived safe; and so he lived with great pleasure. But when his brother Crito returned from Sicily, and took him and put him into the hands of a doctor, and cured him of his madness, he himself related his madness, and said that he had never been happier in his life; for that he never felt any grief, but that the quantity of pleasure which he experienced was something unspeakable."
Footnotes.
[1] This is a blunder of Athenæus. Mars does not say this, but it is the observation made by the gods to each other.
Ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε ἰδὼν ἐς πλήσιον ἄλλον. Odys. viii. 328.
[2] From κείρω, to cut and dress the hair.
[3] Κόλαξ, a flatterer.
[4] Πορφύρεος is a common epithet of death in Homer. Liddell and Scott say—"The first notion of πορφύρεος was probably of the troubled sea, υ. πορφύρω,"—and refer the use of it in this passage to the colour of the blood, unless it be = μέλας θάνατος.
[5] The modern Palermo.
[6] Iliad. i. 225.
[7] Odyss. ii. 418.
[8] Soph. Ant. 1169.
[9] Εὐεργέτης, from εὖ, well; Κακεργέτης, from κακῶς, ill; and ἔργον, a work.
[10] The artabe was equivalent to the Greek medimnus, which was a measure holding about twelve gallons.
[11] Cacodæmonistæ, from κακὸς, bad, and δαίμων, a deity. Numeniastæ, from Νουμήνια, the Feast of the New Moon.
BOOK XIII.
LACEDÆMONIAN MARRIAGES.
1. Antiphanes the comic writer, my friend Timocrates, when he was reading one of his own comedies to Alexander the king, and when it was plain that the king did not think much of it, said to him, "The fact is, O king, that a man who is to appreciate this play, ought to have often supped at picnic feasts, and must have often borne and inflicted blows in the cause of courtesans," as Lycophron the Chalcidian relates in his treatise on Comedy. And accordingly we, who are now about to set out a discussion on amatory matters, (for there was a good deal of conversation about married women and about courtesans,) saying what we have to say to people who understand the subject, invoking the Muse Erato to be so good as to impress anew on our memory that amatory catalogue, will make our commencement from this point—
Come now, O Erato, and tell me truly
what it was that was said by the different guests about love and about amatory matters.