Sure, he continued, they never read these authors, who cry up the pine as anciently wreathed in the Isthmian garlands, and would not have it some upstart intruder. The young men yielded presently to him, as being a man of various reading and very learned.
But Lucanius, with a smile looking upon me, cried out: Good God! here's a deal of learning. But others have taken advantage of our ignorance and unacquaintedness with such matters, and, on the contrary, persuaded us that the pine was the first garland, and that afterwards in honor of Hercules the parsley was received from the Nemean games, which in a little time prevailing, thrust out the pine, as if it were its right to be the wreath; but a little while after the pine recovered its ancient honor, and now flourishes in its glory. I was satisfied, and upon consideration found that I had run across a great many authorities for it. Thus Euphorion writes of Melicertes,
They mourned the youth, and him on pine boughs laid
Of which the Isthmian victors' crowns are made.
Fate had not yet seized beauteous Mene's son
By smooth Asopus; since whose fall the crown
Of parsley wreathed did grace the victor's brow.
And Callimachus is plainer and more express, when he makes Hercules speak thus of parsley,
This at Isthmian sports
To Neptune's glory now shall be the crown;
The pine shall be disused, which heretofore
In Corinth's fields successful victors wore.
And besides, if I am not mistaken, in Procles's history of the Isthmian games I met with this passage; at first a pine garland crowned the conqueror, but when this game began to be reckoned amongst the sacred, then from the Nemean solemnity the parsley was received. And this Procles was one of Xenocrates's fellow-students at the Academy.
QUESTION IV. CONCERNING THAT EXPRESSION IN HOMER, [GREEK OMITTED] ("Iliad," ix. 203.)
NICERATUS, SOSICLES, ANTIPATER, PLUTARCH.
Some at the table were of opinion that Achilles talked nonsense when he bade Patroclus "mix the wine stronger," adding this reason,
For now I entertain my dearest friends.