167. Games and Entertainments.—By the time the craters are one third emptied the general conversation is beginning to be broken up. It is time for various standard diversions. Eunapius therefore begins by enjoining on each guest in turn to sing a verse in which a certain letter must not appear, and in event of failure to pay some ludicrous forfeit. Thus the bald man is ordered to begin to comb his hair; the lame man (halt since the Mantinea campaign), to stand up and dance to the flute player, etc. There are all kinds of guessing of riddles—often very ingenious as become the possessors of “Attic salt.” Another diversion is to compare every guest present to some mythical monster, a process which infallibly ends by getting the “Parasite” likened to Cerberus, the Hydra, or some such dragon, amid the laughter of all the rest. At some point in the amusement the company is sure to get to singing songs:—“Scolia”—drinking songs indeed, but often of a serious moral or poetic character, whereof the oft-quoted song in praise of Harmodius and Aristogeiton the tyrant-slayers is a good example.[*] No “gentleman” will profess to be a public singer, but to have a deep, well-trained voice, and to be able to take one’s part in the symposium choruses is highly desirable, and some of the singing at Prodicus’s banquet is worth hearing.
[*] Given in Readings in Ancient History, Vol. I, p. 117, and in many other volumes.
Before the evening is over various games will be ordered in, especially the cottabus, which is in great vogue. On the top of a high stand, something like a candelabrum, is balanced rather delicately a little saucer of brass. The players stand at a considerable distance with cups of wine. The game is to toss a small quantity of wine into the balanced saucer so smartly as to make the brass give out a clear ringing sound, and to tilt upon its side.[+] Much shouting, merriment, and a little wagering ensues. While most of the company prefer the cottabus, two, who profess to be experts, call for a gaming board and soon are deep in the “game of towns”—very like to latter-day “checkers,” played with a board divided into numerous squares. Each contestant has thirty colored stones, and the effort is to surround your opponent’s stones and capture them. Some of the company, however, regard this as too profound, and after trying their skill at the cottabus betake themselves to the never failing chances of dice. Yet these games are never suffered (in refined dinner parties) to banish the conversation. That after all is the center, although it is not good form to talk over learnedly of statecraft, military tactics, or philosophy. If such are discussed, it must be with playful abandon, and a disclaimer of being serious; and even very grave and gray men remember Anacreon’s preference for the praise of “the glorious gifts of the Muses and of Aphrodite” rather than solid discussions of “conquest and war.”
[+] This was the simplest form of the cottabus game; there were numerous elaborations, but our accounts of them are by no means clear.
168. Going Home from the Feast: Midnight Revellers.—At length the oil lamps have begun to burn dim. The tired slaves are yawning. Their masters, despite Prodicus’s intentions of having a very proper symposium, have all drunk enough to get unstable and silly. Eunapius gives the signal. All rise, and join in the final libation to Hermes. “Shoes and himation, boy,” each says to his slave, and with thanks to their host they all fare homeward.
Such will be the ending to an extremely decorous feast. With gay young bloods present, however, it might have degenerated into an orgy; the flute girl (or several of them) would have contributed over much to the “freedom”; and when the last deep crater had been emptied, the whole company would have rushed madly into the street, and gone whirling away through the darkness,—harps and flutes sounding, boisterous songs pealing, red torches tossing. Revellers in this mood would be ready for anything. Perhaps they would end in some low tavern at the Peiræus to sleep off their liquor; perhaps their leader would find some other Symposium in progress, and after loud knockings, force his way into the house, even as did the mad Alcibiades, who (once more to recall Plato) thrust his way into Agathon’s feast, staggering, leaning on a flute girl, and shouting, “Where’s Agathon!” Such an inroad would be of course the signal for more and ever more hard drinking. The wild invaders might make themselves completely at home, and dictate all the proceedings: the end would be even as at Agathon’s banquet, where everybody but Socrates became completely drunken, and lay prone on the couches or the floor. One hopes that the honest Prodicus has no such climax to his symposium.
…At length the streets grow quiet. Citizens sober or drunken are now asleep: only the vigilant Scythian archers patrol the ways till the cocks proclaim the first gray of dawn.
Chapter XIX.
Country Life Around Athens
169. Importance of his Farm to an Athenian.—We have followed the doings of a typical Athenian during his ordinary activities around the city, but for the average gentleman an excursion outside the town is indispensable at least every two or three days, and perhaps every day. He must visit his farm; for his wealth and income are probably tied up there, rather than in any unaristocratic commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Homer’s “royal” heroes are not ashamed to be skilful at following the plow[*]: and no Athenian feels that he is contaminating himself by “trade” when he supervises the breeding of sheep or the raising of onions. We will therefore follow in the tracks of certain well-to-do citizens, when we turn toward the Itonian gate sometime during the morning, while the Agora is still in a busy hum, even if thus we are curtailing our hypothetical visits to the Peiræus or to the bankers.
[*] See Odysseus’s boasts, Odyssey, XVIII. 360 et passim. The gentility of farming is emphasized by a hundred precepts from Hesiod.