He said
everything
on that table was his, and disputed possession
with the servants.
with the servants.
Lucian
Then it will be my turn to coquet.
Oh,
very well; do not trouble to tell me; good-bye; I will get it out of
some one else.
_Ly. _ Oh, you needn't be so hasty. I will tell you, if you are so set
upon it; only don't repeat it to everybody.
_Phi. _ If I know anything whatever of you, you will take good care of
that; you will not leave me many to repeat it to.
Now begin with telling me what Aristaenetus was giving the banquet for;
was it his boy Zeno's wedding?
_Ly. _ No, his girl Cleanthis's--to the son of Eucritus the banker, a
student of philosophy.
_Phi. _ I know; a fine lad; only a lad, though; old enough to marry?
_Ly. _ Well, he was the most _suitable_ to be had, I suppose. He is a
well-behaved youngster, has taken up philosophy, and is sole heir to a
rich father; so he was the selected bridegroom.
_Phi. _ Ah, no doubt Eucritus's money is a consideration. Well, and who
were the guests?
_Ly. _ Why, I need not give you the whole list; what you want is the
philosophers and men of letters. There was the old Stoic Zenothemis,
and with him 'Labyrinth' Diphilus; Aristaenetus's son Zeno is his
pupil. The Peripatetics were represented by Cleodemus--the ready,
argumentative person--you know him; 'Sword,' and 'Cleaver,' his
disciples call him. And then there was Hermon the Epicurean; directly
he came in, there were queer looks and edgings away in the Stoic
contingent; he might have been a parricide or an outlaw, by the way
they treated him. These had been asked as Aristaenetus's personal
friends and intimates, under which head come also Histiaeus the
literary man and Dionysodorus the rhetorician.
Then Chaereas (that is the bridegroom's name) was responsible for
his tutor Ion the Platonic--a grave reverend man remarkable for
the composure of his expression. He is generally spoken of as 'The
Standard,' so infallible is his judgement. As he walked up the room,
everybody got out of his way and saluted him like some higher being;
the great Ion's presence is like an angel's visit.
When nearly all the guests had arrived, and we were to take our
places, the ladies occupied the whole of the table to the right of
the entrance; there were a good many of them, surrounding the closely
veiled bride. The table at the far end accommodated the general
company, in due precedence.
At the one opposite the ladies, Eucritus had the first place,
with Aristaenetus next him. Then a doubt arose whether the next
was Zenothemis the Stoic's, in virtue of his years, or Hermon
the Epicurean's, who is priest of the Twin Gods[14], and also of
the noblest blood in the land. Zenothemis found the solution.
'Aristaenetus,' he said, 'if you place me below this Epicurean (I
need not use worse language than _that_), I at once leave the room';
and calling his servant he made as if to depart. 'Have your way,
Zenothemis,' said Hermon, 'though, whatever your contempt for Epicurus,
etiquette would have suggested your giving way to my priesthood, if
I had no other claims. ' 'Priest and Epicurean! that is a good joke,'
retorted Zenothemis, and took the place, with Hermon next him, however.
Then came Cleodemus the Peripatetic, Ion with the bridegroom, myself,
Diphilus and his pupil Zeno, then Dionysodorus the rhetorician and
Histiaeus the literary man.
_Phi_. Upon my word, a very temple of the Muses, peopled mainly with
the learned! I congratulate Aristaenetus on choosing for his guests
on so auspicious an occasion these patterns of wisdom; he skimmed the
cream off every sect in a most catholic spirit.
_Ly. _ Oh, yes, he is not one's idea of the rich man at all; he cares
for culture, and gives most of his time to those who have it.
Well, we fell to, quietly at first, on the ample and varied fare. But
you do not want a catalogue of soups and pastry and sauces; there
was plenty of everything. At this stage Cleodemus bent down to Ion,
and said: 'Do you see how the old man' (this was Zenothemis; I could
overhear their talk) 'is stuffing down the good things--his dress gets
a good deal of the gravy--and what a lot he hands back to his servant?
he thinks we cannot see him, and does not care whether there will be
enough to go round. Just call Lycinus's attention to him. ' This was
quite unnecessary, as I had had an excellent view of it for some time.
Just after Cleodemus had said this, in burst Alcidamas the cynic. He
had not been asked, but put a good face upon it with the usual 'No
summons Menelaus waits. ' The general opinion clearly was that he was an
impudent rogue, and various people struck in with what came to hand:
'What, Menelaus, art distraught? ' or, 'It liked not Agamemnon, Atreus'
son,' and other neat tags suited to the occasion; but these were all
asides; no one ventured to make them audible to him. Alcidamas is a
man uncommonly 'good at the war-cry'; he will bark you louder than any
dog of them all, literal or metaphorical; my gentlemen all knew he was
their better, and lay low.
Aristaenetus told him he was quite right to come; would he take a chair
and sit behind Histiaeus and Dionysodorus? 'Stuff! ' he said; 'a soft
womanish trick, to sit on a chair or a stool! one might as well loll at
one's food half on one's back, like all of you on this soft couch with
purple cushions under you. As for me, I will take my dinner standing
and walking about the room. If I get tired, I will lay my old cloak on
the ground and prop myself on my elbow like Heracles in the pictures. '
'Just as you please,' said Aristaenetus; and after that Alcidamas fed
walking round, shifting his quarters like the Scythians according to
where pasturage was richest, and following the servants up as they
carried the dishes.
However, he did not let feeding interrupt his energetic expositions
of virtue and vice, and his scoffs at gold and silver. What was the
good of this multitude of wonderful cups, he wanted to know, when
earthenware would serve the purpose? Aristaenetus got rid of his
obtrusiveness for the moment by signing to his servant to hand the
cynic a huge goblet of potent liquor. It seemed a happy thought; but he
little knew the woes that were to flow from that goblet. When Alcidamas
got it, he was quiet for a while, throwing himself on the ground in
dishabille as he had threatened, with his elbow planted vertically,
just in the attitude of the painters' _Heracles with Pholus_.
By this time the wine was flowing pretty freely everywhere; healths
were drunk, conversation was general, and the lights had come in. I now
noticed the boy standing near Cleodemus--a good-looking cupbearer--to
have an odd smile on. I suppose I am to give you all the by-play of
the dinner, especially any tender incidents. Well, so I was trying to
get at the reason for the smile. In a little while he came to take
Cleodemus's cup from him; he gave the boy's fingers a pinch, and handed
him up a couple of shillings, I think it was, with the cup. The smile
appeared again in response to the pinch, but I imagine he failed to
notice the coins; he did not get hold of them; they went ringing on
the floor, and there were two blushing faces to be seen. Those round,
however, could not tell whose the money was, the boy saying he had not
dropped it, and Cleodemus, at whose place it had been heard to fall,
not confessing to the loss. So the matter was soon done with; hardly
any one had grasped the situation--only Aristaenetus, as far as I could
gather. He shifted the boy soon after, effecting the transfer without
any fuss, and assigned Cleodemus a strong grown-up fellow who might
be a mule or horse groom. So much for that business; it would have
seriously compromised Cleodemus if it had attracted general attention;
but it was smothered forthwith by Aristaenetus's tactful handling of
the offence.
Alcidamas the cynic, who had now emptied his goblet, after finding out
the bride's name, called for silence; he then faced the ladies, and
cried out in a loud voice: 'Cleanthis, I drink to you in the name of
my patron Heracles. ' There was a general laugh; upon which, 'You vile
scum,' says he, 'you laugh, do you, because I invoke our God Heracles
as I toast the bride? Let me tell you that, if she will not pledge me,
she shall never bear a son as brave of spirit, as free of judgement,
as strong of body, as myself. ' And he proceeded to show us more of
the said body, till it was scarcely decent. The company irritated him
by laughing again; he stood there with a wandering wrathful eye, and
looked as if he were going to make trouble. He would probably have
brought down his stick on somebody's head, but for the timely arrival
of an enormous cake, the sight of which mollified him; he quieted down,
and accompanied its progress, eating hard.
The rest were mostly flushed with wine by this time, and the room
was full of clamour. Dionysodorus the rhetorician was alternately
delivering speeches of his own composition and receiving the plaudits
of the servants behind. Histiaeus, the literary man below him, was
making an eclectic mixture of Pindar, Hesiod, and Anacreon, whose
collaboration produced a most remarkable ode, some of it really
prophetic of what was soon to come--'Then hide met stubborn hide,' for
instance, and 'Uprose the wailings and the prayers of men. ' Zenothemis
too had taken a scroll in small writing from his servant, which he was
reading aloud.
Now came one of the usual slight breaks in the procession of dishes;
and Aristaenetus, to avoid the embarrassment of a blank, told his
jester to come in and talk or perform, by way of putting the company
still more at their ease. So in came an ugly fellow with a shaven
head--just a few hairs standing upright on the crown. He danced with
dislocations and contortions, which made him still more absurd, then
improvised and delivered some anapaests in an Egyptian accent, and
wound up with witticisms on the guests.
Most of them took these in good part; but when it came to Alcidamas's
turn, and he called him a Maltese poodle[15], Alcidamas, who had shown
signs of jealousy for some time and did not at all like the way he was
holding every one's attention, lost his temper. He threw off his cloak
and challenged the fellow to a bout of pancratium; otherwise he would
let him feel his stick. So poor Satyrion, as the jester was called,
had to accept the challenge and stand up. A charming spectacle--the
philosopher sparring and exchanging blows with a buffoon! Some of us
were scandalized and some amused, till Alcidamas found he had his
bellyful, being no match for the tough little fellow. They gave us a
good laugh.
It was now, not long after this match, that Dionicus the doctor came
in. He had been detained, he said, by a brain-fever case; the patient
was Polyprepon the piper, and thereby hung a tale. He had no sooner
entered the room, not knowing how far gone the man was, when he jumped
up, secured the door, drew a dagger, and handed him the pipes, with an
order to play them; and when Dionicus could not, he took a strap and
inflicted chastisement on the palms of his hands. To escape from this
perilous position, Dionicus proposed a match, with a scale of forfeits
to be exacted with the strap. He played first himself, and then handed
over the pipes, receiving in exchange the strap and dagger. These he
lost no time in sending out of window into the open court, after which
it was safe to grapple with him and shout for help; the neighbours
broke open the door and rescued him. He showed us his wealed hands and
some scratches on his face. His story had as distinguished a success as
the jester before; he then squeezed himself in by Histiaeus and dined
on what was left. His coming was providential, and he most useful in
the sequel.
There now appeared a messenger who said he brought a communication
from Hetoemocles the Stoic, which his master had directed him to read
publicly, and then return. With Aristaenetus's permission he took it to
the lamp, and began reading.
_Phi. _ The usual thing, I suppose--a panegyric on the bride, or an
epithalamium?
_Ly. _ Just what we took it for; however, it was quite another story.
Here are the contents:
_HETOEMOCLES THE PHILOSOPHER TO ARISTAENETUS, GREETING. _
_My views on dining are easily deducible from my whole past life;
though daily importuned by far richer men than you to join them, I
invariably refuse; I know too well the tumults and follies that attend
the wine-cup. But if there is one whose neglect I may fairly resent,
it is yourself; the fruit of my long and unremitting attentions to you
is to find myself not on the roll of your friends; I, your next-door
neighbour, am singled out for exclusion. The sting of it is in the
personal ingratitude; happiness for me is not found in a plate of wild
boar or hare or pastry; these I get in abundance at the houses of
people who understand the proprieties; this very day I might have dined
(and well, by all accounts) with my pupil Pammenes; but he pressed me
to no purpose; I was reserving myself, poor fool, for you. _
_But you pass me by, and feast others. I ought not to be surprised;
you have not acquired the power of distinguishing merit; you have no
apprehensive imagination. I know whence the blow comes; it is from
your precious philosophers, Zenothemis and The Labyrinth, whose mouths
(though I would not boast) I could stop with a single syllogism. Let
either of them tell me, What is Philosophy? or, not to go beyond the
merest elements, how does_ condition _differ from_ constitution? _for
I will not resort to real puzzles, as the_ Horns[1], _the_ Sorites[1],
_or the_ Reaper[16]. _Well, I wish you joy of their company. As for me,
holding as I do that nothing is good but what is right, I shall get
over a slight like this. _
_You will be kind enough not to resort later to the well-worn excuse of
having forgotten in the bustle of your engagements; I have spoken to
you twice to-day, in the morning at your house, and later when you were
sacrificing at the Anaceum. This is to let your guests know the rights
of the case. _
_If you think it is the dinner I care about, reflect upon the story of
Oeneus; you will observe that, when he omitted Artemis alone from the
Gods to whom he offered sacrifice, she resented it. Homer's account of
it states that he_
_Forgot or ne'er bethought him--woeful blindness! _
_Euripides's begins_,
_This land of Calydon, across the gulf
From Pelops' land, with all its fertile plains_--;
_and Sophocles's_,
_Upon the tilth of Oeneus Leto's child,
Far-darting Goddess, loosed a monstrous boar_.
_I quote you but these few of the many passages upon the incident,
just to suggest the qualities of him whom you have passed over,
to entertain, and to have your son taught by, Diphilus! natural
enough; of course, the lad fancies him, and finds him an agreeable
master! If tale-telling were not beneath me, I would add a piece of
information that, if you choose, you can get confirmed by the boy's
attendant Zopyrus. But a wedding is not a time for unpleasantness or
denunciations, especially of offences so vile. Diphilus deserves it
richly at my hands, indeed--two pupils he has stolen from me--; but for
the good name of Philosophy I will hold my hand. _
_My man has instructions, if you should offer him a portion of wild
boar or venison or sesame cake to bring me in lieu of my dinner, to
refuse it. I would not have you find the motive of my letter in such
desires. _
My dear fellow, I went all hot and cold as this was read; I was praying
that the earth might swallow me up when I saw everybody laughing at
the different points; the most amused were those who knew Hetoemocles
and his white hair and reverend looks; it was such a surprise to find
the reality behind that imposing beard and serious countenance. I felt
sure Aristaenetus had passed him over not in neglect, but because he
supposed he would never accept an invitation or have anything to do
with festivities; he had thought it out of the question, and not worth
trying.
As soon as the man stopped reading, all eyes were turned on Zeno and
Diphilus, who were pale with apprehension, and confirmed by their
embarrassment the insinuations of Hetoemocles. Aristaenetus was uneasy
and disturbed, but urged us to drink, and tried to smooth the matter
over with an attempt at a smile; he told the man he would see to it,
and dismissed him. Zeno disappeared shortly after; his attendant had
signed to him, as from his father, to retire.
Cleodemus had been on the look-out for an opportunity; he was spoiling
for a fight with the Stoics, and chafing over the difficulty of
starting the subject; but the letter had struck the right key, and
off he went. 'Now we see the productions of your fine Chrysippus, your
glorious Zeno, your Cleanthes--a few poor catch-words, some fruitless
posers, a philosophic exterior, and a large supply of--Hetoemocleses.
What ripe wisdom does this letter reveal, with its conclusion that
Aristaenetus is an Oeneus, and Hetoemocles an Artemis! How auspicious,
how suitable to the occasion, its tone! '
'To be sure,' chimed in Hermon, his left-hand neighbour; 'he had no
doubt heard that Aristaenetus had bespoken a wild boar, and thought the
introduction of the one at Calydon appropriate. Aristaenetus, I adjure
you by the domestic altar, let him taste the victim, or we shall have
the old man starving, and withering away like his Meleager. Though
indeed it would not be so very hard on him; such a fate is one of
Chrysippus's _things indifferent_. '
Here Zenothemis woke up and thundered out: 'Chrysippus? you name
that name? because a pretender like Hetoemocles comes short of his
profession, you argue from him to the real sages, to Cleanthes and
Zeno? And who are the men, pray, who hold such language? Why, Hermon,
who shore the curls, the solid golden curls, of the Dioscuri, and who
will yet receive his barber's fee from the executioner. And Cleodemus,
who was caught in adultery with his pupil Sostratus's wife, and paid
the shameful penalty. Silence would better become the owners of
such consciences. ' 'Who trades in his own wife's favours? ' retorted
Cleodemus; 'I do not do that, and I do not undertake to keep my foreign
pupil's purse and then swear by Polias the deposit was never made; I
do not lend money at fifty per cent, and I do not hale my pupils into
court if fees are not paid to the day. ' 'You will hardly deny, though,'
said Zenothemis, 'that you supplied Crito with the poison for his
father. '
And therewith, his cup being in his hand, about half full of wine, he
emptied it over the pair; and Ion, whose worst guilt was being their
neighbour, came in for a good deal of it. Hermon bent forward, dried
his head, and entered a protest. Cleodemus, having no wine to reply
with, leant over and spat at Zenothemis; at the same time he clutched
the old man's beard with his left hand, and was aiming a blow which
would have killed him, when Aristaenetus arrested it, stepped over
Zenothemis, and lay down between the two, making himself a buffer in
the interests of peace.
All this time, Philo, my thoughts were busy enough with the old
commonplace, that after all it is no use having all theory at your
finger's ends, if you do not conform your conduct to the right. Here
were these masters of precept making themselves perfectly ridiculous in
practice. Then it was borne in upon me that possibly the vulgar notion
is right, and culture only misleads the people who are too much wrapt
up in books and bookish ideas. Of all that philosophic company there
was not a man--not so much as an accidental exception--who could pass
muster; if his conduct did not condemn him, his words did yet more
fatally. I could not make the wine responsible, either; the author of
that letter was fasting and sober.
Things seemed to go by contraries; you might see the ordinary people
behaving quite properly at table; no rioting and disorder there; the
most they did was to laugh at and, no doubt, censure the others, whom
they had been accustomed to respect and to credit with the qualities
their appearance suggested. It was the wise men who made beasts of
themselves, abused each other, over-fed, shouted and came to blows. I
thought one could find no better illustration for our dinner than the
poets' story of Eris. When she was not invited to Peleus's nuptials,
she threw that apple on the table which brought about the great Trojan
war. Hetoemocles's letter was just such an apple, woeful Iliad and all.
For buffer-Aristaenetus had proved ineffectual, and the quarrel between
Zenothemis and Cleodemus was proceeding. 'For the present,' said the
latter, 'I am satisfied with exposing your ignorance; to-morrow I
will give you your deserts more adequately. Pray explain, Zenothemis,
or the reputable Diphilus for you, how it is that you Stoics class
the acquisition of wealth among the things indifferent, and then
concentrate your whole efforts upon it, hang perpetually about the rich
to that end, lend money, screw out your usury, and take pay for your
teaching. Or again, if you hate pleasure and condemn the Epicureans,
how comes it that you will do and endure the meanest things for it? you
resent it if you are not asked out; and when you are, you eat so much,
and convey so much more to your servant's keeping'--and he interrupted
himself to make a grab at the napkin that Zenothemis's boy was holding,
full of all sorts of provender; he meant to get it away and empty the
contents on the floor; but the boy held on too tight.
'Quite right, Cleodemus,' said Hermon; 'let them tell us why they
condemn pleasure, and yet expect more of it than any one else. ' 'No,
no,' says Zenothemis; 'you give us your grounds, Cleodemus, for
saying wealth is _not_ a thing indifferent. ' 'No, I tell you; let us
have _your_ case. ' So the see-saw went on, till Ion came out of his
retirement and called a truce: 'I will give you,' he said, 'a theme
worthy of the occasion; and you shall speak and listen without trying
for personal triumphs; take a leaf from our Plato this time. ' 'Hear,
hear,' from the company, especially from Aristaenetus and Eucritus, who
hailed this escape from unpleasantness. The former now went back to his
own place, confident of peace.
The 'repast,' as they call it, had just made its appearance; each guest
was served with a bird, a slice of wild boar, a portion of hare, a
fried fish, some sesame cakes and sweet-meats--all these to be taken
home if the guest chose. Every man had not a separate dish, however;
Aristaenetus and Eucritus shared one little table, from which each was
to take what belonged to him; so Zenothemis the Stoic and Hermon the
Epicurean; Cleodemus and Ion had the third table, the bridegroom and
I the next; Diphilus had a double portion, by the absence of Zeno.
Remember these details, Philo; you will find they bear on the story.
_Phi. _ Trust me.
_Ly. _ Ion proceeded: 'I will start, then, if you wish it. ' He reflected
a moment, and then: 'With so much talent in the room, no less a subject
might seem indicated than Ideas[17], Incorporeals, and the Immortality
of the Soul. On the other hand our divergent views might make that too
controversial; so I will take the question of marriage, and say what
seems appropriate. The counsel of perfection here would be to dispense
with it, and be satisfied, according to the prescription of Plato and
Socrates, with contemplating male beauty. So, and only so, is absolute
virtue to be attained. But if marriage is admitted as a practical
necessity, then we should adopt the Platonic system of holding our
wives in common, thus obviating rivality. '
The unseasonableness of these remarks raised a laugh. And Dionysodorus
had another criticism: 'Spare us these provincialisms,' he said; 'or
give us your authority for "rivality. "' 'Such carpings are beneath
contempt,' was the polite reply. Dionysodorus was about to return the
compliment with interest, when our good man of letters intervened:
'Stop,' said Histiaeus, 'and let me read you an epithalamium. '
He at once went off at score; and I think I can reproduce the effusion:
Or like, in Aristaenetus's hall,
Cleanthis, softly nurtured bright princess,
Surpassing other beauties virginal,
Cythera's Queen, or Helen's loveliness.
Bridegroom, the best of your contemporaries,
Nireus's and Achilles' peer, rejoice!
While we in hymeneal voluntaries
Over the pair keep lifting up our voice.
By the time the laughter that not unnaturally followed had subsided, it
was time to pack up our 'repasts'; Aristaenetus and Eucritus took each
his intended portion; Chaereas and I, Ion and Cleodemus, did likewise.
But as Zeno was not there, Diphilus expected to come in for his share
too.
He said everything on that table was his, and disputed possession
with the servants. There was a tug of war between them just like that
over the body of Patroclus; at last he was worsted and had to let go,
to the huge amusement of all, which he heightened by taking the thing
as a most serious wrong.
As I told you, Hermon and Zenothemis were neighbours, the latter
having the upper place. Their portions were equal enough except in one
respect, and the division was peaceful until that was reached. But the
bird on Hermon's side was--by chance, no doubt--the fatter. The moment
came for them to take their respective birds. At this point--now attend
carefully, please, Philo; here is the kernel of the whole affair--at
this point Zenothemis let his own bird lie, and took the fatter one
before Hermon. But Hermon was not going to be put upon; he laid hold of
it too. Then their voices were lifted up, they closed, belaboured each
other's faces with the birds, clutched each other's beards, and called
for assistance, Hermon appealing to Cleodemus, Zenothemis to Alcidamas
and Diphilus. The allies took their sides, Ion alone preserving
neutrality.
The hosts engaged. Zenothemis lifted a goblet from the table where it
stood before Aristaenetus, and hurled it at Hermon;
And him it missed, but found another mark,
laying open the bridegroom's skull with a sound deep gash.
This opened the lips of the ladies; most of them indeed jumped down
into the battle's interspace, led by the young man's mother, as soon as
she saw his blood flowing; the bride too was startled from her place
by terror for him. Meanwhile Alcidamas was in his glory maintaining
the cause of Zenothemis; down came his stick on Cleodemus's skull, he
injured Hermon's jaw, and severely wounded several of the servants
who tried to protect them. The other side were not beaten, however;
Cleodemus with levelled finger was gouging out Zenothemis's eye, not
to mention fastening on his nose and biting a piece off it; and when
Diphilus came to Zenothemis's rescue, Hermon pitched him head first
from the couch.
Histiaeus too was wounded in trying to part the pair; it was a kick
in the teeth, I think, from Cleodemus, who took him for Diphilus.
So the poor man of letters lay 'disgorging blood,' as his own Homer
describes it. It was a scene of tumult and tears. The women were
hanging over Chaereas and wailing, the other men trying to restore
peace. The great centre of destruction was Alcidamas, who after
routing the forces immediately opposed to him was striking at whatever
presented itself. Many a man had fallen there, be sure, had he not
broken his stick. I was standing close up to the wall watching the
proceedings in which I took no part; Histiaeus's fate had taught me
the dangers of intervention. It was a sight to recall the Lapithae and
Centaurs--tables upside down, blood in streams, bowls hurtling in the
air.
At last Alcidamas upset the lamp, there was a great darkness, and
confusion was worse confounded. It was not so easy to procure another
light, and many a horrid deed was done in the dark. When some one came
at last with a lamp, Alcidamas was discovered stripping and applying
compulsion to the flute-girl, and Dionysodorus proved to have been
as incongruously engaged; as he stood up, a goblet rolled out of his
bosom. His account of the matter was that Ion had picked it up in the
confusion, and given it him to save it from damage! for which piece of
carefulness Ion was willing to receive credit.
So the party came to an end, tears being resolved in the laughter at
Alcidamas, Dionysodorus and Ion. The wounded were borne off in sad
case, especially old Zenothemis, holding one hand on his nose and the
other on his eye, and bellowing out that the agony was more than he
could bear. Hermon was in poor condition himself, having lost a couple
of teeth; but he could not let this piece of evidence go; 'Bear in
mind, Zenothemis,' he called out, 'that you do _not_ consider pain a
thing indifferent. ' The bridegroom, who had been seen to by Dionicus,
was also taken off with his head in bandages--in the carriage in which
he was to have taken his bride home. It had been a sorry wedding-feast
for him, poor fellow. Dionicus had done what he could for the rest,
they were taken home to bed, and very ill most of them were on the way.
Alcidamas stayed where he was; it was impossible to get rid of him, as
he had thrown himself down anyhow across a couch and fallen asleep.
And now you know all about the banquet, my dear Philo; a tragedy
epilogue seems called for:
Hidden power sways each hour:
Men propose, the Gods dispose:
Fail surmises, come surprises.
It was the unexpected that came to pass here, at any rate. Well, live
and learn; I know now that a quiet man had better keep clear of these
feasts of reason.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Castor and Pollux.
[15] Alcidamas being a cynic, or 'dog. '
[16] See _Puzzles_ in Notes.
[17] See _Plato_ in Notes.
DEMOSTHENES
AN ENCOMIUM
A little before noon on the sixteenth, I was walking in the Porch--it
was on the left-hand side as you go out--, when Thersagoras
appeared; I dare say he is known to some of you--short, hook-nosed,
fair-complexioned, and virile. He drew nearer, and I spoke:
'Thersagoras the poet. Whence, and whither? ' 'From home, hither,' he
replied. 'Just a stroll? ' I asked. 'Why, I do need a stroll too,' he
said. 'I got up in the small hours, impressed with the duty of making
a poetic offering on Homer's birthday. ' 'Very proper,' said I; 'a good
way of paying for the education he has given you. ' 'That was how I
began,' he continued, 'and time has glided by till now it is just upon
noon; that was what I meant by saying I wanted a stroll.
'However, I wanted something else much more--an interview with this
gentleman' (and he pointed to the Homer; you know the one on the right
of the Ptolemies' shrine, with the hair hanging loose); 'I came to
greet him, and to pray for a good flow of verse. ' 'Ah,' I sighed, 'if
prayers would do it! in that case _I_ should have given Demosthenes a
worrying for assistance against _his_ birthday. If prayers availed, I
would join my wishes to yours; for the boons we desire are the same. '
'Well, I put down to Homer,' he replied, 'my facility of this night and
morning; ardours divine and mystic have possessed me. But you shall
judge. Here are my tablets, which I have brought with designs upon any
idle friend I might light upon; and you, I rejoice to see, are idle. '
'Ah, you lucky man! ' I exclaimed; 'you are like the winner of the three
miles, who had washed off the dust, and could amuse himself for the
rest of the day. He was minded to crack a story with the wrestler, when
the wrestling was next on the programme; but the wrestler asked him
whether he had felt like cracking stories when he toed the line just
now. You have won your poetic three miles, and want me to minister to
your amusement just as I am shivering at the thought of my hundred
yards. ' He laughed: 'Why, how will it make things worse for you? '
'Ah, you probably consider Demosthenes of much less account than Homer.
_You_ are very proud of your eulogy on Homer; and is Demosthenes a
light matter to _me_? ' 'A trumped up charge,' he exclaimed; 'I am not
going to sow dissension between these two mighty ones, though it is
true my own allegiance is rather to Homer. '
'Good,' I said, 'and you must allow me to give mine to Demosthenes.
But, though you do not disqualify my subject, I am sure you think
poetry the only real treatment; you feel about mere rhetoric what the
cavalryman feels as he gallops past the infantry. ' 'I hope I am not
so mad as that,' he said, 'though a considerable touch of madness is
required of him who would pass the gates of poetry. ' 'If you come to
that, prose cannot do without some divine inspiration either, if it
is not to be flat and common. ' He admitted that at once: 'I often
delight myself with comparing passages from Demosthenes and other prose
writers with Homer in point of vehemence, pungency, fire. "Flown with
wine" I pair off against the revellings and dancings and debauchery of
Philip; "One presage that ne'er fails[18]" finds its counterpart in
"It is for brave men, founding themselves upon brave hopes--"; "How
would old Peleus, lord of steeds, repine--" is matched by "What a cry
of lamentation would go up from the men of those days who laid down
their lives for glory and freedom--"; "fluent Python" reminds me of
Odysseus's "snow-flake speech"; "If 'twere our lot neither to age nor
die," I illustrate by "For every man's life must end in death, though
he shut himself up in a narrow chamber for safer keeping. " In fact the
instances are numberless in which they attack their meaning by the same
road.
'I love too to study his feelings and moods and transitions, the
variety with which he combats weariness, his resumptions after
digression, the charm of his opportune illustrations, and the
never-failing native purity of his style.
'It has often struck me about Demosthenes--for I will tell the whole
truth out--that that looser of the bonds of speech rebukes Athenian
slackness with a dignity that is lacking in the "Greekesses" used by
Homer of the Greeks; and again he maintains the tragic intensity proper
to the great Hellenic drama more consistently than the poet who inserts
speeches at the very crisis of battle and allows energy to evaporate in
words.
'As often as I read Demosthenes, the balanced clauses, the rhythmic
movement and cadence, make me forget that this is not my beloved
poetry; for Homer too abounds in contrast and parallel, in figures
startling or simple. It is a provision of nature, I suppose, that each
faculty should have its proper equipment attached to it. How should I
scorn your Muse? I know her powers too well.
'None the less, I consider my task of a Homeric encomium twice as
difficult as your praise of Demosthenes; not because it must be in
verse, but from the nature of the material; _I_ cannot lay down a
foundation of fact to build the edifice of praise upon; there is
nothing but the poems themselves. Everything else is uncertain--his
country, his family, his time. If there had been any uncertainty about
them,
Debate and strife had not divided men;
but as it is, they give him for a country Ios or Colophon or Cumae,
Chios, Smyrna, or Egyptian Thebes, or half a hundred other places; his
father may be Maeon the Lydian, or he may be a river; his mother is now
Melanope, and now in default of satisfactory human descent a dryad; his
time is the Heroic Age, or else perhaps it is the Ionic. There is no
knowing for certain whether he was before or after Hesiod, even; and no
wonder, considering that some object to his very name, and will have
him Melesigenes instead. So too with his poverty, and his blindness.
However, all these questions are best left alone. So you see the arena
open to my panegyric is extremely limited; my theme is a poet and not a
man of action; I can infer and collect his wisdom only from his verses.
'_Your_ work, now, can be reeled smoothly off out of hand; you have
your definite known facts; the butcher's meat is there, only needing to
be garnished with the sauce of your words. History supplies you with
the greatness and distinction of Demosthenes; it is all known; his
country was Athens, the splendid, the famous, the bulwark of Hellas.
Now if _I_ could have laid hands on Athens, I might have used the
poet's right to introduce the loves and judgements and sojourns there
of the Gods, the gifts they lavished on it, the tale of Eleusis. As
for its laws and courts and festivals, its Piraeus and its colonies,
the memorials set up in it of victory by land and sea, Demosthenes
himself is the authority for saying that no words could do justice to
them. My material would have been inexhaustible; and I could not have
been accused of hanging up my true theme; the formula of panegyric
includes the arraying of the man in the splendours of his country. So
too Isocrates ekes out his _Helen_ by introducing Theseus. It is true
that poets have their privileges; and perhaps _you_ have to be more
careful about your proportions; there must not be _too_ much sack to
the proverbial halfpennyworth of bread.
'Well then, let Athens go; but your discourse at once finds another
support in his father's wealth--that "golden base" which Pindar
likes--; for to be responsible for providing a war-ship was to be
among the richest Athenians in those days. And though he died while
Demosthenes was quite a child, we are not to count his orphan state a
disaster; it led to the distinction that brought his splendid gifts
into notice.
'Tradition gives us no hint of how Homer was educated or developed his
powers; the panegyrist must plunge straight into his works, and can
find nothing to talk about in his breeding and training and pupilage;
he has not even the resource of that Hesiodic sprig of bay which could
make a facile poet out of a shepherd. But think of _your_ abundance
in this branch of the subject. There is Callistratus and all the
mighty roll of orators, Alcidamas, Isocrates, Isaeus, Eubulides. Then
again, at Athens even those who were subject to paternal control had
countless temptations to indulgence, youth is the susceptible time, a
neglected ward could have lived as irregular a life as he chose, and
yet the objects that Demosthenes set up for himself were philosophy and
patriotism, and the doors they took him to not Phryne's, but those of
Aristotle and Theophrastus, Xenocrates and Plato.
'And so, my dear sir, your way is open to a disquisition upon the two
kinds of human love, the one sprung of a desire that is like the sea,
outrageous, fierce, stormily rocking the soul; it is a true sea wave,
which the earthly Aphrodite sets rolling with the tempestuous passions
of youth; but the other is the steady drawing of a golden cord from
heaven; it does not scorch and pierce and leave festering wounds; it
impels towards the pure and unsullied ideal of absolute beauty, and is
a sane madness in those souls which "yet hold of Zeus and nurse the
spark divine. "
'Love will find out the way, though that way involve a shaven head,
a cavern dwelling, a discouraging mirror and punitive sword, a
disciplining of the tongue, a belated apprenticeship to the actor's
art, a straining of the memory, a conquest over clamour, and a
borrowing of night hours to lengthen toilsome days. [19] All this your
Demosthenes endured, and who knows not what an orator it made of
him? his speech packed with thought and terse of language, himself
convincing in his knowledge of human nature, as splendid in the
elevation as mighty in the force of his sentiments, the master and not
the slave of his words and his ideas, ever fresh with the graces of
his art. He is the one orator whose speech has, in the bold phrase of
Leosthenes, at once the breath of life and the strength of wrought iron.
'Callisthenes remarked of Aeschylus that he wrote his tragedies in
wine, which lent vigour and warmth to his work. With Demosthenes it was
otherwise; he composed not on wine but on water; whence the witticism
of Demades, that most men's tongues are regulated by water,[20] but
Demosthenes's pen was subject to the same influence. And Pytheas
detected the smell of the midnight oil in the very perfection of the
speeches. Well, there is much in common between your subject and mine,
so far as this branch of them is concerned; on Homer's _poems_ I was no
worse off than you are.
'But when you come to your hero's acts of humanity, his pecuniary
sacrifices, his grand political achievements' (and he was going on
in full swing to the rest of the catalogue, when I interrupted, with
a laugh: 'Must I be dowsed with the remainder of your canful, good
bath-man? ' 'Most certainly,' he retorted, and went straight on),
'the public entertainments he gave, the public burdens he assumed,
the ships, the wall, the trench he contributed to, the prisoners he
ransomed, the girls he portioned, his admirable policy, the embassies
he served on, the laws he got passed, the mighty issues he was
concerned in--why, then I cannot but laugh to see your contracted
brows; as if a recital of the exploits of Demosthenes _could_ lack
matter! '
'I believe you think, my good man,' I protested, 'that I have never had
the deeds of Demosthenes drummed into me; I should be singular among
rhetoricians, then. ' 'It was on the assumption,' he said, 'implied by
you, that we want assistance. But perhaps your case is a very different
one; is the light so bright that you cannot manage to fix your eyes on
the dazzling glory of Demosthenes? Well, I was rather like that about
Homer at first. Indeed, I came very near turning mine away, thinking I
could not possibly face my subject. However, I got over it somehow or
other; became gradually inured, as it were, superior to the weakness of
vision that would have condemned me for a bastard eagle and no true son
of Homer.
'But now here is another great advantage that I consider you have over
me. The poetic faculty has a single aim; from which it follows that
Homer's glory must be laid hold of at once and as a whole. You on the
other hand, if you were to attempt dealing with the whole Demosthenes
all at once, would never know what to say; you would waver and not be
able to set your thoughts to work. You would be like the _gourmand_
at a Sicilian banquet, or the aesthete who has a thousand delightful
sights and sounds presented to him at once; they do not know which
way to turn for their conflicting desires. I suspect that you too are
distracted and find concentration impossible; all round you are the
varied attractions--his magnanimity, his fire, his orderly life, his
oratorical force and practical courage, the endless opportunities of
gain that he scorned, his justice, humanity, honour, spirit, sagacity,
and each of all his great services to his country. It may well be that,
when you behold on this side decrees, ambassadors, speeches, laws, on
the other, fleets, Euboea, Boeotia, Chios, Rhodes, the Hellespont,
Byzantium, you are pulled to and fro among these too numerous
invitations, and cannot tell which to accept.
'Pindar once found himself in a similar difficulty with an
over-abundant theme:
Ismenus? Melia's distaff golden-bright?
Cadmus? the race from dragon's teeth that came?
Thebe's dark circlet? the all-daring might
Of Heracles? great Bacchus' merry fame?
White-armed Harmonia's bridal? --Ay, but which?
My Muse, we're poor in that we are too rich.
You, I dare say, are in the same quandary. Logic and life, rhetoric and
philosophy, popularity and death--ay, but which?
'The maze is quite easy to escape from, though; you have only to take
hold of one single clue, no matter which--his oratory, if you will, so
that it is taken by itself--, and stick to that one throughout your
present discourse. You will have ample material; his oratory is not of
the Periclean type. Pericles could lighten and thunder, and he could
hit the right nail on the head; so much tradition tells us; but we
have nothing to judge for ourselves by, no doubt because, beyond the
momentary impression produced, there was in his performances no element
of permanence, nothing that could stand the searching test of time. But
with Demosthenes's work--well, that it will be your province to deal
with, if your choice goes that way.
'Or if you prefer his character, or his policy, it will be well to
isolate some particular detail--if you are greedy you may pick out two
or three--which will give you quite enough to go upon; so great was he
at every point. And for such specializing we have Homer's example; the
compliments he pays his heroes are attached to parts of them, their
feet, their heads, their hair, even their shields or something they
have on; and the Gods seem to have had no objection to poets' basing
their praises merely on a distaff, a bow, or the aegis; a limb or a
quality must pass still more easily; and as for good actions, it is
impossible to give an exhaustive list of them. Demosthenes accordingly
will not blame you for confining your eulogy to _one_ of his merits,
especially as to celebrate the whole of them worthily would be beyond
even _his_ powers. '
When Thersagoras had finished this harangue, I remarked: 'Your
intention is plain; I am to be convinced that you are more than a good
poet; so you have constructed your prose Demosthenes as a pendant to
your verse Homer. ' 'No, no,' he said; 'what made me run on so long was
the idea that, if I could ease your mind by showing how light your
task was, I should have secured my listener. ' 'Then let me tell you
that _your_ object has not been furthered, and _my_ case has only been
aggravated. ' 'A fine doctor I seem to be! ' he said. 'Not knowing where
the difficulty lies,' I continued, 'you are a doctor who mistakes his
patient's ailment and treats him for another. ' 'How so? '
'You have been prescribing for the troubles that would attend a first
attempt; unfortunately it is years and years since I got through that
stage, and your remedies are quite out of date. ' 'Why, then,' he
exclaimed, 'the cure is complete; nobody is nervous about a road of
which he knows every inch. '
'Ah, but then I have set my heart upon reversing the feat that
Anniceris of Cyrene exhibited to Plato and his friends. To show what
a fine driver he was, he drove round the Academy time after time
exactly in his own track, which looked after it as if it had only been
traversed once. Now my endeavour is just the opposite, to _avoid_ my
old tracks; and it is by no means so easy to keep out of the ruts. '
'Pauson's is the trick for you,' he said. 'What is that? I never heard
of it. '
'Pauson the painter was commissioned to do a horse rolling. He painted
one galloping in a cloud of dust. As he was at work upon it, his
patron came in, and complained that this was not what he had ordered.
Pauson just turned the picture upside down and told his man to hold
it so for inspection; there was the horse rolling on its back. ' 'You
dear innocent! ' I said; 'do you suppose I have kept my picture turned
the same way all these years? It has been shifted and tilted at every
conceivable angle, till I begin to have apprehensions of ending like
Proteus. ' 'And how was that? ' 'Oh, I mean the issue of his attempts to
evade human observation; when he had exhausted all shapes of animals
and plants and elements, finding no metamorphosis left him, he had to
be Proteus again. '
'You have more shifts than ever Proteus had,' he said, 'to get off
hearing my poem. '
'Oh, do not say that,' said I; 'off goes my burden of care, and I am
at your service. Perhaps when you have got over your own pains of
child-birth you will show more feeling for my delicate state. '
He liked the offer, we settled down on a convenient stone step, and
I listened to some excellent poetry. In the middle of reading he was
seized with an idea, did up his tablets, and said: 'You shall have your
hearer's fee, as well deserved as an Athenian's after a day in court or
assembly. Thank me, please. ' 'I do, before I know what for. But what
may it be? ' 'It was in the Macedonian royal archives that I came across
the book; I was delighted with it at the time, and took considerable
trouble to secure it; it has just come into my head that I have it
at home. It contains, among details of Antipater's management of the
household, facts about Demosthenes that I think you will find worth
your best attention. ' 'You shall have payment on the spot,' I said,
'in the shape of an audience for the rest of your verses; and moreover
I shall not part with you till your promise is fulfilled. You have
given me a luscious Homer birthday dinner; and it seems you are to be
at the charges of the Demosthenes one too. '
He read to the end, we stayed long enough for me to give the poem its
meed of praise, and then adjourned to his house, where after some
search the book was found. I took it away with me, and on further
acquaintance was so much impressed by it that I shall do no editing,
but read it you _totidem verbis_. Asclepius is not less honoured if his
worshippers, in default of original compositions, have the hymns of
Isodemus or Sophocles performed before him; there is a failure nowadays
in the supply of new plays for Dionysus; but those who produce the
works of old masters at the proper season have the credit all the same
of honouring the God.
This book, then (the part of the state records that concerns us is the
conversation I shall give you)--the book informs us that Archias's
name was announced to Antipater. In case any of my younger hearers
should not know the fact already, this Archias had been charged with
the arrest of all exiles. In particular, he was to get Demosthenes from
Calauria into Antipater's presence, but rather by persuasion than by
force. Antipater was excited about it, hoping that Demosthenes might
arrive any day. So, hearing that Archias was come from Calauria, he
gave orders for his instant admittance.
When he entered--but you shall have the conversation as it stands.
_Archias. Antipater_
_Ar. _ Is it well with you, Antipater?
_Ant. _ It is well, if you have brought Demosthenes.
_Ar. _ I have brought him as I might. I have the urn that holds his
remains.
_Ant. _ Ha? my hopes are dashed. What avail ashes and urns, if I have
not Demosthenes?
_Ar.
very well; do not trouble to tell me; good-bye; I will get it out of
some one else.
_Ly. _ Oh, you needn't be so hasty. I will tell you, if you are so set
upon it; only don't repeat it to everybody.
_Phi. _ If I know anything whatever of you, you will take good care of
that; you will not leave me many to repeat it to.
Now begin with telling me what Aristaenetus was giving the banquet for;
was it his boy Zeno's wedding?
_Ly. _ No, his girl Cleanthis's--to the son of Eucritus the banker, a
student of philosophy.
_Phi. _ I know; a fine lad; only a lad, though; old enough to marry?
_Ly. _ Well, he was the most _suitable_ to be had, I suppose. He is a
well-behaved youngster, has taken up philosophy, and is sole heir to a
rich father; so he was the selected bridegroom.
_Phi. _ Ah, no doubt Eucritus's money is a consideration. Well, and who
were the guests?
_Ly. _ Why, I need not give you the whole list; what you want is the
philosophers and men of letters. There was the old Stoic Zenothemis,
and with him 'Labyrinth' Diphilus; Aristaenetus's son Zeno is his
pupil. The Peripatetics were represented by Cleodemus--the ready,
argumentative person--you know him; 'Sword,' and 'Cleaver,' his
disciples call him. And then there was Hermon the Epicurean; directly
he came in, there were queer looks and edgings away in the Stoic
contingent; he might have been a parricide or an outlaw, by the way
they treated him. These had been asked as Aristaenetus's personal
friends and intimates, under which head come also Histiaeus the
literary man and Dionysodorus the rhetorician.
Then Chaereas (that is the bridegroom's name) was responsible for
his tutor Ion the Platonic--a grave reverend man remarkable for
the composure of his expression. He is generally spoken of as 'The
Standard,' so infallible is his judgement. As he walked up the room,
everybody got out of his way and saluted him like some higher being;
the great Ion's presence is like an angel's visit.
When nearly all the guests had arrived, and we were to take our
places, the ladies occupied the whole of the table to the right of
the entrance; there were a good many of them, surrounding the closely
veiled bride. The table at the far end accommodated the general
company, in due precedence.
At the one opposite the ladies, Eucritus had the first place,
with Aristaenetus next him. Then a doubt arose whether the next
was Zenothemis the Stoic's, in virtue of his years, or Hermon
the Epicurean's, who is priest of the Twin Gods[14], and also of
the noblest blood in the land. Zenothemis found the solution.
'Aristaenetus,' he said, 'if you place me below this Epicurean (I
need not use worse language than _that_), I at once leave the room';
and calling his servant he made as if to depart. 'Have your way,
Zenothemis,' said Hermon, 'though, whatever your contempt for Epicurus,
etiquette would have suggested your giving way to my priesthood, if
I had no other claims. ' 'Priest and Epicurean! that is a good joke,'
retorted Zenothemis, and took the place, with Hermon next him, however.
Then came Cleodemus the Peripatetic, Ion with the bridegroom, myself,
Diphilus and his pupil Zeno, then Dionysodorus the rhetorician and
Histiaeus the literary man.
_Phi_. Upon my word, a very temple of the Muses, peopled mainly with
the learned! I congratulate Aristaenetus on choosing for his guests
on so auspicious an occasion these patterns of wisdom; he skimmed the
cream off every sect in a most catholic spirit.
_Ly. _ Oh, yes, he is not one's idea of the rich man at all; he cares
for culture, and gives most of his time to those who have it.
Well, we fell to, quietly at first, on the ample and varied fare. But
you do not want a catalogue of soups and pastry and sauces; there
was plenty of everything. At this stage Cleodemus bent down to Ion,
and said: 'Do you see how the old man' (this was Zenothemis; I could
overhear their talk) 'is stuffing down the good things--his dress gets
a good deal of the gravy--and what a lot he hands back to his servant?
he thinks we cannot see him, and does not care whether there will be
enough to go round. Just call Lycinus's attention to him. ' This was
quite unnecessary, as I had had an excellent view of it for some time.
Just after Cleodemus had said this, in burst Alcidamas the cynic. He
had not been asked, but put a good face upon it with the usual 'No
summons Menelaus waits. ' The general opinion clearly was that he was an
impudent rogue, and various people struck in with what came to hand:
'What, Menelaus, art distraught? ' or, 'It liked not Agamemnon, Atreus'
son,' and other neat tags suited to the occasion; but these were all
asides; no one ventured to make them audible to him. Alcidamas is a
man uncommonly 'good at the war-cry'; he will bark you louder than any
dog of them all, literal or metaphorical; my gentlemen all knew he was
their better, and lay low.
Aristaenetus told him he was quite right to come; would he take a chair
and sit behind Histiaeus and Dionysodorus? 'Stuff! ' he said; 'a soft
womanish trick, to sit on a chair or a stool! one might as well loll at
one's food half on one's back, like all of you on this soft couch with
purple cushions under you. As for me, I will take my dinner standing
and walking about the room. If I get tired, I will lay my old cloak on
the ground and prop myself on my elbow like Heracles in the pictures. '
'Just as you please,' said Aristaenetus; and after that Alcidamas fed
walking round, shifting his quarters like the Scythians according to
where pasturage was richest, and following the servants up as they
carried the dishes.
However, he did not let feeding interrupt his energetic expositions
of virtue and vice, and his scoffs at gold and silver. What was the
good of this multitude of wonderful cups, he wanted to know, when
earthenware would serve the purpose? Aristaenetus got rid of his
obtrusiveness for the moment by signing to his servant to hand the
cynic a huge goblet of potent liquor. It seemed a happy thought; but he
little knew the woes that were to flow from that goblet. When Alcidamas
got it, he was quiet for a while, throwing himself on the ground in
dishabille as he had threatened, with his elbow planted vertically,
just in the attitude of the painters' _Heracles with Pholus_.
By this time the wine was flowing pretty freely everywhere; healths
were drunk, conversation was general, and the lights had come in. I now
noticed the boy standing near Cleodemus--a good-looking cupbearer--to
have an odd smile on. I suppose I am to give you all the by-play of
the dinner, especially any tender incidents. Well, so I was trying to
get at the reason for the smile. In a little while he came to take
Cleodemus's cup from him; he gave the boy's fingers a pinch, and handed
him up a couple of shillings, I think it was, with the cup. The smile
appeared again in response to the pinch, but I imagine he failed to
notice the coins; he did not get hold of them; they went ringing on
the floor, and there were two blushing faces to be seen. Those round,
however, could not tell whose the money was, the boy saying he had not
dropped it, and Cleodemus, at whose place it had been heard to fall,
not confessing to the loss. So the matter was soon done with; hardly
any one had grasped the situation--only Aristaenetus, as far as I could
gather. He shifted the boy soon after, effecting the transfer without
any fuss, and assigned Cleodemus a strong grown-up fellow who might
be a mule or horse groom. So much for that business; it would have
seriously compromised Cleodemus if it had attracted general attention;
but it was smothered forthwith by Aristaenetus's tactful handling of
the offence.
Alcidamas the cynic, who had now emptied his goblet, after finding out
the bride's name, called for silence; he then faced the ladies, and
cried out in a loud voice: 'Cleanthis, I drink to you in the name of
my patron Heracles. ' There was a general laugh; upon which, 'You vile
scum,' says he, 'you laugh, do you, because I invoke our God Heracles
as I toast the bride? Let me tell you that, if she will not pledge me,
she shall never bear a son as brave of spirit, as free of judgement,
as strong of body, as myself. ' And he proceeded to show us more of
the said body, till it was scarcely decent. The company irritated him
by laughing again; he stood there with a wandering wrathful eye, and
looked as if he were going to make trouble. He would probably have
brought down his stick on somebody's head, but for the timely arrival
of an enormous cake, the sight of which mollified him; he quieted down,
and accompanied its progress, eating hard.
The rest were mostly flushed with wine by this time, and the room
was full of clamour. Dionysodorus the rhetorician was alternately
delivering speeches of his own composition and receiving the plaudits
of the servants behind. Histiaeus, the literary man below him, was
making an eclectic mixture of Pindar, Hesiod, and Anacreon, whose
collaboration produced a most remarkable ode, some of it really
prophetic of what was soon to come--'Then hide met stubborn hide,' for
instance, and 'Uprose the wailings and the prayers of men. ' Zenothemis
too had taken a scroll in small writing from his servant, which he was
reading aloud.
Now came one of the usual slight breaks in the procession of dishes;
and Aristaenetus, to avoid the embarrassment of a blank, told his
jester to come in and talk or perform, by way of putting the company
still more at their ease. So in came an ugly fellow with a shaven
head--just a few hairs standing upright on the crown. He danced with
dislocations and contortions, which made him still more absurd, then
improvised and delivered some anapaests in an Egyptian accent, and
wound up with witticisms on the guests.
Most of them took these in good part; but when it came to Alcidamas's
turn, and he called him a Maltese poodle[15], Alcidamas, who had shown
signs of jealousy for some time and did not at all like the way he was
holding every one's attention, lost his temper. He threw off his cloak
and challenged the fellow to a bout of pancratium; otherwise he would
let him feel his stick. So poor Satyrion, as the jester was called,
had to accept the challenge and stand up. A charming spectacle--the
philosopher sparring and exchanging blows with a buffoon! Some of us
were scandalized and some amused, till Alcidamas found he had his
bellyful, being no match for the tough little fellow. They gave us a
good laugh.
It was now, not long after this match, that Dionicus the doctor came
in. He had been detained, he said, by a brain-fever case; the patient
was Polyprepon the piper, and thereby hung a tale. He had no sooner
entered the room, not knowing how far gone the man was, when he jumped
up, secured the door, drew a dagger, and handed him the pipes, with an
order to play them; and when Dionicus could not, he took a strap and
inflicted chastisement on the palms of his hands. To escape from this
perilous position, Dionicus proposed a match, with a scale of forfeits
to be exacted with the strap. He played first himself, and then handed
over the pipes, receiving in exchange the strap and dagger. These he
lost no time in sending out of window into the open court, after which
it was safe to grapple with him and shout for help; the neighbours
broke open the door and rescued him. He showed us his wealed hands and
some scratches on his face. His story had as distinguished a success as
the jester before; he then squeezed himself in by Histiaeus and dined
on what was left. His coming was providential, and he most useful in
the sequel.
There now appeared a messenger who said he brought a communication
from Hetoemocles the Stoic, which his master had directed him to read
publicly, and then return. With Aristaenetus's permission he took it to
the lamp, and began reading.
_Phi. _ The usual thing, I suppose--a panegyric on the bride, or an
epithalamium?
_Ly. _ Just what we took it for; however, it was quite another story.
Here are the contents:
_HETOEMOCLES THE PHILOSOPHER TO ARISTAENETUS, GREETING. _
_My views on dining are easily deducible from my whole past life;
though daily importuned by far richer men than you to join them, I
invariably refuse; I know too well the tumults and follies that attend
the wine-cup. But if there is one whose neglect I may fairly resent,
it is yourself; the fruit of my long and unremitting attentions to you
is to find myself not on the roll of your friends; I, your next-door
neighbour, am singled out for exclusion. The sting of it is in the
personal ingratitude; happiness for me is not found in a plate of wild
boar or hare or pastry; these I get in abundance at the houses of
people who understand the proprieties; this very day I might have dined
(and well, by all accounts) with my pupil Pammenes; but he pressed me
to no purpose; I was reserving myself, poor fool, for you. _
_But you pass me by, and feast others. I ought not to be surprised;
you have not acquired the power of distinguishing merit; you have no
apprehensive imagination. I know whence the blow comes; it is from
your precious philosophers, Zenothemis and The Labyrinth, whose mouths
(though I would not boast) I could stop with a single syllogism. Let
either of them tell me, What is Philosophy? or, not to go beyond the
merest elements, how does_ condition _differ from_ constitution? _for
I will not resort to real puzzles, as the_ Horns[1], _the_ Sorites[1],
_or the_ Reaper[16]. _Well, I wish you joy of their company. As for me,
holding as I do that nothing is good but what is right, I shall get
over a slight like this. _
_You will be kind enough not to resort later to the well-worn excuse of
having forgotten in the bustle of your engagements; I have spoken to
you twice to-day, in the morning at your house, and later when you were
sacrificing at the Anaceum. This is to let your guests know the rights
of the case. _
_If you think it is the dinner I care about, reflect upon the story of
Oeneus; you will observe that, when he omitted Artemis alone from the
Gods to whom he offered sacrifice, she resented it. Homer's account of
it states that he_
_Forgot or ne'er bethought him--woeful blindness! _
_Euripides's begins_,
_This land of Calydon, across the gulf
From Pelops' land, with all its fertile plains_--;
_and Sophocles's_,
_Upon the tilth of Oeneus Leto's child,
Far-darting Goddess, loosed a monstrous boar_.
_I quote you but these few of the many passages upon the incident,
just to suggest the qualities of him whom you have passed over,
to entertain, and to have your son taught by, Diphilus! natural
enough; of course, the lad fancies him, and finds him an agreeable
master! If tale-telling were not beneath me, I would add a piece of
information that, if you choose, you can get confirmed by the boy's
attendant Zopyrus. But a wedding is not a time for unpleasantness or
denunciations, especially of offences so vile. Diphilus deserves it
richly at my hands, indeed--two pupils he has stolen from me--; but for
the good name of Philosophy I will hold my hand. _
_My man has instructions, if you should offer him a portion of wild
boar or venison or sesame cake to bring me in lieu of my dinner, to
refuse it. I would not have you find the motive of my letter in such
desires. _
My dear fellow, I went all hot and cold as this was read; I was praying
that the earth might swallow me up when I saw everybody laughing at
the different points; the most amused were those who knew Hetoemocles
and his white hair and reverend looks; it was such a surprise to find
the reality behind that imposing beard and serious countenance. I felt
sure Aristaenetus had passed him over not in neglect, but because he
supposed he would never accept an invitation or have anything to do
with festivities; he had thought it out of the question, and not worth
trying.
As soon as the man stopped reading, all eyes were turned on Zeno and
Diphilus, who were pale with apprehension, and confirmed by their
embarrassment the insinuations of Hetoemocles. Aristaenetus was uneasy
and disturbed, but urged us to drink, and tried to smooth the matter
over with an attempt at a smile; he told the man he would see to it,
and dismissed him. Zeno disappeared shortly after; his attendant had
signed to him, as from his father, to retire.
Cleodemus had been on the look-out for an opportunity; he was spoiling
for a fight with the Stoics, and chafing over the difficulty of
starting the subject; but the letter had struck the right key, and
off he went. 'Now we see the productions of your fine Chrysippus, your
glorious Zeno, your Cleanthes--a few poor catch-words, some fruitless
posers, a philosophic exterior, and a large supply of--Hetoemocleses.
What ripe wisdom does this letter reveal, with its conclusion that
Aristaenetus is an Oeneus, and Hetoemocles an Artemis! How auspicious,
how suitable to the occasion, its tone! '
'To be sure,' chimed in Hermon, his left-hand neighbour; 'he had no
doubt heard that Aristaenetus had bespoken a wild boar, and thought the
introduction of the one at Calydon appropriate. Aristaenetus, I adjure
you by the domestic altar, let him taste the victim, or we shall have
the old man starving, and withering away like his Meleager. Though
indeed it would not be so very hard on him; such a fate is one of
Chrysippus's _things indifferent_. '
Here Zenothemis woke up and thundered out: 'Chrysippus? you name
that name? because a pretender like Hetoemocles comes short of his
profession, you argue from him to the real sages, to Cleanthes and
Zeno? And who are the men, pray, who hold such language? Why, Hermon,
who shore the curls, the solid golden curls, of the Dioscuri, and who
will yet receive his barber's fee from the executioner. And Cleodemus,
who was caught in adultery with his pupil Sostratus's wife, and paid
the shameful penalty. Silence would better become the owners of
such consciences. ' 'Who trades in his own wife's favours? ' retorted
Cleodemus; 'I do not do that, and I do not undertake to keep my foreign
pupil's purse and then swear by Polias the deposit was never made; I
do not lend money at fifty per cent, and I do not hale my pupils into
court if fees are not paid to the day. ' 'You will hardly deny, though,'
said Zenothemis, 'that you supplied Crito with the poison for his
father. '
And therewith, his cup being in his hand, about half full of wine, he
emptied it over the pair; and Ion, whose worst guilt was being their
neighbour, came in for a good deal of it. Hermon bent forward, dried
his head, and entered a protest. Cleodemus, having no wine to reply
with, leant over and spat at Zenothemis; at the same time he clutched
the old man's beard with his left hand, and was aiming a blow which
would have killed him, when Aristaenetus arrested it, stepped over
Zenothemis, and lay down between the two, making himself a buffer in
the interests of peace.
All this time, Philo, my thoughts were busy enough with the old
commonplace, that after all it is no use having all theory at your
finger's ends, if you do not conform your conduct to the right. Here
were these masters of precept making themselves perfectly ridiculous in
practice. Then it was borne in upon me that possibly the vulgar notion
is right, and culture only misleads the people who are too much wrapt
up in books and bookish ideas. Of all that philosophic company there
was not a man--not so much as an accidental exception--who could pass
muster; if his conduct did not condemn him, his words did yet more
fatally. I could not make the wine responsible, either; the author of
that letter was fasting and sober.
Things seemed to go by contraries; you might see the ordinary people
behaving quite properly at table; no rioting and disorder there; the
most they did was to laugh at and, no doubt, censure the others, whom
they had been accustomed to respect and to credit with the qualities
their appearance suggested. It was the wise men who made beasts of
themselves, abused each other, over-fed, shouted and came to blows. I
thought one could find no better illustration for our dinner than the
poets' story of Eris. When she was not invited to Peleus's nuptials,
she threw that apple on the table which brought about the great Trojan
war. Hetoemocles's letter was just such an apple, woeful Iliad and all.
For buffer-Aristaenetus had proved ineffectual, and the quarrel between
Zenothemis and Cleodemus was proceeding. 'For the present,' said the
latter, 'I am satisfied with exposing your ignorance; to-morrow I
will give you your deserts more adequately. Pray explain, Zenothemis,
or the reputable Diphilus for you, how it is that you Stoics class
the acquisition of wealth among the things indifferent, and then
concentrate your whole efforts upon it, hang perpetually about the rich
to that end, lend money, screw out your usury, and take pay for your
teaching. Or again, if you hate pleasure and condemn the Epicureans,
how comes it that you will do and endure the meanest things for it? you
resent it if you are not asked out; and when you are, you eat so much,
and convey so much more to your servant's keeping'--and he interrupted
himself to make a grab at the napkin that Zenothemis's boy was holding,
full of all sorts of provender; he meant to get it away and empty the
contents on the floor; but the boy held on too tight.
'Quite right, Cleodemus,' said Hermon; 'let them tell us why they
condemn pleasure, and yet expect more of it than any one else. ' 'No,
no,' says Zenothemis; 'you give us your grounds, Cleodemus, for
saying wealth is _not_ a thing indifferent. ' 'No, I tell you; let us
have _your_ case. ' So the see-saw went on, till Ion came out of his
retirement and called a truce: 'I will give you,' he said, 'a theme
worthy of the occasion; and you shall speak and listen without trying
for personal triumphs; take a leaf from our Plato this time. ' 'Hear,
hear,' from the company, especially from Aristaenetus and Eucritus, who
hailed this escape from unpleasantness. The former now went back to his
own place, confident of peace.
The 'repast,' as they call it, had just made its appearance; each guest
was served with a bird, a slice of wild boar, a portion of hare, a
fried fish, some sesame cakes and sweet-meats--all these to be taken
home if the guest chose. Every man had not a separate dish, however;
Aristaenetus and Eucritus shared one little table, from which each was
to take what belonged to him; so Zenothemis the Stoic and Hermon the
Epicurean; Cleodemus and Ion had the third table, the bridegroom and
I the next; Diphilus had a double portion, by the absence of Zeno.
Remember these details, Philo; you will find they bear on the story.
_Phi. _ Trust me.
_Ly. _ Ion proceeded: 'I will start, then, if you wish it. ' He reflected
a moment, and then: 'With so much talent in the room, no less a subject
might seem indicated than Ideas[17], Incorporeals, and the Immortality
of the Soul. On the other hand our divergent views might make that too
controversial; so I will take the question of marriage, and say what
seems appropriate. The counsel of perfection here would be to dispense
with it, and be satisfied, according to the prescription of Plato and
Socrates, with contemplating male beauty. So, and only so, is absolute
virtue to be attained. But if marriage is admitted as a practical
necessity, then we should adopt the Platonic system of holding our
wives in common, thus obviating rivality. '
The unseasonableness of these remarks raised a laugh. And Dionysodorus
had another criticism: 'Spare us these provincialisms,' he said; 'or
give us your authority for "rivality. "' 'Such carpings are beneath
contempt,' was the polite reply. Dionysodorus was about to return the
compliment with interest, when our good man of letters intervened:
'Stop,' said Histiaeus, 'and let me read you an epithalamium. '
He at once went off at score; and I think I can reproduce the effusion:
Or like, in Aristaenetus's hall,
Cleanthis, softly nurtured bright princess,
Surpassing other beauties virginal,
Cythera's Queen, or Helen's loveliness.
Bridegroom, the best of your contemporaries,
Nireus's and Achilles' peer, rejoice!
While we in hymeneal voluntaries
Over the pair keep lifting up our voice.
By the time the laughter that not unnaturally followed had subsided, it
was time to pack up our 'repasts'; Aristaenetus and Eucritus took each
his intended portion; Chaereas and I, Ion and Cleodemus, did likewise.
But as Zeno was not there, Diphilus expected to come in for his share
too.
He said everything on that table was his, and disputed possession
with the servants. There was a tug of war between them just like that
over the body of Patroclus; at last he was worsted and had to let go,
to the huge amusement of all, which he heightened by taking the thing
as a most serious wrong.
As I told you, Hermon and Zenothemis were neighbours, the latter
having the upper place. Their portions were equal enough except in one
respect, and the division was peaceful until that was reached. But the
bird on Hermon's side was--by chance, no doubt--the fatter. The moment
came for them to take their respective birds. At this point--now attend
carefully, please, Philo; here is the kernel of the whole affair--at
this point Zenothemis let his own bird lie, and took the fatter one
before Hermon. But Hermon was not going to be put upon; he laid hold of
it too. Then their voices were lifted up, they closed, belaboured each
other's faces with the birds, clutched each other's beards, and called
for assistance, Hermon appealing to Cleodemus, Zenothemis to Alcidamas
and Diphilus. The allies took their sides, Ion alone preserving
neutrality.
The hosts engaged. Zenothemis lifted a goblet from the table where it
stood before Aristaenetus, and hurled it at Hermon;
And him it missed, but found another mark,
laying open the bridegroom's skull with a sound deep gash.
This opened the lips of the ladies; most of them indeed jumped down
into the battle's interspace, led by the young man's mother, as soon as
she saw his blood flowing; the bride too was startled from her place
by terror for him. Meanwhile Alcidamas was in his glory maintaining
the cause of Zenothemis; down came his stick on Cleodemus's skull, he
injured Hermon's jaw, and severely wounded several of the servants
who tried to protect them. The other side were not beaten, however;
Cleodemus with levelled finger was gouging out Zenothemis's eye, not
to mention fastening on his nose and biting a piece off it; and when
Diphilus came to Zenothemis's rescue, Hermon pitched him head first
from the couch.
Histiaeus too was wounded in trying to part the pair; it was a kick
in the teeth, I think, from Cleodemus, who took him for Diphilus.
So the poor man of letters lay 'disgorging blood,' as his own Homer
describes it. It was a scene of tumult and tears. The women were
hanging over Chaereas and wailing, the other men trying to restore
peace. The great centre of destruction was Alcidamas, who after
routing the forces immediately opposed to him was striking at whatever
presented itself. Many a man had fallen there, be sure, had he not
broken his stick. I was standing close up to the wall watching the
proceedings in which I took no part; Histiaeus's fate had taught me
the dangers of intervention. It was a sight to recall the Lapithae and
Centaurs--tables upside down, blood in streams, bowls hurtling in the
air.
At last Alcidamas upset the lamp, there was a great darkness, and
confusion was worse confounded. It was not so easy to procure another
light, and many a horrid deed was done in the dark. When some one came
at last with a lamp, Alcidamas was discovered stripping and applying
compulsion to the flute-girl, and Dionysodorus proved to have been
as incongruously engaged; as he stood up, a goblet rolled out of his
bosom. His account of the matter was that Ion had picked it up in the
confusion, and given it him to save it from damage! for which piece of
carefulness Ion was willing to receive credit.
So the party came to an end, tears being resolved in the laughter at
Alcidamas, Dionysodorus and Ion. The wounded were borne off in sad
case, especially old Zenothemis, holding one hand on his nose and the
other on his eye, and bellowing out that the agony was more than he
could bear. Hermon was in poor condition himself, having lost a couple
of teeth; but he could not let this piece of evidence go; 'Bear in
mind, Zenothemis,' he called out, 'that you do _not_ consider pain a
thing indifferent. ' The bridegroom, who had been seen to by Dionicus,
was also taken off with his head in bandages--in the carriage in which
he was to have taken his bride home. It had been a sorry wedding-feast
for him, poor fellow. Dionicus had done what he could for the rest,
they were taken home to bed, and very ill most of them were on the way.
Alcidamas stayed where he was; it was impossible to get rid of him, as
he had thrown himself down anyhow across a couch and fallen asleep.
And now you know all about the banquet, my dear Philo; a tragedy
epilogue seems called for:
Hidden power sways each hour:
Men propose, the Gods dispose:
Fail surmises, come surprises.
It was the unexpected that came to pass here, at any rate. Well, live
and learn; I know now that a quiet man had better keep clear of these
feasts of reason.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Castor and Pollux.
[15] Alcidamas being a cynic, or 'dog. '
[16] See _Puzzles_ in Notes.
[17] See _Plato_ in Notes.
DEMOSTHENES
AN ENCOMIUM
A little before noon on the sixteenth, I was walking in the Porch--it
was on the left-hand side as you go out--, when Thersagoras
appeared; I dare say he is known to some of you--short, hook-nosed,
fair-complexioned, and virile. He drew nearer, and I spoke:
'Thersagoras the poet. Whence, and whither? ' 'From home, hither,' he
replied. 'Just a stroll? ' I asked. 'Why, I do need a stroll too,' he
said. 'I got up in the small hours, impressed with the duty of making
a poetic offering on Homer's birthday. ' 'Very proper,' said I; 'a good
way of paying for the education he has given you. ' 'That was how I
began,' he continued, 'and time has glided by till now it is just upon
noon; that was what I meant by saying I wanted a stroll.
'However, I wanted something else much more--an interview with this
gentleman' (and he pointed to the Homer; you know the one on the right
of the Ptolemies' shrine, with the hair hanging loose); 'I came to
greet him, and to pray for a good flow of verse. ' 'Ah,' I sighed, 'if
prayers would do it! in that case _I_ should have given Demosthenes a
worrying for assistance against _his_ birthday. If prayers availed, I
would join my wishes to yours; for the boons we desire are the same. '
'Well, I put down to Homer,' he replied, 'my facility of this night and
morning; ardours divine and mystic have possessed me. But you shall
judge. Here are my tablets, which I have brought with designs upon any
idle friend I might light upon; and you, I rejoice to see, are idle. '
'Ah, you lucky man! ' I exclaimed; 'you are like the winner of the three
miles, who had washed off the dust, and could amuse himself for the
rest of the day. He was minded to crack a story with the wrestler, when
the wrestling was next on the programme; but the wrestler asked him
whether he had felt like cracking stories when he toed the line just
now. You have won your poetic three miles, and want me to minister to
your amusement just as I am shivering at the thought of my hundred
yards. ' He laughed: 'Why, how will it make things worse for you? '
'Ah, you probably consider Demosthenes of much less account than Homer.
_You_ are very proud of your eulogy on Homer; and is Demosthenes a
light matter to _me_? ' 'A trumped up charge,' he exclaimed; 'I am not
going to sow dissension between these two mighty ones, though it is
true my own allegiance is rather to Homer. '
'Good,' I said, 'and you must allow me to give mine to Demosthenes.
But, though you do not disqualify my subject, I am sure you think
poetry the only real treatment; you feel about mere rhetoric what the
cavalryman feels as he gallops past the infantry. ' 'I hope I am not
so mad as that,' he said, 'though a considerable touch of madness is
required of him who would pass the gates of poetry. ' 'If you come to
that, prose cannot do without some divine inspiration either, if it
is not to be flat and common. ' He admitted that at once: 'I often
delight myself with comparing passages from Demosthenes and other prose
writers with Homer in point of vehemence, pungency, fire. "Flown with
wine" I pair off against the revellings and dancings and debauchery of
Philip; "One presage that ne'er fails[18]" finds its counterpart in
"It is for brave men, founding themselves upon brave hopes--"; "How
would old Peleus, lord of steeds, repine--" is matched by "What a cry
of lamentation would go up from the men of those days who laid down
their lives for glory and freedom--"; "fluent Python" reminds me of
Odysseus's "snow-flake speech"; "If 'twere our lot neither to age nor
die," I illustrate by "For every man's life must end in death, though
he shut himself up in a narrow chamber for safer keeping. " In fact the
instances are numberless in which they attack their meaning by the same
road.
'I love too to study his feelings and moods and transitions, the
variety with which he combats weariness, his resumptions after
digression, the charm of his opportune illustrations, and the
never-failing native purity of his style.
'It has often struck me about Demosthenes--for I will tell the whole
truth out--that that looser of the bonds of speech rebukes Athenian
slackness with a dignity that is lacking in the "Greekesses" used by
Homer of the Greeks; and again he maintains the tragic intensity proper
to the great Hellenic drama more consistently than the poet who inserts
speeches at the very crisis of battle and allows energy to evaporate in
words.
'As often as I read Demosthenes, the balanced clauses, the rhythmic
movement and cadence, make me forget that this is not my beloved
poetry; for Homer too abounds in contrast and parallel, in figures
startling or simple. It is a provision of nature, I suppose, that each
faculty should have its proper equipment attached to it. How should I
scorn your Muse? I know her powers too well.
'None the less, I consider my task of a Homeric encomium twice as
difficult as your praise of Demosthenes; not because it must be in
verse, but from the nature of the material; _I_ cannot lay down a
foundation of fact to build the edifice of praise upon; there is
nothing but the poems themselves. Everything else is uncertain--his
country, his family, his time. If there had been any uncertainty about
them,
Debate and strife had not divided men;
but as it is, they give him for a country Ios or Colophon or Cumae,
Chios, Smyrna, or Egyptian Thebes, or half a hundred other places; his
father may be Maeon the Lydian, or he may be a river; his mother is now
Melanope, and now in default of satisfactory human descent a dryad; his
time is the Heroic Age, or else perhaps it is the Ionic. There is no
knowing for certain whether he was before or after Hesiod, even; and no
wonder, considering that some object to his very name, and will have
him Melesigenes instead. So too with his poverty, and his blindness.
However, all these questions are best left alone. So you see the arena
open to my panegyric is extremely limited; my theme is a poet and not a
man of action; I can infer and collect his wisdom only from his verses.
'_Your_ work, now, can be reeled smoothly off out of hand; you have
your definite known facts; the butcher's meat is there, only needing to
be garnished with the sauce of your words. History supplies you with
the greatness and distinction of Demosthenes; it is all known; his
country was Athens, the splendid, the famous, the bulwark of Hellas.
Now if _I_ could have laid hands on Athens, I might have used the
poet's right to introduce the loves and judgements and sojourns there
of the Gods, the gifts they lavished on it, the tale of Eleusis. As
for its laws and courts and festivals, its Piraeus and its colonies,
the memorials set up in it of victory by land and sea, Demosthenes
himself is the authority for saying that no words could do justice to
them. My material would have been inexhaustible; and I could not have
been accused of hanging up my true theme; the formula of panegyric
includes the arraying of the man in the splendours of his country. So
too Isocrates ekes out his _Helen_ by introducing Theseus. It is true
that poets have their privileges; and perhaps _you_ have to be more
careful about your proportions; there must not be _too_ much sack to
the proverbial halfpennyworth of bread.
'Well then, let Athens go; but your discourse at once finds another
support in his father's wealth--that "golden base" which Pindar
likes--; for to be responsible for providing a war-ship was to be
among the richest Athenians in those days. And though he died while
Demosthenes was quite a child, we are not to count his orphan state a
disaster; it led to the distinction that brought his splendid gifts
into notice.
'Tradition gives us no hint of how Homer was educated or developed his
powers; the panegyrist must plunge straight into his works, and can
find nothing to talk about in his breeding and training and pupilage;
he has not even the resource of that Hesiodic sprig of bay which could
make a facile poet out of a shepherd. But think of _your_ abundance
in this branch of the subject. There is Callistratus and all the
mighty roll of orators, Alcidamas, Isocrates, Isaeus, Eubulides. Then
again, at Athens even those who were subject to paternal control had
countless temptations to indulgence, youth is the susceptible time, a
neglected ward could have lived as irregular a life as he chose, and
yet the objects that Demosthenes set up for himself were philosophy and
patriotism, and the doors they took him to not Phryne's, but those of
Aristotle and Theophrastus, Xenocrates and Plato.
'And so, my dear sir, your way is open to a disquisition upon the two
kinds of human love, the one sprung of a desire that is like the sea,
outrageous, fierce, stormily rocking the soul; it is a true sea wave,
which the earthly Aphrodite sets rolling with the tempestuous passions
of youth; but the other is the steady drawing of a golden cord from
heaven; it does not scorch and pierce and leave festering wounds; it
impels towards the pure and unsullied ideal of absolute beauty, and is
a sane madness in those souls which "yet hold of Zeus and nurse the
spark divine. "
'Love will find out the way, though that way involve a shaven head,
a cavern dwelling, a discouraging mirror and punitive sword, a
disciplining of the tongue, a belated apprenticeship to the actor's
art, a straining of the memory, a conquest over clamour, and a
borrowing of night hours to lengthen toilsome days. [19] All this your
Demosthenes endured, and who knows not what an orator it made of
him? his speech packed with thought and terse of language, himself
convincing in his knowledge of human nature, as splendid in the
elevation as mighty in the force of his sentiments, the master and not
the slave of his words and his ideas, ever fresh with the graces of
his art. He is the one orator whose speech has, in the bold phrase of
Leosthenes, at once the breath of life and the strength of wrought iron.
'Callisthenes remarked of Aeschylus that he wrote his tragedies in
wine, which lent vigour and warmth to his work. With Demosthenes it was
otherwise; he composed not on wine but on water; whence the witticism
of Demades, that most men's tongues are regulated by water,[20] but
Demosthenes's pen was subject to the same influence. And Pytheas
detected the smell of the midnight oil in the very perfection of the
speeches. Well, there is much in common between your subject and mine,
so far as this branch of them is concerned; on Homer's _poems_ I was no
worse off than you are.
'But when you come to your hero's acts of humanity, his pecuniary
sacrifices, his grand political achievements' (and he was going on
in full swing to the rest of the catalogue, when I interrupted, with
a laugh: 'Must I be dowsed with the remainder of your canful, good
bath-man? ' 'Most certainly,' he retorted, and went straight on),
'the public entertainments he gave, the public burdens he assumed,
the ships, the wall, the trench he contributed to, the prisoners he
ransomed, the girls he portioned, his admirable policy, the embassies
he served on, the laws he got passed, the mighty issues he was
concerned in--why, then I cannot but laugh to see your contracted
brows; as if a recital of the exploits of Demosthenes _could_ lack
matter! '
'I believe you think, my good man,' I protested, 'that I have never had
the deeds of Demosthenes drummed into me; I should be singular among
rhetoricians, then. ' 'It was on the assumption,' he said, 'implied by
you, that we want assistance. But perhaps your case is a very different
one; is the light so bright that you cannot manage to fix your eyes on
the dazzling glory of Demosthenes? Well, I was rather like that about
Homer at first. Indeed, I came very near turning mine away, thinking I
could not possibly face my subject. However, I got over it somehow or
other; became gradually inured, as it were, superior to the weakness of
vision that would have condemned me for a bastard eagle and no true son
of Homer.
'But now here is another great advantage that I consider you have over
me. The poetic faculty has a single aim; from which it follows that
Homer's glory must be laid hold of at once and as a whole. You on the
other hand, if you were to attempt dealing with the whole Demosthenes
all at once, would never know what to say; you would waver and not be
able to set your thoughts to work. You would be like the _gourmand_
at a Sicilian banquet, or the aesthete who has a thousand delightful
sights and sounds presented to him at once; they do not know which
way to turn for their conflicting desires. I suspect that you too are
distracted and find concentration impossible; all round you are the
varied attractions--his magnanimity, his fire, his orderly life, his
oratorical force and practical courage, the endless opportunities of
gain that he scorned, his justice, humanity, honour, spirit, sagacity,
and each of all his great services to his country. It may well be that,
when you behold on this side decrees, ambassadors, speeches, laws, on
the other, fleets, Euboea, Boeotia, Chios, Rhodes, the Hellespont,
Byzantium, you are pulled to and fro among these too numerous
invitations, and cannot tell which to accept.
'Pindar once found himself in a similar difficulty with an
over-abundant theme:
Ismenus? Melia's distaff golden-bright?
Cadmus? the race from dragon's teeth that came?
Thebe's dark circlet? the all-daring might
Of Heracles? great Bacchus' merry fame?
White-armed Harmonia's bridal? --Ay, but which?
My Muse, we're poor in that we are too rich.
You, I dare say, are in the same quandary. Logic and life, rhetoric and
philosophy, popularity and death--ay, but which?
'The maze is quite easy to escape from, though; you have only to take
hold of one single clue, no matter which--his oratory, if you will, so
that it is taken by itself--, and stick to that one throughout your
present discourse. You will have ample material; his oratory is not of
the Periclean type. Pericles could lighten and thunder, and he could
hit the right nail on the head; so much tradition tells us; but we
have nothing to judge for ourselves by, no doubt because, beyond the
momentary impression produced, there was in his performances no element
of permanence, nothing that could stand the searching test of time. But
with Demosthenes's work--well, that it will be your province to deal
with, if your choice goes that way.
'Or if you prefer his character, or his policy, it will be well to
isolate some particular detail--if you are greedy you may pick out two
or three--which will give you quite enough to go upon; so great was he
at every point. And for such specializing we have Homer's example; the
compliments he pays his heroes are attached to parts of them, their
feet, their heads, their hair, even their shields or something they
have on; and the Gods seem to have had no objection to poets' basing
their praises merely on a distaff, a bow, or the aegis; a limb or a
quality must pass still more easily; and as for good actions, it is
impossible to give an exhaustive list of them. Demosthenes accordingly
will not blame you for confining your eulogy to _one_ of his merits,
especially as to celebrate the whole of them worthily would be beyond
even _his_ powers. '
When Thersagoras had finished this harangue, I remarked: 'Your
intention is plain; I am to be convinced that you are more than a good
poet; so you have constructed your prose Demosthenes as a pendant to
your verse Homer. ' 'No, no,' he said; 'what made me run on so long was
the idea that, if I could ease your mind by showing how light your
task was, I should have secured my listener. ' 'Then let me tell you
that _your_ object has not been furthered, and _my_ case has only been
aggravated. ' 'A fine doctor I seem to be! ' he said. 'Not knowing where
the difficulty lies,' I continued, 'you are a doctor who mistakes his
patient's ailment and treats him for another. ' 'How so? '
'You have been prescribing for the troubles that would attend a first
attempt; unfortunately it is years and years since I got through that
stage, and your remedies are quite out of date. ' 'Why, then,' he
exclaimed, 'the cure is complete; nobody is nervous about a road of
which he knows every inch. '
'Ah, but then I have set my heart upon reversing the feat that
Anniceris of Cyrene exhibited to Plato and his friends. To show what
a fine driver he was, he drove round the Academy time after time
exactly in his own track, which looked after it as if it had only been
traversed once. Now my endeavour is just the opposite, to _avoid_ my
old tracks; and it is by no means so easy to keep out of the ruts. '
'Pauson's is the trick for you,' he said. 'What is that? I never heard
of it. '
'Pauson the painter was commissioned to do a horse rolling. He painted
one galloping in a cloud of dust. As he was at work upon it, his
patron came in, and complained that this was not what he had ordered.
Pauson just turned the picture upside down and told his man to hold
it so for inspection; there was the horse rolling on its back. ' 'You
dear innocent! ' I said; 'do you suppose I have kept my picture turned
the same way all these years? It has been shifted and tilted at every
conceivable angle, till I begin to have apprehensions of ending like
Proteus. ' 'And how was that? ' 'Oh, I mean the issue of his attempts to
evade human observation; when he had exhausted all shapes of animals
and plants and elements, finding no metamorphosis left him, he had to
be Proteus again. '
'You have more shifts than ever Proteus had,' he said, 'to get off
hearing my poem. '
'Oh, do not say that,' said I; 'off goes my burden of care, and I am
at your service. Perhaps when you have got over your own pains of
child-birth you will show more feeling for my delicate state. '
He liked the offer, we settled down on a convenient stone step, and
I listened to some excellent poetry. In the middle of reading he was
seized with an idea, did up his tablets, and said: 'You shall have your
hearer's fee, as well deserved as an Athenian's after a day in court or
assembly. Thank me, please. ' 'I do, before I know what for. But what
may it be? ' 'It was in the Macedonian royal archives that I came across
the book; I was delighted with it at the time, and took considerable
trouble to secure it; it has just come into my head that I have it
at home. It contains, among details of Antipater's management of the
household, facts about Demosthenes that I think you will find worth
your best attention. ' 'You shall have payment on the spot,' I said,
'in the shape of an audience for the rest of your verses; and moreover
I shall not part with you till your promise is fulfilled. You have
given me a luscious Homer birthday dinner; and it seems you are to be
at the charges of the Demosthenes one too. '
He read to the end, we stayed long enough for me to give the poem its
meed of praise, and then adjourned to his house, where after some
search the book was found. I took it away with me, and on further
acquaintance was so much impressed by it that I shall do no editing,
but read it you _totidem verbis_. Asclepius is not less honoured if his
worshippers, in default of original compositions, have the hymns of
Isodemus or Sophocles performed before him; there is a failure nowadays
in the supply of new plays for Dionysus; but those who produce the
works of old masters at the proper season have the credit all the same
of honouring the God.
This book, then (the part of the state records that concerns us is the
conversation I shall give you)--the book informs us that Archias's
name was announced to Antipater. In case any of my younger hearers
should not know the fact already, this Archias had been charged with
the arrest of all exiles. In particular, he was to get Demosthenes from
Calauria into Antipater's presence, but rather by persuasion than by
force. Antipater was excited about it, hoping that Demosthenes might
arrive any day. So, hearing that Archias was come from Calauria, he
gave orders for his instant admittance.
When he entered--but you shall have the conversation as it stands.
_Archias. Antipater_
_Ar. _ Is it well with you, Antipater?
_Ant. _ It is well, if you have brought Demosthenes.
_Ar. _ I have brought him as I might. I have the urn that holds his
remains.
_Ant. _ Ha? my hopes are dashed. What avail ashes and urns, if I have
not Demosthenes?
_Ar.
