LOVE SONGS. . . . and he ridicules him. for his poems; and in his Herdsmen he says—
A man who would not give to Sophocles
A chorus when he asked one; though he granted
That favour to Cleomachus, whom I
Should scarce think worthy of so great an honour,
At the Adonia.
And in his Hours he says—
Farewell to that great tragedian
Cleomachus, with his chorus of hair-pullers,
Plucking vile melodies in the Lydian fashion.
But Teleclides, in his Rigid Men, says that he was greatly addicted to adultery. And Clearchus, in the second book of his Amatory Anecdotes, says that the love-songs, and those, too, which are called the Locrian songs, do not differ in the least from the compositions of Sappho and Anacreon. Moreover, the poems of Archilochus, and that on fieldfares, attributed to Homer, relate to some division or other of this passion, describing it in metrical poetry. But the writings of Asopodorus about love, and the whole body of amorous epistles, are a sort of amatory poetry out of metre.
44. When Masurius had said this, the second course, as it is called, was served up to us; which, indeed, was very often offered to us, not only on the days of the festival of Saturn,[1] when it is the custom of the Romans to feast their slaves, while they themselves discharge the offices of their slaves. But this is in reality a Grecian custom. At all events, in Crete, at the festival of Mercury, a similar thing takes place, as Carystius tells us in his Historic Reminiscences; for then, while the slaves are feasting, the masters wait upon them as if they were the servants: and so they do at Trœzen in the month Geræstius. For then there is a festival which lasts for many days, on one of which the slaves play at dice in common with the citizens, and the masters give a banquet to the slaves, as Carystius himself tells us. And Berosus, in the first book of his History of Babylon, says that on the sixteenth day of the month Lous, there is a great festival celebrated in
- ↑ The Saturnalia originally took place on the 19th of December; in
the time of Augustus, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th: but the merrymaking
in reality appears to have lasted seven days. Horace speaks of
the licence then permitted to the slaves:—
"Age, libertate Decembri,
Quando ita majores voluerunt, utere—narra."—Sat. ii. 7. 4.—Vide Smith, Gr. Lat. Ant.
