THE SYBARITES. Sybarites were the first people to forbid those who practise noisy arts from dwelling in their city; such as braziers, and smiths, and carpenters, and men of similar trades; providing that their slumbers should always be undisturbed. And it used to be unlawful to rear a cock in their city.
And Timæus relates concerning them, that a citizen of Sybaris once going into the country, seeing the husbandmen digging, said that he himself felt as if he had broken his bones by the sight; and some one who heard him replied, "I, when I heard you say this, felt as if I had a pain in my side." And once, at Crotona, some Sybarites were standing by some one of the athletes who was digging up dust for the palæstra, and said they marvelled that men who had such a city had no slaves to dig the palæstra for them. But another Sybarite, coming to Lacedæmon, and being invited to the phiditium, sitting down on a wooden seat and eating with them, said that originally he had been surprised at hearing of the valour of the Lacedæmonians; but that now that he had seen it, he thought that they in no respect surpassed other men: for that the greatest coward on earth would rather die a thousand times than live and endure such a life as theirs.
16. And it is a custom among them that even their children, up to the age when they are ranked among the ephebi, should wear purple robes, and curls braided with gold. And it is a custom with them also to breed up in their houses little mannikins and dwarfs (as Timon says), who are called by some people [Greek: stiltônes]; and also little Maltese dogs, which follow them even to the gymnasia. And it was these men, and men like them, to whom Masinissa, king of Mauritania, made answer (as Ptolemy rebates, in the eighth book of his Commentaries), when they were seeking to buy some monkeys: "Why,—do not your wives, my good friends, produce any offspring?" For Masinissa was very fond of children, and kept about him and brought up the children of his sons, and of his daughters equally, and he had a great many of them: and he brought them all up till they were three years old, and after that he sent them to their parents, having the younger ones to take their places. And Eubulus the comic writer has said the same thing in his Graces:—
For is it not, I pray you, better far
For one man, who can well afford such acts,
