THE COLOPHONIANS.
- ginally adopted a very rigid course of life, when, in consequence
of the alliance and friendship which they formed with the Lydians, they began to give way to luxury, used to go into public with their hair adorned with golden ornaments, as Xenophanes tells us—
They learnt all sorts of useless foolishness
From the effeminate Lydians, while they
Were held in bondage to sharp tyranny.
They went into the forum richly clad
In purple garments, in numerous companies,
Whose strength was not less than a thousand men,
Boasting of hair luxuriously dress'd,
Dripping with costly and sweet-smelling oils.
And to such a degree did they carry their dissoluteness and their unseemly drunkenness, that some of them never once saw the sun either rise or set: and they passed a law, which continued even to our time, that the female fluteplayers and female harpers, and all such musicians and singers, should receive pay from daybreak to midday, and until the lamps were lighted; but after that they set aside the rest of the night to get drunk in. And Theopompus, in the fifteenth book of his History, says, "that a thousand men of that city used to walk about the city, wearing purple garments, which was at that time a colour rare even among kings, and greatly sought after; for purple was constantly sold for its weight in silver. And so, owing to these practices, they fell under the power of tyrants, and became torn by factions, and so were undone with their country." And Diogenes the Babylonian gave the same account of them, in the first book of his Laws. And Antiphanes, speaking generally of the luxury of all the Ionians, has the following lines in his Dodona:—
Say, from what country do you come, what land
Call you your home? Is this a delicate
Luxurious band of long and soft-robed men
From cities of Ionia that here approaches?
And Theophrastus, in his essay on Pleasure, says that the Ionians, on account of the extraordinary height to which they carried their luxury, gave rise to what is now known as the golden proverb.
32. And Theopompus, in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip, says that some of those tribes which live on the sea-coast are exceedingly luxurious in their manner of
