Book 1
28
The heroes used also flutes and pipes. At all events Agamemnon hears the voice of flutes and pipes, which however he never introduced into banquets, except that in the ManufactureThat is to say, in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, which relates the making of the arms for Achilles by Vulcan. of Arms, he mentions the flute on the occasion of a marriage-feast. But flutes he attributes to the barbarians. Accordingly, the Trojans had the voice of flutes and pipes, and they made libations, when they got up from the feast, making them to Mercury, and not, as they did afterwards, to Jupiter the Finisher. For Mercury appears to be the patron of sleep: they drop libations to him also on their tongues when they depart from a banquet, and the tongues are especially allotted to him, as being the instruments of eloquence.
