Book 14
17
And since we are on this subject, it is as well not to omit what happened to Amœbeus, a harp-player of our time, and a man of great science and skill in everything that related to music. He once came late to one of our banquets, and when he heard from one of the servants that we had all finished supper, he doubted what to do himself, until Sophon the cook came to him, and with a loud voice, so that every one might hear, recited to him these lines out of the Auge of Eubulus:— O wretched man, why stand you at the doors Why don't you enter'? Long ago the geese Have all been deftly carved limb from limb; Long the hot pork has had the meat cut off From the long backbone, and the stuffing, which Lay in the middle of his stomach, has Been served around; and all his pettitoes, The dainty slices of fat, well-season'd sausages, Have all been eaten. The well-roasted cuttle-fish Is swallow'd long ago; and nine or ten Casks of rich wine are drain'd to the very dregs. So if you'd like some fragments of the feast, Hasten and enter. Don't, like hungry wolf, Losing this feast, then run about at random. For as that delightful writer Antiphanes says, in his Friend of the Thebans,— A. We now are well supplied with everything; For she, the namesake of the dame within, The rich Bœotian eel, carved in the depths Of the ample dish, is warm, and swells, and boils, And bubbles up, and smokes; so that a man, E'en though equipp'd with brazen nostrils, scarcely Could bear to leave a banquet such as this,— So rich a fragrance does it yield his senses. B. Say you the cook is living A. There is near A cestreus, all unfed both night and day, Scaled, wash'd, and stain'd with cochineal, and turned; And as he nears his last and final turn He cracks and hisses; while the servant bastes The fish with vinegar: then there's Libyan silphium, Dried in the genial rays of midday sun:— B. Yet there are people found who dare to say That sorcerers possess no sacred power; For now I see three men their bellies filling While you are turning this. A. And the comrade squid Bearing the form of the humpback'd cuttlefish, Dreadful with armed claws and sharpen'd talons, Changing its brilliant snow-white nature under The fiery blasts of glowing coal, adorns Its back with golden splendour; well exciting Hunger, the best forerunner of a feast. So, come in— Do not delay, but enter: when we've dined We then can best endure what must be borne. And so he, meeting him in this appropriate manner, replies with these lines out of the Harper of Clearchus:— Sup on white congers, and whatever else Can boast a sticky nature; for by such food The breath is strengthen'd, and the voice of man Is render'd rich and powerful. And as there was great applause on this, and as every one with one accord called to him to come in, he went in and drank, and taking the lyre, sang to us in such a manner that we all marvelled at his skill on the harp, and at the rapidity of his execution, and at the tunefulness of his voice; for he appeared to me to be not at all inferior to that ancient Amœbeus, whom Aristeas, in his History of Harp-players, speaks of as living at Athens, and dwelling near the theatre, and receiving an Attic talent a-day every time he went out singing.
