Book 14
43
But the author of the play called the Beggars, which is attributed to Chionides, mentions a certain man of the name of Gnesippus as a composer of ludicrous verses, and also of merry songs; and he says— I swear that neither now Gnesippus, nor Cleomenes with all his nine-string'd lyre, Could e'er have made this song endurable. And the author of the Helots says— He is a man who sings the ancient songs Of Alcman, and Stesichorus, and Simonides; (he means to say Gnesippus): He likewise has composed songs for the night, Well suited to adulterers, with which They charm the women from their doors, while striking The shrill iambyca or the triangle. And Cratinus, in his Effeminate Persons, says— Who, O Gnesippus, e'er saw me in love I am indignant; for I do think nothing Can be so vain or foolish as a lover. . . . . . . .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.
