3
I heard something to that effect about you cocks a good while ago. They say that a young fellow named Alectryon (Cock) became friends with Ares ind drank with the god and caroused with him and shared his amorous adventures; at all events, whenever Ares went to visit Aphrodite on poaching bent, he took Alectryon along too; and as he was especially uspicious of Helius, for fear that he would look down on them and tell Hephaestus, he always used to leave the young fellow outside at the door to warn him when Helius rose. Then, they say, Alectryon fell asleep one time and unintentionally betrayed his post, and Helius unexpectedly stole upon Aphrodite with Ares, who was sleeping peacefully because he relied on Alectryon to tell him if anyone came near. So Hephaestus found out from Helius and caught them by enclosing and trapping them in the snares that he had long before contrived for them; and Ares, on being let go in the plight in which Hephaestus let him go,The story is told in the Odyssey 8, 300-366, and repeated by Lucian in Dialogues of the Gods, 21. was angry at Alectryon and changed him into this bird, weapons and all, so that he still has the crest of his helmet on his head. And for this reason, they say, you cocks try to put yourselves right with Ares when it is no use, and when you notice that the sun is about to come up, you raise your voices far in advance and give warning of his rising.
4
That is what they say, Micyllus, I grant you; but my own experience has been quite different, and it is only just lately that I changed into a cock.
4
How? That is what I want to know above all else.
4
Have you ever heard of a man named Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, of Samos?
4
You mean the sophist, the quack, who made laws against tasting meat and eating beans, banishing from the table the food that I for my part like best of all, and then trying to persuade people that before he became Pythagoras he was Euphorbus (Well- fed)? They say he was a conjurer and a miraclemonger, cock.
