8
By that time we had to take our places, for almost everyone was there. On the right as you enter, the women occupied the whole couch, as there were a good many of them, with the bride among them, very scrupulously veiled and hedged in by the women. Toward the back door came the rest of the company according to the esteem in which each was held.
9
Opposite the women, the first was Eucritus, and then Aristaenetus. Then a question was raised whether Zenothemis the Stoic should have _precedence, he being an old man, or Hermon the Epicurean, because he was a priest of the Twin Brethren and a member of the leading family in the city. But Zenothemis solved the problem; “Aristaenetus,” said he, “if you put me second to this man here,— an Epicurean, to say nothing worse of him,—I shall go away and leave you in full possession of your board.” With that he called his attendant and made as if to go out. So Hermon said: “Take the place of honour, Zenothemis; but you would have done well to yield to me because I am a priest, if for no other reason, however much you despise Epicurus.” “You make me laugh,’ said Zenothemis: “an Epicurean priest!’ With these words he took his place, and Hermon next him, in spite of what had passed; then Cleodemus the Peripatetic; then Ion, and below him the bridegroom, then myself; beside me Diphilus, and below him his pupil Zeno; and then the rhetorician Dionysodorus and the grammarian Histiaeus,
10
Heavens, Lycinus, it’s a learned academy, this dinner party that you are telling of! Philosophers almost to a man. Good for Aristaenetus, I say, because in celebrating the greatest festival day that there is, he thought fit to entertain the most learned men in preference to the rest of the world, and culled the bloom, as it were, of every school, not including some and leaving out others, but asking all without discrimination.
