13
Aristaenetus commended him and bade him take a chair and sit beside Histiaeus and Dionysodorus. “Get out with you!” said he. “What you tell me to do is womanish and weak, to sit on a chair or on a stool, like yourselves on that soft bed, lying almost flat on your batks while you feast, with purple cloths under you. I shall take my dinner on my feet as I walk about the dining-room, and if I get tired I'll lie on the floor, leaning on my elbow, with my cloak under me, like Heracles in the pictures they paint of him.” “Very well,” said Aristaenetus; “if you prefer it that way.” Then Alcidamas began to circle about for his dinner, shifting 1o richer pasturage as the Scythians do, and following the orbits of the waiters.
14
But even while he was eating he was not idle, for he talked of virtue and vice all the time, and scoffed at the gold and silver plate; for example, he asked Aristaenetus what was the use of all those great goblets when earthenware would do just as well. But he had begun to be a bore by this time, so Aristaenetus put a quietus on him for the moment by directing the waiter to give him a big bowl and pour him out a stiffer drink. He thought that he had had a good idea, little realising what woes that bowl was destined to give rise to. On taking it, Alcidamas kept quiet for a little while, throwing himself on the floor and lying there halfnaked as he had threatened, with his elbow squared under him and the bowl in his right hand, just as Heracles in the cave of Pholus is represented by the painters.
