16
To tell it all from first to last, my friend, would be impossible in such a case, where even to see it all was hard work. However, the principal features were like what Homer says was on the shield.Iliad 18, 478 ff. In one place there were banquets and weddings, elsewhere there were sessions of court and assemblics; in a different direction a man was offering sacrifice, and close at hand another was mourning a death. Whenever I looked at the country of the Getae I saw them fighting; whenever I transferred my gaze to the Seythians, they could be seen roving about on their wagons: and when I turned my eyes aside slightly, I beheld the Egyptians working the land. The Phoenicians were on trading-ventures, the Cilicians were engaged in piracy, the Spartans were whipping themselves and the Athenians were attending court.
17
As all these things were going on at the same time, you can imagine what a hodge-podge it looked. It is as if one should put on the stage a company of singers, or I should say a number of companies, and then should order each singer to abandon harmony and sing a tune of his own; with cach one full of emulation and carrying his own tune and striving to outdo his neighbour in loudness of voice, what, in the name of Heaven, do you suppose the song would be like?
17
Utterly ridiculous, Menippus, and all confused.
17
Well, my friend, such is the part that all carth’s singers play, and such is the discord that makes up the life of men. Not only do they sing different tunes, but they are unlike in costume and move at cross-purposes in the dance and agree in nothing until the manager drives each of them off the stage, saying that he has no further use for him. After that, “however, they are all quiet alike, no longer singing that unrhythmical medley of theirs. But there in the play-house itself, full of variety and shifting spectacles, everything that took place was truly laughable.
