STRATONICUS.
Once, when at Ephesus, as rumour goes,
A stupid harper was exhibiting
One of his pupils to a band of friends;
Stratonicus, who by chance was present, said,
"He cannot make himself a harp-player,
And yet he tries to teach the art to others."
42. And Clearchus, in the second book of his treatise on Friendship, says,—"Stratonicus the harp-player, whenever he wished to go to sleep, used to order a slave to bring him something to drink; 'not,' says he, 'because I am thirsty now, but that I may not be presently.'" And once, at Byzantium, when a harp-player had played his prelude well, but had made a blunder of the rest of the performance, he got up and made proclamation, "That whoever would point out the harp-player who had played the prelude should receive a thousand drachmæ." And when he was once asked by some one who were the wickedest people, he said, "That in Pamphylia, the people of Phaselis were the worst; but that the Sidetæ were the worst in the whole world." And when he was asked again, according to the account given by Hegesander, which were the greatest barbarians, the Bœotians or the Thessalians, he said, "The Eleans." And once he erected a trophy in his school, and put this inscription on it—"Over the bad harp-players." And once, being asked by some one which was the safer kind of vessel, the long one or the round one,—"Those," quoth he, "are the safest which are in dock." And once he made a display of his art at Rhodes, and no one applauded; on which he left the theatre, and when he had got into the air he said, "When you fail to give what costs you nothing, how can I expect any solid pay from you?" "Let the Eleans," said he, "celebrate gymnastic contests, and let the Corinthians establish choral, and the Athenians theatrical exhibitions; and if any one of them does anything wrong, let the Lacedæmonians be scourged,"—jesting upon the public scourgings exhibited in that city, as Charicles relates, in the first book of his treatise on the City Contests. And when Ptolemy the king was talking with him in an ambitious kind of way about harp-playing, "The sceptre," said he, "O king, is one thing, and the plectrum another;" as Capito the epic poet says in the fourth book of his Commentaries addressed to Philopappus. And once being invited to hear a flute-player, after he had heard him, he said—
