Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/46

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But Pisistratus was in many respects very oppressive; and some say that that statue of Bacchus which there is at Athens was made in his likeness.

45. And Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, says that Pericles, nicknamed the Olympian, after he got rid of his wife out of his house, and devoted himself to a life of pleasure, lived with Aspasia, the courtesan from Megara, and spent the greater part of his substance on her. And Themistocles, when the Athenians were not yet in such a state of intoxication, and had not yet begun to use courtesans, openly filled a chariot with prostitutes, and drove early in the morning through the Ceramicus when it was full. But Idomeneus has made this statement in an ambiguous manner, so as to leave it uncertain whether he means that he harnessed the prostitutes in his chariot like horses, or merely that he made them mount his four-horsed chariot. And Possis, in the third book of his History of the Affairs of Magnesia, says, that Themistocles, having been invested with a crowned magistracy in Magnesia, sacrificed to Minerva, and called the festival the Panathenæa. And he sacrificed also to Dionysius Choopotes, and celebrated the festival of the Choeis there. But Clearchus, in the first book of his treatise on Friendship, says that Themistocles had a triclinium of great beauty made for him, and said that he should be quite contented if he could fill that with friends.

46. And Chamæleon of Pontus, in his Essay on Anacreon, having quoted these lines—

And Periphoretus Artemon
Is loved by golden-hair'd Eurypyle,

says that Artemo derived this nickname from living luxuriously, and being carried about ([Greek: peripheresthai]) on a couch. For Anacreon says that he had been previously very poor, and then became on a sudden very luxurious, in the following verses—

Having before a poor berberium cloak,
And scanty cap, and his poor ears
With wooden earrings decorated,
And wearing round his ribs a newly-bought
Raw ox-hide, fitter for a case
For an old-fashion'd shield, this wretch
Artemon, who long has lived
With bakers' women, and the lowest of the low,
Now having found a new style of life,