Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/30

 of insolence, that they were the first people who painted their faces, and who wore headbands and false hair, and who clothed themselves in robes embroidered with flowers, and who considered it disgraceful to cultivate the land, or to do any kind of labour. And most of them made their houses more beautiful than the temples of the gods; and so they say, that the leaders of the Iapygians, treating the Deity with insult, destroyed the images of the gods out of the temples, ordering them to give place to their superiors. On which account, being struck with fire and thunderbolts, they gave rise to this report; for indeed the thunderbolts with which they were stricken down were visible a long time afterwards. And to this very day all their descendants live with shaven heads and in mourning apparel, in want of all the luxuries which previously belonged to them.

25. But the Spaniards, although they go about in robes like those of the tragedians, and richly embroidered, and in tunics which reach down to the feet, are not at all hindered by their dress from displaying their vigour in war; but the people of Massilia became very effeminate, wearing the same highly ornamented kind of dress which the Spaniards used to wear; but they behave in a shameless manner, on account of the effeminacy of their souls, behaving like women, out of luxury: from which the proverb has gone about,—May you sail to Massilia. And the inhabitants of Siris, which place was first inhabited by people who touched there on their return from Troy, and after them by the Colophonians, as Timæus and Aristotle tell us, indulged in luxury no less than the Sybarites; for it was a peculiar national custom of theirs to wear embroidered tunics, which they girded up with expensive girdles ([Greek: mitrai]); and on this account they were called by the inhabitants of the adjacent countries [Greek: mitrochitônes], since Homer calls those who have no girdles [Greek: amitrochitônes]. And Archilochus the poet marvelled beyond anything at the country of the Siritans, and at their prosperity. Accordingly, speaking of Thasos as inferior to Siris, he says—

For there is not on earth a place so sweet, Or lovely, or desirable as that Which stands upon the stream of gentle Siris.

But the place was called Siris, as Timæus asserts, and as Euripides says too in his play called The Female Prisoner, or