Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/300

 and of the liberality of the god, by the mere taste. And they hand it round when men are already full, in order that there may be as little as possible drunk out of it. And having paid adoration three times, they take it from the table, as if they were entreating of the gods that nothing may be done unbecomingly, and that they may not indulge in immoderate desires for this kind of drink, and that they may derive only what is honourable and useful from it." And Philochorus, in the second book of his Atthis, says—"And a law was made at that time, that after the solid food is removed, a taste of the unmixed wine should be served round as a sort of sample of the power of the Good Deity, but that all the rest of the wine should be previously mixed; on which account the Nymphs had the name given them of Nurses of Bacchus." And that when the pledge-cup to the Good Deity was handed round, it was customary to remove the tables, is made plain by the wicked action of Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily. For there was a table of gold placed before the statue of Æsculapius at Syracuse; and so Dionysius, standing before it, and chinking a pledge-cup to the Good Deity, ordered the table to be removed.

But among the Greeks, those who sacrifice to the Sun, as Phylarchus tells us in the twelfth book of his History, make their libations of honey, as they never bring wine to the altars of the gods; saying that it is proper that the god who keeps the whole universe in order, and regulates everything, and is always going round and superintending the whole, should in no respect be connected with drunkenness.

49. Most writers have mentioned the Attic Scolia; and they are worthy also of being mentioned by me to you, on account of the antiquity and simple style of composition of the authors, and of those especially who gained a high reputation for that description of poetry, Alcæus and Anacreon; as Aristophanes says in his Daitaleis, where we find this line—

Come, then, a scolium sing to me, Of old Alcæus or Anacreon.

Praxilla, the Sicyonian poetess, was also celebrated for the composition of scolia. Now they are called scolia, not because of the character of the verse in which they are written, as if it were [Greek: skolios] (crooked); for men call also