Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/312

 great a number of candles as there are days in a year. And Hermippus the comic poet, in his Iambics, speaks of—

A military candlestick well put together.

And, in his play called The Grooms, he says—

Here, lamp ([Greek: lychnidion]), show me my road on the right hand.

Now, [Greek: panos] was a name given to wood cut into splinters and bound together, which they used for a torch: Menander, in his Cousins, says—

He enter'd, and cried out, "[Greek: Panon, lychnon, lychouchon] any light—" Making one into many.

And Diphilus, in his Soldier, says—

But now this [Greek: panos] is quite full of water.

And before them Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, had used the word [Greek: panos]—



61. Alexis, too, uses the word [Greek: xylolychnouchou], and perhaps this is the same thing as that which is called by Theopompus [Greek: obeliskolychnion]. But Philyllius calls [Greek: lampades], [Greek: dades]. But the [Greek: lychnos], or candle, is not an ancient invention; for the ancients used the light of torches and other things made of wood. Phrynichus, however, says—

Put out the [Greek: lychnon],

Plato too, in his Long Night, says—

And then upon the top he'll have a candle, Bright with two wicks.

And these candles with two wicks are mentioned also by Metagenes, in his Man fond of Sacrificing; and by Philonides in his Buskins. But Clitarchus, in his Dictionary, says that the Rhodians give the name of [Greek: lophnis] to a torch made of the bark of the vine. But Homer calls torches [Greek: detai]—

The darts fly round him from an hundred hands, And the red terrors of the blazing brands ([Greek: detai]), Till late, reluctant, at the dawn of day, Sour he departs, and quits th' untasted prey. ,

where Clytæmnestra is speaking of the beacon fires, which had conveyed to her the intelligence of the fall of Troy.]