A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities

by J. C. McKeown

  Dew has a naturally erosive quality, as is indicated by its making fat people thinner. Fat women at any rate soak up dew on their clothes or on soft tufts of wool and imagine that this causes their excess flesh to melt away (Plutarch Natural Phenomena 913f).

  Even by itself, thinking can promote weight loss, but when combined with a modicum of exercise that involves enjoyable competition, it gives us the benefit of a healthy body and an intelligent mind (Galen On Exercise with the Small Ball 5.904).

  There are many pleasures that lead us into doing the wrong thing and force us to give in to them even though they are harmful, and the pleasure of eating is probably the hardest of them all to resist. For we meet with the other pleasures less frequently and can steer away from some of them for months or even years at a time; but we are inevitably tempted by this one every single day, and often twice in a day, for we have to eat if we are to live. But the more often we are tempted by the pleasure of eating, the greater the temptations it poses (Musonius Rufus frg. 18b).

  Hecuba: Helen should not board the same ship as you.

  Menelaus: Why is that? Has she put on weight since the last time she sailed?

  (Trojan Women 1049–50; Euripides can make jokes even in his darkest tragedies)

  The people of Gordium in Phrygia [where Alexander cut the famous knot] choose the fattest man among them as their king (Ps.-Plutarch Collection of Proverbs Current in Alexandria 10).

  Ptolemy VIII had the nickname Physcon (“Sausage Man”) because of his obesity. When the members of a Roman delegation arrived at Alexandria and were walking into the city, Ptolemy had considerable difficulty keeping up with them, on account of his slothfulness and corpulence. Scipio whispered quietly to Panaetius [the Stoic philosopher]: “The people of Alexandria have already benefited from our visit; thanks to us they have seen their king walking” (Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 200f).

  Physcon’s younger son, Ptolemy X Alexander, was not very charming either. The ruler of Egypt was hated by the masses, but his courtiers fawned on him, and he lived in luxury. He could not even relieve himself without two men to prop him up, but even so he used to leap down barefoot from his lofty couch at drinking parties and join in with the dancing more vigorously than the experts (Posidonius frg. 77).

  Athenaeus mentions both Physcon and Alexander in a catalog of obese rulers that also includes Magas of Cyrene, who was choked to death by his own fat, and Dionysius of Heracleia, who gave audience to his subjects from behind a large box, with only his head showing (Wise Men at Dinner 549a).

  SLAVES

  A slave is a possession that is alive (Aristotle Politics 1253b).

  Is it right and just that someone should be a slave, or is all slavery an offense against nature? This question is easy to answer both in theoretical and in practical terms. It is necessary and proper that some people should rule while others are ruled, and we are marked out at birth to be either the ruled or the rulers (Aristotle Politics 1254a).

  The women in authority in a household used to pour figs, dates, nuts, and other such tidbits over the head of newly bought slaves, to show them the sweetness and pleasure of the life they were entering upon (Lexica Segueriana Rhetorical Glosses s.v. catachysmata).

  Slaves should be punished as they deserve, not just given a warning, as if they were free people, for that gives them big ideas about themselves. Just about everything you say to a slave should be an order. Never joke in any way with slaves, whether female or male. Many people are foolish enough to spoil their slaves with that sort of treatment, but it simply makes life more difficult both for the slaves and for their owners (Plato Laws 777e).

  Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew, Speusippus, to do the actual whipping, for he himself was angry, and anger was inappropriate for a philosopher (Seneca On Anger 3.12). When Plutarch was having one of his slaves whipped, the slave protested that this was inappropriate for a philosopher who had written a book on “Not Being Angry.” Plutarch calmly replied that he was not angry and told his other slave who was administering the whipping to carry on while he and his philosophizing slave continued their discussion (Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 1.26).

  I have never struck any of my slaves with my fist. I adopted this principle from my father, who criticized many of his friends when they suffered a bruised tendon through hitting slaves on the teeth. He used to say that they deserved to suffer spasms and death as a result of the consequent inflammation, when they could quite easily have beaten them with a stick or a strap (Galen On the Diagnosis and Cure of Afflictions of the Mind 4). Galen may have been antiquity’s most influential doctor, but he occasionally says things that make us wonder about his bedside manner.

  In Athens, slaves and resident aliens are quite out of control. You cannot strike them, and a slave will not stand aside for you. The reason for this is that, if it were legal for a free man to strike a slave, an alien, or a freedman, you would often strike an Athenian citizen on the assumption that he was a slave, for the clothing and personal appearance of citizens is no better than that of slaves or aliens (Ps.-Xenophon The Athenian Constitution 1.10).

  They say that the citizens of the Tuscan city of Oenarea, fearing that someone might establish himself as tyrant, entrust the government to emancipated slaves, replacing them with other such freedmen every year (Ps.-Aristotle On Marvelous Things Heard 837b).

  Slaves were often known rather unimaginatively by their nationality. These manumission records are typical: a slave called Cyprius, from Cyprus; a slave called Judaeus, from Judaea; a slave called Libys, from Libya (Collection of Greek Dialect Inscriptions 1749, 2029, 2175).

  Poor people, since they have no slaves, have to use their wives and children as their servants (Aristotle Politics 1323a).

  If a slave is lucky enough to win any event, a quarter of the prize money is to go to his fellow-competitors (Papers of the American School of Archaeology at Athens 3.275, from an inscription giving rules for an athletic festival in southwest Asia Minor).

  ETIQUETTE

  Manners for the dinner table, as prescribed by St. Clement of Alexandria (Paedagogus 2.7):

  • Do not lean over your food, guarding it the way wild animals do.

  • Do not over-indulge in dainty dishes, for humans are by nature bread-eaters.

  • Do not make smacking noises with your lips, or whistle, or click your fingers.

  • Do not spit excessively, or clear your throat too violently, or wipe your nose, for that is to behave like cattle and donkeys, whose manger is also their dunghill.

  • If you must sneeze or hiccup, do not make so much noise that you startle the person reclining next to you.

  • Do not open your mouth as if you were wearing a tragic mask, but dissipate the eruction discretely, concealing anything else that the displacement of air may bring up with it.

  • Picking one’s teeth until they bleed is disgusting.

  • Scratching one’s ears and sneezing unduly are swinish gestures, associated with unrestrained sexual activity.

  Even nowadays, the Persians regard it as shameful to spit, or to wipe one’s nose, or to show signs of being flatulent, or to be noticed going away to urinate or for any other such purpose. They could not achieve this level of discretion if they did not follow a reasonable diet and work off the moisture in the body in other ways (Xenophon Education of Cyrus 1.2.16).

  I have written to you in discreet terms about things that the Stoics discuss quite openly—but then, the Stoics say that people should pass gas as freely as they belch (Cicero Letters to His Friends 9.22, concluding a lively discussion of verbal taboos).

  A slave boy steadies an old man’s head as he vomits.

  Proclus can’t wipe his nose with his arm, for his arm is shorter than his nose. Nor does he say, “Excuse me,” if he sneezes: he can’t hear his nose, for it’s so far from his ears (Anonymous Greek Anthology 11.268).

  With other diseases of the soul, such as love of money, love of
glory, love of pleasure, there is the possibility that the person afflicted might obtain what he desires, but this is very difficult for people who chatter idly. They long for listeners, but cannot find any. Everyone runs headlong away. If people are sitting in a public park or strolling in a colonnade and see a chatterer approaching, they quickly pass the signal round for breaking camp. And just as they say that Hermes has joined the group if a sudden silence falls at a meeting, so when a chatterer arrives at a symposium or other gathering of friends, everyone stops talking, so as not to give him a handle on any conversation (Plutarch On Talkativeness 502e).

  When it comes to nosy people, everyone is defensive and circumspect. People do not like to do or say anything when a busybody might see or hear them. If such a person turns up while something is being discussed, the business is put to one side, just as food is taken away and hidden when a weasel runs by (Plutarch On Curiosity 519d). Weasels, and even snakes, rather than cats, which seem to have been uncommon in Greece, were kept domestically to control vermin.

  Characteristics of an inconsiderate person, according to Ariston of Ceos, as quoted by Philodemus On Vices 10 (Herculaneum Papyrus 1008):

  • He asks the attendant for more hot or cold water without consulting fellow bathers.

  • When he buys a slave, he neither asks what his name is nor gives him a name himself, but just calls him “boy.”

  • He does not rub oil on anyone who has rubbed oil on him.

  • He does not reciprocate invitations.

  • When he knocks at someone’s door and is asked, “Who is it?” he does not respond until the person comes to the door.

  There are three ways to answer questions: the barely adequate way, the polite way, and the superfluous way. For example, in response to the question, “Is Socrates at home?”:

  The first person replies reluctantly and grudgingly, “Not at home,” and if he wants to imitate the Spartans, he can leave out the “at home” and utter just the negative. That’s what the Spartans did when Philip of Macedon wrote to ask if they would admit him into their city: they wrote “NO” in big letters on a piece of papyrus and sent it to him.

  The second person replies more politely, “He’s not at home; he’s at the bank,” and if he wants to expatiate on that, he adds, “waiting for some visitors.”

  The third person, who chatters excessively, replies, “He’s not at home; he’s at the bank, waiting for some visitors from Ionia, about whom he’s had a letter from Alcibiades, who’s spending his time near Miletus with Tissaphernes, the satrap of the king of Persia, who used to help the Spartans, but now, thanks to Alcibiades, is siding with the Athenians. Alcibiades wants a recall from exile, and that’s why he’s getting Tissaphernes to change sides,” and he’ll go right on reciting the whole of Thucydides’s eighth book, inundating the person who asked the question.

  (Plutarch On Talkativeness 513a)

  Plato’s companions used to imitate his stooping posture, Aristotle’s, his lisp, Alexander’s, the inclination of his neck and his gravelly voice (Plutarch How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend 53d).

  Starting at Wise Men at Dinner 248c, Athenaeus provides a long catalog of court flatterers. For example:

  When Philip of Macedon had his eye knocked out, Cleisophus went about with him with a bandage on the same eye, and when Philip was wounded in the leg, Cleisophus limped around with him. If ever Philip ate something bitter, he would twist up his own features as if he were eating it as well.

  Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, was laughing with a group of friends, and his flatterer Cheirisophus started laughing too, even though he was too far away to have heard the joke: when Dionysius asked him later why he had laughed, Cheirisophus replied, “I’m sure I can rely on you, that what was said was funny.”

  His son, also called Dionysius, maintained a large number of flatterers. Since he was shortsighted, they pretended that they also had poor vision. At dinner, they groped for the food set before them, as if they could not see it, until he steered their hands to the dishes. Whenever Dionysius spat, they often offered him their faces to spit on. They would lick off his saliva, or even his vomit, and say that it was sweeter than honey.

  RIDDLES

  What creature is two-footed and yet also three-footed and four-footed? No one else could guess, but Oedipus solved the problem with the answer “man,” for a human being goes about on all fours when he is an infant; as an adult, he is biped; but he has three feet when he is old, for then he uses a walking stick (Diodorus Siculus The Library 4.64). This is the riddle of the Theban Sphinx, who killed those who were unable to solve it.

  A man who was not a man, but a man even so, hit a bird that was not a bird, but a bird even so, with a stone that was not a stone when it was sitting on a log that was not a log. This is a children’s riddle, alluded to by Plato at Republic 479c and quoted in full by the scholiast ad loc., who also gives the answer: a eunuch hit a bat sitting on a hollow fennel-stalk with a pumice stone.

  Oedipus and the Sphinx.

  There are two sisters. One of them gives birth to the other, and she herself, having given birth, is given birth to by the other (Theodectas frg. 4). Answer: night and day.

  Solving riddles is not so unlike philosophy. In olden times, people displayed their learning at symposia through riddles, a far cry from what drinkers do nowadays, asking each other what sexual position gives the most pleasure, or what sort of fish tastes best or is in season (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 457d, quoting from the first book of On Proverbs by Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle).

  WONDROUS WATERS

  The Florentine Paradoxographer lists over forty springs with amazing qualities in Marvelous Things about Water. Somewhere in the Greek world there is a spring with the power to, for example,

  • dye in bright colors the fleeces of sheep that drink from it;

  • cure wounds; if you break a stick and throw it in, it becomes a single stick again;

  • turn to stone the stomach of anyone who drinks from it;

  • make people drunk;

  • cause those who drink from it to lose their front teeth;

  • throw out onto the bank anyone who bathes in it.

  In the interior of Sicily there is a little lake, the size of a shield. If anyone gets into it to wash, it expands, and if a second person gets in, it expands even more. It increases to accommodate fifty men, but when it reaches that number the water seethes up from the depths and throws the bathers in the air so that they land on the dry ground. It then returns to its original size. This happens not just with people, but with any sort of quadruped as well (Ps.-Aristotle On Amazing Things Heard 840b).

  They say that there is a strange river in northern Italy that flows along with its water raised up out of its bed into the air, so that people on the other bank cannot be seen (Ps.-Aristotle On Amazing Things Heard 837b).

  Some springs purify themselves at regular intervals. The fountain Arethusa at Syracuse in Sicily does this every four years, during the Olympic Games. This gave rise to the belief that the river Alpheus flows under the sea all the way to Syracuse, and that the dung of sacrificial victims thrown into the river at Olympia floats to the surface again in the Arethusa fountain (Seneca Natural Questions 3.26).

  Strabo mentions speculation on whether the River Cydnus (in Eastern Turkey) could possibly cut across the Euphrates and the Tigris and empty into the Choaspes (in Iran) (Geography 1.47).

  On Taenarum there is a spring in the waters of which it used to be possible to see harbors and ships, but a woman put an end to this marvel when she washed dirty clothes in it (Pausanias Guide to Greece 3.25).

  I have heard a tale about the river Selemnus, that its water is a cure for love, effective for both men and women. People who bathe in the river forget their passion. If there is any truth in this story, the water of the Selemnus is worth more to mankind than great riches (Pausanias Guide to Greece 7.23).

  GREEKS AND BARBERS

  Dem
osthenes had an underground study built that has been preserved to this day. He used to go down there every single day to practice his gestures and to train his voice. He often stayed there two or three months at a time, shaving one side of his head to ensure that he would be too ashamed to leave the study even when he felt a strong urge to do so (Plutarch Life of Demosthenes 7). Somewhat comparably, when the youthful Origen was keen to rush off to suffer martyrdom with his father in the early 3rd century, his mother hid all his clothes, thus compelling him to stay at home (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.2).

  Theophrastus used to joke about barbershops, calling them “symposia without wine” because of the chattering of those who sat in them (Plutarch Table Talk 679a).

  A talkative barber asked King Archelaus of Sparta how he would like his hair cut. He replied, “In silence” (Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 177a).

  In a barber’s shop, the conversation turned to Dionysius’s tyranny, how solid and invulnerable it was. The barber laughed and said, “You may say that about Dionysius, but I have my razor at his throat every few days.” When Dionysius heard this, he had the barber crucified (Plutarch On Talkativeness 508f).

  A barber was the first to bring the news of the Athenian disaster in Sicily, after hearing it in Piraeus from a slave who was one of the survivors. He left his shop and hurried to bring the news to the upper city. Panic broke out; the people assembled and tried to trace the source of the rumor. The barber was brought forward and questioned, but he did not even know his informant’s name and had to refer to his source as an anonymous and unknown person. There was outrage and uproar in the theater: “Torture the wretch on the rack! He’s made it up! Who else has heard about this? Who else believes it?” The wheel was brought in, and the barber was attached to it. Meanwhile, people who had actually escaped from the disaster arrived with the news. The assembly dispersed, each man to his own private grief, leaving the poor barber tied to the wheel. When he was finally released near evening, he was eager to learn from the public executioner whether they had heard how Nicias, the commander of the expedition, had died. Such is the irresistible and incorrigible vice that habit makes of garrulity (Plutarch On Talkativeness 509a).