BOOK I.

Charterian Edition Vol. 10. [2.] Basel Edition Vol. 4. (34.)

In that city, everyone is busy throughout the entire day. In the morning, they are all occupied together with social greetings salutationes: the formal morning visits paid by clients to their patrons. After this, they go their separate ways. A considerable crowd heads to the forum and the lawsuits of no small nation. An even larger group goes to see the dancers and the chariot drivers. Another significant number devotes their leisure to dice games, or to various love affairs, or to the baths, or to drunkenness, or to revelries, or to other bodily pleasures. Toward evening, everyone gathers again for banquets symposia: drinking parties often accompanied by music or intellectual discussion. When they have filled themselves with wine, there is no lyre or cithara cithara: a professional version of the lyre used in ancient Greece and Rome passed around the circle. Nor is any other musical instrument touched, even though in the past it was considered honorable to play them at such gatherings, and conversely, it was thought deeply shameful not to do so. Nor is there any exchange of conversation, such as the ancients recorded taking place in their banquets. No other honorable thing occurs. Instead, they toast one another and compete over the size of their drinking vessels. For among these people, the best man is not the one who knows how to play many musical instruments or engage in philosophical discourse, but the one who has drained many of the largest cups kylices: shallow, wide-mouthed drinking cups used in ancient Greece. Consequently, by the next morning...