preparations for departure; and each proceeded to pack up and carry home, as was the custom at such entertainments, some little delicacy set apart for them by their liberal host. They quarrelled again, however, in their greediness, over the largest portions and the fattest fowls. A "free fight" of philosophers ensues, which Lucian could only aptly compare with the battle between the Centaurs and Lapithæ at the marriage of Pirithous. In the midst of it Alcidamas the Cynic, by design or accident, upset the lamp, and the combatants were left for a while in darkness. When it was suddenly relighted, some awkward revelations were made. The Peripatetic moralist was discovered making fierce love to a music-girl, while the Epicurean was concealing under his robe a gold cup which he had snatched from the table. Wounded and bleeding, the combatants were assisted from the room by their attendant slaves. But even thus they could not resist a gibe or two at parting. The Epicurean, with two teeth knocked out in the scuffle, saw the Stoic professor with a damaged eye and his nose bleeding, and bids him remember that, according to his own tenets, "Pain is no real evil." Lucian could only sum up the moral, he tells his friend, in the words of Euripides,—
The gods still bring to pass the unforeseen,
And what we look for never comes at all."[1]
For what could possibly be more unexpected than
- ↑ The somewhat weak "tag" common to several of Euripides's plays.
