DIONYSIUS. after that to perform the rest of the sacred ceremonies in the temple. And from thence it was that this festival got the name of the Choes. But on the day of the festival of the Choes, it is customary for the Athenians to send presents and pay to the sophists, who also themselves invite their acquaintances to a banquet, as Eubulides the dialectician shows us in his drama entitled the Revellers, where he says—
You're acting like a sophist now, you wretch,
And long for the pay-giving feast of Choes.
50. But Antigonus the Carystian, in his essay on the Life of Dionysius of Heraclea, who was called the Turncoat, says that Dionysius, when he was feasting with his slaves at the festival of the Choes, and was not able, by reason of his old age, to avail himself of the courtesan whom they brought him, turned round and said to those who were feasting with him—
I cannot now, so let another take her.
But Dionysius, as Nicias of Nicæa tells us in his Successions, had been from the time he was a boy very furious in the indulgence of his amorous propensities; and he used to go to all the common women promiscuously. And once, when walking with some of his acquaintances, when he came near the house where the girls are kept, and where, having been there the day before, he had left some money owing, as he happened to have some with him then, he put out his hand and paid it in the presence of all of them. And Anacharsis the Scythian, when a prize for drinking was proposed at the table of Periander, demanded the prize, because he was the first man to be drunk of all the guests who were present; as if to get to the end were the goal to be aimed at, and the victory to be achieved in drinking as in running a race. But Lacydes and Timon the philosophers, being invited to an entertainment which was to last two days, by one of their friends, and wishing to adapt themselves to the rest of the guests, drank with great eagerness. And accordingly, in the first day, Lacydes went away first, as soon as he was quite satiated with drink. And Timon, seeing him as he was departing, said—
Now have we gain'd immortal praise and fame,
Since we have slain great Hector. . . .
But on the next day Timon went away first because he could
