Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/159

This page needs to be proofread.

LOVE. But the statue spoken of is the work of Ctesicles; as Adæus of Mitylene tells us in his treatise on Statuaries. And Polemo, or whoever the author of the book called Helladicus is, says—"At Delphi, in the museum of the pictures, there are two boys wrought in marble; one of which, the Delphians say, was so fallen in love with by some one who came to see it, that he made love to it, and shut himself up with it, and presented it with a crown; but when he was detected, the god ordered the Delphians, who consulted his oracle with reference to the subject, to dismiss him freely, for that he had given him a handsome reward.

85. And even brute beasts have fallen in love with men: for there was a cock who took a fancy to a man of the name of Secundus, a cupbearer of the king; and the cock was nicknamed the Centaur. But this Secundus was a slave of Nicomedes the king of Bithynia; as Nicander informs us in the sixth book of his essay on the Revolutions of Fortune. And, at Ægium, a goose took a fancy to a boy; as Clearchus relates in the first book of his Amatory Anecdotes. And Theophrastus, in his essay on Love, says that the name of this boy was Amphilochus, and that he was a native of Olenus. And Hermeas the son of Hermodorus, who was a Samian by birth, says that a goose also took a fancy to Lacydes the philosopher. And in Leucadia (according to a story told by Clearchus), a peacock fell so in love with a maiden there, that when she died, the bird died too. There is a story also that, at Iasus, a dolphin took a fancy to a boy (and this story is told by Duris, in the ninth book of his History); and the subject of that book is the history of Alexander, and the historian's words are these: "He likewise sent for the boy from Iasus. For near Iasus there was a boy whose name was Dionysius, and he once, when leaving the palæstra with the rest of the boys, went down to the sea and bathed; and a dolphin came forward out of the deep water to meet him, and taking him on his back, swam away with him a considerable distance into the open sea, and then brought him back again to land." But the dolphin is an animal which is very fond of men, and very intelligent, and one very susceptible of gratitude. Accordingly Phylarchus, in his twelfth book, says—"Coiranus the Milesian, when he saw some fishermen who had caught a dolphin in a net, and who