Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/27

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THE SYBARITES. spread under the horse. And afterwards he begged one of those who had accompanied him down to the vessel to go with him, saying, "I have already stipulated with the captain of the ship to keep along the shore." But he replied, "I should have had great difficulty in complying with your wishes if you had been going to walk along the seashore, much less can I do so when you are going to sail along the land."

20. But Phylarchus, in the twenty-fifth book of his History, (having said that there was a law at Syracuse, that the women should not wear golden ornaments, nor garments embroidered with flowers, nor robes with purple borders, unless they professed that they were public prostitutes; and that there was another law, that a man should not adorn his person, nor wear any extraordinarily handsome robes, different from the rest of the citizens, unless he meant to confess that he was an adulterer and a profligate: and also, that a freewoman was not to walk abroad when the sun had set, unless she was going to commit adultery; and even by day they were not allowed to go out without the leave of the regulators of the women, and without one female servant following them,)—Phylarchus, I say, states, that "the Sybarites, having given loose to their luxury, made a law that women might be invited to banquets, and that those who intended to invite them to sacred festivities must make preparation a year before, in order that they might have all that time to provide themselves with garments and other ornaments in a suitable manner worthy of the occasion, and so might come to the banquet to which they were invited. And if any confectioner or cook invented any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make this for a year; but he alone who invented it was entitled to all the profit to be derived from the manufacture of it for that time; in order that others might be induced to labour at excelling in such pursuits. And in the same way, it was provided that those who sold eels were not to be liable to pay tribute, nor those who caught them either. And in the same way the laws exempted from all burdens those who dyed the marine purple and those who imported it."

21. They, then, having carried their luxury and insolence to a great height, at last, when thirty ambassadors came to them from the people of Crotona, slew them all, and threw