to it. The song, too, addressed to Agemon of Corinth, the father of Alcyone, which the Corinthians sang, contains the burden of the pæan. And this burden, too, is even added by Polemo Periegetes to his letter addressed to Aranthius. The song also which the Rhodians sing, addressed to Ptolemy the first king of Egypt, is a pæan: for it contains the burden Io Pæan, as Georgus tells us in his essay on the Sacrifices at Rhodes. And Philochorus says that the Athenians sing pæans in honour of Antigonus and Demetrius, which were composed by Hermippus of Cyzicus, on an occasion when a great many poets had a contest as to which could compose the finest pæan, and the victory was adjudged to Hermippus. And, indeed, Aristotle himself, in his Defence of himself from this accusation of impiety, (unless the speech is a spurious one,) says—"For if I had wished to offer sacrifice to Hermias as an immortal being, I should never have built him a tomb as a mortal; nor if I had wished to make him out to be a god, should I have honoured him with funeral obsequies like a man."
53. When Democritus had said this, Cynulcus said;—Why do you remind me of those cyclic poems, to use the words of your friend Philo, when you never ought to say anything serious or important in the presence of this glutton Ulpian? For he prefers lascivious songs to dignified ones; such, for instance, as those which are called Locrian songs, which are of a debauched sort of character, such as—
Do you not feel some pleasure now?
Do not betray me, I entreat you.
Rise up before the man comes back,
Lest he should ill-treat you and me.
'Tis morning now, dost thou not see
The daylight through the windows?
And all Phœnicia is full of songs of this kind; and he himself, when there, used to go about playing on the flute with the men who sing colabri.[1] And there is good authority, Ulpian, for this word [Greek: kolabroi]. For Demetrius the Scepsian, in the tenth book of his Trojan Array, speaks thus:—"Ctesiphon the Athenian, who was a composer of the songs called [Greek: kolabroi], was made by Attalus, who succeeded Philetærus as king of Pergamus, judge of all his subjects in thewas danced.]
- ↑ Colabri were a sort of song to which the armed dance called [Greek: kolabrismos
