great a number of candles as there are days in a year. And Hermippus the comic poet, in his Iambics, speaks of—
A military candlestick well put together.
And, in his play called The Grooms, he says—
Here, lamp ([Greek: lychnidion]), show me my road on the right hand.
Now, [Greek: panos] was a name given to wood cut into splinters and bound together, which they used for a torch: Menander, in his Cousins, says—
He enter'd, and cried out,
"[Greek: Panon, lychnon, lychouchon] any light—"
Making one into many.
And Diphilus, in his Soldier, says—
But now this [Greek: panos] is quite full of water.
And before them Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, had used the word [Greek: panos]—
<tb>[1]
61. Alexis, too, uses the word [Greek: xylolychnouchou], and perhaps this is the same thing as that which is called by Theopompus [Greek: obeliskolychnion]. But Philyllius calls [Greek: lampades], [Greek: dades]. But the [Greek: lychnos], or candle, is not an ancient invention; for the ancients used the light of torches and other things made of wood. Phrynichus, however, says—
Put out the [Greek: lychnon],
Plato too, in his Long Night, says—
And then upon the top he'll have a candle,
Bright with two wicks.
And these candles with two wicks are mentioned also by Metagenes, in his Man fond of Sacrificing; and by Philonides in his Buskins. But Clitarchus, in his Dictionary, says that the Rhodians give the name of [Greek: lophnis] to a torch made of the bark of the vine. But Homer calls torches [Greek: detai]—
The darts fly round him from an hundred hands,
And the red terrors of the blazing brands ([Greek: detai]),
Till late, reluctant, at the dawn of day,
Sour he departs, and quits th' untasted prey.[2]
,
</poem>
where Clytæmnestra is speaking of the beacon fires, which had conveyed to her the intelligence of the fall of Troy.]
