because when the first two syllables are made long, [Greek: iê paian], it becomes a heroic verse, but when they are pronounced short it is an iambic, and thus it is plain that we must attribute the iambic to him. And as the rest are short, if any one makes the last two syllables of the verse long, that makes a Hipponactean iambic.
63. And after this, when we also were about to leave the party, the slaves came in bringing, one an incense burner, and another. . . . For it was the custom for the guests to rise up and offer a libation, and then to give the rest of the unmixed wine to the boy, who brought it to them to drink.
Ariphron the Sicyonian composed this Pæan to Health—
O holiest Health, all other gods excelling,
May I be ever blest
With thy kind favour, and for all the rest
Of life I pray thee ne'er desert my dwelling;
For if riches pleasure bring,
Or the power of a king,
Or children smiling round the board,
Or partner honour'd and adored,
Or any other joy
Which the all-bounteous gods employ
To raise the hearts of men,
Consoling them for long laborious pain;
All their chief brightness owe, kind Health, to you;
You are the Graces' spring,
'Tis you the only real bliss can bring,
And no man's blest when you are not in view,
64. They know.—For Sopater the farce-writer, in his play entitled The Lentil, speaks thus—
I can both carve and drink Etruscan wine,
In due proportion mix'd.
These things, my good Timocrates, are not, as Plato says, the sportive conversations of Socrates in his youth and beauty, but the serious discussions of the Deipnosophists; for, as Dionysius the Brazen says,—
What, whether you begin or end a work,
Is better than the thing you most require?
