ANOINTING.
If hunger should attack your well-shaped person,
'Twould make you thinner than Philippides.
And the word [Greek: pephilippidôsthai] was used for being extremely thin, as we find in Alexis; who, in his Women taking Mandragora, says—
A. You must be ill. You are, by Jove, the very
Leanest of sparrows—a complete Philippides [Greek: pephilippidôsthai].
B. Don't tell me such strange things: I'm all but dead;
A. I pity your sad case.
At all events, it is much better to look like that, than to be like the man of whom Antiphanes in his Æolus says—
This man then, such a sot and glutton is he,
And so enormous is his size of body,
Is called by all his countrymen the Bladder.
And Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, says that Dinias the perfumer gave himself up to love because of his luxury, and spent a vast sum of money on it; and when, at last, he failed in his desires, out of grief he mutilated himself, his unbridled luxury bringing him into this trouble.
78. But it was the fashion at Athens to anoint even the feet of those men who were very luxurious with ointment, a custom which Cephisodorus alludes to in his Trophonius—
Then to anoint my body go and buy
Essence of lilies, and of roses too,
I beg you, Xanthias; and also buy
For my poor feet some baccaris.
And Eubulus, in his Sphingocarion, says—
. . . Lying full softly in a bed-chamber;
Around him were most delicate cloaks, well suited
For tender maidens, soft, voluptuous;
Such as those are, who well perfumed and fragrant
With amaracine oils, do rub my feet.
But the author of the Procris gives an account of what care ought to be taken of Procris's dog, speaking of a dog as if he were a man—
A. Strew, then, soft carpets underneath the dog,
And place beneath cloths of Milesian wool;
And put above them all a purple rug.
B. Phœbus Apollo!
A. Then in goose's milk
Soak him some groats.
B. O mighty Hercules!
A. And with Megallian oils anoint his feet.
