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Home  »  library  »  prose  »  The Pleasures of Athens—Euthydicus to Epiphanio

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Pleasures of Athens—Euthydicus to Epiphanio

By Alciphron (Second Century)

From the ‘Epistolæ,’ iii. 39.

BY all the gods and demons, I beg you, dear mother, to leave your rocks and fields in the country, and before you die, discover what beautiful things there are in town. Just think what you are losing,—the Haloan Festival and the Apaturian Festival, and the Great Festival of Bacchus, and especially the Thesmophorian Festival, which is now going on. If you would only hurry up, and get here to-morrow morning before it is daylight, you would be able to take part in the affair with the other Athenian women. Do come, and don’t put it off, if you have any regard for my happiness and my brothers’; for it’s an awful thing to die without having any knowledge of the city. That’s the life of an ox; and one that is altogether unreasonable. Please excuse me, mother, for speaking so freely for your own good. After all, one ought to speak plainly with everybody, and especially with those who are themselves plain speakers.