refreshments, may thus claim a venerable antiquity. In due time the
bridegrooms conducted their respective brides to chambers prepared for
them within the precincts of the royal palace.

The festivities continued for five days, and all the amusements of the
age were put into requisition for the entertainment of the company.
Athenaeus has quoted from Charas, a list of the chief performers, which
I transcribe more for the sake of the performances and of the states
where these lighter arts were brought to the greatest perfection, than
of the names, which are now unmeaning sounds. Scymnus from Tarentum,
Philistides from Syracuse, and Heracleitus from Mytylenè, were the great
jugglers, or as the Greek word intimates, the wonder-workers of the day.
After them, Alexis, the Tarentine, displayed his excellence as a
rhapsodist, or repeater, to appropriate music, of the soul-stirring
poetry of Homer. Cratinus the Methymnoean, Aristonymus the Athenian,
Athenodorus the Teian, played on the harp--without being accompanied by
the voice. On the contrary, Heracleitus the Tarentine, and Aristocrates
the Theban, accompanied their harps with lyric songs. The performers on
wind instruments were divided on a similar, although it could not be on
the same principle. Dionysius from Heracleia, and Hyperbolus from
Cyzicum, sang to the flute, or some such instrument; while Timotheus,
Phrynichus, Scaphisius, Diophantus, and Evius, the Chalcidian, first
performed the Pythian overture, and then, accompanied by chorusses,
displayed the full power of wind instruments in masterly hands. There
was also a peculiar class called eulogists of Bacchus; these acquitted
themselves so well on this occasion, applying to Alexander those praises
which in their extemporaneous effusions had hitherto been confined to
the god, that they acquired the name of Eulogists of Alexander. Nor did
their reward fail them. The stage, of course, was not without its
representatives:--Thessalus, Athenodorus, Aristocritus, in