LYCINUS
Just as Cleodemus said that, Alcidamas the Cynic romped in uninvited, getting off the commonplace joke about Menelaus coming of his own accord. Ihiad 2, 408. Most of them thought he had done an impudent thing, and they slyly retorted. with the first thing they could think of, one growling under his breath, Menelaus, thou’rt a fool! Iliad 7, 109. another: But Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, was sorely vexed, Iliad 1, 24. and others other remarks that, in the circumstances, were to the point and witty. But nobody dared to speak out, for they all feared Alcidamas, who was really “good at the war-cry,” Like Menelaus: Iliad 2, 408. and the noisiest of all the Cynic barkers, for which reason he was considered a superior person and was a great terror to everybody.
Aristaenetus commended him and bade him take a chair and sit beside Histiaeus and Dionysodorus. “Get out with you!” said he. “What you tell me to do is womanish and weak, to sit on a chair or on a stool, like yourselves on that soft bed, lying almost flat on your batks while you feast, with purple cloths under you. I shall take my dinner on my feet as I walk about the dining-room, and if I get tired I'll lie on the floor, leaning on my elbow, with my cloak under me, like Heracles in the pictures they paint of him.” “Very well,” said Aristaenetus; “if you prefer it that way.” Then Alcidamas began to circle about for his dinner, shifting 1o richer pasturage as the Scythians do, and following the orbits of the waiters.
