‘As for me,’ said Eudemus, ‘I was sent for in the gloaming by Damasias, the athlete many-victoried of yore, now pithless from age; you know him in bronze in the market. He was busy with roast and boiled. He was this day to exdomesticate his daughter, and was decking her out for her husband, when a baleful incident occurred, which cleft the feast in twain. For Dion bis son, on grievance unknown, if it were not rather the hostility of Heaven, hanged himself 3 and be sure be was a dead man, had I not been there, and dislocated and loosed him from his implication, Long time I squatted a-knee, pricking and rocking, and sounding him, to see whether his throat was still whole. What profited most was compressure of the extremities with both my hands.’
‘What, Dion the effeminate, the libertine, the debauchee, the mastich-chewer, the too susceptible to amorous sights?’ ‘Yes; the lecher and whore-master. Well, Damasias fell down and worshipped the Goddess (they have an Artemis by Scopas in the middle of the court), he and his old white-headed wife, and implored her compassion. The Goddess straightway nodded assent, and he was well; and now he is their Theodorus, or indeed their manifest Artemidorus. So they made offerings to her, among them darts and bows and arrows; for these are acceptable in her sight; bowwoman she, far-dartress, telepolemic.
