n away, but in
a little time give over the search, and cry that he is fled to the Muses
and lurks with them; and some time after, when supper is done, put
riddles and hard questions to one another. For this mystery teaches us,
that midst our entertainments we should use learned and philosophical
discourse, and such as hath a Muse in it; and that such discourse being
applied to drunkenness, everything that is brutish and outrageous in it
is concealed, being pleasingly restrained by the Muses.

This book, being the eighth of my Symposiacs, begins with that discourse
in which about a year ago, on Plato's birthday, I was concerned.

QUESTION I. CONCERNING THOSE DAYS IN WHICH SOME FAMOUS MEN WERE BORN;
AND ALSO CONCERNING THE GENERATION OF THE GODS.

DIOGENIANUS, PLUTARCH, FLORUS, TYNDARES.

On the sixth day of May we celebrated Socrates's birthday, and on the
seventh Plato's; and that first prompted us to such discourse as was
suitable to the meeting, which Diogenianus the Pergamenian began thus:
Ion, said he, was happy in his expression, when he said that Fortune,
though much unlike Wisdom, yet did many things very much like her; and
that she seemed to have some order and design, not only in placing the
nativities of these two philosophers so near together, but in setting
the birthday of the most famous of the two first, who was also the
master of the other. I had a great deal to say to the company concerning
some notable things that fell out on the same day, as concerning the
time of Euripides's birth and death; for he was born the same day that
the Greeks beat Xerxes by sea at Salamis, and died the same day that
Dionysius the elder, the Sicilian tyrant, was born,--Fortune (as Timaeus
hath it) at the same time taking out of the world a representer, and
bringing into it a real actor, of tragedies. Besides, we remembered that
Alexander the king and Diogenes the Cynic died upon the same day. And
all agreed that Attalus the king died on his own birthday. And some
said, that Pompey the great was killed in Egypt on his birthday, or, as
others will have it, a day before. We remember Pindar also, who, being
born at the time of the Pythian games, made afterwards a great many
excellent hymns in honor of Apollo.

To this Florus subjoined: Now we are celebrating Plato's nativity, why
should we not mention Carneades, the most famous of the whole Academy,
since both of them were born on Apollo's feast; Plato, whilst they were