But Duris, speaking concerning the luxury of the Samians, quotes the poems of Asius, to prove that they used to wear armlets on their arms; and that, when celebrating the festival of the Heræa, they used to go about with their hair carefully combed down over the back of their head and over their shoulders; and he says that this is proved to have been their regular practice by this proverb—“To go, like a worshipper of Juno, with his hair braided.” Now the verses of Asius run as follows:—-
And they march'd, with carefully comb'd hairBut Heraclides of Pontus, in his treatise on Pleasure, says that the Samians, being most extravagantly luxurious, destroyed the city, out of their meanness to one another, as effectually as the Sybarites destroyed theirs.
To the most holy spot of Juno's temple,
Clad in magnificent robes, whose snow-white folds
Reach'd to the ground of the extensive earth,
And golden knobs on them like grasshoppers,
And golden chaplets loosely held their hair,
Gracefully waving in the genial breeze;
And on their arms were armlets, highly wrought,
. . . . . . . . . and sung
The praises of the mighty warrior.