But the author of the play called the Beggars, which is attributed to Chionides, mentions a certain man of the name of Gnesippus as a composer of ludicrous verses, and also of merry songs; and he says—
I swear that neither now Gnesippus, norAnd the author of the Helots says—
Cleomenes with all his nine-string'd lyre,
Could e'er have made this song endurable.
He is a man who sings the ancient songs(he means to say Gnesippus):
Of Alcman, and Stesichorus, and Simonides;
He likewise has composed songs for the night,And Cratinus, in his Effeminate Persons, says—
Well suited to adulterers, with which
They charm the women from their doors, while striking
The shrill iambyca or the triangle.
Who, O Gnesippus, e'er saw me in love[p. 1021] . . . . . . .and he ridicules him for his poems; and in his Herdsmen he says—
I am indignant; for I do think nothing
Can be so vain or foolish as a lover.
A man who would not give to SophoclesAnd in his Hours he says—
A chorus when he asked one; though he granted
That favour to Cleomachus, whom I
Should scarce think worthy of so great an honour,
At the Adonia.
Farewell to that great tragedianBut Teleclides, in his Rigid Men, says that he was greatly addicted to adultery. And Clearchus, in the second book of his Amatory Anecdotes, says that the love-songs, and those, too, which are called the Locrian songs, do not differ in the least from the compositions of Sappho and Anacreon. Moreover, the poems of Archilochus, and that on fieldfares, attributed to Homer, relate to some division or other of this passion, describing it in metrical poetry. But the writings of Asopodorus about love, and the whole body of amorous epistles, are a sort of amatory poetry out of metre.
Cleomachus, with his chorus of hair-pullers,
Plucking vile melodies in the Lydian fashion.