Hippocleides cares not!

Ibland känner jag att jag aldrig vill skriva ett ord till, eftersom det aldrig kan bli lika bra som det Herodotus skrev. (Det är inte jätteofta, och det brukar gå över ganska snabbt.)

Heodotus och Sean Connerys hatt möttes i en tidsmaskin och blev genast djupt fästa vid varandra

Herodotus levde i Sydeuropa på 400-talet före vår tideräkning. Han var en grekisk historieskrivare som reste mycket. Enligt Wikipedia kallade Cicero honom för ”historieskrivningens fader”. Hur som helst kunde han skriva roligt och underbart. Följande text, ur ”Herodotus historia” (förlåt att jag inte lyckas översätta den från engelska), handlar om Cleisthenes som vill gifta bort sin dotter, och friaren Hippocleides som kommer på att han älskar att dansa och sprattla med benen mer än han älskar Cleisthenes dotter. Och varför inte? Det är roligt att sprattla! Hippocleides bryr sig inte!

6.129: Then when the appointed day came for the marriage banquet and for Cleisthenes himself to declare whom he selected from the whole number [of suitors for his daughter], Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen and feasted both the wooers themselves and all the people of Sikyon; and when the dinner was over, the wooers began to vie with one another both in music and in speeches for the entertainment of the company; and as the drinking went forward and Hippocleides was very much holding the attention of the others, he bade the flute-player play for him a dance-measure; and when the flute-player did so, he danced: and it so befell that he pleased himself in his dancing, but Cleisthenes looked on at the whole matter with suspicion. Then Hippocleides after a certain time bade on bring in a table; and when the table came in, first he danced upon it Laconian figures, and then also Attic, and thirdly he planted his head upon the table and gesticulated with his legs. Cleisthenes meanwhile, when he was dancing the first and the second time, though he abhorred the thought that Hippocleides should now become his son-in-law, because of his dancing and his shamelessness, yet restrained himself, not desiring to break out in anger against him; but when he saw that he thus gesticulated with his legs, he was no longer able to restrain himself, but said ”You have danced away your marriage, however good your dancing, son of Tisander!” and Hippocleides answered ”Hippocleides cares not!”