Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters (Deipnosophistae) 602f · 602f
Laius and Chrysippus
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Myrtilus — πεπλάσθαι φησὶν Πολέμων ὁ περιηγητὴς ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τὸν Νεάνθην Ἀντιγραφαῖς. ὑμεῖς δέ, ὦ Κύνουλκε, τὰς διηγήσεις ταύτας, κἂν ψευδεῖς ὦσιν, ἀληθεῖς εἶναι πιστεύετε, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ποιημάτων ἃ περὶ τοὺς παιδικούς ἐστιν ἔρωτας ἡδέως μελετᾶτε.... τοῦ παιδεραστεῖν παρὰ πρώτων Κρητῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας παρελθόντος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Τίμαιος. ἄλλοι δέ φασι τῶν τοιούτων ἐρώτων κατάρξασθαι Λάιον ξενωθέντα παρὰ Πέλοπι καὶ ἐρασθέντα τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ Χρυσίππου,
…was invented, says Polemon the travel writer in his Replies to Neanthes. But you, Cynulcus, believe these stories to be true even if they are false, and you gladly rehearse such poems as are about the love of boys. … (words lost) … the love of boys passed to the Greeks first from the Cretans, as Timaeus records. But others say that Laius began such loves, when he was a guest of Pelops and fell in love with his son Chrysippus…
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The setting
Polemon of Ilium, a 2nd-century BC scholar who described sanctuaries and their monuments, wrote replies to other writers. Myrtilus turns on Cynulcus, the Cynic guest who has been needling him all evening.
A note on this passage
Myrtilus is honest about his evidence. Polemon thought the Cratinus story a fiction, and Myrtilus says so before turning the charge on Cynulcus, who believes any tale and loves the poems. Some words are lost here.<br><br>Then two answers to where the custom began. Timaeus, the historian of Sicily, says Crete. Others go back to myth: Laius, the father of Oedipus, carried off the son of the man who had taken him in. Euripides wrote a play about it, the <i>Chrysippus</i>, now lost.
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