Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 4.3.1 — Symposiacs

Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 4.3.1 — Symposiacs, Plutarch; served verbatim

Question III. WHY MEN USUALLY INVITE MANY GUESTS TO A WEDDING SUPPER. SOSSIUS SENECIO, PLUTARCH, THEO. AT my son Autobulus’s marriage, Sossius Senecio from Chaeronea and a great many other noble persons were present at the same feast; which gave occasion to this question (Senecio proposed it), why to a marriage feast more guests are usually invited than to any other. Nay even those law-givers that chiefly opposed luxury and profuseness have particularly confined marriage feasts to a set number. Indeed, in my opinion, he continued, Hecataeus the Abderite, one of the old philosophers, hath said nothing to the purpose in this matter, when he tells us that those that marry wives invite a great many to the entertainment, that many may see and be witnesses that they being free born take to themselves wives of the same condition. For, on the contrary, the comedians reflect on those who revel at their marriages, who make a great ado and are pompous in their feasts, as such who are marrying with no great confidence and courage. Thus, in Menander, one replies to a bridegroom that bade him beset the house with dishes,... Your words are great, but what’s this to your bride?

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 4.2.4 contents Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 4.3.2 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Autobulus — a candidate entry Senecio — a candidate entry

Symposiacs, Plutarch — translated by Thomas Creech (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)