This painting shows an understanding of the tale, for there are roots at their extremities, and some are trees up to the navel, and others have branches instead of hands. Alas! Their hair is wholly black poplar! Pity! Their tears are golden. The teary flood shines in the brightness of their eyes and sort of attracts rays of light and gleams as it reaches the cheeks and the blush that fills them, but the tears which drip down their chests are already gold.

Even the river grieves as it rises from the whirlpool and holds out its lap to Phaëthon – for it is in the shape of one who receives – and at once cultivates the daughters of Helios. For with the breezes and chills it releases it will turn to stone the pieces which fall from the poplars and carry them through its radiant waters to the barbarians in Oceanus.

THE WEDDING FEAST

Deipnosophistae

Athenaeus

Translated by C. D. Yonge, 1854

Written in the third century AD by Athenaeus, an Egyptian who lived in Rome, the Deipnosophistae or ‘Dining Sophists’ is a peculiar collection of descriptions of food, symposia and banquets. Here a narrator from Macedonia describes a particularly extravagant wedding feast hosted by a fellow Macedonian named Caranus in the fourth century BC.