The Piper Antigenidas
4. There was a certain piper named Antigenidas, whose every note made honeyed harmony. He had skill, too, to make music in every mode, choose which you would, the simple Aeolian or the complex Ionian, the mournful Lydian, the solemn Phrygian, or the warlike Dorian. Being therefore the most famous of all that played upon the pipe, he said that nothing so tormented him, nothing so vexed his heart and soul, as the fact that the musicians who played the trumpet at funerals were dignified by the name of pipers. But he would have endured this identity of names with equanimity, had he ever seen the performance of mimes; for he would have noted that the magistrates, who preside in the theatre, and the characters on the stage, who come in for a good cudgelling, are clad in practically the same purple garments. So too, had he ever watched our games! For he would have seen one presiding, another fighting, yet both of them sharing the same common humanity. He would have noted that the Roman toga is worn alike by him who performs a vow to heaven and by him that lies dead upon the bier, that the Grecian pallium serves to shroud the dead no less than to clothe the philosopher.