Lucian Lexiphanes 11

[11] “I,” quoth Eudemus, “was summoned as it grew crepuscular by Damasias the quondam athlete and champion, now out of the lists for eld—the brazen image, you know, in the square. ¹ He was hard at it a-plucking and a-singeing, for he intended to marry off his daughter to-day and was busking her. Then a Termerian ² misadventure befell that cut short the gala day. Distraught over I know not what, or more likely overtaken by divine detestation, his son Dion hung himself, and, depend upon it, he would have been undone if I had not been there to slip the noose and relieve him of his coil. Squatting on my hunkers beside him for a long time, I jobbed him, titillating and sounding him lest perchance his windpipe still hang together. But what helped most was that I confined his extremes with both hands and applied pressure.” ³

[11] ‘As for me,’ said Eudemus, ‘I was sent for in the gloaming by Damasias, the athlete many-victoried of yore, now pithless from age; you know him in bronze in the market. He was busy with roast and boiled. He was this day to exdomesticate his daughter, and was decking her out for her husband, when a baleful incident occurred, which cleft the feast in twain. For Dion bis son, on grievance unknown, if it were not rather the hostility of Heaven, hanged himself 3 and be sure be was a dead man, had I not been there, and dislocated and loosed him from his implication, Long time I squatted a-knee, pricking and rocking, and sounding him, to see whether his throat was still whole. What profited most was compressure of the extremities with both my hands.’