{"id":10278,"date":"2020-03-19T20:06:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T00:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=10278"},"modified":"2020-03-19T20:06:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T00:06:17","slug":"killing-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/19\/killing-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sitting around at home trying to wait out the quarantine reminded me of an old story from Herodotus about a people trying to wait out a bad situation.\u00a0 A famine isn\u2019t the same as a plague but something about the story seemed appropriate for our present predicament.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The customs of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, except that they make prostitutes of their female children. They were the first men whom we know who coined and used gold and silver currency; and they were the first to sell by retail. And, according to what they themselves say, the games now in use among them and the Greeks were invented by the Lydians: these, they say, were invented among them at the time when they colonized Tyrrhenia. This is their story: In the reign of Atys son of Manes there was great scarcity of food in all Lydia. For a while the Lydians bore this with what patience they could; presently, when the famine did not abate, they looked for remedies, and different plans were devised by different men. Then it was that they invented the games of dice and knuckle-bones and ball and all other forms of game except dice, which the Lydians do not claim to have discovered. Then, using their discovery to lighten the famine, every other day they would play for the whole day, so that they would not have to look for food, and the next day they quit their play and ate. This was their way of life for eighteen years. But the famine did not cease to trouble them, and instead afflicted them even more. At last their king divided the people into two groups, and made them draw lots, so that the one group should remain and the other leave the country; he himself was to be the head of those who drew the lot to remain there, and his son, whose name was Tyrrhenus, of those who departed. Then the one group, having drawn the lot, left the country and came down to Smyrna and built ships, in which they loaded all their goods that could be transported aboard ship, and sailed away to seek a livelihood and a country; until at last, after sojourning with one people after another, they came to the Ombrici,1 where they founded cities and have lived ever since. They no longer called themselves Lydians, but Tyrrhenians, after the name of the king&#8217;s son who had led them there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Luckily OCF won\u2019t allow me to get bored.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>photog<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sitting around at home trying to wait out the quarantine reminded me of an old story from Herodotus about a people trying to wait out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,237],"tags":[2371,2372,196,802],"class_list":["post-10278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-reviews","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-herodotus","tag-lydia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - 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