Wine Mixed with Water

Today we ventured forth to the National Archeological Museum in downtown Athens to view some of the exhibits including a collection from an archeological dig in Santorini. In the collection I found a wall illustration of two men fighting.
I talked to one of the people who work at the museum as an archeologist and she told me the story of the wall illustration: they got into a fight over a cow. See the guy on the left was going to be married to his childhood sweetheart and one of the wedding present to the girl’s father was a cow. The girl’s father had only consented to the arrangement because of the cow. This is because the cow is legend…wait for it…dary. There are epic tales about the adventures of this cow leading other cows on journeys to greener pastures and protecting the other cows from harm. So you can see why the girl’s father really wants this cow.

Enter the second guy. The second guy was transporting the cow to the father of the girl. But to make smatter more interesting he was also moonlighting for the dairy industry, such as it was in Greece at the time, as a cow scout. When he learned that he would be transporting the legend…wait for it…dary cow, he reported to his superiors and they told him to acquire the cow for their business. The second guy then made the cow disappear en route to the father, and this part I didn’t really understand but it involves a rug, some rope, and cheese. The first guy then found out that the cow never reached the girl’s father and by a process of elimination he found out that the man transporting the cow (the second guy) had lost the cow and he went to confront the guy about it. The second guy denied it and then the first guy punched the second guy because he knew about the second’s other job. He wound up for a second punch and the second guy recovers and punches the first guy at the same time as the first guy goes for his second punch. A local painter happened to be walking by at the exact moment that two men were punching each other and he decided to capture the image as a wall painting. And that is how the painting came to be.

"If it is well told and to the point, that is what I myself desired; if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do. For just as it is harmful to drink wine alone, or, again, to drink water alone, while wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one's enjoyment, so also the style of the story delights the ears of those who read the work. And here will be the end." 2 Maccabees 15: 38-39.