Adagia 1–100

Τὰ τῶν φίλων κοινὰ, Between friends all is common. Since there is nothing more wholesome or more generally accepted than this proverb, it seemed good to place it as a favourable omen at the head of this collection of adages. If only it were so fixed in men's minds as it is frequent on everybody's lips, most of the evils of our lives would promptly be removed. From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men, just as they do to the gods. For to the gods, said he, belong all things; good men are friends of the gods; and among friends all possessions are in common. Therefore good men own everything. It is quoted by Euripides in his Orestes: 'Shared in common are the possessions of friends,' and again in the Phoenissae: 'All grief of friends is shared.' Again in the Andromache: 'True friends have nothing of their own, but with them all is common.' Terence says in the Adelphoe 'For there is an old proverb, that between friends all is common.' It is said that this was also in Menander, in a play of the same name. Cicero in the first book of the De Officiis says 'As the Greek proverb has it, all things are in common between friends,' and it is quoted by Aristotle in the eighth book of his Ethics and by Plato in the Laws, book 5. Plato is trying to show that the happiest condition of a society consists in the community of all possessions: 'So the first kind of city and polity and the best laws are found where the old saying is maintained as much as possible throughout the whole city; and the saying is that friends really have all things in common.' Plato also says that a state would be happy and blessed in which these words 'mine' and 'not mine' were never to be heard. But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Plato's, how in fact they cast stones at it, although nothing was ever said by a pagan philosopher which comes closer to the mind of Christ. Aristotle in book 2 of the Politics moderates the opinion of Plato by saying that possession and legal ownership should be vested in certain definite persons, but otherwise all should be in common according to the proverb, for the sake of convenience, virtuous living and social harmony. Martial in book 2 pokes fun at a certain Candidus, who was always quoting this adage, but otherwise gave nothing to his friends: '0 Candidus, what's mine is yours, you say; / Grandly you chant this maxim night and day,' and the epigram ends thus: "'What's mine is yours," yet naught you give away.' An elegant remark of Theophrastus is quoted in Plutarch, in the little essay entitled 'On Brotherly Love': 'If friends' possessions are in common, then friends' friends still more should be in common too.' Cicero in the first book of the De legibus seems to attribute this adage to Pythagoras, when he says: 'Hence that word of Pythagoras "Between friends things are in common, and friendship is equality."' In Diogenes Laertius also Timaeus reports that this saying first began with Pythagoras. Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights, book i chapter 9, bears witness that not only was Pythagoras the author of this saying, but he also instituted a kind of sharing of life and property in this way, the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians. For all those who were admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instruction would give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed. This is called in Latin, in a word which expresses the facts, coenobium, clearly from community of life and fortunes.

These also are ascribed to Pythagoras as their author, containing as they do the same opinion, that friendship is equality and having one soul, and that a friend is a second self. For there is nothing not shared where there is equality of fortune; nor is there any dissension where the mind is one and the same, nor any separation where two are joined in one. Aristotle in the Magna Moralia, book 2: 'Whenever we wish to say emphatically "friend" we say "My soul and his are one."' Again, in the same book: 'for a friend, as we say, is a second self.' Plato in book 6 of the Laws quotes it as an old saying and accepted as a proverb: 'There is a saying old and true and finely phrased, that equality is the maker of friendship.' However, Plato did not think that everything should be offered equally to young and old, learned and unlearned, stupid and wise, strong and weak, but that distribution should be made to each according to his worth. Otherwise, as he says in the same passage, 'to unequal people equal things will be unequal;' and just as extreme right turns into extreme wrong, so equality pushed to extremes becomes extreme inequality. Pliny observed wittily that in counting votes there is nothing to be found more unequal than equality. Some think however that this also came out of Homer, where one sometimes finds the expression 'as much as my own life.' The law of the Hebrews does not differ from this, when it commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves. And Aristotle quotes all this as proverbial in his Ethics, book 9. THE PRECEPTS OF PYTHAGORAS But since I have happened to mention Pythagoras, I will not hesitate to set down the rest of his precepts, which circulated among the Ancients with the force of oracles - such at least as Ι have been able to find in Greek authors at the time of writing. Although at first blush, as they say, some of these injunctions may seem superstitious and laughable, yet if one pulls out the allegory one will see that they are nothing else but precepts for the good life. There is ηο need to imitate the superstition of the Etruscans, who obeyed them literally, as Plutarch testifies in his `Table-talk.' He also states in his life of Numa that some of Numa's precepts of this kind agreed with those of Pythagoras. Ne gustaris quίbus nigra est cauda Μὴ γεύεσθαι τῶν μελανούρων, Taste not of anything with a black tail. Plutarch interprets this in his essay 'Οn the Education of Children' as meaning Do not have anything to do with wicked people and those whose character is black and disreputable. The grammarian Tryphon, discussing this also among his examples of riddling phrases, interprets it as follows: 'Do not tell a lie. For a lie grows blacker in the end, and brings darkness wίth it.' Some think this is a reference to the cuttle-fish, which hides itself in the ink it carries in its tail. But Pliny, in the last chapter of book 32, lists among the fishes a black-tail, melanurus, though he has discussed the cuttle-fish lengthily in previous books, so that it appears that the melanurus and the cuttle-fish are not the same. Theodorus Gaza translates melanurus by oculata, eye-fish, a kind he mentions only in the place Ι have just indicated. Stateram ne transgrediaris Μὴ ζυγόν ὑπερβαίνειν, Exceed not the balance, that is, Υου shall not do anything which is not just and right. For the balance was commonly held in old days to be α symbol of equity, as is shown by that Doric proverb: As fair as a pair of scales. Demetrius of Byzantium gives the same interpretatίon in book το of Athenaeus' Doctors at Dinner. Choenici ne insideas Χοίνικι μὴ ἐπικάθισαι, Do not sit οn the grain-measure. St Jerome says this means Do not worry about food for the morrow. The choenix was α slave's ration, the daily allowance, as in Homer, Odyssey 19: 'Not idle shall Ι αllow him to remain who has had α daily portion from me,' a choinix. Laertius and Suidas give the same explanation. It was the custom in old time to distribute the day's ration to the slaves by this measure, and they in turn were to furnish α day's work; so the Pythian Αροllο calls the Corinthians choenίxmeasurers, because they possessed forty-six thousand slaves. The source of this information is Athenaeus, book 6. Plutarch however takes it quite differently, as follows: ίt is not right to indulge in leisure, but one must work diligently for one's living, so as not to be in want later. The same author recalls this precept in his'Table-talk,' in these words:'Together with Pythagoras' grain-measure οn which he forbade us to sit, teaching us to leave some of what we have for the future, and every day to think of the day to come.' But he also sees in it a reference to our ancestors, who had a religious scruple against taking away the tables empty. Demetrius of Byzantium in Athenaeus interprets this as meaning that we should not look only at the present but always take thought for the future; in this he almost agrees with Plutarch. For my part at least, since when one is dealing with this kind of precept it is not only allowable but necessary to make a guess, I should say that this Pythagorean riddle is taken from the passage I have just quoted in Homer; and that it means that we should not idly seek leisure and sustenance from others, but acquire through our own industry the means to sustain life decently. For it is parasitical and dishonourable 'to live on the crumbs from another man's table,' and have no skills whereby one can pay for the food in one's own home. Homer blames this in Irus, when he says in Odyssey 18: Known for his idle belly,
To eat and drink unceasingly. In him
Was neither strength nor might.
The remark of the Apostle Paul concurs with this, and it too is in common circulation: 'If any will not work, neither shall he eat.' As I was preparing the sixth edition (if I am not mistaken) of my Adagia, that is, in the year of grace 1517, a book saw the light just at that moment, the Antiquae lectiones of Ludovicus Caelius Rhodiginus. There is no need to give an opinion now as to the book in general. However a first taste of it (for I have only taken a sip) at once indicated that the author was a man who flitted round among writers of every kind with an insatiable desire to read, and delighted in taking to pieces the garlands of other people to plait them into new wreaths. The fact that he nowhere, so far as I could find out, mentioned the name of Giorgio Valla of Volterra, or my name: (although it is probable that he was helped to a certain extent by our collections) I know to have been the result of discretion and not malice; even if, when he is writing about this very precept he asserts that he does not wish to put anything forward which bubbles up in anyone else's work (this is how he talks), and at the same time he produces a good many things which I find in my own Chiliades. I do not think it any concern of mine that he should also beget proverbs of his own, though of a kind with which one could fill out hundreds of Chiliades, if one had a mind to it. When I have a little more time, I shall not hesitate to take a more careful look and see if there is anything in this book which belongs to this project of mine - not wishing to defraud the man of his due credit if he has made a contribution. As far as concerns the interpretation of this riddle, I am aware of his guesses about the grainmeasure and the rolled-up blankets, but at present I neither accept nor reject his discovery. Personally, I do not feel free to make guesses in this way, if there is any help to be had in other ways from reliable authors. As soon as this protection fails me, I shall perhaps do some guessing too, but without putting too much serious work into such things. What is the point of anxiously searching out the meaning of an author who has taken great care not to be understood? When I was writing this, I learnt through letters from scholars that Rhodiginus had breathed his last - a great grief to all who love learning, and a loss to learning itself. Those who knew him in his private life say that he was a man of true Christian character, untiring in his studious labours though he reached extreme old age. In the face of such virtues, I cannot hold it against him if he was not quite fair to me. The value of learning to the public is more important to me than the matter of my own reputation. Ne cuivis dextram inieceris Μή παντὶ ἐμβάλλειν δεξιάν Do not hold out your right hand to all and sundry; that is, do not rashly admit to your friendship no matter whom, but choose whom you cherish. This is quoted and explained by Plutarch in his 'On Having Many Friends.' It agrees with that remark of Solon, which Diogenes Laertius records out of Apollodorus: 'Do not make friends quickly; but when made, do not reject them.' Arctum anulum ne gestato Μὴ φορεῖν στενὸν δακτύλιον, Do not wear a tight-fitting ring. According to St Jerome this means: Do not live in anxiety, and do not plunge yourself into slavery or into a manner of life from which you cannot extricate yourself. For whoever wears a tight-fitting ring puts himself, as it were, in fetters. Ignem ne gladio fodito Πῦρ σιδήρῳ μὴ σκαλεύειν, Stir not the fire with a sword, that is, Do not provoke a man who is already in a rage. It is wiser to give way, and soothe the fuming spirit with gentle words. So says St Jerome, and Demetrius of Byzantium in Athenaeus. Diogenes Laertius explains that the wrath of the mighty and the fierce should not be stirred up by recriminations, because a flame grows stronger and stronger the more it is stirred up. Plutarch does not disagree with this interpretation. But Plato in the sixth book of the Laws used it in such a way as to make it seem to refer normally to those people who vainly attempt something which can by no means be done; he explains that it was a kind of game 'to cut fire with a sword.' St Basil in the letter to his nephews gave it much the same meaning, so that to cut the fire with a sword has the same effect as to draw water in a sieve. Certainly Lucian was alluding to this in book 2 of his True Stories, when on leaving the Fortunate Isles he imagines himself warned by Rhadamanthus to observe three rules when he should return to this world of ours: 'not to stir the fire with a sword, not to eat lupins, and not to become attached to a boy over eighteen years of age.' If he were mindful of these things, he might someday return to that island. Horace seems to apply this saying to cruelty joined with insanity; for love is in itself madness, and if it breaks out in fighting and slaughter, the fire is pierced with a sword. In the third satire of book 2: `To these add bloodshed, and poke the fire with a sword.' Cor ne edito Μὴ ἐσθίειν τὴν καρδίαν, Do not eat your heart out, that is, Do not torture your own soul with cares (in Athenaeus, Demetrius of Byzantium interprets it in this way) or Do not shorten your life by worry. Aristotle in his On the Parts of Animals, book 3, says the heart is the source of all the senses, and of life and blood. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'Nevertheless biting my heart I said.' Theognis too: 'Something bites my heart; my spirit is divided.' It :eems to have been taken from Homer, who writes in Iliad 6: 'Alone he wandered in the empty plains, / Eating his heart out with cares, shunning the path of men.' And in book 24: 'You are eating your heart out.' So in the Odyssey, book 9: 'There two whole nights and two whole days we lay / Eating our hearts with weariness and pain.' And in the Iliad, book 1: 'You tear your inmost heart.' A fabis abstineto Κυάμων ἀπέχεσθαι, Abstain from beans. There are various interpretations of this riddle. Plutarch in his essay'On the Education of Children' explains it in this way; one must abstain from holding public office, because in Antiquity, when magistrates were to be elected, the votes were taken by beans instead of pebbles. However in his 'Problems' he gives a different reason, that all leguminous plants affect the body with wind and tainted humours, and accordingly arouse sexual passion. Cicero seems to have been of the same opinion, as he writes thus in the On Divination, book 1: 'Therefore Plato prescribes that one should seek sleep in such a disposition of body that nothing can confuse or disturb the mind. It is thought that this is why the Pythagoreans are forbidden to eat beans, a thing highly conducive to wind. That kind of food, according to him, is unfavourable to those who seek tranquility of mind.' But Aristoxenus in Aulus Gellius, book 4 chapter ii, rejects this opinion, affirming that there was no leguminous vegetable more frequently used by Pythagoras than beans, because that food gently purges and soothes the bowels. Gellius thinks that 'the cause of this mistake as to habitual abstention from eating the cyamus was a line found in a poem by Empedocles, a follower of Pythagoras: "Ah! wretched, wretched men! Draw back your hands; / Touch not that cyamus." Most people believe that cyamus was a common term for a leguminous plant. But those who have considered the poems of Empedocles with more care and intelligence' (I will quote the words of Gellius) 'think that in this passage kuamoi signifies testicles; and that in the Pythagorean fashion they were called kuamoi figuratively and symbolically, as if they were efficacious' in helping the womb to conceive or 'in causing conception, and were favourable to human procreation. Thus that line of Empedocles is not intended, according to them, to deter people from eating beans but from excessive sexual indulgence.' Laertius quotes the following from Aristotle about the reason for forbidding beans: 'Aristotle says in his book on beans that he [Pythagoras] ordained abstention from beans because they resembled the privy parts or the gates of Hades, for this vegetable alone is devoid of generative power; or because it has injurious properties, or because it resembles the nature of the universe, or belongs to an oligarchical system because beans are used in electing men to office.' This last point mentioned by Aristotle coincides with the opinion of certain authors, who believe Pythagoras to have used this riddle to deter people from seeking public office. For myself, I prefer the explanation added by the writer who collected the incidents referred to by Gregory of Nazianzus: that those who 'eat beans' are men corrupted by bribery in the casting of their votes. In Gellius again Plutarch bears witness that Aristotle left on record how Pythagoras 'abstained from eating the matrix, the heart, the seaanemone and some other things of this sort.' Theon the grammarian tells in Plutarch's 'Table-talk' that among the Egyptians there were such strong religious feelings against beans that they neither sowed nor ate them, nor was it permissible even to look at them - so says Herodotus. In Rome moreover beans were thought to be one of the things that denoted death, and in fact it was forbidden for the priest of Jove to touch them 'or name them, because they were thought to belong to the dead. For they were scattered before ghosts and spectres and used in sacrifices at the Parentalia, and on their flowers there seem to appear letters that indicate mourning,' as Festus Pompeius testifies. Pliny thinks that beans were condemned by Pythagoras because they dull the senses and cause dreams, or because the spirits of the dead are in them; hence their use at the Parentalia too. Hence Plutarch asserts that pulse-foods are most powerful in the evocation of spirits. Varro records that the reason why the priest did not eat them was the presence of the sinister letters found on the flowers. In any case, when Plutarch relates among other things in his 'Antiquarian Problems' that beans were forbidden because they were synonymous with Lethe and Erebus, I did not quite understand the meaning of this; but finally on consulting the Greek manuscripts I gathered that there had been an error, either of copyist or translator. The Greek text runs thus: 'Did they, like the Pythagoreans, abominate beans for the reasons which are commonly given, but vetch and chick-pea because they take their names lathyrus and erebinthus from Lethe and Erebus?' I have given Plutarch's actual words. He was thinking of lathyrus and erebinthus, which are kinds of chick-pea; Lethe means forgetfulness in Greek and Erebus takes its name from darkness - and both are ill-omened words to the student of wisdom. This mistake had its uses, in allowing me to show up a fault in the Latin text and so prevent anyone from stumbling over the same stone. Cibum in matellam ne immittas Σιτίον εἰς ἀμίδα μὴ ἐμβάλλειν, Do not put food in a chamber-pot. Plutarch interprets this saying as meaning that one should not pour courteous words into the mind of a bad man; for speech is the food of the mind, and it decays and goes rotten if it falls into a mind that is impure. This means, as Epictetus warns us in Gellius, that we must look with great care to see what kind of mind we are making the recipient of our words. For if we put them into an impure container, he says, they will turn to vinegar or urine. Horace refers to this with his 'A dirty bottle sours all you pour in.' Ad finem ubi perveneris, ne velis reverti Μὴ ἐπιστρέφεσθαι ἐπὶ τοὺς ὅρους ἐλθόντα, Do not turn back when you have come to the final stage: that is, according to Plutarch, when the day selected by fate has come and 'you see the end of life approaching, you are to bear it with serenity, and not lose heart' through a shameful desire for life. In his life of Numa he writes rather differently: 'Those who have set out on a journey should not turn back.' Jerome speaks otherwise: 'After death, thou shalt not wish for this life,' in the way we so often hear people repeating those words of Virgil: '0 my lost years, if Jove would bring them back!' Superis impari numero, inferis pari sacrificandum Τοῖς μὲν οὐρανίοις περισσὰ θύειν, ἄρτια δὲ τοῖς χθονίοις, Sacrificing must be by odd numbers to the gods above, but by even numbers to the gods below. This he only quotes as a riddle of Pythagoras, and does not explain. However, in his 'Problems of Roman Antiquity' he tells us the first month was sacred to the gods of heaven and the second to the gods of the underworld, and in the latter month it was customary to undergo certain purification ceremonies, and they offered sacrifices for departed members of the family. Moreover they wished to mark three days of a complete month as important and influential, the calends, nones, and ides, which they kept as festivals and holy days, as though sacred to the gods of heaven; the following days, that is the day after the calends, the nones, and the ides, they gave to the spirits of the underworld, and hence they regarded these days as evil and unlucky. In the same way too among the Greeks the third bowl of wine was dedicated to Jove the saviour, the second to demigods and daemons. The beginning of all number is the monad, one, and the dyad, two, is in opposition to it, first among even numbers, having no end and no completion, while three is absolute. You will find much about the mysteries of number in Plato and the Pythagoreans, and even something in the early theological writers. As to the interpretation of this precept, I think it means that God, being Mind in its singleness and perfect in itself, takes delight above all in the endowments of the spirit. For what belongs to Body is composite, and can be propagated by multiplication to infinity; while Spirit is simple, immortal, and desiring nothing but itself. Per publicam viam ne ambules Λεθφόρου μὴ βαδίζειν Walk not in the public highway. St Jerome's explana¬tion is: Do not follow common errors. For human affairs have never gone so well that the best pleases the majority. Hence some express it like this: 'Refuse the king's highway and take the byroads.' This piece of advice agrees with the teaching of the Gospel, which recommends us to avoid the broad road where most people walk, and take the narrow way, trodden by few but leading to immortality. Tollenti onus auxiliare, deponenti nequaquam Φορτίον συγκαθαιρεῖν, μὴ δὲ συνεπιτιθέναι, St Jerome cites it in this form: 'To the burdened another burden must be added; no help should be given to those who lay their burden down.' He thinks the meaning is that those who strive towards virtue should be given an increasing burden of instructions, while those who give themselves up to idleness must be left alone. So the proverb is to be quoted in this form: Φορτίον συγκαθαιρεῖν, μὴ δὲ συνάποτιθέναι. I thought it necessary to point this out, because in some printed books this precept is corrupt. Ollae vestigium in cinere Χύτρας ἴχνος συγχεῖν ἔ τῇ τέφρᾳ, Obliterate the trace of the pot in the ashes. Plutarch in his 'Table-talk' interprets this to mean that no evident trace of anger should be left, but as soon as resentment has cooled down and subsided, every recollection of past injuries must be wiped out. Unguium criniumque praesegmina ne commingito Ἀπονυχίσμασι καὶ κουραῖς μὴ ἐπουρεῖν μὴ δὲ ἐφίστασθαι, Do not make water on clippings from nails or hair nor tread on them. So far I have found no explanation of this. But I conjecture the meaning to be: if we have relatives or kindred who are lowly and unprofitable, we should not con¬stantly pour scorn on them nor cover them with reproaches. Extra publicam viam ne deflectas Εκτὸς λεωφόρου μὴ βαδίζειν, Do not walk outside the public highway. This also is quoted by Diogenes Laertius as a Pythagorean precept, although it is the opposite of the one cited above. We need not be surprised at this contradiction since, as has been rightly laid down, one should speak like the many but think like the few, and yet at the same time there are matters in which it is the part of a skilful man to agree with the multitude, and others in which a good man must entirely differ from it. Horace well says: 'At times even the common herd sees right, / At times 'tis wrong.' Quae uncis sunt unguibus ne nutrias Φαμψώνυχα μὴ τρέφειν, Feed not things that have sharp claws. Shun rapacity, explains Tryphon. For my part I think it agrees with the saying of Aeschylus, which I shall give in its due place, 'The lion's cub must not be fostered in the state;' that is, no admittance for 'people-devouring kings,' as Homer has it, or for those who create factions and powerful individuals who concentrate the wealth of the citizens in few hands, which is now the usual practice. Adversus solem ne loquitor Πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον τετραμμένον μὴ λαλεῖν, Speak not facing towards the sun, that is: Do not contest what is evident. For when something is established and generally acknowledged, we say it is as clear as the sun. So it is 'speaking against the sun' to say 'Olive no kernel hath nor nut no shell.' Gladium acutum avertas Ὀξεῖαν μάχαιραν ἀποστρέφειν Turn aside the sharp blade. I take this to mean: Avoid dangerous matters. For there is another proverb too: A sword in the hand of a child (we must understand Put not). Adversus solem ne meiito Πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον τετραμμένον μὴ ὀμιχεῖν, Do not make water facing towards the sun. I think this is a recommendation to behave with modesty. However Pliny gives a superstitious origin for this, book 8 chapter 6-I quote his actual words: 'From the urine one may draw conclusions as to the state of health. If it is clear in the morning and later turns reddish, this signifies on the first occasion that digestion is taking place, then that it has taken place. It is a bad sign if the urine is red, very bad if it is black; if it has bubbles in it and it is thick, this is bad, and if the deposit is white, this indicates that there will be pain in the joints and in the viscera. Green urine indicates an illness of the viscera, pale of the bile, red of the blood. It is bad when specks appear in it or when it is cloudy, and also when watery and white; but when it is thick and strong-smelling, it foretells death. Similarly in children when it is thin and watery. Ancient sages rule against baring oneself for this purpose in front of sun or moon, and against making water on anyone's shadow. Hesiod recommends that this should be done against a wall, for fear of offending some deity by nakedness.' The passage which Pliny quotes, and from which the precept of Pythagoras is clearly taken, is in the poem entitled Works and Days: Forbear to let your water flow away Turn'd upright towards the sun's all-seeing ray; E'en when his splendour sets, till morn has glowed Take heed; nor sprinkle, as you walk, the road, Nor the roadside; nor bare affront the sight, For there are gods that watch and guard the night. The holy man discreet sits silently, And to some sheep-fold's fenced wall draws nigh. Hirundinem sub eodem tecto ne habeas Oμωφοφίους χελιδόνας μὴ ἔχειν, shall not have swallows under the same roof. St Jerome, following the authority of Aristotle, interprets this to mean that we should shun the company of garrulous people and talebearers. But this explanation is rejected in Plutarch, in the eighth decade of his 'Table-talk'; for it would seem unjust to drive away as if bloodthirsty and rapacious a household bird, which loves to live with man and does no harm. As for the pretext of its garrulity, he says that it is nonsense, as we do not refuse to admit hens, jackdaws, partridges and magpies and many other much noisier birds to live with us; and indeed hardly anything is further from the swallow than garrulity. Nor does it seem acceptable to refer the Pythagorean precept, as some do, to the tragic story which is told about the swallow, as if it brought an evil omen. For on that score we should have likewise to reject the nightingale, since it is implicated in the same tragedy. It seems more likely that the swallow is under the same condemnation as those birds which are in bad odour because they have hooked claws. It lives in fact on flesh, and it hunts cicadas, the most vocal of creatures and sacred to the Muses; it also preys stealthily on tiny insects, flying low along the ground, and then it is the only bird that makes its home in roofs without doing anything useful. The stork, for instance, even when it does not make use of our roof, still makes no small return for hospitality by removing toads and snakes, the enemies of man, from our midst. The swallow on the other hand raises its chicks under our roof and then makes off, without returning any thanks for the hospitality it has been given. Finally, and most important of all, there are only two domestic creatures which never grow tame through living with man, and will never allow themselves to be touched nor admit of companionship nor share any thing or any discipline. The fly is always afraid of being hurt, and so remains unteachable and half-wild; and the swallow appears to have a natural hatred of man, and thus cannot be tamed, but is always distrustful, always suspecting some harm. On this account Pythagoras rightly recommended us by his precept about the swallow to keep at a distance an ungrateful and untrustworthy companion. Plutarch says something like this in the passage I have indicated. There seems only one thing to add: Cicero, or whoever wrote the Rhetorica ad Herennium, borrows an emblem for faithless friendship from the swallows, which come with the beginning of spring and fly away at the approach of winter. Stragula semper convoluta habeto Τὰ στρώματα ἀεὶ συνδεδεμένα ἔχειν Always have the bedclothes folded up. In these days also it is considered rough and uncivilized not to make one's bed. However I leave it to others to guess what this precept means. I suspect though that it is a recommendation to modesty, even in those things which we are obliged to do to satisfy a necessity of nature. In anulo Dei figuram ne gestato Ἐν δακτυλίῳ θεοῦ εἰκόνα μὴ περίφερειν, Do not wear the image of God in a ring. Perhaps this is a warning not to bandy the name of God about everywhere. Sellam oleo ne absterseris Λαδίῳ εἰς θάκον μὴ ὀμόπγνυσθαι Do not wipe a seat with oil. There is no explanation of this either. I think the sense is: Do not put the best things to unworthy or unprofitable use. Coronam ne carpito Στέφανον μὴ δρέπεσθαιPluck not a garland for yourself. St Jerome Against Rufinus interprets this to mean that the laws of cities must be observed, not flouted or criticized, because the castellated walls of cities have the appearance of a garland. Quae deciderint ne tollito Τὰ πεσόντα μὴ ἀναιρεῖσθαι, Do not pick up what has fallen. This tells us to become accustomed to a moderate diet. Aristophanes in the Heroes, according to Laertius, offers a superstitious origin for this precept; what fell from the table was the property of the heroes, and therefore it was forbidden to taste of it. Others put it thus: Taste not of what has fallen at table. A gallo candido abstineas Ἀλεκτρυόνος μὴ ἅπτεσθαι λευκοῦ Do not lay hands on a white cock, because it is sacred to the Month, being the herald of the hours. Panem ne frangito Ἄρτον μὴ καταγνύειν Do not break bread. This warns us not to break off a friendship, because in ancient times friendship was ratified by bread. Hence Christ our Prince by distributing bread consecrated a perpetual friendship among His own, and so it is not seemly that that should be broken by which friends are joined together. Salem apponito Τὸν ἅλα παρατίθεσθαι, Put salt on the table. This warns us that justice and right should be part of every transaction. Whatever it has penetrated, salt preserves; and it consists of the purest of things, water and sea. In via ne seces ligna Ἐν ὁδῷ μὴ σχίζειν ξύλα, Do not cut up logs on the road. Some explain this as meaning: Do not torment and shorten your life with cares and anxious thoughts. Ne libaris diis ex vitibus non amputatis Μὴ σπένδειν θεοῖς ἐξ ἀμπέλων ἀτμήτων, Pour no libations to the gods from unpruned vines. Nothing is pleasing to the gods which is not pure and purged. This riddle is attributed to Numa by Plutarch in his life of Numa, and he guesses it to be a commendation of gentleness, which is part of piety; just as the teaching of the Gospel rejects the offering of the ruthless man who will not agree to be reconciled with his brother. Anything which is not pruned is wild, and meal helps to soften anything hard; for he adds what I shall put next. Ne sacrificato sine farina Μὴ θύειν ἄτερ ἀλφίτων, Make no sacrifice without meal. This enigma recommends gentleness in conduct, as has been said. Adorato circumactus Προσκυνεῖν περιφερόμενος, Turn your body as you worship. No doubt in imitation of the perpetual wheeling of the heavens; moreover the Ancients believed that the sky was a god. Plutarch ascribes this also to Numa as peculiar to him. He does indeed mention the wheeling of the sky, but he also adds other interpretations: as for instance when shrines face the rising sun, and the worshipper, turning himself to the east by a movement of the body, seems to turn himself towards God and by describing a circle to send out his prayer to both halves of the world. He adds a third meaning, which he seems to like the best: the turning of the body signifies the Egyptian wheels. I take it that he is thinking of the hieroglyphics by which they signified that nothing in human affairs is stable or eternal, but that, however it shall please God to change and turn our life, it is right for us to accept His will. Adoraturi sedeant Καθῆσθαι προσκυνήσοντας, Let those who intend to worship be seated. This signifies that we should concentrate on our prayers, and should pray steadily for what is best. This too Plutarch ascribes to Numa in his life of Numa (except that in the volume published by the Aldine press we read the word for worship in the past, not the future tense), adding that this was like a good augury that our prayers will be accepted and answered. He goes on to say that some people see in this sitting quiet a way of making a break between one activity and the next, as if those who have brought their former activity to an end by sitting still in the presence of the gods are asking them at the same time to bless the action that is to follow. Others think that there is a suggestion of a different kind: that those who celebrate a religious ceremony should not do so heedlessly and as though their minds were on something else, but in singleness of heart, concentrating on the divine office. That is why, as Plutarch also relates, whenever the priest began to take the auspices or perform the rite, the heralds cried'Attend, attend!' That cry was an admonition that those who approach sacred things should do so with reverence and concentration. In his 'Antiquarian Problems' he mentions that it was customary for those who had made vows to the gods to lodge in the temples and keep a retreat, because action in this life often involves a man in troubles. Surgens e lecto, vestigium corporis confundito. Ἀναστας ἐξ εὐνῆς συνταράττειν τὰ στρώματα, When you rise, shake up the bedclothes. This seems the same as the former, on folding the blankets. A piscibus abstineto Ἰχθυων μὴγεύεσθαι, Do not taste fish. The reason why Pythagoras commanded abstinence from the urtica marina or sea-anemone is possibly because that creature is sacred to Hecate, on account of the mystery of the number three, which they say is dedicated to this goddess; but why he should forbid the eating of all other fish is not so easily explained. Though in Plutarch, in his 'Table-talk,' someone produces this explanation, that fish seem in a way to be fellow-students of the Pythagorean philosophy, owing to their silence, so that As dumb as a fish has passed into a proverb. Theon the grammarian, also in Plutarch, alleges a different reason. Fish are natives of the sea and nourished by it, and it is an element not merely most foreign, but most hostile, to the nature of man. For the gods gain no sustenance from it, as for instance the Stoics believe they do from the stars; even the parent and preserver of the land of Egypt, Osiris, perished by being cast into it. So the Egyptians do not use sea-water for drinking, nor think anything which is born in it or nourished by it either clean or useful for the purposes of man; for they do not breathe the same air as we do, nor have we any region we can share with them. Indeed this air of ours, which is life and nourishment to all else, brings death to them, as to creatures which are born and live in unnatural and exceptional conditions. It is no wonder, he says, if the Egyptians abstain from creatures which are foreign to man's nature because their element is the sea, which for the same reason are unfit to be mixed with our breath and our blood; neither do they deign in any case to speak to sailors when they meet them, because they make their living from the sea. In the same passage Sylla advances yet another reason, that the custom of Pythagoras was to eat only things that had been sacrificed to the gods, after the first-fruits had been dedicated. But no fish is suitable for sacrifice. Plutarch himself rejects both of these interpretations, saying that the apparently alien character of fish should provide all the more reason for eating them. To live on creatures of the same sort as oneself by mutual slaughter is monstrous and quite worthy of a Cyclops. For when, as the story goes, Pythagoras one day bought a whole catch and let the caught fish go, he was not scorning them as enemies and aliens but sparing them as new-made friends and captives, after paying the price on their behalf. He gives two reasons why Pythagoras did not approve of the eating of fish: it was partly because he thought there was an element of injustice in pursuing, killing and devouring a creature which by its very nature does no harm at all to man nor ever could. Secondly, because the eating of fish is not a result of necessity, but a luxury, a superfluous pleasure for the glutton. Hence, he says, Homer represents not only the Greeks, when they were warring round the Hellespont, as abstaining from fish, but also the Phaeacians, who were otherwise great trenchermen. He did not set seafood even before his greedy suitors, although both he and they were islanders. For it is among these that we see a greater degree of both cruelty and luxury. The companions of Ulysses never used hook or nets, as long as they had supplies of flour. But when they had eaten all their stores, just before they devoured the sacred oxen of the Sun, they began to fish, not for a more interesting diet, but to repel hunger. There are other points about abstention from fish which are mentioned in this passage of Plutarch, but these seemed sufficient for the interpretation of the precept. To Pythagoras is also ascribed that fine saying, as Plutarch records in his essay 'On Exile': 'Choose the best rule of life, and custom will render it delightful.' St Jerome also records this Pythagorean principle, in which that great man seems to have comprised the whole of moral philosophy: 'These things we must chase from us, and cut away by all means in our power - sickness from the body, ignorance from the mind, gluttony from the belly, sedition from the state, discord from the family, intemperance in short from every activity of life.'

Οὐκ ἔστιν εὖ ἄρξειν μὴ ἀρχθέντα, It is impossible for one to rule well, who has not been ruled himself. This proverb is still extant and is well known today; no one is a good master who has not previously been a servant. Aristotle quotes this in the Politics, book 3: 'Therefore this also is rightly said, that no one can rule well who has not himself been ruled,' and in the same book, 'For they say that it is necessary for the one who is going to rule well to be ruled first himself.' Plato expresses it in a more proverbial form, in the Laws, book 6: 'Now it is necessary that every man think this about all men, that the one who has not been a servant will by no means become a master worthy of praise.' Plutarch, 'To An Uneducated Ruler': 'For those who have fallen are unequal to the task of setting up others, nor is it for the ignorant to teach, or the disorderly to create order, or the undisciplined to impose discipline, or for one to rule who has not undergone rule.' The same writer gives this particular praise to Agesilaus, that he came to a position of command well trained in obeying command. Seneca, On Anger, book 2: 'No one can rule but the man who can also be ruled.' The proverb arose out of that famous saying of Solon, which is quoted in his Life by Diogenes Laertius: 'Rule, but after first learning to be ruled.' It can be applied either to those who by first obeying others' rule learn to rule others, or to those who exercise control over their own desires before they take control of other people. A person who is a slave to his own emotions is certainly not fit to rule over others; and he cannot be a king to others unless his own king is reason.

Ἀδώνιδος κῆποι, Gardens of Adonis, used to be applied to trivial things, which served no useful purpose and were suitable only for giving a brief passing pleasure. Pausanias tells how people used to be very fond of 'Adonis-gardens, well stocked particularly with lettuce and fennel; they would plant seeds in them just as one does in pots. Thus the thing became a proverb directed against worthless, trifling men,' born for silly pleasures - people like singers, sophists, bawdy poets, confectioners and so on. These gardens were sacred to Venus, on account of her darling Adonis, who was snatched away in his first bloom and turned into a flower. Plato makes mention of this in the Phaedrus: 'Would a sensible husbandman who has seeds which he cares for and wants to come to fruition sometime, plant them in gardens of Adonis in the summer and be pleased to see them become beautiful in eight days, or would he do these things for the sake of sport and amusement, if he does them at all?' Thus also Plutarch, in the treatise entitled 'On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance': 'Nay, God is so particular and concerned with trifles that although we have nothing divine in us, nothing which in any way resembles him, nothing consistent and stable, but rather in the manner of leaves, as Homer says, we begin to wither away and shortly die, yet he has such a care for us (just like the women who cherish and care for gardens of Adonis that bloom for a few days in earthenware pots), that he cherishes our short-lived souls sprouting in tender flesh that is incapable of any strong root of life, who are soon, for any chance cause, to perish.' Theocritus recalls this in idyll 15: 'Frail gardens, in bright silver baskets kept.' The proverb is also known in the form: 'more fruitless than gardens of Adonis.' In a metaphor not unlike this, Isaeus, according to Philostratus, calls youthful pleasures 'gardens of Tantalus' because they are just like shadows and dreams, and do not satisfy the soul of a man, but rather irritate it. Similarly Pollux called the style of Athenodorus the sophist 'gardens of Tantalus' because it was smooth and youthful and gave the appearance of having something in it, when there was nothing at all.

Βαλὼν φεύξεσθαι οἴει, Do you think you can shoot and run? A proverbial metaphor; someone has uttered an accusation or committed some misdeed, and immediately removes himself, so as to escape being forced to uphold what he has said, or having the same treatment meted out to himself. Eryximachus the doctor, in the Symposium of Plato, says to Aristophanes, who is on the point of leaving so that he may not himself have to praise Cupid, and escaping with a few poetic jokes: 'As it seems, Aristophanes, you think you can shoot and run. Pay attention and speak as if you were going to render an account. Then perhaps if it seems good to me I'll let you go.' He makes use of it also in the Phaedo, and in the Republic, book i, though in this place he changes the metaphor and speaks of the bath-attendant who has thrown water over his client and gone away: 'Having said this Thrasymachus had it in mind to leave, like a bath-attendant having poured a flood of words about our ears.' And soon after in the same place, 'Having cast such a word, do you have it in mind to leave?' Plutarch thought of the proverb in the essay 'On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance': 'But even if he did go off after casting his weapon, it does not do to disregard the arrow that is in the wound.' Aristotle alluded to this proverb in the third book of his Lectures on Physics. Refuting the opinion of Anaxagoras, who had said that infinity was immobile and at rest in itself, he averred that it had not been enough to say that and then retreat, when he ought also to have stated the reason why infinity could not be moved: 'It is not enough, having said these things, to go away' (in passing I amend the spelling, not Aristotle's but the printer's). This will fit those people who make statements in oracular fashion, giving others grounds for a speculation, since they do not explain why they think in this way. It seems to be adapted from bees or wasps, which plant their sting and immediately fly away. This is what Plato is suggesting in the Phaedo. It may also be a reference to the Parthians, who cast their javelins against the enemy and then wheel their horses and take flight, not daring to come to close quarters. Something very like this is in Cicero, De finibus, book 4: 'That's a sharp stone to the departing one, but we shall see.' A sharp pointed stone is usually troublesome to walkers. He says this more clearly in his speech Pro Flacco: 'What did it profit Flaccus? The man was in good health until the moment when he came forward here; he died when he had shot his bolt and given his evidence.'

Κὰθαμμα λύειν, To undo the knot, used to be said of a person who easily completed a job that everyone found difficult. It arose, they say, from the tradition about Midas, who used to ride in a chariot harnessed with inextricable knots of cornel-bark. This chariot was placed in a temple, and it was generally said among the Phrygians that anyone who could loose the bonds that held it would become the ruler of Asia. Alexander the Great undid it by removing the pin which fixed the yoke to the pole; some say by cutting the knot with a sword. I shall mention this story in another place, in the proverb Herculaneus nodus. Cicero says in the fifth book of his Letters to Atticus: 'No consideration should be paid to Caesar by the senate until this knot is loosed,' that is, until this business is completed.

Δωδωναῖον χαλκεῖον, A cymbal, or bell, from Dodona. This is usually said of a man whose garrulity is excessive and ill-timed. Zenodotus quotes it from the Ariphorus of Menander. He relates that there were in Dodona two lofty columns: on one of them was fixed a bronze basin, on the other hung the figure of a boy holding a bronze whip in his hand, and whenever the wind blew with any force it would often happen that the thong struck the cauldron which gave out a ringing sound at each blow, the reverberations of which lasted a long time. Others think it refers to Corinthian bronze vessels, which have a clearer ring than the rest. Stephanus mentions this adage under the word 'Dodona.' Juvenal seems to have alluded to it when he says, 'You would think / As many basins or as many bells / were sounding,' rebuking the talkativeness of women. Suidas provides a different interpretation for the proverb from Demo. He says that the oracle of Jove, formerly in Dodona, was hung all round with bronze cauldrons, so that they touched each other. In this way it was inevitable that when any one of them was struck, all the others rang in turn, the sound running by contact from one to another. That clanging would last for a long time, as the sound made full circle. He thinks too that the proverb was applied to misers, and to people who complain about the slightest thing. It is true that Aristotle rejects this interpretation as fictitious, and proposes the other meaning which has been mentioned above, the two columns and the figure of the boy. Plutarch in his essay 'On Garrulity' declares that in Olympia there was a certain portico which was so constructed by mathematical computation that it gave back many notes in answer to one, and for this reason was called 'Seven Voices.' He compares this with immensely talkative men: you may speak one little word to them and they immediately return such a spate of words that there is no end to the chatter. Julius Pollux also refers to this adage in his sixth book, in the chapter on chatterers, by the words 'the bronze of Dodona.

Πρώρα καὶ πρύμνη, Stem and stern. Cicero, in the last book of his Letters to Friends, writing to his beloved Tyro, refers to this proverb in these words: 'The stem and stern (as the Greek proverb goes) of my sending you away from me was that you might straighten out my financial affairs.' By 'stem and stern' we mean to sum up our intentions; because the whole ship depends on stem and stern, as it were on 'head and heel.' In Greek I find it said in this form, 'they perished stem and stern,' or 'stem is lost and stern too,' that is, to complete destruction. Philostratus in the Heroicus: 'But it is necessary to be tied to the ship like Ulysses, otherwise all perishes, stem and stern as they say.' A similar figure is used in the Apocalypse: 'I am alpha and omega,' I am the sum of all things. All things proceed from me as from a source, and all things come back to me, as to a haven of bliss. Now alpha is the first letter in Greek, omega the last. Not unlike this is the phrase of Theocritus in the Praise of Ptolemy, 'But Ptolemy shall be celebrated among all men as the first, and last, and middle.' So Virgil's phrase: 'My first notes were inspired by you, yours shall be the last.' To this belongs the description of delivery by Demosthenes, calling it the first, second, and third, in fact the whole of eloquence. Plato in the Laws, book 4: 'The god himself, as the old saying goes, holding the beginning and end and middle of all things.' Plutarch in the essay 'On the Education of Childreri :'That the first, middle and final point in these matters is a good education and proper instruction.' Aristotle in book 3 of the Rhetoric quotes from a certain Alcidamas who called philosophy the 'ditch and rampart' of the laws, meaning that all safeguards for law resided in philosophy. But the philosopher rejects this metaphor as harsh and insipid, as if the foregoing 'stem and stern' were not harsher still. In serious oratory, certainly, these expressions might be unsuitable; in proverbs this roughness is less offensive, because they are often of a riddling nature, and those often seem most successful which are used in a rather more strained sense. Thus whenever we wish to describe the sum of the whole business, everything that is important and essential for it, we shall say stem and stern, or rampart and ditch; for instance, Piety ought to be the stem and stern of our studies. For some people the stem and stern of every consideration is money. Against the might of the Carthaginians Scipio was rampart and ditch, ie the principal safeguard.

ΣκιὰιShadows: the name given in a proverbial and humorous way to those who came to a dinner without being invited themselves, but as companions to those who had been invited, following them without question as the shadow follows the body. Horace alluded to this proverb in the first book of the Epistles, writing to Torquatus: Your Brutus and Septimius I'll invite,
And if he's not engaged to better cheer
Or a kind girl, Sabinus shall be here.
Still there is room for other shades, but note -
Too crowded feasts are scented with the goat.
In this place Acron makes no mention of the proverb, passing it over, I imagine, as something everybody uses and knows. Cristoforo Landino, in general a man of learning, interprets 'shadows' as places in the country covered with shade, where the guests could recline at ease. And then he interprets'goats' as sharp-tongued jesters. Further on, he explains'say how many you would like to be on the day' in the following way: 'write and tell me what kind of men, of what rank, you would wish me to invite with you; for if you want them to be above you, you will be the last, if lower than you, you will be the first.' I would not have thought of quoting this, except that it helps to show to what lengths of absurdity a learned man can be pushed sometimes by the ignorance of one little proverb. The meaning of Horace's poem is as follows: he suggests to Torquatus that he should come to the dinner accompanied by a few friends, for instance Brutus, Septimius and Sabinus; not that there will not be room for more `shadows' if he wishes to bring them with him, but the disadvantage of being crowded together would be that the smell of perspiration would interfere with the sweetness of the banquet. Further, if he wishes to bring several 'shadows' or companions he should warn Horace of the number, lest the preparations should not be adequate. Thus he calls Brutus, Septimius and Sabinus the 'shadows' of Torquatus, if they come not as invited guests but as companions brought by Torquatus, whom Horace has invited. In another place he says, 'Servilius, Balatro, Vibidius were there, / brought by Maecenas as his shadows,' that is, coming of their own accord. Plutarch in his 'Table-talk' relates what 'shadows' are in these words: 'The question was raised as to the origin of the custom of bringing along guests, now called shadows, these not themselves invited, but brought to a meal by those who were invited. They thought it began with Socrates, who persuaded Aristodemus, although he was not invited, to accompany him to a party at Agathon's. A funny thing had happened to Aristodemus. Not realizing that Socrates had been left behind on their way, he went in first, just like a shadow going ahead of a person who has the light at his back.' Thus far Plutarch. This story about Socrates and Aristodemus is in the dialogue of Plato called the Symposium.

Οὐδὲν πρὸς τὴν παρμένοντοσ ὖν, Nothing like Parmeno's pig. This is said about emulation, when it falls far short of what it was imitating. Plutarch in his 'Table-talk,' in the second problem of the fifth decade, gives this account of how the proverb came into being. Parmeno was one of those people (and they exist also in our time) who imitate the various voices of men and of animals so cleverly and make them sound so present, that the hearers (though not the observers) think they hear real and not imitated voices. And there is no lack of people who are particularly delighted with this trick. Parmeno is said to have been in great favour with the people, and extremely well known owing to this skill. When others tried to emulate him, and everybody said 'That's all very well, but nothing like Parmeno's pig,' someone came forward carrying a real piglet hidden under his arm. When the people thought the sound was an imitation and immediately cried as usual 'What's that to Parmeno's pig?' he proved by producing the real pig and showing it round that their judgment was wrong, and founded not on truth but imagination. The same author mentions Parmeno and this sham pig in his essay 'On How to Study Poetry.' We can use this adage appositely whenever anyone is deceived by conjecture into making a false judgment. For instance if someone should immensely admire an ignorant and new-fangled epigram, thinking it to be ancient. On the other hand, if he should dismiss as recent something which was ancient and learned. For the force of imagination is such that it can deceive the judgment of even the most erudite men.

Συγκρητισμὸς, 'Syncretism' was the word used in a Cretan proverb whenever it happened that those who recently seemed to be most deadly enemies suddenly came into complete agreement. This often happens, especially when some misfortune strikes which is common to them both. Plutarch in the essay'On Brotherly Love' reviews the proverb and explains it in the following words: 'Furthermore it will be necessary to keep this in mind, when brothers are quarrelling, to preserve our familiarity with the brothers' friends and to associate with them especially at that time; but to avoid and shun their enemies, following that example at least of the Cretans, who often fought among themselves in factions and intestine strife, but when an enemy from outside attacked them they put aside their difference and stood together; and this was called "syncretism" by them.' Thus far Plutarch. Something of the same kind is mentioned by Quintus Curtius, book 9, regarding the Sudraci and Malli, 'who were otherwise accustomed to make war on each other, but were united by the common danger at the threat of Alexander's coming.' A phrase belongs here, which we shall mention elsewhere out of Aristotle: 'Troubles bring men together.' This adage will also be rightly used to describe those who enter on a friendship not because they sincerely love each other, but because each has need of the other's resources; or where forces are joined to destroy a common enemy. In our own time we see this happen over and over again, that a military pact is made between those who are the bitterest enemies. There is such a fury for vengeance even among Christian men. This is mentioned by a certain Apostolius of Byzantium, a very recent compiler of proverbs among the Greeks.

Περὶ ἅλα καὶ κύαμον, Around salt and beans, was said of those who pretended to know what they did not know; because the soothsayers about to make a pronouncement employed salt and beans. So those who talked secrets among themselves, were called 'men concerned with salt and beans.' It is to be found in this form in Diogenianus and in the other compilers of Greek proverbs. Plutarch, however, in the fourth decade of his 'Problems At Table' writes not 'beans' but 'cummin,' unless the text is corrupt: 'This somehow has escaped you who are concerned with salt and cummin, that the one is more varied but the other is sweeter.' Again in the fifth decade of the same work: 'Florus was asking, when we were dining with him, who these might be who are referred to in the proverb as "concerned with salt and cummin."' But Apollophanes the grammarian solved this question by saying that the adage signifies extreme familiarity. Those, in fact, who are closely intimate with each other eat together, with either salt or cummin, and require no elaborate preparation of dishes. Hence that jesting remark of Octavius Caesar to someone who had invited him to a frugal repast: 'I didn't know I was such a close friend of yours.' Here belongs another phrase which I shall refer to in its place: 'One must not transgress salt and trencher.' That is, one must not transgress against the right of friendship, which is established by these things. On the other hand, the use of salt to mean frugality of living is often to be recognized in the poets. Horace, in the Odes:
He lives well on little,
Who keeps upon his frugal board
The ancestral salt-cellar.
And again in the Satires: 'Give me only a three-legged table / and a shell of pure salt.'
However it seems to be in divinations, more for religious reasons, that salt is customarily employed. Why this honour should be particularly accorded to salt, is a question asked in Plutarch, in the place I have just quoted; for Homer also calls salt divine, and Plato wrote that salt is closely and intimately bound up with divine things. For this reason the Egyptians abstained from salt, out of reverence, so completely that they could not even eat salted bread. Plutarch, however, thinks that the Egyptians were more likely to have abstained for this reason, that they wished to live purely, because it is thought especially likely to arouse desire, owing to heat. It is also not unlikely that they renounced salt because it is the tastiest condiment of all, so much so that it can deservedly be called the relish of relishes. For this reason there are those who term salt 'grace,' because without it everything seems tasteless and disagreeable. But the most divine quality of salt seems to be that it shields dead bodies from corruption and decay, and does not allow them to die at once, resisting death for a long time and thus as far as it may acting like the soul - and nothing is diviner than the soul. It is the office of the soul to protect and hold together living beings, and not to allow the structure to collapse; and in the same way salt, like the soul, maintains the harmony of bodies which are tending to decay, and preserves the alliance of the members among themselves. On the same grounds they think the lightning-flash sacred and divine, because bodies struck by lightning last a long time without mouldering away.
Salt has another almost divine quality: it is thought to possess some real power in connection with procreation, especially for the reason (as has been said above) that it arouses and encourages a lusty seed. Thus people who rear dogs feed them on salt meat and salty foods so as to make them active breeders. One might add that a huge quantity of mice are usually bred in sea-going ships. And there are some who say that if women lick salt they can become pregnant without the help of men. It is thought too that the poets had this in mind, and not without reason imagined Venus, the goddess of birth, to be born from the sea, calling her `salt-born.' Indeed they make all the sea-gods fertile, the fathers of many children. Finally, there is no creature on earth or in the air so fecund as all the sea-creatures.
Questions of this kind about salt are discussed in the pages of Plutarch, and I chose all the more to mention them because in Christian rites also, and especially in baptism, when we are born again and have our new birth to salvation, salt has an important place; so that from these views of the ancients about salt, even the theologian may find something suited to his use.

Επὶ δυοῖν ὁρμεῖ, He sits in harbour moored by two (anchors, understood); referring to fixed and steadfast people, who have established their affairs well. It is taken from ships which are safely berthed in the harbour, with anchors let down from both stem and stern. Aristides mentions this in his Panathenaicus. Drawn from the same metaphor is the phrase used by Demosthenes against Ctesiphon: 'He does not rely on the same (we must supply, anchor) as the general run of men.'

Ακὲφαλος μῦθος, A headless tale is used of one imperfect and incomplete. Plato in the Laws, book 6: 'Certainly after I took up the function of speaking, I would be most unwilling to leave our talk headless; for if anyone met it wandering about like that, it would seem ugly.' Again in the Gorgias: 'But they say it is not right to leave stories half-finished, but one should put a head on them lest they walk about without a head.' Perhaps this is an allusion to what Plutarch relates in his dialogue 'On the Obsolescence of Oracles.' In Crete a certain festival was carried out with novel and ridiculous ceremonies, which included displaying a man's dummy without a head. They said that this was the father of Homerion, who was found without a head after ravishing a nymph. This proverb is referred to by Zenodotus.

Tyndarus, in Plautus, one of the prisoners, whose wiles had been detected and who, being thus exposed, had no skill left by which he could escape, said 'Now I am done for, now I am between the shrine and the stone, and I do not know what to do.' Apuleius in the eleventh book of his Ass: 'And so, as the misery of poverty had come upon me, in the words of the old proverb, I was desperately tormented between the shrine and the stone.' Apuleius explains the allegory in the adage, clearly referring to the priestly office to which he was to be admitted, and to poverty, harder than a stone, which meant that he could not pay his way. It appears to have been taken from the early ceremonies attending the making of a treaty, when the fetial priest struck a pig with a stone, speaking these words at the same time: 'Whichever people first breaks this treaty, let Jupiter strike that people just as I am now striking this pig with a stone.' But whatever was the origin of the proverb, it is clear enough that it is usually applied to those who are in confusion and driven into the greatest danger.

Μεταξὺ τοῦ ἄκμονος, Between the hammer and the anvil. Something like this is mentioned by the theologian Origen, in a homily on Jeremiah, in these very words (for we lack the Greek): 'Now there is a proverb often used in popular speech among the gentiles, when they say about people who are oppressed by dread and by great misfortune, "They are between the hammer and the anvil."'

The same thing is signified by a different metaphor in Terence in the Heautontimorumenos, when he says, 'Strictly into a narrow place are myforces pressed.' The metaphor comes from an army which is in difficulties, enclosed in an unfavourable place, and surrounded on all sides by enemies so that it can hardly escape.

Not unlike the preceding is the saying taken from Homer, and well-known among the greatest authors, which became an adage: ἐπὶ ξυροῦ ἀκμῆς, On the blade, or the edge, of the razor, meaning 'in the greatest danger.' So Nestor speaks in the Iliad, book 10:
For now we all stand on the razor's edge,
Whether for the Achaeans it be life
Or sore destruction.
Sophocles in the Antigone: 'Think now once again / You tread upon the razor's edge of fate.' These are the words of Teiresias the seer, warning Creon, to let him know in how great danger he stands. Again in the Epigrams: 'Kings of Europe and Asia powerful in war, / Now both of you are on the razor's edge.' This refers to Menelaus and Paris, deciding by single combat which of them should gain possession of Helen. Theocritus in the Dioscuri: 'Certain salvation of men standing on dagger's point.' This seems to be taken from conjurors, who walk on the points of swords, or from people who handle blades, as the scholia published on this author tell us.

Not very different from this is the phrase 'Things are at a turning-point' or hinge, which Servius points out as an adage, when explaining Virgil: 'Insuch a turn of things she'll not delay,' and he thinks this is equal to saying that the matter is at a turning-point. Cicero says 'the matter hinges on this,' meaning 'on this the whole thing depends.' Quintilian, in book 12: 'Not to speak of the careless people, to whom it matters not at all on what the hinge of lawsuits turns.' The same, in book 5: 'For if he confesses, there might be many reasons for the garment to be stained with blood: if he denies, he places the crucial point, on which his case hinges, here, and if he should be worsted in that, he falls down in the rest also.' This is taken from doors, which are supported on hinges on which they turn.

Ξυρὸς εἰς ἀκόνην, The razor against the whetstone. This is usually applied to those who happen to meet the very circumstances which they least wanted to encounter. The razor could not fall more inconveniently that in striking the whetstone. Not far removed from this is that remark of Horace: 'Thinking to plunge his teeth into the crumb, / He'll break them on a stone.' This proverb will be rightly applied to the man who is eager to hurt others,and finally meets someone who is able in turn to hurt him, while remaining invulnerable. Just so a razor, if it meets something soft, cuts it up, but if it meets a whetstone it is blunted. It was of this that Tarquin was thinking when he said that he had it in mind how Actius Navius the augur divided a whetstone with a razor, meaning that the razor was powerless against the whetstone, although Livy tells in book 1 how the augur had done what he thought impossible.

The boot of Maximinus is a popular saying against men of immoderate height and awkwardness. Julius Capitolinus refers to this proverbial use in his life of the emperor Maximinus: 'Now since, as we said, Maximinus was eight and a half feet tall, or nearly so, his shoe, or rather his imperial boot, was placed by some people in the grove which lies between Aquileia and Arzia; and it is known to have been longer by a foot than any footprint or measure of a man. From this is derived the popular saying about tall and stupid men: the boot of Maximinus.' So far Julius. Thus the proverb may more suitably be used if it is spoken with hatred and contempt, because that Maximinus from whom it seems it arose was detested both by the Roman people and the Senate, as being Thracian by race, moreover of base birth, and lastly barbarous and savage in his conduct. Indeed even now the common people speak ill of unusually tall men, as if they were sluggards and blockheads.

Close to the foregoing proverb is what Demetrius of Phalerum reports, Κληματὶς αἰγυπτία the Egyptian clematis, which he says is often used jokingly about people who are unusually tall in stature and of dark complexion. No doubt it comes from the appearance of that plant, which is mentioned by Dioscorides in his fourth book. Pliny, book 24 chapter 15, says: 'The Italians call it centunculus; it has beaked leaves in the shape of a hood, and creeps in the fields. But the Greeks call it clematis.' But though there are many forms of clematis, which Pliny lists in this passage, only one seems to have given rise to the proverb, and that is the one known by the name of Egyptian clematis. It is said that this grows mostly in Egypt, that it has a long thin leaf like the bay, and is efficacious, when taken in vinegar, against snakes, particularly vipers. Some call it daphnoides and some polygonoides. Laertius in the life of Zeno writes on the authority of Apollonius that Zeno was slender in build, tall in stature and dark of complexion; then he quotes Chrysippus as having written in the second book of his Proverbs that someone called Zeno an 'Egyptian clematis' for this reason.

There is a Roman adage, one of the choicest and well worth commenting on: 'Things were back to the third line.' This will be suitable when we wish to convey that things have reached such a point of danger that final efforts and the greatest energy have to be exerted, and recourse had to desperate measures; and if these are no good there seems nothing left to which we can look for help. For instance, in some literary discussion, when men of ordinary attainments wrangle, we may be forced to submit the matter to one man of consummate learning. Or in a transaction of uncertain outcome we may be compelled to beg for help from our most powerful friends, to whom we should never have thought of appealing unless driven by the most dire necessity. Or it may be impossible to resolve things by more everyday methods, and one must have recourse to something new and really clever.
Thus Phormio in Terence in the play of the same name, when he meant that neither Antiphon nor Phaedria nor Geta would be a defence sufficient to blunt the old mari s rage, remarks 'It's you now, Phormio - the whole thing comes back to you.'
The adage arose from the arrangement and disposition of the Roman army. It is mentioned and explained by Livy in the eighth book of the first decade, in terms which it seems best to quote: 'Finally, the battle-line was divided into several ranks. A rank consisted of sixty soldiers' (though some read six hundred), 'two centurions, one standard-bearer. The first line, or hastati, comprised fifteen maniples, stationed a short distance apart. The maniple had twenty light-armed soldiers, and the rest of their number were "shieldmen"; those were called "light-armed" who carried only a spear and javelins. This front line in the battle contained the flower of the young men who were growing ripe for service. Behind these came a line of the same number of maniples, made up of older and stronger men; these were called the principes. Those who followed them were all shieldmen, who were the most showily armed of all. This body of thirty maniples they called the antepilani, because behind the standards again there were stationed fifteen other ranks, each of which had three sections, the first section in every rank being known as primus pilus. The rank consisted of three vexilla or banners; a vexillum numbered a hundred and eighty-three' (some say eighty-six) 'men. The first banner led the triarii, veteran soldiers of proven valour; the second banner the rorarii, less effective because younger and less experienced; the third the accensi, who were the least dependable and were, for that reason, assigned to the rearmost line. When an army had been marshalled in these ranks, the hastati were the first to engage. If the hastati were unable to rout the enemy, they retreated slowly and were received by the principes into the intervals between their ranks. The principes then took up the fighting, and the hastati followed them. The triarii knelt beneath their banners, with the left leg advanced, having their shields leaning against their shoulders and their spears thrust into the ground and pointing upwards, so that their battle-line was fortified with a sort of bristling palisade. If the principes too were unsuccessful in their fight, they fell back slowly from the battle-line on the triarii. From this arose the adage "To have come back to the third line," when things are going badly. The triarii, rising up after they had received the principes and hastati into the intervals between their ranks, would at once draw their ranks together and close the lanes, as it were; then, with no more reserves behind to count on, they would charge the enemy in one compact array. This was a thing exceedingly disheartening to the enemy who, pursuing those whom they supposed they had conquered, all at once beheld a new line rising up with augmented numbers.' Thus far Livy, from whose words I think the proverb is clear enough not to need any further explanation from me.
Vegetius also in his De re militari, book 2, says that the triarii were customarily placed behind all the other lines, and armed with all kinds of weapons; they took up a kneeling position, so that if it happened that the front line was beaten, they could regain the victory by reopening the battle. Modestus in his book On Military Terms says: 'The sixth rank, behind all the others, was selected from the most reliable men, both shieldmen and those armed with all kinds of weapons, and held the warriors whom the Ancients called triarii. These, so as to attack the enemy the more vigorously for being fresh and fully rested, used to sit down behind the last lines, and if there had been a setback in the ranks in front of them, the entire hope hung on the strength of the triarii being able to make good the loss.' Flavius Vopiscus in his life of the emperor Firmus suggests that it was usual to choose the stoutest of the soldiers for the triarii, when he tells us that he had great muscular strength on the evidence of his having even defeated a triarius.

Closely similar is a well-known phrase in Greek, ἱεράν ἄγκυραν χαλάζειν, 'to let go the sheet-anchor,' whenever one falls back on the final defences. It is borrowed from sailors, who call the biggest and most efficient anchor 'sacred' (sheet-anchor) and only let it go when they are labouring under extreme difficulties. Lucian in his Jupiter tragoedus: 'Hear now the sheetanchor, as they say, which you cannot sever by any force.' For so he describes an insoluble argument. Again in the Fugitives: 'Therefore it seemed best for those considering the matter to lower the last anchor which sailors call "sacred."' Again in the Apology: 'Perhaps I still have that one anchor unbroken,' that is, there is still something left for me to take refuge in. Euripides in the Helena: 'A single anchor stays my destiny,' that is, only one hope is left me. Aristides in Themistocles: 'Hanging on his voice as on a sheet-anchor.' St Chrysostom, in his fourth sermon On Lazarus, calls the conscience a sheet-anchor, because it never allows a man to be carried away by the force of his desires, as by a storm of wind, without making a struggle.

.The same force is given, says Diogenianus, by the following: κινῶ τὸν ἀφ' ἱερᾶς, 'I move the counter from the sacred line,' used of those who are about to resort to extreme methods. Julius Pollux explains in his ninth book that this proverb comes from a certain game of counters. He says it was played like this: each player had five counters, placed on the same number of lines (hence Sophocles too speaks of 'five-line counters'). Between these lines, five on each side, was one middle line which was called'sacred'; and anyone who moved the counter from that was said to move his man from the sacred line. This was never done unless the situation demanded that the player should fall back on his last resources. Plato makes use of this in the Laws, book 5: 'As if the counters were moved from the sacred line.' Plutarch in the essay entitled 'Whether An Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs' says 'And finally they adduce to us old age, like a move from the sacred line,' meaning 'as a very weighty reason.' The same author in the essay 'On A Comparison Between Creatures of Land and Sea' says 'Come, making the move from the sacred line, let us speak briefly about their divinity and powers of divination.' Again, in the 'Against Colotes' the Epicurean: 'Colotes promptly therefore made the move from the sacred line,' that is, he started in at once on the most serious point by attacking the judgment of Apollo about Socrates. The same author, writing in his life of Martius Coriolanus about the dismay of the city of Rome on account of the threats of Coriolanus: 'It moved the counter from the sacred line.' For the city, in despair at its situation, took refuge in worship of the gods by prayers, sacrifices, priests, initiators, augurs and so on. Theocritus alludes to this in his Bucoliastae: 'And from the line she moves the stone,' which I have also mentioned elsewhere.

Γυμνότερος λεβηρίδος, As bare as a snake's sloughed skin, referring to extremely flimsy things. The leberis is the sloughed skin of a snake, than which nothing could be emptier. This happens to almost all those creatures which are protected by a covering, but of the softer sort, such as the gecko, the lizard and particularly snakes; and these shed their skins about twice a year, in spring and autumn, vipers in particular. In the snake, the skin first begins to peel away at the eyes, so that they seem to be going blind, to those who do not understand the process; and in one night and day their old age is I stripped off, from head to tail. Among the insect the silpha and gnat renew their youth, and those whose wings are covered with a case like beetles, locusts and cicadas. Among sea-creatures, the crab sheds its shell, and that more than once in the year. This also is called a slough (syphar) by the Greeks, and its lightness and dryness is extraordinary to feel; all the mois- J ture has been used to build up the new growth, as Aristotle says (in the eighth book of his De natura animantium). Suidas says leberis was the name of an extremely poor man, so that it came to be used in common parlance. Athenaeus in Doctors at Dinner: 'You show yourself as empty as a snakeskin.'

If you say what you like, you will hear what you don't like. St Jerome quotes this expressly as a proverb in his Against Rufinus: 'You will hear nothing on this subject except what is said in the street: "when you say what you like, _ you will hear what you don't like."' Terence in the Andria: 'If he proceeds to say what he likes to me, he'll hear what he doesn't like.' Again in the prologue to the Phormio: 'If he had tried with kind words, he would have heard something kind.' He made the same allusion in the prologue to the Andria: 'Let them cease from bad words, in case their bad deeds come to I light.' It is less clear in the prologue to the Eunuchus: 'If there be anyone who thinks something ungentle has been said against him, let him think this, let him know no reply has been made,' for he means by a reply, an insult in return for an insult. But this passage suggests to me that I might here discuss the mistake made by some critics who have said in a marginal note that in the following sentences I read quia lesit 'because he first did the injury,' and indeed this was the reading of the commonly accepted editions. However, it was I who first restored the true reading based on the old copies, which is as follows: 'Such as the man (quale sit) who first by translating well and then copying wrong made bad Latin plays out of good Greek ones, and has recently produced the Phasma of Menander.' Here quale sit means the same as the Greek hoion, in Latin'as if' or'of this kind' - expressions which we use when we are going to give an example. He has remembered about the insult which was to be returned, and then adds an instance of this, the word 'first' corresponding to the following adverb 'recently.' He says in fact: the same man who first translated many plays which you do not remember has now recently produced a stupid play called Phasma, which you can certainly call to mind.
But to return to the subject. The first begetter of this adage appears to have been Homer, who has this line in the Iliad, book 2o: 'The word you speak is the word you will hear.' Hesiod too, in the poem called Works and Days: 'If you speak evil, you will yourself soon hear worse.' Again in the same author:
If by yourself the first
In word or deed some ill is said or done,
Know it shall come back twofold to yourself.
Euripides in the Alcestis: 'If you speak evil of us / Much evil will you hear, and that not false.' Plutarch quotes a much finer passage of Sophocles:
The man who rashly pours out many words
Often must hear against his will the wrong
He willed to say.
Just so in our own day people often say something of the same sort, 'the greeting you give is the greeting you will get,' that is, the reply will correspond to your own words. Plautus: 'If you speak scorn, you will hear it.' Caecilius in his Chrysium (quoted by Gellius) 'You'll hear ill words if you speak ill words to me.' Of the same kind is the phrase of Euripides we meet often in the authors: 'Of unchecked speech and wicked folly, the end (or reward) is disaster.' This is celebrated among the sayings of Chilon: 'There must be no evil-speaking of those with whom we have to deal; otherwise we shall hear words which bring trouble.' Here I think we should add the line quoted by Quintilian as a common saying: 'Not wrong was his reply, / For wrong was the other's question.'

This proverb is taken from that very old tragedy of Livius Andronicus entitled The Trojan Horse. It is used by Cicero in his Letters to Friends: `You know you are in the Trojan horse; the Phrygians learn wisdom too late.' It fits those people who repent too late of the stupidities they have committed. The Trojans, for instance, after so many disasters, only began to think of giving back Helen when nearly ten years had elapsed; whereas if they had handed her back at the very beginning when Menelaus asked for her, they would have saved themselves from innumerable calamities. Euripides in the Orestes: 'Now you are prudent late / Since then you left your house in shame.' The words are those of Electra to Helen. This is mentioned also by Festus Pompeius as being a proverb. According to Plutarch, Demades used to say that the Athenians never decided to make peace until they wore mourning; meaning that they had such an unnecessary lust for war that only the destruction of their own kinsmen could warn them to think of peace. But how much more insensate are we than the Athenians! Not even the misfortunes of so many years have taught us to hate war, nor do we even now at long last begin to think about peace, which ought to be perpetual between Christians.

The same thought is to be found in that proverb which was very familiar in Greek, ἁλιεὺς πληφεὶς νόον οἴσει, The fisherman once stung will learn sense. They say this arose from an event of this kind: when some fisherman put his hand on the fish in his net and was stung by a sea-scorpion, he said 'I shall be the wiser for being stung.' So, taught by his pain, he was careful in the future. Pliny, book 32, explains that it is characteristic of the serpent and sea-scorpion to wound with their spines if touched by the hand. Zenodotus says the proverb is to be found in Sophocles.

Another version of the same thing: ῥεχθὲν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω When the thing is done, the fool understands it. This comes from Homer, who makes use of this idea several times. So in the Iliad, 17 and 20:
Beware of coming to challenge me
Before suffering some harm; even a fool perceives
A deed once done.
Euripides alludes to it in the Bacchae: 'For he learnt by experiencing evil.' This refers to Pentheus, who began late, and not until he was taught by his own misfortune, to revere Bacchus. This is no different from the warning of that famous line, current among the Greek maxims: 'A man learns judgment as he learns regret.' Virgil's phrase belongs here: 'Be warned, / Learn to deal justly and not scorn the gods.' Demosthenes said the same thing: 'I don't buy repentance at such a price.' And so Fabius, in Livy, very elegantly calls the outcome the teacher of fools: 'It is not the outcome, the teacher of fools, which teaches this,' he says, 'but reason.' Pliny, in the Panegyric he delivered before Trajan, calls this kind of tardy and fruitless prudence 'pitiful': 'Fear,' he says, 'and dread and that pitiful prudence gained from danger, warned us to avert our eyes, our ears, our minds, from the State (there was practically no State at all).'

Hesiod expressed the same thought, though a little differently, when he said in his book entitled Works and Days: 'His punishment the wicked man receives / At last, but only pain instructs the fool.' Homer too seems to allude to the same saying in the Iliad, book 23: `... so that paying up, you 11 know the truth.' Plato in the Symposium: 'I am saying this to you also, Agathon, so that you may not be deceived by this, but take warning from the knowledge of what happened to us; and that you should not, like the fool in the proverb, learn wisdom through the experience of evil.' Plautus' phrase in the Mercator is to be classed with this: 'Happy is he who learns wisdom at another's cost.' Similarly in the Elegies of Tibullus, book 3: 'How happy is he, whosoe'er he be, / Who from another's woe learns woe to flee.' This is what those speeches of the tardily-wise mean: 'Now I know what love is.' 'Now I understand that she is wicked and that I am wretched."Ah, fool that I am, I have just tumbled to it at last.' The adage seems to spring from that very old story about the two brethren, Prometheus and Epimetheus, which is told in Hesiod, more or less in this way. Jupiter was angry with Prometheus because he had stolen fire from heaven and given it to men; and wishing to play a similar trick on him, gave Vulcan the job of making the figure of a girl out of clay, with the greatest possible skill. When this was done, he required each of the gods and goddesses to endow this image with his or her gifts. This is clearly why the name Pandora was invented for the maiden. Then, when the image had been showered with all the endowments of beauty, accomplishment, brains and speech, Jupiter sent her to Prometheus with a box, beautiful indeed, but concealing inside it every kind of misfortune. Prometheus refused the present, and warned his brother that if any kind of gift was brought in his absence, it must not be accepted. Back comes Pandora and, having persuaded Epimetheus, she gives him the box. As soon as he had opened it, and understood, as the diseases flew out, that Jove's 'gifts were no gifts,' he began to be wise, but too late. Hesiod clearly refers to the adage when he says 'He took it, and touched by woe understood at last.' He says the same in the Theogony: she gave birth to Prometheus, 'the cunning one' (so he calls him) 'of many wiles / And Epimetheus, whom mistakes made wise.' Hence Pindar in the Pythians calls him 'late-wise.' Their very names indicate this. For Prometheus means in Greek a man who takes counsel before acting, and Epimetheus one who acts first, and only then does common sense enter his head. To act like Prometheus, prometheuesthai, is to meet misfortunes when they threaten by taking thought. Lucian in one of his dialogues quotes from some comedy-writer or other the following line, attacking Cleon on the ground that he was only wise too late when the business was all over: 'Cleon is a Prometheus after the fact.' Again, at the end of the same dialogue: 'To take counsel after the event is like Epimetheus, not Prometheus.' The proverb is also found in the form παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ φρονιμώτερος, More prudent after hard experience, and again in this form: ἐξ ὦν ἕπαθες, ἔμαθες, From what you suffer, you learn, or (giving the sense rather than the words) What hurts is what teaches, Quae nocent docent. But it is much more circumspect to learn prudence from the ills of others, according to the Greek saying: `I learnt my lesson watching others' ills.' There is a word going round among my own people: 'It is through shame and loss that mortals grow wiser.'

Lysimachus in the Mercator of Plautus: 'Now I am finding out the truth of that saying, something bad comes from a bad neighbour.' From these words of Plautus it is abundantly clear that this remark was well known in common speech. Hesiod voiced it elegantly in the book called Works and Days:
When trouble falls at home the neighbours come
Without their belts, relations gird themselves;
An evil neighbour is a mighty woe,
A useful one the greatest boon; to him
Who lacks good neighbours there's a lack of honour,
Nor would an ox die, were there no bad neighbour.
This saying holds good not only as between private neighbours, but experience has shown whole peoples overthrown by their neighbours. This happened to the Aetolians and Acarnanians, who destroyed each other by mutual conflict, close as their borders were. So also the Carthaginians and Byontini, whose history is told by the scholiasts on Hesiod. Virgil appears to have made a passing allusion to this in the Eclogues: 'No harm will come to them from neighbouring flocks', and 'Poor Mantua, too near to doomed Cremona.' The proverb is a warning that we should seek out the society and companionship of good men, and separate ourselves as much as possible from bad ones. So it was clever of Themistocles in Plutarch when he was selling an estate, to cause the auctioneer to add 'that it had also good neighbours,' as if this recommendation would make it much more saleable. And not so very far away from this is the saying from the poem of that same Hesiod: 'Oft the whole people suffers for one bad man's misdeed.'

Socrates in the Axiochus of Plato says that Prodicus the sophist was always quoting this line of the comic poet Epicharmus: 'Hand rubs hand; give something, and you get something.' Here Socrates is poking fun at the profiteering of a man who never taught anyone for nothing, and from whom he himself admitted that he had learnt what he was then about to say, and that not gratis - far from it, he had paid in coin. A notion worthy of a Sicilian, or of a 'crafty poet,' for that is what Cicero calls him. It warns us that there is almost no one to be found among mortals who is willing to bestow a benefit on anyone else, without hoping that some profit will redound to himself; a favour is the result of another favour, one kindness is called forth by another kindness. The same adage exists in the form 'One hand washes the other.' The two metaphors have the same force, for it is a matter of mutual convenience when one hand rubs or washes another. Among the Greek maxims this couplet is in circulation: 'Town preserves town, one man likewise another; / Hand washes hand and finger washes finger.' Seneca makes use of this too in his amusing skit on the death of the emperor Claudius.

The same thought is simply expressed by Sophocles in the Oedipus Coloneus: 'A favour favour brings.' Again in the Ajax Mastigophoros: 'Always one favour begets another.' Hesiod expands on this, as it were, in the first book of his Georgics:
Be a friend to a friend, and frequent the one who frequents you,
Give to the one who gives, and not to the one who gives not;
One gives to the giver, no one gives to the giftless.
By this it is meant that a benefit is induced by a benefit, a kindness provoked by a kindness. Euripides in the Helena: 'Let favour come in return for favour.'

ἴσον ἴσῳ ἐπιφέρειν, To render like for like. Terence in the Eunuchus makes use of an adage not unlike the preceding: 'Render like for like.' This teaches us that we should behave to others as we find them behaving to us. Like the Medea of Euripides we are to be friends to our friends, hostile to our enemies, false to the false, mean to the mean, noisy with the noisy, shameless with the vile; and finally we are to return every good service with a similar one. Thus in the prologue to the Phormio: 'Let him be aware that whatever he brought will be given back to him again.' It would not be inappropriate to use this when we repay words with words, flattery with flattery, promises with promises. There is an amusing instance of this in the Ethics of Aristotle, book 9. Dionysius summoned a lute-player to play at his wedding, and made an agreement with him on these terms, that the more skilfully and sweetly he played, the more generous would be his fee. The musician made an effort to use all his skill to play beautifully, hoping for a really ample reward. But the next day, when the musician who had made the bargain asked for his pay, Dionysius declared that he had already carried out his promise: he had returned like for like, he said, he had repaid pleasure with pleasure, and by this he meant the hope of gain, which had indeed risen higher and higher the more skilfully the man played. However the philosopher denies that this was rendering like for like; because the one (Dionysius) got what he wanted, while the other was cheated of what he was looking for. This seems to have been what Euripides was thinking of when he says in the Andromache: 'Moderate towards us, he will find me moderate; / But if he rages, he will see us rage.' The proverb may perhaps have arisen from the habits of the ancient Greeks at drinking-parties, when they customarily used ladles of equal size. Archippus in his second Amphitryon, cited by Athenaeus book io: 'Which of you, O wretch, mixed it half and half?' Similarly Cratinus in his Pytine: 'But the man that brings me half and half I shall pay in full.' Again in book 6: 'Not through those who sell fish at Rome, like for like,' meaning that the fish were priced for sale separately.
This expression 'like for like' was normal in drinking healths, as can easily be seen from the same author. By this they meant either that the ladles were the same size, or that the same amount of water was added as there was of wine. Those other phrases are similar: `to strike a balance' for to recompense on equal terms, and `level reckoning.' Pliny writes to Flaccus: 'Thank you for those magnificent thrushes, for which I fear level reckoning is out of the question, either from my city supplies as I am now in my place at Laurentum, or with anything from the sea which is now rough with all these storms.' Cicero, in his Orator addressed to Brutus, reduces 'like for like' to the level of a rhetorical figure, in which the parts of a sentence have an equal and corresponding number of syllables: 'For when like is matched with like, or unlike is contrasted with unlike, or words are set against words of similar endings, whatever is elaborated in this way generally has an agreeably rhythmical cadence.'

What we have just mentioned seems to relate to the repaying of kind offices and injuries alike, but is more to be applied to the return of benefits, as Hesiod says: 'With the same measure, or better if you can,' by which he means that we should repay a kindness in the same measure, or even more fully if opportunity offers; and in this way we should imitate fertile fields, which usually yield a big increase on the seed sown in them. It is quoted as a proverb by Lucian in the Imagines: 'With the same measure, they say, or better.' Cicero in the thirteenth book of the Letters to Atticus: 'I for my part was making ready to pay him for his offering "in measure like, and better too" - that is, if I had been able to, for even Hesiod adds "if thou canst."' Our teacher Christ did not hesitate to use this adage in the Gospel, when he says that it shall be so, that whatever measure we have used in dealing with others will be dealt out to us again. For he speaks thus in Matthew: 'For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.'

Minerva, according to poets' tales, presides over the arts and the talents. From this sprang the phrase 'Against Minerva s will,' as well as 'With a crass' or 'stupid Minerva,' already in common use as a proverb in old time. Columella in book 12 of his Agriculture, chapter i: 'But in this science of agriculture such minute accuracy is not called for; what they call crass mother-wit [pingui Minerva] will provide the farm-bailiff with an indication of future weather which is of great value.' Columella again, in the preface to the first book: 'The business of farming can be carried on without great subtlety of intellect, but what they call crass mother-wit [pingui Minerva] is not enough.' Again in the tenth book: 'And yet the subtlety of Hipparchus is not required for what they call the more crass education of country folk.' A thing is said to be done pinguiore Minerva, by crass mother-wit, when it is done in a way that is artless and crude and, as it were, inexpert, without refined art or careful exactitude. So that old Priapus, when he asks in plain terms for an improper privilege, which he might have asked for more politely under a veil of words, says `My Minerva is a bit crass.' And Horace, describing a philosopher who was not armed with those famous close reasonings and sophistries of the Stoics, but expressed his philosophy in his way of life, as though without art, and was not eloquent but rather simple and sincere: 'Bound to no school, a rustic sage was he, / Of homely motherwit.' Aulus Gellius, book 14 chapter 1: 'He gave it as his opinion that this could certainly not be perceived and comprehended by the mind of a man, however great, in so short and cramped a space as a lifetime, but a few things might be guessed at, and to use his own words "in a rough and ready style" [crassius, et pingui Minerva].'

Παχυτέρᾳ μούσῃ, Of the more clumsy Muse. The same proverb is expressed thus by Quintilian in his Institutiones oratoriae, book i: 'I should like for the sake of those who are inexperienced or, as they say, of the more clumsy Muse, to remove any doubt about the value of this.' Sometimes in writers not without authority one finds 'To a cruder pattern,' Pinguiore formula, for 'clearer and more intelligible.' There is also the phrase 'to speak Latin,' meaning 'openly and simply.' Cicero in the Verrines: 'I am not using the language of a prosecutor, but speaking Latin, you must know.' And again in the Philippics: 'As they say who speak open and plain Latin.' In the Priapeia: `Simpler far to say / In good plain Latin, Let me bugger you.'

The Greeks have a phrase which is less elegant but has the same force: ἀμαθέστερον καὶ σαφέστερον εἰπὲ, Speak more roughly and more plainly.
It is found in the same Gellius when he says 'For you know, I think, that old and widespread expression, "speak more roughly and more plainly,"' meaning 'speak in an ignorant and rough style to express yourself more openly and clearly.' It comes apparently from a comedy of Aristophanes, the Frogs: 'Speak thou unlearnedly and speak the clearer.' In this line Bacchus blames Euripides for obscurity, since he has made some rather unclear proposition. Suidas and the scholiast indicate that there is a proverb hidden here, which circulates under the form: 'Speak to me more clearly and with less learning.' I surmise that this proverb originated from the fact that in old days those great sages, o-oOoi as they are called, used to take great care to wrap up the mysteries of wisdom in certain coverings of enigma, seemingly to prevent the common herd, not yet initiated into the rites of philosophy, from following their drift. Indeed, even today there are some who profess to be expert in philosophy and theology who do the same: when they are propounding something which any woman or a cobbler might say, they have to envelop and involve it in all sorts of difficulties and extraordinary language in order to appear learned. So Plato made his philosophy obscure by his numbers and so Aristotle rendered many things still more obscure by mathematical parallels.

This adage is a very common one among Latin authors: ὖς τὴν ἀθηνᾶν, The sow teaches or advises (understood) Minerva. This was usually said whenever some ignorant and silly person attempts to teach the one by whom he ought rather to be taught; or, to borrow the words of Festus Pompeius, 'when one instructs another in what he himself does not know.' The point is that the guardianship of the arts, and of the talents, is ascribed by the poets, as I have said, to Minerva. Furthermore, there is no animal more brutish than a pig, or more filthy, whether because it eagerly revels in dung, or because of the huge size of its liver, the seat of concupiscence and lust; or because of the grossness of its nose and dulled sense of smell, which results in its not finding a foul stench offensive. Added to which it is so turned towards the ground, so intent on its food, that if by any chance it is forced to look upwards it is struck dumb with stupefaction, this being so unusual, as we are told by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Nor is there any other animal more unmanageable, just as if it were intended by nature not for any other purpose (as some beasts are) but solely for the pleasure of the table. Pliny testifies to this, book 8 chapter 51: 'This is the most irrational of animals, and it used to be thought (not unamusingly) that a soul was given it only as salt.' Varro says the same in his Agriculture, book 2: 'They say that the swinish tribe was provided by nature for good food, and that they were only given a soul to act like salt and preserve the flesh.'
The meaning of these words is explained by Cicero in the fifth book of the De finibus: 'For the inanimate or nearly inanimate creatures that are created and preserved by nature have all of them their supreme good in the body; hence it has been cleverly said, as I think, about the pig, that a soul has been bestowed upon this animal to serve as salt, and keep it from going bad. But there are some animals which possess something resembling virtue, lions for example and dogs and horses; in these we may observe not only bodily movements as in pigs, but in some degree a sort of mental activity also.' Aristotle in his Physiognomonica writes that men with low foreheads seem to be unteachable and unsuited to processes of learning, and to belong to the swinish kind, as though utterly foreign to docility and the arts of men. For almost all other creatures are capable, he says, of being taught; so that now we commonly call swine those people who are slow-witted and seem born for belly and stomach. Suetonius too in his list of famous grammarians reports that Palaemon had arrogance enough to call Varro a pig, as if literature had been born and was to die with himself. If we want to indicate that something is uncultured and illiterate, we say it comes out of the sty, as Cicero puts it in the In Pisonem: 'products of the sty, not of the school.' That is what gave rise to this adage, 'The sow teaches Minerva.' In Cicero, in the second book of the De oratore, Lucius Caesar says: 'So in the hearing of Crassus I will speak first of humour, and play the sow teaching the great orator, of whom Catulus said, when he heard him recently, that the other speakers ought to eat hay.' Cicero again in the Academic Questions, book i: 'Even if it be not a case of the proverbial sow teaching Minerva, anyway whoever teaches Minerva is doing a silly thing.' Jerome Against Rufinus: 'I leave aside the Greeks, whose wisdom you vaunt, and while you are running after foreign things you have almost forgotten your own language, in case it should seem, in the words of the old proverb, that the sow was teaching Minerva.' He also uses it in different words in the letter to Marcellus beginning 'Charity knows no measure.' Varro and Euemerus refer the adage to fables, or at least one may guess this from the words of Pompeius: 'This thing lies open to all as they say, yet they prefer to wrap it up in stupid stories rather than quote it simply.' The jeering answer of Demosthenes is well known, when Demades shouted at him 'Demosthenes wants to correct me like the sow teaching Minerva,' and he replied, 'But last year this Minerva was taken in adultery.' The saying refers to the fact that Minerva was a virgin goddess.

The same, or something extremely like it, is found in the Wayfarers of Theocritus: 'Once a sow dared to enter into strife with divine Minerva.' It is used whenever the ignorant and stupid, spoiling for a fight, are not afraid to challenge men of the greatest expertise to a literary duel. The annotator of Theocritus writes that this proverb is generally used in the form: 'Sow as you are, you contend with Minerva.' Some unknown scholiast adds that those who fight with words are said to `contend' ἔρίζειν while another word ἔρείδειν is used of those who fight with deeds - which makes it the more ridiculous if a sow, the unteachable, contends with Minerva, who presides over liberal studies.

In Latin there is another very popular saying, 'against Minerva's will,' for something which is done against one's bent, in defiance of nature, without the blessing of heaven. Cicero in De officiis: 'against Minerva s will, as they say.' Again in his Letters to Friends, book 12: 'During the Quinquatria I pleaded your cause before a full house, not without the blessing of Minerva.' Also in the same work, book 3: 'As it is your wish, I may say that I shall do so "not against Minerva's will."' Horace says, 'Naught without Minerva s aid shall you do or say.' Seneca was alluding to this when he said'Force a mind and it will not respond.'

Εβα καὶ ταῦρος ἀν ὕλαν, The bull too went off into the wood. A pastoral proverb, with rather an ugly meaning, signifying divorce or neglect of an old love. However it will be allowable to turn it into a more decent use, for instance by jocularly applying it to people who seem to neglect their early friends, and to lose touch with the group of their old companions and acquaintances; or to those who desert their wonted studies and take up a different kind of life. Theocritus in the idyll entitled Theonychus speaks of it expressly as a proverb: 'In truth a certain tale is told, / The bull went off into the wood.' The lover is complaining in fact that he has been deserted by his lady-love, a long while back, and explains that for some time Cynisca (or Puppy-dog, for that was the girl's name) has been delighting herself with a certain Lycus and has not the slightest desire to return to their former association; any more than bulls, which also sometimes forsake the herd of cows and either seek the company of other bulls or roam alone through the glades, untouched by any desire for the female.
This departure and neglect of the cows, this divorce, as it were, is given a special name by herdsmen: they call it atimagelein, a word apparently composed of two words, the first meaning to neglect or despise, and the second meaning the herd. And bulls are said to do this when they are parted from the company of the females and not only take no notice of them, to the point of not desiring coition, but they do not even wish to use the same pastures. This habit of the animal and the name given to it is explained by Aristotle in the Nature of Animals, book 6 (I will translate the sense rather than enumerate the words): 'But the bull, when the mating season comes, then feeds with the herd and fights with the other bulls. Before that they graze by themselves, which is referred to as "straying." Often the bulls in Epirus do not appear for three months, and on the whole all wild animals, or most of them, do not graze with the females before breeding time.' It seemed to me worth remarking that in the translation by Theodorus Gaza the Greek word atimagelein, for which there is no Latin equivalent, is given as coarmentari. This term has thrown great obscurity on the passage for scholars, to such an extent that they think the text of Aristotle corrupt, and by changing that reading they extract a very different meaning, and think Theodorus to have gone considerably astray in his translation. But for my part, after close consideration of the whole thing, I seem to see that the meaning of Aristotle's words exactly fits the sense, without the alteration of any word. What he means is that the bull runs with the cows and feeds in the same pastures as mating time approaches, and does not agree with the rest of the herd of males, but fights them; at other times the bulls sociably share the pastures, not seeking out the company of the females but living together among themselves, a thing which occurs with almost all wild animals. This social behaviour of bulls with bulls, to the neglect of the cows, is called atimagelein. I wonder what kind of scruple makes us think that the reading of Aristotle should be changed, unless the trouble is caused by a shift in number (plural for singular), a thing often detected in Aristotle, particularly in this work. But the word coarmentari is certainly not genuine, but supposititious, either due to the negligence of copyists or rashly produced by some person lacking learning. For I suspect the reading should be dearmentari or abarmentari. Nor can I be brought to believe that Theodorus, a man so perfectly versed in every kind of learned subject, should have made a mistake, especially over a word which is not extraordinarily rare or unusual among the Greek authors, and of which the sense is indicated by the very etymology; particularly when it is to be found in such a well-known and widely read author as Theocritus, in the Shepherd, or the Oxherds: 'And they graze together, and in the long-tressed grasses / They wander, seeking no separation from the herd.' Suidas shows that atimagelos is the name given to the bull which neglects the herd. I think this is what Virgil is alluding to in Silenus:
Ah, woeful maiden wandering through the hills!
He rests on hyacinth his snowy sides,
He crops pale grass beneath dark ilex-trees
Or else pursues a heifer of the herd.
'Come, Nymphs, and close the forest glades for me,
Close them, ye nymphs of Crete, while there is hope
That I may glimpse his wandering tracks; maybe
Some green grass tempted him, or with the herd
Some heifers led him to Gortyna's stall.'
When he says 'he rests on hyacinth his snowy sides, / He crops pale grass beneath dark ilex-trees,' he is describing the bull'straying' and also when he speaks of the 'wandering tracks' of the bull. The poet means that bull beloved of Pasiphae, who goes straight off alone, or goes off to such good purpose that neglecting his own herd, he follows other cows. A mention of the fights between bulls at mating time occurs in the same Virgil in book 3 of the Georgics:
Nor is it their way
To fight and stay together; one, defeated,
Seeks distant shores for exile, and bewails
His shame, the blows of his proud enemy,
And his lost love; and leaves his fathers' halls
With many a sad look back at his own field.
It seems to me that the term, when applied in a different sense, becomes proverbial, just like those others kaproun and hippomanein, to want the boar or the stallion, and it is of this term that Theocritus is thinking when he says it is proverbially said 'the bull went into the wood.'
The current scholia on Theocritus have the particle ken instead of the copulative conjunction kai; they add that the proverb is used of those who go away never to return. When once the bull has escaped to the wood he can never be caught again. Hence it would not be inappropriate to use this of a husband who spends a long period sleeping apart from his wife, or of one who has ceased to visit his friends, or who has long abstained from the Muses or from living with books. A person who detests the company of other people and lives alone can be called a'strayer.' And it can well be applied to someone who has wandered away from his own home and abandoned it. This is not unlike the phrase used by Aristophanes in the Lysistrata: 'At home I'll lead my life without a bull,' for so he designates the celibate life of a woman, neglecting the bull, that is, her husband. So in Horace: 'May Lesbia perish evilly, / who, when I was seeking a bull, showed me an inert one - you.'

Ετος φέρει, οὐχὶ ἄρουρα, The year, not the field, produces the yield. This is a proverbial half-line referred to by Theophrastus, On Plants, book 8: 'Growth and nourishment is greatly aided by the climate, and the state of the year in general. For if showers, fine days and storms come at the right time, everything will grow successfully and in profusion, even in salt soil and infertile fields. So what the proverb says is not far from the truth, that "the year not the field produces the yield." However the soil of the region makes a great difference.'
Here I think I ought to remark in passing that in the printed copies I have read ou kalos, that is, 'not rightly,' and this very reading itself is in my opinion ou kal6s, partly because Theodorus Gaza translated it by non perperam (not incorrectly) and partly because it does not entirely square with Theophrastus' thought. He, in fact, is asserting that the state of the weather is of great importance, as the proverb also bears witness, which says not without reason that the size of the crop can be entirely attributed to the weather; however some difference is made by the actual nature of the soil. Thus I surmise the true reading to be οὐ καλῶς, 'not far from the truth.' All the same I can see that the former reading, οὐ καλῶς might also be defended. Doubtless Theophrastus did not approve the common saying which makes the climate responsible for everything, when the type of soil is also an important factor. To my mind, however, the reading above is the more attractive, and I think my opinion will be endorsed by men of learning. The same author turns to the adage again in the third book of the Causes of Plants, when he is discussing why wheat flourishes both in cold and warm regions; he does not deny that the nature of the land contributes something to fertility, but says that by far the most important thing is the surrounding air, the mingled tempering of weather and winds, and the winds to which the land is exposed. Plutarch too in his 'Table-talk,' decade 7 problem 2, mentions this.
If one wishes to extend the use of this proverb, it may quite appropriately express this thought, that education is of far greater importance than race in forming character, and it is of no great moment who your ancestors were, but much more important on what lines you were brought up, what principles you were taught. For it is the climate which 'educates' what the earth produces. Euripides seems to have alluded to this adage in the Hecuba, when he makes her say:
No new thing is it, for bad land to bear
Good crops if heaven send good seasons; or,
Lacking in that it needs, good soil may give
Bad fruit. But as for men, let one be bad,
Never can he be otherwise than bad;
Worth remains worthy to the end; good minds,
Unchanged by adverse fate, retain their goodness.
Is this from parents or from nurture gained?
Some little knowledge of the right may come
From good upbringing.
Hecuba seems to attribute more to lineage than to teaching, and wonders why the same thing does not apply in the human character as in the harvest-field. However Lycurgus gave a splendid example showing how much more powerful education is than race, by displaying to the people two dogs: one was born of a common bitch, but owing to its training it rushed valiantly after the quarry, while the other, from pedigree stock, but untrained, stood still at the smell of bread and food and disgracefully gave up the chase.

A proverbial metaphor which means 'in safety,' 'out of danger,' taken from swimmers or navigators. Terence: 'Everything is in shallow water.' Plautus, Aulularia: 'This affair seems now to be almost in safe and shallow waters.' Vadum, a ford, is the depth in which anyone who stands up has already escaped the peril of drowning.

Similar to this is the allegorical saying, ἐν λιμένι πλεῖν, To navigate in harbour, by which we mean that we are now out of danger. Anyone who steers his ship in the midst of the waves is still sailing at the mercy of winds and storm, but those who are already in the harbour have nothing more to do with winds and waves. Thus by a very well-known metaphor we call a man in whose protection we trust our 'haven.' And those who commit themselves to a tranquil and safe way of life are said to have come into port. Terence in the Andria: 'Now the danger is his, I navigate in harbour.' Virgil says it a little differently in the Aeneid, book 7: `Now rest is mine, I am quite at the harbour's mouth.'

St Jerome, with great elegance, makes use of this adage when writing to St Augustine, wishing to dissuade him, being still young, from challenging an older man. The point is that those who are already tired because of their age are slower to be provoked to battle, but they are the ones who are fiercer and more pressing when that elderly courage of theirs, aroused, grows hot again: 'Remember,' he says, 'Dares and Entellus, and the well-known proverb, that the tired ox treads more firmly.' It appears to be borrowed from the old method of threshing, when the grain is shaken out by ox-waggons being driven round and round over the sheaves; this is done partly by the wheels armed for this purpose and partly by the hooves of the oxen. And the Mosaic law, quoted by the Apostle Paul to Timothy, forbids the muzzling of the ox which treads out the corn. Thus the tired ox, because it stamps harder with its hoof, is more suitable for threshing. But the tired horse is not so good for running. There might also seem to be an allusion here to the fact that young men excel in agility while old men are stronger when it comes to a fixed battle, as Virgil shows in the fight between Dares and Entellus. Nor is the phrase (which I find in the Greek collections) 'slowly the ox' (one must supply 'moves its hoof') very different from this. For it moves its hoof gradually, but presses harder.

Τῇ πάσῃ ὁδῷ ἀφαμαρτάνεσθαι, To stray entirely from the road. The proverb is aimed at those who are wildly astray. Terence in the Eunuchus: 'You are entirely on the wrong road.' It comes from travellers, who sometimes miss their way but get to their destination in the end at some expense, or sometimes miss it so badly that they are turned far aside and go in the opposite direction. So people who err from the truth are said to leave the track (exorbitare). Aristotle in the Ethics, 'They are not totally on the wrong road.' The same author in the Physics, book i, writes of those early philosophers who examined natural causes, that'they went off the track, and like people thrust out of the road, utterly deviated from the truth.' This is taken from Aristophanes' Plutus: 'Or have we missd the road entirely?' Just so nowadays they say 'they are on the right road' when people start something on a proper plan, and 'off the track' for those who tackle an affair by the wrong methods. There are other metaphors, proverbial in form and most often used by scholars: 'to thrust from the road,"to lead back to the road,"to show the way,' 'to make a way,' 'to smooth the way,"to open the way,' 'to close the way,' 'to cut off the way.' Cicero in the first Philippic: 'If you think so, you are totally blind to the true way of glory.' There is also that familiar saying: 'They run well, but not on the right road.'

Close to this is what Macrobius uses in the Saturnalia, book 3: 'Did it never come into your head, Praetextatus, that Virgil was quite wrong (wrong, as they say, by the whole sky)?' This seems to be taken from Aristophanes' Frogs: 'Straightway he has erred sky-high.' It is said by Euripides against Aeschylus, who had been quite wrong in what he said. The metaphor is taken either from the story of Phaethon, or from that of Ceres; or from steersmen, who direct their course by observation of the sky and the stars, just as skippers who are badly astray sometimes imagine they see the Bear in quite a different part of the sky, and are totally out of their course. We might of course prefer to take 'sky' for region, as Horace does: 'Those who through the ocean range / The region, not themselves, do change.'

The person who is the author of his own misfortunes is said to 'fetch trouble for himself on his own beast'; it is at his own expense, by his own effort, as it were in his own waggon, that he goes to fetch a pack of troubles for himself. Plautus in the Amphitryo: 'That man brought trouble from me on his own beast.' The metaphor comes from baggage-waggons, for the pack-animal (jumentum) can mean this, according to Gellius, book Zo chapter r, or in any case from animals carrying burdens on their backs.

'To be killed with his own sword or weapon is said of the man who is refuted by his own words, or caught by a trick invented by himself; anyone, in fact, whose word or deed can be used as a retort against himself, though coming from him in the first place. Take for instance someone who follows the example of Protagoras by taking the converse and turning a dilemma round against the person who propounded it; or like Phalaris, taking Perillus the inventor of a torture and putting an end to him through his own invention. Thus in the Adelphoe of Terence, the old man Mitio complains of the harshness of his brother Demea and makes the following remark: 'This is the particular vice which old age brings, it makes us more grasping than we should be.' A little later Demea retorts against his brother: 'Finally I don't take to myself that observation you, Mitio, made just now - how right and wise you were! It is a common fault of us all to be too grasping in our old age, and we ought to shun this defect.' When Mitio, compelled by this reasoning, was forced to hand over the field for which he was being asked, Demea s remark is 'I am cutting his throat with his own sword.' The metaphor is borrowed from those who sometimes during a battle manage to get stabbed with their own weapons. Plautus in the Amphitryo: 'And this man is to be turned out of the house with his own weapon, his own wicked cunning.' Cicero in the Pro Caecina: 'Your case is doomed to be destroyed, either by your own sword, as the saying is, or by mine.' Ovid alluded to this in the Heroides: 'The oars to flee away from me, I gave them you; / I suffer from the wounds my own darts made.' These words of Cicero's concern the same thing: 'You'll have to run on your own sword's point,' and again, 'This is the sword-point of your defence, and your speech will be obliged to run on to it.' Nor is Livy's phrase very different, in book 2 of the Second Punic War: 'Hannibal knew he was being attacked by his own stratagems.' Lucian in the Fishermen: 'The arrows which, as you admit, you took from us, you aimed against us.' Plutarch relates that when Brasidas the general had a weapon extracted from his body, he used it to stab the man who had thrown it. Marius, one of the Thirty Tyrants, was struck down by a certain soldier, who said as he attacked (according to Trebellius Pollio): 'This is the sword you made yourself,' for Marius had been a blacksmith before he came to power, and had employed that very soldier in his smithy. Here indeed was one who could have been said to be killed with his own sword.

The same meaning is found in that passage of the Odes of David, Psalm 7: 'He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.' Adapted from those who dig pits or other snares and decoy wild animals into them; or else from wars, in which one enemy sometimes tries to capture another by means of underground tunnels.

Much the same is what we read in the same author, Psalm 9: 'In the net which they hid is their own foot taken.' A well-known metaphor, taken from those who spread out snares and lie in wait for birds or beasts.

The same idea is expressed in another way by Lucian: 'So you came a cropper owing to your own invention.' This concerns a man who was looking for an inheritance, and wrote down a rich man as his only heir and showed him the will, hoping that the said rich man would do the same by him. But suddenly the roof collapsed and crushed the testator, so that he left everything to the very man whose wealth he had coveted. This should be used when a trick intended for another person rebounds on to the head of its originator, a thing which quite often happens.

Very like these is the Greek adage: Κίχλα χέζει αὑτῇ κακὸν, The thrush's droppings are its own harm. It is used of those who procure for themselves the cause of their ruin. In fact, according to Pliny, birdlime is only produced by being matured in the stomach and passed out through the bowels of birds, especially of doves and thrushes. Servius mentions this in his commentary on Aeneid 6. Aristotle in the Nature of Animals, book 9, distinguishes three sorts of thrush, the first called ixoboron, or as Athenaeus says ixophagon, because it feeds on mistletoe. Since birds are caught by birdlime, it is clear that their droppings are their own harm. Plautus has it a little differently: 'the bird itself,' he says, 'creates its own death.' But I have no doubt that Plautus really wrote cacat (excretes) rather than creat (creates), and that the passage was then corrupted by some half-educated person who did not know the Greek proverb, and substituted the wrong term creat. Sophocles in Antigone:
He who begets unhelpful sons,
What would you say save troubles for himself
He breeds, and for his foes a laughing-stock?
The proverb will fit this case, or the case of those who take to themselves powerful sons-in-law, who later become their oppressors.

There is also among the same people a line in frequent use as a proverb, Αὐτὸς γὰρ εὖρε τοῦ κακοῦ την πητύαν, He found himself the bond of his misfortune, Or Αὐτὸς εὖρε τοῦ κακοῦ πηγήν, He found himself the fountain of his woe. So Aeschylus in the Persae: 'Now, it seems that a fountain of evil / Has been discovered for all our friends.' This is a trochaic line. There are in fact noxious springs, and to taste the water from them causes death or insanity; it would have been better not to have discovered them.

This belongs to the same kind, ἂιξ μάχαιραν, The goat (found, understood) the sword. This is said of those who themselves discover what is to ruin them. It arose from the following circumstance. Once when the Corinthians were preparing to celebrate the rites of Acraean Juno (for that was the name given to her, and it is said that a statue of this Juno was set up by Medea), and those who had been hired to provide the sacrificial victim buried the knife in the ground and pretended to have forgotten it, the goat scratching with its feet uncovered the knife, dug it out and was thereupon sacrificed with it. Some give the form of this adage as 'the goat supplying the knife,' and others as 'the sheep (supplies) the knife.'

Close in meaning also is this, Κορώνη τὴν σκορπίον, The crow (caught) the scorpion. It fits those who are preparing to harm others, by whom they in turn will suffer just as much harm. The crow seized a scorpion, but its tail curved up and the crow got a fatal wound and died. There is a Greek epigram about this by Archias, which I am not unwilling to translate:
A scorpion had crept from the earth, and a crow
Spied it as he sought his living in the limpid sky.
He snatched what he saw and fled. But just as the bird
Touched the ground, the scorpion struck with his sting, and killed him.
Behold, the death the insidious bird was preparing
For the other, the wretch achieved it for himself.
And in human affairs it often happens that the one who seems to be the captor is himself caught. So Horace writes: 'Thus captive Greece took her rude victor captive.'

The following sentence of Plautus seems to refer to this: 'Today you have eaten a hot dinner,' that is, you have done something which will cause you great trouble. This comes from people who stuff themselves with unwholesome and deadly food and are likely to feel the pains of colic.

Τᾶς σφηκιὰς ἐρεθίζεινTo stir up hornets. To this saying we must refer what Plautus has in the Amphitryo, `You'll stir up the hornets.' Here the poet is using it against the mentality of women: once they have been annoyed, you will only provoke them more by having a fight and you will get the worst of it. The hornet is a kind of insect related to the wasp; highly pertinacious and with a most virulent sting. Pliny in the Natural History, book ii chapter 21, says that the sting of a hornet hardly ever fails to cause fever. He adds that according to some accounts a man is killed by thrice nine stings from this insect. Aristotle in book 9 of On the Parts of Animals remarks, among the other things he says about hornets, that while there are some bees which have no sting, such as drones and queens, and some stingless wasps are also to be found, no hornet is ever discovered unarmed with a sting. But whether the leader has a sting, he is in some doubt. St Jerome uses this adage in one of his letters. Plautus expresses the same idea with a change of metaphor:
Oppose a bacchant in her bacchic frenzy:
You'll make the mad madder and get hit the more;
Yield to her then, and get off with one blow.
The custom was that those who celebrated the Bacchanalia would strike the bystanders with their wands. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata (for that is the name I find given to it): 'Unless someone should, as it were, rob / My wasp's nest and provoke me'. It is to this, I think, that the writer refers who wrote the epitaph on Archilochus the scurrilous poet: 'Stranger, on tiptoe pass, and do not wake / The wasps for ever perched upon his tomb.' Xenophon in his fourth book explains how the proverb arose, namely from efforts to drive wasps out of their nests: 'And I see, he said, that those too who want to drive wasps out of their nests, if they try to catch them as they are flying out, are stung by many of them.'

The same force belongs to the proverb mentioned by Diogenianus, τόν λέοντα νύπτεις, You are pricking, or pinching, the lion. This applies to people who provoke and goad someone powerful and fierce, to their own destruction. The metaphor is too well known to need explanation.

The same meaning lies in this phrase, Μὴ κινεῖν κακὸν εὗ κείμενον, Do not disturb a well-suppressed evil, or one which is inactive. This is aimed at those who stir up trouble for themselves by their own stupidity, or who resurrect and revive old abuses long buried. Theognis seems to have recalled the proverb in this line: 'For ofttimes it is best to hide away evil at home.' Very like this is that other phrase, 'He rouses sleeping fires.'

Cratinus in his Thrattae, quoted by Suidas, ὀκτώπουν ἀνεγείρεις, You are waking up Eight-feet, that is, the scorpion, which has eight feet and usually lies hidden and dormant under a stone; you rouse him at your peril, because of the poison he carries in his tail.

Κινεῖν τὴν καμαρίνην, To move Camarina, is to bring trouble upon oneself. Lucian in Apophrade: `You see that it would have been better for you to leave Camarina unmoved.' The origin of the adage is explained by Servius the grammarian, in commenting on that passage of Virgil in Aeneid 3: 'And Camarina shows up far away, / Ne er to be moved; so have the fates decreed.' 'Camarina,' he says, 'is a fen near the town of that name, which once exhaled pestilence when it dried up. The people consulted the oracle to ask whether they would be doing right to drain it altogether. The God forbade them to move Camarina. But they did drain it, instead of obeying the oracle, and the pestilence ceased; but their enemies came in across it, and they were well punished for not attending to the oracle.' Suidas mentions this too, with an additional explanation, that some say camarina was a shrub, whose branches gave off a foul smell if anyone disturbed or shook them. But it seems to me that the former opinion comes nearer to the likeness of truth. Stephanus mentions this adage also, in a hexameter line, and reports it in this fashion: 'Move not Camarina, for it is best not moved.' But he says Camarina is a town, and a marsh of that name, in Sicily. Silius mentions it in book 14, imitating Virgil: 'And Camarina, which the fates would not allow to be moved.'

Very little different from the foregoing is the saying, current in Greek: ἀνάγυρον κινεῖς , You are moving Anagyrus. It fitted those who were the authors of their own misfortunes, and who provoked another and so brought about their own downfall. The origin of the proverb is related differently by the authorities. Some refer it to the nature of the shrub which is mentioned by Dioscorides in his third book, and which some call magyrus and others anagyrus, and others again acopon, efficacious as a medicine, but having a very strong odour, especially when rubbed by the hand; the fruit when eaten produces violent vomiting. The proverb seems to arise either from the disagreeable smell which results from cutting it (since indeed the word acopon is evidently traceable to the same source), or else from its power of producing vomiting. Pliny also mentions this, book 27 chapter 4. There are those who say that Anagyrus is a place in Attica, which belongs to the Erechtheid tribe (my authority is Stephanus), where there is a prolific growth of a certain bush with a heavy odour, so that we take the name anagyrus for the shrub, just as Anticyra is used for the hellebore. Others again think that Anagyrus is the name of a certain local deity, whose sanctuary was violated, and who for this reason destroyed all those living in his vicinity. This adage is mentioned by Aristophanes in the Lysistrata. And in fact the passage in Aristophanes runs thus: 'Whence come they? From Anagyrus, by Zeus. At least it seems we've stirred up Anagyrus.'
Suidas tells roughly the following story: Anagyrasius was a certain tutelar deity, named so from the place just mentioned, who took revenge on an old man living close by, because he had cut down his grove; and this is how he did it. He sent a furious passion for the old man's son into the heart of the father's concubine, who when she found that she could not entice the young man, took the step of accusing him to his father, saying that he continually pestered her to commit adultery. The father, persuaded by the woman, threw his son down from the roof and killed him. Then, overcome with remorse for the deed, he hanged himself. Finally the woman threw herself into a well. As authority for this story he cites a certain Hieronymus, I am not sure who, in a work entitled On Writers of Tragedy.

Ἡ ἂιξ καθ' ἑαυτῦς τὰ κέρατα, The goat (turns) its horns against itself. This belongs to the preceding group, and comes from a fable. A goat, wounded by an arrow, looked round to see where this hurt had come from, and seeing the bow made of goat's horn, it said, 'I grew those horns for my own destruction.'

Ατλας τὸν οὐρανὸν, Atlas the sky (supported, understood). This is said about people who get themselves entangled in great and grievous matters, thus seeking out trouble for themselves. For this man received hospitality in heaven; but caught in the act of laying an ambush against it, he was flung into the Atlantic Ocean. But really there is no need to relate here the well-known story of Atlas, supporting the sky on his head and shoulders.

Θεὸς ἀπὸ μηχανῆς ἐπιφανεὶς, A god appearing suddenly from the machine. This is applied to people who find, in the midst of their perplexities, some unhoped-for person who comes to their rescue and solves the problem for them. It is taken from a habitual practice in tragedies, in many of which some god was revealed by means of certain machines, not on the stage itself, but coming down from above so that he could finish off the play by a sudden change in the plot. Cicero witnesses to this in book i of the On the Nature of the Gods, as when he says this: 'You on the contrary cannot see how nature can achieve all this without the aid of some intelligence, and so, like the tragic poets, being unable to bring the plot of your drama to a denouement, you have recourse to a god; whose intervention you assuredly would not require if you would but contemplate the measureless and boundless extent of space that stretches in every direction.' There is no doubt that Cicero here is imitating a passage from the Cratylus of Plato: 'Unless, just as the writers of tragedy do when they are at a loss, they take refuge in machines, hoisting up gods.' This passage of Plato has been translated quite wrongly, or at least obscurely, by the Latin translator, because he did not know the proverb. For he puts it like this: 'Unless like the tragic poets, whenever they are undecided, they take refuge with the gods by means of some imaginary machines.' The same stumbling-block seems to have got in the way of the writer who translated the life of Lysander from Plutarch. When Lysander decided to make changes in the state and reflected that the proposition was too difficult to tackle by the ordinary methods, he did what the poets do in tragedy, he planned how to achieve what he wished by means of false oracles and reverence for the gods. The Greek is as follows: 'Just as in a tragedy, bringing a machine before the public, he composed and concocted oracular replies purporting to come from the Pythian Apollo.' The same is indicated rather vaguely, but with true elegance, by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, book T, in words which one may translate as follows: 'For Anaxagoras uses mind, like some god of tragedy suddenly shown forth as a device for the making of the world. And when he is at a loss in explaining the cause of what necessarily is, then he brings in mind. But in all other matters he ascribes the cause to anything rather than to mind.'
Hence there is the frequent phrase in Greek tragedy, 'Many are the forms of the gods, etc.' They work out the plot by the introduction of a god; as in Euripides' Orestes, where Apollo appears in the midst of the uproar and at once settles the disturbed situation. An example of this seems to be taken from Homer, when in the Iliad, book z, he introduces Pallas to placate the enraged Achilles; and he brings forward some divinity in various other places. But Horace, in the Art of Poetry, says that this should not be done in comedy, unless the situation is so difficult that it cannot be unravelled by human effort: 'Nor let a God in person be displayed / Unless the labouring plot deserve his aid.' In agreement with this, Plautus introduced Jove into the Amphitryo and for that reason called it a tragicomedy. Lucian in Philopseudes: 'And I thought that this one was chosen for me by fate as a god from the machine, as the saying goes.' Again in On Salaried Posts: 'For these specially pertain to tragedies of this sort; or some other god from the machine, sitting on the mast-head.' Euripides thought of this in the Iphigenia in Aulis. 'Truly I appeared to you as a great god.' Lucian in The Sects, 'There you stood, like that adage beloved of tragedy-writers, a god appearing from a machine.' In Athenaeus, book 6, some poet or other makes a certain gluttonous fellow complain that the sellers of fish just show their goods and then immediately snatch them away: 'And they quickly remove the goods from sight, / And sell them like gods from the machine.' just so, whenever salvation comes from some unexpected quarter, it is usually ascribed to a god. Thus Pliny writes in book 25: 'Even in what has been discovered chance has sometimes been the finder; at other times, to speak the truth, the finder was a god.' Again, in book 27: 'Therefore this is chance, this is that god who discovered most things in life.'

Not far from this is the phrase ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου δαιμόνιον, Man is a god to man, usually said about one who has conferred sudden and unlooked-for salvation, or who has brought help by some great benefaction. To be a god, thought the ancients, was simply and solely to be of value to mortal men; thus the ancient world made gods out of the originators of grain, wine, laws, anyone who had contributed something to the betterment of life. To such an extent was this true, that they worshipped certain animals, as the Egyptians worshipped the stork, because it was believed to seek out, drive away and kill the snakes which came up at a certain time of year from the marshlands of Arabia. The Romans also held the goose sacred, because its noise woke the guards and so saved the stronghold of the Capitol from the invading Gauls. This is what Cicero means when he writes in the first book of his On the Nature of the Gods: 'I will make my point thus: these animals are deified by the barbarians for the benefits which they confer.'
According to Prodicus of Ceos, some inanimate bodies have been held to be gods, such as the sun, the moon, water, earth, because they seemed conducive to life, and mortals particularly rejoiced in their benefits. The Scythians, as Lucian tells us in Toxaris, swear by wind and sword as if they were gods, because the one gives breath, the other death. But since, as Cicero says, the advantages and misfortunes of men are for the most part derived from mankind, and the special quality of God is to preserve or do good, thus it comes about that whoever brings rescue in dire peril, or is the means of conferring some immense benefit, performs as it were the office of God, and is said to have stood as a god to the beneficiary. Agreeing with this we have that customary expression used by Homer and by Hesiod, 'the gods, the givers of all good things,' and what Strabo says in his tenth book, 'It is rightly said, that it is when mortals are beneficent that they most closely imitate the gods.' The same writer says, in book 17, that for some Egyptians God was twofold: immortal, the creator of all things, and mortal, of an unknown name; and thus they gave almost divine honours to those who conferred benefits upon them. In common parlance, too, people who are preserved in desperate and involved situations, or in deadly peril, say that some god had preserved them. Horace: 'Thus Apollo saved me.' Again in the Odes, he says he was saved in war by Mercury, and once more by Faunus from the fall of a tree. Juvenal makes the same allusion when he says,
Would any god, or godlike man below
Four hundred sesterces on you bestow,
Kinder than fate ...
And Virgil in Tityrus,
O Meliboeus, a god gave us this respite;
To me that man for ever shall be God,
And on his altar fume a tender lamb
From our own flocks ... Then he gives the reason why he will consider Caesar among the divinities, adding the benefit conferred:
He, he it was who gave my cattle leave
To stray thus freely, and myself allowed
The play I wished for with my rustic pipe.
Pliny in the Natural History, book 2, is more clearly referring to the Greek proverb, but speaks as irreverently about the gods as he does a little later about the immortality of souls and foolishly about the resurrection of bodies. For after gibing at the multiplicity of gods, and utterly refusing to attribute the care of mortals to the one supreme divinity which he takes to be either the world or some kind of Nature, he says: 'To be a god is to bring aid to a mortal, though mortal oneself. And this is the way to eternal glory. By this went the great men of Rome, by this now advances with divine step, with his children, Vespasianus Augustus, the greatest ruler of all time, bringing help in disaster. This is the oldest way of giving thanks to those who deserved well, to number them with the gods. For even the names of all the other gods, and those I have recorded above of the stars, have sprung from the merits of men.' Thus far Pliny. Ovid says: "Tis a fitting pleasure for man to save man; / There is no better way of seeking favour.' Plutarch in the essay 'To An Uneducated Ruler' says that the gods are not blessed because they live for ever, but because they are the lords and authors of virtue. Paul, though, places the height of virtue in charity; but charity which consists in doing the greatest good to the greatest number. Gregory of Nazianzus thought of this in his oration On the Care of the Poor: `By imitating the mercy of God you will become God to the sufferer, for man has nothing so divine as kindness.'
Among Christians the name of God ought not to be given to any mortal man even in jest, and such extraordinary and disgusting flattery must be altogether unacceptable to our moral code; yet it can happen that this adage finds a use, and not an immoral nor unfitting one. For instance, one might say, 'At a time when I was labouring under such great misfortunes that no mortal man either wished to help me or could do so, you alone came to my aid - it was more than I had hoped for - and not only rescued me by your kindness (otherwise I should have perished) but made me better fitted for life than I had been before. Between us two, if ever, that old Greek proverb can apply, man is a god to man.' Or one might speak thus: 'I owe everything to letters, even my life; but I owe letters to you, who by your liberality procure me leisure and support me in it. What is this, if not what the Greeks mean when they say, "man is a god to man?"' Or in this way: 'To do a small kindness certainly proves a man is a friend; but to spend skill and wonderful care and attention so as to retain a life which is ebbing away, and restore it, as a doctor does, what is that but what the Greeks say, man is a god to man?' Again, 'Matters had come to such a point that not Salvation itself could bring aid. Then you came upon me like the presence of a god, and dispersed my troubles with marvellous speed, and set me back where I was before, not expecting nor hoping for such a thing - so that I might understand that it was no idle word of the Greeks, "man is a god to man."' Or again, 'In other things, indeed, you have always been the greatest friend to me, but in this juncture you were not only my greatest friend, but I might almost say, as the Greeks do, "a man who is a god to man."'

ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου λύκος, Man is a wolf to man. Almost the opposite of the foregoing, and in a way derived from it apparently, is the phrase of Plautus in the Asinaria, 'Man is a wolf to man.' Here we are warned not to trust ourselves to an unknown person, but to beware of him as of a wolf. 'A man is a wolf and not a man,' he says, 'to the one who knows nothing of his character.'

Ορτυξ ἔσωσεν Ἡρακλῆν τὸν καρτερόν, A quail saved Hercules, that man of might. This is an iambic six-foot line in Greek, which is current as a proverb, though Zenodotus says it cannot be found in any of the old writers. It was usually said about people who had been preserved in danger by those from whom they expected it least. They trace the origin of the adage to the following fable. Hercules had a favourite quail, and when it was burnt alive, the smell brought him back from death. Athenaeus also mentions the story in his ninth book, where he writes that Hercules, the son of Jupiter and Asteria, was slain by Typhon as he was setting out to go to Libya; but he was restored to life by the odour of a quail which Iolaus gave him to smell, and for this reason the Phoenicians sacrifice quails to Hercules.

The saying just reported, 'Man is a god to man,' seems to have its opposite in the 'evil genius' which the Greeks call alastor; this is the name we give to those whom we blame for our misfortunes, for the most part, and it remains in common speech to the present day. There are some people who have such an unlucky effect on certain others that they can really appear to be their evil destiny, and born to destroy them. The proverb, however, seems to have arisen from the view of the ancients that each person had two attendant spirits whom they call daemones - and not people only, but also places and buildings are said to have spirits - and one of these plots our destruction while the other tries to come to our aid. Empedocles thought this, according to Plutarch's quotation in his essay 'On Tranquillity of Mind.' There is a connection here with what the same Plutarch says in his life of Brutus. For when that famous day of doom was approaching for Brutus, and he was watching in his tent in Asia far into the night, as his custom was, by the dying light of a lantern, he seemed to see a figure of tragic aspect and superhuman size. Undismayed, he asked at once who it might be, among gods and men. In a low voice the vision muttered, 'I am your evil genius, Brutus; you will see me at Philippi.' The same apparition came before him again as he fought at Philippi, and that was his last battle. A similar story is told by him about Mark Antony and Augustus: they were on very good terms with each other and lived in friendship, but in the games, where they were rivals, Octavius always used to be the winner. This was a source of some distress for Antony. He had however in his retinue a certain Egyptian soothsayer. Whether this man really knew Antony's destiny or whether he was inventing something to please Cleopatra, he gave Antony a warning to separate himself as much as possible from Caesar, because his own genius, otherwise valiant, was intimidated by Caesar's genius, and the closer he came to Caesar the more he would appear humiliated and downtrodden. Plato also bears witness that Socrates had a familiar spirit, and Apuleius and Plutarch wrote of this too. Terence seems to refer to the genius when he says in the Phormio, 'I have found it so, I can tell you; I have in mind that I am deserted and that my god is angry with me.' And indeed our own theologians (following the ancients, I imagine) attribute to each person from the very beginning of his life two genii which they call angels; one is our friend, and procures for us the things that are good, the other is evil, and he is intent on bringing about our ruin in every possible way. The good genius is expressed by Naevius in his Stalagmus, quoted by Donatus: 'Mine is so favourable to me, he is my man.' Also Persius: 'with the displeasure of the gods, and with an unlucky genius.' All of these expressions: with the wrath of the gods, with the favour of the gods, have a flavour of this proverb. Terence: 'I do not know, except that I know well enough that the gods are angry with me for having given ear to him.' Horace in the Satires: 'The blameless wall is the one to suffer, / The wall that grew in spite of gods and poets.' Again, 'Born in unlucky seasons, whate'er they be.' And again in the Odes,
Thou art not here, absent too long,
Sprung from the good gods, protector of the race
Of Romulus.
Homer, Iliad 5: 'Truly it is some angered god.' And Virgil: 'I think it is with the favour of the gods and Juno's blessing.' These other phrases also belong here: 'Antipho, you are the only beloved of the gods'; and 'The gods are mindful of us'; and, 'If only Jupiter is with us'; and 'If the unpropitious deities allow anyone'; and 'May Apollo be on our right hand'; and hundreds of other such passages met with in the poets.
This will be more attractive if you use it of a particular power: 'This man writes his poems without the favour of the Muses one and all'; 'He sings with Apollo against him.' 'He pleaded that cause clumsily, obviously the goddess of Persuasion was angry with him.' 'We fought with Mars against us.' 'We sailed with the favour of Neptune.' 'When I made an agreement with that old fox, I must have had Mercury against me.' 'He is striving for children against the will of Venus,' about someone who begets deformed sons. 'Minerva unwilling' of someone who practises his art unskilfully.

Of the same kind, but more obscure, is the allusion in Horace: 'Rich, by the friendship of Hercules,' and again in Persius:
If only
A money-jar might tinkle under my mattock,
Hercules being at my side!
The allusion fits those who are lucky in acquiring wealth. This is thought to arise from what Hercules is supposed to have said before he died: that anyone who would dedicate a tenth of his goods to him would become rich. So many wealthy men were accustomed to do this. But Plutarch in his 'Problems' gives another reason for this custom, that Hercules himself once sacrificed on the Palatine a tenth part of the oxen he had taken from Geryon; or because he freed the Romans from the tenth they used to pay as tribute to the Etruscans.

That well-known hyperbole is also proverbial, 'with the applause of gods and men,' for something done successfully and with good auspices. Cicero to his brother Quintus: `I annihilated Vatinius, who was openly attacking him, just as the fancy took me, with the applause of gods and men.' The same, in his Letters to Friends, book i: 'I not only said so, but I do so as well, to the delight of gods and men.' Then to his brother Quintus, book 3, he turns the proverb round: 'Unless our friend Pompey, to the disgust of gods and men, upsets the whole affair.' Although 'gods and men' by itself is proverbial because figurative, and often met with in the poets: 'By the faith of gods and men!"Detested by gods and men."Neither gods nor men does he fear.' Homer: 'Immortal gods and mortal men,' and again: 'Parent of men and gods.'

The phrase 'with good or bad auspices' also belongs to this class; by it we signify success or failure in our undertakings. It is derived from the observation of the augurs. Horace says in the Odes: 'With evil auspices the ship sets sail, / Bearing unsavoury Maevius.' And again:
Ill-augured are you now
Who take her homeward whom all Greece shall seek
To take again with might.
And yet again, 'Valiant victor in war, thou shalt be sung / By Varius, that winged Maeonian poet,' Homer, Iliad 24: `So do not you yourself become for me / A bird of evil omen here.' These are the words of Priam to his wife, who was beseeching him not to go alone to the camp of Achilles to recover the body of Hector, and foretelling many misfortunes, as women usually do. 'With the birds against him' is used by a certain Latin writer of tragedies, who speaks in this way of Agamemnon setting sail against the auspices: `He gives orders to set sail, with rumour for him, and the birds against him.' Cicero refers to this in book z of his On Divination. There are other phrases to be referred to this form: 'with a fair omen,' 'well-omened,' 'with good auspices,' 'inauspiciously,' 'with happy auguries,' and so forth; phrases arising from the art of the soothsayer and taken over by popular speech.

From that same superstition springs the Greek phrase, γλαὺξ ἵπταται, or ἵπτατο, The owl flies, or flew. For the early Athenians the flight of the owl was taken as a symbol of victory, because this bird was believed to be sacred to Minerva, who was said to give her blessing even to the wrong decisions of the Athenians. On this subject we shall say more in connection with the proverb 'Thoughtless and headstrong like Athenians.' Thus, when things went better, and turned out according to wish, it was said 'the owl flies.' This is in Zenodotus and Suidas. The owl may be said to have flown, quite wittily, when an affair is believed to have been settled not by effort but by a financial bargain: for the coinage of Athens bore the stamp of an owl. Hence that other phrase, 'Lauriotic owls,' which is treated elsewhere. Plutarch, in his life of Pericles, tells how his hero was making a speech from the upper deck of a ship when an owl flew to his right side and perched on the mast; the omen resulted in everyone agreeing with his opinion.

Εν τετράδι γεγεννηθῆναι, To be born on the fourth. This describes people whose birth is unlucky (see Eustathius on Iliad 2), because Hercules is said to have been born at this stage of the moon, and his whole life was deprived of all pleasure and filled with toil. It can be used about those who weary themselves by labours which bring no reward, like Hercules, who toiled to help others and was useless to himself. Pyrrhus, in Lucius Florus, said he thought he was born under Hercules' star, because the more victories he won against the Romans, the more fiercely they returned to the attack against him. Horace made an elegant application of this to Hannibal: 'Flourishing as fiercely as the severed Hydra / Sprouted at Hercules, chafing in defeat.'

The lucky man, on the contrary, we call a son of the white hen.' Juvenal: 'because you are a son of the white hen.' This is either because Latin uses 'white' for joyful and auspicious things, or because the proverb alludes to that fateful hen recalled by Suetonius in his life of Galba, in these words: 'When Livia was revisiting her villa near Veii soon after her marriage to Augustus, an eagle flying overhead dropped a white hen with a sprig of bay in its beak on to her lap. When she had decided to feed the bird and plant the sprig, there grew up such a flock of chickens that even today the villa is called "house of hens." The bay grove was such that Caesars about to have a triumph picked their bays from it. It was the custom for those who celebrated a triumph to plant other bay trees forthwith in the same place. And it was observed that shortly before the death of someone, the tree set by him drooped. So in Nero s last year the whole grove dried up by the roots and whatever was left in the way of poultry died.'
So the adage will fit those who experience some rare and predestined good fortune and success in their affairs. Another phrase of Juvenal's means the opposite: 'Born from unlucky eggs.' Not unlike this is what Cicero writes in the seventh book of his Letters to Curio: 'For after devoting myself to the : reception of my friends, a function more numerously attended than heretofore, because to them the sight of a fellow-citizen of sound sentiments is just as if they saw a white bird, I hide myself away in my library.' For the ancients, what they wished to be thought inauspicious they called dark or black, and the fortunate, white. Hence Asinius Pollio, quoted by Seneca: 'As . for the opinions of Albutius, because they were unaffected and frank, he was wont to call them white.' And in Greek the phrase `to speak more whitely' is used of the person who explains something more clearly.

Δαφνίην φορῶ βακτηρίαν, I bear the staff of bay. Suidas tells how this expression was used by people who were the victims of plotting, and luckily escaped the danger. This was because the bay tree was believed to contain a cure for poison. Pliny, book 15, shows that bay was used in lustration rites; it seems that its power also avails against lightning, since this tree alone is not struck by lightning. Tiberius Caesar was so convinced of this that he never went without his wreath of bay on his head, according to his life by Suetonius.

Δεινότερα Σαμβίκου πάσχηει, He suffers worse tortures than Sambicus. Of those who are tormented by exquisite pain or to whom notable evils occur. Plutarch mentions this proverb in his 'Greek Questions,' and gives an origin as follows: Sambicus was a man of Elis, who with a few confederates cut to pieces a number of bronze statues at Olympia and sold them. Then with even greater daring, he plundered the temple of Diana the protectress (there is a temple to her in Elis which they call the Aristarcheum). But he was soon captured, and while he refused to betray his associates, he underwent searching tortures for a whole year, and under these he breathed his last. Hence the proverb came into common speech.

This is said of angry and abusive men: He has hay on his horn. Horace, in the Satires: 'He has hay on his horn, beware.' This originates, in the view of Acron, from the fact that in ancient times hay was attached to the horn of a bull given to goring, as a sign that people who came up by chance should be warned to take care. Plutarch indicates in his 'Problems' that this is done because not only bulls, but horses and donkeys grow insolent and fierce through being too well fed. This is the meaning of Sophocles' expression about an over-weening and belligerent person: 'You seethe with insolence' he says 'like a colt overfed.' That saying of Solon, in Laertius, agrees with this: 'Satiety is begotten by wealth, but insolence by satiety.' It was sometimes said of Crassus (as the same Plutarch testifies) that he had hay on his horn, because he never let an injury pass unavenged, being a very rich and powerful man, and inveterate in pursuing feuds. But later on Caesar is said to have pulled the hay off him, because when everyone else was fleeing from him in fear as from a bull who uses his horns, he, Caesar, first dared to stand up to him. St Jerome uses this adage also, in one of his letters, when he is threatening those by whom he might be attacked.

There is a similar meaning in the phrase of Plautus, 'you attack a horned beast,' referring to someone who assaults a person who is ready to repay the injury, and whom one persecutes at one's own peril. Horace had this in mind in the Odes: 'I raise my ready horns.'

Διονύσιος ἐν κορίνθῳ, Dionysius in Corinth. An allegory with proverbial force, by which we indicate a person reduced from the highest rank of authority to a humble status in private life, just as Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, after being thrust from power, became a paid teacher of letters and music to boys at Corinth. Cicero in the Letters to Atticus, book q: 'About the optimates, let it be as you wish; but you know the saying Dionysius in Corinth.' Quintilian Institutions, book 8: `Historical instances are a source of allegory, if they are not cited for some specified reason. Take the phrase Dionysius in Corinth, which is so common in Greek: many similar examples can be used.' When Cicero says 'You know the saying' and Quintilian 'which is so common in Greek,' both of course show that this was a common expression. Plutarch explains in his essay 'On Pointless Garrulity' how the adage arose. When he is praising terse and weighty sayings, he recalls the reply of the Spartans to King Philip, who was threatening them with war and taking a very fierce line: 'Dionysius in Corinth.' The king wrote back to them saying that if he were ever to lead an army into Laconia, he would destroy the Spartans; they replied in just one word 'If.' Plato made three voyages to Sicily, not without arousing adverse comment. Hence Molon, who had a great dislike of Plato, used to say that it was no surprise if Dionysius were in Corinth, but what was surprising was to see Plato in Sicily. The king was driven by necessity; Plato was tempted by ambition.

Terence in the Eunuchus: 'But these beans will be pounded on me,' that is (says Donatus' commentary) 'This trouble will recoil on me, I shall be the one to be blamed for it.' It is transferred, it seems, from beans, which are shelled and then pounded or beaten with flails, as is done on country threshing-floors, and they do not get as much damage as the surface on which they are pounded. Others prefer to think the proverb refers to badly-cooked beans; if they did not soften but remained hard, the angry master of the house would sometimes pound them with a stone on the cook's head, as if wreaking vengeance on the beans and not on the cook - but it was the cook who got the worst of it.

Donatus points out a proverb not unlike the foregoing, which is to be read in the same poet, in the Phormio: 'You yourself made this dish and you must eat it all up.' The words are those of the parasite, Phormio, who since he originated the plan of abducting the girl, thinks it only right that he should finish the matter off at his own expense. It is thought to be taken from the rustic dish pounded up with garlic. The same maxim is on people's lips in our own day. There is also another similar saying, `You got it ready for the distaff and now you must spin it yourself,' ie, you began the affair and now you are the one who must settle it.

Ausonius in his trochaics adds to the proverb from Terence something very like it, and interprets the poet's metaphor by a different one:
You troublesome claimant, here are some troublesome verses for you.
You must eat what you have cooked: so the old proverb demands.
The fetters he made himself the blacksmith must wear.
It fits those who are the authors of their own misfortune. But it seems to be taken from the poet Theognis, who says 'No man, dear Cyrnus, forges fetters for himself.' Something like this, of a humbler kind, but apt, is said in common speech: 'He prepared a rod for his own back,' and that is derived from boys or servants who are sometimes made to prepare themselves the rods with which they are to be beaten.

A proverb like this is mentioned in the Greek collections: Αὐτοὶ χελώνας ἐσθίεσθ' οἵπερ εἵλετε, You caught the turtles, now you must eat them. It is cast at people who have thoughtlessly undertaken something and then beg the help of others so as to involve them in their business. The proverb is thought to have arisen from the following fable. Some fishermen cast their nets and drew out some turtles. When they had shared them out among the party, and found there were not enough people to eat them up, they invited Mercury, who happened to come on the scene, to join the feast. But he perceived that it was not out of kindness that he was invited, but so that he could relieve them of some of their unwanted food; so he refused, and told them they must eat up the turtles they had caught. According to Pliny, there are tribes in Carmania who live on the flesh of turtles, and this is why they are nicknamed chelonophagoi (turtle-eaters). It is said that among them turtles are to be found of such a size that they roof their huts with their shells.

Strabo, in his Geography, book 6, reports that Temessa after Laus was the chief town of Brutia, and called Tempsa in his time. It was founded by the Ausonians, and then held by the Aetolians, companions of Thoas, and after their expulsion by the Brutians it was finally completely overthrown by Hannibal and the Romans. Near it, he says, there was a shrine hedged round with wild olive, and dedicated to Polites, one of the companions of Ulysses. When his shrine was violated by the barbarians, he let fly his anger against them, so that it became a proverb, and they said, 'Beware, lest the Temessaean spirit should threaten you.' Later, when the Epizephyrian Locrians had obtained possession of the town, there came from Italy (so says Aelian) a well-known pugilist of enormous strength, a certain Euthymus, who wielded a huge stone (it is normally on show at Locri). This man had an encounter with Polites, and came off victor in the fight; and so the neighbouring peoples were liberated from the tribute that Polites had been accustomed to extort from them. He even compelled Polites to restore with interest what he had taken. It is thought that the proverb is derived from this: people who make immoral and unjust gains will find the Temessaean spirit at hand; by which was meant that some time or other whatever had been snatched by illegal means, by force or fraud, will have to be repaid with interest.
Pausanias, in his book on Elis, tells the story a little differently. He says that a certain companion of Ulysses had been killed for ravishing a girl, and for this reason his ghost used to walk and bring destruction to all ages and both sexes, unless it were placated by the yearly sacrifice of a virgin. And it was generally supposed that this was the genius of that place, whom Euthymus the pugilist suppressed on his return to Temessa, and he set free the maiden who had been dedicated for sacrifice and married her.
The passage in Strabo seems to me to be not without error in the Greek text. This is what we read in the Aldine edition: 'So that the dwellers in the country round collected tribute for him in accordance with an oracle, and there was in use a proverb referring to them ... saying (legonton) that the guardian spirit of Temessa presses hard upon them.' Perhaps the reading will be more acceptable if you eliminate the conjunction de, and for legonton read legomenon. However, the fact that Strabo relates the proverb before referring to the defeat of the hero suggests that it was used against those who attack a more powerful person than themselves. Even so, there is no reason why the proverb should not be adapted to several uses.

Τερμέρια κακὰ, Termerian evils. In the old proverb this is used of great evils, especially those which, when a man has forced them on others, recoil on his own head. Plutarch recalls this adage in his life of Theseus, who used to travel through the world after the manner of Hercules, making the criminals whom he overcame undergo the same punishment as they had wreaked on others in their fury. Hercules, for instance, threw Damascus from a high rock; Busiris he offered up in sacrifice; Antaeus he killed, after worsting him in wrestling; Cygnus he slew in gladiatorial style. Finally Termerus, who had knocked people's heads together, he crushed in the same way with blows. Thus the proverbial saying'a Termerian evil' is used of people whose misdoings recoil on their own heads. Plutarch uses it this way in his life of Theseus. There is a type of punishment, eminently to be approved of, which exactly fits the crime, as when we read of the man from Thurii who sold smoke and was himself smoked to death; and Perillus, whom Phalaris shut up in the bronze bull, thus destroying him by his own invention. There is a particularly good story told in the life of the emperor Gallienus. A man had sold false jewels for real to the empress and when the thing was found out, he cried out for punishment. The emperor ordered the vendor to be seized as if he were to be thrown to the lions, and let out a capon on him instead. When all the spectators were amazed at so absurd a spectacle, he ordered the herald to proclaim: `Sham were his wares, and sham his punishment': and so he sent the merchant away.
Suidas offers quite a different interpretation of 'Termerian evils': he says there is a place in Caria, called Termerium, which at some time or other was used by tyrants as a prison. It was situated between Melos and Halicarnassus. Robbers used this in later times as a base for plundering, and they could not be driven out because the place was well fortified, and so it became a proverb. Stephanus though, places the town of Termera in Lycia, and says its name is drawn from Termerus.
Finally, 'Termerian evils' may be taken to mean the last extremity of evil. For terma means end in Greek, and they call the last day of life termerian hemeran. In Latin too the word 'extreme' is used when they wish to signify highest or greatest: for instance extreme madness, extreme frenzy. The Greeks likewise say eschaton kakon, 'an extreme evil,' and ἐσχάτων ἔσχατα, 'the extreme of extremes,' 'greater than the greatest,' as it were.

Νεοπτολέμειος τίσις, The revenge of Neoptolemus. This is exactly similar to the preceding: when what a man has done to others, he suffers himself. Pausanias in his book on Messene reports it and explains it as follows: 'Indeed in time what is called the revenge of Neoptolemus encompassed the Lacedemonians. For it happened that Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, who killed Priam in the very heart of his palace, was himself slain at the altar of Apollo, and from this to suffer what one has oneself done they call a Neoptolomean revenge.' Euripides in the Orestes, where in the character of Apollo it is said of Neoptolemus: 'It is his fate to die by the Delphic sword.'

Cicero said To be a slave to your theatre, meaning to serve the time, to accommodate oneself to the present situation. This is a metaphor taken from the actors in plays, who do not behave according to their own judgment but think of one thing only - pleasing the eyes of the public somehow or other, otherwise they will be slow-clapped and hissed off the stage. He writes thus to Brutus: 'Now your business is to be a slave to the people and your public, as they say. For not only the eyes of your army are upon you, but those of all the citizens and almost the whole world.' This can be said of people who have undertaken some important affair, from which they must emerge either with the highest credit or the utmost shame, because so many people are watching them. To serve the time is indeed the part of the wise man, as Phocylides warns us: 'Remember, always wary, to serve the times; blow not against the wind.' However the metaphor here is taken from mariners, who once they have set out must be tossed at the will of winds and tides; it would be vain for them to strive to put up a resistance.

Close to this is the saying, τῇ ἀγορᾷ χρῆσθαι, , To take the market as you find it, meaning to make the best of the present state of affairs, and to turn one's mind wherever fortune presents itself. Terence says in the Phormio 'You knew how to make the best of the market.' Donatus explains that the proverb is a popular one, and the metaphor taken from merchants, 'who do not set a price for what they have brought before they reach the place of sale, but after finding out the current market prices they decide whether or not to sell their wares.' Seneca: 'Let us take the market as we find it, and what chance may bring, let us bear with equanimity.' Again in Epistle 72 he used the phrase 'to spring up under one's hand' for when the moment comes: 'The plan must be born on the day, and even this is too slow; it must spring up, as they say, under one's hand.'

There is in Greek an adage one can put in this class: Πολύποδος νόον ἴσχε, Adopt the outlook of the polyp. This recommends us to take up for the time being this or that kind of behaviour, this or that kind of face. Homer seems to praise this in Ulysses, and calls him' a man of many turnings,' changeful in his ways. The adage originates from the nature of this fish, of which Pliny speaks, book 9 chapter 29. Lucian too, in the conversation of Menelaus and Proteus; they write that it changes colour especially in fear. When the fishermen are out after it, it attaches itself to rocks, and its body takes the colour of whatever rock it sticks to, obviously to escape being caught. In fact St Basil reports that fish are sometimes taken in by its deceptive appearance, and swim up, offering themselves to be caught. The proverb is taken from Theognis, whose couplet about the polyp exists today. He is also quoted by Plutarch in his essay 'On Having Many Friends': 'Adopt the attitude of the many-coloured polyp; / Moving towards a rock, it straightway takes its hue.'
Clearchus quotes this couplet among proverbs according to Athenaeus (the author's name is not given): 'O hero, son Amphilochus, take on the polyp's way, / Whatever nation you shall meet, let you become as they.' Plutarch cites the same poem out of Pindar. Thus there is a well-known proverbial line: "Tis best in season to be this, or that.' This advises us to suit ourselves to every contingency of life, acting the part of Proteus, and changing ourselves into any form as the situation demands. In the same way Plutarch said, 'I turn to a different opinion.' Aristophanes makes the same observation in the Plutus, telling us to live in the style of the region, in local style. The saying Noµos Kai Xwp«, Custom of the country, points in the same direction. This means that in every region there are certain established things, which as guests we should not condemn, but do our best to copy and act on them. Let no one think that by this adage we are taught a disgusting type of flattery, which assents to everything in everybody, or an improper changeability in behaviour, of the sort which Horace elegantly castigates in the Satires, and which historians remark in Catiline and in the emperor Anedius Cassius, and Holy Scripture in any bad man when it says 'the fool is as inconstant as the moori : the wise man is like the sun, always himself.
In Alcibiades one may wonder whether this changeableness is to be taken as a vice or a virtue; he certainly had a happy and enviable dexterity of mind and character, which made him act the polyp, so that 'in Athens he amused himself with jokes and sallies, bred horses, and lived in pleasant elegant style, while among the Spartans he was close-shaved, wore a cloak and took cold baths. Among the Thracians he was warlike and took to drinking. But when he came to Tisaphernes, he followed the custom of the people and enjoyed pleasures, soft living and ostentation.' There is however a kind of downrightness, edgy and harsh and unsmiling, among inexperienced people; they require everyone to live solely in his own way, and whatever pleases others they condemn. On the contrary there is a sensible attitude which makes good men comply on occasion with a different mode of conduct, to avoid either being disliked or being unable to be of use, or else for the sake of rescuing themselves or their households from great dangers. Ulysses acted like this with Polyphemus, making a great many pretences, and with the suitors, when he acted the part of a beggar. Brutus too feigned stupidity, David even pretended to be mad. And St Paul too congratulates himself, with a kind of saintly boasting, on having used a pious pretence, and become all things to all men, that he might win all for Christ.
There is also nothing to prevent us using the adage in a wider sense, when we are observing people's faults, against the conduct of men endowed with versatile minds who take on the character of those with whom they have to do, whoever they are. Plautus aptly describes this kind of person in the Bacchides: 'Not a soul can be worth anything, unless he knows how to be good and bad both. He must be a rascal among rascals, rob robbers, steal what he can. A chap that's worth anything, a chap with a fine intellect, has to be able to change his skin. He must be good with the good and bad with the bad; whatever the situation calls for, that he's got to be.' Eupolis in Athenaeus: 'A city man, a polyp in his manners.' Plutarch in his 'On Natural Causes' quotes these lines from Pindar: 'Adapting the mind to the colour of the sea-creature, / He mingles with all cities.' And in the same place he gives the reason why this happens to the fish.
Aristotle draws a similar metaphor from the chameleon, in his Ethics, book i. He says that anyone who is dependent on fortune, with its sudden changes, will be like a chameleon, continually altering, now happy, now cast down; every time chance puts on a different face, this man changes his face and his mentality. Pliny mentions the chameleon, book 28 chapter 8, where he writes that this creature is about equal in size to the crocodile, but differs from it by its sharply-curved spine and breadth of tail. No creature, he says, is thought to be more easily frightened, and hence these changes of colour. Plutarch, in his essay 'On Flattery,' writes that the chameleon imitates every colour except white. He also tries, in the 'Table-talk,' to explain why the polyp does not only change colour, which happens to men when they are afraid, but also matches itself to the rock, whatever colour that may be. There are some birds too which change both colour and song according to the season of the year; Pliny, book io, chapter 29, is the authority, and Aristotle in book 9 on the Nature of Animals. This change of song is most notable in the nightingale. This is why Hecuba, in Euripides, orders Polyxena to imitate the nightingale and try all kinds of speech, so as to persuade Ulysses that she should not be killed.

Εὐμεταβολώτερος κοθόρνου, As versatile as a buskin. This was used of a fickle and unreliable man, belonging to a doubtful and wavering party, by a metaphor which comes from the shoe called kothornos in Greek and cothurnus (one letter being changed) in Latin; a footgear usually adopted by the actors in tragedy. It was 'square and suitable to either foot,' so that it could be worn on the right or on the left. Suidas adds that it was of a kind that both men and women could wear. Virgil is a witness to this: 'to bind the buskin high up on the calf.' The proverb is employed in two ways, in a comparison (as versatile as a buskin) and in metonymy, when we call the man himself, who joins first one and then the other party, a buskin. This was the term used of Theramenes the Athenian rhetorician, the disciple of Prodicus of Ceos, because he sat as it were on two stools, trying to please the people and the Thirty, and seeming to be now on the side of one party and now on the other, or rather on both. Plutarch in his 'Precepts of Statecraft': 'But here it is especially fitting to put on the buskin of Theramenes, conversing with both sides but joining neither.' Lucian in the Amores: 'So I at least would wish, if it were possible, to become Theramenes called the cothurnus, in order that both of you might depart equally victorious.' Again in the Pseudologista :'And another called him cothurnus, likening his inconstant and equivocal behaviour to that kind of shoe.' Plutarch remarks that Nicias the general was commonly nicknamed the Buskin, owing to the craftiness of his behaviour. Cicero, even, had this reproach levelled at him. Homer, if I am not mistaken, speaks of Mars suddenly changing sides, and uses a new word, alloprosallos. There is no reason, however, why we should not use the proverb in a good sense; one might call a man a cothurnus because he had easy ways, a certain mobility of intellect, and a capacity for getting on with all kinds of people. For this reason Homer calls Ulysses a'man of many turnings' because he could play any part to perfection - the general, the beggar, the head of the house.

Ποικιλώτερος ὕδρας, As variable as the hydra. Spoken of the artful and wily, because the hydra is a snake with many-coloured markings. It will be neatly used against crafty people, clever at dissimulation, or people who are not consistent with themselves. The following line is referred to in Athenaeus, in the third book of his Doctors at Dinner:'You made him more colourful than a peacock.' This is not unlike the nickname Salpa, given to the poet Mnaseas of Colophon as a popular jest, because he was so various in his poetry; for this fish is wonderfully marked, with reddish gold lines drawn from head to tail, and spaced along its silvery sides. But its flavour has nothing to recommend it.

Γύγου δακτύλιος, Gyges' ring. This suits either men of fickle character, or the lucky ones who get everything they want by just wishing for it, as by the wave of a magic wand. Lucian recalls this proverb in Wishes, where someone wishes he had several rings like that of Gyges, one so that he could get rich, one to make him attractive and lovable, another to help him to fly wherever the fancy took him. In early times superstition credited rings with great efficacy, and indeed they used to be sold as possessing various powers through enchantment, some against the bite of wild beasts, some against slander, some for other purposes, either to repel bad luck or attract good luck for those who wore them. Hence in Aristophanes, in the Plutus, Dicaeus says to the sycophant threatening judgment, 'I take no heed of you, because I wear this ring Eudamus sold me for a drachma.' And again in the same play, 'But it has none against the sycophant's blow' (remedy, understood). He is speaking of a ring, and the allusion is to the bite of wild beasts. The proverb is derived from a story of this sort, which Plato does not disdain to tell in his Republic, book 2. I likewise will not find it irksome to go over it here. A certain Gyges, the father of Lydus, was a herdsman in the service of the king who at that time ruled over the Lydians. One day a furious storm arose, torrents of rain fell, finally there was lightning and even an earthquake, so that in the region where Gyges happened to be grazing his flocks the earth split open, leaving a great chasm. When he saw this (he alone, because all the other shepherds had fled in terror) he went down into the chasm, and there, among other sights marvellous to relate, he saw a huge bronze horse, hollow inside. There was an aperture in the horse's flank, and looking through this he saw in its belly the corpse of a man, of more than human size. No clothing was on it nor any accoutrements, only a gold ring on one finger. This Gyges took, and turned back out of the cavern. A few days later he returned to the assembly of shepherds in which the business was to elect an envoy to take the king, month by month, the proceeds of his flocks. When Gyges had taken his place among the rest, he noticed that if he happened to turn inwards the jewel set in the ring, it came about at once that no one could see him, and they all talked about him just as if he had not been present. Amazed at this, he turned the bezel of the ring outwards again and began at once to be visible to the herdsmen. When he had tested this carefully and often, and had ascertained that the ring had this power to make him invisible when the jewel faced himself and visible when it faced towards others, he contrived to get himself sent by the shepherds as their envoy to the king. He went off, seduced the king's wife, and plotted with her to murder the king. After disposing of him, and marrying the queen, he rapidly became king from being a shepherd - and all because of the ring of destiny. Plato mentions the same in the Republic, book 10. Cicero also refers to this in the De officiis, book 3. Herodotus, in his first book, tells the story very differently, without making any mention of a ring. Very similar to this is the cap of Orcus, which I shall mention in another place.

There is not much difference between this and the 'magic wand': by this we mean that whatever we desire we obtain, as if by divine aid and without the help of man. It was thought in Antiquity that the carrying of wands, like rings, held some fated and as it were, magical virtue. Cicero in his De officiis, book i: 'But if all that is essential to our wants and comfort were supplied by some magic wand, as they say...' Varro's Magic Wand is also quoted sometimes in Nonius Marcellus, so that clearly this was the title of one of his Menippean Satires, most of which of course had proverbial titles. The adage seems to be derived particularly from the wand in Homer, which he attributes to Pallas, so famous that the founder of the Cynic sect, Antisthenes, wrote a book about it, comparing it, I imagine, with his own staff. Homer mentions this in many places; when it changes Ulysses suddenly from a dreary old man into a youth and makes him spruce and handsome (Odyssey 13): 'Having spoken thus Athena touched him with her wand.' Again, turning him from a youth into an old man, Odyssey 16: 'Standing close by, Pallas struck the Ithacan Ulysses / And with her rod made him an old man again.' In the same book, again, when she turns him back into a youth and increases his strength: 'Athena spoke, and touched him with her golden wand.' In the same way he credits Mercury, as an enchanter, with a wondrous wand which he calls a caduceus, Odyssey 24:
And in his hands he held a wand, golden and fair;
With it he soothes the eyes of men with sleep,
If he so wills, or waves their sleep away.
He says almost the same in Odyssey 5 and in Iliad 24:
Straight then he shod his feet with lovely sandals
Golden, ambrosial-scented, and they bore him
Through limpid air and over boundless lands
Swift as the wind: with him he took the rod
With which he soothes the eyes of men with sleep,
If so he wills, or waves their sleep away.
Virgil, in imitation of this, describes his caduceus in the fourth Aeneid:
He takes the rod: with this he calls from death
The pallid shades, and with it others sends
To the sad underworld.
He gives sleep, takes it back,
Opens the eyes in death; and on this wand
Trusting, he drives the winds, and sails along
Through the wild clouds.
Circe was not without her wand for performing marvels, when she transformed the companions of Ulysses: 'Striking them with a wand she drove them to join the pigs, / And lo, they had the heads of swine.' Then a little further on: 'When Circe strikes you with her long long wand.' A little later, Ulysses is the only one to have drunk from Circe's cup without being transformed into a beast: 'But when I drained the drink she gave, / She did not enchant me, striking with her wand.' Finally when to please Ulysses Circe restored his companions to their former shapes, she made use of her wand.
Indeed, even in Hebrew literature Moses uses a rod in performing miracles. He changed it into a snake, he restored it to its first shape, with it he turned the river water into blood, killing the fish, he called forth lice, he divided the waves of the Red Sea, he struck the rock and called out a stream of water.
Perhaps one might add here that kings also have a wand attributed to them, called a sceptre: hence in several places in Homer, 'sceptre-bearing kings.' The same meaning is to be found in the adage we have quoted elsewhere, 'I bear the staff of bay.'

Euripides in the Bacchae: Μωρὰ γὰρ μωρὸς λέγει, Fools in their folly speak. Our prophet Isaiah expresses the same thing in just the same words. Seneca to Lucilius: 'The Greeks have a proverb that as men's life is, so is their talk.' What this was like is not clear, except that there is a verse very like it current in Greek: 'Man's character is known from what he says.' In Laertius, the philosopher Democritus called speech 'the mirror of life,' a sort of reflection of it, as it were. Nothing could be said more truly. For no mirror reflects the bodily appearance better or more definitely than speech reflects the image of the heart. Men are discerned by their words just as brazen vessels are by their resonance.

Even today too it is a very common popular expression 'to tear the cloak,' meaning to retain a guest with eagerness, or to invite him with urgency; people who do this lay hands on the travelling-cloak as if trying to force someone to stay. This adage springs from Antiquity, like many others. Cicero Letters to Atticus, book 13, speaking of Varro, says: 'He called, and at such an hour I had to ask him to stay. But I took care not to tear his coat (I remember your phrase, "they were many and we were unprepared"). No use! Soon after came C. Capito and T. Carinas. Their coats I hardly touched. However they stayed.'

Ωτίων πιστότεροι ὀφθαλμοί, Eyes are to be believed rather than ears. What is seen is more certain than what is heard. So Horace: 'Wide-open ears / Entrusted secrets ill retain.' Again in the Art of Poetry:
Tidings that come by ear we find
Less actively distress the mind,
Than what the looker-on espies
Thrust plainly'neath his faithful eyes.
Though perhaps that is a little different. Closer to the meaning is Plautus' phrase when he called a bawd's hands 'eyed' not 'eared,' meaning that in the end they believe only what they see. Again, when people wish to represent a story as actual fact, they use a word derived from historein, which means 'to see.' Finally there is that fiction of Virgil's about the two gates of the underworld, one of ivory, by which is meant what comes out of the mouth, because of the ivory whiteness of the teeth, and the other of horn, by which is meant what is seen by the eyes, because of the blackness of the pupil. In a word, ears do more for knowing, eyes are surer in producing confidence. And so in ordinary speech, when someone tells an unlikely story, we usually enquire if he has seen these things. If he says no, he only heard them, he gets laughed at.
The proverb is found in Julian's letter to Leontius, 'A certain Thurian saying has it, men's ears are less faithful than their eyes.' He called it Thurian to indicate that Herodotus was the author of the saying, either because of his divine inspiration, or because that writer lived and died at Thurii; however it was taken from his Clio, 'For ears are less faithful to men than eyes.'