Adagia 201–300

Annaeus Seneca was a man, as Tacitus said, of a very pleasant wit; this is clear from that amusing skit which he wrote against Claudius Caesar, and which has recently come to light in Germany. In this short work he mentions an adage, One ought to be born a king or a fool. It is best to give his very words: 'As for me,' he says, `I know I have gained my freedom from the fact that the end has come for that man who proved the truth of the proverb, One ought to be born a king or a fool.' And again in the same book, 'He killed in one and the same house Crassus, Magnus, Scribonia, Bassionia, the Assarii, although they were noble, while Crassus was such a fool that he might have reigned.' In another place, though the allusion is less clear, he refers to the same thing in his line 'He snapped the royal thread of a stupid life.' If Hesiod is right in the view that a popular saying is never meaningless, perhaps it would not be beside the point to inquire what can have given rise to this proverb, uniting as it does two such dissimilar things - a king and a fool - with the obvious intention of drawing a parallel between the two. Especially as it is the particular distinction of kings (and the only true royal one) to surpass all others in wisdom, prudence, and watchfulness. Well, everyone agrees that those famous kings of old time were for the most part well endowed with stark stupidity; one can see this in the fables of the poets on the one hand, in the writings of the historians on the other. Homer, for instance (and the writers of tragedy after him), makes his Agamemnon ambitious rather than wise. What could be more stupid than to purchase the title of commander-in-chief by the cruel slaughtering of an only daughter? What could be more idiotic than to be up in arms so childishly for the sake of a chit from a barbarous land, and then when he couldn't keep his sweetheart, to snatch the girl belonging to Achilles, and put the whole army in danger? And then there is Achilles himself- how foolishly he rages when bereft of his lady-love and how childishly he goes crying to his mother! And yet he is the one whom the poet sets before us as the perfect example of an excellent prince. Look at Ajax, and his unwise anger; look at Priam, and his senile maunderings when he embraces Helen - that shameless creature - and calls her his daughter, and declares he has no regrets for that war which brought him such disasters, bereaved him of so many children, plunged him into such mourning so often - and all so that Paris should not fail to possess his girl. Why say more? The whole of the Iliad, long as it is, has nothing in it, as Horace says in an elegant line, but `the passions of foolish kings and foolish peoples.' The Odyssey also has its dense and stupid suitors and characters like Alcinous. Even Hercules himself is described as sturdy and spirited, but heavy and doltish in mind. Indeed Hesiod (whom some think older than Homer) calls princes 'gift-greedy' and 'childish' - I suppose on account of their small wisdom in government, and the way they strained after the accumulation of riches by fair means and foul, rather than after the public good. So they imagine old Midas, wearing his asses' ears as a mark of stupidity. And I think perhaps this is the place to mention how the earliest theologians - that is, the poets - attribute wisdom to Apollo and to Minerva, but to Jove, the ruler of gods and men, they leave nothing but the threeforked lightning, and that nod and that eyebrow which makes all Olympus tremble. Moreover, what profligate, what buffoon ever fooled so foolishly, or was more vilely vile, than this character whom they make ruler of the world? He deceives his wife with tricks, turning himself into a swan, a bull, a shower of gold; he rigs up traps for women, suborns his Ganymedes, fills heaven with bastards. In the same way Neptune and Pluto are painted as fierce and ruthless, but they are not credited with wisdom. But suppose we dismiss the legends and turn to more recent times, to history: how much sense do you think Croesus King of Lydia had, if he was truly such as Herodotus paints him, so relying on his treasure of jewels and gold that he was angry with Solon for refusing him the name of `fortunate'? Or what could be imagined more idiotic than Xerxes, when he sent messengers to Mount Athos, to terrify it with most scornful and threatening letters, or ordered so many lashes to be given to the Hellespont? Alexander the Great showed a no less kingly stupidity when he renounced his father and took pleasure in being greeted as the son of Jove, when he competed in drinking to excess, when he allowed himself to be worshipped as god by the flatterers in his banquets, when he complained that this world was too small for his victories, and took to the ocean to find other worlds to conquer. I leave aside all the others, the Dionysiuses, the Ptolemies, the Juliuses, the Neros, the Tiberiuses, the Caligulas, the Heliogabaluses, the Commoduses, and the Domitians - among whom one arrogated to himself the name of god when he was unworthy of the name of man, another exposed himself to be laughed to scorn by his very flatterers, another urged by ambition shook the whole world with meaningless wars. But I look rather silly myself when I embark on this catalogue, and as they say, seek water in the sea. You merely have to turn over the chronicles of both the ancients and the moderns, and you will find that in several centuries there have been barely one or two princes who did not by sheer stupidity bring disaster to human affairs. A prince, indeed, is either a fool to the immense detriment of the whole world, or a wise man to the immense benefit of all; although it is easier to do badly than well, and the harm he does spreads or rather pervades everything more quickly than the good. But nowadays we see some princes who aspire to anything except the one thing which would make them deserve the name of prince; and stupid subjects, who admire everything in their kings except the one thing needful. 'He is young'; that would recommend him as a bridegroom to a bride, not as a prince to the state. 'He is good-looking'; that is the right praise for a woman. 'He is broad-shouldered, broad-flanked'; if you were praising an athlete, that would be the way to do it. 'He is strong and can stand hard toil'; that is a testimonial for a batman or a houseboy. 'He has a large store of gold'; you are describing an active moneylender. 'He is eloquent'; that's what dazzles me in a sophist. 'He sings well, he dances well'; that is the way to praise flute-players and actors, not kings. 'He has no equal in drinking' - for former princes actually delighted in this commendation! It would be fitter praise for a sponge. 'He is tall, and stands head and shoulders above the rest'; that's splendid, if one wants to reach something down from a high place. As for saying 'He's a skilled dice player, he's good at chess,' that is praise shared with the lowest idlers, and a prince should be ashamed of it. You may heap up everything - public refinement, gold and jewels, ancestral images, a pedigree drawn from Hercules (or from Codrus or Cecrops if you prefer), but unless you tell me of a mind far removed from vulgar foolishness, free from sordid desires for worthless things, and from the prejudices of the herd, I have not heard any praise worthy of a king. For it was not ill-advisedly that the divine Plato wrote that the only way for a state to attain happiness was for the supreme command to be given to philosophers, or else, inversely, that those who govern should themselves follow philosophy. And to follow philosophy is not just to wear a mantle and to carry a bag round, or let your beard grow. What is it then? It is to despise those things which the common herd goggles at, and to think quite differently from the opinions of the majority. And I don't see how it is possible for a man who thinks he is free to do just what he likes, who marvels at riches as if they were important, who thinks even a sworn oath may be set aside for the sake of power, who is captivated by empty glory, who is a slave to shameful lust, who is terrified of death - I just can't see how such a man can play the part of a beneficent king. The first requisite is to judge rightly about each matter, because opinions are like springs from which all the actions of life flow, and when they are contaminated everything must needs be mismanaged. The next essential is to recoil from evil and to be led towards good. For true wisdom consists not only in the knowledge of truth, but in the love and eager striving for what is good. You may well find among rulers one who can see that it is not possible to go to war without grave disaster to human affairs, and that an old obsolete claim to sovereignty is not very important - and yet he will plunge everything into war merely out of ambition. There may be one who can see that the greatest curse of a state comes from appointing as magistrates, not those who can be of the most use to the public weal by their prudence, experience and integrity, but those who can bid the highest sums - and yet he will be impelled by avarice to look after the treasury and let the abuse go on. And there is another who understands that the duty of a prince, who takes taxes from all, is to look after everyone's interest, to preside over trials, to stamp out crime, to watch the magistrature, to amend . useless laws. And yet he is called away from this business by pleasures, which do not give him the time to attend to matters worthy of a ruler. Another is conscious that he has it in his power to confer a great benefit on the human race, but at the risk of his life; and anyone who thinks it is the most terrible thing to die, will fail in duty to the state at this point. And so first of all the mind of the prince must be freed from all false ideas, so that he can see what is truly good, truly glorious, truly splendid. The next thing is to instil the hatred of what is base, the love of what is good, so that he can see clearly what is becoming to a prince, and wish for nothing but what is worthy of a good and beneficent ruler. Let him recognize the good where it may be found, and always measure everything by it, never varying from this aim. This is what is meant by wisdom, and it is in this that the prince must so far excel other mortals, as he excels them in dignity, in wealth, in splendour, and in power. If only all Christian princes would copy that wisest of all kings, who when he was given a free choice of a boon from Him to whom nothing is impossible, wished for wisdom alone, and that wisdom by which he might rightly govern his people! And pray what did he teach his own son, but the love and following of wisdom? It is for this reason that the Egyptians make a symbolic representation of a prince by drawing an eye and a sceptre. Indeed what the eye is to the body, so is a true prince to the people; the sun is the eye of the world, the prince the eye of the multitude. As the mind is to the body, so is the prince to the state; the mind knows, the body obeys. And if the mind commands the body, it is for the body's good; it does not rule for itself like a tyrant, but for that which is in its charge. Above all, the good ruler is the living portrayal of God, who rules the universe. And the closer the prince conforms to the lines of the original, the more magnificent he is. God is all-seeing, all-feeling, and swayed by no passions. He is greatest in power, but at the same time greatest in goodness. He does good to all, even the unworthy. He deals no punishments, except rarely and when he must. He governs this world for us and not for himself. All the reward he asks is to do good. But the evil prince, on the contrary, seems to be the copy of the devil, and to act in his stead. Either he knows nothing, or what he knows is how to bring about public disaster. What power he has, he uses to harm the state. And though it is in his power to do a great deal of harm to everybody, he would like to do even more than he can. Nothing is nobler than a good king, nothing better, nothing nearer God; equally, nothing is worse than a bad prince, nothing viler, nothing more like the devil. There is something divine about a beneficent prince, but no wild beast is more destructive than a tyrant. And a tyrant is whoever wields power for himself, whatever name his paintings and statues give him. It is not for us to pass judgment, as it were, upon the great ones of the earth, but yet we are obliged - not without sorrow - to feel the lack in Christian princes of that high wisdom of which we have spoken. All these revolutions, treaties made and broken, frequent risings, battle and slaughter, all these threats and quarrels, what do they arise from but stupidity? And I rather think that some part of this is due to our own fault. We do not hand over the rudder of the ship to anyone but a skilled steersman, when nothing is at stake but four passengers or a small cargo; but we hand over the state, in which so many thousands of people are in peril, to the first comer. If anyone is to be a coachman, he learns the art, spends care and practice; but for anyone to be a king, we think it is enough for him to be born. And yet to rule a kingdom well, as it is the finest of all functions, is also the most difficult by far. You choose the man who is to have charge of a ship; but you do not choose the man to whom you are entrusting so many cities, so many human lives? But there it is, the thing is so established that it is impossible to root it out. Kings are born, and whoever may have been picked out by chance, whether he be good or bad, stupid or wise, sane or clouded in mind, as long as he looks like a human being, he is to be entrusted with supreme power in the state. By his will the world is to be thrown into an uproar with wars and slaughter, all things sacred and profane are to be turned upside down. But if this is a thing which we cannot change, the next best plan would be to improve matters by careful education; and if we may not choose a suitable person to be our ruler, we must strive to try to make that person suitable whom fate has given us. We see with what care and solicitude and watchfulness a father brings up his son, who is the future master of one estate. How much more care, then, should be spent on the education of one who, if good, will be so to the immense benefit of all, and if bad, will bring about the ruin of all - one on whose nod hangs the safety or the destruction of the world? With what rules and precepts of philosophy must that mind be fortified, not only against such great calamities as may arise in a state, but against the favour of fortune, so often accompanied by pride and stupidity; against pleasures, which can corrupt the best natures; still more against the dangerous fawning of flatterers, and that poisonous 'Bravo!' which they chant - particularly when the prince is acting most like a madman. It seems 2 to me that he should have attached to him, while still an infant, some skilful educator; for no one can truly be fashioned into a prince, except long before he knows that he is what he is. In the early days, I say, a preceptor should be appointed, and we should take all the more care in choosing him because we are not free to choose our prince - but we are free to educate him. Let him instil into this childish mind, as yet blank and malleable, opinions worthy of a prince; arm it with the best principles of conduct, show it the difference between a true prince and a tyrant, and lay before its very eyes what a god-like thing is a beneficent ruler, what a loathsome hateful brute is a tyrant. He will explain that a ruler who wields power for himself and not for . the state is no prince, but a robber; that there is no difference between pirates and pirate-minded princes, except that the latter are more powerful and can bring so much more disaster on human affairs. He will impress on his pupil that he can be of use to so many thousands of people - nay, to the whole world, by simply behaving as one good and wise man. He will teach : that among Christians supreme rule means administration of the state, and not dominion. It may bear the name of supreme rule, but he must remember that he is ruling over free men, and over Christians, that is, people who are twice free. In addition, for a person to be a prince it is not enough to be born, to have ancestral statues, the sceptre and the crown. What makes a prince is . a mind distinguished for its wisdom, a mind always occupied with the safety of the state, and looking to nothing but the common good. He will warn his pupil not to judge himself by the plaudits of the stupid populace or the praise of flatterers, not to do anything on the impulsion of hatred, love, or anger, or at the urge of any passion. When he appoints magistrates, creates . laws, or in his other duties, he must work for one end only, for good, and for the people's benefit. It is not enough if he himself does harm to no one - the prince is also the guarantor of the uprightness of his officials. The glory of a prince does not lie in extending his sway, in removing his neighbours by force of arms; but if he happens to acquire the sovereignty of a region, he must make it flourish by justice, by wise economy, and the other arts of peace. The teacher will recommend him to be particularly inclined to serve the cause of good men, to be ready to pardon, and with the attitude towards punishment of a friendly doctor, who amputates or cauterizes the limb which he despairs of healing; to be careful to avoid everything from which he can foresee the danger of evil to the state. Above all, he is to shun war in every way; other things give rise to this or that calamity, but war lets loose at one go a whole army of wrongs. These principles and others like them should be impressed on the child's mind, with the help of the maxims of the wise and the examples of esteemed princes. What actually happens is that no kind of man is more corruptly or carelessly brought up than those whose education is of such importance to so many people. The baby who is to rule the world is handed over to the stupidest of womenkind who are so far from instilling anything in his mind worthy of a prince, that they discourage whatever the tutor rightly advises, or whatever inclination to gentleness the child may have in himself - and they teach him to act like a prince, that is like a tyrant. Then no one fails to fawn and flatter. The courtiers applaud, the servants obey his every whim, even the tutor is obsequious; and he is not doing this to make the prince more beneficial to his country, but to ensure a splendid future for himself. The cleric who is popularly called his confessor, is obsequious too - he has some bishopric in mind. There is flattery from the judges, flattery from playmates and companions; so that Carneades was right when he said that the only art kings could learn properly was the art of riding, because only a horse makes no distinction between prince and peasant and is unable to flatter. He just tosses off the rider who is not skilful enough to stay on his back, no matter who it may be. One of the earliest lessons is pomp and pride; he is taught that whatever he wants, he can have. He hears that the property of everyone belongs to the prince, that he is above the law; that the whole paraphernalia of government, laws and policies exist stored in the prince's mind. He hears the terms sacred majesty, serene highness, divinity, god on earth, and other such superb titles. In short, while he is yet a boy, all he learns to play at is being a tyrant. Then he is caught up among the girls; they all allure and admire and defer to him. The effeminate crew of young friends is there, and they have no other topic for jokes or conversation but girls. Next there are other diversions - gaming, dancing, feasting, lute-playing, gadding about; the best years of his life are used up like this. If he takes a fancy to beguile his leisure by reading, he reads old wives' tales, or what is worse, historical romances. His mind is not in the least equipped with any antidote, and he imbibes from them an enthusiasm - what the Greeks call zeal - for some pernicious hero, say Julius Caesar or Xerxes or Alexander the Great. And what suits him best in them is the worst. They furnish the worst example, they foster the craziest urges. Now imagine, if you please, an intelligence not selected from among many, as should be the case, but a very ordinary mind, and an education so corrupt that it would corrupt the mentality of an Aristides; then imagine the poison of flattery, frolic and pleasure (which don't agree very well with wisdom), luxurious living, wealth and magnificence, the sense of power; all this at an age of ruthlessness and inclined naturally to bad courses. Add finally the tainting of the mind by false ideas. And can you wonder if, coming from this early environment to the administration of a kingdom, he doesn't do it very wisely?
'But never mind,' they say, 'he's young, he'll learn by experience.' But the prince must never be young, even if he is young in years. Any prudence which is won from experience is of a sorry kind, and sorriest of all in a prince. The prince's prudence will be too dearly bought by the country, if he only learns by waging war that war is the thing he must avoid at all costs; or if he fails to understand that public offices must be given to upright men, until he sees the state tottering through the audacity of evildoers. Don't tell me that those who wish to learn to sing to the lute will spoil several lutes in the process, before they learn the art, as Xenophon said; that would mean that the prince would only learn to administer his state by the ruin of the state. It is not therefore much to be wondered at, if we see things going absolutely contrary to the way they should; when instead of the passions which arise from the body being controlled by the mind the disturbances in the mind spread out into the body, when the eyes see less than the rest of the body sees, when the person who is most pernicious and harmful to the public is the very person who should be beneficial to all, acting in place of God. Do we not see fine cities, created by the people, overthrown by the princes? Or a state enriched by the toil of its citizens, and looted by the princes' greed? Plebeian lawyers make good laws, princes violate them; the people seek for peace, the princes stir up war.
I think these are the things which give rise to this adage, from which somehow or other we have digressed a long way; but now we return to it. So it is said, One ought to be born a king or a fool, because the primitive kings were of that sort, as the ancients tell - and may the princes of our day be altogether different! For everything is permitted to fools, because of the weakness of their minds. And everything is praised in kings, because of their power. There is perhaps another way of understanding the saying, in reference to the equal happiness of kings and fools; because whatever a king wants is provided by fortune, and fools are no less fortunate because of their selfsatisfaction, it allows them to think they have no lack of good gifts. And in fact the proverb seems to have originated among the Romans, who hated the name of king as barbaric and tyrannous, and contrary to political freedom, of which they at that time were the most enthusiastic supporters.

Ψεκάδες ὄμβρον γεννῶσαι, Tiny drops that produce a shower: suitable whenever a thing which is small at the outset grows into something large. As for instance in Plautus, Menaechmi: 'Now your leaves are falling, then the trees will fall.' So it behoves us to be watchful about small things, lest we should little by little fall into some great trouble, as the proverbial line warns us: 'Great things you'll lose, unless you watch the small.' The Greek word (psekas) means a thin drizzle, such as comes even from mist when fairly thick.

Αοινος μέλη, Drunkenness without wine. Theophrastus, as Plutarch tells us in his'Table-talk,' called barbers' shops'teetotal drunkenness' because as people sat in them, doing nothing, they became so drunk with speech that they poured out everything they had in their minds just as drunkards do in their cups, pouring out words all the time in a sort of intoxication, words which in the end will cut their throats, as Pliny says. Horace calls insolence drunkenness, 'intoxicated with fortune's favours.' There is a common name, 'the drunkenness of the bread-basket,' for arrogance and the moral licence which often goes with prosperity, and this is much more dangerous than the kind induced by wine. The heat of wine, indeed, is calmed down by a few hours, or even by sleep; but the other kind is prone to last in many cases right to the end of life.

'To bear the palm,' 'to award the palm,"to carry off the palm,' and suchlike expressions, even if they seem straightforward through their frequent use, are yet a proverbial figure of speech. The palm does not itself signify victory, but a tree 'with leaves perpetually green,' which the Greeks call phoinix. Why the metaphor should be taken particularly from this tree is a question answered, I think, by what Plutarch says in his'Table-talk,' that this tree alone was used for the crown common to all the sacred contests, whereas otherwise each game had its own tree or plant to mark the victor: such as the bay, olive, myrtle or celery. Some think that this was the tree sacred to Apollo before the bay, and that the oldest sign of victory was the palm, not any other tree. Why this tree was chiefly selected by the ancients for this use, Aulus Gellius tells in Attic Nights, book 3 chapter 6, where he writes that the palm-tree has a peculiar quality which agrees with the natural temper of brave men: 'for if,' he says, 'you place a heavy weight on the wood from this tree, and so increase the pressure that the weight of the burden cannot be borne, the palm does not break down nor bend but reacts against the weight, pushes upwards and makes a rising curve.' He quotes authorities for this amazing thing, Aristotle in Problemata, book 7, and Plutarch in the 'Table-talk,' book 8. And I found the words of Plutarch on this subject in the book cited by Gellius: 'For the wood of the palm-tree, if you subject it to great pressure under a weight, is not bent downwards, but curves the other way, just as if it were resisting the violence done to it by the weight. This very thing happens also in contests between athletes. For those who yield to their opponents through weakness and lack of spirit are pushed out of the way by them. But those who persevere steadfastly in this exercise are borne forward and strengthened not only in physical force but in quality of mind.' Pliny says the same thing in his sixteenth book, chapter 42: 'Fir and larch are strong for bearing weight, even when placed transversely. Oak and olive bend and give under a weight, but those others resist, and are not easily broken; if they give way it is from decay rather than strain. And the palm is the most robust of trees, for it curves the other way. But the poplar would spread under any downward weight; the palm, on the contrary, takes the form of an arch.' Theophrastus says the same in his fifth book on plants. This virile force of mind, corresponding to the native strength of the palmtree, is aptly described by Virgil, when he says: 'You must not yield to affliction, but go forth all the more daringly, / As your fortune allows you.' And that passage of Horace is not unlike it:
Like some tough-grained oak, lopped by the woodman
On Algidus, that dark-browed, verdurous mountain:
It bleeds, it feels the shock
Yet draws in vigour from the very axe,
Flourishing as fiercely as the severed Hydra
Sprouted at chafing Hercules. Old Cadmus'
Dragon-sown fields at Thebes
Never pushed up a prodigy like this.
Whelm it in water, it will come up brighter,
Throw it, and it will grapple with the winner
Again and take the applause.
The wars they wage breed tales for wives to tell.

Λειπέ τι καὶ Μήδοις, Leave a remnant for the Medes too, is a proverbial jest against people who leave nothing after a banquet, or who waste their whole substance. Plutarch in the 'Table-talk': 'This is a common saying among us Boeotians, "Leave something for the Medes," from the time when the Medes invaded Phocis and the farthest borders of Boeotia, harassing and distressing everything with devastation.' However he adds what is still currently said today: 'Leave something for the guests who are to come.' The proverb can be applied in various ways: ironically, as if one were to say to a rich man who proposed to leave his wealth to unworthy and wasteful heirs 'Leave something for the Medes too', meaning 'You save up, and your savings will be spent by those who bear you ill will'; or it may be said to a wildly extravagant person, or one who talks too much out of season, as in the Phormio of Terence: 'Stop, if you please, that you may have power with her.'

Θεῶν χεῖρες, Hands of the Gods. In old days they used to say (ironically, I suppose) that remedies were efficacious when they were made up from various ingredients brought from far away; just the things which doctors and apothecaries use today to trick the public. Plutarch in the 'Table-talk,' fourth decade, mentions the proverb, at the same time quoting from Erasistratus, who disapproved of such doctors' mixtures: 'But much more when they make the royal and effective mixtures which they used to call "the hands of the gods." Erasistratus exposes the absurdity and useless inquisitiveness of those who mixed into one potion mineral, vegetable and animal ingredients, mingling in one whatever earth or sea produced. But he would approve if omitting these things they had confined their art of healing to barley-water, cupping-glasses and oil-and-water cures. But dear me, how the mere variety of things imposes on us and stirs up longing!' Thus far Plutarch. Galen recalls this adage, in his sixth tractate, quoting from Erophilus. We may also add at this point in passing the words of Pliny, by which he censures the mixtures made by the doctors. They are in the preface to book 24: 'Hence sprang the art of medicine. Such things alone had Nature decreed should be our remedies, provided everywhere, easy to discover and costing nothing - the things in fact which support our life. Later on man's usual perfidy and the art of laying traps for human nature led to the invention of the quack laboratories, in which each customer is provided with a new lease of his own life at a price. At once compound prescriptions and mysterious mixtures are glibly repeated, Arabia and India are valued as the storehouse of remedies, and a small sore is charged with the cost of a medicine from the Red Sea, although the genuine remedies form the daily dinner of even the poorest. For if a plant were to be sought in the kitchen-garden, or a shrub were to be procured thence, none of the arts would become cheaper than medicine.' Thus far Pliny.

Nothing is more widely known even today than this saying of Terence 'So many men, so many opinions,' and in the same author there is a similar phrase, 'every man has his own way.' Persius also: 'Men are of a thousand kinds, and diverse the colour of their lives; / Each has his own desires; no two offer the same prayer.' In the same class is that remark in an epigram that one may find people who are willing to yield in the matter of family acres, but not one who will give way on a matter of opinion. Horace adds an elegant metaphor: 'Three guests I have, of wishes quite contrary; / As their tastes differ, so their orders vary.' It was Horace, too, who devoted the first ode of all to the subject of this proverb, ie that different people are led by different interests, that some have one thing at heart and some another. Terence, in the Phormio, plays upon this in jest when he says of three advisers, 'the first says yes, the second says no, and the third says "Let's think about it."' St Paul the Apostle seems to have made a reference to this when he says that for the putting aside of strife, we should allow every man to have his own convictions. If the general run of theologians had listened to this advice, there would not now be such fierce contention about little questions of no moment at all; for there certainly are some things of which one may remain in ignorance without any lack of piety. The same thought is expressed at greater length by Euripides in the Phoenissae: If what were fair and wise were so to all Disputing strife would not exist for men, But now for mortals naught is 'like' nor 'same,' Only the words may happen to agree, In deed and fact no likeness can be found. Again in the Hippolytus Crowned: 'This man, this God, is after their own heart / To some, not so to others.' Homer thought of this in the Odyssey, book 14: 'For one man takes delight in certain things, / Another in others.'

This is found among the Greek collections of proverbs: "ἄκουε τοῦ τὰ τέσσαρα ὦτα ἔχοντος", Listen to him who has four ears. Zenodotus contributes an interpretation on these lines: a reply was given by an oracle to Entimus of Crete and Antiphemus of Rhodes, saying that they should watch the one who had four ears. He was in fact a robber named Phoenix, of whom the oracle was warning them to beware. But why he was said to have four ears is not easy to understand: whether he really had them, or the phrase is to be taken allegorically as meaning that he had spies posted in four places. However, as they regarded the god's reply as nonsense and paid no heed to it, they met with the robber and were destroyed by him; and it is thought that the proverb arose in popular speech from this event. But an explanation which appeals more to me is the one given by the same author out of Aristophanes the grammarian: that the Spartans used to make a figure of Apollo with four ears and as many hands, either because, as Sosibius says, Apollo was seen by them in this guise as they fought at Amyclae, or to indicate, as I for my part conjecture, that the wise man must hear as many things as possible, and test them out by the experience of life. It was certainly believed by the ancients that no oracle was to be trusted more than those of Apollo. Hence the current saying 'Straight from the tripod.' And the proverb is a warning that it is necessary to listen to those who are wiser than others because of their long and varied experience, as old men usually are. It is for this reason that the speech of Nestor is praised in Homer, as being worthy to be listened to by all, and in the Odyssey, book 2, the poet shows the grand old man Aegyptius being first to speak: 'Bent was he with his years, yet much he knew.' Euripides had the same idea in the Phoenissae, and this is the passage Lucian was referring to in Hercules Gallicus. I thought I should mention this in passing, because that dialogue is one of many which I translated into Latin, and the allusion is somewhat obscure. But I will give the poet's lines. These are the words of Jocasta, already old, to Eteocles, her young son. I have translated them as follows: My son Eteocles, not everything is evil Which old age has; for through experience, Knowing the world, it has some power to speak Better, more prudently than untaught youth. Our own common folk say the same thing, in less elegant terms perhaps, but with an apt metaphor, when they say 'an old dog's bark is worth listening to,' meaning it is best not to turn a deaf ear when old men issue a warning of danger. For old dogs do not bark without reason, as young ones do.

Αεὶ γὰρ πίπτουσιν οἱ διὸς κύβοι, Always the dice fall happily for Jove. A line of poetry proverbially famous, and usually applied to people for whom everything always falls out as they wish, by some favouritism of fortune. Obviously it is taken from the throw of the dice, perhaps because it was observed in antiquity that Jove's dice were the luckier ones; the custom being for players to preface their throws by uttering the names of gods or men, to bring good luck. A throw dedicated to Venus was counted among the lucky ones, as the proverb shows, 'If you throw often, you'll sometime throw a Venus.' Or we may prefer to see in it a reference to the victory of Jove and the story of discomfited Juno. Some think this applies to people who are properly punished for their deeds, as if Jove would not suffer a fault to go unavenged. It seems to me that it would not be improper to apply it also to powerful and fortunate men, whose deeds are applauded even when they are not quite creditable; as the proverbial verse has it, 'Great men's concerns will always turn out well.' What is said by Euripides in the tragedy called the Phoenissae is not unlike this: 'All things are easy for the gods,' and what is often found in Homer: 'The gods can do all things.'

Θεσσαλών σόφισμα, A trick of the Thessalians. Suidas writes that this can be applied to various uses: to those who desert their place in the line of battle, to those who adopt a luxurious type of dress, to those who circumvent someone else by trickery. It is thought that the source of the proverb is a story of this kind. A certain Aratus, a Thessalian, had a reply from an oracle, to the effect that he should take care not to be privately defeated by people who were appealing to the oracle against him and bringing a more important and magnificent offering. As soon as he heard this, he pronounced a vow that he would sacrifice a hundred men's heads to the god. Later, when he had completed to his satisfaction the affairs for which he had come, he put off indefinitely the performance of his vow, under the pretext that it was not virtuous enough, and unworthy of Apollo. The result of this, they say, was that every year after this the people would customarily promise a hecatomb to this god, but the promise was never carried out.
Euripides in the Phoenissae remarks on the trickery of the Thessalians: 'Eteocles then played the Thessalian trick, / Learnt in his own experience of that land.' And elsewhere: 'Many were present indeed, but faithless are the Thessalians.' So Demosthenes asserts in the First Olynthiac: 'Added to this,' he says, 'are the affairs of the Thessalians, always mistrusted by all men by their very nature.' This proverb is quoted by some writers in this form: 'Thessalian ways are never to be trusted.' The commentator on Aristophanes thinks that the proverb came from Jason, because he broke his promise to Medea, and she upbraids him with this, in Ovid in his Heroides. There is also a mention of the proverb by the writer who handed down to us the fragments of Athenaeus.

Θεσσαλικαὶ πτέρυγες, The wings of the Thessalians. A jesting proverbial allusion that used to be made to the garments with sleeves (which the Greeks call cheirodotoi) because these were worn by Thessalians, luxurious and pleasure-loving as they were. In Virgil the Trojans are reproached by their enemies for wearing this type of garment, as not manly enough: 'Their tunics have sleeves, their bonnets strings to tie.' In Plautus someone in Carthaginian dress, like an exotic bird, is ridiculed for his sleeves, hanging and spreading out on both sides like pointed wings.

Θεσσαλικὴ γυνὴ, A Thessalian woman. This was said of poisoners, skilled in evil arts; because that race was notorious above all others for this reason, as appears clearly from the Ass of Apuleius and from many other writers. So Horace in the Odes: 'What witch can rescue thee, / What wizard with Thessalian charms, what god?' Plautus in the Amphitryo calls a poisoner'the Thessalian.' And Strepsiades, in Aristophanes' Clouds, consults Socrates as to whether a Thessalian witch should be employed to pull the moon out of the sky, so that he would not have to pay his debts at the time of the new moon. It is thought that this superstition about Thessalians comes from Medea, who when she fled that way carried through the air, dropped a little box full of poisons and magic herbs; they were scattered abroad and sprouted everywhere. Pliny, book 30 chapter 1, tells us that magic was widespread among the Thessalians and was long called by their name, to such an extent that 'Menander, experienced in literary refinements, called a play A Woman o f Thessaly which dealt with the tricks of the women who drag down the moon.'

To rejoice in one's own bosom means to feel in oneself a silent joy, without doing as people commonly do, showing public signs of pleasure. Tibullus: 'Let the wise man keep his joy, / Hushed up within his bosom.' And Propertius too: 'Keep thy joy shut within thy silent bosom.' The same: 'To weep in one another's bosom'; this latter said of lovers,who pour out to each other the secrets of their hearts which they conceal from everyone else. Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, book 3: 'Then, as such things are not likely to win applause, let them keep their joy in their own hearts, let them cease to speak so boastfully.' Pliny the Younger, book 2 letter i: 'For these reasons I must pour my mourning into your bosom, as for his untimely death.' It is sometimes found in Seneca, as in letter 106: 'If you have not boasted of your good luck, but known how to keep your joy in your heart.' And indeed this figure of speech seems to be taken in turn from Homer, who says in the Odyssey, book 22: 'Rejoice in your bosom, old nurse, and be quiet.' 'In the bosom' means in your breast, not on the lips or on the brow, which are the features by which the common people usually betray what they are thinking in the depths of their soul. Cicero says in a letter to his brother Quintus: 'Believe me, he is my bosom friend, and I never ungird myself.' By these words he promises to keep silent, for he who ungirds himself lets go what has been entrusted to his bosom. Plutarch in the life of Cato of Utica seems to have used the term 'bosom' for intimate friendship: 'The consuls, Piso Calpurnius, who was the father of Caesar's wife, and Gabinius Paulus, a bosom friend of Pompey, as those people say who knew the character and life of the man.' Scaevola in the Pandects, book 22, title De probationibus, chapter 27, uses it in a somewhat different way: 'Because all the wealth and substance which he had inherited, if any, from his mother, I had in my bosom without security'; he says 'in my bosom' meaning 'in my power, committed in trust to me.' What we commit to the safe-keeping of another, we say we 'lay in his bosom.' So Terence: 'He gives her into my hand.'

Aulus Gellius writes that certain sayings of Publius the moralist, which were couched in everyday language, were often bandied about in common speech. This is one of them, more wholesome than any dictum of the philosophers: 'What can't be cured must be endured.' These words warn us that destined evils, when they cannot by any means be avoided nor warded off, can at least be alleviated by resignation. The same thing, in different words, is taught by Euripides in the Phoenissae, when he says 'The will of the gods one must endure,' and again at the end of the same play, `What the gods will, mortals needs must endure.' Homer, Odyssey, book 9: 'A sickness sent from great Jove can never be avoided.' Varro's shrewd saying comes in here: 'The faults of a wife must be cured or endured,' and the proverb which I shall mention in its place, 'You shall not kick against the pricks.'

A proverbial allegory, which we use to signify that something is upside down, that the proper arrangement of things is reversed, as for instance if a boy should admonish an old man, or a pupil try to teach his teacher, or a servant give orders to his master. The adage comes from Euripides, Medea:
Upwards flow the streams of sacred rivers,
Overturned are justice and tradition,
The plans of men are treacherous
And trust in the gods no longer fixed.
In these words the chorus is pointing out that the original order of things is reversed: men are using women's wiles and not abiding by their promises, while women are daring to do manly deeds. Lucian in Terpsion makes use of this proverb when the deceived legacy-hunter reproaches Pluto because he himself has been carried off by death as a mere youth, while the old man whose money he had desired to inherit is still alive, against all the natural order of things. 'This is a case of Upwards flow the streams,' he says. Again in his Apology for the essay On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'At any rate there is a big difference between your present life and your writing; this would be, as they say, Upwards flow the streams and all things overturned, and a recantation towards what is worse.' Diogenes Laertius uses this in his life of Diogenes the Cynic: he tells how Diogenes sent a message to his master, as if he were the lord and not the servant, that he should do what he had been ordered to do, and the master replied with the proverb, 'Upwards flow the streams of the sacred rivers'; 'but if you were ill,' Diogenes said, 'and had hired the doctor with your own money, would you follow his prescription or reply in that way, "Upwards flow the streams?"' Aristotle makes use of it in his Meteorologica. Virgil has an allusion to it in the Aeneid, when he says: 'Back flows Aufidus river from Adriatic waves.' Servius remarks here that a proverb is lying concealed, suggesting unlikelihood or inconsistency. Horace expresses it thus in the Odes:
Who shall deny that streams ascend
And Tiber's currents backward bend,
While you have all our hopes betrayed;
You, that far other promise made,
When all your volumes, learned store!
The treasure of Socratic lore,
Once bought at mighty price in vain,
Are sent to purchase arms in Spain?
Porphyrion noted that this was a proverb. Ovid, too, in his Heroides:
If Paris' breath shall fail not, once Oenone he doth spurn,
The waters of the Xanthus to their fount shall backward turn.
O Xanthus, backward haste; waters, to your springs again,
Oenone has been deserted, and Paris feels no pain.
Propertius again, 'Rivers begin to recall their waters to their fount.'

Aristophanes, in his comedy entitled the Frogs, quotes a splendid proverb; if only it were merely a matter of literature and not a feature of the life of almost every human being:
This is the mark of a man
Who has mind and wit and
Has often gone to sea,
He always rolls over, cautious man,
To the snug side of the ship.
The proverb may be expressed more succinctly as 'to incline towards the fortunate side.' The commentator on Aristophanes thinks it comes from voyagers by boat, who when the swell forces the ship down on one side immediately rush to the other, because it rises higher out of the waves. It may be applied to those who look after their own advantage by always attaching themselves to influential and wealthy friends; they are like flies, flitting to and fro round the smell of the kitchen, and what they look for in friendship is the solidest advantage, not loyalty. There are those who keep quiet while the outcome of a war is uncertain, but as soon as fortune has turned and it is clear which side is going to win, they join it at once. We read that Metius in Virgil was of this mind, and Polymnestor, who 'took the winning side' rather than keep the law of hospitality; he 'slew Polydorus and secured the gold / By force.' Aristophanes again, in the Plutus, aptly characterizes this sort of men. When Chremylus has become rich he complains of being deafened by the greetings of people who have smelt out his money: 'Hang you, be off! The nuisance these friends are, / Emerging suddenly when fortune smiles.' The phrase of Euripides in the Medea belongs here: 'Every friend shuns a man who's poor.' Antiphanes in the Progoni, cited by Athenaeus, book 6. 'Don't come near me, when things are going wrong.' The commentator remarks that there is a proverb lurking here, which is often applied to those who abandon the company of their friends as soon as they get into danger, but that the poet has inverted the sense and is alluding to the proverb usually expressed thus: 'Don't come near me, when things are going well.' Agreeing with this, there is the phrase of Euripides in the Orestes:
In desperate need ought friends to help their friends.
When Fortune gives her boons, what need of friends?
God's help suffices, when he wills to help.
The same poet came nearer to expressing the proverb in the same tragedy, except that he is applying a general dictum exclusively to heralds: Such is the herald tribe; lightly they skip
To Fortune's minions' side; their friend is he
Who in a state hath power and beareth rule.
Again in the Hercules furens: 'When things go well, a comrade for the voyage, / Offers himself, but not to the unlucky.' Here comes in, what Aristotle in the Ethica Eudemia, book 7, shows to be a proverb: 'Time shows who truly loves.' The passage of time proves friendship, and reveals those counterfeit friends.

As Terence has it in the Phormio, 'a man is a friend only to his friend.' Donatus points out that this is a proverb, and can be found in Apollodorus, who wrote a Phormio in Greek: 'He alone knows how to love his friends.' Aristophanes, quoted by Athenaeus:
But nothing care I for the common jests:
My friend's friend am I, not in words alone,
I aim to serve him both in act and deed.
The metaphor itself is proverbial on the face of it, as I showed in the beginning. It will fit those who refuse no duty, as long as it is a service to their friends. This seems close to what Euripides says in the Medea:'Harsh to a foe and kindly to a friend.' Theocritus in Aita:
They loved each other with an equal yoke:
Truly the men of old were golden then,
The loved one loved the lover in return.
Aristotle is quoted by Laertius as saying habitually: 'My friends, I have no friend,' meaning that true friendship has perished among mortals.

As Ovid wrote: 'Presents, believe me, buy both gods and men: / And Jove himself's appeased by offered gifts.' Euripides, in the Medea, shows that this was well-known in common speech, when he says:
There is a saying that gifts bend even gods;
Surely to mortal men the yellow gold
Has weight and power more than a hundred sayings.
This line of poetry is also celebrated, which Plato borrowed in his Republic, book 3: 'Gifts move the gods and venerable kings.' Hence Seneca, quoting a remark of some philosopher, says that of all things the sweetest is to receive.

Cicero says in some letter or other: 'Hands off your picture! The master is here sooner than we expected.' He seems to have been warning by this proverbial metaphor that there should be an end of writing witticisms. The allusion is clearly to a saying of the famous artist Apelles. 'When he was admiring the work of Protogenes, with its immense taking of pains and over-anxious care, he said that he and Protogenes were equal in all they did, or indeed Protogenes' work was the better, but there was one thing in which he himself had the advantage: Protogenes did not know when to take his hand from the picture. By this memorable precept he meant that overdiligence often does harm.' So says Pliny, book 35 chapter io. And so, when we wish to warn someone to draw back from the work or piece of business he has in hand, we shall tell him to take his hand from the picture. This is particularly applicable to over-meticulous writers, of peevish industry, who are forever poring over their writings, always adding, subtracting, altering, and whose greatest fault is that they are trying to avoid all faults.

Cicero in the Verrines quotes as an adage, 'I would rather buy than beg.' The meaning is that something bought with entreaty is not freely received; indeed, nothing is bought more dearly than what is given to an asker. That word 'I beg' is a harsh one to honourable minds, nor should it ever be awaited between friends, as Seneca says. The saying is derived from the custom of the ancients, by which one neighbour would beg from another such furnishings as he himself did not happen to have in the house. We can tell that this custom existed in old days from the Aulularia and Rudens of Plautus. Apuleius in his Florida says: 'The man who asks is buying at a substantial rate; the man who is asked receives no inconsiderable price; so it is preferable for you to buy all you need rather than beg for it.' The same idea is conveyed with more obscurity but with elegance, by a proverb well known in Greek, which I shall give in another place: 'Pray for plenty for your neighbour, but still more for your pot,' signifying that it is a desirable thing to have a rich neighbour from whom one can borrow what one has not got of one's own, but it is much better to possess oneself in one's own house whatever is needful for daily life.

A proverbial hyperbole, I would not turn a hand, meaning 'it does not trouble me,' 'it is no concern of mine.' For nothing is easier than to turn the hand. It is found, among other places, in Apuleius, Apology for Magic: 'As for what Mezentius thinks about me I would not turn a hand'; Cicero too, in De finibus, book 5: 'They would not raise a hand.' Again in book 3 of the same work: 'Chrysippus indeed and Diogenes said that apart from utility not a hand should be raised on that account, and I heartily agree with them.' He is there discussing glory or reputation, which is to be altogether disdained, if it brings nothing useful with it, as that remark of the Satirist says: 'Glory, as much as you like, what is it if nothing but glory?' Of the turning down of the thumb we have spoken elsewhere. Quintilian, book 11, writes that the movements of the hands are so important in delivery that 'it is almost another tongue speaking, instead of any words.' 'Wonder is best conveyed by the following gesture: the hand turns slightly upward and the fingers are brought in to the palm, one after the other, beginning with the little finger; the hand is then opened and turned over by a reversal of this motion. The gesture which expresses interrogation is a turn of the hand, however the fingers are arranged.' Today, we hold up the hand and turn it over to express the smallest difference. In the passage from Quintilian I have just quoted, I think it would be more correct to read not 'instead of any words' but'instead of any other members,' so as to indicate that the hand alone can convey whatever might be expressed by other parts of the body. In Plutarch's life of Timoleon a messenger sent to Andromachus, after making a long, cruel and barbarous speech, finally held out his hand, first palm upwards and then palm downwards, threatening by this gesture to overthrow their state. But Andromachus only laughed, and made the same gesture with his hand, ordering the man to be off at once, unless he wanted the same treatment to be given to his ship.

Αεὶ λεόντιοι περὶ τοὺς κρατῆρας Always at their cups, the Leontini. This aptly describes the luxurious, or those who are always addicted to the same studies. The Leontini are a people of Sicily, whom Phalaris defeated, and to prevent them from starting a rebellion he took away their weapons and turned them over to drinking and pleasure; hence this adage, which is mentioned by Diogenianus.

Κεστρεὺς νηστεύει, The grey mullet is fasting. This is appropriately said of people who are both starving and voracious. Those who gape with hunger are called kestreis, mullets, and there is a verb kestreuein which expresses an accusation formerly levelled at the Athenians, Hesychius tells us. Others prefer to apply the term to those who lead a harmless life, and refrain from injuring others, but never reap any reward from their blameless behaviour. The grey mullet is a kind of fish, which alone among all the rest who live by eating each other up, abstains from the flesh of others and is therefore not caught by the bait, but hides in the mud and there survives for a long time; some think it feeds on mud. Even when caught it is not nourished by food or any other creature, though it has sharp teeth. It is indeed easily devoured by the pike, but for the very reason that it is not voracious, it is not very tasty. When frightened it hides its head, thinking that thus its whole body will be safe. So Aristophanes says in Athenaeus: 'Is there a colony of Kestrians inside?' He is alluding to Cestrina, a part of Chaonia. Again Diphilus in the same author: 'I am going to be a grey mullet, with this starvation.' Again in book 7, he quotes out of Anaxandrides: 'He wanders about at feasts like a starving mullet.' The adage is mentioned by Zenodotus, Diogenianus, Suidas, Athenaeus in his Doctors at dinner, book 7; and this last, among other information, says that this fish is called by some the plotes, and is devoured by the conger-eel, as the eel is eaten by the lamprey. Theodorus Gaza translates it as 'mullet.'

Plautus in the Truculentus: 'True is the word often quoted, Where there are friends, there is wealth.' Quintilian also quotes it as a proverb in his Institutions book 5. The meaning is that friends are to be preferred to money, and it is more important as a protection in life to have friends without money than to have riches without friends. That is why among the Scythians (so says Lucian) that man was deemed the richest who had the best and most loyal friends. However, if anyone were to look at the ways of the world today, he would think the adage should be reversed: Where there is wealth, there are friends, seeing that'The crowd assesses friendship by its use,' and 'Friendship, that venerable name of old, / Has now turned harlot and is bought and sold.'

Η γῆ ἵπταται, The earth flies. This describes a totally incongruous thing, which cannot possibly occur. Suidas gives it as an example of the 'impossible [adynaton]. Julian, in some letter or other, mentions it under the heading of a proverb, with one word changed: 'The earth is light, as the saying goes.' This adage is of the type I have mentioned elsewhere, 'a childless Jupiter' and'Olive no kernel hath nor nut no shell.'

Ιλιὰς κακῶν, An Iliad of troubles. This means the simultaneous occurrence of the greatest catastrophes, because in Homer's Iliad every kind of disaster is recounted. For this reason scholars think that the writers of tragedy drew their plots from this, as the writers of comedy did from the Odyssey. It is a lengthy work, hardly finished in 24 books. So a speech which is too prolix is called `longer than the Iliad,' as Aeschines against Demosthenes: 'And saying this, he gave the decree to the scribe to read, longer than the Iliad and more meaningless than the words he was accustomed to speak.' Eustathius turns it round like this: 'The proverb speaks of an Iliad of evils, but this is an Iliad of all good things.' Synesius in a letter to his brother: 'In short, an Iliad of evils surrounded our city.' Plutarch in 'Advice to Bride and Groom': 'But the marriage of these made an Iliad of evils for Greeks and barbarians.' He is speaking of the marriage of Paris and Helen, which was the cause of countless misfortunes. Cicero uses it in his Letters to Atticus: 'Such an Iliad of troubles is impending.'

Λέρνη κακῶν, A Lerna of troubles. Used of an accumulation of many ills all piled up on one another. Strabo mentions this proverb in his Geography, book 8, where he writes that Lerna was a lake, joining the lands of the Argives and Mycenaeans, into which all the refuse from everywhere was pitched. Hence the common proverb, 'a Lerna of evils.' The poets claim that in this lake dwelt the famous seven-headed hydra, which Hercules destroyed with Greek fire. This hydra, as Hesiod writes, was the offspring of Echidna and Typhaon, and nourished by Juno, doubtless in hatred of Hercules. Zenodotus says that Lerna was a certain place in the Argolid into which every kind of filth was promiscuously thrown, and from which fetid and poisonous vapours used to rise. However he affirms that the proverb is more likely to refer to the story of the Danaids. It is said that Danaus had given his fifty daughters in marriage to fifty young men, the sons of Aegyptus, whom he slaughtered all in one night; and their heads were piled up in that place, hence the proverb. It is not unlikely, he thinks, that out of contempt Danaus would have ordered refuse to be carried to the spot where he had collected the heads together. Thus, when we signify a totally infamous man, stained with all kinds of baseness, or a pestilential gang of men, the dregs and offscourings of the criminal classes, we shall be right in saying 'a Lerna of evils.' In Hesychius the comedy-writer Cratinus calls the theatre a Lerna of spectators, because it consists of the mixed and various offscourings of humanity.

Κακῶν θάλασσα, A sea of troubles. This is usually said of catastrophes which are boundless and manifold, because the sea is an infinite thing, or else because those who occupy themselves in it are subject to infinite hardships. Euripides says in the Hippolytus Crowned: 'Wretched I see a sea of evils, / So great that there's no hope of swimming out.' Plautus in the Asinaria gives the name of 'sea' to harlot and bawd, because they are the authors of so many ills: 'the sea,' he says, 'is no sea - it is you who are the bitterest of seas.' Aeschylus in the Suppliants:
A throng of evils bursts upon me like a river,
Or like a deep sea, unfathomable,
Not to be crossed without the greatest peril.
The Scriptures also, when they refer to the inexhaustible force of something, call it an 'abyss.' And St Chrysostom says in his De sacerdotio, book 6, 'Look, a great abyss of toil.'

The opposite is also said, ἀγαθῶν θάλασσα, A sea of good things, with reference to great and heaped-up benefits. This may be either because the sea itself yields innumerable riches in the way of fish and gems; or because of its tremendous width and depth, so great that it can never be exhausted, nor does it ever overflow, though such a mass of water flows into it from the rivers.

θησαυρὸς κακῶν, A store of evils. Something in the same style is found in other places, for instance in Euripides, Ion: 'Alas, how great a store of evils opens.' Among the Greek maxims there is this line: `A wife's a store of ills if she be bad.' Plautus uses this adage in the Mercator: 'You have indeed brought me a store of ill.' Hence that saying so frequent in Holy Scripture, 'They treasure up evil for themselves,' that is, they collect it, seek it out, hoard it up. But what we really mean by treasure is a mass of useful things similarly stored away.

Αγαθῶν σωρὸς, A heap of good things - referring to immense wealth. Hence we often read of feasts or riches as 'heaped-up,' wealth as 'amassed,' as a term for abundance, as if those things had been thrown together pell-mell, poured out by mass, not by weight or counting. Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'For us a heap of goods has flowed / Into our house, though we've done nothing wrong.' Again in the same play: 'As I bring all good things to you in crowds.' Again, in the same play, he turns it jokingly to a bad meaning: 'You say one came bearing a pile [soron] of money,' the words of the chorus of old men, to which the slave Carion replies jokingly: 'Nay, rather bearing to you a pile of old men's ills.' He is alluding to the old age of those people with 'One foot in the grave.' For the word soros with a short o [omicron] means 'burial mound,' and soros with a long o [omega] means heap and mass. The slave naturally takes care to pronounce the vowel wrong. These, and other phrases of the same kind, will be improved, as I have often pointed out, if they are twisted a little from their original meaning. One might say that other orators excel in this or that quality, but Cicero is 'alone the accumulation of all good qualities.' Those phrases which come often to Cicero have the flavour of this adage, 'to load with kindness,' 'to give massive satisfaction,' 'a heap of services rendered.'

Αγαθῶν μυρμηκία, An ant-hill of good things. This describes uncounted wealth. Myrmecia, the word used, is the Greek for an ant-hill or column of ants; though this may be derived from those ants mentioned by Pliny, book 11 chapter 31, which he says are the colour of cats and the size of wolves in Egypt. 'These ants dig gold out of caves in the northern territory of the Indians, who are called Dardae. It is dug out in winter, and in the warm summer the Indians pillage it, when the ants are hiding away in their holes because of the heat. But sometimes, attracted by smell, they fly out and often sting, even when the pilferers escape on the swiftest camels.' St Basil appears to have been thinking of this when he writes to his nephews that everything in excess of necessities should be despised, whether it were Lydian nuggets or the work of gold-digging ants; and the less needed, the more it should be despised. There is no reason, however, why he should not be referring to our own ants, not only because of the immense numbers of their marching columns but because of the natural industry of the creature in building up its store, bringing everything it can in the mouth to add it to the heap, as Horace wrote. It is due to this, I think, that in Antiquity an assemblage of ants presaged wealth. Cicero testifies to this in the On Divination, book 2: 'When Midas of Phrygia was a boy, ants collected grains of wheat in his mouth as he lay asleep. It was prophesied that he would be extremely rich; and this happened.' Theocritus in the Praise of Ptolemy: 'Just as the wealth of ever-toiling ants is piled up.' And in the Women of Syracuse: 'Ants unnumbered and unmeasured,' meaning a vast crowd of men. This is close to what Plato says in the Republic, book 9, about the 'swarm of pleasures' and Socrates in Plutarch of Chaeronea speaking of a'swarm of virtues,' a crowd or countless number. The passage quoted by Plutarch is in Plato s Meno. Similar to these is the phrase used by Plato in the Cratylus, 'a swarm of learning.' Also what Alexis wrote in his Pamphila, cited by Athenaeus, book 8: 'I brought the table in, and laid thereon / A wainload of good things.'

Δάθος ἀγαθῶν, A Dathos of good things. It was customary to use this in the same sense. Dathos is a colony of the Thasians, near the Strymon; it was rich and flourishing in other ways as well as having veins of gold, so that the proverb grew up 'A Dathos of good things' to suggest collected wealth. Suidas mentions this, among others; in him we read Datos not Dathos.

Θάσσος ἀγαθῶν, A Thasos of good things. This proverb grew likewise out of the fertility of a place. Thasos is an island near Thrace. Zenodotus tells a story of this sort: Callistratus the orator, on his departure from Athens, tried to persuade the Athenians that they should inhabit the region opposite to them; he gave a splendid description of its fertility, and said it had veins of gold and the most fruitful soil. In a word, he said, it is a Thasos of good things; and this became a popular saying about people who make magnificent promises.

The ancients held religiously to their belief that gifts were to be carefully examined, as to who had sent them and with what intention; since it is well known that anything given by those who wish us ill would usually be for our destruction. It was so with the deceiving box sent to Prometheus by Jove through Pandora; and with the garment which Medea gave to the new wife of Jason, and the garment Deianira sent to Hercules. The commentators on proverbs think that this proverb was derived from the story told by Homer in the seventh book of the Iliad. He tells how Hector and Ajax became friends and exchanged gifts: Hector gave Ajax a sword and Ajax gave Hector a belt. Afterwards each of them came to grief through the gift he had received. Ajax, in fact, after being defeated by Ulysses, and knowing what he had said and done in his madness, killed himself with that same sword. Likewise Hector was slain by Achilles before the walls of Troy, as a result of that same belt. The adage is mentioned in Sophocles in the Ajax Mastigophoros, but the reference suggests that it was not derived from Ajax but was already old when he used it. After his decision to kill himself, Ajax curses the sword which he had accepted as a gift from his bitterest enemy, and declares it was a most unlucky one for him and that thereafter nothing has gone right for the Argives. He confirms his suspicions by the well-known proverb:
How true it is, as says the world's old saw,
That gifts from foes are never gifts at all,
But luckless, bringing harm.
There is a Greek epigram about this: 'Hector gave Ajax a sword, Ajax gave Hector a belt; / To each his gift meant death.' Another epigram says; 'So pass the lethal gifts from foe to foe, / Kindness apparently, but bringing doom.' There is a hint of this in Euripides, when Medea refuses Jason's presents, saying they will cause her destruction: 'Harm and not good must come from gifts of an evil man.' Servius points out that Virgil referred to this in the Aeneid, book 4, when he says: 'She unsheathed the blade, / The Trojan's gift, not for these uses sought.' He is speaking of the sword left behind by Aeneas, with which Dido stabs herself, calling Aeneas wicked, and her enemy. We may add the warning among the proverbs in Holy Scripture, not to be too sure of the enemy after reconciliation. A proverbial line runs 'Never think friendly what is said by foe,' and another in the same vein: 'Distrust thy foe, and thou shalt not fare ill.' The proverb can be applied to those, poor themselves, who aim at the favour of the rich by little presents, thus hoping to induce them to be generous. This is not giving but begging. Hence Plutarch in his essay 'On the E at Delphi approves of what Dicaearchus thinks was said to Archelaus by Euripides:
I being poor do not wish to give a gift
To a rich man, lest I be thought a fool,
Or asking for a gift in return.
This will fit both those who gain the services of demons by magic arts, for these result in the destruction of the users, and seekers after inheritances, and those who try to please by doing a good turn, not for genuine reasons but with another end in view. And so the proverb may be given a new meaning by the alteration of a word: 'flatterers' gifts are no gifts,' 'poor men's gifts are no gifts,' and finally'poets' gifts are no gifts,' as I have shown at the beginning of this work.

The ingenuity of Oedipus in cleverly proposing riddles and solving them at the same time is famous owing to the problem of the Sphinx which he solved: indeed his very name has become a proverb. In Terence, in the Andria, the slave pretends not to understand what his master has said, and replies, 'I am Davus, not Oedipus.' This can be made to suit anyone by changing the name: `I am Paul, not Oedipus'; `I am Antony, not Oedipus.' Since the form is proverbial in itself, it can be applied to any person or thing well known to the public: 'How could I remember all that? I am Peter, not Lucullus. How could I succeed in so many labours? I am Nicholas, not Hercules. How can I convince you of such a difficult thing? I am Richard, not Cicero.' Something like Terence's phrase is found in Euripides' Hippolytus Crowned: 'I am no prophet to know clearly things obscure.' Again in the Hecuba: 'I am no seer, so that hearing not, / I can search out the pathway of your purposes.' Thus it can be turned against those who make a point of speaking obscurely, and in riddles; or those who out of inexperience or a superstitious veneration for unknown words write in such a complicated way that they need a prophet rather than a reader. Heraclitus was of this sort, as we learn from Plato in several places, and from Aristotle's Rhetoric, book 3; and the latter adds that this man's obscurity arose from an ambiguous arrangement of words, since it was uncertain whether the word in question belonged to what went before or to what followed after. Hence Socrates said that to understand him one would need a'Delian diver.' Martial alludes to this when he teases Sextus, who affected obscurity: 'It's not a reader your books need, but Apollo; / In your judgment Cinna s a better poet than Virgil.' The same Heraclitus and his failing is used by Jerome to upbraid Jovinianus. However Laertius writes that this philosopher, when he wanted to do so, used the clearest possible speech, so that it is clear this obscurity was purposely assumed, indeed he recommended his disciples to practice it.

In Herodotus there is a famous story, of how Solon replied to Croesus that no one can claim the name of 'fortunate' except the man who has successfully terminated the journey of life. Juvenal refers to this: '- whom the eloquent voice of Solon, / Bade to consider the last end of life.' Sophocles extends this thought in Oedipus Tyrannus: So watch to see that final day And deem no mortal happy till All free from pain his life he ends. Again, slightly differently, in the Trachiniae: There lives an ancient proverb among men, That none may know another good or bad Whoe'er he be, until his destined span Has run and he attains his final day. Euripides has something similar in the Andromache: 'Never call a mortal blessed, Until you see his day of dying.' Again in the Troades: 'Of those borne on by fortune, call none happy, / Till happily he dies.' He repeats the same in other words in the Heraclidae: Now by his fate He heralds clear to mortals all Not to envy him who seems to prosper, Until they see him die, since fates are fleeting. Ovid in the Metamorphoses expresses it thus: Yet a man's final day Is to be looked for, and no one called blessed Before his death and final obsequies. Even today we often hear it said 'the affair must be judged by the outcome.'

Among the Greek proverbs we find this: δευτέρων ἀμεινόνων, Better the second time. This is applied to affairs which have had little success on the first try, but sometimes turn out more favourably the second time; a mistake in the first plan is corrected in the later one. Some think this arose from religious rites: if the first victim did not give a favourable augury they repeated the ritual, hoping for better things. This is clearly enough indicated by the pimp in Plautus, who could not get a favourable answer after sacrificing to Venus repeatedly. Plato in the fourth book of the Laws seems to refer it to throwing knuckle-bones or some similar game, because it often happens that when a player finds the game going against him, he asks to begin it again from the outset, hoping that he will have more luck. Plato says, 'So once again, as players are used to say, let us see whether a second try has a better result.' It is true that the Greek word he uses, players, can refer not to a game but to a more proverbial jest. However Cicero gives his assent to the first interpretation, when he says in the second book of the On Divination: 'How inconstant are the gods, who threaten with the entrails of the first sacrifice and give good augury with the second.' Also in the twelfth of his Philippics: 'Later thoughts, as they say, are wiser.' The same to this brother Quintus: 'I assure you that, as for "second thoughts," I could have none in my relations with Caesar,' meaning 'I can find no suitable plan by which I can amend the earlier bad ones.' Davus in Terence was thinking of this when he said, 'No success here, we'll try another way.' Aristotle seems to allude to this in the first book of the Metaphysics, where he says, 'It is necessary to end up with the opposite and the better, according to the proverb.' He is speaking of those who turn to philosophy from interest and wonder at natural causes; wishing them, once the causes are known, to cease from wonder and turn to better things. It may be that the proverb arose from the tragedy of Euripides called Hippolytus Crowned: 'Among mortals, / Second thoughts are sometimes wiser.' The words are spoken by the nurse to Phaedra, as a recantation or palinode to what she has said earlier, now that she sees Phaedra meditating on suicide. He thought of this too in the Supplices: At home if something goes not well With later thoughts we set it right, But life is not the same. The Greeks spoke of metanoea [hindsight] when later reflexions showed that it would have been better to act differently.

We use these words proverbially even today to signify despair: 'All is over,' Greek πέπρακται. Euripides in Hippolytus Crowned: 'Alas, all's over, my lady's clearly lost.' Terence, in the Eunuchus, says actum est, ilicet, peristi. Donatus thinks the first (it is all over) comes from the law, the second (it's finished) from the judgment, the third (you are done for) from the punishment. For these three words all signify despair in an increasing degree. Since it was not allowable to rescind the decision of the judges, and obtain a second judgment on the same case, as Terence says, it was popularly accepted that one could say of irremediable cases 'It's all over!' even if it were to be found later that people were completely reinstated by the judge. At any rate the phrase actum est is used because what is once done can never be undone; witness the proverbial sayings to the effect that it is not permitted even to God to undo what has been done. Plautus: 'Unless you find some cover against it, the affair is finished. I am resolved to die.' We can either say 'it is over' absolutely, or with some addition of this kind, 'It is all over with the republic.' 'It is all over with your business.' `It is all over with human affairs.' 'It is all over with your safety, unless you watch out.'

Very little different is the phrase we read here and there in Martial, `to consider a thing done,' meaning it is certain and indubitable. Promises, to be sure, are far from certain, but you may put your trust solely in what has been kept and openly fulfilled. For instance he says to Procillus 'You thought the whole thing was already done,' and again 'And now you take the thing as done, Bithynicus.' He used the term 'a thing done' to show that it was not promised, but ready and completed. Se we use 'wrought silver' of what is not roughly made but carefully finished and chased. Perhaps he referred to a legal phrase, as Terence did when he said 'all finished and concluded,' and Cicero in the third of his speeches against Catiline 'And what first needed to be done was finished and concluded,' used whenever reference is made in contracts to anything which is legally agreed between the parties.

In Martial there is a particularly neat adage, 'to sell smoke,' which means to sell the favour of the great, pretending that one can do a man the service of recommending him because one has a certain proximity to them. Smoke, in fact, begins by seeming something sizeable, but it vanishes in no time. Martial's lines run: 'To sell about the palace no empty smoke, nor applaud Canus, nor applaud Glaphyrus.' So it comes about that we talk of 'smoke and clouds' when we mean a display which is all deceit, and the vain hope of great things. St Jerome against Rufinus: 'From such a forest of books you cannot produce one sprig, one bush. These are mere puffs of smoke, mere clouds.' Rufinus had reproached Jerome with having brought the works of the poets like smoke to the notice of nuns who were not likely to understand them. But Jerome takes the proverb like a clumsily hurled weapon and thrusts it back more skilfully,indicating that the word 'smoke' does not mean obscurity, but vain, false ostentation. Plutarch, 'On the Divine Sign of Socrates': `But he sent off nonsense to the sophists, as a kind of smoke of philosophy.' This kind of man, the greatest plague of kingly courts, is neatly and excellently described by Aelius Lampridius in his life of the emperor Heliogabalus. I should like to quote his very words: 'Zoticus,' he says, 'was of such importance under him, that he was regarded by all the highest officials of the court as if he had been the mate of their master. It was this same Zoticus, as well, who making bad use of his familiarity used to sell for bribes all the actions and words of Heliogabalus, hoping for enormous riches from this "smoke," as he made promises to one and another and deceived them all. Leaving the presence of Heliogabalus he interviewed them one by one, saying "I said this about you," "I heard this about you," "This is what is going to happen to you." There are men of this kind, who if they are admitted to too great familiarity with princes, sell the reputation not only of the bad princes but of the good ones; and who live on the proceeds of their infamous scandal-mongering, through the stupidity or innocence of the rulers who do not perceive what is going on.' Thus far Aelius. But the adage is given greater point by the punishment of Thurinus Verconius, which the same Aelius recounts in his life of Alexander Severus in this manner: 'When alone, in the afternoon or in the early morning, he never saw certain people because he knew that they told lies about him, especially Verconius Thurinus, who had been his close companion. This man had put up everything for sale by his deceptions, with the result of dishonouring the rule of Alexander, as if he were a stupid man whom Thurinus had in his power and whom he could persuade to everything. Indeed he convinced everybody that he could do anything by a nod. In the end Alexander caught him by a stratagem. He sent someone to him who was asking publicly for a favour, and approaching Thurinus for it in private, as if asking for his support in interesting Alexander in him in secret. This was done, and Thurinus promised to use his influence, and said that he had spoken to the emperor when he had not spoken at all, but left it to be thought that the request might yet be granted, selling the outcome for money. Alexander ordered him to be spoken to again, and Thurinus, as if thinking of something else, assented by a nod, but still did not say anything. The request was granted, and Thurinus the "seller of smoke" exacted a huge reward from the man who had won his case. Alexander ordered him to be accused, and when everything had been proved by witnesses, those who were present when he had been paid and those who had heard his promises, the emperor ordered him to be tied to a stake in the Passage Market and a fire to be made from burning straw and damp wood, which killed him. Meanwhile the herald proclaimed, "By smoke he is punished, who sold smoke." But as he did not wish to seem cruel in even one case, he made diligent enquiries before pronouncing sentence, and found that Thurinus had accepted bribes from both parties in lawsuits, putting up the result for sale; and from all who had received lucrative posts or provinces.' And a little further on: 'He gave no one of these "sellers of smoke" the chance to speak ill of him, or of others to him, particularly after the death of Thurinus, who had often betrayed him as if he were stupid and senseless.' The phrase he uses, Passage Market or 'open market,' he seems to explain himself in another part of the same Life, when he says: 'The man who "sold smoke" about him, and had accepted a hundred gold pieces from a certain soldier, he ordered to be crucified, beside the road frequently used by his slaves on their way to the imperial estates.' 'The Emperor Avidius Cassius, we read, thought out this kind of punishment, by making a tall wooden stake a hundred and eighty feet high, and ; tying the criminals on it from the top to the bottom, setting fire to the lowest, so that some were burnt and others killed by the torment of the smoke and even by fear.' Thus far the historian. A horrible punishment, yet fitting for such heinous crimes. But I could wish it were not true today that the Courts, not only of princes but of bishops were full of this detestable kind of people, and had not only a lot of men like Thurinus but much worse than he; who not only sell an office falsely promised, but even sell silence itself, as it were copying Demosthenes; or indeed, what is still worse, they use the poison of the tongue to thwart those whose bribes they have accepted for their good offices. If only our princes would take care to imitate Alexander Severus. He was a pagan moreover, and a Syrian by race, and a mere youth, and yet he was so violently opposed to flatterers, informers, dishonest judges, sellers of smoke and all such pests of Courts, that he was implacable towards them, though otherwise a man of the mildest character. There is a proverbial saying bandied about in our own time regarding the splendid promises of courtiers. For they talk of 'court incense,' thinking of that incense-vapour which is wafted in our sacred rites from a swinging censer. That is not very different from our proverb. They speak too of the 'holy water' of courtiers, thinking of the water which is placed at the door of churches, for those to sprinkle themselves with who go in or come out.

Terence in the Phormio, using a proverbial phrase, I am sure, says this of Geta, the elderly slave to whom the old man, who is setting out on a journey, had entrusted the character of his children, as their tutor and guardian, and also his household affairs: 'A pillar of the household.' Donatus thinks columen is put for columna or pillar on which the rest of the house is supported, and so in former times the older slaves were called 'props,' columellae. Virgil's phrase agrees with this: 'On thee the whole house rests though tottering.' So does that line of Euripides in the Iphigenia in Tauris: 'Male children are the pillars of the house.' Pindar in the Olympians calls Hector the pillar of Troy: 'Who toppled Hector, Troy's unconquerable steadfast pillar.' He is speaking of Achilles. Close to this is that remark in Juvenal: 'A sorry state, to rest on borrowed fame: / Down come your rafters if the columns crack.'

With a similar metaphor Hecuba in Euripides calls Polydorus the anchor of his family and clan: 'The one remaining anchor of my house.' We have noted elsewhere, when we were explaining the 'sacred anchor,' how the Greeks often used 'anchor' proverbially, meaning 'refuge.' Indeed, whatever we lean on and put our trust in they call an anchor, taking the metaphor from ships which are steadied by an anchor and so are at rest and protected from the waves. So Aristides in the first Panathenaic Oration: 'All the Greeks seemed to themselves to be in a kind of harbour, moored by two anchors' as if strengthened by a double defence. I have cited this passage also a little while back.

The hyperbolic phrases of the comedy-writers are also proverbial. 'I am nothing, I am down, I am lost'; thus we signify despair and immense disaster. Euripides, from Iphigenia in Tauris: 'Cowards and idle folk are nothing anywhere,' and again in Iphigenia in Aulis: 'You were nothing, but ruined by fate, you were dismayed.' I think this is the very thing which Athenaeus is quoting from Plato in his tenth book: 'For you are nothing, as the proverb says,' although this does not refer to ruin but expresses contempt. It may seem to be taken from Homer, in whose Odyssey, book 9 Ulysses pretends that his name is Noman, suggesting that he had almost perished. And by this invented name the Cyclops was deceived.

As has been shown earlier, and as Donatus explains, almost all figures of this kind are proverbial - which consist largely in opposites, because they seem to have an enigmatic quality. They are frequent among the Greek poets: as in Euripides, in the Hecuba, 'But he not willing and yet willing,' and in the Iphigenia in Tauris: 'I am in exile in a sense, not willing yet willing.' To this form belongs what Terence says in the Andria, 'You were compelled of your own free will.'

Πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν, You are kicking up your heels against the pricks, means to struggle in vain against those you cannot conquer, or to provoke those who are harmful when roused. Or it may mean to rebel against destiny, and by failing to bear with patience an evil you cannot avoid, not only to fail to escape from it but to double it. For instance, a man has a quarrelsome wife: if he is constantly disputing with her, he will achieve no result except to make her more quarrelsome still. Terence says in the Phormio: 'For this is ignorance - heels against the goad.' Donatus points out that this is a proverb, but with an ellipse, as the word iactare, to kick up, is missing, and Greek says it all in one word, laktizein. Plautus in the Truculentus: 'If you fight a goad with your fists, the hands get the worst of it.' This proverb also comes in the Acts of the Apostles: 'It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,' that is, to fight against God. Euripides in the Bacchae:
I would much rather do him sacrifice
Than hot with anger kick against the goad,
Myself a mortal man and he a god.
Pindar in the Pythians: 'For this is to kick against the goad.' The metaphor comes from oxen jabbed in the rear by ploughmen with pointed poles; hence they are called boukentai, goaders of oxen, in the proverb 'Few men can plough, though many ply the goad.' If the oxen fight back with their heels against the goad, so far are they from damaging the goad that they are worse hurt themselves. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Control of Anger' tells of a pancratiast Ctesiphon who was so angry with a kicking mule that he kicked: it in return.

Εἰς οὖς λέγειν, To speak in the ear. This is still used nowadays, to mean a secret and private communication. It is taken from people who come near to whisper in someone's ear what they do not want heard by others. So sometimes in Homer, 'Bringing his head near, so that the others would not hear.' Horace in the Satires: 'And whisper something or other in my servant's ear.' Euripides in the Ion: 'Come here, for I wish to speak into your ear.' Lucian in Gallus: 'Speaking a word in the ear of some Syracusans.' To this belongs the phrase in the Gospel, 'What ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops,' that is, what you have received in private conversation, preach in public.

A proverbial hyperbole about people in the direst poverty. Lucian in Timon, 'Who had not an obol yesterday to buy a noose with.' The man must indeed be poor who wants to strangle himself with a noose for very weariness of his poverty; but poorer still is the man who has not a coin left to buy a rope to hang himself with.

This is a proverbial allegory: ὁ νέβρος τὸν λέοντα The fawn (we must supply) has caught, or has conquered, or is challenging, the lion (or any other verb which gives the gist of the saying); used whenever a far weaker antagonist defeats a stronger, thus turning things upside down. Lucian, of the legacy-hunter who, young as he is, is caught out by an old man, the pursuer outdone by his quarry: 'This is just what the proverb says, the fawn has caught the lion.' This was in the mind of whoever wrote Megara the Wife of Hercules: `Is it because your glorious son suffers boundless woes at the hands of a worthless man, as a fierce lion might from a fawn?' It can also be suitably extended to the case where a much weaker person attacks a stronger, or one who is far less learned disputes with an accomplished scholar.

Said of a palpably ridiculous thing, Ζευγνύειν τὰς ἀλώπεκας, To yoke foxes together. Virgil in Palaemon: 'Who hates not Bavius, let him like your songs, Maevius, / Let him yoke foxes to the plough and milk he-goats.' The fox is an animal utterly foreign to the plough.

Τράγον ἀμέλγειν To milk a he-goat. This has the same sense. Lucian, in his Life of Demonax, recalls among the many witty sayings of this man the following: when he saw a pair of philosophers, each as ignorant as the other, disputing together, one propounding absurd questions and the other giving crazy answers, entirely off the point: 'Why, friends,' said he, 'is not one of these fellows milking a he-goat and the other putting a sieve under it?' Diogenianus gives it in these words, 'Which is the stupider, the one who milks the he-goat or the one who holds the sieve?' Both are equally absurd. Not unlike this is that other proverb Like lips, like lettuce, and The cover is worthy of such a cup.

Υπερ ὄνου σκιᾶς, About an ass's shadow. That is, about a thing of no moment. Sophocles in the Cedalion, cited by Suidas: 'All things are the shadow of an ass,' that is, nonsense, rubbish. Also cited by him, Aristophanes in the Daedalus: 'Concerning what are you now at war? Concerning the shadow of an ass.' The same author quotes Aristotle, in the Didaskaliai, as saying that there was a play with the title Shadow of An Ass; it was a comedy of Archippus, I think, that he meant, of which Zenodotus makes mention. Lucian, in The Sects, 'All philosophers, or almost all, are fighting over the shadow of an ass.' Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'What are we fighting about? About an ass's shadow.' Demosthenes in one of his Philippics says: 'Going to war with the whole world now about that shadow in Delphi.'
There are some who think that this adage was first derived from Demosthenes as its author, and they tell this story: Once when Demosthenes was defending someone on a capital charge, and he had judges who were inattentive but interrupted constantly, he said, 'Lend me your ears for a little while, and I will tell something new and amusing, and merry to hear.' At these words they pricked up their ears to listen to him. 'A certain young man, ' he said, 'had hired an ass to carry goods from Athens to Megara. On the way, as the midday heat grew stronger, and he could not find a tiny bit of shade to shelter him from the sun, he took off the pack-saddle and sat under the ass, protecting himself with its shade. However the owner would not allow this, and dragged the man out, shouting that he rented the ass but not the ass's shadow. The other held the opposite view, and declared that he had paid for the ass's shadow too. The quarrel between them dragged on until they came to blows, the one stoutly asserting that the ass's shadow had not been paid for, the other declaring on the contrary that he had hired it as well. Finally they went to law.' Having got thus far, when he knew the judges were listening carefully, Demosthenes suddenly began to leave the rostrum. The judges called him back and asked him to go on with the rest of the story. 'Do you mean to say,' he said, 'that you will listen to something about an ass's shadow, but you can't bother to hear the cause of a man in peril of his life?'
Plutarch tells the story a little differently in his life of Demosthenes, as follows: 'When the Athenians interrupted him in a speech in the assembly, he said he would like to tell them a short story. When there was silence he said: A young man hired an ass one summer to go from the city to Megara. At midday when the sun was burning fiercely, he and the owner wanted to lie down in the shadow of the ass. But each prevented the other from doing so. The owner said he had rented the ass, not the shadow, and the other who had hired it replied that he had full rights over the ass. And after saying this he was preparing to depart. But the Athenians detained him, asking him to tell the rest of the story of the ass. He said, "Are you willing to listen when I speak of the shadow of an ass, but not willing to listen when I speak of serious matters?"' Some say that the ass was hired in Athens to go not to Megara but to Delphi, and this appears from the words of Demosthenes who mentions the `Delphic shadow' at the end of his speech On the Peace: 'Is it not stupid, is it not truly lamentable, that we, who are already at odds with one another about our own concerns, many of them of the greatest importance, should be going to war with the whole world now about that shadow in Delphi?' Apuleius in the Ass claims jokingly that it came from him. Menander in the Enchiridion and Plato in the Phaedrus make use of this adage, Plato saying that inexperienced politicians act impudently and dangerously when, speaking to a public equally inexperienced, they praise, not the shadow of an ass, which would be something frivolous and unimportant, but evil as though it were good: 'not so much exalting the ass's shadow as if it were the shadow of a horse, but praising evil instead of good.' Procopius says in one of his letters: 'I myself believe that, holding as you do the opposite view of the art, my clever friend, you are starting a quarrel on the proverbial ass's shadow, for the pleasure, I suppose, of the scurrilities.' Origen used it in the preface to his third book Against Celsus.
But it was time long ago for me to abandon the ass's shadow, before anyone laughs at me legitimately for fussing over the shadow of an ass.

A very similar adage is found in Latin, about goat's wool, which seems to have arisen from some event of the same kind, when two people were disputing as to whether a goat has wool or hair; or else from a discussion on goats' hair as a useless and unimportant subject, just as there is a proverb about asses' wool. Horace in the Epistles, to Lollius: Another, with devotion fervent, Is more than your obsequious servant; Admitted as a humbler guest Where men of money break their jest, He waits the nod, with awe profound, And catches, ere it reach the ground, The falling joke, and echoes back the sound. A schoolboy thus with humbler air Repeats to pedagogue severe; His players act an under-part, And fear to put out all their art. Another in disputes engages, With nonsense armed for goat's wool rages. He is talking about people who are bad-tempered with their friends, and start a quarrel with a friend on the slightest pretext.

Similar to this is what we read in Aristophanes' Clouds: 'Already he seeks to quibble and speak subtly of smoke, καὶ περὶ καπνοῦ στενολεσχεῖν: It is a dig at philosophers, who discuss with great earnestness about smoke, that is, things of no importance. There is a spice of comic wit in the very words he uses for the joke, leptologein, stenoleschein, one meaning to discuss silly and frivolous things, the other to be tormented with care and anxiety about sheeer nonsense. So the school of Socrates was called a phrontisterion, a thinking-shop.

τυφλότερος ὰσπάλακος, As blind as a mole. Suidas and Diogenianus record this, referring to people whose sight is exceptionally poor, or who have no judgment, for the metaphor will be more pleasing if it is transferred to the mind. Pliny, book 11, writes that among quadrupeds, 'the mole is without sight, and yet the shape of the eyes is there, if the covering membrane is drawn back.' From this arose the adage.

Τυφλότερος λεβηρίδος, As blind as a sloughed skin. This phrase belongs to the same order of ideas. It is quoted from Aristophanes. The leberis, as I have shown elsewhere, is that dry skin which snakes, crickets and other kinds of creature slough off, whenever they renew their youth. In this there is at least the appearance of eyes, and that extremely thin membrane which protects the eyes of snakes. Some say that this, so well known in snakes and crickets, happens to fish also. Lycophron calls this skin syphar, in his iambic poem: 'A syphar he will die, fleeing the covering of the sea.' Syphar is used symbolically; it is his way of speaking of an old man, either because that age brings blindness, or because it is worn out and dried up, deprived of sap and strength. Sophron in the Mimes: 'What is Xysilus, what Syphar, for a man?'
He gives the name Xysilus to a dry and scabby old man, from the Greek for scraping, or Syphar, as if he were now no man at all, but a dry and empty skin. This too has a hint of the proverb in it. It is said however that leberis properly signifies the outer membrane which protects the foetus of cows, and in which there are merely vestiges of the eyes. There are three forms of the adage: 'As blind as a sloughed skin', 'As bare' or 'As empty.'

Τυφλότερος τειρεσίου, As blind as Tiresias. Taken from a well-known story. Juvenal: 'Neither a deaf man nor a Tiresias, / Is one of the gods.' He used Tiresias for a proverbial way of saying 'blind,' as Horace says 'Irus' for 'poor': 'It differs much if wealth or Irus speak.'

Horace used a similar metaphor in the Satires: 'Not with Lynceus' eye her charms inspect, / While blind as Hypsea to her plain defect.' It is clear that the proverb comes from a certain woman of ill fame named Hypsea, well known for her blindness.

When something advantageous is thrown in a person's way unexpectedly and at no cost, the ancients called this An inheritance without rites. Everything in fact in the way of profit which might have accrued from any source without our effort they styled, as though proverbially 'an inheritance,' particularly because what comes freely, while we are asleep, as it were, seems to be the gift of Fortune. So Ergasilus the parasite says in Plautus, in the Captivi duo: 'I have acquired an ample inheritance without rites.' And in another place: 'At the present price it is an inheritance without rites.' For it was the custom for the heir to celebrate certain rites at his own cost, either for the welfare of the dying or as offerings for the departed. Plautus again elsewhere: 'Such legacies do not often come my way.' Cicero against Verres, in the fifth speech: 'Verres seemed to himself to have come into a legacy, when he saw come into his dominions, and under his power, that man.' Andrea Alciati in his Praetermissa, book 1, prefers to trace the origin of the adage to a practice in ancient law. The code of the Twelve Tables says: 'Private rites shall be maintained in perpetuity.' These words are interpreted by Cicero, in the second book of the De legibus, as meaning that anyone to whom the estate of the head of household might pass was under an obligation to celebrate these rites. He also quotes the interpretation of Scaevola the pontifex to the effect that an inheritance is subject to five kinds of sacrificial rites. Those who inherited by right of kinship were bound by partnership in rites which they shared. But it is normally more agreeable when some advantage befalls one unexpectedly like an inheritance without rites. These and other matters are discussed most learnedly by my friend Alciati, and I willingly give my vote in favour of his interpretation, albeit slightly different from mine. Moreover I think the phrase of Plautus contains an allusion to the well-known Greek proverb 'To devour the sacrifice before it has been offered,' and also to that passage in Hesiod, 'From unhallowed vessels to take aught to eat.'

A particularly choice adage is to be found in Cicero, in his Letters to Atticus: Many other points, all other points in fact, but first and foremost that nothing be added to my responsibilities or my tenure between slaying and offering as the saying is.' He seems to mean delay and wavering hesitation, an interval as it were between laying aside something begun, and beginning something which has to be renewed. This is taken from the old method of augury, when the priest carried out certain ceremonies'between the slaying and the offering,' as Varro explains in his On the Latin Language book 2: 'For the Flamen Dialis,' he says, 'solemnly inaugurates the vintage, and when he has ordered the grapes to be picked he makes a sacrifice to Jove of a ewe lamb; between the slaying and the offering of entrails, precisely, the priest picks the grapes.' That 'entrails slaughtered' among the ancients meant an extension of time, Cicero makes clear in his On Divination, book 2: `What has the diviner in mind, why does the cutting up of the lung, even when the entrails are favourable, interrupt the time and postpone the day?'

Pensum persolvere means to fulfil one's part, to do the duty expected of one. It is adapted from the way women worked at the wool: each of them had a definite weight of it distributed to her for her to work up. Plautus in the Persa: 'I have finished the task I was given.' Also in the Bacchides: 'I will make a nice job of my allotted task.' And Cicero, in the third book of the De oratore: 'Now I will go on to the rest, and recall myself to my duty and allotted task.' Varro in his Agriculture: 'We have fulfilled our allotted task.' Jerome writing to Rusticus: 'And you may complete your allotted task.' But the further the metaphor is twisted to new uses, the more attractive the adage will be: if, for instance, it is applied to speech, to study, to moral obligations or other mental activities.

Οὐδ᾽ ὄναρ, Not even in a dream. In Greek, this is a proverbial way of saying 'by no means, at no time.' No one was ever so utterly deprived of happiness that he did not occasionally, at a quiet moment, dream of happier things. Lucian On Salaried Posts: 'Not even in a dream did he ever have his fill of white bread.' He makes use of it also in Gallus, when he says that kings cannot enjoy any pleasant thing, even in a dream: 'because of which not even a dream of some pleasure is possible.' Again in Electrum: 'As for the sweet singing, such as you tell of, we haven't heard it even in our dreams.' Theocritus made a charming allusion to this in the Boukoliskos, when he described Eunica, a well brought-up girl, thrusting aside a boor who tried to kiss her; she was so far from giving him a kiss, she said, that he need not hope for it even in a dream. The poem runs thus:
Take yourself off, and good riddance!
Do you want to kiss me, you boor?
I never learnt to kiss the country folk,
But city lips to press, nor shall you ever
Touch with your filthy lips my shining mouth
Even in a dream.
Cicero uses the same thing in Letters to Atticus: 'Not one statesman is to be found, even in a dream.' Theocritus in Megara, Wife of Hercules: 'This happened to no one else, even in a dream.' Galen On the Natural Faculties, book 2: 'And these things should not have been unknown to Erasistratus, if even in dreams he had ever happened to be familiar with the Peripatetics.' Even men of the humblest sort may have magnificent dreams, like the Micyllus of Lucian, who was the richest of men in his dreams, but when he woke up he was a cobbler almost poorer than Irus. For to dream is a kind of hoping. So Virgil in the Eclogues calls the vain hopes of lovers 'dreams': 'Those who love, do they shape their own dreams?' Horace was thinking of this in the Satires, when he says: When he shall free you from your servile fear And tedious toil; when broad awake, you hear 'To good Ulysses, my right trusty slave, A fourth division of my lands I leave.'
So to say 'not even in a dream' is equivalent to saying 'you do not even dare to hope.' Plutarch, in the essay he wrote 'Against the Stoics,' expresses the adage in a slightly different way: 'One cannot even take their dreams beyond ordinary thoughts.' St Chrysostom in his third sermon against the Jews expresses it thus, 'not even as a dream.'

Our memory or grasp of some things may be doubtful, vague or even fading, and then we say proverbially that we register them through a mist, we remember them as in a dream, we see them darkly. What we saw as children, we recall as old men as if in a dream, as if faint images of those things were clinging to our minds; this is the form memory takes of ordinary dreams. When we gaze at something through an intervening mist, we see only its confused image, like a wavering shadow; so it is with things seen in darkness, through the obscurity, and hence the metaphor. These turns of speech are frequently found among writers. Plautus in the Pseudolus, 'There are things we particularly want to ask you, which we know and have heard ourselves as if through a cloud.' Again in the Captivi duo: 'I go back in memory, seeming to have heard myself as if through a cloud.' Cicero in book 5 of the De finibus: 'In the years of immaturity and intellectual weakness the powers of our nature are discerned as through a mist.' Plato in the seventh book of the Laws: 'But I must try to make what I am saying clear, with examples brought out into the light. For they appear now like things which are said in some kind of darkness.' In the same book we read 'through sleep' or 'in sleep.'

Περὶ ὄνου παρακύψεως, About the ass that poked its head in. This old adage used to be said of those who speak ill of someone for an absurd reason, or take someone to court for a trifling cause. The event which gave rise to the story is variously told by different authors. Some tell it as follows: a certain potter had created various shapes of birds and displayed them in his shop. But a donkey, followed by its driver, who was not looking, poked its head through the shop window and knocked over the birds and the rest of the pots and smashed them to pieces. The owner of the shop took the driver to law. When asked by everybody what he was going to law about, he said: 'About the ass that poked its head in.' Others say that the birds were not made of clay, but real birds, which the ass disturbed by thrusting its head in as aforesaid, so that they broke their perch and upset the other pots. The rest of the story is the same. Lucian in his Ass claims to have given rise to this proverb; when, being an ass, he tried to turn his head sideways to see through the window what was happening, he gave both himself and his masters away. This was greeted by all with a mighty laugh and became a proverb. However for Lucian the phrase is more applicable to people who try to keep up a foolish pretence but are betrayed by their own stupidity. Apuleius copies the passage of Lucian in the ninth book of the Metamorphoses, where he writes as follows: 'When I heard the noise and uproar of the quarrel, being an ass of a most curious disposition and endued with the most restless indiscretion, I poked my head out slantwise through a small window and sought to discover what the tumult might mean. But one of the soldiers chanced to see me out of the corner of his eye, and espied my shadow. Whereupon he called all the others to bear witness. A great uproar arose, they rushed upstairs, laid hands on me, and dragged me downstairs as a prisoner. Then without a moment's delay they searched everything even more carefully than before. Among other things they opened the chest, found the wretched gardener, dragged him out and showed him to the magistrates. Then they led him away to the public jail to be punished for this offence. As for me, they never tired of laughing and jesting about the way I had poked my head out. And from this the well-known proverb has arisen about the ass that poked its head out and the ass's shadow.' Thus far Apuleius.

Terence in the Eunuchus says much the same thing: 'Today, alas, I perished by giving myself away like the shrew.' It is Parmeno speaking, when the deceit of Pythia has led him to betray himself to the old man. Donatus explains that the proverb is directed against people who give themselves away by their own talk. He thinks the metaphor comes from the fact that shrews typically squeak louder than mice, or make more noise when they are gnawing at bits and pieces; and people often notice this squeak and pin them down even in the darkness of night. St Augustine uses this adage in the first book of the De ordine, about his friend Licentius, who frightened a shrew by hitting his writing tablet and making a noise, thereby letting Augustine know that he was awake. Origen has the same allusion in his third homily on Genesis: 'But I shall seem to have been caught by the hints I gave myself.'

Ενδύετέ μοι τὴν λεοντὴν, You are dressing me up in the lionskin. Said of those who undertake a work beyond their means, and who bear themselves with more pride than their rank warrants. Some think this comes from Hercules, whose accoutrement was this: he wore a lionskin, held in one hand a club and in the other a bow, and thus equipped he went down into the underworld to bring out Cerberus. Aristophanes, alluding to this in the Frogs, pretends that Bacchus, like Hercules equipped with lionskin and club, proposed to descend to the underworld to hear Euripides and Aeschylus having a dispute. However, Hercules makes fun of him, on the grounds that such accoutrements are not in the least suitable to a weak effeminate character like his. Similarly, the famous Menippus of Lucian feigns to have returned from the underworld in the same array. But there is no reason why the proverb should not refer to the story told by Lucian in the Fisherman. In Cumae there was a certain donkey who got tired of servitude, broke his leash and ran away into the woods. There he happened to find a lionskin, and put it on himself. He then behaved like a lion, frightening men and wild beasts with his noise and his tail (for the good people of Cumae know nothing of lions). So the masquerading donkey had it all his own way for some time, and was taken for a fierce lion, and feared. This went on until a visitor came to Cumae who had often seen both lions and donkeys, and thus it was not difficult to discern - he recognized the donkey by its long sticking-out ears and some other indications, and after giving it a good beating led it back to the owner who claimed it. The unmasking of the donkey roused a general laugh at the expense of the population of Cumae, who had been almost terrified out of their wits for so long by an imaginary lion. The people of Cumae of whom he speaks, are not, however, those in Italy but those who live in Aeolis above Lesbos. The people of both Lesbos and Cumae are famous for their stupidity, as Stephanus remarks. The Socrates of Plato uses this adage in the Cratylus, declaring that he need not be frightened at the importance of the discussion embarked upon, once he had put on the lionskin. Lucian in Pseudologista: 'There is no need of anyone to strip away your lion's skin that you may be revealed as a donkey, unless perhaps someone has just come to us from the Hyperboreans, or has spent so much time in Cumae as not to know, as soon as he sees you, that you are the most unbridled of all asses, without waiting to hear you bray.' Eusebius of Caesarea against Hierocles: 'Indeed he will depart from us as a philosopher, but he is an ass covered with a lionskin.' Lucian altered the proverb a little in Philopseudes, where he says, 'I had failed, in all these years, to notice that his lion's skin covered a silly ape.'

Μίδας ὄνου ὦτα, Midas has ass's ears. Recorded by Diogenianus. It is taken from the well-known story about Midas, king of Phrygia; when he had stupidly judged Pan's singing to be superior to Apollo's, the god fixed a pair of ass's ears to his head. For a long time he managed to hide them under a turban, but his barber saw them and told the tale abroad. The adage will be properly applied to stupid people, with dense ears and doltish wits; or to tyrants, who have ears as long as asses' and hear from a long way off, since they have eavesdroppers sent out to bring back news of what they hear. Plutarch in his essay 'On Being a Busybody' has special Greek words for 'listeners' and 'tale-bearers.' Lucian, in his essay on Not Believing Slanderers, draws a portrait of Calumny and gives her Midas's ears, because of her eagerness to eavesdrop and catch what other people are doing: 'On the right sits a certain man with very large ears, almost like those of Midas.'
Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Midas indeed, if you put on the ears of an ass.' The commentator on this passage notes the proverb about asses' ears and gives several reasons for the fabrication. He says that according to some authorities Midas was turned into an ass for having at one time scorned and disparaged the divinity of Bacchus. Others tell a story about his having one day passed the asses of this god and insulted them, so Bacchus in anger gave him asses' ears. Some say that he had ears that were overlong by nature and stuck out like asses' ears, and hence this jesting tale arose. Most of them, however, prefer to take the meaning of this allegory to be that Midas, being a despot, used to send out spies and eavesdroppers, whom he used as ears, to let him know whatever was being said or done all over the country. Hence, as there was general astonishment at the way in which he had news even of things which were done in secret and far away, these gave rise to the proverb, that Midas was said to have asses' ears. Perhaps it was because no other animal has more acute hearing than the donkey, except the mouse; or because it has the longest ears of any. Persius: 'Who has not the ears of an ass?' Some say that the poet first wrote: 'King Midas has the ears of an ass,' and changed it into a question, 'Who has not' for fear of the emperor.

In the Andria of Terence there is a phrase which seems a proverbial allusion borrowed by Horace, 'hence those tears.' Cicero made use of it in his speech in defence of Marcus Caelius: 'Hence those tears, indeed, and this is the cause of all those offences and criminal charges.' It may be said, when the reason for something has remained long concealed and at last the truth is discovered. For instance, suppose someone said that the barbarians despise Greek learning for fear, of course, they themselves should appear uneducated; he could usefully add 'hence those tears' that is, because it makes them uncomfortable. This sort of allusion often appears in good authors; and it takes on a proverbial function even if there is no proverbial metaphor present. Of this kind is the often-repeated Homeric phrase in Cicero's Letters to Atticus: 'I fear the Trojans.'

Something of the same kind is said by Lucian in the Eunuch: 'This, Pamphilus, was that very Helen, αὕτη Ἑλένη, for whom the champions fought so fiercely.' He speaks of two Peripatetic philosophers, contending disgracefully in court about fees and filthy lucre. The allusion is to the fight in single combat between Menelaus and Paris, which Homer describes in the Iliad, book 3.

To whiten ivory with ink is to apply external refinement and decoration to something naturally beautiful, so as to obscure rather than enhance its native charm. The bawd in Plautus says to the naturally pretty girl who is asking for white pigment to smear on her cheeks: 'You might as well ask for ink to whiten ivory.' Every attempt to add allurement to things which are beautiful by nature results in disfiguring them, not beautifying. It would be the same if one were to use the face-paint of rhetoric to prettify truth, the most beautiful of all things. White-lead used to be used to produce a white complexion, and similarly rouge to redden the cheeks. On the same lines Plautus says in the Mostellaria, 'It's a lovely piece of work and you want to furbish it up with a new look.'

To this class belongs the metaphor in Horace which we read in the first book of the Satires, poem 3: 'But we distort their virtues to a crime, / And joy th'untainted vessel to begrime.' That is, we corrupt and mask things which are right in themselves, by applying to them unsuitable names. It would however be neatly matched with the previous saying: we apply a covering to things which are in themselves seemly, and this masks their native comeliness instead of increasing it.

Τῶν καλῶν καὶ ὀπώρη καλὴ, Even the autumn of beauty is beautiful. The proverbial metaphor comes from an observation of Archelaus, made by him, according to Plutarch, about Euripides, who was showering kisses at a banquet on Agathon, already a young man and grown up. It is not far from that Homeric phrase I shall comment on elsewhere, 'to judge by the husk.' In the spring months everything is tender and shining, since all is in flower or leaf. But in the autumn when all things have turned to straw and bare branches, they seem harsh and wild. This can be applied to naturally excellent things which do not seem wearisome even when they grow old. Nothing, indeed, is so ugly that it has not a time of attractiveness. This can be suitably said also of those who carry their age well.

There seems to be a similar metaphor in the saying quoted by Quintilian in the Institutions, book 8: 'Great rivers have navigable springs.' He says this was often repeated everywhere when he was young. Its meaning is that things belonging to the great, however tiny, have more power than all the possessions of the small. But Quintilian gives a bad mark to maxims of this kind, on the ground that they may be clearly seen to be false.

He adds this similar saying in the same place. It seems to mean that excellent and well-endowed minds mature early and come to fruition. Quintilian criticizes this kind of saying. It seemed right to me, however, to include these in the list of adages, because he testifies to their having been in general use, and the shameless exaggeration (as has been said earlier) does not exclude them from this class.

Cicero in his speech in defence of Murena writes thus: 'In the second place, if any awe attached to that profession in the time of our ancestors, it fell into utter contempt and was destroyed by the publication of your mysteries. In former times very few knew whether or not an action at law could be brought; for the calendar was not publicly known. Those who gave legal decisions had great power; they were asked to indicate the day on which a suit could be brought, as if they were Chaldean astronomers. A clerk by name Gnaeus Flavius was found who pierced the crows' eyes and published the calendar, enabling the people to learn up which were court days, and plucked their wisdom from the learned counsel themselves. And so these men, enraged because they were afraid that lawsuits could be conducted without their assistance, once the proper days were published and made a matter of general knowledge, invented certain legal formulae that they might still have a part in every transaction.' Again in the speech for the defence of Lucius Flaccus: 'Here, by Hercules, is a case of the proverbial crow's eye. For he swindled Hermippus here, a learned man, his own fellow-citizen, who should have been thoroughly acquainted with him.' Whether the proverb comes from some fable, or event, or is taken from a metaphor, is not quite clear. Wherever it came from, the meaning of 'to pierce crows' eyes' seems to be: to put the learning of older generations in the shade with some new discovery, and make it appear that earlier people knew nothing, have seen nothing. It is uttered in irony. Jerome, in his second apologetic against Rufinus, used it in the same way: 'Now, indeed, owing to the diversity of the regions, different copies are in circulation, and the genuine old translation has been corrupted and spoilt; and so you may think it within our province either to judge between several as to which is authentic, or to found a new work on the old one, and when the Jews laugh at us, as they say, to pierce their crows-eyes.' Jerome means by this to suggest that his examination of texts might seem to impute ignorance to the Jews, to whom at that time one had to go to get the truth of the Old Testament. Macrobius uses it in much the same way in the seventh book of his Saturnalia: 'And since we confess ourselves unable to cope with this labyrinth of words, come, Vettius, let us urge Eustathius to maintain the contrary opinion and be good enough to give us all the arguments for a mixed diet. In this way the language of violence will be the victim of its own weapons and just like one crow pecking at another's eyes, one Greek will steal the applause from another.' Thus far Macrobius. It would not be inappropriate to suggest to the reader that he should consider very carefully whether crows have given rise to this proverb through their long life and peaceful cohabitation. Indeed the crow was the symbol of concord in Antiquity; and its length of life is celebrated in a Greek proverb. So that anyone who tried to bring into contempt, cancel or remove the things which antiquity approved with one accord, may be said to wish to 'pierce the crows' eyes.' This is not so absurd, if one takes 'piercing the eyes' to mean removing the sight from those who have it at the clearest and best, so letting the darkness flood in; or to mean touching the very thing with the point, as they say, so skilfully that not only the target or the bird is pierced by the dart, but its very eyes.

The phrase we read in the Phormio of Terence has the look of a proverb: 'Why, they are on their way to me in a gladiatorial spirit.' This means with the intention of wreaking harm on another even if it were to one's own peril, steadfastly resolved and ready to destroy or be destroyed. For a gladiator, all set for the fight, has the gamble of battle before him, either to kill if he should gain the upper hand, or to fall dying if he yields. Aristotle calls this kind of bravery, carrying with it scorn for one's own safety, `Celtic.'

`For a crust of bread' is still used in our own day by the common people to mean something quite insignificant and worthless. Marcus Cato, charging Marcus Coelius in a speech with cowardice, not only in what he said but in what he did not say, observes that 'he can be bribed with a crust of bread either to keep silence or to talk.' This is quoted by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights. The hyperbole seems to be taken either from dogs which we tempt with a piece of bread or from beggars.

To keep to the clothes one's mother gave one. This means to live like a child, following the dictates of others; we read it in Quintilian, book 5: 'For what could be more pitiful than that law; it is like following up letters traced beforehand for infants, and (as the Greeks say) carefully keeping to the dress prescribed by mother?' From these words of Quintilian it is clear that this was a proverb in Greek, and it is adopted, and indicated as a proverb, by Lucian in Nigrinus: 'And whence comes this peacock? Perhaps it is his mother's clothing.' These jeers are addressed to one who arrives in a gaudy garment. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Fortune of Alexander': 'Preserving like a small child the dress which the custom of his country, like a nurse, had prescribed for him.' The very phrase 'to live according to prescription' seems to be a proverbial metaphor (nothing could be more commonplace): it is apparently taken from children, who (as Plato says) have writing-copies given them by their teacher as a model, so that they can imitate them and learn to form the letters. This is the kind of imitation made fun of by Horace, imposed and servile: 'O servile herd of mimics, all your fuss / Has roused so oft my laughter and my jest.' And Quintilian thinks nothing less conducive to good oratory than the practice of following the rules of the art in such a way that one dares not diverge from them by a finger's breadth, when the nature of the case calls for it.

Horace's phrase in the Epistles has the appearance of a proverb: 'Yet he knows well enough / How far bronze coins are from lupins.' That is, he knows the difference between what is cheap and what is precious. Horace is speaking about people who do not confer benefits on anybody and everybody, as it were throwing them away, but place them so as to correspond to the merit and dignity of the recipient, and the value of the gift which is given. Juvenal too mentions, as a proverb, the worthlessness of the lupin: 'I'd rather keep my pea-pods to myself / Than have the praise of the whole countryside.' Lucian in On Salaried Posts mentions it, when he asks if there were such a famine of lupins and spring-water, that he should give himself up to such slavery.

There is a Greek iambic line of a proverbial kind in Suetonius Tranquillus' life of Nero: 'When I am dead, the earth may burn with fire.' When this was quoted by someone as a common saying, Nero replied 'Even while I live,' alluding to the burning of the city, which he brought about soon after. This proverb is mentioned by Cicero in the third book of the De finibus: 'And as we feel it wicked and inhuman for men to declare (the saying is usually expressed in a familiar Greek line) that they care not if, when they themselves are dead, the universal conflagration ensues.' Similarly, Seneca in the De clementia, book 2, when he says that 'many powerful but detestable sayings touch human life, and become popular, such as that famous "Let them hate, so long as they fear." There is a Greek line similar to this, which calls for fire on the earth as soon as the speaker is dead.' This same saying still exists among mortals to this day: 'When I die,' they say, 'the whole world dies.' They mean that it does not matter to them what happens to future generations, whether it be good or bad, when they themselves, removed from life, will feel nothing at all.

To mingle sea and sky, is a proverbial hyperbole, meaning to throw everything into confusion, to leave nothing undone. Livy: 'Why do they mingle earth and heaven?' Again in another place, 'Finally what are they doing, why do they mingle heaven and earth?' Juvenal: 'You may confound sea and sky with your bellowing, / I am a man after all.' Lucian in the dialogue between Prometheus and Mercury: 'Was it necessary on account of this to mix earth and sky, as the saying goes?' Virgil in book 5, speaking of Juno trying everything: 'All the seas and sky / She mingled.' The same author, a little differently in book 12: Not though in deluge it confound the earth, And plunge it in the waves, shatter the sky, And cast it down to Hell. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata said with a similar metaphor, 'Zeus the Lord-Thunderer shall turn high to low.' Plutarch in the life of Romulus makes use of it to equate people who 'mix earth and heaven' with those who turn gods into men and men into gods, and tell very human stories about divinities: 'Total denial of the divinity of virtue is impious and ignoble, and to mix earth and heaven is utter stupidity.'

In a similar way Horace says: 'You will mix the sacred with the profane' meaning 'there is nothing you will not do.' Also 'confounding right and wrong.' Among the ancients a great difference was made between what belonged to man and what to the gods, so that Homer even distinguishes the names used customarily by the gods from any human words. And Pythagoras ordered abstinence from some things because they were consecrated to the divine powers; hence those who have no scruples, who dare anything, mix sacred with profane.

In Plautus and other authors a proverbial phrase is found 'To me it's neither here nor there, I reckon it's neither here nor there,' meaning 'I have no concern with it, I am entirely indifferent.' Plautus in the Amphitryo: 'He accuses me of things that were never done and which I never thought of doing, and he thinks I shall take it as neither here nor there.' Aulus Gellius in book 16 of the Nights says that to take something as neither here nor there is equivalent to 'being composed in mind and indifferent to what happens, and sometimes to ignoring and despising it,' on the lines of 'the Greek verb adiaphorein, to be indifferent.' He quotes Laberius in his Compitalia: 'Now you are unconcerned; now you reckon it neither here nor there.' Marcus Varro too in his Sisenna: 'Even if the beginnings of all these were not the same, it would be neither here nor there.' Finally he cites these lines out of Lucilius: 'All this is but a game, which neither here nor there is - / Neither here nor there, but all is a game and jesting.' This is imitated from the familar Greek phrase Ἄνω καὶ κάτω, Up and down, by which we convey that there is no order and no distinguishing feature between things.

To and fro is used as a proverbial phrase, and is equivalent to saying'now on this side, now on that,' or 'on both sides.' The metaphor is more attractive if applied to disputes, altercation, discussion or quarrels. Cicero uses it like this in the De republica: 'We spent the whole of that day in much talk to and fro.' Again in the De of ficiis: 'By kind services given and received, to and fro.' Seneca in the De beneficiis, book 5: 'Kindness and gratitude ought to pass to and fro.' Using the same phrase we say'The question was tossed to and fro,' 'Damage was inflicted and received to and fro,' 'There was a competition in insults to and fro.'

This is very like the previous phrase, and comes from Terence's Eunuchus: 'I will give you peace for all these six months, Parmeno, so that you don't run up and down,' that is, here and there, or at any rate beteeen Thais and your master and your master and Thais, after the manner of lovers' servants. A little more style is given to it by widening the meaning, and speaking for instance of lawyers turning rapidly from volume to volume, from statute to statute, from commentator to commentator, switching from time to time and ranging up and down. This metaphor seems to be borrowed from the Sisyphus of legend, rolling his stone in the underworld. The Greek phrase for `up and down,' ἄνω καὶ κάτω, which I have just mentioned, is so close that it seems the same. Demosthenes in the first Philippic: 'Even though news has come that Philip is somewhere else, you run up and down just the same.' Aristophanes in the Acharnians: 'They chatter in the market-place and up and down they run, / Fleeing the ruddled rope.' Euripides in the Bacchae: `Confusing all things together, up and down.' Plato in the Phaedrus: `One ought to turn all the arguments over, up and down, and consider them.' Again in the Theaetetus: 'It might be, as the proverb says, that all is up and down.' He also used it in the Parmenides. Aristides the rhetorician uses the same phrase in several places, notably in Cimon: 'Really I cannot see how everything could be more completely jumbled up and down.' Menander, quoted by Plutarch: 'Nor would they fuss up and down and say O me!' For 'up and down' Euripides used'back and forth': 'The gods are tumbling these things back and forth.' The line has been corrupted by copyists, and will run better if we omit the definite article. In Athenaeus, book 6: 'But each of them shifts these things up and down.' He is speaking of the poets, who make no new discoveries themselves but mix up the inventions of others and make them their own by a fresh treatment.
And so the proverb can be applied either to the man who tries everything or to the one who confuses everything, or to the acuteness of one who looks at a subject from all sides. This is very like a phrase in Terence, in the Hecyra: 'Running rursum prorsum, back and forth,' for hither and thither. For rursum properly means 'backwards' and prorsum 'forwards.' That this form is proverbial was also remarked by Donatus. Of the same sort are those others, sursum deorsum, intro foras, hac illac, and two Greek examples ἄνω καὶ κάτω, πρόσσω καὶ ὀπίσσω. The further the adage is removed from the physical world, the pleasanter it will be. Of this kind is Julianus' saying to Galen, in the book Galen wrote to confute him: 'Nor could they persuade either us or themselves truly that they know what nature is, about which they chatter up and down, declaiming on all sides.' So anyone who thinks out for himself the various aspects of a thing can be said to have thought it out up and down.

The man who suits himself to seriousness and jesting alike, and whose company is always delightful - that is the man the ancients called 'a man for all hours.' Quintilian tells us that Asinius Pollio was called so. In Suetonius, Tiberius used to call two of his boon companions the merriest of men, and friends for all hours, even in his imperial orders. A friend of this kind is depicted, with vividness and grace, by Ennius, in the person of Geminus Servilius. Although the poem is preserved in the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, book 12 chapter 4, I have pleasure in transcribing it here:
When he had spoken thus, he called the man
Who shared with him his table and his talk,
And all he had; with whom at close of day,
Wearied with counsel and affairs of state,
He might with jesting tell things great and small
And pour out all he thought and know it safe;
A mind to which he turned with full delight
In public and in private, never swayed
By others' views to doing wrong, but light
Of heart, and without malice; learned and loyal;
A man of pleasant ways and power of speech,
Happy, contented with his own, and shrewd,
Speaking a word in season, ready with help,
Sparing with talk, retentive; prizing high
The value of the buried years of old,
Keeping old ways but not despising new,
Wise in the ancient laws of gods and men,
Able to speak but also hold his peace.
Such a one among philosophers is said to have been Aristippus, who did not refuse to obey the command of Dionysius and dance with the rest in the purple worn by women, though Plato objected, adding that even in the Bacchanalia one should behave with modesty. Hence Horace says: 'Every colour became Aristippus.' Those on the other hand who have their own code of behaviour and do not find it easy to live with anyone else, are said to be 'men of few men,' as Terence says. In Horace: 'He lacks, we say, the common feelings of a man.'

It seems as if this was as popular a saying among all peoples as it is now in general use: Everything bows to money. It is mentioned among Hebrew proverbs in Ecclesiastes, chapter 10, and is well known in the same form in Greek and Latin alike. Euripides in the Phoenissae: 'Nothing is dearer to mortals than money, / Among men it has the greatest power.' Again Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Nowhere will you find anything sound, / But all alike bow to the love of gain.' Demosthenes alludes to this in the First Olynthiac: 'In a word, money is needed, and without this nothing can be done that needs to be done.' Aristophanes again in the Plutus explains in humorous vein how everything which is done among mortals, good or bad, is done on account of money, and even the worship of the gods themselves in performed for no other reason. Among many other remarks he quotes this all-embracing thought:
If aught be fine, magnificent or fair,
It comes to men from thee alone; to wealth
All things together are obedient.
Horace calls money a queen: 'Queen Money gives us all; well-dowered wife, / Loyalty, friends, beauty, and lineage.' But no one more clearly describes the tyranny of money than Euripides when he makes Bellerophon speak in this way. Seneca quotes a few lines in his volume of Letters, no 115, for the play itself is lost; as these lines are exceptionally amusing and charming, I will transcribe them with pleasure (but emended in some places, since in Sencea these are corrupt):
Call me the worst of men, but call me rich.
None asks if a man's good, but is he rich?
Not whence or why they ask, but what have you got?
A man's prestige hung everywhere on pelf.
What (do you ask) is shameful to have?
Naught. We ask if he is rich, not if he s good.
I wish to live rich, but if poor, to die.
It's a good death, to die while making profits.
Money, that blessing to the race of men,
Cannot be matched by mother's love, or lisp
Of children, or the honour due one's sire.
And if the sweetness of the lover's glance
Be half so charming, Love will rightly stir
The hearts of gods and men to adoration.
'When these last lines in the play were spoken,' he writes, 'the whole populace rose up as one man to throw out the actor and the poem, until Euripides himself jumped up in the audience and begged them to wait and see what a bad end was reserved for the worshipper of gold. Bellerophon paid the same penalty in that play as each man does in his own.'
But from these lines quoted in Latin by Seneca, I found some later Greek ones in the Doctors at Dinner of Athenaeus, book 4, with no author's name, and I will add them here:
O gain of gold, most honoured among men,
So that no mother, father, children bring
Such pleasure to the house as you confer
On those who hold you in their home; if
Love Has eyes that shine so bright, it is no wonder
If loves be numberless.
It comes into one's mind to wonder at the perversity and unreasonableness of the human mind. A vile opinion spoken by a vile character in a fictitious play, recited by an actor on the stage - they can't bear this, and they riot to have him thrown out; but every man of them makes light of it in his own house. How many of them do not declare in their wishes, in their life, just what that actor was declaiming? Are they shocked at words in the theatre, and not at the thing itself in everyone's life? What is there more infamous, more generally detested than that word 'lie,' and what more common than the thing itself in the conduct of men? What is there more hateful than perjury? Examine the lives of men, and you will find perjury everywhere. Look at the vows which princes swear to their people, and bishops and abbots too - nay, look at the vows all Christians take at baptism. Compare their actual behaviour, see what a mass of perjuries you will find. How we execrate the name of 'thief'! But in real life you will find nothing else. Unless it is not theft, to accept a loan with no intention of paying it back, to deny that a thing was entrusted to you when you have it packed safely away, to usurp an inheritance or someone else's property, to hoodwink a purchaser, to filch part of the goods you have in your charge, to offer glass for gems, to sell one kind of wine as another. In short, to lose no opportunity of defrauding your neighbour. But I return to the Adages.

This adage is found in the collections of Diogenianus. It stands however in the Phoenissae of Euripides, thus: The tale of truth is simple And it needs no fancy explanations. For it has its own proportion, but the unjust word Being diseased, has need of clever drugs. It is quoted by Seneca, letter 49: 'For as that writer of tragedy says, the language of truth is simple.' The proverb can be taken up against orators and poets, who usually trick out their lying words with decorative touches. Or against those who speak fair, and since they do not speak from the heart, are all the more careful to adorn their speech, and make their words imitate true feelings just because those feelings are lacking, 'as those who are paid to weep at funerals / Say and do more than the truly sorrowful.' Meanwhile old-fashioned rustic truth is plain, and knows nothing of this kind of pretence in speech, calling a fig a fig, a spade a spade. Or it may be used against soothsayers, who produce their prognostications in ambiguous terms, for fear they may be caught out; there is always a chink through which they can slink away. Finally it hits at those who talk in riddles to hide the truth. Often this is the sign which gives the falsehood away, as in the Eunuchus of Terence: Are you going on talking roguery with me in riddles? I know, I don't know, he went, I heard, I wasn't there. Will you not speak to me openly, and tell me the truth?

In the Trinummus of Plautus we read a proverbial allegory in these words: The tunic is nearer than the cloak. It means that among our friends there are some who are more closely linked with us than others, and not all are to be considered on the same footing. Among the ancients the first obligation was towards parents, the next to wards committed to our care, the third to clients [dependants], the fourth to guests, the fifth to kinsmen and relatives, as Gellius says, book 5 chapter 13. Besides, some affairs are more our concern than others. The cloak was the outer garment of the Greeks, like the toga worn by the Romans. The tunic was covered by the toga, and frequently as in Homer both are mentioned together.

Γονυ χνήμης ἔγγυον The knee is closer than the calf. The collectors of Greek proverbs say that this adage arose from an event. When in battle, a man saw two friends both in peril of their lives, one his brother and the other his cousin, and was not able to help them both, he left the cousin and defended his brother, saying these words meanwhile, which turned into a proverb: 'the knee is closer than the calf.' It is mentioned by Aristotle in the Ethics book 9: 'Widely-known proverbs touch on the same thing, like "one soul," "among friends all things are common," "friendship is equality," and "the knee is nearer than the shin-bone."' Theocritus in the idyll entitled The Graces, applied this proverb to the grasping man who lives for himself, and wishes to give nothing to his friends:
Every one keeping his right hand close to his chest
Asks only whence his money will increase,
Nor would he give a friend the rust therefrom,
But straightway says: knee nearer is than shin,
I would prefer a profit for myself.
Athenaeus book 9 seems to have applied it differently, as if speaking of those things which belong more nearly to the matter in hand. Plautus seems to have invented from this his own 'The tunic is nearer than the cloak.' The saying of Hesiod is close to this adage: 'Do not equate a friend with a brother.' We must establish an order among those we love. But there is nothing to prevent a different application, for instance, if one were to say that life is worth more than money, the body than clothes, the soul than the body, he would be right to adduce this proverb.

The same idea is expressed simply by Terence in the Andria: 'True is the word oft spoken far and wide, / I want the best myself, whate'er to you betide.' Again in the same play he twists it to suit a character: 'The nearest person to myself is me.' Aristotle in the Ethica Eudemia, book 7: 'For it seems to some that each man is his own best friend.' Plato again in the fifth book of the Laws: 'This is what they say, that each man by nature is a friend to himself, and that is right.' Even today there is a proverb in vogue among theologians, that charity begins from oneself, derived apparently from the words of the mystic Song of Songs: 'ordain charity towards me.' But I will explain more carefully what I think about this when opportunity arises. Euripides expressed the thought of Terence in the Medea: 'That each one loves himself more than his friend.' Again in the collections of Greek maxims: 'None loves another man more than himself.'

People who are in great favour with themselves, and who diligently study their own advantage, even to the neglect and detriment of the affairs of others, are gracefully called philautoi (self-lovers) in Greek. The vice itself is called self-love or philautia. Horace paraphrases it neatly: 'Blind love of self.' This is the vice which Plato names the fount of all evils. Aristotle, in the Ethics, book 9, makes it clear that this shameful term of self-love was commonly bandied about as a proverb, when he says that men who are over-fond of themselves are publicly reproached with the base and disgraceful name of self-lovers. Those of the opposite sort who dislike themselves are called pedantic: Martial, 'One is rank and the other pedantic.' It is a deeply rooted fault which makes people approve of everything belonging to themselves, rather than what belongs to others; it seems to have been especially so in Africans. It is a sickness never more incurable than in matters of doctrine, once we have been imbued with them. Galen notes this neatly, in the first book of his On the Natural Faculties: 'Contention on matters of conviction is such an evil, that it is hard to shake off, quite indelible, more incurable than any scabby disease.'

Εξω βελῶν Out of range. This means in safety, out of danger. It is a metaphor from battles, in which those who do not want to be hit by missiles remove themselves to a spot too far away to be within reach of a weapon, or else take shelter in a place protected against missiles. Hence that frequent phrase in historians: 'They had now come within range.' Quintus Curtius, book 3: 'The battle-lines were now in sight of each other, but out of range.' Again in book 4: 'So that they were out of range.' And again: 'They had not yet come within range, the Greek for which is ἐντὸς βελῶν. But 'out of range' is applied not only to those who are futher away than a javelin's cast could reach but to those also who are safe in any respect. Seneca in book 7 of the De beneficiis used a similar metaphor, 'Out of harm's way': 'The blasphemer indeed cannot injure God, whose divinity places him out of harm's way.' Lucian in Wishes: 'To look down from on high, hovering out of range;' someone is wishing for wings, so that he might observe the fighting from above, safe himself from being hit. Again: `And he was outside the range of missiles.' So Polyphemus of Ulysses, who had already escaped, so that the Cyclops could not reach him with a missile. Odyssey io, near the end. Again the same author: 'Why not strike the Muses, who are safe from your darts?' He alludes to this again in Nigrinus: 'And as they say Zeus rescued Hector, I withdrew myself "out from the javelins, / The slaughter and the tumult and the blood," planning to spend the rest of my life at home.' This is in Homer's Iliad, book 14: 'Out from the javelins, lest anyone add wound to wound.' Conversely, when we wish it to appear that someone is in danger, we shall say that he is 'within range.' Lucian in Bacchus: 'Not waiting even for a moment to be within range.' Virgil in book 11: 'Now both had come within a spearcast's range.'

This has much the same meaning: 'Behind the front rank.' It also comes from war, in which the safest place is behind the front rank. In the front line stood the spearmen, in the second the van (principes), a sturdier age-group; these were followed by the shield-bearers, the most remarkable for feats of arms, and after them came the triarii and rorarii (skirmishers) in the manner described by Livy in the first decade, book 8, so there is no place safer than behind the van. Terence in the Eunuchus: 'You draw these men up, I will be behind the front line, / Thus I shall give the signal to all.' This place was suitable to a cowardly wretch, as Gnatho mockingly says: 'That's real shrewdness,' he says, `to draw up others in battle array and take care to find a spot for himself.' It was the usual practice of Pyrrhus. Donatus points out that this is a military term, and Vegetius in the second book of his De re militari, bears witness that the important soldiers in the line (principales) are properly called principia. He says as follows: 'Now that I have explained the old-time formation of the legion, I will now indicate the names and dignities (according to present arrangements) of the principales, or to use the right word, principia.' Axius, in Varro: `I should like you to start behind the front rank, as they say in the camp.' You will find more about this in the proverb 'Back to the third line.'

Εκ τῶν ποδῶν ἱππείων, Far from the horses' hooves. Even today this is commonly said, to mean that one must fly from danger. By this expression they usually conveyed the warning that everyone must take care in cavalry contests to keep away from the horses' hooves. This was later taken up by the public as a proverb.

Πόῤῥω διός τε καὶ κεραυνοῦ, Away from Jove and from the thunderbolt. This is found in Diogenianus. It is a warning to have nothing to do with great men, who can destroy you with a nod if they feel like it; especially avoiding kings and tyrants. They have their thunderbolt, when they are roused. The thunderbolt is an attribute of Jove, according to the poets, and some kings wished to have their colossal statues made in this image; so says Plutarch. He gives a very neat comparison: just as when a man is struck the blood is seen before the wound, and just as the lightning is seen before the thunder is heard, so it is with tyrants (and this means almost all princes), the condemnation comes before trial and the accused perishes before his crime is proved. Suidas quotes this hemistich: 'Steer clear of the strong.' And Diogenianus gives this too among the adages. He warns that it is not safe to have to do with princes, for whom their liking is their licence; you might apply to this the Greek saying: 'There is great danger that the man who can have everything he wants may want something he ought not to.' This matches the warning that Aristotle gave to Calisthenes, that his talk with Alexander should be either infrequent or such as would give pleasure. Plutarch makes the same point in his life of Solon. Croesus had scorned Solon for replying too freely to a question about happiness, and when as a result Aesop the writer of fables warned him that one should have either the least possible, or the most agreeable possible, conversation with kings, Solon rephrased the saying: 'Indeed not! but rather either the least possible or the best.' Ovid alluded to the proverb, when he had felt the touch of this thunderbolt: 'Live to thyself; as far as thou may'st, shun worldly grandeur; / From the height of grandeur the fierce thunderbolt falls.'

Seven make a feast, nine make a fray. A neat saying, with a neat pun in it, meaning that there should be few invited to a dinner, otherwise it will be noisy and unpleasant. Horace means this when he says, 'Still there is room for other shades, but note - / Too crowded feasts are scented with the goat.' There were laws in old days which prescribed both that the number of guests should be moderate and the expenses kept down. In Gellius, Marcus Terentius Varro judges that the number of guests should stand between the Muses and the Graces - at the most seven, at the least three. But this adage forbids that it should rise to the number of the Muses. Pliny, book 28 chapter 2, writes that Servius Sulpitius suggested that the reason why it was unlucky to leave the table was because at that time the number of guests was still not more than five. Chaerephon in Athenaeus, book 6, seems to permit up to thirty guests, but only at weddings. Those who had the task of counting the guests were called gunaikonomoi. He tells there an amusing story: a hangeron who had attended a wedding uninvited and had taken the end place at table, was ordered by the gunaikonomoi to leave, after they had counted the guests, because he had followed on after number thirty, and this was against the law. 'Count again,' he said, 'and begin with me.' In this way he would not be the extra one. There is a mention by Julius Capitolinus in the life of the emperor Lucius Verus: 'And it is well known that he gave a banquet in which he took twelfth place, for the first time, although there is a wellknown saying about the number of guests, seven to a feast, nine to a fray.' By 'fray,' convicium, he means noise, as though the word were convocium. This can be applied to a multiplicity of friends, or a mass of arguments in discussion, or of examples in proving a point, or even to versatility in skills. In everything, overcrowding leads to confusion and trouble.

A proverbial image, 'to push someone off the step,' to throw him into consternation, to disturb the balance of his mind. Cicero De officiis, book 1: 'But it takes a brave and resolute spirit not to be perturbed in times of difficulty and thrown off the step, as the saying is, in agitation, but to keep one's presence of mind and act with deliberation.' There is the same image in the phrase in gradum reponere, to settle someone back again, as it were to restore him to his previous place. Quintilian, Institutions, book 4: `Or if they should falter at all they may be restored to their place, as it were, by the opportune questioning of the person who has introduced them.' To the same class belong movere loco, 'to move from its place,' deturbare gradu, 'to disturb from its position,' restituere in locum, 'to restore to its place.'

Μετὰ τὰ δεινὰ φρονιμώτερος, Sadder and wiser. Said when someone becomes more cautious through a sad experience, like people who have tasted poison and only know it to be poison when they begin to feel its effects. It is close to the proverb quoted elsewhere: 'The fool is wise after the event.' Or to this: `Cleon is a Prometheus after the fact.' The adage occurs in the collections of Apostolius, an author whom I would not quote except for the lack of anyone better.

Εξ ὠοῦ ἐξῆλθεν, He came out of an egg. They say this remark used to be made about people of great beauty and brightness, as if to say that they were not born in the ordinary way of men but out of an egg, like Castor and Pollux. In the stories of the poets, Leda the daughter of Tyndarus lay with Jove and gave birth to two eggs: from one came the twins Castor and Pollux, boys of exceeding beauty, and from the other was born Helen, whose beauty is celebrated in all literature.