Adagia 301–400

Οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐς Κόρινθόν ἐσθ᾽ ὁ πλοῦς, It is not given to everyone to land at Corinth. A proverb as fine as it is old, regarding things which are dangerous and difficult to approach, and not to be attempted by all and sundry. It originated, according to Suidas, from the fact that the approach to the harbour of Corinth is neither easy nor without danger to sailors. Strabo, in the eighth book of his Geography, gives another origin for the proverb, deriving it from the luxury of Corinth and its courtesans. He shows that Corinth, being on the Isthmus, had two harbours, one looking towards Asia and one facing Italy, and was thus extremely rich owing to the crowds of traders. In this city, he says, there was a temple dedicated to Venus, so rich that it had over a thousand girls whom the Corinthians had consecrated to Venus as prostitutes in her honour. And so for their sake a large multitude crowded into the city, with the result that the public funds became enriched on a vast scale; but the traders, visitors and sailors were drained of resources by the extravagance to which the city's luxury and voluptuousness led them. Hence the proverb got abroad, 'it is not for everyone to land at Corinth.' Horace and Aulus Gellius refer the proverb to the distinguished courtesan Lais. The former writes in his Epistles: To have pleased great men is not the finest praise, Tis not for every man to go to Corinth He stayed at home, who feared lest he should fail. He is apparently alluding to Aristippus, who is known to have been intimate with Lais, and so intimate that his boast was that he alone possessed Lais, and the others were possessed by her. The latter, Gellius, contributes this story, book 1 chapter 8, from Phocion the Peripatetic: 'Lais, the Corinthian woman, earned vast sums by her elegance and beauty. It was notorious that the richest men of all Greece went to see her but no one was admitted unless he gave whatever she had asked. And that girl asked far too much, hence the oft-quoted proverb in Greek 'Not every man can go to Corinth,' because it would be in vain to go there to see Lais if one could not give what she asked. The great Demosthenes went to her in private, and asked for her bounty. But Lais demanded ten thousand drachmas. Demosthenes, much struck and alarmed by the woman's impudence and the amount of money, withdrew, and said as he departed, 'I'm not spending ten thousand drachmas on something I should be sorry for.' Others prefer to relate this proverb to all the harlots of Corinth in general; their rapacity was also commented on in the Old Comedy. Aristophanes says in the Plutus: And they say Corinthian courtesans, When a poor man approaches them by chance They ignore him, but if a rich man does They straightway turn their prôktos to him ... I would not hesitate to translate these lines into Latin if they were as decent as they are elegant. Strabo records the remark of a certain prostitute, which gives an illustration of their greed. When a married lady taxed one of this order with shameful idleness, because she did not work and spent no time on her weaving, the girl said 'Indeed I do; I may be what I am, but I have worked off three pieces of cloth in no time at all.' However, it seems to me that there is no absurdity in taking the proverb to refer to the dangerous navigational approach to Corinth, which Strabo mentions in the same book. From this meaning it would later be turned to other uses. The hanger-on in the comedy twisted it in a neat way: 'It isn't everyone who can get near the table.' Stobaeus quotes it from Nicolaus, a comic poet, and Eustathius too recalls and explains it in his commentary on the Catalogue of Ships, adding that it is an imitation from a line of Sophocles: The sailing's not this way for prudent mortals.' This line of Sophocles which Eustathius quotes is from the Philoctetes. There are thus two ways of using the proverb: either when we are describing something too big for the powers of the person who is attempting it (for instance, a person may aim at becoming a scholar without having the natural endowments or the necessary funds, or one who is weakly in body might try to emulate a Paul or an Antony); or else when someone is preparing to tackle a dangerous business, which is not likely to have a happy outcome, for instance if he should begin a never-ending lawsuit before gift-eating judges, or should give himself up to Court life or undertake a war. None of these usually has so good an outcome that there is no occasion to repent of the course of action.

Ἅλις δρύος, Acorns have had their day [literally, enough of the oak]. An old adage, aimed at those who have left behind a squalid way of life and proceeded to a more polished and wealthier one. It comes from the fact that early men, rough and wild as they were, abandoned the habit of living on acorns as soon as Ceres showed them the use of grain. Pliny testifies, however, in book 16 that in his time many races lived on acorns, and among the Spanish they were a great delicacy, so much so that they were brought in after dinner as a dessert. A sweetmeat like that was eminently suitable to a people who used urine to clean their teeth. The proverb is not inapplicable to those who leave behind the fine old-fashioned virtues and take up with the behaviour and outlook of their times, beginning to copy the ways of modern folk. Cicero seems to have used it like this, when he writes to Atticus, book 2 (in the letter which begins, 'I have many things on my mind ...'): The combats with Clodius which I have to expect give me only moderate concern, for I think I can either face them with all honour or decline them without embarrassment. Perhaps you will say "Like acorns, these have had their day. Think of safety if you love me." Oh dear, why are you not here?' The passage reads thus in all the texts, but I think learned readers will agree with me when I say it should run: 'Perhaps you will say that honour, like acorns, has had its day. Think of safety if you love me,' by which you may understand that all thought for honour (like acorns) and the old-fashioned striving for virtue are to be left behind, and henceforward safety is to be considered rather than reputation. He writes elsewhere that this is in his mind (Letters to Atticus, book 4): 'Recantation had a look of pettiness to me; but farewell true, upright, honest counsels.' The proverb is rather more clearly explained in book 2 of the same: 'What will you say? Are we to consider those people to have been bribed? What shall we do, if there is no other possibility? Are we to serve freedmen, even slaves? But as you say, zeal has had its day' - explaining in fact what the acorns mean, that is, probity and principle. There is no reason why we should not use this in general as a proverb, whenever some old-established interest or principle is given up.

'To open a window' is to give an opportunity, or, so to speak, a handle. Terence in the Heautontimorumenos: 'Ha, what a window onto wickedness you will have opened!' This is always used in a bad sense, but 'to open the door' also in a good one. Pliny to Suetonius Tranquillus: 'And indeed that speech of mine opened the ears of men, and the door of fame.' Plutarch in the essay 'On Osiris': 'Opening great gates for the godless people.' On the same lines is that remark of Cicero's when defending Plancus: 'Since I have entered into the case by a door by which I was reluctant to enter it.' Then those others, 'to open the way,' 'to make ready the way,' 'to bar the way/ 'to lay the foundations,' which we have mentioned elsewhere. A certain Cynic philosopher was called 'the gate-crasher,' in a different sense, because he used to burst into anyone's house to voice his objections to anything he disliked; but the same expression can be used for those who show the way to others.

A handle is what enables something to be seized and held. The metaphor from this supplies various kinds of adage. Plautus in the Persa: 'Do you not see how this man is looking for a handle?' - that is, on the watch for an opportunity to go back on an agreement and invalidate it. This is taken from the Greek metaphor, as it is common for them to say 'to look for a handle, to supply a handle.' Aristophanes in the Lysistrata: Tor if one of us gives them a handle however small, / These women will not forego their comfortable crafts.' Plato, Laws, book 3: 'And the word itself gives us a handle.' Aristides in Pericles: To give a handle that he might seem to be envious.' The same author said in Timon, using a similar metaphor, 'Nor does he give room for false accusation/ and Plato again in the Laws, book 7: 'That they might furnish many with handles for disagreement.' Again in book 8 of the Republic, he points out that the metaphor is taken from wrestlers, whose greatest skill is to arrange the body so that it cannot be seized: 'Again like a wrestler offer the same hold.' The same applies to 'chancing upon the same handles' or opportunities, 'to grasp a handle,' 'to let a handle slip,' 'to neglect a handle,' and possibly others. Epictetus in his Enchiridion wrote that everything has two handles: by one it can be held, but not by the other. Therefore it is important to grasp everything by the handle by which it can be held: that is, to choose the good everywhere and bear with the evil. A certain philosopher refused to admit young people without instruction in mathematics, because he said they were without a handle to philosophy. But Plutarch wrote beautifully in his essay 'On How to Study Poetry,' that there are many parts of the body by which vices can creep in, but there is one approach or handle to virtue and one only - the ears of the young if they have been pure, not taken up by the talk of men who flatter and corrupt them.

Κύκλωπος δωρεά, A present from the Cyclops. This means 'a useless gift.' The favours of tyrants and brigands are of this sort: if they do no harm, or only do it later, they claim this as a great benefaction in itself. Cicero writes to this effect in the second Philippic: 'How are brigands benefactors, except to be able to maintain that they have granted life to those from whom they have not taken it?' Lucian in Cataplus: 'That gift of the Cyclops delights me not at all - his promise "I shall eat Noman last."' The words are those of Micyllus the cobbler: when he had complained that he was not received at once with the others into Charon's boat, and Clotho, one of the Fates, expected him to be grateful for it as a favour, that he should be granted a short delay before going down to the underworld, he replied in this fashion. There is no doubt that Lucian was recalling the passage in Homer, in the ninth book of the Odyssey, where the Cyclops Polyphemus, delighted with the sweet wine Ulysses had given him, promises a present which would make Ulysses vastly happy - so that he would offer the Cyclops another draught from his flagon. Ulysses gave him more, and more again, in the hope of this present. Then when he thought the Cyclops well softened up with wine and likely to reply gently, Ulysses asked for the promised gift. The Cyclops replied: 'First I'll devour your friends, then you, Outis. The others first: that's your present from me.' Outis in Greek means No man, and this was the name Ulysses had invented for himself to delude Polyphemus.

I will paint you in your own colours, that is, I'll describe you as you really are. Taken from painters, who sometimes portray and exhibit a man's face as it really is, and sometimes beautify it with false colours. Or perhaps the allusion is to the crow in Aesop, who passed himself off in colours not his own. St Jerome against Rufinus: 'I might also paint you in your own colours, and rave against a raving man.' In the same work again: 'You boast that you know of crimes which I have confessed to you alone as to my best friend, and you say you will declare these publicly and that I must be painted with my true colours.' Pliny in the preface to the History of the World: 'And lest I should seem to be speaking altogether ill of the Greeks, I would wish us to be understood through them, and to be painted in those colours which you will find in these books.' And Cicero in Letters to His Brother Quintus, book 2, the last letter: 'in your colours, but with my own brush.' This, however, is slightly different.

Terence's ironic remark comes close to this in meaning; it occurs in the Adelphoe: 'If I were king, you should be adorned according to your virtues,' that is, you should have rewards fitting your deeds. For in old times kings used to pay great honour to those who had perpetrated some famous deed.

Οἴκοι τὰ Μιλήσια, Leave Milesian things at home. This is usually said about people who parade their domestic luxury in a place where it is least acceptable; for everyone is free to live in his own way in his own house. However, it is the duty of a guest to praise the dress and customs of those with whom he is staying, and to imitate them as far as he can, but in any case not to vaunt his own way of life and scorn any other. This is what some inexperienced people are apt to do; wherever they go in the world they pour scorn on everyone and everything, praising what is their own to the skies, even extolling vices as the highest virtues. The adage is mentioned by Angelo Poliziano in his Miscellanea, and he adds that it comes from the story of a certain Milesian who was once a guest of the Spartans, and boasted of the delights of his own country. The reply came: 'Your Milesian things are at home, not here.' He quotes as the author of this proverb a certain Zenodotus, a collector of adages. There are indeed extant the collections of one Zenobius, but whether he is the man whom Poliziano calls Zenodotus, I cannot say. However in these collections I find a story of this sort which Suidas also records. One Aristagoras, a Milesian, went to Sparta to ask for help for the lonians, who were being harried by the Persians. But when he appeared before the assembly, dressed with an elegance unusual among the Spartans, and overflowing with other luxuries from Ionia, one of the ephors is said to have warned him, 'Leave Milesian delights at home.' An ephor is one of the Spartan magistrates, whose duty is to investigate questions of contract, as Aristotle affirms in the third book of his Politics; the very form of the word indicates that it means 'overseer.' Athenaeus, however, gives a different reason for the proverb in book 12: he says that the Milesians had imitated the luxury of the people of Colophon and had infected the regions round about with this disease. Finding themselves unpopular on this account, they took warning that their refinements should be enjoyed in the home, not exhibited abroad. He quotes the proverb in the form: 'Milesian things at home, strictly domestic, not in public view.' Just as the austerity of the Spartans is famous in literature, so the luxury of the Milesians became a byword, so much so that when people want to describe anything soft and effeminate they call it Milesian. Thus a certain Aristides entitled his book which was full of improper stories, Milesian Tales. And Lucian in the Amores calls the lascivious talk of lovers 'Milesian.' Martianus Capella speaks of the 'Milesian delights of all the different myths found in the poets.' Apuleius, too, in the iambic poem with which he chose to inaugurate his Ass, calls his enticing and wanton stories 'Milesian talk/ Julius Capitolinus in the Life of Clodius Albinus: 'Some people speak of his Milesian tales, which enjoy a not undistinguished reputation, although they are poorly written.' And that this was also said of the stories of Apuleius, appears from what Julius Capitolinus quotes a little later on from a letter of Severus: 'It was a matter for greater regret that you should have thought him deserving of praise as a writer, since he spent his time on some nonsensical old-wives' tales, and grew old between the Punic Milesian tales of his dear Apuleius and literary frivolity.' Thus far Capitolinus. He speaks of 'his dear Apuleius' because Albinus himself like Apuleius was an African. The luxury of the Milesians, however, was mainly in dress, because they produced the softest of all textiles. Hence Maximus Tyrius calls the Milesians euhimatotatoi [superbly cloaked] on account of the elegance of their costume. And Virgil in the Georgics calls the softest fleeces Milesian. Horace too: 'Another shuns the Milesian-woven cloak / Worse than a dog or snake/ meaning a cosy garment, not austere enough. Aristophanes in the Frogs says 'bundled up in Milesian bedclothes,' and Theocritus too and many other writers speak of these. But this is more than enough for the understanding of the proverb. Euripides alludes to it in the Helena, 'Revered you may have been out there, not here.' And Antiphanes in Athenaeus, book 4, alludes to it in these lines:
When you go to Sparta,
You must do as Sparta does;
Go to their mess to dine,
And their black broth enjoy;
Wear a moustache and be careful
To scorn nothing, to ask for nothing better.

This old Roman adage is to be found in Ovid: Bad women marry in May. It can be said about women who choose the wrong time to be voluptuous, or about people who do something at an inopportune moment, or who make a beginning without good auspices. For in old days it was thought inauspicious for women to marry in May, perhaps because it was in that month that the ghost of Remus, killed by his brother's guard, is believed to have appeared to his foster-father Faustulus and to Acca Laurentia, and to have commanded that due honours be paid to his shade. So the festival established by Romulus and called 'Remuria' began to be called by later generations 'Lemuria' (one letter being changed) as if it came from lemures, or spectres. It was the custom to pay service at this time to the shades of ancestors, and so those days were observed as part of the festival of the dead, and thought unlucky for weddings. Ovid in the Fasti: The times are unsuitable for marriage, both of widow and maid;
She who marries then will not live long.
For the same reason, if you give weight to proverbs,
Common folk say bad women wed in May.
Plutarch in the 'Problems' gives other reasons why people should abstain from marrying in this month. For one thing, it comes between April (sacred to Venus) and June (dedicated to Juno) and both these goddesses preside over weddings; so to gain the favour of the goddess the people who were rather in a hurry married in April, and those who wanted to put it off a little married in June. Another reason was connected with certain mournful rites which the Romans used to observe at that time, by throwing human effigies from the bridge into the Tiber, as they had formerly been used to throw Greeks. On this account the priestess of Juno spent these days as it were in mourning, and did not perform any solemn rite. A further reason was that May seems to take its name from 'elder' [maiores] and June from 'younger' (juniores) and a more advanced age is unseasonable and unlucky for marriage. Thus Euripides wrote: 'But old age bids the Cyprian farewell / And Venus is the enemy of old men.'

Τῷ λύκῳ τὴν ὄϊν, The sheep to the wolf. Terence says in the Eunuchus, 'You wicked woman, you have handed the sheep over to the wolf,' speaking of the young man Chaerea, to whom alone the maiden has been entrusted under the belief that he is a eunuch. Donatus picks this out as a proverb, which contains respect for women combined with a lascivious idea. We can use it appropriately whenever something is committed to the care of a person, whose presence would be a better justification for placing it under guard. Cicero in the third Philippic: 'For he had declared in a speech that he would be the city's guardian, and would keep his army near the city till the first of May. What an excellent guardian of sheep, say they, is a wolf! Would Antonius be the guardian of the city, or rather its plunderer and harasser?' Hence it seems to fit the case, when an affair is handed over to an enemy, one who has the worst intentions towards us; because the wolf and the lamb have a natural antipathy for each other. Homer also shows this in the Iliad, book 22:
Between lions and men there are no faithful oaths,
Nor do wolves and lambs agree,
But always they have evil intentions and hate each other.
And Horace in the Odes: 'Great is the enmity 'twixt wolf and lamb / By nature fixed - and between me and you.' To this we may add the saying quoted by Suidas, 'sooner the wolf will pasture the lamb,' to mean anything entirely unlikely. Plautus has something like it in the Miles: 'The pantry is in the care of a good butler's boy/ but he gets nearer still in the Truculentus: 'His sheep are not far from the wolves.'

Γαλῇ στέαρ, Fat for the weasel. The sense is, you give or hand over (understood) 'fat to the weasel,' when what is given is the very thing the recipient has a natural appetite for; this animal is particularly fond of fat. Thus it may happen that one praises a man who is specially avid for praise, or one incites a naturally bibulous person to drink, or invites people to play at dice who have a passion for the game. The adage is found in Diogenianus.

Τήμερον οὐδεμὶαν γραμμὴν ἤγαγον, I haven't done a stroke today. The adage takes its origin from the painter Apelles. It applies to those who have taken an idle moment from their study or their art. This is recorded by Pliny, book 35 chapter 10, and it is a pleasure to me to quote his words in these notes: 'It is well known what occurred between Protogenes and Apelles. Protogenes lived in Rhodes, and when Apelles sailed there, he was eager to examine the work of a man whom he knew only by his reputation. He looked for the workshop at once. Protogenes was not there, but a large picture stood on the easel, and only one old woman was in charge. She said that Protogenes was out, and asked who she should say had enquired for him. "This man," said Apelles, and taking the brush, he drew a line in colour, of the greatest thinness, across the picture. When Protogenes returned, the old woman showed him what had been done. They say that as soon as he saw the delicacy of the line, he said "Apelles has been here." So perfect a piece of work could not belong to anyone else. Then he himself drew with another colour a still thinner line along the first one, and went away, directing that if the other returned, she should show it to him and say that this was the man he was looking for. So it fell out. Apelles did come back, and blushing at the thought of being defeated, cut across the lines with a third colour, leaving no room for further minuteness. Protogenes admitted himself vanquished, and rushed to the harbour to find his guest. It was resolved to hand the picture down to posterity as it was, as a wonder to all but especially to artists. It is known that it was burnt in the first fire in Caesar's house on the Palatine, but before that we had eagerly examined it. Though of large size, it contained nothing but lines vanishing from sight, and among the excellent work of many other painters it seemed empty, but for that very reason full of attractiveness, and finer than any other work. It was the constant habit of Apelles never to pass a day, however fully occupied, without practising his art by drawing a line, and so the proverb arose from him.' Thus far Pliny. It was moreover to this line, by which he was immediately recognized by Protogenes, that Statius referred in Hercules Vindex on the Dinner-Table, when he says The line which speaks afar the old Apelles.'

Μήτε νεῖν, μήτε γράμματα, He can (which must be supplied) neither swim nor read. This is said about people who are unusually ignorant and have learnt absolutely nothing in childhood in the way of useful knowledge. For these two skills were the first things learnt by the boys in Athens. And in Rome too, as Suetonius asserts plainly enough in his Augustus: 'He himself, for the most part, taught his nephews letters, and swimming, and the other rudiments.' The same author reveals that Caligula, although very quick to learn other things, did not know how to swim - as if this were the very last thing anybody would not know. Plato in the Laws, book 3: Those who take the contrary part are to be called wise, even if they know neither how to read nor how to swim, as the saying goes.' Aristides also in the Joint Defence of Four Orators: 'But as the saying goes, deeming it right to reject him as one who knows neither how to read nor how to swim.'

Decimus Brutus in book 11 of the Letters to Friends, seems to use To bite on the bit in the sense of rebelling even lightly against servitude: 'If you bite on the bit, I'll stake my life that not one of the whole lot will be able to face you if you attempt to speak,' that is, if you indicate in any way that you resent servitude. This is borne out by Cicero's reply: 'Even if I were timorous, that letter of yours would have wiped away all fear from my heart. But, as you advise, I have bitten on the bit. Indeed, seeing that during your confinement I rested all my hopes upon you, what do you imagine I am doing now?' But Papinius in the Wedding Hymn of Stella and Violantilla takes it in a different sense, doubtless meaning 'to accept servitude,' to receive the bit: 'Silence, rumour: he has taken his orders and bitten on the bit,' that is, he has accepted the fetters of marriage. However, I leave to the learned the question whether the words of Cicero can be understood in this sense. The proverb seems to be taken from the play of Aeschylus called Prometheus, where Mercury speaks as follows:
For you are not touched or softened by my prayers;
Biting the bit like a newly-yoked colt,
You rage and strive against the reins.

To express the greatest effort we say 'with hands and feet/ because hands indicate diligence in bringing something to a conclusion, feet indicate swiftness in getting it done. Davus in the Andria of Terence: 'I am obliged, Pamphilus, in service to you, to strive with hands and feet.' Aeschines uses this adage more than once in his speech against Demosthenes. Homer, Iliad 20: 'But whatever I can do with hands and feet.'

This has much the same sense: with all one's force, with all one's concentration. For strength lies in the sinews, so say the philosophers. Hence we say 'to stretch the sinews,' 'to prepare the sinews,' and we call those things 'sinewy' which are lively and vigorous, not in the least sluggish. Cicero to his brother Quintus: 'So strive with every sinew and all your capacity.' Again in the Letters to Friends, book 15: 'You may strive towards this with every sinew,' and again in the second Verrine: 'Such that my manhood and determination may fitly strain every sinew to bear it.'

The same sense of endeavour is in this saying 'with sail and horse,' more for flight or pursuit than achievement. Cicero, Letters to His Brother Quintus, book 2: 'So I, who have been asleep so long over the matter of paying court to your friend (though you, heaven knows, repeatedly tried to rouse me) shall make up for my slowness by galloping, with horses and sails too.' However in this place the ordinary texts have men [viris] for sails [velis]. Again, in De officiis, book 3: 'Now that these schools are out of date, Epicurus has come into vogue-an advocate and supporter of practically the same doctrine. Against such a philosophy we must fight it out with horse and sail as the saying is, if our purpose is to defend and maintain what is right.' In these examples he used the metaphor in a slightly different way, first with reference to speed and then to two different kinds of warfare, with cavalry or at sea.

With oars and sails is very similar, and comes from the fact that when the ship is driven onwards by rowers and sails both together, the greatest effort of the sailors is being put forth. Cicero, Tusculan Questions, book 3: For it is a loathsome thing, wretched and execrable, and ought to be avoided (so to speak) with all power of sails and oars.' Again, in the first Philippic: Then indeed I was fired with such eagerness to return, that no oars, no winds were swift enough for me.' Plautus in the Asmara: 'As fast as you can, with oar and sail, hurry away and flee.' When the ship is propelled by oarsmen, the Greeks call this Δεύτερος πλοῦς, the 'secondary mode of travel': when it is carried along by sail, they use the word 'sail-borne' but when it runs before a following wind, they have a word 'breeze-borne' The metaphor is reversed by Aristophanes, to mean tardiness, in the Ecclesiazusae: 'Now we neither run nor are otherwise driven along,' and the commentator explains, 'we are travelling neither with sails nor oars.' However there is nothing to prevent the proverb being used for horse-racing. Virgil expresses it simply in the third Aeneid: 'Then all our company made to port with oars and sails.' In this category falls the phrase of Plato in the ninth book of the Laws: 'From the society of evil men you must flee irreversim,' that is, not even looking back. He referred to the story of Eurydice, who was commanded never to look back. So in Genesis, Lot is ordered to flee from Sodom 'without turning round' and Virgil says, 'Cast them over your head; do not look back.'

Horace used 'With ships and chariots' to mean 'with the greatest eagerness, the greatest haste,' in his Epistles:
A stenuous inactivity drives us on.
With ship and chariot the good life pursue-
But what you seek is here.
Plutarch in his attack on usury: 'So do not wait for splendid horses or chariots veneered with horn, plated with silver, which borrowing rapidly overtakes and outruns; rather make use of the first donkey or sorry hack that offers and escape that enemy and tyrant, the moneylender.'

To flee 'with swift chariots, with Jove's chariots,' that is, as rapidly as possible, is found in Plautus, borrowed from Homer, who credits the gods with chariots which carry them off at once wherever they wish to be from Olympus to earth, and from earth to heaven. Cicero alludes to this, writing to his brother Quintus: 'Since you write that my poem meets with his approval on the car of poesy, only you must give me Britain for a subject, so that I may paint it in your colours, but with my own brush.' Plautus in the Aulularia: 'Let him hasten to obey these orders with swift chariots.' Livy, in the first decade, book 5, tells how Camillus, after taking Veii, made a triumphal entry into the town in a chariot drawn by white horses, and for this reason the triumph achieved more notoriety than popularity, because he was attempting to vie with the chariots of the Sun and of Jove.

When they wished to say that someone was far superior to others in some particular way, surpassing them by a great distance, they would say that he 'led the way with white horses,' either because in ancient times white horses were considered the best, or because victors were usually drawn by white horses in a triumph, or because white horses were believed to be lucky and likely to prosper, if we apply the metaphor to equestrian contests. Apuleius indicates this when he says 'After I got clear of the steep hills, the dewy meadows, and the muddy fields, riding on a pure white native horse, and one already fairly tired.' It is not without reason that he adds 'native' (that is, from Thessaly) and 'white,' for both contribute to the idea of fleetness. Horace in the Satires, on a certain Persius:
Presumptuous, vain and obstinate was he,
Able in hatred to defeat a king,
In bitterness of speech so far outstripping
Sisenna, Barrus and their kind, as if
He led the way with white horses.
Sisennna and Barrus were great slanderers; although Acron reads barros as if it were an adjective. The phrase of Plautus in the Asinaria is similar: 'For if this chance is let slide, he'll never catch it again, by Jove, not with a chariot and four white horses.' Greek simply says 'to ride ahead' for 'to surpass by far,'/ because travel by horses is the swiftest.

To hold fast with one's teeth is to guard with the utmost pertinacity, ὀδάξ in Greek. Cicero in the first book of his Academic Questions: 'We shall declare that all presentations of this nature are devoid of perspicuity, to which we are bound to cling with clenched teeth.' St Augustine in one of his letters to St Jerome: Those disturb me more who, though their versions were more recent and though they held on with clenched teeth, as the saying is, to the method and the rules of Hebrew in both words and idioms, not only did not agree among themselves, but even left many things out.' In the same way Seneca says in book 7 of his De beneficiis 'With both hands': 'Our good Demetrius recommends the learner to hold on to these things with both hands, and never let go of them.'

With one's whole body, and With every claw, have the same sense of pertinacity. The metaphor is taken from wild animals, who hold on with teeth and claws and their whole body to anything that they refuse to have wrenched away. Lucian in the dialogue of Diogenes and Crates: 'But the gold they safeguarded with their teeth and claws and any device they had.' Cicero in his Tusculan Questions, book 2: 'With the whole force of the body, with all their nails, as the saying is, they second the straining of the voice.'

Ceaseless and tireless industry is often expressed by this figure, By night and day. Horace, in the Art of Poetry: Turn them over by night and by day.' Hesiod: 'Nights and days,' and elsewhere: 'Both when he goes to bed and when returns/The golden sun.' It is often found in Homer also: 'All the nights and days.'

By land and sea also has the look of a proverb, used whenever we describe great effort and eager desire. Theognis: 'For over land and sea, Cyrnus,/ Some freedom must be sought from wretched poverty.' And Horace: 'Fleeing from poverty through sea, through rocks, through fire.'

When we describe sincere and perfect love, we say 'whole-hearted' or 'with all one's soul,' παντὶ στήθει καὶ παντὶ θύμῷ. Cicero in the first book of the De legibus: 'What becomes of that sacred thing, friendship, if the friend himself is not loved for his own sake with the whole heart, as people say?' Aristotle too in the Ethics quotes, and quotes as a proverb, 'with the whole soul.' 'With the whole heart' however can also refer to earnest study and diligence. Cicero uses it in this way in his Letters to Friends, book 13 epistle 1. 'Let us whole-heartedly consider Scapula's house and gardens.' Again in book 12: 'Give yourself up whole-heartedly to this thought.' Seneca, letter 3: 'Ponder for a long time whether you should admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with your whole heart.' Cornelius Tacitus in the Dialogue on Orators: 'And this singleness of mind and strict upbringing pointed to one result: each of them had a single-minded integrity, not warped by any vicious habits, which could absorb the liberal arts at once with the whole heart.' St Augustine has somewhere 'with the whole vitals, as they say,' as though the image was made less coarse by popular usage. 'With the whole heart' is the phrase in Hebrew.

With a gentle touch, a light touch Almost the opposite of these are With a gentle touch, With a light touch [literally 'arm'], by which we signify work not taken seriously. Cicero in the second book of the Letters to Atticus: 'As you take me to task with a gentle touch, as it were, for my friendly relations with Pompey, I should not wish you to think thus.' To the same, book 4: The consuls, who handled the business with a light touch, referred the position to the senate.'

This is found among the appropriate writers to mean 'to pursue in every possible way.' The metaphor may seem to be taken from that Homeric line: 'With spear and sword and immense stones they press.' Close to this is 'with cut and thrust,' these being the two ways by which we assail the enemy.

Ἐγγύθεν καὶ πόῤῥωθεν, At close quarters and at long range, belongs to the same form and is also from war, in which the fighting is now hand-to-hand with swords, now with machines which hurl missiles at the enemy from a distance. If this is transferred to the things of the mind, it will be more attractive: peace must be kept between men, but with vices we must fight, both at close quarters and at long range. Hand-to-hand fighting in Greek is συστάδην μάχεσθαι, spear-fighting is διὰ δοράτων μάχεσθαι .

Πάντα λίθον κίνει, Leave no stone unturned: that is, try everything, leave nothing unattempted. Many writers say that this adage arose in the following way. When Xerxes made war on the Greeks, and was vanquished at Salamis, he himself moved away from there but left Mardonius behind to carry on the war in his name. When the latter had also been worsted in the fight at Plataeae, and had taken flight, a rumour got about that Mardonius had left an immense treasure buried in the ground near his tent. Incited by this prospect, Polycrates, a Theban, bought that piece of ground. However, when he had looked for the treasure long and thoroughly, and had made no progress, he consulted the oracle of Delphi, as to how he could find that money. Apollo replied in these words 'Leave no stone unturned.' As soon as he had done this, he found, they say, a great hoard of gold. Others think the metaphor comes from those who hunt for crabs along the seashore; for the crabs usually lie hidden under rocks which the people looking for them move. The adage is also found with the word rock petra instead of stone lapis, πάντα κινήσω πέτρον, meaning Til risk everything.' Euripides in the Heraclidae, where the phrase means 'to leave nothing undone.' Pliny the Younger in one of his letters: 'I make straight for the throat and concentrate on that. He certainly concentrates on his chosen target, but he often makes a bad choice. I pointed out that it might be the knee or shin or ankle when he thought he had the throat. I can't see the throat, I said, so my method is to feel my way and try everything - in fact I leave no stone unturned.' St Basil to his nephews: 'For the preparations for our journey, we must, as they say, leave no stone unturned.' Perhaps Theocritus is alluding to this in his Boucoliastae: 'And from the line she moves the stone.' He is speaking of Galatea wantonly trying everything to make Polyphemus angry with her; I have mentioned this elsewhere. The commentator points out that this is a proverb and means the same as 'to shake out every rope.' He adds that the metaphor comes from some sort of game in which a player who cannot vanquish his opponent by any other means moves from the back line a piece called the 'king.' However, what he says about the stone statue which Galatea could move by her beauty is more far-fetched, in my opinion.

Πάντα κάλων σείειν, To shake out every rope. This has a different figurative origin but the same meaning. Aristophanes in the Knights: 'Now you must let out every rope, And keep your spirit high and words ineluctable.' Lucian in his False Prophet: 'And I began to move every rope wishing to get revenge.' Apollonius in the Epistle to Euphrates: They say that a merchant ought to move every rope.' Plato in the dialogue entitled Sisyphus: 'Let us therefore reflect carefully, by heaven! letting out, as they say, every rope, and uttering all sounds.' Julius Pollux in his Vocabulary, book i: 'We sailed letting out every rope,' and 'with all our cordage.' In this way he describes a difficult voyage, in which everything must be tried.

To cast all the dice means to risk everything, to commit all to the will of fortune. Dice, in fact, is a game of chance rather than skill. So in a figurative way, when we describe a thing of uncertain outcome, as if it depended not on the will of the thrower but on luck, we say 'the die is cast.' Thus Terence in the Adelphoe said that 'the life of man is like playing the dice - what does not fall right in the throw you must correct by skill.' Lucian in the dialogue entitled For the Images: T shall dare to cast the dice.' Euripides in the Rhesus: 'He should receive a reward worthy of his toil / Who risks his life on Fortune's dice!' Aristides in Pericles: 'And a single die was cast on behalf of everything, life, money, reputation, political leadership.' When Caesar came to the Rubicon, the river which divides Italy from Gaul, he hesitated privately and considered in his mind what a difficult thing he was proposing to do; when his spirits were revived by a sign, he said, 'Let us go whither we are called by the portents of the gods and the wickedness of our enemies; let the die be cast.' Plutarch in the Apophthegmata recalls that a phrase like this was used, 'let every die be cast.' Lucan has an allusion to this. 'Let the die of fate be cast, / Which will sink one or the other.' Plutarch in the Life of Coriolanus seems to have used the term 'last dice' in the same sense, 'throwing, as it were, the last dice.' And so Petronius Arbiter: The die is cast, let Fortune be the judge.' Cicero in his On Divination, book 2: 'Do you fail to see in choosing the victim it is almost like a throw of the dice, especially as facts prove it? For when the entrails of the first victim are disastrous and have been without a head, which is the most fatal of all signs, it often happens that the sacrifice of the next victim is altogether favourable.' Here Cicero is using 'dice' for chance. It seems as if the adage were derived from Menander; for Athenaeus, book 13, gives some lines from a comedy of his called Arrhephorus, or the Flute-Player: 'If you are wise you will not marry, leaving this life behind. I myself did marry, therefore I urge you not to marry.' To this the other replies: The matter's settled, let this die be cast.' The Greek lines in Athenaeus are rather deformed by the ignorance of the scribes. But they can be restored with very little trouble. I think they were first written like this [second version follows]. According to Plutarch, Plato said that life is like a game of dice; one must throw properly, and whatever falls to one's lot, one must use it rightly. What falls, is in the hand of fortune; but to apportion rightly what has fallen to us by chance, is for us to do. This is the comparison which Terence seems to have imitated in the Adelphoe.

Quintilian uses a similar figure in the preface to his Institutiones Oratoriae: 'Let us spread our sails to the winds, and wish good luck to those who leave the shore,' that is, let us try out the uncertain fate of publishing, whatever may befall. Seneca in the Agamemnon has a very similar saying, 'I gave my craft to the waves,' that is, I committed my all to the will of fortune. Theognis: 'Wherefore now we are borne on, unfurling to the winds our white sails.' The Greeks beautifully say 'to be carried along by swelling white sails' for someone who is urged towards some goal with all his heart and all his efforts. So Plutarch on Scipio, in the 'Elder Cato.' Cato rebuked Scipio for using bribes for corruption. Scipio replied that he had no need of an over-diligent treasurer since he himself was carried on 'with swelling sails' towards war. Ovid: 'And because I am carried along on the great sea and have spread full sails to the winds.'

Υπὸ παντὶ λίθῳ σκορπίος εὕδει, Under every stone sleeps a scorpion, or to keep the metre (an anapaestic dimeter), est sub lapide scorpius omni. The adage warns us that a man should beware of speaking heedlessly in the presence of fault-finders and slanderers; for whatever he touches, there is a risk that he will be stung. Scorpions do normally hide under stones, and if a rash person dislodges them he will get himself stung and be wounded. This aptly fits ill-tempered people who will argue about anything, or lazy ones, who will use the most trivial excuses to escape doing a job of work. Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae:
I praise the ancient proverb,
One must look beneath every stone
Lest a politician bite you.
The commentator on Nicander cites the following line from the Captives of Sophocles: 'For under every stone a scorpion keeps watch.' That is, nothing is safe, everything demands caution.

Ονος λύρας, An ass [we must supply, listening] to the lyre. This is a hit at people who lack judgment through their ignorance, people who have dull ears. Varro gave this proverbial title to one of his Satires. In Gellius are to be found these words of his, extracted from the Satire entitled The Will: 'If an only son, or more than one, is born to me in ten months, and if they turn out to be asses at the lyre, they shall be disinherited'; meaning by this phrase unteachable, as far as good learning is concerned, and unmanageable. St Jerome to Marcella: 'Although I could justifiably set these people aside, since it is useless for the lyre to play to the ass, yet lest they accuse us of pride, as they usually do ...' and again against Vigilantius: 'Although it is a stupid thing that I am doing, to seek masters for the master of all, and to place a restraint on him, who does not know how to speak and cannot keep silent. There is a true proverb in Greek, An ass to the lyre.' Lucian On Salaried Posts: 'For what communication can there be, as they say, between the ass and the lyre?' And Against An Ignoramus: 'But you are an ass listening to the lyre and wagging your ears.' Hence the adage is used in this form, 'the ass twitching its ears,' or again, 'Someone told a story to an ass, and it twitched its ears.' This is turned against those people who understand nothing, and yet make play with nods and smiles to those who are talking, as if there were nothing they did not understand. It is natural to the donkey to twitch its ears as if to convey that it has understood, when it has not even heard. Sometimes applied to the ass not listening to the lyre, but trying to play itself. Lucian: 'Especially when he plays, he wants to appear merry and charming, an ass, as they say, himself playing on the lyre.' Again in Pseudologista: 'As the popular saying goes, an ass seeing the lyre and trying to play.' This line is also quoted: 'The donkey listened to the lyre, the porker to the trumpet.' This can be applied to people who make an unseemly attempt to follow a craft of which they have no experience, having rather a natural unfitness for it. Stratonicus turns it round amusingly in Athenaeus, Doctors at Dinner, book 8: There was a certain Cleon, nicknamed the Bull, who sang well, but had not an equal knowledge of the lyre. When Stratonicus heard him play, he said, There was an old saying about an ass at the lyre, but now it's the bull at the lyre.'

Σάλπιγγος ὗς ἤκουε, The pig heard the trumpet. This will fit people who hear good talk but neither understand nor admire it; or those who are neither pleased nor moved by what they hear. Horses are incited to war by the sound of the trumpet, but it drives the pig away rather than inspiring it to fight. Suidas gives an iambic line of this kind: 'Unmoved the donkey hears the lyre, the pig the trumpet.'

A jackdaw has no business with a lute. That is, stupid and ignorant people have nothing to do with good learning. For the jackdaw is a silly troublesome chatterbox, and a noisy one, so much so that it is thought the name comes from the chatter, according to Quintilian in the first book of the Institutions: Then it loves to congregate with its kind, so as to make the noise more tedious by general chattering.' But the lute requires silence and attentive ears. At the end of the preface of the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, this adage is neatly turned against certain dull-witted fellows endowed with stupid loquacity, profane, amousoi (that is, averse to the rites of the Muses), people who can either laugh at polished literature and refined knowledge or even despise it, but never understand it; people who only appreciate what they themselves have learnt, of course - squalid, wordless, ignorant stuff. These people are equally insistent on disturbing the teaching of others and advertising their own ignorance and forcing it on everybody; they despise anyone except themselves. This is the kind of man Gellius is taking a stick to in his collections, the most polished and erudite possible. There is an old adage,' says he, 'a jackdaw has no business with a lute.'

He (Gellius) immediately adds another similar phrase: 'A pig has nothing to do with marjoram/ meaning that to stupid people the very best things are stinking and unpleasant. Marjoram is a kind of plant named in the Sicilian tongue after a son of Cynaras, king of Cyprus, called Amaracus who is said in legend to have been changed into this plant. But Servius, on book i of the Aeneid, writes that Amaracus was the king's page in charge of perfumes, who accidentally fell while carrying them and created a supreme scent by the mixture; hence the best perfumes began to be called amaracina, and he was later changed into this plant. It is also called samsucum, and has many other names, as Dioscorides asserts in his third book, where he says it has a most delightful perfume, and every part of it is scented. Pliny, book 13 chapter i, mentions amaracinum among the finest perfumes, and tells how in Cos it was once highly praised; later melinum was preferred there. Then he shows that samsucum is mixed with various other perfumes, such as telinum, though a splendid ointment can be made from the juice of the amaracus itself. Pliny also writes, book 21 chapter 22, that the most highly prized and scented samsucum comes from Cyprus, and he explores various uses of it as remedies. An oil is also made from it, called amaracinum or samsucinum. This, then, is what amaracinum is like, and on the contrary there is nothing dirtier than the pig, and nothing that likes dirt more. For this reason Virgil says, 'Foul pigs remember,' and Horace, 'or else mud-loving swine,' and 'Gallops the miry pig.' Nothing is less suited to a pig's snout than refinements of perfume; what smells sweet to it is what smells of filth. This is particularly true of marjoram, among all the scents; it is inimical to the swinish tribe through some particular property of its own, and virtually poisonous to them, if we are to believe Lucretius, who has these lines in his sixth book: 'In fact the pig flees marjoram, and fears / All scent, stark poison to the bristly swine.' The Egyptians of old considered the pig such a disgusting animal that if anyone had happened to touch one in passing he would at once run to the river to wash himself and his clothes. Swineherds, even native to the country, they held in such detestation that they were not admitted into the temples, and marriage and relationships arising from marriage were forbidden to them, according to Herodotus, book 2. Cicero appears to have been thinking of this proverb when he says 'to so-and-so an alabaster vase full of scent smells bad,' meaning that the best things are as distasteful to him as the worst. Something of the same sort can be said of the dung-beetle; to him perfume is dung and filth is perfume. Plutarch suggests that this was currently said in common speech, when he says in his essay comparing the doctrines of the Stoics with the words of the poets: They say that beetles flee from perfume but pursue a foul smell.'

Τί κοινὸν κυνὶ καὶ βαλανείῳ; What has a dog to do with a bath? I quote this adage with all the more pleasure because it refreshes and renews my memory, and my affection, for Rodolphus Agricola of Friesland, whom I name as the man in all Germany and Italy most worthy of the highest public honour: in Germany, because she gave him birth, in Italy, because she made him a great scholar. No one was ever born this side of the Alps more completely endowed with all literary gifts; let this be said without prejudice. There was no branch of fine learning in which that great man could not vie with the most eminent masters. Among the Greeks he was the best Greek of them all, among the Latins the best Latin. As a poet you would have said he was a second Virgil; as a writer of prose he had the charm of a Poliziano, but more dignity. His style, even extempore, had such purity, such naturalness, that you would maintain it was not a Frisian who spoke, but a native of ancient Rome herself. Such perfect eloquence was paired with the same degree of learning. He had delved into all the mysteries of philosophy. There was no part of music in which he was not accurately versed. At the very end of his life he had bent his whole mind on the study of Hebrew and the Holy Scripture. In the midst of these efforts he was snatched from this world by the envy of the fates, not yet forty years old, as I am told. There are a few literary remains of his work, some letters, poems of various kinds; the Axiochus of Plato translated into Latin, and a version of Isocrates' To Demon-icus. Then there are a couple of lectures given in public session in the University of Ferrara, for it was there he both learnt and gave open lectures. There were lying hidden in some people's possession his treatises on dialectic, and they have recently appeared, but in a mutilated state. He had also translated some of Lucian's dialogues. But since he himself cared little for glory, and most mortals are, to say the least of it, careless in looking after the work of others, none of these have yet seen the light. But the works which are extant, even if not published by himself, give plain proof of something divine about the man. Let it not be thought that I as a German am blinded by patriotic feeling; to avoid this I will transcribe the epitaph written for him by Ermolao Barbaro of Venice. It is superb, and one might find it difficult to decide whether it was more worthy of the man who wrote it or the man it was written about. Here it is: Under this stone, the jealous Fates decreed The Frisian hope, his country's light, should come, Rudolph Agricola; in life, indeed, He brought such praise to Germany his home As ever Greece could have, or ever Rome. What ampler or more magnificent tribute could be paid to our dear Rodol-phus than this splendid testimony, so complete, and offered not to a living man but to one already dead - so there is no question of its proceeding from affection rather than from judgment? and to a German, so there is no possibility that love for a country they both shared should diminish the weight of the testimony? And it came from that man who had brought glory not only to his native Italy, but to this whole age of ours; whose authority is such among all learned men that it would be most impertinent to disagree with him; whose work in restoring literature is so outstandingly valuable that anyone would have to be utterly impervious to culture, or at least utterly ungrateful, who did not hold the memory of Ermolao as sacrosanct. Such full and ungrudging praise of this man has, I confess, a singular charm for me, because I happened while yet a boy to have his disciple Alexander Hegius as my teacher. He was headmaster of the once famous school of the town of Deventer, where I learned the rudiments of both languages when I was almost a child. To put it in a few words, he was a man just like his master: as upright in his life as he was serious in his teaching. Momus himself could have found no fault in him except one, that he cared less for fame than he need have done, and took no heed of posterity. If he wrote anything, he wrote as if he were playing a game rather than doing something serious. And yet these writings, so written, are of the sort which the learned world votes worthy of immortality. So it was not without thought that I plunged into this digression; not to boast of the glory of Germany, but to perform the duty of a grateful pupil, and acquit myself of the debt I owe to the memory of both these men, because I owe to one the loving respect of a son, and to the other the affection of a grandson. Now to turn to the adage, which I remember having learnt from a certain very learned letter of my beloved Rodolphus, at a time when I was a mere child and as yet ignorant of Greek. In this letter he is trying to persuade the town council of Antwerp, with conviction and eloquence, that they should appoint as master of their school someone proficient in liberal studies, and not (as they usually do) entrust this office to an inarticulate theologian or naturalist, the sort of man who is sure he has something to say about everything but has no notion of what it is to speak. 'What good would he be in a school? As much good, to use the Greek repartee, as a dog in a bath.' Lucian Against an Ignoramus: 'And each one of the onlookers immediately voices that very handy proverb: what do a dog and a bath have in common?' Again in the Parasite: 'But to my way of thinking, a philosopher at a drinking-party is just like a dog in a bath.' So this is to be applied to those who are totally useless for certain purposes, just as there is no use for dogs in a bath.

You teach a donkey to race with a bit. That is, you are teaching the unteach-able. For a horse is suitable for racing but a donkey is useless in a horse race. Horace: 'You waste your labour, as if one should try / To make an ass run docile to the curb.' Acron indicates that this is a proverbial saying about donkeys. There is another one different from this, which we have quoted elsewhere: The horse to the plain.'

'Αλλότριον ἀμᾷς θέρος, You are reaping another's harvest. There are two ways of using this adage: it fits equally well when applied to people who take over advantages gained by the labour of others, and to those who are not diligent enough about their own affairs. The metaphor arises from the old custom among neighbouring farmers of lending each other aid in reaping their crops. It is the way of men to be much more attentive to their own business than to that of others. This is neatly expressed by that old fable about the crested lark, which I would readily tell, if it were not easy for anyone to read it in Aulus Gellius. It can also refer to a thing which sometimes happens, when those who have done the sowing are thrown out and others take their place, and enjoy the fruits of others' toil with no trouble to themselves. Hence Virgil's phrase, 'for whom did we sow our fields?' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'reaping someone else's harvest.' This is against Cleon, who came when everything was ready and the result had been prepared with great efforts by Demosthenes, captured Pylos, and took over all the glory of the victory for himself, leaving Demosthenes nothing but unpopularity. Homer says something like this in the Odyssey, book i: 'Since with impunity they eat another's sustenance.' And Aristophanes in the play just mentioned expresses the same idea: 'Walking about, I stole from a shop / The prepared pot cooked by another.'

To unravel Penelope's web. That is, to take up a useless task, and then undo what one has done. It comes from Homer, who in the second book of the Odyssey makes Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, hoodwink the suitors who are already pressing her urgently, by making this condition, that she will marry when she has finished the piece of weaving she has in hand. They agreed to the condition, and the clever woman began every night to unravel what she had woven during the day: 'Every day she kept weaving a large web, / But in the night, with torches placed beside her, she unravelled it.' Plato takes over this adage in the Phaedo. So does Cicero in the Academic Questions, book 2: 'What of the fact that this same science destroys at the end the steps that came before, like Penelope unweaving her web?' He is thinking of dialectic, which by the same reasoning which has been used to make an assertion subsequently weakens and destroys it, so that nothing seems to have been settled. Seneca, De beneficiis, book 5: Tor what is the good of laboriously untying knots which you yourself have made in order that you might untie them?' Aristides in the Defence of Four Orators: 'And unravelling I know not what web; for whatever wisdom they have gained, they lose as much by turning out so arrogant.' Since he joins this to other proverbs which we shall mention later, he indicates clearly that this too is a proverb.

Γεράνδρυον μεταφυτεύειν, To transplant an aged tree, is said about people who at a late time of life, already past their prime, try to unlearn the customs they have been long used to as young men. Or it may be simply applied to those things which we attempt in vain. A tree must not be moved from its place when the roots have already struck deep, but while it is still a small plant. The ancients declared that a tree should not be transplanted at less than two years old or more than three, so says Pliny. The proverb appears to apply particularly to the oak, which of all trees strikes its roots deepest (thus the word used in Greek for 'aged tree' derives from the word for oak); or perhaps it is because this is thought to have been the first of all trees. For this reason it was sacred to Jove, and the wood of Dodona was an oak wood, from which the first of all the oracles are believed to have proceeded. Seneca made elegant use of this proverb in his book of Letters, Letter 86: 'If what I am saying shall seem to you too pessimistic, charge it up against the country-house where I have learned a lesson from Aegialus, a most careful householder and now the owner of this estate; he taught me that a tree can be transplanted, no matter how far gone in years. We old men must learn this precept; for there is none of us who is not planting an olive-grove for his successor.'

Ἄμμον μετρεῖς, You are seeking the measure of the sands, or counting them. This is a way of saying: you are taking on something which involves infinite toil, which you can never bring to an end; or else you are attempting something in vain, which you can never achieve. Athenaeus, book 6, gives the instance of a certain Alexis, who used the expression 'sand-hundred' for innumerable as if equal to the sand: 'using sand-numbered names' if I am to imitate the invented Greek word. Plato in the Theaetetus, 'Is more hidden from him than, as they say, the sands of the sea.'

Κύματα μετρεῖς, You are counting the waves. This has the same meaning as the previous one, and both are elegantly touched on by Virgil in the second book of his Georgics:
If you wish to know their number, go and tot up the grains
Of sand that are whirled around by a sand-storm in the Sahara,
Or count the waves that break along Adriatic coasts
When an easterly gale comes down in gusts upon the shipping.
Theocritus in The Graces: 'But it is like the toil of measuring the waves on the beach/As many as the wind drives shoreward from the sea.' This seems to have come from an Aesopic fable recounted by Lucian in his Sects. Once a man sat by the seashore, trying to count the waves one by one; but he was defeated by waves following close on other waves, and distressed in his mind because he could not number them. Then a crafty fox encouraged him with a timely piece of advice. 'Why are you distressed,' it said, 'about the waves which pass? You should begin counting from here, and consider the rest as finished with.'

Παρὰ κωφῷ αποπαρδεῖν, To break wind in the presence of the deaf, is said when an action is useless, or when some fault is committed against stupid people who cannot perceive it, or reproaches are heaped on a person who takes no notice, just as if he had not heard. It is mentioned by Diogenianus and Suidas.

Τὰ ἀράχνια ὑφαίνειν, To spin spiders' webs. This means to spend infinite and anxious efforts on some futile thing that is worth nothing. It is mentioned as a proverb by St Basil at the beginning of his exposition of the Hexameron. So also in the life of Zeno by Diogenes Laertius, a certain philosopher used to say that dialectical reasoning is like spiders' webs, which look like something constructed with care and accuracy, but are really trifling and fragile. Someone else compared the laws to webs spun by spiders, which are easily torn apart by big birds and only trap flies.

There are several proverbs of this kind used in Greek, by which we signify unprofitable work; as for example Πλίνθον πλύνεις, You are washing a brick, which is used by Terence in the Phormio, 'Shall I speak? I shall rouse anger. Shall I be silent? I shall provoke him. Shall I try to clear myself? I shall be washing a brick.' Theocritus in The Graces: 'And to have washed a black stone in clear water.'

Something very like this is quoted by Aristophanes in a comedy entitled Wasps: Λίθον ἕψεις, You are cooking a stone, in the sense of 'you are toiling in vain': 'But when anyone entreated, lowering his head thus, he used to say: "You cook a stone."' For a stone never softens, however long it is boiled. This will suit in general any vain effort, particularly directed against a hard man whom no prayers can mollify.

These expressions have the same meaning: Αἰθίοπα σμήχεις, You are washing an Ethiopian, and Αἰθίοπα λευκαίνεις, You are whitening an Ethiopian. Lucian, Against An Ignoramus: 'And according to the proverb I am trying to wash an Ethiopian.' That inborn blackness of the Ethiopian, which Pliny thinks to be a result of heat from the nearness of the sun, cannot be washed away with water nor whitened by any means whatever. This will be particularly apposite when a matter of doubtful morality is decorated by a gloss of words, or when praise is given to one who does not deserve praise, or an unteachable person is being taught. The adage, it seems, comes from a fable of Aesop. A man bought an Ethiopian, and thinking his colour was not natural, but the result of a former master's negligence, he tried everything which is used to whiten clothes, and so tormented the poor creature with perpetual washing that he made the man ill - but still he stayed the colour he had always been.

Αἰγιαλὸν ἀροῦν, To plough the seashore. This means to take fruitless pains. Ausonius to Theon: 'What are you labouring on, there at the world's end,/O poet tiller of sands, fated to plough the shore?' meaning that he was labouring in vain. There will be a special appropriateness in using this when a kindness is bestowed on one from whom you will never see any return; for instance if one were to teach the donkey to play the lyre, or were to do a favour to an ungrateful person. For the salt causes the seashore to remain almost sterile, and there is even a proverb about this: 'a brackish neighbourhood' meaning infertile. And sea-water is so sterile that it will not even grow trees. Various causes for this are adduced by Plutarch in his essay 'On Natural Causes,' in the very first problem.

Εἰς ψάμμον σπείρεις, You are sowing seed in the sand. Sands being sterile, especially along the shore, they are unsuitable for sowing. Oenone to Paris, in Ovid: 'What are you doing, Oenone, why sow your seeds in the sand?/ You plough the sea-shore with oxen that will bring no harvest.' But in my native Brabant there are husbandmen so industrious that they force the thirstiest sands to bear, and to bear wheat.

Εἰς ὕδωρ σπείρεις, You are sowing seed in water. Theognis: 'Just as if one should throw seed into the grey salt sea.' He is speaking of those who confer a benefit on ungrateful and wicked men: it is as entirely lost as if one were sowing seeds in the waves of the sea. The scholiast on Aristophanes quotes this proverb also (using thalassa instead of hydor): 'You are sowing the sea.'

Κατὰ πετρῶν σπείρεις, You are sowing among the rocks. It is quite possible that the parable in the Gospel about the seed which fell on stony ground is an allusion to this proverb. For soil of this kind is usually sterile, either because it cannot be broken up by the plough, or because what is sown can find nowhere to put down its roots.

Εἰς τὸ πῦρ ξαίνειν, To belabour fire, belongs to the same category, though we have included it with the precepts of Pythagoras. Aristides in the Joint Defence of Four Orators: 'Didn't you realise that you were exposed to all the proverbs: belabouring a fire, boiling a stone, and sowing the rocks?' He is reproaching Plato for not doing anything worthwhile at the court of Diony-sius the tyrant.

Καθ᾽ ὕδατος γράφεις or εἰς ὕδωρ γράφεις,, You write in water, that is, you are wasting your time. Lucian in The Tyrant: 'Are you joking, Charon, or are you, as they say, writing in water, if you expect anything in the way of an obol from Micyllus?' Plato in the Phaedrus: 'Will he not then write these things carefully in black water, sowing with his pen?' There is a line of verse to this effect among the Greek maxims: 'The oaths of wicked men are writ in water.' Xenarchus misquotes this in his Pentathlon, cited by Athenaeus in his tenth book: To me, a woman's oath is writ in wine.' And then Catullus: 'What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and in running water.'

Εἰς ψάμμον οἰκοδομεῖς, You are building on the sand. The parable in the Gospel seems to allude to this. What one has built on the sand does not remain firm. This can be appropriately applied when someone has undertaken a piece of work which is bound to be useless, because the foundations have not been properly laid.

'Ανέμους γεωργεῖς, You are tilling the winds. (I am using colis, you are tilling, to mean 'bringing into cultivation.') This is found in Zenodotus. It is said of people who reap no profit from their labours.

Σίδηρον πλεῖν διδάσκεις, You are teaching iron to swim. This refers to people who try to do something against nature, something which can never be done.

Κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ ἀντλεῖ, ἢ ἐπιφέρει, He draws water in a sieve. This can be applied, not unsuitably, to forgetful people. Plautus in the Pseudolus: 'It is as profitless as to catch a shower of rain in a sieve.' That this was formerly included among the adunatotata [impossible things] is shown by the fact that when Tucia, a Vestal virgin, carried water in a sieve, this was counted among wonders; it was in the year 609 from the foundation of the city, according to Pliny, book 28 chapter 2. Dionysius of Halicarnassus recalls it too in his Roman Antiquities, book 2. It is derived from the story of the Danaids, whom Plato described as undergoing this kind of punishment in the underworld; they had to carry water continually in leaky jars to a leaky tub. Alciphron in a letter from Galen to Cyrto: 'And, as the saying goes, we are emptying pitchers into the jars of the Danaids.' Lucian in Timon: 'As if from a basket with holes in it.' It is also found in the form, 'You are carrying water to a leaky tub.' Plautus in the Pseudolus: 'We are pouring our words into a leaky tub, labouring in vain.'

Εἰς κόπρον θυμιᾷς, You are sprinkling scent on manure. All scent vanishes and is overcome by the smell of manure. Suidas has this. It is suitable for those who offer something excellent to unworthy people. A similar phrase is Perfume on the lentils.

To this class belongs the saying of Plautus in the Poenulus: 'Heavens, I have wasted both oil and toil/ meaning that whatever I spent, whether money or labour, was spent in vain. The metaphor comes from the contests of gladiators and athletes: when about to compete they anoint themselves with oily unguents. Cicero in his Letters: 'As to the athletes, why should I suppose that you miss them - you, who treated the gladiators so contemptuously? And on them Pompey himself admits that he wasted both oil and toil.' It can however refer to the lamps of writers; and Cicero seems to have meant this when writing to Atticus, book 13: 'When I was writing against the Epicureans, before daybreak, I jotted down something to you using the same oil and toil, and despatched it before dawn.' To the same, in another place, he says: 'Let us not lament, in case we lose the oil and toil of our study, but let us discuss with a quiet mind.' This is all the pleasanter here because it is transferred to the realm of the mind. The oil, here, refers to expense, and the adage has also this form, as in Plautus in the Rudentes: They lose both work and outlay.' Here belongs that phrase which the talking raven learned to say, 'Care and cost lost.' Macrobius tells this story in book 2 of the Saturnalia. As the tale seems worth the telling, I will readily write it down here, and in his own words. 'Octavius was returning in high triumph from his victory at Actium. Among those who hurried to congratulate him was a man carrying a raven, which he had taught to say "Hail, victorious Caesar, hail, emperor." Caesar was amazed at the obliging bird, and bought it for twenty thousand nummi. A partner of the successful trainer's, who had not laid hands on any of the cash, had informed Caesar that the man also had another raven, and asked that he might be commanded to bring it. When he brought it, the words he had taught it to say were "Hail, victorious Antony, emperor." Good-humouredly, Octavius thought it sufficient to order him to share the present made to his mate. When he was similarly greeted by a parrot, he ordered that to be bought. A magpie which astonished him by the same trick was bought too. These events prompted a certain poor cobbler to teach a raven a similar salutation; at the end of his resources, he often used to say to the unresponsive bird, "Care and cost lost." Finally, however, the raven did begin to say the oft-repeated greeting. Augustus heard it as he passed, and replied, "I have enough of these compliment-mongers in my house." A memory came to the raven which moved it to add what it had heard its scolding master say so often: "Care and cost lost." The emperor laughed at this, and had the bird bought at a higher price than any he had paid before.' Thus far I have quoted the words of Macrobius. Writing to Pammachius, St Jerome seems to have subjoined another proverb to this one: 'he loses oil and expense, who sends an ox to the wrestling-ring' [ceroma]. This phrase about the ox and the wrestling-ring sounds like a proverb, meaning to teach the unteachable or to appoint somebody to an office for which he is least fitted, and which is foreign to his whole character. For ceroma is the name of the ointment with which athletes formerly used to anoint themselves, made out of oil and certain kinds of earth. For contests, the ox is quite useless.

Δικτύῳ ἄνεμον θηρᾶς, You are trying to catch the wind in a net. Used of people who toil in vain, or who chase foolishly after things they have no hope of catching, or who snatch in a futile way after futility. The wind can be contained in a bladder but never in a net.

Αἰθέρα νήνεμον ἐρέσσεις, You are rowing in still air. In Zenodotus this is used of people who work in vain, as if one said 'You are cleaving the air, as rowers do.'

Νεκρὸν μαστίζεις, You flog a dead man. Said of people who scold others, who are not to be moved in the least by scolding; or who attack and outrage the dead.

Χύτραν ποικίλλεις, You are adorning or decorating a cooking-pot, is said of people who make great and useless efforts for quite ridiculous reasons. It is lost labour to paint designs on a kitchen pot, a despised object meant for cooking. There is another common saying something like this, To apply gold-leaf to walnut-shells.

Ὠὸν κολλήεις, You are sticking an egg together. This is mentioned by Diogenianus. It is a ridiculous task to piece together a broken eggshell and mend it with glue.

Ἀσκὸν δέρεις, You are beating a wineskin, or, skinning a leather bottle; it is to be found in Aristophanes in the Clouds. Apuleius seems to have alluded to this in the Ass, when he recalls the three leather bottles which he struck and wounded. This may be taken from the rites of Bacchus, or from those who make an empty noise by banging on skins.

Very similar to this is 'Ἀσκὸν τίλλεις, You are plucking a wineskin, either because it has no feeling, or because it has no hairs.

Terence in the Phormio: 'Here! Don't reopen a closed subject, as they say.' This is taken from the practice of the lawcourts, under which it is not permitted to reopen a case once judgment has been given. Plautus: 'You are pleading a case already finished,' that is, you are working to no purpose. Quintus Fabius in Livy, decade 3 book 8: 'I know that to many of you, senators, it seems to-day that we are reopening a closed subject, and that he will speak to no purpose who expresses an opinion about the province of Africa as though the question were not yet settled.' Cicero in his little book on friendship suggests that this was customarily used of a piece of business conducted in the wrong order: 'But we suffer from carelessness in many of our undertakings; in none more than in selecting and cultivating our friends. We put things back to front, and go over things already settled, in defiance of the old proverb.'

'Ακόνην σιτίζεις, You are feeding a whetstone. This is said about gluttonous people, who eat a lot and are in no better condition for that. There is a common proverb going about today which refers to the leanness of whetstones: they say 'as fat as a whetstone' when they mean 'emaciated.' Ermolao Barbaro, in a letter to Pico, explains this proverb as meaning 'to bestow a kindness wrongly and get no thanks for it'; so that it would be close to the other one which will be recorded elsewhere, Feed the wolf's cubs, when poor thanks are returned for a benefit.

Υλαν κραυγάζεις, You are calling for Hylas. Said about people who shout with no result, or generally about those who make no progress. The proverb was derived from the following event. Hylas, the son of Theodamas, was one of the Argonauts, a beautiful youth beloved by Hercules. When he was in Mysia, he went out to fetch water, fell into the spring and was drowned. It is said that the Nymphs fell in love with him and carried him away. Polyphemus was sent to find him, and went calling his name 'Hylas!' with great shouts, but he had no success. Hence the proverb arose. Virgil seems to relate it to the shouts of the sailors, when he says:
He joins to these Hylas, left by the sailors beside a spring,
Shouting for him, till the whole coast rang with the name
Hylas, Hylas.
Theocritus too remembers it in idyll 13: Thrice he called 'Hylas' with the loudest shout he could muster From his deep throat; and thrice the lad heard, But faintly his voice struck the ear. There is no reason why it should not refer to the sacred rites instituted in memory of the snatching away of Hylas; his name was shouted during these rites. It would be more elegant and apt to use it for someone longing for something he lacks, weeping for it or wishing for it. So a man reduced to poverty might long for the hundred talents he used to possess. Aristophanes seems to have thought of this proverb in the Plutus: 'You long for one not present and you call in vain.' This is said of Mercury, lamenting for the cakes which he had once been accustomed to eat during the ceremonies.

Αλλως ἀναλίσκεις ὕδωρ, You are wasting water (time). This will be suitable for people who try to persuade others, but in vain. It comes from the ancient custom of judicial trials, when a time-limit was set by the water-clock. Aeschines, speaking against Demosthenes, explains that the first measure of water was poured in for the plaintiffs, the second for the defence, the third for the judges to decide on the penalty, unless the accused had been acquitted by the first votes. And Demosthenes challenges Aeschines to say if he can, in his own water-time if need be, what decree had ever been passed on a proposal moved by him: 'Let him get up and speak - yes, he can have my own water-time.' Lucian, playing with the idea in On Salaried Posts In Great Houses, jokes about a professional rhetorician who made speeches at drinking-parties among the barbarians measured not by water but by the wine-jar. Again in Twice Accused: 'For the water that is running now is hers.' Plato seems to suggest this in the Theaetetus, when he says that some people can report what has been done in the least possible water-time. Again, in the same work, 'The running water urges on,' because the orator's business is to speak by the periods allowed him on the clock. Apuleius in the Golden Ass: 'Again, when summoned by the herald with a great roar, an older prosecutor rose and for a set space of time (there was a vessel with a sort of thin pipe by way of a neck, through which water poured into it came slowly drop by drop) he made an appeal to the people, as follows.' Pliny the Younger, writing to Falco: 'And anyone who can order someone else to be quiet, should have silence imposed on him by the clock.' The same to Arrianus again: 'I spoke for nearly five hours. For my twenty periods by the clock, which I had supposed ample when I accepted them, were increased by four.' Quintilian, book 12: 'And if you make an assumption, you have to prove it, and there is not enough water-time for the speech you have worked on and built up with days and nights of study.' Cicero at the end of the second book of his Tusculan Questions: 'Tomorrow then by the water-clock; for that is how we speak.' Cicero again in the De oratore, book 3, speaking of Pericles: 'But this man had not been taught by some noisy declaimer to rant by the water-clock, but (as we understand) his teacher was the great Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, a man with a supreme grasp of the most important subjects.' Philetas, in Athe-naeus, book 2: 'I have said so much, like orators who talk by the clock'; for his speech had actually been about water. In this lies the charm of the allusion. Demades used to joke about Demosthenes 'the water-drinker,' saying that others timed their speeches by water but Demosthenes timed his writing by it. Philostratus in his life of Adrian the sophist calls sophists 'water-clock men,' because they practised against the clock. In early times lines and shadows were used to tell the hours. The first to invent a water-clock was Publius Scipio Nasica, and then one could tell the time even on a cloudy day or at night. Now they use instead of water-clocks hourglasses and automatic clocks.

Of the same sort are the phrases Plautus makes use of in the Asinaria: 'to fish in the air, to hunt with a spear in the sea.' These will directly fit those people who try in vain to achieve the impossible, or who look in the wrong place for something they can never hope to find there. For instance, a man might seek a quiet life in magisterial office, or a blessed one in the midst of pleasure, or a happy one in the midst of wealth. So Libanus the slave, ordered by his master Demaenetus to get money away by fraud from the latter's own wife, indicates by his reply that there is no way of taking anything away from a really close-fisted woman: 'Order me at one and the same time to go fishing in the air, and hunting with a javelin in the midst of the sea.'

We find in the same poet something not very different from the above: 'to look for water from a pumice-stone,' meaning to seek in vain to obtain something from a person who is in great need of it himself. For nothing is dryer than a pumice-stone, or more thirsty for water; it is just as if we were to ask for teaching from the most untaught, to expect advice from the most ill-advised, or a present from a pauper, protection from the helpless, money from a close-fisted miser. Plautus: 'For you are asking now for water from a pumice-stone, which is thirsty itself.' 'The pumice-stone,' says the same author, 'is not as dry as this old man.' The pumice is a stone full of holes, which is used to polish books; so dry in its nature that if you put it into a boiling pot, it will stop the boiling, not only for a time but altogether. There is no other cause for this, thinks Theophrastus, than that because of its extreme dryness it strives to draw all the froth into itself. He recalls the case of a certain Eudemus of Chios, who habitually provided himself with a pumice stone sprinkled with vinegar, so that after the seventh draught of hellebore he could not be provoked to vomit either by baths or by drinking wine.

This also belongs to the same line of thought, and is used by the same poet: To drag the clothes off a naked man, meaning to hope for gain from a person who has nothing that can be taken away. Thus the aforesaid Libanus, in the Asinaria of Plautus, is ordered by his master to steal from himself, by a trick, the money to buy a girl for his son, and he says: 'You're joking - you want me to get the clothes off a naked man.' St Chrysostom also quotes a popular proverb, to the effect that 'a hundred men cannot despoil one naked man.' Apuleius, in the first book of the Ass, wrote that 'a naked man cannot be robbed by ten wrestlers.'

Τὸν ἀνθέρικον θερίζειν, To reap asphodel-stalks, was said of those who take on useless and fruitless work. Asphodel is a kind of plant which cannot be mown, but must be pulled up by hand like flax. The word antherices means the tips of ears of grain, or awns. Herodotus calls the stalks of asphodel antherices, according to Suidas, and he says they are too tough to be broken. Pliny, book 21 chapter 17, mentions asphodel-stalks: 'In the Greek compilations I find antherices and atherices used indifferently.'

'Εκ τῆς ψάμμου σχοινίον πλέκειν., To twist a rope of sand. This means trying in vain to do what can by no means be done. What could be sillier than to want to twist a rope out of sand, which cannot stick together? Both proverbs, this and the one just quoted, are used by Aristides in his Joint Defence of Four Orators: 'But hiding themselves in holes, and there inventing their marvellous wisdom, they draw together words in shadow, as you say, O Sophocles, reaping asphodel, weaving rope from sand, unravelling I know not what web.' By these adages he indicated that the private study of the philosophers bears no fruit at all. Columella in the preface of his poem on gardening: Tor although there are many parts of this of which we could speak, they are so tiny that, as the Greeks say, from their incomprehensible smallness one cannot make a rope of sand.' The proverb can be particularly adapted to use as follows: if one should try to bring into agreement people who are far apart in way of life, with nothing whatever in common; or if one should put together a speech woven out of discordant arguments, creating a kind of chimaera or a monster like that described by Horace, with a man's head on a horse's neck and with the rest of the limbs collected from different kinds of animal, 'making a woman beautiful from the waist up end miserably in a black fish.'

Very nearly the same is this phrase, about people who stupidly search for what does not exist: Ὄνου πόκας ζητεῖς, You are looking for wool from a donkey. The proverb is also found in the form 'donkey's wool.' Aristophanes: 'Who's for the plain of Lethe? Who for donkey's wool?' Meaning by ass's wool something empty and non-existent. The phrase makes a Greek trimeter if you leave out the second tis.

Τὸν ὄνον κείρεις, You are shearing the donkey. This has the same sense, and is used of people who attempt something ridiculous and useless, because you can neither comb a donkey, with its shaggy hair, nor shear it, because it has no wool. Aristophanes recalls it in the Frogs.

Λύκου πτερὰ ζητεῖς, You are looking for the wolf's wings. Used of people who seek something which does not exist, or when someone produces alarm merely by words, making a threat he will never carry out. It is quite impossible that a wolf should ever turn up with wings. The proverb is listed by Suidas.

In the same place the commentator mentions this proverb also, as if it had the same meaning: Tὰ ἐν ἄδου, The things in Hades, and he quotes Aristarchus as his authority, and thinks it arose from the story in Cratinus of a man in the underworld twisting a rope while a donkey chewed off the part he had already twisted, so that the twister's work was quite in vain. This phrase 'the things in Hades' relates however in general to everything that the poets' stories tell us, not to be believed except by children; so when we describe empty dreams or the like we can appropriately say 'the things in Hades.' Athenaeus relates in book 4 of his Doctors at Dinner that Democritus wrote a book with this title, About What Is In Hades, probably stuffed with monstrous fables, and it may be from this that the proverb arose.

So similar as to seem almost the same, is what Pausanias tells in his Phocica, about Ocnus the ass, or the 'lazy ass,' well known, he says, among the lonians: Συνάγει Ὄκνος τὴν θώμιγγα, The sluggard twists the rope. I will give his own words: 'Beyond these there is a man sitting, and the inscription indicates that he is Ocnus [sloth]. He is portrayed in this way: he is twisting a rope, and a she-ass standing near by is continually gnawing away at what he has twisted. They say that this Ocnus is an industrious man bent on his work, but he has an extravagant and spendthrift wife, so that whatever he gets together by working is soon wasted by her. I can testify that if the lonians see someone labouring away at something which brings in no profit, they habitually say, "this man is twisting the rope of Ocnus."' The subject of the picture seems to have been taken from a word with a double meaning. The Greeks say 'to get together a living' for 'to procure one's livelihood.' The one who increases his substance gets together; the one who squanders scatters it. And this subject seems to have been illustrated in old days by the work of many artists. Pliny, in his History of the World, describes among the themes of the famous painter Socrates the picture of an ass gnawing a rope. 'And the sluggard' he says 'called Ocnus, twisting the rope which the ass chews off.' It is said that the same picture was at Delphi, dedicated by Polygnotus the Thasian. However, they deny that it means an idle and indolent man, as Varro thought, but much more a diligent and industrious one with an extravagant wife. So Pausanias says that the donkey in the picture was a female and not a male. Ermolao Barbaro testifies that a carving illustrating the same subject is on show at two places in Rome, namely on the Capitol and in the gardens of the Vatican. Propertius also made use of this proverb: 'Worthier' he says,
To twist the rope for Ocnus sideways sitting,
And feed for aye the ass that's always eating.
It is curious, by the way, that Pliny should say the man who twisted the rope was called Ocnus, which means lazy, and not rather the gnawing ass, especially as Propertius does not give the name Ocnus, lazy, to the man who twists, but says that the rope is being twisted for him; so that one would think 'lazy' was applicable to the ass rather than the rope-maker. Plutarch recalls this adage in his essay 'On Tranquillity of Mind': 'But it is just like the man in the picture of the underworld who is twisting a rope, and close to him stands one who eats away what he has made.'

Αἰγιαλῷ λαλεῖς, You are talking to the seashore. This is quoted in the Greek collections. It is said of people who advise or pray in vain, as if they spoke to the deaf. For the seashores are called deaf because of the continual noise of the waves. Ovid: 'Deafer to me than the sea as I shrieked out the name of Orestes, /He dragged me with hair all disarrayed into his palace.'

Suidas adds this one: Ἀνέμῳ διαλέγῃ, You are talking to the wind. It means 'in vain' because the wind blows everything away and makes it disappear. Virgil spoke of 'commands scattered on the breezes' which had vanished in oblivion. Plautus, Mostellaria: 'The only word he knows to cry to the wind is "interest."' In Athenaeus we read, with a similar metaphor, 'to call on heaven and earth.'

Νεκρῷ λέγουσα μύθους εἰς οὖς, Telling a story to a dead man's ear. Plautus says 'Now I am talking to the dead.' Terence: 'Words are spoken to the dead.' Plautus again: 'It makes no more difference than if a joke were told to a dead man in his tomb.' Apposite here is what is said by Aeschylus in the Agamemnon: 'Alive, I wail in vain to the tomb of the dead.' The proverb arises from the foolish custom of the ancients, of calling three times the name of the deceased. For this reason they are called 'the lamented' [conclamati] especially at funerals were there is much bewailing of the dead man. This custom is derided by Lucian in his essay on Mourning, which I have translated into Latin.

This has the same force: Κωφῷ ἄδεις, You sing to a deaf man. Virgil in the Bucolics: 'We are not singing to the deaf; the woods echo it all.' Horace: 'He'd think a tale were told / To a deaf ass.' Terence in the Heautontimorumenos: Truly he hardly knows what a story he is telling to my deaf ears.' Livy in the Macedonian War, book 10: 'I am afraid they were singing to empty ears.' Aeschylus in the Seven Against Thebes: 'Did you hear, or did you not? Am I talking to the deaf?' Ovid alludes to this in the Amores, book 3: 'If Phemius sings to deaf ears, what's the use? What use is a picture to poor Thamyras?' This seems to have arisen from a ridiculous situation, when it often happens that a stranger chances upon a deaf man and asks him many questions, to the amusement of those who know him to be deaf.

Ἀλλως ᾄδεις, You sing or play in vain. Said of those who urge to no purpose. Derived from singers, who when they are unpleas-ing to their audience 'sing in vain' because no one listens, or those who sing at their own expense and carry away no reward. The Greeks often use the proverbial metaphor of singing to describe a speech. Hence the phrase in the Hecuba of Euripides: 'Some song will come.' And 'you are singing the same song,' and 'croaking in one's ears' and 'going beyond the song.' The poet Lycophron used and at the same time explained this saying: Thus you will rouse the idle notes of the lyre, / Playing your foodless unrewarded songs.' The commentator adds that the proverb is sometimes found in this form, 'you are touching the lute-strings in vain.' But this is from lute-players, who sing without being paid anything, and get their food at home, that is at their own expense and cost, as Plautus says, 'they sing for others.' Perhaps one might see here a reference to the fable of Aesop, about the flute-player who tried in vain to charm the fishes by his music. For he had heard the story of Arion.

Λίθῳ διαλέγῃ, You are speaking to a stone. This has the same meaning. In Terence in the Heautontimorumenos 'stone' is several times used for a stupid, dull sort of man. There was good sense in the reply quoted by Laertius to the person who asked Aristippus what improvement education would bring to his son: 'If nothing else,' said Aristippus, 'he won't sit in the theatre like one stone sitting on another'.

Πρὸς τὸν τοῖχον λαλεῖς, You are talking to a wall. This also is found in the Greek collections, and also in the form 'to talk through the wall.' It used to be said about anyone who did something particularly absurd. Perhaps it came from lovers, who sometimes talk to the doors and windows, or even the walls of their sweethearts, as if there were understanding in them. Plautus in the Truculentus adopts it in the sense of speaking to one who will keep quiet: 'I will be a wall; you go ahead and talk.'

A proverb familiar in Greek and Latin alike, To play the fool, meaning to do something trivial and silly, or to make efforts in vain. A phrase familiar in Attic Greek is 'to fool with foolery,' λῆρον ληρεῖς. Aristophanes in the Clouds calls Socrates the high-priest of subtle foolery, the originator, so to speak, of witty frivolities: 'You, the high priest of most subtle foolery.' Galen said in his On the Natural Faculties, book 2: Thus every hypothesis of ducts as an explanation for natural functioning is complete foolery.' It is more amusing when applied to an individual, as in Athenaeus, book 6: 'But, he says, poets are foolery.' They also say 'you are crazy,' 'you are being nonsensical,' taking this over from old women who are beginning to get weak in the head with age and usually babble foolish nonsense. Ausonius to Paulus:
Phoebus demands that we should speak the truth.
He may let the Pierian sisters rave,
But he himself will never twist the furrow.
In these lines the allusion is rather obscure, I might almost say out of place. Bilingual as he was, the man had in mind both languages and a double meaning of the word. In Greek lews means nonsense and in Latin lirae or porcae are words for furrow. Ploughmen first open up the ground, then break up the clods, then plough a furrow [lirant]. Then he adds 'never does he twist a furrow.' Formerly ploughmen were said delirare when they deviated from the straight line of the furrow. And so it is transferred to people who are doting.

'Ες τὸν οὐρανὸν τοξεύεις, You are aiming your arrow at the sky. This is found in Zenodotus and Suidas; it refers to people who toil in vain, or who dare to attack those whom they cannot harm. For the man who shoots at the skies can never hit anything; he only seems to be attacking the gods. It often happens that his missile falls back on himself. There is something like this in the proverbs of the Hebrews too, namely in Ecclesiasticus chapter 27: 'Whoever throws a stone straight up, it shall fall on his own head; and a treacherous blow opens up wounds for the treacherous. He who digs a pit will fall into it, and he who has set up a stone for his neighbour will fall over it, and he who sets a snare for another will perish in it.'

Δελφῖνα πρὸς τὸν οὐραῖον δεῖς, You are tying a dolphin by the tail. This refers to people who try to do something in vain; because the dolphin has a slippery tail and cannot be held by that part, or else because the tail is so strong that ships are sometimes overturned by its thrashing, so that there is no catching it at that end. This is also applicable to those who make an attack on someone using means by which he cannot possibly be overcome.

Απ᾽ οὐρᾶς τὴν ἔγχελυν ἔχεις, You are holding the eel by the tail. This comes in appropriately when people have to do with untrustworthy and treacherous men, or have possessions of a fleeting and uncertain kind which they cannot retain for long.

τῷ θρίῳ τὴν ἔγχελυν, (we must supply, You are holding) the eel in the fig-leaf. This is a little different: used when an otherwise evasive, slippery person is held by a grip too tight for him to escape. A fig-leaf has a rough surface, so much so that Plutarch wrote that its name was synonymous with harshness; and for that reason perfectly adapted for keeping hold of a slippery eel.

Close to the previous saying is the remark of Aristophanes in the Frogs: νῦν ἔχῃ μέσος , Now you are held by the middle, of someone held in such a way that he cannot possibly extricate himself. It comes from wrestlers and athletes, who have an easy victory if they have seized someone by the middle. These are the words of Aeacus to Bacchus: 'But now you are held by the middle.' To the same belongs the phrase of Terence, 'I'd catch him round the waist and lift him up.'

Δελφῖνα νήχεσθαι διδάσκεις, You teach a dolphin to swim. This fits those who try to give advice to another person on a subject of which he has great experience, and so needs no teacher. The dolphin has the swiftest impetuosity in swimming, so that it not only exceeds in speed every kind of swimming creature, but all land animals too; see Aelianus, book 12. It even leaps over ships, and holding its breath propels itself forward like a missile.

'Αετὸν ἵπτασθαι διδάσκεις., You teach an eagle to fly. The same sense comes out of a different metaphor. As the dolphin among fish, so is the eagle among birds. They have one thing in common, that it is said each has a love for boys. Gregory seems to have been hinting at this in a letter to Eudoxus the Rhetor: 'Say farewell to the common herd, consider those to be jackdaws who test the flight of eagles.'

Terence says in the Phormio: 'You are sticking in the same mud.' It applies to those who are so involved in some affair that they cannot extricate themselves. It comes from travellers, when they fall into the mire and try to pull one foot out and the other sinks deeper in; and then to pull this one out, the one they had freed has to be stuck again. Horace says about this: 'Wishing in vain to pluck your foot out of the mire.' Similar to this is 'to stick in the same track': Quintus Curtius, book 4: 'On the third day, livid with fear, weighed down by their arms, they stuck in the same track.'

A proverb something like this is quoted by Cicero in De officiis, book 3: 'In many passages he has much to say, but he sticks in the water, as the phrase is.' He is describing Epicurus, too little consistent in disputation and getting himself mixed up, so that what he says in one place contradicts what he said in another, and so he floats about, as it were, and never reaches solid ground. This happens to people who wander from the truth and wrap the matter up in deceitful words. It seems to be taken from people floating, who have lost touch with the bottom and are thrown hither and thither; the more they struggle, the greater danger they are in. Or else from the water-clocks of orators, which we have mentioned elsewhere; we say a man 'sticks in the water' when he cannot extricate himself from the case for the defence even when the water has all run out. Cicero to his brother Quintus, book 2: 'What had been said should be done on the ides and the next day about the land in Campania, has not been done. In this case the water sticks for me.' It is uncertain whether he means that the whole lawsuit was left to him, or that the case was incapable of resolution. Here we may place what we quoted previously out of Quintilian: There is not enough water for the speech you have worked on and built up with days and nights of study.' What I shall say later about the proverb 'He is sticking in shallow water' is not dissimilar.