Adagia 701–800

Τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα., Marry a wife of your own sort. The adage reminds us that no man ought to be misled by love of money or ambition into marrying a wife who is grander than himself; for such marriages tend to turn out badly. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Education of Children' tells parents to 'betroth wives to their sons who are not much richer or more influential than they are; for there is much wisdom in the proverb Take a wife of your own station.' This is also circulated among the maxims of the Sages, and is ascribed by some to Pittacus: Marry a wife of your own kind. For if you marry one whose family are grander than you are, you will be acquiring masters to order you about, not kinsmen. Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Philosophers tells the following anecdote, which he assures us was also given currency by Callimachus in a brilliant epigram. A young man from Atarneus once consulted Pittacus as to which woman he should marry; for he had the choice of two, one of them his equal in birth and property and the other his superior in both. Pittacus lifted the staff on which he leant, and told him to go to the square in the middle of the city where the children gather to play, and ask their advice, and then to follow whatever they might give him. The children, in agreement with the familiar proverb, replied Seek a wife of your own sort. And so the young man rejected one, and chose the other who was his equal. Callimachus advises his friend Dion to do the same. This principle appealed to Pittacus especially 'because he had married a wife more high-born than himself, the sister of Draco,' who ordered him about and was difficult to please, which he found very trying, so that he seems to have learnt this wise saying not from theory but from his own unfortunate experience. There is also an epigram, though the name in it is Ion and not Dion (wrongly, I think), which runs as follows: 'A stranger from Atarneus once asked Pittacus, son of Hyrrhadius, of Mitylene the following question. "Aged sir, two marriages are offered me, one with a girl who is in wealth and birth my equal, while the other is far above me. Which is the better course? Pray give me your advice, which I had better marry." He raised his staff, the old man's weapon, and replied: "Those over there will tell you all you need." Now there were children who whipped their whirling tops as they spun them in the wide street. "Follow their lead" he said. So the young man went and stood near the boys and heard them cry "Stick to your own!" When he heard this, he refrained from grasping the grander marriage, for he took a hint from what the children said. He chose to live with him the humbler bride; and even so you, Dion, should stick to your own.' These lines were rendered into Latin verse not wholly without success by Ambrosius Camaldulensis in his version of Diogenes, and I shall add them without hesitation: [Here follow eight Latin couplets, the sense of which has been given already in translating the Greek original]. The image is taken from a child's top, which he spins by whipping it; for each child drove as hard as he could the top that belonged to him. Deianira in Ovid transfers the proverb to her own sex:
As bad as ill-matched oxen at the plough
Are a grand husband and a lesser bride.
She who will spoil the splendid show he makes
Brings him no honour; she is just a burden.
Let her who wishes for a well-tuned marriage
Marry her equal.
Plutarch 'On the Education of Children': 'There is much wisdom in the saying Take a wife of your own station.' I have thought it right to add at this point that line from the Thesmophoriazusae that passes under the name of Aristophanes: 'An aged groom is mastered by his bride.' There is the same message in that line of Euripides in the Rhesus: T would not marry one grander than I.' And it will be appropriate to see that one's wife is equal not only in lineage and in property; there should be only a moderate difference in age, good looks, and style of life. This can be taken still further, and applied to the undertaking of business which you are equal to and fit for. Also to the choice of the right style of life and a congenial friend.

Those who were too frightened to utter a sound were said at one time not to dare say mu. The adage is recorded by Varro in the third book of his On the Latin Language. He thinks the verb mussare, to mutter is derived from the name of the letter mu, as an equivalent to the Greek verb muzein, because dumb people (mutes, as we call them) can make no sound except mu. For m is the most silent letter in the alphabet, especially when final, for it draws the lips together and closes them to a surprising degree. Varro's words are: 'From which the same author calls the least utterance mu: "nor, as the phrase goes, dare any say him mu."' It seems to be a line from Ennius, for he had quoted him shortly before. In Greek muzein means both to suck and to speak through one's nose, to mutter. Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae: 'Why mutter, when all has gone well?' For this is Euripides' reply when Mnesilochus had said mu mù. In Latin mutire and mussare mean to bear something in silence and as it were swallow your protests. Terence: 'The wrongs of the young must be endured in silence (mussitanda).' Virgil: 'In silence king Latinus hesitates (mussat).' In Aristophanes in the Knights two characters who wish to complain about the evils of their city repeat in unison the line mu mù, mu mù, mu mù, mu mù, mu mù, mu mù, from which we may infer that this was the sound made by those who did not dare speak out.

Μηδὲ γρὺ φθέγγεται., He utters not a grunt. An exaggeration with proverbial status in Greek, indicating not even a very little. For gru means something very small, either dirt under the nails (than which nothing could be more worthless) or a grunt like a pig's (commonly uttered by those who cannot be bothered to reply in words) or an extremely small coin. Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'And makes me follow too, / Although the man gives not a grunt in answer.' Hence too the verb gruzein, to grunt or grumble. The same poet and the same play: 'You filthy jailbirds, do you dare to grunt?' Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius: 'He said nothing, and could not be induced to utter even a grunt.' This word is used frequently by Aristophanes.

'I count it not worth a hair,' 'Not a hairsbreadth to choose' is an exaggeration in common use in Latin when it wishes to express a very small degree of importance. Catullus: 'They count their staff not worth a hair.' Cicero, writing to his brother: 'I shall not love you one hairsbreadth the less,' and in another passage 'And all this time from Cappadocia not a single hair,' though ordinary copies there read pileum, a cap, not pilum. And this adage in our own day too is on everyone's lips. A hair was proverbial for something worthless in Greek as well as Latin. Hence the expression ἄξιος τριχός., 'worth a hair,' of a man of no account. The bolder the metaphor, the better the effect; for the phrase 'I count the man not worth a hair' contains almost nothing in the way of a rhetorical figure except the exaggeration, while 'Not a hairsbreadth the better scholar,' 'Not a hairsbreadth less attractive,' 'Not a hairsbreadth more distinguished' and similar expressions, going as they do a little further beyond the simple statement, acquire rather more power to please.

To be worth a mite, and To count worth a mite, for to be worthless or think worthless, will be found fairly often in Plautus. As to the meaning of this word nauci, a mite, one of the slaves in Plautus who has just used it admits that he has no idea what it means. Plautus: 'A faint heart in a tight place will not be worth a mite.' Some of the grammarians, Pompeius Festus among them, say that nauci means the shell of a nut, or an olive-stone, or the fine membrane that one can see making the partitions in the inside of a walnut; in a word, they think it is the husk of anything, the Greek peripsema, that is called nauci. Some derive it from the Greek word nake, a goatskin. Other views on the word nauci will be found by those who wish to learn them in Festus under the heading naccae. 'I care not a mite' was used by Ennius, as quoted by Cicero in book 1 of the On Divination: 'I care not a mite in fact for your Marsian soothsayer.'

In the same way they used the phrase flocci facere and ne flocci quidem facere, To think worth a wisp of wool or, not even worth a wisp of wool, for something of no value. Floccus is a scrap of wool that is torn as being of no purpose from the fleece and flies away, or something at least like that of no importance. Examples are so common everywhere in ancient authors that it does not seem worth while to find room for them here.

To the same shape of phrase belongs a remark in Terence in the Adelphoe: 'I shall make it not worth that!' Donatus points out that this is what Greek calls deiktikon, accompanied by a gesture, and the speaker means either a wisp of wool or a straw or a finger-tip, or something of the sort. Athenaeus tells us in his twelfth book that there was a statue of Sardanapalus on his tomb, making this kind of gesture with his fingers, to show that all human affairs are despicable and not worth a snap of the fingers.

In the Miles of Plautus T wouldn't buy your life for a rotten walnut,' meaning 'for no sum however small.' And we say in current speech 'I would not swap that for an empty nut' and 'not worth a nutshell.' Aristophanes in the Peace: 'I would not buy it, not for one dried fig.' Close to this are some words quoted, also from Plautus, by Festus: 'I would not value what you say at a titivillitium,' a word used in Latin to signify something absolutely worthless, like pipolo in Greek. There is also butubata, an expression for 'rubbish' used by Naevius, as we know from Festus.

Cicero sometimes uses as an exaggeration the word farthing, which clearly meant some sort of very small coin. In a letter to Atticus: T even hope that during the whole of my year as governor not a farthing of expense will fall on the province.' Plautus in the Captivi: 'Now they won't pay a farthing for a man who makes them laugh,' just as Greek uses the word half-obol for something of no value. Varro thinks the word teruncius is derived from 'three ounces.'

Plautus again in the Poenulus uses 'a three-ha'penny fellow' of a rascal whose value is clearly nil. Derived from a very small coin, Aristophanes uses a very similar metaphor in the Wasps, when he calls worthless verses 'three-quart lines.' Gregory in his letters says of a worthless and contempt- ible person 'or rather a slave worth a few ha'pence.' There is also a word triobolares which conveys the same meaning.

Persius in the same vein speaks of some contemptible creature as 'a stable-boy dear at threepence,' and in another passage of 'bidding a hundred clipped pennies,' which would be the smallest possible sum, 'for a hundred Greeks.' The word tressis was a new one, equivalent to 'worth threepence,' the as or penny being a small bronze coin. Persius' lines are in the fifth satire and run as follows:
'Barren indeed of truth my countrymen!
One twirl makes any Jack a citizen.
Take Dama now, no threepenny stable-boy.'
There is a related phrase in Jerome: 'Who priced you at two pounds?' Justinian in the preface to the Pandects expressed the wish that law-students might lose their ancient nickname 'twopounders,' which was both contemp- tuous and absurd, and take the new name of 'Justinians.'

Ἄξιος τριχός., Worth a hair, is used in Greek of men who are worthy of nothing good, because nothing is more contemptible than a hair. Aristopha- nes in the Frogs: 'Death take me if ever I was here before / Or stole aught of yours that was worth a hair.' The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.

Ἄξιος οὐδὲ μόνου, καὶ Ἄξιος ἑνός., Not worth even a one, or Worth a one and no more, used of something quite worthless. The metaphor is taken from the casting of dice, in which the one is the lowest throw. In fact the one is the least in all systems of numbering, and is itself (so the philosophers tell us) not even a number. Conversely, when the meaning is that a man is highly valued, it is a familiar expression in Greek to say he is 'worth a great deal' and 'worth everything,' and the opposite, 'worth very little,' if a man is despised. It is ordinary and plebeian to be valued solely as one individual; and thus Homer in Iliad 11, wishing to convey the importance of a physician, says that he is the equivalent of many other men. Plato looks back to this in book 5 of the Laws, when he says of two people that one is worth his own value as an individual while the other is the equivalent of many other men. To the same shape of phrase belong those figures of the teachers of rhetoric which run that One man finds an audience in himself, and that They value the judgment of one particular man more than that of an infinite multitude.

Ἄξιος ὀβελίσκου., Worthy of an obelisk, worthy of any honour you can think of. For the very greatest men had this kind of thing, columns and pyramids, erected in their honour, with grandiloquent inscriptions, or huge colossal figures; for that was how in old days stupid princes loved to be represented. Not but what the proverb is double-edged, for Aristarchus used an obelisk, or obelus, to cut to pieces anything he disapproved of. This is recorded by Suidas among others.

When Greek wants to convey that a man deserves the highest honours, it is customary to say to him You shall be set up at Olympia in gold. Lucian in Pseudologista: 'You shall, as they say, be set up at Olympia in gold,' for in those days it was held to be the highest honour to have a statue among the illustrious in such a famous place. Virgil alludes to this when he says 'If lambs fill up my flock, you shall be gold.' Plato in the Phaedrus: 1 promise to set up a statue of you in gold at Delphi life size.' And a little further on: 'You shall stand in hammered metal at Olympia by the offering of the Cypselids.' The translator perhaps read chryselatos (of beaten gold), not sphurelatos (hammered), or at the least he must have been asleep, for he gives 'in gold.' It should be added that the kings of Corinth were called Cypselids from Cypselus, who drove the Bacchidae out of Corinth, took over the govern- ment and acquired great wealth; as evidence of which Strabo cites 'the dedication of Cypselus at Olympia, a statue of a man of large size in hammered gold.' Philostratus alludes to this in his Life of Apollonius: 'They will crown you in Olympia.' Persius uses a rather similar image in his second satire: 'Let them rank first, and give them golden beards.' For it was customary to give certain statues a beard of gold.

Ἄξιος τοῦ παντός., Worth everything you like to mention. Recorded by all the Greek collectors of adages. Plato uses it in the Sophist: 'Some find them quite valueless, to others they are worth everything.' Terence in the same way speaks of a 'man worth anything you please.' Though this adage has just been mentioned.

Ἄξιος εἶ τῆς ἐν Ἄργει ἀσπίδος., You are worthy of the shield at Argos. Of a well-bred man for whom one has exceptional respect. Taken from an old custom at Argos, that boys of unblemished character and breeding should go in procession, carrying some particular shields. This privilege had been granted to boys of that age in accordance with some ancient tradition.

When we wish to indicate something of the greatest importance, which ought to be secured however great the expense, we shall say that it is worth breaking bail for; for those who have entered into recognizances cannot fail to appear without great personal risk. Pliny the Elder in the preface to his Natural History speaks of 'titles for which one might break one's bail,' so attractive, that is, that for their sake everything else though of the greatest value might well take second place. Seneca in the De beneficiis, book 4: 'We give our recognizances, and yet fail to keep them; but not every failure is a ground for legal action, for it can be excused on the ground of force majeure.' Seneca's words make it clear that a reason adequate to excuse a man who has broken his bail must be very urgent indeed. Horace: 'Just then by chance he had to answer bail.' He is making fun of a tiresome chatterbox, who would rather risk losing his suit than have to suspend his flow of nonsense. There is a similar formula which runs 'To fight as though for hearth and altar,' when the object of the struggle is something precious and important. Celsus uses a like form of words in the Pandects, book 6 title De rei vindicatione: 'To forego household gods and tombs of ancestors.' 'Imagine a poor man,' he says, 'who if he were forced to give it up would forego household gods and tombs of ancestors. It is enough for you to be allowed to take as much of the property as you can take and yet leave the estate in no way worse than if there had been no building done in the first place.'

To sleep sound on either ear is to have an easy mind, unconcerned and free from care. Terence in the Heauton: 'I'll see that all your fears are done away; / Then soundly shall you sleep on either ear.' Basil too uses it in one of his letters, but in a bad sense, to convey idle self-confidence. Menander in the Plocium, quoted by Gellius: 'She has her dowry; she may sleep sound on either ear.' So someone has translated it, I know not who.

In the same sense Pliny used 'on your right ear,' for he says in a letter to his friend Romanus: 'But there's no call to leave it to me and sleep on your right ear; idleness does not go unpunished,' meaning, there is no reason not to worry. In the same way physicians tell us that for our first sleep, which is generally the deepest, we should lie on the right ear; when we have woken up and wish to get to sleep again, on the left ear; and the man who wishes to sleep lightly lies on neither ear, in order to wake up more easily.

Related to this is Ἀποτείναντα τῶ πόδε καθεύδειν., To sleep at full stretch. Lucian On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'And now you have at last got what everyone prays for, to sleep at full stretch.' To the same image belongs a phrase used by Mercury in Aristophanes' Plutus: 'I rest anabaden, with my feet up,' and supinus, 'supine' for 'at ease,' and we use 'to be supine' for being negligent and thoughtless; and to fold the hands in the Hebrew proverbs of the sluggard: 'A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.'

To turn up your nose at something is to mock it in a sly sneering fashion. Pliny, book 11 chapter 32, tells us it was his own generation that gave the word nose this special sense of sly derision; for we find nothing like it in earlier authors. I will give Pliny's actual words: 'And man alone has the projecting nose to which our modern habits have given the special sense of sly derision.' Horace in the Satires: 'You turn up your nose and catch them on it,' and in another passage: 'A tiresome fellow who turns up his nose at everything.' Persius, speaking of Horace as a master of skilful and well-hidden mockery: 'with a sly talent for turning up his nose and catching the public on it'; and elsewhere 'Attend then, but drop that angry wrinkled snarl from your nostrils.' Hence clever critics of other men were said to have 'a sharp satirical nose.' Martial: 'All are not gifted with the critic's nose,' and 'And children have the nose of a rhinoceros,' and again 'Sharp-nosed you may be, you may be all nose.' Persius: 'You laugh, he says, and let your nostrils curl / More than they should.' Greek expresses this with a plain verb mukterizein and its opposite antimukterizein, for mockery and counter- mockery, derived from a word that means nostril. Cassius to Cicero, in book 15 of his Letters to Friends: 'And when you have hurt their feelings by some humorous or teasing remark, they wish to return your mockery in boorish fashion with a drawn sword,' to turn up their noses at you in their turn.

They used to say of a really honest man that you could play morra with him in the dark. Cicero in book 3 of the De officiis: 'Surely it is a disgrace that philosophers should find any problems where the veriest rustic finds none at all, for it was country people invented the proverb, now threadbare with age: when they praise a man's honesty and good faith, they say he's the sort of man with whom you could play morra in the dark.' Again in book 2 of the De finibus: 'Why do we praise justice? Is there some truth in the old threadbare proverb, "with whom you could play morra in the dark"?' Morra is a kind of game which still survives in Italy, in which the two competitors each hold up a number of fingers suddenly, and each has to guess how many. Cicero speaks of it in the second book of the On Divination: 'For what is chance? The same, almost, as playing morra and throwing knucklebones and shooting dice.' Marcus Varro: 'One must play morra with the Greek to decide whether I follow his number or he mine.' Nemesianus in a pastoral poem: 'Up with your fingers in the morra!' Augustine mentions it in his De Trinitate, book 8 chapter 5: 'We have that when we please, to say nothing else, even by playing morra with three fingers.' The point is that a man with whom you play it in the dark is at liberty to cheat if he wishes, and so the man with whom you can safely play in the dark must be so dependably honest that he would not wish to cheat anyone even when it is safe to do so. There is a similar phrase in Greek: 'This is a man you can trust even when he is not on oath,' with its opposite 'Even were he on oath I would not trust him.'

Ἐκ τῶν Διὸς δέλτων ὁ μάρτυς., literally, The witness from Jove's own tablets. This was used in Greek of a reliable witness whose word could not be doubted. Lucian in his essay On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'And if anyone accuses you of adultery or pederasty, without more ado this is evidence, as they say, from Jove's own files.' The allusion, if I am not mistaken, is to the sheet of parchment on which the poets imagine that Jupiter records all that mortals do.

Ἀττικὸς μάρτυς., An Attic witness, is given in the collection of Diogenianus for one of the highest reputation who is quite incorruptible. If one were to turn this round and use it ironically of a worthless witness, one would make a nice point.

Ἀττικὴ πίστις., Athenian honesty, is applied in the same source to those who are never irresponsible and never break their word, derived from the existence in Athens of a temple built in honour of the goddess Honesty, which is also mentioned by Plautus in the Aulularia. Velleius Paterculus speaks of it in the following words: 'If anyone thinks the Athenians are to be blamed for this period of rebellion during which Athens was captured by Sulla, he is quite ignorant of truth and history. The loyalty of the Athenians to Rome was so dependable that at all times and in every field what was done in genuine good faith was said by the Romans to be done with Athenian honesty.' Quintilian, book 12 in the chapter on style, puts it like this: 'For I suppose that if they had found a patch of more fertile soil in this area or a more productive field, they would say that it cannot be Attic because it yields more seed than has been put into it, and the honesty of Attic soil in this regard has been made fun of by Menander.' From this I infer that Athenian honesty meant neither falling short of what you had promised nor going beyond it. Even a not very fertile soil could show this form of loyalty, though normally a field is praised for reliability which returns what has been entrusted to it with interest.

Ἑλληνικῇ πίστει., On Greek credit, is found likewise to express something absolutely reliable. Perhaps identical with the preceding, unless we prefer to take it ironically. Ausonius writing to Paulus: 'In my house you shall find the opposite, if you are willing to do business on Greek credit, not Punic' Similarly of Philo his farm-bailiff: 'He borrows on Greek credit.' Plautus used 'Greek credit' when business is done not by spoken promise or written contract, but for cash down. For this is how he makes Clareta the bawd speak in the Asinaria: 'Daylight and water, sun and moon and night - for these I pay no money. Everything else I need I buy on Greek credit,' that is, for ready cash. Euripides in the Iphigeneia in Tauris: 'There's nothing honest in the whole of Greece.' Under this head the Greeks in old days had a very bad reputation.

The perfidy of the Carthaginians passed into a proverb, because as a nation they had a singularly bad reputation for perjury and falsehood, as Livy bears abundant witness. He writes as follows in the second book of his Punic war: 'a promise which was kept with Punic scrupulosity by Hannibal.' Again in the first book of his Second Punic war: 'These outstanding qualities were matched by the greatest faults, inhuman cruelty, treachery beyond Punic standards, no respect for truth or religion, no fear of any god, no regard for oath or conscience.' It is in these colours he paints Hannibal. Quintus Curtius suggests the same thing when he speaks of the Tyrians as deserted by their Carthaginian supporters. So too does Maximus, as quoted by Julius Capitolinus, saying 'the Africans kept true Punic faith,' and also the phrase I have cited above from Ausonius, 'on Punic credit.' Sallust On the Jugurthine War: T understand that Bocchus kept both the Romans and the king of Numidia in suspense, hoping for a peaceful solution, more from Punic faith than for the reasons he put forward.' Plautus: 'None has more Punic blood in his veins than I,' alluding to their habitual treachery. The Carthaginians were always held to be treaty-breakers. Plautus again in the Poenulus: 'He knows all tongues although pretending not to; he's a true Carthaginian. Why say more?'

Those who flatter a man to his face and criticize him privately, openly playing the part of friends and hurting him under cover, or those who help at one moment and hinder at another, arousing misguided hopes that they will help him, in order to destroy him utterly when they get a chance - such people are said to bear a stone in one hand and offer a loaf in the other. It is a metaphor from those who attract dogs by pretending to throw them bread, and hit them with a stone when they come close. Euclio in Plautus' Aulularia: 'While he makes promises, it's now he means to snatch, his mouth wide open to swallow up my gold. He bears a stone in one hand though he offers a loaf in the other.' St Jerome, writing to Rufinus: 'I wanted, my friend, to protest to you about this privately, rather than vent in public my resentment at this attack; for this will show you that once I have repaired a friendship I respect it honourably and do not follow that quip in Plautus, "He bears a stone in one hand and offers a loaf in the other."' He makes a neat allusion to this in a letter to the same Rufinus: 'Do I refuse you a loaf simply because I bring a stone down on the brains of heretics?' Gregory the Theologian has something similar in a letter to Eusebius bishop of Caesarea: 'for all the world as though one were to scratch the same man's head with one hand and box his ears with the other.'

Ἑκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ στόματος τὸ θερμόν καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐξάγειν., To blow hot and cold from one mouth. Those given to double talk, and those who praise a man one minute and vilify him the next, are said to blow hot and cold from the same mouth. This originates in one of the stories in Avianus the writer of fables. A satyr who was suffering severely from the cold in an exceptionally hard winter was invited by a countryman to take refuge in his house. When he saw the man put his hands to his mouth and blow into them, he was astonished, and asked why he did so. 'To warm my frozen hands' he replied 'with the heat of my breath.' The man then made up a good fire, produced a meal, and blew again, this time on his hot porridge; whereat the satyr, still more astonished, asked him what the point of that was. 'So that my breath may cool my porridge, which is too hot' was the reply. At which the satyr jumped up from the table, crying: 'What is this I hear? Out of one mouth you can blow both hot and cold? I wish you goodbye, for it does not seem to me in reason to share a lodging with a man like that.' Yet the fact which astonished the satyr is explained by Aristotle in the Problems, section 34 problem 7; and this, he thinks, happens because the man who blows hard does not displace all the air in front of him, but contracts his mouth and breathes out a fairly small quantity of air, so that the heat issuing from his mouth is at once dissipated by the rest of the air which he sets in motion by exhaling so forcibly, and turns into cold. It is different in the case of a man who opens his mouth and breathes out fully all at once. There is something related to this in the epistle of James the Apostle, for it passes under his name: 'From the same mouth cometh forth sweet and sour.' We can add at this point a more than miraculous fact recorded by Pliny, book 2: that in Dodona there is a spring which itself is intensely cold and extinguishes a blazing torch plunged into it, and yet, 'if torches that have been extinguished are brought close to it, it rekindles them.' All this it will be possible to divert for use against professional speakers who have the skill to both praise and vilify, exalt and debase the same object; against lawyers who at one point support and at another attack the same case. Plutarch diverted to this purpose the story of how Circe with the same magic wand both takes away the reason and restores it, making beasts of men and men of beasts. There is a proverbial line in Greek that runs as follows: 'To praise and blame the same man shows the rascal.' And a Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, in fact, forebodes ill for those who 'call good evil and evil good, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.' Athenaeus in his fourth book informs us that there is a kind of musical pipe called in Greek magadis or palaiomagadis, which gives both a high and a low note at the same time; for which he quotes from Alexandrides the line T will speak you magadis-f ashion, soft and loud both at once.' The Greek word for this is magadizein, to play two notes together low and high, the octave or diapason as musicians call it. Aristotle, in the problem which is section 19 number 18 in the Greek copies and number 17 in the version by Theodorus, uses this word magadizein, asking why the harmony I have mentioned is the only one played on a magadis. Again, in problem 39 according to the Greek copies, 'They play the magadis in the harmony of the octave.'

Plautus speaks of 'Hands with eyes in them,' which prefer promises to be made good in kind, not dangled before them in words only; they have eyes, he says, and can check delivery of the goods, but no ears with which to listen to offers. So a bawd puts it in the Asinaria, when the young man promises her mountains of gold, and she remains quite unmoved by his undertakings. 'My hands always have eyes in them' she says; 'they believe what they see.' And Sannio, that pimp in Terence, was of the same opinion: 'Never' he says 'was I so cunning that I would not rather make what profit I could in ready cash for choice.' Chaerea alludes to this in the Eunuchus: 'Now let your promises be visible.'

Plautus also speaks of 'A blind day' and 'A day with eyes' for one on which one does not, or does, pay in ready cash. Such is the wording used by a pandar in the Pseudolus: 'Buy oil on a blind day and sell it on one with eyes. Why, man, you can put two hundred in the ready in your pocket,' meaning Pay nothing when you buy, but fix a day for settlement, and sell for cash. 'A blind day' is also used by lawyers, and 'blind evidence' for what is given in writing by absent witnesses; for 'blind' can mean not only what cannot see but also what is not seen and not present.

Σχῖνον διατρώγειν., To munch, or chew, mastic is a proverbial expression in Greek used of those who go too far in an excessive interest in their toilet, since mastic was commonly employed in making dentifrice. It is a kind of fine powder prepared for whitening the teeth; and mastic-wood was also used for making toothpicks, which are a sort of sharp instrument adapted for picking the teeth. Martial in his Apophoreta:
Mastic for choice: if leafy spike you lack,
A quill will pick your teeth, both front and back.
Moreover Dioscorides, book 1, states that an infusion of mastic in boiling water fixes loose teeth if rinsed in it, and that pointed splints of the wood rubbed against the teeth are useful for cleaning them. Thus it is that those who have a toothpick permanently in their mouths are said to nibble mastic and are called schoinotrôges, mastic-munchers. To take care of one's teeth was in old days a reproach levelled at dandies, and among the charges laid against Apuleius was his preparation of a dentifrice. The adage will rightly be extended to cover the whole world of the toilet.

Effeminate and womanish men are said to scratch their heads with one finger, being anxious presumably not to disturb the exquisite arrangement of their hair. The phrase is supposed to have been first used by the poet Calvus in an attack on Pompey and thence to have been extended to all those whose virility is under suspicion. Juvenal in his ninth satire: 'Who with a single finger scratch their heads,' using this gesture as a way to identify effeminates and perverts. That this gesture in fact was taken in early times as evidence of perversion is shown by the Letters of Seneca, who writes: 'Everything to a careful observer has its telltale marks, and evidence of a man's character can be derived from the smallest signs. A pervert is betrayed by the way he walks or moves his hands, sometimes by one answering remark, by his raising his hand to his head and by his shifting eyes. A rascal is sometimes given away by his laugh, a lunatic by his expression and bearing.'

Τῷ ἄκρῳ δακτύλῳ τὴν κεφαλὴν κνᾷν., To scratch one's head with the tip of one's finger, is the same as the preceding. Lucian in his Teacher of Public Speaking gives the following description of a dissolute and effeminate person: 'And among them a very clever man and very pretty, with a mincing walk, an affected poise of the head, an effeminate air, and a sickly sweet way of speaking, who reeks of scent and scratches his head with his finger-tip.'

It takes blows to mend a Phrygian is used of boors and men fitted by nature to be slaves, to whom moral standards and rebukes mean nothing; only corporal punishment improves them, while 'a free-born spirit,' on the other hand, in Seneca's words, 'is more easily led than driven.' Cicero in his Pro Flacco, speaking of natives of Asia minor in the witness-box: 'This Asia of yours is made up of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia. Is it then you or we who have a proverbial saying that a Phrygian is commonly made better by a good beating?' The adage is recorded by Suidas in the form of a trochaic verse: 'Better man and better servant is a Phrygian soundly drubbed.' Athenaeus shows that slaves exported from Phrygia were highly esteemed: 'From Phrygia slaves, from Arcady recruits.'

Οὐδὲν ἱερὸν ὑπάρχεις., You're nothing sacred. A phrase used by those who wish to express scorn in proverbial language, for in Greek anything was called sacred which they wished to represent as outstanding and highly expedient - 'counsel is a sacred thing,' for example, and 'a sacred city' in Aristides as a place where all men can take sanctuary, and one I have cited elsewhere, 'a sacred anchor.' Plutarch in his life of Pelopidas speaks of a 'sacred guard.' Theocritus in his Wayfarers: 'Come, wager me a kid, if you so please, though 'tis no sacred matter,' where the speaker wishes to show his contempt for the object offered. Those who give an origin for the proverb say that Hercules saw a statue of Adonis and expressed his scorn of it in the words 'You're nothing sacred'; either because he thought that divine honours should be paid only to those who have been benefactors of the human race, or because thieves who might have taken sanctuary in his temple should not be protected by the sanctity of the place, as they would be in the shrines of other deities. Nowadays it is applied to anything that is an object of scorn. There is no discrepancy between this and the remarks of the scholiast on Theocritus, who gives Cleandrus as authority for the story.

Great depravity of character with no regard for right and wrong is indicated in Greek by the words Οὐδὲν ὑγιές,, Rotten to the core. Examples are to be found everywhere in Greek comedy and tragedy. Aristophanes in the Plutus:
To ask if he should change his way of life,
Be rascal, swindler, rotten to the core;
Just this, I find, makes life enjoyable.
Andromache in the tragedy by Euripides which bears her name describes the Spartan character in these words:
Detested bane of all your fellow men,
Dwellers in Sparta, treacherous counsellors,
Ye lords of lies who weave your evil web,
Twisting and turning, rotten to the core.
Aristophanes in his Thesmophoriazusae, if the title does not mislead, speaking of women: 'Sots, traitors, chatterers, rotten to the core, / Plaguing our husbands,' where it is clear that he has used 'rotten to the core' as a proverbial equivalent for 'utterly depraved.' Cicero in book 15 of his Letters to Atticus: 'In a word, rotten to the core.' And two letters earlier, as though to make his meaning clear, he has used the expression in its Latin form.

Τὸ Δίoνος γρύ, Dion's grunt, will properly be used either when we treat someone with lofty scorn and do not even think him worth an answer, or when we wish to convey that a thing is worthless. Of gry, a grunt, I have treated in another place. The adage arose from an incident. Dion, an Alexandrian by origin, achieved distinction in philosophy. He had a brother who was a professional wrestler, whose name was Topsius. One of the brother's opponents made an abusive attack on Dion, pouring out torrents of obloquy; a large crowd gathered to listen to the abuse, as they always do; and he himself, bearing in mind no doubt the principles of his philosophy, answered to all this vituperation not one word. However, when he was already in the entry of his own house (for the man had followed him with his insults as far as that), he showed no overt sign of indignation, but merely answered 'Not a grunt.' The man went out of his mind and hanged himself; and the story became a popular tradition.

Τυφλὸς τυφλῷ ὁδηγός, The blind leading the blind. An adage to which the Gospel text has given a wider circulation, and it is therefore a special pleasure to record it. It may be used whenever one ignorant man attempts to instruct another, or an unwise man tries to give advice to an imprudent one. Cicero alluded to the proverb in the last book of the De finibus: 'History relates that Gaius Drusus' house was often beset by those who came to him for a legal opinion; the people concerned could not see their own way clear, and chose a blind man to be their guide.' Such are Cicero's words; Drusus was a highly expert jurist, and for the benefit of others looked forward with his mental vision though with his bodily eyes he could see nothing. Close to this is Horace's phrase about a blind man showing the way. Horace, writing to Scaeva: 'Though he were blind who shows you where to go, / Yet listen none the less.' Porphyrion opines that the expression is equivalent to 'A sow teaching Minerva'; for it is to stand the thing on its head if a blind person tries to show the way to a sighted one. In the Plutus of Aristophanes the slave Carion is indignant at the way his master, who can see, followed the god of wealth, Plutus, who is blind:
He does the opposite of what he should
Who follows a blind man. Tis we who see
Who guide the blind; yet he must follow them,
And make me do the like.

Ἀλαοσκοπίη, A blind man's watch, is a Greek compound noun alaoskopie formed from laein to see, whence alaos unseeing or blind, and skopein to look or keep watch. So Suidas, citing Homer. The author of the Etymologicum adds other suggestions, citing the same expression from Methodius. Suidas tells us that it is a proverbial way of referring to those who either close their eyes when some task has been entrusted to them or observe nothing when they have been posted to keep watch. The metaphor comes from men who from some lofty watch-tower keep a careful look-out all round and report to others what they have seen. Homer in several places has the phrase oὐδ᾽ ἀλαοσκοπίην εἶχε, which the Etymologicum cites from Methodius, for 'Nor did he keep a blind man's watch.' This will be suitably used when we wish to convey that some clue has been skilfully followed up and the thing laid bare; if, for instance, you were to say that bishops, inactive and short- sighted in other respects, 'keep no blind man's watch' where there is any prospect of material advantage, or in the opposite sense to a victim of deception or hallucination, 'In this you were keeping a blind man's watch.'

People are said to swim without cork who are old enough not to require a supervisor for their conduct, or who have reached a level of knowledge at which they no longer need the help of teachers. Horace:
Once time's matured your body and your mind,
You shall swim free and leave your cork behind,
meaning, you shall govern yourself, be your own master, with no tutor and supervisor. Acron points out the proverb, and thinks the image borrowed from young people who in their first swimming-lessons take to the water with sheets of cork tied round their waists and then, when they have gained more experience, begin to swim with no such supports. Plautus in the Aulularia: 'As boys learning to swim have a raft of reeds to halve their trouble; they can swim more easily and use their arms.' The Greek phellon or phellos (the spelling varies), the Latin suber (so Theodorus renders it), is the bark of a tree which always floats, and is therefore useful especially for ships at anchor, for it marks the position of the anchor so that sailors can avoid it; also for fishermen's dragnets, for it supports the cords at the edge of the net. It is used also for the bungs of casks, and for the shoes women wear in the winter, which are therefore traditionally given the humorous name of tree-bark in Greek; nowadays men are not ashamed to wear similar footgear in summer. This is mentioned in Pliny, book 16 chapter 8. Lucian in his Verae historiae tells of a people called Corkfeet, and hence the word phelleuein, to float like a cork, and phelleis are regions where a thin layer of soil overlies the rock.

Ζῶμεν γὰρ οὐκ ὡς θέλομεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς δυνάμεθα., We live not as we would but as we can. An iambic line in use as a proverb, which reminds us that we are the slaves of time and necessity. Mysis in Terence's Andria, when asked what sort of life they were living in Athens, modestly confessed to the old man that she was making her living as a street-walker in the words: 'As best we can, since as we would we may not.' Caecilius in the Plocium, quoted by Donatus: 'You can't live as you would; live as best you can.' Plato too in the Hippias major: 'Our way of life, my dear Hippias, is, as people always say, quoting the proverb, not as we would but as we can.' He alludes to it in the Cratylus too: 'Saying first, As best we can'; for so people often start by saying when they begin on something, in order not to sound presumptuous. Here too belong those proverbial sayings in Greek 'We all would fain be wealthy, if we could' and 'We all wish to live well, but cannot so.' No one is happy with his lot; he has his eye on something else, yet I doubt if anyone ever achieves it. This we can use when we wish to indicate that we are not satisfied with what we have, and that it is opportunity and not ambition that is lacking: fortune is not as kind as we could wish, or life is not really honourable, or the letter we have written not really stylish.

Ἡ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δυσβουλία., Thoughtless and headstrong like Athenians, is suitable for those whose designs are not well thought out, but turn out well. It used to be commonly said of Athenians that they took no trouble when making plans and used little foresight, but that Minerva the city's patron goddess usually gave their ill-advised policies a happy outcome. It resembles a phrase which is still in popular use, 'He does it more by good luck than good management,' when a man enjoys success not through his own hard work but by the favour of fortune. Eupolis, quoted by Suidas and by Athenaeus book 10, speaking of the Athenian character:
Those whom of old no man would have elected
Wine-tasters at a party, now we see
Chosen as generals. O city, city!
How fortunate you are, rather than wise!
The fecklessness of the Athenians is also blamed by Aristophanes in this line in the Clouds: 'For unwisdom, so they say, ever waits upon this city.' On which passage the scholiast contributes the following story. When Nep- tune, having been defeated by Minerva, could not possess himself of Attica, in his resentment he sent upon them the curse of dysboulia, folly and unwisdom, and thereafter this defect was endemic in the Athenians, nor did Minerva alter this; instead, she saw to it that whenever they made a wrong decision, it turned out all right. Aristophanes alluded to this again in the Wasps: 'Before the fray was seen an owl that flew between our ranks.' And I think I see a passing allusion to the same thing in Demosthenes, when he says in his first Olynthiac, at the very beginning: 'But I suppose it to be part of your good fortune that some people take it into their heads on the spur of the moment to say many of the things that need saying.' But he criticizes them for this fault more directly in another speech, when he says that other men normally consider before they act, but the Athenians, reversing this, act first and consider afterwards. Theognis: 'And many fools find fortune is their friend, / When bad decisions come to a good end.' Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazusae:
There is a story that old people tell:
Fatuous and foolish as our plans may be,
All turn to our advantage in the end.
The middle line in the Greek will run correctly if we remove the conjunction kai, though it was in the Aldine text. And Livy from time to time speaks of 'the fortune of Rome.' This does not differ greatly from one I have recorded elsewhere: The sleeper's net makes a catch.

Cicero in one of his letters, in book 7 of his Letters to Friends, cites the advice of an old proverb which runs like this: 'There is an old saying, When you are not the man you were, why wish to go on living?' It is drawn from a common experience in the life of men; they think nothing is harder to bear than to live neglected or even discredited in a society in which they were once distinguished and influential, so much so that they would choose any form of exile or even extinction, rather than support the disgrace of a change of status. This is remarked by Euripides in the Hecuba, when he puts words into her mouth to the effect that shame is the reason why she does not look Polymnestor in the face; for she is ashamed to be seen in her present distressful state by the man who once knew her in prosperity. Again in the Alcestis: 'What profits it me then, my friends, / To live alike dishonoured and distressed?' The same sentiment is expressed in Sophocles by Ajax' words: 'Base is the man who would prolong his life, / When there's no respite in his misery.' And a little further on in the same play: 'But it befits the noble-minded man / To live with honour or with honour die.' Then there is a proverbial line: 'When fortune grudges life, 'tis base to live.' But Cicero's feelings are more closely approached by that passage in Euripides in the Hecuba where Polyxena argues that she had no reason to wish to go on living when she had already been deprived of all the privileges of her original station in life:
Why must I live? My father once was king
Of all the Phrygians: thus my life began.
By what fair prospects was I nurtured then,
Bride of a royal house.
and what follows; for it is too long, I think, to be set out here.

In ancient times the thumb was used as an indicator of interest and support. The supporter used to turn his thumb down; the man who did not support turned his thumb up. These gestures passed into a proverb, so that now to turn the thumb down is used of support in any context, and to turn it up of hostility. Pliny, book 27 chapter 2: 'Our thumbs should be turned down when we support someone, and there is actually a proverb which prescribes this.' Juvenal: 'And if the mob have given their Thumbs up, / They kill whome'er they like to please the crowd.' Horace uses 'both thumbs' to express whole-hearted support: 'And if he thinks that you his taste approve, / With both his thumbs he'll sponsor what you love.' Porphyrion expounds as follows: 'With both his thumbs means With both hands, the part being put for the whole by the figure of speech called synecdoche. Perhaps because a speaker who delivers an encomium closes his hands, joining the thumb to its next neighbour.' Acron in this fashion: 'With both his thumbs means by the figure of speech synecdoche With both hands, raised equally and moved to and fro; for this is the gesture of those who deliver a panegyric' It is pretty clear, as we can infer from their words, that both of them have missed the origin of the proverb.

The forehead or front was in old days held to be the seat of modesty, and so was the face, as is shown by the proverbial saying that modesty sits in the eyes. Hence those people are proverbially said to have wiped off the blushes from forehead or face, who have abandoned all modesty, as though they had passed a hand over their faces and removed all sense of shame. The origin clearly is a gesture used by some men who, when they have to say or do something in front of people they do not know, pass a hand over the face, which is a sign of some sort of countrified shyness which you are trying to overcome. Quintilian criticizes this gesture among faults of delivery in book 11: 'Among other tricks to be avoided,' he says, 'are gazing at the ceiling and rubbing your face as though to wipe away your blushes and leave it brazen.' Plutarch writes that it was a gesture characteristic of Cicero to pass his left hand over his face as he began; and in any case Cicero himself does not deny that he was somewhat nervous when beginning to speak. Quintilian in his ninth book cites from Calvus the words 'Wipe off your blushes and confess that you are more worthy than Cato to be elected praetor/ his point being that to say such a thing would be highly arrogant. Pliny in the preface to his Natural History: 'I put a bold face on it, but I made no progress, for I am brought up face to face with your greatness in another way.' Cicero in book three of his Tusculan Questions used the words perfricare os, to put a bold face on something: 'Why do we beat about the bush, Epicurus? Why not admit that we use the word pleasure in the same way as you habitually do when you put a bold face on it?' Seneca in his Letters, number 40: 'You must wipe off your blushes, and pay no attention to your own words.' Here too belongs that use of 'effrontery,' having as it were no forehead, which we apply to shameless people, and expressions like 'How will you have the face to do this?' When Horace writes 'The fathers almost to a man would cry, / How have we lost all sense of decency!' the echo in Persius takes the form 'Melicertes would exclaim / "No forehead's left in things!"' Also such phrases as 'How will you have the face to rebuke your son?' 'a bold countenance,' 'a harsh face,' 'a countenance of iron,' to suggest lack of a sense of decency. Ovid: "Tis not more heart you have; you have less face,' meaning, you have not more courage or intelligence than other men, but less modesty. Cicero in the Verrines: 'Just see what a cheek the man has, what astonishing impudence!' Again in the fifth Philippic: 'But that cheek, that indecency!' Again in the Pro C. Rabirio Postumo: 'What a brazen face they have, what effrontery!' Again in the De oratore: 'What a face the advocate must have who dares to undertake these cases without any knowledge of jurisprudence!' In the eleventh Philippic: 'He would have heard how Dolabella entered in a rage, his disgusting voice and foul shameless face.' Martial in book 9: 'My doctor gave me drink with wormwood spiced, / And asked (confound his cheek!) sweet wine instead.' In Homer, Achilles calls Agamemnon 'dog-eyed,' meaning shameless as a bitch; and elsewhere he has 'with the eyes of a bitch and the heart of a hind,' to convey a combination of the shameless and the fearful. Lastly, I think perhaps that line belongs here that is quoted by Athenaeus in the Doctors at Dinner from 'the poet of Cyrene': 'To men with face thrice washed god gives good luck.' His suggestion, if I am not mistaken, is that it shows a certain lack of modesty to ask a man to repeat what passed at a wine-party.

We are said to smooth the forehead when we are cheerful and wrinkle it when we are vexed, which means that something has annoyed us. Pliny in book 11: 'Other creatures have a forehead, but man alone uses it as an indicator of sadness and cheerfulness, of mercy and severity.' Terence: 'Take those wrinkles from your forehead.' Horace in the Odes: 'Have smoothed care's furrowed forehead,' and in another passage: 'Take that stormcloud from your brow.' 'With unwrinkled brow,' cheerfully. 'With brow unfurrowed you should speak with me' in Plautus. With brow overcast, furrowed, close-drawn, wrinkled. Plautus: 'He wrinkles his brow with severity.' The image is supposed to be that of a he-goat lowering its horns. Also: With cloudy forehead, clear forehead, open forehead.

'The eyebrows in man' say Pliny 'are movable, both together and separately, and in them is some share of the mind: with them we signify No and Yes. The brows are the chief gauge of disdain. Pride has its place of origin elsewhere, but in the eyebrow it is at home; born in the heart, it moves upwards and haunts the brows. It has found no part of the body at once so lofty and so steep in which to live its lonely life.' So Pliny. Hence we speak proverbially of raising the brows, when we wish to convey arrogance; of knitting the brows when we wish to indicate contempt. Suidas too cites a phrase 'knitting the brows and inflating the cheeks.' Greek has a single word for it, katophruasthai, which Lucian transferred from the person to the thing when he called arrogant and supercilious language 'brow-knit words.' 'To relax the brow' is used when a man abandons his disdain. And we call disdainful people 'supercilious.' In fact, Latin uses supercilium, the word for 'eyebrow,' by itself for disdain and arrogance. 'Who can tolerate supercilium' they say 'in philosophers?' As for Pliny's saying that we use our brows to say yes and no, he is following Homer, in whom we find several times the line 'So spake the son of Cronos and nodded in assent with his deep dark brows.' Which Virgil imitated in 'He spake, / And all Olympus trembled at his nod.'

To wink at something is a metaphor which has become proverbial, used of those who knowingly conceal a person's guilt, which they clearly appreciate but through prejudice or partisanship pretend it does not exist, and who, as the phrase goes, seem not to see what they do see. Parents, for example, wink at some of the faults of adolescence, and husbands ought to wink at some of the errors of their wives, and corrupt judges wink in the hearing of a case. Hallucination comes on one unawares, blindness strikes an unwilling victim, one winks deliberately. There are examples in plenty in Cicero's speeches. To wink is to close the eyes intermittently, as people do who have weak sight and cannot stand direct sunlight; and they are easily deceived. On the other hand, those who gaze fixedly at an object do not miss anything. What we call winking is in Greek sometimes σκαρδαμυκτεῖν, sometimes ἰλλοπεῖν; whence Aristophanes' phrase in the Knights 'Look at me ἀσκαρδάμυκτος:, without winking.' Hallucination is παραβλέπειν, blindness ἀμβλυώττειν. All of these, if transferred to the things of the mind, will fall to be treated as proverbs.

Aristophanes in the Wasps: πῖθ᾽ ἐλλέβορον, Drink hellebore; by which remark he indicates that someone is mad. He uses pithe and not pine because, as the scholiast tells us, the latter form of the imperative is referred by scholars to ordinary drinking, and the former to the drinking of medicine. He also shows that two verbs, elleborian and elleborizein, were formed from this, indicating insanity, and those who are nearly out of their minds are said to 'need hellebore.' In Latin authors too such people are proverbially told to eat hellebore and to purge themselves with hellebore, because of the free use made of this herb in Antiquity for treatment of disorders of the mind and head. Pliny in his Natural History, book 25 chapter 5, makes out that there are two kinds of hellebore, as Dioscorides does in his fourth book; white, which in Italy is called white veratrum, and black, called by others entomon, though Dioscorides' name for it is atomon. Others call it polyrrhizon, but most authors melampodion, from its discoverer the seer Melampus, or from a shepherd of the same name, who had observed that she-goats ate it to purge themselves, and had then cured Proetus' daughters of their insanity by making them drink the milk of these goats. But Aulus Gellius, following Pliny, says that the difference of colour appears 'not in the seed or in the stems, but in the root.' White hellebore provokes vomiting, and thereby purges the stomach and upper intestine; the black form relaxes the lower digestive tract. Both are taken with some risk; but doses of the white, being more powerful, are also more dangerous. Yet this very fact has come to be so familiar that many people for the benefit of their intellectual work have taken fairly frequent doses to clear their ideas. In particular, 'Carneades the Academic philosopher, when preparing to write an attack on the work of Zeno the Stoic,' is said to have had the habit of 'taking white hellebore to purge the upper parts of the body, for fear that some overflow from the corrupt humours in the stomach into the seat of the mind might sap his originality and mental force.' Pliny records that black hellebore was also used in ritual, for they fumigated and purified their homes with it, sprinkling both themselves and their livestock. It was also gathered with solemn prayers and superstitious rites, as we learn from Theophrastus too. First a line was drawn round it with a sword, and then the man who was to cut it faced the sunrise, and prayed that the gods might give him leave to perform the operation. He also watched for the flight of an eagle; for if this should have flown too near him, it was a sign that he who had cut the plant should die within the year. We can therefore infer from Pliny that both kinds, the white and the black, had strong remedial properties against many troubles but especially against the melancholy. Hence too came the proverb, though there are various forms of this. Plautus in the Menaechmi: 'Three acres of hellebore would not settle this.' Demosthenes tells Aeschines in a speech to purge with hellebore. Lucian in a dialogue between Menippus and Tantalus: 'Tantalus, you're mad; you need a drink all right, but my goodness, it ought to be neat hellebore.' Elsewhere, in the second book of his Verae historiae, Rhadamanthus passes judgment that Ajax must drink hellebore administered by Hippocrates before he is allowed to join the company of heroes, alluding to his having gone mad. In the same passage we read that Chrysippus was not allowed as an immigrant into the Island of the Blest until he had finished his fourth course of hellebore. The allusion of course is to the tradition that he had taken it three times while still alive, which is also confirmed by Petronius in verse. Horace: 'Drove off his bile with unmixed hellebore.' Ovid in book four of the Epistulae ex Ponto: 'Try a good purging dose, I would have said, / Anticyra's whole crop, to clear your head.' Persius: 'When neat Anticyras should be your tipple,' meaning the man is mad. Ausonius in his epistle to Theon: 'And drink the hellebore that made / The Samian sage's wits so sharp.'

Πλεύσεις εἰς Ἀντικύρας, Take ship for the Anticyras. Horace gave the adage an elegant face-lift, so to say, when he wrote in the Satires 'Let him take ship for the Anticyras,' using these words to indicate that a Stoic was mad, being mentally deranged and unworthy to be called a wise man, because no one can be wise who is not sane. The expression has the same shape as the Greek Πλεύσειας εἰς Μασσαλίαν,, You should take ship for Marseilles. Strabo in the ninth book of his Geography shows that there are two places called Anticyra, in one of which, beyond the town of Crissa, hellebore is found, while in the other, which has the same name and lies on the Malian gulf near Mount Oeta, it is very well prepared, and people go there from many parts of the world to recover their health. Pausanias in his last book writes that above Anticyra there are very rocky mountains in which hellebore grows in great quantities; the black sort, he says, purges the intestines, the white provokes vomiting and purges the upper parts of the body. Stephanus adds that it was a native of Anticyra who released Hercules from his madness with a dose of hellebore. Horace: 'Who's ne'er asked barber Licinus to crop / A head past cure by three Anticyras.' He has put 'three Anticyras' for 'all the hellebore in the world,' indicating hopelessly incurable insanity. Using a similar metaphor, people still say, when they wish to indicate that someone is not right in the head, that he should be removed to Chela. Under the same formula fall phrases like 'He needs the barber' and 'He needs a trustee.' Horace: 'Needs, as you think, no barber, no trustee'; guardians were provided for infants and trustees for the mentally deficient. So too Columella, book 1 chapter 3, tells us a saying of Cato's that a man who farmed land with an unhealthy climate and low fertility should be reported to his kith and kin as being of unsound mind. Varro Agriculture, book 1 chapter 2: 'He who pays no heed to a healthy climate has something wrong with his head, and should be referred to his kith and kin.' Cicero in book 2 of the De inventione: 'It he prove insane, his kith and kin shall have rights over him and his estate.' For the Twelve Tables deprive the insane of the right to manage their own affairs and transfer this to their kith and kin, as we read in the first book of the Institutes, title De curatoribus, and the twenty-seventh of the Pandects, title De curatore furiosi, and again in book 1 of the same work, title 18 De officio praesidis. Also in Cicero in book 3 of the Tusculan Questions: 'A man so affected is prohibited by the Twelve Tables from being master of his own possessions.' The wording of the Twelve Tables runs thus: 'The spendthrift and the lunatic shall be debarred from disposing of his own estate, and it shall be administered by his kinsmen.'

Στρύχνον ἔπινεν., He has drunk strychnum. Also applicable to the insane, from the properties of the plant strychnon, which if it is so much as tasted causes insanity immediately. Dioscorides in book 4 makes out four kinds of strychnon, of which he calls the last manic, as producing insanity. Pliny, book 21 chapter 31, after showing that two kinds of strychnon are medicinal, continues: 'The third kind has leaves like basil, and need not be described in detail here, for my subject is remedies and not poisons, and this plant causes insanity even with a small quantity of its juice. Though Greek authors have found a humorous side to it; for they have reported that one drachm by weight has comic effects on a man's modesty, and he is haunted by hallucinations of different kinds and vivid images. Double this quantity, they say, causes insanity in the full sense, and any addition to that weight means immediate death. This is the poison which authorities in all innocence have called simply dorycnium, from the fact that it was used in battle for poisoning the points of spears; and it grows everywhere.' Dioscorides writes that the root of strychnon, drunk in wine to the amount of one drachm, produces visions of a sort, and comic effects which are not unpleasant; but doubling the dose induces coma of three days' duration, and to quadruple it causes death. The antidote, he says, is to drink a large quantity freely and vomit it up. This makes me think it a better fit for the self-satisfied and those who are pleased with themselves and, as Horace puts it, 'see a fine fellow in the looking-glass.' For Theophrastus records that those who have eaten strychnon are much taken with their own appearance; and we see plenty of that sort, whose admiration of themselves is unfailing, just as if strychnon were their staple diet. The opposite form of insanity also exists, the victims of which are continually dissatisfied; but this is the commoner kind and the more incurable. I would not in fact have listed this in my work (for I would not like anyone to accuse me of inventing adages rather than collecting them), except that Pliny, by saying that the Greeks thought there was a humorous side to it, showed clearly enough that the properties of this plant had passed into a proverb.

Εσθιε κάρδαμον, Why can't you eat cress? This was said in old days to a spiritless, lazy, and stupid man, because cress is supposed to contain a principle opposite to that in the plant called rocket. It is thought to excite the powers and activity of the mind and inhibit sexual desire, while rocket is an aphrodisiac and retards the power of thought, whence supposedly its name in Greek, kardamon, the equivalent of cor domans, that which tames the heart or intelligence. Pliny, book 19 chapter 8, says: 'Cress gets its name nasturtium from nostril-torture; and hence to express the idea of energy we have come to use it proverbially, as the name of something that arouses the slothful.' In Greek it gets its name from the word for heart. Dioscorides relates that nasturtium has powers like those of rocket and mustard, so far as concerns the burning sensation that concentrates in the nose. In saying however that cress is a sexual stimulant, he differs from Pliny. Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae: 'I ate cress yesterday; why ply me with cress?' And again in the Wasps: 'Men high-spirited and just men, with the clear cress-eater's eye.'

Nor should I fail to mention that Plautus in the Menaechmi tells a character whom he represents as mentally defective to offer a sound pig suitable for sacrifice:
Young man, what is the price of porkers here,
Sound porkers suitable for sacrifice?
A silver coin? Then let me give you this:
Get yourself exorcized at my expense,
For that you're raving mad I have no doubt.
I take it that in the practice of the Ancients a man pursued by the assaults of an angry deity used to purge himself with a pig as a sort of sin-offering. Again, a little further on in the same play:
Menaechmus, now it's you are clearly mad,
Cursing yourself like that. If you've any sense,
Send for that porker and offer it yourself.
Horace in the Satires: 'He owes the kindly Lares a pig for that.' The man he speaks of seems to have recovered from a fit of madness.

Πολλὰ Σύρων λάχανα., Syria is not short of herbs, can be applied to those skilled in magic arts who use baleful herbs in the practice of them, or to people well-supplied with things of little value. Perhaps too it will be right to apply it to those who spend too much effort on things of small practical use, busying themselves, for instance, not in agriculture but in gardening which brings in more pleasure than profit. The proverb is recorded by Pliny, book 20 chapter 5, where after registering various remedies derived from a plant called staphylinus, also known as wandering parsnip, he goes on: 'In Syria they take great trouble with their gardens, whence the Greek proverb Syria is not short of herbs. They sow there a vegetable very like staphylinus, which some call gigidion.' So Pliny. I am induced to think that the proverbial phrase may be suitable to magicians by observing that shortly before he had cited Orpheus as the authority for the presence of a love-philtre in staphylinus. That the character of the Syrians was not without blemish appears, if nowhere else, from the adage Σύροι πρὸς τοὺς Φοίνικας., Syrians against Phoenicians. On the subject of this proverb Caelius Rhodiginus is so good as to sympathize with me for the exceptional difficulties I have had, without himself providing any assistance whatever.

A sword smeared with honey is applied to flattery that can do real harm. St Jerome, writing to Augustine: 'Several men who are my friends and vessels of Christ, of whom there is a large number in Jerusalem and the holy places, made the suggestion that you had a double motive in all this, and were seeking credit for yourself and some sort of reputation and popular acclaim, in the hope of growing greater at my expense. They thought you wanted it to be generally recognized that when you issued a challenge I was too frightened to reply; that you wrote as a scholar and I kept silence as an ignoramus; and that you had at last found someone to put a stop to my endless chatter. For my part, to speak frankly, I was at first unwilling to answer your reverence, because I did not think you were clearly responsible for the letter, this sword smeared with honey as the current proverb goes.' If this passage is free from errors, Jerome calls Augustine's letter a sword smeared with honey, because it contained at the same time a rebuke - a sword with which to cut his throat - and civil words intended to overlay the rough edge of the rebuke. Augustine too in his reply makes the sense of the proverb clear when he rejects with disgust civilities that conceal an attack. Pliny in book 21 records that at Heraclea in Pontus the same bees sometimes make honey that contains a most dangerous poison; those who eat it throw themselves on the ground in search of something cool, for sweat pours from them. This is caused by what they have been eating - a white plant which is called aegolethron. There is also a reference to the barbaric practice of dipping weapons in poison to make the wound incurable, the most effective of these evil substances being an incendiary oil applied to a missile which, once the weapon had sunk into a man's body, burned inextinguishably; water only made the fire worse, and nothing could put it out except to cover the place with earth. The authority is Marcellinus, book 23.

Θανάσιμον μελίκρατον., A deadly honey-brew, conveys the same sense as the preceding. Diogenes used to call a handsome whore a deadly honey- brew, though nothing will prevent us from applying the phrase to flattery or dishonourable enjoyments of any kind or in a word to anything which pleases but cannot fail to harm at the same time. We read of 'poisoned honey' in Pliny; and Diogenes of whom we have just spoken used to call language designed to give pleasure and tickle the listener's ear 'like being choked with honey,' because it would delight with its flattery and suffocate with its falsehood anyone willing to listen to it. This of course is very close to the phrase from Jerome we have been considering; and I have a suspicion that something may be wrong with the text, and we ought to read laqueus instead of gladius, not a sword smeared with honey but a noose. For whose practice is it to smear a sword with honey? To the same species belongs a phrase used by Irenaeus, book 3 chapter 19, 'to make a dangerous mixture of gypsum and milk,' for gypsum is a dangerous poison, and when added to milk it is very difficult to detect.

Λίνον λίνῳ συνάπτεις., You join thread with thread. I find this adage used in the Greek commentators in a double sense. One is: You attach one weak thing to another, join together things which are alike worthless. The other is: You do or say the same things, but not in the same way. Ctesippus in Plato's Euthydemus: 'You are perhaps not joining thread with thread, as the saying goes, if your father is everybody's father.' There is irony in this, directed against the sophist, who thought his foolish hair-splitting had led him to this as a logical conclusion. Aristotle in the third book of the Physics, in a discussion of the infinite, where he prefers Parmenides' opinion to that of Melissus (for Melissus had held that the universe as a whole was infinite, while Parmenides said it was finite, equidistant from the centre), says 'For it is impossible that the infinite should be connected with the universe as a whole, just as thread is with thread.' I will add the philosopher's actual words, in case anyone would like them: 'And so we must suppose that Parmenides spoke better sense than Melissus. For one said that the universe is infinite, and the other that the whole sum of things is finite and balanced about the centre; for it is not joining thread with thread to link the sum of things with the infinite.' Suidas quotes this adage from the Republic of Strattis. Proculus in discussing the questions raised by statements in Plato, uses it in one passage in a way that makes it seem applicable to a man who couples together incompatible things; showing how Plato quotes opposite and incompatible things from Homer, he says 'It is not joining thread with thread to couple such things together.' Related to this is a quotation in Athenaeus, book 6, from some Theban poet, Pindar if I am not mistaken: 'Like one gluing wood to wood'; for the previous speaker had spoken of parasites, and the man who says this gives a discourse on flatterers which agrees with what has already been said.

Γηράσκω δ᾽ ἀεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος. , Age comes upon me learning all the time. This pentameter line from Solon's elegies passed into a proverb. Its point is that experience of life and long familiarity with affairs are the way to get wisdom. It agrees with the maxim cited by Gellius: 'Experience sired me, memory was my mother.' Plato quotes it in book seven of the Republic, and again in a dialogue on philosophy, where one of the characters who wants to know whether philosophy is the same as wide knowledge says 'Can philosophy be anything else than what Solon described in the words "Age comes upon me learning all the time"? I think myself that constant learning is essential to anyone who wants to end up as a philosopher, whether he be old or young, so that in the course of his life he may acquire as much knowledge as possible.' He quotes it also in the Laches. Seneca in one of his letters to Lucilius: 'One must go on learning as long as there is anything one does not know and, if we are to believe the proverb, as long as one lives.' It is quoted more than once by Cicero in the Cato major. Demea in Terence moreover was thinking of Solon's maxim when he said:
No man so balanced his account with life
That facts and years and practice taught him nothing;
Thus warned, you know not what you think you know,
Reject in act what you thought mattered most.
There is an allusion to this in that well-known line, skilful and neatly turned whoever may be the author, which is popularly ascribed to Seneca.I think myself it may be one of the moral maxims of Publius; this is an inference, but I follow it, because I find several lines in the list which are recorded expressly under Publius' name by Aulus Gellius. The line of which I speak is 'Tomorrow learns its lesson from today.'

Ζωὴ πίθου., Life in a tub, is a proverbial expression for a frugal and abstemious life, far from all noise and competition - in a word, the sort of life that was led, we are told, in Athens by Diogenes, the famous Cynic philosopher, sufficiently provided with one cloak, a stick to drive away the dogs, cheerfully using a tub fixed to a stake as a place to live in, raw vegetables and plain water as his diet, accustomed to a piece of bread hollowed out for a platter and the hollow of his hand for a cup; and he used to say he had learnt to do this from a child whom he had seen taking up water in his hand to drink. He said moreover that the idea of living in a tub had come to him from watching snails, when he had decided that no other form of dwelling could be so convenient to creep out of into the sun and to take refuge in from the wind or the heat of summer. It can also be diverted for use against those in whose style of living there is too much meanness, too much hardship, too much dirt. Such people are described by Eubulus the comic poet, as cited by Athenaeus in his second book, in the words 'with unwashed feet, sleeping on earth and dwelling in the air.' Again, in book 4, speaking of the Pythagoreans he cites from Antiphanes:
Then for a short time one must learn to face
Hunger and dirt and cold, silence and gloom,
Therewith a strict economy of baths.
It will be possible to divert to the same effect the name of the Hamaxobii, the 'Caravan-dwellers,' who are a tribe in Sarmatia, and call Caravanners those whose way of life is harsh and mean. The tribe have earned this name, because they use wagons or caravans in place of houses.

To live from one day to the next is to be content with your present lot and live on what you have at hand, without thought for the future. Such a life is called in Greek καθημερίος βίος., and those who live like that are καθημερόβιοι. Theocritus in Idyll 13: 'We who are only mortal, and do not look to the morrow.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'I'll keep you in barley, feed you day by day.' Homer in Odyssey 21: 'Fools, bumpkins, thinking only of to-day.' Persius: 'And live but for the moment,' that is, with no thought for the future. Whence also 'to speak extempore, on the spur of the moment,' meaning with no thought beforehand. Cicero in his fifth Philippic uses a similar formula, to live from hour to hour: 'What Hannibal never did, who kept much back for future use, these men have done. Living as they do from hour to hour, they have not spared a thought for the fortunes and property of their fellow-citizens, and not even for their own advantage.' Horace's phrase in the Art of Poetry does not differ much from this: 'And changes hour by hour,' meaning from time to time. Such a way of life was approved as the best of all by Christ, for He both followed it Himself and prescribed it for His Apostles. It is quite remarkable how little it commends itself nowadays, even to those who expect to be thought better Christians than the rest of us.

Βίος μεμαλαγμένος., A soft or tender way of life, used of those who live in comfort and have all they want within their reach. It is recorded by Diogenianus, Zenodotus, and Suidas. The metaphor comes, I think, from vegetables or salt meat which have been softened by boiling and are now easier to eat, or from grain which has been milled, pounded, and worked into dough. The opposite of this is Βίος ἀκανθώδης,, Living on a bed of thorns.

There is a line of Hesiod in his work on the importance of observing days of good and evil omen, which later passed into a proverb and 'won the approval of many generations of men,' as the philosopher Favorinus puts it in Gellius. It runs as follows: 'One day's a stepmother and one's a mother,' and the meaning is that 'it is impossible for things to go well every day; one day they go well, and another day badly.' Drawn from the fact that mothers are well disposed towards their children, and stepmothers hate their stepchildren. Pliny in the same way says he is not sure whether nature shows herself more often as a stepmother or as a mother, considering the way she produces so many poisons and at the same time so many remedies.

Theocritus in his Battus uses a different metaphor to make the same point: 'So Jove now rains, now shines in cloudless sky.' Sometimes, that is, all goes badly and sometimes well, just as the sky is clear and calm at one time, dark and stormy at another. There is an image close to this in Pindar, in the Pythian Odes, to the effect that the winds are not fixed, but sometimes one blows, sometimes another: The winds that wing their way on high do change their course, now here, now there.' Pindar again in his fourth Isthmian Ode: 'Now from this quarter, now from that sweeps the gale that drives all men before it.'

A metaphor which has become proverbial, conveying the same sense as 'more trouble than pleasure.' For the aloe is a shrub with an unpleasant smell and a very bitter taste, which comes in Dioscorides, book 3. Plautus in the Amphitryo:
For such is each man's lot
In human life, so have the gods decreed:
That pleasure must go hand in hand with pain,
And if some good befall, your share of evil
And of misfortune must go up to match.
In Plautus too it says somewhere that man's life has more aloes in it than honey. And Juvenal of a wife: 'More aloes than honey in her.' Apuleius expresses this, without the metaphor, in his Florida: 'But it is indeed a true saying that the gods never gave man anything on such favourable terms that there was no trouble mixed in with it.' Homer in the last book of the Iliad expressed this alternation in human affairs, this mixture of sorrow and joy in man's lot brilliantly in the image of the two jars which stand, he says, on Jove's threshold, one full of sad things and the other of gay ones. Out of these he mixes the fortunes of mortal men, who 'now meet with evil fortune, now with good,' as I have set forth above. But Homer's Jupiter is highly ungenerous in his mixing, for he puts in far more bad than good; so that if every individual were to cast up the account of what fortune has come his way, he will find only a very small total for the things that have turned out as we wished. This has been admirably expressed by Pindar in his Pythian Odes: 'For every blessing, the immortals allot to mortal men a pair of woes.' Pliny in book 27 reverses the meaning when he says that there is nothing too bad in nature to have no good attached to it somehow. For it is well known that even aconite, the deadliest of poisons, contains a remedy valuable especially for troubles in the eye. To the same effect Euripides, cited by Plutarch: 'Good things and bad cannot be separated; / But they are somehow mixed.'

A similar image is used by Homer in Iliad 20, when he speaks of abuse which would be a load too heavy for a ship of a hundred oars, in the same way that Lucian put 'whole cartloads of abuse,' as I mentioned previously. Homer's lines run as follows: 'We both have plenty of abuse to utter - / A hundred-oar ship would not take the load.' It is related also to a phrase I shall speak of elsewhere: 'Which even a hundred Egyptians could not lift.' Hermippus, quoted by Athenaeus in his first book, describing the different things imported from various countries, slips in by way of a jest the line 'Lies from Perdicas, many and many a shipload,' reflecting I think on the standard of behaviour in Lycia. For Perdicia is a district and harbour in Lycia. Virgil too in the fourth Aeneid speaks of 'Lycian soothsaying' as something not to be trusted.

'To lift one's horns' for 'to be exhilarated' is still a very common expression in our own day. Horace, speaking of Bacchus: "Tis you lift up the poor man's horn.' Ovid too, of indulgence in strong drink: 'Then laughter comes, / And then the poor man lifts unwonted horns.' A metaphor from animals which confront one another horns against horns. Horace in the Epodes: 'The wicked feel my onslaught, as I raise my ready horns.'

The metaphor is different, the sense the same. Juvenal: 'What could be more bare-faced? and yet his crest / Began to rise,' he began to plume himself. The metaphor comes from birds with a crest, which when it is erected is a sign of eagerness and pugnacity; unless we prefer to see a reference to the crests worn by military men, the most insolent and stupid sort there is. It is in this sense that Aristophanes uses the phrase 'to take down crests' in the Peace: 'She has taken down our crests,' on the return of peace. On the other side, men are said to 'lower their fasces' who give up their legal position and of their own free will resign their official status and return to the modest standing of a private person. Pliny, book 7 chapter 30: 'Gnaeus Pompeius at the end of the war against Mithridates, when proposing to visit the house of Posidonius the eminent philosopher, told his lictor not to knock on the door in the traditional way and laid down the fasces in the doorway - he before whom East and West alike had laid down their arms.' Cicero in the Brutus: 'After you had gained experience in cases of great importance, and I at my age was already giving way to you and lowering my fasces.' And in Livy in the second book of his Rome from the Foundation, Publicola 'lowered his fasces and went up to speak.' The phrase gains in point when used metaphorically: for instance, if one were to say philosophy 'lowers its fasces' to theology.

When people are in a state of great fear and foreboding, we say their heart is in their boots. Even today we hear the expression 'My whole heart was in my knees,' in the sense 'I was thoroughly frightened.' Homer in Iliad 15: 'Fear seized them all; their hearts were in their heels.'

Σφὴξ βομβῶν τέττιγος ἐναντίον, I the shrill cricket, you the buzzing wasp. From Theocritus' Wayfarers. In these words one shepherd expresses his contempt for another who challenges him to a contest. Suitable for someone who takes on an opponent far superior to himself, or makes himself a nuisance to his betters. Of the same kind is A puppy barking at a lion.

Of similar import are the following lines by the same poet and from the same eclogue: Οὐ θεμιτὸν, Λάκων πότ᾽ ἀηδόνα κίσσας ἐρισδεν. / oὐδ᾽ ἔποπας κύκνοισι. 'Lacon, 'tis wrong for jays with nightingales, / Hoopoes with tuneful swans in song to strive.'

Τρίχας ἀντ᾽ ἐρίων., Bristles instead of wool. There seems to be a proverbial colouring in these lines too, which are found in the same poet's Wayfarers and refer to an extremely unfair transaction or one which is patently absurd: 'Who bristles shears for wool? Who milks a bitch, / Having at hand a goat with her first kid?' A she-goat has bristly hair rather than wool, a sheep has a woolly fleece. The words are directed at a shepherd who wanted to put up a kid as his stake in a singing-match against the other man's lamb.

Αὐλὸν σάλπιγγι συγκρίνεις., You match flute against trumpet. Recorded by Diogenianus. Appropriate to things which are more than usually unequal, the pipe making a thin sound and the trumpet a very loud one.

Τέττιγι τὴν μέλιτταν συγκρίνεις., You match a cricket against a bee. A cricket is larger and also makes a considerable noise, while a bee not only has a small body but is almost silent. Lucian in his Teacher of Public Speaking brings in both proverbs in passing: 'You will find his voice as much louder than the rest as a trumpet is louder than flutes and crickets than bees.'

Χελώνην Πηγάσῳ συγκρίνεις., You match a tortoise against Pegasus. Of things that cannot be compared in any way. Pegasus, if we may credit the myths, was a winged horse, and a tortoise is the slowest thing that moves. Virgil in Tityrus has put together several ways of expressing unlikeness:
Litter like bitch and kid like dam I knew,
Comparing thus small things with great; but she
'Midst other cities holds her head as high
As cypresses o'er sprawling guelder-rose.

In Plautus, in the Epidicus, we find an unattractive but most expressive image: Dogs and hogs smell very different. The words signify that one man is distinguished from another, not by his clothes but by some inborn quality, special and peculiar to each individual, which shines out (to look no further) in his face and the look in his eye and discriminates easily between free man and slave, well-born man and peasant, good man and rascal. This is, as it were, a kind of smell peculiar to the man, by which if you have a keen nose you can tell what he is like. Martial is thinking of it in book six, when he says:
A thousand arts she did essay
And thought that she had saved the day:
But let her try what tricks she will,
Thais smells of Thais still.
Here belongs the remark of an advocate quoted by Quintilian: 'He does not have even the face of a man of free birth.' The speaker was himself extremely hideous, and counsel for the other party threw it back at him, saying he was quite right; he who did not have a free man's face could not be free-born.

Cicero used a most elegant metaphor, As you have sown, so also shall you reap, in the sense that you will receive the reward appropriate to what you have done. Plautus in the Epidicus: 'A bitter pill indeed, for work well done / To reap a harvest of calamity,' meaning ill-treatment in return for kindness. And in Plato: 'What harvest will this man reap? A wretched one, I am sure.' The image is shared with Scripture too: 'They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,' and St Paul: 'He that soweth to his flesh shall of his flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting,' and 'If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?' Euripides has it in mind in that line in the Hecuba: 'And you may reap what your designs deserve.' In fact, there is almost a regular phrase in Greek poetry of the form 'bad things badly.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'No culture have I but to read and write / A few poor rudiments and very poorly.' And one often finds the threat to bring an evil man to an evil end. The scholiast points out that this is a proverbial turn of speech, on which something has been said in the introduction to this work. Euripides again in the Hecuba: 'Bad men to have bad fortune, good men good,' and further on in the same play 'For since you dared to do what is not right, / What is not welcome you shall suffer now.' Laertius tells an amusing anecdote about Diogenes. At dinner some of them were throwing him bones as one would to a dog, because he was a Cynic. His method of avenging this insult was to go up close to them, and as he stood by them to lift a leg, treating them as a dog might in return. But even nearer is a story he tells in his life of Zeno. Zeno one day was beating a slave who had been caught thieving. The slave cried out all the time that it was his fate to steal; to which Zeno replied: 'Yes; and your fate to be beaten.' The slave had heard his master arguing for the inevitability of fate, and made this his excuse for his offence; but the philosopher prettily reversed the argument.

Καρικὴ μοῦσα., Carian music; καρικὰ αὐλήματα, Dirges on a Carian flute. Applied to mournful or countrified and crude or tiresome forms of music. It will suit an unskilled poet or speaker. In ancient times it was used of sad shrill unattractive music because, as Athenaeus tells us in the fourth book of his Doctors at Dinner, the Carians, just like the Phoenicians, are accustomed in times of mourning to employ a kind of flute or fife which is about a palmsbreadth in size and makes a shrill funereal sound. These flutes, he tells us, are called gringoi in Phoenician, as being habitually used in the mourning for Adonis, and they call Adonis Gringes. Hence also their verb gingraino. Julius Pollux has something very like this in his fourth book, except that there I find the form gingra. Aristophanes also gives a bad mark to Carian music in the Frogs: 'Drinking-catches by Meletus, dirges on the Carian flute.' This same Carian flute-music was called by the Ancients scolia, which means crooked or slanting, either from the shape of the flute or from the order in which they sang back and forth, aslant as it were, at drinking-parties, of which I have said something under the proverb Ad myrtum canere. Plato too in his Laconians, quoted by Athenaeus: 'Some damsel with a flute strikes up a Carian strain.' Plato the philosopher also speaks of Carian music in book seven of the Laws, and explains it as what is played at funerals. Hesychius explains that it derives from the practice of hiring women from Caria to play the part of mourners at funerals; and so an unskilful and unattractive speech might well be called 'Carian music' This fits in with Sopater's remark, quoted by Athenaeus in his fourth book: 'The pektis glorying in its barbarous notes,' the pektis being a kind of instrument with two strings. Athenaeus also expresses doubts whether Caria and Phoenicia are two names for the same thing, for the Phoenicians call recorders or pipes gingroi, a word derived it seems from their shrill sound. This agrees with what Plato tells us in the Laws, in book 7 which I was quoting just now: 'And if the citizens must form an audience for such lamentations, when days come which are not clear days but unlucky ones, then it would be desirable to secure some hired bands of singers from elsewhere, in the same way as those who are customarily hired for funerals send the dead on their way with some sort of Carian music' and so forth. The barbarous nature of the Carian language is noted by Homer in the second book of the Iliad: 'Nastes led Carians of barbarian tongue.' Hence in popular speech too those whose native tongue is barbarian and boorish are said in Greek karbazein or karbaizein or karbanizein. And Cicero, quoted by Quintilian in his chapter on rhetorical delivery, speaks of 'the sing-song style of those orators from Lycia and Caria in their perorations,' when what he dislikes is their delivery. Strabo in book 14 of his Geography shows how Carians on occasion have often been intermingled with Greeks, and yet have had a barbarous thick way of speaking Greek, just as Greeks have when talking Latin and we when talking English. This defect Strabo calls pachystomia, cacostomia and barbarostomia. Cicero too speaks of the sing-song delivery of Carians and Phrygians in the Brutus. There was also a riotous and warlike form of dance in which they sometimes ended up with injuries, for it was performed by men fully armed, which Julius Pollux in his fourth book calls Carian.

The opposite of this is Ἀττικὴ μοῦσα., The Attic Muse, used of an elegant but graceful way of writing. Among the various types of style the highest place was given to Attic. Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch in his life of Plato tells us that Xenophon was commonly nicknamed 'the Attic Muse' on account of the exceptional elegance of his language. Hence they also speak of Attic eloquence and Attic charm, as I have shown elsewhere. When applied to a person it will be more elegant, especially if a touch of irony is added, if for instance when speaking of some very awkward man who is a perfect stranger to culture and the graces you were to call him an Attic muse; for all such people are said to be amousoi, untouched by the Muses.

To drink of the same cup is to suffer from the same disadvantages and be exposed to troubles which you share with others. Plautus in the Casina: 'That the old man might drink of this same cup that I have drained.' The image comes either from drinking-contests or from men who are afraid of poison. The same phrase remains in very common use in our own day in my native country. For if they ever threaten to repay a man in his own coin, they say they will give him a drink of the same cup. Martial pillories a person who used to set watered and acid wine before his guests while he drank the most exquisite vintages (a habit still found in most rich men), and this seems a possible origin for the proverb. But it sometimes happens that those who have drunk from a corked bottle unintentionally do their best to persuade others to do the same. In several places in Holy Scripture there is mention of the cup of Babylon, to signify some adversity that must come to pass. And again our Lord in the Gospels asks the sons of Zebedee whether they could drink of the same cup from which he proposed to drink himself, adding a similar proverbial expression about the same baptism; nor is there any doubt that both were well known in popular usage. There is a slight difference between this and the phrase used by Aristophanes in the Knights: 'Never does he use his lips to drink from the same cup as we,' when he is attacking a man for sexual deviation.

'Ες πεδίον τὸν ἵππον, The horse to the plain. Used whenever a man is encouraged to do the thing he is best at and most enjoys doing. A horse on open level ground is, as it were, in its natural sphere of action. In Lucian's Captive, when he himself asks to be tried by a court of law, Plato replies: 'That's just what they call The horsemen to the plain,' meaning that as a skilled rhetorician Lucian is a practised pleader in the courts. Plato in the Theaetetus: 'You are inviting horsemen to the plain, if you ask Socrates to argue.' Though some manuscripts have 'horse' in this passage, not 'horseman.' Synesius in one of his letters: 'In asking you to do this, I am, I think, urging the horse to the plain, as the saying goes.' This looks like a military metaphor; for when infantry are engaged with cavalry, they avoid level ground and keep to more difficult country.

The finch is outsung by the raven. Calphurnius the bucolic poet in his sixth eclogue:
O Astylus! This will I then believe,
When sings the raven sweeter than the finch
And grisly owls than tuneful nightingales.
The acanthis or finch is a songbird with a very musical note; the raven noisy enough, but far from musical. Theodorus renders acanthis sometimes by spinus, sometimes by ligurinus, and gives the nightingale the Greek form aedon. And that is how it should be pronounced, with the ae as two syllables. For aedon is the Greek for nightingale, luscinia. Pliny uses the Greek word acanthis as though it were equivalent to spinula, thorn-finch, because it lives in thorn-bushes, and it has a great dislike of donkeys, which eat the flowers of thorn. It is the smallest of all birds, and so productive that it lays twelve eggs. Pliny is the authority, book 10 chapters 63 and 74.

Πρώτερον χελώνη παραδραμεῖται δασύποδα, Ere that, the tortoise shall outrun the hare, is used of something grossly improbable. The tortoise is the slowest thing that moves. We speak of 'progressing like a tortoise,' and in Cicero's On Divination someone calls a tortoise a 'slow-paced house-carrier.' The hare, on the other hand, is exceptionally fast. This adage is reported by Diogenianus. That passage of Theocritus is comparable, in his Thyrsis:
Let violets now on thorns and brambles bloom
And fair narcissus clothe the juniper,
Let all things change, ripe pears on pine trees hang -
Daphnis is dying! Stag shall harry hound;
Owls from the mountains call to nightingales.

Καρκίνους δασύποδι συγκρίνεις., You match crab against hare, of two things that are entirely unlike. For the speed of the hare is well known, and so is the slow pace of the crab. It bears a very close resemblance to the preceding, and is also recorded in the same source. Suidas adds καρκίνος λαγὼν αἰρεῖ, The crab shall catch the hare, of absurd things that cannot possibly happen.

In the old days men of obscure and unknown parentage were called 'sons of earth,' because the earth is the common parent of us all, or because, according to accounts in other sources, mortals originally sprang from the ground. Tertullian in his Apologeticum against the Gentiles: 'For in common parlance those whose lineage is uncertain are called sons of earth.' Athenaeus in book 10 has the phrase 'a man born from the earth.' Cicero in his Letters to Atticus, book 1: 'And to this son of earth, whoever he may be, I did not dare entrust a letter on such important subjects.' Again, in a letter to Trebatius in book 7 of his Letters to Friends: 'Gnaeus Octavius, your high-born friend, that son of earth.' Persius:
Manius shall be my heir. A son of earth?
Yes: but who was my great-great-grandfather?
I'll tell you (give me time). One further back?
And yet one further still? All sons of earth.
Juvenal: 'Hence I'd much rather be / The giant's little brother.' This is a clear allusion to our proverb, for according to the myths in poetry the giants were sprung from the earth. It is part of the same thing when Ion in Euripides asks Xuthus 'Were you born of mother earth?' and the reply is 'The ground bears no children.' In Pausanias, Strabo, and other authors of the kind we read that certain peoples were called autochthonous because they did not trace their origin to some other part of the world, as most do, but wished to be thought to have grown out of the actual soil. The Athenians are of their number. Those who had earned a famous name by their valour, with no family portraits to lend them distinction, were called new men, novi homines. Unknown people moreover who emerged suddenly, even their place of origin being uncertain, were called sons of heaven as though they had dropped down from the sky. Melchizedech too in the books of Moses is introduced as without father or mother. Nor is the thinking very different by which they spoke of men fallen from the sky. Juvenal: 'Here's a third Cato, fallen from the skies!' Though this is more appropriate to men of outstanding virtue. Plutarch, in the attack which he wrote 'Against Herodotus,' speaks of the ship from which Adimantus heard a sudden voice 'This ship had, it seemed, fallen from heaven.' And this style of writing is taken from the tragedians, in whose works characters were suddenly revealed to the audience by stage-machinery in such a way that they were meant to seem fallen from heaven. In Rome the phrase 'new men' was used of those who had become known by their good qualities though born of an undistinguished family. And when this was thrown as a taunt at Cicero, he claimed it himself as a distinction.

Related to this is that expression in Homer 'sprung from oaktrees or from rocks,' which will fit either a man of lowly birth or one who is boorish and rough by nature and of uncivilized habits. The adage derives from the practice in ancient times of living in hollow oaks instead of houses, and that was why they were supposed to be 'born from oaktrees.' Hence the poet's 'born of the stubborn oak.' Besides which, it was believed that the human race, after being wiped out in the flood, was restored from stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Homer in Odyssey 19: 'You sprang from no prophetic oak, no rock.' Palladas imitates this in an epigram: 'No oak it was, no rock (as they say) that sired you.' Plato alludes to this humorously in the eighth book of the Republic: 'Or do you suppose a polity is born from rocks and oaktrees, and not from the character of people in cities?' Theocritus in his Goatherd turns it to apply to those who are cruel and heartless, when he says of Cupid: 'It was a lioness gave him her dugs to suck, / And in the thickets did his mother rear him.'

Θεῶν τροφή, Food of the gods, was used of very splendid banquets, because Homer represents the gods as feasting on nectar and ambrosia, and therefore never growing old. Suetonius in his life of Nero: 'His record of parricide and murder began with Claudius, whose death he was privy to though not responsible for it, nor did he try to conceal this. Claudius had swallowed poison in a dish of mushrooms, and Nero, using a Greek proverb, habitually called them the food of the gods, and said what a good thing they were.' Horace in his Epistles: 'Evenings and suppers of the gods!' Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'To the banquets of the Blessed,' meaning to dine richly at the courts of kings.

'A third Cato' is an ironical expression which was proverbial, used of extremely strait-laced men who were severe critics of the way others live. There were two Catos, the elder called Cato the censor, and the younger Cato of Utica, and they were both equally famous in old days for their serious austere life and their integrity, so much so that they were described as sent down from heaven to wage war on vice. [For in Antiquity men of unknown origin who had appeared suddenly among mortals and were admired for their high qualities were commonly said to have come down from heaven and to be sons of heaven. Heracleides held that man had fallen from the moon, exactly as though mortals lived in the moon just like another earth. On the other hand Menippus the Cynic philosopher pretended that he had returned from the lower world in order to have more freedom to criticize the way men live. The evidence is in Laertius and Lucian.] Juvenal:3 'Now Rome may well feel shame: / Here's a third Cato, fallen from the skies!'

Very close to this in every way is that phrase in Horace's Satires 'Eighth of the Sages,' used of a man who prides himself on his philosophy. For the Greeks have a list of seven Sages, whose wise remarks are well known and regarded as oracles, although the authors differ greatly as to their names. But on their number at any rate everyone agrees; and so 'eighth of the Sages' is used ironically of someone who might be added to the famous seven. Horace: 'Stertinius taught me this, eighth of the Sages.' Ausonius too: 'Wise as he is beyond the Grecian seven, / Here's an eighth Sage.'

I remember reading somewhere, in Seneca if I am not mistaken, that 'He who gives quickly gives twice.' Seneca too in the second book of the De beneficiis has 'A gift is less welcome that has long stuck to the giver's fingers.' The lesson of this maxim is that we should not be dilatory or reluctant in helping our friends when they need it, but should do what we can for them on our own initiative without waiting to be asked. Among the Greek epigrams there is a couplet that bears the name of Lucian: 'Swift gifts are sweetest, and the good / That tarries earns no gratitude.' The lines cannot be turned adequately into Latin, because the charm and wit of the epigram lies in the word charis, which in Greek sometimes means a kindness, sometimes the grace that makes a thing acceptable, sometimes an actual goddess, one of the Graces. Ausonius cites a similar maxim in Greek: 'Favour slow-footed is favour without favour.' It is the beginning of a hexameter line, taken from some epigram. His rendering is: 'Favour that tarries loses its savour; / Favour done promptly wins answering favour.' And he offers an alternative: 'A good deed should be done with speed; / What is tardy, though kind, no thanks will find.' So it is that Hector in Euripides, in the Rhesus, condemns delay in helping friends: 'In helping friends I like not to be late.' There is also an elegant moral maxim to the same effect: 'Twice welcome what we need, when offered free,' and another like it: 'He helps the needy twice whose help is swift.'

That sentence in Cicero, 'Honours nourish arts,' seems to be taken from Aristophanes' Plutus: 'There's no reward, and so there is no art.' For his argument is that one cannot expect good physicians in Athens when they get no recompense. Diogenianus records this among his adages. Martial alludes to it when he writes: 'Give us more patrons like Maecenas, Flaccus, and there will be more poets like Maro; even your rough countryside will give you a new Virgil.' Aristotle also writes that honour is the reward of virtue, and the laws of the Ancients not only threatened wrongdoers with punishment, but also encouraged right actions by the offer of rewards and honours. Pindar in the Isthmians, in the ninth hymn, cites as generally familiar 'There is a saying among men that good well done ought not to be hid in silence in the earth.' Here too belongs the parable in the Gospel of the light that should not be hidden beneath a bushel. The object of praising the good deeds of famous men is to make them a guiding light for lesser men in the pursuit of excellence.

An exaggeration often found as a proverb in good authors is 'A blind man might see that,' of something extremely obvious. Aristophanes in the Plutus: "'What makes you say so?" "Sure this would be clear / Even to a blind man."' Eusebius in his Adversus Hieroclem: 'This would be clear, as they say, even to a blind man.' Plato in the eighth book of the Republic: 'Surely it is clear to a blind man that it changes.' And in the Sophist: 'How could even a blind man not see this, as the saying goes?' It seems to be taken from the eighth book of Homer's Odyssey: 'Surely a blind man might discern the mark.' Quintilian in book 12: 'Everyone surely knows that it is far the most honourable course and most characteristic both of a liberal education and of the spirit which we expect to find, not to take money for one's assistance or reduce the value of so great a service; for it often happens that things begin to seem worth little, merely because a price is put on them. This will be enough, as they say, for a blind man. Nor will anyone who has enough to live on (and very little will suffice for that) do this for gain without being thought mercenary.' In this passage from Quintilian some word seems to be missing: we must read 'will be clear enough.' King Antigonus, who had only one eye, alluded to this saying when they brought him a document written in very large letters, and his reaction was 'This would be clear even to a blind man.' Plutarch records this in the second decade of his 'Table-talk.' In Livy, in the second book of his Macedonian War, when Philip was delivering a violent attack on the Aetolians and Phaneas interrupted him, saying that it was not a matter of words; one must either win the war or do the bidding of better men, Philip's reply was 'Even a blind man can see that,' which was a jesting reference to Phaneas' weak sight.

Πολλαῖσι πληγαῖς δρῦς στερὰ δαμάζεται, Many strokes fell great oaks. This iambic line is found in the collection of Diogenianus, and is applicable to anything which is difficult to achieve but can be mastered by energy and persistence. It is not much unlike those lines in Hesiod: 'Piling little on little and often repeating the process, / Likely enough in the end something great will reward your efforts.' This applies not only to money, of which by its nature a great pile is often made out of very small contributions, but to persistent work; which need not be very laborious provided it is constant and unflagging, and, if so, often achieves very difficult targets. A single blow seems to contribute nothing to the falling of a great massive oak; but frequent blows easily lay it low.

He pulls out the mare's tail slowly hair by hair who performs by taking time and trouble a task that brute force and violence cannot accomplish. Horace in his Epistles:
I take what's offered, slowly hair by hair
Pull out the mare's tail, as a heap of sand
Falls grain by grain; and thus that man is foiled
Who thumbs the annals, counting worth by years.
This arises from something Sertorius the general once did, of which we are told by Plutarch in his life. Sertorius had tried and failed by the use of arguments to persuade his soldiers, who were a barbarous and motley lot, that strategy is more effective in war than brute force. Later, when they had fought a battle unsuccessfully, he produced two horses, one a thin feeble creature and the other a powerful animal with a bushy tail. To the feeble jade he assigned a man in the prime of life, a great big fellow with tremendous muscles; and an undersized and feeble little chap to the powerful horse. This latter pulled out the horse's tail slowly hair by hair, and soon there wasn't a hair left. The strong man, on the other hand, grasped the whole tail with both hands and tried to pull it out by main force; he struggled in vain, and was a laughing-stock. Sertorius, who had planned and arranged all this, jumped up and said: 'Now, fellow-soldiers, you can see how much more strategy can do than strength.'

Κἂν μῦς δάκοι ἄνδρα πονηρόν, Even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal. Part of a heroic hexameter, indicating that somehow or other the wicked do not escape punishment but pay the proper penalty in some way. It applies also to those who start a quarrel on some frivolous pretext and complain that they have suffered loss, pretending that they have received an injury in order to avoid paying what they owe. This happened lately in England to a man I know, a physician with whom I am closely linked both by our common country and by the ties of friendship. I should like to tell the story in passing. There was a citizen of London, an extremely rich man and supposed to be highly respectable, whom my friend by his skill and care, and not without some personal risk, had restored to freedom; for he was the victim of a most pestilent fever. As happens in the moment of danger, he had promised the physician mountains of gold if he would attend him without stint in such a desperate situation, appealing also to the friendship there was between them. To cut the story short, my friend agreed. He was young, and a German. He attended him, he did all he could, and the man recovered. When the physician shyly raised the question of payment, the worthless fellow wriggled out of it. He must not worry about his fee; 'but as a matter of fact my wife keeps the keys of the chest where I keep my money, and you know what women are. I should not like her to notice that I had parted with such a large sum.' A few days later he happened to meet the man, who was now in very good shape and showed not a trace of his recent illness; so he appealed to him, reminding him that the fee had not yet been paid. In reply the fellow stoutly asserted that the money had been paid over by his wife in cash on his instructions. The physician said this was not so. Now see what a handle this worthy man seized! The physician happened to address him in Latin in the second person singular; whereat he flared up as though grossly insulted. 'How dare you,' he cried, 'a German like you, use your thou and thee to an Englishman?' and as though he had lost all self-control, shaking his head in a rage and uttering frightful threats, he was off in a trice. And that was how this honourable citizen gave him the slip, richly deserving another attack of his complaint. I laughed at the story, but it was a bitter laugh when I thought how unfairly my friend had been let down, and I was astonished at such surpassing ingratitude. Lions return thanks for help given them in peril, serpents remember a kindness done them; between man and man, friend and friend, when such a service has been rendered that no return could be adequate, an insult is the only recompense. I say this to show my hatred of the deed, not my dislike of the doer's countrymen; for it is unfair to judge all Englishmen from this one worthless specimen. The adage is recorded in a Greek epigram: 'So they say, even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal.' But the author whoever he was (his name is uncertain) turns the proverb upside down, saying that good men get bitten by the merest mouse, while before bad men even dragons dare not show their teeth: the innocent always suffer, because there seems to be no risk in attacking those who will not retaliate.

Κἂν αἲξ δάκοι ἄνδρα πονηρόν, Even a she-goat will bite a villain. This is found in the collection of Diogenianus. The sense does not differ from the preceding; for the she-goat is not in general given to biting, except that everything hates a wicked man. Suidas makes the spelling clear; for when the adjective refers to something physical, when it is applied, that is, to a man suffering from some affliction and deserving of pity, he thinks the accent should be on the first syllable, πόνηρος,, and the word is so used in the phrase πονήρος ἔχειν, which means 'to be in a bad way'; when fortune is against you; and so Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Poor indeed are our allies, of whom you speak.' When however it means bad at heart, there should be an acute accent on the last syllable, πονηρός. For when we speak of 'a bad stamp' or of 'bad water,' we are transferring to inanimate objects an epithet appropriate to human beings, as when we say 'accursed cold weather' or 'deceitful riches.'

There is another well-known proverbial line in Greek: Δίκην ὑφέξει κἂν ὄνος δάκῃ κύνα, He'll have the law on you, if an ass has so much as bitten his dog. This will be appropriate for those who go to law on the slightest provocation. It looks as though it must have started with some actual incident. Lawyers are familiar with a statutory action when damage has been caused by a quadruped. Recorded by Zenodotus and Suidas, though in both the text gives 'greatest' instead of 'slightest,' which is what the sense seems to me to demand.

Δίκη δίκην ἔτικτε, καὶ βλάβη βλάβην., Quarrel will quarrel breed, and hurt breed hurt. An iambic line commonly used against quarrelsome people with a passion for litigation, for whom one lawsuit always breeds another, one affair is the seed-bed of another, and wrongs are self-perpetuating. It survives in Suidas.

Ὁ καλῶς ἄγων ἐμποιεῖ τὸ καλῶς ἕπεσθαι., A good leader makes his followers good. It lies in a prince to make his subjects behave well, provided he himself is a good ruler. It is in a bishop's power to make his people good, provided he himself leads a pious and honourable life. A wise and upright ruling class makes virtuous and honest citizens. A good head of a family means a well-run household. A learned and hardworking teacher produces a well-educated pupil. A careful husband draws his wife into his way of living. And so every man appointed to be head of something ought in the first place to take pains to fulfil his own obligations before he expects others to do the same. But, as it is, you may see several princes who expect their people to obey the law, while living themselves a life that is quite lawless, as though they were above the law; who demand integrity in their office- bearers and subordinates, while themselves openly selling those offices or granting them at their good pleasure. You may see some bishops who expect religion and piety in their flock, while far from all piety themselves. The image is taken from military life, in which a general's quality is reflected in his soldiers. This is reported in the Greek collections, but anonymously. It is to be found however in Plutarch, an authority well above the common herd, in his life of Lycurgus: 'But obedience is a lesson to be learnt from a ruler; for agood leader makes for good following.'