Adagia 801–900

Τας Ἀμύκλας ἀπώλεσεν ἡ σιγὴ, Silence destroyed Amyclae. Some learned men, among them the author of a by no means negligible work called Cornucopia, have decided that this belongs to the class of proverbs, and I do not differ widely from their conclusion, for there is no doubt that a humorous reference to the story was widely current. Virgil suggests that there was an adage here, when he writes in the Aeneid, book 10, of
Camers the red-head, noble Volscens' breed,
Of all Ausonia's sons the richest he
In land, and ruled o'er silent Amyclae.
Clearly his epithet glances at a well-known event that happened there, which the scholiast Servius expounds as follows. The people of Amyclae from time to time used to receive reports of the approach of enemies which were quite untrue, so that 'the city was constantly rocked by baseless panic. They therefore passed a law to forbid the reporting of any enemy approach.' It befell after that, that the enemy arrived in reality, and since no one brought the news, this having been declared illegal, 'the city was captured all in a moment.' This occurrence, it is clear, gave rise to a humorous popular saying: 'Silence has destroyed Amyclae,' they said, if a man kept his mouth shut and suffered for it. He also cites Lucilius: 'Speak I must, for well I know / Amyclae was destroyed by keeping mum.' In this context we must take Amyclae to be, not one of the famous hundred cities of Laconia founded by the son of Lacedaemon, but 'a town situated between Gaeta and Terracina, founded by the Laconians who accompanied Castor and Pollux,' and gave it this name in order to recall the more famous Amyclae in Laconia. Servius thinks that the Laconians were followers of the doctrines of Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras was believed to have forbidden the eating of meat, on the spurious pretext that, according to him, the souls of human beings migrate into the bodies of animals; and he therefore prohibited the slaughter of any animal, 'as Juvenal too bears witness, saying that he "refrained from all living creatures as though they were men." The Laconians thus thought it criminal to kill the serpents which bred in the near-by marshes;' and they increased so greatly in numbers that they destroyed the city, as Pliny confirms. This could therefore provide another source for the common saying that silence destroyed Amyclae: it was their devotion to the teaching of Pythagoras that was their undoing, the first of which was the importance of silence, for he instructed those who wished to become adepts in his philosophy to keep silence for five years, as Aulus Gellius avers. Regarding the statement of Servius that the Laconians were of Pythagoras' way of thinking, I do not remember to have read this in any other authority, except for Plutarch's recording in his Table-talk' that the Tyrrhenians were so devoted to the decrees of this philosopher as to carry out to the letter in an excess of superstitious folly the rules laid down in his famous precepts. The people of Amyclae therefore were either included among the Tyrrhenians or were devotees of the same rule of life as they. The silence of Amyclae is mentioned by Silius Italicus: 'And Amyclae that silence overthrew.' It is also spoken of by Catullus, if we may believe the heading of a poem on the spring which my friend Aldo Manuzio showed me recently as having been discovered in a certain very ancient library in France: 'Thus Amyclae mute and voiceless by its silence was destroyed.' It will be permissible to use this proverb in different contexts. For instance, if a man might have lent money, and lost it through failure to remind the borrower, or might have lost possession of something through allowing what they call a prescriptive right to develop, he might call this 'the silence of Amyclae'; or a man arguing his case too boldly and ordered to be silent might reply 'But silence destroyed Amyclae.' Such ill-timed harmful silence is called in Greek dysôpia, mistaken modesty, and garrulity, adoleschia, is the opposite fault. On both there are surviving pieces of advice by Plutarch.

Δείλότερος εἶ τοῦ παρακύπτοντος, You are as fearful as the figure that looks out. Said of anybody who is unduly timorous. They say it arose from the following fabulous incident. A man who was fearful by nature, having heard what Hercules was like, had hidden himself in terror in a cave. At one moment he looked out and happened to catch sight of Hercules as he passed by; whereupon he died of fright and stiffened instantly, having turned to stone. And the stone is there to this day, in the shape of a man peeping out of a cave; so they call that rock the Peeper. Suidas is the authority. It is mentioned also by Zenodotus, as is the one that follows.

Δειλότερος πεισάνδρου, As big a coward as Pisander. Another phrase used in old days of absurdly nervous people. Pisander, they say, was a prodigiously timid man, who was haunted by the fear that one day he might catch sight of his own soul after it had left his body. This seems in effect the same as Cicero's 'to be afraid of one's own shadow.'

Διομήδειος ἀνάγκη, To have Diomede on your track. Used of those who do something under strong compulsion and not of their own free will. Plato employs it in the sixth book of the Republic: 'He has Diomede on his track, as the saying goes, and must do whatever these people approve.' Some trace the origin of the adage to Diomede the infamous king of Thrace, whose practice is said to have been to make his guests sleep with his daughters, who were perfecty hideous, after which he used to put them to death. Hence the tradition that Diomede's mares were usually fed on human flesh, the 'mares' being daughters who were ridden by the guests. This indeed is the sense in which it is explained by the scholiast on Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, where there is a line '"And must I really do so?"
"And you must. / Diomede's on your track."' The young man there asks whether he is obliged to follow the old crone, and she says 'Yes, Diomede is after you.' Others see a reference to Diomede the Greek captain, and produce the following story. When Diomede and Ulysses by their joint efforts had carried off the Palladium and were returning through the night, Ulysses, who wanted all the credit for the enterprise for himself alone, decided to kill Diomede, who was walking in front of him and carrying the image. As he brandished his sword over Diomede's head from behind, Diomede saw the shadow of the sword in the moonlight and avoided the blow; then seized Ulysses, bound his hands, and compelled him to walk in front, beating his back from time to time with the flat of the sword. Hence the phrase 'To have Diomede on one's track.' So roughly Suidas and Zenodotus.

Εἰς αρχαίας φάτνᾶς., To his old manger. Used to be applied to those who are suddenly reduced from a more luxurious standard of living to the poverty from which they started; or in the opposite sense, to those who are reinstated in the prosperity from which they had descended, or who return to their accustomed level in society. A metaphor from farm animals which greatly prefer a known and familiar manger. Plautus too used it in the Curculio: 'For ropes of iron could not hold him back / But he'd be guzzling here in his old manger.'

Αλλος βίος, ἄλλη δίαιτα,, Change your life and change your life-style, will suit those whose fortunes change for the better, and they change their way of life and habits to match. It is a metaphor from people who begin to live on a more lavish scale when a more lavish income has come their way. Aristophanes alluded to this in the Plutus in the words 'Now he has coin, lentils have ceased to please, / Who once ate everything, when he was poor,' applied to a young man who despised an ageing mistress, now that he had ceased to be in want himself. Horace alluded to this: 'Nor age nor inclination are the same.'

Διὰ δακτυλίου δεῖ σε ἑλκυσθῆναι., You might well be dragged through a ring, will suit a person who is exceptionally thin and skinny, whether the cause is sickness or anxiety or overwork or something else. Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Indeed, you might have pulled me through a ring.' The words are spoken by an old woman who wishes to appear so worn down and exhausted by grief that she could be drawn through a ring. I myself suppose the adage to be taken from a game, in which an egg beaten up in vinegar is drawn through a ring, as is recorded by Pliny, book 10 chapter 60. It had magical force to pass something through a ring, for 'the brain of a nanny-goat that had been passed through a gold ring was administered drop by drop to babies before they were offered any milk as a protection against epilepsy and the other illnesses of childhood,' as Pliny also bears witness, book 28 chapter 10.

Γραῦς βακχεύει, The hag's on the hop. Commonly said of those who disport themselves in an unseemly way that does not befit their years. Bacchanalian revelry is to some extent permitted in the young; in a silly old woman it is horrible. It is really a species of lunacy for an old woman to fall in love, to drink, to dance, or to indulge in other girlish frolics.

Γραῦς καπρῶσα., A hag in heat, of an old woman still burning with lust which is quite untimely and, as Plautus puts it, playing the bitch. Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Well he knew the trick: / Gobble up the dinner of a hag in heat.' He speaks of a young man who was supplied with everything by a lecherous old woman, that in return she might get from him all the pleasure she wanted. The lechery of he-goats is notorious, and so is the smell associated with them when they are sexually excited.

Πρὸς τὸν μητρυιῆς τάφον δακρύειν, To shed tears at the grave of your stepmother, is to make a great show of grief when you really are delighted. It is not consistent for a stepson to feel distress at his stepmother's death; but all the same he sometimes weeps at her funeral out of a sense of duty. The same phrase will be used neatly enough of a rich man's heirs, about whom there is a well-known and very elegant moral maxim ascribed to Publius: 'The heir in mourning laughs behind a mask.'

Some people think that one should also include among adages a phrase used by the elder Pliny in the preface to his History of the World: 'As for scholars,' he says, 'I have always expected to find them in travail with a reply to my publications in the field of scholarship, and for ten years now there has been a miscarriage from time to time, though even an elephant would take less time to produce its young.' Such are Pliny's words, and they authorize us to use this phrase of his to express undue delay and the excessive time some people take to get under way. Besides which, on the gestation of elephants we have Plautus in the Stichus: 'Oft have I heard it said, an elephant / For ten long years with young will pregnant be.' With this Pliny, book 8, concurs: 'That they carry their young in the womb for ten years is widely believed, though Aristotle thinks they take two years to produce their offspring, never more than once and one at a birth.' Theophrastus records a tree in India that does not bear for its first hundred years. Latin uses parturire, to be in travail, of those who make preparations and are always planning to produce something. And so we can always put the adage in this form: 'And when, may I ask, do you finally expect to produce what you have been in travail with for so many years now, that no elephant could take longer?'

'Απὸ νεκροῦ φορολεγεῖν, To exact tribute from the dead, was applied to those who accumulate wealth from any source by fair means or foul. Aristotle in the second book of his Rhetoric quotes 'He levies taxes even on the dead,' and explains that it was used of men who sought to make a disreputable profit from any and every source, even from small things and sordid things, as Vespasian did from urine; or from disgraceful activities such as pimping and prostitution; or by extorting money from no matter whom, from friends, from the poor, from beggars, and in the last resort even from the dead. It was thought discreditable in leading Romans when they dug beneath the ancient monuments of Corinth and removed the Corinthian bronzes which they found, a special word being coined to express the meanness of what they did; for things stolen in this fashion were called Necrocorinthia, Corinthian grave-goods. In Attic Greek phoros means a commission levied or exaction taken from any source, including money. Those who collect such ill-gotten gains are called phorologi, a class of men universally hated and deservedly so. Phoros is derived from the word pherein, the same as the Latin ferre, to bring in, from which Latin in the same way gets the word foenus, usury - a word not used in early times except of the fruits of the earth, which sometimes like a grateful debtor would repay the seed sown a hundredfold. For it is contrary to nature, as Aristotle says in the Politics, for money to breed money. But today this is so much taken for granted among Christians that they despise the husbandman, the most innocent kind of man and the most essential to the community, and reckon usurers almost among the pillars of the Church, although usury was condemned in those very early times, controlled and repressed even by the laws of the gentiles, absolutely forbidden by Jewish law, abominated and attacked with every weapon by the decrees of the Holy See. Not that I am personally hostile to usurers, whose skill can, I am aware, be properly justified, had it not been condemned long ago by the authority of the Fathers.
Especially if you consider the standards of our own time, I would accept a usurer sooner than this sordid class of merchants who use tricks and falsehoods, fraud and misrepresentation, in pursuit of profit from any source, buying in one market in order to sell for twice the price in another, or fleecing the wretched public with their monopolies; and yet these men who do nothing else all their lives are almost the only class we think honourable. I take this proverb to be identical, or at least very closely akin, with one I have recorded elsewhere: 'The very statues he implores for flour.' Flour is put here humorously for tribute, because everything in the end comes down to food, and statues were put up as a memorial to the dead; and thus the man who rakes in profits even from this source can be said to exact it from the dead. Among the Ancients the right of sepulchre was deeply respected, and burial-places were exempt from all obligations. But now our mad passion for property has gone so far that there is nothing in the wide world, sacred or profane, from which something like usury cannot be extorted, and this not only by princes but even by priests. In the old days, even under tyrants, who however did not yet know their business nor fully understand the nature of tyranny, some things were actually held to be common property - seas, rivers, highways, wild beasts. Now a few nobles, as though they alone were men, or rather gods, claim everything as theirs. The wretched seaman is obliged to alter course, whatever the danger, and 'to do and suffer anything' to satisfy the whim of some insolent pirate, as though the poor man had not enough trouble facing winds and waves without the addition of such storms as these. A harbour offers, and a fee is extorted from you; you have to cross a bridge, and you must pay; ferry over a river, and you are made to feel the privilege of princes; you have a piece of baggage, and you must pay these sacrilegious wretches to relinquish it; and what is much more cruel than all this, people in the humblest walk of life are robbed of their simple pleasures, and these countless tithes and taxes take the bread out of the mouths of the poor. It is not lawful to bring in the grain from your fields unless it has been tithed. You may not grind it nor bake it until someone has had a second bite at it.
No wine can be imported without paying repeated tithes; you cannot store it in your cellar unless you cut off half the whole value, or at least a quarter, for these rascally harpies. In some places more than half the ale, as they call it, is put on one side for the prince. You cannot kill a beast without paying the taxman; you cannot resell a horse, which you bought with your own money, unless you pay out. When I was staying in the country near Bologna, after Julius had taken possession of the city, I saw country people in the depths of poverty, whose whole property consisted of a yoke of oxen, by whose labours they had to support their entire household, paying a whole ducat for each ox. In some places it is impossible for a man to be legally married unless he has paid his dues. But why should I attempt to go through every detail? These men's rapacity strains the resources of language. There is nothing in the world from which they cannot squeeze some advantage. There is no limit to it and no end; they invent new systems of extortion every day, and when a precedent has found its way in through some chance opportunity, they maintain it tooth and nail. These exactions are hateful enough in themselves, and since the insolence of the officials who practise them is still more hateful, they rouse no mean resentment against princes; but princes think nothing beneath them which will bring in money, in other words, which will make the poor go even hungrier and support the luxury of great men, or rather, great robbers. Nor is there any shortage of people who make no inconsiderable profit out of the misdeeds of the guilty, with the law as their fishing-net. Is there indeed any public office, any position, any post in government, which is not for sale in most parts of the world? Last but not least, when all these expedients have failed to fill that great jar with holes in it, the prince's exchequer, war is the excuse put forward; the generals all play the same game, and the unfortunate public are sucked dry to the marrow, exactly as though to be a prince was simply to run an enormous business venture. And yet, disgusting as it is to see Christian princes in this field more inhuman than any pagan tyrants ever were, yet this is a little less outrageous than the fact that among our priests also, in whose eyes all money ought to be quite worthless and whose duty it is freely to share the endowments they have so freely received, everything has its price, nothing is free. Think of the storms they raise over those famous tithes of theirs, how hatefully they oppress wretched common people! You cannot be baptized, which means that you cannot become a Christian, unless you pay cash; such are the splendid auspices under which you enter the portals of the Church.
They do not authorize your marriage, unless you pay cash; they do not listen to your story in the confessional except in hope of a reward. They are hired to offer the sacrifice; without pay they sing no psalms; there is no praying without pay, no laying on of hands without pay. They will barely lift a hand to bless you from a distance, unless you have made it worth their while. Not a stone, not a chalice is hallowed without a fee. Even the duty of instructing the people, the true duty of a bishop, is defiled by the love of gain. Not least, they do not give you your share in the body of Christ, unless you pay cash. To say nothing for the moment of the harvest they reap from suits at law, from dispensations as they call them, from pardons known to common people as indulgences, from the conferring of priestly office and the confirmation of bishops and abbots. What could be given free by the hands of men who make you pay for the right of burial even in ground that is not theirs? In pagan times a public place of burial was established for the common people, for the poor; there was a place where you could bury whom you would without paying. Among Christians the dead cannot even be laid in the ground unless you have hired that little scrap of space from a priest, and the size and splendour of the place you are given will be in proportion to the price. A large sum in ready money will buy you the right to lie and rot in church near the high altar; a modest offering, and you will lie out of doors in the rain among ordinary folk. It would be a disgrace if they accept the price you might choose to offer; but now they call it their legal right, and it is astonishing how obstinately they exact it. Hebron was a barbarian and a gentile, but he made Abraham, an unknown guest, the free offer of a burial-place, and could scarcely be induced by entreaty to accept the money proffered in return; how can we priests sell the right of sepulture in ground that is not ours? Or rather, how can we lease public property for money as though it were ours? And none reap this kind of harvest more greedily than those who never plant one seed for the public good, but live entirely for themselves or at least for their prince. Others spin us the old rigmarole, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire,' for all the world as if there were no difference between a bishop and a hired soldier or farm-labourer. The work of menials is recompensed by a reward; princes and priests have an office so exalted as to be beyond price.

Κέπφος ὠδίνει, The cepphus is going to lay, was used in the old days of men who made enormous promises and never produced anything to match their undertakings. The cepphus or cemphus is said to be a small bird of great natural stupidity, for which it has become proverbial. Some people call it a gull; others, Theodorus Gaza among them, translate it fulica or coot; and it is said to live on sea-spray and to have dense plumage and long wings but a small body, and to make a tremendous noise when it is about to lay. Hence the proverb, The gull is about to lay, when someone makes a great display and will produce very little. Such approximately is the account given by the scholiast on the Peace of Aristophanes. Hesychius tells us that it is a bird which lives by the sea and, being very light in weight, is easily carried away by the wind; and that is why the name cepphos is given to an inconstant and fickle person. Pliny, book 8 chapter 19, speaks of a quadruped called the cephon, which Pompey imported from Egypt for display to the Roman public, 'the hind feet of which resembled human feet, while its forefeet were like hands.' He says it was never seen in Rome thereafter. But this has no connection with our proverb.

Ὤδινεν οὖρος, εἶτα μῦν ἀπέκτεκεν., The mountain laboured, then produced a mouse. A proverbial iambic line, customarily used of boastful characters who are all display, and rouse wonderful expectations by their munificent promises and the magisterial air of their expression and costume, but when it comes to the point they contribute mere rubbish. Lucian uses this adage in the essay called How History Should Be Written; for he says that when a Cupid dressed up as Hercules or a Titan, he was greeted by shouts of 'The mountain laboured.' Athenaeus in his Doctors at Dinner, book 14, records that Tachas king of Egypt directed a jibe of this kind against the Spartan king Agesilaus, who had come to offer him assistance during a war: 'The mountain laboured and Jupiter was in a fright, but it has brought forth a mouse,' Agesilaus being very small in build. He took great offence, and retorted 'One day you will take me for a lion.' Later on there was a rebellion in Egypt and the king, not having the support of Agesilaus, was obliged to take refuge in Persia. In Greek it seems to be an anapestic line. Horace too uses it in the Art of Poetry: 'How will our boaster match these mighty words? / The hills will travail; out will creep a mouse.' Porphyrion thinks this arose from a fable of Aesop's, which runs as follows. Once upon a time, some inexperienced rustics saw the earth on a mountain-side lifting and shifting, and gathered from the country round to such a terrifying sight, expecting the earth to bring forth some new and formidable portent, since a mountain was in labour; the Titans, they thought, would break out once more to renew their war against the gods. At length, after they had waited a long time in suspense and terror, a mouse crept out of the ground, and soon they were all roaring with laughter.

Χρυσὰ ὄρη ὑπισχνεῖσθαι., To promise golden mountains, is a proverbial exaggeration used to describe those who make immense promises and offer most extensive expectations. It is derived from the arrogance of the Persians, who had veins of the precious metal and so boasted that their hills were made of gold. Plautus in the Stichus: 'He'd not do it to earn / Those Persian mountains, made (they say) of gold.' Again in the Miles he speaks to the same effect of silver mountains: 'Mountains of silver, not mere lumps of it.' Terence in the Phormio: 'He won the old man over with a letter, / Promising him virtually mountains of gold.' On this passage I think I should observe in passing what the majority of commentators have apparently failed to notice, that modo non is used for what in Greek would be μονονουχὶ, 'only not,' or 'just not,' meaning 'nearly.' For you will find 'only not' used in this Greek fashion in Livy and Suetonius, and more than once in Valerius Maximus. Apuleius in his first speech in his own defence: 'If it is avarice that makes him feel poor, so that whatever he gains leaves him unsatisfied, mountains of gold will not be enough for him.' St Jerome against Rufinus: 'So that though you have promised mountains of gold, not one beggarly coin do you produce out of all your treasures.' Aristophanes in the Acharnians: 'For eight long months he sat / And eased himself upon the Golden Hills,' using 'eased himself in the ribald style of the Old Comedy for 'had an easy time.' Phoenix of Colophon, cited by Athenaeus, book 12, when speaking of the immense wealth of King Ninus turns the mountains into a sea and says he had 'oceans of gold.' Sallust puts it rather differently in the Catiline: 'Proceeds to promise oceans and mountains'; and in the same way Persius has 'to promise great mountains,' so that the exaggeration of the size is conveyed not by the words 'of gold,' but simply by the mountains themselves.

Αντλεῖν ἀμφοτέραις, To take with both at once, hands being understood. Habitually used of those who do something with all their might. So Aristophanes in the Knights: 'And with both hands sups up the public funds.' Related to this is Homer's line in the seventh Iliad: 'I know how / To right and left to turn my ox-hide shield.' We also find the phrase ἀμφοῖν δωρούμενος giving freely with both hands, for excessive and wasteful gifts, or for great generosity. Plato in the Sophist: 'And, as the saying goes, not to be caught with one hand. No indeed; but with both.' There seems to be some difference between this form of the phrase and what we find in the Cimon of Aristides, who quotes this passage from a hymn by some poet or other: 'And Asia groaned aloud beneath their stroke, / With both hands stricken in the stress of war.' There is a more closely similar expression in the same author's Panathenaic Oration: 'And there he was with both hands leading them as far as Attica, both Greeks and barbarians.' Though in this passage it is also possible to take it with no element of metaphor: we are to understand it either of land and sea forces equally, or of barbarians and Greeks. For we use 'hand' or 'handful' of a body of armed men, as in Virgil's 'Up leapt / A valiant handful of the younger men.' Of a 'full hand' as an image of generosity I have spoken elsewhere, in Greek ὀμπνίᾳ χειρὶ, a rich hand; whence the epithet ompnios applied to Ceres (in Latin alma, fostering, because she gives us our daily bread) and to water, as to a thing that abundantly supports life.

With one voice, for 'with entire agreement,' is found freely in good authors. Terence: 'All with one voice wished him the best of luck.' Cicero in his dialogue on friendship: 'Friendship is the one thing in human affairs, on the value of which all men with one voice are agreed.' Seneca in his Letters, book 11, number 82: 'Greatly as men's judgments differ, they will all assure you with one voice, as the saying goes, that a man should recompense those who have done him a service.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'But they with one mouth all cried out at once.' Plato in the first book of the Laws: 'With one voice and from one mouth all men concur.' And again in the second book of the Republic: 'For all keep on repeating with one voice that both temperance and justice are a good thing.'

Αετὸν γλαυκὶ συγκρίνεις, You match eagle and owl. Martial, in a scazon iambic: 'Why seek to make eagles appear like owls?' The eagle has exceptionally keen sight, so much so that it can gaze straight at the sun without winking; and some aver that the bird uses this as a test to decide whether its offspring are legitimate or not. The owl, on the other hand, shuns the sun's light by every means in its power. Pindar in one place contrasts the eagle and the jackdaw.

To group foxes with lions is to put together things which are unequal and unlike. Martial: 'Why group in one the lion and the fox?' The fox relies on cunning, the lion's confidence is in his strength. Though the two are joined by Pindar, who suggests that the brave man should prove himself a lion in mastering the exertions of the battlefield and a fox in counsel. He writes thus in the Isthmians: 'For in courage he presents the spirit of loud-roaring lions in the fray, and in counsel he is a fox.'

Αετὸς ἐν νεφέλαις, An eagle in the clouds. This is commonly understood as something which is in itself great or important, but not easily to be achieved; others apply it to men who far surpass their fellows. Aristophanes in the Knights: 'That line I love, / How I shall become an eagle in the clouds.' The words are those of the Athenian people, looking forward securely to the time when they will rule the whole world. And a little further on in the same play, an oracle is uttered in the words: 'How thou art made an eagle, to have the whole world for thy kingdom.' This too is said of the people of Athens, unless we prefer to see it as an allusion to their empty hopes of world-rule. Again in the Birds: 'You shall become an eagle in the clouds.' The scholiast informs us that the poet alludes to an oracle once delivered to the Athenians, which foretold that Athens would one day surpass all other cities as far as an eagle in the clouds was higher than other birds. Pindar too in the Nemeans, in the passage I have just referred to, calls himself an eagle and his rival Bacchylides a jackdaw, because of course there was such a great distance between them. The sense runs something like this: 'Swift is the eagle among birds, which swoops suddenly down from afar and seizes the blood-stained quarry in its claws; but chattering jackdaws feed upon the ground.'

Related to this is a phrase used by Aristotle in the third book of his Metaphysics: τὰ πετώμενα διώκειν, To pursue a flying quarry. He speaks of subjects which are excessively obscure and very hard to get to the bottom of. It is not unlike that line
Have you an aim, a target at which you point your bow?
Do you with brickbats and with clods pursue the random crow?
He is thinking of those who set before themselves no certain goal in life, but live for the moment, ready to change at any opportunity.

Αἱ ἰβύκου γέρανοι, The cranes of Ibycus, gave rise to a proverb in Greek, which has commonly been used whenever crimes have come to light by some new and unexpected chance, and the criminals give the victims their revenge. This took its rise, they say, from a chain of events somewhat like this. A poet called Ibycus who had fallen into the hands of robbers and was about to be put to death, protested to some cranes which happened to be flying overhead. Sometime later the robbers were sitting in the market-place when again some cranes flew over, and they whispered to each other in jest 'Here they come to avenge Ibycus.' These words were overhead by their neighbours, who were instantly suspicious, for Ibycus had been greatly missed for some time. When asked what their words meant, the men gave embarrassed and inconsistent answers, and when exposed to torture confessed their crime. Thus one might say the cranes were the informers to whom Ibycus owed his revenge; or rather, the guilty died because, as the saying goes, they gave themselves away. This is the story much as Plutarch tells it in his essay 'On Pointless Garrulity.' Ausonius recalls this adage in his Monosyllaba: 'Who avenged Ibycus? 'Twas high-flying cranes.' There is also a Greek epigram on the subject, ascribed to Antipater, which it will be a pleasure to transcribe: 'Pirates killed you, Ibycus, disembarking upon the untrodden beach of a lonely island, while you cried for help to a passing cloud of cranes that came to witness your most bitter death. Nor were your appeals in vain, for the Erinys heard their cry and avenged you in the land of Sisyphus. Why, greedy tribe of pirates, did you not fear the anger of the gods? Aegisthus too, who killed a poet long ago, did not escape the watchful eye of the black-robed Eumenides.' I would have rendered these lines, like the rest, as best I can, had not, as luck would have it, Pieter Gillis, my host in Antwerp - it would be truer to say, my Pylades, or any truer type of friendship there may be than that - already turned them into Latin, in my opinion very skilfully. So I will add his version, happy to spare myself this labour and gladly seizing this opportunity to mention my incomparable friend:
Poor Ibycus, they killed you, that brutal pirate band,
Appealing to the cranes that flew o'er that lone island strand.
But dark Erinys heard their cries - you did not waste your breath -
And in the land of Sisyphus avenged your cruel death.
O brutal band of pirates, in your cruelty and greed,
Why was it, to the wrath of god you gave so little heed?
Remember, old Aegisthus killed a poet long ago,
But the black-robed Eumenides, they did not let him go.
This poet is mentioned by Cicero in the fourth book of his Tusculan Questions, where his poem is said to have been of the most lascivious description.

Αληθέστερα τῶν ἐπὶ Σάγρᾳ, As true as what happened at the Sagra, was turned in old days against incredulous people and those who do not believe until some misfortune has taught them a lesson. Strabo tells the story in book 6 of his Geography. 'Next to the Locrians' he says 'flows the river Sagra, on the bank of which are the altars of Castor and Pollux, near which ten thousand Locrians with Rhegian help fought and defeated one hundred and thirty thousand troops from Crotona. This victory was the origin of the adage turned against the incredulous, As true as what happened at the Sagra.' Many add that the news of the result reached Olympia on the day the battle was fought; such was the speed with which it became known that the news of the battle was true. This battle is mentioned by Justin, book 20, though he differs from Strabo as to the number of the dead. It is also mentioned by Eustathius in his commentary on Homer's Boeotia; and he adds that the phrase was commonly used of things that were perfectly true but were not believed. Lastly, it also comes in Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, book 2: 'For the Sagra' he says 'is also the subject of a familiar proverb in Greek: people who tell you something assure you it is as true as what happened at the Sagra.'

To receive a wooden sword for to retire from employment, and To present with a wooden sword for to allow someone to retire are frequently found in reliable authors. The metaphor is taken from the ancient custom of describing gladiators who were allowed to retire from their professional duties as rude donati, presented with a wooden sword. The right to retire was conveyed by means of a wooden foil which they called a rudis, and so those given this leave were called rudiarii. Consequently, anyone who is restored to private life from any office, on account either of age or of failing health, will be said to have received his wooden sword. Horace in the first of his Epistles: 'I've oft performed, and earned my wooden sword, / And must I now my ancient squad rejoin?' Juvenal too: 'And so he'll give himself the wooden sword, / If he takes my advice.' Ovid: 'And so, as tardy age doth sap my powers, / 'Twas time I too received my wooden sword.' Cicero in the second of his Philippics: 'Has so good a gladiator as yourself so soon received your wooden sword?' The metaphor will gain in elegance if slightly more far-fetched: for instance, if one were to urge a man of letters not to work so hard and to 'award himself the wooden sword,' or were to call someone who has given up life at court a rudiarius or 'retired veteran' of court life. What looks like more or less the opposite of this is that phrase in Quintilian, 'a candidate for sharp-edged eloquence,' though in that passage I think we should read 'the eloquence of your ancestors' (avitae), not 'sharp-edged' (acutae) and 'a candidate for good literature,' for 'candidate' is a word properly used of those who wish to be elected to office. If this is transferred as a metaphor to other fields, it will take on a proverbial air.

Κακοῦ κόρακος κακὸν ὠόν, An ill crow lays an ill egg, will be appropriate for use whenever an incompetent tutor produces an incompetent pupil, a rascally father a rascal son, a country of ill repute a disreputable native, a man with a criminal record a criminal act. Some derive the metaphor from the nature of the bird itself, which is not fit for human food and lays an egg useless for any purpose. Some say that young crows have been known to devour their parents if they do not bring them enough to eat, and that this is the source of the adage; others prefer to trace it back to the following anecdote. A man named Corax, which means crow, in Syracuse after the death of Hieron, was the first who ever set up to teach the art of rhetoric for pay. A youth whose name was Tisias made an agreement with him that he would not pay the fee until he was a complete master of the art. When he had acquired the technique but was in no hurry to hand over the price, Corax took his pupil to law. Whereupon the young man put forward the following alternative. 'What is the purpose of this art?' he asked; and when Corax replied that it was to achieve persuasion by the use of words, 'Very well,' he said, 'if I persuade the judges that I owe nothing, I shall not pay you, because I have won my case, and if I don't persuade them, I shan't pay you, because I am not yet a master of the art.' Corax however rejected Tisias' alternative as defective and what logicians call reversible, and turned it in this fashion against his pupil. 'On the contrary,' he said, 'if you persuade them, you will pay, because you have learnt the art and are bound to pay by the contract, and if you do not persuade them, you will pay, because the verdict of the court is against you.' When the judges heard this most cunning and artful contrivance, they were amazed at the young man's ingenuity, and cried 'An ill crow (Corax) lays an ill egg.' Some say that it was the crowd of bystanders who cried out like that, when they heard their rival pleas. Such roughly is the story as it appears in the introduction to the Rhetoric of Hermogenes. This tale, if I am not mistaken, is the origin of another, told by Aulus Gellius in the Attic Nights, book 5 chapter 10, about the sophist Protagoras and his pupil Euathlus. It is rather long and easily accessible, but such a very good story that I will give myself the pleasure of transcribing it.
Gellius then, having explained the nature of the faulty alternative which is called reversible, because it can be turned round and used in exactly the same words against an opponent, goes on thus. 'An example of this is the argument used by Protagoras, one of the ablest of the sophists, according to a well-known story, against his pupil Euathlus. A dispute between them and a lawsuit about an agreement to pay a fee arose in the following way. Euathlus was a rich young man who wanted to learn the art of public speaking and of pleading in the courts; and he entered himself as a pupil with Protagoras, promising to pay by way of fee the large sum for which Protagoras had asked. Half this he paid at once before his lessons began, and promised to pay the balance on the day that he first pleaded a case in court and won it. After a longish time spent listening to Protagoras and being a member of his circle, he had made great advances in the art of public speaking, but he got no legal work; the time was going by, and it looked as if he had no intention of paying the balance of his fee. Protagoras therefore formed a plan which he thought clever at the time; he proceeded to demand his fee in accordance with their agreement, and sued Euathlus in the courts. When they came before the judges to establish their case, Protagoras began as follows. "Let it be clear to you, most foolish young man, that either way, whether the verdict is against you or for you, you will have to pay what I ask. If the case is decided against you, my fee will be payable in accordance with the verdict, because I have won; if it goes in your favour, the fee will be payable under our contract, because you have won your case." Euathlus replied like this. "I could have challenged this very two-faced and captious argument of yours, if I were not speaking myself but appearing by counsel. But I defeat you with all the greater pleasure because I not only have the better case, but can use your own argument. Let it be clear to you then, most wise of masters, that either way, whether the verdict is against me or for me, I shall not have to pay what you ask. If the judges' opinion is on my side, nothing will be payable to you in accordance with the verdict, because I have won; if they pronounce against me, I owe you nothing under our contract, because I have not won my case." Thereupon the judges, thinking that what was said on both sides set them an insoluble problem, for fear that their verdict, no matter which side it favoured, would be self-contradictory, left the case undecided and adjourned it to a very distant date.' Thus Gellius. What are we to say? Surely there was at least one comment the judges might have handed down by way of verdict: An ill crow lays an ill egg. The same story is told by Apuleius in his Florida, I will not say, at greater length, for it could not be told at greater length than what we find in Gellius, but in a more florid and (if I may use the word) embroidered style. Euathlus is mentioned by Aristophanes in the Wasps and again in the Acharnians.

In full agreement with this is that Hebrew saying in the first book of Kings, chapter 24, which David actually calls 'a proverb of the ancients': Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked. It means that wicked men are always a source of evil in some form, and nothing evil is ever started by the good. Consequently there is no reason for Saul to fear that he may be killed by David. This would be a wicked crime such as only wicked men would perpetrate, and he himself will not stain his hands with the blood of a king. Moreover the proverb, if anyone would like this extra information, runs in Hebrew like this: [hebrew]. For it is a property of most proverbs that they require to be uttered in the language in which they originated, and if they migrate into another tongue, they lose much of their charm. Some wines are like that: they refuse to travel, and do not retain their native qualities except in the regions in which they are grown. Almost the same thought is expressed in Greek in a proverbial verse: 'For noble deeds do come of noble minds.'

Λήμνιον κακόν, As bad as Lemnos, of great and lamentable wrongs. The story from which the adage derives is told in different forms, nor is there much point in meticulously pursuing them. Herodotus in Erato tells both of the proverb and of the events behind it, somewhat as follows. The Pelasgians had been forcibly expelled from Attica, and were living in Lemnos. Wishing to have their revenge on the people of Attica for the wrongs they had suffered, and being familiar with their feast-days and ceremonies, they posted men in ambush and carried off the Athenian wives, while they were sacrificing to Minerva in Brauron; then, having deported them by ship to Lemnos, they treated them shamefully as concubines. The women however having produced a large number of children, brought them all up as Athenians and taught them to speak Attic Greek, with the result that they refused to marry Pelasgian girls, and if a Pelasgian ever tried to beat any of them, all the Athenians banded together to defend him. In a word, the young men of Attic blood grew so powerful that they appeared to have the upper hand in most things, and the Pelasgians thought it best to put to death all the sons they had had by Athenian mothers. This they did, and killed the mothers at the same time; after which they themselves were so much reduced by sterility, loss of children, plague, and all other possible troubles that they consulted the Delphic oracle for some way to relieve themselves of their calamities. Hence, he says, a proverb spread all through Greece, by which huge and lamentable wrongs were called 'as bad as Lemnos.' So he thinks that this is one source for the adage, and the other that the women of Lemnos once took offence at the bad smell emitted by their husbands and killed them all, with Thoas' help. This fact is mentioned by Euripides in the Hecuba: 'And utterly stripped Lemnos of its men.' Also by Seneca in his Agamemnon: 'And Lemnos rendered famous by its crimes.'

Τέτιγγα πτεροῦ συνείληφας, You have taken a grasshopper by the wing. Said of those who provoke a man to do something which is by no means out of keeping. Lucian in his Pseudologista says that the poet Archilochus, who was a satirist and exceptionally well equipped in the art of obloquy, replied to a man who had provoked him with abuse in these words: 'You have taken a grasshopper by the wing.' The grasshopper or cricket is an insect with an astonishing and prodigious capacity for making a noise, especially when the sun is very hot. Pliny says it has no voice, only a rasping noise long drawn out; and it does not produce this sound with its wings, as do flies, bees, and gnats, for their humming ceases when they cease to fly, but the grasshopper if you hold down its wings makes an even more emphatic noise than before. It has in its thorax, he says, two chambers and by the friction of a membrane with the addition of a rapid current of air it emits the sound through these from its intestines. And so, just as if you take a grasshopper by the wing, which is by nature a noisy creature, it makes a louder noise, so, if you give a man of poetical gifts the excuse for a quarrel, not only will he not remain silent; he too will make a louder noise than before, and 'on spiteful paper dash down all his spleen.' And so it was, they say, Plato's advice that one should never make a poet one's enemy. And Horace speaks of the 'irascible tribe of bards.'

Τενέδιος πέλεκυς, An axe from Tenedos, will be appropriate either for those who sentence and punish very severely or those who settle disputes and doubtful controversies with great speed. The source is an old custom, by which the king of Tenedos dispensed justice carrying an axe, and when the case was decided would instantly use the axe to execute the guilty party; or else because some king of Tenedos passed a law against adultery, by which both parties were to be executed with an axe, and had to set an example by enforcing it against his own son. As a result he ordered the issue of a coin with an axe on one side and on the other two heads growing out of one neck. This is mentioned by Stephanus in his catalogue of cities. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Pythian Oracles' shows that the axe was an emblem and symbol of the people of Tenedos, on account of the crabs which are found in their territory in a place called Asterium. Plutarch's words, in case anyone would like to have them, are as follows: 'As the people of Selinus are said once to have dedicated a branch of celery in gold, and the Tenedians an axe, derived from the crabs which are found near a place called Asterium in their territory; for they are the only crabs to have the mark of an axe on their shell.' Lucian in the Philopseudes: 'For I thought, as the phrase goes, that I had been offered an axe to cut falsehoods.' I personally think there is an allusion to the action of Alexander the Great in using his sword to cut through the knot on Midas' wagon that could not be untied, as I have shown elsewhere. It is also mentioned by Pausanias in his book on Phocis, but he attributes the origin of the adage to another story. He writes that there was an axe among the offerings in memory of Periclitus, son of Euthymachus of Tenedos, and that there was an old story about this. Neptune had a son called Cycnus, who was king in Colonae. Colonae is a place in the Troad, opposite an island called Leucophrys. Now this Cycnus had a daughter called Hemithea and a son called Tennes by his wife Procleia (she was a daughter of Clytius and a sister of Caletor, who according to Homer in Iliad 15 was killed by Ajax because Caletor had tried to set fire to Protesilaus' ship). When Procleia died, she was succeeded by Philonome daughter of Craugasos. Philonome fell in love with Tennes, and when he rejected her advances, she told her husband a pack of lies about her being unwillingly solicited by Tennes to commit adultery with him. Cycnus believed his wife's falsehoods, shut up Tennes and his sister in a chest, and threw them into the sea. However, they were carried in safety to the island of Leucophrys, which afterwards took its name from Tennes and became Tenedos. When Cycnus learnt at length how he had been deceived, he set sail towards his son, meaning to acknowledge his mistake and ask for forgiveness. But when he had landed, and tied up his vessel to some tree or rock, Tennes in anger cut the rope with an axe. Hence a proverb came into use about those who persistently deny something: 'This man could cut this or that with an axe from Tenedos.' A story not unlike this is told in connection with the proverb Tenedius homo, A man from Tenedos.

Ανθρακες ὁ θησαυρὸς πέφυκεν., The treasure consisted of coals. Suits those whose hopes are disappointed and who find mere rubbish where they expected something magnificent. It looks as though it must derive from some incident, when a man digging for treasure found a buried deposit of charcoal, and this became a subject of merriment and common talk. For in old days it was the custom to bury charcoal as a marker for the boundary of a property because, as Augustine testifies in his book The City of God, nothing is more durable and more likely to last forever than charcoal buried in the ground. Lucian in his Zeuxis: 'But, as the proverb runs, our treasure consisted of coals.' Again in the Philopseudes: 'As the saying goes, you have shown yourself to be coals instead of treasure.' Again in the Timon, about a discovery of gold: 'So I'm afraid that when I wake up I shall find it's coals.' And in his Wishes: 'And you will find your treasure is coals.' Alciphron in one of his letters: 'Will not all my treasure turn to cinders?'

Οκτάποδες, literally With eight feet, was a proverbial expression in Scythia for men who possessed two oxen and one cart. Lucian in The Scythian or the Consul: 'Those among them who are called Eight-footers.' This can be used in jest of a man who fancies himself rich, or of one whose wealth is entirely countrified. High in the list of countrified wealth in Hesiod is 'a ploughing ox.' The proverb gains in point from its allusion to the scorpion, the polyp, the cuttle-fish, and the squid, all creatures endowed with eight feet and therefore called in Greek octapods. The scorpion even gave rise to a proverb, You are waking up Eight-feet; for this creature is said to sleep under every stone. Suidas writes octôpous, with a long 0 instead of an a.

Πάλιν δρομῆσαι μᾶλλον ἢ δραμεῖν κακῶς, Better run backwards than run all awry. An iambic line current as a proverb, the moral of which is that it is advisable to change your mind for something better, rather than to persevere in a wrong decision. Lucian's ass turned this maxim over in his mind, far from asinine though it is: 'I felt the force of what the proverb says, Better run backwards than run all awry.' In our own day too there is a common saying that the man who turns back at halfway is not always wrong, by which they mean that those are to be commended who repent of their folly in good time.

Μόνος θέων ἐκράτει, He was the only runner and he won. Of those who win when there is no competition. A metaphor from the sports-ground, for it is no trouble to win when you have no competitor. It will be neatly directed against self-satisfied people, who think they have proved their case in fine style when there is no one to put the other side. Lucian in his Imagines: 'It is, I imagine, very easy, as the proverb puts it, to win when you are the only runner.' Related to one I have recorded elsewhere, 'To win a case by default,' and not far from 'Victory without the dust' and 'Victory without sweat,' all of which I have mentioned elsewhere.

Εκ τῶν ὀνύχων λέοντα γινώσκειν, To know a lion by his claws, is to form an idea of an entire object from one single inference, to infer much from little evidence and great results from small indications. The adage seems to take its rise from the sculptor Phidias who, as Lucian tells us in his Sects, having seen nothing but the claw of a lion, formed an idea of the size of the whole lion and reproduced the whole beast on the evidence of one claw. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Obsolescence of Oracles' appears to refer it to Alcaeus, for he writes: 'Not, as Alcaeus has it, painting the lion from a single claw,' inferring, that is to say, great things from one small one. Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius: 'Such as I see you already to be from the claw.' Basil the Great writing to the philosopher Maximus: 'A man's words are truly a reflection of his soul, and so I learnt to know you from your writings, as they say one knows a lion from his claws.' This is done by using mathematical ratios (as Vitruvius tells us in book 3) in such a way that even from the smallest limb the dimensions of the whole body can be inferred. It was by this method that Pythagoras calculated the dimensions of Hercules' body from the stadium at Pisa, which he had laid out by stepping it himself. In the same way physicians judge the state of a man's health at all points from the pulse in one artery, and one can infer the whole of a man's life from his hair, his waistline, or the movement of his eyes; in this way we assess the whole of a man's education from a single letter, and from one reply form an idea of his whole stock of wisdom.

Η κέρκος τῇ ἀλώπεκι μαρτυρεῖ, The fox is given away by his brush, is normally said of those who betray in some trifling matter what sort of people they are, a fox's brush being so long and bushy in proportion to its size that it is not easily concealed. Otherwise it might be taken for a dog. Hence this will also be suitable when the outcome of something shows what the rest was really like. Some men who are lambs when you first meet them prove in the end to be foxes.

Εκ τοῦ κρασπέδου τὸ ὕφασμα γινώσκω., I gauge the whole fabric from the border - from one small fact, that is, I draw an inference about everything else. A metaphor taken from merchants, who can easily form an opinion on the quality of a whole piece of cloth by inspecting the weave of one edge.

Εκ γεύματος γινώσκω, I judge by tasting, that is, from a very small experiment. Taken like the preceding from merchants, who from a mere taste of wine or oil pass a verdict without hesitation on the rest. For the fruit of every tree has its own taste, its proper nature and its particular shape; and whenever these changed into something different, it was taken for a portent, as Theophrastus elegantly describes in book 2, chapter 4 of his History of Plants. Hence Pliny: Ι promise you the rest answers to this taste of it.' Seneca: 'And I wanted to give you a taste.' And an experiment of this kind we call a tasting. Nor will it be out of place to add here a phrase used as a proverb by Irenaeus: 'To learn that the sea is salt, there is no need to drink the whole thing.' One can discover from a few drops what the whole sea is like.

Τὸν Aἰθίοπα ἐκ τῆς ὄψεος γινώσκω., I recognize an Ethiopian simply by his face. Every man offers some indication what sort of person he is. For an Ethiopian indicates by his black face, curly hair, thick lips, and gleaming teeth where his native country is. An Ethiop may change his clothes, but his face he cannot change.

Εν τοῦ καρποῦ τὸ δένδρον γινώσκω., I know the tree from its fruit, I judge a man by his actions. This proverb also appears in the Gospels, as I have shown at the outset of this work. Mean clothing, shaven crown, fasting, prayer, and a severe expression - these are leaves which often tell a lie, just as the figtree in the Gospel lied to Christ; but patiently to endure obloquy for the glory of Christ and to wish well to those who wish one ill and not to render evil for evil are the fruit of a good tree. If a man produces this regularly and readily, it is evidence of a faithful and true heart; pretence cannot last long, and sooner or later nature must assert herself and prove that in heart he is unsound.

Εν τῷ σκόπῳ ὀρχεῖσθαι, To dance in the dark, means to do something secretly, with no witness and no critic. The image is taken from dancers, of whom no one can say in the dark whether they perform the steps rightly or the reverse. Lucian in his Sects: 'We should, as they say, be dancing in the dark.' From these words it looks as though the adage could also be applied to people who act rashly and without judgment and on no certain principle. For Lucian's point is that, if we are deprived of philosophy, we should be dancing in the dark, so that, 'whatever might come to hand we should believe to be the thing we were in search of.' It is clear that Plato alluded to this tacitly in the eighth book of the Republic: 'To avoid a discussion in the dark, let us first make some definitions.' For discussion in a muddle is like dancing in the dark.

Αρειοπαγίτης, An Areopagite, was used of a severe and strait-laced person, or even of an utterly incorruptible judge. It is also found in the form Σκυθρώπτερος ἀρειοπαγίτου, As gloomy as an Areopagite. In Athens the Areopagites were the supreme authority; they were the judges who tried offences that incurred the death-penalty, and their integrity was such that they sat by night and in darkness, not by day and in the daylight, to make sure that they considered not the persons of those who spoke before them but only what was said. The evidence for this is Lucian in his Sects. Cicero alludes to the proverb in the first book of his Letters to Atticus: 'The senate are a regular Areopagus: so determined, so strict, so courageous, you never saw the like.' Again in book four of the same collection: 'From which one can infer that our three Areopagites care not a scrap for bribery, elections, interregnum, treasonable conduct, or indeed the whole constitution.'

Αττικὸν βλέπος, That Attic look, is tantamount to saying 'a face that shows no sense of shame.' It was applied to those whose effrontery was obvious at first glance and their readiness to say anything; for this was thought to be a characteristic fault of the Athenian character. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'And on his face is that true Attic look.' This is Strepsiades' comment on his son when he leaves Socrates' school, and he can infer from the look on his son's face that he can now plead a bad case, such is the combination it shows of Athenian cunning and effrontery. Achilles too in Homer calls Agamemnon dog-faced because he is so shameless, and Hesychius tells us that such men were called kunoblôpes, which means the same thing.

Εστίᾳ θύουσιν, They sacrifice to the Lar, will be applied to selfish people, who never give anyone a share of what they have, or to greedy people at a dinner-party, who never send their friends any of the good things set before them, and leave nothing on their plates. Among the Ancients it was unlucky to take anything that was sacrificed to the household gods out of the house. Aristophanes alludes to this in the Plutus, when Mercury asks that they should give him a share of the sacrifice that was going on within the house, and Carion replies 'Export prohibited.' In another place in the same play a woman who wants to scatter good things to eat in front of the door is told 'Indoors, before the Lar, as custom is; / Nothing may be brought out, only brought in.' In Rome, according to Plutarch, it was forbidden to remove a table that had nothing on it, either to suggest that something must always be kept back for a future occasion, or to teach them to control their appetites by refraining from what they had before them, or as a means of earning the goodwill of the household, since it showed that to some extent they share the table with their slaves, or because it was unlucky during a religious rite for anything to be seen empty. And there is something sacred about a dinner-table. Cato in his book On Agriculture tells us that the farm-bailiff's wife is to sacrifice to the Lar on the appointed days in accordance with what supplies she has at hand, having first hung a garland over the hearth. One could coin an adage which would be the opposite of this: τῇ Ἑκάτῃ θύειν, To sacrifice to Hecate. For in the rites paid to this goddess, those who brought in the supper did not get a taste of it themselves; all they got was the tumult and the smoke, as Plutarch says in his 'Table-talk.' The same thing customarily happened when they brought in any offering for the other gods who are called averters of evil. This was diverted to apply to those who consult other men's interests rather than their own; they make others rich, and get no benefit themselves.

It was regarded as unlucky in some other sacrifices too to leave any remnants of the sacred banquet; or, if anything was left over, it had to be consumed with fire, in the way Moses handed down for the paschal lamb. This form of sacrifice was called by the Romans a protervia. Hence the popularity of Cato's witty comment on a certain Albidius, who had used up his entire patrimony in luxurious living with the exception of his house, which was then burnt down. 'Well,' said Cato, 'He has made a protervia,' meaning that he had, as it were, consumed with fire all that he could not eat. The authority is Macrobius in the second book of his Saturnalia. A remark points in the same direction that is recorded by Athenaeus in book 8. Dioclites, a spendthrift, after eating a very hot dish of fish, complained that he had burned the roof of his mouth (for which Greek uses the same word as it does for 'sky'); whereat Theocritus of Chios remarked 'There's only one thing left for you to do; to drink up the sea. Then you will have polished off the three largest things in the world - earth, sea, and sky.' But whenever a man's expenses outstrip his income, and the disease shows no sign of diminishing, having now become second nature, what is there left for him except to take to trickery and crime, so that his finances may keep pace with luxurious tastes that are always growing? And this is a special plague, and by no means the least of them, in our modern Germany, especially among those who pride themselves on a title of nobility; although there are some of them who boast a fictitious nobility so that they can do this with the greater impunity, who suborn men to call them Junkers, pride themselves on their ancestral castles, stick feathers in their hats, get a shield painted on which is a hand brandishing a sword and cutting up an elephant, and add at the end of their letters the magic EQU. Suppose one of them is born in a village - let us say his name is Ornithoplutus and his village called Isocômus - he never signs himself an Isocomian; any plebeian could do that. He is Ornithoplutus von Isocomum. After that, they think they have the right to declare war on whom they please. If the discipline of law were to restrain the intemperance of these young men, there would be no need to inflict punishment on so many of them or to overlook their offences. Gaming, card-playing, whoring, drinking, idleness land them in debt, and soon it is robbery and blackmail. Off they go to the war, and come back loaded with booty which has not been taken from the enemy. Having learnt their lesson when young in a school like this, they shrink from no crime. Among the Ancients there were sumptuary laws: in Corinth even, which was more corrupt than any other city, there was a law to put down those who lived a more expensive life than their means would allow. Diphilus, in the sixth book of Athenaeus, speaks of it in the following lines:
'In Corinth here, good sir, we have a law:
Seeing a man who lives in luxury,
We ask him what he lives on, what he does,
And if he's well-endowed and pays his way,
We leave him to enjoy his livelihood.
If his expenses should outrun his means,
We tell him this has got to stop at once,
And disobedience means a heavy fine.
If he's extravagant and has no money,
We send him to be tortured.' 'Gracious heavens!'
'Such men, you see, can only live by crime;
Needs must they spend their nights in robbery
Or they are burglars, or in league with such,
Run a protection-racket in the market,
Or else give perjured evidence for pay.
Such filth as this we sweep out of the city.'
But today quite famous cities in Germany produce spendthrifts and gamesters of this kind, who not only have no means but are heavily in debt on all sides; and no one ever says to them 'Hey, where do you get the money to live in such luxury?' If they did, they might find there was some truth in those lines from Diphilus.

Αὕτη μὲν μήρινθος οὐδὲν ἔσπασεν., This line has caught no fish. A proverbial iambic line which they used to mean that their labour was wasted, and that what a man was trying to do had not succeeded as he wished. The image is taken from the line with hook attached used by anglers, who often pull up an empty hook. It seems to be derived from the Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes, in which this line occurs. He alludes to the adage again in the Wasps: 'But he caught nothing,' the subject being the man who had laid a snare for his father to prevent his leaving the house.

Ovid uses a similar metaphor in the Amores: Keep your hook hanging still; all may come right, And where you least expect, a fish will bite, that is, always be ready to try your luck, and lose no opportunity. This resembles 'Leave no stone unturned.'

St Jerome in a letter to Hedibia writes as follows: 'Hence too I think it absolutely true, as the common saying has it, that a rich man is either wicked himself or the heir of a wicked man.' If that remark in Hesiod is true, that what is in every man's mouth is not spoken wholly without cause, this proverb should be diligently taken to heart by those who are foolishly proud of being rich. Great wealth is hardly ever acquired without dishonesty; either the owner himself has accumulated it by fair means or foul, or at the very least he is the successor of one who acquired it in that fashion. Plato in book 5 of the Laws: 'So that there is truth in the current saying, that very rich men are not good men.' There is also a line current in Greek from one of Menander's comedies: 'Wealth ne'er comes quickly to an honest man.' The man had this in mind who is recorded as saying to Sulla when he was in a boastful mood: 'How can you be an honest man when you have so much money though your father left you nothing?' Plutarch tells this in his life of Sulla.

Ηράκλειον ἅμμα, A Hercules-knot, is found in learned authors for a fastening that is very tight and difficult to undo. Seneca, writing to Lucilius: 'One knot still confronts you - but it is a Hercules-knot.' This is his word for a syllogism which is almost impossible to solve. It will suit people who are bound by very close ties. Its origin is pretty well suggested by Plutarch in his life of Alexander the Great. He records that when Alexander had captured the town of Gordium, Midas' capital, he wished to inspect the famous wagon constructed with admirable skill out of cornel bark. A story was current about this among the barbarians that whoever should undo the knots with which it was made would be the destined ruler of the whole world. Alexander cut them with his sword. Aristobulus tells us that he undid them very easily: it was only necessary to remove the pin that held the yoke to the pole. Ausonius alludes to this when writing to his friend Paulinus: 'I must say, you are more obstinate than Alexander of Macedon, who cut through the straps of that yoke of destiny when he could not undo the knots, and entered the Pythia's cave which was absolutely forbidden.' Again, when writing to the same friend in verse: 'More swiftly, I think, was Pella's king able to part the thongs of that yoke of destiny, though the ends were hidden and the beginning of both knots concealed.' That the knot which Hercules demonstrated was held to be sacred and traditional by the Ancients is sufficiently clear from what Pliny says in book 28, chapter 6 of his History of the World: 'And to bandage wounds with a Hercules-knot remarkably increases the speed of healing. Even ordinary girdles fastened with such a knot are said to have some sort of beneficial effect.' Festus Pompeius shows that there was a custom in early times for a bride on her wedding night to wear a woollen girdle fastened with a Hercules-knot, which was loosed by the groom in the marriage-bed for good luck, that he too might be fortunate in begetting offspring; for Hercules left behind him seventy children. Athenaeus, book 11, records that the people of Heraclea in Boeotia were distinguished by this emblem from the rest, 'because above the ears they wore what is called a Hercules-knot.' In the same sense Cicero uses trabalis clavus, a nail such as would fix a beam, in his seventh speech against Verres: 'And to establish this good deed, as they say, with such nails as would fix a beam, he investigated with his council the case of the Mamertines.' Horace too speaks of these enormous nails.

Πάλαι ποτ᾽ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Mιλήσιοι., The Milesians were valiant in days of yore. This iambic line was used as a bitter comment on those who had fallen from their original eminence or belied the standards of their ancestors. In a word, it will fit all those who have ceased to be what they once were and gone downhill, the old, the poor who used to be rich, the private person who once held sway, the obscure man who once had a reputation. Different accounts are given by the Greeks of the origin of the proverb. Some say that the Milesians were once such famous warriors that they conquered anyone they might choose to attack. So Polycrates the tyrant of Samos, when about to enter on a war, decided to invite the Milesians to join him as allies, and consulted the oracle on the subject. The reply he got from the god was The Milesians were valiant in days of yore.' Others produce a different story. The Carians were preparing to make war against some other people, and had decided to seek the help of the most powerful of their neighbours; some thought they should send for the Milesians, others that they should come to an arrangement with Persia. So they consulted Apollo on the point, and he replied with the line that I have quoted. After the oracle had spread over the whole of Asia, the Milesians almost to a man were killed in an attack which they had launched against the Persians. So the oracle passed with irony into a proverb. Others again say that the Carians, who were at war with Darius, followed an ancient oracle which advised them to seek the help of the most powerful, and set off for Branchidae to ask the god of that sanctuary whether they ought to get help from the Milesians. The god replied that the Milesians were valiant in days of yore, which evidently meant they were now unwarlike and softened by luxurious living. But this theory is refuted by Zenodotus on chronological grounds; for this line, he says, is to be found in Anacreon, who flourished in the days of Cyrus king of Persia, who was succeeded by Darius at two removes. Consequently Angelo Poliziano thinks it better to refer it to the softening of the Milesian character by luxury, as Athenaeus also does in book 12 of his Doctors at Dinner. The adage is used more than once by Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'On top of this he also brought them word, / Miletus valiant was in days of yore.' This is put in the mouth of a young man who once, when he was young, had courted an older woman for her money; and now she invites him to return, and he is rich and she old and worn-out, and he scorns her. He makes another allusion in the Wasps, poking fun at old men: 'O you who once were valiant in the dance, valiant in battle, and in accord with this, most pugnacious of men, all this was true of old; but now it is all over, and you are whiter in the head than swans.' Aristophanes in the Frogs disapproves of 'Milesian coverlets' as luxurious and effeminate things. It is also used by Synesius in a letter to a woman called Philosophos, saying that he was reduced to calamity from his original good fortune.

Ἦμεν Τρῶες, We Trojans have ceased to be. This fashion of speaking is so commonly met with in Greek tragedy, that it passed virtually into an adage, when they wish to convey that someone has perished. Euripides in the Hecuba: 'I too have ceased to be.' Sophocles in the Electra: 'Alack, I'm done for; I have ceased to be.' Virgil imitates this in the second book of the Aeneid: 'We Trojans are no more, nor Ilium nor the surpassing glory of the Teucrians,' and again in another passage: 'And fields where Troy once stood,' to convey that it is now extinct. The same sense is expressed in another metaphor by Ovid in book 2 of the Tristia: 'I too was once in flower; that flower soon faded. /I was like fire in stubble, soon put out.' There is a phrase of the same species in Terence's play Heautontimorumenos: 'Not have, dear Chremes: had,' as though to indicate that the son is no more. And another in the Rudens of Plautus: 'O that sad word, that worst of words: J hadY Besides which there is Cicero's famous utterance about the conspirators who had been executed: 'All over,' to convey that they had been put to death. This form of phrase is supposed to have passed into circulation from the words of a very ancient Spartan chorus, which is mentioned by Plutarch in his essay 'On Inoffensive Self-praise,' and referred to by Diogenianus also in his collection of Greek adages. This chorus was made up by three rows of singers in a circle, old men, boys, and young men. The old men's words were 'We too were valiant young men in our time.' Then the boys sang: 'And we shall be far better in the future.' Then the young men followed with 'But we are now. Look, if you want to know.' This triple choir, called a trichoria, was established in Sparta by Tyrtaeus, in accordance with the three stages of human life: boyhood the entrance, manhood the forward progress, old age the way out.

Πυραύστου μόρος, The death of a fire-worm, was used of those who court their own destruction; for Zenodotus describes the fire-worm as an insect that flies into lamps, and thus singes its wings, falls down, and dies. He cites this line from Aeschylus: 'I greatly fear the fire-worm's foolish death.' Aelian gives the same account of the fire-worm in book 12 of his work On the Nature of Animals, and quotes the same passage from Aeschylus. Pliny, book 11 chapter 36, also speaks of the fire-worm: 'Some things,' he says, 'are actually produced by the converse element in nature. In the copper-smelting furnaces in Cyprus, for instance, a four-footed creature with wings, the size of a fairly large fly, can be seen flying in the heart of the flames. It is called a pyralis and by some a pyrausta,' or, as some manuscripts have it, a pyrotus. 'This lives as long as it remains in the flames, but when it makes a somewhat longer flight and leaves the fire, it falls dead.' This recalls what Aristotle tells us in the third book On Animals of a worm engendered in long-lying snow which, if taken out of the snow, cannot survive. I have seen it myself in the Alps. And if we choose to apply the adage for this purpose, it will also fit what in Greek is called the ocymori, those who die young. Nor would it lose its point if transferred to those who can live happily nowhere except in their own country; and if chance obliges them to live abroad, they find fault with everything.

Κατόπιν τῆς ἑορτης ἥκεις, You have come too late for the feast. Recorded by Diogenianus. Said of those who have missed some important piece of business, because they arrived too late when it was all over. Socrates in Plato's Gorgias: 'Have we come, as the saying runs, too late for the feast, and missed it all?' It is also found in the form 'Too late for the Panathenaea' and 'You have arrived when the Pythia is over.'

Goods given away will soon decay, means that free offers to those who do not ask for them are not well received. This looks like a metaphor from merchants who are apt to have doubts about goods offered unasked by a vendor; they suspect that he is keen to get rid of them. The adage is recorded by St Jerome in his Hebrew Problems: 'There's a familiar proverb' he says 'to the effect that Goods given away will soon decay; and so I too deliberately hold back what I have to say, to make you more eager to hear what I am suppressing.' He uses it again in a letter to a nun called Demetrias. The idea is close to that of Ovid's couplet: What lightly comes, we light and easy hold; What cost us hope and fear, we prize like gold. There is a common saying too, even now, that service freely proffered is usually unwelcome; though this is contradicted by the maxim, a rather neat one: 'Twice welcome what we need, when offered free.'

Ανίπτοις ποσίν ἀναβαίνειν, To enter with unwashed feet, is to attack an important task confidently but without experience, as though in a profane and irreverent attitude of mind. The metaphor comes from the ceremonial of sacrifice, in which the rule was that everything provided must be clean and newly washed. Lucian in his Life of Demonax: 'But he did not enter on this with unwashed feet, as the saying goes,' that is, raw and inexperienced. Again, in the Teacher of Public Speaking, he criticizes those who approach the teacher's task 'with unwashed feet,' meaning, not equipped with a good education. Aeneas the sophist in one of his letters: 'Most men force their way onto this holy ground with unwashed feet, as the saying goes.' Aulus Gellius in the Nights: 'With unwashed feet, as they say, and with unwashed language he criticizes the style of a distinguished author.' Macrobius in book 1 of the Saturnalia: 'They pass by with unwashed feet.' He is thinking of the teachers of literature who ignore the obscure learning concealed in Virgil's poetry. Galen in his Value of Simple Remedies, book 7, calls such people 'uninitiate' and 'profane.' 'It is not perhaps surprising,' he says, 'if some of the uninitiated have actually dared to read the texts of the mysteries. But the writers did not write those books for the profane; nor do I write this for those who have as yet had no practice in the rudiments.' In general, all irreverent, immodest, and offensive language can proverbially be called 'unwashed.'

Ανίπτοις χερσὶν, With unwashed hands, is recorded by Diogenianus in the sense of irreverent and ill-prepared. This too is a metaphor from ritual purity. Hesiod in the Works and Days forbids the offering of a libation to Jove in the morning with hands unwashed: 'Never with hands unwashed in the early light of morning / Offer the glinting wine to Jove and the other immortals.' He also forbids anyone to enter a stream or spring without washing his hands. Hence the frequent mention of the chernips in Homer, a word which by its sound precisely conveys the sense of 'hand-washing,' with which the Ancients always made a propitious start to religious ceremonial, and also to dinners which have a ceremonial element in them. Gregory the Theologian, as they call him, in the apology for his flight into Pontus, connects both phrases: 'With unwashed hands, as the saying goes, and uninitiate feet they force their way into most sacred things.' Gaius in the first book of the Pandects, title De origine juris, writes: 'If it is thought indecent, if I may so put it, for counsel presenting a case in court to set out the facts before the judge with no introduction, how much more improper it will be for those who offer an interpretation to overlook the early stages and make no search for origins, but with unwashed hands, if I may so put it, to proceed at once to the subject-matter of their interpretation.' Either proverb will properly be used of those who plunge into some undertaking full of self-confidence or ignorant of what they ought to know; for instance, anyone who assumes the office of a prince with no equipment of virtue or wisdom or experience of affairs, or sets out to interpret Holy Scripture untaught and unpractised in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and indeed in the whole of Antiquity, without which it is not only foolish but impious to undertake to treat of the mysteries of theology. And yet, outrageous as it is, this is now common practice. Equipped with a few frosty syllogisms and some childish sophistries, where (Heaven help us) do they draw the line? Where do they not lay down the law? What problems are insoluble?
Could they but see the merriment, or rather, the sorrow that they cause to those with some experience of the ancient tongues and of Antiquity, could they see the monstrosities that they produce and the shameful errors into which they fall continually, they would surely be ashamed of their headlong incompetence and return even in old age to the rudiments of a liberal education. Many men come to a right conclusion unaided by the laws of dialectic, to say nothing of the quillets of sophistry. There was sense and wisdom among mortals, even before the idol of these people, Aristotle, was born. No one ever understood another person's meaning without a knowledge of the tongue in which that meaning was expressed. And so St Jerome, when he had decided to interpret Holy Scripture and was determined not to take up such a task with unwashed feet, as the saying goes -I ask you, did he equip his mind with sophistic rubbish? With Aristotelian principles? With nonsense yet more nonsensical than this? Not he. How did he start then? With incalculable efforts he acquired a knowledge of the three tongues. The man who is ignorant of these is no theologian, he treats divine theology with outrage, and with both hands and feet in very truth unwashed he does not take up this most sacred of all subjects, he profanes it and defiles it and outrages it.

Ἀετοῦ γῆρας, An eagle's old age, was used of old men who drank more than they ate. For Pliny, book 10 chapter 3, tells us that eagles die, not of old age or sickness but of hunger, because their upper beak grows to such a disproportionate length that they cannot open their mouths. The eagle therefore in old age can only drink or suck blood from its quarry, although almost none of the birds that have crooked talons drink; only the kestrel and the kite, and they too very rarely. The authority is Aristotle in book 8 of his On the Nature of Animals. But the same author in book 9, after giving much the same account of the eagle's beak as Pliny, adds that there is a myth attached to this, to the effect that this happened to the eagle in return for outrage done to a guest long ago when it was a man. Terence in the Heautontimorumenos: T saw the eagle's old age that they tell of.' The speaker is Syrus, and he compliments his master on a strenuous feat of drinking at a party the day before. Love of the bottle is almost a special characteristic of old men, either because nature requires to make up for the cold of that period of life with the warmth in the wine, or cheerfulness induced by the wine lessens the troubles of the aged. Hence Plato too, though he entirely forbade the young to drink and allowed grown-up men very moderate potations, permitted much greater indulgence to the aged. A further reason why old age should drink more wine is given by Alexander of Aphrodisias in his Problems, the fourth from the end, where he says that advancing years reduce the bodily heat, and wine both moistens and warms at the same time. Hence it is also commonly called 'old men's milk.' It is said 'old Cato oft his valiant heart / With wine would cheer' - so Horace tells us.

Ἀετου γῆρας, κόρδου νεότης, The old age of an eagle equals the youth of a lark. Used of a vigorous and green old age, which is better than some people's youth. For an aged eagle beats a small bird like the lark even in its prime of life. Euripides expresses this without allegory in the Andromache: 'A man of spirit, be he ne'er so old, / Is better far than many younger men.'

Κάμηλος καὶ ψωριῶσα, πολλῶν ὄνων ἀνατίθεται φορτία., A camel, even with the mange, bears the same load as many donkeys. Used of those who are so much more use than certain other people that even when old or disabled in some other way, they can do more than the others do in good health. Or of men who, when things go wrong with them, can yet do more with what's left of their former fortunes than other men whose position is untouched. This is used by Synesius.

Παλινῳδειν, To sing a palinode, is to say the opposite of what you said before and adopt the contrary opinion. The source is an anecdote about Stesichorus the lyric poet which is recounted by Plato in the Phaedrus. He had written scandal in one of his poems about Helen, after which he lost his sight; but when he learnt the cause of his blindness, Achilles having been sent by Helen to tell him (as Pausanias informs us in his book on Sparta), he at once sang a palinode, praised Helen whom he had previously vilified, and so recovered his sight. Socrates says jokingly that he wishes to follow Stesichorus' example, and sing a palinode for his abuse of the god of love, before he loses his eyesight. The Greek word palinodia means 'singing backwards' or 'unsinging'; in Latin it might be recantatio. This is the word used by Horace in the Odes, when he promises a palinode to the girl whom he had assailed with scandal in another poem:
If you resume the lover's part,
While I my former taunts recant,
And give me back once more your heart.
St Augustine writing to Jerome: 'Adopt therefore, I beg you, the honourable and truly Christian spirit of severity tempered with charity, correct and emend that work, and as the saying goes, sing your palinode.' Then, alluding to the story of Stesichorus: 'For Truth as we Christians know her is incomparably more beautiful than any Helen known to the Greeks, and our martyrs have fought for her more bravely against this Sodom than ever the Greek heroes fought for Helen against Troy. I say this with no idea that the eyes of your heart should recover their sight, which heaven forbid they should ever have lost, but that you should turn them on the object; for though they are healthy and wide awake, from some desire for concealment you have turned them aside.' To which Jerome replies as follows: 'But if you reject what I said at close quarters and ask me to defend what I have written and compel me to correct it and challenge me to a palinode and give me back my sight, all this is a breach of our friendship.' But on the subject of this palinode Augustine himself almost sings one later on, writing to Jerome to say that his adding of the reference to Stesichorus was not so much scholarly as foolish. I also think it was arrogant to write such a letter to a man so much more learned than himself; but one can forgive this in an African, a young man, and a bishop. Cicero writing to Atticus: 'You may expect a splendid palinode.' This adage was used by John Chrysostom specifically as a proverb. So also Plato in his third letter to Dionysius.

To turn one's sails about is to change one's opinion for its opposite and reverse one's way of life. Horace in the Odes: 'Backwards I now must turn my sails perforce, / Again retracing my abandoned course.' The metaphor is taken from sailors, who correct an error in navigation by turning their sails. Persius in his fifth satire changes the image to some extent when he uses 'to pull in the rope' for adopting the opposite of one's former principles: 'Withdraw concessions and pull in the rope.'

Συγγνώμη πρωτοπείρῳ, Let a beginner off lightly, is recorded by Diogenianus. We should be ready to forgive the unskilled who are starting to operate in some unfamiliar field, if they make a mistake through inexperience. Chrysostom expresses this view somewhere in a homily: 'We all forgive the man who makes a mistake at the outset through inexperience.' It sometimes takes the form, Pardon for a first offence. Pindar in his Hymns says that 'two offences bring troubles in their train,' because the man who goes wrong twice ought not to escape punishment. I have recorded elsewhere To stumble twice on the same stone. Celsus in the first book of the Pandects, title De legibus et senatu: 'For the law ought to be adapted to things which happen both often and easily, rather than to those which rarely come about; for legislators, as Theophrastus says, make light of things that happen once or twice by chance.' Theophrastus' opinion in Greek runs 'For what happens once or twice is overlooked by lawgivers.'

Εὔρϊπος ἄνθρωπος, Man's a Euripus, is to be used of those who are changeable and of no settled character. It will also be suitable for changes of fortune, which sweeps mortal affairs to and fro in a sort of tide, so that Plautus put it rightly in the Captivi: 'We men are the gods' tennis-balls.' The image is taken from the prodigious speed with which the Euripus ebbs and flows, the Euripus being that part of the sea that lies between Aulis, a port in Boeotia, and the island of Euboea, which is mentioned by Strabo in book 9 and by Pliny in book 2. 'Yet among tides' says Pliny 'some have a nature of their own, like those of the Euripus of Taormina, which change frequently, and the Euripus of Euboea, which change seven times, every twenty-four hours.' So rapid is the change that, as we learn from Pomponius Mela, the tide carries with it the wind and even ships in full sail. Nor has an adequate cause for this astonishing phenomenon yet been thoroughly investigated by writers on the subject, though Livy in book 8 of his work On the Second Punic War thinks the water is swept along by certain winds which blow in those parts. Seneca in his Hercules on Oeta:
Changeful Euripus bends its wandering waves;
Seven times it turns them back, and seven times forward,
Ere Sun in Ocean steeps his weary rays.
Boethius too: 'Swept like Euripus with its boiling tides.' Cicero in the Pro Plautio: 'Does any tidal strait, do you suppose, does Euripus itself know such commotions, such great and varying disturbances, such reversals, such breakers as our system of elections with its upheavals and its tides?' Aeschines accuses Demosthenes of changing sides so often that he had outdone Euripus itself in unreliability; whence comes a Greek word for an untrustworthy man, euripistos. Gregory the Theologian in a letter to Sophronius, master of the horse: 'You see how we are placed, and how we are carried round by the turning wheel of human affairs, as now one party now another flourishes and decays, so that neither prosperity nor adversity, as they say, lasts for us very long, but all shifts and changes rapidly into its opposite, so that it is better to put one's trust in the winds and in words written in water than in human felicity.' These words give an eloquent picture of the Euripus that is our human predicament. One also finds τύχη εὐριπος for 'fortune is changeable,' because it is the most instable thing there is, and εὔριπος διάνοια, 'thought is a Euripus,' because thought flows rapidly now this way and now that.

Ενδυμίωνος ὕπνου καθεύδεις, You sleep Endymion's sleep, will suit people who grow fat by indulging excessively in sleep, or those who are very idle all day and never occupy themselves in business of any kind but live a soft and leisurely existence. It arose from the very familiar story of Endymion. Endymion was a very handsome boy, and the Moon fell in love with him. For his benefit, she asked her father Jove to grant him a wish that should come true, and he wished that he might sleep forever, and remain immortal and unageing. This adage is used by Aristotle in the tenth book of the Ethics, who infers that idleness is inappropriate for the gods, nor does any other activity seem worthy of them, except contemplation. Furthermore, as all men are agreed that the gods are alive, it follows that they must also do something; 'since it is not right' he says 'for them to sleep, like Endymion in the story.' Cicero in book 5 of the De finibus, arguing that chief among the qualities implanted in us by nature is the urge to be up and doing, says that 'even if we thought we should enjoy the most delightful dreams, we should not want to be endowed with Endymion's sleep, and in fact if it did befall us, we should think it like death.' Again in his Tusculan Questions, book one: 'Though those who make death out to be a lighter burden would have it that death is very like sleep. As though any man would be willing to live for ninety years, if it was a condition that once he had finished sixty years he should sleep the rest of the time. Pigs, even, would not like that, let alone the man himself. There is always Endymion, if we are ready to listen to myths, who fell asleep, I know not when, on Latmos, which is a mountain in Caria, and has not yet, I fancy, woken up.'

Υπὲρ τὸν Ἐπιμενίδην κεκοίμησαι, You sleep longer than Epimenides, will be used of men who are permanently idle. The tale of Epimenides the Cretan theologian is to be found in the Attic Nights, and also in Diogenes Laertius. He once went for a walk, and when he grew tired, entered a cave and there fell asleep; nor did he wake up until forty-seven years had elapsed. Pliny mentions this in book 7, chapter 52, in these words: 'This is pure fable, and I myself put the story of Epimenides the Cretan in the same class, who is said to have been tired out when a boy by heat and exercise and to have slept in a cave for fifty-seven years. After which he woke up under the impression it was next day, and was much surprised by what he saw and how much things had changed. After that, he lived for the normal span of time and became an old man; but even so he reached his one hundred and fifty-seventh year.' Lucian in his Timon: 'For you have slept longer than Epimenides.' If there is any truth in Pythagoras' doctrine of the transmigration of souls, there can be no doubt that the soul of this theologian Epimenides has migrated into our sophistical theologians, who have brought so many empty dreams into the world that two hundred years' unbroken sleep would hardly suffice for them.

Columella in his Agriculture writes as follows: 'All farming operations must be performed energetically, and above all sowing. There is an old farming proverb to the effect that an early sowing is often disappointing but a late one never fails to go wrong.' So Columella. The lesson of the adage is that, whatever the business, we should act promptly and that it is far better to anticipate the proper time than to start late. If, for instance, one had to point out that a child should be entrusted to the tutors who are to educate him while he is still of tender years; for it is wiser to start too early than to wait till he is older and not begin till then.

Λιμὸς Μηλιαῖος, A Melian famine. Of severe famine and other extreme hardships, Melus being a town in Thessaly besieged by Nicias the Athenian general, and taken not by siege-engines but by starvation. So roughly Suidas, who also gives it in the form λιμῷ Μηλίῳ,, By Melian famine. The story of this is told by Thucydides in his fifth book. The proverb is found in Aristophanes, in the Birds: 'You will destroy the gods by Melian famine.'

The famine at Saguntum became proverbial in the same way. The story is mentioned by Livy, by Valerius Maximus, and by Cicero in the Philippics. Saguntum is a town in Spain near the river Ebro, which was bound to the Romans by alliance and a formal treaty. After a prolonged siege by the Carthaginians, famine reduced it to such desperate straits that the citizens built a great pyre in the market-place, threw onto it all their most precious possessions, and finally cast themselves and their children into the flames, that they might not fall into the hands of the enemy. Ausonius: 'From this Saguntine famine let a sausage rescue me.' In Greek, violent and insupportable hunger, such as might make a man faint away, is called a bulimy, and a similar verb is used of those who faint, especially from hunger. Aristotle in his Problems, section 8 number 4, asks why it is that men suffer more from bulimy (he uses the verb I refer to) in cold weather and in the winter months. And what Aristotle calls bulimy Theodorus renders as hunger like a dog's. There used to be an old custom in Greece of driving hunger out of the house with sticks, with cries of 'Out with you, hunger; in with wealth and health.'

Λιμοῦ πεδίον., Famine field is used of cities which are under severe pressure from famine; but there is an actual place with that name. They say too that once, when famine there was causing great distress, an oracle told the Athenians to make their peace with the famine-god in an appointed place with certain special sacrifices. They appointed a field which lies behind the Treasury, and so it has been called Famine Field ever since.

Ελέφαντα ἐκ μυίας ποιεῖς., You make an elephant out of a fly, that is, you use big words about little things and exaggerate them. Lucian in his Panegyric on the Fly: 'There is much more that I could say, but I will stop there, for fear of seeming, as the proverb has it, to make an elephant out of a fly.' This might be thought to come from Homer, who among the battles of gods and heroes describes the indomitable spirit of the fly, comparing with it an invincible and valiant warrior, Menelaus in Iliad 17. St Augustine too in his book against the Manichees On Duality in the Soul does not hesitate to set a fly above the sun in value, one being a living creature and the other inanimate.

Ελέφας μῦν οὐχ ἁλίσκει., The elephant does not catch mice. A noble and lofty spirit disdains worthless prey and small returns; a scholar of distinction does not pursue cheap hacks, the apes of men of letters; a powerful man does not resent the petty injuries done him by the poor and weak. This adage is used in our own day absurdly enough by those dabblers in philosophy and theology, when they have taken a fall from their scandalous ignorance of Latin and Greek, as they constantly do. 'The eagle' they say 'does not catch flies,' as though they were the eagles, as they spout their sophistical rubbish, or as though a knowledge of the ancient tongues were not part, indeed the greatest part, of scholarship.

Αετὸς θρίπας ὁρῶν, An eagle confronted with a thrips, of great men who disdain small things. The thrips is some sort of very small bird, which the eagle with its very keen sight detects but does not deign to pursue, regarding it as prey unworthy of its talons. This at least is what I find in the Greek collections, but I suspect it is not right, for I find a thrips to be a sort of small worm.

Εκ τριχὸς κρεμᾶται., It hangs by a hair, of something in very great peril. It looks as though it arose from the story of Dionysius the tyrant and the sword that hung over the man's head by a single hair. Persius alludes to this in his third satire: 'The naked sword from golden ceiling hung / Did more affright that neck in scarlet clothed.' There is a line cited from the third book of Ennius' Annals by Macrobius in his Saturnalia, book 1: 'This night shall all Etruria hang by a single thread,' meaning that it will be at the greatest risk. This is one of the commonest expressions in popular use today. Synesius in one of his letters: 'And life, they say, hangs by a fine thread.' Here belongs that truly Laconic comment recorded by Plutarch in his 'Sayings of Spartans.' Someone was speaking very highly of an Aeginetan called Lampes as being by far the richest man in the world because he owned so many ships; to which a Spartan replied 'I don't think much of prosperity that hangs by ropes,' suggesting of course that a shipowner's wealth is risky and exposed to the vagaries of fortune.

A proverbial line from the Epistles of Horace, which can be used against those who carry effrontery to such crazy lengths that they are not afraid to deny what is generally accepted and to maintain that manifest falsehoods are certainly true, who in fact will say anything rather than be seen to lose an argument. Plato introduces a character like this in the sophist Euthydemus, who says that a dog was his father and indeed everybody's father, and that everyone knows everything; and stoutly maintains other monstrosities of the same sort rather than be defeated. Horace's line goes as follows: 'Olive no kernel hath, nor nut no shell.' All sane people of course agree that the walnut has a hard shell and the fruit of the olive contains a hard stone. In fact it is a waste of time to discuss anything with the sort of men who 'call light darkness and darkness light,' as the inspired poet-prophet puts it. Something similar is produced by Galen On the Virtue of Simple Remedies, book 2; some, he says, cited Anaxagoras as authority for the statement that snow is not white. His words run as follows: 'And some of them actually summon Anaxagoras as a witness, he having stated of snow that it is not white.'

Ζεὺς ἄγονος., Jupiter childless. When a man makes a statement which is manifestly false. It is well known that Jupiter had a very great many children, being of all the gods far the most devoted to the female sex and very lecherous; in fact, that he did not get children with one part of his body only, but produced Bacchus from his thigh and Pallas from his brain.

Εν θαλάσσῃ ζητεῖς ὕδωρ, You seek water in the sea, you look for it exactly as though it was hard to find, in the very place where there is nothing else to be seen, as one might hunt for one or two faults in the behaviour of a notorious rascal, whose whole life is contaminated, or search for a few points to object to in illiterate authors, in whom everything is objectionable. Martial, if I remember right: 'You seek water in the sea.' Propertius too in the first book of his Elegies: 'But now / Witless you seek for water in midstream.'

Ποταμὸς θαλάττῃ ἐρίζεις., You are only a river striving with the sea. When little men start to compete with great men. There is a place (so Suidas tells us) in the Leontid tribe called Potamoi (literally Rivers), the inhabitants of which are called Potamians (as it might be Riverines). These people were criticized for admitting to their citizenship a large number of persons for whom their city had no proper room. Hence a proverbial jest to the effect that, though only a River, not (that is) a very spacious place, it was trying to rival the sea by accepting new arrivals from all quarters.

One stammerer better understands another, that is, one barbarian understands what another barbarian is saying. By a natural dispensation, a man who stammers - who has, that is, an impediment in his speech - finds it easier to understand another sufferer from the same disability than a man whose speech is straightforward and articulate. This will be applied neatly to ignorant people, to whom ignorant writing is more familiar and acceptable. St Jerome uses this adage in criticizing the folly of a certain monk, in language equally humorous and scathing. 'And his reason' he says 'for thinking himself a good scholar is that he alone can understand Jovinian. There is of course an old saw, One stammerer better understands another.' So Jerome; and elsewhere he is very witty at the expense of Jovinian's style as full of monstrosities and excessively obscure, in the preface to the books in which he refuted Jovinian's errors.

To proffer grass, as a phrase for acknowledging the winner and confessing oneself beaten, is to be met with freely in good authors. In origin (Festus Pompeius is our authority) it was 'a characteristic of the life led by shepherds,' because it was the ancient custom for the loser in a race or any other form of contest to pluck some grass immediately from the actual spot and offer it to the winner as a sign that he knew he was beaten. Pliny, book 22 chapter 4, when speaking of the wreath of grass awarded for the raising of a siege: 'The wreath awarded was made from green grass plucked from the place where the recipient had delivered those who were besieged. For the chief token of victory in ancient times was for the vanquished to proffer grass, which indicated that they were giving up their claim to the ground, the very earth which had borne them, and the right to be buried in it. This custom' he says T know to be still valid in Germany.' Again, in book 8 chapter 5, of the elephant: 'It has an astonishing sense of shame: when defeated, it shuns the sound of its conqueror's voice, and offers him earth and plucked herbs.' The adage will gain in point if transferred to victory in the field of literature.

Using a similar figure, Horace writes 'to put one's hands up' for to confess oneself beaten; for those who surrender to the man who has defeated them to avoid being killed voluntarily hold out their hands to be shackled. Horace in the Epodes: 'Hands up, I yield to your o'ermastering skill.' Cicero in his dialogue On Friendship: 'In the end let him hold his hands up and admit that he is beaten.' This becomes more elegant if referred to the things of the mind. There are kinds of men who never admit they are beaten in argument, even when they haven't a leg to stand on. They are thus described by Galen in book 2 of his On the Natural Faculties: 'But when a man who has no sense of shame continues the struggle and refuses to admit that he is down, he is like one of those unskilled wrestlers who, when they have been thrown by the wrestling-master and are lying on their backs on the ground, are still so far from admitting the fall that they continue to hold those who have thrown them by their necks, refusing to let them go, and think this is evidence that they have not been beaten.'

Those who take a mere sample of some art, or of some author, casually and as it were in passing, are said to taste it 'like a dog drinking out of the Nile.' This adage took its rise from a witty remark which is recorded by Macrobius in book 2 of the Saturnalia, and goes as follows. After his rout at Modena, people were asking what Antony was up to, and some friend of his replied 'He's like a dog in Egypt, drinking on the run.' For in those parts it is well known that dogs have to keep running while they drink, in terror of being seized by a crocodile. Solinus says they drink only on the run, for fear of being caught.

To throw away one's spear is used by Cicero in his speech Pro Murena to express the loss of faith in one's cause and a readiness to quit the struggle. It is a metaphor from the army. Anyone who throws away his weapons in a battle has lost hope, and is either looking for a way of escape or waiting for death. Greek uses a single word rhipsaspides for frightened men and those who take to their heels in battle, from two words meaning throw away and shield. Demosthenes earned this as a nickname in some battle, being as cowardly in war as he was invincible in the assembly. Cleonymus is called aspidapobles, shield-shedder, by Aristophanes in the Wasps. Plato in book 12 of the Laws says that rhipsaspis is the most discreditable name one can be given.

Related to these is To leave the arena, for giving up the struggle and freely admitting defeat. It is a metaphor from the combats between gladiators. So too Horace: 'The Scythian now unbends his bow / And thinks to leave the field.'

To descend into the arena, for to enter on a contest, is another image derived from the combat of gladiators in the arena, to which Horace refers when he writes of continually 'begging the public from the arena's edge' for leave to retire. If that group of phrases is transferred to the things of the mind, the resulting metaphor will have proverbial status. Examples are so ready to hand that I have not thought it necessary to spend my time and delay my reader in recording them. Pliny has 'my arena' in his letters for 'my sphere of action,' for he writes in these words to Fabatus: 'So I will do everything I can for Beticius Priscus, especially in my own proper arena, by which I mean the centumviral court.'

I have belaboured the south wind, that is, I have wasted my labour. This occurs in the Epidicus of Plautus, and Paul did not disdain to use it as a proverbial expression in his epistles; for the man who beats the air finds it gives way before his blows and makes a mock of them. This can be derived, it seems, either from gladiators practising their skill who brandish their swords in the air, or from the story referred to by Aulus Gellius of a certain tribe which fought a war against this wind.

To know a man by sight is to have a slight acquaintance with him, such as you might have with someone whom you have seen only two or three times and never been on familiar terms with. When transferred metaphorically to the things of the mind it will gain in elegance. Cicero in the In Pisonem: 'This is a characteristic of true virtue, which you do not know even by sight,' that is, not even superficially.

An expression very close to the last is used by Cicero in one of his Letters to Atticus, in book 2: 'Poor wretched fool, who has never glimpsed even a shadow of what is right!' Plutarch in his essay 'On Having Many Friends' quotes Menander as calling a man happy who has even the shadow of a friend. And in Athenaeus a lickspittle guest called the sour black loaves that had been brought to the dinner-table 'shadows of loaves,' as though they were the ghost of bread rather than its substance. Though it looks more as though the adage came from ancient painting, which represented objects crudely by the use of shading only. And everyone has heard of Plato's cave, in which those who sit there are beguiled by the shadows of things.

This is very like that other phrase of Horace's in the Satires: 'Up runs a man I knew by name alone.' For this is another proverbial expression used by ordinary people to indicate a casual and ordinary acquaintance with someone. And it will be even more effective if transferred to things of the mind; for instance, if one were to say that a man knew philosophy scarcely even by name.

These phrases too have a proverbial ring, especially when applied to abstract things: 'At first sight' and 'On the face of it,' used when you see something for the first time, before you study it more closely and attentively. For that first glance is often deceptive, and sometimes a kind of shyness in the face of novelty blurs our vision. Then, as we look at the object repeatedly, we perceive certain features which we had missed before, and we withdraw, as it were, the judgment which our eyes first formed. This adage is in frequent use in Latin literature, especially in Quintilian, book 12. Papinian in book 12, title De condictione sine causa: 'The claim for restitution seems at first sight to fall to the ground.' Again in book 16, title Ad senatusconsultum Velleianum: 'When someone undertakes an obligation which at first sight is another man's, but in reality is his,' and in several further passages. Celsus in book 22, title Deprobationibus, chapter Quingenta: 'At first sight it seems more equitable that the claimant should prove what he puts forward etc'

To be known both inwardly and in the buff is to be familiar in every aspect, equivalent to 'well-known inside and out.' Persius: 'Away with trappings; they are for the mob. /I know you inwardly, close to the skin.' Deceive other men, if you like, that is, I know you too well, and you cannot fool me. We use the words 'surface skin' of the upper layer of something, what you see first. Ausonius in the preface to his Homeric Summary: 'This aspect of it is clear to anyone who looks at the surface skin of the opening work.' And Horace: 'Ugly within, / For all the beauty of that dappled skin.'

A similar image is used by Lucian in the Pseudologista: 'To a free man who knew you well at home.' This will be more effective if transferred to things of the mind; if one were to say, for instance, that somebody knew just what rhetoric was like at home. That phrase of Pliny's is similar, in a letter to Attius Clemens: 'When I was a young man and serving in the army in Syria, I got to know him well and in his home context.'

Pretty well the opposite of this is A limine salutare, To greet from the threshold. This too will gain greatly in elegance if diverted to incorporeal things; if a man were said, for instance, to have only greeted theology from the threshold, who has spent neither much time nor much trouble on it, but only sampled the rudiments. Seneca in letter 49: 'Nor do I deny that one should glance at the subject, but it should be a glance, one should greet it from the threshold.' He speaks of the niceties of dialectic, with which he thinks a passing acquaintance is enough. The metaphor comes from those casual friends who are not admitted into the more intimate part of the house, but offer their greeting at a distance and from the threshold, and then depart.

To taste with the tip of one's tongue is to take a brief sample of something. The image derives from those who taste food or drink and swallow none of it. Cicero in the Pro Caelio: 'Personally I have both seen and heard many in this city who had not merely tasted this kind of life with the tip of the tongue.' Again, in On the Nature of the Gods, book 2: 'As for the man who said the world would be immortal, do you suppose he had tasted natural philosophy with the tip of his tongue? I mean an understanding of nature's workings.' Quintilian in book 12: 'But I pass over this point, about which I cannot think that anyone who has, as they say, tasted literature with the tip of his tongue, can have the slightest doubt.' Procopius the sophist in one of his letters: 'Again, I was angry with her giving us a taste of such a great thing with the tip of her finger, as they say, and then faking away the pleasure.' In these words there is one new expression, where he attributes a sense of taste to the fingers, unless he meant that those who are lightly sampling something bring it to their tongue to taste with the tip of a finger.

With the tip of the lips, is used rather differently in Greek, when a man puts up a pretence in words only and takes no action from his heart. Lucian in the Apologia: 'Playing the philosopher with the tip of the lips.' Again in the Amatory Dialogues: 'Keeping their oaths on the tip of their lips.' He speaks of lovers, who swear an oath to their beloved without really meaning it. Seneca, book 1 chapter 10: 'Those words did not come only from the lips; there is something solid behind them.' In the same way St Jerome, writing to Rusticus the monk, says 'that we should not invite our friends casually or in a moment of enthusiasm or, as they say, with the tip of the lips.' This is a habit with some courtiers and civil lawyers, to make enormous promises, and in those great solemn words which have no effect on anyone except a perfect fool.

Close to this is Extremis attingere digitis, To touch with the fingertips, for to touch lightly, which will only look like an adage if metaphor is added. Cicero in the passage which I have just cited: 'Personally I have both seen and heard many in this city who had not merely tasted this kind of life with the tip of the tongue and touched it, as the saying goes, with the fingertips, but had devoted their whole youth to pleasure, and yet rose above it eventually and returned, as they say, to worthy causes.' In Greek the expression is τῳ ἄκρῳ ἅψασθαι δακτύλῳ, To touch with the tip of your finger. So Basil in his letters: 'I know it myself, though only with the tip of my finger, having enjoyed the honey-sweet hospitality of your church last year.' The metaphor seems to be drawn from wrestlers, for Greek has a word ἀκροχειρίζεσθαι for fighting someone with the fingertips only without engaging the rest of the body. Lucian in his Life of Demonax: 'Nor had he touched it, as they say, with his fingertips.' Euripides uses the hyperbolical expression with no colouring of metaphor in the Iphigeneia in Aulis: 'Nor shall king Agamemnon touch your daughter, / Even with the fingertips.'

Πλέον ἥμισυ παντός., The half is more than the whole. A riddling proverb, which recommends the golden mean. It is quoted and explained by Plato in the Laws, book 3: 'Was it not because they failed to understand that Hesiod was speaking excellent sense when he said that the half is often more than the whole? Whenever to take the whole is detrimental but to take half is reasonable, then he thought the reasonable was more than the unreasonable, one being better and the other worse.' The scholiasts on Hesiod explain him in the same way: the whole represents greed and the half is fair shares; for he who is content with half takes his stand on the mean, while he who goes on to take the whole passes beyond the mean and must inevitably end in excess. He mentions the same adage in the fifth book of the Republic. Again, in book 6 of the Laws, where he is making clear the great importance to a community of entrusting magistracies to outstanding men, he says: 'For in the proverbs it is said that the beginning is half of a whole action, and everyone always praises a good beginning. But, as it seems to me, it is more than half.' Plato plays on the ambiguity of the word, for arche in Greek means both the beginning of something and also first place, office or rule. Pittacus in Laertius, on his retiring of his own free will from the government, was allotted land by the people of Mytilene, but cut it in half (so Sosicrates tells us) on the ground that the half was better than the whole. He also refused money sent him by Croesus saying in his reply that half what he already had would be all he wanted. The lines are to be found in the first book of Hesiod's poem called Works and Days, where he writes as follows to his brother Perses:
Once ere this we divided our heritage, yet you continued
Seizing and bearing away much else, to oblige the princes,
Eaters of bribes, who are fain to settle this lawsuit for us -
Fools, they have never learnt how much more half than whole is,
Nor how great is the blessing that mallow and asphodel offer.
On the nature of asphodel there seems to have been little agreement among ancient scholars; Gellius in book 18 tells us that this question used to be put forward in social gatherings of the learned, as a thing that few understood. Theodoras renders it somewhere by the word albucus. As far as the interpretation of this adage is concerned, we can infer from many passages in Lucian that asphodel was a cheap and common vegetable, and was a staple food among the dead, where luxury and social pretensions are alike unknown. Asphodel appears further in Theocritus, in the seventh idyll, among vegetables eaten by country folk: 'With fleabane and asphodel and curling celery.' And so the poet is criticizing the unbridled luxury of kings and rich men, showing how inferior their splendours are to the moderate life of ordinary folk. Plutarch too in his 'Dinner of the Seven Sages' thinks this passage in Hesiod should be regarded as propaganda for the simple life. Suidas considers the proverb as derived from something that really happened, and supplies an anecdote to the following effect. Once upon a time there were two brothers, one of whom died, leaving the other by his will as a guardian of his son, who was still a minor, and trustee of his estate. However the brother was no better than the common run of men - he cared more for coin than his duty to his family, tried to seize the son's property, and in the process lost both it and his own. Then, when he asked for sympathy in hopes of recovering his position, the answer took the form: 'Fool, he has never learnt how much more half than whole is.' And so kings take half, and tyrants take everything. The proverb can therefore be used in three ways. The first is, when we wish to praise what is so truly called the golden mean, without which there can be nothing in human affairs that is honourable, or enjoyable, or admirable. And this mean we assess by a standard of fitness, such as Pindar thinks of in his imitation of Hesiod: 'In everything there is due measure, and the due time is the best way to discover it.' For it is a question of context: what is too much in one place will be too little in another. Pindar again, in the last hymn in his Nemeans: 'In the search for gain one must pursue the mean; the desire for things unattainable breeds delusions too severe.' A second way to use it will be found when we wish to extol equality, which is according to Pythagoras both parent and nurse of friendship, while inequality is the mother of discord and war, as Euripides eloquently expounds in the Phoenissae:
Better far, my child,
Embrace equality, which binds friend to friend,
City to city and ally to ally.
Equality's the natural source of law;
The less is ever hostile to the greater -
Hence endless discord. But equality
Prescribes for men limits and balances,
And numbers all things. Tis equality
That makes the darkling eyelids of the night
Keep level progress thro' the turning year
With the sun's rays. No jealous loser there,
But day and night alike serve mortal men -
and what follows. The third way of using it will appear when we wish to dissuade someone from inflicting an injury, and argue that it is better, following Plato's opinion, to suffer an injury oneself than to inflict it on another. For that this proverb means that is made clear by Plutarch in his essay 'How to Study Poetry.' And I think a story told by Plutarch about Darius belongs here too. Darius once summoned his provincial governors and asked them whether the taxes were heavy. When they replied that they were moderate, he gave instructions that only half of each assessment should be paid, thinking it better to get half with the goodwill of the provinces than get the lot and be hated by his own people. Even today, perhaps, there are those who mistakenly neglect this proverb. For while some divines and some prelates are absolutely unwilling to abandon one jot of their principles or their legal rights, they run the risk of losing even things they had a perfect right to. In my opinion one should not invariably neglect the advice of Syrus in the comedy:
Before you find yourself faced with the risk,
Either to keep this sum or lose the lot,
Cut it in two,
or, as others read, 'divide it.'

Ὄφεως ὄμμα., A serpent's eye, was customarily used of those who looked at things with very keen and piercing eyes. The metaphor is taken from a living creature. For the serpent has rather tough eyes and very keen sight; hence Horace: 'Why then in your friends' faults so eagle-eyed? / No snake from Epidaurus sees so clear.'

Μὴ κίνει γραμμὴν., Move not the line. The commentator on the Pindaric hymns has to explain the passage 'Such an offer did the Libyan make when he was choosing a fit bridegroom for his daughter: he made her stand upon the line.' He speaks of Antaeus, who set his marriageable daughter as a prize for the young men on the finishing line, so that he who got there first in the race could take her home as his wife. In his explanation he considers a proverb of this form: 'Move not the line,' and supposes it to be a metaphor drawn from the ancient custom of marking the finish of a race by drawing a line, on which was set the prize that the winner could carry off. Another line also was drawn for the starting-point, as I have said elsewhere, from which the race began. Both these lines gave rise to a proverb, 'To start from scratch,' and 'Move not the finishing-line.' The meaning is that one should not alter the laws nor overrun the limits that have been laid down for things. That phrase from the Bucoliastae of Theocritus is specially relevant here: 'And from the line she moves the stone.' He alludes to the river Galatea, carrying off with it some stone or other from the edge of the shore. There is also a 'sacred line' in a board-game, of which I have spoken elsewhere.

To pound continuously at the same anvil is to persevere with untiring persistence in the study of one particular subject. The image comes from blacksmiths, who deliver a rain of blows on the anvil and thus in the end overcome the stubbornness of the iron sooner or later by their unbroken exertions. Cicero in the second book of his De oratore: 'Personally, if I had someone quite untrained and wanted him taught how to speak, I should prefer to entrust him to those untiring characters who pound the same anvil continuously day and night.' This will be appropriate to those who teach the elements of writing and reading, who have endlessly to din into their pupils the same basic teaching, in hopes that one day it will stick.

This line is said by Crassus, the famous orator, to have been so popular that at Terracina it could be seen written up on all the walls. The anecdote which gave rise to the adage runs as follows. A certain Roman by the name of Memmius, while staying in Terracina, fell madly in love with a young woman, but not without a rival. A fight broke out on one occasion between the two of them, and Memmius reached such a pitch of fury that he plunged his teeth into Largius' arm (Largius was his rival's name). This caused great public merriment, and some humorous wags painted up this line on all the walls in Terracina; but they reduced it to five letters, three ls and two ms, with the idea that all new arrivals would be provoked into asking what they meant. When therefore Crassus had occasion to go to Terracina, he was surprised by this new letter-puzzle, and asked some ancient inhabitant what on earth letters like that could stand for. The old man told him the story and unfolded the line Lacerat lacertum Largi mordax Memmius, 'Man-eating Memmius lacerates Largius' limbs.' Cicero mentions this in the second book of the De oratore; though Lucius Caesar, a character in Cicero's book, is of the opinion that the whole story had been deliberately made up by Crassus to discredit Memmius, his political opponent.

Τέττιγος εὐφωνότερος, As noisy as a cricket, was said of a man who never stops talking or who is very musical, because the insect in question, though it lives solely on dew, takes a particular delight in singing. There were people so devoted to music that they forgot to eat and would have died of starvation had not the gods turned them into crickets, as Socrates tells us in Plato in the Phaedrus. So Theocritus in his Daphnis: 'For you sing better than any cricket.' Diogenes Laertius also quotes some lines from Timon on Plato's style:
Their leader was the widest of them all,
A master of sweet words, whose pen could sing
Like any cricket, perching on the trees
Of Hekademe with voice so delicate.
Note that there is an allusion in 'the widest,' platustatos, to the name Plato and in Hekademe to the name of his Academy, which a translator cannot convey. There is also a reference to a line of Homer, in the third Iliad, to the old men who 'utter their delicate voices.' In Athenaeus, book 6, a parasite describes himself as 'a cricket in conversation'; and further on, in book 11, from Theopompus 'the cricket chatters,' though in that passage the wordsseem to convey a favourable omen.