Adagia 901–1000

Antipelargein in Greek means to repay kindness you have received, and especially to look after and cherish those by whom you were at one time raised or taught; for instance, if children were to maintain and cherish their aged parents in their turn or if a pupil were in return to instruct his teacher. It is taken from the natural behaviour of the stork, pelargos in Greek, which is the one great emblem among birds of family affection. There is a law in existence to enforce this affection, the terms of which are that children must maintain their parents or be sent to prison. Homer seems to refer to this in Iliad 4, in the words:
Nor did he repay
The price of nurture to his parents dear.
Few were his years.
Euripides also alludes to it in the Orestes: 'Yet he'd repay his nurture to her that's dead.' This law, then, neglected as it is for the most part even by mortals, is typified by the stork alone among all living creatures. The rest love their parents and acknowledge them for just so long as they need their help to find food; the stork alone feeds its parents in its turn when they are overcome by age, and carries them on its shoulders when they cannot fly. This latter action won praise for Aeneas, and he is called 'pious Aeneas' as a result; the former earned great renown for a young woman who supported her mother in prison for several days on her own milk. This is the reason, as Suidas tells us, why in Antiquity a stork was represented on the upper end of a king's sceptre and a hippopotamus at the lower end, that even the object in his hand might remind him to set the highest value on the natural affections and to hold violence in check. For the hippopotamus is a ferocious and violent creature, devoid indeed of all natural feeling, for it will kill its father and have carnal connection with its mother, as Plutarch records in the essay he calls 'Whether Land or Water Animals are Cleverer.' Vipers too are notorious for their impiety, because at birth they burst their mother's womb; and so are scorpions and spiders which, when they have duly hatched their offspring, are murdered by them. The authority is Aristotle in book 5 On the Nature of Animals. The family feeling of storks is attested by Pliny, book 10 chapter 23, in these words: 'Storks return to the same nest. When their parents are old, they look after them in their turn.' St Basil too puts the stork forward as an example to us of piety towards parents. Crates the Cynic philosopher alludes to it in a letter to his wife Hipparchia when she has borne him a son: he promises to see to it that the child shall be sent back to his mother as a stork and not a dog in her old age. Philosophers of the Cynic school are referred to as 'dogs,' and he means that the boy will show proper affection and cherish his mother in return when she is stricken in years. This filial affection of storks is mentioned by Aristophanes too in the Birds:
There is an ancient law among us birds,
Writ in the code of storks: when once the cock
Has reared his storklets till they all can fly,
The new-fledged storks in turn must feed their father.
Plato too uses it as an example in the First Alcibiades. But no one has made a more elegant and felicitous use of it than Angelo Poliziano, in one of his epigrams: 'Nor is it strange, / If we like storks do cherish her old age,' - if we Latin speakers, that is, who had our schooling from Greek literature so long ago, teach Greece her own literature in return, now that she is old and worn. Moreover, this service which children render to their parents in their turn is expressed in Greek by a compound verb, geroboskein or gerotrophein and gerokomein, to feed, cherish, look after the aged. There is an iambic line of verse to the same effect that runs like this: 'Cherish thy parents and long life is thine.'

'Tenor' is a word for the forward movement of something. Things of the same sort, which follow as though in some kind of continuous series, are said to have a 'uniform tenor.' Cicero in his book on the perfect orator: 'In speaking he keeps what they call an even tenor.' He is thinking of a uniform flow of language which has no variety to refresh the listener's ear. Again in his book on famous orators: 'They have an even tone in speaking and the same style.' In this passage I rather think it may be better to read 'tenor' instead of 'tone.'

'To square things up' was used by Cicero in the same book for reducing them to order and to a proper system. It is derived from those who even up trees or stones with surveying instruments, so that they correspond exactly in all directions; and so, when something is a good fit, we say 'It squares.' Virgil in book 3 of his Georgics:
Give your rows room;
Yet every alley, when your trees are set,
Should square precisely where it cuts the path.

Cicero in his review of distinguished orators uses a metaphor which must surely be proverbial when he speaks of 'draining the dregs,' to express the pursuit of mean, vulgar, and unduly pedestrian things. Atticus turns this proverb against Cicero in the book of which I speak, on the ground that he wasted his time in recording certain obscure speakers who were almost unheard-of. It is borrowed from those mean individuals who drink wine dregs and all, for fear of leaving anything whatever in the cask. Hence too we speak of 'the lowest dregs of the population.'

'To draw into the net' and 'To draw into the toils' is to close in upon someone cunningly in such a way that he no longer has any means of escape. This was a habit with Plato's Socrates: by those innocent questions of his he would reduce the sophists to denying what they had previously asserted and asserting what they had previously denied, until they did not know what they were saying. Quintilian in the fifth book of his Institutiones: 'For they are thrown into confusion, and drawn by the advocates on the other side into a net.' In Greek, people already held captive are called embrochoi. Ovid: 'The prize I sought has fallen into my toils.' Euripides in the Hippolytus: 'Fast held in hanging noose,' and again a little farther on: 'To free my mistress from the tight-strung toils.'

Ἡ βοιωτία ὗς., The Boeotian pig. A very ancient adage which was commonly used in old days to taunt any stupid and uneducated man. Pindar has it in his Olympians: 'Then we escape in very truh that ancient slur, Boeotian pig.' He is telling Aeneas the chorus-master to ensure that his hymn is so well sung as to escape for sound reasons the ancient taunt that used to be levelled at unmusical people, Boeotian pig. The scholiast relates the origin of the proverb as follows. The early inhabitants of the Boeotian region were called Hyantes, and they were barbarous and boorish; so some people, playing on the name, called them Hyes, which is the Greek for pigs. This taunt became proverbial; first it was used of the Boeotians, from whom it spread to any uneducated and uncivilized people of boorish habits, Boeotian pigs. The scholiast cites another passage of Pindar, from his Dithyrambs: 'Time was when they called the people of Boeotia pigs.' He also cites from Cratinus: 'These are they, the Styboeotians, a pedestrian race,' inventing a comic compound name to convey both pig and ox. In the Greek proverbcollections I have found 'A Boeotian wit' for a stupid and brutish person. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Eating of Flesh' suggests that it was the people of Attica who gave the Boeotians the nicknames of stupid, dullard, blockhead, and even pig, mainly because they ate so much. In this Athenaeus, book 10, concurs, citing these lines from Eubulus:
Eating and drinking we our valour show,
In these unflinching, while the Athenians
Are valiant talkers, feeble trenchermen,
Not mighty eaters like the men of Thebes.
In the Greek of these lines it is clear that ponein has been written instead of pinein or piein, and the first men for gar, and toi for hoi. Eubulus again in his Europa: 'Founded a city of Boeotians, / Those manful eaters all the livelong day.' And again from another Eubulus play: 'A true Boeotian he, and no mistake.' This he supports with much evidence from many sources. The faults of over-eating and stupidity are nearly akin, and hence they make out that Hercules, as a Theban, was a heavy eater and at the same time so much averse from education that he killed his teacher. But he too was a Boeotian, having been born in Thebes. Plutarch again in his 'On the Divine Sign of Socrates': 'To revive that ancient reproach against the Boeotians that they hate book-learning'; though Plutarch was himself a Boeotian and stupid is the last thing you could call him. Lastly, it is common knowledge that, as a result either of the very great extension of the Roman empire or of their commercial contacts, ancient words were mixed with the local language in Germany, Gaul, and Britain; and I suspect therefore that we derived from the Greeks the popular use of the word bot, short for Boeotian, to describe a stupid man with no cutting edge to his mind, for it is characteristic of German to contract words of any number of syllables into monosyllables.

Αδύνατα θηρεῖς, You pursue the impossible. Of a man who attempts what he cannot perform. Taken from fowling or hunting, where the quarry is such as you have no means of catching up with. This I should not have listed among adages, had I not found it in the Greek proverb-collections; for, apart from the metaphor that underlies 'pursue,' there is no smack of the proverb about it. As a maxim however it is not without its uses; for if the Greeks are right in laying down that one ought not to attempt anything in which success is doubtful, still less should one try anything in which one is sure to fail. For instance, if one tried to secure peace of mind from riches or ordinary common pleasures, or true learning without a knowledge of the ancient tongues, this would be to 'pursue the impossible.' Pindar in the Nemeans: 'But of empty hopes vain is the issue.' Again in the third hymn of his Pythians: 'But one should ever observe the limit in all things, each man according to his own condition.' The scholiast says this means that a man should not attempt things too hard for him. It is one of the reported sayings of Chilon that you should not attempt what you cannot accomplish; for some schemes are grand but for that very reason useless, because they are impracticable.

Κοσκίνῳ μαντεύεσθαι, To divine by a sieve, is to detect a thing by skilful inference, or to make foolish guesses about things concealed. Lucian in his False Prophet: 'Divining what had happened, as they say, by a sieve.' Theocritus also mentions it in his third idyll: 'Agroeo that divines by a sieve told me the truth.' In fact, this method of divination by shaking a sieve continues among certain superstitious folk to the present day. In Antiquity the future was foretold by sieve, bay-leaf, and tripod.

Ὕδραν τέμνεις, You cut off a hydra's heads, is in Plato's Republic, book 4: 'Not perceiving that in reality they are cutting off a hydra's heads.' To cut off a hydra's heads is to overcome one obstacle only to be faced with many others in its place. The adage takes its rise from the myth of the hydra at Lerna, which some say had a hundred heads, some eight, of which one was immortal. With this monster Hercules had a long and bitter struggle, because when he cut off one head, several heads sprouted in its place. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Fortune of Alexander': 'Cutting off a hydra's heads that always grew again with fresh wars.' He speaks of Alexander, who was faced continually, when one war was finished, with a series of new ones. Cyneas, when he saw how the large population of Rome constantly put fresh forces in the field after every defeat, observed that Pyrrhus seemed to him to be fighting against a Lernaean hydra. Hence Horace in the Odes: 'No hydra, gaining strength from severed heads, / Faced Hercules, that chafed to lose the day.' It will be possible to adapt it to those who are involved in unending lawsuits; for one suit leads to another, and often if one is killed off three take its place. Seneca writes somewhere that the everyday business that calls us away from the pursuit of philosophy can be broken off short but can never be disentangled, because one piece of business generates another and one task another task, as wave succeeds to wave.

'Not a splinter richer,' an exaggeration which became proverbial. It occurs a few times elsewhere in Plautus, and in particular in the Rudens: 'Never shall you find yourself one splinter richer by this day's work,' just as one might say 'one stijver richer' in our modern vernacular. Aristophanes uses the same metaphor in the Lysistrata: 'Leaving nothing here, she did not move a straw,' and again in the Wasps: 'By night he sees not a paspale of sleep,' where the scholiast tells us that paspale means a tiny scrap. Some think the word indicates a magnet. In the same passage he adds a similar metaphor: 'But if he nods his head so much as an achne,' where achne means the very small and light fragments of chaff that fly from ears of corn as they are threshed. Homer too uses the word in Iliad 5: 'And as the wind drives chaff over the sacred threshing-floor.' Experts in Hebrew tell us that [hebrew] which Jerome renders 'dust,' following the Septuagint which has chnoun, has the same meaning in Hebrew as achne has in Greek.

Ἄκαπνος θυσία,, A smokeless sacrifice, of an excessively economical entertainment, in which no cooked food is set before one. Drawn from the offerings of the poor, who tender meal, a bit of incense, milk, or garlands, while the gods are waiting for the well-known savour of burnt-offering that flies up with the smoke, as in Homer. Lucian in his Amores: 'The god is a great eater, Lucian, and takes very little pleasure in what they call smokeless sacrifices.' Athenaeus too uses it in the same sense: 'For we poets always offer smokeless sacrifices.'

Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ, Hippocleides doesn't care, or, if am to reproduce the rhythm, 'All's one to Hippocleides,' for it is a catalectic iambic dimeter. This adage was used to convey that they were neglecting something and not greatly concerned. It is derived from a story told at some length by Herodotus in the Erato. To put it briefly, this Hippocleides was a son of Teisander, who along with many other young men sought the hand of a daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon. Cleisthenes tested the suitors for a whole year, during which there was a party at which Hippocleides gave an unseemly exhibition by dancing on his hands with his feet in the air. The father took great offence at the young man's improper levity, and said: 'Son of Teisander, you have danced yourself out of your marriage.' To which he promptly replied 'Hippocleides doesn't care'; and the remark, as Herodotus tells us, passed into a proverb. Plutarch turned the saying against the author himself, in the essay which he wrote 'Against Herodotus': 'He seems to me like Hippocleides, the man who danced on the dinner-table gesticulating with his legs: after dancing himself out of the truth, he would say Hippocleides doesn't care.' Lucian in his Apologia: 'I should be satisfied with the old saying Hippocleides doesn't care.' And again in the Hercules: Nor will Hippocleides care.' This adage is mentioned by Eustathius too in his commentary on the first book of Homer's Iliad, and Aristophanes referred to it in the Wasps, when he constantly repeats the phrase 'Little I care.'

Η κύων ἐν τῇ φάτνῃ, The dog in the manger, is said of those who neither enjoy something themselves nor allow other people to get any benefit from it; for instance if a man were to keep valuable manuscripts tightly locked up, which he never opens himself nor allows anyone else to read them, just like a dog in a manger that does not eat the barley itself and prevents the horse from eating it. Lucian Against an Ignoramus: 'But you behave like the dog that lies in the manger, neither eating the barley itself nor making way for the horse that could eat it.' He uses it again in his Timon. It is cited by Suidas in his article on the proverb Nothing to do with Dionysus, but no source is named: 'You bring the dog to the manger, and bring forward nothing to do with Dionysus,' that is, you adduce something quite off the point, and of what was relevant to the point at issue you adduce nothing. Athenaeus in book 6 reports something similar of a tribe of Galatians called the Cordistae: they abominate gold and do not import it into their own country, but none the less do not cease to seize gold from other people. This tribe is said to be the remnant of the Gauls who ravaged the oracle at Delphi under their leader Brennus, who were pursued and dealt with mercilessly by their leader Bathanatus. Hence their hatred of gold, for the sake of which they have suffered so much; and yet they grudge it to anyone else.

Αἱροῦντες ᾑρήμεθα, We were made prisoners as we prisoners made, when things go topsy-turvy, and we are taken in ourselves by those whom we were trying to impose upon. It is a common experience to fall into the traps that we had set for others. It often happens that he who pretends to be in love in order to secure a girl's affections begins himself to love her in earnest; the man who tries to make someone else tipsy by constantly offering him liquor ends up drunk himself; the prince who tries to drive a neighbour from his throne loses his own instead. So too Horace: 'Thus captive Greece took her rude victor captive.' Plato seems to have had the same thing in mind when he wrote in the Theaetetus: 'It seems to me, Socrates, that the argument which tries to entrap others is most often trapped.' Sophocles in the Oedipus Coloneus: 'See how while grasping you yourself are grasped, / And while you fish, are caught in fortune's net.' Plautus in the Epidicus: 'Now is the taker taken.' Lucian in his Dialogues of Courtesans: 'I, alas, took her fancy, and at the same time fell into her trap.' A metaphor either from war, or from fishing or hunting.

Lucian puts this with more wit in the Toxaris: 'The hunt was her undoing,' while (that is) she pursued the young man and tried to get him into her toils, she was herself undone. Phrases moreover, such as 'to hunt for praise,''to set traps for fame' are proverbial metaphors, and so is 'to fish for' something, meaning to make enquiries and try to discover it.

Εἰς πάγας ὁ λύκος., The wolf's fallen into the trap. When some rascal is at last reduced to extreme peril. For as the wolf is the most crafty of all living creatures, everyone is delighted if by any chance he is caught in a trap, and they all shout, 'The wolf's in the trap!' Recorded by Zenodotus.

Γέρων ἀλώπηξ οὐχ ἁλίσκεται πάγῃ,, An aged vixen cannot be caught in a trap. An iambic line current as a proverb, applicable to a man who by age and wide experience has become too skilful to be caught in some cunning trap.

Αλώπηξ οὐ δωροδοκεῖται., A fox takes no bribes. Suidas cites Cratinus as the authority for this adage. Used of experienced and wily people, who are not easily taken in by the offer of some modest present or a bit of flattery, or by promises. Gulls and some other birds can be taken with bait; but not foxes. The Greek verb dorodokein, to take bribes, is borrowed from political speeches or law-courts, where some have taken bribes before expressing an opinion.

Αττικὸς εἰς λιμένα, An Athenian entering harbour, used to be applied to those who make a display of heroism where all is safe and it has no point at all. Taken from Athenian sailors who, when about to enter harbour, used to put on a splendid show by way of self-advertisement, but in action, that is, in a sea-battle, were not nearly so energetic.

Αἰξ σκυρία, A she-goat from Scyros. Zenodotus derives both this proverb and its explanation from Chrysippus. It is appropriate for those who spoil some good action by its opposite, or whose good qualities are tainted and thrown into the shade by an admixture of faults, or who begin on the right lines and end wrong. This is like a she-goat in Scyros, which is very wild, and after filling the pail with milk kicks it over, herself undoing in this way the good service she has rendered. Others think it is used of those who are benefactors of their fellow-men, because the she-goats of that part of the world are said to be very heavy milkers. This is stated also by Athenaeus in the first book of his Doctors at Dinner, where he cites this line of Pindar: 'And Scyrian she-goats for the milking best of all.'

When something perfectly monstrous and quite intolerable happened, the Ancients used to say that one should choose a tree and hang oneself. This comes from an attack on Theophrastus the eminent philosopher once published by a courtesan called Leontium. Pliny the elder in the preface to his Natural History: 'As though I were unaware that Theophrastus, a writer so eminent that he achieved an immortal reputation, was attacked in writing by a mere woman, and this gave rise to a proverbial expression that one should choose a tree and hang oneself.' So Pliny; and there is something very like it in Euripides, in the Alcestis: 'Such things call for the knife, or for a noose high as heaven around one's neck.' Plautus in the Curculio: 'She is my prize. Pray go and hang yourself.' Juvenal: 'How can you bear a mistress when ropes are to be had?' And in Plautus a character who was tired of life wishes he had a coin to buy a rope with. When I was about to publish this, in the year 1525, I happened by chance on the collections of Caelius Rhodiginus. He says that in expounding things like this many people miss the point, and boasts that he has solved every difficulty; whereas there is no difficulty, and if there were, nothing would be solved by what he tells us about hanging on the cross. Criminals do not 'choose their tree,' they are led off to the gallows. Whereas those who contemplate suicide do choose different forms of hanging, so it is clear that they are not out of their minds but know just what they are doing.

Ἀθηνᾷ τὸν αἴλουρον, Minerva against a cat - we must supply 'You match.' When vastly inferior things are paired with what is far better on the ground that they agree in some small particular. What has the goddess Minerva in common with a cat, except that both have grey-green eyes? For that is traditionally the colour of Minerva's eyes, as it is in the owl and the cat; whence already in Homer the epithet 'grey-eyed Athena.' Cats share another feature with owls: they can see by night as well as by day, and like them they lie in wait for mice. This is recorded by Zenodotus and Suidas. The author of the Etymologicum points out a difference in spelling. Elouros, the name of the tribe (who lived in Scythia and get their name from the marshes) is written with an e; when it stands for an animal, it is written with a dipthong, eilouros, as though to indicate that the tail is twisted or pulled, though I find that authors neglect this distinction.

To pay by a switching-loan is used of the man who finds a way out of his present difficulties, but only by binding himself to face more and heavier trouble later. For Donatus says that to arrange a switching-loan is 'to pay off one debt by contracting another, or to borrow money at a higher rate of interest and employ it at a lower rate.' So called, according to Festus Pompeius, because they switch from one creditor to another. Terence in the Phormio: 'You stick in the same mud; you pay by switching. The trouble that hung over you is gone for the moment, but the burden grows.' Cicero in a letter to Atticus: 'The economy which you recommended to me is remarkable; so much so that I fear that the swap I arranged with you may have to be paid off by a switching-loan.' And in his speech Pro Flacco: 'He denied that he had raised any switching-loan at all in Rome.' Seneca De beneficiis, book 5: 'Switching begins at home, they say; like a loan made in play, it is instantly transferred.' Again in the last letter of book 2: 'Whatever the state of the case, I must raise a switching-loan from Epicurus.' I must, that is, borrow something from him to pay you what I owe you. And he uses a similar metaphor in the fourth letter of book one: 'But I must draw to a close, so here is something I found today much to my liking, though this flower too was plucked in another man's garden.' Lactantius uses the proverb in book two of his Institutiones: 'But when you ascribe the origin of things to Nature and take it away from God, you are sticking in the same mud; you pay by switching.' Demosthenes neatly explained this metaphor in his first Olynthiac: 'You know how it is when men borrow easily at a high rate of interest: for a short time they have plenty of money, but later they find their capital has gone too. I very much fear, men of Athens, that it will be the same with us: if we sit here much longer in idleness, seeking merely to please ourselves, we shall find ourselves later on obliged to do many unpleasant things which we had no wish to do, and may run great risks of losing the place itself.'

Τὴν ψυχὴν ὀφείλει, He owes his own soul. Donatus points out that this is a proverbial expression, referring to anyone who is under such an immense burden of debt that he owes more than all his possessions are worth, and will end by owing himself. Terence in the Phormio: 'Suppose he owes his own soul?' For there was a law in Antiquity that a man unable to pay his debts should be put in chains and handed over to his creditor, to pay with his own body - by manual labour, that is - what he could not pay in coin. Gellius quotes a law from the Twelve Tables which laid it down that the body of a man who was in debt to many creditors and could not pay should be cut in pieces and distributed.

Extreme right is extreme wrong means that men never stray so far from the path of justice as when they adhere most religiously to the letter of the law. They call it 'extreme right' when they wrangle over the words of a statute and pay no heed to the intention of the man who drafted it. Words and letters are like the outer skin of the law. The folly of some pedantic interpreters of the law is fully and brilliantly shown up by Cicero in his speech Pro Murena. Terence: 'But the saying is, Chremes, that extreme right is often extreme injustice.' Cicero in the first book of the De officiis: 'Hence came that proverb which is now so familiar, Extreme right is extreme wrong.' Columella in book one of his Agriculture: 'Nor for the matter of that should we always exact whatever we have a right to; for our forefathers thought that extreme right was extreme torment.' Celsus too as a young man is reported in the Pandects, book 45, title De verborum obligatione, in the chapter Si servum Stichum, as saying: 'For this is a question of justice and equity, a field in which dangerous mistakes are frequently made under authority from the science of the law.' Paulus too in book 50, in the title De regulis juris: 'In all things, but in the law especially, regard should be had to equity.' Seneca uses a similar metaphor, summo animo, in the first book of his On Anger, where he says: 'If you understand that the wickedness is not deep-seated, but resides, as they say, in the surface levels of the heart.'

Οὐδὲ περφόρος ἐλείφθη, No one remained even to carry fire. When we wish to convey that an army was wiped out, so that not even the man who went in front of it to carry fire was spared. For it was the custom in ancient times for a priest to precede an army into battle, wearing a wreath of bay and carrying a torch; and both sides refrained from using violence against him, because it was thought sacrilege to draw the sword against a holy man. And so, if they had wished to indicate that there had been some cruel massacre, they would say 'No one was spared, not even the fire-carrier.' This adage is recalled by Eustathius on the twelfth book of the Iliad, when he is explaining those lines in Homer: 'Never thereafter, I think, will even a man with tidings / Find his way home to the city.' He reminds us that there was another phrase of proverbial form, 'Not a man was left to tell the tale,' whenever we wish to convey that every single man was killed, so that not one got away to bring the news; for a man to carry the news is often spared by the enemy deliberately.

Related to this is πανολεθρία, Root and branch, words which conveyed annihilation and the sort of utter destruction that leaves no survivors. Thucydides in the seventh book of his History: 'For they were utterly defeated and at no point was the disaster other than complete, but it was what they call root and branch: land forces, ships, and everything perished.' It will be more effective if transferred from battle, shipwreck, conflagration, and similar disasters to other fields. If, for instance, you were to say that 'Lechery is a great plague among Christians, but what destroys the Christian life root and branch is avarice,' and 'Ignorance of Greek destroyed all humane learning root and branch.' Cicero uses a similar formula in his In Pisonem, when he calls the temple of Castor 'the grave of all law and all religion,' because that was the place where the authority of the laws and the sanctity of religion had been overwhelmed.

Θράκεια παρεύρεσις, A Thracian stratagem or invention. Found in Zenodotus, and may be twisted to apply to those who evade their promises by inventing some skilful and cunning stratagem. Moreover, an origin for this proverbial expression is suggested by Strabo in book nine of his Geography, with Ephorus as his authority. The Thracians, having arranged a truce of some days' duration with the Boeotians, continued their nightly forays none the less. When the Boeotians had driven off their attacks, and were protesting against the violation of the truce, the Thracians replied that they had done nothing contrary to their undertaking; for their undertaking spoke of days, and they had attacked at night. Zenodotus gives a very similar story. The Thracians had established a ten-day truce, and then made raids by night into Boeotia, where the people had relaxed their vigilance, relying on the truce; and they left a number of casualties and carried off some prisoners. The Boeotians protested against this breach of the agreement, and they replied that it spoke of days and not nights. Hence the proverb, A Thracian stratagem; for pareuresis, which we render by stratagem, is properly an ingenious quibble, by which we escape from the terms of an undertaking; what Plautus calls 'a bit of stitchery.' Terence too has 'For fear he stitches a cap for his own head.' They add outside the agreement some invention that makes nonsense of the whole thing.

Rome wins by sitting still, is an ancient proverb, referring to those who remain in peace and idleness and yet get what they want, or who achieve their results by skill rather than force. Marcus Varro in the first book of his Agriculture, chapter 2: 'I suggest then that meanwhile we follow the old proverb, Rome wins by sitting still, until he comes.' I suppose it is taken from the story of Fabius Cunctator, whose dogged patience broke down the youthful exuberance of Hannibal, and is immortalized in that line of Ennius: 'That same man, / Whose slow, slow tactics saved the Roman state.' This is quoted by Cicero in his Cato major, and adapted with a touch of genius by Virgil in book 6. Not but what Livy, in the first book of his Macedonian War, gives a similar account of the consul Sulpicius: 'And were he to be entirely surrounded by those forces,' he says, 'it might have been thought that Rome would win by sitting still.'

Τυγχάνειν τοῦ σκοποῦ, To hit the target, is to achieve your aim, or to arrive by guesswork at the right answer. Lucian in his Icaromenippus: 'And your guess is not far from the target.' Similarly, Not to hit the target, To miss the target, and other metaphors of the kind all have a proverbial ring. Diogenes made a witty use of this adage when he saw a small boy throwing stones at a gallows. 'Stick to it' he said; 'you'll get there one day.' Pindar in the ninth of his Nemean Odes: 'Aiming close to the heart of the Muses' target.' And again in his sixth ode: 1 hope, great though my promises may be, to hit the target.' There is also a phrase 'To speak wide of the mark' used of a man whose remarks are far from the point at issue; it is used by Gregory of Nazianzus in his Monodia.

Ο πίθηκος οὐχ ἁλίσκεται βρόχῳ, No monkey was ever caught in a trap. Often applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught out. It was once used of Heracleides, who had carelessly quoted something by Dionysius when it was really from Sophocles. He was sent a copy of the text, so that he could look up the line and confess he was wrong. Even then he shilly-shallied and would not admit his mistake. 'It might happen by chance' he said 'that the same line should occur in different poets.' At which someone's comment was 'No monkey was ever caught in a trap.' Diogenes Laertius is the authority. The lines run as follows in Greek: 'No aged monkey e'er was caught in trap; / Or if he's caught, 'tis after many days.'

Cicero in the second book of the De officiis says 'We must always remember the saying which has been so often used by our countrymen that it now passes for a proverb: Bounty has no bottom.' By this they meant that imprudent generosity can exhaust the most ample resources; in fact they simply flow away. The figure looks as though it were taken from the daughters of Danaus in the nether regions with their great jar full of holes. Bottomless things are called in Greek ἀπύθμενα, and so Parthenius in Athenaeus, book 11, speaks of an ἀπύθμενον φιάλην, a bottomless cup.

Απληστος πίθος, A great jar that cannot be filled. This adage has various applications. It fits, first of all, gluttons and heavy eaters; but even more closely those who drink to excess and grow thirstier, the more they drink, as used to be said of the Parthians. So Festus seems to have thought, for he cites some author (I know not whom; the text is mutilated) as using 'a great jar with holes' when he meant the belly; though in any case nature has made it impossible to fill the belly, because whatever you put into it by way of the mouth is excreted by other passages. It will also suit a forgetful person, one of those who, if you tell them anything, let it slip immediately, and forget a thing before they have learnt it properly, like Strepsiades in the Clouds of Aristophanes: 'Who learns some little bits, I know not what, / And then forgets, ere he has them by heart.' This is much how Plautus uses it in the Pseudolus: 'We put it into a great jar with holes, and waste our labour.' This will also suit men who are generous beyond measure, as Aristotle suggests in the first book of the Oeconomica: 'For the ability to acquire ought to go with the ability to preserve what one has acquired. Otherwise it serves no useful purpose, for it is fetching water in a sieve, and a great jar with holes, as the phrase goes.' It is applicable also to grasping men whose avarice knows no bounds, and the more they are filled with riches, the emptier they seem to be. This is elegantly expressed in that line from Solon, quoted by Plutarch in his essay 'On Love of Wealth': 'Of riches mortal men no limit know.' Zenodotus thinks that Tartarus itself can rightly be thought of as 'a great jar with holes,' because all the thousands of the dead cannot fill it; and the Hebrew sage names it in his list of insatiable things. It will be suitable also for those men who wrongfully seize from some of their fellow-men what they can wrongfully waste on others. It is used also of those who labour in vain, as has been shown elsewhere; for instance, in Catullus: 'He'll fill those virgins' jars with their own pitchers.' The adage takes its rise from the well-known fable of the daughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands, and are said to have been punished in the nether regions by having to draw water in leaky pitchers and pour it into a great jar which itself is full of holes, a burdensome and useless task. The story is mentioned by Horace in the Odes: 'That great jar, of water never full, / That through its leaky bottom runs away.' Tibullus too: 'And Danaus' daughters, for that they did Venus once offend, / Pour Lethe water into jars empty without an end.' Lucian speaks of this in his Timon, and Aristotle in the sixth book of the Politics. Lucian again in the Hermotimus: 'For, as the proverb has it, the labour and toil that you ladle out flows back again - the converse of the Danaids' great jar.' Plato also uses it in several passages, especially in the Gorgias.

Αρκτου παρούσης τὰ ἴχνη ζητεῖς, You go hunting for the tracks of a bear that is there in front of you. Used of people who are too timid to face up to the problem that confronts them, and turn aside to easy things that don't matter. The image is taken from cowardly huntsmen, who pretend they have not observed the bear and act as though they were following its tracks, as an excuse for getting away from the danger-point. Men like this are described by Plato, in the Republic, book 5, as resembling dogs which will bite a stone, and dare not touch the man who throws it. This is not far from something in Plutarch's life of Lucullus. When Archelaus was urging him to abandon the enemy and cross over into Pontus, on the ground that he would thus make himself master of everything forthwith, Lucullus replied that he was as brave as the average huntsman, and unlikely to pay no attention to the beasts and go in search of their empty lairs.

Αὐτόματοι δ᾽ ἀγαθοὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐπῒ δαῖτας ἴενται., Good men with good men dine, nor wait for an invitation. A proverbial hexameter line, which can be used whenever a good man, relying on his personal merit and on the friendship which exists in principle between all honest men, approaches another like himself without waiting for the common formality of an invitation. Some think it goes back to Hercules, who is said to have been the first to use this line when he went unbidden to the house of Cetus in Trachis. An iambic line is also current to the same effect: 'Unbidden friends to their friends' parties go.' Homer tacitly alludes to the adage in the second Iliad: 'Came to his help unasked Menelaus good at the war-cry.' The scholiast points out that this word is meant to convey Menelaus' courage in battle; for a small voice indicates a poor spirit, and 'war-cry' in Greek is sometimes equivalent to 'battle,' as it still is today in Germany. Zenodotus in his collection quotes a use of this adage in the opposite sense from a comedy by Eupolis called Chrysogenes: 'Brave men with cowards dine, nor wait for an invitation.' Plato conveys much the same meaning in the Symposium: 'Let's make nonsense of the old proverb about the good going to dine with the good unasked, and give it a new meaning.' Plato seems to have felt that Homer had made a lesser man, in the shape of Menelaus, come to dine with a much better one, because Agamemnon was a mighty warrior and Menelaus was unwarlike. This passage is also quoted by Athenaeus in book four. Though I do not myself think Homer meant this, because he testifies to Menelaus' courage in his epithet 'good at the war-cry,' and introduces him in several passages as giving a very good account of himself. Elsewhere too he gives him the honourable epithet 'dear to the god of war.' In the first book of Athenaeus, who quotes from Cilatinus, a character who had appeared uninvited at a party is made to say: 'I have come to dinner as one good man to others; for friends have all things in common.'

'Εν φρέατι κυσὶ μάχεσθαι, To fight with dogs in a well, used to be said when anyone had to deal with a quarrelsome and contentious man, from whom he could not shake himself free. It is also expressed in the form ἐν φρέατι κυνομαχεῖν, where the 'fighting with dogs' is given by a single compound verb.

Εμαυτῳς βαλανεύσω, I will be my own bathman. When someone is devoted to his own interests, or when he conducts his own affairs without waiting for outside help. Aristophanes in the Peace: 'But, if you please, I'll fix my bath myself.' The scholiast tells us that this derives from the practice in the public baths in which, when the bathman went off duty, the bathers themselves drew the water and poured it over themselves. Zenodotus thinks it can also refer to those who put acorns in the fire to roast them. It may perhaps be applied without absurdity to those who shake acorns off a tree. For in Greek balaneus means a bath attendant and balanos an acorn; and thus the adage admits of two interpretations.

Ανὴρ δὲ φευγων οὐ μένει λύρας κτυπὸν., But the man who runs away won't stop to hear the fiddler play. A proverbial iambic line, referring to those who are in a dangerous and serious situation, and in their need to make haste ignore less important things. The fugitive from a battlefield does not think he has time and leisure to listen to some musician. And this has many applications: for instance, if you were to say that one ought not to waste time on frivolous pleasures when our life here is exposed to so many dangers. On this topic Seneca writes elegantly in one of the Letters to Lucilius: 'Let us skip these most ingenious trifles, and hasten on to things that are likely to be of real use to us. No one who is hurrying, full of anxiety, to fetch the midwife for his expectant daughter stops to read the legal notices and the programs for the games. No one running home on the news that his house is on fire pauses to survey a chessboard to see how some piece that is shut in can be rescued. But take my word for it: bad news is pouring in on you from all sides, your house is on fire, your children in danger, your country beleaguered, your property pillaged. Throw in shipwrecks and earthquakes and all that is frightful. With all this to distract you, have you really time for things which are purely entertaining?' Plutarch in his essay 'On the E at Delphi': 'Those who lament love neither harp nor lyre.' This squares with that saying in Ecclesiasticus: 'A tale out of season is as music in mourning.'

'A dog's dinner' was used proverbially of an abstemious meal and one at which no wine was drunk, because by some natural property dogs hate wine. This adage is recorded by Aulus Gellius in the last chapter of book 13 of his Attic Nights, as follows: 'The passage in which that proverb occurs runs like this' (it comes from a satire by Marcus Varro called 'ὕδωρ κρυὸν, Water frozen stiff).' You observe no doubt that Mnesteus says there are three sorts of wine - black, white, and intermediate, called in Greek kirros, which means tawny; new, old, and intermediate. The black, he says, generates poison, the white is a diuretic, and the intermediate promotes digestion; new wine is cooling, old wine heating, and the intermediate is a dog's dinner. The meaning,' says Gellius, 'of the phrase "a dog's dinner," though of small importance, was the subject of long and anxious discussion. An abstemious meal, at which no wine is drunk, is called a dog's dinner, because dogs do without wine. Once he had applied the term intermediate wine to that which was neither new nor old, then, in view of the fact that as a rule men speak as though all wine is to be called either new or old, his point was that what is intermediate does not exert the effect of either new or old, and is therefore not to be regarded as wine at all, because it neither cools nor heats.' So Gellius. Plutarch in his Table-talk' was accustomed humorously to call barbers' shops 'teetotal drinking-parties,' as I have pointed out elsewhere.

Ανὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται, The man who runs away will fight again. A proverbial iambic line, which tells us not to lose heart at once if things have not gone well, because those who have lost one battle can win the next. So Homer, who gives the epithet heteralkes to victory, meaning that which sides in turn now with one party and now with the other. And in Homer again, in Iliad 8, Alexander says to Hector 'But victory changes sides from man to man.' Elsewhere, in Iliad 3, 'For now with Pallas' help was Menelaus victor, and now again it was I.' Demosthenes was thought by his enemies to have disgraced himself, because in the victory of Philip king of Macedon over the Athenians at Chaeroneia he had thrown away his shield and taken to his heels, and thus earned the very discreditable nickname of Rhipsaspis. But Demosthenes, a man not noted for modesty, is said to have always countered this reproach with that most familiar proverbial line 'He that fights and runs away will live to fight another day.' This is close to Davus' remark in Terence: 'No success here: we'll try another way.' Tertullian uses the adage in his book on running away from persecution: 'But some people pay no attention to the divine command, and prefer to apply to themselves that Greek line that contains the wisdom of the world, He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day. In order, maybe, to run away a second time? And when can a man win who has already confessed defeat by running away?'

Εκ τῆς καλάμης γινώσκειν, To judge by the stubble, is used when we infer from certain traces which remain in old age what a man was like when he was young, the metaphor being taken from a cornfield. Homer in Odyssey 14: 'Yet this I think you can tell, if you do but look at the stubble.' Lucian uses this adage in his False Prophet, which I long ago turned into Latin. Aristotle in the Rhetoric explains 'stubble' as meaning old age: 'When he calls old age stubble,' he says, 'he makes us understand and recognize the old man; for both have lost their bloom.' Aristophanes in the Wasps uses a very similar figure: 'You must gauge their strength when they were young from what remains.' We say too that we infer what something was like from the fragments or the ruin of it.

Αὐτῷ πήχει With the same yardstick, that is, the same rule, the same standard of measurement. Lucian uses it sometimes; apart from other places, it is in his How History Should Be Written: 'And in short there is one yardstick, one accurate measure.' Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'For on the balance music shall be weighed; / Yardsticks and rules be found for poetry.' Cornelius Tacitus uses a not dissimilar image in the preface to his book On Orators, when he says that he wishes to set out what he had learned from men of great distinction by the same numbers and same lines of argument that they had used. And Pliny in book 8 of his Letters uses the phrase 'an even balance.' It may be off the point, but it will be useful to point out, that most metaphors drawn from measurement are proverbial: 'to weigh the matter up,' 'to give what has been done its due weight,' 'to restore the balance of goodwill,' 'an adequate measure of thanks,' 'the balance of a transaction,' 'to size up the reasons' for a thing, 'to equate one kindness with another,' 'to equalize services rendered,' 'to pay off old scores,' and other phrases of the same sort.

Δείνυσθαι τῷ δακτύλῳ, To be pointed out, as a way of saying 'to be a distinguished person,' is in common use as a proverb even today. Horace in the Odes: 'The pointing finger of the passers-by.' Persius: 'And grand it is / To see them point, and hear them say "That's he!"' Lucian in his Harmonides: 'And in a crowd to be a very important person and have people point you out.' A possible source for this is an anecdote told of Diogenes by Laertius. Some tourists had come to Athens in hopes of seeing Demosthenes, of whose fame they had heard so much at home. Diogenes stretched out his middle finger. 'There you have the man,' he said, 'the great Athenian demagogue,' thus conveying by the same gesture that he had a great appetite for applause and was given to obscene practices.

Μηδὲ τὸν ἕτερον πόδα., to depart Not one foot. Lucian in the Harmonides. Again in his Sects: 'Who has never set one foot outside Ethiopia.' This is to be classed with those I have recorded elsewhere, 'a finger-breadth,' 'a foot's breadth,' 'a nail's breadth,' which can be used to indicate very close agreement or zealous support; as one can with the phrase 'night and day.' This is rather differently expressed by Livy in the first book of his Macedonian War. 'Others remained in camp without posting sentries, and with sleeping and drinking made no difference between night and day.'

Εκ διαμέτρου, Diametrically, was formerly used of things in violent contrast, the metaphor being taken from geometry, in which the maximum possible degree of opposition is called 'diametrical.' Lucian in the Tyrant: 'For our life is, as they say, the diametrical opposite of theirs.' Athanasius in a book of his on the synod of Nicaea: 'Who are, if I may so put it, diametrically opposed to the opinion of Sabellius.' Basil uses the same phrase in a letter to Athanasius. For a diameter is a straight line that bisects a figure equally in its longest dimension; the diameter of a circle, for instance, runs from the highest point of the circle to its lowest, passing through the centre. So Macrobius defines it in the second book of his commentary on the Dream of Scipio, and Euclid's definition concurs. In Latin this line is called the dimetiens, that which gives the through measurement, for the Greek word diametros comes from the verb for measuring from one end to the other. Aristotle gives the reason for the name in his Problems, section 15 problem 2. This is related to Dis dia pason, of which I have treated elsewhere.

Ακουε τ᾽ ἀπὸ καρδίας., Listen to a man who speaks from the heart. Serious remarks made with no attempt at concealment are said to come from the heart, and this expression is in common use of a man who speaks his mind. Lucian in his Jupiter tragoedus: 'Listen then, ye gods, to one who speaks his mind, as the saying is.' Flattery and pretence speak from the throat and not the heart. Plutarch, in the essay he entitled 'How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend,' quotes these iambic lines:
Would I had some poor man, or if he please,
One baser yet, who out of mere goodwill
Would leave his fear and speak straight from the heart.
He adds that these words do not come easily to rich men and princes, who utterly hate the truth; nor can tender ears endure what is not heavily sweetened with flattery and spiced with adulation. Under the same metaphor we should class that phrase in Plautus, 'to love from the soul,' and he also has 'to pursue with heart and soul and strength'; both are in the Captivi. Its opposite is 'only from the lips,' for 'not from the heart'; Seneca in his Letters to Lucilius: 'This does not come only from the lips.'

He must either drink or quit is an adage that instructs us either to adapt ourselves to time and place or to withdraw from human society, as Cato is said to have done when, being unable to assume the cheerful air appropriate to the feast of Flora, he left the theatre. This comes from those symposia or drinking-parties that were traditional in Greece, in which it was customary to elect someone by throwing knucklebones to be a sort of chairman of the party, and lay down rules for it, which they called 'laws.' These 'laws' were the subject of a humorous poem by Valerius of Valentia, which he called Tapullae, as Festus Pompeius tells us. And so the chairman was called the basileus or king; Plutarch's name is symposiarch. Varro, quoted by Nonius, says that the Latin for this was modiperator, as though from modum imperans, prescribing a limit, which the drinkers should not exceed or fall short of. Athenaeus, book 10, on the authority of Eupolis tells us that those in charge were called oinoptai, wine-watchers, or opthalmoi, eyes. Horace too mentions the custom in the Odes: 'Nor shall you cast the bones to choose / A ruler of the feast.' From this merry code of laws one still survives: He must either drink or quit. Cicero speaks of it in the fifth book of his Tusculan Questions. 'It seems to me' he says 'that in life one should maintain the same law as held good in Greek drinking-parties: He must either drink, it said, or quit. And rightly. A man should either enjoy the pleasure of drinking on an equal footing with the others, and thus avoid the risk of being roughly handled when they are flown with wine and he is still sober, or he should leave. Thus the wrongs of fortune, which you cannot endure, can be left behind you in your flight.' Thus far Cicero. Some use the form Drink or go. How much more humane this is than the law which Empedocles was made to obey at a drinking-party by the party-chairman! Either he drank, or the wine was poured over his head. Empedocles was so furious at this that next day he called together the council and laid a complaint against the man who had invited them, who was responsible, and the symposiarch, and secured the condemnation of both. The story is in Diogenes Laertius. But our chairmen go further and lay down laws more suitable for Scythians: Either drink up, they say, or I will break this stoup, large as it is, over your head. So it is not unusual for social drinking to develop into single combat.

Οἴκοθεν εἰκάζειν, To draw a conclusion at home, from one's own resources. What is not brought in from some outside sources is said proverbially to be home-grown. Plautus in the Cistellaria: 'This conclusion is home-grown, all my own work,' that is, it is drawn from my own experience. Seneca De beneficiis, book 5: 'Switching begins at home, they say; like a loan made in play, it is instantly transferred.'

To the same metaphor belongs To have at home. For we say that 'we have something at home,' when it is to be found in us and there is no need to borrow it from others. This is evidently derived from the practice of borrowing tackle from others which you do not possess at home. Terence in the Adelphoe: 'What nonsense! He has plenty to learn from at home.' Cicero writing to Varro: 'But why do I say all this to you now, when you have it all home-grown?' And again in the Academic Questions, book 2: 'And pray desist from your generalities; I have plenty of those home-grown'; they are, that is, part of the orator's stock-in-trade. And so you could say with some point 'Why seek for happiness in things like that? You have the materials for blessedness at home already' or 'It is a king's business to get home-grown advice, and not to depend on the opinions of outsiders.'

In Plautus in the Cistellaria someone is said to have broken his token when he has cut himself off from returning to a house. When a lover says that he had taken an oath to marry the bawd's daughter, and begs her not to let him commit perjury, her reply is 'Be off with you, and find a place where there is backing for your oath. With us here, Alcesimarchus, you have broken your token.' This token is a symbol of friendship, which a former guest could produce to secure recognition if he ever came back again.

To pour cold water seems to be used by Plautus in the Cistellaria for secret provocation. For in that play a woman of the town complains of respectable married women who inflame their husbands, as far as they can, with hatred of her and her class. 'They're civil enough to our class in public,' she says, 'but in secret, if they ever get a chance, they treacherously pour cold water. They say we're too familiar with their husbands, call us their rivals.' Clearly derived from the men at the races who used to pour cold water over the horses so that thus refreshed they might run faster, and thus provoked them to race. This employment is also mentioned in the Pandects of the civil law, book 3, title De iis qui infamia notantur, citing Ulpian, in the following words: 'And in general all agree on this, and it seems desirable that neither actors nor athletes nor charioteers nor those who throw cold water over the horses nor those employed in any other capacity in the service of the public games should be subject to public ignominy.' So Ulpian. This was done also, I believe, at the Olympic games or similar contests, sometimes for this further purpose, to prevent the wheels, as they got hot through revolving so fast, from catching fire. Unless anyone prefers to think it taken from those who as a joke or to make fun of their victims sprinkle water unexpectedly over the place where a party is being held, or those who sprinkle water over someone to make him a laughing-stock, which is a favourite joke of bath-men. Hence it is that Julius Pollux tells us in his seventh book that plunein, to scrub, is sometimes used in the sense of abusing a person, 'dressing him down.' So Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'dressing me down before so many men,' spoken by a character complaining that he has been soaked in water to make him ridiculous before a large crowd. But it seems more likely to be an image taken from bronze-foundries, where the smiths sprinkle cold water from time to time over the hearth to make the fire burn more vigorously.

Γέροντι μηδὲποτε μηδέν χρηστὸν ποιεῖν., Never do a kindness to an old man, is recorded expressly as a proverb by Aristotle in the second book of the Rhetoric: 'And he who advises us not to make friends with an old man can claim the support of the proverbial saying that one should never do an old man a kindness.' It is still a common saying today that one should not waste a kindness on an old man or a child, because the one does not repay and the other does not remember it. There is also an adage of the same sort in Diogenianus: 'Never be kind to old men or to a woman or a child or to someone else's dog or to a boatman who never stops talking,' because what is expended on such people is clearly lost. Seneca in the third book of the De beneficiis: 'Thus it comes about that we forget our teachers and what we owe to them, because we leave our childhood completely behind us; thus benefits that we received as adolescents slip from our minds, because we never pass in review what happened to us then.'

Immediately after the preceding he adds, expressly as a proverb, 'And he who advises you to kill the sons whose fathers you have killed, has the support of the old saw: Fool is he who kills the father and the children leaves behind.' He records the same thing later among proverbial sayings: He's a fool who killed the father and spared the children. It is a proverbial line of verse: 'Fool is he who kills the father and the sons allows to live.' Herodotus uses it in Clio: 'For I now feel I have acted like a man who should kill a father and spare his sons.' This adage is said to have been used by Philip of Macedon when doing away with some children whose fathers he had killed. For one ought either to refrain in the first place from killing the parents, or else to remove the sons also, who later on will avenge their father's death. There is a memorable remark on record, made by the soldiers who assassinated the emperor Maximinus and his son, to the effect that from a worthless litter not one puppy should be left alive. Here belongs that sentence in Homer, in the third Odyssey: 'How good it is that, when the sire is slain, / The son should yet be left.' The adage will have its uses when we have to point out that one should either not provoke people at all, or should make a job of them, so as to leave no remnant to cause us trouble in the future.

Χρηστολόγος, Fair-spoken, was used, and today is still commonly used,of those whose words are good and their actions bad. It was an accusation levelled particularly against the emperor Pertinax, as Julius Capitolinus records in his life. Paul in his epistle to the Romans uses χρηστολογία this kind of fair-spoken behaviour: 'And by their fair speech and smooth words beguile the hearts of the innocent.'

This seems to be the place for those ironical comments which have become proverbial, such as are frequent in comedy: Dixti pulchre, Fine words! Belle narras, A likely story! Καλῶς ἔλεξας., What you say is splendid, when something has been said that is quite absurd. Plato in the Euthydemus expressly calls it proverbial. Plato's words are: 'As the saying goes, this is all very splendid.' Again in the Gorgias: 'Now let me tell you, as they say, a very pretty story.'

Κεράμειος πλοῦτος, Wealth made of clay. Of undependable and fragile things that cannot possibly last long, comparable to potters' vessels which any mishap can so easily break. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.

Λαγὼς καθεύδων., A hare asleep, is suitable for the man who pretends to do what he is not doing or conceals the fact that he is doing what he does. Some think this was the sort of sleep enjoyed by Ulysses when he was put ashore on the island of Ithaca by the Phaeacians; so we learn from Plutarch. The fact that a hare sleeps with its eyes open is recorded by a great many other authors, and particularly by Pliny, book 11 chapter 37, who says that this is known in human beings also; in Greek they are called Corybants. Nor will it be wrong, I think, to use it of timid persons. The adage is recorded by many authorities.

Ὁ ζεὺς κατεῖδε χρόνιος εἰς τὰς διφθέρας., Jupiter has looked up the record, but after long delay. It is a proverbial iambic line, referring to those who do at length pay the penalty for their misdeeds, though late in the day. For Antiquity believed that Jupiter wrote everything down on this diphthera, which is goatskin used for keeping records, and for the time being overlooked many transgressions, only to exact penalties from the guilty later. It will also fit very nicely for princes who overlook offences for a long time and punish them in the end.

Η τέθνηκεν, ἤδιδάσκει γράμματα, He must be either dead or teaching school. An iambic line current as a proverb, and used in old days to convey that a man was in great misfortune, though it was not clear what he was doing. This passed into common speech, as Zenodotus tells us, on the following occasion. The Athenians, under command of Nicias, had on one occasion fought and lost a battle against the Sicilians; they suffered heavy casualties, and many prisoners were taken and carried off to Sicily, where they were compelled to teach Sicilian children their elements. And so the few who escaped and returned to Athens, when asked what so-and-so was doing in Sicily, used to reply with the line I have quoted above: 'He must be either dead or teaching school.'

Η δεῖ χελώνης κρέα φαγεῖν ἢ μὴ φαγεῖν, Eat, or don't eat, your turtle: you must choose, is a proverbial iambic line, directed against those who, having taken up some piece of business, go through with it slowly, neither finishing nor giving it up. Some think the saying derives from an author called Terpsion; and among them is Athenaeus, book 8, who says he was the first to lay down rules about eating, and published a code which made clear what one ought to abstain from and what one ought to eat, in which was this rule about turtle, 'eat or don't eat.' They say further that turtle-meat eaten in moderate quantities causes griping of the bowels, which is relieved by larger amounts; very much what Pliny tells us about lettuce. It amounts to a way of saying: Make up your mind. Either go to war or don't go to war; either study or don't study. Remember how many activities there are which are admirable if you throw yourself into them, and do harm if you are lukewarm; or which do not admit of mediocrity, like music and poetry. Again, there are some things of which a taste is sufficient, to which class the study of philosophy was assigned by Neoptolemus in Ennius and Callicles in Plato. It is not far from that text in the Apocalypse: 'I would thou wert hot or cold.'

Macrobius in the third book of his Saturnalia: 'It is an old saying that ill manners make good laws. We should have no need of physicians and their physic unless people fell ill; and in the same way we should have no need to make laws unless people led wicked lives.' Hence there was in Aegina in the old days a special penalty inflicted on the man who had given rise to the passing of a new penal statute. Our authority is Aristotle in the second book of the Rhetoric. Cornelius Tacitus, book 15: 'Experience proves that excellent laws and honourable precedents originate among good men from the misdeeds of others.' Here belongs that remark of Solon who, when asked why he had enacted no law against parricide, replied that he had not expected it would be necessary.

Βοῦς ἀλλότριος τὰ πολλὰ ἔξω βλέπει., A borrowed ox is always looking over the hedge. Of those who when in strange company do not get the treatment they think they deserve, and often wish they were in their own circle. Everyone finds life more enjoyable at home, like a sheep in its familiar fold; when not at home, there are many things we do not like, and much that we feel the need of. Plutarch seems to have been alluding to this proverb in his 'Table-talk,' decade 8 problem 2, when he says 'But do not despise your own powers; don't be always looking elsewhere,' meaning Do not seek from some outside source what you can derive from the interpreters of Plato. And so we can properly use the phrase 'look elsewhere' of a man who is not content with what he has and relies on something outside. He also uses it in his essay 'On Virtue and Vice.'

Εβδομος βοῦς, The seventh ox, was used in old days of stupid and brutish people, whence came a current iambic line 'That seventh ox the clever proverb tells of.' This is said to have arisen from a practice in Antiquity, when the first six days of a lunar month were past, of modelling an ox in dough and baking it, with the idea that its horns would reproduce the moon's first quarter, due on the seventh day. Some prefer another explanation. Among the Ancients there were six animals normally used for sacrifice to the gods, sheep, pig, she-goat, bull, domestic fowl, and goose; and poor people who could not afford a live animal for sacrifice used to make a model of an ox out of dough. Since this had neither life nor feeling, it became proverbial for stupidity. Suidas quotes the Erechtheus of Euripides and the Iris of Achaeus as containing examples of this proverb in use, though he does not give their actual words.

Τῇ ἄκρῃ ῥινὶ ὀσφραίνεσθαι, To smell with the tip of one's nose, for to detect on very light contact and an inference of the slightest, is found in Lucian in his Jupiter Confuted.

'Had I then held the pen' says Cicero in the second Philippic for Had this business been entrusted to my judgment and my management, the metaphor being drawn from playwrights by whose stylus and pen the play is written right to the end. Cicero's words run as follows: 'But I fear there is one point you will not make good. Had I been one of their group, I should have swept not merely a king but the whole idea of kingship out of our public life. Had I held the pen, as the saying goes, take my word for it, I should have finished off not only one act, but the whole play.' The stylus is the sharp-pointed metal implement which we use for writing on wax tablets; it is transferred metaphorically to the character and general 'feel' of a man's literary style, to which Cicero refers.

In the letters which pass under the name of Phalaris can be found an adage which goes something like this: An Indian elephant does not notice a gnat. The reason for this is the exceptional toughness of the elephant's hide, which is said actually to repel javelins, so far is it from being sensitive to a gnat's bite. It will be possible to use this whenever we wish to convey that slight and casual injuries should be overlooked by lofty minds.

Πηλῷ πηλὸν καθαίρεσθαι., Mud is said to be purged away with mud when something dirty is removed with dirty means, with the result that the dirt is not removed but either altered or actually made worse. Apollonius in one of his letters: 'Not even he could persuade the Ephesians not to purge away mud with mud.' He speaks of the priests who were polluting the altars of the gods with blood, and supposed this was a means of expiation. Here belongs a remark made, if I am not mistaken, by Diogenes. Having gone into some very dirty public baths, he asked 'The people who bathe here, where do they go to get a bath?' - the suggestion being that they left such baths dirtier than when they came in. The same thing happens in Alexandria, where the townsfolk keep large flocks of ibises in the city with the idea that they will eat up the snakes and the refuse from the slaughter-houses; but they then befoul everything once again with their own filthy droppings.

Ενθ᾽ ἄν οἱ πόδες φέρωσιν, Wherever your feet take you, a way of saying 'in any direction whatever.' This will be suitable whenever we have no definite mark to which to direct our efforts. Lucian in the Hermotimus: 'Nor shall we do as the proverb says, and go wherever our feet take us.' Horace in the Epodes:
To go where'er our feet may stray,
Or south or rude south-wester o'er the waves
Sweep us away.
Again in the Odes: 'Go whither feet and breezes call.' So too Theocritus in Hylas: 'Where his feet led, he went.' Again in Thalysia: 'Whither this noontide do you drag your feet?' And Virgil: 'Whither do your feet take you, Moeris? Where the road takes you, to town?' Plato uses a not dissimilar formula in the third book of the Republic: 'But wherever the argument carries us, as a wind might, we must follow.'

Κυκλώπειος βίος, To live like the Cyclops, stands for a very wild and barbarous life, governed by no law or civil discipline and guided by no worship of any gods. Such is the life described by Homer in the ninth book of the Odyssey through the mouth of Polyphemus: 'Foolish art thou, stranger, or thou comest from far away, when thou commandest me to fear or reverence the gods. We Cyclopes care nothing for Jove that bears the aegis nor for the blessed gods.' And in the same book: 'I will take soundings of the men, if there are any, whether they are brutal and fierce and have no justice in them, or are hospitable to strangers and godfearing at heart.' Euripides follows Homer when he makes his Cyclops speak as follows: 'I shake not, stranger, at Jove's thunderbolt, / Nor know I Jove a stronger god than I.' Strabo in book 11 of his Geography writes that the Albanians were commonly said to live like the Cyclops, because they took no interest in agriculture and were idle and primitive where all the arts of life were concerned.

When they wish to convey the idea of a considerable difference, they do so by using the words 'far and away.' Aulus Gellius: 'I think myself, unless my judgment is blinded by my partiality and deep respect for this particular author and for traditional habits of style in general, that it is far and away wider in scope, longer in time, and in general more extensive to refer to the population of an entire city by the word "mortals" rather than "men."' In the Pandects these words are cited from Ulpian: 'If the bequest is of the use of a piece of land, no one doubts that this is far and away less than the use and enjoyment and something of a quite different nature.' The image looks as though derived from land-surveying.

Like lips like lettuce: whenever like falls to the lot of like - when an ill-taught teacher gets an unteachable pupil, when a public with low standards of honesty gets a dishonest government, when an abusive counsel for the prosecution meets an abusive defending counsel, when a cantankerous husband has a cantankerous wife - in a word, whenever bad things befall bad people, and men get what they deserve. The adage took its rise from a donkey eating thistles. Lettuce is a soft and juicy plant, yet not so very unlike a thistle, especially the woodland kind. So then thistles on the one side are thorny and prickly above the average in leaf and stem and even in flower, and on the other a donkey's lips are as hard and rough as could be, so that nothing in the way of lettuce could be more appropriate to them than this. Moreover, that some people used to serve thistles instead of lettuce even at dinner-parties is asserted by Julius Capitolinus in his life of the emperor Pertinax. Pliny too in book 19 gives the following account of thistles: 'It might be thought that I had mentioned all the vegetables that are of any importance, did there not remain one of high commercial value, about which one cannot speak without some sense of shame. It is well known that thistles, especially round metropolitan Carthage and Cordova, bring in six thousand sesterces from quite small plots; for we convert even the oddest products of different regions to serve our gormandizing, and even grow things which sensible animals will not touch.' Saint Jerome uses and at the same time explains the proverb in a letter to Chroma this as follows: 'Following the precdent set by the only thing (according to Lucilius) in his whole life that made Crassus laugh - like lips like lettuce, when the donkey was eating thistles - that a feeble helmsman should steer a leaking ship, and a blind man lead the blind into the ditch, and the ruler take his cue from those he rules.' So Jerome. This Crassus was the grandfather of the Crassus who died in battle against the Parthians, and whose standards were later recovered by Augustus. He is included in the list of those who are said never to have laughed once in a lifetime, and are therefore called agelastoi, laughless. Cicero in his speeches tells us that Licinius Crassus according to Lucilius laughed once in his whole life. Pliny in the Natural History, book 7 chapter 19, says: 'It is reported that Crassus, the grandfather of Crassus who was killed fighting the Parthians, never laughed and was therefore called Agelastus, just as many people, we know, are unable to cry.' St Jerome in the Adversus Rufinum: 1 at least, to make a very strait-laced man laugh, that you may one day imitate Crassus, who according to Lucilius only laughed once in his life.' Macrobius also mentions it in the second book of his Saturnalia.

Something very like this is used by Jerome again in his letter to Chromatius: The cover is worthy of such a cup. 'In my native country,' he says, 'boorish rusticity is the natural thing. Men's god is their belly, they live from day to day, and the man who has most money is the most respected. And the cover, to use a well-worn popular saying, is worthy of such a cup.' He refers to a bishop who is well adapted to the dishonest behaviour of his flock. Jerome again in the Adversus Rufinum: 'That you should be translating that book of Eusebius in support of Pamphilus, that you should be putting your cover on that poisonous cup.' Plato in the Hippias major, discussing the difference between the beautiful and the appropriate, has something not very far from our proverb: 'Which is more appropriate, he will say, when you put on the fire that admirable pot of which we spoke, full of admirable pease-pottage - a gold toryne or one made of fig-wood?' The word toryne in the Greek is rendered by Plato's translator as indecula. The author of the Etymologicum suggests that toryne is a word peculiar to Attic, and meant the same to the Athenians as eusegetis. Suidas calls it the tool with which the pot was stirred.

Plutarch in his essay 'On the Education of Children': Ἂν χωλῷ παροικήσῃς, ὑποσκάζειν μαθήσῃς , If you live next to a cripple, you will learn to limp. The scholiast on Pindar gives this in the form 'Live next a cripple; you will learn to limp.' Here belongs also that line from Hesiod which I have quoted elsewhere: 'An evil neighbour is as great a bane' etc. Such indeed is the unhappy state of human affairs, because faults pass from man to man more easily than good qualities; yet there is truth in what Hesiod adds: 'as a good neighbour is a boon.' So Pindar in the seventh of his Nemean Hymns: 'If one man has need of another, what shall we say one neighbour is to another, if he loves him with steadfast heart? A joy beyond all price.' Though I find the Greeks are not agreed on either the reading or the interpretation of this passage. Some of them read γεύεται (partakes of) instead of δεύεται (has need of) and refer this to the way one man shares good and bad fortune with another, and especially with a neighbour. And clearly one should read γείτον᾽ ἔμμεν, so that it agrees with the participle φιλήσαντα. The scholiast quotes another line from Hesiod: 'Neighbours come just as they are, while kinsmen are putting their belts on.' And there is a well-known story of Themistocles who, when he put a piece of land up for sale, told the auctioneer to add to its other merits that it had an excellent neighbour. The point of the proverb is that association with wicked men is very dangerous, because faults of the body and still more faults of the mind pass like an infection from one man to another. Ovid: 'Watching the captives you yourself are caught; / Full many a fault is by contagion taught.' Aristotle thinks this most likely to happen in diseases of the eyes, because that part of the body is so easily moved. Again in skin diseases, being on the surface of the skin and in the glutinous humour and passing easily to another person by contact. Last but not least, all diseases which arise from the corruption of the breath, plague for example, because the breath easily passes from one man to another. There is also a kind of underlying natural sympathy, which makes a man yawn when he sees someone else yawning, and wish to make water when he sees another doing so. The authority for this is Alexander of Aphrodisias. And if you live constantly in the society of someone who stammers, you learn to stammer yourself. A man's moral corruption rubs off on those who live in his company. Aristotle, section 6 problem 4, enquires why ophthalmia, consumption, and skin diseases pass to other people by contagion, but this does not happen in all diseases. Plutarch in his essay 'How to Tell a Flatterer from a True Friend' says that such is the force of continuous association, we imitate unconsciously even the faults of those with whom we live; so Plato's friends used to copy his stoop, Aristotle's associates echoed his lisp, the friends of Alexander the Great his twisted neck and his harsh voice in conversation. Plato in the second book of the Laws elegantly describes how contagion leads a man astray: 'Is it not likely, or even inevitable, that it should be the same as when a man lives among men of bad character and does not abhor their behaviour but is content to accept it, though he may rebuke them humorously, as though his own wickedness were merely a dream? I presume that in such a case the man who is content will end up by resembling whatever it is that contents him.'

There is an iambic line of Menander which belongs here, the line which the Apostle St Paul did not disdain to quote in his first epistle to the Corinthians: 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' Tertullian in his Ad uxorem translates the Greek line, but freely and in the style of Roman comedy: 'Let the way of life you follow and the company you keep be godly, mindful of that line of verse sanctified by the Apostle: Bad company corrupts good character.' A similar maxim is recorded by Aristotle in book 9 of the Ethics. There is also an iambic line current in Greek: 'Bad company will make you bad yourself.' Though it seems a little far from my purpose to collect such material, I cannot refrain from adding the following from the third book of Seneca's On Anger, which may not contribute much to our understanding of the proverb, but is full of lessons for the conduct of life: 'We take our character' he says 'from the company we keep, and the spirit passes on its defects to its neighbours, much as some bodily ailments pass by contagion. A man addicted to drink draws his associates into a love of the bottle; the society of effeminates can soften a strong man, and, if they are given the chance, a brave one; the poison of avarice seeps across into those who have anything to do with it. It is the same, in the opposite direction, with virtue; it can make everything better with which it is associated, and a suitable country and more healthy climate have never had such a good effect on ill-health as the company of better men can have on the poor-spirited. How great this influence can be you will understand, if you consider how even wild beasts grow tame through living with human beings and that no animal however fierce retains its ferocity when it has long endured the society of men.' For all this I have been quoting Seneca's own words. What is more, while the intercourse of daily life in all its contacts has very great power to mend or mar the characters of men, this is especially true of the spoken word. Brought forth as it is from the inner recesses of the human mind, it has a secret natural force, better conveyed by the Greek term energeia, which it can pour into the mind of any hearer, bringing an instant venom if it is poisonous and a powerful remedy if it is wholesome. And so I never remember reading an utterance by any famous philosopher which seems to me fit to be compared with words my friend John Colet, a man of equal scholarship and integrity, used to repeat: 'We are, what we are made by our daily conversation: we are shaped by what we hear round us every day.' And what he said about conversation is also to be understood of what we read. Those who spend their whole lives on gentile literature end up as pagans; those who read nothing but filthy books must needs develop in their own characters a streak of filth. For reading surely is a kind of conversation.

Ἄννος κρίβανον, Annus and the oven, was applied in old days to those who had made some new invention, Annus being an Egyptian credited with the invention of ovens to bake bread in. For in very early times they lived on porridge and polenta, and the use of baked bread was unknown. On the theory of baking bread in ovens Pliny has much to say in book 18 chapter 11. And hence the thing also gets its name. Plautus in the Aulularia calls it artoptesia. Seneca in one of his Letters to Lucilius points out that in the beginning bread was kneaded by hand and baked in hot ashes in an earthenware pot; 'Ovens and other devices for controlling the heat at will were gradually discovered later.' Bread so baked was called kribanites. This adage is mentioned both by Suidas and by the scholiast on Aristophanes' Acharnians. Though the texts mostly have anthrôpos; only in one place have I found it written Annos, but personally I think it is better regarded as a proper name.

Αρχὴ τὸν ἄνδρα δείκνυσιν, Command displays the man. An iambic dimeter that circulated as a proverb. Some think it was a saying of Pittacus of Mitylene; some attribute it to Solon, Sophocles among them, or so they say. Aristotle in the fifth book of the Ethics cites it under the name of Bias. Theophrastus too in his Proverbs (though they are no longer extant) ascribes it to Bias. I thought it best to add this, to prevent any complaints that this is a maxim and not a proverb. Though Plutarch too in his life of Cicero shows that this was current as a proverb, when he writes as follows: 'But what is thought and commonly said to exhibit and test a man's character better than anything - power and official position, which arouses all his passions and displays all his bad qualities - this never fell to the lot of Demosthenes.' Sophocles in the Antigone:
'Tis hard to learn the soul of any man,
His thoughts and feelings, ere he shows himself
On the touchstone of power and government.
The point is that private life hardly gives sufficient scope for an insight into a man's character and natural qualities; put him in a position of power, where he can do what he likes, and then it will be clear what sort of man he is. Epaminondas turned this rather nicely upside down. To show their low opinion of him the Thebans had given him some mean and negligible office. He did not despise it; he took such pains over his duties that the post which had previously been of no account whatever gained immensely in dignity and importance; for, said he, 'It's not only that place shows the man; sometimes the man shows the place.' The story is in Plutarch's 'Precepts of Statecraft.'

There was once an adage quoted by Marcus Varro in a satire called The Testament, and reported by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights: 'Accius and Titius take alike.' 'If one is born' he says 'in the eleventh month, as Aristotle suggests, then let Accius and Titius take alike.' His point of course was that he would give a son born in the tenth month of pregnancy exactly the same rights as one born in the eleventh. The source is no doubt the lawyers' custom of using the two names Titius and Accius to stand for any two litigants.

Κωφὸν πρόσωπον, A walk-on part. Martial in the sixth book of his Epigrams:
Three actors hold the comic stage:
How can it be that Paula's heart,
Lupercus, four do now engage?
Your Paula loves the walk-on part.
This will suit those who in the deliberations of a committee, in a dispute, or even at a dinner-party alone sit silent while everyone else is talking. It is clearly drawn from the rules of the comic stage, on which it was exceptional to introduce more than three characters in any one scene. If a fourth is sometimes added, he is either a walk-on part, or he says very little. Cicero in the Letters to Atticus, book 13: 'Had I made Cotta and Varius dispute among themselves, as you say I should have in your last letter, I should have left nothing but a walk-on part for myself.' Pindar somewhere uses A silent wedding, ἄφθογγος γάμος., for a secret one, a wedding at which there is no hymeneal anthem. Of the doryphorema I have spoken elsewhere.

There is not much difference between that and a trimeter from Laberius 'If you've no tongue in your head, you must vote with your feet.' It suits those who in consultation or discussion have nothing of their own to contribute but agree with the opinions of other people. For pedarian, foot-slogging, senators were those who sat in the senate but were not asked to give their opinions; they went into the voting lobbies in support of other men's views. Hence, as we learn from Festus Pompeius under the word pedarius, Lucilius called them agipedes, foot-workers, because they expressed an opinion by walking to one side or the other. It is recorded by Gellius in the Attic Nights, book 3 chapter 18. The crocodile too has no tongue in its head, but its mouth is well set with teeth; and we see many men like that nowadays, who have no idea how to speak well, but can give one a deadly bite. The Nile is a long way away, but this species of crocodile is a very common animal.

Horace uses a proverbial metaphor in his Epistle to Albius: 'Never were you body without soul. The gods have given you good looks, and money and the art to enjoy it.' Ovid too in his Heroides: 'O Helen, how can you hope this man without a soul can possibly appreciate your gift of beauty?' In fact, 'body without soul' is used just like 'without mind'; for both wisdom and wit are lodged in soul and heart; and so we say a prudent man has a wise heart. And Juvenal, referring to a slow-witted stupid person says: 'That Arcadian youth, / 'Neath whose left pap no beating organ stirs.''

In old days men who deserved a black mark, dishonest worthless men, were said to be 'fit to be registered in Caere,' proverbially, because it was a great disgrace to be entered on the wax tablets on which the people of Caere were registered. Horace: 'Of honour and dishonour alike oblivious, fit for the Caere register, like that vice-ridden crew of Ithacan Ulysses.' Acron and Porphyrion give the following explanation of the adage. When Rome had defeated Caere, the inhabitants were deprived of any right to vote and forbidden to make or to possess any laws of their own; and this humiliation passed into an adage. Aulus Gellius also refers to the Caere register, book 16 chapter 13: 'The first townsmen without the right to vote were, we are told, the people of Caere. They were allowed not to share the privilege of Roman citizenship but to take part in the business and burdens of the citizen body in return for their giving hospitality and protection to sacred objects from Rome during the Gallic war. Thus it came about that the name "register of Caere" was inverted, and used for the list of persons deprived of the vote by the censors for disciplinary reasons.' It seems related to Sutorium atramentum, of which I have spoken elsewhere.

Macrobius in his Saturnalia, book 1 chapter 6, writes as follows: 'Why Saturn himself is represented in fetters was unknown (as he tells us) to Verrius Flaccus, but is suggested to me by my reading of Apollodorus. Apollodorus says that Saturn is bound in woollen bonds throughout the year, but released for his festival - that is, in this month of December. Hence, he says, the proverb that the gods have feet of wool, the meaning of which is that in the tenth month the embryo in the womb grows into a living creature, which is confined in soft bonds by nature until it is ready to come forth suddenly into the light.' So Macrobius. Lucian too in his Cronosolon indicates that Saturn is commonly shown in fetters. And in his book On Astrology he gives a reason for this fanciful idea: since Saturn's orbit is furthest from the Earth, the great depth of air intervening gave them an excuse for saying that he had been cast into Tartarus. Also the fact that the planet's movements are the slowest of all, so much so that it almost seems to stand still, made them imagine that he was bound in fetters. Plutarch in his 'Problems' says it was customary in Tyre to chain the statues of the gods. The riddle of this proverb means that the gods move slowly to punish crime, but sooner or later do make evil-doers pay the penalty, it may be unexpectedly. So Porphyrion explains it, pointing out that what Horace says in Odes 3.2: 'Rarely does Punishment, although she limps, / Let go the guilty, though they're well ahead,' is related 'to the proverb The gods have feet of wool, because they are sometimes slow in catching up with wrongdoers.'

Ζήνωνος ἐγκρατέστερος, As temperate as Zeno. Laertius also states in his life of Zeno that both in food and sexual pleasures the philosopher was so tolerant and so economical that he lived exclusively on uncooked food and was covered by a very thin blanket. Hence he is criticized by Philemon in one of his comedies for eating dried figs by way of a relish after his dry bread, and drinking water in place of wine, and teaching his pupils to go hungry. From this there arose a popular expression, As temperate as Zeno. Philemon's lines, which are quoted by Diogenes from his play The Philosopher, run as follows:
On his dry bread a relish of dried figs,
Water to wash them down - this is indeed
A new philosophy: he teaches hunger,
And yet gets pupils.
Though some ascribe these lines to Posidippus rather than to Philemon, as we are warned by Laertius.

Ἡ συλόσωντος χλαμὺς, Syloson's cloak. Recorded by Diogenianus. Used normally of people who take pride in wearing grand clothes; but it would make sense also of those who give a small present at the right moment and get it back with interest. The anecdote which gave rise to the proverb is related by Herodotus in Thalia, though in his text the word is chlanis, which is a garment worn by soldiers, and not chlamys: and also by Strabo in book 14 of his Geography. It runs as follows. There was a man called Syloson, who perceived that Darius the son of Hystaspes, while he was still a private individual, very greatly admired a very handsome cloak that he was wearing, so he gave it to him as a present. Darius did not forget this well-placed generosity, and when he became supreme he handed over to Syloson the whole city and island of Samos, thus rewarding the gift of one garment with a flourishing kingdom. Valerius Maximus also mentions the story in book five of his Memorabilia in the chapter on gratitude. Only what others call a chlamys or chlanis, he names as an amiculum, a kind of mantle.

Ἓκητι Συλοσῶντος εὐρυχωρία, Plenty of room here, thanks to Syloson. An iambic line turned into a proverb, which is recorded by Strabo in book 14 of his Geography. Thanks to the generosity of Darius, Syloson was made tyrant of Samos on the death of Polycrates. He was a very strict ruler, as men often are who have risen to grandeur from a humble position in life, and the inhabitants therefore began to leave the island; which gave rise to the proverbial saying 'Plenty of room here, thanks to Syloson.' Appropriate to a severe governor or a wicked prince, whose faults cause the inhabitants to leave. It will gain in elegance if used further afield, for instance if applied to an avaricious man who has pillaged a house, or to a wastrel whose spendthrift habits have emptied the coffers.

Φαλάριδος ἀρχή, The tyranny of Phalaris, is in the list of Greek proverbs. It will rightly be used of those who make a cruel use of absolute power or of some authority entrusted to them. The adage takes its rise from Phalaris tyrant of Agrigentum, whose cruelty has made him immortal. Among many instances of his ferocity, the most famous is the bronze bull made for him by Perillus (or Perilaus, for so he is called by Lucian), in which human beings were enclosed, and a fire lit beneath it, so contrived that the screams of men in agony sounded like the bellowing of the bull. Having first burnt the inventor to death in it, he then sent this bull to Delphi as an offering to Phoebus, that it might be placed in his temple as a monument both to its brilliant technique and to the cruelty of the invention and the punishment rightly turned against the inventor. The Delphians however refused it, as the offering of a tyrant. Such more or less is the story told by Lucian. The same image underlies Φαλαρισμὸς, Phalarism, which I find used to express frightful cruelty. Cicero in his Letters to Atticus, book 7: 'As for the man whose Phalarism you fear, I think all he does will be frightful.' Again in the In Pisonem: 'Since we have a Phalaris for our schoolmaster,' a man, that is, who metes out capital punishment to books he does not like.

My last adage rightly fitted those who show great cruelty towards men over whom they have power; and the very similar proverb 'Manlian orders' may well be turned against the over-rigid observance of the letter of the law which ignores humanity and justice. The story which gave rise to the proverb is told by Livy in book 8 of his first decade; it is also in Valerius Maximus and many other authors, and it runs something like this. Titus Manlius during his consulate was fighting a war against the Latins, and had issued orders that there was to be no attacking outside the regular line of battle. The consul's son Titus Manlius, who commanded a squadron of cavalry, was challenged by Genutius (or, as Valerius has it, Geminius) Metius, who commanded the cavalry of Tusculum; forgot the consul's orders and engaged him; and ran the challenger through with his spear. Surrounded by his squadron and carrying his spoils, he was making something like a triumphant return to his father - who, because his son had fought outside the line, had him fastened to a stake and flogged in the usual way before them all, and then beheaded. It was 'a valuable precedent for the future,' as Livy says, but made the consul highly unpopular at the time. In fact, as Valerius tells us, in the ninth book of his Memorabilia in the chapter on anger, when he returned to Rome victorious, 'none of the younger men went out to escort him, such was the hatred he inspired in them all.' Hence he was commonly nicknamed 'the Imperious.' There is a similar example of severity in Valerius Maximus, book 2, in the chapter on military discipline: Posthumius Tiburtus, whose son, a youth of outstanding courage, was executed by his father because he had engaged the enemy successfully, but without his father's orders. Though Livy, in book 4 of his first decade, prefers to believe this of Manlius Torquatus rather than of Posthumius, and says that in choosing between the different opinions of his authorities he has followed the argument that the current proverb calls these 'Manlian orders' and not 'Posthumian,' though in date Posthumius came before Manlius, and had he been the first to set such a ferocious example he would presumably have pre-empted 'the distinguished position of being proverbial for cruelty'; besides which, he says, it was Manlius and not Posthumius who was nicknamed 'the Imperious.' Seneca too in the De beneficiis, book 3, recalls a certain Manlius or Manilius who, having been exiled by his father, returned to save him from the perils of a threatened lawsuit. Cicero has a covert allusion to the proverb in the second book of the Definibus: 'Make sure that ours are not Manlian orders, or something even worse, if you give me commands which I am quite unable to obey.' Perhaps 'ours,' nostra, should be jussa, 'commands.'

Πολλῶν ἐγὼ θρίων ψόφον ἀκήκαο, Of many fig-leaves have I heard the sound. This is an iambic line current as a proverb, by which we express our contempt for threats and empty bluster, as Thais did in Terence, when she snapped her fingers at Thraso's fierce and bombastic threats and called him 'a great noisy rascal.' Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'Well I know the sound of fig-leaves; often have I heard the same.' Thrion is the Greek for a fig-leaf; and when fig-leaves are put on the fire they make a curiously formidable noise, which well might startle anyone who had never heard it before, though otherwise it is empty crackling not worth a thought. Unless you prefer to change the accent and take the word from thriai, the Greek name for pebbles put into an urn by soothsayers when fortune-telling, as I have pointed out elsewhere. These fortune-tellers have a habit sometimes of foreseeing terrible events in order to frighten their foolish and credulous clients, though often none of their threats come true.

Οὐδ᾽ ἐν σελίνοις εἰσὶν, They are not even in the celery, in the sense that they have not even reached the first steps and beginning of the matter. The metaphor derives from people entering a garden; for in ancient times the outside circuit of a garden was planted with celery, and those who had not yet got beyond that seemed to be as it were still on the threshold of the garden. Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'He's not yet in the celery, nor yet in the rue,' that is, he has no idea what's coming. The scholiast also reports quite a different opinion on this passage: the adage would refer to a gymnastic contest, and those who prepared infants for such a future were accustomed as soon as they were born to lay them in celery. Thus to say 'Not yet even in the celery' was equivalent to 'Not even in the first stage'; and the comic poet added rue by way of a joke, because he had just mentioned celery. Moreover they think that the custom of using celery for garlands was introduced long ago by Hercules after he had killed the Nemean lion, as Pindar seems to suggest somewhere. In the fourth of his Nemean Hymns he says: 'Where in the contest of him that roars aloud he was conspicuous in his wreath of Corinthian celery,' meaning that in the contest sacred to Neptune at the Isthmus he was crowned by the Corinthians.

Πρωκτὸς λουτροῦ περιγίνῃ, You are an arse that beats all efforts at washing. Callistratus, quoted by the scholiast on Aristophanes, refers this adage to those who get themselves into some sort of trouble, because that part of the body, however much it's washed, dirties itself afresh, so that it is itself to blame if it cannot be washed clean. It will also fit when we wish to convey that some action is fruitless, such as paying for a criminal's release from gaol who immediately repeats the offence and hurries back there again, or trying to reconcile two people who will soon relapse into their ancient quarrel, or correct someone by nature incorrigible, a woman for instance. It will also suit those who get their own way through their own bad qualities, a pupil for instance of such bad character that his tutor gives up trying to improve him. They think the adage seems to derive from people of loose bowels, whom Nonius calls forioli. Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'An arse that beats all efforts at washing.' In the same way a disease is said to beat the art of the physician when it is incurable. You will find in ancient sources that there was a public custom, after voiding the bowels, of washing that part of the body, though this had to be often repeated. Martial records among the pretty tricks of Issa, a lapdog, that after relieving herself she would ask to be washed. We read also of a barbarian so unwilling to endure slavery that he committed suicide by forcing down his throat the stick with a sponge attached to it which was provided for wiping the arse.

Quintilian in the fifth book of his Institutiones oratoriae quotes this as a proverbial saying: Conscience is a thousand witnesses. The sense needs no interpreter. Everyone knows that conscience is more powerful than anything else, so that no tortures are so effective in bringing wrongdoing to light as a bad conscience, nor can any hangman apply more cruel punishment. Hence that line: 'How hard for guilt to wear a guiltless face!' There is also a maxim in Greek: συνείδησις πλήττει τὴν ψυχὴν., Conscience belabours the spirit. Juvenal too: 'And flogs with silent lash.' This is what poets mean when they produce their fables about avenging Furies.

Μυσῶν λεία, The Mysians are fair game, used to be used of those who are wronged and plundered with impunity by the first comer. The adage derives from the Mysians, who were once, it is said, much exposed to raids by their neighbours, while their king Telephus was abroad. Aristotle uses this adage in the first book of the Rhetoric, where he deals with arguments derived from conjecture: 'And those who are wronged by many and take no steps to get their revenge, but are (as the proverb puts it) fair game like the Mysians.' His point is that everyone attacks them freely, because by the way they endure their earlier wrongs they seem to invite fresh ones. Demosthenes uses it in his attack on Aeschines, a passage in which ignorant scribes have altered 'Mysian' to 'miserable' in Leonardo Aretino's version. It is cited from the Medea of Stratis and the Iambi of Simonides.

Υπὲρ τὰ ἐσκαμμένα πηδᾶν, To leap beyond the pit, is suitable for those who plan some new and incredible enterprise far beyond the capacity of ordinary men, or who depart from the plan which has been laid down, or who transgress the appointed limits and the bounds of the power entrusted to them. The adage comes from a certain Phayllus, a performer in the pentathlon, an Opuntian or, as some think, a native of Crotona, who is said to have shown astonishing prowess in both the long jump and the discus. Such is the account in Suidas. There is extant an inscription written for a statue of him: 'Full five and fifty feet Phayllus leapt, / And for five score less five the discus threw.' This adage is mentioned by Plato in the Cratylus: 'And to overleap the pit.' Julius Pollux also records it in book 3 of On the Names of Things. Lucian in The Dream: 'It overleaps the pit,' of a dream which continues into a man's waking moments though sleep is its normal limit. Chrysostom in his third homily on Second Corinthians: 'He overleapt the pit.' He speaks of Paul who, since he taught the Gospel without recompense, did more than was expected of an Apostle. Cicero in the first book of his De oratore: 'And a knowledge, as it were, of definite professional subjects with a legal fence round it.' Again in his speeches: 'If I stray outside the fence I have erected round myself.' For the place in which the ludi forenses were held was fenced in with ditches, railings, and similar boundaries.

Psyra is an island not far from Chios, mentioned by Homer in the third book of the Odyssey, where he calls it Psyria: 'At least we were returning on the upper side of rocky Chios past the isle of Psyria, keeping Chios itself on our left hand.' Strabo uses the word Psyra as a neuter plural. Pliny also mentions it in book five of his History of the World. This island, being very small and quite undistinguished, came to be a proverb for something despicable and worthless, so that things done in a mean and unworthy fashion were said to be done 'as they do in Psyra.' So more or less Stephanus. He also cites Cratinus: 'Taking Bacchus to Psyra' and another phrase from his Nemesis: 'You take Sparta to Psyra.'

Κύπριος βοῦς, A Cyprus ox was a taunt aimed at a brutish and stupid man, since the oxen in Cyprus were thought to be more brutish than the average, feeding as they did on human excrement. Recorded by Suidas and Diogenianus. The scholiast on Aristophanes' Plutus writes that oxen in Boeotia were scatophagous, that is, they ate dung. Aristophanes applies the word to physicians, because in the course of curing the sick they must handle various filthy substances and narrowly examine urine or faeces. As to the oxen in Cyprus, Pliny in the last chapter of book 28 agrees, reporting they they seek human excrement not simply as food but as a remedy for pain in their intestines.

Festus Pompeius cites this sotadean line from Ennius: 'Luncheon for a Cyprus ox,' and makes clear that it is in place whenever a mean and tedious guest is entertained at a mean and tedious party. Of the origin of the adage he gives the same account as I have just given here. It will be more humorous if diverted to things of the mind, and applied to a man making a speech full of obscenities to an audience who live that kind of life, or an ignorant speech to a party of ignoramuses.

To keep Sejus' horse was said in old days proverbially of anyone who had suffered misfortunes and been reduced to the depths of penury. It is an allegory, derived from a horse which had a curse on it, called Sejus' horse from the name of its owner, Gnaeus Sejus. It was believed to be descended from the horses of Diomede, and it was a very handsome animal; but the curse on it took the form that its owner at any time was fatally destined for extinction with his whole household. Sejus himself was sentenced to death and was horribly executed; next came Dolabella, who was killed in battle; then Cassius, killed by the enemy; after him Antonius, who died a horrible death: all proved the truth of it. 'This horse was seen by Gaius Bassus (so he says) in Argos; it was incredibly handsome and of a spirit and colour to beat all, for its coat was red.' This adage is both recorded and explained at length by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights, book 3 chapter 9. It is possible that this superstition about the horse is an echo of the wooden horse of which Homer tells in Odyssey 8, which brought final disaster upon Troy, and to which Virgil alludes in 'the fatal engine climbs the walls.' Conversely, there was an ancient superstition that some things were destined to bring success. Trebellius Pollio in his book on the Thirty Tyrants says it was commonly supposed that people who carried a likeness of Alexander the Great in gold or silver would be successful. Even today there are those who promise princes swords which are lucky in battle and suchlike nonsense. It is still more suprising that some people believe these impostors.

Another adage very close to that is Aurum habet Tolossanum,He has gold from Toulouse. This is said of a man who suffers great and inescapable disasters and dies a strange and pitiable death. It is recorded by Aulus Gellius in the passage cited above, in the following words: 'The same sense is conveyed by another ancient proverb which, I understand, runs thus, He has gold from Toulouse. When the town of Toulouse in Gaul had been put to the sack by Quintus Cepio the consul and quantities of gold had been found in the temples there, anyone who had handled gold originating from the sack died a pitiful and agonizing death.' In most texts of Gellius the reading hitherto has been 'in Italy,' but this is wrong, for both Strabo and Justin put Toulouse in Gaul. Cicero mentions gold from Toulouse in his On the Nature of the Gods, book 3; 'Consider' he says 'other problems, gold from Toulouse or the conspiracy of Jugurtha.' Strabo in book.4 of his Geography tells us that this money at Toulouse was part of what had belonged to Delphi. Brennus, who was a Prausian in origin, had raided Delphi with the help of the Tectosagi. Then, as Justin says in book 22, the Tectosagi returned to their ancestral home at Toulouse, and there began to suffer from pestilence; nor could they find any relief until, as instructed by soothsayers, they had taken all the gold and silver they had collected by sacrilege and sunk it in the lake at Toulouse. All of this was removed long afterwards by Cepio the Roman consul; and this act of sacrilege brought destruction not only to him but to his forces. There were 110,000 pounds of gold and 1,500,000 pounds of silver; for Strabo says that the people of Toulouse had increased the temple treasure out of their private fortunes in hopes of a closer reconciliation between themselves and the deity. Further details of the gold in Toulouse derived from Posidonius are given by Strabo in the same passage; but as they did not seem to contribute very much to the understanding of the adage, I have thought it sufficient to give the reference. Even today a belief still exists among the common people which makes them think everyone will come to a bad end who has laid violent hands on sacred things.

Πολύποδος κεφαλὴ, An octopus' head. Used of a man who is inconsistent and has both faults and virtues at the same time, like Catiline in Sallust's description. It also suits anything from which you can derive plenty of advantage not unmixed with harmful features. The image is taken from the head of this animal which, as Plutarch tells us in his essay called 'How Young Men should Study Poetry,' is delicious eating but provokes appalling nightmares. Those who wished to foretell the future from dreams were thus forbidden to eat it, and beans too, as Plutarch again tells us in his 'Table-talk.' So he calls poetry an octopus' head, as containing much that is entertaining and useful, and yet some things that will do harm unless one takes precautions. So we should try to select the good out of such things and avoid what is harmful. As Simonides teaches, we should model ourselves on bees, which ignore everything else and fly only to the places where they can collect what they can use for making honey, and gather nothing for which they will have no use. The complete proverb is given in Plutarch as follows: 'In the octopus' head is much evil and much good.' Theognis likewise in his maxims says of wine 'It is both good and bad.' One might divert to the same effect the story of the spear of Achilles, which could cure the wound it had inflicted in the first place.

Εν θέρει τὴν χλαῖναν κατατρίβεις, You wear out your greatcoat in summer, is recorded by Zenodotus, Diogenianus, and Suidas. It will be used appropriately of anyone who wastes heedlessly and on the spur of the moment essential things which would one day be of great use if they were preserved. This is common among the young, who foolishly dissipate their patrimony in early life, which should have been their support when old and feeble. Nor will it be a bad fit for those who use up their bodily strength in pointless pleasures, only to feel the lack of it later in serious business. For the chlaina or overcoat is a top garment worn according to the weather as a protection against wind, rain, and cold, the Latin for which is paenula. Juvenal: 'And my paenula dripped with the heavy rain.' Though Latin also uses the word laena for the Greek chlaina; Nonius shows that it is an outer garment worn in the army, like chlamys, pallium, and penula. In Diogenes Laertius Philemon the comic poet makes a similar criticism of Crates, that he wore a thick cloak in summer and in winter a ragged tunic, presumably to teach himself moderation and endurance.