Adagia 1401–1500

Ἥν ἔλαχες Σπάρτην κόσμει, Sparta has fallen to your lot; be an honour to her, or rule her well. The purport of this adage is that, whatever sphere of activity may chance to be ours, we should adapt ourselves to it, and live up to the standard that it sets. Cicero in his Letters to Atticus, book 4 letter 6: 'Nothing is left but "Sparta is your portion; do your best for her." I simply can't, and can understand why Philoxenus preferred to be sent back to jail.' Again in the same collection, in book 1: 'That is why, when you say that Sparta is my portion, I shall never desert her; and what is more, if she deserts me, I shall stand by my original convictions.' The words Cicero quotes form an anapaestic line from some tragedy. The scholiast on Theocritus points out an allusion to this proverb in his Wayfarers: 'Compete from there then, and pasture your oxen from there. / Tread your own beat and keep your oaks.'
It will thus be permissible to apply the proverb to various purposes; when, for instance, we urge someone to maintain in a proper spirit the role which he has adopted. If you are a bishop, behave like a bishop, not an oriental prince. If you're a husband, mind you fulfil a husband's duties; if a courtier, than play the part of a courtier; if a judge, be no man's private friend or enemy, but be a judge. Has Fortune given you a princedom? - do your princely duty. Are you a private person? - act as a private person ought. This is very much how Aristophanes uses the phrase (for his is the name attached to the comedy called Thesmophoriazusae): 'The poet his behaviour must adapt / To suit the play that he's obliged to write.' Equally, when we tell any individual that it is his duty to be content with the lot that has befallen him; for like an experienced ship's-captain, who shows his seamanship in any weather, a wise man acts a wise man's part in any circumstances. If you have an ample fortune, use it wisely; if the reverse, enjoy the blessings of a modest station. If you have had a good education, make it serve a good life; if not, do not repine, for godliness is sufficient to secure salvation. Plutarch in his essay 'On Tranquillity of Mind/ making the point that everyone should be content with what he has, says 'Sparta has fallen to your lot; do your best for her.' In the same essay he tells us that this saying was uttered by Solon. It is however cited from Euripides: 'Sparta's your portion, Sparta you must rule; / Mycenae ours.' (The words seem addressed by Agamemnon to Menelaus.) This is close to Plato's 'Make the best of what you have' or 'Take it in good part.' But the mass of people nowadays are more devoted to increasing what they have than to making the most of it; against which we are rightly warned by Socrates' words in Plato's Theaetetus: 'For surely it is better to do something small well than something large inadequately.'
And so it would be right for this sentence 'Sparta is your portion; do your best for her' to be inscribed everywhere in the Courts of princes; for you will hardly find one who truly considers what it means to play a prince's part, or who is content with the authority he has and does not attempt to add something to the extent of his dominions. It is a prince's duty to provide by all the means in his power for the well-being of the commonwealth, to protect public liberty, to cherish peace, to banish wrongdoing with the least possible sacrifice of his own subjects, and to see to it that he has virtuous and upright servants. And so, when he does not spare a thought for these things, but amuses himself with gaming, dancing, wenching, music, hunting, or business deals, and in a word is wholly occupied in other things, that is the time to din into his ears the adage 'Sparta is your portion; do your best for her.' Again, when he neglects the dominions which are already his and spends his time abroad, thirsting for the territory of others; when he brings his own subjects into great peril, exhausts his people utterly, and stakes alike himself and his whole fortune on the hazards of war, in order that he may add to his territories two or three petty towns; it is then he should be reminded of the adage 'Sparta is your portion.' Nothing brings a prince more credit than to take such dominions as Fortune has given him, and make them more flourishing by his own wisdom, virtue and activity. Your lot is a small town: take Epaminondas as your model, and make that small dull town far more populous and richer by your efforts. Your lot is a barbarous and intractable race of men: make it your business to tame them and render them law-abiding by degrees. Your lot may be a crown without much glory: do not challenge your neighbours, but improve what you have without inflicting loss on others. The desire for foreign dominions has very rarely turned out well. Some nations have been made separate by their character and language, like the Germans and the Spaniards; some men nature herself has isolated, the islanders by the sea, the Italians at the same time by the sea and the great mass of the Alps; some have been given their proper boundaries by chance. If every prince were to try to improve what he has been given, we may be sure all things would flourish universally; and among friends of course, who are Christians, all things will be common to all. As things are, it often happens that we try to undermine the possessions of others, and entirely overthrow our own; or, even granting things go well, the blood of all those of our fellow-citizens, all that expense, such dangers and such efforts and so many childless homes, and in a word evils past counting, purchase some empty title and the smoke of a great name. Xerxes and Cyrus and Alexander the Great would have lived longer and won more solid glory, had they preferred the good government of their own states to the harrassment by force of arms of states that were not theirs. Charles, duke of Burgundy, great-grandfather of the present duke, had he turned his outstanding intellectual gifts and his noble spirit to the enriching of his own dominions instead of conquering other men's, would not have met a wretched death in war, and might have been numbered among the most admired of princes. A great part of my native realm was at that time in the grip of a sort of fatal pestilence, a very foolish but uniquely disastrous civil strife; the whole population was split into two camps, of which one took its name from a hook and the other from a codfish. City fought against city, village against village, house against house; often those who were united by sharing the same bed were divided by a difference of party, which broke the bonds of natural affection and rent brother from brother. Everywhere was a turmoil of robbery, strife, bloodshed and rapine; and all the time that excellent prince, just as though this were not his business, was far away, laying siege to the walls of strangers.
Charles, king of France, eighth of that name, after ranging over Italy returned to his own people; but at the price of such distress and danger for himself and them as made them repent of his success. Some even maintain that he might have reached old age, had he left Italy to the Italians.
What shall I say of Philip, father of this present Charles? He set off for Spain, not to risk the hazards of war but because he was summoned to assume his share of the kingdom. There was universal peace; and yet that auspicious expedition - what tears it cost his country, plundered by unbearable taxation! He himself was more than once in great peril of death. He lost Frangois de Busleyden, archbishop of Besangon, a man without peer in every way. Somehow or other, none the less, he returned; but he was not allowed to be quit of his troubles so lightly. Once again he left his own people and, after being most cruelly tossed by a storm, he was cast up on the coast of England, which was at that time none too friendly to my countrymen. How he fared then, the treatment he received, the promises he made, on what conditions he was sent away, are subjects on which I would rather not dwell. He was the slave of necessity, of course, and I forgive him; but why was it necessary to subject himself to that necessity? Nor did he learn his lesson from these troubles and think of returning to his own country; he had to revisit Spain, and there he died, a young man born to do great things, had he not begrudged himself his own good fortune. Thus one man's death at one stroke deprived his country of an excellent prince and Maximilian of an only son.
What am I to say of the Most Christian king of France, Louis XII? He attacked Venice, which at that time seemed invincible, and in one conflict restored all those towns to the Roman pontiff Julius and to the Emperor Maximilian, and won so many for himself, returning, as it seemed, in triumph. But as a result what a sea of troubles came flooding into France! With their own blood the French had won all those famous victories for Julius, and it was Julius' doing that with still greater bloodshed they were expelled from Italian soil. Nor was this all, and they were branded with every form of ignominy. Had Julius not been carried off by death, we should have seen that kingdom, the most properous in the whole world, utterly overthrown.
Of James, most serene king of Scots, what am I to say? Prosperity and reputation, both without flaw, were his, if he had confined himself permanently within his own frontiers. He was so handsome that even from afar you could see he was a king; he had great powers of mind, incredible and universal knowledge, and unconquerable spirit, a truly royal nobility of feeling, the most perfect courtesy, the most open-handed generosity; there is, in short, no good quality that might grace a great prince in which he did not so far excel as to win praise even from his enemies. He was blessed with a wife - Margaret, sister of his most serene majesty King Henry the eighth of England - of such beauty, such good sense and such devotion to her husband, that he could not have asked heaven for a different queen. On the kingdom of Scotland, which in wealth, in the number of its inhabitants and in grandeur is thought to fall short of many others, he had shed such lustre by his own qualities, and had so exalted, so embellished it, that he deserved the true praise of an outstanding prince, if he had kept within this field of action in his quest for glory. But alas, when a king leaves his kingdom, this is never a blessing for the country, and rarely for the prince. In an excess of friendly feeling for the king of France, and in hopes of diverting the English king, who was mounting serious and active threats against the French, and recalling him to the defence of his island, he crossed the frontier of his own kingdom and opened hostilities against the English. In brief, he perished, bravely but disastrously, not so much for himself as for his kingdom, and perished while still in his prime. Long might Scotland have enjoyed such a great prince; long might Margaret have enjoyed such a husband, his son (for he had had a son by her) such a father, and he in his turn all these blessings and his own renown, had he not begrudged himself a longer life.
Killed with that valiant father was a son, a son worthy of such a father, Alexander archbishop of Saint Andrews, a young man only some twenty years of age, in whom no quality that would grace a man in his maturity was lacking. Strikingly handsome and dignified, and of heroic stature, he had a very placid temperament, but none the less was very quick to acquire knowledge in every field. I once lived under the same roof in the city of Siena, at a time when I was coaching him in rhetoric and Greek. What gifts he had, in heaven's name! How quick his mind, how fertile, how ready to follow any clue, how capable of grasping many things at once! At the same time he was learning law, but did not much enjoy his lawbooks with the element of barbarism in their style and the tedious verbosity of the commentators. He used to have lessons on rhetorical theory, and declaimed on a prescribed theme, practising at the same time both pen and tongue. He was learning Greek, and every day used to return at the agreed time the exercise that had been set him. The afternoons were given up to his music teachers, in the monochord, the flute and the zither; sometimes he also sang. Even dinner-time did not fail to contribute to his studies. The chaplain used to read continuously some improving book, the Papal Decrees perhaps or St Jerome or Ambrose; nor was he ever interrupted as he read, unless one or other of the two learned men between whom the archbishop was sitting had drawn attention to some point, or he himself, not fully understanding what was read, had asked some question. After dinner again there was conversation, but not for long, and it was spiced with sound learning. No part of his life in fact was exempt from study, except for what was given to divine service and to sleep. For even if there had been any time to spare (and time did not suffice for so great a variety of studies) - if in spite of this there was any time left over, he spent it on reading the historians, for history was his favourite subject.
The result of all this was that, when a youth scarcely more than eighteen years old, his achievements in every department of learning were such as you would rightly admire in a grown man. Nor was it the case with him, as it is with so many others, that he had a natural gift for learning but was less disposed to good behaviour. He was shy by nature, but it was a shyness in which you could detect remarkable good sense. His spirit was lofty, and far above the usual unworthy desires, but in a way that avoided both the disdainful and the farouche. Sensitive as he was, he often concealed his feelings, nor could he ever be provoked to lose his temper; such was his gentle nature and his fairness of mind. In wit he took great delight, but it must be educated and have no cutting edge, seasoned with the white salt of Mercury, not the black salt of Momus. Had there been any domestic trouble among his household, the skill and plain speaking with which he normally dealt with it were remarkable. Last but not least, his was a very devout religious nature, without a trace of superstition; no one, in a word, was ever more worthy to be a king's son and the son of that king.
If only his devotion to his father, admirable as it was, had been equally fortunate! Resolved never to fail his father, he went with him to the war. What pray had you to do with Mars, the stupidest of all the gods of poetry, when you were already enlisted as a disciple of the Muses and, what is more, of Christ himself? With your handsome person, your youth, your gentle nature, and your fairness of mind, what could they mean to you, the trumpet-calls, the cannon and the sword? What place has learning in the line of battle, or a bishop sword in hand? It was, no doubt, excessive filial devotion that misled you. You proved your love for your father with a courage that was too great, and unhappily fell with your father on the field of battle. Those gifts of nature, those high qualities, those splendid hopes, were all sunk in the hurricane of a single fight. Something of mine was lost there too: the pains I had devoted to teaching you, and so much of you as was made by my efforts, I claim as my share in you.
And what supreme felicity there might have been, had not some evil genius driven the king to pass the frontiers of his own kingdom and try the fortunes of war in foreign fields against a nation noted for ferocity! If only he had been willing to complete the task he had begun so admirably, of doing the best for the Sparta which was his portion! Kings find their proper and their noblest field for distinction within the frontiers of their realm. Take the commonwealth of bees: the other citizens fly hither and thither at will; only the king is without a sting, and he only has much smaller wings in proportion to his body, so that he is not well-fitted for flight. The Ancients used to represent Venus with her feet resting on a tortoise-shell, to convey the message that the mother of a family ought never to leave the house, since all her duties are confined within domestic walls. It was in any case much more the point for the prince to take warning from his emblem, for if he does wrong, his wrongdoing entails unhappiness, not for a single family but for the whole round world.
Has he so little business in his own country that he must look for trouble in foreign parts? Crime like a great cesspit lies everywhere, all that sacrilege and robbery, that oppression injury and insult; those fraudulent magistrates, those laws enacted by tyrants or wrested to the service of tyranny; to say nothing of the small-scale scandals, the neglected roads between our towns, the churches falling into ruin, the river-banks neglected. To heal these evils in such a way that you expend on the remedy as little as possible of your people's blood, and the commonwealth feels the benefit without feeling the expense, is surely a splendid task for any prince and earns him immortal renown. If, however, all your desire is to extend the horizon of your glory beyond the bounds of your own realm, see to it that your neighbours learn your greatness from the benefits you confer on them, not from your misdeeds. Do you burn farms and trample crops, demolish cities, drive off flocks and herds and slaughter human beings? Are these the only means by which you show your greatness? A pretty contest, had you been matched against a pirate! Hesiod wrote that 'an evil neighbour is a mighty woe,' a good one on the other hand an enormous boon. Let your neighbours see this proved true in you; let them admire your greatness, in so far as your goodness wins their affection. But I have given rein enough to my grief, and to the memory of my disciple; it remains to return to my catalogue of proverbs.

Δέδοται καὶ κακοῖσιν ἄγρα, Cowards too sometimes have good hunting. Used when success comes to someone who does not deserve it, success that must be ascribed to good fortune rather then to any efforts made by himself. The allegory is taken from hunting, in which more than in most things luck is paramount and merit carries very little weight. Learning on the other hand comes no man's way unless he works for it. Men become monarchs while they sleep, wealth sometimes comes in plenty to the idle, honours are conferred even on those who shun them; but what is of real worth must needs be won by our own efforts. This proverb originates, I suspect, from the old custom of dividing what had been taken in a day's hunting among those present, whether they had earned it or not. So Theocritus in The Fishermen: 'I share our catch; share with me all your dreams.' We do not entrust our secrets to any but chosen friends; and in the same spirit there are some people to whom we tell all. The proverb is given by Suidas, who gets it from Zenodotus.
If you were to read δέδοται or δίδοτο or δέδοτο, it will be the beginning of a trochaic line; for it is probably taken from some poet or other.

Horace uses To walk the tightrope' as a proverbial metaphor, equivalent to doing something very difficult without putting a foot wrong. Derived, Acron thinks, from circus-artists who, with consummate skill and long experience, walk along a tight-stretched rope, a feat by which we may well suppose that the Ancients were much astonished, though in our day nothing is more ordinary. Horace's lines are: 'That poet could methinks the tightrope walk, / Who plucks my heart-strings with mere idle talk.'

No one would hesitate, I think, to give proverbial status to such exaggerations as 'Years ago,' 'Ages ago,' and others of the kind. Terence in The Self-tormenter. 'You know what women are: while they're making themselves up and getting under weigh, a year goes by.' And in another passage: 'Long? It's been an age already,' for a very long time. Plautus in the Asinaria: 'I'd gladly serve for ages, if I could only fall in with Libanus.' And 'It's an age already since I had a letter from you.' So we shall use metaphors of this kind to convey a long stretch of time.

Menedemus in Terence's Heautontimorumenos cites this in so many words as an adage: 'Either I'm born express for misery, / Or there's no truth in what I hear men say, / That time will temper grief.' Sophocles seems to have had the same thing in mind in his Ajax with the scourge: 'For Time's a kindly god,' no doubt because he is the great healer and peacemaker. Ovid: 'What you find hard to bear, the habit formed, / Will easy be; time lightens many loads.' Euripides in the Alcestis: 'Time will relax your grief.' Cicero in book three of the Tusculan Questions: 'That this is so is shown by time, the passage of which has such a softening effect that, though troubles remain the same, the pain of them is not merely relieved but in many cases removed altogether.' And again in book five of the Letters: The effect that will be produced by lapse of time it is our duty to accelerate by wise and thoughtful action.' A line is cited from Iphiclus: Time the great healer of every sort of pain.' Euripides: The leech who time prescribes for your disease / Heals more forthwith than he who plies the knife.'

Λύχνον ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ ἅπτεις, You light a lantern at midday, which means, You do something at the wrong moment, or you explain something perfectly obvious. For what is the use of lamps when daylight is at its brightest? This might be thought to take its rise from a humorous gesture of Diogenes, who carried a lantern in broad daylight, and when asked what he would be at, replied: 'I'm looking for a man.' So Diogenes Laertius records. Seneca in his essay 'On the Happy Life' shows that this was done from superstitious motives, when the anger of a deity threatened: 'When someone rattles a sistrum and falsely declares that he does it under orders; when someone who has a trick of slashing his forearm draws blood with light strokes from arms and shoulders; when a woman crawls on her knees howling through the streets; when an old man dressed in linen and carrying a bay-branch and a lantern in broad daylight dolefully proclaims that some god is angry, you gather in crowds and listen.'

Quintilian in book five of his Principles of Oratory, in the chapter on the uses of evidence, used a metaphor very like this when he said that a man who tried to establish by argument a point that was in itself entirely obvious, was holding a candle to the sun. To all appearance identical with one I have recorded elsewhere: To lend light to the sun.

Zoilus, with his biting tongue, was bold enough but missed his target, and gave rise to a proverb: we commonly give the name of Zoilus to those who blacken other men's fair fame and find fault with the result of other men's labours. Martial: 'I would see Zoilus on tenterhooks.' The original Zoilus was a sophist, whose most distinguished achievement was to have had the audacity to write several books attacking Homer, the prince of poets. This earned him the name of Homeromastix, scourge of Homer; and this too passed into a proverb, for it began to be used of those who criticized famous authors, as we learn from Pliny in the preface to his Natural History. There were Virgilomastiges too, scourges of Virgil, one of whom was Pero. So this Zoilus, having written his critical works on Homer, dedicated them to Ptolemy, tyrant of Egypt, and hoped for an enormous reward from the king. When however nothing was forthcoming, and he was obliged by penury to send and ask, Ptolemy expressed his surprise that Homer, who had been dead for so many years, still provided so many men with their daily bread, and Zoilus, who was so much cleverer than Homer, was starving. At length, as a result of something that happened, he suffered capital punishment, though about the manner of his death the authorities tell differing stories.

Αγαθὰ Κιλλικών, Cillicon is doing well; we must understand that he either is doing something well, or has done well out of it. Appropriate for a person who has grown rich on the profits of crime or dishonourable intrigues. It was a man called Cillicon who gave rise to the adage, a native of Miletus who betrayed his country to the city of Priene and reaped a harvest of riches and dishonour. While planning his treachery, he was asked what his intentions were and replied 'All things well.' So the proverb can take another form: 'All well, as Cillicon used to say.' The authorities are Suidas and Zenodotus. Aristophanes too refers to it in the Peace: 'Nothing wrong; all just as Cillicon said.' The scholiast adds an account of Cillicon's end. After the island of Samos had been betrayed by Cillicon, a Syrian by name of Theagenes went to settle there and opened a butcher's shop. Cillicon went to buy a joint from him, and handed him the piece so that he could cut off what the customer did not want. Whereupon the man lifted his chopper and cut off Cillicon's hand, saying 'With that hand at least you will never betray another city.'

To cut a man's throat with a leaden sword is to refute someone with worthless and trifling argument. Cicero, writing to Atticus: 'Though he said that a leaden sword would be enough to cut his throat.' Again, in his book On the Definitions of Good and Evil he calls an argument that cuts no ice 'a dagger of lead.' In the same way Augustine in book 3 of his Contra ]ulianum has 'And yet you go forth to battle burdened with what you think are the sharp javelins of dialectic, and boast of your dagger of lead.' Demosthenes in his first speech against Aristogeiton: 'After all, a knife is no use to a cook if it will not cut.'

Λέοντα ξυρεῖν, To shave a lion, is applied to those who use finesse in their dealing with the fierce and the powerful, and make fun of them at great risk to themselves. Socrates uses this adage in the first book of Plato's Republic, where he says he 'was not so crazy as to risk trying to shave a lion and make fun of that very formidable character Thrasymachus.' Lambs can be shorn and plucked without danger, but no lion takes kindly to the knife. Martial was clearly alluding to this adage in the tenth book of his Epigrams: 'And so for pity's sake, Ligella, stop plucking a dead lion by the beard.' The poet turns it into a joke, as though it were quite safe and needed no courage to pluck a lion that can no longer feel anything; though by 'lion' he hints at a woman's privy parts when old and dead. Aristides in the Panathenaicus applies it to Pericles when criticized by Plato: 'Make sure we do not try to shave a lion, not by making fun of Thrasymachus but by mocking Pericles, and especially for cowardice.'

Not to flatter myself, and make a fool of myself by my conceit. Suffenus was an exceedingly incompetent poet, eloquent on the subject of other men's faults and blind to his own. Hence arose a current proverb, and those who were foolishly pleased with themselves were called 'Suffenuses.' Catullus in one of his epigrams:
Duller is he than country dullness' self,
Once he takes pen in hand, yet ne'er so happy
As when he scribbles verse; then is he all
Self-admiration and self-centred bliss,'
And again: There's Suffenus-touch about us all.' Horace makes his Maevius very like Suffenus, blind to his own faults and bitterly attacking those of others: 'I have excuses for myself, says Maevius.'

Σικελὸς ὀμφακίζει, A Sicilian picking unripe grapes. Greek has a word omphaka for sour grapes which are not yet ready to pick, derived from ômos, raw, and phagein, to eat, because they are eaten raw. Hence this phrase was used of those who had such a passion for thieving that they made off with quite worthless things. Derived from the Sicilian love of stealing. It will also not be wrong to use it of those people whose excessive greed makes them impatient, so that to secure some trifling gain for themselves they inflict immense loss on others. Some believe it can be made to fit those who take all the best things for themselves, like Syrus in Terence. Zenodotus says it comes from Epicharmus. It is also recorded by Suidas.

Γέρων πίθηκος ἁλίσκεται μὲν, μετὰ χρόνον δ᾽ ἁλίσκεται, An aged ape can be taken, but only after many days. When some cunning fellow, who has long escaped detection, pays the penalty at last. Will be useful in urging that a man should play straight if he wants to be safe, and not put his trust in tactics that are skilful but not honest, for no one has such a stock of stratagems that he can deceive people all the time; sooner or later some accident brings hidden villainy into the open.

Κατὰ ῥοῦν προχωρεῖν, To proceed with a following tide, is a proverbial metaphor often found in the best authors. It is taken from sailors, who make an easier passage when the current, or even the tides in the sea, are in their favour. Lucian in his Jupiter tragoedus: Tn all this so far Damis has had a favouring tide.' And in another passage: 'Everything else is carried by a following tide,' though the sense there is slightly different. Momus is blaming the gods for their neglect of mortal affairs, which they allow to drift, as it were, down stream. So he uses the phrase 'to go with the tide' or 'the current' for being carried along aimlessly with no supervision. Aeschylus in the Persae: 'When fortune's breeze blows fair, to stand convinced / That the same wind of luck will always blow.'

Εξ οὐρίου φέρεσθαι, To be carried by a fair wind, is recorded by Suidas. A man is said to have a fair wind for his voyage when things go as he would wish. The Greek phrase is more expressive, because it suggests a wind from the stern. Libanius the sophist in one of his declamations has 'They who approach things in this spirit often find their plans have a fair wind.' Cicero in book 2 of his Letters to Atticus: Take Caesar, who enjoys a very favourable wind just now: suppose I make even him a better man.' Plautus in the Bacchides: This ship's running very well/ meaning that all proceeds according to plan. In Plautus again, when Tranio's master has been away for three years, leaving him and the son of the house to spend a most agreeable and highly civilized time; and now the master is returned, and the slave sees nothing to hope for but the rack: 'Now' says he 'there's no wind in my sails any more.' Horace in the Satires: 'My canvas swells not with fair northern gales, / Yet 'tis no adverse south that mocks my sails.'
For that matter, the very use of 'shipwreck' for misfortunes has the force of a proverb, and 'conflagration' likewise. And if we remember how many phrases in Homer are used as proverbs, what prevents us from including among adages that phrase of which he is very fond: 'Wind and water kept her true on course,' whenever something goes well from all points of view. There is another phrase in common use in the same poet: 'But wind and steersman held her straight on course/ when the favour of fortune is seconded by industry. Pindar in the first hymn of his Pythians: 'For mariners setting out on their voyage the first of blessings is a favouring breeze.'

Πάρνου σκαφίδιον, Parnus' skiff, suits those who for some affair of no moment raise endless quarrels and complaints. It comes from a man called Parnus, who had a small boat which was stolen, and is said on this account to have made himself a public nuisance. Diogenianus is the authority. Motions were constantly brought before the public assembly about this boat, and at length it became a current jest, like 'Corinthus son of Jove.'

Μὴ παιδὶ τὴν μάχαιραν, The sword in the hand of a child (we must supply Put not), is an allegory with proverbial status, warning us not to entrust power to adolescents or to men without experience or common sense, because they will misuse it and both they and others will suffer. Give no young man the management of money: it is a sword in the hand of a child. Do not entrust the kingdom to an infant: a sword in the hand of a child. Do not delegate the office of public preaching to a fool: a sword in the hand of a child. Nor trust fools with public office: a sword in the hand of a child. Do not commit the duties of a bishop to an ill-educated and unintelligent man: a sword in the hand of a child. Plutarch in the essay he entitled 'Even bad women should be educated' (as preserved in Stobaeus, for the original has not yet emerged into the light of day): 'Put not a sword into the hand of a child, says the proverb; but I would rather say Trust not a child with riches or a grown man with ignorance.' He means that money is most destructive of the young, and ignorance of those in the prime of life. Plutarch again in his 'Table-talk': 'Otherwise we must treat them like children who cannot sit still, and give them, not a spear or a sword but a rattle and a ball.' Athenaeus also used it in book 5 of the Doctors at Dinner of a philosopher entrusted with supreme power.
This form of words is not much unlike a remark, both witty and weighty, once made by the English king, Henry VII, who was both a man of keen judgement and a master of laconic speech. He once heard a sermon by a theologian of the sort they call Mendicants; and after the preacher had let fly in unbridled language on the life of princes (this was madness rather than licence), for there are some who go even to these lengths to win a reputation, the king said 'It was like a sword put into the hands of a maniac.'

Λίνδιοι τὴν θυσίαν, The Lindians (we must supply, thus offer) sacrifice, was used of people who made offerings to the gods when the auspices were against them. It is taken from a story told among others by Lactantius in the first book of his Principles of the Christian Religion. Hercules once seized two oxen by force from a husbandman at Lindos, slaughtered them, and got his dinner ready. As he ate, the old man rained curses on him, which both gratified him and made him laugh; so that Hercules is reported to have said that he never enjoyed a dinner so much. But it will not be out of place to give Lactantius' own words. 'At Lindos' he says, 'which is a town in the island of Rhodes, there are sacrifices in honour of Hercules, of which the ritual is very unlike that used elsewhere: for they are performed, not in what the Greeks call euphemia, a holy silence, but to the accompaniment of curses and execrations, and they are held to be null and void if during the ceremony anyone lets fall a word of good omen, even by accident. The reason for this is said to be as follows, if one can use the word reason of such gross absurdities. Hercules, having arrived in Lindos, was famished; and seeing a local man busy ploughing, he besought him to sell him one of his oxen. The man said this was impossible, for his hopes of cultivating his ground rested entirely on those two oxen. Hercules, in his usual rough way, being unable to acquire one ox, seized both. The unfortunate owner, seeing his oxen slaughtered, vented his rage at the wrongs he suffered in curses, which gave his elegant and well-bred guest great pleasure. While he got ready a feast for his companions and wolfed down the oxen that were another man's property, he listened to the owner's torrents of abuse with roars of laughter. However, once the citizens had decided to pay divine honours to Hercules on account of his valiant exploits, an altar was built for him which they named from this story bouzygos, which means an ox-yoke; and on this two yoked oxen were to be sacrificed, like those which he had seized from the ploughman. The man himself he appointed priest, and instructed him while performing sacrifice always to utter the same curses, on the ground that he had never enjoyed a dinner so much.' In all this I give Lactantius' text. Zenodotus adds that this custom grew up in Lindos because they were also told by an oracle to utter certain curses while performing sacrifice. Gregory of Nazianzus also mentions it in his Steleutic Orations. The adage can be turned to many uses, to a quarrelsome dinner-party for instance, or a disputation, or any enterprise begun with evil omens.

Μεγαρέων δάκρυα, Megarian tears, were either fictitious and not the outcome of real grief, or extorted by force. Diogenianus traces the expression to the following incident. A certain Corinthian called Bacchius had married a daughter of Clithius king of Megara. When she died, Clythius sent a number of maidens and young men to Corinth to lament for the princess in her funeral procession; but their tears were of course fictitious, 'as hireling mourners at a funeral / say and do more than those who really grieve.' Conversely Juvenal: 'When money's lost, the tears are genuine.' Suidas offers another explanation. In Megara, he says, garlic grows very freely, and its sharp tang wrings tears out of many people even against their will. So in Aristophanes it is said humorously of a character with tears in his eyes that he must have been sniffing garlic. If then you were to adapt this proverb to pretended grief, it will be very close to Weeping at your stepmother's funeral.

Ἄνεμος οὔτε μένειν ἐᾷ οὐτε πλεῖν, This wind will let me neither stay nor sail. The words are used by Philoctetes in Aeschylus. The effect is very close to the adage I have a wolf by the ears. It will be useful when a man finds himself in such a difficult situation that it is not open to him to break off what he is doing nor has he the ability to finish it. The metaphor is borrowed from winds of gale force, which makes it very dangerous for mariners to set sail, and yet it is not safe to cast anchor. Quintus Curtius in book 8 sets out the position without metaphor in the words 'Astonished at what they heard, the army dared neither advance nor halt.' It is recorded by Diogenianus.

Ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ αὖθις ἀλώπηξ πάγαις, No fox twice in a trap (we have to supply, is caught). A man of sense 'does not stumble twice at the same stone'; it is the stupid man who falls a second time into the trouble he has already tasted. In Plutarch's collection it is expressed in the form 'A fox that has once escaped the trap is not caught a second time.' Cunning is a natural quality of this creature, as courage is of the lion; thus Pindar in the fourth hymn of the Isthmians compares his hero in strength to a lion and in cleverness to a fox. Related to one I have recorded elsewhere, To trip twice over the same stone. This was used by Gregory the Theologian in one of his letters, addressed to Bosphorius: 'Only fools are allowed by the proverb to trip twice over the same stone.'

Ἀβυδηνὸν ἐπιφόρημα, An introduction or interruption in the style of Abydos. Customarily used when someone interrupts a dinner-party or some other activity and causes a tiresome disturbance. Zenodotus says the proverb is found in Eudoxus, in his play The Changeling. Its source, he says, is an old custom at Abydos. When they entertained a fellow-citizen or a visitor to dinner, and also in their regular religious feasts, after the perfumes and garlands had been distributed, they used to bring in their infant children, and they were carried round by their nurses to be kissed. The children whimpered and screamed, and the nurses chattered noisily and gossiped, and the result was a noisy and unpleasant party. So when a group of friends are agreeably engaged in conversation, and some noisy fellow, some chatterbox bursts in who will make their talk disagreeable by his loquacity, we shall rightly call this an interruption, Abydos fashion; though in some copies I have found epiphonema, an interjection. Wrongly, I think; for Athenaeus in book 24 of the Doctors at Dinner mentions this adage, and shows from the evidence of several authorities that epiphoremata means dessert, or second course, from bringing in, not from interrupting noisily. Stephanus too reads epiphorema, not epiphonema, and so do Zenodotus and Suidas. Hesychius alone reads epiphonema, explaining that it was applied to those who made unjust accusations against the visitors. In any case, a variant reading found in some copies, 'of the Abydenes' instead of 'Abydos fashion,' makes very little difference to the sense.

Πτωχοῦ πῆρα οὐ πίμπλαται, A beggar's satchel is never filled. Zenodotus says this comes from Callimachus. The meaning of itself is clear enough: the demands of beggars are insatiable, for the more you give to people who have a beggar's disposition, the more they ask. It can be diverted, either to the selfish who are always making some demand on their friends, or to the rich who are never satisfied, or to princes who 'feed on their people' and whose rapacity cannot be sated by any plundering of common folk. It will be highly suitable for those who are the slaves of lechery, greed, ambition and all the other vices of that sort; for it is their common experience that the more unlimited their self-indulgence, the greater and ever greater is their hunger and thirst. This is suggested too by the parable in the Gospels of the prodigal son, who could not satisfy his hunger even with husks.

Λακωνικὰς σελήνας, Spartan moons (we must supply, are your excuse, or something of the kind), was used where promises or undertakings were unsafe and unreliable. Tradition says that whenever the Spartans were asked to provide some help which they had promised to supply, they used the moon as an excuse, and so got out of their obligations; because, as Lucian assures us, Lycurgus had passed a law that they should never fight a battle except at the full moon. In starting other enterprises they were equally superstitious in observing its phases; and hence arose the proverb. It was to this, if I am not mistaken, that Cicero alluded in one of his Letters to Atticus, book 7 (it begins Dionysius vir optimus): 'For my part, the second of January being Compitalia, I would rather not reach my Alban place on that day and be a nuisance to the household. I shall arrive on the third, and therefore get to town on the fourth. I don't know what day your crescent moon is due; but I am very anxious you should not move at any risk to your health.' I am well aware that in this passage the current copies have lepsis and not selenis. Some people have adopted lepsis but the sense requires us to read selenis, the crescent. Cicero has indicated how he has been observing the calendar and what day he has chosen, as though superstition meant something to him, and now he says to Atticus 'I don't know what day your crescent is due,' playfully suggesting that he too has his superstitions, though his real point is that Atticus should look after his health. It agrees with one I have discussed elsewhere: Accessaei luna, Accessaeus' moon.

Λιπαρώτερος λύχνου, Λιπαρώτερος ληκυθίου, Oilier than a lamp, or an oil-bottle. This proverb seems to be an ironical comment on men who are heavy eaters but never put on any weight, like a lamp which consumes a great deal of oil but never gets any fatter. It will perhaps not be absurd, if diverted to thick-headed men, or men devoted to luxury and pleasure. Recorded by Diogenianus.

Μέτρῳ μὲν ὕδωρ πίνοντες, ἀμετρίῃ δὲ μάζαν ἔδοντες, Drinking water by measure, eating meat without measure. Zenodotus says this was a line of verse delivered to the Sybarites by an oracle, and passed into a common proverb, for they were overthrown by Croton on account of their immoderate love of luxury, as I have recorded elsewhere. Hence it can be adapted either to those who are reduced from great luxury and riches to the depths of poverty, or to people whose meanness has things in the wrong order: they are very sparing in things of no account, and neglect what is important (most of the men one comes across are in this class). It is a hexameter line, but is read corruptly in all the copies I have yet seen; it can be restored like this: Μέτρῳ ὕδωρ πίνοντες, ἀμέτρως μάζαν ἔδοντες. There is a line of similar shape in Theocritus in the Bucoliastae: Καὶ φεύγει φιλέοντα, καὶ οὐ φιλέοντα διώκει, they turn away from a lover and pursue one who does not love them.

To put a dancer on the stage wearing a toga, is to do something contrary to all the proprieties, like an old man or a theologian talking nonsense or someone mixing jokes with serious business. Martial in the preface to his second book: Tray do nothing so ridiculous; do not put a dancer on the stage wearing a toga.' The toga was the proper dress of a Roman citizen, and was worn as a sign of their status by those who had already outgrown their boyhood and laid aside the gown with a purple stripe, thus declaring by the very clothes they wore that in mind and character there were come to man's estate. Hence they spoke of the toga virilis, the grown man's gown. Hence that cut of Cicero's in the Philippics: 'You put on a man's gown, and turned it promptly into a woman's skirt.' It was also worn in time of peace, as the sagum or military cloak was in war. Hence Cicero in the Philippics sometimes tells his hearers to lay aside the toga and put on the military cloak. And again: 'Let arms to toga yield.' Lucan too, speaking of Pompey: 'Arms were his choice and not the toga, and yet in arms he was a lover of peace.'

Ἀβασάνιστος ἄνθρωπος, A man untried, in other words anexetastos, agymnastos, adokimastos, not tested, not practised, not approved. Suidas cites Aelian in his book On Providence as authority for the use of abasanistos in the sense of 'one who has never felt pain,' because basanizein in Greek means to torture. But there is an underlying metaphor in the word; for basanos means the touchstone (index in Latin) with which they normally test gold. A saying of Chilon survived to the effect that 'Gold is to men what the touchstone is to gold'; you can test a man's character with gold as you can test gold with a touchstone.

Ἄβρωνος βίος, Abron's life, used of those who live in luxury and ease. Taken from the behaviour of a man called Abron, whose luxurious way of living was notorious, as with us Apicius and Aesop are celebrated for their extravagance. Greek uses abron and panabron of anything soft and effeminate; and hence is derived abrodiaitos for a man of expensive tastes and luxurious habits. Preserved by Zenodotus.

Ἔνεστι κᾂν μύρμηκι κᾂν σέρφῳ χολή Even the ant and gnat, serphus, have their gall. The lesson of the adage is that no enemy should be despised or heedlessly provoked, for no living creature is so small and weak that it cannot grow angry if irritated. This will also suit human beings of no stature or strength, who yet plan their revenge, when anger gives them spirit, as it often does. The serphus is a small creature not unlike an ant. Brasidas, according to Plutarch, once put his hand without thinking into some figs, and was bitten by a mouse which by pure chance was hiding in them. 'Just look!' he cried; 'there is no creature so small and so feeble that it will not want to defend itself if provoked.'

To mould something by hand is to shape it with skill and care. The image is taken from those who mould figures from wax or clay. Lucius Annaeus Seneca in one of his Letters: 'Some natures are easy and straightforward; some have, as the saying goes, to be moulded by hand.' Seneca again in book 6 of the De beneficiis says 'We must learn to carry the obligation to return a kindness with an easy mind, and wait for an opportunity to repay it rather than manufacture one.' He uses 'manufacture' in the sense of seeking one by our own efforts. Pliny too in book 18: 'Let us confess then that it is our own fault if we are not content with what grows naturally but manufacture several sorts ourselves.' Juvenal in his seventh satire: 'Insist that he mould the child's character as an artist models a wax portrait with his thumb.' Tibullus in book one: 'Try with his fingers to mould his snowy hair,' speaking of the attempt to dye hair artificially. Persius in satire five: 'And assumes plastic features under your hand.' Cicero in the Brutus uses factum, 'hand-wrought,' for 'carefully contrived': 'But when it was realised how much power was exercised by a well finished and as it were hand-wrought style.' The metaphor is taken from modellers and foundry-men, who persuade a raw material to take shape. Hence we speak of wrought silver, as distinct from the raw metal.

Λοκρῶν σύνθημα, Locrian loyalty, was used of those who violated treaties, for the Locrians in old days had a reputation for doing this; they broke a treaty they had made with the Peloponnesians, and deserted them to join the Heracleidae. Or, as some say, they were thought to have deceived the Sicilians by not keeping faith with them. So more or less Zenodotus. Recorded in almost the same words by Eustathius in his commentary on Homer's Boeotia.

Κασσιώτικον ἅμμα, The knot from Cassius, was commonly used with reference to cunning rogues. Cassius is a hill, and a city of the same name, in Egypt near Pelusium. The inhabitants have an inborn natural capacity for tying the most surprising knots. This is related to the Hercules knot of which I have spoken elsewhere, which is used as a symbol of very close and inseparable friendship. On the caduceus, Mercury's wand, there are two serpents male and female, twisted together in the middle of their bodies to make a Hercules knot. The parts above this knot approach to embrace one another in such a way that as they curve they form a circle; the lower parts curve back in a similar way to the handle of the wand, and there again the two tails are united. This representation of the caduceus is still to be seen on ancient coins. It was from them, I imagine, that Johann Froben borrowed his mark - the most industrious of our modern printers, and a man who has laid students of sacred literature under the greatest debt. The only difference is that outside the circle formed by the serpents as they bring their heads together he has added a dove that sits on the wand. This knot was consecrated to Mercury by the Egyptians to indicate that agreements once made should never be broken but should retain great strength; and that is why it is also called a Hercules knot. Though the Gauls, and maybe the Egyptians too, identify Hercules with Mercury. Diogenianus and Suidas record the Cassius knot as an adage. Stephanus gives it another form, viz.
Kασσιώτικα ἱμάτια, Cassian garments; unless perhaps himatia, garments was originally himantia, thongs.

Ἀγαθὸς ψάλτης, ἀγαθὸς ζωμοποιὸς, A good fiddler or a good pastrycook, all's one. Uttered to show contempt for the art of music, for it suggests that the same man could tickle your ears with his playing and your palate with his pastries. A man was once recommended to Archidamus son of Zeusippus on the ground that he was a good musician; to which he replied 'In my country we should rate him as a good cook.'

Plutarch in his essay entitled 'How a Man can check that he has made Progress' quotes the following trochaic line: 'Gauge your marble by the ruler, not your ruler by the stone.' The message of this is that we should amend our way of life according to the laws, and not the other way round, distorting the law to suit the way we live, so that we follow the path of honour and do not think that what we do must be right. The 'Lesbian rule' I have treated of elsewhere.

There is a proverbial look about a phrase in Persius' first satire: 'In that great scale the lying tongue set straight, / Nor seek outside yourself,' meaning 'Measure yourself by your own capacity and not by public opinion.' It corresponds to something the same author says elsewhere: 'Be your own lodger.' It is the things we 'have at home' that are really ours and do not need to be got from some other source. The man who is not content with a good conscience, but has one eye on reputation, is said to look 'outside himself.' Plutarch in the essay entitled 'How a man can check that he has made progress': 'It is clear that he still looks outside himself, and is swayed by public opinion.' Here too belongs another which I have recorded elsewhere: 'A borrowed ox is always looking over the hedge,' for of course where he is, he finds much not to his liking. In short, a wise man 'carries all his belongings round with him;' based wholly on himself, he is 'right and tight like the round world.'

Plutarch in the essay entitled 'How to profit by one's Enemies' cites an iambic line from some tragedy or other: 'He physics others, full of sores himself.' This can be turned against those who criticize other men's faults and put them to rights, while steeped in faults themselves beneath the skin. Everyone knows the old saying 'Physician, heal thyself.' Gregory in his Defence of his own Flight: 'Or may give a wide berth to the old proverb, trying to physic others while full of sores ourselves.' There is an aphorism not unlike this in Cicero, in the twelfth Phillipic: 'For the man who sets himself up as the defender of others ought (so wise men say) to know first of all how to defend himself.' Xenophon in his Symposium shows that some such criticism was commonly levelled at soothsayers: 'They say, I believe, that soothsayers foretell the future to others, but do not foresee what is in store for themselves.'

Τραγικώτερον λαλεῖν, To speak in tragic language, is to use grand words; for tragic authors have an exalted style, and tragedy loves 'bombast and words a foot and a half long.' Menander, cited by Plutarch in his essay 'Consolation addressed to Appolonius': 'But if 'twas on the selfsame terms as we / You drew this breath of life which we all share / (I give you somewhat in the tragic vein).' Plato too uses it in book 3 of the Republic. Gregory the Theologian in one of his Letters: 'But it was, I suppose, impossible, while you were acting in tragic vein, to spend the holiday in comic fashion.' And again in a letter to Basil: 'O earth and sun, O air and virtue - for I will give you a few words in the tragic vein.' Though I suspect that for arete, virtue he wrote aithêr, sky, just as aêr had become anêr, man; for the first editor of these letters seems to have been such a Greek scholar that he could hardly read them. From time to time in Lucian we have ektragodizein for the use of grandiloquent language and style that inflates the subject-matter, and phortikos lalein 'vulgarity of style' for coarse and pompous expressions.

Τραγῳδικὸν βλέπειν, To have a tragic look. There is a similar image in Aristophanes, when he says in the Plutus, describing Poverty: 'At any rate there's madness in her eye; / She has that tragic look.' This will suit either pompous people or those who are sunk in grief and melancholy.

A well-known phrase in tragedy which passed into proverb: Ἡ γλῶσσ᾽ ὄμωσεν , My tongue did swear it, when a man does not keep a promise, or when he promises but does not mean it. It comes in Euripides in the Hippolytus crowned: 'My tongue did swear it, but my heart is free.' This line was much attacked by the writers of comedy. Aristophanes in the Bacchae: 'Or mind that could not bring itself to swear over the offerings, and tongue that swore without the mind but did not mean to keep it.' And again in the Frogs, criticizing Euripides: 'My tongue hath sworn, and I'll choose Aeschylus.' So Pindar too, in the fifth victory-ode of the Isthmians, praises an upright man of honest speech with the words 'His tongue from his mind is never parted.' This saying from Euripides is cited by Plato in the Theaetetus: 'If you reply that it is so, the situation will be something like that in Euripides: our tongues will be free from question, but our hearts by no means so.'

Χθὲς καὶ πρώην, Yesterday and the day before, was a proverbial exaggeration, denoting time that has very recently elapsed. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Conflict between Fire and Water': The use of fire was discovered yesterday or the day before, as they say, by Prometheus; fire was life, but not without water.' It occurs several times in Lucian, especially in the essay On Salaried Posts. Plato too in the third book of the Laws: 'And all the many other things that have happened at different times, yesterday and the day before as the phrase goes.' I have read somewhere else, but cannot remember where, 'He who set up gods for himself yesterday or the day before.' Plato in the Second Alcibiades: 'I think it will be no surprise to you that some things should have happened yesterday and the day before.'

Plutarch in his essay 'On Natural Causes' cites this line as a current proverb: 'The rain will cease in the night when the wild sow farrows.' The domesticated sow farrows more than once and at different times of the year, the wild animal once only and as a rule at the same season, that is, at the beginning of the summer. Hence they say that once the wild sow has farrowed there will be no more rain, because the rainy months are then over. It will be possible to use it in jest, suppose we wish to say that things will be quieter, once some quarrelsome person who is difficult to please has relieved his feelings.

Θεομαχεῖν, To fight against the gods, is used of those who either fly in the face of nature or struggle against the decrees of destiny. Taken from the fable of the Giants. Cicero in his dialogue On Old Age: 'What can be the meaning of war against the gods such as the Giants fought, except to fly in the face of nature?' Euripides in the Bacchae: 'Your words persuade me; I'll not fight with heaven.' There is also an iambic line to this effect in the collection of proverbial aphorisms: Tis hard with fortune and with god to fight,' and a well-known phrase in Homer: 'No mortal man can fight against the gods,' and an echo of it in Pindar: 'And it is right not to strive with God.'

Δωρικὴ Μοῦσα, The Dorian Muse, of those who are greedy for bribes. Aristophanes in the Knights says humorously of Cleon that he has never been able to master any form of music except the Dorian, alluding of course to those celebrated types of harmony, the Dorian, Lydian, Phrygian and Boeotian modes. He brings out the joke by distorting the word, using for dôristi, in the Dorian mode, dôrodokêsti, because dôrodokêisthai is the Greek for corruptly accepting bribes in return for giving someone your vote, what Pythagoras called 'eating beans.' For in old days they used beans to vote with, so that metaphorically those who made money out of their votes could be said to eat beans. Such at least is the explanation given by the man, whoever he was, who collected the historical allusions in Gregory of Nazianzus. Though someone has appeared lately who turns Pythagoras' beans into eggs, because they contain the embryo of a living creature, and thinks kyamos, bean is connected with kyêsis, conception. I would think him worth attention, had he produced even one minor ancient authority or some argument of any weight. Hesiod too calls princes who give corrupt judgment dôroboroi, bribe-eaters.

Μὴ ὑπὲρ τὸν πόδα τὸ ὑπόδημα, Let not the shoe be too big for the foot, do not (that is) undertake tasks beyond your strength, or Do not live more grandly than suits your station in life. Lucian in his Images: 'Let not the shoe be larger than the foot.' And again in the dialogue that follows: This seemed to you excessive, and too big for the foot.' Again in the Gallus: 'And by no means in proportion to the foot.'

Οὐκ ἐκ παντὸς ξύλου Ἑρμῆς ἂν γένοιτο, A Mercury could not be made out of every piece of wood. All men (that is) are not adapted by their natural gifts for education; for some, as Quintilian says, should be confined to the country. The image is taken from craftsmen choosing a piece of timber; for that different timbers are suitable for different purposes is shown at length by Theophrastus in his fifth book On Plants. Pliny too in book 16 says that some people are very scrupulous in their choice of timber for making the statue of some deity; and though Priapus, that coarse and easy-going god, has no objection to being made of figwood, one must not do the same for Mercury, who is so intelligent and gifted with so many skills. Though I myself prefer the suggestion that this applies to an image of Mercury made for use in magic; for then they did not carve him out of the first wood that came to hand, but out of some particular kind, since otherwise he would not be suitable for use in the black arts. Hence it was that among the evidence for the crime of witchcraft brought against Apuleius, one count was that he had ordered the carving of an image of Mercury in boxwood, as Apuleius himself shows in his first Apology against the charge of magic. Boxwood was perhaps the first choice for this because its colour is that of a man who has turned pale, or because of all woods it has the longest life. Even against fire it maintains, according to Pliny, the resistance of iron. Apuleius in his first Apology traces the proverb to Pythagoras as the source: 'for a Mercury' he says 'ought not to be made, according to Pythagoras, out of every wood.' There is something related to this in the fifth book of Athenaeus (whether the saying belongs to Demochares or Crates is uncertain): 'No one could make a spear-shaft out of savory, or a good soldier out of Socrates.' Savory, thymbra, is a sort of garden herb or shrub not unlike thyme or satureia, mentioned by Pliny, book 19 chapter 8, as suitable for use in sauces, whence Greek gets a word thymbrophagoi, savory-eaters, for those who like a sharp taste, which will also be used of people suffering a bitter fate. Athenaeus again in the same book has: 'But you cannot make a spear-shaft, as Demochares said, out of savory, nor a good man out of such conversation as this.'

Οὐκ εἰμὶ τούτων τῶν ἡρώων, I'm not one of that class of heroes, not one of those people, that is, who are more given to doing an injury than a service. Taken from the spirits who, once roused, often bring destruction and rarely are of any help. Hence this adage was in use among those who were promising to do good, not harm. Zenodotus cites Menander, from the Ephebi.

Οἶδα Σίμονα καὶ σίμων ἐμὲ, I know Simon and Simon knows me, was said of two men who were equal in wickedness and who mutually knew and understood each other's faults. Zenodotus and Suidas tells us that there were two leading men, both famous rascals, called Simon and Nicon; but that Simon, who was the bigger rascal of the two, put the other's reputation in the shade. Hence Simon alone is mentioned in the proverb. According to tradition they were two of the Telchines, who brought the water of the Styx into the country where they built Arnon.
The name Techines is given in Greek to evil spirits, or to men who practise magic and the black arts. Strabo speaks of the Telchines in book 10, and says there were nine of them, who accompanied Rhea on her journey from Rhodes to Crete. The name is supposed to be derived from the Greek verb thelgein, to darken or soothe, because they get the better of people by bewitching them. Hence too an adjective telchineion or telchinôdes is used of something outstandingly wicked, and there is a verb telchitainein for quarrelsome and obstinate behaviour. The compiler of the Etymologicum adds that all inhabitants of Crete are called Telchines and Crete itself Telchiona. Chrysostom uses the adage in his Babylas: 'A Telchin's hand in that!' meaning the right hand of a rascal.

Terence in the Eunuchus: 'Be careful: it may be too cunning this way.' Donatus makes it clear that this is a proverb, though the true reading is in doubt, for one can put either calidum, hot or callidum, cunning; of which the first would apply to hasty decision and the second to an over-ingenious one. For both courses are usually unsuccessful, doing things in heat, which means setting out in too much of a hurry, and going too far in the use of subterfuge. Fabius Maximus in Livy tells us that to be rash is not only foolish, it is usually unsuccessful; and that in the same way there are times when cunning lands one in great emergencies. Those who read callidum, cunning seem to think there is a reference to something Chaerea has said shortly before: 'Never did I see a man give better advice.' Those who read calidum, hot, with one /, and in my view they are more likely to be right, detect a Greek allusion; for thermos, the Greek for hot, is applied both to criminal acts and to acts which are hasty and rash. Thus Penia (Poverty) in the Plutus of Aristophanes says of the old men who are planning a revolution with the purpose of giving blind Plutus (Riches) back his sight: 'Hot work indeed and impious and wrong.' The scholiast explains 'hot' as meaning extraordinary and headstrong and rash. Similarly Sophocles in the Antigone: 'Hot is the heart you bring to this cold task.' Antigone is thus rebuked for being too eager to bury her brother. And Plutarch in the fifth decade of his Table-talk' makes it clear that some people took zôroteron, stronger, to signify heat, so that when Achilles in Homer tells Patroclus to mix the wine 'stronger,' he was really demanding that he should do his work faster; 'just as we ourselves' he says, 'often tell our servants to put more warmth into their work, meaning more energy and speed.'

Μὴ μάχαιραν αἶρε θῆλυ, Woman must never draw sword, is half of a trochaic line. Do not take the weight of a piece of business when you can be no help. It is men's work 'to fight in defence of their fatherland,' as Homer puts it. This can also be taken to mean that you should not hold out hopes which you cannot fulfill; you should not threaten or provoke your enemy when, after the provocation, you cannot finish him off. Brutus criticizes Cicero for rousing Antony with his speeches when, having roused him, he has been unable to put him down, like a woman drawing the sword.

Those who are perfectly useless, and 'born to consume the fruits of the earth,' are described in a proverbial formula as 'of no use to themselves or to others.' Cicero in his book On Moral Obligation: 'And so, as I said earlier, this is why we condemn those who make no effort, take no trouble, have no staying power.' This comes from a famous line of Hesiod's, in the poem entitled Works and Days, which is cited from time to time by Aristotle: 'That man stands first who thinks of all things for himself, / Considering what later and in the end will prove the better course. / He too is good who follows the right advice given him by others; / But he who neither thinks for himself nor listens to another, / He is no use.' The sense of these lines is given most elegantly and aptly by Livy as follows: 'I have often heard it said, my men, that he is best who makes up his own mind what should be done; next comes the man who follows good advice. But he who knows neither how to make his own plans nor to follow good advice, his gifts are lowest in the scale.' Mortals of this description are not hard to find who, though they themselves from lack of sense cannot discern what needs to be done, yet are astonishingly obstinate and unwilling to take advice from others, recalling that donkey in Horace who, since he neither knew the way nor obeyed his driver, fell headlong over the cliff. Hesiod's lines, according to Diogenes, were thus turned inside out by Zeno: That man stands first who follows the right advice; / He too is good who thinks of all things for himself.' In fact, he preferred the teachable man to the intelligent one, because he had practice and experience, while the latter had only brains.

Οὔθ᾽ ὕεται, οὔτε ἡλιοῦται, Neither wet with the rain nor scorched by the sun, was currently applied to the man who spent his life untouched by an inconvenience. The opposite is Horace's 'He sweated and he froze,' and 'dust and blazing sun,' and 'his flanks familiar with rain from heaven.' Merchants, soldiers, athletes, sailors and others of their kind must learn the habit of bearing sun and rain; he who lives softly at home is far from troubles such as these. So this will suit a man softly nurtured and unfit to endure hardship. Aristophanes in the Frogs, criticizing Bacchus for his effeminacy: 'And let the way be neither too hot nor too cold.' The proverb is recorded by Zenodotus.

Τῶν πιθήκων εὐμορφότατος δύσμορφός ἐστι, The prettiest ape is hideous, will rightly be applied to things which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be compared with even the lowest specimens of the class of things that possess any merit; just as one might say that the worthiest of brothel-keepers will be a perjurer or the most esteemed actor a rascal or Maevius' best poem sorry stuff. It is cited by Plato, and referred to Heraclitus as its source.

Ζητῶν γὰρ ὄψον θοιμάτιον ἀπώλεσα, While I sought a dinner I lost my coat. Used when things go very badly, or when in the course of trying to secure some small advantage we lose something much more important. Recorded by Suidas and by other sources, but they give no indication of its origin. Though it is not hard to see that it must come from some actual incident, in which a thief bent on stealing food was caught, and escaped not without difficulty and by throwing away his cloak. Aristophanes alludes to the proverb: 'And that was why you lost your cloak as well.'

Lucian Against an Ignoramus: 'You would sooner hide five elephants under your arm than one catamite.' Of men who cannot conceal their defects of personality: some tell-tale mark or other will always betray them. The proverbial metaphor takes the form called hyperbole, and is related to one cited by Cicero in book 2 of the De oratore from Ennius: 'It is easier for a wise man to keep his mouth full of burning fire than to suppress good advice.'

Εὐδαίμων γε Κόρινθος, ἐγὼ δ᾽ εἴην Τενεάτης, Corinth is a fine town, but Tenea for me. Tenea is a village not far from Corinth, in a wooded situation of much charm; and on the other hand the wealth of the Corinthians was famous. Strabo in book 8 writes that this line was the oracle's reply to a man from Asia who asked whether he should move to Corinth. From him it seems to have passed like so many others into common speech, and it is actually recorded in the list of Greek adages. It will be timely to use this whenever there is a choice between two things, one of which we freely admit is grander, while the other is attractive and more what we like ourselves. One might say, for instance, I admit that the study of law is a better way to become rich and famous than writing poetry; but though Corinth is a fine town, it's Tenea for me. Let one be better or more profitable, the other is what I like. Strabo tells us that some read Tegea for Tenea, but wrongly; for Tegea is a city in Arcadia.

Ὄνος εἰς ἄχυρα, A donkey on the straw; we must understand, has fallen upon, or has found, the straw. Used by custom when some large and unexpected piece of good fortune has befallen a man, or he has secured by chance something that gives him special pleasure. If for instance you saw a man very fond of oysters demolishing a large plateful, you might well say The donkey has found the straw.' In the fragments of book 2 of the Doctors at Dinner, an iambic line is quoted from Philemon the comic poet: 'You make your way to the good things like an ass to the straw.' It will have more point if applied to something quite unrelated, for instance to someone eagerly reading a poet to whose works he is devoted. It will also suit a different use, when someone produces confusion through ignorance, an illiterate barbarian for instance befouling a good author with disgraceful notes, as Thomas and Nicolaus with their glosses and Passavant with his no less foolish additions have muddied that noble work the City of God. For an ass loves rolling, and while enjoying himself like this makes chaos of everything, as Apuleius too illustrates when he describes how he rolled on all the garden beds and wrecked them. That the adage arose from some incident is clear enough.

A proverbial formula, used by Martial when attacking an anonymous poet who, like Aesop's crow, put about his own worthless verses under Martial's name, thinking that his readers would be taken in by the title and suppose them to be Martial's: 'Think you, Priscus, that a parrot can speak with the voice of a quail?' This will suit musicians or poets of widely differing styles and widely unequal capacity. Of all birds the parrot comes nearest to reproducing human speech; quails are pugnacious rather than loquacious. Hence Ovid in his 'Parrot's Epitaph': 'How quails do live from one fight to the next.'

A bald man with long hair, which occurs, like our last, in Martial, is a phrase obviously proverbial in form: 'Nothing is uglier than a bald man with long hair.' Again in Martial: 'When you've gone bald, you still will have long hair.' This will be fittingly used of one who has no real good qualities, and set himself off with pretences; an uneducated man, for instance, publishing what others have written as his own work, or someone trying to conceal what he really is, like an old man trying to look young by wearing a wig or dyeing his hair, or an ugly woman painting her face in hopes of being thought handsome.

Τὰ πρῶτ᾽ ἀρίστους παῖδας Αἴγιν᾽ ἐκτρέφει, Of old, Aegina bears most noble sons, is used of anything which from a promising start gradually deteriorates, as happens with most mortal things. The adage arose from Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, Neoptolemus, who were men of great valour, though they all came from Aegina. Strabo, book 8, agrees, pointing out that Aeacus and his line started in this island; for Stephanus thinks it took its name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus. At one time it held command of the sea, and was prepared, he says, to dispute the supremacy even with Athens, in the sea-battle at Salamis during the Persian invasion of Greece. Aegina is also mentioned by Homer. It is the best known of the Cyclades, and was for a long time called Oenone, as we learn from Strabo again, and from Stephanus. Their capacity for hard work and their industry and frugality earned the Aeginetans the name of Myrmidons; for their land being covered with stones on the surface though suitable for grain-crops underneath, as they dug it they seemed to live in caverns like ants, and almost to reproduce that little creature's industrial life as they carried away the stones. Then their native strength of character declined, and the Aeginetans began to have a bad reputation, for which there is evidence in several proverbs, among them The Aeginetans are neither the third nor the fourth, as I have said when dealing with a similar proverb about the Megarians. Not unlike that other one, The Milesians were valiant in the days of yore.

Ἀγέλαστος πέτρα, The laughless rock. Of anything very sad and painful. In old days a rock used to be shown to visitors in Attica, on which tradition had it that Ceres sat, when she abandoned heaven and sought with lighted torches for Proserpine, who had been carried off by Pluto. When in the course of this she reached Eleusis, she took her seat sadly on a certain rock, which they called the Laughless Rock for this very reason. Zenodotus is the authority. It will be suitable for severe and gloomy characters, for whom Greek uses the same word agelastos, laughless; among whose number Pliny puts Socrates and Aristides puts Pericles. Nor will it fit badly for anything that is most unpleasant.

Ἀγαμέμνονος θυσία, Agamemnon's victim, was applied at one time to hard, obstinate men. It comes from the story how, when Agamemnon was preparing to offer a sacrifice at Troy, the bull escaped and was recaptured and brought back with the greatest difficulty. Thus far Zenodotus. It will also be suitable for those who do something unwillingly and under compulsion. It was a point of importance at sacrifices in the old days that the sacrificial animal should come mildly and readily to the altar, and if it broke the rope and ran away, this was considered a sinister omen. It seems to me that this could also be referred to Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia in Aulis, though sorely against his will. Listed by Zenodotus.

As gentle as a tested sacrifice is used as a proverbial formula by Horace in the Odes: 'She will come, gentler than a tested sacrifice.' Of those who move mildly and of their own accord. Taken from sacrifices, in which the sacrificial animal was tested by drawing a knife across its forehead, for which action mactare was the word. Hence men of proven valour were called in Latin macti virtute.

Μικρὸν κακὸν μέγ᾽ ἀγαθὸν, A small evil and a great good. The message of this adage is that very great and important advantages can be secured at the price of small disadvantages and trifling exertions. It is recorded by Diogenianus. There is no disagreement between this and an aphorism of Musonius recalled by Aulus Gellius,1 book 16 chapter i: 'If you do something good by working hard for it, the work is forgotten and the good remains; if you do something disgraceful and enjoy it, the enjoyment is forgotten and the disgrace remains.' The same maxim is expressed by Cato, with less subtlety and less rhetorical skill but accurately, as follows: 'Consider within yourselves, if you do something right by working hard, the labour will quickly pass away; but the good deed will never leave you as long as you live. But if any of you act dishonourably in search of pleasure, the pleasure will quickly pass away, and the dishonourable action will be with you for ever.'

Ἀττικοὶ Ἐλευσίνια, The Athenians and their Eleusinia; we must understand that they kept them to themselves. Duris, cited by Zenodotus, says that the proverb was commonly used when a number of people had come to an agreement privately after discussing some topic in secret. The metaphor is derived from the secret rites of the Eleusinian mysteries, which were celebrated at Eleusis in honour of Ceres with intense fervour and mysterious ceremonies, from which the uninitiated were excluded. To publish any part of these mysteries was a capital offence, as seems to have been the case in Rome with the ceremonies of the Bona Dea, who is said by Gaius Bassus, cited by Lactantius, to have been called Fatua. These in the same way were performed by night and under cover, and males were excluded.

Ἀνθ᾽ Ἑρμίονος, Instead of Hermion. We must add some word to the sentence in accordance with usage to fill out the sense; for instance 'I will be to you' or 'My house' or 'This city will be to you,' or something else of the same kind. It means much the same as if you said 'I will be your place of refuge' or 'an altar of sanctuary to keep you safe.' Hermione is a temple in the Peloponnese dedicated to Ceres and Proserpine, and all who take sanctuary there are protected by the holiness of the place. Zenodotus cites the Babylonians of Aristophanes as having mentioned the adage. There are two forms of the word, Hermion and Hermiona, like kalukê from kalux. Stephanus is the authority.

Ἀντρώνιος ὄνος, An Antronian ass, was in old days applied to a man of shapeless and overgrown physical bulk, and at the same time in mind a booby and a blockhead. Antron was a city in Thessaly, which got its name from its abundance of caverns and grottoes. Here, they say, the asses were at one time exceptionally large, which gave the proverb its currency. The authorities are Stephanus and Suidas. The proverb is also touched on by the scholiast on Homer Iliad 2. Even today there is a popular jibe levelled against the corpulent to the effect that their brains are not very plentiful, as though nature had struck a balance, and amused herself by subtracting from their minds the mass that she had added to their bodies. Some say that Antronian territory is a source of immense millstones; and the lower one of each pair of stones, as being idle and motionless, is called in Greek onos, the donkey. 'Stone' is a word we use in Latin for stupid and brainless people.

Ἀνέμων στάσεις, Where the wind lies, is used of things which long experience has watched and surveyed. Clearly the full form of the proverb should be The natives know where the wind lies; for most parts of the world have some special wind of their own, the nature of which is best known to those who dwell in the region exposed to them; the Scyron, for example, at Athens, a minor deviation of the northwest wind unknown to the rest of Greece. In Narbonese Gaul there was the Circius, so called from its rotary and eddying motion, or Certius, as Cato calls it; this was a very well-known wind in that region 'which yielded to none in strength, but it was unknown under other quarters of the sky and never even reached a city in that province called Vienne. The south wind does not penetrate as far as Egypt;' so Fabianus says, cited by Pliny. The lapyx is familiar to the Apulians, and the Atabulus well-known and unhealthy on some particular mountains in Apulia, whence it gets its name. There are a great many other winds which are localised in particular districts, as Favorinus testifies in Gellius; besides which, some vary in strength and nature from one region to another. For, as Aristotle assures us in the Problems, the Hellespontias, which is also called the Scyron, brings rain 'to the land of Attica and the adjacent islands, the north wind to the Hellespont and Cyrene, and the south wind to Lesbos.' And the south wind, though warm and rainy in other places, is cold in Africa and brings fine weather; the north wind on the other hand is rainy; so Pliny says. The Etesian winds, which both arise at fixed times of the year and blow and die away at fixed times of the day, 'blow from the east in Spain and Asia, from the north in Pontus, and in the remaining parts of the world from the south.' Suidas records the following words, though it is not certain where he found them: 'For the inhabitants know best not only, as the proverb puts it, where the wind lies, but also the character of the natives.' It will be permissable to adapt this for use in support of such statements as that every nation knows its own character best, every man best knows his own friends, every man is most familiar with his own wife, every man is an expert in the profession in which he has spent most of his life.

Ἀνέμου πεδίον, A field for the wind, was used of an unstable man, easily turned, always changing his mind. It is recorded by Diogenianus. For in open country the winds blow as they please this way and that, with no obstacle to restrain them. Homer in several places calls unreal things anemôlia, vain as the wind, and hypênemia, full of wind, is applied to what is not solid but merely inflated. And we call unreliable people 'vain as the wind.' Horace: 'Vain as the wind, in Rome I Tibur love, / In Tibur Rome.' Again: 'Not mine to court the plaudits of the mob, / Vain as the wind.' Then again a house which is draughty in every direction may neatly be called 'a field for the winds.' Pindar in the second hymn of his Olympians found an elegant expression for the vicissitudes of human life: 'But different are the currents that at different times come upon men with happiness and with toil.' This might also be taken as a metaphor from the to-and-fro of tides in the sea. However that may be, in the seventh encomium he expresses the same sentiment in a metaphor drawn from the winds, which do not always blow from the same quarter: 'But in a single allotted span of time the winds change swiftly now this way and now that.' Again in the twelfth hymn he puts the same thing in a metaphor drawn from the fall of dice: 'Many things fall out as men did not expect: for some reversal of joy, while others, breasting a surging sea of troubles, in a short space of time exchange their woe for deep-rooted success.'

Ὃπου αἱ ἔλαφοι τὰ κέρατα ἀποβάλλουσιν, Where stags cast their horns. This adage was used to convey in a sort of riddle that someone was engaged on a very difficult enterprise. For stags when about to shed their antlers retire to rough and inaccessible places. It will be suitable for those also who withdraw from the common society of their fellow-creatures, like Timon of Athens who for that very reason was called 'the Misanthrope.' It will be useful too when we wish to convey that some place is exceedingly remote and well hidden. Last but not least, when we would suggest that a thing cannot be found anywhere, we shall say that it exists at the place where the stags cast their horns, so that this can be used of space just as At the Greek calends is used of time. One could say, for example: 'Where did you perform that famous deed of which you boast so much? In the place, I dare say, where the stags cast their horns.' Pliny, book 8 chapter 32, writes of stags changing their antlers as follows: 'The males have antlers and, alone among living creatures, lose them every year at a fixed time in the spring. For this purpose, when the day approaches, they make for inaccessible places, and when they have lost their horns lie hid, as being defenceless, but also because they grudge man a benefit which is theirs to confer. They say the right horn is never found, containing as it does a valuable drug; and this, we must admit, is the more surprising when they change their antlers every year even in deer-parks. It is thought that they bury them.' So Pliny. This proverb is also mentioned by Aristotle in the ninth book of his On the Nature of Living Creatures, and I shall not hesitate to add here what he says. 'Again, the male, when he grows fat (and he does grow very fat every autumn), does not expose himself to be seen but conceals himself, knowing that when he is so heavy he can easily be taken. Besides which, they also shed their antlers in rough places difficult to find. Hence too the proverb Where do the stags cast their horns? For having thrown away their defensive weapons, they are now very careful not to be seen. They say that no one has ever set eyes on a left-hand horn, because the stags hide them, as containing some valuable remedy.' Though Plutarch in his essay 'Why are the Pythian Oracles now given in prose?' makes it clear than an oracle was uttered in these terms regarding Procles the tyrant, that he must go into exile and depart for the place where the stags shed their horns; by which the god meant that he must be buried, and removed from the face of the earth. He also mentions the adage in his 'Table-talk,' in the second problem of the seventh decade.

Planesium the courtesan in Plautus warns her lover not to beat his slave, who has long been hardened to blows and is quite impervious, because he will only hurt his own hand rather than his victim. 'Pray do not belabour that stone' she says; 'you'll damage your hand.' This will be suitable for anyone who tries to correct the incorrigible or teach the unteachable or undertakes a hopeless task of any kind.

Terence in the Adelphoe uses a proverbial metaphor when he writes 'Off with you! You'll never do any business, Sannio. You don't know how to dangle the bait before men.' This is taken from those who attract fish with food fixed on a hook, and it is appropriately spoken to a pander, whose business it is, first to inveigle young men with bait like this, and later to gobble them up altogether. He uses esca, food, as a metaphor for the sort of attraction which exposes a man to fraud. Hence Plato, as Cicero bears witness in the Cato major, calls pleasure the bait that leads men into evil ways, because they are taken by it as fish are by the hook. Greek expresses the metaphor by a simple verb, deleazein, to catch with bait. In the Knights of Aristophanes, when Cleon objects that the common people have been won over easily by spurious blandishments, the Sausage-seller replies 'Why, you yourself captured them with far smaller bait than this,' retorting that Cleon had dangled bait before the people with more humiliating flattery. This will gain not a little in effect if it is turned to a good sense and then adapted to things of the mind; if one were to say, for instance, that children's minds must be attracted to their lessons by dangling the bait, the attractive idea, of reputation, and the minds of princes attracted to the love of virtue by baiting the hook with praise.

No less neat is a phrase in the Curculio: 'I have him; he swallows the hook,' said of the pander who is the target of a deception, and who is eagerly beginning to read the letter which is to lead him astray. Lucian has exactly the same words in Greek. Horace too in his Epistles writes The fish is seen to make for the hidden hook.' Plautus again in the Bacchides expressed the same sentiment in a similar metaphor: This thrush is picking his worm out of the trap.' One image is provided by fishermen and one by fowlers. I too in one of my epigrams have alluded to this proverb in the following words: 'In future I shall not be so foolish as to swallow the hook I have had so often in my mouth, wounded more than once by its barbed bronze. Even at this late hour I will learn wisdom, and cease at length to snatch at the bait that does so much harm.'

Αφθάς σοι λελάληκεν, You have it from Vulcan's mouth, is recorded by Suidas. It was used, I suppose, when a man thought he had the final answer to some question, as though he had heard it from an oracle. Phthas in Memphis is a name for Vulcan, and by the addition of one small letter it becomes Aphthas, as stachys becomes astachys.

Τὸ αὐτὸ ᾄδεις ἄσμα, You sing the same song. Of a man who is tedious because he says the same thing so often; for nothing is more tiresome than what is always the same. Dorio, the pander in Terence's Phormio: 'You sing the same old song, and I was wondering if you would have any new suggestion.' It is poetical usage to say 'a song' for 'news.' Euripides in the Ion: 'What song is this? This fear, whence does it spring?' And again in the Hecuba: 'A song of woe will come upon us in our woeful state.' This is taken from singers, who grow wearisome if they go on too long singing the same tune. Skilled performers therefore change the nature of the music now and again, so that we may not feel that we have had too much.

We find in Quintilian an elegant phrase, which is also proverbial in shape, To blink in the sunlight, when a man does not see clearly though the subject is perfectly lucid. This often happens to people with poor eyesight, who see nothing however bright the light may be, because their weak perceptions are overwhelmed by its brilliance. The same thing happens to owls, and to sufferers from a certain form of weak sight, to whom sunlight is what darkness is to us. There will be some point in diverting this to those who complain of anything learned as though it were obscure; they find darkness even in a speech by Cicero, because they carry darkness round with them in their own eyes. In the same way, Portius in Seneca used to say that a man who complained that he was always treading on thorns must have thorns on his own feet, turning a natural weakness of the man himself for use against him. 'It's your feet' he says 'have the thorns, and not the ground.' In the same way the people I speak of bring with them in their own eyes the night which they say they cannot tolerate in the best authors, and do not find it in their works.

Βοῦς ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῷ κονιεῖται, The ox raises the dust (or, hastens) to its own harm. When a man is drawn on freely and willingly to his own undoing. Oxen, being gentle creatures, allow themselves to be harnessed without difficulty and submit to the yoke without reluctance. The Greek word koniein means to raise the dust from a wish to make haste. Some people make it fit those who willingly and with their eyes open run into difficulties which they have foreseen, as an ox allows the halter to be put on it, by which it will be led to the slaughter. Recorded by Zenodotus.

Τραγικὸς βασιλεύς, A tragedy king, can be applied either to a proud and pompous man, or to one who is a king in name alone but has little power, as the French proverb uses 'a paper king' of a ruler who is a king in name rather than in wealth or power. Dionysius described the tyrant of Pherae, who held power for ten months and then died, as a tragedy king. For in a tragedy on the stage a king's power lasts only till the play is finished. The mask is then laid aside, and the man who just now was Agamemnon or even Jupiter goes home, dear at threepence.

Martial in one of his prefatory letters: 'And then pray consider whether you enjoy watching a rod against a net-man,' whether, that is, you find tolerable something which everyone dislikes and greets with catcalls. Domizio Calderini the commentator points out that a proverb underlies this, commonly applied to those who fight with inadequate armament against an adversary who is really well equipped. Though a little later Domizio drifts off on another tack, saying in effect that gladiators who failed to give satisfaction were normally beaten with rods and thrown out. This is close to something in Gellius in book 1 chapter 2 of the Nights: 'Would you not raise your stick against him? My good man, what have I to do with you?' Thus to lift your rod or stick against someone is to contradict him and reject his opinion in an insulting way. The rod is a wooden object with which children used to be beaten, and soldiers too, if they were thought to do anything contrary to good discipline. I imagine that in the schools for gladiators those who were in charge of such contests used to do the same.

Γυνὴ στρατηγεῖ, καὶ γύνὴ στρατεύεται, A woman general and a woman soldier. A proverbial iambic line, used whenever some piece of business is wholly entrusted to cowards, and both those who command and those who obey are alike easily frightened. Athenaeus in book 3 cites a play by Alexis called The Regiment of Women. Nature has made women not to command but to obey, as is shown among others things by that Greek line 'But Nature gives no woman power to rule.' For what reason and emotion are in human beings, man and woman are in life, and according to Moses the Creator made woman subject to man. Though Plato does not entirely banish the female sex from the government of the state, provided suitable women can be found. Aeschines seems to have tacitly alluded to this in his speech Against Timarchus: 'Finding a household that was rich and badly governed, the management being in the hands of a proud and brainless woman.' The aphorism will be more agreeable, the further its use is diverted; if one were to say, for instance that Tartaretus is the author and principal leader of the Peripatetic philosophy. So Virgil: 'Of this great deed a woman was the leader.' And in the Acts of the Apostles Paul is called 'leader of the word.' So Galen somewhere calls Aristotle 'father of the argument,' because the opinion in question started with him.

Δικαιότερον σταχάνης, As fair as a pair of scales. A Doric proverb for men of very great and incorruptible fairness of mind, stachanê being the Doric word for trutanê, scales. This is a kind of weighing machine by which the very minutest change in weight can be felt and detected. Latin also has a word aequilibrium for a state of exact balance. Hence too we speak of 'giving equal weight' when something is done with absolute fairness and no respect of persons. Thus Modestinus in the Pandects, book 42, in the title De re judicata: 'And considerations of equity suggest that this should be maintained with equal weight in the case of a female.' Similarly Justinian in book 5 of the Code, in the title De naturalibus liberis: 'Accordingly we approve that in cases of this kind all the children, whether born prior to the issue of the documents relating to dowry or later, should be given equal weight.' Nicarchus uses a similar metaphor in an epigram: 'Straighter than any ruler.'

Ακαρπότερος ἀγρίππου, More barren than a wild-olive, is a Spartan adage, applied to those who are desperately poor and possess no resources at all. It also suits lazy men and those who have no wish to work. The Spartans use agrippos for a wild-olive. So Zenodotus and Suidas, and that is all we know.

Διὸς ψῆφος, Jupiter's vote, was said to be sacrosanct and inviolable; and so you might well use the phrase of the opinion of anyone possessed of authority that cannot be contradicted, or sarcastically, whenever anyone makes an arrogant pronouncement on some subject expects his opinion to be accepted with the force of law or like an oracle, you can fairly comment 'Jupiter's vote.' For they say that the place where Neptune and Minerva obtained a decision in their dispute, which of them should give his name and patronage to the new city of Athens, was called Jupiter's Vote. Suidas cites the Archilochians of Cratinus: 'Where is the seat, and votes, of mighty Jove.' (For 'votes' he uses the word for 'knucklebones,' which were often employed for making choices, especially when this was done by casting lots.)

Donatus (or the scholiast on Terence's Phormio, whoever he was) shows that To go to the bowstring is a proverb meaning 'to deceive.' The image is taken, he says, from archers, who sometimes find that, if they draw a bow with too much force, they break the string, or overstrain one of their own sinews, so that this is close to a proverb of which I have treated elsewhere, To stretch the rope till it breaks. But in nervum ibit He will go to the bowstring is a way of saying He will be put in chains; for in the old days debtors who could not pay were bound and handed over to their creditors, until they paid off their borrowings by forced labour. The young lover in the play is afraid that if Phormio were to be forced into the position where he had either to take the girl home in accordance with the contract or at least to repay the money he had received, under penalty of being bound if he does not do so, and of having to repay according to law by his own labour the debt he cannot pay in cash, he would do what is best for himself, and either betray the whole plot or abduct the girl in earnest. Thus the word for 'bowstring' can also mean 'prison' in phrases like 'to throw into prison' and 'to release from prison,' in the context of carrying people off bound for unpaid debt. But I will add Terence's actual words: 'He will not marry her, I know. But when they want the money back, for our sakes he will prefer to go to prison, in nervum ibit.'

Αὐτὸς αὑτὸν αὐλεῖ, literally, He is his own flute-player, he himself, in other words, makes clear by his actions what sort of man he is. For flute-players in the old days used to sing the praises of heroes. Now why should a man who acquires all the reputation he wants by his own prowess need to hire someone else to trumpet his renown? The adage can be used in both senses, good and bad. This man needs not trumpeter; he is famous enough on his own distinguished record.' Or 'No need to unmask this man's life; its dishonour and infamy are there for all to see.'
It will also suit those who praise themselves, a habit of fighting-cocks even when they have run away from the contest. Plato in the Theaetetus: 'We shall look like cocks of a very poor strain if we drop the argument suddenly and start crowing before we have won.

Αὐτὸς ἔφα, He said himself. Whenever we wish to convey that one man's authority is so great as to justify our belief in something even with no reason given, in the way that 'He said himself is sufficient in Holy Scripture, though not in other texts. The adage took its rise from Pythagoras who, in order to achieve more respect and authority for himself and his school, used to say in his lectures 'He said himself,' just as though he were repeating not his own opinions but utterances that he had received from some oracle. The words then migrated into common speech. Such is more or less the account given by Suidas. Diogenes Laertius gives us to understand that the remark stems from Pythagoras of Zacynthus. All the same, Cicero in the first book of his On the Nature of the Gods tells a different story: 'For in a discussion we should look not for authorities but for reason to sway the balance. In fact the authority of those who profess themselves teachers is often a handicap to those who wish to learn; they cease to use their own judgement, and accept as authoritative whatever verdict they find passed by the judge of their choice. Nor do I normally approve a habit I have heard ascribed to the Pythagoreans; it is said that when they asserted something in a discussion to be true, and were asked why this was so, they were wont to reply 'He said so himself.' The "himself" of course was Pythagoras. Such was the effect of an opinion predetermined, that authority carried the day, even with no appeal to reason.' Quintilian in the Principles: 'For juries give a reluctant hearing to the man who takes for granted that his case is right, nor can counsel rely on finding among his opponents the principle to which Pythagoras could appeal among his disciples, He said so himself.' But this approach is sometimes more defective, sometimes less; it depends on the sort of man who uses it. Aristophanes also alludes to this in the Clouds:
Tell me, who's this man swinging in the basket?
Himself. - And who's himself? - Why, Socrates.
Who's Socrates? Call him - a good loud shout.
No, no: call him yourself. I haven't time.
(When he says 'swinging in the basket,' I may explain in passing, this is a new and humorous idea: he wants us to understand that Socrates is contemplating the clouds, with his mind set on higher things. The kremathra of which he speaks is a hanging container in which the left-over remains of food used to be kept.) The phrase is used in two ways, sometimes with its simple meaning but more often ironically; for example to someone citing Aristotle as an oracle one might reply 'No doubt he said so himself,' to show that one needed his reasons and was not satisfied with the bare authority of the writer. It will be useful too when we wish to transfer the unpopularity of some opinion, or the task of defending it, from ourselves to the man who is really responsible. Juvenal: 'Such is my will and pleasure; if I please, / That's good enough for you.' Horace is better: 'To no man's words in blind allegiance pledged.'
It is perhaps worth pointing out that 'He said himself in this proverb has much the same force as Thus saith the lord,' so that Pythagoras might be thought to have learnt this phrase, which is familiar to us in the Prophets, from the seers in Egypt. Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'Go, tell the girls, / His lordship has arrived - and here I am,' meaning that the master arrives in some sense, even if he only sends his servants. In the same way in the scriptural prophets 'Here I am/ meaning 'your lord and master.'
Here belongs what I have said earlier on the proverb After planting the dart. Thus Augustine in some passage where he reviews the opinion of Manichaeus, if I remember right: 'Manichaeus said this, and departed,' his point being that he was content to have stated his view, when he should have argued it. Galen too On the Natural faculties, book 1: 'Having said this and more like it without preparation and without hesitation, as though what he said could not be wrong or be misunderstood, he ended by dashing off and leaving us where we were, as though we were quite unable to produce any counter argument with even a shadow of probability.'

Αὐτὸν οὐ τρέφων κύνας τρέφεις, You keep hounds though you cannot keep yourself, was said of a man who was so poor that he could not provide himself with the necessities of life, and yet tried to keep either horses or servants. It will be aptly used against those who have so little money that they can hardly support life, yet are ambitious and try to ape the rich and powerful with splendid garments and all the bustle of the great. In a word, it will fit everyone who takes thought for the pleasures and grandeurs of life, and neglects the things that are more badly needed. The necessities of life should have our attention first, and after them our social position; otherwise we shall be like one who toils to become a good scholar, and gives no thought to his livelihood, which is at risk.

Γῆς ἔντερα, The bowels of the earth, was an expression used of worthless things of no value. Rocks are called 'the bowels of the earth.' This is recorded by Diogenianus. The bowels of the earth are rocks; and we call useless men 'stones.' It is like that other phrase, 'A useless burden on the earth.'

Τενέδιος αὐλητὴς, A flute-player from Tenedos, was a phrase for a deceitful witness who gave fabricated evidence, which arose from the fact that Philonome suborned her flute-player to report falsely to Cygnus that she had received improper advances from Tennes and even been physically assaulted. So Stephanus in his catalogue of cities. Of Tenedos I have already spoken frequently elsewhere.

Κύρβεις κακῶν, Statute-books full of wrong. Of abandoned rascals, stained with every sort of crime. In Athens there were certain four-sided prisms, on which laws were inscribed as a means of publication, and with them the various penalties laid down for offenders. These they called kyrbeis, and in Lucian the word is 'axles.' This is not unlike one I have recorded elsewhere, An Iliad of woes. A similar metaphor is used in Athenaeus, book 9, by Antiphanes if I remember right: 'And here I found a whole great dish of woes.' For different sorts of food are often set out on the same dish, all designed to look attractive. This makes the image all the more effective, if you turn it round, as one might speak of An Iliad of blessings.

Κριὸς τροφεῖα ἀπέτισεν, The ram paid the cost of its upbringing. Cited from Menander. Suitable when anyone repays a good turn with a bad one. The image derives from the fact that the ram attacks with its horns the bucket or other container in which food is set before it, and butts the very people who provide it with food and perhaps actually feed it. The proverb is also expressed in the form Κριοῦ διακονία, A ram's recompense, used when someone has done a kindness to an ungrateful man, and is repaid with injury. This is related to that phrase in Aristophanes, in the Wasps: 'The prop has let down the vine.'

A man was said to pass From Dorian to Phrygian, Απὸ δωρίου ἐπὶ φρύγιον, who had turned from a more abstemious way of living to a life of luxury, or who had passed from a modest situation to one of more noise and bustle. The metaphor is taken from those very familiar kinds of harmony used by the Ancients, of which the Dorian was the more restrained, as Suidas indicates, quoting the following words from an author whose name I do not know: The way of life that had fallen to his lot was moderate and far from luxurious, such as would neither blight a man's prospects through poverty or sap his energies through too much wealth; it was a middle way, well-tuned and truly adapted to the Dorian mode of fortune.' Suidas also refers to another passage, suppressing, if I am not mistaken, the author's name; it is not easy to give an appropriate rendering of this without knowing what precedes or follows, but I will add my own guesswork, to serve until the passage turns up: 'It will be clear that I put forward, not the chosen language of men of rotund utterance but their actual meaning; only I shall not have from Dorian (as they say) to Phrygian.' Though in Suidas the reading is not monon ou 'only I shall not have,' but monon ei, 'only if I have.' From these words it is clear that the Dorian mode was more delicate and the Phrygian more severe. Apuleius in the first book of his Florida makes it quite plain that the Dorian style in music was very different from Phrygian, since one aroused the mind to religious feelings and the other fired it with martial ardour. Apuleius' words run as follows: 'There was a flute-player once called Antigenidas, whose control of every note was sweet as honey, a master too in the management of every mode, whether you wished him to play the simple Aeolian, the versatile Asian, the plaintive Lydian, the solemn Phrygian or warlike Dorian.' Such are Apuleius' words; and if he is right, the Dorian, which kindles men with martial ardour, cannot be a temperate mode, unless maybe the flutes played calming music to men on their way into battle, because at that moment self-control is more use than wild enthusiasm. Whether in the passage from Apuleius we should read 'Aetolian' (Aetolicum or Aetolium) for 'Aeolian' and 'Ionian' (lassium or lastium, from las or lasti) for 'Asian', I leave open for the consideration of the learned. Though this does not agree properly with what Lucian writes in his Harmonides: 'And each mode has its special character, divine force' (what Apuleius calls 'solemnity') 'in the Phrygian, Bacchic enthusiasm in the Lydian, severity in the Dorian, cheerfulness in the Ionian' (which Apuleius seems to have rendered by Versatility'). Dion on the other hand, in his essay 'On Kingship,' records that the fighting spirit of Alexander the Great was always aroused when the musician Timotheus played in the Dorian mode. Athenaeus in book 14 credits the Dorian mode with 'manly severity and majesty and force,' neither languishing nor gay, but solemn and the reverse of versatile.
A later author, Boethius in the preface to his work On Music, shows how this art has a special power of rousing our feelings, and that the feelings it rouses or calms differ from one mode to another. He adds the story of a young man, a barbarian by birth (for he came from Taormina), who had been excited by music played in the Phrygian mode, and was drunk and furiously angry; when he was already trying to set fire to the house of his mistress, who had admitted a rival, Pythagoras told the flute-girl to change to a spondaic rhythm, and so restored him to sanity. Boethius says the young man had been excited by the Phrygian mode, and returned to his senses when the mode was changed; but he does not tell us what mode replaced the Phrygian. Cicero, who is quoted in this passage by Boethius, mentions neither mode, and only says that the young man was pacified by music in spondaic rhythm. If it was with the Dorian mode that Timotheus used to rouse Alexander to war, and with the Phrygian that this young man was fired to attack the house, it would seem that there was not much difference between these two modes. Lucian ascribes madness, to entheon, to the Phrygian, but madness of a sacred kind. Of this Plato establishes three sorts: one inflicted on poets by the Muses, one on seers by Apollo, and the third on lovers by the god of love. Bacchus and Mars have their own madness too. Thus the young man in the story, when he went out of his mind, had been seized by madness of three kinds, from Bacchus, Cupid and Mars. That a pyrrhic rhythm rouses men to battle, I have shown elsewhere, for this is the source of To have a pyrrhic look in the eye, used of fierce excited people; and the pyrrhic is the opposite of the spondee. Had not Boethius spoken of a change of mode, we might have accepted that the same Phrygian mode could rouse with pyrrhic rhythms and calm with spondees. And it seems possible that Boethius, in speaking of a change of mode, meant a change not of harmony but of rhythmic speed.
There is clearly a place for the proverb when there is a change of subject, when, for instance, a man starts with the principles of rhetoric and digresses to speak of theology. I myself suppose that the Ancients have given us different accounts of the systems of harmony, because the system itself changed with changes in the behaviour of society. In early days the people of Asia were reputed for their discipline, before they were softened by luxury. The same happened to the Spartans, among whom were Dorians. Hence those names for mixtures of mode, hypodorian, mixolydian and hypermixolydian. Athenaeus thinks the hypodorian mode is the same as the Aeolian, to which he attributes pomp and circumstance and a touch of effeminacy. Some music-scholars affirm that to change from Dorian to Phrygian is very difficult. I have shown elsewhere that there was a Phrygian form of song called skolion, which was also commonly used in the dirges at funerals. If Dorian music is different from Phrygian, inasmuch as it arouses martial ardour, everyone must agree that it consisted of pyrrhics, since the pyrrhic is the opposite of the spondee. But there is a great deal about these kinds of harmony in Plato's Republic, and again in the Laches he teaches us that the true Dorian harmony, and the true Greek harmony (neither Phrygian nor Ionian nor Lydian) is to be found when there is complete harmony in a virtuous man between his life and language. Plutarch has something to say in his essay 'On Music.' For my part, I have said enough to make clear the meaning of the adage.

Ἀπὸ βαλβίδος, From the starting-pen or the starting-rope, that is, from the very beginning of a thing. Taken from horse-racing, in which the course begins at the starting-pens or starting-rope and the meta or finishing-post is the end. And so, when we wish to convey the starting of some enterprise, we say 'Right from the starting-pen,' and if it's the end, 'Right to the finishing-post.' A man might say, for example, that it is disgraceful for a craftsman to make blunders 'right from the very starting-pens,' or that no one is so idle that he does not wish to give an effect of activity, at least on the starting-line. It is found in Aristophanes. Related to one I have placed elsewhere: From scratch.

Ἀπὸ οὐρανοῦ μέχρι γῆς, From heaven to earth, is a proverbial phrase with the same meaning as if you were to say 'About anything you please, right from the beginning to the very end.' So in Plautus, in the Persa, when a purchaser enquires if he may ask the girl some questions, the seller, to give him permission to ask as many questions as he wishes, replies 'From heaven to earth, whatever you please.'

Porphyrion in his commentary on Horace tells us that this line was proverbial: 'Know you friend's weaknesses but hate them not.' I found this among the Greek aphorisms, and have restored the original; for it runs like this: 'Love a friend's ways indeed, but hate them not.' The point is that certain faults of character in our friends should be overlooked, on the basis that we should understand them and at the same time tolerate them, for fear that if you are too strict and too sharpsighted in observing your friend's defects, you will undermine the friendship. And this will rank as a command when lesser faults are concerned, but not in those that reflect on our friends' honour or may land them in very great danger. Ignorance of his friends' faults is the mark of a man who has made no choice of those he will cherish; resentment of them shows discourtesy. You should recognize them, so that you can either correct them, or at least reduce their force, but not to the extent that makes you seem to dislike a friend. For the man who can tolerate no faults in a friend will have no friends.

Bithus and Bacchius were a well-known pair of gladiators, mentioned by Suetonius, a good match both in skill and courage. Consequently, whenever two rascals of equal quality are in such conflict that neither will yield to the other, it will not be out of place if we say 'Here's Bacchius matched with Bithus.' Horace in his Satires: 'Never was Bacchius better matched with Bithus,' where his point was that Rupilius and Persius were equal alike in their rascality and their command of bad language. Anything really criminal and ready for a fight of any kind we call 'gladiatorial': the physical strength of a gladiator, a gladiator's brutal daring, 'They plan their attack on me in gladiatorial style.' Cicero in the Philippics sometimes calls Antony's brother 'a mirmillo,' as in the sixth Philippic: 'Shall even the resolutions of the senate and the reports of its official representatives be accessible to this mirmillo from Asia?'

There is a well-known phrase very like this in Lucilius: Esernius matched against Pacidianus. They too were gladiators, a well-matched pair and far more distinguished than all their contemporaries. Cicero in his book On the Best Kind of Orator: 'For my part, to compare small things with great, I bring onto the stage a famous pair of gladiators. Aeschines takes the part of Esernius, "no filthy fellow he," as Lucilius puts it, but a skilled and doughty fighter, "is matched with our Pacidianus, and is far / The best that ever was since men were men."'
A spectacle very like this was presented to us in these last few days in London, England, to the great delight of all those present, by two theologians. One of whom was that great figure, Standish, the archimandrite of the Franciscans who in that isle are called conventuals, a powerful speaker and tireless Scotist who knows not fear, and a man of such sinews and physical vigour that he might well have been a guardsman or a prizefighter, had he not been a theologian. The other was an Italian, a member of the community commonly called the Servite Friars, the reason being (so they tell me) that, though as black as beetles, they serve the Virgin Mary as their only mistress, and have no truck with Christ or any of the saints besides. This man, however, though in learning perhaps not inferior, was quite unequal, in my opinion, in all those gifts that make a gladiator. Having retired to England shortly before Lent as his custom was, he wanted to demonstrate that the efforts he had expended in Paris for several years already on the study of theology had not been wasted, and so he proceded to put forward a number of conclusions, as they call them, for discussion in academic circles, most of which related to commercial problems, but not the first, which was taken to cast some aspersions on St Francis. The text was something to this effect: that the Friars Minor commit sin if they accept money, whether personally or through a third party, and in consequence those who give them money also commit sin, for whoever furnished another with the opportunity to commit sin, sinned himself also.
The cause that moved a foreigner to take this bold step was as follows. This Servite was lodging with the Augustinians who call themselves Hermits, I suppose by some principle of opposites. The Augustinians in London do very well out of the merchants, Italians especially, and this made the Minorites jealous. The man Standish therefore, in hopes of diverting this source of income to his own Order, warned the congregation in a sermon to be extremely careful in the choice of a confessor; only two Orders had been authorized by the Holy Father to hear any man's confession, the Minorites and the Jacobites. As this would clearly reduce the other Orders to starvation, they put their heads together, and suborned the Servite, whose ignorance of English did not permit him to preach in public, to seek satisfaction for such an outrageous attack by a series of academic theses. Fixed up therefore on every church door and at every street corner were to be seen the 'conclusions' of which I began to tell.
The news of this spread gradually, as it usually does; and when it reached the ears of Standish, the spirit of that holy and high-hearted hero was fired with appropriate wrath. Dire were his threats, and all seemed set for some great and tragic outcome, when some god intervened, as they say, from the machine. Our wise philosopher saw clearly that the affair would end in famine at Saguntum, if such a proposition were even to get a hearing in public; and among themselves they reckon most saintly the man who has most coin. To cut a long story short, the Servite was forced to go and see Standish in order to apologize and pacify him. He went with great reluctance. He was a stranger, and there were plenty of people to frighten him with the news that Standish was a poisonous man, and noisy, and had an ungovernable temper; that he was thought to be something by common people, sailors perhaps and cart-drivers and cobblers, old-clothes dealers and fullers and other such leaders of society; and that he had sufficient self-confidence to stand out alone against the whole English Church in a most valiant defense of the case for immunity, which had made him unpopular with all priests and bishops and a large part of those ordinary folk who wish well to the secular clergy. When the Servite was ushered into the presence, having dabbled in rhetoric as well as theology, he attempted to secure the man's goodwill by the following exordium: 'Worshipful father,' says he, 'I have come, to be sure, most reluctantly, having heard from several sources that you are ungovernably angry and, if some of my informants are to be believed, actually mad.' Having thus, fully in accordance with the rules of the art, secured his hearer's goodwill, he went on briefly as follows: 'But in any case, as these fathers have so strongly urged me to do so, I have come to hear if you have anything to say.' At this the other man exploded, and abused him roundly. His 'conclusion' was a perfect scandal; it was offensive to pious ears, it stank of heresy, it showed gross contempt of the Seraphic Order of St Francis, and its author would soon pay the penalty if he did not recant. The Servite replied, as a brave man should, that he had put it forward for discussion, and there was no call for recantation. At such godless words Standish lost all control over his emotions; he told the man to wait a moment, and rushed into the house. The Servite, who on this point also was reluctant to obey the great man, was already preceding to depart. His opponent, rapidly summoning several of his bodyguard in their monastic habit, of whom he has a large number, as muscular and as bold as any king's, caught up with him as he retreated, seized him, and dragged him into the house feet first like a second Cacus. Thereupon the poor Servite, desolate and fearing his end was near, did as men often do in an extremity: he appealed to Jesus, crying 'Jesus, Jesus' over and over again at the top of his voice. Among the Franciscans Jesus was nowhere to be found, and all the time the wretch was being dragged along; but there were some builder's workmen in the neighbourhood, who were aroused by the name of Jesus, and came running up with stones, and with the tools of their trade, and rescued the man by force from the hands of that bodyguard. And that was the first act of the play.
The next act opened with torrents of abuse on either side, as the leaders of both parties appealed to their supporters. The Servite is even said to have hung up a votive picture in gratitude to Jesus his saviour, in which the story was portrayed in colour, with an epigram appended. By now the tale had spread rapidly through the population, and had even got as far as the ears of the cardinal, who is the chief magistrate and judge of that kingdom. Having a sense of humour, and thinking this might be an entertaining spectacle, he ordered both of them to appear before him. Standish delivered a severe attack, and the Servite defended himself vigorously. The cardinal decided, this being a scholastic proposition and open to debate, that immediately after Easter, on the Thursday, they should hold a public discussion in St Paul's Cathedral, which is the most famous church in the island. Neither side declined battle. The chieftains arm themselves, their soldiers get ready for the fray. The 'conclusions' are nailed up on every door, at every crossroad and on every fence; people gather even from long distances to see the fun. Men hold opposite views, but all are at one in their excitement. Not to make a long story of it, the day came that had been fixed for the battle, and with learned and unlearned the place was packed, when lo and behold, the efforts of certain people had secured an order from the king, announced by the cardinal, that things should go no further. Whereupon Standish, to secure all the credit for himself, sent some of his people separately to put it about all through the crowd that the Servite had thrown himself humbly at his feet and begged him that the dispute might not proceed. Most of them were already convinced of this, the other man being a foreigner and unable to speak English, had not some god given the Servite a bright idea. He went up into the pulpit, and addressed the crowd in these words: 'Right learned doctors, and all other honourable men, there was to have been a dispute today, but his Eminence the Cardinal for good and sufficient reason has given orders to cancel it, so do not wait in vain for something to happen.' The Minorites, seeing the prize of so great a victory torn from their grasp, fell upon the man, and would have torn him to pieces right there in the cathedral, had not the cardinal seen this coming and attached a few men to him to protect him who were known to his own household.
So the Minorites wagged their heads at him and uttered a great many threats from a safe distance, which was all they were allowed to do; and then they accused the Servite a second time before the cardinal with a lot of uproar for having dared to breach the royal prohibition and go on record before a public audience that he was prepared to defend such an impious 'conclusion.' Both parties were ordered to appear. Standish beside his bodyguard had also brought a boy in a monastic habit, who was already learning his Scotus; such is the importance of being correctly brought up from an early age. This boy he proudly displayed to the magnates of the court, as they passed through the different rooms to the cardinal's privy chamber; for Standish was known to many of them, better known than loved. He assured them that they would see the boy polish off the Servite and trample him under foot. 'We have got to the stage' said Standish 'when a boy can be pitted against him.' But the cardinal said it was improper to pit a boy against a man who was a graduate, as they call it; for the Servite was a bachelor of theology, though whether currens or sedens, formatus or shortly to become so, is uncertain. So a Minorite was put forward, this time an Italian confronting an Italian, so that one crow might pick out the other crow's eyes. A number of scholars and leading members of the court stood round listening eagerly. 'Do you maintain' began the Minorite with arm outstretched 'that the Friars commit sin if they handle money?' 'Yes,' he said, 'I do.' 'Do you deny that the Pope has power to issue a privilege to make it lawful?' 'No,' he said, 'I do not.' 'But the Pope has given us a privilege.' 'I dare say.' 'So then it is lawful.' 'I have nothing against that.' 'So then your "conclusion" is a lie.' This weapon the Servite dodged like this: 'My "conclusion" he said 'makes a statement about the Friars Minor. It is not lawful for them; for you, who are not Friars Minor, it is lawful.' 'But the papal bull' said the other man 'calls us Friars Minor.' 'So it does' said the Servite, 'but it adds the words "who are conventuals;" for conventual friars are Friars Minor in the same way that a dead man is a man.' This silenced the Minorite, for it was a solution he had not seen coming; and the cardinal, admired this skill in argument with a pleasant smile. When Standish saw that the first round had gone so badly, he entered the ring himself, and said with a threatening frown and outstretched arm: 'I maintain that you are excommunicated.' When the other said no, he went on 'We have a papal bull which excommunicates everyone who dares to say the the conventual Friars Minor in England commit a sin if they accept money. You have seen the bull, and you say this: therefore you are excommunicated.' At this point the Servite was fairly in trouble, had he not wormed his way out by saying that the bull spoke of conventual Friars Minor, who were not really such, while his conclusion referred to Friars Minor without qualification. The cardinal, whose object in all this had been entertainment rather than serious business, dismissed them both in such terms that it was not yet quite clear which was the stronger man. The Servite returned to Paris to enjoy his triumph there; the Standish party on the other hand put it about among themselves that he was defeated by a boy and reduced to complete silence. The 'conclusion' remains to be discussed at Oxford and Cambridge in the schools of theology. This spectacle I found so exceedingly entertaining, dear reader, that I thought I would share my pleasure with you, so that you could lighten the tedium of your reading with this agreeable relief.

Δὶς ἑπτὰ πληγαῖς πουλύπους πιλούμενος, A polyp crushed with blows twice sevenfold. In use when a man is eventually improved by a series of misfortunes, as happens to the young and headstrong as they grow up and are tamed in the end by long experience of disaster. It will also suit those who are naturally stubborn and require severe punishment to correct their faults. The polyp, they say, is a fish which when taken is usually subjected to prolonged and severe pounding and beating to soften it and make it edible. Zenodotus is the authority.

There seems to be something proverbial about this phrase in Virgil, in the Sorceress: 'Nisa is Mopsus' bride.' When, against universal expectation, some great success befalls a man who is quite unworthy, making it clear that there is no longer any limit to what anyone may hope for: 'Nisa is Mopsus' bride: what may we lovers not hope for?' There is also some point in the names; for when we say 'Mopsus,' we think of a despicable shepherd of the lowest class, and Nisa suggests a very beautiful girl. Sophocles is not far from this in the Ajax: 'Nought is beyond the reach of hope.' And to the same effect Linus, preserved by Stobaeus: 'Never despair, for nothing is past hope; / All things God brings to pass; nought is impossible.'