Adagia 1501–1600

Τι ἄλλο ἢ τοῖς νενηκιμένοις ὀδύνη Losers must expect to suffer. Can be used when something is done publicly in order to show contempt. The source is a remark made by Brennus, intended to humilate the Romans publicly at the weighing of gold, when the Romans despaired of outside help, and he had made this a condition of the removal of his army of Gauls from Roman territory. But I would like to give Plutarch's own words. 'The authorities' he says 'then decided on a meeting between Brennus and Sulpicius the Roman commander, at which it was agreed that the Romans should pay down a thousand pounds weight of gold, and on the receipt of this the Gauls would forthwith vacate the city and leave Roman territory. This was confirmed on oath, and the gold duly produced; but while it was being weighed, disorder broke out among the Celts and they began, secretly at first and then openly, to pull down the scale-pan with the weights in it and thus distort the weighing. The Romans were furious; but Brennus, as though deliberately to show his contempt and scorn for them, took off his sword and sword-belt and flung them on top of the weights in the pan. And when Sulpicius asked what he meant by that, the reply was "Why of course, that the loser must expect to suffer." And this remark has now become proverbial.' This is mentioned by Festus Pompeius, who adds that when Camillus 'had caught Brennus in an ambush and cut him to pieces, and Brennus complained that this was in breach of the truce, 'Camillus retorted in Brennus' own words 'Woe to the vanquished!' Such is the form of the proverb in Festus. It is clear from this that ὀδύνη in Plutarch must be translated 'suffer,' not 'be disgraced.' Lapo [the translator] either made a mistake, or used a text in which ὀδύνη, 'suffering,' had been replaced by ὄνειδος, 'disgrace.' Ballio in Plautus was probably alluding to this with his 'Woe to the vanquished!' when the loser is obliged to do as he is told, even on conditions which are unjust. Also, if I am not mistaken, Virgil in Moeris: Defeated now and sad, for chance rules all,
I send these kids. God grant some ill befall!
Nonius Marcellus under the word Cestus cites 'Woe to the vanquished!' as the title of one of Varro's Satires.

Ὓδωρ δὲ πίνων χρηστὸν οὐδὲν ἂν τέκῃς, If you drink water, you will produce nothing good and useful. The author of this is said to be Demetrius of Halicarnassus, and the meaning is that no distinguished work, nothing beautiful or worthy of survival comes from poets if they drink water, if, that is to say, they are poor and have little to live on. Horace: 'No poems can live long nor hope to please / Written by water-drinkers.' Juvenal likewise: 'Take Virgil now: / Without his slave and his congenial home, / No snakes would bristle in his Furies' hair / All his deep-sounding trumpets would be dumb.' And again: 'On a full stomach Horace cries Ohè.' A couplet by Demetrius of Halicarnassus is cited by Zenodotus in the following form, though it is included in the Epigrams under the name of Niceratus: 'Wine is pleasant. What does the poets' swift horse bear? / But, drinking water, you will do no good.' Though in Athenaeus the first verse is different: 'Wine is a tall horse to the gifted poet.' The same lines are recorded by Athenaeus in book 2 of the Doctors at Dinner from an epigram which someone wrote on Cratinus, who is frequently criticized in comedy as too fond of the bottle. Horace also attributes eloquence to wine: 'Inspiring cups make all men eloquent.' Martial: 'Sober I'm helpless; give me wine, / And fifteen poets help me shine.' Aristotle in book 8 of his On the Nature of living Creatures, thinks that a parrot speaks more freely if it has drunk wine.

Ἀξία ἡ κύων τοῦ βρώματος, The dog is worthy of his dinner, means much the same as saying 'the labourer is worthy of his hire.' And there is hardly any servant so useless that he cannot be thought worthy at least of his food, though maybe not of good wages. Recorded by Suidas. It will suit a man who is not entirely despicable and useless, or one who is a toady and as such suitable for life in the courts of princes, where men have no value who do not know how to play the flatterer.

Αξία ἡ κύων θρόνου, The bitch is worthy of her basket. When fresh honour falls to the lot of someone who does not deserve it. Taken, it seems, from the lapdogs on which some foolish women lavish more affection than on their husbands. Unless you would rather refer it to the Egyptian god Anubis. In any case, as is well known, dogs have been so highly valued by their masters that they have actually had monuments raised in their honour after death. Recorded by Diogenianus.

Ἂν οἶνον αἴτῃ, κονδύλους αὐτῳ δίδου, If wine is what he asks, show him your fists. When we expect a good reception and get the reverse. This iambic line is taken from some tragedy on the subject of Ulysses and the Cyclops. The story is very familiar, how Ulysses in Homer is asked by Polyphemus the Cyclops for wine. He is repeatedly given it; and as soon as he is drunk and lying asleep, Ulysses bores through his eye with a stake, the point of which he has hardened in the fire. The figure is supposed to be derived from children, who sometimes, when they ask for something they are not allowed, get smacked instead. Terence, in that phrase in the Phormio 'Ply your fists on his stomach/ uses fists when he means the actual blows, just as Greek uses kondyloi. The adage is recorded by Suidas.

Αντὶ πέρκης σκορπίον, Scorpion instead of perch. When somebody aims at the best and gets the worst. A perch is a highly popular fish, mentioned from time to time by Athenaeus when he is listing a gourmet's favourite dishes, and a scorpion is deadly poisonous. Though there is also a fish of that name, of no value as food, to which the adage seems more likely to refer. Lycophron uses a similar image: 'But in place of the woodpecker (pipo) he swallowed a scorpion'; for the pipo is a kind of bird.

Ἀντὶ πέρκης σκορπίον, In return for his services the Greeks ill-treated Agamemnon (some give the verse with 'bound' instead of 'ill-treated'). An expression used of ungrateful people, who repay a great service done them with some great disservice. Agamemnon expended so much effort on the capture of Troy, all for the honour of Greece, and when he reached home was caught in the folds of a robe from which he could not escape and murdered by Clytemnestra with the help of her paramour Aegisthus. It has been noted that this fate usually awaits those who have deserved well of their country: in return for their services they have met with great public ingratitude. Pindar in hymn 4 of the Pythians: They say that this is the most grievous thing of all, to know the good and yet perforce to keep one's foot outside,' not (that is) to enjoy good things when you have done good things for other men, but to be evil spoken of in return for good deeds.

Ἄειδε τὰ Τέλληνος, Sing Tellen's songs. Some think this is used of people with sharp sarcastic tongues; some, of those who are always talking nonsense; for this Tellen, they say, was a flute-player and also wrote very bad verse. Others say he wrote humorous poetry of great elegance, spiced with a nice critical wit. This Tellen is mentioned by Diarchus of Messene, quoted by Zenodotus, and also by Plutarch in his 'Apophthegms.'

Αζαναῖα κακὰ, Azanian ills, was in common use when someone expended a great deal of labour on some very difficult and unproductive task, or when one had to do business with a man who was difficult, hard to please, unmanageable, obstinate. They say that Azanaea is a district in Arcadia which is barren and unsuitable for agriculture, in which the husbandmen work hard for very little return. This is more or less what we get from the Greek collectors of proverbs. Stephanus however in his book on place-names opens up what looks like a source for this adage. There are, he says, several places called Azania, one of which is part of Arcadia; and there is a spring there, the water of which will give the man who tastes it such an aversion from wine that he will find even the smell intolerable. A second is in Massilia and a third in Phrygia, and the latter is mentioned also by Strabo in book 12 of his Geography. Of this, Hermogenes as cited by Stephanus tells the following story. In Azania were many farm houses and when the country suffered from famine owing to the poverty of the soil, the herdsmen banded together and offered sacrifices to the gods in search of greater fertility. When the gods failed to hear their prayers and the barrenness of the fields continued unabated, one of the shepherds, by name Euphorbus, invented a new form of sacrifice: he offered an anagous and an exis, which are the Phrygian names for a fox and a hedgehog. The gods were pleased, he says, with this sacrifice, and the fields began to be fertile; and when the neighbouring herdsmen heard the news, they offered Euphorbus the position of priest and sole ruler. Later the name of the place was changed from Azania to Exanagous, which means exactly the same in Phrygian as echinalopex would in Greek or echinovulpes, hedgehog-fox in Latin. Such is the account in Stephanus, from which we may conjecture that the proverb took its rise from this story.

Αἰξ οὔπω τέτοκεν, ἔριφος δ᾽ ἐπὶ δώματα παίζει, The she-goat has not yet given birth, but the kid is already playing in the house. Of those who are already attempting the final and finished stages of a task, passing over what ought to have come first; or who boast that they have achieved something when the foundations are not even laid, or who attack something in the wrong order. To bring forth is an earlier stage than to have the kid playing on the roof. Recorded by Zenodotus.

Εὗρε θεός τὸν ἀλιτρὸν, God finds the guilty. When retribution at last overtakes the wicked, as though sent from on high. Theocritus in idyll 10: 'God finds the guilty; you have what you've long wanted.' The scholiast on Theocritus indicates that the proverb was also used in another form: Eὗρε θεὸς αἴτιον, God finds the doer. It is like that saying of Homer's in book 4 of the Iliad: 'For though Olympian Jove did not punish at once, punish he will in the end, and heavy the price they will pay.' Here belongs that saying in Sophocles: 'But when one of the gods decides to hurt, the powerful man has no means of escape.' And this is supported by that proverbial iambic line: 'No mortal man sidesteps the strokes of God.' Pindar too in the Pythians: 'God, who can catch the winged eagle and overtakes the dolphin in the deep, bends any proud mortal to his will.' This view finds support also in the Olympians: 'But if any man hopes that in doing something he will escape God's notice, he is wrong.'

Those who find time to do nothing are said feriari, to make holiday, and leisure is feriae, holidays, and those who enjoy it are feriati and these metaphors were in common use as though they were proverbial. Theocritus in his Bucolics: 'It's always holiday for those who have no work to do.' For on holidays pagans no less than Christians abstained from worldly business.
Those who fight shy of work wish for the feast-days on which it is permitted to do nothing, and gratify your wish to eat, drink and be merry. In Antiquity a certain number of holidays were allowed to country folk with the deliberate purpose of refreshing them with play instead of work when they were tired; but there was an admixture of religion to keep the play between bounds. Today the common run of Christians misuse the holy days, devised in old days for pious purposes, in drinking, wenching, gambling, quarreling and fighting; and at no season are more crimes committed than at those when crimes are most clearly out of place. Never do we so clearly imitate the pagans as on the days when we have a special duty to behave like Christians; and though it is clear that a practice designed for the advancement of religion now tends to put religion itself in peril, yet on some policy I do not understand the popes daily add new holidays on top of old. It would be more appropriate to follow the practice of prudent physicians and alter remedies to suit the pattern of diseases, with no object in view except to contribute to good health. Thus, when they see that a practice wisely instituted long ago to suit the pattern of those times is now, with the changes in Christians' way of life, a menace to religion, why these scruples about changing the established order with the same end in view as that with which our fathers established it?
What I say about holy days would make sense about many other things; not that I think the Christian practice of holidays should be condemned, but I would rather it did not grow to unmeasured lengths, and I should prefer to see the few festivals instituted by the authority of early times converted to the purpose for which they were invented. For to a true Christian every day is a holy day; while to the bad Christians who form the great majority, holy days are not so much holy as profane.
But to return to my proverb, it will be well adapted to those who always have some excuse why they should be at leisure; those, for example, who do not enjoy reading are at one moment in poor health, at another busied with domestic cares; sometimes the cold of winter is the obstacle and sometimes summer heat or the treacherous climate of autumn, or they are called away from their books by the lovely spring weather which will so soon be gone. After dinner they say one should have nothing to do with books until one's stomach has settled down, and when they have not yet dined the pangs of hunger remove the desire to read. In daylight, they say, it is lazy to sit doing nothing indoors, and to sit up by lamplight is bad for their eyes. If they have enough to live on, they say, why bother to read? A young man says he cannot spend the best years of his life on cares which are all right when you're old; and a man in later life says he must careful of his health.

Τὰς δεσποίνας αἱ κύνες μίμούμεναι, A lapdog takes after its mistress. Used when slaves reproduce the rudeness of their masters or pupils smack of the arrogance of their teacher or flunkeys ape the pride of princes; in a word, whenever subordinates adopt the character of those under whose orders they serve. Hence Juvenal's line 'Every great household's full of haughty slaves.' You may also see how lapdogs which are the darlings of rich women reflect their arrogance and wantonness and often their whole character. This adage is used by Plato in the eighth book of the Republic: 'Clearly a lapdog, as the proverb has it, takes after its mistress, and it is the same with horses and asses which have had no discipline but are accustomed to proceed in arrogant fashion down the street, jostling everyone they meet who does not get out of their way.'

Ταντάλειοι τιμωρίαι, The torments of Tantalus, is to be used of those who have good things within reach but are forbidden to enjoy them. Taken from the myth of Tantalus, who is fancied by the poets in the nether regions standing by a river and suffering from thirst; and as soon as he approaches it in order to drink, the water, as he touches it with his lips, suddenly flows away. Over his head hangs a tree laden with fruit, but the moment he stretches out his hand towards it, it withdraws; and so the poor wretch is tormented by want in the midst of plenty. That this was commonly applied in the old days to rich men who were mean and avaricious is clear from Horace's Satires: In vain he grasps the cup he fain would quaff At you this story points: how dare you laugh? On your piled money-bags you lie and snore; 'Twere sacrilege to touch your sacred store, They pleases the eye like pictures, and no more. And again in the Odes: 'Amidst great riches poor.' Gregory of Nazianzus in a letter to Basil turns this elegantly to apply to the delights of this world, which never satisfy the mind: 'Like Tantalus condemned to suffer from thirst amid the waters and to a feast of plenty in which there is no food.' (He uses a Greek word pandaisia, a feast furnished with good things of every kind.)

Ανδρὸς γέροντος αἱ γνάθοι βακτηρία, The aged find their teeth a second staff. Customarily said of those whose strength fails with age, and they are obliged to adopt a better and more plentiful diet to mend, as best they can, with food the ravages of time. Even today you may hear an old man say 'It's my teeth that keep me going.' There is almost a riddle in this: others proceed on their feet, old men on their teeth. As the natural sap of the body grows less, the loss must be made good with the support of food and drink. We often see it happen that, when an old man loses that increased appetite, the end of life is near.

Μὴ λόγος αὐτ᾽ ἀλφίτων, that is, Do not [give us] words instead of barley-meal. This was a weapon for use against those whose generosity took the form of words, not things. This is a habit among grandees; they feed their hangers-on with splendid promises. Pomponius, the legal authority, is however quite right when he says in the Pandects that a man's property must be increased by things, not words. It will also suit those who repay a service with promises, or comfort a man with kind words, when what he needs is help. The Ancients used the word alphita, properly barley-meal, for anything that would support life. It looks as though it were taken from some comedy, for it forms the second half of an iambic trimeter. Of the proverb in Aristophanes, What has this to do with my daily bread [alphita], I have spoken elsewhere.

There is a phrase in Varro, in the last chapter of his book On Agriculture, which looks something like a proverb: To weigh anchor, for to make preparations to depart. It is something like one we have already had, To put wings on one's feet. He writes as follows: 'Meanwhile Pavo came back to us and said "Are you ready to weigh anchor? The votes have been cast, and the tribes are casting lots."' He means, If you are willing to break off your discussion and depart. Though there is an allusion here to two senses of the word tabulae, either the planks used in shipbuilding or, in public life, the tablets used in voting. This is like Quintilian's To cast off from shore'; for so most people read.

Men of no refinement and of no education are called in Greek ἀμούσους, Strangers to the Muses; for in Antiquity there was thought to be no culture without [what they called] 'music,' and hence in Greek comedy those who disclaim all book-learning say they have never been taught 'music.' Quintilian in his first book, in a chapter in praise of music, says that 'in fact it passed into a proverb in Greece that people with no education are "far from the Muses and the Graces".' Plato in book 8 of the Republic uses hypamousos, 'somewhat of a stranger to the Muses,' of a selfish, brash, discourteous man. Aristotle in the second book of the Rhetoric: 'As the poets put it, it is the uneducated speakers who make better music in the ears of the mob.' We call a man of notable refinement 'very harmonious' (mousikos). In Greek, in short, anything that shows control and poise can be described as emmouson, 'blest by the Muses,' and Athenaeus has a word, amousologia, for crude stories told out of season. Aeschines in his speech Against Timarchus: Tor, apart from his other bad qualities, the man is a stranger to the Muses (amousos) and quite uneducated.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'But, my good sir, music I never learnt.' People lacking in culture, who had none of the polish that comes from reading, were told that they should sacrifice to the Graces and the Muses; which recalls Plato's custom of telling Xenocrates from time to time that he should make some sacrifice to the Graces. In Athenaeus, book 4, one of the characters, complaining of the boorish habits of a Cynic philosopher, says 'Not like you, Cynic that you are, who have never sacrificed to the Muses, let alone the Graces.' The same author in book 13 quotes from some writer of parodies: 'Who learned their letters from some left-handed Muse.' This phrase is clearly suitable for anyone who makes a perverse or hypercritical use of his learning. Ephippus, quoted in the same passage, says of someone 'You have in your mouth the tongue of a left-handed man'; unless we should make a small change in the Greek, and read 'You keep your tongue on the left side of your mouth,' for the man who puts a sinister interpretation on everything, leaving out the good parts, may well be said to 'keep his tongue on the left side.' Thus we speak of sinister suspicions as well as interpretations. There is also the well-known saying of a certain philosopher, that he offered his pupils the principles of philosophy with his right hand, and they took them with their left. Plutarch in his life of Romulus, wishing to indicate that a man is neither uneducated nor uncivilized, says he lacks neither Muses nor Graces: 'Sextius Sulla, the Carthaginian,' he says, 'a man not unfamiliar with either the Muses or the Graces.'

Vitilitigatores was used by Marcus Cato for men who enjoyed a quarrel and were captious critics of other men's work, and the novelty of the word gave it currency as a adage among the learned, like Homeromastix and Virgiliomastix. Pliny in the preface to his History of the World: 'With some confidence therefore, even to face the vitilitigatores (what a clever idea that was of Cato's, to make a compound word of vitia, faults and litigatores, litigants; for how else do they spend their time but in litigation and looking for quarrels?) - with confidence I will go forward to the rest of my chosen task.'

Good wine needs no bush. True excellence, in other words, needs no outside advertisement. Good things please in their own right, and feel no lack of external commendation. Evidently taken from the inn-keepers' practice of hanging an ivy-bush as a sign over their wineshops. Plautus has the same idea in the Poenulus: 'For unsaleable goods you must go out and look for a buyer; good stuff finds its own buyer easily enough.' Horace: The salesman here no panegyric spares To find a market for his lingering wares.

A man of no literary education or powers of expression, incapable of conversation in learned company, was told proverbially Αδειν πρὸς μυῤῥίνην, To sing to the myrtle-branch. The image is taken from the custom, prevalent in Antiquity, by which at dinner-parties each man sang his own song; but if a man refused to take over the lyre on the ground that he knew no music, he was jokingly given a branch of bay or myrtle, and compelled to sing to that. That this was a method of singing in the old days we also learn from Quintilian in the first book of his Institutions: 'Hence he says 'came also that habit at parties, when dinner was done, of passing round a lyre; and when Themistocles confessed that he could not play, he was, to use Cicero's words, reckoned more or less uneducated.' But the ancient Romans too knew the custom of having stringed instruments and flutes played at dinner. Plutarch in book one of his 'Table-talk' writes that it used to be the practice at dinner, first of all to sing a chorus in honour of the god, which was called, he says, paianizein after which, each man was handed a branch of myrtle called asarkon, as he supposes, because the recipient sang. A lyre was then passed round, and anyone who had the necessary skill took it and sang, accompanying himself on the strings. For those who could not play and refused, there was a song called skolion, on the ground that it was no ordinary affair, nor did anyone find it easy. Others say that the myrtle was not usually passed round in order, but carried from one couch to another, in such a way that after the man had sung who sat in the first place on the first couch, he passed it to the man who sat first on the second couch, and he in turn to the first man on the third. Then on the second round the second man on the first couch passed it, he says, to the second man on the second couch, and in this way it went round them all. Such more or less is Plutarch's account.

'Αδμήτου μέλος, Admetus' dirge, of sad and mournful song. It will be adaptable to any style of complaint and lamentation. For there is an accepted kind of singing called the skolion, of which Julius Pollux has much to say. It is called 'slanting,'obliquum, either from the shape of the flutes, or because at dinner-parties, as I have just said, the turn to sing was passed across in slanting fashion from couch to couch. Some suppose that singing of this kind was easy and not elaborate, as of course songs ought to be that are sung over the wine and with no practice. But he who wishes to learn more fully about these songs, and about the preceding proverb, should read the scholiast on Aristophanes, on a passage which I shall indicate in a moment. They trace the adage back to a myth, which runs as follows. There was a king of Pherae called Admetus, whose flocks Apollo is said to have tended as a hired shepherd when he was expelled from Olympus, and lived in exile among mortals in human shape. The reason for his exile is thus reported. Apollo's son Aesculapius had mastered the art of medicine with Cheiron as his teacher; after which, having been given by Pallas blood which had flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, he used it to effect many cures; indeed, he employed blood from the veins on the left side to destroy people, and blood from the right-side veins to save their lives. The myth further relates that he even restored to life certain people who had already died. Consequently, to prevent his being taken by mortals for a god, since he seemed to do something which is the gods' prerogative, Jupiter struck him with a thunderbolt. Apollo was furious, and destroyed the Cyclopes who had provided Jupiter with the bolt he used. Outraged by this, Jupiter had made up his mind to send Apollo headlong from the sky to the nether regions; but Latona intervened, and her prayers secured him a milder punishment. He was therefore forbidden the sky, and told to depart, condemned for one year to serve a mortal man for pay. Thus Apollo made his way to Admetus, and tended the king's herds, as I said, for a year; and such was his skill that all the cows had twins. Having been most kindly treated while he was with Admetus, and wishing to show gratitude to his master, he got the Fates to agree that when the day of Admetus' death should turn up on their spindles, he should be allowed to escape death on this condition, that he should find someone else willing to die in his place and redeem his life by the sacrifice of his own. So, when the fatal day came, and no one could be found willing to die as his substitute, even his father and mother refusing, his wife Alcestis alone was prepared to treat her husband's life as dearer to her than her own. After her death, Admetus' house was constantly full of shrill and melancholy dirges, until Proserpine was moved at length and sent Alcestis back; or (as some say) until Hercules took Orcus by storm and brought her back to the upper world. These dirges are also mentioned by Euripides in the Alcestis: 'Dirges twofold then might one hear.' Aristophanes also touches on them in the Wasps: 'He seizes Cleon's right hand, and sings the story of Admetus. Learn this, my friend, and love those who are good. What crooked answer will you make to this?' It is a mixture of anapaestic and iambic lines. The scholiast cites these lines from his play The Storks: 'He sang Admetus' story to the myrtle-branch; but the other made him sing the song of Harmodius.' He collects other evidence as well which is worth having, which can be found in his work.

Αδακρυς πόλεμος,, War with no tears, when victory is gained without slaughter and bloodshed; or when someone extricates himself from a perilous situation in such a way that he gets off without loss; or when two quarrelsome people wage a wordy battle, and there is no risk of their coming to blows; or when the contest is of a kind which can bring loss to neither side, as in some literary dispute from which the loser goes home better informed, and the winner more friendly disposed. They say it arose with some ancient oracle of Dodona in which the Spartans, who were minded to fight the Arcadians, were told that it would be a war without tears; and they then won a victory with no losses on either side. We also speak of a 'bloodless victory,' when a contest is won without bloodshed, and there is a similar phrase in Greek ἀναιμωτὶ νικᾷν, that is, to win without bloodshed. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Fortune of the Romans' uses the words 'a victory without tears' of the success won by Paulus Aemilius over Perses.
The proverb also takes the form ἀναίματον ἔστησε τρόπαιον, He set up a trophy without bloodshed. There is a well-known saying among those ascribed to Pittacus, that victories ought to be achieved without the shedding of blood. The authority is Laertius. And I find another like this in the Greek collections, that 'there has arisen in Greece a war without weapons.' This means a contest carried on by words, not arms. This alone is worthy of wise men; anything else is fit for wild beasts, and for gladiators, a species I myself set below the beasts. And yet no one would have believed, did we not see it with our own eyes, how much this method of making war appeals to Christian princes. They fight with machines such as no pagans with all their ferocity and no barbarians invented. There is actually in Germany a class of persons whose chief glory it is to have slaughtered the greatest number of their fellow-men; and this, while bestial in itself, is made all the more foul by their doing it for pay, like some butcher hired for money to run a slaughter-house. These will be still more effective as proverbs if transferred to more distant fields, to a legal contest, for example and disputes and other struggles of that kind.

Κλαίει ὁ νικηθεὶς, ὁ δὲ νικήσας ἀπόλωλειν, The vanquished weep, the victor is no more. Whenever both sides issue from a contest having themselves suffered great loss, as commonly happens in war, and no less in lawsuits and disputes in general. Hesiod distinguishes two figures he calls Strife, one of whom is disastrous for mortals and the other a blessing. In the first kind, both sides have suffered when they leave the field, the winner in character and the loser in circumstances. In the other, he who comes off best has gained distinction, and the defeated party goes home a better man than he set out. They say that this arose from a prophecy of the Erythrean Sibyl regarding the battle of Chaeronea; for the Athenians, and the Thebans with them, were defeated in the field and perished, and Philip the victor was promptly removed by Pausanias. Georgius Gemistus tells the story in his Greek History. Though the same thing happened long before to the Trojans and Greeks after the most insane war which they waged for all those years about a worthless young woman: for Troy was overthrown utterly, and its Greek conquerors either perished on their way home or found destruction waiting when they got there.

Αλλ᾽ οἱ γὰρ ἀθυμοῦντες ἄνδρες, οὔποτε Τρόπαιον ἐστήσαντο, The poor of spirit ne'er set up a trophy. Suidas cites it from Eupolis, and Plato uses the same words in the Critias. It will be employed appropriately of those who from lack of energy and idleness dare attempt nothing difficult or out of the ordinary, or who refrain from great enterprises from fear of danger, though no distinction worth having is to be got without running great risks. Nor was a triumph ever won except by those who dared to chance the outcome of war. There is something like this in Hebrew, in the Preacher: 'He that considereth the wind will never sow, and he that watcheth the clouds will never reap.' There is also a good line on timid people in Sophocles: The coward hears noises everywhere.'

[greek], Sheaves and all. When all is utterly lost, so that not one ear of grain is left. The proverb looks as though it arose among countryfolk. It is recorded by Suidas.

[greek], You have not even thumbed your Aesop, was used of very stupid people with no experience of life. It is recorded by Suidas, and is found in Aristophanes, in the Birds: 'Without schooling and without knowledge of the world, you have not even thumbed your Aesop.' For in the old days even the uneducated mob knew Aesop's fables by heart; and so anyone who had not read the fables obviously knew nothing. Aesop was a Phrygian by race and the slave of a master called Xanthus, but was given his freedom by Idmon, a blind man. Plato the writer of comedies imagines his coming to life again. He has given his name to all the fables in which animals are the characters, while those in which men appear are called 'Sybaritic' or in the diminutive form Sybaritides.

'[greek], The fox drives the ox. When things are done in an absurd fashion; for a fox has nothing to do with husbandry. It would be like a poet lecturing on divinity or a brothel-keeper in public office. It can also be diverted to apply to someone who pretends that he wants to do something, but is not serious and has another purpose in mind. This too is found in Suidas.

'[greek], But not against the sting of blackmail (we have to understand There's no remedy). This is directed against calumny, the bite of which is not only highly poisonous but impossible to avoid, because it usually attacks in secret. In the old days it was thought that rings served as a remedy against the bites of serpents for instance, or some disease, or witchcraft. This comes in Aristophanes in the Plutus, where one character boasts of a magic ring which contains, he says, remedies against evils of all kinds; and the reply is 'But not against the sting of blackmail.' Aristophanes seems to have imitated this, as cited by Athenaeus in his third book: 'If I have a pain in my stomach or round my navel, I have a ring that I bought from Phertatus for a drachma.'

'[greek], More ignorant than Philonides. He was a man from Melite, of great physical bulk and an uneducated boor. He is pilloried in several places by Aristophanes as lecherous and lavish with toadies.

"[greek], Off with you, stranger, in the storm, was often said when someone arrived at a very inconvenient moment. For strangers can cause trouble if they appear at a time of misfortune or mourning, when it is more convenient for friends to come, who will lighten the burden. If foreigners intrude, what we suffer from our misfortunes is increased by embarrassment, which can be the greatest of our troubles. It will be correct to adapt this, if someone makes a request of a prince who is already occupied with business which is far from pleasant. The same adage teaches us that an outsider should not involve himself in other people's domestic misfortunes. Euripides says something like this in the Alcestis: 'Do I not justly hate the stranger who has intruded on our troubles?' The words are spoken by a slave to Hercules, who arrives when the house of Admetus is already filled with mourning. Again in the same play: 'A guest is troublesome to those that mourn.'

To grind one tooth on another is used of those who criticize someone they cannot hurt, and indeed he does not feel it; or who bite one equally equipped for biting back. Martial in book 13, of one of his critics: But why grind tooth on tooth in want of meat? It's steak you need, if you would feel replete. This resembles that other one: Do not belabour a stone.

To swear by Jupiter the stone is used of those who take an oath of especial sanctity. Cicero writing to Trebatius, in book 7 of his Letters to Friends: 'But how will it satisfy you to swear by Jupiter the stone, when you know that Jupiter cannot be angry with anyone?' Taken from the primitive ritual of treaty-making, which was performed according to a fixed formula by the pater patratus, holding a stone in his hand, as described in Livy and in Macrobius. The Arabians also used a stone in making treaties, as recorded by Herodotus in book 3. The adage can be used in various ways. 'On this point I would not he sitate to swear even by Jupiter the stone/ that is, with all the solemnity you could desire. 'I would rather trust the other man though he were not upon oath, than you when you have sworn, as they say, by Jupiter the stone.' 'He swore by Jupiter the stone that there was no idea of any such thing,' that is, he asserted it with the greatest emphasis. Aulus Gellius in the Nights used it as follows: 'I am ready to swear by Jupiter the stone, which was regarded as the most solemn oath of all, that Virgil never wrote this.' Apuleius in his essay On the Deity of Socrates: 'What then shall I swear by Jupiter the stone, the most ancient Roman rite?'
I for my part would class here something that is quoted from Augustine in the Decreta: that those are guilty of perjury who have sworn 'by the stone' and not performed their sworn promise, although the text there has 'on the stone,' super lapidem, which is if I am not mistaken a scribal corruption. He makes it clear in that passage that this oath was valid to the man to whom it was sworn, if (that is) a Christian were to swear it to a pagan, in whose eyes this was a most solemn oath. Why need I record here the inventions of those who collect rare words, and the theologians who have followed them, concerning this stone, which are so absurd that stones themselves would hardly say such things? I am content to point them out; and let him read them who will.
The Ancients swore 'by the head' of the person they held most dear, the Romans by the 'genius' of the emperor, Socrates by dog and goose, Zeno of Citium by capers, many by green vegetables - 'By cabbage, no!' This we learn, with many examples repeated from the classical poets, in the ninth book of Athenaeus, because cabbage has a certain value in foretelling the future, and therefore he says that it was accounted sacred.

Deep obscurity or darkness of the mind they call Cimmerian gloom. Lactantius in book 4 of his Divine Institutions: 'What a blind heart, a mind with all the darkness of what they call Cimmerian gloom!' And as though in rivalry with him, St Jerome, a keen admirer of Lactantius' style: I ask you,' he says, 'what blindness have we here, plunged in the darkness of what they call Cimmerian gloom?' The adage takes its rise from the legendary darkness of the country of Cimmeria, of which Strabo in the first book of his Geography writes as follows: 'He also knows of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, seeing that he knows of the Cimmerians; for he could hardly know the name of the people and not know the people themselves, who in his time or not long before had made raids on all the lands between the Bosporus and Ionia. He also gives a hint at least of the latitude of their country, when he calls it murky and, as he puts it,' "shrouded in mist and cloud, nor does the bright Sun ever shine upon it but a dread night spreads over all".' The passage quoted by Strabo, though with some verbal differences from the poet, comes in Homer in Odyssey 11: Then came he to the boundary, the deep stream of Ocean, where are the people and city of Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, nor does the bright Sun glance at it ever with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heaven nor yet when he returns again from heaven to earth, but for wretched mortals a dread night spreads over all.' The Cimmerians are also mentioned by Cicero in book 4 of his Academic Questions: 'And the Cimmerians for their part, who had been deprived of a sight of the Sun either by some god or by nature or by the position of the country where they lived, yet possessed fire, which they could use for light. But those people of whom you approve' and so forth. And in this region the poet Ovid, in book 11 of his Metamorphoses, built a palace for the god of Sleep: near the Cimmerians, he says, There stands a mountain with deep hollow heart,
Of slothful Sleep the home and hiding-place;
Rising nor setting nor at mid-day height
Can Phoebus find an entry for his rays,
Such fogs and darkness mixed the ground exhales,
And dubious twilight takes the place of light.
In Greek I find the word constantly spelled with double m though the Etymologicon referred to by Eustathius is against this, averring that they were so called from lying (keimenoi) in the mist. It is more likely that they should have been called Cimmerians as being wintry (cheimerioi), though then too we have only one m.

[greek], Hopeless against Hercules; we must understand 'to bring false accusations' against him. This was customarily applied to those who so conduct all their affairs that no one can accuse them of dishonesty or would dare to. It was Hercules' habit to take other men's property by force, not fraud. This will suit either a man of the highest reputation, or one of such absolute power that to bring any accusation against him would not be safe. History relates that Cato the censor was sued in the courts more than forty times, and always acquitted by the jury. Caesar in his Anti-Catones accused him of avarice; and Plutarch writes that this was equivalent to accusing Hercules of cowardice, for nothing is as inappropriate to Hercules as such a charge. Some think it can fitly be used when a man does what he likes with impunity and no one dares accuse him, in the way that Hercules used with impunity to carry off other men's possessions.

Terence in the Phormio: 'There's one thing, Phormio, I often fear: / Your courage in the end may break the string.' Suitable for those who are inconsiderate, rash and headstrong, a quality that is often unsuccessful and sometimes leads to great disasters. Donatus the scholiast thinks the metaphor is taken from archers who, by drawing their bowstring with excessive force, sometimes snap it, not without great risk to themselves.

Terence in the Phormio: 'Old age is sickness of itself.' This has the air of a proverbial expression; for in the aged, though there may be no sickness, age itself is a kind of ill-health. Hence that common expression in Homer, 'harsh old age.' Iliad 8: 'But your strength is undone, and harsh old age is your companion.' And in Virgil: 'Diseases come upon them and sad old age.' Horace in the Art of Poetry: 'Many good things advancing years will bring, / Many they will remove as they recede.' Juvenal: 'Diseases of all kinds in serried ranks are quick to gather round.' I too, in a poem on the troubles of old age: 'Age is indeed very grim, a massive sickness; no remedies can keep it away or drive it out, or stop its sudden onset from drinking dry the body's vital sap and weakening the vigour of the mind.' This is borne out by the proverbial iambic line: 'Beware of age; it never comes alone.' And again: To men a grievous burden is old age.' There is a quotation from Antiphanes: 'Our life is just like wine: when there's little left in the cask, it turns to vinegar.' Again from the same source: Tils of all kinds in age an altar find beneath whose shade they can take sanctuary.' And again: 'For in old age, as in a sort of workhouse, all human ills foregather.' There is an allusion to this in Plautus, when the old woman apologizes for walking so slowly, and says she is carrying a heavy burden. 'So heavy' she says 'is this burden that I bear. What burden? Threescore and fourteen years.' So too Cicero in the Cato maior. 'Which most old men find so hateful that they say they carry a burden heavier than Etna.' Aristotle in book 5 of the Animals describes old age as a disease that comes by nature, just as disease is a kind of accidental or premature old age; the reason being that some forms of sickness have the same effect on a man as age, and age produces similar effects to those of sickness. Seneca calls it 'a sickness for which there is no cure.' Donatus adds the words of Apollodorus13 in the Greek comedy: 'Old age is sickness of itself.'

'[greek], Adrastia Nemesis - we must supply 'is at hand' or 'will be here,' or something of the sort. It will be permissible to turn this against those whose insolence and arrogance moves us to threaten them with a change of fortune, or who have been brought down from prosperity to a disastrous situation. This Nemesis some suppose to be a goddess, the scourge of insolence and arrogance, whose province it is to forbid excessive hopes and punish them; and her name Adrasteia comes from the negative particle a and drasmos, which means running away, because no guilty person has ever escaped the punishment he deserves, although sometimes she is slow in overtaking. Lucian in the Dialogues of Courtesans: 'There is a goddess Adrasteia by name, and she watches over things like this.' Euripides in the Rhesus: 'O Adrasteia, daughter of Jove, mayest thou defend our words against ill-will.' And again in the same play: 'With Andrasteia's good leave I speak.' There is more evidence for this in the Epigrams, for instance: 'With bit and bridle Nemesis forewarns: / Do nought beyond the mean and keep a tight rein on your tongue.' And another: 'I, Nemesis, carry a bridle, and if your ask me why, / My warning to all men is to do nothing beyond the mean.' Strabo, in book 13 of his Geography, tells us that Adrasteia got her name, not from escaping, but from Adrastus, the king who first founded a temple in her honour; and he supports this with some lines from the poet Antimachus: There is a goddess Nemesis, a great goddess, to whom all this has been entrusted by the blessed gods. For her an altar was first set up by Adrastus on the banks of the Aesopus river, where she is honoured still, and is known as Adrasteia.' This city is mentioned by Pliny, book 5 chapter 32, in these words: 'The colony of Parium, which Homer calls Adrasteia.' The goddess Adrasteia is also referred to by Plato in the Phaedrus. Ammianus in book 14: This, and countless other things of the same kind, are the work from time to time of Adrasteia, she who avenges impious deeds and rewards the good; and would that she always did so! - she whom we also call Nemesis, giving her two names.' She is said, in accordance with the views of the ancient theologians, to have been appointed mistress of the moon and to have possessed a general power of supervising the fates, surveying from above all human affairs as queen and arbiter of all things. She is particularly inimical toward pride. Sometimes she humbles and degrades those who are bold and arrogant, at other times she raises up good people from the depths and lifts them to the heights of success. In Antiquity they also gave her wings, as a symbol of speed, and provided her with a rudder and a wheel, to signify that she speeds everywhere and has control of every single thing. Ammianus again in book 22: 'When he thus became unbearable, Adrasteia, she who watches over human affairs, plucking him (as the phrase goes) by the ear, to warn him to live a better regulated life,' and so forth. Zenodotus refers the origin of the adage to the following myth, which I for my part, though not very willingly, will give here, lest I should seem to have unfairly deprived the reader who has an appetite for such things. Eteocles and Polynices, after the death of their father Oedipus, came to an agreement about the kingdom of Thebes, that they would enjoy the government in alternate years. Eteocles however when his time was up (for it so happened that the first year had fallen to his lot) refused to hand the kingdom over to his brother, and so Polynices, thrown out, took refuge at Argos, which was then ruled by Adrastus, and arrived there by night. There by chance he fell in with Tydeus, who had gone into exile from Calydon after committing a murder, and joined battle with him; and in the resulting noise and tumult Adrastus intervened and separated the combatants. Recalling at the same time an oracle, by which he had been advised to give his daughters in marriage to a boar and a lion, he secured them both as sons-in-law, for one had a boar and the other a lion on his shield, and promised them both that he would restore each to his own country. He began by attacking Thebes in support of Polynices, but the Argive chieftains were killed, and Adrastus alone escaped. When the Thebans threw out the bodies of the slain unburied, and were not prepared to give them burial, their children took refuge at the altar of Mercy and demanded the bodies of their parents. The Athenians approached with an army, and the Thebans handed over the corpses. This was the occasion when Evadne, the wife of Capaneus, threw herself on the pyre, and was burnt with her husband's body. Thereafter the sons of the Argives who had been killed at Thebes never again won a victory fighting for their own land, but served as mercenary troops for some other power. Diogenianus gives the proverb in another form: Nemesis is at your feet. Galen, finally, in book 6 of his work On the Use of Parts of the Human Body has 'to remember and make clear that none can escape the law of Andrasteia,' and a little further on: 'giving no thought, I suppose, to the law of Adrasteia.' He is threatening physicians who teach falsehoods instead of truth.
The goddess is also called Rhamnusia, taking the name from a place in Attica called Rhamnus, where, as Zenodotus shows, she had a statue made of a solid block of marble fifteen feet high and carved by Phidias. She was at one time represented in the form of Venus, and therefore held an apple-tree in her right hand, as we learn from Eudemus. This adage, although separated by Zenodotus, seemed to me to be properly joined with the preceding, since there is nothing between them but the change of name. Pliny, book 28 chapter 2: 'Why do we take steps, by invoking some special patron, against the evil eye? Some invoke the Greek goddess Nemesis, who for this reason has a statue in Rome on the Capitol, although she has no name in Latin.'

[greek]. Greek has a word synkrousios to describe immoderate laughter, because it shakes a man's sides as he laughs; some think it is the same as the Sardonic laugh. It is thought, and rightly so, that such laughter is highly insuitable for a man of character, because it is clearly the expression of a mind which has lost control. It is discreditable for a man of solid worth to cry out like a woman when he is hurt; and in the same way when overcome by joy it is unseemly to break out in loud guffaws. Philostratus uses a similar image sometimes in his Lives of the Sophists, when he speaks of laughing with wide-open mouth.

'[greek], Seek not again the rose you have passed by; do not, that is, torment yourself with longing for the things that cannot be recalled or given back - youth, beauty, strength, good fortune. Nothing is lovelier than a rose, nothing more fleeting. Horace says to the same effect in the Odes: 'Seek not where lingers summer's latest rose.' For roses have their own season, all too short as it is; but persons of exquisite sensibility seek for roses even out of season. Hence this will also be suitable for those who pursue pleasures which they have outlived, the grown man playing with nuts, the greybeard pursuing women and wine.

'[greek], You match a rose with an anemone. When a man compares two things which are emphatically unequal. The rose in old days was highly valued; the anemone is a kind of poppy, with a flower which imitates the rose in shape, but has no charm of scent. It is a common wild flower, while the rose from early times has been held in the highest esteem.

'[greek], Your words are roses to me; they are, that is, highly gratifying, and have all the sweetness of the rose. Suidas cites it from Aristophanes, who has it in the Clouds. In the same way, Plautus in the Poenulus writes 'For pity's sake! How he does say things as sweet as syrup!' Close to this is that phrase in Persius: 'Sure, on that tomb, from that contented ghost, / Shall pansies bloom.' And again: 'Roses shall spring where'er he set his foot.' The opposite of this comes in the Aulularia of Plautus: 'Your words are stones,' so rough that they nearly knocked the hearer senseless.

'[greek], A Rhodian sacrifice. When business is conducted with wrangling and menaces. Recorded by Diogenianus. It is the same as one I have recorded a little earlier, A Lindian sacrifice; for Lindus is a city in Rhodes, on the evidence of Stephanus. This might seem to be the origin of the name Londinium, London in Britain. Stephanus calls that city Lindonium, and cites Martianus as his authority. Both Rhodes and Britain are islands, and the ancient language of that people, now called Welsh, is a sufficient indication that they either started as Greeks, or at least have a Greek admixture. Even their customs are not very much unlike Greek customs.

'[greek], An oracle for the Rhodians. When someone asks too many and too meticulous questions about some minute point. For the people of Rhodes were performing a sacrifice to Minerva of Lindus, and prolonged their feasting round the altar of the goddess for several days, remaining there without a break. Since it was not their custom to bring a chamberpot to a sacrifice, they consulted the god on the subject, and were told that they should bring one. Whereupon they began to have fresh doubts, whether they ought to bring one of bronze or earthenware, and consulted the oracle again on this point. The god was indignant, and told them to bring neither. Recorded by Diogenianus.

'A[greek], Do not despise a country orator. The lesson of this adage is that one should not look down on anyone simply because he lacks experience or cannot express himself. Nor should we consider who says something and how he says it, but what he says. If a man's strength lies in his powers of self-expression, we need take no particular care to discover what his threats or promises amount to. But those who possess the truth, though in rustic dress, one ought on no account to overlook, even if they have spoken in uneducated style; for men of this sort are often more effective in deeds than words. The authority is Diogenianus.

'[greek], The city is now country. When someone in a city overrides the laws, and rules by violence just as he pleases; for in a civilized community men live in equality under the law, and in the country they are more free to act as they please. Epicharmus, cited by Diogenianus, has 'You turn the city into countryside.' It will also suit a community in which there is no great respect for the law. Seneca alludes to this in the humorous pamphlet which he wrote as a satire on the Emperor Claudius: 'You have made the place a mere collection of huts; I want to see court discipline properly kept.'

'[greek], A chickpea Bacchus. Of something quite contemptible. The adage is taken from a drink made out of pulses which imitates wine. The Ancients counterfeited wine in different ways, some of which Pliny speaks of in book 14 chapter 16. Again, in book 22 chapter 25, he mentions beer, the zythus of the Egyptians, the celia of the Spaniards, the cervisia of the French. This was a kind of drink brewed from leguminous crops, invented for want of wine in these regions, where the vine will not grow. This might seem also to provide an origin for another adage which I have recorded elsewhere, Nothing to do with Bacchus; it might have been said by someone who had tasted beer. Beer was in fact despised and disliked by those who had hitherto been used to wine, as appears from an epigram ascribed to the Emperor Julian, which runs as follows: 'What Bacchus pray are you, and where is your home? By Bacchus the true god I swear I do not recognize you; the son of Jupiter is the only one I know. He smells of nectar, you of goat. Was it Celts in want of grapes that made you from barleycorns? What name am I to give you? Demetrius surely, not Dionysius, born as you are of grain, and Bromus not Bromius.' Bromus is a kind of barley, but Theophrastus in book 8 of his Plants lists it among those which are virtually wild and not domesticated. Pliny thinks the principal use of this species is that 'the foam of it feeds a woman's complexion. When we consider its value as a drink,' he says, 'we shall do better to pass on and speak of wine.'
I myself should have no objection if anyone preferred to trace the proverb back to the ritual of sacrifices to Bacchus, in which they tied models of the male sexual organ to their heads and thighs, and in that fashion danced in honour of the god. Those models are called in Greek phalloi, whence we find in the grammarian Terentianus the title 'phallic metre.' Those who wore the phallus were called phallophori and ithyphalli. Athenaeus, in book 14, indicates a distinction between ithyphalli and phallophori: the former wore a mask representing a man intoxicated, and the latter had no masks, though there were other differences too. But this has nothing to do with the proverb. Aristophanes alludes to this in the Acharnians: 'Your part is to carry the phallus upright, following the basket-bearer, and I will come behind you and sing the phallic song.' This model of the male organ was made of figwood, which was specially connected in Antiquity with sexual licence; and that is why Horace likewise carved his Priapus out of it. Servius supposes that Virgil too was thinking of these phallic symbols in the second book of the Georgics, when in a description of the rites of Bacchus he speaks of little hanging figures: 'Hangs the soft figures from a lofty pine.' They were normally made, he says, of flowers to represent the male organ, and were suspended between the columns to provoke laughter in anyone who encountered them. Hence then Bacchus got the nickname Chickpea; and for a similar reason he was also called Morychus, presumably because, being an easy-going deity, he invited contempt.

[greek], Seek not soft things lest you are given hard. Recorded by Phurnutus in his work On the Nature of the Gods, in the chapter on the Muses; and he records it as though it were in common currency. Suitable for those who, by being too selfish and too hard to please in asking for what they want, offend those whom they approach and are given what they do not want, or for those who are too much devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and land themselves in trouble.

[greek], But the right way not Execestides himself could find. Used of some complicated and insoluble problem. Execestides had a bad reputation for being an unreasonably ambitious traveller, so that he had an exceptional knowledge of all ways to get from place to place. The same man is criticized by Aristophanes in the Birds: 'But if he's a slave and a Carian like Execestides.' And again at the outset of the same play: 'The way from here, by god, / Would be too much for Execestides' (we must supply 'to find out'). Hence it came to be applied to those who had lost their way completely, or were caught up in some difficult and insoluble problem.

'[greek], A kindness like Hermon's, used when a man very much wants it to be thought that he is doing something to oblige, which he does in any case under compulsion, not to give anyone pleasure but because he can't do anything else. This proverb is traced back to the following story. A Pelasgian tribe who lived in Lemnos crossed over by boat to Baebron (or, as Herodotus has it, Brauron), a district of Attica, seized the women there, and carried them off. Later, when they suffered from plague, they were told by the oracle that they must make reparation to the Athenians, and then the plague would leave them. The Athenians, when asked what form of satisfaction they expected, told them firmly to get out of Lemnos. When the Pelasgians heard this condition, they sent a humorous reply: they would leave Lemnos, if anyone could leave home and cross over to Lemnos in a single day on a north wind. It later happened, when Darius was campaigning in Thrace and overrunning everywhere, that Miltiades the Athenian commander set sail from the Chersonese and attacked Lemnos, officially informing the Pelasgians that he had arrived on a north wind in one day's sailing, having set out from home; for he held the Chersonese, and that was where he lived. So Hermon the prince of the Pelasgians retired from Lemnos; and though he had done so under compulsion from fear of Darius, he pretended none the less that he was leaving Lemnos voluntarily to oblige the Athenians.
Such, more or less, is the story I find in the Greek collections. Aemilius Probus in his life of Miltiades tells it rather differently. When the Athenians had decided to send a colony to the Chersonese, which was then held by the Thracians, they asked Apollo whom they should choose as their leader in driving them out, and he instructed them to send for Miltiades. Attacking Lemnos, he demanded that they should freely surrender to the Athenians. The Lemnians sent a humorous reply: they would do so as soon as he should reach Lemnos coming from home by ship on a north wind; for this is a head wind to anyone leaving Athens for Lemnos. Miltiades, to avoid wasting time there, sailed for the Chersonese. Having taken that, and settled things to his own satisfaction, he returned to Lemnos, and demanded the island in accordance with the agreement; for he had come from home, he said, on a north wind, because he had a home in the Chersonese (for he had made up his mind to settle there). So the occupants of Lemnos abandoned it in fear. This is put more straightforwardly by Pamphilus in Terence. 'It is no part of the duty of an honest man' he says 'to demand credit when he has done nothing to deserve it.' Yet in the courts of princes, and indeed anywhere where men are gathered together in any way, the world is full of people like this Hermon, who at the same time are most anxious to seem to render a service and to consider no one's advantage but their own.
The proverb is mentioned both by Suidas and by Hesychius.

'[greek], You twist a rope of sand, was said of anyone who attempts some vain and foolish action, or labours to connect together things that have no connection whatever. It will be properly used of a speech, or a syllogistic argument, that does not hold together; so that it is related to Sand without lime, and Brooms untied. It is used much in that sense by Irenaeus in his first book. An example is the activity of those who collect centos from Homer. Taken over all, it will fit anything impossible and absurd, so that it also belongs to the same category as You are washing a brick, and You are whitening an Ethiopian.

A remark made in the Casina of Plautus, These are halcyon days around the market,' looks like a proverb. The phrase indicates tranquillity and silence. Plautus has it again in the Poenulus: 'Unless you make this business as tranquil for me as the sea is when the halcyon is hatching her chicks.' There is a proverb like this in the Greek collections: '[greek], You're passing halcyon days, of those who live a peaceful lazy life. Aristophanes in the Birds: 'And lived continuous halcyon days.' The adage is drawn from a seabird called in Greek the halcyon, in Latin halcedo, as Marcus Varro tells in the third book of his On the Latin Language, so let no one think Plautus' word is a corruption. The story of Ceyx and Halcyone is in Ovid. Of the bird, Pliny, in book 10 chapter 32, gives the following account. The halcyon, he says, is 'a little bigger than a sparrow, of a dark blue colour for the most part, but with an admixture of red and white feathers, and it has a long thin neck. It breeds in midwinter, in what are called the halcyon days. Nor does it ever appear except when the sea is calm, and especially the Sicilian sea. For seven days before the winter solstice they build their nests, and for the same number of days after the solstice they lay.' (These days are well known to sailors too, for while they continue, there is no fear of storms. They build their nests out at sea.) The nest is shaped like a ball, and has a very narrow and slightly projecting entrance; it resembles a large sponge, and is built of sharp fish-spines, so hard that they cannot be cut with a knife, but are broken with a powerful blow, like dried sea-foam.' So Pliny. Lucian bears witness to the calm weather of the halcyon days in the dialogue he calls The Halcyon. Virgil among the signs of impending storm also records: 'Nor do the halcyon, Thetis' favourites, / Spread their wings on the shore to the warm sun.' Theocritus also mentions them in the seventh idyll: The halcyons calm the waves and tame the sea,
South wind and east, that stirs the fringe of weed;
The halcyons dearest to the Nereids
Of all the birds whose prey is in the deep.

Εμπεδοκλέους ἐχθρα, A feud worthy of Empedocles, was a name for obstinate and irreconcilable animosity. Such, they say, was Empedocles' character that he was constantly developing feuds with someone or other, and maintained them with the greatest obstinacy. It will also be suitable when somebody changes from friend to enemy for a trifling reason. Recorded by Diogenianus. Suidas cites these words from Lysias: 'I myself supposed that we were united by friendship so sure that it was proof even against a feud worthy of Empedocles.' This is to be related to one of which I have spoken in another place, Hate worthy of Vatinius, and also to Stepmotherly hatred.

Plautus in the Truculentus has: 'One eye-witness is worth more than ten ear-witnesses,' in other words, those who report what they have seen are far more valuable than those who repeat what they have heard from others. The poets suggest the same idea, when they imagine two Gates of Dreams in the Nether World, one of ivory through which false dreams pass to the world above, and the other of horn for true dreams. Virgil in Aeneid 6, following Homer in the nineteenth Odyssey: Twin gates there are of Sleep, whereof the one
Of horn, 'tis said, gives true shades easy passage;
The other shines, of gleaming ivory wrought,
By which false dreams pass to behold the sky.
So with these words Anchises bids his son
Farewell, him and the Sibyl his companion,
And sends them onward through the ivory gate.
Servius takes the gate of horn to mean the eyes, because they are of the colour of horn, and the ivory gate to be the teeth, presumably because they are bone-hard and white; and he thinks true visions pass thought the gate of horn, because nothing can be trusted except what we see with our eyes, and false visions through the ivory gate, because so much of what we hear by word of mouth is usually false. Consequently, the fact that Aeneas is despatched through the gate of ivory is meant to convey that we should consider false whatever the poet has told us about the nether regions. Apuleius also mentions the adage in the first book of his Florida, where he tells how Socrates turned the proverb inside out, so as to run One ear-witness is worth more than ten eye-witnesses. He had espied a youth who was handsome, but remained silent, and addressed him with 'Say something, so that I can see you.' Evidently Socrates thought the ears gave more reliable verdict than the eyes, because the eyes show us only physical beauty, and it is through the ears that we get to know what the mind is like. Justinian, in book 3 of the Institutes. 'On the Degree of Consanguinity,' speaks of 'evidence by eye' when we can see the facts; and they talk of a 'blind day' when a promised sum is not immediately forthcoming, and a 'day with eyes' when a deal is done in cash.

Πεινῶσαν ἀλώπεκα ὕπνος ἐπέρχεται, The hungry fox grows drowsy. When someone who has no food falls asleep. Many poor people use sleep instead of dinner, as that line bears witness which is current as a proverb: 'And sleep tames hunger, the worst plague of all.' The man who is in want is called a fox, because poverty is quick-witted and the inventor of many skills; which agrees with something I have recorded elsewhere, Poverty is the mother of wisdom. And one would not be far out in using it also of those who are apt at concealment, and turn a blind eye to some things in hope of an opportunity to profit later. For a fox under pressure of hunger pretends to be asleep, so that he can attract the birds, and then seize and eat them. There is some natural principle here, which makes sleep extinguish hunger and thirst. The adage is discussed by Diogenianus.

[greek], It came to the ears of the gods. When some action which was performed in secret comes to the notice of those who can either reward it if it was right or punish it if it was wrong. This is how the poets like to think that what is done on earth, be it right or wrong, is discovered by Mercury and reported to Jupiter, who then calls a council of the gods and decides on the penalty. There is too that phrase which is now regularly found in the letters of princes and popes: 'It has come to our ears.' A slightly different expresssion is used by Virgil's shepherd, when he says: 'How oft has Galatea said such things to me! Some part of them I wish the winds may carry to the ears of the gods.' He speaks of wonderful things, such as one might judge worthy of the gods' attention. Horace in the same way: 'And this you keep for Jupiter's private ear.'

Δεινοὶ πλέκειν τὰς μηχανὰς αἰγύπτιοι, Wondrous the webs that these Egyptians weave. Used of cunning wiles, what Plautus calls 'a patchwork of frauds.' It can also be diverted for use against the ingenious perplexities of sophists and the inexplicable labyrinths of syllogisms; or against blackmailers and informers, who weave their webs of calumny by mingling true and false. Ammianus in book 14 tells of a man called Paulus who betrayed numerous victims to Constantine with astonishing ingenuity, and was commonly nicknamed Chains, from the impenetrable systems of falsehoods in which he fettered them. Egypt was celebrated in old days for the marvellous maquetry-work it produced in different woods, which includes a Hercules-knot. This adage is related to one I have recorded elsewhere, the Cassius knot; for Cassium is in Egypt, as I have shown a little higher up.

'[greek], Works fit for Aceseus and Helicon, was a phrase applied in Antiquity to works of art which were thought to show exceptional skill. The proverb owed its origin to two artists of the highest standing, Aceseus a native of Patara and Helicon of Carystus. These are said to have been the first to weave a robe for Pallus Polias, which was the name given to Minerva as she was worshipped in the citadel at Athens.

'[greek], Treated by Acesias, was customarily said of anything which got progressively worse, and the more it was treated the more it suffered. What gave rise to the adage was a certain unskilful and stupid physician called Acesias, who when trying to cure a patient of the gout, made the pain worse. Hence Aristophanes: 'Acesias treated the backside;' for however much care you expend on that part of the body, it always becomes filthy of its own accord. The authority is Diogenianus.

'[greek], Agamemnon's wells, was applied to new and striking undertakings, for they say that both around Aulis and in many other places all over Greece wells were dug by Agamemnon to prevent hardship in summer from lack of water. The authority is Zenodotus.

'[greek], You have eaten venison, was said in old days to anyone who yawned; for it was a common belief that the eating of venison caused prolonged yawning. It will be more elegant if applied in suitable contexts to idle, yawning, careless people.

'[greek], A spring in the field. Of those who worked excessively hard and were constantly at their tasks, like that character Menedemus in Terence. It will also be suitable for any piece of business which is toilsome and 'never finds an end.' For this Greek word for 'spring' carries a notion of an excessive supply; and it is the same in Latin as in Greek.

[greek], The blood of Aesop. The people of Delphi killed a man called Aesop who had done no wrong, and for this reason the god was angry with them and uttered terrible threats. Some think this was the Aesop under whose name the Fables circulate, and tell the story somewhat as follows about his death, although it looks more like fiction than history. He came to Delphi, and aroused public indignation there by his insulting language and contemptuous fables. So the Delphians hid a sacred vessel in his bag secretly, followed him to Phocis, and there seized him, convicted him of sacrilege and, in spite of his protests and curses, threw him over the cliff. Thereafter plague broke out; and when they consulted the oracle, they were told to appease the ghost of Aesop. The Delphians therefore erected a monument to Aesop. However, the princes and learned men of Greece, as soon as they heard of his outrageous death, avenged Aesop's blood by the slaughter of those who had been responsible for his death. Hence the use of the phrase, either when someone who did not deserve it was outrageously treated, or when an innocent person suffered, and the gods above seemed to be angry and to inflict some punishment.
This story is mentioned by Plutarch in the essay he entitled 'On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance.' Aesop, he says, had been given a large sum of gold by Croesus to make a splendid sacrifice at Delphi and give every individual Delphian four minas. However, he fell out with the Delphians for some reason I do not know and, though he offered the sacrifice, sent the money which he had received for distribution to Sardis, thinking the Delphians did not deserve such a benefaction. At this they were furious, convicted him of sacrilege, and threw him over the cliff they call Hyampeia. In return for this the god signified that their land was threatened with barrenness and a severe attack of appalling disease. Whereupon the Delphians were terrified, and enquired publicly by sending a herald to all the public assemblies of the Greeks, if there was anyone who wished to exact reparation in Aesop's name. At length in the third generation there came a Samian called Idmon, not a kinsman of Aesop but a grandson of those who had bought him in Samos; and after they had paid some penalty over to him, their troubles were relieved. In the same passage Plutarch indicates that this is often used when a penalty is paid very belatedly.

I too have withdrawn my hand from the cane, that is, I also have learned my letters and have had the help of teachers; for elementary schoolmasters in Antiquity used to use the cane on their pupils' hands. This cane comes from a sort of shrub, and is the lightest thing of the kind there is, as Pliny tells us in book 13 chapter 22. The Greek word is narthex, and old men use it to support their tottering steps; hence too it is sacred to Bacchus and Silenus, being apt to support them when they are unsteady with wine, without burdening them with its weight. It has a very hard woody exterior, although there is no wood in the core. It was in this that fire from heaven was hidden, according to the poets' fancy, by Prometheus, and brought down to earth. Its ultimate use is to form what Martial calls 'the sceptre of pedagogues/ with which they can frighten rather than hurt. Columella has a neat phrase for this in the book he wrote in verse, 'And canes unkind to hands/ and in the same book 'Now threatening canes are planted.' Hence men are said 'to have withdrawn their hands from the cane' who have ceased to spend their days in the grammar-school, and are no longer children in search of education but, for better or worse, educated people. Juvenal in his first satire: 'I too have withdrawn my hand from the cane, I too have read Sulla a lesson.' Jerome seems to have taken the verb subducere, 'withdrawn ... from' to mean 'subjected ... to' or 'held out... for' for he says in a letter to Domnio: 'I too have learnt my letters, I too have often subducted my hand from the cane.' Unless perhaps to subduct one's hand from the cane is used of children withdrawing their hands from the stroke in fear. There is a similar turn of speech in Greek. Timocles, cited by Athenaeus in book 13: The need still to be frightened, to have one's ears boxed and to be given strokes upon one's tender hands, is no doubt sweet.'

[greek], An Etna beetle, of things which are large and filthy. Aristophanes in the Peace: 'I know not where he went, but he brought back / A monstrous Etna beetle.' He calls it an Etna beetle as being of exceptional size, either because there are various beetles there, all very big, or because it was enormous like Mount Etna itself. The scarabaeus, beetle, is a kind of insect that is born of excrement and feeds on excrement. There is also an ancient myth that Etna embraced a chief figure among the Giants and saved his life, so that he was not destroyed by a thunderbolt with the others. Hence too the saying Tire from heaven came not upon him, neither does Etna lie heavy on him.' The authority is Diogenianus.

Nothing is more hackneyed than this metaphor, From your workshop, From another man's workshop. We say things 'are produced from our own workshop' which we have thought of for ourselves, and it was our own wits that conceived them: 'from another man's workshop,' when we have borrowed them from someone else and use them as our own. For the workshop is the place where craftsmen exercise their skills. The metaphor is taken from those who sell the products of other men's labours in their own stores. The further this can be adapted to the things of the mind, the more elegant it will be, for example 'Who can fail to see that this plan originated in your own workshop?' or 'This whole business was a product of your own workshop.'

'[greek], To dance outside the ring, is used of someone who says or does what is quite foreign to his purpose. A group of people dancing in a ring move within definite limits and to a definite rhythm, and it is not open to any of them to range free at his own sweet will. On the contrary, a dancer who failed to keep to the rules would look very foolish.

Most metaphors derived from weaving have a proverbial look about them. Plautus in the Bacchides: 'So I've set up my web not at all badly.' Again in the Pseudolus: 'I do not know what to do now, nor would you have any point at which to set up your web nor any definite end to aim at in your weaving.' Cicero in the De oratore uses 'to finish the web' for to complete something: 'Just finish, my dear Antonius, the web you have set up.' For we are said to 'set up' an enterprise upon which we enter with skill and forethought, and we 'unravel' something which we remake from the beginning, And that phrase in the Rhetorica ad Herennium: 'I will now weave your whole tapestry from the beginning,' meaning I will reveal what sort of man you are from the very start. Related to the one of which I have treated in another place, Such is the web now woven. 'To set up a web' is cited by Pollux from Greek authorities.

We are said in a proverbial metaphor 'to lean on a tottering wall,' when we rely on and put all our trust in something quite unstable, the image being taken from a building. The emperor Hadrian used to say of Commodus, his adopted son and the destined heir of his empire, 'We lean on a tottering wall, and have lost the four hundred million sesterces we gave to the people and the army for the adoption of Commodus.' He calls him 'a tottering wall/ because his health was poor and he was thought to be incapable of public business. It is the same with anyone who puts his trust in an old man, who presumes on his own good looks, who relies for his livelihood on the fleeting favours of fortune; he will rightly be said to lean on a tottering wall. This is very close to that phrase in Virgil: 'On thee the whole house rests though tottering.'

To the same type belongs a phrase which seems to have been current as a proverb in Hebrew, To lean upon a staff of reed, used of a man who places his hopes in people who not only cannot help him but do him harm when they let him down. For a staff of reed, besides failing to support the man who leans on it, also pierces his hand and inflicts a wound. In chapter 18 of the fourth book of Kings, also in chapter 36 of the prophet Isaiah and again in Ezechiel in chapter 29, Egypt and the king of Egypt are called 'the staff of reed,' in reliance on which a war was being undertaken; and it is foretold that this will break, and not only fail to support him who leans on it, but pierce his hand. It is not far from one I have recorded elsewhere, A figwood prop.

[greek], A bumbling man, describes one who is always talking and makes a great deal of noise, but for any other purpose is useless. Bombylius, a bumble in Greek, is a kind of bee or wasp so called evidently from the noise it makes; it is large, but of no use for honey-making, and makes its combs of mud. There is also a large bee and a large fly, bearing this name from the noise they make. Hesychius adds that bombylides is a Greek word for the bubbles we see forming in water, which soon disappear. Also that bombylion is a kind of drinking-cup, which as the drink slowly drips out of it produces a sound like the creature I have spoken of; though this too gets its name from bombos, buzzing. In Suidas someone calls a flute-player not bombylios but bombaulios with an a added, because he made a buzzing sound (bombein) on his aulos or flute. Cicero too in his third Philippic mentions a certain Bambalio, a worthless man with an impediment in his speech. 'Bambalio the father' he says 'was a man of no account; nothing was more despicable, and on account of his stammer and his stupidity, he had this insulting nickname.' Hesychius says that bombalein in Greek is to quiver at the lips; for this often happens to those who suffer from this speech-affliction, as it does to those who are shivering with cold. Although this word is described in various ways, they all have the same origin: the utterance of those who have an impediment in their speech or are shuddering with cold. The adage is recorded in Zenodotus.

[greek], Buthus strays about, was used of shallow-pated and stupid people, and was taken from the character of an athlete called Buthus, who had won a victory at the Pythian Games. According to Zenodotus, he is mentioned by Cratinus in his Cheirons. Hesychius also mentions him, and indicates that Aristotle also referred to his victory. It is possible that he was given this name from his enormous appetite, because he was accustomed to wolf down whole oxen. Hercules too had the nickname bouthoinas, ox-eater, because once when he was hungry he carried off one of the oxen of Theodamas with which he was tilling his land, killed it, and ate it. Hence, it seems, it could be used of greedy people, in the sense of bouphagi, eaters of oxen.

[greek], Bunas is the judge. In some texts the name is written as boulias and not Bounas; but if I am not mistaken, this is a corruption. Used when a lawsuit is very much prolonged and never completed, which in our time is a practice of the most rascally attorneys: from time to time they find some new reason for proroguing the case, in order to extract more coin from the parties. The proverb took its rise from an Athenian whose name was Bunas. There was a dispute between Calydon and Elis, and both sides referred it to Bunas for arbitration, agreeing that they would refrain from military action until Bunas should have handed down his decision. When Bunas discovered this, he carefully heard both parties, but on some fictitious excuse made a long adjournment of the case, and was never willing to decide the question. The authority is Mnaseas, cited by Zenodotus.

[greek], An ox under the yoke, when someone toils unceasingly or involves himself in some laborious piece of business. Taken from the draught-oxen used in farming. There will also be an opportunity to use it when we say that someone should not be forced to undertake a piece of business for the conduct of which he is not suitable; it should be a man who is fitted for the job. An ox is clearly born for straining at the yoke, and this is not true of a dog or a stag. Thus it will be akin to one I have placed elsewhere, Pack-saddles on the ox. Listed by Zenodotus.

This phrase is used to denote a simple style, less rhetorical than the average; for the technical writers distinguish three types of style: grand, simple, and average. The metaphor derives from spinning, or from weaving at any rate. Horace speaks of 'Verses fine-spun with slender thread.' Ausonius in his speech of thanks to the emperor Gratian for his promotion to the consulship: 'I have drawn, as the saying goes, a thread fine-spun.' The opposite of this will be 'With coarse thread, of coarser texture,' One could say, for instance, that barbarians treat a theological subject 'with too coarse a thread.' Cicero in book two of the De oratore says 'coarse in texture' for 'too verbose,' and in his On Old Age uses 'of a different texture' for a different style of writing.

They convey the same idea by another metaphor when they say 'poor vein,' 'generous vein/ or 'rich vein.' They use the word 'vein' of natural gifts and original powers of thought, taking the image either from springs of water, some of which flow in a narrow course and others in one so wide that they make a great river, or from metals, the veins or seams of which differ in quantity as well as kind. There is something very like this in Quintilian, book 11: 'Yet some things flow in a deeper channel "You too, ye peaks and forests of the Alban hills."'

Maza in Greek is a thing one eats made from very finely ground wheat-flour, which clearly was regarded as a delicacy, because there was a humorous expression in common use, hypermazân, for rich luxurious living, either from the quality of the maza they ate or even more delicious things. Julius Pollux, book 7, says it was an old-fashioned word, replaced in modern times by krithiân, taken from beasts of burden, for which barley is a special treat. It is surprising, since he quotes the word from Aeschylus and Sophocles, that he should say it belongs to modern times, unless perhaps it was only recently that it came to be more used than hypermazân. Euplous to Thalasseros: 'Either too much good food has deranged you [hypermazas] - or you have gone mad; for I hear you are in love with a woman who has a scurrilous tongue.' In the same way they used mattyazein, derived from mattya, a kind of dish listed by Athenaeus in book 14 among rich desserts.

Οὐδ᾽ ἵκταρ βάλλειν, To be nowhere near the mark, is used of people who shoot wide of their target and end up a long way from what they intended. It is taken from unskilful archers, the kind who moved Diogenes the Cynic, when he saw them shooting, to sit as near the target as he could; and when asked the reason, he replied 'I don't want him to hit me,' suggesting that the marksman was likely to make contact with anything rather than the mark. In this way those who shoot very wide of the target were said to be 'nowhere near the mark,' and it has the same force as if you were to say 'Nothing like it.' Homer said 'Off the mark.' This adage was used by Plato in book 9 of the Republic: 'But all this, when compared to a tyrant in respect of the wickedness and misery of the city, is, as they say, nowhere near the mark.' Suidas points out that the proverb derives from an idiom, like the following. Lucian clearly referred to it in the dialogue which he called In defence of Images: 'For I did not deserve such praises, nowhere near it.' Aristides too in the Miltiades: 'This is not so, nowhere near it.' This adage is to be placed in the same group as those I have recorded elsewhere, To miss the gate, To be entirely astray (by the whole sky), and You are entirely on the wrong road.

Διωλύγιον κακόν, An immense disaster. The form of the phrase itself is proverbial. This adage is used by Plato in the Theaetetus: 'Is not this far-reaching and resounding nonsense?' Suidas gives the following quotation from some author or other, I suspect Damascius: 'And would not this appear to be resounding nonsense? It would, and rightly so. It is not just what they call an old wives' tale, it is beyond the farthest limits of absurdity.' Chrysostom in his first speech against the Jews says: 'Giving a loud resounding cry,' such that the sound can be heard a long way off. He is speaking of shepherds shouting to one another when they have seen a wolf. For the origin of the word two suggestions have been made. One is the Greek words diolou ion, going through all, as though the shout would penetrate anything; the other connects diolygion with diollyon, destroying, as though it meant 'that which brings disaster.' The proverb is used of anyone in the grip of some immense and long-lasting misfortune.

Ταῦτά σοι καὶ Πύθια καὶ Δήλια, These are your Pythia and your Delia. For use when we wish to convey that some piece of work is the last, as though one were saying 'This is the grand finale of all you are likely to do in this life.' The adage is quoted from Menander. They say it took its rise from an oracle once delivered to Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. He had captured the island of Rhenaea and dedicated it to Apollo; and having instituted the most splendid games on Delos, he sent a mission to Delphi to ask the oracle whether the games should be called Delian or Pythian. The oracle replied: These are your Pythia and your Delia,' indicating that he would very shortly reach the end of his life; and so it fell out. Thus the thing became proverbial. In any case, according to the accent you place on tauta, the sense will be either 'the same thing' or 'these;' but it does not make much difference to the meaning.

[greek], You try cleaving logs with the key and opening the door with the axe. Used of some topsy-turvy behaviour; when, for instance, a man tries fear as the way to correct his children and indulgence to win the love of his servants, or uses philosophical arguments to convince uneducated people and in learned company tries to win the day by shamelessly shouting them down. Recorded by Plutarch in the essay called 'How to Study.'

[greek], A Bellerophen letter. We must supply some verb suitable to the sense, for instance 'carries' or something of the sort. There will be a place for this when someone brings a letter as though it were a recommendation, which in fact is written to secure his undoing. They commonly call this a Uriah letter, nor is the story current among the Jews very different. Of Bellerophon's letter the Greeks preserve the following account. Bellerophon, having killed Bellerus, had to leave Argos and go into exile; so he came to Tiryns and was hospitably entertained by King Proetus. Meanwhile the king's wife, Antea, fell in love with the young man, and set out to tempt him to commit adultery, offering him free access to her person. When he refused to do wrong, being no doubt highly conscious of his obligations as a guest, she took the initiative and, her love turning to hatred as women's love does, she denounced him secretly to her husband as having made illicit advances to her. When she had convinced the king of this, she encouraged him as far as she could to destroy the young man, whispering constantly in his ear what Homer gives in the line 'Either die, Proetus, or slay Bellerophon.' So Proetus with cunning truly worthy of a king (to use the Homeric word, ankylomêtis, with crooked thoughts) sent Bellerophon, as if it were a courtesy visit, to his friend lobates, giving him what purported to be a letter of recommendation. In this he told lobates to remove the young man somehow from the scene. Bellerophon suspecting nothing, as is the way of innocence, took the letter and delivered it, the seal still unbroken. lobates read it and, to satisfy Proetus, set about finding some honourable excuse for destroying the young man; for such is the way of wicked princes. So he fired Bellerophon, who was by nature brave, with the desire to test his strength and win a reputation, and persuaded him first of all to attack the Chimera. This was a triple monster, 'forepart lion, dragon behind, and in the middle true chimaera,' that is, he-goat. Bellerophon, riding on a winged horse, pierced it with his spear and killed it. After that, lobates exposed the young man to one peril after another, from all of which he returned victorious; so the king, astonished at his strength and guessing from his successes that he must be innocent, showed him Proetus' letter, made him his son-in-law, and left him at his death the succession to his throne. Thus of anyone who from imprudence either tells or does something that betrays him, one can rightly use the phrase A Bellerophon letter, or of anyone who suffers an injury under pretext of doing him a kindness. The adage is listed by Zenodotus. Plautus in the Bacchides: 'Be quiet! No man says this. It is these tales that show you up, which you brought with you; it is they that say you must be bound. O how your son has made a proper Bellerophon of me! I myself brought the order that I should be bound.' The adage is also expressed in another form: [greek] , Bellerophon against himself. Lucian in the defence of his Salaried Posts: 'You are like Bellerophon, but you have written your own death-warrant.' King Pharnabazus played a similar trick on Lysander; Plutarch records it in his life of Lysander.

[greek], If with mud continually / You befoul the limpid water, ne'er will you have aught to drink. The Greek is a trochaic line (rendered by me in a line and a half of the same metre), used customarily of anyone who spoils things very fair in themselves with an admixture of what is very foul. If for instance a poet were to let a streak of obscenity run through his verse (this must be his own fault, for the art of poetry is innocent enough); or a theologian were to distort his learning with heretical opinions, befoul it with indecent language, or contaminate it with pagan literature; or one were to irritate a friendly prince by constantly giving offence. It will be suitable also for those who find this life tedious, if this is their own fault, because by some defect of personality they feel things as a burden which are by no means burdensome in themselves. If only they had a mind immune from foolish fancies, they would be happy, whatever might befall.

[greek], Chares and his promises, is used when someone makes ready and lavish promises in the spirit of Ovid's 'Be lavish with your promises, for what harm can they do? Promises are a currency in which anyone can be rich.' The adage comes from a man called Chares, an Athenian general, who used to promise anything to anybody, but did not also fulfil his undertakings. This Chares is now pretty well the model for our kings and princes, who promise everybody everything, and refuse nothing, so that they can send everyone away happy, at least in hope. They even encourage people to ask them, using these hopes as a bait. There is a similar story about the younger Vespasian. When he was warned not to be so free with his promises, for he was undertaking more than he could possibly perform, he replied 'No one should ever leave the emperor's presence with a long face.' The adage is recorded by Suidas, and I have little doubt that it comes from Aristophanes.

[greek], You dwell in Cescos, was used of any stupid blockhead. Cescos was a city in Pamphylia, the citizens of which had a bad reputation for stupidity and folly. Near the city of Cescos there was a river called the Anous, the Brainless. Though Suidas, who also mentions the proverb, puts Cescos in Cilicia, not in Pamphylia. Hence there was also a common saying: 'Cescos is a city without brains.' It will also suit any company or gathering of foolish people. It agrees with one I have expounded elsewhere, Boeotian pig. The adage is listed by Zenodotus. Another point should be made in passing, that this passage is corrupt in Suidas under the word Keskos, and for ouk echein, have not, we should read oikein, dwell.

Τὸν κύκλον ἀποτελεῖν, To complete the circle, is to render something complete in every detail and in all its parts. Thus Greek uses kyklopaideia of a course which includes all branches of knowledge, as it were, in full cycle, and enkyklios paideia. The metaphor is evidently borrowed from the mathematicians, who regard the circle as the most perfect and absolute of geometrical figures. Hence in those lines on the wise man, which are rightly admired: 'Like the round world itself, so smooth and round, / No outside taint on its smooth face can settle.' This is related to another expression, [greek], In every rhythm. So Quintilian in the preface to book 8: 'While a complete knowledge of this in all its strains is necessary for a full understanding of the whole, at the same time beginners are better suited by a simpler and shorter account,' which clearly draws on the language of music.

Τὸ θερμὸν τοῦ ὀβελοῦ, The hot end of the spit (we must supply 'he has grasped' or some such verb) is used when through lack of experience someone sets out on a piece of business at the point at which it was least safe to start, or through ignorance chooses the worse instead of the better. Zenodotus says that this adage was mentioned by Sophocles. The metaphor is taken from those who seize hold of a spit by the end that has been near the fire, and burn themselves; then drop it and pick up the other end. It is not so very unlike Once stung the fisherman will be wiser, which I have recorded in another place.

Τιτανῶδες βλέπειν, To wear a titanic expression, to look at someone with a titanic glare; and by 'titanic' they mean fierce and terrible, the way those mythical Titans are supposed to have looked. Lucian in Timon: 'At any rate, with his beard down to his knees and towering eyebrows, and the swaggering way he walks, muttering to himself with a titanic glare.' Again in the Icaromenippus: 'Jupiter gave me a terrible bitter look, a real titanic glare.'

[greek], The Thracians do not know the rules. It happened in Thrace on one occasion that a very old man was killed by a javelin that pierced his chest. Hence the lonians and Aeolians took to saying in a riddling fashion that the Thracians do not know the rules because greater honour is thought to be due to the elderly among those who live under the rule of law. Besides which, the barbarity, ferocity and treachery of the Thracians is well illustrated in the murder of Polydorus by Polymnestor in defiance of the laws of hospitality. And Euripidesin the Hecuba has 'A stranger's murder may seem light to you; / We Greeks detest it as a wicked crime.'

[greek], To spear tunny-fish, is used in Greek as a metaphor for piercing and pricking, either because it is customary to prick a tunny to improve the flavour or because the fish itself stings and pricks when you touch it. Pliny, book 9 chapter 15, records something quite new about the tunny. He says there is a marine creature which is very small, the size of a spider, and shaped like a scorpion, which attaches itself to the dolphin and to the so-called swordfish (which is often larger than a dolphin) under the fin by means of a barb. There it causes such pain that the victims frequently jump out of the water into ships. Athenaeus in the Doctors at Dinner, book 7, tells us that a kind of tunny called by the Athenians thynnis has a creature attached to its belly, which is called the ather. (He adds that the fish gets its name from thyein, to rush, because it moves with such speed, especially when it is irritated by a parasite, which happens around the summer solstice.) The parasite is a small creature the size of a drachma with a head resembling a scorpion; and they are so much exasperated by this parasite that they jump out of the water as high as dolphins jump. For this he cites the evidence of Aristotle. Lucian in his Jupiter tragoedus: 'Be quiet, Neptune, you and your schemes, as thick-headed as any tunny-fish/ and elsewhere in that dialogue alluding to the same word: 'If you thus dismiss my ideas as so much tunny-fish.' The adage is listed by Diogenianus.

Θᾶττον ὁ τόκος ἡρακλείτω περινέω τρέχει, Interest runs faster than that champion runner Heraclitus. The message of the adage is that we should refrain from borrowing money that is lent at interest, because the day when we have to pay the interest comes round faster than one could believe possible. The proverb is taken from a man called Heraclitus who was a champion runner of outstanding speed. The genitive forms in omega rather than ou are those of the Doric dialect. It seems to be a trochaic tetrameter catalectic line, with a few syllables corrupted.

Θᾶττον ἢ βούτης, Faster than Butes. They used this adage to convey that something was completed with all possible speed, and the end reached by a shortcut, as people commonly do who give the meaning of a long sentence in few words, and even those are slurred in their delivery. Its origin is said to have been this. In Athens, among the paintings in the portico called the Stoa, there was one that showed a certain Butes; and he was shown in such a way that only the top of his head and his eyes were visible, so as to make the spectator imagine that the rest of his body was concealed behind the mountain on which he was walking. And so, since in painting Butes the artist had not spent much time, his name came to be used proverbially of things very easily done. Zenodotus is the authority.

Λυδὸς τὴν θύραν ἔκλεισε, A Lydian shut the door, was used of thieves, because no Lydian would leave without stealing something. If I may be allowed a guess (and why not, on such a charming subject, when both author and interpreter are wanting?), I would rather take it of those who have some lecherous enterprise in mind, and therefore shun eyewitnesses and conceal themselves, my reason being the Lydians' reputation for effeminacy. Hence Plautus too calls a Lydian 'smooth.' Plutarch alludes to the proverb, and I wish he had also explained it, in the essay he wrote 'Against Colotes.' 'But he seems to me' he says, like the proverbial Lydian, to open more than one door against himself, but to plunge Epicurus in many very serious and insoluble problems.' Unless anyone would rather refer this passage in Plutarch to another adage of which I shall speak elsewhere, A Lydian had no troubles.
Hesychius mentions the proverb, but adds nothing except the words 'Of stupid thieves.' This shows, however, that the reading in the other texts is corrupt, and we should read, not ekleise, shut the door, but ekinklise, moved, or tried. Unskilful thieves often give themselves away by the noise they make opening or shutting a door. Kinklizein in Greek, according to Suidas, is a word of many meanings: it can be to shake, to shoot the bolt, to make a noise, to move; and the skill of a thief consists above all else in moving a door, whether coming in or going out, without making a sound. From this it is, I think, already clear what Plutarch means.

Λυδὸς ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ, A Lydian at noon, was said of a man whose lust was insatiable or ill-timed. They say that the Lydians were so riddled with lust that, not content with spending the night in the pleasures of sex, they indulged in it even at high noon, using their hands to complete their filthy undertaking. Hence Greek has a word lydiazein, to play the Lydian, for to live the sort of life the Lydians live. Athenaeus gives a long account of their luxury and effeminacy in book 12. I have spoken elsewhere, on the proverb Sybaritica mensa, of the dinner-parties at Sybaris in which sexual licence had its place. Surely no time is more unsuitable for copulation than mid-day, when the sun is at its hottest, or dinner-time, when the vital spirits are occupied around the stomach with the process of digestion.

Αἰπόλος ἐν καύματι, A goatherd in the heat, carries a similar sense of ill-timed lust. It is at this time of the day, we read, that goatherds in remote places, having driven their flocks into the shade, indulge in sex. Zenodotus records both adages, and so does Suidas. It will be possible to adapt this to any pleasure indulged in at an unsuitable time.

Λυδὸς καπηλεύει, Lydian shopkeeper, was a taunt levelled at effeminate people who lived a life of pleasure. The traditional explanation is as follows. King Cyrus after defeating the Lydians ordered them on the advice of Croesus to go in for retail trade and nothing to do with weapons; they were to wear long garments right down to the ground, which in old days was a sign of effeminacy, so that after being in this way virtually turned into women, they would be useless partners in a rebellion. Herodotus in book one tells us that the Lydians were the first who ever became shopkeepers and peddlars. Hesychius relates that they invented public spectacles, which is why the Romans called their public games ludi. The verb used means in Greek strictly 'to sell food.' There is a proverbial flavour about other words noted by Suidas: lydiazô or lydizô, for to live as the Lydians do. Recorded by Suidas.

Λυδῶν καρυκας, Lydian black-puddings, was in ancient times a name for any rich food, spiced with tit-bits of various kinds; for the caryca was a Lydian speciality, with all sorts of delicious things in it and also blood. Athenaeus, in book 12 of his Doctors at Dinner, tells us that how to make a caryca was a Lydian discovery. The full form of the adage is as follows: Μήτε λυδῶν καρύκας, μήτε μαστίγων ψόφους, Neither Lydian carycae nor the crack of whips. We have to supply 'do I wish' or something like it; that is, I want neither flattery nor abuse, things neither too smooth nor too rough, of which more will be said elsewhere.

[greek], A drink snatched from the wolves, is a phrase used when someone bought pleasure at the price of risking his life. They say that two springs broke out which were sacred to Apollo, of which one ran with wine and one with honey; and when birds flew to drink, they were shot with bow and arrow. Moreover Apollo, apart from his other names, is also called Lucius, either from the light spreading from him or from his killing of wolves. The authorities are Zenodotus and Suidas, and they tell us that the penultimate syllable of the word should have a circumflex accent, because lykeion with an acute accent on the first syllable means the Lyceum, that gymnasium at Athens which some think was founded by Peisistratus and others by Pericles. And hence arose the proverb, which is akin to that other one, Like a dog drinking out of the Nile.

[greek], Lupus' gang of ten, was applied apparently to those who received some part, though a small one, of ill-gotten gains, or to people corrupted by bribes or who corrupted others. At Athens, in the marketplace, where lawsuits were pleaded, there stood a statue of a semi-divine character called Lycus in the shape of a wolf. Round this statue normally gathered the sycophants, the professional informers who worked for pay, as though it were that of some god, the patron deity of their calling, and a deduction of three obols was made for his benefit every day. The authority is Zenodotus, although Hesychius touched on it too. Suidas adds that the informers were ten in number, a sort of prototype of the decemviri Aristophanes mentions this in the Wasps: 'If somehow you were able to produce the statue of Lycus.' This way of making a living was extremely unpopular in Antiquity, that of the men who took people to court with the intention of getting as a recompense some part of the fine imposed upon them when they were condemned. Hence they were also called sectores and quadruplatores.

[greek], For words are Hermodorus' merchandise. Used to be said of a man who had nothing to show except words, in the way that Laches in Terence's Hecyra asks his son Pamphilus whether he had brought at least one wise saw back with him from Lemnos. Alternatively, it will be right to use it of anyone who sells words for money, poets, advocates, sellers of smoke, and others of the kind. They say it began with a man called Hermodorus, a pupil of Plato's, who was accustomed to carry off to Sicily the notebooks filled by Plato, and sell them there. So the Sicilians, who have sharp tongues, made a proverb of this: 'Hermodorus' they said 'imports words in place of goods.' In any case, sophists and philosophers call their works logoi, Words. Cicero alluded to this no doubt in book 13 of his Letters to Atticus: 'Tell me, are you satisfied first of all to publish with no instruction from me? Was not this what Hermodorus used to do, who was accustomed to sell books written by Plato, whence [greek], the words of Hermodorus. Though Cicero quoted the proverb in truncated form, yet if you add our verb, you get a valid iambic line. Hence the word logemporos, trader in words, for a man who has nothing to show except words.