Adagia 1601–1700

[greek], Hercules eating apples, was a contemptuous way of referring to a man who had some grand title, but neither wealth nor influence to give him power. An incident gave rise to this. Suidas tells us that one day some country people were proposing to sacrifice a bull to Hercules, and it broke its halter and escaped; nor had they any alternative offering. They seized an apple, stuck four twigs into it to serve for legs and then added two more as though in the place of horns, thus producing a sort of model of a bull; and this absurd image they sacrificed to Hercules instead of a victim. Julius Pollux, in book one of his work On the Names of Things, tells the story rather differently, as follows. It is a regular practice in Boeotia, he says, to sacrifice apples to Hercules. Once, when the god's festival was imminent and it was urgently necessary to have the offering ready, the victim, which should have been a ram, was late in arriving because of a sudden flood which made the river Asopus impassable. None the less, some children who were playing near the altar duly performed the sacrifice. They had a fine apple, into which they stuck four stout straws by way of legs and two more in place of horns, playing with the idea that they were thus offering a ram. Hercules was thought to have been greatly delighted with his victim; and so it remained a custom in Thebes to sacrifice apples to Hercules. And hence the god acquired a nickname, the Hercules of apples.

'But diffidence is no good companion for a needy man'; so we read in Homer, Odyssey 17, and it is cited by Plato in the Laches. And a little further on: 'Diffidence, he says, ill becomes a beggar.' And again in Hesiod: 'Shame is no profit to a man in need.' The line passed into a proverb, the lesson of which is that we should cast off diffidence when under pressure of necessity. Diffidence, which in many situations is highly unhelpful, is never more so than when circumstances demand that we do all we can, just as modesty is unprofitable which deters us from learning what it is disgraceful not to know. As Horace puts it, 'foolish is shame that hides untreated sores,' and in another passage You are the victim of a foolish shame.' Euripides alludes to the same point in the Iphigeneia in Aulis: 'But yet one should be modest, when one can.' Homer in Iliad 24 writes that diffidence or reverence can be a very great help, and also a very great hindrance: 'Nor has he the shame / Which does so much for men, both good and bad.' And we can see a number of sufferers from this unprofitable diffidence, who would rather conceal their bodily infirmities than be rid of them with the help of their friends. Such, we read, was the disposition of Apelles, who tried to conceal both his ill health and his poverty; and a kind friend secretly put a gold nugget under his pillow. But those are very much in the majority who through an unhelpful bashfulness conceal ill health and poverty of mind. Yet they often find as a result that their trouble breaks out into the open, and their shame is then more pitiable and quite unavailing.

Two other lines are recorded in the collections of Greek adages: 'You taunt me with my belly; but this is the most honourable of all reproaches, for when full it is a featherweight, only when empty is it heavy.' For my part I do not see where the proverb comes in, unless it is in the phrase 'most honourable of reproaches,' which seems to have been in use in Greek as a proverb. Euripides in his Iphigeneia in Aulis: This is an honourable reproach with which you charge me.' Or it may lie in the part that sounds something like a riddle: 'when full it is a featherweight, heavy when empty.' For other containers grow heavier as they grow fuller and lighter as they empty, but with the belly it is the opposite: the more distended it is with food, the lighter it becomes because the spirits are stimulated and heightened by eating.

[greek], Shame to be mute. It will be right to use this whenever someone is roused by another man's example to pursue a course of study or a piece of business. It originated with, or at any rate was used by, Aristotle. When Isocrates was teaching rhetoric, he was moved by a spirit of competition and he too began to teach the art of speaking in those afternoon promenades of his which are so celebrated, with the comment 'Shame to be mute when Isocrates is vocal.' Cicero in his De oratore shows that Aristotle borrowed the words with a few changes from some tragedy, for he writes as follows: 'When Aristotle saw that the school of Isocrates was prosperous and full of well-born pupils as a result of his switching the subject of his discourses from litigation public and private towards an empty elegance of style, he suddenly altered the shape of his own teaching almost entirely, quoting with some changes a line about Philoctetes. Philoctetes said it was shame for him to be mute in front of barbarians; Aristotle [changed this to] "when Isocrates was free to speak.'" In book six of the Letters to Atticus: Tor my part, were not Bibulus so excited about a triumph, though as long as there was a single foreigner in Syria he no more set foot outside the city gates than he did out of his own front door, I should not give this a second thought; but as things are, it is shame to be mute.' But nowadays this is misused by some people, who think nothing more shameful than to be mute, for fear that an illiterate audience may underestimate their learning and their literary style. Hence comes the principle of the uneducated speaker in Lucian, 'never to keep silence,' because in front of the ignorant a man will be thought tongue-tied and ignorant himself, unless he is perpetually chattering.

[greek], But in gifts the intention is the most important thing. In Greek this is the half of a dactylic hexameter, and it was used proverbially to convey that, when we receive gifts from friends, we should consider, not the value of what they have sent us, but much more the intention of the sender, in the same way that Xerxes in the story took the water that the countryman offered him in his cupped hands, and Christ preferred the widow's mite to all the offerings of the rich. And we are told by one authority that for 'a small present sent by a humble friend' we ought to be as grateful as if it was something big. Pliny in his preface expressed this in a different metaphor: Tut milk is offered to the gods by country folk and many foreign peoples, and mere salted meal is the tribute of those who have no incense.' It is indeed a very familiar fact in our own day that those who offer some gift should draw attention to the spirit of it rather than the thing itself. The adage is recorded by Phurnutus in his work On the Nature of the Gods.

Those who have reached such a depth of effrontery, or rather blindness, that they make simply no distinction between what is respectable and what is indecent are said not to know the difference between head and groin. Among respectable parts of the body the head holds first place, and so it is quite right to keep it bare; from the belly downwards all is indecent, and is kept covered. Juvenal, of a tipsy woman: 'For Venus when in liquor makes no sense; / 'Twixt head and groin she knows no difference.' These words clearly have the shape of a proverb.

[greek], Too many generals brought Caria down. An iambic line, of which the message is that nothing is so disastrous as liberty of action in the mob, when they obey no one man, but everyone does what is right in his own eyes. The Greek for this is anarchia, an evil almost worse than tyranny, which is the worst thing there is. But polyarchia, the rule of many, is as great an evil as the so-called anarchia, the rule of none. Homer teaches the same lesson in that line in the second book of the Iliad, which itself later passed into a proverb: "The rule of many is not good; let one man rule.' These words are used by Ulysses when repressing disorder among the soldiery, one of whom was Thersites. The same Homeric line was adopted by Dio, when he saw that Heracleides was preparing to rebel, as we learn from Aemilius Probus. The adage took its rise from the Carians, who once enjoyed great prosperity, but later were brought so low by civil strife that their worthless character became proverbial, as I have shown in another place.

[greek], A white mouse, in Suidas ([greek], A bad mouse, in Diogenianus) was applied to a lecherous man and one prone to sexual excess, for house mice are very lecherous creatures, and white mice especially. Aelian, book 12 chapter 10, cites authorities to show that the lechery of mice is extraordinary. To much other evidence he adds that of Epicrates in one of his plays where, wanting to convey that a woman is particularly lewd, he calls her myonia, a mousehole; and he quotes the proverb A white mouse from a comedy by Philemon. Hence, it seems, came the practice of using as words of endearment between lovers not only 'lovebird' and 'dove' and others of the kind, but 'mouse' as well. Martial: 'Call me mouse if you will, and the light of your life.'

This, which of course has the air of a proverb, is used by Juvenal of an old woman who has already passed her time of life and is far too ancient for amatory dalliance, but in her lascivious language still carries on as if she were a girl. 'Your years are counted in your face' he says, which means that the wrinkles in your face advertize how old you are, although your lecherous disposition has not yet grown old. The fable of the crocodile is relevant here. A crocodile was boasting of its distinguished ancestry and how it won all its battles, and the fox replied as follows: 'Even though you do not admit it, it is clear from your hide that you have many years of active service behind you.' For that creature has a hide which is armed against all blows with a kind of very tough plate. Martial says of someone who prided himself on his youthful appearance 'Your beard cries out against you, You're a man.'

[greek], As rare as the phoenix, is used of things, or even of men, that are very hard to find. The adage derives from the myth of a bird called the phoenix, of which Pliny writes in book 10 chapter 2: 'And above all the famous phoenix of Arabia, of which it is said (but I rather think this is a myth) that there is only one in the whole world, and that after great efforts it has not been sighted. They say it is as big as an eagle; the neck glittering with gold and the rest of the body scarlet; the tail dark blue picked out with feathers of a rose-colour; its face distinguished by a crest, and a plume of feathers on its head.' In the same passage other marvels relating to the phoenix are recorded; but as they do not contribute to the understanding of the adage, I leave them for anyone interested to read there for himself. Ovid in book 15 of the Metamorphoses puts the following lines in the mouth of Pythagoras: One bird there is that still himself renews: Phoenix the Assyrians call him, and his food Is neither seed nor blade, but incense-beads And spicy juices. When life's span is spent, In holm-oak sprays and crest of quivering palm With beak and talons he constructs his nest. With spikenard this he lines and cassia, With pounded cinnamon and tawny myrrh; Then sits thereon, and dies an odorous death. A fledgling phoenix next, the story runs, Springs from his corpse, to live as long as he, Then, when full-grown and strong to bear the load, The ponderous burden of those lofty boughs, Lifts his own cradle and his father's grave, And to Hyperion's city wings his way In filial duty, there to lay it down, Before Hyperion's holy temple-gates. A poem on the phoenix also survives, the work of Lactantius Firmianus, a piece not without eloquence (the Muses be my witness) and by no means to be despised.

[greek], You could not be praised, even at a funeral feast, was said of someone who was utterly disreputable. The Ancients, and the Athenians in particular, had a practice at funeral feasts, called in Greek perideipna, of delivering encomiums, memorial addresses and panegyrics in praise of a dead man, even if he had done little to deserve this while alive. For, as Ovid puts it, 'Ill will feeds on the living but is silent after death.' As a result we sometimes deprive the living of the praise they deserve, and give the dead even what they have not earned. Festus Pompeius tells us that in Antiquity it was the custom to hire women to lament the departed at funerals, with some admixture of praise, and to lead the rest in the process of mourning; hence they were called praeficae, which is close to praefectae, appointed leaders. For this he quotes evidence from Naevius: 'I really think this woman must be a praefica, a professional mourner, from the way she praises a dead man.' The origin of the phrase may be what seems to have been a custom in Antiquity, that at drinking-parties some men's praises should be recited even in their lifetime, in the way that Alcibiades in Plato produces an encomium on Socrates, and in Plutarch Callisthenes praises Alexander the Great. Praises of this kind were not, however, considered of great value, as being produced under the influence of liquor. Nor do I think it would be foolish if one were to refer the proverb to a practice in the old days of having a lyre-player at feasts to sing of the exploits of the gods or famous men, as happens in Homer at almost every feast. In Virgil too 'Long-haired Iopas sounds his golden lyre.' Though here again the praise was often invented to give pleasure to the audience. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.

The meaning of To vote with one's feet and of A foot-slogger's vote (pedaria sententia) is adequately explained by Aulus Gellius, book 3 chapter 18. If applied by way of metaphor to any form of approval for someone else's views, it will assume proverbial shape; if, for instance, one were to say 'No sensible man would vote with his feet forthwith for anything that may have come into his wife's head,' or 'It is right that emotion should vote with its feet for the proposals made by reason, not against them,' 1 vote for your proposal with hands and feet and with my whole body.' A metaphor from the ancient custom, which used to be observed whenever there was a great crowd of people wishing to record their votes. Livy in book 7 of his first decade: 'When I have finished giving you my opinion, those of you who think the same as I do will cross over in silence to the right, and the view of the larger number will prevail,' and shortly after that '"Those of you who think this is the solution should cross over forthwith to the right." And they all crossed over, and followed Decius as he made his way through a gap left by the pickets.' Cicero in his eleventh Philippic: 'He said however that if any of those who had been asked their opinion after him should have produced a better suggestion, he would vote [lit, 'go'] for it.' Again, in a letter to Lentulus: 'For they saw clearly that many times more would vote for Hortensius' proposal than openly agreed with Volcatius.' In the same letter: They voted in large numbers for the other points.' Again, writing to Plancus: 'A well-attended senate abandoned him, and voted for all the other points.' This system of voting was called discessio, a division [lit, 'a going away']. Pliny the nephew in book two of his Letters, writing to Adrianus: 'But, when there occurred a division, first the members standing by the consuls' chairs proceeded to go over to Cornutus' side, then those who were letting themselves be counted with Collega crossed the floor.' The man who interrupted the taking of votes was said to 'intercede.' Livy in book nine of his Rome from the Foundation: When this was received with nothing but praise, and they were all voting [pedibus irent] for his proposal, a brief attempt was made to intercede.' And again in book five of the same work: 'When they were voting [pedibus iretur] in favour of this proposal, the remaining tribunes made no attempt at opposition.' Pliny the Elder, book 2 chapter 7, made something of a change in the form of the phrase: 'This opinion' he says 'began to take root, and both the learned public and the unlearned adopted it at the run.' To give enthusiastic and over-hasty support to something he calls 'adopting it at the run,' and puts 'to take roof for 'to prove acceptable.' Flavius Vopiscus in his life of the Emperor Aurelian shows that it was also customary to approve someone else's proposal by raising one's hand, for he writes as follows: 'Then with some lifting their hands, others voting with their feet, and most of them shouting their approval, the senatorial decree was carried.' Sallust too conveyed much the same in his War against Catiline, when he wrote that 'Silanus later was moved by Gaius Caesar's speech to say that he would support [pedibus iturum se] the proposal of Tiberius Nero, while others signified their approval of Caesar in various ways.' Quintilian speaks of 'voting in support of a proposal with hands and feet'; besides which, anyone who also indicated his assent by the look in his face and his gestures was said 'to vote in support with his whole body.' The method of voting by raising the hand is known in Greek as cheirotonein or cheirotonia, a word also found in Scripture, as in chapter eight of second Corinthians: cheirotonetheis. Phrases such as 'to subscribe to' a proposal, an opinion, a wish, and suffragari, refragari, to lend or withdraw support, and other metaphors of the kind, whenever they are diverted some little distance from their straightforward meaning, pass gradually into the status of proverbs.

Epictetus, a philosopher of the Cynic school, embraced without exception all those principles of philosophy which relate to the happiness of human life, and which other philosophers expound with difficulty in so many volumes, in two words and no more. For a long time now they have been current as a proverb among educated men, and well do they deserve to be inscribed on walls and columns everywhere, and to be engraved on every ring. They are as follows:'[greek], Bear and forbear. One of them teaches fortitude in adversity; the other warns us to refrain from forbidden pleasures. They are recorded in the Nights of Gellius, book 17 chapter 19. The following lines are recorded in Athenaeus, with no mention of the author's name: 'Good should we call the man who brings good things; / Good too is he who beareth bad things well.'

When I see the Greeks dragging some things into their pile of proverbs by the scruff of the neck, as the saying goes, why should I hesitate to include the sort of sayings which are not only adages in form but so neatly expressed that nothing could be neater? A good example is that line in Horace's Epistles, 'You may cast out nature with a fork, but she will still return.' The point is, that things which Nature has deeply rooted and implanted in us are not easily unlearned. If we are sometimes forcibly obliged, by fear or shame or any other cause, to put on a mask which is not ours, we resume our normal character with ease when we have the chance. Those, for instance, whose fear 'to do wrong' arises not 'from love of virtue' but from fear of the big stick, return to their original way of life as soon as the stick is removed. And Terence: 'If he hopes it will escape notice, he returns to his true self.' The image is taken from branches which are twisted by the use of a forked prop into a different position from the way nature had placed them; and when the prop is removed they tend to resume their former direction. Pindar in the eleventh of his Olympians expressed the same idea in another way: 'But their inborn nature neither wily fox nor roaring lions can change.' However much you may tame a lion, it always returns to its native ferocity, nor does a fox, however much domesticated, ever forget its inborn treachery. Pindar again, in hymn 13 of the same collection, writes 'It is difficult to conceal one's natural character.' Horace too in another passage: 'Remove the danger and, the bit removed, / Nature without restraint will gallop off.'

[greek], An old ship will not sail the open sea, is well adapted to those whose strength has been sapped by old age, so that they are no longer capable of doing something difficult or facing danger; first the size of the burden overwhelms them and they perish, and those whose business is at stake are put in jeopardy. It is a familiar image. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.

[greek], Were you not my father. This was commonly said when they repressed some severe criticism out of respect or fear, and left it to be understood. The complete phrase runs as follows: Were you not my father, I would have said you are not in your right mind.' It is a line from Sophocles' Antigone, spoken by Haemon, who is protesting against his father's preparations to put to death the girl to whom the son is betrothed. We shall use it to indicate that we heartily disagree with someone who by his age or influence or for some other reason commands our respect, but out of reverence do not wish to take issue with him openly. Suppose for instance that one rightly wanted to refute one of Aristotle's opinions before an audience of Peripatetics, one might speak like this: 'The author of this opinion carries the greatest weight, for it is perhaps a crime to disagree with Aristotle. Otherwise, were he not my father ...,' meaning 'Did I not defer to his authority, I possess the means of refuting him.' If you leave half the sentence unexpressed, it will gain somewhat more point. Recorded by Diogenianus.

[greek], A good year talks big, was used whenever an unusually good harvest or a fall in the cost of bread raised the spirits of those who would otherwise have lacked self-confidence, and set them talking. It is typical of country people to speak more boastfully and make more generous promises when they have the prospect of a good harvest. Recorded by Suidas. It does not differ much from He has hay on his horn, or from The springs of silver speak.

[greek], Megarian sphinxes, was a name given commonly in old days to certain courtesans, either because catamites are currently called sphictae in Greek from the word sphingo, or because in Megara sphinx was a word for a children's nurse, or because the people of Megara were immoral and untrustworthy, and their character earned them in old days this discreditable name. Hence Aristophanes in the Wasps criticizes the Megarian laugh, of which I have spoken elsewhere: 'Nor yet a knock-kneed laugh from Megara.' Suidas too quotes another line, but as usual without giving the author's name: 'Yes, but for this I've a Megarian trick.' By 'Megarian laughter' or 'tricks' he understands the luxurious habits of the Megarians. Recorded in the collection of Diogenianus.

[greek], Marrow of honey, was applied to anything exceptionally sweet. Hence too it comes that Ennius, as reported by Cicero, called Marcus Cornelius Cethegus 'the marrow of persuasion' as being a singularly attractive speaker, for that which is best of its kind seems to have been hidden by nature in the very heart of things. For the same reason those very common expressions 'in one's very marrow' and 'to love in the marrow of one's bones' are no different in form from proverbs. We find the same formula in The Greece of Greece.'

Those people are said 'Αλλο γένος κώπης', To be given better auspices, who after a period of adversity find themselves in more prosperous circumstances. For in Latin two words for 'bird,' avis and ales, mean sometimes not the living creature but the actual omen and augury derived from it, and it is the same in Greek with oiônos and ornis; for strouthos is not used in the same way, as Eustathius shows in his comment on Odyssey book one. Horace in the Odes: 'Ill-augured are you now, taking her homeward,' and again in another passage: 'That winged Maeonian poet.' Homer in the Iliad, book 24: 'So do not you yourself become for me / A bird of evil omen in these halls,' and again in book 12 of the same poem: 'The one best augury is to fight in defence of the fatherland.' The Ancients laboured under the superstitious belief that in attacking any great enterprise they must observe the chance encounter of birds, and some of them were professed specialists in this field as though it were an art. Hence the Romans had their College of Augurs. Among Christians this profession, based on superstition, has already been almost drummed out of town, but only with the result that its place has been taken by an evil almost more pestilential and actually double-headed - those who foretell the future by the stars, and others who falsely claim divine inspiration and wish to be taken for prophets by the credulous and uneducated public. Yet it is astonishing how both parties find victims on whom they can impose; for impose they do, not only on the mob but on kings themselves and the rulers of the world.

Αλλο γένος κώπης, Another sort of oar, was used in old days when someone introduced a novelty which had never been seen before, or when there was a change in someone's original character and he adopted a new and unaccustomed way of life. It arose, they say, from the fact that, when Hercules was voyaging in search of the Erythraean cattle, he used his lion-skin in place of a sail, his club for a mast, the thongs of his quiver for rigging, his bow for an oar, and a cauldron for his boat. When the inhabitants caught sight of this highly unusual style of sailing, they cried out Another sort of oar.' Recorded in the collections of Plutarch.

[greek], He makes as much noise as green bay-leaves burning, because a branch of bay, if thrown on the fire while still green, makes a very loud crackling sound. Hence it was also the practice to burn bay-branches in the witchcraft used by lovers, as though the noise symbolized a lover's complaints: 'Cruel Daphnis burns me, and against Daphnis do I burn this bay.' Recorded by Diogenianus.

[greek], Now's the time to pick the beans - in other words, it is now the right moment to do this or that. For example, if one were to tell a young man that the time is now at hand to win glory, to acquire knowledge, or to get rich, one might say 'Now's the time to pick the beans.' It is taken from country people, who are then most keenly on the watch, and never allow that moment to be lost through idleness. Recorded by Diogenianus and Suidas.

[greek], Now the gods are happy. The phrase conveyed a kind of pleasure and satisfaction, whenever the guilty had paid some penalty adequate to their deserts, just as though it brought the gods satisfaction and credit when criminals are punished, but disgrace when things go well for the wicked, in accordance with that proverbial aphorism 'God is to blame, if the ungodly flourish.' After all, others have found in this an argument that the gods do not exist at all.

Λιπεῖν τὴν τάξιν, To desert one's post, is used of those who fail to do their duty in carrying out some piece of business. The figure is taken from men stationed in line of battle, for death was the penalty for anyone who had deserted the place assigned to him by his commanding officer, and so the word 'deserter' carried the greatest possible disgrace among military men. Plato prescribes in the Laws that the name of a sentry who has deserted his watch should be publicly posted up in the market-place as a mark of disgrace and dishonour, as though by leaving his place a man did all that was in his power to betray the entire commonwealth. Aristophanes in the Wasps 'I am learning how to abandon my night's watch.' Lucian in his essay On Salaried Posts: 'So you must always be seen with him and never fail to appear, but be up at daybreak and put yourself among his servants where you are certain to be seen, never deserting your post.' It is used in a straightforward way by Isocrates in his speech On the Peace: 'They are more deeply dishonoured than those who desert their posts or throw away their shields.' Cicero in his Letters to Atticus spoke of 'abandoning guard-duty,' and in the Definibus of 'deserting guard-duty'; in the Cato of 'abandoning one's allotted station,' all of which of course are different ways of rendering the Greek phrase which we have given as 'deserting one's post.' In the first book of Athenaeus Eubulus, the writer of comedies records the following line from Archilochus:
But he who comes late to a dinner for which he will not have to pay
Will be quick, you may guess, to abandon his post in the battle-array.
Aeschines in his speech in his own defence accuses Demosthenes of having been indicted for desertion of his post; and I have recorded elsewhere that by way of insult he was called rhipsaspis, one who has thrown away his shield. But the man who had put Demosthenes in peril of his life lost his own life as a result, for Demosthenes killed him with the support of Aristarchus; so Aeschines asserts in the same passage. Last but not least, in Latin those who do not abandon their established course of life are said to 'remain in their class,' [in sua classe manere] and those who change it to 'abandon their class,' [classem suam deserere].

[greek], Sheep are no use, if the shepherd is not there. The lesson of the adage is that anarchy is the most pernicious thing there is. Servants do nothing right, unless the master is at hand; pupils are useless in the absence of their teacher; the common people are useless unless they have the prince's authority to guide them. This clearly formed an iambic line, for by the change of a few syllables it can be restored as follows: 'Sheep are no use when there's no shepherd there.' On the foolishness of this animal, and how little it therefore can do for itself without the shepherd's care to help it, read what I have cited elsewhere from Aristotle on the proverb The character of sheep.

[greek], The danger-point is the bench in the prow. Whenever we wish to convey that in some piece of business there is some particular risk, some point of special importance. For when a ship is attacked by the enemy, they deliver their first assault on the prow. Selis means the bench commonly situated in the prow, if we may believe Zenodotus.

[greek], Aim at a man who knows the art. When someone abuses a man who knows how to retaliate with abuse in his turn, or criticizes as an ignoramus one who knows as much of the art as he does himself. The metaphor is evidently taken from those who aim javelins or stones at those who have the skill, either to dodge the missile or to turn it back upon the man who threw it.

[greek], Philip's cock. This came to be used when a man boasted of some trifling action as though it were really important. Alectryon (which means 'the Cock') was the name of one of King Philip's generals, who was cut to pieces by Chares the Athenian. It appears that this Chares recounted the action before a public audience in Athens far too often and with far too much self-satisfaction, so that he gave rise to a proverb. Recorded by Zenodotus.

[greek], A girl has a baby, even though she has consorted badly with her husband. It will be appropriate to use this whenever something is quickly accomplished as one wished, even if one set about it carelessly and idly. A girl, for instance, conceives easily - it is the privilege of her youth - although she may have lain with a man of less than complete virility; this is not true of an older woman, and in fact one who is past her youth requires two contacts with a husband. This fact did not escape the notice of, among others, Augustine as a theologian; for the problem that Abraham who, according to Paul, was already impotent in respect of Sarah is said in Scripture none the less to have had children by Keturah, is thus explained by him: Abraham was impotent in respect of Sarah because of her age, but with Keturah, who was a girl, he could still play a man's part. Outstanding ability can acquire a liberal education even under a bad and idle teacher; but if the pupil, on the other hand, is an ass listening to the lyre, even the best of teachers wastes both oil and toil.

[greek], Pases' halfpenny, was used of something strange and astonishing, something with the effect of a conjuring-trick. When, for instance, a speaker makes the same case appear very good at first and then very bad, and the same thing seem very important and then immediately very unimportant; and when logicians demonstrate that an ass and a man are the same thing; or when someone maintains that a thing has happened which could not possibly happen without some sort of witchcraft - on all such occasions it will be proper to cry 'Pases' halfpenny!' Nor will it prove out of place when people make some gift and then by a trick get it back into their own hands. The story goes that a man called Pases had the reputation of being the finest conjurer and most skilled magician of his time. By the use of certain spells he could produce the sudden appearance of a well-furnished dinner-table, and when he thought fit, could make the whole thing completely vanish. He used often to make a purchase, and pay cash for it; and not long thereafter, there were the coins, not in the shopkeeper's till but in Pases' pocket. Such more or less is the account in Suidas.

[greek], Your chick is always small, when someone who is short of stature wishes for that reason to continue being taken for a child. It will also be suitable for those who, though older in years, aim by their use of cute phrases to seem still juvenile; or when of an elderly and doting couple the man calls his wife puppa, lass, and is called puppus, pet, in return, as I have pointed out elsewhere. The scholiast on Aristophanes informs us that in Greek whatever a person was passionately fond of was called his 'chick.' To convey affection we use diminutive forms of words; and thus a character in the Knights who wishes to curry favour with the crowd calls it his 'darling crowdlet,' and in return someone says to him 'What goodwill in that quarter your tiny sweet nothings have earned for you!' By 'tiny' he means affectionate; and the reply he gets is 'Much tinier still than these were the baits with which you caught him,' because he himself had flattered the mob in much more grovelling fashion.

[greek], A sacrifice Phaselite-fashion, as being cheap and without shedding of blood. They used this adage to convey that the cost was mean and small; for it is said that among the Phaselites, a people in Pamphylia, it was customary to offer the gods small salt fish. Zenodotus is the authority. Eudemus also says that to their god Cabrus they sacrifice salt meat, and cites Callimachus as evidence for this. Close to the adage A smokeless sacrifice.

[greek], Babys plays the flute even worse. This adage was used as a familiar jibe against those whose performance always tends to deteriorate. Some speakers are like that: the longer they go on, the worse they speak. They attribute this to a story on the following lines. Babys, they say, was a brother of Marsyas, the man who was not afraid to challenge Apollo himself to a musical contest. When he was defeated, he was suspended by Apollo from a pine-tree upside down, and flayed. Then, when Apollo was preparing to destroy Babys too, Pallas interceded for him, saying that his flute-playing was so unsuccessful and unskilful that clearly he was quite negligible; 'Babys' she said 'plays even worse.' Apollo was impressed by her words, and treated Babys with such disdain that he did not even think him worthy of punishment, but judged it better to abandon him to his incompetence. The adage will also be useful in comparisons; after speaking of an incompetent teacher, if asked about one of his pupils, one might reply 'Babys plays even worse.' Nor should I object if anyone were to take 'worse' here in the sense of more pitiful, giving the meaning that Babys is more to be pitied for the way in which his incompetent playing makes him a general laughingstock than he would be if he were dead. This adage is mentioned by Athenaeus in book 14, and he shows that it was commonly used of those who played worse every day. Though the passage is corrupt in this author in ordinary texts, if I am not mistaken, for what we find is 'and Cion or Babys plays the flute.' A handle for the error is provided by the fact that shortly before, when speaking of incompetent flute-players, who had been torn to pieces by Hipponax the satirist, he has mentioned Cion, Codylus and Babys. In the collection printed by my friend Aldus I find [greek], the choir of Babys, for an unskilled and badly played performance, with the following story attached. The river Maeander had two sons, of whom one, Babys, used to play the single flute and the other, Marsyas, played the double flute in the Phrygian style. Each of them had his own choir, and since Babys was an unskilful performer on the flute, his brother reached such a pitch of insolence that he despised even Apollo in comparison with himself. When Apollo had flayed him alive, and a similar punishment was in train for Babys, the intervention of Pallas saved him from execution. I suspect, however, that the text is corrupt, and that we should read cheiron for choron, giving Worse than Babys,' to produce the same sense as I have recorded above.

'[greek], An assembly of Cercopes, was applied to any gathering and council-of-war of cunning rascals. The story goes that there were people called Cercopes in Ephesus, who were notoriously untrustworthy, and attempted by their treachery to impose on Jove himself. They had been warned by their mother not to have anything to do with Blackbottom. But that is just what happened; for later they were bound by Hercules at the request of Omphale. Some say that there were people in Ephesus and Athens called Cercopes (in effect, men with tails) on account of their deceptions and their black arts, so that this adage would have the same sense as one I have mentioned elsewhere, Lupus' gang of ten. Aeschines aims this verbal attack against Demosthenes: 'I never knew before what the Cercops was, or what they call a paipalema or a palimbolon or other words of the kind; but now that I have him as an expert authority on villainy in all its forms, I have learnt my lesson.' These two further words, paipalema and palimbolon, seem also to have been in popular use. Hesychius suggests that paipalema meant a man of great subtlety in all forms of mischief; it is derived clearly from pallo, I move to and fro (with the syllable pai added by way of reduplication), the future form of which is palo, and paipalan means to look around and hunt about to and fro and try every expedient. Paipale, again, is the subtlest and finest part of wheat-flour that has been shaken to and fro in a sieve. Both processes, the selection and the cleaning of the flour, are effected by shaking; and hence palos means a lot (as in casting lots) and palê fine flour. And so it is those who turn themselves into all shapes who seem to be branded with the unflattering name of paipalema. At the same time I suspect an allusion to words like pais which means a child and paleuo, I hunt or drive into the nets. Hesychius also gives a lengthy explanation of palimbolon: it applies to a man of great inconsistency, who changes direction easily into the opposite course. I suspect this abusive name for them is taken from tools which are cleverly designed to work in either direction, the word being adapted to people who cannot be trusted.

[greek], A man with the heart of a deer, was applied in old days to a cowardly person, one who put his trust in running away rather than in force; for deer can run very fast and when hunted they seek safety in speed. Hence in Homer, in book one of the Iliad, Achilles, being a brave man, mocks Agamemnon as unwarlike and cowardly with the words 'Heavy with wine, with a dog's eyes and a deer's heart,' taunting him as a drunkard, shameless in seizing on rewards won by others, and deer-hearted because he was afraid to fight. Aristotle in his Nature of Animals, book nine, records that deer have by nature a certain innate prudence, such that what they cannot defend by force they secure by ingenuity; for the hind brings forth her young near a public path, that she may be better protected from wild beasts by the passage of human beings. Then, when she has calved, she at once eats the afterbirth, that it may not be found; besides which she takes the fawn and shows it her lair, to make it familiar with the place of refuge where it must take shelter if any danger threatens; and this, he says, is a precipitous rock.

[greek], Cercopian tricks, describes the conduct of those who behave in a disorderly fashion, or who fawn upon other people. The image derives, either from animals which wag their tails to attract favourable attention, as Chrysippus thought according to Suidas, or from tiresome persons who create a disturbance and make a noise. This suggests that the word is derived from the Cercopes in Lydia, who interrupted Hercules in an offensive way when he was sleeping with Omphale, and at her request were bound by him and suspended from his club, as I have recorded in the adage Mind you don't fall in with Blackbottom.

[greek], Farewell, dear light, evidently was a common saying whenever a lamp was put out. It is traced back to a story which is not wholly proper; but to make the point clear, it must be told all the same. They say that some lecherous old woman, when she was undressed and ready to indulge her passion, put out the lamp, that her flabby and wrinkled flesh might not arouse disgust, and said as she did so 'Farewell, friendly light.' These words were the more able, I suspect, to form a catch phrase, because the same language is used in tragedy by characters at the point of death, such as Polyxena in Euripides' Hecuba, Iphigeneia in the play that takes its name from her, Alcestis and Electa and many others. Though Plutarch in his 'Table Talk,' decade 7 problem 5, shows that the words were used by a man who, when his lady-love came in sight at a time when he, from drinking as I suppose, could hardly see, greeted her with 'Hail, dear light!' It will be possible to adapt this proverb to various uses. One is, when we wish to convey that we think the time has come to take liberties. Night is a cover for everything disgraceful, and since, as Ovid puts it, she 'knows no shame,' she seems the proper time for what is shameful and sinful, actions which Lucian for that reason calls 'nightwork.' Aristophanes alluded to this in his Ecclesiazousae, when he makes a woman who wants to relieve nature say 'Or can one do this everywhere by night?' Another is, when we part from some friend or some object to which we are tenderly attached. Another, when we hint that a woman's beauty is now faded, and that she could not attract except in the dark: 'Farewell, dear light.' Or when we wish to convey that we have lost something to which we were passionately devoted. For St Ambrose in the homilies he wrote on St Luke refers it to the following story. There was a man called Theotimus who suffered from severe eye-trouble, and was told by the doctors to have no intercourse with his wife, or else he faced the threat of going blind. Unable to control his desire, he could not refrain from embracing his wife; and thus it was that in the full heat of sexual activity he remembered that the doctors had forbidden it, and uttered the words 'Farewell, friendly light,' as he realized that he had bought that very brief gratification at the price of losing his eyesight. There is a similar anecdote in Martial about a Phrygian with very bad sight who was addicted to the bottle. When the doctors told him to give up drinking, or he would go blind, he at once reached for his drinking-cup and bade farewell to his eyesight. 'Ask you the outcome? In that cup did lie / Wine for the Phrygian, poison for his eye.'

Ξένος ἔλθοι ὅστις ὀνήσει, The stranger who brings profit will be welcome. Theopompus, cited by Zenodotus, writes that this adage arose from a remark made by King Philip. After he had overthrown a city in Thessaly and sold into slavery all the strangers he found there, he used humorously to say 'The stranger who brings profit will be welcome.' It looks as though it came from an oracle or from some poet or other, for the Greek forms the second half of a hexameter line. The lesson of the adage is that only guests by whom we can make something can be sure of a welcome. Ovid:
'Come, Homer, with the Muses in your train: /
If empty-handed, out you go again.'

[greek], Parnoetes invented the obol. It will be possible to adapt this to people who have invented some new reward with which they can win over other men. They say it arose with an Athenian political leader called Callistrates, nicknamed Parnoetes. It was he who introduced the practice of distributing a small sum of money to jurors and those who attended meetings of the assembly; and the constant attacks of the comic poets turned this into a proverb.

'[greek] The Muses' doors are open. This adage will be in place whenever we wish to convey that someone has a fertile and ready intelligence, quick to absorb the noblest subjects of study, as though he had the blessing of the Muses, and they showed no reluctance to keep him supplied. Conversely, it will be possible to say of men whose minds work more slowly that, as they learn, the Muses' doors are closed. Or, when the point is that we ought not to keep learning, the gift of the Muses, to ourselves, but share it openly and without jealousy, as if we were kindling another man's lamp from our own. Recorded by Zenodotus.

[greek], The field of Mars. Cited by Suidas from the Peisander of Alexandrides, it was diverted to apply to those who clearly were equipped with the self-confidence of fighting-men, and operated by force rather than policy, with fists rather than fair phrases; no 'joining issue out of court' for them, but unprincipled clamour; might was their right. For them Hesiod has an admirable compound word cheirodikai, strong-arm justice. In general, a man's sphere of action is called in Greek his 'field.'

'[greek], To fight with silver spears, was used of those who, when some project cannot be completed in any other way, achieve their aim by bribery and gifts. Nothing is so difficult that money will not solve the problem; as Cicero elegantly puts it in his second speech against Verres, 'there is no sanctity which money will not violate, no fortress so strong that money will not take it by storm.' The proverb is said to stem from an oracle of the Pythian Apollo who, when consulted by King Philip how he could win some victory, replied as follows: Tight with spears of silver, and the day is yours,' hinting of course that he should incite certain people to betray their side with bribes, and thus get what he wanted.

Αρχύτου πλαταγὴ, Archytas' rattle, was a taunt levelled at any excessively garrulous and tiresome man. Archytas invented a sort of rattle made of bronze, to be given to children who wanted something to play with, to prevent their laying hands meanwhile on the household pots and pans. So Aristotle tells us in book 8 of the Politics. Suidas indicates that Archytas was a Pythagorean, and the teacher of Empedocles. Although there are references to several men of this name, it is generally agreed that this one, the philosopher from Tarentum, was the inventor of the device, for he is said to have been amazingly skilled in the mechanic arts. A pigeon made by him of wood was also famous, which his calculations balanced so skilfully that it could fly. However, Diogenes Laertius in his life of Archytas records that there was also an architect of this name, who wrote a book On Mechanism. The pigeon is also mentioned by Aulus Gellius, book 10 chapter 12, who gives this invention, on the authority of Favorinus, to Archytas the philosopher. But whichever of the two can claim the invention, it is generally agreed that it was a device of some kind of the sort that can omit a noise of its own accord. Hence it will not be absurd if we divert the expression to describe those who through some natural failing chatter aimlessly, regardless of place, subject and audience, who are called in Greek laloi, ametroepeis, akritomythoi and polymythoi, and in Latin garruli, locutuleii, rabulae, blaterones and linguaces. Of them Eupolis elegantly writes 'In talking excellent, in speaking null,' and Epicharmus not inelegantly 'In speech not gifted, of silence incapable.' Something of this sort was in use among the Romans too; they called it a citeria, and it was 'some sort of speaking image that never stopped talking,' which 'it was the custom to carry in procession as an entertainment. Hence Marcus Cato in his speech against Marcus Cecilius: "What more then can I say? I fully expect to see him carried in procession at the games as a citeria, and holding forth to the spectators.'" Thus there will be a proverbial air about phrases like As garrulous as a citeria, and Compared with him you might call a citeria dumb, and He could compete on his own with many citeriae.

'[greek], To shoot with a plough, is applied to those who do something heedlessly without foreseeing what will happen later, or who attempt to hurt someone else at great inconvenience to themselves. The man who attacks another by throwing a plough at him deprives himself, in order to gratify his rage, of a necessary object, the loss of which he will soon regret. Listed by Diogenianus. One might suppose that it originated in wartime, when men refashion ploughshares, spades, and hoes and the other implements of farming into implements of war. Plutarch uses it in his essay 'On Tranquillity of Mind' as if it indicated something profoundly absurd: 'For he is not unfortunate who wishes to shoot with a plough and hunt the hare with an ox.'

'[greek], An Athenian holds his hand out even on his deathbed. What gave rise to the adage was the insatiable greed of the people of Athens in fishing for gifts and hunting for sources of gain. Hence too the frequent jibes in Aristophanes against those who take bribes. The authority is Diogenianus.

[greek], Argus' hill. When someone was involved in immense misfortune. Can be adapted either to a place or to a piece of business that is exposed to disasters of various kinds. It arose, they say, from a hill of that name, which was notorious for constant murders and robbery.

[greek], A hungry ass does not notice the stick, suits those who, to fill their stomachs or their pockets, endure contempt of every kind. Recorded by Aristotle in book three of the Ethics: 'Since at this rate even donkeys would show courage when they are hungry; for even when beaten they do not stop eating.' He says we should not reckon a man courageous who endures ill-treatment at any price; otherwise asses, he thinks, would be far the most courageous, because when they are hungry no blows can separate them from their food. Clearly taken from Homer, who gives a most elegant description of a donkey's patience in Iliad 11: 'As when a donkey passing by a field of grain is too strong for the boys, an obstinate idle ass. Many the sticks that are broken on his back as he plunges into the deep standing corn and lays it waste. The boys beat him with sticks, but their strength is like a child's, and with much ado they drive him out at last when he has eaten his fill.'

[greek], Either the flower or the gourd, has the same force as if one were to say 'either death or life,' 'either gain or loss,' 'either victory or the opposite.' The Greek name of the gourd-flower is krinon, and there is no telling whether it will fade soon or will produce a gourd. Thus they conveyed by the flower the sense of death or hopes frustrated, and by the gourd the hope of life. Diphilus, cited by Zenodotus: 'Within seven days I wish, my aged friend, / To show you myself the gourd-flower or the gourd,' I can secure, that is, that you shall be either in good health or dead. This is not unlike what we find in Homer, Odyssey, book 4: 'He lives or he is dead; random talk is wrong,' which is said by a ghost that appears to Penelope in her sleep. So too the echo of this put by Horace in Teiresias' mouth: 'Son of Laertes, whatever I shall say, either will be or will not be.'

[greek], Naked are the Graces. The moral of this adage is that we should show open-hearted goodwill in sharing with our friends; or, that between friends there should be no pretences, no concealments, but everything bare and straightforward. For the poets imagine three Charites or Graces, to preside over humane and generous actions. Horace in the Odes: 'Boldly now the naked Grace and her twin sisters, with the Nymphs, lead on the dance,' and in another passage: 'And the Graces with loosened girdles.' Some apply the proverb to ungrateful people, because they strip the Graces, as it were, by always accepting kindness in some form and giving nothing in return. It will thus be appropriate for those who are reduced to want by their generosity, because whatever they get they give lavishly to their friends.

[greek], Crobylus' yoke, was commonly used of the partnership of two well-matches rascals, like those characters in Martial's Epigrams, book 8: 'Worst of wives and worst of husbands, I am surprised that you do not agree.' The source of the proverb is a certain brothel-keeper called Crobylus, who was the biggest rascal of them all. This man kept two prostitutes in his house by whose charms he ensnared many young men to their doom; and not content with that, when he had them in his power he used to rob them of all they had. Hence the phrase Crobylus' yoke, either because his equals in wickedness seemed worthy to be his yoke-fellows, or because he maintained a yoke, that is a pair, of prostitutes.

[greek], Mylus listening to everything, was applied to anyone who pretended not to hear and shammed deafness, while none the less picking up everything and listening with inquisitive ears. This looks as though it were taken from mola, the word for a mill, so often used as an observation-post by spies, for the Latin mola is mylos in Greek; or from the behaviour of some inquisitive character called Mylus. Zenodotus bears witness that Cratinus used this adage in his Cleobulinae. Hesychius points out that there was a comic poet called Mylos, and also that this was the name of a fish; he is thinking, I take it, of the mullet. Besides this, that myllos in Greek means curved, slanting and twisted (it is written with a double lambda). Of the Strobili of Carcinus I have spoken elsewhere. There are certain princes who have informers of this kind, pretending to be deaf and dumb that they may hear and report all the more.

' [greek], We ten Rhodians are ten ships, can be diverted for use against those who are over-confident of their own strength. It looks as though it came from the words of some thrasonical braggart who matched ten men against ten ships. Unless we would rather take it back to those lines in Homer: 'And Tlepolemus, the valiant son of Hercules, from Rhodes brought nine ships full of lordly Rhodians.'

[greek], A devious course. When some course of action is crafty and deceitful, or when we pursue one goal in public while heading towards another, and progress as it were by tunneling and roundabout ways towards the object of our efforts. The adage is derived from a special sort of race, called 'devious' because it demanded compliance with certain defined twistings and turnings, so that while in other races energy and speed were paramount, in this one skill and reasoning had more effect. A race of this kind is described by Virgil in his fifth book: 'Each of the three bands opens out pair by pair, breaking column as the groups wheel apart; then at a signal given turn about, and face each other with arms at the ready. After this they perform other movements and counter-movements.' And shortly afterwards: 'As once upon a time in lofty Crete the Labyrinth is fabled to have had its path entwined in walls through which a man could not see, and its thousand doubtful turnings left him bewildered, as the evidence he should have followed was falsified by confusions which he could neither detect nor retrace.' It might also be thought to be taken from mariners who, faced with a contrary wind, tack this way and that.

Theognis among his moral maxims: 'For Jove himself may not content us all, / Whether he holds rain back or lets it fall.' In our own day too there is a common saying that no one can be found who pleases everybody. For different people like different things, and Three guests I have, of wishes quite contrary; / As their tastes differ, so their orders vary.' Pindar in the eighth of his Olympians: 'But among men nothing will be equally delightful,' because of course some like one thing, some another, and What is one's own is beautiful.' This resembles that saying in the Gospel which I referred to in the outset of this work, when I was speaking of the respect due to proverbs: 'We have piped to you and you have not danced; we have mourned to you and you have not wept.'

[greek], For you will never make me believe that, persuade me as you may. This, which has a proverbial air, comes from Aristophanes. It is a stock type of exaggeration, used for conveying that something is quite impossible. It is like saying 'I shan't believe it, though I see it with my own eyes.'

[greek], Pylaea knows this and Tyttygias. A sort of riddle, used by the Ancients to suggest wealth acquired by improper means. Tyttygias was a rascal, whose practice was to steal slaves and goods belonging to other men, and sell them in Pylaea, a place in Arcadia; and thus he became very rich. Zenodotus is the authority.

[greek], Polycrates looks after my mother. The source of this adage is taken to be a historical event. They relate that Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, listed the mothers of all soldiers who had been killed in battle, and put them in the charge of the more well-to-do citizens for their maintenance, handing them over individually with the words 'I give you this woman to be your mother.' Zenodotus does not add how the adage was used, and so it is open to anyone to make his own guess at the sense which may suit it best. I myself think it can be used not unsuitably whenever someone is more than normally generous and painstaking in recommending his friends. Or when someone is anxious to do another man a service at the expense of a third party, in such a way that other people will find the money, and apart from a few generous words it will cost him nothing. This system is still current in our own day among princes: when their servants are too old to be any further use at court, they hand them over for maintenance to monasteries or to their richer citizens.

[greek], You praise yourself, is the half of an iambic line, with which anyone is taunted who praises himself and blows his own trumpet. The complete line runs as follows: 'Lady, / You praise yourself, as did Astydamas.' Astydamas was an actor, the son or Morsimus. It had been decreed that a statue should be set up in his honour in the theatre, to commemorate his powerful and expert performance in the part of Parthen[op]aeus. He himself therefore composed an inscription enshrining his own praises, and brought it before the popular assembly for approval before it was added to the statue. It was, however, decreed by a public vote that the unpopular wording should not be added. This forthwith became a standing jest in comedy, and later passed into a proverb, so that even now there is a popular saying not without its point to the effect that his neighbours look askance at a man who sings his own praises. Listed by Zenodotus. The inscription written by Astydamas for his own statue still exists, and is quoted by Suidas: 'Would I had lived in their days, or they in mine, / Those men who are thought to bear the palm for beauty of language! / For I should have been judged by Truth, and have left her court without fear of a rival; / But, as it is, they expose me to the verdict of Time, who are themselves beyond the reach of envy.' These lines have been rendered in such elegant Latin by Conradus Goclenius, professor of Latin in the university of Louvain - a young man who is an accurate scholar in both the ancient tongues and wonderfully skilled in both types of composition, whether you ask for prose or verse, and who will one day hold a high place among the first leaders of learning - that there is no call for me to attempt an alternative version. Goclenius' Latin verses run as follows... Used also by Julian in one of his letters addressed to Basil: 'For I praised myself as did Astydamas.'

[greek] A band from Syrbene, was a catch phrase in old days for a group of performers whose playing or singing was disorderly and chaotic. For syrba is thought by some to be the sound used by swineherds when addressing their charges, as a result of which syrba is stretched to mean a disorderly noise. In any case, Hesychius explains syrba as meaning 'accompanied by uproar,' and shortly thereafter he adds that syrbê in Greek meant a case in which musical pipes were kept, so that a syrbeneus was a word for a fluteplayer, or for a man who made a great deal of noise. Athenaeus uses the word in book 15: 'When uproar overwhelmed the party, "Who" he said "are this band of Syrbenaeans?"' for that is the form of the word consistently used by Athenaeus. He has it again on the next page of the same book, and explains somewhat further on, by reference to Clearchus, what a 'band of Syrbenaeans' is: one in which every individual plays or sings what he thinks fit, and pays no attention to the instructions of the conductor of the band, who tells them how they ought to play. I once witnessed in Paris the performance of a ludicrous comic scene, in which a number of people were singing at the same time, but with the intervals between them so arranged that all was perfect discord. This had been organized by an expert musician, for it would be beyond an unskilled person. The image seems to be taken from the familiar discordant grunting of pigs. It will not be out of place if applied to people who are full of mutual discord and complaints, or when our ears are assailed by the discordant performance of unskilled musicians.

Ησίοδειον γῆρας, An old age worthy of Hesiod, was the name for one that was prolonged and lively; for on Hesiod's long life there is an epigram by Pindar, which runs as follows: 'Twice childhood was your lot, and twice the grave; / Men's arbiter of wisdom, Hesiod, hail!' When he says that Hesiod was twice a child, he thinks, I take it, of that advanced old age which recalls infancy, in accordance with the proverb I have recorded elsewhere: Old men are children twice over. Further, when he says the poet was twice buried, he alludes, if I am not mistaken, to a story mentioned by Plutarch in his 'Dinner of the Seven Sages.' when, being suspected, he was killed in Locri, and his corpse cast into the sea, it was taken up by a school of dolphins which landed it on the beach at Rhium. The Locrians were performing the traditional sacrifices at that point, when they recognized the corpse of Hesiod, newly dead, and abandoning everything else, they set out to find those guilty of his murder and, having seized them, flung them alive into the sea and burnt their homes. Hesiod they buried in the Nemeum, but they concealed the place of his burial on account of the people of Orchomenus who, on the advice of an oracle, tried to preserve his remains in their own country. Hence the known fact that both the Nemeans and the Orchomenians claim to possess the tomb of Hesiod, in the same way that many cities claim to be the birthplace of Homer. Unless we prefer to understand that he was buried the first time when he was cast into the sea. And so the reader should consider whether instead of antibolêsas received as your lot, we should not read antioôsas, which governs a genitive when used in the sense of to catch up with or obtain.

Λωτοῦ ἔφαγες, You have tasted the lotus, was said of those who lingered unduly long in foreign parts as though they had forgotten their return. One may also use it neatly of men who, having once tasted dishonourable pleasures, cannot be recalled to their original pursuits. Taken from the story of the Lotus-eaters of whom Homer tells in the ninth book of the Odyssey, where he relates how the companions of Ulysses, having once tasted the lotus when they were among the lotus-eating tribes, refused to return to the ship unless driven with blows. 'But they gave them lotus to taste; and anyone who ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus was no longer willing to send back news or to return, but there among the Lotus-eater folk they wished to remain, plucking the lotus-fruit, and to forget their journey home.' The lotus, which Dioscorides in book 1 says is also called celtis, is a tree, of which Pliny, book 13, says 'Its fruit in those parts is so delicious that it has even given its name to the inhabitants and to their country, where strangers find too warm a welcome, for they forget their native land.' There is also a plant of the same name which, like the tree, has a most delicate taste; there is a long account of it in Theophrastus On Plants, book 4 chapter 9. This proverb also I found in the collection of a comparatively recent author, and since it has a certain elegance, I have seen no objection to its being added here.

Εκ λύκου στόματος, From the jaws of the wolf. When something which seemed already to be utterly lost is unexpectedly recovered - when, for example, money seized by pirates or by a rapacious tyrant is returned to one by some unforeseen chance, for things thus recovered are all the more welcome. So Horace in the Odes: 'Or a kid rescued from the wolf.' The image is familiar. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus. Derived clearly from that fable of Aesop, which tells how, when a bone had stuck in a wolf's throat, a stork, having secured the promise of a reward, inserted her head and pulled it out. When she then demanded her recompense, she was mocked by the wolf, who pointed out that she had received a very large reward already, in being allowed to pull her head back out of a wolf's mouth.

Αγαθοὶ δ᾽ ἀρϊδάκρυες ἄνδρες, Any good man is much inclined to tears, was said of those who were easily stirred to pity and moved by prayers; for those who show pity are described as shedding tears. Ovid: 'Such as might move even wild beasts to weep.' And similarly Horace uses the same word illachrymabilis, not prone to tears, of Pluto, because no prayers can move him: Though with three hundred beeves each passing day You seek, my friend, to soften Pluto's heart, Who knows no tears. And Dido in Virgil, declaiming against Aeneas' hardness of heart: Did he sigh when I wept, or turn his gaze? Did he give way and weep? Or spare a thought For her that loved him? It can also be made to refer to Heraclitus, whose custom was to weep perpetually over human affairs. Used against the hard-hearted and unpitying, whose heartstrings are hard as bone. It will also be possible to adapt it to another point: that good men as a rule have to contend with poverty and are compelled to carry a load of suffering. The adage is listed by Zenodotus.

Bacchyris, or Bocchyris, for I find both forms. Plutarch in his life of Demetrius calls him Bocchoris, showing that a very precise verdict was called by custom Βοκχόρεως κρισιν, A judgment of Bocchoris. He was a king of Egypt, whose sense of justice in the settlement of disputes was so well known and so incorruptible that in common parlance, if they wished to convey an idea of the strictest justice and integrity, they called the man a Bocchyris, exactly as you might speak of a Rhadamanthus or a Minos. Plutarch in his essay 'On Mistaken Silence' bears witness to a story current about him to the effect that, though he was by nature serious and austere, Isis used to send the asp to him to coil round his head and shadow him from ab,ove, that he might be frightened by this portent into giving a just verdict. The adage is recorded by Suidas. It can also be used of those who never pass judgment in haste on any question; for they say that it was this king's habit never to express an opinion except in a case which he had fully mastered and arrived by certain evidence at the truth. Yet one verdict given by this Bocchoris was criticized by Lamia the courtesan. There was a young man in Egypt who was madly in love with a courtesan called Theonis; but she demanded an enormous price for her favour for one night. In the meantime it so fell out that the young man dreamed that he was sleeping with Theonis, and by this delusion he was cured of his passion and ceased to pester the prostitute. When she heard what had happened, she sent for the man and demanded the stated price. Agreement being impossible, they appealed to Bocchoris sitting in judgment. Having heard the facts, he decided that the young man should produce in a bag the sum of money that she had demanded, and in the presence and full view of Theonis should turn it this way and that as he held it in his hand, while she meanwhile laid hold of its shadow, seeing that a shadow is the proper equivalent for a dream. This verdict was criticized as unfair by Lamia the courtesan. The dream' she said 'released the young man from his love of copulation, but the shadow did not release Theonis from her love of money.' So Plutarch in his life of Demetrius.

When a man tried to do something, but ungracefully and against Minerva's will, as the saying goes, they used to say it was a camel dancing, for instance if a severe and straitlaced person attempts to seem an elegant and merry fellow, doing violence to his nature and his genius. Saint Jerome cites it expressly as a proverb, and turns it against Helvidius: 'It made us laugh' he says 'to see the proverb fulfilled in you: we saw the camel dancing.' Jerome pillories the folly of a man who wished to be taken for a stylish author, though utterly foreign to the Muses.

[greek], The dog asks for his chain, was said when someone cast himself into slavery or into some misfortune. Taken from dogs which offer themselves to be chained of their own accord when bribed by food. Zenodotus is the authority. Hesychius points out that the same sense is given by The ox asks for his chains.

Κύων ἐπὶ δεσμὰ, Chiot against Coan, was used of any emphatically unequal comparison; for in the game of knuckle-bones the throw called a Chiot corresponded to a one, and the Coan to a six. What in Greek is called a Chiot is our 'dog,' and their Coan or exites we call a six. Also, just as the Coan was reckoned a lucky throw, the Chiot was one of the unlucky ones. Hence Persius: The summit of my scientific ambition was to know what that lucky dice would bring me, how much that ruinous ace would sweep off.' The six seems to have been lucky in itself, but to have been thought unlucky if joined with a dog. For Martial writes 'No six and dog my ivory dice-box shake.' If this is correct, the adage will be suitable for the comparison not only of unequal things but of things which conflict: if, for instance, one were to compare a plebeian with a king, it is Chiot against Coan, but between a young man and an old one, there is opposition and not merely inequality. The adage is mentioned by Zenodotus, Hesychius and Suidas, except that Suidas writes endon, within, for hen, one, and exô, outside, for hex, six. Whether this is due to a mistake by a scribe, or we are meant to understand the inside and outside, I leave for discussion by the learned. There is a reference all the time to the character of the two sets of people, [Chiots and Coans], neither of whom was without blemish, and the Chiots particularly. Thus it will be found to resemble the adage Cretan and Cretan.

Hunger is the best sauce is a familiar example of the aphorisms ascribed to Socrates. He used these words to ridicule the luxury of the Athenians, who used relishes of all kinds and laborious confections to give some flavour to their dishes when the best recipe to secure this was hunger, which is not only the best sauce but the cheapest. Nothing tastes better than the food eaten by a hungry man. Even in our own day there is a proverb in common use to the effect that hunger makes even raw beans taste of sugar. Antiphanes, cited by Stobaeus: 'Hunger makes all things sweet except itself.' And what hunger does for food, thirst does for drink. 'Darius in the course of his flight drank muddy water polluted with corpses, and said he had never enjoyed a drink so much; evidently he had never drunk when he was thirsty.' The same view is thus expressed by Xenophon in the fourth book of Athenaeus: 'Barley bread and cress are good eating when one is hungry, and water drawn straight from the river is good to drink when one is thirsty.' In the same passage he records a story of Socrates which is not without its point; he used often to walk up and down in front of his house until late at night, and when they asked him why, he replied 'I am looking for an appetizer for my supper.' The story of Dionysius who, when he could not stomach the black broth served in the public meals at Sparta, was told by the cook that this was not surprising, because the sauce was lacking (by which he meant exercise in the wrestlingschool or on the running-track before supper), I have told elsewhere. The proverb either started with Socrates, or was already in common circulation when he used it. Cicero in book two of the Definibus bonorum: Tie would say what I hear Socrates saying, who holds pleasure of no account, that hunger is the best relish for food, and thirst best for drink.' It will be possible to add something to the point of this proverb, if it is diverted from its original meaning, to the study of the humanities for example, which are more enjoyable, the greater one's thirst for good literature. And 'pleasure' is 'more pleasant made by sparing use.'

Η Φάνου θύρα, Phanus' front door, was levelled as a taunt at anyone who had kept watch on something to no purpose; for example, if it so happened that a man's wife was tainted with adultery, in spite of all the jealous care with which he had watched over her. It arose, they say, from a certain Phanus, a usurer or (according to others) a blind man, who had blocked the door of his storeroom in such a way that it could not be opened without making a noise, but for all that it was opened by a servant, and his stores removed. Others tell how this Phanus had a wife of very dubious loyalty, and since he suspected her of adultery, he shut the door of his hall so that it could not be opened without creaking and making a noise. When however her lover gained admittance over the roof tiles, the neighbours took to talking by way of a joke of Phanus' front door,' and the phrase afterwards passed into common currency. Perhaps the same as the one recorded by Eustathius on the last book of the Odyssey, Phanias' door, from a certain Phanias who pretended that he had great riches stored in his house.

Saint Jerome in his Catalogue of Distinguished Authors lists among others Philo Judaeus, as having achieved such a mastery of style and of all the knowledge available in Greek, and reproduced so successfully the amplitude and richness of Platonic language, that he can be called a second Plato. This is supported by the common currency in Greek of a phrase about the two of them: Either Plato imitates Philo or Philo Plato. A work by him survives in which he deals with the lives of sundry illustrious Hebrews from Abraham onwards. And he deals with them with a view to imparting not so much a knowledge of history as a set of principles and rule of life, adapting everything, that is, to the purposes of moral allegory, so that he ought to be read above all by theologians. He has a forthrightness and at the same time nobility of style, with a touch of inspiration about it, which again reminds us of Plato. He delights in symbols and in the mystical meaning of numbers, which is already a habit with Pythagoras and Plato. The building of character is the purpose to which everything is fitted, and in this point also he does not disagree with Plato. It will be possible to turn this figuratively to suit any persons who have a very strong degree of resemblance; for that the original dictum was used not literally but as a metaphor is sufficiently shown by the fact that Philo is known to have lived many years later than Plato. In any case when used to impart criticism it will have a more proverbial ring: if one were to say, for instance, 'Either Africa cretizes or Crete africizes' or 'Either Galba neronized or Nero galbized.' This form of expression is evidently related to that Platonic saying, 'much praised in song' as Aristides calls it, that communities would be happy if either kings were to imitate philosophers or philosophers were to imitate kings.' (I remember some wag once in Orleans, who had heard lawyers holding forth in the sort of voice used in those parts by dealers selling wine, and commented 'Either these fellows borrow their voices from the wine-merchants, or the wine-merchants borrow from them.')

Ανδρὶ λυδῷ πραγματα οὐκ ἦν, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐξελθὼν ἐπρίατο, A man from Lydia was free of troubles, but he went out and acquired them for himself. Said customarily when someone cannot bear to be idle, and sets out to collect business and trouble on his own account. Plutarch in his 'Against Colotes': 'But he seems to me like the proverbial Lydian, to open more than one door against himself, but to plunge Epicurus in many very serious and insoluble problems.' Taken from Croesus, king of Lydia, who at one stage was successful and enjoyed great prosperity, but provoked Cyrus to attack him, and was defeated and reduced to disaster. Zenodotus is the authority.

Ανδρὸς γερόντος μή ποτ᾽ εἰς πυγὴν ὁρᾶν, Never look into the arse of an old man; do not, that is, make a request of someone with which he cannot comply, as for instance if one were to demand eloquence of a philosopher, precise logical reasoning of an orator, and of an old man the fluency and elegance of a young one. The image is too indecent for me to be willing to expound it, and at the same time clear enough to require no exposition. It is recorded by Zenodotus.

Αμαῖα τὴν Αζησίαν μετῆλθεν, Amaea has come upon Azesia, used to be used of something much missed and long sought after. Didymus is our authority for the fact that the people of Troezen called Ceres Amaea and Proserpine Azesia. The story is familiar, how Proserpine was carried off by Pluto to the Elysian Fields, and Ceres sought her daughter all over the world. This is recorded by Plutarch in his collection of the proverbs current in Alexandria.

Αλλ᾽ ὥσπερ ἥρως ἐν ἀσπιδι ξενίσαι σὲ βούλομαι, But like a hero I wish to entertain you in my shield, used to be said when someone tried to do his friends a service in reliance on his own skill or prowess. It stems from the fact that heroes in Antiquity remained continuously under arms and almost lived in their shields; so that if their friends had need of anything that force of arms could provide, they produced it promptly, for courage was their only asset. In Homer too, heroes are entertained on ox-hides, and in Virgil Evander receives Aeneas 'on a hairy lion's skin.' It was with hides that shields were covered.

Τοῦ διὸς σάνδαλον, Jove's slipper, was used ironically of anyone who wished to be taken for something of great importance because of his association with some prince; if a man, for instance, were insolent and peremptory because he was a royal cook, the emperor's footman or the pope's barber, he will properly be called Jove's slipper. Nor is there any reason why it should not be applied to things, suppose a man were to think a royal horse or coat marvellous, as the vulgar custom is, for no better reason than that it belongs to the king. Cited by Suidas from Eupolis.

When things have begun to seem more hopeful, they say Light has dawned. Euripides in the Orestes: 'For your misfortunes and for mine the dawn has come.' A reference to Menelaus, from whose arrival they hoped for some remedy for their troubles. Cicero, in the first of his speeches against Antony: 'Light seemed somehow to have dawned, with the removal not only of the tyranny which we had suffered but even of the fear of tyranny.' Light was in fact regarded as a good omen in Antiquity, as we learn from book two of Marcus Varro On the Latin Language, for he thinks that mane, the Latin for morning, comes from an archaic word manum meaning good; 'and it is a superstitious feeling of this kind that moves the Greeks, when lights are brought in, to greet them with the words "Good is the light.'" We too, when a lamp is brought in, bless it in our turn. For light is commonly identified with life; hence 'to cut short this hated light,' and 'I tire of looking on the dome of heaven.' Euripides in the Iphigeneia in Aulis: 'It is very sweet for mortals to behold the light;' and in Greek the living are called simply 'those who see.' The Egyptians used a lamp as the symbol of life, because they thought life was nothing but fire nourished by moisture, as a flame is by oil.

Λύκος ἀετὸν φεύγει, The wolf runs away from the eagle. When an imminent danger cannot be avoided; for the eagle has wings, and the wolf tries in vain to escape. Recorded by Diogenianus, and mentioned also by Zenodotus. Nor do they indicate the source of the proverb; I never heard of eagles interfering with wolves.

Λύκος πρὸ τῆς βοῆς σπεύδει, The wolf is off before the shouting starts. When someone knows he has done wrong, and is himself afraid before he is accused; for a wolf makes off at top speed the moment it has seized its prey, so as to run no risk when the countrymen raise the alarm. Diogenianus is the authority.

A brothel-keeper in Plautus' Poenulus says: 'They want to snatch the lamb from the wolf; what utter nonsense!' When someone tries in vain to recover the prey on which some robber has once got his claws; for it seems desperate to hope that a wolf will relinquish a lamb which is once within its grip. Close to one of which I have spoken elsewhere: From the jaws of the wolf.

Plautus in the Poenulus: 'He who knows not the way to the sea should find a river as a guide.' The man, that is, who cannot easily finish something must needs finish it as best he can. This can also be adapted to convey another meaning, that the man who has no sense of his own should take orders from those who obviously have more sense than he has. Another too is possible: he who is ignorant of the principles of the good life should model himself on those whose way of life wins general approval. For a river, after long wanderings it may be, brings one eventually down to the sea; for into the sea it must run. This is close to that saying: 'The man who does not know the way should follow the man who carries the flag.' Cato the censor used to say, not without point, of those who put up for office from time to time that 'like men who do not know where they are going, they always look for someone they can follow who is carrying the flag, that they may not lose their way.' For magistrates were preceded, according to custom, by a lictor or someone carrying a staff.

Εκὼν ἀέκοντί γε θυμῷ, Willingly, though with an unwilling heart. A half-line from Homer, from the fourth book of the Iliad. To be used when someone pretends that he does not want what he really desires, or the reverse. Terence uses a not dissimilar image in the Andria: 'You were compelled of your own free will.' Sometimes said of a man in a quandary, who cannot make up his mind, as in Euripides in the Hecuba: 'But he, unwillingwilling.' It also says in the secret proverbs of the Hebrews that the sluggard desires and desires not.

Γυπὸς σκιὰ, A vulture's shadow, was used of a worthless man. Recorded by Diogenianus. To me it seems better adapted to legacy-hunters, or to rapacious characters of other kinds who brood over their prey. It corresponds to the adage If you're a vulture, wait for your carcass.

Παρὼν ἀποδημεῖ, Though present he is wandering, can be used of the man who pays no attention to what is said because his thoughts are taken up with other things. Hence when we tell someone to pay attention, we often say things like 'Follow closely' and 'Please attend' and 'Do not let your attention wander.' Even in our own day those whose attention wanders are commonly said to be all abroad and not at home. Terence in the Eunuchus: 'When in that soldier's presence, be yourself far away/ present in body, that is, but absent in spirit. Conversely, lovers even in absence are present one with the other, as Virgil says of Dido in book 4: 'She sees and hears him when he is not there.' Theodoritus of Cyrene in the first book of his Therapeutic Art cites from Heraclitus of Ephesus Those who are too stupid to understand what they hear are like the deaf; the proverb confirms that though present they are far away.' Aristophanes too in the Knights: 'You're always gaping at the speaker, but for all that you are present, your mind is far away.'

Παραλοῦμαι, I will bathe with you, was a familiar expression when a man wormed his way into someone else's society, or admitted someone into his inner circle, so that the poorer of the two escapes expense. Suidas tells us that it was an old custom for the rich to visit the baths in the company of poor men, so that those who did not possess their own equipment of scrapers, sponges, oil-flasks and so on could borrow the utensils of the rich. He also cites the Anagyrus of Aristophanes: 'But all must bathe together and let their sponges go,' as though those in modest circumstances would get this advantage from going to the baths in company with the rich, that they would save the wear on their own sponges. And so it seems to me that this could be used not inaptly when one man does another a small favour, which he can confer without inconvenience, and expects gratitude as for some great benefit; if a cardinal, for instance, were to confer on a man the great privilege of being called his friend, which costs the donor nothing and does only a little good to the recipient, one might well say that they went to the bath together. One codex has paradyomai, I strip off my clothes with you, as though to convey that we plunge in together.

Πεύκης τρόπον, Fir-tree fashion. When someone is utterly destroyed, root and branch, so that he can in no way be reinstated, he is said to be destroyed 'fir-tree fashion'; for it is said that a fir, once cut down, never shoots again. This proverb is mentioned by Staphylus, who is cited by Diogenianus. It is mentioned also by Suidas.

Πρόκριδος ἀκόντια, The darts of Procris. Said of those who, like a deadly marksman, always achieve whatever they determine to do. Taken from the well-known fable, told by Ovid among others in book seven of his Metamorphoses, of Cephalus, who threw a spear that was sure to hit its target, and killed his wife Procris, whom he had taken for a wild creature. The opposite of this is that line in Horace: 'Not always will the bow hit what it threatens,' that is, you will not always achieve what you want.

Προμέρου κύνες, The hounds of Promerus. Used by custom when someone paid the penalty by a new sort of calamity to those whom he had injured some time before. Promerus was an officer in the royal service who had an excessive hatred for the tragic poet Euripides, because he had once complained of him to the king on some grounds, I know not what. On a later occasion, therefore, he turned some fierce hounds on the poet, which killed and ate him. Thus, whenever some powerful person takes offence, and puts people up and eggs them on to make trouble for you, it will be the moment to say 'Promerus' hounds.' This agrees with one of which I have spoken in another place, A dog's revenge. Listed by Diogenianus.

Αρχων ἄκουε καὶ δικαίως κᾀδίκως, When in office, expect comments fair and unfair alike. They say that this adage is taken from the elegiac poetry of Solon, although the line is an iambic trimeter. Its point is that he who is engaged in bearing office in the state must have very long-suffering ears, and grow accustomed to hear himself both well and ill spoken of while remaining unmoved, nor should he be easily diverted from the right course by the plaudits or curses of the populace. With this those lines in Sophocles are in agreement, in the Antigone: 'A city's chosen lord must learn to hear / Small things and just things and their opposites.' We can adapt to the same purpose the reported saying of one of the Roman emperors, that in a free state men's tongues should also be free; nor is it surprising or of great importance if princes allow people to say what they like, while they themselves are free to do as they like. Besides which, the common people have grown accustomed to passing different judgments on the actions of princes, for one man approves and another condemns; but a prince ought to have too lofty a spirit to think such praise worth seeking or such criticism worthy of notice, and should set his sights on one thing only, the good of the commonwealth. Here belongs that saying of Alexander who, when someone had reported that he had his critics, replied 'It is a property of kings to be ill spoken of when they have done well.'

Αστραπὴ ἐκ πυέλου, A flash in the pan. Of the empty threats of those who have no power to harm. The flash which is produced, by some sort of imitation of lightning, by the oscillation of polished vessels or from water, has no power to damage and frightens only children. In our own day too there are mirrors which imitate a flash of lightning when oscillated in the sun; but that is not the true lightning, which, as Pliny says, 'strikes mountains and seas.' The proverb is listed by Diogenianus. It is also alluded to by Augustine, or the author whoever he was of the De quinque heresibus: 'Let us not be recalled by a crowd of enemies or the appearance of armed men, nor frightened by the glitter of weapons as though made of glass.' Though I think we should read vitra, 'Weapons that glitter like glass.'

Ατὰρ ἐκ καθαρῶν ἀχύρων τετρύγηκας σιτίον, But it is from mere chaff that you have threshed your wheat; you have undertaken a sterile and fruitless task. The adage arose among countryfolk, when their crops have failed to grow and they carry nothing home to their barns except straw and chaff. Listed by Diogenianus.

Ατρέως ὄμματα, The eyes of Atreus, was used to describe a fierce and savage aspect. It was with eyes of this sort that Atreus was presented in tragedy, who set before his brother Thyestes his own sons to eat, because his wife was tainted with adultery.

Αφωνος ἱππαρχίων, Hipparchion loses his voice. When someone falls silent suddenly, at a moment when people specially want to hear what he has to say. It is a by no means rare occurrence for some individuals that when they have to speak before an audience their 'voice sticks in their throat,' as though they were terrified. It is said that this happened to Theophrastus, who was otherwise a very ready speaker in company. On such occasions as these, therefore, there may well be a place for this adage. They say that in Greece in the old days there were two leading lyre-players, Hipparchion and Rufinus. At the regular games celebrated every nine years at Juliopolis these two were to engage in a contest; and it so happened that Hipparchion was unnerved by the uproar in the theatre and lost his voice; hence this became a popular joke. Zenodotus is the authority.

Α φιλοχρηματία σπάρταν ἕλοι, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδέν. Hunger for gold will Sparta captive make, and nothing else. Of those who can be overcome by money alone, and are otherwise invincible. The adage takes its rise from an oracle, which replied to an enquiry by the Spartan kings Alcamenes and Theopompus that the Spartans would not be defeated until they began to set a value on gold and silver. It corresponds to a saying of Philip, king of Macedon, who thought no citadel so strong that it could not be taken, provided it was accessible to an ass laden with gold. It corresponds also to the story of Danae, whom no precautions could protect from the insidious shower of gold. Cicero mentions this in book 2 of the De officiis, and Plutarch in his 'Customs of the Spartans.'

Among the numerous lines in Homer which, as Macrobius tells us, were once current as proverbs, I would place near the top of the list one from book two of the Iliad: 'A wise prince should not sleep the whole night through.' The message of the proverb is that watchful care is specially appropriate for princes, who bear such a load of business on their shoulders. So it is with Aeneas in Virgil: while others sleep or indulge in pleasure, he either lies awake, or at the least is aroused, and is painted as thoughtful, serious, and full of planning for the future, 'But pious Aeneas all night long full of thought,' and again, 'Aeneas, can you prolong your sleep at such a juncture?' and again 'Art thou awake, Aeneas child of the gods? Awake!' A distinguished example of this is provided by Epaminondas, the famous Theban general. When the people of Thebes during several days of public holiday were indulging with some freedom in drink and abandoning themselves to pleasure, he alone was awake and sober, and went round the city walls, checking the weapons. When asked why he did so, he replied that 'he was sober and wakeful in order that the rest might be free to drink and sleep.' So Plutarch records in his essay 'To An Uneducated Ruler.' To return to the quotation I have just given from Homer, the words are spoken to Agamemnon by a Dream personified, which bears the likeness of Nestor. The whole passage runs as follows: 'Sleepest thou, son of Atreus and sage Hippodamas? A wise prince should not sleep the whole night through, to whom the people are entrusted, and such a load of care.' Again in Iliad 10 Agamemnon alone is portrayed as wakeful while all the rest are asleep: 'Down by the ships all the other Achaean chieftains lay all night long in the gentle bonds of sleep. Not so the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, shepherd of the people; sweet sleep held him not, for his mind was full of thought.' In the same way he shows us Jove awake in Iliad 2: 'Then did the other gods, and men that marshalled chariots, sleep all night long, but no sweet sleep held Jove as he pondered in his heart.' Plutarch, in that same essay which I have just quoted, tells us something not irrelevant to the proverb, and well worth remembering in itself. 'It was the custom of the king of Persia always to have one chamberlain on whom the duty was laid of entering the royal bedchamber every morning and waking the king with the following words: "Arise, o king, and consider the business which Mesoromasdes instructed you to consider.'" If a prince were learned and wise, he would have no need of any such chamberlain to remind him of his duty; but reason herself will be always in his bosom, repeating such words as 'Consider' and 'not sleep the whole night through.' Plato in the seventh book of the Laws praises wakefulness on many grounds, and particularly in princes. I will subjoin his words: 'Princes who are wakeful in their cities in the night are a terror to the wicked, alike to their enemies and their citizens.' And a little earlier in the same passage: Tor no one when he is asleep is good for anything.' For they are asleep who act in a listless manner, and sometimes they achieve their purpose, but not often. So Pindar in his tenth Olympian is right when he says that 'Joy that has cost no toil falls to few men's lot.'

Plutarch in the essay entitled 'That we ought not to borrow': 'For there will be the ridicule expressed in the proverb I cannot carry a she-goat and you load me with an ox.' When a man refuses a lighter burden and demands to have something far heavier put upon him; if, for example, from reluctance to suffer poverty (for that is the subject to which Plutarch adapts it) one were to entangle oneself with money-lenders, a burden which even rich men find hard to bear.

Οὐ γὰρ πώποτ᾽ ἐμὰς βοῦς ἤλασαν, οὐδὲ μὲν ἵππους, For they have never driven off my cows nor yet my horses, was clearly used in the old days as a proverbial formula for 'They have never hurt me nor done me an injury,' when we maintain that there is no reason why we ought to hate this man or that. Plutarch in his essay 'That we ought not to borrow': 'And do not think that I say this because I have declared war on the money-lenders, for they have never driven off my cows nor yet my horses,' they have never, that is, deprived me of anything of mine. This will be more like a proverb, the further it is transferred from its straightforward sense. It is taken from the first book of Homer's Iliad, where Achilles in his quarrel with Agamemnon maintains that he has no reason to engage in war with the Trojans except to oblige Agamemnon: 'I did not come hither on account of the Trojan warriors, to fight against them, for they have done me no harm; they have never driven off my cows nor yet my horses, nor did they ever lay waste my harvests on the deep soil of Phthia, nurse of heroes.' This originates in the customs of a bygone age, when men still led a pastoral life, and the prime cause of warfare was the rustling of cattle, as Homer elegantly suggests in Iliad 18, when he is describing the shield of Achilles... That no one may complain that I do not think highly of these lines, I have translated them as follows: 'Aloof from them there sat two watchmen of the folk, on the look-out in case they might see sheep and cows with crumpled horns. And at once there they were, and with them went two herdsmen playing on their pipes, and they foresaw no trap. But the watchers when they saw them ran down, and quickly then did they cut to pieces the herds of cattle and the fair flocks of sheep with white fleeces, and killed the herdsmen.'

Αὐδαίμων ὁ μηδὲν ὀφείλων, Happy is he that owes nothing. A familiar aphorism in Greek, the truth of which will easily be confirmed many times over by anyone who has made the experiment of being heavily in debt. Those without this experience should read Plutarch's essay 'That we ought not to borrow,' and he will easily discover how miserable it is to be in debt. What can be more calamitous than so often to turn red with shame, so often to put a bold face on things, to be in constant state of running away, of hiding, of telling lies and covering up; to be the humble suppliant one day and importunate claimant the next; to suffer demands in public for repayment, to be avoided, to be pointed out by the finger of scorn - never, in short, to be one's own master? All these troubles, and many others beside them, go with being in debt. There is a Greek epigram on the same theme, bearing the name of Automedon, which runs like this: 'First on the list of happy men is he who owes no one anything, second the bachelor, third he who is childless. If one goes mad and marries, he gets his reward if he can bury his spouse forthwith and pocket a large dowry. Learn then this lesson and know yourself wise; let Epicurus waste his time enquiring where the void is and what the atoms are.' Plutarch, in the essay called 'That We Ought Not To Borrow,' says that among the Persians there were two sins; the first was to be in debt, and next after that, to tell lies, because they thought these were closely connected, seeing that those who have borrowed heavily are often driven to falsehood. What Plutarch tells us is to be found in Herodotus, in the first book.

Those who give some command in an arrogant and contemptuous manner are said to convey their meaning by the snap of a finger. St Jerome in his letter to Rusticus the monk, used the phrase of a very proud and supercilious man who, when about to say something, demanded silence by a snap of his fingers, and then in a similarly pompous way brought out his words with long intervals between them, 'so that you might think it was a fit of the hiccoughs and not someone talking.' This gesture seems to have been typical of masters telling their servants to perform some menial task. Martial in book 3 in his attack on Zoilus: 'Some eunuch knows the signal when he snaps his fingers,' and in his book of distichs: 'When I'm summoned with a snap of the fingers, and the houseboy is slow off the mark, how often have the cushions taken over the task which is properly mine!' Cicero in book 3 of the De officiis: 'If therefore a good man were to possess this power of insinuating his name into rich men's wills by a mere snap of his fingers, he would never make use of this power, not even if he were perfectly satisfied that no one at all would ever suspect what he had done.' This resembles the phrase about Jove nodding his head in agreement or refusal, which is quoted from Homer by Pliny in his Letters. And people are said to do things 'on the nod,' who achieve some result with the minimum of effort. Also 'to obey someone's lightest nod,' of those who hasten to comply.

Υν ὁρίνει, He rouses the boar, was used of someone with an appetite for quarrels. For a wild boar when challenged makes straight for its challenger. Experts in hunting tell us that if a man threatens a boar with his spear, even if the boar was already in pursuit of someone else, it will turn immediatelyand attack the man who has challenged it, not even avoiding his spear-point.