Adagia 1701–1800

[greek], The third to the Deliverer. Proculus Diadochus, in his essay on the three parts of the soul as analysed by Plato and the four kinds of virtue, made use of this adage in the words I quote: 'But having solved these questions and distinguished the parts of the soul in accordance with their essence, now for the third to the Deliverer, as they call it.' Proculus' meaning is that, after two points have been dealt with, there remains a third, how four virtues are to be related to those three parts of the soul. Proculus seems to imitate a phrase in Plato's Charmides: 'Once again then, I said, a third to the Deliverer; let us reconsider this, as it were, from the beginning.' He seems to have made the same allusion, though less openly, in the Laws, book 3: 'But that third Deliverer of yours, when he saw that the government was still above itself and showing too much spirit, imposed on it as a sort of bridle the power of the ephors.' His point is that three controls have been built into the Spartan constitution, to prevent its violent change into a despotism. The first was the addition of a second family as an authorized source of recruitment for their kings; for at first only one family was eligible. Secondly, the influence of the nobles and leading men was balanced by the authority of the twenty-eight older citizens, which in major questions of state was reckoned equal with that of the kings. Last but not least, there was the institution of the five ephors, whom a king was compelled to obey. All this, he thinks, was arranged by divine providence to safeguard the state, and that is why he says The third Deliverer.' The adage is taken from Pindar, from hymn six of the Isthmians, where with reference to the third cup drunk in honour of Jupiter the Deliverer we find these words: 'May it be mine to make ready a third [bowl] for the Deliverer at Olympia, and pour a drink-offering for Aegina in music sweet as honey.' The meaning of the lines is somewhat as follows. Pindar expresses the wish that some day a man from Aegina may win an Olympic victory, so that it may be his own privilege to mix a third cup in honour of Jupiter the Deliverer, accompanied by praise both for the victor himself and for Olympian Jove. He thinks of a 'bowl' either in the literal sense of the mixing-bowl from which they drink at the parties given to celebrate the victory, or of the 'bowl of song,' of which he says elsewhere 'Sweet is the mixing-bowl of clear-voiced songs.' The scholiast on this passage of Pindar explains that it was customary in Antiquity for the first bowl of wine at a drinking-party to be mixed in honour of Olympian Jove, the second for the Heroes, and the third for Jove the Deliverer. As evidence for this he cites from the Nauplius of Sophocles: 'Jupiter who sets an end to pain, and the third mixing-bowl poured in libation to Jove the Deliverer.' He also cites Aeschylus in his Epigoni: 'Libations first to Jupiter for timely wedlock and to Juno; the second mixing I then offer to the Heroes; and in third place a votive libation to Jove the Deliverer.' He adds that this last was called 'the cup of the Deliverer' because up to this point the drinking had stopped short of intoxication and had not yet harmed men's wits, whereas once a man had passed beyond that limit, his course seemed set for lechery and drunkenness, in line with that famous dictum of Asclepiades in Apuleius, that the first cup of wine pertains to thirst, the second to pleasure, the third to intoxication, the fourth to madness. This same cup in honour of Jupiter the Deliverer they call teleion, the final or the perfect cup, either because it was the last stage in this system of drinking, or because three is thought to be the most perfect of all numbers, as having a beginning, a middle and an end, and is therefore especially fitted for a theological context, and is applied by Plato to the soul, as being divine and therefore consisting of a triad. And there is another point which is not without a background in theology: that the first and third libation-bowls should be dedicated to Jupiter and the middle one to demigods. In the first place the middle position was appropriate to the Heroes, for several reasons. One was that in Plato's view their status was halfway between the supreme gods 'whose home is Olympus,' as Homer puts it, whom Plato supposes to be minds owing no allegiance to any bodies, and ourselves, who are burdened with bodies and are therefore exposed to passions and to death. For the school of Plato ascribe bodies to these daemons, though they are airy bodies and not like ours; and this opinion was shared by St Augustine in his treatise On the Nature of Daemons, and several times elsewhere. Another reason might be that according to myths told by the poets demigods have a mixed and intermediate origin, one parent being a god and the other a human being, as Hercules was the offspring of Alcmena and Jupiter, Castor and Pollux of Leda and Jupiter. Furthermore, by Jove they understand the supreme intelligence that embraces all things at once, so that he is both beginning and end of all things; and that was why they both began their drinking under his patronage and ended it with him. Jupiter the Deliverer is mentioned more than once by Aristophanes in the Plutus, as in this passage: 'So I think it right for myself to bid farewell to Jove the Deliverer and remain here where I am.' The scholiast tells us that in Athens there was a temple of Jupiter the Deliverer, who was also called by some people the Liberator. Jove the Deliverer is also mentioned by Athenaeus in the second book of the Doctors at Dinner, where he adds that it was once the custom, when food was placed on the table, to pour neat wine, presumably to make clear how great was the power of the good god. Then, when each man had watered his drink to suit himself, they uttered the name of Jupiter the Deliverer by way of introduction to suggest that wine so mixed could be drunk safely and without risk of harm. But in book 11 he virtually tells us that after dinner too, when they had washed their hands, a cup was customarily brought in to be drunk in honour of Jupiter the Deliverer, which was identical with the so-called 'cup of the Good Spirit'; and as authority for this he cites Diphilus, who writes in his Sappho: 'Archilochus, take this full after-dinner cup, in honour of Jove the Deliverer and the Good Spirit.' It will be right to use the adage when we wish to convey that we are approaching the last and most important part of a piece of business. Before I finish I should like to make one other point, that Pindar's words prove the identity of Olympian Jove and Jove the Deliverer. Plutarch in the fifth decade of his Table-Talk' speaks of these three cups, if I am not mistaken: 'For when we sacrifice to a god, we do not sacrifice to all the other gods, especially with temples and altars; but when we mix three bowls, we pour libations to some gods out of the first bowl, to others out of the second, and to yet others out of the last, for jealousy has no place in the heavenly choir.' He also mentions the topic in the seventh decade, making it clear that when a sacrifice was made to one god, prayers were made to all at once, but not by name.

'[greek], A pestle going round and round. When a man is always busy on the same task and yet never gets anything finished. Plato, presumably the comic poet, in his Adonis, cited by Zenodotus: 'Then I shall never have the twirling of a pestle.' Plutarch in his 'Against the Stoics,' making the point that they argue in a circle: 'Corinth son of Jove is always coming into their conversation; but say nothing of the twirling pestle, for fear you seem to make fun of them.' It looks therefore as though the phrase was used when the same things are often repeated, until they become tedious. Logicians speak of 'begging the question' when an argument goes round in circles. Hesychius explains it of those who always say the same thing, and all the time make no progress. Plato discusses something in the Theaetetus which is so close to this that it might be thought identical: 'The twirling of an axle (scytale) or a pestle or whatever else they speak of,' when the discourse returns to the same point in the way in which, in that passage, Theaetetus says that the man who holds the right opinion ought to concur in the right opinion. The translator renders scytale by scutica, a thong, since Plato speaks of the leather strip wrapped round the staff.

'[greek], Put the hog under the cudgel. When someone plunges headlong into instant peril and disaster, for it is the custom in some places to club a pig to death. Recorded by Suidas. Zenodotus says it is found in Deinolochus.

[greek], If you can't drive an ox, drive an ass; that is, if you can't do a thing as you would wish, do it as best you can. If a distinguished position does not come your way, make the most of what does come. If you are not allowed to do what you hope to do, be content with the second best. Suidas is the authority.

Ζειρὴν μὲν φίλον ἀγγέλλει, ξεῖνον δὲ μέλισσα, A bee proclaims a stranger but a wasp foretells a friend. For use when we get a good omen on the same subject from several sources, or when everyone gives rein to his own hopes and infers from the most trivial indications that what he wishes is about to happen; for siren in this context does not mean one of those famous maidens in Homer but a kind of insect not unlike a bee. So we learn from Suidas. Though in Hesychius the text reads σείρη, not σειρὴν.

[greek], If you had even mentioned a wolf (we must supply, he would have appeared). For use when the man of whom we were speaking unexpectedly appears. Related to one I have recorded elsewhere, Talk of the wolf. It commonly happens in comedies and tragedies that by the writer's skill and contrivance a character who has been referred to makes an immediate appearance. It can be adapted to a subject, if for example in some author a thing of which we were speaking immediately occurs by chance. The adage is recorded by Zenodotus. Plato in the Phaedrus: 'At any rate, they say it is right to tell what is said about the wolf.'

'[greek], As like as two figs. A humorous expression for two things very closely alike. The image is taken from the resemblance which one fig bears to any other. Plutarch in 'Against the Stoics': 'It would be surprising and incredible, had not two doves always been very much alike or two bees or two grains of wheat or, as the proverb has it, two figs.' Related to those I have recorded elsewhere, As like as one egg is to another and As like as milk to milk.

[greek], Give and take at the same time. When you have to do business with a man of doubtful honesty, who is not to be trusted in any respect unless you receive there and then what you have bargained for. It can be diverted to apply to someone who does not render any service or fulfil any obligation unless he is already certain of his quid pro quo, nor does he 'buy hope for good money,' as Terence's brothel-keeper puts it. Aristotle expressed this proverb more elegantly in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, criticizing friends who are held together by ties of mutual advantage, and as in business relationships do not so much give a man their friendship as sell it him: 'One form of recompense is sordid, and passes from hand to hand in a purely commercial way; the other, prompted by the circumstances, is more honourable.' The philosopher alludes to that remark from some comedy which is cited by the scholiast on Pindar: I turn Phoenician instantly: give with one hand and take with the other.' The Phoenicians have a bad name for excessive commercial zeal, and hence Pindar's words in the Pythians, hymn 2: This song by some Phoenician exchange' use the expression when one thing is given and something else taken in its place. In fact the tribe of merchants hold nothing sacred except profit in cash, and to this alone they consecrate their whole selves as their god. For piety, for friendship, for honour, for reputation, for all things alike divine and human this is their only measure, and all else is nothing.

'[greek], O may such wars as these always pursue me. When we willingly hate certain people and despise them as opponents; for there is a type of man, as Seneca says, to whom it is more risky to do good than harm, and whom it is more profitable to have as enemies than as friends. There are people whose bad opinion of us does us credit. There are those with whom it is disreputable to be linked in friendship and whose opposition and hostility are an honour. This can also be adapted to friends who have proved false, but now that they are enemies can do one no harm. It is also found in the form O may such enemies always pursue me.

[greek], An aged kid. Apollodorus, cited by Zenodotus, says there was an aged woman called The Kid, because she lived into old age without being married, just as though the same person was an old woman in years and being unmarried was still a child. Some say that a wild locust, known sometimes as a mantis, was called in Sicily 'an aged kid,' and the story goes that anyone on whom this creature's eye falls suffers some misfortune. Clearly therefore it is suitable for a sorceress or a witch, like Horace's Canidia.

[greek] An old woman dancing, suits a person who does something outside all propriety; if, for instance, a graybeard were to play with children's toys, or a theologian to be carried away by florid rhetoric, or a prince to follow Nero's example and give a concert. It is close to one I have already recorded above, The camel dances. Horace, writing of an old woman whose lecherous ways were unsuited to her years: 'The fleeces shorn near famed Lucera are fit work for you; not yours the dance-band and the red, red rose, nor the cask drained to its last dregs: you're an old woman now.' In Plutarch, we read in his life of Pericles of a woman called Elpinice, who attacked people openly with indecent abuse, and got no answer except that line of Archilochus: Wow you're an old woman, do not drench yourself with scent.' When Lapus got the idea of rendering it 'You've not forgotten [oblita] the perfume, now you're an old woman,' cannot guess, unless perhaps instead of [greek] he read[greek] or [greek].

[greek], An old hag's capers raise a power of dust, is said commonly of those whose experience of affairs leads them to undertake many tasks. It looks like a hexameter, corrupt in at least one syllable.

[greek], As an old woman you shall have, like a horse, a deep dark yawning cavern when you're buried. Of those who are cast out utterly, as being of no possible use. Horses, once they have grown old, are thrown headlong somewhere into deep holes in the ground. So is a woman, who has had lovers in her time, rejected by everyone as soon as her beauty fades. So it is with Lyce in Horace. Resembles that saying: A horse's old age.

'[greek], Whitebait glory. When some honour of low degree is conferred on men of humble station; for whitebait are a small cheap fish, which require nothing for their cooking except the oil in which they are fried. Hence there used to be a current phrase: Oil is a glory to whitebait.

[greek], Why not hang yourself, and thus become a demigod at Thebes? Other peoples used to hold in the highest honour men who had contrived their own deaths, especially if it was to save their country; Codrus, for example, in Athens, who 'for his country's sake feared not to die,' and in Rome the Decii and Quintus Curtius, Cato of Utica and Brutus, and many others; but in Thebes those who had died by their own hand got no credit at all. Hence, it is thought, this ironical use of the phrase 'and thus become a demigod at Thebes.' It seems possible to use it of those who are inspired by the thirst for fame to expose themselves to great perils. Recorded by Zenodotus.

[greek], What tune has Apollo played for you on his cithara? - in other words, what answer has he given? The allusion is to Apollo's lyre, which is his attribute in poetry. The adage was used by Aeschylus1 in his Locrian Ajax. It is listed by Zenodotus. It will be suitable when one wishes to ask someone returning from an audience with the prince what sort of answer he has received: 'What tune has Apollo played?'

[greek], Make for Arbelae and you'll do great things, used to be said of a man who has high hopes as he sets out for foreign parts, trusting in the ignorance and barbarism of the people among whom he means to live. Arbela was a town in Sicily (Stephanus is the authority), the citizens of which had in old days a bad reputation as blockheads who were easily taken in. Among them therefore even a man of no account elsewhere might hope to achieve some great position. Though there is also a city of this name in Persia, mentioned by Strabo in book 16; and Quintus Curtius knows of a town in Mesopotamia, famous for the destruction of Darius' army.

[greek], A good day out of the quiver, was applied to a day when things went well. It is derived from a custom among the Scythians. Their practice was, as Philarchus tells us, every evening before they went to sleep to put a pebble into a quiver, a white pebble if the day had passed without mishap and otherwise a black one. In the end, when a man died, they used to bring out his quiver, and if they found in it more white pebbles than black, they declared him fortunate; the opposite, if they found more black. From this they passed judgment on his life as a whole; and hence it became proverbial to say 'A good day out of the quiver' if something had happened as they wished.

[greek], Cannacas' things, or Cannacas' troubles. They used this proverb in two different senses, of things remarkable for their antiquity, or for sad and pitiful lamentation and mourning. Cannacas, as Hermogenes tells us in his account of Phrygia, was a Phrygian king, who foresaw the coming of a great flood and, summoning all the population to the temples of the gods, besought the gods with copious tears to avert the disaster. Hence Herodes the iambicwriter: 'That I may weep, as Cannacas did weep.' All this is recorded by Zenodotus. Pliny in book 36 has a Cannacus in his list of famous sculptors. Stephanus under the word Iconium mentions the adage, except that he calls him Annacus, and not Cannacus or Cannacas, and makes some changes in the story; for he says there was a man called Annacus who lived beyond the age of 300 years. Enquiries were therefore made of oracles everywhere, how long he was to go on living; and the reply was that, when Annacus dies, all things would perish. His death, according to the story, was followed by the great flood of Deucalion. When they heard the reply, the Phrygians are said to have been very greatly distressed, and hence arose the proverb, applied to any great grief: To mourn in future like Annacus.

[greek], Look, what horses! If someone were to introduce a strange and foreign custom - suppose an Italian, for instance, were to wear French clothes. Spoken, it would seem, of strangers arriving in four-horse chariots of an unfamiliar kind. Metagenes in his Thuriopersae, cited by Suidas: 'Look, what horses! How they dance in barbarian style!' This is related to one I treated a little earlier, Another kind of oar.

[greek], A wound for Chiron, was a name for some incurable affliction. Chiron was hit by Hercules in the war against the Centaurs, and received an incurable wound in the foot, to which he succumbed. Hence, says Zenodotus, arose the proverb. Virgil, our great Latin poet (for the lines bear his name), calls a healing hand 'Chironian': 'Within his painful breast the wound lives on, / That Chiron's healing hand could not assuage.' This Centaur, Chiron, is fabled to have been the tutor of Achilles. Hence Plato the comic poet attacks Damon, who was supposed to have educated Pericles for dictatorship under the pretext of giving him music lessons, in the following lines: 'Tell me this first, I beg, for you (they say) / The Chiron were who brought up Pericles.' The passage was rendered by Lapo 'For you (they say) brought Pericles up very badly.' There are also two mistakes in the Aldine edition. First of all the line is divided wrongly, and then the rules of the metre force us to read not [greek] but [greek], 'you were that Chiron.' For by a figure of speech he calls Damon Chiron, because he stood in the same relation to Pericles that Chiron did to Achilles, whom he taught to play the lyre but brought him up as bold as a Centaur. Although it is strictly irrelevant, I thought it well to point this out to students, to prevent anyone stumbling in ignorance over that stone.

[greek], Charon's gate. Used of imminent danger of death, or of some very tragic event, for this was in Antiquity the name given to one of the gates of a prison, through which men condemned by verdict of the judges were led out to execution. Recorded by Zenodotus, Hesychius, and Suidas. For the story goes that souls were taken across to the nether regions in Charon's boat. Hence Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'But Charon gives him his ticket,' meaning that he is at death's door.

A man hounded by misfortune, for whom everything went wrong, was said to have made water on the ashes of his ancestors. In Antiquity the greatest respect was paid to the burial-places of one's forbears, as is clear from the story of Thamyris which I have recorded elsewhere. Accordingly, a man who had violated his father's grave was visited, like a parricide, by the Erinyes with avenging furies, and nothing ever went right for him. Horace in the Art of Poetry: 'Nor is it clear whether your persistent versifier has made water on the ashes of his ancestors, or tampered sacrilegiously with some haunted place where lightning struck; in any case, he's raving mad.'

[greek], To lift the elbow. A man was said to do this who was too fond of drink. Taken from the movement of heavy drinkers who, in course of emptying their tankards, stretch the gullet and chin upwards and raise the forearm, so that no liquor may be left in the mug. Another word for this is kôthônizein, from kôthôn, which is a kind of drinking-vessel. Hesychius shows that maschalê is part of the forepart of a ship which holds the terthron or artemôn; and the artemôn is said to be a kind of sail. Some say that maschalê is a basket woven from palm-fronds, because maschalê is a word for palm-branch, and that the word is sometimes also used for rope. Others maintain that maschalê is a form of tackle used for lowering packages into ships or unloading them; hence the jesting application to those who lift their tankard high when they drink. Hesychius also adds this trochaic tetrameter, without naming the author: That having fallen upon them, we may lift the elbow.' It was perhaps to this that Stratonicus the lyre-player alluded, in Athenaeus book 8, when in the course of an individual review of Greek cities he called Byzantium 'the elbow of Greece,' because (I suppose) there were heavy drinkers there, or because it was the market-place of Greece. (There is a city in Thrace, also called Constantinople.) The proverb gains in elegance from the allusion, for some drinking-cups are boat-shaped, kymbia for example and skaphia and triremes and several others. Recorded by Zenodotus. Also mentioned by Julius Pollux, book 6 chapter 3, in these words: "They also applied to those who had had too much to drink the phrase "to lift the elbow," as though this were customary for drunkards.' He also quotes the evidence of a line in Homer: 'Raising their hands they died with laughing.' From this it looks as though the words came, not from raising a tankard but from some gesture of men rejoicing. The custom remains, at any rate, even in our own day among German soldiers of raising the right hand as a sign of good cheer.

[greek], The Phrygian wins. My own guess is that this was used when approval was given to words which were flattering rather than sincere. The story goes that Croesus, king of Lydia, once asked the famous Seven Sages to whom they would give first place for happiness. They returned various answers, some saying that they thought untamed wild beasts most happy because they died in defence of their own freedom; others said storks because, though bound by no law, they followed justice and piety by their very nature. Solon however denied that anyone should be called happy until he is dead; whereupon Aesop, the famous Phrygian author of fables, who was present, said: 'You, O king, so far surpass all other men as the sea surpasses rivers.' When the king heard this, he is reported to have replied The Phrygian wins,' and the words passed into a proverb. For my part, I think perhaps we should read [greek], More, Phrygian, more,' so that these become the words of someone gladly acknowledging the compliment and, very great as it was, demanding yet something more. Hence when someone flatters us openly we can reply by repeating 'More, Phrygian.' Recorded by Suidas and Zenodotus.

[greek], He is as pleased with himself as Peleus with his sword, is suitable for a man who is made intolerably insolent and conceited by something. The story is that this sword was forged by Vulcan, and given by the gods as a present to Peleus as an acknowledgment of his valour and good sense. Peleus used it both in battle and in the huntingfield, and achieved all he wished. Zenodotus says this is mentioned both in Anacreon and in Pindar.

[greek], You owe your blue blood to your purse, was levelled as a taunt against a man who had wished to be thought well-born on account of his wealth, though in all other respects he was obscure and plebeian. For coin is one of the sources of nobility, and not ancestral wealth alone, as Aristotle says, but coin from any source no matter how recent. And men of this sort are often more rude and insolent than those who owe their distinction to a long line of ancestors.

[greek], As fond of children as Gello, was customarily used of those who had died an untimely death, or who were exceptionally devoted to their sons but ruined them by pampering and indulgence. Gello is said to have been an unmarried girl, who died while still very young. The people of Lesbos believed that her ghost walked, and attacked children. Hence the deaths of children who suffered an untimely fate were ascribed to this Gello. Sappho is cited as having mentioned this story.

[greek], Clod and field. When someone adds small things to big, supposing that he renders some assistance. Hence I suspect that we should change the word for field into the accusative or dative case, and mentally supply some verb meaning 'is added to' or 'increases' or some such thing. For a man contributes nothing significant if he adds a clod of earth to a field; it is just like drawing water from a lake, and pouring it into the sea.

[greek], The art of Glaucus. This proverb has two uses. It is appropriate, either to some task very swiftly completed, or to something finished with the greatest skill and care. Some think it comes from a certain Glaucus of Samos, who first invented the soldering of bronze; others from a Libyan who is said to have made four cymbals, adjusted to each other in exact proportions, so that the thickness of the first bore the ratio of four to three to the second, three to two to the third, and double to the fourth. These when struck produced a particular musical harmony. Zenodotus is the authority.

[greek], Lauriotic owls, was used as a riddling way of referring to the power of money. Laurios is a region of Attica rich in veins of gold, and so they struck gold coins with the image of an owl on them, as I have said in another passage. The scholiast adds that four-drachma coins with an owl were also struck. Aristophanes in the Birds: 'Laurian owls shall ne'er desert you; in your houses they shall nest, / Rear their broods within your purses.'

[greek], Glaucus drank honey and revived. Used customarily when someone whose death is commonly reported is seen again in public, and appears like one risen from the dead to those who had firmly believed he was no more. It arose quite certainly from something that actually happened: a man called Glaucus, contrary to universal expectations, recovered from a fatal illness after drinking a medicine made with honey, and this was turned in jest into a proverb. Some tell the story thus: A certain Glaucus, after drinking honey, almost died from an attack of bile, but the physicians rushed to his bedside, and a herb called polyidos, also known as dragonwort, restored him to health.

[greek], As nobly born as Codrus, will be rightly used by way of irony of those who pride themselves on smoke-stained busts of their ancestors and on ancient lineage. Codrus was the son of Melanthus, and Melanthus was sixth in descent from Neleus, one of whose other descendants was Nestor. This Melanthus, then, was driven out of his native Messene and came to Athens; and there he engaged in single combat with Xanthus, a Boeotian who at that time was ruler of Athens, defeated him, and seized power over the Athenians. He was succeeded by Codrus his son, whose devotion to his country has earned him a great name. For when the Athenians were at war with the Dorians, and it had been declared by an oracle that they would be victorious, provided that their king had been killed by the enemy, Codrus, prizing his country's glory above his own safety, challenged the enemy in disguise, and was killed. He left two sons, Mentor, who after his father's death succeeded to the kingship, and Neleus, who acted as leader of a colony despatched to Asia. Such more or less is the account in Zenodotus.

[greek], A Cadmean victory. For this adage different accounts are offered of both meaning and origin. Some think an unprofitable victory was called 'Cadmean' because the Thebans Eteocles and Polynices, disagreeing about their alternate tenure of the throne, fought each other in single combat and were both killed. A victory of this kind is mentioned by Herodotus in book one, where he treats of the Phocaeans. Another theory is that the Cadmeans defeated the Argives, who were campaigning under Adrastus, but suffered for it; for they paid the penalty on a large scale to their successors. Another is that Oedipus, after solving the riddle of the Sphinx, won a glorious victory over the monster, but later married his own mother unawares, and when he discovered this, put out his own eyes. Thus his victory, like the others, had a far from happy outcome. Some refer it to the following story. When Cadmus had received the alphabet from the Phoenicians, and wished to pass it on to the Greeks, he found that Linus too was putting forward his own alphabet, and killed him. Thereupon the citizens expelled Cadmus, so that, like the others, he got no good from his defeat of Linus. Plutarch subscribes to the first view, for he writes as follows in his essay 'On Brotherly Love': 'For early writers identify a Cadmean victory as that won by the brothers at Thebes, the most disgraceful and lamentable that could be.' He also shows in his 'On the Education of Children' that the phrase 'Cadmean victory' is used when it is better to lose than to win. This adage is used by Plato in the first book of the Laws: 'Education, then, brings victory with it, but victory sometimes brings ignorance, because many people are made more insolent by victories won in war, and reap a harvest of countless other troubles through their use of force. But education was never Cadmean; many victories have proved in human experience to be so, and will be in the future.' Aristides in his Pericles: 'So that he thought he would win the Cadmean victory.' On this passage there is a scholium which, among other things, adds a new point somewhat different from what I have recorded so far. It says that the Thebans, after killing the Argives who had fought against Polynices, refused them burial. This inhuman conduct infuriated the Athenians; they attacked and defeated the Thebans, and in the same way forbade the burial of the bodies of the fallen. The account given by Pausanias in his book on Boeotia neither wholly disagrees with this nor wholly agrees; for he writes much as follows. Battle was joined at the Ismenus, and the Thebans, defeated in the engagement and put to flight, sought shelter behind their own walls, with the idea that the Peloponnesians were ignorant of siegecraft. And indeed, as they pressed on in anger rather than with any skill, not a few of them were killed by the Thebans with javelins thrown from the walls. In the end, they also defeated the others, launching an attack on them as they lost direction and discipline, with the result that the whole army, except Adrastus, was wiped out. But the Thebans paid dearly for their victory, and 'Thenceforward' says Pausanias 'any success accompanied with heavy loss for the victor has been called a Cadmean victory.' But whatever the source of the adage, Cadmean victory was a name for success which proved disastrous even for the victors themselves. Such was the Greeks' capture of Troy, which cost every one of them so dear. Physicians too speak of a Cadmean victory, when a disease is driven off, but only at the price of the patient's death under treatment which is more than nature can support.

[greek], Money makes the man. In other words, a man's worth is measured by his possessions. As Horace says, 'Enough? There's no such thing. What you possess / Fixes your value.' Zenodotus quotes this from Pindar. It is to be found in the Isthmians, in the second hymn, in these words: 'But now she tells me to observe the Argive's words, which come so close to the truth: 'Tis money, money makes the man. So said he when he was bereft alike of property and friends.' The scholiast on Pindar gives Chrysippus as the authority in his Book of Proverbs, where the speaker is said to have been Aristodemus of Sparta. The same scholiast quotes the line I have just recorded as from Alcaeus, in the form 'Money makes the man, and no one poor is ever brave or honourable.' The saying is also mentioned by Laertius in his life of Thales, and he adds that it was very popular in Sparta. These words from Alcaeus to the same effect are cited in Suidas: 'For so runs the word not without weight, once uttered in Sparta by Aristodemus, 'Tis money makes the man, and no one poor is ever brave.' Some would rather trace it back to the famous Seven Sages. To this school of thought belong those lines from some comedy or other: Money's the blood, the life and soul of mortals; He who no money has, nor ever had, Flits to and fro a corpse midst living men. (The second line will hold in Greek if you delete [greek] or read [greek] for [greek]; the third, if for [greek] you read [greek]. There is also a well-known iambic line, not unrelated to the same idea: life without livelihood's no life at all.' We must remember too that vita in Latin, like bios in Greek, means both life as opposed to death and the resources by which we sustain life.

[greek], Now that he's rich, he's lost his love of lentils. Lentils are a kind of vegetable eaten by the poor and lowly, which is despised as soon as a higher standard of living comes their way. Hence the proverb is applied to people who have risen into a more luxurious way of life, and have no further use for things they were thankful for when they were poor. The adage comes from the Plutus of Aristophanes, for it is applied there to a young man who in his days of poverty kept an ageing mistress, but had now achieved wealth and begun to tire of her. Not unlike one I have listed elsewhere: Change your life and change your style.

[greek], You pluck the hair from a bald man's head. When someone undertakes a futile task, or attempts to relieve a man of something which his victim does not possess; if, for instance, one were to try to extort money from a penniless man or a learned note from an ignoramus. It is very like that thing in Plautus 'You ask water from a stone' or again 'To drag the clothes off a naked man.' Even nowadays, when the common people wish to convey that there is nothing to be had, they show one the palm of one hand and tell one to pluck the hair from it, because that part of the body is invariably hairless.

[greek], Be sweet caressing sleep far from your eyes. When someone tackles a task that calls for the highest diligence and care; an example would be, to take up the study of philosophy. This iambic line comes from the Clouds of Aristophanes, where it is put in the mouth of Socrates; he is warning Strepsiades that if he proposes to devote himself to philosophy, he must be ready both to do and to suffer everything.

[greek], Phocus' fee or dinner-party, was customarily used when someone entertained guests and suffered for it. Though nothing prevents our giving the words a more far-fetched application, to any people who are injured by those to whom they have done a service. The story is that a certain Phocus had a daughter of marriageable age. His custom was to entertain her suitors, who were numerous, and for this he fixed a fee; then postponed the marriage by imposing from time to time new conditions of entry. This infuriated the young men, and they killed Phocus at the dinner-table. Zenodotus is the authority; though Plutarch in his 'Love Stories' tells this story differently. Eustathius on the first book of the Odyssey distinguishes three types of dinner-party. Eilapine, the banquet, is aimed at splendour and magnificence; gamos, the wedding-feast, which is normally an even more extravagant affair; and eranos, the collective feast, attended by many guests who provide their own food and expenses. This kind of party is particularly well thought of by Hesiod, as involving the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of expense; for men show greater restraint in both eating and drinking when each person pays for his own food and drink. Hesiod's line runs as follows: 'Sharing most pleasure brings and least expense.' And so those who wished to make an impression of greater splendour used to give an eranos at their own expense and on a grand scale. Homer joins these three types of feast together 'What do you want? A banquet or a marriage-feast? For this is surely no collective feast.'

[greek], Older than chaos, of something excessively ancient and outdated. Ibycus: 'Flying in some foreign chaos,' and again 'But on he rambles, vainly swamping us with nonsense older than chaos and reeking of the age of Saturn.' The adage alludes to Chaos, to which the poets take back the origin of the gods and of all things. Ovid gives this as the beginning of the creation of the world, as also did the Hebrews.

'[greek], He gives himself such airs, he might have taken down the shield in Argos, was said of pompous people and those who made a great show. The story is that in Argos there was a sacred shield, fastened with nails so that it could not easily be taken down. Others say there was a select band of young men of outstanding prowess, called the Shield. Zenodotus is the authority.

[greek], To break in pieces like a shell, was used of weak subjects, far inferior in strength; for shell-fish are dashed on the ground to break them so that the flesh can be extracted to be eaten, or they are opened by cutting the sinew by which they close and open their shells. Recorded by Suidas.

[greek], As tongue-tied as a dugout boat, was used customarily of those who, being of low degree, dare not say a word in the presence of their betters. It is said to derive from the fact that in old days resident aliens and foreigners belonging to another state went in procession at the public games, carrying a boat; so that, whenever they wished to convey that someone was a stranger and no native, they were accustomed to call him a boat or a boat-carrier. And so it was a common form of threat to say 'I'll make you as dumb as a boat,' for those who live in a country which is not their own must keep their mouths shut on many topics. It does not pay in a foreign country to ask too many questions, and equally it is not safe to use unguarded language. For this interpretation Suidas cites the authority of Theophrastus in his book On the Laws. For my part, in most copies I find syntomôteros rather than systomôteros, and if anyone prefers that reading, I shall have no objection, provided we understand this as 'pinched by fear and humiliated.'

[greek], Naked as he came from his mother. A proverbial exaggeration for someone in great poverty. For we are born utterly naked, not covered even with hair, let alone clothes, and of no other living creature is this true. This saying lives even in our own day on the lips of common folk in my own country: As bare as a new-born babe. It resembles one that will be referred to elsewhere: Like a man shipwrecked.

Plutarch in the essay entitled 'That we ought not to borrow' tells us that in Messene there was a line current as a proverb: 'Pylos there is before Pylos, and Pylos a third there is also.' Clearly this was used when of two things one is selected as more highly valued and more distinguished, or when someone is highly self-satisfied as the only man or the best man in his class, though others may be found who can challenge his supremacy. Pylos is a city in Messenia, rendered famous (as some affirm) by Nestor. This line was altered by Plutarch to run as follows: 'Interest there is before interest, and interest a third there is also.' Can be adapted for use against those who face a second loan at high interest arising out of the first. The source of the adage is indicated by Eustathius in his commentary on the Boeotian book of Homer, for he says that according to writers on topography there were three places called Pylos, one in Messenia, the second in Triphylia and the third in Arcadia, and that it was the Triphylian Pylos that was held by Nestor. He also cites the evidence of a geographer, whom I take to be Strabo, who also puts three places of this name in the Peloponnese. Strabo treats of this subject in the eighth book of his Geography, and shows that there were many cities so called, each of which laid claim to Nestor because of his great celebrity. Though Strabo later avers that Nestor's home-country lay on both sides of the Alpheus. Aristophanes alludes to the adage in the Knights: 'Expound this too, this Pylos before Pylos of which he spoke, "Pylos there is before Pylos." - "Before Pylos" - what can he mean by that?' The scholiast adds that the half-line I quoted above from Plutarch was uttered by an oracle.

[greek], Two dice and four dice hath Achilles thrown. This line is cited by Suidas from Euripides; but the meaning of the adage is explained by no one, except that we may guess it was used of those who always win, because this was a lucky throw of the dice. The scholiast on Aristophanes' Frogs cites Aristarchus for the view that this iambic line commonly circulated under the name of Euripides, but wrongly, since it is anonymous. In Aristophanes Bacchus applies it to Aeschylus, who has just beaten Euripides; and this makes it look as though this proverb could be used in congratulating a winner.

'[greek], From plodding donkeys forth has leapt a horse. When some man achieves distinction who was of obscure birth, or a scholarly pupil is turned out by an ignorant teacher. It can also be used by way of irony and in the negative: for instance, 'A horse will never be born from donkeys' or 'There's a horse for you, sprung from the donkeys,' when some proud bold man is born of lowly parents. The opposite of this is one I have recorded elsewhere, Great men have trouble from their children, when the offspring of eminent fathers do not live up to the virtues of their forebears. Thus Socrates in Plato's First Alcibiades shows that both the sons of Pericles, Paralus and Xanthippus, were blockheads, and Clinias went mad; in fact that no one ended up wise as a result of his efforts, while many wise men were produced by associating with Zeno. He treats of the same subject in the Meno, where he also recalls the example of Aristides, who had a worthless son called Lysimachus, and of Thucydides, who had two sons, Melesias and Stephanus, neither of whom was as good a man as his father. To these we might add Cicero, who left a son of no reputation, who fell very far short of his father's virtues.

[greek], As great a coward as Epeus, was used of any very timorous person. Taken from a man called Epeus who was a notorious coward. This allusive nickname was given to Cratinus the comic poet, perhaps because he showed himself so poor-spirited in office, when he was head of the Oeneid tribe.

'[greek], Ephesian letters, was used, it seems, of those astonishingly lucky people who secured whatever they wanted as though by some magic wand. They say that the Ephesians possessed certain magic characters and words, by the use of which they emerged successful in business of every kind. Our authority is Diogenianus. Eustathius on Odyssey 19 tells us that Croesus used these letters on his funeral pyre. They were, he says, certain obscure words very much like riddles, which made absolutely no continuous sense, and were inscribed on the feet, girdle, and crown of Diana. Suidas adds a story on the following lines: at the Olympic games a man from Miletus was matched in the boxing against an Ephesian, but could do nothing with him, because the Ephesian had Ephesian letters on his heel. As soon as he noticed this, he removed the letters, and the Ephesian, who had already worn out thirty opponents, collapsed. Hesychius says that there were certain ancient words which were held sacred, to which many more were added by later impostors. The only ones he thinks ancient were aski, which means 'darkness,' kataski light,' aix 'self,' damnameneus 'sun,' arson 'true.' These are also mentioned by Anaxilas in book 12 of Athenaeus: having spoken of the excesses of a certain philosopher, he adds 'And besides this, on little scraps of leather sewn together, wearing lovely Ephesian letters.' Nor is there a lack of people even in our own day who impose on their foolish victims by inventing words of this kind. One thing is clear enough: careless scribes are responsible for the fact that, though Hesychius lists tetrax among his magic words, he does not mention it when giving the individual explanations.

Men who suffered from similar faults and were equally untrustworthy were described as Taught in the same school. The saying retains its currency, and nothing is more hackneyed. Terence in the Hecyra These women seem to me all taught in the same school, to make mischief.' For it is a common experience that those who have had the same teachers are alike in personality and character. What Terence says of women, that their characters are all alike, is attested already by an iambic line in Greek: 'One woman never differs from another.' The suggestion of the proverb is that a good woman is never found.

[greek], Like a Spartan dinner. When we wish to convey that something has been done with excessive economy and too meanly. The Spartans had public places intended for the eating of meals. In these they entertained their guests and visiting envoys, but with a minimum of special preparation. Hence it looks as though the Greek word was derived from pheidesthai, to spare, though some prefer to take it as phiditia, representing philitia, because such dinners encouraged social ties. Both derivations of the word are given by Plutarch in his life of Lycurgus. The first of them supposes the loss of an e from the diphthong, in the second an / is turned into a d. He adds a third derivation, that phiditia represents editia, from the eating of meals, for which the normal Greek word, especially in Athens, is sussitia, and the Cretan word andreia, as Plutarch tells us in the same passage. This system of common dinners was instituted by Lycurgus in order to exclude luxury and drunkenness. Cicero mentions the phiditia in the fifth book of his Tusculan Questions. 'Why,' he says, 'have we not before us the Spartan way of life in their phiditia, their common meals? When Dionysius the tyrant had dined there, he said he had by no means enjoyed the famous black broth which was the principal dish; whereupon the man who had cooked it said "That is not surprising. The usual relishes were lacking." "And what are they?" asked Dionysius. "Hard work in the hunting-field, sweating, running by the Eurotas, hunger, thirst - these are the things that give the Spartans an appetite for their dinner.'" Though this tale is told differently by Plutarch in the appendix which we find added to his 'Sayings of Spartans,' which deals with the constitution of Lycurgus. There were other kinds of dinner-party too in Sparta. One of these was the kopis, at which particular sorts of food were served; another, rather more elaborate, was the aiklon; the most frugal of them all was the meal served in the phiditia. Athenaeus has much to say of these in his fourth book, should anyone wish to learn. It will be possible to adapt this to style as well; if a man were to say, for instance, that he is not content with very simple language, as if he were being entertained at a Spartan dinner, but feels the need of something more elevated, something capable of arousing appetite by more attractive qualities.

[greek], Apply the lighter brand to an ageing horse. The lesson of this adage is that, when a man's powers begin to fail through old age, he should be given some degree of rest and respite from his labours; as his strength decreases, so his load of work should be reduced and his leisure lengthened. Taken, they say, from cavalry-horses, to which a lighter trisippion was applied as they grew old. A trisippion was a sort of small wheel, a public branding-iron, which used to be heated in the fire and applied to a horse's jaws. Zenodotus shows that this proverb was found in Crates the comic poet, in his Samians. It looks like a hexameter line, provided that you read [greek] for [greek] I have not yet found in any ancient author except Zenodotus. The trisippion is mentioned by Hesychius, and the keikelon seems to have been something not unlike it.

'[greek], The Eretrian rho. Used when a man pronounced the letter r repeatedly and more harshly than is usual, a practice for which Picards are notorious in France today. Criticism is also brought against those who favoured Alcibiades' lisping /. Arrius is ridiculed by Catullus: 'Arrius used to say chommoda when he meant commoda, and hinsidias for insidias; yet never did he think he had spoken more perfectly than when he had said hinsidias to his heart's content.' The adage is recorded by Diogenianus. Plato mentions it in the Cratylus: 'You know how to give the same effect we say sclerotes (that is, hardness) for which the Eretrians say scleroter.' It is clear from this that the Eretrians loved this letter r, which they used in place of s; while the Athenians on the other hand turned r into s, as when they said tharsein for tharrein. Since this letter is said to carry a notion of force and vehemence, the proverb also seems appropriate to headstrong violent men.

[greek], Smitten by an oestrus - deeply stirred, that is, and almost astounded by some overwhelming desire. The oestrum is a sort of insect making a horrible noise, whence its name in Greek; in Latin they call it asylum. It was by adding this to Io when she was turned into a cow, that Juno drove her mad. Hence poets rapt by some heaven-sent madness are said to be struck by an oestrus. This comes in Plato, though the passage does not occur to me at the moment; in the Phaedrus, I think. Hence too the compound word oistroplêgos for frenzied, and oistrein and oistrêlatein for to be struck with madness.

An aphorism of Tibullus, among the most famous of its kind, which has been expertly turned into Greek by Angelo Poliziano. Apuleius in book four of the Florida: 'With more enthusiasm, to be sure, than skill; and he should therefore perhaps be praised the more readily, for in all good undertakings the effort is praiseworthy and the outcome at the mercy of chance.' Marcus Varro too, in Gellius, book one chapter 18: 'In which so far am I from criticizing Laelius' action that I praise his zeal. Success has fortune as her handmaid, but praise waits upon a bold attempt.' Suitable when someone attempts a task beyond his powers and, though he is unequal to the greatness of the undertaking, deserves praise precisely for this reason, that he has attempted some outstanding enterprise.

'[greek], I shall sleep in a hollow stone, was used by those who threatened to discover something by divination. For some explain the Greek holmos as meaning a soothsayer; others say that the tripods of Apollo were so called. Aristophanes the grammarian, however, cited by Zenodotus, tells us that those who had slept on holmoi at once acquired a spirit of divination, and adds that Apollo was for this reason given the epithet enolmos, sitting on the tripod, by Sophocles. Though in Hesychius holmos is put for a mortar. In Athenaeus, book 11, holmos is a drinking-cup shaped like a horn, so that the proverb could also be given a far-fetched sense, as a humorous name for deep drinkers.

[greek], One and the same wax, was applied to those who affirmed the same view with one voice, or had agreed secretly among themselves. Taken from the close connection between the cells of a honeycomb, or from the fact that wax is tenacious and sticks together, or because in old days they wrote on wax tablets, whence also Horace's The same wax wins him praise,' or because the Ancients made images out of wax in various shapes, sometimes of gods, sometimes of kings, sometimes of common people, but all of the same wax. Recorded by Zenodotus. Not unlike what I have spoken of in another place: One and the same dust, and Of the same meal.

'[greek], It lies on the knees of five judges, that is, the question is for others to decide. In ancient times there were five judges entrusted with the business of settling questions relating to the comic stage, as we know from Epicharmus, cited by Zenodotus. Though in Plato too five judges are mentioned in, among other places, book 11 of the Laws: 'Decision to rest with five of the legislators, who are the youngest.' There is an allusion to that phrase which often occurs in Homer: 'And this lies on the knees of the gods,' when we wish to convey that it is not within our power to ensure the outcome of something, but that this is in the hands of heaven or of fortune. Pindar too in the Olympians: 'And now I am full of hopes, but the outcome is in the hand of god.'

With nose well wiped is a phrase for keen and exquisite judgment, as though the nose were cleared, with all mucus wiped away. Horace, speaking of Lucilius, 'With nose well wiped, though harsh the verse he wrote.' A blunt nose, on the other hand, conveys a degree of stupidity: Horace again in the Odes, Though neither young and strong nor thick in the nose.' Lucian in Alexander the False Prophet: 'Uneducated people with noses full of mucus thought it prodigious.' Again in the Philopseudes: 'In my opinion, I said, unless my nose is quite blocked with mucus.' Plato alludes to this in the first book of the Republic, where Thrasymachus, who is accusing Socrates of stupidity, wishes he may have a nursemaid to blow his nose for him: 'Because,' he said, 'she leaves you there snivelling, and doesn't wipe your nose for you when you need her to.'

Plautus' Sosia in the Amphitryo observes: 'It is an old saying that hunger and waiting fill the nose with bile/ or in other words, that when the stomach yelps for want of food, every delay rouses the passions. When he says it is the nose that is filled with bile, this agrees with what Theocritus says in Thyrsis: 'And he is quick of temper and bitter wrath sits ever on his nostril.' The image is derived from those creatures which show anger by inflating their nostrils, whence comes the myth of fire-breathing bulls. Some human beings too give tokens of passion by their nostrils, and thus things which cause disgust are said to wrinkle the nose. Horace: 'Lest a dirty napkin make you wrinkle your nose,' and Persius in his fifth satire: 'But drop that angry wrinkled snarl from your nostrils.' This can be given a wider application, if used of anyone who passionately desires a thing, and finds any delay however short intolerably long. The moral maxim bears this out: 'In longing, speed itself seems mere delay.' Those lines in Horace make the same point: 'Long is the night for those whose mistress tells them lies, and long the day for those who must work for others; slow runs the year for children not yet of age, oppressed by their mothers' severe and watchful eye.'

'[greek], As spirited as Sparta, was applied to a man of a good courage, with no trace of cowardice or submissiveness about him; for in the old days the typical Spartan had the spirit of a man of free birth, and a character intolerant of all servitude and born, as it were, to command. That was why they did not surround their city with walls, which was forbidden by their law; they thought there was no bulwark like brave men. It seemed to them utter disgrace for a man to return from a battle unless he had won the day, a fact attested by an inscription. Nor did they allow despotic government into their constitution; all men lived equal under the law. What is more, they practised no demeaning occupations, and left agriculture and the sedentary trades to be undertaken by the helots, who were a kind of slaves.

[greek], A Locrian ox, can be used of anything cheap or any trifling gift. One day the people of Locri, when proposing to perform a sacrifice, were unable to supply the sacrificial ox, so they constructed a model of small pieces of wood and made their offering to the gods with that. Hence public usage seized upon it as an adage.

[greek], A figwood sword, can be applied to any frivolous argument, which may be refuted with the minimum of trouble. The phrase figwood sword is used of an informer, because he is a teaser and full of false accusations. Mentioned also by Hesychius.

[greek], A fig to Mercury, was said of any advantage which lay ready to hand and was exposed to the first comer. It was the custom in Antiquity, if a fig had been found, to hang it up as if it were an offering to Mercury. It was however free for anyone who chose to take a 'Mercury-fig' either because he was thought to be the patron deity of thieves, or because there was a proverb Mercury in common, that is, Share your luck. It was to this, I take it, that Persius alluded when he wrote: 'Can you pass by a coin stuck in the mud, and not swallow hard as the god of luck makes your mouth water?' as is suggested elsewhere.

[greek], As warts grow on the eye, was said of those who relentlessly pestered others and urged some favourite piece of business. The image is taken from 'figs' (large warts), a troublesome growth that comes on the eyelid and cannot easily be removed by force without damage to the eye. Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'It was like warts that on the eyelids grow.' And it will be by no means pointless if adapted also to those people who, though a grievous and intolerable burden, cannot be forcibly removed without great public mischief. Would that there were not now, and never might be, princes of this sort and princes' chief ministers! Insatiable as they are in their avarice, riddled through and through with lust, cruel in their love of destruction, merciless in their tyranny, the real enemies and predators of the common good, equipped for public devastation not only with resources military and financial but with a new sort of cunning such as Dionysius and Phalaris never knew; even so they cleave so close to the public, they loom over us, they have so secure a hold on it, that they can neither be tolerated nor removed by force. So true is it that there is no council, no body of magistrates, no branch of religion, no part of the body politic into which they have not thrust their roots and penetrated, as a plague spreads through every vein in the body. No doubt they have noticed - for they use their eyes and their wits solely to do harm - that the one remaining sheet-anchor of public prosperity is the restraint of despotic power by honourable agreement between citizens and between states; the dissolution of this concord is therefore their first aim. They realize that in peace their scope is limited, when law and wise counsel are the springs of action, not cunning or armed force; and so it is their chief object, by every means to prevent the people from enjoying the blessings of peace. They see clearly that the prosperity of a country lies above all in this, that it should have a prince who is honourable, intelligent, and watchful, in a word a true prince; and so his tutors take incredible efforts to ensure that the prince shall never be a man. His chief ministers, those who batten on public misfortunes, do their best to see that pleasure makes him as effeminate as possible, and that he should know none of the things which are most appropriate for a prince to know. Villages are burnt down, fields laid waste, churches despoiled, innocent citizens butchered, things sacred and profane utterly confused, while all the time the prince sits idly playing games of chance, dancing, amusing himself with court fools, hunting, womanizing, drinking. O for the line of Brutus and his like, now long extinct! Where is Jove's thunderbolt, now blind or blunted? For there is no doubt that these corrupters of princes will pay God their due penalty, though we may not live to see it. And meanwhile we must bear with them, lest tyranny give place to anarchy, an almost more pernicious evil. This has been proved by long experience of public affairs, and recently too the disorders that have broken out among the country people in Germany have taught us that the brutality of princes is in some ways more tolerable than the anarchy which reduces everything to chaos. Thunderbolts frighten everyone, but they do not strike all that many; an invasion of the sea spares no man, and all is confounded, all is swept away. But the place of godless grandees in the state is perhaps taken in the Church by some members of what are commonly called the Mendicant Orders. I bring no charge against the religious among them, I have no quarrel with an Order; it is the bad I criticize, of whom there are great crowds everywhere. These men have so spread themselves all over the body politic, that nothing can anywhere be done without them. They lord it in the pulpit, the special prerogative of bishops; they have seized despotic power in the universities, which stand next in importance. It is they who dispense the sacraments of the Church, and it is by their leave that we are priests. It is they who, with severity too great for any censor, pass judgment on the faith a man professes: this man is a Christian, that a half-Christian, this man a heretic, that a heretic and a half. It is into their bosoms that ordinary folk pour out the hidden actions of their lives and their hearts' most secret thoughts. Nor does this content them. No treaty can be concluded between princes in which they play no part; no wedding can be solemnized without them; at contests in the theatre and public lotteries they are the judges and organizers, so far are they from any sense of shame. In fact, one cannot even die without them. Of princes' courts there is not one into which they have not wormed their way, and if princes have decided on some nefarious action, it is they who execute it. If popes set on foot some policy which is a little further than one could wish from the traditional and apostolic holiness of their office, these are the men whose services they mostly use; be it war, for instance, or civil disorder, financial exaction, or an unwise indulgence, these are the plays in which these men play the lead, and all the time the simple-minded public are deluded by their show of holiness. Priests compared with them are no priests at all; bishops trust them and sleep sound on either ear. The poor abandoned public instead of living under single shepherds is torn in pieces by a double kind of wolves: their bishops rule as tyrants, nor are these men shepherds but robbers of another sort. Let me repeat: I do not criticize the good among them, or the religious order. There are men among them of the highest integrity, who deplore the same things that I deplore. Bees can from time to time drive out their drones, however thievish, for they have no sting. These drones have sharper stings than any hornet, and neither kings nor popes could drive them out of the commonwealth without disaster to the Christian religion, so well defended are their secret gangs, so well have they secured the whole world with their fortresses and their troupes, building themselves new nests every day, on the ground, no doubt, that the religious fervour of the earlier monasteries, and the reputation for it to which those houses owed their rise in the first place, are now no more, as though the sincerity (if it can be so called) of their own religion would not soon be no more in its turn. As a result, the world is burdened with irreligious and idle flocks of monks; princes are deprived of their people, bishops of their flock, ordinary people of their shepherd, and the purity and liberty of the Christian religion is gradually slipping into Jewish ceremonial. It is hard to say which is the greater burden for the state, the agreement of bad princes among themselves or their mutual hostility, for if they go to war it costs the people dear, and if they are in league they conspire for the public detriment. Just so, one cannot tell which is the more to be desiredit would be better to say, to be detested - the agreement of these men among themselves or their mutual feuding, for both bode public evil. I take the word ficus here to mean a horny swelling that grows on the socket of the eye; this is extremely vexatious, but cannot be removed without risk, being so near the eye, which is highly intolerant of interference and surgical operation. The adage is mentioned in Suidas.

[greek], With spear and shield, when a man attacks some task with all his might. Aristophanes in the Peace: 'With spear and shield as well,' and again in the Wasps: 'Charging forth with spear and shield.' The image is taken from a soldier fully armed. We can also divert to a similar purpose that phrase in Homer: 'With spear and sword, with great and mighty rocks,' when something is done with all possible energy.

'[greek], An old man's skull is like raisins. The lesson of this adage is that an old man physically is weak and flabby; the juice is drained out of him and his flesh is gone to nothing. Lucian in his Tyrant about old men: 'For they're all just a bunch of raisins.' Grapes when dried are wrinkled and flabby, because the juice has been drained out of them by the sun. Hence the Ancients took also to calling dried-up old men 'raisins,' because of their many wrinkles; Lucilius, cited by Nonius: 'Wrinkled and dry, the old want everything the same.'

After the leaves, the trees will fall on you. For use whenever we wish to warn someone that if a man tolerates slight injuries, more grievous injuries will follow. The falling leaves of trees, for example, may be neglected, but it happens sometimes that the trees themselves are rotten and fall on the head of him who stands below. Plautus in the Menaechmi: 'The leaves are falling now; but if we stay here these three days, then it will be the trees that fall on you.'

You're frightened before you hear the trumpet sound, your spirit is broken before the danger shows itself. Derived from cowardly soldiers, who are terrified before the trumpets sound for the fray. For when they hear the trumpet, soldiers' hearts are often attacked by a surprising fear. Virgil: 'Why does trembling seize your limbs before you hear the trumpet?' If diverted some distance from its original sense, this phrase will develop into a proverb.

'[greek], Neglected corner, was used of a man who just sat idle and indolent and attempted nothing worth doing. They say there is a place in Libya commonly called Thoughtless Corner, perhaps because it lay neglected and uncultivated. I find this also written in the form ' [greek], Idle Man's Corner. Recorded by Zenodotus and Hesychius.

'[greek], Beyond the standard of Callicrates, was used of immense wealth. They say there was a man in Carystus called Callicrates, who was far richer than all his fellow-citizens, so that if they wished to convey the idea of a very rich man, they said he could outdo even the wealth of Callicrates of Carystus. Aristotle, however, in his Constitution of Athens, as cited by Suidas, tells us of a certain Callicrates, one of the judges, who increased the exactions of the judiciary beyond all reason, and hence the proverb arose as a phrase for excessive exactions.

'[greek], Vulcan's chains. When a man was bound in fetters that could not be loosed, he was said to be held by one of Vulcan's chains. The description is taken from those fetters of adamant with which Vulcan in Homer bound Venus and Mars, in such a way that the more they strove to get free, the more tightly they were enmeshed. Homer in Odyssey 8: 'So he went his way to the forge, brooding on mischief in his heart. There he set his great anvil on its stand, and hammered out bonds that could never be broken or loosed, that they might remain fixed fast for ever. Then, when in his anger he had finished the trap for Mars, he went his way to the chamber where his dear bed was laid. All round it in a circle on the bedposts he threw bonds everywhere, and many hung down from the roof slender as spider's webs, such as no eye could see, not even the eyes of the blessed gods.' The adage is recorded by Suidas.

[greek], To one's heart's content, that is, as much as one wants, or amply, which will form a proverb only if used as a somewhat far-fetched metaphor: for example, I spend my time on poetry to the point of saturation, and He played tricks with me to the point of saturation, and Quintilian indulges in metaphor to the point of saturation. They express the same thing in a compound word katakoros, enough and to spare. Julius Pollux adds [greek], Beyond the point of saturation, and shows that a man who ate in that way was called addêphagos, and kabasos, from kabos, which is a measure of grain, much as in Latin a heavy drinker can be called tricongius, a two-gallon can. In the same sense they say [greek], Up to the lip, taking the image from vessels of liquid, and Up to both ears, of which I have spoken elsewhere. Julius Pollux calls a full vessel isocheiles or epicheiles, brimfull, and one that overflows hypercheiles, over-brimming, forming the words from cheilos, the lip of a vase. Recorded by Zenodotus.

[greek], Wishes make wealthy. When someone nourishes hopes on a kingly scale in his imagination, and as far as wishes go is rich already. The epithet megalodôros in Greek means 'giver of great gifts,' and there is no more generous donor than a man's wishes: they give each man just as much as he asks for. This is mentioned by Lucian in his essay On Sects. 'Promises are a currency in which anyone can be rich' says Ovid; but it is much easier to be generous and rich in wishes.

[greek], I wish I were at home! A familiar saying when someone longs to escape from the troubles that beset him. Evidently borrowed from those who are in danger in a storm; for even nowadays people in peril on a voyage say 'Would I were at home!' Recorded by Suidas.

[greek], In disgrace may you disgorge the broth that by disgrace you gained; that is, as you acquired reputation or wealth discreditably, so may you lose them and be discredited. Like that phrase in Plautus, 'Ill gotten ill employed.' Suidas cites this trochaic line as a proverb from Aristophanes, where it is to be found in the Knights; it is there addressed to Cleon, who embezzled public funds.

[greek], God produces good things of his own free will. When things turn out well without effort on our part, as though some god were taking care of us. Stobaeus adduces this iambic line from Cratinus' Ploutoi: 'God gives them good things of his own free will.' Of the sleeper's net I have spoken elsewhere.

[greek], Idle bellies, was applied to gross eaters, slaves of their stomachs and their digestions. Epimenides the Cretan, cited by St Paul in his epistle to Titus: 'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.' And Lucilius: 'Farewell, ye greedy gluttons, and farewell, ye idle bellies.' Terence in the Phormio: 'Drive your fists into that paunch,' where, as Donatus points out, 'that paunch' or belly might equally mean the parasite's whole body. Plutarch in his essay 'On the Difference Between Flatterer and Friend' thinks these iambic lines do not suit a parasite so well as they do a flatterer and a toady: 'With body all belly, and with roving eye, / This is the beast that walks upon its teeth.' Aristotle in book three of the Ethics points out that men who are devoted to their stomachs and to what they eat are called gastrimargoi, because they fill their bellies beyond moderation with food and drink; for the word is unquestionably a compound of gastêr, belly, and margos, raving. I should like in passing to record an absurdity, of which I learned while considering this passage. The compiler of our Greek Etymologicon says that no teacher of grammar or rhetoric has ever explained the origin of this word gastrimargus; but that this was achieved by Aristotle in his work on animals. Up to this point I was gaping open-mouthed like a seagull, expecting something pretty recondite. "The margus,' he says, 'is a creature born from putrefaction between land and water. Born as it is from the ground, it does not cease to eat earth, until it has bored its way through the ground and emerges into the air. On emergence it lies dead for three days, until a moist mist arises; and when wetted by this, the creature revives, nor does it eat earth thereafter. Hence it is that those who follow the philosophers of Antiquity call men who are very gross eaters gastrimargoi.' Now what could make greater nonsense than such a fiction? But he follows one dream with another. 'And yet,' he goes on, 'this account can be understood in a religious sense. All carnal desire is born of corruption, and once born it does not cease to devour the heart that contains it until through the habit of knowledge it comes out into the open. When it has come out, it dies, a victim of the three powers of the soul. And thus the grace of the Holy Spirit, appearing through a mist of erudition, provides drops of recognition and revives it, not in accordance with its former life, subject to carnal desires, but according to that life which by way of virtue enjoys converse with gods.' Worse than nonsense though this is, I have thought it worth recording, that the reader may understand how little weight should be given to such drivel, and what a disservice those men do who think it a sin to throw doubt on anything that they have found for whatever reason 'on paper scribbled down.' There was a time when some men's purpose was, not merely to force the poets' fables to accept an allegorical Christian interpretation, but even to invent new fables of their own which they could expound to us allegorically, as though truth cannot be learnt without an admixture of falsehood. This man who, Christian as he was, wished to make Aristotle appear the authority for what he had dreamed up, thought he could nicely delude us all if he wrote 'gods' instead of 'God.' Are we to suppose that Aristotle normally adapts the natures of living creatures to convey a moral lesson, and that he of all people knows what is meant by 'Holy Spirit? Julius Pollux in book 6 of his On the Names of Things tells us that a drunkard is called pithos, a cask, and a glutton kabasos, because kabos meant a measure of grain, as one might say 'firkin.' Antiphanes, cited by Athenaeus in book 12, says of a fat man and a heavy drinker: 'He for his wine-swigging and his portly belly is called Old Barrel by all the locals.' Somewhere in the same author those who are devoted to food and drink are called Thylaci, 'meal-bags.' And there is nothing obscure in the phrase 'to hang a firkin, not a man.'

'[greek], An invention worthy of Ulysses, was applied to something ingenious, astute and wily. Homer always presents Ulysses as artful, suppressing fact and inventing fiction. Thus right at the start of the Odyssey he calls him polytropos, a man of many wiles. So does Virgil: Ulysses, fertile inventor of criminal schemes.' Recorded by Suidas. Plutarch in his life of Lysander makes it clear what 'an invention worthy of Ulysses' is. The Spartans had recalled Lysander by secret despatch. Lysander, expecting to face charges brought by Pharnabazus the Persian satrap, who was in high favour at Sparta, took steps to have an interview with him, and after much entreaty got him to write to the magistrates to say that he had not been wronged by Lysander in any way. Pharnabazus, playing Cretan with a Cretan, as the saying goes, wrote the letter that Lysander asked for and gave it him to read; but he had secretly written another letter conveying his own wishes, with a seal and address so like the other that it was impossible to tell them apart, and this was the one that he entrusted to Lysander. Having no suspicions, he delivered it; and when the ephors, after reading it, showed it to him, he realized that Ulysses was not the only cunning rascal. Such, more or less, is the account in Plutarch.

There is a proverbial metaphor used of parasites, They live on their own juice. These characters, if they have the luck to be invited to a good dinner, stuff themselves to the full; if, on the other hand, no 'promise of food' has smiled upon them, and they are compelled to live off their own resources, they face famine with good courage and hold out in hopes of some dinner to come. The image derives from snails, which in hot weather shrink into their shells and somehow or other live on their own juice until it rains. Plautus in the Captivi: 'When if s vacation-time and men go into the country, there is an adjournment also for our teeth. Like snails that take cover in the hot weather, and live on their own juice if no dew falls, so parasites lie hidden in vacation, living on their own juice.'

Ανδρὸς κακῶς πράσσοντες, ἐκποδὼν φίλοι, The unlucky find their friends are not at home. This proverb is a scathing comment on the behaviour of the common run of friends who, like swallows, adjust their arrival and departure to suit the season: they arrive when all goes well, and when bad weather threatens, off they go. Aristides in his Panathenaic Oration uses this expressly as an adage: 'And he turned the proverb upside down. He made it clear that the friends of a man in misfortune are not far away, but has made many even of those previously at variance with him into friends through his afflictions.' There is also an iambic line to this effect: 'Misfortune never found a prosperous friend.' And a second very like it: 'Fortune tries friendship as the fire tries gold.' To this saying Cicero openly alluded in book 9 of his Letters to Friends: 'For though affection true and fictitious are not easily distinguished, unless things take such a turn that abiding loyalty can be tested by some danger as gold is by fire, all other symptoms can mean anything.' Horace: 'For friends come cheap when good men are in need.' Friends who ask are to be had everywhere; friends who give are very scarce. Pindar too writes to the same effect: 'Honour is lost when a man is bereft of his friends, and few mortals are loyal when things go wrong.'

[greek], He knows the roads by which Eucrates escaped, suits a man who always finds some chink, as Plautus puts it, by which he can slip out, and escape doing his duty. Aristophanes in the Knights: 'Mind he does not give you the slip, for he knows by what roads Eucrates escaped through the bran-market.' He criticizes in passing the character of Eucrates who, though a miller by trade, had run the country. In the Birds too he satirizes a certain Execestides, a homeless foreigner who knew the road to everywhere. This will suit a man who worms his way out on some pretext when he has to keep his word.

[greek], It's alive, kindle the fire. When at the crisis of some risky business we tell a man to make haste and seize an opportunity, just as when we find a small spark on the hearth and make haste to see that it does not go out like the rest of the fire. Resembles Now your iron is in the fire. Recorded in Suidas.

[greek], The belly has no ears. When food is at stake, questions of right and wrong do not get a hearing. This is supported by that iambic line current in Greek as a proverb: 'Hunger admits no counter-argument.' Plutarch and Gellius give currency to a familiar remark of Cato from one of his speeches, in which he opposed a land-law. He began by saying it was difficult for a speaker to address himself to the belly, which has no ears. And it will not be out of place if used of those who are devoted to the pleasures of the table, and accept no argument that may conflict with their dinner. Seneca in his Letters, book 3 number 21: 'The belly listens to no moral principles; it asks, it demands its due. But it is not a tiresome creditor; a small payment sends it away content, provided you pay it as much as you owe, not as much as you can.'

We say Dust and all, whenever a clean sweep is made of something so that nothing is left, not even dust. The image looks as though it were taken from men sweeping up the grain on a threshing-floor, and some dirt with it. Plautus in the Rudens: 'He'll sweep me up entirely, dust and all.' And again in the Truculentus: 'To get his money off him all the sooner, dust and all.' Juvenal uses a similar metaphor when he writes 'rust and all' in the sense of 'completely, not a speck left behind': Nowadays, if your friend does not deny all knowledge of what you left in his charge, if he gives you back your old leather purse, rust and all.' There is a phrase in the gospels that belongs here, where the apostles are told to shake off even the dust, meaning, not to carry away with them anything at all.

Plautus in the Bacchides uses To be as fit as a pancratiast, in the sense of being in good health, for to competitors in the pancratium physical fitness mattered more than anything. To the same effect he also uses To be as fit as an athlete, as a prizefighter, as a king. Terence too has They say she's a bruiser' of a girl of unusual strength and physique. Basilikôs, 'royally' or 'as a king,' is used in Greek for 'splendidly.' And the same phrase is still in common currency even in our own day.

This line of Homer, from the second book of the Iliad, is unquestionably to be numbered among those which, as Macrobius tells us, passed into a proverb: 'Base it is to stay too long and to return empty-handed.' This will be appropriate when someone has aroused long-standing expectations, which later he does not fulfil; if a man, for example, were to spend a long time abroad for purposes of study, and then come home no wiser than he went, or a merchant returning from a long absence not a penny the richer, or a man of great age who has done nothing distinguished in his whole life to prove that he ever existed. Cicero uses it as a proverb in book 6 of his Letters to Atticus, in the letter beginning Nunc quidem profecto.

Plautus in the Epidicus: 'They're getting ready to cast a spear at you,' meaning They're planning some secret attack on you. And in the same passage: 'He has some dirty work in hand.' For the line, which is a trochaic tetrameter, runs thus: 'Plans to cast a spear against you, has some dirty work in hand,' fabricam facit. Both metaphors have a proverbial air. Again in the Casina: 'I'll turn aside that spear of theirs some way or other.' And in the Pseudolus: 'But my plan was to cast a spear at our old man.' This is very close to a phrase in the Mostellaria: 'You've cast a javelin at me,' for a javelin is a kind of spear.

A three-letter man can be used by way of irony of one who wishes to be thought of good family and social standing. It arises from the fact that in old days it was the custom for men of free birth to abbreviate their three names - praenomen, nomen, agnomen - into three initials in their letters or insignia:Q. V.M., for instance, for Quintus Valerius Maximus. Hence the popular jest about a man of three letters. Plautus in the Aulularia turns the joke in another direction, to apply to a thievish slave, adding the retort Three-letter man yourself: cur and thrice a cur!'

Three days' rations, to convey that destitution threatens, the metaphor being drawn from the food carried by soldiers. It comes in Aristophanes, in the Acharnians among other places: 'And to reserve for myself rations for three days.' The scholiast adds that in Antiquity men setting out on a campaign were warned by public proclamation to provide themselves with food for not less than three days. He mentions this in the Knights too: 'I shall provide it, and enough for three days.' Thus we shall use 'three days' rations' when we mean a minimal supply, barely enough to feed one for that space of time. Terence uses a not dissimilar metaphor in the Self-tormentor, when he speaks of 'ten days' supplies.'

A man makes tragedies out of trifles who raises a storm over some matter of no importance and, as Terence puts it, 'brings great effort to the uttering of great nonsense.' Cicero in the De oratore, book 2: 'Lest we be thought to deserve ridicule or disgust if we make tragedies out of trifles.' Quintilian uses the same metaphor in book 6, in his chapter on the peroration: 'For to stir up tragedies in minor disputes is like trying to fit the mask and leggings of Hercules on small children.' In fact, the expression 'arousing a tragedy,' if applied in any other field, has itself the look of a proverb; and hence in Greek too there is ektragôdizein [act tragically] and tragikôs legein [speak tragically], for strong or bitter language.

A man is said to be driven off course who is deflected by some violent force from his intended path. Thus Laberius the writer of mimes, cited by Macrobius in book 2 of the Saturnalia, calls the course of fortune 'crosswise.' For Gaius Caesar in the kindness of his heart invited him, a Roman knight and an old man, to appear on the stage. In a prologue therefore he complains that contrary to his personal convictions he has been compelled to appear by the authority of the emperor. 'Necessity,' he says, 'whose violent crosswise course / Many have tried to escape and few succeeded, / Has thrust me down, in my extreme old age,' and what follows. So a man who is thus carried headlong is said to be 'swept off course.' Clearly drawn from sailors, who are carried straight forward by a following wind and driven off course if it blows contrary.

[greek], You say that Dionysius is like Thrasybulus, is used customarily when someone compares things which are much too far apart. Dionysius is one of the most pestilent tyrants on record, Thrasybulus has a reputation for his very great devotion to the public good. Taken from the Plutus of Aristophanes.

[greek], Better than tribute, was used when someone derived enormous advantages from malpractices and crime. It is recorded by Suidas, and by Zenodotus, as a proverb, with no further explanation. Harpocration in his Rhetorical Dictionary writes that it occurred in a speech by Hyperides against Athenogenes. It arose, I presume, from the fact that those who exact tribute in the prince's name often collect more than the proper sum; and princes demand on terms which enable them to seize what they want from the unwilling if they do not pay up. That phrase in Pindar, in hymn 8 of the Pythians, agrees with this: 'And gain is most acceptable if a man gets it from the house of a willing giver.'

[greek], A tragical ape, was proverbial as an offensive description of a man who held high office and was rich and powerful, though in other ways undeserving. Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a man and more like a pale copy of one; and it is called 'tragic' because of the noise and bustle of high position and the wearing of a kind of mask. Demosthenes in his speech on behalf of Ctesiphon calls Aeschines a tragical ape because, though an utter rascal, he used splendid language to act the part of an upright citizen. The proverb is mentioned by Philostratus in his life of Aristides. St Jerome shows in his letters that this was a jibe often levelled at Christians, though only by the irreligious and by gentiles, as though they made a show of piety in face and bearing, while being themselves rascals; though this passage is not found in the same state in all the copies. This I have pointed out in my notes, in which I have devoted infinite labour to the correction and elucidation of the works of that truly divine author, so that they can be read without stumbling by religious men of only moderate education. It is suitable also for those who by beard and cloak profess themselves philosophers, though the rest of them do not correspond to the outward man. For, as Plutarch puts it, 'It is not wearing a beard or a rough cloak that makes philosophers nor dressing in linen that makes Isiacs,' that is, priests of Isis.

Things are said to feed the worms which are left untouched and perish from neglect. A metaphor from clothes or books which have been a long time motionless on the shelf. Horace in the Epistles: When you start looking dirty from fingering by common folk, Either you will fall silent and be food for idle worms Or you'll take refuge in Utica or be despatched in a greasy parcel to Ilerda.

[greek], A log onto the fire. When a man devotes himself to the pursuits towards which he has a natural leaning - a lecher consigned to the society of young women, a bloodthirsty man to the army, one who thirsts to make money to a merchant's life. The word dalos in Greek means a piece of firewood half-burnt. Not very far from To make water in a chamber-pot. Recorded by Suidas, and by Zenodotus.

[greek], Laconian spurge, was used in dealing with blearyeyed people and those whose sight was poor. Tithymallus is a kind of spurge found in Laconia (oozing when plucked with a milky juice, which has led some to call it lactaris, milkweed). This is exceptionally acrid, and was rubbed on the eyes at nightfall to sharpen the eyesight. Dioscorides in book 4 makes out several kinds of this, and gives a careful account of its use in the treatment of the eye. The adage is recorded by Suidas, who gives a quotation from Aristophanes about a man called Neoclides who had very weak sight, who 'pounded together garlic and spurge.' The passage is to be found in the Ecclesiazusae: What then should I have done? Together pound garlic and silphium-juice, Adding the spurge that's from Laconia, And on your eyelids smear at eventide. The word looks as though it were derived from a nurse's teat; but in other sources I find it written with a single /, though Suidas writes it with two, nor does he at the same time indicate how the proverb was used. If it applies to those with weak sight, one should say 'He needs spurge' or 'he's a spurgepounder.' For they say the bitterness of the juice is such that when collecting it one must be careful that it does not come in contact with the eye, and when taken by the stomach, it must be wrapped up before being swallowed to prevent it from making the throat sore. This juice is used in treating phlegm in the eye. Pliny4 has much to say of it in book 26, chapter 8. Cornelius Celsus in book 5 shows that this plant is called in Latin sea-lettuce, and lists it as an exedent.

[greek], Sardinian dye, was applied to colour of the highest quality, especially scarlet, and was used in jest metaphorically of a man who blushed for shame or was coloured with blood from a wound. Sardo or, as Hesychius calls it, Sardon, is a large island off the coast of Italy which produced various scarlet dyes of the highest class. We find similar references in Latin to Tyrian purple and Sarranian purple. Aristophanes in the Peace: 'Which he says is of Sardinian dye,' and again in the Acharnians: 'Lest I dip you in Sardinian dye.'

Οσον μέλει τῇ χελωνῃ μυιῶν., More than a tortoise minds a fly. Suidas records these words from an author whose name I do not know: 'But Agamemnon cared no more for Thersites' insults than a tortoise minds a fly, as the proverb runs.' Flies cannot possibly hurt a tortoise on account of the shell that protects it. Related to one of which I have mentioned elsewhere, An elephant does not mind gnats. This will be more stylish if adapted to things of the mind: 'a mind defended by virtue and philosophy no more fears the assaults of fortune than a tortoise fears flies.'