Adagia 3001–3100

This is one of the finest of proverbs and is widely used in literature: [greek], War is a treat for one who has not tried it. In book 3 chapter 14 of his Art of War Vegetius puts it this way: 'Do not put too much trust in a novice who is eager for battle, for it is to the inexperienced that fighting is attractive.' From Pindar we have: 'War is sweet for those who have not tried it, but anyone who knows what it is is horrified beyond measure if he meets it in his heart.' You can have no idea of the dangers and evils of some aspects of human affairs until you have tried them.
It is pleasant, for those who have never tried, to seek the favour of a
powerful friend,
But the experienced dread it.
It seems fine and glorious to move among nobles at court and to busy oneself with the affairs of kings, but old men who know all about the business from experience willingly deny themselves this pleasure. It seems delightful to be in love with girls, but only to those who have not yet tasted the bitter in the sweet. The adage could be applied in the same way to any affair carrying great risk and attended by suffering such as no one would face unless he were young and inexperienced. In his Rhetoric Aristotle suggests that youth is bolder and age is diffident because the former are given confidence by their inexperience and the latter are made diffident and hesitant by their long acquaintance with suffering. If there is any human activity that should be approached with caution, or rather that should be avoided by all possible means, resisted and shunned, that activity is war, for there is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more widely destructive, more persistently ingrained, more hateful, more unworthy in every respect of a man, not to say a Christian. Yet it is remarkable how widely these days, how rashly, for what trivial reasons war is begun, how cruelly and barbarously it is waged, not only by pagans, but even by Christians, not only by laymen, but even by priests and bishops, not only by the young and inexperienced, but even by older people who have known it already so many times, not only by common folk and the naturally fickle mob, but most especially by princes whose duty is to restrain with prudence and reason the rash impulses of the foolish mob. And there are plenty of lawyers and theologians who add fuel to the fire of these outrages and, as the saying goes, 'sprinkle them with cold water.' Because of this war is now such an accepted thing that people are astonished to find anyone who does not like it, and such a respectable thing that it is wicked and, I might almost say, 'heretical' to disapprove of this, which of all things is the most abominable and the most wretched.
How much more reasonable it would be to marvel at what evil genius, what plague, what excess, what madness first put into the mind of man something so beastly that this gentle animal, which Nature created to be peaceful and well disposed to its fellow creatures, the only one she intended for the preservation of all the others, should plunge with such savage insanity, such mad clamour, into mutual slaughter. This will cause even more wonder to anyone who has rejected popularly accepted opinions and turned his thoughts to discerning the real meaning and nature of things, looking with a truly philosophical eye on the one hand at the image of man and on the other at the picture of war. First then, if we consider just the condition and appearance of the human body, is it not apparent at once that Nature, or rather God, created this animal not for war but for friendship, not for destruction but for preservation, not for aggression but to be helpful? For he gave every other living thing its own weapons. He armed the charging bull with horns, the raging lion with claws; he fitted the boar with slashing tusks; he protected elephants not only with their hide and their size but with their trunk as well. The crocodile is armour-clad at every point with plate-like scales, dolphins are equipped with flippers as weapons; porcupines have the defence of quills, the ray has a sting; the cock is equipped with spurs. Some Nature fortified with a shell, others with a hide, others with a scaly covering. There are some whose safety she provided for by giving them speed, like the doves; again there are others to whom she gave poison as a weapon. To these features she added hideous, savage appearance, fierce eyes, and harsh voices, and implanted inborn enmities. Man alone she produced naked, weak, delicate, unarmed, with very soft flesh and a smooth skin. No part of his body seems to be intended for fighting and violence, not to mention the fact that other animals are capable of protecting themselves almost as soon as they are born; only man is born in such a state that he must be long dependent entirely on the help of others. He cannot speak, he cannot walk, he cannot feed himself, he only wails for help, so that we may conclude that this creature alone was born entirely for friendship, which is formed and cemented most effectively by mutual assistance. It follows that Nature wanted man to owe the gift of living not so much to himself as to the good will of others, so that he should learn that his end was thankfulness and friendship. Then she gave him an appearance that was not hideous and terrifying, as with the others, but mild and gentle, bearing the signs of love and goodness. She gave him friendly eyes, revealing the soul; she gave him arms that embrace; she gave him the kiss, an experience in which souls touch and unite.
Man alone she endowed with laughter, the sign of merriment; man alone she endowed with tears, the symbol of mercy and pity. To him she also gave a voice that was not threatening and fierce as with the beasts, but friendly and caressing. Not content with these gifts Nature gave to man alone the use of speech and reason, the thing that is able above all else to create and nourish good will, so that nothing should be managed among men by force. She implanted a dislike of solitude and a love of companionship. She sowed deep in his heart the seed of goodwill. She arranged that what is most salutary should also be the most pleasant. For what is more agreeable than a friend, and at the same time what equally necessary? So, even if it were possible to lead a comfortable life without the society of others, still nothing would seem pleasant without a companion - unless one were to put off human nature altogether and sink to the level of a wild animal. Further she added the pursuit of learning and the desire for knowledge, the most effective means of drawing the mind of man away from all savagery, just as it has special power in forming friendships. For neither close family nor blood relationships bind souls together with stronger or firmer chains of friendship than does a shared interest in worthwhile studies. In addition to these she distributed among mankind a wonderful variety of gifts both intellectual and physical, so that everyone could find in someone else something to love and respect for its excellence, or to pursue and prize for its usefulness and necessity. Finally she implanted in man a tiny spark of the divine mind so that, even with no prospect of reward, he would take pleasure in deserving well of everyone. For this above all is the property and nature of God that by his benefits he has regard for all. Otherwise, what is that exquisite pleasure that we feel in our souls when we learn that we have been the means of someone's salvation? And this is why one man is dear to another, that he is bound by some great benefit bestowed. Therefore God placed man in this world as an image in some sense of himself, so that he should, like a sort of earthly divinity, take thought for the salvation of all. Even the brute beasts feel this, for we see not only the gentle ones, but leopards and lions and fiercer animals than these, fly for help to man when in great danger. He is the final refuge for all creatures, he is the most hallowed sanctuary for all, he is without exception their sheet anchor. We have sketched some sort of portrait of man. Now let us compare with this on the other hand, if you will, a picture of war. Imagine now that you see the barbarous cohorts that inspire terror by their very faces and the sound of their voices. On both sides iron-clad battle lines, the fearful clash and glitter of arms, the hateful roar of a great multitude, the threatening looks, harsh bugles, the terrifying blare of trumpets, the thunder of bombardons, no less frightening than real thunder but more harmful, the mad uproar, the furious clash of battle, the monstrous butchery, the merciless fate of the slain and those who kill, the slaughtered lying in heaps, the fields running with gore, the rivers dyed with human blood. Sometimes brother falls on brother, kinsman on kinsman, friend on friend, as the general madness rages, and plunges his sword into the vitals of one who never harmed him even by a word.
In short a tragedy like this contains such a mass of evils that the heart of man is loath even to remember it. I refrain from recounting other evils, common and trivial by comparison, such as crops trampled far and wide, farms burnt out, villages set on fire, cattle driven away, virgins raped, old men dragged off in captivity, churches sacked, and robbery, pillaging, violence and confusion everywhere. And I say nothing of the consequences of even the most successful and just war: peasants plundered, land-owners oppressed; so many old men left desolate, more tormented by the slaughter of their children than if the enemy had killed them and taken away the knowledge of their grief; so many old women left destitute, condemned to a crueller death than by the sword; so many wives left widows, children left orphans, homes filled with mourning, rich folk reduced to poverty. As for the harm it does to the way people behave, what use is it to speak of that when everyone knows that general moral standards are ruined once and for all by war? It is the cause of contempt for duty, disregard for law, readiness to dare any sort of crime. It is the source of the huge teeming flood we have of mercenaries, robbers, despoilers of churches and assassins. Worst of all, this deadly pestilence cannot be contained within its original limits, but, having begun in one quarter, it infects not only neighbouring regions like a contagious disease but even, through the effects of trade, of family or political alliances, drags remote ones into the general uproar and turmoil. In fact war is born from war, a real war from a counterfeit one, a huge war grows from a tiny one, and it is not unusual to see the same thing happen in these cases as the fables tell us about the Lernaean monster. It was for these reasons, I believe, that the ancient poets, who penetrated with the greatest discernment into the significance and nature of things and also pictured them in the most suggestive images, have related that war was sent into the world from the infernal regions by means of the Furies and that not just any Fury was suitable to carry through this work - it was the most deadly one of all that was chosen:
she who has a thousand names,
A thousand ways of causing harm.
Armed with countless serpents she blows her hellish horn. Pan fills everything with mindless tumult. Bellona cracks her furious whip. Godless Rage, breaking all his knotted chains, flies out with gory mouth, hideous to see. This has not escaped grammarians either, some of whom would have it that war is called helium by antiphrasis because it has nothing good or helium 'beautiful' about it; war is 'beautiful' in the same way that the Furies are the Eumenides 'the Kindly Ones.' Other grammarians prefer to think it is derived from bellua 'beast' because it is an act of brute beasts not of men to come together to destroy each other. But to me it seems worse than savage, worse than brutish, to resort to armed conflict. In the first place, most animals live in harmony and good order with their own kind, moving in herds and ensuring mutual protection. Not even all wild animals are fighters by nature (there are harmless ones as well, like deer and hares), it is only the most savage like lions, wolves, and tigers. But even these do not make war on each other as we do. Dog does not eat dogflesh, lions do not inflict their ferocity on each other, snake lives in peace with snake, between venomous creatures there is an understanding. But for man no wild beast is more dangerous than man. And then, when they do fight, animals fight with their own weapons; we men equip ourselves to destroy men with unnatural instruments devised by the art of devils. And animals do not become fierce for trivial reasons, but when hunger drives them mad, or when they feel they are being hunted, or when they fear for their young. But, God in heaven, we humans, what tragedies of wars we stir up, and for what frivolous causes! For the emptiest of territorial claims, out of childish anger, because some woman we intended to marry has been denied us, for reasons even more ridiculous than these. And then among animals combat is always one to one, and very brief, and however bloody the fight may be, one or the other breaks away when wounded. When did anyone hear of a hundred thousand animals falling dead together after tearing each other to pieces, as men do everywhere? Remember too that just as some animals have a natural hostility for others of a different species, so conversely with some they have a real and permanent friendship. But between man and man, any man and any other, warfare is perpetual, and no treaty is capable of holding between any mortals - so true is it that anything that has departed from its own nature degenerates into a species worse than if Nature herself had implanted the vice. Do you want to know what a savage, foul thing war is, how unworthy of man? Have you ever seen a lion forced to fight a bear? What grimaces, what roaring, what growling, what ferocity, what tearing of flesh! It strikes horror in anyone who sees it even from a safe distance.
But how much more loathsome, how much more savage, is the sight of a man fighting a man armed with so many weapons and so many missiles. I ask you, who would believe these were human beings if familiarity with the evil had not taken away our sense of wonder? Their eyes burn, their faces are pale, their step betokens madness, the voice grates, the shouting is mindless, the man is entirely turned to iron; their weapons clang, their cannons spout flashes of lightning. It would be more humane if man devoured man for food and drank his blood; some indeed have even gone this far, doing out of hatred what custom or necessity would have rendered more excusable. But now the same thing is done in a crueller way, with poisoned darts and hellish machines. There is no trace of man in it anywhere. Do you think Nature herself would recognize here what she created? And if anyone were to point it out to her, would she not be right to curse her deed as wicked, saying: 'What new sight is this I see? What hell has produced this monstrosity for us? There are some who call me a harsh stepmother because in the whole grand total of things I made a few poisonous creatures - although even these were meant to yield benefit to man - because I made a few animals that were not gentle - although no beast is so savage that it cannot be tamed by skill and kindness. The art of man can make lions tame, serpents gentle, and bears obedient. Who then is this, worse than a stepmother, who has given us this new beast, a plague to all the world? There was one creature I brought forth made entirely for kindly actions - peaceful, friendly, helpful. What has happened to make him degenerate into a beast like this? I recognize nothing in him of the man I created. What evil genius has degraded my work? What sorceress has conjured away his human mind and called up an animal's in its place? What Circe has changed his native shape? I would order the unhappy creature to look at himself in a mirror; but what can the eyes see when the mind is gone? But look at yourself, you raging warmonger, if you can somehow come to your senses. Where did you get that threatening crest on your head, that glittering helmet, those iron horns, those winged elbow-pieces, those scales, those brazen teeth, that plate-armour, those deadly arrows, that more than savage voice, that more than bestial face, that thunder and lightening more terrifying and more deadly than Jupiter's own bolt? I made you a creature in some sense divine; what came into your head to change yourself into a brute so monstrous that no beast will be a brute in future if compared to man?' I think Nature, the great builder of all things, would say all this and much more. This then is how man is constituted, as we have shown, and this is what war is like, as we experience it all too often.
So it seems a matter for considerable wonder what god, what sickness or what chance first put it into the heart of man to plunge a deadly sword into human vitals. It must have been by many stages that he descended to such an extraordinary madness. Indeed, 'No one ever fell all at once to the worst depths of shame ...' as the satirist says, and the greatest evils have always crept into the lives of men in the shadow and semblance of good. Long ago therefore when the first primitive men lived in the forests, naked, without fortifications or homes, they were sometimes attacked by savage beasts. It was with these that man first went to war, and a man was considered brave and a leader if he had driven off attacking beasts from his fellow humans. Moreover it seemed entirely just that slayers should be slain and butchers should be butchered, especially when they suffered no harm from us and attacked our kind without provocation. Since such deeds won high praise - this was the reason Hercules was deified - spirited young people began to hunt wild animals everywhere and to show off the skins as trophies. Then, not content with having killed, they protected themselves with the skins against the cold of winter. Such were the first murders and the first spoils. After this they went further and dared to do a thing that Pythagoras deemed thoroughly wicked and that might seem unnatural to us if custom did not tell us otherwise. Custom has such force everywhere that among certain peoples it was considered a matter of duty to beat up an aged parent, throw him into a pit and so deprive of life the one who had given it; it was thought pious to eat the flesh of one's intimate friends; it was held to be a fine thing that a virgin should become a common prostitute in the temple of Venus; and there were many other things more absurd than these that would be shocking to anyone if they were so much as mentioned here, so true is it that nothing is too villainous, or too cruel to gain approval if custom recommends it. So, what was the crime they dared to commit? It was that they did not shrink from taking the carcasses of slain animals for food, to tear dead flesh with their teeth, to drink the blood and suck the gore, to 'stuff their entrails with other entrails' as Ovid says. That crime, however monstrous it might seem to gentler minds, was nevertheless sanctioned by usage and convenience. It has even become a pleasure to see, among the luxuries of the table, the semblance of a corpse. Meats are covered under crusts like buried corpses, they are embalmed with scents, an inscription is placed on them: 'Here lies a boar,' 'This is the grave of a bear' - What carrion pleasures! And they went further: from dangerous beasts they moved to harmless animals. There was a general onslaught on sheep, 'a creature without trickery or guile' There was an onslaught on the hare, whose only crime was to be edible. Nor did they refrain from eating the domestic ox who had supported the ungrateful family for so long with his hard labour; no species of bird or fish was spared, and this tyranny of the stomach reached the point that no animal was ever safe from the cruelty of man. But custom also induced them to believe that this was not cruelty to any species providing it was not men they slaughtered. Vice however is like the sea: we may have the choice of shutting it out, but to let it in and then contain it, no one has that power; once admitted, neither is controlled by our will but is driven by its own momentum. After they had had some practice in killing with these beginnings, anger convinced them that man should assault man with clubs or stones, or their fists. For up till then it was with such weapons that they fought, I imagine, and by killing beasts they would have learned that a man too can be slaughtered with very little trouble. But this kind of barbarity remained for a long time a matter of fighting between individuals. When one was defeated, the war was over; sometimes both fell, but then both were unworthy to live. Moreover there was some appearance of right in having killed an enemy, and it began to be a matter for praise if one killed some violent or pernicious man, such as Cacus and Busiris were said to be, and freed the world of such monsters.
We see such titles to praise among the achievements of Hercules. The next step was that numbers of people banded together according to kinship, neighbourhood, or close connection, and what is now called brigandage was then called war. Up till then it was a matter of stones and stakes with fire-hardened points; a stream in the way or a crag or some such obstacle would put an end to the fighting. Meanwhile, as savagery increased with habit, as anger rose and ambition became more and more inflamed, ingenuity provided weapons to match their violence. Men invented any sort of arms they could to defend themselves and missiles to destroy the enemy. Now they began to make war everywhere, now in greater numbers, now with weapons. But this obvious madness had its own code of honour: they called it bellum 'beautiful' or 'war,' and sought to make it a virtue if a man defended children, wife, herds, or places of retreat from enemy attacks at the risk of his own life. And so malice grew gradually side by side with civilization; city began to declare war on city, region on region, kingdom on kingdom, although there still remained at this time, in something that was excessively cruel in itself, traces of the humanity of the earliest times. Priests were sent to demand satisfaction, they called the gods to witness, they skirmished with words before they came to blows. The battle was fought with ordinary weapons, and courage, not trickery. It was a crime to strike the enemy if the signal for battle had not been given; it was forbidden to go on fighting when the general had ordered the retreat to be sounded. In short, it was a contest in bravery and honour rather than a desire to kill. And as yet there was no resort to arms except against foreigners, who because of this were called hostes 'enemies,' a word like hospites 'strangers.' From these beginnings empires were born - and no nation ever achieved empire without great shedding of human blood. Since then there has been constant warfare back and forth, as one man drives another out of the seat of empire and seizes it for himself. Subsequently, as power had fallen into the hands of the most criminal sorts of mortals, armed attacks were made on anybody at will, and it was not the evildoers but the wealthy who began to be most exposed to the dangers of war, and the aim of fighting was no longer glory but filthy lucre or something even more base than that. I have no doubt that Pythagoras, wisest of men, foresaw this when he sought by his philosophical teaching to deter the inexperienced multitude from slaughtering flocks. He could see that someone who, without any provocation or injury, was accustomed to shedding the blood of harmless animals, would not hesitate to kill a man when angry or roused by insults. What is war anyway but murder and brigandage committed by many, all the more criminal because it is more widespread? But these ideas are laughed at as the ravings of schoolmen by the boorish lords of our own time, who have nothing human beyond the appearance of men but think themselves gods. And yet from these beginnings we find the madness has reached such a point that life consists of nothing else. We are continually at war, nation clashes with nation, kingdom with kingdom, city with city, prince with prince, people with people and, as even the heathen admit is wicked, relative with relative, kinsman with kinsman, brother with brother, son with father; finally, worse in my opinion than all these, Christian with fellow man, and worst of all, I must add reluctantly, Christian with Christian. And men are so blind in their thinking that no one is surprised at this, no one denounces it.
There are some who applaud it, make a glorious parade of it, call it 'holy' when it is worse than hellish, and inflame rulers already crazed with fury, pouring oil on the fire, as they say. One uses the sanctity of the pulpit to promise pardon for all sins committed by those who fight under his prince's flag. Another declaims, 'Invincible prince, if you only continue your present support of religion, God will fight on your side.' A third promises certain victory, and distorts the words of the prophets to a wicked purpose with his interpretations of 'You will not be afraid of the terror by night nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the demon of midday,' and 'A thousand will fall at your side, and ten thousand on your right,' and 'You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and tread underfoot the lion and the dragon.' In short, the whole of this mystical psalm was perverted to apply to profane things, to fit the case of this or that ruler. There were plenty of such prophets on both sides, and plenty of people to applaud such prophets. We have heard bellicose sermons of this sort from monks, theologians, and bishops. So the decrepit make war, priests make war, monks make war, and we involve Christ in something so diabolical! Two armies advance on each other and both carry the standard of the cross, which in itself could teach them how appropriate it is to conquer Christians. From that heavenly banner, which represents the complete and ineffable union of all Christians, they rush to mutual slaughter; and of this wicked deed we make Christ the witness and the author. Where is the kingdom of the devil if it is not in war? Why do we drag Christ into this when he would be more at home in any brothel than in a war? Paul the Apostle considers it unworthy that any dispute should arise among Christians that needs a judge to settle the case. What if he could see us making war the whole world over, for such trivial reasons, more savagely than any pagans fought, more cruelly than any barbarians? What if he could see that this is done with the authority, encouragement, and help of representatives of the popethe peacemaker, the unifier of all things - of those who greet the people with the sign of peace? I am not deaf to what has long been shouted at me by the Carians who reap their profit from public misfortune.
'We did not want war! We were forced into it by the crimes of other people! We are taking our rights! Whatever evil war brings, the responsibility should lie with those who gave cause for it.' But let them keep quiet for a moment; I will refute their special pleadings and remove this cosmetic we use to hide our disease. Just as I have contrasted man and war, that is, the most peaceable of animals with what is by far the most barbarous activity, so that the horror of it should be clearer, let me now contrast war and peace, the most wretched and wicked of conditions with the happiest and best; it will then be clear what madness it is to resort to war with so much clamour, so much effort, so much expense, so much danger, and so many disasters, when concord could be bought at much less cost. In the first place, what is there in the whole world better and sweeter than friendship? Absolutely nothing. But what is peace if not friendship among many people? Conversely, war is likewise nothing but hatred between large numbers. It is the characteristic of good things that the more widespread they are the more advantage they bring. Therefore since friendship between one person and another is such a pleasant and salutary thing, how great the happiness will be if kingdom is united with kingdom and nation with nation in bonds of friendship. Conversely it is in the nature of evils that the wider they spread the more they deserve their appellation. Therefore if it is deplorable, if it is criminal for a man to attack another with the sword, how much more destructive it is, how much more criminal for the same deed to be done by so many thousands of men? In concord, small things grow; in discord, even great things decline. Peace is the mother and the nurse of all that is good. War immediately and once and for all buries, extinguishes and destroys all that is joyous and beautiful, and pours out a veritable Lerna of evils into the lives of men. In times of peace it is just as if a fresh spring sun has begun to shine on human affairs; fields are cultivated, gardens turn green, flocks graze contentedly, farms are established and towns rise, fallen buildings are restored, others ornamented and enlarged, wealth increases, pleasures are nurtured, law is in repute, statecraft flourishes, religion is fervent, justice reigns, goodwill prevails, artisans practise their crafts with skill, the earnings of the poor are greater and the opulence of the rich more splendid. The study of the most noble subjects thrives, youth is educated, old age enjoys a peaceful leisure, girls are happily married, 'Young mothers are praised for children who resemble their fathers.' Good men prosper, bad men are less bad. But as soon as the raging storm of war irrupts, ye gods, what a monstrous sea of troubles rushes in, flooding and overwhelming everything. Flocks are driven off, crops trampled, farmers slaughtered, farms burned, flourishing cities built over so many centuries are overturned by a single onslaught, so much easier is it to do harm than good! Citizens' wealth falls into the hands of damnable brigands and assassins; homes grieve with fear, mourning, and complaints; everything is filled with lamentations. The skills of craftsmen grow cold, the poor must starve or resort to wicked means. The rich either mourn their plundered wealth or tremble for what they have left, much to be pitied in either case. If girls marry, they do so with sadness and foreboding.
Deserted wives remain childless in their homes, the laws are silent, goodwill is mocked, there is no place for justice, religion is a subject of scorn, there is no distinction at all between sacred and profane. Youth is corrupted with every sort of vice, the old weep and curse the length of their days. Study and learning are without honour. In short, we find more evils in war than any man's words can express, still less any words of mine. Perhaps it could be borne if wars only made us miserable and not malevolent and wicked too, if peace only made us happier and not better too. But it is a wicked man who resorts to war. There are already, alas! too many evils that never cease to worry hard-pressed mortals whether they will or no, wearing them down and consuming them. About two thousand years ago there were some three hundred names of illnesses noted by physicians, not including sub-types - the new diseases that develop every day - and old age itself, the malady with no cure. We read of whole cities in one place destroyed by an earthquake, set on fire by lightning in another, solid areas of ground in yet another swallowed up by a gaping hole, towns undermined by excavations and collapsing, not to mention the vast number of people carried off by events so common as to be ignored: flooding of seas and rivers, avalanches and collapsing buildings, poisonings, falls, attacks by wild animals, eating, drinking, sleeping. One person chokes on a hair while drinking milk, another on a grape-seed, a third on a fish-bone stuck in his throat. Some have died of sudden joy - though to die of great sorrow is less extraordinary. Then there are the fatal epidemics that rage quite commonly everywhere. There is no part of the world where human life, in any case so brief in itself, is not in danger. It is prey to so many woes that Homer was right to declare man the most wretched of living creatures. But these woes cannot easily be avoided and do not happen by our own fault, so they make us wretched but not guilty. What is it that makes creatures exposed to such a multitude of calamities go looking for further trouble as if they had none already? And looking not for just any trouble but the most terrible of all: so destructive that it alone beats all the others, so fertile that it alone contains all the others, so deadly that it makes people as wicked as it makes them tormented, utterly wretched yet not to be pitied, except those who want war the least and suffer from it the most. Add to all this that the advantages of peace spread very widely and most people have a share in them. In war, if anything turns out happily - though heaven knows whether anything in war could be called happy! - it affects only a few, and unworthy ones at that. The salvation of one is the ruin of another; one man's wealth is the spoils taken from another; this man's triumph is that man's grief, with the result that the unhappiness is bitter, but the happiness is monstrous and bloody. Most often both sides weep over 'a Cadmean victory,' as it is called. I wonder whether any war has ever ended so successfully that a sensible victor did not regret having undertaken it.
So, since peace is of all states both the best and most joyful, and since war, conversely, is the most wretched and most unjust, how can we believe that people are in their right mind when they can ensure peace with little trouble yet prefer to resort to war, even at the cost of the greatest difficulties? What an unpleasant thing it is in the first place, that first rumour of war. And then what resentment the ruler must face as he strips his subjects bare with frequent taxes, how much trouble in raising and keeping extra troops, in bringing in foreign troops and mercenaries. What trouble and expense too fitting out ships, building and repairing fortresses and camps, furnishing tents, constructing and moving machines, weapons, missiles, baggage, transport, provisions. What labours must be put into raising walls, digging trenches and underground passages, in setting watches, posting sentries, holding manoeuvres. I am still saying nothing of alarms and dangers - for what is not to be feared in war? Who could possibly tell how many hardships these idiots of soldiers put up with in their camps? And they deserve worse just for being willing to put up with them: food at which a Cyprian ox would turn up its nose, sleeping quarters that would be scorned by a dung-beetle, few hours of sleep and those not of their own choosing, a tent that lets in the wind from every direction, or no tent at all. They have to endure an open-air life, sleep on the ground, stand in their arms, bear hunger, cold, heat, dust, rain. They have to obey their commanders, they have to bear floggings with rods; for no slave's bondage is more humiliating than soldiers' service. Add to this that when the fatal signal is given you have to go and face up to death, either to kill mercilessly or to fall miserably. We undergo all these woes in order to get to the most wretched part of all. We afflict ourselves first with these countless woes, just in order to inflict them on others. If we will only do the arithmetic and weigh up in honest terms the cost of war and the cost of peace, we shall soon discover that the latter can be bought for a tenth part of the worry, effort, distress, risk, expense, and bloodshed that war involves. You lead forth into danger a huge host of men to demolish some town; but with the labour of these men, and with no danger at all, you could have built another town, and a far finer one! But you want to harm the enemy. That alone is inhumane, but just think: Could you harm them without first harming your own men? And it seems the act of a madman to accept such certain trouble when it is uncertain which way the dice of war will fall. But admitting that the heathen might have been brought to this state of madness by stupidity, anger, ambition, greed, or barbarity, or, as I more readily suppose, by the Furies sent from Hell, where did we get the idea that Christian should draw a bloody sword on Christian? It is called parricide if one brother kills another, but Christian is united with Christian more closely than any blood brother, unless the bonds of nature are tighter than those of Christ. What an absurdity that there should be almost continuous warfare between those whom the church holds under one roof, who boast of being members of the same body with the same head, who is Christ. They have one father in heaven, they are given life by the same spirit, initiated into the same mysteries, redeemed by the same blood, reborn in the same baptism, nourished by the same sacraments; they serve the same commander, eat the same bread, share the same cup; they have a common enemy in the devil and finally are called every one to the same inheritance. Where else are there so many symbols of perfect concord? So many lessons of peace? One commandment Christ called his own - the commandment of love. What is more opposed to love than war? He greets his own with the blessed sign of peace. To his disciples he gives nothing but peace and leaves nothing but peace.
In those holy prayers of his, he prays to the Father particularly that, as he was one with God, so his own (that is, Christians) should be one with him. As you can hear, this is something more than peace, or friendship or concord. The prefiguration of Christ was Solomon, whose name means 'Peacemaker' in Hebrew; he was chosen by God to build the temple. David, who was greatly beloved for his other virtues, was nevertheless kept away from the building of the temple because he was a man of blood. But he made war at God's command usually against the wicked and that in an age which had not yet learned from Him, who came to complete the law of Moses, that we should love even our enemies. When Christ was born, it was not of war or triumphs that the angels sang, but of peace. Even before he was born, the mystic prophet sang of him: 'And his place was made in peace.' Search the whole of his teaching; nowhere will you find anything that does not breathe peace, that does not ring of friendship, that does not savour of love. And since he knew that peace cannot exist except when we sincerely despise the things for which this world is prepared to fight, he commanded us to learn from him to be meek. 'Blessed' was his word for those who thought nothing of riches and of their daughter Pride, for he called them the 'poor in spirit'; 'blessed' were those who reject the pleasures of this world - he called them those that mourn; those who allow themselves to be turned out of their property knowing that this world is nothing but an exile and that the real homeland and the real treasure of the devout are in heaven. 'Blessed' are those who do good to everyone, and yet men revile and persecute them with impunity. He forbad anyone to resist evil. To keep the matter short, just as the whole of his doctrine teaches tolerance and love, so his whole life is a lesson in gentleness. This was how he reigned, how he fought, how he conquered, how he triumphed. The apostles, who drank the spirit of Christ in its purest form and were gloriously drunk with that wine, have no other teaching. What is the sound that rings everywhere in Paul's letters but peace, gentleness and charity? What does John talk of, repeatedly, but love? What else does Peter say? What else do all truly Christian writers say? Where does all this noise of wars come from among the sons of peace? Is it nothing but a fable when Christ calls himself the vine and his followers the branches? Who ever saw a branch fighting with a branch? Is it meaningless, the figure that Paul used more than once: that the Church is nothing if not one body composed of different members, joined to one head, who is Christ? Who ever saw the eye fighting with the hand, or the stomach with the foot? In this universe there is a harmony of all the very different elements. In the body of a living creature, there is peace between one member and another, and the gift that each part has, it has not for itself alone but for all in common. If anything happens to one part, the whole body comes to its aid. Is the bond of nature in a perishable body more powerful that the spiritual bond uniting the mystical and immortal body?
Is it in vain that we pray as Christ taught us: 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven'? In the heavenly city there is complete concord, and Christ wanted his church to be no less than a heavenly people on earth living, as far as possible, in the image of that city, hastening towards him and depending on it. Let me ask you to picture now some strange visitor, from the cities on the moon where Empedocles lives or from one of those innumerable worlds that Democritus imagined, who had come to this world of ours seeking to learn what goes on here. Suppose that he has learned a lot about different things and has heard that there is one animal that is a wonderful combination of a body, which it has in common with the beasts, and a soul which is an image of the divine mind. This creature is so noble that although it lives here in exile it rules over all other animals because, owing to its heavenly origin, it always strives towards heavenly and immortal things. He has heard that God cared for it so much that, seeing that it could not achieve what it strove for either by its own natural strength or by philosophical reasoning, he sent his only son here to bring a new kind of teaching. Suppose then that, having learned everything about the life and teachings of Christ, he wishes to observe from some lofty observatory what he had heard about. When he observes all the other animals behaving properly, each following the laws of nature according to its own kind and seeking nothing except what Nature prescribes, and one animal trafficking, bargaining, quarrelling, and warring, will he not surmise that the 'man' he has heard about is any animal but man himself? Finally when man is pointed out to him and he tries to discern the whereabouts of the Christian flock that follows the teaching of its heavenly master and offers an image of the angelic city, will he not judge that the Christians live anywhere but in those countries in which he has seen such opulence, luxury, licence, pomp, tyranny, ambition, deceit, envy, anger, dissension, brawls, fights, wars, and tumults; in short a Lerna of all those things that Christ condemns, worse than any to be found among the Turks or Saracens? Where did it creep in from then, this plague that has infected the people of Christ? Doubtless this evil, like most others, found acceptance gradually with the heedless. For every bad thing either slips by degrees into the life of men or insinuates itself under the pretext of something good. The first thing to creep in in this case was erudition, apparently ideal for confuting heretics, armed as they were with the writings of philosophers, poets and orators. At the very beginning such things were not studied by Christians, but people who had to do with them before they knew Christ turned what they had acquired to pious uses. Eloquence too, at first disguised rather than spurned, was later openly approved.
Then, on the pretext of overthrowing heresy, an ostentatious love of controversy crept in, which was a major scourge to the church. Finally things went so far that the whole of Aristotle was accepted into the heart of theology, and accepted to the extent that his authority was almost more sacred than that of Christ. For if anything Christ said is not easily seen as fitted to the way we live, we are permitted to interpret it differently, but anyone who dares to oppose in the slightest degree the oracles of Aristotle is immediately hissed off the stage. From the latter we have learned that human happiness is not complete without bodily comforts and worldly goods. From him we have learned that a state in which all property is held in common cannot flourish. We try to fuse together all his decrees and the teachings of Christ, which is like mixing fire and water. We have also accepted some things from Roman law because of their obvious fairness, and in order to reconcile the two better we have twisted gospel teaching as far as we could to fit them. But Roman law allows us to meet force with force and each person to pursue his own rights; it sanctions bargaining, it allows usury, providing it is moderate, and describes war as praiseworthy, providing it is just. 'Just,' however, is defined as what has been ordered by the ruler, even if he is a minor or a fool. In fact the whole teaching of Christ is so contaminated by the writings of pagan dialecticians, sophists, mathematicians, orators, poets, philosophers, and lawyers that the greater part of a lifetime must be spent before you are free to investigate the sacred scriptures; and when you do get to them you are inevitably so corrupted with all these worldly ideas that the precepts of Christ either seem utterly repugnant or they are distorted to fit the teachings of the pagans. And we are so far from condemning this state of affairs that it is regarded as a sin for anyone to speak about Christian scriptures if he has not first crammed himself 'up to both ears,' as they say, with nonsense out of Aristotle, or rather out of the sophists. As if the teachings of Christ were not truly something that could be entirely shared by all, or had any kind of common ground with the wisdom of the philosophers. The next stage was that we were accorded much honour, but spontaneously offered; then we began to demand it as our due. That seemed not unfair. Then we were given money, but to be distributed as alms to the poor; then it was given even for our own use. Why not? For we have learned that this is the order of charity, that each must be his own neighbour.
There was no lack of excuses for this fault: it is one's duty to consider the needs of one's children, it is fair that one should prepare in advance for old age. Finally 'Why should I refuse riches,' they say, 'if they are gained honestly?' By these stages it has gradually reached the point where the richest is considered the best, and never was wealth held in greater honour among pagans than it is nowadays among Christians. What is there anywhere, either sacred or profane, that is not controlled by wealth? It seemed some power should go with these honours; and there was no lack of people willing to cede it. This also became an accepted thing, but somewhat reluctantly and sparingly. Then they were satisfied with the title alone and willingly left the business to others. In the end, bit by bit, it has reached the point where a bishop does not think he is a bishop unless he has some worldly power; and an abbot who can never do what tyrants do is scarcely a proper abbot. Finally, brazen-faced, we have thrown away all shame and broken down all the barriers of modesty. Whatever sort of avarice existed among the heathen - whatever ambition, luxury, pomp, tyranny - we imitate, equal and outdo. I say nothing of less important things, but was there ever war among the heathen as continuous and as cruel as among Christians? What storms have we not seen these past few years, what waves of war, what broken treaties, what bloodshed! What nation has not clashed swords with what other? And then we abominate the Turk; as if there could be any spectacle more agreeable to the Turks than what we ourselves provide for them daily with our massacres of each other. Madness seized Xerxes when he led that huge multitude to invade Greece; does he seem sane to you, writing threatening letters to Mount Athos commanding it to move aside, ordering the Hellespont to be whipped because it did not favour him when he wanted to sail across? Rage overcame Alexander the Great; who denies it? That demigod wished for more worlds to conquer, such was the fever for glory that obsessed his immature mind. And yet these men, whom Seneca does not hesitate to call raving bandits, made war more humanely than we do, made war in better faith, without such machines, without such techniques and not for such frivolous causes as we Christians. If you read the histories of the pagans you will find many leaders who resorted to extraordinary tactics to avoid war, who preferred to fetter the enemy by obligations rather than to defeat them by force of arms. Some even considered it better to give up their power than to go to war. But as for us pseudo-Christians, there is nothing we do not snatch at as a pretext for war. Before pagan warriors resorted to arms, they would meet to talk. Among the Romans, when everything else had been tried, a fetialis was sent forward with the paterpatratus; certain ceremonies were performed; undoubtedly, they were trying to find means of delay, so that the war fever could be cooled. And when all this was completed it was not permitted to engage the enemy until the signal was given, and this was given in such a way that the ordinary soldier would not know when it was to be given. And even when it was given, anyone who was not bound by the military oath was not allowed to challenge or strike the enemy, even if he were living in the camp.
Thus Cato the Elder wrote to his son, who was idling in camp, to tell him either to come back to Rome or, if he preferred to remain with the army, to seek the commander's permission to engage in fighting with the enemy. Just as the signal for battle gave the power to fight only to those who were bound by the oath, so the signal by which the retreat was sounded took away from everyone the right to kill. This is why Cyrus praised a certain soldier who had his sword raised to kill his enemy and, hearing the retreat sounded, forthwith let his opponent go. These practices had the effect that no one thought he had the right to kill a man unless necessity forced him to. Nowadays if, by chance in a wood, a man meets one of the people with whom he is at war - not carrying arms but money, not seeking to fight but running away somewhere to avoid fighting - if he kills him, and having killed him strips him, and having stripped him buries him, this is held to be valour among Christians. 'Soldiers' are those who rush into a fight of their own accord in the hope of some small loot, and fight on either side like gladiators, brothers against brothers, and subjects of the same ruler. Such men come home from battles like these and tell the story of their exploits like soldiers; yet they are not punished as robbers and traitors to their country and deserters of their prince's cause. We loath an executioner because he is hired by the legal authority and puts to death the guilty and the condemned; but men who abandon their parents, wives and children and rush off to war of their own accord, not hired but asking to be hired for some wicked butchery, are almost more welcome when they go home than if they had never been away. They think they have won some sort of nobility from their villainies. The man who has stolen a garment is infamous; the man who has robbed so many innocent people while he was on his way to join his army, while he was serving as a soldier and when he was coming back is considered a respectable citizen. And the soldier who has conducted himself with the most brutality is thought worthy to play the commander in the next war. So, if you consider the rules of military service in olden times, you will see that military service among Christians is not military service at all but brigandage. If you compare Christian monarchs with pagan ones, how weak our own cause is! They had no ambition but glory; they took pleasure in increasing the prosperity of the provinces they had subjugated in war; where rustic peoples were without education or law and living like wild beasts, they brought refinement and the arts of civilization; they populated uncultivated regions by building towns; they fortified unsafe places, and made men's lives easier by building bridges, wharves, embankments, and a thousand other such amenities, so that it turned out beneficial to be conquered. How many stories are told of things wisely said or soberly done by them, even in the midst of war! But the things done in wars between Christians are too disgusting and too cruel to be mentioned here. The fact is that we copy only the worst practices of the pagans, or rather we outdo them. But it would be worthwhile to hear how we justify this great madness of ours. 'If it were always a sin to make war,' we are told, 'God would not have commanded the Jews to fight against their enemies.' I hear you, but you should take into account the fact that the Jews hardly ever went to war among themselves, only against foreigners and unbelievers. We Christians fight with Christians. Their reason for fighting was a difference of religion, different gods; we are drawn into it by childish anger, by hunger for money or thirst for glory, often by sordid wages.
They fought by divine command, but it is passion that makes us draw the sword. However, if the example of the Jews is so attractive, why do we not by the same token practise circumcision? Why do we not make animal sacrifices? Why do we not abstain from pig's flesh? Why do we not each marry several wives? Since we condemn these practices, why is their example in war alone acceptable? Why in a word do we here follow 'the letter that kills'? War was allowed for the Jews, but like divorce, doubtless 'because of the hardness of their hearts.' But after Christ ordered the sword to be put away, it is not proper for Christians to fight, except in the noblest of all battles against the most shameful enemies of the church, against love of money, against anger, against ambition, against the fear of death. These are our Philistines, our Nabuchodonosors, our Moabites, and our Ammonites, with whom we must make no truce, with whom we must be unceasingly at war until the enemy is completely eliminated and peace is installed in their place. Unless we subdue these, there can be no real peace for anyone either with himself or with anyone else. This is the only war that can produce true peace. Anyone who has conquered in this war can have no wish to engage in war with any other mortal. I am not influenced by the fact that some interpret the 'two swords' as the two powers, ecclesiastical and civil - which are both claimed for the successors of Peter - for Christ allowed Peter to err on this very point, so that after he was ordered to put up his sword, no one should be left in any doubt that war, which seemed permissible before, was now forbidden. 'But Peter fought,' we are told. He fought, but still as a Jew who had not yet received the truly Christian spirit. And he fought, not for his rights or his property as we do, nor for his own life, but for the life of his master. And lastly, the man who fought was the one who a little later made the denial. If the example of his fighting attracts you, then so should his denial. And though he erred out of honest affection, he was still reproved. Moreover, if Christ approved this sort of defence - a quite absurd interpretation adopted by certain people - why is it that his whole life and teaching proclaim nothing but tolerance? Why does he send his disciples to meet tyrants armed only with their staff and their pouch? If the sword that Christ ordered them to buy after selling everything else stands for temperate defence against persecutors - as some interpret it, not only ignorantly but wickedly - why did the martyrs never use it? This is where those Rabbinical distinctions are brought forward: 'It is lawful for a paid soldier to fight, just as it is lawful for a butcher to exercise his skill in preparing meat. For the latter has learned to cut up animals, and the former men; even citizens may fight, but in a just war' ('just,' however, means any war declared in any way against anybody by any prince). 'Priests and monks are not allowed to brandish a sword, but they are allowed to be present and take command. It is a sin to make war in a spirit of vengeance, but not out of concern for justice.' But who does not think his own cause is just?
'Christ sent out his disciples without means of defence, but while he was still with them they had no need of defence. When the time came for him to depart, he told them to take a pouch and a sword, the pouch against lack of food, the sword against their enemies. Anyway the words "Take no thought for the morrow," "Do good to them that hate you," and others of that sort were valid up to the time of his departure. Similar teachings of Paul or Peter are advice, not instructions.' It is with brilliant teachings of this kind that we feed the greed of princes and offer them the means of self-flattery. As if there were a danger that the world would have a rest from war one day, we defend war with the words of Christ; and as if we were afraid that men in their greed would get tired of piling up riches, we make Christ our authority for it, twisting his words to the point that it seems he commanded, not tolerated, the practices he had previously forbidden. Before the gospel came, the world had its laws; it punished, made war, gathered stores of wealth and food. Our Lord came not merely to tell us what was allowed - how far we might fall below perfection - but what goal we must strive for with all our might. Anyone who tries earnestly to dissuade men from war is suspected of heresy; and those who water down the strength of gospel teaching with falsehoods like these and offer princes opportunities to flatter their own desires, they are orthodox and 'doctors of divinity.' A doctor who is truly Christian never approves of war; perhaps he admits it is permissible sometimes, but with reluctance and sorrow. But this is dictated, we are told, by the law of nature, it has legal sanction, it is accepted by custom that we should meet force with force, that each of us should defend our own life, and our money too since it is 'our very life,' as Hesiod says. I admit that. But the grace of the gospel is more effective than all these, and prescribes that we should not curse those who curse us, that we should repay evil with good, that if someone takes away part of our possessions, we should give the whole, that we should pray even for those who try to kill us. 'These sayings are addressed to the apostles,' we are told; but they apply still more to the whole people of Christ, and to the body, as we have said, which must be whole and complete, even if one member excels another in endowments. It may be that the teaching of Christ is not addressed to those who do not hope for their reward in Christ; fighting for money, lands and power is for those who scoff at Christ's words, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' - that is, the rich are those who desire nothing of wealth or honour in this world. Those for whom the greatest happiness is in riches fight to save their own lives, but they are people who do not understand that this is death rather than life, and that for the faithful immortality is prepared.
The objection is raised that some Roman pontiffs have both instigated and abetted wars, that there are pronouncements of the church fathers in which war is apparently mentioned with approval. There are indeed some like this, but they are from the later period, when the vigour of the Christian spirit was waning; and they are very few, whereas there are countless examples, among writers of proven sanctity, which argue against war. Why do those few come to mind rather than the rest? Why do we turn our eyes from Christ towards men and prefer to follow uncertain examples rather than the unquestioned authority? In the first place the popes were men. Second, it is possible that they were badly advised, or not attentive, or lacking in prudence or piety. However, even in these cases, you will find there was no approval of the sort of war we are constantly waging. I could prove this with the clearest documentation if I did not want to avoid any longer delay in such a digression. St Bernard praised warriors, but in terms that condemn all our forms of soldiering. But why am I influenced by a work of Bernard, or an argument of Thomas, rather than by the teaching of Christ, who forbids us absolutely to resist evil, certainly in the way that the common man resists? 'But,' it is said, 'it is legitimate to sentence one criminal to punishment; therefore it is legitimate to take revenge on a state by war.' The answer that can be given to this is too long to be set out here. I shall say only that there is this difference: that in the courts a convicted criminal is punished in accordance with the laws, in war each side treats the other as guilty. In the first case, only the one who did wrong suffers and the example is visible for everyone. In the second case the greatest part of the suffering falls on those who least deserve to suffer, namely on farmers, old people, wives, orphans and young girls. Moreover, if there is any advantage to be gained from this most evil of all activities, it goes entirely to a small number of utterly criminal bandits, to the mercenary soldiery, to the brazen profiteers, perhaps to the few leaders who connived to stir up the war for this very purpose and who are never better off than when the state is on the rocks. In the courts, an individual is not spared in order to ensure the safety of all; in war, in order to take revenge on a few, or even on one person perhaps, we inflict cruel suffering on so many thousands of people who in no sense deserve it. It is better for the fault of a few to go unpunished than to demand some vague punishment of one individual or another and in the process draw ourselves and our loved ones, as well as our 'innocent enemies' - as we call them - into certain danger. Better leave the wound alone if you cannot treat it without serious harm to the whole body. If anyone cries out that it is unjust not to punish a sinner, my answer is that it is much more unjust to call down utter disaster on so many thousands of innocents who have not deserved it. But these days almost every war we see is caused by some 'title' or other and by the ambitious alliances of princes who, in order to assert their dominion over some small town, seriously imperil their whole realm. Then this same thing that they have laid claim to with so much blood they sell or give away. Someone will say, 'Would you have princes fail to assert their rights?' I know it is not for someone like me to argue boldly about the business of princes, and even if it were safe to do so, it would take longer than I have time for here. I will say this only: if some claim or other seems to constitute a cause for war, then human affairs are in such a confused state, and there have been so many changes, that there can be no one who does not have a claim.
What nation has not at some time both been driven out of its homeland and driven others out? How many migrations have there been from one place to another? How many times has there been a transfer of power this way and that, either by chance or by treaty? The Paduans should try to recover the site of Troy because Antenor was once a Trojan. The Romans should try to recover Africa and Spain because these were once provinces of Rome. In addition, what we call 'rule' is administration; rights over men, free by nature, are not the same as rights over cattle. This same 'right' that you have was given by the consent of the people, and the same people who gave it, if I am not mistaken, have the power to take it away. Moreover, look what petty affairs are in question: it is not a matter of whether this or that state is to be subject to a good prince or slave to a tyrant, but whether it is reckoned to be Ferdinand's or Sigismund's, whether it pays tax to Philip or to Louis. This is the allimportant right for which the whole world is to be entangled in war and slaughter. But let us admit that this 'right' is worth something, that there is no difference between a privately owned field and a state, no difference between the cattle bought with your money and men who are not only free but Christians. Still it is prudent to give some thought to whether this right is worth so much that you should pursue it at the cost of such huge detriment to your people. If you cannot show that you have the mind of a prince, at least act like a man of business. This man takes no account of expense if he has seen clearly that it cannot be avoided except at the cost of heavier loss, and he considers it a gain if he has the good fortune to cut off a business with very small loss. At all events, in the case of a danger to the state you might follow the example from private life about which there is a popular, rather amusing story. There was a disagreement between two kinsmen about the division of property and since neither would yield to the other it looked as if the affair would go to court and the quarrel would be settled by the decision of the judges. Counsel were being consulted, the action was prepared, it was in the hands of the lawyers. The judges were addressed, the case opened, and the pleading began - that is, war was declared. At this moment one of them came to his senses just in time, invited his opponent to visit him privately, and spoke to him in these words: 'To start with, it is indecent for those whom Nature has joined to be separated by money. In the second place the outcome of legal action is almost as uncertain as war. We have the power to start this but we cannot put an end to it. This whole case is about a hundred gold pieces. We shall spend twice that amount if we go to law on clerks, on investigators, on barristers, on solicitors, on judges, and on judges' friends. We shall have to be polite to them, flatter them, and give them presents; and I say nothing of the worry of canvassing and the effort of running here and there. Even if I win on all possible points, it is still more trouble than gain. Why don't we think more of ourselves, rather than of these robbers, and share between us the money that would be wasted on them? You give up half of yours, and I will give up the same of mine. In this way we shall enrich our friendship, which would otherwise be destroyed, and we shall avoid a great deal of trouble. And if you refuse to give up anything, I cede the whole case to you. I prefer to see this money go to a friend, not to those insatiable robbers. I shall have made an ample profit if I preserve my reputation, keep a friend, and avoid such a host of troubles.' His opponent was moved both by the truth of this and by his kinsman's good humour. The matter was settled between themselves, to the rage of those gaping crows, the lawyers and the judges, whom they had tricked. In a matter of much greater danger, you should try to imitate the good sense of these men.
Do not consider only what you may hope to gain, but the sacrifice of so many amenities, the dangers, the disasters you will also incur in order to gain it. If you weigh, as in a balance, advantages and disadvantages and find that an unjust peace is preferable by far to a just war, why should you prefer a throw of the dice with Mars? Who but a madman would fish with a golden hook? If you see that the cost is far greater than the profit, even if everything falls out well for you, is it not better to give way a little on your rights than to buy a small advantage for such countless ills? I would rather anyone had the title if my claim must be justified by the sacrifice of so much Christian blood. One man, whoever he may be, has held possession for many years, has become accustomed to the reins of government, is acknowledged by his subjects and carries out the office of ruler; then up will come another who has discovered some old claim from the chronicles or from some worn inscriptions, and turns a settled state of affairs upside down. In these times especially, when we see that nothing in human affairs keeps its place for long, but is the plaything of chance and ebbs and flows like the tide, what is the use of asserting one's claim with so much noise to something that will soon, by some quirk of chance, pass to someone else? Finally, if Christians cannot bring themselves to despise such trivialities as these, what need is there to fly immediately to arms? There are so many earnest and learned bishops in the world, so many venerable abbots, so many nobles of great age with the wisdom of long experience, so many councils, so many assemblies set up, not without reason, by our ancestors. Why are the childish disputes of such princes not settled by means of their arbitration? 'But the argument of those who make the pretext of defending the Church is more "honourable"' - as if indeed the people were not really the Church, or as if the whole dignity of the Church were in the wealth of the clergy, or as if the Church had originated, grown, and become established by means of wars and slaughter instead of by the blood of the martyrs, by their tolerance, and by their scorn for life. To me it does not even seem such a commendable matter that we repeatedly prepare war against the Turks. The Christian religion is indeed in a bad way if its safety depends on this sort of defence. Nor is it reasonable to expect good Christians to be born from such beginnings: what is obtained with the sword is also lost by the sword. Would you bring the Turks to Christ? Let us not display our wealth, our armies, our strength. Let them see in us not just the name 'Christians' but the sure marks of Christians: an innocent life, the desire to do good even to our enemies, an unshakeable tolerance of all injuries, a scorn for money, a disregard for glory, a life held cheap; and let them hear the heavenly teaching that accords with this sort of life. The best way to subdue the Turk is with these weapons. All too often nowadays we are wicked people fighting other wicked people. I will put it another way - and would that it were too daring rather than too true! - if you take away the name and sign of the cross, we are Turks fighting with Turks. If it is by armies that religion has been established, if it has been strengthened by the sword, and increased by wars, then let us defend it by the same means. But if everything has been achieved by different means to these, why do we adopt pagan ways as if we distrusted Christ's protection? 'Why should I not cut the throats of those who cut ours?' they say. Do you feel inferior if someone is more of a criminal than you are? Why do you not rob the robber, or revile the man who reviles you, or hate the man who hates you?
Do you think it is a Christian act to kill even the wicked - as we judge them to be, but who are still men whom Christ died to save - and so make a welcome sacrifice to the devil? You would give double pleasure to the enemy, because a man has been killed and because it was a Christian who did the killing. Most people, wishing to seem truly Christian, try to do as much harm as possible to the Turks; and what they cannot do they call down in the form of curses, although one might perceive this, on this very evidence, as unchristian. In the same way some who wish to appear strictly orthodox heap fearful curses on those they call heretics when they themselves are perhaps more deserving of the name. If someone wants to appear orthodox, let him do his best to bring back the erring to a right mind by gentle reasoning. We spit on the Turks and think we are by this action fine Christians, when perhaps we are more detestable to God than the Turks themselves. If the first messengers of the gospel had had the same attitude towards us as we have towards the Turks, where should we be now who are Christian because of their forbearance? Help the Turks! Make the ungodly godly, if you can; if you cannot, then pray and I will recognize your Christian spirit. There are so many orders of monks in the world who live by begging and who want to be thought of as pillars of the church; but out of all these thousands how many are there who hold life cheap when it comes to spreading the religion of Christ? 'But there is no hope of that,' they say. On the contrary there would be the greatest hope if they followed the ways of their founders, Dominic and Francis; they were men who, I think, held the life of this world in supreme contempt, to say nothing meanwhile of apostolic morals. There would be no lack of miracles among us; indeed the glory of Christ would require it. At present those who pride themselves on being the vicars and successors of Peter, the prince of the church, and the other apostles, generally put their whole trust in human defences. They are in truth strict proponents of the true religion; they live in wealthy cities given over to luxury, where they are corrupted themselves more quickly than they can reform others and where there is an ample supply of pastors to teach the people and priests to sing God's praises. They dwell in Princes' courts - and this is not the place to tell what they do there. If only it were nothing worse than 'a dog in a bath.' They sniff around for wills, they hunt for money, they are subject to the tyranny of princes; and in order not to appear idle they censure passages in books as erroneous, suspect, scandalous, irreverent, heretical, or schismatic. The fact is they prefer to rule to the detriment of the Christian people than to extend the kingdom of Christ at any risk to themselves. But those whom we call Turks are in large part half-Christian and perhaps nearer to true Christianity than most of our own folk. How many are there among us who do not believe in the resurrection of the body and do not believe either that the soul survives the body? And meanwhile it is through them that an attack is directed against petty heretics who question whether the Roman pontiff has jurisdiction over souls tormented by the fires of purgatory. Let us first cast out the beam from our own eye, then we can cast out the mote from our brother's eye. The purpose of gospel faith is conduct worthy of Christ. Why do we insist on things that have no effect on morality and neglect others that are like pillars of faith and will cause the whole structure to collapse at once if they are removed? Finally, who will believe us when we bear the cross as our device and the name of the gospel, if our whole life speaks at every moment of nothing but the world? Add to this that Christ, in whom there was no imperfection, nevertheless does not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed, as the prophecy said, but cherishes and tolerates the imperfect until it could become better.
We are preparing to quench the whole of Asia and Africa with the sword, though most of the population there is either Christian or half-Christian. Why do we not rather acknowledge the first and cherish the second, reforming them mercifully? But if we are seeking to expand the Empire, or if we crave their wealth, why to such a worldly enterprise do we put the name of Christ? What of the fact that, at the same time, we attack them with purely human means and bring into obvious peril the whole of that very thing which remains to us in the world? What a small corner of the world is left to us! What a multitude of barbarians, and what a few we are to challenge them! But someone will say, 'If God be for us, who can be against us?' And he will have the right to say this if he relies on the protection of God alone. But what does Jesus Christ our commander say to those who rely on other forms of protection? 'He who strikes with the sword shall perish by the sword.' If we wish to conquer for Christ, let us gird on the sword of the gospel word; let us take the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith, and the rest of the truly apostolic armour. This is how it will come about that when we are conquered we shall make our greatest conquest. But suppose that we are successful in war, who ever saw people being made true Christians by the sword, by slaughter, fire, and pillage? It is a lesser evil to be openly Turk or Jew than to be a Christian hypocrite. 'But their assault on us must be driven off.' Why then do we invite them to assault us by our quarrels with each other? Certainly, if we are in agreement, they will not be able to attack us easily, and they are more likely to be converted to the faith by our good offices if they are spared than if they are killed. I would rather have a genuine Turk than a fake Christian. It is our business to sow the seed of the gospel; Christ will give the increase. The harvest is plentiful, if the labourers are not lacking. And yet for the sake of making a few Turks into bad and false Christians, how many good Christians will we make bad, and how many bad ones worse? For what else can be the result of such a turmoil of wars? I am reluctant to voice here the suspicionwhich has all too often turned out to be true, alas! - that the rumour of war with the Turks has been put forward as an excuse for robbing the Christian population, so that it is broken with every sort of oppression and therefore is more servile to the tyranny of both sorts of princes. I say these things, not because I would entirely condemn an expedition against the Turks if they attack us of their own accord, but in order to ensure that we prosecute the war, which we claim to wage in the name of Christ, in a Christian spirit and with Christ's own protection. Let them feel that they are being invited to be saved, not attacked for booty. Let us show them conduct worthy of the gospel.
If we do not have the language to converse with them our manner of life itself will have considerable eloquence. Let us offer them a simple and truly apostolic profession of faith, not loaded with superfluous transient riders. Let us demand of them most of all those things that are plainly taught us by the sacred books and writings of the apostles. Agreement will be easier to reach on a few points and harmony will be more easily established if each is free to make his own sense of most questions, providing there is no contention. But I shall have rather more to say about all these matters when I publish my book, which I have entitled Antipolemus, and which I wrote some time ago during my stay in Rome, addressing it to Pope Julius II during deliberations about whether to make war against the Venetians - something to be deplored rather than refuted. If you examine the matter more closely you will find that almost all wars between Christians have arisen either from stupidity or from malice. A few youths, with no experience, have been inflamed by the bad examples of their forbears and by the records of the histories that fools have spread about fools. Then they have been encouraged by the calls of flatterers, goaded by lawyers and theologians, with the consent or connivance of bishops, perhaps even at their demand, and, rashly, rather than wickedly, they go to war; and to the enormous suffering of the whole world they learn that war is something to be avoided at all costs. Some are driven to war by a secret hatred, others by ambition, others again by their ferocity of mind. For it is true that even our Iliad contains 'nothing but the feverish doings of stupid kings and peoples.' There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler being allowed to do what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few. Those whom the prince regards with favour are promoted; those with whom he is angry are cast down. They demand as much money as they like. Why say more? It is only then that they feel they are really kings. Meanwhile the generals act in collusion to pick the bones of the unhappy population. With people of this mentality, do you think they would be slow to seize any opportunity offered of making war? Then we cloak our disease with respectable names. I crave the riches of the Turks and hide this with the defence of religion; I do what my hatred dictates and use the rights of the Church as an excuse. I am the slave of ambition, I gratify my anger, carried away by my wild, undisciplined character, and I give as an excuse some treaty broken, some friendship violated, some omission in regard to the laws of betrothal, or something else of the kind. It is astonishing how they can fail to achieve the very thing they are striving for, and while they are stupidly dodging this or that misfortune, they fall into another, or even much deeper into the original one. For really, if they are led by desire for glory, it is much more splendid to preserve than to destroy, much finer to construct a city than to demolish it. Then, even supposing the war has the best possible outcome, it is a very small share of the glory that can be given to the prince, whereas a large part is due to the people whose money paid for the whole thing, a greater part usually to foreign soldiers and mercenaries, some to the generals, and the greatest part to luck, which is always the greatest factor, in war as in all other business.
If it is high-mindedness that incites you to war, think, I beg you, how mistaken you are to act on that basis. You are not willing to yield to one person, a neighbouring ruler for instance, perhaps a kinsman, perhaps one who has deserved well of you in the past, yet how much more humiliating it is for you to make yourself a suppliant, begging for help from barbarians - and what is even more unworthy, from men besmirched with every sort of crime, if indeed brutes of this sort can be called menpersuading, flattering, and wheedling blackguards, murderers, and robbers, for these are the people through whom war is most commonly waged. You try to look rather fierce to your equal, and you have to force yourself to be servile to the lowest dregs of humanity. You get ready to drive some close neighbour out of his territory, and you have to let a rabble of the dirtiest scoundrels into your own. You don't trust your kinsman, yet you trust yourself to an armed mob? How much safer peace would have made you! If you are lured by the idea of gain, make some calculations. War may seem attractive as long as you have not realized that you are incurring immeasurable expenditure for a return that is not only much smaller but uncertain too. But you are thinking of the interests of the state? There is no other way by which states go more quickly and completely to ruin than by war. Before you start, the harm you have already done to your country is greater than the good you would do if you were victorious. You exhaust the wealth of your citizens, you defile their homes with mourning and fill the whole country with robbers, thieves and rapists. For these are the waste that war produces. And whereas before you could have enjoyed control of the whole of France, you are now excluded by your own act from many parts of it. If you really love your people, why do you not think of questions like these? 'Why should I expose this flower of youth to all these evils? Why am I going to deprive so many wives of their husbands, so many children of their parents? Why should some title or other, some uncertain right, be claimed at the price of my people's blood?' When war was undertaken on the pretext of defending the church, we have seen the clergy so crushed by frequent tithes that no enemy could have treated them with greater enmity. So because we use some silly means to avoid one pitfall, we throw ourselves of our own accord into another. Because we cannot suffer some slight insult, we subject ourselves to the greatest humiliations. Because we are ashamed to seem compliant to a prince, we become the suppliants of the basest of men. Because we rashly demand freedom, we entangle ourselves in the heaviest servitude. Because we chase after a little gain, we inflict immense losses on ourselves and on our people. A prudent man would weigh all this up in his mind; for a Christian, if he is truly Christian, a thing so hellish, so alien to both the life and teachings of Christ, is something to be avoided, averted and excluded by all possible means. If, because of general perversity, there is no way of avoiding it, when you have left nothing untried and no stone unturned in your search for peace, then the best expedient will be to ensure that, being an evil thing, it is the exclusive responsibility of evil people, and is settled with a minimum of bloodshed. For if we strive to be in fact what is said of us, that is, admiring or desiring nothing of this world, seeking only to take flight from it with as little burden as possible, striving with all our might towards heavenly things, placing our whole happiness in Christ alone, believing that whatever is truly good, truly glorious, truly joyful is founded only on him, holding firmly that the faithful cannot be harmed, pondering how empty and fleeting are the playthings of mortal existence, reflecting deeply what a difficult thing it is for man somehow to become like God and by a sort of untiring meditation be so purged here of the contagion of this world that, once this bodily cloak is laid aside, he can pass directly into the company of the angels - in short, if we show we have those three qualities without which no one deserves the name of Christian - innocence, so that we may be free of all vice, charity, so that we may do good as far as we can, and patience, so that we may bear with the wicked and, if possible, overcome evil with good - what war over trifles, I ask you, could possibly exist between us? If Christ is merely a story, why do we not frankly spurn it? Why do we glory in his name?
If he is really 'the way, the truth and the life' why is there such a difference between this model and our whole way of thinking? If we acknowledge Christ as our authority, and if he is love, if he taught nothing, handed down nothing but love and peace, well, let us declare him, not by wearing his name and badge, but in our deeds and lives. Let us embrace the cause of peace, so that Christ in return may acknowledge his own. It is to this end that popes, princes, and states must take counsel together. There has been enough shedding of Christian blood now. We have provided enough amusements for the enemies of the name of Christ. If the populace is in something of an uproar, as it usually is, it must be restrained by the rulers, who should be to the state what the eye is to the body, or reason to the mind. Or again, if the rulers make trouble, then it is up to popes to settle the disturbance with their wisdom and authority. Or rather may we become sated in the end of everlasting wars and be touched by the desire for peace. Calamity itself draws us to it; the world, exhausted by wrongs, begs for it; Christ beckons us to it; and to it we are exhorted by Pope Leo, tenth of this name, representative on earth of Jesus Christ, the true peacemaking Solomon, a lamb when it comes to doing harm, but a roaring lion against all that is opposed to piety, whose every wish, every counsel, and every effort are directed to uniting those joined by a common faith in a common bond of harmony. He is endeavouring to make the Church flourish, not by wealth or power, but by its own proper gifts. A magnificent task indeed, and one worthy of such a hero, descendant of the illustrious Medici whose civic wisdom brought the famous city of Florence its great flowering with a long period of peace, whose house was the fortress of all good learning. Leo himself was endowed with a serene and gentle character and was introduced, from earliest childhood, as they say, to the humanities and the gentler Muses; he was educated among the most learned men, as if in the very lap of the Muses, and brought to the office of pontiff a life and reputation quite unsullied, unstained by the slightest suspicion of slander even in that freest of all cities, Rome. Leo did not thrust himself forward for this office but, when he least expected it, his name was called as by a divine voice to bring help to a world grown weary with a prolonged turmoil of war. Let Julius have the glory of making war; let him keep his victories; let him keep his splendid triumphs. Whether such things are fitting for a Christian pontiff is not for such as myself to declare. I shall say only this: that man's glory, such as it was, was accompanied by the ruin and misery of a very great number of people. The return of peace to the world will produce far more true glory for our Leo than all those wars valiantly undertaken or successfully waged all over the world could produce for Julius. But this digression will seem to be an undue delay for those who prefer to hear about proverbs rather than about peaceand war.

[greek], You are seeing Argives, that is, 'You look with stupefied and dazed eyes.' I think the source is Orestes driven mad by the Furies. Hesychius sheds some light on this when he informs us that those who were distinguished and of some authority among the Helots were customarily called 'Argives,' for the Helots are inhabitants of the Peloponnese and the principal city of the Peloponnese is Argos. It was a sign of ambition among them therefore that they preferred to be called Argives rather than Helots. I am not forgetting that among the Spartans the slaves were called Helots because the Spartans conquered them and made them their slaves. And perhaps of these the ones trusted more by their masters preferred to be called Argives rather than Helots. You can find a similar feeling even nowadays in certain people who were born in some quite obscure village but take a surname from some famous city. Aristophanes in his Plutus used the expression 'to look mad,' in the same sense. It is referred to as proverbial by Suidas.

'[greek], Argive thieves. Said of those who are openly dishonest. In ancient times the Argives suffered from a bad reputation for their inclination to steal. This is recorded in Suidas; but there seems to be an allusion to the word itself, for argos in Greek means 'lazy' and 'unoccupied.' Such people in fact are in the habit of living by theft. The Romans, using a word humorously derived as it seems, commonly call thieves Laverniones, because they are under the protection of the goddess Laverna, in whose dark and secret grove they are accustomed to bury their booty and the gains of their thieving. The authority for this is Festus Pompeius.

[greek], Mars is king. Suidas explains this as applying to a ruler who controls the state by force, not by law. Zenodotus believes the origin may have been Timotheus, ruler of the Athenians who achieved many successes against the Persians and Asian forces, and whose leadership brought prosperity to Attica. The expression 'Mars is king' comes from this. Hesychius merely records the proverb. Suidas tells us that the Greeks sometimes called iron itself 'Ares,' so this could be the meaning of the use of the proverb 'Iron is king' whenever something is done by force.

'[greek], Woodcock. Suidas tells us that branded slaves were called by this nickname as a sort of proverbial joke, because the woodcock has feathers distinguished by diverse patches of colour. In the Birds Aristophanes says:
If anyone among you is going to be a deserter and branded with marks,
Among us he will certainly be called a variegated woodcock.
For this reason, in the same play, he calls this bird 'motley feathered.' In the same way the Greeks call 'peacocks' people who adorn themselves brilliantly and wear multi-coloured clothes. However I shall have several things to say about the woodcock in the proverb 'The woodcock's new moon.

[greek], A man of Tenedos. In the Collected Proverbs Plutarch says this was used of a man of severe and formidable appearance. The source, as is generally the case for other proverbs, is variously reported. Suidas says there was a certain king of Tenedos, called Tenes, who made a law and brought in the custom that behind the judge there should stand someone holding an axe clearly ready to strike immediately anyone who said anything untruthful during a trial - meaning, I believe, a deliberate lie or false testimony. This sort of interpretation fits clearly with what I have recalled in the adage 'An axe from Tenedos.' Others tell the story in the following way, which is, however, not incompatible with this. Cygnus, the son of Neptune and father of Hemithea and Tenes, introduced to his children a stepmother. Subsequently however Tenes was accused by the stepmother before his father of having importuned her to commit adultery. The father, believing this to be true, shut the young man up in a chest with his sister Hemithea, because she wanted to be with her brother in his fate, and threw them both into the sea. The box was thrown up on Leucophrys, whose name was later changed to Tenedos, after Tenes the son of Cygnus, of course. In the course of time, Tenedos obtained power on the island and, as we have just said, introduced the warning custom whereby there should be a person in the courts who held a quivering axe over the head of an accuser. For if anyone were convicted of making false accusation he would be immediately cut down as he stood. Since this was seen as a fearful spectacle, it became proverbial to call 'a man of Tenedos' anyone who was of threatening and fierce appearance. In his book on Phocis Pausanias tells a somewhat different story, as I have recounted elsewhere in the proverb 'An axe from Tenedos.' In the second book of his Letters to his brother Quintus Cicero says: 'So the freedom of the Tenedians was cut off by the Tenedian axe, when, apart from myself, Bibulus, Calidus, and Favonius, no one would defend them.' He means that freedom had been strictly and entirely denied.

[greek], a Tenedian advocate. This has come from the same source and was usually said of a lawyer who dispatches a case with economy and cuts through the tangle of a dispute swiftly. The origin is the Tenedian axe, which I spoke of in the previous adage. Suidas states that among the Tenedians two axes were hung on display. According to the same author Aristotle says, in addition to the points I have noted, that in Asserina, which is some place in Tenedos, there is a stream where they use the shells of crabs as boats. They cut these open in such a way that they look like an axe. Stephanus recalls the proverb in his Catalogue of places where he adds that the expression was used of a lawyer who was stern and austere, for in Tenedos it was not safe to babble on in any way you liked in the courts.

[greek]. In his Collected Proverbs Plutarch (if the title is correct) reports that this used to be said of those who propose or offer a feast, and that it comes from the fact that among the Ceans it was the custom for anyone who went into the magistracy to offer a banquet to the people. When several people became magistrates they shared out days among themselves, and so, when they met each other they asked [greek] 'Which day is it?' The expression became a popular joke. It seems however that the word [greek] was a deliberate, absurd contraction of the words [greek] 'In Ceos which?' - 'day' being understood.

[greek], An Artemon, 'rotating.' This is found in the same Collected Proverbs. It is stated there that it was customarily said about those whose good looks are the object of much competition, that this Artemon was a certain young man who was greatly loved by women for his outstanding beauty. I suspect that he was said to be 'rotating,' either because his name was bandied about on everyone's lips or because he walked around to show himself off. Others prefer to believe that Artemon was a maker of machines in the time of Pericles, who was outstanding in his craft, and, being lame, carried his machines around everywhere. In book 12 of his Doctors at Dinner Athenaeus refers to this proverb and quotes the authority of Chameleon of Pontus who states that Artemon was given the nickname 'rotating' because he had himself carried around in a litter for the pleasure of it, or because, having at first been poor, he subsequently began to lead a life of ease and luxury. Athenaeus quotes the following about the same person from Anacreon:
He wore at his side the thin ox-hide covering
Of a poor shield and associated with dealers in loaves
And prostitutes, making a fraudulent living; often,
To survive, he had to submit his neck to the spear, or else
To the wheel, often his hair and beard were plucked.
From these words it seems the adage refers to a man who is inconstant and changeable in his habits, such as Alcibiades was reputed to be. He, as Satyrus tells us, when he was among the Ionians was more luxurious than the Ionians; when among the Thebans he was more Boeotian in physical exercise than any Boeotian; among the Thessalians he was more devoted to horsemanship than they; among the Spartans more temperate and hardy than the Spartans; in Thrace more of a wine-bibber than the Thracians. He could even earn praise in becoming these things. But [greek] is an abusive term for someone who is a shuffler in every sort of matter. This is shown by Pollux in book 6. Plutarch tells us Artemon was a certain lame man who was carried around in a litter and who was somewhat fearful and inclined to remain most of the time at home with two slaves holding a bronze shield over his head in case something fell on it from above. Whenever he did have to go out, he was carried in a litter, but close to the ground for fear of falling. Plutarch relates something like this in his life of Pericles. The word seems therefore to be used of soft-living and fearful people. Indeed Pliny too, in book 34 chapter 8, recalls an Artemon among the works of Polycletus called [greek]. There is also a play here on the word artemo, a tackle-block on a ship by which the sails can be turned and cargo lifted out of ships - sailors still use the yard-arms for both purposes nowadays. Artemon in Greek is, properly speaking, a device for raising loads which Latin speakers, if I am not mistaken, call a troclea. It is constructed so that it can be rotated easily.

[greek], Placiadae and a hoe handle. In the same collection Plutarch declares this used to be said of those taken in adultery and dragged off, as they deserved, with insults. There is a village in the territory of Attica whose inhabitants are called Placiadae. It was their custom to inflict punishment and disgrace on those taken in adultery by pushing radishes up the anus; the radishes in their country are said to be of extraordinary size, and if radishes were not available they used the handle of a hoe. I am aware that I have spoken of this elsewhere, but incorrectly, and I thought it was necessary to set it down here afresh.

[greek], An eye of justice, is an expression used of an upright and uncorrupted judge, or of a judgment itself. The adage is recalled by Suidas. It seems to derive from the description by Chrysippus in Aulus Gellius book 14 chapter 4 in which he attributes to Justice penetrating, direct, and unmoving eyes. It is important that one who is to judge rightly should not allow his gaze to be diverted this way or that from what is honest. This proverbial verse is famous: 'There is an eye of justice which perceives all.'

[greek], More just than justice. This is a proverbial hyperbole for the rigorously upright and uncorrupted. The ancients made Justice a goddess, and there is an elegant description of her image by Chrysippus, as I have just said, in Aulus Gellius.

[greek], As old as the Dionysia or Bacchanalia. Suidas records this as a proverb, but somewhat confusedly as usual. In ancient times the Athenians used to calculate the years and the number attached to them from the Dionysia, as they did from the Olympiads. The festival of the Dionysia was repeated every third year. This is why Virgil calls them trieterica. The complete phrase used by Suidas is as follows: 'Almost as far from that as from the Bacchanalia.' He adds that it is said about things that are very desirable and fervently awaited. This is supported by what he relates from some unknown author: 'O the Bacchanalia, they are fragrant with ambrosia and nectar.'

[greek], He pretends to be a shopkeeper. Can be said of someone who is fearful and makes up false reasons to avoid being put in danger. Suidas quotes it from Aristophanes; in both the Plutus and the Women in Parliament by this author someone is introduced who says something like this: that he pretends to be a shopkeeper whenever he is ordered to go to war, because business men were not obliged to turn out. It was useful to release them so that they could look after provisioning. In the Plutus the passage is as follows:
Are you a tiller of the field?
Do you think I am so mad?
Are you a business man?
I pretend I am when it's necessary.
The other passage is: 'I behave as if I were a business man.' This is not entirely different from the gospel parable about those who are invited to a wedding and excuse themselves for various reasons.

[greek], For any gift be grateful. The adage tells us that a gift, a service or advice offered by a friend is to be appreciated. The source is indicated by Strabo the Geographer in book 6. When the Greeks were commanded by the oracle to establish the city of Croton a certain Myscellus was sent to inspect the future site of the city. When he saw Sybaris already built and thought the site was the most suitable, he returned to the oracle and consulted the god as to whether it was permitted to found Sybaris instead of Croton. The god answers thus: [greek] . These lines are rendered by the translator thus:
Expel it from your breast, short-backed Myscellus;
When you seek other answers, see! you strive in vain for what is unjust.
But take whatever is rightly given with appreciation.
This is also extant in the Collected Proverbs, but in a very corrupt state; however, from the ruins of words, if I may use the expression, the following reading might be put together: [greek] . When you ask the god for something different, hump-backed Myscellus,
You may get something worthless; be happy with the gift that is given.
He was called Myscellus, it seems, because of his thin legs, which were like those of a mouse, and Brachynotus because of his bent back. I have said elsewhere that Croton was a very healthy place, and Sybaris was insalubrious. Suidas relates other things concerning oracles given to Myscellus, but not relevant to the explanation of this proverb.

[greek]. Suidas affirms this expression was proverbial for someone who stimulated and encouraged others. I think it is taken from the usage of sailors, who are exhorted to work hard when they are rowing by the voice of the captain, or from horse racing. In decade 7 question 5 of his 'Tabletalk' Plutarch writes that the chant for encouraging horses was called the [greek]. He relates very similar things in the 'Precepts on Marriage.' In Greek [greek] means 'to leap in with a rush.' So too in Homer Ares is called [greek] 'impetuous' from his swift assault. It seems the Greek word is made up from [greek] 'exceedingly' and [greek] 'to exhort.'

[greek], Eat neither garlic nor beans. This seems to have been said by way of a proverbial riddle, meaning 'Do not go either to war or to court.' Garlic used to be carried into battle as part of the soldiers' provisions. (If only it were in such abundant supply, that those who delight in wars, the foulest of men, should have nothing but garlic to eat - or whatever is worse!) In the courts people commonly ate beans to stop themselves going to sleep. This is what Suidas says in fact, though I think it is rather a reference to the bean-shaped pebbles that were used as votes in ancient times.

[greek], If you dream that you die, you will be free of your cares. This is a line of verse commonly recited by the Greeks, and arising from superstitious observation of dreams. They believed that someone who dreamed he died would be freed from his cares and troubles, because death seems to mark an end to griefs, and clearly does so for those who depart from this life for a better one. Relevant to this same idea perhaps is the line I have recorded elsewhere: 'Your business will fail if you dream of the dead.'

[greek], A heart of seven ox-hides; another version is 'a sevenhide rage.' Said of someone who is big and strong, and invincible. The epithet originates with the shield of Ajax, which Homer calls [greek] because it was covered with the hides of seven oxen and therefore impenetrable. Ovid too has: 'Ajax, Lord of the seven-fold shield.' The adage comes from the Frogs of Aristophanes:
But belching javelins and spears, white plumes on their heads,
With helmets and greaves, and hearts of seven ox-hides.

'[greek], Troy is ill-fated ever. Said of those who are exceedingly wretched and distressed. The fall of Troy offered the poets many subjects of tragedies, and this is how the proverb arose. It is mentioned by Eustathius in his commentary on the fourth book of the Iliad. And when Stratonicus was asked why he did not wish to live with the Trojans he replied, 'Troy is ill-fated ever.' The authority for this is Athenaeus in book 8 of the Doctors at Dinner (though this passage is not entirely without error).

Ελευθέρα κόρκυρα, χέζ᾽ ὅπου θέλεις, Corcyra is free, shit where you will. Said when we want to indicate that one is free to do anything. It is cited by Eustathius in his commentary on Dionysius, but it would be more apt when we want to signify that there is no punishment for the wicked. Here, I think, we can appropriately relate what Plutarch says. Certain Chians, sojourning with the Spartans, not only vomited after a banquet but emptied their bowels on the ephors' couches. At first there was a careful inquiry about who had committed such a villainy, for they would certainly be punished if they were citizens. But when it was found that it had been done by the Chians, the Spartans went about saying, 'Chians have permission to behave outrageously.'

'[greek], The prize will be the Thessalian mare. This expression was used for winning the first prize, because in ancient times Thessalian mares had the best reputation. This is clearly indicated by the oracle given to the Aeginetans. Eustathius quotes it with reference to the second book of the Iliad. Suidas, following I know not which author, says: 'Cavalry in Thessaly and Thrace, archers and lighter-armed infantry in India, Crete and Caria.' This adage is closely related to one discussed elsewhere: 'A tunic Pellene-style.' It will be wittier if used ironically.

[greek], A dog living on breadcrumb. Eustathius, commenting on the Iliad book 4, shows that this expression was used of parasites and those who lived on food provided by others. He says magdalia has something like the meaning of 'scurf or 'scrapings from the hands.' But among other authors I find the phrase is written as one word, as in Hesychius. He says: 'Apomagdalia is the adeps "soft crumb" on which they wiped their hands at banquets; they threw this to the dogs when they left the table.' Then we have Julius Pollux in book 6 chapter 14 of his Vocabulary: 'But the ancients made use of the apomagdaliai, which is what they called the soft, fatty part of bread; they wiped up their food with it and then threw it to the dogs. Hence the Spartans call apomagdalia Kvvas "dog food."' In the Knights of Aristophanes, the halantopola 'sausage-seller' declares that he will surpass Cleon in shameless and wicked tricks, or else his diet of apomagdaliai has been to no avail. Cleon answers him:
Apomagdaliai, like a dog? You villain; if you live on dog's food,
How can you defend yourself against this dog-faced monkey?
Apomagdaliai are mentioned in Plutarch too in the Lycurgus, though I doubt if the translator has followed the meaning of the passage. The Greek words are as follows: [see n6]. I would translate the Greek more or less thus:
A person who wanted to take part in a banquet was tested, so it is said, in
the following manner. Each of the guests took a piece of breadcrumb in his
hand and placed it in silence, like a voting pebble, into a [greek] "bowl" which
a servant was carrying on his head. Those who approved did simply that, oth-
ers passed condemnation by squeezing it hard in their hand. Such a flattened
piece of bread was the equivalent of a perforated pebble. If even one such vote
was found, they did not allow the applicant to join, for they wanted every-
one to have pleasure in eating together. But the person who was rejected
in this way was said to be caddissatus "caddied" for cadus was the word for
the bowl into which they put the pieces of bread.
Lapus however translates thus:
Anyone who wanted to be a participant in a banquet was tested as follows:
first each person took a piece of breadcrumb in his hand and put it like a
voting pebble, without saying anything, into a bowl which a servant carried
on his head; those who reprobaret 'disapproved' did simply that, but those
who approbaret 'approved' squeezed it hard with their hand. If any piece of
bread were flattened it had the same meaning as a perforated pebble. If they
found just one piece which was not flattened they did not admit the applicant,
because they wanted everyone to enjoy themselves together. But the person
who was thus reprobatus 'rejected' was said to be 'caddied,' for caddiscus [sic]
was the word for the bowl into which the pieces of bread were put.
If you compare this with what Plutarch wrote, you will see that the Greek text that Lapus followed was different from that which the Aldine press gave us recently. Be that as it may, Athenaeus also recalls some points in book 9 about pieces of bread which were offered before meals for wiping hands. He also relates in book 4 that among the Arcadians, if I am not mistaken, it was the custom to make a sacrifice after the meal, without actually washing their hands but simply wiping them with some broth and a piece of bread, and whatever they wiped their hands with each one took away with him. This they did to ward off the night-time terrors that tend to haunt crossroads. This is what Athenaeus says. I think this is obviously also a useful remedy for the dogs that assault travellers at crossroads. This is what Aristophanes was remembering, I think, in the Knights when he charges Cleon with the fact that while other outstanding people are driven into exile he wipes his hands with the most delicate barley cakes: 'And he is in exile while you wipe your hands on cakes of [greek] "finest barley."' The scholiast adds that this sort of barley is called Achilleum, as if it were more noble." It is not surprising then that an argument is called an 'Achillean argument' by theologians if it is effective and difficult to refute."

[greek], After fish figs, after meat vegetables. This one is recalled by Athenaeus in the third book of the Doctors at Dinner. It will be applicable when we want to say that different things suit different people. Just as it is common for people to like to have cheese after eating meat, and after fish nuts.

[greek], Birds like figs, but they will not plant them. This heroic hexameter is quoted by Athenaeus immediately after in the same passage as I have just mentioned. It seems to be applicable to lovers of pleasure or those who avoid honest work, though they want the advantages of it.

[greek], Marching in the sacred procession of Juno. This too is found in Athenaeus, book 12 of the Doctors at Dinner. It seems to have been uttered on the occasion of some splendid, slow procession, which Horace too mentions in his Satires: 'As if he were carrying the sacred objects of Juno .. .'

[greek], Drive a willing ox. Make use of the efforts of those who work willingly. It is madness to 'lead unwilling hounds to hunt' as Plautus says. The adage is recorded by the scholiast of Theocritus. I have mentioned it in the adage 'Milk the one that's handy.'

He's got it! is a proverbial expression uttered when someone achieves what he was longing for or what he deserves: 'He's got what he wants; like lips like lettuce.' It is thought to be derived from fowlers, fishermen or hunters who, when they come home, are greeted with [greek]; 'Have you caught anything?' This is quoted from Aristophanes Clouds. In his Agamemnon Seneca the tragedian says: 'He has it. The deed is done.' In the Andria Terence has 'Immediately I say to myself. Indeed he's caught. He's had it.' Donatus shows this is said 'properly of gladiators when others notice they are wounded before they feel it themselves.' The adage seems to have originated with this cry.

[greek], Being a host to Hercules. Often said when someone seemed to be outstaying his welcome at a feast, because those who received Hercules into their house and to a feast had to wait a long time before he was sated. It was not safe to disturb him while he was still hungry, nor was the glutton easily satisfied; we even read that he ate whole oxen at one meal. This is why he was called [greek] 'the glutton' by the Greeks who consecrated to him the seagull calling it the [greek] 'the oxeater.' We also read that he competed with a certain Lepreus to see which of them could finish an ox more quickly. These and many other stories about his greed are recounted in book 10 by Athenaeus, who adds that a certain athlete of Thasos, named Theagenes, and Milo of Croton finished an ox in one day. May our enemies have such guests!

[greek], Even in the assembly, or meeting of the gods. Some take this to refer to persons who are particularly good and just, others to the utterly scurrilous. It is said in addition that there is a place in Eleusis, near the Anactorum, called the Forum of the Gods, which people would not go into without speaking words of good omen. Hence they would say of someone who was outrageously scurrilous, 'This man would speak evil even in the assembly of the gods.'

[greek], Calliphanes. It was this poet's ridiculous way of canvassing favour that gave rise to a proverbial joke. It is said that it was his custom to put together in writing the beginnings of various odes and speeches, up to three or four lines, and to declaim them and show them off in order to seem knowledgeable and learned to people who did not know of the deception. Athenaeus recalls him in book 1 of the Doctors at Dinner and says his nickname was Parabrycontis, son of Parabrycon. Such literary impostors are not unknown in our own times; their method is to learn by heart a few notable passages, not widely published, from some of the best authors of different disciplines. Armed with these they are not afraid to speak in assemblies and attack anyone however learned. And they carry this off, with their ready recitation of these passages, so well that they seem to the inexperienced to be veritable Solons. But these Solons, if it is the third or the fourth time you have encountered them - Heavens above! - there is no one less capable of speech, no one more uneducated than they once their little hoards have been exhausted. I can hardly avoid laughing as I write this remembering a certain Calliphanes I knew once when I was staying in the family of that most distinguished man Hendrik van Bergen, bishop of Cambrai. But I will spare his name because he was a fellow-guest. This man put together and bound a great many volumes, but with empty pages except that at the front there were certain rather grand titles to be seen, such as 'Odes,' 'Orations,' 'Epistles.' Before each title there was written his full three-part name, so that anyone who happened to read the titles would think this was a learned man producing multiple great works of literature.

[greek], Wagging the tail, is said of those who fawn on a person in the hope of some gratification. Aristophanes in the Knights:
The one who wags his tail as he watches the meal, my friend,
While you are looking elsewhere, he is the one who eats your food.
He often expresses the same idea with [greek] 'fawn,' which is said of dogs fawning with their ears, their tails, and their whole body. In the Knights we have: 'These oracles fawn upon me.' [greek] 'to wheedle' was also derived from the name of an animal, if we believe the Greek etymologist. Thos is Greek for a type of wolf, and some wolves fawn in the manner of dogs. Thoes is used by Pliny in book 8 chapter 24 for one kind of wolf, but one that is friendly to man. Whether [greek] comes from this, I am doubtful.

[greek], A basinful of evils. Said of something extremely troublesome or of a man who causes disputes. Aristophanes in the Acharnians has: 'A basinful of evils, a trafficker in disputes,' meaning a slanderer and an informer.

[greek], Lampon swears by a gander. This expression was used when someone tried to cheat by swearing an oath. Lampon was some sort of priest, a prophet, and a speaker of oracles. He was in the habit of swearing by a gander, as if it were an oracular bird, or because this was formerly so ordained by Rhadamanthus, that there be no swearing by one of the gods, but by a dog, or a gander, something which Socrates does commonly in Plato. It is said that it was on Lampon's proposal that the Athenians sent a colony to Sybaris. The adage is recalled by Aristophanes in the Birds: 'Lampon even now swears by a gander when someone deceives him in some matter.'

'Piercing with a caress' is said of anyone who cajoles, or inspires vain hope with words. Plautus in the Merchant:
'I will make a free man of you in a few months.
You pierce me with a caress.
Would I ever dare to tell you an untruth?'
The same author elsewhere: 'You cannot force me with your caresses.' The image is borrowed from grooms who pacify horses by patting with the hand. Virgil in the third book of the Georgics:
Then more and more to delight in his trainer's
Caressing praise and to love the sound of patting his neck.
And Horace in his Satires:
Stroke the steed clumsily and back he kicks, at every point on his guard.

Plautus was using a proverbial figure when he said, 'To strike the handle out of his hand,' meaning to wrest the ability to do something from the person about to do it. The passage is in the Pot of Gold:
I took the cudgel and slew the cock, a red-handed thief.
By heaven! I think the cooks had promised that cock a reward
To show them where it is. I struck the handle out of their hand.
The figure is derived from one who has already raised the sword to strike and has the handle struck suddenly out of his hands.

[greek], Gifts of an Alybantian host, or Hospitality of an Alybantian friend. Eustathius the commentator of Homer thinks this can be properly used as a proverb whenever anyone boasts falsely that he has bestowed great gifts, or if kindness is shown only in words and not in deeds. In the last book of Homer's Odyssey Ulysses, in disguise, talks to his father Laertes; he pretends he is from Alybas, is the son of the very wealthy Aphidas, and that he had earlier given hospitality to Ulysses and sent him away loaded with generous gifts. He says, T am from Alybas, where I have a grand house; / I am the son of King Aphidas, son of Polypemon. / My own name is Eperitus.' And shortly before this:
I took this man into my home and made him welcome,
Showering him with all the luxuries
That overflowed in our house, adding to them
Guest gifts fit for such a friend.
Seven talents of wrought gold I gave him,
A solid silver, engraved wine-bowl,
Twelve cloaks of single weave,
As many long mantles I added and as many tunics,
And besides all this four servant girls handsome and skilled
In arts and hand crafts whom I allowed him to choose for himself.

In the Bacchis Sisters Plautus uses 'mushroom' to mean someone who is stupid and too readily trusting. This is perhaps because the mushroom itself is a rather tasteless thing, or because it is soft and fragile, or because it bursts suddenly. Plautus' words are as follows: 'Could I have been such a mushroom as to trust him?' The same author in the same play:
Of all the fools, dullards, idiots, mushrooms, half-wits,
Babblers, ninnies anywhere, who are, were, or will be,
I alone am far ahead for stupidity.

[greek], Eurycles, was a popular nickname for someone who foresaw anything concerning himself and his own troubles. There was a certain seer of this name also called Etastrimythos because, if I am not mistaken, he foretold true things from the stars, the name being derived from [greek] 'to examine.' He is mentioned by Suidas too, although in his case the nickname is written Engastrimythos, 'prophet' or 'ventriloquist.' It is listed in the Collected Proverbs ascribed to Plutarch. It is also used by Plato in the Sophist. Having criticized those who betray their own foolishness with their tangled and absurd arguments, he goes on: 'There is no need of others to refute them; they have an enemy at home, as the saying goes, to contradict them, and they always go marching about carrying with them some spirit muttering within like the absurd Eurycles.'

[greek], Some shield around the city! This was shouted by way of a joke at people who roved about the city here and there in a dissolute manner. It is listed in the Collected Proverbs of Plutarch, but is not explained.

[greek], His hook has broken. This used to be said about people who had put themselves forward hastily as intending to do some great deed and then, to everyone's disappointment, behaved in a disgraceful and unseemly manner when it came to the deed. The figure is taken from tragic actors; when a god was to be brought on, they used to be raised quickly by certain machinery and appeared high up on the stage building as if suspended in the air, hanging by a rope tied in their belt. Sometimes the hook to which these people were tied happened to break and they fell, much to the amusement of the spectators and to their own hurt and loss of dignity. Crada here does not mean a branch of a fig-tree as it does elsewhere, but the bronze hook by which the actors were secured to the machinery. Julius Pollux in book 4 chapter 19 tells us, [greek] was the word used in comedy for what was called [greek] in tragedy. It was like a "fig-tree," since in Attic Greek a fig tree is [greek],' but the branches of any tree are sometimes called cradae?

This is Plautus in the Merchant: 'Each man thinks of his own business.' It is a proverbial phrase expressing men's usual habit of nodding through another man's business, but each is wide awake and attentive to his own. Hence the good advice of Ennius quoted in Aulus Gellius:
Let this saying be always ready to your mind:
Don't expect your friends to do what you can do for yourself.
The same idea is the subject of a very fine fable by Aesop about the crested lark who knew she was not in danger as long as the harvest was left to other people. Plautus alludes to the adage in the Carthaginian:
Is this how you try to see whether we can remember our own affairs?
Terence alludes to it too in the Phormio: 'But if he had left an estate of ten talents, etc.' Whatever is dear to us we remember easily, and negligence is generally the mother of forgetfulness.

Plautus in the Pseudolus: 'As to that, you may sleep on either eye.' It has the same meaning as the one we noted earlier: 'To sleep sound on either ear.' The comic playwright aimed at humour through his novelty of expression. This is why the dialogue goes on at that point: 'Either eye! Don't you mean "ear"?' And the inventive Pseudolus answers: 'But that's too common.' At the same time the passage draws attention to the fact that men often try to invent new sayings of this sort.

[greek], Troy places no blame on the Corinthians. With this verse we can covertly reproach the cowardice of someone who has acted in such a way that the enemy has nothing for which it may seriously blame him. It is a verse of Simonides, which, according to Aristotle in book 1 of the Rhetoric, the Corinthians were vexed about, believing it to be something composed as an insult to them because in the Trojan War they had not made any great effort to assist. It could be adapted to use when somebody has written in such a gauche way against good letters that his want of eloquence speaks for them rather than against them, 'On the Corinthians etc.' In his life of Dion Plutarch interprets the adage somewhat differently: 'Just as Simonides says, O Sosius Senecio, "Troy is not angry with the Corinthians" for having come to the war with the Greek forces, because the Trojans also had resolute allies in the companions of Glaucus who were themselves descendants of the Corinthians.' From these words of Plutarch we may understand the proverb as meaning that we should feel less hurt if we are harmed by those who were formerly our benefactors, and should forgive the present offence for the sake of earlier services.

[greek], Maras. This name is said to have been that of a certain man of the Syrian city of Beroea, very rich but nonetheless humane and kind to everyone, citizens and strangers. Hence it became popularly accepted to apply the term to men who seemed to be born for the benefit of the many. There is a rather long story about this man in the Greek Collected Proverbs, but I think it is sufficient for me just to have mentioned it in order not to waste time, for 'Maras' does not appear to be a genuine or authentic proverb. If anyone really wants to learn about the story, the work is available, published by Aldus when my Adagia had already been finished.

'[greek], Since Nannacus - when we mean that something goes back to the most remote antiquity. Nannacus, so the story says, was a king before Deucalion who foresaw the flood to come. I have mentioned him elsewhere. He is also recalled, under the word [greek], by Stephanus who reports that he was the source of another proverb: 'To weep in the time of Cannacus,' even though there we read 'Annacus' for 'Cannacus.' Latin speakers use a similar figure when they say, 'Going back to the time of the Aborigines' and 'Just as if you were talking to Evander's mother.' This is not very different from 'As old as Codrus' and 'You are talking of things older than the diphthera.'

[greek], An ass to the flute. This is to be used for someone who does not notice or understand or approve clever remarks. There are certain animals in whom there seems to be some sensitivity to music, such as horses, birds, and serpents. The ass is unmoved by any song. This adage is closely related to 'An ass to the lyre.'

[greek], To weave a cloak for Orestes. Said of one who made a gift for someone who would waste it. For Orestes in his madness would tear his clothes to pieces. It is a hemistich of heroic verse taken from the Birds by Aristophanes: 'And then to weave a cloak for Orestes so that he may not feel cold and strip people of their clothes.' The scholion says that Orestes was a [greek] 'a stealer of other people's clothes,' who, pretending insanity, used to approach men in the dark and rob them of their apparel. Hence it will be quite aptly applied when we are warned to give something to a man threatening to steal so that he does not take it by force. The adage did not originate with Aristophanes but is adapted by him, for by this circumlocution he means the winter.

[greek], A Pandeletian maxim, is how Cratinus in his Low-class Men describes a peevish and annoying saying that people cite. It derives from some informer or other called Pandeletus, of the sort who, in order to make money, 'thrust great law-suits upon you,' as Terence's Phormio says; and they get votes by similar methods.

The longevity of the Sibyl gave rise to this proverb. Propertius in book 2 of his Elegies: 'But a Sibyl's whole lifetime shall never alter my love.' He used 'a Sibyl's lifetime' to mean 'a very long time.' The Sibyl is called the 'long-lived priestess' by Virgil in book 6 of the Aeneid. Servius, explaining this passage, adds that Apollo fell in love with the Sibyl and gave her the choice of asking for anything she wanted. She demanded to live as many years as there were grains of sand in a heap she had scooped up. Apollo replied that this could be done if she left the island of Erythrea and never looked on it again. And so she came to Cumae where she lost her bodily strength and retained life in her voice alone. When her fellow citizens learned this, whether out of envy or pity, they sent her a letter signed in the ancient manner with chalk. But she, seeing the soil of her native land, was finally freed in death. This is how Phoebus deceived his priestess.

In the Eunuchus Terence says of a parasite that he is the sort who would even 'snatch a dinner out of the fire,' that is, that he would suffer or do anything for the sake of food. Catullus explains the adage in his Epigrams:
Rufa from Bologna, wife of Menenius,
Deceives Rufulus. You have seen her often
In the cemeteries snatching food out of the very pyre,
Even though she was cudgelled by a half-shaved corpse-burner As she chased a loaf that fell out of the fire.

In his Epigrams Catullus said by way of a proverb: 'He turned him into Harpocrates,' meaning 'He imposed silence.' The poem goes like this:
Gellius had heard that his uncle was in the habit of reproving loudly
Anyone who enjoyed love's pleasures or talked about them.
Determined that this should not happen to himself, he scorned his own
uncle's wife
And turned his uncle into a figure of Harpocrates.
He did whatever he liked, for now even if he made his uncle himself
Perform fellatio, Uncle would not utter a word.
Harpocrates was pictured in ancient times as a god who, by a finger raised to his lips, enjoined silence, rather like the Roman goddess Angerona.

Plato mentions this proverb in book 1 of the Laws: 'And the popular saying that "those of the Athenians who are good are exceptionally good" seems to be very true.' Plato feels that, in a republic which is badly governed and corrupt, those who are good are instinctively so and to an extraordinary degree. For they are not to be thought of as feigning honesty, certainly not when they are living among dishonest people with whom they would actually find favour if they conducted themselves in the same dishonest way; nor can they be corrupted by the degenerate morals of others and contact with vice. The same can be said of the Roman state in which it is a proof of exceptional integrity to be uncorrupted. By a similar argument Terence's Simo infers the good morals of his son. The adage can be adapted to life at court or the sort of pursuit that offers temptations to ruin.

Things are said to be 'worthy of cedar' when they deserve to be remembered in perpetuity and are considered to be such as should be bequeathed to posterity. Horace in the Art of Poetry
We hope for poems to be fashioned,
Worthy to be smeared with cedar oil.
And Persius: 'who has uttered words worthy of cedar oil.' The origin is the nature of the tree; anything smeared with its sap does not rot. Pliny tells us in book 13 chapter 13 that it was by this means that the books of Numa, although made of paper, lasted five hundred and thirty-five years buried in the ground. The same author in book 16 mentions cedar as being among the materials that last for ever. Dioscorides affirms the sap of this tree is mainly valued for its thickness, clarity, and rather strong smell; it does not run down but forms into solid drops. It has a power which can act in opposite ways: it corrupts living bodies, and preserves dead ones. This is why it is said that some call the tree [greek]j 'The life of a carcass.' Relevant to this is 'poems that will have nothing to fear from mackerel or from spice.' And in Martial:
Lest, hurried off to a sooty kitchen,
You wrap tunny fry in your sodden papyrus .. .
And Horace: 'Or you'll take refuge in Utica, or be despatched in a greasy parcel to Ilerda.'

[greek], A Telemachus pot. This adage is recalled by Athenaeus in book 9 where he says that Telemachus was a certain Acharnian who lived for the most part on beans, from which we may suppose that the expression was used of miserly people.

I would not personally assert with complete confidence that it is a proverb, this answer Stratonicus the lyre-player gave to king Ptolemy, who was disputing with him hotly about the art of singing, but still as a turn of speech and figure it is so similar to a proverb that one fig is scarcely more like another. [greek]. 'A sceptre is one thing, o king, a plectrum is another.' The phrase can be used whenever some wealthy and powerful person, relying on what fortune has given him, argues as if on equal terms with a scholar, though it is one thing to be rich or fortunate and something very different to be educated.

Amphis in the Ampelurgus, quoted by Stobaeus:
On places where a man is not entirely happy
It is most unkind to lay a hand.
Each one of us is unwilling to hear about our own misfortunes especially those that have gained some notoriety, such as a disgrace in the family or a deformity. Accordingly it is a politeness not to rub anyone's wound or to touch a sore spot.

[greek], Gold tested in the fire, is an expression used of someone whose loyalty has been tested and confirmed by adversity. Marcus Tullius uses this figure in book 9 of his Letters to Friends. Pindar too in the fourth Nemean: 'Gold which has been through the fire shows all its brilliance.' Again in the tenth Pythian Ode: 'But gold shines when rigorously tested, and so does a true mind.' Theognis:
In all things you will find me like pure gold,
Gently blushing when rubbed with the touchstone.
And the same author elsewhere:
When it comes to the touchstone and is compared in the test to lead,
Then it will be completely clear that it is pure gold.
This comparison is used also by St Peter the Apostle in his first letter: 'Much more precious than gold which perishes (or "ruinous gold") although it is through fire that it is tested.' It is nothing short of a wonderful miracle that gold is not only not dulled by fire but becomes brighter and brighter. Likewise the man who is genuinely good, when he is exposed to the storms of misfortune, does not lose his strength of mind but brings it to light. In book 33 Pliny writes that gold was esteemed above all metals particularly because it was the only thing in no way damaged by fire, surviving safely by its very nature even in conflagrations. Indeed, as a matter of fact, it improves in quality the more often it is fired. It is a proof of the purity of gold if it glows red like fire, and this is called obrizum 'assayed gold.'

[greek], He pulls down the moon. Customarily said of someone whose prospects seemed utterly desperate. The scholiast of Apollonius, on book 4, asserts that the saying originated with Aglaonice daughter of Hegemon, who because of her skill in astrology knew in advance of an eclipse of the moon and boasted that she was going to bring the moon down from heaven to earth. This excessively arrogant declaration was heard by Nemesis who soon took her revenge. And this was how the proverb arose.

[greek], It's the tracks of the lion you look for. A sarcasm against someone who speaks bravely and acts timidly. From some fable of Aesop in which the story is told of a certain hunter who asked a shepherd he met whether he had seen a lion anywhere and to point him out. The shepherd replied, 'I can soon show you the tracks of a lion for they are not far from from here.' Whereupon the hunter said, 'It's only the tracks that I'm interested in; I do not need any more than that.' This adage matches one recorded elsewhere: 'Confronted with the bear you go looking for his tracks.'

[greek], More than a single ship can carry. This shows all the character of a proverb, one that it will be appropriate to use whenever we mean a greater number of men than a single ship can hold. One might say, for example, 'The ignorant are more than a single ship can carry.' It is to be found in Theognis: 'Even after searching among them all you will not find / More men than a single ship can carry.'

In the Haunted House Plautus uses 'this year's harvest' as a proverbial figure to mean a very large profit, equivalent to 'as much gain as there was to be made this year from the fields.' The comic poet says: 'Heavens! I haven't enjoyed a cold bath more for a long time, / Nor one in which, believe me Scapha, there was better refreshment for me.' These words are spoken by a girl character. Then the procuress says, hoping to take advantage as much as possible of the other's beauty, 'May the outcome be like this year's harvest for everyone.' The girl who is rather naive does not understand what this means and says, 'What has this harvest to do with my bath?' The figure is very close to the same author's phrase in the Curculio: 'This grape harvest is not enough for this one old woman,' meaning that she is such a drinker that all the wine from that year's harvest is not enough to satisfy her thirst.

[greek], Glaucus has eaten grass and lives in the sea. This appears to be said by way of a joke about people who, though dead, are still alive according to popular opinion. This belief occupied the minds of our nation for many years, to the point of madness, in the case of Prince Charles, Duke of Burgundy. When he died in battle there were many who did not hesitate to assert, at great risk to their own interests, that he was still alive. Concerning Glaucus the Greeks tell a story which goes like this:
Glaucus was a certain fisherman of Anthedon who was by far the best swim-
mer of all. To inspire greater wonder this man conceived the following de-
ception: he swam out of the harbour with the Anthedonians watching him
until he was out of sight. At that point he turned back to land, hid in a re-
mote spot and stayed there for many days. Then, when he judged it was
right, he swam back into the harbour watched by those who were standing
on the shore. To friends and enquirers who wondered where on earth he
had stayed all that time he pretended that he had lived for a while on the waves.
He raised further wonder with another deception. During the winter months, when other fishermen could catch no fish at all, he asked the citizens what sort of fish they would like to be provided, and whatever they ordered he brought, for he had already prepared a supply of them for this purpose and kept them enclosed in another place. Finally it came about that this deceiver was eaten by a sea monster, and that was the end of his comedy. But since he did not return as was his custom, a popular legend spread about that Glaucus had tasted grass, become immortal, and lived in the sea. The scholiast of the poet Apollonius tells very similar stories about Glaucus, that he was a fisherman who on one occasion was worn out by the weight of fish he had caught and threw them away when he was half-way home. But then a wonderful thing happened: one of the fish which was already dying ate some grass and revived. This was seen by Glaucus who ate the same grass and became immortal. Finally, wearied of life, he threw himself into the sea. According to some he was turned into a marine god, according to others into a fish, something on which there are many details in book 7 of Athenaeus, who also quotes from the Man with a Cataract of Alexis. If you want to learn all the other stories about Glaucus in minor Greek authors you can read the seventh book of Athenaeus who chatters on enough to put you off and make you sick about Glaucus the fish and Glaucus the demon; for my part I have no desire to repeat all these trifles here. It was almost against my better judgment that I included this fanciful story here; for if I may say plainly what I feel, I suspect this Greek writer, whoever he was, made up the proverb as a pretext for recalling this story. However I preferred to amuse myself with this effort rather than offer some halfeducated individuals an excuse to say that I had ignorantly omitted what was to be found even in the published commentaries on Greek authors.

Since 'To play the Chalcidian,' To behave like a Lesbian,' 'To play Cretan,' and several other expressions of this sort are proverbs in Greek, why should the Romans not take as an adage the word that Plautus uses in the Haunted House, that is pergraecari, meaning 'to lead a pleasant life'? Plautus' own words show clearly enough what pergraecari means:
Get fuddled day and night, live like Greeks,
Buy girls and set 'em free, feed parasites,
Go in for fancy catering!
That's what Plautus says. Marcus Tullius, in the third speech against Verres, says: 'They had a conversation and an invitation was given to drinks in the Greek manner.' The Greeks are spoken of badly everywhere in the Latin poets, and likewise in Cicero, not only as given to pleasures and softened by luxuries, but also as untrustworthy. This was either because to the somewhat uncivilized Romans of early times, holding to that ancient severity of theirs, the refinement of the Greeks seemed to be extravagance, or because rivalry in their purposes and mutual hatred caused them to write such outrageous things about the Greeks, or because there were in. fact not a few Greeks in Italy such as Juvenal describes, something which is not denied by Lucian too in his book On Payment to Servants, so that men judged the whole nation on the basis of Greeks such as these.

[greek], Bangles and baubles. Said of things that are alike and interchangeable. Some scholars believe a conos is a baker's instrument, not unlike an artoxya, which seems to mean a baker's knife. But from what follows shortly after in Suidas it appears that conoi were small gifts given to children, suitable to their age, like bracelets. So does it not fit the case of those who reward someone's effort with some mean and petty gift?

[greek], Not worth a tiddler. Said of a useless, worthless man, it survives in common parlance among Latin speakers even nowadays. However I am of the opinion that it was the cheapness of tunny fry that gave rise to the proverb. Cordylae are young tunny, but even smaller, as Pliny tells us in book 32 chapter 11. The cheapness of tunny fry is also evident from Martial in book 11:
First there will be given you lettuce useful for relaxing
The bowels, and shoots cut from, their parent leeks;
Then tunny salted and bigger than a small lizard fish,
And one which eggs will garnish in leaves of rue.
Shortly afterwards the poet mentions luxuries, so that he can deceive his companion:
I will deceive you to make you come; fish, mussels, sow's paps,
And fat birds of the poultry-yard and the marsh.

[greek], Ship-shape, is said of things that are arranged in good order, and that fit in or fit together, because the fittings of ships are always put in their proper place. For myself I am inclined to doubt whether the phrase that follows is proverbial: 'Rigging to suit the ship.' Not all sails suit every ship.

[greek], He has progressed by the cubit. Said of someone who has risen to a better status, either progressing by regular steps, or advancing by great strides. For cubitus means both 'measure' in the sense of nothing excessive and 'a rather large measure,' in the sense of a fairly big increment. We commonly measure very small things either by finger's breadths or by hand's breadths.

There is a proverbial figure used by Plautus in his Pot of Gold, I am going to a meeting where my status is at stake. The discussion was about whether or not he should marry the girl he was in love with. The origin is the Roman meetings in which new magistrates were created by the votes of the citizens. So when a decision is made about anything on which someone's happiness may depend then the words 'The meeting is about his status' will be appropriately uttered.

Much as the Greeks say, [greek], 'To the point of satiety,' so Plautus somewhat more wittily says, 'To the point of hoarseness' meaning 'excessively,' or more often, 'too noisily,' so that the voice even of the person who shouts so much becomes hoarse. The phrase is in the Pot of Gold as follows: 'Have you been pushing me off on this miserly old man? / If we ask anything of him, we may ask until we're hoarse / Before anything is given.'

Again just as the Greeks say [greek], 'They sacrifice to the Lar,' so Plautus shows more or less that Latin speakers used 'They sacrifice to Ceres' at any time at a feast when there is a shortage of wine. In her rites it was forbidden to introduce wine, as it was in the sacrifices of certain goddesses among the Greeks, as I have shown in the adage 'Nephalian wood.' The passage is in the Pot of Gold, in these words roughly: 'Are these people going to celebrate a marriage to Ceres, dear Strobilus? / - Why? - Because I notice that no alcohol has been brought.'

[greek], As useless, or as bad, as a blax. Said of a good-fornothing, and someone of no virtue at all. The expression derives from a fish that is so bad, tasteless, and evil-smelling that it is rejected even by dogs. However this fish is rather like the catfish if we are to believe the ramblings of the Greek Etymologies. But I have never heard that dogs were eager for fish. And if the catfish is what is popularly called 'sturgeon,' this is considered to be among the best of fish. The etymologist also says there is a place near Cumae, a marsh I suppose and infertile, called Blacia, which he suspects was the source of the proverb. Hesychius too calls the fish blacia instead of Max. He says in addition that in Alexandria there is a tax, called the [greek], paid by astrologers because blaces, that is, fools, go constantly to them asking for oracles from the stars. It is certain that silly, lazy, effeminate, and dull people are called blaces, hence [greek] 'to be effeminate or lazy,' and [greek] 'stupidly, dully.' It seems that it was from this word that Latin speakers took the words flaccus, flaccidus, and flaccescere. But that's enough about catfish.

[greek] was popularly used of someone who seized the property of others by force. It arose from an incident as follows. At the time of the Aetolian wars the Athenians were the victims of such a shortage of grain that poor people, driven by hunger, stole the prisoners' flour by force, and from that incident the term began to be used of any person who was a criminal. In his essay 'On Curiosity' Plutarch gives a different origin for the word, namely that when Athens was suffering extreme starvation and those who had been ordered to do so were not supplying the public with grain but were grinding it secretly in their houses at night, some curious passers-by noticed the noise of the millstones and betrayed them; it was these passersby who were called aliterioi like the sycophants. However he mentions a different explanation to this in the Problems, deriving aliterium from the verb 'to flee' (in Greek aAeco means both 'to grind' and 'to escape') and writes that this term was used to denote a man who was so wicked that anyone who managed to avoid him was considered fortunate. In the Knights Aristophanes calls aliterii those who violated the temple of Pallas: 'I declare you are one of the aliterii who invaded the citadel of the goddess.' The scholiast, among the many things he records, also recalls this: a certain Cylon, wishing to become sole ruler, occupied the citadel and was caught in the act of robbing the temple of Minerva. He himself escaped at an opportune moment but his friends who fled together to the altar of the goddess were dragged away by the Athenians and killed. From this incident the term was applied to those who had violated the supplicants, for those who had violated the temple of the goddess and killed the supplicants later suffered capital punishment. Finally Ceres is called 'Aliteria' and Jupiter 'Aliterius' because when public starvation threatened they guarded the millers so that the flour would not be stolen. Further, we are told that aliterii is a term applied to those who are disappointed in their hopes and do not achieve what they sought. There is an ambiguity in the fact that [greek] means two things: 'to grind' and 'to wander off.' Hence too [greek] 'a vagabond.' Moreover as aliterios means a sacrilegious and wicked person, so [greek] means 'to commit sacrilege.'

'A fish is no good unless it is fresh' is a very common and popular saying that has survived to this day. It is said especially however of a guest or ordinary friend who is not unwelcome when he first arrives but spoils before the third day. Plautus: 'For a procuress a lover is just like a fish - he's no good if he's not fresh.' In Alexis, quoted by Athenaeus, someone makes a joke that since some rather virtuous people would not eat things that had a soul, he had never brought anything of this kind, that is, the fish he purchased were dead. But nowadays vendors, by shaking their hands, pretend that fish dead for two days are still alive.

A service that is offered in good time is most welcome. On the other hand, untimely attention is usually troublesome. Plautus: 'Nothing is more friendly for a man than a timely friend.' To put it the opposite way, 'Untimely kindness is no different from hostility.'

There is an air of a proverb in something Horace writes in his Letters: 'A man who pushed his stubborn ass over a cliff.' This will be suitable for certain people of naturally perverse mentality who have no judgment themselves and yet are unwilling to submit to prudent advisers. Such people have to be pushed even further than they wish, so that they learn through punishment and acknowledge their own stupidity. The source was some peasant or other who was leading his ass over snow-covered mountains; the ass would not obey the reins, and he pushed it over a cliff. And rightly so: 'For who would care to save an ass against his will?'

[greek], I think you are a Lesbian lambda. This signifies a woman who performs fellatio, through a riddle based on the first letter, which 'Lesbians' and the vice attributed to them have in common, as I have mentioned elsewhere. The source is Aristophanes' Women in Parliament.

Persius makes a proverbial expression, 'A face behind your back,' for concealed mockery, from the action of those who laugh at someone behind his back: 'Meet the face being made behind your back.' And the same author:
O Janus, whom no stork ever pecked from behind,
Behind whom no agile hand ever mimicked white donkey-ears,
At whom no tongue ever protruded as much as a thirsty Apulian dog's.
For these are the sort of gestures by which some folk express mockery from behind people's backs.

Κόραξ τὸν ὄφιν, Crow and serpent. When somebody is killed by his own discovery. It originates in some fable of Aesop. A hungry crow noticed a snake sleeping in the sun and seized it but died from its bite. This is very close to one I have noted elsewhere: 'Crow and scorpion.' We can turn this against the man who suffers because of his greed, like Diogenes the Cynic, who died after eating raw octopus.

Τὸ καινέως δόρυ, Caeneus' spear. Caeneus was the son of Elatus, king of the Lapiths. He was formerly a beautiful girl, but was changed from a girl to a man with the consent of Neptune whom she had allowed to lie with her. As a man it was granted to him that 'he could not be harmed by any wound or perish by the sword,' as Ovid relates in book 12 of the Metamorphoses. There is a story that he fought with Apollo and also that it was his habit to command those who approached him to swear by his spear, whence the proverb, as the scholiast of Apollonius on the first book of the Argonautica indicates. This passage is cited with reference to the first book of the Iliad by Eustathius, who adds that Caeneus, having become the most notable man of his times, planted his javelin in the middle of the market-place and called on the gods to count him in their number. Angered by this arrogance, Jupiter took revenge on him, and when he was fighting in a battle with the Lapiths, invulnerable as he was, the god found a way to destroy the man: the Lapiths, throwing oak-trees and pines at him, pounded him into the ground.

Πέπονες, Water-melons, a proverbial insult applied to weak, effeminate men, scarcely masculine. Homer in the Iliad book 2: 'You water-melons, miserable objects of scorn, Achaean women, not men at all.' Eustathius, commenting on the seventh book of this work, indicates that the figure is taken from the fruit, which, at the moment it ripens, is sweet certainly but soft and inedible. However the same word is on occasion used not to insult but to address someone in a rather gentle, affectionate manner, as in book 6 of the Iliad: [greek] 'Soft-hearted Menelaus'

It is a proverbial insult among the Greeks to call sordidi 'dirty' and miserly people 'dirty-knuckles,' the epithet deriving from people who have sordes 'dirt' in their nails and who will not even spend the small coin needed to have a barber clean their nails. For [greek] means properly the dirt that gathers in the tips of the nails of the hands and toes, and [greek] the joints of the fingers and toes. Julius Pollux in book 6 chapter 4 calls these same people [greek] 'living on dregs,' as it were. Some give the adage as follows: [greek] 'His dirtiness offends me.' Latin-speakers use sordes to mean excessive miserliness - that is, the vice that is the opposite of ostentation - and a man addicted to that vice is called sordidus.

Iuvenari is used by Horace in both a novel and proverbial way in his Art of Poetry. The Greeks likewise use [greek] and [greek] in the same way to mean 'acting in a rather boastful, thoughtless, impetuous way,' or any other way that seems to be peculiar to that age-group. The less literal the application the wittier it will be; for example if someone says that flowery and luxuriant speech is 'adolescent.' The same form is shown by [greek], meaning 'to look like a woman in manner and dress.' Because of ignorance and lack of control over their emotions young people are more unstable, which is why the Greeks also say [greek] 'impetuously' for something that is done with more energy than judgment. Basil in one of his letters says: 'And here certainly those who have not yet completed their inner development and have not reached the fullness of maturity, the proverb says they go round in circles and vacillate.' You will also find [greek] used to mean 'doing youthful things.' This is the way Hyperides used it in his speech Against Mantitheus and Lysias against the flute-player Nicarchus. Laberius, quoted by Nonius, uses adolescenturire, incipio adolescenturire, and nescio quid nugarum facere 'doing some nonsense or other' with the same meaning.

There is the appearance of a proverb in what Juvenal writes about misers who confine themselves to praising songs and give nothing to the singers:
When he gives praise the miser
Has learned to give nothing but admiration, to give the eloquent nothing
but praise,
Like children admiring Juno's bird.
And the same author elsewhere: 'Goodness is praised and grows cold.' The figure is so well known that it is not necessary to explain it. Ovid says somewhere about the peacock:
If they are admired, Juno's bird shows its feathers;
But if you look in silence it hides its wealth.

Λευκηπατίας, Liver-pale was once a term for a timid person. Clearchus, in his Lives, quoted by Zenodotus, says that a certain sickness occurred in some people's liver which made them timid and this was how a humorous epithet came to be used proverbially. The word seems to be made up from [greek] 'pale' and [greek] 'liver,' because for the most part people whose liver is affected go pale, something which also appears in animals. And pallor is typical of the timid too.

Two proverbial hyperboles are 'To die laughing' and 'To fall down laughing' meaning to laugh heartily. Homer in the Odyssey book 18:
Then the brilliant crowd of suitors,
Χεῖρας ἀνασχόμενοι γέλῳ ἔκθανον 'Nearly dying with laughter,' threw up their hands
To the stars above.
Terence uses this too in the Eunuchus: 'They all died laughing.'

Ιππάρχου τειχίον, A wall of Hipparchus. This was said of anything that cost a great deal. It arose from the fact that Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus surrounded the Academy with a wall, and on this account exacted a great deal of money from the Athenians. The source is Suidas.

Ο νῦν μὲν οὐδεὶς, αὔριον δ᾽ ὑπερμέγας, He who is a nobody today will be perhaps the greatest tomorrow. Said of the man to whom, suddenly and beyond all hope, some very high honour comes. And those who are raised from the lowest status to high office are commonly said to have emerged from nothing. The line is in Aristophanes' Knights.

Τὰ σαμΐων ὑποπτεύεις, You fear the punishments of the Samians. Commonly said of those who feared betrayal. The story is that, whenever the Athenians captured Samians, they dealt with them violently and mercilessly, that they killed some and others they pierced with a sama, which is an instrument of torture. For their part, if they captured any Athenians, the Samians made them suffer in the same way. This is where the adage 'Men of letters from Samos' arose; for, as Suidas tells us, it used to be said of people who feared incurable injuries, and the same author says that samê was the word for a particular type of Samian injury because the Athenians branded their Samian captives with infamous signs and the Samians soon did the same to the Athenians. Duris, a Samian writer, says many exaggerated things, in the tragic mode, about the cruelty of Pericles and the Athenians towards the Samians, things that Plutarch believes were largely made up to stir up hatred of Pericles and the Athenians. A similar figure is found in the adage 'The misfortunes of the Magnesians.'

Ακροθίνια τῶν πυγμαίων κολοσσῷ ἐφαρμόζειν, People were said to 'use the spoils of the pygmies for the Colossus' if they undertook some work that was vain and silly or if they fitted the very small with the very large; for example if someone greeted some frivolous and petty deed with the highest and most fulsome praise. Philostratus in the Nicetes: 'But he could not understand that he was fitting very good but [greek] "small" parts on to the Colossus.' However when Suidas quotes this passage he says [greek] not [greek]. Eustathius recalls this adage in his commentary on the Odyssey book 21. Colossi is the word for statues of enormous, wonderful size. The word is thought to be used by the Greeks because the height of these statues was further than a man could see. The tallest pygmies are not more than two and a quarter feet tall, so their name is thought to have come from [greek], meaning 'about a forearm's length.' They are a people inhabiting the most distant parts of Egypt, occupied in agriculture, who wage a constant war with the cranes. The cause of the war is that the cranes carry off seed and create famine in that region; this is what the scholiast says, in his commentary on the third book of the Iliad. Their women bear children in their fifth year and become infertile in the eighth. The Pygmies are recalled by Juvenal in Satire 13. And there is much joking about them in Greek epigrams. I may add that acrothinia is the Greek word for the first offerings, because these are usually taken from the top of the heap; acron means 'top,' and thines 'heaps of grain.'

May the gods give you the mind you deserve. This is suitable for a mad person and one who deserves his state of mind. For what greater misfortune could we pray for wicked men? Martial says: 'May the gods grant to you, Philoenis, a mind that suits you.' And Horace: 'What can you do with him but bid him be miserable, / Since that is his whim.' On the other hand Demea in Terence says, 'Get yourself a better mind.'

This expression of Horace comes into the category of proverbs: 'Take care to be what you are said to be.' It fits the wealthy who were happy precisely insofar as they tried to be what they heard from their flatterers. Horace's verse is as follows:
You are living a true life if you take care to be what you are said to be.
All we in Rome have long boasted that you are happy,
But I fear you may give more credit to others than to yourself.

People who refrain from committing misdeeds not on principle but through fear of punishment will be suitably described by these proverbial phrases all using a similar metaphor: 'For the cautious wolf goes in fear of the pit, and the hawk / Of the suspected nets, the pike of the hidden hook.' For different traps are set for different animals. Wolves are caught in a pit covered with leaves, and this is why in Plautus a slave threatens he will dig a pit for the pimp whose name is Lycus. This one about a stick is similar: 'To change tune for fear of the stick.'

If, as Fabius says, a short fable is a type of proverb, why should we not include among proverbs this one composed by Horace?
But if the crow could eat quietly he would get
More of the feast and much less quarrelling and envy.
Some believe this is borrowed from the fable, which is told by Apuleius in the book On the God of Socrates, about the crow that found a prize, which a fox snatched away when he artfully persuaded her to start singing. It applies to people who, finding something good, boast about it constantly and show it off, and in this way bring it about that others either prevent them from deriving any advantages from it or defraud them of what they have found.

A man who tries to take for himself what someone stronger has already taken possession of can be said not without humour to 'want to snatch Hercules' club.' This has been well known as a proverb among scholars for a long time. It arose from an aphorism of Maro who, when certain emulators of Zoilus found fault with him because he had used many verses of Homer as his own, replied that this was in itself a splendid achievement to seize the thunderbolt of Jupiter or to snatch Hercules' club from his hand. Macrobius in book 5 of the Saturnalia says of Maro that he used Homeric verses in such a way that he made them his own: 'Three things were thought to be equally impossible: to steal a thunderbolt from Jupiter, a club from Hercules, or a verse from Homer, and even if it were possible it would not be proper for anyone but Jupiter to throw the thunderbolt, anyone but Hercules to wield the oaken club, or anyone to sing what Homer sang, yet Virgil, by translating suitably into his own work what the earlier poet had said, made people believe it was his own.'

This is a proverbial line from a mime; it is of uncertain authorship, though falsely attributed to Seneca: 'He dies twice who dies by his own arms.' Greater hurt is caused by the troubles we bring on ourselves. It appears to come from an Aesopic fable and was put into iambic verse by a certain Gabrias thus:
Once upon a time an eagle, struck in the breast, looked at his wound,
And weeping many tears for the pain could not go on flying.
But when he saw the feathered arrow he exclaimed 'Woe is me,
Feathered as I am, it is by my feathers I am brought to grievous ruin.'
I have mentioned the Greek adage that is derived from this passage elsewhere.

Sophocles in his Ajax the Whipbearer: [greek] 'Silence is always a seemly ornament for women.' This is a proverbial expression which Servius quotes from Sophocles in his commentary on book 1 of the Aeneid. Woman is by nature a talkative animal and is respected for nothing as much as for her silence, especially in the company of men when the talk is of serious matters. The source is Homer who says several times: 'Speech shall be for men.' And St Paul does not give women the right to speak even in church, but says they should question their husbands at home.

'Imitating the crab' is said of someone who goes backwards. This will be more like a proverb if it is applied figuratively to one who sinks to worse and worse 'Mandraboulus' fashion.' For Nepa, as Festus Pompeius tells us, is what Africans call the constellation Cancer (or, as some think, Scorpio, which also goes backwards). Nonius Marcellus says this word means simply 'scorpion' and quotes Cicero Definibus book 5: 'We may see snakes crawl, ducklings swim, blackbirds fly, oxen using their horns, scorpions their stings, each follows its own nature in living.' He also quotes Manilius: 'Erigone raised among the stars, / The nepa "scorpion" by its sting, and the lion by his skin.' This is what Nonius says. But if nepa is no more than 'scorpion' it is surprising that Cicero should prefer to use the word nepa. However it is a characteristic of the scorpion also to go backwards if it attacks something, and the crab attacks by striking [with its claws]. Plautus in the Casina: 'I shall retreat to the wall. I shall imitate the nepa 'crab.'

When someone changes and disturbs everything, a suitable adage will be this phrase of Plautus from the same play, which is undoubtedly proverbial in its form:
I shall go in, and what one cook has seasoned
I shall in my turn season in another way,
Whatever is for lunch, will not be for lunch,
And he will have got what was not prepared.

In the second book of his Apologia Apuleius quotes this line from some unknown poet, as if it were very commonly used: 'I hate striplings who are precociously wise.' A common belief has taken root that children who become wise too early will either not be long-lived or will be mad as soon as they reach adulthood. Pliny relates in book 7 that Cato the Censor proclaimed as if from an oracle 'To be old while still a youth is a sign of early death.' And in Seneca book 2 of the Controversies, Controversy 1, Cestius used to prophesy of the intelligence of Alfius Flavius 'that great intelligence, mature at that age, was not long-lived.' A boy like that Sophocles calls [greek] [sic] 'A grown-up child'; the verse is quoted by the scholiast on Pindar's second Pythian ode: 'A grown-up child that I his master have myself ruined.' 'Avbpairais is his word for one who is a child in age but endowed with mature wisdom. The adage may be used for a pupil who takes pleasure immediately in the elementary things. In book 2 of his Rhetoric Aristotle quotes this aphorism from an unknown poet:
Good sense tells us one should never,
By teaching boys too much, turn them early into philosophers.