Adagia 3701–3800

Ambrones was a term once commonly applied to people who lived by thieving and wickedness. Festus Pompeius gives the origin of the name, informing us that the Ambrones were a Gallic tribe driven out of their own territory by the flooding in of the sea, who then overran other people's lands and took to maintaining themselves and their dependents by looting and plundering. Their army inspired terror, not only by reason of their numbers - thirty thousand is the figure given - but by their savagery and method of fighting. They bore down on the enemy in close formation keeping in time together and shouting out in a kind of chant, 'Ambrones, Ambrones,' whether this was to keep their own troops together or to inspire terror in the enemy. They had defeated the Roman generals Manlius and Caepio, but were themselves vanquished first of all by the Ligurians, afterwards suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of Gaius Marius, and were finally annihilated by him at Aquae Sextiae, together with the Cimbri and Teutones. This is more or less what Julius Florus says in his epitome of book sixty-eight, also Plutarch in his life of Gaius Marius. Similarly the name 'Cilician' developed into a term of abuse, implying pillaging and plundering.

We dealt earlier with [greek] 'the silver-quinsy,' which causes many people besides Demosthenes to lose their voice. Festus Pompeius tells us that it was jokingly said of those who choked over their wine that they were suffering from 'wine-quinsy,' which you could call [greek] in Greek. I knew a man of considerable scholarship in Rome who actually died of this 'quinsy.' He was a Portuguese called Hermicus. He was very fat and short of breath and he caught a fever. As he lay on his sick-bed, he was visited by Christopher Fisher, an Englishman, who said to him, 'Hermicus, you don't want to pay any attention to the stupid prescriptions the doctors give you. You'll wash this disease out of your system better with a pot of good wine.' So saying, he at once sent out for a bottle of four-year-old Corsican wine. He drank the invalid's health and told him to take heart. Thus persuaded, Hermicus took a deep draught, but immediately choked and began to breathe his last. Drunkenness sometimes turns silent individuals into chatterers, sometimes makes people 'dumb as a fish,' without however any permanent damage to their health. I wish this 'wine-quinsy' were not so prevalent among the Germans.

Titivillitium was a word meaning nothing very definite, but when used as a sort of interjection it indicated utter contempt, like the Greek [greek]. Plautus uses titivillitium in a line cited by Festus Pompeius: 'I wouldn't give a tinker's cuss for talk like that.' (The line comes from the Casina.) Festus gives another similar word, buttubata, used by Naevius for trifles and things of no value. Nonius however thinks the word pipalo meant 'insult,' 'abuse,' as in the lines from Plautus' Pot of Gold: "So help me Laverna, if you don't have my pots brought back, I'll stand outside in the street and by yelling names pipalo differam 'I'll rip up your reputation.'"

Aristotle tells us in book two of the Nicomachean Ethics that people used to say this of a totally satisfactory creation: 'Accordingly people often say in connection with works of art that turn out well that [greek] "You can neither take away nor add anything."' For excellence, the mean is required; excess or deficiency destroys it. Any one who adds, creates excess; anyone who takes away, generates deficiency. Horace wrote of Lucilius: 'There are things one would remove from his turbid stream.' Of Demosthenes and Cicero it was said that 'nothing could be taken from the former, nothing added to the latter.'

It is not clear whether Aristotle, in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, was quoting a verse so well known that he did not need to name the author, or whether he wrote a pentameter verse by accident. It occurs in the passage where he is quoting Pythagoras' view that evil is infinite, virtue finite (for example, there is only one right track through a wood but one can go off it in a thousand ways). Consequently, vice is easy, virtue is hard, just as missing the target is easy, hitting it difficult. Aristotle then goes on to say, [greek] 'Virtue itself is simple, vice comes in many forms.'

In the same book, Aristotle cites an often-quoted line of Homer: 'Do you keep the boat [greek] "Away from the smoke and the swell."' He attributes the words to Calypso, who had advised Ulysses neither to sail too close to the shore-line, following the smoke, nor to entrust himself to the deep, but to cleave a way between the two. For on the one hand, there was danger from rocks and shallows, on the other, from great seas. (Argyropylus in his translation attributes the words to Circe, I know not on what authority.)

This is without question a proverbial expression. In the second Philippic, Cicero says, 'Home, do I say? There wasn't a spot on earth where you could set foot on something that you could call your own - apart from the one place at Misenum, and that you held in joint ownership with your partners like Sisapo.' He meant that Antony did not own the estate at Misenum outright but held it on the same terms as an ore deposit bought up by concessionaires. Pliny tells us in book thirty-three, chapter seven, that red lead (which the Greeks call [greek], others 'cinnabar') was not only highly valued by the ancients but treated as a holy substance. On festal days, the statues of the gods were daubed with red lead, as were generals celebrating a triumph (though Galba, who was old, would not let it be done to him, as Corneliius Tacitus tell us). Sisapo is a place in Baetica, at one time a source of revenue to the Romans, where there were red-lead mines. Hardly anywhere else supplied Rome with the substance. Pliny tell us that 'the Romans supervised its production more carefully than anything else. It was not permitted to complete the process and refine it where it was produced. Up to ten thousand pounds in weight were sent to Rome per year under seal and purified there. The price at which it could be sold was controlled by law to prevent it rising out of all proportion.' But, as Pliny says, 'it was adulterated in many ways, providing rich pickings for the partnership.' Later on he says, concerning the adulterated substance, 'It is adulterated at the diggings of the partners.' This makes it clear that the whole area was divided up among many partners, just as today various contractors have a specified stretch of a gold or silver mine.

Cicero employed this hyperbole to express illustrious renown when speaking in the second Philippic of those who murdered Julius Caesar because he was aiming to set himself up as tyrant: 'Especially since these people have won for themselves such a glory that the heavens can scarce contain it.' Virgil writes, 'His rule he extends to earth's extremes, / His glory to the stars.' But he makes Daphnis 'famed even beyond the stars.' Horace writes, 'I shall strike the stars with my exalted head.' We often find in Cicero the expression 'to laud someone to the skies.'

This phrase would provide a neat dig at an unreliable man of shifting loyalties and changing allegiance, someone, for example, who keeps altering his way of life and sometimes appears in ecclesiastical tiara, sometimes in general's uniform. Cicero in the fifth Philippic: 'Will the presiding magistrate accept the excuse of a Greek juryman, who appears sometimes in a pallium, sometimes in a toga?' The pallium is a Greek garment, just as the toga is Roman. Both however are civilian garb, just as the sagum is military.

The sagum was a short cape worn by soldiers. Cicero several times uses an apparently proverbial expression, 'to don the soldier's cape,' meaning to prepare for war, to rush to arms. In the sixth Philippic he writes: 'Let them go quickly then, which I see they intend to do in any case. Do you however get out your soldiers' capes, since the House has passed a decree to the effect that "if he does not submit to authority, then capes will be donned."' Again in the same speech: 'I proposed that a state of emergency should be declared, capes put on.' Earlier, in the fifth Philippic: 'It is my view that a state of emergency should be declared and capes put on.' Later, in the seventh: 'They called for arms, capes, war.' In the eighth: 'Men have been called up all over Italy, no exemptions granted; tomorrow capes will be worn.' Again in the same speech: 'For my part, honourable members of this House, though persons of my eminence usually wear civilian dress even when the whole country is under arms, I have nonetheless decided that at such a dreadful time, when the nation is in such turmoil, I must dress the same way as you and the rest of the Roman people.' Again in the thirteenth: 'Levies are being raised throughout Italy, consuls sent forth, Caesar honoured, capes being worn. Does all this not make you realize that you are seen as a public enemy?' Similar phrases often occur in the fourteenth: 'We took to our capes'; 'we should don capes again tomorrow'; 'go away to put on capes'; 'to have put on capes and then returned to civilian dress.' We find a similar string of phrases in the third Verrine: 'After you forced these wretched unfortunate men, despairing of Roman law and Roman justice, to resort to violence, to fighting, to weapons.'

Those who profess unmitigated hostility are said to 'Threaten with fire and sword,' an expression still in common use today. Those who wage war in a civilized fashion confine themselves to looting and abstain from slaughter and putting to the torch. Cicero writes in the thirteenth Philippic, 'He will of course treat ambassadors with more respect than he does the two consuls, to whom he offers armed resistance, than the town of Mutina, which he is actually besieging, than his country, which he threatens with fire and sword.' Again in the twelfth Philippic: 'who threatens this city with fire and sword.' It will be even neater to use the phrase metaphorically referring to intellectual pursuits, like saying that philosophers 'threaten someone with fire and sword' when they propose to attack him mercilessly in writing. Likewise, we 'debar from fire and water' those with whom we do not wish to have any dealings at all.

In book three of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle puts forward the view that people who fear nothing because they are naturally brutal, not because they are endowed with courage, should be called not brave but mad, stolid, insensate. He writes: 'A person would be mad and insensate [greek]"if he feared nothing, neither earthquake nor raging sea," as they say of the Celts .. .' Nothing is more terrifying than the sea in turmoil; an earthquake seems to presage Hell bursting out into the world above. Yet some tribes of Gaul and Germany were so brutal that they had no fear even of what is naturally horrendous. Aristotle here equates 'mad' with 'insensate,' and I presume that Diogenes had the same idea in mind when someone asked him his opinion of Socrates and he replied, 'Mad' - Socrates, who was in any case able to withstand all kinds of injury, had inured himself to any and every bodily discomfort. Unless possibly Diogenes also attributed to insensitivity rather than virtue the fact that Socrates could not be provoked even by physical violence to lose his temper in the slightest.

Cicero was apparently using a proverbial expression when he said of a certain person that he had 'Changed his shoes,' when, quite without justification, he took to himself the rank of senator, which entitled the holder to wear black boots with a crescent-shaped decoration at the ankle. What Cicero said was: 'There is also some Asinius or other, a volunteer senator, self-appointed. After Caesar's death he saw the House wide open, he changed his shoes, and all of a sudden became a senator.' A gold stripe on the toga was a sign of senatorial rank; so also was the black leather added at the ankle.

Insolence usually accompanies prosperity. Many ancient writers tell us that Campania was once easily the richest region in Italy. Pliny for example in book three writes, 'Next comes the famous and fertile land of Campania. From the gulf rise hills covered with vineyards, producing a noble tipple with a fruitiness renowned throughout the world. As the ancients said, Father Bacchus vies with Ceres for first place .. .' and so on, speaking not only of the fertility of Campania but of its delightfulness too. And indeed Capua once challenged Rome for supremacy, with the result that 'Campanian pride, Campanian arrogance' became a by-word. Cicero in his speech against Rullus:
That famous Campanian arrogance, that intolerable insolence, our ancestors
deliberately and as a matter of policy reduced to utter indolence and apathy.
They escaped the infamy of cruelty by refraining from destroying the finest
city in Italy, yet at the same time took thought for the future by cutting all
the sinews of the city and leaving it limp and impotent.
A little later in the same speech he calls Campania 'the home of arrogance, the seat of licentiousness' - his words are 'colonists selected and settled in Capua, in the home of arrogance, the seat of licentiousness.' Again, in the speech he made to the senate after his restoration, Cicero says, 'Did you imagine you were consul - for you held that office at that time - in Capua, once the very home of arrogance?' Again in the fragmentary speech attacking the same person: 'The place which by reason of its fertility and abundant supplies of everything needful is reputed to have spawned arrogance and hardness of heart.' And shortly after: 'If the luxurious life-style corrupted Hannibal himself at Capua, if arrogance was born there, as they say, out of the haughty attitudes of the Campanians .. .' Livy writes in the ninth book of his first decade that 'arrogance was endemic among the Campanians.' Furthermore, Aulus Gellius in book eleven, chapter twentyfour, says that the boastful epitaph that Naevius composed for himself was 'full of Campanian arrogance.' (But Naevius was, I think, not a Campanian.) Just as any remarkable example of treacherous dealing was at one time commonly called 'Punic,' so any piece of insolence was called 'Campanian.' I will make no comment on the character of those who inhabit the region today, but when I travelled through Campania myself, I found not a trace of that 'fruitiness renowned throughout the world,' never a drop of Falernian, Massic, Caecuban, of those famous wines from Cales, Sezza, Sorrento. We all but choked with the 'wine-quinsy' in the place today called Capua. We filled the whole cup with sugar, but the wine, sharper than vinegar, won the day. As a general rule, they boil the wine down because otherwise it won't keep until the next vintage. Where are those celebrated wines? The passage of time has destroyed their name and their place of origin. We drank in dust enough. Truly, nature allows nothing of man's works to endure.

We dealt earlier with the saying [greek] 'He is his own fluteplayer.' The single Greek word [greek] 'Self-crying,' expresses a similar idea, when someone recommends himself, or acts as his own auctioneer. Auctioneers cry up the skills and endowments of slaves for sale in order to make people eager to buy. But it is thought ridiculous for a man to cry up himself. The same idea is found in another saying we dealt with earlier, 'A home-grown witness,' which is recorded in Suidas. The Athenians in similar vein say, 'Down with you and all your prating.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'Damn Paphlagon and all his plots'; and a bit later: 'together with all his lies.'

[greek], Don't cultivate barren land. This is found in Plato's Laws. If I recall aright, in its context in Plato, the precept is a cryptic way of discouraging active male homosexual love. In the eighth book of the Laws, he says that they cast their seed on stones. The saying can however be put to other uses: Don't teach the unteachable; Don't look for happiness in riches, for they do not bring real joy. Plautus in the Amphitryo:
To lend your wife to another man is just the same
As to rent out a barren field for sowing.

Two phrases found in an epigram of Palladas are examples of the type of expression classified as [greek] 'impossibilities': 'Sooner will a dung-beetle honey make / Or else a gnat give milk.'

To signify that the end of some long hard task is at hand, people say [greek] 'I see land.' It is an expression taken from sea-faring. Quintus Curtius in book four: 'Just like those far out on the deep sea, they looked around for sight of land.' Plautus, in the Merchant: 'And I thought I'd reached dry land.' Cicero, in his speech on behalf of Lucius Murena: 'Those just sailing into harbour after a long sea voyage eagerly give advice to those who are leaving port about the likelihood of storms and the pirate situation and what all the different places are like, because it is natural to feel kindly towards those who are to face the perils we have just escaped. So what should be my feelings, who am just coming into sight of land after a terrible tossing, towards this man whom I see having to go out and face dreadful political storms?' Cicero again in the Elder Cato: 'I seem to see land,' where Cato intimates that he feels the end of life approaching. When Diogenes was reading out from a very long scroll and reached the point where he could actually see the end of it, he said, 'All's well, friends. I can see land.'

[greek], More effective than any spell. The ancients believed that immense power was inherent in the words of incantations. So the Psalmist speaks allegorically of 'the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter' and compares the people that would not obey the commands of the Divinity to 'the deaf adder that stops its ear.' Plato, in the Letter to Hermias, Erastus, and Conscius: 'I believe that these words of mine will, through shame and a realization of what is right, reconcile you and restore you to your former amity more effectively than any magic spell.'

Aliclytus to Eucymon: [greek], 'Hostile and envious is the eye of neighbours, as the proverb says.' This refers, I think, to what Hesiod says about potters, singers, and neighbours, which I referred to earlier. Ovid similarly says, 'Another's crops are heavier still than thine / And heavier udders grace thy neighbour's kine.'

One should not apply the same rules, advice or reproaches to all situations, but adjust one's words to match different nationalities, times, natures. St Jerome, in his commentary on Ephesians, commends this versatility in the Apostle Paul, who became 'all things to all people, that he might save all.' Jerome's words are cited in Distinctio twenty-nine: 'He does not, like an inexperienced doctor, try to treat everybody's eyes with one salve.' We have already quoted the saying from Galen, 'to fit the same shoe on every foot.'

Anything utterly destroyed beyond all hope of restoration is said to be removed 'From the foundations' and taken away 'Root and all.' The first phrase derives from buildings razed to the ground, the second from trees that not only have their branches lopped but have their trunks chopped right down or are even dug out, root and all. When Acinetus wrote to his girlfriend Phoebiana complaining that she had stripped him of everything and then rejected him, he said, 'You have laid me in ruins, as the saying goes, and then reduced me to slavery.' Plautus in the Three-shilling Day has:
How that giddy fellow almost entirely overthrew
My friend's wise plan, my careful stewardship,
The entire secret business.
In the Haunted House he uses a similar phrase, 'foundations and all':
I don't see how I can
Repair my house, prevent the whole thing falling down,
Going to ruin, foundations and all,
Nor can anyone help me.
The Greek equivalent of Latin radicitus 'root and all' or a stirpe 'right from the base' is the verb [greek] that is, exstirpare 'root out.' There is an example of exstirpare in Cicero's essay On Fate: 'but to have them exstirpari 'rooted out' and funditus 'totally' eliminated, so that the person .. .' Here are other examples of funditus 'totally, absolutely' taken from Cicero. In his defence of Sextus Roscius: 'Titus Roscius did not merely abstract some trifling amount from the estate for his own benefit, but stripped my client absolutely of every possession'; in the fourth Verrine: 'I should run out of time, voice and lung-power if I were to expatiate at this point on the shame and iniquity of a festival in Verres' honour having to be celebrated by the very people who considered Verres entirely responsible for their being brought totally to ruination'; and in the fifth: 'the previous year had already dealt a serious blow to the farmers; the next one had utterly destroyed them'; in the speech he made before the priests, Concerning his house: 'so that you might utterly destroy the state from its very foundations'; and a little later: 'so that any reminder of the man who had plotted the destruction of the state should be utterly erased from the sight and from the thoughts of all'; in the first of his letters to his brother Quintus: 'If we kow-tow to them, we shall allow the people ... to perish utterly'; and, in another letter: 'We have absolutely lost our grip on the country.' And an example of radicitus from the above speech: 'So you see I am not trying to tear out everything you did by the roots.' The phrase can be even more satisfactorily applied to the mind, if one says, for example, that ambition, avarice, and lust must be totally deleted, thoroughly extirpated from the mind.

Anything done publicly is said to be done 'Before the face' and 'In the sight of all.' Cicero in the fifth Verrine: 'Once you have admitted to these things that were done openly, in the Forum, at Syracuse, before the face and in full sight of the whole province .. ' Again, in his Divination: 'Has it never occurred to you to consider what an undertaking it is to embark on a public prosecution, to lay open another's whole life for inspection, to set it out not only before the minds of the jury but before the eyes and in the sight of all?' In the first example, Cicero perhaps used os 'face' to mean 'sight.' But generally the phrase in ore omnium means 'on the lips of all,' that is, to be the subject of common talk. We can also 'carry in our eyes' those we protect and care for.

[greek], Like the Myconians. People who gate-crashed a party were said to turn up 'Like the Myconians.' Myconos is one of the Cyclades and the people were so poor they were obliged to push themselves in among the guests, hence the mocking proverb. Athenaeus cites Archilochus' lambasting of Pericles for thrusting himself uninvited into convivial gatherings 'like the Myconians.' We have already treated this phrase elsewhere. Even today you still find traces of 'Myconian' behaviour among the Irish. On which subject, William Lord Mountjoy told me a rather amusing story, not, however, a fiction but something he saw with his own eyes. A completely unknown Irishman entered the King's palace at the hour of dinner and sat down quite uninvited with the King's entourage. When they saw the exotic bird, they asked him where he came from. He named his country. They then asked whether he had any position at court. 'No,' he replied, 'but I would like to have one.' They were amazed at the fellow's impudence and told him to get up and go. 'Certainly,' said he, 'when I've had my dinner.' To cut a long story short, the Irishman did not retreat but carried the day by his sheer effrontery. Their anger turned to amusement and they asked him how he, a nobody and a foreigner, had the face to push himself in amongst the King's household. 'Well,' said he, 'I knew the King could afford to give me my dinner.'

We have already dealt elsewhere with [greek] 'You lend light to the sun.' Very similar is this other phrase quoted by Gratian from Pope Anacletus in cause six, question one, where he attacks those who in this world think they have the right to dispense the judgment of God which no man shall escape. The judgments of men are indeed unsure and, compared to the judgments of God, are like torches compared to the sun. 'If everything in this world,' he writes, 'received its just deserts, there would be no place for divine judgment. It is wasted effort to seek to add light to the sun with torches ...' Though in common copies of the work, scribes have corrupted facibus 'with torches' to fascibus 'with faggots.'

Scholars very commonly use the term 'Obelus of censure' for authoritative judgment, especially when expressing disapproval. This is derived from the Roman magistrate [the censor]. We can class with this Jerome's words in the dialogue against the Luciferians: 'No one can lay claim to the palm of Christ, no one pass judgment on men before the day of judgment.' Jerome seems to be alluding to Deuteronomy twenty-five, where the palm of justice is a palm given by the judges to one who had proved his innocence and won his case. This palm Christ truly has, and he does not give it to any undeserving person, since he alone never errs in judgment, whereas in human judgments there is plenty of error and darkness.

[greek], Like a whipping top, said of inconstant and changeable people. A bembix is a top which boys whip to make it spin. Suidas cites a line from Aristophanes: 'must be just like a whipping-top.' (The line is from Birds.) Hesychius thinks it refers to someone running away who does not keep to the right path but goes round in circles. This happened to me once when I was going from Selestat to Basel. I fell in with another horseman and led by him rode about in a certain wood for ages. Eventually I asked him if he was sure of the way, and he assured me that he was. When there seemed no end of it, I said, 'We must have gone wrong somewhere. We've been in this wood for three hours now, and it usually takes only an hour to get through it.' To cut a long story short, it turned out that we were almost back where we started. A whipping-top moves with great energy, but in a circle, so that it flees but does not escape. Sirach, the wise Hebrew, chapter thirty-three, uses a similar figure to describe the inconstancy of the fool: 'The heart of the foolish is like a cart-wheel; and his thoughts are like a rolling axle-tree.' Plautus sometimes says someone 'turns quicker than a top' or 'than a potter's wheel.'

There is a line in Menander which says, 'Worse by far it is an old woman to rouse than a dog.' According to the sayings of the Hebrews, there is no anger more violent than a woman's. The whole sex is easily provoked and vindictive, partly through irrationality, partly through pettiness. The truly great spirit will ignore certain injuries and think it beneath him to be angry with all and sundry. Woman, however, is a formidable creature when to the normal faults of the sex are added advancing years. A dog when roused merely barks, sometimes even bites; but old hags not only have poisonous tongues but skill in evil arts as well, in poisonings and spells. Many have discovered to their cost the truth of Menander's words.

In the second part of his attack on Verres, Cicero says that it was universally acknowledged 'not merely among Romans but among foreign nations as well, that, with the courts constituted as they now are, no man with welllined pockets, however guilty he might be, can be convicted.' And in the third part: 'The guilt of the accused is indubitable. If he is convicted, men will no longer say that in these courts money is the thing that matters. If he is acquitted, I for my part shall no longer oppose the transference of the courts to others.' Similar to this is the idea occurring several times in Sallust's Jugurthine War: 'In Rome everything has its price.' Rome has now lost its empire. I wish that the saying did not still stick.

Festus records this as a proverb in use among the Romans but ultimately derived from a Greek one, [greek] 'Many a thing befalls between the cup and the brush of the lips.' He records its origin as follows: 'Chalcas was planting vines when a seer who lived in the neighbourhood happened to pass by and remarked that Chalcas was under a misapprehension - it would not be granted to him [to taste] the new wine.' That's all we can gather from the fragmentary text, which is all that somebody or other's stupidity has left us of this author who is so thoroughly knowledgeable on every subject. The proverb reminds us that there is nothing certain in human life. Very often the very thing that we think we have in our grasp some unexpected chance snatches away. It is like someone holding a cup so close that there is only a small space between the hand and the chin and even so, as sometimes happens, dying before he can drink. The proverb is explained in various ways, and different writers give different accounts of its origin, all of which I treated in some detail above when discussing the proverb 'There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.' I have introduced it here because Festus gives it in different words, which in the Latin have a nice alliterative ring, manum 'hand' and mentum 'chin.'

[greek], Colophonian footwear, was a name for clogs. The ancients usually wore a simple sandal that only protected the sole of the foot. I have seen among my own countrymen a form of footwear made of hollowed-out wood, called in the vulgar tongue a 'hollow block.' This is why the term can be applied to a thick, clumsy, rustic fellow. This kind of footwear is appropriate if you have to make your way through mire. So you could wittily say of someone who was about to work on texts containing filthy material that he needed 'Colophonian clogs.' The opposite of this is 'Sicyonian shoes,' named after Sicyon, a town in the Peloponnese, as we are told by Stephanus and Sextus Pompeius Festus mentions them too, though neither explains the saying. Cicero gives us to understand that 'Sicyonian shoes' were very pretty, more suitable for women and fops than for men. This is what Cicero says: 'Again, when Lysias, the eloquent speaker, brought Socrates a ready-written speech, which he could learn off if he wanted and use it to defend himself at his trial, he read it willingly enough and said it fitted the circumstances very nicely, "but," said he, "if you had brought me Sicyonian shoes, I would not wear them, however comfortable and well-fitting they were"; that is, he thought the speech eloquent and one that did credit to Lysias as an orator, but he did not consider it manly or courageous.'

Manduces, Jaws, was a name for people who were always hungry, or for those who inspired terror with empty threats. Festus tells us that at one time in processions, as well as other extravagant and frightening figures, there would be an effigy with huge jaws gaping wide open and making a great clacking with its teeth, called Mandux 'Jaws.' In Plautus' play the Rope, the professional toady, Charmides, says, 'Suppose I hire myself out somewhere as a Mandux at the games? For why? My teeth are gnashing nicely.' He had just swum ashore from a shipwreck and was shivering all over with cold. A little later, he says his voice has 'got the rattles.' Martial was thinking of this figure or something like it when he wrote: 'Worked in red clay, a Dutchman's phiz am I. / I move your laughter, but make the children cry.' The Greeks call this sort of bogey[greek] 'fright-wolf,' because they used to frighten children with the spectacle of a wolf to make them stop crying.

In his 'Roman Questions,' Plutarch discusses the origin of the custom according to which those who conducted the bride to her husband bade her speak the words, 'Where you are Gaius, there I am Gaia.' His first suggestion is that the ancients desired the bride, in speaking these words, to enter into an agreement with her husband that they would share everything and have equal authority in the household, saying in effect, 'Where you are lord and master of the house, there I am lady and mistress.' The form of the saying is derived from the Jurisconsults, who use 'Gaius Sestius' and 'Lucius Titius' as any two representative people, as the philosophers use 'Dion' and 'Theon.' (Hence the adage which I cited earlier from Varro, 'Accius and Titius take alike,' meaning that they had equal rights.) Plutarch's second suggestion is that the woman is called Gaia as a good omen, because there was a certain Gaia Caecilia, previously called Tanaquil, who was both beautiful and virtuous. She was married to one of the sons of Tarquin, Tarquinius Priscus in fact. The Romans placed a bronze statue of this lady in the temple of Sanctus (that at any rate is the form of the name given in Plutarch's text). He was a god at one time worshipped under this name by the Romans, one of the twelve special divinities. In ancient times the lady's sandals and distaff were laid up in his temple. The sandals were a sign that she stayed at home and looked after the household, the distaff indicated her industry, in diligently performing the work of women and applying herself to her spinning. The use of the name Gaia reminded the bride to be to her husband what Gaia Caecilia was to hers. Among other observances connected with ancient marriage ceremonies was the belief that it was illomened to call bridegroom or bride by their proper names. Even today it is customary for the bride to give up her own family name and take her husband's name, just as Andromache is addressed as 'Andromache of Hector.' The saying, which originated with the married state, should remain special to husband and wife, though it could be adapted to brother and sister.

In the seventh book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle quotes some wellknown lines from Hesiod: 'Rumour dies hard that many folk have uttered.' The philosopher adduces this brief poetic extract as a probable argument in support of the view that pleasure is the supreme good because men as well as beasts pursue it.

In the first book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle takes issue with those who equate human happiness with external blessings, which come and go at the whim of fortune. He says that, according to this line of thought, our happy man appears as a kind of chameleon, being sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy, according as his circumstances change, just as the chameleon changes colour if placed on a different coloured background. True happiness on the other hand lies in the blessings of the mind, from which he deduces that there is no reason why the truly happy man should not remain happy all his life. He goes on:
For the person who will always or as far as possible act and think in a way
consonant with virtue and suffer the mishaps of fortune as well as can possibly
be done, in an absolutely consonant manner, will be the person who is truly
good, a four-square man, free from all that can be faulted.
(In the third book of his Rhetoric, he uses this same phrase, 'a four-square man,' to illustrate a type of metaphor.) Now a square remains a square, whichever side it falls on. In the same way, the wise man remains unchanged in his essential self, however events fall out. It will be even neater to apply the term 'four-square' to the actual mind of the wise man, which remains unshaken in face of fortune's blows.

In his Life of Theseus, Plutarch tells us of a certain Pittheus, the maternal grandfather of Theseus and instructor of the famously chaste Hippolytus. Pittheus was famous for his wise saws, which at the time were held to enshrine the highest sapience. This is supposed to be one of them: [greek], 'Agree the price and make it fair when dealing with a friend.' Aristotle tells us in the ninth book of his Nicomachean Ethics that Protagoras never settled with his students in advance what fees they should pay, but once they had acquired the knowledge they desired, he told them to reckon how much they thought it was worth and then he would accept whatever they gave him. Aristotle thinks that people of this persuasion would find the precept of Pittheus perfectly adequate in transactions of this sort, since he recommends fixing a fair and just reward for a friend. It would be a good thing if doctors too did not fix a fee in advance but accepted what they were offered, once the patient had recovered. In the same passage, Aristotle tells us that certain sophists would not admit anyone to their courses unless the fee were paid cash down, and then, having pocketed the money, failed to deliver what they had promised. We sometimes see shady doctors and surgeons doing exactly the same thing. The ones who demand an enormous fee and will not lift a finger unless the whole sum or at least the greater part of it is actually paid on the spot are usually discovered to be quacks.

In the ninth book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is demonstrating that virtue is learnt best from the company of good men, since friends correct each other if any error is committed and find themselves spurred on to virtuous action by the presence of others. To support this argument, he quotes as if well-known some words of poetry: 'goodness from the good.' The quotation is actually from Theognis, and it also occurs in Xenophon's account of the sayings and doings of Socrates. Socrates was saying that the best of all perfumes was the oil used by athletes. Oil of marjoram and spikenard were best left to women. When asked what old men should smell of, he replied, 'Integrity.' When asked in turn where this perfume could be purchased, he quoted in reply these words from a line of Theognis: 'From the good do thou goodness learn.' Our own writer of maxims says in similar vein: 'Learn, but only from those who have been well taught.'

In the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is saying that pleasure is not the same for all creatures, since the dog, the horse, the man, take pleasure in different things. He then quotes from Heraclitus: 'Asses would choose straw in preference to gold, because food gives them more pleasure than gold.' Here indeed asses are wiser than men. Asses judge things according to their usefulness, we set great price on useless or even harmful things because of some preconceived notion. Everyone knows the fable about the barnyard cock who spurned the gem he uncovered in the dunghill. A cock prefers a perishable barleycorn to a pearl or a diamond. Likewise those who are slaves to their bellies think more of drunken revelry than all liberal disciplines.

In the same book, Aristotle cites the criticism of Anacharsis, directed at those who treat trivial pursuits as serious business, as for example putting a life-time of effort into becoming a good dancer or a skilled wind-player. Play is really something that should be indulged in only from time to time in order to make possible concentration on serious subjects. Aristotle actually says, 'It looks foolish and very childish to treat what is only a pastime as something that matters and to devote a great deal of energy to it. But to play in order to achieve something worthwhile is, according to Anacharsis, quite acceptable.'

In the same book again, Aristotle calls 'Cyclopean' a life subject to no public regulation, where everyone does what he chooses: 'In the majority of cities there is no action taken on these matters (that is, the education of children), but everyone lives as he sees fit, like a Cyclops determining for himself how wives and children are to be treated.' The Cyclopes, it is said, lived scattered over the mountains with no semblance of civilized life, but each doing what he pleased in his own cave. Nor did they have any kind of religion. I have already dealt with the saying, To live like the Cyclopes.'

[greek]. Those who lived in ease and luxury were said to 'Live on harepie.' Martial is evidence for the fact that hare's meat was once considered a delicacy: 'Of birds the thrush, if I my thoughts declare, / Of quadrupeds, the glory is the hare.' There is also the proverb: 'A hare thyself, and goest in quest of game?' Aristophanes says in the Wasps: 'A thousand cities pay us tribute. If each one of them were ordered to provide for twenty men, then:'
Twenty thousand of the common folk
Would live on meat of hares,
With all sorts of garlands.
First milk and curdled beastings.
(The Greek word for 'first milk,' which is taken from the animal when it has just borne its young, is puon, and a clotted form of this is called pyarites.) The ancient commentator on this passage of Aristophanes cites a line (from Homer, I think): 'Feasting on first milk, gorging on beastings.' In Aristophanes again, when Cleon and his rival are vying with each other in promising a really magnificent meal to the people, among all the other fancy foods, they promise hare's flesh as something very special and a great delicacy.

[greek], Piglets, after your mother. This is found several times, for example, in Aristophanes' Plutus. The ancient commentator tells us it's a proverbial joke directed against the stupid and ignorant. According to another proverb, the sow is the opposite of Minerva. One could say, 'Piglets, after your mother,' to the ignorant students of an ignorant teacher. The saying also fits those who are slaves to gullet and belly.

Aristophanes again, in the same passage from the Plutus: 'You'll be an Aristyllus and say with jaw half-agape .. .' The ancient commentator on the passage tells us that Aristyllus was a poet with a facial deformity that made his mouth always hang open. Aristophanes makes fun of him elsewhere, for example in the Women in Parliament. Now actors employing tragic diction do open the mouth unnaturally wide, but to my way of thinking, Aristyllus was really taken to task for speaking without opening his mouth properly, so that he spoke through his nose with a shrill squeal like a pig's. We know people who speak and sing in that way.

Citeria was a term of abuse at one time directed at people who talked too much. Cato, in his speech against Marcus Caelius: 'What more need I say? He'll be paraded about at the Games, I suppose, as a Citeria, and will bandy words with the on-lookers.' Festus tells us that this Citeria was an amusing and loquacious figure, carried along in procession to raise a laugh, making a great noise and racket all the time. These clown figures are no longer carried about in processions, but many people have them at home, making a great deal more noise than the artificial ones.

[greek], Sticks like a mollusc or shellfish. Aristophanes says of an old woman who can hardly be dragged away from a young man: 'Jupiter, how tightly the old hag / Sticks to the lad like a limpet.' There is a type of mollusc which bind themselves together with filaments so as to have more protection against the motion of the waves.

In the play named after him, Plautus' Amphitryo uses these words, which he takes to be proverbial: 'Not a thing, as they say, can go well today.' He is referring to the popular belief that some days were lucky for doing things, some unlucky. If one or two things go wrong, they judge the whole day by that and say, 'Nothing will go right today,' and refrain from doing anything important.

In the Women in Parliament, Aristophanes has the women plotting to take over the state, because hitherto they have been prevented from performing any function and have done nothing: 'Now we neither run nor drive with oars.' The metaphor is taken from sea-farers, and applied to the running of the state. Sailors are said 'to run' before a following wind, 'to drive' when the wind fails and they have to use oars to propel the ship. This is called 6 [greek], 'the second sailing.' The women feel that they are not asked to do anything in either peace or war. The saying can be neatly applied to those who make no progress in spite of all their efforts, because fortune is against them.

[greek], Like carriers of mortar. The women in Aristophanes' Women in Parliament complain that the citizens of Athens will no longer come to the assembly unless they get a coin in the hand, although previously they would pay their own expenses when debating matters of public concern. 'Carrying mortar' is the lowest of all ways of earning a living. The words of the saying can be applied to any who use a respected position as an opportunity for sordid gain, for example, those who preach, perform the Mass, bury, or minister the sacraments, but refuse to function unless something is slipped into their hand, 'like carriers of mortar.' There is the well-known passage in the Bible about the children of Israel being slaves to the Egyptians, 'with hard service in mortar and brick.'

In book three of the Rhetoric, Aristotle advises the speaker not to employ a continuous succession of enthymemes, but to mix them with other matter. He then quotes the apparently well-known line of verse (from Homer, unless I am mistaken):
Since, my friend, you have said as much
As a man of discretion would say ..
This could be addressed to someone who speaks at length but not to the matter in hand. 'As much,' says Aristotle, but not 'in such a way.' What matters is not how much we say, but how relevant it is. In similar vein a philosopher once remarked that we should consider learned not those who have learned a great deal but those who have learned something of use.

A little further on, Aristotle is saying that it is much more difficult to put one's case to the people than to make a speech in the courts. The man who is trying to win support for his proposals has to talk about things that have not yet happened, whereas a prosecutor or defending counsel talks about past realities, and, what's more, has the law as a starting point. With this as a basis, it is easy to develop your line of argument. In passing, Aristotle quotes the saying of Epimenides of Crete: 'That (what has already happened) is a matter of knowledge even to the diviners.' He adds that Epimenides did not make pronouncements about future events, which cannot be known, but about ones in the past that were however not known about. This too is a form of divination. (St Paul calls Epimenides a prophet.) This sarcastic comment can be used about something hitherto unknown which has at long last come to light.

It is clear from a passage in Plautus that it's nothing new to find every fresh issue of coinage more debased than last year's. This is what he says in the Prologue to the Casina:
Those who drink old wine I consider wise.
And those who go to see the plays of older days.
Since you appreciate the words and deeds of ancient times,
It's likely you'll prefer as well the older plays.
For those new comedies that come upon the stage
Are more debased by far than is our latest coinage.

I have already written about [greek] 'To play Cretan,' which has become a by-word indicating treachery. To say [greek] 'To play Thracian' is a somewhat cryptic way of saying the same thing. The ordinary meaning of this in Greek is 'to create a disturbance, be a nuisance,' but a glance back at the entry [greek] 'Thracian slave-girls' suggests the meaning 'deceiving and acting with Thracian guile.' Theodorus said of Nicon, the harp-player, [greek]. And indeed, Nicon was Thracian. If you don't know this, you don't see the joke. This is in Aristotle's Rhetoric book three. I think Aristophanes was after the same idea in the Knights, where Nicias is urged to say what he has to say with boldness. He replies, [greek]'I haven't any thrash.' The ancient commentator tells us that the word used here, [greek], is a foreign word meaning 'confidence,' used to give people courage, like saying to someone 'Assume Thracian boldness.'

[greek]. We are obviously using a proverbial turn of phrase when we say of something totally false 'Never said and never done.' Similarly, 'Never written and never drawn.' Where truth is mingled with falsehood, we say 'Some things done, some not done.' Aristophanes in the Women in Parliament: 'Now just discourse on things never done or said before.' The character in the play is jokingly telling the other person to make sure everything she says is new, because people don't want to hear about what is old. Something never said or done before must be really new, because, as the wise man of the Hebrews said, 'There is nothing new under the sun.' In his speeches, Cicero often uses the phrase novo more 'without precedent' for something which has never occurred before.

This is a popular joke, directed at those who flatter in return for money. Aristotle records the story in book three of the Rhetoric. When the victor in a mule-race offered Simonides only a small fee for writing a victory ode, he refused the commission, saying that he resented the idea that his poetry should celebrate half-asses. When however the victor offered him a fee he considered adequate, he wrote the following line: 'Hail, ye daughters of stallions, galloping fast as the storm.' He passed over the fact that they were the offspring of asses too, and concentrated on the more creditable feature, calling them 'daughters of stallions.'

Anyone who is allotted a humble and despised role at any function can be called 'An itinerant priest of Mithras, no Torchbearer.' That is what Iphicrates called Callias, meaning that he had not been initiated into the sacred rites, though he wanted to give the impression that he had. Among the Persians, the sun is called Mithras and they consider him the supreme god. So 'itinerant priests of Mithras' would seem to refer to those who travel about with fake religious objects, deceiving the ignorant. The existence of such types even in ancient times is confirmed by Apuleius when he was in ass-form. They are very like those characters today who carry round relics of St Antony, St Cornelius or John the Baptist, not as aids to piety but as a source of gain.

In book three of the Rhetoric, Aristotle quotes the following verse from Democritus of Chios: 'Each man that fashions another's ill, fashions ill for himself.' No one can injure another without first injuring himself. A man who cheats another of money, robs himself of peace of mind and harms himself more than the other. So it is very true that 'he that seeks to hurt another hurts himself.'

In book three of the Rhetoric, Aristotle is discussing examples of words that need emphasis and gesture to get their effect. Otherwise, he says, it's a case of 'the man that carries the plank.' This applies to separate words, especially proper names and pronouns, and to repeated words, which carry more than their surface meaning. For example: 'Thersites despises Achilles?'; 'Do you call me an ass?' Also in the figure of asyndeton, for example, 'I came, I saw, I conquered,' and other similar expressions, all of which lose their effect if not enhanced by dramatic delivery. For example, in Terence: 'Shut out! Called back! Return?'; and a little further on: I her - ? who me - ? who won't - ?' Terence again, this time from the Brothers: 'Storax! Aeschines didn't come home from the party last night.' The character starts off by shouting for Storax, so that has to be delivered in a much louder voice, the rest he says to himself. I believe that the words ὁ τὴν δοκὸν φέρων 'the man carrying the plank' come from some play or other, because they form the end of an iambic trimeter. A person carrying a plank can't be expected to do any acting, he just has to concentrate on carrying it. Some such figure, I imagine, was introduced into a comedy to raise a laugh. Sometimes [greek] 'baggage carriers' appear in a play, like the ones in the Woman of Andros, who are told, 'Get that stuff inside!' Or Sosia, in the Mother-in-Law. These are the sort of characters who either aren't given anything to say, or only words that don't require dramatic delivery. Possibly Aristotle was thinking of the figures of Atlas which are placed under the supporting beams of a building, because they appear to be making a great effort, but are not actually moving. Delivery is the life of a speech, and the sign of life is movement. The equivalent of 'baggage-carriers' in tragedy is [greek] 'spear-carriers' or 'bodyguard.' They simply stand about the stage doing nothing. Perhaps Aristotle originally wrote [greek] 'carrying the spear' not [greek] 'carrying the plank.' This is just a suggestion - Aristotelian scholars can look into the problem.

In book two of the Rhetoric, where Aristotle is discussing emotions, he quotes the following apparently popular saying: 'They say that whatever anyone does himself, he doesn't resent his neighbours doing.' The corollary of this is the line in Terence: 'There really is nothing more unfair than an ignorant man - he doesn't approve of anything that he doesn't do himself.' Some people disparage anything that they can't achieve themselves.

In the same book, Aristotle tells us that resentment is felt towards what is near and related to us. No one feels resentment towards those who have long been dead, or are quite different, or vastly superior or inferior. To support his argument he quotes the following line: 'Kith and kin know what resentment is.' Those who have reached such heights that their very distinction makes any ill-will ineffective are said to be 'beyond all hazard and out of envy's range.'

In the same book, where he is discussing maxims, Aristotle quotes the following line:
The man with sound mind endowed never is in need.
This is true, either because the possession of a sound mind is in itself wealth, or because it is easy for the wise man to become rich if he so desires. See for example Aristippus, who found people to give him hospitality after he was shipwrecked. On another occasion, when he asked Dionysius for a considerable sum of money, Dionysius said, 'Did you not teach that the wise man was never in need?' Aristippus replied, 'Give me the money and then I will give you your answer.' The ruler gave him the money and demanded the answer to his question. Aristippus then said, 'Wasn't I right to say that the wise man is never in need?'

In the same work, Aristotle quotes the following line of verse as proverbial: 'Much that is unbelievable comes true for mortal men.' He suggests that this saying should be employed by a speaker who enjoys making false statements and wants his words to be accepted as the truth. A little later, he quotes some lines of Agathon expressing a similar sort of idea:
Well might one say that this is probable -
Much that is improbable will truly come to pass.

[greek], To have the bottle by one's chops. This is a veiled and cryptic jibe at old women who disguise their wrinkles with thick make-up, like the courtesan Phryne, who did not retire from the business even when she was old. See Aristophanes in the Women in Parliament: 'Phryne holding the bottle to her chops.' By her 'bottle,' Aristophanes means a small container for cosmetics. Phryne used to say that many still drank the dregs because the wine had been superlative. So great was her fame that many a client came to her when she was passee, simply to be able to boast that he had had an assignation with Phryne.

[greek], Fish needs salt. For something ridiculous and unbelievable. It is not very likely that fish that spend their lives in the sea should need salt. When Androcles of the deme Pitthus was pointing out the deficiencies in a particular law and said, 'Laws need a law to put them right,' the people shouted back, 'Yes, and fish need salt.' The purpose of laws is to provide a standard by which men's actions can be corrected, but if the laws themselves require correction, they cease to be laws. That is as ridiculous as salt-water fish requiring salt. This is all to be found in Aristotle's Rhetoric.

This is the same sort of saying as the previous one and follows on from it in Aristotle. Again, it is not very credible that the source of oil should itself need oil - oil is produced by pressing olive-berries. It is very like a saying I discussed earlier: The springs themselves are thirsty.'

[greek], Bird descended from birds. A 'proverbial' saying used by Aristophanes to make mock of a man of noble birth, supposedly 'a good man of a long line of good men': 'This hoopoe, a bird descended from a long line of birds.' Those who pride themselves on their nobility trace their descent back through generations of ancestors. Nobility acquired by purchase or only recently achieved is no such great thing.

The ancient commentator on Aristophanes tells us that when boys see birds they say, 'Give the rock a kick and they'll all fall down.' This is a useful saying when someone is aiming at something he cannot achieve or threatening people he cannot harm. In the comedy, one of the characters says he'll make a noise and rouse the birds. The other jokingly replies, 'Kick the rock then.' This of course is not going to incommode the birds in the slightest, only hurt his foot or hand when it strikes the rock. So the first man tells the other to bang his head against the rock and make twice the noise.

[greek], Seek not to become God. A saying directed at a man who has every blessing in this life. Pindar in the fifth Olympian ode:
If a man has established sound prosperity
And enjoys his good in quiet content
And to those blessings adds fair fame,
Let him not pray heaven to make him God.
My own countrymen often say, 'You're well enough off. What are you after? Do you expect to be God?'

It's a well-known saying that 'Honours nourish arts,' also that 'Virtue grows with praise.' Pindar in the sixth Olympian ode: 'To a fresh start must a brilliant face be given,' that is, one must applaud those starting out on some splendid project, both in order to encourage them and to stir others to emulate them. As it is, most people carp and criticize if anyone tries to achieve something out of the ordinary. One can also take the saying to mean, 'Anyone who desires to win fame must start off with something really remarkable.' It matters a great deal how you first make your name.

In the same hymn, Pindar writes some other lines with a proverbial ring: 'Distinction won without venture receives no honour, / Neither among men nor yet in hollow ships.' The sentiment agrees with the oft-quoted line of Hesiod: 'Toil is the price of excellence - Heaven wills it so.' No one ever achieved great fame without risk. That is why Pindar calls war [greek] 'the bringer of glory to men.' We have a proverbial turn of phrase in the words 'Neither by land or sea' and also in fighting 'By land and sea.'

In the same ode, Pindar brings in yet another proverbial sentiment: 'He may be sure his blessed foot is in this pedilon "shoe,"' that is, he knows that this praise belongs to him. In ancient times shoes and sandals could be items of great luxury. The Greek pedilon was a brightly coloured embroidered sandal, so called because it is 'fastened round the foot,' pedin Greek. The same shoe does not fit every foot. Even so the same praise is not appropriate to any and every person.

Pindar again, in the same victory ode: 'Those that value virtue walk the path of fame; / Each man's activity proclaims him.' The poet gives us to understand that the true glory proceeds from deeds of virtue, not from wealth, and that there is more than one way to achieve distinction. Each person becomes famous for his own particular prowess. Homer is remembered for his poetry, Demosthenes for his eloquence, Aristides for his incorruptibility, Themistocles for his military successes; and many others have made a name for themselves, each in their own separate way.

Pindar again, in the same ode: 'Good it is in wintry night / From the swift ship / Two anchors to let down,' that is, it is good to have two lines of defence, so that if one fails us, we may fall back on the other. The recipient of this victory ode had two homelands, so that if disaster befell the one, he could betake himself to the other. I have already treated this under the heading, 'Secured by two anchors.'

Several times in Pindar and Aristophanes, we find the phrase [greek] 'From home to home,' meaning that someone has of his own innate abilities and powers won some special glory for his family or country. For example, in the same victory ode we have: 'From home to home, from the walls of Stymphalos.' A particular ability is more easily accepted, is less cause for resentment, when it is handed down through the generations from distant ancestors.

In the same play, Plautus uses a roundabout expression to suggest something too lewd to be named directly. One of the characters swears by all the gods that another character has absolutely nothing to do with the girl in question. He isn't having dinner with her, walking with her, kissing her, or doing 'the usual.'

[greek], Aggressive at home like a barnyard cock. A saying directed at a man who skulks at home and never ventures out to join in any war or conflict - the cock is an aggressive creature, but only on his own territory. Such a man contributes nothing to his country and his battles are inglorious. (So the commentators explain it, but all the same I wonder whether the true reading is [greek] 'lurking within.' [greek] is a new word, made up of [greek] 'within' and [greek] 'fight.') The saying will fit people who are always quarrelling at home but are peaceable enough outside. This is like the saying I discussed earlier, 'Lions at home.'

We often find these two words linked in a proverbial-type figure in the poets: 'in defiance of gods and men'; 'by the faith of gods and men.' There the words mean 'divine and human.' In Horace we have: 'That the gods allow not, neither men, / Nor yet the booksellers' stalls.' In Pindar's third Pythian: 'No god, no man, can him deceive, by counsel or by deed.' He is praising Apollo, who, though he knows all things, yet will have nothing to do with deceit.

[greek], To stay at their mother's side, was said of those who always stay at home and never venture on any bold enterprise out of cowardice. Pindar, in the fourth Pythian: 'Lest any be left at home safe / From danger at his mother's side.' He is speaking, I think, of the Argonauts who sought glory in bold exploration, inspired by Juno. In the time of Augustine, weak and effeminate persons were called 'Mammy's boys.' This could mean 'brought up by Grandmother' (in Greek, mamme), as grandmothers always bestow a more indulgent affection on the grandchildren than the children's mothers do; or mamme could be a diminutive meaning 'Mummy.' Even today a youth brought up too soft is commonly known as a 'mother's boy,' and such persons used to be said 'to take after their mothers.'

[greek], Without dogs and hunting-nets. In Nemean Odes three, Pindar used this form of words to indicate supreme swiftness of foot. For what ordinary person could keep up with deer on foot unless they were slowed down by dogs or caught in the nets? The saying will however fit people who capture their prey by stealthy moves. What Pindar says is: 'Slaying the deer without dogs or snaring nets.' It will also apply to people who do something without outside help, in their own strength.

If anybody absolutely loathes somebody or something, it's a natural reaction for him to avoid using not only the actual name but any word that sounds like it. Aristophanes has a nice example in the Birds. One character there says, 'It's clear you like aristocracy.' The other replies, 'No, I don't. I can't bear Scellius' son either.' Scellius' son was called Aristocrates. Anyone who detested aristocracy would obviously find the name Aristocrates obnoxious, because it reminded him of the thing he found odious.

[greek], A fat and lardy word, meaning something large and out of the ordinary. The usage originates from the fact that in Larissa the cattle are very large and well-fleshed. Another explanation is that very large fat people were called 'lardy' after a shepherd called Larinus, who was enormous. There is a breed of very large cattle in Epirus, descended from the cattle of Geryon. Aristophanes in the Birds: 'I've long been itching to say a mighty word, a lardy one.' It's worth adding that the Greeks add 'ox' to words to express the idea of hugeness, as in 'ox-eating,' meaning 'with an enormous appetite.' Similarly, the early speakers of Latin used the word luca to mean 'large.'

[greek], Cuckoo! Up, ye castrated, and to the fields. Aristophanes quotes this as a proverbial saying in the Birds: 'So that's what the saying really means, "Cuckoo! Up, ye castrated, and to the fields!"' with 'come' understood. The cuckoo begins to call shortly before harvest time, as if summoning the farmers to the labour of harvesting. See Hesiod's line: 'When the cuckoo first calls "Cuckoo."' When Aristophanes uses the word 'castrated' (Greek [greek]) for farmers, he is in passing making a jibe at the Egyptians, most of whom had been 'cut,' and who were all compelled to get into the fields when the cuckoo called. In the play, he makes out that Cuckoo once ruled in Egypt before he was turned into a bird. Even today undersexed men who find themselves sharing their wives with other men are commonly called 'cuckolds.' I have discussed elsewhere Horace's passage about passers-by calling out 'Cuckoo!' to those who only started tending their vines when they heard the cuckoo. The cuckoo calls only when spring is well on, emerging late from its nest. It builds this in winter in hollow trees, pulling out its feathers and wrapping itself in them, feeding off a store of apples and pears. The ancient commentator on this line of Aristophanes tells us that 'Cuckoo! Up, ye castrated, and to the fields' is a proverb. It is one to be used when the very lateness of the hour compels the idle to bestir themselves.

People complained that Nicias was a 'delayer' when it came to military action, just as Fabius is said to have been among the Romans. So the Old Comedy invented a joke word [greek], made up of [greek] 'to be always on the point of, to delay,' and [greek], the Athenian commander's name. Aristophanes in the Birds:
This is no time for us to doze
Or hang about like Nicias.
We must do something fast.

[greek], Smoke, is a word for magnificent, empty promises, hence the sayings, 'To sell smoke,' 'to blow out smoke.' Kapnos was the name given to one Theagenes. He was poor, but tried to give the impression that he was a rich and important businessman, so he was known as Kapnos 'Smoke' or 'Hot Air.' The ancient commentator on Aristophanes gives as his authority for this Eupolis, in his comedy Demoi.

Oarsmen have to row to a definite rhythm in order to keep the oars moving together, otherwise they will get nowhere. Aristophanes in the Birds used the verb [greek] 'I'm pulling with you,' meaning, 'I agree, I have the same aim as you.' This word is made up of [greek] 'at the same time' and [greek] 'I rush.' The full line says: 'I pull with you, my will concords, I have consented.' The ancient commentator tells us that the word was taken from Sophocles' Peleus.

[greek]. It is clear that these words were traditionally employed by ordinary people whenever anyone was praying for blessings for himself and his friends. One of the birds in Aristophanes prays as follows:
On the Cuckoolanders please bestow
Safety and health, and on the Chians too.
The ancient commentator tells us that this style of words was derived from a regular feature of Athenian public life - whenever they besought the gods for blessings on the state in their solemn supplications and sacrifices, they used to add the words, 'and for the Chians too.' He gives as his authority for this statement Theopompos in the History of Philip book twelve. It was, I presume, because the Athenians benefited considerably from Chios. Anyone who prays for himself alone, not mentioning friends and benefactors, may facetiously intone, 'and for the Chians too.'

People were commonly said '[greek] 'To lend wings' when they emboldened others and made them enthusiastic. Aristophanes in the Birds:
You must have heard
Fathers in the barber's shop say to the lads,
'Diotrephes has by his words supplied my boy with wings
And made him wondrous keen on horses.'
We are told that Diotrephes was a very rich man who was a fanatical breeder of horses, because of which he was later appointed Commander of Cavalry. His example and encouragement fired many young men with a passion for horses, but the fathers hated this enthusiasm on the part of their sons because it was a very expensive hobby.

Theagenes was as clamorous and stupid as a goose and as slippery as a fox, so he was popularly known by the nickname Chenalopex, made up of two Greek words meaning 'goose' and 'fox.' Didymus prefers the explanation that he was called 'Goose' because he was excessively fond of eating birds, especially a goose - just like a fox. (Goose-liver was a great delicacy in the ancient world.) Aristophanes mentions the nickname briefly in the Birds.

[greek] means 'to moan in concert.' Aristophanes in the Knights: 'So we can moan in concert to one of Olympus' tunes.' By [greek] 'concert,' the Greeks meant either several auloi playing in unison or one aulos accompanying a lyre. Olympus was a pupil of Marsyas, and wrote about sorrowful music. The words 'Olympus' tunes,' referring to songs of lament, have a proverbial ring, like 'sing like Ialemus,' 'Carian music.'

Educated, able men are not suited to be political leaders. Many in the ancient world believed this and the same view is commonly held today. Plato abstained from political involvement, Socrates had an unsuccessful attempt at it, the political careers of Demosthenes and Cicero brought them disaster. The mother of Nero urged her son not to study philosophy, as it was deemed to be of no use to one who was destined to occupy the chief position in the state. On the other hand, in his Letters St Augustine demolishes the arguments of certain people who put forward the view that the philosophy of the Gospel was incompatible with effective government. Aristophanes puts the first idea nicely in the Knights. A character there refuses the position of ruler because he knows nothing of music. He gets the reply, 'Leading the people is no job for a man / Who's musical or whose character is sound.' Under 'music' the ancients included every discipline that forms part of a liberal education.

In the same play, Aristophanes amusingly uses the phrase [greek] 'Cookery words' to mean soft, sweet, enticing words. Cooks use flavourings to sweeten something that is naturally rather bitter. In the play, one of the characters is being encouraged to butter up the Athenian people by saying things that will please them. The line reads: 'Cajoling them with little bits of cookery words.' Aristophanes used the adjective 'cookery' instead of 'sugary.' A good use for this phrase will be to say that the philosophy of Epicurus seduces the minds of ignorant people 'with cookery words,' because he asserts that pleasure is the highest good.

[greek], Make an offering to Coalemus. This is a saying for someone who has done well out of behaving outrageously. The comic poet pretends that this is the name of a wicked spirit, inspiring effrontery. It's like someone saying 'Sacrifice to Folly,' if a person plays the fool and is advanced to wealth and position. The Greek word [greek] basically means 'stupid, foolish.' The verb [greek] has the same meaning as [greek] 'perceive, think.' (Callimachus wrote [greek], equivalent to [greek] 'he was so minded.') So, by analogy, [greek], equivalent to [greek] 'mind,' which is put together with [greek] 'flee,' because he is 'out of his wits.' Similarly, people are said to have 'made an offering to the Graces,' when they have been blessed in winning friends. Drunkards have their god Comus, and thieves their goddess Laverna. So one could say jokingly to someone who had grown rich by dishonesty, 'Make an offering to Laverna.'

I have already written about the Caecias, the north-east wind that attracts clouds. Aristophanes was referring to the nature of this wind when he wrote in the Knights, 'He's blowing squally north-easterlies and betrayedwinds now!' The ancient commentator remarks on the proverbial use, but Aldus' Greek text wrongly reads [greek] 'wickednesses,' not [greek] 'northeasterlies,' though the metre will not admit of this. By 'north-easterlies' the poet meant commotions and law-suits. Cleon is here being pilloried as a layer of information and a bringer of charges.

It is quite obvious, I think, that Aristophanes is using a proverbial phrase when he puts these words into Cleon's mouth in the Knights. Cleon had just been accused of behaving like a nurse and not feeding the people properly, but chewing over the food first and popping a morsel into their mouths but swallowing most himself. He replies, 'True, by Jove! So skilled am I / That I can make the people '[greek] "Broad or narrow."' Indeed, ill-fed children grow thin but they fatten up again if properly fed. The saying might well be turned to fit those who teach the young well or badly, or to an orator who harangues the people skilfully or otherwise, for these things contribute greatly to establishing good or bad public morals.

[greek], You would sooner get a dung-beetle to change its mind. A saying applicable to those who have got used to what is bad and cannot be induced to give it up because, out of familiarity with it, they have come to believe it the best. Lucian in the Pretended Critic: 'No censure of mine would ever make you improve, any more than a dungbeetle could ever be persuaded to give up rolling those things, now it has grown accustomed to them.' The dung-beetle rears its young in dung, especially goat-dung, feeds on dung, lives in dung. These beetles shape the excrement into little balls and roll these along to the nest, with their heads down to the ground and their back legs raised up. No one is easily detached from vices when he is born and brought up amidst them. Long familiarity makes things which are actually disgusting seem attractive and agreeable.

[greek] Wear another person's slippers, was said of those who copy others' ways for their own ends. Aristophanes in the Knights:
Not at all! But like a chap who's drinking at a party
And needs a visit to the loo, I grab my neighbour's slippers -
And take your ways for my own.
The character says he is not tricking the Athenian people, but doing what people at a party do when they have to go out suddenly to answer nature's call, and pick up somebody else's shoes, either because they are in a hurry or because they are drunk. The character he is addressing was playing on the nature of the Athenian people, who were willing to be bribed with handouts and were more ready to listen to what was pleasing than to what was good for them. The Greeks it seems took off their foot-gear when reclining at table, and 'asked for their sandals' when ready to go home. This gave great scope to the stealers of clothes. Some people even reclined at dinner naked.

In Plato, Republic book four, we have [greek], 'The preamble is long when one is eager to hear.' This sounds like a proverb. Anyone who is eager to get to the nub of the matter finds any preamble long. See also the line in Terence: 'Oh dear, he's starting off with a preamble {prooemium occeptat)!' At Athens, the official who told the speakers that they could now deliver their addresses used to instruct them, before they started, to do so 'without preamble or emotional appeal,' because such things are extraneous to the matter in hand.

In Plato's Euthydemus, where Socrates is being ironical in his usual way. The person with whom he is arguing had drawn some absurd conclusions, namely that Socrates knew what he did not know and did not know what he knew. Socrates says to him: [greek] "let it be so" then, Euthydemus, for, as the saying goes, "Well said, all of it."' In his translation of the work, Marsilius does not here use esto, the Latin for let it be so,' but en 'See that!' Presumably his Greek text read, not elev 'let it be so,' but elv or elvi, the Greek equivalent of Latin en, 'See that!' This makes the remark express ironic admiration. I think this is what Plato really wrote. For 'let it be so' does not fit the context - Socrates concedes nothing but mockingly expresses admiration as at something unheard of, to say nothing of the fact that elev does not express concession, 'let it be so,' but a wish, 'may it be so.' Plato uses 'Well said' in several places as a common saying, a phrase which I think he has taken from some poet or other. In Theocritus, for example, Praxinoe says, 'Indeed! Truly said!'

You should not ask something back that you have once given away. Plato tells us in Philebus that this was a saying used by children: 'We say to you what children say to each other - "No taking back once you've given it!"' He said this because it was Socrates' habit to go back to where the argument had started and call into question again points that had already been conceded. Even today children have much the same kind of retort. So we see sayings like this coming right down to us over the ages via so many nations.

People who are endeavouring to make sure that the state is being governed as it should be are said [greek] To apply the line to the stone.' St Chrysostom, in section thirty-five of his sermon on the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'See how he again applies the line to the stone, seeking in all things the edification of the Church.' The idea is taken from master-builders, who don't rely on the eye but test the regularity of the stonework with a plumb-line. This is what careful exactitude requires.

In Plato's Republic, book nine, when Socrates asks how a tyrannous man lives, Adeimantus replies, 'As people say when they want to tease someone, [greek] "You'll tell me.'" This can be used when a reply that would not be welcome is turned back on the questioner, or when the questioner is someone who ought to know the answer better than the one he questions.