Adagia 4001–4100

In Plautus' Truculentus the soldier is making horrible threats and the cook replies:
You may be a great fighter in camp if you please,
But here in my kitchen I'm Ares himself.
The cook takes the word 'fighter' up a notch, for Ares is the god of war. As for the use of Greek 'Ares' for Latin 'Mavors' it's nothing unusual for Plautus to mix Greek words in with Latin. Though some texts read here, instead of Ares, either aves 'birds' or aries 'ram,' which are obviously wrong.

This line from Plautus' Three-shilling Day seems to incorporate a proverb: 'It disappears quicker than poppy-seed put before ants.' The words are spoken by the slave Stasimus, who is describing how forty minae disappeared in a fortnight, spent on dinners, drinking-parties, visits to the baths, fish-merchants, pastry-cooks, butchers, cooks, greengrocers, perfumers, and poulterers, just like putting poppy-seed in the way of a column of ants. The heap melts away as each ant takes its own little grain.

In the same play, when the lover demands his gifts back, the tart replies, 'Our accounts are kept like the grave's - what once is brought in / And written in the ledger, never goes out again.' She means that what once enters the tart's establishment never returns to the lover, anymore than the dead return from the grave. As Catullus says, 'Thence they say no one returns.'

One of the most common popular sayings today is 'It's an unhappy mouse that only has one hole.' Plautus has the same idea in Truculentus:
Just consider how wise a creature is the little mouse,
Who never to one hidey-hole alone entrusts his life.
If siege is laid to one, he finds at another his defence.
This adage will find a place if we advise someone to provide himself with abundance of friends or to give thought to philosophy as well as to material well-being, so that if Fortune removes what is hers, learning may provide some defence.

Help that comes too late is called 'Help when the war is over.' Likewise, economy applied too late is 'Counting up when the money's all gone.' Stasimus in Plautus' Three-shilling Day:
Too late and stupid - what should have been thought of before -
To start doing his accounts now, when he's used up all the capital!
The slave is talking to the young master, who is now counting up his assets when he has liquidated his entire resources through folly. This really is numbering the waves that have passed, when one should be counting those that are coming.

Phormio, in Terence's play of that name, speaks of 'A doubtful dinner,' that is, one offering so many dishes that you are 'doubtful which one to try first.' Similarly, Plautus' character Philto applies the phrase 'A dinner for the people' to a splendid, sumptuous, and, what's more, free dinner, like those provided for the whole community. Plautus says:
Suppose you went to a temple for a dinner
And found yourself beside a wealthy man;
The banquet's served, standard of a people's dinner,
Before him lots of tasty dishes by his clients piled.

Another saying occurs soon after the passage quoted above, one that has been 'Passed down from hand to hand' right from those early days and still is in common use today: 'No one ought to hold back at table, / For things human and divine are there in question.' Except that the vulgar add 'or in bed!' These are no words of a philosopher, but the words of Stasimus, a slave in comedy, for in reality bed and table are the two places where restraint needs to be exercised more than anywhere else. Though there are people who are embarrassing guests to have at a dinner because of their gauche fear of putting themselves forward, always waiting for others to offer them food and putting back what they are given. The words 'things human and divine are there in question' are also proverbial, being a figurative expression for 'matters of supreme import are involved.' This saying befits a slave who placed felicity 'Stem and stern' in filling his belly.

In the same scene Philto speaks of man as 'A little salt-cellarful of soul,' meaning that the life of man is very brief, comparable to the small amount of salt served to each guest at a dinner. Plautus here says:
The gods are rich - wealth and social connections are for them.
But we poor mannikins are just a salt-cellarful of soul,
And the moment that has gone from us, the beggar and the millionaire
Count the same in Hell, once dead.
The last line is two syllables short - maybe read 'the millionaire Pelops' or 'the millionaire Croesus' or some such thing.

Like the as, the obol, and the teruncius, 'A lead penny' became proverbial for something of little value. Plautus in Three-shilling Day: 'If it were a matter of life and death, I wouldn't ever trust him with a lead penny.' Again in Casina: 'A fellow that hasn't saved a single lead penny to this day.' Coins of bronze are known even today in Flanders, and England has lead ones. Cicero, in the fifth book of his Letters to Atticus, calls Vatinius a despicable villain, 'a half-penny fellow': 'At the same time that half-penny fellow took up arms against me.' And somewhere or other we have the phrase 'a threepenny donkey man,' meaning 'contemptible.' In the Haunted House Plautus writes, 'Shut up, you coiner of leaden pennies.'

As I have already recorded, the adjective βασιλικὸν 'royal' was applied to anything splendid, for example, enjoying health βασιλικῶς 'fit for a king.' Also splendid buildings were called basilicae. In the Three-shilling Day, Plautus says of a slave, a worthless fellow who is nonetheless spouting some fine sentiments, 'Good heavens! Now he's got onto right royal doings!' There is a well-known story about Porus and Alexander. After he had defeated Porus in battle, Alexander asked him, 'How am I to treat you?' and Porus replied, 'Like a king.' Alexander then asked him, 'And what besides?' Porus answered that the words like a king' were all-inclusive. Kings should indeed do nothing ignoble. Plautus has a rather less natural use of the last phrase in Epidicus: 'Ye gods! I'm done for basilice "right royally!"'

The ancients said that any business so involved that you don't know how to straighten it out or get rid of it had 'Neither head nor feet.' So Cicero jokingly replies to his friend Curio, 'I gather from your letter that you didn't greatly need Sulpicius' assistance, as your affairs were in such a heap that, as you yourself say, they had "Neither head nor feet." For my part, I wish they did have feet, so that you would come back one of these days.' I spoke earlier of Plato's phrase, 'A story without a head.'

Since sleep is not seen but in fact closes the eyes, it is quite obvious that we have one of those proverbial figures of speech in the words 'He never set eyes on sleep,' which express the idea of supreme vigilance. Cicero, writing to Curius in the eighth book of Letters to Friends, says, 'You can take it from me that during Caninius' consulship not a single person ever had lunch. Nor were any crimes committed while he was consul. He was in fact wonderfully vigilant, as he never saw sleep during his whole period of office.' The point of the joke is that he was consul only for one day. Sayings depend on the use of figures.

This gesture is a sign that we know something that we don't want to noise abroad. Caelius, writing to Cicero in book 8 of the Letters to Friends: 'But when Domitius put his fingers to his lips, the loafers in the forum, on their own heads be it, had spread it abroad that you had perished on May 24th.'

Anyone may lord it over his own slaves, but not over anyone else's, nor over free men. So Stasimus in Plautus' play, the Three-shilling Day, says to his master who is imperiously telling him to come back (either because he doesn't know it is his master or is pretending not to know), 'You'd better buy someone to give orders to.' Again, in the Persian: 'You need to buy someone if you want him to obey you.' A line in Theocritus which I discussed earlier is relevant here: 'I'm not bothered. Don't you level off what is empty!' The woman is taking exception to being reprimanded by a man to whom she is neither maidservant nor wife. She also says, 'You're telling Syracusan women what to do,' that is, not women you have any rights over, but free women.

Here are some other proverbial figures of speech: 'Of all the earth supports' or 'Of all the sun beholds, the worst or the best.' Plautus in Stichus:
You'll soon find a woman worse than she was, father,
And with not so nice a nature. A better one
You'll never find; the sun doesn't look upon her like.
Again, in the Bacchis Sisters:
I know this for sure,
Vulcan, Moon, Sun, Day, the Four Gods,
Never shone down on a greater villain.
Virgil: 'O sun, that lightest with thy flames all the works of earth.' Hence the sun is called 'the eye of the world.' Another similar expression is 'whatever meets the foot,' for example in the last letter of book 9 of Cicero's Letters to Friends, 'I enjoy going out to dinner. There I can talk about "whatever meets the foot," as they say, tears and smiles.' Cicero is saying that over dinner he can talk about anything at all, happy or sad. I have already cited this phrase, quoting it from the first book of On the Nature of the Gods. I didn't at the time recall this second example, but it does serve to establish the words as proverbial. Plautus in the Carthaginian: 'The nastiest villain of all that walk upon the earth.'

A thrifty, meagre lunch is being described by the fisherman Gripus in the Rope, when he says, 'My lord will have his lunch flavoured with vinegar and with salt, not a piece of something tasty.' Poor people have salt and vinegar in place of something more substantial. Cicero, writing to Papirius Paetus in book 9 of his Letters to Friends, makes mention of something called tyrotarichus, apparently a cheap and popular savoury dish. It was a broth made with cheese, a dish still found in Italy today under the name 'menestra.' Cicero also mentions there the pilot-fish, a coarse species like the gudgeon. What he says is 'What's all this about a pilot-fish, about a shilling, about a dish of tyrotarichus?' Pliny often mentions the pilot-fish. I suspect that denarius, the word for 'shilling' in the Cicero passage, is corrupt. Certainly I don't as yet see what it means. 'Vinegar' is quite often used in the sense of 'sharpness' or 'shrewdness,' as for example in the phrase from Plautus, 'vinegar in his bosom,' or in Persius, 'well-washed with biting vinegar.' Nonius cites lines from Varro's Better than Ulysses: 'Carneades mapped out another road to virtue, drawing on "tubs of sharp vinegar."' He means 'with great subtlety.'

Along with various other examples of phrases meaning 'of little worth' I have already quoted 'I wouldn't buy it for a rotten nut.' Plautus used a similar figurative expression, 'An empty acorn,' in the Rope. Here the character Gripus is offering information for money. Labrax offers thirty pounds. Gripus: 'Rubbish!' Labrax: 'Forty.' Gripus: 'Stuff and nonsense!' Labrax: 'Fifty.' Gripus: 'Empty acorns!' Labrax: 'Sixty.' Gripus: 'Squiggly wrigglies!' An empty acorn is rotten, just an empty shell with nothing inside.

A sheep-brained piece of statuary Hegio, in Plautus' play the Two Captives, calls a stupid slave 'A sheepbrained piece of statuary,' that is, a brutish tongue-tied fellow. He says, 'You two go inside. Meantime I'll question this sheep-brained piece of statuary / And find out what happened to my younger son.' Some people read here not vervecea 'sheep-brained,' but verberea, so that Plautus wrote 'whippingblock' instead of 'marble-block,' that is, a rascal constantly getting flogged. Certainly the form vervecea disturbs the trochaic rhythm, as there is an extra syllable, unless one reads -cea with the two vowels contracted into one syllable by synaeresis.

When we bid someone pay attention, we say, 'Be right here' or 'Attend to the business in hand.' The Emperor Caligula heard those who had come to assassinate him say 'Attend to the business.' Plautus in the same play uses a plural version, 'Let's attend to business.'

'Comic characters brought on in a tragedy.' We can use this phrase when someone is operating in a field not his own. Tragedy and comedy are very different genres, and it is not allowed to bring on tragic characters in comedy, or vice versa. In Plautus' play the Carthaginian we have a line 'Why, to be sure, I'm less well trained than comic characters in a tragedy.' The word in the text here is indoctior 'more untrained,' but in my opinion we should read inductior 'brought on more.' Colabiscus' words picked up what Milphio had just said: 'Now you just make sure that you've got some words conducta "brought in" to suit this bit of trickery.' Colabiscus jokingly retorts, 'Actually I'm inductior "more brought on,"' in other words 'I'm better rehearsed.'

The word 'dog' is used in common speech to indicate hatred and contempt. Horace says, 'He hates worse than a dog.' Plautus in Amphitryo:
amphitryo: Have you kept well? Are you pleased to see me back?
sosia: Never saw anyone more welcome!
No one's any more pleased to see him back than to see a dog!
I think we need this reading to fit the metre, which is trochaic tetrameter catalectic.

Plautus in Amphitryo:
blepharo: We couldn't stride our steps out with a bigger stretch.
amphitryo: Whether it was 'Stilt-walk or tortoise walk,' I'm sure we've
lost the villain.
Plautus again, in the Carthaginian: 'You'd have outrun a stag, outstepped a stilt-walker.' Gralae 'stilts' are poles on which it is possible to prop oneself up and walk. The Latin name for stilt-walkers was gralatores. The Greeks called them καλοβάται, just as tight-rope walkers are called 'schoenobatae'. The higher the foot-rest on the stilt is from the ground, the bigger the step that can be taken. So much can be deduced from a Nonius passage which is very corrupt, especially in the Aldine edition. Plautus again, writing in the Two Menaechmuses: 'Just look at him tripping along! Get that ant's pace of yours moving!' Ants appear to be scuttling along without making much progress. Plautus, in the Carthaginian again: 'You beat a snail in a slow-race.' In the same play, he calls people who come slowly 'sticky-footed, slower than cargo-boats in a dead calm.' Then he says their steps must have been passed through a flour-sieve - because the flour trickles slowly through the tiny holes.

To indicate speed, Plautus in Amphitryo uses the phrase 'By oarage of Daedalus/ meaning 'flying': 'I couldn't have done it quicker if I'd brought myself by oarage of Daedalus.'

There is nothing more frequently trotted out than this saying: 'Accept a favour and lose your liberty.' Demaenetus puts it neatly in the Comedy of Asses: 'I took the money and for a dowry sold my authority.' He was poor and had married a wife with a large dowry, but found he had no authority over her. Nausistrata in Terence's play Phormio is just such another wife.

Even today it is a popular custom for people to spit to avert the evil omen if they hear of something dreadful that they don't want to happen to themselves. This is a survival of an ancient superstition whereby people believed that spitting was a protection against looming evils, especially against the 'assembly disease,' so called not only because attacks are more likely to occur in crowded places, but because it caused the assembly to be abandoned. Also in the application of remedies, it was thought that spitting three times increased their effectiveness, and it could also counteract spells, according to Pliny, and the same superstitious belief led people to spit three times in their own bosom to avert the mischief attracted by overweening hopes. We have a section in a play of Plautus that goes as follows:
And he suffers attacks of that disease, the one that gets spat on.
You wretch! So I've got that disease that means I need to be spat on?
Never mind! Many a man's tormented by that disease, and spitting
Has helped him back to health.
Plautus again in Amphitryo: 'Please, for heaven's sake, spit away the words you spoke!'

Anyone who wanted to express the idea of belonging wholly to someone, could say, 'I am yours Χρήσει καὶ κτήσει,' that is, 'By both usufruct and ownership.' With regard to possessions, it is often the case that ownership rests with one person, the usufruct with another. Curius, writing to Cicero in book 8 of his Letters to Friends, says, 'I hope you are in good health, for I am yours by usufruct, by ownership I belong to our friend Atticus. So the enjoyment is yours, the ownership his.' Curius means that he is bound to Atticus without being any the less well-disposed to Cicero. Cicero's reply expands on this: '... if I didn't have our dear Atticus as a companion in my studies. When you write that you belong to him by bondage and debtslavery, to me by use and enjoyment, I am content with that, for what someone uses and enjoys is his.' Cicero's joke with the lawyer shows that ownership could be established in two ways, by bondage and by debtslavery, but he does not want that kind of right so long as he has use and enjoyment, because as long as the right of use and enjoyment exists, it is as if the thing were one's own.

Anyone who is thoroughly exasperated and angry is said 'To beat his brow.' Cicero, in his first letter to Atticus, writes, 'I imagine all that will make you laugh or groan. To make you beat your brow, some people think Caesonius too will stand .. . He considered what he had just written fit to raise a laugh or groan, but his news about Caesonius was so unacceptable that Atticus ought 'To beat his brow.' Anyone who thinks this isn't a proverb will have to reject 'To wipe off your blushes' and 'Thumbs down' and many other sayings referring to physical gestures.

In a letter from the same book he quotes a very well-known line from Homer: παντοίης ἄρετῆς μιμνήσκεο, and do all you can to ensure that I am generally popular and approved of.' The Greek may be translated as 'Bring now to mind every power of which you are possessed,' in other words, Tn this matter exert all your strength, strain every mental nerve.'

I have already recorded the Greek proverb εὔνους σφάκτης. 'A well-wishing murderer.' Very similar to this is the phrase 'A soft-hearted manager of gladiators,' used by Cicero when writing to Atticus in the letter in book 1 that begins 'You ask ...':
After the challenging of the jury had taken place amidst a great deal of up-
roar, with the prosecuting counsel, like a good censor, rejecting those of bad
character, and the defendant, like a soft-hearted manager of gladiators, set-
ting aside the respectable, when the jury took their places, decent men began
to feel very apprehensive.

When we think something is 'Back to front,' like the people telling the rulers what to do, or students instructing their teachers, it will be appropriate to use Cicero's words in this same letter: 'I will answer your questions Homeric fashion, ὕστερον πρότερον ὁμηρικῶς.' This is a figure of style that the grammarians call πρωθύστερον 'hindmost foremost' or ὑστερόπρωτον 'latter first,' in which what naturally comes first is put second, for example 'Cornelia brought up the Gracchi and brought them into the world.' This figure occurs frequently in Homer.

The same letter contains another phrase that looks proverbial, 'A musichall assembly,' referring to a gathering of persons of not very reputable character. Consessus 'assembly,' συνέδριον in Greek, is properly used for a session of senators or jurymen, who are usually selected from men of good standing. In a music-hall assembly the most disreputable takes the leading role. Cicero says:
There was never a more disgraceful 'Assembly in a music-hall' - senators under a cloud, knights who had lost their status, treasury tribunes who are not so much paying-out officers as paying-in officers, as people are calling them. There were however a few honest men ...
This last joke can also be called proverbial as Cicero says these men were popularly called not 'paying-out' officers, but 'paying-in' officers. In other words, they were in debt; or else they had paid themselves well out of the public purse.

In the same letter, Cicero uses the phrase 'Take in one's sails,' meaning 'check oneself, go carefully.' 'I took in my sails,' he says, 'when I realized the financial straits of the jurymen, and I didn't say anything in my testimony that was not already so well known and sworn to that I couldn't leave it out.' Horace says something similar:
But also
Draw in, when favouring winds too strongly blow,
Your billowing canvas.
The metaphor is derived from sailors, who take in the sails when the wind blows too strongly, so as to avoid danger; and when it drops, they spread the sails to catch the breeze.

In the same letter, Cicero continues his narrative of events with an amusing quotation from Homer: 'Tell out now, ye Muses, as you told what went before.' This will be nice to use when relating some laughable incident. In the Aldine edition, only the first half of the line is quoted: 'Tell out now, ye Muses.' This half-line occurs more than once in Homer, with variants in the second half, for example, 'Tell out now, ye Muses, that dwell on Olympus' heights,' from book 2.

We tell someone to whom we wish ill to 'go and be hanged' or to 'be off to the crows' or 'to Cynosarges.' The early Romans said, 'Go and get crucified,' using a word dierectus, which means 'crucified.' Nonius cites a line from Varro: 'Get that madness out of our house in dierectum "and onto a cross."' Nonius thinks the word dierectus means 'erected into the day,' (that is, in diem erectus). Perhaps Nonius really wrote in dium erectos 'erected under the open sky,' as those who are crucified are displayed in the open, especially as Varro adds, 'out of our house.' Anything carried out of the house is taken into the open. Varro's word for madness here, insanitas, not insania, is supported by Cicero's use of it, so there is no need to suspect a corruption.

At one time, soldiers who were guilty of a grave misdemeanour had a vein opened to humiliate them. This was called 'Letting blood.' Cicero, in the same letter as above: 'The vein of ill-will was opened without any pain.' He means that his unpopularity was diminished to some extent, because the evidence he produced at the trial had carried no weight, and that this happened without any grief on his part, because everybody knew the jury had been bribed. Again, in the first letter in book 6: 'Appius had treated the province by means of reduction, let blood, removed whatever he could, handed it over to me at the point of death .. .' The phrase 'treated by means of reduction' is a kind of saying, as it is here used of a greedy rapacious man. It is a metaphor derived from doctors, who in certain conditions empty the body, removing superfluous matter, either by a regime of fasting or by blood-letting.

I have said elsewhere that at one time votes were cast using beans, and Pythagoras is thought to have had this in mind when he forbade the eating of beans. So in the following passage, Cicero is referring to electoral corruption in a witty metaphorical way: 'But mark you! If he's elected, our consulship, which Curio used to call a positive apotheosis, will become beancurrency.' Where beans become money, there votes have been bought.

In the same book of letters, in the one beginning 'After I got back from my place near Pompeii,' Cicero quotes an obviously well-known line of Rhinthon: 'I would have you know/ he writes, 'that since the death of Catulus I maintain this optimate road with no protection and no support. As Rhinthon, I think, says, "These are nothing, the others care for nothing."' He means he is without the support of the big names, because they were either powerless or indifferent.

I wrote earlier about 'Judging the Achaeans from the tower,' that is, observing other people's danger from a safe place. Cicero with a touch of humour finds another metaphor to express this same idea. In the second book of his Letters to Atticus, the one beginning 'About the Geography,' he writes, 'Now that I am compelled to abandon ship, not taking my hand off the tiller but having it torn from my grasp, it is my intention to observe from the shore the shipwreck those people are going to make. I desire, as your friend Sophocles says, "beneath my own roof-tree to harken, free from care with mind at peace."' In some texts this fragment of Greek verse appeared in a different version, but one equally corrupt. Other texts omitted it. The line seems to be trochaic catalectic. Instead of the word εὔκηλος, 'free from care', some texts had ψάκαλος, but I do not know what this could be, εὔκηλος doesn't fit the metre. However, the sense seems to be that Cicero desires to listen from home to the commotion affecting others, himself being uninvolved and unconcerned.

In the same book of letters, in the one beginning 'When Caecilius suddenly informed me,' Cicero quotes a line from Homer, threatening vengeance on someone who was the first to pick a quarrel: 'As for myself, it is my intention, if your crony Publius will allow it, to play the sophist. If he is even thinking of upsetting me at all, I will do what goes with the sophist's stance, and I proclaim that I will "ward off any man that is the first to injure."'

Nonius Marcellus cites this verse from Caecilius' Plocium: 'Put up with what they give, as they don't give what you want.' The line in Latin contains the form danunt, an old form for dant 'they give.' This sentiment agrees with something I cited from Cicero earlier: 'Make the best of what you've got,' and other similar phrases.

Cicero humorously denotes an inconstant man of unpredictable behaviour or a work that does not hold together with a line from Homer: 'As to what you write about brother Quintus' letter, I too found it "forepart lion, behind a dragon, in between a chimaera." I don't know what to make of it. The first few lines he spends complaining so forcefully about having to stay out there that anyone would feel sorry for him. Then he slackens off and asks me to edit his Annals and get them published.' Cicero calls this inconsistent letter 'A chimaera.'

In book four of his Letters to Atticus, in the one beginning 'I was delighted to receive,' Cicero quotes an apparently well-known line of Greek verse: Οὐδὲν γλυκύτερον ἢ πᾶν εἰδέναι. 'Nothing nicer than knowing all.' As it stands, the verse is faulty, but this can be healed by the insertion of ἐστὶν 'is': 'Nothing is nicer than οὐδὲν γλυκύτεῥον ἐστὶν ἢ πάντ᾽ εἰδέναι "knowing all things."' Or one can read at the end ἢ πᾶν εἰδέναι 'knowing all.' Cicero goes on: 'So treat me as a fellow consumed with curiosity and write and tell me about what happened on the first day, on the second, tell me about the censors, about Appius, about that pet of the people, the unsexed Appuleius.' One also finds in Cicero's letters another Greek phrase, πάντα περὶ πάντων 'everything about everything.'

I have already discussed 'To be pushed off the step,' meaning 'to be made to abandon one's stance.' Similarly, in the fourth book of his letters to Atticus, in the one beginning 'You will gather how busy I am/ Cicero wrote, 'Abandon my position,' meaning 'give up my principles of action.' He says, 'Those who were not happy that I had any powers at all may burst with fury. I find comfort in many things, nor am I really abandoning my position - I am returning to the life that is most natural to me.' The metaphor seems to be derived either from athletes, or from battles, where it is considered praiseworthy not to have retreated from one's position.

In a letter to Atticus, Cicero used the phrase Strumam dibapho tegere 'Cover a swelling with a purple robe' to mean 'disguise infamy with office.' He says, 'Conceal Vatinius' tumour with the purple robe of priesthood.' The word for the purple robe, dibaphon, means 'double-dyed.' The word struma means some swelling of the body, such as a hump. That deformity is sometimes camouflaged with the purple. Again, writing to Marcus Caelius in book 2 of the Letters to Friends: 'Our friend Curtius has thoughts of the purple robe, but the dyer is keeping him waiting.' By 'purple robe' here he means a magistracy, as holders of such offices were entitled to wear the double-dyed dibaphon, but he jokes that things were not turning out as Curtius hoped, because the dyer was behind schedule. Indeed, one way of obliterating ill repute is to inhibit accusation by the eminence of the position one holds. Modest rank is open to the attacks of enmity. This maybe has motivated some who have striven to attain the cardinal's mitre and hat.

I have already written about 'There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.' Cicero has another metaphorical expression for this idea in book 6 of his Letters to Atticus, in the letter beginning 'Although I had nothing new.' There he writes, 'Not that you could help me. The matter is in train, and you are far away across the world. Πολλὰ δ᾽ ἐν μεταιχμΐω, Νότος κυλίνδει κύματ᾽ εὐρείης ἁλὸς .' Cicero feels that many upheavals would take place before Atticus, who was far away, could come to his aid. The Greek is in iambic verse and could be translated, 'And many the waves in the space between / Rolling before the wind, over the outspread sea.'

Cicero again, in the letter in book 9 that begins 'I received your letter on the twenty-third,' uses a Greek word πειθανάγκην, meaning 'suggestion linked with compulsion and power.' The requests of rulers have this character, and Ovid puts this neatly, when speaking of Jove: 'And being a king, he joins with his entreaties threats.' Here is what Cicero writes: 'I am not so much afraid of his manipulative ability as of his πειθανάγκη, the compulsion that accompanies his requests. As Plato says, "The requests of tyrants come, as you know, with power to compel."' See also the famous line from the mime writer: 'When the more powerful make requests, their request compels.'

Cicero, writing to Atticus about Quintus in the fourteenth book of Letters to Atticus, in the one beginning, 'My dear Atticus': 'He is so opposed to taking a wife that he says nothing is nicer than a bed to oneself.' Quintus had had experience of a wife, and now that she had died, he was greatly worried about paying back the dowry. So he was thinking that a bachelor life was best, and he calls this 'a bed to oneself,' since, as Juvenal says, 'Little sleeping is done in a bed that holds a wife.'

In the same book of letters, in the one beginning 'When Pilia told me,' Cicero quotes the following Greek senarius. He does not give the author, but clearly considers it well known: Αλλοις ἐν ἐσθλοῖς τὸν δ᾽ ἄπωθοῦνται ψόγον 'By other noble deeds they fend off this blame.' He is presumably speaking of Brutus and Cassius, who had assassinated Caesar. The passage runs as follows: 'So the Ides of March do not comfort me as much as they did, for they contain a great mistake, even if those young men "by other noble deeds" .. .' This saying agrees with 'You speak ill while doing well.'

To indicate a troubled situation, we may make use of the lines from Homer which Cicero cites in book 3 of the Letters to his Brother Quintus:
When on an autumn day, Zeus a lashing rainstorm sends,
Impatient grown with mortal men and grievously displeased.
He goes on with the next lines, to indicate that evil is sent from the gods to punish men's injustice: 'For in the meeting-place they set law at naught / And crooked judgments give, but for themselves / They lay up vengeance, scorning Heaven's command.'

Theocritus writes in his Idyll entitled Thalysia:
Just so I hate a builder who strives a house so high to raise
That it challenges Oromedon's high peak.
We have here a proverbial expression containing a metaphor, its purpose being to deter from the arrogance of setting oneself above those with whom one has no point of comparison. The ancient commentator tells us that Oromedon was a mountain in the island of Cos. I think there is here an allusion to the 'Poet of Cos,' for in the next line he calls Homer the Coan poet.

Writing to his brother Quintus in a letter in book 3, Cicero quotes a line of verse as something well known and proverbial. 'That ideal, he writes, 'that always inspired me as a boy, Αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμενα ἄλλων, has totally perished.' He is complaining that, with constitutional government suppressed, there is no opportunity for exercising one's talents or even for maintaining one's status. I think the line comes from Homer, and may be translated, 'Always to hold first place and excel all others in praise.' He uses it again in book 13 of the Letters to Friends, writing to Caesar.

Even today the ignorant crowd say, 'I could have gladly bitten off his ear,' giving vent to passionate hatred and a burning desire for vengeance. Cicero, writing to his brother Quintus in one of the letters in book 3, says, 'There would have been an open breach of relations; there might have been a fight like the one between Pacideianus and Eserninus the Samnite; possibly he would have bitten off my ear; certainly he would have been reconciled to Clodius.' That is how Cicero uses it, but it will be more fittingly used of a man who, however angry he is, has more desire to hurt than ability to do so, for it is women and boys who bite off an ear. I discussed 'Esernius (or Eserninus) versus Pacideianus' earlier, using Horace as my authority.

Cicero seems to have liked this word, as he uses it several times in his letters. It means to wear an expression of cheerfulness and good will when one's real feelings are very different. Hence the line in Virgil: 'She wears false hope upon her face and crushes down her trouble / Deep within her heart.'

In his Encomium of Ptolemy, Theocritus writes, 'To them 'Ρηΐδιαι δὲ γοναὶ, τέκνα δ᾽ οὔ ποθ᾽ ἑοικόττα πατρί. "Children come easily," but the offspring never / Bear the father's features.' According to the Jurists, there is a legal presumption that the husband is the father of any child, but the offspring does not always look like the mother's husband. So, as Horace writes, 'The father's face in the babe honour to the mother brings.' Though here too nature makes sport with variety, as in almost all things. The child does not always look like its mother or its father, but sometimes like its paternal or maternal grandfather, or its grandmother, or its father's brother or indeed its great-grandfather's brother!

Praeficae was the word used for women hired to wail at a funeral, to sing the praises of the deceased and lead the rest in their lamentations. They were called praeficae because they were, so to speak, praefectae 'put in charge.' The word can be used jokingly of those who feign love or grief when they are really motivated by greed. Nonius cites Lucilius: 'Those women hired to mourn at a stranger's obsequies / Tear their hair and cry far more than all the rest.' Horace imitated this in the following: 'Those weeping at a funeral for hire, say and do / Almost more than those who grieve from the heart.' Nonius also cites Plautus' Frivolaria: 'They surpass hired mourners with their never-ending noise.' The words will fit those who, out of jealousy, cannot bear to praise anyone except the dead. Naevius, quoted by Festus: 'Upon my word, I think she's been hired for the job, / She praises him so, now he's dead.' It's common practice for wives to praise a dead husband without end, in order to spite their second. The words will also fit those who themselves have nothing worthy of praise, but try to make themselves seem something by praising others. Plautus, in Truculentus: 'A citizen of ready tongue but without worth, to me / Is but a women hired to praise others, who cannot praise herself.'

Nonius Marcellus cites an example from Varro where 'Socrates' cockerel,' is used to indicate 'hairlessness': 'Though he went to sleep as smooth as Socrates' cockerel, he found himself turned into a hedgehog with bristles and snout.' Whoever is speaking here means to say that when he went to bed, his skin was smooth and he had no hairs anywhere, but in his sleep he was turned into a hedgehog, which is bristly all over and has a snout such as pigs have. I know that the text is corrupt here, and I am well aware of the reading of the Aldine edition, which has not gallus 'cockerel,' but calvus 'bald.' A possible reading would be to replace calvus with callus or callum 'hide,' that is, 'When he went to sleep as hairless as Socrates' hide, he found himself turned into a hedgehog.' Socrates had a tough body, hardened to every kind of toil; he walked bare-foot, slept on the ground. Hence the joke about 'Socrates' hide.' I know the story about the plucked cockerel that Diogenes, if I remember aright, released into Plato's school, but it is more satisfactory to read callus 'hide' than gallus 'cockerel.' The letters 'c' and 'g' are related and it is easy for one to change to the other. The parts of the body covered with thick skin, such as the sole of the foot and the palm of the hand, do not grow hair. The common people, to indicate that they have nothing to give, show the palm of the hand and say, 'Pluck a hair from there.' The saying will fit the poor and destitute.

Nonius Marcellus cites the following trochaic tetrameter catalectic from Lucilius: 'Just as each one of us was from our mother's bag thrust into the light.' This can be introduced when speaking of a total lack of possessions, utter destitution, or of the basic equality of the process that gives us life. The manner of birth does not distinguish a Croesus from an Irus, a king from a commoner. A queen and a beggar-woman both cry out in labour. The babe as it enters the world wails equally, whether it is an emperor or an insignificant nonentity. The cavity from which a queen's child emerges is no cleaner than that which produces a servant's brat. Festus tells us that the word for 'bag,' bulga, comes from the Gauls, who used this word for leather sacks or purses or pouches, that is, those made of animal skin. Lucilius, with a satirist's lack of inhibition, calls the female reproductive organ or womb 'a bag.' The Greek notion 'Naked as he came from his mother' has already been discussed.

Nonius Marcellus cites the following line from Lucilius: Ut esurienti leoni ex ore exsculpere praedam 'As from a hungry lion's mouth its prey to prise away.' This line can be made to scan if you remove ut 'as' at the beginning, or, a more likely solution, replace it by vi 'by force,' and if the -ti in esurienti is shortened, or the word emended to esuriente. The line is harsh, as it has no caesura, but it is not uncharacteristic of Lucilius' style. The adage is similar to ones I discussed earlier: 'Wrest the club from Hercules' hand' and 'Snatch the lamb from the wolf.'

This was a word the ancients used for someone who tells lies all the time. Plautus in Curculio: Well! Phaedromus has got himself a fine spinner of yarns in this fellow. I don't know whether to say he's halopanta 'romancer' or sycophanta 'trickster.' At this point in the play, the soldier is complaining about Curculio, who had used the soldier's signet ring to trick the pimp. Nonius Marcellus quotes the extract, saying 'halopanta or sycophanta, a despicable class of men, hired for a small fee, because of their ability to string lies together.' Festus explains as follows: 'A halopanta means one who tells lies all the time.' In Greek, πάντα means 'all,' ἁλιτόμενος means 'deceiving.' Though how much credulity should be accorded to fragments of this sort, which are as corrupt as they are truncated, I do not know. The Aldine edition offered another etymology, but one equally blemished. For if halopanta is derived from ἀλέω or ἀλιτεύομαι 'to err, transgress,' neither of these words has an initial aspirate and in both the first vowel is short, whereas the word in Plautus has the first vowel long, as required by the trochaic metre. If it is derived from ἁλὸς 'salt,' we have an initial aspirate, but this word too has a short vowel in its first syllable. There is also the further problem in halopanta, that it is unusual to form a compound with a nominal stem in second place. It would be easier if the form were [greek] 'all-wandering.' The two words in the line in Plautus demonstrate the figure of [greek], and there would be a better play on words if we had sycophanta and halophanta, rather than halopanta. A 'halophant' would appear to be someone who informed against those trying to cheat the customs-officers of their dues, just as a sycophant was someone who reported those exporting figs from Athens. If we read [greek] [from [greek] 'other'], meaning someone who says something alien and tells all kinds of lies, the word fits the metre but we have to reject the initial aspirate. The line will scan, however, if you treat halophanten aut sycophanten as Greek words, as then there will be an anapaest instead of a spondee in first position. Plautus often does as the Greeks do in his plays. But I leave all this for the consideration of scholars.

Even today we commonly say, 'Nothing tastes as good as your own home fare.' Nonius cites half a line from Catullus' Priapea: 'A longing to lick up something I myself provide.' 'Lick up' here means 'to eat with enjoyment.' Though Homer's gods prefer to be invited out to the aroma arising from burnt offerings, rather than live at their own expense at home! Nonius also cites Plautus' play the Persian: 'To guzzle at his own expense, if he has the wherewithal at home.'

If we love someone dearly, we are said to 'Give them pap from our own mouths,' a phrase borrowed from mothers and nurses. Nonius cites Lucilius: 'Hoping, if he could show the same years, / He'd give pap from his own mouth.' Cicero and Gellius, however, use praemandere in a rather different sense, 'predigest,' as I indicated earlier.

The ancients had various ways of expressing deep affection: from the heart, from the soul, heart and soul (which I have already discussed), deeply, from the depths of one's being, from one's very bones, as one's very soul, as one's very eyes. Nonius cites a line from Plautus' Crows: 'Hold my maid Sedulium as dear as their very eyes.' Lovers call the object of their affection their 'eye.' In the Haunted House: 'Oh good, my dearest eye!' or 'I wish to please my dear Philolaches, the apple of my eye, my dear protector.'

The wisest of men have said that even in war counsel carries more weight than force. Titinius, as cited by Nonius, puts this neatly: The steersman turns the ship by judgment, not by strength.'

This quotation from Varro's Eumenides, cited in Nonius, quite unmistakably contains a popular saying. It says, 'Zeno was the first to hang a new school on a new peg.' He is censuring Zeno, who introduced to Athens the Stoic sect with its novel theories and its paradoxes. Varro again, in Bimargus: 'A new sieve must hang from a new peg.' I follow the reading of the Aldine edition. The saying will fit those thinking up something new.

Nonius Marcellus also cites this verse from Lucilius: Sarcinatoris esse summum suere centonem optime 'It is for a stitcher of patches to sew his last bit of patchwork best.' The metre appears to be trochaic tetrameter catalectic, and the line scans correctly with the elision of final -s in sarcinatoris 'the stitcher of patches.' The word sarcinator is derived from sarcina 'a bundle,' not from sarcire 'to repair.' This saying comes in the same category as one I mentioned earlier: 'A good poet is at his best in the last act.' But Lucilius' version has a more convincing and nicer proverbial ring.

It is not the one who gets the upper hand in one or two phases of the action who is necessarily the victor, but the one who triumphs overall. A battle is a particular military engagement, a war is the whole period of conflict, even if there is no actual fighting for a time, or if a truce intervenes. Only peace brings a war to an end, a truce suspends hostilities. Nonius cites these lines in trochaic rhythm from Lucilius:
As the Roman people, oft subdued by might
And in many a battle worsted by the foe,
Never yet a war did lose, wherein lies the whole.
This belongs with 'He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day.'

[greek], Take another run. Lucian introduces this phrase into his tragedy Okypus as a saying supposedly originating in a barber-shop. And yet this little work in verse is full of faults and hasn't a grain of Lucian's wit. We meet here a young man suffering from gout, who nevertheless wanted to be thought [greek] 'fast-foot.' When an old man asked him why his foot hurt, he replied that he had sprained his ankle when running very fast, and was in agony as a result. The old man replied, ' "Take another run," as one of the customers said, / Sitting and plucking his beard under the barbers' arms,' that is, submitting to the barber's ministrations. (If that is, one reads [greek] 'one said, who ...') People with gout seek relief from barbers, but they do not want the condition to be recognized as gout, preferring it to be thought the result of some kind of injury, caused for example by too much running. Meantime, one of those getting barbered, realizing that this is just a tale, says, 'Take another run.' For that's the way of treating sprains etc., because the pain subsides as the tendons heat up with vigorous movement. One can see this any day in horses, which after a gallop either do not limp or do not limp so noticeably. It's more likely however that instead of [greek] 'of the barbers,' we should read [greek] the present participle of the verb [greek] meaning 'to be hairy' and in need of a barber, the sense being 'as someone said, sitting in the barber's shop, and plucking the shaggy mass of hair luxuriating in his armpits.' The barber's shop is the place where idlers meet and chatter. As Horace says, 'Leisurely trimming his own nails with a knife.' If anyone does not fancy this suggestion of mine, he can pursue something that appeals to him more, but it is of no great matter.

As nurses handle babies, their clothes are often stained with food, dribble, urine and faeces. So Plautus writes in the Bacchis Sisters: 'If you'd got one syllable wrong, your skin would have / As many blotches as a nurse's dress.' The Scriptures often mention 'the cloths of a menstruous woman.'

This proverbial expression can be used of someone who has handed over all with no deductions of any kind. The phrase apparently originates with metal-workers, who take for themselves what they file off. Plautus, in the Bacchis Sisters: 'For I have handed it over totally to my father, filings and all.' 'Filings and all' is added for the sake of emphasis. He then gives a kind of explanation, saying: 'Every bit. Absolutely.' I have already discussed 'Dust and all,' 'Rust and all.' Plautus, in the Rope: 'He'll sweep me up entirely, dust and all.'

Nothing is more worthless than a dead body. In the same play, Plautus writes, 'Come on, cheer up! - How can I? A dead man is worth more than I am.' In the Persian, one character insults another by calling him 'a slab of dead flesh': 'Heavens! I wouldn't feel afraid, even if I punched / Your face in, you slab of dead flesh!'

In the same play, Plautus writes:
You'll hear more hard words from me this day
Than ever Clinia heard from Demetrius.
Some scholars think that one should read Lamia instead of Clinia. It's quite true that Lamia was passionately loved by Demetrius, king of Macedonia, and on account of this he was much criticized by the people, but we never read that the king abused her verbally. In any case, Lamia does not fit the metre. It's more likely that it's taken from the comedy by Turpilius, called Demetrius, or from some other play where a father bitterly and at great length reproaches his son. In the Self-Tormentor we have just such a Clinia, whose father censures him so often and so bitterly that he eventually runs away to join the army. Maybe Plautus is alluding to this story. It's possible that Terence changed the name of the father from Demetrius to Menedemus. The fact that Terence is later than Plautus does not raise a problem, because the Greek author of the original play was earlier than both of them.

Those who have just sampled anything are said to have dipped their toes in, whereas those who have tackled something with great enthusiasm are said to have approached it 'At a quick march.' Trebonius, writing to Cicero in book 12 of his Letters to Friends: 'He is mentally prepared and marching quick step, as I can see, but I will keep on encouraging him, and then he will continue to make daily progress in his studies and exercises.'

Cicero, in his little treatise On Military Terms (if this work is correctly attributed to him), says, 'The first and second lines, when, as the saying goes, "It comes to the pikes," bear the full brunt of the fighting.' The pike is a kind of short Roman spear, so when the fighting has got to close quarters, they say 'It has come to the pikes.' I have a feeling I have already used this adage, but I can't at the moment recall where.

Those who make suppliant entreaty are said to 'Pray with veiled hands,' a phrase derived from the ancient custom whereby spokesmen who came to treat for peace carried an olive branch before them. I think that velati 'veiled' is here equivalent to vittati 'swathed with vittae.' Plautus writes in Amphitryo: Next day come the chief men from the town to our camp,
Weeping, begging us with veiled hands to pardon their wrongdoing.

[greek], The cicadas will sing to themselves on the ground. Aristotle in book 3 cites this from Stesichorus as an example of a figure in which the real meaning is not the literal meaning of the words. Aristotle doesn't add anything that would help to elucidate the true meaning, though I suspect that the poet in these words threatens those who had injured him, giving them to understand that, if he could not avenge himself in any other way, certainly he would use his poetry to destroy their reputation. Aristotle quotes it again in book 2 among enigmatic sayings: 'As Stesichorus said when among the Locrians, "One shouldn't act with insolent effrontery, or the cicadas will sing on the ground."' Cicadas represent poets; 'on the ground' refers to their poverty and humble status. Every creature uses what means nature has given it to present a threatening aspect. Poets have nothing but their verse, but by this they can hand a man down to posterity as a 'dark or fair man.' This is why Plato is said to have advised his friends never to make an enemy of a man of poetic bent. For, as Horace said, 'Bards are an irascible tribe,' and some of them 'have hay on their horn.' A number of scholars prefer quite a different explanation of Stesichorus' saying. As Virgil tells us, cicadas usually sing in trees, so it appears that, by this riddling saying, Stesichorus was politely warning the Locrians not to keep on harrying their neighbours out of arrogance and aggressiveness, or they would drive them to take up arms against them; their neighbours would invade their territory and cut down everything growing out of sheer hostility, and then the cicadas would start singing on the ground, as there would be no trees for them to perch in. Possibly Gregory of Nazianzus reports something of the sort. I saw his commentaries on this work when I was in Venice.

In his speech against Timarchus, Aeschines quotes a line from Euripides: 'Rumour makes known the righteous man, even in the hollows of the earth.' He explains this as meaning that it is not only the living whose virtues are celebrated by common report, but the dead and buried also. Earth may cover the body, but the talk of men does not allow a man's good deeds in life to be covered over. In the same passage, he cites lines from Hesiod, which I have used before: 'Rumour dies hard that many folk have uttered; / Rumour herself's a kind of deity.' He quotes these lines again in the speech On the False Legation.

Among all the other accusations which Aeschines hurls at Demosthenes, he taxes him with shouting out in an uncontrolled and unseemly manner, like Boeotians: 'As I was saying this, Demosthenes shouted out extremely loudly, as all those who were on the embassy with us know. For indeed, in addition to all his other crimes, [greek] "He acts Boeotian."' The 'shouting out' contains an allusion to the mooing of bovines. Though 'Act Boeotian' could be taken as meaning 'to follow a pro-Boeotian policy.'

Individuals are weak, but joined together in concord they acquire great strength. See Ennius, as cited by Festus: Unus surus surum ferret, tamen defendere possent 'One twig would carry but another twig, and yet they could defend.' As Festus tells us, surus was the form of the word used in ancient times; we now use the diminutive surculus. I am well aware that the text of this line of verse is corrupt, even in the Aldine edition. Perhaps it should read Si unus surum surus ferret 'If one twig should carry but another twig,' eum (or se) defendere -posset 'it could defend it (or, itself), or possent 'they could defend it,' or, 'they could defend each other.' A branch is strong; twigs have no strength except when bundled together.

Because of their poverty, Irus and Codrus became stock examples of indigence. Likewise, a certain Salacon was so impoverished that all persons in extreme penury came to be called 'Salacons' and poverty itself was called salaconia. This information comes from Hesychius, but he also tells us that the same word was used for a conceited person who put on airs, and this gave rise to the verb [greek] 'walk in a mincing or foppish manner.' There is also the evidence of Theophrastus, who said a 'Salacon' was a person who squandered his possessions. From all this we may conclude that the censure carried in the adage is not directed at any and every poor person, but only at those reduced to indigence by self-conceit and extravagance. The word seems to come from the verb [greek], which means 'to totter,' 'to be on the point of collapse.'

[greek], Archilochus' song. This was the name for a song that could be adapted to many subjects, such as Archilochus is supposed to have invented. He was earlier than Pindar and other such lyric poets who composed celebratory odes specific to individual victors. Archilochus' song was the same for everybody and was played on the lyre. The lyre-player simply sang in the name of the victor at intervals throughout the music. If he were praising Hercules, for example, he would bring into his song 'Tenella Kallinike, hail Lord Hercules,' or some other name, if he was praising somebody else. Rather similar is Horace's story of the painter who painted a cypress tree and asked the sailor if he wanted anything added. This phrase will fit anything crude and primitive. 'Archilochus' song' is mentioned by the commentators on Pindar and on Aristophanes. It comes from the seventh of Pindar's Olympian triumphal odes: 'The song of Archilochus, sung out at Olympia, "Kallinikos."' The commentaries on this passage report various suggestions that have been thought up, but it doesn't seem necessary to my present purpose to reproduce them here.

I have already discussed the word ὁλοσχοίνος (in the phrase ὁλοσχοίνος ἀβρόχοs) from a speech by Aeschines. The lexicographers however have here not ὁλοσχοίνος but ὁλοεχίνος. The ancient annotator on Demosthenes cites this speech of Aeschines, that is, the one On the False Legation, attacking Demosthenes, and also Theophrastus, book four. I found the form ὁλοσχοίνος in the Aeschines passage. Likewise, Theophrastus, in book four of On Plants, where he is discussing water-loving plants, distinguishes (as the ancient commentator tells us) three species of σχοίνος 'esparto' or 'rush.' One is the iuncus acutus, the sharp rush, also called 'male,' here meaning 'infertile'; the second is fertile, and from its dark fruits is called μελαγκρανὶς 'black' bog-rush; the third is the ὁλοσχοίνος, the club-rush, which surpasses the others in stoutness, height, and toughness. Theophrastus thinks this last is better for weaving ropes because it is more pliable and fleshier. Dioscorides, in book four, classifies them somewhat differently, but he does tell us that the third species, the one called ὁλοσχοίνος, is rougher and tougher than the others. I think the reason why some persons preferred to write ἐχῖνος 'hedgehog' instead of σχοῖνος 'rush' was that Theophrastus spoke of its 'fleshiness,' as if it were anything unusual to speak of the 'flesh' of an apple or cherry. The land echinos, or 'hedgehog,' does share with the holoschoinos the characteristic of being bristly. The skin of a hedgehog, if removed complete with spines, can be used to clean pots. So the word 'allspiny' can be used of harsh domineering words, which we dash in someone's face, so to speak. Even if some of this is somewhat of an appendix, I wanted to pass it on to my readers.

[greek], A story for Alcinous, is recorded in the Greek proverb collections, as I noted earlier. On that occasion, I surmised that it was derived from Homer's Odyssey, where Ulysses is represented as telling a whole lot of tall stories about himself at the feast. This is not a silly suggestion, if 'A story for Alcinous' can mean a fictitious tale told in the presence of Alcinous. However, Aristotle, in book three of the Rhetoric, happens to mention this tale and writes in such a way that he appears to be censuring some writer who wrote an imaginary speech to Penelope, bringing in all the things that could have happened in the course of many years, and treating fiction as truth. Perhaps the writer, called Alcinous, introduced the figure of Ulysses telling Penelope a lot of things which he was supposed to have experienced either in the war or on his journey home. Aristotle writes, 'Besides, one must speak of events as past and done, [greek] "except for" those that arouse either pity or indignation if represented as happening now. An example is the story of Alcinous, when it is presented to Penelope as if covering sixty years.' George of Trebizond's translation of the passage gives one to understand that he read, 'One must speak of [greek] "events that have not actually happened," such that, if represented as happening now .. .' But even so, the text is not free from fault. So I shall suspend judgment until I can find something more definite either in the commentaries of Gregory of Nazianzus on the Rhetoric, or elsewhere.

Pindar records a similar sentiment in Olympian eight: [greek] 'A man that performs fitting deeds / Gives no thought to Hades.' Life is short, but the memory of good deeds never dies, and for that reason those who have done splendid things that deserve to be remembered for ever depart this life more contentedly and are not so appalled by death, because they know they will live on in the minds of future generations through the glory of their name.

Pindar again, in the same victory ode: To [greek] 'Easier it is for one who knows to teach.' This is like 'Learn, but only from those who have been well taught.' No one can more easily pass on a skill to another than the person who is thoroughly versed in it. He knows how to compress a great deal of information into a few words, he knows how to cast light on obscurities. The reason why some teachers take their pupils round in circles and keep them from making progress is either the desire to make more money, or else spite, or, finally, lack of skill.

In Antigone, Sophocles writes, [greek] 'When evils are upon us, 'tis best when they are short.' These words are addressed by the chorus to Creon, who longs to be removed from this life when faced by all the griefs that have befallen his house. There is much to be said for dying quickly if one is weary of life. Nothing is worse than enduring the mental torture of seeing some evil approaching which cannot be avoided. The best thing is to make sure that it doesn't last long.

Sophocles again, in the same play: 'Take me away, / [greek] "One who no more exists than one who is already nothing."' This idea signifies destruction without hope of recovery. I know I have already discussed 'We Trojans have ceased to be' and 'I am nothing,' but I decided to add this example because it puts the idea in a new way.

In the closing section of the same play: [greek] 'Wisdom is by far the foremost part of happiness.' This was said in reference to Creon who chose to follow the dictates of passion rather than clear thinking, and brought destruction on himself and those nearest him. Without wisdom, great good fortune easily turns to great misfortune. A little earlier in the play, Sophocles expresses the same idea from the opposite point of view. Speaking of Haemon, who had taken his own life, the poet says, 'Proclaiming to the world how rashness divorced from thought / Becomes the greatest evil that can befall a man.'

Sophocles again, in the same play: [greek] 'Alas! Too late you seem to realize what is right.' This is said with reference to Creon, who earlier on would not give way to Tiresias or any of his people, but, having learnt his lesson through dreadful happenings, now blames his folly. We find the same sentiment again in the closing lines of the play, expressed differently: 'Exacting dreadful vengeance for overweening words / The gods teach men in old age to be wise.' This agrees with 'The Phrygians learn wisdom too late.'

There is quite a number of proverbs about the slow vengeance of the gods, which I have recorded above. Sophocles' lines about the swift vengeance of heaven suggest that we should come to our senses promptly if we have fallen into some wickedness. The chorus is addressing Creon: Do it with all speed, O King. For swift-footed mischief from the gods
Seizes evil-minded men and cuts them off.
That is what happened to Creon, for vengeance fell on him almost before Tiresias had finished his prophesying.

In the same play, Creon says, [greek] 'Fight not against the fates, for that fight is hard.' We have cited this same sentiment elsewhere, culled from various authors. No one can escape what God sends us, and what can't be avoided must be endured, not railed against. 'For the fates lead the willing man, the unwilling man they drag,' as the writer of the tragedies says.

In the same play, when Tiresias becomes impassioned in the manner of prophets and attacks the king rather too boldly, Creon replies, [greek] 'I will not return evil words for evil to a prophet.' Horace's words, 'Bards are an irascible tribe,' do not apply to poets only but even more so to people with prophetic powers. You have to wheedle to get anything out of them, and if you offend them, their prophecy is entirely bad. We can use this phrase when somebody assails us with uncontrolled abuse, being in the grip of a sort of madness, and when we are unwilling, out of respect for his position, to return insult for insult, though there is much that we might say by way of reply; or when we permit anger, as a kind of derangement, to say what it will. It is as much use to enter into a contest of insults with a man in the grip of anger as with a madman. This is very like a saying I recorded earlier, 'Hands off the holy man.' Also, 'Were you not my father,' which occurs in this same play, addressed to Creon by Haemon.

In the same scene, Creon says to Tiresias, [greek] 'Prophets as a tribe are money-lovers, each and every one.' In the past, augurs and soothsayers had this bad reputation, and I wish that when the same accusation is levelled against those who handle the things of God today, the charge were not deserved. No one who takes gifts and is thereby induced to say what people want to hear can be relied on to speak the truth at all times.

In the same passage of the play, Tiresias is provoked into threatening Creon with the following words: [greek] 'You will make me utter what lies quiescent in my thoughts.' We can use this phrase when the outrageous behaviour of an opponent drives us to say something about which we had decided to keep silent. Creon had angered Tiresias with the insult 'A skilful prophet you may be, but you love unjust accusation.' This in its turn can be used of a man who is shrewd or learned, but unprincipled. Related is the saying 'You move what should not be moved.'

Again in Antigone, the following words are given to Tiresias as he tries to persuade Creon to let Polynices' body be buried:
Make concession to the dead. Do not stab
A man who is no more. What prowess is it
[greek] 'To slay the dead again?'
This is like a saying I discussed earlier, 'To cut a dead man's throat.'

It is a pious sentiment to say, [greek] 'No mortal man has power to violate (or pollute) the gods,' but when Creon utters these words he is being impious.1 The ancients believed that offence was given to the gods of the underworld if a dead person were denied burial, and to Jove, the protector of suppliants, if a suppliant's plea were rejected. Creon thought that nothing of this sort was of any concern to the gods, because no mortal could injure them. Some people think it improper for God to lie concealed in the Virgin's womb and to come into the world from a woman's belly, just like the rest of mankind. Others think the Body of the Lord is polluted because it goes down into the foul human stomach. To all these one can intone in reply, 'No mortal man can the gods pollute.' The sun is not polluted, though its beams fall on sewers and swamps.

Tiresias, in the same speech addressed to Creon, says:
I mean you well, and speak to bring you good.
Pleasant it is to learn, when he who speaks
Wishes well and says what will bring advantage.
Haemon had said the same thing earlier in the play: 'Right and proper it is to listen to good advice.' This agrees with 'Listen to a man who speaks from the heart,' and also with that line from Hesiod, which expresses approval of the man who follows good advice.

The same Tiresias addresses Creon, warning him to take thought in the crucial situation in which he finds himself: 'Think, now that once again / You tread [greek] "Upon the razor's edge of fate."' On the heels of the calamity brought upon the community by the quarrel of Eteocles and Polynices has come this one, engendered by Cleon's offence against heaven. I have already quoted this line in the course of discussing the proverb 'On the razor's edge.'

Creon threatens his son Haemon, when he remonstrates with him too freely: 'Senseless yourself, you shall as you repent / Teach others to have sense.' When wrongdoers pay the penalty for their folly, though they themselves are not bettered by it, they are nonetheless a warning to others not to fall into similar disaster through thoughtless action.

In the same tragedy, Tiresias warns Creon not to hold to his own view of things with rigid obstinacy, and says, [greek] 'The stubborn mind pays the penalty of its mindlessness.' That kind of intractable ferocity is usually the prelude to some great disaster, as it says in the Hebrew Book of Proverbs: 'Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' Haemon put forward the same view as Tiresias earlier in the play, tellingly expressing it through metaphors taken from trees and sailors:
You see how trees that grow beside the streams
Which winter rains have to torrents turned,
If they yield, their branches keep intact.
Those that resist are torn out root and branch.
Likewise, the master of the ship, holding
The sheets too tight, his boat capsizes,
And on his journey goes, clinging to upturned benches.

I have already recorded 'To be in the same boat,' said of those who share a common danger. Ismene has the same idea in mind when she says she is quite prepared to share the same danger as her sister Antigone: 'In this your misfortune, I am not ashamed / [greek] "Toboard your boat and share your suffering."'