Adagia 4101–4200

Human beings are so constituted that they round on someone who brings bad news as fiercely as if he were responsible for it. When Creon rails at the messenger for bringing unwelcome tidings, he replies, 'He who has done the deed wounds your soul; I trouble only your ears.' He also says, 'No one ever loves the bearer of bad tidings.' This saying can be used in a situation where it is necessary to reprimand someone for committing a fault, so that the guilty person then vents his anger on himself rather than on the one who applies the necessary rebuke. The rebuke is unwelcome at the time, but a guilty conscience pricks for ever.

I have already listed [greek] 'You pursue the impossible.' Sophocles expressed the same idea in different words in Antigone: It is not right even to start upon a hopeless quest. Here Ismeme is trying to deter Antigone from burying Polynices in defiance of the king's order.

The same Ismene, when trying to persuade Antigone to abandon her bold plan, says, 'Hot is the heart you bring to this cold task.' I have already noted that 'a hot deed' is one that is bold and precipitate. By 'cold' here she means 'unlikely to be carried through.'

Again in the same play, Ismene says, 'There is no sense at all in doing what is needless.' It is folly not only to do what is not right, but also to do what is not necessary. Sometimes there is something to be gained from the unjust deed, but never from the unnecessary.

The following words of Creon in the same tragedy have a proverbial ring: 'Of that one man, whosoe'er he be, / Chosen by the city as its ruler, / Every command must be obeyed, / Small things, just things, and their opposites.' But these are the words of a tyrant, not a prince, for he who commands injustice is no prince.

When Creon begins to speak and act like a tyrant, Haemon stings him with the following words: 'What one man owns can never be a city.' Creon had just said that he and no other had the right to rule the land. Haemon replies that there cannot be a city where the supreme power is in the hands of a single individual. The Greek word for city, polis, comes either from a Greek word meaning 'to go about in,' or from one meaning 'many.' The Latin term is respublica 'republic.' It is not a republic where everything proceeds and is done according to the decision of one individual. So when Creon replies that the city belongs to him that rules it, Haemon retorts, 'Yes, if you rule alone an empty land.' The proper function of a king is to command free men and not attempt anything without the consent of the citizens.

In the Philebus Plato represents Socrates as saying 'All philosophers agree, and in so doing they enhance their own standing, that "The mind is the queen of heaven and earth."' His view is that everything is directed by wisdom rather than pleasure. After Philebus had argued that happiness depends on a combination of wisdom and pleasure, the discussion then moved on to the question of which of the two was of more significance for the attainment of the happy life. Plato's remark that everyone agreed on this hints at its being a common saying. Sophocles' character Haemon expresses a comparable idea: 'Father, it is the gods that grant men wisdom, / The noblest thing of all that they possess.'

In book two of his work the Making of an Orator, Cicero uses the phrase 'To throw the first spears' in the sense of 'to start the preliminary skirmishing.' He applies this to the orator, whose opening words should be low-key and unimpassioned, so that his speech is able to take fire as it goes along. In this passage he censures the orator Philippus for being in the habit of rising to speak without knowing what was the first word he was going to utter. Philippus used to say that he didn't start fighting until he had got his arm warmed up, but, as Cicero comments, Philippus did not notice that the very gladiators from whom he took his simile did indeed throw those self-same 'first spears,' even if they did so without exerting a lot of force at this point, their aim being to display graceful movement while saving their strength for later. This becomes proverb-like if it is transferred to the opening section of a discussion or dispute. One can express the same idea with the simple word 'to skirmish.'

In the same book, Cicero uses another proverbial expression when he says, 'Follow along the stream,' meaning to ignore the essential point and say things not particularly relevant. Jerome seems to have been very fond of using 'streams' in this metaphorical way.2 Cicero says, 'It is the sign of thick-wittedness to follow along the stream and not see its source. But by this time persons of our maturity and experience will fetch what we want from the fountain-head and see whence flows this material.'

Activities which have no serious purpose but are intended only for relaxation and display are said to be 'Things of oil and the wrestling-school.' The contenders in the wrestling-school strove unarmed but oiled. The oil made it more difficult to grip an opponent and easier to escape from his. hold; also it made the body shine, as they wrestled naked. In the Making of an Orator, book one, Cicero writes, 'They use glossy, luxuriant words which belong more to oil and the wrestling-school than to the hurly-burly of politics and the lawcourts.' Some oratorical schools practise this kind of wellworn sophistic oratory, which teaches a man how to triumph in an artificial, show-piece debate, but makes him useless for genuine law-suits. So one of the characters in this same book is quite right to say that speaking needs to be brought out of the domestic, sheltered training-ground into the middle of the action, into the dust and shouting, the camp, the battle-line of the courts. Likewise, in book two, where he is speaking of Isocrates' students: 'Some of them had ambitions to excel in display, others in battle.' A passage in book one of On the Laws deals with the same subject: 'Antipater was contemporary with Fannius. He blew a bit harder and displayed some strength. This may have been rough and unpolished, without any sign of gloss or the exercise-ground, but he was able to show the others that they should take more care with their writing.' Here Cicero uses 'gloss' instead of 'oil' as above. In the work on famous orators, he uses 'glossier' in the sense of 'more brilliant': 'By now a glossier and showier style of speaking had come in.' Again, in the Orator, a work he addressed to Brutus: 'Rhythm was not yet out in the open and had no necessary relationship or connection with prose. So it was only later, once it had been observed and recognized, that it brought to prose style the finishing touch, something of the wrestling-school.' By 'wrestling-school' here he means a certain attractiveness of movement, introduced purely to give pleasure. In this last passage there is another proverbial expression, extrema lineamenta 'the finishing touch,' a metaphor derived from painting.

In the same book, Cicero is employing a proverbial turn of phrase when he applies the words 'Hired labourers' to people who plead cases without any knowledge of philosophy. An architect says how a building is to be constructed, using his expert knowledge; the day-labourers do not use their own judgment, but merely apply their labour where they are directed. Someone with philosophical expertise is equipped to speak properly on any topic out of his inner resources. Cicero says, with reference to Mnesarchus, 'The men whom we call orators he said were nothing but a kind of hired labourer, with quick and practised tongues. No one could be an orator unless he were a philosopher.' Again in Brutus: 'I am not so concerned about your collecting together all these "hired labourers." I imagine some people would gladly be dead in order to qualify for inclusion in your list of orators.' In the book On Famous Orators he says this kind of orator mostly 'has the power of human speech': 'We don't want to leave out anyone with the power of human speech, so let's include Gaius Cosconius Calidianus.'3 This word 'labourer' could be used of preachers who are not sufficiently expert in the Scriptures and so learn up something out of books of extracts, which they can then thunder at the people with much waving of arms; or those who boom out in choir what they don't understand. Not preachers, but hired labourers; not choristers, but hired labourers.

As I recorded earlier, Plautus calls 'stage-nonsense' the things always being trotted out in comedy. Cicero calls 'A sing-song from the schools' a piece of declamation suited to students, more a demonstration of technique than an expression of sensible content. The phrase comes in a passage from the book quoted above: 'You must oblige our young friends, Crassus. They don't want a piece of stock fluency from some Greek or other, no singsong from the schools. They want something from the wisest and most eloquent of men, and what's more, one shown to be supreme in counsel and eloquence, not in minor literary productions, but in causes of the greatest import, right here in this very seat of empire and glory.' The phrase can be applied to those who have never made the acquaintance of good authors, never drawn solid learning from the fountain-head, but simply keep to the old themes chanted over and again in the schools. Examples are: 'I would not believe the Gospel, if the authority of the Church did not compel me'; 'No offering is acceptable to the Holy Spirit if what is needful is omitted'; 'The Lord Jesus did many other things which have not been written down'; 'No forgiveness of the sin without restitution of the thing.'

Of those who seem especially fitted by nature for something in particular, we say, using a proverbial expression, that they are born, made, fashioned, for whatever it is. In the same book Cicero used a neat expression for such remarkable natural ability: 'There are others who are so well fitted in all these points, so well supplied with natural gifts, that they seem to be not just born but fashioned by some divinity.' There is an allusion here to Pandora, who was fashioned by Vulcan, with all the other gods each conferring on her his or her own gift.

'A fellow out of the gutter' - so we speak of a low-class contemptible person. Cicero has a phrase, 'Out of a group in the street.' This 'group in the street' is a gathering of men chatting together in the town centre or in the squares. Crassus, in the book I have just cited, says, 'I have poured out before you all my thoughts on the subject. If you had picked any ordinary family man out of a group in the street, possibly he would have given the same answer to your question.'

In the old Jurisconsults, a person against whom a suit was brought was said to be summoned Ex hire manum consertum 'To lay on hands according to the law.' Also, a person who lost the right of raising an action by raising it wrongly was said Causa cadere 'To fall from the case,' that is, to lose the action. Either of these phrases can be treated as proverbial if used metaphorically; for example, 'The theologians never stop summoning Lorenzo Valla "to lay on hands according to law," because, although a literary man, he has seized on theological territory.' Both phrases are put into the mouth of Scaevola in Cicero's book, the Making of an Orator, 'As for the assumption you made at the end of your discourse, apparently assuming yourself to be within your rights so to do, namely, that the orator can deal more than adequately with any topic whatsoever under discussion, if we were not in your own kingdom, I would not have let it pass. I would be putting myself at the head of a whole company of people prepared to dispute with you by interdict, or summon you "To lay on hands according to the law."' And then a little further on: 'When Hypsaeus was going on at great length and at the top of his voice, trying to get the praetor, Marcus Crassus, to rule that the person he was defending should be allowed causa cadere "to withdraw from the action," and Gnaeus Octavius, a man of consular rank, was, in a speech equally long, objecting to the opposing party causa cadere "so withdrawing .. ."' Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Lucius Murena: 'If you think it reflects badly on you, if a person to whom you have given legal advice and whom you later oppose in court should then causa cadere "lose his action" .. .' Quintilian is thinking of this in book seven, chapter four. The ancients stuck religiously to the procedure by which anyone who made even a verbal error in raising an action automatically 'lost his action.' There are considerable traces of this blind sticking to the rules in England, where sometimes a whole legal document is rejected because a name is written with a mistake in a single letter. Justinian in book four of the Institutes, title 'On actions,' section beginning 'If anyone':
If a plaintiff included in his statement of claim more than appertained to him,
causa cadebat 'he lost his action/ meaning that he lost the cause of action and
was only with difficulty restored to his original status, unless he was under
twenty-five years of age ...
In the next paragraph, he demonstrates four aspects of this 'overclaim': thing, time, place, cause; 'thing,' if twenty gold pieces are claimed instead of ten; 'time,' if the demand is made before the date specified or before stated conditions are fulfilled; 'place,' if payment is demanded in Rome when it was promised in Ephesus; 'cause,' if a person promised to hand over either Stichus or twenty gold pieces, and there is a straight demand for Stichus when the promissor or debtor-party has the right of election. The phrases rem amittere 'lose the cause of action,' litem perdere 'lose the case,' formula cadere 'lose the case on a fault in the formula' seem to mean much the same thing as causa cadere. See Justinian in book four, title 'On defences' in the paragraph beginning 'Defences are styled': 'When they rashly brought the issue into litigation and thereby destroyed it, whereby rem amittebant "they lost the cause of action .. ."' Horace in Satires:
As it so happened, it was already time for him
To answer a summons to the court:
If he did not himself present, perdere litem 'his case was lost.'
Quintilian, in chapter eight of book three: 'I am well aware that there are many changes to the basis of action in all those cases where someone is said "to lose on a fault in the formula." The questions asked are whether this person is entitled to bring the case, to bring it against this person, to do so under the provisions of this law, in this court, at this time.' In the forty-ninth letter of the sixth book, Seneca is speaking of philosophers who make a parade of their erudition by employing verbal trickery. 'What is your object/ he says, 'when you deliberately lead the person you are interrogating to make contradictory statements, if not to make it appear that he has formula cecidisse "lost his case on a fault in the formula"? But just as the praetor "restores" the man in a law-suit "to his original status," so does philosophy restore these.' This very phrase in integrum restituere 'to restore to the original status,' meaning 'to start afresh,' can be considered as a saying if it is transferred from its legal use and applied metaphorically to other things. Likewise, causa cadere 'to lose his case' can be used metaphorically of a man who has lost the right to censure his son because he has more or less provoked him into a dissolute way of life either by his own example or by giving him too much money. The formula 'lay on hands according to the law' actually comes from the Twelve Tables, according to Aulus Gellius in book twenty of the Attic Nights, chapter nine. In ancient times, those who were in dispute about a field or some such thing used to go out to the actual site and, in the presence of the praetor, by way of claiming ownership, would 'apply hands,' that is, each would seize the other's hand. But when the boundaries of Italy were extended, the praetors were unwilling to go long distances to oversee this procedure, and 'so the practice grew up of the parties to the dispute not "laying on of hands according to the law" in the presence of the praetor, but summoning to a "laying on of hands according to the law," that is, each would summon the other "to lay hands on" the thing in dispute according to the law, and then they would go together to the property in question and bring back some soil, or even a single sod, to the praetor's court in the city, and there lay claim to that sod as if to the whole field.' In book seven of the Letters to Friends, Cicero is writing to Trebatius, who was a Jurisconsult. He says, 'I am just afraid that your skills will not be of much use to you. From what I hear, the people there:
Claim not the thing by law, by laying on of hands,
But by the sword; dominion they desire,
By solid violence they proceed.'
Cicero paints a humorous picture of this kind of procedure for claiming ownership in his speech in defence of Lucius Murena:
They were furious because they were afraid that once it was generally known
and understood on what days the courts could sit people would be able to
go to law without their assistance. So they thought up some formulae, so that
their presence would be necessary on every occasion, though the following
procedure would have done very nicely. 'The Sabine farm is mine.' 'No it isn't,
it's mine.' Then the judgment. What they preferred was: "The farm which lies
in the territory that is called Sabine' - plenty of words there! So, what next?
'I declare it to be mine according to the law.' And then? 'On that account
I summon you there to the laying on of hands according to the law.' The
man against whom the claim was being raised was at a loss to know what
to say to such a loquacious litigant. So the legal expert crosses over to the
other character, like the Latin flute-players on the stage. He then says, 'On
that matter on account of which you have summoned me to lay on hands
according to the law, on that same account I summon you there in return.'
The phrase is itself metaphorical, derived from warfare, where those who fight at close quarters are said 'to join hand-to-hand,' as Varro tells us in book two of the Latin Language.

Certain words have acquired proverbial status by being obsolete or peculiar to a particular profession. For example, the old jurists used a word Herciscere 'To apportion an inheritance,' hence an action herciscundae familiae 'for apportioning an estate.' The word used here for 'estate,' familia, embraces the whole heritable property and heritable chattels. This kind of action finds its origin in the Twelve Tables, from which the following citation is given in the Codex: 'If the co-heirs desire to relinquish ownership in common, they shall institute action.' If the phrase is used metaphorically of some other kind of division, it becomes a saying. An example is: 'When Guillaume Bude and Leonardo de Portis were in dispute over which of them first discovered the as, Janus Lascaris was appointed arbiter herciscundae gloriae "in the apportioning of the glory."' In the present century, quite a few monks have not hesitated to 'apportion' amongst themselves what was previously common property, and that without reference to any legal process.

A really heart-rending situation is said, in the words of an exaggerated but common turn of speech, to be piteous enough 'To wring tears out of a stone.' In that same work, On the Making of an Orator, Cicero writes:
No, if you were upholding the will, you would make it appear that the validity
of every will ever made hung on that particular case; if you were supporting
a soldier's claim, your oratory would, as so often, rouse his father from the
dead, set him before our eyes, you would embrace the son, commend him
to the court with tears, make the very stones, God bless us, weep and wail,
so that that old formula, 'As tongue hath uttered,' would seem to come, not
from the Twelve Tables which you revere more than a whole library of books,
but from some magic incantation.
Our Lord used a similar hyperbole once or twice, when He said to the Pharisees that 'if these were silent, the stones would shout out'; and to the Jews, priding themselves on their ancestry, that 'God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.' Though in the mouth of Christ perhaps no statement is to be seen as a hyperbole, as He can bring about whatever is His will. In Cicero's words, the 'magic incantation' is an allusion to another saying, for anything that stirs us deeply is 'More effective than any spell,' as I recorded earlier.

Cicero uses the term 'Thonged spears' of weapons supplied ready for use in battle. The amentum is a thong attached to the spear, into which the thrower inserts his hand. The phrase can be used metaphorically of a saying or form of words supplied by someone else. The passage in question comes from the book I have been citing hitherto: 'But on a point of law where experts disagree, it is not difficult for the orator to find some authority to support whatever side he is supporting. From that authority he will take his "thonged spears," which he will then hurl with all the muscle and force of the orator.' Cicero again, in Brutus, speaking of Titus Accius of Pisaurum: 'He spoke for the other side when I was defending Aulus Cluentius. He was a careful and reasonably eloquent speaker, and equipped moreover with the precepts of Hermagoras. Even if these precepts do not supply much in the way of rich ornamentation, they do offer appropriate and ready-made arguments for all the different types of law-suits, rather like the thonged spears supplied to skirmishers.' Again in Topica, speaking of jurisconsults, he says, 'They lend support and can be consulted, and when scrupulous advocates have recourse to their wisdom, they supply them with weapons.' Quintilian has something on the same subject in book twelve, chapter three: 'Nor am I ignorant of the way we usually do things, or forgetful of those who sit, as it were, by the boxes of weapons and supply those in action; and I am well aware that Greek practice was the same, hence their name pragmatici for attorneys, that is, "dealing with the practical side" ' So a weapon ready for hurling, devised by another but delivered by you, can well be called 'a thonged spear.' This is like something I wrote about earlier, about a shoe made by one person and worn by another. Just such a weapon and just such a shoe was Lysias' speech, which Socrates certainly judged to be a very nice specimen, but said did not suit himself.

People are generally more inclined to frivolous pleasures than to worthwhile pursuits. Cicero put this neatly in the second book of his Making of an Orator. 'They would rather hear the discus than a philosopher.' There was an outdoor form of exercise in which a bronze disc was hurled into the air from ground level, being made by strength and skill to land within a certain area. The places where this sport was played, which were called gymnasia, were also used for philosophical lectures. But when the signal for the discus sounded, everyone abandoned the philosopher. Crassus is speaking in the passage in question:
Gymnasia were invented centuries before the philosophers started jabbering
away in them, and even today when philosophers have taken possession of
every gymnasium, the audience prefers the sound of the discus to the philoso-
pher. As soon as the discus clinks, they abandon the philosopher right in the
middle of his exposition of serious and important subjects and go and oil
themselves for exercise. And so they put frivolous enjoyment before serious
benefit, as the philosophers at least judge it.
This can be jokingly transferred to a dish of food, the clink of which many would rather hear than the voice of a philosopher.

Gathering shells and 'navels' on the sea-shore is a sign of being on holiday. It is usually done by children, but can be taken over by people who are normally busy with other things but allow less serious pursuits to intervene occasionally for the sake of relaxation. The orator Crassus, in book two of Cicero's the Making of an Orator, speaking of Laelius and Scipio, says:
I hesitate to say this of men of such standing, but Scaevola vouches for the
story that they used to gather shells and 'navels' at Caieta and by the Lucrine
Lake, and indulge in every kind of lightheartedness and prank.
By 'navels,' I think he means either shells or pebbles shaped like a navel or the plant which is called 'Venus' navel' according to Dioscorides. The incredible variety seen in sea-shells shows nature at her most sportive. See Pliny, book nine, chapter thirty-three, where he writes:
So many different colours, so many different shapes - flat and concave,
long and crescent-shaped, circular, semi-circular, humped, smooth, grooved,
toothed, striated, the body whorled like a murex, the margins tapering to
a point, spreading outwards or folded inwards. Some with little streaks of
colour, some fringed, crinkly, with undulations like tubes or combs or semi-
circular tiles, or patterned like a net, thin and oblong or square, thick, elon-
gated, wavy, joined with a small hinge or all along one side, open like a
cupped hand or curved in like a horn .. .'
In the underground habitation close to Cumae in Italy, popularly believed to have been the Sibyl's cave, though it was most likely the lair of robbers and pirates, visitors can observe the walls covered with all kinds of shells in the manner of a mosaic. Valerius Maximus in book eight chapter eight tells the same story about Scipio and Laelius as Cicero does.

People entirely at leisure, free from all usual business, were said 'to do nothing.' Cicero, in the same work, makes Crassus say to Scaevola:
Well then, I said, when will you carry out your public duties? Serve your
friends? See to your own affairs? When for that matter will you do nothing?
Then I added, 'I don't think a man is free if he can't do nothing sometimes.'
He then goes on to explain what 'doing nothing' means. 'I stick to my opinion, Catulus, and when I come here what I find so delightful is precisely this doing nothing, being totally idle.' Being idle means not only not doing something specific, but being at leisure. It is a good thing to do nothing sometimes, so that we can do other things properly. I showed earlier that people who waste their time are also said 'to do nothing.'

When crops put on too much growth, country men say they 'grow rank,' and call the unseasonal luxuriance 'rankness.' They deal with it by putting in horses or sheep to graze it down. Virgil: 'He grazes down the excessive growth while the blade is young.' In the book cited above, Cicero writes:
If our friend Sulpicius would do this, his style would be much more compact. As it is, it displays a certain rankness of growth, which, as farmers say when crops run to leaf, needs to be grazed down, in his case by the exercise of the eraser.

Those who have only a slight grasp of something are said to 'Hold it by the hem.' The opposite is 'To be gripped by the middle.' Cicero, in book three of the Making of an Orator, writes, 'The other type, which is concerned with particular times, places, things, they do grasp, but only by the hem.' Without doubt, Cicero drew this metaphor from popular speech, for we find the same saying today among our own countrymen, when someone is extending a half-hearted invitation. Related to this is 'To tear the cloak.' In Terence, Mida takes hold of Geta's cloak and jerks him back. Cicero seems to be thinking here of Plautus' line in the Comedy of Asses: 'They're both in tears, and she's hanging on to the hem of his cloak.'

In the same passage, Cicero uses a similar type of expression, 'Break off a twig,' meaning that someone does not have a thorough grasp of a whole discipline, but merely extracts the snippet that will do for present purposes. The Jurisconsults often quote some sentence or excerpt from the theologians. The passage in Cicero runs as follows:
Thus they say so far, and they use this classification in determining the type of case, but in so doing they seem not to be claiming back some lost possession by legal process or in court, but staking a claim to it by breaking off a twig from the civil law.

In Juvenal's Satires, the rich man says, 'Who cares about reputation if the money's safe?' And Dorio in Terence is not ashamed of his breach of faith so long as it makes money. More honourable is Orestes' remark in Sophocles' Electra: 'No word I deem can evil be that brings advantage.' They had agreed to pretend that he was dead, and these words show that he thinks his being thought dead will not hurt the living, but will forward the course of action on which they had decided. They had come with the intention of avenging Agamemnon's death, and that they achieved.

[greek], A horse's old age. I have already spoken of those who after a distinguished career are rejected because they have grown old. But Sophocles in the same play testifies to the old age of a noble horse in the following lines: As a noble horse, though now advanced in years,
When dangers threaten, still his wonted spirit shows
And pricks his ears, even so do you encourage me
And stand yourself beside me in the foremost line.
Orestes says these words to his aged tutor whose support and counsel helped him to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

In the same play, Electra says the following about Orestes, who is delaying his return: 'Always proposing but never doing, / He has destroyed my present and my absent hopes.' The proverb lies in the use of the figure 'present and absent,' meaning 'all.'

When Electra complains about her brother, saying, 'He says, but does nothing of what he says,' the Chorus replies, 'He who embarks on a mighty deed must needs go cautiously.' This means that one must not make hasty decisions in difficult and dangerous enterprises. To this Electra replies, 'It was not by caution that I saved his life.' She means that hesitation can be fatal when danger is upon us.

In the same play Electra says to her sister Chrysothemis:
Oftimes indeed have trivial words
Cast down mortal men or set them up.
She means that great mistakes can arise from a few words misunderstood, and also a misapprehension can be rectified from a few words understood aright. I have spoken elsewhere of the serious consequences that can follow on some trivial matter.

In the same play, Chrysothemis replies to her sister Electra and the Chorus who are both urging her to a particular course of action: 'I will do it. / "It is not reasonable for one against two to strive."' This is related to 'Not even Hercules can take on two.' And there is also a reference to the idea in Catullus' Epithalamium: 'Do not fight against the two.'

When Clytemnestra upbraids her daughter Electra for speaking ill of her as a murderess who had killed her own husband, she gets this answer: 'From wicked deeds other wicked deeds are learned.' This means that if the daughter spoke disrespectfully of her mother, she herself was to blame because she had taught her children to hate their mother by killing her husband and plotting her son's death. A few lines later, Electra spells it out more clearly: 'Actions generate the words to suit them.' Everyone knows Socrates' dictum 'A man should strive to be in reality what he wants to be thought to be.' Reputation has its roots in action, good from good acts, evil from evil. A man who is discredited because of his own discreditable acts has no right to be angry with those who speak ill of him, but only with himself for supplying people with material to use against him. Nor should he seek vengeance on his detractors, but rather endeavour by good deeds to wipe out the evil repute he has earned.

In Homer, Jupiter is threatening his wife and says that his hands are 'not to be resisted,' because they harm whom they will and cannot be harmed by anyone in return. A similar idea is expressed by Orestes' tutor in the same play: 'But whensoever a god does harm, / No one, however strong he be, ever can escape. Men usually find something or other to blame for their calamities, but in reality most of the misfortunes that occur are so beyond expectation that they seem to be visited upon us by the gods. Human foresight is powerless in the face of Heaven's decree.

Those who are not paying attention to the matter in hand are said to be 'away from home.' Those who are far away from the truth are said to be 'in another country.' When her sister tells her that Orestes, who was reported dead, is alive, Electra replies, 'You do not know where on earth your thoughts are rushing you, / Or where in mind you roam.' It is the metaphor that makes this proverbial. In the same way, one can say of someone who does not stick to the point, 'Where's he off to now?' or 'What compass point is he being blown to?' This last is derived from sailing.

Some persons are of the opinion that because they come of noble ancestry, this very fact entitles them to behave disgracefully. In reality, the distinction of the family functions like a torch, with the result that the errors of those of noble birth earn more notoriety than those of humble origins. Electra expresses this sentiment in the following line from the same play: 'Shame it is for those well-born shamefully to live.' But when she speaks of 'living shamefully' here, Electra does not mean doing things that are morally wrong, but living in servitude when one is free born. This agrees with 'When you are not the man you were, why wish to go on living?'

In the same play, Electra announces that she will seek an end to her sorrows by taking her life. She says, ''I do not see the dead enduring pain.' It is in this belief that Pliny expresses the view that the greatest gift given by the gods to man is that each individual has the power in his own hands of choosing when to quit life. Socrates said something better. He teaches that it is wrong for the soul to desert its post in the body without the express command of God, the commander-in-chief.

In the same play, when Orestes asks how Clytemnestra is hurting her, whether by physical violence or other types of harm, Electra replies, 'By violence and by harm and every kind of ill.' This phrase will therefore fit a man who destroys in every possible way, by poison, by violence, words, deeds.

Anything derived from the ultimate authority is said to be 'Fetched from the fountain-head.' In book two of the Making of an Orator, Cicero says, 'Persons of our maturity and experience will fetch what we want from the fountain-head and see whence flows all this material.' Again, in the first chapter of book one of On the Laws, we have: 'You are leading our enquiry pretty far back, brother, right to the fountain-head.' And then: 'So do you want us to trace the origin of justice right back to the source?' He uses 'fountain-head' in the first two instances, 'source' in this last one. Again in the Topics: 'When the argument is based on genus, it will not be necessary to take that right back to the fountain-head.' In the Tusculan Disputations, somewhere or other, he uses 'Fetch from the fountain-head' in the sense of 'take right back to the beginning.'

There is a proverb to be found in the words I quoted earlier from Cicero's speech in defence of Lucius Murena. He says there that the legal expert, after instructing the plaintiff, crosses over 'Like a Latin fluteplayer' to the defendant, to fit him up with the proper form of words. It is not all that clear how the simile originated, though it seems a reasonable conjecture that it started with those inhabitants of Latium in distant times who used to put on plays in the villages and towns, employing only one flute-player. The actors used to speak and move in time with the music, being too inexperienced otherwise to preserve the rhythm of the verse. After this flute-player had led one actor through his part, he then had to cross over to the other actor when it was his turn to speak, and by the notes of the flute guide him likewise through the measures of the verse, and then go back to the first. These rural characters were incapable of acting out plays or mimes correctly without a flute-player to lead them. This suggestion is supported by a passage in Cicero's Orator, the work addressed to Brutus, where he is talking about verse so constructed that it could pass for prose. He says there, 'We have something like this in Latin poetry too, like the lines from Thyestes: "Whoever can you be, coming in slow old age ..." Without the support of the flute-player, this is very like prose.' The earlier quotation is in the adage 'To lose one's action.'

I quoted Aristotle in an earlier adage to the effect that a man whose spirit is unalterable is 'A four-square man,' because a square is no different, whichever side it is viewed from. Anything appropriate and fitting is said to 'square.' Cicero used the phrase 'to square up' in a metaphorical way in the Orator, when he was speaking of well-arranged, rhythmical diction: Once this periodic style, whether we call it circumscriptio, comprehensio, continuatio, or ambitu, had come into being, nobody who counted for anything composed a speech which was intended purely for enjoyment, away from the lawcourts and the confrontations of political life, without 'squaring up' practically every sentence and giving it rhythmical shape.The metaphor is derived from stonemasons. I am well aware that I have cited this phrase before, but I wanted to treat it more extensively, as I only touched on it there.

Clumsy men and clumsy movements devoid of technique Cicero tells us in the same work were called by the Greeks [greek] 'unfamiliar with the palaestra or wrestling-ground.' Those who trained in the wrestling-ground carried over a certain gracefulness of movement to other activities. As he says in the Orator, the work dedicated to Brutus, 'Not that everything is contained in philosophy, but it helps, just as physical exercises help the actor.' Examples are the roles of the Cyclops and Silenus. What Cicero says is: 'The style of people who do not give their sentences a rhythmical closure seems to me like the movements of those whom the Greeks call [greek] "unfamiliar with the wrestling-ground."' In his book On the Best Style of Speaking, Cicero uses the words 'stroll about like a man with a disciplined body' for 'proceed with graceful and harmonious movement.' He says: These faults were avoided by practically everyone who counted as an Attic speaker or employed the Attic style. But though they may be judged to be 'sound and unblemished,' insofar as this was their aim, this only qualifies them for strolling about in the exercise-ground palaestrice like men with disciplined bodies,' not for aiming at an Olympic crown. The words 'aim at an Olympic crown' are themselves proverbial, meaning 'aspire to great and solid praise via a hard struggle,' that is, to be successful in serious and weighty cases. Those who give private lectures under porticos for entertainment are 'taking a stroll in the exercise-ground'; those who conduct important cases in the public eye go out into the heat and dust, and face great danger in the hope of winning great praise.

'Fall in the race.' Cicero used these words to mean to fail to achieve some desired recognition, just as if someone seeking a degree in theology were to die before attaining the dignity of that title. In his book about famous orators, Cicero says, speaking of Galba, 'Our fathers' generation thought highly of him, and favoured him for the sake of his father's memory, but he fell in the race. Manilius' bill caused his downfall, in spite of the fact that he spoke in his own defence, because of the ill-will occasioned by the whole business of supposed conspiracy with Jugurtha.' We use a related figure when we speak of 'calling someone out of the race,' when we make him abandon something on which he has started and do something else. And people are said to be 'in the race' when they are making supreme efforts to achieve some goal. The metaphor is derived from competitive running and horse-racing.

Dancing with loose and sloppy movements was called 'dancing the Titius.' There was a dance of this sort which got its name from a bad orator called Titius. See Cicero, in the work I cited above: 'After these came Sextus Titius, a man with a fluent tongue and a sharp enough mind, but so sloppy and languid in movement that a dance was created called "the Titius." So you must beware of anything in delivery or manner of speaking that people will laugh at when it is mimicked.' Quintilian cites this passage from Cicero in book eleven, in the chapter on delivery. Similar phrases are 'dance the Cyclops,' as in Horace: 'He asked him to dance "the Cyclops."' Also, 'dance the cordax like Silenus.'

Things that are universally acclaimed at first sight are said to please 'Like a statue by Phidias.' Some statues are not immediately attractive, but we grow to like them if we look at them closely and often. Cicero, in the same book: 'When Quintus Hortensius was still a very young man, his ability was no sooner seen than approved, like a statue by Phidias. He made his first appearance in the courts in the consulship of Lucius Crassus and Quintus Scaevola, in the presence of these very same consuls, and won the plaudits not only of everyone else present, but of the two consuls also, who knew more about the subject than anyone else. He was nineteen years old at the time.' I imagine Cicero was thinking of the statue of Jove at Olympia, made by the famous Athenian sculptor Phidias, as Pliny tells us in book thirtyfour, chapter eight and book thirty-six chapter five.

Those whom people are beginning to think well of are said to 'Begin to count for something,' just as those who have already acquired some reputation are said to 'count for something.' Those who are totally disregarded 'count for nothing.' Cicero, in the same book: 'By such activities, though of very humble birth, he achieved office, influence, and wealth, and in spite of knowing no theory and having no real ability, he came to count for something in the ranks of pleaders.' A little later, speaking of Gaius Sicinius, he says: 'By following these rules and coming well-prepared to his cases, as he was not short of words, he was able by means of these same resources and the rhetorical theory which he had acquired, to come to count for something in the ranks of pleaders.'

'To know someone by his birth-mark' means to judge a person's whole nature from some small characteristic, just as we say 'To know a lion by his claws,' and as Protogenes recognized Apelles from the line. Cicero, in the book about famous orators, writes, 'As you appear to want to know me not from some birth-mark or cradle-token, but from my whole person, I will include some topics which might seem less essential.' This second metaphor is derived from the practice of adding cradle-tokens to infants who are rejected or exposed, by which they can be recognized later if ever the occasion arises. Or else the parents note some birthmark on the body. Bankers often add some such sign to their contract notes.

There was once a line of verse in common use: 'Be not ashamed to declare your occupation.' Many people are quite happy to live by some degrading but gainful occupation, but are ashamed to name it. Money-lenders prefer to be called financiers. Cicero cites this verse in the work I have already quoted. He says, 'Either it's that popular verse that says you shouldn't "be ashamed to declare your occupation," which won't let me conceal my pleasure in the subject; or else it's your enthusiasm that has extorted this volume from me ...'

[greek], Follow Dorian fashion. Said of people who went about with their bodies uncovered in a rather indecent manner. The saying derived from the girls in the Peloponnese who normally wore neither girdle nor tunic, only an outer garment open at both sides through which part of their naked bodies could be seen. In Sparta the girls actually went totally naked on some days. Juvenal complains vehemently about the see-through garments of the Romans.

[greek], Sons of Aetolians, a humorous proverbial name for people who were brazen and demanding like the Aetolians. The joke depends on the name: people who expected donations were said to speak Dorian fashion, and the Aetolians were so called, it seems, 'because [greek] "they demanded the lot."' This is mentioned by Stephanus.

This was the joke nickname which the population of Rome gave to people who produced a defence for what they had done wrong out of a dead man's papers. It started with Mark Antony. At his funeral oration over Caesar's body, he displayed Caesar's clothes and incited the people against his assassins. He then laid hold of Caesar's papers, containing his enactments, and wrote into them whatever he fancied. He pretended to be doing whatever he did on their authority, awarding magistracies, recalling from exile, releasing from prison. All the people who benefited from this justified themselves by pointing to the dead man's papers, and so people mockingly called them 'Dead man's men,' as Plutarch tells us in his Life of Mark Antony. This same nickname can be applied to those who use the same underhand ploy on wills.

We have the proverbial phrases 'Carry in our eyes' and 'Carry in our bosom,' meaning 'to love and cherish someone dearly.' These are metaphors transferred from mothers, who love their children tenderly and keep their eyes fixed on them to see that no harm befalls them, and carry them about cradled in their arms. Cicero uses both metaphors frequently. There is something similar in book 10 of Plato's Republic:[greek] 'to carry round on their heads.' 'On account of this wisdom they are so loved that their followers all but carry them round on their heads.'

[greek], Older than Iapetus. This is how Jupiter in Lucian addresses Cupid, when Cupid tries to make his youth an excuse: 'So you're a child, are you? You, Eros, older than Iapetus!'