C O L L E C T E D W O R K S OF E R A S M U S

V O L U M E 32
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COLLECTED WORKS OF

ERASMUS
ADAGES
IvilTOIxlOO

translated and annotated by R. A.B. Mynors

University of Toronto Press

Toronto / Buffalo / London
 The research and publication costs of the
Collected Works of Erasmus are supported by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The publication costs are also assisted by
University of Toronto Press.
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press 1989
Toronto / Buffalo / London
Printed in Canada

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Erasmus, Desiderius, d. 1536.
[Works]
Collected Works of Erasmus

Partial contents: v.32. Adages Ivil to IxlOO /

translated and annotated by R. A.B. Mynors.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-2412-2 (v. 32)

i. Erasmus, Desiderius, d. 1536.1. Title.

PA85OO 1974 876'.04 C74-6326-X rev.

 Collected Works of Erasmus
The aim of the Collected Works of Erasmus
is to make available an accurate, readable English text
of Erasmus' correspondence and his
other principal writings. The edition is planned
and directed by an Editorial Board, an Executive Committee,
and an Advisory Committee.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Alexander Dalzell, University of Toronto

James M. Estes, University of Toronto
Charles Fantazzi, University of Windsor
Anthony T. Graf ton, Princeton University
Paul F. Grendler, University of Toronto
James K. McConica, University of Toronto, Chairman
Erika Rummel, Executive Assistant
Robert D. Sider, Dickinson College
J.K. Sowards, Wichita State University
G.M. Story, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Craig R. Thompson, University of Pennsylvania

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Harald Bohne, University of Toronto Press

Alexander Dalzell, University of Toronto
James M. Estes, University of Toronto
Charles Fantazzi, University of Windsor
Anthony T. Graf ton, Princeton University
Paul F. Grendler, University of Toronto
James K. McConica, University of Toronto
Ian Montagnes, University of Toronto Press
R.J. Schoeck, Universitat Trier
R.M. Schoeffel, University of Toronto Press, Chairman
Robert D. Sider, Dickinson College
J.K. Sowards, Wichita State University
G.M. Story, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Craig R. Thompson, University of Pennsylvania
Prudence Tracy, University of Toronto Press
 ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Danilo Aguzzi-Barbagli, University of British Columbia

Maria Cytowska, University of Warsaw
O.B. Hardison jr, Georgetown University
Otto Herding, Universitat Freiburg
Jozef IJsewijn, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Robert M. Kingdon, University of Wisconsin
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Columbia University
Maurice Lebel, Universite Laval
Jean-Claude Margolin, Centre d'etudes superieures de la
Renaissance de Tours
Bruce M. Metzger, Princeton Theological Seminary
Clarence H. Miller, St Louis University
Heiko A. Oberman, University of Arizona
John Rowlands, British Museum
J.S.G. Simmons, Oxford University
John Tedeschi, University of Wisconsin
J. Trapman, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie
van Wetenschappen
J.B. Trapp, Warburg Institute
 Contents

Foreword
ix

Adages i vi i to i x 100
i

Notes
283

Works Frequently Cited

390

Table of Adages
391
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 Foreword

The aim of this translation of the second five hundred of the Adagia is to
present, as in the preceding volume (CWE 31), an English version of the final
form of a steadily augmented and revised work as left by Erasmus in 1536
and published in the Opera omnia of 1540. The purpose of the notes is to
identify the sources on which Erasmus drew, and to show how his
collections increased and fresh comments suggested themselves from the
Adagiorum Collectanea of his Paris days (1500) into the Aldine Chiliades of
1508 and its successive revisions published in Basel in 1515, 1517/8, 1520,
1523, 1528, 1530, 1533 and 1536. To pursue the use made of individual
adages in the vernacular literatures and in the graphic arts would have been
the task of a lifetime; it is the aim of this version to serve as a tool to workers
in those larger fields.
None of the serial volumes (CWE 31-36) should be judged in isolation. It is
the intention of the Editorial Board to conclude the Adagia with an
introductory volume (CWE 30), in which it is hoped to trace the progress of
the work in its compiler's hands, to relate it to the printed sources available
to him (which might well constitute a survey of the appearance in print of all
classical literature), and to say something of the printed editions and
summaries of the Adagiaa and of its relation to similar collections made by
others. There will also be the necessary indexes. And that will be the place to
acknowledge the debt which these notes must owe, not only to living
scholars, but to the army of textual editors and compilers of commentaries,
dictionaries, and concordances, without whom they could never have been
put together.
The Editorial Board and University of Toronto Press are pleased for the
opportunity to express once again their gratitude to the patron of the
Collected Works of Erasmus, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, for its generous support of the research and publication
costs of the edition.
RABM
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ADAGES

IvilTOIxlOO
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 I Vi 1 / LB II 22OE 3

i Saepe etiam est olitor valde opportuna locutus

Even a gardener oft speaks to the point

Aulus Gellius1 in his Nights, book 2 chapter 6, records that this line circulated
in old days as a proverb:
Even a gardener oft speaks to the point. It warns us not to despise salutary
advice because it comes from a humble source; for it sometimes happens that
a man of lowly position and of no account, or of very little education, says
something that even persons in high place should not despise. A counter-
part is Caecilius' remark in Cicero's2 Tusculan Questions: 'Under a ragged coat
oft wisdom lies/ Nor does that line in Plautus3 disagree, in his Captivi: 'How
oft concealment hides our greatest wits!' As for the Greek adage, I think the
reader should be warned that it is found in this form in all the texts of Gellius
I have yet seen. But, as I remember, my misgivings were aroused one day,
and the existence of some corruption was pointed out to me, by Paolo
Bombace4 of Bologna, much the most learned of the teachers of the
humanities in that city, and by far the most celebrated; and rightly so, for it
was he who first began to teach both Greek and Latin there with equal
qualifications both publicly and in private. He is in any case a man of
exquisite taste and very keen judgment; and I myself am so closely linked
with him both for his outstanding and many-sided learning and for his
exceptional charm of character, that I doubt whether I have ever had a more
intimate relationship with any fellow-creature or more enjoyed any man's
society. I remember his saying once, in the course of those long literary
discussions we used to have, that he did not like the word keporos, gardener,
in that proverb in Gellius, and thought that it was clearly spurious and
interpolated. He himself suspected, he said, in view of many similar
corruptions in the text of that author, that the word mdros, fool, had been
replaced with keporos by some keen gardener. At the time, although this
seemed highly probable, and the opinion of so eminent a scholar carried
great weight with me, yet I did not dare to disagree all by myself with the
consensus of so many copies. In the course, however, of my desultory
wanderings among Greek authors, I fell in by chance with a collection of
extracts, which bore no compiler's name but might have been put together by
Stobaeus5 or at any rate excerpted from him. There I found the following line,
cited from a tragedy of Aeschylus6 called The Phrygians: 'Even a foolish man
oft speaks to the point,' with kai mdros for keporos. Without hesitation I voted,
and I consider that all scholars should vote, for my friend Bombace's
proposal that mdros should be read instead of keporos, all the more so as the
same sentiment in so many words is still current among us at the present day:
'Even a fool sometimes speaks a wise word.' Moreover it balances the
 I Vl 1 / LB II 221D 4

opinion I have quoted above from Euripides:7 Tools in their folly speak/ For,
true as that is, yet it does occur sometimes that a silly man, either by accident
or inadvertently, says something excellent and very much to the point. We
often see this happen. What could the most exquisite wit have produced
more apt than the greeting of which Suetonius8 tells, offered to Pompey and
Julius Caesar by a man somewhat unsettled in his wits? - 'All hail, our
gracious king and queen!' It being remembered that Pompey was suspected
of plans to make himself king, and rumour had it that Caesar had been
enjoyed as his consort by King Nicomedes.

2 Copiae cornu
A horn of plenty

'AfAaXOeias Kspas, Amalthea's horn, or A horn of plenty. When we wish to

convey that there is abundance of everything, we speak of a cornucopia or
horn of plenty. The image is taken from a very early myth, told by our
authorities in various forms. In some1 it runs like this. Rhea, having given
birth to Jupiter, hid her baby in Crete for fear of his father, to be nursed by
two nymphs, Adrastea and Ida, daughters of Melisseus. They fed him on the
milk of a she-goat called Amalthea; and Jupiter, when he was grown up, set
this goat among the stars, where it is called in Greek the Heavenly She-goat.
One of its horns he gave to the nymphs who had nursed him as a reward for
their kindness, bestowing on it the remarkable property of producing a
generous supply of anything they might want. Ovid2 in book 5 of his Fasti
tells a rather different story:

The Naiad Amalthea in a grove

On Cretan Ida hid the infant Jove.
Conspicuous roamed, Mount Dicte's flocks among,
The lovely mother of two likely young,
A goat, with lofty backward-curving horn
And teats such as Jove's nurse might well adorn.
She gave the god her milk; but on an oak
One horn, half of her pride, (good lack!) she broke.
The nymph retrieved it, wreathed it in sweet slips,
Filled it with fruit and set it to Jove's lips.
When he won heaven, and on his father's throne
Jove reigned invincible and reigned alone,
Stars he his nurse and nurse's horn did make;
Still in the sky 'tis famous for her sake.
 I Vi 2 / LB II 222A 5

We read also3 how Hercules gave the Aetolians a horn of plenty, because he
disciplined a horn or branch of the river Achelous, and thereby turned a
region previously barren into most fertile country, the horn presumably
representing the hardness of his labours and its plentiful contents the
resulting fertility. So 'Horn of Plenty' was chosen by Phocion, a philosopher
of the Peripatetic school, as a title for his book, as Aulus Gellius4 tells us.
Pliny5 too informs us that several Greeks used this rather grandiloquent label
for their compilations, as though they contained everything without
exception, and whatever one wanted was to be sought and found there.
Lucian6 in his Salaried Posts in Great Houses writes 'And you shall possess
Amalthea's horn, and drink hen's milk/ Philostratus7 calls Dion the sophist
'a horn of Amalthea/ because he was so packed with excellence of every
kind. One of Plautus'8 slaves calls a letter in the play a horn of plenty,
because he sees himself getting so much advantage out of it. Aulus Gellius,9
book 14 chapter 6: 'With these words he offered me a stout volume packed,
so he assured me, with information of every kind. I accepted it with alacrity,
feeling as if I had acquired a horn of plenty.' Philoxenus10 in Athenaeus calls
a table loaded with delicious desserts of many kinds a cornucopia. Suidas11
quotes a line: There, where life seems an Amalthea's horn'; it is an epic
hexameter.
The adage is also used in the form 'A heavenly she-goat.'12 One of the
old comedies pillories a certain Polyagrus who lived on his wife's immoral
earnings, and calls her a heavenly she-goat, because she brings him in a large
income, as Plutarch13 records in his essay 'How to study poetry': 'How blest
is Polyagrus! - he who keeps / A heavenly goat to bring him gold enough'
(Polyagrus means 'landed proprietor'). Again in another place,14 in an attack
on the Stoics, he has 'But he who is blest with the Stoic Amalthea,' making
fun of the paradoxical theory of the Stoics, who reckon that their ideal wise
man possesses everything - wealth, freedom, health, and royalty. Horace15
in his Odes: 'And Plenty, lavish with her brimming horn.'

3 Lac gallinaceum
Hen's milk

, the milk of hens, has the same meaning, for we use it of rich
people and people who have everything they want, and sometimes of things
that are hard to find and therefore precious; so that it is an extravagant way
of saying that one lacks absolutely nothing. Pliny1 in the preface to his
History of the World, making fun of the artificial and pompous titles adopted
for their books by certain Greeks, says: They have used names like Kerion,
 I Vi 3 / LB II 222E 6

which they wish to be understood as Honeycomb; others Amalthea's Horn

meaning a horn of plenty, as though you could expect from their work a
drink of hen's milk/ Aristophanes2 in his Wasps:

Not for hen's milk itself would I forego

That life of which you would deprive me now.

Eustathius3 on the fourth Odyssey cites this adage from a play by Anaxagoras
called Eggs. Again, Aristophanes4 the comic poet in his play The Birds:

On you, your children and your children's children

Health, wealth and happiness will we bestow,
Life, peace and youth and laughter, dance and song,
Hen's milk indeed, till you're foredone with blessings.

Strabo5 in book 14 of his Geography records of the fields in Samos that they
were commonly said, on account of their great fertility, actually to produce
hen's milk; and he notes that this is found as a proverbial phrase in
Menander the comic poet. Athenaeus,6 in book 9 of his Doctors at Dinner,
adduces these lines from an author of the Middle Comedy called
Mnesimachus:

There waits that rarer stuff of which they tell,

Hen's milk and pheasants exquisitely plucked.

Again,7 in book 9 he cites from Numenius: 'And what they call hen's milk/
The same author8 suggests in book 3 that some people thought hen's milk
was white of egg.

4 Non omnibus dormio

I'm not asleep to everyone

'Not to be asleep to everyone' is a phrase used of those who are not every
man's lackey, and whose complaisance has its limits. It is thought to be
derived from certain husbands who are too ready to oblige, and knowingly
expose their unfaithful wives, sometimes pretending to be asleep over their
wine in order to give the lover freedom to do as he pleases. This kind of
complaisance is pilloried in Juvenal's1 lines:

He knows his cue and gazes at the floor

And, while he winks, he snores - or seems to snore.
 I Vi 4 / LB II 223C 7

Plutarch,2 in the essay entitled 'Eroticus/ tells an amusing story which

illustrates this. A man named Galba had invited Maecenas to dinner; and
when he began to understand from his guest's nods and winks that he had
taken a fancy to his wife, he let his head sink little by little as though he were
falling asleep. Meanwhile, one of the servants stole up to the table and
started filching the wine; at which point he became wide awake, and cried:
'Wretch, couldn't you guess that I'm asleep to no one but Maecenas?' The
saying is recorded also, with the same explanation, by Festus Pompeius,3
quoting Lucilius and showing that the original is a certain Capius, who was
nicknamed Snorer because he used to pretend to be asleep, so that his wife
could entertain her lovers with greater impunity. He also points out that
Lucilius refers to this. Cicero4 too makes use of it in the seventh book of his
Letters to Friends: 'In old days it was "I'm not asleep to everyone," but for me,
my dear Callus, it's "I'm not a slave to everyone."' Cicero's point seems to be
that one of these, 'I'm not everyone's sleeper,' was traditional; the other, 'I'm
not everyone's slave,' was new. Both are at any rate proverbial; but the
former is applicable to the foregoing of one's rights, the latter to the doing of
a menial service. Cicero again,5 in his Letters to Atticus, book 13, has: 'It is nice
to enjoy hating someone and, as the saying goes, not to be everyone's slave.'
This passage, as a matter of fact, if I may mention this in passing, seems
to me not free from fault. Perhaps he wrote: 'and, just as there is a saying,
"not to be asleep to everyone," so not to be everyone's slave.'61 may add that
this same word servire, to be a slave, contains an element of metaphor, as
when we say 'to be a slave to one's theatre,7 to circumstances, to one's own
faults, to one's wife's temper, to the public, to one's private profit/ in the
sense of being ready to do anything to oblige.

5 Sardi venales
Sardinians for sale

^apdavoi &VLOI, Sardinians1 for sale. In the brief treatise called Lives2 of
Famous Men which some ascribe to Pliny and a few to Suetonius, though the
style of both authors is against this, an adage is recorded of the form
'Sardinians for sale,' referring to any transaction that is infinitely long and
interminable. This is said to spring from the fact that Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus, after his conquest of Sardinia in his second consulship, 'brought
back such a quantity of prisoners that the length of time taken in selling them
became proverbial/ Plutarch3 in his 'Roman Questions' adduces another
reason: a regular custom had grown up of old in Rome that those who
produced games on the Capitol proclaimed 'Sardinians for sale/ and a boy
came forward with an ornament hung round his neck in jest, which they call
 I Vl 5 / LB II 224A 8

a bulla. He thinks this custom arose from the fact that the inhabitants of Veii,
an Etruscan people, had waged war for a long time against Romulus, and
their city was the last that Romulus captured. Though Livy4 in his first book
recounts that the people of Veii were defeated by Romulus, but that after his
victory he refrained from attacking their fortified city. From there he brought
to Rome the king himself and a great many prisoners with him, and put them
up for sale. Moreover, as the Etruscans were Lydians in origin, a fact
recorded also by Herodotus5 in his first book, and the capital of Lydia was
Sardis, he has reason to advertise Etruscans for sale under the name of
Sardians or Sardinians. Plutarch6 tells the same story, though somewhat
differently, in his life of Romulus. 'In the conquest of Veii the leader of its
people was captured, and though an elderly man, was thought to have
conducted the campaign with great imprudence for a man of his years.
Hence a custom grew up that whenever the Romans sacrificed a victim to
celebrate a victory, they brought an old man through the Forum up to the
Capitol wearing a purple robe and with a bulla round his neck, which was
then the badge of childhood, while the herald proclaimed "Sardians for
sale." Veii is an Etruscan capital, and the Etruscans are thought to have been
emigrants from Sardis.' Cicero7 uses the adage in his Letters to Friends, book
7, writing to Callus: 'Here's a lot of Sardinians for sale, each worse than the
last/ Cicero is thinking of contemptible wretches and also, if I am not
mistaken, of natives of Sardinia; for he has just said: 'I regard it as a gain not
to have to put up with a man who is more pestilential than his birthplace.'

6 Dasypus carnes desiderat

A hairyfoot hungry for meat

AmrvTrov? Kpstbv iTnQvpei, The hairyf oot is hungry for meat. Said of those
who ask others for something they have plenty of at home. For the hairyf oot
is of the same family as the hare; and the hare, as Pliny1 says in book 8 chapter
55, 'is a harmless animal and edible and prolific, and is born to be the prey of
everything else. It is the only creature beside the hairyf oot to carry a
succession of offspring within itself at one time: while suckling one, it has in
the womb a second covered with fur, a third hairless, and a fourth conceived
but immature.' It is called 'hairyfoot' from the long hair on its shaggy feet.

7 Tute lepus es et pulpamentum quaeris

A hare thyself, and goest in quest of game?

Some suppose to be identical with the preceding a line we find in the

Eunuchus of Terence:1 'A hare thyself, and goest in quest of game?' It is the
 i vi 7 / LB ii 2240 9

retort of the braggart soldier to a youth from Rhodes who was making
advances to the soldier's strumpet, though the boy was of an age when he
was quite capable of taking a strumpet's place himself. Donatus gives
various explanations of the allegory, suggesting that this proverb is
appropriate to effeminate young men, because the hare provides the most
tasty meat from its hinder parts, as it were its thighs and buttocks, and it is
those parts that make it so much sought after; or because it is pursued by
hounds, as lovers pursue the young man; or because, as naturalists tell us, it
is of uncertain sex, male at one time and female at another. These fancies
seem somewhat pointless to me, and I think it both simpler and nearer the
truth to connect it with the Greek proverb of the hairy foot hungry for meat.
Flavius Vopiscus,2 in his life of the emperor Numerian, says that the adage in
Terence comes from Livius Andronicus,3 the earliest of the Roman comic
poets.

8 Pan iugo
Matched in double harness

Pliny1 in his Letters uses this phrase to mean 'with equal zeal and equal
effort.' It will be suitable for those engaged on an enterprise in commmon, in
emulation and with comparable energy. A metaphor from oxen drawing a
wagon and putting equal force into the yoke. Pliny's words are: The desire
to succeed, and especially to succeed in professional matters, has an element
in it of reluctance to admit a partner; but between us there was no
competition and no disagreement, for we were both matched in double
harness, and strove not for our own hand but to win the case.' Theocritus2 in
his Aites: 'In double harness matched each loved the other,' of the love which
is mutual and equal and, as Greek puts it, isorropon, well-balanced. Close to
this are St Jerome's3 words addressed to Augustine: 'In Rome there are said
to be a great many people with both skill and courage enough to take you on,
and to argue with you about Holy Scripture, matching step for step.' The
Greeks have another proverb,4 'We draw the selfsame yoke, both you and I,'
of which I shall treat in its proper place.

9 Uno f asce complecti

To bundle together

'To bundle together' is used also by Pliny of doing something in one

operation and everything together, not separately. 'We were afraid,' he
says, 'that we should run short of time and voice and breath, if we tried, as it
were, to bundle together so many accusations and so many defendants.' A
 I Vi 9 / LB II 225A 10

metaphor from those who tie many things together to make them easier to
carry. For 'collectively' Greek uses syllebden, in one grasp.

10 Salem et mensam ne praetereas

Transgress not salt and trencher

Transgress not salt and trencher. Do

not neglect the society of your friends, or Do not breach the unwritten laws
of friendship. In the old days eating salt with a man and sharing his table
cemented a friendship, and in Antiquity friends used often to dine together.
So Diogenes Laertius1 also testifies in his life of Pythagoras, and Theocritus2
in his Hylas concurs: 'Since these two comrades ever shared one mess/
speaking of Hercules and Telamon. Then Hecuba in Euripides,3 to empha-
size the wickedness of Polymnestor, speaks of the hospitable board: 'He oft
had shared a common table with me/ And in i Esdras,4 chapter 4 we read:
'We therefore, mindful of the salt we have eaten in the palace, because we
think it wrong to watch injury done to the king, etc/ Hence it is that, as we
learn from Alexander in his memoir of Pythagoras, quoted by Laertius5 as
before, Pythagoras said that we ought not to break bread, that there might be
no division of a thing that brought friends together. It was also his opinion
that salt was of all things the most appropriate to set on the dinner-table,
because it puts us in mind of equity and justice, it keeps sound and preserves
whatever it takes to itself, and it is made of the purest substances, of water
and sea. Origen6 in the second book of his Against Celsus refers to a satirist
from Paros, who attacked Lycomantes because he had transgressed salt and
trencher. He turns this also against Judas who betrayed Christ. Again7 in his
commentary on Matthew he says of Judas 'Nor did he bethink him of the
bread and salt that they had eaten together.' And it may well be that Christ
himself, the founder of our religion, alluded to this, as it seems to have been
his policy to hide his deepest mysteries in the very commonest things of daily
life, for he knew that this emblem would be despised by the Jews and
welcomed by the Gentiles. Among the Macedonians, at any rate, it was an
ancestral custom, when they ratified a treaty which they wished to be
especially sacred, that both parties should partake of a loaf cut in two with a
sword; so Quintus Curtius,8 book 8.

11 Baceli similis
Like Bacelus

and Like Bacelus, and You are a regular

Bacelus. Used of catamites and effeminate men, or men of large build but
 I Vi 11 / LB II 225E 11

thick-headed. Derived from the physique and behaviour of a certain

Bacelus. Suidas says that bakelos properly means a eunuch, and is therefore
used of effeminates, because this is the defect from which that class of men
most commonly suffer. Antiphanes1 in his Carians attacks a man called
Bacelus, as quoted in Athenaeus, book 4: 'Seest thou not Bacelus / Dancing
with his arms without a blush?' Suetonius2 mentions him in his life of
Augustus, whose regular habit it was to use a peculiar word bacelus for a
fool, though in the common run of copies the word is baceolus. Ermolao
thinks that in Quintilian3 too Bacelus could rightly be read for Bagoas.
Quintilian's words run as follows: 'But the most distinguished sculptors and
painters, when they wished to represent very beautiful bodies by painting
or modelling, have none the less never fallen into this error of taking some
Bagoas or Megabyzus as a model for their work.' I myself do not see why
Quintilian's text need be changed, since bagoas in some barbarous language
means eunuch, and under that name Lucian4 introduces a philosopher who
looks just like a eunuch in face and body. Ovid5 too in his Amores gives the
name Bagoas to the slave who is set to keep watch over a girl: 'Bagoas, you
who guard my mistress dear.'

12 Batalus
Batalus

BdraXo? el, You're a regular Batalus, was said in old days by way of insult to
effeminate men. Plutarch1 shows that the nickname was given to Demosthe-
nes as a boy, and used to his discredit by his enemies. He adds various
explanations of the name: either there was a fluteplayer called Batalus, an
effeminate who was the first man to come on the stage wearing women's
sandals and who castrated music, if I may use the phrase; or there was an
obscene poet called Batalus; or batalos is a name given in Attic Greek to a part
of the body that cannot be mentioned without indecency. This is referred to
by Libanius.2 The same man, Demosthenes I mean, at an advanced age was
similarly given the insulting nickname Argas,3 either because someone of
that name was the promoter of several bad laws, or because, as Suidas
thinks, an argas is a kind of serpent. There is also a Greek verb4 batalizesthai,
to follow a scandalous and effeminate way of life.

13 Bene plaustrum perculit

He gave the cart a good shove downhill

Country people have a proverb: 'He gave the cart a good shove downhill.'
Commonly used, it is clear, of those who urge a man in a direction to which
 I Vi 13 / LB II 226C 12

he was already tending of his own accord. A metaphor from loaded carts,
which are commonly tipped over to empty them; and this is more easily done
in the direction towards which they already tilt because of a slope in the
ground. Donatus1 pointed to this adage in his explanation of Parmeno's
words in the Eunuchus: 'You'll quite upset me presently.' This idea is not far
removed from that remark in Plautus'2 Curculio: 'Advice is nearly as good as a
helping hand.' The words are spoken by a pandar, who will be all the more
ready to break faith when advised by a money-lender to do what he intended
to do anyhow, with or without advice. The same thing is elegantly expressed
by Sophocles,3 quoted by Plutarch in his life of Artaxerxes: 'How easy 'tis to
preach transgression!' For most men, the road from better to worse runs
downhill.

4 In Care periculum
Risk it on a Carian

Risk it on a Carian: make a risky experiment on a

person or thing of little value, so that if anything goes wrong, there will be
no great loss to suffer. This adage took its rise from the character of the
Carians. They are a people, as Pomponius Mela1 tells us, 'of uncertain origin;
for some think them autochthones (natives, that is, of the country), some
Pelasgians, some Curetes, and their national passion for fighting is such that
they habitually fight for pay even in the wars of other peoples/ Hence
Theocritus2 in his Praise of Ptolemy wrote 'And Carians that love war.'
Herodotus3 too in Euterpe indicates that the Carians were by nature
barbarous and fit to be slaves, prepared to endure any hardships if they are
paid for it. Aristophanes4 suggests the same thing in the Birds: Tf he's a slave
and a Carian/ Strabo5 in book 14 of his Geography tells how the Carians once
roamed all over Greece, fighting in various places as mercenaries, and that in
fact they were such outstanding fighters that weapons of war are commonly
called Carian by the poets: Anacreon has a Carian breastplate, Alcaeus a
Carian crest, to which Aristophanes6 alludes in the Birds. Suidas7 writes that
the Carians were the first mercenary troops, because they set such a low
value on their own lives. Those therefore who had hired Carian troops had a
habit of posting them in the front of the battle-line, that they might receive
the enemy's first onset at their own peril; or they were thrown into a battle at
the point where its outcome looked most uncertain. The Persians8 in their
native tongue had a word kardakes for those who lived by plunder. The
reputation of the Carians is rivalled, it seems, in our own day by the Swiss,9
born fighters, but in other respects a straightforward sort of men with
 I Vi 14 / LB II 22yA 13

absolutely no vice in them, and quite good enough, in my opinion, to forego

this, the only stain on their characters; for they would achieve distinction in
literature and all other honourable subjects, if they would give up fighting
and attend to these instead. This adage is used by Socrates in Plato's10
Euthydemus, when he tells them to make an experiment in transformation on
himself rather than anyone else, as on a worthless Carian, who will be no
great loss if you destroy him in the process. 'If you young men are afraid,' he
says, 'make the experiment on me as your Carian; for I am an old man, and
quite ready to face the risk, and I hand myself over to Dionysodorus here, as
to a modern Medea of Colchis. Let him destroy me; let him boil me, if he
wishes, in a cauldron; let him do what he likes, provided he makes me a good
man.' He refers to it again in the Laches, when he says that those who are
starting to teach and making trial of their skill to the great peril of the young,
must remember that it is no Carian mercenary but the children of the citizens
that are at risk. Aristides11 imitates him in his Panathenaic Oration: 'Making
the experiment on the proverbial Carian, and not on their own persons/
Cicero12 uses the same phrase in his speech Pro L. Flacco: 'Why, is not all
Caria the subject of a common proverb in your language, that if you wish to
make an experiment with some risk attached to it, you should for preference
risk it in Caria?' This passage is clearly corrupt, and I have no hesitation in
asserting that we should read, not 'in Caria' (in Caria) but 'on a Carian' (in
Care). The opposite of this is Aureo piscari hamo, To fish with a golden hook,
of which I will treat elsewhere.13

15 In dolio figularem artem discere

To learn the potter's art on a big jar

The same is true of To learn the potter's

art on a big jar, used of those who from the start practise their skill on the
largest projects, though it is wise to proceed gradually from small things to
great. For a potter does not start by making a big jar immediately, which is a
vessel of the largest size, but sundry small pots, which will not involve heavy
loss if something goes wrong. This is roughly the sense in which Plato1 uses
it in the Laches'. 'We must ensure that we do not run this risk, not with the
proverbial Carian, but in our sons and our friends' sons, so that it happens to
us exactly as the proverb says, that we learn our potting on a big jar/
Dicaearchus2 turns the proverb to mean something different: he makes it say
that every craftsman ought to practise his own art, a coachman by driving
carriages, a shipmaster by steering his ship, a physician by curing the sick, as
though it were absurd for a potter to try driving a carriage, which is someone
 I Vi 15 / LB II 22/E 14

else's business, instead of making a big jar. And thus the well-known
principle3 will apply here too: 'Let each man ply the trade that he knows
best/ and Horace's4 remark in his Epistles:

Who knows not ships will fear to venture aught,

Nor southernwood prescribe, who's not been taught;
Leeches their physic, smiths their hammers ply -
Skilled and unskilled, we all can versify.

Gregory5 the Theologian makes a similar use of it in his Apologia defuga: To

attempt to teach others before they are properly educated themselves, and
like the potter learning on a big jar, as the saying is, to practise piety on the
souls of other people, seems to me the height of folly.'

16 Ne sutor ultra crepidam

Let the cobbler stick to his last

Close to this is Ne sutor ultra crepidam, Let the cobbler stick to his last - let no
one, that is, attempt to judge of matters which are far removed from his own
skill and calling. This adage took its rise from Apelles, the famous painter, of
whom Pliny,1 book 35 chapter 10, tells the following story: 'When his work
was finished, he would expose it in the porch to the view of passers-by,
hiding behind the picture to listen to their comments on its faults, because he
thought the public a more strict critic than himself; and they say that he was
criticized by a cobbler for painting one loop too few on the inner side of a pair
of sandals. Next day, finding his criticism had been attended to, the man
went proudly on to criticize the drawing of a leg; and Apelles looked out
indignantly and told him when passing judgment to stick to his last. These
words became proverbial.' So much for Pliny. There is a similar story in
Athenaeus:2 Stratonicus the lyre-player said to a smith who was arguing
with him about music 'Can't you see that you're not sticking to your
hammer?' His nephew's3 remark in his Letters points the same way, that no
one can judge a work of art properly unless he too is an artist. And
Aristotle's4 saying in the first book of the Ethics that everyone is a proper
judge of the things he knows about. Also what he wrote in the second book
of the Physics of a blind man disputing about colours - words which have
become proverbial among academics of our own day for disputing on
subjects of which a man knows nothing. To the same opinion we may refer
what Fabius Pictor5 says in Quintilian, that the arts would be fortunate if
none but artists were their critics.
 I Vi 17 / LB II 228C 15

17 Dii facientes adiuvant

The gods help those who help themselves

Varro1 in his Agriculture, book i: 'And since, as they say, the gods help those
who help themselves, I will invoke the gods first.' He indicates that divine
help is commonly available, not to the idle, but to industrious men who try as
hard as they can. To this I think we should refer those lines in Homer2 which
have already become proverbial: 'Some things, Telemachus, will you devise /
In your own heart; some too will heaven suggest.' Cicero3 used this in book 9
of his Letters to Atticus: 'You have to do everything unprepared. But
nevertheless "some you'll devise, some too will heaven suggest/"

18 Cum Minerva manum quoque move

Invoke Minerva, but use your own strength too

Close to this is Let Minerva help you, but

make a start meanwhile yourself. The adage warns us not to relax our efforts
in reliance on divine assistance. It is specially appropriate to women: their
woolwork has Minerva as its patron, and they ask her aid, but press on with
no less energy all the time. Some think it arose from a carter1 whose ass stuck
fast in the mud, and when he ought to have helped it out, he did nothing and
appealed to Hercules. The god replied, as the story goes, that he should set
his hand meanwhile to help his donkey in distress, and that heaven would
help him then, but not before. Others produce another tale: when a man was
to enter a contest, he asked Minerva whether he would emerge victorious,
and the answer was yes. However, when he entered the ring and stood
there with folded arms, his opponent knocked him out, and he lost. To this
adage belongs that most elegant line cited from a tragedy by Agathon2 in
Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, book 5: 'Art fond of fortune, fortune fond of art.'
The following iambic line is quoted by Suidas3 to the same effect: 'First take
your coat off, and then say your prayers.'

19 Nostro Marte
By our own prowess

Whenever we bring something to a conclusion with no outside help, by our

own wits and such strength as we possess, we are said to do it by our own
prowess or on our own merits; also when something is done at our own risk.
Cicero1 in his De officiis, book 3: This gap then I propose to fill, with no
outside help but, as they say, by my own prowess.' Again in his second
 I Vi 19 / LB II 229A l6

Philippic, speaking of Deiotarus: Tor the king himself on his own initiative
and with no support from Caesar's memoranda, as soon as the news of
Caesar's death reached him, recovered his property by his own prowess.' In
the second book of the Code,2 in the title Ne liceat potentioribus, chapter i: 'It
was an inspired provision of his late imperial majesty that most sapient
emperor Claudius our kinsman, that all such persons should be cast in their
suit as might have secured the assistance of powerful patrons, in order that
with this threat in prospect, questions at issue in the courts should be
decided on their own merits, in preference to reliance on the resources of
powerful persons in high place.' And again in book 3, title De iudiciis,
chapter 11: This rule being observed beyond a peradventure, that neither of
the parties engaged in a suit and none of the judges may so act, that the case
does not proceed on its own merits; but absolute freedom must be left to the
judge by counsel on either side.' A metaphor, it would seem, from supreme
commanders, who fight a campaign on their own initiative and with their
own forces; for Plautus3 too has 'With my own forces' instead of 'By my own
prowess.' Other phrases have a proverbial ring, such as vario Marte, dubio
Marie, iniquo Marte, when Mars, representing the fortunes of war, is said to
be changeable or doubtful or unfair. This adage is almost the opposite of one
I have recorded elsewhere:4 OVK O.VEV ©Tjcrew?, Not without Theseus.

20 Nequicquam sapit, qui sibi non sapit

He's wise in vain that's not wise for himself

It is an old saw in very frequent use even in our own day, that a man's
wisdom is useless who is wise only for others. Plato1 in the Hippias major
says: 'And many agree that the wise man should be wise above all for his
own benefit.' Cicero2 too uses it in a letter to Trebatius, showing that it comes
from a tragedy on the subject of Medea: 'And since I have begun to play
Medea's part, always remember that line "He whose wisdom nought avails
him, all in vain is counted wise."' It is a trochaic verse. Again in his Letters to
Friends, book 13, writing to Caesar the emperor: 'And so I betake me from
Homer's grand style to the true precepts of Euripides: "Wisdom I hate that's
not wise for itself," a line most highly praised by the elder Praecilius.' Again,
in the first book of the On Divination he quotes against soothsayers the lines
of Ennius:

They whose wisdom tells them nothing yet show other men the way;
'Riches shall be yours' they promise, yet themselves must beg their bread.

Lucian3 in his Apology quotes 'Wisdom I hate that's not wise for itself.'
 I Vi 2O / LB II 229D 17

Alexander4 turned the same line against Callisthenes because, he said, he

did not adapt himself to the characters of those he lived with, but made it
clear that he disapproved of everything that went on. And this freedom of
speech cost the excellent man his life, while that contemptible toady the
philosopher Anaxarchus was held in high esteem. This principle5 is so
precisely observed by our contemporaries, that one would be thought
unworthy to be called a human being who could not find some means of
promoting his own advantage. In this class falls that thing in Suetonius:6
'Observe a second Sulla, fortunate / Not for Rome's benefit but for his own/

21 Cantherium in fossa
Donkey in a ditch

Donkey in a ditch: a country proverb, but it has a military origin. Can be used
whenever someone is obliged to do what he is quite incapable of, or when
something will be extremely complex or dangerous. The story comes in Livy, *
book 3 of the third decade. He tells how, when Fabius had laid siege to
Capua in the second Punic war, Jubellius Taurea, the most renowned of the
Campanian knights, challenged the first comer in the Roman army to single
combat, and one Claudius Asellius dared to step forward. When they had
dodged each other for a long time in open ground, the Campanian called to
his opponent to come down into a hollow way, since otherwise it would be a
contest between the horses instead of their riders. The Roman, whose
courage ran to deeds not words, came down at once; whereupon Taurea
again got the better of him with a remark which has passed into a country
proverb. 'Don't you know' he said 'how little a donkey can do in a ditch?'
Although from Livy's words the sense of the adage is far from clear, we can
easily guess what it means. It conflicts with one of which I shall speak
elsewhere:2 Equum in planiciem, The horse to the plain. A horse is of the
greatest value on an open plain, and is very little use in a ditch.

22 Tantali talenta
The talents of Tantalus

TaXavTo. lavraXov, The talents of Tantalus. Used of immense wealth.

Tantalus was a Phrygian who became a byword for his enormous riches, so
that he is supposed to endure even in the nether regions the sort of
frustration that these grasping rich men feel in the midst of their piled-up
wealth. Horace,1 when he says of Tantalus:

In vain he grasps the cup he fain would quaff -

At you this story points: how dare you laugh?
 I Vi 22 / LB II 23OB l8

shows that the lesson of this myth is aimed at those who are at the same time
both rich and mean. Plato2 uses the adage in the Euthyphro. Suidas3 says it
occurs in Epicharmus and in Anacreon. It also takes another form,4 with an
elegant play on words: Tantali talenta talentizat, meaning He weighs and
hoards as much as Tantalus. That Tantalus moreover was a man of great
wealth is shown by, among other things, that line from a tragedy quoted by
Plutarch5 in his essay 'On Exile': The fields I sow are twelve days' journey
long/ In another passage6 he calls immense riches Tantalic wealth.'
Antiphanes, cited by Athenaeus,7 book 6:

Such once was Thribon's, who was gently stripped

Of all the fabled wealth of Tantalus.

23 Pelopis talenta
The talents of Pelops

Theocritus1 uses a similar expression in idyll 8, when he writes of the 'talents

of Pelops':

Not Pelops' land nor Pelops' wealth I crave,

Talents of gold, nor to outrun the winds.

In Attica moreover a talent was the largest sum of money they knew. The
lesser2 talent weighed sixty pounds, the greater talent weighed eighty.
Hence these lines in the Phormio:3

Geta If anyone would give him a great talent...

Demipho Great talent? Rather give him a great thrashing.

And Aristophanes:4 'What? Turn Opuntian? / Not I! Not for a talent of pure
gold!' which means, I would not sacrifice the sight of one eye, however much
you gave me.

24 Midae divitiae
The riches of Midas

The riches of Midas, and As rich as

Midas, have passed into a proverb on account of the great wealth of a king of
that name, which gave rise also to numerous stories. Statius1 in his poem on
Pollius' villa at Sorrento: 'Richer than Midas' wealth and Lydian gold/ This
Midas was a tyrant of Phrygia who, if we believe the fables of the poets,2 in
 I Vi 24 / LB II 230E 19

return for his hospitality to Bacchus was permitted by the gods to wish for
anything he liked, and it would be given him. He prayed that whatever he
touched might instantly be turned into gold. The historians3 tell us that,
when he was a child, ants piled grains of wheat on his lips as he lay asleep;
the soothsayers said this meant that he would be the richest of all mortal
men, and so it turned out. Pliny4 gives him first place in his list of
outstandingly rich men, in book 33.

25 Non omnino temere est, quod vulgo dictitant

What is in every man's mouth is not spoken wholly without cause

Aristotle1 uses as a proverb - and it has long ago passed into a proverb
among educated men - that famous saying in Hesiod, 'which all men repeat'
as Aristides2 says in his defence of Pericles, to the effect that whatever is
spread by popular rumour is rarely devoid of all foundation. It comes in the
second volume of his poems,3 which has the title Works and Days:

And shun the fearful rumour of mankind.

Rumour's an evil thing, so lightly raised,
Grievous to bear and hard to put away;
Rumour dies hard that many folk have uttered;
Rumour herself's a sort of deity.

The statement can be taken in two ways, either that a thing which is in every
man's mouth and accepted by popular opinion does not seem wholly false,
or that a rumour, false though it may be, once it has already spread in public
cannot be wholly suppressed. And so it warns us to take great care that we
may never have the misfortune to become a byword even unjustifiably
through some rash act. In calling Rumour a deity, he agrees with Homer,4
who in several passages introduces a character called Ossa; for this is his
name for Rumour regarded as a goddess. And Virgil5 imitates him in the
fourth book of the Aeneid: 'This the foul goddess o'er the lips of men / Spread
broadcast.'

26 Domum cum facis, ne relinquas impolitam

When you make your house, leave it not unplaned

Although there is no saying of Hesiod's that has not become proverbial, I

myself prefer to list those which, being wrapped up in riddles, come closer to
proverbs in form. An example of this may be found in these lines from the
book I have just quoted:
 I Vi 26 / LB II 231C 2O

Building thy house, leave not the roof unplaned,

Lest clamorous crows upon it perch and croak.

Proculus1 the commentator tells us that this passage is taken in two ways.
Some think the poet is warning us that every man should see that the
building of his house is finished before the winter, for fear that he may then
have no means of keeping out the cold; for the crow, he says, is a symbol of
winter, as being a winter bird. Moreover, while it is true always, it is most
true in the winter months that There's no place like home/ as the proverb2
runs. Others think it means that a building once begun ought not to be left
half finished, for fear you become a public laughing-stock, and the
passers-by speak against you, and criticize your infirmity of purpose in not
finishing what you have started. For this custom of criticizing others is a
speciality of common people, as the Gospel parables indicate. It was this
habit of persistent denigration that the poet meant to indicate by his crow;
for the crow is a noisy and obstreperous bird, so that it has given rise to the
proverbial use3 of the verb 'to croak/ But Proculus for his part prefers to take
the expression in a general sense: every piece of business to which we have
once set our hands ought to be brought to its proper conclusion, so that
nothing at all is lacking, and everywhere we ought to strive for complete-
ness. The further removed this can be from its literal use, the more elegant it
will appear, and the more like a true proverb: for example, if one were to urge
a man not to abandon humane studies, but to put the finishing touches to
what has been so admirably started, for fear he many become an object of
general derision by giving up something well begun, and bring against him
Hesiod's words:

Building thy house, leave not the roof unplaned,

Lest clamorous crows upon it perch and croak.

27 Ne a chytropode cibum nondum sacrificatum rapias

Snatch not food as yet unblest out of the dish

There is another puzzle in that passage, in the lines that immediately follow:

Nor from unhallowed vessels take thou aught

To eat nor wash.

Cicero1 too suggests that it was irreligious to eat food out of the dish, for he
writes as follows in book 2 of his Definibus: 'And yet we shall find profligates
 I Vi 27 / LB II 231F 21

who in the first place are so devoid of scruples that they eat out of the dish,
and then so far from the fear of death that they have ever on their lips that
verse from the Hymnis: "Six bare months of life suffice me; Death is welcome
to the rest/" It is a trochaic line. Suetonius2 in his life of Vitellius relates that
'his greed was not only so great but so ill-timed, that even at a sacrifice or on a
journey he never controlled himself, but when at the altar would snatch fat
and spelt-grains almost out of the fire and eat them there and then, and the
hot food in a wayside eating-house, even if it was two days old and
half-eaten/ As far as the plain sense goes, it tells us not to fall greedily upon
our food like brute beasts, but to wait until we have first offered the
first-fruits to heaven. For in ancient times, as Plutarch3 tells us in his
Table-talk/ even daily food was included among things sacred; and so,
when they were about to eat, they used to consecrate the first-fruits to the
gods, and then they would proceed to their repast with no indecent haste
but with a certain solemnity, with hands duly washed, as they might to some
sacred meal. This custom4 survives to our own day among well-conducted
Christians. But it will be more like a proverb, if we understand it to mean that
we must not rob our underlings and servants or strip them heartlessly of
what is theirs, but must leave them in possession of some portion of their
money, for them to live on. It will perhaps5 be found suitable for those men
too who are greedy, and therefore in a hurry, and are eager to snatch an
advantage before the right moment comes, and reap their harvest, as it were,
before the crop is ripe; for example, the man who demands on the spot
something bequeathed or promised to him, when it would be more courteous
to say nothing for some days, or he who has lately come into a position of
power and begins at once to despoil the people with his exactions, or who,
when betrothed to a girl, does not wait for her to be of full age, does not wait
for the marriage ceremony, but beds her forthwith. It is taken from the liturgy
of sacrifices, which in old days included a meal.
With this belongs a phrase I have reported elsewhere6 from Athenaeus,
book 9: 'ATTO Trjyavov, A patella, Straight from the pan. In book 6 he quotes
from Pherecrates7 the iambic line 'Said he ate whitebait straight out of the
pan.' Some used the form teganon for a pan, the Ionic eganon; hence the
compound verb apoteganizein, to eat from the pan. Thus Phrynichus,8 quoted
by Athenaeus book 6, uses it: 'Sweet indeed, this eating from the pan, and
no scot paid/ meaning, if there is nothing to pay and you are allowed to do it
free. Again, in another passage, he quotes from Archestratus9 'Snatching it
from the spit'; said of a woman who was described as eating the sacrificial
meat before it had been offered. The same author in his sixth book quotes
from Anaxandrides:10
 I Vi 27 / LB II 232E 22

Let 'em gape as they will at the painter's great skill,

As it hangs in its frame very nice:
Here's art, if they can, that they snatch from the pan,
And it's gone from the pot in a trice.

In general it will be possible to adapt this to anyone who embarks on

something heedlessly and, as the saying goes,11 with unwashed feet.

28 Haec potior
This is sovereign

Plutarch1 in his 'Greek Questions' records a proverb in the following

fashion: 'Whence came the proverbial saying: This is sovereign? Dinon of
Tarentum, when he was general, being a soldier of long experience, put
forward a proposal which was voted down by the citizens; and when the
herald announced the result, he held up his right hand and cried "No! This is
stronger." So the story is told by Theophrastus. Apollodorus in his Rhytinus
adds that when the herald said "There are more votes on the other side," he
retorted "But these are better," and ratified the opinion of the minority.'
From this we may infer that the phrase was commonly used to convey that
some proposal was better or more profitable, although the majority thought
otherwise, or when those who were fewer in number commanded greater
resources. In this class would fall, to illustrate what I mean by examples, the
following. 'Most men measure felicity by happiness and wealth, and very
few are devoted to virtue; but do not be moved by the majority, for this is
sovereign.' Again: There is almost no one in the prince's entire household
who does not wish you well; but one man is against you, and he is so
universally powerful that he can lord it almost over the prince himself. And
so, if all depended on a vote, success is already yours; but this is sovereign/
Porphyrion2 touches lightly on the proverb, as it were with a finger-tip, in
his note on that passage in Horace's Epodes:

Let us bind our citizens all with a solemn oath:

It is time to be gone, for those at the least
Who stand out from the ignorant throng.

Although the reading of many copies is, is, I think, corrupt. It

will be more correct, if I am not mistaken, to write Kappovtov viKa - not The
worse counsel wins' but 'Victory is with the better party.' For the ode is a
rhetorical piece, and urges a unanimous vote in favour of emigration. If
however it is impossible for the best policy to commend itself to the
 I Vi 28 / LB II 2338 23

multitude, at least let the soundest opinion win the day, even if supported
by fewer votes. Plato3 writes to the same effect in the first book of the Laws,
that it is the most admirable sort of victory when the crowd give way before
their betters, and in decisions the weight of votes gets more attention than
their number. His words, in the book I mentioned, run as follows: Tor
wheresoever the better citizens do overcome the multitude and the worser
sort, that city would rightly be said to surpass itself, and such a victory
would most justly redound to its credit; and the converse, where the
converse happens.' Pliny4 had the same point in mind when he complains in
his Letters that votes are counted and not weighed. Here belongs also that
remark in Livy:5 The larger party defeated the better/ Homer6 points the
same way in the first book of the Iliad: 'Since the worse counsel wins/ Nor
should one pass over in this context a story told by Diogenes Laertius7 of the
philosopher Zeno. When Zeno saw that Theophrastus was made much of
and highly praised because he attracted a larger audience, his answer was:
'His choir is larger, but mine sings more in tune/
There will therefore be scope for this adage, when we declare that the
quality of those who think well of us is more important than the quantity; or
when we propose that we should follow not the opinion of the majority but
the best course, even if it has very few votes; or when we say that the
support of two or three people eminent for wealth or popularity or influence
is worth more than the goodwill of the multitude, who are superior in
numbers but inferior in all else. In the same way, a character in Plautus8 says
that he thinks nothing of those lesser gods, provided he may enjoy the
favour of Jove alone. And it will not be absurd to bring this in, whenever one
force is greater than all the rest; one might say, for instance, 'This course has
more public support, has more reasons in its favour, is based on justice, is
enjoined by the law; but the other is the winner. For "such9 is my will and
pleasure/" For inevitably everything must give place whenever the king
utters an oracle like those words of Agamemnon in Homer:10 'If he says no,
I'll take her for myself/ In the same way Lucian11 speaks in his Captive of
those 'who think might is right/ Pyrrhus, when asked by one of his children,
who was still very young, to whom he proposed to bequeath his kingdom,
replied To whichever of you has the sharpest sword/ Plutarch12 in his life of
Pyrrhus thinks this runs very close to that curse in tragedy, that brothers
may divide their family inheritance 'by the sword's whetted edge/ And so,
when confronted with those who use violence and, as Ennius13 puts it, 'by
iron win their way,' who make might their right and for whom 'the laws are
silent14 amid the clash of arms,' it will be right to give an ironic twist to the
saying This wins the day' and This is sovereign/ For the Greek word kyrios
means not only 'master' in the proper sense, but any person who has the
 i vi 28 / LB ii 234B 24

final say. Suidas15 shows that they spoke of a 'sovereign assembly' in which
magistrates were normally elected. Aristophanes16 in the Acharnians uses
kyrios of an assembly in which he says, using a related verb, that they cast
their sovereign votes. Sometimes it can be applied to things as well as
people, as by Euripides17 in his Iphigeneia in Aulis: 'My words, not his,
deserve to win the day/ For the slave's point is, that, for all that he is of lower
standing than Menelaus, he has the advantage over him of a more just cause.
Not far from this are Cicero's18 words in the In Pisonem: 'But I will say nothing
of the way in which each of us was elected. By all means let Fortune be
mistress of the hustings.'

29 Delius natator
A Delian diver

A Delian diver. Commonly used in old days of an expert

swimmer who could swim on the surface1 of the water. The adage took its
rise, or at least won greater currency, from a remark of Socrates. When
Euripides once showed him a book by Heracleitus, who was nicknamed 'the
prince of darkness' for the deliberate obscurity of what he wrote, and asked
him what he thought of it, the story goes that he replied: 'Splendid, where I
could understand it and, I daresay, where I could not; but you need to be a
Delian diver if you are not to drown in his depths.' Socrates2 referred at the
same time both to the proverb and to the excessive profundity of Heracleitus'
abstruse opinions, which were such that without the help of a really
powerful swimmer there was some danger that the reader of his book would
sink without trace. Laertius3 in his life of Heracleitus attributes this dictum to
a certain Crates, who was the first, he says, to introduce Heracleitus' book
on nature to the Greek public, and paid it this tribute.

30 Dicendo dicere discunt

By speaking men learn how to speak

By speaking we learn how to speak.

1
Syrianus, the commentator on Hermogenes, criticizes the sophist Evagoras
for holding that fluency in speaking is a matter merely of practice and not
theory, and that we achieve readiness of speech by speaking, 'supposing' he
says, 'as the vulgar proverb has it, that by speaking one learns how to
speak.' Cicero2 also used it in the first book of his De oratore: 'In this' he says
'they are misled by what they have been told, that men normally contrive to
become good speakers by speaking. There is truth also in the opposite
saying, that a bad style is most easily acquired by speaking badly.' Pliny3 in
the sixth book of his Letters: T observe that many men of small talent and no
 i vi 30 / LB ii 234E 25

education have become good advocates by practice in advocacy/ The adage

also has a wider application, to skill in any field, which is most appropriately
acquired by practice, the best teacher of any subject. Hence all statements
will have a proverbial flavour which are of the form 'You will learn building
as you build, music as you play, tactics on the field of battle, writing as you
ply your pen/

31 Multi bonique
Many good men and true

Many good men and true, was used in old days as a

proverb. Derived from a sacrificial rite in which the celebrant, when about to
offer sacrifice, used to ask who was present. The assembled company then
replied 'Many good men and true/ This they did partly to secure a good
omen, for it was important at a sacrifice to avoid all unlucky words, in Greek
euphemein; partly to give anyone with a crime on his conscience a chance to
leave the sacred mysteries. Plutarch1 in his Table-talk': 'Since many good
men and true are here to support Plato/ But I have referred to this before.2
Aristides3 too alluded to this in his Pericles: 'But he gave evidence in his
favour ungrudgingly and unequivocally, as one would expect of a good man
and true/ Homer's4 phrase 'great and good' is also current as a proverb, and
is found here and there even in Aristophanes.5 The proverb therefore will be
in place whenever we wish to convey, of witnesses or judges or colleagues,
that they are well-chosen and by no means to be rejected.

32 Heroum filii noxae

Great men have trouble from their children

Great men have trouble from their children.

The Ancients observed that in character the sons of distinguished men fall
far short of their forbears. Hence Demosthenes'1 remark that 'good men, as
though by a kind of destiny, produce bad sons/ This opinion of his is
reported by Aristides in the Cimon. The scholiast, whoever he was - and he
was neither idle nor ignorant - quotes on this passage the proverb I have just
recorded. Even today it remains current as a humorous saying, that the
wisest fathers have most fools as their children. Euripides2 in the Heracleidae
applies this opinion widely to mortals in general: 'One among many haply
you may find / No worse man than his sire/ Homer3 says the same in several
passages, especially in Odyssey book 2:

Few sons indeed are equal to their fathers;

Most men are worse, few better than their sires.
 I Vi 32 / LB II 2350 26

Aelius Spartianus4 holds forth on this theme in his life of the Emperor
Severus, showing with many examples how it often happens that men who
are distinguished for courage or literary gifts or the favours of fortune either
have no children at all, or leave offspring of such a kind that it would be
better for humanity if they died childless.

33 Nunquam ex malo patre bonus filius

Never good son from bad father

Euripides1 is evidence for the currency as a proverb of the maxim that a bad
father does not beget good children:
Alas, how true that ancient saying runs:
An evil father ne'er begat good sons!

This dictum finds support in the proverb2 Mali corvi malum ovum, An ill crow
lays an ill egg. Also in that line of Theognis:3 'For ne'er on squills do roses
grow/ and others of the kind, which shall be recorded in their places.

34 Alio relinquente fluctu alius excepit

One wave left me and another caught me up

Aristides in his Themistocles: 'But for Themistocles the sequel was always
greater than what went before, and he felt the force of the proverb "one
wave left me and another caught me up," until at length he emerged
victorious from the third great wave.' There seems to have been a proverbial
verse, which Aristides has distorted somewhat to fit his sentence; it will read
properly like this: The image is
taken from men on a dangerous voyage, who after one wave has hit them
always expect another, as squall follows squall. And sailors in peril actually
count the onset of the waves; for they have a special fear of every tenth
wave, which the Ancients called a 'tenner,' a decumana.lrThe Greek name for
those very heavy squalls was trikumia, the 'great third wave.' This can be
neatly adapted to the onset of misfortunes when, as often happens, one
calamity succeeds another, according to that proverbial verse2 'Fortune is
ne'er content to strike but once.'

35 Duobus pedibus fugere

To put your best foot first

To make for shelter with both feet, putting

your best foot first. Aristides in his Panathenaic Oration: 'And this first point
 i vi 35 / LB ii 2368 27

alone, that all who needed help made for shelter in Athens just as though
they were really putting their best foot first, with never a glance at any of the
other cities, is clear and weighty evidence, better than any inscription on a
monument, that she was pre-eminent from the start.' The man who equipped
this author with explanatory notes, which are by no means to be despised,
tells us that the proverb is derived from men in a hurry running, so that it
seems to resemble Take both hands to it,1 which we use
to express care and speed in the finishing of a task; or from sailors, as one
might say 'with two helms.'2 For the rudder or steering-oar of a ship they call
its foot, because as the ship is turned by it this way and that, she may be
thought to take as it were a step forward by means of it. Thus it would come
close to the proverb we have treated of elsewhere,3 To lie at two anchors.
And so we can take either of two meanings, that their custom was to seek
refuge in the city eagerly and as fast as they could, or that they found there
the safest refuge of all. Though Aristophanes4 in the Birds used it to convey
the idea of speed, when he wrote 'We flew up from our country, best foot
first/ The commentator points out that this is taken from ships that run with
the wind, so that the sense is 'with very great energy and effort/

36 Quis aberret a janua?

Who could miss the gate?

Who could miss the gate? Commonly used when

someone entirely misses the truth and comes to quite the wrong conclusions.
Aristotle1 uses it in the Metaphysics, book 2, right at the beginning; and in all
the copies which I have been able to consult, I find the word spelt thuras,
gate, with a u. Besides which, Argyropylus renders it by janua, a gate, and
he is a competent translator and a philosopher no one can despise. Then
again Averroes,2 who is now the greatest authority in our schools of
philosophy, makes it quite clear in his exposition of the passage that he is
thinking of a gate. Again, in the commentary of Alexander3 of Aphrodisias I
find in the same way thuras, gate. If it were at all permissible to dissent from
so many copies and such great authorities, I myself would think the text more
likely to be right if we read theras, the target, with an e in place of the u. That
thuras should have crept in is not surprising, in the first place because the
mistake was a very easy one, the corruption of a single letter, and probably
quite accidental, especially as there is almost no difference in the sound. And
then the point of the metaphor could be made more obvious and easier to
grasp, so that it deceived even practised philosophers, who were not of
course as familiar with the underlying story as they were with the hackneyed
image of the house-door typifying the first steps in cognition. Last but not
 I Vi 36 / LB II 236? 28

least, that the manuscripts should agree among themselves will not seem
remarkable to anyone who is even moderately experienced in the evaluation
and comparison of codices; for it often happens that the error of one
archetype, provided it displays some semblance of the truth, is propagated
thereafter into all the copies which are, so to speak, its progeny, *be they its
children's children, and all that ensue thereafter/41 say this with no desire
for a fight to the death, should someone perchance disagree with me, partly
because this would be against my principles, partly because I am well aware
what a slippery slope it is and a perilous business, to make any change in
these eminent authors. All I will do is to put forward conjectures that appeal
to me. If anyone thinks they fit, he will subscribe to my opinion; if not, he will
hold to his old view all the more readily because, even when challenged, it
has won the day.
In the first place, then, considerable doubts were raised in my mind by
a very old and also very accurate manuscript of the speeches of Aristides5 the
rhetorician, in which I find not only theras, target, in the text, but also a
reference to a very ancient story, and with it to an author from whom this
proverb of Aristotle's might, if I am not mistaken, have gained currency.
What Aristides says, then, in the speech entitled Pericles runs as follows:
'And so, before you have shot any of your opponents, you hit and bring
home one of your friends; you have the same experience as Peleus in Pindar,
who missed the target he was aiming at and instead killed Eurytion, who was
very dear to him.' I am supported here by the extant scholia on that author,
which bear no definite title, it is true, but are evidently the work of a
disciplined intelligence by no means ill-informed. Consequently I shall
append his remarks without hesitation, in case anyone should be interested
to see them: 'Pindar recounts' he says 'in his Hymns how Eurytion, son of
Irus whose father was Actor, and who was one of the Argonauts, was
accidentally killed by Peleus when they were hunting together. He calls him
dear because they were kinsmen; for Peleus' first wife, before his marriage to
Thetis, had been Actor's daughter Polymelos, and Actor was the father of
Irus, whose son Eurytion was.' And so it seems not unlikely that the adage
started with Pindar, and was used by Aristotle as usual without giving the
name of his authority; so that we are to understand that he misses his target
who not only fails to hit the animal in the place he intended, but misses his
quarry entirely and does not even touch what he was aiming at. Now I
would not expect anyone to accept this, unless it is seen to agree by the rule,6
as they say, with what Aristotle is saying. For in this passage the
philosopher is discussing our knowledge of the natural world, which is at
the same time, he says, both easy and difficult. In favour of its being easy, he
points out that everyone achieves it to some extent; in favour of its difficulty,
 i vi 36 / LB ii 2371 29

that no man's knowledge is exact. The proposition that no man ever existed
who achieved no truth at all in his cognition of the natural world is
reinforced, as it were, with a proverb; for who, he says, could miss the
target? As though to possess an exact knowledge of the details was just like
aiming at some selected point and hitting your mark without fail; while
conversely, to fall short entirely would be like missing your quarry
completely, and deflecting your cognition like a missile upon something
quite different. But to satisfy my reader, however captious and hard to
persuade he may be, let me add Aristotle's actual words from the book to
which I referred: 'Enquiry respecting the truth is in one way difficult and in
one way easy. Witness the fact that no one can attain to it as it deserves, nor
wholly fail to do so; but while every individual makes some statements about
nature, by himself he contributes little or nothing of importance to our
knowledge; but when all this is put together, it amounts to something
substantial. So that if it seems to hold good, as we say in the proverb, Who
could miss the gate?, from one point of view the enquiry would be easy; but
the fact of grasping the whole and being unable to grasp the part shows how
difficult it is/ In what Aristotle says, I see no place for a gate; but the familiar
resemblance between beginning something and finding the gate or way into
it provided, if I am not mistaken, a handle for the error. No: Aristotle means
that a man misses his target, if he fails entirely to achieve his object, which he
goes on to call 'grasping the whole,' as it were to possess it in a confused way
and in general terms; the contrary of which he calls 'grasping the part,'
meaning to possess something exactly, and not merely to hit your quarry no
matter how, but to pierce some definite part of the beast which you have
specially chosen. Although on this passage the commentator adduces so
many possible meanings, that he seems to have found no one meaning
satisfactory. He also observes that there is a difference of opinion on the text;
and whenever that happens, I immediately suspect that there is some
underlying corruption. Otherwise, 'simple is e'er the language of the truth,'
as Euripides7 so truly puts it.
There is still in reserve my most powerful weapon - Alexander8 of
Aphrodisias, who, apart from the fact that all he says openly supports my
view, informs us specifically that the image in the proverb is taken from
archers, none of whom as a rule fails to hit a large target, something like a
whole animal, though they may sometimes miss a small one. But it will be best
to transcribe what he says too, so far as it contributes to the elucidation of the
proverb: 'In my view, the fact that so many men attempt to express an
opinion on the subject, and that none of them is wholly off the point, shows
that the treatment of the subject is by nature within our scope; but the fact
that no one has treated of it as it deserves is evidence that it is important and
 I Vi 36 / LB II 238D-E 30

difficult, and that we ought not to make the study of it merely a sideline. We
ought on the contrary to get a firm grasp of it, because it is in accordance with
our nature, but in no careless spirit, because of its difficulty. And he
encourages us by what he says, neither to despise it as something quite easy,
nor again to abandon it because it is all so difficult. So that if it seems to hold
good, as we say in the proverb, Who could miss the gate?, the fact that all
those who say anything on the subject say something sensible, would be an
indication that it is easy; and this he demonstrates by adding the proverb,
Who could miss the gate?, which is used of easy things with nothing difficult
about them, and is derived from archers who shoot at a mark. For if the target
set before them is narrow, they do not find it easy to hit; but if it is a wide
target, to hit it is not difficult, but they all do so easily/ Down to this point I
have been quoting Alexander; and this makes it, I think, abundantly clear
that we should read theras, target or quarry, and not thuras, gate. Though I
leave this whole question, for what it is worth, to the judgment of the
learned. If anyone is specially attached to 'gate/ he will have material with
which to defend his choice without being at all absurd. For I think it quite
possible that a practice which we see in some places today was followed no
less in Antiquity -1 mean, that the bank of earth which supports the target is
protected on each flank, and behind it as well, by walls with an overhanging
roof, so that the open side, from which the target is accessible, may have
somewhat the shape of a doorway. Consequently, a man must needs be
extremely incompetent who not merely fails to hit the target, or its
supporting bank, but even misses the way in to it, which it would be hard for
anyone not to achieve. To me however it seems nearer the truth to refer the
adage to the story in Pindar. But on this, as I have said, the learned must
pronounce. I am satisfied to have done my duty as a commentator by putting
forward for consideration what I have found in the authorities and what I
think myself.
Close to this proverb, perhaps, is a phrase we find in Plato's9 Phaedrus:
'Lysias has missed the whole point/ Lucian10 alludes to this humorously in
his Timon, when he says that Jove's thunderbolt, which he had hurled at the
philosopher Anaxagoras, missed its target through lack of skill and hit the
temple of Castor and Pollux by mistake. The form of the expression recalls
Toto aberrare coelo, To be the whole sky wide of the mark, and Tola aberrare via,
To be entirely on the wrong road, which I have recorded elsewhere.11

37 Salsuginosa vicinia
A brackish neighbourhood

A briny neighbourhood, said of a barren, countrified,

and boorish part of the world. Aristides in his Themistodes: 'Be it a briny
 I vi 37 / LB ii 2390 31

neighbourhood, as the saying goes/ The commentator adds that the adage is
taken from Alcman1 the lyric poet. Plato2 in book 4 of the Laws: 'In reality not
a very briny and bitter neighbourhood/ Can be applied either to a piece of
business that is very toilsome but unrepaying, or to tiresome neighbours.
Drawn from farmland close to the sea, which is often unsuited to cultivation;
thus Virgil3 too condemns salty ground as the least fertile of all. Besides4
which, we observe that people likewise who live near the sea are more
inhospitable than other men, as though they acquired some unpitying
quality from that most pitiless element.

38 Ad fractam canis
You sing to a broken string

You sing to a break (we must understand either a

broken string or a broken lyre). Suidas shows that it is used habitually of
those who labour in vain. It was an ancient practice to accompany yourself as
you sang on the lyre; and if it had a broken string, you would try in vain to
sing in tune, because it would not answer. The fable of the grasshopper that
took the place of a broken string has already been told elsewhere. Though it
will not be without point if adapted when someone's kind actions evoke no
response, or when one tries to persuade a man deaf to persuasion or asks
forgiveness of the unforgiving.

39 Utre territas
You terrify with a wineskin

flca, To terrify, or be terrified, with a

wineskin. Used normally when someone either feels a baseless fear or
inspires it. Taken from those who frighten children or nervous people by
making a noise with empty containers; more likely perhaps of those who use
the noise of such vessels to scare away birds, as Aristophanes1 indicates in
the Birds. It is preserved by Diogenianus,2 who regards it as related to atr/co)
</>avXi£e«>, to rout with a wineskin. Hesychius3 gives this as one word,
do-Ko^Xavpt^ei^, of baseless fear. He thinks the same sense is conveyed by
TT) a-KLa jjiopfjivo-crr), You terrify with a shadow.

40 Leonem larva terres

You terrify a lion with a mask

You terrify the lion with a mask.

Recorded in the same source. Will be applicable to empty threats and
bugbears that are merely laughable. Although, as Pliny1 says, 'this great and
 i vi 40 / LB ii 239? 32

savage animal is terrified by turning wheels and empty chariots, even more
by the crests and the crowing of cocks, but most of all by fire/ If memory
serves, I have found in some author or other that the lion does take fright
even at scarecrows and at those who wear masks. The adage is used by
Seneca,2 book 2.

41 Principatus Scyrius
Sovereignty in Scyros

To rule in Scyros. Of a tedious and trifling sovereignty. The

island of Scyros, once the home of Pelasgians and1 Carians, is rocky and
infertile and produces nothing worth having. Suidas2 adds that some
authorities refer the proverb to Theseus who, having invaded the kingdom
of Lycomedes and made adulterous overtures to his wife, was thrown over a
cliff; whence it appears that a ruthless government was called 'a Scyrian
regime/ We read also of the Scyronian rocks; but whether this has any
connection with our proverb I do not know. If we follow the first
interpretation, the adage will apply elegantly enough to any office that,
apart from an empty title and tedious administrative duties, brings no
advantage with it. Zenodotus is the authority.

42 Post Lesbium cantorem

But second fiddle to a Lesbian

But second fiddle to a Lesbian. This adage they used to

indicate that someone came in not first but second. It is close to Nihil ad
Parmenonis suem, Nothing like Parmeno's pig.1 A Spartan proverb, which
arose on the following occasion, described by Suidas. Sparta was rent by
faction, and the Spartans consulted an oracle, which told them to send for a
musician from Lesbos. So Terpander, who was a native of Lesbos (in fact, of
Antissa), was sent for, and dispatched to Sparta. His playing calmed their
passions with such success that he put an end to all the strife and reconciled
the citizens. As a result, the Spartans held Lesbian musicians in the highest
esteem, and after hearing a performance by anyone else, they would say at
once 'But second fiddle to a Lesbian/ Zenodotus cites this proverb from a
play by Cratinus, Chiron by name. This adage is recorded by Plutarch2 in his
essay 'On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance' - though to me at least the
style does not read like Plutarch's. Nothing however will be found to
prevent our diverting this proverb from persons to things; for instance, a
man asserting that education is desirable, but only if one has made money
first, might say 'But second fiddle to a Lesbian/
 i vi 43 / LB ii 2400 33

43 Callipides
Callipides

Callipides was an old proverbial name for someone who, with

business to be got under way, threatened great activity and got nothing
finished or, as Terence1 puts it, 'though constantly in motion never moved/
Cicero,2 in book 13 of his Letters to Atticus: 'As for what you say about Varro,
you know that in the old days I wrote speeches or something of a kind that
made it impossible to bring Varro in. After I started on these more academic
subjects, Varro had announced that he would make some grand and
important dedication to me. Two years went by, and that old Callippides
though he never stopped running was not a foot further forward/ Cicero
uses these words to emphasize how slow Marcus Varro was, holding out
great hopes and in fact never finishing anything. Suetonius3 Tranquillus in
his life of Tiberius: 'Eventually he allowed prayers to be offered for his safe
voyage and return, so that it was a current jest to call him Callipides, from the
man in the Greek proverb who was always running and never progressed so
much as a foot/ Thus Suetonius; but it is not quite clear whether the whole
point of the proverb lies in the name Callipides, which is derived from fine
horses, or whether there was some other proverbial saying at Callipides'
expense, as it seems one can conjecture from what Suetonius says. And then
who this Callipides was, whose speed without progress is criticized in the
adage, is far from obvious, except that it seems not unlikely that we should
understand it of Callipedes the tragic actor, of whom Plutarch4 speaks in his
'Sayings of Spartans' in a passage that runs somewhat as follows: 'Of the
objects of popular enthusiasm he seemed to be perfectly unaware. It
happened one day that Callippides, a tragic actor who enjoyed a great
reputation in Greece and was universally admired, first put himself in his
way and greeted him, and then thrust himself pompously and prominently
among his entourage, expecting the king to open a friendly conversation. At
length he broke out: "Does your majesty not recognize me? Have you not
been told who I am?" Whereupon Agesilaus looked him up and down, and
said "Why, are you not Callippides the busker?" - deikelictas, which is a
Spartan word for an entertainer/ So Plutarch. Deikelon5 in Greek means an
image, and so an imitation or representation; Eudemus is the authority.
Hence the Spartans seem to have got their word for an actor of mimes - a
word which itself we derive from mimesis, the Greek for imitation. We may
suppose therefore that this Callipides, or whoever was the man in question,
used gesture in such a way as to give an impression of remarkable agility,
while remaining in the same spot. This name is also recorded by Aristoph-
anes6 in the Clouds, and he indicates that it is derived from hippos, the Greek
for horse.
 i vi 44 / LB ii 2418 34

44 Balneator
A bathman

Bathman, One who takes money in the baths. Commonly applied

as a term of abuse to someone who is too inquisitive, because men of this sort
living in idleness and having no business of their own to occupy them, have
a habit of minding other people's; like Horace's1 Damasippus who 'minds
others' business, having lost his own.' The same is true of barbers - Horace2
again:
A tale, I guess, to every barber known
And every blear-eyed lounger in the town.

Plato3 in book i of the Republic seems to use it of garrulous people. Not but
what inquisitiveness and garrulity are closely related faults, as Horace4 for
one will show: 'Shun him who questions asks: he's sure to blab.' The adage is
recorded by Diogenianus.

45 Bacchae more
Like a Bacchant

Like a Bacchant. Used habitually of sullen silent people,

from their resemblance to the Maenads we hear so much of, when inspired
by Bacchic frenzy. Here too Diogenianus is the authority. Juvenal however
referred it to a life of intemperance: 'Who look like Curius, live like
Bacchanals.'

46 A lasso rixa quaeritur

Weariness loves a wrangle

Seneca in the third book of his On Anger records a proverb of the form
Weariness loves a wrangle, or It is the weary man who picks a quarrel. The
sense in which this was used in Antiquity is not entirely clear. If conjecture is
permitted, the object seems to be certain bad-tempered people who are
over-ready for a quarrel, not because they suffer an affront but because they
are depressed for some other reason, just as those who suffer misfortune are
awkward and irascible. But I will subjoin Seneca's own words, from which I
think it will be possible to infer that this is the sense of the proverb: 'And so
men whose digestion is not above suspicion, when about to embark on
important business, should control by eating the bile of which fatigue is a
principal cause; either because lack of food concentrates the vital heat and
impairs the blood, checking its course through the veins, which are bound to
 i vi 46 / LB ii 2411 3
5

suffer, or because the body when reduced and weakened becomes a burden
on the mind. It is surely the same cause that makes men lose their tempers
more easily when they are tired through ill-health or old age. Hunger and
thirst likewise should be avoided for the same reasons, for they exasperate
and inflame the spirits. There is an old saying that a weary man loves a
wrangle; and this is equally true of a man who is hungry and thirsty and of
everyone who has something on his mind. Like a sore place, which hurts at a
light touch to begin with, and afterwards at the mere suspicion of a touch, a
mind thus situated takes offence at trifles, so much so that some people are
aroused to pick a quarrel by the way they are greeted, and written or spoken
to, and asked a question. Sore places can never be touched without protest/
So much for Seneca. Also to the point is Pliny's1 observation, book 22 chapter
24: 'In the same way to be more inclined to anger when tired and thirsty/

47 Gladiator in arena consilium capit

A gladiator plans his fight in the ring

A gladiator plans his fight in the ring. This points out that we should
sometimes change our plans to suit changing circumstances and, as the
phrase goes, take our cue from events.1 This too is recorded by Annaeus
Seneca in book 3 of his Letters to Lucilius. 'You understand by now' he says
'that you must extricate yourself from these outwardly attractive but
unhealthy preoccupations. You ask how you are to achieve this. Some
things can be demonstrated only by a man on the spot. A physician cannot
prescribe the right moment for meals or baths by letter; he must feel the
pulse. There is an old proverb, A gladiator plans his fight in the ring. The
look in his opponent's eye, the movement of his hand, the very angle of his
body has its message for him as he watches. What is commonly done, what
ought to be done, can be conveyed in general both in speech and writing.
Such advice can be given not only to those at a distance but even to posterity.
But when it should be done, or how, no one will teach you convincingly from
a distance. You must make up your mind on the facts/ Thus far Seneca.2
Caesar3 in book 5 of his Gallic War: 'As commonly happens to those who are
obliged to form their plans right in the thick of the affair/ We speak also of
basing our plans on circumstances as they arise.

48 Inelegantior Libethriis
As rude as any Libethrian

As ignorant as any Libethrian. A proverbial

exaggeration appropriate to a thoroughly uneducated man, completely
 I Vi 48 / LB II 242B 36

innocent of any commerce with the Muses. The proverb is derived from the
rustic ignorance of the tribe of that name. They say that the Libethrians were
very stupid, and despised music and poetry and, in short, all elegant
subjects, so much so that some authorities suppose it was among them that
Orpheus met his death. Of this persuasion is Zenodotus, who writes that the
Libethrians were a tribe in Persia. Servius1 believed there was a Libethrian
spring, from which Virgil in his Meliboeus took the name Libethrides for the
Muses. Pliny2 in his fourth book mentions a spring called Libethra, placed by
him in Magnesia which is adjacent to Thessaly. Solinus3 calls it Libethrus,
the masculine form. Strabo4 too in book 9 of his Geography mentions
Libethrus. 'In this place' he says 'there is a temple sacred to the Muses, a
spring called the Horse Fountain, and a cavern sacred to the Libethrid
Nymphs. From which one may suspect that those who consecrated Helicon
and Pieria and Libethrus and Pimpleia all to the Muses, were Thracians.
They were called Pierians; but they died out, and the Macedonians possess
these places now/

49 Domesticum thesaurum calumniari

To speak ill of one's own good things

Tov OLKOL Orjcravpov SiaySdAAei?, You speak ill of, or traduce, the treasure you
have at home, which means that you criticize and tear to bits your own
advantages. Very like the phrase from Horace which I have recorded
elsewhere:1 To ply the axe on one's own vines.' Aristides the rhetorician in
his Pericles: 'We shall be speaking ill of the treasure we have at home, if we
object to this.' No man in his right mind misrepresents and vilifies what he
holds stored up at home; everyone prefers what he has, and looks askance at
what belongs to others. This will2 be applicable to those people also who
cannot keep their own secrets.

50 Qualis vir, talis oratio

As the man is, so is his talk

Annaeus Seneca1 in his Letters to Lucilius, letter 114, says: The Greeks have a
proverb to the effect that as men's life is, so is their talk.' The Greek proverb
is to be found in Aristides,2 in his second defence of rhetoric against Plato:
'And the proverb is not at variance with this which says that as a man's way
of life is, so is his talk, and equally the reverse,' as a man's talk is, so is his
character. This view is confirmed by a remark which Diogenes Laertius3
records among the sayings of Solon, that 'Speech is the image of action.'
 i vi 50 / LB ii 242F 3

Persius4 in his fifth satire concealed the same opinion in a metaphor, when
he said:

Skilled by a tap to tell what solid rung,

What was mere plaster of a varnished tongue,

indicating of course that a man's mind can be gauged from what he says, just
as jars are tested by the noise they return when struck with the knuckles.
And again in the third:

Strike the flawed jar: cracked sounds its rifts betray,

And doubtful rings its green and ill-baked clay.

And this retains its value as a proverb, not only when a man's talk proves
him to be of bad or good character, but when we gauge a man's gifts from his
style and form a view of his whole habit of mind simply from the way he
expresses himself. A pompous man will have a bombastic style, a humble
man a style that is mean and lifeless; a rough man will have a crude style, a
bitter man a style that is acrimonious and offensive, the foppish and the
self-indulgent one that is flowery and slipshod. In a word, a complete image
of a man's way of life and the whole force of his character is reflected in his
style as in a mirror, and the very secrets of his bosom can be detected from
clues, as it were, that lie beneath the surface. Thus Seneca5 says that the
luxuriant and pleasure-loving nature of Maecenas can be inferred even from
the way he writes.
With this belongs what Socrates in Plato6 says to Charmides: 'Speak,
that I may see you/ knowing no doubt that he will form a judgment on him
from what he says. Again in the Gorgias he says that he does not know
Perdiccas' son Archileus, because he has never had a conversation with him.
But in common parlance people say that they know someone they have
merely set eyes on, though a person's mind cannot be truly seen except
through what he says.

51
The girl who stammers doesn't b-b-believe

The girl who stammers doesn't b-b-believe. A

proverbial jest, used of someone who tries to conceal his shortcomings,
though he makes them more obvious even while he does so; if a man, for
instance, were to deny that he has a lisp, and could not deny it without
 I Vl 51 / LB II 243B 38

lisping in the process. For is put instead of T I, since those

with a defect of speech most often have difficulties with two letters, s and r.
This comes in Suidas. The lisp of Alcibiades is famous: he pronounced r as /,
not, I imagine, from some defect but more as an affectation. In the Wasps of
Aristophanes1 one character says Theolos for Theoros and kolakos for korakos:
'You thee? Theoluth hath a toady'th head,' and the other replies 'So
Alcibiades lisping spoke the truth.'

52 Nostris ipsorum alls capimur

We are shot with our own feathers

We are shot with our own feathers.

Aristophanes1 in the Birds: 'And this we guessed, as Aeschylus would say, /
Not taught by others, but with our own feathers.' Aeschylus, as the
commentator tells us, in his play The Myrmidons, calls this a Libyan proverb,
because it derives from a fable2 located in Libya. The story runs as follows.
An eagle was struck by an arrow, and when it saw that the shaft was made to
resemble and imitate feathers, it said Thus not by others, but with our own
feathers / Are we undone/ Athenaeus3 uses this in book 11: 'And thus not by
others but with your own feathers are you undone, as that wonderful poet
Aeschylus puts it/ Appropriate to those who provide the occasion for their
own misfortunes, like Chremes in Terence's4 Heautontimorumenos, when he
urges his slave to aim some trick at Menedemus, and shortly afterwards is
himself a victim of Menedemus' wiles.

53 Bonae fortunae, or Boni genii

Here's to good luck, or A blessing on it!

A blessing on it! or Here's luck! These are the words of a

man who hopes for good fortune as he starts some undertaking, like that
remark too in Persius:1 'May it be for the best!' It will therefore be more
amusing if turned into a joke against a man who enters upon something
trivial in itself with as much pother as if it were of the greatest importance; for
instance, if some miserly man were to steel himself to broach a cask of wine or
put some ancient cheese on the table, saying 'Well, here's luck!' Zenodotus,
and equally the scholiast on Aristophanes,2 make it clear that the proverb
arose from the old custom at the end of dinner, when the table was cleared,
of bringing on neat wine; this dram was called a health to the agathos daimon,
the good spirit or spirit of luck. As the authority for this invention the
scholiast on Aristophanes' Wasps cites Theopompus; nor does it differ from
what he adduces from Apollodorus. And this opinion seems to have the
 i vi 53 / LB ii 244A 39

support of Aristophanes3 in the Knights: 'Heavens, no! but a neat dram to

bring good luck/ Again, in the Wasps: 'Never may I drink a dram of unmixed
fees to bring good luck/ and in the same play 'And drink a health to good
luck/ Rather different in the Peace: 'Now the time has come to snatch a hasty
dram to bring us luck/ Though Athenaeus4 in his Doctors at Dinner, book 11,
shows clearly that after washing their hands, which was the practice at the
end of dinner, they used to bring in a loving-cup which took its name from
Good Fortune - a habit which, to be sure, still persists in Germany. This cup
was called, as he makes clear, the rinse-cup, because it was brought on after
they had washed their hands, a custom scrupulously observed to this day in
England. Antiphanes5 in his Lampas: 'Toss off a rinse-cup to the god of luck/
and the same author elsewhere: 'But yet a rinse-cup to the god of luck/ Any
man who had taken this cup in hand invited someone else to drink after him,
as the same authority makes clear. Now there was a custom among the
Ancients that those who drank wine with someone, or were about to drink
themselves, first uttered in order to secure a good omen the name of
someone, whether god or mortal, and put this name in the genitive case; as
for instance in Lucian,6 in his Lapiihs, the Cynic philosopher Alcidamas
toasts the bride in the name of Hercules. It is the same in Horace:7 'Quick!
Here's to the new moon, here's to midnight, here's to our new augur! Fill,
boy, fill!'
Others prefer to think the proverb derived from an ancient custom of
making the first cup a health to the Good Spirit, and by these words securing
a favourable omen, with reference to Bacchus as a native and domestic deity.
Furthermore, the second day of each month was called in Antiquity the day
of the Good Spirit. It is said also that there was a shrine of the Good Spirit in
Thebes;8 and there is even an island of that name in the Indian Ocean, as
Stephanus9 assures us. Plutarch,10 in the third decade of his Postprandial
Problems, makes it clear that in Antiquity it was the custom not to start
drinking wine without first pouring a libation to some deity, that the draught
might do them no harm, but rather good, as though it were a medicine. In
Athens too on the eleventh of the month they used to offer the first-fruits of
their wine, and called that day the pithoenia. The Boeotians on the other
hand, on the seventh day of the opening month, after doing sacrifice to the
Good Spirit, used to sample their wine after the west wind had sprung up,
because that wind especially rouses and changes wine, so that what has
survived it now seems likely to keep; the month is called prostaterios.
Aristides11 in his Themistocles seems to have alluded to this proverb when he
says 'But among the Greeks he took the place of a Good Spirit'; though this
more properly belongs with Bonus genius and Mains genius, of which I have
treated elsewhere.12
 i vi 54 / LB ii 2441 4

54 Ad aqyan naky
A rascal at the water

A rascal at the water, was said in the old days of men of the
lowest class, employed in the meanest occupations; the reason being that in
Antiquity those who habitually supplied litigants with their allocation of
water were regarded as disreputable, and as far the most contemptible
members of society. For, as I have pointed out elsewhere,1 the Ancients used
to measure the length of speeches in a law-court against a clepsydra or
water-clock. Competitors too were given a ration of water put into the
clepsydra. This water was poured in, and the outflow measured, by
poverty-stricken and worthless individuals. So those who performed this
task were regarded at Athens as outcasts, devoid alike of property and of
esteem, just as in Roman law2 a stigma attaches to actors and certain servants
employed in other forms of public competition. There is another3 which
resembles this: Off with you to the water, ie to perdition.

55 Phocensium exsecratio
Phocaean imprecations

Phocaean imprecations. Of an oath enforced by many

sanctions. In olden time when they ratified a treaty they employed to protect
it from violation not merely exchange of promises and clasping of right hands
and sacrifice but imprecations too, to hang over the head of anyone who
might not abide by the agreement. This it was possible to infer from
Euripides,1 who has the following lines in his Iphigeneia Aulidensis:

Suitor with suitor make a covenant,

With oaths exchanged and pledge of clasped right hands,
Burnt sacrifice, libations duly poured,
Calling down imprecations on his head.

The proverb, to return to our subject, took its rise from an incident such as
the following. Once on a time the Phocaeans, a people of Ionia, by common
consent abandoned their native soil, having bound themselves with curses
and imprecations never again to think of returning to their own country. So,
in accordance with an oracle of Diana, and led by Aristarchas, they made for
Narbonese Gaul, and there founded the most flourishing city of Massilia.
The story is touched on by Herodotus2 in his first book, and by Strabo3 in his
fourth; and it is alluded to also by Horace4 in his Epodes: 'Maybe, in common
council or the better part at least, you seek some expedient whereby to live
 I vi 55 / LB ii 24501 41

without these eils and these toils. No better plan could be than this, as
Phocaea's citizens deserted under oath ancestral field and hearth, and left
their temples to be lairs for wild boars and ravening wolves ...' And then he
explains what sort of thing this rite of imprecation was: 'But let us swear an
oath to this effect: when the time comes that rocks rise from the sea-bed and
float, then it shall be no sin to return, nor need we hesitate to set sail for
home, when once the Po's waters wash the top of Mattinata, once lofty
Appennine pushes out into the sea, once a strange passion makes monstrous
unions of unheard-of lust, tigress submitting gladly to be trodden by stag,
pigeon and kite in adulterous union, while trustful herds have no more fear
of tawny lions and goats with slippery scales love the salt sea. This let us
swear, and all that can cut us off from the sweet pleasure of returning home;
and under these imprecations with all our fellow-citizens let us be off.'
Stephanus5 makes Phocaea a city of Ionia, of which an inhabitant is
Phocaeeus, as in Herodotus,6 or Phocaeus, and has another of the same name
in Mycala which is part of Caria. There is also Phocis, a part of Boeotia near
Mount Parnassus, the people of which are Phoceis and Phocicoi. I thought it
well to mention this, because some fall into mistakes through the resem-
blance of the names. For it is from the Phocaeans or Phocaeensians of Ionia
that this proverb is derived, while from the Phocici of Boeotia comes
Phocensium or Phocidensium desperatio, which I shall report elsewhere.7 The
proverb is recorded by Zenodotus.8

56 Sybaritica oratio
The language of Sybaris

The language of Sybaris (or Tales from Sybaris). Hesyc-

hius tells of a man called Acopus, presumably a native of Sybaris, who
worked so hard to secure a suitable rich and luxuriant prose style that he
gave rise to a humorous proverbial saying: an exquisite and highly polished
style was called 'the language of Sybaris.' The luxury of dinner-parties in
Sybaris has been touched on in the proverb1 Sybaritica mensa. Similarly an
Asiatic style2 of writing became proverbial; for there is much truth in the
remark3 that as man's life is, so is his language. This will be suitable also for
an arrogant and bombastic style, for the Sybarites were criticized for their
pride; see Sybaritae per plateas.4

57 A linea incipere
To start from scratch

To start from scratch, is used of those who begin at

 i vi 57 / LB ii 246A 4

the very beginning of something. Aristides 1 the sophist in this themistocles:

This was the first crucial test which Themistocles underwent; begin here to
watch the man at work, and start from scratch.' The person who provided
this author with scholia thinks this proverb is related to A lare exorsus,
Beginning at home.2 To me it seems more closely related to those of which I
have spoken elsewhere, A capite, From the head downwards, and A
carceribus, From the pens. For so they called the place from which the horses
were dispatched at the start of a race, for which another name was oppidum
(Festus3 is our authority). The image is taken from competitors in a race in the
stadium; for one special line is laid down for them, on which they must stand
level until they get the starting signal, as the commentator on Aristophanes4
shows in the passage I shall shortly quote. Tertullian5 in his Adversus
Marcionem, book i: 'Back you go then to scratch again! Back on your marks!'
When he says 'to scratch/ he means 'Right back to the beginning.'

58 A carceribus
From the start

, From the starting-rope or starting-pens, means the same as

the adage we have just given. Aristophanes1 in the Wasps: 'Yes, right from
the starting-rope I'll tell you how it all began,' that is, beginning at the
beginning. The scholiast makes it clear, as I have just said, that the image is
borrowed from the race-course, at which the carceres were a kind of pen or
enclosure from which the race started, called in Greek balbides or apheteriae.
Close to these a line was drawn, on which the competitors took up their
positions. Hence those phrases, which are common in Latin authors too, A
carceribus ad metam and A meta ad carceres, From starting-point to finish and
vice versa, of which I have cited examples elsewhere.2

59 Nova hirundo
The first swallow

The first swallow. Suidas cites this adage from the Birds of
Aristophanes, by a slip of memory I suppose, for it occurs in that poet in his
Knights in the following lines:

I played those cooks a pretty trick. I said to them, I said:

Look, boys! Spring's come. You see, there's the first swallow overhead.
Then while they gaped I helped myself to a nice piece of meat.

The scholiast tells us this is a proverbial image, which means the same as 'the
 i vi 59 / LB ii 2461 43

beginning of spring/ because that is the season when the bird appears. So in
Horace:1 'When Zephyrs blow and swallows first appear/ Suidas says it was
in current use when a trick was played on someone. This is taken from a
children's game. One party elaborately pretends to see the first swallow, and
shows it to the rest; then, while the others are absorbed in looking for it, they
help themselves to what they want. Theognis in the eighth book of
Athenaeus2 states that it was a regular custom in Rhodes to issue a public
invitation to the swallow every year at the beginning of spring, which they
called chelidonizein, summoning it with the formula The swallow is here, is
here, bringing lovely seasons, bringing lovely years/ So it will fit those who
deceive and do harm by inspiring false hopes.

60 Jovis et regis cerebrum

Jove's brain and the king's

Jove's brain, and B The king's brain.

Used of exceptionally succulent and delicious food, or of people who live a
soft luxurious life. Clearchus,1 cited by Zenodotus, writes that in Persia
rich dinners are called Jove's brain and the king's. Athenaeus,2 book 12, tells
us that Sardanapalus rewarded the inventors of some new pleasure with a
dish of 'Jove's brain and the king's/ something very delicious I suppose.
And again in book 14 he lists 'Jove's brains' among the great delicacies of the
second course. In Apuleius,3 in his first Apologia, Ennius is quoted as saying:
'Why pass over the wrasse, great Jove's brains, or very near it? / Off old
Nestor's home they catch very big, very good ones/ Ephippus in Athen-
aeus4 mentions 'Jove's brain' among the luxuries of the second course. He
also5 calls dishes he prefers 'the flower of nectar/ and tells us in another
passage6 that wine was called by Aristophanes 'Venus' milk/ Again7 in
another place he indicates that delicious dishes were called 'Food for Helen.'

61 Non movenda moves

You move what should not be moved

You move what should not be moved, will fit those who
either attempt something impossible, or violate sacred things, or change a
solemn agreement, or launch scandalous attacks on people whose authority
entitles them to respect. Zenodotus thinks it arose from the solemn
prohibition on moving altars or tombs or shrines, which are rightly the
objects of some sort of respect and reverence. Plutarch1 in his essay 'On the
Divine Sign of Socrates' writes that a man who was trying to raise the ghost
of a dead friend heard the words 'Move not what should not be moved.' He
 i vi 61 / LB ii 2470 44

uses it again in the 'Eroticus' of a man who was thought to be undermining

the accepted view of the gods. Plato2 records it in the Laws, book 8, where he
brings forward a law which he calls the statute of Jove god of boundaries,
forbidding any alteration of a neighbour's bounds, be he fellow-citizen or
stranger, and any removal of the frontiers of a city or region, and ordaining
that everyone should rather move an immense rock than a small stone, if the
stone is fixed by treaty and on oath, thinking, as he says, that this really is to
move what should not be moved.' Again3 in the Laws, book 11: 'For that
saying which holds good in many contexts, that one ought not to move what
should not be moved.' He mentions it also in book 3 of the same work. And in
a certain epigram4 are the words 'Not Death himself grasps what may not be
moved.' Sophocles5 in the Antigone: 'You'll make me utter what should not
be moved.' And again in the Oedipus Coloneus: 'Words that may not be moved
'tis pain to speak.' Plutarch6 in his essay 'On Listening' speaks of 'desire
moving strings not to be moved/ and again in his 'On Garrulity': 'Moving
the heart-strings that should not be moved.' There is an elegant allusion to
this in an oracle to be found in Herodotus'7 Erato: 'Delos I'll move, though
moved she may not be/ For with the same words he glanced at the fable, or
fact if you prefer, of Delos floating freely at first, and then being anchored
fast to please Apollo. Whence Virgil's8 'Granted to stand unmoved and
spurn the winds/

62 Neque mel neque apes

No bees, no honey

No bees, no honey. Used commonly of those who

refuse to tolerate a drawback which is tied up with something advantageous;
for example, if a man could not endure bees because they have stings, and
therefore will be unable equally to enjoy honey, which he is very fond of. For
heaven has so blended the affairs of mortals that gains are always
accompanied by loss. Tryphon1 the writer on grammar gives this among the
figures of speech as an example of the proverb, and illustrates it from Sappho
the poetess of Lesbos: 'For me no honey and no bee/ There is a well-known
maxim2 to the same effect: 'Bear now what hurts, and reap the benefit/ Here
too belongs that thing in Plautus:3 'Take the rough like a man, and the
smooth is yours hereafter.' Homer4 points to the same thing, I suppose, more
indirectly but elegantly all the same, in his plant the moly, when he gives it a
black root and a milk-white flower. The black root he means for a symbol of
the toil and trouble by which one arrives at that peace of mind which is the
reward of virtue perfected.
 i vi 63 / LB ii 248 45

63 Tussis pro crepitu

A cough for a fart

A cough for a fart. Used in practice when someone in a

state of confusion pretends one thing to conceal another; for instance, if a
man caught in the house of an unfaithful wife were to maintain that he was
there to buy or sell something. A metaphor from those who, when they break
wind, conceal the fact with a resounding cough - a class of men who are
quite often detected even today, and cause considerable mirth.

64 Cornicibus vivacior
As long-lived as the crows

As long-lived as the crows. A proverbial

exaggeration for persons of very great age, taken from that bird's prodigious
life-span, of which Plutarch1 writes as follows in the essay entitled 'On the
Obsolescence of Oracles,' citing Hesiod who 'in the person of a Naiad' thus
puts together the different life-span of various living creatures:

Nine generations of men the crow with her chatter outliveth;

Four crows yield to the stag and three stags yield to the raven.
Nine long ravens' lives will not see the end of the phoenix;
We the Nymphs can live ten times as long as a phoenix,
We the long-haired daughters of Jove who is lord of the aegis.

What seems to be a version of these lines of Hesiod was produced by

someone, I know not who,2 and is to be found with the other pieces in the
Appendix to Virgil; it goes something like this:

Four score and sixteen years runs the full span

Of men; nine times as far the noisy crow;
And the crow's age four times outlives the stag;
Thrice the swift stag yields to the raven's years,
Nine times the phoenix, that its life renews,
Outlives the raven, and ten times do we,
The Hamadryads, longest-lived of Nymphs,
Surpass the phoenix. Such the span of life
That living creatures bounds; but all the rest
God only knows, time's secret who controls.

It was equally a pleasure to add these lines, because I hope thereby to secure
 i vi 64 / LB ii 248E 46

forgiveness for myself when I translate so often extempore, as I shall be

compelled to do, if I seem sometimes not to have rendered everything quite
precisely; for these lines will have shown how much latitude the ancients
allowed themselves when translating poetry. The same view is repeated
from Hesiod with great point and brevity by Pliny:3 'Hesiod' he says 'allots to
the crow nine times our span of life; four times that amount to the stag; and
three times more to the raven/ Though some authorities regard all this as
fabulous; among them Aristotle,4 who thinks that no living creature lives
longer than man except only the elephant. Martial:5 'And outlived every
crow' of a woman who lived to an inordinate old age. Horace6 too in the
Odes: 'But Lyce meant to keep to match the years / Of some old crow/ It was
to the same effect that that great philosopher on his deathbed envied the
crows that length of days, which nature had denied to man. Synesius7 in one
of his letters: 'It is right that the most just man should govern us for a crow's
span of years/

65 Tithoni senecta
The old age of Tithonus

TiBtovov yfjpas, The old age of Tithonus. The myth tells how Aurora fell in
love with Tithonus, and how he was taken up into heaven and bathed with
some heavenly elixir, as a result of which he lived to such an immense age
that at length he prayed to be turned into a grasshopper. Lucian1 has in one
of his dialogues 'And the old man was living longer than Tithonus/ This
same character of Tithonus is introduced as a marvel of longevity by Ariston
of Chios in his book on old age; so Cicero2 tells us in his Cato. Suidas3 records
the adage in the form 'May you sink deeper into old age than Tithonus!'

66 Nestorea senecta
As old as Nestor

In the same way, in Latin at any rate, the great age of Nestor became
proverbial; for Homer1 in book 3 of the Odyssey says he lived for three
generations: Thrice has he ruled, they say, over a whole generation of men,'
and he asserts this likewise in the first book of the Iliad. So too Juvenal:2
'Now starts to count his years on his right hand,' meaning that he has
outlived three generations. In a word, any expression drawn from creatures3
which are exceptionally long-lived will have the air of a proverb; for
example, 'as old as a phoenix,' which lives (as we are told by Hesiod) nine
times as long as a raven, and 'as old as a stag' or 'as a raven/ and 'as old as
Tiresias/ who is said in the tragedy to have outlived six generations of men,
 i vi 66 / LB ii 2490 47

and 'as old as a Chinaman/ for the Greek historians tell us that the Chinese
live for three hundred years. Anyone who needs examples of this sort of
thing should read Lucian's4 Marcrobioi, which means Men of great age, and
Pliny,5 book 7 chapter 48.

67 Ultra pensum vivit

He outlives his allotted span

Lucian has a neat remark in his Philopseud.es, Tor he is already outliving his
spindle/ meaning that he has already reached his allotted span. This is an
allusion to the spindle with which, if we may believe the poets, the Fates are
supposed to draw out the thread of the lives of mortals. Theologians also
speak of the fated bourn of life, when they mean the period allotted to a man,
which none may outlive.

68 Facile/ cum valemus, recta consilia aegrotis damus

Good counsel to the sick is cheap enough, when we ourselves are well

In the Andria of Terence a young man, not particularly intelligent himself,

makes a most intelligent and apt remark:

Good counsel to the sick is cheap enough,

When we ourselves are well; but in my place
You would think different.

This seems to derive from an oracular saying of the philosopher Thales.

According to Laertius,1 when asked what is the most difficult thing to do,
and what is the easiest, he replied, The hardest is to know yourself, and the
easiest to give another person good advice'; and in the comedy the author
has added elegance by his metaphor. Euripides2 in the Alcestis: 'Grieve not
o'ermuch, but bear it like a man/ This is Hercules consoling Admetus on the
death of his wife; and his response 'To advise is easy; to bear wrongs is
hard/ Close to this is the proverbial saying:3

To counsel others, all men have a mind,

But when we err ourselves, then are we blind.

This observation is drawn from human nature. Everyone gives invalids good
advice on what to avoid and what to do, and often they take them up for not
doing what they are told in order to get well. When they fall ill themselves,
those fine precepts are no help at all, and they need advice and criticism from
 I Vi 68 / LB II 25OA 48

others too. In fact, all inordinate desire is a sickness of the mind, by which it
is virtually blinded, so that it either cannot see what it needs for its own
well-being or, if it sees, cannot pursue it. Thus Phaedria in Terence4 puts his
hand into the fire 'well knowing what he does' and 'goes to his doom with
his eyes open.' Horace5 too pursues what he ought to avoid, and 'shuns
what he believes will do him good.' An avaricious man sometimes sees
clearly what a monstrous thing ambition is. Conversely the ambitious man is
well aware of the disease from which the miser suffers. Each of them
prescribes admirably for a complaint from which he himself is free, and
neither knows how to treat his own.

69 Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos

The things that are above us are nothing to us

The things that are above us are nothing to

us. A remark of Socrates which discourages us from restless enquiry into
heavenly things and the secrets of nature. It is referred to as a proverb by
Lactantius,1 book 3 chapter 20, 'Of these' he says 'I will choose one which
enjoys universal approval and is well known, and was regarded by Socrates
as a proverb: That which is above us is nothing to us/ It can be diverted also
for use against those who talk loosely about the business of princes or the
mysteries of theology. It will further be possible to turn it upside down: The
things that are beneath us are nothing to us - when we refer to trivial affairs,
the importance of which is too small to demand care on our part.

70 Notum lippis ac tonsoribus

Known to blear-eyed men and barbers

What has already become common gossip is said to be 'known to all the
barbers and blear-eyed men,' because in the old days it was in the gatherings
at the barbers' shops that rumour flourished. Aristophanes1 suggests this in
the Plutus:

And yet 'twas often said, by Hercules,

While men were sitting in the barber-shops,
That he had suddenly waxed very rich.

And Antipho in Terence2 gets news of his girl in the barber's. Horace3 too
says of the barber's: 'There with shaven poll / Sailors safe home long-winded
perils tell.' And again4 in his Satires:
 i vi 70 / LB ii 2500 49

A tale, I guess, to every barber known

And every blear-eyed lounger in the town,

where by his reference to something widely known he made the sense of the
proverb clear; for blear-eyed men sit doing nothing in the barbers' shops in
search of some treatment for their eyes. On the talkative habits of
hairdressers Plutarch5 has many interesting things to say in his essay 'On
Pointless Garrulity/ one of which I shall give myself the pleasure of
repeating. 'When there was talk once/ he says, 'in a barber's shop about
Dionysius, and they said his tyranny was like adamant and unbreakable, the
barber remarked with a laugh "What a way to speak about Dionysius, when I
constantly have my razor at his throat." As soon as Dionysius heard what
the man had said, he crucified his barber/ and thus, as Pliny6 puts it, his
words cut his own throat. That barbers as a class should talk so much he
attributes to the tendency of all very talkative men to congregate in their
shops and sit there doing nothing, and he thinks that constant exposure to
their chatter has infected the barbers themselves with the same complaint of
garrulity. This is why Theophrastus,7 as Plutarch also tells us, called barbers'
shops 'teetotal drinking parties/ thinking that the endless talk in them made
men virtually intoxicated. Bath-attendants8 suffer from a bad reputation of
the same kind, because public baths likewise are places where men sit idle,
uttering any gossip that comes into their heads.
It was for some such reasons that the Ancients called smithies leschai,
talking-places, as Joannes Grammaticus9 makes clear, because on cold days
in the winter a crowd of humble folk used to gather there to keep warm, and
there they sat doing nothing and passed the time in idle talk. Such places
seem designed for lazy men, and Hesiod10 warns the husbandman to avoid
them: 'Pass by the smithy in the winter-time, / Its warmth and gossip.'

71 Optat ephippia bos, piger optat arare caballus

The ox would wear the trappings and the lazy nag would plough

There is great elegance in that phrase in Horace The ox would wear the
trappings and the lazy nag would plough/ which expresses an inborn fault
in human nature, men's constant envy of another person's lot and contempt
and dislike for their own, their wish for things they have never tried and
rejection of what they know. For 'trappings'1 means what we normally call
riding-saddles, added with the object of giving the rider a more comfortable
seat. The Ancients ploughed with oxen, not with horses. The allegory looks
as though it was taken from a fable of some sort. The sense without the
metaphor is given in Terence's2 'We are dissatisfied with what is ours.'
 I Vi 72 / LB II 2518 50

72 Fertilior seges est alieno in arvo

The crop is heavier in another man's field

Ovid1 changed the metaphor while expressing the same meaning:

Another's crops are heavier still than thine

And heavier udders grace thy neighbour's kine.

Persius2 in his sixth satire: 'What care I if that cantle of my neighbour's / Is

better land than mine?' Then there is a well-known moral maxim to the same
effect, one of those, I fancy, by Publius3 which are quoted by Aulus Gellius:
'Other men's goods we like, and they like ours.' And Horace:4

How is't, Maecenas, no one likes the lot

That reason chose, or chance cast in his way,
But envies those who follow other paths?

73 Fecem bibat, qui vinum bibit

He must drink the dregs that drank the wine

There was no doubt an element of proverb in it when Aristophanes said in

the Plutus that the same man who has already finished the wine must drink
up the dregs as well; the man, that is, who has prospered in everything must
not complain if his luck turns: 'But yet, if you saw fit to drink the wine / You
must drink up the dregs.' The words are spoken by Chremylus about a
woman who had once been popular in the springtime and flower of her
youth, and now was old and was spurned by a young man.

74 Croeso, Crasso ditior

As rich as Croesus or Crassus

In Greece the riches of Croesus king of Lydia were a byword, to which

Solon's1 remark gave special currency. So it was in Rome with the wealth of
Marcus Crassus,2 who was even given the extra name of Dives, the Rich. He
refused to call a man wealthy unless he could support a legion out of his
yearly income. His estates amounted to two billion sesterces. Several other
men are recorded in Pliny,3 book 33 chapter 10, and also in chapter 3, as
possessed of inordinate wealth; and among them is Aristotle, the sainted
philosopher4 and virtually the god of theologians in our own day, whose
heirs are said to have produced seventy dishes for sale by auction. But they
did not pass in the same way into common speech, and so there is no call to
 i vi 74 / LB ii 25iE 51

mention them here. There will be more wit in the adage as a figure of speech
if we also change the number, as St Jerome5 does: 'You may give yourself the
airs of Croesuses and Dariuses, but a full pate and a full purse are not
inseparable.' Horace6 used 'the treasures of Arabia' for piled-up wealth,
with a proverbial air, just as he used 'Persian splendours' for over-elaborate
and expensive decorations.

75 Pactoli opes
The wealth of Pactolus

The riches of Pactolus, is a phrase used somewhere

by Philostratus1 to express very great wealth. The Pactolus is a river in Lydia
that rises under Mount Tmolus and abounds in gold-bearing sand, whence it
gets the epithet in poetry2 chrysoroas, streaming with gold. The same story is
told of the Tagus in Spain, the Ganges in India and the Hebrus in Thrace. To
these Pliny3 adds the Po in Italy, and says that no gold is of higher purity
than what is found in rivers, as being rendered very fine by friction due to
the current. Horace4 in the Epodes:

Rich you may be in flocks and lands,

For you Pactolus roll his sands.

Juvenal:5

No prize is worth it, not the golden sand

That shady Tagus rolls into the sea.

Exaggerations like this can be adapted to various ends. One might say, for
instance, This enormous expense is more than anyone could support, even
if he had the Pactolus flowing through his garden.' This man's greed is more
than the Tagus itself could satisfy/ 'He had no ordinary ambitions, but in his
mental picture it was to be all Pactoluses and Taguses.' Or 'He promised one
Pactolus after another/ riches pressed down and running over.

76 Iro, Codro pauperior

As poor as Iras or Codrus

On the other hand, with Irus and Codrus their poverty provided material for
a proverb. Ovid:1 'Irus he straight will be, who late was Croesus/ Codrus2
comes in Juvenal: 'All Codrus' furniture packed in one cart/ Irus3 is
mentioned by Homer in Odyssey, book 18, where he is said to have been a
 I Vl 76 / LB II 252B 52

common beggar in Ithaca, a great big man to look at, whose name from birth
was Arnaeus, but the young men called him Irus because he would carry a
message wherever one was needed. It was he who was matched against
Ulysses, who was then thought to be a beggar too, and Ulysses threw him
out. Hecale4 too is celebrated for her poverty, and is mentioned by Plautus in
the Cistellaria: 'If all answers my hopes, you'll ne'er be Hecale.' Ovid5 too
speaks of her: 'Hecale no husband, Irus had no wife; / And why? He was a
beggar, she was poor/ In how many different ways these phrases can be
used has been shown at sufficient length in the introduction6 to this book.

77 Mysorum postremus
Lowest of the Mysians

Farthest of the Mysians. Strabo1 in his Geography, book 12,

records that the people of Mysia were so much despised as to give rise to a
proverb. This is used by Cicero2 in his speech Pro Flacco: 'Is there any phrase
in Greek so commonplace and familiar as to call a man "the lowest of the
Mysians," if you despise him?' And again, in a letter to his brother Quintus:
'Unless perhaps you think I am moved by the complaints of one Paconius of
whom I know nothing and who is not even a Greek but a Mysian or, more
likely, a Phrygian,' in which of course he shows his contempt for the race.
Great contempt therefore, and very lowly station, can be expressed with this
adage.

78 Mysorum ultimus navigat

The last of the Mysians on a voyage

To be the last of the Mysians on a voyage, used to

be said in a humorous and proverbial way of a man who laboured in vain.
The origin of the proverb, as generally happens, is given in more than one
fashion. Some say that once, when the Greeks were suffering from a
pestilence, they received a reply from the oracle that they should sail to the
last of the Mysians. At first they wondered what the oracle meant. At length,
after wandering around for a long time, they found that Aeolis was situated
on the edge of Mysian territory, and that was where the god had told them to
move to. Others write that Telephus after killing his uncles enquired of the
Pythian oracle where he should move to (for it was the custom in Antiquity
for those who had killed anyone to go to another country); and the reply was
that he should migrate to the farthest region of the Mysians. So he went to
Teuthrania, which is on the edge of Mysia, and became the prince of the
country. Some give as the reason for his flight not the murder of his uncles
 I Vi 78 / LB II 252E 5

bu t the search for his mother, whom he found eventually in Teuthrania. The
proverb was used when anyone was ordered to do something hard and
difficult.

79 Tangere ulcus
To touch on a sore place

To rouse or touch on a sore place, is to arouse

pain, and to mention something which may hurt us very much. Terence:1
'Was anything less necessary than to touch on this sore place?' Donatus in his
note on the passage tells us there is an underlying proverb. The Emperor
Augustus (so Suetonius2 tells us) felt the shameful behaviour of his two
daughters called Julia and his grand-daughter of the same name as
something worse than death, and was accustomed not to refer to them except
as his three boils or three malignant ulcers, because it gave him great pain
even to think of them. The same metaphor was used with the greatest
elegance by Cicero3 in an attack on Clodius who, when the common people
were already exasperated by famine, was goading them still further into fury
with his incendiary speeches: 'So you were like the finger that scratched this
sore spot.' Plutarch4 'On Flattery': 'When he had scratched the sore of secret
talk.'

80 Refricare cicatricem
To rub up a sore

When grief or resentment which has softened with the passage of time is
roused afresh, this is called 'rubbing up old sores.' The source of the
metaphor is familiar; it is taken of course from a physical wound which has
now closed up and is covered with a scar, but can be opened afresh by
rubbing, so that the original pain of the wound returns in force. Cicero,1
writing to Atticus: 'I don't scratch the sores that Appius has left behind him.'
Again, in his attack on Rullus: 'For I would not be thought to be rubbing up
old sores inflicted on the body politic,' and he speaks of 're-opening
wounds' in his De oratore, book 2. We speak also of rubbing up the memory,
or jogging the memory, which means administering a mild reminder, but
nearly always with intent to annoy.

81 Odorari, et similes aliquot metaphorae

Scenting out, and sundry metaphors of this kind

Metaphors derived from the bodily senses, being more or less ready to hand
 i vi 81 / LB ii 2538 54

and taken as it were from what is very close to us, are nearly all proverbial, as
I have pointed out at the beginning1 of this work. To scent out/ for instance,
in the sense of to discover, and to establish some fact by intelligent detective
work. 'A whiff of something for suspicion and rumour. Cicero2 has There's
a certain whiff of dictatorship/ To nose out' in Terence's3 Adelphoe for to
detect. To smell' (Terence again) for to be suspected. To stink' for being
offensive or under suspicion. Hence too people are said to have 'a keen nose'
and to be 'keen-scented/4 with its converse 'thick in the head.' In fact the
nose by itself became proverbial for critical judgment; Horace's5 'Not that no
nose was theirs/ And things which we do not like 'have a bad smell/ Here
belong phrases like 'It smacks of falsehood/ They are redolent of Atticism/
They smell of the lamp/6 We often use 'a taste of something' as though it
meant our first acquaintance with it, as if we sipped a thing or tasted some
kind of sample. Cicero7 writing to Atticus: 'Get a taste of the man/ and again
That Latin Atticism of yours must be savoured again after an interval/ And
thus we use 'that first flavour'8 to express that first experience of a thing
which we acquire in childhood more or less from our nurses. And a thing we
like is said to 'please the palate/ And we say 'swallow something' when we
accept some normally unpleasant experience as though we did not feel it,
taking the metaphor from those who drink nasty medicines as though
against the protests of their sense of taste. Hence we find several times in
Cicero and Quintilian 'to swallow the tedium'9 or 'to digest the inconve-
nience' of something. Related phrases are They smack of arrogance/ They
have a whiff of adolescence/ Also 'to stomach' for to overcome something
unwelcome. 'Sickening' of something insupportable to listen to. To vomit
out/ to utter what passion did not allow us to repress. And 'to spit out that
trouble from one's heart/ 'to bespatter' a man with abuse as one might with
spittle, 'to spit upon'10 as expressing contempt. 'His gorge rises' for 'he is
indignant/
The sense of sight also provides many metaphors, as 'to bear someone
in one's eyes'11 for to love him dearly and be concerned for him; 'to be in
someone's eyes/ 'to have someone's eyes upon one' to express memory and
being remembered and thought of. 'Look out for/ be concerned about
something and take thought for it; 'look forward/ plan for the future; 'look
down on' of contempt; 'look up to' of admiration; 'to wink at' for to ignore
deliberately; 'to be blind' for to be deluded and make errors of judgment. But
to pursue this to greater lengths is not my present intention and would be a
boundless task. And so, although materials of this kind have some family
relationship to proverbs, to collect them in greater detail and more precisely
is not now my purpose, especially since this department has already been
taken in hand by a native of Britain, Richard Pace,12 whom I often think of,
 i vi 81 / LB ii 253? 55

and always with pleasure; a young man (to say nothing for the moment of his
character, which is fully worthy of his abilities) expert alike in Greek and
Latin literature, and possessed of unusual experience in the reading of
authors in every subject. Then he is very keen-sighted in picking up things
which the common run of readers pass over, as the saying13 goes, with
unwashed feet; and last but not least, his judgment is by no means that of a
young man, but refined and scrupulous. With the Muses' blessing, he has
formed, as I say, and I believe is now engaged on, a project which (unless I
am much mistaken) will be of great value to all who wish to make progress in
polite literature; he intends to collect all the notable metaphors to be found in
classical authors in both tongues, with all the pointed and elegant phrases
and other jewels and ornaments of style, and arrange them in a single
volume.

82 Mihi istic nee seritur nee metitur

The sowing and reaping there are none of mine

Plautus in the Epidicus used a proverbial phrase of great elegance when he

wrote The sowing and reaping there are none of mine/ meaning The
business you speak of is nothing to do with me, for neither risk nor profit is
to my account/ The metaphor is very familiar. The man who sows a field does
so at his own expense and risk; the man who reaps takes the proceeds and is
in the clear. This is the opposite of what Plautus has in the Mercator: 'Yours is
the ploughing and the hoeing yours, / Yours is the seed, yours too the
harvesting/

83 Ab ipso lare
Begin at home

Start from your own hearthstone, begin at home; make a

beginning, that is, with your own family and household. This will rightly be
addressed to magistrates and to critics of the lives of other people, whose
first duty is to correct the faults of their own dependants and the way they
live. For hestia in Greek means hearth, what in Latin we call Lar and Vesta.
Aristophanes1 in the Wasps: 'No, no: / To crush my man I must begin at
home/ Taken from the ancient custom at sacrifices of offering the first-fruits
to the Lares, the household gods. Aristocritus, cited by the scholiast, tells
the following story. When Jupiter had defeated the Titans and achieved
supreme power, he offered Vesta the choice of anything in the various parts
of his kingdom that she might select. First she asked for virginity, and then
for the first-fruits of all sacrifices offered to the gods by men. Hence, he says,
 I Vi 83 / LB II 254C 56

it became the custom to assign the first share in every sacrifice to the Lar or
household god. Plato2 uses this adage in the Euthyphro: 'So I could wish,
Socrates, but I fear things may turn out differently. For the man who tries to
do you wrong seems to me to be simply set on injuring the city at its very
hearthstone/ Plutarch3 in his essay 'On Having Many Friends': 'First of all,
beginning at the very hearthstone, as it were.' He uses almost the same
words in his treatise 'On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance/ He also makes
use of them in the essay he wrote 'Against Herodotus/ Aristides4 in his
Pericles: 'But it was his choice, beginning at his own hearthstone, to pursue
equality rather than to excel other men/ The scholiast points out that the
phrase is normally used of those who are either good or bad from the very
outset. It is like saying 'From the cradle/ because the Lar welcomes infants at
the moment of birth.

84 Propria vineta caedere

To cut down one's own vineyards

There is a phrase in Horace related to this, 'If I on my own vines the axe may
ply/ which means to begin with myself and tear poets to pieces although I
myself am one. It may be supposed a metaphor from those who cut down a
vineyard or who damage newly planted vines out of spite. Horace in his
Epistles: 'A poet's oft his own worst enemy, / If I on my own vines the axe may
ply/

85 Aedibus in nostris quae prava aut recta geruntur

The good or ill that's wrought in our own halls

Aulus Gellius1 says that this Homeric line, which comes from the fourth book
of the Odyssey, was always current as a proverb: ' OTTI rot ev /u,eydpoio-i
The good or ill that's wrought in our own
halls. Others attribute this to Socrates; Diocles ascribed it to Diogenes, as
Laertius2 tells us. Socrates used this saying to discourage the study of nature
and the supernatural and also of the whole field of mathematics, and to
recall people to the pursuit of moral philosophy, on the ground that it alone
deals with things in which we are really concerned. Plutarch3 employs it like
a proverb in his essay 'On the Maintenance of Good Health': 'If he thinks it
more becoming to him to be seen taking some interest in geometry, dialectic,
and music than in enquiring into and trying to find out "the good or ill that's
wrought in our own halls/" The lesson of this line is that we should attend
as far as we can to the things that concern our own selves and not enquire
into outside things which are no business of ours. Martial4 has a witty attack
 i vi 85 / LB ii 255A 57

on a man called Ollus who suffered from this fault, being a most painstaking
observer and most keen critic of misconduct in others, while he himself had
an unfaithful wife and a daughter ready for a husband and on top of that an
unpaid tailor's bill. Diogenes the Cynic5 philosopher, who, as I said just
now, was constantly quoting this line, used to say that schoolmasters made
great fools of themselves with their passionate researches into the misfor-
tunes of Ulysses while ignoring their own. To this we may also refer that line
in Homer6 which is almost hackneyed, for it comes in the sixth book of the
Iliad and books i, 8, and 21 of the Odyssey, 'Go home now, and attend to your
own tasks.' Plutarch7 defines inquisitiveness as 'a love of hearing about
other people's misfortunes,' and says that inquisitive people are like
vampires, who put their eyes away for safe keeping while they are at home
and replace them when they go out, with the result that at home they can see
nothing and are very clear-sighted out of doors. Those who make such an
inverted use of their sight are a fair target for that line in Sophocles8 about old
men: Tar-sighted they, but blind as bats at home,' for old men suffer from a
difficulty in seeing things close to them and can see clearly what is at some
distance; a fact for which Plutarch supplies an explanation in the first decade
of his Table-talk/

86 In se descendere
To venture down into oneself

To venture down into oneself is for a man to contemplate his own faults. The
image is taken from undercrofts or cellars, into which people descend and
can then see what is kept there in store. But the reference is to those
cavernous recesses of the human heart, which Momus thought should have
been supplied with windows. Persius:

None, none dare venture down into themselves.

They watch the wallet hanging on the back
Of him that walks before.

87 Tecum habita
Be your own lodger

Homer's line seems to have a very near neighbour in another place, also in
Persius: 'Be your own lodger, and you'll shortly come / To learn how scant
the gear you have at home/ You must live at home, this means, in order to
learn how little your possessions amount to. A metaphor from those who live
in princes' households and, as commonly happens, wax fat on the wealth of
 I Vi 87 / LB II 255E 58

other men as though it were their own, when if they had to board at home
they would scarcely have a salt-cellar to set on the table. 'Be your own
lodger' therefore means 'Measure yourself by the scale of your own
possessions and rate yourself by the advantages and disadvantages that are
really yours/1 suspect that we should place here those words of Cicero in his
Cato major: 'Live in his own house, as the saying goes/

88 Messe tenus propria vive

Live up to your own harvest

The same idea was expressed in a different image by Persius in his sixth
satire: 'Let your own harvest your expense dictate/ spend, that is, only so
much as you can really afford. A metaphor from the husbandman, who
measures what he can spend by the produce of his land year by year; for, as
Plautus1 says, no man can keep going if his expenses outrun his income. A
man who makes a great pretence of wealth was described by Alexis,
according to Athenaeus,2 book 6, by the elegant word ptochalazon, a
'beggar-bully/ for this clearly conveys the combination of pomp and penury.
Nowadays the world is full of men of this class, who unite the swagger of a
tyrannical bully with the vow of poverty.

89 Tuo te pede metire

Measure yourself by your own foot

To the same line of thought belongs that verse in Horace:1 Tis right each man
should measure his own strength / On his own scale and by his own foot's
length/ Lucian,2 in the essay entitled On Behalf of the Images, has 'But you
should judge between the two and measure each on his own scale/ the
phrase being of course just what Horace used, except that he added 'by his
own foot' as if to explain what he had said. Pindar3 too: 'But one should ever
observe the limit in all things, each man according to his own condition/
And Aristophanes4 in the Birds: 'Now measure yourself off to somewhere
else/ The message of the adage is that no man should inflate himself beyond
his own condition, and he should gauge his own worth not by the praise of
those who flatter him or by public opinion or by the favours of fortune but by
his own genuine gifts and by his powers of mind. A metaphor from those
who gauge the dimensions of the human body as a multiple of the length of
the foot. In fact, the exact stature of every individual is seven times that
length, if painters and sculptors are to be trusted. Here too belongs that line
in Martial:5 'For he who weighs his load can bear the weight/
 i vi 90 / LB ii 2568 59

90 Non videmus manticae quod in tergo est

We see not what is in the wallet behind

Catullus1 (it is an iambic line): 'We look not in the wallet on our backs/ which
means that we do not see our own faults, while watching with sharp eyes the
faults of others. The proverb took its rise from one of Aesop's2 fables, which
is told as follows by Stobaeus: Aesop said that each of us carries two wallets,
one in front and the other behind hanging from our shoulders; and in the
front one we put what other men do wrong and our own failings into the
back one. Persius:3

None, none dare venture down into themselves.

They watch the wallet hanging on the back
Of him that walks before.

Horace:4 'Will learn to look / At what hangs on the back he never sees/ St
Jerome:5 'But this is a real reason for friends to correct one another, if we
cannot see what we do ourselves and concentrate, as Persius says, on the
wallet of other men/

91 Festucam ex alterius oculo ejicere

To cast a mote out of another man's eye

This blind self-love, so characteristic of human nature, has been pilloried not
only in the poets but in the Gospels1 too (for they will have no objection to
being appealed to in this context), when they say that there are some men
who can see a mote in their brother's eye and cannot see a beam in their own,
meaning that they take offence at the smallest faults in others and flatter their
own however great. For so it runs in Matthew: 'Why do you see the mote in
your brother's eye, and take no note of the beam in your own eye? Or how
will you say to your brother, Let me cast the mote out of your eye? - and look
at the beam in your own eye!' Such is the literal sense of the Greek. St Jerome2
has: 'Who through the beam in his own eye would try to extract the mote
from another man's/ Men of this class are pointedly criticized by Horace:3

Blear-eyed with salves, you scarce discern your faults,

Yet in your friends' shortcomings there's no eagle,
No Epidaurian serpent sees so clear.

And again elsewhere: 'Who his friend's pardon for his boils demands, / 'Tis
 I Vi 91 / LB II 256? 60

fair that his friend's warts he should forgive/ This in itself has all the look of
a proverb. The boils of which he speaks are a much greater disfigurement
than the warts, which elsewhere he calls wens.

92 Intra tuam pelliculam te contine

Keep inside your own skin

Porphyrion1 points out that this is a proverb, which tells us not to forget our
condition and attempt what is beyond our powers; and he thinks it derives
from the fact that in the old days generals who were 'under canvas' slept in
tents made of skins. To me it seems more likely to be connected with the
famous ass at Cumae,2 who dressed himself, according to the fables, in a
lion's skin and thus passed for some time as a lion. But this did him very little
good when he was detected and became a universal laughing-stock, and
then was stripped of the hide that was not his and beaten to death with
cudgels. Nor would it be absurd to refer this to Cleon3 the Athenian who,
after starting life as a leather-seller or cordwainer, was made general in
command of an army and by the favour of fortune won a victory and
captured Pylos; then robbed and despoiled his native city and thus became
excessively rich; then at length was overthrown by another man and roughly
handled, and paid the penalty, all because he had not stayed quietly among
the skins where he belonged. Cleon is a character in the Knights of
Aristophanes, and is criticized from time to time by the same poet in other
places. It is of him, in fact, that Plautus4 seems to have been thinking when
he makes his braggart and swaggering soldier 'clad in an elephant's hide and
not his own,' either to show that he was a blockhead or because he used to
tell of feats beyond his powers. Horace:5 'Aye, and rightly too, / Because I
had not stayed within my skin.' Martial6 addresses a shoemaker who, like
Cleon, had risen to great riches and hoisted his sails to catch the favouring
winds; but was then reduced again by his extravagance to his original
poverty, so that for the future he could be nothing but a cobbler.

'You've had your fun/ he says, 'but mark my words: begin,

My cobbler friend, to stay within your skin/

Seneca7 too in his letters: They banish the wise man from everything and
compel him to stay inside his own skin/ Ovid8 brings out the point without
using the metaphor, in this way: Take my advice: he who lives hid, lives
best. / Let each man with his lot contented rest/ Lucian9 too alluded to it in
his Images: They remain no longer within their proper sphere,' said of
people who have been promoted by strokes of good fortune and are not
 I Vi 92 / LB II 257C 6l

sufficiently mindful of where they belong. In conclusion, it would not, I

think, be unreasonable to refer our proverb to the story of the flaying of
Marsyas,10 who did not sufficiently remember who he was and challenged
Apollo to a contest, in return for which he was stripped of his skin.

93 Pennas nido maj ores extendere

To spread wings greater than the nest

In Horace's Epistles we find a metaphor which is no doubt proverbial, To

spread wings greater than the nest, in the sense of enhancing your estate
and position in society, which were small and modest when you inherited
them from your forebears. If this is achieved by honourable conduct, it is
greatly to a man's credit, so far am I from thinking it should be reckoned a
fault. 'A freedman's son/ he says,

'with modest fortune blest,

Tell how I spread wings greater than the nest;
Add to my virtues and demean my birth.'

The image is derived from fledgling birds which grow so big, as their
plumage sprouts, that the maternal nest cannot hold them.

94 In tuum ipsius sinum inspue

Spit into your own bosom

In our own day this adage is current in many parts of the world. They tell a
man who criticizes other people's faults to spit into his own bosom, as
though warning him to remember his own private errors and desist from
arrogant attacks on the way other men live. That the Ancients did the same
can be inferred from the words of Pliny,1 who in book 28 chapter 4 writes as
follows: 'We also ask for forgiveness from the gods for expressing some
unduly optimistic hope by spitting in our bosoms.' In the same chapter he
also says on the authority of Salpa that the stiffness in any numbed limb can
be eased by spitting into the bosom. Neither of these practices is very far
from our current proverb; for the man who criticizes others offends by a kind
of self-centred optimism, as though he hoped that no one would ever be able
to blame him for anything of the kind, whereas nobody exists who is not the
victim of some fault or other, and the man who is unconscious of his own
mistakes (which is a kind of insensibility) is the victim of a sort of numbness.
Seneca2 in book 7 of the De beneficiis: 'It may be that if you examine yourself
carefully, you will find the fault of which you complain in your own bosom.'
 i vi 94 / LB ii 258A 62

Lucian3 in his defence of the essay On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'And that
you did not spit in your own bosom before you began your accusations/ and
again in his Wishes: 'You are above yourself from over-eating, Adimantus,
and you don't spit in your bosom nor remember who you are, though you
may be a ship-owner/ which is a joking attack on a friend, who seems to
have forgotten himself and imagines he is immensely rich, and did not spit in
his bosom to remind himself who he really was. Theocritus4 makes the same
point in his sixth eclogue. Polyphemus, after speaking rather boastfully
about his own good looks, says: 'But to avert the evil eye I spat thrice in my
bosom as the hag Cotyttaris taught me.' The scholiast adds that in his own
day the custom still survived for women to spit into their bosoms to avoid the
evil eye. He also quotes a line from Callimachus: 'O fortune, why do women
spit in their bosoms?' Here perhaps belongs a phrase from Lucian's5
Necyomantia: 'When he had spat three times in my face.' Nor is it irrelevant
that Persius6 in his second satire tells how the maternal aunt protects the
baby's brow and dribbling lips, 'with magic finger and purifying spittle.'
An ancient practice referred to by Athenaeus7 in his first book, of
wiping the face three times to drive away misfortune, took its rise from the
same superstition. He quotes the following line from a poet of Cyrene: To
men with face thrice wiped god gives good luck.'

95 Nosce teipsum
Know thyself

To the same line of thought belong those three sayings which are easily the
most famous of all the utterances of wise men, so much so that, as Plato1 bears
witness in the Charmides, they could be seen inscribed by the Amphictyons
in front of the doors of the temple at Delphi as maxims worthy of the god. The
first of these is Tv&Bi creavrov, Know thyself, which recommends modera-
tion and the middle state, and bids us not to pursue objects either too great
for us or beneath us. For here we have a source of all life's troubles: every
man flatters himself, and blinded by self-love2 takes to himself without
deserving it all the merit that he wrongly denies to others. Cicero3 in the
third book of letters to his brother Quintus: 'As for that famous Know thyself,
you must not think it was uttered merely to reduce our self-conceit; we
should also recognize our own blessings.' There is also a line preserved
among the proverbial maxims:4 That Know thyself is useful everywhere.'
Nonius Marcellus quotes a satire by Varro,5 the title of which was Know
Thyself. Ovid6 in his Art of Love: Those world-famous words, / That every
man should to himself be known/ Juvenal:7 'And Know Thyself descended
from the sky.' Ovid gives Pythagoras as the author of this rule; Socrates in
 i vi 95 / LB ii 2598 63

Plato8 thinks it started with Apollo. Plato in the Phaedrus: 'I cannot yet
achieve the self-knowledge of the Delphian inscription.' Some think9 that
this too was taken from that ocean we call Homer; for Hector in Homer,10
while attacking everyone else, fought shy of Ajax whom he knew to be
stronger than himself. As the poet says, 'he shunned an encounter with Ajax
son of Telamon.' Diogenes11 ascribes it to Thales, but cites Antisthenes as
giving it to Phemonoe, though he says that Chilon appropriated it. Thales
when asked 'What is difficult?' replied 'To know oneself.' Asked 'What is
easy?' he said To give another man good advice.' Macrobius12 in the first
book of his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio records that when someone
asked the Delphic oracle by what road he could arrive at happiness, the
answer was: 'If you have learnt to know yourself.' The same reply was given
by the oracle to Croesus, as we learn from Xenophon13 in his Cyropaedeia. The
Greek proverb-collections cite this line from Antiphanes:14 'Friend, if you're
mortal, think as mortals should.' The same principle is expressed by Pindar15
in the words 'Mortal desires are fit for mortal men.' Demonax,16 asked when
he had begun to be a philosopher, replied 'As soon as I began to know
myself.' Socrates,17 when judged by the oracle of Apollo to be the only
philosopher in Greece, though Greece was full of them, explained this by
saying that the others professed to know what they knew not, and that he
defeated them because he knew that he knew nothing, and that was the only
thing he professed to know. But Socrates was outdone in modesty on this
point by Anaxarchus,l8 who used to maintain that he did not even know that
he knew nothing. Menander19 the writer of comedies has one of his
characters correct this universally accepted dictum: This Know thyself in
many ways is wrong; / Far better were it, other men to know.'

96 Ne quid nimis
Nothing to excess

The second embodies almost the same principle in different words: Mrjdev
ayav, Nothing to excess. Terence1 in the Andria puts it in the mouth of one of
his characters, Sosia the freedman, as though it were widely known.
Diogenes Laertius2 ascribes it to Pythagoras. Aristotle3 in book 3 of the
Rhetoric gives Bias as the source, where he is treating of the ungoverned
passions of the young who, he says, go wrong in every field through
enthusiasm; for they love to excess and hate to excess too, while the aged are
different, for (to borrow Aristotle's own words) 'they follow the advice of
Bias, loving as though they might one day hate and hating as though they
might one day love.' Some attribute it to Thales, some to Solon, according to
Laertius.4 Plato5 cites it in one place from Euripides. And there is no lack of
 I Vl 96 / LB II 259? 64

people who trace it back to Homer6 as the fountain-head, who has the
following lines in Odyssey 15: That host I like not who beyond the mean /
Both loves and hates; reason is always best.' Again in Iliad book 10: 'O son of
Tydeus, praise me not too much / Nor too much blame me/ Personally I
should prefer to trace it back to Hesiod,7 who has in his Works and Days the
line 'Observe the mean; due time is best in all.' So Euripides8 in several places
and especially in the Hippolytus: 'So what there is too much of I like less /
Than the old rule of nothing to excess.' Pindar,9 cited by Plutarch: The wise
have ever praised exceedingly this saying Nothing to excess.' Sophocles10 in
the Electra: 'Be not over-angry with those whom you hate, but let not your
enemies slip out of mind.' Plautus" in the Poenulus: 'Moderation, sister, in all
things is best.' Here too belongs that Homeric tag,12 in book 13 of the Iliad:
'But in all things there comes satiety, / In sleep and love, sweet song and
gracious dance.' Pindar13 seems to have imitated this in the Nemeans: 'In
honey lies satiety, and in the delightful flowers of love.' Pliny14 in his
eleventh book: 'Most destructive, even in every walk of life, is that which is
carried to excess.' Horace:15 'All things are ruled by reason, have fixed
bounds, / Within which only can the right hold firm.' And again: 'Virtue's a
mean 'twixt vices either side/ Phocylides:16 'Measure's the best of all things/
And Alpheus17 in an epigram: This Nothing to excess I like excessively/
Quintilian18 writes that moderation is sovereign in delivery, as in everything
else. Finally Plutarch19 in his life of Camillus tells us that piety is halfway
between contempt of the gods and superstition, and that 'piety and the
principle of nothing to excess are best/ And there is nothing in the whole
world in which one cannot go wrong by excess, except the love of God, as
Aristotle20 too admits in different words, putting wisdom in the place of God.
Here belongs a quotation from some poet, given by Athenaeus21 in his first
book, on the virtues of wine: 'All human cares it drives from out the heart /
With reason drunk, but to excess, 'tis worse/

97 Sponde, noxa praesto est

Stand surety, and ruin is at hand

Stand surety, and ruin is at hand. All three of these are

thought by Socrates in Plato1 to belong to the same line of thought. For he
who gives a guarantee for another man makes a promise regarding
something which it is not in his power to guarantee, the honesty of someone
else. But he attributes the first of them to Apollo and thinks the other two
were added by mortals. Pliny,2 book 7 chapter 32, ascribes them all equally to
Chilon, qualified by their being treated as oracles; 'again' he say 'mortals
have admitted Chilon the Lacedaemonian to a partnership in the oracle by
 i vi 97 / LB ii 260? 65

writing up his three precepts at Delphi in letters of gold, viz that everyone
should know himself, that he should desire nothing to excess, and that
misery is the bedfellow of debt and litigation/ Pliny has explained the
meaning of 'stand surety.' We give a guarantee on behalf of a man when he is
borrowing money, and it often happens that the guarantor is obliged to
repay the lender in cash. We also give a guarantee to the judges that we will
produce the accused, and if he lets them down it is those who have gone bail
for him who are punished. This saying too is traced back to an origin in
Homer,3 who has a line in the eighth book of the Odyssey: 'Worthless the
pledges given by worthless men/ Chersias in Plutarch's4 'Symposium of
Plato' refers this to the story in Homer about the goddess of Mischief who,
because she had been present when Jupiter stood surety for the birth of
Hercules, was hurled by him down to earth. These three sayings are cited
with approval by Plutarch5 in his essay 'On Pointless Garrulity/

98 Novit quid album, quid nigrum

He knows white from black

He knows what white is and what black. This

can be taken in two different ways, either He knows the difference between
right and wrong, or He knows something known to the veriest ignoramus;
for the difference between white and black is too obvious to be lost on
anyone. Aristophanes in the Knights says that 'Not a soul but knows
Arignotus, of those who know what white is and what high stirring music/
The scholiast points out and expounds the proverb. This seems to be taken
from men in very early days, who could distinguish two colours in nature
only, white and black, as Pompeius1 records.

99 Albus an ater sis/ nescio

I know not whether you are dark or fair

Said commonly of a man entirely unknown. Cicero1 in the second Philippic:

'No one save friends ever left me anything, so that a touch of regret might be
sweetened by the windfall, if such it was. But you! A man you had never set
eyes on, Lucius Rubrius of Cassinum, left you his heir. How that man must
have loved you! He knew not whether you were dark or fair, and passed
over his own brother's son/ Quintilian,2 in book 11 of his Principles of
Rhetoric, says: 'one of the poets maintains that he does not care greatly
whether Caesar is dark or fair,' putting his finger no doubt on Catullus,
among whose surviving poems is one addressed to Caesar: 'Caesar, to flatter
you I don't much care, / Nor yet to know if you be dark or fair/ Apuleius3 in
 i vi 99 / LB n 2610 66

his defence against a charge of witchcraft: 'Up till quite lately I was perfectly
content not to know whether you were fair or dark, and I do not really know
you even now/ St Jerome4 attacking Helvidius: 'Who pray knew of you
before this blasphemous outburst? Who thought you worth twopence? You
have got what you wanted, and your crimes have made your reputation.
Even I, who write against you and live in the same city as yourself (how you
stammer and change colour!), do not know, as the saying goes, whether you
are fair or dark/ Horace5 in the last of his Epistles: 'Whose features change;
now fair he is, now dark/ where Porphyrion points out that 'fair and dark' is
a proverbial expression for good and bad, and that Horace 'has related fair to
generous or prosperous and dark to mean or miserable/ Matron6 makes a
pretty use of this, as quoted in the fourth book of Athenaeus, when speaking
of the cuttlefish: he says that though only a fish, it alone knows the
difference between black and white, because the cuttlefish itself is white,
but has a black juice which it spreads when afraid of being caught.

100 Non novit natos

He does not know that they exist

An idiom very like this is 'I do not know that he exists/ when you mean you
are utterly and completely ignorant of a man. Cicero1 in the ninth book of his
Letters to Friends, writing to Papyrius: 'I am aware that before now I have had
letters from kings at the ends of the earth, thanking me for having proposed
that they should be given the title of kings, when not only was I ignorant that
they had the royal title, I simply was not aware that they existed/ Very like
this is a phrase in the Wasps of Aristophanes:2 'He would not even have
known that I existed/ meaning that he would have paid no attention to me
whatever. Theocritus3 too in his Sorceress: 'And knows not whether I am
dead or alive/ Plautus4 uses it with the same sense in the mouth of Euclio:
'You'd take no more heed / Than if I never had been born at all/

i Odi memorem compotorem

I hate a pot-companion with a good memory

I hate a pot-companion with a good memory.

Used of those who publish freely to the outside world what is uttered
without constraint among friends over their wine. Lucian1 in his Lapiths
quotes it from some unknown poet. Martial2 has
No pot-companion welcome here
With memory so crystal-clear:
Procillus, kindly note.
 I Vii 1 / LB II 262A 67

This is a joke at the expense of one Procillus, who in the heat of a

drinking-party was asked to supper next day and duly came, as though what
a man says in his cups should carry any weight. Plutarch3 refers to the
proverb in his first problem, right at the start of the Table-talk,' where he
raises the question whether philosophy is a proper subject for conversation
at a drinking-party. He thinks it is directed against those who keep up the
pressure at a party, urging men to drink more than they want to and
prescribing a fixed minimum which must be drunk; for some people who are
not very heavy drinkers habitually evade this by introducing topics of
conversation designed to make the other guests forget all about it. Then, if
anyone happens to remember and insist on the rule, they pretend they have
already drunk the prescribed amount. The Dorians in Sicily have epistathmoi
who preside over drinking-parties and are in charge of the amount drunk,
and call them 'remembrancers.' The Latin for this, according to Nonius,4 is
modiperatores, 'bottle-masters,' because they give orders how much people
are to drink. And so the proverb will look like a neat fit for those who exact
the prescribed amount of drinking at a party too strictly.
Others take the proverb to recommend what is called in Greek an
amnesty, that everything done and said at a party should be forgotten. In
support of this they cite the stories of those in old days who held that
Bacchus was the patron deity equally of canes and of forgetfulness,
indicating by this, I take it, that any errors committed at a drinking-party
ought not to be remembered, or at worst require only the light kind of
punishment one might give a child. Caning was a normal penalty for
children, as Juvenal5 for one can show: 'My hand like theirs has flinched
beneath the cane.' Plutarch6 again, elsewhere in the same work, tells how
the Spartans had a custom, if they entertained a friend or a visitor, to point
out the door to him and say 'No word here spoken passes this.' Plutarch
however rejects this custom, because he thinks the conversation at a
drinking-party should be educated and improving and not frivolous, so that
if it is repeated outside this will be honourable and do some good. He records
the same custom in his life of Lycurgus, who instituted a tradition by which
the oldest person present used to stand near the door, and as the guests
entered for the party he would point out the doorway and say 'No word goes
out through this.' Horace7 too thinks of it as one of the good features of
agreeable entertainment in his Epistles book one number 5: True friends, and
none to publish what we say.' Here too belongs that familiar Greek line8 'For
what a woman swears I write in wine,' because it suggests that what is
uttered casually at a wine-party normally carries no weight. It alludes to a
proverb I have recorded elsewhere, 'Writ in water/ of something that will
disappear. At this point we may add that the ancients, as Plutarch9 testifies
 I Vil 1 / LB II 262E 68

in his Table-talk/ had made out that Bacchus was the child of Forgetfulness;
and someone in Plutarch humorously inverts this, saying that he should be
called its father, not its child, because wine, especially in excess, deprives a
man of his memory even before old age sets in.

2 Duabus sedere sellis

To sit on two stools

To sit on two stools at once is to belong for certain to neither party, being of
doubtful loyalty and trying to please both sides. Homer1 coins a new word
alloprosallos, double-faced, and applies it to Mars, because he favours first
one side and then the other. Macrobius in his Saturnalian Feast, book 7
chapter 3, tells how Laberius, the pantomime-actor, had been appointed by
Caesar to the Senate, and Cicero 'would not make room for him, saying "I
would move up, if we were not such a crowd." The actor tartly replied
"When you sat on two stools, you had plenty of room," accusing the great
man of disloyalty. In any case, Cicero's words "if we were not such a crowd"
were a jibe at Caesar, who admitted so many men to the Senate indiscrimi-
nately that the official fourteen rows of seats would not hold them all.' Thus
Macrobius; and it is generally agreed2 that to intrigue with both sides is most
dishonourable. Solon however passed a law to punish those who in civil
strife had taken neither side.

3 Duos parietes de eadem dealbare fidelia

To whitewash two walls out of the same bucket

Close to this, I think, is another: To whitewash two walls out of the same
bucket, signifying to earn thanks twice over for the same thing, and lay two
people equally under an obligation to you by a single act. Marcus Curius in a
letter to Cicero has: 'But pray, my eminent friend, do not show this letter to
Atticus. Leave him to enjoy his error and to suppose me a man of honour, not
one with the habit of whitewashing two walls out of the same bucket.' For
Curius wished to be most highly thought of equally by both Atticus and
Cicero, and so to divide his single self that Cicero should get the interest
while Atticus held the capital. It is clearly derived from the men who put
plaster on walls. A similar adage in Greek is to be found in Suidas:
You are plastering two walls, applied to those who in party
strife make overtures to both sides. To the same class belongs the Hebrew
prophet's 'going lame in both legs' and the Gospel phrase 'serve two
masters,' and again what is said in the Apocalypse of those who are 'neither
hot nor cold.'
 i vii 4 / LB ii 2630 69

4 Unica filia duos parare generos

To make two sons-in-law of one daughter

A similar phrase is in popular use today, which, I think, if nothing else,

deserves a place among the adages of Antiquity: With one daughter you
wish to get two sons-in-law, when a man promises to do the same kindness
to two people at once, or when for a service that he has done for one of a pair
he expects both to be grateful.

5 Nescis quid serus vesper vehat

Who knows what evening in the end will bring?

Who knows what evening in the end will bring? Cited as the title of one of
Varro's Menippean Satires both by Aulus Gellius1 and by Macrobius, and no
doubt it was proverbial, like most of his other titles. It gives us a salutary
warning, not to be so much elated by the fair prospect of our successes at the
moment that we abandon thought for the future, and not to be confident
about anything until we have seen the outcome. The same thought is current
in our own day: Tt is not bedtime yet/ when people mean that things can still
turn out very differently. It is clear that Virgil2 alludes to the proverb, when
he says in the first book of his Georgics, 'In short, what evening in the end
will bring/ referring to weather-signs derived from the sunset. It can also be
connected with Solon's3 famous warning Wait till
you see the end of a long life. Livy4 in his fifth decade, book 5: 'When things
go well, one should form no proud or violent designs against anyone, nor
trust to the prosperity of the moment, for what evening will bring is still
uncertain/ King Philip5 referred to the same thing in Livy's fourth decade,
book 9, when he ended his reply to the Thessalians with the veiled threat
that 'the sun of all their days had not yet set.'

6 Multi thyrsigeri, pauci bacchi

Many bear the wand, few feel the god

For many bear the wand,

few feel the god. A hexameter line current in Greece as a proverb, meaning
that many mortals enjoy the outward signs and even the reputation of virtue,
who lack virtue itself. Similarly, not all are really theologians who wear the
bonnet of a doctor of divinity or are honoured with that title. Not all are
poets who go about under that name. Not all are monks who are burdened
with the cowl. Not all Christians1 who play a Christian's part in outward
observance. Not all of noble birth who wear collars of gold. Not all virgins
 i vii 6 / LB ii 263? 70

who have flowing hair. Not all kings who are distinguished by a crown. Not
all bishops who wear the twin-peaked mitre or carry the silver crook. Not all
are popes who are called Your Holiness and glorified by the triple tiara. Not
all are emperors who boast an eagle on their banners. It is not pogonophory or
tribonophory, as Plutarch2 expresses it, wearing of beards or cloaks, that
makes the philosopher. This adage is drawn from the ceremonies of the
Bacchanalia, during which in a fit of religious ecstasy they brandished thyrsi,
a kind of wand wreathed in vine-shoots. Plato3 uses it in his dialogue called
Phaedo. There is an elegant allusion to it in Plutarch's4 'Against Colotes':
'One of his friends, Aristodemus of Aegiae, - you know the man, I think, a
disciple of the Academy, no mere wand-bearer but a passionate devotee of
Plato/ He calls a 'wand-bearer' one who is an Academic philosopher in name
and dress alone, not in reality. Herodes Atticus5 also made a good remark
about a man with a cloak and long hair and a beard down to his waist: 'Beard
and cloak I see; I do not yet see the philosopher/

7 Non omnes qui habent citharam sunt citharoedi

Not all that hold the lyre can play it

Marcus Varro in the second book of his Agriculture has expressed the same
sentiment in a different metaphor: 'But not all those' he says 'who hold the
lyre can play it/ To this, I think, we can add a neat remark of Seneca's, that
some people 'prefer the mask to the face/ By face, he meant the state of
affairs in which a man looks like what he is; by mask, when a man purports to
be what he is not. This can also be diverted for use against avaricious people,
if you say that the rich are not those who possess wealth but those who
know how to use it, just as not everyone is a lyre-player who carries a lyre,
but only the man who knows how to play it properly. He is not a king who
happens to possess wide dominions, but he who knows how to govern.

8 Plures thriobolos, paucos est cernere vates

Many the casters of lots, but few can you find that are prophets

Many the casters of

lots, but few can you find that are prophets. A verse-line like the last, and
like that in common use in Greece. Philochorus, cited by Zenodotus, tells us
that there were once three nymphs, Apollo's nurses, who dwelt on
Parnassus, and were called the Thriae; whence came the later custom of
giving the name thriae to dice and to the lots used by soothsayers. Hence the
word thrioboli for those who cast lots into the divining-urn. Some maintain
that the theory of divining by lots was invented by Minerva, and was more
 i vii 8 / LB n 2640 71

successful than the oracle at Delphi; so it was turned into something false
and useless by Jupiter, who wished to give pleasure to Apollo. Then, when
mortals once again frequented the Delphic oracle, the Pythia made this
pronouncement: Many the casters of lots, but few can you find that are
prophets.

9 Multi qui boves stimulent, pauci aratores

Few men can plough, though many ply the goad

The same sense is given by another line:

Those who can goad an ox are common, the man who can
plough is rare. Many pretend to be what they are not. In Antiquity they
ploughed with oxen, as has been said above, and goaded them with a very
long reed or shaft fitted with a sharp point. The practice exists to this day in
Italy.

10 Simla in purpura
An ape in purple

An empurpled ape. The proverb can be applied to

various purposes: for example, to men whose true nature, though they may
be wearing very fine clothes, is obvious from their expression and
behaviour, or to those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon
them, or when something nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with
ornament from some unconnected or external source. What could be more
ridiculous than an ape dressed in purple clothes? And yet this is a thing we
quite often see in a household where they keep apes or monkeys as pets:
they dress them up with plenty of finery to look as much like human beings
as possible, sometimes even in purple, so as to deceive people who do not
look carefully or have seen nothing like it before, in hopes that the monkey
will be greeted as though it were a person, or if a man sees through the
deception, the joke will be funnier still. How many apes of this kind one can
see in princes' courts, whom you will find, if you strip them of their purple,
their collars and their jewels, to be no better than any cobbler!1 It will be2
more elegant if the comparison is stretched a little, for example, to those who
aim at a venerable appearance with a long beard and a flowing gown.
Augustine3 somewhere calls such men rather neatly 'cloak-deep philoso-
phers/ And Ammianus,4 book 14, calls a certain Antigonus 'a philosopher
no wiser than his cloak.' Of sages whose wisdom goes no deeper than their
beards I have already5 spoken.
 i vii ii / LB n 265A 72

11 Simla simia est, etiamsi aurea gestet insignia

An ape is an ape, though clad in gold

An ape will be an ape, though

he wears gold on his uniform. Corresponds to what has preceded, pointing
out that the trappings of fortune do not change a man's nature. The adage is
quoted by Lucian in his harangue Against an Ignoramus. It seems to derive
from the well-known Egyptian monkeys that can dance like human beings.
Lucian1 tells a story to the following effect. There was once a king in Egypt
who taught a number of monkeys how to dance; for no animal looks more like
a human being, and in the same way none is more able or more ready to mimic
human actions. So having learnt the art, they immediately began to dance,
dressed in scarlet uniforms and wearing masks. For a long time the
performance was extremely popular, until some clever fellow among the
audience brought a quantity of nuts secreted in his pocket, and scattered
them. The moment they saw the nuts, the monkeys forgot their dancing,
resumed their true nature, and instantly became monkeys again instead of
dancers. They trampled on their masks, they tore their clothes to shreds, and
fought each other for the nuts, while the spectators roared with laughter. A
similar story2 is told of the cat which was elegantly dressed by Venus and
admitted to the company of her ladies-in-waiting. And it played a woman's
part pretty well, until a mouse ran out of some hole or other, when it made
quite clear that it was only a cat after all.

12 Asinus apud Cumanos

An ass at Cumae

An ass at Cumae. Applies to those who, though

ridiculous and absurd, are valued none the less by people who do not know
them, simply for their novelty; or to men who achieve some appointment
which they do not deserve, by a freak of fortune, and thereby (as often
happens) become arrogant and boastful. Demosthenes1 has a neat remark to
this effect in the first of his Olynthiac Orations: 'Undeserved success starts
fools on misguided courses/ In line with this is that verse quoted from
Aeschylus:2 'A fool's prosperity is hard to bear/ I have told elsewhere3 the
story of the runaway ass which posed among the good people of Cumae as a
lion.

13 Ira omnium tardissime senescit

Resentment is the last thing to grow old

Resentment grows old last of all. The opposite

 i vii 13 / LB ii 265D 73

of this is a remark of Aristotle1 who, according to Laertius, when asked what

grows old faster than anything else, replied 'a kind action.' The two are put
together by Cicero:2 'Please a man, and he forgets it; hurt him, and he
remembers/ For it is the common way of mortals to remember an injury
stubbornly enough, and to forget kindness done to them with the greatest
ease. The Greek adage seems to be taken from Sophocles,3 who says in the
Oedipus Coloneus

Resentment knows no age, save only death,

For there's no feeling that can touch the dead.

Homer4 makes the same point in his surely very charming fable about Prayers
and Mischief or Infatuation. Infatuation he makes out to be a goddess who
sends disasters and confusion upon the affairs of men, giving her very keen
sight and great swiftness of foot. After her, and some way behind, follow the
Prayers, goddesses who do their best, he says, to mend the confusion
caused by Infatuation. These he describes as cross-eyed and lame, making
the point, no doubt, that men are quick to take offence and slow to be
reconciled, because they have a long memory for injuries. I will append
Homer's actual lines from the ninth book of the Iliad:

For Saturn's mighty son begot the Prayers,

Wrinkled and lame, squinting with sidelong glance.
Where Mischief went, they follow in her train
To mend the harm that she doth leave behind.
Mischief herself, mighty and fleet of foot,
Runs far in front and quite outstrips them all;
O'er the wide earth she harmeth mortal men,
While they pursue, the damage done to mend.
He who reveres Jove's daughters at their coming, -
Him they will help, and listen to his prayers;
But if he spurns and sternly says them nay,
They seek their father Jove, and beg that straight
Mischief may haunt the man and make him pay.

He mentions the same goddess Infatuation in the nineteenth book of the

Iliad, where Jupiter, thinking that it is her doing that he has been deceived by
Juno, seizes her by the hair and throws her down to earth headlong,
forbidding her ever to return to the society of the gods. This invention5 of
Homer's is thought by some people to be close to the Christian belief that
Lucifer was hurled down from Heaven.
 i vii 14 / LB ii 2660 74

14 Si vultur es, cadaver exspecta

If you're a vulture/ wait for your carcase

Legacy-hunters, the people who haunt a man when he is making his will, are
known in a familiar image as Vultures/ from the way they hang over a rich
man with no children as though he were a corpse. For it is characteristic of
the vulture to feed exclusively on carrion, and nature has therefore given it,
according to Pliny,1 such foresight that it flies two or three days beforehand
to the place where there will be corpses, and so is accustomed, as Basil2 the
truly Great records, to follow an army from one camp to another in a great
column. In one respect it is less noxious than those human beings who hang
over rich men's deathbeds: it never touches the fruits of the earth, nor does it
ever kill or even pursue any living creature however unfit for combat; it feeds
on nothing but corpses, whether they have died a natural death or are the
leavings of other animals, and among these it refrains none the less from
corpses of its own kind, that is, of other birds. So Plutarch3 tells us in his
'Antiquarian Problems'; to say nothing for the moment of what the Egyptians
believe, for they hold that all vultures are female and conceive by the east
wind, just as trees are fertilized by the west wind. It is therefore surprising
that this bird, which does so little harm, should have such a bad name. Thus
those who have the audacity to blackmail the rich or to poison them, are
called 'kites,' while those who fish for a place in their wills merely by acting
as toadies and flatterers are proverbially referred to as 'vultures.' Seneca4
in letter 96: 'If you're a vulture, wait for your carcase.' Martial5 in his sixth
book:

Silanus' only son is deadly sick:

Round with your present, Oppianus, quick!
'O cruel fate, this monstrous blow that struck!'
Let's see which vulture now will be in luck.

Diogenianus6 records this adage in his collections, but in another form:

Vulture-fashion. He tells us it is used of those who lie in wait
for a man in hopes of a legacy or some other advantage.

15 Corvum delusit hiantem

He's tricked the gaping crow

Horace uses a similar image of someone who had outwitted the man who
hoped for a legacy in his will, when he says that he tricked the gaping crow;
for the crow, like the vulture, is always on the look-out for carrion. Often he
 i vii 15 / LB ii 266F 75

says, 'Some jack-in-office, petty clerk rehashed / Has played your gaping
crow a pretty trick/ He speaks of one Coranus, who deluded his father-in-
law Nasica with great hopes of a legacy, and when he died left him 'save
lamentation, nought.' It looks as though this adage was made up in imitation
of the Greek expression A wolf with open mouth, so that one
might say equally well He's tricked the gaping wolf, or A crow
with open mouth.

16 Cornicari
To croak

Greek also uses o croak, proverbially for hovering over a prey or

for foolish chattering. Aristophanes in the Plutus: T hear you croak. You
think I've helped myself, / And want your share.' The scholiast points out
that this is a proverbial expression directed against those who croak like
crows to no good purpose. The words are spoken by Chremylus an old man,
who says he is well aware what Blepsidemus is up to; he is attacking him
from all quarters in hopes of extracting a confession, in order no doubt that
once he is in the secret he may claim his share of the spoils. Persius1 in his
fifth satire: 'Croaking mysterious nonsense to yourself.' St Jerome2 too uses it
in his letter to Rusticus the monk.

17 In vino veritas
Wine speaks the truth

Wine speaks the truth. An adage found in many classical

authors, meaning that strong drink strips the mind of its pretences and
brings out into the open what is hidden in a man's heart. That is why
Scripture1 forbids wine to be given to kings, because where strong drink
reigns there are no secrets. Pliny,2 book 14 chapter 22, writes that wine
'betrays the secrets of the mind so effectively that men in their cups will say
what will cost them their lives and cannot even repress remarks that will
recoil and cut their own throats. It is a common saying' he adds 'that there is
truth in wine.' There is a well-known saying, attributed to an eminent
Persian,3 that torture is unnecessary to get at the truth; wine is much more
effective. Horace4 confirms this in the Odes:

Tough wits to your mild torture yield

Their treasures; you unlock the soul
Of wisdom and its stores conceal'd,
Arm'd with Lyaeus' kind control.
 i vii 17 / LB ii 2670 76

Again in the Art of Poetry:

So kings are said to ply with cups galore

(Strong drink their thumbscrew) him they would explore:
Is he the stuff of which a friend is made?

And again elsewhere: 'Drink's the one key that opens every door.' The
proverb is also expressed in the second book of Athenaeus5 in this way:
'Wine and truth/ because those who have drunk too much not only blurt out
their own secrets but make rash statements about other people too. In
Plutarch's6 life of Artaxerxes, when Mithridates has said something insolent
in his cups, Sparamixas says 'No offence taken, Mithridates, but when the
Greeks speak of "wine and truth"' and what follows. Greek has another
common proverbial saying:7 'What is in the heart of the sober man is in the
mouth of the drunkard.' Theognis:8 'Silver and gold by fire the craftsman
tries; / Tis wine displays the mind before our eyes.' Athenaeus9 cites this line
from Euripides: 'Bronze the face mirrors, and strong drink the mind.' He also
quotes Ephippus: 'Liquor in plenty forces one to speak, / And tipsy men,
they say, will tell the truth.' But he also preserves in book 10 a saying of
Anacharsis10 that men as they get drunk are filled with false ideas, and then
tells a story not without its point. One of the guests had said to Anacharsis
'You have married a very ugly wife.' 'Yes' said he, 'I quite agree. Hey,
waiter, bring me a good strong drink, and I'll make her look handsome.' So
it's not only the lover, but the drinker too, who 'thinks what's foul is fair,' as
Theocritus11 puts it. And yet how can a man speak the truth whose
judgement is unsteady? Truth however is not always opposed to falsehood;
sometimes its opposite is pretence. A man can speak sincerely and what he
says may be false; and what he says can be true though he does not speak the
truth.
Last but not least, the proverb aims, not at the madness of intoxication,
to which things that are fixed appear to be going round and round and single
things appear double or treble, but at the more moderate stage which clears
away false shame and disguises. Alcibiades in the Symposium of Plato:12
'What follows you would never have heard me say, unless first I had recalled
the proverb that Wine without children or with children speaks the truth.'
From these words it is clear that the same proverbial expression was current
about childhood as about wine. A similar proverb is still in common use
today, to the effect that you never hear the truth from anyone, save only from
three kinds of person: children, drunkards and madmen.
To this I think one should add another proverbial line:13 'A slip of the
tongue is wont to tell the truth.' For what a man lets fall unawares is
 i vii 17 / LB ii 2688 77

commonly thought to be true, because only then is it free from any suspicion
of falsehood. Such slips of the tongue are picked upon as indications that can
be trusted: Tor "Neoptolemus" I thoughtless cry / "Orestes" - sign that
better days are nigh/14 Cicero15 finally in his Topica lists among those whose
remarks carry conviction children, sleepers, persons caught off their guard
and drunkards.

18 Bos in lingua
An ox on the tongue

Bov? em yXtorr^?, An ox on the tongue. Used of those who do not dare say
freely what they think. A metaphor either from the great mass of the animal,
as though it crushed the tongue and did not let it speak, or from the fact that
in Athens there was once a coin with the figure of an ox. In Rome too king
Servius first struck bronze coins with sheep and oxen on them, according to
Pliny,1 book 18 chapter 3. Plutarch2 in his 'Antiquarian Problems' tells the
same story, the reason being that in early times almost all wealth took the
form of flocks and herds, whence some suppose3 that pecunia, the Latin for
money, is derived from pecora, cattle. And so those who kept their mouths
shut for fear of a pecuniary penalty, or had not the face to speak because they
had taken bribes, were said to have 'an ox on the tongue/ Julius Pollux,4 in
the ninth book of his Vocabulary where he explains this proverb, more or less
agrees with this, adding that the coin itself was commonly called an ox.
Further, that in the festival in Delos, if someone was due to receive an award,
the herald announced by custom 'Such-and-such a man shall receive so
many oxen/ An ox in this sense, he says, was worth two Attic drachmas,
whence some people supposed that it was a Delian and not an Attic coin. He
adds that in the laws of Draco5 there was mention of a ten-ox payment, which
would mean ten coins; and that there were those who thought that Homer6
too had spoken of the coin, not of the animal, when he tells of exchanging
'gold arms for bronze, arms worth a hundred oxen / For arms worth nine/
But this view is refuted by Julius Pollux7 in another passage, where he shows
that exchange of goods already existed without coins. The author of the
scholia8 on Homer, in the second book, records that the ox was honoured
among the Ancients for many reasons, but particularly because it is sacred to
Apollo; and so on one side of the coin they stamped an ox and on the other a
king's head. But he gives the adage in the form Bov? em yXOKTOTJ /Se/SrjKef,
An ox treads on my tongue, pointing out that this is used when a man kept
silent for money. Theognis:9 'An ox is on my tongue/ Philostratus10inhis Life
of Apollonius: 'He was the first of men to restrain his tongue, inventing "An
ox sits upon it" as a principle of silence/ He speaks of Pythagoras, the
 i vii 18 / LB ii 269A 78

apostle of silence. Again, in his life of the sophist Scopelianus:11 'Nor should
we be surprised if some people, who are tongue-tied themselves and have
set upon their tongues the ox of silence/ It occurs also in the Agamemnon of
Aeschylus;12 The rest for me is silence; on my tongue / A great ox treads/

19 Argentanginam patitur
He has the silver-quinsy

He has the silver-quinsy. Related to the preceding,

and derived from a story told by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights book 9
chapter 9, and also by Plutarch1 in his life of Demosthenes. It runs as follows.
A mission from Miletus which had come to Athens to ask for help had been
bitterly attacked by Demosthenes in the assembly, and his opposition made
it seem unlikely that they would get what they wanted. The question having
been put off to the next day, the envoys approached Demosthenes in
person, and bought him off with a large sum of money, not to speak against
them. Next day, when the question was due to be reopened, he appeared in
the assembly with a great woollen bandage round his neck, pretending that
he had a synanche, a quinsy, and that this prevented him from speaking in the
normal way. At which someone in the audience who suspected he was
shamming shouted that this was no ordinary quinsy but an argyranche, a
'silver-quinsy/ A synanche is a complaint the name of which is commonly
corrupted by physicians to 'squinancy.' Aretaeus2 of Cappadocia speaks of it
in his first book among acute complaints, and points out that it has two
names, either kynanche because it is common among dogs or synanche because
it impedes and restricts the breathing.

20 Equus me portat, alit rex

A horse to carry me, a king to feed me

A king feeds me and a horse carries me.

Listed among Greek proverbs, with the following note of its origin. A young
man was serving in King Philip's army; and when urged to apply for his
discharge and abandon a soldier's life, he refused to do so, saying he had a
horse to carry him and a king to feed him. By which he meant that he lived in
the greatest comfort, never walking on his own feet or buying food with his
own money. Horace1 alludes to this in his Epistles, when he puts into the
mouth of Aristippus the words Tis a far better and more glorious thing / To
ride a horse and be fed by a king/ Commenting on this passage, Acron tells
us of this proverb, which is also recorded by Diogenianus. It is taken clearly
from some tragedy, for it forms a line of verse,2 an anapaestic dimeter.
 i vii 21 / LB ii 269? 79

21 Etiam corchorus inter olera

Blue pimpernel too is a vegetable

Blue pimpernel too is a vegetable. Said normally

of worthless men who are anxious to be thought of some importance. For
blue pimpernel is a kind of greenstuff very little thought of, which is given by
Pliny,1 book 21, in a list of vegetables. Elsewhere he records it among plants
that grow wild. He tells us that blue pimpernel is a plant 'used for food in
Alexandria, with crinkled leaves like those of the mulberry/ which has many
medicinal uses. Theophrastus2 recalls the proverb in his work on plants,
book 7 chapter 7, where he classifies corchorus among the vegetables that can
be eaten either cooked or raw, but says that proverbially it had a bad name
for bitterness. Suidas3 and Hesychius4 inform us that some thought the
corchorus was a fish, much despised and of no value, like the hippurus.
Aristophanes5 in the Wasps has 'And then we laid hands on the pimpernel.'
Here too the scholiast has not failed to mention the proverb.

22 Graculus inter Musas

A jackdaw among the Muses

There is apparently some difference between that and KoXoto? ev rat?

Movcmis, A jackdaw among the Muses, an ignoramus among eminent
scholars, an inarticulate person among practised speakers. It will be rightly
used also of men who advertise themselves by a display of spurious learning
and brazenly interrupt those who really know. The jackdaw is a bird that
cannot sing a note, but chatters tediously all the time. Related to this is a
phrase used by Virgil1 in his Bucolics: 'A cackling goose amid the tuneful
swans/ That swans are musical is so constantly repeated2 in the work of
every poet that no fact is better known, although no one has had the good
fortune to hear them singing. Nor is there any shortage of philosophers who
try to explain the phenomenon. Aelian3 adds that they do not sing unless a
west wind is blowing. Hence also the proverbial expression
A swan-song.4 Geese on the other hand greet one with a most tedious
cackling. Hence when an ignorant man is chattering in educated company, it
will be a suitable moment to use the adage A goose among swans.

23 In lente unguentum
Perfume on the lentils

The story on lentils; we must supply You are telling.

When someone introduces the name of some contemptible and worthless
 i vii 23 / LB ii 2700 80

person into a conversation concerned with men of outstanding merit. So the

phrase runs in all the current texts of Aulus Gellius,1 book 13 chapter 28. But
I gladly subscribe to a correction by Ermolao, who restored the text so as to
, Perfume on the lentils. This is appropriate to an
man or subject brought in at entirely the wrong moment in some quite
unsuitable context; for instance, if you were to involve a philosopher in a
riotous party of young men, or to start an argument over the wine on some
serious theological topic, just like some silly fellow pouring perfume on a
dish of ordinary lentils. According to Dioscorides,2 lentils also impair the
eyesight, lie heavy on the stomach, damage the intestines, have a bad effect
on sinews, lungs, and head, and cause nightmares. The adage will also be
useful when several things that are unlike one another are confused.
Fronto's words in Gellius run as follows: 'But mind you do not suppose that
"many mortals" should always be used for "many men" and in all contexts,
or it will be a case (to quote the Greek title of a satire of Varro's3) of perfume
on lentils/ Cicero4 also uses it in the first book of his Letters to Atticus, letter
19; 'A mission with full powers was to be sent' he says 'to visit the
communities of Gaul and ensure that they should not join the Helvetii. The
members were Quintus Metellus Creticus and Lucius Flaccus and, the
perfume on the lentils, Lentulus Clodia's son/ Though this passage suffers
from the same defect as that from Gellius. Aristotle5 quotes the adage in his
De sensu et sensili: 'For there is much truth in the gibe levelled at Euripides by
Strati's, that when cooking lentils it is a mistake to add perfume/ though of
the monstrosities offered in that passage by our current texts, the less said
the better. Athenaeus6 also cites it in book four of his Doctors at Dinner: T
wish to give you now some wise advice: / When cooking lentils, add no
unguent in/ from the Phoenissae of the comic poet Stratis. He also cites from
Sopater's7 Necya: 'Here comes Odysseus, prince of Ithaca, / The perfume on
our lentils! Courage, heart!' He further adduces the proverb-collector
Clearchus8 as having included 'Perfume on the lentils' in his list of proverbs,
adding that it occurs in Varro and that many Latin authors used it as a
proverb but without knowing whence Varro got the iambic line.9 I think
Aristophanes10 had it in mind when he says in the Peace: 'Won't you plant
thyme thereon and pour on unguent?' This unguent I take to be oil to which
scent has been added, something like what is used by hairdressers;
otherwise, to pour ordinary oil on lentils would be nothing outrageous.
Athenaeus11 in book two cites this trimeter from Eupolis: 'A nasty dish in an
expensive sauce/ The vegetable of which we speak is among the most
familiar in ancient authors, to be classed with onions, chives, and garlic, and
some have even written a panegyric on lentils. Some things are admirable in
 I Vii 23 / LB II 271E 8l

themselves, but none the less will not go together; so the man of taste needs
to learn what goes with what. The philosopher Diodes12 was celebrated as a
gourmet. When asked by someone which was the better fish, conger or bass
(lupus, wolf-fish, in Latin), 'One boiled/ he replied, 'the other grilled/ So
Horace13 speaks of the poet who is no good in war, but 'has his point in
peace/ Whenever a task is entrusted to someone not really suitable, you will
fitly say 'This is perfume on lentils/
I will add a further point. In the authorities I find this word spelt in two
ways, sometimes with an acute accent and sometimes with a
circumflex and this happens so often that it can scarcely be due to
ignorance or accident. Hence I conjecture14 that is derived by
contraction from for we find ? in Athenaeus. He also tells us
that s a contracted form for And so those who accept this
derivation prefer to use those who prefer the common form have
ignored the source of it, and written add

24 Anulus aureus in naribus suis

A gold ring in a pig's snout

More or less akin to this is an adage among the Hebrew proverbs, A gold ring
in a pig's snout. For so it runs in Proverbs, chapter 11: 'As a jewel of gold in a
swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion/ For use when
something outstanding in itself is distributed in the most unsuitable places;
if, for instance, wealth falls to the lot of a blockhead, beauty to a woman
without brains, blue blood to a coward, eloquence to a rascal, public office to
a man with no experience of the world. Not only do these gifts do those who
possess them no credit, they actually make them more ridiculous. There was
a time when some sort of gold ring worn in the ears was thought to be an
ornament, especially among barbarians. Further, a bronze ring is inserted in
a pig's nose so that they can do less damage to the fields by digging them up
with their snouts, a habit peculiar to this creature, whence the idea that pigs
first showed men how to till the soil. If you were to put a gold ring in a pig's
snout, the result would be utterly ridiculous. In Greek a line of Menander1 is
current which is much to the same effect: T hate the rogue who speaks like an
honest man/ Here belongs a story told by Aulus Gellius2 in the Nights. When
a man of very bad reputation had made a proposal likely to be of great public
benefit, they arranged for it to be put forward by someone else who was
honourable and right-thinking, and voted on in his name, regarding it as
absurd that a bad man should be the source of a good plan or a good policy.
To these we must add a line of Antiphanes cited in the sixth book of
 i vii 24 / LB ii 2720 82

Athenaeus:3 'A stinking sheatfish on a silver dish/ Some think4 that this fish,
the silurus, was what we commonly call the sturgeon, of all fishes by far the
most highly valued.

25 In eburnea vagina plumbeus gladius

A leaden sword in an ivory sheath

Close to this is the adage , In an

ivory scabbard a leaden sword, which arose from a remark made by Diogenes
the Cynic philosopher. When a young man who was very handsome had
said something disgusting and obscene, he said The scabbard is ivory, but
the sword you draw is lead/

26 Omnia octo
All eights

All eights. When we wish to convey that nothing is lacking, or

when many things have a strong resemblance. The proverb is thought to
have arisen as follows. The poet Stesichorus1 is said to have been buried in
great state in the town of Catania, with a monument ingeniously designed
entirely in groups of eight units - eight columns, eight steps, eight corners;
and hence the phrase All eights gained its proverbial currency. It is also
mentioned by Julius Pollux2 in his ninth book, where he treats of the game of
dice, which consists, he says, of numbered throws one of which is called a
Stesichorean, showing in fact eight pips, and gets its name from this
monument. Some say that the man who brought the Corinthians3 together to
form one city divided the whole body of citizens into eight tribes, and hence
the phrase in common use. And some writers4 tell us, giving Evander as their
authority, that there are eight gods who control the sum of things, Fire,
Water, Earth, Sky, Moon, Sun, Mithras, and Night; but the Persians equate
Mithras with the Sun. Others again say that there were eight kinds of contest
in the Olympic games, and that that is the source of the adage All eights.
If I too5 may hazard a conjecture regarding this conundrum, it might
very well be derived from a story told by Plutarch in his essay 'On the Divine
Sign of Socrates/ The people of Delos, he says, and the other Greeks
received an answer from an oracle in Egypt that there would be no end to
their troubles until they had doubled the altar that stood in Delos. Not
having understood what the oracle meant, they foolishly doubled all four
sides of the altar, and were surprised to find they had produced a solid eight
times as large, through ignorance of the ratio which produces a linear
 i vii 26 / LB ii 2 83

double. On this problem, however, they consulted Plato, who was a leading
expert in geometry, and he replied that the god had rebuked the Greeks for
their lack of education and was telling them to make a proper study of
Geometry. This proverb was clearly a favourite with the Emperor Heliogaba-
lus; for Aelius Lampridius6 tells us that he had a trick of inviting to the same
dinner-party eight bald men, eight men with bad sight, eight sufferers from
the gout, eight deaf men, eight black men, eight very tall men, and eight men
who were very fat and gross.

27 Omnia idem pulvis

All is the same dust

All is one and the same dust. Used of things that are
indistinguishable. Lucian: 'But to us, all is (as they say) one and the same
dust/ alluding to the ashes of the dead, between which the eye can see no
difference. Related to the proverb I shall exhibit elsewhere, 'Of the same
meal/ for the Ancients used 'meal' where we use 'flour.'

28 Plaustrum bovem trahit

The cart before the horse

literally The wagon drags the ox. Of something

that happens the wrong way round: for instance, of a wife laying down rules
for her husband, of a pupil correcting his master, of a people giving orders to
their prince, of reason subservient to the emotions. Lucian in his Terpsion:
'But now, in the words of the proverb, the wagon often runs away with the
ox.' The image derives from carts rolling backwards down a slope and
dragging their oxen after them.

29 Ab equis ad asinos
From horses to asses

From horses to asses. When a man turns aside from an

honourable vocation to something less reputable; for instance, a philosopher
turned ballad-singer, a theologian turned schoolmaster, a merchant turned
street-hawker, a steward turned cook, a blacksmith turned strolling player.
It will also be suitable when someone has sunk from affluence to a humbler
station. Procopius the sophist in one of his letters: 'As the proverb has it, we
have come down from horses to asses.'
 i vii 30 / LB ii 2730 84

30 Ab asinis ad boves transcendere

To rise from asses to oxen

The opposite of this is that phrase in Plautus, To rise from asses to oxen, in
the sense of passing from a lower walk of life into a richer stratum of society.
For it is thus expressed in Plautus' Aulularia by Euclio, a man of modest
means, when a rich man wanted to marry into his family:

The thought that has occurred to me is this:

You're influential, Megadorus, you
Are rich, and I'm the poorest of the poor.
If I give you my daughter, as I see it,
We're ox and ass; and when I'm yoked with you,
If I can't share the burden, I the ass
Fall in the mud, and you'd take no more heed
Than if I never had been born at all.
And you would hate me, my own class would flout me,
Nor could I find sure shelter if we parted;
Asses would use their teeth, oxen their horns.
Tis a great risk, to rise from ass to ox.

So Plautus. The allegory looks as though it must be borrowed from some

fable, which at the moment does not occur to me.

3iA Ab asino delapsus

Fallen off the donkey

Fallen off the donkey. Said of those who do

something unadvisedly or unskilfully, or who lose their present advantages
because they are too ignorant to know how to use them. The Greek contains
an elegant pun on an expression which is closely related but has a different
accent, duo vov, Off his head, in the sense of being lunatic or demented.
Plato1 uses this adage in book three of the Laws: 'It seems to me that at all
points one ought to keep a tight rein on the argument, as though it were a
horse, and not let it be carried away as though it had the bit between its teeth
until, as the proverb puts it, it falls off the donkey/ Plutarch2 too uses it in his
'Gryllus/ Aristophanes3 again in the Clouds:

'So you were in a real bad way, I take it.

Driving my horses, I fell off my car.
Why rave, as though you'd fallen off your donkey?'
 i vii 3iA / LB ii 273F 85

The first line is spoken by Strepsiades in ridicule of the money-lender,

because he demands repayment of the loan made to his son; the second line
by the usurer, who blames the young man by inference for having wasted
the money in question by his passion for keeping horses; the third by
Strepsiades, who says he must be raving, exactly as though he had fallen,
not from his horses but from his donkey, and were now airo vov, off his
head. Latin too4 uses a verb of collapsing of those who are off their heads or
out of their minds. Suetonius in his life of Augustus: 'He used also to appoint
a guardian for those who were under age or had collapsed mentally.' For this
proverb, like the last, some people invent a fable to serve as a basis. Two men
had found a donkey by accident in a lonely place, and a fierce argument set
in, which of them should take it home as his own property, because chance
seemed to have offered it equally to both of them. While they were thus
disputing, the ass made off, and neither of them got it. Hence, they say, the
proverb. It seems to me more likely that the point of the adage was the pun of
which I spoke, especially as I observe that scholars have always had a
passion for attaching some fable or anecdote however spurious to every
adage. Suetonius' phrase 'mental collapse' finds a parallel in Ulpian,5 who in
the title De magistratibus conveniendis speaks of the 'financial collapse' of
persons reduced to poverty.

316 Telluris onus

A burden on the earth

rf)s /3<ipo9, A burden on the earth. Used of a man who is absolutely useless,
who does nothing but make the earth heavier by the amount he weighs. It is
recorded among the Greek adages, and takes its rise from Homer,1 where
Achilles in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, resenting his idleness and his
failure to go out to battle with the rest of the army, uses these words: 'while
by the ships /1 sit, a useless burden on the earth.' Again in the Odyssey, book
20,

Such is this homeless beggar that you bring,

His mind on food and drink, not honest toil
Nor deeds of might, vain burden on the earth.

Plato2 has it in the Theaetetus: They think they are being told that they are not
merely absurd, vain burdens on the earth.' A pleasant story, which is I think
by no means off the point, is told by Athenaeus3 in his eighth book. A
well-known lyre-player called Stratonicus was in Corinth on a visit. An old
woman stared at him intently for a long time; and at length he said 'What's
 i vii 318 / LB ii 2740 86

the matter with you, my good woman? Why do you stare at me like that?' 'I
was wondering' she replied 'how your mother could have borne you for ten
months, when it is pain and grief to the city that has to bear with you for a
single day/ Such people would be well matched by the epitaph which
according to Athenaeus,4 book 10, marked the grave of Timocreon of
Rhodes, a poet but also a glutton and a drunkard:

I ate, I drank, I cursed, and all is said:

Now I, Timocreon of Rhodes, am dead.

32 Arabius tibicen
An Arabian piper

An Arabian piper, or An Arabian

messenger, is used of those who once they have started on something never
stop. This is said by Horace1 to be a besetting sin of singers: when invited to
sing they can never be induced to start, and if they start unasked they never
cease. A phrase is cited from Menander:2 'I see I have aroused an Arabian
pipe.' Julius Pollux3 in his chapter on talkative people recalls the adage in the
form An Arabian pipe. The Medea of Cantharus4 is also cited: 'He started up
an Arabian on the lyre/ And this line about the Arabian piper is common in
Greek: 'Plays for one drachma, and will stop for four,' because it took a very
small fee to induce him to play and nothing but a large one could stop him.
The origin of the adage is supposed to be the reluctance of free-born people
in the old days to learn the pipes as a thing beneath them; the art was
confined to slaves, most of whom were produced by Arabia. It then became
so fashionable among the free-born that anyone who could not play was
thought uneducated, until Alcibiades5 threw away his pipes, having seen in
the mirror how misshapen they made his face. It will also suit6 sufferers from
the disease for which Greek has the word aperantologia, the inability to stop
talking. Sophocles7 has written something to their address: 'Who loves to
talk for ever has not seen / How grievously he tires his company/

33 Artem quaevis alit terra

Skill fills your hand in every land

A skilled man need never starve. A

proverbial maxim, the point of which is that there is no more reliable
provision for a journey than a good education or some technical skill. You
cannot be stripped of these by robbers, and wherever you go they keep you
company without adding any weight to your baggage. Suetonius tells us
 i vii 33 / LB ii 2758 87

that Nero once received from the astrologers a forecast that his empire would
be taken from him; and hence Nero's celebrated answer: 'Art fills your hand
in every land/ by which he hoped to secure some indulgence for his own
efforts in music, which is a luxury to a prince and his bread and butter to a
man in private station. Consequently,1 when he understood that his hour
had come, he kept on saying That such an artist as myself should perish!' as
though it were an outrage that a performer good enough to make a living
anywhere in the world should now be starved to death. (For on that point I
do not accept the opinion of those commentators who offer a different
explanation for this passage in Suetonius.) Nor was Nero ever more
infuriated by criticism than when someone had said he played badly. The
same thing happened to Dionysius2 tyrant of Syracuse, who when he was
deposed from power opened a school in Corinth, where he taught small boys
reading, writing, and music. The words Suetonius quotes are clearly a
six-foot iambic line,3 which has been corrupted by the alteration of a few
syllables; it will perhaps be mended thus: To rexvi>6v ye Tracra yala
eKTpe</>ei. Among the Greek maxims4 there is a line of the same sort, which is
not very different from our proverb: Ai^i/ arvxias ecrriv av6pd)TTOL<s Texvr],
'Skill is a man's best harbour in distress.' Sensible5 men therefore, even if
they have abundant resources, compel their children all the same to learn
some sort of skill, so that they may have some way to earn their keep even if
luck changes and they lose all their money or are condemned to go into exile.
But as things are now a great many people who have no money of their own
grow old in the households of the rich; and if they are turned out from there,
they must either beg their bread or take up what they have not laid down,
against Plato's principle.
The author of the Latin Cornu copiae6 cites a proverb very like this,
which was I suppose in common circulation: Sua cuique ars pro viatico est,
Every skilled traveller can pay his way. This is to be sure the most respectable
sort of journey-money, provided the skill itself is respectable. But now the
world is full of travellers who possess no skill, but carry round a stock of
licenses and dispensations, as they call them, which they have purchased
and must sell again to pay their way.

34 Non eras in hoc albo

You were not on this roster

Meaning, You were not in this class of person. A metaphor from the album,
the whitewashed board on which in old days the names of jurors were
posted. Pliny in the preface to his History of the World: 'When I was
composing this work, you were not on this roster,' you were not, that is, in
 i vii 34 / LB ii 275E 88

the number of those whom I believed would read it. There was also the
praetor's roster or album, on which laws and approved forms of action were
written up. In the first book of the Pandects,1 in the title De edendo, Labeo, as
cited by Ulpian, 'says that a man performs the act of publication who
produces his adversarium to the album and makes clear what he intends to put
forward.' And in this passage2 at any rate the word must mean, not the
adversary with whom he has a dispute but his adversaria, the notes he has
taken down extempore on a tablet to refresh his memory. Cicero3 uses the
word in this sense in his speech Pro Roscio, more than once. Andrea Alciati4
thinks we should read adversaria and not adversarium, in book three of his
Dispunctiones. Besides which, in the second book of the same work5 in the
first title much is said about the album. Quintilian6 in book 11 of the
Institutiones: 'Some of whom transferred their attention to the album and the
subdivisions of the law/ pouring scorn on the specialists in legal niceties and
forms of action, who derived their knowledge of the law from the praetor's
roster rather than from the works of eminent lawyers. Livy7 in the ninth book
of his first decade: 'He published the civil law, which was enshrined in the
secret archives of the priests, and posted a calendar near the market-place on
a whitewashed board, so that it might be possible to know when action at
law was permitted.' Apuleius8 in book 6 of his Metamorphoses speaks of an
album or roster; for when Jove is to make a speech to the assembled gods, he
makes him begin as follows: 'Ye gods, whose names are entered in the
Muses' roster.' In these words I seem to detect a veiled but elegant allusion
by the writer to the gods who have been invented by the poets, as though
only those are members of the divine fraternity who have been established in
it by the Muses, who supply poets with their inspiration.

35 Oleo tranquillior
As smooth as oil

A proverbial exaggeration, used of men who never lose their temper and are
of a placid disposition, derived from the nature of a fluid which is more silent
and smoother than any other. Plautus in the Poenulus: 'I'll see to it: you'll find
this dog as smooth as any oil.' Oil is so tranquil1 in nature that it can even
calm the sea, the most cruel thing there is, and 'that is the reason, they say,
why divers sprinkle oil from their mouths, because it tames that element
which is so wild by nature, and carries light down with them.' The authority
for this is the second book of Pliny.2 It is confirmed by Plutarch,3 and the
reason for the practice is given, in his essay 'On Natural Causes.' Again, in
the sixth decade of his Table-talk,' when giving the reason why Homer, who
mentions so many liquids, reserves his epithet vypov, which means wet or
 i vii 35 / LB ii 2y6c 89

liquid, for oil alone, he demonstrates that oil contains nothing rough, but is
smooth from every point of view, and therefore gives very clear reflections,
as mirrors do. Besides which, when shaken or struck it makes no sound,
unlike all other fluids, nor has it any antipathy to fire, but feeds it in silence.
Lastly, there is no liquid which covers so wide an area when spread over the
body, or takes longer to dry, or is more effective as an emollient or
demulcent. Plato4 too uses this adage in the Theaetetus when speaking of
knowledge, for he compares those placid natures which approach the
business of learning and discussion in an equable and tranquil spirit to oil
with its steady flow: 'But he makes such a placid and cautious, yet at the
same time effectual, approach to learning and discussion, always in such a
gentle fashion like a stream of oil silently flowing, that you wonder how
anyone of that age could behave like this.'

36 Auricula inf ima mollior

As soft as the tip of the ear

Very similar to this is a phrase used by Cicero in his Letters to His Brother
Quintus, book 2, where he says 'Let me tell you that in public affairs and in
my private feuds I am and shall be just what you think I ought to be - as soft
as the tip of the ear.' Ammianus, book 19: 'In other things unduly severe, in
this department he was, as the saying goes, as soft as the tip of the ear.' The
image is derived from that part of the ear which is the softest, most flexible,
and most pliant part of the human body, having no bone in it to stiffen it, no
cartilage to harden it, and no sinew to stretch it tight.

37 Apio mollior, aut tnitior

As soft, or As ripe, as a pear

As ripe as a pear. The same image is used by Theocritus:

'Sure riper than a pear is he.' Apios in Greek means a radish, or a kind of pear.

38 Spongia mollior
As soft as a sponge

To the same class belongs As soft as a sponge.

For this is the phrase used by a toady in some comedy which is quoted by
Plutarch in his essay 'On the Difference between Flatterer and Friend':

Send me, Nicomachus, to fight this warrior.

Unless I thrash the wretch into a pumpkin
And make his face as soft as any sponge ...
 i vii 38 / LB ii 277A 90

In the same way1 they said 'As soft as a pumpkin.' So Theopompus,2 cited by
Athenaeus, book 2: Things have become as soft as a pumpkin or a gourd.' To
this class belongs a thing he quotes from Epicharmus:3 'As for me, I'm mild as
mallow/ because mallow is a vegetable with relaxing qualities. Then there is4
'As soft as any fancy-boy.' Plautus in the Aulularia: 'With all this beating I'm
as tender as any fancy-boy.' For the Ancients called dancers and pantomime-
actors 'fancy-boys' because of the gestures they used when they sang.
Catullus5 likewise: Thallus you tender fancy-boy, as soft as rabbit fur.'

39 Felicibus sunt et trimestres liberi

How happy he who has a three-months' child

How happy he who has a three-

months' child. A proverbial line, pointing to the happy position of princes
and rich men, whose flatterers turn everything to their credit and who
regard themselves as having a licence to do just as they please; so much so
that what in a man of the people is disapproved of as a great disgrace is cried
up in them as a virtue. The origin of the proverb is made clear by Suetonius
Tranquillus, who begins his life of the Emperor Claudius with these words:
The father of the Emperor Claudius, whose forename was Drusus but had
previously been Decimus and later Nero, had married Livia when she was
already carrying Augustus, and within three months she had her baby,
giving rise to the suspicion that he was the result of her adultery with his
stepfather. Whether true or not, it made immediately popular the line "How
happy he who has a three-months' child!"' For births in the seventh, tenth,
and eleventh months are legitimate; in the fourth and eighth they seldom
survive and are very rare; in the third month viable births are unknown. The
authority is Pliny, book 7 chapter 5.

40 Aurem vellere
To pluck by the ear

To pluck by the ear' was used by the Ancients in the sense of 'to remind,' the
image being taken from a traditional practice by which those who intended
to bring a lawsuit against another party plucked by the ear a man whom they
proposed to call as a witness, as though they wished to refresh his memory.
Hence that phrase in Horace's1 Satires: 'May I call you as a witness?
whereupon I turn my ear towards him.' In old days the forehead was sacred
to Genius, as Servius2 tells us in his commentary on Virgil's Silenus, the
fingers to Minerva, the knees to Pity, and in the same way the patron of the
 i vii 40 / LB ii 2770 91

ear was the goddess of memory, whom the Greeks called Mnemosyne. Virgil
in his Silenus:

My chosen theme was kings and battlefields,

But Cynthius, warning, plucked me by the ear:
'Fat, Tityrus, should be a shepherd's ewes,
But fine and delicate the song he sings.'

Which Calphurnius3 imitates in his Bucolics with: Tor grudging want oft
plucks me by the ear / And bids me mind small things/ Calphurnius gave the
proverb fresh elegance by transferring it from persons to things; though
'want' in this passage can be taken for a deity. Seneca4 in book 4 of his De
beneficiis: 'I shall not give it you as a present; I shall redeem my undertaking
and pluck myself by the ear. I will punish my rash promise with a loss.' And
again in book 2: 'I will have a word with myself and pluck myself by the ear'
(meaning, I will give myself a lecture, to ensure that I do not make the same
mistake again). He uses it in the same way in other passages as well, for
instance in one of his letters: 'Let someone then be on the watch, who can
pluck us by the ear from time to time, send common rumour packing and put
the other side when public opinion speaks well of us/

41 Alter Hercules
A second Hercules

There is an exaggerated expression current as a proverb

He's a second Hercules, used of somebody who is immensely
energetic and shows great endurance. A play with this title is on record
among the Menippeans of Terentius Varro,1 and it would be surprising if it
were not proverbial. Aristotle2 in book seven of his Eudemian Ethics: 'For a
friend wishes to be, as the saying goes, a second Hercules, another this/
Plutarch3 says that Theseus was given this as a nickname because he did
many valiant deeds with Hercules as his model. Laertius4 in his Lives of the
Philosophers tells us that the philosopher Cleanthes also was commonly called
a second Hercules because of his exceptional endurance whatever the
burden, so much so that he spent his nights raising water out of a well in
order to earn enough to keep himself by day, and was nicknamed Phreantles
instead of Cleanthes; yet with unabated energy he did marvellous work in
the daytime in philosophy. Clearchus,5 cited by Zenodotus, offers us
another story as the source of this adage. He says that Briareus, another
person who was also given the name Hercules, went to Delphi, where he
 i vii 41 / LB ii 2/8A 92

carried off a number of the treasures and monuments which were preserved
there in accordance with some ancient custom. He then proceeded to what
they call the Pillars of Hercules, and in the same way seized what there was
there. After that, the Tyrian Hercules came to Delphi to consult the oracle,
and the deity replied 'He's a second Hercules/ And this oracle, he says,
passed on into an adage.
Many people refer the origin of this saying to a certain Titormus,6 an
oxherd who is reported to have shown himself in many instances superior to
Milo. Milo, confessing himself beaten, raised his hands to heaven and cried
'O Jupiter, is this a second Hercules you have begotten for us?' Here belongs
that remark in Theocritus'7 Herdsmen: They say he vied in might with
Hercules,' to which the herdsman replies: 'I too beat Pollux, mother used to
say.' For Pollux was a champion boxer. And the nasty Greek toady in
Juvenal8 compares his rich and flabby patron to Hercules 'holding Antaeus
high o'er mother earth.' Macrobius9 in the third book of his Saturnalia writes
as follows: The Salii he assigns to Hercules on account of their rich stores of
recondite learning, for that deity is regarded by the pontifices also as
identical with Mars. And so it is stated in Varro's Menippean, the title of
which is He's a second Hercules, for in the course of a long account of Hercules,
he proved that he was the same as Mars.' It was the same in Rome: a man of
prodigious strength called Ruticellus was nicknamed Hercules. He could
pick up his mule, as Varro records, who is quoted by Pliny,10 book 7.
Whereas Hippocrates the physician 'received by decree from the Greeks the
same honours as were paid to Hercules, by way of reward for having
foretold the onset of a pestilence from Illyria and dispatched his pupils to the
various cities to deal with it/ for Hercules too was held to be alexikakos, an
averter of mischief. The authority for this is Pliny again, in the same book. In
fact this name Hercules seems normally to have been applied in common
speech to all men of exceptional strength, just as a serious and wise man was
called a Cato. Varro11 lists forty-three men who bore the name Hercules,
adding that it was given as a distinction to anyone who had performed some
great feat of strength. Macrobius12 too bears witness in his Saturnalia that
many shared this name before ever Amphitryon had a stepson.
Similarly13 generals of outstanding courage were given the name
Achilles, among whom was Lucius Siccius Dentatus, known for his
prodigious courage as the Roman Achilles: he had fought in one hundred
and twenty engagements against the enemy, and had never received a
wound except in front. The authority for this is Aulus Gellius, book 2
chapter 11. Last but not least they give the name Achillean to any argument
or demonstration that cannot be surmounted or impugned.
 i vii 42 / LB ii z/SE 93

42 Bipedum nequissimus
Vilest of two-legged creatures

Used of a man of whom you disapprove intensely and who surpasses the
beasts themselves in wickedness. Directed against a rhetorician called
Regulus, who is painted in his true colours by Pliny in several places in his
letters, where this adage is also recorded. But before his time Cicero1 had
aimed this shaft at Clodius in his speech Pro domo sua: 'He drafted
death-warrants for you, he was your confidant and your right-hand man,
this foulest not merely of two-legged creatures but of four-legged ones too,
when you ruined the commonwealth.' The Emperor Alexander uses the
same image in Aelius Lampridius:2 'Lately, members of the Senate, as you
will no doubt remember, when that most disgusting not only of two-legged
creatures but of four-legged ones too put forward the name of Antoninus';
by which he meant Heliogabalus, of all emperors that ever were the most
effeminate, such that he might well be called the Roman Sardanapalus.3 In
this phrase the use of a common noun adds a fresh emphasis which is not
without its merits, just as we often say 'no living creature' when we mean 'no
man/

43 Adamantinus
Adamantine

Adamantine, to take the place of 'inexorable' or 'inexhaust-

ible.' This proverb owes its existence to the incredible hardness of the stone
in question, of which Pliny1 in book 37 writes as follows: 'Pieces of adamant
are detected when placed on the anvil, for when struck they reject the blow
with such violence that iron splits in two and anvils themselves are
shattered. Its hardness in fact is indescribable, and at the same time it is
naturally proof against fire and never grows hot. Hence its Greek name,
which means when translated "indomitable force"/ Thus Pliny. Hence
anything invincible and impregnable we call 'adamantine/ Hesiod:2 'Their
stubborn souls were made of adamant/ Theocritus3 in Amaryllis: 'She'll
spare even me a glance maybe; / No piece of adamant is she/ Nor is it
irrelevant that Homer4 imagines Vulcan catching Venus and Mars in a net
knotted with links of adamant, or that Virgil5 made out of adamant the gates
and pillars of the infernal regions. Socrates in Plato's6 Gorgias speaks of
'adamantine arguments' by which he means 'inexpugnable/ Again in book
10 of the Republic he uses 'adamantine grip' of grasping something firmly: 'A
man must hold this opinion in a grip of adamant before he descends to the
 i vii 43 / LB ii 2790 94

world below/ Plutarch7 in his life of Dion: 'As a result of this, the relaxation
relating to this young man advanced and spread little by little, and
eventually softened and destroyed the adamantine chains by which the
elder Dionysius had said that he would leave the monarchy anchored/
Horace8 in the Odes: 'Or Mars in adamantine armour clad/ and in another
passage: 'Let harsh Necessity but choose to drive / In your roof-tree her
adamantine nails/ In the same way Augustine9 attacking Manicheus: 'But
when I proceed to demonstrate the explicit and inescapable reasoning which
follows from these propositions and is attached to them, as the saying goes,
by chains of adamant/ Finally, a certain number of writers have earned the
nickname 'adamantine' by their indefatigable endurance in research, the
scholar Didymus10 for example and Origen the theologian.
Pindar11 uses it to much the same effect in his Isthmians in the fifth ode,
where he praises a certain Lampon who stands out among other men of great
strength as Naxian emery does among other stones: 'You might say that this
man among other athletes was like a Naxian whetstone, master of metals,
among other stones/ Pliny,12 book 36 chapter 7, speaks of Naxian emery,
which for long was highly regarded, and says that from it the whetstones are
called Naxian which occur naturally in the island of Cyprus. Naxos however
is one of the Cyclades, not far from Paros, whose marble is celebrated for its
brilliant white colour. The scholiast on Pindar puts this Naxos in Crete, on
what authority is uncertain. Pliny13 puts a town called Naxos in Sicily.
Stephanus14 indicates that this name, like so many others, was shared by
several places, and adds that Cretan whetstone was called Naxian, with a
Greek name Naxias. But he suggests that this proverb applies more to the
discrimination and testing of things that were liable to mislead than to
physical strength, of which I have spoken above15 in connection with Lydian
stone. We should do well therefore to consider whether for Cyprus in Pliny16
we ought not to read Crete or Naxos.

44 Ferreus, Aheneus
Hard as iron, Tough as bronze

By a similar metaphor Hard as iron and Tough as bronze are used of things of
which we wish to convey that they are solid and firmly fixed. Virgil:1 'Had I
an hundred tongues, an hundred mouths, / A voice of iron/ In which
passage he seems to have reproduced Homer's2 famous lines in the second
book of the Iliad: 'Had I ten tongues, ten mouths, / A voice unwearied and a
heart of bronze/ Horace3 in the first of his Epistles: 'Be this your wall of
bronze,' of an unshakeable resolve. Homer4 in book 22 of the Iliad: Truly an
iron heart is in thy breast/ Again in Odyssey, book 5: 'In my breast there lies /
 i vii 44 / LB ii 28oc 95

No heart of iron, but compassionate/ And in the Iliad, book 23, he calls the
power of fire strong as iron: 'Fire strong as iron comes into his heart/ It is
rather different when Cicero5 says of Atilius that his writing is hard as iron,
meaning that he is harsh and unskilled. In the arts we call things hard which
lack skill, and soft when they have the grace of perfect art. Cicero's words, in
the first book of the Definibus, run as follows:'... but think I must read the
Electra badly translated by Atilius; who is described by Licius as a writer with
an iron style. But he was a writer all the same, so that he must be read/ He
speaks of him again in his On Divination as a very harsh bad poet.

45 Cornea f ibra
Heart-strings of horn

A similar image is to be found in Persius' words 'My heart-strings are not of

horn/ For an animal's horns are very hard, and have no sensation, and so
are hoofs1 too. Though the adjective might be derived not so much from
cornu, horn as from cornus, a cornel-tree, the wood of which is notoriously
hard. Persius' lines are in his first satire, and run as follows:
When I take pen in hand, should something good
Emerge (a phoenix this; but if it should,
However rare the bird), I was not born
Afraid of praise; my heart-strings are not horn.

Hence those who are deficient in human sympathies are said to have hearts
of oak, adamant, flint, iron, and horn.

46 Ajacis risus
To laugh like Ajax

An Ajax-laugh. Of those who laugh without reason and

like madmen, and will be aptly used of men who enjoy pleasures which end
in death and who will soon be dead, or of those who rejoice in doing wrong
and will one day pay the penalty. A laugh of this kind is admirably described
by Homer1 in book 20 of the Odyssey: 'But among the suitors Pallas Athene
roused laughter unquenchable, driving them out of their wits. And they
were laughing now with alien mouths; dripping with blood was the meat
they ate, and their eyes brimmed with tears, for their hearts were set on
lamentation/ The adage took its rise from the story of Ajax. Ajax is said to
have so greatly resented that Ulysses should be preferred to himself in the
choice of a successor to the armour of Achilles that in his anger he went mad,
and fell with drawn sword upon a flock of farm animals under the impression
 I vii 46 / LB ii z8iA 96

that he was laying low the Greek army. He then hung two great swine from a
beam and flogged them, thinking they were Agamemnon and Ulysses, who
were special objects of his wrath as being the judge and the winner. So he
attacked these swine with peals of laughter and all the abuse that his
'glittering bile'2 suggested. Then, when he returned to his senses, partly
from shame and partly fear, he killed himself. It will be turned not unsuitably
against those who laugh without reason which is commonly regarded as
proof of insanity or foolishness. This finds support from the proverbial line3
The fool will laugh when 'tis no laughing matter/

47 Canis vindictam
A dog's revenge

Kvvos SLK^V, A dog's revenge, is a Macedonian adage, applied to those who

unexpectedly pay the penalty to the victims of some injury they have
inflicted in the past. It arises from the sad end of Euripides the tragic poet. In
Macedonia there is a village which takes its name from the Thracians who
once lived there. One of King Archelaus' hounds once went astray and
found its way there; and the Thracians, as their custom is, killed it, offered it
as a sacrifice, and ate it. When Archelaus heard what had happened, he
fined them a talent. Being unable to pay, they persuaded Euripides to appeal
to the king to remit the penalty, and he did so. Later however, when he was
walking in a forest by himself, and Archelaus was returning from hunting,
the hounds surrounded the poet, tore him in pieces, and ate him; and it was
widely believed that these hounds were the offspring of the hound which
the Thracians had sacrificed. Hence the adage gained currency in Macedon,
A dog's revenge; with which one must understand 'He has suffered' or
whatever suits best. Valerius Maximus1 in his ninth book, in the chapter on
rare forms of death, records that Euripides had been invited to dinner by
Archelaus king of Macedon, and was torn in pieces by hounds on his way
home that night. The story that these hounds had been set on him by a rival is
confirmed by Aulus Gellius2 in book 15, chapter 20, of the Attic Nights.
Suidas3 adds that these rivals were Arrideus a Macedonian and Crateuas a
Thessalian, two poets who were jealous of Euripides' reputation; and they
made up the story that he was torn in pieces by the king's hounds. There is
another version, to the effect that he was dismembered not by hounds but by
women, late one night when he was on his way to visit a youth called
Craterus who was Archelaus' bedfellow. Gellius too bears witness that
Euripides was a misogynist, a woman-hater.
As regards the earlier theory, a not so very dissimilar tale is told by
 i vii 47 / LB ii 28iE 97

Plutarch4 in his dialogue 'A Comparison between Living Creatures of Land

and Sea/ King Pyrrhus, he says, was once on a journey, when he came upon
a dog on guard over the corpse of a murdered man; and when the king
discovered that it had gone for over two days without food and could not be
dragged away from the corpse, he gave instructions for the dead man to be
buried and the dog to be brought away by his own entourage. A few days
later a levy was held to recruit soldiers for the army, and as the king sat there
they all filed past him. The dog was there too, and lay very quiet to start with,
until he saw his master's murderers filing past; at which he flew into a fury
and attacked them noisily, barking constantly and looking back at Pyrrhus
from time to time, in such a way that not Pyrrhus only but all those present
had their suspicions aroused. As a result, with several other clues coming in,
as so often happens, from other sources, the two were arrested, confessed
their crime, and were duly punished. He adds that in the same way the men
who murdered Hesiod were identified by Hesiod's dog, and paid the
penalty. After this, he tells the story of something which happened, he says,
in his own day. A man broke into a temple of Aesculapius, seized various
gold and silver offerings, and escaped secretly and (as he thought)
undetected. But a temple watchdog - his name was Capparus, for he
deserves not to perish without a name - when he saw that none of the temple
staff paid any attention to his barking, pursued the escaping criminal. To
begin with, though stones were thrown at him, he would not leave the man;
when day broke he kept out of range, but watched him and followed at a
distance, refusing all offers of food. When the man went to sleep, the dog lay
down near by, and when he moved the dog followed in the same fashion. If
they met any travellers on the road, he rushed up to them wagging his tail,
but that one man he attacked, barking furiously. This news was passed from
hand to hand, and at the same time both dog and man were recognized; they
seized the criminal and carried him off to punishment, preceded by the dog
now wild with joy at the success of his hunt for the guilty man. So it was
decreed that the dog should have his meals at the public expense, and this
duty was entrusted to the priests.
But we must return to our proverb. Clearly, it can properly be used in
this further context, when the author of some wrongdoing is deliberately
concealed; for example, when a man's enemy is poisoned, and the story is
put about that he died of a fever, or when a prince sends his servants to
someone's house and strips it, and they spread a report that it has been
attacked by burglars, or when a tyrant makes away with a man he hates and
puts all the blame for it on his officials, as though they had done it without
his knowledge. This seems to be the origin of a saying widely current in
 i vii 47 / LB ii 2820 98

Germany in our own day when something happens which undoubtedly

causes damage though the culprit is in doubt and no one can be held
responsible; they say it must have been caused by the bite of a dog.

48 In tuo regno
In your kingdom

A man's private property is called his kingdom. Thus Meliboeus in Virgil1

says: Tar in the future shall these wondering eyes / Behold my kingdom -
some few ears of grain?' Scaevola, a character in Cicero's2 Orator: 'Had we
not been in your kingdom, we should not have put up with that/ meaning
'on your country estate/ for he was addressing Crassus in the country-
house at Tusculum which at that time was Crassus' property. Besides which
there is a popular saying to the effect that every man is king in his own
house, and it looks as though this has come down from Antiquity, for in
Homer3 in the first book of the Odyssey there is a line 'But in my house I will
myself be king.'

49 In tuo luco et fano est situm

It's put in your grove and shrine

The phrase In your grove and shrine is found in Plautus in the sense of 'in
your power, within your discretion, under your protection, in your hands/
It is a metaphor from the shrines and groves dedicated to deities. It differs to
some extent from Cicero's expression in his speech in defence of Aulus
Caecina: 'You are now in my camp and garrison/ meaning 'You are on my
side, what you say supports my case.'

50 Intra suas praesepes

Safe in his own fold

Plautus uses a similar image in the Casina: 'He knows that if he gets his way
in this, / The thing he loves will be safe in his own fold/ meaning, it will be
secure and ready to hand, for what is shut up within our own walls is surely
and safely ours. The words are used of an old man who was scheming to get
the servant-girl he had taken a fancy to married to his farm-manager, the plan
being that he could then enjoy her in the country when he pleased, and his
wife be none the wiser. Again in the Rudens: 'My master is to arbitrate, and I /
To appear before him - safe in my own fold.'
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51 In aere meo est

He is at my service

When we wish to convey that a man is so much bound to us by what we have

done for him that he is now wholly and certainly ours, we say that he is 'at
our service/ using a word that really means he owes us bronze money,
because in early times all money was coined in bronze, the use of gold for
striking coin not yet having been invented. I remember reading this in Cicero
in book 13 of the Letters to his Friends: 'And, I must say, I have always had the
feeling that you were at my service on account of your connection with my
friend Lamia and your special relation to him/ Again in book 15: Thank you
for introducing Marcus Fabius to me as a new friend, though I gain nothing
out of that since he has been at my service for many years now and is a man I
like very much/

52 A teneris unguiculis
Since the time their nails were soft

Since the time their nails were soft, in the sense

of 'from earliest childhood/ A metaphor from puppies whose claws have not
yet grown hard. Cicero:1 'Since your nails were soft, as they say in Greek/
Horace2 in the Odes: 'And ere her nails are hard, her head / Is full of wanton
thoughts of bed.' Plutarch3 in his essay 'On the Education of Children': 'in
proportion as they love their children from the heart and, as the phrase goes,
from the finger-nails/ meaning4 from the earliest days of childhood. He
speaks of mothers who feed their own babies at the breast.

53 Ab incunabulis
From the cradle

The same sense is conveyed by 'From the cradle/ meaning from a man's
earliest years. Plautus1 in the Pseudolus: 'This slave now, from Carystos
newly come, / What sense has he made since he left the cradle?' Livy2 too:
'Steeped from the cradle in the hatred of tribunes/ Cicero3 uses 'the cradle of
an orator' for his first introduction to fundamental principles. And Virgil:4
The cradle of our race/ Aurelius in book one of the Pandects,5 in the title De
officio praefecti praetorio: 'Such was the cradle from which the prefect's
authority took its rise, and it has grown deservedly to such proportions that
from the praetorian prefects there is no right of appeal/ Aristotle6 in the
Ethics, book 2, uses 'from infancy/ 'from childhood/ and cites the latter
 i vii 53 / LB ii 2830 100

phrase from Plato.7 The passage in Plato is in the tenth book of the Laws: 'So
now, believing the stories we heard from our nurses and from our mothers
from earliest childhood when we were still fed on milk/ Toys'8 can be used
in the same way for the years of infancy.

54 Cum lacte nutricis

With our mother's milk

Related to the two I have just mentioned, From the cradle and Since the time
their nails were soft. Cicero in book 3 of his Tusculan Disputations: 'But now,
from the moment we come into the light of day and are allowed to live, we
pass our days right from the start in every form of perversity and in most
erroneous opinions, so that we seem almost to have imbibed error with our
mother's milk.'

55 Ante victoriam encomium canis

You triumph before the victory

YOU sing your song of triumph before you

have won the day. Used of a man who boasts prematurely when the battle is
not yet over. In Greece those who had shown gallantry in battle received a
tribute of praise in prose or verse, the special name of which was an
encomium. We still have a poem by Theocritus1 in praise of Ptolemy which is
called his 'Encomium,' and Lucian's2 encomium on Demosthenes. In Rome
ovations,3 supplications, and triumphs were the reward of valour, so that
one can use the phrase 'Before you have won the day you get your triumph
ready.' Plato4 in the Lysis: 'Before your victory you write your own
triumph-song and sing it.' On the same lines is Plato's remark in the
Theaetetus: 'We shall look like cocks of a very poor strain if we drop the
argument suddenly and start crowing before we have won'; for it is that
creature's habit to celebrate its victory by crowing.5 Here belongs that
aphorism I have recorded elsewhere6 on the authority of Solon, 'Look to the
end of a long life,' and also Pindar's7 observation in the Isthmians, 'Even for
those who strive the outcome is all uncertain till they reach their goal at last.'

56 Omnes attrahens, ut magnes lapis

Attracting all men, like the magnet stone

All things attracting, like a magnet

stone. This line is cited by Suidas from Pisides, and has the look of a proverb.
 i vii 56 / LB ii 283 101

The metaphor is drawn from the natural quality of a stone which attracts iron
to itself and holds it there, which some suppose to be identical with the
so-called Heraclean stone of which I have spoken elsewhere, in the proverb
Lydius lapis.1 This remarkable effect is extolled by Pliny,2 book 36 chapter 16,
as follows: 'What is more difficult to move than solid stone? Yet nature
supplies it with feeling and hands. What so hard, so doughty a fighter as
iron? Yet it capitulates and does what it is told, and it is attracted by the
magnet; that substance which masters everything else runs towards
something unsubstantial, and the closer it approaches the more it is
paralysed, held fast and clasped in its embrace. For this reason another name
for it is siderites, the iron-catching stone, and some call it Heradeon; magnet
was the name given it by its discoverer, according to Nicander, and it is
found in India/ Thus far I have given Pliny's actual words. Among many
kinds of magnet he speaks of one from Ethiopia, the pull of which is so
powerful that it will draw to itself not only iron but another magnet, and the
stone is therefore so highly valued that it fetches its own weight in silver. He
mentions also one called haematite, which exerts no particular force in
attracting iron but is remarkable for another peculiar property. Not only is it
blood-red in colour (hence its name), but if rubbed, it oozes blood. This
stone, then, has such miraculous powers that it has given rise to a proverb.
Suidas cites Euripides,3 from the Oeneus: 'Like the magnet-stone, / It draws
the mind and lets it go again.' This is related to one which I have given
elsewhere:4 'Drawing to itself, as a north-easter draws the clouds.'

57 In silvam ligna ferre

To carry wood to the forest

To carry wood to the forest is to wish to supply someone with things of

which he already has a large supply. Horace in his Satires:

When I, born overseas, would write in Greek,

In after-midnight hour, when dreams speak plain,
I saw Quirinus, and he said 'Refrain:
Wood to the forest would be no more mad
Than to the serried ranks of Greeks to add.'

On the same lines we speak1 of carrying water to the sea. I have used both
images together in one of my epigrams:2 To send my Pietro verses sure
would be / Wood to the forest, water to the sea.' They both agree with one I
have recorded elsewhere,3 Owls to Athens.
 i vii 58 / LB ii 2840 102

58 Lumen soli mutuas

You lend light to the sun

You are lending light to the sun. When we give a very

learned man a lesson, or offer advice to an extremely wise man, or try to
expound something quite obvious in itself, or deliver a panegyric on
something that is famous enough in its own right. For the sun is reckoned to
be the source of all light, accustomed to lend light and not borrow it. This is
recorded in the collection which goes under Plutarch's name. There is
something very like it in Quintilian: those, he says, who try to shed light on
things clear enough in themselves behave as a man would who should try 'to
add some mortal gleams to the sun in his splendour/

59 Fontes ipsi sitiunt

The springs themselves are thirsty

A proverbial expression, used ironically of those who ask others to give them
what they themselves have plenty of at home. Cicero, writing to his brother
Quintus: 'Since it seems that by now the springs themselves are thirsty, I will
write what you ask, if I have room.' He means that his brother is a more fluent
versifier than he is himself, although he asks for a piece of verse just as
though he himself was barren in that line. Cicero again, in the Letters to
Atticus, book 12: That he should have come, not to a thirsty spring but to
Erine, as you say in your letter, especially at such a difficult moment/

60 Ipsa olera olla legit

The pot picks its own greens

This will suit those who shift responsibility for their own faults onto
something else or who are, as it were, so expressly adapted to some form of
wickedness that they cannot fail to commit it. Catullus,1 attacking Caesar:
'Mentula makes cuckolds? With a name like that, what else would you
expect? So the proverb runs: The pot picks its own greens/ A pot is born2 for
the cooking of greens; alternatively, it would be most absurd to make the pot
responsible for its choice of greens, for it will cook only what has been put
into it by someone else, so the pot is not to blame but the person who puts
rotten greens into it. There is not much to choose between this and the
phrase quoted as proverbial by Tertullian from Homer:3 'Iron of itself draws a
man on/ This I have dealt with in another place,4 in the proverb Remove the
opportunity to go astray. Likewise: The pot helped itself to the lentils.
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61 Oedipi imprecatio
The curse of Oedipus

The curse of Oedipus. Of tragical and great disasters. The

collectors of Greek adages cite the following story from Aeschylus. Eteocles
and Polynices, in accordance with custom, used to send their father a
forepart from every sacrifice. One day, through ignorance and inattention,
they sent him a haunch, which is one of the hinder parts; and he, thinking
this was done to insult him rather than from forgetfulness and inadvertence,
laid a terrible curse on them. Others tell how Oedipus, discovering that he
had killed his own father and had been living with his mother as her
husband, tore out his eyes with his own hands. When this became public
knowledge, the local people drove Oedipus out of their city. As he went into
exile, he laid a curse on his sons for failing to defend their father in his
calamity. And his curses were by no means ineffectual, for the young men
killed each other, their mother committed suicide, and Oedipus himself was
killed by a thunderbolt. The nature of these imprecations is roughly
suggested by Diogenes1 the Cynic philosopher in Laertius, who used to say
humorously that he had incurred 'the curses in the tragedy,' for he had no
home and no city, was deprived of a native country, was poor and a
vagabond, and lived from day to day. Sophocles2 in the Oedipus tyrannus
makes his hero actually unaware who it is that Phoebus has said must be
exiled as having polluted the country with his crimes; and he calls down
many curses on the culprit, that is, on his own head. Euripides3 in the
Phoenissae: 'He lays most frightful curses on his children'; it is Jocasta
speaking of Oedipus. Again4 in the Oedipus Coloneus he makes Oedipus lay a
curse on Polynices, praying that he may be killed by his brother and kill him
in return:

These curses with you take,

Which I call down on you. Ne'er may you win
Your native land by arms, and ne'er return
To hollow Argos. By your brother's hand
May you be killed, and kill him in your turn
Who drove you out. This curse I lay upon you
And call the ancestral deeps of hell to witness,

and what follows. Horace5 calls this form of cursing 'execration' in the Odes:
'With curses I will hound you; no sacrifice shall purge my execration.' That
this kind of imprecation by parents on their children was a formidable thing
 I vii 61 / LB ii 2851 104

is shown by Homer6 in the Iliad, book 9, where Phoenix tells how he was
exposed to his father's imprecations and how what they had called down
upon his head came to pass. Homer's lines run as follows: 'He prays that
never on his knees may sit / A son of mine, and the gods heard his prayer.'

62 Efficimus pro nostris opibus moenia

We build the walls we can afford

Appropriate to men of humble station and modest means, who none the less
live as well as their resources permit. Plautus in the Stichus:

Rich men from gilded cups and goblets drink,

We from our Samian crocks; - and yet we live,
We live and build the walls we can afford.

So Plautus. Even today there is a popular saying to the effect that Little birds
build little nests.

63 Omnium rerum vicissitude est

All things do change

Terence1 in the Eunuchus: 'How all things do change!' This pronouncement

means that in the affairs of mortal men nothing lasts for ever, nothing stands
still, but all things ebb and flow as it were in a series of tides. By these turns
of fortune all things are conveyed from one set of men to another, empire and
wealth and glory and happiness and learning and all else whether desirable
or undesirable. Sophocles2 in the Oedipus Coloneus has an eloquent descrip-
tion of these vicissitudes in human affairs:

The gods alone know neither age nor death;

All else almighty Time confounds in one.
Earth's strength decays, decays the strength of man;
Faith dies and falsehood burgeons in its place.
The same wind never lasts 'twixt friend and friend,
City and city; but for some forthwith,
And for some later, what was sweet turns sour
And what was hateful pleases in its stead.

Homer3 too in Iliad 6: 'Victory changes sides from man to man/ and again in
Iliad 18: The god of war / Impartial slays the slayer in his turn.' Nor should
we pass over in this context the same poet's4 very beautiful invention of the
 I vii 63 / LB ii 2860 105

two great jars out of which Jupiter blends in varying proportions the affairs
of mortals. The lines occur in the last book of the Iliad, and it will not be off
the point to add them here:

For on Jove's threshold two great jars are placed

Filled with his gifts - one full of bad, one good.
From these he mingles what he gives to each,
Whose pleasure is the thunder, and so man
Now meets with evil fortune, now with good.

The adage looks as if it were drawn from an answer given by Aesop. When
he was asked (so Laertius5 says) what Jupiter was doing, he replied
'Bringing down high things and exalting things of low degree.' Euripides6 in
the Ion: 'Such is man's lot: nothing remains in place.' Euripides in the
Supplices: 'For heaven again turns all things upside down.' Theognis7 in his
moral maxims: 'Now for this man, now that Jove tips the scale, / That now he
should be rich and now have nought.' In these lines, I may remark in
passing, Theognis alluded to that passage in Homer,8 Iliad 8, where Jupiter
weighs in a golden balance the fates of Trojans and Greeks. There is also in
circulation a line9 to the same effect: 'All things do change that under heaven
abide/ And another popular saying10 'Man's life' (is, we must understand) 'a
wheel,' because human affairs come round again and again and as it were
revolve in cycles, as Fortune spins her wheel. Pindar11 too in the Theron:
'With joys and sorrows different tides at different times befall men.' Homer12
in several places calls victory a turncoat.

64 Jucunda vicissitude rerum

Variety's the spice of life

literally Change in all things is sweet. A proverbial

maxim used by many authors and especially by Aristotle1 in the second book
of his Principles of Rhetoric: 'And variety is pleasant, for change is part of the
order of nature. What never changes breeds a distaste for the established
order, Hence the saying that variety is the spice of life.' It is used by Aristotle
again in book 7 of his Eudemian Ethics. Evidently derived from the Orestes of
Euripides:2 'Change in all things is sweet.' Virgil3 has it in mind in his
Bucolics: 'And sing by turns, for turns the Muses love.' There is also an
elegant moral sentence4 to this effect: 'Nothing is sweet unless refreshed by
change,' and another very like it: 'Good things grown too familiar turn to
bad/ Such is the nature of things, so hard to please are human tastes, that
nothing can be so sweet as not to provoke satiety if you continue with it a
 i vii 64 / LB ii 2870 106

little too long, and there is no excellence that can long give pleasure. Hence
too that line in Juvenal:5 'Pleasure more pleasant made by sparing use/ In
fact variety has such force in everything, that the charm of novelty sometimes
makes very bad things acceptable in place of good.

65 Invitis canibus venari

To hunt with reluctant hounds

This adage signifies that work extorted from the unwilling is never as good
as we could wish, nor should one use the services of those who do not
readily lend us their help. In Plautus' Stichus, Panegyris adjures her father
not to get husbands for her and her sister against their will, saying To go
a-hunting with reluctant hounds / Is folly, sir/ and adds a maxim that
explains the metaphor: 'That wife's an enemy / Who's married to a man
against her will/

66 Invitos boves plaustro inducere

To harness reluctant oxen to the cart

A similar saying is still in use in common speech: that it is a mistake to drive

the cart with reluctant oxen or harness unwilling horses to the carriage. It
looks as though it were taken from Theognis: 'Unwilling am I; drive me not
by force / Of whip and goad, nor yoke me to your car/

67 Velocem tardus assequitur

Slow catches up with fast

Slow catches up with swift. Appropriate to the man

who is physically weak, but by skill and cunning overcomes one who is
stronger than he is. The adage derives from the eighth book of the Odyssey,
where a very amusing story is told about the lame god Vulcan. He had reason
to suspect Venus his wife of a secret liaison with Mars, and not having the
strength needed to catch the adulterer, he took refuge in his technical skill
and invention. He covered his bed with very fine invisible chains made of
adamant, and having done so pretended he was going abroad. Then when
Mars and Venus were clasped in each other's arms, they found themselves
caught in the net, and the more they twisted this way and that, the tighter
they were bound. Lo and behold, Vulcan suddenly returns, and having
been warned1 by the Sun, invites all the gods to be witnesses of the
adulterous pair caught in the act.. At which point Homer2 comments:
 i vii 67 / LB ii 288A 107

Slow, says the proverb, catches up with swift:

So lately Vulcan, slow though he may be,
Caught Mars, the swiftest of the Olympian gods.
Lame as he is, he won the day by craft,
And Mars the adulterer's penalty must pay.

The same lesson is taught by the fable3 of the fox and the crow, who pursued
the same quarry, and the fox though he was slower secured it by a trick; also
by those of the crab that ran a race with the fox, and the lark that contended
in flying with the eagle. Something of the sort4 happens even in fish: very
slow-moving species catch very fast ones by cunning. Among these is the
ray, which hides itself in sandy or muddy places, stretching out those fine
hairy structures it has to attract other fish, and those it attracts it draws into
its mouth. The torpedo in the same way conceals itself in sand or mud,
paralyses any fish that come within range, and proceeds to eat them. It even
tries to play the same trick on human beings. The sting-ray, in Greek trigonis,
also hides, but on a different system. Thus it happens that, though
themselves sluggish, they are sometimes taken with a grey mullet in their
stomachs. The authority for this is Aristotle in book nine of his work on the
nature of animals. Pliny however in his ninth book avers that the grey mullet
has an exceptional turn of speed, and when afraid of attack from some other
fish throws itself clear over a ship. Theognis5 reports the adage in this form:
The slow by cunning overtake the swift/

68 Aquilam testudo vincit

Tortoise defeats eagle

There is no conflict between that and something Diogenes Laertius records

in his life of the philosopher Menedemus from a satire by the poet Achaeus,
the title of which is Omphale: 'The swift, they say, fall victims to the weak, /
And soon the eagle to the tortoise yields/ Menedemus, he says, used
habitually to quote these lines against those who competed with him for civic
office. They can be taken ironically or in their straightforward sense, when a
man defeats a more powerful opponent by skill, and achieves by determina-
tion what he cannot do by brute force.

69 Intempestiva benevolentia nihil a simultate diff ert

Goodwill untimely differs not from hate

There is a line current as a proverb in Greek "A/coupcs evvoC ovdev 'exOpas

 i vii 69 / LB n 288E 108

dLcupepei, Goodwill untimely differs not from hate. Suidas1 under the word
akairos, untimely, tells how Hippolytus replied in these words to Phaedra his
stepmother, when she confessed that she had fallen in love with him. It will
be appropriate for those whose zeal to be of service without regard to timing
actually does harm, or who are too solicitous and become a nuisance. Those
for example2 who take a friend to task at an unfortunate moment, or make a
man unpopular by excessive and ill-timed praise of him, or supply a young
man with money and thus enable him to go to the dogs. A second line3 very
like it is in circulation: 'The friends who hurt us differ not from foes/ Horace4
glanced at this when he wrote in his Epistles 'All such provoking fondness I
disclaim/ and again elsewhere: 'For sure a foolish fondness of the heart /
Hurts whom it loves/ Seneca5 likewise in book 2 of the De beneficiis: 'Often
there is nothing to choose between the kind presents of our friends and what
our enemies wish may befall us. Our friends' untimely kindliness forces us
into the very position in which our enemies would wish to see us. Yet what
could be more discreditable than the state of affairs which happens
constantly, that there should be no difference between hatred and good-
will?' In this passage from Seneca, for the word vota which I have restored to
the text from ancient copies, the common run of codices had acta. I had to
mention this for fear that someone in ignorance might remove as a blemish
the reading that in old days was familiar in many texts. Here belongs that line
from Ennius6 which Cicero praises so rightly in book 2 of his De officiis:
'Kindness ill-placed unkindness I would call/ The proverb7 will gain
something in effectiveness if the application is a little far-fetched: if one were
to say, for instance, that none do so much harm to humane studies as those
who handle them with more zeal than discretion. Or, nothing harms a man's
reputation more than foolish praise. Or, good fortune is more damaging than
bad.

70 Nosce tempus
Consider the due time

Consider the due time. Prominent among the familiar sayings

of the Seven Sages; ascribed, like most of them, to several authors and used
by almost everyone. Hesiod:1 'Observe the mean: due time is best in all/
Theocritus2 alludes to it in the eleventh idyll: 'Some blooms in summer, some
in winter blow/ Isocrates3 too in the Ad Demonicum remarks that in all things
there is less satisfaction if they are done out of due season. So important is it
in all business to observe the due and proper time. The same message is to be
found in the Greek maxims4 'Small things are great when in due season
given' and in another 'It always pays to know when time is ripe/ Besides,
 I vii 70 / LB ii 2890 109

there is Pindar5 in the Pythians: The proper time likewise is of all things the
chief/ And Horace's6 familiar tag 'Sweet is folly in its proper place.' Such is
the force of Opportunitas, of Timeliness, that it can turn what is honourable
into dishonour, loss into gain, happiness into misery, kindness into
unkindness, and the reverse; it can, in short, change the nature of
everything. In the beginning and ending of any business it has especial
influence, so that the Anicents, we may well think, had good reason to
endow it with divinity, though in Greek this god is masculine, and his name
is Kairos, Due Time.7
Her image was represented in the old days as follows. She had wings
on her feet and stood on a freely-turning wheel, and she spun very rapidly
round and round. The forepart of her head was thickly set with hair, the
back of it bald, so that her forehead could easily be grasped and the back of it
not at all. Hence the phrase8 'to seize the opportunity.' Thus both a learned
allusion and an elegant image were produced by the unknown author of the
line 'Long in the forelock, Time is bald behind.' Besides which, it is a
pleasure to add the epigram by Posidippus9 on this subject, which was
unaccountably omitted by Poliziano, and runs as follows: "'Where did the
sculptor come from?" Sicyon. "And his name?" Lysippus. "And who are
you, the subject?" Due Time, master of all things. "Why go on tiptoe?" I am
always running. "Why have a pair of winged sandals on your feet?" I fly
with the wind. "Why carry a razor in your right hand?" To show that I am
keener than a razor's edge. "And your hair, why so long over your face?"
That he who is beforehand with me may seize it. "The back part why so
bald?" Because once I have run past a man on my winged feet, never for all
his longing shall he seize me from behind. Such, stranger, did the artist make
me, and set me in the forecourt to be a warning to you and your fellow men.'
My version of these verses is not meant to compete with the Greek original; it
is, as usual, uninspired and quite extempore, as the poem itself will have
made clear even if I said nothing, my sole purpose being to make it intelligible
to those who know no Greek. Nor will it be off the point to add an epigram by
Ausonius,10 which, as Poliziano points out, is evidently derived from the
Greek, although it differs in certain respects, and in particular by the
addition of Remorse as Opportunity's companion. The poem runs like this:
'"The artist's name?" Phidias. "What, the man who made the great statue of
Athena?" Yes, and the Jupiter, and I am the third of his masterpieces. I am
the goddess Opportunity, so seldom seen, recognized by so few. "Why
stand on a wheel?" I cannot stay still in one place. "And why those winged
sandals?" I am always in flight, and the good fortune of which Mercury is
patron I provide when I please. "Do you hide your face with hair?" I have no
wish to be recognized. "But why bald behind?" That I may not be seized as I
 i vii 70 / LB ii 2900 110

run past. "And who is your companion?" Let her tell you herself. "Tell me,
pray, who are you?" I am the goddess who was not named even by Cicero
himself, she who punishes what is done and not done in such a way that
there are regrets afterwards; and so I am called Remorse. "Now I turn to you
again: you must tell me what business she has with you." When I take wing,
she stays behind; if I pass any man by, she remains with him. You yourself,
while you ask these questions and waste your time in idle curiosity, will find
that you have let me slip/

71 Olet lucernam
It smells of the lamp

It smells of the lamp, of something which has been the object

of thought and much work has gone into the polishing of it. Derived from the
practice among keen students of working late by lamplight to finish some
elaborate piece, if they want to produce a special effect. It used to be a
common criticism of Demosthenes that his arguments smelt of the lamp,
because his speeches were all written and thought out in advance before he
left home. Hence too the well-known tribute to him, that he used more oil
than wine. For he was temperate and drank only water, and even when a
very old man could still be found toiling away by the light of his humble and
yet famous lamp.

72 Aristophanis et Cleanthis lucerna

The lamp of Aristophanes and Cleanthes

This became proverbial because they worked with such exceptional dili-
gence, so that a man is said to study by the lamp of Aristophanes or
Cleanthes who ponders every detail with great diligence and meticulous
care. Varro in the first book of his On the Latin Language: 'Studying as I do not
merely by Aristophanes' lamp but by Cleanthes' as well, I was unwilling to
pass over those who develop the significance of words, as poets do.' I
suppose1 the adage to refer to Aristophanes the grammarian. Then there is
the modest lamp of Epictetus2 too, which won its place in history by being
sold for a great sum after his death. But when Juvenal3 asks 'Am I not right? /
These themes deserve Venusia's midnight lamp,' it is finding out rather than
writing up that he has in mind.

73 De plaustro loqui
Wagon-language
Licence in the Old Comedy reached such a pitch that, beside prominent
 i vii 73 / LB ii zgoF 111

citizens, the gods themselves were lampooned by name, as is clear from

Aristophanes, who treats Jove, Mercury, Aesculapius, and all the other
gods with contumely in the Plutus; Bacchus too in the Frogs gets far from
respectful treatment. Since in those early days plays of this kind were
performed in wagons by young men, their faces smeared with wine-lees to
make them unidentifiable, who uttered offensive remarks at the expense of
any convenient target with great freedom, this gave rise to the adage '(1? e£
aiAagris \a\siv, To speak like a man on a wagon, for public and gross abuse.
Aristophanes1 criticizes this in the Clouds in the words 'No joking now, don't
treat me like those poor devils smeared with lees,' unless we prefer to
attribute this to a custom which lasted in Athens even into later centuries.
During a festival called the Lenaea it was the custom for poets to compete in
writing verses intended to make people laugh, which they recited sitting in
wagons amid an exchange of mutual abuse. Some trace the phrase to the
feast called the Greater Eleusinia, in which women rode along in carts, and
as they rode the custom was for them to abuse one another. Lucian2 in Jupiter
tragoedus: 'As he spares none of the gods, but speaks his mind freely from the
wagon and "fastens alike on innocent and guilty".' Demosthenes3 too holds
it against Aeschines that he had brought against him charges speakable and
unspeakable, like a man on a wagon. As a result, merely to speak of the
licence of the Old Comedy has a proverbial ring about it. St Jerome4 writing
to Rusticus the monk: T shall name no names; I shall not borrow the licence of
the Old Comedy and pick out special people for criticism.' I suppose
Aristophanes5 alluded to this in the Knights: 'Alack, you have nothing to say
from the wainwright's shop,' wainwright being a name for those who build
wagons.

74 Plaustra conviciis onusta

Cartloads of abuse

Lucian alludes to the same custom when he writes in his Eunuchus 'And they
poured whole cartloads of abuse on one another.' He speaks of two
philosophers engaged in an acrimonious dispute, and means by this
exaggerated phrase as much abuse as a wagon could carry. The image itself
belongs in its nature to the class of proverbs, when we speak of 'cartloads of
promises' or 'shiploads of tempting offers,' to indicate extravagantly
generous promises. Greek also has hamaxiaia, 'words that need a wagon' to
mean magnificent or splendid, which is derived from the word for wagon.
Alexis,1 quoted by Athenaeus in the ninth book, adapts it to bear a
favourable sense: 'He set the table by us, then brought round / A wainload of
good things.'
 I Vii 75 / LB II 291E 112

75 Tollat te qui non novit

Let someone pull you out who doesn't know you

If we wish to convey that a man's tricks are no longer hidden from us and that
we cannot be taken in by him in future, we shall say very aptly 'Let someone
pull you out who doesn't know you.' This is recorded by Quintilian in his
sixth book: 'What they call an adage is very similar; and proverbs skilfully
adapted, for instance that reply to the man who had fallen into the water and
was calling for help, "'Let someone pull you out who doesn't know you."'
Quintilian's words, otherwise rather obscure, receive something like an
explanation from Horace's1 Epistles, where he is speaking of an impostor
called Planus, who used often to fall down deliberately, pretending he had
broken his leg, and make pitiful appeals to the passers-by to pick him up.
Any stranger who did not know the trick and came up to help him was
promptly fleeced by the impostor. But the time came when his deception had
become generally known; and one day he really broke his leg and implored
people to pick him up, and no one helped him, because they all supposed
that this was Planus up to his old tricks. He suffered in fact what is said to
have been foretold by Aristotle2 who, when asked whether anything was
achieved by telling lies, replied 'Yes: that nobody will believe you when you
speak the truth/ Horace's lines run as follows:

Let Planus at the cross-roads break his leg:

Has he once fooled you? You will never stop
To pick him up, though tears roll down his cheeks,
Though he by great Osiris swears 'tis true.
This is no fooling. You hard-hearted brutes,
Help the poor cripple!' 'Find a stranger first'
Harsh-voiced his fleering neighbours all reply.

It may be added that planus is recorded by Aulus Gellius,3 book 16 chapter 7,

among the unusual words used by Laberius the writer of mimes, and he says
it means 'a cunning rogue/ Though the same noun is used by Cicero4 and
with the same meaning, in his defence of Cluentius. It is the Greek pianos,
and means both a vagabond and an impostor.
The same proverbial sense can also be expressed in this way: 'Find a
foreigner' or 'find a stranger,' as Horace puts it. This too will be a suitable
retort to those who have deceived us in the past and thus made us more
circumspect and less credulous for the future. There is something like it in
Juvenal:5 'He goes the rounds and finds no innocents,' for innocents are
 i vii 75 / LB ii 2920 113

easily taken in. Much the same is that Greek proverb6 'No fox a second time/
where we supply 'is taken in.'

76 Oppedere, et Oppedere contra tonitrua

To fart in someone's face, or To fart against the thunder

To fart in someone's face I find in use as a proverbial expression for the

display of dislike and contempt. Horace1 in the Satires: 'Do you really mean /
To fart in the face of a pack of curtal Jews?' Aristophanes2 in the Plutus: 'And
fart in the face of penury/ and again elsewhere in the same play: 'And break
wind in the face of penury.' This was a way for those who had now become
rich to show their contempt for poverty. The same author in the Clouds: 'And
fain would I out-fart your thunder-claps,' The speaker is Strepsiades, who is
making a humble address to the Clouds and showing contempt for Jove's
thunderbolts. The scholiast adds that this is derived from a device used on
the ancient stage, by which small stones were poured from a great jar into a
bronze vessel so that they made a sound like thunder, and this was a way of
making a noise in answer to the thunder. I think myself that there is an
allusion to the ancient custom of poppysmos, smacking the lips; for in the old
days when they saw lightning it was the custom to make an answering noise
by smacking the lips, which they supposed to be a protection against being
struck by lightning. Aristophanes3 in the Wasps: 'And if I send a lightning-
flash, they smack their lips'; at which some people by way of a joke would
break wind, as though this were a clumsy way of imitating the smacking
noises made by other men. The Cyclops, in Euripides'4 tragedy of that name,
to show his contempt for Jove's thunder, speaks as follows: 'Then I drink a
great bucket of milk, and raise my skirts and rumble fit to match Jove's
thunderbolts.'

77 In antro Trophonii vaticinatus est

He has consulted the oracle in Trophonius' cave

He has consulted the oracle in the cave of

Trophonius. Of a man who is exceptionally gloomy and severe, because
there used to be a tradition that anyone who had gone down into the grotto
of Trophonius never smiled again. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'I took such a
fright, / I might have been down in Trophonius' cave.' The story of
Trophonius in Greek takes several forms. Some say that this Trophonius was
a very great expert in the cutting of rocks, and made an underground shrine
at Lebadeia in Boeotia, which is commonly called the shrine of Trophonius
 i vii 77 / LB ii 293A 114

from the name of the builder. Later, those who wished to consult the oracle
sat according to custom naked in the entrance to the grotto, and from there
were suddenly swept underground by something like a blast of wind. They
brought some cakes with them, which they threw to the ghosts and serpents
they encountered. After which, having received their oracle, they were
returned to the surface by way of another cleft in the ground. Others give the
following account. There was a king of Stymphalus, which is part of Arcadia,
called Agamedes; he married a wife called Epicaste, and Trophonius was his
son. These two were quite the most skilful craftsmen of their time, and had
undertaken to build the temple at Delphi. They had also constructed a
treasury of some kind in Elis for Augeas to keep his gold; but later they
loosened the joints round one particular stone which they had left with this
in mind, forced an entry by night, and made a practice of helping themselves
to the gold, with the help of Agamedes' brother Gercyon and a son of
Epicaste. This very greatly puzzled Augeas; but by pure chance Daedalus,
who was trying to escape from Minos, took refuge with him, and Augeas
begged him to think of some device by which he could detect the thieves. So
Daedalus with great skill constructed some snares, in which Agamedes was
caught. When Trophonius saw that there was no way out, he cut off
Agamedes' head so that he was unrecognizable, and escaped with Gercyon
to Orchomenus. When Augeas, guided by Daedalus, pursued them to
Orchomenus, they escaped from there too, one of them (Gercyon) to Athens
or, as Callimachus has it, to Arcadia, and the other to a place in Boeotia called
Lebadeia. There he made himself a dwelling underground, and remained for
the rest of his life. After his death, it was widely believed that infallible
oracles were delivered there, and they started offering sacrifices to Trophon-
ius as though he were a deity. Some say that Agamedes and Trophonius
stole some works by Daedalus and escaped, and that while Trophonius was
making his escape the earth opened and swallowed him alive near Lebadeia.
Some years later, when the Boeotians were suffering from a pestilence, they
consulted an oracle, which replied that they must honour the shade of
Trophonius. They had no idea where his grave was, and discovered it on the
evidence of bees; for when they saw some bees issuing in quantities from a
hollow in the ground, they inferred that that must be the place. So they
decided to send someone down into the cave to investigate. A man therefore
went down, and found himself confronted by two serpents; but by throwing
them cakes soaked in honey he managed to escape unharmed. Hence arose
the custom that those who propose to enter the cave of Trophonius take
some cakes down with them. Before descending they were purified for a
specified number of days with the prescribed ceremonial, living to a strict
 i vii 77 / LB ii 2930 115

regime in the mean time; and then they put on a sacred robe and went down,
spear in hand some people say, to ward off any attack by the snakes.
Cicero1 in the first book of his Tusculan Questions records that
Trophonius and Agamedes, having finished the temple of Apollo at Delphi,
did obeisance to the god, and asked him by way of reward for their labours
not for anything definite, 'but for what was of all things best for mankind.
Apollo declared that he would give them this in two days' time; and when
the second day dawned, they were found dead.' Later authorities tell the
story like this: that there was a man called Trophonius who was excessively
eager to be famous, very like Empedocles. This man built himself an
underground dwelling, where he delivered oracles; and then, when he died
of starvation, his place was taken by a spirit which continued to utter
oracles, and thereafter from superstition a number of people lowered
themselves into the cave and spent several days there. This story about
Trophonius seems to me so close to the tale about St Patrick's cave2 in
Ireland, that one might well believe one of them derived from the other.
Though there are plenty of people who make the descent even in our own
day; but first they utterly exhaust themselves by fasting for three days, so
that they cannot be in their right minds when they enter. Those who have
gone down say they have lost all desire to smile for the rest of their lives.
Plutarch3 in his essay 'On the Divine Sign of Socrates' tells how a certain
Timarchus went down into the cave of Trophonius, and on his return
recounted the astonishing sights he had seen, not unlike what Bede4 and
some other Christian authors have reported of the nether regions. Cicero5
too in the third book of his De natura deorum mentions this Trophonius, and
so does Herodotus6 in book one. But the greatest nonsense on this foolish
subject is talked in Philostratus7 by Apollonius, a man whose disquisitions
on philosophy should in my opinion be confined to this topic. Lucian,8 that
adamantine persecutor of all superstition, mocks this Trophonius in several
passages, and Menippus too makes fun of him, saying that he came back
from the lower world by way of Trophonius' cave. The cave is mentioned by
Euripides9 in the Ion: 'What oracle bring you from Trophonius?' And again in
the same play: 'You visit the precinct of Trophonius.' My account of
Trophonius' cave is borrowed partly from the scholiast on Aristophanes and
partly from Zenodotus.10

78 Excubiarum causa canens

Singing at his post

Singing at his post, was used in the old days of a wakeful

 i vii 78 / LB ii 2940 116

and industrious man, and came from the habit that men on sentry-duty have
of singing, either to beguile the tedium of their watch or to prevent their
falling asleep on duty. Thus Strepsiades in the Clouds of Aristophanes, who
has made a bad start in Socrates' school:
Lost is my money, lost my ruddy cheeks,
Lost are my life and soul, lost are my slippers,
And what is worse, as I sing at my post,
I'm almost lost myself.

The proverb is expressed in two forms, with phrouras and phrouros, and there
is a play on the word phroudos, which means 'lost' or Vanished/

79 Sale emptum mancipium

A slave not worth his salt

literally A slave exchanged for salt. Used in ancient

times of any barbarian and worthless creature, for the merchants of those
days who carried salt into the interior used to return with slaves from the
barbarians. And it was a practice peculiar to the Thracians to exchange
slaves for salt; whence that line in a comedy: 'A true-blue Thracian are you,
bought with salt.' Such is more or less what Zeonodotus tells us.

80 Sails onus unde venerat, illuc abiit

Salt to water whence it came

A load of salt has vanished whence it

came. A proverbial iambic line for those who cannot look after their gains, or
make an ill use of gains ill-gotten. The source of the adage is something that
once happened. A certain merchant had chartered a ship and loaded it with
salt, and while the crew were asleep the sea got in and caused a sharp rise in
the bilge-water, which dissolved and ruined the salt and sank the ship itself;
with the result that what had originated in sea-water (out of which salt
crystallizes) returned to sea-water again as it dissolved.

81 Sales vehens dormis

You sleep on a cargo of salt

This is the wording of another adage derived from the same event:
You sleep on a cargo of salt. It will be suitable for a man who
behaves in an idle and careless fashion at a moment of danger, because salt is
so easily spoilt if bilge-water gets access to it.
 I Vii 82 / LB II 294F 117

82 Male parta male dilabuntur

111 gotten ill spent

The preceding maxim finds a counterpart in those words in Cicero's second

Philippic: 'But, as some poet has observed, ill gotten ill spent/ With regard to
Cicero's doubts about the authorship, in Plautus1 in the Poenulus we find '111
gotten ill employed.' Festus Pompeius2 cites from Naevius '111 gotten ill
spent/

83 Qui se non habet, Samum habere postulat

Who does not own himself would Samos own

He who is not his own master desires

to be master of Samos. This will suit people who demand something
outrageous, or who concern themselves with details and neglect the larger
issues. Derived from an anecdote preserved by Plutarch in his 'Sayings of
Spartans/ When the Athenians had surrendered their city to the victor, they
asked that he should at least let them keep Samos, and his reply took the form
'When you are not your own masters, do you expect to master other men?'
And hence came the proverb: 'Who does not own himself would Samos
own/ Dion the sophist in his essay 'On Disbelief adapts it neatly to a
different meaning: 'How can a man who is not his own best friend make a
good friend for someone else?' It will also fit those who expect to control
others when they themselves have no self-control.

84 Occultae musices nullus respectus

Hidden music has no listeners

At one time a favourite adage in Greece, the point of which is that natural
endowments however distinguished, if not put forward, might as well not
exist. Persius1 seems to have had this in mind when he wrote 'Knowledge is
naught if no one knows you know/ Something of the sort can be found
among Hebrew2 proverbs too, in fact in Ecclesiasticus chapter 20: 'Wisdom
that is hid and treasure that is hoarded up, what profit is in them both?' This
proverb with which we deal is recorded by Suetonius3 in his life of the
emperor Nero, who forgot, he says, what was expected of an emperor, and
had such a passion for music that he not merely practised without exception
all the tricks used by professional singers to preserve or improve the voice,
but actually had ambitions to appear on the stage, making play among his
circle with the Greek proverb 'Hidden music has no listeners/ Aulus Gellius4
uses the same phrase in the last chapter of book 13 of the Nights: 'You know,
 i vii 84 / LB ii 2950 118

professor, that saying - it must be an old one - that music however excellen
is worthless if kept hidden/ Lucian5 uses it in his Harmonides: Though secret
and hidden music, they say, is no use to anyone.' Ovid6 no doubt had this in
mind when he wrote Though Thamyras and Orpheus you outsing, / Music
unheard's a very pointless thing/ But there are some human beings who
either through an inborn fault of character or even by deliberate choice
conceal what they know and dislike imparting it to others. Such men
sometimes suffer the fate of being disregarded, because they are supposed to
be ignorant. To these7 we may ascribe what is called in Greek rv^Xd?
TrXovro?, blind riches, resources which are kept secret and hidden away.
Plutarch speaks of them in this fashion in several passages, and so does
Lucian. Plutarch8 in his life of Lycurgus tells us it was a common boast among
the Lacedaemonians that in their country Plutus, the god of wealth, was
kept without honour, as lifeless and motionless as a painted image. For
Lycurgus had drafted the constitution in such a way that no one could find
riches either useful or ornamental.

85 Ficulnus
Fig-wood

The wood of the fig-tree, breakable as it is and useless for almost any
purpose, has given rise to several proverbs. In Greek 'a figwood fellow' is
someone weak and worthless, for instance Theocritus1 in his Ergatinae: 'Lest
someone pass and say Here be figwood fellows; here's more wages wasted/
The scholiast points out that the proverb is derived from figtree wood,
which is so fragile and weak as to be useless, whence also the expression a
figwood prop, for a useless one. In Aristophanes2 in the Drones, one of the
characters asks another 'Of what wood are you?' and the reply is 'Fig-wood/
The scholiast on the passage points out that fig-wood makes a very acrid and
unpleasant smoke. Elsewhere, in the Plutus, a sycophant threatens that if he
had found a figwood fellow of the same sort as himself, he would avenge the
injury: Tf I find a like-minded man, a figwood fellow like myself/ And again
in the same poet and the same play: This figwood mighty god of yours I will
this day compel to pay the penalty,' using the phrase 'figwood god' to mean
a weak and powerless one. Horace3 alludes to this when he introduces
Priapus saying T was once a figwood trunk, a useless log,' and a little further
on T opened up and let out a good old figtree fart/ Lucian4 speaks of 'a
figtree mind' in his Against an Ignoramus: 'Having a lame and figtree mind/
Alexander the false prophet had the same thing in mind when he burnt the
works of Epicurus on a fire made of fig-wood to show that he thought the
philosopher worthless. Also 'a figwood prop'5 in Greek for support that is
 I vii 85 / LB ii 2968 'AXwvqTov avdpdnodov,

weak and worthless; Aristophanes in the Lysistrata 'Who would have been
to us a figwood prop.' 'A sword of fig-wood'6 for calumny. 'A boat of
fig-wood'7 for an inferior one that cost very little. In Naxos8 too, where
Bacchus has two names, one, Baccheus, they represent as god of the vine,
the other, Meilichius, as patron of figs; for meilicha is a Naxian word for fig.
Bacchus is regarded as having introduced not only the grape but the fig too;
so Athenaeus, book 3. The converse image is used by Theocritus9 in his Aites:
'The golden men of old.' Similar10 are 'sacred line of defence,' 'sacred anchor'
for 'sheet anchor,' and 'strength of adamant.'

86 Lupi ilium priores viderunt

The wolves have seen him first

Used of a man with a sore throat and one who has suddenly lost his voice. It
will have more point if used of those who fall silent from fear of something,
though otherwise bold enough. Virgil1 in the Eclogue they call his 'Moeris':
'Moeris his voice is losing now; the wolves / Caught sight of Moeris first.'
Servius tells us that according to the naturalists wolves have this innate
power: if they see a man before he sees them, he loses his voice, and there is
no shortage of philosophers who try to explain this. Socrates, as reported by
Plato2 in the first book of the Republic, made an allegorical use of this, saying
that Thrasymachus would have robbed him of his voice, had he not by great
good fortune seen the man first. 'When I heard that,' he says, T was struck
dumb. I was terrified at the sight of him. I really think that had I not seen him
before he saw me, I should have been speechless.' Theocritus3 in Idyll 14:
'You will be speechless; you have seen a wolf.' It is worth noting in passing
that Theocritus has inverted the sense, for he says that the man struck dumb
has seen a wolf, not been seen by one. But in any case4 Theocritus alluded to
the proverb, for he meant that the man had seen a rival whose name was
Wolf.

87 Quaecunque in somnio videntur

What we see in a dream

Whatever you see in a dream, is used of

extravagant desires. For to dream that what you wish is true is a thing that
can happen to anyone, like Micyllus in Lucian,1 who dreams that he is rich
and powerful. In Theocritus2 there is a fisherman who dreams of a golden
fish. And men of the humblest sort sometimes dream they have married
queens. A shepherd in Theocritus'3 ninth eclogue says 'I possess all you can
dream of, many ewes and many she-goats.' The scholiast gives the form
 i vii 87 / LB ii 297A 120

'Your dreams come true/ and quotes a line from Homer 'Not if you brought
me all false dreams can bring.' The line is found in the poet in the first book of
the Iliad, but in a slightly different form: 'Not if you brought gifts countless as
the sand/ Cicero4 seems to have glanced at this in his attack on Sallust: 'Just
lately you could not pay off the debt on your family home, and how is it that,
like a man who dreams he is a millionaire, you have suddenly acquired a most
valuable suburban estate, a country house at Tibur, and all those other
properties of Caesar's?'

88 Bona Porsenae
Porsena's property

Porsena's property was a name given to goods sold very cheap, for instance
if they were booty seized from the enemy. Livy in the second book of his
Rome from the Foundation writes that the expression had survived to his own
day; he thinks it arose from the fact that 'Porsena's property' was customarily
sold in Rome in wartime, and the practice as well as the name continued in
peace as well, because otherwise this custom of selling the goods as enemy
property would not be appropriate 'when the king's departure had been so
peaceful/ If this does not commend itself, he finds 'a more peaceable origin'
for the practice. He thinks it 'most likely that when Porsena' in accordance
with the agreed terms 'departed from the Janiculum, leaving a well-stocked
camp into which he had collected the booty from the fertile farmland of
Etruria which was not far away, he made a present of it to the Romans, the
city being then short of supplies after the long siege. To prevent the people
from falling on these goods and wasting them, they were sold as enemy
property and called Porsena's property, the name indicating a welcome gift
rather than the sale by auction of a king's possessions.' The phrase will
perhaps be suitable if applied to things which come to us as a gift or by favour
of fortune and without any effort on our part. For Livy does not indicate how
the adage was used.

89 Leonina societas
The lion's share

We speak of Leonina societas, Going shares with a lion, when all the profits go
to one of the partners, while the rest are forcibly done out of them; such a
partnership as is often shared with kings or men of very great power though
of lowly origin. It occurs in the Pandects, in which Ariston, as quoted by
Ulpian, records a legal opinion given by Cassius to the effect that a valid
partnership cannot be formed where one party is to take all the profits and
 i vii 89 / LB ii 2970 121

the other bear any loss, and Cassius used to call this, he says, 'going shares
with a lion/ The name Cassius gives it, which is without a doubt proverbial,
evidently derives in any case from a fable of Aesop the Greek author, which
is still current and goes as follows: A lion, an ass, and a vixen had formed a
partnership, on the basis of sharing in common anything they might catch.
When they had secured their quarry, the lion ordered the ass to divide it up.
The ass, donkey that he was, divided it into three equal shares. Infuriated to
find himself put on the same level as the other two, the lion turned on the ass
and tore him in pieces. That left the vixen; and the lion told her to make a
fresh division. So she allotted almost the whole prey to the lion and kept only
a few scraps for herself. The lion approved her distribution, and asked her
who had made her such an expert in dividing. And the vixen's answer was: T
saw what happened to the ass/

90 Ex tripode
Straight from the tripod

Spoken from the tripod, is customarily used of what we

passionately wish to be thought unquestionably true. The adage is found in
several forms: As though from the tripod, This is straight from the tripod, of
something as indubitably true as if it came from the oracle of Apollo. Cicero1
in one of his letters to Brutus: 'Imagine that you have received this reply from
the oracle of the Pythian Apollo/ A metaphor from the oracular tripod,
whether Delphic or Pythian; for these two oracles once commanded supreme
confidence among men everywhere. Of the Pythian oracle Strabo2 in the
ninth book of his Geography attests that it was once the most popular of all,
and that this is clear from the substantial treasuries built there for the storage
of religious funds and from the works of the most famous artists; furthermore
from the Pythian games which are held there and from the innumerable
oracles that survived in writing. Of the tripod he gives the following
account. Reliable authorities, he says, record that the god's actual dwelling
is a deep and curving cavern with a fairly narrow mouth, and that an
exhalation issues from this which is an effluence from the deity. Over the
entrance stands a tall tripod, and when the Pythian priestess climbs onto this
she inhales the spirit of prophecy, and utters replies some in verse and some
in prose. So in the comedy:3 'Apollo himself never uttered a truer word/
Plato4 in book 12 of the Laws: 'Not if Pythian Apollo said so himself/ There
are other metaphors too which have a proverbial ring: Whatever he says he
wishes to be taken as an oracle, Whatever he says he wants to be a law, and
the Stoic dogmata or decrees, and Cato's words in Pliny5 about physicians
'This too you must take as spoken by a prophet/ that is, believe that what I
 I VU 9O / LB II 298A 122

have said will come true. Pliny himself elsewhere: 'And would that most
people thought this was false and not the utterance of a prophet.' Plutarch6
too in his essay 'On the Difference between Flatterer and Friend': Then,
having heard what the man has to say, he goes off, declaring that he has
heard not an opinion but an oracle.' In any case there is some difference
between this and what Athenaeus7 records in the second book of his Doctors
at Dinner - that in contests in honour of Bacchus the prize was a tripod, and
thus the man who spoke the truth was said to speak 'straight from the
tripod.' The tripod, he says, was a cauldron on three feet; and of this there
were two sorts, one sacred to Apollo because of the truth of his oracles and
the other to Bacchus, in which wine was mixed, because those who are
drunk speak the truth, as I have remarked8 on the proverb Wine speaks the
truth. Galen9 uses a similar image in the first book of his On the Natural
Faculties, As from some inner shrine: 'For this Lycus maintained, with the air
of one uttering an oracle from some inner shrine, that what is superfluous in
the nourishment of the kidneys constitutes urine.'

91 Folium Sibyllae
A leaf from the Sibyl's book

A Sibylline leaf in Latin carries the same idea, for instance in Juvenal's Take
my word for it, I read you a leaf from the Sibyl's book/ meaning an
undoubted fact. Aristophanes1 in the Peace: These lines are nought to do
with me; no Sibyl uttered them.' The adage is taken from the Sibyl of Cumae,
whose oracles have a very great reputation. It was her practice, as we know
from Marcus Varro,2 to write her oracles on palm-leaves. This is followed by
Virgil3 in the third book of the Aeneid:

There shall you see that frenzied prophetess

Who in her rocky cave foretells the future,
Trusting her knowledge to the tenuous grasp
Of leaves; and what upon those leaves she writes,
She sets in order due and leaves it locked
Within the cave, and there it lies unmoved
Nor shifts its place.

And again in book 6: 'But this I pray: write not your oracles / On leaves, light
playthings of the sweeping wind.'
 i vii 92 / LB ii 29&E 123

92 Prater viro adsit

Let a man's brother stand by him

Let a man's brother stand by him. Commonly used

of help that one can trust, because in moments of danger a man's brother
hardly ever leaves him in the lurch. In Plato,1 in book 2 of the Republic,
Adeimantus takes over from Glaucon the argument with Socrates, and says
'No, Socrates, we have not yet really dealt with this. Why so? Because we
have not yet settled the point which needed settling more than anything.'
'Very well,' replies Socrates, 'let a man's brother stand by him, as the proverb
runs: if he has left something out, you must help him.' He also says the adage
comes from Homer, in the Protagoras where Socrates calls on Prodicus to
defend Simonides his fellow-citizen from being maligned by Protagoras. 'I
find myself he says 'calling on you for help, just as Scamander in Homer,2
when he is hard-pressed by Achilles, calls on Simoeis: "Dear brother, let us
both withstand this man/" The passage is in Iliad 21. Again in Iliad 22 in the
same way Hector, who is already being worsted by Achilles, calls on his
brother Deiphobus to come and help him. For Pallas had appeared to him in
the likeness of Deiphobus and Hector, deceived by this, appeals to him in
vain.3 'And with a mighty shout he summoned Deiphobus of the white
shield.' And when Deiphobus abandoned him, he knew that his last hour
had come. Plutarch4 in his life of Caesar records that when Caesar caught
hold of the sword, Casca sought his brother's help in the same way, and that
too in Greek: 'Help, brother, help/

93 Ne temere Abydum
Not rashly to Abydos

Not rashly to Abydos (should you sail, understood).

Run no serious risk without good reason. For instance,1 if one were advising
somebody not to plunge into a prince's court too readily, because such a
venture does not always succeed; or not to become involved in drunken
parties, because as a rule one does not succeed in escaping unharmed; or not
to read poetry because so often it corrupts the mind. Athenaeus2 in book 12
tells how Alcibiades, having received his property from his trustees, set sail
for Abydos on the Hellespont and was there corrupted by luxury and
dissipation, so that this would be not unlike the well-known line3 'Not all
men have the luck to get to Corinth/ The inhabitants4 of Abydos had a bad
reputation as tale-bearers, and one might suppose that for this reason it was
not safe to live there. The adage is recorded by Stephanus and Suidas.
 i vii 93 / LB ii 299C 124

Stephanus gives the adage in the form 'If not even unadvisedly to set foot in
Abydos/ let no one, that is, go there without misgivings; he indicates that it
was applied to headstrong people, and adds that it was habitually directed
at the inhabitants of Abydos in the island of Miletus. I was once shown a
village in Picardy, which no stranger could ever pass (so they told me)
without being the target of vulgar abuse.5

94 Una hirundo non facit ver

One swallow does not make a summer

A single swallow does not make a summer,

meaning that one day is not time enough to acquire virtue or education. Or
that one thing well done or well said is not sufficient to earn you the
reputation of a good man or a good speaker, for many good qualities go to
make this up. Or that to obtain certainty on some question, one single theory
is not enough. If a great many approaches lead to the same result, then and
then only will your theory be acceptable. It can so easily happen that one
swallow should appear early by mere chance. This is derived from the
natural habits of the swallow, which is the herald of early summer, for it flies
away when winter comes. Whence Horace's1 phrase 'When Zephyrs blow
and swallows first appear/ which refers to the early summer. Aristotle2 in
the first book of the Ethics: 'One swallow makes no summer, nor does one
day'; and in the same way it takes more than one day or one short space of
time to make a happy man. Aristophanes3 in the Birds: 'He seems to me to
need full many swallows/ where the scholiast sees a reference to the proverb
I have just recorded, One swallow does not make a summer. There is
something akin to this in Sophocles'4 Antigone: 'What one man owns can
never make a city.' For just as5 one swallow does not make a summer, so one
man does not make a commonwealth nor one coin a rich man.

95 Da mihi mutuum testimonium

Lend me your evidence

Lend me your evidence, meaning Give evidence in

my favour, and when you need it you shall have mine in exchange. Rightly
aimed at those who praise and recommend each other turn and turn about,
or support one another on a system of exchange, or who testify to give
satisfaction and overlook their duty to the truth. Cicero in his Pro Flacco
rejects Greeks as witnesses and rates their honesty very low, observing: 'Let
me say what I think about the Greeks as a whole. I grant they have a
literature, I recognize the width of their education, I do not grudge them the
 i vii 95 / LB n 3OOA 125

charm of their language, their intellectual ability, their abundant eloquence,

and any other claims they make I shall not resist. But honesty and respect for
the truth in giving evidence they as a nation have never developed, and of
the meaning of such things and their importance and the weight they carry
they have no idea. "Lend me your evidence" - where did that come from? No
one supposes that we owe that to Gaul or Spain. It belongs entirely to the
Greeks, so much so that even those who have no Greek know the actual
Greek words for it/ What Cicero says makes it clear enough that in his time
this adage was exceptionally familiar.

96 Mutuum muli scabunt

One mule scratches another

When rascals and men of no reputation admire and cry up one another. The
image is taken from mules which, like other beasts of burden, have a habit of
scratching one another with their teeth. The phrase is cited by Nonius
Marcellus1 as the title of one of Marcus Varro's Menippean Satires, and must
surely be proverbial. Ausonius2 in the second preface to his Monosyllaba:
'But to end with a proverb what I began with an adage, mules scratch one
another/ Varro3 also mentions this in the third book of his On the Latin
Language, though the wording is most foully corrupt, for which the passage
of time is not so much to blame as the common run of printers, whose only
object seems to be the utter extinction of all good books. For the text runs
thus: Thiloptorus, a female friend of the man who in old age calls a boy pusus
and a girl pusa. The result will be mutuam mulinam.' I think we should read
mutuum muli and understand scabunt. Symmachus4 in one of his letters: The
proverb says that mules scratch one another, and for fear I may be within
reach of that, I hold back behind clenched teeth what I would say in praise of
you/ It looks however as if the adage could not be correctly understood
except in a derogatory sense, as for instance if two ignorant men were to
praise each other or two cripples or two rascals. This recalls Horace's5
anecdote of the two brothers who enjoyed mutual back-scratching and an
exchange of panegyrics in turn.

Rome had two brothers; one the spoken word

And one the law pursued. And how they purred!
How oft reciprocal the butter flew! -
'Gracchus has met his match/ 'And Mucius too!'

He also criticizes poetasters who, bad as they are, listen to each others'
recitations with rapture:
 i vii 96 / LB ii 3000 126

Alcaeus I in his opinion shine,

He soars a new Callimachus in mine.

97 Tradunt operas mutuas

They help each other out

There is a phrase related to this in Terence's Phormio, They help each other
out/ used of the young men who get into scrapes and defend one another in
turn. It looks as though it might be a metaphor from neighbouring farmers
who have a custom of lending a hand with the work in both directions, or
from craftsmen, especially coppersmiths, who sometimes share their work.

98 Senes mutuum fricant

Old men rub one another

There also belongs here a humorous turn which gave rise to a proverb, about
old men rubbing one another. The story is told by Aelius Spartianus in his
life of the Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian once saw an old soldier in the baths,
who was too poor to keep a slave, rubbing himself down against the marble
walls, and presented him with a few slaves and the money to maintain them.
A number of other veterans, seeing what a success that had been, began
likewise to rub themselves down against the marble when they were within
sight of the emperor, hoping in this way to extract some more bounty from
their prince. He however sent for the old men and told them to rub each
other down in turns, and in that way they would not need slaves. This
humorous turn afterwards became a common proverb. There is also a
well-known retort of Scipio Aemilianus, 'Beasts must be rubbed down by
someone else because they have no hands'; by which he meant that those
who are not capable of famous exploits need an expert in publicity, through
whom they can secure a reputation.

99 Fricantem refrica
You scratch my back and Til scratch yours

If someone rubs you rub him in return. Recorded in the

collections of Diogenianus. It is only fair to oblige a man who has obliged you
and to repay one kindness with another. Suidas1 thinks the metaphor is
drawn from donkeys nibbling one another, and that it can be used in either
sense, of the exchange of mutual assistance or abuse. There is a well-known
and rather neat moral maxim2 to the same effect, which is ascribed to Seneca
but wrongly, 'Your neighbour will treat you as you treat him/ Aristides3 in
 i vii 99 / LB ii 3O1A 127

his united defence of the four orators: 'Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours
is proverbially credited, I think, to donkeys; but our Homeric enthusiasts
would surely compare Pericles to a lion rather than a donkey.'
Here belongs that other phrase,4 'One hand washes the other/ which
Plato cites in the Axiochus: 'On every point he follows that tag from
Epicharmus, One hand washes the other; give first and take afterwards.'
Though the Aldine edition5 reads for not 'he follows' but
'he repeats'; and the trochaic tetrameter in Greek will run better if you read
for . I have already quoted this elsewhere, but with a
different text, following6 a defective copy, because as yet I had no Greek
Plato at hand which I could consult. It seemed advisable to draw the reader's
attention to this, for fear someone might accuse me rashly of inverting Plato's
text. Though, as far as the sense goes, it makes no difference at all whether
you read ince whether one hand scratches the other or
washes it, the exchange of services is exactly the same.

100 Ferrum ferro acuitur

Iron sharpeneth iron

It was not my intention to mingle with this series the proverbs which belong
to theologians, not that I despise them, but partly because I thought this
showed a proper respect for Holy Writ and partly because they are
universally accessible. There is however one which I shall add without
hesitation because it chimes in so exactly with what I have just said. It comes
in the Proverbs of Solomon, chapter 27: 'Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharp-
eneth the countenance of his friend.' In Hebrew it is expressed like this - for
it is something to hear an adage in its original language:

i Aequalem uxorem quaere

Seek a wife of your own sort

Marry a wife of your own sort. The adage reminds us

that no man ought to be misled by love of money or ambition into marrying a
wife who is grander than himself; for such marriages tend to turn out badly.
Plutarch1 in his essay 'On the Education of Children' tells parents to 'betroth
wives to their sons who are not much richer or more influential than they are;
for there is much wisdom in the proverb Take a wife of your own station.'
This is also circulated among the maxims of the Sages, and is ascribed by
some to Pittacus: Marry a wife of your own kind. For if you marry one whose
family are grander than you are, you will be acquiring masters to order you
about, not kinsmen. Diogenes Laertius2 in his Lives of the Philosophers tells the
 I viii i / LB ii 302A 128

following anecdote, which he assures us was also given currency by

Callimachus3 in a brilliant epigram. A young man from Atarneus once
consulted Pittacus as to which woman he should marry; for he had the choice
of two, one of them his equal in birth and property and the other his superior
in both. Pittacus lifted the staff on which he leant, and told him to go to the
square in the middle of the city where the children gather to play, and ask
their advice, and then to follow whatever they might give him. The children,
in agreement with the familiar proverb, replied Seek a wife of your own sort.
And so the young man rejected one, and chose the other who was his equal.
Callimachus advises his friend Dion to do the same. This principle appealed
to Pittacus especially 'because he had married a wife more high-born than
himself, the sister of Draco/ who ordered him about and was difficult to
please, which he found very trying, so that he seems to have learnt this wise
saying not from theory but from his own unfortunate experience. There is
also an epigram, though the name in it is Ion and not Dion (wrongly, I think),
which runs as follows: 'A stranger from Atarneus once asked Pittacus, son of
Hyrrhadius, of Mitylene the following question. "Aged sir, two marriages
are offered me, one with a girl who is in wealth and birth my equal, while the
other is far above me. Which is the better course? Pray give me your advice,
which I had better marry." He raised his staff, the old man's weapon, and
replied: "Those over there will tell you all you need." Now there were
children who whipped their whirling tops as they spun them in the wide
street. "Follow their lead" he said. So the young man went and stood near
the boys and heard them cry "Stick to your own!" When he heard this, he
refrained from grasping the grander marriage, for he took a hint from what
the children said. He chose to live with him the humbler bride; and even so
you, Dion, should stick to your own.' These lines were rendered into Latin
verse not wholly without success by Ambrosius Camaldulensis4 in his
version of Diogenes, and I shall add them without hesitation: [Here follow
eight Latin couplets, the sense of which has been given already in translating the
Greek original]. The image is taken from a child's top, which he spins by
whipping it; for each child drove as hard as he could the top that belonged to
him. Deianira in Ovid5 transfers the proverb to her own sex:

As bad as ill-matched oxen at the plough

Are a grand husband and a lesser bride.
She who will spoil the splendid show he makes
Brings him no honour; she is just a burden.
Let her who wishes for a well-tuned marriage
Marry her equal.
 i viii i / LB ii 3038 129

Plutarch6 'On the Education of Children': 'There is much wisdom in the

saying Take a wife of your own station/ I have thought it right to add at this
point that line from the Thesmophoriazusae that passes under the name of
Aristophanes:7 'An aged groom is mastered by his bride.' There is the same
message in that line of Euripides8 in the Rhesus: 'I would not marry one
grander than I.' And it will be appropriate to see that one's wife is equal not
only in lineage and in property; there should be only a moderate difference
in age, good looks, and style of life. This can be taken still further, and
applied to the undertaking of business which you are equal to and fit for.
Also to the choice of the right style of life and a congenial friend.

2 Ne my quidem facere audet

He does not even dare say mu

Those who were too frightened to utter a sound were said at one time not to
dare say mu. The adage is recorded by Varro in the third book of his On the
Latin Language. He thinks the verb mussare, to mutter is derived from the
name of the letter mu, as an equivalent to the Greek verb muzein, because
dumb people (mutes, as we call them) can make no sound except mu. For m is
the most silent letter in the alphabet, especially when final, for it draws the
lips together and closes them to a surprising degree. Varro's words are:
'From which the same author calls the least utterance mu: "nor, as the phrase
goes, dare any say him mu."' It seems to be a line from Ennius, for he had
quoted him shortly before. In Greek1 muzein means both to suck and to speak
through one's nose, to mutter. Aristophanes2 in the Thesmophoriazusae: 'Why
mutter, when all has gone well?' For this is Euripides' reply when
Mnesilochus had said mu mu. In Latin mutire and mussare mean to bear
something in silence and as it were swallow your protests. Terence:3 'The
wrongs of the young must be endured in silence (mussitanda).' Virgil:4 Tn
silence king Latinus hesitates (mussat).' In Aristophanes5 in the Knights two
characters who wish to complain about the evils of their city repeat in unison
the line mu mu, mu mil, mu mu, mu mu, mu mu, mu mu, from which we may
infer that this was the sound made by those who did not dare speak out.

3 Ne gry quidem
Not a grunt

He utters not a grunt. An exaggeration with proverbial

status in Greek, indicating not even a very little. For gru means something
very small,1 either dirt under the nails (than which nothing could be more
worthless) or a grunt like a pig's (commonly uttered by those who cannot be
 i viii 3 / LB n 3O4A 130

bothered to reply in words) or an extremely small coin. Aristophanes2 in the

Plutus: 'And makes me follow too, / Although the man gives not a grunt in
answer/ Hence too the verb gruzein, to grunt or grumble. The same poet and
the same play: 'You filthy jailbirds, do you dare to grunt?' Philostratus3 in his
Life of Apollonius: 'He said nothing, and could not be induced to utter even a
grunt/ This word is used frequently by Aristophanes.

4 Pili non facio

I count it not worth a hair

'I count it not worth a hair/ 'Not a hairsbreadth to choose' is an exaggeration

in common use in Latin when it wishes to express a very small degree of
importance. Catullus:1 They count their staff not worth a hair/ Cicero,2
writing to his brother: 'I shall not love you one hairsbreadth the less/ and in
another passage 'And all this time from Cappadocia not a single hair,'
though ordinary copies there read pileum, a cap, not pilum. And this adage in
our own day too is on everyone's lips. A hair was proverbial for something
worthless in Greek as well as Latin. Hence the expression3
'worth a hair,' of a man of no account. The bolder the metaphor, the better
the effect; for the phrase 'I count the man not worth a hair' contains almost
nothing in the way of a rhetorical figure except the exaggeration, while 'Not
a hairsbreadth the better scholar/ 'Not a hairsbreadth less attractive/ 'Not a
hairsbreadth more distinguished' and similar expressions, going as they do a
little further beyond the simple statement, acquire rather more power to
please.

5 Nauci non facio

I care not a mite

To be worth a mite, and To count worth a mite, for to be worthless or think

worthless, will be found fairly often in Plautus. As to the meaning of this
word nauci, a mite, one of the slaves in Plautus1 who has just used it admits
that he has no idea what it means. Plautus: 'A faint heart in a tight place will
not be worth a mite/ Some of the grammarians, Pompeius Festus2 among
them, say that nauci means the shell of a nut, or an olive-stone, or the fine
membrane that one can see making the partitions in the inside of a walnut; in
a word, they think it is the husk of anything, the Greek peripsema, that is
called nauci. Some derive it from the Greek word nake, a goatskin. Other
views3 on the word nauci will be found by those who wish to learn them in
Festus under the heading naccae. T care not a mite' was used by Ennius, as
 i viii 5 / LB ii 304E 131

quoted by Cicero4 in book i of the On Divination: 'I care not a mite in fact for
your Marsian soothsayer/

6 Flocci non facio, aut Flocci facio

I care not a wisp of wool, or, a wisp of wool and no more

In the same way they used the phrase flood facere and neflocci quidemfacere, To
think worth a wisp of wool or, not even worth a wisp of wool, for something
of no value. Floccus is a scrap of wool that is torn as being of no purpose from
the fleece and flies away, or something at least like that of no importance.
Examples are so common everywhere in ancient authors that it does not seem
worth while to find room for them here.

7 Huius non facio

I make it not worth a snap of the fingers

To the same shape of phrase belongs a remark in Terence in the Adelphoe: T

shall make it not worth thatV Donatus points out that this is what Greek calls
deiktikon, accompanied by a gesture, and the speaker means either a wisp of
wool or a straw or a finger-tip, or something of the sort. Athenaeus tells us in
his twelfth book that there was a statue of Sardanapalus on his tomb, making
this kind of gesture with his fingers, to show that all human affairs are
despicable and not worth a snap of the fingers.

8 Vitiosa nuce non emam

I would not buy it for a rotten walnut

In the Miles of Plautus 'I wouldn't buy your life for a rotten walnut/ meaning
'for no sum however small/ And we say in current speech 'I would not swap
that for an empty nut' and 'not worth a nutshell/ Aristophanes1 in the Peace:
T would not buy it, not for one dried fig/ Close to this are some words
quoted, also from Plautus, by Festus:2 'I would not value what you say at a
titivillitium/ a word used in Latin to signify something absolutely worthless,
like pipolo3 in Greek. There is also butubata, an expression for 'rubbish' used
by Naevius, as we know from Festus.4

9 Ne teruncium quidem insumpsit

He did not spend a farthing

Cicero sometimes uses as an exaggeration the word farthing, which clearly

meant some sort of very small coin. In a letter to Atticus: T even hope that
 i viii 9 / LB ii 3050 132

during the whole of my year as governor not a farthing of expense will fall on
the province/ Plautus1 in the Captivi: 'Now they won't pay a farthing for a
man who makes them laugh/ just as Greek uses the word half-obol for
something of no value. Varro2 thinks the word teruncius is derived from
'three ounces/

10 Homo trioboli
A three-ha'penny fellow

Plautus again in the Poenulus uses 'a three-ha'penny fellow' of a rascal

whose value is clearly nil. Derived from a very small coin, Aristophanes1
uses a very similar metaphor in the Wasps, when he calls worthless verses
'three-quart lines/ Gregory2 in his letters says of a worthless and contempt-
ible person 'or rather a slave worth a few ha'pence/ There is also a word
triobolares3 which conveys the same meaning.

11 Homo tressis
A threepenny man

Persius in the same vein speaks of some contemptible creature as 'a

stable-boy dear at threepence/ and in another passage of 'bidding a
hundred clipped pennies/ which would be the smallest possible sum, 'for a
hundred Greeks/ The word tressis was a new one, equivalent to 'worth
threepence,' the as or penny being a small bronze coin. Persius' lines are in
the fifth satire and run as follows:
'Barren indeed of truth my countrymen!
One twirl1 makes any Jack a citizen.
Take Dama now, no threepenny stable-boy/

There is a related phrase in Jerome:2 'Who priced you at two pounds?'

Justinian3 in the preface to the Pandects expressed the wish that law-students
might lose their ancient nickname 'twopounders,' which was both contemp-
tuous and absurd, and take the new name of 'Justinians/

12 Dignus pilo
Worth a hair

Worth a hair, is used in Greek of men who are worthy of

nothing good, because nothing is more contemptible than a hair. Aristopha-
nes in the Frogs: 'Death take me if ever I was here before / Or stole aught of
yours that was worth a hair/ The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.
 i viii 13 / LB ii 305? 133

13 Nee uno dignus

Not worth a one

Not worth even a one, or Worth a one and

no more, used of something quite worthless. The metaphor is taken from the
casting of dice, in which the one is the lowest throw. In fact the one is the
least in all systems of numbering, and is itself (so the philosophers tell us) not
even a number. Conversely, when the meaning is that a man is highly
valued, it is a familiar expression in Greek to say he is 'worth a great deal' and
'worth everything/ and the opposite, 'worth very little,' if a man is despised.
It is ordinary and plebeian to be valued solely as one individual; and thus
Homer1 in Iliad 11, wishing to convey the importance of a physician, says
that he is the equivalent of many other men. Plato2 looks back to this in book
5 of the Laws, when he says of two people that one is worth his own value as
an individual while the other is the equivalent of many other men. To the
same shape of phrase belong those figures of the teachers of rhetoric which
run that One man finds an audience in himself, and that They value the
judgment of one particular man more than that of an infinite multitude.

14 Dignus obelisco
He deserves an obelisk

Worthy of an obelisk, worthy of any honour you can think

of. For the very greatest men had this kind of thing, columns and pyramids,
erected in their honour, with grandiloquent inscriptions, or huge colossal
figures; for that was how in old days stupid princes loved to be represented.
Not but what the proverb is double-edged, for Aristarchus used an obelisk,
or obelus, to cut to pieces anything he disapproved of. This is recorded by
Suidas among others.

15 Aureus in Olympia stato

You shall be set up at Olympia in gold

When Greek wants to convey that a man deserves the highest honours, it is
customary to say to him You shall be set up at Olympia in gold. Lucian in
Pseudologista: 'You shall, as they say, be set up at Olympia in gold,' for in
those days it was held to be the highest honour to have a statue among the
illustrious in such a famous place. Virgil1 alludes to this when he says 'If
lambs fill up my flock, you shall be gold/ Plato2 in the Phaedrus: T promise to
set up a statue of you in gold at Delphi life size/ And a little further on: 'You
shall stand in hammered metal at Olympia by the offering of the Cypselids/
 i viii 15 / LB ii 3060 134

The translator perhaps read chryselatos (of beaten gold), not sphurelatos
(hammered), or at the least he must have been asleep, for he gives 'in gold.' It
should be added3 that the kings of Corinth were called Cypselids from
Cypselus, who drove the Bacchidae out of Corinth, took over the govern-
ment and acquired great wealth; as evidence of which Strabo cites 'the
dedication of Cypselus at Olympia, a statue of a man of large size in
hammered gold/ Philostratus4 alludes to this in his Life of Apollonius: They
will crown you in Olympia.' Persius5 uses a rather similar image in his second
satire: 'Let them rank first, and give them golden beards/ For it was
customary to give certain statues a beard of gold.

16 Quavis re dignus
Worth everything

Worth everything you like to mention. Recorded by all

the Greek collectors of adages. Plato1 uses it in the Sophist: 'Some find them
quite valueless, to others they are worth everything/ Terence2 in the same
way speaks of a 'man worth anything you please/ Though this adage has
just been mentioned.

17 Dignus Argivo clypeo

Worthy of the shield at Argos

You are worthy of the shield at Argos. Of a

well-bred man for whom one has exceptional respect. Taken from an old
custom at Argos, that boys of unblemished character and breeding should go
in procession, carrying some particular shields. This privilege had been
granted to boys of that age in accordance with some ancient tradition.

18 Dignum propter quod vadimonium deseratur

Worth breaking bail for

When we wish to indicate something of the greatest importance, which

ought to be secured however great the expense, we shall say that it is worth
breaking bail for; for those who have entered into recognizances cannot fail
to appear without great personal risk. Pliny the Elder in the preface to his
Natural History speaks of 'titles for which one might break one's bail/ so
attractive, that is, that for their sake everything else though of the greatest
value might well take second place. Seneca1 in the De beneficiis, book 4: 'We
give our recognizances, and yet fail to keep them; but not every failure is a
ground for legal action, for it can be excused on the ground offeree majeure/
 i viii 18 / LB ii 3oyA 135

Seneca's words make it clear that a reason adequate to excuse a man who has
broken his bail must be very urgent indeed. Horace:2 'Just then by chance he
had to answer bail.' He is making fun of a tiresome chatterbox, who would
rather risk losing his suit than have to suspend his flow of nonsense.
There3 is a similar formula which runs 'To fight as though for hearth
and altar/4 when the object of the struggle is something precious and
important. Celsus uses a like form of words in the Pandects,5 book 6 title De rei
vindicatione: 'To forego household gods and tombs of ancestors.' 'Imagine a
poor man/ he says, 'who if he were forced to give it up would forego
household gods and tombs of ancestors. It is enough for you to be allowed to
take as much of the property as you can take and yet leave the estate in no
way worse than if there had been no building done in the first place.'

19 In utramvis dormire aurem

To sleep sound on either ear

To sleep sound on either ear is to have an easy mind, unconcerned and free
from care. Terence in the Heauton: 'I'll see that all your fears are done away; /
Then soundly shall you sleep on either ear.' Basil1 too uses it in one of his
letters, but in a bad sense, to convey idle self-confidence. Menander2 in the
Plocium, quoted by Gellius: 'She has her dowry; she may sleep sound on
either ear.' So someone has translated it, I know not who.

20 In dexteram aurem
On the right ear

In the same sense Pliny used 'on your right ear/ for he says in a letter to his
friend Romanus: 'But there's no call to leave it to me and sleep on your right
ear; idleness does not go unpunished/ meaning, there is no reason not to
worry. In the same way physicians tell us that for our first sleep, which is
generally the deepest, we should lie on the right ear; when we have woken
up and wish to get to sleep again, on the left ear; and the man who wishes to
sleep lightly lies on neither ear, in order to wake up more easily.

21 Porrectis dormire pedibus

To sleep at full stretch

Related to this is To sleep at full stretch.

Lucian On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'And now you have at last got what
everyone prays for, to sleep at full stretch.' To the same image belongs a
phrase used by Mercury in Aristophanes'1 Plutus: 'I rest anabaden, with my
 i viii 21 / LB n 3070 136

feet up/ and supinus, 'supine' for 'at ease/ and we use 'to be supine' for
being negligent and thoughtless; and to fold the hands in the Hebrew2
proverbs of the sluggard: 'A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the
hands to sleep.'

22 Naso suspendere
To turn up the nose

To turn up your nose at something is to mock it in a sly sneering fashion.

Pliny, book 11 chapter 32, tells us it was his own generation that gave the
word nose this special sense of sly derision; for we find nothing like it in
earlier authors. I will give Pliny's actual words: 'And man alone has the
projecting nose to which our modern habits have given the special sense of
sly derision.' Horace1 in the Satires: 'You turn up your nose and catch them
on it/ and in another passage: 'A tiresome fellow who turns up his nose at
everything.' Persius,2 speaking of Horace as a master of skilful and
well-hidden mockery: 'with a sly talent for turning up his nose and catching
the public on it'; and elsewhere 'Attend then, but drop that angry wrinkled
snarl from your nostrils.' Hence clever critics of other men were said to have
'a sharp satirical nose.' Martial:3 'All are not gifted with the critic's nose/ and
'And children have the nose of a rhinoceros/ and again 'Sharp-nosed you
may be, you may be all nose.' Persius:4 'You laugh, he says, and let your
nostrils curl / More than they should.' Greek expresses this with a plain verb
mukterizein and its opposite antimukterizein, for mockery and counter-
mockery, derived from a word that means nostril. Cassius5 to Cicero, in book
15 of his Letters to Friends: 'And when you have hurt their feelings by some
humorous or teasing remark, they wish to return your mockery in boorish
fashion with a drawn sword/ to turn up their noses at you in their turn.

23 Dignus quicum in tenebris mices

A man with whom you could play morra in the dark

They used to say of a really honest man that you could play morra with him in
the dark. Cicero in book 3 of the De officiis: 'Surely it is a disgrace that
philosophers should find any problems where the veriest rustic finds none
at all, for it was country people invented the proverb, now threadbare with
age: when they praise a man's honesty and good faith, they say he's the sort
of man with whom you could play morra in the dark.' Again in book 2 of the
De finibus: 'Why do we praise justice? Is there some truth in the old
threadbare proverb, "with whom you could play morra in the dark"?' Morra
is a kind of game which still survives in Italy, in which the two competitors
 i viii 23 / LB ii 3085 137

each hold up a number of fingers suddenly, and each has to guess how
many. Cicero speaks of it in the second book of the On Divination: 'For what
is chance? The same, almost, as playing morra and throwing knucklebones
and shooting dice.' Marcus Varro:1 'One must play morra with the Greek to
decide whether I follow his number or he mine.' Nemesianus2 in a pastoral
poem: 'Up with your fingers in the morra!' Augustine3 mentions it in his De
Trinitate, book 8 chapter 5: 'We have that when we please, to say nothing
else, even by playing morra with three fingers.' The point is that a man with
whom you play it in the dark is at liberty to cheat if he wishes, and so the man
with whom you can safely play in the dark must be so dependably honest
that he would not wish to cheat anyone even when it is safe to do so. There is
a similar phrase in Greek:4 'This is a man you can trust even when he is not on
oath,' with its opposite5 'Even were he on oath I would not trust him.'

24 Ex Jovis tabulis testis

Evidence from Jove's own files

literally, The witness from Jove's own tablets.

This was used in Greek of a reliable witness whose word could not be
doubted. Lucian in his essay On Salaried Posts in Great Houses: 'And if anyone
accuses you of adultery or pederasty, without more ado this is evidence, as
they say, from Jove's own files.' The allusion, if I am not mistaken, is to the
sheet of parchment on which the poets imagine that Jupiter records all that
mortals do.

25 Atticus testis
An Attic witness

An Attic witness, is given in the collection of Diogenianus

for one of the highest reputation who is quite incorruptible. If one were to
turn this round and use it ironically of a worthless witness, one would make
a nice point.

26 Attica fides
Athenian honesty

Athenian honesty, is applied in the same source to those

who are never irresponsible and never break their word, derived from the
existence in Athens of a temple built in honour of the goddess Honesty,
which is also mentioned by Plautus1 in the Aulularia. Velleius Paterculus2
speaks of it in the following words: 'If anyone thinks the Athenians are to be
 i viii 26 / LB ii 3o8E 138

blamed for this period of rebellion during which Athens was captured by
Sulla, he is quite ignorant of truth and history. The loyalty of the Athenians
to Rome was so dependable that at all times and in every field what was done
in genuine good faith was said by the Romans to be done with Athenian
honesty/ Quintilian,3 book 12 in the chapter on style, puts it like this: Tor I
suppose that if they had found a patch of more fertile soil in this area or a
more productive field, they would say that it cannot be Attic because it yields
more seed than has been put into it, and the honesty of Attic soil in this
regard has been made fun of by Menander.' From this I infer that Athenian
honesty meant neither falling short of what you had promised nor going
beyond it. Even a not very fertile soil could show this form of loyalty, though
normally a field is praised for reliability which returns what has been
entrusted to it with interest.

27 Graeca fide
On Greek credit

On Greek credit, is found likewise to express something

absolutely reliable. Perhaps identical with the preceding, unless we prefer to
take it ironically. Ausonius1 writing to Paulus: 'In my house you shall find
the opposite, if you are willing to do business on Greek credit, not Punic/
Similarly of Philo his farm-bailiff: 'He borrows on Greek credit/ Plautus2
used 'Greek credit' when business is done not by spoken promise or written
contract, but for cash down. For this is how he makes Clareta the bawd speak
in the Asinaria: 'Daylight and water, sun and moon and night - for these I
pay no money. Everything else I need I buy on Greek credit,' that is, for
ready cash. Euripides3 in the Iphigeneia in Tauris: There's nothing honest in
the whole of Greece/ Under this head the Greeks in old days had a very bad
reputation.

28 Punica fides
Punic faith

The perfidy of the Carthaginians passed into a proverb, because as a nation

they had a singularly bad reputation for perjury and falsehood, as Livy1
bears abundant witness. He writes as follows in the second book of his Punic
war: 'a promise which was kept with Punic scrupulosity by Hannibal/ Again
in the first book of his Second Punic war: These outstanding qualities were
matched by the greatest faults, inhuman cruelty, treachery beyond Punic
standards, no respect for truth or religion, no fear of any god, no regard for
oath or conscience/ It is in these colours he paints Hannibal. Quintus
 I viii 28 / LB ii 3095 139

Curtius2 suggests the same thing when he speaks of the Tyrians as deserted
by their Carthaginian supporters. So too does Maximus, as quoted by Julius
Capitolinus,3 saying 'the Africans kept true Punic faith/ and also the phrase
I have cited above from Ausonius,4 'on Punic credit/ Sallust5 On the
Jugurthine War: T understand that Bocchus kept both the Romans and the
king of Numidia in suspense, hoping for a peaceful solution, more from
Punic faith than for the reasons he put forward/ Plautus:6 'None has more
Punic blood in his veins than I/ alluding to their habitual treachery. The
Carthaginians were always held to be treaty-breakers. Plautus again in the
Poenulus: 'He knows all tongues although pretending not to; he's a true
Carthaginian. Why say more?'

29 Altera manu fert lapidem, altera panem ostentat

He bears a stone in one hand and offers a loaf in the other

Those who flatter a man to his face and criticize him privately, openly
playing the part of friends and hurting him under cover, or those who help at
one moment and hinder at another, arousing misguided hopes that they will
help him, in order to destroy him utterly when they get a chance - such
people are said to bear a stone in one hand and offer a loaf in the other. It is a
metaphor from those who attract dogs by pretending to throw them bread,
and hit them with a stone when they come close. Euclio in Plautus'1
Aulularia: 'While he makes promises, it's now he means to snatch, his mouth
wide open to swallow up my gold. He bears a stone in one hand though he
offers a loaf in the other/ St Jerome,2 writing to Rufinus: 'I wanted, my
friend, to protest to you about this privately, rather than vent in public my
resentment at this attack; for this will show you that once I have repaired a
friendship I respect it honourably and do not follow that quip in Plautus,
"He bears a stone in one hand and offers a loaf in the other/" He makes a
neat allusion to this in a letter to the same Rufinus: 'Do I refuse you a loaf
simply because I bring a stone down on the brains of heretics?' Gregory3 the
Theologian has something similar in a letter to Eusebius bishop of Caesarea:
'for all the world as though one were to scratch the same man's head with
one hand and box his ears with the other/

30 Ex eodem ore calidum et frigidum efflare

Out of one mouth to blow hot and cold

To blow hot and

cold from one mouth. Those given to double talk, and those who praise a
man one minute and vilify him the next, are said to blow hot and cold from
 i viii 30 / LB ii 3O9E 140

the same mouth. This originates in one of the stories in Avianus1 the writer of
fables. A satyr who was suffering severely from the cold in an exceptionally
hard winter was invited by a countryman to take refuge in his house. When
he saw the man put his hands to his mouth and blow into them, he was
astonished, and asked why he did so. To warm my frozen hands' he replied
'with the heat of my breath/ The man then made up a good fire, produced a
meal, and blew again, this time on his hot porridge; whereat the satyr, still
more astonished, asked him what the point of that was. 'So that my breath
may cool my porridge, which is too hot' was the reply. At which the satyr
jumped up from the table, crying: 'What is this I hear? Out of one mouth you
can blow both hot and cold? I wish you goodbye, for it does not seem to me in
reason to share a lodging with a man like that.' Yet the fact which astonished
the satyr is explained by Aristotle2 in the Problems, section 34 problem 7; and
this, he thinks, happens because the man who blows hard does not displace
all the air in front of him, but contracts his mouth and breathes out a fairly
small quantity of air, so that the heat issuing from his mouth is at once
dissipated by the rest of the air which he sets in motion by exhaling so
forcibly, and turns into cold. It is different in the case of a man who opens his
mouth and breathes out fully all at once. There is3 something related to this in
the epistle of James the Apostle, for it passes under his name: 'From the same
mouth cometh forth sweet and sour.' We can add4 at this point a more than
miraculous fact recorded by Pliny, book 2: that in Dodona there is a spring
which itself is intensely cold and extinguishes a blazing torch plunged into
it, and yet, 'if torches that have been extinguished are brought close to it, it
rekindles them.' All this it will be possible to divert for use against
professional speakers who have the skill to both praise and vilify, exalt and
debase the same object; against lawyers who at one point support and at
another attack the same case. Plutarch diverted to this purpose the story of
how Circe with the same magic wand both takes away the reason and
restores it, making beasts of men and men of beasts. There is a proverbial
line5 in Greek that runs as follows: To praise and blame the same man shows
the rascal.' And a Hebrew prophet,6 Isaiah, in fact, forebodes ill for those
who 'call good evil and evil good, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter.'
Athenaeus7 in his fourth book informs us that there is a kind of musical
pipe called in Greek magadis or palaiomagadis, which gives both a high and a
low note at the same time; for which he quotes from Alexandrides the line T
will speak you magadis-fashion, soft and loud both at once.' The Greek word
for this is magadizein, to play two notes together low and high, the octave or
diapason as musicians call it. Aristotle,8 in the problem which is section 19
number 18 in the Greek copies and number 17 in the version by Theodorus,
 i viii 30 / LB ii 3ioc 141

uses this word magadizein, asking why the harmony I have mentioned is the
only one played on a magadis. Again, in problem 39 according to the Greek
copies, 'They play the magadis in the harmony of the octave/

31 Oculatae manus
Hands with eyes in them

Plautus speaks of 'Hands with eyes in them,' which prefer promises to be

made good in kind, not dangled before them in words only; they have eyes,
he says, and can check delivery of the goods, but no ears with which to listen
to offers. So a bawd puts it in the Asinaria, when the young man promises her
mountains of gold,1 and she remains quite unmoved by his undertakings.
'My hands always have eyes in them' she says; 'they believe what they see/
And Sannio, that pimp in Terence,2 was of the same opinion: 'Never' he says
'was I so cunning that I would not rather make what profit I could in ready
cash for choice/ Chaerea alludes to this in the Eunuchus: 'Now let your
promises be visible/

32 Caeca dies, et Oculata dies

A blind day, and A day with eyes
Plautus also speaks of 'A blind day' and 'A day with eyes' for one on which
one does not, or does, pay in ready cash. Such is the wording used by a
pandar in the Pseudolus: 'Buy oil an a blind day and sell it on one with eyes.
Why, man, you can put two hundred in the ready in your pocket/ meaning
Pay nothing when you buy, but fix a day for settlement, and sell for cash. 'A
blind day' is also used by lawyers, and 'blind evidence' for what is given in
writing by absent witnesses; for 'blind' can mean not only what cannot see
but also what is not seen and not present.

33 Lentiscum mandere
Munching mastic

To munch, or chew, mastic is a proverbial expression in

Greek used of those who go too far in an excessive interest in their toilet,
since mastic was commonly employed in making dentifrice. It is a kind of fine
powder prepared for whitening the teeth; and mastic-wood was also used
for making toothpicks, which are a sort of sharp instrument adapted for
picking the teeth. Martial1 in his Apophoreta:

Mastic for choice: if leafy spike you lack,

A quill will pick your teeth, both front and back.
 i viii33 /LB II3HA 142

Moreover Dioscorides,2 book i, states that an infusion of mastic in boiling

water fixes loose teeth if rinsed in it, and that pointed splints of the wood
rubbed against the teeth are useful for cleaning them. Thus it is that those
who have a toothpick permanently in their mouths are said to nibble mastic
and are called schoinotroges, mastic-munchers. To take care of one's teeth was
in old days a reproach levelled at dandies, and among the charges laid
against Apuleius3 was his preparation of a dentifrice. The adage will rightly
be extended to cover the whole world of the toilet.

34 Unico digitulo scalpit caput

He scratches his head with a single finger

Effeminate and womanish men are said to scratch their heads with one
finger, being anxious presumably not to disturb the exquisite arrangement of
their hair. The phrase is supposed to have been first used by the poet
Calvus1 in an attack on Pompey and thence to have been extended to all
those whose virility is under suspicion. Juvenal2 in his ninth satire: 'Who
with a single finger scratch their heads/ using this gesture as a way to
identify effeminates and perverts. That this gesture in fact was taken in early
times as evidence of perversion is shown by the Letters of Seneca,3 who
writes: 'Everything to a careful observer has its telltale marks, and evidence
of a man's character can be derived from the smallest signs. A pervert is
betrayed by the way he walks or moves his hands, sometimes by one
answering remark, by his raising his hand to his head and by his shifting
eyes. A rascal is sometimes given away by his laugh, a lunatic by his
expression and bearing.'

35 Summo digito caput scalpere

To scratch one's head with the tip of one's finger

To scratch one's head with the tip of

one's finger, is the same as the preceding. Lucian in his Teacher of Public
Speaking gives the following description of a dissolute and effeminate
person: 'And among them a very clever man and very pretty, with a mincing
walk, an affected poise of the head, an effeminate air, and a sickly sweet way
of speaking, who reeks of scent and scratches his head with his finger-tip.'

36 Phryx plagis emendatur

It takes blows to mend a Phrygian

It takes blows to mend a Phrygian is used of boors and men fitted by nature to
be slaves, to whom moral standards and rebukes mean nothing; only
 i viii 36 / LB ii 3110 143

corporal punishment improves them, while 'a free-born spirit/ on the other
hand, in Seneca's1 words, 'is more easily led than driven.' Cicero2 in his Pro
Flacco, speaking of natives of Asia minor in the witness-box: This Asia of
yours is made up of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, Lydia. Is it then you or we who
have a proverbial saying that a Phrygian is commonly made better by a good
beating?' The adage is recorded by Suidas3 in the form of a trochaic verse:
'Better man and better servant is a Phrygian soundly drubbed.' Athenaeus4
shows that slaves exported from Phrygia were highly esteemed: 'From
Phrygia slaves, from Arcady recruits.'

37 Nihil sacri es
You're nothing sacred

You're nothing sacred. A phrase used by those who

wish to express scorn in proverbial language, for in Greek anything was
called sacred which they wished to represent as outstanding and highly
expedient - 'counsel is a sacred thing,'1 for example, and 'a sacred city' in
Aristides2 as a place where all men can take sanctuary, and one I have cited
elsewhere, 'a sacred anchor.'3 Plutarch4 in his life of Pelopidas speaks of a
'sacred guard.' Theocritus5 in his Wayfarers: 'Come, wager me a kid, if you so
please, though 'tis no sacred matter,' where the speaker wishes to show his
contempt for the object offered. Those who give an origin for the proverb say
that Hercules saw a statue of Adonis and expressed his scorn of it in the
words 'You're nothing sacred'; either because he thought that divine
honours should be paid only to those who have been benefactors of the
human race, or because thieves who might have taken sanctuary in his
temple should not be protected by the sanctity of the place, as they would be
in the shrines of other deities. Nowadays it is applied to anything that is an
object of scorn. There is no discrepancy between this and the remarks of the
scholiast on Theocritus, who gives Cleandrus as authority for the story.

38 Nihil sanum
Rotten to the core

Great depravity of character with no regard for right and wrong is indicated
in Greek by the words OvSsv vyies, Rotten to the core. Examples are to be
found everywhere in Greek comedy and tragedy. Aristophanes1 in the
Plutus:

To ask if he should change his way of life,

Be rascal, swindler, rotten to the core;
Just this, I find, makes life enjoyable.
 i viii 38 / LB ii 3128 144

Andromache in the tragedy by Euripides2 which bears her name describes

the Spartan character in these words:
Detested bane of all your fellow men,
Dwellers in Sparta, treacherous counsellors,
Ye lords of lies who weave your evil web,
Twisting and turning, rotten to the core.

Aristophanes3 in his Thesmophoriazusae, if the title does not mislead,

speaking of women: 'Sots, traitors, chatterers, rotten to the core, / Plaguing
our husbands/ where it is clear that he has used 'rotten to the core' as a
proverbial equivalent for 'utterly depraved.' Cicero4 in book 15 of his Letters
to Atticus: 'In a word, rotten to the core/ And two letters earlier, as though to
make his meaning clear, he has used the expression in its Latin form.

39 Diortis gry
Dion's grunt

Dion's grunt, will properly be used either when we treat

someone with lofty scorn and do not even think him worth an answer, or
when we wish to convey that a thing is worthless. Of gry, a grunt, I have
treated in another place. The adage arose from an incident. Dion, an
Alexandrian by origin, achieved distinction in philosophy. He had a brother
who was a professional wrestler, whose name was Topsius. One of the
brother's opponents made an abusive attack on Dion, pouring out torrents
of obloquy; a large crowd gathered to listen to the abuse, as they always do;
and he himself, bearing in mind no doubt the principles of his philosophy,
answered to all this vituperation not one word. However, when he was
already in the entry of his own house (for the man had followed him with his
insults as far as that), he showed no overt sign of indignation, but merely
answered 'Not a grunt.' The man went out of his mind and hanged himself;
and the story became a popular tradition.

40 Caecus caeco dux

The blind leading the blind

The blind leading the blind. An adage to which the

Gospel text has given a wider circulation, and it is therefore a special
pleasure to record it. It may be used whenever one ignorant man attempts to
instruct another, or an unwise man tries to give advice to an imprudent one.
Cicero1 alluded to the proverb in the last book of the De finibus: 'History
relates that Gaius Drusus' house was often beset by those who came to him
 I viii 40 / LB ii 312F 145

for a legal opinion; the people concerned could not see their own way clear,
and chose a blind man to be their guide/ Such are Cicero's words; Drusus
was a highly expert jurist, and for the benefit of others looked forward with
his mental vision though with his bodily eyes he could see nothing. Close to
this is Horace's2 phrase about a blind man showing the way. Horace, writing
to Scaeva: Though he were blind who shows you where to go, / Yet listen
none the less.' Porphyrion3 opines that the expression is equivalent to 'A
sow teaching Minerva'; for it is to stand the thing on its head if a blind person
tries to show the way to a sighted one. In the Plutus of Aristophanes4 the
slave Carion is indignant at the way his master, who can see, followed the
god of wealth, Plutus, who is blind:

He does the opposite of what he should

Who follows a blind man. Tis we who see
Who guide the blind; yet he must follow them,
And make me do the like.

41 Caeca speculatio
A blind man's watch

A blind man's watch, is a Greek compound noun alaoskopie

formed from laein to see, whence alaos unseeing or blind, and skopein to look
or keep watch. So Suidas,1 citing Homer. The author of the Etymologicum
adds other suggestions, citing the same expression from Methodius. Suidas
tells us that it is a proverbial way of referring to those who either close their
eyes when some task has been entrusted to them or observe nothing when
they have been posted to keep watch. The metaphor comes from men who
from some lofty watch-tower keep a careful look-out all round and report to
others what they have seen. Homer in several places has the phrase2
which the Etymologicum cites from Methodius, for 'Nor
did he keep a blind man's watch.' This will be3 suitably used when we wish
to convey that some clue has been skilfully followed up and the thing laid
bare; if, for instance, you were to say that bishops, inactive and short-
sighted in other respects, 'keep no blind man's watch' where there is any
prospect of material advantage, or in the opposite sense to a victim of
deception or hallucination, 'In this you were keeping a blind man's watch.'

42 Sine cortice nabis

You shall swim without cork

People are said to swim without cork who are old enough not to require a
 I viii 42 / LB ii 3130 146

supervisor for their conduct, or who have reached a level of knowledge at

which they no longer need the help of teachers. Horace:

Once time's matured your body and your mind,

You shall swim free and leave your cork behind,

meaning, you shall govern yourself, be your own master, with no tutor and
supervisor. Acron1 points out the proverb, and thinks the image borrowed
from young people who in their first swimming-lessons take to the water
with sheets of cork tied round their waists and then, when they have gained
more experience, begin to swim with no such supports. Plautus2 in the
Aulularia: 'As boys learning to swim have a raft of reeds to halve their
trouble; they can swim more easily and use their arms/ The Greek3 phellon or
phellos (the spelling varies), the Latin suber (so Theodorus4 renders it), is the
bark of a tree which always floats, and is therefore useful especially for ships
at anchor, for it marks the position of the anchor so that sailors can avoid it;
also for fishermen's dragnets, for it supports the cords at the edge of the net.
It is used also for the bungs of casks, and for the shoes women wear in the
winter, which are therefore traditionally given the humorous name of
tree-bark in Greek; nowadays men are not ashamed to wear similar footgear
in summer. This is mentioned in Pliny,5 book 16 chapter 8. Lucian6 in his
Verae historiae tells of a people called Corkfeet, and hence the word
phelleuein,7 to float like a cork, and phelleis are regions where a thin layer of
soil overlies the rock.

43 Ut possumus, quando ut volumus non licet

As best we can, since as we would we may not

We live not as we would but

as we can. An iambic line in use as a proverb, which reminds us that we are
the slaves of time and necessity. Mysis in Terence's1 Andria, when asked
what sort of life they were living in Athens, modestly confessed to the old
man that she was making her living as a street-walker in the words: 'As best
we can, since as we would we may not.' Caecilius2 in the Plocium, quoted by
Donatus: 'You can't live as you would; live as best you can/ Plato3 too in the
Hippias major: 'Our way of life, my dear Hippias, is, as people always say,
quoting the proverb, not as we would but as we can/ He alludes to it in the
Cratylus too: 'Saying first, As best we can'; for so people often start by saying
when they begin on something, in order not to sound presumptuous. Here
too belong those proverbial sayings4 in Greek 'We all would fain be wealthy,
if we could' and 'We all wish to live well, but cannot so/ No one is happy5
 i viii 43 / LB ii 3i4A 147

with his lot; he has his eye on something else, yet I doubt if anyone ever
achieves it. This we can use when we wish to indicate that we are not
satisfied with what we have, and that it is opportunity and not ambition that
is lacking: fortune is not as kind as we could wish, or life is not really
honourable, or the letter we have written not really stylish.

44 Atheniensium inconsulta temeritas

Thoughtless and headstrong like Athenians

Thoughtless and headstrong like Athenians,

is suitable for those whose designs are not well thought out, but turn out
well. It used to be commonly said of Athenians that they took no trouble
when making plans and used little foresight, but that Minerva the city's
patron goddess usually gave their ill-advised policies a happy outcome. It
resembles a phrase1 which is still in popular use, 'He does it more by good
luck than good management,' when a man enjoys success not through his
own hard work but by the favour of fortune. Eupolis,2 quoted by Suidas and
by Athenaeus book 10, speaking of the Athenian character:

Those whom of old no man would have elected

Wine-tasters at a party, now we see
Chosen as generals. O city, city!
How fortunate you are, rather than wise!

The fecklessness of the Athenians is also blamed by Aristophanes3 in this

line in the Clouds: 'For unwisdom, so they say, ever waits upon this city/ On
which passage the scholiast contributes the following story. When Nep-
tune, having been defeated by Minerva, could not possess himself of Attica,
in his resentment he sent upon them the curse of dysboulia, folly and
unwisdom, and thereafter this defect was endemic in the Athenians, nor did
Minerva alter this; instead, she saw to it that whenever they made a wrong
decision, it turned out all right. Aristophanes4 alluded to this again in the
Wasps: 'Before the fray was seen an owl that flew between our ranks.' And I
think I see a passing allusion to the same thing in Demosthenes,5 when he
says in his first Olynthiac, at the very beginning: 'But I suppose it to be part of
your good fortune that some people take it into their heads on the spur of the
moment to say many of the things that need saying.' But he criticizes them for
this fault more directly in another speech, when he says that other men
normally consider before they act, but the Athenians, reversing this, act first
and consider afterwards. Theognis:6 'And many fools find fortune is their
friend, / When bad decisions come to a good end.' Aristophanes7 in the
Ecdesiazusae:
 i viii 44 / LB ii 314E-315A 148

There is a story that old people tell:

Fatuous and foolish as our plans may be,
All turn to our advantage in the end.

The middle line in the Greek will run correctly if we remove the conjunction
kai, though it was in the Aldine text. And Livy8 from time to time speaks of
'the fortune of Rome.' This does not differ greatly from one I have recorded
elsewhere:9 The sleeper's net makes a catch.

45 Ubi non sis qui fueris, non est cur veils vivere
When you are not the man you were, why wish to go on living?

Cicero in one of his letters, in book 7 of his Letters to Friends, cites the advice
of an old proverb which runs like this: There is an old saying, When you are
not the man you were, why wish to go on living?' It is drawn from a common
experience in the life of men; they think nothing is harder to bear than to live
neglected or even discredited in a society in which they were once
distinguished and influential, so much so that they would choose any form
of exile or even extinction, rather than support the disgrace of a change of
status. This is remarked by Euripides1 in the Hecuba, when he puts words
into her mouth to the effect that shame is the reason why she does not look
Polymnestor in the face; for she is ashamed to be seen in her present
distressful state by the man who once knew her in prosperity. Again in the
Alcestis: 'What profits it me then, my friends, / To live alike dishonoured and
distressed?' The same sentiment is expressed in Sophocles2 by Ajax' words:
'Base is the man who would prolong his life, / When there's no respite in his
misery.' And a little further on in the same play: 'But it befits the
noble-minded man / To live with honour or with honour die.' Then there is a
proverbial line:3 'When fortune grudges life, 'tis base to live.' But Cicero's
feelings are more closely approached by that passage in Euripides4 in the
Hecuba where Polyxena argues that she had no reason to wish to go on living
when she had already been deprived of all the privileges of her original
station in life:

Why must I live? My father once was king

Of all the Phrygians: thus my life began.
By what fair prospects was I nurtured then,
Bride of a royal house.

and what follows; for it is too long, I think, to be set out here.
 I viii 46 / LB ii 3151 149

46 Premere pollicem. Convertere pollicem

Thumbs down. Thumbs up

In ancient times the thumb was used as an indicator of interest and support.
The supporter used to turn his thumb down; the man who did not support
turned his thumb up. These gestures passed into a proverb, so that now to
turn the thumb down is used of support in any context, and to turn it up of
hostility. Pliny,1 book 27 chapter 2: 'Our thumbs should be turned down
when we support someone, and there is actually a proverb which prescribes
this/ Juvenal:2 'And if the mob have given their Thumbs up, / They kill
whome'er they like to please the crowd.' Horace3 uses 'both thumbs' to
express whole-hearted support: 'And if he thinks that you his taste approve,
/ With both his thumbs he'll sponsor what you love.' Porphyrion expounds
as follows: 'With both his thumbs means With both hands, the part being put
for the whole by the figure of speech called synecdoche. Perhaps because a
speaker who delivers an encomium closes his hands, joining the thumb to its
next neighbour/ Acron in this fashion: 'With both his thumbs means by the
figure of speech synecdoche With both hands, raised equally and moved to
and fro; for this is the gesture of those who deliver a panegyric/ It is pretty
clear, as we can infer from their words, that both of them have missed the
origin of the proverb.

47 Faciem perfricare. Frontis perfrictae

To wipe off your blushes. To put a bold front on it

The forehead or front was in old days held to be the seat of modesty, and so
was the face, as is shown by the proverbial saying1 that modesty sits in the
eyes. Hence those people are proverbially said to have wiped off the blushes
from forehead or face, who have abandoned all modesty, as though they had
passed a hand over their faces and removed all sense of shame. The origin
clearly is a gesture used by some men who, when they have to say or do
something in front of people they do not know, pass a hand over the face,
which is a sign of some sort of countrified shyness which you are trying to
overcome. Quintilian2 criticizes this gesture among faults of delivery in book
11: 'Among other tricks to be avoided,' he says, 'are gazing at the ceiling and
rubbing your face as though to wipe away your blushes and leave it brazen/
Plutarch3 writes that it was a gesture characteristic of Cicero to pass his left
hand over his face as he began; and in any case Cicero himself does not deny
that he was somewhat nervous when beginning to speak. Quintilian4 in his
ninth book cites from Calvus the words 'Wipe off your blushes and confess
 i viii 47 / LB ii 3168 150

that you are more worthy than Cato to be elected praetor/ his point being
that to say such a thing would be highly arrogant. Pliny5 in the preface to his
Natural History: 'I put a bold face on it, but I made no progress, for I am
brought up face to face with your greatness in another way/ Cicero6 in book
three of his Tusculan Questions used the words perfricare os, to put a bold face
on something: 'Why do we beat about the bush, Epicurus? Why not admit
that we use the word pleasure in the same way as you habitually do when
you put a bold face on it?' Seneca7 in his Letters, number 40: 'You must wipe
off your blushes, and pay no attention to your own words/ Here too belongs
that use of 'effrontery/ having as it were no forehead, which we apply to
shameless people, and expressions like 'How will you have the face to do
this?' When Horace8 writes The fathers almost to a man would cry, / How
have we lost all sense of decency!' the echo in Persius9 takes the form
'Melicertes would exclaim / "No forehead's left in things!"' Also such
phrases as 'How will you have the face to rebuke your son?' 'a bold
countenance/ 'a harsh face/ 'a countenance of iron/ to suggest lack of a
sense of decency. Ovid:10 "Tis not more heart you have; you have less face/
meaning, you have not more courage or intelligence than other men, but less
modesty. Cicero11 in the Verrines: 'Just see what a cheek the man has, what
astonishing impudence!' Again in the fifth Philippic: 'But that cheek, that
indecency!' Again in the Pro C. Rabirio Postumo: 'What a brazen face they
have, what effrontery!' Again in the De oratore: 'What a face the advocate
must have who dares to undertake these cases without any knowledge of
jurisprudence!' In the eleventh Philippic: 'He would have heard how
Dolabella entered in a rage, his disgusting voice and foul shameless face.'
Martial12 in book 9: 'My doctor gave me drink with wormwood spiced, / And
asked (confound his cheek!) sweet wine instead.' In Homer,13 Achilles calls
Agamemnon 'dog-eyed/ meaning shameless as a bitch; and elsewhere he
has 'with the eyes of a bitch and the heart of a hind/ to convey a combination
of the shameless and the fearful. Lastly, I think perhaps that line belongs
here that is quoted by Athenaeus14 in the Doctors at Dinner from 'the poet of
Cyrene': 'To men with face thrice washed god gives good luck.' His
suggestion, if I am not mistaken, is that it shows a certain lack of modesty to
ask a man to repeat what passed at a wine-party.

48 Frontem exporrigere. Frontem contrahere

To smooth the forehead. To wrinkle the forehead

We are said to smooth the forehead when we are cheerful and wrinkle it
when we are vexed, which means that something has annoyed us. Pliny1 in
book 11: 'Other creatures have a forehead, but man alone uses it as an
 i viii 48 / LB ii 3i6F 151

indicator of sadness and cheerfulness, of mercy and severity.' Terence:2

Take those wrinkles from your forehead/ Horace3 in the Odes: 'Have
smoothed care's furrowed forehead/ and in another passage: 'Take that
stormcloud from your brow/ 'With unwrinkled brow/ cheerfully. 'With
brow unfurrowed you should speak with me' in Plautus.4 With brow
overcast, furrowed, close-drawn, wrinkled. Plautus: 'He wrinkles his brow
with severity/ The image is supposed to be that of a he-goat lowering its
horns. Also: With cloudy forehead, clear forehead, open forehead.

49 Attollere supercilium, ponere supercilium

To raise the brows, to relax the brows

The eyebrows in man' say Pliny 'are movable, both together and separately,
and in them is some share of the mind: with them we signify No and Yes. The
brows are the chief gauge of disdain. Pride has its place of origin elsewhere,
but in the eyebrow it is at home; born in the heart, it moves upwards and
haunts the brows. It has found no part of the body at once so lofty and so
steep in which to live its lonely life/ So Pliny. Hence we speak proverbially
of raising the brows, when we wish to convey arrogance; of knitting the
brows when we wish to indicate contempt. Suidas1 too cites a phrase
'knitting the brows and inflating the cheeks/ Greek2 has a single word for it,
katophruasthai, which Lucian transferred from the person to the thing when
he called arrogant and supercilious language 'brow-knit words/ To relax
the brow' is used when a man abandons his disdain. And we call disdainful
people 'supercilious/ In fact, Latin uses supercilium, the word for 'eyebrow,'
by itself for disdain and arrogance. 'Who can tolerate supercilium' they say 'in
philosophers?' As for Pliny's saying that we use our brows to say yes and no,
he is following Homer,3 in whom we find several times the line 'So spake the
son of Cronos and nodded in assent with his deep dark brows/ Which
Virgil4 imitated in 'He spake, / And all Olympus trembled at his nod/

50 Connivere
To wink

To wink at something is a metaphor which has become proverbial, used of

those who knowingly conceal a person's guilt, which they clearly appreciate
but through prejudice or partisanship pretend it does not exist, and who, as
the phrase goes, seem not to see what they do see. Parents, for example,
wink at some of the faults of adolescence, and husbands ought to wink at
some of the errors of their wives, and corrupt judges wink in the hearing of a
case. Hallucination comes on one unawares, blindness strikes an unwilling
 i viii 50 / LB ii 3170 152

victim, one winks deliberately. There are examples in plenty in Cicero's

speeches. To wink is to close the eyes intermittently, as people do who have
weak sight and cannot stand direct sunlight; and they are easily deceived.
On the other hand, those who gaze fixedly at an object do not miss anything.
What we call winking is in Greek sometimes sometimes
whence Aristophanes' phrase in the Knights 'Look at me
without winking.' Hallucination is blind-
ness All of these, if transferred to the things of the mind, will
fall to be treated as proverbs.

51 Bibe elleborum
Drink hellebore

Aristophanes in the Wasps: Drink hellebore; by which

remark he indicates that someone is mad. He uses pithe and not pine because,
as the scholiast tells us, the latter form of the imperative is referred by
scholars to ordinary drinking, and the former to the drinking of medicine. He
also shows that two verbs,1 elleborian and elleborizein, were formed from this,
indicating insanity, and those who are nearly out of their minds are said to
'need hellebore.' In Latin authors too such people are proverbially told to eat
hellebore and to purge themselves with hellebore, because of the free use
made of this herb in Antiquity for treatment of disorders of the mind and
head. Pliny2 in his Natural History, book 25 chapter 5, makes out that there
are two kinds of hellebore, as Dioscorides3 does in his fourth book; white,
which in Italy is called white veratrum, and black, called by others entomon,
though Dioscorides' name for it is atomon. Others call it polyrrhizon, but most
authors melampodion, from its discoverer the seer Melampus, or from a
shepherd of the same name, who had observed that she-goats ate it to purge
themselves, and had then cured Proetus' daughters of their insanity by
making them drink the milk of these goats. But Aulus Gellius,4 following
Pliny, says that the difference of colour appears 'not in the seed or in the
stems, but in the root.' White hellebore provokes vomiting, and thereby
purges the stomach and upper intestine; the black form relaxes the lower
digestive tract. Both are taken with some risk; but doses of the white, being
more powerful, are also more dangerous. Yet this very fact has come to be so
familiar that many people for the benefit of their intellectual work have taken
fairly frequent doses to clear their ideas. In particular, 'Carneades the
Academic philosopher, when preparing to write an attack on the work of
Zeno the Stoic,' is said to have had the habit of 'taking white hellebore to
purge the upper parts of the body, for fear that some overflow from the
corrupt humours in the stomach into the seat of the mind might sap his
 I viii 51 / LB ii 3188 153

originality and mental force/ Pliny records that black hellebore was also
used in ritual, for they fumigated and purified their homes with it, sprinkling
both themselves and their livestock. It was also gathered with solemn
prayers and superstitious rites, as we learn from Theophrastus5 too. First a
line was drawn round it with a sword, and then the man who was to cut it
faced the sunrise, and prayed that the gods might give him leave to perform
the operation. He also watched for the flight of an eagle; for if this should
have flown too near him, it was a sign that he who had cut the plant should
die within the year. We can therefore infer from Pliny that both kinds, the
white and the black, had strong remedial properties against many troubles
but especially against the melancholy.
Hence too came the proverb, though there are various forms of this.
Plautus6 in the Menaechmi: Three acres of hellebore would not settle this.'
Demosthenes7 tells Aeschines in a speech to purge with hellebore. Lucian8 in
a dialogue between Menippus and Tantalus: Tantalus, you're mad; you
need a drink all right, but my goodness, it ought to be neat hellebore.'
Elsewhere, in the second book of his Verae historiae, Rhadamanthus passes
judgment that Ajax must drink hellebore administered by Hippocrates
before he is allowed to join the company of heroes, alluding to his having
gone mad. In the same passage we read that Chrysippus was not allowed as
an immigrant into the Island of the Blest until he had finished his fourth
course of hellebore. The allusion of course is to the tradition that he had
taken it three times while still alive, which is also confirmed by Petronius9 in
verse. Horace:10 'Drove off his bile with unmixed hellebore.' Ovid11 in book
four of the Epistulae ex Ponto: Try a good purging dose, I would have said, /
Anticyra's whole crop, to clear your head.' Persius:12 'When neat Anticyras
should be your tipple/ meaning the man is mad. Ausonius13 in his epistle to
Theon: 'And drink the hellebore that made / The Samian sage's wits so
sharp/

52 Naviget Anticyras
Let him take ship for the Anticyras

Take ship for the Anticyras. Horace gave the adage

an elegant face-lift, so to say, when he wrote in the Satires 'Let him take ship
for the Anticyras/ using these words to indicate that a Stoic was mad, being
mentally deranged and unworthy to be called a wise man, because no one
can be wise who is not sane. The expression has the same shape as the Greek
You should take ship for Marseilles. Strabo1 in
the ninth book of his Geography shows that there are two places called
Anticyra, in one of which, beyond the town of Crissa, hellebore is found,
 i viii 52 / LB ii 3i8r 154

while in the other, which has the same name and lies on the Malian gulf near
Mount Oeta, it is very well prepared, and people go there from many parts of
the world to recover their health. Pausanias2 in his last book writes that
above Anticyra there are very rocky mountains in which hellebore grows in
great quantities; the black sort, he says, purges the intestines, the white
provokes vomiting and purges the upper parts of the body. Stephanus3 adds
that it was a native of Anticyra who released Hercules from his madness with
a dose of hellebore. Horace:4 'Who's ne'er asked barber Licinus to crop / A
head past cure by three Anticyras.' He has put 'three Anticyras' for 'all the
hellebore in the world/ indicating hopelessly incurable insanity.
Using5 a similar metaphor, people still say, when they wish to indicate
that someone is not right in the head, that he should be removed to Chela.
Under the same formula fall phrases like 'He needs the barber' and 'He needs
a trustee.' Horace:6 'Needs, as you think, no barber, no trustee'; guardians
were provided for infants and trustees for the mentally deficient. So too
Columella,7 book i chapter 3, tells us a saying of Cato's that a man who
farmed land with an unhealthy climate and low fertility should be reported
to his kith and kin as being of unsound mind. Varro8 Agriculture, book i
chapter 2: 'He who pays no heed to a healthy climate has something wrong
with his head, and should be referred to his kith and kin.' Cicero9 in book 2
of the De inventione: 'If he prove insane, his kith and kin shall have rights
over him and his estate.' For the Twelve Tables10 deprive the insane of the
right to manage their own affairs and transfer this to their kith and kin, as we
read in the first book of the Institutes,11 title De curatoribus, and the
twenty-seventh of the Pandects, title De curatorefuriosi, and again in book i of
the same work, title 18 De officio praesidis. Also in Cicero12 in book 3 of the
Tusculan Questions: 'A man so affected is prohibited by the Twelve Tables
from being master of his own possessions.' The wording of the Twelve
Tables13 runs thus: The spendthrift and the lunatic shall be debarred from
disposing of his own estate, and it shall be administered by his kinsmen.'

53 Strychnum bibit
He has drunk strychnum

He has drunk strychnum. Also applicable to the insane,

from the properties of the plant strychnon, which if it is so much as tasted
causes insanity immediately. Dioscorides1 in book 4 makes out four kinds of
strychnon, of which he calls the last manic, as producing insanity. Pliny,2
book 21 chapter 31, after showing that two kinds of strychnon are medicinal,
continues: 'The third kind has leaves like basil, and need not be described in
detail here, for my subject is remedies and not poisons, and this plant causes
 i viii 53 / LB ii 3190 155

insanity even with a small quantity of its juice. Though Greek authors have
found a humorous side to it; for they have reported that one drachm by
weight has comic effects on a man's modesty, and he is haunted by
hallucinations of different kinds and vivid images. Double this quantity,
they say, causes insanity in the full sense, and any addition to that weight
means immediate death. This is the poison which authorities in all innocence
have called simply dorycnium, from the fact that it was used in battle for
poisoning the points of spears; and it grows everywhere/ Dioscorides
writes that the root of strychnon, drunk in wine to the amount of one drachm,
produces visions of a sort, and comic effects which are not unpleasant; but
doubling the dose induces coma of three days' duration, and to quadruple it
causes death. The antidote, he says, is to drink a large quantity freely and
vomit it up. This makes me3 think it a better fit for the self-satisfied and those
who are pleased with themselves and, as Horace4 puts it, 'see a fine fellow in
the looking-glass.' For Theophrastus5 records that those who have eaten
strychnon are much taken with their own appearance; and we see plenty of
that sort, whose admiration of themselves is unfailing, just as if strychnon
were their staple diet. The opposite form of insanity also exists, the victims of
which are continually dissatisfied; but this is the commoner kind and the
more incurable. I would not in fact have listed this in my work (for I would
not like anyone to accuse me of inventing adages rather than collecting
them), except that Pliny, by saying that the Greeks thought there was a
humorous side to it, showed clearly enough that the properties of this plant
had passed into a proverb.

54 Ede nasturtium
Why can't you eat cress?

Why can't you eat cress? This was said in old days to a
spiritless, lazy, and stupid man, because cress is supposed to contain a
principle opposite to that in the plant called rocket. It is thought to excite the
powers and activity of the mind and inhibit sexual desire, while rocket is an
aphrodisiac and retards the power of thought, whence supposedly its name
in Greek, kardamon,1 the equivalent of cor domans, that which tames the heart
or intelligence. Pliny,2 book 19 chapter 8, says: 'Cress gets its name
nasturtium from nostril-torture; and hence to express the idea of energy we
have come to use it proverbially, as the name of something that arouses the
slothful.' In Greek3 it gets its name from the word for heart. Dioscorides4
relates that nasturtium has powers like those of rocket and mustard, so far as
concerns the burning sensation that concentrates in the nose. In saying
however that cress is a sexual stimulant, he differs from Pliny. Aristophanes5
 i viii 54 / LB ii 32OA 156

in the Thesmophoriazusae: 'I ate cress yesterday; why ply me with cress?' And
again in the Wasps: 'Men high-spirited and just men, with the clear
cress-eater's eye/

55 Porcum immola
Sacrifice a pig

Nor should I fail to mention that Plautus in the Menaechmi tells a character
whom he represents as mentally defective to offer a sound pig suitable for
sacrifice:

Young man, what is the price of porkers here,

Sound porkers suitable for sacrifice?
A silver coin? Then let me give you this:
Get yourself exorcized at my expense,
For that you're raving mad I have no doubt.

I take it that in the practice of the Ancients a man pursued by the assaults of
an angry deity used to purge himself with a pig as a sort of sin-offering.
Again, a little further on in the same play:

Menaechmus, now it's you are clearly mad,

Cursing yourself like that. If you've any sense,
Send for that porker and offer it yourself.

Horace1 in the Satires: 'He owes the kindly Lares a pig for that/ The man he
speaks of seems to have recovered from a fit of madness.

56 Multa Syrorum olera

Syria is not short of herbs

Syria is not short of tierbs, can be applied to those

skilled in magic arts who use baleful herbs in the practice of them, or to
people well-supplied with things of little value. Perhaps too it will be right to
apply it to those who spend too much effort on things of small practical use,
busying themselves, for instance, not in agriculture but in gardening which
brings in more pleasure than profit. The proverb is recorded by Pliny, book
20 chapter 5, where after registering various remedies derived from a plant
called staphylinus, also known as wandering parsnip, he goes on: 'In Syria
they take great trouble with their gardens, whence the Greek proverb Syria
is not short of herbs. They sow there a vegetable very like staphylinus,
 i viii 56 / LB ii 3200 157

which some call gigidion/ So Pliny. I am induced to think that the proverbial
phrase may be suitable to magicians by observing that shortly before he had
cited Orpheus as the authority for the presence of a love-philtre in
staphylinus. That the character of the Syrians was not without blemish
appears, if nowhere else, from the adage Syrians
against Phoenicians. On the subject of this proverb Caelius Rhodiginus2 is
1

so good as to sympathize with me for the exceptional difficulties I have had,

without himself providing any assistance whatever.

57 Melle litus gladius

A sword smeared with honey

A sword smeared with honey is applied to flattery that can do real harm. St
Jerome, writing to Augustine: 'Several men who are my friends and vessels
of Christ, of whom there is a large number in Jerusalem and the holy places,
made the suggestion that you had a double motive in all this, and were
seeking credit for yourself and some sort of reputation and popular acclaim,
in the hope of growing greater at my expense. They thought you wanted it to
be generally recognized that when you issued a challenge I was too
frightened to reply; that you wrote as a scholar and I kept silence as an
ignoramus; and that you had at last found someone to put a stop to my
endless chatter. For my part, to speak frankly, I was at first unwilling to
answer your reverence, because I did not think you were clearly responsible
for the letter, this sword smeared with honey as the current proverb goes/ If
this passage is free from errors, Jerome calls Augustine's letter a sword
smeared with honey, because it contained at the same time a rebuke - a
sword with which to cut his throat - and civil words intended to overlay the
rough edge of the rebuke. Augustine too in his reply makes the sense of the
proverb clear when he rejects with disgust civilities that conceal an attack.
Pliny1 in book 21 records that at Heraclea in Pontus the same bees
sometimes make honey that contains a most dangerous poison; those who
eat it throw themselves on the ground in search of something cool, for sweat
pours from them. This is caused by what they have been eating - a white
plant which is called aegolethron. There is also2 a reference to the barbaric
practice of dipping weapons in poison to make the wound incurable, the
most effective of these evil substances being an incendiary oil applied to a
missile which, once the weapon had sunk into a man's body, burned
inextinguishably; water only made the fire worse, and nothing could put it
out except to cover the place with earth. The authority is Marcellinus, book
23-
 I viii 58 / LB ii 32iA 158

58 Letale mulsum
A deadly honey-brew

A deadly honey-brew, conveys the same sense as

the preceding. Diogenes used to call a handsome whore a deadly honey-
brew, though nothing will prevent us from applying the phrase to flattery or
dishonourable enjoyments of any kind or in a word to anything which
pleases but cannot fail to harm at the same time. We read of 'poisoned honey'
in Pliny;1 and Diogenes2 of whom we have just spoken used to call language
designed to give pleasure and tickle the listener's ear 'like being choked with
honey/ because it would delight with its flattery and suffocate with its
falsehood anyone willing to listen to it. This of course is very close to the
phrase from Jerome3 we have been considering; and I have a suspicion that
something may be wrong with the text, and we ought to read laqueus instead
of gladius, not a sword smeared with honey but a noose. For whose practice4
is it to smear a sword with honey? To the same species belongs a phrase used
by Irenaeus,5 book 3 chapter 19, 'to make a dangerous mixture of gypsum
and milk/ for gypsum is a dangerous poison, and when added to milk it is
very difficult to detect.

59 Linum lino nectis

You join thread with thread

You join thread with thread. I find this adage used in

the Greek commentators in a double sense. One is: You attach one weak
thing to another, join together things which are alike worthless. The other is:
You do or say the same things, but not in the same way. Ctesippus in Plato's1
Euthydemus: 'You are perhaps not joining thread with thread, as the saying
goes, if your father is everybody's father.' There is irony in this, directed
against the sophist, who thought his foolish hair-splitting had led him to this
as a logical conclusion. Aristotle2 in the third book of the Physics, in a
discussion of the infinite, where he prefers Parmenides' opinion to that of
Melissus (for Melissus had held that the universe as a whole was infinite,
while Parmenides said it was finite, equidistant from the centre), says 'For it
is impossible that the infinite should be connected with the universe as a
whole, just as thread is with thread.' I will add the philosopher's actual
words, in case anyone would like them: 'And so we must suppose that
Parmenides spoke better sense than Melissus. For one said that the universe
is infinite, and the other that the whole sum of things is finite and balanced
about the centre; for it is not joining thread with thread to link the sum of
things with the infinite.' Suidas3 quotes this adage from the Republic of
 i viii 59 / LB ii 3210 159

Strattis. Proculus4 in discussing the questions raised by statements in Plato,

uses it in one passage in a way that makes it seem applicable to a man who
couples together incompatible things; showing how Plato quotes opposite
and incompatible things from Homer, he says 'It is not joining thread with
thread to couple such things together.' Related to this is a quotation in
Athenaeus,5 book 6, from some Theban poet, Pindar if I am not mistaken:
'Like one gluing wood to wood'; for the previous speaker had spoken of
parasites, and the man who says this gives a discourse on flatterers which
agrees with what has already been said.

60 Senesco semper multa addiscens

Age comes upon me learning all the time

Age comes upon me learning all the

time. This pentameter line from Solon's elegies passed into a proverb. Its
point is that experience of life and long familiarity with affairs are the way to
get wisdom. It agrees with the maxim cited by Gellius:1 'Experience sired me,
memory was my mother.' Plato2 quotes it in book seven of the Republic, and
again in a dialogue on philosophy, where one of the characters who wants to
know whether philosophy is the same as wide knowledge says 'Can
philosophy be anything else than what Solon described in the words "Age
comes upon me learning all the time"? I think myself that constant learning is
essential to anyone who wants to end up as a philosopher, whether he be
old or young, so that in the course of his life he may acquire as much
knowledge as possible.' He quotes it also in the Laches. Seneca3 in one of his
letters to Lucilius: 'One must go on learning as long as there is anything one
does not know and, if we are to believe the proverb, as long as one lives.' It is
quoted more than once by Cicero4 in the Cato major. Demea in Terence5
moreover was thinking of Solon's maxim when he said:

No man so balanced his account with life

That facts and years and practice taught him nothing;
Thus warned, you know not what you think you know,
Reject in act what you thought mattered most.

There is an allusion to this in that well-known line, skilful and neatly

turned whoever may be the author, which is popularly ascribed to Seneca.61
think myself it may be one of the moral maxims of Publius; this is an
inference, but I follow it, because I find several lines in the list which are
recorded expressly under Publius' name by Aulus Gellius. The line of which
I speak is 'Tomorrow learns its lesson from today.'
 i viii 61 / LB ii 322A 160

61 Vita doliaris
Life in a tub

Life in a tub, is a proverbial expression for a frugal and

abstemious life, far from all noise and competition - in a word, the sort of life
that was led, we are told, in Athens by Diogenes, the famous Cynic
philosopher, sufficiently provided with one cloak, a stick to drive away the
dogs, cheerfully using a tub fixed to a stake as a place to live in, raw
vegetables and plain water as his diet, accustomed to a piece of bread
hollowed out for a platter and the hollow of his hand for a cup; and he used
to say1 he had learnt to do this from a child whom he had seen taking up
water in his hand to drink. He said moreover that the idea of living in a tub
had come to him from watching snails, when he had decided that no other
form of dwelling could be so convenient to creep out of into the sun and to
take refuge in from the wind or the heat of summer. It can also be diverted for
use against those in whose style of living there is too much meanness, too
much hardship, too much dirt. Such people are described by Eubulus2 the
comic poet, as cited by Athenaeus in his second book, in the words 'with
unwashed feet, sleeping on earth and dwelling in the air/ Again, in book 4,
speaking of the Pythagoreans he cites from Antiphanes:3

Then for a short time one must learn to face

Hunger and dirt and cold, silence and gloom,
Therewith a strict economy of baths.

It will be possible to divert to the same effect the name of the Hamaxobii,4 the
'Caravan-dwellers/ who are a tribe in Sarmatia, and call Caravanners those
whose way of life is harsh and mean. The tribe have earned this name,
because they use wagons or caravans in place of houses.

62 In diem vivere. Ex tempore vivere

To live from one day to the next. To live for the moment

To live from one day to the next is to be content with your present lot and live
on what you have at hand, without thought for the future. Such a life is
called in Greek1 and those who live like that are
Theocritus2 in Idyll 13: 'We who are only mortal, and do not
look to the morrow/ Aristophanes3 in the Knights: 'I'll keep you in barley,
feed you day by day/ Homer4 in Odyssey 21: 'Fools, bumpkins, thinking only
of to-day/ Persius:5 'And live but for the moment,' that is, with no thought
for the future. Whence also 'to speak extempore, on the spur of the moment,'
 I Vlii 62 / LB II 322E 161

meaning with no thought beforehand. Cicero6 in his fifth Philippic uses a

similar formula, to live from hour to hour: 'What Hannibal never did, who
kept much back for future use, these men have done. Living as they do from
hour to hour, they have not spared a thought for the fortunes and property
of their fellow-citizens, and not even for their own advantage/ Horace's7
phrase in the Art of Poetry does not differ much from this: 'And changes hour
by hour/ meaning from time to time. Such a way of life was approved as the
best of all by Christ, for He both followed it Himself and prescribed it for His
Apostles. It is quite remarkable8 how little it commends itself nowadays,
even to those who expect to be thought better Christians than the rest of us.

63 Vita macerata
Living softly

A soft or tender way of life, used of those who live in

comfort and have all they want within their reach. It is recorded by
Diogenianus, Zenodotus, and Suidas. The metaphor comes, I think, from
vegetables or salt meat which have been softened by boiling and are now
easier to eat, or from grain1 which has been milled, pounded, and worked
into dough. The opposite of this is Living on a bed of
thorns.

64 Ipsa dies quandoque parens, quandoque noverca

One day's a stepmother and one's a mother

There is a line of Hesiod in his work on the importance of observing days of

good and evil omen, which later passed into a proverb and 'won the
approval of many generations of men/ as the philosopher Favorinus puts it
in Gellius. It runs as follows: 'One day's a stepmother and one's a mother/
and the meaning is that 'it is impossible for things to go well every day; one
day they go well, and another day badly.' Drawn from the fact that mothers
are well disposed towards their children, and stepmothers hate their
stepchildren. Pliny in the same way says he is not sure whether nature
shows herself more often as a stepmother or as a mother, considering the
way she produces so many poisons and at the same time so many remedies.

65 Nunc pluit et claro mine Jupiter aethere fidget

So Jove now rains, now shines in cloudless sky

Theocritus in his Battus uses a different metaphor to make the same point: 'So
Jove now rains, now shines in cloudless sky.' Sometimes, that is, all goes
 i viii 65 / LB n 3238 162

badly and sometimes well, just as the sky is clear and calm at one time, dark
and stormy at another. There is an image close to this in Pindar,1 in the
Pythian Odes, to the effect that the winds are not fixed, but sometimes one
blows, sometimes another: The winds that wing their way on high do
change their course, now here, now there/ Pindar again in his fourth
Isthmian Ode: 'Now from this quarter, now from that sweeps the gale that
drives all men before it.'

66 Plus aloes quam mellis habet

More aloes than honey in it

A metaphor which has become proverbial, conveying the same sense as

'more trouble than pleasure.' For the aloe is a shrub with an unpleasant smell
and a very bitter taste, which comes in Dioscorides,1 book 3. Plautus2 in the
Amphitryo:

For such is each man's lot

In human life, so have the gods decreed:
That pleasure must go hand in hand with pain,
And if some good befall, your share of evil
And of misfortune must go up to match.

In Plautus too it says somewhere that man's life has more aloes in it than
honey. And Juvenal3 of a wife: 'More aloes than honey in her/ Apuleius4
expresses this, without the metaphor, in his Florida: 'But it is indeed a true
saying that the gods never gave man anything on such favourable terms that
there was no trouble mixed in with it/ Homer5 in the last book of the Iliad
expressed this alternation in human affairs, this mixture of sorrow and joy in
man's lot brilliantly in the image of the two jars which stand, he says, on
Jove's threshold, one full of sad things and the other of gay ones. Out of
these he mixes the fortunes of mortal men, who 'now meet with evil fortune,
now with good/ as I have set forth above. But Homer's Jupiter is highly
ungenerous in his mixing, for he puts in far more bad than good; so that if
every individual were to cast up the account of what fortune has come his
way, he will find only a very small total for the things that have turned out as
we wished. This has been admirably expressed by Pindar6 in his Pythian
Odes: 'For every blessing, the immortals allot to mortal men a pair of woes/
Pliny7 in book 27 reverses the meaning when he says that there is nothing too
bad in nature to have no good attached to it somehow. For it is well known
that even aconite, the deadliest of poisons, contains a remedy valuable
especially for troubles in the eye. To the same effect Euripides,8 cited by
 i viii 66 / LB n 323F 16

Plutarch: 'Good things and bad cannot be separated; / But they are somehow
mixed/

67 Naves onustae conviciis

Shiploads of abuse

A similar image is used by Homer in Iliad 20, when he speaks of abuse which
would be a load too heavy for a ship of a hundred oars, in the same way that
Lucian put 'whole cartloads of abuse/ as I mentioned previously. Homer's
lines run as follows: 'We both have plenty of abuse to utter - / A hundred-oar
ship would not take the load/ It is related also to a phrase I shall speak of
elsewhere:1 'Which even a hundred Egyptians could not lift/ Hermippus,2
quoted by Athenaeus in his first book, describing the different things
imported from various countries, slips in by way of a jest the line 'Lies from
Perdicas, many and many a shipload/ reflecting I think on the standard of
behaviour in Lycia. For Perdicia3 is a district and harbour in Lycia. Virgil4 too
in the fourth Aeneid speaks of 'Lycian soothsaying' as something not to be
trusted.

68 Tollere cornua
To lift one's horns

'To lift one's horns' for 'to be exhilarated' is still a very common expression in
our own day. Horace,1 speaking of Bacchus: "Tis you lift up the poor man's
horn/ Ovid2 too, of indulgence in strong drink: 'Then laughter comes, / And
then the poor man lifts unwonted horns/ A metaphor from animals which
confront one another horns against horns. Horace3 in the Epodes: 'The
wicked feel my onslaught, as I raise my ready horns/

69 Tollere cristas
To raise one's crest

The metaphor is different, the sense the same. Juvenal: 'What could be more
bare-faced? and yet his crest / Began to rise,' he began to plume himself. The
metaphor comes from birds with a crest, which when it is erected is a sign of
eagerness and pugnacity; unless1 we prefer to see a reference to the crests
worn by military men, the most insolent and stupid sort there is. It is in this
sense that Aristophanes2 uses the phrase 'to take down crests' in the Peace:
'She has taken down our crests/ on the return of peace.
On the other side, men are said to 'lower their fasces' who give up their
legal position and of their own free will resign their official status and return
 I viii 69 / LB ii 3240 164

to the modest standing of a private person. Pliny,3 book 7 chapter 30:

'Gnaeus Pompeius at the end of the war against Mithridates, when
proposing to visit the house of Posidonius the eminent philosopher, told his
lictor not to knock on the door in the traditional way and laid down the
fasces in the doorway - he before whom East and West alike had laid down
their arms.' Cicero4 in the Brutus: 'After you had gained experience in cases
of great importance, and I at my age was already giving way to you and
lowering my fasces/ And in Livy5 in the second book of his Rome from the
Foundation, Publicola 'lowered his fasces and went up to speak/ The phrase
gains in point when used metaphorically: for instance, if one were to say
philosophy 'lowers its fasces' to theology.

70 Animus in pedes decidit

My heart is in my boots

When people are in a state of great fear and foreboding, we say their heart is
in their boots. Even today we hear the expression 'My whole heart was in my
knees,' in the sense 'I was thoroughly frightened/ Homer in Iliad 15: 'Fear
seized them all; their hearts were in their heels/

71 Vespa cicadae obstrepens

Wasp buzzing against cricket

I the shrill cricket, you the buzzing wasp.

From Theocritus' Wayfarers. In these words one shepherd expresses hi
contempt for another who challenges him to a contest. Suitable for someone
who takes on an opponent far superior to himself, or makes himself a
nuisance to his betters. Of the same kind is A puppy barking at a lion.

72 Pica cum luscinia certat, epopa cum cygnis

Jay strives with nightingale, hoopoe with swans

Of similar import are the following lines by the same poet and from the same
eclogue:
'Lacon, 'tis wrong for jays with nightingales, / Hoopoes with
tuneful swans in song to strive/

73 Pilos pro lana

Bristles for wool

Bristles instead of wool. There seems to be a proverbial

 i viii 73 / LB ii 3258 165

colouring in these lines too, which are found in the same poet's Wayfarers
and refer to an extremely unfair transaction or one which is patently absurd:
'Who bristles shears for wool? Who milks a bitch, / Having at hand a goat
with her first kid?' A she-goat has bristly hair rather than wool, a sheep has a
woolly fleece. The words are directed at a shepherd who wanted to put up a
kid as his stake in a singing-match against the other man's lamb.

74 Tibiam tubae comparas

You match flute against trumpet

You match flute against trumpet. Recorded by

Diogenianus. Appropriate to things which are more than usually unequal,
the pipe making a thin sound and the trumpet a very loud one.

75 Cicadae apem comparas

You match a cricket against a bee

You match a cricket against a bee. A cricket

is larger and also makes a considerable noise, while a bee not only has a small
body but is almost silent. Lucian in his Teacher of Public Speaking brings in
both proverbs in passing: 'You will find his voice as much louder than the
rest as a trumpet is louder than flutes and crickets than bees.'

76 Testudinem Pegaso comparas

You match a tortoise against Pegasus

You match a tortoise against Pegasus. Of

things that cannot be compared in any way. Pegasus, if we may credit the
myths, was a winged horse, and a tortoise is the slowest thing that moves.
Virgil in Tityrus has put together several ways of expressing unlikeness:

Litter like bitch and kid like dam I knew,

Comparing thus small things with great; but she
'Midst other cities holds her head as high
As cypresses o'er sprawling guelder-rose.

77 Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues

Dogs and hogs smell very different

In Plautus, in the Epidicus, we find an unattractive but most expressive

image: Dogs and hogs smell very different. The words signify that one man is
 i viii 77 / LB ii 325E 166

distinguished from another, not by his clothes but by some inborn quality,
special and peculiar to each individual, which shines out (to look no further)
in his face and the look in his eye and discriminates easily between free man
and slave, well-born man and peasant, good man and rascal. This is, as it
were, a kind of smell peculiar to the man, by which if you have a keen nose
you can tell what he is like. Martial is thinking of it in book six, when he says:

A thousand arts she did essay

And thought that she had saved the day:
But let her try what tricks she will,
Thais smells of Thais still.

Here belongs the remark of an advocate quoted by Quintilian: 'He does not
have even the face of a man of free birth.' The speaker was himself extremely
hideous, and counsel for the other party threw it back at him, saying he was
quite right; he who did not have a free man's face could not be free-born.

78 Ut sementem feceris, ita et metes

As you have sown, so also shall you reap

Cicero used a most elegant metaphor, As you have sown, so also shall you
reap, in the sense that you will receive the reward appropriate to what you
have done. Plautus1 in the Epidicus: 'A bitter pill indeed, for work well done /
To reap a harvest of calamity,' meaning ill-treatment in return for kindness.
And in Plato:2 'What harvest will this man reap? A wretched one, I am sure.'
The image is shared with Scripture3 too: They that sow in tears shall reap in
joy,' and St Paul: 'He that soweth to his flesh shall of his flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life
everlasting/ and Tf we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great
thing if we shall reap your carnal things?' Euripides4 has it in mind in that
line in the Hecuba: 'And you may reap what your designs deserve.' In fact,
there is almost a regular phrase in Greek poetry of the form 'bad things
badly.' Aristophanes5 in the Knights: 'No culture have I but to read and write
/ A few poor rudiments and very poorly/ And one often finds the threat to
bring an evil man to an evil end. The scholiast points out that this is a
proverbial turn of speech, on which something has been said in the
introduction to this work.6 Euripides7 again in the Hecuba: 'Bad men to have
bad fortune, good men good/ and further on in the same play 'For since you
dared to do what is not right, / What is not welcome you shall suffer now/
Laertius8 tells an amusing anecdote about Diogenes. At dinner some of them
were throwing him bones as one would to a dog, because he was a Cynic.
 I viii 78 / LB ii 3260 167

His method of avenging this insult was to go up close to them, and as he

stood by them to lift a leg, treating them as a dog might in return. But even
nearer is a story he tells in his life of Zeno. Zeno one day was beating a slave
who had been caught thieving. The slave cried out all the time that it was his
fate to steal; to which Zeno replied: 'Yes; and your fate to be beaten.' The
slave had heard his master arguing for the inevitability of fate, and made this
his excuse for his offence; but the philosopher prettily reversed the
argument.

79 Carica musa
Carian music

Carian music; Dirges on a Carian flute.

Applied to mournful or countrified and crude or tiresome forms of music. It
will suit an unskilled poet or speaker. In ancient times it was used of sad
shrill unattractive music because, as Athenaeus1 tells us in the fourth book of
his Doctors at Dinner, the Carians, just like the Phoenicians, are accustomed
in times of mourning to employ a kind of flute or fife which is about a
palmsbreadth in size and makes a shrill funereal sound. These flutes, he tells
us, are called gringoi in Phoenician, as being habitually used in the mourning
for Adonis, and they call Adonis Cringes. Hence also2 their verb gingraino.
Julius Pollux3 has something very like this in his fourth book, except that
there I find the form gingra. Aristophanes4 also gives a bad mark to Carian
music in the Frogs: 'Drinking-catches by Meletus, dirges on the Carian flute/
This same Carian flute-music was called by the Ancients scolia, which means
crooked or slanting, either from the shape of the flute or from the order in
which they sang back and forth, aslant as it were, at drinking-parties, of
which I have said something under the proverb5 Ad myrtum cornere. Plato6 too
in his Laconians, quoted by Athenaeus: 'Some damsel with a flute strikes up a
Carian strain.' Plato7 the philosopher also speaks of Carian music in book
seven of the Laws, and explains it as what is played at funerals. Hesychius8
explains that it derives from the practice of hiring women from Caria to play
the part of mourners at funerals; and so an unskilful and unattractive speech
might well be called 'Carian music/ This fits in with Sopater's9 remark,
quoted by Athenaeus10 in his fourth book: The pektis glorying in its
barbarous notes/ the pektis being a kind of instrument with two strings.
Athenaeus also expresses doubts whether Caria and Phoenicia are two
names for the same thing, for the Phoenicians call recorders or pipes gingroi,
a word derived it seems from their shrill sound. This agrees with what Plato11
tells us in the Laws, in book 7 which I was quoting just now: 'And if the
citizens must form an audience for such lamentations, when days come
 i viii 79 / LB ii 327A 168

which are not clear days but unlucky ones, then it would be desirable to
secure some hired bands of singers from elsewhere, in the same way as those
who are customarily hired for funerals send the dead on their way with some
sort of Carian music' and so forth. The barbarous nature of the Carian
language is noted by Homer12 in the second book of the Iliad: 'Nastes led
Carians of barbarian tongue.' Hence in popular speech too those whose
native tongue is barbarian and boorish are said in Greek karbazein13 or
karbaizein or karbanizein. And Cicero,14 quoted by Quintilian in his chapter on
rhetorical delivery, speaks of 'the sing-song style of those orators from Lycia
and Caria in their perorations/ when what he dislikes is their delivery.
Strabo15 in book 14 of his Geography shows how Carians on occasion have
often been intermingled with Greeks, and yet have had a barbarous thick
way of speaking Greek, just as Greeks have when talking Latin and we
when talking English. This defect Strabo calls pachystomia, cacostomia and
barbarostomia. Cicero16 too speaks of the sing-song delivery of Carians and
Phrygians in the Brutus. There was also a riotous and warlike form of dance
in which they sometimes ended up with injuries, for it was performed by
men fully armed, which Julius Pollux17 in his fourth book calls Carian.

80 Attica musa
The Attic Muse

The opposite of this is 'The Attic Muse, used of an elegant

but graceful way of writing. Among the various types of style the highest
place was given to Attic. Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch in his life of Plato
tells us that Xenophon was commonly nicknamed 'the Attic Muse' on
account of the exceptional elegance of his language. Hence they also speak
of Attic eloquence and Attic charm, as I have shown elsewhere.1 When
applied to a person it will be more elegant, especially2 if a touch of irony is
added, if for instance when speaking of some very awkward man who is a
perfect stranger to culture and the graces you were to call him an Attic muse;
for all such people are said to be amousoi, untouched by the Muses.3

81 Eodem bibere poculo

To drink of the same cup

To drink of the same cup is to suffer from the same disadvantages and be
exposed to troubles which you share with others. Plautus1 in the Casina:
'That the old man might drink of this same cup that I have drained.' The
image comes either from drinking-contests or from men who are afraid of
poison. The same phrase remains in very common use in our own day in my
 I viii 81 / LB ii 327E 169

native country. For if they ever threaten to repay a man in his own coin, they
say they will give him a drink of the same cup. Martial2 pillories a person who
used to set watered and acid wine before his guests while he drank the most
exquisite vintages (a habit still found in most rich men), and this seems a
possible origin for the proverb. But it sometimes happens that those who
have drunk from a corked bottle unintentionally do their best to persuade
others to do the same. In several places in Holy Scripture3 there is mention of
the cup of Babylon, to signify some adversity that must come to pass. And
again our Lord in the Gospels4 asks the sons of Zebedee whether they could
drink of the same cup from which he proposed to drink himself, adding a
similar proverbial expression about the same baptism; nor is there any doubt
that both were well known in popular usage. There is a slight difference
between this and the phrase used by Aristophanes5 in the Knights: 'Never
does he use his lips to drink from the same cup as we/ when he is attacking a
man for sexual deviation.

82 In planiciem equum
The horse to the plain

The horse to the plain. Used whenever a man is

encouraged to do the thing he is best at and most enjoys doing. A horse on
open level ground is, as it were, in its natural sphere of action. In Lucian's1
Captive, when he himself asks to be tried by a court of law, Plato replies:
That's just what they call The horsemen to the plain,' meaning that as a
skilled rhetorician Lucian is a practised pleader in the courts. Plato2 in the
Theaetetus: 'You are inviting horsemen to the plain, if you ask Socrates to
argue.' Though some manuscripts have 'horse' in this passage, not
'horseman.' Synesius3 in one of his letters: 'In asking you to do this, I am, I
think, urging the horse to the plain, as the saying goes.' This looks4 like a
military metaphor; for when infantry are engaged with cavalry, they avoid
level ground and keep to more difficult country.

83 Acanthida vincit comix

The raven sings sweeter than the finch

The finch is outsung by the raven. Calphurnius the bucolic poet in his sixth
eclogue:

O Astylus! This will I then believe,

When sings the raven sweeter than the finch
And grisly owls than tuneful nightingales.
 I viii 83 / LB ii 3285 170

The acanthis or finch is a songbird with a very musical note; the raven noisy
enough, but far from musical. Theodorus1 renders acanthis sometimes by
spinus, sometimes by ligurinus, and gives the nightingale the Greek form
aedon. And that is how2 it should be pronounced, with the ae as two
syllables. For aedon is the Greek for nightingale, luscinia. Pliny3 uses the
Greek word acanthis as though it were equivalent to spinula, thorn-finch,
because it lives in thorn-bushes, and it has a great dislike of donkeys, which
eat the flowers of thorn. It is the smallest of all birds, and so productive that it
lays twelve eggs. Pliny is the authority, book 10 chapters 63 and 74.

84 Prius testudo leporem praeverterit

Ere that, the tortoise shall outrun the hare

Ere that, the tortoise shall

outrun the hare, is used of something grossly improbable. The tortoise is the
slowest thing that moves. We speak of 'progressing like a tortoise/ and in
Cicero's1 On Divination someone calls a tortoise a 'slow-paced house-carrier.'
The hare, on the other hand, is exceptionally fast. This adage is reported by
Diogenianus. That passage of Theocritus2 is comparable, in his Thyrsis:

Let violets now on thorns and brambles bloom

And fair narcissus clothe the juniper,
Let all things change, ripe pears on pine trees hang -
Daphnis is dying! Stag shall harry hound;
Owls from the mountains call to nightingales.

85 Cancros lepori comparas

You match crab against hare

You match crab against hare; of two things

that are entirely unlike. For the speed1 of the hare is well known, and so is
the slow pace of the crab. It bears a very close resemblance to the preceding,
and is also recorded in the same source. Suidas2 adds
The crab shall catch the hare, of absurd things that cannot possibly
happen.

86 Terrae filius
A son of earth

In the old days men of obscure and unknown parentage were called 'sons of
 i viii 86 / LB ii 328 171

earth/ because the earth is the common parent of us all, or because,

according to accounts in other sources, mortals originally sprang from the
ground. Tertullian1 in his Apologeticum against the Gentiles: Tor in common
parlance those whose lineage is uncertain are called sons of earth/
Athenaeus2 in book 10 has the phrase 'a man born from the earth/ Cicero3 in
his Letters to Atticus, book i: 'And to this son of earth, whoever he may be, I
did not dare entrust a letter on such important subjects/ Again, in a letter to
Trebatius in book 7 of his Letters to Friends: 'Gnaeus Octavius, your
high-born friend, that son of earth/ Persius:4

Manius shall be my heir. A son of earth?

Yes: but who was my great-great-grandfather?
I'll tell you (give me time). One further back?
And yet one further still? All sons of earth.

Juvenal:5 'Hence I'd much rather be / The giant's little brother/ This is a clear
allusion to our proverb, for according to the myths in poetry the giants were
sprung from the earth. It is part of the same thing when Ion in Euripides6
asks Xuthus 'Were you born of mother earth?' and the reply is The ground
bears no children/ In Pausanias,7 Strabo, and other authors of the kind we
read that certain peoples were called autochthonous because they did not
trace their origin to some other part of the world, as most do, but wished to
be thought to have grown out of the actual soil. The Athenians are of their
number. Those who8 had earned a famous name by their valour, with no
family portraits to lend them distinction, were called new men, novi homines.
Unknown people moreover who emerged suddenly, even their place
of origin being uncertain, were called sons of heaven as though they had
dropped down from the sky. Melchizedech9 too in the books of Moses is
introduced as without father or mother. Nor is the thinking10 very different
by which they spoke of men fallen from the sky. Juvenal:11 'Here's a third
Cato, fallen from the skies!' Though this is more appropriate to men of
outstanding virtue. Plutarch,12 in the attack which he wrote 'Against
Herodotus,' speaks of the ship from which Adimantus heard a sudden voice
This ship had, it seemed, fallen from heaven/ And this style of writing is
taken from the tragedians, in whose works characters were suddenly
revealed to the audience by stage-machinery13 in such a way that they were
meant to seem fallen from heaven. In Rome14 the phrase 'new men' was used
of those who had become known by their good qualities though born of an
undistinguished family. And when this was thrown as a taunt at Cicero, he
claimed it himself as a distinction.
 I viii 87 / LB ii 3290 172

87 Ex quercubus sive saxis nati

Born of oaktrees or rocks

Related to this is that expression in Homer 'sprung from oaktrees or from

rocks/ which will fit either a man of lowly birth or one who is boorish and
rough by nature and of uncivilized habits. The adage derives from the
practice in ancient times of living in hollow oaks instead of houses, and that
was why they were supposed to be 'born from oaktrees/ Hence the poet's1
'born of the stubborn oak.' Besides which, it was believed that the human
race, after being wiped out in the flood, was restored from stones thrown by
Deucalion2 and Pyrrha. Homer in Odyssey 19: 'You sprang from no prophetic
oak, no rock/3 Palladas4 imitates this in an epigram: 'No oak it was, no rock
(as they say) that sired you/ Plato5 alludes to this humorously in the eighth
book of the Republic: 'Or do you suppose a polity is born from rocks and
oaktrees, and not from the character of people in cities?' Theocritus6 in his
Goatherd turns it to apply to those who are cruel and heartless, when he says
of Cupid: 'It was a lioness gave him her dugs to suck, / And in the thickets did
his mother rear him/

88 Deorum cibus
Food of the gods

Food of the gods, was used of very splendid banquets,

because Homer1 represents the gods as feasting on nectar and ambrosia, and
therefore never growing old. Suetonius in his life of Nero: 'His record of
parricide and murder began with Claudius, whose death he was privy to
though not responsible for it, nor did he try to conceal this. Claudius had
swallowed poison in a dish of mushrooms, and Nero, using a Greek proverb,
habitually called them the food of the gods,2 and said what a good thing they
were/ Horace3 in his Epistles: 'Evenings and suppers of the gods!'
Aristophanes4 in the Frogs: To the banquets of the Blessed/ meaning to dine
richly at the courts of kings.

89 Tertius Cato
A third Cato

'A third Cato' is an ironical expression which was proverbial, used of

extremely strait-laced men who were severe critics of the way others live.
There were two Catos, the elder called Cato the censor, and the younger
Cato of Utica, and they were both equally famous in old days for their serious
austere life and their integrity, so much so that they were described as sent
 i viii 89 / LB ii 33OB 173

down from heaven to wage war on vice. [For in Antiquity men of unknown
origin who had appeared suddenly among mortals and were admired for
their high qualities were commonly said to have come down from heaven and
to be sons of heaven. Heracleides1 held that man had fallen from the moon,
exactly as though mortals lived in the moon just like another earth. On the
other hand Menippus2 the Cynic philosopher pretended that he had
returned from the lower world in order to have more freedom to criticize
the way men live. The evidence is in Laertius and Lucian.] Juvenal:3 'Now
Rome may well feel shame: / Here's a third Cato, fallen from the skies!'

90 Sapientum octavus
Eighth of the Sages

Very close to this in every way is that phrase in Horace's Satires 'Eighth of the
Sages/ used of a man who prides himself on his philosophy. For the Greeks
have a list of seven Sages, whose wise remarks are well known and regarded
as oracles, although the authors differ greatly as to their names. But on their
number at any rate everyone agrees; and so 'eighth of the Sages' is used
ironically of someone who might be added to the famous seven. Horace:
'Stertinius taught me this, eighth of the Sages/ Ausonius too: 'Wise as he is
beyond the Grecian seven, / Here's an eighth Sage.'

91 Bis dat qui cito dat

He that gives quickly gives twice

I remember reading somewhere, in Seneca if I am not mistaken, that 'He who

gives quickly gives twice/ Seneca1 too in the second book of the De beneficiis
has 'A gift is less welcome that has long stuck to the giver's fingers/ The
lesson of this maxim is that we should not be dilatory or reluctant in helping
our friends when they need it, but should do what we can for them on our
own initiative without waiting to be asked. Among the Greek epigrams2
there is a couplet that bears the name of Lucian: 'Swift gifts are sweetest, and
the good / That tarries earns no gratitude.' The lines cannot be turned
adequately into Latin, because the charm and wit of the epigram lies in the
word charis, which in Greek sometimes means a kindness, sometimes the
grace that makes a thing acceptable, sometimes an actual goddess, one of the
Graces. Ausonius3 cites a similar maxim in Greek: 'Favour slow-footed is
favour without favour/ It is the beginning4 of a hexameter line, taken from
some epigram. His rendering is: 'Favour that tarries loses its savour; / Favour
done promptly wins answering favour/ And he offers an alternative: 'A
good deed should be done with speed; / What is tardy, though kind, no
 i viii 91 / LB ii 33OE 174

thanks will find/ So it is that Hector in Euripides,5 in the Rhesus, condemns

delay in helping friends: 'In helping friends I like not to be late/ There is also
an elegant moral maxim6 to the same effect: Twice welcome what we need,
when offered free/ and another like it: 'He helps the needy twice whose
help is swift/

92 Honos alit artes

Honours nourish arts

That sentence in Cicero, 'Honours nourish arts/ seems to be taken from

Aristophanes'1 Plutus: 'There's no reward, and so there is no art/ For his
argument is that one cannot expect good physicians in Athens when they get
no recompense. Diogenianus2 records this among his adages. Martial3
alludes to it when he writes: 'Give us more patrons like Maecenas, Flaccus,
and there will be more poets like Maro; even your rough countryside will
give you a new Virgil/ Aristotle4 also writes that honour is the reward of
virtue, and the laws of the Ancients not only threatened wrongdoers with
punishment, but also encouraged right actions by the offer of rewards and
honours. Pindar5 in the Isthmians, in the ninth hymn, cites as generally
familiar There is a saying among men that good well done ought not to be
hid in silence in the earth/ Here too belongs the parable in the Gospel6 of the
light that should not be hidden beneath a bushel. The object of praising the
good deeds of famous men is to make them a guiding light for lesser men in
the pursuit of excellence.

93 Vel caeco appareat

A blind man might see that

An exaggeration often found as a proverb in good authors is 'A blind man

might see that,' of something extremely obvious. Aristophanes1 in the
Plutus: "'What makes you say so?" "Sure this would be clear / Even to a blind
man."' Eusebius2 in his Adversus Hieroclem: This would be clear, as they say,
even to a blind man/ Plato3 in the eighth book of the Republic: 'Surely it is
clear to a blind man that it changes/ And in the Sophist: 'How could even a
blind man not see this, as the saying goes?' It seems to be taken from the
eighth book of Homer's4 Odyssey: 'Surely a blind man might discern the
mark/ Quintilian5 in book 12: 'Everyone surely knows that it is far the most
honourable course and most characteristic both of a liberal education and of
the spirit which we expect to find, not to take money for one's assistance or
reduce the value of so great a service; for it often happens that things begin
to seem worth little, merely because a price is put on them. This will be
 i viii 93 / LB ii 3310 175

enough, as they say, for a blind man. Nor will anyone who has enough to
live on (and very little will suffice for that) do this for gain without being
thought mercenary/ In this passage from Quintilian some word seems to be
missing: we must read 'will be clear enough.' King Antigonus,6 who had
only one eye, alluded to this saying when they brought him a document
written in very large letters, and his reaction was This would be clear even
to a blind man.' Plutarch records this in the second decade of his 'Table-talk.'
In Livy,7 in the second book of his Macedonian War, when Philip was
delivering a violent attack on the Aetolians and Phaneas interrupted him,
saying that it was not a matter of words; one must either win the war or do
the bidding of better men, Philip's reply was 'Even a blind man can see that/
which was a jesting reference to Phaneas' weak sight.

94 Multis ictibus dejicitur quercus

Many strokes fell great oaks

Many strokes fell great oaks.

This iambic line is found in the collection of Diogenianus, and is applicable to
anything which is difficult to achieve but can be mastered by energy and
persistence. It is not much unlike those lines in Hesiod: 'Piling little on little
and often repeating the process, / Likely enough in the end something great
will reward your efforts/ This applies not only to money, of which by its
nature a great pile is often made out of very small contributions, but to
persistent work; which need not be very laborious provided it is constant
and unflagging, and, if so, often achieves very difficult targets. A single
blow seems to contribute nothing to the falling of a great massive oak; but
frequent blows easily lay it low.

95 Caudae pilos equinae paulatim vellere

To pull out the mare's tail slowly hair by hair

He pulls out the mare's tail slowly hair by hair who performs by taking time
and trouble a task that brute force and violence cannot accomplish. Horace in
his Epistles:

I take what's offered, slowly hair by hair

Pull out the mare's tail, as a heap of sand
Falls grain by grain; and thus that man is foiled
Who thumbs the annals, counting worth by years.

This arises from something Sertorius the general once did, of which we are
 i viii 95 / LB ii 332A 176

told by Plutarch in his life. Sertorius had tried and failed by the use of
arguments to persuade his soldiers, who were a barbarous and motley lot,
that strategy is more effective in war than brute force. Later, when they had
fought a battle unsuccessfully, he produced two horses, one a thin feeble
creature and the other a powerful animal with a bushy tail. To the feeble jade
he assigned a man in the prime of life, a great big fellow with tremendous
muscles; and an undersized and feeble little chap to the powerful horse. This
latter pulled out the horse's tail slowly hair by hair, and soon there wasn't a
hair left. The strong man, on the other hand, grasped the whole tail with
both hands and tried to pull it out by main force; he struggled in vain, and
was a laughing-stock. Sertorius, who had planned and arranged all this,
jumped up and said: 'Now, fellow-soldiers, you can see how much more
strategy can do than strength/

96 Virum improbum vel mus mordeat

Even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal

Even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal.

Part of a heroic hexameter, indicating that somehow or other the wicked do
not escape punishment but pay the proper penalty in some way. It applies
also to those who start a quarrel on some frivolous pretext and complain that
they have suffered loss, pretending that they have received an injury in
order to avoid paying what they owe. This happened lately in England to a
man I know, a physician with whom I am closely linked both by our common
country and by the ties of friendship. I should like to tell the story in passing.
There was a citizen of London, an extremely rich man and supposed to be
highly respectable, whom my friend by his skill and care, and not without
some personal risk, had restored to freedom; for he was the victim of a most
pestilent fever. As happens in the moment of danger, he had promised the
physician mountains of gold if he would attend him without stint in such a
desperate situation, appealing also to the friendship there was between
them. To cut the story short, my friend agreed. He was young, and a
German. He attended him, he did all he could, and the man recovered. When
the physician shyly raised the question of payment, the worthless fellow
wriggled out of it. He must not worry about his fee; 'but as a matter of fact my
wife keeps the keys of the chest where I keep my money, and you know what
women are. I should not like her to notice that I had parted with such a large
sum.' A few days later he happened to meet the man, who was now in very
good shape and showed not a trace of his recent illness; so he appealed to
him, reminding him that the fee had not yet been paid. In reply the fellow
 i viii 96 / LB ii 3320 177

stoutly asserted that the money had been paid over by his wife in cash on his
instructions. The physician said this was not so. Now see what a handle this
worthy man seized! The physician happened to address him in Latin in the
second person singular; whereat he flared up as though grossly insulted.
'How dare you/ he cried, 'a German like you, use your thou and thee to an
Englishman?' and as though he had lost all self-control, shaking his head in a
rage and uttering frightful threats, he was off in a trice. And that was how
this honourable citizen gave him the slip, richly deserving another attack of
his complaint. I laughed at the story, but it was a bitter laugh when I thought
how unfairly my friend had been let down, and I was astonished at such
surpassing ingratitude. Lions return thanks for help given them in peril,
serpents remember a kindness done them; between man and man, friend and
friend, when such a service has been rendered that no return could be
adequate, an insult is the only recompense. I say this to show my hatred of
the deed, not my dislike of the doer's countrymen; for it is unfair to judge all
Englishmen from this one worthless specimen. The adage is recorded in a
Greek epigram: 'So they say, even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal.'
But the author whoever he was (his name is uncertain) turns the proverb
upside down, saying that good men get bitten by the merest mouse, while
before bad men even dragons dare not show their teeth: the innocent always
suffer, because there seems to be no risk in attacking those who will not
retaliate.

97 Vel capra mordeat nocentem

Even a she-goat will bite a villain

Kav aii; ba.Koi avdpa trovripov, Even a she-goat will bite a villain. This is
found in the collection of Diogenianus. The sense does not differ from the
preceding; for the she-goat is not in general given to biting, except that
everything hates a wicked man. Suidas1 makes the spelling clear; for when
the adjective refers to something physical, when it is applied, that is, to a
man suffering from some affliction and deserving of pity, he thinks the
accent should be on the first syllable, TTOI^POS, and the word is so used in the
phrase which means 'to be in a bad way'; when fortune is
against you; and so Aristophanes2 in the Plutus: 'Poor indeed are our allies,
of whom you speak.' When however it means bad at heart, there should be
an acute accent on the last syllable, TTOI/TJPO?. For when we speak of 'a bad
stamp' or of 'bad water,' we are transferring to inanimate objects an epithet
appropriate to human beings, as when we say 'accursed cold weather' or
'deceitful riches.'
 i viii 98 / LB ii 3335 178

98 Litem movebit, si vel asinus canem momorderit

He will have the law on you, if an ass has so much as bitten his dog

There is another well-known proverbial line in Greek:

He'll have the law on you, if an ass has so much as bitten his dog.
This will be appropriate for those who go to law on the slightest provocation.
It looks as though it must have started with some actual incident. Lawyers
are familiar with a statutory action when damage has been caused by a
quadruped. Recorded1 by Zenodotus and Suidas, though in both the text
gives 'greatest' instead of 'slightest,' which is what the sense seems to me to
demand.

99 Litem parit lis, noxa item noxam parit

Quarrel will quarrel breed, and hurt breed hurt

Quarrel will quarrel breed, and hurt

breed hurt. An iambic line commonly used against quarrelsome people with
a passion for litigation, for whom one lawsuit always breeds another, one
affair is the seed-bed of another, and wrongs are self-perpetuating. It
survives in Suidas.

100 Bonus dux bonum reddit comitem

A good leader makes for good following

A good leader makes his

followers good. It lies in a prince to make his subjects behave well, provided
he himself is a good ruler. It is in a bishop's power to make his people good,
provided he himself leads a pious and honourable life. A wise and upright
ruling class makes virtuous and honest citizens. A good head of a family
means a well-run household. A learned and hardworking teacher produces
a well-educated pupil. A careful husband draws his wife into his way of
living. And so every man appointed to be head of something ought in the
first place to take pains to fulfil his own obligations before he expects others
to do the same. But, as it is, you may see several princes who expect their
people to obey the law, while living themselves a life that is quite lawless,1 as
though they were above the law; who demand integrity in their office-
bearers and subordinates, while themselves openly selling those offices or
granting them at their good pleasure. You may see some bishops who expect
religion and piety in their flock, while far from all piety themselves. The
image is taken from military life, in which a general's quality is reflected in his
soldiers. This is reported in the Greek collections, but anonymously. It is to
 i viii 100 / LB ii 333E 179

be found however in Plutarch,2 an authority well above the common herd, in

his life of Lycurgus: 'But obedience is a lesson to be learnt from a ruler; for a
good leader makes for good following.'

i Amyclas perdidit silentium

Silence destroyed Amyclae

Silence destroyed Amyclae. Some learned

men, among them the author of a by no means negligible work called
Cornucopia* have decided that this belongs to the class of proverbs, and I do
not differ widely from their conclusion, for there is no doubt that a humorous
reference to the story was widely current. Virgil2 suggests that there was an
adage here, when he writes in the Aeneid, book 10, of

Gamers the red-head, noble Volscens' breed,

Of all Ausonia's sons the richest he
In land, and ruled o'er silent Amyclae.

Clearly his epithet glances at a well-known event that happened there,

which the scholiast Servius expounds as follows. The people of Amyclae
from time to time used to receive reports of the approach of enemies which
were quite untrue, so that 'the city was constantly rocked by baseless panic.
They therefore passed a law to forbid the reporting of any enemy approach/
It befell after that, that the enemy arrived in reality, and since no one brought
the news, this having been declared illegal, 'the city was captured all in a
moment/ This occurrence, it is clear, gave rise to a humorous popular saying:
'Silence has destroyed Amyclae/ they said, if a man kept his mouth shut and
suffered for it. He also cites Lucilius:3 'Speak I must, for well I know /
Amyclae was destroyed by keeping mum/ In this context we must take
Amyclae to be, not one of the famous hundred cities of Laconia founded by
the son of Lacedaemon, but 'a town situated between Gaeta and Terracina,
founded by the Laconians who accompanied Castor and Pollux/ and gave it
this name in order to recall the more famous Amyclae in Laconia.
Servius thinks that the Laconians were followers of the doctrines of
Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras was believed to have forbidden the eating of
meat,4 on the spurious pretext that, according to him, the souls of human
beings migrate into the bodies of animals; and he therefore prohibited the
slaughter of any animal, 'as Juvenal5 too bears witness, saying that he
"refrained from all living creatures as though they were men." The
Laconians thus thought it criminal to kill the serpents which bred in the
near-by marshes;' and they increased so greatly in numbers that they
 I ix 1 / LB II 3340 180

destroyed the city, as Pliny6 confirms. This could therefore provide another
source for the common saying that silence destroyed Amyclae: it was their
devotion to the teaching of Pythagoras that was their undoing, the first of
which was the importance of silence, for he instructed those who wished to
become adepts in his philosophy to keep silence for five years, as Aulus
Gellius7 avers. Regarding the statement of Servius that the Laconians were
of Pythagoras' way of thinking, I do not remember to have read this in any
other authority, except for Plutarch's recording in his Table-talk'8 that the
Tyrrhenians were so devoted to the decrees of this philosopher as to carry
out to the letter in an excess of superstitious folly the rules laid down in his
famous precepts. The people of Amyclae therefore were either included
among the Tyrrhenians or were devotees of the same rule of life as they. The
silence of Amyclae is mentioned by Silius Italicus:9 'And Amyclae that silence
overthrew.' It is also spoken of by Catullus,10 if we may believe the heading
of a poem on the spring which my friend Aldo Manuzio showed me recently
as having been discovered in a certain very ancient library in France: Thus
Amyclae mute and voiceless by its silence was destroyed.'
It will be permissible to use this proverb in different contexts. For
instance, if a man might have lent money, and lost it through failure to
remind the borrower, or might have lost possession of something through
allowing what they call a prescriptive right to develop, he might call this 'the
silence of Amyclae'; or a man arguing his case too boldly and ordered to be
silent might reply 'But silence destroyed Amyclae.' Such ill-timed harmful
silence is called in Greek dysopia, mistaken modesty, and garrulity, adoles-
chia, is the opposite fault. On both there are surviving pieces of advice by
Plutarch.11

2 Timidior es prospiciente
You are as frightened as the peeper

You are as fearful as the figure that looks

out. Said of anybody who is unduly timorous. They say it arose from the
following fabulous incident. A man who was fearful by nature, having heard
what Hercules was like, had hidden himself in terror in a cave. At one
moment he looked out and happened to catch sight of Hercules as he passed
by; whereupon he died of fright and stiffened instantly, having turned to
stone. And the stone is there to this day, in the shape of a man peeping out of
a cave; so they call that rock the Peeper. Suidas is the authority. It is
mentioned also by Zenodotus, as is the one that follows.
 i ix 3 / LB ii 335A 181

3 Timidior Pisandro
As big a coward as Pisander

As big a coward as Pisander. Another phrase used

in old days of absurdly nervous people. Pisander, they say, was a
prodigiously timid man, who was haunted by the fear that one day he might
catch sight of his own soul after it had left his body. This seems in effect the
same as Cicero's 'to be afraid of one's own shadow.'

4 Diomedea necessitas
To have Diomede on your track

To have Diomede on your track. Used of those who do

something under strong compulsion and not of their own free will. Plato1
employs it in the sixth book of the Republic, 'He has Diomede on his track, as
the saying goes, and must do whatever these people approve.' Some trace2
the origin of the adage to Diomede the infamous king of Thrace, whose
practice is said to have been to make his guests sleep with his daughters,
who were perfecty hideous, after which he used to put them to death. Hence
the tradition that Diomede's mares were usually fed on human flesh, the
'mares' being daughters who were ridden by the guests. This indeed is the
sense in which it is explained by the scholiast on Aristophanes'3 Ecclesiazus-
ae, where there is a line "'And must I really do so?" "And you must. /
Diomede's on your track/" The young man there asks whether he is obliged
to follow the old crone, and she says 'Yes, Diomede is after you.' Others see a
reference to Diomede the Greek captain, and produce the following story.
When Diomede and Ulysses by their joint efforts had carried off the
Palladium4 and were returning through the night, Ulysses, who wanted all
the credit for the enterprise for himself alone, decided to kill Diomede, who
was walking in front of him and carrying the image. As he brandished his
sword over Diomede's head from behind, Diomede saw the shadow of the
sword in the moonlight and avoided the blow; then seized Ulysses, bound
his hands, and compelled him to walk in front, beating his back from time to
time with the flat of the sword. Hence the phrase 'To have Diomede on one's
track.' So roughly Suidas and Zenodotus.

5 Ad pristina praesepia
To his old manger

To his old manger. Used to be applied to those who are

suddenly reduced from a more luxurious standard of living to the poverty
 i ix 5 / LB ii 3350 182

from which they started; or in the opposite sense, to those who are
reinstated in the prosperity from which they had descended, or who return
to their accustomed level in society. A metaphor from farm animals which
greatly prefer a known and familiar manger. Plautus too used it in the
Curculio: Tor ropes of iron could not hold him back / But he'd be guzzling
here in his old manger/

6 Alia vita, alia diaeta

Change your life and change your style

Change your life and change your life-style, will

suit those whose fortunes change for the better, and they change their way
of life and habits to match. It is a metaphor from people who begin to live on a
more lavish scale when a more lavish income has come their way.
Aristophanes1 alluded to this in the Plutus in the words 'Now he has coin,
lentils have ceased to please, / Who once ate everything, when he was poor/
applied to a young man who despised an ageing mistress, now that he had
ceased to be in want himself. Horace2 alluded to this: 'Nor age nor inclination
are the same/

7 Per medium annulum traharis oportet

You might well be dragged through a ring

You might well be dragged through a

ring, will suit a person who is exceptionally thin and skinny, whether the
cause is sickness or anxiety or overwork or something else. Aristophanes in
the Plutus: 'Indeed, you might have pulled me through a ring/ The words
are spoken by an old woman who wishes to appear so worn down and
exhausted by grief that she could be drawn through a ring. I myself suppose1
the adage to be taken from a game, in which an egg beaten up in vinegar is
drawn through a ring, as is recorded by Pliny,2 book 10 chapter 60. It had
magical force to pass something through a ring, for 'the brain of a nanny-goat
that had been passed through a gold ring was administered drop by drop to
babies before they were offered any milk as a protection against epilepsy and
the other illnesses of childhood/ as Pliny also bears witness, book 28 chapter
10.

8 Anus bacchatur
The hag's on the hop

The hag's on the hop. Commonly said of those who disport

 i ix 8 / LB n 3368 183

themselves in an unseemly way that does not befit their years. Bacchanalian
revelry is to some extent permitted in the young; in a silly old woman it is
horrible. It is really a species of lunacy for an old woman to fall in love, to
drink, to dance, or to indulge in other girlish frolics.

9 Anus hircissans
A hag in heat

A hag in heat, of an old woman still burning with lust

which is quite untimely and, as Plautus puts it, playing the bitch.
Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'Well he knew the trick: / Gobble up the dinner of
a hag in heat/ He speaks of a young man who was supplied with everything
by a lecherous old woman, that in return she might get from him all the
pleasure she wanted. The lechery of he-goats is notorious, and so is the smell
associated with them when they are sexually excited.

10 Flere ad novercae tumulum

To weep at your stepmother's funeral

To shed tears at the grave of your

stepmother, is to make a great show of grief when you really are delighted. It
is not consistent for a stepson to feel distress at his stepmother's death; but
all the same he sometimes weeps at her funeral out of a sense of duty. The
same phrase will be used neatly enough of a rich man's heirs, about whom
there is a well-known and very elegant moral maxim ascribed to Publius: 'The
heir in mourning laughs behind a mask.'

11 Celerius elephant! pariunt

Elephants breed faster

Some people think that one should also include among adages a phrase used
by the elder Pliny in the preface to his History of the World: 'As for scholars,'
he says, 'I have always expected to find them in travail with a reply to my
publications in the field of scholarship, and for ten years now there has been
a miscarriage from time to time, though even an elephant would take less
time to produce its young.' Such are Pliny's words, and they authorize us to
use this phrase of his to express undue delay and the excessive time some
people take to get under way. Besides which, on the gestation of elephants
we have Plautus1 in the Stichus: 'Oft have I heard it said, an elephant / For ten
long years with young will pregnant be.' With this Pliny,2 book 8, concurs:
That they carry their young in the womb for ten years is widely believed,
 i ix ii / LB ii 336E 184

though Aristotle thinks they take two years to produce their offspring, never
more than once and one at a birth/ Theophrastus3 records a tree in India that
does not bear for its first hundred years. Latin uses parturire, to be in travail,
of those who make preparations and are always planning to produce
something. And so we can always put the adage in this form: 'And when,
may I ask, do you finally expect to produce what you have been in travail
with for so many years now, that no elephant could take longer?'

12 A mortuo tributum exigere

To exact tribute from the dead

To exact tribute from the dead, was applied to

those who accumulate wealth from any source by fair means or foul.
Aristotle1 in the second book of his Rhetoric quotes 'He levies taxes even on
the dead/ and explains that it was used of men who sought to make a
disreputable profit from any and every source, even from small things and
sordid things, as Vespasian2 did from urine; or from disgraceful activities
such as pimping and prostitution; or by extorting money from no matter
whom, from friends, from the poor, from beggars, and in the last resort even
from the dead. It was thought discreditable3 in leading Romans when they
dug beneath the ancient monuments of Corinth and removed the Corinthian
bronzes which they found, a special word being coined to express the
meanness of what they did; for things stolen in this fashion were called
Necrocorinthia, Corinthian grave-goods. In Attic Greek phoros means a
commission levied or exaction taken from any source, including money.
Those who collect such ill-gotten gains are called phorologi, a class of men
universally hated and deservedly so. Phoros is derived from the word
pherein, the same as the Latin ferre, to bring in, from which Latin in the same
way gets the word foenus, usury - a word not used in early times except of the
fruits of the earth, which sometimes like a grateful debtor would repay the
seed sown a hundredfold.
For it is contrary to nature, as Aristotle4 says in the Politics, for money to
breed money. But today this is so much taken for granted among Christians
that they despise the husbandman, the most innocent kind of man and the
most essential to the community, and reckon usurers almost among the
pillars of the Church, although usury was condemned in those very early
times, controlled and repressed even by the laws of the gentiles, absolutely
forbidden by Jewish law, abominated and attacked with every weapon by
the decrees of the Holy See. Not that I am personally hostile to usurers,
whose skill can, I am aware, be properly justified, had it not been
condemned long ago by the authority of the Fathers. Especially if you
 i ix 12 / LB ii 3370 185

consider the standards of our own time, I would accept a usurer sooner than
this sordid class of merchants who use tricks and falsehoods, fraud and
misrepresentation, in pursuit of profit from any source, buying in one market
in order to sell for twice the price in another, or fleecing5 the wretched public
with their monopolies; and yet these men who do nothing else all their lives
are almost the only class we think honourable. I take this proverb to be
identical, or at least very closely akin, with one I have recorded elsewhere:6
The very statues he implores for flour/ Flour is put here humorously for
tribute, because everything in the end comes down to food, and statues were
put up as a memorial to the dead; and thus the man who rakes in profits even
from this source can be said to exact it from the dead.
Among the Ancients the right of sepulchre was deeply respected, and
burial-places were exempt from all obligations. But now our mad passion for
property has gone so far that there is nothing in the wide world, sacred or
profane, from which something like usury cannot be extorted, and this not
only by princes but even by priests. In the old days, even under tyrants, who
however did not yet know their business nor fully understand the nature of
tyranny, some things were actually held to be common property - seas,
rivers, highways, wild beasts. Now a few nobles, as though they alone were
men, or rather gods, claim everything as theirs. The wretched seaman is
obliged to alter course, whatever the danger, and 'to do and suffer
anything'7 to satisfy the whim of some insolent pirate, as though the poor
man had not enough trouble facing winds and waves without the addition of
such storms as these. A harbour offers, and a fee is extorted from you; you
have to cross a bridge, and you must pay; ferry over a river, and you are
made to feel the privilege of princes; you have a piece of baggage, and you
must pay these sacrilegious wretches to relinquish it; and what is much more
cruel than all this, people in the humblest walk of life are robbed of their
simple pleasures, and these countless tithes and taxes take the bread out of
the mouths of the poor. It is not lawful to bring in the grain from your fields
unless it has been tithed. You may not grind it nor bake it until someone has
had a second bite at it. No wine can be imported without paying repeated
tithes; you cannot store it in your cellar unless you cut off half the whole
value, or at least a quarter, for these rascally harpies. In some places more
than half the ale, as they call it, is put on one side for the prince. You cannot
kill a beast without paying the taxman; you cannot resell a horse, which you
bought with your own money, unless you pay out. When I was staying in
the country near Bologna,8 after Julius had taken possession of the city, I saw
country people in the depths of poverty, whose whole property consisted of
a yoke of oxen, by whose labours they had to support their entire
household, paying a whole ducat for each ox. In some places it is impossible
 I iX 12 / LB II 338A 186

for a man to be legally married unless he has paid his dues. But why should I
attempt to go through every detail? These men's rapacity strains the
resources of language. There is nothing in the world from which they cannot
squeeze some advantage. There is no limit to it and no end; they invent new
systems of extortion every day, and when a precedent has found its way in
through some chance opportunity, they maintain it tooth and nail. These
exactions are hateful enough in themselves, and since the insolence of the
officials who practise them is still more hateful, they rouse no mean
resentment against princes; but princes think nothing beneath them which
will bring in money, in other words, which will make the poor go even
hungrier and support the luxury of great men, or rather, great robbers. Nor
is there any shortage of people who make no inconsiderable profit out of the
misdeeds of the guilty, with the law as their fishing-net. Is there indeed any
public office, any position, any post in government, which is not for sale in
most parts of the world? Last but not least, when all these expedients have
failed to fill that great jar with holes in it,9 the prince's exchequer, war is the
excuse put forward; the generals all play the same game, and the unfortunate
public are sucked dry to the marrow, exactly as though to be a prince was
simply to run an enormous business venture.
And yet, disgusting as it is to see Christian princes in this field more
inhuman than any pagan tyrants ever were, yet this is a little less outrageous
than the fact that among our priests also, in whose eyes all money ought to be
quite worthless and whose duty it is freely to share the endowments they
have so freely received, everything has its price, nothing is free. Think of the
storms they raise over those famous tithes of theirs, how hatefully they
oppress wretched common people! You cannot be baptized, which means
that you cannot become a Christian, unless you pay cash; such are the
splendid auspices under which you enter the portals of the Church. They do
not authorize your marriage, unless you pay cash; they do not listen to your
story in the confessional except in hope of a reward. They are hired to offer
the sacrifice; without pay they sing no psalms; there is no praying without
pay, no laying on of hands without pay. They will barely lift a hand to bless
you from a distance, unless you have made it worth their while. Not a stone,
not a chalice is hallowed without a fee. Even the duty of instructing the
people, the true duty of a bishop, is defiled by the love of gain. Not least,
they do not give you your share in the body of Christ, unless you pay cash.
To say nothing for the moment of the harvest they reap from suits at law,
from dispensations as they call them, from pardons known to common
people as indulgences, from the conferring of priestly office and the
confirmation of bishops and abbots. What could be given free by the hands
 i ix 12 / LB ii 338E 187

of men who make you pay for the right of burial even in ground that is not
theirs? In pagan times a public place of burial was established for the
common people, for the poor; there was a place where you could bury whom
you would without paying. Among Christians the dead cannot even be laid
in the ground unless you have hired that little scrap of space from a priest,
and the size and splendour of the place you are given will be in proportion to
the price. A large sum in ready money will buy you the right to lie and rot in
church near the high altar; a modest offering, and you will lie out of doors in
the rain among ordinary folk. It would be a disgrace if they accept the price
you might choose to offer; but now they call it their legal right, and it is
astonishing how obstinately they exact it. Hebron10 was a barbarian and a
gentile, but he made Abraham, an unknown guest, the free offer of a
burial-place, and could scarcely be induced by entreaty to accept the money
proffered in return; how can we priests sell the right of sepulture in ground
that is not ours? Or rather, how can we lease public property for money as
though it were ours? And none reap this kind of harvest more greedily than
those who never plant one seed for the public good, but live entirely for
themselves or at least for their prince. Others spin us the old rigmarole, The
labourer is worthy of his hire/11 for all the world as if there were no
difference between a bishop and a hired soldier or farm-labourer. The work
of menials is recompensed by a reward; princes and priests have an office so
exalted as to be beyond price.

13 Larus parturit
The gull is about to lay

The cepphus is going to lay, was used in the old days1 of men
who made enormous promises and never produced anything to match their
undertakings. The cepphus or cemphus is said to be a small bird of great
natural stupidity, for which it has become proverbial. Some people call it a
gull; others,2 Theodorus Gaza among them, translate it fulica or coot; and it is
said to live on sea-spray and to have dense plumage and long wings but a
small body, and to make a tremendous noise when it is about to lay. Hence
the proverb, The gull is about to lay, when someone makes a great display
and will produce very little. Such approximately is the account given by the
scholiast on the Peace of Aristophanes. Hesychius3 tells us that it is a bird
which lives by the sea and, being very light in weight, is easily carried away
by the wind; and that is why the name cepphos is given to an inconstant and
fickle person. Pliny,4 book 8 chapter 19, speaks of a quadruped called the
cephon, which Pompey imported from Egypt for display to the Roman public,
 i ix 13 / LB ii 3395 188

'the hind feet of which resembled human feet, while its forefeet were like
hands/ He says it was never seen in Rome thereafter. But this has no
connection with our proverb.

14 Parturiunt monies, nascetur ridiculus mus

The mountains labour, forth will creep a mouse

The mountain laboured, then produced a

mouse. A proverbial iambic line, customarily used of boastful characters who
are all display, and rouse wonderful expectations by their munificent
promises and the magisterial air of their expression and costume, but when it
comes to the point they contribute mere rubbish. Lucian1 uses this adage in
the essay called How History Should Be Written; for he says that when a Cupid
dressed up as Hercules or a Titan, he was greeted by shouts of The
mountain laboured.' Athenaeus2 in his Doctors at Dinner, book 14, records
that Tachas king of Egypt directed a jibe of this kind against the Spartan king
Agesilaus, who had come to offer him assistance during a war: The
mountain laboured and Jupiter was in a fright, but it has brought forth a
mouse,' Agesilaus being very small in build. He took great offence, and
retorted 'One day you will take me for a lion/ Later on there was a rebellion
in Egypt and the king, not having the support of Agesilaus, was obliged to
take refuge in Persia. In Greek it seems to be an anapestic line. Horace3 too
uses it in the Art of Poetry: 'How will our boaster match these mighty words? /
The hills will travail; out will creep a mouse/ Porphyrion4 thinks this arose
from a fable of Aesop's, which runs as follows. Once upon a time, some
inexperienced rustics saw the earth on a mountain-side lifting and shifting,
and gathered from the country round to such a terrifying sight, expecting the
earth to bring forth some new and formidable portent, since a mountain was
in labour; the Titans, they thought, would break out once more to renew
their war against the gods. At length, after they had waited a long time in
suspense and terror, a mouse crept out of the ground, and soon they were all
roaring with laughter.

15 Aureos montes polliceri

To promise mountains of gold

To promise golden mountains, is a proverbial

exaggeration used to describe those who make immense promises and offer
most extensive expectations. It is derived from the arrogance of the Persians,
who had veins of the precious metal and so boasted that their hills were
made of gold. Plautus1 in the Stichus: 'He'd not do it to earn / Those Persian
 i ix 15 / LB ii 339? 189

mountains, made (they say) of gold/ Again in the Miles he speaks to the same
effect of silver mountains: 'Mountains of silver, not mere lumps of it.'
Terence2 in the Phormio: 'He won the old man over with a letter, / Promising
him virtually mountains of gold/ On this passage I think I should observe in
passing what the majority of commentators have apparently failed to notice,
that modo non is used for what in Greek would be povovovxi, 'only not,' or
'just not,' meaning 'nearly/ For you will find 'only not' used in this Greek
fashion in Livy and Suetonius, and more than once in Valerius Maximus.3
Apuleius4 in his first speech in his own defence: 'If it is avarice that makes
him feel poor, so that whatever he gains leaves him unsatisfied, mountains of
gold will not be enough for him/ St Jerome5 against Rufinus: 'So that though
you have promised mountains of gold, not one beggarly coin do you produce
out of all your treasures/ Aristophanes6 in the Acharnians: 'For eight long
months he sat / And eased himself upon the Golden Hills/ using 'eased
himself in the ribald style of the Old Comedy for 'had an easy time/ Phoenix7
of Colophon, cited by Athenaeus, book 12, when speaking of the immense
wealth of King Ninus turns the mountains into a sea and says he had 'oceans
of gold/ Sallust8 puts it rather differently in the Catiline: 'Proceeds to promise
oceans and mountains'; and in the same way Persius9 has 'to promise great
mountains,' so that the exaggeration of the size is conveyed not by the words
'of gold/ but simply by the mountains themselves.

16 Ambabus manibus haurire

To take with both hands

To take with both at once, hands being understood.

Habitually used of those who do something with all their might. So
Aristophanes1 in the Knights: 'And with both hands sups up the public
funds/ Related to this is Homer's line2 in the seventh Iliad: T know how / To
right and left to turn my ox-hide shield/ We also find3 the phrase ot^olv
8a>povjaei>o<?, giving freely with both hands, for excessive and wasteful gifts,
or for great generosity. Plato4 in the Sophist: 'And, as the saying goes, not to
be caught with one hand. No indeed; but with both/ There seems to be some
difference between this form of the phrase and what we find in the Cimon of
Aristides,5 who quotes this passage from a hymn by some poet or other: 'And
Asia groaned aloud beneath their stroke, / With both hands stricken in the
stress of war/ There is a more closely similar expression in the same author's
Panathenaic Oration: 'And there he was with both hands leading them as far
as Attica, both Greeks and barbarians/ Though in this passage it is also
possible to take it with no element of metaphor: we are to understand it
either of land and sea forces equally, or of barbarians and Greeks. For we use
 I ix l6 / LB II 34OD 190

'hand' or 'handful' of a body of armed men, as in Virgil's6 'Up leapt / A valiant

handful of the younger men/ Of a 'full hand' as an image of generosity I have
spoken elsewhere,7 in Greek a rich hand; whence the epithet
ompnios applied to Ceres (in Latin alma, fostering, because she gives us our
daily bread) and to water, as to a thing that abundantly supports life.

17 Uno ore
With one voice

With one voice, for 'with entire agreement,' is found freely in good authors.
Terence:1 'All with one voice wished him the best of luck.' Cicero2 in his
dialogue on friendship: 'Friendship is the one thing in human affairs, on the
value of which all men with one voice are agreed.' Seneca3 in his Letters, book
11, number 82: 'Greatly as men's judgments differ, they will all assure you
with one voice, as the saying goes, that a man should recompense those who
have done him a service.' Aristophanes4 in the Knights: 'But they with one
mouth all cried out at once.' Plato5 in the first book of the Laws: 'With one
voice and from one mouth all men concur.' And again in the second book of
the Republic: 'For all keep on repeating with one voice that both temperance
and justice are a good thing/

18 Aquilam noctuae comparas

You match eagle and owl

You match eagle and owl. Martial, in a scazon

iambic: 'Why seek to make eagles appear like owls?' The eagle has
exceptionally keen sight, so much so that it can gaze straight at the sun
without winking;1 and some aver that the bird uses this as a test2 to decide
whether its offspring are legitimate or not. The owl, on the other hand,
shuns the sun's light by every means in its power. Pindar3 in one place
contrasts the eagle and the jackdaw.

19 Congregare cum leonibus vulpes

To group foxes with lions

To group foxes with lions is to put together things which are unequal and
unlike. Martial: 'Why group in one the lion and the fox?' The fox relies on
cunning, the lion's confidence is in his strength. Though the two are joined
by Pindar, who suggests that the brave man should prove himself a lion in
mastering the exertions of the battlefield and a fox in counsel. He writes thus
in the Isthmians: 'For in courage he presents the spirit of loud-roaring lions in
the fray, and in counsel he is a fox/
 i ix 20 / LB ii 3418 191

20 Aquila in nubibus
An eagle in the clouds

An eagle in the clouds. This is commonly understood as

something which is in itself great or important, but not easily to be achieved;
others apply it to men who far surpass their fellows. Aristophanes1 in the
Knights: That line I love, / How I shall become an eagle in the clouds/ The
words are those of the Athenian people, looking forward securely to the time
when they will rule the whole world. And a little further on2 in the same
play, an oracle is uttered in the words: 'How thou art made an eagle, to have
the whole world for thy kingdom/ This too is said of the people of Athens,
unless we prefer to see it as an allusion to their empty hopes of world-rule.
Again in the Birds: 'You shall become an eagle in the clouds/ The scholiast
informs us that the poet alludes to an oracle once delivered to the Athenians,
which foretold that Athens would one day surpass all other cities as far as an
eagle in the clouds was higher than other birds. Pindar3 too in the Nemeans,
in the passage I have just referred to, calls himself an eagle and his rival
Bacchylides a jackdaw, because of course there was such a great distance
between them. The sense runs something like this: 'Swift is the eagle among
birds, which swoops suddenly down from afar and seizes the blood-stained
quarry in its claws; but chattering jackdaws feed upon the ground/

21 Volantia sectari
To pursue a flying quarry

Related to this is a phrase used by Aristotle in the third book of his

Metaphysics: TO. irero^eva 8to>Ketv, To pursue a flying quarry. He speaks of
subjects which are excessively obscure and very hard to get to the bottom of.
It is not unlike that line

Have you an aim, a target at which you point your bow?

Do you with brickbats and with clods pursue the random crow?

He is thinking of those who set before themselves no certain goal in life, but
live for the moment, ready to change at any opportunity.

22 Ibyci grues
The cranes of Ibycus

The cranes of Ibycus, gave rise to a proverb in Greek,

which has commonly been used whenever crimes have come to light by some
new and unexpected chance, and the criminals give the victims their
 I ix 22 / LB II 342A 192

revenge. This took its rise, they say, from a chain of events somewhat like
this. A poet called Ibycus who had fallen into the hands of robbers and was
about to be put to death, protested to some cranes which happened to be
flying overhead. Sometime later the robbers were sitting in the market-place
when again some cranes flew over, and they whispered to each other in jest
'Here they come to avenge Ibycus/ These words were overhead by their
neighbours, who were instantly suspicious, for Ibycus had been greatly
missed for some time. When asked what their words meant, the men gave
embarrassed and inconsistent answers, and when exposed to torture
confessed their crime. Thus one might say the cranes were the informers to
whom Ibycus owed his revenge; or rather, the guilty died because, as the
saying goes, they gave themselves away. This is the story much as Plutarch1
tells it in his essay 'On Pointless Garrulity/ Ausonius2 recalls this adage in
his Monosyllaba: 'Who avenged Ibycus? 'Twas high-flying cranes/ There is
also a Greek epigram3 on the subject, ascribed to Antipater, which it will be a
pleasure to transcribe: 'Pirates killed you, Ibycus, disembarking upon the
untrodden beach of a lonely island, while you cried for help to a passing
cloud of cranes that came to witness your most bitter death. Nor were your
appeals in vain, for the Erinys heard their cry and avenged you in the land of
Sisyphus. Why, greedy tribe of pirates, did you not fear the anger of the
gods? Aegisthus too, who killed a poet long ago, did not escape the watchful
eye of the black-robed Eumenides/ I would have rendered these lines, like
the rest, as best I can, had not, as luck would have it, Pieter Gillis,4 my host in
Antwerp - it would be truer to say, my Pylades,5 or any truer type of
friendship there may be than that - already turned them into Latin, in my
opinion very skilfully. So I will add his version, happy to spare myself this
labour and gladly seizing this opportunity to mention my incomparable
friend:

Poor Ibycus, they killed you, that brutal pirate band,

Appealing to the cranes that flew o'er that lone island strand.
But dark Erinys heard their cries - you did not waste your breath -
And in the land of Sisyphus avenged your cruel death.
O brutal band of pirates, in your cruelty and greed,
Why was it, to the wrath of god you gave so little heed?
Remember, old Aegisthus killed a poet long ago,
But the black-robed Eumenides, they did not let him go.

This poet is mentioned by Cicero6 in the fourth book of his Tusculan

Questions, where his poem is said to have been of the most lascivious
description.
 i ix 23 / LB ii 343A 193

23 Veriora iis quae apud Sagram acciderunt

As true as what happened at the Sagra

As true as what happened at the Sagra, was

turned in old days against incredulous people and those who do not believe
until some misfortune has taught them a lesson. Strabo1 tells the story in
book 6 of his Geography. 'Next to the Locrians' he says 'flows the river Sagra,
on the bank of which are the altars of Castor and Pollux, near which ten
thousand Locrians with Rhegian help fought and defeated one hundred and
thirty thousand troops from Crotona. This victory was the origin of the
adage turned against the incredulous, As true as what happened at the
Sagra/ Many add that the news of the result reached Olympia on the day the
battle was fought; such was the speed with which it became known that the
news of the battle was true. This battle is mentioned by Justin,2 book 20,
though he differs from Strabo as to the number of the dead. It is also
mentioned by Eustathius3 in his commentary on Homer's Boeotia; and he
adds that the phrase was commonly used of things that were perfectly true
but were not believed. Lastly, it also comes in Cicero's4 On the Nature of the
Gods, book 2: 'For the Sagra' he says 'is also the subject of a familiar proverb
in Greek: people who tell you something assure you it is as true as what
happened at the Sagra.'

24 Rudem accipere. Rude donare

To be given a wooden sword. To present with a wooden sword

To receive a wooden sword for to retire from employment, and To present

with a wooden sword for to allow someone to retire are frequently found in
reliable authors. The metaphor is taken from the ancient custom of
describing gladiators who were allowed to retire from their professional
duties as rude donati, presented with a wooden sword. The right to retire was
conveyed by means of a wooden foil which they called a rudis, and so those
given this leave were called rudiarii. Consequently, anyone who is restored
to private life from any office, on account either of age or of failing health,
will be said to have received his wooden sword. Horace1 in the first of his
Epistles: 'I've oft performed, and earned my wooden sword, / And must I
now my ancient squad rejoin?' Juvenal2 too: 'And so he'll give himself the
wooden sword, / If he takes my advice.' Ovid:3 'And so, as tardy age doth
sap my powers, / 'Twas time I too received my wooden sword.' Cicero4 in the
second of his Philippics: 'Has so good a gladiator as yourself so soon received
your wooden sword?' The metaphor will gain in elegance if slightly more
far-fetched: for instance, if one were to urge a man of letters not to work so
 I ix 24 / LB II 3430 194

hard and to 'award himself the wooden sword/ or were to call someone who
has given up life at court a rudiarius or 'retired veteran' of court life. What
looks like more or less the opposite of this is that phrase in Quintilian,5 'a
candidate for sharp-edged eloquence/ though in that passage I think we
should read 'the eloquence of your ancestors' (avitae), not 'sharp-edged'
(acutae) and 'a candidate for good literature/ for 'candidate' is a word
properly used of those who wish to be elected to office. If this is transferred
as a metaphor to other fields, it will take on a proverbial air.

25 Mali corvi malum ovum

An ill crow lays an ill egg

An ill crow lays an ill egg, will be appropriate for

use whenever an incompetent tutor produces an incompetent pupil, a
rascally father a rascal son, a country of ill repute a disreputable native, a
man with a criminal record a criminal act. Some derive the metaphor from the
nature of the bird itself, which is not fit for human food and lays an egg
useless for any purpose. Some say that young crows have been known to
devour their parents if they do not bring them enough to eat, and that this is
the source of the adage; others prefer to trace it back to the following
anecdote. A man named Corax, which means crow, in Syracuse after the
death of Hieron, was the first who ever set up to teach the art of rhetoric for
pay. A youth whose name was Tisias made an agreement with him that he
would not pay the fee until he was a complete master of the art. When he had
acquired the technique but was in no hurry to hand over the price, Corax
took his pupil to law. Whereupon the young man put forward the following
alternative. 'What is the purpose of this art?' he asked; and when Corax
replied that it was to achieve persuasion by the use of words, 'Very well/ he
said, 'if I persuade the judges that I owe nothing, I shall not pay you,
because I have won my case, and if I don't persuade them, I shan't pay you,
because I am not yet a master of the art/ Corax however rejected Tisias'
alternative as defective and what logicians call reversible, and turned it in
this fashion against his pupil. 'On the contrary/ he said, 'if you persuade
them, you will pay, because you have learnt the art and are bound to pay by
the contract, and if you do not persuade them, you will pay, because the
verdict of the court is against you.' When the judges heard this most cunning
and artful contrivance, they were amazed at the young man's ingenuity, and
cried 'An ill crow (Corax) lays an ill egg.' Some say that it was the crowd of
bystanders who cried out like that, when they heard their rival pleas. Such
roughly is the story as it appears in the introduction1 to the Rhetoric of
Hermogenes.
 i ix 25 / LB ii 344A 195

This tale, if I am not mistaken, is the origin of another, told by Aulus

Gellius2 in the Attic Nights, book 5 chapter 10, about the sophist Protagoras
and his pupil Euathlus. It is rather long and easily accessible, but such a very
good story that I will give myself the pleasure of transcribing it. Gellius then,
having explained the nature of the faulty alternative which is called
reversible, because it can be turned round and used in exactly the same
words against an opponent, goes on thus. 'An example of this is the
argument used by Protagoras, one of the ablest of the sophists, according to
a well-known story, against his pupil Euathlus. A dispute between them and
a lawsuit about an agreement to pay a fee arose in the following way.
Euathlus was a rich young man who wanted to learn the art of public
speaking and of pleading in the courts; and he entered himself as a pupil
with Protagoras, promising to pay by way of fee the large sum for which
Protagoras had asked. Half this he paid at once before his lessons began, and
promised to pay the balance on the day that he first pleaded a case in court
and won it. After a longish time spent listening to Protagoras and being a
member of his circle, he had made great advances in the art of public
speaking, but he got no legal work; the time was going by, and it looked as if
he had no intention of paying the balance of his fee. Protagoras therefore
formed a plan which he thought clever at the time; he proceeded to demand
his fee in accordance with their agreement, and sued Euathlus in the courts.
When they came before the judges to establish their case, Protagoras began
as follows. "Let it be clear to you, most foolish young man, that either way,
whether the verdict is against you or for you, you will have to pay what I ask.
If the case is decided against you, my fee will be payable in accordance with
the verdict, because I have won; if it goes in your favour, the fee will be
payable under our contract, because you have won your case." Euathlus
replied like this. "I could have challenged this very two-faced and captious
argument of yours, if I were not speaking myself but appearing by counsel.
But I defeat you with all the greater pleasure because I not only have the
better case, but can use your own argument. Let it be clear to you then, most
wise of masters, that either way, whether the verdict is against me or for me, I
shall not have to pay what you ask. If the judges' opinion is on my side,
nothing will be payable to you in accordance with the verdict, because I have
won; if they pronounce against me, I owe you nothing under our contract,
because I have not won my case." Thereupon the judges, thinking that what
was said on both sides set them an insoluble problem, for fear that their
verdict, no matter which side it favoured, would be self-contradictory, left
the case undecided and adjourned it to a very distant date.' Thus Gellius.
What are we to say? Surely there was at least one comment the judges might
have handed down by way of verdict: An ill crow lays an ill egg. The same
 i ix 25 / LB ii 344E 196

story is told by Apuleius3 in his Florida, I will not say, at greater length, for it
could not be told at greater length than what we find in Gellius, but in a more
florid and (if I may use the word) embroidered style. Euathlus is mentioned
by Aristophanes4 in the Wasps and again in the Acharnians.

26 Ab impiis egressa est iniquitas

Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked

In full agreement with this is that Hebrew saying in the first book of Kings,
chapter 24, which David actually calls 'a proverb of the ancients': Wicked-
ness proceedeth from the wicked. It means that wicked men are always a
source of evil in some form, and nothing evil is ever started by the good.
Consequently1 there is no reason for Saul to fear that he may be killed by
David. This would be a wicked crime such as only wicked men would
perpetrate, and he himself will not stain his hands with the blood of a king.
Moreover the proverb, if anyone would like this extra information, runs in
Hebrew like this: For it is a property of most proverbs
that they require to be uttered in the language in which they originated, and
if they migrate into another tongue, they lose much of their charm. Some
wines are like that: they refuse to travel, and do not retain their native
qualities except in the regions in which they are grown. Almost the same
thought is expressed in Greek in a proverbial verse:2 Tor noble deeds do
come of noble minds/

27 Lemnium malum
As bad as Lemnos

As bad as Lemnos, of great and lamentable wrongs. The

story from which the adage derives is told in different forms, nor is there
much point in meticulously pursuing them. Herodotus in Erato tells both of
the proverb and of the events behind it, somewhat as follows. The
Pelasgians had been forcibly expelled from Attica, and were living in
Lemnos. Wishing to have their revenge on the people of Attica for the
wrongs they had suffered, and being familiar with their feast-days and
ceremonies, they posted men in ambush and carried off the Athenian wives,
while they were sacrificing to Minerva in Brauron; then, having deported
them by ship to Lemnos, they treated them shamefully as concubines. The
women however having produced a large number of children, brought them
all up as Athenians and taught them to speak Attic Greek, with the result
that they refused to marry Pelasgian girls, and if a Pelasgian ever tried to beat
any of them, all the Athenians banded together to defend him. In a word, the
young men of Attic blood grew so powerful that they appeared to have the
 I ix 27 / LB II 3455 197

upper hand in most things, and the Pelasgians thought it best to put to death
all the sons they had had by Athenian mothers. This they did, and killed the
mothers at the same time; after which they themselves were so much reduced
by sterility, loss of children, plague, and all other possible troubles that they
consulted the Delphic oracle for some way to relieve themselves of their
calamities. Hence, he says, a proverb spread all through Greece, by which
huge and lamentable wrongs were called 'as bad as Lemnos/ So he thinks
that this is one source for the adage, and the other that the women of Lemnos
once took offence at the bad smell emitted by their husbands and killed them
all, with Thoas' help. This fact is mentioned by Euripides1 in the Hecuba:
'And utterly stripped Lemnos of its men/ Also by Seneca2 in his Agamemnon:
'And Lemnos rendered famous by its crimes/

28 Cicadam ala corripuisti

You have taken a grasshopper by the wing

You have taken a grasshopper by the wing.

Said of those who provoke a man to do something which is by no means out
of keeping. Lucian in his Pseudologista says that the poet Archilochus, who
was a satirist and exceptionally well equipped in the art of obloquy, replied
to a man who had provoked him with abuse in these words: 'You have taken
a grasshopper by the wing/ The grasshopper1 or cricket is an insect with an
astonishing and prodigious capacity for making a noise, especially when the
sun is very hot. Pliny says it has no voice, only a rasping noise long drawn
out; and it does not produce this sound with its wings, as do flies, bees, and
gnats, for their humming ceases when they cease to fly, but the grasshopper
if you hold down its wings makes an even more emphatic noise than before.
It has in its thorax, he says, two chambers and by the friction of a membrane
with the addition of a rapid current of air it emits the sound through these
from its intestines. And so, just as if you take a grasshopper by the wing,
which is by nature a noisy creature, it makes a louder noise, so, if you give a
man of poetical gifts the excuse for a quarrel, not only will he not remain
silent; he too will make a louder noise than before, and 'on spiteful paper2
dash down all his spleen/ And so it was, they say, Plato's3 advice that one
should never make a poet one's enemy. And Horace4 speaks of the 'irascible
tribe of bards/

29 Tenedia bipennis
An axe from Tenedos

An axe from Tenedos, will be appropriate either for those

who sentence and punish very severely or those who settle disputes and
 i ix 29 / LB ii 346A 198

doubtful controversies with great speed. The source is an old custom, by

which the king of Tenedos dispensed justice carrying an axe, and when the
case was decided would instantly use the axe to execute the guilty party; or
else because some king of Tenedos passed a law against adultery, by which
both parties were to be executed with an axe, and had to set an example by
enforcing it against his own son. As a result he ordered the issue of a coin
with an axe on one side and on the other two heads growing out of one neck.
This is mentioned by Stephanus1 in his catalogue of cities. Plutarch2 in his
essay 'On the Pythian Oracles' shows that the axe was an emblem and
symbol of the people of Tenedos, on account of the crabs which are found in
their territory in a place called Asterium. Plutarch's words, in case anyone
would like to have them, are as follows: 'As the people of Selinus are said
once to have dedicated a branch of celery in gold, and the Tenedians an axe,
derived from the crabs which are found near a place called Asterium in their
territory; for they are the only crabs to have the mark of an axe on their shell.'
Lucian3 in the Philopseudes: 'For I thought, as the phrase goes, that I had been
offered an axe to cut falsehoods.' I personally think there is an allusion to the
action of Alexander the Great in using his sword to cut through the knot on
Midas' wagon4 that could not be untied, as I have shown elsewhere.
It is also mentioned by Pausanias5 in his book on Phocis, but he
attributes the origin of the adage to another story. He writes that there was
an axe among the offerings in memory of Periclitus, son of Euthymachus of
Tenedos, and that there was an old story about this. Neptune had a son
called Cycnus, who was king in Colonae. Colonae is a place in the Troad,
opposite an island called Leucophrys. Now this Cycnus had a daughter
called Hemithea and a son called Tennes by his wife Procleia (she was a
daughter of Clytius and a sister of Caletor, who according to Homer6 in Iliad
15 was killed by Ajax because Caletor had tried to set fire to Protesilaus'
ship). When Procleia died, she was succeeded by Philonome7 daughter of
Craugasos. Philonome fell in love with Tennes, and when he rejected her
advances, she told her husband a pack of lies about her being unwillingly
solicited by Tennes to commit adultery with him. Cycnus believed his wife's
falsehoods, shut up Tennes and his sister in a chest, and threw them into the
sea. However, they were carried in safety to the island of Leucophrys, which
afterwards took its name from Tennes and became Tenedos. When Cycnus
learnt at length how he had been deceived, he set sail towards his son,
meaning to acknowledge his mistake and ask for forgiveness. But when he
had landed, and tied up his vessel to some tree or rock, Tennes in anger cut
the rope with an axe. Hence a proverb came into use about those who
persistently deny something: This man could cut this or that with an axe
from Tenedos.' A story not unlike this is told in connection with the proverb8
Tenedius homo, A man from Tenedos.
 i ix 30 / LB ii 346E 199

30 Thesaurus carbones erant

The treasure consisted of coals

The treasure consisted of coals. Suits those

whose hopes are disappointed and who find mere rubbish where they
expected something magnificent. It looks as though it must derive from some
incident, when a man digging for treasure found a buried deposit of
charcoal, and this became a subject of merriment and common talk. For in old
days it was the custom to bury charcoal as a marker for the boundary of a
property because, as Augustine1 testifies in his book The City of God, nothing
is more durable and more likely to last forever than charcoal buried in the
ground. Lucian2 in his Zeuxis: 'But, as the proverb runs, our treasure
consisted of coals/ Again in the Philopseudes: 'As the saying goes, you have
shown yourself to be coals instead of treasure/ Again in the Timon, about a
discovery of gold: 'So I'm afraid that when I wake up I shall find it's coals/
And in his Wishes: 'And you will find your treasure is coals/ Alciphron3 in
one of his letters: 'Will not all my treasure turn to cinders?'

31 Octopedes
Eight-feet

literally With eight feet, was a proverbial expression in Scythia

for men who possessed two oxen and one cart. Lucian in The Scythian or the
Consul: 'Those among them who are called Eight-footers/ This can be used in
jest of a man who fancies himself rich, or of one whose wealth is entirely
countrified. High in the list of countrified wealth in Hesiod1 is 'a ploughing
ox/ The proverb2 gains in point from its allusion to the scorpion, the polyp,
the cuttle-fish, and the squid, all creatures endowed with eight feet and
therefore called in Greek octapods. The scorpion even gave rise to a proverb,3
You are waking up Eight-feet; for this creature is said to sleep under every
stone. Suidas4 writes octopous, with a long o instead of an a.

32 Satius est recurrere quam currere male

Better run backwards than run all awry

Better run backwards than

run all awry. An iambic line current as a proverb, the moral of which is that it
is advisable to change your mind for something better, rather than to
persevere in a wrong decision. Lucian's ass turned this maxim over in his
mind, far from asinine though it is: T felt the force of what the proverb says,
Better run backwards than run all awry/ In our own day too there is a
common saying that the man who turns back at halfway is not always wrong,
 i ix 32 / LB ii 3470 2000

by which they mean that those are to be commended who repent of their folly
in good time.

33 Solus currens vicit

He was the only runner and he won

He was the only runner and he won. Of those who win

when there is no competition. A metaphor from the sports-ground, for it is
no trouble to win when you have no competitor. It will be neatly directed
against self-satisfied people, who think they have proved their case in fine
style when there is no one to put the other side. Lucian in his Imagines: 'It is, I
imagine, very easy, as the proverb puts it, to win when you are the only
runner.' Related to one I have recorded elsewhere, To win a case by
default/ and not far from 'Victory without the dust' and 'Victory without
sweat/ all of which I have mentioned elsewhere.

34 Leonem ex unguibus aestimare

To know a lion by his claws

To know a lion by his claws, is to form an

idea of an entire object from one single inference, to infer much from little
evidence and great results from small indications. The adage seems to take its
rise from the sculptor Phidias who, as Lucian1 tells us in his Sects, having
seen nothing but the claw of a lion, formed an idea of the size of the whole
lion and reproduced the whole beast on the evidence of one claw. Plutarch2
in his essay 'On the Obsolescence of Oracles' appears to refer it to Alcaeus,
for he writes: 'Not, as Alcaeus has it, painting the lion from a single claw/
inferring, that is to say, great things from one small one. Philostratus3 in his
Life of Apollonius: 'Such as I see you already to be from the claw.' Basil the
Great4 writing to the philosopher Maximus: 'A man's words are truly a
reflection of his soul, and so I learnt to know you from your writings, as they
say one knows a lion from his claws.' This is done by using mathematical
ratios (as Vitruvius5 tells us in book 3) in such a way that even from the
smallest limb the dimensions of the whole body can be inferred. It was by this
method that Pythagoras6 calculated the dimensions of Hercules' body from
the stadium at Pisa, which he had laid out by stepping it himself. In the same
way7 physicians judge the state of a man's health at all points from the pulse
in one artery, and one can infer the whole of a man's life from his hair, his
waistline, or the movement of his eyes; in this way we assess the whole of a
man's education from a single letter, and from one reply form an idea of his
whole stock of wisdom.
 i ix 35 / LB ii 348A 201

35 Cauda de vulpe testatur

The fox is given away by his brush

The fox is given away by his brush, is

normally said of those who betray in some trifling matter what sort of people
they are, a fox's brush being so long and bushy in proportion to its size that it
is not easily concealed. Otherwise it might be taken for a dog. Hence this will
also be suitable when the outcome of something shows what the rest was
really like. Some men who are lambs when you first meet them prove in the
end to be foxes.

36 E fimbria de texto iudico

I judge the fabric from its border

I gauge the whole fabric from the

border - from one small fact, that is, I draw an inference about everything
else. A metaphor taken from merchants, who can easily form an opinion on
the quality of a whole piece of cloth by inspecting the weave of one edge.

37 De gustu cognosce
I know by the taste

I judge by tasting, that is, from a very small

experiment. Taken like the preceding from merchants, who from a mere taste
of wine or oil pass a verdict without hesitation on the rest. For the fruit of
every tree has its own taste, its proper nature and its particular shape; and
whenever these changed into something different, it was taken for a portent,
as Theophrastus1 elegantly describes in book 2, chapter 4 of his History of
Plants. Hence Pliny:2 'I promise you the rest answers to this taste of it.'
Seneca:3 'And I wanted to give you a taste.' And an experiment of this kind
we call a tasting. Nor will it be out of place to add here a phrase used as a
proverb by Irenaeus:4 To learn that the sea is salt, there is no need to drink
the whole thing.' One can discover from a few drops what the whole sea is
like.

38 Aethiopem ex vultu judico

I judge an Ethiopian by his face

I recognize an Ethiopian simply by his

face. Every man offers some indication what sort of person he is. For an
Ethiopian indicates by his black face, curly hair, thick lips, and gleaming
 I ix 38 / LB II 3480 2O2

teeth where his native country is. An Ethiop may change his clothes, but his
face he cannot change.

39 De fructu arborem cognosco

I know the tree by its fruit

, I know the tree from its fruit, I judge a

man by his actions. This proverb also appears in the Gospels, as I have
shown at the outset of this work. Mean clothing, shaven crown, fasting,
prayer, and a severe expression - these are leaves which often tell a lie, just
as the figtree in the Gospel lied to Christ; but patiently to endure obloquy for
the glory of Christ and to wish well to those who wish one ill and not to
render evil for evil are the fruit of a good tree. If a man produces this
regularly and readily, it is evidence of a faithful and true heart; pretence
cannot last long, and sooner or later nature must assert herself and prove
that in heart he is unsound.

40 In tenebris saltare
To dance in the dark

To dance in the dark, means to do something

secretly, with no witness and no critic. The image is taken from dancers, of
whom no one can say in the dark whether they perform the steps rightly or
the reverse. Lucian1 in his Sects: 'We should, as they say, be dancing in the
dark/ From these words it looks as though the adage could also be applied to
people who act rashly and without judgment and on no certain principle.
For Lucian's point is that, if we are deprived of philosophy, we should be
dancing in the dark, so that, 'whatever might come to hand we should
believe to be the thing we were in search of/ It is clear that Plato2 alluded to
this tacitly in the eighth book of the Republic: To avoid a discussion in the
dark, let us first make some definitions/ For discussion in a muddle is like
dancing in the dark.

41 Areopagita
An Areopagite

An Areopagite, was used of a severe and strait-laced

person, or even of an utterly incorruptible judge. It is also found in the form
As gloomy as an Areopagite. In Athens the
Areopagites were the supreme authority; they were the judges who tried
 i ix 41 / LB ii 348F 203

offences that incurred the death-penalty, and their integrity was such that
they sat by night and in darkness, not by day and in the daylight, to make
sure that they considered not the persons of those who spoke before them
but only what was said. The evidence for this is Lucian1 in his Sects. Cicero2
alludes to the proverb in the first book of his Letters to Atticus: 'The senate are
a regular Areopagus: so determined, so strict, so courageous, you never saw
the like/ Again in book four of the same collection: 'From which one can infer
that our three Areopagites care not a scrap for bribery, elections, interreg-
num, treasonable conduct, or indeed the whole constitution.'

42 Atticus aspectus
That Attic look

That Attic look, is tantamount to saying 'a face that shows

no sense of shame/ It was applied to those whose effrontery was obvious at
first glance and their readiness to say anything; for this was thought to be a
characteristic fault of the Athenian character. Aristophanes in the Clouds:
'And on his face is that true Attic look/ This is Strepsiades' comment on his
son when he leaves Socrates' school, and he can infer from the look on his
son's face that he can now plead a bad case, such is the combination it shows
of Athenian cunning and effrontery. Achilles too in Homer1 calls Agamem-
non dog-faced because he is so shameless, and Hesychius2 tells us that such
men were called kunoblopes, which means the same thing.

43 Lari sacrif icant

They sacrifice to the Lar

They sacrifice to the Lar, will be applied to selfish people,

who never give anyone a share of what they have, or to greedy people at a
dinner-party, who never send their friends any of the good things set before
them, and leave nothing on their plates. Among the Ancients it was unlucky
to take anything that was sacrificed to the household gods out of the house.
Aristophanes1 alludes to this in the Plutus, when Mercury asks that they
should give him a share of the sacrifice that was going on within the house,
and Carion replies 'Export prohibited/ In another place in the same play a
woman who wants to scatter good things to eat in front of the door is told
'Indoors, before the Lar, as custom is; / Nothing may be brought out, only
brought in/ In Rome, according to Plutarch,2 it was forbidden to remove a
table that had nothing on it, either to suggest that something must always be
kept back for a future occasion, or to teach them to control their appetites by
refraining from what they had before them, or as a means of earning the
 i ix 43 / LB n 3490 204

goodwill of the household, since it showed that to some extent they share
the table with their slaves, or because it was unlucky during a religious rite
for anything to be seen empty. And there is something sacred about a
dinner-table. Cato3 in his book On Agriculture tells us that the farm-bailiff's
wife is to sacrifice to the Lar on the appointed days in accordance with what
supplies she has at hand, having first hung a garland over the hearth.
One could coin4 an adage which would be the opposite of this:
To sacrifice to Hecate. For in the rites paid to this goddess,
those who brought in the supper did not get a taste of it themselves; all they
got was the tumult and the smoke, as Plutarch says in his Table-talk.' The
same thing customarily happened when they brought in any offering for the
other gods who are called averters of evil. This was diverted to apply to
those who consult other men's interests rather than their own; they make
others rich, and get no benefit themselves.

44 Proterviam fecit
He has made a clean sweep

It was regarded as unlucky in some other sacrifices too to leave any remnants
of the sacred banquet; or, if anything was left over, it had to be consumed
with fire, in the way Moses1 handed down for the paschal lamb. This form of
sacrifice was called by the Romans a protervia. Hence the popularity of Cato's
witty comment on a certain Albidius, who had used up his entire patrimony
in luxurious living with the exception of his house, which was then burnt
down. 'Well/ said Cato, 'He has made a protervia/ meaning that he had, as it
were, consumed with fire all that he could not eat. The authority is
Macrobius2 in the second book of his Saturnalia. A remark points in the same
direction that is recorded by Athenaeus3 in book 8. Dioclites, a spendthrift,
after eating a very hot dish of fish, complained that he had burned the roof of
his mouth (for which Greek uses the same word as it does for 'sky'); whereat
Theocritus of Chios remarked There's only one thing left for you to do; to
drink up the sea. Then you will have polished off the three largest things in
the world - earth, sea, and sky.'
But whenever4 a man's expenses outstrip his income, and the disease
shows no sign of diminishing, having now become second nature, what is
there left for him except to take to trickery and crime, so that his finances may
keep pace with luxurious tastes that are always growing? And this is a
special plague, and by no means the least of them, in our modern Germany,
especially among those who pride themselves on a title of nobility; although
there are some of them who boast a fictitious nobility so that they can do this
with the greater impunity, who suborn men to call them Junkers, pride
 i ix 44 / LB ii 35OA 205

themselves on their ancestral castles, stick feathers in their hats, get a shield
painted on which is a hand brandishing a sword and cutting up an elephant,
and add at the end of their letters the magic EQU.5 Suppose one of them is
born in a village - let us say his name is Ornithoplutus and his village called
Isocomus - he never signs himself an Isocomian; any plebeian could do that.
He is Ornithoplutus von Isocomum. After that, they think they have the right
to declare war on whom they please. If the discipline of law were to restrain
the intemperance of these young men, there would be no need to inflict
punishment on so many of them or to overlook their offences. Gaming,
card-playing, whoring, drinking, idleness land them in debt, and soon it is
robbery and blackmail. Off they go to the war, and come back loaded with
booty which has not been taken from the enemy. Having learnt their lesson
when young in a school like this, they shrink from no crime. Among the
Ancients there were sumptuary laws: in Corinth even, which was more
corrupt than any other city, there was a law to put down those who lived a
more expensive life than their means would allow. Diphilus,6 in the sixth
book of Athenaeus, speaks of it in the following lines:

'In Corinth here, good sir, we have a law:

Seeing a man who lives in luxury,
We ask him what he lives on, what he does,
And if he's well-endowed and pays his way,
We leave him to enjoy his livelihood.
If his expenses should outrun his means,
We tell him this has got to stop at once,
And disobedience means a heavy fine.
If he's extravagant and has no money,
We send him to be tortured.' 'Gracious heavens!'
'Such men, you see, can only live by crime;
Needs must they spend their nights in robbery
Or they are burglars, or in league with such,
Run a protection-racket in the market,
Or else give perjured evidence for pay.
Such filth as this we sweep out of the city.'

But today quite famous cities in Germany produce spendthrifts and

gamesters of this kind, who not only have no means but are heavily in debt
on all sides; and no one ever says to them 'Hey, where do you get the money
to live in such luxury?' If they did, they might find there was some truth in
those lines from Diphilus.
 i ix 45 / LB ii 35OE 206

45 Hie f unis nihil attraxit

This line's caught nothing

This line has caught no fish. A

proverbial iambic line which they used to mean that their labour was wasted,
and that what a man was trying to do had not succeeded as he wished. The
image is taken from the line with hook attached used by anglers, who often
pull up an empty hook. It seems to be derived from the Thesmophoriazusae of
Aristophanes, in which this line occurs. He alludes to the adage again in the
Wasps: 'But he caught nothing/ the subject being the man who had laid a
snare for his father to prevent his leaving the house.

46 Semper tibi pendeat hamus

Keep your hook in the water

Ovid uses a similar metaphor in the Amoves:

Keep your hook hanging still; all may come right,

And where you least expect, a fish will bite,

that is, always be ready to try your luck, and lose no opportunity. This
resembles 'Leave no stone unturned/

47 Dives aut iniquus est aut iniqui heres

A rich man is either wicked himself or the heir of a wicked man

St Jerome in a letter to Hedibia writes as follows: 'Hence too I think it

absolutely true, as the common saying has it, that a rich man is either wicked
himself or the heir of a wicked man/ If that remark in Hesiod1 is true, that
what is in every man's mouth is not spoken wholly without cause, this
proverb should be diligently taken to heart by those who are foolishly proud
of being rich. Great wealth is hardly ever acquired without dishonesty;
either the owner himself has accumulated it by fair means or foul, or at the
very least he is the successor of one who acquired it in that fashion. Plato2 in
book 5 of the Laws: 'So that there is truth in the current saying, that very rich
men are not good men/ There is also a line current in Greek from one of
Menander's3 comedies: 'Wealth ne'er comes quickly to an honest man/ The
man had this in mind who is recorded as saying to Sulla when he was in a
boastful mood: 'How can you be an honest man when you have so much
money though your father left you nothing?' Plutarch4 tells this in his life of
Sulla.
 I ix 48 / LB II 351B 207

48 Herculanus nodus
A Hercules-knot

'HpotKKsiov a/A/xa, A Hercules-knot, is found in learned authors for a

fastening that is very tight and difficult to undo. Seneca,1 writing to Lucilius:
'One knot still confronts you - but it is a Hercules-knot.' This is his word for a
syllogism which is almost impossible to solve. It will suit people who are
bound by very close ties. Its origin2 is pretty well suggested by Plutarch in
his life of Alexander the Great. He records that when Alexander had
captured the town of Gordium, Midas' capital, he wished to inspect the
famous wagon constructed with admirable skill out of cornel bark. A story
was current about this among the barbarians that whoever should undo the
knots with which it was made would be the destined ruler of the whole
world. Alexander cut them with his sword. Aristobulus tells us that he
undid them very easily: it was only necessary to remove the pin that held the
yoke to the pole.3 Ausonius4 alludes to this when writing to his friend
Paulinus: 'I must say, you are more obstinate than Alexander of Macedon,
who cut through the straps of that yoke of destiny when he could not undo
the knots, and entered the Pythia's cave which was absolutely forbidden.'
Again, when writing to the same friend in verse: 'More swiftly, I think, was
Pella's king able to part the thongs of that yoke of destiny, though the ends
were hidden and the beginning of both knots concealed/ That the knot
which Hercules demonstrated was held to be sacred and traditional by the
Ancients is sufficiently clear from what Pliny5 says in book 28, chapter 6 of
his History of the World: 'And to bandage wounds with a Hercules-knot
remarkably increases the speed of healing. Even ordinary girdles fastened
with such a knot are said to have some sort of beneficial effect.' Festus
Pompeius6 shows that there was a custom in early times for a bride on her
wedding night to wear a woollen girdle fastened with a Hercules-knot,
which was loosed by the groom in the marriage-bed for good luck, that he too
might be fortunate in begetting offspring; for Hercules left behind him
seventy children. Athenaeus,7 book 11, records that the people of Heraclea
in Boeotia were distinguished by this emblem from the rest, 'because above
the ears they wore what is called a Hercules-knot.'
In the same sense Cicero8 uses trabalis clavus, a nail such as would fix a
beam, in his seventh speech against Verres: 'And to establish this good
deed, as they say, with such nails as would fix a beam, he investigated with
his council the case of the Mamertines.' Horace9 too speaks of these
enormous nails.
 i ix 49 / LB ii 35iF 208

49 Fuere quondam strenui Milesii

The Milesians were valiant in days of yore

The Milesians were valiant in days of

yore. This iambic line was used as a bitter comment on those who had fallen
from their original eminence or belied the standards of their ancestors. In a
word, it will fit all those who have ceased to be what they once were and
gone downhill, the old, the poor who used to be rich, the private person
who once held sway, the obscure man who once had a reputation. Different
accounts are given by the Greeks of the origin of the proverb. Some say1 that
the Milesians were once such famous warriors that they conquered anyone
they might choose to attack. So Poly crates the tyrant of Samos, when about
to enter on a war, decided to invite the Milesians to join him as allies, and
consulted the oracle on the subject. The reply he got from the god was The
Milesians were valiant in days of yore/ Others produce a different story.
The Carians were preparing to make war against some other people, and had
decided to seek the help of the most powerful of their neighbours; some
thought they should send for the Milesians, others that they should come to
an arrangement with Persia. So they consulted Apollo on the point, and he
replied with the line that I have quoted. After the oracle had spread over the
whole of Asia, the Milesians almost to a man were killed in an attack which
they had launched against the Persians. So the oracle passed with irony into
a proverb.
Others again say2 that the Carians, who were at war with Darius,
followed an ancient oracle which advised them to seek the help of the most
powerful, and set off for Branchidae to ask the god of that sanctuary whether
they ought to get help from the Milesians. The god replied that the Milesians
were valiant in days of yore, which evidently meant they were now
unwarlike and softened by luxurious living. But this theory is refuted by
Zenodotus on chronological grounds; for this line, he says, is to be found in
Anacreon, who flourished in the days of Cyrus king of Persia, who was
succeeded by Darius at two removes. Consequently Angelo Poliziano3
thinks it better to refer it to the softening of the Milesian character by luxury,
as Athenaeus4 also does in book 12 of his Doctors at Dinner. The adage is used
more than once by Aristophanes5 in the Plutus: 'On top of this he also
brought them word, / Miletus valiant was in days of yore/ This is put in the
mouth of a young man who once, when he was young, had courted an older
woman for her money; and now she invites him to return, and he is rich and
she old and worn-out, and he scorns her. He makes another allusion in the
Wasps, poking fun at old men: "O you who once were valiant in the dance,
valiant in battle, and in accord with this, most pugnacious of men, all thiswas
 i ix 49 / LB ii 3520 209

true of old; but now it is all over, and you are whiter in the head than swans/
Aristophanes6 in the Frogs disapproves of 'Milesian coverlets' as luxurious
and effeminate things. It is also used by Synesius7 in a letter to a woman
called Philosophos, saying that he was reduced to calamity from his original
good fortune.

50 Fuimus Troes
We Trojans have ceased to be

We Trojans have ceased to be. This fashion of speaking is so

commonly met with in Greek tragedy, that it passed virtually into an adage,
when they wish to convey that someone has perished. Euripides1 in the
Hecuba: T too have ceased to be.' Sophocles2 in the Electra: 'Alack, I'm done
for; I have ceased to be/ Virgil3 imitates this in the second book of the Aeneid:
'We Trojans are no more, nor Ilium nor the surpassing glory of the
Teucrians/ and again in another passage: 'And fields where Troy once
stood/ to convey that it is now extinct. The same sense is expressed in
another metaphor by Ovid4 in book 2 of the Tristia: T too was once in flower;
that flower soon faded. /1 was like fire in stubble, soon put out/ There is a
phrase of the same species in Terence's5 play Heautontimorumenos: 'Not have,
dear Chremes: had/ as though to indicate that the son is no more. And
another in the Rudens of Plautus:6 'O that sad word, that worst of words: I
hadl' Besides which there is Cicero's7 famous utterance about the conspira-
tors who had been executed: 'All over,' to convey that they had been put to
death. This form of phrase is supposed to have passed into circulation from
the words of a very ancient Spartan chorus, which is mentioned by Plutarch8
in his essay 'On Inoffensive Self-praise/ and referred to by Diogenianus9
also in his collection of Greek adages. This chorus was made up by three
rows of singers in a circle, old men, boys, and young men. The old men's
words were 'We too were valiant young men in our time/ Then the boys
sang: 'And we shall be far better in the future.' Then the young men followed
with 'But we are now. Look, if you want to know/ This triple choir, called a
trichoria,™ was established in Sparta by Tyrtaeus, in accordance with the
three stages of human life: boyhood the entrance, manhood the forward
progress, old age the way out.

51 Pyraustae interitus
The death of a fire-worm

The death of a fire-worm, was used of those who court

their own destruction; for Zenodotus describes the fire-worm as an insect
 i ix 51 / LB ii 353C 210

that flies into lamps, and thus singes its wings, falls down, and dies. He cites
this line from Aeschylus:1 'I greatly fear the fire-worm's foolish death/
Aelian2 gives the same account of the fire-worm in book 12 of his work On the
Nature of Animals, and quotes the same passage from Aeschylus. Pliny,3 book
11 chapter 36, also speaks of the fire-worm: 'Some things/ he says, 'are
actually produced by the converse element in nature. In the copper-smelting
furnaces in Cyprus, for instance, a four-footed creature with wings, the size
of a fairly large fly, can be seen flying in the heart of the flames. It is called a
pyralis and by some a pyrausta/ or, as some manuscripts have it, a pyrotus.
This lives as long as it remains in the flames, but when it makes a somewhat
longer flight and leaves the fire, it falls dead.' This recalls what Aristotle4
tells us in the third book On Animals of a worm engendered in long-lying
snow which, if taken out of the snow, cannot survive. I have seen it myself in
the Alps. And if we choose to apply the adage for this purpose, it will also fit
what in Greek is called the ocymori, those who die young. Nor would5 it lose
its point if transferred to those who can live happily nowhere except in their
own country; and if chance obliges them to live abroad, they find fault with
everything.

52 Post f estum venisti

You have come too late for the feast

You have come too late for the feast. Recorded

by Diogenianus. Said of those who have missed some important piece of
business, because they arrived too late when it was all over. Socrates in
Plato's Gorgias: 'Have we come, as the saying runs, too late for the feast, and
missed it all?' It is also found in the form Too late for the Panathenaea' and
'You have arrived when the Pythia is over.'

53 Merx ultronea putet

Goods given away will soon decay

Goods given away will soon decay, means that free offers to those who do
not ask for them are not well received. This looks like a metaphor from
merchants who are apt to have doubts about goods offered unasked by a
vendor; they suspect that he is keen to get rid of them. The adage is recorded
by St Jerome1 in his Hebrew Problems: There's a familiar proverb' he says 'to
the effect that Goods given away will soon decay; and so I too deliberately
hold back what I have to say, to make you more eager to hear what I am
suppressing.' He uses it again2 in a letter to a nun called Demetrias. The idea
is close to that of Ovid's3 couplet:
 i ix 53 / LB ii 353F 211

What lightly comes, we light and easy hold;

What cost us hope and fear, we prize like gold.

There is a common saying too, even now, that service freely proffered is
usually unwelcome; though this is contradicted by the maxim,4 a rather neat
one: 'Twice welcome what we need, when offered free/

54 Illotis pedibus ingredi

To enter with unwashed feet

To enter with unwashed feet, is to attack an

important task confidently but without experience, as though in a profane
and irreverent attitude of mind. The metaphor comes from the ceremonial of
sacrifice, in which the rule was that everything provided must be clean and
newly washed. Lucian1 in his Life of Demonax: 'But he did not enter on this
with unwashed feet, as the saying goes/ that is, raw and inexperienced.
Again, in the Teacher of Public Speaking, he criticizes those who approach the
teacher's task 'with unwashed feet,' meaning, not equipped with a good
education. Aeneas2 the sophist in one of his letters: 'Most men force their
way onto this holy ground with unwashed feet, as the saying goes/ Aulus
Gellius3 in the Nights: 'With unwashed feet, as they say, and with unwashed
language he criticizes the style of a distinguished author/ Macrobius4 in
book i of the Saturnalia: They pass by with unwashed feet/ He is thinking of
the teachers of literature who ignore the obscure learning concealed in
Virgil's poetry. Galen5 in his Value of Simple Remedies, book 7, calls such
people 'uninitiate' and 'profane/ 'It is not perhaps surprising/ he says, 'if
some of the uninitiated have actually dared to read the texts of the mysteries.
But the writers did not write those books for the profane; nor do I write this
for those who have as yet had no practice in the rudiments/ In general, all
irreverent, immodest, and offensive language can proverbially be called
'unwashed/

55 Illotis manibus
With unwashed hands

With unwashed hands, is recorded by Diogenianus in the

sense of irreverent and ill-prepared. This too is a metaphor from ritual
purity. Hesiod1 in the Worfcs and Days forbids the offering of a libation to Jove
in the morning with hands unwashed: 'Never with hands unwashed in the
early light of morning / Offer the glinting wine to Jove and the other
immortals/ He also forbids anyone to enter a stream or spring without
 i ix 55 / LB ii 3540 212

washing his hands. Hence the frequent mention of the chernips in Homer,2 a
word which by its sound precisely conveys the sense of "hand-washing/
with which the Ancients always made a propitious start to religious
ceremonial, and also to dinners which have a ceremonial element in them.
Gregory3 the Theologian, as they call him, in the apology for his flight into
Pontus, connects both phrases: 'With unwashed hands, as the saying goes,
and uninitiate feet they force their way into most sacred things/ Gaius in the
first book of the Pandects,4 title De origine juris, writes: 'If it is thought
indecent, if I may so put it, for counsel presenting a case in court to set out
the facts before the judge with no introduction, how much more improper it
will be for those who offer an interpretation to overlook the early stages and
make no search for origins, but with unwashed hands, if I may so put it, to
proceed at once to the subject-matter of their interpretation/
Either proverb5 will properly be used of those who plunge into some
undertaking full of self-confidence or ignorant of what they ought to know;
for instance, anyone who assumes the office of a prince with no equipment of
virtue or wisdom or experience of affairs, or sets out to interpret Holy
Scripture untaught and unpractised in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and
indeed in the whole of Antiquity, without which it is not only foolish but
impious to undertake to treat of the mysteries of theology. And yet,
outrageous as it is, this is now common practice. Equipped with a few frosty
syllogisms and some childish sophistries, where (Heaven help us) do they
draw the line? Where do they not lay down the law? What problems are
insoluble? Could they but see the merriment, or rather, the sorrow that they
cause to those with some experience of the ancient tongues and of Antiquity,
could they see the monstrosities that they produce and the shameful errors
into which they fall continually, they would surely be ashamed of their
headlong incompetence and return even in old age to the rudiments of a
liberal education. Many men come to a right conclusion unaided by the laws
of dialectic, to say nothing of the quillets of sophistry. There was sense and
wisdom among mortals, even before the idol of these people, Aristotle, was
born. No one ever understood another person's meaning without a
knowledge of the tongue in which that meaning was expressed. And so St
Jerome, when he had decided to interpret Holy Scripture and was determined
not to take up such a task with unwashed feet, as the saying goes -1 ask you,
did he equip his mind with sophistic rubbish? With Aristotelian principles?
With nonsense yet more nonsensical than this? Not he. How did he start
then? With incalculable efforts he acquired a knowledge of the three
tongues. The man who is ignorant of these is no theologian, he treats divine
theology with outrage, and with both hands and feet in very truth
unwashed he does not take up this most sacred of all subjects, he profanes it
and defiles it and outrages it.
 i ix 56 / LB ii 3550 213

56 Aquilae senecta
An eagle's old age

An eagle's old age, was used of old men who drank more
than they ate. For Pliny,1 book 10 chapter 3, tells us that eagles die, not of old
age or sickness but of hunger, because their upper beak grows to such a
disproportionate length that they cannot open their mouths. The eagle
therefore in old age can only drink or suck blood from its quarry, although2
almost none of the birds that have crooked talons drink; only the kestrel and
the kite, and they too very rarely. The authority is Aristotle3 in book 8 of his
On the Nature of Animals. But the same author in book 9, after giving much the
same account of the eagle's beak as Pliny, adds that there is a myth attached
to this, to the effect that this happened to the eagle in return for outrage done
to a guest long ago when it was a man. Terence4 in the Heautontimorumenos: 'I
saw the eagle's old age that they tell of.' The speaker is Syrus, and he
compliments his master on a strenuous feat of drinking at a party the day
before. Love of the bottle is almost a special characteristic of old men, either
because5 nature requires to make up for the cold of that period of life with the
warmth in the wine, or cheerfulness induced by the wine lessens the
troubles of the aged. Hence Plato6 too, though he entirely forbade the young
to drink and allowed grown-up men very moderate potations, permitted
much greater indulgence to the aged. A further reason7 why old age should
drink more wine is given by Alexander8 of Aphrodisias in his Problems, the
fourth from the end, where he says that advancing years reduce the bodily
heat, and wine both moistens and warms at the same time. Hence it is also
commonly called 'old men's milk.' It is said 'old Cato oft his valiant heart /
With wine would cheer' - so Horace9 tells us.

57 Aquilae senecta, corydi iuventa

An old eagle is as good as a young lark

The old age of an eagle equals the youth of a

lark. Used of a vigorous and green old age, which is better than some
people's youth. For an aged eagle beats a small bird like the lark even in its
prime of life. Euripides expresses this without allegory in the Andromache: 'A
man of spirit, be he ne'er so old, / Is better far than many younger men.'

58 Camelus vel scabiosa complurium asinorum gestat onera

Even a mangy camel bears the load of many donkeys

A camel, even with

the mange, bears the same load as many donkeys. Used of those who are so
 i ix 58 / LB ii 355F 214

much more use than certain other people that even when old or disabled in
some other way, they can do more than the others do in good health. Or of
men who, when things go wrong with them, can yet do more with what's left
of their former fortunes than other men whose position is untouched. This is
used by Synesius.

59 Palinodiam canere
To sing a palinode

To sing a palinode, is to say the opposite of what you said

before and adopt the contrary opinion. The source is an anecdote about
Stesichorus the lyric poet which is recounted by Plato1 in the Phaedrus. He
had written scandal in one of his poems about Helen, after which he lost his
sight; but when he learnt the cause of his blindness, Achilles having been
sent by Helen to tell him (as Pausanias2 informs us in his book on Sparta), he
at once sang a palinode, praised Helen whom he had previously vilified, and
so recovered his sight. Socrates says jokingly that he wishes to follow
Stesichorus' example, and sing a palinode for his abuse of the god of love,
before he loses his eyesight. The Greek word palinodia means 'singing
backwards' or 'unsinging'; in Latin it might be recantatio.3 This is the word
used by Horace4 in the Odes, when he promises a palinode to the girl whom
he had assailed with scandal in another poem:

If you resume the lover's part,

While I my former taunts recant,
And give me back once more your heart.

St Augustine5 writing to Jerome: 'Adopt therefore, I beg you, the honourable

and truly Christian spirit of severity tempered with charity, correct and
emend that work, and as the saying goes, sing your palinode.' Then,
alluding to the story of Stesichorus: Tor Truth as we Christians know her is
incomparably more beautiful than any Helen known to the Greeks, and our
martyrs have fought for her more bravely against this Sodom than ever the
Greek heroes fought for Helen against Troy. I say this with no idea that the
eyes of your heart should recover their sight, which heaven forbid they
should ever have lost, but that you should turn them on the object; for
though they are healthy and wide awake, from some desire for concealment
you have turned them aside/ To which Jerome6 replies as follows: 'But if you
reject what I said at close quarters and ask me to defend what I have written
and compel me to correct it and challenge me to a palinode and give me back
my sight, all this is a breach of our friendship.' But on the subject of this
palinode Augustine7 himself almost sings one later on, writing to Jerome to
 i ix 59 / LB ii 3560 215

say that his adding of the reference to Stesichorus was not so much scholarly
as foolish. I also think8 it was arrogant to write such a letter to a man so much
more learned than himself; but one can forgive this in an African, a young
man, and a bishop. Cicero9 writing to Atticus: 'You may expect a splendid
palinode.' This adage was used by John Chrysostom10 specifically as a
proverb. So also Plato11 in his third letter to Dionysius.

60 Vertere vela. Funem reducere

To turn one's sails about. To pull in the rope

To turn one's sails about is to change one's opinion for its opposite and
reverse one's way of life. Horace in the Odes: 'Backwards I now must turn my
sails perforce, / Again retracing my abandoned course.' The metaphor is
taken from sailors, who correct an error in navigation by turning their sails.
Persius in his fifth satire changes the image to some extent when he uses 'to
pull in the rope' for adopting the opposite of one's former principles:
'Withdraw concessions and pull in the rope.'

61 Venia primum experienti

Let a beginner off lightly

Let a beginner off lightly, is recorded by Diogen-

ianus. We should be ready to forgive the unskilled who are starting to
operate in some unfamiliar field, if they make a mistake through inexperi-
ence. Chrysostom1 expresses this view somewhere in a homily: 'We all
forgive the man who makes a mistake at the outset through inexperience.' It
sometimes takes the form, Pardon for a first offence. Pindar2 in his Hymns
says that 'two offences bring troubles in their train,' because the man who
goes wrong twice ought not to escape punishment. I have recorded
elsewhere3 To stumble twice on the same stone. Celsus in the first book of the
Pandects,4 title De legibus et senatu: 'For the law ought to be adapted to things
which happen both often and easily, rather than to those which rarely come
about; for legislators, as Theophrastus says, make light of things that
happen once or twice by chance.' Theophrastus' opinion in Greek runs 'For
what happens once or twice is overlooked by lawgivers.'

62 Euripus homo
Man's a Euripus

Man's a Euripus, is to be used of those who are

changeable and of no settled character. It will also be suitable for changes of
fortune, which sweeps mortal affairs to and fro in a sort of tide, so that
 i ix 62 / LB ii 357A 216

Plautus1 put it rightly in the Captivi: 'We men are the gods' tennis-balls.' The
image is taken from the prodigious speed with which the Euripus ebbs and
flows, the Euripus being that part of the sea that lies between Aulis, a port in
Boeotia, and the island of Euboea, which is mentioned by Strabo2 in book 9
and by Pliny3 in book 2. 'Yet among tides' says Pliny 'some have a nature of
their own, like those of the Euripus of Taormina, which change frequently,
and the Euripus of Euboea, which change seven times, every twenty-four
hours/ So rapid is the change that, as we learn from Pomponius Mela,4 the
tide carries with it the wind and even ships in full sail. Nor has an adequate
cause for this astonishing phenomenon yet been thoroughly investigated by
writers on the subject, though Livy5 in book 8 of his work On the Second Punic
War thinks the water is swept along by certain winds which blow in those
parts. Seneca6 in his Hercules on Oeta:

Changeful Euripus bends its wandering waves;

Seven times it turns them back, and seven times forward,
Ere Sun in Ocean steeps his weary rays.

Boethius7 too: 'Swept like Euripus with its boiling tides/ Cicero8 in the Pro
Plautio: 'Does any tidal strait, do you suppose, does Euripus itself know such
commotions, such great and varying disturbances, such reversals, such
breakers as our system of elections with its upheavals and its tides?'
Aeschines9 accuses Demosthenes of changing sides so often that he had
outdone Euripus itself in unreliability; whence comes a Greek word for an
untrustworthy man, euripistos.10 Gregory11 the Theologian in a letter to
Sophronius, master of the horse: 'You see how we are placed, and how we
are carried round by the turning wheel of human affairs, as now one party
now another flourishes and decays, so that neither prosperity nor adversity,
as they say, lasts for us very long, but all shifts and changes rapidly into its
opposite, so that it is better to put one's trust in the winds and in words
written in water than in human felicity/ These words give an eloquent
picture of the Euripus that is our human predicament. One also finds12 rvx"1?
Evpi7T09 for 'fortune is changeable/ because it is the most instable thing there
is, and EvpiTro? 8iavoia, 'thought is a Euripus,' because thought flows
rapidly now this way and now that.

63 Endymionis somnum dormis

You sleep Endymion's sleep

You sleep Endymion's sleep, will suit people

who grow fat by indulging excessively in sleep, or those who are very idle all
 I ix 63 / LB II 3570 217

day and never occupy themselves in business of any kind but live a soft and
leisurely existence. It arose from the very familiar story of Endymion.
Endymion was a very handsome boy, and the Moon fell in love with him. For
his benefit, she asked her father Jove to grant him a wish that should come
true, and he wished that he might sleep forever, and remain immortal and
unageing. This adage is used by Aristotle1 in the tenth book of the Ethics,
who infers that idleness is inappropriate for the gods, nor does any other
activity seem worthy of them, except contemplation. Furthermore, as all men
are agreed that the gods are alive, it follows that they must also do
something; 'since it is not right' he says 'for them to sleep, like Endymion in
the story.' Cicero2 in book 5 of the Definibus, arguing that chief among the
qualities implanted in us by nature is the urge to be up and doing, says that
'even if we thought we should enjoy the most delightful dreams, we should
not want to be endowed with Endymion's sleep, and in fact if it did befall us,
we should think it like death.' Again in his Tusculan Questions, book one:
Though those who make death out to be a lighter burden would have it that
death is very like sleep. As though any man would be willing to live for
ninety years, if it was a condition that once he had finished sixty years he
should sleep the rest of the time. Pigs, even, would not like that, let alone the
man himself. There is always Endymion, if we are ready to listen to myths,
who fell asleep, I know not when, on Latmos, which is a mountain in Caria,
and has not yet, I fancy, woken up.'

64 Ultra Epimenidem dormis

You sleep longer than Epimenides

You sleep longer than Epimenides, will

be used of men who are permanently idle. The tale of Epimenides the Cretan
theologian is to be found in the Attic Nights, and also in Diogenes Laertius.1
He once went for a walk, and when he grew tired, entered a cave and there
fell asleep; nor did he wake up until forty-seven years had elapsed. Pliny2
mentions this in book 7, chapter 52, in these words: 'This is pure fable, and I
myself put the story of Epimenides the Cretan in the same class, who is said
to have been tired out when a boy by heat and exercise and to have slept in a
cave for fifty-seven years. After which he woke up under the impression it
was next day, and was much surprised by what he saw and how much things
had changed. After that, he lived for the normal span of time and became an
old man; but even so he reached his one hundred and fifty-seventh year.'
Lucian3 in his Timon: 'For you have slept longer than Epimenides.' If there is
any truth4 in Pythagoras' doctrine of the transmigration of souls, there can
be no doubt that the soul of this eologian Epimenides has migrated into our
 I ix 64 / LB II 3585 218

sophistical theologians, who have brought so many empty dreams into the
world that two hundred years' unbroken sleep would hardly suffice for
them.

65 Matura satio saepe decipit, sera semper mala est

Sow early and be often sorry, sow late and always lose

Columella in his Agriculture writes as follows: 'All farming operations must

be performed energetically, and above all sowing. There is an old farming
proverb to the effect that an early sowing is often disappointing but a late
one never fails to go wrong/ So Columella. The lesson of the adage is that,
whatever the business, we should act promptly and that it is far better to
anticipate the proper time than to start late. If, for instance, one had to point
out that a child should be entrusted to the tutors who are to educate him
while he is still of tender years; for it is wiser to start too early than to wait till
he is older and not begin till then.

66 Fames Melia
A Melian famine

A Melian famine. Of severe famine and other extreme

hardships, Melus being a town in Thessaly besieged by Nicias the Athenian
general, and taken not by siege-engines but by starvation. So roughly
Suidas,1 who also gives it in the form AI/AW M-ryA^, By Melian famine. The
story of this is told by Thucydides2 in his fifth book. The proverb is found in
Aristophanes,3 in the Birds: 'You will destroy the gods by Melian famine/

67 Saguntina fames
Famine at Saguntum

The famine at Saguntum became proverbial in the same way. The story is
mentioned by Livy, by Valerius Maximus, and by Cicero in the Philippics.
Saguntum is a town in Spain near the river Ebro, which was bound to the
Romans by alliance and a formal treaty. After a prolonged siege by the
Carthaginians, famine reduced it to such desperate straits that the citizens
built a great pyre in the market-place, threw onto it all their most precious
possessions, and finally cast themselves and their children into the flames,
that they might not fall into the hands of the enemy. Ausonius:1 'From this
Saguntine famine let a sausage rescue me/ In Greek,2 violent and insupport-
able hunger, such as might make a man faint away, is called a bulimy, and a
similar verb is used of those who faint, especially from hunger. Aristotle3 in
 i ix 67 / LB ii 358E 219

his Problems, section 8 number 4, asks why it is that men suffer more from
bulimy (he uses the verb I refer to) in cold weather and in the winter months.
And what Aristotle calls bulimy Theodorus renders as hunger like a dog's.
There used to be4 an old custom in Greece of driving hunger out of the house
with sticks, with cries of 'Out with you, hunger; in with wealth and health.'

68 Famis campus
Famine field

Famine field is used of cities which are under severe pressure

from famine; but there is an actual place with that name. They say too that
once, when famine there was causing great distress, an oracle told the
Athenians to make their peace with the famine-god in an appointed place
with certain special sacrifices. They appointed a field which lies behind the
Treasury, and so it has been called Famine Field ever since.

69 Elephantum ex musca facis

You make of a fly an elephant

You make an elephant out of a fly, that is, you

use big words about little things and exaggerate them. Lucian1 in his
Panegyric on the Fly: 'There is much more that I could say, but I will stop there,
for fear of seeming, as the proverb has it, to make an elephant out of a fly.'
This might be thought to come from Homer,2 who among the battles of gods
and heroes describes the indomitable spirit of the fly, comparing with it an
invincible and valiant warrior, Menelaus in Iliad 17. St Augustine3 too in his
book against the Manichees On Duality in the Soul does not hesitate to set a
fly above the sun in value, one being a living creature and the other
inanimate.

70 Elephantus non capit murem

The elephant does not catch mice

The elephant does not catch mice. A noble and

lofty spirit disdains worthless prey and small returns; a scholar of distinction
does not pursue cheap hacks, the apes of men of letters; a powerful man does
not resent the petty injuries done him by the poor and weak. This adage1 is
used in our own day absurdly enough by those dabblers in philosophy and
theology, when they have taken a fall from their scandalous ignorance of
Latin and Greek, as they constantly do. 'The eagle' they say 'does not catch
flies/ as though they were the eagles, as they spout their sophistical
 i ix 70 / LB ii 359C 220

rubbish, or as though a knowledge of the ancient tongues were not part,

indeed the greatest part, of scholarship.

71 Aquila thripas aspiciens

An eagle confronted with a thrips

An eagle confronted with a thrips, of great men who

disdain small things. The thrips is some sort of very small bird, which the
eagle with its very keen sight detects but does not deign to pursue,
regarding it as prey unworthy of its talons. This at least is what I find in the
Greek collections, but I suspect it is not right, for I find a thrips to be a sort of
small worm.

72 De pilo pendet. De filo pendet

It hangs by a hair. It hangs by a thread

It hangs by a hair, of something in very great peril. It

looks as though it arose from the story of Dionysius the tyrant and the sword
that hung over the man's head by a single hair. Persius1 alludes to this in his
third satire: The naked sword from golden ceiling hung / Did more affright
that neck in scarlet clothed/ There is a line cited from the third book of
Ennius'2 Annals by Macrobius in his Saturnalia, book i: This night shall all
Etruria hang by a single thread/ meaning that it will be at the greatest risk.
This is one of the commonest expressions in popular use today. Synesius3 in
one of his letters: 'And life, they say, hangs by a fine thread/ Here belongs
that truly Laconic comment recorded by Plutarch4 in his 'Sayings of
Spartans/ Someone was speaking very highly of an Aeginetan called
Lampes as being by far the richest man in the world because he owned so
many ships; to which a Spartan replied T don't think much of prosperity that
hangs by ropes/ suggesting of course that a shipowner's wealth is risky and
exposed to the vagaries of fortune.

73 Nil intra est oleam, nil extra est in nuce duri

Olive no kernel hath, nor nut no shell

A proverbial line from the Epistles of Horace, which can be used against
those who carry effrontery to such crazy lengths that they are not afraid to
deny what is generally accepted and to maintain that manifest falsehoods are
certainly true, who in fact will say anything rather than be seen to lose an
argument. Plato1 introduces a character like this in the sophist Euthydemus,
who says that a dog was his father and indeed everybody's father, and that
 i ix 73 / LB ii 359F 221

everyone knows everything; and stoutly maintains other monstrosities of

the same sort rather than be defeated. Horace's line goes as follows: 'Olive
no kernel hath, nor nut no shell.' All sane people of course agree that the
walnut has a hard shell and the fruit of the olive contains a hard stone. In fact
it is a waste of time to discuss anything with the sort of men who 'call light
darkness and darkness light/ as the inspired poet-prophet2 puts it.
Something similar is produced by Galen3 On the Virtue of Simple Remedies,
book 2; some, he says, cited Anaxagoras as authority for the statement that
snow is not white. His words run as follows: 'And some of them actually
summon Anaxagoras as a witness, he having stated of snow that it is not
white/

74 Jupiter orbus
Jupiter childless

Jupiter childless. When a man makes a statement which is

manifestly false. It is well known that Jupiter had a very great many children,
being of all the gods far the most devoted to the female sex and very
lecherous; in fact, that he did not get children with one part of his body only,
but produced Bacchus from his thigh and Pallas from his brain.1

75 In mari aquam quaeris

You seek water in the sea

You seek water in the sea, you look for it exactly

as though it was hard to find, in the very place where there is nothing else to
be seen, as one might hunt for one or two faults in the behaviour of a
notorious rascal, whose whole life is contaminated, or search for a few points
to object to in illiterate authors, in whom everything is objectionable.
Martial, if I remember right: 'You seek water in the sea/ Propertius too in the
first book of his Elegies: 'But now / Witless you seek for water in midstream/

76 Fluvius cum mari certas

You're only a river striving with the sea

You are only a river striving with the sea. When

little men start to compete with great men. There is a place (so Suidas tells us)
in the Leontid tribe called Potamoi (literally Rivers), the inhabitants of which
are called Potamians (as it might be Riverines). These people were criticized
for admitting to their citizenship a large number of persons for whom their
city had no proper room. Hence a proverbial jest to the effect that, though
 I iX 76 / LB II 3600 222

only a River, not (that is) a very spacious place, it was trying to rival the sea
by accepting new arrivals from all quarters.

77 Balbus balbum rectius intelligit

One stammerer better understands another

One stammerer better understands another, that is, one barbarian under-
stands what another barbarian is saying. By a natural dispensation, a man
who stammers - who has, that is, an impediment in his speech - finds it
easier to understand another sufferer from the same disability than a man
whose speech is straightforward and articulate. This will be applied neatly
to ignorant people, to whom ignorant writing is more familiar and accept-
able. St Jerome uses this adage in criticizing the folly of a certain monk, in
language equally humorous and scathing. 'And his reason' he says 'for
thinking himself a good scholar is that he alone can understand Jovinian.
There is of course an old saw, One stammerer better understands another/
So Jerome; and elsewhere he is very witty at the expense of Jovinian's style as
full of monstrosities and excessively obscure, in the preface to the books in
which he refuted Jovinian's errors.

78 Herbam dare
To proffer grass

To proffer grass, as a phrase for acknowledging the winner and confessing

oneself beaten, is to be met with freely in good authors. In origin (Festus
Pompeius1 is our authority) it was 'a characteristic of the life led by
shepherds/ because it was the ancient custom for the loser in a race or any
other form of contest to pluck some grass immediately from the actual spot
and offer it to the winner as a sign that he knew he was beaten. Pliny,2 book
22 chapter 4, when speaking of the wreath of grass awarded for the raising of
a siege: The wreath awarded was made from green grass plucked from the
place where the recipient had delivered those who were besieged. For the
chief token of victory in ancient times was for the vanquished to proffer
grass, which indicated that they were giving up their claim to the ground,
the very earth which had borne them, and the right to be buried in it. This
custom' he says 'I know to be still valid in Germany/ Again, in book 8
chapter 5, of the elephant: 'It has an astonishing sense of shame: when
defeated, it shuns the sound of its conqueror's voice, and offers him earth
and plucked herbs/ The adage will gain in point if transferred to victory in
the field of literature.
 i ix 79 / LB ii 36iA 223

79 Dare manus
To put one's hands up

Using a similar figure, Horace writes 'to put one's hands up' for to confess
oneself beaten; for those who surrender to the man who has defeated them
to avoid being killed voluntarily hold out their hands to be shackled. Horace
in the Epodes: 'Hands up, I yield to your o'ermastering skill.' Cicero1 in his
dialogue On Friendship: 'In the end let him hold his hands up and admit that
he is beaten.' This becomes2 more elegant if referred to the things of the
mind. There are3 kinds of men who never admit they are beaten in argument,
even when they haven't a leg to stand on. They are thus described by Galen
in book 2 of his On the Natural Faculties: 'But when a man who has no sense of
shame continues the struggle and refuses to admit that he is down, he is like
one of those unskilled wrestlers who, when they have been thrown by the
wrestling-master and are lying on their backs on the ground, are still so far
from admitting the fall that they continue to hold those who have thrown
them by their necks, refusing to let them go, and think this is evidence that
they have not been beaten.'

80 Ut canis e Nilo
Like a dog drinking out of the Nile

Those who take a mere sample of some art, or of some author, casually and as
it were in passing, are said to taste it 'like a dog drinking out of the Nile.' This
adage took its rise from a witty remark which is recorded by Macrobius1 in
book 2 of the Saturnalia, and goes as follows. After his rout at Modena,
people were asking what Antony was up to, and some friend of his replied
'He's like a dog in Egypt, drinking on the run.' For in those parts it is well
known that dogs have to keep running while they drink, in terror of being
seized by a crocodile. Solinus2 says they drink only on the run, for fear of
being caught.

81 Hastam abjicere
To throw away one's spear

To throw away one's spear is used by Cicero1 in his speech Pro Murena to
express the loss of faith in one's cause and a readiness to quit the struggle. It
is a metaphor from the army. Anyone who throws away his weapons in a
battle has lost hope, and is either looking for a way of escape or waiting for
death. Greek uses a single word rhipsaspides for frightened men and those
 I IX 8l / LB II 3610 224

who take to their heels in battle, from two words meaning throw away and
shield. Demosthenes2 earned this as a nickname in some battle, being as
cowardly in war as he was invincible in the assembly. Cleonymus is called
aspidapobles, shield-shedder, by Aristophanes3 in the Wasps. Plato4 in book
12 of the Laws says that rhipsaspis is the most discreditable name one can be
given.

82 Arena cedere
To leave the arena

Related to these is To leave the arena, for giving up the struggle and freely
admitting defeat. It is a metaphor from the combats between gladiators. So
too Horace: The Scythian now unbends his bow / And thinks to leave the
field/

83 In arenam descendere
To descend into the arena

To descend into the arena, for to enter on a contest, is another image derived
from the combat of gladiators in the arena, to which Horace refers when he
writes of continually 'begging the public from the arena's edge' for leave to
retire. If that group of phrases is transferred to the things of the mind, the
resulting metaphor will have proverbial status. Examples are so ready to
hand that I have not thought it necessary to spend my time and delay my
reader in recording them. Pliny has 'my arena' in his letters for 'my sphere of
action,' for he writes in these words to Fabatus: 'So I will do everything I can
for Beticius Priscus, especially in my own proper arena, by which I mean the
centum viral court.'

84 Austrum perculi
I have belaboured the south wind

I have belaboured the south wind, that is, I have wasted my labour. This
occurs in the Epidicus of Plautus, and Paul1 did not disdain to use it as a
proverbial expression in his epistles; for the man who beats the air finds it
gives way before his blows and makes a mock of them. This can be derived, it
seems, either from gladiators practising their skill who brandish their swords
in the air, or from the story referred to by Aulus Gellius2 of a certain tribe
which fought a war against this wind.
 i ix 85 / LB ii 362A 225

85 De facie nosse
To know by sight

To know a man by sight is to have a slight acquaintance with him, such as

you might have with someone whom you have seen only two or three times
and never been on familiar terms with. When transferred metaphorically to
the things of the mind it will gain in elegance. Cicero in the In Pisonem: This
is a characteristic of true virtue, which you do not know even by sight/ that
is, not even superficially.

86 Ne umbram quidem eius novit

He does not know even the shadow of it

An expression very close to the last is used by Cicero in one of his Letters to
Atticus, in book 2: 'Poor wretched fool, who has never glimpsed even a
shadow of what is right!' Plutarch1 in his essay 'On Having Many Friends'
quotes Menander as calling a man happy who has even the shadow of a
friend. And in Athenaeus2 a lickspittle guest called the sour black loaves that
had been brought to the dinner-table 'shadows of loaves/ as though they
were the ghost of bread rather than its substance. Though it looks3 more as
though the adage came from ancient painting, which represented objects
crudely by the use of shading only. And everyone has heard of Plato's cave,4
in which those who sit there are beguiled by the shadows of things.

87 Nomine tantum notus

Known by name alone

This is very like that other phrase of Horace's in the Satires: 'Up runs a man I
knew by name alone.' For this is another proverbial expression used by
ordinary people to indicate a casual and ordinary acquaintance with
someone. And it will be even more effective if transferred to things of the
mind; for instance, if one were to say that a man knew philosophy scarcely
even by name.

88 Prima facie. Prima fronte

At first sight. On the face of it

These phrases too have a proverbial ring, especially when applied to

abstract things: 'At first sight' and 'On the face of it/ used when you see
something for the first time, before you study it more closely and attentively.
 i ix 88 / LB ii 3620 226

For that first glance is often deceptive, and sometimes a kind of shyness in
the face of novelty blurs our vision. Then, as we look at the object
repeatedly, we perceive certain features which we had missed before, and
we withdraw, as it were, the judgment which our eyes first formed.1 This
adage is in frequent use in Latin literature, especially in Quintilian,2 book 12.
Papinian3 in book 12, title De condictione sine causa: The claim for restitution
seems at first sight to fall to the ground/ Again in book 16, title Ad
senatusconsultum Velleianum: 'When someone undertakes an obligation
which at first sight is another man's, but in reality is his,' and in several
further passages. Celsus in book 22, title Deprobationibus, chapter Quingenta:
'At first sight it seems more equitable that the claimant should prove what he
puts forward etc/

89 Intus et in cute
Inwardly and in the buff

To be known both inwardly and in the buff is to be familiar in every aspect,

equivalent to 'well-known inside and out/ Persius: 'Away with trappings;
they are for the mob. /1 know you inwardly, close to the skin/ Deceive other
men, if you like, that is, I know you too well, and you cannot fool me. We use
the words1 'surface skin' of the upper layer of something, what you see first.
Ausonius2 in the preface to his Homeric Summary: This aspect of it is clear to
anyone who looks at the surface skin of the opening work/ And Horace:3
'Ugly within, / For all the beauty of that dappled skin/

90 Domestice notus
Well-known at home

A similar image is used by Lucian in the Pseudologista: To a free man who

knew you well at home/ This will be more effective if transferred to things of
the mind; if one were to say, for instance, that somebody knew just what
rhetoric was like at home. That phrase of Pliny's is similar, in a letter to Attius
Clemens: 'When I was a young man and serving in the army in Syria, I got to
know him well and in his home context/

91 A limine salutare
To greet from the threshold

Pretty well the opposite of this is A limine salutare, To greet from the
threshold. This too will gain greatly in elegance if diverted to incorporeal
things; if a man were said, for instance, to have only greeted theology from
 i ix 91 / LB ii 363A 227

the threshold, who has spent neither much time nor much trouble on it, but
only sampled the rudiments. Seneca in letter 49: 'Nor do I deny that one
should glance at the subject, but it should be a glance, one should greet it
from the threshold.' He speaks of the niceties of dialectic, with which he
thinks a passing acquaintance is enough. The metaphor comes from those
casual friends who are not admitted into the more intimate part of the house,
but offer their greeting at a distance and from the threshold, and then
depart.

92 Primoribus labiis degustare

To taste with the tip of one's tongue

To taste with the tip of one's tongue is to take a brief sample of something.
The image derives from those who taste food or drink and swallow none of
it. Cicero in the Pro Caelio: 'Personally I have both seen and heard many in
this city who had not merely tasted this kind of life with the tip of the
tongue.' Again,1 in On the Nature of the Gods, book 2: 'As for the man who said
the world would be immortal, do you suppose he had tasted natural
philosophy with the tip of his tongue? I mean an understanding of nature's
workings.' Quintilian2 in book 12: 'But I pass over this point, about which I
cannot think that anyone who has, as they say, tasted literature with the tip
of his tongue, can have the slightest doubt.' Procopius3 the sophist in one of
his letters: 'Again, I was angry with her giving us a taste of such a great thing
with the tip of her finger, as they say, and then faking away the pleasure.' In
these words there is one new expression, where he attributes a sense of taste
to the fingers, unless he meant that those who are lightly sampling
something bring it to their tongue to taste with the tip of a finger.

93 Summis labiis
With the tip of the lips

With the tip of the lips, is used rather differently in Greek, when a man puts
up a pretence in words only and takes no action from his heart. Lucian1 in the
Apologia: 'Playing the philosopher with the tip of the lips.' Again in the
Amatory Dialogues: 'Keeping their oaths on the tip of their lips.' He speaks of
lovers, who swear an oath to their beloved without really meaning it.
Seneca,2 book i chapter 10: Those words did not come only from the lips;
there is something solid behind them.' In the same way St Jerome,3 writing to
Rusticus the monk, says 'that we should not invite our friends casually or in
a moment of enthusiasm or, as they say, with the tip of the lips.' This is a
habit with some courtiers and civil lawyers, to make enormous promises, and
 i ix 93 / LB ii 364A 228

in those great solemn words which have no effect on anyone except a perfect
fool.

94 Extremis digitis attingere

To touch with the fingertips

Close to this is Extremis attingere digitis, To touch with the fingertips, for to
touch lightly, which will only look like an adage if metaphor is added.
Cicero1 in the passage which I have just cited: 'Personally I have both seen
and heard many in this city who had not merely tasted this kind of life with
the tip of the tongue and touched it, as the saying goes, with the fingertips,
but had devoted their whole youth to pleasure, and yet rose above it
eventually and returned, as they say, to worthy causes/ In Greek the
expression is To touch with the tip of your
finger. So Basil2 in his letters: T know it myself, though only with the tip of
my finger, having enjoyed the honey-sweet hospitality of your church last
year.' The metaphor seems to be drawn from wrestlers, for Greek has a word3
for fighting someone with the fingertips only without
engaging the rest of the body. Lucian4 in his Life of Demonax: 'Nor had he
touched it, as they say, with his fingertips/ Euripides5 uses the hyperbolical
expression with no colouring of metaphor in the Iphigeneia in Aulis: 'Nor shall
king Agamemnon touch your daughter, / Even with the fingertips/

95 Dimidium plus toto

The half is more than the whole

The half is more than the whole. A riddling proverb,

which recommends the golden mean. It is quoted and explained by Plato1 in
the Laws, book 3: 'Was it not because they failed to understand that Hesiod
was speaking excellent sense when he said that the half is often more than
the whole? Whenever to take the whole is detrimental but to take half is
reasonable, then he thought the reasonable was more than the unreason-
able, one being better and the other worse/ The scholiasts2 on Hesiod
explain him in the same way: the whole represents greed and the half is fair
shares; for he who is content with half takes his stand on the mean, while he
who goes on to take the whole passes beyond the mean and must inevitably
end in excess. He mentions3 the same adage in the fifth book of the Republic.
Again, in book 6 of the Laws, where he is making clear the great importance
to a community of entrusting magistracies to outstanding men, he says: 'For
in the proverbs it is said that the beginning is half of a whole action, and
everyone always praises a good beginning. But, as it seems to me, it is more
 i ix 95 / LB ii 364E 229

than half/ Plato plays on the ambiguity of the word, for arche in Greek means
both the beginning of something and also first place, office or rule. Pittacus4
in Laertius, on his retiring of his own free will from the government, was
allotted land by the people of Mytilene, but cut it in half (so Sosicrates tells
us) on the ground that the half was better than the whole. He also refused
money sent him by Croesus saying in his reply that half what he already had
would be all he wanted. The lines are to be found in the first book of
Hesiod's5 poem called Works and Days, where he writes as follows to his
brother Perses:

Once ere this we divided our heritage, yet you continued

Seizing and bearing away much else, to oblige the princes,
Eaters of bribes, who are fain to settle this lawsuit for us -
Fools, they have never learnt how much more half than whole is,
Nor how great is the blessing that mallow and asphodel offer.

On the nature of asphodel there seems to have been little agreement among
ancient scholars; Gellius6 in book 18 tells us that this question used to be put
forward in social gatherings of the learned, as a thing that few understood.
Theodorus7 renders it somewhere by the word albucus. As far as the
interpretation of this adage is concerned, we can infer from many passages in
Lucian8 that asphodel was a cheap and common vegetable, and was a staple
food among the dead, where luxury and social pretensions are alike
unknown. Asphodel appears further in Theocritus,9 in the seventh idyll,
among vegetables eaten by country folk: 'With fleabane and asphodel and
curling celery/ And so the poet is criticizing the unbridled luxury of kings
and rich men, showing how inferior their splendours are to the moderate life
of ordinary folk. Plutarch10 too in his 'Dinner of the Seven Sages' thinks this
passage in Hesiod should be regarded as propaganda for the simple life.
Suidas11 considers the proverb as derived from something that really
happened, and supplies an anecdote to the following effect. Once upon a
time there were two brothers, one of whom died, leaving the other by his will
as a guardian of his son, who was still a minor, and trustee of his estate.
However the brother was no better than the common run of men - he cared
more for coin than his duty to his family, tried to seize the son's property,
and in the process lost both it and his own. Then, when he asked for
sympathy in hopes of recovering his position, the answer took the form:
'Fool, he has never learnt how much more half than whole is/ And so kings12
take half, and tyrants take everything.
The proverb can therefore be used in three ways. The first is, when we
wish to praise what is so truly called the golden mean, without which there
 i ix 95 / LB ii 3650 230

can be nothing in human affairs that is honourable, or enjoyable, or

admirable. And this mean we assess by a standard of fitness, such as Pindar13
thinks of in his imitation of Hesiod: 'In everything there is due measure, and
the due time is the best way to discover it/ For it is a question of context:
what is too much in one place will be too little in another. Pindar14 again, in
the last hymn in his Nemeans: 'In the search for gain one must pursue the
mean; the desire for things unattainable breeds delusions too severe/ A
second way to use it will be found when we wish to extol equality, which is
according to Pythagoras15 both parent and nurse of friendship, while
inequality is the mother of discord and war, as Euripides16 eloquently
expounds in the Phoenissae:

Better far, my child,

Embrace equality, which binds friend to friend,
City to city and ally to ally.
Equality's the natural source of law;
The less is ever hostile to the greater -
Hence endless discord. But equality
Prescribes for men limits and balances,
And numbers all things. Tis equality
That makes the darkling eyelids of the night
Keep level progress thro' the turning year
With the sun's rays. No jealous loser there,
But day and night alike serve mortal men -

and what follows. The third way of using it will appear when we wish to
dissuade someone from inflicting an injury, and argue that it is better,
following Plato's17 opinion, to suffer an injury oneself than to inflict it on
another. For that this proverb means that is made clear by Plutarch in his
essay 'How to Study Poetry/ And I think a story told by Plutarch18 about
Darius belongs here too. Darius once summoned his provincial governors
and asked them whether the taxes were heavy. When they replied that they
were moderate, he gave instructions that only half of each assessment
should be paid, thinking it better to get half with the goodwill of the
provinces than get the lot and be hated by his own people. Even today,
perhaps, there are those who mistakenly neglect this proverb. For while
some divines and some prelates are absolutely unwilling to abandon one jot
of their principles or their legal rights, they run the risk of losing even things
they had a perfect right to. In my opinion one should not invariably neglect
the advice of Syrus in the comedy:19
 i ix 95 / LB ii 3668 231

Before you find yourself faced with the risk,

Either to keep this sum or lose the lot,
Cut it in two,
or, as others read, 'divide it.'

96 Serpentis oculus
A serpent's eye

A serpent's eye, was customarily used of those who looked at

things with very keen and piercing eyes. The metaphor is taken from a living
creature. For the serpent has rather tough eyes and very keen sight; hence
Horace: 'Why then in your friends' faults so eagle-eyed? / No snake from
Epidaurus sees so clear.'

97 Ne moveto lineam
Move not the line

Move not the line. The commentator on the Pindaric

hymns has to explain the passage 'Such an offer did the Libyan make when
he was choosing a fit bridegroom for his daughter: he made her stand upon
the line.' He speaks of Antaeus, who set his marriageable daughter as a prize
for the young men on the finishing line, so that he who got there first in the
race could take her home as his wife. In his explanation he considers a
proverb of this form: 'Move not the line/ and supposes it to be a metaphor
drawn from the ancient custom of marking the finish of a race by drawing a
line, on which was set the prize that the winner could carry off. Another line
also was drawn for the starting-point, as I have said elsewhere,1 from which
the race began. Both these lines gave rise to a proverb, To start from
scratch/2 and 'Move not the finishing-line/ The meaning is that one should
not alter the laws nor overrun the limits that have been laid down for things.
That phrase from the Bucoliastae of Theocritus3 is specially relevant here:
'And from the line she moves the stone.' He alludes to the river Galatea,
carrying off with it some stone or other from the edge of the shore. There is
also a 'sacred line' in a board-game, of which I have spoken elsewhere.4

98 Eandem tundere incudem

To pound the same anvil

To pound continuously at the same anvil is to persevere with untiring

persistence in the study of one particular subject. The image comes from
 i ix 98 / LB ii 366E 232

blacksmiths, who deliver a rain of blows on the anvil and thus in the end
overcome the stubbornness of the iron sooner or later by their unbroken
exertions. Cicero in the second book of his De oratore: 'Personally, if I had
someone quite untrained and wanted him taught how to speak, I should
prefer to entrust him to those untiring characters who pound the same anvil
continuously day and night.' This will be appropriate to those who teach the
elements of writing and reading, who have endlessly to din into their pupils
the same basic teaching, in hopes that one day it will stick.

99 Lacerat lacertum Largi mordax Memmius

Man-eating Memmius lacerates Largius' limbs

This line is said by Crassus, the famous orator, to have been so popular that
at Terracina it could be seen written up on all the walls. The anecdote which
gave rise to the adage runs as follows. A certain Roman by the name of
Memmius, while staying in Terracina, fell madly in love with a young
woman, but not without a rival. A fight broke out on one occasion between
the two of them, and Memmius reached such a pitch of fury that he plunged
his teeth into Largius' arm (Largius was his rival's name). This caused great
public merriment, and some humorous wags painted up this line on all the
walls in Terracina; but they reduced it to five letters, three Is and two ms,
with the idea that all new arrivals would be provoked into asking what they
meant. When therefore Crassus had occasion to go to Terracina, he was
surprised by this new letter-puzzle, and asked some ancient inhabitant what
on earth letters like that could stand for. The old man told him the story and
unfolded the line Lacerat lacertum Largi mordax Memmius, 'Man-eating
Memmius lacerates Largius' limbs.' Cicero mentions this in the second book
of the De oratore; though Lucius Caesar, a character in Cicero's book, is of the
opinion that the whole story had been deliberately made up by Crassus to
discredit Memmius, his political opponent.

100 Cicada vocalior

As noisy as a cricket

As noisy as a cricket, was said of a man who never

stops talking or who is very musical, because the insect in question, though
it lives solely on dew, takes a particular delight in singing. There were
people so devoted to music that they forgot to eat and would have died of
starvation had not the gods turned them into crickets, as Socrates tells us in
Plato1 in the Phaedrus. So Theocritus2 in his Daphnis: 'For you sing better than
any cricket.' Diogenes Laertius3 also quotes some lines from Timon on Plato's
style:
 I ix 10O / LB II 3670 233

Their leader was the widest of them all,

A master of sweet words, whose pen could sing
Like any cricket, perching on the trees
Of Hekademe with voice so delicate.

Note that there is an allusion in 'the widest/ platustatos, to the name Plato
and in Hekademe to the name of his Academy, which a translator cannot
convey. There is also a reference to a line of Homer,4 in the third Iliad, to the
old men who 'utter their delicate voices/ In Athenaeus,5 book 6, a parasite
describes himself as 'a cricket in conversation'; and further on, in book 11,
from Theopompus 'the cricket chatters/ though in that passage the words
seem to convey a favourable omen.

i
To cherish in one's turn

Antipelargein in Greek means to repay kindness you have received, and

especially to look after and cherish those by whom you were at one time
raised or taught; for instance, if children were to maintain and cherish their
aged parents in their turn or if a pupil were in return to instruct his teacher. It
is taken from the natural behaviour of the stork, pelargos in Greek, which is
the one great emblem among birds of family affection. There is a law in
existence to enforce this affection, the terms of which are that children must
maintain their parents or be sent to prison. Homer1 seems to refer to this in
Iliad 4, in the words:

Nor did he repay

The price of nurture to his parents dear.
Few were his years.

Euripides2 also alludes to it in the Orestes: 'Yet he'd repay his nurture to her
that's dead/ This law, then, neglected as it is for the most part even by
mortals, is typified by the stork alone among all living creatures. The rest
love their parents and acknowledge them for just so long as they need their
help to find food; the stork alone feeds its parents in its turn when they are
overcome by age, and carries them on its shoulders when they cannot fly.
This latter action won praise for Aeneas,3 and he is called 'pious Aeneas' as a
result; the former earned great renown for a young woman4 who supported
her mother in prison for several days on her own milk. This is the reason, as
Suidas5 tells us, why in Antiquity a stork was represented on the upper end
of a king's sceptre and a hippopotamus at the lower end, that even the object
 i x i / LB ii 368A 234

in his hand might remind him to set the highest value on the natural
affections and to hold violence in check. For the hippopotamus is a ferocious
and violent creature, devoid indeed of all natural feeling, for it will kill its
father and have carnal connection with its mother, as Plutarch6 records in the
essay he calls 'Whether Land or Water Animals are Cleverer/ Vipers too are
notorious for their impiety, because at birth they burst their mother's womb;
and so are scorpions and spiders which, when they have duly hatched their
offspring, are murdered by them. The authority is Aristotle7 in book 5 On the
Nature of Animals. The family feeling of storks is attested by Pliny,8 book 10
chapter 23, in these words: 'Storks return to the same nest. When their
parents are old, they look after them in their turn/ St Basil9 too puts the stork
forward as an example to us of piety towards parents. Crates10 the Cynic
philosopher alludes to it in a letter to his wife Hipparchia when she has
borne him a son: he promises to see to it that the child shall be sent back to his
mother as a stork and not a dog in her old age. Philosophers of the Cynic
school are referred to as 'dogs,' and he means that the boy will show proper
affection and cherish his mother in return when she is stricken in years. This
filial affection of storks is mentioned by Aristophanes11 too in the Birds:

There is an ancient law among us birds,

Writ in the code of storks: when once the cock
Has reared his storklets till they all can fly,
The new-fledged storks in turn must feed their father.

Plato12 too uses it as an example in the First Alcibiades. But no one has made a
more elegant and felicitous use of it than Angelo Poliziano,13 in one of his
epigrams: 'Nor is it strange, / If we like storks do cherish her old age/ - if we
Latin speakers, that is, who had our schooling from Greek literature so long
ago, teach Greece her own literature in return, now that she is old and worn.
Moreover, this service which children render to their parents in their turn is
expressed in Greek by a compound verb, geroboskein or gerotrophein and
gerokomein, to feed, cherish, look after the aged. There is an iambic line14 of
verse to the same effect that runs like this: 'Cherish thy parents and long life
is thine/

2 Uno tenore
Even tenor

'Tenor' is a word for the forward movement of something. Things of the same
sort, which follow as though in some kind of continuous series, are said to
have a 'uniform tenor/ Cicero in his book on the perfect orator: Tn speaking
 I X 2 / LB II 368E 235

he keeps what they call an even tenor.' He is thinking of a uniform flow of

language which has no variety to refresh the listener's ear. Again in his book
on famous orators: They have an even tone in speaking and the same style.'
In this passage I rather think it may be better to read 'tenor' instead of 'tone.'

3 In quadrum redigere
To square up

To square things up' was used by Cicero in the same book for reducing them
to order and to a proper system. It is derived from those who even up trees or
stones with surveying instruments, so that they correspond exactly in all
directions; and so, when something is a good fit, we say 'It squares.' Virgil in
book 3 of his Georgics:

Give your rows room;

Yet every alley, when your trees are set,
Should square precisely where it cuts the path.

4 De fece haurire
To drain the dregs

Cicero in his review of distinguished orators uses a metaphor which must

surely be proverbial when he speaks of "draining the dregs,' to express the
pursuit of mean, vulgar, and unduly pedestrian things. Atticus turns this
proverb against Cicero in the book of which I speak, on the ground that he
wasted his time in recording certain obscure speakers who were almost
unheard-of. It is borrowed from those mean individuals who drink wine
dregs and all, for fear of leaving anything whatever in the cask. Hence too
we speak of 'the lowest dregs of the population.'

5 In laqueum inducere
To draw into the net

To draw into the net' and To draw into the toils' is to close in upon someone
cunningly in such a way that he no longer has any means of escape. This was
a habit with Plato's Socrates: by those innocent questions of his he would
reduce the sophists to denying what they had previously asserted and
asserting what they had previously denied, until they did not know what
they were saying. Quintilian in the fifth book of his Institutiones: 'For they
are thrown into confusion, and drawn by the advocates on the other side
into a net.' In Greek,1 people already held captive are called embrochoi.
 I X 5 / LB II 3698 236

Ovid:2 The prize I sought has fallen into my toils/ Euripides3 in the
Hippolytus: 'Fast held in hanging noose/ and again a little farther on: To free
my mistress from the tight-strung toils/

6 Boeotica sus
Boeotian pig

The Boeotian pig. A very ancient adage which was commonly

used in old days to taunt any stupid and uneducated man. Pindar1 has it in
his Olympians: Then we escape in very truth that ancient slur, Boeotian pig/
He is telling Aeneas the chorus-master to ensure that his hymn is so well
sung as to escape for sound reasons the ancient taunt that used to be levelled
at unmusical people, Boeotian pig. The scholiast relates the origin of the
proverb as follows. The early inhabitants of the Boeotian region were called
Hyantes, and they were barbarous and boorish; so some people, playing on
the name, called them Hyes, which is the Greek for pigs. This taunt became
proverbial; first it was used of the Boeotians, from whom it spread to any
uneducated and uncivilized people of boorish habits, Boeotian pigs. The
scholiast2 cites another passage of Pindar, from his Dithyrambs: Time was
when they called the people of Boeotia pigs/ He also cites from Cratinus:
These are they, the Styboeotians, a pedestrian race/ inventing a comic
compound name to convey both pig and ox. In the Greek proverb-
collections3 I have found 'A Boeotian wit' for a stupid and brutish person.
Plutarch4 in his essay 'On the Eating of Flesh' suggests that it was the people
of Attica who gave the Boeotians the nicknames of stupid, dullard,
blockhead, and even pig, mainly because they ate so much. In this
Athenaeus,5 book 10, concurs, citing these lines from Eubulus:

Eating and drinking we our valour show,

In these unflinching, while the Athenians
Are valiant talkers, feeble trenchermen,
Not mighty eaters like the men of Thebes.

In the Greek of these lines it is clear that ponein has been written instead of
pinein or piein, and the first men for gar, and toi for hoi. Eubulus again in his
Europa: 'Founded a city of Boeotians, / Those manful eaters all the livelong
day/ And again from another Eubulus play: 'A true Boeotian he, and no
mistake/ This he supports6 with much evidence from many sources. The
faults of over-eating and stupidity are nearly akin, and hence they make out
that Hercules, as a Theban, was a heavy eater and at the same time so much
 i x 6 / LB ii 369F 237

averse from education that he killed his teacher. But he too was a Boeotian,
having been born in Thebes. Plutarch7 again in his 'On the Divine Sign of
Socrates': 'To revive that ancient reproach against the Boeotians that they
hate book-learning'; though Plutarch was himself a Boeotian and stupid is
the last thing you could call him. Lastly,8 it is common knowledge that, as a
result either of the very great extension of the Roman empire or of their
commercial contacts, ancient words were mixed with the local language in
Germany, Gaul, and Britain; and I suspect therefore that we derived from the
Greeks the popular use of the word bot, short for Boeotian, to describe a
stupid man with no cutting edge to his mind, for it is characteristic of German
to contract words of any number of syllables into monosyllables.

7 Impossibilia captas
You pursue the impossible

You pursue the impossible. Of a man who attempts what

he cannot perform. Taken from fowling or hunting, where the quarry is such
as you have no means of catching up with. This I1 should not have listed
among adages, had I not found it in the Greek proverb-collections; for, apart
from the metaphor that underlies 'pursue,' there is no smack of the proverb
about it. As a maxim however it is not without its uses; for if the Greeks are
right in laying down that one ought not to attempt anything in which success
is doubtful, still less should one try anything in which one is sure to fail. For
instance, if one tried to secure peace of mind from riches or ordinary common
pleasures, or true learning without a knowledge of the ancient tongues, this
would be to 'pursue the impossible/ Pindar2 in the Nemeans: 'But of empty
hopes vain is the issue.' Again in the third hymn of his Pythians: 'But one
should ever observe the limit in all things, each man according to his own
condition.' The scholiast says this means that a man should not attempt
things too hard for him. It is one of the reported sayings of Chilon3 that you
should not attempt what you cannot accomplish; for some schemes are grand
but for that very reason useless, because they are impracticable.

8 Cribro divinare
To divine by a sieve

To divine by a sieve, is to detect a thing by skilful

inference, or to make foolish guesses about things concealed. Lucian1 in his
False Prophet: 'Divining what had happened, as they say, by a sieve.'
Theocritus2 also mentions it in his third idyll: 'Agroeo that divines by a sieve
 I X 8 / LB II 370D 238

told me the truth/ In fact, this method of divination by shaking a sieve

continues among certain superstitious folk to the present day. In Antiquity
the future was foretold by sieve, bay-leaf, and tripod.3

9 Hydram secas
You cut off a hydra's heads

You cut off a hydra's heads, is in Plato's1 Republic, book 4:

'Not perceiving that in reality they are cutting off a hydra's heads.' To cut off
a hydra's heads is to overcome one obstacle only to be faced with many
others in its place. The adage takes its rise from the myth of the hydra at
Lerna, which some say had a hundred heads, some eight, of which one was
immortal. With this monster Hercules had a long and bitter struggle, because
when he cut off one head, several heads sprouted in its place. Plutarch2 in
his essay 'On the Fortune of Alexander': 'Cutting off a hydra's heads that
always grew again with fresh wars.' He speaks of Alexander, who was faced
continually, when one war was finished, with a series of new ones. Cyneas,3
when he saw how the large population of Rome constantly put fresh forces
in the field after every defeat, observed that Pyrrhus seemed to him to be
fighting against a Lernaean hydra. Hence Horace4 in the Odes: 'No hydra,
gaining strength from severed heads, / Faced Hercules, that chafed to lose
the day.' It will be possible5 to adapt it to those who are involved in
unending lawsuits; for one suit leads to another, and often if one is killed off
three take its place. Seneca6 writes somewhere that the everyday business
that calls us away from the pursuit of philosophy can be broken off short but
can never be disentangled, because one piece of business generates another
and one task another task, as wave succeeds to wave.

10 Ne ramenta quidem. Ne festuca quidem

Not a splinter. Not even a straw

'Not a splinter richer,' an exaggeration which became proverbial. It occurs a

few times elsewhere in Plautus,1 and in particular in the Rudens: 'Never shall
you find yourself one splinter richer by this day's work/ just as one might
say 'one stijver richer' in our modern vernacular. Aristophanes2 uses the
same metaphor in the Lysistrata: 'Leaving nothing here, she did not move a
straw,' and again in the Wasps: 'By night he sees not a paspale of sleep,'
where the scholiast tells us that paspaU means a tiny scrap. Some think the
word indicates a magnet. In the same passage he adds a similar metaphor:
'But if he nods his head so much as an achne,' where achne means the very
small and light fragments of chaff that fly from ears of corn as they are
 I X 1O / LB II 3718 239

threshed. Homer3 too uses the word in Iliad 5: 'And as the wind drives chaff
over the sacred threshing-floor/ Experts in Hebrew4 tell us that
which Jerome renders 'dust/ following the Septuagint which has chnoun,
has the same meaning in Hebrew as achne has in Greek.

11 Sacrum sine fumo

A smokeless sacrifice

A smokeless sacrifice, of an excessively economical

entertainment, in which no cooked food is set before one. Drawn from the
offerings of the poor, who tender meal, a bit of incense, milk,1 or garlands,
while the gods are waiting for the well-known savour of burnt-offering that
flies up with the smoke, as in Homer.2 Lucian in his Amores: 'The god is a
great eater, Lucian, and takes very little pleasure in what they call smokeless
sacrifices/ Athenaeus3 too uses it in the same sense: 'For we poets always
offer smokeless sacrifices/

12 Non est cura Hippoclidi

Hippocleides doesn't care

Hippocleides doesn't care, or, if11 am to reproduce

the rhythm, 'All's one to Hippocleides,' for it is a catalectic iambic dimeter.
This adage was used to convey that they were neglecting something and not
greatly concerned. It is derived from a story told at some length by
Herodotus2 in the Erato. To put it briefly, this Hippocleides was a son of
Teisander, who along with many other young men sought the hand of a
daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon. Cleisthenes tested the suitors for a whole
year, during which there was a party at which Hippocleides gave an
unseemly exhibition by dancing on his hands with his feet in the air. The
father took great offence at the young man's improper levity, and said: 'Son
of Teisander, you have danced yourself out of your marriage/ To which he
promptly replied 'Hippocleides doesn't care'; and the remark, as Herodotus
tells us, passed into a proverb. Plutarch3 turned the saying against the
author himself, in the essay which he wrote 'Against Herodotus': 'He seems
to me like Hippocleides, the man who danced on the dinner-table gesticulat-
ing with his legs: after dancing himself out of the truth, he would say
Hippocleides doesn't care/ Lucian4 in his Apologia: T should be satisfied
with the old saying Hippocleides doesn't care/ And again in the Hercules:
'Nor will Hippocleides care/ This adage is mentioned by Eustathius5 too in
his commentary on the first book of Homer's Iliad, and Aristophanes6
 I X 12 / LB II 3/1F 240

referred to it in the Wasps, when he constantly repeats the phrase 'Little I

care/

13 Canis in praesepi
Dog in the manger

The dog in the manger, is said of those who neither

enjoy something themselves nor allow other people to get any benefit from it;
for instance if a man were to keep valuable manuscripts tightly locked up,
which he never opens himself nor allows anyone else to read them, just like a
dog in a manger that does not eat the barley itself and prevents the horse
from eating it. Lucian1 Against an Ignoramus: 'But you behave like the dog
that lies in the manger, neither eating the barley itself nor making way for the
horse that could eat it/ He uses it again in his Timon. It is cited by Suidas2 in
his article on the proverb Nothing to do with Dionysus, but no source is
named: 'You bring the dog to the manger, and bring forward nothing to do
with Dionysus/ that is, you adduce something quite off the point, and of
what was relevant to the point at issue you adduce nothing. Athenaeus3 in
book 6 reports something similar of a tribe of Galatians called the Cordistae:
they abominate gold and do not import it into their own country, but none
the less do not cease to seize gold from other people. This tribe is said to be
the remnant of the Gauls who ravaged the oracle at Delphi under their leader
Brennus, who were pursued and dealt with mercilessly by their leader
Bathanatus. Hence their hatred of gold, for the sake of which they have
suffered so much; and yet they grudge it to anyone else.

14 Captantes capti sumus

We were made prisoners as we prisoners made

We were made prisoners as we ners made, when

things go topsy-turvy, and we are taken in ourselves by those whom we
were trying to impose upon. It is a common experience1 to fall into the traps
that we had set for others. It often happens that he who pretends to be in
love in order to secure a girl's affections begins himself to love her in earnest;
the man who tries to make someone else tipsy by constantly offering him
liquor ends up drunk himself; the prince who tries to drive a neighbour from
his throne loses his own instead. So too Horace:2 Thus captive Greece took
her rude victor captive/ Plato3 seems to have had the same thing in mind
when he wrote in the Theaetetus: Tt seems to me, Socrates, that the argument
which tries to entrap others is most often trapped/ Sophocles4 in the Oedipus
 I X 14 / LB II 372C 241

Coloneus: 'See how while grasping you yourself are grasped, / And while you
fish, are caught in fortune's net/ Plautus5 in the Epidicus: 'Now is the taker
taken/ Lucian6 in his Dialogues of Courtesans: 'I, alas, took her fancy, and at
the same time fell into her trap/ A metaphor either from war, or from fishing
or hunting.

15 In venatu periit
The hunt was her undoing

Lucian puts this with more wit in the Toxaris: 'The hunt was her undoing/
while (that is) she pursued the young man and tried to get him into her toils,
she was herself undone. Phrases moreover, such as 'to hunt for praise/ 'to
set traps for fame' are proverbial metaphors, and so is 'to fish for' something,
meaning to make enquiries and try to discover it.

16 In laqueos lupus
The wolf's fallen into the trap

The wolf's fallen into the trap. When some rascal is at last
reduced to extreme peril. For as the wolf is the most crafty of all living
creatures, everyone is delighted if by any chance he is caught in a trap, and
they all shout, 'The wolf's in the trap!' Recorded by Zenodotus.

17 Annosa vulpes haud capitur laqueo

An old vixen is not caught in a trap

An aged vixen cannot be caught in a

trap. An iambic line current as a proverb, applicable to a man who by age and
wide experience has become too skilful to be caught in some cunning trap.

18 Vulpes haud corrumpitur muneribus

A fox takes no bribes

A fox takes no bribes. Suidas cites Cratinus as

the authority for this adage. Used of experienced and wily people, who are
not easily taken in by the offer of some modest present or a bit of flattery, or
by promises. Gulls and some other birds can be taken with bait; but not
foxes. The Greek verb dorodokein, to take bribes, is borrowed from political
speeches or law-courts, where some have taken bribes before expressing an
opinion.
 i x 19 / LB ii 373A 242

19 Atticus in portum
An Athenian entering harbour

An Athenian entering harbour, used to be applied to

those who make a display of heroism where all is safe and it has no point at
all. Taken from Athenian sailors who, when about to enter harbour, used to
put on a splendid show by way of self-advertisement, but in action, that is, in
a sea-battle, were not nearly so energetic.

20 Capra Scyria
A Scyrian she-goat

A she-goat from Scyros. Zenodotus derives both this proverb

and its explanation from Chrysippus. It is appropriate for those who spoil
some good action by its opposite, or whose good qualities are tainted and
thrown into the shade by an admixture of faults, or who begin on the right
lines and end wrong. This is like a she-goat in Scyros, which is very wild,
and1 after filling the pail with milk kicks it over, herself undoing in this way
the good service she has rendered. Others think it is used of those who are
benefactors of their fellow-men, because the she-goats of that part of the
world are said to be very heavy milkers. This is stated also by Athenaeus2 in
the first book of his Doctors at Dinner, where he cites this line of Pindar: 'And
Scyrian she-goats for the milking best of all.'

21 Suspendio deligenda arbor

Choose your tree and hang yourself

When something perfectly monstrous and quite intolerable happened, the

Ancients used to say that one should choose a tree and hang oneself. This
comes from an attack on Theophrastus the eminent philosopher once
published by a courtesan called Leontium. Pliny the elder in the preface to
his Natural History: 'As though I were unaware that Theophrastus, a writer
so eminent that he achieved an immortal reputation, was attacked in writing
by a mere woman, and this gave rise to a proverbial expression that one
should choose a tree and hang oneself.' So Pliny; and there is something
very like it in Euripides,1 in the Alcestis: 'Such things call for the knife, or for a
noose high as heaven around one's neck.' Plautus2 in the Curculio: 'She is my
prize. Pray go and hang yourself/ Juvenal:3 'How can you bear a mistress
when ropes are to be had?' And in Plautus4 a character who was tired of life
wishes he had a coin to buy a rope with.
When I was about to publish this, in the year 1525, I happened by
 I X 21 / LB II 3730 243

chance on the collections of Caelius Rhodiginus.5 He says that in expound-

ing things like this many people miss the point, and boasts that he has solved
every difficulty; whereas there is no difficulty, and if there were, nothing
would be solved by what he tells us about hanging on the cross. Criminals do
not 'choose their tree/ they are led off to the gallows. Whereas those who
contemplate suicide do choose different forms of hanging, so it is clear that
they are not out of their minds but know just what they are doing.

22 Minervae £elem
Minerva against a cat

Minerva against a cat - we must supply 'You match.'

When vastly inferior things are paired with what is far better on the ground
that they agree in some small particular. What has the goddess Minerva in
common with a cat, except that both have grey-green eyes? For that is
traditionally the colour of Minerva's eyes, as it is in the owl and the cat;
whence already in Homer1 the epithet 'grey-eyed Athena.' Cats share
another feature with owls: they can see by night as well as by day, and like
them they lie in wait for mice. This is recorded2 by Zenodotus and Suidas.
The author of the Etymologicum3 points out a difference in spelling. Elouros,
the name of the tribe (who lived in Scythia and get their name from the
marshes) is written with an e; when it stands for an animal, it is written with a
dipthong, eilouros, as though to indicate that the tail is twisted or pulled,
though I find that authors neglect this distinction.

23 Versuram solvere
To pay by a switching-loan

To pay by a switching-loan is used of the man who finds a way out of his
present difficulties, but only by binding himself to face more and heavier
trouble later. For Donatus1 says that to arrange a switching-loan is 'to pay off
one debt by contracting another, or to borrow money at a higher rate of
interest and employ it at a lower rate/ So called, according to Festus
Pompeius,2 because they switch from one creditor to another. Terence3 in the
Phormio: 'You stick in the same mud; you pay by switching. The trouble that
hung over you is gone for the moment, but the burden grows/ Cicero4 in a
letter to Atticus: 'The economy which you recommended to me is remarkable;
so much so that I fear that the swap I arranged with you may have to be paid
off by a switching-loan/ And in his speech Pro Flacco: 'He denied that he had
raised any switching-loan at all in Rome.' Seneca5 De beneficiis, book 5:
'Switching begins at home, they say; like a loan made in play, it is instantly
 i x 23 / LB ii 3748 244

transferred/ Again6 in the last letter of book 2: 'Whatever the state of the
case, I must raise a switching-loan from Epicurus/ I must, that is, borrow
something from him to pay you what I owe you. And he uses a similar
metaphor in the fourth letter of book one: 'But I must draw to a close, so here
is something I found today much to my liking, though this flower too was
plucked in another man's garden/ Lactantius7 uses the proverb in book two
of his Institutiones: 'But when you ascribe the origin of things to Nature and
take it away from God, you are sticking in the same mud; you pay by
switching/ Demosthenes8 neatly explained this metaphor in his first
Olynthiac: 'You know how it is when men borrow easily at a high rate of
interest: for a short time they have plenty of money, but later they find their
capital has gone too. I very much fear, men of Athens, that it will be the same
with us: if we sit here much longer in idleness, seeking merely to please
ourselves, we shall find ourselves later on obliged to do many unpleasant
things which we had no wish to do, and may run great risks of losing the
place itself/

24 Animam debet
He owes his own soul

He owes his own soul. Donatus points out that this is a

proverbial expression, referring to anyone who is under such an immense
burden of debt that he owes more than all his possessions are worth, and will
end by owing himself. Terence in the Phormio: 'Suppose he owes his own
soul?' For there was a law in Antiquity that a man unable to pay his debts
should be put in chains and handed over to his creditor, to pay with his own
body - by manual labour, that is - what he could not pay in coin. Gellius1
quotes a law from the Twelve Tables which laid it down that the body of a
man who was in debt to many creditors and could not pay should be cut in
pieces and distribut

25 Summum jus, summa injuria

Extreme right is extreme wrong

Extreme right is extreme wrong means that men never stray so far from the
path of justice as when they adhere most religiously to the letter of the law.
They call it 'extreme right' when they wrangle over the words of a statute
and pay no heed to the intention of the man who drafted it. Words and
letters are like the outer skin of the law. The folly of some pedantic
interpreters of the law is fully and brilliantly shown up by Cicero1 in his
speech Pro Murena. Terence:2 'But the saying is, Chremes, that extreme right
 i x 25 / LB ii 374E 245

is often extreme injustice.' Cicero3 in the first book of the De offidis: 'Hence
came that proverb which is now so familiar, Extreme right is extreme wrong/
Columella4 in book one of his Agriculture: 'Nor for the matter of that should
we always exact whatever we have a right to; for our forefathers thought that
extreme right was extreme torment/ Celsus too as a young man is reported in
the Pandects,5 book 45, title De verborum obligatione, in the chapter Si servum
Stichum, as saying: 'For this is a question of justice and equity, a field in
which dangerous mistakes are frequently made under authority from the
science of the law/ Paulus too in book 50, in the title De regulis juris: 'In all
things, but in the law especially, regard should be had to equity/
Seneca6 uses a similar metaphor, summo animo, in the first book of his
On Anger, where he says: 'If you understand that the wickedness is not
deep-seated, but resides, as they say, in the surface levels of the heart/

26 Ne ignif er quidem reliquus est f actus

No one was left even to carry fire

No one remained even to carry fire. When we wish

to convey that an army was wiped out, so that not even the man who went in
front of it to carry fire was spared. For it was the custom in ancient times for a
priest to precede an army into battle, wearing a wreath of bay and carrying a
torch; and both sides refrained from using violence against him, because it
was thought sacrilege to draw the sword against a holy man. And so, if they
had wished to indicate that there had been some cruel massacre, they would
say 'No one was spared, not even the fire-carrier/ This adage is recalled by
Eustathius on the twelfth book of the Iliad, when he is explaining those lines
in Homer: 'Never thereafter, I think, will even a man with tidings / Find his
way home to the city/ He reminds us that there was another phrase of
proverbial form, 'Not a man was left to tell the tale,' whenever we wish to
convey that every single man was killed, so that not one got away to bring
the news; for a man to carry the news is often spared by the enemy
deliberately.

27
Root and branch

Related to this is Root and branch, words which conveyed

annihilation and the sort of utter destruction that leaves no survivors.
Thucydides in the seventh book of his History: 'For they were utterly
defeated and at no point was the disaster other than complete, but it was
what they call root and branch: land forces, ships, and everything perished/
 I x 27 / LB ii 3750 246

It will be more effective if transferred from battle, shipwreck, conflagration,

and similar disasters to other fields. If, for instance, you were to say that
'Lechery is a great plague among Christians, but what destroys the Christian
life root and branch is avarice/ and 'Ignorance of Greek destroyed all
humane learning root and branch/ Cicero uses a similar formula in his In
Pisonem, when he calls the temple of Castor 'the grave of all law and all
religion/ because that was the place where the authority of the laws and the
sanctity of religion had been overwhelmed.

28 Thracium commentum
A Thracian stratagem

A Thracian stratagem or invention. Found in Zenod-

otus, and may be twisted to apply to those who evade their promises by
inventing some skilful and cunning stratagem. Moreover, an origin for this
proverbial expression is suggested by Strabo1 in book nine of his Geography,
with Ephorus as his authority. The Thracians, having arranged a truce of
some days' duration with the Boeotians, continued their nightly forays none
the less. When the Boeotians had driven off their attacks, and were
protesting against the violation of the truce, the Thracians replied that they
had done nothing contrary to their undertaking; for their undertaking spoke
of days, and they had attacked at night. Zenodotus gives a very similar story.
The Thracians had established a ten-day truce, and then made raids by night
into Boeotia, where the people had relaxed their vigilance, relying on the
truce; and they left a number of casualties and carried off some prisoners.
The Boeotians protested against this breach of the agreement, and they
replied that it spoke of days and not nights. Hence the proverb, A Thracian
stratagem; for pareuresis, which we render by stratagem, is properly an
ingenious quibble, by which we escape from the terms of an undertaking;
what Plautus2 calls 'a bit of stitchery/ Terence3 too has 'For fear he stitches a
cap for his own head/ They add outside the agreement some invention that
makes nonsense of the whole thing.

29 Romanus sedendo vincit

Rome wins by sitting still

Rome wins by sitting still, is an ancient proverb, referring to those who

remain in peace and idleness and yet get what they want, or who achieve
their results by skill rather than force. Marcus Varro1 in the first book of his
Agriculture, chapter 2: 'I suggest then that meanwhile we follow the old
proverb, Rome wins by sitting still, until he comes/1 suppose it is taken from
the story of Fabius Cunctator,2 whose dogged patience broke down the
 i x 29 / LB ii 3y6A 247

youthful exuberance of Hannibal, and is immortalized in that line of Ennius:3

'That same man, / Whose slow, slow tactics saved the Roman state/ This is
quoted by Cicero4 in his Cato major, and adapted with a touch of genius by
Virgil5 in book 6. Not but what Livy,6 in the first book of his Macedonian War,
gives a similar account of the consul Sulpicius: 'And were he to be entirely
surrounded by those forces/ he says, 'it might have been thought that Rome
would win by sitting still/

30 Scopum attingere
To hit the target

To hit the target, is to achieve your aim, or to arrive

by guesswork at the right answer. Lucian1 in his Icaromenippus: 'And your
guess is not far from the target/ Similarly, Not to hit the target, To miss the
target, and other metaphors of the kind all have a proverbial ring. Diogenes2
made a witty use of this adage when he saw a small boy throwing stones at a
gallows. 'Stick to it' he said; 'you'll get there one day/ Pindar3 in the ninth of
his Nemean Odes: 'Aiming close to the heart of the Muses' target/ And again
in his sixth ode: T hope, great though my promises may be, to hit the target/
There is also a phrase 'To speak wide of the mark' used of a man whose
remarks are far from the point at issue; it is used by Gregory of Nazianzus4 in
his Monodia.

31 Simla non capitur laqueo

No monkey was ever caught in a trap

No monkey was ever caught in a trap.

Often applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught out. It was
once used of Heracleides, who had carelessly quoted something by
Dionysius when it was really from Sophocles. He was sent a copy of the text,
so that he could look up the line and confess he was wrong. Even then he
shilly-shallied and would not admit his mistake. Tt might happen by chance'
he said 'that the same line should occur in different poets/ At which
someone's comment was 'No monkey was ever caught in a trap/ Diogenes
Laertius is the authority. The lines run as follows in Greek: 'No aged monkey
e'er was caught in trap; / Or if he's caught, 'tis after many days/

32 Largitio non habet fundum

Bounty has no bottom

Cicero in the second book of the De officiis says 'We must always remember
the saying which has been so often used by our countrymen that it now
 I X 32 / LB II 3/6D 248

passes for a proverb: Bounty has no bottom/ By this they meant that
imprudent generosity can exhaust the most ample resources; in fact they
simply flow away. The figure looks as though it were taken from the
daughters of Danaus in the nether regions with their great jar full of holes.
Bottomless things are called in Greek and so Parthenius in
Athenaeus, book 11, speaks of an a bottomless cup.

33 Inexplebile dolium
A great jar that cannot be filled

A great jar that cannot be filled. This adage has various

applications. It fits, first of all, gluttons and heavy eaters; but even more
closely those who drink to excess and grow thirstier, the more they drink, as
used to be said of the Parthians. So Festus1 seems to have thought, for he
cites some author (I know not whom; the text is mutilated) as using 'a great
jar with holes' when he meant the belly; though in any case nature has made
it impossible to fill the belly, because whatever you put into it by way of the
mouth is excreted by other passages. It will also suit a forgetful person, one
of those who, if you tell them anything, let it slip immediately, and forget a
thing before they have learnt it properly, like Strepsiades in the Clouds of
Aristophanes:2 'Who learns some little bits, I know not what, / And then
forgets, ere he has them by heart.' This is much how Plautus3 uses it in the
Pseudolus: 'We put it into a great jar with holes, and waste our labour.' This
will also suit men who are generous beyond measure, as Aristotle4 suggests
in the first book of the Oeconomica: Tor the ability to acquire ought to go with
the ability to preserve what one has acquired. Otherwise it serves no useful
purpose, for it is fetching water in a sieve, and a great jar with holes, as the
phrase goes/ It is applicable also to grasping men whose avarice knows no
bounds, and the more they are filled with riches, the emptier they seem to be.
This is elegantly expressed in that line from Solon, quoted by Plutarch5 in his
essay 'On Love of Wealth': 'Of riches mortal men no limit know/ Zenod-
otus6 thinks that Tartarus itself can rightly be thought of as 'a great jar with
holes/ because all the thousands of the dead cannot fill it; and the Hebrew
sage7 names it in his list of insatiable things. It will be suitable also for those
men who wrongfully seize from some of their fellow-men what they can
wrongfully waste on others.
It is used also of those who labour in vain, as has been shown
elsewhere; for instance, in Catullus:8 'He'll fill those virgins' jars with their
own pitchers/ The adage takes its rise from the well-known fable of the
daughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands, and are said to have been
punished in the nether regions by having to draw water in leaky pitchers
 i x 33 / LB ii 377C 249

and pour it into a great jar which itself is full of holes, a burdensome and
useless task. The story is mentioned by Horace9 in the Odes: That great jar,
of water never full, / That through its leaky bottom runs away/ Tibullus10
too: 'And Danaus' daughters, for that they did Venus once offend, / Pour
Lethe water into jars empty without an end.' Lucian11 speaks of this in his
Timon, and Aristotle12 in the sixth book of the Politics. Lucian13 again in the
Hermotimus: Tor, as the proverb has it, the labour and toil that you ladle out
flows back again - the converse of the Danaids' great jar.' Plato14 also uses it
in several passages, especially in the Gorgias.

34 Cum adsit ursus, vestigia quaeris

Confronted with the bear you go looking for his tracks

You go hunting for the tracks of a bear

that is there in front of you. Used of people who are too timid to face up to the
problem that confronts them, and turn aside to easy things that don't matter.
The image is taken from cowardly huntsmen, who pretend they have not
observed the bear and act as though they were following its tracks, as an
excuse for getting away from the danger-point. Men like this are described
by Plato,1 in the Republic, book 5, as resembling dogs which will bite a stone,
and dare not touch the man who throws it. This is not far from something in
Plutarch's2 life of Lucullus. When Archelaus was urging him to abandon the
enemy and cross over into Pontus, on the ground that he would thus make
himself master of everything forthwith, Lucullus replied that he was as brave
as the average huntsman, and unlikely to pay no attention to the beasts and
go in search of their empty lairs.

35 Boni ad bonorum convivia ultro accedunt

Good men with good men dine, nor wait for an invitation

Good men with good men

dine, nor wait for an invitation. A proverbial hexameter line, which can be
used whenever a good man, relying on his personal merit and on the
friendship which exists in principle between all honest men, approaches
another like himself without waiting for the common formality of an
invitation. Some think it goes back to Hercules, who is said to have been the
first to use this line when he went unbidden to the house of Cetus in Trachis.
An iambic line1 is also current to the same effect: 'Unbidden friends to their
friends' parties go.' Homer2 tacitly alludes to the adage in the second Iliad:
'Came to his help unasked Menelaus good at the war-cry.' The scholiast
points out that this word is meant to convey Menelaus' courage in battle; for
 i x 35 / LB ii 3/8A 250

a small voice indicates a poor spirit, and 'war-cry' in Greek is sometimes

equivalent to 'battle/ as it still is today in Germany. Zenodotus3 in his
collection quotes a use of this adage in the opposite sense from a comedy by
Eupolis called Chrysogenes: 'Brave men with cowards dine, nor wait for an
invitation/ Plato4 conveys much the same meaning in the Symposium: 'Let's
make nonsense of the old proverb about the good going to dine with the
good unasked, and give it a new meaning/ Plato seems to have felt that
Homer had made a lesser man, in the shape of Menelaus, come to dine with a
much better one, because Agamemnon5 was a mighty warrior and Menelaus
was unwarlike. This passage is also quoted by Athenaeus in book four.
Though I do not myself think Homer meant this, because he testifies to
Menelaus' courage in his epithet 'good at the war-cry/ and introduces him in
several passages as giving a very good account of himself. Elsewhere6 too he
gives him the honourable epithet 'dear to the god of war/ In the first book of
Athenaeus,7 who quotes from Cilatinus, a character who had appeared
uninvited at a party is made to say: T have come to dinner as one good man to
others; for friends have all things in common/

36 In puteo cum canibus pugnare

To fight with dogs in a well

To fight with dogs in a well, used to be said when

anyone had to deal with a quarrelsome and contentious man, from whom he
could not shake himself free. It is also expressed in the form
where the 'fighting with dogs' is given by a single compound
verb.

37 Mihi ipsi balneum ministrabo

I'll fix my own bath

I will be my own bathman. When someone is devoted

to his own interests, or when he conducts his own affairs without waiting for
outside help. Aristophanes in the Peace: 'But, if you please, I'll fix my bath
myself/ The scholiast tells us that this derives from the practice in the public
baths in which, when the bathman went off duty, the bathers themselves
drew the water and poured it over themselves. Zenodotus thinks it can also
refer to those who put acorns in the fire to roast them. It may perhaps be
applied without absurdity to those who shake acorns off a tree. For in Greek
balaneus means a bath attendant and balanos an acorn; and thus the adage
admits of two interpretations.
 I X 38 / LB II 3780 251

38 Vir fugiens haud moratur lyrae strepitum

But the man who runs away won't stop to hear the fiddler play

But the man who runs away won't

stop to hear the fiddler play. A proverbial iambic line, referring to those who
are in a dangerous and serious situation, and in their need to make haste
ignore less important things. The fugitive from a battlefield does not think he
has time and leisure to listen to some musician. And this1 has many
applications: for instance, if you were to say that one ought not to waste time
on frivolous pleasures when our life here is exposed to so many dangers. On
this topic Seneca writes elegantly in one of the Letters to Lucilius: 'Let us skip
these most ingenious trifles, and hasten on to things that are likely to be of
real use to us. No one who is hurrying, full of anxiety, to fetch the midwife
for his expectant daughter stops to read the legal notices and the programs
for the games. No one running home on the news that his house is on fire
pauses to survey a chessboard to see how some piece that is shut in can be
rescued. But take my word for it: bad news is pouring in on you from all
sides, your house is on fire, your children in danger, your country
beleaguered, your property pillaged. Throw in shipwrecks and earthquakes
and all that is frightful. With all this to distract you, have you really time for
things which are purely entertaining?' Plutarch2 in his essay 'On the E at
Delphi': Those who lament love neither harp nor lyre.' This squares with
that saying in Ecclesiasticus:3 'A tale out of season is as music in mourning.'

39 Caninum prandium
A dog's dinner

'A dog's dinner' was used proverbially of an abstemious meal and one at
which no wine was drunk, because by some natural property dogs hate
wine. This adage is recorded by Aulus Gellius in the last chapter of book 13
of his Attic Nights, as follows: 'The passage in which that proverb occurs
runs like this' (it comes from a satire by Marcus Varro1 called
Water frozen stiff). 'You observe no doubt that Mnesteus says there are
three sorts of wine - black, white, and intermediate, called in Greek kirros,
which means tawny; new, old, and intermediate. The black, he says,
generates poison, the white is a diuretic, and the intermediate promotes
digestion; new wine is cooling, old wine heating, and the intermediate is a
dog's dinner. The meaning,' says Gellius, 'of the phrase "a dog's dinner,"
though of small importance, was the subject of long and anxious discussion.
An abstemious meal, at which no wine is drunk, is called a dog's dinner,
 i x 39 / LB ii 3793 252

because dogs do without wine. Once he had applied the term intermediate
wine to that which was neither new nor old, then, in view of the fact that as a
rule men speak as though all wine is to be called either new or old, his point
was that what is intermediate does not exert the effect of either new or old,
and is therefore not to be regarded as wine at all, because it neither cools nor
heats.' So Gellius. Plutarch2 in his Table-talk' was accustomed humorously
to call barbers' shops 'teetotal drinking-parties/ as I have pointed out
elsewhere.

40 Vir fugiens et denuo pugnabit

He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day

The man who runs away will fight

again. A proverbial iambic line, which tells us not to lose heart at once if
things have not gone well, because those who have lost one battle can win
the next. So Homer, * who gives the epithet heteralkes to victory, meaning that
which sides in turn now with one party and now with the other. And in
Homer again, in Iliad 8, Alexander says to Hector 'But victory changes sides
from man to man.' Elsewhere, in Iliad 3, 'For now with Pallas' help was
Menelaus victor, and now again it was I.' Demosthenes2 was thought by his
enemies to have disgraced himself, because in the victory of Philip king of
Macedon over the Athenians at Chaeroneia he had thrown away his shield
and taken to his heels, and thus earned the very discreditable nickname of
Rhipsaspis.3 But Demosthenes, a man not noted for modesty, is said to have
always countered this reproach with that most familiar proverbial line 'He
that fights and runs away will live to fight another day.' This is close to
Davus' remark in Terence:4 'No success here: we'll try another way.'
Tertullian5 uses the adage in his book on running away from persecution:
'But some people pay no attention to the divine command, and prefer to
apply to themselves that Greek line that contains the wisdom of the world,
He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day. In order, maybe,
to run away a second time? And when can a man win who has already
confessed defeat by running away?'

41 Ex stipula cognoscere
To judge by the stubble

To judge by the stubble, is used when we infer

from certain traces which remain in old age what a man was like when he was
young, the metaphor being taken from a cornfield. Homer in Odyssey 14: 'Yet
this I think you can tell, if you do but look at the stubble/ Lucian1 uses this
 i x 41 / LB ii 379F 253

adage in his False Prophet, which I long ago turned into Latin. Aristotle2 in
the Rhetoric explains 'stubble' as meaning old age: 'When he calls old age
stubble/ he says, 'he makes us understand and recognize the old man; for
both have lost their bloom/ Aristophanes3 in the Wasps uses a very similar
figure: 'You must gauge their strength when they were young from what
remains/ We say too that we infer what something was like from the
fragments or the ruin of it.

42 Eodem cubito
With the same yardstick

With the same yardstick, that is, the same rule, the same
standard of measurement. Lucian uses it sometimes; apart from other places,
it is in his How History Should Be Written: 'And in short there is one yardstick,
one accurate measure/ Aristophanes1 in the Frogs: 'For on the balance music
shall be weighed; / Yardsticks and rules be found for poetry/ Cornelius
Tacitus2 uses a not dissimilar image in the preface to his book On Orators,
when he says that he wishes to set out what he had learned from men of great
distinction by the same numbers and same lines of argument that they had
used. And Pliny3 in book 8 of his Letters uses the phrase 'an even balance/ It
may be off the point, but it will be useful to point out, that most metaphors
drawn from measurement are proverbial: 'to weigh the matter up/ 'to give
what has been done its due weight/ 'to restore the balance of goodwill/ 'an
adequate measure of thanks/ 'the balance of a transaction/ 'to size up the
reasons' for a thing, 'to equate one kindness with another/ 'to equalize
services rendered/ 'to pay off old scores/ and other phrases of the same sort.

43 Monstrari digito
To be pointed out

To be pointed out, as a way of saying 'to be a

distinguished person/ is in common use as a proverb even today. Horace1 in
the Odes: 'The pointing finger of the passers-by/ Persius:2 'And grand it is /
To see them point, and hear them say "That's he!"' Lucian3 in his Harmonides:
'And in a crowd to be a very important person and have people point you
out/ A possible source for this is an anecdote told of Diogenes by Laertius.4
Some tourists had come to Athens in hopes of seeing Demosthenes, of whose
fame they had heard so much at home. Diogenes stretched out his middle
finger. 'There you have the man/ he said, 'the great Athenian demagogue/
thus conveying by the same gesture that he had a great appetite for applause
and was given to obscene practices.
 i x 44 / LB ii 3800 254

44 Ne altero quidem pede

Not one foot

to depart Not one foot. Lucian in the Harmonides.

Again in his Sects: 'Who has never set one foot outside Ethiopia/ This is to be
classed with those I have recorded elsewhere,1 'a finger-breadth/ 'a foot's
breadth/ 'a nail's breadth/ which can be used to indicate very close
agreement or zealous support; as one can with the phrase 'night and day/2
This is rather differently expressed by Livy3 in the first book of his
Macedonian War: 'Others remained in camp without posting sentries, and
with sleeping and drinking made no difference between night and day/

45 E diametro opposita. Diametro distans

Diametrically opposite. Distant by a diameter

Diametrically, was formerly used of things in violent

contrast, the metaphor being taken from geometry, in which the maximum
possible degree of opposition is called 'diametrical/ Lucian1 in the Tyrant:
'For our life is, as they say, the diametrical opposite of theirs/ Athanasius2 in
a book of his on the synod of Nicaea: 'Who are, if I may so put it, diametrically
opposed to the opinion of Sabellius/ Basil3 uses the same phrase in a letter to
Athanasius. For a diameter is a straight line that bisects a figure equally in its
longest dimension; the diameter of a circle, for instance, runs from the
highest point of the circle to its lowest, passing through the centre. So
Macrobius4 defines it in the second book of his commentary on the Dream of
Scipio, and Euclid's5 definition concurs. In Latin this line is called the
dimetiens,6 that which gives the through measurement, for the Greek word
diametros comes from the verb for measuring from one end to the other.
Aristotle7 gives the reason for the name in his Problems, section 15 problem 2.
This is related to Dis dia pason, of which I have treated elsewhere.8

46 Audi quae ex animo dicuntur

Listen to a man who speaks from the heart

Listen to a man who speaks from the heart. Serious

remarks made with no attempt at concealment are said to come from the
heart, and this expression is in common use of a man who speaks his mind.
Lucian1 in his Jupiter tragoedus: 'Listen then, ye gods, to one who speaks his
mind, as the saying is/ Flattery and pretence speak from the throat and not
the heart. Plutarch,2 in the essay he entitled 'How to Tell a Flatterer from a
Friend,' quotes these iambic lines:
 I X 46 / LB II 381A-B 255

Would I had some poor man, or if he please,

One baser yet, who out of mere goodwill
Would leave his fear and speak straight from the heart.

He adds that these words do not come easily to rich men and princes, who
utterly hate the truth; nor can tender ears endure what is not heavily
sweetened with flattery and spiced with adulation. Under the same
metaphor we should class that phrase in Plautus,3 'to love from the soul,' and
he also has 'to pursue with heart and soul and strength'; both are in the
Captivi. Its opposite is 'only from the lips,' for 'not from the heart'; Seneca4 in
his Letters to Lucilius: 'This does not come only from the lips.'

47 Aut bibat aut abeat

He must either drink or quit

He must either drink or quit is an adage that instructs us either to adapt

ourselves to time and place or to withdraw from human society, as Cato1 is
said to have done when, being unable to assume the cheerful air appropriate
to the feast of Flora, he left the theatre. This comes from those symposia2 or
drinking-parties that were traditional in Greece, in which it was customary
to elect someone by throwing knucklebones to be a sort of chairman of the
party, and lay down rules for it, which they called 'laws.' These 'laws' were
the subject of a humorous poem by Valerius of Valentia, which he called
Tapullae, as Festus Pompeius3 tells us. And so the chairman was called the
basileus or king; Plutarch's4 name is symposiarch. Varro,5 quoted by Nonius,
says that the Latin for this was modiperator, as though from modum imperans,
prescribing a limit, which the drinkers should not exceed or fall short of.
Athenaeus,6 book 10, on the authority of Eupolis tells us that those in charge
were called oinoptai, wine-watchers, or opthalmoi, eyes. Horace7 too men-
tions the custom in the Odes: 'Nor shall you cast the bones to choose / A ruler
of the feast.' From this merry code of laws one still survives: He must either
drink or quit. Cicero8 speaks of it in the fifth book of his Tusculan Questions.
Tt seems to me' he says 'that in life one should maintain the same law as held
good in Greek drinking-parties: He must either drink, it said, or quit. And
rightly. A man should either enjoy the pleasure of drinking on an equal
footing with the others, and thus avoid the risk of being roughly handled
when they are flown with wine and he is still sober, or he should leave. Thus
the wrongs of fortune, which you cannot endure, can be left behind you in
your flight.' Thus far Cicero. Some use the form Drink or go.9 How much
more humane this is than the law which Empedocles was made to obey at a
drinking-party by the party-chairman! Either he drank, or the wine was
 i x 47 / LB ii 38iE 256

poured over his head. Empedocles was so furious at this that next day he
called together the council and laid a complaint against the man who had
invited them, who was responsible, and the symposiarch, and secured the
condemnation of both. The story is in Diogenes Laertius.10 But our chairmen
go further and lay down laws more suitable for Scythians: Either drink up,
they say, or I will break this stoup, large as it is, over your head. So it is not
unusual for social drinking to develop into single combat.

48 Domi conjecturam facere

To draw a home-grown conclusion

To draw a conclusion at home, from one's own resources.

What is not brought in from some outside sources is said proverbially to be
home-grown. Plautus in the Cistellaria: This conclusion is home-grown, all
my own work/ that is, it is drawn from my own experience. Seneca De
beneficiis, book 5: 'Switching begins at home, they say; like a loan made in
play, it is instantly transferred/

49 Domi habet. Domi nascitur

He has it at home. It's home-grown

To the same metaphor belongs To have at home. For we say that 'we have
something at home/ when it is to be found in us and there is no need to
borrow it from others. This is evidently derived from the practice of
borrowing tackle from others which you do not possess at home. Terence1 in
the Adelphoe: 'What nonsense! He has plenty to learn from at home/ Cicero2
writing to Varro: 'But why do I say all this to you now, when you have it all
home-grown?' And again in the Academic Questions, book 2: 'And pray desist
from your generalities; I have plenty of those home-grown'; they are, that is,
part of the orator's stock-in-trade. And so you could say with some point
'Why seek for happiness in things like that? You have the materials for
blessedness at home already' or Tt is a king's business to get home-grown
advice, and not to depend on the opinions of outsiders/

50 Confringere tesseram
To break one's token

In Plautus in the Cistellaria someone is said to have broken his token when he
has cut himself off from returning to a house. When a lover says that he had
taken an oath to marry the bawd's daughter, and begs her not to let him
commit perjury, her reply is 'Be off with you, and find a place where there is
 I X 50 / LB II 382B 257

backing for your oath. With us here, Alcesimarchus, you have broken your
token.' This token is a symbol of friendship, which a former guest could
produce to secure recognition if he ever came back again.

51 Frigidam aquam suffundere

To pour cold water

To pour cold water seems to be used by Plautus in the Cistellaria for secret
provocation. For in that play a woman of the town complains of respectable
married women who inflame their husbands, as far as they can, with hatred
of her and her class. They're civil enough to our class in public/ she says,
'but in secret, if they ever get a chance, they treacherously pour cold water.
They say we're too familiar with their husbands, call us their rivals.' Clearly
derived from the men at the races who used to pour cold water over the
horses so that thus refreshed they might run faster, and thus provoked them
to race. This employment is also mentioned in the Pandects1 of the civil law,
book 3, title De Us qui infamia notantur, citing Ulpian, in the following words:
'And in general all agree on this, and it seems desirable that neither actors
nor athletes nor charioteers nor those who throw cold water over the horses
nor those employed in any other capacity in the service of the public games
should be subject to public ignominy/ So Ulpian. This was done2 also, I
believe, at the Olympic games or similar contests, sometimes for this further
purpose, to prevent the wheels, as they got hot through revolving so fast,
from catching fire. Unless anyone prefers to think it taken from those3 who as
a joke or to make fun of their victims sprinkle water unexpectedly over the
place where a party is being held, or those who sprinkle water over someone
to make him a laughing-stock, which is a favourite joke of bath-men. Hence it
is that Julius Pollux4 tells us in his seventh book that plunein, to scrub, is
sometimes used in the sense of abusing a person, 'dressing him down/ So
Aristophanes5 in the Plutus: 'dressing me down before so many men,'
spoken by a character complaining that he has been soaked in water to make
him ridiculous before a large crowd. But it seems6 more likely to be an image
taken from bronze-foundries, where the smiths sprinkle cold water from time
to time over the hearth to make the fire burn more vigorously.

52 In senem ne quod collocaris beneficium

Never do a kindness to an old man

Never do a kindness to an old

man, is recorded expressly as a proverb by Aristotle1 in the second book of
the Rhetoric: 'And he who advises us not to make friends with an old man can
 I X 52 / LB II 382E 258

claim the support of the proverbial saying that one should never do an old
man a kindness/ It is still a common saying today that one should not waste a
kindness on an old man or a child, because the one does not repay and the
other does not remember it. There is also an adage of the same sort in
Diogenianus:2 'Never be kind to old men or to a woman or a child or to
someone else's dog or to a boatman who never stops talking/ because what
is expended on such people is clearly lost. Seneca3 in the third book of the De
beneficiis: Thus it comes about that we forget our teachers and what we owe
to them, because we leave our childhood completely behind us; thus benefits
that we received as adolescents slip from our minds, because we never pass
in review what happened to us then/

53 Stultus est qui patre caeso liberis pepercit

He's a fool who kills the father and spares the children

Immediately after the preceding he adds, expressly as a proverb, 'And he

who advises you to kill the sons whose fathers you have killed, has the
support of the old saw: Fool is he who kills the father and the children leaves
behind/ He records the same thing later among proverbial sayings: He's a
fool who killed the father and spared the children. It is a proverbial line1 of
verse: 'Fool is he who kills the father and the sons allows to live/ Herodotus2
uses it in Clio: 'For I now feel I have acted like a man who should kill a father
and spare his sons/ This adage is said to have been used by Philip of
Macedon3 when doing away with some children whose fathers he had
killed. For one ought either to refrain in the first place from killing the
parents, or else to remove the sons also, who later on will avenge their
father's death. There is a memorable remark4 on record, made by the soldiers
who assassinated the emperor Maximinus and his son, to the effect that from
a worthless litter not one puppy should be left alive. Here belongs that
sentence in Homer,5 in the third Odyssey: 'How good it is that, when the sire
is slain, / The son should yet be left/ The adage will have its uses when we
have to point out that one should either not provoke people at all, or should
make a job of them, so as to leave no remnant to cause us trouble in the
future.

54
Fair-spoken

Fair-spoken, was used, and today is still commonly used, of

those whose words are good and their actions bad. It was an accusation
levelled particularly against the emperor Pertinax, as Julius Capitolinus
 i x 54 / LB ii 3830 259

records in his life. Paul in his epistle to the Romans uses xpi^oroXoytO! for this
kind of fair-spoken behaviour: 'And by their fair speech and smooth words
beguile the hearts of the innocent.'

55 Pulchre dixti. Belle narras

Fine words! A likely story!

This seems to be the place for those ironical comments which have become
proverbial, such as are frequent in comedy: Dixti pulchre, Fine words! Belle
narras, A likely story! KaXwg e'Xe^a?, What you say is splendid, when
something has been said that is quite absurd. Plato in the Euthydemus
expressly calls it proverbial. Plato's words are: 'As the saying goes, this is all
very splendid.' Again in the Gorgias: 'Now let me tell you, as they say, a very
pretty story.'

56 Figuli opes
A potter's wealth

Wealth made of clay. Of undependable and fragile

things that cannot possibly last long, comparable to potters' vessels which
any mishap can so easily break. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus.

57 Lepus dormiens
A hare asleep

A hare asleep, is suitable for the man who pretends to do

what he is not doing or conceals the fact that he is doing what he does. Some
think this was the sort of sleep enjoyed by Ulysses when he was put ashore
on the island of Ithaca by the Phaeacians; so we learn from Plutarch. * The fact
that a hare sleeps with its eyes open is recorded by a great many other
authors, and particularly by Pliny,2 book 11 chapter 37, who says that this is
known in human beings also; in Greek they are called Corybants. Nor will it
be wrong, I think, to use it of timid persons. The adage is recorded by many
authorities.

58 Sero Jupiter diphtheram inspexit

Jupiter was slow looking into his records

Jupiter has looked up the record,

but after long delay. It is a proverbial iambic line, referring to those who do at
length pay the penalty for their misdeeds, though late in the day. For
 i x 58 / LB ii 383F 260

Antiquity believed that Jupiter wrote everything down on this diphthera,

which is goatskin used for keeping records, and for the time being
overlooked many transgressions, only to exact penalties from the guilty
later. It will also fit very nicely for princes who overlook offences for a long
time and punish them in the end.

59 Aut mortuus est aut docet litteras

He must be either dead or teaching school

He must be either dead or teaching

school. An iambic line current as a proverb, and used in old days to convey
that a man was in great misfortune, though it was not clear what he was
doing. This passed into common speech, as Zenodotus tells us, on the
following occasion. The Athenians, under command of Nicias, had on one
occasion fought and lost a battle against the Sicilians; they suffered heavy
casualties, and many prisoners were taken and carried off to Sicily, where
they were compelled to teach Sicilian children their elements. And so the few
who escaped and returned to Athens, when asked what so-and-so was
doing in Sicily, used to reply with the line I have quoted above: 'He must be
either dead or teaching school/

60 Oportet testudinis carnes aut edere aut non edere

When you're offered turtle-meat, either eat or do not eat

Eat, or don't eat, your turtle:

you must choose, is a proverbial iambic line, directed against those who,
having taken up some piece of business, go through with it slowly, neither
finishing nor giving it up. Some think the saying derives from an author
called Terpsion; and among them is Athenaeus, book 8, who says he was the
first to lay down rules about eating, and published a code which made clear
what one ought to abstain from and what one ought to eat, in which was this
rule about turtle, 'eat or don't eat.'1 They say further that turtle-meat eaten in
moderate quantities causes griping of the bowels, which is relieved by larger
amounts; very much what Pliny2 tells us about lettuce. It amounts to a way of
saying: Make up your mind. Either go to war or don't go to war; either study
or don't study. Remember how many activities there are which are admirable
if you throw yourself into them, and do harm if you are lukewarm; or which
do not admit of mediocrity, like music and poetry. Again, there are3 some
things of which a taste is sufficient, to which class the study of philosophy
was assigned by Neoptolemus in Ennius and Callicles in Plato. It is not far
from that text in the Apocalypse:4 T would thou wert hot or cold.'
 I X 6l / LB II 384 261

61 Bonae leges ex mails moribus procreantur

111 manners produce good laws

Macrobius in the third book of his Saturnalia: 'It is an old saying that ill
manners make good laws. We should have no need of physicians and their
physic unless people fell ill; and in the same way we should have no need to
make laws unless people led wicked lives/ Hence there was in Aegina in the
old days a special penalty inflicted on the man who had given rise to the
passing of a new penal statute. Our authority is Aristotle1 in the second book
of the Rhetoric. Cornelius Tacitus,2 book 15: 'Experience proves that excellent
laws and honourable precedents originate among good men from the
misdeeds of others/ Here belongs that remark of Solon3 who, when asked
why he had enacted no law against parricide, replied that he had not
expected it would be necessary.

62 Bos alienus subinde foras prospectat

A borrowed ox is always looking over the hedge

borrowed ox is always looking over

the hedge. Of those who when in strange company do not get the treatment
they think they deserve, and often wish they were in their own circle.
Everyone finds life more enjoyable at home, like a sheep in its familiar fold;
when not at home, there are many things we do not like, and much that we
feel the need of. Plutarch seems to have been alluding to this proverb in his
'Table-talk/ decade 8 problem 2, when he says 'But do not despise your own
powers; don't be always looking elsewhere/ meaning Do not seek from some
outside source what you can derive from the interpreters of Plato. And so we
can properly use the phrase 'look elsewhere' of a man who is not content
with what he has and relies on something outside. He also uses it in his essay
'On Virtue and Vice/

63 Septimus bos
The seventh ox

The seventh ox, was used in old days of stupid and brutish
people, whence came a current iambic line 'That seventh ox the clever
proverb tells of/ This is said to have arisen from a practice in Antiquity,
when the first six days of a lunar month were past, of modelling an ox in
dough and baking it, with the idea that its horns would reproduce the
moon's first quarter, due on the seventh day. Some prefer another
 i x 63 / LB ii 385A 262

explanation. Among the Ancients there were six animals normally used for
sacrifice to the gods, sheep, pig, she-goat, bull, domestic fowl, and goose;
and poor people who could not afford a live animal for sacrifice used to make
a model of an ox out of dough. Since this had neither life nor feeling, it
became proverbial for stupidity. Suidas1 quotes the Erechtheus of Euripides
and the Iris of Achaeus as containing examples of this proverb in use, though
he does not give their actual words.

64 Summis naribus olfacere

To smell with the tip of one's nose

To smell with the tip of one's nose, for to

detect on very light contact and an inference of the slightest, is found in
Lucian in his Jupiter Confuted.

65 Si meus ille stilus fuisset

Had I held the pen

'Had I then held the pen' says Cicero in the second Philippic for Had this
business been entrusted to my judgment and my management, the metaphor
being drawn from playwrights by whose stylus and pen the play is written
right to the end. Cicero's words run as follows: 'But I fear there is one point
you will not make good. Had I been one of their group, I should have swept
not merely a king but the whole idea of kingship out of our public life. Had I
held the pen, as the saying goes, take my word for it, I should have finished
off not only one act, but the whole play/ The stylus is the sharp-pointed
metal implement which we use for writing on wax tablets; it is transferred
metaphorically to the character and general 'feel' of a man's literary style, to
which Cicero refers.

66 Indus elephantus baud curat culicem

An Indian elephant does not notice a gnat

In the letters which pass under the name of Phalaris can be found an adage
which goes something like this: An Indian elephant does not notice a gnat.
The reason for this is the exceptional toughness of the elephant's hide,
which is said actually to repel javelins, so far is it from being sensitive to a
gnat's bite. It will be possible to use this whenever we wish to convey that
slight and casual injuries should be overlooked by lofty minds.
 I X 67 / LB II 3850 263

67 Lutum luto purgare

To purge away mud with mud

Mud is said to be purged away with mud when

something dirty is removed with dirty means, with the result that the dirt is
not removed but either altered or actually made worse. Apollonius in one of
his letters: 'Not even he could persuade the Ephesians not to purge away
mud with mud/ He speaks of the priests who were polluting the altars of the
gods with blood, and supposed this was a means of expiation. Here belongs
a remark made, if I am not mistaken, by Diogenes.1 Having gone into some
very dirty public baths, he asked The people who bathe here, where do they
go to get a bath?' - the suggestion being that they left such baths dirtier than
when they came in. The same thing happens in Alexandria,2 where the
townsfolk keep large flocks of ibises in the city with the idea that they will eat
up the snakes and the refuse from the slaughter-houses; but they then befoul
everything once again with their own filthy droppings.

68 Quocunque pedes ferent

Wherever your feet take you

Wherever your feet take you, a way of saying 'in

any direction whatever/ This will be suitable whenever we have no definite
mark to which to direct our efforts. Lucian in the Hermotimus: 'Nor shall we
do as the proverb says, and go wherever our feet take us/ Horace1 in the
Epodes:

To go where'er our feet may stray,

Or south or rude south-wester o'er the waves
Sweep us away.

Again in the Odes: 'Go whither feet and breezes call/ So too Theocritus2 in
Hylas: 'Where his feet led, he went/ Again3 in Thalysia: 'Whither this
noontide do you drag your feet?' And Virgil:4 'Whither do your feet take
you, Moeris? Where the road takes you, to town?' Plato5 uses a not dissimilar
formula in the third book of the Republic: 'But wherever the argument carries
us, as a wind might, we must follow/

69 Cyclopica vita
To live like the Cyclops

To live like the Cyclops, stands for a very wild and

 i x 69 / LB ii 386A 264

barbarous life, governed by no law or civil discipline and guided by no

worship of any gods. Such is the life described by Homer1 in the ninth book
of the Odyssey through the mouth of Polyphemus: 'Foolish art thou,
stranger, or thou comest from far away, when thou commandest me to fear or
reverence the gods. We Cyclopes care nothing for Jove that bears the aegis
nor for the blessed gods.' And in the same book: T will take soundings of the
men, if there are any, whether they are brutal and fierce and have no justice
in them, or are hospitable to strangers and godfearing at heart.' Euripides2
follows Homer when he makes his Cyclops speak as follows: 'I shake not,
stranger, at Jove's thunderbolt, / Nor know I Jove a stronger god than I.'
Strabo3 in book 11 of his Geography writes that the Albanians were commonly
said to live like the Cyclops, because they took no interest in agriculture and
were idle and primitive where all the arts of life were concerned.

70 Longe lateque
Far and away

When they wish to convey the idea of a considerable difference, they do so

by using the words 'far and away.' Aulus Gellius: 'I think myself, unless my
judgment is blinded by my partiality and deep respect for this particular
author and for traditional habits of style in general, that it is far and away
wider in scope, longer in time, and in general more extensive to refer to the
population of an entire city by the word "mortals" rather than "men."' In the
Pandects these words are cited from Ulpian: 'If the bequest is of the use of a
piece of land, no one doubts that this is far and away less than the use and
enjoyment and something of a quite different nature.' The image looks as
though derived from land-surveying.

71 Similes habent labra lactucas

Like lips like lettuce

Like lips like lettuce: whenever like falls to the lot of like - when an ill-taught
teacher gets an unteachable pupil, when a public with low standards of
honesty gets a dishonest government, when an abusive counsel for the
prosecution meets an abusive defending counsel, when a cantankerous
husband has a cantankerous wife - in a word, whenever bad things befall
bad people, and men get what they deserve. The adage took its rise from a
donkey eating thistles. Lettuce is a soft and juicy plant, yet not so very unlike
a thistle, especially the woodland kind. So then thistles on the one side are
thorny and prickly above the average in leaf and stem and even in flower,
and on the other a donkey's lips are as hard and rough as could be, so that
 I X 71 / LB II 3&7A 265

nothing in the way of lettuce could be more appropriate to them than this.
Moreover, that some people used to serve thistles instead of lettuce even at
dinner-parties is asserted by Julius Capitolinus1 in his life of the emperor
Pertinax. Pliny2 too in book 19 gives the following account of thistles: 'It
might be thought that I had mentioned all the vegetables that are of any
importance, did there not remain one of high commercial value, about which
one cannot speak without some sense of shame. It is well known that
thistles, especially round metropolitan Carthage and Cordova, bring in six
thousand sesterces from quite small plots; for we convert even the oddest
products of different regions to serve our gormandizing, and even grow
things which sensible animals will not touch/ Saint Jerome3 uses and at the
same time explains the proverb in a letter to Chromatius as follows:
'Following the precdent set by the only thing (according to Lucilius) in his
whole life that made Crassus laugh - like lips like lettuce, when the donkey
was eating thistles - that a feeble helmsman should steer a leaking ship, and
a blind man lead the blind into the ditch, and the ruler take his cue from those
he rules.' So Jerome. This Crassus4 was the grandfather of the Crassus who
died in battle against the Parthians, and whose standards were later
recovered by Augustus. He is included in the list of those who are said
never to have laughed once in a lifetime, and are therefore called agelastoi,
laughless. Cicero5 in his speeches tells us that Licinius Crassus according to
Lucilius laughed once in his whole life. Pliny6 in the Natural History, book 7
chapter 19, says: 'It is reported that Crassus, the grandfather of Crassus who
was killed fighting the Parthians, never laughed and was therefore called
Agelastus, just as many people, we know, are unable to cry.' St Jerome7 in
the Adversus Rufinum: 'I at least, to make a very strait-laced man laugh, that
you may one day imitate Crassus, who according to Lucilius only laughed
once in his life.' Macrobius8 also mentions it in the second book of his
Saturnalia.

72 Dignum patella operculum

The cover is worthy of such a cup

Something very like this is used by Jerome1 again in his letter to Chromatius:
The cover is worthy of such a cup. 'In my native country,' he says, 'boorish
rusticity is the natural thing. Men's god is their belly, they live from day to
day, and the man who has most money is the most respected. And the cover,
to use a well-worn popular saying, is worthy of such a cup.' He refers to a
bishop who is well adapted to the dishonest behaviour of his flock. Jerome
again2 in the Adversus Rufinum: 'That you should be translating that book of
Eusebius in support of Pamphilus, that you should be putting your cover on
 I X 72 / LB II 3870 266

that poisonous cup.' Plato3 in the Hippias major, discussing the difference
between the beautiful and the appropriate, has something not very far from
our proverb: 'Which is more appropriate, he will say, when you put on the
fire that admirable pot of which we spoke, full of admirable pease-pottage - a
gold toryne or one made of fig-wood?' The word toryne4 in the Greek is
rendered by Plato's translator as indecula. The author of the Etymologicum
suggests that toryne* is a word peculiar to Attic, and meant the same to the
Athenians as eusegetis. Suidas calls it the tool with which the pot was stirred.

73 Si juxta claudum habites, subclaudicare disces

If you live next to a cripple, you will learn to limp

Plutarch in his essay 'On the Education of Children':

If you live next to a cripple, you will learn to
limp. The scholiast on Pindar1 gives this in the form 'Live next a cripple; you
will learn to limp.' Here belongs also that line from Hesiod2 which I have
quoted elsewhere: 'An evil neighbour is as great a bane' etc. Such indeed is
the unhappy state of human affairs, because faults pass from man to man
more easily than good qualities; yet there is truth in what Hesiod adds: 'as a
good neighbour is a boon.' So Pindar3 in the seventh of his Nemean Hymns: Tf
one man has need of another, what shall we say one neighbour is to another,
if he loves him with steadfast heart? A joy beyond all price.' Though I find
the Greeks are not agreed on either the reading or the interpretation of this
passage. Some of them read ysverm (partakes of) instead of Several (has need
of) and refer this to the way one man shares good and bad fortune with
another, and especially with a neighbour. And clearly one should read
so that it agrees with the participle The scholiast
quotes another line from Hesiod:4 'Neighbours come just as they are, while
kinsmen are putting their belts on.' And there is a well-known story of
Themistocles5 who, when he put a piece of land up for sale, told the
auctioneer to add to its other merits that it had an excellent neighbour. The
point of the proverb6 is that association with wicked men is very dangerous,
because faults of the body and still more faults of the mind pass like an
infection from one man to another. Ovid: 'Watching the captives you
yourself are caught; / Full many a fault is by contagion taught.' Aristotle7
thinks this most likely to happen in diseases of the eyes, because that part of
the body is so easily moved. Again in skin diseases, being on the surface of
the skin and in the glutinous humour and passing easily to another person
by contact. Last but not least, all diseases which arise from the corruption of
the breath, plague for example, because the breath easily passes from one
 i x 73 / LB ii 3880 267

man to another. There is also a kind of underlying natural sympathy, which

makes a man yawn when he sees someone else yawning, and wish to make
water when he sees another doing so. The authority for this is Alexander8 of
Aphrodisias. And if you live constantly in the society of someone who
stammers, you learn to stammer yourself. A man's moral corruption rubs off
on those who live in his company. Aristotle,9 section 6 problem 4, enquires
why ophthalmia, consumption, and skin diseases pass to other people by
contagion, but this does not happen in all diseases. Plutarch10 in his essay
'How to Tell a Flatterer from a True Friend' says that such is the force of
continuous association, we imitate unconsciously even the faults of those
with whom we live; so Plato's friends used to copy his stoop, Aristotle's
associates echoed his lisp, the friends of Alexander the Great his twisted
neck and his harsh voice in conversation. Plato11 in the second book of the
Laws elegantly describes how contagion leads a man astray: 'Is it not likely,
or even inevitable, that it should be the same as when a man lives among men
of bad character and does not abhor their behaviour but is content to accept
it, though he may rebuke them humorously, as though his own wickedness
were merely a dream? I presume that in such a case the man who is content
will end up by resembling whatever it is that contents him.'

74 Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava

Evil communications corrupt good manners

There is an iambic line of Menander which belongs here, the line which the
Apostle St Paul did not disdain to quote in his first epistle to the Corinthians:
'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' Tertullian1 in his Ad uxorem
translates the Greek line, but freely and in the style of Roman comedy: 'Let
the way of life you follow and the company you keep be godly, mindful of
that line of verse sanctified by the Apostle: Bad company corrupts good
character.' A similar maxim is recorded by Aristotle2 in book 9 of the Ethics.
There is also an iambic line3 current in Greek: 'Bad company will make you
bad yourself.' Though it seems a little far from my purpose to collect such
material, I cannot refrain from adding the following from the third book of
Seneca's4 On Anger, which may not contribute much to our understanding of
the proverb, but is full of lessons for the conduct of life: 'We take our
character' he says 'from the company we keep, and the spirit passes on its
defects to its neighbours, much as some bodily ailments pass by contagion. A
man addicted to drink draws his associates into a love of the bottle; the
society of effeminates can soften a strong man, and, if they are given the
chance, a brave one; the poison of avarice seeps across into those who have
 i x 74 / LB ii 3898 268

anything to do with it. It is the same, in the opposite direction, with virtue; it
can make everything better with which it is associated, and a suitable
country and more healthy climate have never had such a good effect on
ill-health as the company of better men can have on the poor-spirited. How
great this influence can be you will understand, if you consider how even
wild beasts grow tame through living with human beings and that no animal
however fierce retains its ferocity when it has long endured the society of
men/ For all this I have been quoting Seneca's own words. What is more,
while the intercourse of daily life in all its contacts has very great power to
mend or mar the characters of men, this is especially true of the spoken word.
Brought forth as it is from the inner recesses of the human mind, it has a
secret natural force, better conveyed by the Greek term energeia, which it can
pour into the mind of any hearer, bringing an instant venom if it is poisonous
and a powerful remedy if it is wholesome. And so I never remember reading
an utterance by any famous philosopher which seems to me fit to be
compared with words my friend John Colet,5 a man of equal scholarship and
integrity, used to repeat: 'We are, what we are made by our daily
conversation: we are shaped by what we hear round us every day.' And
what he said about conversation is also to be understood of what we read.
Those who spend their whole lives on gentile literature end up as pagans;
those who read nothing but filthy books must needs develop in their own
characters a streak of filth. For reading surely is a kind of conversation.

75 Arums clibanum
Annusand the oven

Annus and the oven, was applied in old days to those who
had made some new invention, Annus being an Egyptian credited with the
invention of ovens to bake bread in. For in very1 early times they lived on
porridge and polenta, and the use of baked bread was unknown. On the
theory of baking bread in ovens Pliny2 has much to say in book 18 chapter i \.
And hence the thing also gets its name. Plautus3 in the Aulularia calls it
artoptesia. Seneca4 in one of his Letters to Lucilius points out that in the
beginning bread was kneaded by hand and baked in hot ashes in an
earthenware pot; 'Ovens and other devices for controlling the heat at will
were gradually discovered later.' Bread so baked5 was called kribanites. This
adage is mentioned both by Suidas and by the scholiast on Aristophanes'6
Acharnians. Though the texts mostly have anthropos; only in one place have I
found it written Annas, but personally I think it is better regarded as a proper
name.
 i x 76 / LB ii 3900 269

76 Magistratus virum indicat

'Tis the place that shows the man

Command displays the man. An iambic dimeter

that circulated as a proverb. Some think it was a saying of Pittacus of
Mitylene; some attribute it to Solon, Sophocles among them, or so they say.1
Aristotle2 in the fifth book of the Ethics cites it under the name of Bias.
Theophrastus3 too in his Proverbs (though they are no longer extant) ascribes
it to Bias. I thought it best to add this, to prevent any complaints that this is a
maxim and not a proverb. Though Plutarch4 too in his life of Cicero shows
that this was current as a proverb, when he writes as follows: 'But what is
thought and commonly said to exhibit and test a man's character better than
anything - power and official position, which arouses all his passions and
displays all his bad qualities - this never fell to the lot of Demosthenes/
Sophocles5 in the Antigone:

'Tis hard to learn the soul of any man,

His thoughts and feelings, ere he shows himself
On the touchstone of power and government.

The point is that private life hardly gives sufficient scope for an insight into a
man's character and natural qualities; put him in a position of power, where
he can do what he likes, and then it will be clear what sort of man he is.
Epaminondas6 turned this rather nicely upside down. To show their low
opinion of him the Thebans had given him some mean and negligible office.
He did not despise it; he took such pains over his duties that the post which
had previously been of no account whatever gained immensely in dignity
and importance; for, said he, 'It's not only that place shows the man;
sometimes the man shows the place.' The story is in Plutarch's 'Precepts of
Statecraft/

77 Idem Accii quod Titii

Accius and Titius take alike

There was once an adage quoted by Marcus Varro in a satire called The
Testament, and reported by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights: 'Accius and
Titius take alike/ Tf one is born' he says 'in the eleventh month, as Aristotle
suggests, then let Accius and Titius take alike/ His point of course was that
he would give a son born in the tenth month of pregnancy exactly the same
rights as one born in the eleventh. The source is no doubt the lawyers'
 i x 77 / LB ii 3900 270

custom of using the two names Titius and Accius to stand for any two
litigants.

78 Muta persona
A walk-on part

A walk-on part. Martial in the sixth book of his Epigrams:

Three actors hold the comic stage:

How can it be that Paula's heart,
Lupercus, four do now engage?
Your Paula loves the walk-on part.

This will suit those who in the deliberations of a committee, in a dispute, or

even at a dinner-party alone sit silent while everyone else is talking. It is
clearly drawn from the rules of the comic stage, on which it was exceptional
to introduce more than three characters in any one scene. If a fourth is
sometimes added, he is either a walk-on part, or he says very little. Cicero1 in
the Letters to Atticus, book 13: 'Had I made Cotta and Varius dispute among
themselves, as you say I should have in your last letter, I should have left
nothing but a walk-on part for myself/ Pindar2 somewhere uses A silent
wedding, for a secret one, a wedding at which there is no
hymeneal anthem. Of the doryphorema3 I have spoken elsewhere.

79 Caput sine lingua

No tongue in your head

There is not much difference between that and a trimeter from Laberius 'If
you've no tongue in your head, you must vote with your feet.' It suits those
who in consultation or discussion have nothing of their own to contribute
but agree with the opinions of other people. For pedarian, foot-slogging,
senators were those who sat in the senate but were not asked to give their
opinions; they went into the voting lobbies in support of other men's views.
Hence, as we learn from Festus Pompeius1 under the word pedarius, Lucilius
called them agipedes, foot-workers, because they expressed an opinion by
walking to one side or the other. It is recorded by Gellius in the Attic Nights,
book 3 chapter 18. The crocodile2 too has no tongue in its head, but its mouth
is well set with teeth; and we see many men like that nowadays, who have no
idea how to speak well, but can give one a deadly bite. The Nile is a long
way away, but this species of crocodile is a very common animal.
 I X 8O / LB II 39OF 271

80 Corpus sine pectore

Body without soul

Horace uses a proverbial metaphor in his Epistle to Albius: 'Never were you
body without soul. The gods have given you good looks, and money and the
art to enjoy it.' Ovid too in his Heroides: 'O Helen, how can you hope this
man without a soul can possibly appreciate your gift of beauty?' In fact,
'body without soul' is used just like 'without mind'; for both wisdom and wit
are lodged in soul and heart; and so we say a prudent man has a wise heart.
And Juvenal, referring to a slow-witted stupid person says: That Arcadian
youth, / 'Neath whose left pap no beating organ stirs.''

81 Cerite cera dignus

Fit to be registered in Caere

In old days men who deserved a black mark, dishonest worthless men, were
said to be 'fit to be registered in Caere,' proverbially, because it was a great
disgrace to be entered on the wax tablets on which the people of Caere were
registered. Horace: 'Of honour and dishonour alike oblivious, fit for the
Caere register, like that vice-ridden crew of Ithacan Ulysses.' Acron and
Porphyrion give the following explanation of the adage. When Rome had
defeated Caere, the inhabitants were deprived of any right to vote and
forbidden to make or to possess any laws of their own; and this humiliation
passed into an adage. Aulus Gellius1 also refers to the Caere register, book
16 chapter 13: The first townsmen without the right to vote were, we are
told, the people of Caere. They were allowed not to share the privilege of
Roman citizenship but to take part in the business and burdens of the citizen
body in return for their giving hospitality and protection to sacred objects
from Rome during the Gallic war. Thus it came about that the name "register
of Caere" was inverted, and used for the list of persons deprived of the vote
by the censors for disciplinary reasons.' It seems related to Sutorium
atramentum, of which I have spoken elsewhere.2

82 Dii laneos habent pedes

The gods have feet of wool

Macrobius in his Saturnalia, book i chapter 6, writes as follows: 'Why Saturn

himself is represented in fetters was unknown (as he tells us) to Verrius
Flaccus, but is suggested to me by my reading of Apollodorus. Apollodorus
says that Saturn is bound in woollen bonds throughout the year, but
 I X 82 / LB II 3910 272

released for his festival - that is, in this month of December. Hence, he says,
the proverb that the gods have feet of wool, the meaning of which is that in
the tenth month the embryo in the womb grows into a living creature, which
is confined in soft bonds by nature until it is ready to come forth suddenly
into the light/ So Macrobius. Lucian1 too in his Cronosolon indicates that
Saturn is commonly shown in fetters. And in his book On Astrology he gives a
reason for this fanciful idea: since Saturn's orbit is furthest from the Earth,
the great depth of air intervening gave them an excuse for saying that he had
been cast into Tartarus. Also the fact that the planet's movements are the
slowest of all, so much so that it almost seems to stand still, made them
imagine that he was bound in fetters. Plutarch2 in his 'Problems' says it was
customary in Tyre to chain the statues of the gods. The riddle of this proverb
means3 that the gods move slowly to punish crime, but sooner or later do
make evil-doers pay the penalty, it may be unexpectedly. So Porphyrion4
explains it, pointing out that what Horace says in Odes 3.2: 'Rarely does
Punishment, although she limps, / Let go the guilty, though they're well
ahead,' is related 'to the proverb The gods have feet of wool, because they
are sometimes slow in catching up with wrongdoers.'

83 Zenone moderatior
As temperate as Zeno

As temperate as Zeno. Laertius also states in his

life of Zeno that both in food and sexual pleasures the philosopher was so
tolerant and so economical that he lived exclusively on uncooked food and
was covered by a very thin blanket. Hence he is criticized by Philemon in one
of his comedies for eating dried figs by way of a relish after his dry bread, and
drinking water in place of wine, and teaching his pupils to go hungry. From
this there arose a popular expression, As temperate as Zeno. Philemon's
lines, which are quoted by Diogenes from his play The Philosopher, run as
follows:

On his dry bread a relish of dried figs,

Water to wash them down - this is indeed
A new philosophy: he teaches hunger,
And yet gets pupils.

Though some ascribe these lines to Posidippus rather than to Philemon, as

we are warned by Laertius.
 I X 84 / LB II 392A 273

84 Sylosontis chlamys
Syloson's cloak

Syloson's cloak. Recorded by Diogenianus. Used

normally of people who take pride in wearing grand clothes; but it would
make sense also of those who give a small present at the right moment and
get it back with interest. The anecdote which gave rise to the proverb is
related by Herodotus1 in Thalia, though in his text the word is chlanis, which
is a garment worn by soldiers, and not chlamys: and also by Strabo2 in book 14
of his Geography. It runs as follows. There was a man called Syloson, who
perceived that Darius the son of Hystaspes, while he was still a private
individual, very greatly admired a very handsome cloak that he was
wearing, so he gave it to him as a present. Darius did not forget this
well-placed generosity, and when he became supreme he handed over to
Syloson the whole city and island of Samos, thus rewarding the gift of one
garment with a flourishing kingdom. Valerius Maximus3 also mentions the
story in book five of his Memorabilia in the chapter on gratitude. Only what
others call a chlamys or chlanis, he names as an amiculum, a kind of mantle.

85 Opera Sylosontis ampla regio

Plenty of room thanks to Syloson

Plenty of room here, thanks to Syloson. An

iambic line turned into a proverb, which is recorded by Strabo in book 14 of
his Geography. Thanks to the generosity of Darius, Syloson was made tyrant
of Samos on the death of Poly crates. He was a very strict ruler, as men often
are who have risen to grandeur from a humble position in life, and the
inhabitants therefore began to leave the island; which gave rise to the
proverbial saying 'Plenty of room here, thanks to Syloson/ Appropriate to a
severe governor or a wicked prince, whose faults cause the inhabitants to
leave. It will gain in elegance if used further afield, for instance if applied to
an avaricious man who has pillaged a house, or to a wastrel whose
spendthrift habits have emptied the coffers.

86 Phalaridis imperium
To rule like Phalaris

The tyranny of Phalaris, is in the list of Greek proverbs. It

will rightly be used of those who make a cruel use of absolute power or of
some authority entrusted to them. The adage takes its rise from Phalaris tyrant
 i x 86 / LB n 392E 274

of Agrigentum, whose cruelty has made him immortal. Among many

instances of his ferocity, the most famous is the bronze bull made for him by
Perillus (or Perilaus, for so he is called by Lucian), in which human beings
were enclosed, and a fire lit beneath it, so contrived that the screams of men
in agony sounded like the bellowing of the bull. Having first burnt the
inventor to death in it, he then sent this bull to Delphi as an offering to
Phoebus, that it might be placed in his temple as a monument both to its
brilliant technique and to the cruelty of the invention and the punishment
rightly turned against the inventor. The Delphians however refused it, as
the offering of a tyrant. Such more or less is the story told by Lucian.1 The
same image underlies ^>a\o;pto-/x6?, Phalarism, which I find used to express
frightful cruelty. Cicero2 in his Letters to Atticus, book 7: 'As for the man
whose Phalarism you fear, I think all he does will be frightful/ Again in the
In Pisonem: 'Since we have a Phalaris for our schoolmaster/ a man, that is,
who metes out capital punishment to books he does not like.

87 Manliana imperia
Manlian orders

My last adage rightly fitted those who show great cruelty towards men over
whom they have power; and the very similar proverb 'Manlian orders' may
well be turned against the over-rigid observance of the letter of the law
which ignores humanity and justice. The story which gave rise to the
proverb is told by Livy in book 8 of his first decade; it is also in Valerius
Maximus and many other authors, and it runs something like this. Titus
Manlius during his consulate was fighting a war against the Latins, and had
issued orders that there was to be no attacking outside the regular line of
battle. The consul's son Titus Manlius, who commanded a squadron of
cavalry, was challenged by Genutius (or, as Valerius has it, Geminius)
Metius, who commanded the cavalry of Tusculum; forgot the consul's orders
and engaged him; and ran the challenger through with his spear. Surround-
ed by his squadron and carrying his spoils, he was making something like a
triumphant return to his father - who, because his son had fought outside
the line, had him fastened to a stake and flogged in the usual way before
them all, and then beheaded. It was 'a valuable precedent for the future,' as
Livy says, but made the consul highly unpopular at the time. In fact, as
Valerius1 tells us, in the ninth book of his Memorabilia in the chapter on
anger, when he returned to Rome victorious, 'none of the younger men went
out to escort him, such was the hatred he inspired in them all/ Hence he was
commonly nicknamed 'the Imperious/ There is a similar example of severity
in Valerius Maximus, book 2, in the chapter on military discipline:
 I X 87 / LB II 393B 275

Posthumius Tiburtus, whose son, a youth of outstanding courage, was

executed by his father because he had engaged the enemy successfully, but
without his father's orders. Though Livy,2 in book 4 of his first decade,
prefers to believe this of Manlius Torquatus rather than of Posthumius, and
says that in choosing between the different opinions of his authorities he has
followed the argument that the current proverb calls these 'Manlian orders'
and not Tosthumian/ though in date Posthumius came before Manlius, and
had he been the first to set such a ferocious example he would presumably
have pre-empted 'the distinguished position of being proverbial for cruelty';
besides which, he says, it was Manlius and not Posthumius who was
nicknamed 'the Imperious.' Seneca3 too in the De beneficiis, book 3, recalls a
certain Manlius or Manilius who, having been exiled by his father, returned
to save him from the perils of a threatened lawsuit. Cicero4 has a covert
allusion to the proverb in the second book of the Definibus: 'Make sure that
ours are not Manlian orders, or something even w rse, if you give me
commands which I am quite unable to obey.' Perhaps 'ours,' nostra, should
be jussa, 'commands.'

88 Complurium thriorum ego strepitum audivi

I have heard the sound of many fig-leaves

Of many fig-leaves have I heard the

sound. This is an iambic line current as a proverb, by which we express our
contempt for threats and empty bluster, as Thais did in Terence, when she
snapped her fingers at Thraso's fierce and bombastic threats and called him
'a great noisy rascal.' Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'Well I know the sound of
fig-leaves; often have I heard the same.' Thrion is the Greek for a fig-leaf; and
when fig-leaves are put on the fire they make a curiously formidable noise,
which well might startle anyone who had never heard it before, though
otherwise it is empty crackling not worth a thought. Unless you prefer to
change the accent and take the word from thriai, the Greek name for pebbles
put into an urn by soothsayers when fortune-telling, as I have pointed out
elsewhere. These fortune-tellers have a habit sometimes of foreseeing
terrible events in order to frighten their foolish and credulous clients,
though often none of their threats come true;

89 Ne inter apia quidem sunt

They are not even in the celery

They are not even in the celery, in the sense that they
have not even reached the first steps and beginning of the matter. The
 i x 89 / LB ii 393? 276

metaphor derives from people entering a garden; for in ancient times the
outside circuit of a garden was planted with celery/ and those who had not
yet got beyond that seemed to be as it were still on the threshold of the
garden. Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'He's not yet in the celery, nor yet in the
rue/ that is, he has no idea what's coming. The scholiast also reports quite a
different opinion on this passage: the adage would refer to a gymnastic
contest, and those who prepared infants for such a future were accustomed
as soon as they were born to lay them in celery. Thus to say 'Not yet even in
the celery' was equivalent to 'Not even in the first stage'; and the comic poet
added rue by way of a joke, because he had just mentioned celery. Moreover
they think that the custom of using celery for garlands was introduced long
ago by Hercules after he had killed the Nemean lion, as Pindar2 seems to
suggest somewhere. In the fourth of his Nemean Hymns he says: 'Where in
the contest of him that roars aloud he was conspicuous in his wreath of
Corinthian celery/ meaning that in the contest sacred to Neptune at the
Isthmus he was crowned by the Corinthians.

90 Podex lotionem vincit

The arse beats all efforts to wash it

You are an arse that beats all efforts at washing.

Callistratus, quoted by the scholiast on Aristophanes, refers this adage to
those who get themselves into some sort of trouble, because that part of the
body, however much it's washed, dirties itself afresh, so that it is itself to
blame if it cannot be washed clean. It will also fit when we wish to convey
that some action is fruitless, such as paying for a criminal's release from gaol
who immediately repeats the offence and hurries back there again, or trying
to reconcile two people who will soon relapse into their ancient quarrel, or
correct someone by nature incorrigible, a woman for instance. It will also suit
those who get their own way through their own bad qualities, a pupil for
instance of such bad character that his tutor gives up trying to improve him.
They think the adage seems to derive from people of loose bowels, whom
Nonius1 calls forioli. Aristophanes2 in the Wasps: 'An arse that beats all
efforts at washing.' In the same way a disease is said to beat the art of the
physician when it is incurable. You will find3 in ancient sources that there
was a public custom, after voiding the bowels, of washing that part of the
body, though this had to be often repeated. Martial4 records among the
pretty tricks of Issa, a lapdog, that after relieving herself she would ask to be
washed. We read5 also of a barbarian so unwilling to endure slavery that he
committed suicide by forcing down his throat the stick with a sponge
attached to it which was provided for wiping the arse.
 i x 91 / LB ii 3940 277

91 Conscientia mille testes

Conscience is a thousand witnesses

Quintilian in the fifth book of his Institutiones oratoriae quotes this as a

proverbial saying: Conscience is a thousand witnesses. The sense needs no
interpreter. Everyone knows that conscience is more powerful than any-
thing else, so that no tortures are so effective in bringing wrongdoing to light
as a bad conscience, nor can any hangman apply more cruel punishment.
Hence that line:1 'How hard for guilt to wear a guiltless face!' There is also a
maxim in Greek:2 Conscience belabours the
spirit. Juvenal3 too: 'And flogs with silent lash/ This is what poets mean
when they produce their fables about avenging Furies.

92 Mysorum praeda
The Mysians are fair game

Mvcr&v Asia, The Mysians are fair game, used to be used of those who are
wronged and plundered with impunity by the first comer. The adage derives
from the Mysians, who were once, it is said, much exposed to raids by their
neighbours, while1 their king Telephus was abroad. Aristotle2 uses this
adage in the first book of the Rhetoric, where he deals with arguments
derived from conjecture: 'And those who are wronged by many and take no
steps to get their revenge, but are (as the proverb puts it) fair game like the
Mysians.' His point is that everyone attacks them freely, because by the way
they endure their earlier wrongs they seem to invite fresh ones. Demos-
thenes3 uses it in his attack on Aeschines, a passage in which ignorant
scribes have altered 'Mysian' to 'miserable' in Leonardo Aretino's4 version.
It is cited from the Medea of Stratis5 and the Iambi of Simonides.6

93 Ultra septa transilire

To overleap the pit

To leap beyond the pit, is suitable for those

who plan some new and incredible enterprise far beyond the capacity of
ordinary men, or who depart from the plan which has been laid down, or
who transgress the appointed limits and the bounds of the power entrusted
to them. The adage comes from a certain Phayllus, a performer in the
pentathlon, an Opuntian or,1 as some think, a native of Crotona, who is said
to have shown astonishing prowess in both the long jump and the discus.
Such is the account in Suidas. There is extant an inscription2 written for a
statue of him: 'Full five and fifty feet Phayllus leapt, / And for five score less
 i x 93 / LB ii 395A 278

five the discus threw/ This adage is mentioned by Plato3 in the Cratylus:
'And to overleap the pit/ Julius Pollux4 also records it in book 3 of On the
Names of Things. Lucian5 in The Dream: 'It overleaps the pit/ of a dream which
continues into a man's waking moments though sleep is its normal limit.
Chrysostom6 in his third homily on Second Corinthians: 'He overleapt the
pit." He speaks of Paul who, since he taught the Gospel without recom-
pense, did more than was expected of an Apostle. Cicero7 in the first book of
his De oratore: 'And a knowledge, as it were, of definite professional subjects
with a legal fence round it/ Again in his speeches: 'If I stray outside the fence
I have erected round myself/ For the place in which the ludiforenses were
held was fenced in with ditches, railings, and similar boundaries.

94 Psyrice facta
As they do in Psyra

Psyra is an island not far from Chios, mentioned by Homer1 in the third book
of the Odyssey, where he calls it Psyria: 'At least we were returning on the
upper side of rocky Chios past the isle of Psyria, keeping Chios itself on our
left hand/ Strabo2 uses the word Psyra as a neuter plural. Pliny3 also
mentions it in book five of his History of the World. This island, being very
small and quite undistinguished, came to be a proverb for something
despicable and worthless, so that things done in a mean and unworthy
fashion were said to be done 'as they do in Psyra/ So more or less
Stephanus.4 He also cites Cratinus: Taking Bacchus to Psyra' and another
phrase from his Nemesis: 'You take Sparta to Psyra/

95 Bos Cyprius
A Cyprus ox

A Cyprus ox was a taunt aimed at a brutish and stupid man,

since the oxen in Cyprus were thought to be more brutish than the average,
feeding as they did on human excrement. Recorded by Suidas and
Diogenianus. The scholiast on Aristophanes'1 Plutus writes that oxen in
Boeotia were scatophagous, that is, they ate dung. Aristophanes applies the
word to physicians, because in the course of curing the sick they must
handle various filthy substances and narrowly examine urine or faeces. As to
the oxen in Cyprus, Pliny2 in the last chapter of book 28 agrees, reporting
they they seek human excrement not simply as food but as a remedy for pain
in their intestines.
 i x 96 / LB ii 395E 279

96 Cyprio bovi merendam

Luncheon for a Cyprus ox

Festus Pompeius cites this sotadean line from Ennius: 'Luncheon for a
Cyprus ox/ and makes clear that it is in place whenever a mean and tedious
guest is entertained at a mean and tedious party. Of the origin of the adage
he gives the same account as I have just given here. It will be more humorous
if diverted to things of the mind, and applied to a man making a speech full of
obscenities to an audience who live that kind of life, or an ignorant speech
to a party of ignoramuses.

97 Equum habet Sejanum

He must keep Sejus' horse

To keep Sejus' horse was said in old days proverbially of anyone who had
suffered misfortunes and been reduced to the depths of penury. It is an
allegory, derived from a horse which had a curse on it, called Sejus' horse
from the name of its owner, Gnaeus Sejus. It was believed to be descended
from the horses of Diomede, and it was a very handsome animal; but the
curse on it took the form that its owner at any time was fatally destined for
extinction with his whole household. Sejus1 himself was sentenced to death
and was horribly executed; next came Dolabella, who was killed in battle;
then Cassius, killed by the enemy; after him Antonius, who died a horrible
death: all proved the truth of it. 'This horse was seen by Gaius Bassus (so he
says) in Argos; it was incredibly handsome and of a spirit and colour to beat
all, for its coat was red.' This adage is both recorded and explained at length
by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights, book 3 chapter 9. It is possible that this
superstition about the horse is an echo of the wooden horse of which Homer2
tells in Odyssey 8, which brought final disaster upon Troy, and to which
Virgil3 alludes in 'the fatal engine climbs the walls.' Conversely, there was an
ancient superstition that some things were destined to bring success.
Trebellius Pollio4 in his book on the Thirty Tyrants says it was commonly
supposed that people who carried a likeness of Alexander the Great in gold
or silver would be successful. Even today there are those who promise
princes swords which are lucky in battle and suchlike nonsense. It is still
more suprising that some people believe these impostors.

98 Aurum habet Tolossanum

He has gold from Toulouse

Another adage very close to that is Aurum habet Tolossanum,He has gold from
 I X 98 / LB II 3968 280

Toulouse. This is said of a man who suffers great and inescapable disasters
and dies a strange and pitiable death. It is recorded by Aulus Gellius in the
passage cited above, in the following words: The same sense is conveyed by
another ancient proverb which, I understand, runs thus, He has gold from
Toulouse. When the town of Toulouse in Gaul had been put to the sack by
Quintus Cepio the consul and quantities of gold had been found in the
temples there, anyone who had handled gold originating from the sack died
a pitiful and agonizing death!' In most texts1 of Gellius the reading hitherto
has been 'in Italy,' but this is wrong, for both Strabo and Justin put Toulouse
in Gaul. Cicero2 mentions gold from Toulouse in his On the Nature of the Gods,
book 3; 'Consider' he says 'other problems, gold from Toulouse or the
conspiracy of Jugurtha.' Strabo3 in book.4 of his Geography tells us that this
money at Toulouse was part of what had belonged to Delphi. Brennus, who
was a Prausian in origin, had raided Delphi with the help of the Tectosagi.
Then, as Justin4 says in book 22, the Tectosagi returned to their ancestral
home at Toulouse, and there began to suffer from pestilence; nor could they
find any relief until, as instructed by soothsayers, they had taken all the gold
and silver they had collected by sacrilege and sunk it in the lake at Toulouse.
All of this was removed long afterwards by Cepio the Roman consul; and this
act of sacrilege brought destruction not only to him but to his forces. There
were 110,000 pounds of gold and 1,500,000 pounds of silver; for Strabo says
that the people of Toulouse had increased the temple treasure out of their
private fortunes in hopes of a closer reconciliation between themselves and
the deity. Further details of the gold in Toulouse derived from Posidonius
are given by Strabo in the same passage; but as they did not seem to
contribute very much to the understanding of the adage, I have thought it
sufficient to give the reference. Even today a belief still exists among the
common people which makes them think everyone will come to a bad end
who has laid violent hands on sacred things.

99 Polypi caput
An octopus' head

An octopus' head. Used of a man who is inconsistent

and has both faults and virtues at the same time, like Catiline in Sallust's1
description. It also suits anything from which you can derive plenty of
advantage not unmixed with harmful features. The image is taken from the
head of this animal which, as Plutarch2 tells us in his essay called 'How
Young Men should Study Poetry,' is delicious eating but provokes appalling
nightmares. Those who wished to foretell the future from dreams were thus
forbidden to eat it, and beans too, as Plutarch again tells us in his
 i x 99 / LB ii 396F 281

'Table-talk.' So he calls poetry an octopus' head, as containing much that is

entertaining and useful, and yet some things that will do harm unless one
takes precautions. So we should try to select the good out of such things and
avoid what is harmful. As Simonides3 teaches, we should model ourselves
on bees, which ignore everything else and fly only to the places where they
can collect what they can use for making honey, and gather nothing for
which they will have no use. The complete proverb is given in Plutarch as
follows: 'In the octopus' head is much evil and much good.' Theognis4
likewise in his maxims says of wine 'It is both good and bad.' One might
divert to the same effect the story of the spear of Achilles, which could cure
the wound it had inflicted in the first place.

100 Aestate penulam deteris

You wear out your greatcoat in summer

You wear out your greatcoat in

summer, is recorded by Zenodotus, Diogenianus, andSuidas. It will be used
appropriately of anyone who wastes heedlessly and on the spur of the
moment essential things which would one day be of great use if they were
preserved. This is common among the young, who foolishly dissipate their
patrimony in early life, which should have been their support when old and
feeble. Nor will it be a bad fit for those who use up their bodily strength in
pointless pleasures, only to feel the lack of it later in serious business. For the
chlaina or overcoat is a top garment worn according to the weather as a
protection against wind, rain, and cold, the Latin for which is paenula.
Juvenal:1 'And my paenula dripped with the heavy rain.' Though Latin also
uses the word laena for the Greek chlaina; Nonius2 shows that it is an outer
garment worn in the army, like chlamys, pallium, and penula. In Diogenes3
Laertius Philemon the comic poet makes a similar criticism of Crates, that he
wore a thick cloak in summer and in winter a ragged tunic, presumably to
teach himself moderation and endurance.
This page intentionally left blank
 otes

i This stood in 1508 between the present I vi 18 and 19, and was placed here in
1515, when the adages were first divided into centuries and a piece of
more than average interest was set at the head of most centuries. The opening
is a rewritten version of Collectanea no 167, but no use seems to have been
made at that stage of the Greek proverb-collections (Diogenianus 7.81); other-
wise Erasmus might well have included here what now forms n vi 45
Rusticanum oratorem ne contempseris, which makes the same point. Suringar
196; Tilley c 476 Under a ragged coat lies wisdom, F 449 Even a fool some-
times speaks a wise word, F 469 A fool may sometimes give a wise man coun-
sel. Zen. Ath. 2.93.
1 Gellius] Noctes Atticae 2.6.9. The Attic Nights of this Roman antiquary of the
second century AD was much used for the Adagia (Aldus put out a text in
1515); the precise reference here is an addition of 1528. The verse, of un-
known authorship, is used again in n ix 34.
2 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 3.23.56, citing the early Roman dramatist
Caecilius Statius 266 (Ribbeck 2.89); Otto 1326.
3 Plautus] Captivi 165
4 Bombace] He was at this time public reader in rhetoric and poetry in his native
Bologna, and the earliest known of his letters to Erasmus (Ep 210) was written
in 1508, the year that this tribute to him was published. See Contemporaries
1.163-5.
5 Stobaeus] Johannes Stobaeus compiled an important florilegium from good
Greek authors about the year 500 AD, and Erasmus' guess is correct; this is
Stobaeus 3.4.24. Books 3 and 4 are cited sixty times, and as these were not
printed till 1525/6, most of these references are to a manuscript source.
Twenty, added anonymously in 1533, are taken from a gnomologia, a collection
of moral extracts printed in the edition of Callimachus' Hymns published
by Froben in 1532. The reading mows is also found in Macrobius (see n ix 34)
Saturnalia 6.7.12, which Bombace had certainly read, and in Diogenianus.
6 Aeschylus] This ascription is not now accepted.
7 Euripides] See i i 98.
8 Suetonius] Divus Julius 49.2. The De vita Caesarum of C. Suetonius Tranquillus
(first half of the second century AD) was edited by Erasmus for Aldus in
1518. Nicomedes was king of Bithynia in Asia minor, and this reflection on
Caesar's morals was hostile gossip.
 N o T E s i vi 2-1 vi 3 284

2 This was no 497 in the Collectanea, but has been completely rewritten from the
sources named. Otto 441
1 In some] Zenobius ('Zenodotus' as Erasmus calls him) 2.48
2 Ovid] Fasti 5.115-28
3 We read also] This account resembles that in the first century BC historian
Diodorus Siculus 4.35.3, rather than Ovid's in Metamorphoses 9.85-92. The
Greek of this part of Diodorus was not printed till 1559, but there was a
translation made for Pope Nicholas v by Poggio Bracciolini.
4 Aulus Gellius] Nodes Atticae 1.8.1-2; the philosopher's name is really Sotion,
not Phocion.
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia praef 24
6 Lucian] De mercede conductis 13
7 Philostratus] A sophist of the second/third century AD, or more than one man
under that name. This is from the Vitae sophistarum 1.487, of which the first
edition appeared in the Aldine Lucian of 1503; like most of the references to
the Vitae, it was added in 1533.
8 Plautus] Pseudolus 671, originally cited, as it had been in the Collectanea, from
memory, for both there and here the slave was described as a parasite. This
was put right later.
9 Aulus Gellius] Nodes Atticae 14.6.2
10 Philoxenus] of Leucas, a lost lyric poet of the fifth/fourth centuries BC (Poetae
melici graeci, ed D.L. Page, Oxford 1962, 439), cited by Athenaeus 14.6433
11 Suidas] A 1478, citing an anonymous line, perhaps from a Greek fable (Babrii
fabulae Aesopeae, ed O. Crusius, Leipzig 1897, 217); the Latin version (re-
vised later) and metrical comment were added in 1515.
12 heavenly she-goat] See Adagia in x 76. This is from Suidas AI 237; the clause
'and calls her ... income' is an insertion of 1515.
13 Plutarch] Moralia 270, citing a fragment of comedy (frag adesp 8 Kock). Poly-
agros (Erasmus renders it Tolyager') is rightly taken here as a proper
name, and an explanation added (in 1528); in in x 76, where the Plutarch
passage was added in 1526 independently of its appearance here, it is
taken in 152^ as a common noun, 'large landowner.'
14 another place] Moralia 10580, added in 1515
15 Horace] Carmen saeculare 59-60; 'in his Odes' added in 1517/3. The wrong
identification suggests that he is quoting from memory.

3 Collectanea no 575 had nothing but the Pliny passage. Originally from the
comic poet Eupolis (frag 379 Kock). The opening here seems to be from
Apostolius 5.19 rather than from Diogenianus 3.92; see also Suidas F 19. Otto
748; Tilley D 583 A draught of hen's milk
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia praef 24; Erasmus uses the title Historia mundi
occasionally.
2 Aristophanes] Wasps 508-9
3 Eustathius] Archbishop of Salonica in the late twelfth century; on Homer
Odyssey 4.88 (1485.30). He cites from Athenaeus 2.57d the view of the early
philosopher Anaxagoras (59822 Diels-Kranz) that 'hen's milk' means 'what is
found in eggs,' white of egg. Erasmus seems to have misunderstood this as
'found in the Eggs of Anaxagoras/ a dramatist and play that never existed.
 N o T E s i vi 3-1 vi 5 285

4 Aristophanes] Birds 729-35

5 Strabo] Geographica 14.1.15, citing Menander frag 892. Strabo, who wrote
under Augustus, was first printed by the Aldine press in 1516, and Eras-
mus generally quotes, as here, the Latin version.
6 Athenaeus] 9.3873-^ (the reference added in 1517/8), citing Mnesimachus, a
writer of the Attic New Comedy, frag 9 Kock
7 Again] Athenaeus 9-37ic, citing Nicander of Colophon, a Greek didactic poet
of perhaps the second century BC, frag 71, where 'hen's milk' is the name
of a plant. A quotation from Numenius' poem on fish had just preceded, and
his name is put to this by mistake. From here to the end was added in
1517/8.
8 The same author] Athenaeus 2.57d, which we have already had; but now it is
cited by Erasmus directly from Athenaeus, and correctly understood.

4 Most of the Latin material for this was already in Collectanea no 392. Otto 580
1 Juvenal] 1.56-7. 'To gaze at the ceiling,' which is the literal meaning of his
phrase, might well have been given proverbial status as an image of idle-
ness and refusal to participate, and is so treated by Otto 1747.
2 Plutarch] Moralia /6oA. This anecdote, in which the man's name should be
Gabba, and Maecenas is the Emperor Augustus' right-hand man, proverbi-
al as a patron, was added in 1515.
3 Festus Pompeius] P 174 Lindsay, citing Lucilius, the great Roman satirist of
the second century BC, line 1223 in the edition of F. Marx, Leipzig 1904.
This reference, and other refinements, were inserted in 1515.
4 Cicero] Adfamiliares 7.24.1
5 Cicero again] Ad Atticum 13.49.2
6 This passage ... everyone's slave] Added in 1523. Erasmus' suggestion, that a
phrase has fallen out in the transmission of the text, is accepted by modern
editors.
7 one's theatre] The phrase is expanded in i i 91.

5 Otto 1587
1 Sardinians] or Sardians. Sardi prima facie are the people of the island of
Sardinia. It could however mean the Etruscans, because they were sup-
posed to have migrated to Tuscany from Lydia in Asia Minor, the capital of
which was Sardis. Veii, about twenty kilmeters north of Rome, was one of
their chief cities.
2 Lives] Now passes under the name of Aurelius Victor (the reference is 57.2),
but in the manuscripts normally given to Pliny. It is a fourth-century com-
pilation.
3 Plutarch] Moralia 2jjc
4 Livy] 1.15.4; this sentence was added in 1528.
5 Herodotus] 1.94 (see i vi 1411)
6 Plutarch] Romulus 25.5, added in 1526 in a Latin translation. The purple robe
worn by the old man is, with the golden bulla or amulet, the traditional
garb of a Roman boy of the upper class.
7 Cicero] Adfamiliares 7.24.2, added in 1523
 N O T E S I Vi 6-1 Vi 1O 286

6 From Diogenianus 4.12; also in Suidas A 87. 'Hairyfoot' is a Greek name for
the hare, which was regarded as very good eating, and so might be
thought to have plenty of meat already and to be unlikely to ask for more.
i Pliny] Naturalis historia 8.219; his hairyfoot, being distinguished from the
hare, is perhaps the rabbit.

7 A brief report of the Terence passage forms Collectanea no 117; there were
small alterations after 1508.
1 Terence] Eunuchus 426 (tr Ashmore). Aelius Donatus, the ancient commenta-
tor, in his note on the line, gives the sense as looking to someone else for
what you already possess, which identifies it with the preceding adage; but
this has been much discussed (see Otto 941).
2 Flavius Vopiscus] One of the authors of the collection of lives of Roman
emperors purporting to date from the first half of the fourth century, and
known as the Historia Augusta, of which Froben published an edition by
Erasmus in 1518. This is from the Carus 13.5.
3 Livius Andronicus] In effect the first Latin poet, second half of the third
century BC; this is line 8 (Ribbeck 2.4).

8 Taken direct from the younger Pliny. Otto 876

1 Pliny] the Younger Letters 3.9.8
2 Theocritus] 12.15, added in 1515; Gow's note quotes several further examples
of the phrase. The second half of the sentence was added in 1526, perhaps
because it occurred to Erasmus, as he reread, that iugum means the beam of a
balance as well as an ox-yoke, so that 'well-balanced' is an extra point.
Erasmus normally refers to the Idylls by title, not number.
3 Jerome] Letters 105.3.2
4 another proverb] Adagia in iv 48; a line of verse given here in Greek, with a
Latin version added in 1515 and revised later.

9 Again taken from the younger Pliny (Letters 3.9.9); his name was added in
1515, because 'the same author' (1508) would refer to Theocritus, who has
just been inserted in the preceding adage. The explanatory sentence ('A meta-
phor ...') was added at the same time.

10 Probably from the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.62; Diogenianus

2.11). There is a supplement in iv ix 80.
1 Diogenes Laertius] 8.35
2 Theocritus] 13.38
3 Euripides] Hecuba 793
4 Esdras] Ezra (in the King James version) 4.14, added in 1533.
5 Laertius] 8.35-6, citing a lost work by Alexander Polyhistor.
6 Origen] Contra Celsum 2.21 (PG 11.8400), added in 1517/5. He refers to the
early Greek poet Archilochus of Paros (frag 173 West), but the name of the
victim is Lycambes, not Lycomantes.
7 Again] Comm. in Matthaeum 26.23, added in 1533; this survives only in an
ancient Latin version, first edited by Jacques Merlin, Paris (Jean Petit and
Jean Bade) 1512. Ed E. Klostermann GCS 38 (1933) 194.
 N o T E s i vi 10-1 vi 14 287

8 Quintus Curtius] 8.4.27. These last two sentences were added in 1517/8. It
was in June 1518 that Matthias Schiirer in Strasbourg published a text edited
by Erasmus of the History of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus (first
century AD); see Ep 704.

11 From the Greek collections (Zenobius 2.62; Diogenianus 3.45; Suidas B 46).
Bacelus is not a proper name.
1 Antiphanes] A poet of the Attic Middle Comedy; frag 113 Kock, cited by
Athenaeus 4-i34b; added in 1517/8
2 Suetonius] Divus Augustus 87.2; see i vi in. Erasmus' suggested emendation
for baceolus is thought worthy of mention by modern editors.
3 Quintilian] 5.12.21; for Ermolao Barbaro, the Venetian scholar, see Contempor-
aries 1.91-2.
4 Lucian] Eunuchus 4. Greek is said to have taken the word bagoas from the
Persian.
5 Ovid] Amores 2.2.1, added in 1520

12 The Greek word batalos is said to have an indecent meaning (Eupolis frag 22
Kock) and hence could be used as a nickname for a man given to indecent
or effeminate practices (Aeschines 1.131 and 2.99). There seems to be little
reason to give it proverbial status.
1 Plutarch] Mora/fa 847E; Demosthenes 4.3. 'An effeminate ... phrase' was added
in 1526; before that, the flute-player was merely 'distorted in body.'
2 Libanius] A voluminous sophist of the fourth century AD; Demosthenis apologia
66-7. Erasmus had perhaps seen this in the manuscript from which he
prepared a text of Libanius' Legatio Menelai (Ep 177); the two compositions
occur together, for instance, in MS Vatican gr 213. This was added in 1526.
'Demosthenes, I mean' was added in 1528 to make the sense quite clear.
3 Argas] From Plutarch's Demosthenes or from Aeschines 2.99; the Suidas refer-
ence is B 178.
4 Greek verb] This rare word occurs in a fictitious letter from Theano, the wife
of Pythagoras (Epistulae Pythagoreorum 4.3), printed in the Epistolae diver-
sorum edited by Marcus Musurus (Aldus 1499), sig p iii; and this is probably
Erasmus' source.

13 Taken from Aelius Donatus, the ancient commentator on Terence. For another
instance of the phrase, see i ix 84n. Otto 1437
1 Donatus] On Terence Eunuchus 379 (tr Ashmore)
2 Plautus] Curculio 459 (Otto 1131)
3 Sophocles] Frag 786, cited by Plutarch Artaxerxes 28.3. This reference, with
Erasmus' concluding reflection, was added in 1533.

14 Collectanea no 751 refers only to the passage from Plato's Euthydemus (in Latin)
and gives the Greek in a different form. The phrase was current on the
Attic stage; the wording given here is in Zenobius 3.59. Otto 38. Zen. Ath. 1.7
1 Mela] Chorographia (first century AD) 1.16.83. 'Curetes' (see in i 80) replaced in
1515 the 'Cretans' of 1508.
2 Theocritus] 17.89
 N o T E s i vi 14-1 vi 16 288

3 Herodotus] 2.152, 154. The books of his history, first printed by Aldus in
1502, were referred to by the names of the Muses.
4 Aristophanes] Birds 764, used again in n vi 49
5 Strabo] Geographica 14.2.28 (see i vi 3n), citing two early lyric poets, Anacreon
frag 56 Page and Alcaeus z 65(388) Lobel-Page
6 Aristophanes] Birds 292-3
7 Suidas] E 1377
8 The Persians] Strabo 15.3.18, inserted in 1533
9 the Swiss] The first half of this sentence (down to 'no vice in them') was
added in 1515, the second half in 1517/8.
10 Plato] Euthydemus 28$c, the Greek, with a Latin version of it, was inserted in
1528. What follows is a paraphrase of Laches iSjb, of which the Greek was
later added to the following adage.
11 Aristides] Panathenaicus p 267 Dindorf. He is a sophist of the second century
AD; see i i i3n.
12 Cicero] Pro L. Flacco 27.65; Erasmus' correction is now known from MSS.
13 elsewhere] Adagia n ii 60

15 Collectanea no 745 gave the Greek proverb and a Latin paraphrase of a sen-
tence from the Laches. This was abandoned, and the paragraph rebuilt from
Zenobius 3.65 (cf also Suidas E 1426) and Horace. In 1508 it began The oppo-
site of the preceding is ...'; this was altered to 'The same is true of ...' in
1528. The effect is something like our To run before you can walk.' Zen. Ath.
3-152
1 Plato] Laches iSyb, already paraphrased in the preceding paragraph, and
added here, in the Greek with a Latin version, in 1520.
2 Dicaearchus] A lost author of the fourth century BC, cited by Zenobius, but
not by Diogenianus (4.44), which indicates that Zenobius was the collec-
tion Erasmus was using here
3 principle] See Adagia n ii 82, where the Horace is also quoted.
4 Horace] Epistles 2.1.114-17
5 Gregory] of Nazianzus (AD 326-90), Orationes 2.47 (PG 35.4563), added in
1533.

16 Collectanea no 153 gave the first Pliny quotation only, with one divergence
from the true text which is now corrected, so that Erasmus probably went
back to the original when compiling the Chiliades. Otto 462; Suringar 142;
Tilley c 480 Let not the cobbler go beyond his last.
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 35.85
2 Athenaeus] 8.3513, added in 1533, so that 'his nephew' in the next sentence
refers back to Pliny.
3 His nephew's] Pliny the Younger Letters 1.10.4
4 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 1.3 (iO94b27); Physica 2.1 (19237). The words 'of
our own day' were added in 1515. Cf Tilley M 80 A blind man should judge
no colours.
5 Fabius Pictor] The early Roman annalist, whose works are lost, must owe his
presence here to some confusion. The quotation comes from Jerome Letters
 N o T E s i vi 16-1 vi 20 289

66.9.2, who ascribes it to Fabius, by which he must mean not the annalist but
Quintilian (Fabius Quintilianus), just as Erasmus so often does. In Jerome's
Comm. in Esaiam, in the prologue to book 16, he gives it to 'the eminent
stylist/ which points the same way. Possibly an echo of Quintilian
12.10.50; no one seems to have found any other source.

17 Seemingly taken direct from Varro; Otto 522 quotes several close parallels
from Greek tragedy, which one might have expected to appear either here or
in the following paragraph. Tilley G 236 Help thyself and God will help thee.
1 Varro] Res rusticae 1.1.4, which Erasmus calls De re rustica; datable to 37 BC.
2 Homer] Odyssey 3.26-7, which provide also Adagia in ix 55; the Greek, with a
Latin version, was not given here till 1528.
3 Cicero] Ad Atticum 9.15.4

18 Mainly from Zenobius 5.93 (Diogenianus 8.11 contributes nothing), and very
close to the preceding paragraph; cf Tilley G 243 Pray to God to help you,
and put your hand to work.
1 carter] Aesop 81 Halm
2 Agathon] Frag 6 Nauck cited by Aristotle Ethica Eudemia 5 = Ethica Nicoma-
chea 6.4 (1140319). He is a lost fifth-century Attic tragedian.
3 Suidas] A 4525; cf Euripides frag 432 Nauck.

19 In 1508 this was preceded by what is now i vi i, which was moved to that
place in 1515. Material from Collectanea no 292 is reused, partly verbatim.
Otto 1063. Related phrases in English are 'With my own bow and spear' and
'Fighting a lone hand.'
1 Cicero] De officiis 3.7.34; Philippics 2.37.95, added in 1536
2 Code] Codex of Justinian 2.13.1; 3.1.13.9, both added in 1533
3 Plautus] Perhaps a conflation from memory of such phrases as Bacchides 551
copias omnes meas and Cistellaria 29 nostra copia.
4 elsewhere] Adagia i v 27

20 Collectanea no 293 gave the first Cicero passage only. Otto 1579; Suringar 140;
Tilley w 532 He is not wise that is not wise for himself; H 412 He helps little
that helps not himself.
1 Plato] Hippias major 28$). From 1508 onwards this stood in Latin near the end
of the paragraph. In 1520 it was added here in Greek, with a Latin version,
introduced by the words 'Plato says somewhere'; the name of the dialogue
was inserted in 1523, and at the same time the Latin citation below was
removed.
2 Cicero] Adfamiliares 7.6.2, citing Ennius sc 273 (the metrical comment added in
1515); Adfamiliares 13.15.2 (cf in i 53), citing Euripides frag 905; De divinat-
ione 1.58.132, citing Ennius sc 321 (this last added in 1536). For the fragments
of Quintus Ennius, greatest of the early Roman poets, we use the number-
ing of Ennianae poeseos reliquiae ed J. Vahlen, Leipzig 1903.
3 Lucian] Apologia 5
4 Alexander] Plutarch Alexander 53, added in 1533
 N O T E S I Vi 2O-I Vl 24 290

5 This principle] Sentence added in 1515

6 Suetonius] See i vi in; Tiberius 59.2; the Latin is an anonymous line that was
in popular circulation under the Emperor Tiberius (Fragmenta poetarum
latinorum ed W. Morel, Leipzig 1927, 122).

21 Given on Livy's authority. Otto 336. Cantherium is properly a low-grade hack,

a packhorse. If the rendering 'donkey' is legitimate, a play on words may
have been intended in the Latin, one of the combatants being called Asellus
(the Latin for donkey), which Erasmus gives as Asellius. Be that as it may,
the Latin should be minime sis, not set's: apparently Tray do not put a donkey
(?) into a ditch,' which leaves the point of the anecdote still uncertain.
1 Livy] 23.46.12-47.6, given in paraphrase
2 elsewhere] Adagia i viii 82

22 This and the next appear very briefly in the Collectanea under no 674, no
doubt from the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 6.4; Diogenianus 8.23;
Suidas T 81). With us, As rich as Croesus (Adagia i vi 74) has put the other two
phrases out of business; and 'talents' as a weight of precious metal has
been replaced, except in technical contexts, by 'talents' in the sense of person-
al endowment, derived from the parable in Matthew 25.14-30. Zen. Ath. 2.66
1 Horace] Satires 1.1.68-70, used again in n vi 14
2 Plato] Euthyphro ne
3 Suidas] x 147, citing the early fifth-century Sicilian dramatist Epicharmus frag
226 Kaibel and the sixth-century lyric poet Anacreon frag 10 Page.
4 another form] Frag com adesp 602 Kock
5 Plutarch] Moralia 6o3A, citing Aeschylus frag 158 Nauck, which is used again
in in vi 5.
6 In another passage] Moralia 4988, added in 1515.
7 Athenaeus] 6.2306, citing in fact the fourth-century humorous writer Sopater,
frag 19 Kaibel; but three lines from Antiphanes, a poet of the Attic New
Comedy, have just preceded, and so his name is given by mistake, as in n v
91. This was an addition of 1517/5.

23 Collectanea no 674 (in part), illustrated with an anonymous Latin version of the
first of the two lines from Theocritus.
1 Theocritus] 8.53-4
2 The lesser] Sentence added in 1526
3 Phormio] Terence Phormio 643-4
4 Aristophanes] Birds 153-4. Opuntian Locris was a small Greek state on the
southern border of Thessaly, an inhabitant of which would be called Op-
untius. Opuntius was also a personal name, borne by a one-eyed common
informer of the day, pilloried by the comic poets (eg Birds 1294).

24 Collectanea no 733 briefly gives the reference to Plato, from whose Republic
(3-4o8b) the second Greek phrase is taken. Diogenianus 8.53. Otto 1110
1 Statius] Silvae 2.2.121 (a volume of occasional verse from the very end of the
first century AD)
2 the poets] Probably a reminiscence of Ovid Metamorphoses 11.94-101
 N o T E s i vi 24-1 vi 27 291

3 the historians] A reference perhaps to Valerius Maximus i.6.ext.2 (see i vii

47^)
4 Pliny] Naturalis historia 33.51, added in 1515

25 The first of a little group of three adages suggested by Hesiod. Cf Tilley F 43

Common fame is seldom to blame, M 204 It is true, that (= that which) every
man says. It was duplicated in 1533 in iv viii 34.
1 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 7.13.5 (ii53b27)
2 Aristides] De quattuor p 201 Dindorf (see i vi i4n)
3 poems] Hesiod Works and Days 760-4
4 Homer] Iliad 2.93; Odyssey 24.413
5 Virgil] Aeneid 4.195, where the 'foul goddess' is the terrible figure of Fama,
gossip or rumour personified.

26 From Hesiod Works and Days 746-7. The crow was a bird of ill omen; but the
meaning of the word translated 'unplaned' has been much discussed, and
some think there must be an early corruption in our text of Hesiod.
1 Proculus] Name current in Erasmus' day for Proclus, an eminent Greek schol-
ar of the fifth century AD, author of a commentary on the poem; cf Scholia
vetera ed A. Pertusi, Milan 1954, 227.
2 proverb] Adagia in iii 38
3 proverbial use] See i vii 16.

27 From Hesiod Works and Days 748-9, quoted also in i iii 59. The sense of the
Greek is not known.
1 Cicero] Definibus 2.7.22, citing Caecilius Statius (cf i vi in) line 70 (Ribbeck
2.53), from his Hymnis. This was added in 1515.
2 Suetonius] Vitellius 13.3, added in 1517/8 with Otho in place of Vitellius (cor-
rected in 1520). This slip in the emperor's name suggests that Erasmus was
quoting from memory, but even he could hardly have carried a longish sen-
tence from Suetonius in his head almost verbatim. For the author, see i vi
in.
3 Plutarch] Moralia 7030, the title of the work added in 1515
4 This custom] Sentence added in 1515
5 It will perhaps ... a meal] Sentences added in 1515
6 elsewhere] Not yet identified; 'book 9' was inserted in 1526. The phrase
occurs in Athenaeus 3-io8c and 1156.
7 Pherecrates] Frag 104 Kock, cited by Athenaeus 6.228e; this and the next are
scraps from the Attic Old Comedy, added here in 1528.
8 Phrynichus] Frag 57 Kock, cited 6.2293
9 Archestratus] A fourth-century BC writer on gastronomy in epic verse, much
pillaged by Athenaeus; this is frag 57.4 in Corpusculum poesis epicae Graecae
ludibundae ed P. Brandt, Leipzig 1888, 166. It was cited by Athen. 9.3996, and
added here in 1517/8.
10 Anaxandrides] Frag 33 Kock, cited by Athen. 6.227b and added in 1528. He is
a writer of the Attic New Comedy; the speaker is a fisherman praising his
wares.
11 as the saying goes] Adagia i ix 54
 N o T E s i vi 28-1 vi 30 292

28 Taken direct from Plutarch

\ Plutarch] Moralia 3010, citing Theophrastus frag 133 Wimmer, and perhaps
the historian Apollodorus of Athens of the second century BC (but see FHG
4.650)
2 Porphyrion] The ancient scholiast, on Horace Epodes 16.36-7. The Greek he
quotes is part of Homer Iliad 1.576, which appears again below, and Eras-
mus' suggestion for changing it is misguided.
3 Plato] Laws 1.6723
4 Pliny] the Younger Letters 2.12.5
5 Livy] 21.4.1, used again with the Pliny in iv iii 44, which duplicates this.
6 Homer] Iliad 1.576
7 Laertius] Perhaps a slip of memory; the story is told of Zeno by Plutarch
Moralia j8E.
8 Plautus] Casina 331-2
9 such is my will] Sic volo, sicjubeo: a familiar tag from Juvenal (6.223), used in
three other places in the Adagia
10 Homer] Iliad 1.137
11 Lucian] Piscator 10
12 Plutarch] Pyrrhus 9.2, citing Euripides Phoenissae 68; inserted in 1526
13 Ennius] Annals 268 (see i vi 2on), cited by Gellius 20.10; the right reading is vi,
not ferro. Added in 2515
14 the laws are silent] One might have expected this celebrated phrase from
Cicero Pro Milone 4.11 (Otto 946) to rank as an adage in its own right.
15 Suidas] K 2760, added in 1517/5
16 Aristophanes] Acharnians 19, added in 152$
17 Euripides] Iphigeneia Aulidensis 318
18 Cicero] In L. Pisonem 2.3; added in 1533, in which it also provided iv x 19.

29 Probably from the Greek proverb-collections (Suidas A 400; Apostolius 5.100)

1 on the surface] The Greek adverb akrds indicates one who swims either 'on
the top' (surface) of the water, or 'in the top class' (with great skill). The
sense here demands the latter, but this meaning, which is not common, was
perhaps unfamiliar to Erasmus.
2 Socrates] The story is told in Diogenes Laertius 2.22, but is given here from
Suidas.
3 Laertius] 9.12, added in 1533

30 Hermogenes of Tarsus is an important figure in the history of rhetorical theo-

ry, who flourished around AD 200; Syrianus a teacher of philosophy and
rhetoric in Athens of the fifth century AD. Erasmus tells us in Adagia n i i that
Hermogenes with notes was one of the unprinted Greek texts that he was
able to borrow when he was preparing the first edition of the Chiliades in
Venice; and this no doubt means Syrianus, who was soon afterwards prin-
ted in the Aldine two-volume Rhetores graeci of November 1508-May 1509. He
drew on the same source for i ix 25 and in iv 86. The sense of the adage is
related to our 'Practice makes perfect/ Otto 524; cf Tilley u 24 Use makes
mastery.
i Syrianus] In Hermogenem commentaria ed H. Rabe, 2 (Leipzig 1893) 3
 N o T E s i vi 30-1 vi 35 293

2 Cicero] De oratore 1.33.149, added in 1523

3 Pliny] the Younger Letters 6.29.4, added in 1533

31 The first of a small group of six which have Aristides the rhetorician (second
century AD) among their authorities, into which no 33 has no doubt been
inserted because it is close in sense to no 32.
1 Plutarch] Moralia 698?
2 before] In the introduction, section xiii (col IOE); cross-reference added in
1515.
3 Aristides] De quattuor p 174 Dindorf
4 Homer] Iliad 2.653 an<^ elsewhere
5 Aristophanes] Eg Knights 227; Clouds 101

32 From the scholiast on Aristides. Suringar 86; Tilley M 421 The wisest men
have most fools to their children.
1 Demosthenes] His remark is reported by Aristides De quattuor p 214 Dindorf.
2 Euripides] Heradidae 327-8
3 Homer] Odyssey 2.276-7.
4 Aelius Spartianus] Severus 20.4, added in 1517/8. He is one of the authors of
the Historic Augusta (see i vi 7n).

33 Placed here no doubt because of its kinship with the preceding. Cf Tilley F 92
Like father, like son
1 Euripides] Frag 333 Nauck, preserved in the florilegium of Stobaeus 4.30.5
(see i vi in)
2 proverb] Adagia i ix 25
3 Theognis] 537. This also supplies n iii 93.

34 From Aristides De quattuor p 239 Dindorf, who is perhaps thinking of a line

from a lost comedy (frag adesp 471 Kock), though Erasmus' attempt to
reconstruct the metrical form is not satisfactory.
1 decumana] Festus p 62 Lindsay; the word comes again in iv ix 54
2 proverbial verse] Publilius Syrus F 18. He was a famous actor and writer of
mimes in the last century BC, under whose name (generally in the form
Publius) circulated, especially in schools, a large collection of one-line moral
maxims in verse, edited by Erasmus in his Cato of 1514. This is Tilley M
1012 Misfortune never comes alone (wrongly identified with v ii 31).

35 From Aristides Panathenaicus p 188 Dindorf; Erasmus tells us in n i i (4050)

that in Venice he had had access to a manuscript of this with scholia. An
English equivalent of the adage is Tilley F 570 To set the best foot forward (cf
m i 34).
1 both hands to it] Adagia i ix 16
2 two helms] The literal sense of the Greek is 'with two feet/ and Erasmus may
have found this used of the ship Argo in Apollonius Rhodius 2.932; his
Argonautica had been published in Florence in 1496. But the sense there is
'with both sheets' of a square sail at full stretch, ie with a brisk following
wind. Erasmus' sense, 'rudder/ is sometimes found, but has less point.
 N o T E s i vi 35-1 vi 40 294

3 elsewhere] i i 13
4 Aristophanes] Birds 55

36
1 Aristotle] Metaphysics IA.I (9931^5). Giovanni Argiropolo was one of the most
learned of the Byzantine refugees, who taught in Florence in the mid-
fifteenth century; he replaced the medieval Latin versions of many of Aristot-
le's works with new ones (CEBR 1.70).
2 Averroes] Known for his eminence simply as 'the Commentator'
3 Alexander] The passage is further referred to below.
4 thereafter] Homer Iliad 20.308
5 Aristides] De quattuor p 168 Dindorf, citing Pindar frag 48
6 by the rule] i v 90
7 Euripides] Phoenissae 469, which forms Adagia i iii 88
8 Alexander] Greek commentator of the third century AD; the passage cited will
be found in M. Hayduck's edition in the Berlin corpus of the Greek com-
mentators on Aristotle i (1891) 140.
9 Plato] Phaedrus 2356
10 Lucian] Timon 10
11 elsewhere] Adagia i i 48-9. The paragraph concluded in 1508 with citations
from Macrobius 3.12.10 and Aristophanes Frogs 1135; these were removed
in 1515, having found a home of their own in i i 49.

37 From Aristides De quattuor p 272 Dindorf

1 Alcman] Frag 108 Page. He was the great lyric poet of Sparta in the seventh
century BC.
2 Plato] Laws 4.7053 ('not' is a mistake in Erasmus' Greek text).
3 Virgil] Georgics 2.238
4 Besides] Sentence added in 1515. Erasmus is perhaps thinking of the water-
guard at Dover, who confiscated all his money in January 1500 when he
was leaving England. This he never forgot; an allusion in Collectanea no 325
was not repeated in the Chiliades, but he refers to it with feeling in Ep 279,
ascribed to 1513.

38 From Suidas n 2646 (cf Diogenianus 7.60). The grasshopper we have met in i v
14.

39 From Suidas M 1251; of the two forms given for askos, a wine-skin, one seems
to come from Diogenianus, and the other from Hesychius o 1658.
1 Aristophanes] Birds 1245 (?)
2 Diogenianus] 2.65, 2.100. The second phrase had been mentioned in Collec-
tanea no 424.
3 Hesychius] A 7725, added in 1526. He is a lexicographer of the fifth century
AD, first printed by Aldus in 1514.

40 From Diogenianus 2.100. Tilley L 310 A lion fears no bugs.

1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 8.52
2 Seneca] This has not been found in his Letters; added in 1533.
 N o T E s i vi 41-1 vi 47 295

41 Derived, as Erasmus tells us, from Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 1.32. Zen. Ath.
3-39
1 Pelasgians and] Added in 1526
2 Suidas] A 4100, added in 1526, as far as 'first interpretation'

42 Derived from the Greek proverb-collections, Suidas M 701 and Zenobius

('Zenodotus') 5.9, who cites Cratinus, a writer of the Attic Old Comedy,
frag 243 Kock. Zen. Ath. 3.150
1 Parmeno's pig] i i 10
2 Plutarch] Moralia 558A; this sentence was added in 1515.

43 Collectanea no 120 quoted the passages from Suetonius and Cicero; but the
Cicero is longer here, so that Erasmus has clearly gone back to the original
when compiling the Chiliades. Otto 305
1 Terence] Eunuchus 913
2 Cicero] Ad Atticum 13.12.3
3 Suetonius] See i vi in; Tiberius 38. 'Which is derived from fine horses' was
added in 1515;^ the Collectanea Erasmus had used the form Callipedes,
which suggests feet rather than horses, and Callipedes is maintained in LB.
4 Plutarch] Moralia 212F
5 Deikelon] Hesychius A 452-3; Eudemus of Rhodes was a favourite pupil of
Aristotle.
6 Aristophanes] Clouds 64

44 From Diogenianus 3.64, as Erasmus tells us (also in Suidas B 63). One might
have expected him to add one or two of the deleterious allusions to bath-
men in Aristophanes.
1 Horace] Satires 2.3.19-20
2 Horace again] Satires 1.7.2-3, used more fully in Adagia i vi 70, and again in
11163.
3 Plato] Republic i.344d; the Greek is given in i i 5.
4 Horace] Epistles 1.18.69

45 From Diogenianus 3.43. The reference to Juvenal 2.3 was added in 1515.
Manius Curius Dentatus, a distinguished general of the third century BC,
was a standing example of traditional Roman frugality; the Bacchanalia was a
festival of Bacchus full of licence.

46 From Seneca Dialogi 5 (De ira 3).9.4-5. Otto 921

i Pliny] Naturalis historia 22.111, added in 1533

47 From Seneca Letters 22.1. Otto 756

1 take our cue from events] This seems not to have been treated as an adage in
its own right; but cf n ii 38.
2 Thus far Seneca] Added in 1515
3 Caesar] De bello Gallico 5.33, added in 1533
 N o T E s i vi 48-1 vi 53 296

48 Collectanea no 547 gives the Greek phrase (seemingly from Diogenianus, since
it speaks of a Mount Libethrius, as he does), but no supporting quotations.
The sources are Zenobius 1.79; Diogen. 2.26. Zen. Ath. 3.1
1 Servius] On Virgil Eclogues 7.21. Erasmus normally refers to the Eclogues by
title rather than number.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 4.32
3 Solinus] 8.7. This is a geographical compendium of the third century AD.
4 Strabo] Geographica 9.2.25; see i vi 3n.

49 Probably owes its presence to Aristides (De quattuor p 182 Dindorf), like nos
31-7 above; but it is also in Apostolius 16.82.
1 elsewhere] Adagia i vi 84 (Horace Epistles 2.1.220)
2 This will] Sentence added in 1526

50 Perhaps first suggested, like the preceding, by Aristides; cf Apostolius 12.420

Otto 1299; Tilley M 75 As the man is, so is his talk.
1 Seneca] Letters 114.1; in the editions of 1515-36 the reference was to Book 20; it
has already appeared in i i 98.
2 Aristides] De rhetorica p 133 Dindorf
3 Diogenes Laertius] 1.58
4 Persius] Satires 5.24-5; 3.21-2. The latter passage had provided Collectanea no
259, but this was not taken up in the Chiliades.
5 Seneca] Letters 114.4-8, added in 1515. Erasmus Apophthegmata 3.70
6 Plato] Charmides, perhaps a reminiscence of 159 and following; Gorgias 47od-
e. Both these were added in 1523, without the Greek.

51 Derived, it seems, from Suidas H 691.

i Aristophanes] Wasps 44-6, part of the Greek added in 1533. Theorus was a
political figure in Athens, apparently with a distinguished profile, 'the
head of a raven' (korax). Alcibiades, who could not pronounce the letter R,
calls him Theolus (evidently a joke, but the point escapes us) with the head
of a toady (kolax); which Aristophanes, who despised Theorus, found accu-
rate enough.

52 Derived from a fragment of Aeschylus, which was evidently well known in

Antiquity. Tilley F 166 To be shot with one's own feathers
1 Aristophanes] Birds 807-8. The scholiast quotes Aeschylus frag 139 Nauck.
2 a fable] Aesop 4 Halm
3 Athenaeus] 11.494^ added in 1517/8
4 Terence] Heautontimorumenos 470-1, the explanation added in 1515

53 A common phrase, recorded among the material from Zenobius ('Zenodotus')

printed in the Aldine Aesop of 1505 (column 2), and also in Suidas A 122
and Apostolius 1.10
1 Persius] Satires 4.30, used again in in vi 100; the context is quoted in in iv 44.
2 Aristophanes] The scholiast on Wasps 525, cited more fully just below (in a
sentence inserted in 1528) as quoting two lost historians, Theopompus of
 N O T E S I VI 53-1 VI 55 297

Chios (fourth century BC) FGrHist 1155406 and Apollodorus of Athens

(second century BC) 2445215
3 Aristophanes] Knights 85; Wasps 525; Knights (not Wasps) 106; Peace 300
4 Athenaeus] 11.4873-^ added in 1517/8, as it was in n viii i. The text original-
ly ran 'in Germany and England' (durat Germanis ac Britannis), but the
British were cut out here in 1528 when the last clause ('a custom') was added.
5 Antiphanes] A writer of the Middle Comedy, frag 137 Kock, cited by Athen-
aeus ii-486f and 487^ this, like the preceding, is part of the additions
made from him in 1517/8 out of the Aldine editio princeps of 1512.
6 Lucian] Symposium 16 (Lapithae is an alternative titl
7 Horace] Odes 3.19.9-10, quoted more fully in n Hi i
8 Thebes] This might come from Apostolius 1.10.
9 Stephanus] Steph. Byzantius p 11. His geographical lexicon, perhaps fifth
century AD, was printed by Aldus in 1502, and is used in the Adagia about
a hundred times. Referred to by the pages of A. Meineke's edition, Berlin
1849.
10 Plutarch] Moralia 6^E, added in 1515
11 Aristides] De quattuor p 243 Dindorf (see i vi i4n).
12 elsewhere] i i 72

54 From the Greek proverb-collections (Suidas E 3973), but they throw no light
on its origin and little on the usage, and our translation may not do it
justice. In 1508 Erasmus' version was 'Under the water,' but he changed this
in 1515. The 'at-water man/ as a humble functionary in the law-courts, is
in the word-list of Julius Pollux (8.13), which is mentioned elsewhere in the
Adagia as a source. (One might have thought that a respectable citizen,
above the suspicion of having been bribed by either of the parties to a lawsuit,
would have been a better choice for the responsible position of regulating
the length of the speeches on either side.)
1 elsewhere] Adagia i iv 73
2 Roman law] See on i x 51.
3 another] Zenobius 2.72; Diogenianus 3.51; Suidas B 80

55 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 6.35; Suidas <& 635). Zen. Ath.
3.102
1 Euripides] Iphigeneia Aulidensis 58-60. Erasmus introduces his Latin version of
the lines with the words 'I translated the sense of these lines long ago as
follows.' This refers to his Latin translation of the play published by Bade in
Paris in September 1506 (Ep 188).
2 Herodotus] See i vi i4n; 1.165.
3 Strabo] See i vi 3n; 4.1.4.
4 Horace] Epodes 16.15-20 and 25-36; described in 1508 as from the fourth book
of the Odes. This was corrected in 1517/8.
5 Stephanus] Steph. Byzantius p 675 Meineke; see i vi 53n.
6 Herodotus] 1.163 etc;tne name was inserted in 1528.
7 elsewhere] Adagia rv iv i. These last two sentences were added in 1528.
8 Zenodotus] Zenobius 6.35
 N o T E s i vi 56-1 vi 60 298

56 Here stood originally an article called Phocensium amolitio, which was largely
rewritten and put to stand as iv iv i in 1515, when the 1508 text was
extended to iv v 11. It was not removed from this place, however, until 1528,
when the present article was made new to replace it here. The source is
Hesychius i 2131; but, as Henri Estienne points out in a note printed in LB,
Erasmus has mistaken a Greek verb in his source. Acopus did not 'work
hard to secure a rich style/ he 'was so much courted/ 'was treated with so
much respect/ that he developed a pompous style. In any case, the phrase
can also mean Tales from Sybaris/ and Erasmus has overlooked its earliest
appearance, where it has the sense of fables of some sort, distinguished
from the beast-fables that pass under the name of Aesop (Aristophanes Wasps
1259). This overlaps iv vii 10.
1 proverb] Adagia u ii 65
2 Asiatic style] Asiatic (more often Asianic) and Attic were the catchwords of
the debate on style in Cicero's day: one rich and elaborate, the other ele-
gant and terse. Erasmus refers to them, eg in the De copia 1.4 and 6 (CWE
24.299 and 301).
3 remark] Adagia i vi 50
4 Sybaritae] u ii 67

57 Taken very likely from Aristides; also in Suidas A 327

1 Aristides] De quattuor p 346 Dindorf; also in n iv 51
2 at home] Adagia i vi 83; the next two referred to are i ii 37 (for v ii 37, which is
similar, did not appear till 1533) and i vi 58.
3 Festus] P 201 Lindsay; the author's name was at first given as Varro.
4 Aristophanes] Scholiast on Wasps referred to in the next article
5 Tertullian] Adversus Marcionem 1.9.2, added in 1523. The works of this African
father, whose floruit is given as AD 197-220, were first printed by Froben
in July 1521, edited by Beatus Rhenanus.

58 Probably taken direct from Aristophanes; but see also Zenobius 2.7; Suidas A
3247. ii v 94 is a duplicate.
1 Aristophanes] Wasps 548
2 elsewhere] Adagia in v 35

59 From Aristophanes Knights 418-20, cited by Suidas N 120

1 Horace] Epistles 1.7.13, used again in i vii 94
2 Athenaeus] 8.36ob-d, added in 1517/8. He cites the lost historian Theognis of
Rhodes FGrHist 526F1. This is the opening of the famous Rhodian
swallow-song, sung by the children from door to door at the time of the first
swallow (Carmina popularia 2, Page p 450).

60 Collectanea no 345, based on Diogenianus 4.24; also in Zenobius ('Zenodotus')

3.41 and Suidas A 1204. Zen. Ath. 3.94
1 Clearchus] An early collector of proverbs; frag 51 in F. Wehrli, Die Schule des
Aristoteles 3 (Basel/Stuttgart 1969)
2 Athenaeus] 12.529(1 (and 5146), inserted in 1517/8, as was the reference in the
 N o T E s i vi 60-1 vi 64 299

following clause to book 14, although it has already been given two sen-
tences later.
3 Apuleius] Apologia 39, citing Ennius v 407 (see i vi 2on)
4 Athenaeus] 14.642!:, citing Ephippus (a poet of the Attic New Comedy) frag 13
Kock
5 He also] Athenaeus 7.3056, citing the gastronomic poet Archestratus, frag 15
Brandt, on the semi-mythical boar-fish of Epirus which grunted like a pig.
This reference and the next two were added in 1517/8.
6 in another passage] Athenaeus io.444d, citing Aristophanes frag 596 Kock;
this is used again in n iii 97.
7 Again] Athenaeus 8.358^ citing Antiphanes (see i vi 11) frag 68 Kock

61 Apparently from Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 1.55; also in Diogenianus 2.6 and

Suidas A 888. Cf i i 64. Tilley w 260 Let well alone.
1 Plutarch] Moralia 585F, 7563, both inserted in 1515
2 Plato] Laws 8.8433. The text was given in 1508 in the Latin translation of
Marsilio Ficino, and the Greek, with Erasmus' version, did not replace this
until 1523.
3 Again] Laws 11.913^ 3.684^ the latter reference added in 1536.
4 epigram] Anthologia Palatina 7.239, by Parmenion on Alexander the Great; but
he wrote aniketon, invincible, not akineton, immovable.
5 Sophocles] Antigone 1060, used again in 1533 in v i 93; Oedipus Coloneus 624.
6 Plutarch] Moralia 430, citing a fragment from an unidentified tragedy (frag
trag adesp 361 Nauck); 5020. Erasmus has this line again, taken from a
different passage of Plutarch, in n iii i.
7 Herodotus] 6.98; see i vi i4n.
8 Virgil] Aeneid 3.77

62 This is Diogenianus 6.58. Suringar 191; Tilley s 1035 He deserves not the
sweet that will not taste of the sour.
1 Tryphon] De tropis 25 (Rhetores graeci ed Spengel 3.206), citing Sappho frag
146 Lobel-Page, which has already been referred to by Erasmus in the
second section of the introduction to the Adagia.
2 maxim] Publilius Syrus F 25; see i vi 34n.
3 Plautus] Asinaria 324; this line stood as an independent adage in the Collectan-
ea (no 62), with no comment but 'a very well-known saying.'
4 Homer] Odyssey 10.305; the passage is quoted in a similar context in n ix 35.
The moly was the magic herb given by Mercury to Ulysses to protect him
from the wiles of Circe.

63 From the Greek proverb-collections (Diogenianus 3.62; Suidas B 261). Tilley F

64 Cloak a fart with a cough

64 Collectanea no 391 gave the Greek form of this, which could have been derived
from the word-list of Julius Pollux (2.16), and ultimately from comedy (frag
adesp 912, 913 Kock), with 'Merula is the authority' - the humanist Giorgio
Merula (1430/1-94), who edited Martial in 1471 and other major Latin
authors. The quotations from Martial and Horace followed. Erasmus also
 N O T E S i vi 64-1 vi 68 300

referred to the proverbial phrase 'Cervina senectus/ Old as a stag (Juvenal

14.251; Otto 378), but does not seem to have thought it worthy of an indepen-
dent life in the Chiliades. This might well be due to inadvertence. Otto 434.
A much fuller review of Greek and Latin texts is given by D'Arcy W. Thomp-
son A Glossary of Greek Birds, Oxford 1936, 169.
1 Plutarch] Moralia 4150, citing Hesiod frag 304 Merkelbach-West
2 I know not who] Ausonius 32 (De aetatibus animantium) 1-10, sometimes
found in manuscripts of the minor poems ascribed to Virgil (the so-called
Appendix Vergiliana). Ausonius was a professor at Bordeaux, whose skilful
verses were first printed in 1472; we follow the numbering of the text
edited by S. Prete, Leipzig 1978.
3 Pliny] Natumlis historia 7.153
4 Aristotle] De generatione animalium 4.10 (777b3)
5 Martial] 10.67.5
6 Horace] Odes 4.13.24-5; the Fates took away lovely Cinara in her prime, but
will spare Lyce to become an old crone.
7 Synesius] Epistulae (not yet identified)

65 This is in the proverb-collections (Zenobius 6.18; Diogenianus 8.37; Suidas T

578), and the Greek was given in the Collectanea no 681 with the note 'a
story too well known to need further illustration.' Otto 1789. Zen. Ath. 3.99
1 Lucian] Dialogi mortuorum 7(17).!
2 Cicero] De senectute 1.3
3 Suidas] K 497, added in 1523

66 A very common comparison (Otto 1223); the actual wording in Statius Silvae
1.3.110 or Martial 13.117.1
1 Homer] Odyssey 3.245; Iliad 1.250-2
2 Juvenal] 10.249; 'the Ancients counted units and tens on the fingers of the left
hand, and hundreds on those of the right' (J.D. Duff), thirty years being
the normal span of a generation.
3 creatures] See i vi 64, and for Tiresias i iii 57.
4 Lucian] Macrobii (The Long-lived'), passim, an essay not referred to else-
where in the Adagia. The information about the Chinese may also come
from it (section 3).
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.153-9

67 From Lucian Philopseudes 53. The last sentence was added in 1515.

68 Collectanea no 284, from Terence Andria 309-10. Otto 22; Tilley M 182 The
healthful man can give good counsel to the sick.
1 Laertius] Diogenes Laertius 1.36, repeated in i ix 95
2 Euripides] Alcestis 477-8
3 proverbial saying] Menander Sententiae 57-8; it comes from Euripides (frag
1042 Nauck).
4 Terence] Eunuchus 72-3, also used in iv iii 75
5 Horace] Epistles 1.8.11
 N O T E S i vi 69-1 vi 73 301

69 Included in Collectanea no 109 with a reference to Lactantius, but without the

Greek which was added later, perhaps from Apostolius 15.95^ see also
Jerome Adversus Rufinum 3.28 (PL 23.4788). Otto 1714; Tilley T 206 The things
that are above us are nothing to us.
i Lactantius] Divinae institutiones 3.20.10, the text of the quotation inserted in
1515. The last sentence is an addition of the same date. He is a Christian
writer of the early fourth century.

70 The wording comes as it stands from Horace's Satires, to which Erasmus

returns in 1520 when he has to replace Adagia n i 63. Otto 1794; Suringar
151
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 337-9
2 Terence] Phormio 89
3 Horace] Juvenal 12.81-2; the same false ascription to Horace recurs in n i 63
and ii iii 43.
4 again] Horace Satires 1.7.2-3, cited in i vi 44 as well as n i 63
5 Plutarch] Moralia 508?. Dionysius was tyrant of Syracuse 367-43 BC.
6 Pliny] Naturalis historia 14.141, added in 1515. The phrase is used by Erasmus
as if it were proverbial (i iii 3, i vii 17, n i 55, n iv 52).
7 Theophrastus] Frag 76 Wimmer, cited by Plutarch Moralia 6j<)A; this is also
used in i iii 3 and i x 39.
8 Bath-attendants] In the big public baths which were such a feature of ancient,
especially Roman, city life; see i vi 44. From here to the end of the article is
an addition of 1526.
9 Joannes Grammaticus] The Byzantine scholar J. Tzetzes, who published lec-
tures on the Works and Days about AD 1135-40.
10 Hesiod] Works and Days 493-4

71 Collectanea no 435, the source both there and here being Horace Epistles
1.14.43. Otto 261
1 For trappings ... horses] These two sentences of explanation were inserted in
1515.
2 Terence] Phormio 172

72 From Ovid. Otto 59; Tilley N 115 Our neighbour's ground yields better corn
than our own.
1 Ovid] Ars amatoria 1.349-50, used again in iv viii 20
2 Persius] Satires 6.13-4
3 Publius] Publilius Syrus A 28. See i vi 34n; he was known as Publius in
Erasmus' day. This is not in fact one of the maxims cited by Aulus Gellius
17.14.
4 Horace] Satires 1.1.1-3; lines so familiar, as the opening words of the book,
that in 1508 Erasmus gave the first half-dozen words and then 'etc,' but he
completed the quotation in 1515.

73 Taken directly from Aristophanes Plutus 1084-5; the words were ascribed in
1508 to 'a woman,' and given rightly to Chremylus, a character in the play,
in 1515. Cf Tilley w 466 No wine without lees.
 N o T E s i vi 74-1 vi 77 302

74 A product of general reading; Otto 468 and 457. Tilley c 832 As rich as
Croesus.
1 Solon] Croesus, the rich Asiatic despot, expected Solon, the Attic philoso-
pher, to call him without hesitation the happiest of mortals, and Solon
replied 'Call no man happy till he is dead'; see Adagia i iii 37.
2 Marcus Crassus] The source of this is Pliny Naturalis historia 33.134.
3 Pliny] 33.134-7 and 48-50; the latter reference added in 1515
4 and among them ... philosopher] This clause was added in 1515, the rest of
the sentence in 1517/8. The story about Aristotle's hoard of dishes (no
doubt the heavily embossed silver produced at the time, so unsuited to a
philosopher) comes from Diogenes Laertius 5.16.
5 Jerome] Adversus Rufinum 1.17 (PL 23.4113)
6 Horace] Odes 1.29.1-2; 1.38.1, the latter added in 1515 (Otto 1384)

75 This expression, though familiar, is not in the printed Greek proverb-

collections. The Pactolus is Otto 1320 and the Tagus 1737.
1 Philostratus] Life of Apollonius ofTyana 8.7. Philostratus wrote, perhaps in the
first quarter of the third century, the surprising life and travels of Apollon-
ius, an ascetic miracle-working sage from Tyana in Asia Minor of the first
century AD. Aldus published the first edition in 1504, and Erasmus uses it a
dozen times in 1508 and 1515.
2 in poetry] Euripides Bacchae 154
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 33.66, inserted in 1515
4 Horace] Epodes 15.19-20; called Odes in 1508, but corrected in 1533
5 Juvenal] 3.54-5

76 Derived from general reading. Otto 875 (Irus), 796 (Hecale), but Codrus as a
proverbial figure is a ghost. Tilley c 503 Poorer than Codrus, 1101 As poor
as Irus. In modern times 'As poor as Job' or 'as a church mouse.'
1 Ovid] Tristia 3.7.42
2 Codrus] Codrus is a poor but respectable character in Juvenal 3.203 and 208
(in modern texts he has become Cordus); he is not in 3.10, the line Erasmus
quotes, and we have no particular reason to think he was proverbial.
3 Irus] Homer Odyssey 18.1-7; he has been mentioned already in i i 2. Ulysses'
fight with him was added in 1515.
4 Hecale] An old woman in a popular poem by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus
(which has recently become better known to us from papyrus fragments
found in Egypt), she comes in Plautus Cistellaria 48, and was added here in
1520.
5 Ovid] Remedia amoris 747-8, added in 1520
6 introduction] Section xiii (CWE 31.27)

77 It must surely be a mere accident that Plato Theaetetus 2oc)b is not cited for this
expression, considering the use made of that dialogue in the Adagia. It is
Menander frag 175. Strabo seems to be the source of the Greek. Otto 1192.
Zen Ath. 1.34
1 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geograp
2 Cicero] Pro L. Flacco 27.65; Ad Quintum fratrem 1.1.19
 N o T E s i vi 78-1 vi 83 303

78 This phrase, the relation of which to the preceding is not clear, is found in the
Corpus paroemiographorum (1.411) as Appendix 2.85, and it is in Suidas E
3254, Hesychius E 6456 and Apostolius 8.1. Mysia is in the north-west corner
of what is now Asia minor.

79 This is Collectanea no 92, and is given again in no 640, with no Greek equiva-
lent in either place. More material is added in Adagia iv x 75. Otto 1810.
Zen. Ath. 2.86
1 Terence] Phormio 690, with Donatus the ancient commentator
2 Suetonius] See i vi in; Divus Augustus 65, used again in iv x 75.
3 Cicero] De domo sua ad pontifices 5.12
4 Plutarch] Moralia 6$c. The Greek should be knesantos, not kinesantos (which
Erasmus gives), meaning 'when secret talk (scandal) had scratched this
sore.'

80 This was included in Collectanea nos 640 and 766. Tilley s 649 To rub up old
sores
i Cicero] Ad Atticum 5.15.2; De lege agraria contra Rullum 3.2.4, added in 1523;
De oratore 2.48.199, added in 1523, the book-number not till 1526

81 The germ of this is to be found in Collectanea no 88. Otto 326 note

1 beginning] introduction, section xiii (CWE 31.21)
2 Cicero] Ad Atticum 4.18.3
3 Terence] Adelphoe 397; Phormio 474
4 keen-scented] This and the following phrase form Adagia n viii 59.
5 Horace] Satires 2.2.89-90
6 smell of the lamp] See i vii 71.
7 Cicero] Ad Atticum 4.83.4 (from memory); 4.19.1
8 first flavour] Developed in n iv 19
9 swallow the tedium] Quintilian 11.2.41; for 'digest the inconvenience' we
have as yet found no source.
10 spit upon] Added in 1515
11 in one's eyes] Adagia v i 50 (Otto 1265)
12 Richard Pace] Erasmus has already spoken of this project of Pace's (which
was never realized) in his dedication of the Adagia to Lord Mountjoy (Ep
211); the phrase beginning 'whom I often think of was added in 1515. Some
years later (Ep 398 of 5 April 1516) Georgius Precellius quotes much of
what is said here, urging Erasmus to keep Pace up to the mark.
13 the saying] Adagia i ix 54

82 Collectanea no 78 gave the source, Plautus Epidicus 265 (Otto 1106). In 1508 the
article ended 'The metaphor is too well known to need explanation,' but in
1515 this was replaced by an explanatory sentence ('very familiar ... clear'),
and the contrast from Mercator 71 was appended in 1523.

83 This is found with slightly varying interpretations in the Greek proverb-

collections (Zenobius 1.40; Suidas A 4590), but the prime source may well
be Aristophanes.
 N o T E s i vi 83-1 vi 8 304

1 Aristophanes] Wasps 846, with the ancient scholia, citing the lost historian
Aristocritus of Miletus (FGrHist 493F5)
2 Plato] Euthyphro 33; a small change was made in the Greek, and consequently
in the Latin version, in 1520.
3 Plutarch] Moralia 93E; 549E; 8560, this last inserted in 1515
4 Aristides] De quattuor p 199 Dindorf

84 Collectanea no 319, citing Horace Epistles 2.1.219-20. Otto 1898. Erasmus him-
self notes the similarity to i vi 49.

85 Collectanea no 444 referred to Aulus Gellius, with one sentence of comment

(beginning The lesson of this line') which is incorporated verbatim here.
1 Aulus Gellius] 14.6.5, citing Homer Odyssey 4.392, the reference added in
1528. In 1508 the text ran 'was always on the lips of Socrates, and accord-
ing to Laertius of Socrates and Diogenes too'; this was cut out, and the two
following sentences added, in 1526.
2 Laertius] Diogenes Laertius 6.103, citing the philosopher Diocles of Magnesia
3 Plutarch] Moralia 1220, the Latin version added in 1515
4 Martial] 7.10, referred to again in n ix i
5 Diogenes the Cynic] Diogenes Laertius 6.27
6 Homer] Iliad 6.490; Odyssey 1.356 and 21.350. It is not found in Odyssey 8.
These references were added in 1533.
7 Plutarch] Moralia 5750
8 Sophocles] Frag 774 Nauck, cited by Plutarch Moralia 6250; this was added in
1515.

86 Collectanea no 406 covered both this and our no 90 below, citing Persius Satires
4.23-4 as the authority for both. Momus, the god of mockery and hyper-
criticism, complained that men had not been made with windows allowing
one to see what they were really like; see Adagia i v 74. The second and
third lines of the Persius were added in 1515.

87 Collectanea no 268, merely citing the line from Persius (Satires 4.52). To this the
phrase from Cicero De senectute 14.49 was appended in 1520. Otto 1929

88 From Persius (Satires 6.25), like the two preceding. Otto 1107
1 Plautus] A reference to Poenulus 286-7
2 Athenaeus] 6.2300 A seven-line quotation from the comic poet Alexis has just
preceded, but it is not clear that the word in question formed part of it. It is
however derived from the Attic Old Comedy, for it is found in Phrynichus,
frag 4 Kock. These last two sentences were added in 1528.

89 Collectanea no 268 gave the reference to Horace (but from memory, for it said
Satires instead of Epistles), followed by one sentence of exposition, reused
here almost verbatim; and then came the line from Persius which now forms
our no 87. The effect on the early material of Greek reading and of further
 N o T E s i vi 89-1 vi 93 305

thought is nowhere more clearly identifiable. Otto 1107 combines it with the
preceding, no 88.
1 Tilley F 567 Measure yourself by your own foot.
2 Horace] Epistles 1.7.98
3 Lucian] De imaginibus 21
4 Pindar] Pythians 2.34; it was added in 1526 to i x 7.
5 Aristophanes] Birds 1020
6 Martial] 12.98.8

90 Collectanea no 406 combined this with our no 86, giving Persius as the source.
Tilley w 20 We see not what is in the wallet behind.
1 Catullus] 22.21; the note that this is a 'scazon iambic' line (in which the last
foot is two long syllables instead of the short-long of the normal iambic)
was inserted in 1515.
2 Aesop's fables] It is of course in all the fable-collections: Aesop 359, Babrius
66, Phaedrus 4.10; Erasmus quotes from the anthology of Stobaeus 3.23.6
(see i vi in). In the Collectanea the identification of this fable as one of Aesop's
was ascribed to Poliziano.
3 Persius] Satires 4.23-4, as in no 86 above
4 Horace] Satires 2.3.299
5 Jerome] Letters 102.2.1

91 This was appended in Collectanea no 406, with the reference to St Jerome, to

our nos 86 and 90. Tilley M 1191 You can see a mote in another man's eye,
but cannot see a beam in your own.
1 Gospels] Matthew 7.3-4; the Greek was inserted, with a Latin version, in
1515.
2 Jerome] Adversus Rufinum 1.31 (PL23-423 c)
3 Horace] Satires 1.3.25-7; 3.73-4; 6.69

92 The Horace, Martial and Plautus quotations were already mobilized in Collec-
tanea no 467. Otto 1376 and (for the Seneca) 493
" i Porphyrion] The ancient commentary on Horace, on Satires 1.6.22
2 ass at Cumae] Adagia i vii 12
3 Cleon] A favourite butt of Aristophanes; Erasmus returns to this story in n x i
4 Plautus] Miles gloriosus 235; the image is used again in 1523 in n ix 90
5 Horace] Satires 1.6.22
6 Martial] 3.16.5-6
7 Seneca] Letters 9.13, added in 1520
8 Ovid] Tristia 3.4.25-6, which was added in 1520 to n x 50
9 Lucian] Imagines 21
10 Marsyas] He thought himself a better flautist than Apollo, and was flayed
alive for his presumption; Erasmus added the reference in 1520.

93 Collectanea no 158 with the three lines from Horace and brief comment, partly
reused here. Tilley w 499 To spread wings greater than the nest. It is
Horace Epistles 1.20.20-2.
 N o T E s i vi 94-1 vi 96 306

94 Forms of this appear in the Greek collections (Diogenianus 4.8ab; Apostolius

6.64), but Erasmus does not use them. Further material will be found in
Adagia v i 25. Otto 1656; Suringar 100
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 28.36. Originally Erasmus seems to have thought Pliny
was writing to one Salpa who was a sufferer from this stiffness; this was
corrected in 1526.
2 Seneca] De beneficiis 7.28.3, added in 152$
3 Lucian] Apologia 6; down to 1517/5 this was ascribed not to the defence of the
essay On Salaried Posts but to that essay itself. The other reference is to his
Navigium 15, for which Erasmus uses the alternative name Wishes.
4 Theocritus] 6.39-40. The scholiast's comment was appended in 1526, with
Callimachus frag 687. Cotyttaris was no doubt a local witch.
5 Lucian] Necyomantia 7
6 Persius] Satires 2.32-4
7 Athenaeus] 1.23, citing the poet Erastosthenes of Cyrene (third century BC),
frag 30 (Collectanea Alexandrina ed J.U. Powell, Oxford 1925, 65). This was
added in 1528, and had already been used in i viii 47; it was indexed as an
adage in its own right under Ter .

95 This, with the two other famous 'oracles of Apollo' which follow here, formed
no 108 in the Collectanea. Otto 1236; Tilley K 175 Know thyself.
1 Plato] Charmides i6^d
2 self-love] This has already been treated in Adagia i iii 92.
3 Cicero] Ad Quintum fratrem 3.5.7 (described as 'book 4' until 1523)
4 proverbial maxims] Menander Sententiae 762
5 Varro] One of his Menippean Satires, mentioned in the lexicon of Nonius fif-
teen times. See i vii 5n.
6 Ovid] Ars amatoria 2.499-500
7 Juvenal] 11.27
8 Plato] Phaedrus 2296
9 Some think] Erasmus has in mind perhaps Plutarch Moralia 1648-0:
10 Homer] Iliad 11.542
11 Diogenes] Diogenes Laertius 1.40 and 1.36, the latter already in i vi 68.
12 Macrobius] Comm. in Somnium Scipionis 1.9.2
13 Xenophon] Institutio Cyri 7.2.20, added in 1523
14 Antiphanes] See i vi nn; frag 289 Kock, preserved by Stobaeus in his late
florilegium 3.21.4.
15 Pindar] Isthmians 5.16
16 Demonax] A Cynic philosopher of the second century AD; this is not in Lu-
cian's account of him.
17 Socrates] Cf Diogenes Laertius 2.32; added in 1526.
18 Anaxarchus] Diogenes Laertius 9.58, added in 1526; he was a philosopher of
the late fourth century BC.
19 Menander] Frag 203, preserved in Stobaeus 3.21.5; added in 1533

96 Collectanea no 108. Otto 1229; Tilley M 793 The mean is the best, and 1158 Too
much of one thing is good for nothing.
i Terence] Andria 61
 N o T E s i vi 96-1 vi 9 307

2 Diogenes Laertius] 8.9 (in 1.41 he quotes an ascription to Chilon, one of the
Seven Sages)
3 Aristotle] Rhetoric 2.13 (i389b24); see n i 72.
4 Laertius] 1.63
5 Plato] He uses the phrase in Philebus 45<i-e, but does not ascribe it to Euripi-
des (see below).
6 Homer] Odyssey 15.69-71; Iliad 10.249, suggested by Plutarch Moralia 1640
7 Hesiod] Works and Days 674, quoted again in i vii 70
8 Euripides] Hippolytus 264-5
9 Pindar] Frag 216, cited by Plutarch Moralia 1160
10 Sophocles] Electra 177-8
11 Plautus] Poenulus 258
12 Homeric tag] Iliad 13.636-7
13 Pindar] Nemeans 7.52-3, added in 1526; it was already in n i 50
14 Pliny] Naturalis historia 11.284
15 Horace] Satires 1.1.106-7; Epistles 1.18.9
16 Phocylides] Sententiae 36; the maxims falsely ascribed to him were printed in
the Aldine Theocritus of 1495.
17 Alpheus] of Mitylene, of whom nothing is known; Anthologia Palatina 9.110
18 Quintilian] Perhaps 12.6.20; inserted in 1536
19 Plutarch] Camillas 6.4, added in 1526
20 Aristotle] Not identified; added in 1526
21 Athenaeus] 2(not i)-37b, citing Panyasis (circa 500 BC) frag 14 Kinkel; added
in 1528

97 One of the three famous moral maxims set up in the sanctuary at Delphi,
which form Collectanea no 108; the Latin version given is based on Auson-
ius (see i vi 64n) Ludus septem sapientium 181, a text included by Erasmus in his
Cato of 1514. Tilley s 1009 He that will be a surety shall pay.
1 Plato] Charmides 1653 (the speaker is Critias).
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.119. The explanations that follow ('Pliny has ex-
plained ... down to earth.') were inserted in 1515.
3 Homer] Odyssey 8.351; the reference was added in 1528.
4 Plutarch] Moralia 1640:, still part of the insertion of 1515. But the reference to
the Symposium ('convivium') of Plato is the result of confusion. The source
is Plutarch's Convivium septem sapientium, an imaginary conversation between
the Seven Sages to whom these maxims and their like are ascribed, which is
not nearly so famous a party as Plato's. The Homeric story comes from Iliad
19.91-131, and is told in Adagia i vii 13.
5 Plutarch] Moralia 5116; this is part of the text of 1508.

98 From Aristophanes Knights 1278-9 and the ancient scholia: the words 'high
stirring music' replace 'black' to give an unexpected turn to the proverb.
i Pompeius] Not identified; added in 1515

99 Collectanea no 121 cited the centre portion of this as it stands now, beginning
with Quintilian as though he were the prime source. Otto 50
i Cicero] Philippics 2.6.41
 N o T E s I vi 99-1 vii 3 308

2 Quintilian] 11.1.38, citing Catullus 93 (the first line added in 1520)

3 Apuleius] Apologia 16
4 Jerome] Adversus Helvidium (De perpetua virginitate b. Mariae) 16 (PL 23.2008)
5 Horace] Epistles 2.2.189, wi*h the so-called Porphyrion, one of the ancient
commentaries.
6 Matron] the parodist, quoted by Athenaeus 4-i35c; added in 1525, but it
would be more at home above in no 98. This is line 35 of the Atticum
convivium, a description of a dinner in Homeric language (Corpusculum poesis
epicae ludibundae ed P. Brandt, Leipzig 1888, 61).

100 Perhaps from Cicero. Otto 1195; Suringar 148

1 Cicero] Adfamiliares 9.15.4
2 Aristophanes] Wasps 558
3 Theocritus] 2.5, added in 1515. As usual, Erasmus cites the idyll by name, not
by number.
4 Plautus] Aulularia 231; the speech is quoted at greater length in i vii 30. This
too was added in 1515.

i In 1505 this stood after what is now i vii 25; it was placed here, not much
altered, in 1515. The Greek words are a fragment of some lost lyric poem
(frag adesp 84 Page), quoted by several authors with whom Erasmus was very
familiar. Our English is that of Tilley P 509.
1 Lucian] Symposium 3; Lapithae is an alternative title.
2 Martial] 1.27.7
3 Plutarch] Moralia 6i2C
4 Nonius] See p 142 Mercer; used again in Adagia i x 47. The Latin ... drink'
was inserted in 1520. Modus means limit, imperator commander.
5 Juvenal] 1.15; the phrase forms itself an adage (II vi 64).
6 Plutarch] Moralia 6^^E; Lycurgus 12.5, the latter added in 1526
7 Horace] Epistles 1.5.24-5, the reference inserted after 1540, which suggests
that in 1508 it was quoted from memory.
8 Greek line] Xenarchus, a writer of the New Comedy, frag 6 Kock, cited al-
ready in i iv 56. It comes from Athenaeus 10.4416, and is a parody of
Sophocles (frag 306 Nauck) with 'wine' for 'water.'
9 Plutarch] Moralia 7058, added in 1515

2 Based on the anecdote in Macrobius Saturnalia 7.3.8 (he had already told it in
2.3.10). Otto 1621
1 Homer] Iliad 5.831 and 889, with some corrections in 1515; the word had been
used already in i i 94.
2 and it is generally agreed] From here to the end was added in 1525; it comes
from Plutarch Solon 20.1.

3 At first sight this looks like the modern To kill two birds with one stone, but it
is really closer to our To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; and
Suidas A 1581 makes it clear by his comment that such is the force of the Greek
equivalent. Erasmus derives his Latin from Cicero Adfamiliares 7.29.2. The
 N O T E S i vii 3-1 vii 8 309

Scriptural parallels are 3 Kings 18.21 (closer to the Septuagint than to the
Vulgate text); Matthew 6.24 and Luke 16.13; Apocalypse 3.15-16. It is Otto
1342; Suringar 62.

4 A proverb derived from modern usage with no ancient authority; Erasmus as

it were underlines the rarity of this by inserting 'if nothing else' in 1515.
Suringar 62; Tilley s 639 He makes two sons-in-law of one daughter.

5 The Menippean Satires of Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) 8et their name
from the third-century Cynic philosopher Menippus, who also appears in
the Icaromenippus of Lucian; the fragments are in Petronii saturae ed F. Buechel-
er, Berlin 1922. Many of his titles were in fact proverbs (i vii 41 and 96 are
examples), and Erasmus gives one the feeling that he regarded their author as
a kindred spirit. This one is Otto 1881; Suringar 141; cf Tilley D 100 Praise a
fair day at night.
1 Aulus Gellius] 13.11.1; Macrobius Saturnalia 1.7.12 and 2.8.2 probably has it
from him.
2 Virgil] Georgics 1.461
3 Solon] A reference to his interview with Croesus king of Lydia; see i iii 37 and
i vi 74n.
4 Livy] 45.8.6. This and the following passage were added in 1533.
5 Philip] King of Macedon, from Livy 39.26.9. This is really quite another prov-
erb (Otto 1668), closer to our There's life in the old dog yet,' and it is a
little surprising that Erasmus did not give proverbial status to a memorable
form of it, Theocritus 1.102, where the dying Daphnis says to Venus, who
is killing him, 'And think you then that all my suns are set?'

6 From Zenobius 5.77 or Diogenianus 7.86. One Latin equivalent and two
Greek follow.
1 Not all Christians ... makes the philosopher] Added in 1515, replacing anoth-
er characteristic sentence: 'Not all soldiers who bear a soldier's arms.' It
would have been so easy for this to drop out, where so many clauses begin
with 'Not all,' that one may wonder whether its omission is not accidental.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 352c; the Greek, with its two scornfully coined pseudo-
technical terms, was added in 1526 to Adagia n viii 95.
3 Plato] Phaedo 6gc
4 Plutarch] Moralia HOTF. This and the next were added in 1515.
5 Herodes Atticus] A writer and prominent public figure in Athens (AD 101-77);
the anecdote comes from Aulus Gellius 9.2.1-4.

7 From Varro's treatise on agriculture, Res rusticae 2.1.3 (see T vi 17n)- The
parallel from Seneca De beneficiis 2.13.2, which was added with what fol-
lows in 1515, had already appeared in i v 52 and in vii 6.

8 This article is translated as it stands from Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 5.75 (cf

Suidas n 1932). Philochorus is a lost historian of the fourth century BC; this
fragment will be found in FGrHist 328F195. Zen. Ath. 2.76
 N O T E S I Vll 9-1 Vll 14 310

9 This, on the other hand, is mentioned without comment by Diogenianus 7.86,

and Erasmus had to provide all the explanation. The last two sentences
were added in 1515.

10 From Diogenianus 7.94 or Suidas n 1581. Tilley A 266 As fine as an ape in

purple.
1 And yet... any cobbler] Added in 1515
2 It will be] From here to the end is of 1528.
3 Augustine] Letters 1.1
4 Ammianus] Ammianus Marcellinus 14.9.5 (tne name should be Epigonus). He
is an historian of the end of the fourth century AD, and all Erasmus' refer-
ences to him in the Adagia were added in 1528. He had appeared in the same
volume as Erasmus' Suetonius in 1518; Erasmus does not cite books 27-30,
first printed in May 1533.
5 already] In i ii 95; i vii 6

11 Given as a proverb by Lucian Adversus indoctum 4, and only an extended form

of the preceding. Tilley A 263 as above; A 262 An ape is an ape, a varlet is a
varlet, Though they be clad in silk or scarlet.
1 Lucian] Piscator 36
2 A similar story] Aesop 88 Halm; Babrius 32 (see i ii 72). This was added in
1515.

12 It is not clear why this did not form one article with the story of the donkey at
Cumae in Campania which dressed up, for a time with success, as a lion,
which has found a home in i iii 66 and appears from time to time in collections
of proverbs and Aesopic fables. Suidas o 390 is a possible source. Tilley A
151 An ass in a lion's skin
1 Demosthenes] First Olynthiac 23
2 Aeschylus] Frag 392 Nauck, preserved by Stobaeus (see i vi in) in his florile-
gium, 3.4.18
3 elsewhere] Adagia i iii 66

13 Collectanea no 446 gave this with a Greek equivalent but no comment. Apostol-
ius 8.93 has it, but thinks it means that old men's bad temper is more
durable as they grow older, which is not Erasmus' point. He returns to the
topic in iv v 26. Tilley R 30 Rancour sticks long by the ribs.
1 Aristotle] Diogenes Laertius 5.18
2 Cicero] Pro L. Murena 20.42; quoted again (perhaps from memory) in III i 83
3 Sophocles] Oedipus Coloneus 954-5
4 Homer] Iliad 9.502-12; 19.126-31. See also Adagia in vi 97.
5 This invention] Sentence added in 1515

14 The adage in this form comes from Seneca. Otto 1946

1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 10.19
2 Basil] Homiliae in Hexaemeron 8.7 (PG 29.1810). This is the great fourth-
century Greek father, for whose works (the first edition in Greek) Erasmus
wrote a preface in 1532 (Ep 2611). Inserted here in 1528
 N o T E s i vii 14-1 vii 18 311

3 Plutarch] Moralia 286s-c, added (as far as 'bad name') in 1526. Erasmus uses
the title Problems or Antiquarian Problems indiscriminately for what we call
the Greek Questions and Roman Questions.
4 Seneca] Letters 95.43, the precise reference added in 1533
5 Martial] 6.62
6 Diogenianus] 2.88

15 Based on Horace Satires 2.5.55-6 and 69, behind which lies a Greek fable
(Aesop 264 Halm, Phaedrus 1.13). The gaping wolf is Adagia u iii 58. Otto
448

16 From Suidas K 2492, or direct from Aristophanes Plutus 369-70, the Latin
translation of which was added in 1528.
1 Persius] Satires 5.12
2 Jerome] Letters 125.16, added in 1515

17 In the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.5; Diogenianus 4.81; Suidas 01

134). Otto 1900; Suringar 101; Tilley w 465 In wine there is truth, w 481
Wine is the glass of the mind. Close to n iii 18 Wine has no rudder.
1 Scripture] Proverbs 31.4
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 14.141; cf Adagia i vi 70.
3 Persian] Not yet identified
4 Horace] Odes 3.21.13-6 (tr Conington); Ars poetica 434-6; Epistles 1.5.16
5 Athenaeus] 2.376, the author's name inserted in 1517/8. The Greek he quotes
comes from the lyric poet Alcaeus (Lesbos, seventh/sixth century BC), frag
366 Lobel-Page, and stands as Diogenianus 7.28.
6 Plutarch] Artaxerxes 15.3, inserted in 1533 (cf i vi 13)
7 proverbial saying] Diogenianus 8.43; an adage (u i 55) in its own right
8 Theognis] 499-500
9 Athenaeus] 10.427^ citing Aeschylus frag 393 Nauck. Erasmus says Euripi-
des, probably because a named quotation from him has just preceded. The
next is from Ephippus, a writer of the Attic Middle Comedy, frag 25<Kock,
cited by Athenaeus 2.38b; it was inserted here in 1517/8.
10 Anacharsis] A half-mythical Scythian sage; this comes from Athenaeus
10.445^ and was added in 1528.
11 Theocritus] 6.19, added in 1528, with what follows down to 'disguises'
12 Plato] Symposium 2176
13 proverbial line] Menander Sententiae 294; Tilley s 538, A slip of the tongue is
wont to tell the truth
14 nigh] Ovid Heroides 8.115-16; the speaker, Hermione, is betrothed to both
Neoptolemus and Orestes, the former being, as it were, the official candi-
date. The fact that, when she is off her guard, Orestes is the name on her lips,
shows where her heart really is.
15 Cicero] Topica 20.75

18 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.70; Diogenianus 3.48; Suidas

B 460). Zen. Ath. 1.31
i Pliny] Naturalis historia 18.12, added in 1515
 N O T E S i vii i8-i vii 22 312

2 Plutarch] Moralia 274?, added in 1528

3 some suppose] For example, Festus p 291 Lindsay; added in 1528
4 Julius Pollux] Onomasticon 9.61. This is the epitome of a large classified Greek
word-list compiled between the years 166 and 176AD, first published by Al-
dus in 1502.
5 Draco] The early Athenian legislator, whose code passed into a byword for
severity ('Draconian')
6 Homer] Iliad 6.236; for the famous exchange of arms between Glaucus and
Diomede, see Adagia i ii i.
7 Julius Pollux] Onomasticon 9.73
8 scholia] Not yet identified; added in 1528
9 Theognis] 815
10 Philostratus] See i vi 75n; Life of Apollonius 6.11, the Latin version added in
1515.
11 Scopelianus] Idem, Lives of the Sophists p 515
12 Aeschylus] Agamemnon 36-7, added in 1523

19 Probably derived from Gellius 11 (not 9).9.1 Tilley D 620 He has the silver
dropsy (a mistranslation: dropsy is an affliction of the lower half of the
body, not the throat).
1 Plutarch] Demosthenes 25-6
2 Aretaeus] 1.7.1. He is a medical writer of the second century AD, first printed
in Latin Venice 1552, in Greek Paris 1554; this is the only quotation in the
Adagia.

20 Most of this was in Collectanea no 364, from Diogenianus 5.31. Otto 608
1 Horace] Epistles 1.17.19-20, with Acron, or rather, the ancient commentary
that passes under his name. Aristippus was a Greek philosopher of the
fifth/fourth century BC.
2 line of verse] This metrical note was added in 1525. The origin of the words
remains obscure. Possibly from a lost comedy (frag adesp 1329 Kock)

21 Probably from Zenobius 4.57

1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 21.89 and 183
2 Theophrastus] Historia plantarum 7.7.2. He is one of Aristotle's most eminent
followers (fourth/third century BC), and was printed in the Aldine Greek
Aristotle in 1498. This is added in 1515.
3 Suidas] K 2133
4 Hesychius] K 3736; this was inserted in 1526.
5 Aristophanes] Wasps 239, with the ancient scholia. 'Laid hands on' should be
'cooked'; Erasmus has confused two Greek verbs which are not unlike each
other.

22 That the jackdaw is not musical we have learnt from i iv 37; but the source of
this form of the saying is not yet identified. The article originally ended
with 'those who really know.' Then followed in 1508, duly numbered as for a
new adage, a heading Anser inter olores, A goose among swans, after which
 N O T E S i vii 22-1 vii 23 313

the rest of the article follows naturally. When preparing 1515, Erasmus intro-
duced the sentence beginning 'The jackdaw is a bird/ and in the process,
it seems - for why should it be removed on purpose? - the heading fell out
and the two adages were run together.
1 Virgil] Eclogues 9.36
2 so constantly repeated ... wind is blowing] These words replaced in 1515 'a
familiar fable, which the Ancients believed in.'
3 Aelian] This statement was added in 1515 both here and in i ii 55. It seems not
to occur in Aelian (see note on that adage), but is found in Philostratus
Imagines 1.9.4.
4 swan-song] Adagia i ii 55

23 The original source of this seems to be Aulus Gellius. For the sense, Erasmus
himself compares i iv 61.
1 Aulus Gellius] 13.29.5; corrected by Ermolao Barbaro (see i vi nn)
2 Dioscorides] De materia medico. 2.107.1, added in Latin in 1528, though Aldus
had printed the Greek in Venice in June 1518. He is a celebrated medical
author of the first century AD.
3 Varro] For his Menippean Satires, see i vii 5n.
4 Cicero] Ad Atticum 1.19.2, the number of the letter inserted later
5 Aristotle] De sensu et sensato 5 (443b3o). The comment on the text was added in
1517/8.
6 Athenaeus] 4.i6ob-c. In 1508 neither the title of his work nor the Greek of the
ensuing quotation was given; these were supplied in 1517/8 from the Al-
dine Athenaeus of 1514, and a Latin version of the Greek lines was appended
in 1528. Their author Strattis (not Stratis) was a writer of the Attic Old
Comedy, and they are listed as frag 45 Kock. Originally the name of the play
was given as Jocasta, but by 1520 (with that readiness for detailed correc-
tion now and again which is so surprising in a man as busy as he was)
Erasmus had observed that they are said to be spoken by Jocasta in a play
called Phoenissae, and made the necessary correction. It was in fact a parody of
the Phoenissae of Euripides, as we have just been told in that quotation
from Aristotle, and the first of our two lines is verbatim Euripides Phoenissae
460.
7 Sopater] A satirical writer of the fourth century BC; this is frag 14 Kaibel.
8 Clearchus] See i vi 6on; frag 83 Wehrli.
9 adding ... iambic line] Inserted in 1517/8
10 Aristophanes] Peace 168-9
11 Athenaeus] 2.68a, citing Eupolis, a prominent writer of the Old Comedy, frag
335 Kock. Added, with the rest of the article, in 1528.
12 Diocles] From Athenaeus 8.3436, where however 'philosopher' is a mistake
for 'gourmet.'
13 Horace] Epistles 2.1.124, from memory
14 conjecture] This seems to be correct; the uncontracted form cited from Athen-
aeus 4.i58c is exceptional, and the form with acute accent erroneous.
 N O T E S I Vll 24-1 Vll 31A 314

24 From Proverbs 11.22, though the wording of that verse was not inserted till
1515.
1 Menander] Frag 481, preserved as Menander Sententiae 483; it is also in the
anthology of Stobaeus (see I vi in) 3.2.3.
2 Aulus Gellius] 18.3.2-8
3 Athenaeus] 6.2306, citing Sopater (see i vii 23n) frag 15. Antiphanes provided
the quotation that immediately precedes, and his name was attached to this
by mistake.
4 Some think] Sentence added in 1533. Erasmus is probably referring to Paulus
Jovius De Romanis piscibus libellus, which had been reprinted by Froben in
August 1531 (pp 41-8).

25 From Diogenes Laertius 6.65. Tilley s 1048, as above

26 This was preceded in 150$ by what is now i vii i. The sources of almost all the
material can be detected with fair assurance. Zen. Ath. 1.3
1 Stesichorus] of Himera, one of the earliest and most important of Greek lyric
poets (seventh/sixth century BC). This tale of his burial-place is in Suidas n
225.
2 Julius Pollux] See i vii 18; Onomasticon 9.100.
3 Corinthians] This suggestion is also from Suidas.
4 Some writers] The 'eight gods' and eight Olympic contests are from Zenobius
5.78; of the Evander of whom he speaks, nothing is known.
5 If I too] From here to the end was added in 1515. Erasmus draws his geometri-
cal problem (given a cube, to construct another cube of twice the volume)
from Plutarch Moralia 5798.
6 Aelius Lampridius] Antoninus Elagabalus 29.3; this is one of the texts in the
so-called Historia Augusta; see i vi 7n.

27 Taken from Lucian Dialogi mortuorum 1.3. The parallel offered is Adagia in v
44. The last clause ('for the Ancients ...') was added in 1515. Tilley A 119
All are of the same dust.

28 From Lucian Dialogi mortuorum 16.2 (the characters in the dialogue are Terp-
sion and Pluto). Diogenianus 3.30; Suidas A 1486. There is some overlap
with Adagia v i 30. Tilley c 103 To set the cart before the horse

29 This is in Zenobius 2.33; Diogenianus 1.96. Tilley H 713 From the horses to the
asses. Erasmus himself compares iv v 45 De toga ad pallium. His only exam-
ple is from Procopius of Gaza, a rhetorician of the fifth/sixth century AD,
Epistulae 36, printed in the Aldine Epistolographi Graeci of 1499.

30 From Plautus Aulularia 226-35, Part °f which has been used in i vi 100. Otto
189. Behind this lies a Greek proverb, From asses to horses, known to us
from manuscript sources which were not available to Erasmus.

3iA Zenobius 2.57; Suidas A 3459

i Plato] Laws ^>.'Jo^c
 N O T E S i vii 31A-I vii 33 3X5

2 Plutarch] This is not in the Gryllus (Moralia 985D-992E), which looks like a slip
of memory. Plutarch's name was inserted in 1515.
3 Aristophanes] Clouds 1271-3
4 Latin too ... collapsed mentally] Added in 1517/8. The example given is from
Suetonius Divus Augustus 48.
5 Ulpian] As preserved in the Digest of Justinian 27.8.1.11 ('title' is the name
given traditionally to the major divisions of each book of the Digest). This
was added in 1528.

318 Erasmus himself gives the Greek proverb-collections as his source (Diogen-
ianus 3.90; Suidas r 258)
1 Homer] Iliad 18.104; Odyssey 20.377-9. The three-word phrase from the Iliad
recurs in n iii 23 and 48, and in Latin in iv x 98.
2 Plato] Theaetetus i76d, inserted in 1533
3 Athenaeus] 8.3496; the anecdote was added in 1517/8.
4 Athenaeus] 10.415^ added in 1528. Timocreon of Rhodes was a lyric poet of
the fifth century BC. This striking distich is also preserved in the Greek
Anthology (7.348), where it is wrongly attributed to Simonides of Ceos.
32 This comes from the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.58; Suidas A 3729);
it had also an entirely different explanation (Zenobius 2.39), which Eras-
mus ignores.
1 Horace] Satires 1.3.1-3
2 Menander] Frag 30; Erasmus perhaps got this from Apostolius 3.71.
3 Julius Pollux] See i vii i8n; Onomasticon 6.120, added in 1515.
4 Cantharus] Frag i Kock, preserved by Suidas and Apostolius; he was a writer
of the Attic Old Comedy. The anonymous line which follows (com adesp
268 Kock) is also familiar from Stephanus Byzantius p 107 Meineke and the
proverb-collections. It is the English Give the piper a penny to play and
two pence to leave off.
5 Alcibiades] Plutarch Alcibiades 2.4
6 It will also suit] This sentence was added in 1528; the word is probably from
some source such as Lucian Dialogi mortuorum 20.10.
7 Sophocles] Frag 99 Nauck, preserved in the florilegium of Stobaeus (see i vi
in) 3.36.16. This sentence was added in 1533 from the 1532 Callimachus
Hymns.

33 Derived from Suetonius Nero 40.2 (where however the words for 'every land'
are rejected by modern texts, so that the phrase means something like 'Art
keeps me going'). There seems to be no ancient Latin form. Otto 171 note;
Suringar 247; Tilley T 461 He who has a trade has a share everywhere.
1 Consequently ... played badly] Added in 1517/8; it draws on Nero 49.1.
2 Dionysius] The fate of Dionysius the younger, tyrant of Syracuse, who when
sent into exile became a schoolmaster in Corinth, was proverbial, some-
times as an example of the whirligig of fortune, sometimes to show how the
human species would rather enjoy contemptible authority than none at all;
see Adagia i i 83.
3 iambic line] Erasmus' attempted reconstruction shows much greater ignorance
of Greek metre than one would expect from his performance elsewhere.
 N O T E S i vii 33-1 vii 37 316

4 Greek maxims] Menander Sententiae 430

5 Sensible men ... Plato's principle] Added in 1515. Erasmus thinks of Laws
11.9130, which will provide in iv 43.
6 Cornu copiae] by Niccolo Perotti, first published in Venice in 1489. This last
paragraph was added in 1520; 'and must sell again' in 1536.

34 From Pliny Naturalis historia praef 6; Erasmus calls it occasionally his History of
the world.
1 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 2.13.1.1, where an excerpt from the great jurist
Ulpian (who died AD 228) incorporates the opinion of Labeo, an expert
from the end of the first century be. The point seems to be that a man initiating
a legal action had to 'publish' it, to notify his opponent, so that he might
know the form of action he would have to defend, and this obligation could
be satisfied (so Labeo thought) by referring him to the entry of the action in
the calendar of forthcoming cases. Erasmus' interpretation of adversarium
seems to be quite wrong; and in any case, when the word means 'notes/ it is
always neuter plural, adversaria. This is discussed in Poliziano's Miscellanea
C82.
2 And in this passage] This sentence, with the references to Cicero and Alciati,
was added in 1526.
3 Cicero] Pro Q. Roscio comoedo 2.5 and 7
4 Alciati] For this correspondent of Erasmus and eminent jurist (1492-1550), see
i iii 59 and Contemporaries 1.23-6.
5 same work] Digest 2.1.7 an(^ 9
6 Quintilian] Institutio oratoria i2(not n).3.n
7 Livy] 9.46.5
8 Apuleius] Metamorphoses (often called The golden Ass) 6.23

35 From Plautus Poenulus 1236. Otto 1282; Tilley o 25 as above

1 Oil is so tranquil] The examples from Pliny and Plutarch which follow were
added in 1515.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 2.234
3 Plutarch] Moralia 914?-158; 6g6A
4 Plato] Theaetetus i44b; the Greek, with a Latin version, was added in 1533.

36 From Cicero Ad Quintum fratrem 2.14.4,tne title and book-number inserted in

1523. One might have expected a reference to Catullus 25.2, which is the
most familiar example of the phrase. The parallel from Ammianus 19.12.5 (see i
vii ion) was added in 152$. Otto 209

37 No doubt taken directly from Theocritus 7.120. The statement that apius can
mean 'radish' stems perhaps from Theophrastus (see i vii 2in) Historia
plantarum 9.9.5 and 6 where it is another name for the plant ischas, a species of
spurge; for ischas is also called 'mountain cabbage' (rhaphanos) and it was
not hard to identify this as a radish (rhaphanis). If this is right (but we are in a
field for specialists), it is one more example of Erasmus' extraordinary eye
for detail and his way of finding somewhere to put what he has collected.
 N O T E S i vii 38-1 vii4i 31?

38 In 1505 this was a short article, incorporating pumpkins as well as sponges in

its title, and derived like ours from an unidentified fragment of Greek
comedy (frag adesp 125 Kock) cited by Plutarch Moralia 62E. It ended
with 'Popular speech in France' (if that is the meaning of Gallorum vulgus)
'threatens that a man's back will be as soft as wet gypsum after a thrash-
ing.' In 1515 when it was placed here, the verse was lengthened by one line,
the final sentence was omitted, and the pumpkins were exiled, to find a
home later in iv i 81.
1 In the same way ... relaxing quantities] Added in 1517/8
2 Theopompus] A writer of the Attic Old Comedy, frag 72 Kock, cited by Ath-
enaeus 2.68d. This seems to be what Erasmus made of it; but more likely it
should be 'She has become,' the subject being a man's wife after a process of
taming.
3 Epicharmus] (i vi 22n) frag 153 Kaibel, cited by Athenaeus 2.586
4 Then there is] From here to the end is of 1515. The source, including the
Plautus (Aulularia 422) but not the Catullus, is Nonius p 5.
5 Catullus] 25.1

39 From Suetonius Divus Claudius 1.1, citing an unidentified fragment of Greek

comedy (frag adesp 213 Kock). The supporting evidence is from Pliny
Naturalis historia 7.38, in paraphrase.

40 Probably derived in the first place from Horace. Otto 214

1 Horace] Satires 1.9.76-7
2 Servius] The fourth-century commentator, on Virgil Eclogues 6.3-4, which is
quoted lower down. Erasmus sometimes quotes the Eclogues by title rather
than number, as he does Theocritus; the fact that until 1517/8 he gave the
wrong title here suggests (as one would expect) that he was quoting from
memory.
3 Calphurnius] Calpurnius Siculus (so the modern spelling; his date is the mid-
dle of the first century AD) 4.153-6. Nicolaus Heinsius corrected vilia,
'small things' to ovilia, 'my sheepfold.'
4 Seneca] De beneficiis 4.36.1, added with the rest of this article in 1515; ibid
5.7.6, the words in brackets inserted in 1517/8 and 1528; Letters 94.55

41 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 5.48; Diogenianus 1.63; Suidas

A 1338). The words are thought to come from a lost comedy (frag adesp 685
Kock). Zen. Ath. 1.6
1 Varro] For his Menippean Satires, see i vii 5n; this is from Macrobius (see
below).
2 Aristotle] Ethica Eudemia 7.12 (1245329)
3 Plutarch] Theseus 29.3
4 Laertius] 7.170. Cleanthes was a leading Stoic philosopher of the first half of
the third century BC.
5 Phreantles, his nickname, is a comic compound of phrear, a well, and antlein,
to raise water.
6 Clearchus] See i vi 6on; this is frag 67 Wehrli. Zenodotus is Erasmus' normal
 N O T E S i vii 41-1 vii 43 318

name for Zenobius the proverb-collector (5.48). Briareus was a mythical

giant.
7 Titormus] From Aelian Varia historia 12.22; added in 1526. Aelian was a soph-
ist who flourished around the year 200 AD, and whose works were first
printed in Greek by Conrad Gessner at Zurich in 1556.
8 Theocritus] 4.8-9; Erasmus cites the idyll by title, not number, as usual. This
was added in 1526.
9 Juvenal] 3.89
10 Macrobius] Saturnalia 3.12.5, citing Varro Saturae Menippeae 20 Buecheler
11 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.83 and 123, added in 1515
12 Varro] This is from Servius' note on Aeneid 8.564, on which Erasmus will draw
again at 11 i 27.
13 Macrobius] Saturnalia 1.20.6
14 Similarly] This paragraph was added in 1515. The source is Aulus Gellius
2.11; the 'Achilles argument' is mentioned by Diogenes Laertius 9.29 in his
account of the philosopher Zeno.

42 Probably taken direct from the younger Pliny Letters 1.5.14; which is again
referred to in n i 83. Otto 254
1 Cicero] De domo sua ad pontifices 18.48; this sentence was inserted in 1523.
2 Aelius Lampridius] Severus Alexander 9.4; he is one of the authors of the
Historia Augusta (see i vi 7n).
3 Sardanapalus] King of Assyria, proverbial for effeminacy; see in vii 27.

43 A widespread metaphor for hard hearts and unbreakable chains, hardly to be

traced to any one source. Otto 17 and 18
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 37.57
2 Hesiod] Works and Days 47, inserted in 1515
3 Theocritus] 3.39, referred to, as often, by title, not number
4 Homer] The tale referred to will be found below in 1 vii 67; but Erasmus'
memory has betrayed him: adamant is not mentioned in Homer anywhere.
5 Virgil] Aeneid 6.552
6 Plato] Gorgias 5093 (no Greek is quoted); Republic io.6i8e, added in 2536.
7 Plutarch] Dion 8.3, added in 1533
8 Horace] Odes 1.6.13; 3.24.5-7
9 Augustine] De duabus animabus 23 (PL 42.110), added in 152^
10 Didymus] The great Alexandrian scholar of the end of the first century BC; but
his standard nickname is chalkenteros, 'brazen-guts,' because he wrote so
many books. Origen, the third-century Christian father, had Adamantius as a
family name; but Jerome Letters 33.4.1 (who couples the same two scholars
together) treats it as signifying his toughness in writing so much.
11 Pindar] Isthmians 6.72-3; added, with the rest of the article, in 1526
12 Pliny] Naturalis historia 36.54
13 Pliny] Nat. hist. 3.88
14 Stephanus] Steph. Byzantius p 468 Meineke (see i vi 53n)
15 above] Adagia i v 87
16 Pliny] In the standard text of K. Mayhoff, Leipzig 1897, the correction to Crete
in 36.54 is attributed to L. Jan (1860). Erasmus added Naxos in 1528.
 N O T E S i vii44-i vii48 319

44 Two obvious metaphors, like the preceding, of which the second is much
rarer than the first. Otto 655; Tilley s 839 As strong as steel
1 Virgil] Georgics 2.43-4 and Aeneid 6.625-6
2 Homer] Iliad 2.489-90
3 Horace] Epistles 1.1.60; this provided Adagia n x 25 and is used again in in iv
7-
4 Homer] Iliad 22.357; Odyssey 5.190-1; Iliad 23.177. In 1508 for the third pas-
sage Erasmus was content with the phrase iron strength of fire'; in 1528 he
inserted most of the line in Greek, with a Latin version which showed that he
had quite forgotten the context. Achilles is lighting the pyre of his friend
Patroclus, and the sense is 'Then he set to it the might of fire strong as iron.'
5 Cicerol] Definibus 1.2.5; Atilius (Erasmus always calls him Attilius) was a
writer of comedies of the second century BC. The reference to the De
divinatione must be a slip of memory; Cicero's other mention is in Ad Atticum
14.20.3, and Erasmus has quoted the whole passage in i ii 15.

45 From Persius Satires 1.45-7 (see a^so n i 21)- Ott° 437

i and so are hoofs ... not horn] Added in 1515

46 This is in the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.43; Diogenianus 1.41,

much abbreviated; Suidas AI 8): Erasmus' account differs in one or two
small points from that given by Zenobius, but the story was well known,
being the basis of the Ajax of Sophocles. Cf Tilley A 95 As mad as Ajax.
Zen. Ath. 1.6
1 Homer] Odyssey 20.345-9, quoted again in in v i Risus Sardonicus
2 glittering bile] A reminiscence of Horace Satires 2.3.141
3 proverbial line] Menander Sententiae 165

47 Euripides the tragedian died in 406 BC at the court of Archelaus king of Mace-
donia, and the legend soon became established that he had been torn in
pieces by hounds, or by women. Here 'In Macedonia ... A dog's revenge' is
translated from one of the lives of Euripides, printed in A. Nauck's text i
(Leipzig 1889) vi; for the legends, see W. Nestle in Philologus 57 (1898) 134-49.
Suringar 36
1 Valerius Maximus] Facta et dicta memorabilia 9. i2.ext-4; it is a manual of histori-
cal anecdotes for the use of speakers, compiled in the early first century
AD. This, and all that follows it, were added in 1515.
2 Aulus Gellius] Noctes Atticae 15.20.9. Misogynist is given in Greek.
3 Suidas] E 3695
4 Plutarch] Moralia cfigc-yyoA; the standard name for this essay is De sollertia
animalium, but Erasmus gives it a variety of titles.

48 Suringar 99. The 'popular saying' recalls Tilley M 473 A man's house is his
castle.
1 Virgil] Eclogues 1.69
2 Cicero] De oratore (not Orator) 1.10.41, used again in 1533 in v ii 15
3 Homer] Odyssey 1.397
 N O T E S i vii 49-1 vu 55 320

49 From Plautus Aulularia 615, where there is no trace of proverbial usage. The
parallel from Cicero is Pro A. Caecina 29.83; it was added in 1515.

50 Plautus Casina 56-7; Rudens 1038

51 In ijoS this ended 'I remember reading this in Cicero, though at the moment I
have not the passage at hand.' In 1523 Erasmus substituted references to
two passages in the Adfamiliares, 13.62 and 15.14.1. Otto 30

52 The only appearance of this adage in the printed Corpus paroemiographorum is

Apostolius 7.513 with slightly different Greek; but it is in the so-called
Porphyrion commentary on Horace. Otto 1826; Tilley N 8 From their tender
nails
1 Cicero] Adfamiliares 1.6.2
2 Horace] Odes 3.6.23-4
3 Plutarch] Moralia 30
4 meaning ... breast] Added in 1533

53 A very familiar phrase, which has given a word to the language, incunabula,
for books from the earliest years of printing. Otto 478
1 Plautus] Pseudolus 737-8; but in the second line, we now know that the text is
not usque a cunabulis but hircum ab alls. One character says 'Is he a sensible
fellow?' and the other, deliberately misunderstanding him (for his words
equally mean 'What does he smack of?'), replies 'He-goat in the armpits.'
2 Livy] 4.36.5
3 Cicero] Orator 13.42
4 Virgil] Aeneid 3.105
5 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 1.11.1.1, added in 1526
6 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 2.3.8 (110632); 10.9.8 (ii79b3i). This and the Plato
were added in 1533.
7 Plato] Laws io.887d
8 Toys] So Jerome Letters 108.3.1; this is of 1508.

54 Made new in 1526, and placed here to be near the two preceding; the source
is Cicero Tusculanae disputationes 3.1.2, a work which contributed afresh to
seven out of the nine editions of the Chiliades. Otto 900; Tilley E 198 He sucked
evil from the dug.

55 A rather grand equivalent for our You count your chickens before they are
hatched, probably from the Greek proverb-collections (Diogenianus 7.56;
Suidas n 2880). Tilley v 50 Do not triumph before the victory.
1 Theocritus] Idyll 17 in the numbering which we now use instead of titles.
2 Lucian] It seems to be generally agreed among modern scholars that the De-
mosthenis encomium is not Lucian's, but the work of an imitator; but Eras-
mus' point is unaffected.
3 ovations] The ovation was a lesser honour for a victorious general than a
triumph; if a supplicatio was decreed after a victory, it meant a general
visiting of the temples in Rome to give thanks.
 N o T E s i vii 55-1 vii 60 321

4 Plato] Lysis 2o$d, added in 1520; Theaetetus 1640. The latter passage was ad-
ded in 152$ to ii v 86.
5 for it is ... crowing] Inserted in 1515
6 elsewhere] Adagia i iii 37. This and the next item were added in 1526.
7 Pindar] Isthmians 4.31-2

56 From Suidas H 459, citing Georgius Pisides frag 106 (PG 92.1745A)
1 in the proverb ... lapis] This phrase was added in 1528; th
Adagia i v 87.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 36.126-30; he quotes the third-century didactic poet
Nicander of Colophon frag 101.
3 Euripides] Frag 567 Nauck, cited by Suidas H 459
4 elsewhere] Adagia i v 62

57 From Horace Satires 1.10.31-5; our To carry coals to Newcastle (Tilley c 466).
Otto 1649. Cf i ii 16, in i 44.
1 we speak] Tilley w 106 To cast water into the sea
2 epigrams] Addressed to Pietro Carmeliano (CEBR 1.270), circa 1506. In C.
Reedijk's Poems of Erasmus, Leiden 1956, it is no 81 lines 9-10.
3 elsewhere] i ii 11

58 This seems to be the only adage in the first chiliad to be taken from the
so-called Collectanea of Plutarch, which means that Erasmus got it from a
Florence MS, Laurentianus box. 13 or a derivative of that; he used this mostly
in in vii and x and iv i and iii. When he found it there, Erasmus forgot that
he had already put it into the Collectanea of 1500 on the basis of Quintilian
5.12.8, which he repeats here. Hence we have here a doublet of ii v 7. It is
also in Apostolius 8.51. Otto 1665; Tilley s 988 To set forth the sun with a
candle

59 From Cicero Ad Quintumfratrem 3.1.11, to which Ad Atticum 12.5.1 was added

in 1536. Otto 687

60 The meaning of this proverbial expression, known only from Catullus 94, is
not much clearer to us than it was to Erasmus. Mentula is the male sexual
organ, and it is also the nickname of someone of whom the poet disapproved;
modern scholars seem less certain than Erasmus was that it is Julius Cae-
sar. He was a notorious adulterer. Either (i) he is not to be blamed, for
adultery to a man with such an improper name (and, we may presume, of
such virility) comes as naturally as cooking greens does to a saucepan. Or (2)
for him to say it's not his fault is as absurd as for the cook to make the
saucepan responsible for the nasty greens she has put into it. And the Homer-
ic parallel is: If you give a man a sword, don't be surprised if his possession
of it inspires him to commit bloodshed. Otto 1287 compares i x 72.
1 Catullus] 94.1-2 (the complete poem)
2 A pot is born] This explanation is of 1515
3 Homer] Odyssey 16.294 and 19.13, added here in 1523 from Tertullian (see i vi
57n); the passage has not been identified.
 N O T E S i vii 60-1 vii 64 322

4 another place] Adagia in x 41; the other reference, to iv vii 29, was added in
252$.

61 This is a translation (as far as 'killed each other') from Zenobius 5.43; Diogen-
ianus 2.51 is out of the picture, being severely abbreviated. Zen. Ath. 2.88
i Diogenes] Diogenes Laertius 6.38, citing an unidentified fragment of Greek
tragedy (frag trag adesp 284 Nauck), which is used again in 1526 in i ii 84.
(It was also parodied in comedy, frag adesp 127 Kock.)
'2 Sophocles] Oedipus tyrannus 245-51
3 Euripides] Phoenissae 67; this looks as though it had been inserted later be-
tween two quotations from Sophocles.
4 Again] Sophocles Oedipus Coloneus 1384-90
5 Horace] Epodes (nearly always called Odes by Erasmus) 5.89-90. This has
already appeared in i ii 84.
6 Homer] Iliad 9.455-6

62 From Plautus Stichus 693-5. Otto 1126; Suringar 65; Tilley B 379 A little bird is
content with a little nest.

63 This was no 530 in the Collectanea where, after referring to the passage from
Terence, it went on 'This maxim so strongly retains its proverbial force that
it is written up in many places on beams and in windows' (passim postibus ac
fenestris inscribatur; we take postibus to refer to timber-framed buildings).
Otto 1292; Suringar 161; Tilley c 233 There is change of all things. Adagia in ix
72 belongs here.
1 Terence] Eunuchus 276
2 Sophocles] Oedipus Coloneus 607-15
3 Homer] Iliad 6.339; 18.309. These two come together again in iv vii 49.
4 same poet] Iliad 24.527-30, referred to in i viii 66 and in i 87
5 Laertius] Diogenes Laertius 1.69
6 Euripides] Ion 969; Supplices 331
7 Theognis] 157-8
8 Homer] Iliad 8.69-74; the first line of this forms in ix 28.
9 a line] Menander Sententiae 745; our version is purloined from Edmund Spen-
ser Ruins of Time 206.
10 saying] Aristotle Physics 4.14 (223b24); the parenthesis inserted in 1515
11 Pindar] Olympians 2.37-8, written for Theron, tyrant of Acragas
12 Homer] Iliad 7.26 and elsewhere

64 Presumably from Aristotle, whose Rhetoric was quarried for adages, mainly in
1508 and 1533. Otto 1848; Tilley c 229 Change is sweet.
1 Aristotle] Rhetoric 1.11(1271325); Ethica Nicomachea 7.14.9 (ii54b28)
2 Euripides] Orestes 234, where the scholiast quotes the phrase from a lost
comedy (frag adesp 115 Kock)
3 Virgil] Eclogues 3.59
4 moral sentence] Publilius Syrus (see i vi 34n) 110 (probably quoted from
memory) and B 2.
5 Juvenal] 11.208, quoted anonymously at the end of n vii 69
 N o T E s i vii 65-1 vii 70 323

65 From Plautus Stichus 139-40. Otto 326; Suringar 102

66 From Theognis 371. Otto 326 (with the preceding); Suringar 102

67 Based on a famous story from the Odyssey

1 having been warned] So 1528; previously 'having secured the help of
2 Homer] Odyssey 8.329-32
3 fable] These have not been identified among ancient fables.
4 Something of the sort] From here almost to the end was added in 1515. The
sources are Aristotle Historia animalium 9.37 (62obi9 and 24) and Pliny
Naturalis historia 9.143, 144, and 155.
5 Theognis] 329; this sentence is the conclusion of the article in 1508.

68 The source is Diogenes Laertius 2.133, citing a satyric drama by the tragedian
Achaeus of the fifth century BC, frag 34 Nauck.

69 This was included in Collectanea no 79 with its opposite, now iv i 75. It comes
from the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.50; Diogenianus 1.48; Suidas
A 827).
1 Suidas] A 827; this sentence was inserted in 1523.
2 Those for example] This sentence is of 1515 .
3 second line] Meander Sententiae 805
4 Horace] Epistles 2.1.264 (also used in in ii 7) and 260
5 Seneca] De beneficiis 2.14.5, added (down to 'in many texts') in 1528. The
reading defended by Erasmus is now accepted as that of the manuscript
tradition.
6 Ennius] Sc 409 (see i vi 20 n), cited by Cicero De officiis 2.18.62; this also is
repeated in in ii 7. The sentence was inserted in 1533.
7 The proverb] From here to the end first appeared in 1517/8.

70 Ripeness is all. Greek analogues are collected in the Corpus paroemiographorum

2.767. Otto 1755
1 Hesiod] Works and Days 694, already quoted in i vi 96
2 Theocritus] 11.58, used again in iv iv 20
3 Isocrates] Attic orator of the fifth/fourth century BC Ad Demonicum 31. Eras-
mus had done some work on the text of this speech (Ep 677).
4 Greek maxims] Menander Sententiae 872 and 381
5 Pindar] Pythians 9.78-9; the work was named in 1523.
6 Horace] Odes 4.12.28
7 Due Time] In 1508 the text continued: 'as I have said in another place, though
in Latin this is rendered by Occasio or Opportunitas. The form normally
taken by the image of this deity is fully discussed by Angelo Poliziano in his
Miscellanea (c 49). For the present I will content myself by adding.' This
was replaced in 1515 by the words 'Her image ... pleasure to add.'
8 the phrase] Tilley T 311 Take Time by the forelock, for she is bald behind. The
anonymous line which follows is Catonis disticha 2.26.2 (ed M. Boas, Am-
sterdam 1952); Otto 1262. Erasmus' own edition of the Disticha, first printed
by Maartens at Louvain in 1514, was a popular schoolbook.
 N o T E s i vii 70-1 vii 76 324

9 Posidippus] A poet of the third century BC; this is Anthologia Palatina 16.275.
10 Ausonius] See i vi 6411; Epigrammata 33.

71 From Plutarch Moralia 8021 and 8480. Tilley c 43 It smells of the candle, L 44 It
smells more of the lamp than of wine.

72 Varro De lingua latina 5.9, referring to the great scholar Aristophanes of By-
zantium (first half of the second century BC) and Cleanthes the Stoic phi-
losopher (first half of third), both of whom were interested in the theory of
language.
1 I suppose] This sentence was added in 1517/8.
2 Epictetus] The moral philosopher (first/second century AD)
3 Juvenal] 1.51, added in 1523

73 From Aristophanes Clouds 296, with the ancient scholia. Cf Suidas T 19.
1 Aristophanes] Clouds 296; the name of the play inserted in 1523, before which
the text had 'somewhere.'
2 Lucian] Jupiter tragoedus 44, citing Homer Iliad 15.137
3 Demosthenes] De corona 122; this sentence was added in 1515.
4 Jerome] Letters 125.5, quoted again in n ii 40
5 Aristophanes] Knights 464

74 The phrase comes from Lucian Eunuchus 2; the word hamaxiaia, 'so big that
they need a wagon to carry them/ from Diogenianus 3.41, with some
further explanation added in 1515. But the word is thought to come from a
lost comedy, and is listed as frag adesp 835 Kock; it will provide in ii 69.
i Alexis] a prominent writer of the Attic Middle Comedy, frag 171 Kock, cited
by Athenaeus 9.3806. This was added in 1517/8, as it was in i iii 32.

75 From Quintilian 6.3.98. Otto 1792

1 Horace] Epistles 1.17.58-62, where planus, as Erasmus goes on to suggest, is
not a proper name but means 'some cheating rascal.'
2 Aristotle] A saying of his, quoted by Diogenes Laertius 5.17 (Otto 1094)
3 Aulus Gellius] 16.7.10, citing Laberius (the writer of mimes, first century BC) 3
Ribbeck
4 Cicero] Pro A. Cluentio 26.72
5 Juvenal] 9.8
6 Greek proverb] Adagia n v 22

76 Derived by Erasmus directly from his own reading

1 Horace] Satires 1.9.69-70
2 Aristophanes] The second of these is Plutus 618; the first, a confused recollec-
tion of that line and Clouds 293-4 which follows. On this latter line, he
originally put Socrates for Strepsiades, and corrected this in 1523 .
3 Aristophanes] Wasps 626. Pliny Naturalis historia 28.25 has also contributed.
4 Euripides] Cyclops 327-8
 N o T E s I vii 77-1 vii 8 325

77 The tale of Trophonius seems to have caught Erasmus' fancy; for he does not
often favour us with such a farrago which throws no light on the adage he
is properly concerned with. And in Antiquity the cave was much more a
curiosity than a serious oracle. His first two sentences are translated literal-
ly from Zenobius 3.61 (Suidas T 1065 he does not seem to have used). Then
comes the usual illustrative quotation, from Aristophanes Clouds 507-8.
The whole of what follows, except for a later intrusion from Cicero, is taken
from the ancient scholiast on those lines (citing Callimachus frag 294 Pfeif-
fer), until the scholiast has laid before us the last of his alternative explana-
tions, and we return to normal life with a quotation from Plutarch 'like
people who have just emerged from a cave.' Erasmus does not use the story of
Parmeniscus' visit to the cave, told in Athenaeus 14.6143, although he had
marked it in his copy of Athenaeus, now in Oxford.
1 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 1.47.114; this, as far as 'found dead/ was
inserted in 1517/8.
2 St Patrick's cave] This, better known as 'St Patrick's Purgatory/ is identified
as a cave on an island in Lough Dearg in County Donegal, which was a
place of pilgrimage all through the Middle Ages. Erasmus' mention of it sug-
gests no special knowledge, for it attracted pilgrims from the continent,
and accounts of it (beginning with Henry of Sawtry in the twelfth century) are
widespread and survive in several vernaculars.
3 Plutarch] Moralia 59OA-92E, added in 1515
4 Bede] A reference to the visions of the next world in his Ecclesiastical History of
the English People 5.12-14. All this is of 1515 down to 'this topic.'
5 Cicero] De natura deorum 3.19.49
6 Herodotus] See i vi i4n; 1.46.
7 Philostratus] See i vi 75n; in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana 8.19 he describes
how that tedious and successful charlatan paid a patronizing visit to Tro-
phonius' cave.
8 Lucian] Deorum consilium 12; Dialogi mortuorum y, Necyomantia 22. With this
we return to the original text of 1508.
9 Euripides] Ion 405 and 300
10 Zenodotus] Erasmus' normal name for the proverb-collection we know as
Zenobius; see the introductory note to this article.

78 The first clause might be a translation of Apostolius 17.95;tne undoubted

sources are Aristophanes Clouds 718-22 and Suidas $ 738.

79 This is from the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.12; Diogenianus 1.100;

Suidas A 1384), and was already in the Collectanea no 420, with a Latin
version of the line from Greek comedy (Menander frag 805). Zen. Ath. 2.86

80 Collectanea no 579 gave for this a version of Diogenianus 2.34, with a reference
to our i vii 82 (Plautus). What we have here is much closer to Zenobius 2.20
than to Diogenianus; also in Suidas A 1381. Our English is taken from Francis
Bacon c 1594, given by Tilley under s 76 Cast salt brine into the sea, which
is quite another proverb.
 N o T E s i vii 80-1 vii 85 326

81 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.23; Diogenianus 1.21; Suidas

A 1077). This and the preceding draw different morals from the same facts.

82 From Cicero's second Philippic 27.65. Otto 1013; Tilley G 90 Evil gotten evil
spent, and G 301 Evil gotten goods never prove well.
1 Plautus] Poenulus 844, also quoted in n viii 76; the play was not identified till
1520, but the phrase had been given in the Collectanea no 579. Cicero will
have had no doubts; he loved the old republican poets like Naevius; but he
knew that before a very general audience quotations from the classical
poets are often more effective if not too closely identified.
2 Festus Pompeius] See p 248 Lindsay, citing Naevius trag 51 Ribbeck. This was
added in 1520.

83 From Plutarch Moralia 2330; also in Diogenianus 7.34. We borrow F.C. Bab-
bitt's version of the.line. The parallel from Dio Chrysostom 74.5 was added
in 1533. Otherwise known as Dion of Prusa, he was a stylish author of the
early empire (c AD 40-120).

84 The source is Suetonius; for the Greek see Corpus paroemiographorum 2.196.
Otto 1185
1 Persius] Satires 1.27
2 Hebrew] Ecclesiasticus 20.32 (30 in the King James version)
3 Suetonius] Nero 20. i
4 Aulus Gellius] Nodes Atticae 13.31.3
5 Lucian] Harmonides \
6 Ovid] Ars amatoria 3.399-400, added in 1520
7 To these ... Lucian] Added in 1515. 'Blind riches' is quoted in in i 90 from
Plato's Laws.
8 Plutarch] Lycurgus 10.3, added with the following sentence in 1533. The re-
mark became proverbial, and is thought to have appeared in Greek comedy
(frag adesp 44 Kock).

85 It is not clear how far this use of figwood as a symbol of worthlessness was
ever current in Latin, for Horace in the passage quoted above may well
have had Greek prototypes in mind. Much Greek material is collected in the
Corpus paroemiographorum 2.210. The effect is something like our 'broken
reed.'
1 Theocritus] 10.44-5 (tr Gow). The following sentence, based on the ancient
scholia, was inserted in 1526, and inadvertently duplicates what is said of
a 'figwood prop' further on.
2 Aristophanes] Wasps 145 (Drones is an unorthodox title); Plutus 945-6 and
946-7, the second of these giving the same use of the word with different,
and faulty, punctuation. The word (sukinos) may have gained extra currency
in the Attic Old Comedy because it recalled sukophantes, a common inform-
er or blackmailer, an abusive term much used on the comic stage.
3 Horace] Satires 1.8.1, used again in n vi 47; 1.8.46-7
4 Lucian] Adversus indoctum 6; Alexander 47 (see i x 8n)
 N o T E s I vii 85-1 vii 90 327

5 figwood prop] This was a current proverb (we have had it already from the
Theocritus-scholia), but in Aristophanes Lysistrata no (as in Hesychius i
1199) there is a pun: skutine, leathern, for sukine, made of figwood, which
Erasmus has overlooked.
6 sword of fig-wood] This appears in its own right as Adagia n viii 63, the
source being Suidas ?. 1324 with Hesychius 2 2232 added. It is thought to
come from a lost comedy (frag adesp 905 Kock).
7 boat of fig-wood] Zenobius 3.44; Suidas s 1324
8 In Naxos] This sentence and the next were added in 1528 from Athenaeus
3-78c.
9 Theocritus] 12.16, the idyll being cited by title and not number. There is
something very like this in n x 90. It was added here in 1526.
10 Similar] Adagia iv vi 51; i i 24; i vii 43. This too is of 1526.

86 A familiar idea, to which Erasmus returns in iv v 50 Lupus in fabula. Otto 989;

Tilley w 621 The wolves saw him first.
1 Virgil] Eclogues 9.53-4, with Servius the fourth-century scholiast
2 Plato] Republic i.336d; the passage identified in 1517/8, when the Greek also
was provided.
3 Theocritus] 14.22
4 But in any case] This final sentence was added in 1515. Lycus, the Greek for
wolf, is a familiar personal name.

87 Suggested apparently by Theocritus

1 Lucian] Micyllus is the principal character in his Callus, of which the full title
is The Dream or the Cock.
2 Theocritus] 21.52, added in 1526
3 Theocritus] 9.16-7, to which 1526 added the scholiast's comment, including
Homer Iliad 9.385 in a variant form peculiar to him. In the next edition
(1528) Erasmus added this line in its normal form; but 'in the first book' is a
slip: the Greek letter i, which when used as a numeral means nine, has been
read as a Roman i, which means one.
4 Cicero] This is the spurious invective against Sallust the historian, In Sallus-
tium 7.19; added in 1533.

88 From Livy 2.14.1; Erasmus sometimes uses this title, Ab urbe condita, to desig-
nate the first decade of the History (books 1-10). The title and book-
number were inserted, and some small additions made to the text, in 1528.
Suringar 28

89 From the Pandects or Digest of Justinian 17.2.29.2, backed up with Aesop 260
Halm

90 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 6.3; Diogenianus 8.21; Suidas T

20). Otto 130; Tilley o 74 To speak like an oracle. Zen. Ath. 1.13
1 Cicero] Epistulae ad Brutum 8.3, added in 1538
2 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geographica 9.3.5. Pytho was an old name for Delphi.
 N o T E s i vii 90-1 vii 94 328

3 comedy] Terence Andria 698

4 Plato] Laws 12.9473, quoted in Latin
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia 29.14; 7.131 (the context is quoted in n iv 29)
6 Plutarch] Moralia $jf, added in 1515
7 Athenaeus] 2.37f. 'In any case ... speak the truth' was added in 1517/5.
8 as I have remarked] From here to the end was added in 1528. The reference is
to i vii 17.
9 Galen] De naturalibus facultatibus 1.17 (Kuehn 2.70)

91 From Juvenal 8.126. Otto 1641

1 Aristophanes] Peace 1095
2 Marcus Varro] Apart from his books, he was the greatest antiquarian of the
end of the Roman republic; this reference comes from the comment of
Servius on Aeneid 3.444.
3 Virgil] Aeneid 3.443-7; 6.74-5

92 This was no 651 in the Collectanea, based on the same passages of Plato and
Plutarch, though the Plutarch was not quoted verbally, and on Diogen-
ianus 3.29 (it is also in Suidas A 442). For the Plato passages Collectanea was
quoted here almost verbatim; and as a result the Plato in our text is given in
Latin, in the version of Marsilio Ficino (with some stylistic improvements);
only when Socrates quotes the actual phrase which concerns us is it given
in the original Greek, which was inserted in 1517/8.
1 Plato] Republic 2,^6zd; Protagoras 3403
2 Homer] Iliad 21.308-9; 22.294
3 For Pallas ... in vain] Inserted in 1528
4 Plutarch] Gaius Caesar 66. Casca's actual words were not given in 1508; in
1515 after 'in Greek' Erasmus added 'in the words I have given above'; and
in 1520 he gave the words 'Help, brother, help' correctly in Greek.

93 Collectanea no 639, from Diogenianus 6.53; also in Suidas A 101. See also iv vi
17-
1 For instance ... corrupts the mind] Added in 1515. Then followed, from 1508
onwards 'For the voyage to Abydos was dangerous on account of the
rough and cruel straits in which Leander, Hero's lover, was drowned; who
may well, I think, have given rise to the proverb.' This was cut out in 1528,
and replaced with the sentence about Alcibiades which now follows.
2 Athenaeus] i2.534f
3 well-known line] Horace Epistles 1.17.36, already quoted in i iv i
4 The inhabitants ... Suidas] Added in 1515. The references are to Stephanus
Byzantius p 10 Meineke (see i vi 53n) and Suidas EI 77.
5 Stephanus gives the adage ... vulgar abuse] Added in 1528

94 Zenobius 5.12; Suidas M 1030. Tilley s 1025 One swallow makes not summer.
1 Horace] Epistles 1.7.13, already used in i vi 59
2 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 1.7 (1098318)
3 Aristophanes] Birds 1417. The words 'I have just recorded' were inserted in
1515.
 N o T E s i vii 94-1 vii 9 329

4 Sophocles] Antigone 737, used again in v ii 6

5 For just as] This concluding sentence was added in 1515.

95 Cicero Pro Flacco 4.9. Otto 1772. For more on the moral obliquity of the Greeks
see i viii 27 Graeca fide.

96 Taken from Nonius; it looks like the second half of an iambic line, though
Erasmus does not note this, as he usually does. Otto 1162; Tilley M 1396
One mule doth scrub another. The first of a small group of adages with related
meanings.
1 Nonius Marcellus] p 115 and three other places; for the Menippean Satires see i
vii5n.
2 Ausonius] See i vi 64n; from the third preface of his Technopaegnion.
3 Varro] De lingua latina 7.28. The standard edition by G. Goetz and F. Schoell,
Leipzig 1910, credits the recognition of the proverb in this corrupt passage
to Pantagathus, who in 1508 was a boy of fourteen.
4 Symmachus] Epistulae 10.1.3; he was an orator of the fourth century AD. In his
edition in the Monumenta Germaniae historica (Auct ant 6), Berlin 1883, O.
Seeck says that the manuscripts read (a)emulos for mulos, and credits the
correction to Maarten Lips, whose edition was published in Basel in 1549.
5 Horace] Epistles 2.2.87-9 anc^ 99-100, the latter in the version of Sir Philip
Francis (1756), which has already been used in i v 60. Horace, a devoted
follower of the Lesbian lyric poet Alcaeus, means himself to be recognized as
one of these characters; it is thought that the other, who likes to be regard-
ed as a second Callimachus (the eminent Hellenistic poet), may be a dig at his
contemporary Propertius.

97 From Terence, Phormio 267, which is already used in i ii 38. Otto 1162 rightly
thinks this is not proverbial. The reference to coppersmiths was added in
1515.

98 From Aelius Spartianus Hadrianus 17.6; he is one of the authors of the Historia
Augusta (see i vi 7n).

99 This was Collectanea no 685, using Diogenianus 8.48.

1 Suidas] T 767
2 moral maxim] Publilius Syrus A 2 (see i vi 34n), and the modern Do as you
would be done by (Tilley D 395). Publilius' Sententiae circulated for centu-
ries, and were often printed, under the title Proverbia Senecae, and it was
Erasmus' edition of 1514 (in the Cato) that first established them as Mimi
Publiani. The line quoted here is cited by Seneca in his Letters 94.43, and is
attributed to him in the early fourth century by Lactantius Divinae institut-
iones 1.16.10. But it has been thought to be from a lost Roman comedy, and is
com incert 82 Ribbeck.
3 Aristides] De quattuor p 300 Dindorf. In 1508 Themistocles stood in place of
Pericles, but Erasmus was sufficiently attentive to put this right in 1515 .
4 other phrase] Adagia i i 33. Plato Axiochus (spurious) 366c, citing Epicharmus
frag 273 Kaibel (see i vi 22n).
 N O T E S I vii 99-1 viii 2 330

5 Aldine edition] This sentence was inserted in 152$. The first edition of Plato's
works was published by Aldus in September 1513, and on this point its
reading is correct. The end of the line is defective, but Erasmus' idea is not
good: we have to take as long a syllable which he must have known was
short.
6 following ... consult] So from 3525 onwards; in 3508 it ran 'in following the
authority of a great scholar, Rodolphus Agricola, who read KVL^SI (scratches),
not vit,K(. (washes), though for my part I find vit,ei written in all the copies I
have so far been able to consult.'

100 From Proverbs 27.17. Tilley i 913 Iron whetteth iron. This was supplied new
in 1515. And from 1508 through 1523 the century ended with Fuit et Man-
dronificulna navis, which was moved in 1526 to be iv v 49.

i In 1508 this stood between the present i viii 35 and 36; it was moved here in
1515, when the centuries were numbered and each was given an article of
some importance to make a good start. The adage is in Suidas T 522 and (in a
slightly different form) in Diogenianus 8.46. Tilley E 178 Marry your equal
and B 465 Like blood, like goods, and like age make the happiest marriage.
1 Plutarch] Moralia 13?
2 Diogenes Laertius] 1.79-81
3 Callimachus] The piece that follows, first in Latin paraphrase, then in the
original Greek elegiacs, and then in Ambrogio's version in Latin elegiacs,
is the first epigram of the eminent Hellenistic poet Callimachus. The name of
the person addressed is given by Diogenes Laertius as Dion, rightly; it is
Ion in the Greek Anthology 7.89.
4 Ambrosius Camaldulensis] Ambrogio Traversari is best known for his ver-
sions from the Greek. The Diogenes Laertius is said to have been finished
in 1431, and it was printed in 1475 and later. In 1508 after 'in his verson of
Diogenes' the text went on 'or some other author, whoever he may have
been, for the style does not much correspond to Ambrosius' period.' These
misgivings were struck out in 1523.
5 Ovid] Heroides 9.29-32, added in 1538
6 Plutarch] Moralia 13F, inserted in 1533; we have had it already.
7 Aristophanes] Thesmophoriazusae 413; in 1508 followed 'falsely, I think my-
self/ but these scruples were removed in 1523.
8 Euripides] Rhesus 168. All that follows was added in 1515.

2 From Varro De lingua latina 7.101, who cites Ennius frag incert 10 (see I vi
2on). Otto 1149
1 In Greek] Suidas M 1381, 1383
2 Aristophanes] Thesmophoriazusae 231, the title of the play added in 1523, and a
little more explanation given
3 Terence] Adelphoe 207
4 Virgil] Aeneid 12.657
5 Aristophanes] Knights 10
 N o T E s i viii 3-1 viii 331

3 Cf Zenobius 5.54; Suidas r 461. there is some overlap with n i 82.

1 something very small] Dirt under the nails appears in Zenobius and in Hesy-
chius; pig's grunt in the scholia on the Plutus; both, with small coin, in
Suidas.
2 Aristophanes] Plutus 16-17 and 454, the latter line used again in n i 82
3 Philostratus] Vita Apollonii 1.15

4 After two ways of expressing what is small in quantity or value, we come to

ten articles in which what is without value is described in terms of the
derisorily small price which it might be expected to fetch. This first one is
Suringar 170; cf Otto 1420 note.
1 Catullus] 10.13, from memory
2 Cicero] Ad Quintum fratrem 2.16.5; Ad Atticum 5.20.6
3 the expression] See i viii 12; 'of a man of no account' was added in 1517/8.

5 Otto 1258 note; Tilley M 10261 care not a mite.

1 Plautus] Truculentus 611; Mostellaria 1041
2 Pompeius Festus] See p 166 Lindsay, listing the opinions of a number of
earlier Roman grammarians.
3 Other views] This sentence, which refers to the same page of Festus, was
inserted in 1515.
4 Cicero] In De divinatione 1.58.132 he uses the phrase, and early editions by
their punctuation make it a quotation from Ennius. This sentence was
added in 1538.

6 Common, as Erasmus says, in Latin from Plautus and Terence onwards, and
an obvious ancient equivalent for Tilley s 917 Not to care a straw and s 918
Not worth a straw.

7 From Terence Adelphoe 163, with Donatus the ancient commentator. Suringar
131. The example of Sardanapalus (see in vii 27) was added in 1517/8 from
Athenaeus i2.$2<)d, the first edition of Athenaeus having been published by
Aldus in 1514, and in 1528 was made into an independent adage (iv vii 17).

8 Plautus Miles gloriosus 316 (the play was not named till 1523). Otto 1258;
Suringar 239; cf Tilley N 366 Not worth a nutshell, and perhaps N 365 Deaf
nuts. This is largely duplicated by iv viii 3.
1 Aristophanes] Peace 1223. The word meaning 'dried fig' is translated 'nut' by
Erasmus; but he may well have adjusted the sense to help out the metre of
his version.
2 Festus] See p 514 Lindsay, citing Plautus Casina 347. These two last sentences
were added in 1515.
3 pipolo] This word occurs in Plautus Aulularia 446, where according to Varro
De lingua latina 7.103 (and Nonius p 152) it means 'abuse.' None of these
sources treat it as a Greek word.
4 Festus] See p 32 Lindsay, citing Naevius com 131 (Ribbeck 2.34).
 N o T E s i viii 9-1 viii 16 332

9 Cicero Ad Atticum 5.20.6. Otto 1767; Tilley F 71 Not worth a farthing

1 Plautus] Captivi 477, also quoted in in vii 52
2 Varro] De lingua latina 5.174, added in 2515

10 Plautus Poenulus 381 and 463. Otto 1799

1 Aristophanes] Wasps 481, the Greek translated in 1515
2 Gregory] Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 326-90) Epistulae
3 triobolares] Sentence added in 1533. The word is medieval, but as used here
could be a reminiscence of Plautus' word diobolares, which provides iv ix
33-

11 Persius Satires 5.75-6 and 191, the full text of the former added in 1515
1 one twirl] At one point in the ceremony of 'manumitting' a slave (giving him
his freedom) he revolved on his own .axis; so Persius in characteristically
allusive language is complaining that slaves are manumitted much too readily.
2 Jerome] Adversus Helvidium 16 (PL 23.2008)
3 Justinian] This is from the second paragraph of the Constitutio 'Omnem' which
is the preface to the Digest or Pandects of Justinian; it was added in 1533
both here and to in v 54.

12 In the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.4; Diogenianus 1.93; Suidas A

2819). Close to i viii 4. The passage in Aristophanes is Frogs 613-14 (the
play identified in 1523; before that it was 'quoted by Suidas').

13 Suidas A 2819. The opposite is i viii 16.

1 Homer] Iliad 11.514, which also provides in viii 53
2 Plato] Laws 5-73od

14 Thirteen expressions denoting excellence or reliability in one's fellow men

follow those which convey a want of worth. This one is from Suidas A
2819. Obeliscus is in form a diminutive of obelus, a spit or skewer, and the
words can designate many pointed objects, from Egyptian obelisks to the
obeli or 'daggers' used by scholars to mark doubtful passages in a text. Eras-
mus added 'with grandiloquent inscriptions ... disapproved of in 1515; he
has treated of Aristarchus, the eminent Alexandrian scholar, in i v 57.

15 Lucian Pseudologista 15, whence Apostolius 18.41

1 Virgil] Eclogues 7.36
2 Plato] Phaedrus 2^d, 2$6b; the translator referred to is Marsilio Ficino.
3 It should be added ... hammered gold] Inserted in 1523 to explain the allusion
in Plato. Strabo Geographica 8.6.20 is a source.
4 Philostratus] Vita Apollonii; see i vi 75n.
5 Persius] Satires 2.58. The statue of Aesculapius at Epidaurus had a beard of
gold (Cicero De natura deorum 3.34.83).

16 Zenobius 2.2; Diogenianus 1.91; Suidas A 2819

i Plato] Sophist 2i6c, added in 1523
 N o T E s i viii 16-1 viii 24 333

2 Terence] Andria 856. The following cross-reference to i viii 13 was added in

1517/8.

17 Translated from Zenobius 2.3 or Diogenianus 1.92

18 From Pliny Naturalis historia praef 24

1 Seneca] De beneficiis 4.39.4, added in 1528
2 Horace] Satires 1.9.36-7, used again in v ii 15. It was added here in 1528.
3 There is ... first place] Added in 1526
4 hearth and altar] Otto 147
5 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 6.1.38

19 From Terence Heautontimorwnenos 341-2 (attributed in 1508 to the Andria).

Otto 211; Tilley E 24 To sleep securely on both ears. Adagia iv i 43 is a
humorous variant.
1 Basil] See i vii i4n; Epistulae.
2 Menander] Frag 333.1-2, preserved by Gellius 2.23.9

20 From Pliny the Younger Letters 4.29.1, to his friend Romatius. The physicians'
opinion was added in 1515.

21 Lucian De mercede conductis 13

1 Aristophanes] Plutus 1123
2 Hebrew proverbs] Proverbs 24.33, the text itself added in 1515

22 Pliny Naturalis historia 11.198. Otto 1198

1 Horace] Satires 1.6.5; 2.8.64
2 Persius] Satires 1.118 (tr Conington); 5.91, cited again in n viii 60
3 Martial] 1.41.18; 1.3.6, cited again in in v 7; 13.2.1
4 Persius] 1.40-41 (tr Conington)
5 Cassius] In Cicero Ad familiares 15.19.4, the final phrase of explanation added
in 1515

23 This seems to have been a favourite phrase of Cicero's: De officiis 3.19.77; De

finibus 2.16.52; De divinatione 2.41.85. Otto 1109
1 Marcus Varro] From his Menippean Satires (see i vii 5n), frag 396 in Buecheler's
edition, cited by Nonius p 347.
2 Nemesianus] (Second half of the third century) wrote Eclogues, but this line is
by a pastoral poet of the first century AD whose work is always published
with his, Calpurnius Siculus 2.26, quoted from memory.
3 Augustine] De Trinitate 8.5.8 (PL 42.953); this was inserted in 1528.
4 Greek] Suidas A 2592
5 opposite] This is given again in iv v 61, but seems not to have achieved the
status of an independent adage, perhaps through some accident.

24 Lucian De mercede conductis 12. The last sentence was added in 1515 and looks
forward to i x 58.
 N O T E S i vm 25-1 vin 29 334

25 This was Collectanea no 299; Diogenianus 3.11, Suidas A 4359

26 Diogenianus 2.80; Suidas A 4359. Otto 201

1 Plautus] Aulularia 583
2 Velleius Paterculus] 2.23.4; a historian of the early first century AD, whose
work was first published by Beatus Rhenanus in Basel in 1520. The extract
was added here in 1523.
3 Quintilian] 12.10.25, referring to Menander frag Georgos 35-9. From here to
the end was added in 152$.

27 This is not clear. We have found no source for the Greek adage, and suspect
that the Greek is a back-translation from the Latin. If so, it is uncomplimen-
tary. Romans did not trust Greeks commercially, and 'on Greek credit' might
well mean, as it seems to mean in the Plautus passage, 'cash down,' no
credit given or taken when dealing with a Greek. When Erasmus says it
expresses reliability, he is perhaps moved by the contrast with 'Punic faith'
(see next adage), which undoubtedly meant treachery of the deepest dye; but
'Punic' in the Ausonius passage is corrupt (proika has been suggested, the
Greek for 'gratis'). Only the bad sense appears in Otto 770 and Tilley F 31
Grecian faith.

1 Ausonius] See i vi 64n; Epistulae 4.41-2 and 22.24.

2 Plautus] Asinaria 198-9
3 Euripides] Iphigeneia Taurica 1205, added with the next sentence in 1523. The
speaker is a disgruntled Greek, and so a prejudiced witness.

28 The Carthaginians were Rome's most serious enemy, and Otto 1490 lists
twenty-seven examples of Punic or Carthaginian faith as a synonym for
treachery.
1 Livy] 22.6.12 (the reference added in 1520, before which the text said 'some-
where') and 21.4.9 (added in 1528). Erasmus normally refers to the third
decade (books 21-30) as his (Second) Punic War.
2 Quintus Curtius] See i vi ion; 4.2.19, added in 1517/8.
3 Julius Capitolinus] Gordiani tres 14.1, reporting a speech by Maximinus, not
Maximus. He is one of the authors of the Historia Augusta (i vi 7n).
4 Ausonius] i viii 27
5 Sallust] Bellum Jugurthinum 108.3; added in 1526. he is a Roman historian of
the first century BC, cited in the Adagia a dozen times.
6 Plautus] Poenulus 991 and 112-3, tne latter added in 1533. The word 'treaty-
breakers' (foedifragi) may come from Cicero De officiis 1.12.38.

29 From Plautus. Otto 914; Suringar 8; Tilley B 634 He bears a stone in one hand
and bread in the other. Close to iv iv 74
1 Plautus] Aulularia 194-5 (195 is in iv iv 74).
2 Jerome] Letters 81.1.4
3 Gregory] of Nazianzus (AD 326-90) Epistulae 16.6 (PG 37.49^ added in 1528
from the Haguenau edition of that year
 N o T E s i viii 30-1 viii 36 335

30 Based on a familiar fable (Aesop 64 Halm). Suringar 63; Tilley M 1258 as above
1 Avianus] Fable 29. Avianus (or Avienus) wrote a small collection of Aesopic
fables in elegiac verse, perhaps at the end of the fourth century AD.
2 Aristotle] Problems 34.7 (964310); this was added in 1515, and the precise
reference was not given till 1528.
3 There is ... of James] This also was inserted in 1515, and so was the Greek
text; it is James 3.10-11 'the Apostle ... his name' is of 1517/8. In 1508 the
wording was There is also in one of the prophets/ and the quotation was
given in Latin only.
4 We can add ... men of beasts] This too is of 1515, and it draws on Pliny
Natumlis historia 2.228 and Plutarch Moralia 9850 and following.
5 proverbial line] Menander Sententiae 747; we have now returned to the 1508
text.
6 Hebrew prophet] Isaiah 5.20; his name was supplied in 1515.
7 Athenaeus] 4.i82d, citing Anaxandrides (not Alex-), a writer of the Attic
Middle Comedy, frag 35 Kock. From here to the end of the article was
added in 1528, and there is much overlap with iv vi 58 of the same year.
8 Aristotle] Problems 19.18 (9i8b4o) and 39 (920312)

31 From Plautus Asinaria 202; cf i i 100. Otto 1272; Tilley s 212 Seeing is
believing.
1 mountains of gold] Adagia i ix 15
2 Terence] Adelphoe 221-2; Eunuchus 311

32. Plautus Pseudolus 301. Otto 538. There is some overlap with n vi 54.

33 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 5.96; Diogenianus 8.13; Suidas

2 1793). The source may be a lost comedy (frag adesp 757 Kock).
1 Martial] 14.22; this book contains couplets designed to be sent with presents
to friends, in this instance a case of quill toothpicks, the 'leafy spike' being
the mastic-twig.
2 Dioscorides] See i vii 23n; 1.70.2, added in 1528.
3 Apuleius] Apologia 6. He had in fact sent a present of toothpowder to a friend
with a set of elegant verses on its merits, which he quotes with relish.

34 From Seneca the elder Controversiae 7.4.7. Otto 553

1 Calvus] A Roman poet of the first half of the first century BC
2 Juvenal] 9.133
3 Seneca] Letters 52.12

35 From Lucian Rhetorum praeceptor 11

36 Cicero himself couples this with our i vi 14 and 77. Otto 1409. For what was
probably once a shortened form of it, see n viii 25.
1 Seneca] Not yet identified
2 Cicero] Pro L. Flacco 27.65
3 Suidas] 4> 772. The verse has been ascribed to Epicharmus (i vi 22n), frag 159
in the edition of H.L. Ahrens.
 N o T E s i viii 36-1 viii 41 336

4 Athenaeus] 1.27^ citing Hermippus (a writer of the Attic Old Comedy) frag 63
Kock. This was added in 1517/8.

37 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 5.47; Diogenianus 7.13; Suidas

o 798). Zen. Ath. 1.12
1 counsel] Adagia u i 47
2 Aristides] Panathenaicus p 177 Dindorf
3 anchor] In 1508 this continued: 'Aristides for instance in his Themistodes has
"hanging on his voice as on a sacred anchor."' The sentence was removed
in 1515, and transferred to i i 24, which deals with the phrase.
4 Plutarch] Pelopidas 15.3
5 Theocritus] 5.21-2. The ancient scholia on this contain, as Erasmus says in the
last sentence of the article (added in 1526), much of all this material. When
they give Cleandrus as the source, this is a mistake for Clearchus, the ancient
proverb-collector (see i vi 6on), frag 66 Wehrli.

38 This seems not to be in the collections, and was perhaps derived by Erasmus
from his own reading.
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 36-8
2 Euripides] Andromache 445-8
3 Aristophanes] Thesmophoriazusae 373-4; 'speaking of women' was inserted in
1515
4 Cicero] Ad Atticum 15.1.3; 14.21.2 (Tn short, I don't trust him a yard' tr Shack-
leton Bailey). This latter was added in 1536.

39 This is in Zenobius 5.54 and Suidas T 730; clearly it should be 'Not even
Dion's grunt,' but the tradition at some point lost the first Greek word. For
gry, see i viii 3.

40 This looks like a case where Erasmus has obtained the Greek for his adage by
translating its Latin form, with the Gospel authority of Matthew 15.14
behind him. Otto 277; Tilley B 452 If the blind lead the blind, they both fall
into the ditch.
1 Cicero] Definibus: really Tusculanae disputationes 5.38.112. For the same confu-
sion in the opposite direction, in 1533, see v ii 37. The passage with the
comment on it was inserted in 1526.
2 Horace] Epistles 1.17.3-4. A new sentence begins after 'where to go/ but the
same wrong punctuation appears in in iii 78 and in a letter of 1516 (Ep
456:143; CWE 4.49).
3 Porphyrion] Supposed author of the ancient scholia on Horace; he refers to
Adagia i i 40.
4 Aristophanes] Plutus 13-16

41 Suidas A 1071, drawing the word from Homer Iliad 10.515 and elsewhere.
1 So Suidas ... Methodius] Added in 1528. Etymologicon magnum 57.11; Method-
ius is a lost lexicographer, not earlier than the fourth century AD.
2 in several... phrase] Inserted in 1528
3 This will be] From here to the end is of 1515.
 N o T E s i viii 42-1 viii 44 337

42 From Horace Satires i .4.119-20. Otto 444; Tilley B 443 Swim without bladders.
Now 'to stand on your own feet.'
1 Acron] The ancient scholia on Horace which pass under this name.
2 Plautus] Aulularia 595-6
3 The Greek] From here to the end was added in 1528.
4 Theodorus] of Gaza, the eminent refugee scholar who translated Theophras-
tus on plants about 1453 for Pope Nicholas v, and was used by Erasmus for
Aristotle.
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia 16.34
6 Lucian] Verae historiae 2.4
7 phelleuein] The word is recorded by Hesychius <t> 280; phelleis comes more than
once in Aristophanes.

43 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.16; Diogenianus 4.100;

Suidas z 133), citing Menander frag 45, which also appears as Menander
Sententiae 273. Close to m vi 4. Otto 1456
1 Terence] Andria 805
2 Caecilius] Caec. Statius (see i vi in) 177 (Ribbeck 2.75), added in 1523.
3 Plato] Hippias major 3oic, the Greek not added till 1517/8; Cratylus 425^ ad-
ded in 1528
4 proverbial sayings] Menander Sententiae 104 and 329
5 No one is happy] From here to the end was added in 1515. Erasmus himself
quotes the line in this spirit in m i l .

44 The English rendering of this is not wholly satisfactory. Dysboulia, the fault
ascribed to Athens in the Greek, is ill counsel, taking wrong decisions
which you will regret. Erasmus' version, which we have tried to convey,
emphasizes not so much bad judgment as rashness and haste, and seems to
have been at least partly diictated by a desire, not suggested by the Greek, to
produce a line of verse in the Latin, as he has had occasion to do for so
many other adages. No single passage can be clearly identified as the originat-
ing source. Suringar no 61
1 a phrase] i v 82
2 Eupolis] See i vii 23n; frag 205 (already used in Adagia i v 82), cited by Suidas
A 732, and by Athenaeus io.425b (the latter passage inserted in 1517/8 and
the book-number in 1523). The first three lines are an after-thought of 1523.
3 Aristophanes] Clouds 587-8
4 Aristophanes] Wasps 1086, used again in m i 40
5 Demosthenes] First Olynthiac i;
6 Theognis] 161-2
7 Aristophanes] Ecclesiazusae 473-5, added in 1523. The metrical defect in the
transmitted text which Erasmus tries to cure is mended in modern texts by
a small rearrangement of the word-order.
8 Livy] For example, 1.52.3; added in 1523
9 elsewhere] Adagia i v 82
 N O T E S i viii 45-1 viii 48 338

45 Cicero Adfamiliares 7.3.4; the adage itself is thought to come from some lost
Roman comedy, com incert 90/1 (Ribbeck 2.150). Otto 1928. (The precise
reference to Cicero's letter was added in 1523.)
1 Euripides] Hecuba 968-72; Alcestis 960-1
2 Sophocles] Ajax 473-4, 479-80
3 proverbial line] Menander Sententiae 280
4 Euripides] Hecuba 349-52

46 The origin and precise meaning of these phrases have been much discussed.
The most widely held view seems to be that they come from the arena
where, if one gladiator had another at his mercy, the crowd pointed their
thumbs downwards if they wished the loser's life to be spared, as an indica-
tion that the victor should lower his weapon; thumbs turned upwards or
towards their own bosoms showed that they wanted him to be despatched.
Otto 1445
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 28.25
2 Juvenal] 3.36-7
3 Horace] Epistles 1.18.65-6. Porphyrion and Acron are the ancient scholars
whose names are attached to the traditional scholia.

47 A widespread idiom in Latin, for which English, which uses different meta-
phors, does not provide a very satisfactory equivalent. Tilley F 17, To set a
good face on the matter, applies after an act; our adage applies before it. Otto
631
1 proverbial saying] Adagia u i 70
2 Quintilian] Institutio oratoria 11.3.160
3 Plutarch] Apparently a reminiscence of his Cicero 48.3
4 Quintilian] Inst. 9.2.25, citing Calvus, the mid first-century BC poet, who was
also a promising orator. This is frag 23 (Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta ed
H. Malcovati, Turin 1955, 497).
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia praef 4
6 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 3.18.41, added in 1526
7 Seneca] Letters 40.13, added in 1533
8 Horace] Epistles 2.1.30-1
9 Persius] Satires 5.103-4
10 Ovid] Heroides 16.102
11 Cicero] Verrines 4.29.66; Philippics 5.6.16; Pro C. Rabirio Postumo 12.34; De
oratore 1.38.175; Philippics 11.3.7. These five examples from Cicero were all
added in 1533.
12 Martial] 9.94.1-2, added in 1533
13 Homer] Iliad 1.159, also use(* in i ix 42 and n i 70; 1.225, also m n v" 3^
14 Athenaeus] i.2a, citing the astronomical writer Eratosthenes of Cyrene frag
37 Hiller, 30 Powell. This was added in 1527/5 here, and to i vi 94 in 1528 .

48 A very common image, like the last

1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 11.138
2 Terence] Adelphoe 839
3 Horace] Odes 3.29.16; Epistles 1.18.94, added in 1523
 N o T E s i viii 48-1 viii 52 339

4 Plautus] Casina 281, from memory; Epidicus 609. In the latter passage Plautus
uses a rare verb caperrat, it becomes wrinkled, which the Ancients connect-
ed with caper, a he-goat.

49 A common expression, illustrated from Pliny Naturalis historia 11.138. It over-

laps m v 71.
1 Suidas] o 1027
2 Greek] This sentence, citing Lucian Amores 53, was added in 1533.
3 Homer] Iliad 1.528; 17.209
4 Virgil] Aeneid 9.106; 10.115

50 Another familiar metaphor, illustrated from Aristophanes Knights 292. The

last sentence was added in 1515.

51 Aristophanes Wasps 1489 (whence Apostolius 14.303). Otto 596

1 two verbs] Also in Suidas E 770
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 25.48, drawing on Dioscorides De materia medica 4.148
and 162
3 Dioscorides] De materia medica 4. 148 and 162 (see i vii 23)
4 Aulus Gellius] 17.15
5 Theophrastus] See i vii 2in; Historia plantarum 9.10.4 and 9.8.8; Pliny Nat.
hist. 25.50, from which much of this is quoted.
6 Plautus] Menaechmi 913; the name of the play added in 1533.
7 Demosthenes] De corona 121
8 Lucian] Dialogi mortuorum 7(17).2; Verae historiae 2.7
9 Petronius] Satyricon 88.4. The fragments of this novel of the mid first century
AD (lacking the famous description of the supper of Trimalchio) had been
in print since 1482, and Erasmus has twice referred to them. On this point he
does not seem to have seen the original, which is unmistakably in prose.
10 Horace] Epistles 2.2.137
11 Ovid] Epistulae ex Ponto 4.3.53-4
12 Persius] Satires 4.16
13 Ausonius] See i vi 64n; Epistulae 12.70, perhaps from memory.

52 The Latin is from Horace Satires 2.3.166; the Greek (which is in the second
person: 'You should take ship ...') is perhaps a back-translation from the
Latin, on the model of the phrase about Marseilles which Erasmus quotes,
and which supplies Adagia n iii 98. Otto 117
1 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geographica 9.3.3.
2 Pausanias] 10.36.7. His valuable description of Greece and its monuments
was compiled in the second century AD; most of Erasmus' references to it in
the Adagia antedate the first edition of the Greek text, published by Aldus in
July 1516, his copy of which is in the British Library.
3 Stephanus] Steph. Byzantius p 99 Meineke (see i vi 53n); reference inserted in
1515.
4 Horace] Ars poetica 300-1
5 Using ... unsound mind] Added in 1526
6 Horace] Epistles 1.1.102, from memory: Horace spoke in this line of a physi-
cian, not a barber.
 N o T E s i viii 52-1 viii 56 340

7 Columella] Res rustica 1.3-1; this is a long treatise on agriculture of the mid first
century AD.
8 Varro] Res rusticae (see i vi i/n) 1.2.8
9 Cicero] De inventione 2.50.148
10 Twelve Tables] The earliest code of Roman law, known only in fragments.
From here to praesidis was added in 1526.
11 Institutes] of Justinian 1.23.3, followed by two references to his Digest or
Pandects 27.10.1 and 1.18.13
12 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 3.5.8; these last two sentences were added in
*533-
13 Twelve Tables] 5.73 in Fontes juris Romani antiqui ed C.G. Bruns and O. Grad-
enwitz, Tubingen 1909, 1.23

53 Probably from Apostolius 15.81!!, supplemented from botanical and medical

sources.
1 Dioscorides] De materia medica 4.70-71
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 21.178-9
3 This makes me ... more incurable] Added in 1528
4 Horace] Epistles 1.19.45
5 Theophrastus] See i vii 2in; Historia plantarum. 9.11.6

54 The source of this adage is not yet clear.

1 kardamon] This fanciful etymology was inserted in 1538.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 19.155 (Otto 1197)
3 In Greek] This sentence was added in 1515 .
4 Dioscorides] De materia medica 2.155.1, in Latin, inserted (as far as 'from
Pliny') in 1528
5 Aristophanes] Thesmophoriazusae 616-17; Wasps 455

55 Plautus Menaechmi 289-92 (the name of the play added, in place of 'some-
where,' in 1523, with text of the quotation; 312-14 (the play named in
1508). Otto 1448
i Horace] Satires 2.3.164-5

56 Otto 1729 says he has found no source for the Greek form of this adage,
neither have we. We therefore suspect that it is one of those that Erasmus
secured by back-formation from the Latin, in this case from Pliny Naturalis
historia 20.33.
1 Syrians against Phoenicians] This appeared in the Collectanea as no 672, with
the Greek equivalent supplied from Diogenianus 8.19 (it is also in Suidas x
1670) and the explanation 'When one cunning man does business with
another; for both nationalities are notoriously dishonest.' This adage does not
appear except in section ii (col 2F) of the introduction, and here, in passing;
it was perhaps not given an article of its own in the Chiliades by inadvertence.
2 Caelius Rhodiginus] Lodovico Ricchieri (1453-1525), mentioned in i i 2 (CWE
31.34); see Allen u p 348n. This is a reference to his Antiquae lectiones,
published in Venice by Aldus, February 1516. This last sentence was added in
1520. See also CEBR 3.155
 N o T E s i viii 57-1 viii 6 341

57 From Jerome Letters 105.2. Otto 1086. Augustine's reply is 82.2 in his own
letters, or 116.2.2 in Jerome's.
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 21.74, added in 1515
2 There is also] From here to the end was added in 1528, with a reference to
Ammianus Marcellinus (see i vii ion) 23.4.15

58 From Diogenes Laertius 6.61, in his life of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes;
mulsum, which for want of a better word we have translated 'honey-brew,'
is a deceptively sweet drink, wine doctored perhaps with honey and milk.
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 21.74-8
2 Diogenes] The philosopher again, in Laertius 6.51
3 Jerome] See the preceding article, A sword smeared with honey.
4 For whose practice] Sentence added in 1515
5 Irenaeus] Bishop of Lyon (died c AD 200), Adversus haereses 3.19 in the old
Latin version first published by Erasmus (Froben, August 1526), see Ep
1738; p 180 in the second edition of 1528, in which year this reference was
added here.

59 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.96; Diogenianus 6.16; Suidas

A 566)
1 Plato] Euthydemus 2<)8c
2 Aristotle] Physics 3.6 (207317); the 'actual words' were added in Greek in
1515.
3 Suidas] A 566, citing Strattis (i vii 23n) frag 38 Kock. The title of the comedy is
Potamii, not Politia (Republic).
4 Proculus] Proclus (see i vi 26n) Comm. on Plato's Republic, diss 6 and 13 (ed W.
Kroll, Leipzig 1899-1901, 1.70 and 2.30). First printed in Basel in 1534
5 Athenaeus] 6.248c, citing Pindar frag 241; added in 1528

60 A famous line from Solon, the Athenian poet and statesman of the sixth
century BC; frag 18 West. Otto 1627; Suringar 43
1 Gellius] 13.8.3, citing Afranius, writer of comedies of the later second century
BC, 278 (Ribbeck 2.241).
2 Plato] Republic 7-536d; Amatores i33c; Laches 1893, added in 1533
3 Seneca] Letters 76.3
4 Cicero] De senectute (also called Cato major) 8.26; 14.50
5 Terence] Adelphoe 855-8
6 Seneca] Publilius Syrus D i (he was known as Publius in Erasmus' day).
Several of his moral lines are to be found in Gellius 17.14.4, and many
passed for centuries under the name of Seneca; so Erasmus' inference is cor-
rect. This is Tilley T Today is the scholar of yesterday.

61 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.14; Diogenianus 5.98; Suidas

z 127). The life of this Diogenes in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent
Philosophers (perhaps of the early third century AD), is cited in the Adagia over
twenty times.
1 he used to say] Diogenes Laertius 6.37
2 Eubulus] Frag 139 Kock, cited by Athenaeus 3(not 2).ii3f
 N o T E s i viii 61-i viii 66 342

3 Antiphanes] A slip: this is Alexis frag 197 Kock, cited by Athenaeus 4.i6id,
but Alexis' name had occurred several lines back, while that of Antiphanes
follows soon thereafter. All three names are those of writers of the Attic
Middle Comedy. Tor a short time' has disappeared from modern texts.
4 Hamaxobii] The name may come from Pliny Naturalis historia 4.80 or, as in in ii
47, from Stephanus Byzantius p 180 Meineke; it refers to the nomads of the
steppes of South Russia. This sentence was added in 1515, and the explana-
tion that follows in 1517/5.

62 A common phrase; Otto 537 offers many more examples. Tilley H 98 To live
from hand to mouth
1 Greek] Erasmus' word for those who live from day to day is not in the Greek
lexicon of Liddell and Scott.
2 Theocritus] 13.4
3 Aristophanes] Knights 1101
4 Homer] Odyssey 21.85
5 Persius] Satires 3.62
6 Cicero] Philippics 5.9.25, added in 1528
7 Horace] Ars poetica 160, added in 1528
8 It is quite remarkable] This sentence was added in 1515.

63 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.21; Diogenianus 3.69; Suidas

B 293), as Erasmus tells us, though the names of 'Zenodotus' and Suidas
were not added until 152$. A duplicate, derived from Suidas A 1183, stood in
1508 after in i 14.
i or from grain... thorns] Added in 1528. The last sentence comes from Suidas B
295, which in that same year provided iv vii 56.

64 From Hesiod Works and Days 825, discussed in Gellius 17.12.4, who cites
Favorinus of Aries (second century AD) frag 65. The parallel given is from
Pliny Naturalis historia 7.1. Cf Tilley F 609 Fortune to one is mother, to another
is stepmother.

65 Theocritus 4.43; Erasmus as usual refers to the idyll by title rather than num-
ber. His Latin version is identified in n iv 12 as Filelfo's.
i Pindar] Pythians 3.104-5, the title inserted in 1523. More of the same passage
is given in 1526 in in vi 69. The quotation which follows, from Isthmians
4.5-6, was added in 1526.

66 From Juvenal. Otto 1083. There is some overlap with iv x 33 Duke et amarum;
compare too in the last paragraph of in i 87 Ubi mel,ibifel.
1 Dioscorides] De materia medica 3.22; see i vii 23n.
2 Plautus] Amphitryo 634-6. The second reference to Plautus is a slip of
memory: the Plautus passages cited in iv x 33 have taken on in recollection the
wording which belongs to Juvenal.
3 Juvenal] 6.181
4 Apuleius] Florida 18
5 Homer] Iliad 24.527-30; the passage is displayed at length in i vii 63.
 N o T E s i viii 66-1 viii 71 343

6 Pindar] Pythians 3.81-2, used again in in i 87; the title of the work was insert-
ed in 1523.
7 Pliny] Naturalis historia 27.9
8 Euripides] Frag 21 Nauck, probably from Plutarch Moralia 2$c, for in the two
other places where he cites the fragment, he gives the whole of the second
line. This was added in 1515.

67 From Homer Iliad 20.246-7; the parallel cited is Lucian Eunuchus 2, which
provided Adagia i vii 74. The opening words would normally be used by
Erasmus to connect an adage with the one that immediately precedes it, as for
instance in i vii 50; yet this adage has no such relation to its predecessor.
This suggests that it was designed originally to stand somewhere else, for
instance after i vii 74.
1 elsewhere] in v 47, citing Aristophanes Frogs 1406
2 Hermippus] See i viii 36n; frag 13 Kock, cited by Athenaeus 1.276. From here
to the end was added in 1528.
3 Perdicia] This is from Stephanus Byzantius (see i vi 53n) p 517 Meineke.
4 Virgil] Aeneid 4.346 and 377

68 From Horace. Otto 439; Suringar 224. More or less the opposite of Tilley H 620
Pull in your horns, and has no connection with his H 625 He wears the
horns, with which he identifies it.
1 Horace] Odes 3.21.18
2 Ovid] Ars amatoria 1.239
3 Horace] Epodes 6.11-12; as often with the Epodes, the source was given origi-
nally as Odes, and this was not corrected till 1520. The last phrase is used
in i i 82 and in iii 12; did Erasmus sometimes apply it to himself?

69 From Juvenal 4.69-70, with the verb changed to match that in the preceding
adage. Otto 467
1 unless ... there is] Added in 1517/8
2 Aristophanes] Peace 561; this sentence was added in 1520.
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.112. All this paragraph was added in 1533.
4 Cicero] Brutus 6.22
5 Livy] 2.7.7; tne title 'Rome from the foundation' (Ab urbe condita) is used here,
as often by Erasmus, for the first decade (ten books). The fasces (rods and
axes) were carried by the lictors, the official bodyguard of a Roman magis-
trate, and to lower them was a sign of respect (like, in some circumstances,
our dipping of a flag) or indicated that for a short time the magistrate did not
wish to take advantage of his official status.

70 Latinized from Homer Iliad 15.280. Suringar 12; Tilley H 314 His heart is in his
heels

71 From Theocritus 5.29. Close to no 75 below. 'A puppy barking at a lion,'

added in 1528, does not appear in the Adagia; it is perhaps a reference to
Aesop's Fables 226 Halm.
 N o T E s i viu 72-1 viu 79 344

72 Theocritus 5.136-7. From 1515 through 1526 this stood as iv iv 19 as well as

here.

73 Theocritus 5.36-7. The last two sentences were added in 1526.

74 From Diogenianus 1.15

75 Diogenianus 1.15, illustrated from Lucian Rhetorum praeceptor 13, which also
contains the preceding adage

76 Diogenianus 1.56 (also in Apostolius 18.24); illustrated from Virgil Eclogues

1.22-5, Par* °f which is used again in in i 27

77 From Plautus Epidicus 579, the title of the play not given till 1523; illustrated
from Martial 6.93.11-12 and Quintilian 6.3.32. Otto 361

78 From Cicero De oratore 2.65.261. Otto 1104; Tilley s 687 As they sow, so let
them reap. Erasmus himself points out the resemblance to in vii 55 Miseram
messem metere.
1 Plautus] Epidicus 718
2 Plato] Phaedrus 26od
3 Scripture] Psalms 125(126).5; Galatians 6.8; i Corinthians 9.11.
4 Euripides] Hecuba 331
5 Aristophanes] Knights 188-9; Plutus 65
6 this work] This clause was inserted in 1515; the reference is to section xiii of
Erasmus' introduction (CWE 31.22).
7 Euripides] Hecuba 903-4 and 1250-1
8 Laertius] Diogenes Laertius 6.46, and in his life of Zeno 7.23. The nickname of
the Cynic school of philosophy, which became their regular name, is de-
rived from the Greek for 'dog.' These stories were added in 1526.

79 Diogenianus 5.86
1 Athenaeus] 4-i74f
2 Hence also] This sentence was inserted in 1517/5.
3 Julius Pollux] Onomasticon (i vii i8n) 4.76
4 Aristophanes] Frogs 130-2
5 proverb] Adagia n vi 21; cross-reference added in 1515
6 Plato] The writer of comedies, frag 69 Kock, cited by Athenaeus i5.665d;
added in 1517/8 under the name of Aristophanes (set right in 1523).
7 Plato] Laws 7.8006, added in 1523
8 Hesychius] K 824, added in 1528
9 Sopater] See i vii 23n; frag 11, cited by Athenaeus 4_i83b
10 Athenaeus] 4-i74f. This and the preceding were added in 1528.
11 Plato] Laws 7.8ood-e, added in 1528
12 Homer] Iliad 2.867
13 karbazein] Perhaps from Hesychius K 779-81, inserted in 1526
14 Cicero] Orator 18.57, cited by Quintilian 11.3.58; inserted in 1526
15 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geographica 14.2.28; added in 1523.
 N o T E s i viii 79-1 viii 84 345

16 Cicero] Orator 18.57, cited by Quintilian; inserted in 1515

17 Pollux] Onomasticon 4.100; this sentence was added in 1528.

80 Apparently from Diogenes Laertius 2.57

1 elsewhere] Adagia i ii 57
2 especially] From here to the end was added in 1515.
3 untouched by the Muses] Amousoi; the word provides an adage, n vi 18.

81 Otto 1442; Suringar 66; Tilley c 908, as above

1 Plautus] Casina 933
2 Martial] 4.85, added in 1515
3 Scripture] Jeremiah 51.7, added in 1515
4 Gospels] Matthew 20.22, Mark 10.38; added in 1528
5 Aristophanes] Knights 1289
82 From Lucian, though it is also mentioned in passing by Diogenianus 1.65. It is
Menander frag 334.
1 Lucian] Captive is an unorthodox name for his Piscator 9, the subject of that
dialogue being the treatment of a free-thinker (himself) who has been seized
by a parcel of indignant philosophers.
2 Plato] Theaetetus iS^d
3 Synesius] A Greek man of letters of the fourth/fifth century AD; Epistulae
i55.293C.(PG 66.15578).
4 This looks] Sentence added in 1533

83 From Calpurnius Siculus (see i vii 4on) 6.7-8. This and the two following are
proverbial expressions of a particular form, sometimes called the adunaton,
an appeal to that which is contrary to the order of nature; cf i iii 15.
1 Theodorus] Theodore Gaza; the reference is to his Latin version of Aristotle's
Historia animalium. In 1508 Erasmus had printed Calpurnius' Latin in the
current form (turpior aedona bubo), which presented aedon, the Greek for night-
ingale (also used in Latin), as a disyllable. He did however suggest an
emendation (turpis) - whether he had thought of it for himself is not made
clear - which rectifies this, 'because' as he says 'the Greek for nightingale
is aedon,' clearly three syllables. In 1520 he printed turpis in the text, and cut
out his comment.
2 And that is how] This sentence he added in ^1526 to make his point clear.
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 10.175 and 205. All this was added in 1528. From
D'Arcy W. Thompson A Glossary of Greek Birds, Oxford 1936, 30-2 it ap-
pears that we shall never identify these small birds, but that a finch is more
likely than a warbler.

84 Diogenianus 7.57; Suidas n 2875. Attributed to some lost comedy (frag adesp
555 Kock).
1 Cicero] De divinatione 2.64.133. He there quotes a line of deliberate obscurity
(given fully in in iii 38), which is translated, very likely by himself, from a
lost Greek original; see Fragmenta poetarum latinorum ed W. Morel, Leipzig
1927, 78.
2 Theocritus] 1.132-6, added in 1526
 N O T E S i viii 85-1 viii 87 346

85 Derived, as Erasmus tells us, from Diogenianus 1.56.

1 For the speed] This sentence was inserted in 1517/8.
2 Suidas] K 395, added in 1528. This form of the adage is also in Diogenianus
5.96, whence it was taken into the Collectanea as no 614, and found a home
in the Chiliades as n iv 78.

86 A not uncommon phrase (Otto 1763), the relation of which with nos 87 and 89
cost Erasmus some thought after 1508.
1 Tertullian] The Church father, active in Africa around the year 200 AD; Apolog-
eticum 10.9. This was added in 1523; the first edition, edited by Erasmus'
friend and admirer Beatus Rhenanus, had been published in Basel by Froben
in July 1521.
2 Athenaeus] 10.4436, citing Alexis (i viii 6in) frag 108 Kock; added in 1528
3 Cicero] Ad Atticum 1.13.4 (the book number inserted in 1523); Ad familiares
7.9.3. In the second passage the name of Gn. Octavius was given in 1508 as
'A certain Cornelius'; this was altered in 1523 when the title and book-number
were inserted. 'Your high-born friend, that son of earth' could well be a
fragment from some lost play.
4 Persius] Satires 6.56-9. Persius pretends that he will leave his estate to Man-
ius, an unknown beggar. His would-be heir protests that Manius is a
nobody and no relation. If you go far enough back, replies the satirist, that
would be true of us all.
5 Juvenal] 4.98. If the mythical Giants were the offspring of Earth, then their
brother would be equally a son of earth, that is, a nobody - a much safer
thing to be in imperial Rome, in Juvenal's opinion, than a grandee.
6 Euripides] Ion 542
7 Pausanias] He and Strabo are the two leading Greek geographers.
8 Those who ... father or mother] These words formed in 1508 the conclusion of
the next article (no 87), following on after 'no prophetic oak, no rock.'
They were placed here in 1515, and no 87 was supplied in three stages with a
new ending.
9 Melchizedech] Genesis 14.8; but 'without father or mother' is expressed in
Greek in words from Hebrews 7.3.
10 Nor is the thinking ... meant to seem fallen from heaven] Added in 1515, at
which time something similar was removed from no 89; see below.
11 Juvenal] 2.40; already in no 89 below, and added to i v 100 in 1523.
12 Plutarch] Moralia 8700
13 stage-machinery] Cf i i 68.
14 In Rome] The long addition of 1515 ends here, and this sentence was added in
1528; the reference to Cicero which follows, in 2533.

87 The joining of oaks and rocks in a single phrase is a very ancient Greek
practice and covers a number of quite different meanings. Used of origin,
as here, it has two, run together by Erasmus, as they are by Otto 1646: (i) to
be born of obscure or unidentifiable parents, like foundlings exposed in
the wilderness, or with reference to some myth of the general origin of man-
kind; (2) to have a heart so hard that you might be born of flint (and no
 N o T E s i viii 87-1 viii 92 347

doubt suckled by a Hyrcanian tigress). Homer Odyssey 19.163, and the others
in his train, convey the first meaning.
1 the poet's] Virgil Aeneid 8.315
2 Deucalion] He and Pyrrha his wife, the only human beings left behind after
the Deluge, were told by an oracle to repeople the earth by throwing over
their shoulders the bones of their mother, by which they had the wit to
understand stones, the bones of mother earth. Hence men. Ovid Metamor-
phoses 1.313-415
3 no rock] This was followed in 1508 by a passage transferred in 1515 to no 86
4 Palladas] Circa AD 400; Anthologia Palatina 10.55, added in 1515
5 Plato] Republic 8-544d; this reappears as a separate adage in iv vii 96. It was
added here in 1517/8.
6 Theocritus] 3.15-16; this uses our phrase in its second meaning.

88 It seems possible that this is a back-formation in Greek by Erasmus of the

'Greek proverb' quoted in Latin by Suetonius Nero 33.1.
1 Homer] Horace by mistake in 1508; eg Odyssey 5.93
2 food of the gods] This had a special point when Nero was thinking of the last
dish eaten by his predecessor as emperor, because a deceased emperor was
promoted to the ranks of the gods.
3 Horace] Satires (not Epistles) 2.6.65, quoted also in in i 91
4 Aristophanes] Frogs 85

89 Derived from Juvenal; Otto 358. The passage in brackets is part of the 1508
text, which was removed in 1515 (cf no 86 above).
1 Heracleides] of Pontus, frag 115 Wehrli, from Diogenes Laertius 8.72
2 Menippus] In his Menippus, Lucian gives an account of the visit to Hades.
3 Juvenal] 2.39-40, added in 1515 to no 86

90 From Horace Satires 2.3.296. Otto 1581. The parallel cited from Ausonius (see i
vi 64n) is Epistulae 22.25-6. This is overlapped by iv x 80.

91 This looks like a recollection of Publilius Syrus i 6 (quoted at the end of the
article), and if, like some other Publilian maxims, it was sometimes to be
found travelling under Seneca's name, that would account for Erasmus' tenta-
tive ascription. Otto 248; Tilley G 125 as above
1 Seneca] De beneficiis 2.1.2, inserted in 1515
2 Greek epigrams] Anthologia Palatina 10.30, added with the following comment
in 1515
3 Ausonius] Epigrammata 16 and 17. He is adapting Anthologia Palatina 10.30.
4 It is the beginning] Sentence added in 1515
5 Euripides] Rhesus 333
6 moral maxim] Publilius Syrus (see i vi 34n) B i and i 6.

92 From Cicero Tusculanae disputationes 1.2.4; what is perhaps an earlier form,

Laus alit artes, Praise nourishes the arts, is quoted from 'an antique poet' by
 N O T E S i viii 92-1 viii 98 348

Seneca Letters 102.16 (Fragmenta poetarum latinorum ed W. Morel, Leipzig

1927, 172). Otto 169; Tilley H 584 as above
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 408
2 Diogenianus] Not found
3 Martial] 8.55.5-6
4 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 4.7 (11231335), taken in Latin from Cicero Brutus
81.281. This was added with the rest of the paragraph in 1526.
5 Pindar] Nemeans (not Isthmians) 9.6-7
6 parable in the Gospel] Matthew 5.15; Mark 4.21; Luke 8.16 and 11.33

93 Otto 276; Tilley M 82 as above. Many Greek parallels are given in the Corpus
paroemiographorum 2.156.
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 48-9
2 Eusebius] Bishop of Caesarea, c AD 260-340; Contra Hierodem 33(29) (PG
22.8440), printed in the Aldine Philostratus of 1501-4
3 Plato] Republic 8.55od, added in 1517/8; Sophist 2^id, added in 1523. Both
quotations are in Greek.
4 Homer] Odyssey 8.195, added in 1523
5 Quintilian] 12.7.8-9. Erasmus was right to require an extra word, though he
did not choose the right one. Better manuscripts have provided us with a
better text.
6 Antigonus] The anecdote comes from Plutarch Moralia 6330, and was added
in 1515.
7 Livy] 32.34.3 (Macedonian War is the title sometimes used by Erasmus for the
fourth decade of his history of Rome). This was added in 1525.

94 From Diogenianus 7.773 (also in Suidas n 1876). The supporting quotation is

Hesiod Works and Days 361-2. Tilley s 941 as above

95 From Horace Epistles 2.1.45-8. The supporting story is from Plutarch Sertorius
16.1-5. Tilley H 21 Pull hair and hair, and you'll make the mare's tail bare.

96 Derived, as Erasmus tells us, from an epigram by Palladas (circa AD 400) in

the Greek Anthology 9.379. Diogenianus 5.87 has the adage, but with 'goat'
in place of 'mouse.' The anecdote ('It applies ... worthless specimen') was
inserted in 1515. P.S. Allen on Ep 275 suggested that the physician might
be a Dutchman called Bont, who is mentioned in Epp 225 and 275 (CEBR
1.170).

97 From Diogenianus 5.87; compare the immediately preceding adage.

1 Suidas] n 2040, added with the rest of the article in 1525.
2 Aristophanes] Plutus 220. The expression 'bad stamp' (referring to badly
struck coins) is from line 862 of the same play, and forms in ii 6.

98 This looks as though it were derived from Suidas A 1091 though, as Erasmus
tells us, it also occurs in Zenobius 3.20 (whom he always calls Zenodotus),
and for that matter in Diogenianus 4.17 too. In none of them do we find the
reading 'greatest' to which he rightly objects. And unfortunately he has
 N o T E s i viii 98-1 ix 349

inverted the sense of the verb in the Greek: it means not 'to have the law on
someone' but 'to answer a case' or 'to pay a penalty.' 'A victim of blackmail
even on some quite unimportant issue' (so the explanation given by the pro-
verb-collections) will pay a penalty, even for some minor misdemeanour by
his donkey.
i Recorded] This sentence was added in 1528.

99 Perhaps derived from Zenobius 3.28, for the reference to Suidas A 1091 was
not supplied, as in the preceding article, until 1528. Erasmus himself points
out the relationship with n x 41 Lis litem serit. The line is listed as from a
comedy by Kock (frag adesp 542).

100 A very brief section in 1508, this was entirely rewritten in characteristic form
in 1515. The source was Apostolius 12.60, and it ended in the words 'This
smells to me like something from common parlance, for Apostolius has a con-
siderable admixture of such things.' By 1523 he had detected that it came from
no 'common' authority, Plutarch's Lives, and replaced the last sentence
with what we have now. Cf Tilley K 70 Like king like people.
1 lawless] The word is given in Greek; this phrase was inserted in 1520.
2 Plutarch] Lycurgus 30.4

i The sources from which this article is compiled appear on the face of it:
mainly, with some verbal quotation, Servius, the fourth-century commentator
on Virgil. The underlying story, which refers to an Italian township, seems
to be unknown in Greece, and the Greek of the adage, given at beginning and
end, may have been coined by Erasmus himself. Placed here in 1515, when
the work was divided into centuries, each of which was meant in principle to
begin with an article of some substance.
1 Cornucopia] The best-known work of the humanist Niccolo Perotti
2 Virgil] Aeneid 10.562-4, with the relevant note of Servius
3 Lucilius] Lines 957-8; see i vi 4n.
4 the eating of meat... prohibited] These words were added in 1515, and the
fact that for 'meat-eating' Erasmus uses a Greek word, sarkophagia, sug-
gests that he may have in mind two essays on vegetarianism by Plutarch
(Moralia 993A), of which that was the title. For Pythagoras in general and
his famous 'precepts,' see Adagia i i 2.
5 Juvenal] 15.173-4, cited already by Servius. A general reference to the last
book of Ovid's Metamorphoses (15.96-142) followed in 1508, but was cut
out in 1515.
6 Pliny] Naturalis historia 3.59 and 8.104
7 Aulus Gellius] Noctes Atticae 1.9.3
8 Table-talk] Moralia j2.jc
9 Silius Italicus] Punica 8.528. Silius Italicus was an epic poet of the first century
AD, first printed in 1471, and is quoted in the Adagia only twice.
10 Catullus] Erasmus quotes (probably from memory, for his precise wording is
not found elsewhere) line 92 of the Pervigilium Veneris, an anonymous
pagan poem not earlier than the third or fourth century AD, which had
recently been discovered, and was not to be printed until 1577/8. None of the
 N O T E S I IX 1-1 IX 7 350

three extant copies ascribes it to Catullus, and it looks as though Erasmus

had seen a transcript which is now lost (and which may of course have been
quite late), in which Catullus' name had somehow become attached to the
poem. It is commonly thought that this happened while he was staying in
Venice in 1507-8.
11 Plutarch] The De vitioso pudore and De garrulitate (Moralia 5280: and 5025);
reference added in 2525

2 The sources, Suidas A 319 and Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 3.32, were appended
in 1525.

3 The ultimate source of this is Aristophanes Birds 1556-8; but as Erasmus does
not mention Aristophanes, he is probably drawing on Suidas A 319, as he
did for what immediately precedes. He there also mentioned 'Zenodotus'
(Zenobius); but it is not in our printed text of Zenobius, it is one of a small
number of additional adages ascribed to him in 1526 or 1528, and was found
(with the preceding) in the Aldine Aesop of 1505 (col 67). For the parallel
from Cicero (Ad Atticum 15.20.4) see Adagia i v 65.

4 The sources are given in the last sentence, added in 152$, as Suidas (A 1164)
and Zenobius, alias Zenodotus (3.8). In its printed form, however, our
Zenobius gives only the second half of the original article, and Erasmus again
draws on the 1505 Aesop (col 70). Zen. Ath. 1.57
1 Plato] Republic 6.493d, added in 1523, but the Greek not till 3533.
2 Some trace] This might come from Eustathius (archbishop of Salonica in the
twelfth century) Commentary on the Iliad 10.531 (822.27). The story is also in
Hesychius A 1881, who ascribes it to Clearchus (i vi 6on), frag 68 Wehrli.
3 Aristophanes] Ecdesiazusae 1029, added in 1523
4 Palladium] A sacred image of Pallas (Minerva) preserved in her temple in
Troy, on which the city's safety was dependent, and which according to
tradition was later installed in Rome. The theft of it during the siege of Troy
by Diomede son of Tydeus and Ulysses is referred to eg by Virgil Aeneid
2.162-70.

5 From Zenobius 3.50 or Suidas EI 230. In 150$ it ended 'Plautus too used it
somewhere'; in 1515 'if I am not mistaken' was added to this; in 2523 the
passage had been found in the Curculio, and was duly quoted.

6 This was already in the Collectanea, no 718, and the source is therefore
Diogenianus 1.20, though Zenobius 1.22 and Suidas A 1357 also have it.
Suringar 6. It comes perhaps from a lost comedy (frag adesp 650 Kock).
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 1004-5; the first line is quoted again in Adagia n viii 36
and m i 2.
2 Horace] Epistles 1.1.4, added in 2523

7 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 3.18, Diogenianus 4.30, Suidas

A 536), the original source of them all being probably Aristophanes Plutus
1037, to which Erasmus refers.
 N O T E S i ix 7-1 ix 12 351

1 I myself suppose] From here to the end was added in 1515.

2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 10.167 (the chapter-number corrected in 1528) and
28.259

8 Both Zenobius 2.96 and Diogenianus 3.74 may have contributed to this (cf
also Suidas r 432); no literary source seems to be known.

9 Diogenianus 3.74 includes this phrase with the preceding, and gives a brief
reference to Aristophanes Plutus 1023-4, which Erasmus has amplified.
His reference to Plautus is a recollection of catillatum in Casino. 552, confused
with catu(l)lire, to be in heat, of a bitch, which Erasmus would have found
in Nonius p 90. The confusion is found already in c 22 of the Expositio sermon-
urn anticjuorum of Fulgentius, an African author of the fourth or fifth centu-
ry AD, used in the Adagia in two or three other places (I owe this to Prof
Rudolf Kassel). The word used by Aristophanes is derived from kapros, a
boar, and is applicable not to she-goats but to sows. Whether inadvertently or
not is hard to say, Erasmus has replaced this with a word hircissare, de-
rived from hircus, a he-goat, for which another Latin name is caper.

10 This was Collectanea no 786, with the Greek equivalent in the form given by
Diogenianus 6.34. The Greek here is not quite identical either with that or
with Diogenianus 7.66, and the comment seems to be Erasmus' own. The
verse he quotes comes from the moralist Publilius (often called Publius)
Syrus, line H 19 (see i vi 34n).

11 This seems to be taken directly from Pliny Naturalis historia praef 28.
1 Plautus] Stichus 167-9
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 8.28
3 Theophrastus] Not found; added in 1515

12 In 1508 this article was short and unpretending. The adage itself is given in
passing in Diogenianus 1.9 and the quotation from Aristotle's Rhetoric
forms Diogenianus 5.84, though Erasmus of course need not have taken it
from that source. He himself contributed very little, not even the allusion
to Vespasian, and ended quietly 'even from small things or disgraceful things
or from the poorest of the poor or even from the dead.' It was in 1515 that
the spirit moved him, and he wrote the eloquent piece we have before us, to
which only two short additions were made in later years. For the historical
background see S. Seidel-Menchi Adagia: sei saggi politici, Torino 1980,
298-304.
1 Aristotle] Rhetoric 2.6 (i383b25)
2 Vespasian] According to Suetonius Vespasianus 23.3, that emperor derived an
income from the public receptacles for urine in the streets of Rome, and
when his son Titus protested, pointed out to him that the money at least had
no smell. This was added in 1515, with all that follows except as otherwise
specified. Erasmus refers to the story again in in vii i and 13.
3 It was thought discreditable] This sentence was inserted in 1533; the source is
Strabo 8.6.23.
 N O T E S I IX 12-1 IX 15 352

4 Aristotle] Politics 1.10 (i258b7)

5 or fleecing ... monopolies] This clause was inserted in 1520.
6 elsewhere] Adagia in ii 89
7 to do and suffer] Horace Odes 3.24.43; used again in in iii i (col /IOA).
8 Bologna] Julius n entered the city in triumph on 11 November 1506.
9 great jar with holes in it] A reference to the story of the Danaids; see i iv 60.
10 Hebron] Genesis 23.11. The name is Ephron.
11 his hire] Luke 10.7

13 Derived from the scholiast on Aristophanes Peace 1067; it is to some extent

duplicated by Adagia n ii 33.
1 in the old days] Added in 1515
2 others ... coot] Inserted in 1525. The reference is to Aristotle's Historia animal-
ium 9.35 (610313) in the Latin version of Theodorus Gaza (see i viii 83n).
3 Hesychius] A 2242, added in 2528
4 Pliny] Naturalis historia 8.70, added in 152$

14 The Greek might well come from Diogenianus 8.75, though it seems to have
been slightly altered, very likely by Erasmus himself, to make it a line of
iambic verse. It is Horace who has made it one of the most familiar of ancient
proverbs; other examples in Otto 1173. Tilley M 1215 The mountain was in
labour and brought forth a mouse.
1 Lucian] Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 23
2 Athenaeus] Deipnosophistae i4.6i6d. In 1508 Erasmus, who was not yet very
familiar with Athenaeus, gave the title of his work in the singular ('Doctor
at dinner') and said he recorded that 'this was the exclamation uttered by the
Persians when they caught sight of Agesilaus, who was very small in
build. The joke annoyed him greatly, and he was estranged from Artaxerxes.'
In August 1514 Aldus published the edition by Marco Musuro; in 1517/8
the title of the work was put right, and in 1520 the reference to Athenaeus
was filled out as it now stands.
3 Horace] Ars poetica 138-9
4 Porphyrion] The ancient scholar whose name is attached to one of our sets of
scholia on Horace. The mountain and the mouse appear in Aesop 520 Halm
and Phaedrus 4.24, but not the rest of this rather childish anecdote.

15 The adage seems not to appear in Greek in quite this form, and it is possible
that Erasmus took it from the passages which he quotes from Roman come-
dy and provided it himself with a Greek equivalent. A sort of appendix to it
will be found in Adagia iv x 14 Monies frumenti, Mountains of grain. It is
Otto 1132-3 and 1383; Tilley M 1217 To promise (golden) mountains.
1 Plautus] Stichus 24-5; Miles gloriosus 1065, added in 1523
2 Terence] Phormio 67-8
3 Valerius Maximus] See i vii 47n. This reference was inserted in 1515.
4 Apuleius] Apologia 20
5 Jerome] Adversus Rufinum 3.39 (PL 23.4890)
6 Aristophanes] Acharnians 82
7 Phoenix] A poet of the third century BC; frag 1.2 Powell, cited by Athenaeus
12.5306; added in 1528
 N O T E S i ix 15-1 ix 2i 353

8 Sallust] See i viii 28n; Catiline 23.3 (Erasmus says his Catilinarian, thinking
perhaps of the speeches Cicero published under that title). In this form the
adage provides Tilley s 187 He promises seas and mountains.
9 Persius] Satires 3.65

16 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.98; Diogenianus 2.^b;

Suidas A 2749). There is some overlap with II ix 54.
1 Aristophanes] Knights 826-7 (the Latin version not given till 1523, and altered
later)
2 Homer's line] Iliad 7.238, used in a different sense in in viii 33
3 We also find] In Suidas A 1790
4 Plato] Sophist 2263, made into a separate adage in iv v 31
5 Aristides] De quattuor p 209 Dindorf, citing Simonides, to be found in the
Anthologia Palatina 7.296; Panathenaicus p 226 Dindorf
6 Virgil] Aeneid 6.5
7 elsewhere] Adagia n i 16. This sentence was added in 1528; the Greek phrases
are in Suidas o 303 and 304.

17 A common phrase, hardly proverbial. Otto 1313

1 Terence] Andria 96-7
2 Cicero] De amicitia 23.86
3 Seneca] Letters 81.31; this was added in 1515, and the exact reference inserted
in 1533 .
4 Aristophanes] Knights 670
5 Plato] Laws 1.6346; Republic 2.3643, added here in 1523, and to u i 12 in 1533

18 It is not clear whence Erasmus took the Greek of this adage. His first example
is from Martial 10.100.4.
1 without winking] Erasmus uses a rare Greek adverb, which he will have
found in Aristophanes Knights 292.
2 test] References to this alleged practice are very common; it has the authority
of Aristotle Historia animalium 9.34 (62032).
3 Pindar] Nemeans 3.82, cited below in no 20

19 Derived from the same epigrsm of Martial 3S the preceding (10.100.3), with 3
parallel from Pindar (Isthmians 4.45-7), which was added to Adagia n v 22
in 1526. The contrast of the two animals is of course an old tradition, and
recurs in iv v 80 (Otto 932, 933).

20 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.50; Diogenianus 1.67; Suidas

A 575)
1 Aristophanes] Knights 1012-13; the reference is to a line in an oracle uttered
by the mythical prophet Bacis, which flattered Athenian ambitions.
2 further on] Knights 1087; Birds 978
3 Pindar] Nemeans 4.80-2, already touched on in i ix i

21 The source of this is Aristotle's Metaphysics 3.5 (ioo9b38), and it has a dupli-
cate in in iii 44. The parallel cited is from Persius Satires 3.60-1, whose
name was given in 1508 and 1515, and then cut out as though Erasmus had
 N O T E S i ix 21-1 ix 25 354

doubts, remembering how his memory confused the three Roman satirists.
Only the second of the two lines was given in 1508; the other line and the
concluding sentence are of 1515.

22 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.37; Diogenianus 1.35; Suidas

i 80)
1 Plutarch] Moralia 5091. This sentence was put here in 1515. One to the same
effect stood in 1508 after the sentence referring to Ausonius and was not
cancelled, in spite of the duplication, until 1523.
2 Ausonius] See i vi 64n; Technopaegnion 80.
3 Greek epigram] By Antipater of Sidon (second century BC); Anthologia Palatina
7-745-
4 Gillis] The man to whom More's Utopia is dedicated, secretary to the Town
Council of Antwerp and one of Erasmus' closest friends.
5 Pylades] He and Orestes are one of the stock examples of devoted friendship
in Antiquity.
6 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 4.33.71. This sentence was added in 2515.

23 Zenobius 2.17; Suidas A 1173. It comes from a lost comedy by Alexis (frag 305
Kock). Otto 1567. Zen. Ath. 1.58
1 Strabo] Geographica 6.1.10
2 Justin] 20.3.4-9; he is a late Latin epitomator of the universal history of Pom-
peius Trogus.
3 Eustathius] See i ix 4n; commentary on Iliad 2.533 (278.6).
4 Cicero] De natura deorum 3.5.13; the battle is also mentioned in 2.2.6. This
concluding sentence was added in 1520.

24 A standard phrase. Otto 1557

1 Horace] Epistles 1.1.2-3
2 Juvenal] 7.171-2
3 Ovid] Tristia 4.8.23-4; added in 1536
4 Cicero] Philippics 2.29.74; added in 1523
5 Quintilian] 6 proem 13, and perhaps a reminiscence of 12.2.27. In me ^rst °f
these, Erasmus' suggestion for a correction in the text, made in 1515, is now
accepted.

25 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.82; Diogenianus 5.39, very

briefly; Suidas K 171). Erasmus himself notes the connection with i vi 33.
Tilley B 376 An ill crow lays an ill egg.
1 introduction] Sopatros (an Athenian sophist of the fourth century AD), com-
menting on the Ars rhetorica of Hermogenes (see i vi 3on); in Rhetores graeci
ed C. Walz 5, Leipzig 1833, 6-7.
2 Aulus Gellius] 5.10.3-15.
3 Apuleius] Florida 18.
4 Aristophanes] Wasps 592; Acharnians 710.
 N o T E s i ix 26-1 ix 30 355

26 From i Kings (i Samuel) 24.13

1 Consequently ... are grown] With the exception of the last sentence the rest of
this is an addition of 1515 .
2 proverbial verse] Menander Sententiae 170; this sentence is of 1508.

27 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.91; Diogenianus 6.2, very

briefly; Suidas A 451). Most of the article is a paraphrase in Latin from
Herodotus (see i vi i4n) 6.138. Zen. Ath. 1.19
1 Euripides] Hecuba 887
2 Seneca] Agamemnon 566

28 Probably taken direct from Lucian Pseudologista i, who cites the early Greek
poet Archilochus frag 223 West. Tilley G 425 To hold a grasshopper by the
wing
1 The grasshopper ... And so, just as] This section, with the reference to Pliny
Naturalis historia 11.266, was inserted in 1515.
2 on spiteful paper] A tacit echo of Horace Satires 1.4.36; cf n viii 73.
3 Plato] Not identified
4 Horace] Epistles 2.2.102; this and the preceding reference recur in 1533 in v i
75-

29 Diogenianus 8.58; Suidas T 311. Otto 1759. As Erasmus himself noted in 1523,
there is considerable overlap with iv i 6; and both there in 1526 and iv ix 67
in 1533 he uses a quotation from Cicero's Ad Quintum fratrem which properly
belongs here.
1 Stephanus] Stephanus Byzantius p 616 Meineke (cf i vi 53n); added in 1517/8.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 399F, inserted in 1515
3 Lucian] Philopseudes 29. The title was given in 1508 as Pseudologista.
4 Midas' wagon] See Adagia i ix 48.
5 Pausanias] Graeciae descriptio (see i viii 52n) 10.14.1-4. Erasmus normally uses
the geographical title of the book he quotes, rather than its number, as we
do. From here to the end of the article was added in 1523.
6 Homer] Iliad 15.419-21
7 Philonome] Her story had already provided Adagia n v 90 in 1517/8.
8 proverb] Adagia iv i 6

30 This was Collectanea no 418, with a Greek equivalent taken from Diogenianus
1.90, and one illustration from Lucian given in Latin. Here the Greek is in
slightly longer form, and must be taken from Zenobius 2.1; it is also in Suidas
A 2521. Otto 350; Tilley T 484 as above. An inverted use of this is suggested
in the introduction, section xii.
1 Augustine] De civitate Dei 21.4
2 Lucian] Zeuxis 2; Philopseudes 32; Timon 41; Navigium 26 (Wishes; Vota is an
alternative title.)
3 Alciphron] Writer of fictional letters in the fourth century AD, first printed by
Aldus in his collection of Greek letter-writers in 1499; Epistulae 4.18.13
 N o T E s i ix 30-1 ix 35 356

31 The source of this seems to be the phrase from Lucian with which it starts;
Lucian's name was not given till 1515, and the title of his work (Scytha i)
not till 1523. The Latin for eight-footed creatures is octopedes, the Greek octa-
podes (or octapodes with a long o). Erasmus seems to have used the first two
forms carefully, but there are signs that the distinction puzzled his printers. It
is doubtful whether we have a proverb here.
1 Hesiod] Works and Days 405; cf n iv 18. This sentence was added in 1515.
2 The proverb] From here to the end first appeared in 152^.
3 proverb] Adagia i i 63
4 Suidas] o 130

32 Derived from Lucian Asinus 18, who quotes a line from an unknown Greek
comedy (frag com adesp 480 Kock). Lucian's ass, like the hero of Apuleius'
Golden Ass, was a man turned into an ass by accident, and hence capable of
moral reflection. For 'Second thoughts are best' see Adagia i iii 38; Suringar
201.

33 This comes, like its neighbours, from Lucian, from his Pro imaginibus 15. The
three parallels offered will be found in Adagia i v 80 and 79; the first two
were given in 1508 in Greek with Latin equivalents added in 1515, the third
was added in 1520.

34 Apparently from Lucian in the first instance, though like the five which fol-
low it is recorded in Diogenianus 5.15. Tilley L 313 A lion is known by his
claws.
1 Lucian] Hermotimus 55; this is a dialogue, in which Hermotimus is one of the
speakers, on the shortcomings of the contemporary schools of philosophy,
and Erasmus often refers to it by its alternative title, The Sects.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 4ioc, citing Alcaeus frag z 115 (438) Lobel-Page. This was
added in 1515, and had Erasmus had leisure to reread the preceding sen-
tence he would have withdrawn his suggestion about the origin of the adage.
Pheidias is the famous sculptor of the late fifth century BC, very likely
chosen as a man of lively imagination (he was always sculpting gods and
goddesses), who could have imagined a lion if anyone could; whereas
Alcaeus, one of the great lyric poets of Lesbos, flourished about 600 BC.
3 Philostratus] See i vi 75n; Life of Apollonius 1.32.
4 Basil the Great] St Basil of Caesarea (see i vii i4n); Episrulae 9.1 (PG 32.2680:),
added in 152$, no doubt from the Haguenau edition of that year
5 Vitruvius] De architectura 3.1.2 (late first century BC. He is mentioned only
twice in the Adagia; this parenthesis was added in 152^.
6 Pythagoras] From Aulus Gellius 1.1.2, who gives Plutarch as his source.
7 In the same way] This concluding sentence was added in 2515.

35 The source of this is Diogenianus 5.15. It is there illustrated by five other

expressions (which seem originally to have formed a separate article), one
of which (our no 34) Erasmus already knows from Lucian and another (our no
37) he had put in the Collectanea. This provides him with nos 36-9; but as
Diogenianus offers no comment and there is little or no evidence of their use
 N o T E s i ix 35-1 ix 42 357

elsewhere in ancient texts, he had to annotate them (except no 37) out of

his own head. The last three sentences ('Otherwise ... foxes') were added in
1528.

36 Taken, with no 35, from Diogenianus 5.15; whence it is borrowed, with the
three that follow here, by Apostolius (6.90).

37 This was given very briefly in the Collectanea no 361 from Diogenianus 4.92,
and it is also in Suidas (E 676); it owes its place here to its appearing again
in Diogenianus 5.15 (see above no 35).
1 Theophrastus] See i vii am; Historia plantarum 2.3.1-2, added in 1515.
2 Pliny] the Younger Letters 4.27.5; he is sending a specimen from a book of
poems written by a friend of his.
3 Seneca] Letters 114.18, added in 1515 .
4 Irenaeus] Adversus haereses (see i viii 58n); added in 1528

38 From Diogenianus 5.15 (see above, no 35). The two concluding sentences
were added in 1515, with a reminiscence of Jeremiah 13.23 'Can the Ethiop-
ian change his skin?'

39 From Diogenianus 5.15, like its four predecessors, the ultimate source being,
as Erasmus says in his introduction section v (CWE 31.13), Matthew 12.33.
In 1528 he added the last two sentences ('Mean ... unsound'), with an allu-
sion to Mark 11.13, where Jesus curses a figtree that made a fine show of
leaves but bears no fruit. Tilley T 497 The tree is known by the fruit.

40 This was no 347 in the Collectanea, and the source of the Greek is therefore
Diogenianus 4.50, though the phrase occurs also in Zenobius 3.71 and
Suidas E 1438. It should not be confused with Tilley L 148, Leap in the dark, in
which the phrase has its modern meaning of action taken without due
forethought.
1 Lucian] Hermotimus 49; Sects is an alternative name for this essay, which
Erasmus uses more often than not (see above, 34n).
2 Plato] Republic 8.558d, added in 1517/8

41 Diogenianus 2.91; Suidas A 3824. This comes in a different form in iv x 6.

Suringar 85
1 Lucian] Hermotimus 64
2 Cicero] Ad Atticum 1.14.5; 4-15-4- 'Three Areopagites' is the transmitted word-
ing in the latter passage; but we now read it as one word 'triple-dyed
Areopagites.'

42 Probably direct from Aristophanes Clouds 1176, though it is listed by Apostol-

ius 4.17; for he gives it a good sense, intelligence rather than impudence.
1 Homer] Iliad 1.159; already in i viii 47, added here in 1528, and in 1517/8 to n i
70
2 Hesychius] A 4594; 'Achilles ... same thing' was added in 1528.
 N o T E s i ix 43-1 ix 48 358

43 This is in the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.44; Diogenianus 2.40 and

4.68; Suidas E 3214), but the wording suggests that Zenobius is the primary
source.
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 1138; 792-3 (from memory)
2 Plutarch] Moralia 279%
3 Cato] (234-149 BC); De agri cultura 143.2, added in 1526
4 One could coin ... benefit themselves] Added in 1515. The passage in Plu-
tarch referred to is Moralia 709A.

44 The source must be Macrobius. In our texts protervia has become two words,
propter viam, on account of a journey, and Festus the lexicographer (p 254
Lindsay) explains this as a sacrifice made to Hercules by travellers about to set
out. Had Erasmus known this, had he not written the tirade which fol-
lows, we should have been the poorer.
1 Moses] Exodus 12.10
2 Macrobius] Saturnalia 2.2.4
3 Athenaeus] 8.344^ added (as far as 'sea and sky') in 1527/5. Oumnos, the
Greek for 'sky,' also means 'palate,' the roof of the mouth.
4 But whenever] From here to the end first appears in 152$.
5 EQU] The abbreviation for eques, knight. Preserved Smith Erasmus, New York
1923, 383-6 detected that Erasmus has one particular German knight in
mind, Heinrich von Eppendorff (CEBR 1.483-41): Ornithoplutus, Fowl-riches,
is Hahn-reich; and Isocomus, Equal- or Even-village, is Eben-dorf.
6 Diphilus] An eminent writer of the Attic New Comedy; frag 32 Kock, pre-
served by Athenaeus 6.2276

45 This was Collectanea no 301, derived from Diogenianus 3.35, with 'line' mis-
rendered 'nets,' which suggests that Erasmus was not familiar with merin-
thos, a cord or line. (It is also in Suidas A 4475 and M 978.) It was not till 1523
that the true source was given: Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 928, though
the reference to a similar usage in the Wasps, 175, had already been supplied
in 1508.

46 From Ovid's Ars amatoria (not the Amoves) 3.425-6. There is no evidence that
it enjoyed a proverbial currency, though Erasmus quotes the phrase again
in n ii 60. the parallel to which he refers is Adagia i iv 30.

47 The source of this is Jerome's Letters 120.1.7. Otto 566; Tilley M 364 (as above)
1 Hesiod] Works and Days 763-4; see Adagia i vi 25.
2 Plato] Laws 5-743C
3 Menander] Frag Kolax 43 Koerte, preserved by Stobaeus 3.10.21
4 Plutarch] Sulla 1.2; added (from The man') in 1526

48 Apostolius 8.643. Otto 803. What this knot was, we do not know. Macrobius
Saturnalia 1.19.16 tells us that the two snakes twined round the caduceus,
the wand carried by Mercury, were held together in the middle by such a
knot; but that does not help much. See also n v 34. Erasmus' first example
suggests that it was proverbially difficult to untie; his example from Pliny, that
 N o T E s i ix 48-1 ix 50 359

it possessed some magical quality; Athenaeus seems to associate it with a

recognizable shape.
1 Seneca] Letters 87.38, added (down to 'impossible to solve') in 1515
2 Its origin] This is a mistake. Plutarch Alexander 18 is concerned with the
famous knot at Gordium in Asia Minor, the subject of Adagia i i 6, and no
connection appears between that and Hercules.
3 yoke to the pole] After this the article concluded in 1508 with the words: 'And
so either there were certain knots of this kind set up by Hercules in differ-
ent places, or at the least we should see a reference to the knots with which
he grasped Antaeus, and held him so that he could not struggle free; for
"knots" is also used of a wrestler's holds.' This was removed in 1515.
4 Ausonius] See i vi 64n; De bissula preface; Epistulae 23.48-50, both inserted in
1533. Alexander the Great came from Fella in Macedonia.
5 Pliny] Naturalis historia 28.64, added in 1515
6 Festus Pompeius] See p 55 Lindsay; added in 1515 (as far as 'seventy
children').
7 Athenaeus] 11.5003; but these Heradeotid are a kind of drinking-cup, with a
particular ornament over the handles, not a tribe of people. Added in 1528
8 Cicero] Verrines 5.21.53; Otto 395. Added, with the next, in 1533
9 Horace] Odes 1.35.18

49 Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 5.80; Suidas n 61. Tilley M 929 as above. Zen. Ath.
1.45
1 Some say] This comes from the scholiast on Aristophanes Plutus 1002.
2 Others again say] This is the version given by Zenobius, citing Anacreon (see
i vi 22n) frag 81 Page.
3 Angelo Poliziano] Miscellanea c 17, cited in i iv 8
4 Athenaeus] 12.523^ the title and book-reference inserted in 1517/8
5 Aristophanes] Plutus 1001-2; Wasps 1060-4, *ne Latin version added in 1515
6 Aristophanes] Frogs 542, already cited in i iv 8. This sentence was added in
1528.
7 Synesius] See i viii 82n; Epistulae 81.2280 (PG 66.1453A).

50 Tilley T 529 We were Trojans, T 540 Troy was. The Greek of the adage is a
back-translation from Virgil.
1 Euripides] Hecuba 284
2 Sophocles] Electra 677
3 Virgil] Aeneid 2.325-6; 3.11
4 Ovid] Tristia 5.8.19-20, added in 1523
5 Terence] Heautontimorumenos 94; Otto 776. Menedemus, the 'self-tormentor'
who gives its name to the play, has been unkind to his son, and the son
has run away, so that he feels he now has no son, and it's all his own fault.
6 Plautus] Rudens 1321
7 Cicero] Plutarch Cicero 22; when asked what had become of the members of
the Catilinarian conspiracy whom he had caused to be executed, Cicero
was reported to have replied evasively They have lived,' Their life is over.'
8 Plutarch] Moralia 5446; Erasmus gives the title in full, 'How a man can praise
himself without arousing ill-will.'
 N o T E s i ix 50-1 ix 53 360

9 Diogenianus] 2.30 (Zenobius 1.82 is much shorter and was not used). The
lines, which are quoted several times in Plutarch, are Carmina popularia 24
Page. Poliziano had already connected them with Fuimus Troes in his Miscel-
lanea c 88.
10 trichoria] This word, and the attribution to the poet Tyrtaeus, are from Pollux
Onomasticon 4.107 (see i vii i8n).

51 We have here two quite distinct creatures, from which different morals are to
be drawn. Erasmus starts with the account in Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 5.79,
found also in Suidas n 3194, of the pyraustes, the proverbial moth which
courts the flame and perishes in it (Tilley F 394 The fly that plays too long in
the candle singes its wings at last). He also found a slightly different form of
this adage in the collection of Apostolius (18.18), which provided him with
in iii 8 Your joy is that of the pyraustes. But Pliny had derived from Aristotle
(who gives it no name) another insect, called according to the manuscripts
of his work either pyrallis or pyroto, which lives in the fire as salamanders do,
and dies if taken from it. Pyroto being an improbable word in Greek, the
early editors of Pliny had apparently replaced it with pyraustes; so following
in their footsteps Erasmus identifies the two insects, both here and in the
Parabolae, first published in 1514 (col 6i6E, CWE 23.262). 'Fire-worm,' a Tudor
equivalent, we take from Tilley.
1 Aeschylus] Frag 288 Nauck
2 Aelian] De natura animalium 12.8 (see i vii 4in)
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 11.119
4 Aristotle] Historia animalium 5.19 (552b7), added in 1517/5; the parallel with
the fire-worm of the smelters in Cyprus is drawn by him. Erasmus' own
reminiscence was added in 1528.
5 Nor would] This sentence, suggested by the Cypriot fire-worm, was added in
1515.

52 Collectanea no 508, where it followed our n ix 52; both were illustrated from
the opening scene of Plato's Gorgias (4473) in the Latin version of Ficino,
and our adage was provided with a Greek equivalent from Diogenianus
(5.73). Here Erasmus has rewritten the article entirely, and added from Apos-
tolius (14.6 and 15.10) two more specific formulae referring to the two great
Greek festivals of Athena (Minerva) at Athens and the Pythian Apollo at
Delphi. Tilley offers two commercial parallels: c 237 He is a fond (= foolish)
chapman that comes after the fair, and D 112 You come a day after the fair.

53 Taken from Jerome. Otto 1102; Suringar 118; Tilley s 252 Proffered service
stinks.
1 Jerome] AdMarcellam deHebraicis verbis, otherwise Letter 26.5
2 again] In Letter 130.16; reference added in 1515
3 Ovid] The first four words of this couplet come from his Epistulae ex Ponto
1.5.59; ^e couplet as a whole is apocryphal.
4 maxim] Publilius Syrus BI, already used in i viii 91
 N O T E S i ix 54-1 ix 59 361

54 Zenobius 1.95; Suidas A 2477. But as the proverb-collections have 'to go up on

the roof rather than 'to enter/ this may well have been taken straight from
Lucian. Otto 1390. Collectanea no 504, citing Gellius and Macrobius.
1 Lucian] Demonax 4; Rhetorum praeceptor 14
2 Aeneas] Aeneas of Gaza (a rhetorician of the fifth/sixth century AD) Epistulae
21; printed in Aldus' edition of the Epistolographi graeci, Venice 1499
3 Aulus Gellius] Noctes Atticae 1.9.8
4 Macrobius] Saturnalia 1.24.12
5 Galen] De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis 7 prooemium (Kuehn
12.2), added in 1528

55 This was in Collectanea no 504, from Diogenianus 1.43. Otto 1046; Tilley H 125
as above
1 Hesiod] Works and Days 724-5; 737-9
2 Homer] Chernips immediately recalls cheras, hands, and niptein, to wash.
3 Gregory] of Nazianzus (AD 326-90) Oratio 2.8 (PG 35.4168), added in 1533
4 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 1.2.1, added in 1526
5 Either proverb] From here to the end was added in 1515.

56 The Greek does not seem to be in the proverb-collections, and may be a

back-formation inspired by the adage next following. Otto 143; Suringar
244; Tilley E 5 as above
1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 10.15
2 although ... was a man] Added in 1515
3 Aristotle] Historia animalium 8.3 (593b29); 9.32 (619317)
4 Terence] Heautontimorumenos 520-1
5 either because ... lessens] 'For wine lessens' 1508, altered in 1515
6 Plato] Laws 2.666a-b
7 A further reason] From here to the end was added in 1528.
8 Alexander] of Aphrodisias (Aristotelian scholar of the third century AD) Pro-
blemata 2.127 m tne Latin version of Theodorus Gaza (Aldine ed of 1504,
273)
9 Horace] Odes 3.21.11-12

57 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.38; Diogenianus 1.56; Suidas

A 577). The parallel from Euripides, Andromache 764-5, appears also in
1515 in n x 99, which to a great extent overlaps this.

58 Collectanea no 611, from Diogenianus 5.81; also in Suidas H 160. The reference
to Synesius Epistulae 113.2548 (PG 66.i4g6A) was added in 1536; see i viii
82n.

59 A well-known story, for which much material is collected by Page under

Stesichorus frag 15, and by M. Davies in Quaderni Urbinati di cultura classica
ns 12 (1982) 7-16. Stesichorus himself is a Sicilian lyric poet of the seventh/
sixth century BC. Suidas n 100. Otto 1323
i Plato] Phaedrus 2/ftb
 N O T E S i ix 59-1 ix 62 362

2 Pausanias] 3.19.13; see i viii 52. Erasmus refers to the books of his Graeciae
descriptio by descriptive title rather than number; the title here was added
in 1533.
3 recantatio] This seems not to be a classical word, and Horace's use of the verb
in this sense is quite exceptional. (Whereas in English, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, 'recanting' appears half a century before the first
reference to 'palinody.')
4 Horace] Odes 1.16.26-8
5 Augustine] Letters 40.7 (= Jerome Letters 67.7.1-2)
6 Jerome] 105.4.2 (= Augustine 72.4)
7 Augustine] 82.33 ( = Jerome 116.33.2)
8 I also think] This sentence was inserted in 1515. Erasmus' supposed partiality
for Jerome as against Augustine is a subject of adverse comment from time
to time in his correspondence.
9 Cicero] Ad Atticum 2.9.1
10 John Chrysostom] Not identified
11 Plato] Epistulae 3.3196

60 From Horace Odes 1.34.3-5 and Persius Satires 5.118; but the two images have
little in common beyond the presence of cordage in each. Horace is think-
ing of a ship, hoisting sail for a voyage in the opposite direction to that in
which it had come (cf Otto 1855); Persius, who has made a concession to
his friend, of a man who 'gives rope' to an animal by paying out its halter,
which he then has to tighten when he finds he has given it too much
freedom too quickly (Otto 739n).

61 From Diogenianus 6.93

1 Chrysostom] Not yet identified; added in 1533
2 Pindar] Pythians 2.30-1; Erasmus occasionally uses the title Hymns, not for the
Hymns of whose existence he was unaware, but for the Epinician Odes;
of which his knowledge is remarkable, considering that the Greek is by no
means easy.
3 elsewhere] Adagia i v 8, added in 1526
4 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 1.3.5-6, added in 1526. The passage quoted is
partly from Celsus and partly from Paulus, and Theophrastus' maxim is
given in the Digest in Greek.

62 Perhaps from Diogenianus 3.39

1 Plautus] Captivi 22
2 Strabo] Geographica 9.2.8; this reference was added in 1515.
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 2.219. 'The Euripus of Taormina' is the modern Straits
of Messina between Italy and Sicily. Familiar as they were with the largely
tideless Mediterranean, the Ancients were deeply impressed when they saw
a tidal effect in narrow waters, and used 'euripus' almost as a common
noun.
4 Pomponius Mela] See i vi i4n; 2.108.
5 Livy] 28.6.10
6 Seneca] Hercules Oetaeus 779-81
 N o T E s i ix 62-1 ix 67 363

7 Boethius] De consolatione philosophiae 2 metrum 1.2

8 Cicero] Pro L. Murena 17.35
9 Aeschines] In Ctesiphontem 90, probably from the Latin version made by Leon-
ardo Bruni in 1412
10 euripistos] Erasmus no doubt got this word from Cicero Ad Atticum 14.5.2, but
it has nothing to do with the Euripus; it means 'easily blown about' or
'fanned into flame' (from rhipizein, to fan, to blow up the fire).
11 Gregory] of Nazianzus (see i viii 23n) Epistulae 29.1 (PG 37-64A) added in 1528
12 One also finds] For the first of these phrases, see in vi 69; both of them are in
Suidas T 1234 and in Apostolius 3.18.

63 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 3.76; Diogenianus 4.40; Suidas

E 1192); but Diogenianus, who makes Endymion's lover Sleep and not the
Moon, is not used. Otto 600. Zen. Ath. 1.20
1 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 10.8 (1178^9)
2 Cicero] Definibus 5.20.55; Tusculanae disputationes 1.38.92, added in 1525

64 The formula must come from Lucian, whence it found its way into some copies
of Apostolius (17.643). The materials for Epimenides are in Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker ed H. Diels and W. Kranz, Berlin 1961,1.27-37. He reappears
in Adagia iv ii 76. Why Erasmus should refer us to Gellius' Noctes Atticae, in
which he does not appear, is not yet clear. Otto 601
1 Diogenes Laertius] 1.109-15
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.175
3 Lucian] Timon 6
4 If there is any truth] This last sentence was added in 1515.

65 From Columella De re rustica 11.2.79-80 (cf i viii 52). The saying does not seem
to have been taken up into literary Latin, for Otto 1590 can quote no other
instance except Pliny Naturalis historia 18.204, which is copied from Columel-
la. The lesson of the adage recalls Erasmus' own declamation De pueris
statim ac liberaliter instituendis which, though not printed till 1529, had been
written many years earlier.

66 In giving two forms of the geographical epithet, Erasmus seems to follow

Suidas, who sees a double historical reference, to a town in Thessaly and
to an island in the Cyclades, whose shocking ill-treatment by the Athenians in
416 BC was never forgotten. Zenobius 4.94 and Diogenianus 6.14 give only
the second form of it, and Zenobius refers expressly to Thucydides.
1 Suidas] A 557. 'So roughly ... gives it' is of 1533; previously the wording ran
'Some give the adage.'
2 Thucydides] 5.116, with the debate that preceded in 84ff
3 Aristophanes] Birds 186, added in 1523

67 The historical sources named are Livy 21.14.1, Valerius Maximus 6.6o.ext.i,
Cicero Philippics 5.10.27. But Otto 1568 note doubts whether the phrase
was really proverbial. The date is 219 BC.
i Ausonius] See i vi 64n; Epistulae 22.43-4.
 N O T E S i ix 67-1 ix 73 364

2 In Greek] This sentence was added in 1515 .

3 Aristotle] Problems 8.9 (887b38), added in 152^. Theodorus is Th. Gaza, the
fifteenth-century translator.
4 There used to be] From Plutarch Moralia 693?; added in 1525

68 Small differences between Zenobius 4.93 and Diogenianus 6.13 suffice to

show that this is translated from the former. Zen. Ath. 3.35

69 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 3.68; Diogenianus 4.46; Suidas

E 814). Tilley F 398 To make of a fly an elephant; M 1216 To make mountains
out of molehills
1 Lucian] Muscae encomium 12
2 Homer] Iliad 17.570-3, which reappears in in viii 95. This was added in 1515;
Menelaus' name and the book-number in 152$.
3 Augustine] De duabus animabus 4 (PL 42.96), added in 152$

70 Zenobius 3.67; Diogenianus 4.45. Suringar 252. This and the next are very
close to in ii 65 Aquila non capit muscas.
i This adage] From here to the end was added in 1515.

71 Zenobius 2.53; Diogenianus 1.71. The sense should be 'An eagle looking at
woodworms,' and where Erasmus found the word thrips explained as a
small bird, we do not know. Could there be confusion with the thraupis of
Aristotle Historia animalium 8.3 (592b3o)?

72 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 3.47; Diogenianus 4.41; Suidas

E 690). Otto 662; Suringar 56. This is still in use: when prosperity is very
near collapse, or a government seems likely to fall at any moment, we say it
hangs by a hair. Erasmus has confused this with another situation, in
which some disaster hangs over us by a hair, and will descend if the hair
breaks - what we call 'the sword of Damocles/ taking the victim's name
from Cicero Tusculanae disputationes 5.21.61-2, though it does not seem in
Antiquity to have been, as with us, an essential part of the proverb. For
another use of tenuifilo, in a textile metaphor, see u vi 75.
1 Persius] Satires 3.40-1; the neck is that of Damocles splendidly dressed and
richly entertained by Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, but his mind was not
on his food. One would expect Erasmus to quote Horace Odes 3.1.17-21.
2 Ennius] The great epic poet of early Rome, Annals 172, cited by Macrobius
Saturnalia 1.4.18
3 Synesius] See i viii 82n; Epistulae 4-i62A (PG 66.13320).
4 Plutarch] Moralia 234?; added from memory to iv iv 6 in 1533

73 Horace Epistles 2.1.31, also cited in i i 2 (col 210) and i iii 25. Otto 1256
1 Plato] Euthydemus 2986
2 poet-prophet] Isaiah 5.20
3 Galen] De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis 2.1 (Kuehn 11.461), refer-
ring to the argument of Anaxagoras (59A97 Diels-Kranz), that as snow is
 N o T E s i ix 73-1 ix 80 365

congealed water and as water (we know) is black, snow must be black and not
white.

74 From Diogenianus 5.95b; 'in fact... brain' was added in 1515.

75 The origin of the Greek has not been identified, and the example of the Latin
quoted with reservations from Martial looks like an incorrect reminiscence
of Propertius 1.9.16, which was appended in 1520. In that form the proverb is
Otto 674; but Tilley w 113 To seek water in the sea seems at the moment to
have small roots in Antiquity.

76 This may well come from Diogenianus 7.74; but his explanation, that it is used
of something impossible, is less likely than that offered in Suidas n 2124,
that it refers to those who try unsuccessfully to keep up with their betters (cf
A minnow among Tritons etc). His connecting of it with a place in Attica
called Potamoi may stem from the Attic Old Comedy; for we know that Strattis
wrote a play called The Potamians, in which their habit of admitting too
many immigrants was criticized, and our proverb, it may be, provided him
with a joke.

77 From Jerome Letters 50.4.1, supported by his Adversus Jovinianum 1.1

(PL 23.211-12). Otto 237

78 An equivalent for our 'to throw in the sponge.' Otto 799

1 Festus Pompeius] See p 88 Lindsay. 'A characteristic ... because it was' was
added in 1515 .
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 22.8. After 'in Germany' followed in 1508 the words
'So Pliny'; and Naturalis historia 8.12 was added in 1515. The last sentence
is of 1508.

79 From Horace Epodes 17.1 (Erasmus quotes the Epodes some thirty times, and
this is one of the three or four places where he names them, instead of
ascribing his quotation to the Odes). Otto 1040.
1 Cicero] De amicitia 26.99
2 This becomes] Sentence added in 1517/8
3 There are] From here to the end was added in 1528. The source is Galen De
facultatibus naturalibus 2.2 (Kuehn 2.80).

80 This interesting habit was sufficiently well known to have provided Aesop
with a fable (no 483 Halm; Phaedrus 1.25). Otto 333 note; Tilley D 604 To
snatch a drink like the dogs of Egypt
1 Macrobius] Saturnalia 2.2.7 (see i vii 2n). Mark Antony was on the run after
his defeat in the battle of Mutina (Modena) in April 43 BC, but was not
likely to have lost his supposed fondness for the bottle.
2 Solinus] 15.12 (i vi 48n), copying from Pliny Naturalis historia 8.149
 N O T E S i ix 8i-i ix 88 366

81 The same topic is dealt with at greater length in n ii 97. Otto 795
1 Cicero] Pro L. Murena 21.45
2 Demosthenes] See i x 40.
3 Aristophanes] Wasps (here called by the unorthodox name of Drones) 592
4 Plato] Laws 12.944^

82 A metaphor, rather than a proverb. The parallel quoted is Horace Odes

3.8.23-4.

83 Again Horace, Epistles 1.1.6. The parallel is from Pliny the Younger Letters
6.12.2, and was added in 1533.

84 From Plautus Epidicus 592. But he really wrote Plaustrum perculi, I have given
the cart a good shove; see i vi 13.
1 Paul] i Corinthians 9.26
2 Aulus Gellius] 16.11.6, drawing on Herodotus 4.173. The Psylli, who lived in
North Africa, lost all their water-supply after a prolonged spell of strong
southerly winds. Furious, they decided to seek redress by force of arms, and
proceeded against the wind; whose response was to bury them, their arms,
and their whole country under mountains of sand.

85 From Cicero In L. Pisonem 32.81

86 From Cicero Ad Atticum 7.11.1. Otto 1819

1 Plutarch] Moralia 930, citing Menander frag 554
2 Athenaeus] 6.2463. Irrelevant; the point is not that the loaves were ghostly
(unreal), but that they were very black.
3 Though it looks] These last two sentences were added in 1515.
4 Plato's cave] Republic 7.514-16

87 From Horace Satires 1.9.3. Suringar 144

88 Two common phrases, barely proverbial. Otto 718

1 first formed] From 1508 through 1520, the article concluded at this point with
the words This adage is used by Plato in the Symposium and besides him
by many Latin authors/ The sentence about Quintilian replaced this in 1523,
and the references to the Digest were added in 1526.
2 Quintilian] 12.7.8
3 Papinian] Digest of Justinian 12.7.5; 16.1.13 (from Gaius, but he is not named);
22.3.12. It is normal for Erasmus to name the eminent jurists whose opin-
ions have been excerpted for inclusion in the Digest, and to refer to the titles
(main subdivisions of each book) by their Latin headings and to individual
chapters by the first word of their Latin text (as Quingenta here); but his
failure to mention that he is quoting the Pandects (his normal name for
Justinian's Digest) makes one wonder whether something has fallen out of the
text as he drafted it.
 N o T E s i ix 89-1 ix 95 367

89 From Persius Satires 3.30. Otto 492

1 We use the words] From here to the end is an addition of 1515.
2 Ausonius] See i vi 6^r\; from the preface to his Periocha Hindis, a set of verse
summaries of the books of the Iliad.
3 Horace] Epistles 1.16.45

90 From Lucian Pseudologista 2, supported by Pliny the Younger Letters 1.10.2

91 From Seneca Letters 49.6. Otto 953. 'Seneca ... is enough' was inserted in
1515.

92 From Cicero Pro M. Caelio 12.28. Otto 892. Literally 'with the edge of the lips'
1 Again] Cicero De natura deorum 1.8.20, added in 1523
2 Quintilian] 12.2.4
3 Procopius] of Gaza, the sophist (see i vii 2gn); Epistulae 4 (p 534 Hercher)

93 From Lucian. Otto 893. The opposite is i x 46 Ex animo.

1 Lucian] Apologia 6; Dialogi meretricii 7.3. The sense of this latter passage, as
Henri Estienne points out in a long note reprinted in LB, is slightly differ-
ent. Young men who wish to over-persuade their girls are always ready with
an oath, they have one 'on the tip of the tongue'; though of course this
comes to the same thing in the end.
2 Seneca] Letters 10.3, added here in 1528, as it was in 1515 to i x 46
3 Jerome] Letters 125.14, added with the following sentence in 1515

94 Zenobius 1.61; Diogenianus 2.10. Otto 546. Adagia iv ix 73 is related.

1 Cicero] Pro M. Caelio 12.28
2 Basil] St Basil of Caesarea (see i vii i4n); Epistulae, added in 1528
3 Greek has a word] Erasmus could have found this in Plato or Aristotle.
4 Lucian] Demonax 4
5 Euripides] Iphigeneia Aulidensis 950-1

95 In 1508 the place of nos 95 and 96 was occupied by what are now iv iii 66 and
n viii i, of which the first (Summis ingredi pedibus) is clearly related to what
we have just had; this present article was put here in 1515. It is a famous tag
from Hesiod: Otto 558; Suringar 59; Tilley H 43 as above.
1 Plato] Laws 3.6906
2 scholiasts] This moral interpretation is widespread in Antiquity.
3 He mentions] Plato Republic 5.466^, Laws 6.7536. This latter passage, which
was added (down to 'office or rule') in 1528, does not belong here; it has
already been quoted in its proper place in i ii 39.
4 Pittacus] One of the Seven Sages; this comes from Diogenes Laertius 1.75.
5 Hesiod] Works and Days 37-41
6 Gellius] 18.2.13, the book-number inserted in 1515
7 Theodorus] Gaza (see i viii 42n); he would have found his word in Pliny
Naturalis historia 2.109.
8 Lucian] Cataplus 2, for example
 N o T E s i ix 95-1 ix 99 368

9 Theocritus] 7.68 (trans Gow)

10 Plutarch] Moralia 157?
11 Suidas] H 350
12 And so kings] This sentence was added in 1526. It was preceded in that
edition by the words 'Suidas quotes from a certain Marinus: "That was the
principate for us, and not only the principate, nor as the proverb has it half of
the whole, but the complete thing in itself."' This (from Suidas A 4091)
belongs in i ii 39, and was indignantly rejected by Erasmus in 1536 as having
been inserted here by a blundering secretary; see Ep 3093. It was removed
in 1540.
13 Pindar] Olympians 13.47-8. Erasmus' Latin version shows this is how he took
the line; but Pindar meant 'Due time is the best thing one can discover,' act
at the right moment and avoid the problems.
14 Pindar] Nemeans 11.47-8, added in 1526
15 Pythagoras] Adagia i i 2
16 Euripides] Phoenissae 534-46.
17 Plato] Gorgias 4733 onwards, and in several places in the Republic; this allu-
sion and the reference to Plutarch that follows were added in 1515 to i ii
14.
18 Plutarch] Moralia 172?, added (from here to the end) in 1526.
19 comedy] Terence Adelphoe 240-1, the variant reading (dimidium for dividuum)
added in 1528

96 Apostolius 13.80, illustrated from Horace Satires 1.3.26-7. The second sen-
tence was added in 1515, and the third in 1527/8.

97 This is taken from the scholiast on Pindar Pythians 9.117-18.

1 elsewhere] i vi 58
2 To start from scratch] i vi 57
3 Theocritus] 6.18 (cited, as usual, by title); already used in i i 25 and i iv 30.
Galatea is the nymph pursued in vain by Polyphemus, and the suggestion
that she is a river is wide of the mark.
4 elsewhere] i i 25

98 From Cicero De oratore 2.39.162, a passage to which Erasmus will return in

Adagia n x 33. Otto 861

99 This is in no sense a proverb or adage. Cicero in his De oratore 2.59.240 is

distinguishing between verbal humour in a speech and the humour of
anecdote, and as an example of the latter he makes one of his characters,
Gaius (not Lucius) Caesar, produce this story. The Crassus who is suspect-
ed of having made it all up is L. Licinius Crassus (born 140 BC, one of Rome's
most celebrated orators and the principal figure in Cicero's discussion.
Terracina is on the coast a hundred kilometres south-east of Rome; one is
inevitably reminded of the countless inscriptions found at Pompeii, not far
away, in which runs of capital letters, used as abbreviations, are so common.
 N O T E S I ix 10O-I X1 369

100 In 1508 this was a brief sentence only, probably derived from Apostolius
16.37, wno perhaps quotes a lost comedy (frag adesp 695 Kock). It was
built up and placed here in 1515, and more than doubled in length later. Otto
385
1 Plato] Phaedrus 2^c, the name of the dialogue inserted in 1523. This was as
far as the article went in 1515, and it all dates from that year. The 'people'
turned into crickets were 'maidens' in that text, and became masculine in
1523.
2 Theocritus] 1.148 (referred to as usual by its title); this was added in 1526.
3 Diogenes Laertius] 3.7, citing the satirist Timon of Phlius (320-230 BC) frag 30
in H. Diels Poetarum philsophorum fragmenta, Berlin 1901. This was added
(as far as 'cannot convey') in 1526.
4 Homer] The third line of the quotation from Timon is identical with Iliad 3.152,
where the voices of a party of old men are compared, in words the exact
sense of which has always been subject to discussion, with the sound of
crickets chattering. This was added in 1528.
5 Athenaeus] 6.238d; 11.4850, citing the Old-Comedy writer Theopompus, frag
40 Kock. These too are additions of 1528.

i In 1508 this stood after the present i x 18; it was moved to stand here at the
start of a new century in 1515. It comes from the Greek collections (Zenob-
ius 1.94; Diogenianus 1.84), and perhaps ultimately from a lost comedy (frag
adesp 939 Kock).
1 Homer] Iliad 4.477-8
2 Euripides] Orestes 109
3 Aeneas] He earned this standing epithet (in the Aeneid) by his dutiful behav-
iour in carrying his old father Anchises on his shoulders away from the
sack of Troy.
4 young woman] In the usual form of this story it is the father who is thus
supported; he is called Mycon or Cimon, and his daughter Pero (Valerius
Maximus Facta et dicta memorabilia 5.4.6x1.1).
5 Suidas] A 2707
6 Plutarch] Moralia g62E. From 'devoid indeed' to 'Nature of Animals' was added
in 1515.
7 Aristotle] Historia animalium 5.26-7 (555325, bi3)
8 Pliny] Naturalis historia 10.63
9 St Basil] Homiliae in Hexaemeron 8.5 (PG 29.1750:); cf i vii i4n. This was added
in 1528.
10 Crates] Epistulae 33; he was a leading Cynic philosopher of the late fourth
century BC, but his letters, included in the Aldine Epistolographi graeci of
1499, are spurious.
11 Aristophanes] Birds 1353-7
12 Plato] First Alcibiades 1356
13 Poliziano] Efc Baplvov, Opera (Aldus 1498) sig KK 7
14 iambic line] Menander Sententiae 365
 N O T E S I X 2-1 X 7 370

2 From Cicero Orator 6.21. Otto 1760. The parallel passage is from his Brutus
26.100, with a change in the text suggested in 1515; but the right reading is
now thought to be sonus, not tonus.

3 The phrase comes from Cicero's Orator 61.208 and 70.233; the Virgilian paral-
lel from his Georgics 2(not 3).277-8, which has already been used in i v 91.
Erasmus provided a slightly fuller treatment of the same adage in v ii 39, first
printed in 2533.

4 Like the two preceding, this also comes from Cicero's rhetorical works: Brutus
69.244, in which his friend Atticus is one of the speakers.

5 Derived primarily from Quintilian Institutio oratoria 5.7.11. Suringar 98

1 Greek] The word is not in the Greek lexicon; Erasmus may be remembering
embroche, which means a noose or halter and is used by Lucian Lexiphanes
11.
2 Ovid] Ars amatoria 2.2
3 Euripides] Hippolytus 779 and 793; these lines are irrelevant, because the
'toils' referred to are the noose in which Phaedra the queen has hanged
herself.

6 Easily confused with the 'Boeotian ear,' which differs in Greek by a single
letter; see Diogenianus 3.46, Adagia in ii 48. Our form is found for instance
in Suidas B 583. There is more to the same effect in n iii 7. Cf Tilley H 488
Hampshire hog.
1 Pindar] Olympians 6.89-90, with the ancient scholia
2 The scholiast] In his note on Pindar Olympians 6.152 he cites Pindar frag 83,
and frag 310 Kock from the Old-Comedy writer Cratinus. The Latin version
and comment ('inventing ... pig and ox') were added in 1528.
3 Greek proverb-collections] Apostolius 5.11. In Greek, as 'ear' differs from
'pig/ so 'wit' differs from 'ear/ by a single added letter. And dull-witted
oxen can be dragged in because the Greek for them is boes. The dullness of the
Boeotians (if they were dull) seems to rub off on their critics.
4 Plutarch] Moralia 995E, cited again in ii iii 7; this was added in 1515.
5 Athenaeus] 10.417^ citing the New-Comedy writer Eubulus frag 12,34, and 39
Kock. This was added in 1517/8, and supplemented in 1528. The note on the
Greek was added in the latter year; Erasmus had not recognized in ponein a
valid dialect-form of pinein, to drink.
6 This he supports ... born in Thebes] This too first appeared in 1517/8; the
words 'as a Theban' later.
7 Plutarch] Moralia 575%, added in 1515
8 Lastly] From here to the end first appeared in 1533.

7 Zenobius 1.28; Suidas A 538. Otto 1761. Adagia v ii 2 is an addendum to this,

supplied in 1533.
1 This I... pursue the impossible] Added in 1515
2 Pindar] Nemeans 8.45; Pythians 2.34. Both these, and the comment from the
 N O T E S I X y-I X 11 371

scholia which follows, were added in 1526; the second quotation has al-
ready been used in i vi 89.
3 Chilon] He was one of the mythical Seven Sages, and is introduced here from
Diogenes Laertius 1.70. This sentence was added in 1533.

8 Probably from Lucian; cf Apostolius 9.89. Coscinomancy, the use of a sieve in

divination, is discussed by W. Biihler, on Zen. Ath. 2.39.
1 Lucian] Alexander 9; this is the standard title for the piece which Erasmus
always calls Lucian's False Prophet, because it chronicles the astonishing career
of a confidence-trickster called Alexander of Abonuteichos in Asia Minor.
2 Theocritus] 3.31
3 tripod] See i vii 90. This sentence could be taken from Suidas T 22.

9 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 6.26; Diogenianus 8.61; Suidas

y 58). Otto 837; Tilley H 278 As many heads as Hydra. This was Collec-
tanea no 735, from Diogenianus, with a bare reference to Plato. Zen. Ath.
1.10
1 Plato] Republic 4.4266. In 1508 through 1520 the book-number was given as 3,
and there was no text; in 1523, the number was corrected, and the Greek
text given with a Latin version.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 341F; two sentences, added in 1515 at the end of the original
article.
3 Cyneas] Cineas (properly so spelt) was the right-hand man of Pyrrhus, king
of Epirus c 307-272 BC, to whom the remark is attributed in i i 77. The
source here is Plutarch Pyrrhus 19; added in 1523.
4 Horace] Odes 4.4.61-2; added here in 1523, to i i 77 in 1533. The full context is
in i iii 4.
5 It will be possible] The rest of the article first appeared in 1515; it echoes i viii
99-
6 Seneca] Letters 23.3, quoted, also from memory as here, in i v 67

10 Presumably Plautine in origin; Erasmus returns to the word ramentum in v i

69. Otto 1503. Nefestuca quidem, on the other hand, does not seem to occur
in classical Latin, though the word is familiar as the Vulgate equivalent for the
'mote' in a man's eye (i vi 91).
1 Plautus] Rudens 1016; see also Bacchides 512-13.
2 Aristophanes] Lysistrata 474, the Latin version inserted in 1515; Wasps 91-2
3 Homer] Iliad 5.499
4 Experts in Hebrew] This was added in 1517/8.

11 Erasmus must have taken this from Lucian Amores 4 (where 'the god' is Her-
cules). The source is a fragment from the eminent Alexandrian poet Callim-
achus (frag 494 in Callimachus ed R. Pfeiffer, Oxford 1949-53, 1-3^7); but he
could not have known this, for the evidence, which comes from twelfth-
century Byzantium, has emerged only quite recently.
1 a bit of incense, milk] Added in 1515
2 Homer] Iliad 1.315-7 and often
 N O T E S I X 11-IX 17 372

3 Athenaeus] i.8e, added in 1520. The poet's point no doubt is that the modest
offerings of his profession (hymns, odes, and what not) are as acceptable
as the more expensive tributes of less gifted men, or ought to be.

12 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 5.31; Diogenianus 7.21; Suidas

o 978). Zen. Ath. 1.84
1 or if... dimeter] An iambic metron is in principle four syllables scanning short-
long-short-long; and the verse which Erasmus wishes us to recognize here
is formed by two of these in succession, lacking the final syllable. This metri-
cal note was inserted in 1526.
2 Herodotus] See i vi i4n; 6.129.
3 Plutarch] Moralia 8678; this sentence was inserted in 1515.
4 Lucian] Apologia 15; Hercules 8
5 Eustathius] See i ix 4n; on Iliad 1.598 (159.40).
6 Aristophanes] Only once in the Wasps, 1411, but seven times in other plays

13 Suidas K 2729; Apostolius 17.203; see also Corpus paroemiographorum 1.363.

Probably from a lost comedy (frag adesp 719 Kock). Tilley D 513 To play the
dog in the manger, not eat yourself nor let anybody else. Read evolvit neque
aliis evolvendi.
1 Lucian] Adv. indoctum 30 (this is perhaps Erasmus' original source); Timon 14
2 Suidas] o 806; this sentence was introduced in 1526.
3 Athenaeus] 6.234a-b; from here to the end was added in 1528. This story of
the marauding Gauls recurs in i x 98; both passages seem to derive from
Poseidonius, the Stoic philosopher and historian of the first century BC. Bath-
anatus did not pursue these Gauls, he settled them on the land (edioikisen,
not edioken).

14 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.35; Diogenianus 1.33; Suidas

AI 307).
1 It is a common experience ... victor captive] Added in 1515
2 Horace] Epistles 2.1.156. This was added in the same year to i i 58.
3 Plato] Theaetetus ijcjb, added in 1520
4 Sophocles] Oedipus Coloneus 1025-6, added in 1523
5 Plautus] Epidicus 359, added in 1523
6 Lucian] Dialogi meretricii 11.2, added in 1523. But 'took her fancy' is a mis-
translation; the Greek verb means 'was taken captive.' With the last sen-
tence we return to the text of 1508.

15 From Lucian Toxaris 14

16 Zenobius (to Erasmus always 'Zenodotus') 3.52; Suidas EI 306. 'For as ... in
the trap!' was added in 1517/8.

17 Zenobius 2.90; Diogenianus 4.7; Suidas r 202. Tilley F 647 An old fox cannot
be taken by a snare. Cf u v 22.
 N o T E s i x 18-1 x 23 373

18 Zenobius 1.71; Diogenianus 2.18; Suidas A 1391, citing Cratinus (see i vi 4211)
frag 128 Kock. This was followed in 150$ by what is now i x i. It overlaps n
v 22.

19 From Zenobius 2.10; Diogenianus 1.66, who makes the Athenian crews put
out from harbour to do battle, seems not to have been used. The words
'that is, in a sea-battle' were inserted in 1517/5. See also W. Biihler on Zen.
Ath. 2.19.

20 From Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 2.18, citing the prominent Stoic philosopher

Chrysippus (third century BC) frag 3 of his Paroemiae (Stoicorum veterum
fragmenta ed H. von Arnim, Leipzig 1903, 3). It is also in Diogenianus 2.33 and
Suidas AI 238. Zen. Ath. 1.85
1 is very wild, and] These words were inserted in 1517/3.
2 Athenaeus] 1.283, citing Pindar frag 106; added in 1517/8. The island of
Scyros was famous for its goats: Alcaeus frag z 112 (435) Lobel-Page;
Athenaeus i2.54od; Strabo 9.5.16.

21 From Pliny Naturalis historia praef 29, the name Leontium supplied from Cice-
ro De natura deorum 1.33.93. Otto 1528 and 1722
1 Euripides] Alcestis 228-30
2 Plautus] Casina (not Curculio) 113
3 Juvenal] 6.30, already in i v 21. This, and all that follows, was added in 1526.
4 Plautus] Pseudolus 88-9
5 Caelius Rhodiginus] See i viii 56.

22 From Zenobius 2.25; also in Diogenianus 2.37 and Suidas A 726. Zen. Ath.
3-33
1 Homer] Iliad 1.206 and often
2 This is recorded] From here to the end was added in 1528.
3 Etymologicum] Etymologicon magnum 333.6. There is a play on words: helos,
marsh, and helkein, to draw or pull, neither of which has any connection
with ailouros (in later Greek pronunciation elouros), a cat.

23 Versura, literally 'turning over,' had a special sense in Rome: to pay off one
loan by raising another, normally no doubt at a higher rate of interest,
a practice which has brought misery to many debtors down the ages. The
phrase comes from the Phormio, and would be easier to render if we read,
as Bentley suggested, versura solvere, to pay (a debt) by (raising) a loan rather
than to pay off a loan; but Erasmus presumably was satisfied with what he
found in his Terence.
i Donatus] Aelius Donarus, the ancient commentator, on Terence Phormio 780.
The second half of the quotation makes no sense, and one wonders how
Erasmus understood it. We have assumed (which involves altering the tradi-
tional text) that Donarus saw the loan from both points of view; borrowing
cheap and lending dear has always been one of the basic activities of the
banking system.
 N o T E s i x 23-1 x 29 374

2 Festus Pompeius] P 520 Lindsay, inserted in 1515

3 Terence] Phormio 780-1, also used in i iv 99
4 Cicero] Ad Atticum 5.15.2; Pro L. Flacco 20.48, added in 1536
5 Seneca] De beneficiis 5.8.3, added in 1528 both here and in i x 48
6 Again] Seneca Letters 19.10 and 4.10, both added in 1533. Seneca's point is
that he has undertaken to provide his correspondent with a moral maxim at
the end of every letter; and he can only satisfy this debt by 'borrowing' a
suitable one from the rival philosophy of Epicurus.
7 Lactantius] See i vi 6gn; Divinaeinstitutiones2.8.24, tacitly citing the line from the
Phormio with which we began; this was added in 1533.
8 Demosthenes] First Olynthiac 15

24 The Latin of this comes from Terence's Phormio 661 (it reappeared in 1533 in iv
ix 20, which is almost a duplicate of this); the Greek from the note on that
line by Donatus, the ancient commentator. Otto 109
i Gellius] See i vi in; 20.1.48-9, citing the early Roman code called the Twelve
tables (Leges xn tabularum 3.6, in Fontes juris Romani antiqui ed C.G. Bruns
and O. Gradenwitz, Tubingen 1909, 23). It is thought unlikely that this rule,
which is also recorded by Quintilian 3.6.84, can be historical.

25 A common saying. Otto 884; Tilley R 122, as above (the English Much law but
little justice may carry a different sense).
1 Cicero] Pro L. Murena 11.25 and following, part quoted in v ii 15
2 Terence] Heautontimorumenos 795-6
3 Cicero] Deofficiis 1.10.33
4 Columella] See i viii 52n; Res rustica 1.7.2, added in 1515
5 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 45.1.91.3; 50.17.90, both added in 1526
6 Seneca] De ira i[Dialogi 3].19.5; Otto 113. This was added here in 152$, but is
out of place; perhaps it was intended for i x 46 or i ix 93.

26 The sources are Zenobius 5.34; Diogenianus 7.15; Suidas o 814; Eustathius
(see i ix 4n) on Homer Iliad 12.73-4 (893.16). Zen. Ath. 1.25

27 This, which has no element of proverb in it, was written in 1515 out of Thuc-
ydides 7.87, and placed here because, like the preceding article, its subject
is total annihilation. The concluding sentence, derived from Cicero In L. Pis-
onem 5.11, was added in 2533.

28 From Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 4.37 (also in Suidas 0 450). Cf n vi 89. Zen. Ath.
1.78
1 Strabo] Geographica 9.2.4
2 Plautus] Captivi 692; Casina 95. This recurs in u ii 63.
3 Terence] Phormio 491. This phrase constitutes in i 58.

29 The Romans liked this proverb; perhaps it flattered their self-esteem. Otto
1548. (Our version says 'Rome,' not the literal sense 'a Roman' or 'the
Roman/ which is the Latin idiom.)
i Marcus Varro] Res rusticae 1.2.2, cited again in iv v 96.
 N o T E s i x 29-1 x 33 375

2 Fabius] Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman leader in the war against the
Carthaginians under Hannibal in the late third century BC, whose delaying
tactics made him for all time a great exemplar of the 'slow but sure' (Otto 478).
His nickname was Cunctator, Slowcoach, as other generals have been
called Stonewall.
3 Ennius] See i ix 72n; Annals 370; it comes again in n i i and in v 60.
4 Cicero] De senectute (for which Cato major is an alternative title) 4.10
5 Virgil] Aeneid 6.846
6 Livy] 31.38.8 (Macedonian War is a title sometimes used by Erasmus for the
fourth decade of the History, books 31-40). This was added in 2528 .

30 A specimen from that area where the adage shades off into the familiar and
useful metaphor.
1 Lucian] Icaromenippus 2
2 Diogenes] The Cynic philosopher; the anecdote comes from Diogenes Laer-
tius 6.45, and was added in 1523.
3 Pindar] Nemeans 9.55 and 6.26-7, both added in 1526
4 Gregory of Nazianzus] Oratio 43 (PG 37.245), added in 1528

31 This adage should surely run 'No aged monkey ...'; it is a doublet of i x 17.
The source is Diogenes Laertius 5.93; it is also in Suidas n 1591 and Apos-
tolius 5.37. Erasmus made three additions in 1526: 'He was sent... even then,'
It might... different poets,' and the two lines of verse (equally from Laer-
tius). Heracleides of Pontus was a philosopher of the fourth century BC (frag
133 Wehrli).

32 From Cicero De officiis 2.15.55 (our version of the adage is taken from John
Higginbotham's translation of 1967). Otto 732. The concluding sentence,
from Athenaeus 11.5013, was added in 1528. For the daughters of Danaus,
see the next article. Parthenius is a Greek grammarian cited by Athenaeus.

33 Joined in Collectanea no 368 with our i iv 60; here it is entirely rewritten. In the
Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.6; Diogenianus 1.95; Suidas A 3230);
Otto 466
1 So Festus ... other passages] Added in 1515 from Festus p 279 Lindsay. The
mutilated line he quotes is Plautus Pseudolus 369, to which we shall come in
a moment.
2 Aristophanes] Clouds 630-1
3 Plautus] Pseudolus 369. Added here in 1523, as it was in 1533 to i iv 60; but
Erasmus did not identify it as the line cited by Festus.
4 Aristotle] Oeconomica 1.6 (i344b25)
5 Plutarch] Moralia 524%, citing Solon (see i viii 6on) frag 13.71 West
6 Zenodotus] Zenobius 2.6 (so Erasmus always calls him)
7 Hebrew sage] Proverbs 27.20
8 Catullus] A slip of memory; this is Propertius 2.1.67
9 Horace] Odes 3.11.26-7
10 Tibullus] 1.3.79-80
11 Lucian] Timon 18
 N O T E S i X33-I x 37 376

12 Aristotle] Politics 8(6),5(i32oa3i)

13 Lucian] Hermotimus .61, used again in u iii 33
14 Plato] Gorgias 493!?; see i iv 60.

34 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 2.36; Diogenianus 2.70; Suidas

A 3954). Zenobius tells us that the phrase comes from the lyric poet Bacchy-
lides (fifth century BC); frag 5 in Bacchylides ed R.C. Jebb, Cambridge 1905,
413.
1 Plato] Republic 5.4696, the work and book-number not given till 1523. This will
later provide iv ii 22.
2 Plutarch] Lucullus 8.4, added in 1523

35 Otto 5 (joined with i ii 90). The immediate source here is Zenobius ('Zenod-
otus') 2.19, and the line comes from Hesiod's lost poem on the Marriage of
Ceyx, who was king in Trachis, and whose name is corrupted to Cetos in
Zenobius; Hesiod frag 264 Merkelbach-West. Zen. Ath. 1.15
1 iambic line] This stands on its own footing in the Greek proverb-collections
(Zenobius 2.46; Diogenianus 1.60; Suidas A 898); it is likely to be a fragment
from some comedy.
2 Homer] Iliad 2.408; the comment (The scholiast... Germany') was added in
1528.
3 Zenodotus] Zenobius 2.19, as before, citing Eupolis (a writer of the Attic Old
Comedy) frag 289 Kock.
4 Plato] Symposium i74b; there is an added point, in that Socrates is persuading
his friend to come uninvited to dinner with a host called Agathon.
5 because Agamemnon ... book four.] Added in 1517/8. Athenaeus 5(not
4).i77c and i78b quotes our adage in a different form from Bacchylides (see
the preceding article) frag 18 Jebb, where Hercules' visit to Ceyx uninvited
is again the context.
6 Elsewhere ... god of war] Added in 1517/8; Iliad 3.21 and other places
7 Athenaeus] i.8a, citing the Old-Comedy writer Cratinus frag 328 Kock, of
whose name Cilatinus is a corruption. 'All things in common' is Adagia i i i.
This last sentence was added in 1528.

36 The source of this is probably Zenobius 3.45, though it also appears in Suidas
E 1505. Erasmus would have found the variant with the compound verb in
Hesychius E 3449 or in Apostolius 7.40.

37 From Aristophanes Peace 1103. Erasmus did not identify the play till 1523; the
Latin version of the line was inserted in 1515, and altered later. It found its
way into Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 3.58, and also Suidas E 932. The suggestion
that it refers to roasting acorns seems to have found no followers; Erasmus
was probably led to think of shaking acorns from the oak (a common practice
in Antiquity among those who had pigs to feed) by a recollection of i v 34
Go and shake another oak-tree.
 N o T E s i x 38-1 x 42 377

38 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 1.86; Diogenianus 1.74; Suidas

A 2425). It appears in Latin in Publilius Syrus among the spurious lines
(921).
1 And this ... entertaining.] Added in 1515. The Seneca is Letters 117.30-1.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 3946, citing Sophocles frag 765 Nauck; added in 1523
3 Ecclesiasticus] 22.6, added in 1523

39 From Gellius 13.31.14-17, whose discussion shows that the meaning of the
phrase was uncertain even in Antiquity. (Otto 332 does not throw much
light.) The modern English use, of things in a state of confusion, seems un-
related.
1 Marcus Varro] One of his Menippean Satires (i vii 5n), cited earlier in the
same passage by Gellius. The name should be Hydrokuon, Water-dog (575
Buecheler).
2 Plutarch] Moralia 6j()A, citing Theophrastus frag 96 Wimmer. This we have
seen in i vi 70.

40 The Greek is one of the proverbial lines ascribed to Menander (see note on i vi
68), Sententiae 456. Erasmus gives two versions of it, one in prose and the
other an iambic line, for the first of which we give the normal modern form
(Tilley D 79). Otto 726
1 Homer] Iliad 7.26 and elsewhere; 6[not 8].339; 3.439-40. The book-references
of the second and third of these were supplied in 1528.
2 Demosthenes] This bit of scandal comes from Gellius 17.21.31; the battle of
Chaeroneia, which marked the end of Athens as an independent power,
was fought in 338 BC.
3 Rhipsaspis] The word means literally 'he who throws away his shield'; Eras-
mus treated the topic twice at greater length, in Adagia i ix 81 and n ii 97. In
1508 the text continued 'Aristophanes remarked on this in the Knights' (21-6)
'when Demosthenes is told by Nicias to repeat over and over again "Let us
run, let us run!"' These were two Athenian generals in the Peloponnesian
war, and Erasmus cut it out in 1523, having observed that it referred to
quite another Demosthenes and not to the famous orator.
4 Terence] Andria 670, already quoted in i iii 38
5 Tertullian] Defuga 10.1; see note on i viii 86. This was added in 1523.

41 Apparently from Homer Odyssey 14.214-15, which comes again in iv ii 3. But

Lucian is used also in the five that follow.
1 Lucian] Alexander 5; for the title see i x 8n. Erasmus' Latin version was dedi-
cated about August 1506 to the bishop of Chartres (Ep 199).
2 Aristotle] Rhetoric 3.10 (1410^4); it comes again in iv ii 3.
3 Aristophanes] Wasps 1066-7

42 Perhaps in the first instance from Lucian; the example quoted is his Quomodo
historia conscribenda sit 39, and the length of the measure literally a cubit,
half a yard.
i Aristophanes] Frogs 797, 799
 N O T E S I X 42-1 X 46 378

2 Cornelius Tacitus] Dialogus de oratoribus 1.3, added in 1533, as were all his
references to the Dialogus
3 Pliny] the Younger, Letters 9.9.2, added in the same year

43 The Greek probably from Lucian, but it is in some copies of Apostolius as

5.813. Otto 549; Suringar 119.
1 Horace] Odes 4.3.22
2 Persius] Satires 1.28
3 Lucian] Harmonides i
4 Laertius] Diogenes Laertius 6.34, in his life of Diogenes the Cynic philoso-
pher. Thus conveying ... practices' was added in 1517/8. The force of this
lies in his using the middle finger rather than the index finger to point with;
this gesture carried obscene overtones in Antiquity which are now happily
lost; see further in n iv 68.

44 From Lucian; not the Harmonides, in which the phrase does not occur, but
Hermotimus 32, for which The Sects is an alternative title.
1 elsewhere] Adagia i v 6. From 'which can be used' to the end was added in
1523.
2 night and day] i iv 24
3 Livy] 31.41.10

45 Perhaps from Suidas E 392, or Lucian. In 1508 the Latin equivalent was given
as Perpendiculo opposita. This was altered in 1515, but what is now 'diamet-
rical' in the first two sentences of the text was 'perpendicular' until 1528.
1 Lucian] Cataplus (for which Tyrant is an alternative title) 14
2 Athanasius] De decretis Nicenae synodi 26 (PG 25.4610), added in 1528; 'if I may
so put it' should correctly be 'almost.'
3 Basil] See i vii i4n; Epistulae 69.2 (PG 32.4328), added in 1528.
4 Macrobius] Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis i(not 2).20.15; reference added in
1515
5 Euclid] Liber i definitiones 17
6 dimetiens] Erasmus probably takes the word from Pliny Naturalis historia 2.86
and 87, where he would also have found a perpendiculo. This was added in
1515.
7 Aristotle] Problems 15.2 (9iobi9); added in 1515, the detailed reference in 1528
8 elsewhere] i ii 63; this concluding sentence is of 1528.

46 Diogenianus 2.59. Tilley s 725 To speak as one thinks

1 Lucian] Jupiter tragoedus 19
2 Plutarch] Moralia 6$A, citing Euripides frag 412 Nauck. In 1508 it ran 'Plutarch:
Will speak straight from the heart'; the title of his essay, and all down to
'spiced with adulation' was inserted in 1515.
3 Plautus] Captivi 420 and 387
4 Seneca] Letters 10.3, added in 1528 to i ix 93. Here perhaps should stand
another sentence from Seneca, added in 1528 at the end of i x 25.
 N O T E S i X47-I x 51 379

47 From Cicero, as will appear. Otto 253; Suringar 24. There is some overlap with
i vii i.
1 Cato] Cato called the Censor, proverbial for his severity; see i viii 89. The
story is from Valerius Maximus (i vii 4711) 2.10.8.
2 symposia] On these see Athenaeus i.^i and elsewhere.
3 Festus Pompeius] P 496 Lindsay; added in 1515. The Lex Tappula convivalis of
the humorous poet Valerius, perhaps of the second century BC, seems to be
reflected somehow in an inscribed bronze fragment of the early second centu-
ry AD, found near Vercelli in north Italy and printed in Petronii saturae ed F.
Buecheler, Berlin 1922, 266. We are on the edge of an unknown world. The
convivial parties of Erasmus' own day, even in academic and church cir-
cles, were a law unto themselves.
4 Plutarch] Moralia 62OA
5 Varro] A fragment from his Antiquitates rerum humanarum, preserved by Non-
ius p 142; it was added in 1520 to i vii i.
6 Athenaeus] 10.425^ citing the Old-Comedy poet Eupolis frag 205 Kock (see i
viii 44); this was added in 1517/8.
7 Horace] Odes 1.4.18
8 Cicero] Tusculanae disputationes 5.41.118. 'Thus far Cicero' at the end was
added in 1515.
9 drink or go] Much more elegant in the Greek, for the two verbs differ by a
single letter, pithi and apithi. From here to the end is of 1526.
10 Diogenes Laertius] 8.64

48 From Plautus Cistellaria 204. Otto 572. The illustration from Seneca De benefic-
iis 5.8.3 was added in 1528 both here and to i x 23.

49 A common idiom; Otto 573 and 574

1 Terence] Adelphoe 412-13, the play not identified till 1523. The word doubtful-
ly translated 'What nonsense!' is a rare monosyllabic ejaculation Phy! This
appeared in 1508 as Philosophos, and was corrected in 1515, in which year 'to
learn from' was added. Yet philosophos is there again in 1517/8 and 1520; it
was widely read before the manuscripts and metres of Terence became better
known.
2 Cicero] Adfamiliares 9.5.2; Lucullus 25.80. Academic questions or Academica is
Erasmus' normal title for this work.

50 From Plautus Cistellaria 502-3. Otto 1769. The relationship of a 'guest-friend,'

commoner in Antiquity than in our own day, was symbolized by the tessera
hospitalis, a small token (the name suggests pottery) which was broken in two,
in order that host and guest might each keep half, and either might claim
the benefit of special status on some future occasion by showing that the two
halves of the tally fitted together. Since the sense here is 'All is over be-
tween us/ the tally must be thought of as so much damaged that the two
pieces can no longer fit.

51 To pour cold water seems not to have carried in Antiquity its modern sense of
discouragement (usually of projects rather than persons); but it was used
 N O T E S 1x51-1x54 380

proverbially in three other ways, (i) To revive, as people who have fainted
are revived; for this see Adagia in ii 60. (2) To spread scandal about some-
one; so apparently in Plautus Cistellaria 33-4, with which Erasmus starts here,
and Horace Satires 1.4.87 (Otto 137 note). (3) To impart fresh energy, as
horses in the chariot-races were drenched with cold water to spur them to
fresh feats of speed. Erasmus refers to this practice in the Parabolae (LB I
6098; CWE 23.244), but is surely wrong in trying to detect something like it in
the passage from Plautus.
1 Pandects] Digest of Justinian 3.2.4. Ulpian's opinion there is that the legal
disabilities that attached to common players ought not to bear in the same
way on those who were essential for public festivals like the chariot-races,
which would include these grooms with their buckets. The full reference of
this citation and its text were inserted in 1515.
2 This was done ... catching fire] Added in 1515, 'sometimes ... purpose' insert-
ed in 1517/8.
3 from those ... large crowd] Added in 1526
4 Julius Pollux] Onomasticon (see i vii i8n) 7.38
5 Aristophanes] Plutus 1061
6 But it seems] The concluding sentence was added in 1523.

52 In this form the adage comes from the Greek proverb-collections (Diogenianus
3.89; Suidas r 201). Perhaps ultimately from comedy (frag adesp 551 Kock).
Suringar 95; Tilley K 47 Kindness is lost that is done to an old man or young
child.
1 Aristotle] Rhetoric 1.15(137633). He gives this adage and the one that follows
(no 53) as examples of the way in which proverbs can be used to support
an argument; and Erasmus borrows this in his introduction, section vii
('Proverbs as a means to persuasion').
2 Diogenianus] 6.61; the ultimate source of this longer form seems to be un-
known.
3 Seneca] De beneficiis 3.3.4, added in 1528

53 From Aristotle's Rhetoric 1.15(137635-7); also 2.2(1395316). The Greek line is

ascribed to a late Homeric poem, the Cypria of Stasinus, frag 22 (in Epicor-
um graecorum fragmenta ed G. Kinkel, Leipzig 1877).
1 proverbial line] Suidas N 325
2 Herodotus] 1.155, added in 1533 (Erasmus normally refers to his books by
name rather than number)
3 Philip of Macedon] The story is in the historian Polybius 23.4.10.
4 memorable remark] The Roman emperor Maximinus was murdered at Aquileia
AD 238; Herodian 8.5.9 (his history was published by Aldus in 1503). Ad-
ded in 1528.
5 Homer] Odyssey 3.196-7

54 From Julius Capitolinus Pertinax 13; he is one of the suthors of the so-cslled
Historia Augusta (see i vi 7n). The parallel from St Paul Romans 16.18 was
added in 1515. Suringar 39
 N O T E S I X 55-1 X 63 381

55 This is discussed at greater length in iv viii 97. The Plato texts cited are
Euthydemus 2936. and Gorgias 5233, the Greek being added in 1523 and
1520 respectively.

56 This was Collectanea no 615, from Diogenianus 5.97. Cf Suidas K 1352. Perhaps
from some lost comedy (frag adesp 749 Kock)

57 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 4.84; Diogenianus 6.1; Suidas

A 29). Tilley H 153 A hare sleeps with his eyes open.
1 Plutarch] Moralia 2jE, commenting on Odyssey 13.79-80
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 11.147

58 From Suidas z 39; the original source of the line was perhaps a lost comedy
(frag adesp 545 Kock). For a more familiar form of the same idea, see Adagia
iv iv 82 God's mill grinds slow but sure. The records kept on goatskin have
already appeared in i v 24.

59 Taken from Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 4.17. Thought to be a line from comedy

(frag adesp 20 Kock). Zen. Ath. 1.43

60 From Zenobius 4.19 (he is represented by 'Some think' and 'They say fur-
ther'); also in Suidas H 85. Adagia i i 87 is another drawn from the eating of
turtles. Zen. Ath. 2.56
1 and among them ... don't eat] Added in 1517/8. The source is Athenaeus
8.337^ referred to again in in ii 54; his authority, Terpsion (fourth century
BC), was said to be the first author of a Gastrology.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 20.64
3 Again, there are] From here to the end is an addition of 1515. Neoptolemus is
from Ennius Sc 376 (see i vi 2on), and Callicles from Plato Gorgias 454C.
4 Apocalypse] Apoc 3.15

61 From Macrobius Saturnalia 3.17.10. Otto 944; Tilley M 625 as above.

1 Aristotle] This has not been found in his Rhetoric or Politics.
2 Tacitus] Annals 15.20.3, added in 1533
3 Solon] The Athenian statesman and poet of the sixth century BC, in Diogenes
Laertius 1.59

62 From Zenobius 2.81. The two supporting passages from Plutarch (Moralia
7i9F and IOOF) were added in 1515.

63 This might well come from Eustathius, the twelfth-century archbishop of Sal-
onica, in his commentary on Iliad 18.575 (1165.6). It is also given in Diogen-
ianus 3.50 and Suidas B 457-8. Zen. Ath. 1.71
i Suidas] He cites Euripides frag 350 and Achaeus, another fifth-century trage-
dian, frag 23 Nauck. The concluding clause ('though he ...') was added in
1533-
 N O T E S I X 64-1 X 71 382

64 From Lucian, not his Jupiter confutatus but his Jupiter tragoedus 15

65 Cicero Philippics 2.14.34. Otto 1691

66 From the letters attributed to Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum (Akragas) in

the sixth century BC (see i x 86), which are a fiction of late Antiquity. They
were printed in the Aldine Epistolographigraeci of 1499. 'So far ... lofty
minds' was added in 1517/5.

67 From Apollonius of Tyana Epistulae 27

1 Diogenes] The Cynic philosopher; this is from his life by Diogenes Laertius
(6.47). From here to the end was added in 152^.
2 in Alexandria] According to Strabo Geographica 17.2.4

68 From Lucian Hermotimus 28. Otto 1396

1 Horace] Epodes 16.21-2; Odes 3.11.49, the latter added in 1523
2 Theocritus] 13.70, of which Hylas is the title. So 1515, when a Latin version
was also provided; in 1508 it had been ascribed to the Thyonichus, which is
Idyll 14.
3 Again] 7 Thalysia .21, added in 1526
4 Virgil] Eclogues 9.1
5 Plato] Republic 3-394d, added in 152$

69 This phrase can carry either of two meanings, a rough and barbarous life, as
in Erasmus' first sentence (so Apostolius 4-92b), or a leisurely life in some
blessed climate where it is not necessary to grow one's own food; material is
collected in Corpus paroemiographorum 2.182.
1 Homer] Odyssey 9.273-6 and 174-6
2 Euripides] Cyclops 320-1
3 Strabo] Geographica 11.4.3

70 Not so much an adage as a faded metaphor in daily use. Erasmus' examples

are taken from Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae 13.29.3 and Ulpian the great
jurist (died AD 228), as excerpted in the Digest or Pandects of Justinian, 7.8.10.4
(where however longe lateque is not in our modern text).

71 This formed Collectanea no i, where it was dealt with at some length, and
the opening sentence and conclusion of our adage are taken largely verbatim
from that earlier text. It has been thought to come from some early Roman
comedy (frag incert 102 Ribbeck). Otto 896; Tilley L 326 Like lips like lettuce.
1 Julius Capitolinus] Pertinax 12.2 (see i x 54n)
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 19.152, added in 1515
3 Jerome] Letters 7.5, citing the early Roman satirist Lucilius 1299-1300 Marx
4 This Crassus] This sentence and the next appear to be based on the words of
Pliny quoted below. The duplication perhaps escaped notice because the
Pliny was taken over more or less mechanically from the Collectanea. The
recovery of the standards lost to the Parthians at Carrhae in 53 BC was
ascribed in 1508 to Marius; Augustus was substituted in 1533.
 N O T E S I X 71-1 X 73 383

5 Cicero] De finibus 5.30.92; Tusculanae disputationes 3.15.31. The attribution to

his 'speeches' (actiones), which is taken over from the Collectanea, is per-
haps a confused memory of a mention of this Crassus in the so-called pseudo-
Asconius commentary on Cicero's Verrines (T. Stangl's edition, Vienna/
Leipzig 1912), which Erasmus quotes in a few other places.
6 Pliny] Naturalis historia 7.79
7 Jerome] Adversus Rufinum 1.30 (PL 23-422A)
8 Macrobius] Saturnalia 2.1.6, added in 1536

72 Derived from Jerome. The Greek form, perhaps from a lost comedy (frag adesp
651 Kock), is preserved as the title of another of Varro's Menippean Satires
in Nonius p 478, Evpev 77 XOTTCKS TO rid)/LAO;. Erasmus missed this; otherwise he
might have elaborated on the sub-title: The dish (?) has found its cup (?),
of married couples.' Otto 1355; Tilley c 742 The cover is worthy of such a cup,
c 986 Such cup such cover, P 502 There is no pot so ugly that a cover
cannot be found for it.
1 Jerome] Letters 7.5; in 1508 it was 'in the same letter.'
2 Jerome again] Adversus Rufinum 3.24 (PL 23.4730); this was added in 1515.
3 Plato] Hippias major 2^od. When added in 1517/8 this went on after 'appropri-
ate' in the first clause, 'says that for a pot of pease-pottage a fig-wood lid is
more suitable than a gold lid.' This was taken out, and the Greek text intro-
duced, in 1528.
4 toryne] This discussion was added in 1528. Plato's translator is Marsilio Fi-
cino. The other passages referred to are Etymologicum magnum 762.34 and
Suidas T 799.

73 From Plutarch Moralia 4A. There is considerable overlap with in ii 49. Tilley c
828 If one dwells by a cripple, he will learn to halt.
1 Pindar] Scholia on Nemeans 7.127, citing a line attributed in in ii 49 to 'Aristar-
chus'; it has been claimed for comedy (frag adesp 610 Kock). Added here in
1526
2 Hesiod] Works and Days 346; see i i 32. Added in 1526
3 Pindar] Nemeans 7.86-9; added in 1526, and the Latin version and comment
on the Greek text in 1528
4 Hesiod] Works and Days 345, added in 1526
5 Themistocles] Plutarch Themistodes 18, which is used in n i 32 (1508) and iv v i
(1526), and was added here in the latter year.
6 The point of the proverb] Here we return to the text of 1508; but the second
line of the Ovid quotation, which is Remedia amoris 615-16, was added in
1515. It replaced Juvenal 2.81, which was already in in ii 49.
7 Aristotle ... Aphrodisias] Added in 1515; the reference is to Aristotle Problem-
ata 7.8 (887325).
8 Alexander] of Aphrodisias (see i ix 56n), Problemata 1.32 in the version of
Theodore Gaza (Aldine edition of 1504, 258)
9 Aristotle] As in n7 above, the reference is unexplained. Added in 1528
10 Plutarch] Moralia 530, added in 1515
11 Plato] Laws 2.6$6b, added in 1528
 N O T E S I X 74-1 X 77 384

74 Menander Sententiae 808, also thought to be a line from Euripides, frag 1024
Nauck and from Menander himself, frag 187. Quoted by St Paul in i Corin-
thians 15.33. Otto "48; Tilley c 558, whom we have followed in giving the
King James version with 'communications/ though Erasmus' own render-
ing 'Living with bad men' or The society of bad men' is more accurate.
1 Tertullian] See i viii 86n; Ad uxorem 1.8.4, added in 1523.
2 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 9.12 (117^29)
3 iambic line] Menander Sententiae 383, thought to be in origin a line from some
lost tragedy (frag adesp 314 Nauck).
4 Seneca] Dialogi 5 (De ira 3).8.1-3. 'And, if they are given the chance, a brave
one' is not what Seneca wrote in this eloquent sentence; it has been bril-
liantly emended to read 'a man of iron.'
5 John Colet] Dean of St Paul's, London, 1504-19; CEBR 1.324-8.

75 The source of this might be Suidas K 2414; there is a substantial postscript in

in x 89.
1 For in very ... discovered later] This was added in 1515.
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 18.105 and following
3 Plautus] Aulularia 400
4 Seneca] Letters 90.23
5 Bread so baked] From Suidas K 2413, added in 1520
6 Aristophanes] Scholiast on his Acharnians 86. Anthropos ('man' as a human
being) might easily be confused with a name Annos, since anos with a line
over it is a standard abbreviation for the word in Greek manuscripts.

76 Collectanea no 148, from Diogenianus 2.94 (it is also in Suidas A 4096), with an
ascription to Pittacus, as in Diogenes Laertius 1.77. Tilley A 402 Authority
shows what a man is.
1 Sophocles among them] Inserted in 1525, 'or so they say' in 1523. The source
of this, and of what follows about Theophrastus, is perhaps Harpocra-
tion's lexicon to the ten Attic orators (of uncertain date), p 61 of Dindorf's
Oxford edition of 1853. This was printed by Aldus in 1503.
2 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 5.3(43031); this is of 1508.
3 Theophrastus too ... not a proverb] Added in 1515, from Harpocration
4 Plutarch] Not the life of Cicero, but the Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero
(which follows it) 3.2. This was added in 1523.
5 Sophocles] Antigone 175-7; this also was added in 1523, and with The point
is' we return to the text of 1508.
6 Epaminondas] From here to the end was added in 1515. The source is Plu-
tarch Moralia 8ns; more in Otto 965.

77 Accius (or Attius) and Titius are stock names used by Roman lawyers to stand
for two parties in a situation, like Titius and Seius (Adagia iv viii 33) or John
Doe and Richard Roe among old-fashioned English lawyers (Otto 203). They
appear in Nonius p 40 as the title of one of Varro's Menippean Satires (see i
vii 5n), which is probably to be identified with the Testament referred to here
(frag 217 and 543 Buecheler). Aulus Gellius 3.16.14 cites the second frag-
 N O T E S I X 77-1 X 82 385

ment in a chapter on the duration of pregnancy (the Romans, with their

inclusive methods of reckoning, regard ten months as normal, where we
speak of nine); hence the relevance of a reference to Aristotle Historia animal-
ium 7.4 (5841)1). The explanation is not provided by Erasmus, but para-
phrased from Gellius.

78 Martial 6.6. Paula, the wife of his friend Lupercus, is stage-struck in a special
way; she dotes on a silent character, as well as on the normal three actors.
Can it be that there is evidence of virility about one of them which, though it
remains silent, suggests that it might do marvels?
1 Cicero] Ad Atticum 13.19.3
2 Pindar] Sophocles frag 561 Nauck, cited by the scholiast on Pindar Nemeans
3.60, so that by a slip of memory Erasmus recalls the words as Pindar's.
This was added in 1526.
3 don/phorema] A bodyguard, who just stand there, armed and silent, and so
gave their name to mute characters on the stage; see Adagia iv v 14 of
1517/8. The word was added here in 1528.

79 Laberius 88 (Ribbeck p 357; see i vii 75n), cited by Gellius 3.18.9. The exact
sense, in the absence of context, is not certain.
1 Festus Pompeius] P 232 Lindsay, citing Lucilius 1102 Marx. This was added in
1523; 'because ... the other' in 1528.
2 The crocodile] From here to the end is an addition of 1528.

80 Horace Epistles 1.4.6-7. The supporting quotations are Ovid Heroides

16.305-6 and Juvenal 7.159-60 (used again in in iii 27).

81 From Horace Epistles 1.6.62-3. Acron and Porphyrion are the supposed com-
pilers of our ancient scholia on Horace. For Ulysses' crew, see n x 62.
Caere is an Etruscan city about thirty-five kilometres north-west of Rome.
1 Aulus Gellius] 16.13.7
2 elsewhere] Adagia in v 74

82 Macrobius Saturnalia 1.8.5, referring to two lost authorities, Verrius Flaccus

the Roman philologist and antiquarian of the late first century BC, and
Apollodorus, Athenian scholar of the second century BC, who wrote a treatise
in 24 books on the gods. Otto 520; Tilley G 182, as above
1 Lucian] Saturnalia 10 (Cronosolon is the name of one section of this); De
astrologia 21. The latter (down to 'in fetters') was added in 1515.
2 Plutarch] Moralia 2j()A. Erasmus uses the title Problems for both his Greek and
(as here) his Roman questions.
3 The riddle of this proverb means] These words replaced the following in 1523:
The meaning of this proverb, which is in common use, is still not clear to
me; unless perhaps its point is.' For the idea that the gods are slow to punish,
see iv iv 82.
4 Porphyrion] The ancient scholiast, on Horace Odes 3.2.32; Otto 521. This was
added in 1523.
 N O T E S I X 83-1 X 89 386

83 From Diogenes Laertius 7.27; the adage is also in Suidas z 79. He refers to the
New-Comedy writer Philemon frag 85 Kock. The standard of reference is
Zeno of Citium, the great Stoic philosopher (333-261 BC).

84 This was Collectanea no 363, from Diogenianus 5.14; it is also in Suidas x 333.
1 Herodotus] 3.139 and following (the books of his History were named by
Herodotus after the Muses). The parenthesis ('though in the text...') was
inserted in 1528.
2 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geographica 14.1.17.
3 Valerius Maximus] See i vii 47n; 5.2.ext.i. Further small comments on the title
of the garment were added here too in 1528.

85 Based on Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 3.90, with added comments and a reference

to Strabo 14.1.17, as in the preceding article. The story that lies behind
both is discussed by W. Biihler on Zen. Ath. 2.21. The concluding reflection
(from 'Appropriate ...') was added in 1517/8. The Greek line is Adespota
iambica i West.

86 Collectanea no 691, very briefly, from Diogenianus 8.65. Otto 1405

1 Lucian] i Phalaris 11-12
2 Cicero] AdAtticum 7.12.2, the book-number added in 1523; In L. Pisonem
30.73, the name of the speech added in 1523, before which the text said
'elsewhere.'

87 From Livy 1.8.7 or Valerius Maximus (see i vii 47n) 2.7.6. Otto 1031. This was
followed in 1508 by the present i ix 95 and in vii 4.
1 Valerius] Valerius Maximus 9.3.4; on Posthumius, ibid 2.7.6.
2 Livy] 4.29.5-6. Both 'Manlian' and 'Posthumian orders' are used together by
Gellius 1.13.7.
3 Seneca] De beneficiis 3.37.4, added in 1528
4 Cicero] Definibus 2.32.105, added in 1536 ('ours' should rightly be 'yours').

88 Collectanea no 722, from Diogenianus 7.92. For the notion that in ancient
Athens 'the noise of fig-leaves' conveyed the idea of empty threats, our
authority is Aristophanes, Wasps 436, and it is from the scholia on that line
that Erasmus draws his proverb. (One character in Aristophanes is telling
another not to be frightened by the bluster of politicians and suchlike.) This
puts Erasmus in mind of a favourite word, nebula, a 'noisy rascal' or 'good-
for-nothing/ and he illustrates with a parallel from Terence Eunuchus 785,
which he will use again in 1526 in in vii 11 (Thais is the soubrette and
Thraso the proverbial braggart soldier). The suggestion that we are concerned
not with fig-leaves but with pebbles used in divination, for which we are
referred to i vii 8, was added in 1515, but has not found favour.

89 From Suidas o 808 and Aristophanes Wasps 480, with the scholia. Zen. Ath.
2.40
i celery] This seems unlikely, and there is in fact little evidence for it, as W.
Biihler shows in a valuable discussion in Zen. Ath. 4(1982) 308-12.
 N O T E S I X 89-1 X 92 387

2 Pindar] The passage was identified in 1526 as Nemeans 4.87-8. A garland of

celery-leaves was worn by the winner at the Isthmian or Nemean games;
'he that roars aloud' is a circumlocution for Poseidon or Neptune, the god of
the sea.

90 From Suidas o 2951 and the scholia on Aristophanes Wasps, citing Callis-
tratus, an Alexandrian scholar of the second century BC. Illustrative materi-
al is collected in the Corpus paroemiographorum 1.447. In 15°8 *ne present in v i
followed.
1 Nonius] p 114; added in 1515.
2 Aristophanes] Wasps 604, the play identified in 1523
3 You will find] From here to the end was added in 1533.
4 Martial] 1.109.13; but in a correct text the lapdog asks not to be washed but to
be picked up (levari, not lavari).
5 We read] Seneca Letters 70.20 tells a terrible story of a German who was due to
fight with beasts in the arena, and retired to the latrine, 'the only place
where he would not be narrowly observed/ and thus put an end to his own
life.

91 Collectanea no 176, very briefly, from Quintilian 5.11.41. Erasmus returns to

the theme in 1533 in iv x 40. Otto 421; Tilley c 601 as above.
1 that line] Ovid Metamorphoses 2.447, use£^ again in 1533 in iv x 69. This was
followed here in 1508 by Horace Epistles 1.2.58-9 (ascribed to Juvenal, a
slip which occurs elsewhere in the Adagio). After this, 1508 carried on 'And
Juvenal on conscience: Sicilian tyrants have found a greater torment than
jealousy.' This was rightly removed in 1515; it is Horace Epistles 1.2.58-9, and
has a negative in it: 'Sicilian tyrants/ which means Phalaris, 'have found
no greater torment than jealousy.'
2 maxim in Greek] Not identified
3 Juvenal] 13.194

92 From the Greek proverb-collections (Zenobius 5.15; Diogenianus 6.42; Suidas

M 1479). The Mysians, who seem to have been poorly thought of, have
already furnished i vi 77 and 78.
1 while ... abroad] Inserted in 1515 from the lexicon of Harpocration (see i x
76n) p 209 Dindorf
2 Aristotle] Rhetoric 1.12 (i372b3i)
3 Demosthenes ... miserable] Added in 1515; the reference is to De corona 72.
4 Aretino's version] This identification was introduced in 1517/8. Leonardo
Bruni published a Latin version of the De corona (entitled Pro Ctesiphonte) in
April 1407.
5 Stratis] So rightly spelt; frag 35 Kock; he is a writer of the Attic Old Comedy.
6 Simonides] Not Simonides of Ceos but Semonides of Amorgos, who is often
confused with him; frag 37 West. This final sentence with the two names
was added in 1515 from the same entry in Harpocration already used.
 N O T E S I X 93-1 X 98 388

93 This was Collectanea no 793, with a brief reference to Plato's Cratylus. It is

Zenobius 6.23, and Suidas Y 364.
1 an Opuntian or] Added in 1526, with the words 'Such is the account in
Suidas.' The reference is to Suidas <D 144. Previously 'a man from Pontus.'
2 inscription] Anthologia Palatina appendix 3.28, preserved by Suidas <t> 144
3 Plato] Cratylus 4133
4 Julius Pollux] Onomasticon (see i vii i8n) 3.151
5 Lucian] Callus 6 (The Cock, for which The Dream is an alternative title)
6 Chrysostom] Johannes Chrysostomus In epistolam secundam ad Corinthios
homiliae 3.1 (PG 61.406), added in 1533
7 Cicero] De oratore 1.12.52; Pro P. Quinctio 10.36, from memory. This is a mere
metaphor for limits, and has no connection with any 'forensic games.'

94 Material to illustrate this is collected in the Corpus paroemiographorum 1.465-6.

Suidas * 155. The Latin versions of the three Greek quotations were not
supplied till 1515.
1 Homer] Odyssey 3.170-1
2 Strabo] See i vi 3n; Geographica 14.1.35.
3 Pliny] Naturalis historia 5.134
4 Stephanus] Stephanus Byzantius p 703 Meineke (see i vi 53n), citing the
Old-Comedy writer Cratinus frag 352 and 112 Kock. These two quotations
are adages in their own right; see Adagia in iv 39.

95 Collectanea no 305, from Diogenianus 3.49 or 5.80; also in Suidas B 462. Otto
269 covers both this article and the next.
1 Aristophanes] Plutus 706. In the second place where his name occurs, it did
not appear till 1525; 150$ had 'a poet.'
2 Pliny] Naturalis historia 28.266

96 This was Collectanea no 715, from Festus Pompeius p 51 Lindsay, citing Ennius
in a fragment of unknown context (var 26 in Vahlen's numbering). The
sotadean, of which this would be an incomplete specimen, is a metrical form
that gets its name from Sotades, a lyric poet of the third century BC; but this
must not be cited as evidence of Erasmus' metrical expertise, because the
name is already supplied by Festus. Otto groups this with the preceding
adage under no 269.

97 Taken from Aulus Gellius 3.9. Otto 1620

1 Sejus] The name was given as Sejanus in 1508, and not corrected till 1526.
2 Homer] Odyssey 8.492-5
3 Virgil] Aeneid 2.46
4 Trebellius Pollio] Tyranni triginta 14.6; this is part of the Historia Augusta, for
which see i vi 7n.

98 From Gellius 3.9.7. Otto 1793; Suringar 23

i In most texts] This sentence was added in 1526; until that year, the word
'Gaul' in the quotation from Gellius just above had been 'Italy.' Modern
texts give Erasmus the credit for this correction.
 N O T E S I X Q8-I X 1OO 389

2 Cicero] De natura deorum 3.30.7; this was inserted in 1515.

3 Strabo] Geographica 4.1.13
4 Justin] 32.3.9 (see i ix 23n)

99 The source of this seems to be Plutarch Moralia 155, rather than Diogenianus
7.76, which was not used. The versatility of the octopus has already provided
an adage in i i 93.
1 Sallust] Catilinae conjuratio 5
2 Plutarch] Moralia 158; 734F, this latter added in 1515.
3
Simonides] The early Greek lyric poet, frag 88 Page, cited by Plutarch Moralia
79C
4 Theognis] 875

100 Collectanea no 349, from Diogenianus 4.51; also in Zenobius ('Zenodotus') 3.72
and Suidas E 1359
1 Juvenal] 5.79
2 Nonius] p 541. This sentence and the next were added in 1526 as a result of
comments in the De re vestiaria of Lazare Ba'if (see CEBR 1.87-8); cf Allen's
notes on Ep 1479.
3 Diogenes Laertius] 6.87, citing frag 146 Kock, by the New-Comedy writer
Philemon (who criticizes the Cynic philosopher Crates).
WORKS FREQUENTLY CITED

This list provides bibliographical information for works referred to in short-title

form in this volume.

ASD Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam

1969- )

CEBR P.G. Bietenholz and T.B. Deutscher eds Contemporaries of

Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and
Reformation 3 vols (Toronto 1985-7)

Collectanea Desiderius Erasmus Adagiorum Collectanea (Paris 1500); we

use the numbering of the revised edition of 1506/7

CWE Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto 1974- )

Diels-Kranz H. Diels and W. Kranz eds Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker

(Berlin 1951-2) 3 vols

FGrHist F. Jacoby ed Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin/

Leiden 1926- )

Kaibel G. Kaibel ed Comicorum Graecorum fragmenta (Berlin 1899)

Kock T. Kock ed Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta (Leipzig 1880-8)

3 vols

LB J. Leclerc ed Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami opera omnia (Leiden

1703-6) 10 vols

Nauck A. Nauck ed Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (Leipzig 1889)

Otto A. Otto Die Sprichworter ... Der Romer (Leipzig 1890)

PG J.P. Migne ed Patrologia graeca

PL J.P. Migne ed Patrologia latina

Reedijk C. Reedijk ed The Poems of Desiderius Erasmus (Leiden 1956)

Suringar W.H.D. Suringar Erasmus over nederlandsche spreekwoorden ...

(Utrecht 1873)

Tilley M.P. Tilley Dictionary of Proverbs in English in the Sixteenth

and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, Michigan 1950)

The name 'Suidas' has been retained for the great Byzantine lexicon, now known
to be properly called 'the Suda' (ed A. Adler, Leipzig 1928-38), since Erasmus
supposed Suidas to be the compiler's name.
 TABLE OF ADAGES

i vi i Saepe etiam est olitor valde opportuna locutus

Even a gardner oft speaks to the point 3
i vi 2 Copiae cornu
A horn of plenty 4
i vi 3 Lac gallinaceum
Hen's milk 5
i vi 4 Non omnibus dormio
I'm not asleep to everyone 6
i vi 5 Sardi venales
Sardinians for sale 7
i vi 6 Dasypus carnes desiderat
A hairyfoot hungry for meat 8
i vi 7 Tute lepus es et pulpamentum quaeris
A hare thyself, and goest in quest of game? 8
i vi 8 Pari iugo
Matched in double harness 9
i vi 9 Uno fasce complecti
To bundle together 9
i vi 10 Salem et mensam ne praetereas
Transgress not salt and trencher 10
i vi 11 Baceli similis
Like Bacelus 10
i vi 12 Batalus
Batalus 11
i vi 13 Bene plaustrum perculit
He gave the cart a good shove downhill 11
i vi 14 In Care periculum
Risk it on a Carian 12
i vi 15 In dolio figularem artem discere
To learn the potter's art on a big jar 13
i vi 16 Ne sutor ultra crepidam
Let the cobbler stick to his last 14
i vi 17 Dii facientes adiuvant
The gods help those who help themselves 15
i vi 18 Cum Minerva manum quoque move
Invoke Minerva, but use your own strength too 15
i vi 19 Nostro Marte
By our own prowess 15
i vi 20 Nequicquam sapit, qui sibi non sapit
He's wise in vain that's not wise for himself 16
i vi 21 Cantherium in fossa
Donkey in a ditch 17
i vi 22 Tantali talenta
The talents of Tantalus 17
i vi 23 Pelopis talenta
The talents of Pelops 18
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 392

i vi 24 Midae divitiae
The riches of Midas 18
i vi 25 Non omnino temere est, quod vulgo dictitant
What is in every man's mouth is not spoken wholly without cause 19
i vi 26 Domum cum facis, ne relinquas impolitam
When you make your house, leave it not unplaned 19
i vi 27 Ne a chytropode cibum nondum sacrificatum rapias
Snatch not food as yet unblest out of the dish 20
i vi 28 Haec potior
This is sovereign 22
i vi 29 Delius natator
A Delian diver 24
i vi 30 Dicendo dicere discunt
By speaking men learn how to speak 24
i vi 31 Multi bonique
Many good men and true 25
i vi 32 Heroum filii noxae
Great men have trouble from their children 25
i vi 33 Nunquam ex malo patre bonus filius
Never good son from bad father 26
ivi 34 Alio relinquente fluctu alius excepit
One wave left me and another caught me up 26
i vi 35 Duobus pedibus fugere
To put your best foot first 26
i vi 36 Quis aberret a janua?
Who could miss the gate? 27
i vi 37 Salsuginosa vicinia
A brackish neighbourhood 30
i vi 38 Ad fractam canis
You sing to a broken string 31
i vi 39 Utre territas
You terrify with a wineskin 31
i vi 40 Leonem larva terres
You terrify a lion with a mask 31
i vi 41 Principarus Scyrius
Sovereignty in Scyros 32
i vi 42 Post Lesbium cantorem
But second fiddle to a Lesbian 32
i vi 43 Callipides
Callipides 33
i vi 44 Balneator
A bathman 34
i vi 45 Bacchae more
Like a Bacchant 34
i vi 46 A lasso rixa quaeritur
Weariness loves a wrangle 34
i vi 47 Gladiator in arena consilium capit
A gladiator plans his fight in the 35
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 393

i vi 48 Inelegantior Libethriis
As rude as any Libethrian 35
i vi 49 Domesticum thesaurum calumniari
To speak ill of one's own good things 36
i vi 50 Qualis vir, talis oratio
As the man is, so is his talk 36
i vi 51 'H i|/eX\T7 ov mrTevei
The girl who stammers doesn't b-b-believe 37
i vi 52 Nostris ipsorum alis capimur
We are shot with our own feathers 38
i vi 53 Bonae fortunae, or Boni genii
Here's to good luck, or A blessing on it! 38
i vi 54 Ad aquam malus
A rascal at the water 40
i vi 55 Phocensium exsecratio
Phocaean imprecations 40
i vi 56 Sybaritica oratio
The language of Sybaris 41
i vi 57 A linea incipere
To start from scratch 41
i vi 58 A carceribus
From the start 42
i vi 59 Nova hirundo
The first swallow 42
i vi 60 Jovis et regis cerebrum
Jove's brain and the king's 43
i vi 61 Non movenda moves
You move what should not be moved 43
i vi 62 Neque mel neque apes
No bees, no honey 44
i vi 63 Tussis pro crepitu
A cough for a fart 45
i vi 64 Cornicibus vivacior
As long-lived as the crows 45
i vi 65 Tithoni senecta
The old age of Tithonus 46
i vi 66 Nestorea senecta
As old as Nestor 46
i vi 67 Ultra pensum vivit
He outlives his allotted span 47
i vi 68 Facile, cum valemus, recta consilia aegrotis damus
Good counsel to the sick is cheap enough, when we ourselves are well 47
i vi 69 Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos
The things that are above us are nothing to us 48
i vi 70 Notum lippis ac tonsoribus
Known to blear-eyed men and barbers 48
i vi 71 Optat ephippia bos, piger optat arare caballus
The ox would wear the trappings and the lazy nag would plough 49
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 394

i vi 72 Fertilior seges est alieno in arvo

The crop is heavier in another man's field 50
i vi 73 Fecem bibat, qui vinum bibit
He must drink the dregs that drank the wine 50
i vi 74 Croeso, Crasso ditior
As rich as Croesus or Crassus 50
i vi 75 Pactoli opes
The wealth of Pactolus 51
i vi 76 Iro, Codro pauperior
As poor as Irus or Codrus 51
i vi 77 Mysorum postremus
Lowest of the Mysians 52
i vi 78 Mysorum ultimus navigat
The last of the Mysians on a voyage 52
i vi 79 Tangere ulcus
To touch on a sore place 53
i vi 80 Refricare cicatricem
To rub up a sore 53
i vi 81 Odorari, et similes aliquot metaphorae
Scenting out, and sundry metaphors of this kind 53
i vi 82 Mihi istic nee seritur nee metitur
The sowing and reaping there are none of mine 55
i vi 83 Ab ipso lare
Begin at home 55
i vi 84 Propria vineta caedere
To cut down one's own vineyards 56
i vi 85 Aedibus in nostris quae prava aut recta geruntur
The good or ill that's wrought in our own halls 56
i vi 86 In se descendere
To venture down into oneself 57
i vi 87 Tecum habita
Be your own lodger 57
i vi 88 Messe tenus propria vive
Live up to your own harvest 58
i vi 89 Tuo te pede metire
Measure yourself by your own foot 58
i vi 90 Non videmus manticae quod in tergo est
We see not what is in the wallet behind 59
i vi 91 Festucam ex alterius oculo ejicere
To cast a mote out of another man's eye 59
i vi 92 Intra tuam pelliculam te contine
Keep inside your own skin 60
i vi 93 Pennas nido majores extendere
To spread wings greater than the nest 61
i vi 94 In tuum ipsius sinum inspue
Spit into your own bosom 61
i vi 95 Nosce teipsum
Know thyself 62
 TABLE OF ADAGES 395

i vi 96 Ne quid nimis
Nothing to excess 63
i vi 97 Sponde, noxa praesto est
Stand surety, and ruin is at hand 64
i vi 98 Novit quid album, quid nigrum
He knows white from black 65
i vi 99 Albus an ater sis, nescio
I know not whether you are dark or fair 65
i vi 100 Non novit natos
He does not know that they exist 66

i vii i Odi memorem compotorem

I hate a pot-companion with a good memory 66
i vii 2 Duabus sedere sellis
To sit on two stools 68
i vii 3 Duos parietes de eadem dealbare fidelia
To whitewash two walls out of the same bucket 68
i vii 4 Unica filia duos parare generos
To make two sons-in-law of one daughter 69
i vii 5 Nescis quid serus vesper vehat
Who knows what evening in the end will bring? 69
i vii 6 Multi thyrsigeri, pauci bacchi
Many bear the wand, few feel the god 69
i vii 7 Non omnes qui habent citharam sunt citharoedi
Not all that hold the lyre can play it 70
i vii 8 Plures thriobolos, paucos est cernere vates
Many the casters of lots, but few can you find that are prophets 70
i vii 9 Multi qui boves stimulent, pauci aratores
Few men can plough, though many ply the goad 71
i vii 10 Simia in purpura
An ape in purple 71
i vii 11 Simia simia est, etiamsi aurea gestet insignia
An ape is an ape, though clad in gold 72
i vii 12 Asinus apud Cumanos
An ass at Cumae 72
i vii 13 Ira omnium tardissime senescit
Resentment is the last thing to grow old 72
i vii 14 Si vultur es, cadaver exspecta
If you're a vulture, wait for your carcase 74
i vii 15 Corvum delusit hiantem
He's tricked the gaping crow 74
i vii 16 Cornicari
To croak 75
i vii 17 In vino veritas
Wine speaks the truth 75
i vii 18 Bos in lingua
An ox on the tongue 77
 TABLE OF ADAGES 396

i vii 19 Argentanginam patitur

He has the silver-quinsy 78
i vii 20 Equus me portat, alit rex
A horse to carry me, a king to feed me 78
i vii 21 Etiam corchorus inter olera
Blue pimpernel too is a vegetable 79
i vii 22 Graculus inter Musas
A jackdaw among the Muses 79
i vii 23 In lente unguentum
Perfume on the lentils 79
i vii 24 Anulus aureus in naribus suis
A gold ring in a pig's snout 81
i vii 25 In eburnea vagina plumbeus gladius
A leaden sword in an ivory sheath 82
i vii 26 Omnia octo
All eights 82
i vii 27 Omnia idem pulvis
All is the same dust 83
i vii 28 Plaustrum bovem trahit
The cart before the horse 83
i vii 29 Ab equis ad asinos
From horses to asses 83
i vii 30 Ab asinis ad boves transcendere
To rise from asses to oxen 84
i vii 31A Ab asino delapsus
Fallen off the donkey 84
i vii 316 Telluris onus
A burden on the earth 85
i vii 32 Arabius tibicen
An Arabian piper 86
i vii 33 Artem quaevis alit terra
Skill fills your hand in every land 86
i vii 34 Non eras in hoc albo
You were not on this roster 87
i vii 35 Oleo tranquillior
As smooth as oil 88
i vii 36 Auricula infima mollior
As soft as the tip of the ear 89
i vii 37 Apio mollior, aut mitior
As soft, or As ripe, as a pear 89
i vii 38 Spongia mollior
As soft as a sponge 89
i vii 39 Felicibus sunt et trimestres liberi
How happy he who has a three-months' child 90
i vii 40 Aurem vellere
To pluck by the ear 90
i vii 41 Alter Hercules
A second Hercules 9i
 TABLE OF ADAGES 397

i vii 42 Bipedum nequissimus

Vilest of two-legged creatures 93
i vii 43 Adamantinus
Adamantine 93
i vii 44 Ferreus, Aheneus
Hard as iron, Tough as bronze 94
i vii 45 Cornea fibra
Heart-strings of horn 95
i vii 46 Ajacis risus
To laugh like Ajax 95
i vii 47 Canis vindictam
A dog's revenge 96
i vii 48 In tuo regno
In your kingdom 98
i vii 49 In tuo luco et fano est situm
It's put in your grove and shrine 98
i vii 50 Intra suas praesepes
Safe in his own fold 98
i vii 51 In acre meo est
He is at my service 99
i vii 52 A teneris unguiculis
Since the time their nails were soft 99
i vii 53 Ab incunabulis
From the cradle 99
i vii 54 Cum lacte nutricis
With our mother's milk 100
i vii 55 Ante victoriam encomium canis
You triumph before the victory 100
i vii 56 Omnes attrahens, ut magnes lapis
Attracting all men, like the magnet stone 100
i vii 57 In silvam ligna ferre
To carry wood to the forest 101
i vii 58 Lumen soli mutuas
You lend light to the sun 1O2
i vii 59 Fontes ipsi sitiunt
The springs themselves are thirsty 1O2
i vii 60 Ipsa olera olla legit
The pot picks its own greens 1O2
i vii 61 Oedipi imprecatio
The curse of Oedipus 103
i vii 62 Efficimus pro nostris opibus moenia
We build the walls we can afford 104
i vii 63 Omnium rerum vicissitude est
All things do change 104
i vii 64 Jucunda vicissitude rerum
Variety's the spice of life 105
i vii 65 Invitis canibus venari
To hunt with reluctant hounds 106
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 398

i vii 66 Invitos boves plaustro inducere

To harness reluctant oxen to the cart 106
i vii 67 Velocem tardus assequitur
Slow catches up with fast 106
i vii 68 Aquilam testudo vincit
Tortoise defeats eagle 107
i vii 69 Intempestiva benevolentia nihil a simultate differt
Goodwill untimely differs not from hate 107
i vii 70 Nosce tempus
Consider the due time 108
i vii 71 Olet lucernam
It smells of the lamp no
i vii 72 Aristophanis et Cleanthis lucerna
The lamp of Aristophanes and Cleanthes no
i vii 73 De plaustro loqui
Wagon-language no
i vii 74 Plaustra conviciis onusta
Cartloads of abuse in
i vii 75 Tollat te qui non novit
Let someone pull you out who doesn't know you 112
i vii 76 Oppedere, et Oppedere contra tonitrua
To fart in someone's face, or To fart against the thunder 113
i vii 77 In antro Trophonii vaticinatus est
He has consulted the oracle in Trophonius' cave 113
i vii 78 Excubiarum causa canens
Singing at his post 115
i vii 79 Sale emptum mancipium
A slave not worth his salt 116
i vii 80 Salis onus unde venerat, illuc abiit
Salt to water whence it came 116
i vii 81 Sales vehens dormis
You sleep on a cargo of salt 116
i vii 82 Male parta male dilabuntur
111 gotten ill spent 117
i vii 83 Qui se non habet, Samum habere postulat
Who does not own himself would Samos own 117
i vii 84 Occultae musices nullus respectus
Hidden music has no listeners 117
i vii 85 Ficulnus
Fig-wood 118
i vii 86 Lupi ilium priores viderunt
The wolves have seen him first 119
i vii 87 Quaecunque in somnio videntur
What we see in a dream 119
i vii 88 Bona Porsenae
Forsena's property 120
i vii 89 Leonina societas
The lion's share 120
 TABLE OF ADAGES 399

i vii 90 Ex tripode
Straight from the tripod 121
i vii 91 Folium Sibyllae
A leaf from the Sibyl's book 122
i vii 92 Prater viro adsit
Let a man's brother stand by him 123
i vii 93 Ne temere Abydum
Not rashly to Abydos 123
i vii 94 Una hirundo non facit ver
One swallow does not make a summer 124
i vii 95 Da mihi mutuum testimonium
Lend me your evidence 124
i vii 96 Mutuum muli scabunt
One mule scratches another 125
i vii 97 Tradunt operas mutuas
They help each other out 126
i vii 98 Senes mutuum fricant
Old men rub one another 126
i vii 99 Fricantem refrica
You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours 126
i vii 100 Ferrum ferro acuitur
Iron sharpeneth iron 127

i viii i Aequalem uxorem quaere

Seek a wife of your own sort 127
i viii 2 Ne my quidem facere audet
He does not even dare say mu 129
i viii 3 Ne gry quidem
Not a grunt 129
i viii 4 Pili non facio
I count it not worth a hair 130
i viii 5 Nauci non facio
I care not a mite 130
i viii 6 Flocci non facio, aut Flocci facio
I care not a wisp of wool, or, a wisp of wool and no more 131
i viii 7 Huius non facio
I make it not worth a snap of the fingers 131
i viii 8 Vitiosa nuce non emam
I would not buy it for a rotten walnut 131
i viii 9 Ne teruncium quidem insumpsit
He did not spend a farthing 131
i viii 10 Homo trioboli
A three-ha'penny fellow 132
i viii 11 Homo tressis
A threepenny man 132
i viii 12 Dignus pilo
Worth a hair 132
 TABLE OF ADAGES 400

i viii 13 Nee uno dignus

Not worth a one 133
i viii 14 Dignus obelisco
He deserves an obelisk 133
i viii 15 Aureus in Olympia stato
You shall be set up at Olympia in gold *33
i viii 16 Quavis re dignus
Worth everything 134
i viii 17 Dignus Argivo clypeo
Worthy of the shield at Argos 134
i viii 18 Dignum propter quod vadimonium deseratur
Worth breaking bail for *34
i viii 19 In utramvis dormire aurem
To sleep sound on either ear 135
i viii 20 In dexteram aurem
On the right ear 135
i viii 21 Porrecris dormire pedibus
To sleep at full stretch 135
i viii 22 Naso suspendere
To turn up the nose 136
i viii 23 Dignus quicum in tenebris mices
A man with whom you could play morra in the dark 136
i viii 24 Ex Jovis tabulis testis
Evidence from Jove's own files *37
i viii 25 Atticus testis
An Attic witness 137
i viii 26 Attica fides
Athenian honesty 137
i viii 27 Graeca fide
On Greek credit 138
i viii 28 Punica fides
Punic faith 138
i viii 29 Altera manu fert lapidem, altera panem ostentat
He bears a stone in one hand and offers a loaf in the other 139
i viii 30 Ex eodem ore calidum et frigidum efflare
Out of one mouth to blow hot and cold 139
i viii 31 Oculatae manus
Hands with eyes in them 141
i viii 32 Caeca dies, et Oculata dies
A blind day, and A day with eyes 141
i viii 33 Lentiscum mandere
Munching mastic 141
i viii 34 Unico digitulo scalpit caput
He scratches his head with a single finger 142
i viii 35 Summo digito caput scalpere
To scratch one's head with the tip of one's finger 142
i viii 36 Phryx plagis emendatur
It takes blows to mend a Phrygian 142
 TABLE OF ADAGES 4O1

i viii 37 Nihil sacri es

You're nothing sacred 143
i viii 38 Nihil sanum
Rotten to the core 143
i viii 39 Dionis gry
Dion's grunt 144
i viii 40 Caecus caeco dux
The blind leading the blind 144
i viii 41 Caeca speculatio
A blind man's watch 145
i viii 42 Sine cortice nabis
You shall swim without cork 145
i viii 43 Ut possumus, quando ut volumus non licet
As best we can, since as we would we may not 146
i viii 44 Atheniensium inconsulta temeritas
Thoughtless and headstrong like Athenians 147
i viii 45 Ubi non sis qui fueris, non est cur velis vivere
When you are not the man you were, why wish to go on living? 148
i viii 46 Premere pollicem. Convertere pollicem
Thumbs down. Thumbs up 149
i viii 47 Faciem perfricare. Frontis perfrictae
To wipe off your blushes. To put a bold front on it 149
i viii 48 Frontem exporrigere. Frontem contrahere
To smooth the forehead. To wrinkle the forehead 150
i viii 49 Attollere supercilium, ponere supercilium
To raise the brows, to relax the brows 151
i viii 50 Connivere
To wink 151
i viii 51 Bibe elleborum
Drink hellebore 152
i viii 52 Naviget Anticyras
Let him take ship for the Anticyras 153
i viii 53 Strychnum bibit
He has drunk strychnum 154
i viii 54 Ede nasturtium
Why can't you eat cress? 155
i viii 55 Porcum immola
Sacrifice a pig 156
i viii 56 Multa Syrorum olera
Syria is not short of herbs 156
i viii 57 Melle litus gladius
A sword smeared with honey 157
i viii 58 Letale mulsum
A deadly honey-brew 158
i viii 59 Linum lino nectis
You join thread with thread 158
i viii 60 Senesco semper multa addiscens
Age comes upon me learning all the time 159
 TABLE OF ADAGES 4O2

i viii 61 Vita doliaris

Life in a tub 160
i viii 62 In diem vivere. Ex tempore vivere
To live from one day to the next. To live for the moment 160
i viii 63 Vita macerata
Living softly 161
i viii 64 Ipsa dies quandoque parens, quandoque noverca
One day's a stepmother and one's a mother 161
i viii 65 Nunc pluit et claro nunc Jupiter aethere fulget
So Jove now rains, now shines in cloudless sky 161
i viii 66 Plus aloes quam mellis habet
More aloes than honey in it 162
i viii 67 Naves onustae conviciis
Shiploads of abuse 163
i viii 68 Tollere cornua
To lift one's horns 163
i viii 69 Tollere cristas
To raise one's crest 163
i viii 70 Animus in pedes decidit
My heart is in my boots 164
i viii 71 Vespa cicadae obstrepens
Wasp buzzing against cricket 164
i viii 72 Pica cum luscinia certat, epopa cum cygnis
Jay strives with nightingale, hoopoe with swans 164
i viii 73 Pilos pro lana
Bristles for wool 164
i viii 74 Tibiam tubae comparas
You match flute against trumpet 165
i viii 75 Cicadae apem comparas
You match a cricket against a bee 165
i viii 76 Testudinem Pegaso comparas
You match a tortoise against Pegasus 165
i viii 77 Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues
Dogs and hogs smell very different 165
i viii 78 Ut sementem feceris, ita et metes
As you have sown, so also shall you reap 166
i viii 79 Carica musa
Carian music 167
i viii 80 Attica musa
The Attic Muse 168
i viii 81 Eodem bibere poculo
To drink of the same cup 168
i viii 82 In planiciem equum
The horse to the plain 169
i viii 83 Acanthida vincit cornix
The raven sings sweeter than the finch 169
i viii 84 Prius testudo leporem praeverterit
Ere that, the tortoise shall outrun the hare 170
 TABLE OF ADAGES 403

i viii 85 Cancros lepori comparas

You match crab against hare 170
i viii 86 Terrae filius
A son of earth 170
i viii 87 Ex quercubus sive saxis nati
Born of oaktrees or rocks 172
i viii 88 Deorum cibus
Food of the gods 172
i viii 89 Tertius Cato
A third Cato 172
i viii 90 Sapienrum octavus
Eighth of the Sages 173
i viii 91 Bis dat qui cito dat
He that gives quickly gives twice 173
i viii 92 Honos alit artes
Honours nourish arts 174
i viii 93 Vel caeco appareat
A blind man might see that 174
i viii 94 Multis ictibus dejicitur quercus
Many strokes fell great oaks 175
i viii 95 Caudae pilos equinae paulatim vellere
To pull out the mare's tail slowly hair by hair 175
i viii 96 Virum improbum vel mus mordeat
Even a mouse will fasten its teeth in a rascal 176
i viii 97 Vel capra mordeat nocentem
Even a she-goat will bite a villain 177
i viii 98 Litem movebit, si vel asinus canem momorderit
He will have the law on you, if an ass has so much as bitten his dog 178
i viii 99 Litem parit lis, noxa item noxam parit
Quarrel will quarrel breed, and hurt breed hurt 178
i viii 100 Bonus dux bonum reddit comitem
A good leader makes for good following 178

i ix i Amyclas perdidit silentium

Silence destroyed Amyclae 179
i ix 2 Timidior es prospiciente
You are as frightened as the peeper 180
i ix 3 Timidior Pisandro
As big a coward as Pisander 181
i ix 4 Diomedea necessitas
To have Diomede on your track 181
i ix 5 Ad pristina praesepia
To his old manger 181
i ix 6 Alia vita, alia diaeta
Change your life and change your style 182
i ix 7 Per medium annulum traharis oportet
You might well be dragged through a ring 182
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 404

i ix 8 Anus bacchatur
The hag's on the hop 182
i ix 9 Anus hircissans
A hag in heat 183
i ix 10 Flere ad novercae tumulum
To weep at your stepmother's funeral 183
i ix 11 Celerius elephanti pariunt
Elephants breed faster 183
i ix 12 A mortuo tributum exigere
To exact tribute from the dead 184
i ix 13 Larus parturit
The gull is about to lay 187
i ix 14 Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus
The mountains labour, forth will creep a mouse 188
i ix 15 Aureos montes polliceri
To promise mountains of gold 188
i ix 16 Ambabus manibus haurire
To take with both hands 189
i ix 17 Uno ore
With one voice 190
i ix 18 Aquilam noctuae comparas
You match eagle and owl 190
i ix 19 Congregare cum leonibus vulpes
To group foxes with lions 190
i ix 20 Aquila in nubibus
An eagle in the clouds 191
i ix 21 Volantia sectari
To pursue a flying quarry 191
i ix 22 Ibyci grues
The cranes of Ibycus 191
i ix 23 Veriora iis quae apud Sagram acciderunt
As true as what happened at the Sagra 193
i ix 24 Rudem accipere. Rude donare
To be given a wooden sword. To present with a wooden sword 193
i ix 25 Mali corvi malum ovum
An ill crow lays an ill egg 194
i ix 26 Ab impiis egressa est iniquitas
Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked 196
i ix 27 Lemnium malum
As bad as Lemnos 196
i ix 28 Cicadam ala corripuisti
You have taken a grasshopper by the wing 197
i ix 29 Tenedia bipennis
An axe from Tenedos 197
i ix 30 Thesaurus carbones erant
The treasure consisted of coals 199
i ix 31 Octopedes
Eight-feet 199
 T A B L E OF A D A G E S 405

i ix 32 Satius est recurrere quam currere male

Better run backwards than run all awry 199
i ix 33 Solus currens vicit
He was the only runner and he won 200
i ix 34 Leonem ex unguibus aestimare
To know a lion by his claws 200
i ix 35 Cauda de vulpe testatur
The fox is given away by his brush 201
i ix 36 E fimbria de texto iudico
I judge the fabric from its border 201
i ix 37 De gustu cognosce
I know by the taste 201
i ix 38 Aethiopem ex vultu judico
I judge an Ethiopian by his face 201
i ix 39 De fructu arborem cognosce
I know the tree by its fruit 202
i ix 40 In tenebris saltare
To dance in the dark 202
i ix 41 Areopagita
An Areopagite 202
i ix 42 Atticus aspectus
That Attic look 203
i ix 43 Lari sacrificant
They sacrifice to the Lar 203
i ix 44 Proterviam fecit
He has made a clean sweep 204
i ix 45 Hie funis nihil attraxit
This line's caught nothing 206
i ix 46 Semper tibi pendeat hamus
Keep your hook in the water 206
i ix 47 Dives aut iniquus est aut iniqui heres
A rich man is either wicked himself or the heir of a wicked man 206
i ix 48 Herculanus nodus
A Hercules-knot 207
i ix 49 Fuere quondam strenui Milesii
The Milesians were valiant in days of yore 208
i ix 50 Fuimus Troes
We Trojans have ceased to be 209
i ix 51 Pyraustae interitus
The death of a fire-worm 209
i ix 52 Post festum venisti
You have come too late for the feast 210
i ix 53 Merx ultronea putet
Goods given away will soon decay 210
i ix 54 Illotis pedibus ingredi
To enter with unwashed feet 211
i ix 55 Illotis manibus
With unwashed hands 211
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 406

i ix 56 Aquilae senecta
An eagle's old age 213
i ix 57 Aquilae senecta, corydi iuventa
An old eagle is as good as a young lark 213
i ix 58 Camelus vel scabiosa complurium asinorum gestat onera
Even a mangy camel bears the load of many donkeys 213
i ix 59 Palinodiam canere
To sing a palinode 214
i ix 60 Vertere vela. Funem reducere
To turn one's sails about. To pull in the rope 215
i ix 61 Venia primum experienti
Let a beginner off lightly 215
i ix 62 Euripus homo
Man's a Euripus 215
i ix 63 Endymionis somnum dormis
You sleep Endymion's sleep 216
i ix 64 Ultra Epimenidem dormis
You sleep longer than Epimenides 216
i ix 65 Matura satio saepe decipit, sera semper mala est
Sow early and be often sorry, sow late and always lose 218
i ix 66 Fames Melia
A Melian famine 218
i ix 67 Saguntina fames
Famine at Saguntum 218
i ix 68 Famis campus
Famine field 219
i ix 69 Elephantum ex musca facis
You make of a fly an elephant 219
i ix 70 Elephantus non capit murem
The elephant does not catch mice 219
i ix 71 Aquila thripas aspiciens
An eagle confronted with a thrips 220
i ix 72 De pilo pendet. De filo pendet
It hangs by a hair. It hangs by a thread 220
i ix 73 Nil intra est oleam, nil extra est in nuce duri
Olive no kernel hath, nor nut no shell 220
i ix 74 Jupiter orbus
Jupiter childless 221
i ix 75 In mari aquam quaeris
You seek water in the sea 221
i ix 76 Fluvius cum mari certas
You're only a river striving with the sea 221
i ix 77 Balbus balbum rectius intelligit
One stammerer better understands another 222
i ix 78 Herbam dare
To proffer grass 222
i ix 79 Dare manus
To put one's hands up 223
 T A B L E OF A D A G E S 407

i ix 80 Ut canis e Nilo
Like a dog drinking out of the Nile 223
i ix 81 Hastam abjicere
To throw away one's spear 223
i ix 82 Arena cedere
To leave the arena 224
i ix 83 In arenam descendere
To descend into the arena 224
i ix 84 Austrum perculi
I have belaboured the south wind 224
i ix 85 De facie nosse
To know by sight 225
i ix 86 Ne umbram quidem eius novit
He does not know even the shadow of it 225
i ix 87 Nomine tantum notus
Known by name alone 225
i ix 88 Prima facie. Prima fronte
At first sight. On the face of it 225
i ix 89 Intus et in cute
Inwardly and in the buff 226
i ix 90 Domestice notus
Well-known at home 226
i ix 91 A limine salutare
To greet from the threshold 226
i ix 92 Primoribus labiis degustare
To taste with the tip of one's tongue 227
i ix 93 Summis labiis
With the tip of the lips 227
i ix 94 Extremis digitis attingere
To touch with the fingertips 228
i ix 95 Dimidium plus toto
The half is more than the whole 228
i ix 96 Serpentis oculus
A serpent's eye 231
i ix 97 Ne moveto lineam
Move not the line 231
i ix 98 Eandem tundere incudem
To pound the same anvil 231
i ix 99 Lacerat lacertum Largi mordax Memmius
Man-eating Memmius lacerates Largius' limbs 232
i ix 100 Cicada vocalior
As noisy as a cricket 232

i xi
To cherish in one's turn 233
1x2 Uno tenore
Even tenor 234
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 408

1x3 In quadrum redigere

To square up 235
1x4 De fece haurire
To drain the dregs 235
1x5 In laqueum inducere
To draw into the net 235
1x6 Boeotica sus
Boeotian pig 236
1x7 Impossibilia captas
You pursue the impossible 237
1x8 Cribro divinare
To divine by a sieve 237
1x9 Hydram secas
You cut off a hydra's heads 238
i x 10 Ne ramenta quidem. Ne festuca quidem
Not a splinter. Not even a straw 238
i x 11 Sacrum sine fumo
A smokeless sacrifice 239
i x 12 Non est cura Hippoclidi
Hippocleides doesn't care 239
i x 13 Canis in praesepi
Dog in the manger 240
i x 14 Captantes capti sumus
We were made prisoners as we prisoners made 240
i x 15 In venatu periit
The hunt was her undoing 241
i x 16 In laqueos lupus
The wolf's fallen into the trap 241
i x 17 Annosa vulpes haud capitur laqueo
An old vixen is not caught in a trap 241
i x 18 Vulpes haud corrumpitur muneribus
A fox takes no bribes 241
i x 19 Atticus in portum
An Athenian entering harbour 242
i x 20 Capra Scyria
A Scyrian she-goat 242
i x 21 Suspendio deligenda arbor
Choose your tree and hang yourself 242
i x 22 Minervae felem
Minerva against a cat 243
i x 23 Versuram solvere
To pay by a switching-loan 243
i x 24 Animam debet
He owes his own soul 244
i x 25 Summum jus, summa injuria
Extreme right is extreme wrong 244
i x 26 Ne ignifer quidem reliquus est factus
No one was left even to carry fire 245
 T A B L E OF A D A G E S 409

I x 27
Root and branch 245
i x 28 Thracium commentum
A Thracian stratagem 246
i x 29 Romanus sedendo vincit
Rome wins by sitting still 246
i x 30 Scopum attingere
To hit the target 247
i x 31 Simia non capitur laqueo
No monkey was ever caught in a trap 247
i x 32 Largitio non habet fundum
Bounty has no bottom 247
i x 33 Inexplebile dolium
A great jar that cannot be filled 248
i x 34 Cum adsit ursus, vestigia quaeris
Confronted with the bear you go looking for his tracks 249
i x 35 Boni ad bonorum convivia ultro accedunt
Good men with good men dine, nor wait for an invitation 249
i x 36 In puteo cum canibus pugnare
To fight with dogs in a well 250
i x 37 Mihi ipsi balneum ministrabo
I'll fix my own bath 250
i x 38 Vir fugiens haud moratur lyrae strepitum
But the man who runs away won't stop to hear the fiddler play 251
i x 39 Caninum prandium
A dog's dinner 251
i x 40 Vir fugiens et denuo pugnabit
He that fights and runs away may live to fight another day 252
i x 41 Ex stipula cognoscere
To judge by the stubble 252
i x 42 Eodem cubito
With the same yardstick 253
i x 43 Monstrari digito
To be pointed out 253
i x 44 Ne altero quidem pede
Not one foot 254
i x 45 E diametro opposita. Diametro distans
Diametrically opposite. Distant by a diameter 254
i x 46 Audi quae ex animo dicuntur
Listen to a man who speaks from the heart 254
i x 47 Aut bibat aut abeat
He must either drink or quit 255
i x 48 Domi conjecturam facere
To draw a home-grown conclusion 256
i x 49 Domi habet. Domi nascitur
He has it at home. It's home-grown 256
i x 50 Confringere tesseram
To break one's token 256
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 410

1x51 Frigidam aquam suffundere

To pour cold water 257
i x 52 In senem ne quod collocaris beneficium
Never do a kindness to an old man 257
i x 53 Stultus est qui patre caeso liberis pepercit
He's a fool who kills the father and spares the children 258
i x 54
Fair-spoken 258
i x 55 Pulchre dixti. Belle narras
Fine words! A likely story! 259
i x 56 Figuli opes
A potter's wealth 259
i x 57 Lepus dormiens
A hare asleep 259
i x 58 Sero Jupiter diphtheram inspexit
Jupiter was slow looking into his records 259
i x 59 Aut mortuus est aut docet litteras
He must be either dead or teaching school 260
i x 60 Oportet testudinis carnes aut edere aut non edere
When you're offered turtle-meat, either eat or do not eat 260
i x 61 Bonae leges ex malis moribus procreantur
111 manners produce good laws 261
i x 62 Bos alienus subinde foras prospectat
A borrowed ox is always looking over the hedge 261
i x 63 Septimus bos
The seventh ox 261
i x 64 Summis naribus olfacere
To smell with the tip of one's nose 262
i x 65 Si meus ille stilus fuisset
Had I held the pen 262
i x 66 Indus elephantus haud curat culicem
An Indian elephant does not notice a gnat 262
i x 67 Lutum luto purgare
To purge away mud with mud 263
i x 68 Quocunque pedes ferent
Wherever your feet take you 263
i x 69 Cyclopica vita
To live like the Cyclops 263
i x 70 Longe lateque
Far and away 264
i x 71 Similes habent labra lactucas
Like lips like lettuce 264
i x 72 Dignum patella operculum
The cover is worthy of such a cup 265
i x 73 Si juxta claudum habites, subclaudicare disces
If you live next to a cripple, you will learn to limp 266
i x 74 Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava
Evil communications corrupt good manners 267
 TABLE OF A D A G E S 411

i x 75 Annus clibanum
Annus and the oven 268
i x 76 Magistrates virum indicat
Tis the place that shows the man 269
i x 77 Idem Accii quod Titii
Accius and Titius take alike 269
i x 78 Muta persona
A walk-on part 270
i x 79 Caput sine lingua
No tongue in your head 270
i x 80 Corpus sine pectore
Body without soul 271
i x 81 Cerite cera dignus
Fit to be registered in Caere 271
i x 82 Dii laneos habent pedes
The gods have feet of wool 271
i x 83 Zenone moderatior
As temperate as Zeno 272
i x 84 Sylosontis chlamys
Syloson's cloak 273
i x 85 Opera Sylosontis ampla regio
Plenty of room thanks to Syloson 273
i x 86 Phalaridis imperium
To rule like Phalaris 273
i x 87 Manliana imperia
Manlian orders 274
i x 88 Complurium thriorum ego strepitum audivi
I have heard the sound of many fig-leaves 275
i x 89 Ne inter apia quidem sunt
They are not even in the celery 275
i x 90 Podex lotionem vincit
The arse beats all efforts to wash it 276
i x 91 Conscientia mille testes
Conscience is a thousand witnesses 277
i x 92 Mysorum praeda
The Mysians are fair game 277
i x 93 Ultra septa transilire
To overleap the pit 277
i x 94 Psyrice facta
As they do in Psyra 278
i x 95 Bos Cyprius
A Cyprus ox 278
i x 96 Cyprio bovi merendam
Luncheon for a Cyprus ox 279
i x 97 Equum habet Sejanum
He must keep Sejus' horse 279
i x 98 Aurum habet Tolossanum
He has gold from Toulouse 279
 T A B L E OF A D A G E S 412

i x 99 Polypi caput
An octopus' head 280
i x 100 Aestate penulam deteris
You wear out your greatcoat in summer 281