We avoid those who are lame in the right foot, especially if we should see them early in the morning; and if anyone should see a cut priest or a eunuch or a monkey immediately upon leaving the house, he returns upon his tracks and goes back, auguring that his daily business for that day will not be successful, thanks to the bad and inauspicious omen at the start. But in the beginning of the whole year, at its door, on its first going forth, in its early morning, if one should see a profligate who commits and submits to unspeakable practices, notorious for it, broken in health, and all but called by the name of his actions themselves, a cheat, a swindler, a perjurer, a pestilence, a pillory, a pit,

That is to say, approximately, a whipping-stock, a gallowsbird; hurling into a pit was a form of capital punishment in many cities of Greece.

will not one shun him, will not one compare him to a nefandous day ?

Well, are you not such a person? You will not deny it, if I know your boldness; indeed, it seems to me that you are actually vain over the fact that you have not lost the glory of your exploits, but are conspicuous to all and have made a great noise. If, however, you should offer opposition and should deny that you are such a person, who will believe what you say? The people of your native city (for it is fitting to begin there)? No, they knew about your first source of livelihood, and how you gave yourself over to that pestilential soldier and shared his depravity, serving him in every way until, after reducing you to a torn rag, as the saying goes, he thrust you out.

And of course they remember also the effrontery that you displayed in the theatre, when you acted secondary parts for the dancers and thought you were leader of the company.

This man played parts like that of the Odysseus who, as we are told in The Dance, § 83, had his head broken by the pantomimic dancer who was enacting Ajax gone mad. Such parts did not involve dancing (cf. daoxplywy, above), but were not silent—a point made perfectly clear by another allusion to them in § 25 of this piece. Three of the réles in which Lucian’s butt appeared are named there; Ninus, Metiochus, and Achilles. See the note on that passage.

Nobody might enter the theatre before you, or indicate the name of the play ; you were sent in first, very properly arrayed, wearing golden sandals and the robe of a tyrant, to beg for favour from the audience, winning wreaths and making your exit amid applause, for already you were held in esteem by them. But now you are a public speaker and a lecturer! So those people, if ever they hear such a thing as that about you, believe they see two suns, as in the tragedy,

Euripides, Bacchae, 913.

and twin cities of Thebes, and everyone is quick to say, “That man who then—, and after that—?” Therefore you do well in not going there at all or living in their neighbourhood, but of your own accord remaining in exile from your native city, thoughit is neither “bad in winter” not “oppressive in summer,”

It was therefore unlike Ascra, the home of Hesiod, which was both. Works and Days, 640.

but the fairest and largest of all the cities in Phoenicia. To be put to the proof, to associate with those who know and remember your doings of old, is truly as bad as a halter in your sight. And yet, why do I make that silly statement? What would you consider shameful, of all that goes beyond the limit? I am told that you have a great estate there—that ill-conditioned tower, to which the jar of the man of Sinope

More familiar to us as the tub of Diogenes.

would be the great hall of Zeus !

In view of all this, you can never by any means persuade your fellow-citizens not to think you the most odious man in the world, a common disgrace to the whole city.

Could you, though, perhaps win over the other inhabitants of Syria to vote for you if you said that you had done nothing bad or culpable in your life? Heracles! Antioch was an eye-witness of your misconduct with that youth from Tarsus whom you took aside—but to unveil these matters is no doubt shameful for me. However, it is known about and remembered by those who surprised the pair of you then and saw him doing—you know what, unless you are absolutely destitute of memory.

Well, perhaps people in Egypt do not know you, who received you when, after those marvellous performances of yours in Syria, you went into exile for the reasons which I have mentioned, pursued by the clothiers, from whom you had bought costly garments and in that way obtained your expense-money for the journey. But Alexandria knows you to be guilty of offences just as bad, and should not have been ranked second to Antioch. No, your wantonness there was more open and your licentiousness more insane, your reputation for these things was greater, and your head was uncloaked under all circumstances.

Cf. Petronius, 7: operui caput.

There is only one person who would have believed you if you denied having done anything of the sort, and would have come to your assistance—your latest employer, one of the first gentlemen of Rome. The name itself you will allow me to withhold, especially in addressing people who all know whom I mean. As to all the liberties taken by you while you were with him that he tolerated, why should I speak of them? But when he found you in the company of his young cup-bearer Oenopion,—what do you think ? Would he have believed you? Not unless he was completely blind. No, he made his opinion evident by driving you out of his house at once, and indeed conducting a lustration, they say, after your departure.

And certainly Greece as well as Italy is completely filled with-your doings, and your reputation for them, and I wish you joy of your fame! . Consequently, to those who marvel at what you are now doing in Ephesus, I say (and it is true as can be) that they would not wonder if they knew your early performances. Yet you have learned something new here having to do with women.

Does it not, then, fit such a man to a hair to call him nefandous? But why in the name of Zeus should you take it upon yourselfto kiss us after such performances ? In so doing you behave very offensively, especially to those who ought least of all to be so treated, your pupils, for whom it would have been enough to get only those other horrid boons from your lips—barbarity of language, harshness of voice, indistinctness, confusedness, complete tunelessness, and the like, but to kiss you—forfend it, Averter of Ill! Better kiss an asp or a viper; then the risk is a bite and a pain which the doctor cures when you call him. But from the venom of your kiss, who could approach victims or altars? What god would listen to one’s prayer? How many bowls of holy water, how many rivers are required?

And you, who are of that sort, laughed at others in the matter of words and phrases, when you were doing such terrible deeds! For my part, had I not known the word nefandous, I should have been ashamed, so far am I from denying that I used it. In your own case, none of us criticised you for saying “bromologous” and “tropomasthletes” and “to rhesimeter,” and “Athenio,” and “anthocracy” and “sphendicise” and “‘cheiroblime.”

Except for rhesimeter (to speak for a measured time, as in court), which Lucian’s Lexiphanes uses (Lez., 9), these words are found only here. Their meaning is : bromologous : stench-mouthed.

tropomasthletes: oily-mannered fellows.

athenio: to yearn for Athens.

anthocracy: apparently, rule of the “flower”; i.e., the select few. sphendicise: to sling, very likely in the sense, to throw.

cheiroblime : to handle.

May Hermes, Lord of Language, blot you out miserably, language and all, for the miserable wretch that you are! Where in literature do you find these treasures? Perhaps buried somewhere in the closet of some composer of dirges, full of mildew and spiders’ webs, or from the Tablets of Philaenis,

The Tablets of Philaenis are frequently mentioned as an ars amatoria. An epigram by Aeschrion (Anth. Pal., VII, 345) says that it was not written by the woman whose name it bore, but by the sophist Polycrates. The book is therefore of the time of Polycrates, the beginning of the fourth century B.C.

which you keep in hand. For you, however, and for your lips they are quite good enough.