He thought he was directing these remarks at our friend, and he subjected ‘nefandous’ to a great deal of laughter; but he had unwittingly brought against himself the uttermost proof of his want of education. Under these circumstances he who sent me in to you in advance has written this composition to demonstrate that the renowned sophist does not know expressions common to all the Greeks, which even men in the workshops and the bazaars would know.”

Thus far Exposure. In my own turn (for I myself have now taken over the rest of the show), I might fittingly play the part of the Delphic tripod and tell what you did in your own country, what in Palestine, what in Egypt, what in Phoenicia and Syria; then, in due order, in Greece and Italy, and on top of it all, what you are now doing at Ephesus, which is the extremity of your recklessness and the culminating point and crowning glory of your character. Now that, in the words of the proverb,

If people of Troy attend tragedies, they are bound to hear about the misfortunes of the Trojans.

you who live in Troy have paid to see tragedians, it is a fitting occasion for you to hear your own misadventures.

But no! not yet. First about that ‘ nefandous.’

Tell me, in the name of Aphrodite Pandemus and the Genetyllides

Genetyllis was originally a goddess of childbirth. Hesychius says that she resembled Hecate, received sacrifices of dogs, and was of foreign origin. But in Attica, where she was worshipped in the temple of another similar divinity, Colias, the identities of the two were apparently so thoroughly merged that they could both be called either Genetyllides or Coliades, and both were more or less blended with Aphrodite.

and Cybebe, in what respect did you think the word nefandous objectionable and fit to be laughed at? Oh, because it did not belong to the Greeks, but had somehow thrust its way in among them from their intercourse with Celts or Thracians or Scyths; wherefore you—for you know everything that pertains to the Athenians—excluded it at once and banished it from the Greek world, and your laughter was because I committed a barbarism and used a foreign idiom and went beyond the Attic bounds !

“Come now, what else is as well established on Athenian soil as that word?” people would say who are better informed than you about such matters. It would be easier for you to prove Erechtheus and Cecrops foreigners and invaders of Attica, than to show that ‘ nefandous ’ is not at home and indigenous in Attica. There are many things which they designate in the same way as everybody else, but they, and they alone, designate as nefandous a day which is vile, abominable, inauspicious, useless, and like you.

There now! I have already taught you in passing what they mean by nefandous!

When official business is not transacted, introduction of lawsuits is not permissible, sacrifice of victims is not performed, and, in general, nothing is done that requires good omens, that day is nefandous.

The custom was introduced among different peoples in different ways; either they were defeated in great battles and subsequently established that those days on which they had undergone such misfortunes should be useless and invalid for their customary transactions, or, indeed—but it is inopportune, perhaps, and by now unseasonable to try to alter an old man’s education and reinstruct him in such matters when he does not know even what precedes them.

That is, he lacks even the rudiments of an education.

It can hardly be that this is all that remains, and that if you learn it, we shall have you fully informed! Nonsense, man! Not to know those other expressions which are off the beaten path and obscure to ordinary folk is pardonable ; but even if you wished, you could not say nefandous in any other way, for that is everyone’s sole and only word for it.

“Well and good,” someone will say, “but even in the case of time-honoured words, only some of them are to be employed, and not others, which are unfamiliar to the public, that we may not disturb the wits and wound the ears of our hearers.” My dear sir, perhaps as far as you are concerned I was wrong to say that to you about yourself; yes, yes, I should have followed the folk-ways of the Paphlagonians or the Cappadocians or the Bactrians in conversing with you, that you might fully understand what was being said and it might be pleasing to your ears. But Greeks, I take it, should be addressed in the Greek tongue. Moreover, although even the Athenians in course of time have made many changes in their speech, this word especially has continued to be used in this way always and by all of them.

I should have named those who have employed the word before our time, were I not certain to disturb you in this way also, by reciting names of poets and rhetoricians and historians that would be foreign to you, and beyond your ken. No, I shall not name those who have used it, for they are known to all; but do you point me out one of the ancients who has not employed the word and your statue shall be set up, as the saying goes, in gold at Olympia. Indeed, any old man, full of years, who is unacquainted with such expressions is not, I think, even aware that the city of Athens is in Attica, Corinth at the Isthmus, and Sparta in the Peloponnese.

It remains, perhaps, for you to say that you knew the word, but criticised the inappropriate use of it. Come now, on this point too I shall respond to you fittingly, and you must pay attention, unless not knowing matters very little to you. The ancients were before me in hurling many such taunts at the like of you, each at the men of their day; for in that time too there were, of course, dirty fellows, disgusting traits, and ungentle dispositions. One man called a certain person “Buskin,” comparing his principles, which were adaptable, to that kind of footwear ; another called a man “Rampage” because he was a turbulent orator and disturbed the assembly, and another someone else “Seventh Day” because he acted in the assemblies as children do on the seventh day of the month, joking and making fun and turning the earnestness of the people into jest.

The nickname “Buskin” was given to Theramenes. “Seventh Day” cannot be identified, and the other nickname is corrupted in the Greek text.

Will you not, then, in the name of Adonis, permit me to compare an utterly vile fellow, familiar with every form of iniquity, to a disreputable and inauspicious day ?

Stripped of its manifest disingenuousness (for comparison includes both simile and metaphor, and the use of simile would have been entirely unexceptionable), this amounts to defending what he said as Ry legitimate use of metaphor, like calling a man “Buskin.’? The argument would be valid if he had called the man “Apophras hémera!’’ But since we may safely say that he addressed him or spoke about him simply as “apophras,” the examples are not parallel, despite the speciousness of “hebdomas” (“Seventh Day”), formally identical with “apophras.” The one locution, however, is metaphor, because “day” is understood; in the other, that is not the case, and instead of metaphor what we have to do with is an application of the adjective grammatically incorrect and really justifiable only by pleading previous use—which might have been done by adducing Eupolis (see § 1, note).