You have spoken as if the letters are definitely written in order—I mean alpha first, beta second, and so on through the alphabet, until the number of competitors is completed at one of them. I grant that this is so at Olympia. But suppose we choose five letters completely at random—chi, sigma, zeta, kappa, and theta—and we write four of these twice on eight lots, but the zeta only on the ninth, which is going to show us the bye. What will you do if you find the zeta first? How can you pick out the competitor who holds it as the man for the bye, without going to all the others and finding no letter to correspond to it? You cannot, as you were just now, be sure from the alphabetical order.

Come now, look at the same question in another way. Suppose we wrote no letters on the lots, but signs and symbols, such as the many that the Egyptians use instead of letters—dog- and lion-headed men. What then? No, let us not use them, queer creatures that they are. No, let us write down simple, uniform symbols with as good a likeness as we can: human beings on two lots, two horses for another two, two cocks and two dogs, and for the ninth let the picture be a lion. Now, if at the beginning we find this lot with the picture of a lion, how will you be able to say that this is the one that gives the bye, unless you go to them all and compare whether another also has a lion?

I can give you no answer, Lycinus.