Judicium vocalium

[In the year that Aristarchus of Phalerum was archon, on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion, Sigma brought suit against Tau before the seven Vowels for assault and robbery, alleging that he had stolen all the words that are pronounced mith double tau.]

Vowels of the jury, as long as the wrongs that I underwent at the hands of this fellow Tau through his misusing my property and establishing himself where he had no business were but slight, I did not take the injury to heart, and I ignored some of the things that I heard because of the equable temper which, as you know, I maintain toward you and the other letters. But now that he has come to such a pitch of self-seeking and lawlessness that, not content with what I have repeatedly let pass in silence, he is trying to wrest still more from me, I am compelled to call him to account before you, who know both sides. Besides all this, I am more than a little afraid of my own ejection; for by making greater and

It is fitting, then, that you who are now on the jury and all the other letters, too, should be on your guard against his pernicious activity, for if anyone who wants to may work his way out of his own place into someone else’s, and if you Vowels, without whom nothing can be written that means anything, are going to permit this, I do not see how society is to keep the orthodox distinctions of rank which were fixed for it in the beginning. But I do not think you will ever reach such a pitch of negligence and carelessness as to permit anything unjust, and even if you do shirk your duty I cannot overlook my wrongs. If only the others had been thwarted in their audacity long ago, when they first began to be law-breakers!

In that case, Lambda would not be at war with Rho, disputing the possession of pumice-stone (κίσηλις—κίσηρις) and headaches (κεφαλαλγάα—κεφαλαργία), nor would Gamma be quarreiling with Kappa and again and again almost coming to blows with him at the fuller’s (γναφεῖον—κναφεῖον) over pillows (γνάφαλλα—κνάφαλλα), and he would have been prevented from fighting with Lambda, too, openly stealing from him with some difficulty (μόλις—μόγις) and slyly filching without any doubt (μάλιστα— μάγιστα[*](The word μάλιστα may have been pronounced μάγιστα by the common people at some time or other. I know of no evidence that it was ever so written.)); and the rest would also have refrained from beginning illegal confusion. Surely it is best for each of us to stay in the place which belongs to

one has no right is the act of a law-breaker.

The man who first framed these laws for us, be he the islander Cadmus[*](The story usually ran that Cadmus brought sixteen letters from Phoenicia to Greece, and that four were added to these by Palamedes and four more by Simonides (not the poet, but a physician of Syracuse). Cadmus is here called an islander because some versions of his story made him come from Tyre, not Sidon.) or Nauplius’ son Palamedes(and some attribute this provision to Simonides), did not determine which of us should be first and which second solely by putting us in the order in which our places are now fixed, but they also decided the qualities and powers that each of us has. To you, jurors, they gave the greatest honour, because you can be sounded by yourselves; to the Semivowels they gave the next highest, because they need something put with them before they can be heard ; and they prescribed that the last place of all should belong to nine letters which have no sound at all by themselves. [*](The Greek "mutes” are nine in number. Sigma, as a semivowel, claims higher rank.) The Vowels should enforce these laws.

But this Tau here (I cannot call him by a worse name than his own), who, as Heaven is my witness, could not have made himself heard unless two of your number, Alpha and Upsilon, stout fellows and good to look on, had come to his aid—this Tau, I say, has had the audacity to injure me beyond all precedent in acts of violence, not only ousting me from my hereditary nouns and verbs, but banishing me likewise from conjunctions and prepositions all at once, so that I cannot stand his monstrous greed any longer. Where and how he began it, you shall now hear.

Once I made a visit to Cybelus, which is rather an agreeable little village, settled, the story has it, by . Athenians. I took with me sturdy Rho, the best of ~ neighbours, and stopped at the house of a comic poet called Lysimachus, evidently a Boeotian by descent, though he would have it that he came from the heart of Attica. [*](Lysimachus is called a Boeotian because to say s for t was a characteristic of the Boeotian dialect.) It was at that foreigner’s that I detected the encroachments of this fellow Tau. As long as it was but little that he attempted, venturing to mispronounce four (τέσσαρα—τέτταρα) and forty (τεσσαράκοντα—τετταράκοντα), and also to lay hands on to-day (σήμερον—τήμερον), and the like and say they were his own, thus depriving me of my kith and kin among the letters, I thought it was just his way and could put up with what I heard, and was not much annoyed over my losses.

But when he went on and ventured to mispronounce tin (κασσίτερον—καττίτερον) and shoe-leather (κάσσυμα—κάττυμα), and tar (πίσσα—πίττα), and then, losing all sense of shame, to miscall queens (βασίλισσα—βασίλιττα), I am uncommonly annoyed and hot about all this, for I am afraid that in course of time someone may miscall a spade ![*](An allusion to the English saying is here substituted for a similar allusion to its Greek equivalent, "to call a fig a fig” (τὰ σῦκα σῦκα ὀνομάζειν).) Pardon me, in the name of Heaven, for my righteous anger, discouraged as I am and bereft of partisans. I am not risking a trifling, every-day stake, for he is robbing me of acquaintances and companions among the letters. He snatched a blackbird, a talkative

That I am a much-enduring letter, you yourselves can testify, for I never brought Zeta to book for taking my emerald (σμάραγδος—ζὡμάραγδος) and robbing me utterly of Smyrna, [*](Pronounced, as it is to-day, Zmyrna, but written usually with s.) nor Xi for overstepping every treaty (συνθήκη—ξυνθήκη) with Thucydides the historian (συγγραφεύς—ξυγγραφεύς) as his ally (ύμμαχος—ξύμμαχος): And when my neighbour ho was ill I forgave him not only for transplanting - my myrtles (μυρσίνη—-μυῤῥίνη) into his own garden, but also for cracking my crown (κόρση—κόρρη) in a fit of insanity.

That is my disposition, but this Tau— just see how bad-natured he is toward the others, too! To show that he has not let the rest of the letters alone, but has injured Delta and Theta and Zeta and almost all the alphabet, please call to the stand the injured parties in person. Listen, Vowels of the jury, to Delta, who says: “He robbed me of

Not only does he injure his own kinsfolk of the alphabet, but he has already attacked the human race also; for he does not allow them to talk straight with their tongues. Indeed , jurymen—for speaking of men has suddenly put mein mind of the tongue—he has banished me from this member too, as far as in him lay, and makes glotta out of glossa. O Tau, thou very plague o’ the tongue! But I shall attack him another time and advise men of his sins against them, in trying to fetter their speech, as it were, and to mangle it. A man on seeing something pretty (καλόν) wants to call it so, but Tau interferes and makes him say something else (ταλόν), [*](One would expect a pun here, but ταλόν is not in the dictionaries.) wanting to have precedence in everything. Again, another is talking about a palm-branch (κλῆμα), but Tau, the very criminal (τλήμων), turns the palm-branch into a crime (τλῆμα). And not only does he injure ordinary people, but even the Great King, in whose honour, they say, even land and sea give place and depart from their own natures—even he is plotted against by Tau, who instead of Cyrus makes him out something of a cheese (Κῦρος—τυρός).

That is the way he injures mankind as far as their