Pseudologista

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

That you did not know the word nefandous is surely clear to everyone. When I had said of you that you were like a nefandous day—for I well remember comparing your character to a day of that kind[*](As Lucian explains below (12-13), an apophras hémera, or “nefandous day,’’ like a dies nefastus among the Latins, was a day of ill-omen on which no courts were held and no business affairs transacted. But the fact that a day can be called apophras does not in itself justify calling a man apophras, particularly as the word is of the feminine gender; and that is what Lucian obviously did (cf. § 16, and especially § 23). It might have been defended by citing the comedian Eupolis (Fr. Incert., 832M., 309K.): ‘On going out, I chanced to meet a wight nefandous (avOpwaos dmod¢pds) with a fickle eye.” Either Lucian did not know the passage, or perhaps he thought that to reply in that way would be too like a Lexiphanes. Anyhow, he elected to infuriate his critic and divert his public by being transparently disingenuous and mendacious, and entirely evading the real issue. What his talk of “comparing” amounts to is commented on in the note on § 16. )— how could you, with reference to that word, have made the stricture that I was barbarous in my speech, unless you were wholly unacquainted withit? I shall teach you presently what nefandous means ; but I say to you now what Archilochus once said: “You have caught a cicada by the wing.”[*](Bergk, frg. 143. ) Have you ever heard of a writer of iambic verses named Archilochus, a Parian by birth, a man absolutely independent and given to frankness, who did not hesitate at all to use insulting language, no matter how much pain he was

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going to inflict upon those who would be exposed to the gall of his iambics? Well, when he was abused by someone of that type, he said that the man had caught a cicada by the wing, likening himself, Archilochus, to the cicada, which by nature is vociferous, even without any compulsion, but when it is caught by the wing, cries out still more lustily. “Unlucky man,” said he, “what is your idea in provoking against yourself a vociferous poet, in search of motives and themes for his iambics?”[*](See G. L. Hendrickson, “Archilochus and Catullus,’’ Class. Philol. (1925), 155-157. With the aid of Catullus 40, he is able to identify the poem from which Lucian quotes with the one from which we have the fragment addressed to “Father Lycambes” (Bergk, 88), and to reconstruct part of the context. )

In these same terms I threaten you, not likening myself to Archilochus (how could I? I am far indeed from that!), but aware that you have done in your life hundreds of things which deserve iambics. Even Archilochus himself, I think, would not have been able to cope with them, though he invited both Simonides[*](Of Amorgos; his name is sometimes spelt Semonides, but not in the MSS of Lucian. ) and Hipponax to take a hand with him in treating just one of your bad traits, so childish in every sort of iniquity have you made Orodocides and Lycambes and Bupalus,[*](Orodocides was evidently the butt of Semonides; this is the only reference to him, and the name is not wholly certain (Horodoecides N). Lycambes was satirised by Archilochus, and Bupalus by Hipponax. ) their butts, appear. Probably it was one of the gods who brought the smile to your lips on that occasion at my use of the word nefandous, in order that you might become more notorious than a Scythian for being absolutely uneducated and ignorant of these obvious matters of common knowledge, and that you might afford a reasonable excuse for attacking you to an independent

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man who knows you thoroughly from home and will not refrain from telling—I should say, heralding abroad—all that you do by night and by day even now, in addition to those many incidents of your past.

And yet it is idle, no doubt, and superfluous to deal frankly with you by way of education; for in the first place you yourself could never improve in response to my censure, any more than a tumble-bug could be persuaded not to roll those balls of his any longer, when once he has become used to them.[*](On the habits of the tumble-bug, or dung-beetle, soe the beginning of the Peace of Aristophanes. ) In the second place, I do not believe that anyone exists who still is ignorant of your brazen performances and of the sins that you, an old man, have committed against yourself. You are not to that extent secure or unobserved in your iniquity. There is no need of anyone to strip away your lion’s skin that you may be revealed a donkey, unless perhaps someone has just come to us from the Hyperboreans, or is sufficiently Cymaean[*](Cf. Runaways, 13. ) not to know, as soon as he sees you, that you are the most unbridled of all asses, without waiting to hear you bray. Your doings have been noised abroad so long a time, so far ahead of me, so universally and so repeatedly; and you have no slight reputation for them, surpassing Ariphrades, surpassing the Sybarite Hemitheon, surpassing the notorious Chian, Bastas, that adept in similar matters.[*](Ariphrades was an Athenian whom Aristophanes pilloried for perverted relations with women, The Sybarite Hemitheon (or Minthon ; see the critical note) is alluded to as the author of an obscene book in the Ignorant Book-Collector, 23 (III, 203) and perhaps also in Ovid (Trist., II, 417 : qui composuit nuper Sybaritica), but the name is not given there. Bastas was a nickname applied to Democritus of Chios, a musician, by Eupolis in the Baptae (Fr. 81 Kock). )

Nevertheless, I must speak of them, even if I shall

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seem to be telling stale news, in order that I may not bear the blame of being the only one who does not know about them. But no!

We must callin one of Menander’s Prologues, Exposure, a god devoted to Truth and Frankness, by no means the least notable of the characters that appear on the stage, disliked only by you and your sort, who fear his tongue because he knows everything and tells in plain language all that he knows about you.[*](We do not know the play in which Exposure appeared as prologue and have no other information in the matter. ) It would indeed be delightful if he should prove willing to oblige us by coming forward and telling the spectators the entire argument of the play.

Come then, Exposure, best of prologues and divinities, take care to inform the audience plainly that we have not resorted to this public utterance gratuitously, or in a quarrelsome spirit, or, as the proverb has it, with unwashen feet,[*](Zenobius, I, 95: “going up to the roof with unwashed feet”; unexplained by the paroemiographers or Suidas. It must have to do with the use of the roof as a sleeping-place, ) but to vindicate a grievance of our own as well as those of the public, hating the man for his depravity. Say only this, and present a clear exposition, and then, giving us your blessing, take yourself off, and leave the rest to us, for we shall copy you and expose the greater part of his career so thoroughly that in point of truth and frankness you can find no fault with us. But do not sing my praises to them, Exposure dear, and do not prematurely pour out the bald truth about these traits of his; for it is not fitting, as you are a god, that the words which describe matters so abominable should come upon your lips.

“This self-styled sophist” (Prologue is now speaking) “once came to Olympia, purposing to deliver

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to those who should attend the festival a speech which he had written long before. The subject of his composition was the exclusion of Pythagoras (by one of the Athenians, I suppose) from participation in the Eleusinian mysteries as a barbarian, because Pythagoras himself was in the habit of saying that before being Pythagoras he had once been Euphorbus.[*](Euphorbus was one of Homer’s Trojans. See Lucian’s Cock, 13, 17, and 20 (II, pp. 204-214). ) In truth, his speech was after the pattern of Aesop’s jackdaw, cobbled up out of motley feathers from others. Wanting, of course, to have it thought that he was not repeating a stale composition but making up offhand what really came from his book, he requested one of his familiars (it was the one from Patras, who has so much business in the courts) to select Pythagoras for him when he asked for subjects to talk about. The man did so, and prevailed upon the audience to hear that speech about Pythagoras.

In the sequel, he was very unconvincing in his delivery, glibly reciting (as was natural) what he had thought out long before and learned by heart, no matter how much his shamelessness, standing by him, defended him, lent him ahelping hand, and aided him in the struggle. There was a great deal of laughter from his hearers, some of whom, by looking from time to time at that man from Patras, indicated that they had not failed to detect his part in the improvisation, while others, recognising the expressions themselves, throughout the performance continued to have that as their sole occupation, testing each other to find out how good their memories were at distinguishing which one of those sophists who achieved fame a little before our time for their

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so-called “exercises” was the author of each expression.

“Among all these, among those who laughed, was the writer of these words. And why should not he laugh at a piece of cheek so manifest and unconvincing and shameless? So, somehow or other, being one who cannot control his laughter, when the speaker had attuned his voice to song, as he thought, and was intoning a regular dirge over Pythagoras, our author, seeing an ass trying to play the lyre, as the saying goes, burst into a very melodious cachinnation, and the other turned and saw him. That created a state of war between them, and the recent affair sprang from it.

It was the beginning of the year, or rather, the second day after the New Year,[*](New Year’s Day is called in the Greek “the great New- Moon-Day.” The day of the festival on which the incident occurred was January third (a.d. III non. Ian.) For the vow of the consuls on that day, two gilded bulls for the health of the Imperial family, see Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, pp. 100-102. ) the day on which the Romans, by an ancient custom, make prayers in person for the entire yearand holdsacrifices, following ceremonies which King Numaestablished for them; they are convinced that on that day beyond all others the gods give ear to those who pray. Well, on that festival and high holiday, the man who burst out laughing then in Olympia at the suppositious Pythagoras saw this contemptible cheat approaching, this presenter of the speeches of others. It happened that he knew his character, too, and all his wantonness and unclean living, both what he was said to do, and what he had been caught doing. So he said to

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one of his friends: ‘We must give a wide berth to this ill-met sight, whose appearance is likely to make the most delightful of all days nefandous for us.’[*](“Exposure,” however devoted to Truth and Frankness, here indulges in prevarication so obvious that its purpose is clearly to exasperate Lucian’s victim rather than to impose upon his public. To say that a man’s appearance would make the day apophras is not saying that he was “like that kind of day,” let alone calling him apophras. See the note on § 1, above, and that on § 16, below. )

“On hearing that, the sophist at once laughed at the word nefandous as if it were strange and alien to the Greeks, and paid the man back, in his own estimation, at least, for the laughter of that former time, saying to all: ‘Nefandous! What, pray, is that? A fruit, or a herb, or a utensil? Can it be something to eat ordrink? For my part I have never heard the word, and should never be able to guess what it means.’