The Greek Questions (15-19)

What is the wooden dog among the Locrians?

Locrus was the son of Physcius, the son of Amphictyon. The son of Locrus and Cabyê was Opus. His father quarrelled with Opus and taking many of the citizens with him he went to seek an oracle concerning a colony. The god told him to found a city where he should chance to be bitten by a wooden dog, and, as he was crossing to the other sea, he trod upon a dog-brier.[*] Greatly troubled by the wound, he spent several days there, during which he explored the country and founded the cities Physcus and Oeantheia and the other cities which the so-called Ozolian Locrians inhabited.

Some say that the Locrians are called Ozolian because of Nessus; others say that it is because of the serpent Python, since their bodies were washed up

by the sea and rotted away in the country of the Locrians. But some say that these men wear fleeces and goatskins and for the most part spend their time with herds of goats, and thus became evil-smelling.[*] But some, on the contrary, assert that, since the country has many flowers, it acquired its name from sweet odour. Among these is also Archytas[*] of Amphissa, for he has written thus:

Lovely Macyna, wreathed with clusters of grapes and fragrant with perfume.

What is it that the Megarians call aphabroma?

When Nisus, from whom Nisaea acquired its name, was king, he took a wife from Boeotia, Habrotê, daughter of Onchestus, the sister of Megareus, a woman who, as it appears, was both exceptionally intelligent and remarkably discreet. When she died, the Megarians mourned her with one accord, and Nisus, wishing that her memory and her repute should be established everlastingly, ordered the women of the city to wear the garment that she used to wear; and because of her he called the garment aphabroma. Even the god seems to have furthered the repute of this woman, for often, when the Megarian women wished to make a change in their raiment, he prevented them by an oracle.

What is the spear-friend?

In days of old the Megarid used to be settled iri village communities with the citizens divided into five groups. They were called Heraeïs, Piraeïs,

Megareis, Cynosureis, and Tripodiscioi. Although the Corinthians brought about a civil war among them, for the Corinthians were ever plotting to get Megara under their control, none the less, because of their fair-mindedness, they conducted their wars in a civilized and a kinsmanly way. For no one did any harm at all to the men working in the fields, and when anyone was captured, he but needed to pay a certain specified ransom; this his captors received after they had set him free, and did not collect it earlier; but he who took a prisoner conducted the man to his house and, after sharing with him salt and food, sent him home. He, accordingly, who brought his ransom, was highly regarded and continued thenceforward to be a friend of his captor; and, as a consequence of his capture by the spear, he was now called spear-friend. But any one who failed to pay the ransom was held in disrepute as dishonest and faithless, not only among his enemies, but also among his fellow-citizens.

What is return-interest?[*]

When the Megarians had expelled Theagenes,[*] their despot, for a short time they were sober and sensible in their government. But later when the popular leaders poured a full and heady draught of freedom for them, as Plato[*] says, they were completely corrupted and, among their shocking acts of misconduct toward the wealthy, the poor would enter their homes and insist upon being entertained and banqueted sumptuously. But if they did not receive what they demanded, they would treat all the household with violence and insult. Finally they enacted a decree whereby they received back again the

interest which they chanced to have paid to their creditors, calling the measure return-interest.

Which is the Anthedon to which the utterance of the prophetic priestess refers:

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon,

for Anthedon in Boeotia is not rich in wine?

In days of old they used to call Calaureia by the name of Eirenê, from the woman Eirenê who, as legend has it, was born of Poseidon and Melantheia, the daughter of the Alpheius. But later, when the companions of Anthus and Hypera settled there, they called the island Anthedonia and Hypereia. According to Aristotle[*] the oracle ran as follows:

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon,

No, nor in Hypera holy; for wine without lees thou didst drink there.

This, then, is Aristotle’s version. But Mnasigeiton says that Anthus, the brother of Hypera, disappeared from home while he was still a child, and that Hypera, while she was wandering about in search of him, came to Pherae to the house of Acastus, where it chanced that Anthus was the slave appointed to be cupbearer. While they were feasting the boy recognized his sister, as he was bearing her cup to her, and said to her softly

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon.