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




 

creature, right out of my bosom, almost, and renamed it (κίσσα—κίττα) ; he took away my pheasant
(¢décca—ddrra) along with my ducks (νήσσαι—νήτται)
and my daws (κόσσυφοι—κόττυφοι), although Aristarchus forbade him; he robbed me of not a few
bees (μέλισσα—μέλιττα), and he went to Attica and
illegally plucked Hymessus (Ὑμησσός—Ὑμηττός) out
of the very heart of her, in full view of yourselves
and the other letters. But why mention this? He
has turned me out of all Thessaly, wanting it called
Thettaly, has swept me from the sea (θάλασσα—ϑάλαττα) and “has not even spared me the beets
(σεύτλια—τεύτλια) in my garden, so that, to quote the
proverb, he hasn’t even left me a peg (πάσσαλος—πάτταλος). 
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



 

endelechy, wanting it to be called entelechy agairist
all the laws”; to Theta crying and pulling out the
hair of his head because he has had even his pumpkin
(κολοκύνθη—-κολοκύντη) taken away from him, and to
Zeta, who has lost his whistle (συρίζειν—συρίττειν) and
trumpet (σαλπίζειν—σαλπίττειν), so that he can’t even
make a sound (γρύζειν—γρύττειν) any longer. Who
could put up with all this, and what punishment
could be bad enough for this out-and-out rascal Tau ?