The Mistaken Critic, or a Discourse on the Word (1-2)

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[*]— 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.”[*] 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

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?”[*]

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[*] 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,[*] 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

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.