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




 

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





 

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.