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.
 
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







 

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




 

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.