The Mistaken Critic, or a Discourse on the Word (13-14)

The custom was introduced among different peoples in different ways; either they were defeated in great battles and subsequently established that those days on which they had undergone such misfortunes should be useless and invalid for their customary transactions, or, indeed—but it is inopportune, perhaps, and by now unseasonable to try to alter an old man’s education and reinstruct him in such matters when he does not know even what precedes them.[*] It can hardly be that this is all that remains, and that if you learn it, we shall have you fully informed! Nonsense, man! Not to know those other expressions which are off the beaten path and obscure to ordinary folk is pardonable; but even if you wished, you could not say nefandous in any other way, for that is everyone’s sole and only word for it.

“Well and good,” someone will say, “but even in the case of time-honoured words, only some of them are to be employed, and not others, which are unfamiliar to the public, that we may not disturb the wits and wound the ears of our hearers.” My dear sir, perhaps as far as you are concerned I was wrong to say that to you about yourself; yes, yes, I should have followed the folk-ways of the Paphlagonians or the Cappadocians or the Bactrians in conversing with you, that you might fully understand what was being said and it might be pleasing to your ears. But Greeks, I take it, should be addressed in the Greek tongue. Moreover, although even the Athenians in