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. That is, he lacks even the rudiments of an education. 
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


 

course of time have made many changes in their
speech, this word especially has continued to be used
in this way always and by all of them.