It remains, perhaps, for you to say that you knew the word, but criticised the inappropriate use of it. Come now, on this point too I shall respond to you fittingly, and you must pay attention, unless not knowing matters very little to you. The ancients were before me in hurling many such taunts at the like of you, each at the men of their day; for in that time too there were, of course, dirty fellows, disgusting traits, and ungentle dispositions. One man called a certain person “Buskin,” comparing his principles, which were adaptable, to that kind of footwear; another called a man “Rampage” because he was a turbulent orator and disturbed the assembly, and another someone else “Seventh Day” because he acted in the assemblies as children do on the seventh day of the month, joking and making fun and turning the earnestness of the people into jest.

The nickname “Buskin” was given to Theramenes. “Seventh Day” cannot be identified, and the other nickname is corrupted in the Greek text.

Will you not, then, in the name of Adonis, permit me to compare an utterly vile fellow, familiar with every form of iniquity, to a disreputable and inauspicious day?

Stripped of its manifest disingenuousness (for comparison includes both simile and metaphor, and the use of simile would have been entirely unexceptionable), this amounts to defending what he said as Ry legitimate use of metaphor, like calling a man “Buskin.’? The argument would be valid if he had called the man “Apophras hémera!’’ But since we may safely say that he addressed him or spoke about him simply as “apophras,” the examples are not parallel, despite the speciousness of “hebdomas” (“Seventh Day”), formally identical with “apophras.” The one locution, however, is metaphor, because “day” is understood; in the other, that is not the case, and instead of metaphor what we have to do with is an application of the adjective grammatically incorrect and really justifiable only by pleading previous use—which might have been done by adducing Eupolis (see § 1, note).

We avoid those who are lame in the right foot, especially if we should see them early in the morning; and if anyone should see a cut priest or a eunuch or a monkey immediately upon leaving the house, he returns upon his tracks and goes back, auguring that his daily business for that day will not be successful, thanks to the bad and inauspicious omen at the start. But in the beginning of the whole year, at its door, on its first going forth, in its early morning, if one should see a profligate who commits and submits to unspeakable practices, notorious for it, broken in health, and all but called by the name of his actions themselves, a cheat, a swindler, a perjurer, a pestilence, a pillory, a pit,

That is to say, approximately, a whipping-stock, a gallowsbird; hurling into a pit was a form of capital punishment in many cities of Greece.

will not one shun him, will not one compare him to a nefandous day?

Well, are you not such a person? You will not deny it, if I know your boldness; indeed, it seems to me that you are actually vain over the fact that you have not lost the glory of your exploits, but are conspicuous to all and have made a great noise. If, however, you should offer opposition and should deny that you are such a person, who will believe what you say? The people of your native city (for it is fitting to begin there)? No, they knew about your first source of livelihood, and how you gave yourself over to that pestilential soldier and shared his depravity, serving him in every way until, after reducing you to a torn rag, as the saying goes, he thrust you out.

And of course they remember also the effrontery that you displayed in the theatre, when you acted secondary parts for the dancers and thought you were leader of the company.

This man played parts like that of the Odysseus who, as we are told in The Dance, § 83, had his head broken by the pantomimic dancer who was enacting Ajax gone mad. Such parts did not involve dancing (cf. daoxplywy, above), but were not silent—a point made perfectly clear by another allusion to them in § 25 of this piece. Three of the réles in which Lucian’s butt appeared are named there; Ninus, Metiochus, and Achilles. See the note on that passage.

Nobody might enter the theatre before you, or indicate the name of the play; you were sent in first, very properly arrayed, wearing golden sandals and the robe of a tyrant, to beg for favour from the audience, winning wreaths and making your exit amid applause, for already you were held in esteem by them. But now you are a public speaker and a lecturer! So those people, if ever they hear such a thing as that about you, believe they see two suns, as in the tragedy,

Euripides, Bacchae, 913.

and twin cities of Thebes, and everyone is quick to say, “That man who then—, and after that—?” Therefore you do well in not going there at all or living in their neighbourhood, but of your own accord remaining in exile from your native city, thoughit is neither “bad in winter” not “oppressive in summer,”

It was therefore unlike Ascra, the home of Hesiod, which was both. Works and Days, 640.

but the fairest and largest of all the cities in Phoenicia. To be put to the proof, to associate with those who know and remember your doings of old, is truly as bad as a halter in your sight. And yet, why do I make that silly statement? What would you consider shameful, of all that goes beyond the limit? I am told that you have a great estate there—that ill-conditioned tower, to which the jar of the man of Sinope

More familiar to us as the tub of Diogenes.

would be the great hall of Zeus!

In view of all this, you can never by any means persuade your fellow-citizens not to think you the most odious man in the world, a common disgrace to the whole city.

Could you, though, perhaps win over the other inhabitants of Syria to vote for you if you said that you had done nothing bad or culpable in your life? Heracles! Antioch was an eye-witness of your misconduct with that youth from Tarsus whom you took aside—but to unveil these matters is no doubt shameful for me. However, it is known about and remembered by those who surprised the pair of you then and saw him doing—you know what, unless you are absolutely destitute of memory.