The Mistaken Critic, or a Discourse on the Word (21-25)

Well, perhaps people in Egypt do not know you, who received you when, after those marvellous performances of yours in Syria, you went into exile for the reasons which I have mentioned, pursued by the clothiers, from whom you had bought costly garments and in that way obtained your expense-money for the journey. But Alexandria knows you to be guilty of offences just as bad, and should not have been ranked second to Antioch. No, your wantonness there was more open and your licentiousness more insane, your

There is only one person who would have believed you if you denied having done anything of the sort, and would have come to your assistance—your latest employer, one of the first gentlemen of Rome. The name itself you will allow me to withhold, especially in addressing people who all know whom I mean. As to all the liberties taken by you while you were with him that he tolerated, why should I speak of them? But when he found you in the company of his young cup-bearer Oenopion,—what do you think? Would he have believed you? Not unless he was completely blind. No, he made his opinion evident by driving you out of his house at once, and indeed conducting a lustration, they say, after your departure.

And certainly Greece as well as Italy is completely filled with-your doings, and your reputation for them, and I wish you joy of your fame! . Consequently, to those who marvel at what you are now doing in Ephesus, I say (and it is true as can be) that they would not wonder if they knew your early performances. Yet you have learned something new here having to do with women.

Does it not, then, fit such a man to a hair to call him nefandous? But why in the name of Zeus should you take it upon yourselfto kiss us after such performances? In so doing you behave very offensively, especially to those who ought least of all to be so treated, your pupils, for whom it would have been enough to get only those other horrid boons from your lips—barbarity of language, harshness of voice, indistinctness,

And you, who are of that sort, laughed at others in the matter of words and phrases, when you were doing such terrible deeds! For my part, had I not known the word nefandous, I should have been ashamed, so far am I from denying that I used it. In your own case, none of us criticised you for saying “bromologous” and “tropomasthletes” and “to rhesimeter,” and “Athenio,” and “anthocracy” and “sphendicise” and “‘cheiroblime.”[*] May Hermes, Lord of Language, blot you out miserably, language and all, for the miserable wretch that you are! Where in literature do you find these treasures? Perhaps buried somewhere in the closet of some composer of dirges, full of mildew and spiders’ webs, or from the Tablets of Philaenis,[*] which you keep in hand. For you, however, and for your lips they are quite good enough.

Now that I have mentioned lips, what would you say if your tongue, summoning you to court, let us suppose, should prosecute you on a charge of injury and at the mildest, assault, saying: “Ingrate, I took you under my protection when you were poor and hard up and destitute of support, and first of all I made you successful in the theatre, making you now Ninus, now Metiochus, and then presently Achilles[*] After that, when you taught boys to spell, I kept you for a long time; and wien at length you took to delivering these speeches of yours, composed by other people, I caused you to be considered a sophist, attaching to you a reputation which had nothing at all to do with you. What charge, then, have you to bring against me, so great that you treat me in this way, imposing disgraceful tasks and abominable services? Are not my daily tasks enough, lying, committing perjury, ladling out such an amount of silliness and twaddle, or (I should say) spewing out the nastiness of those speeches? Even at night you do not allow me, unlucky that I am, to take my rest, but unaided I do everything for you, am abused, defiled, treated deliberately like a hand rather than a tongue, insulted as if I were nothing to you, overwhelmed with so many injuries. My only function is to talk; other parts have been commissioned to do such things as those. Oh if only someone had cut me out, like the tongue of Philomela. More blessed