The Mistaken Critic, or a Discourse on the Word (25-26)

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

In Heaven’s name, if your tongue should say that, acquiring a voice of its own, and getting your beard to join in the accusation, what response would you make? The reply, manifestly, which you made recently to Glaucus when he rebuked you just after a performance, that by this means you had speedily become famous and known to everyone, and how could you have become so notorious by making speeches? It was highly desirable, you said, to be renowned and celebrated in any way whatsoever. And then you might tell it your many nicknames, acquired in different nations. In that connection I marvel at it that you were distressed when you heard ‘ nefandous ’ but were not angry over those names.