In Syria you
were called Rhododaphne; the reason, by Athena,
I am ashamed to tell. So as far as lies in me, it will
still remain a mystery. In Palestine, you were
Thorn-hedge, with reference, no doubt, to the
prickling of your stubbly beard; for you still kept it
shaved. In Egypt you were called Quinsy, which is
clear. In fact, they say you were nearly throttled
when you ran afoul of a lusty sailor who closed with
you and stopped your mouth. The Athenians, excellent fellows that they are, gave you no enigmatic
name but called you Atimarchus, honouring you with
the addition of a single letter because you had to have
something that went even beyond Timarchus. Timarchus is the man whom Aeschines castigated for his vices in an extant speech. From the wording of this passage it has been very generally inferred that the name of Lucian’s butt was Timarchus. That, however, would be a singular coincidence, which would surely have called for especial emphasis. All that Lucian intends to convey, I think, is that the Athenians did not nickname the man Timarchus as they might have done, but went a step further and styled him Atimarchus. . And
in Italy—my word! you got that epic nickname of



 

Cyclops, because once, over and above your old bag
of tricks, you took a notion to do an obscene parody
on Homer’s poetry itself, and while you lay there,
drunk already, with a bowl of ivy-wood in your hand,
a lecherous Polyphemus, a young man whom you
had hired came at you as Odysseus, presenting his
bar, thoroughly made ready, to put out your eye;

 And that he missed; his shaft was turned aside. Its point drove through beside the jawbone’s
root. The first line of this cento from the Iliad is XIII, 605 combined with XI, 233; the second is V, 293.
 


(Of course it is not at all out of the way, in discussing
you, to be silly.) Well, you as the Cyclops, opening
your mouth and setting it agape as widely as you
could, submitted to having your jaw put out by him,
or rather, like Charybdis, you strove to engulf your
Noman whole, along with his crew, his rudder, and
his sails. That was seen by other people present.
Then the next day your only defence was drunkenness, and you sought sanctuary in the unwatered
wine.
 
Rich as you are in these choice and numerous
appellations, are you ashamed of ‘nefandous’? In
the name of the gods, tell me how you feel when
the rabble call you names derived from Lesbos and
Phoenicia?, Are you as unacquainted with these as
with ‘nefandous,’ and do you perhaps think they are
praising you? Or do you know these through old
acquaintance, and is it only ‘ nefandous’ that you scorn
as unknown and exclude from your list of names?
Consequently, you are paying us a penalty which
cannot be considered inadequate; no, your notoriety

 

extends even to the women’s quarters. Recently,
for instance, when you had the hardihood to seek a
match in Cyzicus, that excellent woman, who had
very thoroughly informed herself in every particular
said: ‘I do not care to have a man who needs
one.”