A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting (1-5)

It is difficult for a mortal to avoid the caprice of some power on high, but it is much more difficult to find a defence for a silly slip sent by some such heavenly power. Both of these misfortunes have now happened to me. When I came to you to give you the morning greeting, I ought to have used the usual expression “Joy to you,” but like a golden ass I blundered and said “Health to you,” a pleasant enough greeting, but not suitable—it is not for the morning. As soon as I had said it I was all sixes and sevens. I began to sweat and went pink. Some of the company thought it a slip—naturally enough; others thought that I had become a fool in my old age, or that it was a hangover from yesterday’s drinking. You took it very well, though—not a trace of a smile to mark my slip of the tongue. So I thought it a good idea to write something to comfort myself, so as not to be too upset over my slip, or think it intolerable if I, an old man, had fallen so far from what was proper before so many witnesses. I don’t think an apology was necessary for a tongue that slipped into a wish so pleasant.

When I began to write, I thought that I was taking on an impossible task, but as I went on I found

“Joy to you, you lord of this Tirynthian land,” [*]

“Joy to you, Achilles, there is no lack

Of meat for all alike.” [*]

“Joy to you! No longer mortal know me now,

To you a god divine.” [*]

“Joy to you! For now does darkness gird me

round.” [*]

Philippides, the one who acted as courier, is said to have used it first in our sense when he brought the news of victory from Marathon and addressed the magistrates in session when they were anxious how the battle had ended; “Joy to you, we’ve won,” he said, and there and then he died, breathing his last breath with that “Joy to you.” Cleon the Athenian demagogue also began his letter from Sphacteria with “Joy to you,” when he gave the good news of the victory there and the capture of the Spartiates. [*] However after him Nicias in his despatches from Sicily followed the old practice and began right away with the matter in hand. [*]

The admirable Plato himself, a most sound authority on such matters, altogether rejected the use of “Joy to you” as bad and pointless. He substitutes “Do well,” which implies a good state of both body and soul. In a letter to Dionysius [*] he censures him for greeting Apollo with “Joy to you” in his poem to the god; it is unworthy of the Pythian, he says, and not even for men of taste is it becoming, let alone gods.

The divine Pythagoras chose not to leave us anything of his own, but if we may judge by Ocellus the Leucanian and Archytas and his other disciples, he did not prefix “Joy to you” or “Do well,” but told them to begin with “Health to you.” At any rate all his school in serious letters to each other began straightway with “Health to you,” as a greeting