A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting (6-10)

But why quote the ancients when there is Epicurus? He certainly enjoyed joy, and chose Pleasure as the chief good. In his more serious letters (there are not many of these) and in those to his dearest friends he generally began straightway with “Health to you.” In tragedy too and in Old Comedy you will often find “Health” said straightway first. The greeting

“Good health and joy be yours” [*]

“Good health, my lord! At long last you are

here,”

“I come in dreadful case, but health I wish to

you,”

“First I beg good health, and second doing well,

Thirdly to have joy, and last to owe no debts.”

“I’d live with thee, O Health, chief of the gods

Through all the mortal life that’s left to me.” [*]

I could show you thousands of other passages in the poets and historians and philosophers which put health first, but I shall beg to be excused, or my writing will be guilty of the bad taste of an adolescent, and only knock one nail out with another. But a few things from ancient history I remember are to the point, and I may as well add them for you.

Just before the Battle of Issus, as Eumenes of Cardia says in his letter to Antipater, Hephaestion came early into Alexander’s tent. He blundered or was confused (as I was) or was driven to it by some god when he gave my greeting: “Health to you, king,” he said, it is already time to set the battle-line.”

When Antiochus Soter was about to engage the Galatians, he dreamed he saw Alexander standing by him, who told him to give the army the password “Health” before the battle, and under that word he won his amazing victory.

Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, when writing to Seleucus clearly reversed the usual order by putting “Health to you” at the beginning of his letter, and at the end “Joy to you” instead of wishing him strength. Dionysodorus who collected his letters tells us this.