Rhenanus and Hoius, Proverbiales formulae toto opere Tertullianico contentae

PROVERBIAL FORMULAS CONTAINED IN THE WHOLE OF THIS WORK OF TERTULLIAN, ILLUSTRATED WITH BRIEF SCHOLIA, BY BEATUS RHENANUS AND ANDREAS HOIUS OF BRUGES.

1. "He has gone already, and must come back." Volume I, book On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 4, number 22.

The use of this proverb, which is current among the Germans and the French as well, Tertullian himself explains most fully: namely, that "a man has gone" means that the soul has departed from the body, and so has ceased to be among the living. So the Greeks are accustomed to use these words, οἴχεσθαι, κατοίχεσθαι, ἀπέρχεσθαι, †ὑπογίνεσθαι, that is, to die: all of which signify a going away and a departure. In the little word "already", which hints at a long space of time, the whole force of the proverb seems to lie. So great was the force of the truth concerning the resurrection and the immortality of the soul that, handed down as it were from hand to hand by their forebears, it could not be torn out of men's minds even in such darkness of vain opinions, but was kept in currency by a trite and customary proverb about those who had long since died; as though they presumed, that is, took beforehand and anticipated in their minds, the resurrection of bodies, or the return of the souls that had departed to their own bodies, ἀναστροφή, ἀνάστασις, that is, "to come back", ἐπαναστρέφειν, or ἀναβιοῦν.

2. "To leap a very wide gap." Volume III, book V Against Marcion, chapter 14, number 231.

"To leap" stands for to leap across, or to cross over at a bound. So that it means to send ahead [read: to pass over] either altogether, or at least the intervening words. It is taken from those who prefer to make a short cut on a journey by a leap rather than a loss of time by a more comfortable walk. So: "You fly across a very great plain with the lightest leap," Scaliger to Cardanus. Tertullian soon explains himself: "You have taken away so much from the Scriptures," that is, you have cut out, thrown away and broken off, so that very great gaps stand in the fabric of the books. Book V against the same: "How many pits he has made in the Epistle, by taking away what he wished." Virgil, book IV:

With these words he breaks off his speech in the middle.

3. "To fix with the gaze." Volume I, book On the Cloak, chapter 4, number 84.

It is to look sharply, with eyes intent and as it were fastened on the thing, ἀτενὲς ὁρᾶν. Virgil:

...... his eyes fixed on the dreadful maiden.

As those who, clothed in garments foreign to the moderation of nature and driving men crosswise out of their upright state, offer themselves openly to be gazed at, or rather to be laughed at, may seem to wish to turn the eyes of all upon themselves. Yet in such a way that this sort of inspection, or looking-at, which they court, is joined with the disgrace and insult of those same wearers, so that it turns out not to their praise but to their reproach. To this is subjoined: "To mark out with the finger", "To deliver over with a nod". Of these below.

4. "The edge of the sword bared." Volume V, book On Modesty, chapter 14, number 115.

When the reins, as it were, of full right, authority and power are let loose in open rebuke. In Virgil: "He went with sword sheathed." The contrary of this is that saying of Cicero, I Against Catiline: "But we for the twentieth day now suffer the edge of these men's authority to grow blunt. For we have a decree of the Senate, but shut up in the records, like a sword hidden in its scabbard." So in Apio: "teeth bared", sharp and breaking forth to inflict wounds.

5. "Nothing to do with Andromache." The same, chapter 8, number 65.

He seems to allude to the play of some old tragedian, entitled with the name of Andromache. And from Tertullian one may gather that nothing else is meant by this proverb than by these: "Nothing to the verse", "Nothing to Bacchus", οὐδὲν πρὸς ἔπος, ἀπροσδιόνυσα, that is, things foreign to the matter. For he compares the heretics with actors. These, fitting allegorical gestures to the songs, express things far removed from the present play and scene (so that he seems to have had in view the Greek proverbs ἐκτὸς χοροῦ ὀρχεῖσθαι, or τὸ ἀπορχεῖσθαι

(to dance outside the chorus, and to dance off the point)); they, that is, the heretics, assign these same parables wherever they wish, and do not shape them most aptly to the point they belong to.

6. "To bring out to the arena." Volume II, book To the Martyrs, chapter 3, number 44.

RHENANUS. The place of contest in which athletes meet is called σκάμμα by the Greeks, because it used to be surrounded by a ditch, from σκάπτειν, "to dig". Hence St Jerome's proverbial phrase, "to go out of the scamma and the place of contest", for what means "to digress from the subject", or "to leap over the lines". For so it is to be read in him, where he writes against the errors of John of Jerusalem, to Pammachius: "Since then these things are being asked," he says, "why do you, leaving aside the matters over which the fight is, go out of the scamma and the place of contest and linger in foreign and far-removed disputations?" Further, he explains himself when he adds: "and the place of contest". For "and" has the same force as "that is". It must not be passed over that Tertullian speaks very pointedly. For athletes and gladiators are said to be "brought out" at the shows by the very givers of the games who put them on. So shortly after: "that we may be brought out to the stadium of the tribunal well trained by all hardships." In Tertullian's sense it is to bring into the theatre, the arena, the public place of contest, for the sake of displaying and putting to the test one's skill and strength, and of carrying off the prize, or βραβεῖον; to go down into the arena. Paulus Leopardus, book I of the Miscellanies, chapter 22, explains the meaning of the word, and refutes the scamma of Erasmus and of Caelius. St Ambrose, book I On the Duties: "The athletes are still in the scamma," also proverbially, as if to say: the prize is still being contested, and the palm is in doubt.

7. "To what we have come, attend to this." Volume III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter 7, number 65.

At sacred rites silence used to be commanded in these words: "Favour with your tongues"; and in Greek, σῖγα πᾶς ἴστω λεώς, "let all the people keep silence"; and for the same reason it used to be cried: "Do this", that is, attend. And Plutarch seems to say this in the Numa: "preserving some trace of which even now, when a magistrate is occupied with auspices or sacrifices, they shout †ὢν ἄγε." Muretus, Various Readings, book 15. It will be, then, a proverb by which we bid someone be attentive to the business in hand, so that he apply himself to it alone with his whole mind, so that he neither take up anything else in words nor think anything else to himself in his mind.

8. "From money contributed in common." Volume III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter 12, number 136.

RHENANUS. Although mention is made here of a contribution and a pooling (for Tertullian says "they contribute into the common stock", and soon after, "all contributed one good thing". Likewise Irenaeus: "each one contributing that which he had best and most flourishing in himself, they made a pooling." Again soon after: "and the fabrication of a second Christ, whom they call Soter, composed from a pooling"), nevertheless, since even the copies consistently have "aere collatitio", I see that one may read not so much collatitio, which occurs to everyone, as collocatitio, for money borrowed and belonging to another; which good men, putting it together into one, and with a friend intent on business

placing it, thus both adorn him and help him, having first taken security from him. Hence perhaps the proverb current at that time among the common people of the Africans, that something was said to be done "with placed money", or that someone was boasted to be rich who was not strong in his own means but in lent and borrowed ones. Indeed in Irenaeus, in another place, it is read of this very Soter: "while they placed in him, as it were, their own flower", so that what is "placed" here would be "deposited". The sense will be the same if you read collatitio, or certainly not greatly different. Indeed among the ancients many things were done with money contributed in common; and on such works these abbreviations were inscribed: AERE COL. To this custom perhaps Tertullian looked here. A contributed alms is that which is paid out for the uses of the poor; and collatio, or collecta, which is also called indictio, is a kind of money levy; and σύμβολον is a contribution towards the provision of a supper, whether in money or in provisions. Hence a "contributed supper" is a meal at which companions or messmates recline, where each brings his own dishes, an ἔρανος. The proverb will fit those who are worth nothing by themselves but lean wholly on another's means, and, these withdrawn, collapse, and are left without credit and fortune: rich in debt, as Horace said, "I am poor on my own money."

9. "Aesop's jackdaw." The same, chapter 12, number 139.

RHENANUS. Of this there is a fable among those commonly attributed to Aesop. Hence the proverb arose among the Greeks: Αἰσώπειος κολοιός, that is, "Aesop's jackdaw". It was customarily said of those who show off another's goods as their own. Horace, Epistle 3, book I:

What is my Celsus doing? he who was warned, and must often be warned,

to seek riches of his own, and shun to touch

whatever writings the Palatine Apollo has received,

lest, if perhaps one day the flock of birds should come

to claim back their feathers, the poor crow should raise a laugh,

stripped of her stolen colours.

The moral of the fabulist Gabrias is plainly suited to Tertullian's meaning.

Clothed in another's feathers,

the jackdaw boasted that he surpassed the birds;

but first the swallow snatched away her gift,

then after her all the rest: he was found naked.

Moral: beauty got by contribution is dissolved.

Which we translate thus:

While, clad in another's little feathers, she boasts

that she, the poor crow, excels the other birds,

the swallow first tears off her own gift,

then the rest, and at last she is seen naked.

10. "The ass from Aesop's well." Volume III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter 23, number 349.

So that the words "you have only just come, you have only just appeared" are understood. It is said against one who, unknown, from elsewhere, and distinguished by no renown of name, has just arrived as it were out of a corner; who has lain hidden, or, to use Horace's word, has "escaped notice" until now, and who suddenly dares to boast of something great and splendid, nay, to claim for himself authority and favour along with fame. Since this fable is not extant among the Aesopic ones, it would be futile to put forward anything here from conjecture as to whence their proverb comes, whatever others may trifle about "the ass's peeping out".

11. "The middle of the agina", or "to be carried in the balance of the agina". Volume III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter 41, number 142; and Volume V, book On Modesty, chapter 9, number 73.

In the book On Modesty: "For the matching of examples will not be admitted, though most fitting in the agina, if it should be most harmful to salvation." If, as Rhenanus says from Festus, the agina is that hole into which the shaft of the balance is inserted, that is, in which the balance is moved or turns, and the balance is then said to stand in the middle of the agina whenever an equal weight occurs, so that neither side sinks down, it will be the same as the handle (so far as the use of the proverb goes), which is λαβή, in which the tongue turns, or in the middle of which the little pointer moves about and nods this way and that, until, the pans being made equal, it answers to the topmost point, that is, inclines to neither side but divides the difference with equal weight. The proverb could be used of those who are of neither party, so as to offend neither these nor those; of those who embrace the virtues, which are certain means set between extreme vices; of upright judges, and the like. See Pamelius's annotations.

12. "Loftier than Alexander." Volume I, Apology, chapter 11, number 175.

Of men of a lofty and exalted spirit. Most celebrated is the loftiness of spirit in Alexander the Great, which shone out in his sayings as much as in his deeds: who as a boy grieved that nothing was being left him by his father for him to accomplish himself; who refused to run the stadium at Olympia except against kings as rivals; who would not divide the Asian kingdom with Darius while matters were still undecided; who, when he had heard from Anaxagoras that the worlds were innumerable, wept, since he had not yet been made master of even one.

13. "Bolder than an Amazon." Volume III, book I Against Marcion, chapter 1, number 14.

"The Amazons, or Amazonae, a singular example for all ages," says Justin, book II. Deeds full of their more than manly daring, wars and expeditions are recorded. But since daring in the female sex is for the most part joined with shamelessness, the proverb will fit those who are shamelessly bold and rash. See Pamelius's annotations.

14. "The ram is tempered against us, by which the flesh is shaken." Volume III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 5, number 43.

The ram is a beam stretched with ropes and hung up, whose head is clad with iron so that it seems to have a very hard brow, like a ram's; and, again in the manner of a ram, it is drawn back so as to strike with greater force and undermine the walls. Hence the word "to be tempered", because in its preparation and in the swinging aimed at the blows there was need of skill and a fixed tempering. Tertullian adds the word "is shaken". Virgil: "They were battering the walls with the ram"; "The gate totters under the frequent ram"; "He rams at the gates." Cicero: "The ram will have struck the wall." It could be said proverbially of a strong argument brought against us which is hard to refute: we are assailed by open force. So that rams and mines may be set against one another in arguments.

15. "More just than Aristides." Volume I, Apology, chapter 11, number 173.

So famous among the Greeks, and especially the Athenians, was the justice and fairness of Aristides that he earned the surname "the Just". So great was the man's regard not only for the laws but also for what is fair and good, that for this reason alone he was driven into exile by wicked men, and he governed the commonwealth with aims contrary to those of Themistocles.

16. "The asp borrows venom from the viper." Volume III, book III Against Marcion, chapter 8, number 53.

Of the asp Pliny says thus, book VIII, chapter 23: "the necks of asps swell, and there is no remedy for the bite except that the parts touched be cut off at once": so instantaneous, that is, is the venom. Of the viper, in the same book, chapter 29: "Of serpents the viper alone is said to hide itself in the earth, the rest in the hollows of trees or rocks." But Aristotle, book V On the Nature of Animals, records on the contrary that the viper hides itself under rocks and that the other serpents are buried in the earth; all sleep in their season of retreat, bereft of their venom. In book 7, chapter 2, he says that those who live on Mount Athos are fed on vipers' flesh. Which is certainly a proof of a venom less effective. By this proverb, then, it will be meant that the most pestilent is schooled in wickedness by the less evil.

17. "Attalic riches." Volume V, book On Fasting, chapter 15, number 93.

If Attalicae is read, there is no difficulty: the riches of Attalus, King of Pergamum, are well known, upon which the Roman people entered by inheritance. Of him Horace in the Odes:

Nor have I, the unknown heir,

seized the riches or the palace of Attalus.

And "on Attalic terms". So that those magnificent and superfluous riches and delights are set against bread, that is, against the simplest fare. But if Attellanae is read, those masked refinements in dress and clothing will be understood. For to the Atellan actors (from Atella, a town of Campania), who were most celebrated, this right had been granted, that they should not be compelled to lay aside the mask on the stage. Hence "masked plays" stands for the Atellans par excellence. It will be said of clothing that is superfluous and got up for luxury and display.

18. "From the toga to the cloak." Volume I, book On the Cloak, chapter 5, number 94, and chapter 6, number 116.

RHENANUS. The cloak belonged to the Greeks and to the philosophers. The Romans too, casting off the toga, would wrap themselves in it. Hence that gibe of the wondering crowd about the more powerful men who had gone over to the Christian religion, "From the toga to the cloak". By which Tertullian was moved to write a book on behalf of the cloak. Ammianus Marcellinus on Julian Augustus: "For in peace," he says, "the frugality of his measure was to be wondered at by those who rightly knew him, as of one who would soon return to the cloak."

19. "The blind led by the blind into the same pit." Volume III, book III Against Marcion, chapter 7, number 44.

A proverb used even by the Saviour Himself, Luke XVI: whenever an untaught man tries to teach an untaught one, or an imprudent man to give counsel to an imprudent one, and so hurls him along with himself into the same errors or perverse opinions.

Tertullian interprets it thus: to borrow from the same man the plan of one's errors and one's guidance.

20. "The blind man strikes against the rock." Volume III, book V Against Marcion, chapter 7, number 119.

Tertullian says it allegorically of Marcion, who, blinded by the perversity of his errors, thought ill of Christ (the spiritual rock). Not unlike is "To run upon a reef", book On the Trinity, chapter 28: "Bereft of his eyes at these two places, as though they had been dug out, he is wholly overcome in the blindness of his own doctrine." It will be used of one whom the perversity of his opinions drives headlong into every absurdity.

21. "To strike at close quarters." Volume III, book II Against Marcion, last chapter, number 205; and book III, chapter 5, number 14.

To strike at close quarters, to fight at close quarters, συστάδην μάχεσθαι, and ἐγγύθεν, "hand to hand" and "from near by"; its contrary is πόρρωθεν, "from afar", with spears or darts. It is transferred from war, in which men now fight locked together with swords, and are said to join or bring together hands, now hurl missiles at the enemy from afar with engines or even with throwing-thongs. We shall use it when we wish to signify that we mean to weigh and discuss a matter more closely, or at close range, and to bring forward arguments taken from the nature of the thing itself, not from outside, to weaken someone's opinion.

22. "From the lime-kiln to the charcoal-pit." Volume III, book On the Flesh of Christ, chapter 6, number 52.

RHENANUS. A calcaria is a shop where lime is kept or sold. So a carbonaria, from carbones, coals. Its use will be when a dirty or troublesome thing is exchanged for one equally dirty or troublesome. And it is an elegant proverb whenever we betake ourselves from an unclean place to one no cleaner, when from one evil we fall into another of a different kind. After Tertullian had answered the most unclean heresy of Marcion, he girds himself for the refutation of Apelles, equally unclean. Not unlike: "Out of Scylla into Charybdis"; "Out of the smoke into the flame." Except that by that proverb a certain diversity of evils, and as it were an opposition, seems to be signified, as lime and coals are opposed by reason of their contrary colours. And it is taken from those to whom dirt is hateful, and who do not readily suffer their clothing to be soiled, which the grime of both brings about.

23. "To spread out in its own plains." Volume V, book On the Trinity, chapter 6, number 26.

Novatian sets these against each other: "to shut up the measure or shape of the divine majesty within these outlines of our body; and to spread it out without any end in its own plains of unbounded greatness." In the word's proper meaning the open levels of plains and their immensities are well known. And that line of Virgil:

Messapus, the horsemen in arms,

and Coras with his brother, spread them out over the wide plains.

By way of metaphor these: "the plains of the rhetoricians"; "the orator moves in some plain"; "to drive the orator from some huge and immense plain into a narrow ring"; and "These things, a very wide plain of speaking for the rhetorician,

are wont to open up." From which the use both of this proverb and of the following is plain.

24. "A broad and wide plain is opened." The same, chapter 28, number 127.

Its contrary is "not to have a large enough plain in which to move", in Cicero. Novatian also, elsewhere in the same book: "Let these things have been said by us briefly and set down summarily, and not drawn out in a long disputation. For they could have been extended more widely, and prolonged in a more ample disputation."

25. "To speak with the eyebrow of the head." Volume III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter 27, number 91.

In the eyebrows haughtiness is marked, the part with which we either refuse or assent. Beyond doubt Tertullian borrowed this from Homer, Iliad I, Thetis to Jupiter:

Promise me truly, and nod assent.

Promise me what is not to be doubted, and nod assent.

Jupiter answers:

Come then, I will nod assent to you with my head, that you may be sure;

for this from me among the immortals is the greatest

token: for no word of mine can be taken back, nor is it deceitful,

nor unfulfilled, whatever I nod assent to with my head.

He spoke, and the son of Cronus nodded with his dark brows.

That is,

I will nod to you with my head, that you may rest well assured;

for this from me among the immortal gods is a great

sign; for nothing of mine can be recalled, nor is it false,

nor unfulfilled, whatever I nod to you with my head.

The son of Saturn assented to her words with his dark brows.

Hence Pliny, book I, letter to Octavius Rufus: "See on what a pinnacle you place me, when you have given me the same power and the same kingship as Homer gave to Jupiter,

To him the father granted the one, and refused the other.

One the father granted to his prayer, to one he nodded.

For I too can answer your prayer with a like nod and shake of the head." To this I should think, not rashly, belongs "the censor's eyebrow", as of one who either condemns or approves by his eyebrow alone, which others interpret as a gloomy severity.

26. "To give a purge." Volume I, book On the Cloak, chapter 5, number 111.

Καθαρτικόν or καθαρτήριον φάρμακον, or κάθαρσις, is a medicine that loosens the belly, or that purges the bowels. Hence it is called ὑπήλατον by Hippocrates. Tertullian explains himself: "You have persuaded me by speech, a most wise medicine": from a Greek senarius:

You persuaded me by a word, a most wise medicine.

Καθαιροῦν is to purify and expiate, to which Horace alludes, book I, epistle 1, speaking of the vices of the mind:

There are words and spells by which you may soothe this pain

and drive away a great part of the disease. And,

..... there are sure expiations which

could restore you when the little book has been read three times with purity.

To this belongs "To purge with hellebore", and the like.

27. "Wiser and graver than Cato." Volume I, Apology, chapter 11, number 173.

The Sabines called a sharp man catus, whence the name of the Catos. Of this Cato, however, the first and the Censor in Tertullian, you have the eulogy in Pliny, book VII, chapter 27.

and in Cicero, book On Friendship, where Laelius says of Cato: "For either no one was wise, or, if anyone, he was." And in the book On Old Age, which is inscribed with the name of this Cato.

28. "More rugged than the Caucasus." Volume I, book I Against Marcion, chapter 1, number 15.

The Caucasus is a most vast mountain of Scythia, whose ridges, as Pliny says, book VI, chapter 5, wind in the Colchian region of Pontus towards the Riphaean mountains, sloping on one side towards the Euxine and the Maeotis, on the other towards the Caspian and Hyrcanian sea, under various names. Virgil, Aeneid IV:

Bristling with hard crags

the Caucasus bore you, and Hyrcanian [tigresses], etc.

By which words "rugged" is explained. It is said against a man boorish and hard, intractable and inhospitable.

29. "To have no brain or heart." Volume III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter 10, number 118.

In a man's brain, the receptacle of the vital spirits, lies the supreme and as it were royal power of reason; in the heart the whole source of life itself and the seat of wisdom. Hence the senseless and witless are said to be empty of brain and heart. And indeed the very defects of the body, if they are bound up with either the brain or the heart, impair the mind and its action as well. Well known is Aesop's fable of the fox admiring the head of a mask: ὦ οἵα κεφαλή, καὶ ἐγκέφαλον οὐκ ἔχει, said of those who are without reason in their soul. "O what a head! and it has no brain."

30. "Stags in battle." Volume II, book On the Soldier's Crown, chapter 1, number 18.

RHENANUS. It savours of a proverbial figure, born, as appears, from that apophthegm of Chabrias, who said that an army of stags led by a lion was more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag. Plutarch mentions it. The stag is a simple animal of known timidity, whose whole defence is in flight, since it is very swift. Hence men are called "stag-like" when they trust in flight more than in strength, and who are fearful; whose "Mars", as Virgil says, book II, "is in a windy tongue and in feet quick to flee". And in Homer, Iliad I, Achilles reproaches Agamemnon with timidity in the clashes of battle:

Heavy with wine, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer!

Drunkard, having a deer's heart and a dog's eyes.

31. "Chrysippus to the hellebore." Volume III, book On the Soul, chapter 6, number 89.

Chrysippus, the disciple of Cleanthes, a man of the keenest intellect, of whom the little verse runs:

For if there had not been Chrysippus, there would not be the Stoa....

Unless there were Chrysippus, nor would there be a Stoa.

Valerius Maximus relates, book VIII, chapter 7, that Carneades, when he was about to dispute with Chrysippus, used first to purge himself with hellebore, so as to bring out his own wit more attentively and refute the other's more sharply. Aulus Gellius says the same, book XVII, chapter 15: "Carneades the Academic, when about to write against the books of the Stoic Zeno, purged the upper parts of his body with white hellebore." And the chapter where he explains the working and the twofold kind of hellebore. And Pliny, book XXV, chapter 5, attributes the same to Carneades and describes the nature of hellebore. Tertullian seems to attribute it to Chrysippus himself. "His opinions

"by not understanding, to suspect a decay of health." This is what Valerius writes of Chrysippus in the same chapter: "whose zeal in composing the monuments of his genius sustained so much work and toil that a long life would be needed for thoroughly knowing the things he wrote." And as Cicero says of the same man: "Some things," he says, "he propounded which not even he himself could resolve." But Lucian tells the tale, in book II of the True Histories, that Chrysippus was not allowed to move into the island of the blessed unless he had taken hellebore now for the fourth time; alluding to the fact that he is recorded to have drunk it three times in his life. Hence those who wish to have the faults of mind and head relieved are bidden to drink and eat hellebore, and to purge themselves with it.

32. "He came down from heaven." Volume I, Apology, chapter 10, number 162.

See Pamelius's annotations. Tertullian explains it of persons unknown, or appearing even unexpectedly, who were said to be heaven-dwellers and to have slipped down from heaven, or to have fallen from heaven, οὐρανοπετεῖς. It may seem to have been taken from tragic stages, on which there is usually a "god from the machine". For the machine is a place above the stage, from which some god would appear unexpectedly.

33. "From heaven into the mud." Volume II, book On the Shows, chapter 25, number 189.

Tertullian: "From the Church of God to make for the Church of the devil." And in the book On the Soldier's Crown: "To transfer one's name from the camp to the camp of darkness." Tertullian aimed at elegance by wordplay: so that it means to prefer darkness to light, death to life. When we turn aside from the most honourable actions and pursuits to shameful deeds, to vain and base exercises.

34. "A summer supper after the roast." Volume III, book On the Soul, chapter 32, number 387.

Tertullian seems to hint that at summer suppers, after the roast, that is, roasted meats, no further courses used to be brought in, so that the roast was the end of the supper. As Empedocles, well roasted in burning Etna, was changed into no other body, and so was the end of the transmigration. What if he is alluding to this? Among the Greeks, who served eggs with thrushes and hare's flesh and honeyed cakes as the second tables, this was the custom: that at the end of the supper, after the conversation, they gave tongues roasted in the fire to be tasted. So by the proverb it will be signified that something is finished, that nothing is left.

35. "To play with one's own hide." Volume I, book On the Cloak, chapter 3, number 49.

Drawn from the chameleon, which with its whole body gives back whatever colour it has touched nearest, except red and white. So the adage lies open to be applied to a turncoat man, inconstant and turning himself into every guise as the moment requires. Similar to it: "More changeable than Proteus."

36. "Richer than Croesus and Crassus." Volume I, Apology, chapter 11, number 173.

The opulence of Croesus, king of the Lydians, who dared to make war on Cyrus the Persian, passed into a proverb among the Greeks. To Marcus Crassus, among the Romans, the surname "the Rich"

added, who possessed in his fields two million sesterces, and who said that no one is rich unless he can maintain an army from his own produce, as Cicero relates in the Paradoxes.

37. To push with the elbow. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. 55, no. 605. If we rebuke something said wrongly or too shamelessly, we are accustomed to drive our elbow into the side of the neighbour whose words we do not approve, and, as though shrinking from him, to keep him far from us for the sake of abhorrence. Horace, Book I, Epistle 6: "Let us buy a slave to dictate the names to us, who may dig the left side." He means a slave of the memory, that is, a nomenclator. There, to dig the side is to prick or to nudge with the hand, which is done for the sake of reminding, prompting and urging on. It will mean, then, to spurn and reject men steeped in so perverse an opinion.

38. To drive out with a wedge. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 21, no. 150. "By this wedge of truth every heresy is driven out." A wedge is an iron or wooden tool with which, as Virgil says, the cleavable wood was split; from its shape the "wedge" in a battle line is foot-soldiers massed close, who, joined with the line, advance at first narrower and then wider, and break the ranks of the enemy, because missiles are thrown by many at one spot. To these is opposed, in the ordinary way, what they call the "pincers", which is formed of the choicest soldiers massed into the shape of the letter V, and receives that wedge and encloses it from both sides. When this is done, it cannot break out of the line. From the former meaning come those sayings: "For a bad knot a bad wedge must be sought", from the cleavers of oak-wood, meaning to blunt evil with evil and to drive out a nail with a nail. To these Tertullian seems to allude here. In what follows he seems to play on the other meaning.

39. To meet with a wedge. Vol. III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 2, no. 18. Taken from military matters. Virgil: "The columns are packed close in wedges....." And: "all form a wedge, and are borne to the walls in a dense mass." And: "Where that throng of men presses most densely." And it will mean to set strong and compact arguments against someone's reasonings.

40. He arms the first wedge of the encounter. Vol. III, book Against the Valentinians, ch. 3, no. 24. To which Tertullian adds: "As the revealer of their conscience, we take this first victory as an omen." So the forerunners, horsemen sent ahead, are accustomed to uncover the enemy's forces, ambushes and numbers. And the first victory is as it were an omen of the battle. All this is transferred from the martial clash of combat to disputation, which is a literary contest.

41. More eloquent than Demosthenes. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 2, no. 173. Nothing is more brilliant than the oratorical force of Demosthenes, says Valerius Maximus, Book IV, ch. 3, and Book VIII, ch. 7. Demosthenes, whose

name being mentioned, the consummation of the greatest eloquence rises in the hearer's mind. Quintilian, Book IX, records his praise.

42. To speak by a nod of the finger. Vol. III, book Against Hermogenes, ch. 27, no. 91. In the Apology: "with the reckoning gestures of the fingers." The ancients had a customary method of reckoning, done by bending the fingers. By the Venerable Bede it is called the speech of the fingers, or by gesture of the fingers. Alexander ab Alexandro, Book I, ch. 14: "The ancients often counted up years by a gesture of the hand, now the right, now the left, and by pressing down or bending round the fingers," etc. To this custom Tertullian alludes when he adds: "with a fitting nod; raising it higher, and as it were throwing it back." It is used of a man who takes far too much upon himself and lays down whatever he pleases at his own discretion.

43. To mark out with the finger. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, chapter, no. 84. Tertullian, book On the Veiling of Virgins: "while she is tickled by the fingers of those pointing her out." It belongs to a man of power to be marked and pointed out with the fingers. Horace, Odes, Book IV, 3: "That I am pointed out by the finger of passers-by as the player of the Roman lyre." And in the book of Epodes, Ode 4, he explains our proverb in Tertullian's sense: "Do you see, as you pace the Sacred Way with your toga of twice three ells, how the freest indignation of those going this way turns their faces?"

44. To fight at a sure mark. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book III, ch. 5, no. 14. Gladiators and boxers about to engage each other are accustomed, before they come to blows and strokes, to give a kind of display as of a prelude, and, as blessed Paul says, to beat the air. Virgil, Book V: "Such was Dares, first to lift his head high for the fight, and he shows his broad shoulders, and throws out his arms by turns, stretching them forth, and beats the breezes with blows." Then afterwards: "And they mingle hands with hands and provoke the fight." And Book XII: "And he challenges the winds with blows, and practises for the fight with sand scattered." It may also seem to be taken from javelin-throwers, who set before themselves a target at which to aim. To this belongs that saying of blessed Paul, 1 Corinthians 9: "I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty; so I fight, not as one beating the air" (1 Cor. 9:26).

45. To fight hand to hand. In the same place. See "To give way hand to hand", above.

46. An after-piece on the lyre following the play. Vol. III, book Against the Valentinians, ch. 33, no. 367. Rhenanus. When plays were formerly performed in public, a lyre-player used to come forward before the audience was dismissed, to soothe the minds of the spectators, who at the end were already flagging from the tedium of the long narrative. It is customary, both before and after the play proper, for certain pieces unrelated to the matter to be sung in the odeum, merely to dispel the weariness of the hearers.

Hence that "prooemium", as it were a fore-singing, before the song, ahead of the regular singing, which the rhetoricians by a transfer called the exordium of their speech. In poetry, the prologue, and on the other side, the epilogue. In the playing of pipes, the "proaulion". It may be said of the appendage of some vain undertaking, or of an added fiction.

47. To taste honeycombs after gall. Vol. II, book On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 14, no. 196. Rhenanus. It has the look of a proverb, commonly said of one who, having endured adversity, at last comes into happier circumstances. To this belong the sayings: "Out of the storm into harbour"; "After the contest, the crown." In the vernacular: "From black bread to white"; "The roots of virtue are bitter, its fruits most sweet."

48. To loosen or unloose the clasp. Vol. II, book On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 11, no. 144. Rhenanus. Said proverbially for to open a window and to give a handle to sins, which themselves also have the form of a proverb. Opposed to it is what the same author said in the book On Monogamy: "to put on the clasp", that is, to restrain and hold in check. It seems to have arisen from the clasp of a girdle, by which a loose garment is drawn tight, or, when drawn tight, is let loose. Virgil: "A golden clasp fastens the purple garment beneath." But since Tertullian mostly applies it to the slippery pleasures of the flesh, it may be referred to the binding of the clasp which was formerly put through the genitals of youths itching for and prone to lust, which they called "to infibulate". The rationale of the practice is in Cornelius Celsus, and mention of it in Martial and Juvenal; so that it is said of those who, having broken the bars of modesty, are carried headlong into lust and are abandoned to every kind of licence.

49. To attempt the thinnest thread with a hanging footstep; perhaps "to walk upon". Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 10, no. 83. Tertullian explains himself, and indicates that this kind of expression is transferred from rope-walkers, when he says beforehand: "rope-walkers of modesty". Rope-walkers, "neurobatae" and "schoenobatae", went along a stretched rope, and such walking among the unskilled was not without danger of falling; and hence against "with hanging footstep" (for they seem to hang in the air) he sets: "to be wholly on firm footing, to be on solid ground". It will apply, then, to those who undertake a matter full of danger. Ovid, on the changeableness of human fortunes: "All human things hang by a slender thread."

50. To mark the bounds of the ditch, beyond which it is not permitted to leap: a metaphorical expression. Vol. III, book On the Prescription against Heretics, ch. 10, no. 68. Rhenanus. The rampart of a camp used to be fortified either with earth heaped up from turf or with a huge ditch dug, which, with the fortifications, no one might cross, and within which the soldiers were kept; or else what was said above about the "scamma" belongs here. It will mean, then, that fixed laws have been laid down for someone, from which it is wrong to depart. Not unlike it among the Greeks is "to leap beyond the dug lines", to jump beyond the ditch.

51. The waves engulf you on both sides. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 7, no. 50. From a storm at sea and the tenth, greatest waves; applied to arguments that catch an adversary on both sides; for Tertullian is also using a dilemma. As if he said: There is no room for escape; you are held bound and entangled on both sides, that is, by either part of the argument. It may also be used of one who is hemmed in by twin and two-edged evils. Virgil: "He tosses on a shifting tide of cares."

52. To bridle. Vol. V, On Modesty, Book I, ch. 16, no. 156. Tertullian: "It will be held fast for bridling marriages by continence." A most common metaphor taken from horses. Virgil: "And by justice he gave [them] to bridle proud nations." Horace: "Restrain this (the mind) with bridles, restrain it with chains": that is, check and repress the passions of the mind. To which [one may] oppose from Tertullian, "to loosen or unloose the clasp for the flesh". Cicero: to put bridles on someone's frenzy, and to bridle someone's fury.

53. To slacken, or loosen, the bridled. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 2, no. 22; and "To tighten the reins", in the same place. They are opposites. Virgil, Aeneid, Book I: "Who, by a fixed compact, would know, when bidden, both to draw in and to give loose reins." Cicero: "One needs the bridle, the other the spurs." Tertullian transferred it to discipline, to signify the use either of excessive indulgence or of immoderate severity in the keeping of discipline.

54. To be set forth with one's own face. Vol. V, book On Monogamy, ch. 12, no. 400. Rhenanus. Because it ought to be set forth freely and openly, not under constraint and rightly. "With a true face", in Cicero, For Gaius Rabirius, is to do or say something from the heart and without disguise; and on the contrary, "with a lying face and countenance", by pretence. Hence that saying: "No trust in the face." For the face and eyes most of all declare the disposition of the mind. And in Terence: "To feign a countenance" is to compose it for pretending or concealing something. I think, however, that the authors of the proverb more probably had regard to this: since the seat of shame is in the face (whence "a man of brazen face"), when we do or say anything not at variance with honour, and which does not rashly turn to shame, we may use the phrase that we do or say it with our own face. Whereas if anything to the contrary, either base or unseemly, must be done, we do and say it with another's face, that is, through suborned persons, and spare our own shame.

55. He who fled will fight again. Vol. V, On Flight in Persecution, ch. 10, no. 72. Rhenanus. Demosthenes, once fleeing from the battle of Chaeronea, in which the Athenians were defeated fighting against Philip, King of the Macedonians, used to answer those who reproached him with that shameful flight, because of the shield he had thrown away, with this little verse: "The man who flees

will fight again", that is: "The man who flees will take up battle once more." Tertullian a little before sets against this: "Does He at any rate command men to stand immovable, and not to flee; or [to be] movable, and girded for flight, or for the onset of the Gospel?" To throw away the spear; and among the Greeks "rhipsaspis" or "aspidapobles", from throwing and casting away the shield: a proverb for losing confidence in one's cause, or deserting the defence of one's cause. By Tertullian's proverb (which came from the Greeks) we may be admonished not to lose heart at once if something has turned out rather unhappily, and when it has not succeeded this way, as the Comic poet says, to attempt it by another way.

56. To lead the rope of contention. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 4, no. 28. "To lead the rope" is frequent in good authors; it is taken metaphorically from the comic dance which they call the "kordax" and "kordakismos". Terence, The Brothers: "You will dance among them, leading the rope"; and in Aristophanes [the Clouds]: "nor did she drag in the kordax". In these dances he who is the leading dancer and director leads the rope, and the others, having taken hold of the rope, follow him as he goes before. Hence in Cicero "to lead the troupe" is to be the chief and originator of some sect; and Horace, on Money, Epistle I: "Worthy rather to follow than to lead the whole rope." But what has this to do with contention and contest? With the obstinate defence of opinions? He seems therefore to allude to another kind of game, in which perhaps each side, straining in opposite directions, strove to pull the rope across by the middle to itself and wrest it from the others. In this a prize of victory was set: something observed in not a few places by boys today. Tertullian calls it the rope of contention, or the contentious rope, from the contention of the sides (as the Flemings say "Kyfbal") in the game of hand-ball, when it is played by passing to and fro; and he adds: "with equal effort swaying this way and that"; perhaps: "swaying under the rope".

57. To draw out the day till evening with the contentious rope. Vol. I, book Against the Jews, ch. 1, no. 1; and Vol. III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 34, no. 254. Or "to drag it into the evening". To which Tertullian adds "by alternate turns", as above: "with equal effort this way and that". Cicero, Letters to Friends, Book I, Letter 2: "This dispute having been drawn out until night"; and Letters to Atticus, Book IV, Letter 2: "When it came to Clodius, he wished to use up the day." Pliny: "My pleading, as night parts battles"; and: "He spoke into the night, and even after the lamps were brought in." Among the Romans, when those interposing wished something to be deferred or put off to another day, they drew out the day by speaking, so that nothing should be decreed by the Senate on that very day; and they were said, in Sallust, to draw out the day, to drag out the time and to prolong the deliberations. So it will signify the obstinacy of a long-drawn contention. In the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, "to draw it out with the contentious rope" is to agitate a matter with long and tangled arguments.

58. To stretch the contentious rope in opposite directions by alternate pulling. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 2, no. 22. Besides what has been brought forward above, I am reminded by this proverb that the rope is called the "ductarius" which, through the little wheels of a pulley (which is a hauling machine, with a bronze

or wooden little wheel which turns about a small axle, or a grooved wheel which the Belgians call "Caterol" and "Moufle") is passed through. This machine we use for raising loads, bundles and sacks of grain on high and for letting them in through windows. The rope, on the other hand, is said to be let down. Virgil: "Having slid down by the let-down rope." "With eternal pulling", as above, "by alternate turns, with equal effort this way and that". And it will signify the same: to agitate a matter in dispute with great obstinacy on both sides.

59. To draw on a long rope. Vol. II, book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 14, no. 115. Well known is that saying of blessed Gregory in the Moralia: "From suggestion arises thought, from thought affection, from affection delight, from delight consent," etc., right up to certain damnation. This is that long and dreadful chain of sins. These are the ropes and fetters with which Satan binds a man and hurls him headlong not only into every kind of evil but even into the abyss of Tartarus. In profane authors: "a chain of business", "chained labours". Pindar: "the rope of hard-to-bear cares".

60. More brittle than ice. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 1, no. 14. In others, "More brittle than frost". Of a man inconstant and a breaker of treaties. For brittle is opposed to firm and stable. The cause of brittleness in ice is the looseness of its parts, the heat, which is the bond of joining them, having been driven out.

61. To give ground, to give way from one's footing, or to withdraw a little. Vol. III, book On the Prescription against Heretics, ch. 9, no. 64; and Against Marcion, Book V, ch. 16, no. 256; and Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 7, no. 53. All metaphors taken from athletes already engaging, that is, engaging step, foot and hand. Book On the Prescription against Heretics: "I now give way of my own accord from that footing." That is: not driven, nor overcome by arguments, I yield from my right: I grant my adversary this, which it would be easy for me to defend, and I fall back on firmer reasons.

62. To meet on the same footing. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 29, no. 492. Taken from gladiators, who, about to fight it out with an opponent, plant their footing, and, giving way to avoid blows, advance again and take their stand on the same footing, and, going to meet him, resist. It will mean to use the same argument and weapon.

63. To shut out from one's footing, to drive out, to push from one's footing. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. 6, no. 82; and Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 13, no. 71; and Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 9, no. 104. In the book On the Soul: "I shall have shut out the footing of this definition"; that is, I shall have shown that the definition cannot stand, nor the thing, the definition [not] passing back and forth with it, which is the chief fault in the method of defining a thing. "With God we drive [them] from this footing", that is, when to God this power, prerogative, force

of creating we deny. "I shall push you from your footing", that is, I shall convict you of falsehood and weaken your reasons. All these, taken from wrestlers, signify to refute an adversary and to overcome him in the contest of disputation.

64. To be thrown, or moved, from one's footing. Vol. III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 2, no. 18. In Cicero, On Duties, Book I, "to be thrown from one's footing" is to be dismayed in mind, and as it were moved from one's state of mind, and not to use the counsel of a ready mind. To this belong "to be moved from one's place", "to be dislodged from one's footing". Their contraries: "to be put back on one's footing", and "to be restored to one's place". Tertullian: "thrown or moved from the footing of that hope", that is, one who, led on by the persuasions of others, has now cast away the hope on which he was leaning.

65. To take up another footing. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 6, no. 52. It is to attempt it by another way and to enter on a new contest, or at least in a new manner; or, one matter having been already disproved and shaken, to gird oneself for overthrowing another.

66. To close step [with the enemy]. Vol. I, book Against the Jews, ch. 2, no. 6, and ch. 7, no. 27; and Against Marcion, Book III, ch. 2, no. 4. A military phrase, like these: "to fight foot to foot"; "to join hand or foot"; "to close step with the enemy". "To open the battle": to begin the contest of disputation; to come closer to the matter; this is "coming near", having engaged hand to hand.

67. To direct one's step. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 37, no. 601. It is to bring the force of one's mind to bear on something, to prepare oneself to weigh something.

68. To plant one's step. Vol. II, book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 1, no. 86; and Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book IV, ch. 2, no. 18; Against Marcion, Book V, ch. 10, no. 154; book Against Praxeas, ch. 8, no. 56, and ch. 22, no. 135; Vol. V, book On Fasting, ch. 11, no. 71. Rhenanus. A metaphor from athletes engaging in a contest; a proverbial expression. To take one's stand with constancy; and in Tertullian, in so many places, it is to defend keenly an opinion once conceived and to persist in it; or to press one's argument, as Cicero puts it; or to dwell on the careful weighing of one matter and to use no digressions foreign to the matter.

69. To plant one's step in the battle line. Vol. V, book On Flight in Persecution, ch. 11, no. 80. Frequent in Virgil is "Stand, men!", from one exhorting them to halt from flight; whence the name of Jupiter Stator. And Aeneid, Book X: "Do not trust to your feet: a way must be broken with the sword through the enemy." Proverbially: not to be moved by the arguments of adversaries, to persist obstinately in one's opinion, to defend one's cause keenly. Book On Fasting: "Stand on that footing, if you can."

70. To move one's step. Vol. V, book On Fasting, ch. 13, no. 78. Tertullian interprets it thus: "You have moved your step by going beyond

tradition, when you undertake things which have not been appointed." It is therefore to depart from what is established, that is, from the prescribed rule; to yield, beaten, to one's adversary. Virgil, Book II: "And he drew back his foot, together with his voice."

71. To block the step. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 27, no. 424; Vol. II, book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 15, no. 120; Vol. III, book On the Prescription against Heretics, ch. 15, no. 99; and book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 48, no. 344. "This step, then, we chiefly block: that of not admitting them to any disputation about the Scriptures"; that is: this we set against them first; we keep them from the encounter. In the Apology: "Challenged to sacrifice, we block the step of faithlessness (another reading: for the faith) of our conscience"; that is, we forestall it, lest faithlessness creep into our minds. Cicero: "to block the refuges of the wicked". Book On the Resurrection of the Flesh: "so that what our adversaries block in the very first line of battle we might lay low in the last encounter."

72. To hold one's step. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 1, no. 23. Those who are attacked are said to sustain, or bear, the force and onset of the enemy. Hence it is used proverbially for "to undertake the defence of some matter", or "to sustain" it. Tertullian thus transferred it to literary disputation: "Another little book will hold this step against the heretics."

73. To press on one step. Vol. III, book Scorpiace, Against the Gnostics, ch. 8, no. 52. Tertullian adds, and explains himself: "To this alone we challenge." To press on, and to draw back the foot, and to advance further, are contraries. Cicero: "to press on" is to remain in some position. Proverbially: not to go out from the disputation undertaken, and to apply oneself to the inquiry into one matter.

74. This step will stand. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. [ ], no. 83. Tertullian: "But neither will this step stand", that is: this reasoning, this definition, this argument will not be firm nor hold; it can easily be refuted and weakened. Affirmatively: this I shall undertake to defend against all reasonings; I shall fight for the truth of this statement.

75. To meet [him] at the present step. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 19, no. 125. Cicero: "to meet and resist someone's plans". In Tertullian it is to parry an argument, as the occasion arises, with an answer and a contrary reasoning.

76. To make a prelude from the first step. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book III, ch. 5, no. 14. Tertullian adds: "So far, and as it were from a distance", to which he at once subjoins the opposite: "to fight at a sure mark and hand to hand", which, explained above, belong here. Gladiators are accustomed, before the regular contest with an opponent, to make a prelude in order to display their skill and to delight the spectator, as Acestes in Virgil: "Displaying at once his skill and his sounding bow." It is therefore to bring forward light and as it were playful arguments and

weaker ones at the beginning, before the real strength of the arguments is brought out.

77. To be on one's footing. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 10, no. 83. To press on with one argument. To which Tertullian opposes "to go on". This we may interpret as: to draw out the conclusion from the premisses or propositions, and to arrive at the sum of the thing to be proved. He may be said to be "wholly on his footing" who makes propositions but concludes nothing; who, using a sorites, that is, a heaped-up argument, lingers over the beginnings and is far from the end of the conclusion.

78. To lead down on the footing. In the same place, ch. 21, no. 183. To prepare oneself for a new inquiry into the matter; one thing having been explained, to go on to another.

79. Back to the footing again. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 9, no. 155. When, having been carried away and led off rather far from our purpose by a digression, or "ekbasis", we return to the same point from which we turned aside, and agitate and weigh the same matter afresh.

80. To challenge on the very footing. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book V, ch. 1, no. 12. Taken from those who challenge to a fight, who, when they have taken their stand, await the adversary and provoke him with weapon levelled. It signifies, then, to attack the head of the matter, and not to go back too far for the matter nor fetch it from afar, but to inquire at the outset into the things about which the fight is, and not to depart from the inquiry into them.

81. With reins let loose. Vol. V, Letter on Jewish Foods, ch. 4, no. 14. Reins are the straps that are tied to the bit on either side for guiding a horse. Hence these metaphors: "to give the loosest reins to friendship", Cicero. Virgil, Book V: "And he puts the foaming bits on the wild beasts, and with his hands lets loose all the reins." (In the proper sense; Book XII:) "Without distinction he stirs up slaughter, and lets loose all the reins of his wrath." (In the transferred sense.) And the orator is said in his peroration to open all the fountains of eloquence and to let loose all the reins of the emotions. The contrary is "to put on the reins", for to restrain and to check an onrush. "To let loose, give, slacken the reins", in Greek "to give the bits, to let go all, or to give up the whole rein", means to indulge too much and to permit too much liberty. "With reins let loose" is most licentiously, most freely and most intemperately, or immoderately. So too Novatian, in the book On the Trinity: "He poured out the ample folds of His indulgence"; and: "For under the yoke of the natural law given to all, some things, as if recalled by bridles, are drawn back; others, as if roused with reins let loose, are driven on."

82. More unstable than a wagon-dweller. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 1, no. 12. See Pamelius's notes. Celebrated by historians and poets are the Hamaxobii, or Hamaxobitae, a people of Sarmatia, whom Horace thus describes, Book III, Ode 24: "Better live the Scythians of the plains, whose wagons by custom draw their wandering homes, and the hardy Getae,

whose unmeasured acres bear free fruits and grain, nor does a tillage longer than a year please them." It will therefore be said not only of one who repeatedly changes his abode and plays a restless play from every quarter, but of one who is inconstant in a shifting judgement of mind.

83. Colder than winter. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 1, no. 14. Words, judgements and men are said by Cicero to be cold; and "to be hot in the coldest matter, to be cold in the most fervent", he sets against each other metaphorically; and "slow in speaking and almost cold", of a witless man, of slow and dull mind; as "hot" of a brisk and roused mind. And "hot counsels" are headlong and rash ones.

84. An unbreathable under-sea. Vol. II, book On Idolatry, last chapter, no. 170. See Pamelius's notes: "hypobrychion", that which is covered by the waves, what is overwhelmed by the billows. Homer, Odyssey: "And he held him under water a long time", where "hypobrycha" is poetic for "hypobrychion", one who has gone down into the water, who has gone under the water. So, roughly, Paulus Leopardus, Miscellanies, Book VIII, ch. 23. But since Tertullian says, "an unutterable depth for those thrown out, an inextricable shipwreck for those dashed against [the rocks], an unbreathable under-sea for those swallowed up", he seems to signify a place, namely the lowest bottom of the sea, to which those thrown out who do not know how to swim, and those dashed against the rocks, clinging neither to planks nor to rocks, are carried down. As a proverb, then, it will signify extreme danger, such that all hope of safety and of emerging from evils has been taken away.

85. To look out for another blow. Vol. III, Scorpiace, Against the Gnostics, ch. 5, no. 35. "This stroke has been met; let us look out for another blow," etc. Others punctuate it quite differently. Taken from gladiators. Cicero, First Catilinarian: "How many of your thrusts, so aimed that it seemed they could not be avoided, have I escaped by a slight swerve and, as they say, with my body"; and Virgil, Book V, on the boxers: "Now this approach, now that, and every spot he skilfully tries, and presses with varied assaults in vain. Entellus, rising, showed his right hand and raised it high; the other swiftly foresaw the blow coming from above, and, slipping aside with nimble body, gave way." So that it means: one argument having been refuted, to seek the weakening of another, and to work out with oneself a reasoning by which it can be disproved.

86. More deceitful than the Ister. Vol. III, Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 1, no. 15. See Pamelius's notes. Who would say this was taken from the porcupine, the animal? The inhabitants of the region of Istria are called not Istri or Histri but Istrii, and I do not find that anyone ascribes deceit to them. It remains, then, that the river Ister, by another name the Danube, gave occasion to this proverb, since Tertullian assigns to Marcion so many titles and honorific names from places, peoples, Pontus, the neighbours of his homeland, and things peculiar to it. The Ister will be called deceitful either because of its winding bends (like the Maeander), whence by the poets it is said to be twisted and winding,

because of the multitude of its mouths (among which one is Pseudostoma, as it were a false or deceitful mouth), which deceive those sailing on their set course, or because by a sudden flood it often overwhelms the dwellers on its banks unawares. Tibullus:

Also the deceitful witness, / the Pannonian who dwells by the Ister,

Ausonius:

And the source of the Hister, unknown to Latin annals.

(for he aspirates [the name].) Unknown, because it deceives and lies hidden.

87. To shake off the yoke; and: To excuse the neck from the yoke. Tome V, book On Modesty, chapters X, XII, numbers 81 and 95.

The yoke, which oxen put on when they draw a plough or a cart. Cicero: "The necks of oxen were born for the yoke." Metaphorically it signifies servitude or a heavy burden. Hence the phrase: to send under the yoke. To throw the yoke off the neck is: to set free from violent domination, from the heavy burden of servitude. The contrary in Virgil, [book] XII:

Unless they confess they accept the bridle and, conquered, obey.

Tertullian, book On Idolatry: "He has loosed for us the bond and the yoke"; and book On Modesty: "The yokes of works have been cast off, not those of disciplines."

88. Lamia's towers. Tome III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter III, number 23.

On the Lamiae Politian [wrote] much in the Preface to the Dialectic, and Brassicanus his commentator; Hadrian Junius, Adage 34, Century 2; and Caelius Rhodiginus, chapter V, book XXIX, where, concerning the sweetheart of Menippus the Lycian, who was just about to be taken as his wife, a certain philosopher after much else says: "This pretty bride is one of the Empusae, whom the many take to be Lamiae and Mormolyceae", that is: of the Empusae, whom most people think to be both Lamias and Mormolycias. Tertullian, moreover, mentions towers, because they tell the tale that Lamia, a queen in the regions of Libya, settled in a huge cave at the foot of a rock. It will be said, therefore, of things fearsome in appearance in which there is no danger: names invented to terrify, old wives' tales.

89. He defended this with his flank. Tome III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter II, number 21.

In the battle line, that is, in an army girded for battle, there were these: the front, the rear, and two flanks, which were also called wings and horns. A covered flank [is said] of those who are protected by arms and defence; an open one of those exposed to danger. Terence, Heautontimorumenos:

I triumph, if I may get away with my flank covered:

that is, in such a way that I bring no danger upon myself. Caesar, book II of the Gallic War: "This circumstance also protected one flank of the camp by the banks of the river"; and: "almost the whole camp being laid bare in front and on the left side"; and: "part of whom [began] to surround the legions on their open flank". Nennius in his Miscellanies (if I remember rightly), and Muretus on Terence following him, would have it taken from gladiators, for whom, if they cannot inflict a blow on their opponent, it is honourable enough to go away with flank covered, that is, whole and unharmed. Moreover it used to be said: to present an open flank, when they did not dodge the blow but gave themselves up freely to the lictor and to death. To defend this with one's flank is therefore, by these selfsame arguments,

reasons and proofs, to be made firm; a word which, like the military one, to be fortified, Tertullian uses in the same place.

90. From either flank. Tome V, book On the Trinity, chapter XXVI, number 112.

Words frequent among the jurists. Ulpian, book III of the Digest, title On procurators: "That he be held as plaintiff, as it were, from either side." And Justinian, book V of the Code of Law, says: "The authorities on either side have had a great contest." Tertullian: "From either flank the truth shuts us into this judgement", that is: on both sides, and from both sides of the argument.

91. On whatever flank you will. Tome III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter XXXI, number 544.

The same as the preceding: from either flank, as Tertullian makes plain: "You have one who provides for marriage on whatever flank you will", that is: to whatever side you turn.

92. On which of the flanks. Tome V, book On Fasting, chapter XI, number 72.

On which side of the argument; by what reasoning, towards which side? And here he uses the word confirmed, so that it may be referred to the covered flank, in an army or in a gladiator.

93. Lions in peace; see above: Stags in battle. Tome II, book On the Soldier's Crown, chapter I, number 18.

It fits those who conduct themselves the wrong way round: where the matter demands boldness and courage, there they are timid; fierce, where there is no need of fierceness. Livy: "Turbulent in leisure, sluggish in war." Synesius: "bold in peace, cowardly in war", fierce in peace, fearful in war.

94. To meet [one] on the threshold. Tome V, book On Monogamy, chapter VIII, number 52.

To present oneself at the very entrance of the work and of the disputation.

95. To stumble from the threshold. Tome III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter III, number 22.

RHENANUS. A proverb about those who go wrong at the beginning of a matter they have undertaken to do. Like that one: The gelding at the gate. With this agree: To run aground in harbour; To fail on the threshold. Virgil:

Why do we fail dishonoured on the first threshold?

for: to go wrong at the very outset of the work and business undertaken. It is transferred from those who, about to go out of the house, strike their foot on the threshold. Now to have struck the threshold, for the hem of a garment to have caught on it, or to have slipped and fallen, were unlucky portents and of evil omen, everywhere in the poets. Ovid:

He is said to have fallen headlong, his foot having stumbled,

96. To draw lines. Tome III, book On the Soul, chapter XLIII, number 480.

"To draw daily the lines, above all, of the human beginning and end." The proverbs drawn from lines which follow are transferred partly from geometry, which accomplishes everything by lines, partly from racecourses and wrestling-grounds, whose spaces were enclosed by fixed lines, partly from painters, who are accustomed to draw lines with the brush before they begin to colour the shadow that is without colour. But this first

Tertullian seems to draw from the beginning and end of the courses in the racetrack, or from painting, when he adds: "Stretching out a hand to faith, which is more easily helped by images and parables, of things as well as of words." Then: "it sets before you, therefore", as if it places it before the eyes in a picture: "even through the image of death".

97. To draw beforehand certain lines at which the fight is to be fought. Tome III, book Against Marcion, chapter V, number 14.

This is taken from those who meet in a duel, that is, in single combat; or from those who run in the stadium; it stands for: to fix beforehand a definite law for the matter.

98. To bound with fixed lines. Tome I, book Against the Jews, chapter II, number 6.

Tertullian adds: "the sum of the question itself". From the same lines of the contestants, within which they take their stand to fight it out. In the book On Modesty: "We fix the same limit of the threshold." Where threshold is a line, as in Virgil: "and they leave the threshold". To set beforehand fixed bounds and fixed laws for the disputation undertaken.

99. To enclose with lines. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter VII, number 51.

"Although the whole matter is fought out over two Gods, we have meanwhile enclosed it within these lines; within them we shall engage." It is, therefore, to fix beforehand certain settled arguments, within which, as within a kind of railings, the freer wandering of speech may be held in.

100. To bring down by lines. Ibid., chapter XXV.

Cicero: "The case is brought down to this point." "I have brought the matter down to this", that is, I have brought it into this state, this place. Tertullian: "As regards the question of goodness, we have brought it down by these lines [to show] that it is by no means made equal to God", that is: we have treated it within these bounds.

101. To draw beforehand fixed lines for one kind of engagement. Tome III, Scorpiace against the Gnostics, chapter IV, number 32.

There precedes in Tertullian: "We, fighting elsewhere about God." To prescribe to oneself fixed laws within which the disputation may run its course about one and the same matter.

102. The last line. Tome III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter III, number 19, and chapter XXXVIII, numbers 132, 133; and book Against Praxeas, chapter XVI, number 100.

RHENANUS: Formerly, in the courses where races were run publicly, the beginning and the end were marked with lines. Hence whatever is last began to be called, proverbially, the last line. So when Tertullian here calls Hermogenes "not the last line of men of understanding", take it as "most unskilled". Horace closes the epistle to Quintius thus:

Death is the last line of things.

These things also Turnebus, Adversaria, book XII, chapter X, where he explains a similar passage of Terence; and it was called the calx, because it was marked, of course, with lime and chalk. Beyond the calx nothing remains towards which the race may be directed. And yet when the God of the universe, in the book Against Praxeas, is called the last line, the author seems rather to allude to that in the Apocalypse, I and XXII: "I am the alpha and the omega", that is, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8; 22:13). Book Against Hermogenes: "If it is bounded, it has a last line

which, as properly as a painter, you recognize to be the end for everything of which there is a last line." In Terence, to love to the last line is to love most intensely; ἡ ἄκρα γραμμή, the highest line and the outermost bound, so that there the highest love is meant. Just as Euripides, when he meant the outermost bound of evils and miseries, said: "we have come to the outermost line of evils." Yet you would not take it ineptly if in Terence you understood the last line in love as the mere sight of the thing loved or desired, as if to love by long lines, that is, from afar. Erasmus holds that Hermogenes is called the last line by Tertullian as being the last and latest of the heretics of his time, who survived into Tertullian's age.

103. To fight at the line. Tome V, book On Modesty, chapter VI, number 59.

"At this line now our engagement will fight." Then he explains himself: "Yet I must prescribe a form for you, lest you put out your hand to old things, lest you look behind your back." It is therefore not to wander, in disputing, from the matter proposed.

104. To step out from the lines. Tome III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter XXXIX, number 137.

To stray from what was undertaken and proposed; a metaphor that seems taken from those who, not keeping their stand on the lines, fall out or step out, that is, carry their foot beyond the line while fighting.

105. Beyond the line. Ibid.

Beyond the limit fixed beforehand for the disputation.

106. There is one line. Tome III, Scorpiace against the Gnostics, chapter XI, number 84.

There is one target, towards which the sum of the whole disputation is to be directed.

107. To direct to one line of engagement. Tome III, book On the Flesh of Christ, chapter XVII, number 135.

To keep one's stand on one matter, and to dispute it with reasons brought from both sides; as above: To fight in the same stance.

108. To stand upon the line. Tome III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter XVII, number 250.

To which the contrary is the one above: To step out from the lines. It is to remain in what was undertaken, and not to wander. Because, as Turnebus says, they sometimes fought foot to foot in such a way that the foot always had to stand upon the line drawn, and not be drawn back from it.

109. To fight on the same lines. Tome III, book V Against Marcion, chapter I, number 12.

To remain within fixed enclosures of arguments, that is, to keep within the same bounds in disputing.

110. Back to the lines. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter IX, number 55.

That is, to return to what was proposed and undertaken after a digression or παρέκβασις. Taken from those who, when they have already fallen out from the lines, recover their stance again. See above: Back into stance.

111. To recover one's stance on the same lines. Tome III, book On the Soul, chapter XXVI, number 345.

Blessed Jerome, in the Dialogue against the Luciferians: "go back again into your stance and onto the lines."

112. To enclose within the last line. Tome III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter XXXVIII, number 134.

This seems rather to be taken from the geometers, whose treatment concerns quantity, place, surface and line. Tertullian is speaking of Matter, which Hermogenes made infinite in body, and yet assigned to it a place by which it was bounded, that is, was enclosed by a last line. The proverb will therefore mean, if you please, to comprehend and define something by fixed limits.

113. To draw lines. Tome III, book On the Soul, chapter XXXVI, number 432.

In Greek, to lead or to draw a line. And line-drawing, ἡ γραφίς. Hence that phrase: To draw the first lines, an elegant metaphor from painters, for what amounts to presenting only the outline of some thing, and sketching in passing what you wish to be understood. He also draws the first lines who prescribes a form for beginning a piece of business. And to send a line, for: to give only an outline of a matter, and to set it forth to be investigated by certain conjectures. For indeed from the drawing of lines we learn even the proper craft of painting. Whence the little verse:

A line that would confess, from afar, the old Apelles.

Pliny, book XXXV, chapter X, mentions the lines of Apelles. For painters are accustomed, as Rhenanus also noted, to draw lines with the brush before they begin to colour the shadow that is without colour.

114. To draw straight lines. Tome III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter XXXVI, number 126.

He fits these proverbs, drawn from the painter's art, to Hermogenes, who had practised painting before his heresy: "Except that, if you draw lines as straight as that reasoning of yours, Hermogenes, there is no painter duller than you." It can be applied to one who does his duty well; who does not depart from the precepts of honour; who is skilled in his art. To which may also be opposed: to fall out from the lines.

115. To draw lineaments. Tome III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, number 35.

Cicero: "Pigments sprinkled at random on a panel can form the lineaments of a face." In Greek they are περιγραφαί and σκιαγραφίαι. Likewise Cicero in the Orator to Brutus: "Rhythm has brought to oratory a kind of wrestling-school training, as it were, and the finishing lineaments", that is, a grace applied for display, and as it were the finishing hand. Tertullian: he explains to express as to draw lines; that is, to set a matter more clearly before the eyes and to demonstrate it.

116. To fall out from the lines. Tome III, book Against Hermogenes, chapter XXXIX, number 137.

Besides the interpretation above, drawn from athletes, he applies this rather from painters against Hermogenes, formerly a painter. For painters, falling out from the lines drawn with the brush, extend their painting beyond the line; so that it means: to run off the track from what was undertaken, or even to depart from duty, and to be deceived and to err.

117. To work the saw back and forth along the same line. Tome II, book On the Soldier's Crown, chapter III, number 28.

Rhenanus: It has the look of a proverb about useless and vain labour. A metaphor taken from wood-cutters: those who draw the saw in such a way that they either do not let it go down or keep on only in the same line will achieve nothing, or at any rate not much. Tertullian hints at useless labour about one and the same thing, like those who are immoderate on the same theme and, as it were, paint the cypress. These look to the same point: Always to stray on the same string; To beat the same anvil night and day. In Virgil, "the blade of the shrill saw" hints at the back-and-forth motion. So fullers are said to be "shrill with their feet", that is, to tread out and wash cloths with alternating, back-and-forth foot.

118. Light-shunners. Tome III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter XLVII, number 341.

Lucifuga and Lucifugus, a name of ill repute. A man, to be sure, contrary to nature and topsy-turvy, who sleeps by day and is awake by night, whom the jurists call a bat, because when the day's course is already run, towards night, he creeps out after the manner of a bat. In Greek λυχνόβιος, called by some Tenebrio, as being a lover of darkness. Cicero, against Catiline, calls them sleepers when he sets them against the wakeful. Tertullian: "light-shunners of the Scriptures", those who in the utmost clearness of what is written, and in things which, to use Tertullian's words, "shine out as if written with a ray of the sun itself", stumble and, as the saying goes, are in the dark in the sun.

119. To carry a lamp about at midday. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter I, number 19.

Proverbially it will mean the same as to use or light a lamp at midday, that is, to do something out of its proper time, or: to hunt for obscurity in a clear matter. It arose from Diogenes, who with a lighted lamp at midday was looking for a man.

120. Bereft, his eyes dug out. Tome V, book On the Trinity, chapter XXVIII, number 127.

Virgil, book III, of Polyphemus:

Then he washed the flowing gore of the eye dug out.

And a little above: "whose eye was taken away", and: "we bore out his eye with a weapon". See above: The blind man stumbles on a rock. Novatian adds by way of epexegesis: "Let him be wholly overcome in the blindness of his doctrine." So that it may be said proverbially of one who is blinded by the perversity of doctrines or errors, and who has nothing left of sound mind or understanding. Or, nearer to Novatian's meaning: one for whom no way of escape remains to which, beaten by arguments, he may run back, and who can discern nothing within himself by which to defend his error.

121. To run off the track from the light through darkness. Tome V, book On Modesty, chapter VIII, number 59.

From orbita, which is the track of a wheel running along the road, comes the verb exorbitare, as it were to turn aside from the road: through the blindness of errors not to be able to see through to the true doctrine, which shines of itself. Book to the Gnostics: "From Him (God) they have run off the track into idolatry."

(Huit.)

122. Evil, out of doors! Tome III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter X, number 119.

The cry of one who detests and shrinks from something, and who prays to avert evil and misfortune. Virgil, [book] II:

Which omen may the gods first turn upon himself..... and: / Better things, gods, to the dutiful, and that madness to our enemies. / Gods, forbid the threats; gods, turn away such a fall.

Among the ancients a Hercules ἀλεξίκακος, that is, averter of evils, used to be set up in the forecourts of houses, and sometimes, for the sake of good omen, there was inscribed: μηδὲν κακὸν εἰσίτω, let nothing evil come in. Moreover, wicked and profane men used to be kept away from the rites by the cry of the sacrificers. Virgil:

Away from here, away, you profane.

Theocritus, in an idyll:

I shall sing to those who understand; shut the doors, you profane.

That is:

I shall sing to the initiated; close the doors, you profane.

123. To hold back by laying on a hand. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter VI, number 44.

To lay on a hand, properly in the old term of law, is whenever, without waiting for any authority of a judge, we claim a thing owed to us, or even our own; and a lord was accustomed to lay a hand on an estate held in benefice. A hand is laid on someone and his goods or wares when they are forbidden by some authority or edict to go away from there or be moved. So to reserve the laying on of a hand is to retain the right of reclaiming a thing alienated. Virgil:

The Fates laid a hand on him,

that is, they destined him for death. Tertullian explains himself: "Further, here too the same rule of the supremely great will plead for us, inasmuch as it claims the whole condition of divinity."

124. To stretch out a hand. Tome III, book On the Soul, chapter XXIII, number 408; and book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter LIII, number 382; and book IV Against Marcion, chapter XLI, number 677.

Common enough, for: to be of help. Cicero in the speech after his return: "Who first stretched out to me, struck down and prostrate, his consular pledge and his right hand." So God is said by Tertullian to stretch out a hand to faith, that is, to strengthen it and preserve it in its firmness. Virgil, book III:

He gives his right hand, and strengthens his spirit with the present pledge.

By the stretching out of hands, too, approval of another's opinion was signified, which in Greek is χειροτονία, τὸ χειροτονεῖν.

125. To hand over the hand. Tome V, book On Modesty, chapter XV, number 126.

He uses it for the same thing as the preceding. Virgil, book VIII:

And he took him by the hand, and clasping his right hand clung to it.

To hand over from hand to hand, in Cicero, is to give up and commend.

126. To give one's hands. Tome V, book On the Trinity, chapter XI, number 55.

Cicero in On Friendship: "At last let him give his hands, and allow himself to be conquered." Virgil:

For he himself would not, in his fierceness, have given his hands.

It is therefore to acknowledge oneself conquered, and to yield to the adversary,

for those who surrender to the victor so as not to be killed freely offer their hands to the chains. Virgil also said to stretch and to stretch forth, book XII:

He, humble and suppliant, stretching forth his eyes and his pleading right hand: "You have conquered, and the Ausonians have seen me, conquered, stretch out my palms....."

127. To hold between the hands. Ibid., chapter I, number 95.

It is to have something certain, to have it as it were set before the eyes. So we say: to hold victory in one's hands. Virgil:

The rest, in what ruin of things they lie struck down, all is before your eyes and between your hands.

As if he were to say: they need no narration; they lie open to all and are clear.

128. The napkin dropped. Tome III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter XXXVI, number 381.

That is, as if at some signal given. Tertullian alludes to the custom received at Rome at the Circensian Games, by which a napkin, of the kind used by tragic actors, was let fall by the praetor as the signal for beginning the chariot-race and the contest. Juvenal touches on this custom, Satire II:

Meanwhile the shows of the Megalesian napkin keep the Idaean festival.... And Martial: When the praetor wished to drop the chalked (otherwise, waxen) napkin;

And Suetonius in the Nero: "Some freedman dropping the napkin." See Pamelius's annotations on the book On the Shows, chapter XVI, number 143, Tome II.

129. More inhuman than a Massagete. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter I, number 13.

See Pamelius's annotations. A nation of Scythians beyond the Hyrcanian Sea, afterwards called Alani, Abasgi and Augi, and by the Hebrews Magogites, most hostile to strangers, able to keep neither lasting treaties of friendship with neighbouring peoples nor faith. They drink mares' milk mixed with blood; moreover they are of a nature so monstrous and savage that they are accustomed to cut into pieces those worn out with old age and to feed on their flesh mixed with that of cattle. Hence that famous name for inhumanity.

130. Not to fight against God. Tome I, [book] To Scapula, chapter IV, number 22.

Do not wage war with God. Cicero in the book On Old Age: "For what else is it to war with the gods in the manner of the Giants than to fight against nature?" Hence θεομάχοι: enemies of God, or those who struggle against God. It seems drawn from the well-known fable of the Giants warring against Jupiter. It can be used when someone, relying on his own strength, rashly attempts things not to be tried, and so that we may warn that whatever is undertaken by force against divine and human law ends unhappily. Horace in the Odes:

Why do you weary with eternal counsels a mind too small for them? / Virgil: / Trust God.... and: / Alas, it is not right for anyone to trust in anything when the gods are unwilling.

Twice in the Acts of the Apostles: "let us not fight against God"..... "lest you be found fighters against God" (Acts 23:9; 5:39). Plato said that men of this kind were of the race of the Titans.

131. To stuff in crumbs. Tome III, book On the Soul, chapter VI, number 85.

From the dispute between Plato and Aristotle which Tertullian set up something may be drawn out. Plato, varied, manifold

and copious, of singular eloquence and sweetness of speech, in whose Dialogues the diction, although it is free from verse, yet because it moves with more animation and uses the most brilliant ornaments of words, is to be thought poetry rather than that of the comic poets. Aristotle excelled in brevity of speaking, or rather he was fond of a certain dryness and slenderness in speaking, that is, a narrow, compressed and concise style (which in Plato is ample, copious, overflowing). Hence these phrases, honeyed water for Plato's eloquence and crumbs for Aristotle's terse speech, can be taken proverbially; so that the latter kind of speech is dry, and one from which nothing can lightly be taken away, while the former is overflowing, and one from which, if you remove or change anything, you will have taken nothing away from the sense. Nevertheless we shall also be able to interpret to stuff in crumbs as: to distribute something thinly and sparingly; as to pour in honeyed water is: generously and kindly.

132. To pour in honeyed water. Ibid.

Aqua mulsa, ὑδρόμελι or μελίκρατον: water mixed with honey. So that he alludes not only to the copious but to the honeyed or honey-sweet eloquence in Plato. In the book On the Soul, of the same Plato: "for the honey of his eloquence". Whereas, on the contrary, what is dry is very easily crumbled and dissolves bit by bit into crumbs. The words to pour in and to stuff in serve the same purpose. Perhaps to stuff in crumbs will also agree with Tully's to put into the mouth what has been chewed beforehand, that is: in teaching, to deliver a matter too minutely and in too small morsels, and to explain it coarsely; in Greek, to be petty, to split hairs, or, as Cicero to Atticus, to be busy about small things, that is, to be anxious with petty care.

133. To prick the mule out of the ass. Tome III, book Against the Valentinians, chapter XIX, number 237.

Mules, which asses and mares beget, whence ἡμίονοι, as it were half-asses, from their fathers. Hinnuli, or rather, in Columella's opinion, hinni, from the neighing of the stallion father, are born of a horse and a she-ass. Ginni are those born of a mare by the mating of a mule. Hence the proverb: of the ass and the mule, that is: of the half-ass, from the Greek etymology, by likeness, when the model and the things fashioned on it are not much different, or when follies are represented by follies, or lies are built upon lies. Of such a stamp are these too: Not so like is egg to egg; Of the same herd; Bacchius with Bythus.

134. To wrinkle the nose. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter XIII, number 71.

In the nose is the seat of mockery. Hence mockers are called "nosy", and are said to "have a nose". Pliny, book XI, chapter XXXVII: "New manners have dedicated the nose to sly mockery." Horace:

To hang up on a hooked nose.

Martial:

And boys have a rhinoceros's nose,

Persius:

"You laugh", he says, "and indulge too much your hooked nostrils."

And the Greeks [say] μυκτηρίζειν, from μυκτήρ, to mock with the nose. From the nostrils, too, comes a sign of anger, as

certain animals betray their anger by the snorting of their nostrils. Theocritus, in the Thyrsis:

And bitter bile sits ever at his nostril. / Harsh anger always sits in his nostrils.

Hence those who take offence are said to wrinkle and contract their nostrils. Horace:

Lest a dirty napkin wrinkle your nostrils.

135. To act with the nose. Tome III, book Against Marcion, chapter XXV, number 178.

Cicero: to wound with a ridiculous and scoffing jibe.

136. To deride with the nose. Tome V, book On Modesty, chapter VI, number 48.

Blessed Paul to the Galatians, [chapter] VI: "God is not mocked" (Gal. 6:7), that is, He is not derided, He is not treated with the nose. For μύζειν among the Greeks, that is, to murmur or mutter, signifies hardly anything other than to draw a sound through the nostrils with the lips closed, whence μυκτήρ. The sound, moreover, μυγμή, is for the most part given over to mockery; and hence one who acts without the bite of censure is called ἀμύγμων, in Homer everywhere ἀμύμων. Tertullian adds "of flatterers", so that a grimace behind the back seems to be meant, which is a secret and hidden mockery, from the gesture of those who laugh at someone behind his back or the back of his head; so that it means: to wheedle God.

137. An inextricable shipwreck. Tome II, book On Idolatry, last chapter, number 169.

In Greek: ναυάγιον ἄφυκτον, which cannot be avoided. Those who strike on rocks and break their ship cannot extricate or free themselves from the danger. Virgil, of the Labyrinth: "the inextricable maze". See Hypobrychium.

138. To sail among rocks and bays, through shoals and straits. Ibid., 168.

It is to be in two-sided danger. For rocks, that is, stony mountains or crags standing up out of the sea and sometimes lying hidden beneath the surface of the water; and bays, curved shores embracing the sea; and shoals, shallower places of the sea, dangerous with their shallows of waves; and straits, narrows of the sea, where the sea boils as with surge: these are both treacherous and dangerous to those who sail. Book I Against Marcion: "the two Symplegades of his shipwreck".

139. Darker than a cloud. Tome III, book I Against Marcion, chapter I, number 14.

See Pamelius's annotations on the Cimmerian darkness, which falls under the same proverb. A cloud-bank: a denser cloud, or a thickening of exhalations, having a fruitful power of producing water. Hence a misty or cloudy sky. To spread mists or cloud over is to darken. But since Tertullian alludes to Marcion's character, gloominess and a hidden severity of mind will be meant; as in the Greek comic poet, "to scatter the cloud of the brow", to dispel the cloud of the forehead, that is, to drive away sadness and put on a cheerful face. And a clouded brow, ὀφρὺς συννεφής, for a gloomy one. Horace: "Take the cloud from your brow." Virgil:

But a brow little glad, and eyes with downcast face; and: / But black night flies round his head with gloomy shadow.

140. To hand over by a nod (unless one prefers "to expose [to ridicule]"). Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 4, no. 84. See: To fix with the eye, and to point out with the finger. It belongs to those who deride and disapprove of something secretly among themselves, which it would not be safe or seemly to do openly: since it is not permitted to do it either by casting the eyes upon the man or the thing, or by stretching out the fingers, then at least it can be shown by a secret nod.

141. With eyes closed. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 2, no. 20; Apology, ch. 3, no. 36; Vol. III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 51, no. 361. If you understand the word "it is plain", the thing is most clear, clearer than the midday light, so that anyone, willing or unwilling, can either see it or understand it. If you understand "to do something", it is to act abruptly, rashly, without discernment. As they rush, with eyes closed, into hatred of the Christian name, and by the blindness of hatred into shipwreck, who neither examine the truth of the matter nor take pains to examine it, but most unjustly indulge their own passions; and, as Terence has it: "They know neither right nor good nor fair; / better, worse, what may profit, they see nothing but what they please." Blessed Augustine: "What force, in short, except blindness and emptiness of mind, drives a man to throw at another, with eyes closed, as the saying is, what, when he has thrown it at him, at once comes back?" Blessed Jerome: "After the manner of the Andabatae they brandish the sword in darkness"; and: "It is better, however, to fight with eyes closed (as the saying is), after the manner of the Andabatae, than not to repel with the shield of truth the darts aimed at one." And blessed Basil spoke of a νυκτομαχία, a night-battle, against those who attack something with no judgement.

142. With Homeric eyes. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 2, no. 20. See Pamelius's notes. The same as the preceding. Homer, formerly called Melesigenes, from his blindness [for he is reported to have been deprived of sight from early youth] obtained the name of ὅμηρος. Hence that admiration of all, that the images of all human things could have been set expressly before our eyes by one who had never used his eyes upon them.

143. To fix boundary stakes. Vol. V, book On Fasting, ch. 11, no. 72. A boundary stone, and sometimes a stake, which is set at the borders of fields; and as Virgil says of the stone: "which happened to lie in the plain, / set as a boundary for the field, to settle disputes over the lands." And in the Georgics: "Not even to mark out or divide the plain with a boundary / was lawful." That stakes used to be set in place of stones or rocks is shown by the name Palen, used among the Flemings for the boundaries of fields. Or Tertullian alludes to the dromos or horse-course, where the terminus was the place where they rested when the race was run, and the meta, a pointed stake set at the end of the course, round which they turned their course. To fix boundary stakes, therefore, is to shut someone within narrow and fixed limits, so that he may neither attempt anything, nor be able to do anything, nor exercise command any further.

144. To bear down on one side. Vol. V, book On the Trinity, ch. 23, no. 102. Taken from warfare, where the right or left flank, or wing, or part is pressed with greater force and persistence by adversaries who advance their standards, turned from every side. When these are thrown down and driven from their place, victory comes easily. Caesar, Gallic War II: "Caesar, having set out to the right wing, where he saw his men pressed," etc. In these words the author explains himself in the book On the Trinity: "they had inclined", "to draw", "to overcome", which are taken from warfare.

145. More insipid than a melon. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. 32, no. 387. Πέπονες is said of the soft and pliant, a metaphor drawn from ripe fruits; or also from cucumbers, which are called pepones because they grow soft and, as soon as they have ripened, go flabby. Hence those sayings: μαλακώτερος πέπονος σύκου, softer than a ripe fig; πεπαίτερος μόρων, riper than mulberries. And proverbial in conviviality, by a transfer of meaning, πέπονες, that is, tender and weak. It is also at times a coaxing and friendly word, ὦ πέπον, that is, "dearest" or "gentlest", from ripe and gentle manners, or because we all love τὰ πέπονα, that is, things soft and ripe.

146. To have a melon in place of a heart. Vol. III, book IV Against Marcion, ch. 40, no. 666. See on this place the notes of Pamelius, and those of Feuardent on that saying of blessed Irenaeus, book I, ch. 3, no. 10: "O you melons, contemptible sophists, and not men": which is taken from Homer, Iliad II: "ὦ πέπονες, κάκ' ἐλέγχε', ἀχαιΐδες, οὐκ ἔτ' ἀχαιοί", that is: "O you soft ones, base disgraces, Achaean women, not Achaean men", which Virgil imitated: "O truly Phrygian women, for you are not Phrygian men." The proverb therefore means: to be heartless, or to be of an insipid heart. For in the heart are the chief powers of the mind. Hence the "hearted", whose heart is rightly disposed and strong; the "heartless", whose heart is like a melon, soft, flabby, not at all manly. See above: To have no brain or heart, and, Stags in battle.

147. To play a part. Vol. III, book III Against Marcion, ch. 11, no. 77. See below: To run through the scene. Persona, for an office or role. Cicero: "This role of mildness I have always played; that part of severity I have not sought." From the mask of the actors. To bear, maintain, sustain, play a part: from writers on the stage.

148. More impure than Physcon. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 4, no. 79. Of a man who plunges himself into every kind of luxury and lust. For Ptolemy Physcon was the eighth king of Egypt, who, while he ruled Cyrene, succeeded his deceased brother Euergetes; who beyond a bestial lust and

cruelty (which crimes Justin records, book 83), by the cramming of his belly and the deformity of his body and face was more like a beast than a man. This foulness, increased in him by the fineness of a transparent garment, as if on purpose, or rather out of intemperance, earned him from the fact the infamous name of Physcon, as of one pot-bellied and dropsical, because of his devotion to his belly. For φύσκων is one who is big-bellied or fat, from φύσκη, which is the thick intestine. To whom Persius too says: "A fat paunch juts out with a hanging foot and a half."

149. To meet the blow. Vol. III, Scorpiace against the Gnostics, ch. 5, no. 35. Taken from gladiators, who either escape the adversary's thrust by bending the body aside, or catch it on the small shield, so that his effort is in vain. See above: To look out for another blow. Blessed Jerome against Jovinian: "We seem as it were to give ground, and to give the adversary an opening to strike." And: "to beat back with the shield of truth the darts aimed at one."

150. To applaud into one's bosom. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 9, no. 42. "If any examples applaud into your bosom", that is, if any befall you so welcome that they seem to confirm the opinion formed in your minds, so that you feel a silent pleasure at it within yourselves and indulge your own inclination. In Homer: to rejoice in one's heart. Tibullus: "to rejoice in a silent bosom."

151. To applaud a side. The same, ch. 16, no. 160. In Tertullian is read "to applaud the opposite side", or "to applaud softly", as it were to vote for and subscribe to the opinion of others. From those who make a noise with their feet, or show approval by clapping their hands. Cicero: "No one stamped a foot in applause in that trial."

152. More fortunate than Polycrates. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 11, no. 173. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, a golden offspring of fortune, to whom all things flowed at his nod and will. But who nevertheless closed a course of life prosperous to the point of envy with a miserable end, fixed to a cross on the summit of Mount Mycale. Valerius Maximus, book VI, ch. 11.

153. Loftier than Pompey. The same. You have the praise of Pompey in Cicero, Oration for the Manilian Law; in Pliny, book VII, the whole of ch. 26, by whom he says the splendour of the deeds not only of Alexander the Great was equalled, but almost that of Hercules and Liber too. The surname of Great, shared with Alexander, gave him also a shared title of loftiness.

154. To stick fast in the midst of the surge of the sea. Vol. III, book I Against Marcion, ch. 7, no. 50. Virgil, book V: "It stuck on the jutting rocks." And: "struggling on the reef and in the shallows." And book X: "while, dashed on the shoals, it hangs on the uneven ridge." These, like the Tertullian phrase, can be taken proverbially. The contrary will be from the same book:

"It glides on, cutting the deep, with wave and tide favouring." Aestus, moreover, is sometimes taken for the very motion of the sea as it rises and falls, that is, for its approach or increase, or its retreat or ebb. Sometimes for that unstable sand which swallows and drains everything. Virgil: "The surge rages on the sands..." and: "With the surge the sands are mingled." Similar are these: To stick on the same reefs, in water, in a shoal, in a rough place. Metaphors drawn from sailors, who, when the ship has been dashed on a shoal, cannot keep the course they set. So while the ship is driven hither and thither by the ebbing surge and cannot go forward, the proverb is used to signify: not to extricate or disentangle oneself, not to answer an argument, but to slip back to the same point. See: Waves on both sides.

155. To set upon the precipice. Vol. III, book IV Against Marcion, ch. 37, no. 607. Praeruptum, used as a noun, like abruptum, is whatever is high and sheer: "sheer rocks", and "a sheer mountain", that is, high (Pliny). To the Greeks τὸ ἀπόκρημνον, whence a steep precipice. Tertullian explains himself: "Knowing that men would go headlong, He Himself set them upon the precipice": so that it means: to expose to open danger, and not to take sufficient care that no harm befall; as if the management of money were entrusted to a greedy man and a thief, or the chastity of virgins to a lustful youth.

156. An unspeakable deep. Vol. II, book On Idolatry, last chapter, no. 169. Those who, thrown from a ship, sink down into the depth of the sea, scarcely ever come up by swimming from the inescapable danger. See Hypobrychium, and: Shipwreck. The contrary will be that line of Virgil, book V: "At last, scarcely, he was given back from the lowest depth." And book VI: "I was swimming to land, and was already holding to safety."

157. To bring to the rule. Vol. III, book I Against Marcion, ch. 22, no. 153. A rule, otherwise a square, is a builder's instrument by which builders test the length of a structure, whether it is true; and Tertullian uses a builder's word for examining the goodness of God. Hence those sayings: Straighter than a rule; More exact than a level; By the plumb-line and the level. To weigh a matter carefully, so that it is treated completely in all its parts and measures.

158. Softer than Sardanapalus. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 4, no. 79. Sardanapalus, last king of the Assyrians, a man more corrupt than a woman, says Justin, book I, who was found among herds of harlots, spinning purple on the distaff and, in woman's dress, since in softness of body and wantonness of eyes he surpassed all women, sharing out the day's wool among the maidens; so that his name, for his remarkable effeminacy, passed into a proverb among the Greeks and Latins.

159. To run through and dance out the scene. Vol. III, book III Against Marcion, ch. 11, no. 7. Scena is properly the front of the theatre, namely the place of the actors,

screened off with hangings, from which the players about to perform came out onto the proscenium. Frequently it is used for the play itself, a tragedy or a comedy. Virgil: "Orestes driven across the scenes"; that is, celebrated in tragedies and frequently acted. Horace: "How he runs across the boards in a loose sock." The boards for the scene, that is, how artless and ill-fitted are the comedies he writes. To run through the scene, therefore, will be to complete the sum of the thing that had been undertaken. Cicero: "What you have briefly run through concerning the art." To run through the scene of the phantasm is, in Tertullian, to prove wholly and absolutely that the flesh of Christ was a mere phantasm, and to persist in proving it. So Caelius to Cicero, book VIII: "The scene of the whole matter", that is, that on which the whole matter turns and in which it must be spent. In the book Against the Valentinians Tertullian calls a "desultory virtue" one that is unstable, ill-founded and restless, and hence he uses "desultory men", properly from the vaulting horsemen; just as "to run through", so "to dance out" is to represent by mimic leaping. For in the theatre the orchestra belongs to the chorus, as the scene to the players, on which the mimes used to present their actions. ὀρχηστύς, the art of dancing and dancing itself; so that he alludes to both with both words, to the stage players and to the mimes, and draws different metaphors from each.

160. To plunge in the lancet. Vol. I, book On the Pallium, ch. 11, no. 173. Scalpellus or scalpellum is a surgeon's knife, a lancet. I do not know whether also scalpella, as pistilla in Plautus for pistillum, commonly lanceola, taken from the surgeons. For by the word "harshness" an abundance of the choleric humour in Vedius seems to be signified. Cicero, For Sestius: "That is not medicine, when the lancet is applied to a sound part of the body." Surgeons are accustomed to cut a vein by plunging in the lancet, and to draw out the overflowing humour. The proverb will be used of the healing of the diseases of the mind, as also what follows in Tertullian: To give a purge.

161. More just and more soldierly than Scipio. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 11, no. 173. Pliny, book VII, no. 27: "Cato is thought to have been the first to have excelled in the three highest things in name: best orator, general, senator; all of which seem to me, if not earlier, yet more brightly to have shone in Scipio Aemilianus." His praise is in Cicero, book On Friendship. Justice and goodness are commended in the other Scipio, Nasica. Yet Laelius in Cicero, in the same book, attributes zeal both for justice and for military science to the younger Scipio, or Aemilianus. The elder, or Africanus, also excelled in both kinds of praise.

162. Fouler than a Scythian. Vol. III, book I Against Marcion, ch. 1, no. 11. See Pamelius's notes. The Scythian race, in all memory and in the judgement of almost all nations and writers, was born for wars and savagery rather than for any pursuit of humanity.

163. To cut down and lop the forest. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 4, nos. 50 and 51; and book On the Prescription against Heretics, ch. 37, no. 222. "By what right do you cut down my forest", which transfers everything from the civil law; that is: why do you rush into my property? why do you put your sickle into my harvest? Apology: "That whole old and squalid forest of laws you lop and cut down with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts." Sylva among the Latins, as also ὕλη among the Greeks, is used metaphorically for abundance and material. Cicero: "All the richness and, as it were, the forest of speaking"; and: "A forest of things and of thoughts." This proverb, moreover, is taken from trees, which are either pruned so that they do not run wild with shoots and spread too far in all directions, or are cut out by the roots together with the trunk.

164. To cut down, uproot and unstump the forest. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 16, no. 135. "How far he cuts down with the axe the whole forest of lusts, and uproots and unstumps it." He adds: "That he may not allow anything to sprout again from the stump." It is to abolish something utterly, and is the same as the preceding. For a truncus is the stock itself stripped of branches and leaves; a caudex, with its leaves. So to lop and to unstump are the same.

165. To stir up a huge forest. Vol. V, book On the Trinity, ch. 16, no. 81. To stir up a forest of scriptures about something: to shake out many things, and take arguments from every side, to range over a wide field.

166. What a forest! Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. 2, no. 30. What force? what abundance? how ample and widely spreading a matter?

167. Wiser than Socrates. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 11, no. 137. Socrates is reported to have been judged wisest not only in the estimation of men but by the oracle of Pythian Apollo, and to have been preferred to all. Pliny, book VII, ch. 31; Cicero, book On Friendship.

168. Combs of the sun. Vol. III, book Against the Valentinians, ch. 3, no. 24. In combs, with which we either part or comb the hair, the teeth, close and wide, are called radii from their likeness to the sun's rays; and by a reciprocal metaphor, "combs of the sun", because it sends out its rays in every direction, cut apart like the little notches of a comb. Hence in Lucretius, "the darts of the day", the rays being as it were missiles, after the manner of darts. And Apollo the far-darter, the Sun. But since by these words bugbears for children are signified, as also by "Lamia's towers", nurses perhaps were accustomed either to quiet a child's wailing, or to break with these words its stubborn defiance when it would not let its head be combed, by ordering that the combs of the sun, like strigils, be brought to them.

169. Written with a ray of the sun. Vol. III, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 47, no. 341. For what is perspicuous and is clear. For the things that are most certain and most admitted are those [said to be] clea[rer than the] sun

[are those we call clea]rer than the sun. Hence those sayings: To be in the dark in the sunshine; to speak against the sun. Book On Modesty, ch. 7: "For the searching out of which there is need not of the point of light of a lamp, but of the lance of the whole sun."

170. To be on solid ground. Vol. V, book On Modesty, ch. 10, no. 83. To be secure, and well established and fortified. To which he opposes: To walk with a hanging footstep, and: To be wholly in one's stance, To be shaken from one's course. Like this: To be held by two anchors. To be in the shallows. Virgil, book II: "Fortune, revisiting by turns, has mocked many, and set them again on solid ground."

171. To answer to the mirror. The same, ch. 8, no. 64; book IV Against Marcion, ch. 31, no. 511. "Against the mirror of the parable" he seems to have said for the anagogical sense, or anagoge itself, which is the mystical and hidden sense of the scriptures, parables and oracles, and which lies within and as it were under the bark. So to answer to the mirror (as in builders' matters, to the rule, the level, the plumb-line) will be that all the things set forth by a parable can be fitted to the things that are signified by it. And, as Tertullian says, "for the examples to be made to match exactly."

172. Marcion's sponge. Vol. III, book V Against Marcion, ch. 4, no. 43. Painters used the sponge for wiping out colour, as is clear from Pliny, book XXXV, ch. 10, on painters and on Protogenes: "He had wiped it out several times and changed his brush; at last he dashed the sponge against the hated spot of the picture." Ausonius in a certain letter: "Having applied the colouring of your correction, dash on the sponge, which may finish the imperfect work of the horse foaming badly." It was used also for wiping the tables of the money-changers, and especially the counting-boards on which they wrote and corrected by drawing a sponge over them. And in palimpsests, that is, tablets or parchments that can be erased, on which we are accustomed to write with the stylus. Hence Augustus used to say that the tragedy Ajax, which he had written and then erased, had fallen upon the sponge, after the example of Ajax, who had fallen upon the sword. Aristides in a certain oration: "There is no need of the palinode of Stesichorus, but the sponge will heal": there will be no need of Stesichorus's palinode or recantation, but the sponge will cure. So, since Marcion erased what books of sacred Scripture he wished (as was explained above: To leap the widest chasm; and in this place he at once adds: what he took away, what he kept), he called "Marcion's sponge" that audacity in expunging Books and cutting them away with a censor's rashness.

173. The little thief snatches at the dole-basket. Vol. III, book III Against Marcion, ch. 16, no. 111. The sportula, named from little baskets of broom, receptacles for coins, was a gift, or rather a provision of food, which the Roman rich gave to those who came to greet them, while they themselves dined in private. Opposed to it was the "proper dinner", when the more courteous provided a regular banquet for the clients who greeted them. It was once given only to the poor; afterwards the rich too to snatch at the sportula and demand it

began. He, however, who, though he was not a client nor a regular caller, thrust himself upon another and, though unknown, strove to receive the sportula, is in this place called a little thief. It will fit one who falsely claims something for himself, as Marcion's god the name of Christ.

174. One more easily sees a straw in another's eye than a beam in his own. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 39, no. 510. A Gospel proverb (Matt. 7; Luke 6), by which is marked the self-love of those who are offended by the least faults of others and flatter their own, even the greatest; κάρφος is in Tertullian "a straw", in the translator of the Vulgate edition "a mote". Horace: "He who asks that his friend be not offended by his own boils, it is fair that he pardon that friend's warts." And another proverb: Others' pimples, while teeming with ulcers.

175. Under the fold of the robe and the tunic. Vol. V, book On Flight in Persecution, ch. 12, no. 89. Tertullian adds "as by stealth", and sets against it "before the whole world". Whatever is done not in the open but craftily and secretly, with witnesses removed and without another's knowledge, is said to be done under the fold of the robe. So: To bring into one's bosom, to turn into it, that is, to apply to private advantage. And by Pliny Scaurus is called the pocket of provincial plunder, who turned everything into the gulf of his avarice. To rejoice in one's bosom is not to publish one's joy to the crowd, nor to make it open.

176. More fortunate than Sulla. Vol. I, Apology, 11, no. 173. To this Sulla a portent of good fortune was given by a thunderbolt, as Pliny says, book II, ch. 54. "Alone of men", says the same Pliny, book VII, ch. 44, "up to this age he claimed for himself the surname of Fortunate." Which rashness, joined with folly, he refutes in the same place.

177. Is glass worth as much as a pearl? Vol. II, book Against Marcion, ch. 4, no. 58. This is read not only in Tertullian but also in blessed Jerome. By this saying the greatest inequality of things will be signified. Pearls, otherwise called unions, have the highest price among gems; glass is most cheap, which yet can counterfeit a pearl and impose on the inexperienced. Tertullian explains himself and compares these with one another: earthly glory, heavenly glory; the reward of human praise, the divine recompense.

178. Time reveals all things. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 7, no. 107. Seneca: "The day lays truth open." Horace: "Whatever is under the earth time will bring forth into the sunlight; it will bury and hide what now shines." Time is the tester of all things: time examines all things. And in Sophocles time is said to be "seeing and hearing all things and unfolding all things": to see and hear all things, and to bring them out into the open. And hence Truth is fittingly called the daughter of Time, since in the course of time, when it has lain hidden for a while, it comes out into the light. Hence that saying: "Time leads truth to the light." But time digs truth out into the light.

179. Sons of the earth. The same, ch. 10, no. 162. See Pamelius's notes. "The common people", says Tertullian, "call sons of the earth those whose descent is uncertain": earth-born, and hence giants, as it were born of the earth. In Juvenal, "little brother of the giants", for an unknown man. Persius: "Offspring of the earth." See above: He came down from heaven.

180. To pray that the earth lie heavy. Vol. I, book On the Testimony of the Soul, ch. 4, no. 21. The ancients, as is clear from almost all the Latin poets, used to pray that the earth lie heavy on the shade of one whose memory, as Tertullian says, "they kept with the sting of some offence", and whom they wished to curse; but for one to whom they owed gratitude, to pray refreshment for his bones and ashes. And especially in the month of February, for twelve continuous days, the people performed purifications and expiations to obtain rest for the shades of the dead. Hence those lines: "Softly may the bones lie..., and may the earth press not heavily on the ash." "I pray that your quiet bones may rest safe in the urn, and the soil be not heavy on your ash."

181. Thales into the well. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. 6, no. 89. See this proverb treated by Plato in the Theaetetus. Of those who do not look even before their feet. Thales, one and the first of the seven sages of Greece, while he was contemplating the heavens too intently, fell into a pit. Hence he was laughed at by an old woman, or by a maidservant.

182. Loftier than Themistocles. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 2, no. 173. Tertullian calls him soldierly. Hence it seems one should read "more soldierly", that is, more skilled in warfare or the military art. His glory shone out while he was still a youth in the Median war, at the battle of Marathon, under the auspices of Miltiades. Then some years later, as general of the Athenians, he fought with memorable praise against the naval forces of Xerxes at Salamis.

183. To check off the entry. Vol. V, book On Monogamy, ch. 8, no. 55. To check accounts, among the jurists, is to examine the reckoning, as we commonly say; or, as Papinian describes it, to compare receipts and payments; and elsewhere: to inquire into, examine and write out accounts, for what is meant by dispungere. Expungere is another thing, which is to surround with points and remove, and as it were to take a settled matter out of the ledger. Tertullian uses a metaphor drawn from accountants, and from the censors, who enter in their tables the names and titles of those who make their declarations. If one likes to use it proverbially, it will be: to weigh a reckoning or a case, whether it is just or the contrary; or to judge whether someone is fit to undertake some office and amply furnished with gifts for it. Book IV Against Marcion: he calls the Creator "judge and checker of merits". Book V: "the checking of good and evil work". Book On Patience: "Every injury, when it has struck patience, will be checked off with the same end as a dart hurled against a rock and blunted"; that is: it will vanish and [be] void

will be the attempt, just as those things vanish which are erased or checked off, for "expunged".

184. To engrave the inscription. Vol. III, book I Against Marcion, ch. 9, no. 57. To engrave is to mark something on the monuments of deeds done. Cicero: "To engrave an elogium" (in others, and in Muretus especially, elogium) "on a tomb, in bronze, in marble." Pliny, on Pompey the Great, ch. 26, book VII, records the inscriptions of victories and triumphs engraved. To this custom Tertullian alluded, so that it means: to honour or to brand with a public surname, and to ennoble with an inscription.

185. More eloquent than Tully. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 11, no. 17. You have the praise of Marcus Tullius in Pliny, book VII, no. 30, where he calls him the father of eloquence and of Latin letters. Quintilian, Institutes book IX: "Into whom", he says, "the abundance of Plato, the force of Demosthenes, the sweetness of Isocrates were poured."

186. To drive out vanity with vanity. Vol. III, book IV Against Marcion, ch. 30, no. 496. It is to foil art with art, a lie with a lie; to break and refute a frivolous argument, not fitted to the matter, with a frivolous and irrelevant one. Very like these: To play the fox with a fox, to play the Cretan with a Cretan.

187. To draw off veins. Vol. V, book On the Trinity, I, ch. 2, no. 131. A metaphor taken from springs, from which streams and, as it were, veins of water are drawn off. Hence those sayings: With a rich or a slender vein, because some springs flow with a narrower vein, others with a larger, so as to make a river; or else from metals, whose veins sometimes differ in quantity as in kind. Quintilian: "They flow in a fuller channel." And the poets are said to have drawn their veins from Homer as from the fountain of poetry.

188. The way up and down is the same. Vol. III, book II Against Marcion, ch. 28, no. 195. This proverb, used by Heraclitus, Tertullian seems to transfer to his own manner of argument. For to this point belong: Above, and below oneself; these regarding rank, those, up and down, regarding place. For this is truly to make rival antitheses against Marcion, which consist not only in thoughts (if he was ignorant of them, he did not know them at all) but in the words I have mentioned. Heraclitus perhaps used this rather obscure saying in his teachings on the soul; since up and down, in the reckoning of place, are among the things said to be relative, or relations. Cicero: "To be borne upward in straight lines, and downward along the line." And thus Tertullian proves his argument, that is, by the axiom of Heraclitus.

189. By living voice. Vol. III, book On the Prescription against Heretics, ch. 21, no. 128. To this is at once opposed "by letters", with "preaching" understood. The living voice, as being lively and effective, received from the very mouth of the speaker, in which a native and genuine grace shines out, and in which delivery with movement, which is the life of a speech, inheres. All of which, from writing,

which only imitates the true and living voice, are kept apart. Quintilian: Delivery is as it were the life of a speech; the invention of the matter is like the bones; arrangement imitates the sinews; style renders the flesh, the skin and the colour; memory performs the office of the breath. To all these is added utterance, like a kind of vital motion. For there is no surer proof of life than motion; hence rivers are called living, from their motion. Blessed Jerome, in the Preface to Genesis: The living voice has something of hidden energy, I know not what. To this, as I said, Tertullian opposes "to preach by letter". And in other writers: dumb teachers, that is, the writings of those who left the monuments of their learned genius committed to letters for posterity, as being without voice and life.