Book 10
83
And there are great numbers of other griphi. Here is one— In a conspicuous land I had my birth, The briny ocean girds my country round, My mother is the daughter fair of Number. By the conspicuous land (φανερὰ) he means Delos (as δῆλος is synonymous with φανερὸς), and that is an island surrounded by the sea. And the mother meant is Latona, who is the daughter of Coius, and the Macedonians use κοῖος as synonymous with ἀριθμός. And the one on barley-water (πτυσάνη)— Mix the juice of peel'd barley, and then drink it. And the name πτισάνη is derived from the verbs πτίσσω, to pound, and ἄνω, to bruise. There is also the one on the snail, which is quoted in the Definitions of Teucer— An animal destitute of feet and spine And bone, whose back is clad with horny shell, With long, projecting, and retreating eyes. And Antiphanes, in the Man who admires himself, says— Coagulated, tender-bodied milk. lost understand me not? I mean new cheese. And Anaxandrides, in his Ugly Woman, says— He's lately cut it up; then he confined The long, unbroken portions of the body In earthen vases, wrought in crackling fire,— A phrase, my men, invented by Timotheus, Who meant to say in dishes. And Timocles, in his Heroes, says— A. And when the nurse of life was taken away, Fierce hunger's foe, sweet friendship's guardian, Physician of voracious hunger, which Men call the table . . . B. How you tire yourself, When you might say the table in a word. And Plato, in his Adonis, saying that an oracle was given to Cinyras concerning his son Adonis, reports it in these words— O Cinyras, king of hairy Cyprians, Your son is far the fairest of all men, And the most admirable: but two deities Lay hands upon him; one is driven on By secret courses, and the other drives. He means Venus and Bacchus; for both of them loved Adonis. And the enigma of the Sphinx is reported by Asclepiades, in his essay on the Subjects on which Tragedies have been written, to have been such as this— There is upon the earth an animal With two feet, and with four, and eke with three, And with one voice; and it alone, of all The things which move on earth, or in the heavens, Or o'er the boundless sea, doth change its nature; But when its feet are of the greatest number, Then is its speed the slowest, and strength least.
