Kitap 10
76
There are also many other riddles, such as this:— I saw a man who by the means of fire Was glueing brass unto another man So closely that they two became like brothers. And this expression means the application of a cupping- glass. And a similar one is that of Panarces, mentioned by Clearchus, in his Essay on Griphi, that A man who is not a man, with a stone which was not a stone, struck a bird which was not a bird, sitting on a tree which was not a tree. For the things alluded to here are a eunuch, a piece of pumice-stone, a bat, and a narthex νάρθηξ, a tall umbelliferous plant, (Lat. ferula,) with a slight knotted pithy stalk, in which Prometheus conveyed the spark of fire from heaven to earth. —L. & S. Gr. Eng. Lex. in voc. νάρθηξ. . And Plato, in the fifth book of his Laws,This is a mistake of Athenæus. The passage referred to occurs in the fifth book of the De Republica. alludes to this riddle, where he says, that those philosophers who occupy themselves about minute arts, are like those who, at banquets, doubt what to eat, and resemble too the boys' riddle about the stone thrown by the eunuch, and about the bat, and about the place from which they say that the eunuch struck down the bat, and the engine with which he did it.
