While this discussion was going on, some slaves came in bringing garlands made of such flowers as were in bloom at the time; and Myrtilus said;—Tell me, my good friend Ulpian, the different names of garlands. For these servants, as is said in the Centaur of Chærephon—
Make ready garlands which they give the gods,And the same poet says, in his play entitled Bacchus—
Praying they may be heralds of good omen.
Cutting sweet garlands, messengers of good omen.Do not, however, quote to me passages out of the Crowns of Aelius Asclepiades, as if I were unacquainted with that work; but say something now besides what you find there. For you cannot show me that any one has ever spoken separately of a garland of roses, and a garland of violets. For as for the expression in Cratinus—
ναρκισσίνους ὀλίσβους,that is said in a joke. And he, laughing, replied,—The word στέφανος was first used among the Greeks, as Semos the Delian tells us in the fourth book of his Delias, in the same sense as the word στέφανος is used by us, which, however, by some people is called στέμμα. On which account, being first crowned with this στέφανος, afterwards we put on a garland of bay leaves; and the word στέφανος itself is derived from the verb στέφω, to crown. But do you, you loquacious Thessalian, think, says he, that I am going to repeat any of those old and hacknied stories? But [p. 1081] because of your tongue (γλῶσσα), I will mention the ὑπογλωττὶς, which Plato speaks of in his Jupiter Ill-treated—
But you wear leather tongues within your shoes,And Theodorus, in his Attic Words, as Pamphilus says in his treatise on Names, says, that the ὑπογλωττὶς is a species of plaited crown. Take this then from me; for, as Euripides says,
And crown yourselves with ὑπογλωττίδες,
Whenever you're engaged in drinking parties.
And when you sacrifice you speak only words
Of happy omen.
'Tis no hard work to argue on either side,
If a man's only an adept at speaking.
