[
133]
Which of them, pray, is the
better poet? Heraclitus
1 is very obscure; Democritus is not so in the least: then are they to be
compared? But you give me advice and for my
good in words that I cannot understand. Then why
do you advise me at all? That's like a doctor
ordering a patient to take
A bloodless, earth-engendered thing that crawls
And bears its habitation on its back,
instead of saying in common, every-day speech, 'a
snail.' Amphion, in a play by Pacuvius,
2 speaks
to the Athenians of a creature as
Four-footed, of stature short; rough, shy, and slow;
Fierce-eyed, with tiny head and serpent's neck;
When disembowelled and deprived of life,
It lives for ever in melodious song.
His meaning being too obscure the Athenians
replied:
[p. 521]
Speak plainer, else we cannot understand.
Whereupon he described it in a single word—'a
tortoise.' Couldn't you have said so at first, you
cithara-player?
