AENIGMA
AENIGMA (
αἴνιγμα), a riddle. It
appears to have been a very ancient custom among the Greeks, especially at
their symposia, to amuse themselves by proposing riddles to be solved. Their
partiality for this sort of amusement is attested by the fact that some
persons, such as Theodectes of Phaselis and Aristonymus, acquired
considerable reputation as inventors and writers of riddles. (Athen. x. pp.
451, 452; xii. p. 538.) Those who were successful in solving the riddle
proposed to them received a prize, which had been previously agreed upon by
the company, and usually consisted of wreaths, taeniae, cakes, and other
sweetmeats, or kisses, whereas a person unable to solve a riddle was
condemned to drink in one breath a certain quantity of wine, sometimes mixed
with salt water. (
Athen. 10.457;
Pollux, 6.107;
Hesych. sub voce
γρῖφος.) Those riddles which have come down
to us are mostly in hexameter verse, and the tragic as well as comic writers
not unfrequently introduced them into their plays. Pollux (
l.c.) distinguishes. two kinds of riddles, the
αἴνιγμα and
γρῖφος, and, according to him, the former was of a jocose
and the latter of a serious nature; but in the writers whose works have come
down to us, no such distinction is observed; and there are passages where
the name
γρῖφος is given to the most
ludicrous jokes of this kind. (
Aristoph. Wasps
20; Becker-Göll,
Charikles, ii. p. 363;
K. F. Hermann,
Gottesdienstl. Alt. § 62, 29.) The
Romans seem to have been too serious to find any great amusement in riddles;
and when Gellius (
18.2) introduces some Romans at
a banquet engaged in solving riddles, we must remember that the scene is
laid at Athens ; and we do not hear of any Romans who invented or wrote
riddles until a very late period. Apuleius wrote a work entitled
Liber Ludicrorum et Griphorum, which is lost. After the
time of Apuleius, several collections of riddles were made, some of which
are still extant in MS. in various libraries.
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