Aenigma
（
αἴνιγμα). A riddle. The Greeks were especially fond of
riddles, the propounding of which even formed a part of some of their semireligious festivals
(see
Agrionia); and certain persons, such as
Theodectes of Phaselis and Aristonymus, owed their celebrity to their cleverness at
propounding
aenigmata. At the symposia especially, the asking and
answering of riddles formed a favourite amusement, and those who successfully solved them
received a prize in the form of cakes, sweetmeats, wreaths, etc., while the unsuccessful were
condemned to swallow a draught of wine sometimes mixed with salt water. Riddles were often
written in hexameter verse, and the tragic as well as the comic writers have introduced them
into their plays. The most famous riddle of antiquity is perhaps the celebrated one propounded
by the Sphinx to
Oedipus (q.v.).
The Romans cared little for riddles, though Apuleius wrote a work on the subject
(
Liber Ludicrorum et Griphorum), and mentions several collections of riddles
that had been made. (See Athenaeus, x. 457.) A late writer, Symphosius, in the fourth century
A.D., wrote a work entitled
Aenigmata Symphosi Scholastici, containing a hundred riddles. The best list of
these is in Riese's
Anthologia Lat., pp. 187-207; trans. into French by Corpet
(Paris, 1868).
