GARLANDS. because of your tongue ([Greek: glôssa]), I will mention the [Greek: hypoglôttis], which Plato speaks of in his Jupiter Ill-treated—
But you wear leather tongues within your shoes,
And crown yourselves with [Greek: hypoglôttides],
Whenever you're engaged in drinking parties.
And when you sacrifice you speak only words
Of happy omen.
And Theodorus, in his Attic Words, as Pamphilus says in his treatise on Names, says, that the [Greek: hypoglôttis] is a species of plaited crown. Take this then from me; for, as Euripides says,
'Tis no hard work to argue on either side,
If a man's only an adept at speaking.
20. There is the Isthmiacum also, and there was a kind of crown bearing this name, which Aristophanes has thought worthy of mention in his Fryers, where he speaks thus—
What then are we to do? We should have taken
A white cloak each of us; and then entwining
Isthmiaca on our brows, like choruses,
Come let us sing the eulogy of our master.
But Silenus, in his Dialects, says, "The Isthmian garland." And Philetas says, "[Greek: Stephanos]. There is an ambiguity here as to whether it refers to the head or to the main world.[1] We also use the word [Greek: isthmion], as applied to a well, or to a dagger." But Timachidas and Simmias, who are both Rhodians, explain one word by the other. They say, [Greek: isthmion, stephanon]: and this word is also mentioned by Callixenus, who is himself also a Rhodian, in his History of Alexandria, where he writes as follows—
21. But since I have mentioned Alexandria, I know that in that beautiful city there is a garland called the garland of Antinous, which is made of the lotus, which grows in those parts. And this lotus grows in the marshes in the summer season; and it bears flowers of two colours; one like that of the rose, and it is the garlands woven of the flowers of this colour which are properly called the garlands of Antinous; but the other kind is called the lotus garland, being of a dark colour. And a man of the name of Pancrates, a native poet, with whom we ourselves were acquainted, made a great parade of showing a rose-coloured lotus to Adrian the emperor, when he was staying at Alexandria, saying, that
- ↑ Schweighauser confesses himself unable to guess what is meant by these words.
