They call a table mensam, from [Greek omitted], PLACING IT IN THE MIDDLE; bread, panem, from satisfying [Greek omitted], HUNGER; a garland, coronam, from [Greek omitted], THE HEAD;--and Homer somewhat likens [Greek omitted], a HEAD-PIECE, to a garland;--caedere, TO BEAT, from [Greek omitted]; and dentes, TEETH, from [Greek omitted]; lips they call labra, from [Greek omitted], TAKING OUR VICTUALS WITH THEM. Therefore we must either listen to such fooleries as these without laughing, or not give them so ready entrance by means of words.... QUESTION VII. CONCERNING PYTHAGORAS'S SYMBOLS, IN WHICH HE FORBIDS US TO RECEIVE A SWALLOW INTO OUR HOUSE, AND BIDS US AS SOON AS WE ARE RISEN TO RUFFLE THE BEDCLOTHES. SYLLA, LUCIUS, PLUTARCH, PHILINUS. Sylla the Carthaginian, upon my return to Rome after a long absence, gave me a welcoming supper, as the Romans call it, and invited some few other friends, and among the rest, one Lucius an Etrurian, the scholar of Moderatus the Pythagorean. He seeing my friend Philinus ate no flesh, began (as the opportunity was fair) to talk of Pythagoras; and affirmed that he was a Tuscan, not because his father, as others have said, was one, but because he himself was born, bred, and taught in Tuscany. To confirm this, he brought considerable arguments from such symbols as these:--As soon as you are risen, ruffle the bedclothes; leave not the print of the pot in the ashes; receive not a swallow into your house; never step over a besom; nor keep in your house creatures that have hooked claws. For these precepts of the Pythagoreans the Tuscans only, as he said, carefully observe. Lucius, having thus said, that precept about the swallow seemed to be most unaccountable, it being a harmless and kind animal; and therefore it seemed strange that that should be forbid the house, as well as the hooked-clawed animals, which are ravenous, wild, and bloody. Nor did Lucius himself approve that only interpretation of the ancients, who say, this symbol aims directly at backbiters and tale-bearing whisperers. For the swallow whispers not at all; it chatters indeed, and is noisy, but not more than a pie, a partridge, or a hen. What then, said Sylla, is it upon the old fabulous account of killing her son, that they deny the swallow entertainment, by that means showing their dislike to those passions which (as the story goes) made Tereus and Procne and Philomel both act and suffer such wicked and abominable things? And even to this day they call the birds Daulides. And Gorgias the sophister, when a swallow muted upon him, looked upon her and said, Philomel, this was not well done. Or perhaps this is all without foundation; for the nightingale, though concerned in the same tragedy, we willingly receive.