While all were making a disturbance, Menephylus, a Peripatetic
philosopher, addressing Hylas: You see, he said, how this investigation
is no foolery nor insolence. But leave now, my dear fellow, that
obstinate Ajax, whose name is ill-omened, as Sophocles says, and
side with Poseidon, whom you yourself are wont to tell has often been
overcome, once by Athene here, in Delphi by Apollo, in Argos by Here, in
Aegina by Zeus, in Naxos by Bacchus, yet in his misfortunes has always
been mild and amiable. Here at least he shares a temple in common with
Athene, in which there is an altar dedicated to Lethe. And Hylas, as if
he had become better tempered: One thing has escaped you, Menephylus,
that we have given up the second day of September, not on account of the
moon, but because on that day the gods seemed to have contended for the
country. By all means, said Lamprias, by as much as Poseidon was more
civilized than Thrasybulus, since not like him a winner but a loser....
(The rest of this book to Question XIII is lost; with the exception of
the titles that follow, and the fragment of Question XII.)
QUESTION VII. WHY THE ACCORDS IN MUSIC ARE SEPARATED INTO THREE.
QUESTION VIII. WHEREIN THE INTERVALS MELODIOUS DIFFER FROM THOSE THAT
ARE HARMONIC.
QUESTION IX. WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF ACCORD? AND ALSO, WHY, WHEN TWO
ACCORDANT STRINGS ARE TOUCHED TOGETHER, IS THE MELODY ASCRIBED TO THE
BASE?
QUESTION X. WHY, WHEN THE ECLIPTIC PERIODS OF THE SUN AND THE MOON ARE
EQUAL IN NUMBER, THE MOON APPEARS OFTENER ECLIPSED THAN THE SUN.
QUESTION XI. THAT WE CONTINUE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME, IN REGARD OF THE
DEFLUX OF OUR SUBSTANCE.
QUESTION XII. IS IT MORE PROBABLE THAT THE NUMBER OF THE STARS IS EVEN
OR ODD?
Men must be cheated by oaths. And Glaucias said: I have heard this
saying used against Polycrates the tyrant; probably too it was said
against others: but why do you ask these questions? Because, by Zeus,
said Sospis, I see the children playing odd and even with jackstones
and the Academics with words. For such tempers as these differ in no
way from those who ask whether they hold clutched in their hands odd or
even. Then Protogenes stood up and called me by name: What is the matter
with us that we allow these rhetoricians to be so conceited, and to
laugh down others while they are asked nothing, and contribute nothing
in the way of argument,--unless they swear that they have no part in the
wine as admirers and disciples of Demosthenes, a man who in his whole
life never drank wine. That is not the cause of this, said I; but we
have never asked them anything. But unless you have something more
useful, I think I can put before them from Homer's poetry a case of
antinomy in rhetorical theses.
QUESTION XIII. A MOOT-POINT OUT OF THE THIRD BOOK OF HOMER'S ILIADS.
PLUTARCH, PROTOGENES, GLAUCIAS, SOSPIS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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