The letter which comes first a circle is, With one soft eye; then come two upright lines Of equal and exact proportions, United by one middle transverse line; The third is like a wreathed curl of hair; The next a trident lying on its side; The fifth two lines of equal length above, Which below join together in one base; The sixth, as I have said before, a curl. And Sophocles has said something like this, in his Amphiaraus, which is a satyric drama, where he introduces an actor dancing in unison with his explanation of the letters. 81. But Neoptolemus the Parian, in his treatise on Inscriptions, says that this inscription is engraved on the tomb of Thrasymachus the sophist at Chalcedon— My name is Theta, ro, alpha, and san, Upsilon, mu, alpha, chi, ou, san again: Chalcedon was my home, wisdom my trade. And there is a poem of this kind upon Pan, by Castorion the Solensian, as Clearchus says: every foot[52] consists of one entire word, and so every line has its feet in pairs, so that they may either precede or follow each other; as for instance— σὲ τὸν βόλοις νιφοκτύποις δυσχείμερον ναίονθ᾽ ἕδος, θηρονόμε πὰν, χθόν᾽ ᾿αρκάδων, κλήσω γραφῇ τῇδ᾽ ἐν σοφῇ, πάγκψειτ᾽ ἔπη συνθεὶς, ἄναξ, δύσγνωστα μὴ σοφοῖς κλύειν, μουσοπόλε θὴρ, κηρόχυτον ὅς μείλιγμ᾽ ἱεῖς. [Which may be translated thus— O thou that dwellest on the lofty plain, Stormy with deep loud-sounding falls of snow, Th' Arcadian land,—lord of the forest kinds, Thee, mighty Pan, will I invoke in this Sagacious writing, carefully compounding Words difficult for ignorant men to know, Or rightly understand. Hail, friend o' the Muse, Who pourest forth sweet sounds from waxen flute.] And so on in the same manner. And in whatever order you place each of these pairs of feet it will give the same metre; as you may, for instance, transpose the first line, and instead of— σὲ, τὸν βόλοις νιφοκτύποις δυσχείμερον, you may read it— νιφοκτύποις σὲ τὸν βόλοις δυσχείμερον. [Sidenote: ΓΡΙΦΟΙ.] You may also remark that each pair of feet consists of ten[53] letters; and you may produce the same effect not in this way, but in a different one, so as to have many ways of putting one line; for instead you may read— μέτρον φράσον μοι, τῶν ποδῶν μέτρον λαβών: or this way— λαβὼν μέτρον μοι τῶν ποδῶν, μέτρον φράσον. [And you may take this line too—] οὐ βούλομαι γὰρ τῶν ποδῶν μέτρον λαβεῖν, [and transpose it thus—] λαβεῖν μέτρον γὰρ τῶν ποδῶν οὐ βούλομαι. 82. But Pindar, with reference to the ode which was composed without a σ in it, as the same Clearchus tells us, as if some griphus had been proposed to him to be expressed in a lyric ode,—as many were offended because they considered it impossible to abstain from the σ, and because they did not approve of the way in which the idea was executed, uttered this sentence— Before long series of songs were heard, And the ill-sounding san from out men's mouths.