“14. And he said unto them, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not, in three days, expound the riddle. “15. And it came to pass, on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so? “16. And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, I have not told it my father, nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee? “17. And she wept before him the seven days, while the feast lasted; and it came to pass, on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him: and she told the riddle to the children of her people. “18. And the men of the city said unto him, on the seventh day, before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, if ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. “19. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave changes of raiment unto them which expounded the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father’s house. “20. But Samson’s wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.” Now, in this very ancient story, we find embodied as much roguery and crime as in any modern turf episode. Samson bet without any means of paying, if he lost: he lost, and was a defaulter. But, to pay this “debt of honour,” he had recourse to wholesale murder and robbery—to satisfy men, who to his own knowledge, had (to use a modern expression) “tampered with the stable.” The early Greeks betted, as we find in Homer’s _Iliad_, b. xxiii. 485-7 where Idomeneus offers a bet to the lesser Ajax to back his own opinion: Δεῦρό νυν ή τρίποδος περιδώμεθον, ἠὲ λέβετος̓ Ἳστορα δ̓ Ἀτρείδην Ἀγαμέμνονα θείομεν ὕμφω. Ὀππότεραι πρόθ̓ ἵπποἰ ἵνα γνοίης ὰποτίνων. “Now, come on! A wager stake we, of tripod, or of caldron; And make we both Atreidès Agamemnon Judge, whether foremost are those mares: and so Learn shalt thou, to thy cost!” In Homer’s _Odyssey_, xxiii. 78, Eurycleia wagers her life to Penelope that Ulysses has returned: Aristophanes in his _Equites_, 791; _Acharnes_, 772, 1115; and _Nebulæ_, 644, gives examples of wagers; and, in the eighth idyll of Theocritus, Daphins proposes a bet to Menalcas about a singing match.