----- It might, without any authority, be presumed that when people met together for enjoyment they would derive the greater portion of it from conversation, which would, of course, vary and slide “From grave to gay, from lively to severe,” according to the character or fluctuating humour of the company. The Spartans, like all military people, were grievously addicted to jokes, which among them supplied the place of that elegant badinage, alternating with profound or impassioned discourse, familiar to the more intellectual Athenians. The latter, however, though free from the coarseness, possessed more than the mirthfulness of the Dorians, and in the midst of their habits of business and application to philosophy, knew better than any people how, amidst wine and good-eating, to unbend and enjoy the luxury of careless trifling and an unwrinkled brow. While some therefore retired to the kottabos-room, which occupied the place of our billiard-room, others still sat clustered round the table, extracting amusement from each other. Among these of course would be found all such as excelled in the art of small talk, who could tell a good story or anecdote, scatter around showers of witticisms, or give birth to a pun. Some, like the Spartans, had a Welsh passion for genealogies, and loved to run back over the history of the “Landed Gentry” of old Hellas, to the time of Deucalion or higher; others coined their wisdom and experience into fables, for which they exhibited an almost Oriental fondness; while the greater number, like the princes in the Arabian Nights, exercised their wits in propounding and resolving difficult questions, enigmas, charades, anagrams, and conundrums. But the principal classes into which these contrivances were divided were two: _enigmas_ and _griphoi_,[854] the former comprehending all those terminating in mere pleasure, the latter such questions and riddles as involved within themselves the kernel of wisdom or knowledge,[855] supposed to have been a dull and serious affair. Casaubon,[856] however, vindicates it stoutly from this charge, affirming that in the griphos the _utile_ was mingled with the _dulce_ in due proportion; so that it must, according to Horace’s opinion, have borne away the palm from most literary inventions. In point of antiquity, too, the riddle may justly boast; for, if to be old is to be noble, it has “more of birth and better blood” even than the hungry Dorians of the Peloponnesos, whom Mr. Mitchell prefers, on this account, before all nations of Ionic race. Like everything good also it comes from the East. The earliest mention of the riddle occurs in the book of Judges,[857] where Samson, during his marriage-feast at Timnath, perplexes his guests with the following riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness;” ----- Footnote 854: Vid. Clem. Alexan. Protrep. i. 1. Diog. Laert. ii. 33. Footnote 855: Pollux. vi. 107. Footnote 856: