Lucian of Samosata, Judicium vocalium, Austin Morris Harmon (Translator), 6

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[6] The man who first framed these laws for us, be he the islander Cadmus¹ or Nauplius’ son Palamedes(and some attribute this provision to Simonides), did not determine which of us should be first and which second solely by putting us in the order in which our places are now fixed, but they also decided the qualities and powers that each of us has. To you, jurors, they gave the greatest honour, because you can be sounded by yourselves; to the Semivowels they gave the next highest, because they need something put with them before they can be heard; and they prescribed that the last place of all should belong to nine letters which have no sound at all by themselves. ² The Vowels should enforce these laws.

Judicium vocalium. Lucian of Samosata. Austin Morris Harmon (Translator). United States. Perseus 5.0.

Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

The Consonants at Law Sigma Vs. Tau, in the Court of the Seven Vowels (English) (Lucian, Vol. 1. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.)

Editions (1)

Δίκη Συμφώνων Perseus (Lucian, Vol. 1. Harmon, Austin Morris, editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.) — 6 focus

[6] τὸ δέ γε Ταῦ τοῦτο, οὐ γὰρ ἔχω χείρονι αὐτὸ ὀνομάσαι ῥήματι ἢ ᾧ καλεῖται, ὃ μὰ τοὺς θεούς, εἰ μὴ ἐξ ὑμῶν δύο συνῆλθον ἀγαθοὶ καὶ καθήκοντες ὁραθῆναι, τό τε Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὗ, οὐκ ἂν ἠκούσθη μόνον, τοῦτο τοίνυν ἐτόλμησεν ἀδικεῖν με πλείω τῶν πώποτε βιασαμένων, ὀνομάτων μὲν καὶ ῥημάτων ἀπελάσαν πατρῴων, ἐκδιῶξαν¹ δὲ ὁμοῦ συνδέσμων ἅμα καὶ προθέσεων, ὡς μηκέτι φέρειν τὴν ἔκτοπον πλεονεξίαν.

Translations (1)

Trial in the Court of Vowels Perseus (The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Vol. 1. Fowler, Henry Watson and Fowler, Francis George, translators. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 6 focus

[6] But this—this Tau—I would give him a worse designation, but that is a manifest impossibility; for without the assistance of two good presentable members of your Estate, Alpha and Upsilon, he would be a mere nonentity—he it is that has dared to outdo all injuries that I have ever known, expelling me from the nouns and verbs of my inheritance, and hunting me out of my conjunctions and prepositions, till his rapacity has become quite unbearable. I am now to trace proceedings from the beginning.

Notes on the current edition

The Consonants at Law Sigma Vs. Tau, in the Court of the Seven Vowels

1. The story usually ran that Cadmus brought sixteen letters from Phoenicia to Greece, and that four were added to these by Palamedes and four more by Simonides (not the poet, but a physician of Syracuse). Cadmus is here called an islander because some versions of his story made him come from Tyre, not Sidon.

2. The Greek "mutes” are nine in number. Sigma, as a semivowel, claims higher rank.

Lucian of Samosata Judicium vocalium 6

Austin Morris Harmon (Translator)

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