Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 · Plutarch
QUESTION I. CONCERNING VERSES SEASONABLY AND UNSEASONABLY APPLIED.
AMMONIUS, PLUTARCH, ERATO, CERTAIN SCHOOLMASTERS, AND FRIENDS OF AMMONIUS. Ammonius, captain of the militia at Athens, would show Diogenianus the proficiency of those youths that learned grammar, geometry, rhetoric, and music; and invited the chief masters of the town to supper. There were a great many scholars at the feast, and almost all his acquaintance. Achilles invited only the single combatants to his feast, intending (as the story goes) that, if in the heat of the encounter they had conceived any anger or ill-will against one another, they might then lay it aside, being made partakers of one common entertainment. But the contrary happened to Ammonius, for the contentions of the masters increased and grew more sharp midst their cups and merriment; and all was disorder and confused babbling. Therefore Ammonius commanded Erato to sing to his harp, and he sang some part of Hesiod's Works beginning thus, Contention to one sort is not confined; ("Works and Days," 11.) and I commended him for choosing so apposite a song. Then he began to discourse about the seasonable use of verse, that it was not only pleasant but profitable. And straight every one's mouth was full of that poet who began Ptolemy's epithalamium (when he married his sister, a wicked and abominable match) thus, Jove Juno called his sister and his wife; ("Iliad," xviii. 356.)
Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain, My wish had been complete; ("Iliad," iii. 428.) and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son's dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said: Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you did not know nor had read this line, For no report is wholly false? (Hesiod, "Works and Days," 763.) And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this, Fly from the island, worst of all mankind, ("Odyssey," x. 72.) either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this discourse quieted the tumult. QUESTIONS II. AND III. WHAT IS THE REASON THAT ALPHA IS PLACED FIRST IN THE ALPHABET, AND WHAT IS THE PROPORTION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF VOWELS AND SEMI-VOWELS?
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