RIDDLES. his book on the Pupils of Isocrates, was a wonderfully clever man at discovering any riddles that might be proposed to him, and that he too could propose riddles to others with great acuteness. As that riddle about shade, for instance;—for he said that there was a nature which is greatest at its birth and at its decease, and least when at its height. And he speaks thus:—
Of all the things the genial earth produces,
Or the deep sea, there is no single one,
Nor any man or other animal
Whose growth at all can correspond to this:
For when it first is born its size is greatest;
At middle age 'tis scarcely visible,
So small it's grown; but when 'tis old and hastens
Nigh to its end, it then becomes again
Greater than all the objects that surround it.
And in the Œdipus, which is a tragedy, he speaks of night and day in the following riddle:—
There are two sisters, one of whom brings forth
The other, and in turn becomes its daughter.
And Callisthenes, in his Greek History, tells the following story, that "when the Arcadians were besieging Cromnus, (and that is a small town near Megalopolis,) Hippodamus the Lacedæmonian, being one of the besieged persons, gave a message to the herald who came to them from the Lacedæmonians, showing the condition in which they were by a riddle, and he bade him tell his mother—'to be sure and release within the next ten days the little woman who was bound in the temple of Apollo; as it would not be possible to release her if they let those days elapse.' And by this message he plainly enough intimated what he was desirous to have understood; for the little woman meant is Famine, of which there was a picture in the temple of Apollo, near the throne of Apollo, and it was represented under a woman's form; so it was evident to every one that those who were besieged could hold out only ten days more because of famine. So the Lacedæmonians, understanding the meaning of what had been said, brought succour with great speed to the men in Cromnus."
76. There are also many other riddles, such as this:—
I saw a man who by the means of fire
Was glueing brass unto another man
So closely that they two became like brothers.
