Note 151 — Chapter XXIX · LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.

Homer, Hymn. ad Cererem. 202; Hesychius, v. Γεφυρὶς; Herodot. v, 83; Diodor. v, 4. There were various gods at whose festivals scurrility (τωθασμὸς) was a consecrated practice, seemingly different festivals in different places (Aristot. Politic. vii, 15, 8).

The reader will understand better what this consecrated scurrility means by comparing the description of a modern traveller in the kingdom of Naples (Tour through the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, by Mr. Keppel Craven, London, 1821, ch. xv, p. 287):—

“I returned to Gerace (the site of the ancient Epizephyrian Lokri) by one of those moonlights which are known only in these latitudes, and which no pen or pencil can portray. My path lay along some cornfields, in which the natives were employed in the last labors of the harvest, and I was not a little surprised to find myself saluted with a volley of opprobrious epithets and abusive language, uttered in the most threatening voice, and accompanied with the most insulting gestures. This extraordinary custom is of the most remote antiquity, and is observed towards all strangers during the harvest and vintage seasons; those who are apprized of it will keep their temper as well as their presence of mind, as the loss of either would only serve as a signal for still louder invectives, and prolong a contest in which success would be as hopeless as undesirable.”