The Proverb of Letters and the Goat

One might recall you through proverbs. But either it is dead or it teaches letters. Someone might take this proverb to refer to the appearance of the letter, saying that those teaching according to the letters are doing so; for another also said among them, 'You were teaching letters, but I was plundering.'

But those who wrote the commentaries said it was not so; rather, because Sicilians, having won the war against the Athenians, they say, were saving only those carrying the educational staff, leading their teachers to the children while plundering all the others, they said that some of them, having fled and returned, were asked by the Athenians about certain things differing from them, and they said, 'But either it is dead or it teaches letters.'

And what about 'The goat has the knife'? Someone might think it was said so that he might first say the things said about it, in order to somehow divert the proverb because of the goat being sacrificed to the knife. But the ancients did not say this; for the said thing would not have been a proverb, if it had been like this (for it would have been obvious from the circumstances), but they say it was said regarding those bringing evils upon themselves. For they say that Medea, having killed the children in Corinth, hid the knife on the spot; and the Corinthians, while sacrificing a black goat given to them by lot, were at a loss for knives, and the goat, scratching with its foot, found the knife of Medea and was sacrificed by it.

And what does 'The sow is an oak' mean? Someone says: for it is not possible to recognize the proverb from what is at hand. The ancients, as they said, while eating acorns before the agriculture of wheat, because they thought this fruit would be found later, paying attention to it and rejoicing in the change, said 'The sow is an oak'; and they said this was the proverb.

Again, there is another proverb mentioned by many of the wise among them in many and diverse books; what some have written about it, those who set themselves to interpret proverbs, it is necessary in the present to mention [...], but in order that we may expose Asterius, and that he, being a man knowing the sciences of the external sources exactly, the excellence of the proverb, but in the present having feigned ignorance, might seem to be skillfully constructing his own will through the use of the proverbial phrase.

And there is 'The Art of Glaucus'. This, the external wise men, having remembered the proverb, explained it diversely. For one of them said that a certain Glaucus, having become a master of a certain art, the being very wonderful of many, perished at once in the sea, with no one at all proclaiming it. Another, testifying to the experience in music at the highest, says that four bronze discs constructed by him were for the purpose of making the harmony of the sounds somewhat pleasant; from this the proverb is said to be. Another indeed says that a wonderful crater and an under-crater of Alyattic votive offerings are standing, the work of Glaucus of Chios. Another, to place Glaucus himself as a bronze tripod in Delphi, having thus created it, to make the thick-sounding legs upon which he stands, and the upper surrounding part and the crown upon the basin and the rods arranged through the middle, to speak with the voice of a lyre. And again another, from a certain Glaucus having thought to have done more, says the proverb.

You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown, through the fact that those wishing to explain this proverb do not even stand upon the same interpretation. Thus something difficult the matter of the proverb seems to be even among the external ones. Therefore also someone, having collected the proverbs said by many and diversely among the wise with them, has written six books about them, two of the metrical and four of the unmetered. And these proverbs the external ones named 'Proverbs' for no other reason, it seems to me, but because having encountered the Proverbs of the wisest Solomon and having known through them that there is nothing to learn clearly from what is said in them by what is at hand, and themselves having wished to emulate the prophetic style, they wrote the letters in the same manner as he. Then, as being unable to devise any other name more important than that, they named these 'Proverbs'.

So surely this is 'The Lord has created me for the beginning of his ways toward his works' (Proverbs 8:22). (He says) that the Word of God prepared the human flesh to become immortal through the resurrection and just as a crown of victory...