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

[In the year that Aristarchus of Phalerum was archon, on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion, Sigma brought suit against Tau before the seven Vowels for assault and robbery, alleging that he had stolen all the words that are pronounced mith double tau.]

Vowels of the jury, as long as the wrongs that I underwent at the hands of this fellow Tau through his misusing my property and establishing himself where he had no business were but slight, I did not take the injury to heart, and I ignored some of the things that I heard because of the equable temper which, as you know, I maintain toward you and the other letters. But now that he has come to such a pitch of self-seeking and lawlessness that, not content with what I have repeatedly let pass in silence, he is trying to wrest still more from me, I am compelled to call him to account before you, who know both sides. Besides all this, I am more than a little afraid of my own ejection; for by making greater and greater additions to what he has already done he will altogether eject me from my own estate, so that if I keep quiet I shall scarcely count at all as a letter, and shall be no better than a hiss. It is fitting, then, that you who are now on the jury and all the other letters, too, should be on your guard against his pernicious activity, for if anyone who wants to may work his way out of his own place into someone else’s, and if you Vowels, without whom nothing can be written that means anything, are going to permit this, I do not see how society is to keep the orthodox distinctions of rank which were fixed for it in the beginning. But I do not think you will ever reach such a pitch of negligence and carelessness as to permit anything unjust, and even if you do shirk your duty I cannot overlook my wrongs. If only the others had been thwarted in their audacity long ago, when they first began to be law-breakers! In that case, Lambda would not be at war with Rho, disputing the possession of pumice-stone (κίσηλις—κίσηρις) and headaches (κεφαλαλγάα—κεφαλαργία), nor would Gamma be quarreiling with Kappa and again and again almost coming to blows with him at the fuller’s (γναφεῖον—κναφεῖον) over pillows (γνάφαλλα—κνάφαλλα), and he would have been prevented from fighting with Lambda, too, openly stealing from him with some difficulty (μόλις—μόγις) and slyly filching without any doubt (μάλιστα—μάγιστα); and the rest would also have refrained from beginning illegal confusion. Surely it is best for each of us to stay in the place which belongs to him: to go wher one has no right is the act of a law-breaker. The man who first framed these laws for us, be he the islander Cadmus 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. The Vowels should enforce these laws. But this Tau here (I cannot call him by a worse name than his own), who, as Heaven is my witness, could not have made himself heard unless two of your number, Alpha and Upsilon, stout fellows and good to look on, had come to his aid—this Tau, I say, has had the audacity to injure me beyond all precedent in acts of violence, not only ousting me from my hereditary nouns and verbs, but banishing me likewise from conjunctions and prepositions all at once, so that I cannot stand his monstrous greed any longer. Where and how he began it, you shall now hear. Once I made a visit to Cybelus, which is rather an agreeable little village, settled, the story has it, by. Athenians. I took with me sturdy Rho, the best of ~ neighbours, and stopped at the house of a comic poet called Lysimachus, evidently a Boeotian by descent, though he would have it that he came from the heart of Attica. It was at that foreigner’s that I detected the encroachments of this fellow Tau. As long as it was but little that he attempted, venturing to mispronounce four (τέσσαρα—τέτταρα) and forty (τεσσαράκοντα—τετταράκοντα), and also to lay hands on to-day (σήμερον—τήμερον), and the like and say they were his own, thus depriving me of my kith and kin among the letters, I thought it was just his way and could put up with what I heard, and was not much annoyed over my losses. But when he went on and ventured to mispronounce tin (κασσίτερον—καττίτερον) and shoe-leather (κάσσυμα—κάττυμα), and tar (πίσσα—πίττα), and then, losing all sense of shame, to miscall queens (βασίλισσα—βασίλιττα), I am uncommonly annoyed and hot about all this, for I am afraid that in course of time someone may miscall a spade! Pardon me, in the name of Heaven, for my righteous anger, discouraged as I am and bereft of partisans. I am not risking a trifling, every-day stake, for he is robbing me of acquaintances and companions among the letters. He snatched a blackbird, a talkative creature, right out of my bosom, almost, and renamed it (κίσσα—κίττα); he took away my pheasant (¢décca—ddrra) along with my ducks (νήσσαι—νήτται) and my daws (κόσσυφοι—κόττυφοι), although Aristarchus forbade him; he robbed me of not a few bees (μέλισσα—μέλιττα), and he went to Attica and illegally plucked Hymessus (Ὑμησσός—Ὑμηττός) out of the very heart of her, in full view of yourselves and the other letters. But why mention this? He has turned me out of all Thessaly, wanting it called Thettaly, has swept me from the sea (θάλασσα—ϑάλαττα) and “has not even spared me the beets (σεύτλια—τεύτλια) in my garden, so that, to quote the proverb, he hasn’t even left me a peg (πάσσαλος—πάτταλος).