Kitap 13
31
LATELY a foolish, boastful fellow, sitting in a bookseller's shop, was praising and advertising himself, asserting that he was the only one under all heaven who could interpret the Satires of Marcus Varro, which by some are called Cynical, by others Menippean. And then he displayed some passages of no great difficulty, which he said no one could presume to explain. At the time I chanced to have with me a book of those Satires, entitled (Udroku/wn, or The Water Dog. This, with the (Ippoku/wn, or Dog-Knight, and the Kunorh/twr, or Dog-Rhetorician, justifies the term Cynicae as applied to Varro's Saturae. I therefore went up to him and said: Master, of course you know that old Greek saying, that music, if it be hidden, is of no account. The same proverb is put into the mouth of Nero by Suetonius (Nero, xx. 1), where the meaning is, that it is of no use for one to know how to sing, unless he proves that he knows how by singing in public. I beg you therefore to read these few lines and tell me the meaning of the proverb contained in them. Do you rather, he replied, read me what you do not understand, in order that I may interpret it for you. How on earth can I read, I replied, what I cannot understand? Surely my reading will be indistinct and confused, and will even distract your attention.
