I know, too, the sportive sayings which Lasus of Hermione has uttered about fishes; which Chamæleon of Heraclea has recorded in writing, in his book on this very Lasus, where he says—' They say that Lasus called raw fish ὀπτὸς (which means roasted or visible); and when many people wondered why he did so, he thus began to prove what he had said; arguing thus: 'As whatever a person can hear (ἀκοῦσαι) is properly called ἀκουστὸν, and as whatever a person can understand by his intellect (νοῆσαι) is properly called νοητὸν, so whatever any one can see (ὄπτεσθαι) is clearly ὀπτόν;; as therefore it was possible to see the fish, he evidently was ὀπτός.'.' And once, in a joke, he stole a fish from a fisherman, and having taken it, he gave it to one of the bystanders; and when the fisherman put him to his oath, he swore that he had not got it himself, and that he had not seen any one else take it; because, in fact, he himself had taken it, but some one else had got it. And then he prompted the other man, on the other hand, to swear that he had not taken it himself, and that he was not acquainted with any one else who had it; for, in fact, Lasus had taken it, and he himself had it.” And Epicharmus jests in the same way; as, in his Logus and Logina,— [p. 535]
A. Jupiter 'tis who did invite me, giving
A feast (γ̓ ἔρανον) to Pelops.
B. 'Tis a sorry food,
That crane (γέρανος), to my mind.
A. But I did not say
A crane (γέρανον), but a feast (ἔρανόν γε), as you might well have heard.
