1 Reformers always denounce this source of wit while conservative satirists maintain that ridicule is a test of truth. Cf. e.g. Renan, Avenir de la Science, p. 439 “Le premier pas dans la carrière philosophique est de se cuirasser contre le ridicule,” and Lucian, Piscator 14 “No harm can be done by a joke; that on the contrary, whatever is beautiful shines brighter . . . like gold cleansed,” Harmon in Loeb translation, iii. 22. There was a literature for and against custom (sometimes called συνήθεια) of which there are echoes in Cicero's use of consuetudo, Acad. ii. 75, De off. i. 148, De nat. deor. i. 83.
3 Cf. Theaetetus 162 B, and the ὀψιμαθής or late learner in Theophrastus'Characters xxvii. 14 Loeb. Euripides Andromache 596 ff. denounces the light attire of Spartan women when exercising.
4 Cf. Propert. iv. 13 Muller.
5 For a variation of this image cf. 568 D.
6 Plato plays on his own favorite phrase. The proper business of the wit is to raise a laugh. Cf. Symposium 189 B.
7 Cf. Thucydides i. 6, Herodotus i. 10. Sikes in Anthropolgy and the Classics says this was borrowed from Thucydides, whom Wilamowitz says Plato never read. Cf. Dio Chrys. xiii. 226 M. For ἐξ οὗ cf. Demosthenes iv. 3, Isocrates v. 47.
8 Lit. “what (seemed) laughable to (in) the eyes.”
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