And he, laughing, replied,—The word στέφανος was first used among the Greeks, as Semos the Delian tells us in the fourth book of his Delias, in the same sense as the word στέφος is used by us, which, however, by some people is called στέμμα. On which account, being first crowned with this στέφανος, afterwards we put on a garland of bay leaves; and the word στέφανος itself is derived from the verb στέφω, to crown. But do you, you loquacious Thessalian, think, says he, that I am going to repeat any of those old and hacknied stories? But because of your tongue (γλῶσσα), I will mention the ὑπογλωττὶς, which Plato speaks of in his Jupiter Ill-treated—
GARLANDS.
But you wear leather tongues within your shoes,
And crown yourselves with ίπογλωττίδες,
Whenever you're engaged in drinking parties.
And when you sacrifice you speak only words
Of happy omen.
And Theodorus, in his Attic Words, as Pamphilus says in his treatise on Names, says, that the ὑπογλωττὶς is a species of plaited crown. Take this then from me; for, as Euripides says,
'Tis no hard work to argue on either side,
If a man's only an adept at speaking.