Eurycles the possessing prophetic demon Eleatic visitor [Those who forbid us to call
things by other names] do not need people to confute them, for they go round all the time with their enemy and opponent in their own house, as it is said, speaking from inside, just as if they were carrying round the bizarre Eurycles.
Scholium adloc.: Eurycles was the name proverbially given to those who prophesied to their own misfortune. For Eurycles was believed to have a demon in his stomach, which inspired him to speak about the future. Hence he was also called a ventriloquist [engastrimuthos]. He met a bad end when one day he made someone a prediction they did not like. ... A kind of prophet is called a Eurycles after him.
Earlier iv B.C. (Plato}; Hellenistic-Byzantine (scholium)
Plato Sophist 252c, with scholium
Greek
THE SCHOLIUM CONTINUES WITH the MATERIAL found in the Suda (34). Once again Eurycles affords a useful analogy. The opponents of predication cannot help but disprove their own contentions about language with every sentence they utter. The scholiast's story of Eurycles's bad end looks suspiciously like an overinterpretation of Plato's analogy.
Post a comment