studious avoidance of proper names. Not one
is mentioned, although thirteen persons are designated. It is evident
that this "Altar" was a work of ingenuity, and intended to be
enigmatical. Probably the substitutions were also considered to be
somewhat playful and amusing, as in Antiphanes--a comic poet, said to
have died from an apple falling on his head--we read,

_A._ Shall I speak of rosy sweat
From Bacchic spring?

_B._ I'd rather you'd say wine.

_A._ Or shall I speak of dusky dewy drops?

_B._ No such long periphrasis--say plainly water.

_A._ Or shall I praise the cassia breathing fragrance
That scents the air.

_B._ No, call it myrrh.

Another conceit in the form of a Sphinx or Pandean pipe has been
attributed to Theocritus--perhaps without good foundation.

In the "Egg" there is not only the form of the lines, which gradually
expand and then taper downwards, but there is also a great amount of
similitude--the literary egg being compared to a real egg, and the poet
to the nightingale that laid it. There is also a remarkable involution
in form--the last line succeeding the first, and so on; and this
alternation of the verses is compared to the leaping of fawns. The Axe
or Hatchet is apparently a sort of double axe, being nearly in the form
of wings; and is supposed to be a dedicatory inscription written to
Minerva on the axe of Epeus, who made the wooden horse by which Troy was
taken.

The ancient riddles seem to have been generally of a descriptive
character, and not to have turned upon quibbles of words, like those of
the present day. They more corresponded to our enigmas--being
emblematic--and in general were small tests of ingenuity, some being
very simple, others obscure from requiring special knowledge or from
being a mere vague description of things. Of the learned kind were
doubtless those hard questions with which the Queen of Sheba proved
Solomon, and those with which, on the authority of Dius and Menander,
Josephus states Solomon to have contended with Hiram. The riddle of
Samson also required special information; and the same characteristics
which marked the early riddles of Asia, where the conceit seems to have
originated, is also found in those of Greece. Who could have guessed the
following "Griphus" from Simonides of Ceos, without local knowledge, or
with it, could have failed,

"I say that he who does not like to win
The grasshopper's prize, will give