June 24, 1850.

* * * * *

TO GIVE A MAN HORNS. 
(Vol. i. p. 383.)

Your correspondent L.C. has started a most interesting inquiry, and your readers must, I am sure, join with me in regretting that he should have been so laconic in the third division of his Query; and have failed to refer to, even if he did not quote, the passages from “late Greek,” in which “horns” are mentioned as a symbol of a husband’s dishonor.  The earliest notice of this symbolical use of horns is, I believe, to be found in the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus, who lived during the reign of Hadrian, A.D. 117-138: 

[Greek:  “Pepi de ippon en to peri agonon logo proeiraeiai.  Elege de tis theasameno tini epi kriou kathaemenpo, kai pesonti ex autou ek ton euprosthen, mnaesteuomeno de kai mellonti en autais tais haemerais tous gamous epetelein, proeipein auto hoti hae gunae sou porneusei, kai kata to legomenon, kerata soi poiaesei kai outos apethae, k.t.l.”—­Artem. Oneirocritica, lib. ii, cap. 12.]

See Menage, Origines de la Langue Francoise, Paris, 1650, in verb.  “Cornard.”  I have only seen Reiff’s edition of Artemidorus, 8vo.  Lipsiae, 1805.  His illustrations of the passage (far too numerous to be quoted) seem to be curious, and likely to repay the reader for the trouble of examination.  His note commences with a reference to Olaus Borrichius, Antiqua Urb.  Rom. facies:—­

“Alexander Magnus ....successores ejus..... in nummis omnes
cornuti quasi Jovii, honore utique manifesto, donee cornuum
decus in ludibria uxoriorum vertit somnorum interpres
Artimidorus.”

On which he observes,—­

“Bene.  Nam ante Artimidorium nullus, quod sciam, hujus scommatis mentionem fecit.  Quod enim Traug.  Fred. Benedict. ad Ciceron. Epist. ad Div. 7.24. ad voc.  ‘Cipius’ conjecit, id paullo audientus mihi videtur conjecisse.”

I have not succeeded in obtaining a sight of this edition of the Epistles.  And I should feel much obliged to any one who would quote the “conjecture,” and so enable your readers to gauge its “audacity” for themselves.  Is it not odd that Reiff should have made no remark on the utter want of connection between the “honor manifestus,” and the “ludibria” of Olaus? or on the [Greek:  kata to legomenon] of the author that he was illustrating? {91} Artemidorus may certainly have been the first who recorded the scomma; but the words [Greek:  kata to legomenon] would almost justify us supposing that

          “—­The horn
  Was a crest ere he was born.”

Menage (referred to above) evidently lays some stress on the following epigram, as an illustration of the question:—­

  [Greek:  “Ostis eso purous katalambanei ouk agorazon,
  Keinou Amaltheias hae gunae esti keras.”]

Parmenon. Anthol. lib. ii.

But I confess that I am utterly unable to see its point and therefore cannot, of course, trace its connection with the subject.  Falstaff, it is true, speaks of the “horn of abundance,” but then he assigns it to the husband, and makes the “lightness of the wife shine through it.” (K.  Henry IV. Act i.  Sc. 2., on which see Warburton’s note.)