Question XII. WHETHER OF THE TWAIN IS MORE PROBABLE, THAT THE NUMBER OF THE STAR IS EVEN OR ODD? but men are to be deceived with oaths. And Glaucias said: I have heard that this speech was used against Polycrates the tyrant, and it may be that it was spoken also to others. But why do you demand this of me? Because verily, quoth Sospis, I see that children play at odd and even with cockal bones, but Academics with words. For it seems to me that such stomachs differ in nothing from them who hold out their clutched fists and ask whether they hold odd or even. Then Protogenes arose and called me by name, saying: What ail we, that we suffer these rhetoricians thus to brave it out and to mock others, being demanded nothing in the mean time, nor put to it to contribute their scot to the conference—unless peradventure they will come in with the plea that they have no part of this table-talk over the wine, being followers of Demosthenes, who in all his life never drank wine. That is not the reason, said I; but we have put them no questions. And now, unless you have any thing better to ask, methinks I can be even with these fellows, and put them a puzzling question out of Homer, as to a case of repugnance in contrary laws.