[1] The word for a fishermen's net or basket came to mean a riddle, in association with the myth of
Homer's death on Ios (
gamma 458).
"A riddle is a problem put in jest, requiring, by searching the mind, an answer to be given for a prize of forfeit."
Athenaeus, in his lengthy and useful discussion of riddles at dinners and symposia (10.69-89 Kaibel = 448B-459C, cf.
Epitome, ed. S.P. Peppink, 2.2.44-52), attributes this definition to
Clearchus of Soli (also known as Soleus),
On Riddles (FHG II 31).
Pollux 6.19, from the same source, classifies it among "questions over the wine-cups" (
zhth/mata kuli/keia) or "to test memory" (
mnhmo/neia), and distinguishes it from enigma as having not only the character of a game but also a serious side. The person solving the riddle received a particular portion of meat, the loser(s) had to drink salted water.
Athenaeus cites with evident pleasure many riddles from Greek comic playwrights (
Alexis,
Antiphanes,
Diphilus,
Eubulus) and elsewhere, and demonstrates the extraordinary literary and intellectual breadth required by this game.
The griphos was included as one form of allegory in some rhetorical lists of figures of speech.
Philodemus, however, in reporting this, excludes griphos and urbane witticism from allegory, accepting enigma, paroemia (the misapplication of a proverb to a situation in order to undercut the statement) and irony (
Rhetorica I p.181 Sudhaus; cf. R.R. Dyer,
Journal of Roman Studies 80, 1990, 27-30). Quintilian includes in his definition of allegory (8.6.44-59) continued passages of changed meaning (modern 'allegory', cf.
Cicero,
de Oratore 2.65.261-7; 3.41.106) and irony (within which he includes paroemia, with sarcasm, urbane witticism and antiphrasis, as one of its four types), but classes enigma, from its obscurity, as a stylistic flaw (and, a fortiori, griphos, which he does not mention). See the references for Schultz's collection of hellenistic riddles and for the recent work and bibliography by P. Pucci.
2Greek logos, 'argument, calculation, word, sentence, utterance, mode of discourse' (see LSJ). The many possible senses of the word give rise to ambiguity in its use. Here it refers to a party game of words and meanings and might be translated 'word game'. However, as a type of allegory in rhetoric, it would be a type in a particular 'mode of discourse' known in antiquity as "figured speech" (to\ e)sxhmatisme/non, Latin oratio figurata, cf. Dyer 18ff., nn. 23, 24, 53, 54, 57), used to disguise political dissent under tyrants or the jargon of minorities subject to discrimination (e.g. the jargon of homosexuals in previous centuries).