<em>Lippis et tonsoribus</em>

Abstract

The saying lippis et tonsoribus notum goes back to Horace, but the coupling of barbers and bleary-eyed people seems to have been already proverbial at the poet’s time. If barbers are traditionally fond of gossip, and therefore well-informed about everything, the same is not true for bleary-eyed people. The paper proposes that the bleary-eyed may have been thought to have contracted this eye-disease due to excessive peeking through chinks in doorposts and window shades. An appendix treats the disease of bleariness in Greek lexikon and literary tradition.