Of Mice & Cheese. Seneca, Epistulae Morales 5.48B.6

~ Seneca plays a riddle-game with Lucilius, mocking the way pedants pose & solve rhetorical problems (like the problem of overdefining friendship). This is either a completely new epistle (as some MSS have it), or a continuation of the one before (as others record). ~

Mus syllaba est; mus autem caseum rodit; syllaba ergo caseum rodit. Puta nunc me istuc non posse solvere: quod mihi ex ista inscientia periculum imminet? quod incommodum? Sine dubio verendum est ne quando in muscipulo syllabas capiam, aut ne quando, si neglegentior fuero, caseum liber comedat. Nisi forte illa acutior est collectio: mus syllaba est; syllaba autem caseum non rodit; mus ergo caseum non rodit.

The word mouse is a single syllable. Mouse gnaws nummy cheese (†). So a single syllable consumes three. Imagine that I am incapable of solving this riddle. What danger threatens me, because of the ignorance that keeps me from solving it? Where is my difficulty or discomfort, here? No doubt we must fear that I may discover extra syllables in phrases like little mouse, or that as I am distracted, a free mouseling may devour my cheese. Perhaps there is a better way to compose this problem: The word mouse is just one syllable. But one syllable is not enough for nummy cheese. So the mouse gets no cheese.

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(†) The Latin word for cheese, caseus, has three syllables, so we have to add something to the English to make the riddle work.