He can (which must be supplied) neither swim nor read. This is said about people who are unusually ignorant and have learnt absolutely nothing in childrood in the way of useful knowledge. For these two skills were the first things learnt by the boys in Athens. And in Rome too, as Suetonius asserts plainly enough in his Augustus: 'He himself, for the most part, taught his nephews letters, and swimming, and the other rudiments.' The same author reveals that Caligula, although very quick to learn other things, did not know how to swim - as if this were the very last thing that anybody would not know. Plato in the Laws, book 3: 'Those who take the contrary part are to be called wise, even if they know neither how to read nor how to swim, as the saying goes.' Aristides also in the Joint Defence of Four Orators: 'But as the saying goes, deeming it right to reject him as one who knows neither how to read nor how to swim.'