Faced with two equally undesirable alternatives. In Greek logic a lemma was a premise, a matter taken for granted in an argument, whereas a dilemma (a double lemma) was an either/or proposition. The Romans called this an argumentum cornutum, or “horned argument,” because one could be caught on either horn. In the sixteenth century Nicholas Udall, translator of Erasmus, turned it into a horned question: “Because that to whether of both partyes a bodye shall make a direct aunswere, he shall renne on the sharpe poyncte of a horne.” Soon thereafter it began to be called “the horns of a dilemma.”