Noctes Atticae
Gellius, Aulus
Gellius, Aulus. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, 1927 (printing).
Whether avarus is a simple word or, as it appears to Publius Nigidius, a compound, made up of two parts.
PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS, in the twenty-ninth book of his Commentaries,[*](Fr. 42, Swoboda.) declares that avarus is not a simple word, but is compounded of two parts:
For that man,he says,
is called avarus, or 'covetous,' who is avidus aeris, or 'eager for money;' but in the compound the letter e is lost.He also says [*](Id. fr. 44.) that a man is called by the compound term locuples, or
rich,when he holds pleraque loca, that is to say,
many possessions.[*](The derivation from locus and the root ple- (of pleo, plenus, etc.) seems to be correct.)
But his statement about locuples is the stronger and more probable. As to avarus there is doubt; for why may it not seem to be derived from one single word, namely aveo, [*](This is, of course, the accepted etymology. The derivation of amarus is uncertain; it is perhaps connected with Greek w)mo/s, raw (cf. crudus and crudelis). Sanscrit âma-s.) and formed in the same way as amarus, about which there is general agreement that it is not a compound?
That a fine was imposed by the plebeian aediles on the daughter of Appius Caecus, a woman of rank, because she spoke too arrogantly.
PUBLIC punishment was formerly inflicted, not only upon crimes, but even upon arrogant language; so necessary did men think it to maintain the dignity of Roman conduct inviolable. For the daughter of the celebrated Appius Caecus, when leaving the plays of
What, pray, would have become of me, and how much more should I have been crowded and pressed upon, had not my brother Publius Claudius lost his fleet in the sea-fight and with it a vast number of citizens? [*](In 249 B.C. He was warned not to fight by the refusal of the sacred chickens to eat; but he threw them overboard, saying that they might drink, since they would not eat. See Suet. Tib. ii. 2.) Surely I should have lost my life, overwhelmed by a still greater mass of people. How I wish,said she,
that my brother might come to life again, take another fleet to Sicily, and destroy that crowd which has just knocked poor me about.Because of such wicked and arrogant words, Gaius Fundanius and Tiberius Sempronius, the plebeian aediles, [*](The two plebeian aediles were first appointed with the tribunes of the commons in 494 B.C. (see xvii. 21. 11), and the designation plebei or plebi was perhaps not added until the appointment of two curule aediles in 388 B.C. They were assistants to the tribunes, but also had the right of independent action, as here. Julius Caesar added two aediles ceriales; Suet. Jul. xli. 1.) imposed a fine upon the woman of twenty-five thousand pounds of full-weight bronze. [*](Aes gravis or aes libralis refers to the old coinage, when the as was equal to a pound of copper or bronze.) Ateius Capito, in his commentary On Public Trials, says [*](Fr. 2, Huschke; 2 Bremer (ii, p. 284).) that this happened in the first Punic war, in the consulship of Fabius Licinus and Otacilius Crassus. [*](246 B.C.)
Marcus Varro, I remember, writes that of the rivers which flow outside [*](This was true in Varro's time.) the limits of the Roman empire the Nile is first in size, the Danube second, and next the Rhone.
OF all the rivers which flow into the seas included within the Roman empire, which the Greeks call
the inner sea,it is agreed that the Nile is the greatest. Sallust wrote [*](Hist. iii. 80, Maur.) that the Danube is next in size; but Varro, when he discussed the part of the earth which is called Europe, placed [*](Ant. Hum. xiii, fr. 6, Mirsch.) the Rhone among the first three rivers of that quarter of the earth, by which he seems to make it a rival of the Danube; for the Danube also is in Europe.
That among the ignominious punishments which were inflicted upon soldiers was the letting of blood; and what seems to be the reason for such a penalty.
THIS also was a military punishment in old times, to disgrace a soldier by ordering a vein to be opened, and letting blood. There is no reason assigned for this in the old records, so far as I could find; but I infer that it was first done to soldiers whose minds were affected and who were not in a normal condition, so that it appears to have been not so much a punishment as a medical treatment. But afterwards I suppose that the same penalty was customarily inflicted for many other offences, on the ground that all who sinned were not of sound mind. [*](Muretus, Var. Lect. xiii, p. 199, thought it was in order that they night lose with ignominy the blood which they had been unwilling to shed for their country.)