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).
On the Enigma.
THE kind of composition which the Greeks call
enigmas,some of our early writers called scirpi, or
rushes.[*](Apparently so called from the involved pattern of plaited rushes.) An example is the enigma composed of three iambic trimeters which I recently found— very old, by Jove! and very neat. I have left it unanswered, in order to excite the ingenuity of my readers in seeking for an answer. The three verses are these:
He who does not wish to puzzle himself too long will find the answer [*](The answer is Terminus. Once minus and twice minus = thrice (ter) minus. In the cella of Jupiter on the Capitolium, or possibly in the pronaos, there was a terminal cippus, representing Terminus, who refused to be removed from his original site.) in the second book of Varro's Latin Language, addressed to Marcellus. [*](Fr. 55. G. & S.)
- I know not if he's minus once or twice,
- Or both of these, who would not give his place,
- As I once heard it said, to Jove himself.
Why Gnaeus Dolabella, the proconsul, referred to the court of the Areopagus the case of a woman charged with poisoning and admitting the fact.
WHEN Gnaeus Dolabella was governing the province of Asia with proconsular authority, a woman of Smyrna was brought before him. This woman had killed her husband and her son at the same time by secretly giving them poison. She confessed the crime, and said that she had reason for it, since her husband and son had treacherously done to death another son of hers by a former husband, an excellent and blameless youth; and there was no dispute about the truth of this statement. Dolabella referred the matter to his council. No member of the council ventured to render a decision in so difficult a case, since the confession of the poisoning which had resulted in the death of the husband and son seemed to call for punishment, while at the same time a just penalty had thereby been inflicted upon two wicked men. Dolabella referred the question to the Areopagites [*](A very ancient court at Athens, so called because it held its meetings on the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars.) at Athens, as judges of greater authority and experience. The Areopagites, after having heard the case, summoned the woman and her accuser to appear after a hundred years. Thus the woman's crime was not condoned, for the laws did not permit that, nor, though guilty, was she condemned and punished for a pardonable offence. The story is told in the ninth book of Valerius Maximus' work on Memorable Occurrences and Sayings. [*](viii. 1 amb. 2, Kempf; Gellius' reference is wrong.)