Noctes Atticae

A somewhat careful inquiry into these words of Marcus Tullius in his first Oration against Antony:

But many things seem to threaten contrary even to nature and to fate

; and a discussion of the question whether the words

fate

and

nature

mean the same thing or something different.

MARCUS CICERO, in his first Oration against Antony,[*](Phil. i. 10.) has left us these words:

I hastened then to follow him whom those present did not follow; not that I might be of any service, for I had no hope of that nor could I promise it, but in order that if anything to which human nature is liable should happen to me (and many things seem to threaten contrary even to nature and contrary to fate) I might leave what I have said to-day as a witness to my country of my constant devotion to its interests.

Cicero says

contrary to nature and contrary to fate.

Whether he intended both words,

fate

and

nature,

to have the same meaning and has used two words to designate one thing, [*](This is the recognized figure of speech known as hendiadys.) or whether he so divided and separated them that nature seems to bring some casualties and fate others, I think ought to be investigated; and this question ought especially to be asked—how it is that he has said that many things to which humanity is liable can happen contrary to fate, when the plan and order and a kind of unconquerable necessity of fate are so ordained that all things must be included within the decrees of fate; unless perhaps he has followed Homer's saying:

1. Lest, spite of fate, you enter Hades' home.
[*](Iliad, xx. 336.)

But there is no doubt that Cicero referred to a violent and sudden death, which may properly seem to happen contrary to nature.

But why he has put just that kind of death outside the decrees of fate it is not the part of this work to investigate, nor is this the time. The point, however, must not be passed by, that Virgil too had that same opinion about fate which Cicero had, when in his fourth book he said of Elissa, who inflicted a violent death upon herself: [*](Aen. iv. 696.)

1. For since she perished not by fate's decree,
2. Nor earned her death;

just as if, in making an end of life, those deaths which are violent do not seem to come by fate's decree. Cicero, however, seems to have followed the words of Demosthenes, a man gifted with equal wisdom and eloquence, which express about the same idea concerning nature and fate. For Demosthenes in that splendid oration entitled On the Crown wrote as follows [*](205, p. 296.) :

He who thinks that he was born only for his parents, awaits the death appointed by fate, the natural death; but he who thinks that he was born also for his country, will be ready to die that he may not see his country enslaved.

What Cicero seems to have called

fate

and

nature,

Demosthenes long before termed

fate

and

the natural death.

For

a natural death

is one which comes in the course of fate and nature, as it were, and is caused by no force from without.

About an intimate talk of the poets Pacuvius and Accius in the town of Tarentum.

THOSE who have had leisure and inclination to inquire into the life and times of learned men and hand them down to memory, have related the following anecdote of the tragic poets Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius:

Pacuvius,

they say,

when already enfeebled by advanced age and constant bodily illness, had withdrawn from Rome to Tarentum. Then Accius, who was a much younger man, coming to Tarentum on his way to Asia, visited Pacuvius, and being hospitably received and detained by him for several days, at his request read him his tragedy entitled Atreus.

Then they say that Pacuvius remarked that what he had written seemed sonorous and full of dignity, but that nevertheless it appeared to him somewhat harsh and rugged.

What you say is true,

replied Accius,

and I do not greatly regret it; for it gives me hope that what I write hereafter will be better. For they say it is with the mind as it is with fruits; those which are at first harsh and bitter, later become mild and sweet; but those which at once grow mellow and soft, and are juicy in the beginning, presently become, not ripe, but decayed. Accordingly, it has seemed to me that something should be left in the products of the intellect for time and age to mellow.