Noctes Atticae

That Chrysippus skilfully and vividly represented the likeness of Justice in melodious and picturesque language.

MOST worthily, by Heaven! and most elegantly did Chrysippus, in the first book of his work entitled On Beauty and Pleasure, depict the face and eyes of Justice, and her aspect, with austere and noble word-painting. For he represents the figure of Justice, and says that it was usually represented by the painters and orators of old in about the following manner:

Of maidenly form and bearing, with a stern and fearsome countenance, a keen glance of the eye, and a dignity and solemnity which was neither mean nor cruel, but awe-inspiring.

From the spirit of this representation he wished it to be understood that the judge, who is the priest of Justice, ought to be dignified, holy, austere, incorruptible, not susceptible to flattery, pitiless and inexorable towards the wicked and guilty, vigorous, lofty, and powerful, terrible by reason of the force and majesty of equity and truth. Chrysippus' own words about Justice are as follows:

She has the title of virgin as a symbol of her purity and an indication that she has never given way to evil-doers, that she has never yielded to soothing words, to prayers and entreaties, to flattery, nor to anything of that kind. Therefore she is properly represented too as stern and dignified, with a serious expression and a keen, steadfast glance, in order that she may inspire fear in the wicked and courage in the good; to the latter, as her friends, she presents a friendly aspect, to the former a stern face.

I thought it the more necessary to quote these words of Chrysippus, in order that they might be before us for consideration and judgment, since, on hearing me read them, some philosophers who are more sentimental in their views called that a representation of Cruelty rather than of Justice.

The strife and contention of two eminent grammarians at Rome as to the vocative case of egregius.

ONCE upon a time, wearied with constant writing, I was walking in the park of Agrippa [*](The campus Agrippae, laid out by the famous minister of Augustus, was finished and dedicated by the emperor in 7 B.C. It extended from the line of the aqua Virgo on the south at least as far as the modern via S. Claudio on the north, and from the via Lata to the slope of the Quirinal hill, although its eastern boundary is quite uncertain; see Platner, Topog.,2 p. 477.) for the purpose of relieving and resting my mind. And there, as it chanced, I saw two grammarians of no small repute in the city of Rome, and was a witness of a violent dispute between them, one maintaining

that vir egregi was the proper form of the vocative case, the other vir egregie.

The argument of the one who thought that we should say egregi was of this sort:

Whatever nouns or words,

said he,

end in the nominative singular in the syllable us preceded by i, in the vocative case terminate in the letter i, as Caelius Caeli, modius modi, tertius terti, Accius Acci, Titius Titi, and the like; so then egregious, since it ends in the syllable us in the nominative and the letter i precedes that syllable, must in the vocative singular have i for the final letter, and therefore it is correct to say egregi, not egregie. For divus and rivus and clivus do not end in the syllable us, but in that which ought to be written with two us, and in order to indicate that sound a new letter was devised, which was called the digamma.

[*](The Greek digamma had practically the form of Latin F and the pronunciation of Latin V (the semi-vowel). The Romans used the character to represent the sound of f, at first with the addition of the aspirate h (as in heehawed, C.I.L. i2. 3 and xiv. 4123) and afterwards alone. Since V was used both for the vowel u and the semi-vowel v, the emperor Claudius introduced an inverted digamma (v), to represent the latter sound; see Suet. Claud. xii. 3 and (e.g.) C.I.L. vi. 919. The writing of F for V, to which Gellius seems to refer, was apparently confined to a few grammarians; see Cassiodorus, vii. 148. 8 K and Priscian, ii, 11. 5 K.) When the other heard this, he said: "O egreie grammatice, or if you prefer, egregissime, tell me, I pray you, what is the vocative case of, inscius, impius, sobrius, ebrius, proprius, propitious, anxius, and contrarius, which end in the syllable us and have the letter i before the final syllable? For shame and modesty prevent me from pronouncing them according to your rule." Now the other, overcome by the accumulation of so many words against him, remained silent for a time; but then he nevertheless rallied, and upheld and defended that same rule which he had laid down, maintaining that proprius, propitius, anxius and contrarius ought to have the same form in the vocative case as adversarius and extrarius; that inscius also and impius and ebrius and sobrius were somewhat less commonly, nevertheless more correctly, made to end in that same case in the letter i rather than e. But as this contest of theirs was likely to be continued for some time, I did not think it worth while to listen to those same arguments any longer, and I left them shouting and wrangling.

Of what kind are the things which have the appearance of learning, but are neither entertaining nor useful; and also of changes in the names of several cities and regions.

A FRIEND of mine, a man not without fame as a student of literature, who had passed a great part of his life among books, said to me:

I should like to aid and adorn your Nights,

at the same time presenting me with a book of great bulk, overflowing, as he himself put it, with learning of every kind. He said that he had compiled it as the result of wide, varied and abstruse reading, and he invited me to take from it as much as I liked and thought worthy of record. I took the book eagerly and gladly, as if I had got possession of the horn of plenty, and shut myself up in order to read it without interruption. But what was written there was, by Jove! merely a list of curiosities: the name of the man who was first called a

grammarian

; the number of famous men named Pythagoras and Hippocrates; Homer's description [*](Odyss. xxii. 128, 137.) of the laurh/, or

narrow passage,

in the house of Ulysses; why Telemachus did not touch Pisistratus, who was lying beside him, with his hand, but awakened him by a kick; [*](Odyss. xv. 44.) with what kind of bolt Euryclia shut in Telemachus; [*](Odyss. i. 441.) and why the same poet did not know the rose, but did know oil made from roses. [*](Iliad xxiii. 186.) It also contained the names of the companions of Ulysses who were seized and torn to pieces by Scylla; [*](Odyss. xii. 245.) whether the wanderings of Ulysses were in the inner sea, as Aristarchus believed, [*](p. 244, Lehrs.) or in the outer sea, according to Crates. There was also a list of the isopsephic verses in Homer; [*](That is, those whose letters, treated as figures, amounted to the same sum, thus Iliad vii. 264 and 265 = 3498. See Suet. Nero xxxix. 2 and note a (L.C.L.).) what names in the same writer are given in the form of an acrostic; what verse it is in which each word is a syllable longer than the preceding word; [*](An example is Iliad iii. 182, w)= ma/kar )Atrei/dh moirhgene\s o)libiodai/mwn.) by what rule each head of cattle produces three offspring each year; [*](Odyss. iv. 86.) of the five layers with which the shield of Achilles was strengthened, whether the one made of gold was on top or in the middle; [*](Iliad xx. 269.) and besides what regions and cities had had a change of name, as Boeotia was formerly called Aonia, Egypt Aeria, Crete by the same name Aeria, Attica Acte, Corinth Ephyre, Macedonia Emathia, Thessaly Haemonia, Tyre Sarra, Thrace Sithonia, Paestum Poseidonia. [*](The original name was Poseidwni/a; Poseidw/nion was in Pallene. Gellius seems to have made a slip. Poseidw/ni/on means a temple of Poseidon.) These things and many others of the same kind were included in that book. Hastening to return it to him at once, I said:

I

v3.p.47

congratulate you, most learned sir, on this display of encyclopaedic erudition; but take back this precious volume, which does not have the slightest connection with my humble writings. For my Nights, which you wish to assist and adorn, base their inquiries especially on that one verse of Homer which Socrates said was above all other things always dear to him [*](Odyss. iv. 392.) Whate'er of good and ill has come to you at home.

[*](The emphasis is on the last two words. Socrates thought that the chief value of the study of philosophy was its effect on the student's own life and character. Gellius apparently means that he is collecting materials for home consumption; see Praef. i, ut liberis meis partae istiusmodi remissiones essent.)

That Marcus Varro presented Gnaeus Pompeius, when he was consul elect for the first time, with a commentary, which Varro himself called Ei)sagwgiko/s, [*](The word means Introductory. It was what we should call a Handbook of Parliamentary Practice.) on the method of conducting meetings of the senate.

GNAEUS POMP/EIUS was elected consul for the first time with Marcus Crassus. When he was on the point of entering upon the office, because of his long military service he was unacquainted with the method of convening and consulting the senate, and of city affairs in general. He therefore asked his friend Marcus Varro to make him a book of instructions (Ei)sagwgiko/s, as Varro himself termed it), from which he might learn what he ought to say and do when he brought a measure before the House. Varro in letters which he wrote to Op

pianus, contained in the fourth book of his Investigations in Epistolary Form, says [*](i, p. 195, Bipont.) that this notebook which he made for Pompey on that subject was lost; and since what he had previously written was no longer in existence, he repeats in those letters a good deal bearing upon the same subject. [*](i, p. 125, Bremer.)

First of all, he tells us there by what magistrates the senate was commonly convened according to the usage of our forefathers, naming these:

the dictator, consuls, praetors, tribunes of the commons, interrex, and prefect of the city.

No other except these, he said, had the right to pass a decree of the senate, and whenever it happened that all those magistrates were in Rome at the same time, then he says that the first in the order of the list which I have just quoted had the prior right of bringing a matter before the senate; next, by an exceptional privilege, the military tribunes also who had acted as consuls, [*](From 444 to 384 B.C. military tribunes with consular authority took the place of the consuls.) and likewise the decemvirs, [*](The decemviri legibus scribundis, who drew up the Twelve Tables in 450 B.C.) who in their day had consular authority, and the triumvirs [*](The second triumvirate of Antony, Octavian and Lepidus; cf. iii. 9. 4 and the note.) appointed to reorganize the State, had the privilege of bringing measures before the House. Afterwards he wrote about vetoes, and said that the right to veto a decree of the senate belonged only to those who had the same authority [*](Potestate is used in the technical sense. The par potestas conferred on the colleague of the presiding officer the right to interpose his veto (Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, § 274).) as those who wished to pass the decree, or greater power. He then added a list of the places in which a decree of the senate might lawfully be made, and he showed and maintained that this was regular only in a place which had been appointed by an augur, and called a

temple.

[*](A templum (from temno) was originally a sacred precinct.) Therefore in the Hostilian Senate House [*](The curia Hostilia, on the Comitium (see iv. 5. 1 and note 3), was the earliest senate house, ascribed to Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome. It was restored by Sulla in 80 B.C., rebuilt by Faustus Sulla after its destruction by fire in 52 B.C. The curia Julia was begun by Caesar in 45 B. c. The curia Pompei, in which Caesar was murdered, was built by Pompey in 55 B.C., near his theatre. Whether it was an exedra of his colonnade, or a separate building, is uncertain.) and the Pompeian, and later in the Julian, since those were unconsecrated places,

temples

were established by the augurs, in order that in those places lawful decrees of the senate might be made according to the usage of our forefathers. In connection with which he also wrote this, that not all sacred edifices are temples, and that not even the shrine of Vesta was a temple. [*](The shrine or temple of Vesta, in spite of its sacred character, was not a consecrated temnplum. It was said to) After this he goes on to say that a decree of the senate made before sunrise or after sunset was not valid, and that those through whom a decree of the senate was made at that time were thought to have committed an act deserving censure. Then he gives much instruction on the same lines: on what days it was not lawful to hold a meeting of the senate; that one who was about to hold a meeting of the senate should first offer up a victim and take the auspices; that questions relating to the gods ought to be presented to the senate before those affecting men; then further that resolutions should be presented indefinitely, [*](That is, in general terms, as in Livy xxii. 1. 5, cum (consul) de re public rettuliset, i.e. had proposed a general discussion of the interests of the State.) as affecting the general welfare, or definitely on specific cases; that a decree of the senate was made in two ways: either by division if there was general agreement, or if the matter was disputed, by calling for the opinion of each senator; furthermore the senators ought to have been built by Numa, and was certainly very ancient. It was burned and rebuilt several times, the last restoration being in A.D. 196 by Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus. be asked their opinions in order, beginning with the grade of consul. And in that grade in former times the one to be called upon first was always the one who had first been enrolled in the senate; but at the time when he was writing he said that a new custom had become current, through partiality and a desire to curry favour, of asking first for the opinion of the one whom the presiding officer wished to call upon, provided however that he was of consular rank. [*](Cf. Suet. Jul. xxi.) Besides this he discoursed about seizure of goods [*](In consequence of the issue of a writ of execution; see Mommsen, Statsr. i. 160, and cf. Suet. Jul. xvii. 2.) and the imposing of a fine upon a senator who was not present when it was his duty to attend a meeting. These and certain other matters of that kind, first published in the book of which I spoke above, Marcus Varro treated in a letter written to Oppianus.

But when he says that a decree of the senate is commonly made in two ways, either by calling for opinions or by division, that does not seem to agree with what Ateius Capito has written in his Miscellanies. For in Book VIIII Capito says [*](Frag. 3, Huschke; 5, Bremer.) that Tubero asserts [*](Frag. 1, Huschke; De Off. Sen. 1, Bremer.) that no decree of the senate could be made without a division, since in all decrees of the senate, even in those which are made by calling for opinions, a division was necessary, and Capito himself declares that this is true. But I recall writing on this whole matter more fully and exactly in another place. [*](iii. 18.)