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).

That Metellus Numidicus borrowed a new form of expression from Greek usage.

IN Quintus Metellus Numidicus, in the third book of his Accusalion of Valerius Messala, I have made note of a novel expression. The words of his speech are as follows: [*](O.R.F., p. 276, Mever2.)

When he knew that he had incurred so grave an accusation, and that our allies had come to the senate in tears, to make complaint that they had been exacted enormous sums of money (pecunias maximas exactos esse).
He says
that they had been exacted enormous sums of money,
instead of
that enormous sums of money had been exacted from them.
This seemed to me an imitation of a Greek idiom; for the Greeks say: ei)sepra/cato/ me a)rgu/rion, meaning
he exacted me money.
But if this can be said, so too can
one is exacted money,
and Caecilius seems to have used that form of expression in his Supposititious Aeschinus: [*](v. 92, Ribbeck3.)
  1. Yet I the customs-fee exacted am.
That is to say,
yet the customs-fee is exacted from me.

That the early writers used passis velis and passis manibus, not from the verb patior, to which the participle belongs, but from pando, to which it does not belong.

FROM the verb pando the ancients made passum, not pansum, and with the preposition ex they formed

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expassum, not expansum. Caecilius in the Fellowbreakfasters says: [*](v. 197, Ribbeck3.)
  1. That yesterday he'd looked in from the roof,
  2. Had this announced, and straight the veil [*](The flame-coloured (yellow) bridal veil.) was spread (expassum).
A woman too is said to be capillo passo, or
with disordered hair,
when it is hanging down and loosened, and we say passis manibus and velis passis of hands and sails stretched out and spread. Therefore Plautus in his Braggart Captain, changing an a into an e, as is usual in compound words, uses dispessis for dispassis in these lines: [*](359 Cf. iv. 17. 8; a became e before two consonants, i before a single one, except r.) Methinks you thus must die without the gate, When you shall hold the cross with hands outstretched (dispessis).

Of the singular death of Milo of Croton. [*](The same story is told by Strabo, vi. 1. 12 (iii, p. 45, L.C.L.).)

MILO of Croton, a famous athlete, who was first crowned at the sixty-second Olympiad, [*](32 B.C.) as the chronicles record, ended his life in a strange and lamentable manner. When he was already advanced in age and had given up the athletic art, he chanced to be journeying alone in a wooded part of Italy. Near the road he saw an oak tree, the middle of which gaped with wide cracks. Then wishing, I suppose, to try whether he still had any strength left,

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he put his fingers into the hollows of the tree and tried to rend apart and split the oak. And in fact he did tear asunder and divide the middle part; but when the oak was thus split into two parts, and he relaxed his hold as if he had accomplished his attempt, the tree returned to its natural position when the pressure ceased, and catching and holding his hands as it came together and united, it kept the man there, to be torn to pieces by wild beasts.

Why young men of noble rank at Athens gave up playing the pipes, although it was one of their native customs.

ALCIBIADES the Athenian in his boyhood was being trained in the liberal arts and sciences at the home of his uncle, Pericles; and Pericles had ordered Antigenides, a player on the pipes, to be sent for, to teach the boy to play on that instrument, which was then considered a great accomplishment. But when the pipes were handed to him and he had put them to his lips and blown, disgusted at the ugly distortion of his face, he threw them away and broke them in two. When this matter was noised abroad, by the universal consent of the Athenians of that time the art of playing the pipes was given up. This story is told in the twenty-ninth book of the Commentary of Pamphila. [*](F.H.G. iii. 521. 9.)

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That the battle which Gaius Caesar fought on the plains of Pharsalus during the civil war was announced on the very same day at Patavium in Italy, and his victory foretold, by the divination of a seer.

ON the day that Gaius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius engaged in battle in Thessaly during the civil war, an event occurred at Patavium in Transpadane Italy, which is deserving of record. A priest called Cornelius, a man of good birth, honoured for scrupulousness in his office and revered for the purity of his life, was suddenly seized by a prophetic inspiration and said that he saw a most furious battle taking place afar off; then he shouted out, just as if he were personally taking part in the engagement, that some were giving way, others pressing on; that he saw before him carnage, flight, flying weapons, a renewal of the engagement, an attack, groans and wounds; and later he suddenly exclaimed that Caesar was victorious.

At the time the prophecy of the priest Cornelius seemed unimportant and without meaning. Afterwards, however, it caused great surprise, since not only the time of the battle which was fought in Thessaly, and its predicted outcome, were verified, but all the shifting fortunes of the day and the very conflict of the two armies were represented by the gestures and words of the seer. [*](Cf. Plutarch, Caesar, 47.)

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Memorable words of Marcus Varro, from the satire entitled Peri\ )Edesma/twn.

THERE are not a few to whom that may apply which is said by Marcus Varro in his satire entitled Peri\ )Edesma/twn. or On Eatables. His words are these: [*](Fr. 404, Bücheler.)

If you had given to philosophy a twelfth part of the effort which you spent in making your baker give you good bread, you would long since have become a good man. As it is, those who know him are willing to buy him at a hundred thousand sesterces, while no one who knows you would take you at a hundred.

Certain facts about the birth, life and character of the poet Euripides, and about the end of his life.

THEOPOMPUS says [*](F.H. G. i. 294.) that the mother of the poet Euripides made a living by selling country produce. Furthermore, when Euripides was born, his father was assured by the astrologers that the boy, when he grew up, would be victor in the games; for that was his destiny. His father, understanding this to mean that he ought to be an athlete, exercised and strengthened his son's body and took him to Olympia to contend among the wrestlers. And at first he was not admitted to the contest because of his time of life, [*](He was too old for the boys' races.) but afterwards he engaged in the Eleusinian [*](Athletic games in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries.) and Thesean [*](A festival held at Athens in the autumn in the month Pyanepsion, in honour of Theseus.) contests and won crowns.

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Later, turning from attention to bodily exercise to the desire of training his mind, he was a pupil of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras and the rhetorician Prodicus, and, in moral philosophy, of Socrates. At the age of eighteen he attempted to write a tragedy. Philochorus relates [*](F.H. G. i. 412.) that there is on the island of Salamis a grim and gloomy cavern, [*](These words are probably not part of the quotation.) which I myself have seen, in which Euripides wrote tragedies. He is said to have had an exceeding antipathy towards almost all women, either because he had a natural disinclination to their society, or because he had had two wives at the same time (since that was permitted by a decree passed by the Athenians) and they had made wedlock hateful to him. Aristophanes also notices his antipathy to women in the first edition of the Thesmophoriazousae in these verses: [*](453 ff.)
  1. Now then I urge and call on all our sex
  2. This man to punish for his many crimes.
  3. For on us, women, he brings bitter woes,
  4. Himself brought up 'mid bitter garden plants.
But Alexander the Aetolian composed the following lines about Euripides: [*](Anal. Alex. p. 247, Meineke.)

  1. The pupil of stout Anaxagoras,
  2. Of churlish speech and gloomy, ne'er has learned
  3. To jest amid the wine; but what he wrote
  4. Might honey and the Sirens well have known.

When Euripides was in Macedonia at the court of Archelaus, and had become an intimate friend of the king, returning home one night from a dinner with the monarch he was torn by dogs, which were set

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upon him by a rival of his, and death resulted from his wounds. [*](He died in 406 B.C.; according to another version of the story it was a band of women who tore him to pieces. Both tales are of doubtful authenticity; the one told by Gellius appears also in Athenaeus xiii. 597, but is denied in verses preserved in Suidas, s.v. u(pai/meke.) The Macedonians treated his tomb and his memory with such honour that they used to proclaim:
Never, Euripides, shall thy monument perish,
also by way of self-glorification, because the distinguished poet had met his death and been buried in their land. Therefore when envoys, sent to them by the Athenians, begged that they should allow his bones to be moved to Athens, his native land, the Macedonians unanimously persisted in refusing.

That by the poets the sons of Jupiter are represented as most wise and refined, but those of Neptune as very haughty and rude.

THE poets have called the sons of Jupiter most excellent in worth, wisdom and strength, for example Aeacus, Minos and Sarpedon; the sons of Neptune, the Cyclops, Cercyon, Sciron, and the Laestrygonians, they said, were most haughty and cruel, and strangers to all refinement, as being sprung from the sea.

A story of the distinguished leader Sertorius; of his cunning, and of the clever devices which he used to control and conciliate his barbarian soldiers.

SERTORIUS, a brave man and a distinguished general, was skilled in using and commanding an army. In times of great difficulty he would lie to

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his soldiers, if a lie was advantageous, he would read forged letters for genuine ones, feign dreams, and resort to fictitious omens, if such devices helped him to keep up the spirits of his soldiers. the following story about Sertorius is particularly well known: A white hind of remarkable beauty, agility and swiftness was given him as a present by a man of Lusitania. He tried to convince everyone that the animal had been given him by the gods, and that inspired by the divine power of Diana, it talked with him, and showed and indicated what it was expedient to do; and if any command which he felt obliged to give his soldiers seemed unusually difficult, he declared that he had been advised by the hind. When he said that, all willingly rendered obedience, as if to a god. One day, when an advance of the enemy had been reported, the hind, alarmed by the hurry and confusion, took to flight and hid in a neighbouring marsh, and after being sought for in vain was believed to have perished. Not many days later, word was brought to Sertorius that the hind had been found. Then he bade the one who had brought the news to keep silence, threatening him with punishment in case he revealed the matter to anyone; and he ordered him suddenly on the following day to let the animal into the place where lie himself was with his friends. Then, next day, having called in his friends, he said that he had dreamed that the lost hind had returned to him, and after its usual manner had told him what ought to be done. Thereupoli he signed to the slave to do what he had ordered; the hind was let loose and burst into Sertorius' room, amid shouts of amazement.

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This credulity of the barbarians was very helpful to Sertorius in important matters. It is recorded that of those tribes which acted with Sertorius, although he was defeated in many battles, not one ever deserted him, although that race of men is most inconstant.

Of the age of the famous historians, Hellanicus, Herodotus and Thucydides.

HELLANICUS, Herodotus, and Thucydides, writers of history, enjoyed great glory at almost the same time, and did not differ very greatly in age. For Hellanicus seems to have been sixty-five years old at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, [*](In 413 B.C.) Herodotus fifty-three, Thucydides forty. This is stated in the eleventh book of Pamphila. [*](F.H.G. iii. 521. 7; cf. xv. 17. 3, above.)

Vulcacius Sedigitus' canon of the Latin writers of comedy, from the book which he wrote On Poets.

SEDIGITUS, in the book which he wrote On Poets, shows in the following verses of his [*](Frag. 1, Bährens.) what he thought of those who wrote comedies, which one he thinks surpasses all the rest, and then what rank and honour he gives to each of them:

  1. This question many doubtfully dispute,
  2. Which comic poet they'd award the palm.
  3. This doubt my judgment shall for you resolve;
  4. If any differ from me, senseless he.
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  5. First place I give Caecilius Statius.
  6. Plautus holds second rank without a peer;
  7. Then Naevius third, for passion and for fire.
  8. If fourth there be, be he Licinius.
  9. I place Atilius next, after Licinius.
  10. These let Terentius follow, sixth in rank.
  11. Turpilius seventh, Trabea eighth place holds.
  12. Ninth palm I gladly give to Luscius,
  13. To Ennius tenth, as bard of long ago. [*](The principle on which the ranking was done is a disputed question—the amount of originality, that of pa/qos, and personal feeling have been suggested. Vulcacius lived about 130 B.C. He is cited by Suetonius, v. Ter. ii, iv, v (L.C.L. ii, pp. 456, 458, 462).)

Of certain new words which I had met in the Miimiambics of Gnaeus Matius.

GNAEUS MATIUS, a learned man, in his Mimiambics properly and fitly coined the word recentatur for the idea expressed by the Greek a)nai eou=tai, that is

it is born again and is again made new.
The lines in which the word occurs are these: [*](Frag. 9, Bährens.)
  1. E'en now doth Phoebus gleam, again is born (recentatur)
  2. The common light to joys of mortal men.
Matius too, in the same Mimiarmbics, says edulcare, meaning
to sweeten,
in these lines: [*](Frag. 10, Bährens.)

  1. And therefore it is fit to sweeten (edulcare) life,
  2. And bitter cares with wisdom to control.
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In what words the philosopher Aristotle defined a syllogism; and an interpretation of his definition in Latin terms.

ARISTOTLE defines a syllogism in these lines: [*](Topic. i. 1, p. 100. 25.)

A sentence in which, granted certain premises, something else than these premises necessarily follows as the result of these premises.
The following interpretation of this definition seemed to me fairly good:
A syllogism is a sentence in which, certain things being granted and accepted, something else than that which was granted is necessarily established through what was granted.

The meaning of comitia calata, curiata, centsriata, and tribulta, and of concilium, and other related matters of the same kind.

IN the first book of the work of Laelius Felix addressed To Quintus Mucius it is said [*](Frag. I ff., i. p. 70, Bremer.) that Labeo wrote [*](Frag. 22, Huschke; inc. 187, Bremer.) that the comitia calata, or

convoked assembly,
was held on behalf of the college of pontiffs for the purpose of installing the king [*](That is, the rex sacrorum; see note on x. 15. 21.) or the flames. Of these assemblies some were those
of the curies
, others those
of the centuries
; the former were called together (calari being used in the sense of
convoke
) by the curiate lictor, the latter by a horn blower.

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In that same assembly, which we have said was called calata, or

convoked,
wills were customarily made and sacrifices annulled. For we learn that there were three kinds of wills: one which was made in the
convoked assembly
before the collected people, a second on the battle-field, [*](See Mommsen, Staatsr. iii, p. 307, n. 2.) when the men were called into line for the purpose of fighting, a third the symbolic sale of a householder's property by means of the coin and balance. [*](See note on xv. 13. 11.)

In the same book of Laelius Felix this is written:

One who orders a part of the people to assemble, but not all the people, ought to announce a council rather than an assembly. Moreover, tribunes do not summon the patricians, nor may they refer any question to them. Therefore bills which are passed on the initiative of the tribunes of the commons are properly called plebiscita, or 'decrees of the commons,' rather than 'laws.' In former times the patricians were not bound by such decrees until the dictator Quintus Hortensius passed a law, providing that all the Quirites should be bound by whatever enactment the commons should pass.
[*](In 287 B.C.) It is also written in the same book:
When voting is done according to families of men, [*](The comitia curiata were organized on the basis of the thirty curiae of the three original Roman tribes. These curiae included the patrician gentes, which, before the time of the military assembly (comitia centuriata) attributed to Servius Tullius, alone had the full rights of citizenship.) the assembly is called 'curiate'; when it is according to property and age, ' centuriate'; when according to regions and localities, 'tribal.' Further it impious for the assembly of the centuries to be held within the pomerium, because the army must be summoned outside of the city, and it is not lawful for it to be summoned within the city. Therefore it was customary for the
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assembly of the centuries to be held in the field of Mars, and the army to be summoned there for purposes of defence while the people were busy casting their votes.