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).

It has been observed of old men, that the sixty-third year of their life is marked as a rule by troubles, by death, or by some disaster; and an example apropos of this observation is taken from a letter from the deified Augustus to his son Gaius. [*](Gaius and Lucius Caesar were sons of Agrippa and Julia, and grandsons of Augustus (see Gaium nepotem, § 3).)

IT has been observed during a long period of human recollection, and found to be true, that for almost all old men the sixty-third year of their age Both were adopted by Augustus, and on the death of the young Marcellus were made principes iuventutis, and thus designated as the successors of Augustus.

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is attended with danger, and with some disaster involving either serious bodily illness, or loss of life, or mental suffering. Therefore those who are engaged in the study of matters and terms of that kind call that period of life the

climacteric.

[*](Cf. iii. 10. 9.) Night before last, too, when I was reading a volume of letters of the deified Augustus, written to his grandson Gaius, and was led on by the elegance of the style, which was easy and simple, by Heaven without mannerisms or effort, in one of the letters I ran upon a reference to this very belief about that same year. I give a copy of the letter: [*](p. 155, 18, Wichert.)

The ninth day before the Kalends of October. [*](Sept. 23.)

Greeting, my dear Gaius, my dearest little donkey, [*](A term of affection. The asellus is an attractive little beast, whatever the reputation of the asinus. The ocellus of Beroaldus and Damsté's autclus (=avicellus, birdlet; the usual form is avicula, as in ii. 29. 2) are needless changes, particularly in view of Augustus' humorous tendencies; Weiss cites vi. 16. 5, where asellus has a different, but hardly more complimentary, meaning.) whom, so help me! constantly miss whenever you are away from me. But especially on such days as to-day my eyes are eager for my Gaius, and wherever you have been to-day, I hope you have celebrated my sixty-fourth birthday in health and happiness. For, as you see, I have passed the climacteric common to all old men, the sixty-third year. And I pray the gods that whatever time is left to me I may pass with you safe and well, with our country in a flourishing condition, while you [*](The plural refers to Gaius and his brother Lucius; see note.) are playing the man and preparing to succeed to my position.

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A passage from a speech of Favonius, an early orator, containing an attack which he made on luxurious entertainments, when he was advocating the Licinian law for lessening extravagance.

WHEN I was reading an old speech of Favonius, a man of no little eloquence, in which [*](The sense of the lacuna seems to be given in the chapter heading.) . . . I learned the whole of it by heart, in order to be able to remember that such extravagant living is truly hateful. These words which I have added are those of Favonius: [*](O.R.F., p. 207, Meyer2.)

The leaders in gluttony and luxury declare that an entertainment is not elegant, unless, when you are eating with the greatest relish, your plate is removed and a better, richer dainty comes from the reserves. This to-day is thought the very flower of a feast among those with whom extravagance and fastidiousness take the place of elegance; who say that the whole of no bird ought to be eaten except a fig-pecker; who think that a dinner is mean and stingy unless so many of the other birds and fatted fowl are provided, that the guests may be satisfied with the rumps and hinder parts; who believe that those who eat the upper parts of such birds and fowl have no refinement of taste. If luxury continues to increase in its present proportion, what remains but that men should bid someone to eat their dinners for them, in order that they may not fatigue themselves by feeding, when the couch is more profusely adorned with gold, silver and purple for a few mortals than for the immortal gods?

[*](The reference is probably to the lectisternium, when the images of the gods were placed upon couches and food was set before them by the vii viri epulones.)

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That the poet Caecilius used frons in the masculine gender, not by poetic license, but properly and by analogy.

CORRECTLY and elegantly did Caecilius write this in his Changeling: [*](ii. 79, Ribbeck3.)

The worst of foes are these, of aspect gay (fronte hilaro),
Gloomy of heart, whom we can neither grasp Nor yet let go.

I chanced to quote these lines in a company of well educated young men, when we were speaking of a man of that kind. Thereupon one of a throng of grammarians who stood there with us, a man of no little repute, said:

What license and boldness Caecilius showed here in saying, fronte hilaro and not fronte hilara, and in not shrinking from so dreadful a solecism.

Nay,

said I,

it is rather we who are as bold and free as possible in improperly and ignorantly failing to use frons in the masculine gender, when both the principle of regularity which is called analogy [*](On analogy see ii. 25.) and the authority of earlier writers indicate that we ought to say, not hanc frontem, but hunc frontem. Indeed, Marcus Cato in the first book of his Origins wrote as follows: [*](Frag. 99, Peter2.) 'On the following day in open combat, with straight front (aequo fronte) we fought with the enemy's legions with foot, horse and wings.' Also Cato again says [*](Frag. 100, Peter2.) recto fronte in the same book.

But that half-educated grammarian said:

Away with your authorities, which I think you may perhaps have, but give me a reason, which you do not
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have.

Then I, somewhat irritated by those words of his, as was natural at my time of life:

Listen,

said I,

my dear sir, to a reason that may be false, but which you cannot prove to be false. All words,

said I,

ending in the three letters in which frons ends are of the masculine gender, if they end in the same syllable in the genitive case also, as mons, fons, pons, frons.

[*](Nouns of the third declension ending in s preceded By a consonant are regularly feminine. The four exceptions are mons, fons, dens, and pons; frons is usually feminine.) But he replied with a laugh:

Hear, young scholar, several other similar words which are not of the masculine gender.

Then all begged him at once to name just one. But when the man was screwing up his face, could not open his lips, and changed colour, then I broke in, saying:

Go now and take thirty days to hunt one up; when you have found it, meet us again.

And thus we sent off this worthless fellow to hunt up a word with which to break down the rule which I had made.

About the strange suicides of the maids of Miletus.

PLUTARCH in the first book of his work On the Soul, [*](vii. p. 20, Bern.) discussing disorders which affect the human mind, has told us that almost all the maidens of the Milesian nation suddenly without any apparent cause conceived a desire to die, and thereupon many of them hanged themselves. When this happened more frequently every day, and no remedy had any effect on their resolve to die, the Milesians passed a decree that all those maidens who committed suicide

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by hanging should be carried to the grave naked, along with the same rope by which they had destroyed themselves. After that decree the maidens ceased to seek a voluntary death, deterred by the mere shame of so disgraceful a burial.

The words of a decree of the senate on expelling philosophers from the city of Rome; also the words of the edict of the censors by which those were rebuked and restrained who had begun to establish and practise the art of rhetoric at Rome.

IN the consulship of Gaius Fannius Strabo and Marcus Valerius Messala [*](161 B.C.) the following decree of the senate was passed regarding Latin speaking philosophers and rhetoricians: [*](Fontes Iuris Rom., p. 157; cf. Suetonius, De Rhet. 1 (ii. p. 434, L.C.L.).)

(The praetor Marcus Pomponius laid a proposition before the senate. As the result of a discussion about philosophers and rhetoricians, the senate decreed that Marcus Pomponius, the praetor, should take heed and provide, in whatever way seemed to him in accord with the interests of the State and his oath of office, that they should not remain in Rome.

Then some years [*](92 B.C.) after that decree of the senate Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Lucius Licinius Crassus the censors issued the following edict for restraining the Latin rhetoricians: [*](F.I.R., p. 215; Suetonius ii, p. 434 f. L.C.L.)

It has been reported to us that there be men who have introduced a new kind of training, and that our young men frequent their schools; that these men have assumed the title of Latin rhetoricians, and that
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young men spend whole days with them in idleness. Our forefathers determined what they wished their children to learn and what schools they desired them to attend. These innovations in the customs and principles of our forefathers neither please us nor seem proper. Therefore it seems necessary to make our opinion known, both to those who have such schools and to those who are in the habit of attending them, that they are displeasing to us.

And it was not only in those times, which were somewhat rude and not yet refined by Greek training, that philosophers were driven from the city of Rome, but even in the reign of Domitian [*](A.D. 89.) by a decree of the senate they were driven from the city and forbidden Italy. And it was at that time that the philosopher Epictetus also withdrew from Rome to Nicopolis because of that senatorial decree.