Noctes Atticae

A passage taken from the Symposium of Plato, skilful. harmonious and fitting in its rhythm and structure, which for the sake of practice I have turned into the Latin tongue.

THE Symposium of Plato was being read before the philosopher Taurus. Those words of Pausanias in which, taking his turn among the banqueters, lie eulogizes love, I admired so much that I even resolved to commit them to memory. And tile words, if I remember rightly, are as follows [*](Symlpos. p. SO, E.) "Every action is of this nature: in and of itself, when done, it is neither good nor bad; for example, what we are now doing, drinking, or singing, or arguing. Not one of these things is in itself good, but it may become so by the way in which it is done. Well and rightly done, it becomes a good action; wrongly done, it becomes shameful. It is the same with love; for not all love is honourable or worthy of raise, but only that which leads us to love worthily." When these words had been read, thereupon Taurus said to me:

Ho! you young rhetorician

— for so he used to call me in the beginning, when I was first admitted to his class, supposing that I had come to Athens only to work up eloquence [*](This would seem to imply that Gellius went to Athens on completing his studies in Rome; see Introd. p. xv.) —

do you see this syllogism, full of meaning, brilliant, well rounded and constructed in brief and smooth numbers with a kind of symmetrical turn? Can you quote us so aptand so melodiously formed a passage from the works of your rhetoricians? But yet

v3.p.271

I advise you to look upon this rhythm as an incidental feature; for one must penetrate to the inmost depths of Plato's mind and feel the weight and dignity of his subject matter, not be diverted to the charm of his diction or the grace of his expression.

This admonition of Taurus as to Plato's style not only did not deter me, but even encouraged me to try to equal the elegance of the Greek in a Latin rendering; and just as there are small and insignificant animals which through wantonness imitate everything which they have seen or heard, just so I had the assurance, not indeed to rival those qualities which I admired in Plato's style, but to give a shadowy outline of them, such as the following, which I patterned on those very words of his:

Every act, in general,

he says,

is of this nature; it is in itself neither base nor honourable; as, for example, the things which we ourselves are now doing, drinking, singing, arguing. For none of these things is honourable in itself, but it becomes so by the manner in which it is done; if it is done rightly and honourably, it is then honourable; but if it is not rightly done, then it is shameful. It is the same with love; thus not every kind of love is honourable, not every kind is deserving of praise, but only that which leads us to love honourably.

The times after the foundling of Rome and before the second war with Carthage at which distinguished Greeks and Romans flourished. [*](Leuze has shown (see Biogr. Note, i. p. xxiv) that, besides the Chroica of Cornelius Nepos, Gellius made use of Varronian sources, which used a different chronology. According to the source which he followed, Gellius' dates are reckoned from 751 (Nepos) or 753 B.C. (Varro) as the date of the founding of Rome. He does not, however, confuse these epochs in speaking of the same event. In my notes the Varronian chronology is followed, except as otherwise indicated; for full details see the article of Leutze.)

I WISHED to have a kind of survey of ancient times, and also of the famous men who were born in those days, lest I might in conversation chance to make some careless remark about the date and life of celebrated men, as that ignorant sophist did who lately, in a public lecture, said that Carneades the philosopher [*](Carneades, who was one of the envoys sent from Athens to Rome in 155 B.C., lived more than a hundred years after the death of Alexander.) was presented with a sum of money by king Alexander, son of Philip, and that Panaetius the Stoic was intimate with the elder Africanus. [*](Panaetius, born about 185 B.C., was the teacher and personal friend of the younger Africanus.) In order, I say, to guard against such errors in dates and periods of time, I made notes from the books known as Chroicles [*](Chronic (xronika/) were chronological lists of historical events. The Chronica of Nepos seem to have given the important dates in foreign, as well as in Roman, history, including mythology.) of the times when those Greeks and Romans flourished who were famous and conspicuous either for talent or for political power, between the founding of Rome and the second Punic war. [*](218–202 B.C.) And these excerpts of mine, made in various and sundry places, I have now put hastily together. For it was not my endeavour with keen and subtle care to compile a catalogue of the eminent men of both nations who lived at the same time, but merely to strew these Nights of mine

lightly here and there with a few of these flowers of history. [*](After his usual fashion, Gellius tries to present his material in an entertaining form by introducing the anecdote of the ignorant sophist, by freedom of treatment, and by condensation; also by the arrangement of his matter.) Moreover, it seemed sufficient in this survey to speak of the dates of a few men, from which it would not be difficult to infer the periods also of many more whom I did not name.

I shall begin, then, with the illustrious Solon; for, as regards Homer and Hesiod, it is agreed by almost all writers, either that they lived at approximately the same period, or that Homer was somewhat the earlier; yet that both lived before the founding of Rome, when the Silvii were ruling in Alba, more than a hundred and sixty years after the Trojan war, as Cassius has written [*](Frag. 8, Peter2; F.H.G. iii, p. 688.) about Homer and Hesiod in the first book of his Annals, but about a hundred and sixty years before the founding of Rome, as Cornelius Nepos says of Homer in the first book of his Chronicles. [*](Frag. 2, Peter2. Nepos' date is 910 B.C., that of Cassius (Hemina), 1024. Both are too late, for literary and archæological evidence indicate the end of the twelfth century before our era as the time of the Homeric poems. See Amer. Journ. of Phil. xlvi (1925), pp. 26 ff.) Well then, we are told that Solon, one of the famous sages, [*](About 639–559 B.C. For the seven sages see vol. i, p. 10, n. 2.) drew up laws for the Athenians when Tarquinius Priscus was king at Rome, [*](616–578 B.C., traditional chronology.) in the thirtythird year of his reign. [*](See the critical note.) Afterwards, when Servius Tullius was king, [*](578–534 B.C.) Pisistratus was tyrant at Athens, Solon having previously gone into voluntary exile, since he had not been believed when he predicted that tyranny. Still later, Pythagoras of Samos came to Italy, when the son of Tarquinius was king, he who was surnamed the Proud, [*](534–510 B.C.) and at that same time

Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus and brother of the tyrant Hippias, was slain at Athens by Harmodius and Aristog, iton. [*](514 B. C.) And Cornelius Nepos adds [*](Frag. 4, Peter2.) that when Tullus Hostilius was king at Rome [*](673–641 B.C.) Archilochus was already illustrious and famous for his poems. [*](Flourished about 650 B.C.)

Then, in the two hundred and sixtieth year after the founding (of Rome, or not much later, it is recorded that the Persians were vanquished by the Athenians in the famous battle of Marathon under the lead of Militiades, [*](490 B.C., but Gellius, here following Nepos. puts it in 493.) who after that victory was condemned by the Athenians and died in the public prison. At that time Aesthylus. the tragic poet, flourished at Athens. [*](He lived from 525 to 456 B.C.) In Rome, at about the same time, the commons, as the result of a secession, for the first time elected their own tribunes and aediles; [*](494 B.C.) and not much later Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, harassed and exasperated by the tribunes of the commons, turned traitor to the republic and joined the Volscians, who were then our enemies, [*](Leuze suggests that Gellius so arranged his material as to show that at a time when the Greeks were lighting epochmaking battles the Romans were warring with comparatively insignificant Italian peoples.) and lade war upon the Roman people. Then a few years later, King Xerxes was beaten and put to flight by the Athenians and a good part of Greece, under the lead of Themistocles, in the sea-fight at Salamis. [*](480 B.C. Gellius is here using a Varroian source; Nepos' date would be 483.) About three [*](That is, in the fourth year; see note on xvii. 12. 5 (p 252).) years afterwards, in the consulship of Menenius Agrippa and Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, during the war with Veii, the patrician Fabii, three hundred and six in number, along with their dependents, [*](Some 4000 in number. This was in 477 B.C.) were all ambushed at the river Cremera and slain.

At about that time Empedocles of Agrigentum was eminent in the domain of natural philosophy. [*](Flourished about 450 B.C. In § 14–15 Leuze sees the chronology of Fabius Pictor.) But at Rome at that epoch it is stated that a board of ten was appointed [*](451 B.C.) to codify laws, and that at first they compiled ten tables, to which afterwards two more were added.

Then the great Peloponnesian war began in Greece, which Thucydides has handed down to memory, about three hundred and twenty-three years after the founding of Rome. [*](431 B.C.) At that time Olus Postumius Tubertus was dictator at Rome, and executed his own son, because he had fought against the enemy contrary to his father's order. The people of Fidenae and the Aequians were then at war with the Roman people. [*](See note on § 11, above. Here the contrast is still more marked.) During that period Sophocles, and later Euripides, were famous and renowned as tragic poets, Hippocrates as a physician, and as a philosopher, Democritus; Socrates the Athenian was younger than these, [*](Born 469 B.C.) but was in part their contemporary.

Somewhat later, when the military tribunes with consular authority were in power [*](407 B.C. They were first chosen in 444, but were compelled to resign. From 404 B.C. (407, Nepos) to 367 the series of military tribunes was interrupted by only two consular years. Gellius here records changes in the form of government of Athens, Syracuse and Rome.) at Rome, about the three hundred and forty-seventh year after the founding of the city, the notorious thirty tyrants were imposed upon the Athenians by the Lacedaemonians, and in Sicily the elder Dionysius was tyrant. [*](404 B.C.) A few years later, at Athens, Socrates was condemned to death and executed in prison by means of poison. At about the same time, at Rome,

Marcus Furius Camillus was dictator and took Veii. Not long afterwards came the war with the Senones, when the Gauls captured Rome with the exception of the Capitol. [*](390 B.C.; 387. Varro.)

Not long after these events the astronomer Eudoxus was famed in the land of Greece, the Lacedaemonians were defeated by the Athenians at Corinth under the lead of Phormio, [*](429 B.C.) and at Rome Marcus Manlius, who during the siege of the Capitol had repulsed the Gauls as they were climbing up its steep cliffs, was convicted of having formed the design of making himself king. Marcus Varro says [*](Annales iii, frag. 2. Peter2. In 384 B.C.) that he was condemned to death and hurled from the Tarpeian rock; but Cornelius Nepos has written [*](Chron., frag. 5, Peter.2) that he was scourged to death. In the very same year, which was the seventh after the recovery of the city, it is recorded that the philosopher Aristotle was born. [*](384 B.C.)

Next, some years after the war with the Senones, the Thebans defeated the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra [*](371 B.C.) under the lead of Epaminondas, and a little later in the city of Rome the law of Licinius Stolo provided for the elections of consuls also from the plebeians, [*](317 B.C.) whereas before that time it was not lawful for a consul to be chosen except from the patrician .

Then, about the four hundredth year after the founding of the city, Philip, son of Amyntas and father of Alexander, became king of Macedonia. At that time Alexander was born, [*](356 B.C.) and a few years later the philosopher Plato went to the court of the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily; then some little time afterwards Philip defeated the Athenians in the great battle at Chaeronea. [*](338 B.C.) At that time the

orator Demosthenes sought safety in flight from the battlefield, and when he was bitterly taunted with his flight he jestingly replied in the well-known verse: [*](Menander, Monost. 45.)

1. The man who runs away will fight again.

Later Philip fell victim to a conspiracy; but Alexander, who succeeded him, [*](336 B.C. Quint. xi. 2. 50) crossed over into Asia and the Orient, to subdue the Persians. But another Alexander, surnamed Molossus, came into Italy intending to make war on the Roman people —for already the fame of Roman valour and success was beginning to be conspicuous among foreign nations—but he died before beginning the war. We have learned that on his way to Italy that Molossus said that he was going against the Romans as a nation of men, but the Macedonian was going against the Persians as one of women. Later, the Macedonian Alexander, having subdued the greater part of the east, died [*](323 B.C.) after a reign of eleven years. Not long after this the philosopher Aristotle ended his life, [*](322 B.C.) and a little later, Demosthenes; [*](322 B.C.) at about that same time the Roman people engaged in a dangerous and protracted war with the Samites and the consuls Tiberius Veturius and Spurius Postumius were surrounded by the Samites in a perilous position near Caudium and being sent under the yoke were allowed to depart only when they had made a shameful treaty; [*](321 B.C.) and when for that reason the consuls by vote of the people were surrendered to the Samites through the fetial priests, they were not accepted.

Then, about four hundred and seventy years after the founding of the city, war was begun with king

Pyrrhus. [*](280 B.C.) At that time Epicurus the Athenian and Zeno of Citium were famed as philosophers, and at the same time the censors at Rome, Gains Fabricius Luscinus and Quintus Aemilius Papus, expelled from the senate Publius Cornelius Rufinus, who had twice been consul and dictator; and they recorded as the reason for that censure the fact that they had learned of his using ten pounds' weight of silverware at a dinner.

Then, in about the four hundred and ninetieth year after the founding of Rome, when the consuls were Appius Claudius, surnamed Caudex, brother of the celebrated Appius the Blind, and Marcus Fluvius Flaccus, the first war with the Carthaginians broke out, [*](264 B.C.) and not long afterwards Callimachus, the poet of Cyrene, was famous at the court of king Ptolemy at Alexandria. A little more than twenty years later, when peace had been made with the Carthaginians and the consuls were C. Claudius Centho, son of Appius the Blind, and Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus, the poet Lucius Livius was the very first to put plays upon the stage at Rome, [*](240 B.C.) more than a hundred and sixty years after the death of Sophocles and Euripides and about fifty-two years after the death of Menander. The consuls Claudius and Tuditanus were followed by Quintus Valerius and Gaius Mamilius, in whose year the poet Quintus Ennius was born, [*](239 B.C.) as Marcus Varro has written in the first book of his work On Poets; [*](p. 259, Bipont.) and he adds that at the age of sixty-seven Ennius had written the twelfth Book of the Annals, and that Ennius himself says so in that same book.

Five hundred and nineteen years after the

founding of Rome, Spurius Carvilius Ruga, at the advice of his friends, was the first Roman to divorce his wife, on the ground that she was barren and that he had taken oath before the censors that he married for the purpose of having children. [*](235 B.C. In iv. 3 Gellius gave the date as 231, following a different chronology. Dionysius of Halicarnassus agrees with the former (Varronian) chronology. On the formula liberty quaerundorum causa see note on iv. 3. 2 (vol. i, p. 322).) In that same year the poet Naevius exhibited plays to the people, [*](235 B.C.) and Marcus Varro says [*](p. 259, Bipont.) in the first book of his work On Poets that Naevius served in the first Punic war and that the poet himself makes that statement in the poem which he wrote on that same war. But Porcius Licinius says [*](Frag. 1, Bährens.) in the following verses that Rome was later in taking up the poetic art:

1. In the second Punic war with winged flight
2. The Muse to Romulus' warrior nation came.

Then, about fifteen years later, war was begun with the Carthaginians, [*](218 B.C.) and not very long after that Marcus Cato was famous as a political orator and Plautus as a dramatic poet; and at that same time Diogenes the Stoic, Carneades the Academic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic were sent by the Athenians as envoys to the senate of the Roman people on public business. Not very long after this came Quintus Ennius, and then Caecilius and Terence, [*](These three poets died respectively in 169, 168 and 159 B.C., before the coming of the envoys to Rome in 155 B.C. Since Gellius announced the second Punic war as his limit, Leuze believes that he added this section from memory.) and afterwards Pacuvius [*](Pacuvius (220–130 B.C.) was older than Terence, but outlived him. Terence's comedies were produced between 166 and 160 B.C.; he died in 159, but the date of his birth is uncertain.) and when

Pacuvius was already an old man, Accius and then Lucilius, who was still more famous through his criticisms of the poems of his predecessors.

But I have gone too far, since the limit that I set for these little notes was the second Punic war.

Discussions held by a Stoic philosopher and in opposition by a Peripatetic, with Favorinus as arbiter; and the question at issue was, how far virtue availed in determining a happy life and to what extent happiness was dependent on what are called external circumstances

THERE were two friends of Favorinus, philosophers of no little note in the city of Rome; one of them was a follower of the Peripatetic school, the other of the Stoic. I was once present when these men argued ably and vigorously, each for his own beliefs, when we were all with Favorinus at Ostia. And we were walking along the shore in springtime, just as evening was falling.

And on that occasion the Stoic mantatined [*](III. 56, Arn.) that man could enjoy a happy life only through virtue, and that the greatest wretchedness was due to wickedness only, even though all the other blessings, which are called external, should be lacking to the virtuous man and present with the wicked. The Peripatetic, on the other hand, admitted that a wretched life was due solely to vicious thoughts and wickedness, but he believed that virtue alone was by no means sufficient to round out all the parts of a happy life, since the complete use of one's limbs, good health, a reasonably attractive person, property, good repute, and all the other advantages of body and fortune seemed necessary to make a perfectly happy life.

Here the Stoic made outcry against him, and maintaining that his opponent was advancing two contrary propositions, expressed his surprise that, since wickedness and virtue were two opposites, and a wretched and a happy life were also opposites, he did not preserve in each the force and nature of an opposite, but believed that wickedness alone was sufficient to cause an unhappy life, at the same time declaring that virtue alone was not sufficient to guarantee a happy life. And he said that it was especially inconsistent and contradictory for one who maintained that a life could in no way be made happy if virtue alone were lacking, to deny on the other hand that a life could be happy when virtue alone was present, and thus to take away from virtue when present and demanding it, that honour which he gave and bestowed upon virtue when lacking.

Thereupon the Peripatetic, in truth very wittily, said:

Pray pardon me, and tell me this, whether you think that an amphora [*](Somewhat less than 6 gallons.) of wine from which a congius [*](A little less than 6 pints.) has been taken, is still an amphora?

By no means,

was the reply,

can that be called an amphora of wine, from which a congius is missing.

When the Peripatetic heard this, he retorted:

Then it will have to be said that one congius makes an amphora of wine, since when that one is lacking, it is not an amphora, and when it is added, it becomes an amphora. But if it is absurd to say that an amphora is made from one single congius, it is equally absurd to say that a life is made happy by virtue alone by itself, because when virtue is lacking life can never be happy.

Then Favorinus, turning to the Peripatetic, said:

This clever turn which you have used about the congius of wine is indeed set forth in the books; but, as you know, it ought to be regarded rather as a neat catch than as an honest or plausible argument. For when a congius is lacking, it indeed causes the amphora not to be of full measure; but when it is added and put in, it alone does not make, but completes, an amphora. But virtue, as the Stoics say, is not an addition or a supplement, but it by itself is the equivalent of a happy life, and therefore it alone makes a happy life, when it is present.

These and some other minute and knotty arguments each advanced in support of his own opinion, before Favorinus as umpire. But when the first night-lights appeared and the darkness grew thicker, we escorted Favorinus to the house where he was putting up; and when he went in, we separated.

What kind of questions we used to discuss when spending the Saturnalia at Athens; and some amusing sophistries and enigmas

WE used to spend the Saturnalia at Athens very merrily yet temperately, not

relaxing our minds,

as the saying is—for, as Musonius asserts, [*](p. 133, Hense.) to relax the mind is like losing it—but diverting our minds a little and relieving them by the delights of pleasant and improving conversation. Accordingly, a number of us Romans who had come to Greece, and who attended the same lectures and devoted ourselves to the same teachers, met at the same dinner-table. Then the one who was giving the entertainment in his turn, [*](Cf. note on vii. 13. 2.) offered as a prize for solving a problem the work of some old Greek or Roman writer and a crown woven from laurel, and put to us as many questions as there were guests present. But when he had put them all, the question which each was to discuss and the order of speaking were determined by lot. Then, when a question was correctly answered, the reward was a crown and a prize; if it was not correctly answered, it was passed on to the next in the allotment, and this process was repeated throughout the circle. If no one could answer a particular question, the crown was dedicated to the god in whose honour the festival was held. Now the questions that were proposed were of this kind: an obscure saying of some early poet, amusing rather than perplexing; some point in ancient history; the correction of some tenet of philosophy which was commonly misinterpreted, the solution of some sophistical catch, the investigation of a rare and unusual word, or of an obscure use of the tense of a verb of plain meaning.

And I recollect that once seven questions were put, the first of which was an explanation of these verses in the Saturae of Quintus Ennius, [*](vv. 59 ff., Vahlen2.) in which one word is very neatly used in many different senses. They run as follows:

1. Who tries with craft another to deceive,
2. Deceives himself, if he says he's deceived
3. Whom he'd deceive. For if whom you'd deceive
4. Perceives that he's deceived, the deceiver 'tis
5. Who is deceived, if 'other's not deceived. [*](Rendered as follows by R. J. E. Tiddy in Gordon, English Literature and the Classics, p. 206: The man who thinks to score a pretty score off another, says that he has scored off him off whom he would score—but he hasn't all the same. For he who thinks he's scoring, but isn't all the same, is scored off himself—and so the other scores.)

The second question was how it ought to be understood and interpreted that Plato in the State

which he planned in his books [*](Rep, p. 457, etc.; 460), 468.) said koina\s ta\s gunai=kas, that is, declared that women

should be common property,

and that the rewards of the bravest men and the greatest warriors should be the kisses of boys and maidens. In the third place this was asked, in what words the fallacy of the following catches consisted and how they could be made out and explained:

What you have not lost, that you have. You have not lost horns; therefore you have horns.

Also another catch:

What I am, that you are not. I am a man; therefore you are not a man.

Then it was inquired what was the solution of this sophistry:

When I lie and admit that I lie, do I lie or speak the truth?

Afterwards this question was put, why the patricians are in the habit of entertaining one another on the Megalensia, [*](The festival of Magna Mater, on April 4, established in 204 B.C.) and the plebeians on the Cerealia. [*](The festival of Ceres, on April 19.) Next came this question:

What one of the early poets used the verb verant, in the sense of 'they speak the truth '?

The sixth question was, what kind of plant the

asphodel

was, which Hesiod mentioned in the following lines: [*](Works and Days, 40. Cf. Horace, Odes, i. 31. 16: me pascunt olivae,Me cichorea levesque malvae.)

1. O fools! who know not how much half exceeds the whole, [*](Hesiod means that a simple and frugal life is the best. He had shared his father's property with his brother Perses; but Perses went to law and through the partiality of the judges got possession of the whole inheritance. He soon wasted it, and Hesiod, through his thrift, was able to come to his help. Hence the expression became proverbial. Cicero, on seeing a bust of his brother Quintus, who was of short stature, said: Half of my bother is greater than the whole. (Macrob. Sat. ii. 3. 4.))
2. Or that the asphodel and mallow make fine food.

And also what Hesiod meant when he said that the half was more than the whole. The last of all the questions was this: of what tense the verbs scripserim, legerim and venerim are, perfect or future, or both.

When these questions had been put in the order that I have mentioned, and had been discussed and explained by the several guests on whom the lots fell, we were all presented with crowns and books, except for the one question about the verb verant. For at the time no one remembered that the word was used by Quintus Ennius in the thirteenth book of his Annals in the following line: [*](v. 380, Vallen2.)

1. Do seers speak truth (verant), predicting life's extent?

Therefore the crown for this question was presented to Saturn, the god of that festival.

What the orator Aeschines, in the speech in which he accused Timarchus of unchastity, said that the Lacedaemonians decided about the praiseworthy suggestion of a most unpraiseworthy man

AESCHINES, the most acute and sagacious of the orators who gained renown in the Athenian assemblies, in that cruel, slanderous and virulent speech in which he severely and directly accused Timarchus of unchastity, says that a man of advanced years and high character, a leader in that State, once gave noble and distinguished counsel to the Lacedaemonians.

The people of Lacedaemon,

he says, [*](In Timarch. 180.)

were deliberating as to what was honourable and expedient in a matter of great moment to their State.

v3.p.305

Then there arose, for the purpose of giving his opinion, a man notorious for the baseness of his past life, but at the same time highly eminent for his eloquence and oratory. The advice which he gave, and the course which he said ought to be followed, were approved and accepted by all, and a decree of the people was about to be passed in accordance with his opinion. Thereupon one of that body of leading citizens whom the Lacedaemonians, because of the prestige of their age and rank, reverenced as judges and directors of public policy, [*](Cf. Cic. De Senectute, 20, apud Lacedaemonios quidem ii qui amplissimum magistratum geruiit, ut sunt, sic etiam nominantur, senes, referring to the gerousi/a.) sprang up in a spirit of anger and vexation, and said: ' What prospect, Lacedaemonians, or what hope, pray, will there be that this city and this State can longer be secure and invincible, if we follow counsellors whose past life is like that of this man? Even if this advice is honourable and noble, let us not, I pray you, allow it to be disgraced by the pollution of its most shameful author.' And when he had said this, he selected a man conspicuous before all others for his courage and justice, but a poor speaker and without eloquence, and bade him, with the consent and at the request of all, to deliver that opinion of the eloquent man in the best language he could command, in order that, without mention of the former speaker, the vote and decree of the people might be passed under the name of him alone who had last made that proposition. And the action which that most sagacious old man had recommended was taken. So the good advice endured, but its base author was displaced.

How Sulpicius Apollinaris made fun of a man who asserted that he alone understood Sallust's histories, by inquiring the meaning of these words in Sallust: incertum, stolidior an vacnior.

WHEN I was already a young man at Rome, having laid aside the purple-bordered toga of boyhood, and was on my own account seeking masters of deeper knowledge, I happened to be with the booksellers in Shoemaker's Street at the time when Sulpicius Apollinaris, the most learned man of all within my memory, in the presence of a large gathering made fun of a boastful fellow who was parading his reading of Sallust, and turned him into ridicule with that kind of witty irony which Socrates used against the sophists. For when the man declared that he was the one and only reader and expositor of Sallust, and openly boasted that he did not merely search into the outer skin and obvious meaning of his sentences, but delved into and thoroughly examined the very blood and marrow of his words, then Apollinaris, pretending to embrace and venerate his learning, said:

Most opportunely, my good master, do you come to me now with the blood and marrow of Sallust's language. For yesterday I was asked what in the world those words of his meant which he wrote in the fourth book of his Histories about Gnaeus Lentulus, of whom he says that it is uncertain whether he was more churlish or more unreliable

; and he quoted the very words, as Sallust wrote them: [*](list. iv. 1, Maur.)

But Gnaeus Lentulus, his colleague, surnamed Clodianus, a man of patrician family—and it is not at all easy to say whether he

v3.p.309

was more churlish or more unreliable—proposed a bill for exacting the money which Sulla had remitted to the purchasers of property.

Apolinaris therefore asserted that it was asked of him, and that he had not been able to answer tile question, what was meant by vanior and what by stolidior, since Sallust seemed to have separated the words and contrasted them with each other, as if they were different and unlike and did not both designate the same fault; and therefore he asked that the man would tell him the meaning and origin of the two words.

Then the other, showing by a grin and a grimace that he despised both the subject of the inquiry and the questioner himself; said:

I am accustomed to examine and explain the marrow and blood of ancient and recondite words, as I said, not of those which are in common use and trite. Surely a man is more worthless and stupid than Gnaeus Lentulus himself, if he does not know that vanitas and stoliditas indicate the same kind of folly.

But having said that, he left us in the very midst of our discussion and began to sneak off: Then we laid hold on him and pressed him, and in particular Apollinaris begged him to discourse at greater length and more plainly upon the difference, or, if he preferred, on the similarity of the words, and not to begrudge the information to one who was eager to learn.

Then the fellow, realizing by this time that he was being laughed at, pleaded an engagement and made off But we afterwards learned from Apollinaris that the term rani was properly applied, not as in common parlance to those who were foolish or dull or silly, but, as the most learned of the ancients

had used them, to liars, deceivers, and those who cleverly devised light and empty statements in place of those which were true and earnest. But that those were called stolidi who were not so much foolish and witless as austere, churlish and disagreeable, such men as the Greeks called moxqhroi/,

ugly fellows,

and fortikoi/,

common

or

vulgar folk.

He also said that the roots and derivations of these words were to be found in the books of Nigidius. [*](Fr. 45, Swoboda. Vanus is related to vacare and vacuus; Eng. want; stolidus to stolo, dullard, from the root stel-, stand, be stiff.) Having sought for these words and found them, with examples of their earliest meanings, I made a note of them, in order to include them in the notes contained in these Nights, and I think that I have already introduced them somewhere among them. [*](viii. 14.)

That Quintus Ennius, in the seventh book of his Annals, wrote quadrupes eques, and not quadrupes equus, as many read it.

A NUMBER of us young men, friends of his, were at Puteoli with the rhetorician Antonius Julianus, a fine man in truth and of distinguished eloquence, and we were spending the summer holidays in amusement and gaiety, amid literary diversions and seemly and improving pleasures. And while we were there, word was brought to Julianus that a certain reader, a man not without learning, was reciting the Annals of Ennius to the people in the theatre in a very refined and musical voice.

Let us go,

said he,

to hear this ' Ennianist.' whoever he may be

; for that was the name by which the man wished to be called.

When at last we had found him reading amid loud applause—and he was reading the seventh book of the Annals of Ennius—we first heard him wrongly recite the following lines: [*](vv. 232 ff. Vahlen2.)

1. Then with great force on rush the four-footed horse (equus)
2. And elephants,

and without adding many more verses, he departed amid the praises and applause of the whole company.

Then Julianus, as he came out of the theatre, said:

What think you of this reader and his fourfooted horse? For surely he read it thus:

1. Denique vi magna quadrupes equus atque elephant
2. Proiciunt sese.

Do you think that, if he had had a master and instructor worth a penny, he would have said quadrupes equus and not quadrupes eqces? For no one who has given any attention to ancient literature doubts that Ennius left it written in that way.

When several of those who were present declared that they had read quadrupes equus, each with his own teacher, and wondered what was the meaning oft quadrupes eques, Julianus rejoined: " I could wish, my worthy young friends, that you had read Quintus Ennius as accurately as did Publius Vergilius, who, imitating this verse of his in The Georgics, used eques for equus in these lines: [*](iii. 115.)

1. Thessalian Lapiths, high on horses' back,
2. Gave us the bit and circling course, and taught
3. The horse [*](Julianus gave this meaning to equitem, but the modern editors give it the usual one of horseman.) full armed, to gallop o'er the plain
4. And round his paces proud.

In this passage, unless one is foolishly and silkily captious, equiter can be taken in no other sense than that of 'horse,' for many of the early writers called the man who sat upon a horse eques and also the horse on which he sat. Hence equitare also, which is derived from the word eques, equitis, was said both of the man who rode the horse and of the horse which carried the man. Lucilius, indeed, a man conspicuous for his command of the Latin language, says equum equitare in these lines: [*](vv. 1284 ff. Marx, who reads ecum for equum.)

1. With what we see the courser run and trot,
2. With this he runs and trots. Now, 'tis with eyes
3. We see him trot; hence with his eyes he trots. [*](Similar sophistries were indulged in by Chrysippus (Diog. Laert. vii. 180 ff.) and other philosophers. See Marx ad loc.)

But,

said Apollinaris,

I was not content with these examples, and in order that it might not appear uncertain and doubtful, but clear and evident, whether Ennius wrote equus or eques, I procured at great trouble and expense, for the sake of examining one line, a copy of heavy and venerable antiquity, which it was almost certain had been edited by the hand of Lampadio; [*](C. Octavius Lampadio edited the Bellum Punicum of Naevius and divided the poem into seven books; see Suet. Gr. ii. (L. C. L. ii, p. 399). Apparently he also edited Ennius.) and in that copy I found eques and not equus written in that line.

"

This at the time Julianus explained to us, along with other problems, clearly and courteously. But afterwards I ran upon the very same remarks in some very well-known handbooks.

That Aelius Melissus, in the book to which he gave the title On Correctness of Speech, and which on its publication he called a horn of plenty, wrote something that deserves neither to be said nor heard, when he expressed the opinion that matrona and mater familias differ in meaning, thus making a distinction that is wholly groundless.

WITHIN my memory Aelius Melissus held the highest rank among the grammarians of his day at Rome; but in literary criticism he showed greater boastfulness and sophistry than real merit. Besides many other works which he wrote, he made a book which at the time when it was issued seemed to be one of remarkable learning. The title of the book was designed to be especially attractive to readers, for it was called Correct Language. Who, then, would suppose that he could speak correctly or with propriety unless he had learned those rules of Melissus? From that book I take these words:

Matrona, 'a matron,' is a woman who has given birth once; she who has done so more than once is called mater familias, 'mother of a family'; just so a sow which has had one litter is called porcetra; one which has had more, scrofa.

But to decide whether Melissus thought out this distinction between matrona and mater familias and that it was his own conjecture, or whether he read what someone else had written, surely requires soothsayers. For with regard to porcetra he has, it is true, the authority of Pomponius in the Atellan farce which bears that very title [*](p. 295, Ribbeck3.) but that

matron

was applied only to a woman who had given birth once, and

mother of a family

only to one who had done so more than once, can be proved by the authority of no ancient writer. Indeed, that seems much more probable which competent interpreters of ancient terms have written, that

matron

was properly applied to one who had contracted a marriage with a man, so long as she remained in that state, even though children were not yet born to them; and that she was so called from the word mater, or

mother,

a state which she had not yet attained, but which she had the hope and promise of attaining later. Matrimonium itself, or

marriage,

has the same derivation; but that woman only is called

mother of the household

[*](Mater familias is the feminine equivalent of pater familias. The latter was father of the household in authority, although he was not the actual father of all its members. In C.I.L. vi. 1035, Julia, wife of Septimius Severus, is called mater Augusti nostri et castrorum et senatus et patriae.) who is in the power and possession of her husband, or in the power and possession of the one under whose authority her husband is; since she had come, not only into a state of wedlock, but also into the family of her husband and into the position of his heir.

How Favorinus treated a man who made an unseasonable inquiry about words of ambiguous meaning; and in that connection the different meanings of the word contio.

DOMITIUS was a learned and famous grammarian in the city of Rome, who was given the surname

Insanus, or

The Madman,

because he was by nature rather difficult and churlish. When our friend Favorinus, in my company, chanced to have met this Domitius at the temple of Carmentis, Favorinus said:

I pray you, master, tell me whether I was in error in saying contiones, when I wanted to turn dhmhgori/ai into Latin; for I am in doubt and should be glad to be informed whether any of the men of old who spoke with special elegance used contio of words and of a speech.

[*](Contio, from coventio ( =conventio) meant first an assembly, then a speech to an assembly, and finally the place of meeting. It is used in the sense of a speech by Cicero, Caesar, and other good writers.) Then Domitius, with excited voice and expression, replied:

There is absolutely no hope left of anything good, when even you distinguished philosophers care for nothing save words and the authority for words. But I will send you a book, in which you will find what you ask. For I, a grammarian, am inquiring into the conduct of life and manners, while you philosophers are nothing but mortualia, or 'winding sheets,' as Marcus Cato says: [*](Frag. incert. 19, Jordan.) for you collect glossaries and word-lists, filthy, foolish, trifling things, like the dirges of female hired mourners. And I could wish,

said he,

that all we mortals were dumb! for then dishonesty would lack its chief .

When we had left him, Favorinus said:

We approached this man at an unseasonable time. For he seems to me to be clearly mad. Know, however,

said he,

that the disorder which is called melagxoli/a, or 'melancholia,' does not attack small or contemptible minds, but it is in a way a kind of heroic affliction and its victims often speak the truth boldly, but without regard to time or moderation. For example, what think you of this which he just said of philosophers? If Antisthenes or Diogenes

v3.p.323

had said it, would it not have seemed worthy of remembrance?

But a little later Domitius sent Favorinus the book which he had promised—I think it was one by Verrius Flaccus—in which the following was written with regard to questions of that kind: [*](Festus, p. xvi, Müller.) that senatus (senate) was used both of a place and of persons; civitas (state) of a situation and a town, also of the rights of a community, and of a body of men; further that tribus (tribes) and decuriae (decuries) designated places, privileges and persons, and that contio had three meanings: the place and tribunal from which speaking was done, as Marcus Tullius in his speech, In Reply to the Address of Quintus Metelius, says: [*](Frag. 4, p. 946, Orelli.)

I mounted the tribunal (contionem); the people assembled.

It also signifies an assembly of the people gathered together, since the same Marcus Tullius says in his Orator: [*](§ 168.)

I have often heard audiences (contiones) cry out, when words ended in a proper rhythm; for the ears expect the thought to be expressed in harmonious words.

It likewise designated the speech itself which was made to the people. [*](See note 1, p. 320. Gellius has given the meanings in the wrong order.)

Examples of these uses were not given in that book. But afterwards I found and showed to Favorinus at his request instances of all these meanings in Cicero, as I remarked above, and in the most elegant of the early writers; but that which he especially desired, an example of contio used for words and of a speech, I pointed out in the title of a book by Cicero, which he had called In Reply to the Address of Quintus Metellus; for there Contionem

surely means nothing else than the speech itself which was delivered by Metellus.

That o(moiote/leuta, o(moio/ptwta, and other devices of the kind which are considered ornaments of style, are silly and uerile, is indicated, among other places, in some verses of Lucilius.

LUCILIUS in the fifth book of his Satires shows, and indeed most wittily, how silly, useless, and puerile are o(moiote/leuta, or

words of the same ending,

i)sokata/lhkta, or

words of the same sound,

pa/risa, or

words exactly balanced,

o(moio/ptwta, or

words of the same case,

and other niceties of that kind which those foolish pedants who wish to appear to be followers of Isocrates use in their compositions without moderation or taste. For having complained to a friend because he did not come to see him when he was ill, he adds these merry words: [*](vv. 181 ff., Marx.)

1. Although you do not ask me how I am,
2. I'll tell you, since with those I still abide
3. Who of all mortals are the lesser part [*](The poet has been ill, but still lives; cf. abiit ad plures, Petron. 42.) . . .
4. You are the slacker friend [*](Marx suggests Tu cessator malus, talis amicus as the sense of the lacuna.) who'd wish him dead
5. Whom you'd not visit though it was your debit.
6. But if you chide this

   visit

   joined with

   debit

7. ('Twas writ by chance), if you detest it all,
8. This silly, puerile, Isocratic [*](The homoioteleuta of Isocrates are mentioned, among others, by Cicero, Orator, 38.) stuff,
9. I'll waste no time on you, [*](That is, in deleting the jingle.) since such you are. [*](Such a friend as he has described.)

The meaning of the word insecenda in Marcus Cato; and that insecenda ought to be read rather than insequenda, which many prefer.

IN an old book, containing the speech of Marcus Cato On Ptolemy against Thermus, were these words: [*](p. 42. 6, Jordan.)

But if he did everything craftily, everything for the sake of avarice and pelf, such abominable crimes as we have never heard of or read of, he ought to suffer punishment for his acts. . .

The question was raised what insecenda meant. Of those who were present at the time there was one who was a dabbler in literature and another who was versed in it; that is to say, one was teaching the subject, the other was learned in it. [*](On the distinction between litterator and litteratus see Suet. Gram. iv. (ii. p. 401 f. L.C.L.).) These two disagreed with each other, the grammarian maintaining that insequenda ought to be written:

For,

said he,

insequenda should be written, not insecenda, since insequens means . . . and inseque has come down to us in the sense of 'proceed to say,' and accordingly insequor was written by Ennius in the following verses: [*](Ann. 326 f., Vahlen2, who reads insece.)

1. Proceed, O Muse, when Rome with Philip warred,
2. To tell the valorous deeds our leaders wrought.

But the other, more learned, man declared that there was no mistake, but that it was written correctly and properly, and that we ought to trust Velius Longus, a man not without learning, who

wrote in the commentary which he composed On the Use of Archaic Terms, that inseque should not be read in Ennius, but insece; and that therefore the early writers called what we term narrationes, or

tales,

insectiones; that Varro also explained this verse from the Menaechmi of Plautus: [*](v. 1047.)

1. Nihilo minus esse videtur sectius quam somnia,

as follows:

they seem to me no more worth telling than if they were dreams.

Such was their discussion.

I think that both Marcus Cato and Quintus Ennius wrote insecenda and insece without u. For in the library at Patrae [*](A city of Achaia, near the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf, modern Patras.) I found a manuscript of Livius Andronicus of undoubted antiquity, entitled )Odu/sseia, in which the first line contained this word without the letter u: [*](Frag. 1, Bahrens.)

1. Tell me (insece), O Muse, about the crafty man,

translated from this line of Homer: [*](Odyss. i. 1.)

1. )/Andra moi e)/nnepe, Mou=sa, polu/tropon.

On that point then I trust a book of great age and authority. For the fact that the line of Plautus has sectius quam somnia lends no weight to the opposite opinion. However, even if the men of old did say insece and not inseque, I suppose because it was lighter and smoother, yet the two words seem to have the same meaning. For sequo and sequor and likewise secta and sectio differ in the manner of their use, but anyone who examines them closely will find that their derivation and meaning are the same.

The teachers also and interpreters of Greek words think that in

1. a)/ndra moi e)/nnepe, Mou=sa,[*](Odyss. i. 1.)

and

1. e)/spete nu=n moi, Mou=sai,[*](Iliad ii. 484, etc.)

e)/nnepe, and e)/spete are expressed by the Latin word inseque; for they say that in one word the n is doubled, in the other changed to s. And they also say that the word e)/ph, which means

words

or

verses,

can he derived only a)po\ tou= e(/pesqai kai\ tou= ei)pei=n, that is from

follow

and

say.

Therefore for the same reason our forefathers called narrations and discourses insectiones.