Noctes Atticae

In conversation at the table of the philosopher Taurus questions of this kind were proposed and discussed:

why oil congeals often and readily, wine seldom, vinegar hardly ever,

and

that the waters of rivers and springs freeze, while the sea does not.

THE philosopher Taurus at Athens usually entertained us at dinner at the time of day when evening had already come on; for there that is the time for dining. [*](In Rome the dinner-hour was considerably earlier, usually the ninth hour, or about three o'clock in the afternoon; see Hor. Epist. 1. 7. 71; Mart. iv. 8. 6. To-day, too, the dinner-hour is later in Athens than in Rome, although the difference is not so great as in ancient times.) The entire basis and foundation of the meal usually consisted of one pot of Egyptian beans, to which were added gourds cut in small pieces.

One day when this dish had been brought and placed upon the table, and we were ready and awaiting the meal, Taurus ordered a slave-boy to pour some oil into the pot. The slave was a boy of Attic birth, at most eight years old, overflowing with the merry wit characteristic of his race and his time of life. He brought an empty Samian flask, from oversight, as he said, supposing there was oil in it, turned it up and, as he usually did, passed it with his hand over all parts of the pot; but no oil came out. The boy, in anger, looked savagely at the flask, shook it violently, and again turned it over the pot; and when we were all quietly and furtively laughing at his actions, he said in Greek, and excellent Attic Greek at that:

Don't laugh; there's oil in it; but don't you know how cold it was this morning; it's congealed.

You rascal,

said Taurus with a laugh,

run and fetch some oil.

But when the boy had gone out to buy oil, Taurus, not at all put out by the delay, said:

The pot needs oil, and, as I see, is intolerably hot; let us withhold our hands and meanwhile, since the slave has just told us that oil is in the habit of congealing, let us consider why oil congeals often and readily, but wine rarely.

And he looked at me and bade me give my opinion. Then I replied that I inferred that wine congealed less quickly because it had in it certain seeds of heat and was naturally more fiery, and that was why Homer called [*](Iliad i. 462, etc.) it ai)/qoy, [*](In Homer this word, from ai)qo/s, fire and o)/y, eye, means fiery-looking or sparkling, rather than fiery. Gellius seems to be wrong so far as Homer is concerned, although some other writers used ai)/qoy in the sense of fiery, as applied to persons.) and not, as some supposed, on account of its colour.

It is indeed,

says Taurus,

as you say. For it is well known that wine, when we drink it, warms the body. But oil is equally calorific and has no less power of warming the body. Besides, if those things which are warmer are frozen with greater difficulty, it follows that those which are colder freeze more readily. But vinegar is the most cooling of all things and yet it never freezes. Is the reason then for the quicker freezing of oil to be found in its lightness? For those things seem to congeal more readily which are lighter and smoother.

Taurus says besides that it is also worth inquiring why the waters of rivers and streams freeze, while all the sea is incapable of freezing.

Although Herodotus,

said he,

the writer of history, contrary to the opinion of almost all who have investigated these matters, writes [*](iv. 28 (ii., p. 226, L.C.L.).) that the Bosphoric sea, which is called Cimmerian, [*](The Cimmerian Bosphorus, the present Strait of Yenikale, connecting the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov) with the Pontus Euxinus or Black Sea.) and all that part of the sea which is termed Scythian, [*](Herodotus does not use the term Scythian Sea, but says the sea, referring to the Palus Maeotis and the Euxine. See the map, Herod., L.C.L., vol. ii.) is bound fast by the cold and brought to a standstill.

While Taurus was thus speaking, the boy had returned, the pot had cooled off, and the time had come to eat and hold our peace.

Of the cypher letters which are found in the epistles of Gains Caesar, and of other secret forms of writing taken from ancient history; and what the Laconian skuta/lh is.

THERE are volumes of letters of Gaius Caesar addressed to Gaius Oppius and Cornelius Balbus,

who had charge of his affairs in his absence. In certain parts of these letters [*](ii. p. 137, Dinter.) there are found individual characters which are not connected to form syllables, but apparently are written at random; for no word can be formed from those letters. But a secret agreement had been made between the correspondents about a change in the position of the letters, so that, in writing, one name and position was given to one letter and another to another, but in reading its own place and force was restored to each of them. [*](See Suet. Jul. lvi. 6, who says that Caesar wrote d for a, and so on with the other letters.) But which letter was written for which was, as I have already said, agreed upon by those who devised this secret code. There is in fact a commentary of the grammarian Probus, On the Secret meaning of the Letters appearing in the Epistles of Gains Caesar, which is a very careful piece of work.

But the ancient Lacedaemonians, when they wanted to conceal and disguise the public dispatches sent to their generals, in order that, in case they were intercepted by the enemy, their plans might not be known, used to send letters written in the following manner. There were two thin, cylindrical wands of the same thickness and length, smoothed and prepared so as to be exactly alike. One of these was given to the general when he went to war, the other the magistrates kept at home under their control and seal. When the need of more secret communication arose, they bound about the staff a thong of moderate thickness, but long enough for the purpose, in a simple spiral, in such a way that the edges of the thong which was twined around the stick met and were joined throughout. Then they wrote the dispatch on that thong across

the connected edges of the joints, with the lines running from the top to the bottom. When the letter had been written in this way, the thong was unrolled from the wand and sent to the general, who was familiar with the device. But the unrolling of the thong made the letters imperfect and broken, and their parts and strokes [*](See note on xiii. 31. 10, and A.J.P. xlviii, No. 1.) were divided and separated. Therefore, if the thong fell into the hands of the enemy, nothing at all could be made out from the writing; but when the one to whom the letter was sent had received it, he wound it around the corresponding staff, which he had, from the top to the bottom, just as he knew that it ought to be done, and thus the letters, united by encircling a similar staff, came together again, rendering the dispatch entire and undamaged, and easy to read. This kind of letter the Lacedaemonians called skuta/lh. I also read this in an ancient history of Carthage, that a certain famous man of that country —whether it was Hasdrubal or another I do not recall—disguised a letter written about secret matters in the following way: he took new tablets, not yet provided with wax, and cut the letters into the wood. Afterwards he covered the tablet with wax in the usual way and sent it, apparently without writing, to one to whom he had previously told his plan. The recipient then scraped off the wax, found the letters safe and sound inscribed upon the wood, and read them.

There is also in the records of Grecian history another profound and difficult method of concealment, devised by a barbarian's cunning. He was called Histiaeus and was born in the land of Asia in no mean station. At that time king Darius held

sway in Asia. This Histiaeus, being in Persia with Darius, wished to send a confidential message to a certain Aristagoras in a secret manner. He devised this remarkable method of concealing a letter. He shaved all the hair from the head of a slave of his who had long suffered from weak eyes, as if for the purpose of treatment. Then he tattooed the forms of the letters on his smooth head. When in this way he had written what he wished, he kept the man at home for a time, until his hair grew out. When this happened, he ordered him to go to Aristagoras, adding:

When you come to him, say that I told him to shave your head, as I did a little while ago.

The slave, as he was bidden, came to Aristagoras and delivered his master's order. Aristagoras, thinking that the command must have some reason, did as he was directed. And thus the letter reached its destination.

What Favorinus thought of the verses of Virgil in which he imitated the poet Pindar in his description of an eruption of Mount Aetna; his comparison and evaluation of the verses of the two poets on the same theme.

I REMEMBER that the philosopher Favorinus, when he had gone during the hot season to the villa of a friend of his at Antium, and I had come from Rome to see him, discoursed in about the following manner about the poets Pindar and Virgil.

The friends and intimates of Publius Vergilius,

said he,

in the accounts which they have left us of his talents and his character, say that he used to declare that he produced verses after the manner and fashion of a

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bear. For he said that as that beast brought forth her young formless and misshapen, and afterwards by licking the young cub gave it form and shape, just so the fresh products of his mind were rude in form and imperfect, but afterwards by working over them and polishing them he gave them a definite form and expression. [*](Cf. Suet. Vita Verg. 22 (ii. p. 470, L.C.L.).) That this was honestly and truly said by that man of fine taste,

said he, "is shown by the result. For the parts that he left perfected and polished, to which his judgment and approval had applied the final hand, enjoy the highest praise for poetical beauty; but those parts which he postponed, with the intention of revising them later, but was unable to finish because he was overtaken by death, are in no way worthy of the fame and taste of the most elegant of poets. It was for that reason, when he was laid low by disease and saw that death was near, that he begged and earnestly besought his best friends to burn the Aeneid, which he had not yet sufficiently revised.

Now among the passages,

said Favorinus,

which particularly seem to have needed revision and correction is the one which was composed about Mount Aetna. For wishing to rival the poem which the earlier poet Pindar composed about the nature and eruption of that mountain, he has heaped up such words and expressions that in this passage at least he is more extravagant and bombastic even than Pindar himself, who was thought to have too rich and luxuriant a style. And in order that you yourselves,

said he, "may be judges of what I say, I will repeat Pindar's poem about Mount Aetna, so far as I can remember it: [*](Pyth. i. 21 ff.)

1. Mount Aetna, from whose inmost caves burst forth
2. The purest fount of unapproachable fire.
3. By day her rivers roll a lurid stream
4. Of smoke, while 'mid the gloom of night red flame,
5. On sweeping, whirleth rocks with crashing din
6. Far down to the deep sea. And high aloft
7. That monster [*](The monster was the giant Typhoeus, or Typhon, who was struck by Zeus' thunder-bolt and buried under Aetna.) flingeth fearful founts of fire,
8. A marvel to behold or e'en to hear
9. From close at hand.

Now hear the verses of Virgil, which I may more truly say that he began than finished: [*](Aen. iii. 570 ff.)

1. There lies a port, safe from the winds' approach,
2. Spacious itself, but Aetna close at hand
3. Thunders with crashes dire, and now hurls forth
4. Skyward a dusky cloud with eddies black
5. And glowing ash, and uplifts balls of flame
6. And licks the stars; now spews forth rocks,
7. The mountain's entrails torn, hurls molten crags
8. Groaning to heaven, and seethes from depths profound.

Now in the first place,

said Favorinus,

Pindar has more closely followed the truth and has given a realistic description of what actually happened there, and what he saw with his own eyes; namely, that Aetna in the daytime sends forth smoke and at night fire; but Virgil, labouring to find grand and sonorous words, confuses the two periods of time and makes no distinction between them. Then the Greek has vividly pictured the streams of fire belched from the depths and the flowing rivers of smoke, and

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the rushing of lurid and spiral volumes of flame into the waters of the sea, like so many fiery serpents; but our poet, attempting to render r(o/on kapnou= ai)/qwna, 'a lurid stream of smoke,' has clumsily and diffusely piled up the words atram nubem turbine piceo et favilla fomented, 'a dusky cloud smoking with eddies black and glowing ash,' and what Pindar called krounoi/, or 'founts,' he has harshly and inaccurately rendered by 'balls of flame.' Likewise when he says sidearm lamb it, 'it licks the stars,' this also,

he says,

is a useless and foolish elaboration. And this too is inexplicable and almost incomprehensible, when he speaks of a 'black cloud smoking with eddies black and glowing ash.' For things which glow,

said Favorinus,

do not usually smoke nor are they black; unless candenti ('glowing') is used vulgarly and inaccurately for hot ashes, instead of those which are fiery and gleaming. For candens, of course, is connected with candor, or 'whiteness,' not with calor ('heat'). But when he says saxa et scopulos eructari et erigi, 'that rocks and crags are spewed forth and whirled skyward,' and that these same crags at once liquefieri et gemere atque glomerari ad auras, 'are molten and groan and are whirled to heaven,' this,

he said,

is what Pindar never wrote and what was never spoken by anyone; and it is the most monstrous of all monstrous descriptions.

[*](Not all modern critics would agree with Favorinus as to Virgil's last two lines, with their elaborate accommodation of sound to sense.)