Noctes Atticae

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.

That those persons are in error who think that in testing for fever the pulse of the veins is felt, and not that of the arteries.

IN the midst of the summer's heat I had withdrawn to the country house of Herodes, a man of senatorial rank, at a place in the territory of Attica which is called Cephisia, abounding in clear waters and groves. There I was confined to my bed by an attack of diarrhoea, accompanied by a high fever. When the philosopher Calvisius Taurus, and some others who were disciples of his, had come there from Athens to visit me, the physician who had been found there and who was sitting by me at the time, began to tell Taurus what discomfort I suffered and with what variations and intervals the fever came and went. Then in the course of the conversation remarking that I was now getting better, he said to Taurus:

You too may satisfy yourself of this, e)a\n

v3.p.333

a(/yh| au)tou= th=s flebo/s, which in our language certainly leans: si attigeris venam illius; that is, 'if you will put your finger on his vein.'

The learned men who accompanied Taurus were shocked by this careless language in calling an artery a vein, and looking on him as a physician of little value, showed their opinion by their murmurs and expression. Whereupon Taurus, very mildly, as was his way, said:

We feel sure, my good sir, that you are not unaware of the difference between veins and arteries; that the veins have no power of motion and are examined only for the purpose of drawing off blood, but that the arteries by their motion and pulsation show the condition and degree of fever. But, as I see, you spoke rather in common parlance than through ignorance; for I have heard others, as well as you, erroneously use the term 'vein' for 'artery.' Let us then find that you are more skilled in curing diseases than in the use of language, and with the favour of the gods restore this man to us by your art, sound and well, as soon as possible.

Afterwards when I recalled this criticism of the physician, I thought that it was shameful, not only for a physician, but for all cultivated and liberally educated men, not to know even such facts pertaining to the knowledge of our bodies as are not deep and recondite, but which nature, for the purpose of maintaining our health, has allowed to be evident and obvious. Therefore I devoted such spare time as I had to dipping into those books on the art of medicine which I thought were suited to instruct me, and from them I seem to have learned, not only many other things which have to do with human experience, but also concerning veins and arteries what I

may express as follows: A

vein

is a receptacle, or a)ggei=on, as the physicians call it, for blood mingled and combined with vital breath, in which the blood predominates and the breath is less. An

artery

is a receptacle for the vital breath mingled and combined with blood, in which there is more breath and less blood. Sfugmo/s (pulsation) is the natural and involuntary expansion and contraction in the heart and in the artery. But the ancient Greek physicians defined it thus:

An involuntary dilation or contraction of the pulse and of the heart.