Noctes Atticae

That the words praeter propter, which are in common use, were found also in Ennius.

I REMEMBER that I once went with Julius Celsinus the Numidian to visit Cornelius Fronto, who was then seriously ill with the gout. When we arrived and were admitted, we found him lying on a Greek

And another fifty thousand, more or less (praeterpropter).

'That word is not my own, for you may hear many men using it; but what the word means you must ask from a grammarian, not from me

We inquire about something which does not at all deserve the honour of investigation, for this is some utterly plebeian expression or other, better known in the talk of mechanics than in that of cultivated men.

But Fronto, raising his voice and with a more earnest expression, said:

Sir, does this word seem to you so degraded and utterly faulty, when Marcus

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Cato [*](Frag. inc. 53, Jordan.) and Marcus Varro, [*](p. 340 Bipont.) and the early writers in general, have used it as necessary and as good Latin?

1. That man in truth who knows not leisure's use
2. More trouble has than one by tasks pursued;
3. For he who has a task must be performed,
4. Devotes himself to that with heart and soul;
5. The idle mind knows not what 'tis it wants.
6. With us it is the same; for not at home
7. Are we nor in the field; from place to place
8. We haste; and once arrived, we would be gone.
9. Aimless we drift, we live but more or less
10. (praeterpropter). [*](That is, we exist rather than really live. Cf. Sophocles, fr. Iphig. ti/ktei ga\r ou)de\n e)sqlo\n ei)kai/a sxolh/, aimless idleness produces nothing that is good. (Bergk, De Frag. Soph. p. 15.))

When this had been read there, then Fronto said to the grammarian, who was already wavering:

Have you heard, most worthy master, that your Ennius used praeterpropter, and that too in an expression of opinion resembling the austerest diatribes of the philosophers? We beg you then to tell us, since we are now investigating a word used by Ennius, what the hidden meaning is in this line:

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1. Aimless we drift, we live but more or less.

And the grammarian, in a profuse sweat and blushing deeply, since many of the company were laughing long and loud at this, got up, saying as he left:

I will tell you at a later time, when we are alone, Fronto, in order that ignorant folk may not hear and learn.

He gives some amatory verses of Plato, with which the philosopher amused himself when he was a very young man and was contending for the tragic prize.

HERE are two Greek verses that are famous and deemed worthy of remembrance by many learned men because of their charm and graceful terseness. There are in fact not a few ancient writers who declare that they are the work of the philosopher Plato, with which he amused himself in his youth, while at the same time he was beginning his literary career by writing tragedies. [*](The writing of tragedies as youthful literary exercises was not uncommon; see Suet. Jul. lvi. 7, and Plin. Epist. vii. 4. 2. The lemma is wrong; cf. note 2, p. 360.) My soul, when I kissed Agathon, did pass My lips; as though, poor soul, 'would leap across. This distich a friend of mine, a young man no stranger to the Muses, has paraphrased somewhat boldly and freely in a number of lines. And since they seemed to me not undeserving of remembrance, I have added them here: [*](p. 375, Bährens.)

1. When with my parted lips my love I kiss,
2. And quaff the breath's sweet balm from open mouth,
3. Smitten with love my soul mounts to my lips,
4. And through my love's soft mouth its way would take,
5. Passing the open gateway of the lips.
6. But if our kiss, delayed, had been prolonged,
7. By love's fire swayed my soul that way had ta'en,
8. And left me. Faith, a wondrous thing it were,
9. If I should die, but live within my love.

A discourse of Herodes Atticus on the power and nature of pain, and a confirmation of his view by the example of an ignorant countryman who cut down fruit-trees along with thorns.

I ONCE heard Herodes Atticus, the ex-consul, holding forth at Athens in the Greek language, in which he far surpassed almost all the men of our time in distinction, fluency, and elegance of diction. He was speaking at the time against the a)pa/qeia, or

lack of feeling

When a man of Thrace,

from a remote and barbarous land, and unskilled in agriculture, had moved into a more civilized country, in order to lead a less wild life, he bought a farm planted with olives and vines. Knowing nothing at all about the care of vines or trees, he chanced to see a neighbour cutting down the thorns which had sprung up high and wide, pruning his ash-trees almost to

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their tops, pulling up the suckers of his vines which had spread over the earth from the main roots, and cutting off the tall straight shoots on his fruit and olive trees. He drew near and asked why the other was making such havoc of his wood and leaves. The neighbour answered; 'In order to make the field clean and neat and the trees and vines more productive.' The Thracian left his neighbour with thanks, rejoicing that he had gained some knowledge of farming. Then he took his sickle and axe; and thereupon in his pitiful ignorance the fellow cuts down all his vines and olives, lopping off the richest branches of the trees and the most fruitful shoots of the vines, and, with the idea of clearing up his place, he pulls up all the shrubs and shoots fit for bearing fruits and crops, along with the brambles and thorns, having learnt assurance at a ruinous price and acquired boldness in error through faulty imitation. Thus it is,

that those disciples of insensibility, wishing to be thought calm, courageous and steadfast because of showing neither desire nor grief, neither wrath nor joy, root out all the more vigorous emotions of the mind, and grow old in the torpor of a sluggish and, as it were, nerveless life.

That what we call pumiliones the Greeks term na/noi.

CORNELIUS FRONTO, Festus Postumius, and Sulpicius Apollinaris chanced to be standing and talking together in the vestibule of the Palace; [*](The palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill at Rome.) and I, being near by with some companions, eagerly

I pray you, Sir, inform me whether I was right in forbearing to call men of excessively small stature nam and in preferring the term pumiliones; for I remembered that the latter word appears in the books of early writers, while I thought that nam was vulgar and barbarous.

It is true,

said he,

"But this word would have been given citizenship by you, or established in a Latin colony, if you had deigned to use it, and it would be very much more acceptable than the low and vulgar words which Laberius introduced into the Latin language." [*](See xvi. 7.) Thereupon Postumius Festus said to a Latin grammarian, a friend of Fronto's:

Apollinaris has told us that nam is a Greek word; do you inform us whether it is good Latin, when it is used, as it commonly is, of small mules or ponies, and in what author it is found.

If I am not committing sacrilege in giving

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my opinion of any Greek or Latin word in the presence of Apollinaris, I venture to reply to your inquiry, Festus, that the word is Latin and is found in the poems of Helvius Cinna, a poet neither obscure nor without learning

1. But now through Genunanian willow groves
2. the wagon hurries me with dwarf steeds (bigis nanis) twain.