Noctes Atticae

What the Greeks understand by a)nalogi/a, and, on the contrary, by a)nwmali/a.

IN the Latin language, just as in Greek, some have thought that the principle of a)nalogi/a should be followed, others that of a)nwmali/a. is the similar inflection of similar words, which some call in Latin proportio, or

regularity.

)Anwmali/a is irregularity in inflection, following usage. Now two distinguished Greek grammarians, Aristarchus and Crates, defended with the utmost vigour, the one analogy, the other anomaly. The eighth book of Marcus Varro's treatise On the Latin Language, dedicated to Cicero, maintains [*](viii, p. 146, G. & S. ) that no regard is paid to regularity, and points out that in almost all words usage rules.

As when we decline,

says he,

lpus lupi, probus probi, but lepus leporis; again, paro paravi and lavo lavi, pungo pupugi, tundo tutudi and pingo pinxi. And although,

he continues, "from ceno and prandeo and poto we form cenatus sum, pransus sum and potus sum, [*](That is, pransus, potus and cenatus are used in an active sense; see Cic. pro Mil. 56, adde inscitiam pransi, poti, oscitantis ducis, and Priscian (ii. 665. 17, Keil) ut cenatus sum . . pro cenavi.) yet from destringor and extergeor and lavor we make destrinxi and extersi and lavi. Furthermore, although from Oscus, Tuscus and Graecus we derive the adverbs Osce, Tusce and Graece, yet from Gallus and Maurus we have Gallice and Maurice; also from probus probe, from doctus docte, but from rarus there is no adverb rare, but some say raro, others rarenter." [*](Charisius (i. 217. 8, Keil), cites rare from Cicero, Cato and Plautus, but the modern texts do not admit the form.) In the same book Varro goes on to say:

No one uses

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senior and that form by itself is naught, but almost everyone says adsentior. Sisenna alone used to say adsentio (I agree) in the senate, but later many followed his example, yet could not prevail over usage.

But Varro himself in other books wrote a good deal in defence of analogy. Therefore his utterances on the subject are, as it were, common-places, [*](Haec argumenta quae transferri in multas causas possunt locos communes noininamus. Cic. De Inv. ii. 48; cf. Brut. 46. and Quintilian passim.) to cite now against analogy and again also in its favour.

Discourses of Marcus Fronto and the philosopher Favorinus on the varieties of colours and their Greek and Latin names: and incidentally, the nature of the colour spadix.

WHEN the philosopher Favorinus was on his way to visit the exconsul Marcus Fronto, who was ill with the gout, he wished me also to go with him. And when there at Fronto's, where a number of learned men were present, a discussion took place about colours and their names, to the effect that the shades of colours are manifold, but the names for them are few and indefinite, Favorinus said: "More distinctions of colour are detected by the eye than are expressed by words and terms. For leaving out of account other incongruities, your simple colours, red (rufus) and green viridiss), have single names, but many different shades. And that poverty in names I find more pronounced in Latin than in Greek. For the colour red Rufuss) does in fact get its name from redness, but although fire is one kind of red, blood

another, purple another, saffron another, and gold still another, yet the Latin tongue does not indicate these special varieties of red by separate and individual words, but includes them all under the one term rubor, except in so far as it borrows names from the things themselves, and calls anything ' fiery,' ' flaming,' 'blood-red,' 'saffron' 'purple' and 'golden.' For russus and rubber are no doubt derived from rufus, and do not indicate all its special varieties, but canqo/s and e)ruqro/s and purro/s and kirro/s [*](kirro/stawny, orange-tawny designates a shade between canqo/s, yellow, and purro/s, flame-coloured.) and foi=nic seem to mark certain differences in the colour red, either intensifying it or making it lighter, or qualifying it by the admixture of some shade."

Then Fronto, replying to Favorinus, said: "I do not deny that the Greek language, which you seem to prefer, is richer and more copious than ours; but nevertheless in naming these colours of which you have just spoken we are not quite so badly off as you think. For russus and ruber, which you have just mentioned, are not the only words that denote the colour red, but we have others also, more numerous than those which you have quoted from the Greek. For fihlvus, flavus, rubidus, poeniceus, rutilus, luteus and spadix are names of the colour red, which either brighten it (making it fiery, as it were), or combine it with green, or darken it with black, or make it luminous by a slight addition of gleaming white. For poeniceus, which you call foi=nic in Greek, belongs to our language, and rutilus and spadix, a synonym of poeniceus which is taken over into Latin from the Greek,

indicate a rich, gleaming shade of red like that of the fruit of the palm-tree when it is not fully ripened by the sun. And from this spadix and poeniceus get their name; for spadix in Doric is applied to a branch torn from a palm-tree along with its fruit. But the colour fulvus seems to be a mixture of red and green, in which sometimes green predominates, sometimes red. Thus the poet who was most careful in his choice of words applies fulvus to an eagle, [*](Virg. Aen. xi. 751.) to jasper, [*](id. iv. 261. ) to fur caps, [*](id. vii. 688.) to gold, [*](id. vii. 279, etc. ) to sand, [*](id. v. 374, etc.) and to a lion; [*](ii. 722, etc.) and so Ennius in his Annals uses fulvus of air. [*](454 Vahlen.2 Ennius has fulva; and is so quoted by Gellius in xiii. 21. 14.) Flavus on the other hand seems to be compounded of green and red and white; thus Virgil speaks of golden hair as flava [*](Aen. iv. 590.) and applies that adjective also to the leaves of the olive, [*](Aen. v. 309.) which I see surprises some; and thus, much earlier, Pacuvius called water flava and dust fulvus. [*](v. 244, Ribbeck.2) I am glad to quote his verses, for they are most charming:

1. Give me thy foot, that with the same soft hands
2. With which oft times I did Ulysses soothe
3. I may with golden (flavis) waters wash away
4. The tawny (fulvum) dust and heal thy weariness.

"

Now, rubidus is a darker red and with a larger admixture of black; luteus, on the other hand, is a more diluted red, and from this dilution its name too seems to be derived. Therefore, my dear Favorinus,

said he, "the shades of red have no more names in Greek than with us. But neither is the colour green expressed by more terms in your language, and Virgil, when he wished to indicate the green colour of a horse, could perfectly well have called the horse caerulus rather than glaucus, but he preferred to use a familiar Greek word, rather than one which was unusual in Latin. [*](Georg. iii. 82, honest spadices glaucique. We should use grey, rather than green. Glaucus was a greyish green or a greenish grey. Since caerulus and caeruleus are not unusual words, Gellius probably means unusual as applied to a horse. Ovid, Fasti iv. 446, uses caeruleus of the horses of Pluto, but in the sense of dark, dusky.) Moreover, our earlier writers used caesia as the equivalent of the Greek glaukw=pis, as Nigidius says, [*](Fr. 72, Swoboda.) from the colour of the sky, as if it were originally caelia."

After Fronto had said this, Favorinus, enchanted with his exhaustive knowledge of the subject and his elegant diction, said:

Were it not for you, and perhaps for you alone, the Greek language would surely have come out far ahead; but you, my deal Fronto, exemplify Homer's line: [*](Iiad, xxiii. 382.)

1. Thou would'st either have won or made the result indecisive.

But not only have I listened with pleasure to all your learned remarks, but in particular in describing the diversity of the colour flavus you have made me understand these beautiful lines from the fourteenth book of Ennius' Annalns [*](v. 384 f., Vahlen 2, who reads placide and sale.) which before I did not in the least comprehend:

1. The calm sea's golden marble now they skim;
2. Ploughed by the thronging craft, the green seas foam;

for 'the green seas' did not seem to correspond with 'golden marble.' But since, as you have said, flavus is a colour containing an admixture of green and white, Ennius with the utmost elegance called the foam of the green sea 'golden marble.'

The criticism of Titus Castricius passed upon passages from Sallust and Demosthenes, in which the one described Philip, the other Sertorius.

THIS is Demosthenes' striking and brilliant description of king Philip: [*](De Cor. 67.)

I saw that Philip himself, with whom we were struggling, had in his desire for empire and absolute power had one eye knocked out, his collar-bone broken, his hand and leg maimed, and was ready to resign any part of his body that fortune chose to take from him, provided that with what remained he might live in honour and glory.

Sallust, desiring to rival this description, in his Histories thus wrote of the leader Sertorius [*](i. 88, Maurenbrecher.) :

He won great glory in Spain, while military tribune under the command of Titus Didius, rendered valuable service in the Marsic war in providing troops and arms; but he got no credit for much that was then done under his direction and orders, at first because of his low birth and afterwards through unfriendly historians; but during his lifetime his appearance bore testimony to these deeds, in many scars on his breast, and in the loss of an eye. Indeed, he rejoiced greatly in his bodily disfigurement, caring nothing for what he had lost, because he kept the rest with greater glory.

In his estimate of these words of the two writers Titus Castricius said:

Is it not beyond the range of human capability to rejoice in bodily disfigurement? For rejoicing is a certain exaltation of spirit, delighting in the realization of something greatly desired. How much truer, more natural, and more

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in accordance with human limitations is this: ' Giving up whatever part of his body fortune chose to take.' In these words,

said he,

Philip is shown, not like Sertorius, rejoicing in bodily disfigurement, which,

he said,

is unheard of and extravagant, but as a scorner of bodily losses and injuries in his thirst for honour and glory, who in exchange for the fame which he coveted would sacrifice his limbs one by one to the attacks of fortune.

That it is uncertain to which deity sacrifices ought to be offered when there is an earthquake.

WHAT is to be regarded as the cause of earthquakes is not only not obvious to the ordinary understanding and thought of mankind, but it is not agreed even among the natural philosophers whether they are due to the mighty winds that gather in the caverns and hollow places of the earth, or to the ebb and flow of subterranean waters in its hollows, as seems to have been the view of the earliest Greeks, who called Neptune

the Earth Shaker

; or whether they are the result of something else or due to the divine power of some other god—all this, I say, is not yet a matter of certain knowledge. For that reason the Romans of old, who were not only exceedingly scrupulous and careful in discharging all the other obligations of life, but also in fulfilling religious duties and venerating the immortal gods, whenever they felt an earthquake or received report of one, decreed a holy day on that account, but forbore to declare and specify in the decree, as is commonly done, the name of the god in whose honour the holy day was to be observed; for fear that by naming one god instead of another they might involve the people in a false observance. If anyone had desecrated that festival, and expiation was therefore necessary, they used to offer a victim

to either the god or goddess,

and Marcus Varro tells us [*](Fr. 1, p. cliii, Merkel.) that this usage was established by a decree of the pontiffs, since it was uncertain what force, and which of the gods or goddesses, had caused the earthquake.

But in the case of eclipses of the sun or moon they concerned themselves no less with trying to discover the causes of that phenomenon. However, Marcus Cato, although a man with a great interest in investigation, nevertheless on this point expressed himself indecisively and superficially. His words in the fourth book of his Origins are as follows: [*](Fr. 77, Peter.)

I do not care to write what appears on the tablet of the high priest: how often grain was dear, how often darkness, or something else, obscured the light [*](Lumine is the old dat., cf. II viri iure dicundo and note 1, p. 153.) of sun or moon.

Of so little importance did he consider it either to know or to tell the true causes of eclipses of the sun and moon.

A fable of the Phrygian Aesop, which is well worth telling.

AESOP, the well-known fabulist from Phrygia, has justly been regarded as a wise man, since he taught what it was salutary to call to mind and to recommend, not in an austere and dictatorial manner, as is the way of philosophers, but by inventing witty and

entertaining fables he put into men's minds and hearts ideas that were wholesome and carefully considered, while at the same time he enticed their attention. For example, this fable of his [*](A shorter version, of 19 choliambic lines, is given by Babrius, 88; cf. Fabulae Aesopiae, 210 Halm, and Avianus, 21, (14 elegiac verses).) about the little nest of a birdlet with delightful humour warns us that in the case of things which one can do, hope and confidence should never be placed in another, but in one's own self.

There is a little bird,

he says,

it is called the lark. It lives in the grain-fields, and generally builds its nest at such a time that the harvest is at hand exactly when the young birds are ready to be fledged. Such a lark chanced to have built her nest in a field which had been sown rather early in the year; therefore when the grain was turning yellow, the fledglings were still unable to fly. Accordingly, when the mother went off in search of food for her young, she warned them to notice whether anything unusual was said or done there, and to tell it to her on her return. A little later the owner of that grain-field calls his young son and says: ' Do you not see that this is ripe and already calls for hands? To-morrow then, as soon as it is light, see that you go to our friends and ask them to come and exchange work with us, and help us with this harvest.' So saying, he at once went away. And when the lark returned, the chicks, frightened and trembling, twittered about their mother and implored her to make haste and at once carry them off to some other place; 'for,' said they, 'the master has sent to ask his friends to come at daybreak and reap.' The mother bids them be easy in mind. ' For if the master,' said she, ' has turned the harvesting over to his friends, the field will not be reaped to-morrow, and I need not take you away

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to-day.' On the following day the mother flies off to get food. The master waits for those whom he had summoned. The sun grows hot and nothing is done. The day advances and no friends come. Then he says again to his son: 'Those friends of ours are a lot of slackers. why not rather go and ask our relatives and kinsfolk to come to reap early tomorrow?' This, too, the frightened chicks tell their mother. She urges them once again to be without fear and without worry, saying that hardly any relatives and kinsfolk are so obliging as to undertake labour without any delay and to obey a summons at once. 'But do you,' she said, 'observe whether anything more is said.' Next day at dawn the bird left to forage. The relatives and kinsfolk neglected the work which they were asked to do. So finally the owner said to his son: ' Enough of friends and relatives. Bring two scythes at daybreak; I myself will take one and you yourself the other, and tomorrow we ourselves will reap the grain with our own hands.' When the mother heard from her brood that the farmer had said this, she cried: ' It is time to get out and be off; for this time what he said surely will be done. For now it depends on the very man whose business it is, not on another who is asked to do it.' And so the lark moved her nest, the owner harvested his crop.

This then is Aesop's fable, showing that trust in friends and relatives is usually idle and vain. But what different warning do the more highly revered books of the philosophers give us, than that we should rely on ourselves alone, and regard everything else that is outside us and beyond our control as helpful neither to our affairs nor to ourselves? This parable

of Aesop has been rendered in tetrameter verse by Quintus Ennius in his Saturae most cleverly and gracefully. [*](vv. 57–58,Vahlen, who reads in promptum in the first verse.) The following are the last two lines of that version, and I surely think it is worth while to remember them and take them to heart:

1. This adage ever have in readiness;
2. Ask not of friends what you yourself can do.

An observation on the waves of the sea, which take one form when the wind is from the south, and another when it is from the north.

IT has often been observed in the motion of the waves caused by the north winds or by any current of air from that quarter of the heaven [that it is different from that caused by] the south and southwest winds. For the waves raised by the blowing of the north wind are very high and follow hard upon one another, but as soon as the wind has ceased, they flatten out and subside, and soon there are no waves at all. But it is not the same when the wind blows from the south or southwest; for although these have wholly ceased to blow, still the waves that they have caused continue to swell, and though they have long been undisturbed by wind, yet the sea keeps continually surging. The reason of this is inferred to be, that the winds from the north, falling upon the sea from a higher part of the sky, are borne straight down, as it were headlong, into the depths of ocean, making waves that are not driven forward, but are set in motion from within; and these, being turned up from beneath, roll only so long as the force of that wind which blows in

from above continues. The south and southwest winds, on the contrary, forced down to the southern zone and the lowest part of the heavens, are lower and flatter, and as they blow over the surface of the sea, they push forward [*](That is, away from, or before, the wind, so that they are flattened and do not rise in surges.) the waves rather than raise them up. Therefore the waters are not struck from above but are forced forward, and even after the wind has fallen they retain for some time the motion given by the original impulse. Moreover, this very suggestion of mine may be supported by the following lines of Homer, if one reads them carefully. For he wrote thus of the blasts of the south wind: [*](Odyss. iii. 295.)

1. Then Notus drives huge waves against the western cliff,

but on the other hand he speaks in a different way of boreas, which we call aquilo: [*](Odyss. v. 296.)

1. And Boreas aetherborn, uprolling a great wave.

For he means that the waves stirred up by the north winds, which are high and blow from above, are so to speak rolled downward, but that by the south winds, which are lower than these, they are driven forward in an upward direction by a somewhat greater force and pushed up. For that is the meaning of the verb w)qei=, as also in another passage: [*](Odyss. xi. 596.)

1. The stone toward the hilltop pushed he up.

This also has been observed by the most learned investigators of nature, that when the south winds blow, the sea becomes blue and bright, but, under the north winds, darker and more gloomy. I noted the cause of this when I was making excerpts from the Problems of Aristotle. [*](xxvi. 37.)