Noctes Atticae

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.)

A discussion of the question why Sallust said that avarice rendered effeminate, not only a manly soul, but also the very body itself.

WHEN winter was already waning, we were walking with the philosopher Favorinus in the court of the Titian baths, [*](Otherwise unknown. The Baths of Titus were Thermae and the adj. is Titianae.) enjoying the mild warmth of the sun; and there, as we walked, Sallust's Catiline was being read, a book which Favorinus had seen in the hands of a friend and had asked him to read. The following passage from that book had been recited: [*](xi. 3.)

Avarice implies a desire for money, which no wise man covets; steeped as it were with noxious poisons, it renders the most manly body and soul effeminate; it is ever unbounded, nor can either plenty or want make it less.

Then Favorinus looked at me and said:

How does avarice make a man's body effeminate? For I seem to grasp in general the meaning of his statement that it has that effect on a manly soul, but how it also makes his body effeminate I do not yet comprehend.

I too,

said I,

have for a long time been putting myself that question, and if you had not anticipated me, I should of my own accord have asked you to answer it.

Scarcely had I said this with some hesitation, when one of the disciples of Favorinus, who seemed

to be an old hand in the study of literature, broke in:

I once heard Valerius Probus say that Sallust here used a kind of poetic circumlocution, and meaning to say that a man was corrupted by avarice, spoke of his body and soul, the two factors which indicate a man; for man is made up of body and soul.

Never,

replied Favorinus,

at least, so far as I know, was our Probus guilty of such impertinent and bold subtlety as to say that Sallust, a most skilful artist in conciseness, used poetic paraphrases.

There was with us at the time in the same promenade a man of considerable learning. He too, on being asked by Favorinus whether he had anything to say on the subject, answered to this effect:

We observe that almost all those whose minds are possessed and corrupted by avarice and who have devoted themselves to the acquisition of money from any and every source, so regulate their lives, that compared with money they neglect manly toil and attention to bodily exercise, as they do everything else. For they are commonly intent upon indoor and sedentary pursuits, in which all their vigour of mind and body is enfeebled and, as Sallust says, 'rendered effeminate.'

Then Favorinus asked to have the same words of Sallust read again, and when they had been read, he said:

How then are we to explain the fact, that it is possible to find many men who are greedy for money, but nevertheless have strong and active bodies?

To this the man replied thus:

Your answer is certainly to the point. Whoever,

said he,

is greedy for money, but nevertheless has a body that is strong and in good condition, must necessarily be possessed either by an interest in, or devotion to,

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other things as well, and cannot be equally niggardly in his care of himself. For if extreme avarice, to the exclusion of everything else, lay hold upon all a man's actions and desires, and if it extend even to neglect of his body, so that because of that one passion he has regard neither for virtue nor physical strength, nor body, nor soul—then, and then only, can that vice truly be said to cause effeminacy both of body and of soul, since such men care neither for themselves nor for anything else except money.

Then said Favorinus:

Either what you have said is reasonable, or Sallust, through hatred of avarice, brought against it a heavier charge than he could justify.

[*](The reading of the MSS., potuit, might perhaps be supported by such expressions as Catull. lxxvi. 16, hocfacias, sire id non pote, sive pole.)

Which was the birthday, according to Marcus Varro, of those born before the sixth hour of the night, or after it and in that connection, concerning the duration and limits of the days that are termed

civil

and are reckoned differently all over the world; and in addition, what Quintus Mucius wrote about that woman who claimed freedom from her husband's control illegally, because she had not taken account of the civil year.

IT is often inquired which day should be considered and called the birthday of those who are born in the third, the fourth, or any other hour of the night; that is, whether it is the day that preceded, or the day that followed, that night. Marcus Varro, in that book of his Human Antiquities which he wrote On Days, says: [*](xiii. Frag. 2, Mirsch.)

Persons who are born during the

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twenty-four hours between one midnight and the next midnight are considered to have been born on one and the same day.

From these words it appears that he so apportioned the reckoning of the days, that the birthday of one who is born after sunset, but before midnight, is the day after which that night began; but that, on the other hand, one who is born during the last six hours of the night is considered to have been born on the day which dawned after that night.

However, Varro also wrote in that same book [*](xiii. Frag. 3, Mirsch.) that the Athenians reckon differently, and that they regard all the intervening time from one sunset to the next as one single day. That the Babylonians counted still differently; for they called by the name of one day the whole space of time between sunrise and the beginning of the next sunrise; but that in the land of Umbria many said that from midday to the following midday was one and the same day.

But this,

he said,

is too absurd. For the birthday of one who is born among the Umbrians at mid-day on the first of the month will have to be considered as both half of the first day of the month and that part of the second day which comes before midday.

[*](That is, according to the Roman reckoning. By the alleged Umbrian reckoning, the first day of the month would begin at midday and end at the next midday.)

But it is shown by abundant evidence that the Roman people, as Varro said, reckoned each day from midnight to the next midnight. The religious ceremonies of the Romans are performed in part by day, others by night; but those which take place by night are appointed for certain days, not for nights; accordingly, those that take place during the last six hours of the night are said to take place on the day which dawns immediately after that night.

Moreover, the ceremony and method of taking the auspices point to the same way of reckoning; for the magistrates, whenever they must take the auspices, and transact the business for which they have taken the auspices, on the same day, take the auspices after midnight and transact tile business after midday, when the sun is high, and they are then said to have taken the auspices and acted on the same day. Again, when the tribunes of the commons, who are not allowed to be away from Rome for a whole day, leave the city after midnight and return after the first lighting of the lamps on the following day, but before midnight, they are not considered to have been absent for a whole day, since they returned before the completion of the sixth hour of the night, and were in the city of Rome for some part of that day.

I have read that Quintus Mucius, the jurist, also used to say [*](Fr. 7, Huschke; Jur. Civ. iv. 2, Bremer.) that a woman did not become her own mistress who, after entering upon marriage relations with a man on the day called the Kalends of January, left him, for the purpose of emancipating herself, on the fourth day before the Kalends of the following January; [*](Dec. 27th; December at that time had twenty-nine days.) for the period of three nights, during which the Twelve Tables [*](vi. 4.) provided that a woman must be separated from her husband for the purpose of gaining her independence, could not be completed, since the last [*](Posterioris is nom. pl. See Varro De Ling. Lat. viii. 66.) six hours of the third night belonged to the next year, which began on the first of January.

Now since I found all the above details about the duration and limits of days, pertaining to the observance and the system of ancient law, in the works of our early writers, I did not doubt that Virgil also

indicated the same thing, not directly and openly, but, as became one treating poetic themes, by an indirect and as it were veiled allusion to ancient observance. He says: [*](Aen. v. 738. )

1. For dewy Night has wheeled her way
2. Far past her middle course; the panting steeds
3. Of orient Morn breathe pitiless on me.

For in these lines he wished to remind us covertly, as I have said, that the day which the Romans have called

civil

begins after the completion of the sixth hour of the night.