Noctes Atticae

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.

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,

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

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,

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?

Your answer is certainly to the point. Whoever,

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.

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

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

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.

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,

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.

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.

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

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.

civil

On investigating and identifying the comedies of Plautus, since the genuine and the spurious without distinction are said to have been inscribed with his name; and further as to the report that Plautus wrote plays in a bakery and Naevius in prison.

I AM convinced of the truth of the statement which I have heard made by men well trained in literature, who have read a great many plays of Plautus with care and attention: namely, that with regard to the so-called

doubtful

Varronian,

1. The gods confound the man who first found out
2. How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
3. Who in this place set up a sun-dial
4. To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
5. Into small portions! When I was a boy,
6. My belly was my only sun-dial, one more sure,
7. Truer, and more exact than any of them.
8. This dial told me when 'twas proper time
9. To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat;
10. But nowadays, why even when I have,
11. I can't fall to unless the sun gives leave.
12. The town's so full of these confounded dials
13. The greatest part of the inhabitants,
14. Shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the streets.

My master Favorinus too, when I was reading the Nervularia of Plautus, and he had heard this line of the comedy: [*](Fr. v. 100 Götz; translation by Thornton and Warner.)

1. Old, wheezing, physicky, mere foundered hags
2. With dry, parched, painted hides, shrivell'd and shrunk,

By heaven! just this one verse is enough to convince one that the play is Plautine.

I myself too a little while ago, when reading the Fretum—that is the name of a comedy which some think is not Plautine—had no manner of doubt that it was by Plautus and in fact of all his plays the most authentic. From it I copied these two lines, [*](Fr. v. 76, Götz.) with the intention of looking up the story of the Arretine oracle: [*](Nothing is known of this oracle. The inferior manuscripts and earlier editors read Arictini and interpreted it as that of Jupiter Ammon, because that god is sometimes represented as a ram (aries), or with a ram's head. According to Bicheler, Thes. Ling. Lat. ii. 636. 9, the reference is to a person, not to the town of Arretium. Text and meaning are most uncertain.)

1. Now here we have at the great games [*](According to Bücheler, T.L.L. ii. 636. 9, the reference is to the ludi Romani, Sept. 5–19.) the Arretine response:
2. I perish if I don't, and if I do, I'm flogged.

Yet Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Comedies of Plautus, [*](Fr. p. 193, Bipont.) quotes these words of Accius: [*](Didascalica, fr. inc., Müller.)

For not the Twin Panders nor the Slave-ring nor the Old Woman were the work of Plautus, nor were ever the Twice Violated or the Boeotian woman, nor were the Clownish Rustic or the Partners in, Death the work of Titus Maccius.

In that same book of Varro's we are told also that there was another writer of comedies called Plautius. Since his plays bore the title

Plauti,

Now there are in circulation under the name of Plautus about one hundred and thirty comedies; but that most learned of men Lucius Aelius thought that only twenty-five of them were his. [*](p. 58. 4, Fun.) However, there is no doubt that those which do not appear to have been written by Plautus but are attached to his name, were the work of poets of old but were revised and touched up by him, and that is why they savour of the Plautine style. Now Varro and several others have recorded that the Saturio, the Addictus, and a third comedy, the name of which I do not now recall, were written by Plautus in a bakery, when, after losing in trade all the money which he had earned in employments connected with the stage, he had returned penniless to Rome, and to earn a livelihood had hired himself out to a baker, to turn a mill, of the kind which is called a

push-mill.

So too we are told of Naevius that he wrote two plays in prison, the Soothsayer and the Leon, when by reason of his constant abuse and insults aimed at the leading men of the city, after the manner of the Greek poets, he had been imprisoned at Rome by the triumvirs. [*](The triumviri capitales, police magistrates, in charge of the public prisons.) And afterwards he was set free by the tribunes of the commons, when he had apologized for his offences and the saucy language with which he had previously assailed many men.

That it was an inherited custom of Publius Africanus and other distinguished men of his time to shave their beard and cheeks.

I FOUND it stated in books which I read dealing with the life of Publius Scipio Africanus, that Publius Scipio, the son of Paulus, after he had celebrated a triumph because of his victory over the Carthaginians and had been censor, was accused before the people by Claudius Asellus, tribune of the commons, whom he had degraded from knighthood during his censorship; and that Scipio, although he was under accusation, neither ceased to shave his beard and to wear white raiment nor appeared in the usual garb of those under accusation. But since it is certain that at that time Scipio was less than forty years old, I was surprised at the statement about shaving his beard. I have learned, however, that in those same times the other nobles shaved their beards at that time of life, and that is why we see many busts of early men represented in that way, men who were not very old, but in middle life. [*](This fashion changed with Hadrian.)

How the philosopher Arcesilaus severely yet humorously taunted a man with the vice of voluptuousness and with unmanliness of expression and conduct.

PLUTARCH tells us [*](Sympos. vii. 5.3, De Tuend. San. 7.) that Arcesilaus the philosopher used strong language about a certain rich man, who was too pleasure-loving, but nevertheless had a

It makes no difference with what parts of your body you debauch yourself, front or rear.

On the natural strength of the palm-tree; for when weights are placed upon its wood, it resists their pressure.

A TRULY wonderful fact is stated by Aristotle in the seventh book of his Problems,[*](Fr. 229, Rose. ) and by Plutarch in the eighth of his Symposiaca. [*](4.5.)

If,

you place heavy weights on the wood of the palmtree, and load it so heavily and press it down so hard that the burden is too great to bear, the wood does not give way downward, nor is it made concave, but it rises against the weight and struggles upward and assumes a convex form. [*](Hardly to be taken literally. The same statement is made by Pliny, N. H. xvi. 223; Theophr. Enquiry into Plants, v. 6 (i. 453, L.C.L.); Xen. Cyrop. vii. 5. 11 (ii. 267, L.C.L.) ) It is for that reason,

that the palm has been chosen as the symbol of victory in contests, since the nature of its wood is such that it does not yield to what presses hard upon it and tries to crush it.