Noctes Atticae

The weak arguments by which Accius in his Didascalica attempts to prove that Hesiod was earlier than Homer.

As to the age of Homer and of Hesiod opinions differ. Some, among whom are Philochorus [*](F.H.G. i. 393, Müller.) and Xenophanes, [*](Poet, Phil. Frag. 13, Diels; Poesis Ludib. fr. 5, p. 191, Wachsmuth.) have written that Homer was older than Hesiod; others that he was younger, among them Lucius Accius the poet and Euphorus the historian. [*](F.H.G. i. 277, Müller.) But Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Portraits, [*](See note 2, p. 267.) says [*](Fr. p. 258, Bipont.) that it is not at all certain which of the two was born first, but that there is no doubt that they lived partly in the same period of time, and that this is proved by the inscription [*](Anth. Pal. vii. 53, Greek Anth. L.C.L., ii. 53: Hsi/odos Mou/sais (Elikwni/si to/nd' a)ne/qhka.u(/mnw| nikh/sas e)n Xalki/di qei=on (/Omhron.) engraved upon a tripod which Hesiod is said to have set up on Mount Helicon. Accius, on the contrary, in the first book of his Didascalica, [*](Fr. 1, Müller; F.P.R. 7, Bährens.) makes use of very weak arguments in his attempt to show that Hesiod was the elder:

Because Homer,

when he says at the beginning of his poem [*](Iliad. 1. 1.) that Achilles was the son of Peleus, does not inform us who Peleus was; and this he unquestionably would have done, if he did not know that the information had already been given by Hesiod. [*](Frag. 102, Rzach.) Again, in the case of Cyclops,

he would not have failed to note such a striking characteristic and to make particular mention of the fact that he was oneeyed, were it not that this was equally well known from the poems of his predecessor Hesiod.

Also as to Homer's native city there is the very greatest divergence of opinion. Some say that he was from Colophon, some from Smyrna; others

1. This snow-white kid the tomb of Homer marks;
2. For such the Ietae [*](That is, the inhabitants of Ios.) offer to the dead.

That Publius Nigidius, a man of great learning, applied bibosus to one who was given to drinking heavily and greedily, using a new, but hardly rational, word-formation.

PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS, in his Grammatical Notes,[*](Fr. 5, Swoboda.) calls one who is fond of drinking bibax and bibosus. Bibax, like edax, I find used by many others; but as yet I have nowhere found an example of bibosus, except in Laberius, and there is no other word similarly derived. For vinosus, or vitiosus, and other formations of the kind, are not parallel, since they are derived from nouns, not from verbs. Laberius, in the mime entitled Salinator, uses this word thus: [*](v. 80, Ribbeck3.)

1. Not big of breast, not old, not bibulous, not pert.

How Demosthenes, while still young and a pupil of the philosopher Plato, happening to hear the orator Callistratus add ressing the people, deserted Plato and became a follower of Callistratus.

HERMIPPUS has written [*](Fr. Hist. Gr. iii. 49, Mu:;ller.) that Demosthenes, when quite young, used to frequent the Academy and

And this Demosthenes,

when he had left home and, as usual, was on his way to Plato, saw great throngs of people running to the same place; he inquired the reason of this, and learned that they were hurrying to hear Callistratus. This Callistratus was one of those orators in the Athenian republic that they call dhmagwgoi/, or 'demagogues.' [*](Leaders of the people.) Demosthenes thought it best to turn aside for a moment and find out whether the discourse justified such eager haste. He came,

and heard Callistratus delivering that famous speech of his, h( peri\ )Wrwpou= di/kh. [*](The Action about Oropus.) He was so moved, so charmed, so captivated, that he became a follower of Callistratus from that moment, deserting Plato and the Academy.

That whoever says dimidium librum legi, or dimidiam fabulam audivi, and uses other expressions of that kind, speaks incorrectly: and that Marcus Varro gives the explanation of that error: and that no early writer has used such phraseology.

VARRO believes that dimidium librum legi (

I have read half the book

I have read half the play

For,

which I own in common with another person, has been divided into two parts, I ought to speak of it as 'halved,' not as 'a half': but my share of the silver of which the bowl is made is a 'half,' not 'halved.'

1. As if one brought a halved cup of wine,

half,

halved.

Now the point of all this argument, which Varro sets forth acutely, it is true, but somewhat obscurely, is this: dimidiatum is equivalent to dismediatum, and means

divided into two parts,

1. With one eye and two feet, like halved pig,

1. why not? To sell his trash the huckster lauds
2. (The rascal!) half a shoe, a strigil split.

1. At its own season and the self-same time,
2. The half an hour and three at least elapsed,
3. At the fourth hour again. [*](The meaning is very uncertain. Marx thinks that the reference is to the quartam ague, "the attacks of which regularly subside at the same time (eandem ad quartam horam.), after a minimum duration of three hours and a half.' Lucilius refers, not to the fourth hour of the day (non diei horam dicit), but to every fourth hour of the period of illness (totius temporis spatii quo aegrotus cubat febri correptus). Dumtaxat is to be taken with the numeral, as in Plaut. Truc. 445. For ad quartam he cites Seneca, Nat. Quaest. iii. 16. 2, quartana ad horam venit, and Suet. Aug. lxxxvii, 1, ad Kalendas Graecas soluturos.)

three and a half elapsed,

half an hour

a halved hour

the halt part of an hour.

half of the gold,

the halved gold,

half of the provisions,

the halved provisions,

1. He bade them give him half of all the meats;

the halved day,

half,

1. Down to the navel now the halved day is dead.

Sow cypress seed thick, just as flax is commonly sown. Over it sift earth from a sieve to the depth of a halved finger. Then smooth it well with a board, with the feet, or with the hands.

a halved finger,

a half.

half of a finger,

halved.

They buried the men halfway down (dimidiatos) in the ground and built a fire around them; thus they destroyed them.

That it is recorded in literature and handed down by tradition, that great and unexpected joy has brought sudden death to many, since the breath of life was stifled and could not endure the effects of an unusual and strong emotion.

ARISTOTLE the philosopher relates [*](Frag. 559, V. Rose.) that Polycrita, a woman of high rank in the island of Naxos, on suddenly and unexpectedly hearing joyful news, breathed her last. Philippides too, a comic poet of no little repute, when he had unexpectedly won the prize in a contest of poets at an advanced age, and was rejoicing exceedingly, died suddenly in the midst of his joy. The story also of Diogoras of Rhodes is widely known. This Diogoras had three young sons, one a boxer, the second a pancratist, [*](The pancratium was a contest including both wrestling and boxing.) and the third a wrestler. He saw them all victors

Moreover, I have read in our annals that at the time when the army of the Roman people was cut to pieces at Cannae, [*](216 B.C. ) an aged mother was overwhelmed with grief and sorrow by a message announcing the death of her son; but that report was false, and when not long afterwards the young man returned from that battle to the city, the aged mother, upon suddenly seeing her son, was overpowered by the flood, the shock, and the crash, so to speak, of unlooked-for joy descending upon her, and gave up the ghost.

The variations in the period of gestation reported by physicians and philosophers; and incidentally the views also of the ancient poets on that subject and many other noteworthy and interesting particulars; and the words of the physician Hippocrates, quoted verbatim from his book entitled Peri\ Trofh=s. [*](On Nurture.)

BOTH physicians and philosophers of distinction have investigated the duration of the period of gestation in man. The general opinion, now accepted as correct, is that after the womb of a woman has conceived the seed, the child is born rarely in the seventh month, never in the eighth, often in the ninth, more often in the tenth in number; and that the end of the tenth month, not its beginning, is

1. And then the girl whom he did violate
2. Brought forth a daughter when ten months had sped.

1. The woman is ten months with child . . .

1. And may a child in the tenth month be born?—
2. By Pollux! in the ninth, and seventh, and eighth.

Eighth-month's children exist and do not exist.

They exist, since they appear to live after the miscarriage; but they do not exist, since they die afterwards; they exist and do not exist therefore, since they live for the moment in appearance, but not in reality.

But Varro says [*](l. c.) that the early Romans did not regard such births as unnatural rarities, but they did believe that a woman was delivered according to nature in the ninth or tenth month, and in no others, and that for this reason they gave to the three Fates names derived from bringing forth, and from the ninth and tenth months.

For Parca,

is derived from partuis with the change of one letter, and likewise Nona and Decima from the period of timely delivery.

Nona, Decuma, Morta

1. When will the day be present that Morta has predicted?

Furthermore, besides what I have read in books about human gestation, [*](XII Tab. iv. 4, Schöll. The fragment is not extant, but it is cited also by Ulpian, Dig. xxxviii. 16. 3. 11: post decem menses mortis natus non admittetur ad legitimam hereditatem.) also heard of the following case, which occurred in Rome: A woman of good and honourable character, of undoubted chastity, gave birth to a child in the eleventh month after her husband's death, and because of the reckoning of the time the accusation was made that she had conceived after the death of her husband, since the decemvirs had written that a child is born in ten months and not in the eleventh month. The deified Hadrian, however, having heard the case, decided that birth might also occur in the eleventh month, and I myself have read the actual decree with regard to the matter. In that decree Hadrian declares that he makes his decision after looking up the views of the ancient philosophers and physicians.

This very day I chanced to read these words in a satire of Marcus Varro's entitled The Will: [*](Fr. 543, Bücheler3.)

If one or more sons shall be born to me in ten months, let them be disinherited, if they are asses in music; [*](That is, stupid, half-witted.) but if one be born to me in the eleventh month, according to Aristotle, [*](i.e., as Aristotle says may happen; Hist. Anim. vii. 4.) let Attius have the same rights under my will as Tettius.

let Attius be as Tettius,

But if it is a fact that gestation cannot be prolonged beyond the tenth month, it is pertinent to ask why Homer wrote that Neptune said to a girl whom he had just violated: [*](Odyss. xi. 248.)

1. Rejoice, O woman, in this act of love;
2. A year gone by, fair offspring shall be thine,
3. For not unfruitful is a god's embrace.

When I had brought this matter to the attention of several scholars, some of them argued that in Homer's time, as in that of Romulus, the year consisted, not of twelve months, but of ten; others, that it was in accord with Neptune and his majesty that a child by him should develop through a longer period than usual; and others gave other nonsensical reasons. But Favorinus tells me that periplome/nou e)niautou= does not mean

when the year is ended

when it is nearing its end

In this instance Favorinus did not use the word adfectus in its popular signification (but yet correctly); for as it was used by Marcus Cicero and the most polished of the early writers, it was properly applied to things which had advanced, or been carried, not to the very end, but nearly to the end. Cicero gives the word that meaning in the speech On the Consular Provinces. [*](§ 19, bellum adfectum videmus ct, vere ut dicam, paene cawfectum; cf. § 29.)

Moreover, Hippocrates, in that book of which I wrote above, when he mentioned the number of days within which the embryo conceived in the womb is given form, and had limited the time of gestation itself to the ninth or tenth month, but had said that this nevertheless was not always of the same duration, but that delivery occurred sometimes more quickly, sometimes later, finally used these words:

In these cases there are longer and shorter periods, both wholly and in part; but the longer are not much longer or the shorter much shorter.

I recall that this question was carefully and thoroughly investigated at Rome, an inquiry demanded by a suit at law of no small moment at the time, whether, namely, a child that had been born alive in the eighth month but had died immediately, satisfied the conditions of the ius trium liberorrum, [*](The fathers of three children were granted certain privileges and immunities.) since it seemed to some that the untimely period of the eighth month made it an abortion and not a birth.

But since I have told what I have learned about a birth after a year in Homer and about the eleventh month, I think I ought not to omit what I read in the seventh book of the Natural Histoy of Plinius Secundus. But because that story might seem to be beyond belief, I have quoted Pliny's own words: [*](vii. 40.)

Masurius makes the statement [*](Fr. 24, Huschke; Memor. 21, Jur. Civ. 31, Bremer.) that the praetor Lucius Papirius, when an heir in the second degree [*](The heir or heirs in the second degree inherited only in case the heirs in the first degree died, or were otherwise incompetent.) brought suit for the possession of an inheritance, decided against him, although the mother [*](That is, the mother of the heir in the first degree.) said that she had been pregnant for thirteen months; and the reason for his decision was that it seemed to him that no definite period of gestation had been fixed by law.

Yawning during childbirth is fatal, just as to sneeze after coition produces abortion.