Noctes Atticae

The statement of men of the highest authority that Plato bought three books of Philolaus the Pythagorean, and that Aristotle purchased a few books of the philosopher Speusippus, at prices beyond belief.

THE story goes that the philosopher Plato was a man of very slender means, but that nevertheless he bought three books of Philolaus the Pythagorean for ten thousand denarii.1 That sum, according to some writers, was given him by his friend Dion of Syracuse.

Aristotle too, according to report, bought a very few books of the philosopher Speusippus, after the latter's death, for three Attic talents, a sum equivalent in our money to seventy-two thousand sesterces. [*](These were very high prices. The first book of Martial's Epigrams, 700 lines, in an elegant form, cost only five denarii, and cheaper editions could be bought for from six to ten sesterces. See Martial, i. 117. 15ff., and Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners, Eng. Trans., iii. p. 37.)

The bitter satirist Timon wrote a highly abusive work, which he entitled Si/llos. [*](Meaning a lampoon, or satirical poem.) In that book he addresses the philosopher Plato in opprobrious terms, alleging that he had bought a treatise on the Pythagorean philosophy at an extravagant figure, and that from it he had compiled that celebrated dialogue the Timaeus. Here are Timon's lines on the subject: [*](Poet. Phil. Frag. 54, Diehls; Poesis Ludib. 26, p 130, Wachsmuth.)

1. Thou, Plato, since for learning thou didst yearn,
2. A tiny book for a vast sum did'st buy,
3. Which taught thee a Timacus to compose.

What is meant by pedari senafores, and why they are so called; also the origin of these words in the customary edict of the consuls:

senators and those who are allowed to speak in the senate.

THERE are many who think that those senators were called pedarii who did not express their opinion in words, but agreed with the opinion of others by stepping to their side of the House. How then? Whenever a decree of the senate was passed by division, did not all the senators vote in that manner? Also the following explanation of that word is given, which Gavius Bassus has left recorded in his Commentaries. For he says [*](Frag. 7, Fun.) that in the time of our forefathers senators who had held a curule magistracy used to ride to the House in a chariot, as a mark of honour; that in that chariot there was a seat on which they sat, which for that reason was called curulis; [*](For currulis, from currus. This derivation is given by Thurneysen, T.L.L. s.v., with the suggestion that the name, as well as the seat itself, was of Etruscan origin.) but that those senators who had not yet held a curule magistracy went on foot to the House: and that therefore the senators who had not yet held the higher magistracies were called pedarii. Marcus Varro, however, in the Menippean Satire entitled (Ippoku/wn, says [*](Frag. 220, Büchcler. ) that some knights were called pedarii, and he seems to mean those who, since they had not yet been enrolled in the senate by the censors, were not indeed senators, but because they had held offices by vote of the people, used to come into the senate and had the right of voting. In fact, even those who had filled curule magistracies, if they had not

Senators and those who have the right to express their opinion in the senate.

I have had a line of Laberius copied also, in which that word is used; I read it in a mime entitled Stricturae: [*](v. 88, Ribbeck3, who reads: sine lingua caput peddrii senténtias, and gives other versions.)

1. The aye-man's vote is but a tongueless head.