Noctes Atticae

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.

A tale from the annals about Quintus Caedicius, tribune of the soldiers; and a passage from the Origins of Marcus Cato, in which he likens the valour of Caedicius to that of the Spartan Leonidas.

A GLORIOUS deed, by the Gods! and well worthy of the noble strains of Greek eloquence, is that of

The actual account runs about as follows: In the first Punic war the Carthaginian general in Sicily advanced to meet the Roman army and was first to take possession of the hills and strategic points. As the result of this, the Roman soldiers made their way into a place exposed to surprise and extreme danger. The tribune went to the consul and pointed out that destruction was imminent from their unfavourable position and from the fact that the enemy had surrounded them.

My advice is,

if you want to save the day, that you order some four hundred soldiers to advance to yonder wart

and command and conjure them to hold it. When the enemy see that, undoubtedly all their bravest and most active men will be intent upon attacking and fighting with them; they will devote themselves to that one task, and beyond a doubt all those four hundred will be slaughtered. Then in the meantime, while the enemy is engaged in killing them, you will have time to get the army out of this position. There is no other way of safety but this.

but who, pray,

will there be to lead those four hundred men of yours to that place in the midst of the enemy's troops?

If you find no one else,

you may use me for that dangerous enterprise. I offer this life of mine to you and to my country.

But what, by Heaven's help, befell that tribune, the leader of the four hundred soldiers, in the battle, I have added, no longer using my own words, but giving those of Cato himself, who says:

The immortal gods gave the tribune good fortune equal to his valour; for this is what happened. Although he had been wounded in many places during the battle, yet his head was uninjured, and they recognized him among the dead, unconscious from wounds and loss of blood. They bore him off the field, he recovered, and often after that rendered brave and vigorous service to his country; and by that act of leading that forlorn hope lie saved the rest of the army. But what a difference it makes where you do the same service! [*](Cf. Sall. Cat. viii.) The Laconian Leonidas, who performed a like exploit at Thermopylae, because of his valour won unexampled glory and gratitude from all Greece, and was honoured with memorials of the highest distinction; they showed their appreciation of that deed of his by pictures, statues and honorary inscriptions, in their histories, and in other ways; but the tribune

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of the soldiers, who had done the same thing and saved an army, gained small glory for his deeds.

With such high personal testimony did Marcus Cato honour this valorous deed of Quintus Caedicius the tribune. But Claudius Quadrigarius, in the third book of his Annals, [*](Fr. 42, Peter.) says that the man's name was not Caedicius, but Laberius.

A fine letter of the consuls Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius to king Pyrrhus, recorded by the historian Quintus Claudius.

AT the time when king Pyrrhus was on Italian soil and had won one or two battles, when the Romans were getting anxious, and the greater part of Italy had gone over to the king, a certain Timochares, an Ambracian and a friend of king Pyrrhus, came stealthily to the consul Gaius Fabricius and asked a reward, promising that if they could come to terms, he would poison the king. This, he said, could easily be done, since his son was the monarch's cup-bearer. Fabricius transmitted this offer to the senate. The senate sent envoys to the king, instructing them not to reveal anything about Timochares, but to warn the king to act with more caution, and be on his guard against the treachery of those nearest to his own person. This, as I have told it, is the version found in the History of Valerius Antias. [*](Fr. 21, Peter.) But Quadrigarius, in his third book, [*](Fr. 40, Peter.) says that it was not Timochares, but Nicias, that approached the consul; that the embassy was not sent by the senate, but by the consuls; and that Pyrrhus thanked and complimented the Roman people in a

The consuls at that time were Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius. [*](282 B. C.) The letter which they sent to king Pyrrhus about that matter, according to Claudius Quadrigarius, ran as follows:

1. " The Roman consuls greet king Pyrrhus.

The characteristics of the horse of Seius, which is mentioned in the proverb; and as to the colour of the horses which are called spadices; and the explanation of that term.

GAVIUS BASSUS in his Commentaries,[*](Frag. 4, Fun.) and Julius Modestus in the second book of his Miscellaneous Questions, [*](p. 15, Bunte.) tell the history of the horse of Seius, a

1. That man has the horse of Seius.

The meaning is the same of that other old proverb, which I have heard quoted thus:

the gold of Tolosa.

Gavius Bassus reports that he saw this horse at Argos; that it was of incredible beauty and strength and of the richest possible colouring.

This colour, as I have said, we call poeniceus; the Greeks sometimes name it foi=nic, at others spa/dic, since the branch of the palm (foi=nic), torn from the tree with its fruit, is called spadix. [*](See ii. 26, 10. The colour is a purple-red, or reddish purple.)

That in many natural phenomena a certain power and efficacy of the number seven has been observed, concerning which Marcus Varro discourses at length in his Hebdomades. [*](Fr. p. 255, Bipont. This work, more commonly called Imagines, consisted of seven hundred portraits of dis. tinguished men, arranged in seven categories of Greeks and Romans; besides the fourteen books thus formed there was an introductory fifteenth. Under each portrait was a metrical elogium and an account of the personage in prose. Cf. Plin. N.H. xxxv. 11.)

MARCUS VARRO, in the first book of his work entitled Hebdomades or On Portraits, speaks of many varied excellencies and powers of the number seven, which the Greeks call e(bdoma/s.

For that number,

forms the Greater and the Lesser Bear in the heavens; also the vergiliae, [*](So called (from ver ) because their rising, from April 22 to May 10, marked the beginning of spring.) which

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the Greeks call pleia/des; and it is likewise the number of those stars which some call 'wandering,' but Publius Nigidius' wanderers.'

poles

for on the twenty-eighth day,

the moon returns to the same point from which it started,

For,

when the life-giving seed has been introduced into the female womb, in the first seven days it is compacted and coagulated and rendered fit to take shape. Then afterwards in the fourth hebdomad the rudimentary male organ, the head, and the spine which is in the back, are formed. But in the seventh hebdomad, as a rule, that is, by the forty-ninth day,

the entire embryo is formed in the womb.

climacterics,

critical

These remarks of Varro about the number seven show painstaking investigation. But he has also brought together in the same place others which are rather trifling: for example, that there are seven wonderful works in the world, that the sages of old were seven, that the usual number of rounds in the races in the circus is seven, and that seven champions were chosen to attack Thebes. Then he adds in that book the further information that he has entered upon the twelfth hebdomad of his age, and that up to that day he has completed seventy hebdomads of books, [*](Only 39 titles have come down to us, through Hieronymus, De Vir. Ill. 54, whose catalogue is unfinished and also includes ten libri singulares under one head. Ritschl estimated Varro's publications as 74 works, comprising 620 books.) of which a considerable number were destroyed when his library was plundered, at the time of his proscription. [*](By Antony in 43 B. C. Varro was saved from death by Fufius Calenus, and died in 27 B.C., at the age of nearly ninety.)

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.