Noctes Atticae

The order observed in calling upon senators for their opinions; and the altercation in the senate between Gaius Caesar, when consul, and Marcus Cato, who tried to use up the whole day in talk.

BEFORE the passage of the law which is now observed in the proceedings of the senate, the order in calling for opinions varied. Sometimes the man was first called upon whom the censors had first enrolled in the senate, sometimes the consuls elect; some of the consuls, influenced by friendship or some personal relationship, used to call first upon anyone they pleased, as a compliment, contrary to the regular order. However, when the usual order was not followed, the rule was observed of not calling first upon any but a man of consular rank. It is said that Gaius Caesar, when he was consul with Marcus Bibulus, [*](In 59 B.C.) called upon only four senators out of order. The first of these was Marcus Crassus, but after Caesar had betrothed his daughter to Gnaeus Pompeius, he began to call upon Pompeius first. [*](See Suet. Jul. xxi., who adds the information that it was the custom for the consul to maintain throughout the year the order with which he had begun on the first of January.)

Caesar gave the senate his reason for this procedure, according to the testimony of Tullius Tiro, Cicero's freedman, who writes [*](Fr. 1, Peter; p. 6, Lion.) that he had the information from his patron. Ateius Capito has made the same statement in his work On Senatorial Conduct. [*](Fr. 18, Huschke; 1, Bremer.)

In the same treatise of Capito is this passage: [*](Fr. 18, Huschke; 2, Bremer. )

The consul Gaius Caesar called upon Marcus Cato for his opinion. Cato did not wish to have the motion before the house carried, since he did not think it for the public good. For the purpose of delaying action, he made a long speech and tried to use up the whole day in talking. For it was a senator's right, when asked his opinion, to speak beforehand on any other subject he wished, and as long as he wished. Caesar, in his capacity as consul, summoned an attendant, [*](According to Suet. Jul. xx. 4, it was a lictor.) and since Cato would not stop, ordered him to be arrested in the full tide of his speech and taken to prison. The senate arose in a body and attended Cato to the prison. But this,

aroused such indignation, that Caesar yielded and ordered Cato's release.

The nature of the information which Aristoxenus has handed down about Pythagoras on the ground that it was more authoritative; and also what Plutarch wrote in the same vein about that same Pythagoras.

AN erroneous belief of long standing has established itself and become current, that the philosopher Pythagoras did not eat of animals: also that he abstained from the bean, which the Greeks call ku/amos. In accordance with that belief the poet Callimachus wrote: [*](Fr. 128, Schn.)

1. I tell you too, as did Pythagoras,
2. Withhold your hands from beans, a hurtful food.

Plato therefore bids us go to our

v1.p.349

sleep in such bodily condition that there may be nothing to cause delusion and disturbance in our minds. It is thought to be for that reason too that the Pythagoreans were forbidden to eat beans, a food that produces great flatulency, which is disturbing to those who seek mental calm.

So then Cicero. But Aristoxenus the musician, a man thoroughly versed in early literature, a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, in the book On Pythagoras which he has left us, says that Pythagoras used no vegetable more often than beans, since that food gently loosened the bowels and relieved them. I add Aristoxenus' own words: [*](F. H. G. ii. 273.)

Pythagoras among vegetables especially recommended the bean, saying that it was both digestible and loosening; and therefore he most frequently made use of it.

Aristoxenus also relates that Pythagoras ate very young pigs and tender kids. This fact he seems to have learned from his intimate friend Xenophilus the Pythagorean and from some other older men, who lived not long after the time of Pythagoras. And the same information about animal food is given by the poet Alexis, in the comedy entitled

The Pythagorean Bluestocking.

1. O wretches, utter wretches, from beans withhold your hands.

Plutarch too, a man of weight in scientific matters, in the first book of his work On Homer wrote that Aristotle [*](Fr. 194, Rose.) gave the same account of the Pythagoreans: namely, that except for a few parts of the flesh they did not abstain from eating animals. Since the statement is contrary to the general belief, I have appended Plutarch's own words: [*](vii., p. 100, Bern.)

Aristotle says that the Pythagoreans abstained from the matrix, the heart, the a)kalh/fh and some other such things, but used all other animal food.

But as to Pythagoras himself, while it is well known that he declared that he had come into the world as Euphorbus, what Cleanthes [*](F. H. G. ii. 317.) and Dicaearchus [*](F. H. G. ii. 244.) have recorded is less familiar—that he was afterwards Pyrrhus Pyranthius, then Aethalides, and then a beautiful courtesan, whose name was Alco.

Instances of disgrace and punishment inflicted by the censors, found in ancient records and worthy of notice.

IF anyone had allowed his land to run to waste and was not giving it sufficient attention, if he had neither ploughed nor weeded it, or if anyone had neglected his orchard or vineyard, such conduct did not go unpunished, but it was taken up by the censors, who reduced such a man to the lowest class of citizens. [*](Made him an aerarius, originally a citizen who owned no land, but paid a tax (aes) based on such property as he had. The aerarii had no political rights until about the middle of the fifth century B.C., when they were enrolled in the four city tribes. See Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 392 ff.) So too, any Roman knight, if his horse seemed to be skinny or not well groomed, was charged with inpolitiae, a word which means the same thing as negligence. [*](More literally, inpolitia is lack of neatness, from in-, negative, and polio, polish, from which pulcher also is derived.) There are authorities for both these punishments, and Marcus Cato has cited frequent instances. [*](Fr. 2, p. 52, Jordan.)

On the possibility of curing gout by certain melodies played in a special way on the flute.

I RAN across the statement very recently in the book of Theophrastus OnInspiration[*](Fr. 87, Wimmer.) that many men have believed and put their belief on record, that when gouty pains in the hips are most severe, they are relieved if a flute-player plays soothing measures. That snake-bites are cured by the music of the flute, when played skilfully and melodiously, is also stated in a book of Democritus, entitled On

A story told of Hostilius Mancinus, a curule aedile, and the courtesan Manilia; and the words of the decree of the tribunes to whom Manilia appealed.

As I was reading the ninth book of the Miscellany of Ateius Capito, entitled On Public Decisions, [*](Fr. 1, Huschke; 1, Bremer.) one decree of the tribunes seemed to me full of old-time dignity. For that reason I remember it, and it was rendered for this reason and to this purport. Aulus Hostilius Mancinus was a curule aedile. [*](The date is uncertain.) He brought suit before the people against a courtesan called Manilia, because he said that he had been struck with a stone thrown from her apartment by night, and he exhibited the wound made by the stone. Manilia appealed to the tribunes of the commons. Before them she declared that Mancinus had come to her house in the garb of a reveller; that it would not have been to her advantage to admit him, and that when he tried to break in by force, he had been driven off with stones. The tribunes decided that the aedile had rightly been refused admission to a place to which it had not been seemly for him to go with a garland on his head; [*](That is, as a reveller coming from a drinking-bout. An aedile might visit such a place officially in the course of his duty of regulating taverns and brothels.) therefore they forbade the aedile to bring an action before the people.

The defence of a passage in the historical works of Sallust, which his enemies attacked in a spirit of malicious criticism.

THE elegance of Sallust's style and his passion for coining and introducing new words was met with exceeding great hostility, and many men of no mean ability tried to criticize and decry much in his writings. Many of the attacks on him were ignorant or malicious. Yet there are some things that may be regarded as deserving of censure, as for example the following passage in the History of Catiline,[*](iii. 2.) which has the appearance of being written somewhat carelessly. Sallust's words are these:

And for myself, although I am well aware that by no means equal repute attends the narrator and the doer of deeds, yet I regard the writing of history as one of the hardest of tasks; first because the style and diction must be equal to the deeds recorded; and in the second place, because such criticisms as you make of others' shortcomings are thought by most men to be due to malice and envy. Furthermore, when you commemorate the distinguished merit and fame of good men, while everyone is quite ready to believe you when you tell of things which he thinks he could easily do himself, everything beyond that he regards as fictitious, if not false.

He declared that he would give the reasons why it appears to be ' hard ' 'to write history'; and then, after mentioning the first reason, he does not give a second, but gives utterance to complaints. For it ought not to be regarded as a reason why the work of history is 'hard,' that the reader either

v1.p.359

misinterprets what is written or does not believe it to be true.

hard

hard

That is what those ill-natured critics say. But Sallust does not use arduus merely in the sense of

hard,