Noctes Atticae

A noteworthy story about the actor Polus. [*](On this famous tragic actor see O'Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (Princeton dissertation, 1908), pp. 128 ff. He flourished toward the end of the fourth century B.C.)

THERE was in the land of Greece an actor of wide reputation, who excelled all others in his clear delivery and graceful action. They say that his name was Polus, and he often acted the tragedies of famous poets with intelligence and dignity. This Polus lost by death a son whom he dearly loved. After he felt that he had indulged his grief sufficiently, he returned to the practice of his profession.

At that time he was to act the Electra of Sophocles at Athens, and it was his part to carry an urn which was supposed to contain the ashes of Orestes. The plot of the play requires that Electra, who is

What Aristotle wrote of the congenital absence of some of the senses.

NATURE has given five senses to living beings; sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, called by the Greeks ai)sqh/seis. Of these some animals lack one and some another, being born into the world blind, or without the sense of smell or hearing. But Aristotle asserts that no animal is born without the sense of taste or of touch.

His own words, from the book which he wrote On Memory, are as follows: [*](Peri\ (/Upnou or On Sleep, 2. Gellius is mistaken in his title.)

Except for some imperfect animals, all have taste or touch.

Whether affatim, like admodunm, should be pronounced with an acute accent on the first syllable; with some painstaking observations on the accents of other words.

THE poet Annianus, [*](One of the few poets of Hadrian's time. He wrote Falisca, on rural life, and Fescennini. Like other poets of his time, he was fond of unusual metres; see Gr. Lat. vi. 122, 12, K.) in addition to his charming personality, was highly skilled in ancient literature and literary criticism, and conversed with remarkable grace and learning. He pronounced affalim, as he did admodum, with an acute accent [*](This seems to mean no more than accent; see note 2, p. 9, above.) on the first, and not on the medial, syllable; and he believed that the ancients so pronounced the word. He adds that in his hearing the grammarian Probus thus read the following lines of the Cistellaria of Plautus: [*](231.)

1. Canst do a valiant deed?—Enough (áffatim) there be
2. Who can. I've no desire to be called brave,

1. Over against (exádversum) the school to which she went
2. A barber had his shop.

emphasis,

In all else, indeed, Annianus spoke aptly enough. But if he supposed that this particle was always accented when it denoted emphasis, that rule is obviously not without exceptions; for when we say adpotus, adprimus, and adprime, emphasis is evident in all those words, yet it is not at all proper to pronounce the particle ad with the acute accent. I must admit, however, that adprobus, which means

highly approved,

1. Hierocles, my friend, is a most worthy (ádprobus) youth.

In those words, then, which we say do not have the acute accent, is not this the reason—that the following syllable is longer by nature, and a long penult does not as a rule [*](Gellius is perhaps thinking of such exceptions as éxinde and súbinde, in which however the penult is not long by nature, but by position.) permit the accenting of the preceding syllable in words of more than two syllables? But Lucius Livius in his Odyssey uses ádprimus in the sense of

by far the first

1. And then the mighty hero, foremost of all (ádprimus), Patroclus.

Livius in his Odyssey too pronounces praemodum like admodum; he says [*](Fr. 29, Bährens.) parcentes praemodum, which means

beyond measure merciful,

An incredible story about a dolphin which loved a boy.

THAT dolphins are affectionate and amorous is shown, not only by ancient history, but also by tales of recent date. For in the sea of Puteoli, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, as Apion has written, and some centuries before at Naupactus, as Theophrastus tells us, dolphins are positively known to have been ardently in love. And they did not love those of their own kind, but had an extraordinary passion, like that of human beings, for boys of handsome figure, whom they chanced to have seen in boats or in the shoal waters near the shore.

I have appended the words of that learned man Apion, from the fifth book of his Egyptian History, in which he tells of an amorous dolphin and a boy who did not reject its advances, of their intimacy and play with each other, the dolphin carrying the boy and the boy bestriding the fish; and Apion declares that of all this he himself and many others were eye-witnesses.

Now I myself,

near Dicaearchia [*](The early Greek name of Puteoli.) saw a dolphin that fell in love with a boy called Hyacinthus. For the fish with passionate eagerness came at his call, and drawing in his fins, to avoid wounding the delicate skin of the object of his affection, carried him as if mounted upon a horse for a distance of two hundred stadia. Rome and all Italy turned out to see a fish that was under the sway of Aphrodite.

Afterwards,

that same boy who was beloved by the

v2.p.45

dolphin fell sick and died. But the lover, when he had often come to the familiar shore, and the boy, who used to await his coming at the edge of the shoal water, was nowhere to be seen, pined away from longing and died. He was found lying on the shore by those who knew the story and was buried in the same tomb with his favourite.

That many early writers used peposci, memordi pepugi, spepondi and cecurri, and not, as was afterwards customary, forms with o or u in the first syllable, and that in so doing said that they followed Greek usage; that it has further been observed that men who were neither unlearned nor obscure made from the verb descendo, not descendi, but descendidi.

POPOSCI, momordi, pupugi and cucurri seem to be the approved forms, and to-day they are used by almost all better-educated men. But Quintus Ennius in his Satires wrote memorderit with an e, and not momorderit, as follows: [*](63, Vahlen2.)

1. 'Tis not my way, as if a dog had bit me (memorderit).

1. Now from my whole estate
2. A hundred thousand have I bitten off (memordi).

1. And when, o'er slow fire cooked, I came beneath her teeth,
2. Twice, thrice she bit (memordit).

As when a serpent bites (memordit) one, a hen is split and placed upon the wound.

1. How he the man did fleece (admemordii).

1. Had I not fled into your midst,
2. Methinks he'd bitten me (praemorsisset).

1. A bear, he says, bit him (memordisse).

Finally Licinius, tribune of the commons, charged him with high treason and asked (peposcit) from the praetor Marcus Marcius a day for holding the comitia.

In the same way Atta in the Aedilicia says: [*](Fr. 2, Ribbeck3.)

1. But he will be afraid, if I do prick him (pepugero).

Probus has noted that Aelius Tubero also, in his work dedicated to Gaius Oppius, wrote occecurrit, and he has quoted him as follows: [*](Fr. 2, Huschke; I. p. 367, Bremer.)

If the general form should present itself (occecurrerit).

Tiberius Gracchus,

v2.p.49

who had been quaestor to Gaius Mancinus in Spain, and the others who had guaranteed (speponderant) peace.

Now the explanation of these forms might seem to be this: since the Greeks in one form of the past tense, which they call parakei/menon, or

perfect,

I find besides that from the verb scindo in the same way was made, not sciderat, but sciciderat. Lucius Accius in the first book of his Sotadici writes sciciderat. These are his words: [*](Fr. i. 2, Müller; 8, Bährens.)

1. And had the eagle then, as these declare,
2. His bosom rent (sciciderat)?

1. When the rock he shall split (sciciderit).

Then, having arranged for the funeral, he went down (descendidit) to the Forum.

1. I wondered how my breasts had fallen low (descendiderant).

As ususcapio is treated as a compound noun in the nominative case, so pignoriscapio is taken together as one word in the same case.

As ususcapio is treated as a compound word, in which the letter a is pronounced long, just so pignoriscapio was pronounced as one word with a long a. These are the words of Cato in the first book of his Epistolary Questions: [*](p. cviii., Jordan. It should be Varro rather than Cato.)

Pignoriscapio, resorted to because of military pay [*](That is, pay in arrears.) which a soldier ought to receive from the public paymaster, is a word by itself.