Noctes Atticae

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,

and he said that the reason for that accent was that affatim was not two parts of speech, but was made up of two parts that had united to form a single word; just as also in the word which we call exadversum he thought that the second syllable should have the acute accent, because the word was one part of speech, and not two. Accordingly, he maintained that the two following verses of Terence [*](Phormio, 88.) ought to be read thus:

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

He added besides that the preposition ad was commonly accented when it indicated e)pi/tasis, or as we say,

emphasis,

as in ádfabre, ádmodum, and ádprobe.

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,

ought to be accented on the first syllable. Caecilius uses that word in his comedy entitled The Triumph: [*](228, Ribbeck.3)

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

in the following line: [*](Fr. 11, Bährens.)

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,

and praemodum is equivalent to praeter modum. And in this word, of course, the first syllable will have to have the acute accent.

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,

he writes, [*](F.H.G. iii. 510.)

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.

To this he adds a detail that is no less wonderful.

Afterwards,

he says,

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.

[*](With this story cf. Pliny, Epist. ix. 33.)