Noctes Atticae

That Julius Hyginus was hasty and foolish in his criticism of Virgil for calling the wings of Daedalus praepetes; also a note on the meaning of aves praepetes and of those birds which Nigidius called inferae.

1. FROM Minos' realms in flight brave Daedalus
2. On pinion swift (praepetibus), 'tis said, did dare the sky.

In these lines of Virgil [*](Aen. vi. 14 f.) Julius Hyginus [*](Fr. 6, Fun.) criticizes the use of pennis praepetibus as an improper and ignorant expression.

For,

says he,

those birds are called praepetes by the augurs which either fly onward auspiciously or alight in suitable places.

Therefore he thought it inappropriate in Virgil to use an augural term in speaking of the flight of Daedalus, which had nothing to do with the science of the augurs.

But of a truth it was Hyginus who was altogether foolish in supposing that the meaning of praepetes was known to him, but unknown to Virgil and to

Gnaeus Matius, a learned man, who in the second book of his Iliad called winged Victory praepes in the following line: [*](Fr. 3, Bährens (F.P.R.).)

1. While Victory swift (praepes) the victor's palm bestows.

Furthermore, why does he not find fault also with Quintus Ennius, who in his Annals uses praepes, not of the wings of Daedalus, but of something very different, in the line: [*](488, Vahlen2. Cf. Gell. ix. 4. 1.)

1. Brundisium girt with fair, propitious (praepete) port?

But if Hyginus had regarded the force and origin of the word rather than merely noting the meaning given to it by the augurs, he would certainly pardon the poets for using words in a figurative and metaphorical sense rather than literally. For since not only the birds themselves which fly auspiciously, but also the places which they take, since these are suitable and propitious, are called praepetes, therefore Virgil called the wings of Daedalus praepetes, since he had come from places in which he feared danger into safer regions. Furthermore, the augurs call places praepetes, and Ennius in the first book of his Annals said: [*](94, Vahlen2.)

1. In fair, propitious (praepetibus) places they alight.

But birds that are the opposite of praepetes are called inferae, or

low,

[*](That is, low-flying, as opposed to swift-, or high-, flying.) according to Nigidius Figulus, who says in the first book of his Private Augury: [*](Fr. 80, Swoboda.)

The right is opposed to the left, praepes to infera.

From this we may infer that birds were called praepetes which have a higher and loftier flight, since Nigidius said that the praepetes were contrasted with the inferae.

In my youth in Rome, when I was still in attendance on the grammarians, I gave special attention to Sulpicius Apollinaris. Once when there was a discussion about augural law and mention had been made of praepetes aves, I heard him say to Erucius Clarus, the city prefect, that in his opinion praepetes was equivalent to Homer's tanupte/ruges, or

wide-winged,

since the augurs had special regard to those birds whose flight was broad and wide because of their great wings. And then he quoted these verses of Homer: [*](Iliad xii. 237 f.)

1. You bid me trust the flight of wide-winged birds,
2. But I regard them not, nor think of them.

On Acca Larentia and Gaia Taracia; and on the origin of the priesthood of the Arval Brethren.

THE names of Acca Larentia and Gaia Taracia, or Fufetia as she is sometimes called, are frequent in the early annals. To the former of these after her death, but to Taracia while she still lived, the Roman people paid distinguished honours. And that Taracia, at any rate, was a Vestal virgin is proved by the Horatian law which was laid before the people with regard to her. By this law very many honours are bestowed upon her and among them the right of giving testimony is granted her, and that privilege is given to no other woman in the State. The word testabilis is used in the Horatian law itself, and its opposite occurs in the Twelve Tables: [*](viii. 22; the date of this privilegium (see x. 20. 4) is uncertain.)

Let him be

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infamous and intestabilis, or 'forbidden to testify.'

Besides, if at the age of forty she should wish to leave the priesthood and marry, the right and privilege of withdrawing from the order and marrying were allowed her, in gratitude for her generosity and kindness in presenting to the people the campus Tiberinus or Martius.

But Acca Larentia was a public prostitute and by that trade had earned a great deal of money. In her will she made king Romulus heir to her property, according to Antias' History; [*](Fr. 1, Peter2.) according to some others, the Roman people. Because of that favour public sacrifice was offered to her by the priest of Quirinus and a day was consecrated to her memory in the Calendar. But Masurius Sabinus, in the first book of his Memorialia, following certain historians, asserts that Acca Larentia was Romulus' nurse. His words are: [*](Fr. 14, Huschke; 1, Bremer (ii, p. 368).)

This woman, who had twelve sons, lost one of them by death. In his place Romulus gave himself to Acca as a son, and called himself and her other sons ' Arval Brethren.' Since that time there has always been a college of Arval Brethren, twelve in number, and the insignia of the priesthood are a garland of wheat ears and white fillets.

Some noteworthy anecdotes of King Alexander and of Publius Scipio.

APION, a Greek, called Pleistoneices, [*](Of many quarrels, a word coined in imitation of the epithet applied to famous athletes: pleistoni/khs, of many victories.) possessed a fluent and lively style. Writing in praise of king

Alexander, he says: [*](F.H.G. iii. 515.)

He forbade the wife of his vanquished foe, a woman of surpassing loveliness, to be brought into his presence, in order that he might not touch her even with his eyes.

We have then the subject for a pleasant discussion—which of the two shall justly be considered the more continent: Publius Africanus the elder, who after he had stormed Carthage, [*](Really New Carthage, captured in 210 B.C.; the story is told by Livy, xxvi. 50.) a powerful city in Spain, and a marriageable girl of wonderful beauty, the daughter of a noble Spaniard, had been taken prisoner and brought to him, restored her unharmed to her father; or king Alexander, who refused even to see the wife of king Darius, who was also his sister, when he had taken her captive in a great battle and had heard that she was of extreme beauty, but forbade her to be brought before him.

But those who have an abundance of talent, leisure and eloquence may use this material for a pair of little declamations on Alexander and Scipio; I shall be satisfied with relating this, which is a matter of historical record: Whether it be false or true is uncertain, but at any rate the story goes that your Scipio in his youth did not have an unblemished reputation, and that it was all but generally believed that it was at him that the following verses were aimed by the poet Gnaeus Naevius: [*](ii. 108, Ribbeck3.)

1. E'en he who oft-times mighty deeds hath done,
2. Whose glory and exploits still live, to whom
3. The nations bow, his father once led home,
4. Clad in a single garment, from his love.

I think it was by these verses that Valerius Antias was led to hold an opinion opposed to that of all

other writers about Scipio's character, and to write, [*](Fr. 25, Peter2.) contrary to what I said above, that the captured maiden was not returned to her father, but was kept by Scipio and possessed by him in amorous dalliance.

A passage taken from the Annals of Lucius Piso, highly diverting in content and graceful in style.

BECAUSE the action of Gnaeus Flavius, [*](He was the secretary of the censor Appius Claudius Caecus and became curule aedile in 303 B.C.) the curule aedile, son of Annius, which Lucius Piso described in the third book of his Annals, seemed worthy of record, and because the story is told by Piso in a very pure and charming style, I have quoted the entire passage from Piso's Annals: [*](Fr. 27, Peter2.)

Gnaeus Flavius, the son of a freedman,

he says, "was a scribe by profession and was in the service of a curule aedile at the time of the election of the succeeding aediles. The assembly of the tribes [*](The expression pro tribu is difficult, but appears in Livy ix, 46. 2 in the same connection, cum fieri se pro tribu aedilem videret. Gronovius believed that it referred to the tribus praerogativa. which voted first in order.) named Flavius curule aedile, but the magistrate who presided at the election refused to accept him as an aedile, not thinking it right that one who followed the profession of scribe should be made an aedile. Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have laid aside his tablets and resigned his clerkship, and he was then made a curule aedile.

This same Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have come to call upon a sick colleague. When he arrived and entered the room, several young nobles were seated there. They treated Flavius with contempt and none of them was willing to

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rise in his presence. Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, the aedile, laughed at this rudeness; then he ordered his curule chair to be brought and placed it on the threshold, in order that none of them might be able to go out, and that all of them against their will might see him sitting on his chair of state.

"

A story about Euclides, the Socratic, by whose example the philosopher Taurus used to urge his pupils to be diligent in the pursuit of philosophy.

THE philosopher Taurus, a celebrated Platonist of my time, used to urge the study of philosophy by many other good and wholesome examples and in particular stimulated the minds of the young by what he said that Euclides the Socratic used to do.

The Athenians,

said he,

had provided in one of their decrees that any citizen of Megara who should be found to have set foot in Athens should for that suffer death; so great,

says he,

was the hatred of the neighbouring men of Megara with which the Athenians were inflamed. Then Euclides, who was from that very town of Megara and before the passage of that decree had been accustomed both to come to Athens and to listen to Socrates, after the enactment of that measure, at nightfall, as darkness was coming on, clad in a woman's long tunic, wrapped in a parti-coloured mantle, and with veiled head, used to walk from his home in Megara to Athens, to visit Socrates, in order that he might at least for some part of the night share in the master's teaching and discourse. And just before dawn he went back again, a distance of somewhat over twenty miles,

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disguised in that same garb. But nowadays,

said Taurus,

we may see the philosophers themselves running to the doors of rich young men, to give them instruction, and there they sit and wait until nearly noonday, for their pupils to sleep off all last night's wine.