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,

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

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

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?

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

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

low,

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

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,

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.'

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

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.

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

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,

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,

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,

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,

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.

A passage from a speech of Quintus Metellus Numidicus, which it was my pleasure to recall, since it draws attention to the obligation of self-respect and dignity in the conduct of life.

ONE should not vie in abusive language with the basest of men or wrangle with foul words with the shameless and wicked, since you become like them and their exact mate so long as you say things which match and are exactly like what you hear. This truth may be learned no less from an address of Quintus Metellus Numidicus, a man of wisdom, than from the books and the teachings of the philosophers. These are the words of Metellus from his speech Against Gaius Manlius, Tribune of the Commons,[*](O.R.F. p. 274, Meyer2.) by whom he had been assailed and taunted in spiteful terms in a speech delivered before the people:

Now, fellow citizens, so far as Manlius is concerned, since he thinks that he will appear a greater man, if he keeps calling me his enemy, who neither count him as my friend nor take account of him as an enemy, I do not propose to say another word. For I consider him not only wholly unworthy to be well spoken of by good men, but unfit even to be reproached by the upright. For if you name an insignificant fellow of his kind at a time when you cannot punish him, you confer honour upon him rather than ignominy.

That neither testamentum, as Servius Sulpicius thought, nor sacellum, as Gaius Trebatus believed, is a compound, but the former is an extended form of testatio, the latter a diminutive of sacrum.

I DO not understand what reason led Servius Sulpicius the jurist, the most learned man of his time, to write in the second book of his work On the Annulling of Sacred Rites[*](Fr. 3, Huschke; i, p. 225, Bremer.) that testamentum is a compound word; for he declared that it was made up of mentis contestatio, or

an attesting of the mind.

A sacellum, or 'shrine,' is a small place consecrated to a god and containing an altar.

Sacellum, I think, is made up of the two words sacer and cella, as if it were sacra cella, or 'a sacred clamber.'

On the brief topics discussed at the table of the philosopher Taurus and called Sympoticae, or Table Talk. [*](Really, talk over the wine, or after-dinner talk.)

THIS custom was practised and observed at Athens by those who were on intimate terms with the philosopher Taurus; when he invited us to his home, in order that we might not come wholly tax-free, [*](The reference is to a dinner to which each guest brought his contribution (symbolon); cf. Hor. Odes, iv. 12. 14 f., non ego te meis immunem meditor tinguere poculis; Catull. xiii.) as the saying is, and without a contribution, we brought to the simple meal, not dainty foods, but ingenious topics for discussion. Accordingly, each one of us came with a question which he had thought up and prepared, and when the eating ended, conversation began. The questions, however, were neither weighty nor serious, but certain neat but trifling e)nqumhma/tia, or problems, which would pique a mind enlivened with wine; for instance, the examples of playful subtlety which I shall quote.

The question was asked, when a dying man died—when he was already in the grasp of death, or while he still lived? And when did a rising man rise—when he was already standing, or while he was still seated? And when did one who was learning an art become an artist—when he already was one, or when he was still learning? For whichever answer you make, your statement will be absurd and laughable, and it will seem much more absurd, if you say that it is in either case, or in neither.

But when some declared that all these questions were pointless and idle sophisms, Taurus said:

Do not despise such problems, as if they were mere trifling

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amusements. The most earnest of the philosophers have seriously debated this question. [*](See Pease, Things without Honor, Class. Phil. xxi. (1926), pp. 97 ff.) Some have thought that the term 'die' was properly used, and that the moment of death came, while life still remained; others have left no life in that moment, but have claimed for death all that period which is termed dying.' Also in regard to other similar problems they have argued for different times and maintained opposite opinions. But our master Plato,

assigned that time neither to life nor to death, and took the same position in every discussion of similar questions. For he saw that the alternatives were mutually contrary, that one of the two opposites could not be maintained while the other existed, and that the question arose from the juxtaposition of two opposing extremes, namely life and death. Therefore he himself devised, and gave a name to, a new period of time, lying on the boundary between the two, which he called in appropriate and exact language h( e)cai/fnhs fu/sis, or 'the moment of sudden separation.' And this very term, as I have given it,

you will find used by him in the dialogue entitled Parmenides.

Of such a kind were our

contributions

sweetmeats

The three reasons given by the philosophers for punishing crimes; and why Plato mentions only two of these, and not three.

IT has been thought that there should be three reasons for punishing crimes. One of these, which

examples,

Other philosophers have discussed these three reasons for punishment in various places, and so too had our countryman Taurus in the first book of the

It is fitting that everyone who suffers punishment, when justly punished by another, either be made better and profit thereby, or serve as an example to others, in order that they, seeing his punishment, may be reformed through fear.