Noctes Atticae

Gellius, Aulus

Gellius, Aulus. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, 1927 (printing).

Words from the poems of Furius of Antium which were ignorantly criticised by Caesellius Vindex; a quotation of the very verses which include the words in question.

I CERTAINLY do not agree with Caesellius Vindex, the grammarian, though in my opinion he is by no means without learning. But yet this was a hasty and ignorant statement of his, that the ancient poet Furius of Antium had degraded the Latin language by forming words of a kind which to me did not seem inconsistent with a poet's license nor to be vulgar or unpleasant to speak and utter, as are some others which have been harshly and tastelessly fashioned by distinguished poets.

The expressions of Furius which Caesellius censures are these: that he uses lutescere of earth which has turned into mud, noctescere of darkness that has arisen like that of night, virescere of recovering former strength, describes the wind curling the blue sea and making it shine by purpurat, and uses opulescere for becoming rich.

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I have added the very lines from the poems of Furius in which these words occur: [*](Frag. 1–6, Bährens.)

  1. Blood floods the world, the deep earth turns to mud (lutescit),
  2. All becomes night (noctescunt) with darkness of black gloom.
  3. Their courage grows, valour 's renewed (virescit) by wounds.
  4. The fleet, like sea-bird, lightly skims the deep,
  5. The East Wind's breath empurples (purpurat) the green surge.
  6. That on their native plains they may grow rich (opulescere).

That our forefathers had the custom of changing passive verbs and turning them into active.

THIS also used to be regarded as a kind of elegance in composition, to use active verbs in place of those which had a passive form and then in turn to substitute the former for the latter. Thus Juventius in a comedy says: [*](5, Ribbeck3.)

  1. I care not if my cloak resplendent be, or spot. [*](The line is corrupt, but with Seyffert's emendation fairly clear.)

Is not this far more graceful and pleasing than if he said maculetur,

if it be spotted
? Plautus also says in a similar way: [*](Frag. fab. inc. xlv, Götz.)
  1. What's wrong?—This cloak doth wrinkle (rugat), I'm ill clad.
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Also Plautus uses pulveret, not of making dusty, but of being dusty: [*](Id. xlvi.)
  1. Go, sprinkle, slave; I'd have this entrance neat.
  2. My Venus comes, don't let the place show dust (pulveret).
In the Asinaria he uses contemples for contempleris: [*](v. 539.) Observe (contemples) my head, if you'd your interest heed. Gnaeus Gellius in his Annals [*](Frag. 30, Peter2.) writes:
After the storm quieted (sedavit) Adherbal sacrificed a bull
; Marcus Cato in his Origins: [*](Id. 20.)
Many strangers came to that same place from the country. Therefore their wealth waxed (auxit).
Varro in the books which he wrote On Latin Diction, dedicated to Marcellus, said: [*](Frag. 85, G. and S.)
In the former word the accents that were grave remain so. The others change,
where mutant,
change,
is a very elegant expression for mutantur,
are changed.
[*](Elegant because it balances manent.) The same expression too seems to be used by Varro in the seventh book of his Divine Antiquities: [*](Frag. 1, p. cxlv, Merkel.)
What a difference (quid mutet) there is between princesses may be seen in Antigone and Tullia.
But passive verbs instead of active are found in the writings of almost all the men of the olden time. A few of these, which I recall now, are the following: muneror te, or
I reward you,
for munero; significor, or
I indicate,
for significo; assentior, or
I assent,
for assentio; sacrificor, or
I sacrifice,
for sacrifice; faeneror, or
I practise usury,
for faenero; pigneror, or
I take as a pledge,
for pignero, and many others of the same kind, which will be noted as I meet them in reading.

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The retort which the philosopher Diogenes made, when he was challenged by a logician with an impudent sophistry.

AT Athens during the Saturnalia we engaged in a pleasant and improving diversion of this kind: when a number of us who were interested in the same study had met at the time of the bath, we discussed the catch questions which are called

sophisms,
and each one of us cast them before the company in his turn, like knuckle-bones or dice. The prize for solving a problem, or the penalty for failing to understand it, was a single sestertius. From the money thus collected, as if it had been won at dice, a little dinner was provided for all of us who had taken part in the game. Now the sophisms were somewhat as follows, although they cannot be expressed very elegantly in Latin, or even without clumsiness:
What snow is, that hail is not; but snow is white, therefore hail is not white.
A somewhat similar one is this:
What man is, that a horse is not; man is an animal, therefore a horse is not an animal.
The one who was called upon by the throw of the dice to solve and refute the sophistry was expected to tell in what part of the proposition and in what word the fallacy consisted, and what ought not to be granted and conceded; if he did not succeed, he was fined one sestertius. The fine contributed to the dinner.

I must tell you how wittily Diogenes paid back a sophism of that kind which I have mentioned above, proposed with insulting intent by a logician of the Platonic school. For when the logician had

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asked:
You are not what I am, are you?
and Diogenes had admitted it, he added:
But I am a man.
And when Diogenes had assented to that also and the logician had concluded:
Then you are not a man,
Diogenes retorted:
That is a lie, but if you want it to be true, begin your proposition with me.