Noctes Atticae

What kind of questions we used to discuss when spending the Saturnalia at Athens; and some amusing sophistries and enigmas

WE used to spend the Saturnalia at Athens very merrily yet temperately, not

relaxing our minds,

as the saying is—for, as Musonius asserts, [*](p. 133, Hense.) to relax the mind is like losing it—but diverting our minds a little and relieving them by the delights of pleasant and improving conversation. Accordingly, a number of us Romans who had come to Greece, and who attended the same lectures and devoted ourselves to the same teachers, met at the same dinner-table. Then the one who was giving the entertainment in his turn, [*](Cf. note on vii. 13. 2.) offered as a prize for solving a problem the work of some old Greek or Roman writer and a crown woven from laurel, and put to us as many questions as there were guests present. But when he had put them all, the question which each was to discuss and the order of speaking were determined by lot. Then, when a question was correctly answered, the reward was a crown and a prize; if it was not correctly answered, it was passed on to the next in the allotment, and this process was repeated throughout the circle. If no one could answer a particular question, the crown was dedicated to the god in whose honour the festival was held. Now the questions that were proposed were of this kind: an obscure saying of some early poet, amusing rather than perplexing; some point in ancient history; the correction of some tenet of philosophy which was commonly misinterpreted, the solution of some sophistical catch, the investigation of a rare and unusual word, or of an obscure use of the tense of a verb of plain meaning.

And I recollect that once seven questions were put, the first of which was an explanation of these verses in the Saturae of Quintus Ennius, [*](vv. 59 ff., Vahlen2.) in which one word is very neatly used in many different senses. They run as follows:

1. Who tries with craft another to deceive,
2. Deceives himself, if he says he's deceived
3. Whom he'd deceive. For if whom you'd deceive
4. Perceives that he's deceived, the deceiver 'tis
5. Who is deceived, if 'other's not deceived. [*](Rendered as follows by R. J. E. Tiddy in Gordon, English Literature and the Classics, p. 206: The man who thinks to score a pretty score off another, says that he has scored off him off whom he would score—but he hasn't all the same. For he who thinks he's scoring, but isn't all the same, is scored off himself—and so the other scores.)

The second question was how it ought to be understood and interpreted that Plato in the State

which he planned in his books [*](Rep, p. 457, etc.; 460), 468.) said koina\s ta\s gunai=kas, that is, declared that women

should be common property,

and that the rewards of the bravest men and the greatest warriors should be the kisses of boys and maidens. In the third place this was asked, in what words the fallacy of the following catches consisted and how they could be made out and explained:

What you have not lost, that you have. You have not lost horns; therefore you have horns.

Also another catch:

What I am, that you are not. I am a man; therefore you are not a man.

Then it was inquired what was the solution of this sophistry:

When I lie and admit that I lie, do I lie or speak the truth?

Afterwards this question was put, why the patricians are in the habit of entertaining one another on the Megalensia, [*](The festival of Magna Mater, on April 4, established in 204 B.C.) and the plebeians on the Cerealia. [*](The festival of Ceres, on April 19.) Next came this question:

What one of the early poets used the verb verant, in the sense of 'they speak the truth '?

The sixth question was, what kind of plant the

asphodel

was, which Hesiod mentioned in the following lines: [*](Works and Days, 40. Cf. Horace, Odes, i. 31. 16: me pascunt olivae,Me cichorea levesque malvae.)

1. O fools! who know not how much half exceeds the whole, [*](Hesiod means that a simple and frugal life is the best. He had shared his father's property with his brother Perses; but Perses went to law and through the partiality of the judges got possession of the whole inheritance. He soon wasted it, and Hesiod, through his thrift, was able to come to his help. Hence the expression became proverbial. Cicero, on seeing a bust of his brother Quintus, who was of short stature, said: Half of my bother is greater than the whole. (Macrob. Sat. ii. 3. 4.))
2. Or that the asphodel and mallow make fine food.

And also what Hesiod meant when he said that the half was more than the whole. The last of all the questions was this: of what tense the verbs scripserim, legerim and venerim are, perfect or future, or both.

When these questions had been put in the order that I have mentioned, and had been discussed and explained by the several guests on whom the lots fell, we were all presented with crowns and books, except for the one question about the verb verant. For at the time no one remembered that the word was used by Quintus Ennius in the thirteenth book of his Annals in the following line: [*](v. 380, Vallen2.)

1. Do seers speak truth (verant), predicting life's extent?

Therefore the crown for this question was presented to Saturn, the god of that festival.

What the orator Aeschines, in the speech in which he accused Timarchus of unchastity, said that the Lacedaemonians decided about the praiseworthy suggestion of a most unpraiseworthy man

AESCHINES, the most acute and sagacious of the orators who gained renown in the Athenian assemblies, in that cruel, slanderous and virulent speech in which he severely and directly accused Timarchus of unchastity, says that a man of advanced years and high character, a leader in that State, once gave noble and distinguished counsel to the Lacedaemonians.

The people of Lacedaemon,

he says, [*](In Timarch. 180.)

were deliberating as to what was honourable and expedient in a matter of great moment to their State.

v3.p.305

Then there arose, for the purpose of giving his opinion, a man notorious for the baseness of his past life, but at the same time highly eminent for his eloquence and oratory. The advice which he gave, and the course which he said ought to be followed, were approved and accepted by all, and a decree of the people was about to be passed in accordance with his opinion. Thereupon one of that body of leading citizens whom the Lacedaemonians, because of the prestige of their age and rank, reverenced as judges and directors of public policy, [*](Cf. Cic. De Senectute, 20, apud Lacedaemonios quidem ii qui amplissimum magistratum geruiit, ut sunt, sic etiam nominantur, senes, referring to the gerousi/a.) sprang up in a spirit of anger and vexation, and said: ' What prospect, Lacedaemonians, or what hope, pray, will there be that this city and this State can longer be secure and invincible, if we follow counsellors whose past life is like that of this man? Even if this advice is honourable and noble, let us not, I pray you, allow it to be disgraced by the pollution of its most shameful author.' And when he had said this, he selected a man conspicuous before all others for his courage and justice, but a poor speaker and without eloquence, and bade him, with the consent and at the request of all, to deliver that opinion of the eloquent man in the best language he could command, in order that, without mention of the former speaker, the vote and decree of the people might be passed under the name of him alone who had last made that proposition. And the action which that most sagacious old man had recommended was taken. So the good advice endured, but its base author was displaced.

How Sulpicius Apollinaris made fun of a man who asserted that he alone understood Sallust's histories, by inquiring the meaning of these words in Sallust: incertum, stolidior an vacnior.

WHEN I was already a young man at Rome, having laid aside the purple-bordered toga of boyhood, and was on my own account seeking masters of deeper knowledge, I happened to be with the booksellers in Shoemaker's Street at the time when Sulpicius Apollinaris, the most learned man of all within my memory, in the presence of a large gathering made fun of a boastful fellow who was parading his reading of Sallust, and turned him into ridicule with that kind of witty irony which Socrates used against the sophists. For when the man declared that he was the one and only reader and expositor of Sallust, and openly boasted that he did not merely search into the outer skin and obvious meaning of his sentences, but delved into and thoroughly examined the very blood and marrow of his words, then Apollinaris, pretending to embrace and venerate his learning, said:

Most opportunely, my good master, do you come to me now with the blood and marrow of Sallust's language. For yesterday I was asked what in the world those words of his meant which he wrote in the fourth book of his Histories about Gnaeus Lentulus, of whom he says that it is uncertain whether he was more churlish or more unreliable

; and he quoted the very words, as Sallust wrote them: [*](list. iv. 1, Maur.)

But Gnaeus Lentulus, his colleague, surnamed Clodianus, a man of patrician family—and it is not at all easy to say whether he

v3.p.309

was more churlish or more unreliable—proposed a bill for exacting the money which Sulla had remitted to the purchasers of property.

Apolinaris therefore asserted that it was asked of him, and that he had not been able to answer tile question, what was meant by vanior and what by stolidior, since Sallust seemed to have separated the words and contrasted them with each other, as if they were different and unlike and did not both designate the same fault; and therefore he asked that the man would tell him the meaning and origin of the two words.

Then the other, showing by a grin and a grimace that he despised both the subject of the inquiry and the questioner himself; said:

I am accustomed to examine and explain the marrow and blood of ancient and recondite words, as I said, not of those which are in common use and trite. Surely a man is more worthless and stupid than Gnaeus Lentulus himself, if he does not know that vanitas and stoliditas indicate the same kind of folly.

But having said that, he left us in the very midst of our discussion and began to sneak off: Then we laid hold on him and pressed him, and in particular Apollinaris begged him to discourse at greater length and more plainly upon the difference, or, if he preferred, on the similarity of the words, and not to begrudge the information to one who was eager to learn.

Then the fellow, realizing by this time that he was being laughed at, pleaded an engagement and made off But we afterwards learned from Apollinaris that the term rani was properly applied, not as in common parlance to those who were foolish or dull or silly, but, as the most learned of the ancients

had used them, to liars, deceivers, and those who cleverly devised light and empty statements in place of those which were true and earnest. But that those were called stolidi who were not so much foolish and witless as austere, churlish and disagreeable, such men as the Greeks called moxqhroi/,

ugly fellows,

and fortikoi/,

common

or

vulgar folk.

He also said that the roots and derivations of these words were to be found in the books of Nigidius. [*](Fr. 45, Swoboda. Vanus is related to vacare and vacuus; Eng. want; stolidus to stolo, dullard, from the root stel-, stand, be stiff.) Having sought for these words and found them, with examples of their earliest meanings, I made a note of them, in order to include them in the notes contained in these Nights, and I think that I have already introduced them somewhere among them. [*](viii. 14.)