Noctes Atticae

That o(moiote/leuta, o(moio/ptwta, and other devices of the kind which are considered ornaments of style, are silly and uerile, is indicated, among other places, in some verses of Lucilius.

LUCILIUS in the fifth book of his Satires shows, and indeed most wittily, how silly, useless, and puerile are o(moiote/leuta, or

words of the same ending,

i)sokata/lhkta, or

words of the same sound,

pa/risa, or

words exactly balanced,

o(moio/ptwta, or

words of the same case,

and other niceties of that kind which those foolish pedants who wish to appear to be followers of Isocrates use in their compositions without moderation or taste. For having complained to a friend because he did not come to see him when he was ill, he adds these merry words: [*](vv. 181 ff., Marx.)

1. Although you do not ask me how I am,
2. I'll tell you, since with those I still abide
3. Who of all mortals are the lesser part [*](The poet has been ill, but still lives; cf. abiit ad plures, Petron. 42.) . . .
4. You are the slacker friend [*](Marx suggests Tu cessator malus, talis amicus as the sense of the lacuna.) who'd wish him dead
5. Whom you'd not visit though it was your debit.
6. But if you chide this

   visit

   joined with

   debit

7. ('Twas writ by chance), if you detest it all,
8. This silly, puerile, Isocratic [*](The homoioteleuta of Isocrates are mentioned, among others, by Cicero, Orator, 38.) stuff,
9. I'll waste no time on you, [*](That is, in deleting the jingle.) since such you are. [*](Such a friend as he has described.)

The meaning of the word insecenda in Marcus Cato; and that insecenda ought to be read rather than insequenda, which many prefer.

IN an old book, containing the speech of Marcus Cato On Ptolemy against Thermus, were these words: [*](p. 42. 6, Jordan.)

But if he did everything craftily, everything for the sake of avarice and pelf, such abominable crimes as we have never heard of or read of, he ought to suffer punishment for his acts. . .

The question was raised what insecenda meant. Of those who were present at the time there was one who was a dabbler in literature and another who was versed in it; that is to say, one was teaching the subject, the other was learned in it. [*](On the distinction between litterator and litteratus see Suet. Gram. iv. (ii. p. 401 f. L.C.L.).) These two disagreed with each other, the grammarian maintaining that insequenda ought to be written:

For,

said he,

insequenda should be written, not insecenda, since insequens means . . . and inseque has come down to us in the sense of 'proceed to say,' and accordingly insequor was written by Ennius in the following verses: [*](Ann. 326 f., Vahlen2, who reads insece.)

1. Proceed, O Muse, when Rome with Philip warred,
2. To tell the valorous deeds our leaders wrought.

But the other, more learned, man declared that there was no mistake, but that it was written correctly and properly, and that we ought to trust Velius Longus, a man not without learning, who

wrote in the commentary which he composed On the Use of Archaic Terms, that inseque should not be read in Ennius, but insece; and that therefore the early writers called what we term narrationes, or

tales,

insectiones; that Varro also explained this verse from the Menaechmi of Plautus: [*](v. 1047.)

1. Nihilo minus esse videtur sectius quam somnia,

as follows:

they seem to me no more worth telling than if they were dreams.

Such was their discussion.

I think that both Marcus Cato and Quintus Ennius wrote insecenda and insece without u. For in the library at Patrae [*](A city of Achaia, near the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf, modern Patras.) I found a manuscript of Livius Andronicus of undoubted antiquity, entitled )Odu/sseia, in which the first line contained this word without the letter u: [*](Frag. 1, Bahrens.)

1. Tell me (insece), O Muse, about the crafty man,

translated from this line of Homer: [*](Odyss. i. 1.)

1. )/Andra moi e)/nnepe, Mou=sa, polu/tropon.

On that point then I trust a book of great age and authority. For the fact that the line of Plautus has sectius quam somnia lends no weight to the opposite opinion. However, even if the men of old did say insece and not inseque, I suppose because it was lighter and smoother, yet the two words seem to have the same meaning. For sequo and sequor and likewise secta and sectio differ in the manner of their use, but anyone who examines them closely will find that their derivation and meaning are the same.

The teachers also and interpreters of Greek words think that in

1. a)/ndra moi e)/nnepe, Mou=sa,[*](Odyss. i. 1.)

and

1. e)/spete nu=n moi, Mou=sai,[*](Iliad ii. 484, etc.)

e)/nnepe, and e)/spete are expressed by the Latin word inseque; for they say that in one word the n is doubled, in the other changed to s. And they also say that the word e)/ph, which means

words

or

verses,

can he derived only a)po\ tou= e(/pesqai kai\ tou= ei)pei=n, that is from

follow

and

say.

Therefore for the same reason our forefathers called narrations and discourses insectiones.

That those persons are in error who think that in testing for fever the pulse of the veins is felt, and not that of the arteries.

IN the midst of the summer's heat I had withdrawn to the country house of Herodes, a man of senatorial rank, at a place in the territory of Attica which is called Cephisia, abounding in clear waters and groves. There I was confined to my bed by an attack of diarrhoea, accompanied by a high fever. When the philosopher Calvisius Taurus, and some others who were disciples of his, had come there from Athens to visit me, the physician who had been found there and who was sitting by me at the time, began to tell Taurus what discomfort I suffered and with what variations and intervals the fever came and went. Then in the course of the conversation remarking that I was now getting better, he said to Taurus:

You too may satisfy yourself of this, e)a\n

v3.p.333

a(/yh| au)tou= th=s flebo/s, which in our language certainly leans: si attigeris venam illius; that is, 'if you will put your finger on his vein.'

The learned men who accompanied Taurus were shocked by this careless language in calling an artery a vein, and looking on him as a physician of little value, showed their opinion by their murmurs and expression. Whereupon Taurus, very mildly, as was his way, said:

We feel sure, my good sir, that you are not unaware of the difference between veins and arteries; that the veins have no power of motion and are examined only for the purpose of drawing off blood, but that the arteries by their motion and pulsation show the condition and degree of fever. But, as I see, you spoke rather in common parlance than through ignorance; for I have heard others, as well as you, erroneously use the term 'vein' for 'artery.' Let us then find that you are more skilled in curing diseases than in the use of language, and with the favour of the gods restore this man to us by your art, sound and well, as soon as possible.

Afterwards when I recalled this criticism of the physician, I thought that it was shameful, not only for a physician, but for all cultivated and liberally educated men, not to know even such facts pertaining to the knowledge of our bodies as are not deep and recondite, but which nature, for the purpose of maintaining our health, has allowed to be evident and obvious. Therefore I devoted such spare time as I had to dipping into those books on the art of medicine which I thought were suited to instruct me, and from them I seem to have learned, not only many other things which have to do with human experience, but also concerning veins and arteries what I

may express as follows: A

vein

is a receptacle, or a)ggei=on, as the physicians call it, for blood mingled and combined with vital breath, in which the blood predominates and the breath is less. An

artery

is a receptacle for the vital breath mingled and combined with blood, in which there is more breath and less blood. Sfugmo/s (pulsation) is the natural and involuntary expansion and contraction in the heart and in the artery. But the ancient Greek physicians defined it thus:

An involuntary dilation or contraction of the pulse and of the heart.