XIII

On the possibility of curing gout by certain melodies played in a special way on the flute.

I RAN across the statement very recently in the book of Theophrastus OnInspirationFr. 87, Wimmer. that many men have believed and put their belief on record, that when gouty pains in the hips are most severe, they are relieved if a flute-player plays soothing measures. That snake-bites are cured by the music of the flute, when played skilfully and melodiously, is also stated in a book of Democritus, entitled On Deadly Infections, in which he shows that the music of the flute is medicine for many ills that flesh is heir to. So very close is the connection between the bodies and the minds of men, and therefore between physical and mental ailments and their remedies.

XIV

A story told of Hostilius Mancinus, a curule aedile, and the courtesan Manilia; and the words of the decree of the tribunes to whom Manilia appealed.

As I was reading the ninth book of the Miscellany of Ateius Capito, entitled On Public Decisions, Fr. 1, Huschke; 1, Bremer. one decree of the tribunes seemed to me full of old-time dignity. For that reason I remember it, and it was rendered for this reason and to this purport. Aulus Hostilius Mancinus was a curule aedile. The date is uncertain. He brought suit before the people against a courtesan called Manilia, because he said that he had been struck with a stone thrown from her apartment by night, and he exhibited the wound made by the stone. Manilia appealed to the tribunes of the commons. Before them she declared that Mancinus had come to her house in the garb of a reveller; that it would not have been to her advantage to admit him, and that when he tried to break in by force, he had been driven off with stones. The tribunes decided that the aedile had rightly been refused admission to a place to which it had not been seemly for him to go with a garland on his head; That is, as a reveller coming from a drinking-bout. An aedile might visit such a place officially in the course of his duty of regulating taverns and brothels. therefore they forbade the aedile to bring an action before the people.

The defence of a passage in the historical works of Sallust, which his enemies attacked in a spirit of malicious criticism.

THE elegance of Sallust's style and his passion for coining and introducing new words was met with exceeding great hostility, and many men of no mean ability tried to criticize and decry much in his writings. Many of the attacks on him were ignorant or malicious. Yet there are some things that may be regarded as deserving of censure, as for example the following passage in the History of Catiline,iii. 2. which has the appearance of being written somewhat carelessly. Sallust's words are these: And for myself, although I am well aware that by no means equal repute attends the narrator and the doer of deeds, yet I regard the writing of history as one of the hardest of tasks; first because the style and diction must be equal to the deeds recorded; and in the second place, because such criticisms as you make of others' shortcomings are thought by most men to be due to malice and envy. Furthermore, when you commemorate the distinguished merit and fame of good men, while everyone is quite ready to believe you when you tell of things which he thinks he could easily do himself, everything beyond that he regards as fictitious, if not false. The critics say: He declared that he would give the reasons why it appears to be ' hard ' 'to write history'; and then, after mentioning the first reason, he does not give a second, but gives utterance to complaints. For it ought not to be regarded as a reason why the work of history is 'hard,' that the reader either misinterprets what is written or does not believe it to be true. They maintain that he ought to say that such work is exposed and subject to misjudgments, rather than hard ; for that which is hard is hard because of the difficulty of its accomplishment, not because of the mistaken opinions of other men.

That is what those ill-natured critics say. But Sallust does not use arduus merely in the sense of hard, but as the equivalent of the Greek word xalepo/s, that is, both difficult and also troublesome, disagreeable and intractable. And the meaning of these words is not inconsistent with that of the passage which was just quoted from Sallust.

XVI

On the inflection of certain words by Varro and Nigidius contrary to everyday usage; and also a quotation of some instances of the same kind from the early writers, with examples.

I LEARN that Marcus Varro and Publius Nigidius, Fr. 63, Swoboda. the most learned of all the Romans, always said and wrote senatuis, domuis and fluctuis as the genitive case of the words senatus, domus and fluctus, and used senatui, domui, fluctui, and other similar words, with the corresponding dative ending. There is also a line of the comic poet Terence, which in the old manuscripts is written as follows: Heaut. 287. Because, I think, of that old dame (anuis) who died. Some of the early grammarians wished to give this authority of theirs That is, of Varro, Nigidius, and Terence. the sanction of a rule; namely, that every dative singular ending in l, if it has not the same form as the genitive singular, Dative singulars ending in i and having the same form as the genitive singular occur only in the fifth declension (diei, rei, etc.), except for the archaic forms of the first declension in -ai. makes the genitive singular by adding s, as pati patris, duci ducis, caedi caedis. Therefore, they say, since we use senatui as the dative case, the genitive singular of that word is senatuis, not senatus.

But all are not agreed that we should use senatui in the dative case rather than senatu. For example, Lucilius in that same case uses victu and ann, and not victui and anui, in these verses: 1288, Marx. Since you to honest fare (victu) do waste and feasts prefer, and in another place: 280, Marx. I'm doing harm to the old girl (anu). Vergil also in the dative case writes aspectu and not aspecui: Aen. vi. 465. Withdraw not from our view (aspectu) and in the Georgics: iv. 198. Nor give themselves to love's embrace (concubitu). Gaius Caesar too, a high authority on the Latin language, says in his Speech against Cato: ii. p. 136, Dinter. owing to the arrogance, haughtiness and tyranny dominateu) of one man. Also in the First Action against Dolabella, Book I: ii. p. 121, Dinter; O. R. F.2, p. 410. Those in whose temples and shrines they had been placed for an honour and an adornment (ornatu). ii. p. 129, Dinter. Also, in his books on analogy he decides that i should be omitted in all such forms.

XVII

A discussion of the natural quantity of certain particles, the long pronunciation of which, when prefixed to verbs, seems to be barbarous and ignorant; with several examples and explanations.

IN the eleventh book of Lucilius are these lines: 394, Marx.Thus base Asellus did great Scipio taunt:Unlucky was his censorship and bad. I hear that many read obiciebat with a long o, and they say that they do this in order to preserve the metre. The point is, that the syllable ob, being a closed syllable, is long, while the vowel o is short. Hence o is pronounced short, but the first three syllables of obiciebat form a dactyl (_ u u). Gellius' explanation in §§ 7–8 is correct, although not so clear as it might be. Again farther on he says: 411, Marx. I'd versify the words the herald Granius spoke. In this passage also they lengthen the prefix of the first word for the same reason. Again in the fifteenth book: 509, Marx, who reads suffert citrus, following Lion. Subicit huic humilem et suffercitus posteriorem, The reading is uncertain and the meaning doubtful. The line is an hexameter, since final s (as in suffercitus) did not make position in early Latin. they read subicit with a long u, because it is not proper for the first syllable to be short in heroic verse. Likewise in the Epidicus of Plautus 194. they lengthen the syllable con in Haste now, Epidicus, prepare yourself,And throw (conice) your mantle round about your neck. In Virgil too I hear that some lengthen the verb subicit in: Georg. ii. 18. Parnassian laurel tooLifts (subicit) 'neath large mother-shade its infant stem. But neither the preposition ob nor sub is long by nature, nor is con long either, except when it is followed by the letters which come directly after it in constituit and confecit, Cf. ii. 17. or when its n is lost, as in Sallust's faenoribus copertus. Loaded with debt, Hist. fr. iv. 52, Maur.; see note on ii. 17. 11, p. 168. Copertus is from co- (not con-) opertus, and there is no loss of n. But in those instances which I have mentioned above the metre may be preserved without barbarously lengthening the prefixes; for the following letter in those words should be written with two i's, not with one. For the simple verb to which the above-mentioned particles are prefixed, is not icio, but iacio, and the perfect is not icit, but iecit. When that word is used in compounds, the letter a is changed into i, as happens in the verbs insilio and incipio, and thus the first i acquires consonantal force. Gellius is partly right. As in + capio and in + salio became incipio and insilio, so ob + iacio became obiicio. As the Romans disliked the combination ii, only one i was written, but both were pronounced, and the syllable ob was thus long by position. In the early Latin dramatists the scansion ăbicio indicates that the i was syncopated and the semi-vowel changed to a vowel. See Sommer, Lat. Laut- und Formenlehre, p. 522. Accordingly, that syllable, being pronounced a little longer and fuller, does not allow the first syllable to be short, but makes it long by position, and thus the rhythm of the verse and the correct pronunciation are preserved.

What I have said leads also to a knowledge of this, that in the line which we find in the sixth book of Virgil: Aen. vi. 365. Unconquered chieftain, save me from these ills;Or do thou earth cast on (inice) me, iniice is to be written and pronounced as I have indicated above, unless anyone is so ignorant as to lengthen the preposition in in this word too for the sake of the metre.

We ask then for what reason the letter o in obicibus is lengthened, since this word is derived from the verb obiicio, and is not at all analogous to motus, which is from moveo and is pronounced with a long o. I myself recall that Sulpicius Apollinaris, a man eminent for his knowledge of literature, pronounced obices and obicibus with a short o, and that in Virgil too he read in the same way the lines: Georg. iii. 479. And by what force the oceans fathomlessRise, bursting all their bounds (obicibus); but, as I have indicated, he gave the letter i, which in that word also should be doubled, a somewhat fuller and longer sound.

It is consistent therefore that subices also, which is formed exactly like obices, should be pronounced with the letter u short. Ennius, in his tragedy which is entitled Achilles, uses subices for the upper air which is directly below the heavens, in these lines: 2, Ribbeck3. By lofty, humid regions (subices) of the gods I swear, Whence comes the storm with savage roaring wind; yet, in spite of what I have said, you may hear almost everyone read subices with a long u. But Marcus Cato uses that very verb with another prefix in the speech which he delivered On his Consulship: i. 9, Jordan, who reads nos for hos. So the wind bears them to the beginning of the Pyrenees' range, where it extends (proicit) into the deep. And so too Pacuvius in the Chryses: 94, Ribbeck3. High Ida's cape, whose tongue into the deep extends (proicit).

XVIII

Some stories of the elder Publius Africanus, taken from the annals and well worth relating.

How greatly the earlier Scipio Africanus excelled in the splendour of his merits, how lofty and noble of spirit he was, and to what an extent he was upheld by consciousness of his own rectitude, is evident from many of his words and acts. Among these are the following two instances of his extreme self-confidence and sense of superiority.

When Marcus Naevius, tribune of the commons, accused him before the people In 185 B.C. and declared that he had received money from king Antiochus to make peace with him in the name of the Roman people on favourable and easy terms, and when the tribune added sundry other charges which were unworthy of so great a man, then Scipio, after a few preliminary remarks such as were called for by the dignity and renown of his life, said: I recall, fellow citizens, that this is the day on which in Africa in a mighty battle I conquered Hannibal the Carthaginian, the most bitter enemy of your power, and won for you a splendid peace and a glorious victory. Let us then not be ungrateful to the gods, but, I suggest, let us leave this worthless fellow, and go at once to render thanks to Jupiter, greatest and best of gods. So saying, he turned away and set out for the Capitol. Thereupon the whole assembly, which had gathered to pass judgment on Scipio, left the tribune, accompanied Scipio to the Capitol, and then escorted him to his home with the joy and expressions of gratitude suited to a festal occasion. The very speech is in circulation which is believed to have been delivered that day by Scipio, O. P. F., p. 6, Meyer2. and those who deny its authenticity at least admit that these words which I have quoted were spoken by Scipio.

There is also another celebrated act of his. Certain Petilii, tribunes of the commons, influenced they say by Marcus Cato, Scipio's personal enemy, and instigated to appear against him, insisted most vigorously in the senate Probably in 187 B.C., but the details of these attacks on Scipio are confused and uncertain. on his rendering an account of the money of Antiochus and of the booty taken in that war; for he had been deputy to his brother Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, the commander in that campaign. Thereupon Scipio arose, and taking a roll from the fold of his toga, said that it contained an account of all the money and all the booty; that he had brought it to be publicly read and deposited in the treasury. But that, said he, I shall not do now, nor will I so degrade myself. And at once, before them all, he tore the roll across with his own hands and rent it into bits, indignant that an account of money taken in war should be required of him, to whose account the salvation of the Roman State and its power ought to be credited. Accepta ferri is a technical term of book-keeping, to enter as received or on the credit side ; the opposite is ferre expensum, i, 16. 5, to enter as paid out or on the debit side.

XIX

What Marcus Varro wrote in his Philosophical-historical Treatise on restricting the diet of immature children.

IT has been found that if immature children eat a great deal and sleep too much, they become so sluggish as to have the dulness of a sufferer from insomnia or lethargy; and their bodies are stunted and under-developed. This is stated by numerous other physicians and philosophers and also by Marcus Varro in that section of his Philosophical-historical Treatise which is entitled Catus, or On Bringing up Children. Fr. 17, Riese.

On the punishment by the censors of men who had made untimely jokes in their hearing; also a deliberation as to the punishment of a man who had happened to yawn when standing before them.

AMONG the severities of the censors these three examples of the extreme strictness of their discipline are recorded in literature. The first is of this sort: The censor was administering the usual oath regarding wives, which was worded as follows: Have you, to the best of your knowledge and belief, a wife? The man who was to take the oath was a jester, a sarcastic dog, Canicula is used of a biting woman by Plaut. Cure. 598, and of Diogenes by Tertullian, adv. Marc. 1. 1. and too much given to buffoonery. Thinking that he had a chance to crack a joke, when the censor asked him, as was customary, Have you, to the best of your knowledge and belief, a wife? he replied: I indeed have a wife, but not, by Heaven! such a one as I could desire. The joke, which seems untranslatable, is of course on the doublemeaning of ex sententia, according to your opinion and according to your wish. Then the censor reduced him to a commoner for his untimely quip, Made him one of the aerarii; see note 1, p. 352. and added that the reason for his action was a scurrilous joke made in his presence.

Here is another instance of the sternness of the same officials. The censors deliberated about the punishment of a man who had been brought before them by a friend as his advocate, and who had yawned in court very clearly and loudly. He was on the point of being condemned for his lapse, on the ground that it was an indication of a wandering and trifling mind and of wanton and undisguised indifference. But when the man had sworn that the yawn had overcome him much against his will and in spite of his resistance, and that he was afflicted with the disorder known as oscedo, or a tendency to yawning, he was excused from the penalty which had already been determined upon. Publius Scipio Africanus, son of Paulus, included both these stories in a speech which he made when censor, urging the people to follow the customs of their forefathers. O. R. F.,2 p. 179.

Sabinus Masurius too in the seventh book of his Memoirs relates a third instance of severity. He says: When the censors Publius Scipio Nasica and Marcus Popilius were holding a review of the knights, they saw a horse that was very thin and ill-kept, while its rider was plump and in the best of condition. 'Why is it,' said they, 'that you are better cared for than your mount?' 'Because,' he replied, 'I take care of myself, but Statius, a worthless slave, takes care of the horse.' This answer did not seem sufficiently respectful, and the man was reduced to a commoner, according to custom.

Now Statius was a slave-name. In old times there were many slaves of that name. Caecilius too, the famous comic poet, was a slave and as such called Statius. But afterwards this was made into a kind of surname and he was called Caecilius Statius. This was regular in the case of freedmen, who took the forename and gentile name of their patron, or former master, and added their slave-name as a cognomen; e.g. M. Tullius Tiro. The forename of the Caecilius to whom Statius belonged is not known.

Book V

That the philosopher Musonius criticized and rebuked those who expressed approval of a philosopher's discourse by loud shouts and extravagant demonstrations of praise.

I have heard that the philosopher Musonius p. 130, Hense. was accustomed. . . There seems to be a lacuna in the text; see crit. note. When a philosopher, he says, is uttering words of encouragement, of warning, of persuasion, or of rebuke, or is discussing any other philosophical theme, then if his hearers utter trite and commonplace expressions of praise without reflection or restraint, if they shout too, if they gesticulate, if they are stirred and swayed and impassioned by the charm of his utterance, by the rhythm of his words, and by certain musical notes, Heracus suggests fritamenta in i. 11, 12. as it were, then you may know that speaker and hearers are wasting their time, and that they are not hearing a philosopher's lecture, but a flute-player's recital. The mind, said he, of one who is listening to a philosopher, so long as what is said is helpful and salutary, and furnishes a cure for faults and vices, has no time or leisure for continued and extravagant applause. Whoever the hearer may be, unless he is wholly lost, during the course of the philosopher's address he must necessarily shudder and feel secret shame and repentance, or rejoice or wonder, and even show changes of countenance and betray varying emotions, according as the philosopher's discourse has affected him and his consciousness of the different tendencies of his mind, whether noble or base.

He added that great applause is not inconsistent with admiration, but that the greatest admiration gives rise, not to words, but to silence. Therefore, said he, "the wisest of all poets does not represent those who heard Ulysses' splendid account of his hardships as leaping up, when he ceased speaking, with shouts and noisy demonstrations, but he says they were one and all silent, as if amazed and confounded, since the gratification of their ears even affected their power of utterance."

Thus he; but they in silence all were hushedAnd held in rapture through the shadowy hall. Odyss. xiii. 1. Odysseus (Ulysses) had just finished telling his story to Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, and his court.

About the horse of king Alexander, called Bucephalas.

THE horse of king Alexander was called Bucephalas because of the shape of his head. Bucephalas in Greek means ox-headed. Chares wrote Fr. 14, p. 117, Müller. that he was bought for thirteen talents and given to king Philip; that amount in Roman money is three hundred and twelve thousand sesterces. It seemed a noteworthy characteristic of this horse that when he was armed and equipped for battle, he would never allow himself to be mounted by any other than the king. Cf. Suet. Jul. lxi. It is also related that Alexander in the war against India, mounted upon that horse and doing valorous deeds, had driven him, with disregard of his own safety, too far into the enemies' ranks. The horse had suffered deep wounds in his neck and side from the weapons hurled from every hand at Alexander, but though dying and almost exhausted from loss of blood, he yet in swiftest course bore the king from the midst of the foe; but when he had taken him out of range of the weapons, the horse at once fell, and satisfied with having saved his master breathed his last, with indications of relief that were almost human. Then king Alexander, after winning the victory in that war, founded a city in that region and in honour of his horse called it Bucephalon.

III

The reason and the occasion which are said to have introduced Protagoras to the study of philosophical literature.

THEY say that Protagoras, a man eminent in the pursuit of learning, whose name Plato gave to that famous dialogue of his, in his youth earned his living as a hired labourer and often carried heavy burdens on his back, being one of that class of men which the Greeks call a)xqofo/roi and we Latins baiuli, or porters. He was once carrying a great number of blocks of wood, bound together with a short rope, from the neighbouring countryside into his native town of Abdera. It chanced at the time that Democritus, a citizen of that same city, a man esteemed before all others for his fine character and his knowledge of philosophy, as he was going out of the city, saw Protagoras walking along easily and rapidly with that burden, of a kind so awkward and so difficult to hold together. Democritus drew near, and noticing with what skill and judgment the wood was arranged and tied, asked the man to stop and rest awhile. When Protagoras did as he was asked, and Democritus again observed that the almost circular heap of blocks was bound with a short rope, and was balanced and held together with all but geometrical accuracy, lie asked who had put the wood together in that way. When Protagoras replied that he had done it himself, Democritus asked him to untie the bundle and arrange it again in the same way. But after he had done so, then Democritus, astonished at the keen intellect and cleverness of this uneducated man, said: My dear young man, since you have a talent for doing things well, there are greater and better employments which you can follow with me ; and he at once took him away, kept him at his own house, supplied him with money, taught him philosophy, and made him the great man that he afterwards became.

Yet this Protagoras was not a true philosopher, but the cleverest of sophists; for in consideration of the payment of a huge annual fee, he used to promise his pupils that he would teach them by what verbal dexterity the weaker cause could be made the stronger, a process which he called in Greek: to\n h(/ttw lo/gon krei/ttw poiei=n, or making the worse appear the better reason.

On the word duovicesimus, which is unknown to the general public, but occurs frequently in the writings of the learned.

I CHANCED to be sitting in a bookshop in the Sigillaria See note 2, p. 128. with the poet Julius Paulus, the most learned man within my memory; and there was on sale there the Annals of Fabius Quintus Fabius Pictor, who was sent as an envoy to Delphi after the battle of Cannae (216 B. C.), wrote a history of Rome from the coming of Aeneas to his own time. He wrote in Greek, but a Latin version is mentioned also by Quintilian (i. 6. 12) and was used by Varro and by Cicero. in a copy of good and undoubted age, which the dealer maintained was without errors. But one of the better known grammarians, who had been called in by a purchaser to inspect the book, said that he had found in it one error; but the bookseller for his part offered to wager any amount whatever that there was not a mistake even in a single letter. The grammarian pointed out the following passage in the fourth book: Fr. 6, Peter. Therefore it was then that for the first time one of the two consuls was chosen from the plebeians, in the twenty-second (duovicesimo) year after the Gauls captured Rome. It ought, said lie, to read, not duovicesimo, but duodevicesimo or twenty-second; for what is the meaning of duovicesimo? . . . Varro There is a lacuna in the text which might be filled by This question might be answered by. in the sixteenth book of his Antiquities of Man; there he wrote as follows: Fr. 1, Mirsch. He died in the twenty-second year Of his reign. (duovicesimo); he was king for twenty-one years. . . .

How the Carthaginian Hannibal jested at the expense of king Antiochus.

IN collections of old tales it is recorded that Hannibal the Carthaginian made a highly witty jest when at the court of king Antiochus. The jest was this: Antiochus was displaying to him on the plain the gigantic forces which he had mustered to make war on the Roman people, and was manœuvring his army glittering with gold and silver ornaments. He also brought up chariots with scythes, elephants with turrets, and horsemen with brilliant bridles, saddlecloths, neck-chains and trappings. And then the king, filled with vainglory at the sight of an army so great and so well-equipped, turned to Hannibal and said: Do you think that all this can be equalled and that it is enough for the Romans? Then the Carthaginian, deriding the worthlessness and inefficiency of the king's troops in their costly armour, replied: I think all this will be enough, yes, quite enough, for the Romans, even though they are most avaricious. Absolutely nothing could equal this remark for wit and sarcasm; the king had inquired about the size of his army and asked for a comparative estimate; Hannibal in his reply referred to it as booty.

On military crowns, with a description of the triumphal, siege, civic, mural, camp, naval, ovation, and olive crowns.

MILITARY crowns are many and varied. Of these the most highly esteemed I find to be in general the following: the triumphal, siege, civic, mural, camp and naval crowns. There is besides the so-called ovation crown, and lastly also the olive crown, which is regularly worn by those who have not taken part in a battle, but nevertheless are awarded a triumph.

Triumphal crowns are of gold and are presented to a commander in recognition of the honour of a triumph. This in common parlance is gold for a crown. This crown in ancient times was of laurel, but later they began to make them of gold.

The siege crown is the one which those who have been delivered from a state of siege present to the general who delivered them. That crown is of grass, and custom requires that it be made of grass which grew in the place within which the besieged were confined. This crown of grass the Roman senate and people presented to Quintus Fabius Maximus in the second Punic war, because he had freed the city of Rome from siege by the enemy.

The crown is called civic which one citizen gives to another who has saved his life in battle, in recognition of the preservation of his life and safety. It is made of the leaves of the esculent oak, because the earliest food and means of supporting life were furnished by that oak; it was formerly made also from the holm oak, because that is the species which is most nearly related to the esculent; this we learn from a comedy of Caecilius, who says: v. 269, Ribbeck3. They pass with cloaks and crowns of holm; ye Gods! But Masurius Sabinus, Fr. 17, Huschke; 8, Bremer. in the eleventh book of his Memoirs, says that it was the custom to award the civic crown only when the man who had saved the life of a fellow citizen had at the same time slain the enemy who threatened him, and had not given ground in that battle; under other conditions he says that the honour of the civic crown was not granted. He adds, however, that Tiberius Caesar was once asked to decide whether a soldier might receive the civic crown who had saved a citizen in battle and killed two of the enemy, yet had not held the position in which he was fighting, but the enemy had occupied it. The emperor ruled that the soldier seemed to be among those who deserved the civic crown, since it was clear that he had rescued a fellow citizen from a place so perilous that it could not be held even by valiant warriors. It was this civic crown that Lucius Gellius, an ex-censor, proposed in the senate that his country should award to Cicero in his consulship, because it was through his efforts that the frightful conspiracy of Catiline had been detected and punished.

The mural crown is that which is awarded by a commander to the man who is first to mount the wall and force his way into an enemy's town; therefore it is ornamented with representations of the battlements of a wall. A camp crown is presented by a general to the soldier who is first to fight his way into a hostile camp; that crown represents a palisade. The naval crown is commonly awarded to the armed man who has been the first to board an enemy ship in a sea-fight; it is decorated with representations of the beaks of ships. Now the mural, camp, and naval crowns are regularly made of gold.

The ovation crown is of myrtle; it was worn by generals who entered the city in an ovation.

The occasion for awarding an ovation, and not a triumph, is that wars have not been declared in due form and so have not been waged with a legitimate enemy, or that the adversaries' character is low or unworthy, as in the case of slaves or pirates, or that, because of a quick surrender, a victory was won which was dustless, as the saying is, )Akoniti/ (dustless ) was proverbial in Greek for without an effort, as in Thuc. iv. 73; Xen. Ages. 6. 3. Cf. Hor. Epist. i. 1. 54, cui sit condicio dulcis sine pulvere palma. and bloodless. For such an easy victory they believed that the leaves sacred to Venus were appropriate, on the ground that it was a triumph, not of Mars, but as it were of Venus. And Marcus Crassus, when he returned after ending the Servile war and entered the city in an ovation, disdainfully rejected the myrtle crown and used his influence to have a decree passed by the senate, that he should be crowned with laurel, not with myrtle.

Marcus Cato charges Marcus Fulvius Nobilior Nobilior was consul in 189 B. C. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 2. 3, says that Cato criticized him also for taking Ennius with him to his province of Aetolia. with having awarded crowns to his soldiers for the most trifling reasons possible, for the sake of popularity. On that subject I give you Cato's own words: xiv. 1, Jordan. Now to begin with, who ever saw anyone presented with a crown, when a town had not been taken or an enemy's camp burned? But Fulvius, against whom Cato brought that charge, had bestowed crowns on his soldiers for industry in building a rampart or in digging a well.

I must not pass over a point relating to ovations, about which I learn that the ancient writers disagreed. For some of them have stated that the man who celebrated an ovation was accustomed to enter the city on horseback: but Masurius Sabinus says Fr. 26, Huschke; memory. 15, Bremer. that they entered on foot, followed, not by their soldiers, but by the senate in a body.

VII

How cleverly Gavius Bassus explained the word persons, and what he said to be the origin of that word.

CLEVERLY, by Heaven! and wittily, in my opinion, does Gavius Bassus explain the derivation of the word persona, in the work that he composed On the Origin of Words; for he suggests that that word is formed from personae. For, he says, Frag. 8, Fun. the head and the face are shut in on all sides by the covering of the persona, or mask, and only one passage is left for the issue of the voice; and since this opening is neither free nor broad, but sends forth the voice after it has been concentrated and forced into one single means of egress, it makes the sound clearer and more resonant. Since then that covering of the face gives clearness and resonance to the voice, it is for that reason called persona, the o being lengthened because of the formation of the word.

VIII

A defence of some lines of Virgil, in which the grammarian Julius Hyginus alleged that there was a mistake; and also the meaning of lituus; and on the etymology of that word.

HERE, wielding his Quirinal augur-staff,Girt with scant shift and bearing on his leftThe sacred shield, Picus appeared enthroned.

In these verses Aen. vii. 187. Hyginus wrote Frag. 5, Fun. that Virgil was in error, alleging that he did not notice that the words ipse Quirinali lituo lacked something. For, said he, if we have not observed that something is lacking, the sentence seems to read ' girt with staff and scant shift,' which, says he,is utterly absurd; for since the lituus is a short wand, curved at its thicker end, such as the augurs use, how on earth can one be looked upon as ' girt with a lituus? '

As a matter of fact, it was Hyginus himself who failed to notice that this expression, like very many others, contains an ellipsis. For example, when we say Marcus Cicero, a man of great eloquence and Quintus Roscius, an actor of consummate grace, neither of these phrases is full and complete, but to the hearer they seem full and complete. As Vergil wrote in another place: Aen. v. 372. Victorious Butes of huge bulk, that is, having huge bulk, and also in another passage: Aen. v. 401. Into the ring he hurled gauntlets of giant weight, and similarly: Aen. iii. 618. A house of gore and cruel feasts, dark, huge within, so then it would seem that the phrase in question ought to be interpreted as Picus was with the Quirinal staff, just as we say the statue was with a large head, and in fact est, erat and fuit are often omitted, with elegant effect and without any loss of meaning. This explanation of Quirinali lituo as an ablative of quality is of course wrong; we simply have zeugma in subcinctus, equipped with and girt with.

And since mention has been made of the lituus, I must not pass over a question which obviously may be asked, whether the augurs' lituus is called after the trumpet of the same name, or whether the trumpet derived its name lituus from the augurs' staff; for both have the same form and both alike are curved. The trumpet called lituits was slightly curved at the end, differing from the tuba, which was straight, and the spiral cornn. The augur's staff was like a crook with a short handle. But if, as some think, the trumpet was called lituus from its sound, because of the Homeric expression li/gce bio/s, Iliad iv. 125. The bow twanged, it must be concluded that the augural staff was called litmus from its resemblance to the trumpet. And Virgil uses that word also as synonymous with tuba: Aen. vi. 167.

He even faced the frayConspicuous both with clarion (lituo) and with spear.

The story of Croesus dumb son, from the books of Herodotus.

THE son of king Croesus, when he was already old enough to speak, was dumb, and after lie had become a well-grown youth, he was still unable to utter a word. Hence he was for a long time regarded as mute and tongue-tied. When his father had been vanquished in a great war, the city in which he lived had been taken, and one of the enemy was rushing upon him with drawn sword, unaware that he was the king, then the young man opened his mouth in an attempt to cry out. And by that effort and the force of his breath he broke the impediment and the bond upon his tongue, and spoke plainly and clearly, shouting to the enemy not to kill king Croesus. Then the foeman withheld his sword, the king's life was saved, and from that time on the youth began to speak. Herodotus in his Histories i. 85. is the chronicler of that event, and the words which he says the son of Croesus first spoke are: Man, do not kill Croesus.

But also an athlete of Samos—his name was Echeklous—although he had previously been speechless, is said to have begun to speak for a similar reason. For when in a sacred contest the casting of lots between the Samians and their opponents was not being done fairly, and he had noticed that a lot with a false name was being slipped in, he suddenly shouted in a loud voice to the man who was doing it that he saw what he was up to. And he too was freed from the check upon his speech and for all the remaining time of his life spoke without stammering or lack of clearness. Valerius Maximus, i. 8. ext. 4 says: cum ei victoriae quam adeptus erat titulus et praemium eriperetur, indignatione accensus vocalis evasit. Just how he was cheated in the story told by Gellius is not clear, unless the lots were cast to determine which of the contestants should be matched together, and he was matched against an unsuitable opponent.