Noctes Atticae

What a tiresome and utterly hateful fault is vain and empty loquacity, and how often it has been censured in deservedly strong language by the greatest Greek and Latin writers.

THE talk of empty-headed, vain and tiresome babblers, who with no foundation of solid matter let out a stream of tipsy, tottering words, has justly been thought to come from the lips and not from the heart. Moreover, men say that the tongue ought not to be unrestrained and rambling, but guided and, so to speak, steered by cords connected with the heart and inmost breast. Yet you may see some men spouting forth words with no exercise of judgment, but with such great and profound assurance that many of them in the very act of speaking are evidently unaware that they are talking. Ulysses, on the contrary, a man gifted with sagacious eloquence, spoke, not from his lips but from his heart, as Hommer says—a remark which applies less to the sound and quality of his utterance than to the depth of the thoughts inwardly conceived; and the poet went on to say, with great aptness, that the teeth form a rampart to check wanton words, in order that reckless speech may not only be restrained by that watchful sentry the heart, but also hedged in by a kind of outpost, so to speak, stationed at the lips.

The words of Homer which I mentioned above are these: [*](Iliad, iii. 221.)

1. When from his breast his mighty voice went forth

and: [*](Iliad, iv. 350, etc.)

1. What a word has passed the barrier of your teeth.

I have added also a passage from Marcus Tullius, in which he expresses his strong and just hatred of silly and unmeaning volubility. He says: [*](De Orat. iii. 142.)

Provided this fact be recognized, that neither should one commend the dumbness of a man who knows a subject, but is unable to give it expression in speech, nor the ignorance of one who lacks knowledge of his subject, but abounds in words; yet if one must choose one or the other alternative, I for my part would prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

Also in the first book of the De Oratore [*](i. 51.) he wrote as follows:

For what is so insane as the empty sound of words, however well-chosen and elegant, if there be no foundation of sense or sagacity?

But Marcus Cato in particular is a relentless assailant of this fault. For in the speech entitled If Caelius, tribune of the commons, should have summoned him, [*](See Jordan's Cato, xl. 1. The meaning of the title, which is uncertain, is discussed in his Prolegomena, p. lxix f. Se refers to Cato himself. By some the speech is regarded as identical with the one mentioned by Fronto, vol. i, p. 117, L.C.L., and by Plutarch, Cato ix. 7, vol. ii, p. 329, L. C.L.) he says:

That man is never silent who is afflicted with the disease of talking, as one in a lethargy is afflicted with that of drinking and sleeping. For if you should not come together when he calls an assembly, so eager is he to talk that he would hire someone to listen. And so you hear him, but you do not listen, just as if he were a quack. For a quack's words are heard, but no one trusts himself

v1.p.77

to him when he is sick.

Again Cato, in the same speech, [*](xl. 2, Jordan.) upbraiding the same Marcus Caelius, tribune of the commons, for the cheapness at which not only his speech but also his silence could be bought, says:

For a crust of bread he can be hired either to keep silence or to speak.

Most deservedly too does Homer call Thersites alone of all the Greeks a)metroeph/s,

of measureless speech,

and a)krito/muqos, [*](Iliad ii. 212 246.)

a reckless babbler,

declaring that his words are many and a)/kosma, or

disordered,

like the endless chatter of daws; [*](Iliad, ii 213.) for what else does e)kolw/a (

he chattered

) mean? There is also a line of Eupolis most pointedly aimed at men of that kind: [*](Fr. 95, Koch.)

1. In chatter excellent, unable quite to speak,

and our countryman Sallust, wishing to imitate this, writes: [*](Hist. iv. 43, Maur.)

Talkative rather than eloquent.

It is for the same reason that Hesiod, wisest of poets, says [*](Works and Days, 719.) that the tongue should not be vulgarly exposed but hidden like a treasure, and that it is exhibited with best effect when it is modest, restrained and musical. His own words are:

1. The greatest of man's treasures is the tongue,
2. Which wins most favour when it spares its words
3. And measured is of movement.

The following verse of Epicharmus is also to the point: [*](Fr. 272, Kaib.)

1. Thou art not skilled in speech, yet silence cannot keep,

and it is from this line surely that the saying arose:

Who, though he could not speak, could not be silent.

I once heard Favorinus say that the familiar lines of Euripides: [*](Bacch. 386.)

1. Of unrestrained mouth
2. And of lawless folly
3. Is disaster the end,

ought not to be understood as directed only at those who spoke impiously or lawlessly, but might even with special propriety be used also of men who prate foolishly and immoderately, whose tongues are so extravagant and unbridled that they ceaselessly flow and seethe with the foulest dregs of language, the sort of persons to whom the Greeks apply the highly significant term kata/glwssoi, or

given to talk.

I learned from a friend of his, a man of learning, that the famous grammarian Valerius Probus, shortly before his death, began to read Sallust's well-known saying, [*](Cat. v. 4.)

a certain amount of eloquence but little discretion,

as

abundant talkativeness, too little discretion,

and that he insisted that Sallust left it in that form, since the word loquentia was very characteristic of Sallust, an innovator in diction, [*](It is true that Sallust was fond of new words, but the best MSS. of Sallust are unanimous for eloquentiae. Besides this passage of Gellius, L. and S. cite loquentia only in Plin. Epist. v. 20. 5, Iulius Cordus . . . solet dicere aliud esse eloquentiam, aliud loquentiam.) while eloquentia was not at all consistent with lack of discretion.

Finally, loquacity of this kind and a disorderly mass of empty grandiloquence is scored with striking epithets by Aristophanes, wittiest of poets, in the following lines: [*](Frogs, 837 ff., Rogers (L. C. L.). The epithets are applied to Aeschylus!)

1. A stubborn-creating, stubborn-pulling fellow,
2. Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech,
3. Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.

And no less pointedly did our forefathers also call men of that kind, who were drowned in words, "babblers, gabbllers and chatterboxes."

That those words of Quadrigarius in the third book of his Annals,

there a thousand of men is killed,

are not used arbitrarily or by a poetic figure, but in accordance with a definite and approved rule of the science of grammar.

QUADRIGARIUS in the third book of his Annals[*](Fr. 44, Peter.) wrote the following: "There a thousand of men is killed," using occiditur, not occiduntur. So too Lucilius in the third book of his Satires,

1. From gate to gate a thousand of paces is.
2. Thence to Salcrnum six, [*](v. 124, Marx, who has exinde for sex inde and supplies sumus, mus profecti.)

has mille est, not mille sunt. Varro in the seventeenth book of his Antiquilies of Man writes: [*](xviii, fr. 2, Mirsch. )

To the beginning of Romulus' reign is more than a thousand and one hundred years,

Marcus Cato in the first book of his Origins, [*](Fr. 26, Peter.)

From there it is nearly a thousand of paces.

Marcus Cicero has in his sixth Oration against Antony, [*](Phil. vi. 15.)

Is the middle Janus [*](The middle Janus was the seat of money-lenders and bankers. As a district it extended along the northern side of the Forum Romanum. The Janus itself was near the basilica Aemlia, perhaps at the entrance to the Argiletum.) so subject to the patronage of Lucius Antonius? Who has ever been found in that Janus who would lend Lucius Antonius a thousand of sesterces?

In these and many other passages mile is used in the singular number, and that is not, as some think, a concession to early usage or admitted as a neat figure of speech, but it is obviously demanded

by rule. For the word mille does not stand for the Greek xilioi,

thousand,

but for xilia/s,

a thousand

; and just as they say one xilia/s, or two xilia/des, so we say one thousand and two thousands according to a definite and regular rule. Therefore these common expressions are correct and good usage,

There is a thousand of denarii in the chest,

and

There is a thousand of horsemen in the army.

Furthermore Lucilius, in addition to the example cited above, makes this point still clearer in another place also: for in his fifteenth book he says: [*](506 ff., Marx, who punctuates with a comma after succussor, with a slight change in the meaning, taking nullus seqetur in the sense of non sequetur. On the Campanian horses see Livy, viii.11.5 and xxvi.4.3, 6; Val. Max. ii.3.3.)

1. This horse no jolting fine Campanian steed,
2. Though he has passed him by one thousand, aye
3. And twain, of paces, can in a longer course
4. Compete with, but he will in fact appear
5. To run the other way.

So too in the ninth book: [*](327, Marx.)

1. With sesterces a thousand you can gain
2. A hundred thousand.

Lucilius wrote milli passum instead of mille passibus and uno milli nummum for unis mille nunmis, thus showing clearly that mille is a noun, used in the singular number, that its plural is milia, and that it also forms an ablative case. Nor ought we to expect the rest of the cases; for there are many other words which are declined only in single cases, and even some which are not declined at all. Therefore we can no longer doubt that Cicero, in the speech which he wrote In Defence of Milo, [*](§53.) used these words:

Before the estate of Clodius, where fully a thousand of

v1.p.85

ablebodied men was employed on those crazy substructures,

not

were employed,

as we find it in less accurate copies; for one rule requires us to say

a thousand men,

but another,

a thousand of men.