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).

That it is written in the Annals of Quintus Claudius that wood smeared with alum does not burn.

THE rhetorician Antonius Julianus, besides holding forth on many other occasions, had once declaimed with marvellous charm and felicity. For such scholastic declamations generally show the characteristics of the same man and the same eloquence, but nevertheless are not every day equally happy. We friends of his therefore thronged about him on all sides and were escorting him home, when, as we were on our way up the Cispian Hill, we saw that a block of houses, built high with many stories, had caught fire, and that now all the neighbouring buildings were burning in a mighty conflagration. Then some one of Julianus' companions said:

The income from city property is great, but the dangers are far greater. But if some remedy could be devised to prevent houses in Rome from so constantly catching fire, by Jove! I would sell my country property and buy in the city.

And Julianus replied to him in his usual happy and graceful style:

If you had read the nineteenth book of the Annals of Quintus Claudius, that excellent and faithful writer, you would surely have learned from Archelaus, a praefect of king Mithridates, by what method and by what skill you might prevent fires, so that no wooden building of yours
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would burn, even though caught and penetrated by the flames.

I inquired what this marvel of Quadrigarius [*](That is, Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius; see § 4.) was. He rejoined:

In that book then I found it recorded, that when Lucius Sulla attacked the Piraeus in the land of Attica, and Archelaus, praefect of king Mithridates, was defending it against him, Sulla was unable to burn a wooden tower constructed for purposes of defence, although it had been surrounded with fire on every side, because Archelaus had smeared it with alum.

The words of Quadrigarius in that book are as follows: [*](Frag. 81, Peter2.)

When Sulla had exerted himself for a long time, he led out his troops in order to set fire to a single wooden tower which Archelaus had interposed. He came, he drew near, he put wood under it, he beat off the Greeks, he applied fire; though they tried for a considerable time, they were never able to set it on fire, so thoroughly had Archelaus covered all the wood with alum. Sulla and his soldiers were amazed at this, and failing in his attempt, the general led back his troops.

That Plato in the work which he wrote On the Laws expressed the opinion that inducements to drink more abundantly and more merrily at feasts were not without benefit.

A MAN from the island of Crete, who was living in Athens, gave out that he was a Platonic philosopher and desired to pass as one. He was, however, a man of no worth, a trifler, boastful of his command

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of Grecian eloquence, besides having a passion for wine which fairly made him a laughing stock. At the entertainments which it was the custom of us young men to hold at Athens at the beginning of each week, as soon as we had finished eating and an instructive and pleasant conversation had begun, this fellow, having called for silence that he might be heard, began to speak, and using a cheap and disordered rabble of words after his usual fashion, urged all to drink; and this he declared that he did in accordance with the injunction of Plato, maintaining that Plato in his work On the Laws had written most eloquently in praise of drunkenness, and had decided that it was beneficial to good and strong men. And at the same time, while he was thus speaking, he drenched such wits as he had with frequent and huge beakers, saying that it was a kind of touchwood and tinder to the intellect and the faculties, if mind and body were inflamed with wine.

However, Plato in the first [*](9, p. 637, A; 14, p. 647, E.) and second [*](9, p. 666, A; 12, p. 671, B.) books of his work On the Laws did not, as that fool thought, praise that shameful intoxication which is wont to undermine and weaken men's minds, although he did not disapprove of that somewhat more generous and cheerful inspiration of wine which is regulated by some temperate arbiters, so to speak, and presidents of banquets. For he thought that by the proper and moderate relaxation of drinking the mind was refreshed and renewed for resuming the duties of sobriety, and that men were gradually rendered happier and became readier to repeat their efforts. At the same time, if there were deep in their hearts any errors of inclination or desire,

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which a kind of reverential shame concealed, he thought that by the frankness engendered by wine all these were disclosed without great danger and became more amenable to correction and cure.

And in the same place Plato says this also: that exercises of this kind [*](That is, in the moderate use of wine, explained by adversum . . . violentiam.) for the purpose of resisting the violence of wine, are not to be avoided and shunned, and that no one ever appeared to be altogether selfrestrained and temperate whose life and habits had not been tested amid the very dangers of error and in the midst of the enticements of pleasures. For when all the license and attractions of banquets are unknown, and a man is wholly unfamiliar with them, if haply inclination has led him, or chance has induced him, or necessity has compelled him, to take part in pleasures of that kind, then he is as a rule seduced and taken captive, his mind and soul fail to meet the test, but give way, as if attacked by some strange power. Therefore he thought that we ought to meet the issue and contend hand to hand, as in a kind of battle, with pleasure and indulgence in wine, in order that we may not be safe against them by flight or absence, but that by vigour of spirit, by presence of mind, and by moderate use, we may preserve our temperance and self-restraint, and at the same time by warming and refreshing the mind we may free it of whatever frigid austerity or dull bashfulness it may contain.

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What Marcus Cicero thought and wrote about the prefix in the verbs aufugio and aufcro; and whether this same preposition is to be seen in the verb autumo.

I READ a book of Marcus Cicero's entitled The Orator. In that book when Cicero had said that the verbs aifugio and aufero were indeed formed of the preposition ab and the verbs fugio and fero, but that the preposition, in order that the word might be smoother in pronunciation and sound, was changed and altered into the syllable au, [*](Au is probably a different preposition from ab; see Archiv. f. lat. Lex. u. Gr., x, p. 480, and xiii, pp. 7 f.) and aufulgio and aufero began to be used for abfugio and abfero; when he had said this, I say, he afterwards in the same work wrote as follows of the same particle: [*](§ 158.)

This preposition,

he says,

will be found in no other verb save these two only.

But I have found in the Commentary of Nigidius [*](Frag. 51, Swoboda.) that the verb autumo is formed from the preposition ab and the verb aestumo (estimate) and that autumo is a contracted form of abaestumo, signifying totum aestumo, on the analogy of abnumero. [*](The derivation of autumo is uncertain; some take the original meaning to be divining and connect it with avis; see T.L.L. s.v. Walde rejects that derivation in favour of the one from autem; cf. Fay, Class. Quart. i. (1907) p. 25. Here the original meaning is assumed to be repeat, assert, and in fact autumo and itero are sometimes synonymous. The development of the meanings of autuino was doubtless influenced by aestumo, which has the same suffix.) But, be it said with great respect for Publius Nigidius, a most learned man, this seems to be rather bold and clever than true. For autumo does not only mean

I think,

but also

I say,

I am of the opinion,

and

I consider,

with which verbs that preposition has no connection either in the composition of the

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word or in the expression of its meaning. Besides, Marcus Tullius, a man of unwearied industry in the pursuit of letters, would not have said that these were the only two verbs containing au, if any third example could be found. But the following point is more worthy of examination and investigation, whether the preposition ab is altered and changed into the syllable au for the sake of making the pronunciation smoother, or whether more properly the particle au has its own origin, and just as many other prepositions were taken from the Greeks, so this one also is derived from that source. [*](See note 1, p. 66; it is not taken from the Greeks.) As in that verse of Homer: [*](Iliad i. 459.)

First bent them back (au)e/rusan), then slew and flayed the beasts;

and: [*](Iliad xiii. 41)

Loud-shouting (au)i/axoi), noisy. [*](Or, in silence, noiseless; see L. and S. s.v.)

The story of Ventidius Bassus, a man of obscure birth, who is reported to have been the first to celebrate a triumph over the Parthians.

IT was lately remarked in the conversation of certain old and learned men that in ancient times many persons of most obscure birth, who were previously held in great contempt, had risen to the highest grade of dignity. Nothing that was said about anyone, however, excited so much wonder as the story recorded of Ventidius Bassus. He was born in Picenum in a humble station, and with his mother was taken prisoner by Pompeius Strabo,

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father of Pompey the Great, in the Social War, [*](90–89 B.C. War was waged by the Italian allies against Rome. After a bitter contest, in which 300,000 men are said to have perished, the Romans were victorious, but by the lex Plautia Papiria granted nearly all the demands of the allies, including the franchise.) in the course of which Strabo subdued the Aesculani. [*](Aesculum was the capital of the Picenates, one of the seven peoples who made up the allies.) Afterwards, when Pompeius Strabo triumphed, the boy also was carried in his mother's arms amid the rest of the captives before the general's chariot. Later, when he had grown up, he worked hard to gain a livelihood, resorting to the humble calling of a buyer of mules and carriages, which he had contracted with the State to furnish to the magistrates who had been allotted provinces. In that occupation he made the acquaintance of Gaius Caesar and went with him to the Gallic provinces. Then, because he had shown commendable energy in that province, and later during the civil war had executed numerous commissions with promptness and vigour, he not only gained Caesar's friendship, but because of it rose even to the highest rank. Afterwards he was also made tribune of the commons, and then praetor, and at that time he was declared a public enemy by the senate along with Mark Antony. Afterwards, however, when the parties were united, he not only recovered his former rank, but gained first the pontificate and then the consulship. [*](43 B.C.) At this the Roman people, who remembered that Ventidius Bassus had made a living by taking care of mules, were so indignant that these verses [*](p. 331, 7, Bährens; cf. Virg. Catal. x., believed by some to refer to Ventidius Bassus, but probably wrongly. See Virgil, L.C.L., ii., p. 499, n. 2.) were posted everywhere about the streets of the city:

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Assemble, soothsayers and augurs all!
A portent strange has taken place of late;
For he who curried mules is consul now.

Suetonius Tranquillus writes [*](Frag. 210, Reiff.) that this same Bassus was put in charge of the eastern provinces by Mark Antony, and that when the Parthians invaded Syria he routed them in three battles; [*](39 and 38 B.C.) that he was the first of all to celebrate a triumph over the Parthians, and was honoured when he died with a public funeral.

That the verb profligo is used by many improperly and ignorantly.

JUST as many other words, through the ignorance and stupidity of those who speak badly what they do not understand, are diverted and turned aside from their proper and usual meaning, so too has the signification of the verb profligo been changed and perverted. For while it is taken over and derived from adfligo, in the sense of

bring to ruin and destruction,

and while all who have been careful in their diction have always used the word to express

waste

and

destroy,

calling things that were cast down and destroyed res profligatae, I now hear that buildings, temples, and many other things that are almost complete and finished are said to be in profligato and the things themselves profligata. Therefore that was a very witty reply, as Sulpicius Apollinaris has recorded in one of his Letters, which a praetor, a man not without learning, made to a simpleton among a crowd of advocates.

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For,

said he,

when that impudent prater had made a request in these terms: 'All the business, renowned sir, about which you said that you would take cognizance to-day, because of your diligence and promptness is done (profligata sunt); one matter only remains, to which I beg you to give attention.' Then the praetor wittily enough replied: 'Whether the affairs of which you say that I have taken cognizance are done (profligata), I do not know; but this business which has fallen into your hands is undoubtedly done for (profligatum est), whether I hear it or not.'

But to indicate what those wish to express who use profligatum in the sense of

nearly done,

those who have spoken good Latin used, not , but adfectum, as for example Marcus Cicero, in the speech which he delivered About the Consular Provinces. His words are as follows: [*](§ 19.)

We see the war nearing its end (adfectum) and, to tell the truth, all but finished.

Also further on: [*](§ 9.)

For why should Caesar himself wish to remain longer in that province, except that he may turn over to the State, completed, the tasks which he has nearly finished (acfecta sunt)?

Cicero also says in the Oeconomicus: [*](Frag. 21, p. 978, Orelli2.)

When indeed, as summer is already well nigh ended (adfecta), it is time for the grapes to ripen in the sun.

An evident mistake in the second book of Cicero On Glory, in the place where he has written about Hector and Ajax.

IN Cicero's second book On Glory there is an evident mistake, of no great importance-a mistake

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which it does not require a man of learning to detect, but merely one who has read the seventh book of Homer. Therefore I am not so much surprised that Marcus Tullius erred in that matter, as that it was not noticed later and corrected either by Cicero himself or by Tiro, his freedman, a most careful man, who gave great attention to his patron's books. Now, in that book the following passage occurs: [*](II., frag. 1, p. 989, Orelli2.)

The same poet says that Ajax, when about to engage with Hector in combat, arranges for his burial in case he should chance to be defeated, declaring that he wishes that those who pass his tomb even after many ages should thus speak: [*](Iliad vii. 89.)
Here lies a man of life's light long bereft,
Who slain by Hector's sword fell long ago.
This, one shall say; my glory ne'er shall die.

But the verses to this purport, which Cicero has turned into the Latin tongue, Ajax does not utter in Homer, nor is it Ajax who plans his burial, but Hector speaks the lines and arranges for burial, before he knows whether Ajax will meet him in combat.

It has been observed of old men, that the sixty-third year of their life is marked as a rule by troubles, by death, or by some disaster; and an example apropos of this observation is taken from a letter from the deified Augustus to his son Gaius. [*](Gaius and Lucius Caesar were sons of Agrippa and Julia, and grandsons of Augustus (see Gaium nepotem, § 3).)

IT has been observed during a long period of human recollection, and found to be true, that for almost all old men the sixty-third year of their age Both were adopted by Augustus, and on the death of the young Marcellus were made principes iuventutis, and thus designated as the successors of Augustus.

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is attended with danger, and with some disaster involving either serious bodily illness, or loss of life, or mental suffering. Therefore those who are engaged in the study of matters and terms of that kind call that period of life the

climacteric.

[*](Cf. iii. 10. 9.) Night before last, too, when I was reading a volume of letters of the deified Augustus, written to his grandson Gaius, and was led on by the elegance of the style, which was easy and simple, by Heaven without mannerisms or effort, in one of the letters I ran upon a reference to this very belief about that same year. I give a copy of the letter: [*](p. 155, 18, Wichert.)

The ninth day before the Kalends of October. [*](Sept. 23.)

Greeting, my dear Gaius, my dearest little donkey, [*](A term of affection. The asellus is an attractive little beast, whatever the reputation of the asinus. The ocellus of Beroaldus and Damsté's autclus (=avicellus, birdlet; the usual form is avicula, as in ii. 29. 2) are needless changes, particularly in view of Augustus' humorous tendencies; Weiss cites vi. 16. 5, where asellus has a different, but hardly more complimentary, meaning.) whom, so help me! constantly miss whenever you are away from me. But especially on such days as to-day my eyes are eager for my Gaius, and wherever you have been to-day, I hope you have celebrated my sixty-fourth birthday in health and happiness. For, as you see, I have passed the climacteric common to all old men, the sixty-third year. And I pray the gods that whatever time is left to me I may pass with you safe and well, with our country in a flourishing condition, while you [*](The plural refers to Gaius and his brother Lucius; see note.) are playing the man and preparing to succeed to my position.

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A passage from a speech of Favonius, an early orator, containing an attack which he made on luxurious entertainments, when he was advocating the Licinian law for lessening extravagance.

WHEN I was reading an old speech of Favonius, a man of no little eloquence, in which [*](The sense of the lacuna seems to be given in the chapter heading.) . . . I learned the whole of it by heart, in order to be able to remember that such extravagant living is truly hateful. These words which I have added are those of Favonius: [*](O.R.F., p. 207, Meyer2.)

The leaders in gluttony and luxury declare that an entertainment is not elegant, unless, when you are eating with the greatest relish, your plate is removed and a better, richer dainty comes from the reserves. This to-day is thought the very flower of a feast among those with whom extravagance and fastidiousness take the place of elegance; who say that the whole of no bird ought to be eaten except a fig-pecker; who think that a dinner is mean and stingy unless so many of the other birds and fatted fowl are provided, that the guests may be satisfied with the rumps and hinder parts; who believe that those who eat the upper parts of such birds and fowl have no refinement of taste. If luxury continues to increase in its present proportion, what remains but that men should bid someone to eat their dinners for them, in order that they may not fatigue themselves by feeding, when the couch is more profusely adorned with gold, silver and purple for a few mortals than for the immortal gods?

[*](The reference is probably to the lectisternium, when the images of the gods were placed upon couches and food was set before them by the vii viri epulones.)

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That the poet Caecilius used frons in the masculine gender, not by poetic license, but properly and by analogy.

CORRECTLY and elegantly did Caecilius write this in his Changeling: [*](ii. 79, Ribbeck3.)

The worst of foes are these, of aspect gay (fronte hilaro),
Gloomy of heart, whom we can neither grasp Nor yet let go.

I chanced to quote these lines in a company of well educated young men, when we were speaking of a man of that kind. Thereupon one of a throng of grammarians who stood there with us, a man of no little repute, said:

What license and boldness Caecilius showed here in saying, fronte hilaro and not fronte hilara, and in not shrinking from so dreadful a solecism.

Nay,

said I,

it is rather we who are as bold and free as possible in improperly and ignorantly failing to use frons in the masculine gender, when both the principle of regularity which is called analogy [*](On analogy see ii. 25.) and the authority of earlier writers indicate that we ought to say, not hanc frontem, but hunc frontem. Indeed, Marcus Cato in the first book of his Origins wrote as follows: [*](Frag. 99, Peter2.) 'On the following day in open combat, with straight front (aequo fronte) we fought with the enemy's legions with foot, horse and wings.' Also Cato again says [*](Frag. 100, Peter2.) recto fronte in the same book.

But that half-educated grammarian said:

Away with your authorities, which I think you may perhaps have, but give me a reason, which you do not
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have.

Then I, somewhat irritated by those words of his, as was natural at my time of life:

Listen,

said I,

my dear sir, to a reason that may be false, but which you cannot prove to be false. All words,

said I,

ending in the three letters in which frons ends are of the masculine gender, if they end in the same syllable in the genitive case also, as mons, fons, pons, frons.

[*](Nouns of the third declension ending in s preceded By a consonant are regularly feminine. The four exceptions are mons, fons, dens, and pons; frons is usually feminine.) But he replied with a laugh:

Hear, young scholar, several other similar words which are not of the masculine gender.

Then all begged him at once to name just one. But when the man was screwing up his face, could not open his lips, and changed colour, then I broke in, saying:

Go now and take thirty days to hunt one up; when you have found it, meet us again.

And thus we sent off this worthless fellow to hunt up a word with which to break down the rule which I had made.

About the strange suicides of the maids of Miletus.

PLUTARCH in the first book of his work On the Soul, [*](vii. p. 20, Bern.) discussing disorders which affect the human mind, has told us that almost all the maidens of the Milesian nation suddenly without any apparent cause conceived a desire to die, and thereupon many of them hanged themselves. When this happened more frequently every day, and no remedy had any effect on their resolve to die, the Milesians passed a decree that all those maidens who committed suicide

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by hanging should be carried to the grave naked, along with the same rope by which they had destroyed themselves. After that decree the maidens ceased to seek a voluntary death, deterred by the mere shame of so disgraceful a burial.

The words of a decree of the senate on expelling philosophers from the city of Rome; also the words of the edict of the censors by which those were rebuked and restrained who had begun to establish and practise the art of rhetoric at Rome.

IN the consulship of Gaius Fannius Strabo and Marcus Valerius Messala [*](161 B.C.) the following decree of the senate was passed regarding Latin speaking philosophers and rhetoricians: [*](Fontes Iuris Rom., p. 157; cf. Suetonius, De Rhet. 1 (ii. p. 434, L.C.L.).)

(The praetor Marcus Pomponius laid a proposition before the senate. As the result of a discussion about philosophers and rhetoricians, the senate decreed that Marcus Pomponius, the praetor, should take heed and provide, in whatever way seemed to him in accord with the interests of the State and his oath of office, that they should not remain in Rome.

Then some years [*](92 B.C.) after that decree of the senate Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Lucius Licinius Crassus the censors issued the following edict for restraining the Latin rhetoricians: [*](F.I.R., p. 215; Suetonius ii, p. 434 f. L.C.L.)

It has been reported to us that there be men who have introduced a new kind of training, and that our young men frequent their schools; that these men have assumed the title of Latin rhetoricians, and that
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young men spend whole days with them in idleness. Our forefathers determined what they wished their children to learn and what schools they desired them to attend. These innovations in the customs and principles of our forefathers neither please us nor seem proper. Therefore it seems necessary to make our opinion known, both to those who have such schools and to those who are in the habit of attending them, that they are displeasing to us.

And it was not only in those times, which were somewhat rude and not yet refined by Greek training, that philosophers were driven from the city of Rome, but even in the reign of Domitian [*](A.D. 89.) by a decree of the senate they were driven from the city and forbidden Italy. And it was at that time that the philosopher Epictetus also withdrew from Rome to Nicopolis because of that senatorial decree.

A highly memorable passage from a speech of Gracchus, regarding his frugality and continence.

WHEN Gaius Gracchus [*](The celebrated tribune of 123 and 122 B.C. He was famous as an orator; cf. i. 11. 10 ff.) returned from Sardinia, he delivered a speech to an assembly of the people in the following words: [*](O.R.F., p. 231, Meyer2.)

I conducted myself in my province,

said he,

as I thought would be to your advantage, not as I believed would contribute to my own ambitions. There was no tavern at my establishment, nor did slaves of conspicuous beauty wait upon me, and at an entertainment of mine your sons were treated with more modesty than at their
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general's tent.

Later on he continues as follows:

I so conducted myself in my province that no one could truly say that I received a penny, or more than that, [*](One is reminded of the story of the politician who declared that he had never received a penny in bribes, but that it was as well to say nothing about thousand dollar bills.) by way of present, or that anyone was put to expense on my account. I spent two years in my province; if any courtesan entered my house or anyone's slave was bribed on my account, consider me the lowest and basest of mankind. Since I conducted myself so continently towards their slaves, you may judge from that on what terms I lived with your sons.

Then after an interval he goes on:

Accordingly, fellow citizens, when I left for Rome, I brought back empty from the province the purses which I took there full of money. Others have brought home overflowing with money the jars which they took to their province filled with wine.

Of some unusual words, which are used in either voice and are called by the grammarians

common.

UTOR, vereor, hortor and consolor are

common

verbs and can be used either way:

I respect you

and

I am respected by you,

that is,

you respect me

;

I use you

and

I am used by you,

that is,

you use me

;

I exhort you

and

I am exhorted by you,

that is,

you exhort me

;

I console you

and

I am consoled by you,

that is,

you console me.

Testor too and interpretor are used in a reciprocal sense. But all these words are

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unusual in the second of these meanings, and it is a matter of inquiry whether they are ever so used. Afranius in The Cousins says: [*](ii. 33, Ribbeck3.)

Lo! there his children hold a sire's life cheap,
Where rather feared than honoured (vereri) he would be.

Here vereor is used in its less common sense. Novius also in the Wood-dealer uses the word utor with a passive meaning: [*](v. 43, Ribbeck3.)

Since a deal of gear is bought which is not used (utitur).

That is,

which is not to be used.

Marcus Cato in the fifth book of his Origins has this: [*](Frag. 101, Peter2.)

He led forth his army, fed, ready, and encouraged (cohortatum), and drew it up in order of battle.

We find consolor also used in a different sense from the one which it commonly has, in a letter of Quintus Metellus, which he wrote during his exile to Gnaeus and Lucius Domitius.

But,

he says,

when I realize your feeling towards me, I am very greatly consoled (consolor), and your loyalty and worth are brought before my eyes.

Marcus Tullius used testata and interpretata in the same manner in the first book of his work On Divination, [*](§ 87 and § 53) so that testor and interpreter ought also to be considered to be

common

verbs. Sallust too in a similar way says: [*](Hist. i. 49, Maur.)

The goods of the proscribed having been given away (dilargitis),

indicating that largior is one of the

common

verbs. Moreover, we see that veritum, like puditum and

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pigitum, is used impersonally and indefinitely, [*](That is, without having a particular person or thing as its subject.) not only by the earlier writers, but also by Marcus Tullius in the second book of his De Finibus. [*](§ 39.)

First (I will refute),

says he,

the view of Aristippus and of all the Cyrenaic philosophers, to whom it caused no fear [*](i.e. who did not scruple.) (veritum est) to assign the highest good to that pleasure which affects the senses with greatest delight.

Dignor, too, veneror, confiteor and testor are treated as

common

verbs. Thus we find in Virgil: [*](Aen. iii. 475.)

Of wedlock high with Venus worthy deemed (dignale),

and [*](Aen. iii. 460.)

Revered in prayer (venerata), shall grant a voyage safe.

Moreover, confessi aeris, meaning a debt of which admission is made, is written in the Twelve Tables in these words: [*](iii. 1.)

For an admitted debt, when the matter has been taken into court, let the respite be thirty days.

Also in those same Tables we find this: [*](viii. 22.)

Whoever shall allow himself to be summoned as a witness or shall act as a balance-holder, [*](That is, in a symbolic sale, when the purchaser touched a balance with a coin. See note on v. 19. 3 (vol. i., p. 436).) if he does not give his testimony, let him be regarded as dishonoured and incapable of giving testimony in the future.

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That Metellus Numidicus borrowed a new form of expression from Greek usage.

IN Quintus Metellus Numidicus, in the third book of his Accusalion of Valerius Messala, I have made note of a novel expression. The words of his speech are as follows: [*](O.R.F., p. 276, Mever2.)

When he knew that he had incurred so grave an accusation, and that our allies had come to the senate in tears, to make complaint that they had been exacted enormous sums of money (pecunias maximas exactos esse).

He says

that they had been exacted enormous sums of money,

instead of

that enormous sums of money had been exacted from them.

This seemed to me an imitation of a Greek idiom; for the Greeks say: ei)sepra/cato/ me a)rgu/rion, meaning

he exacted me money.

But if this can be said, so too can

one is exacted money,

and Caecilius seems to have used that form of expression in his Supposititious Aeschinus: [*](v. 92, Ribbeck3.)

Yet I the customs-fee exacted am.

That is to say,

yet the customs-fee is exacted from me.

That the early writers used passis velis and passis manibus, not from the verb patior, to which the participle belongs, but from pando, to which it does not belong.

FROM the verb pando the ancients made passum, not pansum, and with the preposition ex they formed

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expassum, not expansum. Caecilius in the Fellowbreakfasters says: [*](v. 197, Ribbeck3.)

That yesterday he'd looked in from the roof,
Had this announced, and straight the veil [*](The flame-coloured (yellow) bridal veil.) was spread (expassum).

A woman too is said to be capillo passo, or

with disordered hair,

when it is hanging down and loosened, and we say passis manibus and velis passis of hands and sails stretched out and spread. Therefore Plautus in his Braggart Captain, changing an a into an e, as is usual in compound words, uses dispessis for dispassis in these lines: [*](359 Cf. iv. 17. 8; a became e before two consonants, i before a single one, except r.) Methinks you thus must die without the gate, When you shall hold the cross with hands outstretched (dispessis).

Of the singular death of Milo of Croton. [*](The same story is told by Strabo, vi. 1. 12 (iii, p. 45, L.C.L.).)

MILO of Croton, a famous athlete, who was first crowned at the sixty-second Olympiad, [*](32 B.C.) as the chronicles record, ended his life in a strange and lamentable manner. When he was already advanced in age and had given up the athletic art, he chanced to be journeying alone in a wooded part of Italy. Near the road he saw an oak tree, the middle of which gaped with wide cracks. Then wishing, I suppose, to try whether he still had any strength left,

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he put his fingers into the hollows of the tree and tried to rend apart and split the oak. And in fact he did tear asunder and divide the middle part; but when the oak was thus split into two parts, and he relaxed his hold as if he had accomplished his attempt, the tree returned to its natural position when the pressure ceased, and catching and holding his hands as it came together and united, it kept the man there, to be torn to pieces by wild beasts.

Why young men of noble rank at Athens gave up playing the pipes, although it was one of their native customs.

ALCIBIADES the Athenian in his boyhood was being trained in the liberal arts and sciences at the home of his uncle, Pericles; and Pericles had ordered Antigenides, a player on the pipes, to be sent for, to teach the boy to play on that instrument, which was then considered a great accomplishment. But when the pipes were handed to him and he had put them to his lips and blown, disgusted at the ugly distortion of his face, he threw them away and broke them in two. When this matter was noised abroad, by the universal consent of the Athenians of that time the art of playing the pipes was given up. This story is told in the twenty-ninth book of the Commentary of Pamphila. [*](F.H.G. iii. 521. 9.)

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That the battle which Gaius Caesar fought on the plains of Pharsalus during the civil war was announced on the very same day at Patavium in Italy, and his victory foretold, by the divination of a seer.

ON the day that Gaius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius engaged in battle in Thessaly during the civil war, an event occurred at Patavium in Transpadane Italy, which is deserving of record. A priest called Cornelius, a man of good birth, honoured for scrupulousness in his office and revered for the purity of his life, was suddenly seized by a prophetic inspiration and said that he saw a most furious battle taking place afar off; then he shouted out, just as if he were personally taking part in the engagement, that some were giving way, others pressing on; that he saw before him carnage, flight, flying weapons, a renewal of the engagement, an attack, groans and wounds; and later he suddenly exclaimed that Caesar was victorious.

At the time the prophecy of the priest Cornelius seemed unimportant and without meaning. Afterwards, however, it caused great surprise, since not only the time of the battle which was fought in Thessaly, and its predicted outcome, were verified, but all the shifting fortunes of the day and the very conflict of the two armies were represented by the gestures and words of the seer. [*](Cf. Plutarch, Caesar, 47.)

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Memorable words of Marcus Varro, from the satire entitled Peri\ )Edesma/twn.

THERE are not a few to whom that may apply which is said by Marcus Varro in his satire entitled Peri\ )Edesma/twn. or On Eatables. His words are these: [*](Fr. 404, Bücheler.)

If you had given to philosophy a twelfth part of the effort which you spent in making your baker give you good bread, you would long since have become a good man. As it is, those who know him are willing to buy him at a hundred thousand sesterces, while no one who knows you would take you at a hundred.

Certain facts about the birth, life and character of the poet Euripides, and about the end of his life.

THEOPOMPUS says [*](F.H. G. i. 294.) that the mother of the poet Euripides made a living by selling country produce. Furthermore, when Euripides was born, his father was assured by the astrologers that the boy, when he grew up, would be victor in the games; for that was his destiny. His father, understanding this to mean that he ought to be an athlete, exercised and strengthened his son's body and took him to Olympia to contend among the wrestlers. And at first he was not admitted to the contest because of his time of life, [*](He was too old for the boys' races.) but afterwards he engaged in the Eleusinian [*](Athletic games in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries.) and Thesean [*](A festival held at Athens in the autumn in the month Pyanepsion, in honour of Theseus.) contests and won crowns.

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Later, turning from attention to bodily exercise to the desire of training his mind, he was a pupil of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras and the rhetorician Prodicus, and, in moral philosophy, of Socrates. At the age of eighteen he attempted to write a tragedy. Philochorus relates [*](F.H. G. i. 412.) that there is on the island of Salamis a grim and gloomy cavern, [*](These words are probably not part of the quotation.) which I myself have seen, in which Euripides wrote tragedies. He is said to have had an exceeding antipathy towards almost all women, either because he had a natural disinclination to their society, or because he had had two wives at the same time (since that was permitted by a decree passed by the Athenians) and they had made wedlock hateful to him. Aristophanes also notices his antipathy to women in the first edition of the Thesmophoriazousae in these verses: [*](453 ff.)

Now then I urge and call on all our sex
This man to punish for his many crimes.
For on us, women, he brings bitter woes,
Himself brought up 'mid bitter garden plants.

But Alexander the Aetolian composed the following lines about Euripides: [*](Anal. Alex. p. 247, Meineke.)

The pupil of stout Anaxagoras,
Of churlish speech and gloomy, ne'er has learned
To jest amid the wine; but what he wrote
Might honey and the Sirens well have known.

When Euripides was in Macedonia at the court of Archelaus, and had become an intimate friend of the king, returning home one night from a dinner with the monarch he was torn by dogs, which were set

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upon him by a rival of his, and death resulted from his wounds. [*](He died in 406 B.C.; according to another version of the story it was a band of women who tore him to pieces. Both tales are of doubtful authenticity; the one told by Gellius appears also in Athenaeus xiii. 597, but is denied in verses preserved in Suidas, s.v. u(pai/meke.) The Macedonians treated his tomb and his memory with such honour that they used to proclaim:

Never, Euripides, shall thy monument perish,

also by way of self-glorification, because the distinguished poet had met his death and been buried in their land. Therefore when envoys, sent to them by the Athenians, begged that they should allow his bones to be moved to Athens, his native land, the Macedonians unanimously persisted in refusing.