Noctes Atticae

Marcus Cicero's observations on the nature of certain prepositions; to which is added a discussion of the particular matter which Cicero had observed.

AFTER careful observation Marcus Tullius noted that the prepositions in and con, when prefixed to nouns and verbs, are lengthened and prolonged when they are followed by the initial letters of sapiens and felix; but that in all other instances they are pronounced short.

Cicero's words are: [*](Orator, § 159.)

Indeed, what can be more elegant than this, which does not come about from a natural law, but in accordance with a kind of usage? we pronounce the first vowel in indoctus short, in insanus long; in immanis short, in infelix long; in brief, in compound words in which the first letters are those which begin sapiens and felix the prefix is pronounced long, in all others short; thus we have conposuit but cōnsuevit, cŏncrepuit

v1.p.169

but cōnficit. Consult the rules of grammar and they will censure your usage; refer the matter to your ears and they will approve. Ask why it is so; they will say that it pleases them. And language ought to gratify the pleasure of the ear.

In these words of which Cicero spoke it is clear that the principle is one of euphony, but what are we to say of the preposition pro? For although it is often shortened or lengthened, yet it does not conform to this rule of Marcus Tullius. For it is not always lengthened when it is followed by the first letter of the word fecit, which Cicero says has the effect of lengthening the prepositions in and con. For we pronounce prŏficisci, prŏfugere, prŏfundere, prŏfannu and prŏfestumn with the first vowel short, but prōferre, prōfligare and prōficere with that syllable long. Why is it then that this letter, which, according to Cicero's observation, has the effect of lengthening, does not have the same effect by reason of rule or of euphony in all words of the same kind, [*](That is beginning with f.) but lengthens the vowel in one word and shortens it in another.

Nor, as a matter of fact, is the particle con lengthened only when followed by that letter which Cicero mentioned: for both Cato and Sallust say

faenoribus copertus est.

[*](He is loaded with debt; Fr. 50, Jordan; Sail Hist. iv. 52, Maurenbrecher.) Moreover cōligatus and cōnexus are pronounced long.

But after all, in these cases which I have cited one can see that this particle is lengthened because the letter n is dropped; for the loss of a letter is compensated by the lengthening of the syllable. This principle is observed also in the word cōgo; and it is no contradiction that we pronounce cŏegi

short; for this form cannot be derived from cōgo without violation of the principle of analogy. [*](For analogy in this sense of regularity, see ii. 25. Gellius thought that coegi was an irregular form because oē did not contract, as oi did in cogo; but contraction of unlike vowels did not take place when the second was long; cf. coāctus. Cicero's rule is correct, because a vowel is naturally long before ns and nf. The case of pro is quite different. The ō in cōpertus is due to contraction from co-opertus. Cōligatus is a very rare form; Skutsch, quoted by Hosius, thought it might come from co-alligatus. The ō in cogo is also due to contraction (co-ago, co-igo), which does not apply to the perfect coegi. Compensatory lengthening takes place usually when an s is lost, as in cōnecto for co-snecto, or n before s and f; less commonly when nc is lost before n.)

That Phaedo the Socratic was a slave; and that several others also were of that condition.

PHAEDO of Elis belonged to that famous Socratic band and was on terms of close intimacy with Socrates and Plato. His name was given by Plato to that inspired dialogue of his on the immortality of the soul. This Phaedo, though a slave, was of noble person and intellect, [*](It must be remembered that the slaves of the Greeks and Romans were often freeborn children, who had been cast off by their parents, or free men, who had been taken prisoner in war. Phaedo belonged to the latter class, and the details of his life are very uncertain.) and according to some writers, in his boyhood was driven to prostitution by his master, who was a pander. We are told that Cebes the Socratic, at Socrates' earnest request, bought Phaedo and gave him the opportunity of studying philosophy. And he afterwards became a distinguished philosopher, whose very tasteful discourses on Socrates are in circulation.

There were not a few other slaves too who afterwards became famous philosophers, among them that Menippus whose works Marcus Varro emulated [*](The word implies, not merely imitation, but rivalry, a recognized principle in classic literature; see Revue des Études Latines, II. (1924), pp. 46ff.) in those satires which others call

Cynic,

but he himself,

Menippean.

[*](See note 1, p. 85.)

Besides these, Pompylus, the slave of the Peripatetic Theophrastus, and the slave of the Stoic Zeno who was called Persaeus, and the slave of Epicurus whose name was Mys, were philosophers of repute. [*](I. 438, Arn. )

Diogenes the Cynic also served as a slave, but he was a freeborn man, who was sold into slavery. When Xeniades of Corinth wished to buy him and asked whether he knew any trade, Diogenes replied:

I know how to govern free men.

[*](The word for free men and children is the same (liberi), but it seems impossible to reproduce the word play in English.) Then Xeniades, in admiration of his answer, bought him, set him free, and entrusting to him his own children, said:

Take my children to govern.

But as to the well-known philosopher Epictetus, the fact that he too was a slave is too fresh in our memory to need to be committed to writing, as if it had been forgotten.

On the nature of the verb rescire; and its true and distinctive meaning.

I HAVE observed that the verb rescire has a peculiar force, which is not in accord with the general meaning of other words compounded with that same preposition; for we do not use rescire in the same way that we do rescribere (write in reply), relegere (reread), restituere (restore), . . . and substituere (put in the place of); [*](As substituere does not contain re-, it seems clear that there is a lacuna before that word, but it seems impossible to fill the gap.) but rescire is properly said of one who learns of something that is hidden, or unlooked for and unexpected.

But why the particle re has this special force in this one word alone, I for my part am still inquiring. For I have never yet found that rescivi or rescire was used by those who were careful in their diction, otherwise than of things which were purposely concealed, or happened contrary to anticipation and expectation; although scire itself is used of everything alike, whether favourable or unfavourable, unexpected or expected. Thus Naevius in the Triphallus wrote: [*](v. 96, Ribbeck3)

1. If ever I discover (rescivero) that my son
2. Has borrowed money for a love affair,
3. Straightway I'll put you where you'll spit no more. [*](Literally, spit down into one's bosom, referring to he wooden fork about the slave's neck which would prevent his, and to spitting as a charm for averting evil.)

Claudius Quadrigarius in the first book of his Annals says: [*](Fr. 16, Peter.)

When the Lucanians discovered (resciverunt ) that they had been deceived and tricked.

And again in the same book Quadrigarius uses that word of something sad and unexpected: [*](Fr. 19, Peter. )

When this became known to the relatives (rescierunt provinqui) of the hostages, who, as I have pointed out above, had been delivered to Pontius, their parents and relatives rushed into the street with hair in disarray.

Marcus Cato writes in the fourth book of the Origins: [*](Fr. 87, Peter.)

Then next day the dictator orders the master of the horse to be summoned: I will send you, if you wish, with the cavalry.' It is too late,' said the master of the horse, 'they have found it out already (rescicere).'

That for what we commonly call virvaria the earlier writers did not use that term; and what Publius Scipio used for this word in his speech to the people, and afterwards Marcus Varro in his work On Farming.

IN the third book of his treatise On Farming,[*](iii. 3. 1.) Marcus Varro says that the name leporaria is given to certain enclosures, now called vivaria, in which wild animals are kept alive and fed. I have appended Varro's own words:

There are three means of keeping animals on the farm—bird houses, leporaria (warrens), and fish-ponds. I am now using the term ornithones of all kinds of birds that are ordinarily kept within the walls of the farmhouse. Leporaria I wish you to understand, not in the sense in which our remote ancestors used the word, of places in which only hares are kept, but of all enclosures which are connected with a farm-house and contain live animals that are fed.

Farther on in the same book Varro writes: [*](iii. 3. 8.)

When you bought the farm at Tusculum from Marcus Piso, there were many wild boars in the leporarium.

But the word vivaria, which the common people now use—the Greek para\de/isoi [*](The word means an enclosed park, handsomely laid ou and stocked with game; also, a garden, and in Septuagint Gen. 2. 8, the garden of Eden, Paradise.) and Varro's leporaria—I do not recall meeting anywhere in the older literature. But as to the word roboraria, which we find in the writings of Scipio, who used the purest diction of any man of his time, I have heard several learned men at Rome assert that this means what we call vivaria and that the name came from the

oaken

planks of which the enclosures were made, a kind of enclosure which we see in many places in Italy. This is the passage from Scipio's fifth oration Against Claudius Asellus: [*](Orato. Rom. Frag. p. 184, Myer2.)

When he had seen the highly-cultivated fields and well-kept farmhouses, he ordered them to set up a measuring rod on the highest spot in that district; and from there to build a straight road, in some places through the midst of vineyards, in others through the roborarium and the fish-pond, in still others through the farm buildings.

Thus we see that to pools or ponds of water in which live fish are kept in confinement, they gave their own appropriate name of piscinae, or

fishponds.

Apiaria too is the word commonly used of places in which bee-hives are set; but I recall almost no one of those who have spoken correctly who has used that word either in writing or speaking. But Marcus Varro, in the third book of his treatise On Farming, remarks: [*](iii. 16. 12.)

This is the way to make melissw=nes, which some call mellaria, or 'places for storing honey.'

But this word which Varro used is Greek; for they say melissw=nes, just as they do a)mpelw=nes (vineyards) and dafnw=nes (laurel groves).

About the constellation which the Greeks call a(/maca and the Romans septentriones; and as to the origin and meaning of both those words.

SEVERAL of us, Greeks and Romans, who were pursuing the same studies, were crossing in the same boat from Aegina to the Piraeus. It was night, the sea was calm, the time summer, and the sky

bright and clear. So we all sat together in the stern and watched the brilliant stars. Then those of our company who were acquainted with Grecian lore discussed with learning and acumen such questions as these: what the a(/maca, or

Wain,

was, and what Boötes, which was the Great, and which the Little Bear and why they were so called; in what direction that constellation moved in the course of the advancing night, and why Homer says [*](Iliad, xviii. 489; Odyss. v. 275 )/Arkton . . . oi)/h d' a)/mmoro/s e)sti loetrw=n )Wkeanoi=o.) that this is the only constellation that does not set, in view of the fact that there are some other stars that do not set.

Thereupon I turned to our compatriots and said:

Why don't you barbarians tell me why we give the name of septentriones to what the Greeks call a(/maca. Now ' because we see seven stars' is not a sufficient answer, but I desire to be informed at some length,

said I,

of the meaning of the whole idea which we express by the word septentriones.

Then one of them, who had devoted himself to ancient literature and antiquities, replied: "The common run of grammarians think that the word septentriones is derived solely from the number of stars. For they declare that triones of itself has no meaning, but is a mere addition to the word; just as in our word quinquatrus, so called because five is the number of days after the Ides, [*](The quinquatrtus, or festival of Minerva, was so called because it came on the fifth day after the Ides (fifteenth) of March.) atrus means nothing. But for my part, I agree with Lucius Aelius [*](Fr. 42, Fun.) and Marcus Varro, [*](De Ling. Lat. vii. 4. 74.) who wrote that oxen were called triones, a rustic term it is true, as if they were terriones, [*](A word made up from terra, earth ; the derivation is a fanciful one. Triones is connected with tero, rub, tread, etc.) that is to say, adapted to nominibus regionibusque docere nos ipse vellet,

ploughing and cultivating the earth. Therefore this constellation, which the early Greeks called a(/maca merely from its form and position, because it seemed to resemble a wagon, the early men also of our country called septentriones, from oxen yoked together, that is, seven stars by which yoked oxen (triones) seem to be represented. After giving this opinion, Varro further added," said he,

that he suspected that these seven stars were called triones rather for the reason that they are so situated that every group of three neighbouring stars forms a triangle, that is to say, a three-sided figure.

Of these two reasons which he gave, the latter seemed the neater and the more ingenious; for as we looked at that constellation, it actually appeared to consist of triangles. [*](This is true, whatever the origin of the name.)

Information about the wind called Iapyx and about the names and quarters of other winds, derived from the discourses of Favorinus.

AT Favorinus' table, when he dined with friends, there was usually read either an old song of one of the lyric poets, or something from history, now in Greek and now in Latin. Thus one day there was read there, in a Latin poem, [*](Perhaps Horace, Odes, i. 3. 4 or iii. 27. 20. Gellius mentions Horace by name only once, in § 25, below.) the word Iapyx, the name of a wind, and the question was asked what wind this was, from what quarter it blew, and what was the origin of so rare a term; and we also asked Favorinus to be so good as to inform us about the names and quarters of the other winds,

since there was no general agreement as to their designations, positions or number.

Then Favorinus ran on as follows:

It is well known,

said he, " that there are four quarters and regions of the heavens—east, west, south and north. East and west are movable and variable points; [*](Since the Latin terms for east and west mean the sun's rising and setting.) south and north are permanently fixed and unalterable. For the sun does not always rise in exactly the same place, but its rising is called either equinoctial when it runs the course which is called i)shmerino/s (with equal days and nights), or solsticial, which is equivalent to qerinai\ tropai/ (summer turnings), or brumal, which is the same as xeimerinai\ tropai/, or 'winter turnings.' So too the sun does not always set in the same place; for in the same way its setting is called equinoctial, solstitial, or brumal. Therefore the wind which blows from the sun's spring, or equinoctial, rising is called eurus, a word derived, as your etymologists say, from the Greek which means ' that which flows from the east.' This wind is called by the Greeks by still another name, a)fhliw/ths, or 'in the direction of the sun'; and by the Roman sailors, subsolanus (lying beneath the sun). But the wind that comes from the summer and solstitial point of rising [*](This at the summer solstice would be far to the north.) is called in Latin aquilo, in Greek bore/as, and some say it was for that reason that Homer called [*](Odyss. v. 296.) it ai)qrhgene/ths, or 'ether-born' [*](That is, from the clear, bright sky, often attending the sunrise.) ; but boreas, they think, is so named a)po\ th=s boh=s, 'from the loud shout,' since its blast is violent and noisy. To the third wind, which blows from the point of the winter rising—the Romans call it volturnus—many of the Greeks give a compound name, eu)ro/notos, because it is between eurus and notus. These then are the three east winds: aquilo, volturnus and curus, and eurus lies between the other two. Opposite to and facing these are three other winds from the west: caurus, which the Greeks commonly call a)rgesth/s [*](From a)rgh/s, white, brilliant. The Latin equivalent was argestis, which, according to Isidor (Orig. xiii. 11. 10), the common people corrupted into agrestis.) or 'clearing'; this blows from the quarter opposite aquilo. There is a second, favonius, [*](Perhaps connected with foveo, as a mild, pleasant wind; see Thes. Ling. Lat., s. v. Or with faveo, Faunus, Walde, Etym. Lat. Dict.) which in Greek is called ze/furos, blowing from the point opposite to eurus; and a third, Africus, which in Greek is li/y, [*](From lei/bw, Lat. libo, pour, pour out.) or 'wet-bringing,' blows in opposition to volturnus. These two opposite quarters of the sky, east and west, have, as we see, six winds opposite to one another. But the south, since it is a fixed and invariable point, has but one single south wind; this in Latin is termed auster, in Greek no/tos, because it is cloudy and wet, for noti/s is the Greek for 'moisture." [*]('The derivation of auster is uncertain; see Thes. Ling. Lat., s. v. Walde connects it with words meaning east and eastern, adding Merkwiirdig ist die Bedeutung 'Sudwind,' nicht 'Ostwind'; doch ist auch in der Vogelschau die Richtung gegen Osten teilweise durch die Richtung nach Sūden abgelost. But Thurneysen (T. L. L.) remarks: Sed ab his Latini nominis significatus nimium distat.) The north too, for the same reason, has but one wind. This, called in Latin septentrionarius, in Greek a)parkti/as, or 'from the region of the Bear,' is directly opposite to auster. From this list of eight winds some subtract four, and they declare that they do so on the authority of Homer, [*](Odyss. v. 295, 331.) who knows only four winds: eurus, auster, aquilo and favonius, blowing from the four quarters of the heaven which we have named primary, so to speak; for they regard the east and west as broader, to be sure, but nevertheless single and not divided into three parts. There are others, on the contrary, who make twelve winds instead of eight, by inserting a third group of four in the intervening space about the south and north, in the same way that the second four are placed between the original two at east and west.

"There are also some other names of what might be called special winds, which the natives have coined each in their own districts, either from the designations of the places in which they live or from some other reason which has led to the formation of the word. Thus our Gauls [*](That is, the Gauls of Gallia Narbonensis. Favorinus was a native of Arelate, the modern Aries.) call the wind which blows from their land, the most violent wind to which they are exposed, circius, doubtless from its whirling and stormy character; the Apulians give the name Iapyx—the name by which they themselves are known (Iapzyges)—to the wind that blows from the mouth of )Iapugi/a itself, from its inmost recesses, as it were. [*](Text and meaning are very uncertain. No satisfactory explanation of ore or sinibus has been offered, so far as I know. Apuleius, De Mundo 14, says: Apuli Iapagem eum venture ) ex Iapygae sinu, id est ex ipso Gargano venientem (appellant).) This is, I think, about the same as caurus; for it is a west wind and seems to blow from the quarter opposite eurus. Therefore Virgil says [*](Aen. viii. 709.) that Cleopatra, when fleeing to Egypt after the sea-fight, was borne onward by Iapyx, and he called [*](Aen. xi. 678.) an Apulian horse by the same name as the wind, that is, Iapyx. There is also a wind named caecias, which, according to Aristotle [*](Meteor. ii. 6; Prob. xxvi. 29.) blows in such a way as not to drive away clouds, but to attract them. This, he says, is the origin of the proverbial line: [*](Trag. fr. adesp. 75, Nauck.2)

1. Attracting to oneself, as caecias does the clouds.

Moreover, besides these which I have mentioned there are in various places other names of winds, of new coinage and each peculiar to its own region,

for example the Atabulus of Horace; [*](Serm. i. 5. 78. The wind corresponds to the sirocco. Porphyrio, ad loc. gives the fanciful derivation, a)po\ tou= e)s th\n a)/thn ba/llein pa/nta. The Thes. Ling. Lat. connects it with Atabuli, the name of an Aethiopian tribe.) these too I intended to discuss; I would also have added those which are called etesiae [*](Periodic, or trade winds, referring especially to the Egyptian monsoon, which blow from the north-west during the whole summer (Herodotus, ii, 20); used also of winds which blow from the north in the Aegean for forty days after the rising of the Dog-star.) and prodromi, [*](Preceding the etesiae, and blowing north-north-east for eight days before the rising of the Dog-star.) which at a fixed time of year, namely when the dog-star rises, blow from one or another quarter of the heavens; and since I have drunk a good bit, I would have rated on about the meaning of all these terms, had I not already done a deal of talking while all of you have been silent, as if I were delivering 'an exhibition speech.' But for one to do all the talking at a large dinner-party," said he,

is neither decent nor becoming.

This is what Favorinus recounted to us at his own table at the time I mentioned, with extreme elegance of diction and in a delightful and graceful style throughout. But as to his statement that the wind which blows from the land of Gaul is called circius, Marcus Cato in his Origins [*](Fr. 93, Peter.) calls that wind, not circius, but cercius. For writing about the Spaniards who dwell on this side the Ebro, he set down these words:

But in this district are the finest iron and silver mines, also a great mountain of pure salt; the more you take from it, the more it grows. The cercius wind, when you speak, fills your mouth; it overturns an armed man or a loaded wagon.

In saying above that the e)thsi/ai blow from one or another quarter of the heavens, although following the opinion of many, I rather think I spoke hastily. [*](Gellius, as he sometimes does elsewhere, refers to Favorinus' statement as if it were his own. Gronovius' proposed change to dixit and dixerit is unnecessary.)

For in the second book of Publius Nigidius' treatise On Wind are these words: [*](Fr. 104, Swoboda.)

Both the e)thsi/ai and the annual south winds follow the sun.

We ought therefore to inquire into the meaning of

follow the sun.