Noctes Atticae

A discussion and comparison of passages taken from the comedy of Menander and that of Caecilius, entitled Plocium.

I OFTEN read comedies which our poets have adapted and translated from the Greeks—Menander or Posidippus, Apollodorus or Alexis, and also some other comic writers. And while I am reading them, they do not seem at all bad; on the contrary, they appear to be written with a wit and charm which you would say absolutely could not be surpassed. But if you compare and place beside them the Greek originals from which they came, and if you match individual passages, reading them together alternately with care and attention, the Latin versions at once begin to appear exceedingly commonplace and mean; so dimmed are they by the wit and brilliance of the Greek comedies, which they were unable to rival.

Only recently I had an experience of this kind. I was reading the Plocium or Necklace of Caecilius, much to the delight of myself and those who were present. The fancy took us to read also the Plocium of Menander, from which Caecilius had translated the said comedy. But after we took Menander in hand, good Heavens! how dull and lifeless, and how different from Menander did Caecilius appear!

Upon my word, the armour of Diomedes and of Glaucus were not more different in value. [*](Homer (Iliad vi. 234 ff) tells us that Diomedes proposed to exchange armour with Glaucus in token of friendship. Diomedes' arms of bronze cost nine oxen; those of Glaucus, inlaid with gold, a hundred. Hence gold for bronze became proverbial.) Our reading had reached the passage where the aged husband was complaining of his rich and ugly wife, because he had been forced to sell his maid-servant, a girl skilled at her work and very good looking, since his wife suspected her of being his mistress. I shall say nothing of the great difference; but I have had the lines of both poets copied and submitted to others for their decision. This is Menander: [*](Fr. 402, Kock; p. 428, L.C.L.)

1. Now may our heiress fair on both ears sleep.
2. A great and memorable feat is hers;
3. For she has driven forth, as she had planned,
4. The wench that worried her, that all henceforth
5. Of Crobyle alone the face may see,
6. And that the famous woman, she my wife,
7. May also be my tyrant. From the face
8. Dame Nature gave her, she's an ass 'mong apes,
9. As says the adage. I would silent be
10. About that night, the first of many woes.
11. Alas that I took Crobyle to wife,
12. With sixteen talents and a foot of nose.
13. Then too can one her haughtiness endure?
14. By Zeus Olympius and Athena, no '
15. She has dismissed a maid who did her work
16. More quickly than the word was given her,
17. More quickly far than one will bring her back!

But Caecilius renders it thus: [*](vv. 142ff., Ribbeck3.)

1. In very truth is he a wretched man,
2. Who cannot hide his woe away from home;
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3. And that my wife makes me by looks and acts:
4. If I kept still, I should betray myself
5. No less. And she has all that you would wish
6. She had not, save the dowry that she brought.
7. Let him who's wise a lesson take from me,
8. Who, like a free man captive to the foe,
9. Am slave, though town and citadel are safe.
10. What! wish her safe who steals whate'er I prize?
11. While longing for her death, a living corpse am I.
12. She says I've secret converse with our maid—
13. That's what she said, and so be laboured me
14. With tears, with prayers, with importunities,
15. That I did sell the wench. Now, I suppose,
16. She blabs like this to neighbours and to friends:
17. " Which one of you, when in the bloom of youth,
18. Could from her husband win what I from mine
19. Have gained, who've robbed him of his concubine."
20. Thus they, while I, poor wretch, am torn to shreds.

Now, not to mention the charm of subject matter and diction, which is by no means the same in the two books, I notice this general fact—that some of Menander's lines, brilliant, apt and witty, Caecilius has not attempted to reproduce, even where lie might have done so; but he has passed them by as if they were of no value, and has dragged in some other farcical stuff; and what Menander took from actual life, simple, realistic and delightful, this for some reason or other Caecilius has missed. For example, that same old husband, talking with another old man, a neighbour of his, and cursing the arrogance of his rich wife, says: [*](Fr. 403, Kock; p. 428, L. C. L.)

1. I have to wife an heiress ogress, man!
2. I did not tell you that? What, really? no?
3. She is the mistress of my house and lands,
4. Of all that's hereabout. And in return
5. I have by Zeus! the hardest of hard things.
6. She scolds not only me, but her son too,
7. Her daughter most of all.—You tell a thing
8. There's no contending with.—I know it well.

But in this passage Caecilius chose rather to play the buffoon than to be appropriate and suitable to the character that he was representing. For this is the way he spoiled the passage: [*](vv. 158 ff., Ribbeck3. )

1. But tell me, sir; is your wife captious, pray?—
2. How can you ask?—But in what manner, then?—
3. I am ashamed to tell. When I come home
4. And sit beside her, she with fasting [*](That is, nauseous.) breath
5. Straight kisses me.—There's no mistake in that.
6. She'd have you spew up what you've drunk abroad.

It is clear what your judgment ought to be about that scene also, found in both comedies, which is about of the following purport: The daughter of a poor man was violated during a religious vigil. This was unknown to her father, and she was looked upon as a virgin. Being with child as the result of that assault, at the proper time she is in labour. An honest slave, standing before the door of the house, knowing nothing of the approaching delivery of his master's daughter, and quite unaware that violence had been offered her, hears the groans and prayers of the girl labouring in childbirth; he gives expression to his fear, anger, suspicion, pity and grief. In the Greek comedy all these emotions and

feelings of his are wonderfully vivid and clear, but in Caecilius they are all dull and without any grace and dignity of expression. Afterwards, when the same slave by questioning has found out what has happened, in Menander he utters this lament: [*](Fr. 404, Kock; p. 430, L. C. L.)

1. Alas! thrice wretched he who weds, though poor,
2. And children gets. How foolish is the man
3. Who keeps no watch o'er his necessities,
4. And if he luckless be in life's routine,
5. Can't use his wealth as cloak, but buffeted
6. By ev'ry storm, lives helpless and in grief.
7. All wretchedness he shares, of blessings none,
8. Thus sorrowing for one I'd all men warn.

Let us consider whether Caecilius was sufficiently inspired to approach the sincerity and realism of these words. These are the lines of Caecilius, in which he gives some mangled fragments from Menander, patching them with the language of tragic bombast: [*](vv. 169 ff., Ribbeck.2)

1. Unfortunate in truth the man, who poor,
2. Yet children gets, to share his poverty.
3. His fortune and his state at once are clear;
4. The ill fame of the rich their set conceals.

Accordingly, as I said above, when I read these passages of Caecilius by themselves, they seem by no means lacking in grace and spirit, but when I compare and match them with the Greek version, I feel that Caecilius should not have followed a guide with whom he could not keep pace.

On the ancient frugality; and on early sumptuary laws.

FRUGALITY among the early Romans, and moderation in food and entertainments were secured not only by observance and training at home, but also by public penalties and the inviolable provisions of numerous laws. Only recently I read in the Miscellanies[*](Fr. 5, Huschke; 6, Bremer.) of Ateius Capito an old decree of the senate, passed in the consulship of Gaius Fannius and Marcus Valerius Messala, [*](161 B.C.) which provides that the leading citizens, who according to ancient usage

interchanged

at the Melagesian games [*](The Megalensian or Megalesian festival, on April 4. The games eventually extended from the 4th to the 10th inclusive. Only the nobles gave dinner parties on the 4th; the plebeians celebrated at the Cerealia, April 19.) (that is, acted as host to one another in rotation), should take oath before the consuls in set terms, that they would not spend on each dinner more than one hundred and twenty asses in addition to vegetables, bread and wine; that they would not serve foreign, but only native, wine, nor use at table more than one hundred pounds' weight of silverware.

But subsequent to that decree of the senate the law of Fannius was passed, which allowed the expenditure of one hundred asses a day at the Roman and the plebeian games, [*](The ludi Romani in Cicero's time extended from Sept. 5 to 19; the ludi plebei, at first probably held on one day, finally lasted from Nov. 4 to 17.) at the Saturnalia, [*](Originally on Dec. 17; extended to seven days, of which five (under Augustus, three) were legal holidays.) and on certain other days; of thirty asses on ten additional days each month; but on all other days of only ten. This is the law to which the poet Lucilius alludes when he says: [*](1172, Marx.)

1. The paltry hundred pence of Fannius.

In regard to this some of the commentators on Lucilius have been mistaken in thinking that Fannius' law authorized a regular expenditure of a hundred asses on every kind of day. For, as I have stated above, Fannius authorized one hundred asses on certain holidays which he expressly named, but for all other days he limited the daily outlay to thirty asses for some days and to ten for others.

Next the Licinian law was passed [*](Probably in 103 B.C.) which, while allowing the outlay of one hundred asses on designated days, as did the law of Fannius, conceded two hundred asses for weddings and set a limit of thirty for other days; however, after naming a fixed weight of dried meat and salted provisions for each day, it granted the indiscriminate and unlimited use of the products of the earth, vine and orchard. This law the poet Laevius mentions in his Erotopaegnia. [*](Fr. 23, Bährens, Fray. Poet. Rom., p. 292. Erotopaegnia means Playful Verses about Love ; a sixth book is cited by Charisius (i. 204 K). One fragment indicates that Laevius was a contemporary of Varro. His brief and scanty fragments show great variety in metre (cf. Prisc. ii. 258 K), and innovations in diction (Gell. xix. 7.)) These are the words of Laevius, by which he means that a kid that had been brought for a feast was sent away and the dinner served with fruit and vegetables, as the Licinian law had provided:

1. The Licinian law is introduced,
2. The liquid light to the kid restored.

Lucilius also has the said law in mind in these words:

1. Let us evade the law of Licinius. [*](1200, Marx.)

Afterwards, when these laws were illegible from the rust of age and forgotten, when many men of abundant means were gormandizing, and recklessly

pouring their family and fortune into an abyss of dinners and banquets, Lucius Sulla in his dictatorship proposed a law to the people, which provided that on the Kalends, Ides and Nones, on days of games, and on certain regular festivals, it should be proper and lawful to spend three hundred sesterces on a dinner, but on all other days no more than thirty.

Besides these laws we find also an Aemilian law, [*](78 B. C. Another Aemilian sumptuary law was passed in 115 B.C.) setting a limit not on the expense of dinners, but on the kind and quantity of food.

Then the law of Antius, [*](Passed a few years after the Aemilian law.) besides curtailing outlay, contained the additional provision, that no magistrate or magistrate elect should dine out anywhere, except at the house of stipulated persons.

Lastly, the Julian law came before the people during the principate of Caesar Augustus, [*](Cf. Suet. Aug. xxxiv, 1.) by which on working days two hundred sesterces is the limit, on the Kalends, Ides and Nones and some other holidays, three hundred, but at weddings and the banquets following them, a thousand.

Ateius Capito says [*](Fr, 6, Huschke; 7, Bremer.) that there is still another Edict—but whether of the deified Augustus or of Tiberius Caesar I do not exactly remember—by which the outlay for dinners on various festal days was increased from three hundred sesterces to two thousand, to the end that the rising tide of luxury night be restrained at least within those limits.

What the Greeks understand by a)nalogi/a, and, on the contrary, by a)nwmali/a.

IN the Latin language, just as in Greek, some have thought that the principle of a)nalogi/a should be followed, others that of a)nwmali/a. is the similar inflection of similar words, which some call in Latin proportio, or

regularity.

)Anwmali/a is irregularity in inflection, following usage. Now two distinguished Greek grammarians, Aristarchus and Crates, defended with the utmost vigour, the one analogy, the other anomaly. The eighth book of Marcus Varro's treatise On the Latin Language, dedicated to Cicero, maintains [*](viii, p. 146, G. & S. ) that no regard is paid to regularity, and points out that in almost all words usage rules.

As when we decline,

says he,

lpus lupi, probus probi, but lepus leporis; again, paro paravi and lavo lavi, pungo pupugi, tundo tutudi and pingo pinxi. And although,

he continues, "from ceno and prandeo and poto we form cenatus sum, pransus sum and potus sum, [*](That is, pransus, potus and cenatus are used in an active sense; see Cic. pro Mil. 56, adde inscitiam pransi, poti, oscitantis ducis, and Priscian (ii. 665. 17, Keil) ut cenatus sum . . pro cenavi.) yet from destringor and extergeor and lavor we make destrinxi and extersi and lavi. Furthermore, although from Oscus, Tuscus and Graecus we derive the adverbs Osce, Tusce and Graece, yet from Gallus and Maurus we have Gallice and Maurice; also from probus probe, from doctus docte, but from rarus there is no adverb rare, but some say raro, others rarenter." [*](Charisius (i. 217. 8, Keil), cites rare from Cicero, Cato and Plautus, but the modern texts do not admit the form.) In the same book Varro goes on to say:

No one uses

v1.p.211

senior and that form by itself is naught, but almost everyone says adsentior. Sisenna alone used to say adsentio (I agree) in the senate, but later many followed his example, yet could not prevail over usage.

But Varro himself in other books wrote a good deal in defence of analogy. Therefore his utterances on the subject are, as it were, common-places, [*](Haec argumenta quae transferri in multas causas possunt locos communes noininamus. Cic. De Inv. ii. 48; cf. Brut. 46. and Quintilian passim.) to cite now against analogy and again also in its favour.

Discourses of Marcus Fronto and the philosopher Favorinus on the varieties of colours and their Greek and Latin names: and incidentally, the nature of the colour spadix.

WHEN the philosopher Favorinus was on his way to visit the exconsul Marcus Fronto, who was ill with the gout, he wished me also to go with him. And when there at Fronto's, where a number of learned men were present, a discussion took place about colours and their names, to the effect that the shades of colours are manifold, but the names for them are few and indefinite, Favorinus said: "More distinctions of colour are detected by the eye than are expressed by words and terms. For leaving out of account other incongruities, your simple colours, red (rufus) and green viridiss), have single names, but many different shades. And that poverty in names I find more pronounced in Latin than in Greek. For the colour red Rufuss) does in fact get its name from redness, but although fire is one kind of red, blood

another, purple another, saffron another, and gold still another, yet the Latin tongue does not indicate these special varieties of red by separate and individual words, but includes them all under the one term rubor, except in so far as it borrows names from the things themselves, and calls anything ' fiery,' ' flaming,' 'blood-red,' 'saffron' 'purple' and 'golden.' For russus and rubber are no doubt derived from rufus, and do not indicate all its special varieties, but canqo/s and e)ruqro/s and purro/s and kirro/s [*](kirro/stawny, orange-tawny designates a shade between canqo/s, yellow, and purro/s, flame-coloured.) and foi=nic seem to mark certain differences in the colour red, either intensifying it or making it lighter, or qualifying it by the admixture of some shade."

Then Fronto, replying to Favorinus, said: "I do not deny that the Greek language, which you seem to prefer, is richer and more copious than ours; but nevertheless in naming these colours of which you have just spoken we are not quite so badly off as you think. For russus and ruber, which you have just mentioned, are not the only words that denote the colour red, but we have others also, more numerous than those which you have quoted from the Greek. For fihlvus, flavus, rubidus, poeniceus, rutilus, luteus and spadix are names of the colour red, which either brighten it (making it fiery, as it were), or combine it with green, or darken it with black, or make it luminous by a slight addition of gleaming white. For poeniceus, which you call foi=nic in Greek, belongs to our language, and rutilus and spadix, a synonym of poeniceus which is taken over into Latin from the Greek,

indicate a rich, gleaming shade of red like that of the fruit of the palm-tree when it is not fully ripened by the sun. And from this spadix and poeniceus get their name; for spadix in Doric is applied to a branch torn from a palm-tree along with its fruit. But the colour fulvus seems to be a mixture of red and green, in which sometimes green predominates, sometimes red. Thus the poet who was most careful in his choice of words applies fulvus to an eagle, [*](Virg. Aen. xi. 751.) to jasper, [*](id. iv. 261. ) to fur caps, [*](id. vii. 688.) to gold, [*](id. vii. 279, etc. ) to sand, [*](id. v. 374, etc.) and to a lion; [*](ii. 722, etc.) and so Ennius in his Annals uses fulvus of air. [*](454 Vahlen.2 Ennius has fulva; and is so quoted by Gellius in xiii. 21. 14.) Flavus on the other hand seems to be compounded of green and red and white; thus Virgil speaks of golden hair as flava [*](Aen. iv. 590.) and applies that adjective also to the leaves of the olive, [*](Aen. v. 309.) which I see surprises some; and thus, much earlier, Pacuvius called water flava and dust fulvus. [*](v. 244, Ribbeck.2) I am glad to quote his verses, for they are most charming:

1. Give me thy foot, that with the same soft hands
2. With which oft times I did Ulysses soothe
3. I may with golden (flavis) waters wash away
4. The tawny (fulvum) dust and heal thy weariness.

"

Now, rubidus is a darker red and with a larger admixture of black; luteus, on the other hand, is a more diluted red, and from this dilution its name too seems to be derived. Therefore, my dear Favorinus,

said he, "the shades of red have no more names in Greek than with us. But neither is the colour green expressed by more terms in your language, and Virgil, when he wished to indicate the green colour of a horse, could perfectly well have called the horse caerulus rather than glaucus, but he preferred to use a familiar Greek word, rather than one which was unusual in Latin. [*](Georg. iii. 82, honest spadices glaucique. We should use grey, rather than green. Glaucus was a greyish green or a greenish grey. Since caerulus and caeruleus are not unusual words, Gellius probably means unusual as applied to a horse. Ovid, Fasti iv. 446, uses caeruleus of the horses of Pluto, but in the sense of dark, dusky.) Moreover, our earlier writers used caesia as the equivalent of the Greek glaukw=pis, as Nigidius says, [*](Fr. 72, Swoboda.) from the colour of the sky, as if it were originally caelia."

After Fronto had said this, Favorinus, enchanted with his exhaustive knowledge of the subject and his elegant diction, said:

Were it not for you, and perhaps for you alone, the Greek language would surely have come out far ahead; but you, my deal Fronto, exemplify Homer's line: [*](Iiad, xxiii. 382.)

1. Thou would'st either have won or made the result indecisive.

But not only have I listened with pleasure to all your learned remarks, but in particular in describing the diversity of the colour flavus you have made me understand these beautiful lines from the fourteenth book of Ennius' Annalns [*](v. 384 f., Vahlen 2, who reads placide and sale.) which before I did not in the least comprehend:

1. The calm sea's golden marble now they skim;
2. Ploughed by the thronging craft, the green seas foam;

for 'the green seas' did not seem to correspond with 'golden marble.' But since, as you have said, flavus is a colour containing an admixture of green and white, Ennius with the utmost elegance called the foam of the green sea 'golden marble.'

The criticism of Titus Castricius passed upon passages from Sallust and Demosthenes, in which the one described Philip, the other Sertorius.

THIS is Demosthenes' striking and brilliant description of king Philip: [*](De Cor. 67.)

I saw that Philip himself, with whom we were struggling, had in his desire for empire and absolute power had one eye knocked out, his collar-bone broken, his hand and leg maimed, and was ready to resign any part of his body that fortune chose to take from him, provided that with what remained he might live in honour and glory.

Sallust, desiring to rival this description, in his Histories thus wrote of the leader Sertorius [*](i. 88, Maurenbrecher.) :

He won great glory in Spain, while military tribune under the command of Titus Didius, rendered valuable service in the Marsic war in providing troops and arms; but he got no credit for much that was then done under his direction and orders, at first because of his low birth and afterwards through unfriendly historians; but during his lifetime his appearance bore testimony to these deeds, in many scars on his breast, and in the loss of an eye. Indeed, he rejoiced greatly in his bodily disfigurement, caring nothing for what he had lost, because he kept the rest with greater glory.

In his estimate of these words of the two writers Titus Castricius said:

Is it not beyond the range of human capability to rejoice in bodily disfigurement? For rejoicing is a certain exaltation of spirit, delighting in the realization of something greatly desired. How much truer, more natural, and more

v1.p.221

in accordance with human limitations is this: ' Giving up whatever part of his body fortune chose to take.' In these words,

said he,

Philip is shown, not like Sertorius, rejoicing in bodily disfigurement, which,

he said,

is unheard of and extravagant, but as a scorner of bodily losses and injuries in his thirst for honour and glory, who in exchange for the fame which he coveted would sacrifice his limbs one by one to the attacks of fortune.

That it is uncertain to which deity sacrifices ought to be offered when there is an earthquake.

WHAT is to be regarded as the cause of earthquakes is not only not obvious to the ordinary understanding and thought of mankind, but it is not agreed even among the natural philosophers whether they are due to the mighty winds that gather in the caverns and hollow places of the earth, or to the ebb and flow of subterranean waters in its hollows, as seems to have been the view of the earliest Greeks, who called Neptune

the Earth Shaker

; or whether they are the result of something else or due to the divine power of some other god—all this, I say, is not yet a matter of certain knowledge. For that reason the Romans of old, who were not only exceedingly scrupulous and careful in discharging all the other obligations of life, but also in fulfilling religious duties and venerating the immortal gods, whenever they felt an earthquake or received report of one, decreed a holy day on that account, but forbore to declare and specify in the decree, as is commonly done, the name of the god in whose honour the holy day was to be observed; for fear that by naming one god instead of another they might involve the people in a false observance. If anyone had desecrated that festival, and expiation was therefore necessary, they used to offer a victim

to either the god or goddess,

and Marcus Varro tells us [*](Fr. 1, p. cliii, Merkel.) that this usage was established by a decree of the pontiffs, since it was uncertain what force, and which of the gods or goddesses, had caused the earthquake.

But in the case of eclipses of the sun or moon they concerned themselves no less with trying to discover the causes of that phenomenon. However, Marcus Cato, although a man with a great interest in investigation, nevertheless on this point expressed himself indecisively and superficially. His words in the fourth book of his Origins are as follows: [*](Fr. 77, Peter.)

I do not care to write what appears on the tablet of the high priest: how often grain was dear, how often darkness, or something else, obscured the light [*](Lumine is the old dat., cf. II viri iure dicundo and note 1, p. 153.) of sun or moon.

Of so little importance did he consider it either to know or to tell the true causes of eclipses of the sun and moon.