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).

How the opinions of the Greeks differ as to the number of Niobe's children.

A STRANGE and indeed almost absurd variation is to be noted in the Greek poets as to the number of Niobe's children. For Homer says [*](Iliad xxiv. 602.) that she had six sons and six daughters; Euripides, [*](Frag. 455, N2.) seven of each; Sappho, [*](Frag. 143, Bergk.) nine; Bacchylides [*](Frag. 46, Blass2.) and Pindar, [*](Frag. 65, Bergk.) ten; while certain other writers have said that there were only three sons and three daughters.

Of things which seem to have sumptwsi/a, or

coincidence,
with the waning and waxing moon.

THE poet Annianus owned an estate in the Faliscan territory, where he used to celebrate the vintage season with mirth and jollity. On one occasion he invited me, along with some other friends. As we were dining there one day, a large quantity of oysters were sent from Rome. When they were set before us and proved to be indeed numerous, but neither rich nor very plump, Annianus said:

Of course the moon is waning just now; therefore the oyster also, like some other things, is thin and juiceless.
When we asked what other things wasted away with the waning moon, he answered: "Don't you remember that our Lucilius says: [*](v. 1201, Marx.)
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  1. The moon makes oysters fat, sea-urchins full,
  2. And bulk and substance to the mussels adds? [*](Cf. Hor. Serm. ii. 4. 30, lubrica nascentes implent conchylia lunae; Cic. de Div. ii. 33.)

Furthermore, those same things which grow as the moon waxes grow less as it wanes. The eyes of cats also become larger or smaller according to the same changes of the moon. This too," said he,

is much more greatly to be wondered at, which I read in the fourth book of Plutarch's Commentary on Hesiod: [*](Frag. 90, Bern.) ' The onion grows and buds as the moon wanes, but, on the contrary, dries up while the moon waxes. The Egyptian priests say that this is the reason why the people of Pelusium do not eat the onion, because it is the only one of all vegetables which has an interchange of increase and decrease contrary to the waxing and waning of the moon.'

A passage in the Mimiambi of Gnaeus Matius, in which Antonius Iulianus used to delight; and the meaning of Marcus Cato in the speech which he wrote on his own uprightness, when he said:

I have never asked the people for garments.

ANTONIUS JULIANUS used to say that his ears were soothed and charmed by the newly-coined words of Gnaeus Matius, a man of learning, such as the following, which he said were written by Matius in his Mimiambi: [*](Frag. 12, Bahrens (F.P.R. p. 282).)

  1. Revive your cold love in your warm embrace,
  2. Close joining lip to lip like amorous dove (columbulatim).
v3.p.447
And this also he declared to be charmingly and neatly devised: [*](Id. 13.)
  1. The shorn rugs now are drunken with the dye
  2. With which the shell [*](That is, the murex or purple-fish.) has drenched and coloured them. . .

The meaning of the phrase ex iure manum consertum.

Ex iure manum consertum, or

lay on hands according to law,
is a phrase taken from ancient cases at law, and commonly used to-day when a case is tried before the praetor and claims are made. I asked a Roman grammarian, a man of wide reputation and great name, what the meaning of these words was. But he, looking scornfully at me, said:
Either you are making a mistake, youngster, or you are jesting; for I teach grammar and do not give legal advice. If you want to know anything connected with Virgil, Plautus or Ennius, you may ask me.

It is a question from Ennius then, master,
said I,
that I am asking. For it was Ennius who used those words.
And when the grammarian said in great surprise that the words were unsuited to poetry and that they were not to be found anywhere in the poems of Ennius, I quoted from memory the following lines from the eighth book of the Annals; for it chanced that I remembered them because of their particularly striking character: [*](vv. 268 ff., Vahlen.)

  1. Wisdom is driven forth and force prevails;
  2. They scorn the speaker good, the rude soldier love.
    3. v3.p.449
  3. Contending not with learning nor abuse,
  4. They join in strife, not laying claim by law,
  5. But, seeking with the sword both wealth and power,
  6. With force resistless rush.

When I had recited these verses from Ennius, the grammarian rejoined:

Now I believe you. But I would have you believe me, when I say that Quintus Ennius learned this, not from his reading of the poets, but from someone learned in the law. Do you too then go and learn from the same source as Ennius.

I followed the advice of this teacher, when he referred me to another from whom I could learn what he ought to have taught me himself: And I thought that I ought to include in these notes of mine what I have learned from jurists and their writings, since those who are living in the midst of affairs and among men ought not to be ignorant of the commoner legal expressions. Manum conserere,

to lay on hands.
. . . For with one's opponent to lay hold of and claim in the prescribed formula anything about which there is a dispute, whether it be a field or something else, is called vindicia, or
a claim.
A seizing with the hand of the thing or place in question took place in the presence of the praetor according to the Twelve Tables, in which it was written [*](vi. 5.) "If any lay on hands in the presence of the magistrate." [*](Cf. xx. i. 48; see Allen, Remnants of Early Latin, p. 85.) But when the boundaries of Italy were extended and the praetors were greatly occupied with legal business, they found it hard to go to distant places to settle claims. Therefore it became
v3.p.451
usual by silent consent, though contrary to the Twelve Tables, for the litigants not to lay on hands in court in the presence of the praetor, but to call for
a laying on of hands according to law
; that is, that the one litigant should summon the other to the object in question, to lay hands on it according to law, and that they should go together to the field under dispute and bring some earth from it to the city to the praetor's court, for example one clod, and should lay claim to that clod, as if it were the whole field. Accordingly Ennius, wishing to describe such action, said that restitution was demanded, not by legal processes, such as are carried on before a praetor, nor by a laying on of hands according to law, but by war and the sword, and by genuine and resistless violence; and he seems to have expressed this by comparing that civil and symbolic [*](festuca,a stalk or stem, was used of the rod with which slaves were touched in the ceremony of manumission. Here festucariam (a a(/pac lego/menon) is extended in meaning to include any symbolic legal process.) power which is exercised in name only and not actually, with warlike and sanguinary violence.

The meaning of the word sculna, used by Marcus Varro.

PUBLIUS LAVINIUS is the author of a carefully written book, entitled On Vulgar Words. In it he wrote that scublna was a colloquial form for seculna,

for which,
says he,
more elegant speakers use sequester, or' arbiter.'
Each of these words is derived from sequor, because both parties
follow
the decision of the arbiter who is chosen. Lavinius
v3.p.453
reminds us in the same book that sculna was written in the division of Marcus Varro's Logistorica entitled Caius. [*](Frag. 37, Riese.) But that which was deposited with the arbiter they spoke of as sequestro positum,
deposited for arbitration,
using the adverb sequestro. Cato, in his speech On Ptolemy, against Thermus, says: [*](x. 3, Jordan.)
By the immortal gods, do not. . . .