Noctes Atticae

The order observed in calling upon senators for their opinions; and the altercation in the senate between Gaius Caesar, when consul, and Marcus Cato, who tried to use up the whole day in talk.

BEFORE the passage of the law which is now observed in the proceedings of the senate, the order in calling for opinions varied. Sometimes the man was first called upon whom the censors had first enrolled in the senate, sometimes the consuls elect; some of the consuls, influenced by friendship or some personal relationship, used to call first upon anyone they pleased, as a compliment, contrary to the regular order. However, when the usual order was not followed, the rule was observed of not calling first upon any but a man of consular rank. It is said that Gaius Caesar, when he was consul with Marcus Bibulus, [*](In 59 B.C.) called upon only four senators out of order. The first of these was Marcus Crassus, but after Caesar had betrothed his daughter to Gnaeus Pompeius, he began to call upon Pompeius first. [*](See Suet. Jul. xxi., who adds the information that it was the custom for the consul to maintain throughout the year the order with which he had begun on the first of January.)

Caesar gave the senate his reason for this procedure, according to the testimony of Tullius Tiro, Cicero's freedman, who writes [*](Fr. 1, Peter; p. 6, Lion.) that he had the information from his patron. Ateius Capito has made the same statement in his work On Senatorial Conduct. [*](Fr. 18, Huschke; 1, Bremer.)

In the same treatise of Capito is this passage: [*](Fr. 18, Huschke; 2, Bremer. )

The consul Gaius Caesar called upon Marcus Cato for his opinion. Cato did not wish to have the motion before the house carried, since he did not think it for the public good. For the purpose of delaying action, he made a long speech and tried to use up the whole day in talking. For it was a senator's right, when asked his opinion, to speak beforehand on any other subject he wished, and as long as he wished. Caesar, in his capacity as consul, summoned an attendant, [*](According to Suet. Jul. xx. 4, it was a lictor.) and since Cato would not stop, ordered him to be arrested in the full tide of his speech and taken to prison. The senate arose in a body and attended Cato to the prison. But this,

he says,

aroused such indignation, that Caesar yielded and ordered Cato's release.

The nature of the information which Aristoxenus has handed down about Pythagoras on the ground that it was more authoritative; and also what Plutarch wrote in the same vein about that same Pythagoras.

AN erroneous belief of long standing has established itself and become current, that the philosopher Pythagoras did not eat of animals: also that he abstained from the bean, which the Greeks call ku/amos. In accordance with that belief the poet Callimachus wrote: [*](Fr. 128, Schn.)

1. I tell you too, as did Pythagoras,
2. Withhold your hands from beans, a hurtful food.

Also, as the result of the same belief, Marcus Cicero wrote these words in the first book of his work On Didination: [*](§ 62; see Pease, ad loc.)

Plato therefore bids us go to our

v1.p.349

sleep in such bodily condition that there may be nothing to cause delusion and disturbance in our minds. It is thought to be for that reason too that the Pythagoreans were forbidden to eat beans, a food that produces great flatulency, which is disturbing to those who seek mental calm.

So then Cicero. But Aristoxenus the musician, a man thoroughly versed in early literature, a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, in the book On Pythagoras which he has left us, says that Pythagoras used no vegetable more often than beans, since that food gently loosened the bowels and relieved them. I add Aristoxenus' own words: [*](F. H. G. ii. 273.)

Pythagoras among vegetables especially recommended the bean, saying that it was both digestible and loosening; and therefore he most frequently made use of it.

Aristoxenus also relates that Pythagoras ate very young pigs and tender kids. This fact he seems to have learned from his intimate friend Xenophilus the Pythagorean and from some other older men, who lived not long after the time of Pythagoras. And the same information about animal food is given by the poet Alexis, in the comedy entitled

The Pythagorean Bluestocking.

[*](Fr. 199, Kock.) Furthermore, the reason for the mistaken idea about abstaining from beans seems to be, that in a poem of Empedocles, who was a follower of Pythagoras, this line is found: [*](Fr. 141, Diehls.)

1. O wretches, utter wretches, from beans withhold your hands.

For most men thought that kua/mous meant the vegetable, according to the common use of the word. But those who have studied the poems of Empedocles with greater care and knowledge say that here kua/mous refers to the testicles, and that after the Pythagorean manner they were called in a covert and symbolic way ku/amoi, because they are the cause of pregnancy and furnish the power for human generation: [*](Associating ku/amos with kuei=n to conceive.) and that therefore Empedocles in that verse desired to keep men, not from eating beans, but from excess in venery.

Plutarch too, a man of weight in scientific matters, in the first book of his work On Homer wrote that Aristotle [*](Fr. 194, Rose.) gave the same account of the Pythagoreans: namely, that except for a few parts of the flesh they did not abstain from eating animals. Since the statement is contrary to the general belief, I have appended Plutarch's own words: [*](vii., p. 100, Bern.)

Aristotle says that the Pythagoreans abstained from the matrix, the heart, the a)kalh/fh and some other such things, but used all other animal food.

Now the a)kalh/fh is a marine creature which is called the sea-nettle. But Plutarch in his Table Talk says [*](viii. 8.) that the Pythagoreans also abstained from mullets.

But as to Pythagoras himself, while it is well known that he declared that he had come into the world as Euphorbus, what Cleanthes [*](F. H. G. ii. 317.) and Dicaearchus [*](F. H. G. ii. 244.) have recorded is less familiar—that he was afterwards Pyrrhus Pyranthius, then Aethalides, and then a beautiful courtesan, whose name was Alco.