Noctes Atticae

On the word duovicesimus, which is unknown to the general public, but occurs frequently in the writings of the learned.

I CHANCED to be sitting in a bookshop in the Sigillaria [*](See note 2, p. 128.) with the poet Julius Paulus, the most

learned man within my memory; and there was on sale there the Annals of Fabius [*](Quintus Fabius Pictor, who was sent as an envoy to Delphi after the battle of Cannae (216 B. C.), wrote a history of Rome from the coming of Aeneas to his own time. He wrote in Greek, but a Latin version is mentioned also by Quintilian (i. 6. 12) and was used by Varro and by Cicero.) in a copy of good and undoubted age, which the dealer maintained was without errors. But one of the better known grammarians, who had been called in by a purchaser to inspect the book, said that he had found in it one error; but the bookseller for his part offered to wager any amount whatever that there was not a mistake even in a single letter. The grammarian pointed out the following passage in the fourth book: [*](Fr. 6, Peter.)

Therefore it was then that for the first time one of the two consuls was chosen from the plebeians, in the twenty-second (duovicesimo) year after the Gauls captured Rome.

It ought,

said lie,

to read, not duovicesimo, but duodevicesimo or twenty-second; for what is the meaning of duovicesimo?

. . . Varro [*](There is a lacuna in the text which might be filled by This question might be answered by.) in the sixteenth book of his Antiquities of Man; there he wrote as follows: [*](Fr. 1, Mirsch.)

He died in the twenty-second year [*](Of his reign.) (duovicesimo); he was king for twenty-one years.

. . .

How the Carthaginian Hannibal jested at the expense of king Antiochus.

IN collections of old tales it is recorded that Hannibal the Carthaginian made a highly witty jest when at the court of king Antiochus. The jest was

this: Antiochus was displaying to him on the plain the gigantic forces which he had mustered to make war on the Roman people, and was manœuvring his army glittering with gold and silver ornaments. He also brought up chariots with scythes, elephants with turrets, and horsemen with brilliant bridles, saddlecloths, neck-chains and trappings. And then the king, filled with vainglory at the sight of an army so great and so well-equipped, turned to Hannibal and said:

Do you think that all this can be equalled and that it is enough for the Romans?

Then the Carthaginian, deriding the worthlessness and inefficiency of the king's troops in their costly armour, replied:

I think all this will be enough, yes, quite enough, for the Romans, even though they are most avaricious.

Absolutely nothing could equal this remark for wit and sarcasm; the king had inquired about the size of his army and asked for a comparative estimate; Hannibal in his reply referred to it as booty.