LIBRO VI
TOPIC 1: Some remarkable stories about the elder Publio Africano, drawn from the annals.
1. The tale which in Grecian history is told of Olimpia, wife of king FILIPPO and mother of ALESSANDRO, is also recorded of the mother of that Publio Scipione who was the first to be called Africano.
2. For both Gaio Oppio
and Giulio Igino, as well as others who have written of the life and deeds
of Scipione Africano, declare that his mother was for a long time thought to be barren,
and that Publio Scipione, her husband, had also given up hope of offspring
3. That afterwards, in her own room and bed, when she was lying alone in the absence of her husband and had fallen asleep, of a sudden a huge serpent was seen lying by her side.
And that when those who had seen it were frightened and cried out, the snake glided away and could not be found.
It is said that Publio Scipione himself consulted sooth-sayers about the occurrence; that they, after offering sacrifice, declared that he would have children,
3. That afterwards, in her own room and bed, when she was lying alone in the absence of her husband and had fallen asleep, of a sudden a huge serpent was seen lying by her side.
And that when those who had seen it were frightened and cried out, the snake glided away and could not be found.
It is said that Publio Scipione himself consulted sooth-sayers about the occurrence; that they, after offering sacrifice, declared that he would have children,
4. And not many days
after that serpent had been seen in her bed, the woman began to experience
the indications and sensation of conception.
Afterwards, in the tenth month, she gave birth to that Publio Scipione who conquered Annibale and the Carthaginians in Africa in the second Punic war.
5. But it was far more because of his exploits than because of that prodigy that he too was believed to be a man of god-like excellence.
Afterwards, in the tenth month, she gave birth to that Publio Scipione who conquered Annibale and the Carthaginians in Africa in the second Punic war.
5. But it was far more because of his exploits than because of that prodigy that he too was believed to be a man of god-like excellence.
6. This too I venture to
relate, which the same writers that I mentioned before have put on record.
This Scipione Africano used often to go to the CAMPIDOGLIO in the latter part of the night, before the break of day, give orders that the shrine of GIOVE be opened,and remain there a long time alone, apparently consulting GIOVE about matters of state.
And the guardians of the temple were often amazed that on his coming to the CAMPIDOGLIO alone at such an hour the dogs,t hat flew at all other intruders, neither barked at him nor molested him.
7. These popular beliefs about Scipione seemed to be confirmed and attested by many remarkable actions and sayings of his.
Of these the following is a single example:
8. He was engaged in the siege of a town in SPAGNA, which was strongly fortified and defended, protected by its position, and also well provisioned; and there was no prospect of taking it.
9. One day SCIPIONE sat holding court in his camp, at a point from which there was a distant view of the town.
Then one of SCIPIONE's soldiers who were on trial before him asked in the usual way on what day and in what place he bade them give bail for their appearance.
10. Then Scipione, stretching forth his hand towards the very citadel of the town he was besieging, said:
"Appear the day after to morrow in yonder place."
11. And so it happened: on the third day, the town was captured, and on that same day he held court in the citadel of the place.
This Scipione Africano used often to go to the CAMPIDOGLIO in the latter part of the night, before the break of day, give orders that the shrine of GIOVE be opened,and remain there a long time alone, apparently consulting GIOVE about matters of state.
And the guardians of the temple were often amazed that on his coming to the CAMPIDOGLIO alone at such an hour the dogs,t hat flew at all other intruders, neither barked at him nor molested him.
7. These popular beliefs about Scipione seemed to be confirmed and attested by many remarkable actions and sayings of his.
Of these the following is a single example:
8. He was engaged in the siege of a town in SPAGNA, which was strongly fortified and defended, protected by its position, and also well provisioned; and there was no prospect of taking it.
9. One day SCIPIONE sat holding court in his camp, at a point from which there was a distant view of the town.
Then one of SCIPIONE's soldiers who were on trial before him asked in the usual way on what day and in what place he bade them give bail for their appearance.
10. Then Scipione, stretching forth his hand towards the very citadel of the town he was besieging, said:
"Appear the day after to morrow in yonder place."
11. And so it happened: on the third day, the town was captured, and on that same day he held court in the citadel of the place.
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TOPIC 2: of a disgraceful blunder of Caesellio Vindex, which we find in his
work entitled "Archaic Terms".
1. In those highly celebrated notes of Caesellius Vindex, "On Archaic Terms" we find a shameful oversight, although in fact the man is seldom caught napping.
1. In those highly celebrated notes of Caesellius Vindex, "On Archaic Terms" we find a shameful oversight, although in fact the man is seldom caught napping.
2. This error has escaped the notice of many, in spite of their diligent search
for opportunities to find fault with Caesellio, even through
misrepresentation.
3. Now, Caesellio wrote that Quinto Ennio, in the
thirteenth book of his "Annals", used "cor" in the masculine gender.
4. I add Caesellio's own words:
"Ennio used "cor", like many other words, in
the masculine gender.
For in "Annals", Libro XIII he wrote "quem cor"".
5 He then
quoted two verses of Ennius:
While ANNIBALE, of bold breast, did me exhort not to make war, what HEART thought he was mine?
6. The speaker is Antioco, king of Asia.
Antioco is surprised and indignant that
Annibal, the Carthaginian, discourages his desire to make war on the people of
Rome.
7. Now, Caesellio understands the lines to mean that Antiocho says:
"Hannibal dissuades me from making war."
"In so doing, what kind of heart does he think I have, and how foolish does he believe me to be, when he gives me such advice?"
"In so doing, what kind of heart does he think I have, and how foolish does he believe me to be, when he gives me such advice?"
8. So Caesellio.
But Ennius's meaning was quite different.
9. For there are three
verses, not two, which belong to this utterance of the poet's, and Caesellio overlooked the third verse:
Through valour war's great advocate and friend.
10. The meaning and arrangement of these three verses I believe to be this:
"Annibal, that boldest and most valiant of men, who I believed (for that
is the meaning of "cor meum credidit", exactly as if he had said "who I,
foolish man, believed") would strongly advise war, discourages and
dissuades me from making war."
11. Caesellio, however, somewhat carelessly
misled as to the connection of the words, assumed that Ennio said "quem cor",
reading "quem" with an acute accent, as if it belonged with "cor" and not with
"Annibal".
12. But I am well aware that one might, if anyone should have so
little understanding, defend Caesellio's masculine "cor" by maintaining that the
third verse should be read apart from the others, as if Antioco had exclaimed
in broken and abrupt language "a mighty adviser!"
But those who would
argue thus do not deserve a reply.
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TOPIC 3. What Tullio Tiro, Cicerone's freedman, criticized in the speech
which Marco Catone delivered in the senate in defence of the Rhodians; and our
answer to his strictures.
1. The State of Rhodes is famed for the happy situation of the island, its celebrated works of art, its skill in seamanship and its naval victories.
2. Although a friend and ally of the Roman people, that State was on cordial terms with Perses, son of Philip and king of Macedon, with whom the Romans were at war; accordingly, the Rhodians often sent envoys to Rome and tried to reconcile the contending parties.
3. But when their attempts at peace-making failed, many of the Rhodians harangued the people in their assemblies, agreeing that if peace were not made, the Rhodians should aid the king in his contest with the people of Rome
4. But as to that question no official action was taken.
5. When, however, Perses was defeated and taken prisoner, the Rhodians were in great fear because of what had been said and done on many occasions in the popular assemblies; and they sent envoys to Rome, to apologize for the hastiness of some of their fellow-citizens and vindicate their loyalty as a community.
6. When the envoys reached Rome and were admitted to the senate, after having humbly pleaded their cause they left the House, and the senators were called upon for their opinions.
7. When some of the members complained of the Rhodians, declaring that they had been disloyal, and recommended that war be declared upon them, then Marco Catone arose.
MARCO CATONE endeavoured to defend and save our very good and faithful allies, to whom many of the most distinguished senators were hostile through a desire to plunder and possess their wealth; and he delivered that famous speech entitled "For the Rhodians", which is included in the fifth book of his "Origins" and is also in circulation as a separate publication.
8. Now Tullio Tiro, Marcus Cicerone's freedman, was unquestionably a man of refined taste and by no means unacquainted with our early history and literature.
TULLIO TIRO had been liberally educated from his earliest years, and Cicerone found in him an assistant, and in a sense a partner, in his literary work.
9. But surely Tiro showed more presumption than can be tolerated or excused.
10. For he wrote a letter to Quinto Assio, a friend of CICERONE, with excessive assurance and warmth, in which, as he imagined, he criticized that speech "For the Rhodians" with keen and fine judgment.
11. It chanced to take my fancy to touch upon certain of the animadversions which he makes in that letter, and I shall doubtless be the more readily pardoned for finding fault with Tiro, because he took Catone to task.
12. TIRO's first charge was that Catone, "ignorantly and absurdly," to use Tiro's own language, made use of a preamble which was excessively severe and fault-finding, in which he declared that he feared lest the fathers, having their minds upset by joy and exultation at their success, might act unwisely and be in no state of mind for understanding and deliberating aright.
13. Tiro says: "Advocates who are pleading for clients ought in their opening remarks to win over and propitiate the jurors with complimentary and respectful language."
"They ought, while their minds, as they wait to hear the case, are still in suspense and cool, to render them complacent, and not to arouse contradiction by insults and arrogant threats."
14. Then he has given us Catone's own preamble, which runs as follows:
"I am aware that in happy, successful and prosperous times the minds of most men are wont to be puffed up, and their arrogance and self-confidence to wax and swell.
Therefore I am now gravely concerned, since this enterprise has gone on so successfully, lest something adverse may happen in our deliberations, to bring to naught our good fortune, and lest this joy of ours become too extravagant.
Adversity subdues and shows what ought to be done; prosperity, since it inspires joy, commonly turns men aside from wise counsel and right understanding.
Therefore it is with the greater emphasis that I advise and urge that this matter be put off for a few days, until we regain our self-command after so great rejoicing."
1. The State of Rhodes is famed for the happy situation of the island, its celebrated works of art, its skill in seamanship and its naval victories.
2. Although a friend and ally of the Roman people, that State was on cordial terms with Perses, son of Philip and king of Macedon, with whom the Romans were at war; accordingly, the Rhodians often sent envoys to Rome and tried to reconcile the contending parties.
3. But when their attempts at peace-making failed, many of the Rhodians harangued the people in their assemblies, agreeing that if peace were not made, the Rhodians should aid the king in his contest with the people of Rome
4. But as to that question no official action was taken.
5. When, however, Perses was defeated and taken prisoner, the Rhodians were in great fear because of what had been said and done on many occasions in the popular assemblies; and they sent envoys to Rome, to apologize for the hastiness of some of their fellow-citizens and vindicate their loyalty as a community.
6. When the envoys reached Rome and were admitted to the senate, after having humbly pleaded their cause they left the House, and the senators were called upon for their opinions.
7. When some of the members complained of the Rhodians, declaring that they had been disloyal, and recommended that war be declared upon them, then Marco Catone arose.
MARCO CATONE endeavoured to defend and save our very good and faithful allies, to whom many of the most distinguished senators were hostile through a desire to plunder and possess their wealth; and he delivered that famous speech entitled "For the Rhodians", which is included in the fifth book of his "Origins" and is also in circulation as a separate publication.
8. Now Tullio Tiro, Marcus Cicerone's freedman, was unquestionably a man of refined taste and by no means unacquainted with our early history and literature.
TULLIO TIRO had been liberally educated from his earliest years, and Cicerone found in him an assistant, and in a sense a partner, in his literary work.
9. But surely Tiro showed more presumption than can be tolerated or excused.
10. For he wrote a letter to Quinto Assio, a friend of CICERONE, with excessive assurance and warmth, in which, as he imagined, he criticized that speech "For the Rhodians" with keen and fine judgment.
11. It chanced to take my fancy to touch upon certain of the animadversions which he makes in that letter, and I shall doubtless be the more readily pardoned for finding fault with Tiro, because he took Catone to task.
12. TIRO's first charge was that Catone, "ignorantly and absurdly," to use Tiro's own language, made use of a preamble which was excessively severe and fault-finding, in which he declared that he feared lest the fathers, having their minds upset by joy and exultation at their success, might act unwisely and be in no state of mind for understanding and deliberating aright.
13. Tiro says: "Advocates who are pleading for clients ought in their opening remarks to win over and propitiate the jurors with complimentary and respectful language."
"They ought, while their minds, as they wait to hear the case, are still in suspense and cool, to render them complacent, and not to arouse contradiction by insults and arrogant threats."
14. Then he has given us Catone's own preamble, which runs as follows:
"I am aware that in happy, successful and prosperous times the minds of most men are wont to be puffed up, and their arrogance and self-confidence to wax and swell.
Therefore I am now gravely concerned, since this enterprise has gone on so successfully, lest something adverse may happen in our deliberations, to bring to naught our good fortune, and lest this joy of ours become too extravagant.
Adversity subdues and shows what ought to be done; prosperity, since it inspires joy, commonly turns men aside from wise counsel and right understanding.
Therefore it is with the greater emphasis that I advise and urge that this matter be put off for a few days, until we regain our self-command after so great rejoicing."
15. "Then what Cato says next," continues Tiro, "amounts to a confession rather than a defence.
For it does not contain a refutation or shifting of the charge, but the sharing of it with many others, which of course amounts to nothing in the way of excuse.
Moreover," says Tiro, "he also acknowledges that the Rhodians, who were accused of favouring the king's cause against the Roman people and wishing him success, did so from motives of self-interest, for fear that the Romans, already proud and self-confident, with the addition of a victory over king Perses might become immoderately insolent."
16. And he gives Cato's own words, as follows:
"And I really think that the Rhodians did not wish us to end the war as we did, with a victory over king Perses.
But it was not the Rhodians alone who had that feeling, but I believe that many peoples and many nations agreed with them.
And I am inclined to think that some of them did not wish us success, not in order that we might be disgraced, but because they feared that if there were no one of whom we stood in dread, we would do whatever we chose.
I think, then, that it was with an eye to their own freedom that they held that opinion, in order not to be under our sole dominion and enslaved to us.
But for all that, the Rhodians never publicly aided Perses. Reflect how much more cautiously we deal with one another as individuals.
For each one of us, if he thinks that anything is being done contrary to his interests, strives with might and main to prevent it; but they in spite of all permitted this very thing to happen."
17. Now as to his criticism of Cato's introduction, Tiro ought to have known that although Cato defended the Rhodians, he did so as a senator who had been consul and censor and was recommending what he thought was best for the public welfare, not as an advocate pleading the cause of the accused.
18. For one kind of introduction is appropriate for a man who is defending clients before jurors and striving in every way to excite pity and compassion.
Quite another for a man of eminent authority, when the senate is asked for its opinion on a matter of State, and when, indignant at the highly unjust opinions of some of the members, he gives plain and emphatic expression at once to his indignation and his sorrow, speaking in behalf of the public welfare and the safety of our allies.
19. Indeed, it is a proper and salutary rule of the schools of rhetoric, that jurors who are to pass judgment on the person of a stranger and on a case which does not personally concern them (so that apart from the duty of acting as jurors no danger or emolument will come to them) ought to be conciliated and induced by mild and soothing language to have regard for the reputation and safety of the prisoner at the bar.
20. But when the common prestige, honour and advantage of all are involved, and therefore one must advise what is to be done, or what must be put off that has already been begun, then one who busies himself with an introduction designed to make his hearers friendly and kindly disposed towards himself wastes his efforts in needless talk.
21. For the common interests and dangers have themselves already disposed the jurors to listen to advice, and it is rather they themselves that demand good-will on the part of their counsellor.
22. But when Tiro says that Cato admitted that the Rhodians did not wish the Romans to fight as successfully as they did, and king Perses to be conquered by the Roman people, and when he asserts that he declared that not the Rhodians alone, but many other nations too, had the same feeling, but that this availed nothing in excuse or extenuation of their fault — in this very first point Tiro is guilty of a shameless lie.
23. He quotes Catone's words, yet misrepresents him by giving them a false interpretation.
24. For Cato does NOT admit that the Rhodians did not wish the Roman people to be victorious, but said that he thought they did not.
And this was unquestionably an expression of his own opinion, not a concession of the guilt of the Rhodians.
25. On this point, in my judgment at least, Catone is not only free from reproach, but is even deserving of praise and admiration.
For he apparently expressed a frank and conscientious opinion adverse to the Rhodians; but then, having established confidence in his candour, he so changed and shifted that very statement which seemed to militate against them, that on that account alone it seemed right that they should be more highly esteemed and beloved by the people of Rome.
Inasmuch as they took no steps to aid the king, although they wished him to succeed and although his success would have been to their advantage.
26. Later on, Tiro quotes the following words from the same speech:
"Shall we, then, of a sudden abandon these great services given and received and this strong friendship?
Shall we be the first to do what we say they merely wished to do?"
27. "This," says Tiro, "is a worthless and faulty argument.
For it might be replied:
Certainly we shall anticipate them, for if we do not, we shall be caught unawares and must fall into the snares against which we failed to guard in advance.
28. Lucilio," he says, "justly criticizes the poet Euripide for this reason, that when king Polifonte declared that he had killed his brother, because his brother had previously planned to slay him., Meropa, his brother's wife, confuted the king with these words
If, as you say, my husband planned your death, you too should only plan, till that time came.
29. But that," says Tiro, "is altogether full of absurdity, to wish to do something, and yet have the design and purpose of never doing what you wish to do."
30. But, as a matter of fact, Tiro failed to observe that the reason for taking precautions is not the same in all cases, and that the occupations and actions of human life, and the obligations of anticipation or postponement or even of taking vengeance or precautions, are not like a combat of gladiators.
31. For to a gladiator ready to fight the fortune of battle offers the alternative, either to kill, if he should conquer, or to die, if he should yield.
32. But the life of men in general is not restricted by such unfair or inevitable necessities that one must be first to commit an injury in order to avoid suffering injury.
33. In fact, such conduct was so alien to the humanity of the Roman people that they often forbore to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon them.
34. Then Tiro says that later in that same speech Catone used arguments that were disingenuous and excessively audacious, not suited to the character which Catone showed at other times, but cunning and deceitful, resembling the subtleties of the Greek sophists.
35. "For although," says TIRO, "he charged the Rhodians with having wished to make war on the Roman people, he declared that they did not deserve punishment, because they had not made war in spite of their strong desire to do so."
TIRO says that Catone introduced what the logicians call an "ἐπαγωγή", a most treacherous and sophistical device, designed not so much for the truth as for cavil, since by deceptive examples he tried to establish and prove that no one who wished to do wrong deserved to be punished, unless he actually accomplished his desire.
Now Catone's words in that speech are as follows:
"He who uses the strongest language against them says that they wished to be our enemies.
Pray is there any one of you who, so far as he is concerned, would think it fair to suffer punishment because he is accused of having wished to do wrong?
No one, I think; for so far as I am concerned, I should not."
37. Then a little farther on he says:
"What?
Is there any law so severe as to provide that if anyone wish to do so and so, he be fined a thousand sesterces, provided that be less than half his property.
If anyone shall desire to have more than five hundred acres, let the fine be so much.
If anyone shall wish to have a greater number of cattle, let the fine be thus and so.
In fact, we all wish to have more, and we do so with impunity."
38. Later TIRO continues:"
But if it is not right for honour to be conferred because anyone says that he wished to do well, but yet did not do so, shall the Rhodians suffer, not because they did wrong, but because they are said to have wished to do wrong?"
39. With such arguments Tullio Tiro says that Marco Catone strove to show that the Rhodians also ought not to be punished, because although they had wished to be enemies of the Roman people, they had actually not been such.
40. Furthermore, TIRO says that it cannot be denied that to wish to have more than five hundred acres, which was forbidden by Stolo's bill, is not exactly the same thing as to wish to make an unjust and unrighteous war upon the Roman people.
Also that it could not be denied that rewards and punishments belong to different categories.
41 . For services," TIRO says, "that are promised should be awaited, and not rewarded until they are performed; but in the case of threatening injuries, it is fair to guard against them rather than wait for them.
42. For it is an admission of the greatest folly," TIRO declares, "not to go to meet wickedness that is planned, but to await and expect it, and then, when it has been committed and accomplished, at last to inflict punishment, when what is done cannot be undone."
43. These are the criticisms which Tiro passed upon Cato, not altogether pointless or wholly unreasonable.
44. But as a matter of fact, Cato did not leave this "ἐπαγωγή" bare, isolated and unsupported, but he propped it up in various ways and clothed it with many other arguments.
Furthermore, since he had an eye as much to the interests of the State as to those of the Rhodians, he regarded nothing that he said or did in that matter as discreditable, provided he strove by every kind of argument to save our allies.
45. And first of all, CATONE very cleverly sought to find actions which are prohibited, not by natural or by international law, but by statutes passed to remedy some evil or meet an emergency; such for example as the one which limited the number of cattle or the amount of land.
46. In such cases that which is forbidden cannot lawfully be done; but to wish to do it, and if it should be allowed, is not dishonourable.
47. And then CATONE gradually compared and connected such actions as these with that which in itself it is neither lawful to do nor to wish to do.
Then finally, in order that the impropriety of the comparison may not become evident, he defends it by numerous bulwarks, not laying great stress on those trivial and ideal censures of unlawful desires, such as form the arguments of philosophers in their leisure moments, but striving with might and main for one single end, namely, that the cause of the Rhodians, whose friendship it was to the interests of the commonwealth to retain, should be shown either to be just, or in any event, at least pardonable.
Accordingly, he now affirms that the Rhodians did not make war and did not desire to do so; but again he declares that only acts should be considered and judged, and that mere empty wishes are liable neither to laws nor punishment; sometimes, however, as if admitting their guilt, he asks that they be pardoned and shows that forgiveness is expedient in human relations, arousing fear of popular outbreaks, if pardon is not granted, and on the other hand showing that if they forgive, the greatness of the Roman people will be maintained.
48. The charge of arrogance too, which in particular was brought against the Rhodians in the senate at that time, he evaded and eluded by a brilliant and all but inspired mode of reply.
49. I shall give Catone's very words, since Tiro has passed them by:
50 . They say that the Rhodians are arrogant, bringing a charge against them which I should on no account wish to have brought against me and my children.
Suppose they are arrogant.
What is that to us?
Are you to be angry merely because someone is more arrogant than we are?"
51. Absolutely nothing could be said with greater force or weight than this apostrophe against men proud of their deeds, loving pride in themselves, but condemning it in others.
52. It is further to be observed that throughout that speech of Catone's recourse is had to every weapon and device of the art rhetorical.
But we are not conscious of their use, as we are in mock combats or in battles feigned for the sake of entertainment.
For the case was not pleaded, I say, with an excess of
refinement, elegance and observance of rule, but just as in a doubtful battle,
when the troops are scattered, the contest rages in many parts of the field
with uncertain outcome, so in that case at that time, when the notorious
arrogance of the Rhodians had aroused the hatred and hostility of many men,
Cato used every method of protection and defence without discrimination, at one
time commending the Rhodians as of the highest merit, again exculpating them
and declaring them blameless, yet again demanding that their property and
riches should not be coveted, now asking for their pardon as if they were in
the wrong, now pointing out their friendship to the commonwealth, appealing now
to clemency, now to the mercy shown by our forefathers, now to the public
interest.
53. All this might perhaps have been said in a more orderly and euphonic style, yet I do not believe that it could have been said with greater vigour and vividness.
54. It was therefore unfair of Tullio Tiro to single out from all the qualities of so rich a speech, apt in their connection with one another, a small and bare part to criticize, by asserting that it was not worthy of Marco Catone to maintain that the mere desire for delinquencies that were not actually committed did not merit punishment.
53. All this might perhaps have been said in a more orderly and euphonic style, yet I do not believe that it could have been said with greater vigour and vividness.
54. It was therefore unfair of Tullio Tiro to single out from all the qualities of so rich a speech, apt in their connection with one another, a small and bare part to criticize, by asserting that it was not worthy of Marco Catone to maintain that the mere desire for delinquencies that were not actually committed did not merit punishment.
55. But one will form a juster and more candid opinion of these words of mine, spoken in reply to Tullius Tiro, and judge accordingly, if one will take in hand Catone's own speech in its entirety, and will also take the trouble to look up and read the letter of Tiro to Assio.
For then he will be able either to correct or confirm what I have said more truthfully and after fuller examination.
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TOPIC 4: What sort of slaves Celio Sabino, the writer on civil law, said were commonly sold with caps on their heads, and why; and what chattels were sold under a crown in the days of our forefathers; and the meaning of that same expression "under a crown."
1. Celio SABINO, the jurist, has written that it was usual, when selling slaves, to put caps on those for whom the seller assumed no responsibility.
2. SABINO says that the reason for that custom was, that the law required that slaves of that kind be marked when offered for sale, in order that buyers might not err and be deceived; that it might not be necessary to wait for the bill of sale, but might be obvious at once what kind of slaves they were.
3 "Just so," he says, "in ancient times slaves taken by right of conquest were sold wearing garlands, and hence were said to be sold 'under a crown.'
For as the CROWN was a (non-natural) SIGN that those who were being sold were captives, so a cap upon the head indicated that slaves were being sold for whom the seller gave the buyer no guarantee."
4. There is, however, another explanation of the reason for the common saying that captives were sold "under a crown" namely, because a guard of soldiers stood around the bands of prisoners that were offered for sale, and such a ring of soldiers was called corona.
5. But that the reason which I first gave is the more probable one is made clear by Marco Catone in the book which he wrote "On Military Science".
Catone's words are as follows:
"That the people may rather crown
themselves and go to offer thanks for success gained through their own efforts
than be crowned and sold because of ill-success."
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TOPIC 5: a noteworthy story about the actor Polo.
1. There was in the land of Greece an actor of wide reputation, who excelled all others in his clear delivery and graceful action.
2. They say that his name was Polo, and he often acted the tragedies of famous poets with intelligence and dignity.
3. This Polus lost by death a son whom he dearly loved.
4. After POLO felt that he had indulged his grief sufficiently, he returned to the practice of his profession.
5. At that time he was to act the "ELETTRA" of Sofocle at Athens, and it was his part to carry an urn which was supposed to contain the ashes of Orestes.
6. The plot of the play requires that ELETTRA, who is represented as carrying ORSTE's remains, should lament and bewail the fate that she believed had overtaken him.
7. Accordingly Polo, clad in the mourning garb of Elettra, took from the tomb the ashes and urn of his son, embraced them as if they were those of Oreste, and filled the whole place, not with the appearance and imitation of sorrow, but with genuine grief and unfeigned lamentation.
8. Therefore, while it seemed that a play was being acted, it was in fact real grief that was enacted.
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TOPIC 5: a noteworthy story about the actor Polo.
1. There was in the land of Greece an actor of wide reputation, who excelled all others in his clear delivery and graceful action.
2. They say that his name was Polo, and he often acted the tragedies of famous poets with intelligence and dignity.
3. This Polus lost by death a son whom he dearly loved.
4. After POLO felt that he had indulged his grief sufficiently, he returned to the practice of his profession.
5. At that time he was to act the "ELETTRA" of Sofocle at Athens, and it was his part to carry an urn which was supposed to contain the ashes of Orestes.
6. The plot of the play requires that ELETTRA, who is represented as carrying ORSTE's remains, should lament and bewail the fate that she believed had overtaken him.
7. Accordingly Polo, clad in the mourning garb of Elettra, took from the tomb the ashes and urn of his son, embraced them as if they were those of Oreste, and filled the whole place, not with the appearance and imitation of sorrow, but with genuine grief and unfeigned lamentation.
8. Therefore, while it seemed that a play was being acted, it was in fact real grief that was enacted.
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TOPIC 6: what Aristotle wrote of the congenital absence of some of the senses.
1. Nature has given five senses to living beings:
a) sight
b) hearing
c) taste,
d) touch and
e) smell
-- called by the Greeks "αἰσθήσεις".
Of these some animals lack one and some another, being born into the world blind, or without the sense of smell or hearing.
2. But Aristotle asserts that no animal is born without sense of taste or of touch.
3. His own words, from the book which he wrote "On Memory", are as follows:
"Except for some imperfect animals, all have taste or touch."
TOPIC 7: whether "affatim", like "admodum", should be pronounced with an acute accent on the first syllable; with some painstaking observations on the accents of other words.
1. The poet Anniano, in addition to his charming personality, was highly skilled in ancient literature and literary criticism, and conversed with remarkable grace and learning.
2. Anniano pronounced "affatim", as he did "admodum", with an acute accent on the first, and not on the medial, syllable; and he believed that the ancients so pronounced the word.
3. Anniano adds that in his hearing the grammarian Probo thus read the following lines of the comedy "Cistellaria" of Plauto:
Canst do a valiant deed?
Enough ("áffatim") there be who can. I've no desire to be called brave,
4. And he said that the reason for that accent was that "affatim" was NOT two parts of speech, but was made up of two parts that had united to form a single word; just as also in the word which we call "exadversum", Anniano thought that the second syllable should have the acute accent, because the word was one part of speech, and not two.
Accordingly, Anniano maintained that the two following verses of Terenzio ought to be read thus:
Over against ("exádversum") the school to which she went a barber had his shop.
5. Anniano added besides that the preposition ad was commonly accented when it indicated "ἐπίτασις", or as we say, "emphasis," as in "ádfabre", "ádmodum", and "ádprobe".
6. In all else, indeed, Anniano spoke aptly enough.
But if Anniano supposed that this particle "ad" was always accented when it denoted emphasis, that rule is obviously not without exceptions.
7. For when we say "adpotus", "adprimus", and "adprime", emphasis is evident in all those words.
Yet it is not at all proper to pronounce the particle "ad" with the acute accent.
8. I must admit, however, that "adprobus", which means "highly approved," ought to be accented on the first syllable.
9. Cecilio uses that word in his comedy entitled "The Triumph":
Hierocles, my friend, is a most worthy ("ádprobus") youth.
10. In those words, then, which we say do not have the acute accent, is not this the reason — that the following syllable is longer by nature, and a long penult does not as a rule permit the accenting of the preceding syllable in words of more than two syllables?
11. But Lucio Livio in his "Odyssey" uses "ádprimus" in the sense of "by far the first" in the following line:
And then the mighty hero, foremost of all ("ádprimus"), Patroclo.
12. Lucio Livio in his "Odyssey" too pronounces "praemodum" like "admodum".
He says "parcentes praemodum", which means "beyond measure merciful," and "praemodum" is equivalent to "praeter modum".
And in this word, of course, the first syllable will have to have the acute accent.
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The 8th Topic: an incredible story about a dolphin which loved a boy.
1. That dolphins are affectionate and amorous is shown, not only by ancient history, but also by tales of recent date.
2. For in the sea of Puteoli, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, as Apion has written, and some centuries before at Naupactus, as Theophrastus tells us, dolphins are positively known to have been ardently in love.
3 And they did not love those of their own kind, but had an extraordinary passion, like that of human beings, for boys of handsome figure, whom they chanced to have seen in boats or in the shoal waters near the shore.
4 I have appended the words of that learned man Apion, from the fifth book of his Egyptian History, in which he tells of an amorous dolphin and a boy who did not reject its advances, of their intimacy and play with each other, the dolphin carrying the boy and the boy bestriding the fish; and Apion declares that of all this he himself and many others were eye-witnesses.
5 "Now I myself," he writes, "near Dicaearchia saw a dolphin that fell in love with a boy called Hyacinthus.
For the fish with passionate eagerness came at his call, and drawing in his fins, to avoid wounding the delicate skin of the object of his affection, carried him as if mounted upon a horse for a distance of two hundred stadia. Rome and all Italy turned out to see a fish that was under the sway of Aphrodite."
6 To this he adds a detail that is no less wonderful. "Afterwards," he says, "that same boy who was beloved by the p45dolphin fell sick and died.
7 But the lover, when he had often come to the familiar shore, and the boy, who used to await his coming at the edge of the shoal water, was nowhere to be seen, pined away from longing and died. He was found lying on the shore by those who knew the story and was buried in the same tomb with his favourite."
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The 9th Topic of Book.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL: merely synopsis of topic to follow [ --- That many early writers used "peposci," "memordi", "pepugi", "spepondi" and "cecurri," and not, as was afterwards customary, forms with o or u in the first syllable, and that in so doing said that they followed Greek usage; that it has further been observed that men who were neither unlearned nor obscure made from the verb "descend", not descendi, but "descendidi".]
1. "Poposci", "momordi", "pupugi" and "cucurri" seem to be the approved forms, and to day they are used by almost all better-educated men.
2. But Quinto Ennio in his "Satires" wrote "memorderit" with an "e", and NOT "mOmorderit", as follows:
'Tis not my way, as if a dog had bit me ("memorderit").
3. So too Laberio in the "Galli":
Now from my whole estate a hundred thousand have I bitten off ("memordi").
4. The same Laberio too in his "Colorator":
And when, o'er slow fire cooked, I came beneath her teeth, twice, thrice she bit ("memordit").
5. Also Publio Nigidio in his second book "On Animals":
As when a serpent bites ("memordit") one, a hen is split and placed upon the wound.
6. Likewise Plauto in his comedy "Aulularia":
How he the man did fleece ("admemordit").
7. But Plauto again, in the "Trigemini", said neither "praememordisse" nor "praemomordisse", but "praemorsisse", in the following line:
Had I not fled into your midst, methinks he'd bitten me ("praemorsisset").
8. Atta too in the Conciliatrix says:
A bear, he says, bit him ("memordisse").
9. Valerius Antias too, in the 45th book of his "Annals", has left on record peposci, not poposci in this passage:
Finally Licinius, tribune of the commons, charged him with high treason and asked (peposcit) from the praetor Marcus Marcius a day for holding the comitia.
10. In the same way Atta in the Aedilicia says:
But he will be afraid, if I do prick him ("pepugero").
11. Probus has noted that Aelius Tubero also, in his work dedicated to Gaius Ippius, wrote occecurrit, and he has quoted him as follows:
"If the general form should present itself (occecurrerit)."
12. Probus also observed that Valerius Antias in the twenty-second book of his Histories wrote speponderant, and he quotes his words as follows:
"Tiberius Gracchus, who had been quaestor to Gaius Mancinus in Spain, and the others who had guaranteed (speponderant) peace."
13. Now the explanation of these forms might seem to be this.
Since the Greeks in one form of the past tense, which they call "παρακείμενον", or "perfect," commonly change the second letter of the verb to "e", as φράφω γέγραφα, ποιῶ πεποίηκα, λαλῶ λελάληκα, κρατῶ κεκράτηκα, λούω λέλουκα,
14. So, accordingly mordeo makes memordi, posco peposci, tendo tetendi, tango tetigi, pungo pepugi, curro cecurri, tollo tetuli, and spondeo spepondi.
15 Thus Marcus Tullius and Gaius Caesar used mordeo memordi, pungo pepugi, spondeo spepondi.
I find besides that from the verb "scindo" in the same way was made, not sciderat, but sciciderat.
16. Lucio Accio in the first book of his "Sotadici" writes sciciderat.
These are his words:
And had the eagle then, as these declare, his bosom rent ("sciciderat")?
17. Ennius too in his Melanippa says:
When the rock he shall split (sciciderit).
Valerio Antias in the seventy-fifth book of his "Histories" wrote these words:
"Then, having arranged for the funeral, he went down (descendidit) to the Forum."
18. Laberius too in the Catularius wrote thus:
I wondered how my breasts had fallen low (descendiderant).
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Tenth Topic.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL: Synopsis: As "ususcapio" is treated as a compound noun in the nominative case, so "pignoriscapio" is taken together as one word in the same case.
1. As "ususcapio" is treated as a compound word, in which the letter "a" is pronounced long, just so "pignoriscapio" was pronounced as one word with a long "a".
2. These are the words of Catone in the first book of his "Epistolary Questions":
"Pignoriscapio, resorted to because of military pay which a soldier ought to receive from the public paymaster, is a word by itself."
3. From this it is perfectly clear that one may say "capio" as if it were "captio", in connection with both "usus" and "pignus".
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TOPIC 11th.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL, synopsis: that neither "levitas" nor "nequitia" has the meaning that is given to those words in ordinary conversation.
1. I observe that "levitas" is now generally used to denote inconsistency and changeableness, and "nequitia", in the sense of craftiness and cunning.
2. But those of the men of early days who spoke properly and purely applied the term leves to those whom we now commonly call worthless and meriting no esteem.
That is, they used "levitas" with precisely the force of "vilitas", and applied the term "nequam" to a man of no importance nor worth, the sort of man that the Greeks usually call "ἄσωτος", beyond recovery, or "ἀκόλαστος", incorrigible.
3. One who desires examples of these words need not resort to books that are very inaccessible, but he will find them in Marcus Tullio' second Oration against Antonio.
4. For when Cicerone wished to indicate a kind of extreme sordidness in the life and conduct of Marcantonio, that he lurked in a tavern, that he drank deep until evening, and that he travelled with his face covered, so as not to be recognized — when he wished to give expression to these and similar charges against him, he said:
Just see the worthlessness ("levitatem") of the man."
-- as if by that reproach he branded him with all those various marks of infamy which I have mentioned.
5. But afterwards, when CICERONE had heaped upon the same MARCANTONIO other scornful and opprobrious charges, he finally added
O man of no worth ("nequam")!
For there is no term that I can use more fittingly."
6. But from that passage of Marco Tullio I should like to add a somewhat longer extract:
"Just see the worthlessness of the man!
Having come to Saxa Rubra at about the tenth hour of the day, he lurked in a certain low tavern, and shutting himself up there drank deep until evening.
Then riding swiftly to the city in a cab, he came to his home with covered face.
The doorkeeper asked:
'Who are you?'
'The bearer of a letter from Marcus,' was the reply.
He was at once taken to the lady on whose account he had come, and handed her the letter.
While she read it with tears — for it was written in amorous terms and its main point was this: that hereafter he would have nothing to do with that actress, that he had cast aside all his love for her and transferred it to the reader — when the woman wept still more copiously, the compassionate man could not endure it; he uncovered his face and threw himself on her neck.
O man of no worth! — for I can use no more fitting term.
Was it, then, that your wife might unexpectedly see you, when you had surprised her by appearing as her lover, that you upset the city with terror by night and Italy with dread for many days?"
7. In a very similar way Quinto Claudio too, in the first book of his "Annals", called a prodigal and wasteful life of luxury "nequitia", using these words:
"They persuade a young man from Lucania, who was born in a most exalted station, but had squandered great wealth in luxury and prodigality (nequitia)."
8. Marcus Varrone in his work "On the Latin Language" says:
"Just as from non and volo we have nolo, so from ne and quicquam is formed nequam, with the loss of the medial syllable."
9 Publius Africanus, speaking In his own Defence against Tiberius Asellus in the matter of a fine, thus addressed the people:
"All the evils, shameful deeds, and crimes that men commit come from two things, malice and profligacy (nequitia). Against which charge do you defend yourself, that of malice or profligacy, or both together? If you wish to defend yourself against the charge of profligacy, well and good; if you have squandered more money on one harlot than you reported for the census as the value of all the equipment of your Sabine estate; if this is so, who pledges a thousand sesterces?
If you have wasted more than a third of your patrimony and spent it on your vices; if that is so, who pledges a thousand sesterces? You do not care to defend yourself against the charge of profligacy; at least refute the charge of malice. If you have sworn falsely in set terms knowingly and deliberately; if this is so, who pledges a thousand sesterces?"
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TOPIC 12th.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL: synopsis: Of the tunics called chiridotae; that Publius Africanus reproved Sulpicius Gallus for wearing them.
1. For a man to wear tunics coming below the arms and as far as the wrists, and almost to the fingers, was considered unbecoming in Rome and in all Latium.
2. Such tunics our countrymen called by the Greek name "chiridotae", long-sleeved, and they thought that a long and full-flowing garment was not unbecoming for women only, to hide their arms and legs from sight.
3. But Roman men at first wore the toga alone without tunics.
Later, Roman men had close, short tunics ending below the shoulders, the kind which the Greeks call "ἐξωμίδες", sleeveless.
4. Habituated to this older fashion, Publio Africano, son of Paolo, a man gifted with all worthy arts and every virtue, among many other things with which he reproached Publio Sulpicio Gallo, an effeminate man, included this also, that he wore tunics which covered his whole hands.
5. Scipione's words are these:
"For one who daily perfumes himself and dresses before a mirror, whose eyebrows are trimmed, who walks abroad with beard plucked out and thighs made smooth, who at banquets, though a young man, has reclined in a long-sleeved tunic on the inner side of the couch with a lover, who is fond not only of wine but of men — does anyone doubt that he does what wantons commonly do?"
6. Virgilio too attacks tunics of this kind as effeminate and shameful, saying:
Sleeves have their tunics, and their turbans, ribbons.
7. Quinto Ennio also seems to have spoken not without scorn of "the tunic-clad men" of the Carthaginians.
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TOPIC 13th
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL, synopsis: whom Marcus Cato calls classici or "belonging to a class," and whom infra classem or "below class."
1. Not all those men who were enrolled in the five classes were called "classici", but only the men of the first class, who were rated at a hundred and twenty-five thousand asses or more.
2. But those of the second class and of all the other classes, who were rated at a smaller sum than that which I just mentioned, were called "infra classem".
3. I have briefly noted this, because in connection with the speech of Marcus Catone "In Support of the Voconian Law" the question is often raised, what is meant by "classicus" and what by "infra classem".
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TOPIC 14th.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL, synopsis: of the three literary styles; and of the three philosophers who were sent as envoys by the Athenians to the senate at Rome.
1. Both in verse and in prose, there are three approved styles, which the Greeks call "χαρακτῆρες" and to which they have given the names of
a) "ἁδρός" (hadros)
b) "ἰσχνός" (iskhnos)
c) "μέσος" (mesos)
2. We also call the one which I put first
(a) "grand," the second (b) "plain," and the third
(c) "middle."
3. The "grand" style possesses dignity and richness.
The plain style possesses grace and elegance.
The middle syle lies on the border line and partakes of the qualities of both.
4. To each of these excellent styles there are related an equal number of faulty ones, arising from unsuccessful attempts to imitate their manner and character.
5. Thus very often pompous and bombastic speakers lay claim to the "grand" style, the mean and bald to the plain, and the "unclear" and "ambiguous" to the middle.
6. But true and genuine Latin examples of these styles are said by Marco Varrone to be:
a) Pacuvius of the grand style.
b) Lucilius of the plain, and
c) Terenzio of the middle.
7. But in early days these same three styles of speaking were exemplified in three men by Homer:
a) the grand and rich in Ulysse
b) the elegant and restrained in Menelaus
c) the middle and moderate in Nestor.
8. This threefold variety is also to be observed in the three philosophers whom the Athenians sent as envoys to the senate at Rome, to persuade the senators to remit the fine which they had imposed upon the Athenians because of the sack of Oropos; and the fine amounted to nearly five hundred talents.
9. The philosophers in question were Carneades of the Academy, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic.
When they were admitted to the House, they made use of Gaius Acilius, one of the senators, as interpreter.
But beforehand each one of them separately, for the purpose of exhibiting his eloquence, lectured to a large company.
10. Rutilius and Polybius declare that all three aroused admiration for their oratory, each in his own style.
"Carneade," they say, "spoke with a vehemence that carried you away, Critolao with art and polish, Diogene with restraint and sobriety."
11. Each of these styles, as I have said, is more brilliant when it is chastely and moderately adorned; when it is rouged and bepowdered, it becomes mere jugglery.
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TOPIC 15th:
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL, synopsis.
how severely thieves were punished by the laws of our forefathers; and what Mucius Scaevola wrote about that which is given or entrusted to anyone's care.
1. Labeo, in his second book "On the Twelve Tables", wrote that cruel and severe judgments were passed upon theft in early times, and that Giunio Bruto used to say that a man was pronounced guilty of theft who had merely led an animal to another place than the one where he had been given the privilege of using it, as well as one who had driven it farther than he had bargained to do.
2. Accordingly, Quinto Scaevola, in the sixteenth book of his work "On the Civil Law", wrote these words:
"If anyone has used something that was entrusted to his care, or having borrowed anything to use, has applied it to another purpose than that for which he borrowed, he is liable for theft."
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AD---16:
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL: a passage about foreign varieties of food, copied from the satire of Marcus Varro entitled Περὶ Ἐδεσμάτων, or On Edibles; and with it some verses of Euripides, in which he assails the extravagant gluttony of luxurious men.
1. Marcus Varro, in the satire which he entitled "Περὶ Ἐδεσμάτων," in verses written with great charm and cleverness, treats of exquisite elegance in banquets and viands.
2. For VARRONE has set forth and described in senarii the greater number of things of that kind which such gluttons seek out on land and sea.
3. As for the verses themselves, he who has leisure may find and read them in the book which I have mentioned.
4. So far as my memory goes, these are the varieties and names of the foods surpassing all others, which a bottomless gullet has hunted out and which Varrone has assailed in his satire, with the places where they are found:
5.
-- a peacock from Samos
-- a woodcock from Phrygia
-- cranes of Media
-- a kid from Ambracia
-- a young tunny from Chalcedon
-- a lamprey from Tartessus
-- codfish from Pessinus
-- oysters from Tarentum
-- cockles from Sicily
-- a swordfish from Rhodes
-- pike from Cilicia
-- nuts from Thasos
-- dates from Egypt
-- acorns from Spain.
6. But this tireless gluttony, which is ever wandering about and seeking for flavours, and this eager quest for dainties from all quarters, we shall consider deserving of the greater detestation, if we recall the verses of Euripides of which the philosopher Chrysippus made frequent use,to the effect that gastronomic delicacies were contrived, not because of the necessary uses of life, but because of a spirit of luxury that disdains what is easily attainable because of the immoderate wantonness that springs from satiety.
7. I have thought that I ought to append the verses of Euripide:
what things do mortals need, save two alone, the fruits of Ceres and the cooling spring, which are at hand and made to nourish us?
With this abundance we are not content, but hunt out other foods through luxury.
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AD--17: a conversation held with a grammarian, who was full of insolence and ignorance, as to the meaning of the word "obnoxius"; and of the origin of that word.
1. I inquired at Rome of a certain grammarian who had the highest repute as a teacher, not indeed for the sake of trying or testing him, but rather from an eager desire for knowledge, what obnoxius meant and what was the origin and the history of the word.
2. And he, looking at me and ridiculing what he considered the insignificance and unfitness of the query, said:
"Truly a difficult question is this that you ask, one demanding very many sleepless nights of investigation!
3. Who, pray, is so ignorant of the Latin tongue as not to know that one is called "obnoxious" who can be inconvenienced or injured by another, to whom he is said to be "obnoxious" because the other is conscious of his "noxa", that is to say, of his guilt?
Why not rather," said he, "drop these trifles and put questions worthy of study and discussion?"
4. Then indeed I was angry, but thinking that I ought to dissemble, since I was dealing with a fool, I said:
"If, most learned sir, I need to learn and to know other things that are more abstruse and more important, when the occasion arises I shall inquire and learn them from you; but inasmuch as I have often used the word "obnoxius" without knowing what I was saying, I have learned from you and am now beginning to understand what not I alone, as you seem to think, was ignorant of.
For as a matter of fact, Plauto too, though a man of the first rank in his use of the Latin language and in elegance of diction, did not know the meaning of "obnoxius".
For there is a passage of his in the "Stichus" which reads as follows:
By heaven! I now am utterly undone, Not only partly so ("non obnoxie").
This does not in the least agree with what you have taught me.
For Plauto contrasts plane and "obnoxie" as two opposites, which is far removed from your meaning."
5. But that grammarian retorted foolishly enough, as if "obnoxius" and "obnoxie" differed, not merely in form, but in their substance and meaning:
"I gave a definition of "obnoxius", not "obnoxie"."
6. But then I, amazed at the ignorance of the presumptuous fellow, answered,
"Let us, as you wish, disregard the fact that Plauto said "obnoxie", if you think that too far-fetched;
7. And let us also say nothing of the passage in Sallusto's "Catilina":
Also to threaten her with his sword, if she would not be submissive ("obnoxia") to him.
8. But explain to me this example, which is certainly more recent and more familiar.
For the following lines of Virgilio's are very well known:
f
or now the stars' bright sheen is seen undimmed.
The rising moon owes naught ("nec . . . obnoxia") to brother's rays.
9. But you say that it means 'conscious of her guilt.'
In another place too Virgilio uses this word with a meaning different from yours, in these lines:
What joy the fields to view that owe no debt ("non obnoxia") to hoe or care of man.
For care is generally a benefit to fields, not an injury, as it would be according to your definition of "obnoxius".
10. Furthermore, how can what Quinto Ennio writes in the following verses from the "Fenice" agree with you:
'Tis meet a man should live inspired by courage true, in conscious innocence should boldly challenge foes.
True freedom his who bears a pure and steadfast heart, all else less import has ("obnoxiosae") and lurks in gloomy night"?
11. But our grammarian, with open mouth as if in a dream, said:
"Just now I have no time to spare.
When I have leisure, come to see me and learn what Virgilio, Plauto, Sallustio and Ennio meant by that word."
12. So saying that fool made off.
But in case anyone should wish to investigate, not only the origin of this word, but also its variety of meaning, in order that he may take into consideration this Plautine use also, I have quoted the following lines from the Asinaria:
He'll join with me and hatch the biggest jubilee, stuff'd with most joy, for son and father too.
For life they both shall be in debt (obnoxii) to both of us, by our services fast bound.
13. Now, in the definition which that grammarian gave, he seems in a word of such manifold content to have noted only one of its uses — a use, it is true, which agrees with that of Cecilio in these verses of the Chrysium:
Although I come to you attracted by your pay, don't think that I for that am subject to your will ("tibi . . . obnoxium").
If you speak ill of me, you'll hear a like reply.
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AD--
TOPIC 18th:
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL:
on the strict observance by the Romans of the sanctity of an oath; and also the story of the ten prisoners whom Hannibal sent to Rome under oath.
1. An oath was regarded and kept by the Romans as something inviolable and sacred.
This is evident from many of their customs and laws, and this tale which I shall tell may be regarded as no slight support of the truth of the statement.
2. After the battle of Cannae Annibale, commander of the Carthaginians, selected 10 Roman prisoners and sent them to the city, instructing them and agreeing that, if it seemed good to the Roman people, there should be an exchange of prisoners, and that for each captive that one side should receive in excess of the other side, there should be paid a pound and a half of silver.
3. Before the ten Roman prisoners left, ANNIBALE compelled them to take oath that they would return to the Punic camp, if the Romans would not agree to an exchange.
4. The ten captives come to Rome.
5. They deliver the message of the Punic commander in the senate.
6 The senate refused an exchange.
7. The parents, kinsfolk and connexions of the prisoners amid embraces declared that they had returned to their native land in accordance with the law of postliminium, and that their condition of independence was complete and inviolate.
They therefore besought them not to think of returning to the enemy.
8. Then eight of their number rejoined that they had no just right of "postliminium", since they were bound by an oath, and they at once went back to Hannibal, as they had sworn to do.
9. The other two remained in Rome, declaring that they had been released and freed from their obligation because, after leaving the enemy's camp, they had returned to it as if for some chance reason, but really with intent to deceive, and having thus kept the letter of the oath, they had come away again UNSWORN.
10. This dishonourable cleverness of theirs was considered so shameful, that they were generally despised and reprobated; and later the censors punished them with all possible fines and marks of disgrace, on the ground that they had not done what they had sworn to do.
11. Furthermore Cornelio Nepote, in the fifth book of his "Examples", has recorded also that many of the senators recommended that those who refused to return should be sent to Annibal under guard, but that the motion was defeated by a majority of dissentients.
CORNELIO NEPOTE adds that, in spite of this, those who had not returned to Annibal were so infamous and hated that they became tired of life and committed suicide.
**********************************
AD--
TOPIC 19th:
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL:
a story, taken from the annals, about Tiberius Gracchus, tribune of the commons and father of the Gracchi; and also an exact quotation of the decrees of the tribunes.
1. A fine, noble and generous action of Tiberio Sempronio Gracco is recorded in the "Examples".
2. It runs as follows.
Gaio Minucio Augurino, tribune of the commons, imposed a fine on Lucio Scipione Asiatico, brother of Scipione Africano the elder, and demanded that he should give security for its payment.
3. Scipio Africanus appealed to the college of tribunes on behalf of his brother, asking them to defend against the violent measures of their colleague a man who had been consul and had celebrated a triumph.
4. Having heard the case, 8 of the tribunes rendered a decision.
5. The words of their decree, which I have quoted, are taken from the records of the annals:
"Whereas Publius Scipio Africanus has asked us to protect his brother, Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, against the violent measures of one of our colleagues, in that, contrary to the laws and the customs of our forefathers, that tribune of the commons, having illegally convened an assembly without consulting the auspices, pronounced sentence upon him and imposed an unprecedented fine, and compels him to furnish security for its payment, or if he does not do so, orders that he be imprisoned; and whereas, on the other hand, our colleague has demanded that we should not interfere with him in the exercise of his legal authority — our unanimous decision in this matter is as follows:
If Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus will furnish security in accordance with the decision of our colleague, we will forbid our colleague to take him to prison; but if he shall not furnish the securities in accordance with our colleague's decision, we will not interfere with our colleague in the exercise of his lawful authority."
6 After this decree, Lucius Scipio refused to give security and the tribune Augurinus ordered him to be arrested and taken to prison.
Thereupon Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, one of the tribunes of the commons and father of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, although he was a bitter personal enemy of Publius Scipio Africanus because of numerous disagreements on political questions, publicly made oath that he had not been reconciled with Publius Africanus nor become his friend, and then read a decree which he had written out.
7 That decree ran as follows:
"Whereas Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, during the celebration of a triumph, cast the leaders of the enemy into prison, it seems contrary to the dignity of our country that the Roman people's commander should be consigned to the same place to which he had committed the leaders of the enemy.
Therefore I forbid my colleague to take violent measures towards Lucius Scipio Asiaticus."
8 But Valerius Antias, contradicting this record of the decrees and the testimony of the ancient annals, has said that it was after the death of Africanus that Tiberius Gracchus interposed that veto in behalf of Scipio Asiaticus.
Also that Scipio was not fined, but that being convicted of embezzlement of the money taken from Antiochus and refusing to give bail, was just being taken to prison when he was saved by this veto of Gracchus.
***********************
TOPIC 20th.
SKIPPABLE MATERIAL: That Virgil removed Nola from one of his lines and substituted ora because the inhabitants of Nola had refused him water; and also some additional notes on the agreeable euphony of vowels.
1. I have found it noted in a certain commentary that the following lines were first read and published by Virgilio in this form:
such is the soil that wealthy Capua ploughs and Nola near Vesuvio's height.
That afterwards Virgil asked the people of Nola to allow him to run their city water into his villa, which was near by.
But the people of Nola refused to grant the favour which he asked.
Thereupon the offended poet erased the name of their city from his poem, as if consigning it to oblivion, changing from "Nola" to "ora", region, and leaving the phrase in this form:
"the region near Vesuvio's height".
2. With the truth or falsity of this note I am not concerned.
But there is no doubt that "ora" has a more agreeable and musical sound than "Nola".
3. For the last vowel in the first line and the first vowel in the following line being the same, the sound is prolonged by an hiatus that is at the same time melodious and pleasing.
4 Indeed, it is possible to find in famous poets many instances of such melody, which appears to be the result of art rather than accident; but in Homer they are more frequent than in all other poets.
5 In fact, in one single passage he introduces a number of sounds of such a nature, and with such an hiatus, in a series of successive words; for example:
the other fountain e'en in summer flows, like upon hail, chill snow, or crystal ice,
and similarly in another place:
Up to the top he pushed (ἄνω ὤθεσκε) the stone.
6. Catullus too, the most graceful of poets, in the following verses
Boy, who servest old Falernian, pour out stronger cups for me, following queen Postumia's mandate,
Tipsier she than tipsy grape.
Although he might have said "ebrio", and used "acinum" in the neuter gender, as was more usual, nevertheless through love of the melody of that Homeric hiatus he said "ebria", because it blended with the following a.
But those who think that Catullo wrote ebriosa or ebrioso — for that incorrect reading is also found — have unquestionably happened upon editions copied from corrupt texts.
*********************
AD--
TOPIC 21st:
Skippable material:
why it is that the phrases quoad vivet and quoad morietur indicate the very same time, although based upon opposite things.
1. When the expressions "quoad vivet", or "so long as he shall live," and "quoad morietur", or "until he shall die," are used, two opposite things really seem to be said, but the two expressions indicate one and the same time.
2. Also when we say "as long as the senate shall be in session," and "until the senate shall adjourn," although "be in session" and "adjourn" are opposites, yet one and the same idea is expressed by both phrases.
3. For when two periods of time are opposed to each other and yet are so connected that the end of one coincides with the beginning of the other, it makes no difference whether the exact point of their meeting is designated by the end of the first period or the beginning of the second.
******
AD-- TOPIC 22:
on the custom of the censors of taking their horse from corpulent and excessively fat knights; and the question whether such action also involved degradation or left them their rank as knights.
1. The censors used to take his horse from a man who was too fat and corpulent, evidently because they thought that so heavy a person was unfit to perform the duties of a knight.
2. For this was not a punishment, as some think, but the knight was relieved of duty without loss of rank.
3. Yet Catone, in the speech which he wrote "On Neglecting Sacrifice", makes such an occurrence a somewhat serious charge, thus apparently indicating that it was attended with disgrace.
4. If you understand that to have been the case, you must certainly assume that it was because a man was not looked upon as wholly free from the reproach of slothfulness, if his body had bulked and swollen to such unwieldy dimensions.
Book VII
*****
AD-- TOPIC 1st: How Crisippo replied to those who denied the existence of Providence.
*********************
1. Those who do not believe that the world was created for God and mankind, or that human affairs are ruled by providence, think that they are using a strong argument when they say:
"If there were a Providence, there would be no evils."
For they declare that nothing is less consistent with Providence than the existence of such a quantity of troubles and evils in a world which God is said to have made for the sake of man.
2. Chrysippus, arguing against such views in the fourth book of his treatise "On Providence", says:
"There is absolutely nothing more foolish than those men
3. who think that good could exist, if there were at the same time no evil.
For since good is the opposite of evil, it necessarily follows that both must exist in opposition to each other, supported as it were by mutual adverse forces; since as a matter of fact no opposite is conceivable without something to oppose it.
4 For how could there be an idea of justice if there were no acts of injustice? or what else is justice than the absence of injustice? How too can courage be understood except by contrast with cowardice? Or temperance except by contrast with intemperance? How also could there be wisdom, if folly did not exist as its opposite?
5 Therefore," said he, "why do not the fools also wish that there may be truth, but no falsehood?
For it is in the same way that good and evil exist, happiness and unhappiness, pain and pleasure.
6 For, as Platone says, they are bound one to the other by their opposing extremes; if you take away one, you will have removed both."
7. In the same book Chrysippus also considers and discusses this question, which he thinks worth investigating: whether men's diseases come by nature; that is, whether nature herself, or Providence, if you will, which created this structure of the universe and the human race, also created the diseases, weakness, and bodily infirmities from which mankind suffers.
8 He, however, does not think that it was nature's original intention to make men subject to disease; for that would never have been consistent with nature as the source and mother of all things good.
9 "But," said he, "when she was creating and bringing forth many great things which were highly suitable and useful, there were also produced at the same time troubles closely connected with those good things that she was creating"; and he declared that these were not due to nature, but to certain inevitable consequences, a process that he himself calls κατὰ παρακολούθησιν.
10. "Exactly as," he says, "when nature fashioned men's bodies, a higher reason and the actual usefulness of what she was creating demanded that the head be made of very delicate and small bones.
11. But this greater usefulness of one part was attended with an external disadvantage; namely, that the head was but slightly protected and could be damaged by slight blows and shocks.
12. In the same way diseases too and illness were created at the same time with health.
13. Exactly, by Heaven!" said he, "as vices, through their relationship to the opposite quality, are produced at the same time that virtue is created for mankind by nature's design."
*****
AD-- TOPIC 1st: How Crisippo replied to those who denied the existence of Providence.
*********************
1. Those who do not believe that the world was created for God and mankind, or that human affairs are ruled by providence, think that they are using a strong argument when they say:
"If there were a Providence, there would be no evils."
For they declare that nothing is less consistent with Providence than the existence of such a quantity of troubles and evils in a world which God is said to have made for the sake of man.
2. Chrysippus, arguing against such views in the fourth book of his treatise "On Providence", says:
"There is absolutely nothing more foolish than those men
3. who think that good could exist, if there were at the same time no evil.
For since good is the opposite of evil, it necessarily follows that both must exist in opposition to each other, supported as it were by mutual adverse forces; since as a matter of fact no opposite is conceivable without something to oppose it.
4 For how could there be an idea of justice if there were no acts of injustice? or what else is justice than the absence of injustice? How too can courage be understood except by contrast with cowardice? Or temperance except by contrast with intemperance? How also could there be wisdom, if folly did not exist as its opposite?
5 Therefore," said he, "why do not the fools also wish that there may be truth, but no falsehood?
For it is in the same way that good and evil exist, happiness and unhappiness, pain and pleasure.
6 For, as Platone says, they are bound one to the other by their opposing extremes; if you take away one, you will have removed both."
7. In the same book Chrysippus also considers and discusses this question, which he thinks worth investigating: whether men's diseases come by nature; that is, whether nature herself, or Providence, if you will, which created this structure of the universe and the human race, also created the diseases, weakness, and bodily infirmities from which mankind suffers.
8 He, however, does not think that it was nature's original intention to make men subject to disease; for that would never have been consistent with nature as the source and mother of all things good.
9 "But," said he, "when she was creating and bringing forth many great things which were highly suitable and useful, there were also produced at the same time troubles closely connected with those good things that she was creating"; and he declared that these were not due to nature, but to certain inevitable consequences, a process that he himself calls κατὰ παρακολούθησιν.
10. "Exactly as," he says, "when nature fashioned men's bodies, a higher reason and the actual usefulness of what she was creating demanded that the head be made of very delicate and small bones.
11. But this greater usefulness of one part was attended with an external disadvantage; namely, that the head was but slightly protected and could be damaged by slight blows and shocks.
12. In the same way diseases too and illness were created at the same time with health.
13. Exactly, by Heaven!" said he, "as vices, through their relationship to the opposite quality, are produced at the same time that virtue is created for mankind by nature's design."
*******
AD-
TOPIC 2nd:
How Chrysippus also maintained the power and inevitable nature of fate, but at the same time declared that we had control over our plans and decisions.
TOPIC 2nd:
How Chrysippus also maintained the power and inevitable nature of fate, but at the same time declared that we had control over our plans and decisions.
********
1. Crisippo, the leader of the Stoic philosophy, defined fate, which the
Greeks call εἱμαρμένη, in about the following terms:
"Fate," he says, "is an eternal and unalterable series of circumstances, and a chain rolling and entangling itself through an unbroken series of consequences, from which it is fashioned and made up."
"Fate," he says, "is an eternal and unalterable series of circumstances, and a chain rolling and entangling itself through an unbroken series of consequences, from which it is fashioned and made up."
2. But I have copied Chrysippus' very
words, as exactly as I could recall them, in order that, if my interpretation
should seem too obscure to anyone, he may turn his attention to the
philosopher's own language.
3. For in the fourth book of his work "On Providence",
he says that "εἱμαρμένη" is "an orderly series, established by nature, of
all events, following one another and joined together from eternity, and their
unalterable interdependence."
4. But the authors of other views and of other schools of philosophy openly
criticize this definition as follows:
5 "If Chrysippus," they say, "believes that all things are set in motion and directed by fate, and that the course of fate and its coils cannot be turned aside or evaded, then the sins and faults of men too ought not to cause anger or be attributed to themselves and their inclinations, but to a certain unavoidable impulse which arises from fate," which is the mistress and arbiter of all things, and through which everything that will happen must happen; and that therefore the establishing of penalties for the guilty by law is unjust, if men do not voluntarily commit crimes, but are led into them by fate.
5 "If Chrysippus," they say, "believes that all things are set in motion and directed by fate, and that the course of fate and its coils cannot be turned aside or evaded, then the sins and faults of men too ought not to cause anger or be attributed to themselves and their inclinations, but to a certain unavoidable impulse which arises from fate," which is the mistress and arbiter of all things, and through which everything that will happen must happen; and that therefore the establishing of penalties for the guilty by law is unjust, if men do not voluntarily commit crimes, but are led into them by fate.
6 Against these criticisms Chrysippus argues at length, subtilely and cleverly, but the purport of all that he has written on that subject is about this:
7 "Although it is a fact," he says, "that all things are subject to an inevitable and fundamental law and are closely linked to fate, yet the peculiar properties of our minds are subject to fate only according to their individuality and quality.
8 For if in the beginning they are fashioned by nature for health and usefulness, they will avoid with little opposition and little difficulty all that force with which fate threatens them from without. But if they are rough, ignorant, crude, and without any support from education, through their own perversity and voluntary impulse they plunge into continual faults and sin, even though the assault of some inconvenience due to fate be slight or non-existent.
9 And that this very thing should happen in this way is due to that natural and inevitable connection of events which is called 'fate.'
10 For it is in the nature of things, so to speak, fated and inevitable that evil characters should not be free from sins and faults."
11. A little later he uses an illustration of this statement of his, which is in truth quite neat and appropriate:
"For instance," he says, "if you roll a cylindrical stone over a sloping, steep piece of ground, you do indeed furnish the beginning and cause of its rapid descent, yet soon its speeds onward, not because you make it do so, but because of its peculiar form and natural tendency to roll; just so the order, the law, and the inevitable quality of fate set in motion the various classes of things and the beginnings of causes, but the carrying out of our designs and thoughts, and even our actions, are regulated by each individual's own will and the characteristics of his mind."
12 Then he adds these words, in harmony with what I have said:
"Therefore it is said by the Pythagoreans also:
You'll learn that men have ills which they themselves
Bring on themselves,
for harm comes to each of them through themselves, and they go astray through their own impulse and are harmed by their own purpose and determination."
13 Therefore he says that wicked, slothful, sinful and reckless men ought not to be endured or listened to, who, when they are caught fast in guilt and sin, take refuge in the inevitable nature of fate, as if in the asylum of some shrine, declaring that their outrageous actions must be charged, not to their own heedlessness, but to fate.
14. The first to express this thought was the oldest and wisest of the poets, in these verses:
Alas! how wrongly mortals blame the gods!
From us, they say, comes evil; they themselves by their own folly woes unfated bear.
15. Therefore Marcus Cicerone, in the book which he wrote "On Fate" after first remarking that this question is highly obscure and involved, declares that even the philosopher Chrysippo was unable to extricate himself from its difficulties, using these words:
Chrysippus, in spite of all efforts and labor, is perplexed how to explain that everything is ruled by fate, but that we nevertheless have some control over our conduct.
*****
AD--3: an account, taken from the works of Tubero, of a serpent of
unprecedented length.
*******
1. Tubero in his "Histories" has recorded that in the first Punic war the consul Atilio Regolo, when encamped at the Bagradas river in Africa, fought a stubborn and fierce battle with a single serpent of extraordinary size, which had its lair in that region; that in a mighty struggle with the entire army the reptile was attacked for a long time with hurling engines and catapults; and that when it was finally killed, its skin, a hundred and twenty feet long, was sent to Rome.
1. Tubero in his "Histories" has recorded that in the first Punic war the consul Atilio Regolo, when encamped at the Bagradas river in Africa, fought a stubborn and fierce battle with a single serpent of extraordinary size, which had its lair in that region; that in a mighty struggle with the entire army the reptile was attacked for a long time with hurling engines and catapults; and that when it was finally killed, its skin, a hundred and twenty feet long, was sent to Rome.
**********
TOPIC 4 A new account, written by the above-mentioned Tubero, of the capture of
Regulus by the Carthaginians; and always what Tuditanus wrote about that same
Regulus.
1. I recently read in the works of Tuditano the well-known story about Atilius Regulus:
That Regulus, when a prisoner, in addition to the advice which he gave in the senate at Rome against making an exchange of prisoners with the Carthaginians, also declared that the Carthaginians had given him a poison, not of immediate effect, but such as to delay his death for a season; that their design was that he should live for a time, until the exchange was accomplished, but afterwards should waste away as the drug gradually took effect.
2. Tubero in his "Histories" says that this Regulus returned to Carthage and was put to death by the Carthaginians with tortures of a novel kind:
3 "They confined him," he says, "in a dark and deep dungeon, and a long time afterwards suddenly brought him out, when the sun was shining most brightly, and exposed him to its direct rays, holding him and forcing him to fix his gaze upon the sky. They even drew his eyelids apart upward and downward and sewed them fast, so that he could not close his eyes."
4 Tuditanus, however, reports that Regulus was for a long time deprived of sleep and so killed, and that when this became known at Rome, Carthaginian captives of the highest rank were handed over by the senate to his sons, who shut them in a chest studded within with spikes; and that they too were tortured to death by lack of sleep.
1. I recently read in the works of Tuditano the well-known story about Atilius Regulus:
That Regulus, when a prisoner, in addition to the advice which he gave in the senate at Rome against making an exchange of prisoners with the Carthaginians, also declared that the Carthaginians had given him a poison, not of immediate effect, but such as to delay his death for a season; that their design was that he should live for a time, until the exchange was accomplished, but afterwards should waste away as the drug gradually took effect.
2. Tubero in his "Histories" says that this Regulus returned to Carthage and was put to death by the Carthaginians with tortures of a novel kind:
3 "They confined him," he says, "in a dark and deep dungeon, and a long time afterwards suddenly brought him out, when the sun was shining most brightly, and exposed him to its direct rays, holding him and forcing him to fix his gaze upon the sky. They even drew his eyelids apart upward and downward and sewed them fast, so that he could not close his eyes."
4 Tuditanus, however, reports that Regulus was for a long time deprived of sleep and so killed, and that when this became known at Rome, Carthaginian captives of the highest rank were handed over by the senate to his sons, who shut them in a chest studded within with spikes; and that they too were tortured to death by lack of sleep.
******
AD--5: an error of the jurist Alfenus in the interpretation of early words.
******
1. The jurist Alfeno, a pupil of Servio Sulpicio and a man greatly interested in matters antiquarian, in the thirty-fourth book of his "Digests" and the second of his "Miscellanies", says:
1. The jurist Alfeno, a pupil of Servio Sulpicio and a man greatly interested in matters antiquarian, in the thirty-fourth book of his "Digests" and the second of his "Miscellanies", says:
"In a treaty which was made between
the Roman people and the Carthaginians the provision is found, that the
Carthaginians should pay each year to the Roman people a certain weight of
argenti puri puti, and the meaning of puri puti was asked. I replied," he
says,
"that "putus" meant 'very pure,' just as we say novicius for "novus", new, and "propicius" for "proprius", proper, when we wish to augment and AMPLIFY the utterer's meaning (alla Grice) of "novus" and "proprius."
2. Upon reading this, I was surprised that Alfeno should think that the relation of "purus" and "putus" was the same as that of "novicius" and "novus".
3. For if the word were "puricius", then it would indeed appear to be formed like "novicius."
4. It was also surprising that ALFENO thought that "novicius" was used to implicate amplification, since in fact "novicius" does NOT mean "more new," but is merely a derivative and variant of "novus".
5. Accordingly I agree with those who think that "putus" is derived from "puto" and therefore pronounce the word with the first syllable short, not long as Alfeno seems to have thought it, since he wrote that "putus" came from "purus".
6. Moreover, the earlier writers used "putare" of removing and pruning away from anything whatever was superfluous and unnecessary, or even injurious and foreign, leaving only what seemed useful and without blemish.
7. For that was the meaning of putare, "to prune," as applied to trees and vines, and so too as used of accounts.
8. The verb "puto" itself also, which we use for the purpose of stating our opinion,
certainly means nothing else than that in an obscure and difficult matter we do
our best, by cutting away and lopping off false views, to retain what seems
true and pure and sound.
9. Therefore in the treaty which Carthage silver was
called putum, as having been thoroughly purified and refined, as free from all
foreign matter, and as spotless and whitened by the removal from it of all
impurities.
10 But the expression "purum putum" occurs, not only in the treaty with Carthage, but also in many other early writings, including the tragedy of Quintus Ennius entitled Alexander, and the satire of Marcus Varro called "Δὶς Παῖδες οἱ Γέροντες", or Old Men are Children for a Second Time.
***********
TOPIC 6
That Julius Hyginus was hasty and foolish in his criticism of Virgil for calling the wings of Daedalus praepetes; also a note on the meaning of aves praepetes and of those birds which Nigidius called inferae.
1. From Minos' realms in flight brave Daedalus on pinion swift ("praepetibus"), 'tis said, did dare the sky.
10 But the expression "purum putum" occurs, not only in the treaty with Carthage, but also in many other early writings, including the tragedy of Quintus Ennius entitled Alexander, and the satire of Marcus Varro called "Δὶς Παῖδες οἱ Γέροντες", or Old Men are Children for a Second Time.
***********
TOPIC 6
That Julius Hyginus was hasty and foolish in his criticism of Virgil for calling the wings of Daedalus praepetes; also a note on the meaning of aves praepetes and of those birds which Nigidius called inferae.
1. From Minos' realms in flight brave Daedalus on pinion swift ("praepetibus"), 'tis said, did dare the sky.
2. In these lines of Virgil Giulio Igino criticizes the use of "pennis praepetibus" as an improper and ignorant expression.
3 "For," says Igino, "those birds are called "praepetes" by the augurs which either fly onward auspiciously or alight in suitable places.
4. Therefore he thought it inappropriate in Virgilio to use an augural term in speaking of the flight of Dedalo, which had nothing to do with the science of the augurs.
5. But of a truth it was Igino who was altogether foolish in supposing that the meaning of "praepetes" was known to him, but unknown to Virgil and to Gnaeus Matius, a learned man, who in the second book of his "Iliad "called winged Victory "praepes" in the following line:
While Victory swift (praepes) the victor's palm bestows.
6. Furthermore, why does he not find fault also with Quinto Ennio, who in his "Annals" uses praepes, not of the wings of Daedalus, but of something very different, in the following line:
Brundisium girt with fair, propitious (praepete) port?
7. But if Hyginus had regarded the force and origin of the word rather than merely noting the meaning given to it by the augurs, he would certainly pardon the poets for using words
IN A FIGURATIVE AND METAPHORICAL "use"
rather than literally.
8. For since not only the birds themselves which fly auspiciously, but also the places which they take, since these are suitable and propitious, are called praepetes, therefore Virgilio called the wings of Dedalus praepetes, since he had come from places in which he feared danger into safer regions.
9. Furthermore, the augurs call places praepetes, and Ennius in the first book of his Annals said:
In fair, propitious (praepetibus) places they alight.
10. But birds that are the opposite of praepetes are called inferae, or "low," according to Nigidius Figulus, who says in the first book of his Private Augury:
"The right is opposed to the left, praepes to infera."
11 From this we may infer that birds were called praepetes which have a higher and loftier flight, since Nigidius said that the praepetes were contrasted with the inferae.
12. In my youth in Rome, when I was still in attendance on the grammarians, I gave special attention to Sulpicius Apollinaris.
Once when there was a discussion about augural law and mention had been made of
"praepetes aves",
I heard SULPICIO say to Erucio Claro, the city prefect, that in his opinion "praepetes" was equivalent to Homer's τανυπτέρυγες, or "wide-winged," since the augurs had special regard to those birds whose flight was broad and wide because of their great wings.
And then he quoted these verses of Homer:
You bid me trust the flight of wide-winged birds, but I regard them not, nor think of them.
*********
TOPIC
7 . On Acca Laurentia and Gaia Taracia; and on the origin of the priesthood of the Arval Brethren.
******
1. The names of Acca Larentia and Gaia Taracia, or Fufetia as she is sometimes called, are frequent in the early annals.
To the former of these after her death, but to Taracia while she still lived, the Roman people paid distinguished honours.
2 And that Taracia, at any rate, was a Vestal virgin is proved by the Horatian law which was laid before the people with regard to her.
By this law very many honours are bestowed upon her and among them the right of giving testimony is granted her, and that privilege is given to no other woman in the State.
The word testabilis is used in the Horatian law itself,
3 and its opposite occurs in the Twelve Tables:
"Let him be infamous and intestabilis, or 'forbidden to testify.' "
4 Besides, if at the age of forty she should wish to leave the priesthood and marry, the right and privilege of withdrawing from the order and marrying were allowed her, in gratitude for her generosity and kindness in presenting to the people the campus Tiberinus or Martius.
5. But Acca Larentia was a public prostitute and by that trade had earned a great deal of money.
6. In her will, Acca LARENTIA made king ROMOLO heir to her property, according to Antias' History; according to some others, the Roman people.
7. Because of that favour, public sacrifice was offered to her by the priest of Quirinus and a day was consecrated to her memory in the Calendar.
8. But Masurius Sabinus, in the first book of his "Memorialia", following certain historians, asserts that Acca Larentia was Romulus' nurse.
His words are:
"This woman, who had 12 sons, lost one of them by death.
In his place, Romulus gave himself to Acca LARENTIA as a son, and called himself and her other sons 'Arval Brethren.'
Since that time there has always been a college of Arval Brethren, 12 in number, and the insignia of the priesthood are a garland of wheat ears and white fillets."
*************
TOPIC 8. Some noteworthy anecdotes of King Alexander and of Publius Scipio.
********
1. Apion, a Greek, called Pleistoneices, possessed a fluent and lively style.
2 Writing in praise of king Alessandro Magno, he says:
"He forbade the wife of his vanquished foe, a woman of surpassing loveliness, to be brought into his presence, in order that he might not touch her even with his eyes."
3 We have then the subject for a pleasant discussion — which of the two shall justly be considered the more continent: Publius Africanus the elder, who after he had stormed Carthage, a powerful city in Spain, and a marriageable girl of wonderful beauty, the daughter of a noble Spaniard, had been taken prisoner and brought to him, restored her unharmed to her father; or king Alexander, who refused even to see the wife of king Darius, who was also his sister, when he had taken her captive in a great battle and had heard that she was of extreme beauty, but forbade her to be brought before him.
4 But those who have an abundance of talent, leisure and eloquence may use this material for a pair of little declamations on Alexander and Scipio;
5 I shall be satisfied with relating this, which is a matter of historical record: Whether it be false or true is uncertain, but at any rate the story goes that your Scipio in his youth did not have an unblemished reputation, and that it was all but generally believed that it was at him that the following verses were aimed by the poet Gnaeus Naevius:
E'en he who oft times mighty deeds hath done,
Whose glory and exploits still live, to whom
The nations bow, his father once led home,
Clad in a single garment, from his love.
6 I think it was by these verses that Valerius Antius was led to hold an opinion opposed to that of all other writers about Scipio's character, and to write, contrary to what I said above, that the captured maiden was not returned to her father, but was kept by Scipio and possessed by him in amorous dalliance.
*********************************
TOPIC 9 A passage taken from the Annals of Lucius Piso, highly diverting in content and graceful in style.
***********************
1. Because the action of Gnaeus Flavius, the curule aedile, son of Annius, which Lucius Piso described in the third book of his "Annals", seemed worthy of record, and because the story is told by Piso in a very pure and charming style, I have quoted the entire passage from Piso's Annals:
2. "Gnaeus Flavius, the son of a freedman," he says, "was a scribe by profession and was in the service of a curule aedile at the time of the election of the succeeding aediles.
3 The assembly of the tribes named Flavius curule aedile, but the magistrate who presided at the election refused to accept him as an aedile, not thinking it right that one who followed the profession of scribe should be made an aedile.
4 Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have laid aside his tablets and resigned his clerkship, and he was then made a curule aedile.
5 "This same Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have come to call upon a sick colleague. When he arrived and entered the room, several young nobles were seated there. They treated Flavius with contempt and none of them was willing to rise in his presence. 6 Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, the aedile, laughed at this rudeness; then he ordered his curule chair to be brought and placed it on the threshold, in order that none of them might be able to go out, and that all of them against their will might see him sitting on his chair of state."
***************************************
TOPIC 10
A story about Euclides, the Socratic, by whose example the philosopher Taurus used to urge his pupils to be diligent in the pursuit of philosophy.
******************
1. The philosopher Tauro, a celebrated Platonist of my time, used to urge the study of philosophy by many other good and wholesome examples and in particular stimulated the minds of the young by what he said that Euclides the Socratic used to do.
2. "The Athenians," said TAURO, "had provided in one of their decrees that any citizen of Megara who should be found to have set foot in Athens should for that suffer death;
3. So great," says he, "was the hatred of the neighbouring men of Megara with which the Athenians were inflamed.
4. Then Euclides, who was from that very town of Megara and before the passage of that decree had been accustomed to come to Athens and to listen to Socrates, after the enactment of that measure, at nightfall, as darkness was coming on, clad in a WOMAN's long tunic, wrapped in a parti-coloured mantle, and with veiled head, used to walk from his home in Megara to Athens, to visit Socrates, in order that he might at least for some part of the night share in the master's teaching and discourse. And just before dawn he went back again, a distance of somewhat over twenty miles, disguised in that same garb.
5. But nowadays," said Tauro, "we may see the philosophers themselves running to the doors of rich young men, to give them instruction, and there they sit and wait until nearly noonday, for their pupils to sleep off all last night's wine."
*****
TOPIC 11: A passage from a speech of Quintus Metellus Numidicus, which it was my pleasure to recall, since it draws attention to the obligation of self-respect and dignity in the conduct of life.
*******
1. One should not vie in abusive language with the basest of men or wrangle with foul words with the shameless and the wicked, since you because like them and their exact mate so long as you say things which match and are exactly like what you hear.
This truth may be learned no less from an address of Quintus Metellus Numidicus, a man of wisdom, than from the books and the teachings of the philosophers.
2. These are the words of Metellus from his speech Against Gaius Manlius, Tribune of the Commons, by whom he had been assailed and taunted in spiteful terms in a speech delivered before the people:
3. "Now, fellow citizens, so far as Manlius is concerned, since he thinks that he will appear a greater man, if he keeps calling me his enemy, who neither count him as my friend nor take account of him as an enemy, I do not propose to say another word.
For I consider him not only wholly unworthy to be spoken of by good men, but unfit even to be reproached by the upright.
For if you name an insignificant fellow of his kind at a time when you cannot punish him, you confer honour upon him rather than ignominy."
******TOPIC 12.
That neither testamentum, as Servius Sulpicius thought, nor sacellum, as Gaius Trebatiusº believed, is a compound, but the former is an extended form of testatio, the latter a diminutive of sacrum.
*******
1. I do not understand what reason led Servio Sulpicio the jurist, the most learned man of his time, to write in the second book of his work "On the Annulling of Sacred Rites" that t"estamentum" is a compound word.
2. For he declared that it was made up of "mentis contestation", or "an attesting of the mind."
3 What then are we to say about calciamentum (shoe), paludamentum (cloak), pavimentum (pavement), vestimentum (clothing), and thousands of other words that have been extended by a suffix of that kind?
4 As a matter of fact, Servius, or whoever it was who first made the statement, was evidently misled by a notion of the presence of mens in testamentum, an idea that is to be sure false, but neither inappropriate nor unattractive, just as indeed Gaius Trebatius too was misled into a similar attractive combination.
5 For he says in the second book of his work On Religions:42 "A sacellum, or 'shrine,' is a small place consecrated to a god and containing an altar."
6 Then he adds these words: "Sacellum, I think, is made up of the two words sacer and cella, as if it were sacra cella, or 'a sacred chamber.' " 6 This indeed is what Trebatius wrote, but who does not know both that sacellum is not a compound, and that it is not made up of sacer and cella, but is the diminutive of sacrum?
*****
TOPIC 13: On the brief topics discussed at the table of the philosopher Taurus and called Sympoticae, or Table Talk.43
******
1. This custom was practised and observed at Athens by those who were on intimate terms with the philosopher Taurus.
2. When TAURO invited us to his home, in order that we might not come wholly tax-free, as the saying is, and without a contribution, we brought to the simple meal, not dainty foods, but ingenious topics for discussion.
3. Accordingly, each one of us came with a question which he had thought up and prepared, and when the eating ended, conversation began.
4. The questions, however, were neither weighty nor serious, but certain neat but trifling ἐνθυμημάτια, or problems, which would pique a mind enlivened with wine.
For instance, the examples of a playful subtlety which I shall quote.
5. The question was asked, when a dying man died — when he was already in the grasp of death, or while he still lived?
And when did a rising man rise — when he was already standing, or while he was still seated?
And when did one who was learning an art become an artist — when he already was one, or when he was still learning?
6. For whichever answer you make, your statement will be absurd and laughable, and it will seem much more absurd, if you say that it is in either case, or in neither.
7. But when some declared that all these questions were pointless and idle sophisms, Tauro said:
"Do not despise such problems, as if they were mere trifling amusements.
8. The most earnest of philosophers have seriously debated this question.
Some have thought that the term 'die' was properly used, and that the moment of death came, while life still remained.
Others have left no life in that moment, but have claimed for death all that period which is termed 'dying.'
9. Also in regard to other similar problems they have argued for different times and maintained opposite opinions.
10 But our master Plato," said he, "assigned that time neither to life nor to death, and took the same position in every discussion of similar questions.
11. For he saw that the alternatives were mutually contrary, that one of the two opposites could not be maintained while the other existed, and that the question arose from the juxtaposition of two opposing extremes, namely life and death. Therefore he himself devised, and gave a name to, a new period of time, lying on the boundary between the two, which he called in appropriate and exact language ἡ ἐξαίφνης φύσις, or 'the moment of sudden separation.' And this very term, as I have given it," said he, "you will find used by him in the dialogue entitled Parmenides."
12 Of such a kind were our "contributions" at Taurus' house, and such were, as he himself used to put it, the τραγημάτια or "sweetmeats" of our desserts.
********
TOPIC 14 The three reasons given by the philosophers for punishing crimes; and why Plato mentions only two of these, and not three.
1. It has been thought that there should be three reasons for punishing crimes.
2 One of these, which the Greeks call either "κόλασις" or "νουθεσία", is the infliction of punishment for the purpose of correction and reformation, in order that one who has done wrong thoughtlessly may become more careful and scrupulous.
3. The second is called "τιμωρία" by those who have made a more exact differentiation between terms of this kind.
That reason for punishment exists when the dignity and the prestige of the one who is sinned against must be maintained, lest the omission of punishment bring him into contempt and diminish the esteem in which he is held; and therefore they think that it was given a name derived from the preservation of honour (τιμή).
4. A third reason for punishment is that which is called by the Greeks "παράδειγμα", when punishment is necessary for the sake of example, in order that others through fear of a recognized penalty may be kept from similar sins, which it is to the common interest to prevent.
Therefore our forefathers also used the word exempla, or "examples," for the severest and heaviest penalties.
Accordingly, when there is either strong hope that the culprit will voluntarily correct himself without punishment, or on the other hand when there is no hope that he could be reformed and corrected; or when there is no need to fear loss of prestige in the one who has been sinned against; or if the sin is not of such a sort that punishment must be inflicted in order that it may inspire a necessary feeling of fear — then in the case of all such sins the desire to inflict punishment does not seem to be at all fitting.
5. Other philosophers have discussed these three reasons for punishment in various places, and so too had our countryman Taurus in the first book of the p131Commentaries when he wrote On the Gorgias of Plato.
6 But Plato himself says in plain terms that there are only two reasons for punishment: one being that which I put first — for the sake of correction; the second, that which I gave in the third place — as an example to inspire fear.
7 These are Plato's own words in the Gorgias: "It is fitting that everyone who suffers punishment, when justly punished by another, either be made better and profit thereby, or serve as an example to others, in order that they, seeing his punishment, may be reformed through fear."
8 In these words you may readily understand that Plato used τιμωρία, not in the sense that I said above is given by some, but with the general meaning of any punishment.
9 But whether he omitted the maintenance of the prestige of an injured person as a reason for inflicting punishment, on the ground that it was altogether insignificant and worthy of contempt, or rather passed over it as something not germane to his subject, since he was writing about punishments to be inflicted after this life and not during life and among men, this question I leave undecided.
****************
TOPIC
15 On the verb quiesco whether it should be pronounced with a long or a short e.
********
1. A friend of mine, a man of much learning and devoted to the liberal arts, pronounced the verb "quiescit", be quiet, in the usual manner, with a short "e."
2. Another man, also a friend of mine, marvellous in the use of grammatical rules as jugglers' tricks, so to say, and excessively fastidious in rejecting common words, thought that the first man had been guilty of a barbarism, maintaining that he ought to have lengthened the "e", rather than shortened it.
3. For this friend asserted that "quiescit" ought to be pronounced like "calescit", nitescit, stupescit and many other words of that kind.
4. He also added the statement that quies (quiet) is pronounced with the e long, not short.
5 But my first-named friend, with the unassuming modesty which was characteristic of him in all matters, said that not even if the Aelii, the Cincii and the Santrae had decided that the word ought to be so pronounced, would he follow their ruling against the universal usage of the Latin language, nor would he speak it such an eccentric fashion as to be discordant and strange in his diction.
6 Nevertheless he wrote a letter on the subject, among some exercises for his own amusement, in which he tried to prove that quiesco is not like those words which I have quoted above; that it is not derived from quies but rather quies from quiesco.
He also maintained that quiesco has the form and derivation of a Greek word,50 and he tried to show, by reasons that were by no means without force, that the word should not be pronounced with a long e.
********
TOPIC 16 On a use by the poet Catullus of the word deprecor, which is unusual, it is true, but appropriate and correct; and on the origin of that word, with examples from early writers.
********
1. As we chanced to be strolling one evening in the LICEO, we were furnished with sport and amusement by a certain man, of the kind that lays claim to a reputation for eloquence by a superficial and ill-regulated use of language, without having learned any of the usages and principles of the Latin tongue.
2. For while Catullus in one of his poems had used the word "deprecor" rather cleverly, that fellow, unable to appreciate this, declared that the following verses which I have quoted were very flat, although in the judgment of all men they are most charming:
my Lesbia constantly speaks ill of me and cease not.
By Jove!
She cares for me.
How do I know?
'Tis just the same with me.
I rail at, but by Jove! I worship, her.
3. Our good man thought that "deprecor" in this passage was used in the sense that is commonly given the word by the vulgar; that is, "I pray earnestly," "I beseech," "I entreat," where the preposition "de-" is used intensively and emphatically.
4. And if that were so, the verses would indeed be flat.
5. But as a matter of fact the sense is exactly the opposite.
For the preposition "de-", since it has a double force, contains two meanings in one and the same word.
For "de-precor" is used by Catullus in the sense of "denounce, execrate, drive away," or "avert by prayers".
6. But it also has the opposite meaning, when Cicero In Defence of Publius Sulla speaks as follows:5
"How many men's lives did he beg off (est deprecatus) from Sulla."
7 Similarly in his speech Against the Agrarian Law Cicero says:
"If I do any wrong, there are no masks of ancestors to intercede (deprecentur, "beg off") for me with you by their prayers."
8. But Catullus was not alone in using this word with that meaning.
Indeed, the books are full of cases of its occurrence in the same sense, and of these I have quoted one or two which had come to mind.
9 Quintus Ennius in the Erectheus, not differing greatly from Catullus, says:
Who now win freedom by my own distress
For those whose slavery I by woe avert (deprecor).
He means "I drive away" and "remove," either by resort to prayer or in some other way.
10 Similarly in the Chresphontes Ennius writes:
When I my own life spare, may I avert (deprecer)
Death from mine enemy.
11. Cicero, in the sixth book of his Republic, wrote:
"Which indeed was so much the more remarkable, because, while the colleagues were in the same case, they not only did not incur the same hatred, but the affection felt for Gracchus even averted (deprecabatur) the unpopularity of Claudius."
Here too the meaning is not "earnestly entreated," but "warded off" unpopularity, so to speak, and defended him against it, a meaning which the Greeks express by the parallel word παραιτεῖσθαι.
12. Cicero also uses the word in the same way in his Defence of Aulus Caecina, saying:
"What can you do for a man like this? Can you not sometimes permit one to avert (deprecetur) the odium of the greatest wickedness by the excuse of the most abysmal folly?"
13 Also in the first book of his second Arraignment of Verres:6
"Now what can Hortensius do? Will he try to avert (deprecetur) the charge of avarice by the praise of economy? But he is defending a man who is utterly disgraced and sunk in lust and crime." So then Catullus means that he is doing the same as Lesbia, in publicly speaking ill of her, scorning and rejecting her, and constantly praying to be rid of her, and yet loving her to madness.
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TOPIC 17
Who was the first of all to establish a public library; and how many books there were in the public libraries at Athens before the Persian invasions.
*******************
1. The tyrant Pisistrato is said to have been the first to establish at Athens a public library of books relating to the liberal arts.
Then the Athenians themselves added to this collection with considerable diligence and care; but later Xerxes, when he got possession of Athens and burned the entire city except the citadel,61 removed that whole collection of books and carried them off to Persia.
2 Finally, a long time afterwards, king Seleucus, who was surnamed Nicator, had all those books taken back to Athens.
3 At a later time an enormous quantity of books, nearly seven hundred thousand volumes, was either acquired or written in Egypt under the kings known as Ptolemies; but these were all burned during the sack of the city in our first war with Alexandria, not intentionally or by anyone's order, but accidentally by the auxiliary soldiers.
Book VIII
TOPIC 1
Whether the expression hesterna nocte, for "last night," is right or wrong, and what the grammarians have said about those words; also that the decemvirs in the Twelve Tables1 used nox for noctu, meaning "by night."
1. This is an interesting topic.
2. Ten words pointed out to me by Favorino which, although in use by the Greeks, are of foreign origin and barbarous.
Also the same number, ten, given him me which, though of general and common use by those who speak Latin, are by no means Latin and are not to be found in the early literature.
3. In what terms and how severely the philosopher Peregrino in my hearing rebuked a young Roman of equestrian rank, who stood before him inattentive and constantly yawning.
. . . and saw him continually yawning and noticed the degenerate dreaminess expressed in his attitude of mind and body.
4. That Herodotus, that most famous writer of history, was wrong in saying that the pine alone of all trees never puts forth new shoots from the same roots, after being cut down; and that he stated as an established fact5 about rainwater and snow a thing which had not been sufficiently investigated.
5 On the meaning of Virgil's expression caelum stare pulvere6 and of Lucilius' pecus sentibus stare.
6 That when a reconciliation takes place after trifling offences, mutual complaints are useless; and Taurus' discourse on that subject, with a quotation from the treatise of Theophrastus; and what Marcus Cicero also thought about the love arising from friendship, added in his own words.
7 What we have learned and know of the nature and character of memory from Aristotle's work entitled Περὶ Μνήμης or On Memory; and also some other examples, of which we have heard or read, about extraordinary powers of memory or its total loss.
8 My experience in trying to interpret and, as it were, to reproduce in Latin certain passages of Plato.
9 How Theophrastus, the most eloquent philosopher of his entire generation, when on the point of making a brief speech to the people of Athens, was overcome by bashfulness and kept silence; and how Demosthenes had a similar experience when speaking before king Philip.
10
A discussion that I had in the town of Eleusis with a conceited grammarian who, although ignorant of the tenses of verbs and the exercises of schoolboys, ostentatiously proposed abstruse questions of a hazy and formidable character, to impress the minds of the unlearned.
Would wish a lying scoundrel.
11. The witty reply of Socrates to his wife Xanthippe, when she asked that they might spend more money for their dinners during the Dionysiac festival.
12. On the meaning of plerique omnes, or "almost all," in the early literature; and on the probable Greek origin of that expression.
13 That eupsones, a word used by the people of Africa, is not Phoenician, but Greek.
14 A highly entertaining discussion of the philosopher Favorinus with a tiresome person who held forth on the double meaning of certain words; also some unusual expressions from the poet Naevius and from Gnaeus Gellius; and further, some investigations of the derivation of words by Publius Nigidius.
15 How the poet Laberius was ignominiously treated by Gaius Caesar, with a quotation of Laberius' own words on that subject.11
A pleasant and remarkable story from the books of Heracleides of Pontus.12
****************************************END OF BOOK
TOPIC 1
Whether the expression hesterna nocte, for "last night," is right or wrong, and what the grammarians have said about those words; also that the decemvirs in the Twelve Tables1 used nox for noctu, meaning "by night."
1. This is an interesting topic.
2. Ten words pointed out to me by Favorino which, although in use by the Greeks, are of foreign origin and barbarous.
Also the same number, ten, given him me which, though of general and common use by those who speak Latin, are by no means Latin and are not to be found in the early literature.
3. In what terms and how severely the philosopher Peregrino in my hearing rebuked a young Roman of equestrian rank, who stood before him inattentive and constantly yawning.
. . . and saw him continually yawning and noticed the degenerate dreaminess expressed in his attitude of mind and body.
4. That Herodotus, that most famous writer of history, was wrong in saying that the pine alone of all trees never puts forth new shoots from the same roots, after being cut down; and that he stated as an established fact5 about rainwater and snow a thing which had not been sufficiently investigated.
5 On the meaning of Virgil's expression caelum stare pulvere6 and of Lucilius' pecus sentibus stare.
6 That when a reconciliation takes place after trifling offences, mutual complaints are useless; and Taurus' discourse on that subject, with a quotation from the treatise of Theophrastus; and what Marcus Cicero also thought about the love arising from friendship, added in his own words.
7 What we have learned and know of the nature and character of memory from Aristotle's work entitled Περὶ Μνήμης or On Memory; and also some other examples, of which we have heard or read, about extraordinary powers of memory or its total loss.
8 My experience in trying to interpret and, as it were, to reproduce in Latin certain passages of Plato.
9 How Theophrastus, the most eloquent philosopher of his entire generation, when on the point of making a brief speech to the people of Athens, was overcome by bashfulness and kept silence; and how Demosthenes had a similar experience when speaking before king Philip.
10
A discussion that I had in the town of Eleusis with a conceited grammarian who, although ignorant of the tenses of verbs and the exercises of schoolboys, ostentatiously proposed abstruse questions of a hazy and formidable character, to impress the minds of the unlearned.
Would wish a lying scoundrel.
11. The witty reply of Socrates to his wife Xanthippe, when she asked that they might spend more money for their dinners during the Dionysiac festival.
12. On the meaning of plerique omnes, or "almost all," in the early literature; and on the probable Greek origin of that expression.
13 That eupsones, a word used by the people of Africa, is not Phoenician, but Greek.
14 A highly entertaining discussion of the philosopher Favorinus with a tiresome person who held forth on the double meaning of certain words; also some unusual expressions from the poet Naevius and from Gnaeus Gellius; and further, some investigations of the derivation of words by Publius Nigidius.
15 How the poet Laberius was ignominiously treated by Gaius Caesar, with a quotation of Laberius' own words on that subject.11
A pleasant and remarkable story from the books of Heracleides of Pontus.12
Book IX
********************
TOPIC 1
Why Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius, in the nineteenth book of his Annals, wrote that missiles hit their mark more accurately and surely if they are hurled from below, than if they are hurled from above.
********************
TOPIC 1
Why Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius, in the nineteenth book of his Annals, wrote that missiles hit their mark more accurately and surely if they are hurled from below, than if they are hurled from above.
*******
1. When Quinto Claudio, in the nineteenth book of his "Annals", was describing an attack upon a town by the proconsul Metello, and its defence against him by the townspeople from the top of the walls, he wrote these words:
"The archers and slingers on both sides showered their weapons with the utmost vigour and courage.
But there is this difference between shooting an arrow or a stone downward or upward; for neither missile can be discharged accurately downward, but both upwards with excellent effect. Therefore the soldiers of Metellus suffered far fewer wounds, and, what was of the greatest importance, they very easily drove the enemy back from the battlements by means of their slingers."
2. I asked Antonius Julianus, the rhetorician, why what Quadrigarius had said was so; namely, that the shots of missiles are closer and more accurate if you discharge a stone or an arrow upwards rather than downwards, in spite of the fact that a throw from above downward is swifter and easier than one in the opposite direction.
3 Then Julianus, after commending the character of the question, said: "His statement about an arrow and a stone may be made about almost any missile weapon.
4 But, as you have said, throwing is easier if you throw downwards, provided you wish only to throw, and not to hit a mark.
5 But when the direction and force of the throw must be regulated and guided, then, if you are throwing downwards, the control and command of the marksman are impaired by the downward impulse itself, such as it is, and by the weight of the falling missile.
6 But if you throw your weapon upwards, and direct hand and eye to hitting something above you, the missile which you have hurled will go to the spot to which the impulse which you have given bears it."
7 It was to this general effect that Julianus chatted with us about those words of Quintus Claudius.
8 With regard to the remark of the same Claudius, "they very easily drove the enemy from the battlements," it must be observed that he used the word defendebant, not in the sense which it commonly has, but yet quite properly and in accordance with good Latin usage.
9 For defendere and offendere are opposed to each other, the latter meaning ἐμποδὼν ἔχειν, that is, "to run against something and fall upon it," the former, ἐκποδὼν ποιεῖν, that is, "to avert and drive away"; and the latter is Claudius' meaning in this passage.
1. When Quinto Claudio, in the nineteenth book of his "Annals", was describing an attack upon a town by the proconsul Metello, and its defence against him by the townspeople from the top of the walls, he wrote these words:
"The archers and slingers on both sides showered their weapons with the utmost vigour and courage.
But there is this difference between shooting an arrow or a stone downward or upward; for neither missile can be discharged accurately downward, but both upwards with excellent effect. Therefore the soldiers of Metellus suffered far fewer wounds, and, what was of the greatest importance, they very easily drove the enemy back from the battlements by means of their slingers."
2. I asked Antonius Julianus, the rhetorician, why what Quadrigarius had said was so; namely, that the shots of missiles are closer and more accurate if you discharge a stone or an arrow upwards rather than downwards, in spite of the fact that a throw from above downward is swifter and easier than one in the opposite direction.
3 Then Julianus, after commending the character of the question, said: "His statement about an arrow and a stone may be made about almost any missile weapon.
4 But, as you have said, throwing is easier if you throw downwards, provided you wish only to throw, and not to hit a mark.
5 But when the direction and force of the throw must be regulated and guided, then, if you are throwing downwards, the control and command of the marksman are impaired by the downward impulse itself, such as it is, and by the weight of the falling missile.
6 But if you throw your weapon upwards, and direct hand and eye to hitting something above you, the missile which you have hurled will go to the spot to which the impulse which you have given bears it."
7 It was to this general effect that Julianus chatted with us about those words of Quintus Claudius.
8 With regard to the remark of the same Claudius, "they very easily drove the enemy from the battlements," it must be observed that he used the word defendebant, not in the sense which it commonly has, but yet quite properly and in accordance with good Latin usage.
9 For defendere and offendere are opposed to each other, the latter meaning ἐμποδὼν ἔχειν, that is, "to run against something and fall upon it," the former, ἐκποδὼν ποιεῖν, that is, "to avert and drive away"; and the latter is Claudius' meaning in this passage.
*****
TOPIC 2 In what terms Herodes Atticus reproved a man who in appearance and
dress falsely laid claim to the title and character of philosopher.
*****
1. To Herodes Atticus, the ex-consul, renowned for his personal charm and his
Grecian eloquence, there once came, when I was present, a man in a cloak,
with long hair and a beard that reached almost to his waist, and asked that
money be given him "εἰς ἄρτους", that is, "for bread."
2. Then Herodes
asked him who on earth he was,
3 and the man, with anger in his voice and
expression, replied that he was a philosopher, adding that he wondered why
Herodes thought it necessary to ask what was obvious.
4 "I see," said
Herodes, "a beard and a cloak; the philosopher I do not yet see.
5 Now, I
pray you, be so good as to tell me by what evidence you think we may recognize
you as a philosopher."
6 Meanwhile some of Herodes' companions told him
that the fellow was a vagabond of worthless character, who frequented foul
dives and was in the habit of being shamefully abusive if he did not get what
he demanded.
7 Thereupon Herodes said: "Let us give him some money,
whatever his character may be, not because he is a man, but because we are
men," and he ordered enough money to be given him to buy bread for thirty
days.
8 Then, turning to those of us who were with him, he said: "Musonius ordered a thousand sesterces to be given to a fakir of this sort who posed as a philosopher, and when several told him that the fellow was a rascal and knave and deserving of nothing good, Musonius, they say, replied with a smile: ἄξιος οὖν ἐστὶν ἀργυρίου, 'then he deserves money.'
9 But," said Herodes,
"it is rather this that causes me resentment and vexation, that foul and
evil beasts of this sort usurp a most sacred name and call themselves
philosophers.
10 Now, my ancestors the Athenians by public decree made it
unlawful for slaves ever to be given the names of those valiant youths
Harmodius p159and Aristogeiton, who to restore liberty tried to slay the tyrant
Hippias;3 for they thought it impious for the names of men who had sacrificed
themselves for their country's freedom to be disgraced by contact with slavery.
11 Why then do we allow the glorious title of philosopher to be defiled in the
person of the basest of men? Moreover," said he, "I hear that the
early Romans, setting a similar example in a case of the opposite nature, voted
that the forenames of certain patricians who had deserved ill of their country
and for that reason had been condemned to death should never be given to any
patrician of the same clan, in order that their very names might seem to be
dishonoured and done to death, as well as the malefactors themselves."
*******
TOPIC 3
A letter of king Philip to the philosopher Aristotle with regard to the recent birth of his son Alexander.
*****
1 Philip, son of Amyntas, was king of the land of Macedonia.
Through his valour and energy the Macedonians had greatly increased and enriched their kingdom, and had begun to extend their power over many nations and peoples, so that Demosthenes, in those famous orations and addresses,5 insists that his power and arms are to be feared and dreaded by all Greece.
2 This Philip, although most constantly busied and distracted by the labours and triumphs of war, yet never was a stranger to the Muse of the liberal arts and the pursuit of culture, but his acts and words never lacked charm and refinement.
3 In fact collections of his letters are in circulation, which abound in elegance, grace, and wisdom, as for example, the one in which he announced to the philosopher Aristotle the birth of his son Alexander.
4 Since this letter is an encouragement to care and attention in the education of children, I thought that it ought to be quoted in full, as an admonition to parents.
5 It may be translated, then, about as follows:
"Philip to Aristotle,
Greeting.
"Know that a son is born to me.
For this indeed I thank the gods, not so much because he is born, as because it is his good fortune to be born during your life-time.
For I hope that as a result of your training and instruction he will prove worthy of us and of succeeding to our kingdom."
6.
But Philip's own words are these:
Φίλιππος
Ἀριστοτέλει
χαίρειν
Ἴσθι μοι γεγονότα υἱόν.
πολλὴν οὖν τοῖς θεοῖς ἔχω χάριν
οὐχ οὕτως ἐπὶ τῇ γενέσει τοῦ παιδός
ὡς ἐπὶ τῷ κατὰ σὴν ἡλικίαν αὐτὸν γεγονέναι
ἐλπίζω γάρ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ σοῦ τραφέντα
καὶ παιδευθέντα ἄξιον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἡμῶν
καὶ τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων διαδοχῆς.
TOPIC 4. On some extraordinary marvels found among barbarian peoples; and on awful and deadly spells; and also on the sudden change of women into men.
********************
1. When I was returning from Greece to Italia and had come to Brundisi, after disembarking I was strolling about in that famous port, which Quintus Ennius called praepes, or "propitious," using an epithet that is somewhat far-fetched, but altogether apt.
2. There I saw some bundles of books exposed for sale, and I at once eagerly hurried to them.
3 Now, all those books were in Greek, filled with marvellous tales, things unheard of, incredible; but the writers were ancient and of no mean authority: Aristeas of Proconnesus, Isigonus of Nicaea, Ctesias and Onesicritus, Philostephanus and Hegesias.
4 The volumes themselves, however, were filthy from long neglect, in bad condition and unsightly.
5 Nevertheless, I drew near and asked their price; then, attracted by their extraordinary and unexpected cheapness, I bought a large number of them for a small sum, and ran through all of them hastily in the course of the next two nights.
As I read, I culled from them, and noted down, some things that were remarkable and for the most part unmentioned by our native writers.
These I have inserted here and there in these notes, so that whoever shall read them may not be found to be wholly ignorant and ἀνήκοος, or "uninstructed," when hearing tales of that kind.
6. Those books, then, contained matter of the following sort: that the most remote of the Scythians, who pass their life in the far north, eat human flesh and subsist on the nourishment of that food, and are called ἀνθρωποφάγοι, or "cannibals."
Also that there are men in the same latitude having one eye in the middle of the forehead and called Arimaspi, who are of the appearance that the poets give the Cyclopes.
9 That there are also in the same region other men, of marvellous swiftness, whose feet are turned backwards and do not point forward, as in the rest of mankind.
10 Further, that it was handed down by tradition that in a distant land called Albania men are born whose hair turns white in childhood and who see better by night than in the daytime. That it was also a matter of assured belief that the Sauromatae, who dwell far away beyond the river Borysthenes, take food only every other day11 and fast on the intervening day.
7 In those same books I ran upon this statement too, which I later read also in the seventh book of the Natural History of Plinius Secundus,12 that in the land of Africa there are families of persons who work spells by voice and tongue;
8 for if they should chance to have bestowed extravagant praise upon beautiful trees, plentiful crops, charming children, fine horses, flocks that are well fed and in good condition, suddenly, for no other cause than this, all these would die. That with the eyes too a deadly spell is cast, is written in those same books, and it is said that there are persons among the Illyrians who by their gaze kill those at whom they have looked for some time in anger; and that those persons themselves, both men and women, who possess this power of harmful gaze, have two pupils in each eye. 9 Also that in the mountains of the land of India there are men who have the heads of dogs, and bark, and that they feed upon birds and wild animals which they have taken in the chase. That in the remotest lands of the east too there are p167other marvellous men called monocoli, or "one-legged," who run by hopping with their single leg and are of a most lively swiftness.1
3 And that there are also some others who are without necks and have eyes in their shoulders. 10 But all bounds of wonder are passed by the statement of those same writers, that there is a tribe in farthest India with bodies that are rough and covered with feathers like birds, who eat no food but live by inhaling the perfume of flowers. 11 And that not far from these people is the land of Pygmies, the tallest of whom are not more than two feet and a quarter in height.
12 These and many other stories of the kind I read; but when writing them down, I was seized with disgust for such worthless writings, which contribute nothing to the enrichment or profit of life.
13 Nevertheless, the fancy took me to add to this collection of marvels a thing which Plinius Secundus, a man of high authority in his day and generation by reason of his talent and his position, recorded in the seventh book of his Natural History,14 not as something that he had heard or read, but that he knew to be true and had himself seen. 14 The words therefore which I have quoted below are his own, taken from that book, and they certainly make us hesitate to reject or ridicule that familiar yarn of the poets of old about Caenis and Caeneus.
15 15 He says that the change of women into men is not a fiction. "We find," says he, "in the annals that in the consulship of Quintus Licinius Crassus and Gaius Cassius Longinus a girl at Casinum was changed into a boy in the house of her parents and by direction of the diviners was deported to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus has stated hat he saw at Argos one Arescontes, whose name had been Arescusa; that she had even been married, but presently grew a beard, became a man, and had taken a wife: and that at Smyrna also he had seen a boy who had experienced the same change. I myself in Africa saw Lucius Cossutius, a citizen of Thysdrus, who had been changed into a man on his wedding day and was still living when I wrote this."
16 . Pliny also wrote this in the same book:
'There are persons who from birth are bisexual, whom we call 'hermaphrodites'; they were formerly termed androgyni and regarded as prodigies, but now are instruments of pleasure."
*******
TOPIC 5
Diverse views of eminent philosophers as to the nature and character of pleasure; and the words in which the philosopher Hierocles attacked the principles of Epicurus.
*********
1. As to pleasure the philosophers of old expressed varying opinions.
2 Epicuro makes pleasure the highest good, but defines it as "σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα," or "a well-balanced condition of body."
3 Antisthenes the Socratic calls it the greatest evil; for this is the expression he uses: μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην; that is to say, "may I go mad rather than feel pleasure."
4 Speusippus and all the old Academy declare that pleasure and pain are two evils opposed to each other, but that what lay midway between the two was the good.
5 Zeno thought that pleasure was indifferent, that is neutral, neither good nor evil, that, namely, which he called by the Greek term ἀδιάφορον.
6 Critolaus the Peripatetic declares that pleasure is an evil and gives birth to many other evils: injustice, sloth, forgetfulness, and cowardice.
7 Earlier than all these Plato discoursed in so many and varied ways about pleasure, that all those opinions which I have set forth may seem to have flowed from the founts of his discourses; for he makes use of each one of them according to the suggestion offered by the nature of pleasure itself, which is manifold, and according to the demands made by the character of the topics which he is treating and of the effect that he wishes to produce.
8 But our Roman countryman Tauro, whenever mention was made of Epicuro, always had on his lips and tongue these words of Hierocles the Stoic, a man of righteousness and dignity:
"Pleasure an end, a harlot's creed; there is no Providence, not even a harlot's creed."
*********
TOPIC 6 With what quantity the first syllable of the frequentative verb from ago should be pronounced.
*********
1. From "ago" and "egi" are derived the verbs "actito" and "actitavi", which the grammarians call "frequentatives."
2. These verbs I have heard some men, and those not without learning, pronounce with a shortening of the first syllable, and give as their reason that the first letter of the primitive ago is pronounced short.
3 Why then do we make the first vowel long in the frequentative forms esito and unctito, which are derived from edo and ungo, in which the first letter is short; and on the contrary, pronounce the first vowel short in dictito from dīco? Accordingly, should not actito and actitavi rather be lengthened? For the first syllable of almost all frequentatives is pronounced in the same way as the same syllable of the past participle of the verbs from which they are formed: for example, lego lēctus makes lēctito; ungo ūnctus, ūnctito; scrībo scrīptus, scrīptito; moveo mōtus, mōtito; pendeo pēnsus, pēnsito; edo ēsus, ēsito; but dīco dĭctus forms dĭctito; gĕro gĕstus, gĕstito; vĕho vĕctus, vĕctito; răpio răptus, răptito; căpio căptus, căptito; făcio făctus, făctito. So then āctito should be pronounced with the first syllable long, since it is from ago and āctus.
********
TOPIC 7 That the leaves of the olive tree turn over at the summer and the winter solstice, and that the lyre at that same season produces sounds from other strings than those that are struck.
*********
1. It is commonly both written and believed that at the winter and the summer solstice the leaves of olive trees turn over, and that the side which had been underneath and hidden becomes uppermost and is exposed to sight and to the sun.
2 And I myself was led to test this statement more than once, and found it to be almost exactly true.
3 But about the lyre there is an assertion that is less often made and is even more remarkable. And this both other learned men and also Suetonius Tranquillus, in the first book of his History of the Games, declare to have been fully investigated and to be generally accepted; namely, that when some strings of the lyre are struck with the fingers at the time of the winter solstice, other strings give out sound.
******
TOPIC 8 That it is inevitable that one has much should need much, with a brief and graceful aphorism of the philosopher Favorinus on that subject.
*********
1. That is certainly true which wise men have said as the result of observation and experience, that he who has much is in need of much, and that great want arises from great abundance and not from great lack; for many things are wanted to maintain the many things that you have.
2 Whoever then, having much, desires to provide and take precaution that nothing may fail or be lacking, needs to lose, not gain, and must have less in order to want less.
3. I recall that Favorinus once, amid loud and general applause, rounded off this thought, putting it into the fewest possible words:
"It is not possible for one who wants fifteen thousand cloaks to want more things; for if I want more than I possess, by taking away from what I have I shall be contented with what remains."
*******
TOPIC
9
What method should be followed in translating Greek expressions; and on those verses of Homer which Virgil is thought to have translated either well and happily or unsuccessfully.
********
1. Whenever striking expressions from the Greek poets are to be translated and imitated, they say that we Romans should not always strive to render every single word with exact literalness.
2. For many things lose their charm if they are transplanted too forcibly — unwillingly, as it were, and reluctantly.
3. Virgil therefore showed skill and good judgment in omitting some things and rendering others, when he was dealing with passages of Homer or Hesiod or Apollonius or Parthenius or Callimachus or Theocritus, or some other poet.
4. For example, when very recently the Bucolics of Teocrito and Virgil were being read together at table, we perceived that Virgil had omitted something that in the Greek is, to be sure, wonderfully pleasing, but neither could nor ought to have been translated.
5 But what he has substituted for that omission is almost more charming and graceful.
Theocritus writes:
but when her goatherd boy goes by you should see my Cleärist fling apples, and her pretty lips call pouting to be kissed.
Virgil has:
6.
My Phyllis me with pelted apples plies, then tripping to the woods the wanton hies, and wishes to be seen before she flies.
7. Also in another place I notice that what was very sweet in the Greek was prudently omitted. Theocritus writes:
O Titiro, well-belovéd, feed my goats, and lead them to the front, good Tityrus.
But 'ware yon buck-goat yellow, lest he butt.
8. But how could Virgil reproduce "τὸ καλὸν πεφιλημένε", well-beloved, words that, by Heaven! defy translation, but have a certain native charm?
9. VIRGILIO therefore omitted that expression and translated the rest very cleverly, except in using caper for Theocritus' ἐνόρχας.
10. For, according to Marcus Varro, a goat is called "caper" in Latin only after he has been castrated. Virgil's version is:
11.
Till I return — not long — feed thou my goats.
Then, Tityrus, give them a drink, but as you go, avoid the buck-goat's horn — the fellow butts!
12. And since I am speaking on the subject of translation, I recall hearing from pupils of Valerius Probus, a learned man and well trained in reading and estimating the ancient writings, that he used to say that Virgilio had never translated OMERO *less* successfully than in these delightful lines which Homer wrote about Nausicaa:
As when o'er Erymanth Diana roves, or wide Taÿgetus' resounding groves,
A silver train the huntress queen surrounds,
Her rattling quiver from her shoulder sounds;
Fierce in the sport, along the mountain's brow
They bay the boar or chase the bounding roe;
High o'er the lawn, with more majestic pace,
Above the nymphs she treads with stately grace;
Distinguished excellence the goddess proves,
Exults Latona as the virgin moves:
With equal grace Nausicaa trod the plain,
And shone transcendent o'er the beauteous train.
This passage Virgil renders thus:
13
As on Eurotas' banks or Cynthus' heights
Diana guides her dancing bands, whose train
A thousand Oreads follow, right and left;
A quiver bears she on her shoulder fair,
And as she treads, the goddesses o'ertops;
Joys thrill Latona's silent breast.
14. First of all, they said that Probo thought that in OMERO the maiden Nausicaa, playing among her girl companions in solitary places, was consistently and properly compared with Diana hunting on the mountain heights among the rural goddesses.
But that Virgil had made a comparison that was by no means suitable, since Didone, walking with dignified dress and gait in the midst of a city, and surrounded by the Tyrian chiefs, "pressing on the work of her rising kingdom," as he himself says, can have no points of similarity corresponding with the sports and hunts of Diana.
15 Then secondly, that Homer mentions plainly and directly Diana's interest and pleasure in the chase, while Virgil, not having said a word about the goddess' hunting, merely pictures her as carrying a quiver on her shoulder, as if it were a burden or a pack. And they said that Probus was particularly surprised at this feature of Virgil's version, that while Homer's Leto rejoices with a joy that is unaffected, deep, and springing from the very depths of her heart and soul — for the words γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα Λητώ, or "Leto rejoiced in heart," mean nothing else — Virgil, on the other hand, in his attempt to imitate this, had depicted a joy that is passive, mild, slow, and as it were floating on the surface of the heart.
16. For Probus said that he did not know what else the word pertemptant could mean. Besides all this, Virgil seemed to have left out the flower of the whole passage, by giving only a faint shadow of this verse of Homer's:
And shone transcendent o'er the beauteous train.36
17. For no greater or more complete praise of beauty can be expressed than that she alone excelled where all were beautiful, that she alone was easily distinguished from all the rest.
*******
TOPIC
10
The low and odious criticism with which Annaeus Cornutus befouled the lines of Virgil in which the poet with chaste reserve spoke of the intercourse of Venus and Vulcan.
********
1. The poet Annianus, and with him many other devotees of the same Muse, extolled with high and constant praise the verses of Virgil in which, while depicting and describing the conjugal union of Vulcan and Venere, an act that nature's law bids us conceal, he veiled it with a modest paraphrase.
2 For thus Anniano wrote:
So speaking, the desired embrace he gave, and sinking on the bosom of his spouse, calm slumber then he wooed in every limb.
3. But they thought it less difficult, in speaking of such a subject, to use one or two words that suggest it by a slight and delicate hint, such as Homer's "παρθενίη ζώνη", or "maiden girdle"; λέκτροιο θεσμόν, "the right of the couch"; and ἔργα φιλοτήσια, "love's labours".
4 that
no other than Virgil has ever spoken of those sacred mysteries of chaste
intercourse in so many and such plain words, which yet were not licentious,
but pure and honourable.
5. But Anneo Cornuto, a man in many other respects, to be sure, lacking
neither in learning nor taste, nevertheless, in the second book of the work
which he compiled "On Figurative Language", defamed the high praise of all that
modesty by an utterly silly and odious criticism.
6. For after expressing
approval of that kind of figurative language, and observing that the lines were
composed with due circumspection, CORNUTO added:
"Virgil nevertheless was
somewhat indiscreet in using the word membra."
TOPIC 11
Of Valerius Corvinus and the origin of his surname.
******
1. There is not one of the well-known historians who has varied in telling the story of Valerio Massimo, who was called "Corvino" because of the help and defence rendered him by a raven.
2. That truly remarkable event is in fact thus
related in the annals.
3. In the consulship of Lucius Furius and Appius
Claudius, a young man of such a family was appointed tribune of the
soldiers.
4 And at that time vast forces of Gauls had encamped in the Pomptine
district, and the Roman army was being drawn up in order of battle by the
consuls, who were not a little disquieted by the strength and number of the
enemy.
5 Meanwhile the leader of the Gauls, a man of enormous size and stature,
his armour gleaming with gold, advanced with long strides and flourishing his
spear, at the same time casting haughty and contemptuous glances in all
directions.
Filled with scorn for all that he saw, he challenged anyone from
the entire Roman army to come out and meet him, if he dared.
6 Thereupon, while
all were wavering between fear and shame, the tribune Valerius, first obtaining
the consuls' permission to fight with the Gaul who was boasting so vainly,
advanced to meet him, boldly yet modestly. They meet, they halt, they were
already engaging in combat. And at that moment a divine power is manifest:
7 a
raven, hitherto unseen, suddenly flies to the spot, perches on the tribune's
helmet, and from there begins an attack on the face and the eyes of his
adversary.
It flew at the Gaul, harassed him, tore his hand with its claws,
obstructed his sight with its wings, and after venting its rage flew back to
the tribune's helmet.
8 Thus the tribune, before the eyes of both armies,
relying on his own valour and defended by the help of the bird, conquered and
killed the arrogant leader of the enemy, and thus won the surname Corvinus.
9. This happened 405 years "after the founding of Rome".
10. To that Corvinus the deified Augustus caused a statue to be erected in his Forum.46 On the head of this statue is the figure of a raven, a reminder of the event and of the combat which I have described.
************************
TOPIC
12
On words which are used with two opposite meanings, both active and
passive.
*********
1. As the adjective
"formidulosus" may be used both of one who fears and of one
who is feared,
"invidiosus" of one who envies and of one who is envied,
"suspiciosus" of one who suspects and of one who is suspected,
"ambitiosus" of one
who courts favour and one who is courted,
"gratiosus" also of one who gives, and
of one who receives, thanks,
"laboriosus" of one who toils and of one who causes
toil — as many other words of this kind are used in both ways, so
"infestus"
too
has a double meaning.
2. For he is called "infestus" who inflicts injury on
anyone, and on the other hand he who is threatened with injury from another
source is also said to be infestus.
3. But the meaning which I gave first surely needs no illustration, so many are there who use infestus in the sense of hostile and adverse; but that second meaning is less familiar and more obscure.
4 For who of the common run would
readily call a man infestus to whom another is hostile? However, not only did
many of the earlier writers speak in that way, but Marcus Tullius also gave the
word that meaning in the speech which he wrote In Defence of Gnaeus Plancius,
saying:
5 "I were grieved, gentlemen of the jury, and keenly distressed,
if this man's safety should be more endangered (infestior) for the very reason
that he had protected my life and safety by his own kindliness, protection and
watchfulness."
6 Accordingly, I inquired into the origin and meaning of
the word and found this statement in the writings of Nigidius:
"Infestus
is derived from "festinare"," says he, "for one who threatens anyone,
and is in hasten to attack him, and hurries eagerly to crush him; or on the
other hand one whose peril and ruin are being hastened — both of these are
called infestus from the urgent imminence of the injury which one is either
about to inflict on someone, or to suffer."
7 Now, that no one may have to search for an example of suspiciosus, which I mentioned above, and of formidulosus in its less usual sense, Marcus Cato, On the Property of Florius, used suspiciosus as follows: "But except in the case of one who practised public prostitution, or had hired himself out to a procurer, even though he had been ill-famed and suspected (suspiciosus), they decided that it was unlawful to use force against the person of a freeman."
8 For in this passage Cato uses suspiciosus in the sense of
"suspected," not that of "suspecting."
9 Sallust too in the
Catiline uses formidulosus of one who is feared, in this passage:
"To
such men consequently no labour was unfamiliar, no region too rough or too
steep, no armed foeman to be dreaded (formidulosus)."
10 Gaius Calvus also in his poems uses laboriosus, not in the ordinary sense of "one who toils," but of that on which labour is spent, saying:
The hard and toilsome (laboriosum) country he will shun.
11. In the same way Laberius also in the Sister says:53
By Castor! sleepy (somniculosum) wine!
12. And Cinna in his poems:54
As Punic Psyllus doth55 the sleepy (somniculosam) asp.56
13 Metus also and iniuria, and some other words of the kind, may be used in this double sense; for metus hostium, "fear of the enemy," is a correct expression p193both when the enemy fear and when they are feared.
13 Metus also and iniuria, and some other words of the kind, may be used in this double sense; for metus hostium, "fear of the enemy," is a correct expression p193both when the enemy fear and when they are feared.
14
Thus Sallust in the first book of his History57 speaks of "the fear of
Pompey," not implying that Pompey was afraid, which is the more common
meaning, but that he was feared. These are Sallust's words: "That war was
aroused by the fear of the victorious Pompey, who was restoring Hiempsal to his
kingdom."
15 Also in another passage:58 "After the fear of the
Carthaginians had been dispelled and there was leisure to engage in dissensions."
16 In the same way we speak of the "injuries," as well as of those
who inflict them as of those who suffer them, and illustrations of that usage
are readily found.
17 The following passage from Virgil affords a similar instance of this kind of double meaning; he says:
Slow from Ulysses' wound,
using vulnus, not of a wound that Ulysses had suffered, but of one that he had inflicted.
18 Nescius also is used as well of one who is unknown as of one who
does not know;
19 but its use in the sense of one who does not know is common,
while it is rarely used of that which is unknown.
20 Ignarus has the same
double application, not only to one who is ignorant, but also to one who is not
known.
21 Thus Plautus in the Rudens says:
In unknown (nesciis) realms are we where hope knows naught (nescia).61
22 And Sallust:
In unknown (nesciis) realms are we where hope knows naught (nescia).61
22 And Sallust:
"With the natural desire of mankind to visit unknown
(ignara) places."
And Virgil:
And Virgil:
Unknown (ignarum) the Laurentine shore doth Mimas hold.
p195
*******************
TOPIC
13
A passage from the history of Claudius Quadrigarius, in which he
pictured the combat of Manlius Torquatus, a young noble, with a hostile Gaul,
who challenged the whole Roman army.
******
1. Tito Manlio was a man of the highest birth and of exalted rank.
2. This
Manlio was given the surname "Torquatus".
3. The reason for the surname, "Torquato", we are
told, was that he wore as a decoration a golden neck-chain, a trophy taken from
an enemy whom he had slain.
4. But who the enemy was, and what his nationality,
how formidable his huge size, how insolent his challenge, and how the battle
was fought — all this Quintus Claudius has described in the first book of his
Annals with words of the utmost purity and clearness, and with the simple and
unaffected charm of the old-time style.
5. When the philosopher Favorinus read
this passage from that work, he used to say that his mind was stirred and
affected by no less emotion and excitement than if he were himself an
eye-witness of their contest.
6. I have added the words of Quintus Claudius in which that battle is pictured.
7. "In the meantime a Gaul came forward, who was naked except for a shield
and two swords and the ornament of a neck-chain and bracelets; in strength and
size, in youthful vigour and in courage as well, he excelled all the rest.
8 In
the very height of the battle, when the two armies were fighting with the
utmost ardour, he began to make signs with his hand to both sides, to cease
fighting.
9 The combat ceased.
10 As soon as silence was secured, he called out
in a mighty voice that if anyone wished to engage him in single combat, he
should come forward.
11 This no one dared do, because of his huge size and
savage aspect.
12 Then the Gaul began to laugh at them and to stick out his
tongue.
13 This at once roused the great indignation of one Titus Manlius, a
youth of the highest birth, that such an insult should be offered his country,
and that no one from so great an army should accept the challenge.
14 He, as I
say, stepped forth, and would not suffer Roman valour to be shamefully
tarnished by a Gaul. Armed with a foot-soldier's shield and a Spanish sword, he
confronted the Gaul.
15 Their meeting took place on the very bridge, in the
presence of both armies, amid great apprehension.
16 Thus they confronted each
other, as I said before: the Gaul, according to his method of fighting, with
shield advanced and awaiting an attack; Manlius, relying on courage rather than
skill, struck shield against shield, and threw the Gaul off his balance.
17. While the Gaul was trying to regain the same position, Manlio again struck
shield against shield, and again forced the man to change his ground.
In this
fashion MANLIO slipped in under the Gaul's sword and stabbed him in the breast with
his Spanish blade.
Then at once with the same mode of attack MANLIO struck the Gaul's right shoulder, and he did not give ground at all until he
overthrew him, without giving the Gaul a chance to strike a blow.
18. After Manlio
had overthrown the Gaul, he cut off his head, tore off his neck-chain, and put it,
covered with blood as it was, around his own neck.
19. Because of this act, he
himself and his descendants had the surname "Torquato."
20. From this Titus Manlius, whose battle Quadrigarius described above, all harsh and cruel commands are p199called "Manlian"; for at a later time, when he was consul in a war against the Latins, Manlius caused his own son to be beheaded, because he had been sent by his father on a scouting expedition with orders not to fight, and disregarding the command, had killed one of the enemy who had challenged him.
*******
TOPIC
14 That Quadrigarius also, with correct Latinity, used facies as a
genitive; and some other observations on the inflection of similar words.
********
1. The expression that I quoted above from Quintus Claudius, "On account
of his great size and savage aspect (facies)," I have inquired into by
examining several old manuscripts, and have found it to be as I wrote it.
2. For
it was in that way, as a rule, that the early writers declined the word —
facies facies — whereas the rule of grammar now requires faciei as the genitive.
But I did find some corrupt manuscripts in which faciei was written, with
erasure of the former reading.
3. I remember too having found both facies and facii written in the same manuscript of Claudius in the library at Tibur.
But "facies" was written in the
text and "facii", with double i, in the margin opposite.
4. Nor did I regard that
as inconsistent with a certain early usage.
For from the nominative dies they
used both "dies" and "dii" as the genitive, and from fames, both famis and fami.
5 Quintus Ennius, in the sixteenthº book of his Annals, wrote dies for diei in the following verse:
Caused by the distant time of the last day (dies).
6. Caesellius asserts that Cicero also wrote dies for diei in his oration For Publius Sestius, and after sparing no pains and inspecting several old manuscripts, I found Caesellius to be right.
7 These are the words of Marcus
Tullius:69 "But the knights shall pay the penalty for that day
(dies)." As a result, I readily believe those who have stated that they
saw a manuscript from Virgil's own hand, in which it was written:
When Libra71 shall make like the hours of day (dies) and sleep,
where dies is used for diei.
8 But just as in this place Virgil evidently wrote dies, so there is no doubt
that he wrote dii for diei in the following line:72
As gifts for that day's (dii) merriment,
where the less learned read dei, doubtless shrinking from the use of so uncommon a form.
As gifts for that day's (dii) merriment,
where the less learned read dei, doubtless shrinking from the use of so uncommon a form.
9 But the older writers declined dies dii, as they did fames
fami, pernicies pernicii, progenies progenii, luxuries luxuri, acies acii.
10
For Marcus Cato in his oration On the Punic War wrote as follows:
"The
women and children were driven out because of the famine (fami causa)."
11
Lucilius in his twelfth book has:75
Wrinkled and full of hunger (fami).
Wrinkled and full of hunger (fami).
12 Sisenna in the sixth book of his History writes: "That the
Romans came for the purpose of dealing destruction (pernicii)."
13
Pacuvius in the Paulus says:77
O sire supreme of our own race's (progenii) sire.
O sire supreme of our own race's (progenii) sire.
14 Gnaeus Matius in the twenty-first book of his Iliad:78
The army's (acii) other part the river's wave had shunned.
The army's (acii) other part the river's wave had shunned.
15 Again Matius in Book XXIII writes:79
Or bides in death some semblance of a form (specii)
Of those who speak no more.
Or bides in death some semblance of a form (specii)
Of those who speak no more.
16 Gaius Gracchus, On the Publishing of the Laws has:80 "They say that
those measures were taken because of luxury (luxurii causa),"
17 and
farther on in the same speech we find: "What is necessarily provided to
sustain life is not luxury (luxuries),"
18 which shows that he used
luxurii as the genitive of luxuries.
19 Marcus Tullius also has left pernicii
on record, in the speech in which he defended Sextus Roscius. These are his
words: "We think that none of these things was produced by divine will
for the purpose of dealing destruction (pernicii), but by the very force and
greatness of Nature."
20 We must therefore suppose that Quadrigarius wrote
either facies or facii as the genitive; but I have not found the reading facie
in any ancient manuscript.
21 But in the dative case those who spoke the best Latin did not use the form
faciei, which is now current, but facie.
22 For example, Lucilius in his
Satires:82
Which first is joined to a fair face
And youth.
Which first is joined to a fair face
And youth.
23 And in his seventh book:83
Who loves you, and who to your youth and charms (facie),
Plays courtier, promising to be your friend.
24 However, there are not a few who read facii in both these passages of
Lucilius.
25 But Gaius Caesar, in the second book of his treatise On Analogy,84
thinks that we should use die and specie as genitive forms.
26 I have also found die in the genitive case in a manuscript of Sallust's Jugurtha of the utmost trustworthiness and of venerable age. These were the words:85 "when scarcely a tenth part of the day (die) was left." For I do not think we ought to accept such a quibble as the assertion that die is used for ex die.
***********************************************************
TOPIC 15
On the kind of debate which the Greeks call ἄπορος.
*****
1. With the rhetorician Antonius Julianus I had withdrawn to Naples during the season of the summer holidays, wishing to escape the heat of Rome (only to find more heat in Napoli!)
2. And there
was there at the time a young man of the richer class studying with tutors in
both languages, and trying to gain a command of Latin eloquence in order to
plead at the bar in Rome; and he begged Julianus to hear one of his
declamations.
3 Julianus went to hear him and I went along with him.
4 The
young fellow entered the room, made some preliminary remarks in a more arrogant
and presumptuous style than became his years, and then asked that subjects for
debate be given him.
5 There was present there with us a pupil of Julianus, a man of ready
speech and good ability, who was already offended that in the hearing of man
like Julianus the fellow should show such rashness and should dare to test
himself in extempore speaking.
6 Therefore, to try him, he proposed a topic for
debate that was not logically constructed, of the kind which the Greeks call
ἄπορος, and in Latin might with some propriety be termed inexplicabile, that
is, "unsolvable."
7 The subject was of this kind:
"Seven judges
are to hear the case of a defendant, and judgment is to be passed in accordance
with the decision of a majority of their number. When the seven judges had
heard the case, two decided that the defendant ought to be punished with exile;
two, that he ought to be fined; the remaining three, that he should be put to
death.
8 The execution of the accused is demanded according to the decision of
the three judges, but he appeals."
9 As soon as the young man had heard this, without any reflection and without waiting for other subjects to be proposed, he began at once with incredible speed to reel off all sorts of principles and apply them to that same question, pouring out floods of confused and meaningless words and a torrent of verbiage. All the other members of his company, who were in the habit of listening to him, showed their delight by loud applause, but Julianus blushed and sweat from shame and embarrassment.
10 But when after many thousand lines of drivel the
fellow at last came to an end and we went out, his friends and comrades
followed Julianus and asked him for his opinion.
11 Whereupon Julianus very
wittily replied "Don't ask me what I think; without controversy86 this
young man is eloquent."
*****TOPIC 16
How Plinius Secundus, although not without learning, failed to
observe and detect the fallacy in an argument of the kind that the Greeks call
ἀντιστρέφον.
******
1. Plinius Secundus was considered the most learned man of his time.
2 He left a
work, entitled "For Students of Oratory", which is by no manner of means to be
lightly regarded.
3. In that work he introduces much varied material that will
delight the ears of the learned.
4. He also quotes a number of arguments that he
regards as cleverly and skilfully urged in the course of debates.
5. For instance,
he cites this argument from such a debate:
A brave man shall be given
the reward which he desires.
A man who had done a brave deed asked for the wife
of another in marriage, and received her.
Then the man whose wife she had been
did a brave deed.
He demands the return of his wife, but is refused.'
6 On the
part of the second brave man, who demanded the return of his wife," says
Pliny, "this elegant and plausible argument was presented: 'If the law is
valid, return her to me; if it is not valid, return her.' "
7. But it
escaped Pliny's notice that this bit of reasoning, which he thought very acute,
was not without the fallacy which the Greeks call ἀντιστρέφον, or "a
convertible proposition."
And that is a deceptive fallacy, which lies
concealed under a false appearance of truth; for that very argument may just as
easily be turned about and used against the same man, and might, for example,
be put thus by that former husband: "If the law is valid, I do not return
her; if it is not valid, I do not return her."
*************************** END OF BOOK.
Book X
*****
TOPIC 1
Whether one ought to say tertium consul or tertio; and how Gnaeus Pompeius, when he would inscribe his honours on the theatre which he was about to dedicate, by Cicero's advice evaded the difficulty as to the form of that word.
******
1. I sent a letter from Athens to a friend of mine in Rome.
2 In it, I said that I had now written him for the third time ("tertium").
3. In his reply, he asked employ to give my reason for having written "tertium" and not "tertio".
He added that he hoped that I would at the same time inform him what I thought about the question whether one should say "tertium consul", meaning "consul for the third time," and "quartum", or "tertio" and "quarto".
Since he had heard a learned man at Rome say tertio and quarto consul, not tertium and quartum.
Also, that Coelius had so written1 at the beginning of his third book and that Quintus Claudius in his eleventh book said2 that Marius was chosen consul for the seventh time, using septimo.
4. In reply to these questions, to decide both matters about which he had written to me, I contented myself with quoting Marcus Varro, a more learned man in my opinion than Coelius and Claudius together.
5 For Varro has made it quite plain what ought to be said, and I did not wish, when at a distance, to enter into a dispute with a man who had the name of being learned.
6 Marcus Varro's words, in the fifth book of his Disciplinae, are as follows:
"It is one thing to be made praetor quarto, and another quartum; for quarto refers to order and indicates that three were elected before him;4 quartum refers to time and indicates that he had been made praetor three times before. Accordingly Ennius was right when he wrote:
Quintus, his sire, a fourth time (quartum) consul is,
and Pompeius was timid when, in order to avoid writing consul tertium or tertio on his theatre, he did not write the final letters."
7 What Varro briefly and somewhat obscurely hinted at concerning Pompey, Tullius Tiro, Cicero's freedman, wrote at greater length in one of his letters, substantially as follows: "When Pompey was preparing to consecrate the temple of Victory, the steps of which formed his theatre, and to inscribe upon it his name and honours, the question arose whether consul tertium should be written, or tertio. Pompey took great pains to refer this question to the most learned men of Rome, and when there was difference of opinion, some maintaining that tertio ought to be written, others tertium, Pompey asked Cicero," says Varro, "to decide upon what seemed to him the more correct form." Then Cicero was reluctant to pass judgment upon learned men, lest he might seem to have censured the men themselves in criticizing their opinion. "He accordingly advised Pompey to write neither tertium nor tertio, but to inscribe the first p217four letters only, so that the meaning was shown without writing the whole word, but yet the doubt as to the form of the word was concealed."
8 But that of which Varro and Tiro spoke is not now written in that way on this same theatre.
9 For when, many years later, the back wall of the stage had fallen and was restored, the number of the third consulship was indicated, not as before, by the first four letters, but merely by three incised lines.
10 However, in the fourth book of Marcus Cato's Origines we find:10 "The Carthaginians broke the treaty for the sixth time (sextum)." This word indicates that they had violated the treaty five times before, and that this was the sixth time.
11 The Greeks too in distinguishing numbers of this kind use τρίτον καὶ τέταρτον, which corresponds to the Latin words tertium quartumque.
1. I sent a letter from Athens to a friend of mine in Rome.
2 In it, I said that I had now written him for the third time ("tertium").
3. In his reply, he asked employ to give my reason for having written "tertium" and not "tertio".
He added that he hoped that I would at the same time inform him what I thought about the question whether one should say "tertium consul", meaning "consul for the third time," and "quartum", or "tertio" and "quarto".
Since he had heard a learned man at Rome say tertio and quarto consul, not tertium and quartum.
Also, that Coelius had so written1 at the beginning of his third book and that Quintus Claudius in his eleventh book said2 that Marius was chosen consul for the seventh time, using septimo.
4. In reply to these questions, to decide both matters about which he had written to me, I contented myself with quoting Marcus Varro, a more learned man in my opinion than Coelius and Claudius together.
5 For Varro has made it quite plain what ought to be said, and I did not wish, when at a distance, to enter into a dispute with a man who had the name of being learned.
6 Marcus Varro's words, in the fifth book of his Disciplinae, are as follows:
"It is one thing to be made praetor quarto, and another quartum; for quarto refers to order and indicates that three were elected before him;4 quartum refers to time and indicates that he had been made praetor three times before. Accordingly Ennius was right when he wrote:
Quintus, his sire, a fourth time (quartum) consul is,
and Pompeius was timid when, in order to avoid writing consul tertium or tertio on his theatre, he did not write the final letters."
7 What Varro briefly and somewhat obscurely hinted at concerning Pompey, Tullius Tiro, Cicero's freedman, wrote at greater length in one of his letters, substantially as follows: "When Pompey was preparing to consecrate the temple of Victory, the steps of which formed his theatre, and to inscribe upon it his name and honours, the question arose whether consul tertium should be written, or tertio. Pompey took great pains to refer this question to the most learned men of Rome, and when there was difference of opinion, some maintaining that tertio ought to be written, others tertium, Pompey asked Cicero," says Varro, "to decide upon what seemed to him the more correct form." Then Cicero was reluctant to pass judgment upon learned men, lest he might seem to have censured the men themselves in criticizing their opinion. "He accordingly advised Pompey to write neither tertium nor tertio, but to inscribe the first p217four letters only, so that the meaning was shown without writing the whole word, but yet the doubt as to the form of the word was concealed."
8 But that of which Varro and Tiro spoke is not now written in that way on this same theatre.
9 For when, many years later, the back wall of the stage had fallen and was restored, the number of the third consulship was indicated, not as before, by the first four letters, but merely by three incised lines.
10 However, in the fourth book of Marcus Cato's Origines we find:10 "The Carthaginians broke the treaty for the sixth time (sextum)." This word indicates that they had violated the treaty five times before, and that this was the sixth time.
11 The Greeks too in distinguishing numbers of this kind use τρίτον καὶ τέταρτον, which corresponds to the Latin words tertium quartumque.
************
TOIC
2
What Aristotle has recorded about the number of children born at one time.
2
What Aristotle has recorded about the number of children born at one time.
********
1. The philosopher Aristotele has recorded that a woman in Egypt bore five children at one birth.
This, he said, was the limit of human multiple parturition.
More children than 5 had never known to be born at one time, and even that number was very rare.
2. But in the reign of OTTAVIANO, the deified "Agosto", the historians of the time say that a maid servant of Caesar Augustus in the region of Laurentum brought forth 5 children, and that they lived for a few days; that their mother died not long after she had been delivered, whereupon a monument was erected to her by order of Augustus on the via Laurentina, and on it was inscribed the number of her children, as I have given it.
*********
TOPIC
3
A collection of famous passages from the speeches of Gaius Gracchus, Marcus Cicero and Marcus Cato, and a comparison of them.
1. The philosopher Aristotele has recorded that a woman in Egypt bore five children at one birth.
This, he said, was the limit of human multiple parturition.
More children than 5 had never known to be born at one time, and even that number was very rare.
2. But in the reign of OTTAVIANO, the deified "Agosto", the historians of the time say that a maid servant of Caesar Augustus in the region of Laurentum brought forth 5 children, and that they lived for a few days; that their mother died not long after she had been delivered, whereupon a monument was erected to her by order of Augustus on the via Laurentina, and on it was inscribed the number of her children, as I have given it.
*********
TOPIC
3
A collection of famous passages from the speeches of Gaius Gracchus, Marcus Cicero and Marcus Cato, and a comparison of them.
*******
1. Gaius Gracchus is regarded as a powerful and vigorous speaker.
No one disputes this.
But how can one tolerate the opinion of some, that he was more impressive, more spirited and more fluent than Marcus Tullius?
2. Indeed, I lately read the speech of Gaius Gracchus On the Promulgation of Laws, in which, with all the indignation of which he is master, he complains that Marcus Marius and other distinguished men of the Italian free-towns were unlawfully beaten with rods by magistrates of the Roman people.
3. His words on the subject are as follows:
"The consul lately came to Teanum Sidicinum.
His wife said that she wished to bathe in the men's baths.
Marcus Marius, the quaestor of Sidicinum, was instructed to send away the bathers from the baths.
The wife tells her husband that the baths were not given up to her soon enough and that they were not sufficiently clean.
Therefore a stake was planted in the forum and Marcus Marius, the most illustrious man of his city, was led to it.
His clothing was stripped off, he was whipped with rods.
The people of Cales, when they heard of this, passed a decree that no one should think of using the public baths when a Roman magistrate was in town.
At Ferentinum, for the same reason, our praetor ordered the quaestors to be arrested; one threw himself from the wall, the other was caught and beaten with rods."
4 . In speaking of such an atrocious action, in so lamentable and distressing a manifestation of public injustice, has he said anything either fluent or brilliant, or in such a way as to arouse tears and pity; is there anything that shows an outpouring of indignation and solemn and impressive remonstrance? Brevity there is, to be sure, grace, and a simple purity of expression, such as we sometimes have in the more refined of the comedies.
5 Gracchus also in another place speaks as follows:
"I will give you a single example of the lawlessness of our young men, and of their entire lack of self-control.
Within the last few years a young man who had not yet held a magisterial office was sent as an envoy from Asia.
He was carried in a litter.
A herdsman, one of the peasants of Venusia, met him, and not knowing whom they were bearing, asked in jest if they were carrying a corpse.
Upon hearing this, the young man ordered that the litter be set down and that the peasant be beaten to death with the thongs by which it was fastened."
6. Now these words about so lawless and cruel an outrage do not differ in the least from those of ordinary conversation.
7 But in Marcus Tullius, when in a similar case Roman citizens, innocent men, are beaten with rods contrary to justice and contrary to the laws, or tortured to death, what pity is then aroused! What complaints does he utter! How he brings the whole scene before our eyes! What a mighty surge of indignation and bitterness comes seething forth!
8 By Heaven! when I read those words of Cicero's, my mind is possessed with the sight and sound of blows, cries and lamentation.
9 For example, the words which he speaks about Gaius Verres, which I have quoted so far as my memory went, which was all that I could do at present: "The man himself came into the forum, blazing with wickedness and frenzy. His eyes burned, every feature of his face displayed cruelty. All were waiting to see to what ends he would go, or what he would do, when on a sudden he gave orders that the man be dragged forth, that he be stripped in the middle of the forum and bound, and that rods be brought."
10 Now, so help me! the mere words "he ordered that he be stripped and bound, and rods brought" arouse such emotion and horror that you do not seem to hear the act described, but to see it acted before your face.
11 But Gracchus plays the part, not of one who complains or implores, but of a mere narrator: "A stake," he says, "was planted in the forum, his clothing was stripped off, he was beaten with rods."
12 But Marcus Cicero, finely representing the idea of continued action, says, not "he was beaten," but "a citizen of Rome was being beaten with rods in the middle of the forum at Messana, while in the meantime no groan, no sound was heard from that wretched man amid his torture and the resounding blows except these words, 'I am a Roman citizen.' By thus calling to mind his citizenship he hoped to avert all their stripes and free his body from torture."
13 Then Cicero with vigour, spirit and fiery indignation complains of so cruel an outrage and inspires the Romans with hatred and detestation of Verres by these words:
"O beloved name of liberty! O p225eminent justice of our country! O Porcian and Sempronian laws! O authority of the tribunes, earnestly desired and finally restored to the Roman commons! Pray, have all these blessings fallen to this estate, that a Roman citizen, in a province of the Roman people, in a town of our allies, should be bound and flogged in the forum by one who derived the emblems of his power from the favour of the Roman people? What! when fire and hot irons and other tortures were applied, although your victim's bitter lamentation and piteous outcries did not affect you, were you not moved by the tears and loud groans even of the Roman citizens who were then present?"
14 These outrages Marcus Tullius bewailed bitterly and solemnly, in appropriate and eloquent terms.
15 But if anyone has so rustic and so dull an ear that this brilliant and delightful speech and the harmonious arrangement of Cicero's words do not give him pleasure; if he prefers the earlier oration because it is unadorned, concise and unstudied, yet has a certain native charm, and because it has, so to say, a shade and colour of misty antiquity — let such a one, if he has any judgment at all, study the address in a similar case of Marcus Cato, a man of a still earlier time, to whose vigour and flow of language Gracchus could never hope to attain.
16 He will realize, I think, that Cato was not content with the eloquence of his own time, but aspired to do even then what Cicero later accomplished.
17 For in the speech which is entitled On Sham Battles he thus made complaint of Quintus Thermus:
"He said that his provisions had not been satisfactorily attended to by the decemvirs.
He ordered them to be stripped and scourged. The Bruttiani scourged the decemvirs, many men saw it done. Who could endure such an insult, such tyranny, such slavery? No king has ever dared to act thus; shall such outrages be inflicted upon good men, born of a good family, and of good intentions? Where is the protection of our allies? Where is the honour of our forefathers? To think that you have dared to inflict signal wrongs, blows, lashes, stripes, these pains and tortures, accompanied with disgrace and extreme ignominy, since their fellow citizens and many other men looked on! But amid how great grief, what groans, what tears, what lamentations have I heard that this was done? Even slaves bitterly resent injustice; what feeling do you think that such men, sprung from good families, endowed with high character, had and will have so long as they live?
18 When Cato said "the Bruttiani scourged them," lest haply anyone should inquire the meaning of Bruttiani, it is this:
19. When Hannibal the Carthaginian was in Italy with his army, and the Romans had suffered several defeats, the Bruttii were the first people of all Italy to revolt to Hannibal. Angered at this, the Romans, after Hannibal left Italy and the Carthaginians were defeated, by way of ignominious punishment refused to enrol the Bruttii as soldiers or treat them as allies, but commanded them to serve the magistrates when they went to their provinces, and to perform the duties of slaves. Accordingly, they accompanied the magistrates in the capacity of those who are called "floggers" in the plays, and bound or scourged those whom they were ordered. And because they came from the land of the Bruttii, they were called Bruttiani.
********
TOPIC 4 How Publius Nigidius with great cleverness showed that words are not arbitrary, but natural.
1. Gaius Gracchus is regarded as a powerful and vigorous speaker.
No one disputes this.
But how can one tolerate the opinion of some, that he was more impressive, more spirited and more fluent than Marcus Tullius?
2. Indeed, I lately read the speech of Gaius Gracchus On the Promulgation of Laws, in which, with all the indignation of which he is master, he complains that Marcus Marius and other distinguished men of the Italian free-towns were unlawfully beaten with rods by magistrates of the Roman people.
3. His words on the subject are as follows:
"The consul lately came to Teanum Sidicinum.
His wife said that she wished to bathe in the men's baths.
Marcus Marius, the quaestor of Sidicinum, was instructed to send away the bathers from the baths.
The wife tells her husband that the baths were not given up to her soon enough and that they were not sufficiently clean.
Therefore a stake was planted in the forum and Marcus Marius, the most illustrious man of his city, was led to it.
His clothing was stripped off, he was whipped with rods.
The people of Cales, when they heard of this, passed a decree that no one should think of using the public baths when a Roman magistrate was in town.
At Ferentinum, for the same reason, our praetor ordered the quaestors to be arrested; one threw himself from the wall, the other was caught and beaten with rods."
4 . In speaking of such an atrocious action, in so lamentable and distressing a manifestation of public injustice, has he said anything either fluent or brilliant, or in such a way as to arouse tears and pity; is there anything that shows an outpouring of indignation and solemn and impressive remonstrance? Brevity there is, to be sure, grace, and a simple purity of expression, such as we sometimes have in the more refined of the comedies.
5 Gracchus also in another place speaks as follows:
"I will give you a single example of the lawlessness of our young men, and of their entire lack of self-control.
Within the last few years a young man who had not yet held a magisterial office was sent as an envoy from Asia.
He was carried in a litter.
A herdsman, one of the peasants of Venusia, met him, and not knowing whom they were bearing, asked in jest if they were carrying a corpse.
Upon hearing this, the young man ordered that the litter be set down and that the peasant be beaten to death with the thongs by which it was fastened."
6. Now these words about so lawless and cruel an outrage do not differ in the least from those of ordinary conversation.
7 But in Marcus Tullius, when in a similar case Roman citizens, innocent men, are beaten with rods contrary to justice and contrary to the laws, or tortured to death, what pity is then aroused! What complaints does he utter! How he brings the whole scene before our eyes! What a mighty surge of indignation and bitterness comes seething forth!
8 By Heaven! when I read those words of Cicero's, my mind is possessed with the sight and sound of blows, cries and lamentation.
9 For example, the words which he speaks about Gaius Verres, which I have quoted so far as my memory went, which was all that I could do at present: "The man himself came into the forum, blazing with wickedness and frenzy. His eyes burned, every feature of his face displayed cruelty. All were waiting to see to what ends he would go, or what he would do, when on a sudden he gave orders that the man be dragged forth, that he be stripped in the middle of the forum and bound, and that rods be brought."
10 Now, so help me! the mere words "he ordered that he be stripped and bound, and rods brought" arouse such emotion and horror that you do not seem to hear the act described, but to see it acted before your face.
11 But Gracchus plays the part, not of one who complains or implores, but of a mere narrator: "A stake," he says, "was planted in the forum, his clothing was stripped off, he was beaten with rods."
12 But Marcus Cicero, finely representing the idea of continued action, says, not "he was beaten," but "a citizen of Rome was being beaten with rods in the middle of the forum at Messana, while in the meantime no groan, no sound was heard from that wretched man amid his torture and the resounding blows except these words, 'I am a Roman citizen.' By thus calling to mind his citizenship he hoped to avert all their stripes and free his body from torture."
13 Then Cicero with vigour, spirit and fiery indignation complains of so cruel an outrage and inspires the Romans with hatred and detestation of Verres by these words:
"O beloved name of liberty! O p225eminent justice of our country! O Porcian and Sempronian laws! O authority of the tribunes, earnestly desired and finally restored to the Roman commons! Pray, have all these blessings fallen to this estate, that a Roman citizen, in a province of the Roman people, in a town of our allies, should be bound and flogged in the forum by one who derived the emblems of his power from the favour of the Roman people? What! when fire and hot irons and other tortures were applied, although your victim's bitter lamentation and piteous outcries did not affect you, were you not moved by the tears and loud groans even of the Roman citizens who were then present?"
14 These outrages Marcus Tullius bewailed bitterly and solemnly, in appropriate and eloquent terms.
15 But if anyone has so rustic and so dull an ear that this brilliant and delightful speech and the harmonious arrangement of Cicero's words do not give him pleasure; if he prefers the earlier oration because it is unadorned, concise and unstudied, yet has a certain native charm, and because it has, so to say, a shade and colour of misty antiquity — let such a one, if he has any judgment at all, study the address in a similar case of Marcus Cato, a man of a still earlier time, to whose vigour and flow of language Gracchus could never hope to attain.
16 He will realize, I think, that Cato was not content with the eloquence of his own time, but aspired to do even then what Cicero later accomplished.
17 For in the speech which is entitled On Sham Battles he thus made complaint of Quintus Thermus:
"He said that his provisions had not been satisfactorily attended to by the decemvirs.
He ordered them to be stripped and scourged. The Bruttiani scourged the decemvirs, many men saw it done. Who could endure such an insult, such tyranny, such slavery? No king has ever dared to act thus; shall such outrages be inflicted upon good men, born of a good family, and of good intentions? Where is the protection of our allies? Where is the honour of our forefathers? To think that you have dared to inflict signal wrongs, blows, lashes, stripes, these pains and tortures, accompanied with disgrace and extreme ignominy, since their fellow citizens and many other men looked on! But amid how great grief, what groans, what tears, what lamentations have I heard that this was done? Even slaves bitterly resent injustice; what feeling do you think that such men, sprung from good families, endowed with high character, had and will have so long as they live?
18 When Cato said "the Bruttiani scourged them," lest haply anyone should inquire the meaning of Bruttiani, it is this:
19. When Hannibal the Carthaginian was in Italy with his army, and the Romans had suffered several defeats, the Bruttii were the first people of all Italy to revolt to Hannibal. Angered at this, the Romans, after Hannibal left Italy and the Carthaginians were defeated, by way of ignominious punishment refused to enrol the Bruttii as soldiers or treat them as allies, but commanded them to serve the magistrates when they went to their provinces, and to perform the duties of slaves. Accordingly, they accompanied the magistrates in the capacity of those who are called "floggers" in the plays, and bound or scourged those whom they were ordered. And because they came from the land of the Bruttii, they were called Bruttiani.
********
TOPIC 4 How Publius Nigidius with great cleverness showed that words are not arbitrary, but natural.
******
1. Publio Nigidio in his "Grammatical Notes" shows that nouns and verbs were formed, not by a chance use, but by a certain power and design of nature, a subject very popular in the discussions of the philosophers.
2. For the philosophers used to inquire whether words originate by "nature" or are man-made.
3. Nigidio employs many arguments to this end, to shown that words appear to be "natural" rather than arbitrary.
Among these the following seems particularly neat and ingenious.
4.
When we say vos, or 'you,' " says Nigidio, "we make a movement of the mouth suitable to the meaning of the word.
For we gradually protrude the tips of our lips and direct the impulse of the breath towards those with whom we are speaking.
But on the other hand, when we say "nos", or 'us,' we do not pronounce the word with a powerful forward impulse of the voice, nor with the lips protruded, but we restrain our breath and our lips, so to speak, within ourselves.
The same thing happens in the words "tu" or 'thou,' "ego" or 'I,' "tibi" 'to thee,' and "mihi" 'to me.'
For just as when we assent or dissent, a movement of the head or eyes corresponds with the nature of the expression, so too in the pronunciation of these words there is a kind of natural gesture made with the mouth and breath.
The same principle that we have noted in our own Latin speech applies also to Greek words."
1. Publio Nigidio in his "Grammatical Notes" shows that nouns and verbs were formed, not by a chance use, but by a certain power and design of nature, a subject very popular in the discussions of the philosophers.
2. For the philosophers used to inquire whether words originate by "nature" or are man-made.
3. Nigidio employs many arguments to this end, to shown that words appear to be "natural" rather than arbitrary.
Among these the following seems particularly neat and ingenious.
4.
When we say vos, or 'you,' " says Nigidio, "we make a movement of the mouth suitable to the meaning of the word.
For we gradually protrude the tips of our lips and direct the impulse of the breath towards those with whom we are speaking.
But on the other hand, when we say "nos", or 'us,' we do not pronounce the word with a powerful forward impulse of the voice, nor with the lips protruded, but we restrain our breath and our lips, so to speak, within ourselves.
The same thing happens in the words "tu" or 'thou,' "ego" or 'I,' "tibi" 'to thee,' and "mihi" 'to me.'
For just as when we assent or dissent, a movement of the head or eyes corresponds with the nature of the expression, so too in the pronunciation of these words there is a kind of natural gesture made with the mouth and breath.
The same principle that we have noted in our own Latin speech applies also to Greek words."
**********
TOPIC
5
5
Whether avarus is a simple word or, as it appears to Publius
Nigidius, a compound, made up of two parts.
******
1. Publius Nigidius, in the twenty-ninth book of his "Commentaries", declares that "avarus "is not a simple word, but is compounded of two parts.
"For
that man," he says, "is called avarus, or 'covetous,' who is avidus
aeris, or 'eager for money;' but in the compound the letter e is lost."
2
He also says that a man is called by the compound term locuples, or
"rich" when he holds pleraque loca, that is to say, "many
possessions."25
3 But his statement about locuples is the stronger and more probable. As to
avarus there is doubt; for why may it not seem to be derived from one single
word, namely aveo, and formed in the same way as amarus, about which there is
general agreement that it is not a compound?
*******
TOPIC
6
That a fine was imposed by the plebeian aediles on the daughter of
Appius Caecus, a woman of rank, because she spoke too arrogantly.
********
1. Public punishment was formerly inflicted, not only upon crimes, but even upon arrogant language; so necessary did men think it to maintain the dignity of Roman conduct inviolable.
2. For the daughter of the celebrated Appio Ceco,
when leaving the plays of which she had been a spectator, was jostled by
the crowd of people that surrounded her, flocking together from all sides.
When
she had extricated herself, complaining that she had been roughly handled, she
added:
"What, pray, would have become of me, and how much more should I
have been crowded and pressed upon, had not my brother Publius Claudius lost
his fleet in the sea-fight and with it a vast number of citizens? Surely I
should have lost my life, overwhelmed by a still greater mass of people. How I
wish," said she, "that my brother might come to life again, take
another fleet to Sicily, and destroy that crowd which has just knocked poor me
about."
3. Because of such wicked and arrogant words, Gaio Fundanio and
Tiberio Sempronio, the plebeian aediles, imposed a fine upon the woman of
25,000 pounds of full-weight bronze.
4 Ateius Capito, in his
commentary "On Public Trials", says that this happened in the first Punic war,
in the consulship of Fabius Licinus and Otacilius Crassus.
***************
TOPIC
7
Marcus Varro, I remember, writes that of the rivers which flow
outside32 the limits of the Roman empire the Nile is first in size, the Danube
second, and next the Rhone.
******
1. Of all the rivers which flow into the seas included within the Roman empire, which the Greeks call "the inner sea," it is agreed that the NILO is the greatest.
Sallust wrote that the Danube is next in size.
2. But Varro,
when he discussed the part of the earth which is called Europe, placed the
Rhone among the first three rivers of that quarter of the earth, by which he
seems to make it a rival of the Danube; for the Danube also is in Europe.
*******
TOPIC
8
That among the ignominious punishments which were inflicted upon soldiers
was the letting of blood; and what seems to be the reason for such a penalty.
*******
1. This also was a military punishment in old times, to disgrace a soldier by ordering a vein to be opened, and letting blood.
2. There is no reason assigned
for this in the old records, so far as I could find; but I infer that it was
first done to soldiers whose minds were affected and who were not in a normal
condition, so that it appears to have been not so much a punishment as a
medical treatment.
3 But afterwards I suppose that the same penalty was
customarily inflicted for many other offences, on the ground that all who
sinned were not of sound mind.
******
TOPIC
9
In what way and in what form the Roman army is commonly drawn up, and
the names of the formations.
********
1. There are military terms which are applied to an army drawn up in a certain manner:
1. There are military terms which are applied to an army drawn up in a certain manner:
"the front,"
"reserves,"
"wedge,"
"ring,"
"mass,"
"shears,"
"saw,"
"wings,"
"towers."
2 These and some other terms you may
find in the books of those who have written about military affairs.
3 However,
they are taken from the things themselves to which the names are strictly
applied, and in drawing up an army the forms of the objects designated by each
of these words is represented.
********
TOPIC
10
The reason why the ancient Greeks and Romans wore a ring on the next
to the little finger of the left hand.
******
1. I have heard that the ancient Greeks wore a ring on the finger of the left hand which is next to the little finger.
They say, too, that the Roman men
commonly wore their rings in that way.
2 Apion in his Egyptian History says
that the reason for this practice is, that upon cutting into and opening human
bodies, a custom in Egypt which the Greeks call ἀνατομαί, or
"dissection," it was found that a very fine nerve proceeded from that
finger alone of which we have spoken, and made its way to the human heart; that
it therefore seemed quite reasonable that this finger in particular should be
honoured with such an ornament, since it seems to be joined, and as it were
united, with that supreme organ, the heart.
*****
TOPIC 11
The derivation and meaning of the word mature, and that
it is generally used improperly; and also that the genitive of praecox is
praecocis and not praecoquis.
*****
1. Mature in present usage signifies "hastily" and "quickly," contrary to the true force of the word.
For mature means
quite a different thing.
2. Therefore Publius Nigidius, a man eminent in the
pursuit of all the liberal arts, says:
"Mature means neither 'too soon'
nor 'too late,' but something between the two and intermediate."
3. Publius Nigidius has spoken well and properly.
For of grain and fruits those
are called matura, or "mature," which are neither unripe and hard,
nor falling and decayed, but full-grown and ripened in their proper time.
4 But
since that which was not done negligently was said to be done mature, the force
of the word has been greatly extended, and an act is now said to be done mature
which is done with some haste, and not one which is done without negligence;
whereas such things are immoderately hastened are more properly called
inmatura, or "untimely."
5. That limitation of the word, and of the action itself, which was made by Nigidius was very elegantly expressed by the deified Augustus with two Greek words; for we are told that he used to say in conversation, and write in his letters,
"σπεῦδε βραδέως",
that is, "make haste slowly,"
by which he
recommended that to accomplish a result we should use at once the promptness of
energy and the delay of carefulness, and it is from these two opposite qualities
that maturitas springs.
6. Virgil also, to one who is observant, has
skilfully distinguished the two words properare and maturare as clearly
opposite, in these verses:
Whenever winter's rains the hind confine,
Much is there that at leisure may be done (maturare),
Which in fair weather he must hurry on (properanda).
7. Most elegantly has he distinguished between those two words; for in rural
life the preparations during rainy weather may be made at leisure, since one
has time for them; but in fine weather, since time presses, one must hasten.
8. But when we wish to indicate that anything has been done under too great
pressure and too hurriedly, then it is more properly said to have been done
praemature, or "prematurely," than mature.
Thus Afranius in his
Italian play called The Title says:41
With madness premature (praemature) you seek a hasty power.
With madness premature (praemature) you seek a hasty power.
9. In this verse it is to be observed that he says praecocem and not praecoquem;
for the nominative case is not praecoquis, but praecox.
********
TOPIC
12
Of extravagant tales which Plinius Secundus most unjustly ascribes to
the philosopher Democritus; and also about the flying image of a dove.
*****
1. Pliny the Elder, in the twenty-eighth book of his "Natural History" asserts that there is a book of that most famous philosopher Democrito "On the Power and Nature of the Chameleon", and that he had read it; and then he transmits to us many foolish and intolerable absurdities, alleging that they were written by Democritus.
Of these unwillingly, since they disgust me, I
recall a few, as follows.
2. That the hawk, the swiftest of all birds, if it
chance to fly over a chameleon which is crawling on the ground, is dragged down
and falls through some force to the earth, and offers and gives itself up of
its own accord to be torn to pieces by the other birds.
3. Another statement too
is past human belief, namely, that if the head and neck of the chameleon be
burned by means of the wood which is called oak, rain and thunder are suddenly
produced, and that this same thing is experienced if the liver of a chameleon is burned upon the roof of a house.
4. There is also another story, which by
heaven! I hesitated about putting down, so preposterous is it.
But I have made
it a rule that we ought to speak our mind about the fallacious seduction of
marvels of that kind, by which the keenest minds are often deceived and led to
their ruin, and in particular those which are especially eager for knowledge.
But I return to Pliny.
5. PLINIO says that the left foot of the chameleon is
roasted with an iron heated in the fire, along with an herb called by the same
name, "chameleon"; both are mixed in an ointment, formed into a
paste, and put in a wooden vessel.
He who carries the vessel, even if he go
openly amid a throng, can be seen by no one.
6. I think that these marvellous and false stories written by Plinius Secondo are not worthy of the name of Democritus.
7. The same is true of what the same
Plinio, in his tenth book of his "Natural History", asserts that Democritus wrote; namely, that
there were certain birds with a language of their own, and that by mixing the
blood of those birds a serpent was produced; that who so ate it would understand
the language of birds and their conversation.
8. Many fictions of this kind seem to have been attached to the name of Democritus by ignorant men, who sheltered themselves under his reputation and authority.
9. But that which Archytas the Pythagorean is said to have devised and
accomplished ought to seem no less marvellous, but yet not wholly absurd.
For
not only many eminent Greeks, but also the philosopher Favorino, a most
diligent searcher of ancient records, have stated most positively that Archita
made a wooden model of a dove with such mechanical ingenuity and art that it
flew.
So nicely balanced was it, you see, with weights and moved by a current
of air enclosed and hidden within it.
10. About so improbable a story I prefer
to give Favorino's own words:
"Archytas the Tarentine, being in other
lines also a mechanician, made a flying dove out of wood. Whenever it lit, it
did not rise again. For until this . . . ."
***************************************
TOPIC 13
On what principle the ancients aid cum partim hominum.
******
1. "Partim hominum venerunt" is a common expression, meaning "a part of the men came," that is, "some men."
For "partim" ("some") is here an adverb and
is not declined by cases.
Hence we may say "cum partim hominum," that is,
"with some men" or "with a certain part of the men."
2. Marcus Cato, in his speech "On the Property of Florio" has written as follows.
There she acted like a harlot, she went from the banquet straight to the
couch and with a part of them ("cum partim illorum") she often conducted herself
in the same manner.
3. The less educated, however, read "cum parti", as if
"partim" were declined as a noun, not used as an adverb.
4. But Quinto Claudio, in the twenty-first book of his "Annals", has used this figure in a somewhat less usual manner.
Quinto says:
For with the part of the
forces ("cum partim copiis") of young men that was pleasing to him.
Also
in the twenty-third book of the "Annals" of Claudio are these words:
But
that I therefore acted thus, but whether to say that it happened from the
negligence of a part of the magistrates ("neglegentia partim magistratum"), from
avarice, or from the calamity of the Roman people, I know not.
********
TOPIC 14
In what connection Cato said iniuria mihi factum itur.
******
1. I hear the phrase "illi iniuriam factum iri", or "injury will be done to
him".
I hear "contumeliam dictum iri", or "insult will be
offered," commonly so used everywhere, and I notice that this form of
expression is a general one.
I therefore refrain from citing examples.
2 But
contumelia illi or iniuria factum itur, "injury or insult is going to be
offered him," is somewhat less common, and therefore I shall give an
example of that.
3 Marcus Cato, speaking For Himself against p249Gaius Cassius,
says:49 "And so it happened, fellow citizens, that in this insult which is
going to be put upon me (quae mihi factum itur) by the insolence of this man I
also, fellow citizens (so help me!), pity our country."
4 But just as
contumeliam factam iri means "to go to inflict an injury," that is,
to take pains that it be inflicted, just so contumelia mihi factum itur
expresses the same idea, merely with a change of case.
*********
TOPIC 15
Of the ceremonies of the priest and priestess of Jupiter and words quoted from the praetor's edict, in which he declares that he will not compel either the Vestal virgins or the priest of Jupiter to take oath.
*******
1. Ceremonies in great number are imposed upon the priest of GIOVE and also many abstentions, of which we read in the books written "On the Public Priests"; and they are also recorded in the first book of Fabius Pictor.
2. Of these the following are in general what I remember.
3. It is unlawful for the priest of GIOVE to ride upon a horse.
4. It is also unlawful for him to see the "classes arrayed" outside the pomerium, that is, the army in battle array.
Hence the priest of GIOVE is rarely made consul, since wars were entrusted to the consuls.
5. Also, it is always unlawful for the priest to take an oath.
6. Likewise to wear a ring, unless it be perforated and without a gem.
7. It is against the law for fire to be taken from the flaminia, that is, from the home of the flamen Dialis, except for a sacred rite;
8 if a person in fetters enter his house, he must be loosed, the bonds must be drawn up through the impluvium to the roof and from there let down into the street.
9 He has no knot in his head-dress, girdle, or any other part of his dress
10 if anyone is being taken to be flogged at his feet as a suppliant, it is unlawful for the man to be flogged on that day.
11 Only a free man may cut the hair of the Dialis.
12 It is not customary for the Dialis to touch, or even name, a she-goat, raw flesh, ivy, and beans.
13 The priest of Jupiter must not pass under an arbour of vines.
14 The feet of the couch on which he sleeps must be smeared with a thin coating of clay, and he must not sleep away from this bed for three nights in succession, and no other person must sleep in that bed. At the foot of this bed there should be a box with sacrificial cakes.
15 The cuttings of the nails and hair of the Dialis must be buried in the earth under a fruitful tree.
16 Every day is a holy day for the Dialis.
17 He must not be in the open air without his cap; that he might go without it in the house has only recently been decided by the pontiffs, so Masurius Sabinus wrote,
18 and it is said that some other ceremonies have been remitted and he has been excused from observing them.
19 "The priest of Jupiter" must not touch any bread fermented with yeast.
20 He does not lay off his inner tunic except under cover, in order that he may not be naked in the open air, as it were under the eye of Jupiter.
21 No other has a place at table above the flamen Dialis, except the rex sacrificulus.
22 If the p253Dialis has lost his wife he abdicates his office.
23 The marriage of the priest cannot be dissolved except by death.
24 He never enters a place of burial, he never touches a dead body.
25 but he is not forbidden to attend a funeral.
26 The ceremonies of the priestess of Jupiter are about the same.
27 they say that she observes other separate ones; for example, that she wears a dyed robe
28 that she has a twig from a fruitful tree in her head-dress
29 that it is forbidden for her to go up more than three rounds of a ladder, except the so called Greek ladders
30 also, when she goes to the Argei,58 that she neither combs her head nor dresses her hair.
31. I have added the words of the praetor in his standing edict concerning the flamen Dialis and the priestess of Vesta: "In the whole of my jurisdiction I will not compel the flamen of Jupiter or a priestess of Vesta to take an oath."
32 The words of Marcus Varro about the flamen Dialis, in the second book of his Divine Antiquities, are as follows:60 "He alone has a white cap, either because he is the greatest of priests, or because a white victim should be sacrificed to Jupiter."61
********
TOPIC
16
Errors in Roman History which Julius Hyginus noted in Virgil's sixth book.
*****
1. Igino criticizes a passage in Virgilio's sixth book and thinks that he would have corrected it.
2. Palinurus is in the Lower World, begging Enea to take care that his body be found and buried.
His words are:
O save me from these ills, unconquered one;
Or through thou earth upon me, for you can,
And to the port of Velia return.
3. "How," said IGINO , "could either Palinuro know and name 'the porta of Velia,' or Enea find the place from that name, when the town of Velia, from which he has called the harbour in that place 'Veline' was founded in the Lucanian district and called by that name when Servius Tullius was reigning in Rome, more than 600 years *after* Eneas came to Italia?
4. For of those," he adds, "who were driven from the land of Phocis by Harpalus, prefect of king Cyrus, some founded Velia, and others Massilia.
5 Most absurdly, then, does Palinuro ask Enea to seek out the Veline port, when at that time no such name existed anywhere.
6. Nor ought that to be considered a similar error," said he, "which occurs in the first book:
Exiled by fate, to Italy fared and to Lavinian strand,
7 and similarly in the sixth book:
At last stood lightly poised on the Chalcidian height,
8. Snce it is usually allowed the poet himself to mention, κατὰ πρόληψιν, 'by anticipation,' in his own person some historical facts which took place later and of which he himself could know; just as Virgil knew the town of Lavinium and the colony from Chalcis.
9. But how could Palinuro," IGINO says, "know of events that occurred 600 years later, unless anyone believes that in the Lower World he had the power of divination, as in fact the souls of the deceased commonly do?
10. But even if you understand it in that way, although nothing of the kind is said, yet how could Eneas, who did NOT have the power of divination, seek out the Veline port, the name of which at that time, as we have said before, was not in existence anywhere?"
11. IGINO also censures the following passage in the same book, and thinks that Virgil would have corrected it, had not death prevented.
12 "For," says IGINO, "when he had named TESEO among those who had visited the Lower World and returned, and had said:
But why name Teseo? why Alcide great?
And my race too is from almighty Giove,
he nevertheless adds afterwards:
Unhappy Theseus sits, will sit for aye.
13. But how," says IGINO , "could it happen that one should sit for ever in the Lower World whom VIRGILIO mentions before among those who went down there and returned again, especially when the story of Theseus says that Hercules tore him from the rock and led him to the light of the Upper World?"
14. He also says that Virgil erred in these lines:
He Argos and Mycenae shall uproot,
City of Agamemnon, and the heir
Of Aeacus himself, from war-renowned
Achilles sprung,his ancestors of Troy
Avenging and Minerva's spotless shrine.
15. "He has confounded," says Igino, "different persons and times."
For the wars with the Achaeans and with Pyrrus were not waged at the same time nor by the same men.
16. For Pyrrus, whom he calls a descendant of Aeacus, having crossed over from Epirus into Italy, waged war with the Romans against Manius Curius, who was their leader in that war.
17 But the Argive, that is, the Achaean war, was carried on many years after under the lead of Lucius Mummius.
18 The middle verse, therefore, about Pyrrus," says he, "may be omitted, since it was inserted inopportunely; and Virgil," he said, "undoubtedly would have struck it out."
********
TOPIC
17
Why and how the philosopher Democritus deprived himself of his eye-sight; and the very fine and elegant verses of Laberius on that subject.
******
1. It is written in the records of Grecian story that the philosopher Democritus, a man worthy of reverence beyond all others and of the highest authority, of his own accord deprived himself of eye-sight, because he believed that the thoughts and meditations of his mind in examining nature's laws would be more vivid and exact, if he should free them from the allurements of sight and the distractions offered by the eyes.
2 This act of his, and the manner too in which he easily blinded himself by a most ingenious device, the poet Laberio has described, in a farce called "The Rope Maker", in very elegant and finished verses.
But he has imagined another reason for voluntary blindness and applied it with no little neatness to his own subject.
3 For the character who speaks these lines in Laberio is a rich and stingy miser, lamenting in vigorous terms the excessive extravagance and dissipation of his young son.
4 These are the verses of Laberius:
Democritus, Abdera's scientist, set up a shield to face Hyperion's rise, that sight he might destroy by blaze of brass, thus by the sun's rays he destroyed his eyes, lest he should see bad citizens' good luck;
So I with blaze and splendour of my gold,
Would render sightless my concluding years,
Lest I should see my spendthrift son's good luck.
******
TOPIC
18
The story of Artemisia; and of the contest at the tomb of Mausolus in which celebrated writers took part.
*****
1. Artemisia is said to have loved her husband with a love surpassing all the tales of passion and beyond one's conception of human affection.
2. Now Mausolus, as Marcus Tullius tells us, was king of the land of Caria; according to some Greek historians he was governor of a province, the official whom the Greeks term a satrap.
3. When this Mausolus had met his end amid the lamentations and in the arms of his wife, and had been buried with a magnificent funeral, Artemisia, inflamed with grief and with longing for her spouse, mingled his bones and ashes with spices, ground them into the form of a powder, put them in water, and drank them; and she is said to have given many other proofs of the violence of her passion.
4. For perpetuating the memory of her husband, she also erected, with great expenditure of labour, that highly celebrated tomb, among the seven wonders of the world.
5. When Artemisia dedicated this monument, consecrated to the deified shades of Mausolus, she instituted an agon, that is to say, a contest in celebrating his praises, offering magnificent prizes of money and other valuables.
6 Three men distinguished for their eminent talent and eloquence are said to have come to contend in this eulogy, Theopompus, Theodectes and Naucrates; some have even written that Isocrates himself entered the lists with them. But Theopompus was adjudged the victory in that contest. He was a pupil of Isocrates.
7 The tragedy of Theodectes, entitled Mausolus, is still extant to day; and that in it Theodectes was more pleasing than in his prose writings is the opinion of Hyginus in his Examples.
******
TOPIC
19
That a sin is not removed or lessened by citing in excuse similar sins which others have committed; with a passage from a speech of Demosthenes on that subject.
1. The philosopher Tauro once reproved a young man with severe and vigorous censure because he had turned from the rhetoricians and the study of eloquence to the pursuit of philosophy, declaring that he had done something "dishonourable" and "shameful".
Now the young man did not deny the allegation, but urged in his defence that it was commonly done and tried to justify the baseness of the fault by citing examples and by the excuse of custom.
2. And then Taurus, being the more irritated by the very nature of his defence, said:
"Foolish and worthless fellow, if the authority and rules of philosophy do not deter you from following bad examples, does not even the saying of your own celebrated Demosthenes occur to you? For since it is couched in a polished and graceful form of words, it might, like a sort of rhetorical catch, the more easily remain fixed in your memory.
3 For," said he, "if I do not forget what among I read in my early youth, these are the words of Demosthenes, spoken against one who, as you now do, tried to justify and excuse his own sin by those of others: 'Say not, Sir, that this has often been done, but that it ought to be so done; for if anything was ever done contrary to the laws, and you followed that example, you would not for that reason justly escape punishment, but you would suffer much more severely. For just as, if anyone had suffered a penalty for it, you would not have proposed this, so if you suffer punishment now, no one else will propose it.' "
4 Thus did Taurus, by the use of every kind of persuasion and admonition, incline his disciples to the principles of a virtuous and blameless manner of life.
*******************
TOPIC
20
The meaning of rogatio, lex, plebisscitum and privilegium, and to what extent all those terms differ.
*******
1. I hear it asked what the meaning is of "lex", "plebisscitum", "rogatio", and "privilegium".
2. Ateius Capito, a man highly skilled in public and private law, did the meaning of lex in these words:84 "A law," said he, "is a general decree of the people, or of the commons, answering an appeal85 made to them by a magistrate."
3 If this definition is correct, neither the appeal for Pompey's military command, nor about the recall of Cicero, nor as to the murder of Clodius, nor any similar decrees of the people of commons, can be called laws.
4 For they are not general decrees, and they are framed with regard, not to the whole body of citizens, but to individuals. Hence they ought rather to be called privilegia, or "privileges," since the ancients used priva where we now use singula (private or individual). This word Lucilius used in the first book of his Satires:
I'll give them, when they come, each his own (priva) piece
Of tunny belly and acarne87 heads.
5 Capito, however, in the same definition divided88 the plebes, or "commons," from the populus, or "people," since in the term "people" are embraced every part of the state and all its orders, but "commons" is properly applied to that part in which the patrician families of the citizens are not included.
6 Therefore, according to Capito, a plebisscitum is a law which the commons, and not the people, adopt.
7 But the head itself, the origin, and as it were the fount of this whole process of law is the rogatio, whether the appeal (rogatio) is to the people or to the commons, on a matter relating to all or to individuals.
8 For all the words under discussion are understood and included in the fundamental principle and name of rogatio; for unless the people or commons be appealed to (rogetur), no decree of the people or commons can be passed.
9 But although all this is true, yet in the old records we observe that no great distinction is made among the words in question. For the common term lex is used both of decrees of the commons and of "privileges,"
10 and all are called by the indiscriminate and inexact name rogatio.
Even Sallust, who is most observant of propriety in the use of words, has yielded to custom and applied the term "law" to the "privilege" which was passed with reference to the return of Gaius Pompeius. The passage, from the second book of his Histories, reads as follows:90 "For when Sulla, as consul, proposed a law (legem) touching his return, the tribune of the commons, Gaius Herennius, had vetoed it by previous arrangement."
*****
TOPIC
21
Why Marcus Cicero very scrupulously avoided any use of the words novissime and novissimus.
******
1. It is clear that Marcus Cicero was unwilling to use many a word which is now in general circulation, and was so in his time, because he did not approve of them; for instance, novissimus and novissime.
2 For although both Marcus Cato91 and Sallust,92 as well as others also of the same period, have used that word generally, and although many men besides who were not without learning wrote it in their books, yet he seems to have abstained from it, on the ground that it was not good Latin, since Lucius Aelius Stilo, who was the most learned man of his time, had avoided its use, as that of a novel and improper word.
Moreover, what Marcus Varro too thought of that word I have deemed it fitting to show from his own words in the sixth book of his De Lingua Latina, dedicated to Cicero: "What used to be called extremum or 'last,' " says he, "is beginning to be called generally novissimum, a word which within my own memory both Aelius and several old men avoided as too new a term; as to its origin, just as from vetus we have vetustior and veterrimus, so from novus we get novior and novissimus."
****
TOPIC 22
A passage taken from Plato's book entitled Gorgias, on the abuses of false philosophy, with which those who are ignorant of the rewards of true philosophy assail philosophers without reason.
*****
1. Plato, a man most devoted to the truth and most ready to point it out to all, has said truly and nobly, though not from the mouth of a dignified or suitable character, all that in general may be said against those idle and worthless fellows, who, sheltered under the name of philosophy, follow profitless idleness and darkness of speech and life.
2. For although Callicles, whom he makes his speaker, being ignorant of true philosophy, heaps dishonourable and undeserved abuse upon philosophers, yet what he says is to be taken in such a way that we may gradually come to understand it as a warning to ourselves not to deserve such reproofs, and not by idle and foolish sloth to feign the pursuit and cultivation of philosophy.
3 I have written down Plato's own words on this subject from the book called Gorgias, not attempting to translate them, because no Latinity, much less my own, can emulate their qualities.
4. "Philosophy, Socrates, is indeed a nice thing, if one pursue it in youth with moderation; but if one occupy oneself with it longer than is proper, it is a corrupter of men.
5. For even if a man be well endowed by nature and follow philosophy when past his youth, he must necessarily be ignorant of all those things in which a man ought to be versed if he is to be honourable, good and of high repute.
6. For such men are ignorant both of the laws relating to the city, and of the language which it is necessary to use in the intercourse of human society, both privately and publicly, and of the pleasures and desires of human life; in brief, they are wholly unacquainted with manners.
7 Accordingly, when they engage in any private or public business, they become a laughing-stock; 8 just exactly as statesmen, I suppose, become ridiculous
9 when they enter into your debates and discussions."
10. A little later he adds the following:
"But I think it best to take part in both.
It is good to pursue philosophy merely as a matter of education, and to be a philosopher is not dishonourable when one is young.
But when one who is already older persists in the business, the thing becomes laughable, Socrates.
11. And I for my part feel the same towards those who philosophize as towards those who lisp and play.
12. Whenever I see a little boy, to whom it is fitting to speak thus, lisping and playing, I am pleased, and it seems to me becoming and liberal and suited to the age of childhood.
13. But when I hear a small boy speaking with precision, it seems to me to be a disagreeable thing; it wounds my ears and appears to be something befitting a slave.
14. When, however, one hear a man lisping, or sees him playing, it appears ridiculous, unmanly and deserving of stripes.
15 I feel just the same way towards the philosophers.
16. When I see philosophy in a young man, I rejoice.
It seems to me fitting, and I think that the young man in question is ingenuous; that he who does not study philosophy is not ingenuous and will never himself be worthy of anything noble or generous.
17. But when I see an older man still philosophizing and not giving it up, such a man, Socrates, seems to me to deserve stripes.
18 For, as I have just said, it is possible for such a man, even though naturally well endowed, to become unmanly, avoiding the business of the city and the market-place, where, as the poet says, men become "most eminent," and living the rest of his life in hiding with young men, whispering in a corner with three or four of them,
19 23 but never accomplishing anything liberal, great or satisfactory.
24 These sentiments, as I have said, Plato put into the mouth of a man of no great worth indeed, yet possessing a reputation for common sense and understanding and a kind of uncompromising frankness. He does not, of course, refer to that philosophy which is the teacher of all the virtues, which excels in the discharge of public and private duties alike, and which, if nothing prevents, governs cities and the State with firmness, courage and wisdom; but rather to that futile and childish attention to trifles which contributes nothing to the conduct and guidance of life, but in which people of that kind grow old in "ill-timed playmaking,"98 regarded as philosophers by the vulgar, as they were by him from whose lips the words that I have quoted come.99
******
TOPIC
23
A passage from a speech of Marcus Cato on the mode of life and manners of women of the olden time; and also that the husband had the right to kill his wife, if she were taken in adultery.
*******
1. Those who have written about the life and civilization of the Roman people say that the women of Rome and Latium "lived an abstemious life"; that is, that they abstained altogether from wine, which in the early language was called temetum; that it was an established custom for them to kiss their kinsfolk for the purpose of detection, so that, if they had been drinking, the odour might betray them.
2. But they say that the women were accustomed to drink the second brewing, raisin wine, spiced wine and other sweet-tasting drinks of that kind. And these things are indeed made known in those books which I have mentioned,
3 but Marcus Cato declares that women were not only censured but also punished by a judge no less severely if they had drunk wine than if they had disgraced themselves by adultery.
4 I have copied Marcus Cato's words from the oration entitled On the Dowry, in which it is also stated that husbands had the right to kill wives taken in adultery:
"When a husband puts away his wife," says he, "he judges the woman as a censor would, and has full powers if she has been guilty of any wrong or shameful act; she is severely punished if she has drunk wine; if she has done wrong with another man, she is condemned to death."
5 Further, as to the right to put her to death it was thus written: "If you should take your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial; but if you should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on you, nor does the law allow it."
******
TOPIC
24 That the most elegant speakers used the expressions die pristini, die crastini, die quarti, and die quinti, not those which are current now.
*******
1 I hear die quarto and die quinto, which the Greeks express by εἰς τετάρτην καὶ εἰς πέμπτην, used nowadays even by learned men, and one who speaks otherwise is looked down upon as crude and illiterate. But in the time of Marcus Tullius, and earlier, they did not, I think, speak in that way; for they used diequinte and diequinti as a compound adverb, with the second syllable of the word shortened. 2 The deified Augustus, too, who was well versed in the Latin tongue and an imitator of his father's102 elegance in discourse, has often in his letters103 used that means of designating the days. 3 But it will be sufficient to show the undeviating usage of the men of old, if I quote the regular formula of the praetor, in which, according to the usage of our forefathers, he is accustomed to proclaim the festival known as the Compitalia.104 His words are as follows: "On the ninth day the Roman people, the Quirites, will celebrate the Compitalia; when they shall have begun, legal business ceases." The praetor says dienoni, not die nono.
4 And not the praetor alone, but almost all antiquity, spoke in that way. 5 Look you, this passage of the well-known poet Pomponius comes to my mind, from the Atellan farce entitled Mevia:105
For six days now I've done no stroke of work;
The fourth day (diequarte) I, poor wretch, shall starve to death.
6 There is also the following passage from Coelius in the second book of his Histories:106 "If you are willing to give me the cavalry and follow me yourself with the rest of the army, on the fifth day (diequinti) I will have your dinner ready for you in the Capitol at Rome." 7 But Coelius took both the story itself and the word from the fourth book of Marcus Cato's Origines, where we find the following:108 'Then the master of the horse thus advised the Carthaginian dictator: 'Send me to Rome with the cavalry; on the fifth day (diequinti) your dinner shall be ready for you in the Capitol.' "
8 The final syllable of that word I find written sometimes with e and sometimes with i; for it was usual with those men of olden times very often to use those letters without distinction, saying praefiscine and praefiscini, proclivi and proclive, and using many other words of that kind with either ending; in the same way too they said die pristini, that is, "the day before," which is commonly expressed by pridie, changing the order of the words in the compound, as if it were pristino die.
9 Also by a similar usage they said die
crastini, meaning crastino die or "to morrow." 10 The priests of the
Roman people, too, when they make a proclamation for the third day, say diem
perendini. But just as very many people said di pristini, so Marcus Cato in his
oration Against Furius109 said die proximi or "the next day"; and
Gnaeus Matius, an exceedingly learned man, in his Mimiambi, instead of our
nudius quartus,º or "four days ago," has die quarto, in these lines:110
Of late, four days ago (die quarto), as I recall,
The only pitcher in the house he broke.
p285 Therefore the distinction will be found to be, that we use die quarto of the past, but diequarte of the future.
Of late, four days ago (die quarto), as I recall,
The only pitcher in the house he broke.
p285 Therefore the distinction will be found to be, that we use die quarto of the past, but diequarte of the future.
*****
TOPIC
25 The names of certain weapons, darts and swords, and also of boats and ships, which are found in the books of the early writers.
******
1. Once upon a time, when I was riding in a carriage, to keep my mind from being
dull and unoccupied and a prey to worthless trifles, it chanced to occur to me
to try to recall the names of weapons, darts and swords which are found in the
early histories, and also the various kinds of boats and their names.
2 Those,
then, of the former that came to mind at the time are the following: spear,
pike, fire-pike, half-pike, iron bolt, Gallic spear, lance, hunting-darts,
javelins, long bolts, barbed-javelins, German spears, thonged-javelin, Gallic
bolt, broadswords, poisoned arrows,111 Illyrian hunting-spears, cimeters,
darts, swords, daggers, broadswords, double-edged swords, small-swords,
poniards, cleavers.
3 Of the lingula, or "little tongue," since it is less common, I think I ought to say that the ancients applied that term to an oblong small-sword, made in the form of a tongue; it is mentioned by Naevius in his tragedy Hesione. I quote the line:112
Pray let me seem to please you with my tongue,
But with my little tongue (lingula).
4 The rumpia too is a kind of weapon of the Thracian people, and the word occurs in the fourteenth book of the Annals of Quintus Ennius.113
5 The names of ships which I recalled at the time are these: merchant-ships, cargo-carriers, skiffs, warships, cavalry-transports, cutters, fast cruisers, or, as the Greeks call them, κέλητες, barques, smacks, sailing-skiffs, light galleys, which the Greeks call ἱστιοκόποιº or ἐπακτρίδες, scouting-boats, galliots, tenders, flat-boats, vetutiae moediae, yachts, pinnaces, long-galliots, scullers' boats, caupuls,114 arks, fair-weather craft, pinks, lighters, spy-boats.
3 Of the lingula, or "little tongue," since it is less common, I think I ought to say that the ancients applied that term to an oblong small-sword, made in the form of a tongue; it is mentioned by Naevius in his tragedy Hesione. I quote the line:112
Pray let me seem to please you with my tongue,
But with my little tongue (lingula).
4 The rumpia too is a kind of weapon of the Thracian people, and the word occurs in the fourteenth book of the Annals of Quintus Ennius.113
5 The names of ships which I recalled at the time are these: merchant-ships, cargo-carriers, skiffs, warships, cavalry-transports, cutters, fast cruisers, or, as the Greeks call them, κέλητες, barques, smacks, sailing-skiffs, light galleys, which the Greeks call ἱστιοκόποιº or ἐπακτρίδες, scouting-boats, galliots, tenders, flat-boats, vetutiae moediae, yachts, pinnaces, long-galliots, scullers' boats, caupuls,114 arks, fair-weather craft, pinks, lighters, spy-boats.
*******
TOPIC
26
That Asinius Pollio showed ignorance in criticizing Sallust because he
used transgressus (crossing) for transfretatio (crossing the sea) and
transgressi (those who had crossed) for qui transfretaverant (those who had
crossed the sea).
*****
1. Asinius Pollio, in a letter which he addressed to Plancus, and certain others who were unfriendly to Gaius Sallustius, thought that Sallust deserved censure because in the first book of his "Histories" he called the crossing of the sea and a passage made in ships transgressus, using "transgressi" of those who had crossed the sea, for which the usual term is "transfretare".
2. I give Sallust's
own words:
"Accordingly Sertorius, having left a small garrison in
Mauretania and taking advantage of a dark night and a favourable tide, tried
either by secrecy or speed to avoid a battle while crossing (in
transgressu)."
3 Then later he wrote:116 "When they had crossed
(transgressos), a mountain which had been seized in advance by the Lusitanians
gave them all shelter."
4 This, they say, is an improper and careless usage, supported by no adequate authority.
"For transgressus, says Pollio, "comes from transgredi,
'to step p289across,' and this word itself refers to walking and stepping with
the feet." 5 Therefore Pollio thought that the verb transgredi did not apply
to those who fly or creep or sail, but only to those who walk and measure the
way with their feet. Hence they say that in no good writer can transgressus be
found applied to ships, or as the equivalent of transfretatio.
6 But, since cursus, or "running," is often correctly used of ships,
I ask why it is that ships may not be said to make a transgressus, especially
since the small extent of the narrow strait which flows between Spain and the
Afric land is most elegantly described by the word transgressio, as being a
distance of only a few steps.
7 But as to those who ask for authority and
assert that ingredi or transgredi is not used of sailing, I should like them to
tell me how much difference they think there is between ingredi, or
"march," and ambulare, or "walk."
8 Yet Cato in his book On
Farming says:117 "A farm should be chosen in a situation where there is a
large town near by and the sea, or a river where ships pass (ambulant)."
9
Moreover Lucretius, by the use of this same expression, bears testimony that
such figures are intentional and are regarded as ornaments of diction. For in
his fourth book he speaks of a shout as "marching" (gradientem)
through the windpipe and jaws, which is much bolder than the Sallustian
expression about the ships. The lines of Lucretius are as follows:118
The voice besides doth often scrape the throat;
A shout before marching (gradiens) doth make the windpipe rough.
p291
10 Accordingly, Sallust, in the same book, uses progressus, not only of
those who sailed in ships, but also of floating skiffs. I have added his own
words about the skiffs:119 "Some of them, after going (progressae) but a
little way, the load being excessive and unstable, when panic had thrown the
passengers into disorder, began to sink."
*****
TOPIC 27
A story of the Roman and the Carthaginian people, showing that they
were rivals of nearly equal strength.
*****
1. It is stated in ancient records that the strength, the spirit and the numbers of the Roman and the Carthaginian people were once equal.
2 And this opinion was
not without foundation. With other nations the contest was for the independence
of one or the other state, with the Carthaginians it was for the rule of the
world.
3 An indication of this is found in the following word and act of each of the
two peoples: Quintus Fabius, a Roman general, delivered a letter to the
Carthaginians, in which it was written that the Roman people had sent them a
spear and a herald's staff, signs respectively of war and peace; they might
choose whichever they pleased and regard the one which they should choose as
sent them by the Roman people.
4 The Carthaginians replied that they chose
neither one; those who had brought them might leave whichever they liked; that
whatever should be left them they would consider that they themselves had
chosen.
5 Marcus Varro, however, says that neither the spear itself nor the staff was
sent, but two p293tokens, on one of which was engraved the representation of a
staff; on the other that of a spear.
*****
TOPIC
28
About the limits of the periods of boyhood, manhood and old age, taken
from the History of Tubero.
******
1. Tubero, in the first book of his "History", has written that King Servius
Tullius, when he divided the Roman people into those five classes of older and
younger men for the purpose of making the enrolment, regarded as
-- "pueri", or
"boys,": those who were less than seventeen years old.
Then, from the
seventeenth year, when they were thought to be fit for service, he enrolled
them ass"oldiers, calling them up to the age of forty-six
"iuniores" or
"younger men," and beyond that age,
"seniores", or "elders."
2. I have made a note of this fact, in order that from the rating of Servius
Tullius, that most sagacious king, the distinctions between boyhood, manhood,
and old age might be known, as they were established by the judgment, and
according to the usage, of our forefathers.
********
TOPIC
29
That the particle atque is not only conjunctive, but has many and
varied meanings.
*****
1. The particle "atque" is said by the grammarians to be a copulative conjunction.
And as a matter of fact, it very often joins and connects words.
But sometimes it has certain other powers, which are not sufficiently observed, except by those engaged in a diligent examination of the early literature.
2 For it has
the force of an adverb when we say "I have acted otherwise than (atque)
you," for it is equivalent to aliter quam tu;' and if it is doubled, it
amplifies and emphasizes a statement, as we note in the Annals of Quintus
Ennius, unless my memory of this verse is at fault:121
And quickly (atque atque) to the walls the Roman manhood came.c
3. The opposite of this meaning is expressed by "deque", also found in the early writers.
And quickly (atque atque) to the walls the Roman manhood came.c
3. The opposite of this meaning is expressed by "deque", also found in the early writers.
4. "Atque" is said to have been used besides for another adverb also, namely statim, as is thought to be the case in these lines of Virgil, where that particle is employed obscurely and irregularly:123
Thus, by Fate's law, all speeds towards the worse,
And giving way, falls back; e'en as if one
Whose oars can barely force his skiff upstream
Should chance to slack his arms and cease to drive;
Then straightway ("atque") down the flood he's swept away.
And giving way, falls back; e'en as if one
Whose oars can barely force his skiff upstream
Should chance to slack his arms and cease to drive;
Then straightway ("atque") down the flood he's swept away.
******* END OF BOOK
*********************
Book XI
AD-1.
On the origin of the term “terra Italia”, or "the land of Italy"; of that fine which is called "supreme"; concerning the reason for the name and on the Aternian law; and in what words the "smallest" fine used to be pronounced in ancient days.
*****************
On the origin of the term “terra Italia”, or "the land of Italy"; of that fine which is called "supreme"; concerning the reason for the name and on the Aternian law; and in what words the "smallest" fine used to be pronounced in ancient days.
*****************
1. Timeo, in the “History”
which he composed in the Greek language about the affairs of the Roman people,
and Marco Varrone in his “Human Antiquities”, wrote that the land of Italy
derived its name from a Greek word, “oxen” in the old Greek tongue being called
“ἰταλοί”; for in Italy there was a great abundance of cattle, and in that land
pastures are numerous and grazing is a frequent employment.
2 Furthermore, we may infer that it was for the same reason — namely, since Italy at that time so abounded in cattle — that the fine was established which is called "supreme," consisting of two sheep and thirty oxen each day, obviously proportionate to the abundance of oxen and scarcity of sheep. But when a fine of that sort, consisting of cattle and sheep, was pronounced by a magistrate, oxen and sheep were brought, now of small, again of greater value; and this made the penalty of the fine unequal. Therefore later, by the Aternian law,3 the value of a sheep was fixed at ten pieces of brass, of the cattle at a hundred apiece.
3 Now the "smallest" p301fine is that of one sheep. The "supreme" fine is of that number which we have mentioned, beyond which it is not lawful to impose a fine for a period of successive days;4 and for that reason it is called "supreme," that is, greatest and heaviest.
4 When therefore even now, according to ancient usage, either the "smallest" or the "supreme" fine is pronounced by Roman magistrates, it is regularly observed that oves ("sheep") be given the masculine gender; and Marcus Varro has thus recorded the words of the law by which the smallest fine was pronounced:5 "Against Marcus Terentius, since, though summoned, he has neither appeared nor been excused, I pronounce a fine of one sheep (unum ovem);" and they declared that the fine did not appear to be legal unless that gender was used.
5 Furthermore, Marcus
Varro, in the twenty-first book of his Human Antiquities, also says that the
word for fine (multa) is itself not Latin, but Sabine, and he remarks that it
endured even to within his own memory in the speech of the Samnites, who are
sprung from the Sabines. But the upstart herd of grammarians have asserted that
this word, like some others, is used on the principle of opposites.
6 Furthermore, since it is a usage and custom in language for us to say even now, as the greater number of the early men did, multam dixit and multa dicta est, I have thought it not out of place to note that Marcus Cato spoke otherwise.8 For in the fourth book of his Origins are these words: "Our commander, if anyone has gone to battle out of order, imposes (facit) a fine upon him."
7 But it may seem that Cato changed the word with an eye to propriety, since the fine was imposed in camp p303and in the army, not pronounced in the comitium or in the presence of the people.
6 Furthermore, since it is a usage and custom in language for us to say even now, as the greater number of the early men did, multam dixit and multa dicta est, I have thought it not out of place to note that Marcus Cato spoke otherwise.8 For in the fourth book of his Origins are these words: "Our commander, if anyone has gone to battle out of order, imposes (facit) a fine upon him."
7 But it may seem that Cato changed the word with an eye to propriety, since the fine was imposed in camp p303and in the army, not pronounced in the comitium or in the presence of the people.
AD—2.
That the word elegantia in earlier days was not used of a more refined nature, but of excessive fastidiousness in dress and mode of life, and was a term of reproach.
That the word elegantia in earlier days was not used of a more refined nature, but of excessive fastidiousness in dress and mode of life, and was a term of reproach.
1. It was not customary
to call a man "elegans", or "elegant," by way of praise, but up to the
time of Marcus Cato that word as a rule was a reproach, not a compliment.
“Carmen de Moribus”.
"They thought that avarice included all the vices; whoever was considered extravagant, ambitious, elegant, vicious or good-for nothing received praise."
3 It is evident from these words that in days of old the "elegant" man was so called, not because of refinement of character, but because he was excessively particular and extravagant in his attire and mode of life.
4 Later, the "elegant" man ceased indeed to be reproached, but he was deemed worthy of no commendation, unless his elegance was very moderate. Thus Marcus Tullius commended Lucius Crassus and Quintus Scaevola, not for mere elegance, but for elegance combined with great frugality. "Crassus," he says,11 "was the most frugal of elegant men; Scaevola the most elegant of the frugal."
5 Besides this, in the same work of Cato, I recall also these scattered and cursory remarks:12 "It was p305the custom," says he, "to dress becomingly in the forum, at home to cover their nakedness. They paid more for horses than for cooks. The poetic art was not esteemed. If anyone devoted himself to it, or frequented banquets, he was called a 'ruffian.' "
6 This sentiment too, of conspicuous truthfulness, is to be found in the same work:13 "Indeed, human life is very like iron. If you use it, it wears out; if you do not, it is nevertheless consumed by rust. In the same way we see men worn out by toil; if you toil not, sluggishness and torpor are more injurious than toil."
AD—3. The nature and
degree of the variety of usage in the particle “pro”; and some examples of the
differences.
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***************
1. When I have leisure
from legal business, and walk or ride for the sake of bodily exercise, I have
the habit sometimes of silently meditating upon questions that are trifling
indeed and insignificant, even negligible in the eyes of the uneducated, but
are nevertheless highly necessary for a thorough understanding of the early
writers and a knowledge of the Latin language.
For example, lately in
the retirement of Praeneste, as I was taking my evening walk alone, I began to
consider the nature and degree of variety in the use of certain particles in
the Latin language.
For instance, in the preposition “pro”.
For instance, in the preposition “pro”.
2. For I saw that we had
one use in "the priests passed a decree in the name of their order,"
and another in "that a witness who had been called in said by way of
testimony"; that Marcus Cato used it in still another way in the fourth
book of his Origins: "The battle was fought and ended before the
camp," and also in the fifth book: "That all the islands and cities
were in favour of the Illyrian land." Also "before the temple of
Castor" is one form of expression, "on the rostra" another,
"before, or on, the tribunal" another, "in presence of the
assembly" another, and "the tribune of the commons interposed a veto
in view of his authority" still another.
3 Now, I thought that anyone who imagined that all these expressions were wholly alike and equal, or were entirely different, was in error; for I was of the opinion that this variety came from the same origin and source, but yet that its end was not the same.
4 And this surely anyone will easily understand, if he attentively considers the question and has a somewhat extensive use and knowledge of the early language.
3 Now, I thought that anyone who imagined that all these expressions were wholly alike and equal, or were entirely different, was in error; for I was of the opinion that this variety came from the same origin and source, but yet that its end was not the same.
4 And this surely anyone will easily understand, if he attentively considers the question and has a somewhat extensive use and knowledge of the early language.
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AD—4. How Quintus Ennius
rivalled19 certain verses of Euripides.
1. In the “Ecuba” of
Euripides there are some verses remarkable and brilliant in their diction,
their thought and their terseness.
2 Hecuba is speaking to Ulysses:
2 Hecuba is speaking to Ulysses:
Thine high repute, how
ill soe'er though speak'st,
Shall sway them; for the
same speech carrieth not
Like weight from men
contemned and men revered.
3 These verses Quintus
Ennius, when he translated that tragedy, rivalled with no little success. The
verses of Ennius are the same in number, as follows:21
Though thou speak'st ill,
thou wilt the Achivi sway;
The selfsame words and
speech have other weight
When spoken by the great
and by the obscure.
4. Ennio, as I have
said, did well; but yet "ignobiles" and "opulenti" do not seem to express the full
force of ἀδοξούντων and δοκούντων; for not all who are obscure are contemned, nor
are the great all revered.
5
Some brief notes about the Pyrronian philosophers and the Academics; and of the difference between them.
Some brief notes about the Pyrronian philosophers and the Academics; and of the difference between them.
*****
1. Those whom we call the Pyrronian philosophers are designated by the Greek name σκεπτικοί, or "sceptics,"
2 which means about the same as "inquirers" and "investigators."
3 For they decide nothing and determine nothing, but are always engaged in inquiring and considering what there is in all nature concerning which it is possible to decide and determine.
4 And moreover they believe that they do not see or hear anything clearly, but that they undergo and experience something like seeing and hearing; but they are in doubt as of that nature and character of those very things which cause them those experiences, and they deliberate about them; and they declare that in everything assurance and absolute truth seem so beyond our grasp, owing to the mingling and confusing of the indications of truth and falsehood, that any man who is not rash and precipitate in his judgment ought to use the language which they say was used by Pyrro, the founder of that philosophy: "Does not this matter stand so, rather than so, or is it neither?" For they deny that proofs of anything and its real qualities can be known and understood, and they try in many ways to point this out and demonstrate it.
5 On this subject Favorinus too with great keenness and subtlety has composed ten books, which he entitled Πυρρωνεῖοι Τρόποι, or The Pyrronian Principles.
6 It is besides a question of long standing, which has been discussed by many Greek writers, whether the Pyrronian and Academic philosophers differ at all, and to what extent. For both are called "sceptics, inquirers and doubters," since both affirm nothing and believe that nothing is understood. But they say that appearances, which they call φαντασίαι, are produced from all objects, not according to the nature of the objects themselves, but according to the condition of mind or body of those to whom these appearances come.
7 Therefore they call absolutely all things that affect men's sense τὰ πρός τι.
This expression means that there is nothing at all that is self-dependent or which has its own power and nature, but that absolutely all things have "reference to something else" and seem to be such as their is appearance is while they are seen, and such as they are formed by our senses, to whom they come, not by the things themselves, from which they have proceeded.
8 But although the Pyrronians and the Academics express themselves very much alike about these matters, yet they are thought to differ from each other both in certain other respects and especially for this reason — because the Academics do, as it were, "comprehend" the very fact that nothing can be comprehended, while the Pyrronians assert that not even that can by any means be regarded as true, because nothing is regarded as true.
1. Those whom we call the Pyrronian philosophers are designated by the Greek name σκεπτικοί, or "sceptics,"
2 which means about the same as "inquirers" and "investigators."
3 For they decide nothing and determine nothing, but are always engaged in inquiring and considering what there is in all nature concerning which it is possible to decide and determine.
4 And moreover they believe that they do not see or hear anything clearly, but that they undergo and experience something like seeing and hearing; but they are in doubt as of that nature and character of those very things which cause them those experiences, and they deliberate about them; and they declare that in everything assurance and absolute truth seem so beyond our grasp, owing to the mingling and confusing of the indications of truth and falsehood, that any man who is not rash and precipitate in his judgment ought to use the language which they say was used by Pyrro, the founder of that philosophy: "Does not this matter stand so, rather than so, or is it neither?" For they deny that proofs of anything and its real qualities can be known and understood, and they try in many ways to point this out and demonstrate it.
5 On this subject Favorinus too with great keenness and subtlety has composed ten books, which he entitled Πυρρωνεῖοι Τρόποι, or The Pyrronian Principles.
6 It is besides a question of long standing, which has been discussed by many Greek writers, whether the Pyrronian and Academic philosophers differ at all, and to what extent. For both are called "sceptics, inquirers and doubters," since both affirm nothing and believe that nothing is understood. But they say that appearances, which they call φαντασίαι, are produced from all objects, not according to the nature of the objects themselves, but according to the condition of mind or body of those to whom these appearances come.
7 Therefore they call absolutely all things that affect men's sense τὰ πρός τι.
This expression means that there is nothing at all that is self-dependent or which has its own power and nature, but that absolutely all things have "reference to something else" and seem to be such as their is appearance is while they are seen, and such as they are formed by our senses, to whom they come, not by the things themselves, from which they have proceeded.
8 But although the Pyrronians and the Academics express themselves very much alike about these matters, yet they are thought to differ from each other both in certain other respects and especially for this reason — because the Academics do, as it were, "comprehend" the very fact that nothing can be comprehended, while the Pyrronians assert that not even that can by any means be regarded as true, because nothing is regarded as true.
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TOPIC
6
That at Rome women did not swear by Hercules nor men by Castor.
*****
1. In our early writings neither do Roman women swear by ERCOLE nor the men by CASTORE.
2. But why the women did not swear by Hercules is evident, since they abstain from sacrificing to Hercules.
3 On the other hand, why the men did not name Castor in oaths is not easy to say.
Nowhere, then, is it possible to find an instance, among good writers, either of a woman saying
"by Hercules!" or a man,
"by Castor!";
4 but edepol, which is an oath by Pollux, is common to both man and woman.
5 Marcus Varro, however, asserts that the earliest men were wont to swear neither by Castor nor by Pollux, but that this oath was used by women alone and was taken from the Eleusinian initiations.
6 that gradually, however, through ignorance of ancient usage, men began to say "Edepol", and thus it became a customary expression.
But that the use of "by Castor!" by a man appears in no ancient writing.
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TOPIC
7 That very old words which have become antiquated and obsolete ought not to be used.
******************
1. To use words that are too antiquated and worn out, or those which are unusual and of a harsh and unpleasant novelty, seems to be equally faulty. But for my own part I think it more offensive and censurable to use words that are new, unknown and unheard of, than words that are trite and mean.
2 Furthermore, I maintain that those words also seem new which are out of use and obsolete, even though they are of ancient date.
3 In fact, it is a common fault of lately acquired learning, or ὀψιμαθία as the Greeks call it, to make a great point anywhere and everywhere, and in connection with any subject whatever, to talk about what you have never learned and of which you were long ignorant, when at last you have begun to know something about it. For instance, at Rome in my presence a man of experience and celebrated as a pleader, who had acquired a sudden and, so to speak, haphazard kind of education, was speaking before the prefect of the city and wished to say that a certain man lived upon poor and wretched food, ate bread made from bran, p317and drank flat and spoiled wine: "This Roman knight," said he, "eats apluda and drinks flocces."
4 All who were present looked at one another, at first somewhat seriously, with a disturbed and inquiring aspect, wondering what in the world the two words meant; then presently they all burst into a laugh, as if he had said something in Etruscan or Gallic.
5 Now that man had read that farmers of ancient days called the chaff of grain apluda, and that the word was used by Plautus in the comedy entitled Astraba,27 if that play be the work of Plautus.
6 He had also heard that flocces in the early language meant the lees of wine pressed from the skins of grapes, corresponding to the dregs of oil from olives. This he had read in the Polumeni of Caecilius, and he had saved up those two words as ornaments for his speeches.
7 Another Einfaltspinsel also, after some little reading of that kind, when his opponent requested that a case be postponed, said: "I pray you, praetor, help me, aid me! How long, pray, shall this bovinator delay me?" And he bawled it out three or four times in a loud voice: "He is a bovinator."
8 A murmur began to arise from many of those who were present, as if in wonder at this monster of a word.
9 But he, waving his arms and gesticulating, cried: "What, haven't you read Lucilius, who calls a shuffler bovinator?" And, in fact, this verse occurs in Lucilius' eleventh book:
If trifling shuffler (bovinator) with abusive tongue.
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TOPIC
8
What Marcus Cato thought and said of Albinus, who, though a Roman, wrote a history of Rome in the Greek language, having first asked indulgence for his lack of skill in that tongue.
******
1. Marcus Cato is said to have rebuked Aulus Albinus with great justice and neatness.
2 Albinus, who had been consul with Lucius Lucullus, composed a "Roman History" in the Greek language. 3 In the introduction to his work he wrote to this effect:
that no one ought to blame him if he had written anything then in those books that was incorrect or inelegant; "for," he continues,
"I am a Roman, born in Latium, and the Greek language is quite foreign to me".
And accordingly he asked indulgence and freedom from adverse criticism in case he had made any errors.
4 When Marcus Cato had read this, "Surely, Aulus," said he, "you are a great trifler in preferring to apologize for a fault rather than avoid it. For we usually ask pardon either when we have erred through inadvertence or done wrong under compulsion. But tell me, I pray you," said he, "who compelled you to do that for which you ask pardon before doing it."
5 This is told in the thirteenth book of Cornelius Nepos' work On Famous Men.
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TOPIC
9
The story of the Milesian envoys and the orator Demosthenes, found in the works of Critolaus.
*******
1. Critolaus has written that envoys came from Miletus to Athens on public business, perhaps for the purpose of asking aid. T
hen they engaged such advocates as they chose, to speak for them, and the advocates, according to their instructions, addressed the people in behalf of the Milesians. Demosthenes vigorously opposed the demands of the Milesians, maintaining that the Milesians did not deserve aid, nor was it to the interest of the State to grant it. The matter was postponed to the next day. The envoys came to Demosthenes and begged him earnestly not to speak against them; he asked for money, and received the amount which he demanded. On the following day, when the case was taken up again, Demosthenes, with his neck and shoulders wrapped in thick wool, came forward before the people and said that he was suffering from quinsy and hence could not speak against the Milesians. Then one of the populace cried out that it was, not quinsy, but "silverinsy" from which Demosthenes was suffering.
2 Demosthenes himself too, as Critolaus also relates, did not afterwards conceal that matter, but actually made a boast of it. For when he had asked Aristodemus, the player, what sum he had received for acting, and Aristodemus had replied, "a talent," Demosthenes rejoined: "Why, I got more than that for holding my tongue."
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TOPIC
10 That Gaius Gracchus in a speech of his applied the story related above to the orator Demades, and not to Demosthenes; and a quotation of Gracchus' words.
*******
1. The story which in the preceding chapter we said was told by Critolaus about Demosthenes, Gaius Gracchus, in the speech Against the Aufeian Law, applied to Demades in the following words:
2
"For you, fellow citizens, if you wish to be wise and honest, and if you inquire into the matter, will find that none of us comes forward here without pay. All of us who address you are after something, and no one appears before you for any purpose except to carry something away.
3 I myself, who am now recommending you to increase your taxes, in order that you may the more easily serve your own advantage and administer the government, do not come here for nothing; but I ask of you, not money, but honour and your good opinion.
4 Those who come forward to persuade you not to accept this law, do not seek honour from you, but money from Nicomedes; those also who advise you to accept it are not seeking a good opinion from you, but from Mithridates a reward and an increase of their possessions; those, however, of the same rank and order who are silent are your very bitterest enemies, since they take money from all and are false to all.
5 You, thinking that they are innocent of such conduct, give them your esteem;
6 but the embassies from the kings, thinking it is for their sake that they are silent, give them great gifts and rewards. So in the land of Greece, when a Greek tragic actor boasted that he had received a whole talent for one play, Demades, the most eloquent man of his country, is said to have replied to him: 'Does it seem wonderful to you that you have gained a talent by speaking? I was paid ten talents by the king for holding my tongue.' Just so, these men now receive a very high price for holding their tongues."
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TOPIC 11 The words of Publius Nigidius, in which he says that there is a difference between "lying" and "telling a falsehood."
*****
1. These are the very words of Publius Nigidius, a man of great eminence in the pursuit of the liberal arts, whom Marcus Cicero highly respected because of his talent and learning:
"There is a difference between telling a falsehood and lying.
One who lies is not himself deceived, but tries to deceive another; he who tells a falsehood is himself deceived."
2 He also adds this:
"One who lies deceives, so far as he is able; but one who tells a falsehood does not himself deceive, any more than he can help."
3 He also had this on the same subject:
"A good man," says he, "ought to take pains not to lie, a wise man, not to tell what is false; the former affects the man himself, the latter does not."
4 With variety, by Heaven! and neatness has Nigidius distinguished so many opinions relating to the same thing, as if he were constantly saying something new.
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TOPIC
12
That the philosopher Chrysippus says that every word is ambiguous and of doubtful meaning, while Diodorus, on the contrary, thinks that no word is ambiguous.
Cfr. GRICE, "Do not multiply senses beyond necessity".
1. Crisippo asserts that every word is by nature ambiguous, since two or more things may be understood from the same word.
2. But Diodoro, surnamed Crono, says:
"No word is ambiguous, and no one speaks or receives a word in two senses.
And it ought not to seem to be said in any other sense than that which the speaker feels that he is giving it.
3. But when I," said he, "meant one thing and you have understood another, it may seem that I have spoken obscurely rather than ambiguously.
For the nature of an ambiguous word should be such that he who speaks it expresses two or more meanings.
But no man expresses two meanings who has felt that he is expressing but one."
********
TOPIC 13. What Titus Castricius thought about the wording of a sentence of Gaius Gracchus; and that he showed that it contributed nothing to the effectiveness of the sentence.
*********
1. The speech of Gaius Gracchus Against Publius Popilius was read before Titus Castricius, a teacher of the art of rhetoric and a man of sound and solid judgment.
2 At the beginning of that speech the sentences were constructed with more care and regard for rhythm than was customary with the early orators.
3 The words, arranged as I have said, are as follows: "If you now reject rashly the things which all these years you have earnestly sought and longed for, it must be said either that you formerly sought them earnestly, or now have rejected them without consideration."
4 Well then, the flow and rhythm of this well-rounded and smooth-flowing sentence pleased us to a remarkable and unparalleled degree, and still more the evidence that composition of that kind appealed even in those early days to Gaius Gracchus, a man of distinction and dignity.
5 But when those very same words were read again and again at our request, we were admonished by Castricius to consider what the force and value of the thought was, and not to allow our ears to be charmed by the rhythm of a well-turned sentence and through mere pleasure to confuse our judgment as well.
And when by this admonition he had made us more alert, "Look deeply," said he, "into the meaning of these words, and tell me pray, some of you, whether there is any weight or elegance in this sentence: 'If you now reject rashly the things which all these years you have earnestly sought and longed for, it must be said either that you formerly sought them earnestly, or now have rejected them without consideration.'
6 For to whom of all men does it not occur, that it is certainly natural that you should be said earnestly to have sought what you earnestly sought, and to have rejected without consideration what you rejected without consideration?
7 But I think," said he, "if it had been written thus: 'If you now reject what you have sought and longed for these many years, it must be said that you formerly sought it earnestly or that you now reject it without consideration';
8 if," said he, "it were spoken thus, the sentence would be weightier and more solid and would arouse some reasonable expectation in the hearer;
9 but as it is, these words 'earnestly' and 'without consideration,' on which the whole effect of the sentence rests, are not only spoken at the end of the sentence, but are also put earlier where they are not needed, so that what ought to arise and spring from the very conception of the subject is spoken wholly before the subject demands it. For one who says: 'If you do this, you will be said to have done it earnestly,' says something that is composed and arranged with some regard to sense; but one who says: 'If you do it earnestly, you will be said to have done it earnestly,' speaks in much the same way as if he should say: 'If you do it earnestly, you will do it earnestly.'
10 I have warned you of this," said he, "not with the idea of censuring Gaius Gracchus — may the gods give me a wiser mind! for if any fault or error can be mentioned in a man of such powerful eloquence, it is wholly excused by his authority and overlooked in view of his antiquity — but in order that you might be on your guard lest the rhythmic sound of any flowing eloquence should easily dazzle you, and that you might first balance the actual weight of the substance against the high quality of the diction; so that if any sentence was uttered that was weighty, honest and sound, then, if you thought best, you might praise also the mere flower of the language and the delivery; that if, on the contrary, thoughts that were cold, trifling and futile should be conveyed in words neatly and rhythmically arranged, they might have the same effect upon you as when men conspicuous for their deformity and their ludicrous appearance imitate actors and play the buffoon."
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TOPIC
14 The discreet and admirable reply of King Romulus as to his use of wine.
********
1. Lucius Piso Frugi has shown an elegant simplicity of diction and thought in the first book of his Annals, when writing of the life and habits of King Romulus.
2 His words are as follows:
"They say also of Romulus, that being invited to dinner, he drank but little there, giving the reason that he had business for the following day. They answer:
'If all men were like you, Romulus, wine would be cheaper.'
'Nay, dear,' answered Romulus, 'if each man drank as much as he wished.
For I drank as much as I wished.' "
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TOPIC
15 On ludibundus and errabundus and the suffix in words of that kind; that Laberius used amorabunda in the same way as ludibunda and errabunda; also that Sisenna in the case of a word of that sort made a new form.
*******
1 Laberius in his Lake Avernus spoke of a woman in love as amorabunda, coining a word in a somewhat unusual manner.
2 Caesellius Vindex in his Commentary on Archaic Words said that this word was used on the same principle that ludibunda, ridibunda and errabunda are used for ludens, ridens and errans.
3 But Terentius Scaurus, a highly distinguished grammarian of the time of the deified Hadrian, among other things which he wrote "On the Mistakes of Caesellius", declared that about this word also he was wrong in thinking that ludens and ludibunda, ridens and ridibunda, errans and errabunda were identical.
"For ludibunda, ridibunda, and errabunda," he says, "are applied of the one who plays the part of, or imitates, one who plays, laughs or wanders."
4 But why Scaurus was led to censure Caesellius on the spot, I certainly could not understand. For there is no doubt that these words, each after its own kind, have the same meaning that is indicated by the words from which they are derived. But I should prefer to seem not to understand the meaning of "act the laugher" or "imitate the laugher" rather than charge Scaurus himself with lack of knowledge.
5 But Scaurus ought rather, in censuring the commentaries of Caesellius, to have taken him to task for what he left unsaid; namely, whether ludibundus, ridibundus and errabundus differ at all from ludens, ridens and errans, and to what extent, and so with other words of the same kind; whether they differ only in some slight degree from their primitives, and what is the general force of the suffix which is added to words of that kind.
6 For in examining a phenomenon of that nature that were a more pertinent inquiry, just as in vinulentus, lutulentus and turbulentus it is usual to ask whether that suffix is superfluous and without meaning, παραγωγή, as the Greeks say,44 or whether the suffix has some special force of its own.
7 However, in noting this criticism of Scaurus it occurred to me that Sisenna, in the fourth book of his Histories, used a word of the same form. He says:45 "He came to the town, laying waste the fields (populabundus)," which of course means "while he was laying waste the fields," not, as Sisenna says of similar words, "when he played the part of, or imitated, one laying waste."
8 But when I was inquiring about the signification and origin of such forms as populabundus, errabundus, laetabundus, ludibundus, and many other words of that kind, our friend Apollinaris — very appositely by Heaven! remarked that it seemed to him that the final syllable of such words indicated force and abundance, and as it were, an excess of the quality belonging to p337the primitive word. Thus laetabundus is used of one who is excessively joyful, and errabundus of one who has wandered long and far, and he showed that all other words of that form are so used that this addition and ending indicates a great and overflowing force and abundance.46
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TOPIC 16 That the translation of certain Greek words into the Latin language is very difficult, for example, that which in Greek is called πολυπραγμοσύνη.47
*****
1. We have frequently observed not a few names of things which we cannot express in Latin by single words, as in Greek; and even if we use very many words, those ideas cannot be expressed in Latin so aptly and so clearly as the Greeks express them by single terms.
2 Lately, when a book of Plutarch had been brought to me, and I had read its title, which was
"Περὶ Πολυπραγμοσύνης", a man who was unacquainted with Greek letters and words asked who the author was and what the book was about.
The name of the writer I gave him at once, but I hesitated when on the point of naming the subject of the work.
3 At first indeed, since it did not seem to me that it would be a very apt interpretation if I said that it was written De Negotiositate or "On Busyness," I began to rack my brains for something else which would render the title word for word, as the saying is.
4 But there was absolutely nothing that p339I remembered to have read, or even that I could invent, that was not to a degree harsh and absurd, if I fashioned a single word out of multitudo, or "multitude," and negotium, or "business," in the same way that we say multiiugus ("manifold"), multicolorus ("multicoloured") and multiformius ("multiform").
5 But it would be no less uncouth an expression than if you should try to translate by one word πολυφιλία (abundance of friends), πολυτροπία (versatility), or πολυσαρκία (fleshiness).
6 Therefore, after spending a brief time in silent thought, I finally answered that in my opinion the idea could not be expressed by a single word, and accordingly I was preparing to indicate the meaning of that Greek word by a phrase.
"Well then," said I, "undertaking many things and busying oneself with them all is called in Greek πολυπραγμοσύνη, and the title shows that this is the subject of our book."
7 Then that illiterate fellow, misled by my unfinished, rough-and ready language and believing that πολυπραγμοσύνη was a virtue, said: "Doubtless this Plutarch, whoever he is, urges us to engage in business and to undertake very many enterprises with energy and dispatch, and properly enough he has written as the title of the book itself the name of this virtue about which, as you say, he is intending to speak."
8 "Not at all," said I; "for that is by no means a virtue which, expressed by a Greek term, serves to indicate the subject of this book; and neither does Plutarch do what you suppose, nor do I intend to say that he did. For, as a matter of fact, it is in this book that he tries to dissuade us, so far as he can, from the haphazard, promiscuous and unnecessary planning and pursuit p341of such a multitude of things. 9 But," said I, "I realize that this mistake of yours is due to my imperfect command of language, since even in so many words I could not express otherwise than very obscurely what in Greek is expressed with perfect elegance and clearness by a single term."
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17
The meaning of the expression, found in the old praetorian edicts: "those who have undertaken public contracts for clearing the rivers of nets."
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1. As I chanced to be sitting in the library of Trajan's temple, looking for something else, the edicts of the early praetors fell into my hands, and I thought it worth while to read and become acquainted with them. '
2. Then I found this, written in one of the earlier edicts:
"If anyone of those who have taken public contracts for clearing the rivers of nets shall be brought before me, and shall be accused of not having done that which by the terms of his contract he was bound to do."
3 Thereupon the question arose what "clearing of nets" meant.
4. Then a friend of mine who was sitting with us said that he had read in the seventh book of Gavius "On the Origin of Words" that those trees which either projected from the banks of rivers, or were found in their beds, were called "retae", and that they got their name from nets, because they impeded the course of ships and, so to speak, netted them.
Therefore he thought that the custom was to farm out the rivers to be "cleaned of nets," that is to say, cleaned out, in order that vessels meeting such branches might suffer neither delay nor danger.
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TOPIC
18 The punishment which Draco the Athenian, in the laws which he made for his fellow-citizens, inflicted upon thieves; that of Solon later; and that of our own decemvirs, who compiled the Twelve Tables; to which it is added, that among the Egyptians thefts were permitted and lawful, while among the Lacedaemonians they were even strongly encouraged and commended as a useful exercise; also a memorable utterance of Marcus Cato about the punishment of theft.
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1. Draco the attention was considered a good man and of great wisdom, and he was skilled in law, human and divine.
2 This Draco was the first of all to make laws for the use of the Athenians.
3 In those laws he decreed and enacted that one guilty of any theft whatsoever should be punished with death, and added many other statutes that were excessively severe.
4 Therefore his laws, since they seemed very much too harsh, were abolished, not by order and decree, but by the tacit, unwritten consent of the Athenians.
5 After that, they made use of other, milder laws, compiled by Solon. This Solon was one of the famous wise men. He thought proper by his law to punish thieves, not with death, as Draco had formerly done, but by a fine of twice the value of the stolen goods.
6 But our decemvirs, who after the expulsion of the kings compiled laws on Twelve Tables for the use of the Romans, did not show equal severity in punishing p345thieves of every kind, nor yet too lax leniency.
7 For they permitted51 a thief who was caught in the act to be put to death, only if it was night when he committed the theft, or if in the daytime he defended himself with a weapon when taken.
8 But other thieves taken in the act, if they were freemen, the decemvirs ordered to be scourged and handed over52 to the one from whom the theft had been made, provided they had committed the theft in daylight and had not defended themselves with a weapon. Slaves taken in the act were to be scourged and hurled from the rock,53 but they decided that boys under age should be flogged at the discretion of the praetor and the damage which they had done made good.
9 Those thefts also which were detected by the girdle and mask,54 they punished as if the culprit had been caught in the act.
10 But to day we have departed from that law of the decemvirs; for if anyone wishes to try a case of manifest theft by process of law, action is brought for four times the value.
11 But "manifest theft," says Masurius,55 "is one which is detected while it is being committed. The act is completed when the stolen object is carried to its destination."
12 When stolen goods are found in possession of the thief (concepti) or in that of another (oblati), the penalty is threefold.
But one who wishes to learn what oblatum means, and conceptum, and many other particulars of the same kind taken from the admirable customs of our forefathers, and both useful and agreeable to know, will consult the book of Sabinus entitled On Thefts.
13 In this book there is also written56 a thing that is not p347commonly known, that thefts are committed, not only of men and movable objects which can be purloined and carried off secretly, but also of an estate and of houses; also that a farmer was found guilty of theft, because he had sold the farm which he had rented and deprived the owner of its possession.
14 And Sabinus tells this also, which is still more surprising, that one person was convicted of having stolen a man, who, when a runaway slave chanced to pass within sight of his master, held out his gown as if he were putting it on, and so prevented the slave from being seen by his master.
15 Then upon all other thefts, which were called "not manifest," they imposed a two-fold penalty.57
16 I recall also that I read in the work of the jurist Aristo,58 a man of no slight learning, that among the ancient Egyptians, a race of men known to have been ingenious in inventions and keen in getting at the bottom of things, thefts of all kinds were lawful and went unpunished.
17 Among the Lacedaemonians too, those serious and vigorous men (a matter for which the evidence is not so remote as in the case of the Egyptians) many famous writers, who have composed records of their laws and customs, affirm that thieving was lawful and customary, and that it was practised by their young men, not for base gain or to furnish the means for indulgence of amassing wealth, but as an exercise and training in the art of war; for dexterity and practice in thieving made the minds of the youth keen and strong for clever ambuscades, and for endurance in watching, and for the swiftness of surprise.
18 Marcus Cato, however, in the speech which he p349wrote On Dividing Spoils among the Soldiers, complains in strong and choice language about unpunished thievery and lawlessness. I have quoted his words, since they pleased me greatly:59 "Those who commit private theft pass their lives in confinement and fetters; plunderers of the public, in purple and gold."
19 But I think I ought not to pass over the highly ethical and strict definition of theft made by the wisest men, lest anyone should consider him only a thief who privately purloins anything or secretly carries it off.
20 The words are those of Sabinus in his second book On Civil Law:60 "He is guilty of theft who has touched anything belonging to another, when he has reason to know that he does so against the owner's will."
21 Also in another chapter:61 'He who silently carries off another's property for the sake of gain is guilty of theft, whether he knows to whether the object belongs or not."
22 Thus has Sabinus written, in the book which I just now mentioned, about handling things for the purpose of stealing them.
23 But we ought to remember, according to what I have written above, that a theft may be committed even without touching anything, when the mind alone and the thoughts desire that a theft be committed.
24 Therefore Sabinus says that he has no doubt that a master should be convicted of theft who has ordered a slave of his to steal something.
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