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I. "Tertium"ne consul an "tertio" dici oporteat; et quonam modo Cn. Pompeius, cum in theatro, quod erat dedicaturus, honores suos inscriberet, quaestionem ancipitem istius verbi de consilio Ciceronis vitaverit.I. Familiari meo cuipiam litteras Athenis Romam misi. II. In his scriptum fuit me illi iam "tertium" scripsisse. III.
1. Whether “tertium” consul or “tertio” ought to be said; and in what manner Cn. Pompeius, when in the theater which he was about to dedicate he was inscribing his honors, avoided the two-edged question of that word by the counsel of Cicero.1. I sent letters from Athens to Rome to a certain friend of mine. 2. In them it was written that I had now written to him “tertium” (for the third time). 3.
He wrote back to me and requested that I give the reason why I had written “tertium” and not “tertio.” He also appended that I should likewise make him informed what seemed to me about that other point as well, whether one ought to say “tertium consul” and “quartum,” or “tertio” and “quarto,” since at Rome he had heard a learned man say “tertio et quarto consul,” not “tertium quartumque”; and that Coelius had written this at the beginning of the book … and that Quintus Claudius in the nineteenth book had said that Gaius Marius was created “septimo” consul. 4. To these I wrote back nothing more than the words of M. Varro, a man, I suppose, more learned than Claudius together with Coelius, by which words each of the two points about which he had written to me would be decided; 5. for both Varro taught clearly enough what ought to be said, and I, being absent, did not wish to make my suit against the man who was said to be learned.
6. The words of M. Varro from the fifth book of Disciplinae are these: “It is one thing to become praetor ‘for the fourth time’ (quarto) and another ‘the fourth’ (quartum), since ‘quarto’ designates rank in place and three having been made before, while ‘quartum’ designates time and it having happened thrice before. Therefore Ennius rightly wrote, because he wrote: Quintus the father becomes consul for the fourth time, and Pompey timidly, because, in the theater, to avoid adding ‘consul for the third time’ (consul tertium) or ‘for the third time’ (tertio), did not write the final letters.” 7. What Varro said briefly and somewhat obscurely about Pompey, Tiro Tunius, Cicero’s freedman, wrote more fully in a certain letter, to about this effect: “When Pompey,” he says, “was about to dedicate the temple of Victory, whose steps served the function of a theater, and his name and honors were to be inscribed, it began to be asked whether ‘consul for the third time’ (consul tertio) should be inscribed or ‘for the third time’ (tertium). Pompey referred the matter with the greatest exactness to the most learned men of the state, and when there was disagreement and some argued that ‘tertio,’ others that ‘tertium’ should be written, Pompey,” he says, “asked Cicero to order written whichever seemed to him more correct.” Then Cicero, it is said, feared to judge among learned men, lest, by disapproving their opinion, he seem to have disapproved them themselves.
"He persuaded Pompey, therefore, that neither "tertium" nor "tertio" should be written, but that the letters should be made up to the second 't', so that, with the word not fully written out, the thing indeed would be indicated, yet the ambiguous diction of the word would nonetheless lie hidden." 8. But that which both Varro and Tiro said is not so written now in that same theater. 9. For when many years later the stage, which had collapsed, was rebuilt, the number of the third consulship was indicated not, as at the beginning, by the initial letters, but only by three little incised lines.
10. In M. Cato’s fourth book of the Origines it is thus written: “The Carthaginians departed from the treaty for the sixth time.” That verb signifies that five times before they had acted against the treaty, and then the sixth time. 11. The Greeks also, in signifying numbers of matters of this kind, say triton kai tetarton, which agrees with that which in Latin is said: “the third and the fourth.”
II. Quid Aristoteles de numero puerperii memoriae mandaverit. I. Aristoteles philosophus memoriae tradidit mulierem in Aegypto uno partu quinque pueros enixam eumque esse finem dixit multiiugae hominum partionis neque plures umquam simul genitos compertum, hunc autem esse numerum ait rarissimum. II. Sed et divo Augusto imperante, qui temporum eius historiam scripserunt, ancillam Caesaris Augusti in agro Laurente peperisse quinque pueros dicunt eosque pauculos dies vixisse; matrem quoque eorum non multo, postquam peperit, mortuam, monumentumque ei factum iussu Augusti in via Laurentina, inque eo scriptum esse numerum puerperii eius, de quo diximus.
II. What Aristotle committed to memory about the number of a puerpery. I. Aristotle the philosopher handed down to memory that a woman in Egypt, in one delivery, bore five boys; and he said that this was the limit of the multi-yoked (multiparous) parturition of human beings, and that it had been found that never more were begotten at the same time; but he says that this number is most rare. II. But also, while the deified Augustus was emperor, those who wrote the history of his times say that a handmaid of Caesar Augustus in the Laurentine field gave birth to five boys, and that they lived a few days; their mother too, not long after she bore them, died; and a monument was made for her by Augustus’s order on the Via Laurentina, and on it there was written the number of her puerpery, of which we have spoken.
3. A comparison and contest of certain illustrious passages made from the orations of Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Cicero and Marcus Cato.1. Gaius Gracchus is considered to be a brave and vehement orator. No one denies that. But that, as it seems to some, he is severer, sharper, and more ample than Marcus Tullius—who can endure that?
2. We were reading quite recently the oration of Gracchus on the promulgated laws, in which he complains, with as great odium as can be, that Marcus Marius and certain honorable men from the Italian municipia were wrongfully beaten with rods by magistrates of the Roman people. 3. These are the words which he spoke on that matter: "Recently the consul came to Teanum Sidicinum."
His wife said that she wished to bathe in the men's baths. The business was given to the Sidicinian quaestor, M. Marius, that those who were bathing be driven out from the baths. The wife reports back to her husband that the baths had been delivered to her too slowly and had been insufficiently clean.
“At Ferentinum, for the same cause, our praetor ordered the quaestors to be seized: one threw himself down from the wall, the other, having been caught, was beaten with rods.” 4. In so atrocious a matter and so wretched and mournful contestation of public injury, is there anything that he said either amply and notably, or tearfully and pitifully, or with much and copious ill will and with a grave and penetrative complaint? There is indeed brevity and grace and polish of speech, such as is commonly had in the festivities of comedies. 5. Likewise Gracchus in another place says thus: “How great lust and how great intemperance there is of adolescent men, I will show you one example.
In these few years he was sent from Asia, who during that time had not taken up a magistracy, a young man, as pro-legate. He was being borne in a litter. To meet him there came an oxherd from the Venusian plebs, and in jest, since he did not know who was being carried, he asked whether they were carrying a dead man.
When he heard that, he ordered the litter to be set down, and with the straps by which the litter had been tied, he ordered him to be beaten to such an extent, until he breathed out his life." 6. This speech, indeed, upon so violent and cruel a deed, is assuredly in no respect removed from everyday conversations. 7. But when, in a similar case, in M. Tullius, Roman citizens, innocent men, are beaten with rods contrary to right and contrary to the laws, or are put to death with the extreme punishment, what compassion was there then?
8. by Hercules, my mind, when I read those pieces of M. Cicero, is encompassed by a certain image and sound of lashings and of voices and of ululations; 9. as for instance these, which he says about Gaius Verres, which we, so far as for the present we were able, in so far as memory supplied, have transcribed: "He himself, inflamed with crime and fury, came into the forum. His eyes were blazing; from his whole countenance cruelty stood out."
All were waiting, to what at last he would proceed or what on earth he would do, when suddenly he orders the man to be snatched and in the middle of the forum to be stripped naked and bound, and the rods to be made ready." 10. Indeed, by my faith, these words alone: "he orders him to be stripped naked and bound and the rods to be made ready" are of such agitation and horror that you seem not to be told what was done, but to see the thing being done outright. 11. But Gracchus, not in the tone of one complaining or imploring, but of one reporting: "a stake," he says, "has been set up in the forum, the garments have been stripped off, he has been beaten with rods." 12. But M. Cicero, excellently with a prolonged representation, says not "he was beaten," but: "He was being beaten with rods in the middle of the forum at Messana, a Roman citizen, while meanwhile no groan, no voice of that wretch amid the pain and the crackle of the blows was heard, except this: 'I am a Roman citizen!'" With this commemoration of his citizenship he thought he would drive off all the blows and cast the torment from his body." 13.
He then makes a lamentation over so bitter a matter, and among Roman citizens he powerfully and sharply and in inflaming fashion excites hatred against Verres and detestation, when he says these things: "O sweet name of liberty! o the preeminent right of our citizenship! o the Porcian law and the Sempronian laws!
o tribunician power, gravely longed for and at length restored to the Roman plebs! Have all these things fallen back to this at last, that a Roman citizen, in a province of the Roman people, in a federate town, by him who, by the favor of the Roman people, held the fasces and axes, should be bound in the forum and beaten with rods? What?
when fires and glowing plates and the other torments were being applied, if that man’s bitter imploration and pitiable voice did not soften you, were you not moved even by the weeping and greatest groaning of the Roman citizens who were then present?" 14. These things M. Tullius lamented vehemently, weightily, aptly, and copiously. 15. But if there is anyone so rustic of ear and so rough, whom that light and amenity of oration and the modulation of words delights too little, yet he loves the earlier things for this reason, because they are unadorned and brief and not elaborate, but with a certain native sweetness, and because in them there is the shade and color, as it were, of dusky antiquity, let him, if he has any judgment, consider in a like case the oration of M. Cato, a more ancient man, to whose force and copiousness Gracchus did not even aspire.
16. He will understand, I suppose, that Cato was not content with the eloquence of his age and that he already then wished to do what Cicero later accomplished. 17.
For in that book which is entitled Concerning False Fists, he thus complained about Q. Thermo: "He said that by the decemvirs his provisions had been too poorly cared for. He ordered the garments to be stripped off and for them to be beaten with a scourge. The Bruttiani flogged the decemvirs; many mortals saw."
where is the faith of the ancestors? Signal outrages, lashes, beatings, weals, those pains and butcheries, through disgrace and the greatest contumely, with his fellow citizens and many mortals looking on, that you dared to do? But how much mourning, how much groaning, what a quantity of tears, how much weeping I have heard took place!
Slaves bear injuries too grievously: what do you suppose those men, born of good stock, endowed with great virtue, have had and will have in spirit, so long as they live?" 18. What Cato said: "The Bruttians have flogged [him]," lest anyone perhaps inquire about the Bruttians, means this: 19. When Hannibal the Punic was in Italy with his army and the Roman people had fought several adverse battles, the Bruttians, the first of all Italy, defected to Hannibal.
The Romans took this badly; after Hannibal departed from Italy and the Carthaginians were overcome, they, for the cause of ignominy, did not enroll the Bruttians as soldiers nor hold them as allies, but ordered them to obey and to minister to magistrates going into the provinces in the stead of slaves. And so these used to follow the magistrates, like in scenic plays those who were called “lorarii,” and those whom they had been ordered, they bound or beat; and because they were from the Bruttii, they were called “Bruttiani.”
IV. Quod P. Nigidius argutissime docuit nomina non positiva esse, sed naturalia.I. Nomina verbaque non positu fortuito, sed quadam vi et ratione naturae facta esse P. Nigidius in grammaticis commentariis docet, rem sane in philosophiae dissertationibus celebrem. II. Quaeri enim solitum aput philosophos, physei ta onomata sint e thesei. III.
4. That P. Nigidius most acutely taught that names are not posited, but natural.1. P. Nigidius, in his grammatical commentaries, teaches that names and words were made not by fortuitous positing, but by a certain force and rationale of nature—a matter indeed celebrated in the dissertations of philosophy. 2. For it used to be asked among philosophers whether names are by nature (physis) or by thesis (by convention). 3.
In that matter he advances many arguments why words may seem to be natural rather than arbitrary. 4. Among which this seemed charming and witty: " "Vos" " he says, when we say it, we use a certain motion of the mouth fitting the demonstration of the word itself, and we gently move the foremost lips outward and direct the breath and the soul forward and toward those with whom we are conversing. But on the contrary, when we say "nos", we pronounce it neither with a poured-out and intent blast of the voice nor with lips thrust forward, but we restrain both the breath and the lips, as it were, within our very selves.
The same thing happens also in that we say "you", "I" and "to you" and "to me". For just as, when we nod assent and dissent, that certain motion either of the head or of the eyes does not shrink from the nature of the thing which it signifies, so in these words there is, as it were, a certain natural gesture of the mouth and breath. The same rationale is in the Greek words as well, which we have observed to be in our own."
V. "Avarus" simplexne vocabulum sit, an compositum et duplex, sicuti P. Nigidio videtur.I. "Avarus" non simplex vocabulum, sed iunctum copulatumque esse P. Nigidius dicit in commentariorum undetricesimo. "Avarus enim" inquit "appellatur, qui avidus aeris est. II. Sed in ea copula "e" littera" inquit "detrita est." Item "locupletem" dictum ait ex conpositis vocibus, qui pleraque loca, hoc est, qui multas possessiones teneret.
V. Whether "avarus" is a simple vocable, or a composite and duplex one, as it seems to P. Nigidius.I. "Avarus" is not a simple vocable, but a joined and coupled one, says P. Nigidius in the twenty-ninth of his Commentaries. ""For "avarus"," he says, "is so called of one who is avid of aes (money). II. But in that coupling," he says, "the letter "e" has been worn away." Likewise he says "locupletem" is said from composite vocables, of one who held very many loca, that is, who held many possessions.
3. But more probable and more firm is what he said about "locuples." For about "avārus" there is doubt: for why could it not seem to be derived from a single word alone, which is "aveō," and to be of the same formation as "amārus," about which nothing can be said except that it is not compound?
VI. Multam dictam esse ab aedilibus plebi Appi Caeci filiae, mulieri nobili, quod locuta esset petulantius.I. Non in facta modo, sed in voces etiam petulantiores publice vindicatum est; ita enim debere esse visa est Romanae disciplinae dignitas inviolabilis. II. Appi namque illius Caeci filia a ludis, quos spectaverat, exiens turba undique confluentis fluctuantisque populi iactata est. Atque inde egressa, cum se male habitam diceret: "quid me nunc factum esset" inquit "quantoque artius pressiusque conflictata essem, si P. Claudius, frater meus, navali proelio classem navium cum ingenti civium numero non perdidisset?
6. That a fine was imposed by the plebeian aediles upon the daughter of Appius the Blind, a noble woman, because she had spoken more petulantly.1. Not only for deeds, but even for more petulant utterances, was public vengeance exacted; for thus the dignity of Roman discipline seemed bound to be inviolable. 2. For the daughter of that Appius the Blind, as she was leaving the games which she had watched, was tossed by the crowd of people flowing together from all sides and surging. And having gone out from there, when she said that she had been badly treated: “what would have become of me now,” she said, “and how much more tightly and more closely would I have been pressed and battered, if P. Claudius, my brother, had not lost the fleet of ships in the naval battle along with a huge number of citizens?”
surely indeed, overwhelmed now by a greater throng of the populace, I would have perished. But would that,” she says, “my brother might come back to life and lead another fleet into Sicily and go to destroy that multitude which has now foully made me, wretched, the target of abuse!” 3. On account of these words of the woman, so improper and so uncivil, C. Fundanius and Tiberius Sempronius, plebeian aediles, pronounced a fine upon her of twenty-five thousand asses of heavy bronze.
4. Ateius Capito says that this was done in his commentary on public trials, in the First Punic War, when Fabius Licinus and Otacilius Crassus were consuls.
VII. Fluminum, quae ultra imperium Romanum fluunt, prima magnitudine esse Nilum, secunda Histrum, proxima Rhodanum, sicuti M. Varronem memini scribere.I. Omnium fluminum, quae in maria, qua imperium Romanum est, fluunt, quam Graeci ten eiso thalassan appellant, maximum esse Nilum consentitur. Proxima magnitudine esse Histrum scripsit Sallustius. II. Varro autem cum de parte orbis, quae Europa dicitur, dissereret, in tribus primis eius terrae fluminibus Rhodanum esse ponit, per quod videtur eum facere Histro aemulum.
7. Of the rivers which flow beyond the Roman empire, the first in magnitude is the Nile, the second the Ister, next the Rhone, as I remember M. Varro to have written.1. Of all the rivers which flow into the seas where the Roman empire is, which the Greeks call ten eiso thalassan, it is agreed that the greatest is the Nile. Next in magnitude is the Ister, wrote Sallust. 2. But Varro, when he was discoursing about the part of the orb which is called Europe, places the Rhone among the three foremost rivers of that land, whereby he seems to make it an emulous rival to the Ister.
VIII. Inter ignominias militares, quibus milites coercebantur, fuisse sanguinis dimissionem; et quaenam esse videatur causa huiuscemodi castigationis.I. Fuit haec quoque antiquitus militaris animadversio iubere ignominiae causa militi venam solvi et sanguinem dimitti. II. Cuius rei ratio in litteris veteribus, quas equidem invenire potui, non exstat; sed opinor factum hoc primitus in militibus stupentis animi et a naturali habitu declinatis, ut non tam poena quam medicina videretur. III.
8. Among military ignominies, by which soldiers were coerced, was the letting of blood; and what the cause of a chastisement of this kind seems to be.1. There was also of old this military animadversion: to order, for the sake of ignominy, that a soldier’s vein be opened and that blood be let. 2. The rationale of this practice, in ancient writings which I for my part was able to find, does not exist; but I suppose this was done primarily in soldiers of a stupefied mind and turned aside from their natural habit, so that it might seem not so much a punishment as a medicine. 3.
IX. Quibus modis quoque habitu acies Romana instrui solita sit; quaeque earum instructionum sint vocabula.I. Vocabula sunt militaria, quibus instructa certo modo acies appellari solet: "frons", "subsidia", "cuneus", "orbis", "globus", "forfices", "serra", "alae", "turres". II. Haec et quaedam item alia invenire est in libris eorum, qui de militari disciplina scripserunt. III. Tralata autem sunt ab ipsis rebus, quae ita proprie nominantur, earumque rerum in acie instruenda sui cuiusque vocabuli imagines ostenduntur.
9. By what methods and also in what configuration the Roman battle-line used to be arrayed; and what the names of those formations are.I. There are military vocables by which a battle-line, arranged in a certain way, is accustomed to be called: "frons", "subsidia", "cuneus", "orbis", "globus", "forfices", "serra", "alae", "turres". II. These and likewise certain other things are to be found in the books of those who have written about military discipline. III. Moreover, they have been transferred from the things themselves which are so properly named, and in the arranging of the battle-line the images of each respective vocable are displayed.
X. Quae eius rei causa sit, quod et Graeci veteres et Romani anulum in eo digito gestaverint, qui est in manu sinistra minimo proximus.I. Veteres Graecos anulum habuisse in digito accipimus sinistrae manus, qui minimo est proximus. Romanos quoque homines aiunt sic plerumque anulis usitatos. II. Causam esse huius rei Apion in libris Aegyptiacis hanc dicit, quod insectis apertisque humanis corporibus, ut mos in Aegypto fuit, quas Graeci anatomas appellant, repertum est nervum quendam tenuissimum ab eo uno digito, de quo diximus, ad cor hominis pergere ac pervenire; propterea non inscitum visum esse eum potissimum digitum tali honore decorandum, qui continens et quasi conexus esse cum principatu cordis videretur.
10. What the cause of this matter is, that both the ancient Greeks and the Romans wore a ring on that digit which is on the left hand next to the little finger.1. We learn that the ancient Greeks had a ring on the digit of the left hand which is nearest to the little finger. They say that Roman men also for the most part were accustomed to use rings thus. 2. Apion, in the Egyptian books, says the cause of this matter is this: because, when human bodies were cut up and opened, as was the custom in Egypt—what the Greeks call anatomai—there was found a very slender nerve proceeding from that one digit of which we spoke to the heart of a human being and arriving there; therefore it did not seem unwise that that digit above all should be adorned with such an honor, which seemed to be continuous with, and as it were connected to, the primacy of the heart.
XI. Verbum "mature" quid significet quaeque vocis eius ratio sit; et quod eo verbo volgus hominum inproprie utatur; atque inibi, quod "praecox" declinatum "praecocis" faciat, non "praecoquis". I. "Mature" nunc significat "propere" et "cito" contra ipsius verbi sententiam; aliud enim est "mature", quam dicitur. II. Propterea P. Nigidius, homo in omnium bonarum artium disciplinis egregius: "mature" inquit "est quod neque citius est neque serius, sed medium quiddam et temperatum est." III. Bene atque proprie Nigidius.
11. What the word "mature" signifies and what the rationale of that word is; and that the common crowd uses that word improperly; and therein, that "praecox" when declined makes "praecocis," not "praecoquis". I. "Mature" now signifies "promptly" and "quickly" contrary to the meaning of the word itself; for "mature" is something other than as it is said. II. Therefore P. Nigidius, a man outstanding in the disciplines of all the good arts, says: "mature is that which is neither earlier nor later, but is a kind of mean and is tempered." III. Nigidius spoke well and properly.
For both in crops and in fruits “matura” are said of those which are neither raw and unripe nor fallen and overripe, but grown to their time and ripened. IV. Since, however, that which was not sluggishly being done used to be said to be done “mature,” the signification of the word has advanced very far, and now not what is done not more slowly, but what is done more hastily is said to be done “mature,” since those things which have been hurried beyond the measure of their own time are more truly called “inmatura.” V. But that Nigidian balance of the thing and of the word the deified Augustus expressed most elegantly with two Greek words.
For they say that he was accustomed both to say in conversations and to write in letters: speude bradeos, by which he was warning that, for doing a thing, both the celerity of industry and the tardity of diligence should at the same time be applied, from which two contraries maturity is made. 6. Vergil also, if anyone pay attention, most skillfully separated those two words "properare" and "maturare" as if plainly contraries in these verses: cold rain, whenever it keeps the farmer indoors, many things, which soon under a clear sky would have to be hastened, it is given to mature. 7.
He separated those two words most elegantly; for in the preparation of agricultural business during rainy storms, since there is leisure, it can be “matured,” during clear skies, since the time is pressing, it is necessary to “hurry.” 8. But when it must be signified that something has been done more under compulsion and more hastily, then it is more correct to say that it was done “prematurely” rather than “maturely,” just as Afranius said in a togata, which bears the name Titulus: you seek dominion, madman, prematurely precocious, 9. in which verse it is to be observed that he says “praecocem,” not “praecoquem”; for its nominative case is not “praecoquis,” but “praecox.”
XII. De portentis fabularum, quae Plinius Secundus indignissime in Democritum philosophum confert; ibidem de simulacro volucri columbae.I. Librum esse Democriti, nobilissimi philosophorum, de vi et natura chamaeleontis eumque se legisse Plinius Secundus in naturalis historiae vicesimo octavo refert multaque vana atque intoleranda auribus deinde quasi a Democrito scripta tradit, ex quibus pauca haec inviti meminimus, quia pertaesum est: II. accipitrem avium rapidissimum a chamaeleonte humi reptante, si eum forte supervolet, detrahi et cadere vi quadam in terram ceterisque avibus laniandum sponte sua obicere sese et dedere. III. Item aliud ultra humanam fidem: caput et collum chamaeleontis si uratur ligno, quod appellatur "robur", imbres et tonitrus fieri derepente, idque ipsum usu venire, si iecur eiusdem animalis in summis tegulis uratur.
12. On the portents of fables, which Pliny the Elder most outrageously ascribes to the philosopher Democritus; in the same place, on the winged image of a dove.1. Pliny the Elder, in Natural History 28, reports that there is a book by Democritus, most noble of the philosophers, on the power and nature of the chameleon, and that he himself read it; and then he transmits many things vain and intolerable to the ears, as though written by Democritus, of which few we remember unwillingly, because we are wearied. 2. That the hawk, swiftest of birds, by a chameleon creeping on the ground—if by chance it flies above it—is dragged down and falls by a certain force to the earth, and of its own accord throws and surrenders itself to be torn by the other birds. 3. Likewise another thing beyond human credence: if the head and neck of a chameleon are burned with the wood which is called “robur,” rains and thunder arise forthwith; and this same comes to pass if the liver of the same animal is burned upon the topmost tiles.
4. Likewise another thing, which, by Hercules, I doubted whether I should set down, - so great is its laughable vanity - except that I have plainly set it down for this reason: that it was proper for us to say what we judge about the fallacious allurement of admirations of this sort, by which for the most part minds of the greatest cleverness are captured and slip away to ruin, and especially those which are more desirous of learning. 5. But I return to Pliny. He says that the left foot of the chameleon is roasted with iron heated from the fire together with an herb, which is called by the same name chameleon, and that both are soaked in unguent and bound together in the manner of a pastille and put into a wooden vessel, and that the one who carries that vessel, even if he move about openly in the midst, can be seen by no one.
VI. With these portents and prestiges written by Pliny the Second, I think it not worthy of the name of Democritus; VII. or what of that other thing, which the same Pliny in the tenth book asserts that Democritus wrote: that there are certain birds with fixed vocables, and from the confused blood of those birds a serpent is engendered; if anyone should eat it, he will interpret the tongues of birds and their colloquies. VIII.
Many things, moreover, seem to have been contrived by those badly ingenious men of this sort and given into the name of Democritus, using the refuge of his nobility and authority. 9. But that which is handed down to have been devised and made by Archytas the Pythagorean ought to seem no less admirable, nor yet equally vain. For both very many of the noble Greeks and the philosopher Favorinus, most exhaustive in following out ancient memorials, wrote most emphatically that a simulacrum of a dove out of wood, made by Archytas by a certain method and mechanical discipline, flew; for it was, of course, suspended by counterpoises and set in motion by an aura of breath enclosed and hidden.
X. By Hercules, on a matter so abhorrent to belief, I am pleased to set down the very words of Favorinus: Archytas the Tarentine, being among other things also a mechanician, made a wooden pigeon that flew; whenever it sat down, it no longer got up. For up to that point ...
XIII. "Cum partim hominum" qua ratione veteres dixerint.I. "Partim hominum venerunt" plerumque dicitur, quod significat "pars hominum venit", id est quidam homines. Nam "partim" hoc in loco adverbium est neque in casus inclinatur, sicuti "cum partim hominum" dici potest, id est cum quibusdam hominibus et quasi cum quadam parte hominum. II. M. Cato in oratione de re Floria ita scripsit: "Ibi pro scorto fuit, in cubiculum subrectitavit e convivio, cum partim illorum iam saepe ad eundem modum erat." III.
13. "‘Cum partim hominum,’ by what reasoning the ancients said it."1. "‘Partim hominum venerunt’ is most often said, which signifies ‘pars hominum venit,’ that is, certain men. For ‘partim’ in this place is an adverb and is not declined into cases, just as ‘cum partim hominum’ can be said, that is, with certain men and, as it were, with a certain part of men." 2. M. Cato in the speech on the Floria affair wrote thus: "There he served as a harlot; he sneaked up into the bedroom from the banquet, when some of them had already often been after the same fashion." 3.
The more unskilled, however, read “cum parti,” as though it had been declined like a vocable, not spoken as it were like an adverb. 4. But Q. Claudius in the 21st Annal used this figure a little more unconventionally thus: “For, with part of the forces of young men, pleasing to himself.” And likewise in Claudius’s 23rd Annal the following words are: “But that on that account I have done [this], because whether I should say that it happened by the negligence of part of the magistracy or by avarice or by the calamity of the Roman people, I do not know.”
XIV. "Iniuria mihi factum itur" quali verborum ordine Cato dixerit.I. Audio "illi iniuriam factum iri", audio "contumeliam dictum iri" vulgo quoque ita dici, vulgo et ist esse verborum figuram iam in medio loquendi usu, idcircoque exemplis supersedeo. II. Sed "contumelia illi" vel "iniuria factum itur" paulo est remotius, exemplum igitur ponemus. III.
14. "An injury is being done to me," in what order of words Cato said it.1. I hear "that an injury will be done to him," I hear "that contumely will be said," commonly said thus; and commonly this figure of words is now in the very midst of everyday usage, and therefore I refrain from examples. 2. But "with contumely to him" or "an injury is being done" is a little more out-of-the-way; therefore we will set an example. 3.
M. Cato for himself against C. Cassius: "And so it has come about, Quirites, that in this contumely, which through this fellow’s petulance is being done to me, by my faith I pity the Republic as well, Quirites." 4. And just as "contumeliam factum iri" signifies that there is a going to the doing of contumely, that is, that effort is being given in order that contumely be done, so "contumelia mihi factum itur," with only the case altered, says the same.
XV. De flaminis Dialis deque flaminicae caerimoniis; verbaque ex edicto praetoris apposita, quibus dicit non coacturum se ad iurandum neque virgines Vestae neque Dialem.I. Caerimoniae impositae flamini Diali multae, item castus multiplices, quos in libris, qui da sacerdotibus publicis compositi sunt, item in Fabii Pictoris librorum primo scriptos legimus. II. Vnde haec ferme sunt, quae commeminimus: III. Equo Dialem flaminem vehi religio est; IV. item religio est classem procinctam extra pomerium, id est exercitum armatum, videre; idcirco rarenter flamen Dialis creatus consul est, cum bella consulibus mandabantur; V. item iurare Dialem fas numquam est; VI. item anulo uti nisi pervio cassoque fas non est.
15. On the ceremonies of the Dialis flamen and of the flaminica; and words appended from the edict of the praetor, in which he says that he will not compel to swear either the virgins of Vesta or the Dialis.1. Many ceremonies have been imposed upon the Dialis flamen, likewise multiple chastities, which we read as written in the books that have been composed about the public priests, and likewise in the first book of the works of Fabius Pictor. 2. Whence these are, in sum, the things which we recall: 3. It is a religious scruple for the Dialis flamen to be carried on a horse; 4. likewise it is a religious scruple to see a battle-ready force outside the pomerium, that is, an armed army; therefore the Dialis flamen, once created, is rarely consul, since wars were entrusted to the consuls; 5. likewise it is never right for the Dialis to swear an oath; 6. likewise it is not right to use a ring, except one pervious and hollow.
7. Fire from the "flaminia," that is, the house of the flamen Dialis, may not lawfully be carried out unless it is sacred. 8.
If a man in bonds enters his house, it is necessary that he be loosed, and that the chains be drawn up through the impluvium onto the tiles and from there let down outside into the street. 9. He has no knot in the apex, nor in the girdle, nor in any other part. 10. If anyone is being led off for beating, if he as a suppliant has prostrated himself at his feet, for him to be beaten on that day is a piacular offense.
11. No one but a free man cuts the hair of the Dialis (Flamen of Jupiter). 12. It is the custom for the Dialis neither to touch nor to name a she-goat, uncooked meat, ivy, and the bean.
13. He does not go beneath vine-shoots stretched out on high. 14.
Pedes lecti, in quo cubat, ought to be smeared around with fine mud, and he does not lie apart from that bed for a continuous three nights, nor is it lawful for another to lie in that bed, nor ... At the fulcrum of that bed there ought to be a capsule with strue and fertum. 15. The clippings of the Dialis’s nails and hair are covered with earth beneath a lucky tree. 16.
20. He does not take off his inner tunic except in covered places, lest under the sky, as if under the eyes of Jove, he be naked. 21. At a banquet, above the Flamen Dialis, unless the sacrificial king, no one else reclines.
22. If he has lost his wife, he steps down from the flaminate. 23.
others, they say, she observes separately, as for instance, that she is covered with a “venenatum,” 28. and that in the rica she has a little shoot from a felicitous tree, 29. and that to ascend stairs, unless those which are called Greek, is for her religiously taboo beyond three steps, and also, 30.
when she goes to the Argei, because she neither combs her head nor combs out her hair. 31. I have transcribed the words of the praetor from the perpetual edict about the flamen Dialis and about the priestess of Vesta: "I will not compel the Vestal priestess and the flamen Dialis to swear in all my jurisdiction." 32.
XVI. Quos errores Iulius Hyginus in sexto Vergilii animadverterit in Romana historia erratos.I. Reprehendit Hyginus Vergilium correcturumque eum fuisse existimat, quod in libro sexto scriptum est. II. Palinurus est aput inferos petens ab Aenea, ut suum corpus requirendum et sepeliendum curet. Is hoc dicit: eripe me his, invicte, malis, aut tu mihi terram inice, namque potes, portusque require Velinos.
16. Which errors Julius Hyginus observed in the sixth book of Vergil to have erred in Roman history.1. Hyginus reproves Vergil and thinks that he would have corrected what is written in book six. 2. Palinurus is among the infernal regions, asking from Aeneas that he take care that his body be sought out and buried. He says this: “snatch me from these evils, Unconquered One, or do you cast earth upon me, for you can, and seek out the Velinian harbors.”
3. "In what way," he says, "could either Palinurus have known and name the Veline ports, or could Aeneas find the place from that name, when Velia, the town from which he said the harbor that is in that place is called Veline, was founded in the Lucanian countryside and was called by that name, with Servius Tullius reigning at Rome, more than 600 years after Aeneas came into Italy? 4. For those who," he says, "were driven from the land of Phocis by Harpalus, the prefect of King Cyrus, some founded Velia, and part founded Massilia.
5. Therefore, most ignorantly he asks that Aeneas seek the Velinian port, since that name at that time existed nowhere in the world. 6. “Nor,” he says, “ought that to seem similar, which is in the first song: to Italy, a fugitive by fate, and to the Lavinian shores he came,” 7. “and likewise in the sixth book: and lightly at last he stood upon the Chalcidian citadel,” 8.
since it is usually conceded to the poet himself to say certain things by way of a prolepsis of history from his own persona—things which, once done, he himself could afterward know—just as Vergil knew about the town Lavinium and about the Chalcidian colony. 9. But how could Palinurus," he says, "know those things which were done after 600 years, unless someone thinks that he divined among the infernal regions, just as the souls of the defunct are wont? 10. But even if you take it so—although it is not so said—Aeneas, however, who was not divining, how could he seek the Velinian port, for which at that time, as we have said, there was no name anywhere?" 11. Likewise he also censures this in the same book and thinks that Vergil would have corrected it, had not death forestalled him.
12. "For when," he says, "he had named Theseus among those who had gone down to the infernal regions and had returned, and had said: what of Theseus, great— what should I recall Alcides? and my lineage is from highest Jove, afterward, however, he adds: he sits and will sit forever, unhappy Theseus.
13. “But how,” he says, “can it be that he sits eternally among the infernal ones, he whom above he names among those who have descended thither and from there again have escaped, especially since such is the fable about Theseus, and that Hercules wrenched him from the rock and led him out into the light to the gods above?” 14. Likewise he says that in these verses Vergil erred: he will root out Argos and Agamemnonian Mycenae, and the Aeacid himself, the stock of war-potent Achilles, avenging the ancestors of Troy, the inviolate temples of Minerva.
15. "He has confounded," he says, "both different persons and times. For neither at the same time nor by the same men was war waged with the Achaeans and with Pyrrhus. 16.
18. "Therefore," he says, "the middle verse can be removed, which was inopportunely inserted about Pyrrhus, which Vergil, beyond doubt, was going," he says, "to remove."
XVII. Quam ob causam et quali modo Democritus philosophus luminibus oculorum sese privaverit; et super ea re versus Laberii pure admodum et venuste facti.I. Democritum philosophum in monumentis historiae Graecae scriptum est, virum praeter alios venerandum auctoritateque antiqua praeditum, luminibus oculorum sua sponte se privasse, quia existimaret cogitationes commentationesque animi sui in contemplandis naturae rationibus vegetiores et exactiores fore, si eas videndi inlecebris et oculorum impedimentis liberasset. II. Id factum eius modumque ipsum, quo caecitatem facile sollertia subtilissima conscivit, Laberius poeta in mimo, quem scripsit Restionem, versibus quidem satis munde atque graphice factis descripsit, sed causam voluntariae caecitatis finxit aliam vertitque in eam rem, quam tum agebat, non inconcinniter. III.
17. For what cause and in what manner the philosopher Democritus deprived himself of the lights of his eyes; and on that matter the verses of Laberius made very purely and charmingly.1. It is written in the monuments of Greek history that the philosopher Democritus, a man to be venerated beyond others and endowed with ancient authority, of his own accord deprived himself of the lights of his eyes, because he thought that the thoughts and commentations of his mind, in contemplating the rationes of nature, would be more vigorous and more exact, if he had freed them from the allurements of seeing and the impediments of the eyes. 2. That deed of his and the very method by which he procured blindness easily by a most subtle cleverness, the poet Laberius, in the mime which he wrote The Rope-maker (Restionem), described in verses made quite neatly and graphically; but he fashioned another cause of the voluntary blindness and turned it to the matter which he was then producing, not inelegantly. 3.
For the persona, which says this with Laberius, is of a rich, avaricious, and sparing man, deploring the very great expense and the asotia of a young man. 4. The Laberian verses are: Democritus the Abderite, a physical philosopher, set up a shield against the rising of Hyperion, so that he might gouge out his eyes by brazen splendor. Thus by the sun’s rays he gouged the keen edge of his eyesight, so that he might not see that it was well for evil citizens.
XVIII. Historia de Artemisia; deque eo certamine, quod aput Mausoli sepulcrum a scriptoribus inclutis decertatum est.I. Artemisia Mausolum virum amasse fertur supra omnis amorum fabulas ultraque affectionis humanae fidem. II. Mausolus autem fuit, ut M. Tullius ait, rex terrae Cariae, ut quidam Graecarum historiarum scriptores, provinciae praefectus, quem satrapen Graeci vocant. III.
18. History concerning Artemisia; and about that contest which at Mausolus’s tomb was contested by illustrious writers.1. Artemisia is reported to have loved her husband Mausolus beyond all fables of loves and beyond the credence of human affection. 2. Mausolus, however, was, as M. Tullius says, king of the land of Caria; as certain writers of Greek histories [say], a prefect of a province, whom the Greeks call a satrap. 3.
This Mausolus, when, his fate fulfilled, he was buried with a magnificent funeral amid the lamentations and the hands of his wife, Artemisia, the wife blazing with grief and longing for her husband, is said to have mixed his bones and ashes with perfumes and, having crushed them into the appearance of powder, to have put them into water and drunk them, and she is said to have performed many other tokens of violent love. 4. She also undertook, with a huge impetus of work, that most-remembered sepulcher for preserving her husband’s memory, deemed worthy to be counted among the seven spectacles of all the lands. 5. When Artemisia dedicated that monument to the sacred divine Manes of Mausolus, she makes an agon, that is, a contest for speaking his praises, and sets exceedingly ample prizes of money and of other good things.
6. To vie for those praises there are said to have come men of noble rank and of preeminent talent and tongue—Theopompus, Theodectes, Naucrates; there are even those who have consigned to memory that Isocrates himself competed with them. But in that contest Theopompus was adjudged the victor. He was a disciple of Isocrates.
7. There exists even now a tragedy of Theodectes, which is entitled Mausolus; in which Hyginus, in the Exempla, reports that he pleased more than in prose.
XIX. Non purgari neque levari peccatum, cum praetenditur peccatorum, quae alii quoque peccaverunt, similitudo; atque inibi verba ex oratione super ea re Demosthenis.I. Incessebat quempiam Taurus philosophus severa atque vehementi obiurgatione adulescentem a rhetoribus et a facundiae studio ad disciplinas philosophiae transgressum, quod factum quiddam esse ab eo diceret inhoneste et improbe. At ille non ibat infitias fecisse, sed id solitum esse fieri defendebat turpitudinemque delicti exemplorum usu et consuetudinis venia deprecabatur. II. Atque ibi Taurus isto ipso defensionis genere inritatior: "homo" inquit "stulte et nihili, si te a malis exemplis auctoritates et rationes philosophiae non abducunt, ne illius quidem Demosthenis vestri sententiae tibi in mentem venit, quae, quia lepidis et venustis vocum modis vincta est, quasi quaedam cantilena rhetorica facilius adhaerere memoriae tuae potuit?
CHAPTER 19. That a sin is neither purged nor lightened when the likeness of sins is put forward which others also have committed; and therein words from a speech by Demosthenes on that matter.1. Taurus the philosopher was assailing a certain young man with severe and vehement upbraiding—a youth who had crossed over from the rhetoricians and the pursuit of eloquence to the disciplines of philosophy—because he said that something had been done by him dishonorably and wickedly. But the young man did not go to deny that he had done it; rather, he defended it as something that is wont to be done, and he sought to deprecate the disgrace of the offense by the usage of examples and the indulgence of custom. 2. And thereupon Taurus, made more irate by that very kind of defense: “You man,” he says, “foolish and worthless, if the authorities and the reasons of philosophy do not draw you away from evil examples, does not even that sentence of your Demosthenes come into your mind, which, because it is bound with charming and graceful modes of words, like a certain rhetorical little-chant, could more easily stick to your memory?”
III. "For if," he says, "I am not mistaken—which indeed I read in earliest boyhood—these are the words of Demosthenes against the man who, as you now do, was going about to have his sin exempted and purged by others’ sins: 'But you say of me: I have often seen others do this; and that it is customary for things to be done thus. For not because something was ever done contrary to the laws, and you imitated this, would you therefore be justly acquitted, but much rather would you be convicted. For just as, if someone had been caught, you would not have written these things, so, if you now pay the penalty, another will not write them.'" IV. Thus Taurus, employing every kind of suasion and admonition, led his followers to the principles of a good and inculpable indoles.
XX. Quid sit "rogatio", quid "lex", quid "plebisscitum", quid "privilegium"; et quantum ista omnia differant.I. Quaeri audio, quid "lex" sit, quid "plebisscitum", quid "rogatio", quid "privilegium". II. Ateius Capito, publici privatique iuris peritissimus, quid "lex" esset, hisce verbis definivit: "Lex" inquit "est generale iussum populi aut plebis rogante magistratu." III. Ea definitio si probe facta est, neque de imperio Cn. Pompei neque de reditu M. Ciceronis neque de caede P. Clodi quaestio neque alia id genus populi plebisve iussa "leges" vocari possunt. IV. Non sunt enim generalia iussa neque de universis civibus, sed de singulis concepta; quocirca "privilegia" potius vocari debent, quia veteres "priva" dixerunt, quae nos "singula" dicimus.
XX. What “rogation” is, what “law,” what “plebiscite,” what “privilege”; and how far all these differ.I. I hear it asked what “law” is, what “plebiscite,” what “rogation,” what “privilege.” II. Ateius Capito, most skilled in public and private law, defined what “law” was in these words: “A ‘law,’” he says, “is a general command of the people or of the plebs with a magistrate proposing (it).” III. If that definition is properly made, then neither the question concerning the imperium of Cn. Pompeius nor concerning the return of M. Cicero nor the inquest concerning the murder of P. Clodius nor other commands of that kind of the people or plebs can be called “laws.” IV. For they are not general commands nor about all the citizens, but framed about individuals; wherefore they ought rather to be called “privileges,” because the ancients said “priva” for what we call “singula.”
By which word Lucilius in the first book of the Satires made use: tuna bellies I will give as private portions to the newcomers, and heads and acarnae. 5. "The plebs," moreover, Capito in that same definition separated off from the people, since in the people every part of the civitas and all its orders are contained, but the "plebes" is said to be that in which the patrician clans of citizens are not present. 6. "A plebiscite, therefore, is according to that Capito a law which the plebes, not the people, accepts.
7. But of this whole matter and of the law, whether when the people or when the plebs is asked, whether it pertains to individuals or to all in general, the very head and origin and, as it were, the fount is the "proposal." 8.
For all those terms are reckoned and contained under the principal genus and name of "rogation"; for unless the People or the Plebs be consulted, no order of the plebs or of the people can be made. 9. But although these things are so, yet in ancient writings we have observed that there is not a great difference of those terms. For both plebiscites and privileges they called by the conventional name "laws," and likewise they called all these things, with a confused and indistinct term, "rogations."
10. Sallust, too, most retentive of proprieties in words, conceded to custom and called a “law” the privilege which was being proposed about the return of Gnaeus Pompeius. The words from his second History are these: “For Gaius Herennius, tribune of the plebs, by prearrangement had prohibited Sulla the consul as he was proposing a law concerning his return.”
XXI. Quam ob causam M. Cicero his omnino verbis "novissime" et "novissimus" observantissime vitarit.I. Non paucis verbis, quorum frequens usus est nunc et fuit, M. Ciceronem noluisse uti manifestum est, quod ea non probaret; II. velut est et "novissimus" et "novissime". Nam cum et M. Cato et Sallustius et alii quoque aetatis eiusdem verbo isto promisce usitati sint, multi etiam non indocti viri in libris id suis scripserint, abstinuisse eo tamen tamquam non Latino videtur, quoniam, qui doctissimus eorum temporum fuerat, L. Aelius Stilo ut novo et inprobo verbo uti vitaverat. Propterea, quid M. quoque Varro de ista voce existimaverit, verbis ipsius Varronis ex libro de lingua Latina ad Ciceronem sexto demonstrandum putavi. "Quod "extremum" inquit "dicebatur, dici "novissimum" coeptum vulgo, quod mea memoria ut Aelius, sic senes alii, quod nimium novum verbum esset, vitabant; cuius origo, ut a "vetere" "vetustius" ac "veterrimum" sic a "novo" declinatum "novius" et "novissimum"."
21. For what cause M. Cicero most scrupulously avoided altogether the words “novissime” and “novissimus”.1. It is manifest that M. Cicero was unwilling to use not a few words, whose frequent use now is and formerly was, because he did not approve them; 2. for instance, both “novissimus” and “novissime”. For although both M. Cato and Sallust and others too of the same age used that word indiscriminately, and many men not unlearned also wrote it in their books, nevertheless he seems to have abstained from it as though not Latin, since L. Aelius Stilo, who had been the most learned of those times, had avoided using it as a new and improper word. Therefore, what M. Varro also judged about that term, I thought should be shown in Varro’s own words from the sixth book of On the Latin Language to Cicero. “What had been said ‘last’,” he says, “began commonly to be said ‘novissimum’, which within my memory, both Aelius and other elders avoided, because it was an excessively new word; whose origin, as from ‘vetus’ come ‘vetustius’ and ‘veterrimum’, so from ‘novus’ was declined ‘novius’ and ‘novissimum’.”
XXII. Locus exemptus ex Platonis libro, qui inscribitur Gorgias, de falsae philosophiae probris, quibus philosophos temere incessunt, qui emolumenta verae philosophiae ignorant.I. Plato, veritatis homo amicissimus eiusque omnibus exhibendae promptissimus, quae omnino dici possint in desides istos ignavosque, qui obtentu philosophiae nominis inutile otium et linguae vitaeque tenebras secuntur, ex persona quidem non gravi neque idonea, vere tamen ingenueque dixit. II. Nam etsi Callicles, quem dicere haec facit, verae philosophiae ignarus inhonesta indignaque in philosophos confert, proinde tamen accipienda sunt, quae dicuntur, ut nos sensim moneri intellegamus, ne ipsi quoque culpationes huiuscemodi mereamur neve inerti inanique desidia cultum et studium philosophiae mentiamur. III.
22. A passage taken from Plato’s book, which is entitled Gorgias, about the reproaches of false philosophy, with which they rashly assail philosophers who are ignorant of the emoluments of true philosophy.1. Plato, a man most friendly to truth and most prompt to exhibit it to all, has said—albeit from a character not weighty nor suitable, yet truly and ingenuously—whatever can altogether be said against those slothful and cowardly men who, under the pretext of the name of philosophy, pursue useless idleness and the darkness of tongue and of life. 2. For although Callicles, whom he makes utter these things, ignorant of true philosophy, heaps upon philosophers dishonorable and unworthy charges, nevertheless what is said must be received in such a way that we understand ourselves to be gently warned, lest we too deserve censures of this kind and, by inert and inane sloth, feign the cultivation and study of philosophy. 3.
I wrote the very words of Plato on this matter from the book which is called Gorgias, since it was not my plan to translate them, since Latin speech can by no means aspire to their proper nuances, and much less indeed my own: IV. For philosophy, O Socrates, is a graceful thing, if someone touches upon it moderately in his youth; but if one spends time in it beyond what is needful, it is a corruption of men. V. For even if you are very well-endowed by nature and philosophize beyond the proper age, it is necessary that you have become unskilled in all the things in which the man who is going to be noble-and-good and of good repute ought to be skilled. VI. For they become unskilled in the laws of the city and in the discourses which one must use in dealing with people in contracts, both private and public, and in the pleasures and desires of human beings; and, taken together, they become altogether unskilled in customs.
7. Whenever therefore they come into some private or political practice, they become laughable, just as indeed, I suppose, the political men, [8.-9.] whenever in turn they come into your exercises and discourses, are laughable.. 10. A little later he adds these things: But, I suppose, the most correct is to share in both. Of philosophy, in so far as it is fine to partake for the sake of paideia, and it is not shameful for a youth to philosophize; but whenever a man is already older and still philosophizes, it becomes a laughable thing, 11. O Socrates, and I myself experience something very similar toward those philosophizing as toward those who lisp and play.
12. For whenever I see a child, to whom it still befits to converse thus—lisping and playing—I rejoice; and it seems to me charming, liberal, and fitting to the child’s age; 13. but whenever I hear a little boy discoursing clearly, it seems to me to be something somewhat bitter, and it vexes my ears, and it seems to me something servile; 14.
For as to the young, when I see a lad pursuing philosophy, I admire it, and it seems to me fitting, and I reckon that man to be in a certain way free; but the one not philosophizing I deem servile, and as one who will never consider himself worthy of anything either fair or noble deed; 17. but when I see an older man still philosophizing and not disengaging, it seems to me that this man already needs a beating, O Socrates. 18.
For what I was just now saying holds for these men: even if one be very well‑natured, they become unmanly; they flee the middle places of the city and the marketplaces, in which, the poet said, men become illustrious; and, having dived down, they live the rest of life with a stripling, whispering in a corner of three or four, and never to utter anything free and [XIX-XXIII] great and adequate. XXIV. These things Plato, indeed under a persona, as I said, not a reputable one, yet argued with the credence of common sense and intelligence and with a certain indissimulable truth—not, to be sure, about that philosophy which is the discipline of all the virtues and which excels in public and private duties and, if nothing hinders, administers cities and the commonwealth consistently and bravely and expertly, but about that futile and puerile meditation of quibblings, promoting nothing for life either to be sustained or to be ordered, in which kind of men grow old ill‑at‑leisure, whom the vulgus thinks to be philosophers, and he too thought so, from whose persona these things are spoken.
XXIII. Verba ex oratione M. Catonis de mulierum veterum victu et moribus; atque inibi, quod fuerit ius marito in adulterio uxorem deprehensam necare.I. Qui de victu atque cultu populi Romani scripserunt, mulieres Romae atque in Latio aetatem abstemias egisse, hoc est vino semper, quod "temetum" prisca lingua appellabatur, abstinuisse dicunt, institutumque ut cognatis osculum ferrent deprehendendi causa, ut odor indicium faceret, si bibissent. II. Bibere autem solitas ferunt loream, passum, murrinam et quae id genus sapiant potu dulcia. Atque haec quidem in his, quibus dixi, libris pervulgata sunt; III.
23. Words from a speech of M. Cato on the victuals and morals of women of old; and therein, that there was a right for a husband to kill a wife caught in adultery.1. Those who have written about the victuals and culture of the Roman people say that the women at Rome and in Latium passed their lifetime abstemious, that is, that they always abstained from wine, which in the old tongue was called “temetum,” and that it was established that they should give a kiss to their kin for the sake of apprehension, so that the odor might furnish an indication, if they had drunk. 2. They report, moreover, that they were accustomed to drink lorea, passum, murrina, and, of that sort, things sweet in potation. And these points indeed are widely current in the books which I have mentioned; 3.
but Marcus Cato reports that women were not only thought so, but were also fined by a judge no less, if they had wine upon them, than if they had admitted a disgrace and adultery. 4. I have appended the words of Marcus Cato from the oration which is entitled On the Dowry, in which it is also written that husbands had the right to kill wives caught in adultery: “The husband,” he says, “when he has made a divorce, is judge to the woman in place of a censor; he has authority, as seems good, if anything has been done perversely and foully by the woman; she is mulcted if she has drunk wine; if she has done any disgrace with another man, she is condemned.” 5. Moreover, about the right of killing it is written thus: “If you had caught your wife in adultery, without trial you might kill her with impunity; she, if you committed adultery or if you were an adulterer, would not dare to touch you with a finger, nor is there a right.”
XXIV. "Diepristini", "diecrastini" et "diequarti" et "diequinti", qui elegantius locuti sint, dixisse, non ut ea nunc volgo dicuntur.I. "Die quarto" et "die quinto", quod Graeci eis tetarten kai eis pempten dicunt, ab eruditis nunc quoque dici audio, et, qui aliter dicit, pro rudi atque indocto despicitur. Sed Marci Tullii aetas ac supra eam non, opinor, ita dixerunt: "diequinte" enim et "diequinti" pro adverbio copulate dictum est et secunda in eo syllaba correpta. II. Divus etiam Augustus, linguae Latinae non nescius munditiarumque patris sui in sermonibus sectator, in epistulis plurifariam significatione ista dierum non aliter usus est.
24. "Diepristini," "diecrastini," and "diequarti" and "diequinti": those who spoke more elegantly used to say thus, not as these are now said commonly.1. "Die quarto" and "die quinto," which the Greeks say as eis tetarten kai eis pempten, I hear are even now said by the learned; and whoever says otherwise is looked down upon as rude and uneducated. But the age of Marcus Tullius and before it, I think, did not so speak: for "diequarte" indeed and "diequinti" were said in a copulated (compounded) way as an adverb, and in it the second syllable is shortened. 2. The deified Augustus also, not unknowing of the purities of the Latin tongue and a follower of his father's elegance in discourse, in his letters in many places used that designation of the days no otherwise.
3. But it will be enough, for the sake of demonstrating the perpetual custom of the ancients, to set down the solemn words of the praetor, with which, in the custom of the ancestors, he is wont to conceive the holidays, which are called the Compitalia. These words are these: "On the ninth day, for the Roman People, the Quirites, the Compitalia shall be; whenever they shall have been appointed, it is unlawful." "Dienoni" the praetor says, not "die nono". 4. Nor the praetor alone, but almost all antiquity spoke thus.
V. Behold, that verse of Pomponianus comes to mind, which is from an Atellane farce, which is inscribed Mevia: dies hic sextus, cum nihil edi: diequarte emoriar fame. VI. That passage too of Coelius from the second book of the Histories is ready at hand: "If you are willing to give me the cavalry and yourself to follow me with the rest of the army, diequinti at Rome on the Capitol I will see to it that supper is cooked for you." VII. And both the history and this word Coelius took from the Origines of M. Cato, in book 4, in which it is written thus: "Accordingly the master of horse advised the dictator of the Carthaginians: 'Send the cavalry with me to Rome; diequinti on the Capitol supper will have been cooked for you'." VIII.
I have read the last syllable of that word written now with “e,” now with “i”; for indeed how customary this was among the ancients—to use those letters (e and i) for the most part indifferently—just as they said “praefiscine” and “praefiscini,” “proclivi” and “proclive,” and likewise many other things of this kind variously: “die pristini” too was said in the same way, which signified “on the former day,” that is, earlier—the thing which in common parlance is called “pridie”—with the order of composition inverted, as it were “pristino die.” And likewise, in a similar figure, “die crastini” was said; that was “on the morrow day.” 9. The priests of the Roman people also, when they appoint for the third day, say “die perendini.” 10. But whereas most say “die pristini,” so M. Cato in the speech against Furius said “die proximi”; and “die quarto,” however, Gnaeus Matius, a man exceedingly learned, says in his mimiambs in place of what we say “nudius quartus” (“four days ago”), in these verses: recently on the fourth day, as I recall, and surely he broke at home a single water-pitcher. Therefore this will be the difference: that “die quarto” indeed we say of the past, but “diequarte” of the future.
XXV. Telorum et iaculorum gladiorumque atque inibi navium quoque vocabula, quae scripta in veterum libris reperiuntur.I. Telorum iaculorum gladiorumque vocabula, quae in historiis veteribus scripta sunt, item navigiorum genera et nomina libitum forte nobis est sedentibus in reda conquirere, ne quid aliarum ineptiarum vacantem stupentemque animum occuparet. II. Quae tum igitur suppetierant, haec sunt: hasta, pilum, phalarica, semiphalarica, soliferrea, gaesa, lancea, spari, rumices, trifaces, tragulae, frameae, mesanculae, cateiae, rumpiae, scorpii, sibones, siciles, veruta, enses, sicae, machaerae, spathae, lingulae, pugiones, clunacula. III.
25. The names of missiles and javelins and swords, and therein also the names of ships, which are found written in the books of the ancients.1. The names of missiles, javelins, and swords, which are written in ancient histories, likewise the types and names of ships, it chanced somehow to be our pleasure, as we were sitting in a reda, to gather together, lest anything of other inanities should occupy an idle and dazed mind. 2. What then at that time came to hand are these: hasta, pilum, phalarica, semiphalarica, soliferrea, gaesa, lancea, spari, rumices, trifaces, tragulae, frameae, mesanculae, cateiae, rumpiae, scorpii, sibones, siciles, veruta, enses, sicae, machaerae, spathae, lingulae, pugiones, clunacula. 3.
On "lingula," since it is less frequent, I think it should be pointed out that the ancients called a "lingula" an oblong little sword fashioned in the likeness of a tongue, of which Naevius makes mention in the tragedy Hesiona. I have appended a verse of Naevius: "allow me to seem to do the customary thing not with a tongue, but with a lingula." 4. Likewise, "rumpia" is a kind of missile of the Thracian nation, and this word is set down in Quintus Ennius’s Annals 14.
V. As for the ships, whose appellations we could then recall, these are: gauli, corbitae, caudicae, longae, hippagines, cercuri, celoces or, as the Greeks say, keletes, lembi, oriae, lenunculi, actuariae, which the Greeks call histiokopous or epaktridas, prosumiae or geseoretae or oriolae, stlattae, scaphae, pontones, vectoriae, mydia, phaseli, parones, myoparones, lintres, caupuli, camarae, placidae, cydarum, ratariae, catascopium.
XXVI. Inscite ab Asinio Pollione reprehensum Sallustium, quod transfretationem "transgressum" dixerit, et "transgressos" qui transfretassent.I. Asinio Pollioni in quadam epistula, quam ad Plancum scripsit, et quibusdam aliis C. Sallusti iniquis dignum nota visum est, quod in primo historiarum maris transitum transmissumque navibus factum "transgressum" appellavit eosque, qui fretum transmiserant, quos "transfretasse" dici solitum est, "transgressos" dixit. II. Verba ipsa Sallusti posui: "Itaque Sertorius levi praesidio relicto in Mauretania nanctus obscuram noctem aestu secundo furtim aut celeritate vitare proelium in transgressu conatus est." III. Ac deinde infra ita scripsit: "Transgressos omnis recipit mons praeceptus a Lusitanis." IV. Hoc igitur et minus proprie et aperiskeptos et nullo gravi auctore dictum aiunt.
26. Sallust ineptly censured by Asinius Pollio, because he called a crossing-by-sea “transgressum,” and “transgressi” those who had crossed the strait.1. To Asinius Pollio in a certain letter which he wrote to Plancus, and to some others unfair to Gaius Sallust, it seemed worthy of censure that in the first book of the Histories he called the passage of the sea and the conveyance effected by ships “transgressum,” and those who had sent themselves across the strait—who are customarily said to have “transfretated”—he called “transgressi.” 2. I have set down Sallust’s very words: “And so Sertorius, after leaving a light garrison in Mauretania, having found a dark night, with the tide favorable, attempted, in the crossing, to avoid battle by stealth or by speed.” 3. And then lower down he wrote thus: “A mountain, preoccupied by the Lusitanians, received all the crossers.” 4. They say, therefore, that this is both less proper and inconsiderate and said by no weighty author.
"For," he says, '"transgression" is said from "to transgress," and that very thing is named from "ingress" and from the grade of the feet.' 5. Therefore he did not think the verb "to transgress" suited either to those that fly or to those that creep or to those that sail, but to those alone who walk and measure out a journey with their feet. Therefore they deny that with a suitable writer either a "transgression" of ships can be found, or "transgression" in place of "crossing of the strait." 6. But I ask, why cannot, just as the "course" of ships is rightly said, so also "transgression," done by ships, be said? especially since the shortness of so narrow a strait, which flows between the African land and Spain, has most elegantly been defined by the word "transgression," as though a space of a few steps.
VII. But those who require authority and deny that "to ingress" or "to transgress" is said of those sailing, I wish them to answer how much they think "to ingress" differs from "to ambulate." VIII. And yet Cato in the book On Agriculture says: "An estate is to be held in such a place that both a sizable town is near and the sea or a river, where ships ambulate." IX. Moreover, that transfers of this sort have been sought after and regarded as adornments of speech, Lucretius too gives testimony with this same word.
For in the fourth book he says that the clamor is "going" through the arteries and through the throat, which is far too over-confident than that Sallustian one about ships. The verses of Lucretius are these: moreover the voice often scrapes the throat, and the clamor, advancing outward through the artery, makes things rougher. 10. Therefore Sallust, in the same book, says not only of those who were being carried by ships, but also of "skiffs" afloat, that they "advanced."
XXVII. Historia de populo Romano deque populo Poenico, quod pari propemodum vigore fuerint aemuli.I. In litteris veteribus memoria exstat, quod par quondam fuit vigor et acritudo amplitudoque populi Romani atque Poeni; II. neque inmerito aestimatum: cum aliis quidem populis de uniuscuiusque republica, cum Poenis autem de omnium terrarum imperio decertatum. III. Eius rei specimen est in illo utriusque populi verbo factum: Q. Fabius, imperator Romanus, dedit ad Carthaginienses epistulam.
27. History concerning the Roman people and concerning the Punic people, that they were rivals with almost equal vigor.1. In ancient writings there exists a record that once the vigor and keenness and amplitude of the Roman and the Punic people was equal; 2. nor has it been estimated without merit: with other peoples indeed the contest was waged about each one’s own republic, but with the Punic, however, about the empire of all the lands. 3. A specimen of this matter is in that verbal transaction of both peoples: Q. Fabius, the Roman commander, gave a letter to the Carthaginians.
There it had been written that the Roman people had sent to them a spear and a caduceus, two signs of war or peace, from which they should choose whichever they wished; and that what they had chosen they should consider that alone to have been sent. 4. The Carthaginians replied that they chose neither, but that those who had brought them could leave whichever they preferred; what they had left would count for them as the chosen. 5. But M. Varro says that not the spear itself nor the caduceus itself were sent, but two tesserae, on one of which a likeness of the caduceus, on the other of the spear had been engraved.
XXVIII. De aetatium finibus pueritiae, iuventae, senectae, ex Tuberonis historia sumptum.I. Tubero in historiarum primo scripsit Servium Tullium regem, populi Romani cum illas quinque classes seniorum et iuniorum census faciendi gratia institueret, pueros esse existimasse, qui minores essent annis septem decem, atque inde ab anno septimo decimo, quo idoneos iam esse reipublicae arbitraretur, milites scripsisse, eosque ad annum quadragesimum sextum "iuniores" supraque eum annum "seniores" appellasse. II. Eam rem propterea notavi, ut discrimina, quae fuerint iudicio moribusque maiorum pueritiae, iuventae, senectae, ex ista censione Servi Tulli, prudentissimi regis, noscerentur.
28. On the boundaries of the ages—childhood, youth, old age—taken from Tubero’s History.1. Tubero in the first book of the Histories wrote that King Servius Tullius, when he established those five classes of seniors and juniors for the sake of conducting the census of the Roman people, considered “boys” to be those who were less than 17 years old; and from the 17th year, at which he judged them already suitable for the commonwealth, he enrolled them as soldiers, and he called them “juniors” up to the 46th year, and above that year “seniors.” 2. I noted this matter for this reason: that the distinctions which obtained, in the judgment and customs of the ancestors, for childhood, youth, and old age, might be known from that census of Servius Tullius, a most prudent king.
XXIX. Quod particula "atque" non complexiva tantum sit, sed vim habeat plusculam variamque.I. "Atque" particula a grammaticis quidem coniunctio esse dicitur conexiva. Et plerumque sane coniungit verba et conectit; sed interdum alias quasdam potestates habet non satis notas nisi in veterum litterarum tractatione atque cura exercitis. II. Nam et pro adverbio valet, cum dicimus "aliter ego feci atque tu", significat enim "aliter quam tu", et, si gemina fiat, auget incenditque rem de qua agitur, ut animadvertimus in Q. Enni annalibus, nisi memoria in hoc versu labor: atque atque accedit muros Romana iuventus; III.
29. That the particle "atque" is not only connective, but has a somewhat greater and varied force.1. The particle "atque" is indeed said by grammarians to be a connective conjunction. And for the most part, to be sure, it conjoins words and connects; but sometimes it has certain other powers not sufficiently known except to those exercised in the handling and care of ancient literature. 2. For it also has the value of an adverb, when we say "aliter ego feci atque tu"—for it signifies "otherwise than you"; and, if it be doubled, it augments and kindles the matter in hand, as we observe in the Annals of Q. Ennius, unless my memory falters in this verse: atque atque accedit muros Romana iuventus; 3.
to which signification the contrary is what likewise was said by the ancients, “deque.” IV. And moreover it is also used for another adverb, that is “straightway,” because in these verses of Vergil ... it is thought that that particle has been placed obscurely and inconsequently: thus all things by the Fates rush into worse and, having slipped back, are borne backward, not otherwise than one who against the adverse stream scarcely forces a skiff with his oars, if by chance he has relaxed his arms, and straightway the sloping channel with the river snatches him headlong.