Attic Nights

However, that phrase si aliter non potest does not seem at variance with the meaning of the word under discussion. But yet to condense so many words into a very few letters shows a kind of misplaced subtlety. There was also another man, devoted to books and letters, who said that saltem seemed to him to be formed by the syncope of a medial u, saying that what we call saltem was originally salute. For when some other things have been requested and refused, then, said he, we are accustomed, as if about to make a final request which ought by no means to be denied, to say ' this at least (saltem) ought to be done or given,' as if at last seeking safety salutem, which it is surely most just to grant and to obtain. But this also, though ingeniously contrived, seems too far-fetched. I thought therefore that further investigation was necessary.

That Sisenna in his Histories has frequently used adverbs of the type of celatim, vellicatim and saltuatim.

WHILE diligently reading the History of Sisenna, I observed that he used adverbs of this form: cursim (rapidly), properatim (hastily), celatim, vellicatim, salluatim. Of these the first two, since they are more common, do not require illustration. The rest are to be found in the sixth book of the Histories in these passages: He arranged his men in ambush as secretly (celatim) as he could. Also in another place: I have written of the events of one summer in Asia and Greece in a consecutive form, that I might not by writing piecemeal or in disconnected fashion (vellicatim aut saltuatim) confuse the minds of my readers.

A somewhat careful inquiry into these words of Marcus Tullius in his first Oration against Antony: But many things seem to threaten contrary even to nature and to fate; and a discussion of the question whether the words fate and nature mean the same thing or something different.

MARCUS CICERO, in his first Oration against Antony, has left us these words: I hastened then to follow him whom those present did not follow; not that I might be of any service, for I had no hope of that nor could I promise it, but in order that if anything to which human nature is liable should happen to me (and many things seem to threaten contrary even to nature and contrary to fate) I might leave what I have said to-day as a witness to my country of my constant devotion to its interests. Cicero says contrary to nature and contrary to fate. Whether he intended both words, fate and nature, to have the same meaning and has used two words to designate one thing, or whether he so divided and separated them that nature seems to bring some casualties and fate others, I think ought to be investigated; and this question ought especially to be asked—how it is that he has said that many things to which humanity is liable can happen contrary to fate, when the plan and order and a kind of unconquerable necessity of fate are so ordained that all things must be included within the decrees of fate; unless perhaps he has followed Homer's saying: Lest, spite of fate, you enter Hades' home. But there is no doubt that Cicero referred to a violent and sudden death, which may properly seem to happen contrary to nature.

But why he has put just that kind of death outside the decrees of fate it is not the part of this work to investigate, nor is this the time. The point, however, must not be passed by, that Virgil too had that same opinion about fate which Cicero had, when in his fourth book he said of Elissa, who inflicted a violent death upon herself: For since she perished not by fate's decree, Nor earned her death; just as if, in making an end of life, those deaths which are violent do not seem to come by fate's decree. Cicero, however, seems to have followed the words of Demosthenes, a man gifted with equal wisdom and eloquence, which express about the same idea concerning nature and fate. For Demosthenes in that splendid oration entitled On the Crown wrote as follows : He who thinks that he was born only for his parents, awaits the death appointed by fate, the natural death; but he who thinks that he was born also for his country, will be ready to die that he may not see his country enslaved. What Cicero seems to have called fate and nature, Demosthenes long before termed fate and the natural death. For a natural death is one which comes in the course of fate and nature, as it were, and is caused by no force from without.

About an intimate talk of the poets Pacuvius and Accius in the town of Tarentum.

THOSE who have had leisure and inclination to inquire into the life and times of learned men and hand them down to memory, have related the following anecdote of the tragic poets Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius: Pacuvius, they say, when already enfeebled by advanced age and constant bodily illness, had withdrawn from Rome to Tarentum. Then Accius, who was a much younger man, coming to Tarentum on his way to Asia, visited Pacuvius, and being hospitably received and detained by him for several days, at his request read him his tragedy entitled Atreus. Then they say that Pacuvius remarked that what he had written seemed sonorous and full of dignity, but that nevertheless it appeared to him somewhat harsh and rugged. What you say is true, replied Accius, and I do not greatly regret it; for it gives me hope that what I write hereafter will be better. For they say it is with the mind as it is with fruits; those which are at first harsh and bitter, later become mild and sweet; but those which at once grow mellow and soft, and are juicy in the beginning, presently become, not ripe, but decayed. Accordingly, it has seemed to me that something should be left in the products of the intellect for time and age to mellow.

Whether the words necessitudo and necessitas differ from each other in meaning.

IT is a circumstance decidedly calling for laughter and ridicule, when many grammarians assert that necessitudo and necessitas are unlike and different, in that necessitas is an urgent and compelling force, but necessitudo is a certain right and binding claim of consecrated intimacy, and that this is its only meaning. But just as it makes no difference at all whether you say suavitudo or suavitas (sweetness), acerbitudo or acerbitas (bitterness), acritudo or acritas (sharpness), as Accius wrote in his Neoptolemus, in the same way no reason can be assigned for separating necessitudo and necessitas. Accordingly, in the books of the early writers you may often find necessitudo used of that which is necessary; but necessitas certainly is seldom applied to the law and duty of respect and relationship, in spite of the fact that those who are united by that very law and duty of relationship and intimacy are called necessarii (kinsfolk). However, in a speech of Gaius Caesar, In Support of the Plautian Law, I found necessitas used for necessitudo, that is for the bond of relationship. His words are as follows: To me indeed it seems that, as our kinship (necessitas) demanded, I have failed neither in labour, in pains, nor in industry.

I have written this with regard to the lack of distinction between these two words as the result of reading the fourth book of the History of Sempronius Asellio, an early writer, in which he wrote as follows about Publius Africanus, the son of Paulus: For he had heard his father, Lucius Aemilius Paulus, say that a really able general never engaged in a pitched battle, unless the utmost necessity (necessitudo) demanded, or the most favourable opportunity offered.

Copy of a letter of Alexander to his mother Olympias; and Olympias' witty reply.

IN many of the records of Alexander's deeds, and not long ago in the book of Marcus Varro entitled Orestes or On Madness, I have read that Olympias, the wife of Philip, wrote a very witty reply to her son Alexander. For he had addressed his mother as follows: King Alexander, son of Jupiter Hammon, greets his mother Olympias. Olympias replied to this effect: Pray, my son, said she, be silent, and do not slander me or accuse me before Juno; undoubtedly she will take cruel vengeance on me, if you admit in your letters that I am her husband's paramour. This courteous reply of a wise and prudent woman to her arrogant son seemed to warn him in a mild and polite fashion to give up the foolish idea which lie had formed from his great victories, from the flattery of his courtiers, and from his incredible success—that he was the son of Jupiter.

On the philosophers Aristotle, Theophrastus and Eudemus; and of the graceful tact of Aristotle in selecting a successor as head of his school.

THE philosopher Aristotle, being already nearly sixty-two years of age, was sickly and weak of body and had slender hope of life. Then the whole band of his disciples came to him, begging and entreating that he should himself choose a successor to his position and his office, to whom, as to himself, they might apply after his last day, to complete and perfect their knowledge of the studies into which he had initiated them. There were at the time in his school many good men, but two were conspicuous, Theophrastus and Eudemus, who excelled the rest in talent and learning. The former was from the island of Lesbos, but Eudemus from Rhodes. Aristotle replied that he would do what they asked, so soon as the opportunity came.

A little later, in the presence of the same men who had asked him to appoint a master, he said that the wine he was then drinking did not suit his health, but was unwholesome and harsh; that therefore they ought to look for a foreign wine, something either from Rhodes or from Lesbos. He asked them to procure both kinds for him, and said that he would use the one which he liked the better. They went, sought, found, brought. Then Aristotle asked for the Rhodian and tasting it said: This is truly a sound and pleasant wine. Then he called for the Lesbian. Tasting that also, he remarked: Both are very good indeed, but the Lesbian is the sweeter. When he said this, no one doubted that gracefully, and at the same time tactfully, he had by those words chosen his successor, not his wine. This was Theophrastus, from Lesbos, a man equally noted for the fineness of his eloquence and of his life. And when, not long after this, Aristotle died, they accordingly all became followers of Theophrastus.

The term which the early Latins used for the Greek word prosw|di/ai; also that the term barbarismus was used neither by the early Romans nor by the people of Attica.

WHAT the Greeks call prosw|di/ai, or tones, our early scholars called now notae vocum, or marks of tone, now moderamenta, or guides, now accenticulae, or accents, and now voculationes, or intonations. But the fault which we designate when we say now that anyone speaks barbare, or outlandishly, they did not call outlandish but rustic, and they said that those speaking with that fault spoke in a countrified manner (rustice). Publius Nigidius, in his Grammatical Notes says: Speech becomes rustic, if you misplace the aspirates. Whether therefore those who before the time of the deified Augustus expressed themselves purely and properly used the word barbarismus (outlandishness), which is now common, I for my part have not yet been able to discover.

That Homer in his poems and Herodotus in his Histories spoke differently of the nature of the lion.

HERODOTUS, in the third book of his Histories, has left the statement that lionesses give birth but once during their whole life, and at that one birth that they never produce more than one cub. His words in that book are as follows: But the lioness, although a strong and most courageous animal, gives birth once only in her lifetime to one cub; for in giving birth she discharges her womb with the whelp. Homer, however, says that lions (for so he calls the females also, using the masculine or common (epicene) gender, as the grammarians call it) produce and rear many whelps. The verses in which he plainly says this are these: He stood, like to a lion before its young, Beset by hunters in a gloomy wood And leading them away. In another passage also he indicates the same thing:

With many a groan, like lion of strong beard,

From which a hunter stole away its young

Amid dense woods.

Since this disagreement and difference between the most famous of poets and the most eminent of historians troubled me, I thought best to consult that very thorough treatise which the philosopher Aristotle wrote On Animals. And what I find that he has written there upon this subject I shall include in these notes, in Aristotle's own language.

That the poet Afranius wisely and prettily called Wisdom the daughter of Experience and Memory.

THAT was a fine and true thought of the poet Afranius about the birth of Wisdom and the means of acquiring it, when he said that she was the daughter of Experience and Memory. For in that way he shows that one who wishes to be wise in human affairs does not need books alone or instruction in rhetoric and dialectics, but ought also to occupy and train himself in becoming intimately acquainted with and testing real life, and in firmly fixing in his memory all such acts and events; and accordingly he must learn wisdom and judgment from the teaching of actual experience, not from what books only, or masters, through vain words and fantasies, have foolishly represented as though in a farce or a dream. The verses of Afranius are in a Roman comedy called The Chair: My sire Experience was, me Memory bore, In Greece called Sophia, Wisdom in Rome. There is also a line of Pacuvius to about the same purport, which the philosopher Macedo, a good man and my intimate friend, thought ought to be written over the doors of all temples: I hate base men who preach philosophy. For he said that nothing could be more shameful or insufferable than that idle, lazy folk, disguised with beard and cloak, should change the character and advantages of philosophy into tricks of the tongue and of words, and, themselves saturated with vices, should eloquently assail vice.

What Tullius Tiro wrote in his commentaries about the Suculae, or Little Pigs, and the Hyades, which are the names of constellations.

TULLIUS TIRO was the pupil and freedman of Marcus Cicero and an assistant in his literary work. He wrote several books on the usage and theory of the Latin language and on miscellaneous questions of various kinds. Pre-eminent among these appear to be those to which he gave the Greek title Pande/ktai, implying that they included every kind of science and fact. In these he wrote the following about the stars which are called the Suculae, or Little Pigs: The early Romans, says he, were so ignorant of Grecian literature and so unfamiliar with the Greek language, that they called those stars which are in the head of the Bull Suculae, or 'The Little Pigs,' because the Greeks call them u(a/des; for they supposed that Latin word to be a translation of the Greek name because u(/es in Greek is sues in Latin. But the u(a/des, says he, are so called, ou)k a)po\ tw=n u(w=n (that is, not from pigs), as our rude forefathers believed, but from the word u(/ein; for both when they rise and when they set they cause rainstorms and heavy showers. And pluere, (to rain) is expressed in the Greek tongue by u(/ein.

So, indeed, Tiro in his Pandects. But, as a matter of fact, our early writers were not such boors and crowns as to give to the stars called hyades the name of suculae, or little pigs, because u(/es are called sues in Latin; but just as what the Greeks call u(pe/r we call super, what they call u(/ptios we call supinus, what they call u(forbo/s we call subulcus, and finally, what they call u(/pnos we call first sypnus, and then, because of the kinship of the Greek letter y and the Latin o, somnus—just so, what they call u(a/des were called by us, first shades, and then suculae.

But the stars in question are not in the head of the Bull, as Tiro says, for except for those stars the Bull has no head; but they are so situated and arranged in the circle that is called the zodiac, that from their position they seem to present the appearance and semblance of a bull's head, just as the other parts, and the rest of the figure of the Bull, are formed and, as it were, pictured by the place and location of those stars which the Greeks call Pleia/des and we, Vergiliae.

The derivation of soror, according to Antistins Labeo, and that of frater, according to Publius Nigidius.

ANTISTIUS LABEO cultivated the study of civil law with special interest, and gave advice publicly to those who consulted him on legal questions; he was also not unacquainted with the other liberal arts, and he had delved deep into grammar and dialectics, as well as into the earlier and more recondite literature. He had also become versed in the origin and formation of Latin words, and applied that knowledge in particular to solving many knotty points of law. In fact, after his death works of his were published, which are entitled Posteriores, of which three successive books, the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth and fortieth, are full of information of that kind, tending to explain and illustrate the Latin language. Moreover, in the books which he wrote On the Praetor's Edict he has included many observations, some of which are graceful and clever. Of such a kind is this, which we find written in the fourth book On the Edict: A soror, or 'sister,' he says, is so called because she is, as it were, born seorsum, or ' outside,' and is separated from that home in which she was born, and transferred to another family.

Moreover, Publius Nigidius, a man of prodigious learning, explains the word frater, or brother, by a no less clever and ingenious derivation: A frater, he says, is so called because he is, as it were, fere alter, that is, 'almost another self.'

Marcus Varro's opinion of the just and proper number of banqueters; his views about the dessert and about sweetmeats.

THAT is a very charming book of Marcus Varro's, one of his Menippean Satires, entitled You know not what the Late Evening may Bring, in which he descants upon the proper number of guests at a dinner, and about the order and arrangement of the entertainment itself. Now he says that the number of the guests ought to begin with that of the Graces and end with that of the Muses; that is, it should begin with three and stop at nine, so that when the guests are fewest, they should not be less than three, when they are most numerous, not more than nine. For it is disagreeable to have a great number, since a crowd is generally disorderly, and at Rome it stands, at Athens it sits, but nowhere does it recline. Now, the banquet itself, he continues, has four features, and then only is it complete in all its parts: if a nice little group has been got together, if the place is well chosen, the time fit, and due preparation not neglected. Moreover, one should not, he says, invite either too talkative or too silent guests, since eloquence is appropriate to the Forum and the courts, but silence to the bed-chamber and not to a dinner. He thinks, then, that the conversation at such a time ought not to be about anxious and perplexing affairs, but diverting and cheerful, combining profit with a certain interest and pleasure, such conversation as tends to make our character more refined and agreeable. This will surely follow, he says, if we talk about matters which relate to the common experience of life, which we have no leisure to discuss in the Forum and amid the press of business. Furthermore, the host, he says, ought rather to be free from meanness than over-elegant, and, he adds: At a banquet not everything should be read, but such things as are at once edifying and enjoyable.

And he does not omit to tell what the nature of the dessert ought to be. For he uses these words: Those sweetmeats (bellaria) are sweetest which are not sweet; for harmony between delicacies and digestion is not to be counted upon.

That no one may be puzzled by the word bellaria which Varro uses in this passage, let me say that it means all kinds of dessert. For what the Greeks called pe/mmata or tragh/mata, our forefathers called bellaria. In the earlier comedies one may find this term applied also to the sweeter wines, which are called Liberi bellaria, or sweetmeats of Bacchus.

That the tribunes of the commons have the right to arrest, but not to summon.

IN one of the letters of Ateius Capito we read that Antistius Labeo was exceedingly learned in the laws and customs of the Roman people and in the civil law. But, he adds, an excessive and mad love of freedom possessed the man, to such a degree that, although the deified Augustus was then emperor and was ruling the State, Labeo looked upon nothing as lawful and accepted nothing, unless he had found it ordered and sanctioned by the old Roman law. He then goes on to relate the reply of this same Labeo, when he was summoned by the messenger of a tribune of the commons. He says: When the tribunes of the commons had been appealed to by a woman against Labeo and had sent to him at the Gallianum bidding him come and answer the woman's charge, he ordered the messenger to return and say to the tribunes that they had the right to summon neither him nor anyone else, since according to the usage of our forefathers the tribunes of the commons had the power of arrest, but not of summons; that they might therefore come and order his arrest, but they did not have the right to summon him when absent.

Having read this in that letter of Capito's, I later found the same statement made more fully in the twenty-first book of Varro's Human Antiquities, and I have added Varro's own words on the subject: In a magistracy says he, some have the power of summons, others of arrest, others neither; summoning, for example, belongs to the consuls and others possessing the imperium ; arrest, to the tribunes of the commons and the rest who are attended by a messenger; neither summoning nor arrest to the quaestors and others who have neither a lictor nor a messenger. Those who have the power of summons may also arrest, detail, and lead off to prison, all this whether those whom they summon are present or are sent for by their order. The tribunes of the commons have no power of summons, nevertheless many of them in ignorance have used that power, as if they were entitled to it; for some of them have ordered, not only private persons, but even a consul to be summoned before the rostra. I myself, when a triumvir, on being summoned by Porcius, tribune of the commons, did not appear, following the authority of our leading men, but I held to the old law. Similarly, when I was a tribune, I ordered no one to be summoned, and required no one who was summoned by one of my colleagues to obey, unless he wished.