Attic Nights

Specimens of letters of King Alexander and the philosopher Aristotle. just as they were written; with a rendering of the same into Latin.

THE philosopher Aristotle, the teacher of king Alexander, is said to have had two forms of the lectures and instructions which he delivered to his pupils. One of these was the kind called e)cwterika/, or exoteric, the other a)kroatika/, or acroatic. Those were called exoteric which gave training in rhetorical exercises, logical subtlety, and acquaintance with politics; those were called acroatic in which a more profound and recondite philosophy was discussed, which related to the contemplation of nature or dialectic discussions. To the practice of the acroatic training which I have mentioned he devoted the morning hours in the Lyceum, and he did not ordinarily admit any pupil to it until he had tested his ability, his elementary knowledge, and his zeal and devotion to study. The exoteric lectures and exercises in speaking lie held at the same place in the evening and opened them generally to young men without distinction. This he called deilino\s peri/patos, or the evening walk, the other which I have mentioned above, e(wqino/s, or the morning walk; for on both occasions he walked as he spoke. He also divided his books on all these subjects into two divisions, calling one set exoteric, the other acroatic.

When King Alexander knew that he had published those books of the acroatic set, although at that time the king was keeping almost all of Asia in a state of panic by his deeds of arms, and was pressing King Darius himself hard by attacks and victories, yet in the midst of such urgent affairs he sent a letter to Aristotle, saying that the philosopher had not done right in publishing the books and so revealing to the public the acroatic training, in which he himself had been instructed. For in what other way, said he, can I excel the rest, it that instruction which I have received from you becomes the common property of all the world? For I would rather be first in learning than in wealth and power.

Aristotle replied to him to this purport: Know that the acroatic books, which you complain have been made public and not hidden as if they contained secrets, have neither been made public nor hidden, since they can be understood only by those who have heard my lectures.

I have added copies of both letters, taken from the book of the philosopher Andronicus. I was particularly charmed with the slender thread of elegant brevity in the letter of each.

Alexander to Aristotle, Greeting.

You have not done right in publishing your acroatic lectures; for wherein, pray, shall I differ from other men, if these lectures, by which I was instructed, become the common property of all? As for me, I should wish to excel in acquaintance with what is noblest, rather than in power. Farewell.

"Aristotle to King Alexander, Greeting.

You have written to me regarding my acroatic lectures, thinking that I ought to have kept them secret. Know then that they have both been made public and not made public. For they are intelligible only to those who have heard me. Farewell, King Alexander.

When trying, in the phrase cunetoi\ ga\r ei)sin, to express the word cunetoi/ by a single Latin term, I found nothing better than what is written by Marcus Cato in the sixth book of his Origins: Therefore I think the information is more comprehensible (cognobilior).

It is asked and discussed whether it it is more correct to say habeo curam vestri, or vestrum.

I ASKED Sulpicius Apollinaris, when I was studying with him at Rome in my youth, on what principle people said habeo curam vestri, or I have care for you, and misereor vestri, or I pity you, and what he thought the nominative case of vestri was in such connections. Thereupon he answered me as follows: You ask something of me about which I too have long been in a state of uncertainty. For it seems to me that one ought to say, not vestri, but vestrum, just as the Greeks say e)pimelou=mai u(mw=n and kh/domai u(mw=n, where u(mw=n is translated by vestrum more fittingly than by vestri, having vos for the naming case, or the 'direct' case, as you called it. Yet in not a few places, said he, "I find nostri and vestri, not nostrum or vestrum. Thus Lucius Sulla says, in the second book of his Autobiography: But if it is possible that even now you think of me (nostri), and believe me worthy to be your fellow citizen rather than your enemy, and to fight for you rather than against you, this will surely be due to my services and those of my forefathers. Also Terence in the Phormio: Of such a nature are we almost all, That with ourselves (nostri) we discontented are. Afranius wrote in an Italian play: At last some god or other pitied us (nostri). And Laberius in the Necyomantia:

Detained for many days, he us (nostri) forgot.

There is no doubt, said he, that in all these phrases: 'we are discontented,' he forgot us,' 'he pitied us' (nostri), the same case is used as in 'I repent' (mei paenitet), 'he pitied me' (mei miseritus est), ' he forgot me' (mei oblitus est). But mei is the case of questioning, which the grammarians call 'genitive,' and comes from ego; and the plural of ego is nos. Tui also is formed from tu, and the plural of this is vos. For Plautus has thus declined those pronouns in the Pseudolus, in the following lines: O Sir, could I be told without your words What wretchedness so grievous troubles you, I would have spared the trouble of two men: My own (mei), of asking you, and yours (tis = tui), of answering. For Plautus here uses mei, not from meus, but from ego. Therefore if you should choose to say patrem mei instead of patrem meum, as the Greeks say to\n pate/ra mou, it would be unusual, but surely correct, and on the same principle that Plautus used labori mei, 'the trouble of me,' for labori meo, ' my trouble.' The same rule applies also in the plural number, where Gracchus said misereri vestrum and Marcus Cicero contentio vestrum, and contention nostrum, and on the same principle Quadrigarius in the nineteenth book of his Annals wrote these words: 'Gaius Marius, when pray will you pity us (nostrum) and the State?' Why then should Terence use paenitet nostri, not nostrum, and Afranius nostri miseritus est, not nostrum? Indeed, said he, no reason for this occurs to me except the authority of a certain ancient usage, which was not too anxious or scrupulous in the use of language. For just as vestrorum is often used for vestrum, as in this line from the Mustellaria of Plautus, The greatest part of you (vestrorum) know that is true (where vestrorum is for vestrum), in the same way vestri also is sometimes used for vestrum. But undoubtedly one who desires to speak very correctly will prefer vestrum to vestri. And therefore, said he, those have acted most arbitrarily who in many copies of Sallust have corrupted a thoroughly sound reading. For although he wrote in the Catiline: 'Often your forefathers (maiores vestrum), pitying the Roman commons,' they erased vestrum and wrote vestrz over it. And from this that error has grown and found its way into more manuscripts. This is what I remember hearing from Apollinaris, and I noted down his very words at the time, exactly as they were spoken."

How the opinions of the Greeks differ as to the number of Niobe's children.

A STRANGE and indeed almost absurd variation is to be noted in the Greek poets as to the number of Niobe's children. For Homer says that she had six sons and six daughters; Euripides, seven of each; Sappho, nine; Bacchylides and Pindar, ten; while certain other writers have said that there were only three sons and three daughters.

Of things which seem to have sumptwsi/a, or coincidence, with the waning and waxing moon.

THE poet Annianus owned an estate in the Faliscan territory, where he used to celebrate the vintage season with mirth and jollity. On one occasion he invited me, along with some other friends. As we were dining there one day, a large quantity of oysters were sent from Rome. When they were set before us and proved to be indeed numerous, but neither rich nor very plump, Annianus said: Of course the moon is waning just now; therefore the oyster also, like some other things, is thin and juiceless. When we asked what other things wasted away with the waning moon, he answered: "Don't you remember that our Lucilius says: The moon makes oysters fat, sea-urchins full, And bulk and substance to the mussels adds?

Furthermore, those same things which grow as the moon waxes grow less as it wanes. The eyes of cats also become larger or smaller according to the same changes of the moon. This too," said he, is much more greatly to be wondered at, which I read in the fourth book of Plutarch's Commentary on Hesiod: ' The onion grows and buds as the moon wanes, but, on the contrary, dries up while the moon waxes. The Egyptian priests say that this is the reason why the people of Pelusium do not eat the onion, because it is the only one of all vegetables which has an interchange of increase and decrease contrary to the waxing and waning of the moon.'

A passage in the Mimiambi of Gnaeus Matius, in which Antonius Iulianus used to delight; and the meaning of Marcus Cato in the speech which he wrote on his own uprightness, when he said: I have never asked the people for garments.

ANTONIUS JULIANUS used to say that his ears were soothed and charmed by the newly-coined words of Gnaeus Matius, a man of learning, such as the following, which he said were written by Matius in his Mimiambi: Revive your cold love in your warm embrace, Close joining lip to lip like amorous dove (columbulatim). And this also he declared to be charmingly and neatly devised: The shorn rugs now are drunken with the dye With which the shell has drenched and coloured them. . .

The meaning of the phrase ex iure manum consertum.

Ex iure manum consertum, or lay on hands according to law, is a phrase taken from ancient cases at law, and commonly used to-day when a case is tried before the praetor and claims are made. I asked a Roman grammarian, a man of wide reputation and great name, what the meaning of these words was. But he, looking scornfully at me, said: Either you are making a mistake, youngster, or you are jesting; for I teach grammar and do not give legal advice. If you want to know anything connected with Virgil, Plautus or Ennius, you may ask me.

It is a question from Ennius then, master, said I, that I am asking. For it was Ennius who used those words. And when the grammarian said in great surprise that the words were unsuited to poetry and that they were not to be found anywhere in the poems of Ennius, I quoted from memory the following lines from the eighth book of the Annals; for it chanced that I remembered them because of their particularly striking character:

Wisdom is driven forth and force prevails;

They scorn the speaker good, the rude soldier love.

Contending not with learning nor abuse,

They join in strife, not laying claim by law,

But, seeking with the sword both wealth and power,

With force resistless rush.

When I had recited these verses from Ennius, the grammarian rejoined: Now I believe you. But I would have you believe me, when I say that Quintus Ennius learned this, not from his reading of the poets, but from someone learned in the law. Do you too then go and learn from the same source as Ennius.

I followed the advice of this teacher, when he referred me to another from whom I could learn what he ought to have taught me himself: And I thought that I ought to include in these notes of mine what I have learned from jurists and their writings, since those who are living in the midst of affairs and among men ought not to be ignorant of the commoner legal expressions. Manum conserere, to lay on hands. . . . For with one's opponent to lay hold of and claim in the prescribed formula anything about which there is a dispute, whether it be a field or something else, is called vindicia, or a claim. A seizing with the hand of the thing or place in question took place in the presence of the praetor according to the Twelve Tables, in which it was written "If any lay on hands in the presence of the magistrate." But when the boundaries of Italy were extended and the praetors were greatly occupied with legal business, they found it hard to go to distant places to settle claims. Therefore it became usual by silent consent, though contrary to the Twelve Tables, for the litigants not to lay on hands in court in the presence of the praetor, but to call for a laying on of hands according to law; that is, that the one litigant should summon the other to the object in question, to lay hands on it according to law, and that they should go together to the field under dispute and bring some earth from it to the city to the praetor's court, for example one clod, and should lay claim to that clod, as if it were the whole field. Accordingly Ennius, wishing to describe such action, said that restitution was demanded, not by legal processes, such as are carried on before a praetor, nor by a laying on of hands according to law, but by war and the sword, and by genuine and resistless violence; and he seems to have expressed this by comparing that civil and symbolic power which is exercised in name only and not actually, with warlike and sanguinary violence.

The meaning of the word sculna, used by Marcus Varro.

PUBLIUS LAVINIUS is the author of a carefully written book, entitled On Vulgar Words. In it he wrote that scublna was a colloquial form for seculna, for which, says he, more elegant speakers use sequester, or' arbiter.' Each of these words is derived from sequor, because both parties follow the decision of the arbiter who is chosen. Lavinius reminds us in the same book that sculna was written in the division of Marcus Varro's Logistorica entitled Caius. But that which was deposited with the arbiter they spoke of as sequestro positum, deposited for arbitration, using the adverb sequestro. Cato, in his speech On Ptolemy, against Thermus, says: By the immortal gods, do not. . . .