Attic Nights (11.11-11.15)

The words of Publius Nigidius, in which he says that there is a difference between

lying

and

telling a falsehood.

THESE are the very words of Publius Nigidius, [*] a man of great eminence in the pursuit of the liberal arts, whom Marcus Cicero highly respected because of his talent and learning:

There is a difference between telling a falsehood and lying. One who lies is not himself deceived, but tries to deceive another; he who tells a falsehood is himself deceived.

He also adds this:

One who lies deceives, so far as he is able; but one who tells a falsehood does not himself deceive, any more than he can help.

He also had this on the same subject:

A good man,

says he,

ought to take pains not to lie, a wise man, not to tell what is false; the former affects the man himself, the latter does not.

With variety, by Heaven! and neatness has Nigidius distinguished so many opinions relating to the same thing, as if he were constantly saying something new.

That the philosopher Chrysippus says that every word is ambiguous and of doubtful meaning, while Diodorus, on the contrary, thinks that no word is ambiguous.

CHRYSIPPUS asserts [*] that every word is by nature ambiguous, since two or more things may be understood from the same word. But Diodorus, surnamed Cronus, says:

No word is ambiguous, and no one speaks or receives a word in two senses; and it ought not to seem to be said in any other sense than

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that which the speaker feels that he is giving to it. But when I,

said he,

meant one thing and you have understood another, it may seem that I have spoken obscurely rather than ambiguously; for the nature of an ambiguous word should be such that he who speaks it expresses two or more meanings. But no man expresses two meanings who has felt that he is expressing but one.

What Titus Castricius thought about the wording of a sentence of Gaius Gracchus; and that he showed that it contributed nothing to the effectiveness of the sentence.

THE speech of Gaius Gracchus Against Publius Popilius[*] was read before Titus Castricius, a teacher of the art of rhetoric and a man of sound and solid judgment. At the beginning of that speech the sentences were constructed with more care and regard for rhythm than was customary with the early orators. The words, arranged as I have said, are as follows:

If you now reject rashly the things which all these years you have earnestly sought and longed for, it must be said either that you formerly sought them earnestly, or now have rejected them without consideration.

Well then, the flow and rhythm of this well-rounded and smooth-flowing sentence pleased us to a remarkable and unparalleled degree, and still more the evidence that composition of that kind appealed even in those early days to Gaius Gracchus, a man of distinction and dignity. But when those very same words were read again and again at our request, we

were admonished by Castricius to consider what the force and value of the thought was, and not to allow our ears to be charmed by the rhythm of a well-turned sentence and through mere pleasure to confuse our judgment as well.

And when by this admonition he had made us more alert,

Look deeply,

said he,

into the meaning of these words, and tell me pray, some of you, whether there is any weight or elegance in this sentence: 'If you rashly reject the things which all these years you have earnestly sought and longed for, it must be said either that you formerly sought them earnestly or now reject them without consideration.' For to whom of all men does it not occur, that it is certainly natural that you should be said earnestly to have sought what you earnestly sought, and to have rejected without consideration what you rejected without consideration? But I think,

said he,

if it had been written thus: ' If you now reject what you have sought and longed for these many years, it must be said that you formerly sought it earnestly or that you now reject it without consideration'; if,

said he,

it were spoken thus, the sentence would be weightier and more solid and would arouse some reasonable expectation in the hearer; but as it is, these words 'earnestly' and 'without consideration,' on which the whole effect of the sentence rests, are not only spoken at the end of the sentence, but are also put earlier where they are not needed, so that what ought to arise and spring from the very conception of the subject is spoken wholly before the subject demands it. For one who says: ' If you do this, you will be said to have done it earnestly,' says something that is composed and

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arranged with some regard to sense; but one who says: 'If you do it earnestly, you will be said to have done it earnestly,' speaks in much the same way as if he should say: 'If you do it earnestly, you will do it earnestly.' I have warned you of this,

said he,

not with the idea of censuring Gaius Gracchus—may the gods give me a wiser mind! for if any fault or error can be mentioned in a man of such powerful eloquence, it is wholly excused by his authority and overlooked in view of his antiquity—but in order that you might be on your guard lest the rhythmic sound of any flowing eloquence should easily dazzle you, and that you might first balance the actual weight of the substance against the high quality of the diction; so that if any sentence was uttered that was weighty, honest and sound, then, if you thought best, you might praise also the mere flow of the language and the delivery; that if, on the contrary, thoughts that were cold, trifling and futile should be conveyed in words neatly and rhythmically arranged, they might have the same effect upon you as when men conspicuous for their deformity and their ludicrous appearance imitate actors and play the buffoon.

The discreet and admirable reply of King Romulus as to his use of wine.

Lucius Piso FRUGI has shown an elegant simplicity of diction and thought in the first book of his Annals, when writing of the life and habits of King Romulus. His words are as follows: [*]

They say also of

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Romulus, that being invited to dinner, he drank but little there, giving the reason that he had business for the following day. They [*] answer: ' If all men were like you, Romulus, wine would be cheaper.' ' Nay, dear,' answered Romulus, ' if each man drank as much as he wished; for I drank as much as I wished.'

On ludibundus and errabundus and the suffix in words of that kind; that Laberius used amorabunda in the same way as ludibunda and errabunda; also that Sisenna in the case of a word of that sort made a new form.

LABERIUS in his Lake Avernus spoke [*] of a woman in love as amorabunda, coining a word in a somewhat unusual manner. Caesellius Vindex in his Commentary on Archaic Words said that this word was used on the same principle that ludibunda, ridibunda and errabunda are used for ludens, ridens and errans. But Terentius Scaurus, a highly distinguished grammarian of the time of the deified Hadrian, among other things which he wrote On the Mistakes of Caesellius, declared [*] that about this word also he was wrong in thinking that ludens and ludibunda, ridens and ridibunda, errans and errabunda were identical.

For ludibunda, ridibunda, and errabunda,

he says,

are applied to one who plays the part of, or imitates, one who plays, laughs or wanders.

But why Scaurus was led to censure Caesellius on this point, I certainly could not understand. For there is no doubt that these words, each after its

own kind, have the same meaning that is indicated by the words from which they are derived. But I should prefer to seem not to understand the meaning of

act the laugher

or

imitate the laugher

rather than charge Scaurus himself with lack of knowledge. But Scaurus ought rather, in censuring the commentaries of Caesellius, to have taken him to task for what he left unsaid; namely, whether ludibundus, ridibundus and errabundus differ at all from ludens, ridens and errans, and to what extent, and so with other words of the same kind; whether they differ only in some slight degree from their primitives, and what is the general force of the suffix which is added to words of that kind. For in examining a phenomenon of that nature that were a more pertinent inquiry, just as in vinulentus, lutulentus and turbulentus it is usual to ask whether that suffix is superfluous and without meaning, paragwgh/, as the Greeks say, [*] or whether the suffix has some special force of its own.

However, in noting this criticism of Scaurus it occurred to me that Sisenna, in the fourth book of his Histories, used a word of the same form. He says: [*]

He came to the town, laying waste the fields (populabundus),

which of course means

while he was laying waste the fields,

not, as Sisenna says of similar words,

when he played the part of, or imitated, one laying waste.

But when I was inquiring about the signification and origin of such forms as populabundus, errabundus, laetabundus, ludibundus, and many other words of that kind, our friend Apollinaris—very appositely by Heaven! —remarked that it seemed to him that the final syllable of such words indicated force and abundance, and as it were, an excess of the quality belonging to

the primitive word. Thus laetabundus is used of one who is excessively joyful, and errabundus of one who has wandered long and far, and he showed that all other words of that form are so used that this addition and ending indicates a great and overflowing force and abundance [*]