Attic Nights (13.23-13.27)

Of the Nerio of Mars in ancient prayers.

PRAYERS to the immortal gods, which are offered according to the Roman ritual, are set forth in the books of the priests of the Roman people, as well as in many early books of prayers. In these we find:

Lua, [*] of Saturn; Salacia, of Neptune; Hora, of Quirinus; the Virites of Quirinus; Maia of Vulcan; Heries of Juno; Moles of Mars, and Nerio of Mars.

Of these I hear most people pronounce the one which I have put last with a long initial syllable, as the Greeks pronounce Nhrei/des (

Nereids

). But those who have spoken correctly made the first syllable short and lengthened the third. For the nominative case of the word, as it is written in the books of early writers, is Nerio, although Marcus Varro, in his Menippean Satire entitled Skiomaxi/a, or

Battle of the Shadows,

uses in the vocative Nericnes, not Nerio, in the following verses: [*]

Thee, Anna and Peranna, Panda Cela, Pales,

Nerienes and Minerva, Fortune and likewise Ceres.

From which it necessarily follows that the nominative case is the same. But Nerio was declined by our forefathers like Atnio; for, as they said Aniēnem with the third syllable long, so they did Neriēnem. Furthermore, that word, whether it be Nerio or Nerienes, is Sabine and signifies valour and courage. Hence among the Claudii, who we are told sprang from the Sabines, whoever was of eminent and surpassing courage was called Nero. [*] But the Sabines seem to have derived this word from the Greeks, who call the sinews and ligaments of the limbs neura, whence we also in Latin call them nervi. Therefore Nerio designates the strength and power of Mars and a certain majesty of the War-god.

Plautus, however, in the Truculentus says [*] that Nerio is the wife of Mars, and puts the statement into the mouth of a soldier, in the following line:

Mars, coming home, greets his wife Nerio.

About this line I once heard a man of some repute say that Plautus, with too great an eye to comic effect, attributed this strange and false idea, of thinking that Nerio was the wife of Mars, to an ignorant and rude soldier. But whoever will read the third book of the Annals of Gnaeus Gellius will find that this passage shows learning, rather than a comic spirit; for there it is written that Hersilia, when she pleaded before Titus Tatius and begged for peace, prayed in these words: [*]

Neria of Mars, I beseech thee, give us peace; I beseech thee that it be permitted us to enjoy lasting and happy marriages, since it was by thy lord's advice that in like manner they carried off us maidens, [*] that from us they might raise up children for themselves and their people, and descendants for their country.

She says

by thy lord's advice,

of course meaning her husband, Mars; and from this it is plain that Plautus made use of no poetic fiction, but that there was also a tradition according to which Nerio was said by some to be the wife of Mars. But it must be noticed besides that Gellius writes Neria with an a, not Nerio nor Nerienes. In addition to Plautus too, and Gellius, Licinius Imbrex, an early writer of comedies, in the play entitled Neaera, wrote as follows: [*]

Neaera I'd not wish to have thee called;

Neriene rather, since thou art wife to Mars.

Moreover, the metre of this verse is such that the third syllable in that name must be made short, [*] contrary to what was said above. But how greatly the quantity of this syllable varied among the early writers is so well known that I need not waste many words on the subject. Ennius also, in this verse from the first book of his Annals, [*]

Neriene of Mars and Here,

[*]

if, as is not always the case, he has preserved the metre, has lengthened the first syllable and shortened the third.

And I do not think that I ought to pass by this either, whatever it amounts to, which I find written in the Commentary of Servius Claudius, [*] that Nerio is equivalent to Neirio, meaning without anger (ne ira) and with calmness, so that in using that name we pray that Mars may become mild and calm; for the particle ne, as it is among the Greeks, is frequently privative in the Latin language also.

Remarks of Marcus Cato, who declared that he lacked many things, yet desired nothing.

MARCUS CATO, ex-consul and ex-censor, says that when the State and private individuals were abounding in wealth, his country-seats were plain and unadorned, and not even whitewashed, up to the seventieth year of his age. And later he uses these words on the subject: [*]

I have no building, utensil or garment bought with a great price, no costly slave or maidservant. If I have anything to use,

he says,

I use it; if not, I do without. So far as I am concerned, everyone may use and enjoy what he has.

Then he goes on to say:

They find fault with me, because I lack many things; but I with them, because they cannot do without them.

This simple frankness of the man of Tusculum, who says that he lacks many things, yet desires nothing, truly has more effect in inducing thrift and contentment with small means than the Greek sophistries of those who profess to be philosophers and invent vain shadows of words, declaring that they have nothing and yet lack nothing and desire nothing, while all the time they are fevered with having, with lacking, and with desiring.

The meaning of manubiae is asked and discussed; with some observations as to the propriety of using several words of the same meaning.

ALL along the roof of the colonnades of Trajan's forum [*] there are placed gilded statues of horses and representations of military standards, and underneath is written Ex manubiis. Favorinus inquired, when he was walking in the court of the forum, waiting for his friend the consul, who was hearing cases from the tribunal—and I at the time was in attendance on him—he asked, I say, what that inscription manubiae seemed to us really to mean. Then one of those who were with him, a man of a great and wide-spread reputation for his devotion to learned pursuits, said:

Ex manubiis is the same as ex praeda; for manubiae is the term for booty which is taken mann, that is 'by hand.'

Then Favorinus rejoined:

Although my principal and almost my entire attention has been given to the literature and arts of Greece, I am nevertheless not so inattentive to the Latin language, to which I devote occasional or desultory study, as to be unaware of this common interpretation of manubiae, which makes it a synonym of praeda. But I raise the question, whether Marcus Tullius, a man most careful in his diction, in the speech which he delivered against Rullus on the first of January On the Agrarian Law, joined manubiae and praeda by an idle and inelegant repetition, if it be true that these two words have the same meaning and do not differ in any respect at all.

And then, such was Favorinus' marvellous and almost miraculous memory, he at once added Cicero's own words. These I have appended: [*]

The decemvirs will sell the booty (praedam), the proceeds of the spoils (manubias), the goods reserved for public auction, in fact Gnaeus Pompeius' camp, while the general sits looking on

; and just below he again used these two words in conjunction: [*]

From the booty (ex praeda), from the proceeds of the spoils (ex manubiis), from the crown-money.

[*] Then, turning to the man who had said that manubiae was the same as praeda, Favorinus said, "Does it seem to you that in both these passages Marcus Cicero weakly and frigidly used two words which, as you think, mean the same thing, thus showing himself deserving of the ridicule with which in Aristophanes, the wittiest of comic writers, Euripides assailed Aeschylus, saying: [*]

Wise Aeschylus has said the same thing twice;

'I come into the land,' says he, 'and enter it.'

But 'enter' and ' come into' are the same.

By Heaven, yes! It's just as if one said

To a neighbour: 'Use the pot, or else the pan'?

But by no means,

said he,

do Cicero's words seem like such repetitions as ma/ktra, pot, and ka/rdopos, pan, which are used either by our own poets or orators and those of the Greeks, for the purpose of giving weight or adornment to their subject by the use of two or more words of the same meaning.

Pray,

said Favorinus, "what force has this repetition and recapitulation of the same thing under another name in manubiae and praeda? It does not adorn the sentence, does it, as is sometimes the case? It does not make it more exact or more melodious, does it? Does it make an effective cumulation of words designed to strengthen the accusation or brand the crime? As, for example, in the speech of the same Marcus Tullius On the Appointment of an Accuser one and the same thing is expressed in several words with force and severity: [*] ' All Sicily, if it could speak with one voice, would say this:

Whatever gold, whatever silver, whatever jewels I had in my cities, abodes and shrines.'

For having once mentioned the cities as a whole, he added 'abodes' and 'shrines,' which are themselves a part of the cities. Also in the same oration he says in a similar manner: [*] 'During three years Gaius Verres is said to have plundered the province of Sicily, devastated the cities of the Sicilians, emptied their homes, pillaged their shrines.' Does he not seem to you, when he had mentioned the province of Sicily and had besides added the cities as well, to have included the houses also and the shrines, which he later mentioned? So too do not those many and varied words, 'plundered, devastated, emptied, pillaged,' have one and the same force? They surely do. But since the mention of them all adds to the dignity of the speech and the impressive copiousness of its diction, although they are nearly the same and spring from a single idea, yet they appear to contain more meaning because they strike the ears and mind more frequently.

"This kind of adornment, by heaping up in a single charge a great number of severe terms, was frequently used even in early days by our most ancient orator, the famous Marcus Cato, in his speeches; for example in the one entitled On the Ten, when he accused Thermus because he had put to death ten freeborn men at the same time, he used the following words of the same meaning, which, as they are brilliant flashes of Latin eloquence, which was just then coming into being, I have thought fit to call to mind: [*] 'You seek to cover up your abominable crime with a still worse crime, you slaughter men like swine, you commit frightful bloodshed, you cause ten deaths, slay ten freemen, take life from ten men, untried, unjudged, uncondemned.' So too Marcus Cato, at the beginning of the speech which he delivered in the senate, In Defence

of the Rhodians, wishing to describe too great prosperity, used three words which mean the same thing. [*] His language is as follows: I know that most men in favourable, happy and prosperous circumstances are wont to be puffed up in spirit and to increase in arrogance and haughtiness.' In the seventh book of his Origins too, [*] in the speech which he spoke Against Servius Galba, Cato used several words to express the same thing: [*] ' Many things have dissuaded me from appearing here, my years, my time of life, my voice, my strength, my old age; but nevertheless, when I reflected that so important a matter was being discussed..."

"But above all in Homer there is a brilliant heaping up of the same idea and thought, in these lines: [*]

Zeus from the weapons, from the dust and blood,

From carnage, from the tumult Hector bore.

Also in another verse: [*]

Engagements, battles, carnage, deaths of men.

For although all those numerous synonymous terms mean nothing more than 'battle,' yet the varied aspects of this concept are elegantly and charmingly depicted by the use of several different words. And in the same poet this one thought is repeated with admirable effect by the use of two words; for Idaeus, when he interrupted the armed contest of Hector and Ajax, addressed them thus: [*]

No longer fight, dear youths, nor still contend,

and in this verse it ought not to be supposed that the second word, meaning the same as the first, was added and lugged in without reason, merely to fill out the metre; for that is utterly silly and false. But while he gently and calmly chided the obstinate fierceness and love of battle in two youths burning with a desire for glory, he emphasized and impressed upon them the atrocity of the act and the sin of their insistence by adding one word to another; and that double form of address made his admonition more impressive. Nor ought the following repetition of the same thought to seem any more weak and cold: [*]

With death the suitors threatened, and with fate, Telemachus,

because he said the same thing twice in qa/naton (death) and mo/ron (fate); for the heinousness of attempting so cruel and unjust a murder is deplored by the admirable repetition of the word meaning 'death.' Who too is of so dull a mind as not to understand that in [*]

Away, begone, dire dream,

and [*]

Away, begone, swift Iris,

two words of the same meaning are not used to no purpose, e)k parallh/lwn, 'as the repetition of two similar words,' as some think, but are a vigorous exhortation to the swiftness which is enjoined?"

Also those thrice repeated words in the speech of Marcus Cicero Against Lucius Piso, although displeasing to men of less sensitive ears, did not merely aim at elegance, but buffeted Piso's assumed expression

v2.p.499

of countenance by the rhythmical accumulation of several words. Cicero says: [*] Finally, your whole countenance, which is, so to speak, the silent voice of the mind, this it was that incited men to crime, this deceived, tricked, cheated those to whom it was not familiar.' Well then,

continued Favorinus, "is the use of praeda and manubiae in the same writer similar to this? Truly, not at all! For by the addition of manubiae the sentence does not become more ornate, more forcible, or more euphonius; but manubiae means one thing, as we learn from the books on antiquities and on the early Latin, praeda quite another. For praeda is used of the actual objects making up the booty, but manubiae designates the money collected by the quaestor from the sale of the booty. Therefore Marcus Tullius, in order to rouse greater hatred of the decemvirs, said that they would carry off and appropriate the two: both the booty which had not yet been sold and the money which had been received from the sale of the booty."

Therefore this inscription which you see, ex manubiis, does not designate the objects and the mass of booty itself, for none of these was taken from the enemy by Trajan, but it declares that these statues were made and procured 'from the manubiae,' that is, with the money derived from the sale of the booty. For manubiae means, as I have already said, not booty, but money collected from the sale of the booty by a quaestor of the Roman people. But when I said 'by the quaestor,' one ought now to understand that the praefect of the treasury is meant. For the charge of the treasury has been transferred from the quaestors to praefects. [*] However, it is possible to find instances in which

v2.p.501

writers of no little fame have written in such a way as to use praeda for manubiae or manubiae for praeda, either from carelessness or indifference; or by some metaphorical figure they have interchanged the words, which is allowable when done with judgment and skill. But those who have spoken properly and accurately, as did Marcus Tullius in that passage, have used manubiae of money.

A passage of Publius Nigidius in which he says that in Valeri, the vocative case of the name Valerius, the first syllable should have an acute accent; with other remarks of the same writer on correct writing.

THESE are the words of Publius Nigidius, a man pre-eminent for his knowledge of all the sciences, from the twenty-fourth book of his Grammatical Notes:[*]

How then can the accent be correctly used, if in names like Valeri we do not know whether they are genitive [*] or vocative? For the second syllable of the genitive has a higher pitch than the first, and on the last syllable the pitch falls again; but in the vocative case the first syllable has the highest pitch, and then there is a gradual descent.

[*] Thus indeed Nigidius bids us speak. But if anyone nowadays, calling to a Valerius, accents the first syllable of the vocative according to the direction of Nigidius, he will not escape being laughed at. Furthermore, Nigidius calls the acute accent

the highest pitch,

and what we call accentus, or

accent,

he calls voculatio, or

tone,

and the case which we now call genetivus, or

genitive,

he calls casus interrogandi,

the case of asking.

This too I notice in the same book of Nigidius: [*]

If you write the genitive case of amicus,

he says,

or of magnus, end the word with a single i; but if you write the nominative plural, you must write magnei and amicei, with an e followed by i, and so with similar words. Also [*] if you write terra in the genitive, let it end with the letter i, as terrai; [*] but in the dative with e, as terrae. Also [*] one who writes mei in the genitive case, as when we say mei studiosus, or ' devoted to me,' let him write it with i only (mei), not with e (meei); [*] but when he writes mehei, it must be written with e and i, since it is the dative case.

Led by the authority of a most learned man, I thought that I ought not to pass by these statements, for the sake of those who desire a knowledge of such matters.