Attic Nights (13.8-13.12)

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\ twn u(wn (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

v2.p.443

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

v2.p.445

no one to be summoned, and required no one who was summoned by one of my colleagues to obey, unless he wished.

I think that Labeo, being a private citizen at the time, [*] showed unjustified confidence in that law of which Marcus Varro has written, in not appearing when summoned by the tribunes. For how the mischief was it reasonable to refuse to obey those whom you admit to have the power of arrest? For one who can lawfully be arrested may also be taken to prison. But since we are inquiring why the tribunes, who had full power of coercion, did not have the right to summon ... [*] because the tribunes of the commons seem to have been elected in early times, not for administering justice, nor for taking cognizance of suits and complaints when the parties were absent, but for using their veto-power when there was immediate need, in order to prevent injustice from being done before their eyes; and for that reason the right of leaving the city at night was denied them, since their constant presence and personal oversight were needed to prevent acts of violence.