Attic Nights (15.24-15.28)

Vulcacius Sedigitus' canon of the Latin writers of comedy, from the book which he wrote On Poets.

SEDIGITUS, in the book which he wrote On Poets, shows in the following verses of his [*] what he thought of those who wrote comedies, which one he thinks surpasses all the rest, and then what rank and honour he gives to each of them:

This question many doubtfully dispute,

Which comic poet they'd award the palm.

This doubt my judgment shall for you resolve;

If any differ from me, senseless he.

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First place I give Caecilius Statius.

Plautus holds second rank without a peer;

Then Naevius third, for passion and for fire.

If fourth there be, be he Licinius.

I place Atilius next, after Licinius.

These let Terentius follow, sixth in rank.

Turpilius seventh, Trabea eighth place holds.

Ninth palm I gladly give to Luscius,

To Ennius tenth, as bard of long ago. [*]

Of certain new words which I had met in the Miimiambics of Gnaeus Matius.

GNAEUS MATIUS, a learned man, in his Mimiambics properly and fitly coined the word recentatur for the idea expressed by the Greek a)nai eoutai, that is

it is born again and is again made new.

The lines in which the word occurs are these: [*]

E'en now doth Phoebus gleam, again is born (recentatur)

The common light to joys of mortal men.

Matius too, in the same Mimiarmbics, says edulcare, meaning

to sweeten,

in these lines: [*]

And therefore it is fit to sweeten (edulcare) life,

And bitter cares with wisdom to control.

In what words the philosopher Aristotle defined a syllogism; and an interpretation of his definition in Latin terms.

ARISTOTLE defines a syllogism in these lines: [*]

A sentence in which, granted certain premises, something else than these premises necessarily follows as the result of these premises.

The following interpretation of this definition seemed to me fairly good:

A syllogism is a sentence in which, certain things being granted and accepted, something else than that which was granted is necessarily established through what was granted.

The meaning of comitia calata, curiata, centsriata, and tribulta, and of concilium, and other related matters of the same kind.

IN the first book of the work of Laelius Felix addressed To Quintus Mucius it is said [*] that Labeo wrote [*] that the comitia calata, or

convoked assembly,

was held on behalf of the college of pontiffs for the purpose of installing the king [*] or the flames. Of these assemblies some were those

of the curies

, others those

of the centuries

; the former were called together (calari being used in the sense of

convoke

) by the curiate lictor, the latter by a horn blower.

In that same assembly, which we have said was called calata, or

convoked,

wills were customarily made and sacrifices annulled. For we learn that there were three kinds of wills: one which was made in the

convoked assembly

before the collected people, a second on the battle-field, [*] when the men were called into line for the purpose of fighting, a third the symbolic sale of a householder's property by means of the coin and balance. [*]

In the same book of Laelius Felix this is written:

One who orders a part of the people to assemble, but not all the people, ought to announce a council rather than an assembly. Moreover, tribunes do not summon the patricians, nor may they refer any question to them. Therefore bills which are passed on the initiative of the tribunes of the commons are properly called plebiscita, or 'decrees of the commons,' rather than 'laws.' In former times the patricians were not bound by such decrees until the dictator Quintus Hortensius passed a law, providing that all the Quirites should be bound by whatever enactment the commons should pass.

[*] It is also written in the same book:

When voting is done according to families of men, [*] the assembly is called 'curiate'; when it is according to property and age, ' centuriate'; when according to regions and localities, 'tribal.' Further it impious for the assembly of the centuries to be held within the pomerium, because the army must be summoned outside of the city, and it is not lawful for it to be summoned within the city. Therefore it was customary for the

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assembly of the centuries to be held in the field of Mars, and the army to be summoned there for purposes of defence while the people were busy casting their votes.

That Cornelius Nepos was in error when he wrote that Cicero defended Sextus Roscius at the age of twenty-three.

CORNELIUS NEPOS was a careful student of records and one of Marcus Cicero's most intimate friends. Yet in the first book of his Life of Cicero he seems to have erred in writing [*] that Cicero made his first plea in a public trial at the age of twenty-three years, defending Sextus Roscius, who was charged with murder. For if we count the years from Quintus Caepio and Quintus Serranus, in whose consulship Cicero was born on the third day before the Nones of January, [*] to Marcus Tullius and Gnaeus Dolabella, in whose consulate he pleaded a private case In Defence of Quinctius before Aquilius Gallus as judge, the result is twenty-six years. And there is no doubt that he defended Sextus Roscius on a charge of murder the year after he spoke In Defence of Quinctius; that is, at the age of twenty-seven, in the consulship of Lucius Sulla Felix and Metellus Pius, the former for a second time.

Asconius Pedianus has noted [*] that Fenestella also made a mistake in regard to this matter, in writing [*] that he pleaded for Sextus Roscius in the twenty-sixth year of his age. But the mistake of Nepos is greater than that of Fenestella, unless anyone is inclined to believe that Nepos, led by a

feeling of friendship and regard, suppressed four years in order to increase our admiration of Cicero, by making it appear that he delivered his brilliant speech In Defence of Roscius when he was a very young man.

This also has been noted and recorded by the admirers of both orators, that Demosthenes and Cicero delivered their first brilliant speeches in the courts at the same age, the former Against Androtion and Against Timocrates at the age of twenty-seven, the latter when a year younger In Defence of Quinctius and at twenty-seven In Defence of Sextus Roscius. Also, the number of years which they lived did not differ very greatly; Cicero died at sixty-three, Demosthenes at sixty. [*]