Attic Nights (16.13-16.17)

The meaning of municipium and how it differs from colonia; and what municipes are and the derivation and proper use of that word; and also what the deified Hadrian said in the senate about the name and rights of municipes.

MUNICIPES and municipia are words which are readily spoken and in common use, and you would never find a man who uses them who does not think that he understands perfectly what he is saying. But in fact it is something different, and the meaning is different. For how rarely is one of us found who, coming from a colony of the Roman people, does not say what is far removed from reason and from truth,

namely, that he is municeps and that his fellow citizens are municipes? So general is the ignorance of what municipia are and what rights they have, and how far they differ from a

colony,

as well as the belief that coloniae are better off than municipia. With regard to the errors in this opinion which is so general the deified Hadrian, in the speech which he delivered in the senate In Behalf of the Italicenses, [*] from whom he himself came, discoursed most learnedly, showing his surprise that the Italicenses themselves and also some other ancient municipia, among whom he names the citizens of Utica, when they might enjoy their own customs and laws, desired instead to have the rights of colonies. Moreover, he asserts that the citizens of Praeneste earnestly begged and prayed the emperor Tiberius that they might be changed from a colony into the condition of a municipium, and that Tiberius granted their request by way of conferring a favour, because in their territory, and near their town itself, he had recovered from a dangerous illness.

Municipes, then, are Roman citizens from free towns, using their own laws and enjoying their own rights, merely sharing with the Roman people an honorary munus, or

privilege

[*] (from the enjoyment of which privilege they appear to derive their name), and bound by no other compulsion and no other law of the Roman people, except such as their own citizens have officially ratified. [*] We learn besides that the people of Caere were the first municipes without the right of suffrage, and that it was allowed them to assume the honour of Roman citizenship, but yet to be free from service and burdens, in return for receiving and guarding sacred objects during the war with the Gauls. Hence by contraries those tablets were called Caerites on which the censors ordered those to be enrolled whom they deprived of their votes by way of disgrace.

But the relationship of the

colonies

is a different one; for they do not come into citizenship from without, nor grow from roots of their own, but they are as it were transplanted from the State and have all the laws and institutions of the Roman people, not those of their own choice. This condition, although it is more exposed to control and less free, is nevertheless thought preferable and superior because of the greatness and majesty of the Roman people, of which those colonies seem to be miniatures, as it were, and in a way copies; [*] and at the same time because the rights of the municipal towns become obscure and invalid, and from ignorance of their existence the townsmen are no longer able to make use of them.

That Marcus Cato said there was a difference between properare and festinare, and how inappropriately Verrius Flaccus explained the origin of the latter word.

FESTINARE and properare seem to indicate the same thing and to be used of the same thing. But Marcus Cato thinks that there is a difference, and that the difference is this—I quote his own words from the speech which he pronounced On his Own Merits: [*]

It is one thing to hasten (properare), another to hurry (festinare). He who finishes some one thing in good season, hastens (properat); one who begins many things at the same time but does not finish them, hurries (festinat).

Verrius Flaccus, wishing to explain the nature of this difference, says [*]

Festinat is derived from for (to speak), since those idle folk who can accomplish nothing talk more than they act.

But that seems too forced and absurd, nor can the first letter of the two words be of such weight that because of it such different words as festino and for should appear to be the same. But it seems more fitting and closer to explain festinare as equivalent to fessum esse or

be wearied.

For one who tires himself out by hastily attacking many things at once no longer hastens, but hurries. [*]

The strange thing recorded of partridges by Theophrastus and of hares by Theopompus.

THEOPHRASTUS, most expert of philosophers, declares [*] that in Paphlagonia all the partridges have two hearts; Theopompus, [*] that in Bisaltia the hares have two livers each.

That the name Agrippa was given to those whose birth was difficult and unnatural; and of the goddesses called Prorsa and Postverta.

THOSE at whose birth the feet appeared first, instead of the head, which is considered the most difficult and dangerous form of parturition, are called Agrippae, a word formed from aegritudo, or

difficulty,

and pedes (feet). But Varro says [*] that the position of children in the womb is with the head lowest and the feet raised up, not according to the nature of a man, but of a tree. For he likens the branches of a tree to the feet and legs, and the stock and trunk to the head.

Accordingly,

says he,

when they chanced to be turned upon their feet in an unnatural position, since their arms are usually extended they are wont to be held back, and then women give birth with greater difficulty. For the purpose of averting this danger altars were set up at Rome to the two Carmentes, [*] of whom one was called Postverta, [*] the other Prorsa, [*] named from natural and unnatural births, and their power over them.

Of the origin of the term ager Vaticanus.

WE had been told that the ager Vaticanus, or

Vatican region,

and the presiding deity of the same place, took their names from the vaticinia, or

prophecies,

which were wont to be made in that region through the power and inspiration of that god. But in addition to that reason Marcus Varro, in his Antiquities of the Gods, states [*] that there is another explanation of the name: For,

says he, just as Aius was called a god and the altar was erected in his honour which stands at the bottom of the Nova Via, because in that place a voice from heaven was heard, so that god was called Vaticanus who controls the beginnings of human speech, since children, as soon as they are born, first utter the sound which forms the first syllable of Vaticanus; hence the word vagire ('cry'), which represents the sound of a new-born infant's voice.