A discussion of the question why Sallust said that avarice rendered effeminate, not only a manly soul, but also the very body itself.

1 WHEN winter was already waning, we were walking with the philosopher Favorinus in the court of the Titian baths, ¹ enjoying the mild warmth of the sun; and there, as we walked, Sallust's Catiline was being read, a book which Favorinus had seen in the hands of a friend and had asked him to read. The following passage from that book had been recited: ² Then Favorinus looked at me and said: said I,

Scarcely had I said this with some hesitation, when one of the disciples of Favorinus, who seemed to be an old hand in the study of literature, broke in: replied Favorinus,

There was with us at the time in the same promenade a man of considerable learning. He too, on being asked by Favorinus whether he had anything to say on the subject, answered to this effect:

Then Favorinus asked to have the same words of Sallust read again, and when they had been read, he said: To this the man replied thus: said he, Then said Favorinus: ³

Which was the birthday, according to Marcus Varro, of those born before the sixth hour of the night, or after it and in that connection, concerning the duration and limits of the days that are termed and are reckoned differently all over the world; and in addition, what Quintus Mucius wrote about that woman who claimed freedom from her husband's control illegally, because she had not taken account of the civil year.

1 IT is often inquired which day should be considered and called the birthday of those who are born in the third, the fourth, or any other hour of the night; that is, whether it is the day that preceded, or the day that followed, that night. Marcus Varro, in that book of his Human Antiquities which he wrote On Days, says: ⁴ From these words it appears that he so apportioned the reckoning of the days, that the birthday of one who is born after sunset, but before midnight, is the day after which that night began; but that, on the other hand, one who is born during the last six hours of the night is considered to have been born on the day which dawned after that night.

However, Varro also wrote in that same book ⁵ that the Athenians reckon differently, and that they regard all the intervening time from one sunset to the next as one single day. That the Babylonians counted still differently; for they called by the name of one day the whole space of time between sunrise and the beginning of the next sunrise; but that in the land of Umbria many said that from midday to the following midday was one and the same day. he said, ⁶

But it is shown by abundant evidence that the Roman people, as Varro said, reckoned each day from midnight to the next midnight. The religious ceremonies of the Romans are performed in part by day, others by night; but those which take place by night are appointed for certain days, not for nights; accordingly, those that take place during the last six hours of the night are said to take place on the day which dawns immediately after that night. Moreover, the ceremony and method of taking the auspices point to the same way of reckoning; for the magistrates, whenever they must take the auspices, and transact the business for which they have taken the auspices, on the same day, take the auspices after midnight and transact tile business after midday, when the sun is high, and they are then said to have taken the auspices and acted on the same day. Again, when the tribunes of the commons, who are not allowed to be away from Rome for a whole day, leave the city after midnight and return after the first lighting of the lamps on the following day, but before midnight, they are not considered to have been absent for a whole day, since they returned before the completion of the sixth hour of the night, and were in the city of Rome for some part of that day.

I have read that Quintus Mucius, the jurist, also used to say ⁷ that a woman did not become her own mistress who, after entering upon marriage relations with a man on the day called the Kalends of January, left him, for the purpose of emancipating herself, on the fourth day before the Kalends of the following January; ⁸ for the period of three nights, during which the Twelve Tables ⁹ provided that a woman must be separated from her husband for the purpose of gaining her independence, could not be completed, since the last ¹⁰ six hours of the third night belonged to the next year, which began on the first of January.

Now since I found all the above details about the duration and limits of days, pertaining to the observance and the system of ancient law, in the works of our early writers, I did not doubt that Virgil also indicated the same thing, not directly and openly, but, as became one treating poetic themes, by an indirect and as it were veiled allusion to ancient observance. He says: ¹¹ For in these lines he wished to remind us covertly, as I have said, that the day which the Romans have called begins after the completion of the sixth hour of the night.

On investigating and identifying the comedies of Plautus, since the genuine and the spurious without distinction are said to have been inscribed with his name; and further as to the report that Plautus wrote plays in a bakery and Naevius in prison.

1 I AM convinced of the truth of the statement which I have heard made by men well trained in literature, who have read a great many plays of Plautus with care and attention: namely, that with regard to the so-called plays they would ¹² trust, not the lists of Aelius or Sedigitus or Claudius or Aurelius or Accius or Manilius, but Plautus himself and the characteristic features of his manner and diction. Indeed, this is the criterion which we find Varro using. For in addition to those one and twenty known as which he set apart from the rest because they were not questioned but by common consent were attributed to Plautus, he accepted also some others, influenced by the style and humour of their language, which was characteristic of Plautus; and although these had already been listed under the names of other poets, he claimed them for Plautus: for example, one that I was recently reading, called The Boeotian woman. For although it is not among those one and twenty and is attributed to Aquilius, still Varro had not the least doubt that it was Plautine, nor will any other habitual reader of Plautus doubt it, even if lie knows only the following verses from that play, which, since they are, to speak in the manner of that famous poet, most Plautine, I recall and have noted down. There a hungry parasite speaks as follows: ¹³

My master Favorinus too, when I was reading the Nervularia of Plautus, and he had heard this line of the comedy: ¹⁴ delighted with the wit of the archaic words that describe the ugly defects of harlots, cried:

I myself too a little while ago, when reading the Fretum—that is the name of a comedy which some think is not Plautine—had no manner of doubt that it was by Plautus and in fact of all his plays the most authentic. From it I copied these two lines, ¹⁵ with the intention of looking up the story of the Arretine oracle: ¹⁶

Yet Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Comedies of Plautus, ¹⁸ quotes these words of Accius: ^{19 20}

In that same book of Varro's we are told also that there was another writer of comedies called Plautius. Since his plays bore the title ²¹ they were accepted as Plautine, although in fact they were not Plautine by Plautus, but Plautinian by Plautius.

Now there are in circulation under the name of Plautus about one hundred and thirty comedies; but that most learned of men Lucius Aelius thought that only twenty-five of them were his. ²² However, there is no doubt that those which do not appear to have been written by Plautus but are attached to his name, were the work of poets of old but were revised and touched up by him, and that is why they savour of the Plautine style. Now Varro and several others have recorded that the Saturio, the Addictus, and a third comedy, the name of which I do not now recall, were written by Plautus in a bakery, when, after losing in trade all the money which he had earned in employments connected with the stage, he had returned penniless to Rome, and to earn a livelihood had hired himself out to a baker, to turn a mill, of the kind which is called a ²³

So too we are told of Naevius that he wrote two plays in prison, the Soothsayer and the Leon, when by reason of his constant abuse and insults aimed at the leading men of the city, after the manner of the Greek poets, he had been imprisoned at Rome by the triumvirs. ²⁴ And afterwards he was set free by the tribunes of the commons, when he had apologized for his offences and the saucy language with which he had previously assailed many men.

That it was an inherited custom of Publius Africanus and other distinguished men of his time to shave their beard and cheeks.

1 I FOUND it stated in books which I read dealing with the life of Publius Scipio Africanus, that Publius Scipio, the son of Paulus, after he had celebrated a triumph because of his victory over the Carthaginians and had been censor, was accused before the people by Claudius Asellus, tribune of the commons, whom he had degraded from knighthood during his censorship; and that Scipio, although he was under accusation, neither ceased to shave his beard and to wear white raiment nor appeared in the usual garb of those under accusation. But since it is certain that at that time Scipio was less than forty years old, I was surprised at the statement about shaving his beard. I have learned, however, that in those same times the other nobles shaved their beards at that time of life, and that is why we see many busts of early men represented in that way, men who were not very old, but in middle life. ²⁵

How the philosopher Arcesilaus severely yet humorously taunted a man with the vice of voluptuousness and with unmanliness of expression and conduct.

1 PLUTARCH tells us ²⁶ that Arcesilaus the philosopher used strong language about a certain rich man, who was too pleasure-loving, but nevertheless had a reputation for uprightness and freedom from sensuality. For when he observed the man's affected speech, his artfully arranged hair, and his wanton glances, teeming with seduction and voluptuousness, he said:

On the natural strength of the palm-tree; for when weights are placed upon its wood, it resists their pressure.

1 A TRULY wonderful fact is stated by Aristotle in the seventh book of his Problems, ²⁷ and by Plutarch in the eighth of his Symposiaca. ²⁸ say they, says Plutarch,

A tale from the annals about Quintus Caedicius, tribune of the soldiers; and a passage from the Origins of Marcus Cato, in which he likens the valour of Caedicius to that of the Spartan Leonidas.

1 A GLORIOUS deed, by the Gods! and well worthy of the noble strains of Greek eloquence, is that of the military tribune Quintus Caedicius, recorded by Marcus Cato in his Origins. ³⁰

The actual account runs about as follows: In the first Punic war the Carthaginian general in Sicily advanced to meet the Roman army and was first to take possession of the hills and strategic points. As the result of this, the Roman soldiers made their way into a place exposed to surprise and extreme danger. The tribune went to the consul and pointed out that destruction was imminent from their unfavourable position and from the fact that the enemy had surrounded them. said he, —for that is Cato's term for a high and rough bit of ground— The consul replied to the tribune that the plan seemed to him equally wise; said he, answered the tribune, The consul thanked and commended the tribune. The tribune and his four hundred marched forth to death. The enemy marvelled at their boldness; they were on tiptoe of expectation to see where they would go. But when it appeared that they were on their way to occupy that hill, the Carthaginian commander sent against them the strongest men in his army, horse and foot. The Roman soldiers were surrounded; though surrounded, they resisted; the battle was long and doubtful. At last numbers triumphed. Every man of the four hundred fell, including the tribune, either run through with swords or overwhelmed with missiles. Meanwhile the consul, while the battle was raging there, withdrew to a safe position on high ground.

But what, by Heaven's help, befell that tribune, the leader of the four hundred soldiers, in the battle, I have added, no longer using my own words, but giving those of Cato himself, who says:

With such high personal testimony did Marcus Cato honour this valorous deed of Quintus Caedicius the tribune. But Claudius Quadrigarius, in the third book of his Annals, ³² says that the man's name was not Caedicius, but Laberius.

A fine letter of the consuls Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius to king Pyrrhus, recorded by the historian Quintus Claudius.

1 AT the time when king Pyrrhus was on Italian soil and had won one or two battles, when the Romans were getting anxious, and the greater part of Italy had gone over to the king, a certain Timochares, an Ambracian and a friend of king Pyrrhus, came stealthily to the consul Gaius Fabricius and asked a reward, promising that if they could come to terms, he would poison the king. This, he said, could easily be done, since his son was the monarch's cup-bearer. Fabricius transmitted this offer to the senate. The senate sent envoys to the king, instructing them not to reveal anything about Timochares, but to warn the king to act with more caution, and be on his guard against the treachery of those nearest to his own person. This, as I have told it, is the version found in the History of Valerius Antias. ³³ But Quadrigarius, in his third book, ³⁴ says that it was not Timochares, but Nicias, that approached the consul; that the embassy was not sent by the senate, but by the consuls; and that Pyrrhus thanked and complimented the Roman people in a letter, besides clothing and returning all the prisoners that were then in his hands.

The consuls at that time were Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius. ³⁵ The letter which they sent to king Pyrrhus about that matter, according to Claudius Quadrigarius, ran as follows: We, being greatly disturbed in spirit because of your continued acts of injustice, desire to war with you as an enemy. But as a matter of general precedent and honour, it has seemed to us that we should desire your personal safety, in order that we may have the opportunity of vanquishing you in the field. Your friend Nicias came to us, to ask for a reward if he should secretly slay you. We replied that we had no such wish, and that he could look for no advantage from such an action; at the same time it seemed proper to inform you, for fear that if anything of the kind should happen, the nations might think that it was done with our connivance, and also because we have no desire to make war by means of bribes or rewards or trickery. As for you, if you do not take heed, you will have a fall."

The characteristics of the horse of Seius, which is mentioned in the proverb; and as to the colour of the horses which are called spadices; and the explanation of that term.

1 GAVIUS BASSUS in his Commentaries, ³⁶ and Julius Modestus in the second book of his Miscellaneous Questions, ³⁷ tell the history of the horse of Seius, a tale wonderful and worthy of record. They say that there was a clerk called Gnaeus Seius, and that he had a horse foaled at Argos, in the land of Greece, about which there was a persistent tradition that it was sprung from the breed of horses that had belonged to the Thracian Diomedes, those which Hercules, after slaying Diomedes, had taken from Thrace to Argos. They say that this horse was of extraordinary size, with a lofty neck, bay in colour, with a thick, glossy mane, and that it was far superior to all horses in other points of excellence; but that same horse, they go on to say, was of such a fate or fortune, that whoever owned and possessed it came to utter ruin, as well as his whole house, his family and all his possessions. Thus, to begin with, that Gnaeus Seius who owned him was condemned and suffered a cruel death at the hands of Marcus Antonius, afterwards one of the triumvirs for setting the State in order. ³⁸ At that same time Cornelius Dolabella, the consul, on his way to Syria, attracted by the renown of this horse, turned aside to Argos, was fired with a desire to own the animal, and bought it for a hundred thousand sesterces; but Dolabella in his turn was besieged in Syria during the civil war, and slain. And soon afterwards Gaius Cassius, who had besieged Dolabella, carried off this same horse, which had been Dolabella's. It is notorious too that this Cassius, after his party had been vanquished and his army routed, met a wretched end. Then later, after the death of Cassius, Antonius, who had defeated him, sought for this famous horse of Cassius, and after getting possession of it was himself afterwards defeated and deserted in his turn, and died an ignominious death. Hence the proverb, applied to unfortunate men, arose and is current:

The meaning is the same of that other old proverb, which I have heard quoted thus: For when the town of Tolosa in the land of Gaul was pillaged by the consul Quintus Caepio, and a quantity of gold was found in the temples of that town, whoever touched a piece of gold from that sack died a wretched and agonizing death.

Gavius Bassus reports that he saw this horse at Argos; that it was of incredible beauty and strength and of the richest possible colouring.

This colour, as I have said, we call poeniceus; the Greeks sometimes name it foi=nic, at others spa/dic, since the branch of the palm ( foi=nic), torn from the tree with its fruit, is called spadix. ³⁹

That in many natural phenomena a certain power and efficacy of the number seven has been observed, concerning which Marcus Varro discourses at length in his Hebdomades. ⁴⁰

1 MARCUS VARRO, in the first book of his work entitled Hebdomades or On Portraits, speaks of many varied excellencies and powers of the number seven, which the Greeks call e(bdoma/s. he says, ⁴² Varro also says that there are seven circles in the heavens, perpendicular to its axis. The two smallest of these, which touch the ends of the axis, he says are called po/loi, or ; but that because of their small diameter they cannot be represented on what is termed an armillary sphere. ⁴³ And the zodiac itself is not uninfluenced by the number seven; for the summer solstice occurs in the seventh sign from the winter solstice, and the winter solstice in the seventh after the summer, and one equinox in the seventh sign after the other. Then too those winter days during which the kingfishers nest on the water he says are seven in number. ⁴⁴ Besides this, he writes that the course of the moon is completed in four times seven complete days; he says, and he quotes Aristides ⁴⁵ of Samos as his authority for this opinion. In this case he says that one should not only take note of the fact that the moon finishes its journey in four times seven, that is eight and twenty, days, but also that this number seven, if, beginning with one and going on until it reaches itself, it includes the sum of all the numbers through which it has passed and then adds itself, makes the number eight and twenty, which is the number of days of the revolution of the moon. ⁴⁶ He says that the influence of that number extends to and affects also the birth of human beings. says he, says he, He says that this power also has been observed in that number, that before the seventh month neither male nor female child can be born in health and naturally, and that those which are in the womb the most regular time are born two hundred and seventy-three days after conception, that is, not until the beginning of the fortieth hebdomad. Of the periods dangerous to the lives and fortunes of all men, which the Chaldaeans call all the gravest are combinations of the number seven. Besides this, he says that the extreme limit of growth of the human body is seven feet. That, in my opinion, is truer than the statement of Herodotus, the story-teller, in the first book of his History, ⁴⁷ that the body of Orestes was found under ground, and that it was seven cubits in height, that is, twelve and a quarter feet; unless, as Homer thought, ⁴⁸ the men of old were larger and taller of stature, but now, because the world is ageing, as it were, men and things are diminishing in size. The teeth too, he says, appear in the first seven months seven at a time in each jaw, and fall out within seven years, and the back teeth are added, as a rule, within twice seven years. He says that the physicians who use music as a remedy declare that the veins of men, or rather their arteries, are set in motion according to the number seven, ⁴⁹ and this treatment they call th\n dia\ tessa/rwn sumfwni/an, ⁵⁰ because it results from the harmony of four tones. He also believes that the periods of danger in diseases have greater violence on the days which are made up of the number seven, and that those days in particular seem to be, as the physicians call them, krisi/moi or ; namely, the first, second and third hebdomad. And Varro does not fail to mention a fact which adds to the power and influence of the number seven, namely, that those who resolve to die of starvation do not meet their end until the seventh day.

These remarks of Varro about the number seven show painstaking investigation. But he has also brought together in the same place others which are rather trifling: for example, that there are seven wonderful works in the world, that the sages of old were seven, that the usual number of rounds in the races in the circus is seven, and that seven champions were chosen to attack Thebes. Then he adds in that book the further information that he has entered upon the twelfth hebdomad of his age, and that up to that day he has completed seventy hebdomads of books, ⁵¹ of which a considerable number were destroyed when his library was plundered, at the time of his proscription. ⁵²

The weak arguments by which Accius in his Didascalica attempts to prove that Hesiod was earlier than Homer.

1 As to the age of Homer and of Hesiod opinions differ. Some, among whom are Philochorus ⁵³ and Xenophanes, ⁵⁴ have written that Homer was older than Hesiod; others that he was younger, among them Lucius Accius the poet and Euphorus the historian. ⁵⁵ But Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Portraits, ⁵⁶ says ⁵⁷ that it is not at all certain which of the two was born first, but that there is no doubt that they lived partly in the same period of time, and that this is proved by the inscription ⁵⁸ engraved upon a tripod which Hesiod is said to have set up on Mount Helicon. Accius, on the contrary, in the first book of his Didascalica, ⁵⁹ makes use of very weak arguments in his attempt to show that Hesiod was the elder: he writes, says Accius, ⁶²

Also as to Homer's native city there is the very greatest divergence of opinion. Some say that he was from Colophon, some from Smyrna; others assert that he was an Athenian, still others, an Egyptian; and Aristotle declares ⁶³ that he was from the island of los. Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Portraits, placed this couplet under the portrait of Homer: ⁶⁴

That Publius Nigidius, a man of great learning, applied bibosus to one who was given to drinking heavily and greedily, using a new, but hardly rational, word-formation.

1 PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS, in his Grammatical Notes, ⁶⁶ calls one who is fond of drinking bibax and bibosus. Bibax, like edax, I find used by many others; but as yet I have nowhere found an example of bibosus, except in Laberius, and there is no other word similarly derived. For vinosus, or vitiosus, and other formations of the kind, are not parallel, since they are derived from nouns, not from verbs. Laberius, in the mime entitled Salinator, uses this word thus: ⁶⁷

How Demosthenes, while still young and a pupil of the philosopher Plato, happening to hear the orator Callistratus add ressing the people, deserted Plato and became a follower of Callistratus.

1 HERMIPPUS has written ⁶⁸ that Demosthenes, when quite young, used to frequent the Academy and listen to Plato. says he, says Hermippus,

That whoever says dimidium librum legi, or dimidiam fabulam audivi, and uses other expressions of that kind, speaks incorrectly: and that Marcus Varro gives the explanation of that error: and that no early writer has used such phraseology.

1 VARRO believes that dimidium librum legi ( ), or dimidiam fabulam legi ( ), or any other expression of that kind, is incorrect and faulty usage. says he, ⁷¹ one ought to say dimidiatum librum ('the halved book'), not dimidium, and dimidiatam fabulam, not dimidiam. But, on the contrary, if from a pint a half-pint has been poured, one should not say that 'a halved pint' has been poured, but a ' half-pint,' and when one has received five hundred sesterces out of a thousand that were owing him, we must say that he has received a half sestertium, ⁷² not a halved one. But if a silver bowl," he says, Thus Varro discusses and analyzes very acutely the difference between dimidium and dimidiatum, and he declares that Quintus Ennius spoke, in his Annals, with understanding in the line: ⁷³ and similarly the part that is missing from the cup should be spoken of as not

Now the point of all this argument, which Varro sets forth acutely, it is true, but somewhat obscurely, is this: dimidiatum is equivalent to dismediatum, and means and therefore dimidiatum cannot properly be used except of the thing itself that is divided; dimidium, however, is not that which is itself divided, but is one of the parts of what has been divided. Accordingly, when we wish to say that we have read the half part of a book or heard the half part of a play, if we say dimidiam fabulam or dimidium librum, we make a mistake; for in that case you are using dimidium of the whole thing which has been halved and divided. Therefore Lucilius, following this same rule, says: ⁷⁴ and in another place: ⁷⁵ Again in his twentieth book it is clearer still that Lucilius carefully avoids saying dimidiam horam, but puts dimidium in the place of dimnidiam in the following lines: ⁷⁶ For while it was natural and easy to say he watchfully and carefully shunned an improper term. From this it is quite clear that not even can properly be said, but we must say either or And so Plautus as well, in the Bacchides, ⁷⁸ writes not and in the Aulularia, ⁷⁹ not in this verse: But in the Menaechmi he has not as follows: ⁸⁰ Marcus Cato, too, in his work On Farming, writes: ⁸¹ He says not For we ought to say but the finger itself should be said to be Marcus Cato also wrote this of the Carthaginians: ⁸² In fact, no one of all those who have spoken correctly has used these words otherwise than in the way I have described.

That it is recorded in literature and handed down by tradition, that great and unexpected joy has brought sudden death to many, since the breath of life was stifled and could not endure the effects of an unusual and strong emotion.

1 ARISTOTLE the philosopher relates ⁸³ that Polycrita, a woman of high rank in the island of Naxos, on suddenly and unexpectedly hearing joyful news, breathed her last. Philippides too, a comic poet of no little repute, when he had unexpectedly won the prize in a contest of poets at an advanced age, and was rejoicing exceedingly, died suddenly in the midst of his joy. The story also of Diogoras of Rhodes is widely known. This Diogoras had three young sons, one a boxer, the second a pancratist, ⁸⁴ and the third a wrestler. He saw them all victors and crowned at Olympia on the same day, and when the three young men were embracing him there, and having placed their crowns on their father's head were kissing him, and the people were congratulating him and pelting him from all sides with flowers, there in the very stadium, before the eyes of the people, amid the kisses and embraces of his sons, he passed away.

Moreover, I have read in our annals that at the time when the army of the Roman people was cut to pieces at Cannae, ⁸⁵ an aged mother was overwhelmed with grief and sorrow by a message announcing the death of her son; but that report was false, and when not long afterwards the young man returned from that battle to the city, the aged mother, upon suddenly seeing her son, was overpowered by the flood, the shock, and the crash, so to speak, of unlooked-for joy descending upon her, and gave up the ghost.

The variations in the period of gestation reported by physicians and philosophers; and incidentally the views also of the ancient poets on that subject and many other noteworthy and interesting particulars; and the words of the physician Hippocrates, quoted verbatim from his book entitled Peri\ Trofh=s. ⁸⁶

1 BOTH physicians and philosophers of distinction have investigated the duration of the period of gestation in man. The general opinion, now accepted as correct, is that after the womb of a woman has conceived the seed, the child is born rarely in the seventh month, never in the eighth, often in the ninth, more often in the tenth in number; and that the end of the tenth month, not its beginning, is the extreme limit of human gestation. And this we find the ancient poet Plautus saying in his comedy the Cistellaria, in these words: ⁸⁷ That same thing is stated by Menander also, a still older poet and exceedingly well informed as to current opinion; I quote his words on that subject from the play called Plocium or The Necklace: ⁸⁸ But although our countryman Caecilius wrote a play with the same name and of the same plot, and borrowed extensively from Menander, yet in naming the months of delivery he did not omit the eighth, which Menander had passed by. These are the lines from Caecilius: ⁸⁹ Marcus Varro leads us to believe that Caecilius did not make this statement thoughtlessly or differ without reason from Menander and from the opinions of many men. For in the fourteenth book of his Divine Antiquities he has left the statement on record that parturition sometimes takes place in the eighth month. ⁹⁰ In this book he also says that sometimes a child may be born even in the eleventh month, and he cites Aristotle ⁹¹ as authority for his statement in regard both to the eighth and the eleventh month. Now, the reason for this disagreement as to the eighth month may be found in Hippocrates' work entitled Peri\ Trofh=s, or On Nurture, from which these words are taken ⁹² This statement, so obscure, abrupt, and apparently contradictory, is thus explained by the physician Sabinus, who wrote a very helpful commentary on Hippocrates:

But Varro says ⁹³ that the early Romans did not regard such births as unnatural rarities, but they did believe that a woman was delivered according to nature in the ninth or tenth month, and in no others, and that for this reason they gave to the three Fates names derived from bringing forth, and from the ninth and tenth months. says he, ⁹⁴ But Caesellius Vindex in his Ancient Readings says: ' The names of the Fates are three: ; and he quotes this verse from the Odyssey of Livius, the earliest of our poets, ⁹⁵ But Caesellius, though a man not without learning, took Morta as a name, when he ought to have taken it as equivalent to Mocra. ⁹⁶

Furthermore, besides what I have read in books about human gestation, ⁹⁷ also heard of the following case, which occurred in Rome: A woman of good and honourable character, of undoubted chastity, gave birth to a child in the eleventh month after her husband's death, and because of the reckoning of the time the accusation was made that she had conceived after the death of her husband, since the decemvirs had written that a child is born in ten months and not in the eleventh month. The deified Hadrian, however, having heard the case, decided that birth might also occur in the eleventh month, and I myself have read the actual decree with regard to the matter. In that decree Hadrian declares that he makes his decision after looking up the views of the ancient philosophers and physicians.

This very day I chanced to read these words in a satire of Marcus Varro's entitled The Will: ⁹⁸ Just as it used commonly to be said of things that did not differ from each other, so Varro means by this old proverb that children born in ten months and in eleven are to have the same and equal rights. ¹⁰¹

But if it is a fact that gestation cannot be prolonged beyond the tenth month, it is pertinent to ask why Homer wrote that Neptune said to a girl whom he had just violated: ¹⁰²

When I had brought this matter to the attention of several scholars, some of them argued that in Homer's time, as in that of Romulus, the year consisted, not of twelve months, but of ten; others, that it was in accord with Neptune and his majesty that a child by him should develop through a longer period than usual; and others gave other nonsensical reasons. But Favorinus tells me that periplome/nou e)niautou= does not mean ( confectus), but ( ad fectus.)

In this instance Favorinus did not use the word adfectus in its popular signification (but yet correctly); for as it was used by Marcus Cicero and the most polished of the early writers, it was properly applied to things which had advanced, or been carried, not to the very end, but nearly to the end. Cicero gives the word that meaning in the speech On the Consular Provinces. ¹⁰³

Moreover, Hippocrates, in that book of which I wrote above, when he mentioned the number of days within which the embryo conceived in the womb is given form, and had limited the time of gestation itself to the ninth or tenth month, but had said that this nevertheless was not always of the same duration, but that delivery occurred sometimes more quickly, sometimes later, finally used these words: ¹⁰⁴ By this he means that whereas a birth sometimes takes place more quickly, yet it occurs not much more quickly, and when later, not much later.

I recall that this question was carefully and thoroughly investigated at Rome, an inquiry demanded by a suit at law of no small moment at the time, whether, namely, a child that had been born alive in the eighth month but had died immediately, satisfied the conditions of the ius trium liberorrum, ¹⁰⁵ since it seemed to some that the untimely period of the eighth month made it an abortion and not a birth.

But since I have told what I have learned about a birth after a year in Homer and about the eleventh month, I think I ought not to omit what I read in the seventh book of the Natural Histoy of Plinius Secundus. But because that story might seem to be beyond belief, I have quoted Pliny's own words: ¹⁰⁶ In the same book of Plinius Secundus are these words: ¹¹⁰

The statement of men of the highest authority that Plato bought three books of Philolaus the Pythagorean, and that Aristotle purchased a few books of the philosopher Speusippus, at prices beyond belief.

1 THE story goes that the philosopher Plato was a man of very slender means, but that nevertheless he bought three books of Philolaus the Pythagorean for ten thousand denarii.1 That sum, according to some writers, was given him by his friend Dion of Syracuse.

Aristotle too, according to report, bought a very few books of the philosopher Speusippus, after the latter's death, for three Attic talents, a sum equivalent in our money to seventy-two thousand sesterces. ¹¹¹

The bitter satirist Timon wrote a highly abusive work, which he entitled Si/llos. ¹¹² In that book he addresses the philosopher Plato in opprobrious terms, alleging that he had bought a treatise on the Pythagorean philosophy at an extravagant figure, and that from it he had compiled that celebrated dialogue the Timaeus. Here are Timon's lines on the subject: ¹¹³

What is meant by pedari senafores, and why they are so called; also the origin of these words in the customary edict of the consuls:

1 THERE are many who think that those senators were called pedarii who did not express their opinion in words, but agreed with the opinion of others by stepping to their side of the House. How then? Whenever a decree of the senate was passed by division, did not all the senators vote in that manner? Also the following explanation of that word is given, which Gavius Bassus has left recorded in his Commentaries. For he says ¹¹⁴ that in the time of our forefathers senators who had held a curule magistracy used to ride to the House in a chariot, as a mark of honour; that in that chariot there was a seat on which they sat, which for that reason was called curulis; ¹¹⁵ but that those senators who had not yet held a curule magistracy went on foot to the House: and that therefore the senators who had not yet held the higher magistracies were called pedarii. Marcus Varro, however, in the Menippean Satire entitled (Ippoku/wn, says ¹¹⁶ that some knights were called pedarii, and he seems to mean those who, since they had not yet been enrolled in the senate by the censors, were not indeed senators, but because they had held offices by vote of the people, used to come into the senate and had the right of voting. In fact, even those who had filled curule magistracies, if they had not yet been added by the censors to the list of senators, were not senators, and as their names came among the last, they were not asked their opinions, but went to a division on the views given by the leading members. That was the meaning of the traditional proclamation, which even to-day the consuls, for the sake of following precedent, use in summoning the senators to the House. The words of the edict are these:

I have had a line of Laberius copied also, in which that word is used; I read it in a mime entitled Stricturae: ¹¹⁷ I have observed that some use a barbarous form of this word; for instead of pedarii they say pedanii.

Why, according to Gavius Bassus, a man is called parcus and what he thought to be the explanation of that word; and how, on the contrary, Favorinus made fun of that explanation of his.

1 AT the dinners of the philosopher Favorinus, after the guests had taken their places and the serving of the viands began, a slave commonly stood by his table and began to read something, either from Grecian literature or from our own. For example, one day when I was present the reading was from the treatise of the learned Gavius Bassus On the Origin of Verbs and Substantives. In it this passage occurred: ^{118 119}

Then Favorinus, on hearing these words, said: he continued, ¹²⁰