Fonte primária (ver esclarecimento em Translation logo abaixo): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Gellius/home.html
Notas do Prof. Thayer
“The Text on LacusCurtius and Elsewhere
On October 5, 2006 David Camden’s Forum Romanum, after a run of nearly 10 years providing a very useful index to Latin literature online, and many of the texts themselves, suddenly disappeared.
One of the most useful texts that had been there and nowhere else, at least in full, was Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae. These pages on LacusCurtius are therefore in the nature of an emergency rescue: I retrieved them from Google’s cache of the expired website, reformatted them to match my usual habits, inserted local links at the chapter and section numbers, and threw them back online; at which point, after a fair amount of work on my part which I’m not about to let go for naught, Forum Romanum happily reappeared online, and is still online today (2020).
At some point then I’ll go thru the text, convert the Greek (currently transliterated), conform it to the Loeb edition, add the occasional critical notes in that edition, apply a consistent format, etc. (…)
A partial transcription of Gellius — whether from the same edition as this one or not, I haven’t checked — may be found, unidentified as to source, here. [em latim]
Translation
The English translation, on the other hand, was not online anywhere, and having been dragged into this particular author by a sort of accident, I’m taking advantage of it to input it here from scratch. It is the one by J.C. Rolfe, first published in 1927 in 3 volumes as part of the Loeb Classical Library, and revised in various years. Volumes I and II of my exemplar are in the public domain for sure; [até o BOOK XIII, dos 20 de Gélio] Volume III may not be; if not, I will use another edition, of course.” Thayer está provavelmente esperando direitos autorais da obra vencerem para postar do BOOK XIV ao BOOK XX traduzidos em inglês. Você lerá fragmentos destes capítulos mais adiante, extraídos de outra fonte, porém bastante diminutos (não por qualquer questão legal: trata-se da parte menos interessante deste livro que, em geral, é excepcional para quem está praticando e ampliando seu vocabulário em latim, mas uma leitura medíocre, senão apenas ruim, composta de anedotas empoladas e eruditas sem qualquer liame ou ponto em comum. Maior parte dos parágrafos se refere a “problemas de gramáticos”, como seriam chamados os lingüistas da época, sobre grafias corretas de palavras do latim ou possíveis etimologias das palavras, ou versos polêmicos de autores mais antigos, enfim, coisas triviais para nós.
PREFACE
Autor chato e pedante que começa dizendo que todos os outros escritores são chatos e pedantes, mesmo que jurem que não o são. Sim, se isso não é Literatura Clássica é ao menos um comportamento clássico de escrevinhador! Além disso, trata-se do Montaigne da Antiguidade: ADORA, em caps lock, citar outros autores, ao ponto de causar náusea no leitor. Pensa-se menos através dos gênios do passado do que através de si mesmo. Embora possa parecer que não, a própria motivação para escrever uma obra própria se perde caso seja dada preferência apenas aos ditos dos outros. Isso também vale para Plutarco. O gênio verdadeiro pode ter os outros em mente, mas cria conteúdo, filosofa, ensaia, critica ou inventa (narrativas, épicos) com o próprio sopro, com a própria alma como motor. Veremos muito menos aspas num livro verdadeiramente digno de ser lido.
“P.13 Now just because there will be found in these notes some few topics that are knotty and troublesome, either from Grammar or Dialectics or even from Geometry, and because there will also be some material of a somewhat recondite character about augural or pontifical law, one ought not therefore to avoid such topics as useless to know or difficult to comprehend. For I have not made an excessively deep and obscure investigation of the intricacies of these questions, but I have presented the first fruits, so to say, and a kind of foretaste of the liberal arts; and never to have heard of these, or come in contact with them, is at least unbecoming, if not positively harmful, for a man with even an ordinary education.
P.14 Of those then, if such there be, who may perhaps sometimes have leisure and inclination to acquaint themselves with these lucubrations, I should like to ask and be granted the favour, that in reading of matters which they have known for a long time they shall not scorn them as commonplace and trite”
“P.19 For those, however, who have never found pleasure nor busied themselves in reading, inquiring, writing and taking notes, who have never spent wakeful nights in such employments, who have never improved themselves by discussion and debate with rival followers of the same Muse, but are absorbed in the turmoil of business affairs — for such men it will be by far the best plan to hold wholly aloof from these ‘Nights’ and seek for themselves other diversion.”
“P.22 Up to the present day I have already completed twenty books of notes.”
“P.24 Thus the number of books, given the Gods’ gracious help, will keep pace with the years of life itself, however many or few they may be, nor have I any desire to be allotted a longer span of existence than so long as I retain my present ability to write and take notes.”
BOOK I
“1.1 In the treatise(*) which he wrote on the mental and physical endowment and achievements of Hercules while he was among men, Plutarch says that the philosopher Pythagoras reasoned sagaciously and acutely in determining and measuring the hero’s superiority in size and stature.
(*) This work, probably entitled Βίος Ἠρακλέους, has not survived.”
(*) “The phrase ex pede Herculem has become proverbial, along with ex ungue leonem, ab uno disce omnes (Virg. Aen. II.65 f.).”
(*) “Clarissimus became a standing title of men of high rank, especially of the senatorial order.”
“3.6 I myself secretly voted for conviction, but I persuaded my fellow judges to vote for acquittal. 3.7 Thus I myself in a matter of such moment did my duty both as a judge and as a friend. But my action torments me with the fear that there may be something of treachery and guilt in having recommended to others, in the same case, at the same time, and in a common duty, a course for them contrary to what I thought best for myself.”
“3.21 Theophrastus,¹ however, in the book that I have mentioned, discusses this very question more exhaustively and with more care and precision than Cicero.”
¹ Maior discípulo de Aristóteles.
“3.31 …Chilo of old, having heard a man say that he had no enemy, asked him if he had no friend, believing that enmities necessarily followed and were involved in friendships.”
“10.2 You, on the contrary, just as if you were talking today with Evander’s mother, use words that have already been obsolete for many years, because you want no one to know and comprehend what you are saying. Why not accomplish your purpose more fully, foolish fellow, and say nothing at all? 10.3 But you assert that you love the olden time, because it is honest, sterling, sober and temperate. 10.4 Live by all means according to the manners of the past, but speak in the language of the present, and always remember and take to heart what Gaius Caesar, a man of [un]surpassing[?] talent and wisdom, wrote in the first book of his treatise On Analogy: ‘Avoid, as you would a rock, a strange and unfamiliar word’.”
“15.6 Provided this fact be recognized, that neither should one commend the dumbness of a man who knows a subject, but is unable to give it expression in speech, nor the ignorance of one who lacks knowledge of his subject, but abounds in words; yet if one must choose one or the other alternative, I for my part would prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity. (Cicero)”
“15.8 That man is never silent who is afflicted with the disease of talking, as one in a lethargy is afflicted with that of drinking and sleeping. For if you should not come together when he calls an assembly, so eager is he to talk that he would hire someone to listen. And so you hear him, but you do not listen, just as if he were a quack. For a quack’s words are heard, but no one trusts himself to him when he is sick. (Cato)”
“15.10 …For a crust of bread he can be hired either to keep silence or to speak.”
“20.2 …A ‘plane’ figure is one that has all its lines in 2 dimensions only, breadth and length; for example, triangles and squares, which are drawn on a flat surface without height. 20.3 We have a ‘solid’ figure, when its several lines do not produce merely length and breadth in a plane, but are raised so as to produce height also; such are in general the triangular columns which they call ‘pyramids’, or those which are bounded on all sides by squares, such as the Greeks call κύβοι, and we quadrantalia. 20.4 For the κύβος is a figure which is square on all its sides, ‘like the dice,’ says Marcus Varro, ‘with which we play on a gaming-board, for which reason the dice themselves are called κύβοι.’ 20.5 Similarly in numbers too the term κύβος is used, when every factor consisting of the same number is equally resolved into the cube number itself, as is the case when 3 is taken 3 times and the resulting number itself is then trebled.”
“22.9 Now Julius Paulus, the most learned man within my recollection, used to say with keenness and understanding that superesse and its Greek equivalent had more than one meaning: for he declared that the Greeks used περισσόν both ways, either of what was superfluous and unnecessary 22.10 or of what was too abundant, overflowing and excessive; that in the same way our earliest writers also employed superesse sometimes of what was superfluous, idle and not wholly necessary, a sense which we have just cited from Varro, and some, as in Cicero, of that which indeed surpassed other things in copiousness and plentifulness, yet was immoderate and too extensive, and gushed forth more abundantly than was sufficient.”
“23.4 It was formerly the custom at Rome for senators to enter the House with their sons under age. 23.5 In those days, when a matter of considerable importance had been discussed and was postponed to the following day, it was voted that no one should mention the subject of the debate until the matter was decided. The mother of the young Papirius, who had been in the House with his father, asked her son what the Fathers had taken up in the senate. 23.6 The boy replied that it was a secret and that he could not tell.
23.7 The woman became all the more eager to hear about it; the secrecy of the matter and the boys’ silence piqued her curiosity; she therefore questioned him more pressingly and urgently. 23.8 Then the boy, because of his mother’s insistence, resorted to a witty and amusing falsehood. He said that the senate had discussed the question whether it seemed more expedient, and to the advantage of the State, for one man to have 2 wives or one woman to have 2 husbands. 23.9 On hearing this, she is panic-stricken, rushed excitedly from the house, 23.10 and carries the news to the other matrons. Next day a crowd of matrons came to the senate, imploring with tears and entreaties that one woman might have 2 husbands rather than one man 2 wives. 23.11 The senators, as they entered the House, were wondering at this strange madness of the women and the meaning of such a demand, 23.12 when young Papirius, stepping forward to the middle of the House, told in detail what his mother had insisted on hearing, what he himself had said to her, in fact, the whole story exactly as it had happened. 23.13 The senate paid homage to the boy’s cleverness and loyalty, but voted that thereafter boys should not enter the House with their fathers, save only this Papirius; and the boy was henceforth honoured with the surname Praetextatus, because of his discretion in keeping silent and in speaking, while he was still young enough to wear the purple-bordered gown.”
(*) “If a man was emancipated after having children born to him, the latter remained under the control of their grandfather and were legally orphans”
Platner & Ashby, Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome
Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
BOOK II
“3.1 The letter h (or perhaps it should be called a breathing rather than a letter) was added by our forefathers to give strength and vigour to the pronunciation of many words, in order that they might have a fresher and livelier sound; and this they seem to have done from their devotion to the Attic language, and under its influence. 3.2 It is well known that the people of Attica, contrary to the usage of the other Greek races, pronounced ἱχθύς (fish), ἵππος (horse), and many other words besides, with a rough breathing on the first letter. 3.3 In the same way our ancestors said lachrumae (tears), sepulchrum (burial-place), ahenum (of bronze), vehemens (violent), incohare (begin), helluari (gormandize), hallucinari (dream), honera (burdens), honustum (burdened). 3.4 For in all these words there seems to be no reason for that letter, or breathing, except to increase the force and vigour of the sound by adding certain sinews, so to speak.
3.5 But apropos of the inclusion of ahenum among my examples, I recall that Fidus Optatus, a grammarian of considerable repute in Rome, showed me a remarkably old copy of the second book of the Aeneid, bought in the Sigillaria for 20 pieces of gold, which was believed to have belonged to Virgil himself. In that book, although the following 2 lines were written thus:
Before the entrance-court, hard by the gate,
With sheen of brazen (aena) arms proud Pyrrhus gleams,
we observed that the letter h had been added above the line, changing aena to ahena.”
“5.1 Favorinus used to say of Plato and Lysias: ‘If you take a single word from a discourse of Plato or change it, and do it with the utmost skill, you will nevertheless mar the elegance of his style; if you do the same to Lysias, you will obscure his meaning.’”
“11.1 We read in the annals that Lucius Sicinius Dentatus, who was tribune of the commons in the consulship of Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius, was a warrior of incredible energy; that he won a name for his exceeding great valour, and was called the Roman Achilles. 11.2 It is said that he fought with the enemy in 120 battles, and had not a scar on his back, but 45 in front; that golden crowns were given him 8 times, the siege crown once, mural crowns 3 times, and civic crowns 14 times; that 83 neck chains were awarded him, more than 160 armlets, and 18 spears; he was presented besides with 25 decorations; 11.3 he had a number of spoils of war, many of which were won in single combat; 11.4 he took part with his generals in 9 triumphal processions.”
“17.1 After careful observation Marcus Tullius noted that the prepositions in and con, when prefixed to nouns and verbs, are lengthened and prolonged when they are followed by the initial letters of sapiens and felix; but that in all other instances they are pronounced short.
17.2 Cicero’s words are: ‘Indeed, what can be more elegant than this, which does not come about from a natural law, but in accordance with a kind of usage? We pronounce the first vowel in indoctus short, in insanus long; in immanis short, in infelix long; in brief, in compound words in which the first letters are those which begin sapiens and felix the prefix is pronounced long, in all others short; thus we have cŏnposuit but cōnsuevit, cŏncrepuit but cōnficit. Consult the rules of grammar and they will censor your usage; refer the matter to your ears and they will approve. Ask why it is so; they will say that it pleases them. And language ought to gratify the pleasure of the ear.’
17.3 In these words of which Cicero spoke it is clear that the principle is one of euphony, but what are we to say of the preposition pro? For although it is often shortened or lengthened, yet it does not conform to this rule of Marcus Tullius. 17.4 For it is not always lengthened when it is followed by the first letter of the word fecit, which Cicero says has the effect of lengthening the prepositions in and con. 17.5 For we pronounce prŏficisci, prŏfugere, prŏfundere, prŏfanum and prŏfestum with the first vowel short, but prōferre, prōfligare and prōficere with that syllable long.”
“17.8 Moreover cōligatus and cōnexus are pronounced long.
17.9 But after all, in these cases which I have cited one can see that this particle is lengthened because the letter n is dropped; for the loss of a letter is compensated by the lengthening of the syllable.”
“18.1 Phaedo of Elis belonged to that famous Socratic band and was on terms of close intimacy with Socrates and Plato. 18.2 His name was given by Plato to that inspired dialogue of his on the immortality of the soul. 18.3 This Phaedo, though a slave, was of noble person and intellect, and according to some writers, in his boyhood was driven to prostitution by his master, who was a pander. 18.4 We are told that Cebes the Socratic, at Socrates’ earnest request, bought Phaedo and gave him the opportunity of studying philosophy. 18.5 And he afterwards became a distinguished philosopher, whose very tasteful discourses on Socrates are in circulation.”
“18.9 Diogenes the Cynic also served as a slave, but he was a freeborn man, who was sold into slavery. When Xeniades of Corinth wished to buy him and asked whether he knew any trade, Diogenes replied: ‘I know how to govern free men.’ 18.10 Then Xeniades, in admiration of his answer, bought him, set him free, and entrusting to him his own children, said: ‘Take my children to govern.’
But as to the well-known philosopher Epictetus, the fact that he too was a slave is too fresh in our memory to need to be committed to writing, as if it had been forgotten.”
“23.1 I often read comedies which our poets have adapted and translated from the Greeks — Menander or Posidippus, Apollodorus or Alexis, and also some other comic writers. 23.2 And while I am reading them, they do not seem at all bad; on the contrary, they appear to be written with a wit and charm which you would say absolutely could not be surpassed. 23.3 But if you compare and place beside them the Greek originals from which they came, and if you match individual passages, reading them together alternately with care and attention, the Latin versions at once begin to appear exceedingly commonplace and mean; so dimmed are they by the wit and brilliance of the Greek comedies, which they were unable to rival.
23.4 Only recently I had an experience of this kind. 23.5 I was reading the Plocium or Necklace of Caecilius, much to the delight of myself and those who were present. 23.6 The fancy took us to read also the Plocium of Menander, from which Caecilius had translated the said comedy. 23.7 But after we took Menander in hand, good Heavens! how dull and lifeless, and how different from Menander did Caecilius appear! Upon my word, the armour of Diomedes and of Glaucus were not more different in value.”
“23.9 This is Menander:
Now may our heiress fair on both ears sleep.
A great and memorable feat is hers;
For she has driven forth, as she had planned,
The wench that worried her, that all henceforth
Of Crobyle alone the face may see,
And that the famous woman, she my wife,
May also be my tyrant. From the face
Dam Nature gave her, she’s an ass ‘mong apes,
As says the adage. I would silent be
About that night, the first of many woes.
Alas that I took Crobyle to wife,
With sixteen talents and a foot of nose.
Then too can one her haughtiness endure?
By Zeus Olympius and Athena, no!
She has dismissed a maid who did her work
More quickly than the word was given her,
More quickly far than one will bring her back!
23.10 But Caecilius renders it thus:
In very truth is he a wretched man,
Who cannot hide his woe away from home;
And that my wife makes me by looks and acts:
If I kept still, I should betray myself
No less. And she has all that you would wish
She had not, save the dowry that she brought.
Let him who’s wise a lesson take from me,
Who, like a free man captive to the foe,
Am slave, though town and citadel are safe.
What! wish her safe who steals whate’er I prize?
While longing for her death, a living corpse am I.
She says I’ve secret converse with our maid —
That’s what she said, and so belaboured me
With tears, with prayers, with importunities,
That I did sell the wench. Now, I suppose,
She blabs like this to neighbours and friends:
‘Which one of you, when in the bloom of youth,
Could from her husband win what I from mine
Have gained, who’ve robbed him of his concubine.’
Thus they, while I, poor wretch, am torn to shreds.”
“26.3 Favorinus said: ‘More distinctions of colour are detected by the eye than are expressed by words and terms….’”
“29.20 …
This adage ever have in readiness;
Ask not of friends what you yourself can do.”
(*) “the festival of the Sigillaria; this was on Dec. 21 and 22, an extension of the Saturnalia, although not a religious holiday.”
(*) “The Romans awarded a great variety of military prizes, which are here enumerated, for the most part, in descending order of importance. Phalerae were discs of metal worn on the breast like medals, or sometimes on the harness of horses; the spears were hastae purae, unused (hence ‘bloodless’) and perhaps sometimes headless weapons, although they are represented with 2 heads on 2 tombstones (Cagnat et Chapot, Arch. Rom. II, p. 359, and Bonner Jahrbücher, 114 (1905), Plate 1, Fig. 4). Besides golden crowns without a particular designation, there were others which are enumerated and described in V.6.”
(*) “For ‘analogy’ in this sense of ‘regularity’, see II.25. Gellius thought that coegi was an irregular form because oē did not contract, as oi did in cogo; but contraction of like vowels did not take place when the second was long; cf. coāctus. Cicero’s rule is correct, because a vowel is naturally long before ns and nf. The case of pro is quite different. The ō in cōpertus is due to contraction from co-opertus. Cōligatus is a very rare form; Skutsch, quoted by Hosius, thought it might come from co-alligatus. The ō in cogo is also due to contraction (co-ago, co-igo), which does not apply to the perfect coegi. Compensatory lengthening takes place usually when an s is lost, as is cōnecto for co-snecto, or n before s and f; less commonly when nc is lost before n.”
(*) “Gellius, as he sometimes does elsewhere, refers to Favorinus’ statement as if it were his own. Gronovius’ proposed change to dixit and dixerit is unnecessary.”
(*) “Homer (Iliad VI.234 ff.) tells us that Diomedes proposed to exchange armour with Glaucus in token of friendship. Diomedes’ arms of bronze cost 9 oxen; those of Glaucus, inlaid with gold, 100. Hence ‘gold for bronze’ became proverbial.”
(*) “We should use ‘grey’, rather than ‘green’. Glaucus was a greyish green or a greenish grey.”
BOOK III
(*) “Ritschl estimated Varro’s publications as 74 works, comprising 620 books.”
(*) “The sestertium was the designation of a thousand sesterces, originally a gen. plur., later a nom. sing. neut.”
Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners
BOOK IV
(*) “Penitus, like Penates, is connected with penus in the sense of an inner chamber. Penus is derived by some from the root pa- of pasco, pabulum, etc.; by others it is connected with πένομαι and πόνος, as the fruit of labour. Walde, Lat. Etym. Wörterb. s.v., separates penus, an inner chamber, from penus, a store of provisions, connecting the latter with pasco, the former with penes, penetro and Penates.”
(*) “Walde, Lat. Etym. Wörterb. s.v., regards paelex and the Greek πάλλαξ and παλλακίς, the former in the sense of a young slave, as loan words from the Phoenician-Hebrew pillegesh, ‘concubine’. The spelling pellex is due to popular etymology, which associated the word with pellicio, ‘entice’.”
(*) “The spears sacred to Mars and the sacred shields (ancilia) were said to move of their own accord when danger threatened. According to Dio, XLIV.17, they shook violently before the death of Caesar.”
(*) “In the Latin line the ictus falls on the penult Hánnibális, but the ordinary pronunciation was Hanníbalis.”
(*) “On nefasti dies it was impious for legal business to be carried on, or assemblies held.”
(*) “The sense of relinquo as = ‘avoid’ is shown below (§10); that of careo is explained by Paul. Fest. (pp. 62 and 298, Lindsay, s.v. denariae and purimenstrio) as referring to doing without, or refraining from, certain things on ceremonial days. Some Roman etymologists derived caerimonia from the town of Caere, others from caritas; see Paul. Fest. p. 38, Linds.”
(*) “Made him an aerarius, originally a citizen who owned no land, but paid a tax (aes) based on such property as he had. The aerarii had no political rights until about the middle of the 5th century B.C., when they were enrolled in the 4 city tribes.”
(*) “More literally, inpolitia is ‘lack of neatness’, from im-, negative, and polio, ‘polish’, from which pulcher also is derived.”
(*) “Gellius is partly right. As in+capio and in+salio became incipio in insilio, so ob+iacio became obiicio. As the Romans disliked the combination ii, only one i was written, but both were pronounced, and the syllable ob was thus long ‘by position’. In the early Latin dramatists the scansion ăbicio indicates that the i was syncopated and the semi-vowel changed to a vowel. See Sommer”
(*) “A splendid example of the majesty and fairness of Roman law, all the more so that it is not particularly unusual; and one, not altogether incidentally, that clearly proves wrong the notion currently prevailing in some circles, that the Romans maltreated women (self-serving corollary: we ourselves are enlightened). The net effect of the ruling was to uphold the rights of a prostitute against the private actions of a man who in public life was a high Roman magistrate; it is similar to, and among the ancestors of, the ruling that ordered U.S. president Bill Clinton to pay $90,000 to Paula Jones for perjuring himself in a lawsuit and thus violating her civil rights: to my mind at any rate, the rule of law, one of the hallmarks of Western civilization, is the single greatest treasure bequeathed us by ancient Rome.”
BOOK V
“3.1 They say that Protagoras, a man eminent in the pursuit of learning, whose name Plato gave to that famous dialogue of his, in his youth earned his living as a hired labourer and often carried heavy burdens on his back, being one of that class of men 3.2 whom the Greeks call ἀχθοφόροι and we Latins baiuli, or porters. 3.3 He was once carrying a great number of blocks of wood, bound together with a short rope, from the neighbouring countryside into his native town of Abdera. 3.4 It chanced at the time that Democritus, a citizen of that same city, a man esteemed before all others for his fine character and his knowledge of philosophy, as he was going out of the city, saw Protagoras walking along easily and rapidly with that burden, of a kind so awkward and so difficult to hold together. Democritus drew near, and noticing with what skill and judgment the wood was arranged and tied, asked the man to stop and rest awhile. 3.5 When Protagoras did as he was asked, and Democritus again observed that the almost circular heap of blocks was bound with a short rope, and was balanced and held together with all but geometrical accuracy, he asked who had put the wood together in that way. When Protagoras replied that he had done it himself, Democritus asked him to untie the bundle and arrange it again in the same way. 3.6 But after he had done so, then Democritus, astonished at the keen intellect and cleverness of this uneducated man, said: ‘My dear young man, since you have a talent for doing things well, there are greater and better employments which you can follow with me’; and he at once took him away, kept him at his own house, supplied him with money, taught him philosophy, and made him the great man that he afterwards became.
3.7 Yet this Protagoras was not a true philosopher, but the cleverest of sophists; for in consideration of the payment of a huge annual fee, he used to promise his pupils that he would teach them by what verbal dexterity the weaker cause could be made the stronger, a process which he called in Greek: τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν, or ‘making the word appear the better reason’.”
“7.1 Cleverly, by Heaven! and wittily, in my opinion, does Gavius Bassus explain the derivation of the word persona, in the work that he composed On the Origin of Words; for he suggests that that word is formed from personare. 7.2 ‘For,’ he says, ‘the head and the face are shut in on all sides by the covering of the persona, or mask, and only one passage is left for the issue of the voice; and since this opening is neither free nor broad, but sends forth the voice after it has been concentrated and forced into one single means of egress, it makes the sound clearer and more resonant. Since then that covering of the face gives clearness and resonance to the voice, it is for that reason called persona, the o being lengthened because of the formation of the word.’”
“9.1 The son of king Croesus, when he was already old enough to speak, was dumb, and after he had become a well-grown youth, he was still unable to utter a word. Hence he was for a long time regarded as mute and tongue-tied. 9.2 When his father had been vanquished in a great war, the city in which he lived had been taken, and one of the enemy was rushing upon him with drawn sword, unaware that he was the king, then the young man opened his mouth in an attempt to cry out. And by that effort and the force of his breath he broke the impediment and the bond upon his tongue, and spoke plainly and clearly, shouting to the enemy not to kill king Croesus. 9.3 Then the foeman withheld his sword, the king’s life was saved, and from that time on the youth began to speak. 9.4 Herodotus in his Histories is the chronicler of that event, and the words which he says the son of Croesus first spoke are: ‘Man, do not kill Croesus.’”
(*) “Gellius is wrong in supposing that ve- strengthened the force of a word; it means ‘without, apart from’. Nonius cites Lucilius for vegrandis in the sense of ‘very great’, but wrongly; see Marx on Lucil. 631. Vescus means ‘small, or, in an active sense, ‘make small’ (Lucr. I.326); Walde derives it from vescor in the sense of ‘eating away, corroding’ (Lucr. I.326) and from ve-escus in the sense of ‘small’. Vemens, for vehemens, is probably a participle (vehemenos) from veho.”
(*) “Vediovis, or Veiovis, was the opposite of Jupiter, ve- having its negative force. He was a god of the nether world and of death; hence the arrows and the she-goat, which was an animal connected with the lower world (see Gell. X.15.12, and Wissowa Religion und Kultus, p. 237). Some regarded the god as a youthful (little) Jupiter and the she-goat as the one which suckled him in his infancy; others as Apollo, because of the arrows, but the she-goat has no connection with Apollo.”
(*) “A basic understanding of the physics of sound led to the invention of the telephone (unlike most of our modern machines, a relatively simple device that could just conceivably been invented by some clever ancient Greek)”
BOOK VI
“6.1 Nature has given 5 senses to living beings; sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, called by the Greeks αἰσθήσεις. Of these some animals lack one and some another, being born into the world blind, or without the sense of smell or hearing. 6.2 But Aristotle asserts that no animal is born without sense of taste or of touch.
“9.1 Poposci, momordi, pupugi and cucurri seem to be the approved forms, and today they are used by almost all better-educated men. 9.2 But Quintus Ennius in his Satires wrote memorderit with an e, and not momorderit, as follows:
‘Tis not my way, as if a dog had bit me (memorderit).
9.3 So too Laberius in the Galli:
Now from my whole estate
A hundred thousand have I bitten off (memordi).
9.4 The same Laberius too in his Colorator:
And when, o’er slow fire cooked, I came beneath her teeth,
Twice, thrice she bit (memordit).
9.5 Also Publius Nigidius in his 2nd book On Animals: ‘As when a serpent bites (memordit) one, a hen is split and placed upon the wound.’ 9.6 Likewise Plautus in the Aulularia:
How he the man did fleece (admemordit).
9.7 But Plautus again, in the Trigemini, said neither praememordisse nor praemomordisse, but praemorsisse, in the following line:
Had I not fled into your midst,
Methinks he’d bitten me (praemorsisset).
9.8 Atta too in the Conciliatrix says:
A bear, he says, bit him (memordisse).
9.9 Valerius Antias too, in the 45th book of his Annals, has left on record peposci, not poposci in this passage: ‘Finally Licinius, tribune of the commons, charged him with high treason and asked (peposcit) from the praetor Marcus Marcius a day for holding the comitia.’
9.10 In the same way Atta in the Aedilicia says:
But he will be afraid, if I do prick him (pepugero).
9.11 Probus has noted that Aelius Tubero also, in his work dedicated to Gaius Ippius, wrote occecurrit, and he has quoted him as follows: ‘If the general form should present itself (occecurrerit).’ 9.12 Probus also observed that Valerius Antias in the 22nd book of his Histories wrote speponderant, and he quotes his words as follows: ‘Tiberius Gracchus, who had been quaestor to Gaius Mancinus in Spain, and the others who had guaranteed (speponderant) peace.’
9.13 Now the explanation of these forms might seem to be this: since the Greeks in one form of the past tense, which they call παρακείμενον, or ‘perfect’, commonly change the second letter of the verb to e, as φράφω γέγραφα, ποιῶ πεποίηκα, λαλῶ λελάληκα, κρατῶ κεκράτηκα, λούω λέλουκα, so accordingly mordeo makes memordi, 9.14 posco peposci, tendo tetendi, tango tetigi, pungo pepugi, curro cecurri, tollo tetuli, and spondeo spepondi. 9.15 Thus Marcus Tullius and Gaius Caesar used mordeo memordi, pungo pepugi, spondeo spepondi. I find besides that from the verb scindo in the same way was made, not sciderat, but sciciderat.”
“14.1 Both in verse and in prose there are 3 approved styles, which the Greeks call χαρακτῆρες and to which they have given the names of ἁδρός, ἰσχνός and μέσος. 14.2 We also call the one which I put 1st ‘grand’, the 2nd ‘plain’, and the 3rd ‘middle’.”
“14.4 To each of these excellent styles there are related an equal number of faulty ones, arising from unsuccessful attempts to imitate their manner and character.”
“14.6 But true and genuine Latin examples of 3 styles are said by Marcus Varro to be: Pacuvius of the grand style, Lucilius of the plain, and Terence of the middle. 14.7 But in early days these same 3 styles of speaking were exemplified in 3 men by Homer: the grand and rich in Ulysses, the elegant and restrained in Menelaus, the middle and moderate in Nestor.
14.8 This threefold variety is also to be observed in the 3 philosophers whom the Athenians sent as envoys to the senate at Rome, to persuade the senators to remit the fine which they had imposed upon the Athenians because of the sack of Oropos; and the fine amounted to nearly 500 talents. 14.9 The philosophers in question were Carneades of the Academy, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic….”
“17.1 I inquired at Rome of a certain grammarian who had the highest repute as a teacher, not indeed for the sake of trying or testing him, but rather from an eager desire for knowledge, what obnoxius meant and what was the origin and the history of the word. 17.2… ‘Truly a difficult question is this that you ask, one demanding very many sleepless nights of investigation! 17.3 Who, pray, is so ignorant of the Latin tongue as not to know that one is called obnoxius who can be inconvenienced or injured by another, to whom he is said to be obnoxius because the other is conscious of his noxa, that is to say, of his guilt? Why not rather,’ said he, ‘drop these trifles and put questions worthy of study and discussion?’
17.4… ‘If, most learned sir, I need to learn and to know other things that are more abstruse and more important, when the occasion arises I shall inquire and learn them from you; but inasmuch as I have often used the word obnoxius without knowing what I was saying, I have learned from you and am now beginning to understand what not I alone, as you seem to think, was ignorant of; for as a matter of fact, Plautus too, though a man of the first rank in his use of the Latin language and in elegance of diction, did not know the meaning of obnoxius. For there is a passage of his in the Stichus which reads as follows:
By heaven! I now am utterly undone,
Not only partly so (non obnoxie).
This does not in the least agree with what you have taught me; for Plautus contrasted plane and obnoxie as 2 opposites, which is far removed from your meaning.’
17.5 But that grammarian retorted foolishly enough, as if obnoxius and obnoxie differed, not merely in form, but in their substance and meaning: ‘I gave a definition of obnoxius, not obnoxie.’”
“17.8 ‘…but explain to me this example, which is certainly more recent and more familiar. For the following lines of Virgil’s are very well known:
For now the stars’ bright sheen is seen undimmed.
The rising Moon owes naught (nec . . . obnoxia) to brother’s rays;
17.9 but you say that it means <conscious of her guilt>. In another place too Virgil uses this word with a meaning different from yours, in these lines:
What joy the fields to view
That owe no debt (non obnoxia) to hoe or care of man. …’”
“17.11 But our grammarian, with open mouth as if in a dream, said: ‘Just now I have no time to spare. When I have leisure, come to see me and learn what Virgil, Plautus, Sallust and Ennius meant by that word.’”
(*) “The interrogative quem would be stressed (have ‘an acute accent’), while the relative quem would not (i.e., would have a grave accent).”
(*) “An enthymeme in logic was an argument consisting of 2 propositions, the antecedent and its consequence.”
O’Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (Princeton dissertation), 1908.
(*) “Gellius is perhaps thinking of such exceptions as éxinde and súbinde, in which however the penult is not long by nature, but by position.”
(*) “The translation is ambiguous and misleading. It would have been better to write: five senses, called by the Greeks αἰσθήσεις, to living beings; sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.”
BOOK VII
“1.6 Against these criticisms Chrysippus argues at length, subtilely and cleverly, but the purport of all that he has written on that subject is about this: 1.7 ‘Although it is a fact,’ he says, ‘that all things are subject to an inevitable and fundamental law and are closely linked to fate, yet the peculiar properties of our minds are subject to fate only according to their individuality and quality….’”
“1.13 Therefore he says that wicked, slothful, sinful and reckless men ought not to be endured or listened to, who, when they are caught fast in guilt and sin, take refuge in the inevitable nature of fate, as if in the asylum of some shrine, declaring that their outrageous actions must be charged, not to their own heedlessness, but to fate.”
“10.1 The philosopher Taurus, a celebrated Platonist of my time, used to urge the study of philosophy by many other good and wholesome examples and in particular stimulated the minds of the young by what he said that Euclides the Socratic used to do. 10.2 ‘The Athenians,’ said he, ‘had provided in one of their decrees that any citizen of Megara who should be found to have set foot in Athens should for that suffer death; 10.3 so great,’ says he, ‘was the hatred of the neighbouring men of Megara with which the Athenians were inflamed. 10.4 Then Euclides, who was from that very town of Megara and before the passage of that decree had been accustomed to come to Athens and to listen to Socrates, after the enactment of that measure, at nightfall, as darkness was coming on, clad in a woman’s long tunic, wrapped in a parti-coloured mantle, and with veiled head, used to walk from his home in Megara to Athens, to visit Socrates, in order that he might at least for some part of the night share in the master’s teaching and discourse. And just before dawn he went back again, a distance of somewhat over twenty miles, disguised in that same garb. 10.5 But nowadays,’ said Taurus, ‘we may see the philosophers themselves running to the doors of rich young men, to give them instruction, and there they sit and wait until nearly noonday, for their pupils to sleep off all last night’s wine.’”
“17.1 The tyrant Pisistratus is said to have been the first to establish at Athens a public library of books relating to the liberal arts. Then the Athenians themselves added to this collection with considerable diligence and care; but later Xerxes, when he got possession of Athens and burned the entire city except the citadel, removed that whole collection of books and carried them off to Persia. 17.2 Finally, a long time afterwards, king Seleucus, who was surnamed Nicator, had all those books taken back to Athens.
17.3 At a later time an enormous quantity of books, nearly 700,000, was either acquired or written in Egypt under the kings known as Ptolemies; but these were all burned during the sack of the city in our 1st war with Alexandria, not intentionally or by anyone’s order, but accidentally by the auxiliary soldiers.”
(*) “In 48 B.C. By no means all of the Alexandrian Library was destroyed at that time, and the losses were made good, at least in part, by Antony in 41 B.C. A part of the library was burned under Aurelian, in A.D. 272, and the destruction seems to have been completed in 391.”
BOOK VIII
(*) “The sky on columns of dust upborne, Aen. XII.407, where the poet [Virgil] is describing the effect of an advancing troop of cavalry.”
(*) “The breast with thorns is filled, Lucil. 213, Marx.”
BOOK IX
“4.6 …Further, that it was handed down by tradition that in a distant land called Albania men are born whose hair turns white in childhood and who see better by night than in the daytime….
4.7 In those same books I ran upon this statemet too, which I later read also in the 7th book of the Natural History of Plinius Secundus, that in the land of Africa there are families of persons who work spells by voice and tongue; 4.8 for if they should chance to have bestowed extravagant praise upon beautiful trees, plentiful crops, charming children, fine horses, flocks that are well fed and in good condition, suddenly, for no other cause than this, all these would die…. and that those persons themselves, both men and women, who possess this power of harmful gaze, have two pupils in each eye. 4.9 Also that in the mountains of the land of India there are men who have the heads of dogs, and bark, and that they feed upon birds and wild animals which they have taken in the chase. That in the remotest lands of the east too there are other marvellous men called monocoli, or ‘one-legged’, who run by hopping with their single leg and are of a most lively swiftness.…”
“4.11 And that not far from these people is the land of Pygmies, the tallest of whom are not more than 2¼ feet in height.
4.12 These and many other stories of the kind I read; but when writing them down, I was seized with disgust for such worthless writings, which contribute nothing to the enrichment or profit of life.”
“4.15 [Plinius Secundus] says that the change of women into men is not a fiction.” E isso basta para que Gellius acredite! Com efeito, Plínio o Velho (o Jovem, seu sobrinho, talvez seja chamado Plinius Tertius) podia ser enfileirado entre esses autores anedóticos superestimados de nossa cultura (como Montaigne e Plutarco), não obstante consegue ser ao menos engraçado, e sua História Natural contém muito folclore misturado com informações verídicas ou ao menos parcialmente verídicas.
“4.16 Pliny also wrote this in the same book: ‘There are persons who from birth are bisexual, whom we call <hermaphrodites>; they were formerly termed androgyni and regarded as prodigies, but now are instruments of pleasure.’” Prostituídos ao nascer? Que horror…
“9.1 Whenever striking expressions from the Greek poets are to be translated and imitated, they say that we should not always strive to render every single word with exact literalness. 9.2 For many things lose their charm if they are transplanted too forcibly — unwillingly, as it were, and reluctantly. 9.3 Virgil therefore showed skill and good judgment in omitting some things and rendering others, when he was dealing with passages of Homer or Hesiod or Apollonius or Parthenius or Callimachus or Theocritus, or some other poet.”
“9.7…
O Tityrus, well-belovéd, feed my goats,
And lead them to the front, good Tityrus;
But ‘ware yon buck-goat yellow, lest he butt.”
“9.11 Till I return — not long — feed thou my goats;
Then, Tityrus, give them a drink, but as you go,
Avoid the buck-goat’s horn — the fellow butts!”
“12.1 As the adjective formidulosus may be used both of one who fears and of one who is feared, invidiosus of one who envies and of one who is envied, suspiciosus of one who suspects and of one who is suspected, ambitiosus of one who courts favour and one who is courted, gratiosus also of one who gives, and of one who receives, thanks, laboriosus of one who toils and of one who causes toil — as many other words of this kind are used in both ways, so infestus too has a double meaning. 12.2 For he is called infestus who inflicts injury on anyone, and on the other hand he who is threatened with injury from another source is also said to be infestus.”
“12.13 Metus also and iniuria, and some other words of the kind, may be used in this double sense; for metus hostium, ‘fear of the enemy’, is a correct expression both when the enemy fear and when they are feared.”
“12.18 Nescius also is used as well of one who is unknown as of one who does not know; 12.19 but its use in the sense of one who does not know is common, while it is rarely used of that which is unknown. 12.20 Ignarus has the same double application, not only to one who is ignorant, but also to one who is not known.”
(*) “Pertempto means ‘try thoroughly’, hence ‘affect deeply’. Probus must have taken per in the sense of ‘over’, ‘on the surface’, thus giving pertempto a meaning of which no example exists.”
BOOK X
“5.1 Publius Nigidius, in the 29th book of his Commentaries, declares that avarus is not a simple word, but is compounded of 2 parts: ‘For that man,’ he says, ‘is called avarus, or <covetous>, who is avidus aeris, or <eager for money>; but in the compound the letter e is lost.’ 5.2 He also says that a man is called by the compound term locuples, or ‘rich’ when he holds pleraque loca, that is to say, ‘many possessions.’
5.3 But his statement about locuples is the stronger and more probable. As to avarus there is doubt; for why may it not seem to be derived from one single word, namely aveo, and formed in the same way as amarus, about which there is general agreement that it is not a compound?” [A semântica parece depor a favor de amarus como raiz, se ainda vale algo perante a sintaxe!]
“11.1 Mature in present usage signifies ‘hastily’ and ‘quickly’, contrary to the true force of the word; for mature means quite a different thing. 11.2 Therefore Publius Nigidius, a man eminent in the pursuit of all the liberal arts, says: ‘Mature means neither <too soon> nor <too late>, but something between the two and intermediate.’”
11.5 …‘make haste slowly’…
“11.6 Virgil also, to one who is observant, has skilfully distinguished the 2 words properare and maturare as clearly opposite, in these verses:
Whenever winter’s rains the hind confine,
Much is there that at leisure may be done (maturare),
Which in fair weather he must hurry on (properanda).” [seria prosperare na forma antiga? verificar – parece que não: properare está mais para ‘ser proativo’, dinâmico, não necessariamente prosperando no processo! pro+operare – agir, se bem ou mal, não há qualquer valoração.]
Pliny the Elder é chamado de Plinius Secundos pelos latinos (como vimos mais acima). Parece que Plínio o Jovem é apenas o terceiro! A confusão sobre “Plinius Secundus” me fez crer por algumas semanas que o sobrinho de Plínio o Velho veio a continuar sua História Natural ou então escrever uma outra!…
“12.1 Pliny the Elder, in the 28th book of his Natural History asserts that there is a book of that most famous philosopher Democritus On the Power and Nature of the Chameleon, and that he had read it; and then he transmits to us many foolish and intolerable absurdities, alleging that they were written by Democritus. Of these unwillingly, since they disgust me, I recall a few, as follows: 12.2 that the hawk, the swiftest of all birds, if it chance to fly over a chameleon which is crawling on the ground, is dragged down and falls through some force to the earth, and offers and gives itself up of its own accord to be torn to pieces by the other birds. 12.3 Another statement too is past human belief, namely, that if the head and neck of the chameleon be burned by means of the wood which is called oak, rain and thunder are suddenly produced, and that this same thing is experienced if the liver of that animal is burned upon the roof of a house. 12.4 There is also another story, which by heaven! I hesitated about putting down, so preposterous is it; but I have made it a rule that we ought to speak our mind about the fallacious seduction of marvels of that kind, by which the keenest minds are often deceived and led to their ruin, and in particular those which are especially eager for knowledge. But I return to Pliny.
12.5 He says that the left foot of the chameleon is roasted with an iron heated in the fire, along with an herb called by the same name, ‘chameleon’; both are mixed in an ointment, formed into a paste, and put in a wooden vessel. He who carries the vessel, even if he go openly amid a throng, can be seen by no one.”
“12.7 the same is true of what the same Pliny, in his 10th book, asserts that Democritus wrote; namely, that there were certain birds with a language of their own, and that by mixing the blood of those birds a serpent was produced; that whoso ate it would understand the language of birds and their conversation.
12.8 Many fictions of this kind seem to have been attached to the name of Democritus by ignorant men, who sheltered themselves under his reputation and authority.”
“17.1 It is written in the records of Grecian story that the philosopher Democritus, a man worthy of reverence beyond all others and of the highest authority, of his own accord deprived himself of eye-sight, because he believed that the thoughts and meditations of his mind in examining nature’s laws would be more vivid and exact, if he should free them from the allurements of sight and the distractions offered by the eyes. 17.2 This act of his, and the manner too in which he easily blinded himself by a most ingenious device, the poet Laberius has described, in a farce called The Ropemaker, in very elegant and finished verses; but he has imagined another reason for voluntary blindness and applied it with no little neatness to his own subject.
17.3 For the character who speaks these lines in Laberius is a rich and stingy miser, lamenting in vigorous terms the excessive extravagance and dissipation of his young son. 17.4 These are the verses of Laberius:
Democritus, Abdera’s scientist,
Set up a shield to face Hyperion’s rise,
That sight he might destroy by blaze of brass,
Thus by the sun’s rays he destroyed his eyes,
Lest he should see bad citizens’ good luck;
So I with blaze and splendour of my gold
Would render sightless my concluding years,
Lest I should see my spendthrift son’s good luck.”
“25.1 Once upon a time, when I was riding in a carriage, to keep my mind from being dull and unoccupied and a prey to worthless trifles, it chanced to occur to me to try to recall the names of weapons, darts and swords which are found in the early histories, and also the various kinds of boats and their names. 25.2 Those, then, of the former that came to mind at the time are the following: spear, pike, fire-pike (3), half-pike, iron bolt, Gallic spear, lance, hunting-darts (8), javelins, long bolts (10), barbed-javelins, German spears, thonged-javelin (13), Gallic bolt, broadswords (15), poisoned arrows, Illyrian hunting-spears (17), cimeters (18), darts (19), swords, daggers, broadswords (22=15), double-edged swords, small-swords (24), poniards, cleavers (26).
25.3 Of the lingula, or ‘little tongue’, since it is less common, I think I ought to say that the ancients applied that term to an oblong small-sword, made in the form of a tongue; it is mentioned by Naevius in his tragedy Hesione. I quote the line:
Pray let me seem to please you with my tongue,
But with my little tongue (lingula).
25.4 The rumpia too is a kind of weapon of the Thracian people, and the word occurs in the 14th book of the Annals of Quintus Ennius.
25.5 The names of ships which I recalled at the time are these: merchant-ships, cargo-carriers, skiffs (3), warships, cavalry-transports, cutters, fast cruisers, or, as the Greeks call them, κέλητες, barques, smacks, sailing-skiffs, light galleys, which the Greeks call… ἐπακτρίδες, scouting-boats, galliots, tenders, flat-boats, vetutiae moediae, yachts, pinnaces, long-galliots, scullers’ boats, caupuls [em desuso], arks, fair-weather craft, pinks, lighters, spy-boats.”
“27.1 It is stated in ancient records that the strength, the spirit and the numbers of the Roman and the Carthaginian people were once equal. 27.2 And this opinion was not without foundation. With other nations the contest was for the independence of one or the other state, with the Carthaginians it was for the rule of the world.”
“28.1 Tubero, in the 1st book of his History, has written that King Servius Tullius, when he divided the Roman people into those 5 classes of older and younger men for the purpose of making the enrolment, regarded as pueri, or ‘boys’, those who were less than 17 years old; then, from the 17th year, when they were thought to be fit for service, he enrolled them as soldiers, calling them up to the age of 46 iuniores or ‘younger men’, and beyond that age, seniores, or ‘elders.’”
“29.1 The particle atque is said by the grammarians to be a copulative conjunction. And as a matter of fact, it very often joins and connects words; but sometimes it has certain other powers, which are not sufficiently observed, except by those engaged in a diligent examination of the early literature. 29.2 For it has the force of an adverb when we say ‘I have acted otherwise than (atque) you,’ for it is equivalent to aliter quam tu; and if it is doubled, it amplifies and emphasizes a statement, as we note in the Annals of Quintus Ennius, unless my memory of this verse is at fault:
And quickly (atque atque) to the walls the Roman manhood came.
29.3 The opposite of this meaning is expressed by deque, also found in the early writers.
29.4 Atque is said to have been used besides for another adverb also, namely statim,…”
(*) “The derivation of amarus is uncertain; it is perhaps connected with Greek ὠμός, ‘raw’ (cf. crudus and crudelis). Sanscrit âma‑s.” Amarus pater
(*) “Classis originally meant one of the classes into which the citizens were divided by the Servian constitution, then, collectively, the army composed of the classes.”
(*) “The term mausoleum was applied by the Romans to large and magnificent tombs such as the mausoleum of Augustus and that of Hadrian.”
(*) “Many of these names, both of weapons and ships, are most uncertain; for some no exact equivalent can be found.”
BOOK XI
“5.1 Those whom we call the Pyrronian philosophers are designated by the Greek name σκεπτικοί, or ‘sceptics’, 5.2 which means about the same as ‘inquirers’ and ‘investigators’. 5.3 For they decide nothing and determine nothing, but are always engaged in inquiring and considering what there is in all nature concerning which it is possible to decide and determine. 5.4 And moreover they believe that they do not see or hear anything clearly, but that they undergo and experience something like seeing and hearing; but they are in doubt as of that nature and character of those very things which cause them those experiences, and they deliberate about them; and they declare that in everything assurance and absolute truth seem so beyond our grasp, owing to the mingling and confusing of the indications of truth and falsehood, that any man who is not rash and precipitate in his judgment ought to use the language which they say was used by Pyrro, the founder of that philosophy: ‘Does not this matter stand so, rather than so, or is it neither?’ For they deny that proofs of anything and its real qualities can be known and understood, and they try in many ways to point this out and demonstrate it. 5.5 On this subject Favorinus too with great keenness and subtlety has composed 10 books, which he entitled Πυρρωνεῖοι Τρόποι, or The Pyrronian Principles.” 10 livros é DEMAIS para qualquer coisa, principalmente para o ceticismo (contra ou a favor, ou cético quanto a ele [ironia]).
“5.6 It is besides a question of long standing, which has been discussed by many Greek writers, whether the Pyrronian and Academic philosophers differ at all, and to what extent. For both are called ‘sceptics, inquirers and doubters’, since both affirm nothing and believe that nothing is understood. But they say that appearances, which they call φαντασίαι, are produced from all objects, not according to the nature of the objects themselves, but according to the condition of mind or body of those to whom these appearances come. 5.7 Therefore they call absolutely all things that affect men’s sense τὰ πρός τι. This expression means that there is nothing at all that is self-dependent or which has its own power and nature, but that absolutely all things have ‘reference to something else’ and seem to be such as their appearance is while they are seen, and such as they are formed by our senses, to whom they come, not by the things themselves, from which they have proceeded. 5.8 But although the Pyrronians and the Academics express themselves very much alike about these matters, yet they are thought to differ from each other both in certain other respects and especially for this reason — because the Academics do, as it were, ‘comprehend’ the very fact that nothing can be comprehended, while the Pyrronians assert that not even that can by any means be regarded as true, because nothing is regarded as true.
6.1 In our early writings neither do Roman women swear by Hercules nor the men by Castor. 6.2 But why the women did not swear by Hercules is evident, since they abstain from sacrificing to Hercules. 6.3 On the other hand, why the men did not name Castor in oaths is not easy to say. Nowhere, then, is it possible to find an instance, among good writers, either of a woman saying ‘by Hercules’ or a man, ‘by Castor’; 6.4 but edepol, which is an oath by Pollux, is common to both man and woman. 6.5 Marcus Varro, however, asserts that the earliest men were wont to swear neither by Castor nor by Pollux, but that this oath was used by women alone and was taken from the Eleusinian initiations; 6.6 that gradually, however, through ignorance of ancient usage, men began to say edepol, and thus it became a customary expression; but that the use of ‘by Castor’ by a man appears in no ancient writing.”
(*) “according to Plin. N.H. VII.129, the celebrated Roman actor Roscius made 500,000 sesterces yearly.”
BOOK XII
(*) “Besides Caligula, who called Seneca’s essays ‘mere declamation exercises’ and his style ‘sand without lime’ (Suet. Calig. LIII), there were other critics of Seneca in his own day, as well as in the following Flavian epoch.”
(*) “Saltem or saltim is the accusative of a noun (cf. partim, etc.) derived by some from the root of sal-vus and sal-us; by others from that of sal-io; Walde, Lat. Etym. Wörterb. s.v. accepts Warren’s derivation from si alitem (formed from item), meaning ‘if otherwise’.”
BOOK XIII
(*) “Aristotle tells us that the lioness gives birth to young every year, usually 2, at most 6, sometimes only one. The current idea that the womb is discharged with the young is absurd; it arose from the fact that lions are rare and that inventor of the story did not know the real reason, which is that their habitat is of limited extent. The lionesses in Syria give birth 5 times, producing at first 5 cubs, then one less at each successive birth.”
(*) “It is of no use for one to know how to sing, unless he proves that he knows how by singing in public.”
Livros XIV ao XX apenas em latim (edição Rolfe-Thayer).
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Consegui acesso ao texto integral na seqüência; agora, no entanto, procederemos sem numeração exata.
BOOK XIV
I “Against those who call themselves ‘Chaldaeans’ or ‘astrologers’, and profess from the movements and position of the stars to be able to read the future, I once at Rome heard the philosopher Favorinus discourse in Greek in admirable and brilliant language. But whether it was for the purpose of exercising, not vaunting, his talent, or because he seriously and sincerely believed what he said, I am unable to tell; but I promptly jotted down the heads of the topics and of the arguments which he used, so far as I could recall them immediately after leaving the meeting, and they were about to this effect: That this science of the Chaldaeans was not of so great antiquity as they would have it appear; that the founders and authors of it were not those whom they themselves name, but that tricks and delusions of that kind were devised by jugglers and men who made a living and profit from their lies. And since they saw that some terrestrial phenomena known to men were caused by the influence and control of the heavenly bodies, as for example the ocean, as though a companion of the moon, grows old and resumes its youth along with her — from this, forsooth, they derived an argument for persuading us to believe that all human affairs, both the greatest and the least, as though bound to the stars and constellations, are influenced and governed by them. But Favorinus said that it was utterly foolish and absurd to suppose, because the tide of the ocean corresponds with the course of the moon, that a suit at law which one happens to have about an aqueduct with his neighbours, or with the man next door about a party-wall, is also bound to heaven as if by a kind of chain and is decided by the stars. But even if by some divine power and purpose this could happen, yet he thought that it could by no means be grasped and understood in such a brief and scant span of life as ours by any human intellect, but he believed that some few things were conjectured παχυμερέστερον, (to use his own term), that is, ‘somewhat roughly’, with no sure foundation of knowledge, but in a loose, random and arbitrary manner, just as when we look at objects far away with eyes blinded by their remoteness from us.” Favorino foi realmente precursor neste raciocínio: reconhece a gravidade, mas apenas aquela que faria sentido: corpos imensos atuando sobre objetos relevantes!
“For the greatest difference between men and gods was removed, if man also had the power of foreknowing all future events. Furthermore, he thought that even the observation of the stars and constellations, which they declared to be the foundation of their knowledge, was by no means a matter of certainty.” Exatamente. Porque ainda não havia telescópios, não tínhamos idéia da real dimensão e distância dos astros!
“‘For if the original Chaldaeans,’ said he, ‘who dwelt in the open plains, watched the movements and orbits of the stars their separations and conjunctions, and observed their effects, let this art continue to be practised, but let it be only under the same inclination of the heavens as that under which the Chaldaeans then were. For the system of observation of the Chaldaeans cannot remain valid, if anyone should wish to apply it to different regions of the sky.’
For who does not see,’ said he, ‘how great is the diversity of the zones and circles of the heavens caused by the inclination and convexity of the earth? Why then should not those same stars, by which they maintain that all human and divine affairs are affected, just as they do not everywhere arouse cold and heat, but change and vary the weather, at the same time causing calm in one place and storm in another — why should they not, I say, produce one series of affairs and events in the land of the Chaldaeans, another among the Gaetulians, another on the Danube, and still another on the Nile?…’ Besides, he expressed his surprise that anyone considered it a certainty that those stars which they say were observed by the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, or by the Egyptians, which many call erraticae, or ‘wandering’, but Nigidius called errones, or ‘the wanderers’, are not more numerous than is commonly assumed; for he thought it might possibly be the case that there were some other planets [todo e qualquer corpo celeste, estrela, cometa, planeta] of equal power, without which a correct and final observation could not be completed, but that men could not see them because of their remarkable brilliance or altitude. ‘For’, said he, ‘some stars are visible from certain lands and are known to the men of those lands; but those same stars are not visible from every other land and are wholly unknown to other men. And granting’, said he, ‘both that only these stars ought to be observed, and that too from one part of the earth, what possible end was there to such observation, and what periods of time seemed sufficient for understanding what the conjunction or the orbits or the transits of the stars foretold? For if an observation was made in the beginning in such a manner that it was calculated under what aspect, arrangement and position of the stars anyone was born, and if thereafter his fortune from the beginning of his life, his character, his disposition, the circumstances of his affairs and activities, and finally also the end of his life were noted, and all these things as they had actually happened were committed to writing, and long afterwards, when the same stars were in the same aspect and position, it was supposed that those same things would happen to others who had been born at that same time; if the first observations were made in that way,’ said he, ‘and from such observations a kind of science was formed, it can by no means be a success. For let them tell me in how many years, pray, or rather in how many ages, the cycle of the observations could be completed.’”
Ciente de um modelo teórico de eterno retorno ou grande ano.
“For he said that it was agreed among astrologers that those stars which they call ‘wandering’, which are supposed to determine the fate of all things, beginning their course together, return to the same place from which they set out only after an innumerable and almost infinite number of years, so that there could be no continuity of observation, and no literary record could endure for so long an epoch.” A isso os charlatães modernos redargüirão: mas descobrimos o sistema solar, os anos dos planetas em torno de nosso – insignificante no plano cósmico, é verdade! – sol, – mas ainda – o astro-rei sobre todos os timoratos indivíduos do Planeta Água!
“And he thought that this point also ought to be taken into consideration, that one constellation presided at the time when a man was first conceived in his mother’s womb, and another one 10 months later when he came into the world, and he asked how it was consistent for a different indication to be made about the same person, if, as they themselves thought, a different position and order of the same stars gave different fortunes. But also at the time of marriage, from which children were expected, and at the very union of the husband and wife, he said that it ought to be indicated by a fixed and inevitable position of the stars, with what character and fortune men would be born; and, indeed, long before that, when the father and mother were themselves born, it ought to be foretold even then from their horoscope what offspring they would produce; and far, far back of that, even to infinity, so that, if that science rested on any foundation of truth, 100 years ago, or rather at the beginning of heaven and earth, and then on in an unbroken series of predictions as long as generation followed generation, those stars ought to have foretold what character and fortune anyone would have who is born today.”
“Moreover, he thought that the most intolerable thing was their belief that not only occurrences and events of an external nature, but even men’s very deliberations, their purposes, their various pleasures, their likes and dislikes, the chance and sudden attractions and aversions of their feelings on trifling matters, were excited and influenced from heaven above; for example, if you happened to wish to go to the baths, and then should change your mind, and again should decide to go, that all this happens, not from some shifting and variable state of mind, but from a fateful ebb and flow of the planets. Thus men would clearly be seen to be, not λογικὰ ζῶα or ‘reasoning beings’, as they are called, but a species of ludicrous and ridiculous puppets, if it be true that they do nothing of their own volition or their own will, but are led and driven by the stars. ‘And if’, said he, ‘they affirm that it could have been foretold whether king Pyrrhus or Manius Curius was to be victorious in the battle, why, pray, do they not dare also to predict which of the players with dice or counters on a board will win?…’”
…and are unimportant things more difficult to understand than the important?…
“Then, finally, he asked what answer could be made to this argument, that human beings of both sexes, of all ages, born into the world under different positions of the stars and in regions widely separated, nevertheless sometimes all perished together by the same kind of death and at the same moment, either from an earthquake, or a falling building, or the sack of a town, or the wreck of the same ship.”
“‘But if’, he said, ‘they answer that even in the life and death of men who are born at different times certain events may happen which are alike and similar, through some similar conjunction of the stars at a later time, why may not sometimes everything become equal, so that through such agreement and similarity of the stars many a Socrates and Antisthenes and Plato may appear, equal in birth, in person, in talent, in character, in their whole life and in their death?’” Favorino realmente foi fundo! E nem precisava…
“if the time, the manner and the cause of men’s life and death, and of all human affairs, were in heaven and with the stars, what would they say of flies, worms, sea urchins, and many other minute animals of land and sea? Were they too born and destroyed under the same laws as men? so that to frogs also and gnats either the same fates are assigned at birth by the movements of the constellations, or, if they do not believe that, there seemed to be no reason why that power of the stars should be effective with men and ineffectual with the other animals.”
“These remarks I have touched upon in a dry, unadorned, and almost jejune style. But Favorinus, such was the man’s talent, and such is at once the copiousness and the charm of Greek eloquence, delivered them at greater length and with more charm, brilliance and readiness, and from time to time he warned us to take care lest in any way those sycophants should worm their way into our confidence by sometimes seeming to stumble upon, and give utterance to, something true.”
… And after making many attempts they either happen suddenly on the truth without knowing it, or led by the great credulity of those who consult them, they get hold by cunning of something true, and therefore obviously find it easier to come somewhere near the truth in past events than in those to come….
“They predict, either adverse or prosperous events. If they foretell prosperity and deceive you, you will be made wretched by vain expectations; if they foretell adversity and lie, you will be made wretched by useless fears. But if they predict truly and the events are unhappy, you will thereby be made wretched by anticipation, before you are fated to be so; if on the contrary they promise prosperity and it comes to pass, then there will clearly be 2 disadvantages: the anticipation of your hopes will wear you out with suspense, and hope will in advance have reaped the fruit of your approaching happiness. Therefore there is every reason why you should not resort to men of that kind, who profess knowledge of the future.” Perfeito.
VI “A friend of mine, a man not without fame as a student of literature, who had passed a great part of his life among books, said to me: ‘I should like to aid and adorn your Nights’, at the same time presenting me with a book of great bulk, overflowing, as he himself put it, with learning of every kind. He said that he had compiled it as the result of wide, varied and abstruse reading, and he invited me to take from it as much as I liked and thought worthy of record. I took the book eagerly and gladly, as if I had got possession of the horn of plenty [cornucópia], and shut myself up in order to read it without interruption. But what was written there was, by Jove! merely a list of curiosities:” Que coisa, ele era igual a você, Aulo!
…why Telemachus did not touch Pisistratus, who was lying beside him, with his hand, but awakened him by a kick…
“It also contained the names of the companions of Ulysses who were seized and torn to pieces by Scylla;” Matéria interessante!
“and besides what regions and cities had had a change of name, as Boeotia was formerly called Aonia, Egypt Aeria, Crete by the same name Aeria, Attica Acte, Corinth Ephyre, Macedonia Emathia, Thessaly Haemonia, Tyre Sarra, Thrace Sithonia, Paestum Poseidonia.”
BOOK XV
II “For he [Plato] thought that by the proper and moderate relaxation of drinking the mind was refreshed and renewed for resuming the duties of sobriety, and that men were gradually rendered happier and became readier to repeat their efforts. At the same time, if there were deep in their hearts any errors of inclination or desire, which a kind of reverential shame concealed, he thought that by the frankness engendered by wine all these were disclosed without great danger and became more amenable to correction and cure.”
“that exercises of this kind for the purpose of resisting the violence of wine, are not to be avoided and shunned, and that no one ever appeared to be altogether self-restrained and temperate whose life and habits had not been tested amid the very dangers of error and in the midst of the enticements of pleasures. For when all the license and attractions of banquets are unknown, and a man is wholly unfamiliar with them, if haply inclination has led him, or chance has induced him, or necessity has compelled him, to take part in pleasures of that kind, then he is as a rule seduced and taken captive, his mind and soul fail to meet the test, but give way, as if attacked by some strange power. Therefore he thought that we ought to meet the issue and contend hand to hand, as in a kind of battle, with pleasure and indulgence in wine, in order that we may not be safe against them by flight or absence, but that by vigour of spirit, by presence of mind, and by moderate use, we may preserve our temperance and self-restraint, and at the same time by warming and refreshing the mind we may free it of whatever frigid austerity or dull bashfulness it may contain.”
XX “He [Euripides] is said to have had an exceeding antipathy towards almost all women, either because he had a natural disinclination to their society, or because he had had 2 wives at the same time (since that was permitted by a decree passed by the Athenians) and they had made wedlock hateful to him. Aristophanes also notices his antipathy to women in the first edition of the Thesmophoriazousae”
BOOK XVI
X “Those of the Roman commons who were humblest and of smallest means, and who reported no more than 1500 asses at the census, were called proletarii, but those who were rated as having no property at all, or next to none, were termed capite censi, or ‘counted by head.’ And the lowest rating of the capite censi was 375 asses. But since property and money were regarded as a hostage and pledge of loyalty to the State, and since there was in them a kind of guarantee and assurance of patriotism, neither the proletarii nor the capite censi were enrolled as soldiers except in some time of extraordinary disorder, because they had little or no property and money.”
“in times of danger to the State, when there was a scarcity of men of military age, they [proletarii] were enrolled for hasty service, and arms were furnished them at public expense.”
“Adsidaus in the Twelve Tables is used of one who is rich and well to do, either because he contributed ‘asses’ (that is, money) when the exigencies of the State required it, or from his ‘assiduity’ in making contributions according to the amount of his property.”
XVIII “Optics effect many surprising things, such as the appearance in one mirror of several images of the same thing; also that a mirror placed in a certain position shows no image, but when moved to another spot gives reflections; also that if you look straight into a mirror, your reflection is such that your head appears below and your feet uppermost. This science also gives the reasons for optical illusions, such as the magnifying of objects seen in the water, and the small size of those that are remote from the eye.”
“Harmony, on the other hand, measures the length and pitch of sounds. The measure of the length of a tone is called ῥυθμός, or rhythm of its pitch, μέλος, or ‘melody.’ There is also another variety of Harmony which is called μετρική, or ‘Metric,’ by which the combination of long and short syllables, and those which are neither long nor short, and the verse measure according to the principles of geometry are examined with the aid of the ears. ‘But these things,’ says Marcus Varro, ‘we either do not learn at all, or we leave off before we know why they ought to be learned. But the pleasure,’ he says, ‘and the advantage of such sciences appear in their later study, when they have been completely mastered; but in their mere elements they seem foolish and unattractive.’”
BOOKS XVII-XVIII-XIX-XX
(…) Nada de substancial.
GLOSSÁRIO INGLÊS:
cleaver: cutelo, machadinha, “A heavy, broad-bladed knife or hatchet used especially by butchers.”
gormandize: empanturrar-se
ictus: icto, acento agudo gramatical; ataque súbito (Med.).
pander: cafetão, proxeneta; bajulador.
pink: tipo de navio com uma grande divisória no meio
quack: charlatão
scimitar = scimiter: “A saber with a much curved blade having the edge on the convex side – in use among Mohammedans, esp., the Arabs and Persians.” = CIMITARRA, etim.: do italiano scimitarra.
sculler: remador
scullers’ boat: esquife
sinew: força, energia; tendão.
smack: barco de pesca
sterling: excelente
throng: multidão, aglomeração, ralé
Para o glossário latino, ver https://seclusao.art.blog/2023/05/07/superglossario-latim/ (constantemente atualizado)
Seclusão Anagógica 