a
BY
MORRIS H. MORGAN
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY IN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
MORRIS H. MORGAN.
EHTESED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDOH.
MORGAN, ADDBESSE8 AND ESSAYS.
w. P. a
PREFATORY NOTE
THE contents of this volume, with the exception of the
first address, have already appeared in print at intervals
during the past seventeen years in the different periodicals
which are cited under each title. Consequently they do
not form a real unity, for they are sometimes merely the
natural outcome of occasions, sometimes the result of more
continuous thought bestowed upon a single subject. They
are not chronologically arranged. Two addresses dealing
with classical study in general are placed first ; then some-
thing in lighter vein ; then certain detached notes followed
by longer studies in a Latin author on whom much of my
time has been spent for several years ; and, finally, I have
ventured to add three copies of occasional verse.
CAMBRIDGE, June 28, 1909.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 5
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 34
THE REAL PERSIUS 62
THE WATER SUPPLY OF ANCIENT ROME 75
2KHNAO, 2KHNE12, 2KHNOO 85
NOTES ON LYSIAS 106
NOTES ON PERSIUS 118
ON THE WORD PETITOR 135
ON QVIN WITH THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN QUESTIONS . . .137
QUINTILIAN'S QUOTATIONS FROM HORACE . . . .140
ON CICERO, QVINCT. 13 142
THE DATE OF THE ORATION PRO Roscio COMOEDO . . 143
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 159
NOTES ON VITRUVIUS 214
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS . . . . . . . 233
OCCASIONAL VERSES 273
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 1
IN January, 1644, Mr. John Evelyn, an English gentle-
man who was then on the grand tour of the continent,
visited the University of Paris, and afterwards made the
following entry in his now famous Diary : ' We found a
grave Doctor in his chaire, with a multitude of auditors,
who all write as he dictates ; and this they call a Course.'
It is obvious that worthy Mr. Evelyn, accustomed to
Oxford methods, looked with some suspicion upon this
manner of imparting instruction, yet we all know that it
is far more prevalent to-day than it was two hundred and
sixty years ago, and that it is not confined to the conti-
nent of Europe. If the shade of Evelyn ever visits these
shores, he finds it flourishing some might say, 'like a
green bay tree ' not far from the place where I am
speaking. It is a comfortable method comfortable for
the professor, who can pour forth his accumulated floods
of learning undisturbed by the feeling that it is his duty
to find out whether his hearers have prepared themselves
to appreciate what he is saying, uninterrupted, also, at
least in our larger lecture courses, by questioning from
1 An address before the Harvard Classical Club, March 2, 1905.
5
6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
adolescent youth, and sure that no better authority than
himself is present to dispute his dogmas. This last com-
fortable certainty was not assured in Evelyn's day ; for he
goes on to record that a Cavalier who was in his party
suddenly ' started up, and beginning to argue, he so baffled
the Professor that with universal applause they all rose up
and did him greate honors, waiting on him to the very streete
and our coach, testifying greate satisfaction.'
It might sometimes be well if we professors could feel
that we were subject at any moment to correction by a
more learned visitor. The present method, however, is
comfortable not merely to professors, but also to students.
And to these its comfort brings with it a great danger.
I do not now refer to the danger of irregularity in work, or
to the postponing of serious study of a topic until late in
the days of the course and sometimes even to the last few
days before the examination is held. This is not in itself
dangerous ; it may in some cases be even advantageous,
if the time thus unemployed in a particular course is sys-
tematically given to something better. The danger of
which I am thinking is far more fundamental. It is the
danger of acquiring certain wrong ideas about methods of
learning and about the way in which you can make of
yourselves scholars. I say 'make of yourselves.' For
you can be perfectly sure of one thing, which is that no
teacher, however brilliant or learned, can make scholars
of you (whether you want to be philologians or historians
or geologists), if you sit passive. To use the terminology
of Aristotle, the teacher can, if he is a good teacher, give
you ' the how,' but he can never give you ' the what.' He
can point to methods, he can ' show you the way wherein
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 7
you must walk and the work that you must do,' but then he
must leave you to do the work for yourselves. Scholar-
ship cannot be melted up and poured into you, or chopped
up fine and spooned into your mouths. You have to
chew on it yourselves; you must become metaphorical
Fletcherites and chew on it hard and long. But observe
a difference : the Fletcherites do their chewing in public,
and they are not a pleasant spectacle. He who would
become a scholar has to chew in private ; all by himself
his work has to be done.
Now exactly here I believe lies the great danger of
lecture courses, that the auditors are too apt to think
that in the lecture course they are getting the real thing.
Far from it! The lecture course can and ought to be
nothing but a skeleton. It must be clothed with the flesh
and blood, which are the life, by each auditor for himself
in private study, if he is to get anything more from the
course than the power to pass an examination in it, which
is the most unimportant thing of all. From my own obser-
vation of life in this and other American universities, I am
convinced that the principal failing of American students
is the failing to recognize the necessity of this private study.
Do not mistake my meaning here. I am not making a
plea for specialization or for what is called 'original re-
search.' These, at least in our department, have hardly
any rights in the undergraduate curriculum, and even in
the Graduate School they should be approached with
caution. The reason is that a philologian must be many-
sided before he can be one-sided. And in particular he
must always remember that a man who means to be a
classical philologian must first of all become acquainted
g ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
with as much as possible of the contents of the Greek and
Latin authors. That is, his reading should have been
carried on extensively. As the great scholar Ritschl said :
' It is the fundamental knowledge of the ancient languages
which makes the philologian, and marks him off from the
mere antiquarian or historian who works with translations.'
And American students should awake to this need of
broad reading as early as possible in their careers, because
in our preparatory schools the curriculum in classics is so
very meagre, compared with that of the schools of Eng-
land, Germany, and France. Much of the Greek and
Latin which we read in our colleges has already been read
by English, French, and German boys in their school days.
This is, of course, because the general school curriculum
in their countries is so much narrower in the number of
subjects taught than it is in ours. Whether they or we are
wiser, does not now matter. The fact is that they have
much more time to give to the reading of Greek and
Latin in their schools than we have and so those boys be-
come acquainted with a wider circle of ancient literature.
But think how confined ours is, especially in Greek,
where scarcely anything is read except portions of Xeno-
phon's Anabasis and portions of Homer. This used not to
be the case in America, and the requirements in Greek
for admission to Harvard College once called for some
acquaintance with many more authors.
As one enters Sanders Theatre and looks up, the first
thing to attract the eye is that beautiful window which
represents Athene tying a fillet of honor about the top of
a Greek column. The window is an appropriate memorial
to Cornelius Con way Felton, once professor of Greek and
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 9
afterwards president of Harvard College. By the way, his
professorship, the Eliot Professorship of Greek Literature,
has been held by a line of remarkable men of whom the
university is proud, and about whom every student of
the classics here ought to know something. I mean
Everett, Popkin, Felton, and Goodwin. I have often
thought that it would be well if a lecture were occasionally
delivered, for the benefit of our younger Harvard men and
of students from other colleges, upon the lives and work
of our professors in this department. We ought never
to forget those who labored here in the days which we
sometimes unthinkingly call the 'days of small things/
It does not follow that we are better because we are bigger.
By the way again, the second of these Eliot professors,
Popkin, seems to have been as early as anybody here to hint
at the benefits of an elective system of studies. This was
toward the end of the eighteenth century. At one time
during his undergraduate life (1788-1792), he became dis-
couraged at his apparent inability to make progress in a
certain study which was a part of the required course.
And he then wrote in a document called ' Reflections on
Myself ' the following words : ' This weakness of the
intellect, arising from dejection, is a strong instance of a
proposition which I have heretofore advanced; namely,
that it is a great bar to one's advancement in science to
have a constant conviction of his weakness. Hence I
inferred that it was a great disadvantage to the cause of
literature to oblige every one in a university to attend to
studies in which he could not make any progress.'
But to return to Professor Felton : he was the compiler
of several useful books, and among them was a Greek
IO ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Reader. For thirty years, from 1840 down to 1871, the
matter contained in this Reader was the requirement in
Greek for admission to Harvard College. What were its
contents? Rich in variety. It included twenty-eight prose
fables of Aesop, twenty-seven dialogues by Lucian, forty-
one pages of selections from Xenophon, ten from Thu-
cydides, thirteen from Lysias, seventeen from Herodotus,
thirteen from Homer, as well as selections from Anacreon,
Sappho, Simonides, Euripides, Aristophanes, and several
other poets.
Now here again there is danger lest you mistake me.
I am not suggesting that we ought to go back to Felton's
Reader or to adopt any similar collection. I am not even
suggesting that we ought to make a change in our require-
ments for admission to college. I am simply indicating
the condition of things as they are. It is clear that those
who made a good use of this Reader while in school got
a much wider conception of the variety and richness of
Greek literature than you got or than I got. I was better
off than you in this respect ; for I was introduced to Greek
through Goodwin's Reader, which contained selections
from Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato; and,
besides this, of course I had Homer. You, or at least the
great majority of you, had no prose besides Xenophon.
This being the case, and coming to college, as you do,
so limited in your conceptions of what ancient literature
contains, the necessity is strong upon you to acquaint
yourselves with it. To accomplish this, you are better
equipped than our fathers were, unless our modern system
of teaching is a failure; for you have had training in
what is called 'reading at sight,' that is, training in
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS II
grappling with the difficulties of a new passage without
the aid of a lexicon or a grammar. And nothing can take
the place of the constant and devoted reading which I am
now urging upon you. It may be carried on in one of
two ways ; in fact, both are desirable. First, there is the
exact and careful reading which you do when preparing
yourself in some course for the passage which is likely to
come up for the day, so as to be able to appreciate what
the instructor or other members of the course may say
about it, and so as to be ready yourself to contribute your
share of information or (quite as valuable) question about
this passage. In this kind of reading you work, of
course, with all the aids that you can gather round you
lexicon, grammar, commentaries, and commentaries in
other languages than English, if you can manage others.
And here let me interject a remark which I have made
to some of you before. Do not think that you need a
teacher or must ' take a course ' in order to get a reading
knowledge of a language that is new to you. A man with
brains who knows Latin and French can by himself in a
short time learn enough Italian and Spanish to enable him
to use books written in these languages ; and anybody
who knows English and German can easily learn to read
Dutch. As for German, Macaulay learned to read it dur-
ing his voyage to India, beginning with Luther's transla-
tion of the New Testament, an excellent way in which
to learn a new language is this. The Duke of Wellington
learned to read Spanish, after his appointment to com-
mand in the Peninsula, by using a Spanish translation of
the English Prayer Book.
The second way of reading may be called current or
12 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
cursory. It is carried on to introduce one's self to the
general contents of a new author to a conception of his
style, and to a knowledge of the sort of matter which one
may expect to find in him. For one cannot get intro-
duced to all, or even to all the important, authors in the
regular college courses. This second way may also be
followed in the completion of authors whom you have be-
gun in one of your college courses. Thus, if a student
has read six books of Tacitus or six books of Homer
under a good teacher, why should he not read all the rest
of these authors by himself ? As for the method in this
cursory kind of reading, you might select the best printed
text without notes and push ahead with some impetus,
never thinking, however, of daily progress, never set-
ting a stint of so many pages to be done each day, which
is a method sure to be a failure in the end, as you hasten
to finish your day's stint. You may set a certain period
of time for daily reading, but never an extent of space.
If you find that the author bores you, try another; we
cannot all like everything, and of course some Greek and
Latin authors are not worth reading at all by the general
student. Still, you should at least make the attempt to
interest yourself in all the authors whom the world has
agreed to call the greatest, and, as you read, you should
try to imagine yourself in the author's own time and
surroundings.
"Io?, and we know that cheese was sometimes
kept in a raXa/ao?, for instance from the Frogs of Aristoph-
anes. With greater probability Korte suggests opviv, bird,
as raXa/jo? seems to mean bird cage in a passage in Athen-
aeus, or xn va t goose, remembering Helen's birth from an
egg. But whatever Dionysus pretended that Helen was,
the argument proceeds :) ' and having disguised himself as
a ram, he awaits the issue.' To this scene must belong, I
think, although Croiset does not, a line preserved by
several ancient writers, and by them expressly attributed to
this play:
6 8' ^Aiflios tocnrep irpoftarov fir) J3f) Xey/ia>8emu) very plausibly by innu-
endo for having brought the war upon the Athenians.'
Here is an astonishing statement; for who would ever
have imagined, from the rest of the argument and far less
from the fragments of the play itself, that there was any
political satire in this comedy. But now we suddenly learn
that here, as in his Thrattae and in his Chirones, Cratinus
attacked the leader of the party to which his own political
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 31
chief, Cimon, had been opposed. And we learn also that the
comedy was brought out after the Peloponnesian War had
begun. How, then, was the satire managed ? Croiset sug-
gests an answer to this question upon the following lines :
The words of the argument, ' having heard that the
Achaeans were laying waste the country,' suggest the first
invasion of Attica by the Spartans in the summer of 431, as
described by Thucydides (2,19). In the comedy a messenger
perhaps related to Dionysus the coming of the Achaeans,
and his description of what they were doing would recall to
the audience what had happened when the Spartans came.
The invasion in the comedy was due to the carrying off of
Helen by Dionysus. What Athenian gossip said about
the libertine behavior of Pericles as a cause of the Pelo-
ponnesian War, is well known to us from Plutarch (Per. 1 3
and 32) and Aristophanes (Ach. 527). Dionysus acts like
a coward in the comedy when he hears of the approach of
the Achaeans, and Pericles was charged by his enemies with
cowardice in 431 and 430 (Thuc. 2, 21; Plut. Per. 33).
Then again it has been pointed out by Wilamowitz that
the handing over of Dionysus in the comedy to the
Achaeans is an allusion to the demand of the Spartans that
Pericles as one of the accused descendants of Cylon should
be driven out of Athens (Thuc. I, 126 f.). Finally, if you
accept, as I have done, Rutherford's brilliant explanation
of the reading at the beginning of our argument, where
the chorus ' talks about the getting of sons,' you have
perhaps an allusion to the project for admitting the
younger Pericles (the son of Pericles by Aspasia) to full
citizenship in Athens, a project under foot in 430 B.C.
And from all this satirizing of Pericles, we can perhaps, as
32 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Croiset suggests, arrive at the date of the performance of
the comedy. Plutarch (Per. 33) quotes some anapaests
by Hermippus, the contemporary comic poet, directed
against Pericles, which thus begin :
' Oh, king of the satyrs, why refusest thou
To raise thy spear, and yet
Dost utter dreadful words about the war?'
Accepting the conjecture of Kock and Meineke that
these verses come from Hermippus's comedy of the Moirae,
and conjecturing, from what Plutarch says, that they were
written in the year 430, Croiset asks : ' But why is Pericles
called king of the satyrs ? Our play by Cratinus shows
us. He had lately appeared as such on the stage, being
the Dionysus of Cratinus's comedy. We may therefore
perhaps conclude that the Dionysalexandros was produced
at the Lenaea in 430 B.C.*
If this conclusion is correct (and certainly it is both
probable and attractive), then this work of Cratinus is the
oldest Greek comedy of the plot of which we have any de-
tailed information. The oldest extant play by Aristoph-
anes, the Achamians, was produced, as you know, five
years later. However it may be about the date, 1 here is
one thing which we can say with certainty : this is the only
fifth century Athenian comedy on a mythological subject
of the details of which we really know anything at all.
Finally, the discovery of this argument teaches us once
again how dangerous it is to work up a theory of the con-
tents of a lost work from the chance fragments of it that
may have survived. For even now that we know what the
play is about, there is only one of the dozen fragments of
1 Thieme, p. 29, prefers the year 429.
THE STUDENT OF THE CLASSICS 33
it which we can fit into the plot with any sort of certainty.
How much more untrustworthy, then, must be the results
in the cases of most lost plays, of the plots of which we
know nothing ! More than thirty years ago, Leo said :
' fieri non potest ut atticae comoediae ullius argumentum e
fragmentis refingatur.'
I recognize that these remarks of mine to-night have
been somewhat rambling ; but they could not be other than
rambling, for I had no definite idea of what I was going
to write when I began this address. As I end it, how-
ever, let me not violate a principle which I am often try-
ing to impress upon some of you that one should always
summarize one's results at the end of a piece of work. In
these remarks, then, I have intended first to emphasize the
importance of private study without dependence upon the
immediate presence of a teacher, and I have mentioned
some of the lines in which such study can be carried on,
and how it can be carried on. Particularly I have insisted
upon the need of wide reading in the Greek and Latin
authors and the advantage of getting upon as intimate
terms with them as you possibly can. While warning you
against the dangers of too early specialization, I have sug-
gested examples of topics upon which even an undergrad-
uate may well begin to think for himself. And by referring
to the Oxyrhynchus papyri, I have indicated that, although
some people have a notion that the field of classical study
has already been worked out, yet this field is constantly
offering something new to those who know where to look.
Let me, therefore, close with a word of good cheer from
Demosthenes : a^eBov etprj^' a vo^i^a) avfJLcfrepeiv u/tet? 8'
' o TI Kal ry Trd\ei Kal ajracri arvvoiaeiv vfilv [4\\ei.
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 1
ON the 24th of May, 1660, Mr. Samuel Pepys, the great
English annalist, made the following entry in his
Diary :
' Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the lin-
ning stockings on and wide canons that I bought the
other day at Hague.'
But some time later we find the following entry :
'3 ist. To church; and with my mourning very hand-
some, and new periwigg, make a great show.'
Is there a tailor among us, or lover of fine clothes, who
can tell us whether there is anything much more animat-
ing in a suit of mourning and a periwig than in a pair of
imported stockings with wide canons ? If not, why should
Mr. Pepys have used the present tense ' make ' in his
narrative of the one, but the past tense 'made' in his
narrative of the other?
Let us now go back some two thousand years and exam-
ine the familiar opening lines of Xenophon's Anabasis :
' To Darius and Parysatis are born two sons, the elder
Artaxerxes, and the younger Cyrus.' But in the next
sentence : ' Now when Darius lay sick and suspected that
his end was nigh, he wished \tQ^. his sons to be with him.'
Why does the narrator put the commonplace registry of
1 An address before the New York Latin Club, November 12, 1902 ; first
published in The Latin Leaflet, 1903, No. 61, 62, 64, 65.
34
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 35
birth into the present tense, but employ the past to de-
scribe the longing of a dying father for his sons ?
Here are questions in seeking answer to which we get
but cold comfort from the school grammars, Greek or
Latin, which we teachers have been so faithfully fum-
bling these many years. One tells us that the present is
employed 'to give a more animated statement of past
events ' ; another that it is used ' as a lively representa-
tion of the past ' ; a third informs us that ' this usage,
common in all language, comes from imagining past events
as going on before our eyes.' One of the very latest
says : ' In vivid narration the speaker may for the mo-
ment feel that he is living the past over again and so may
use the present tense in describing events already past.'
Then follow three examples, and the third is the first sen-
tence in the Anabasis ! What ? Did Xenophon feel that
he was ' living over again ' the days when Parysatis was
brought to bed of her two sons ? Is Livy's soul enthralled
by the vividness of past events when he gives us in his
third chapter that long line of reigns and genealogies :
' Silvius deinde regnat; is Aeneam Silvium creat.
Agrippa inde regnat. Proca deinde regnat; is Numitorem
procreat ; Numitori regnum Silvae gentis legat?
Not one whit more, I warrant, than the Evangelist
when he wrote, using the past tense : ' Abraham begat
Isaac ; and Isaac begat Jacob ; and Jacob begat Judas
and his brethren.'
But I am sure that I need not press this point further,
for it must be perfectly obvious to you that the present
tense in the sentences which I have quoted from Pepys,
from Xenophon, and from Livy is not accounted for
36 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
under the usual treatment of the Historical Present in
our schoolbooks. The term itself is a bad one, for it
does not suggest the vivid narration of past events which
it undoubtedly is the function of the present tense some-
times to express; and the explanations are defective be-
cause they do not account for the statement, in this tense,
of dull, inanimate, historical facts. It must be clear that
we have here two distinct usages which ought not to be
confused and treated under the same head in a single sec-
tion of a grammar. There is nothing very new in what I
am saying ; and I fancy that the distinction which should
be drawn is familiar to not a few of you. If I repeat it
here, it is because new school grammars and editions of
the authors continue to ignore it, and because I remember
how absurdly inconsistent the section on the historical
present and the examples under it used to seem to me
in the grammars which I studied when I was a schoolboy.
The distinction was drawn by Professor Lane in his Latin
Grammar, and it is recognized by Professor Gildersleeve
in his invaluable new book on the Syntax of Classical
Greek. Into the question whether the two kinds of pres-
ents are the same in origin or not, I do not now enter. I
am talking now merely of usage by the Greek and Latin
authors in their writings as we have them; not of the
origins of usage. And I will venture here to pause and
to interject the remark that I am strongly of opinion that
some of us are attaching too much attention to 'origins'
in a good many departments of our teaching. The first
and all-important thing is that our pupils, whether in
schools or in colleges, should be able to read the authors
with understanding and appreciation ; and it will in gen-
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 37
eral be found that this twofold task and particularly the
latter part of it, the appreciation of the authors is all
that a schoolboy, or a college student, until he gets a good
deal more than halfway through his college course, can
accomplish. He ought to be taught what each word or
phrase meant to the writer who penned it ; he need know
nothing about the semi-civilized Indo-European who first
mouthed it out, or something like it. He must know the
manners and customs of the time about which he is study-
ing, not necessarily their evolution up from prehistoric
man. It matters very little to him how the adjective
nobilis is formed ; whether from no- and -bills or from a
hypothetical *nobus a,nd~ais ; but it ought to be impressed
upon him that the word doesn't mean noble at all; just as
he ought to know that when people called Cicero a novus
homo, they didn't mean that he was a bourgeois or of a low,
mean family. And so with our present tense ; never mind
its origin till much later, if ever ; but let us make sure that
our students see what it indicates.
There is, then, in the usage of the Greek and Latin
authors an Annalistic or Notebook present, which is em-
ployed in brief historical or personal memoranda, ' to note
incidents day by day or year by year as they occur.' Of
this present I have given examples already, and those of
you who keep diaries make use of it very often. And there is
also a Present of Vivid Narration, a rhetorical device, used
consciously to represent with animation a past action as if
it were going on at the time of writing. One of the best
examples of this kind of present is to be found in the first
book of the Aeneid in the description of that storm which
Aeolus blows up at the request of Juno :
38 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
1 When this was said, with spear reversed he smote the
mountain on its side ; and instantly the winds, as it were
a battle line, rush forth and sweep over the lands in a
cyclone. They've settled on the sea (observe the perfect
definite), and Eurus and Notus side by side upheave it all
from its very bottom Af ricus, too, teeming with the
hurricane and huge are the waves which they roll to the
strand. Then ensues the cry of men and the creaking of
cordage. Clouds of a sudden pluck away the daylight
from the Teucrians' eyes ; dark night broods upon the
sea. The heaven hath thundered (perfect definite again)
and the ether flashes with fire on fire.'
Wonderful indeed is the vivifying effect of this present
when it is rightly used and in moderation. It can be over-
worked : witness those English novels written by 'The
Duchess,' a great favorite, I believe, with the ladies,
though, of course, men never read her. I am told that
the present of vivid narration is the only tense which she
employs. But we must beware of seeing a vivid present
where it is not really found ; and this brings me to another
passage which stands a little earlier in the same book of
the Aeneid.
The goddess Juno, you remember, utters an impassioned
complaint at the apparent escape of the Trojans from her
vengeance, and then :
Talia flammato secum dea corde volutans,
Nimborum in patriam, loco, f eta fur entibus austris,
Aeoliam venit.
1 To Aeolia doth she come.' Here indeed in venit we
do have an example of the present of vivid narration. But
what follows? I translate thus: 'Here, in a cavern huge,
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 39
King Aeolus subdues unto his rule the struggling winds
and sounding tempests, bridling them with chains and in a
dungeon. They in resentment chafe about the barriers
while the mountain mightily resounds; high in his hold
sits Aeolus, sceptre in hand, and calms their spirits and
abates their angry passions.' Now it is not uncommon to
hear these six presents, premit, frenat, fremunt, sedet,
mollit, and tempcrat explained as historical presents, like
venit ; but they are far from being such. The passage
contains a description of the functions of the god of the
winds, who is, of course, thought of by the poet as an active
existing divinity. He is part of the machinery of the gods,
and any ancient reader of Virgil who believed in the im-
ported Greek mythology must believe in Aeolus along
with the rest. No room for a historical present here, for
we are dealing with pure present time. And the next
sentence, as it happens, contains a point of syntax which
is, in my opinion, constantly misinterpreted even in our
best editions. It reads thus :
Ni facial, maria ac terras caelumque profundum
Quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras.
' Imagine him not doing so, they would surely whirl
along with them impetuously seas, lands, and the deep
vault of heaven, and sweep them through the air.'
This conditional sentence is not a ' condition contrary
to fact'; it does not denote unfulfilled or non-occurrent
action. It is true that in the old Latin of Plautus we do
find such conditions sometimes expressed by the present
subjunctive ; it is true also that we find in Augustan poets,
perhaps in Virgil, some imitations of this usage. But ours
40
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
is not one of them ; it is nothing but the common use of
the subjunctive in a future condition ; it is equivalent to
' If he should cease to restrain them, they would whirl
forth.'
And there is another very striking example of this same
sort of a present subjunctive, also introduced by ni, in the
sixth book of the Aeneid, which is also wrongly interpreted
as a contrary to fact condition in many editions. It is the
more interesting to us to-day because it is preceded by an
excellent example of the present of vivid narration, and in-
deed the whole passage is animate with life. Aeneas and
the Sibyl have begun their descent to Hades ; and the
poet first sketches in a few verses the awful shapes that
meet their eyes Fear, Famine, the Furies, the tree of
dreams, the stables of the centaurs, Chimaera, Hydra, and
Gorgons. In telling of all these he uses that same present
tense which he used in his account of Aeolus the real
present, for they are as truly existent as Aeolus himself.
But in the next verse comes the picture of Aeneas' sud-
den fright. The first word is a present tense, corripit, no
longer a true present, but the present of vivid narration:
Corripit hie subita trepidus formidine ferrum
Aeneas, strictamque aciem -venientibus offert,
Et, ni docta comes tenues sine cor pore vitas
Admoneat volitare cava sub imagine formae,
Irruat, et frustra ferro diver beret umbras.
1 Here in the terror of sudden alarm Aeneas plucks
forth his brand and presents the drawn point at them as
they come, and let not his wise mentor warn him that they
are but semblances of lives without flesh, flitting in hollow
mockery of form, he would be charging them and beating
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 4!
the shadows this way and that with his brand, and all in
vain.'
Could anything be more vividly put ? It is hardly trans-
latable 1 in its lively anticipation into our sober English
tongue. How can an editor find it in his heart to note:
' the present subjunctive is used here for the imperfect in
a condition contrary to fact ' ? Virgil, I warrant, never
dreamed of such a thing. How could he, starting with a
vivid present, follow it up with the self-denying ordinance
of a contrary to fact idea ?
But with regard to these clauses with ni, there is perhaps
something to be said for the editors, who have not, poor
men, the time to investigate every little point for them-
selves. The fact is that such clauses have never been
thoroughly brought together from the different authors
and systematically treated in a proper manner. Even for
single authors this has not been done. And something
still more surprising suppose you wished to study ni-
clauses in Virgil. The first thing to do would be to collect
them all. Easy enough, you say, from the Index to Virgil.
But here is the surprising thing there is no modern index
to Virgil. Is not this remarkable, that with all the teachers
and students who are engaged throughout the world on this
author, there should be none who has compiled and pub-
lished a complete index of words, since Ribbeck published
his epoch-making text fifty years ago ? I recommend this
very much needed work to your thoughts why indeed
should it not be a joint production, the labor divided among
members of this club ?
1 1 should be sorry to have it thought that my translation is an attempt to
render the ' original ' meaning of this subjunctive.
42 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
But I must not linger too long over questions of syntax
and usage of words, lest you should think me one of those
soulless creatures called gerund-grinders, who are so con-
stantly held up to mockery by the opponents of the Classics.
There are puzzles enough in our field of study for students
who have no taste for these. To keep for the moment to
Virgil; how full of difficulties is, for instance, the sixth
book of the Aeneid. Although the fourth book, as gener-
ally and wrongly interpreted, is of more interest to the or-
dinary modern reader, because in it Virgil seems to make
a modern romantic heroine out of Dido a notion which
of course he never had in his mind, for Dido is but an
obstacle to the fulfilment of the mission of the Pilgrim of
Destiny, Aeneas, fato prof ugus, and she is striving to retard
the destiny of Rome and must be brushed out of the way
as relentlessly as Rome brushed her city Carthage out of
the way though the fourth book, I say, is commonly
read with greater interest, yet it seems to me that it should
have for the serious student by no means the attractions
that are to be found in the sixth. As the ancient com-
mentator Servius remarks : 'All Virgil is full of knowledge,
but this book holds the first place.' And one of its attrac-
tions is the riddles and enigmas which it offers for our
solution. It is perfectly certain that this book is the result
of wide and deep study on Virgil's part into the writings
of his predecessors, both poets and Greek philosophers, on
the nature of the soul and the state after death. It is cer-
tain also that the book was left uncompleted by its author,
and this is the principal reason why it presents to us several
all but insoluble problems. I need not touch upon the
greater of them here ; indeed, time would not admit of it,
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 43
and you must have pondered them for yourselves. Why,
for instance, are the heroes the bello caduci in the fore
part of Hades, almost in a place of punishment, instead of
in Elysium with Anchises? Are they to remain there
forever, or do they pass on after a period of waiting ?
I shall not attempt to-day to answer this question, though
I have an answer which all but satisfies me. I would not
have it wholly satisfy me, for if it did, part of the attrac-
tion of the book would be gone. Instead, I shall speak
merely of two small points : the Golden Bough, and the
two Gates of Sleep.
A huge book in three volumes has been written, as you
know, by Mr. Frazer on the Golden Bough. It is an in-
valuable mine of folklore and one of the chief treasures of
the students of that fascinating subject, Comparative Reli-
gion. Yet I cannot see how anybody can agree with
Frazer's view that the golden bough of Virgil was a sprig
of mistletoe. Fatal to this view, as Andrew Lang has
pointed out, is the fact that Virgil himself in his descrip-
tion of the golden bough compares it to mistletoe. Could
there be a greater absurdity than the comparison of a
thing to itself ? Whatever the bough was, it was not
mistletoe. But the carrying of it as a passport into Hades
was no invention of Virgil's. It had been used before.
Charon recognized it when the Sibyl showed it, and it is
natural to think that she herself had carried it on that
former occasion when, as she tells Aeneas, she went down
with Hecate to the lower world. Virgil may have taken it
out of some earlier poem now lost to us ; but my own opin-
ion is that pilgrims who visited the sacred places about
Lake Avernus and we know that pilgrimages to that
44
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
vicinity lasted down to the end of heathendom that pil-
grims to the spot in Virgil's time were required to carry in
their hands the branch of some tree, a branch which
Virgil poetically calls the golden bough. No doubt such
pilgrims would be told that some great hero had carried
the branch when he was there before them.
As for the other point, about the two gates, here is
again a much-discussed question. You remember that
Virgil says that one was made of horn and that by it true
ghosts, verae umbrae, passed out; that the other was of
ivory and that through it ' deceptive dreams ' were sent up
to the world. Now Anchises lets Aeneas out by this latter,
the ivory gate. Why ? Quot editores, tot sententiae, and
little comfort to be got out of any of them. Old Servius said
that the poet opened the gate of false dreams to Aeneas in
order to indicate that the whole thing was fiction ! This
comes pretty well from one who had told us that the book
was ' full of knowledge.' Neither will it do to say that
Aeneas goes out by the ivory gate because he is not a true
ghost: he is not a deceptive dream either! To say, as
some do, that there is no point whatever in the choice of
the ivory gate is a confession of ignorance of Virgil's method
in composing this book. Nothing, I venture to say, abso-
lutely nothing is set down here without a reason. We must
be dealing here with a point of doctrine inherited from the
past. The best explanation of the choice has been given, I
believe, by my friend Dr. William Everett of Adams Acad-
emy in Quincy. It is simple, and wholly without those com-
plicated theories which some scholars have called to their
aid. There was a very widespread belief, which we find in
the Greek and Latin authors from Plato to Ovid, that dreams
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 45
before midnight were deceptive dreams. The ivory gate
would therefore be open before midnight, and the poet, in
letting Aeneas out by this gate, merely means to indicate
that he left Hades before midnight. He merely indicates
the time in a poetical manner. If you look back through
the book, you will find here and there poetical indications
of the time that was passing (though none so vague to us
as this), from the hour when just before sunrise Aeneas
started upon the descent. He spent therefore considerably
less than twenty-four hours in going and returning. So,
too, Dante, the great pupil and imitator of Virgil, indicates
by mere passing allusions here and there the time which
he spent on his journey. I am bound to say that this ex-
planation of Dr. Everett's, which was published in the
Classical Review, has not met with that general acceptance
which I had expected for it. Particularly the Germans
scorn it ; perhaps it is too simple for them. But neither
do I feel absolutely certain of it myself ; we cannot hope
to know everything. For example, have you ever found
out why it was that Virgil, in his account of the boat race,
picked out the particular Roman families which he does
pick out to give them the honor of being descended from
the comrades of Aeneas ? It is a very curious choice :
' Mnestheus,' he says, ' from whom comes the house of
Memmius; Sergestus, from whom the house of Sergius,
and Cloanthus, from whom thy race, O Roman Cluentius.'
Think of it Sergius and Cluentius ! We know of only
three or four Sergiuses in Roman history, and the only
one of any consequence is Sergius Catiline the conspira-
tor, for whom Virgil certainly had no admiration, since
he puts him in Tartarus, poised over a precipice and
4 6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
terror struck at the awful faces of the Furies. Almost
the only Cluentius that we know is Cicero's client, a man
of very shady character indeed, in the defense of whom
Cicero afterwards said that he had thrown lots of dust in
the eyes of the jury. Of Virgil's reason for choosing
Memmius, something can be guessed. It seems probable
that the family of Memmius claimed Venus, if not for their
ancestress, at least for their patroness, and this in turn
may account for Lucretius's beautiful opening address to
Venus in his poem dedicated to one of that family. It
may be that the Sergian and Cluentian families boasted
some such connection with the great Aeneas, and possibly
some light might be thrown on this puzzling question by
collecting and studying all the passages in which Virgil
singles out for mention Roman families that were existing
in his day. Possibly, again, it might lead to nothing. I
said a moment ago that we could not hope to know every-
thing. Why, even Cicero, our great model, even Cicero
didn't know everything about Latin syntax, if I may return
for a moment to that fearsome subject.
For example, he once used a preposition before Piraeus
instead of treating it as the name of a town and so using
it without a preposition ; and in a letter to Atticus practi-
cally admits that he doesn't know whether he was right or
not. A more famous example was that of the inscription
which Pompey was going to cut upon his new temple of
Victory. He wished to inscribe his name and the fact
that the temple was dedicated in his third consulship ; but
he didn't feel sure whether he ought to say consul tertium
or consul tertio. After anxious consideration he referred
the matter ad doctissimos civitatis and naturally enough
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 47
the doctissimi disagreed. Finally he consulted Cicero, and
that greatest of authorities, being unwilling to commit him-
self, said : ' Suppose you don't write either termination,
but simply stop at /, and say consul tert,' which was
accordingly done. And we cannot be too grateful to
Cicero for leaving us this warning against being cocksure
about matters of syntax.
This little story teaches another lesson. You will ob-
serve that Pompey did not leave the language of his in-
scription to be selected by his architect, but consulted those
whose business it was to know about such things. It
would be well if his example were followed in modern times.
What extraordinary specimens of language and of the al-
phabet do our architects inflict upon us in their inscriptions
on public buildings, and even upon university buildings!
Take a simple point, this matter of Roman numerals.
Since the twentieth century came in, how often we see MCM
used for 1900. This is, of course, an abbreviation, and is no
more in place than an apostrophe and two zeros would be ;
or ' naughty-naught ' as the students call it. We do find
abbreviations of numerals in Roman tombstone Latin, and
in carelessly made inscriptions where the stonecutter has
not carefully calculated his space ; but I venture to say
that we shall not find IV, IX, or similar abbreviations in
any carefully made public inscription of the classical
Romans. Then, again, if our modern inscription is to be
in classical Latin, the letter M should not be used at all ;
for, of course, it does not stand for the numeral until the
second century after Christ. The proper numeral sign
should be employed, which looks something like an 8
turned on its side. But if the inscription is to be English,
48 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
why use Roman numerals in it ? Our Arabic figures are
far handsomer and infinitely less clumsy than the Roman
numerals, and we can be pretty sure that the Romans, who
were the most practical people that ever lived before Amer-
icans were invented, would have been quick to give up
their bungling method had they been acquainted with the
Arabic.
I have spoken of abbreviations. Much is to be learned
from them in various ways. A very interesting deduction
has lately been made from them by Professor Traube, the
eminent Latin palaeographer. There are, as you know, in
the Vatican Library two illustrated manuscripts of Virgil.
About the age of one of these, the Romanus, there has
been much discussion. Formerly it was thought to have
been written in the fourth century : but more recently ar-
guments have been adduced pointing to a later date, and
now Traube has shown from abbreviations found in it that
it cannot possibly be earlier than the sixth century.
The illustrations of these two manuscripts of Virgil de-
serve, I think, far more attention than is paid to them in the
teaching of Virgil in our schools. In one or two of our edi-
tions there are rude cuts in outline made from old engrav-
ings from them ; but these give you no idea whatever of the
originals, which are not outline drawings, but regular paint-
ings in the miniature style. The Vatican Library, under the
very liberal new policy of his Holiness, the present Pope, him-
self a Latin scholar of much ability, has lately published
photographic facsimiles of these two manuscripts, including
all the illustrations. Unfortunately the edition is limited
in number and the price is high, but the books ought to be
found in every great library. It would add greatly to the
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 49
interest of schoolboys and schoolgirls who are studying
Virgil if they had copies of these ancient pictures before
them. And in these days of universal photography it ought
not to be a difficult thing to bring to pass. The teacher
might get permission to make photographs with his own
camera from the library copy of the book, or if not himself
an expert in photography, he is pretty sure to find among
his pupils or acquaintances somebody to do it for him. Or
this club might cause a set of photographs to be made and
sold at a nominal price to its members. There is an excel-
lent article in French by De Nolhac about the pictures,
which might well be translated to accompany them if the
scheme which I have suggested were carried out.
But to return to Cicero : not only was he doubtful about
some points, but we are much more doubtful about many
points which concern him or the understanding of his writ-
ings. For instance, we talk of the style of Cicero, as if he
had but one style. But what does he say about this him-
self ? At the age of sixty he writes thus to Papirius
Paetus :
' What do you think about my style in letters ? Aren't
they in the sermo plebeius, the vulgar tongue ? Yet one
doesn't use the same tone in all his writings. For what
analogy is there between a letter and a speech in court, or
an address at a public meeting ? Even in court I don't
make a habit of handling all my cases in the same style.
Private suits of slight importance I plead in the plainer
style ; those that affect a man's civil status or reputation
in the more ornate style; letters I compose in the lan-
guage of everyday life verbis cotidianis!
Here, then, are at least three different styles which we
ijO ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
may expect to find at the same period in our great model,
and this ought to be but isn't a warning to those who
think that they can reach the exact date of a speech from
the style employed in it. And then another interesting
question about Cicero: what was his personal feeling
about religion ? This is one of the most difficult questions
to answer about any man; on no topic is a man really
more reserved, open, or even dogmatic, as he may seem to
be. We may be pretty sure that the real Cicero does not
express himself openly about his personal religion in his
public speeches; and in his philosophical works he is
rather the expounder of systems, of theories, and then
again of ethics, than of religion in the strictly personal
sense. There remains to us no source of knowledge on
this point except the collection of over seven hundred of
Cicero's Letters. I looked them through last summer in
the hope of gleaning information on this and several
other subjects in which I am interested. I can tell you,
therefore, from my own observation that there are only a
few passages in the letters which throw any light on the
subject of Cicero's personal religion; and of these, only
two seem to me very significant. Both are addressed to
his wife, but who can mention her without pausing for
a moment to marvel at that other puzzle of Cicero's
divorce of Terentia after over thirty years of married life,
when he was more than sixty years old, followed, as it soon
was, by his marriage with a rich young girl, his ward, and
his prompt divorce of her ? But we have no time for this
interesting problem to-day. The first of the two passages
in the letters to which I have referred was written by
Cicero in one of those moments of despair and bitterness
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 51
when the heart speaks out. On his way into exile he
writes back from Brundisium to Terentia : ' I only wish,
my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your
arms, since neither the gods whom you have worshiped
with such pure devotion, nor men, whom / have spent my
time in serving, have made us any return.' This differ-
ence between the faith of a woman and the worldliness of
a man is only too often illustrated in our modern life.
The other passage is of a similar nature, though it was
written nearly ten years later. He had been melancholy,
anxious, and a burden to those about him ; ' but all these
uneasy thoughts,' he writes, ' I have got rid of and
ejected. The reason of it all I discovered the day after
I parted from you. I threw up pure bile during the night,
and was at once so much relieved that it seemed to me some
god worked the cure. To this god, you, after your wont,
will make full and pious acknowledgment'
No intention expressed, you perceive, of making any
such acknowledgment himself. This function is to be left
to a woman.
These two passages which I have called significant may
seem slight evidence on which to base one's opinion of
a man's attitude toward religion, and they would indeed
be slight were it not that they agree exactly with the
general attitude of educated men in the age in which
Cicero lived. Perhaps there never was an age in which
unbelief was wider spread. The genuine old Roman gods
(except Lares, Penates, and Genius, that is to say except
the family gods) were all but forgotten, and the proper
way to worship them had become a topic for antiquarian
research. The Romans, of course, had never had a
52 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
mythology of their own such as the Greeks had that is,
a history of the dealings of divine beings with one another
and with men. What is sometimes thought of as Roman
mythology I mean the stories found in Virgil, Ovid, and
Horace about gods and heroes are all Greek, not
Roman at all, and even in Latin literature they really
belong later than the time of Cicero. These Greek stories
were commonly regarded, Cicero says, as idle tales. In
his day the best educated men were sceptics or rationalists.
Thus we see that even these two little passages may be
considered as pretty trustworthy indications of one side of
the character of Cicero.
It goes without saying that the letters are a perfect
mine of information on all sorts of topics relating to the
character and life of Cicero. For example : it is very in-
teresting to read, in such confidential epistles as he wrote
to Atticus, what he himself thought about his own
speeches; how he laughed over the way in which he threw
dust in the eyes of a jury ; or how thickly he laid on the
paint in ornamenting his account of the Catiline affair.
Then again his relations with Julius Caesar come out most
clearly in the letters which passed between them, or in
Cicero's letters to others about Caesar and Caesar's views
of Cicero himself. Is it not too bad that we do not try
to bring these two men together in our teaching? We
deliberately separate them. We set them in different
years of the school course and give our boys no chance to
see how they played into each other's hands or against
each other. We lead our boys to think of them as always
the deadliest foes ; but the two had much in common.
Both were lovers of literature. But what schoolboy ever
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 53
hears of Caesar as a literary man ? They think of him as
a soldier, or as a constructor of grammatical puzzles.
And here again I yield to the temptation to speak of a
point of syntax but it shall be the last and indeed I
foresee that I am approaching the end of these somewhat
disconnected remarks. The point to which I now refer
concerns the expression of the apodosis of a condition
contrary to fact in indirect discourse. What a pity it was
that Caesar allowed himself to write the sentence which
stands in the 29th chapter of the fifth book, which is, being
translated, as follows :
' (He said) that he thought Caesar was gone into Italy ;
otherwise, the Carnutes would not have formed their de-
sign of killing Tasgetius, and the Eburones, if he were
at hand, would not be coming against the camp.'
Here for ' would not be coming ' we have ventures esse
and this unfortunate phrase has led to a special category
in almost all our grammars. We are led by them to think
that this is one of the regular ways of expressing in
direct discourse an apodosis of action non-occurrent. But
the fact is, I believe, that this is the only place in any
Latin author where such a rule is borne out. In every
other passage of the kind we have the future participle with
fttisse. In my school grammar I have ventured to give an
explanation of this unique phenomenon in Caesar. In
that passage, the context clearly shows that ventures esse
represents the imperfect subjunctive of the direct discourse.
But ordinarily the future participle with esse might seem to
represent a future indicative. Hence, I believe that to
avoid ambiguity the Romans did not try to express present
time in apodoses of this kind in indirect discourse. It
54
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
was easy to avoid it, and we ought to teach our boys to
do so.
This whole matter of formal indirect discourse is dispro-
portionately prevalent in Caesar. I mean disproportionately
as compared to its appearance in other writers. The re-
sult is that a disproportionate amount of space is given to
it in our grammars and a disproportionate amount of time
in our teaching. The poor boy struggles for weeks over
its problems, and when he has mastered them and gone on
to other authors, he finds very little opportunity to exercise
in them the skill which he has got from the study of Caesar.
This consequence reminds me very much of another result
which comes out of the stress which we are now laying
upon what is called ' Reading at Sight.' I realize that I
am now about to step on very ticklish ground ; and I want
to begin by saying that I am speaking my own thoughts,
not those of my colleagues, for I do not know what they
think on this topic ; and that you must not think that I
represent them or Harvard College or anybody or anything
but myself. What I want to suggest to your thoughts is
this : our boys take a vast amount of pains in learning to
read Xenophon at sight, and then, after they have got the
power, they find there is no more Greek like Xenophon
upon which they can exercise it. And to a less degree this
is true of Latin. Power to read Caesar at sight does not
give a like power over any other author. Now understand
me. I do not mean that we should abandon altogether
the teaching of reading at sight. It does undoubtedly
give a valuable kind of power over the language, but, on
the other hand, I am by no means sure that it enables the
student to carry on his studies of Greek and Latin, after
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 55
he gets to college, with much greater ease than students
prepared under the old regime ; and it also seems to me
that this long drill in a single author in Greek and a
single author in Latin is not the way to encourage students
to continue their studies of the Classics in college. It
opens up to them no vista whatever of the wide and
noble fields of literature which are there to be found.
The subject-matter of Xenophon and Caesar is too much
of the same kind and that of a very narrow kind,
being distinctly military. It was not always thus in
the school course. As late as the time when I myself was
at school we were required to read Sallust as well as Caesar
for the elementary examination ; and in Greek we had to
read not only Xenophon, but selections from Plato and
Herodotus and a bit from Thucydides as well. Of course
in the schooldays of our fathers and grandfathers the
authors read in schools covered even a wider field. They
were not all writers of Attic Greek or of Classical Latin
but what of that ? they were great writers, immortal
names, and they showed boys that there was something
else in the Classics besides marching by parasangs and mak-
ing speeches in indirect discourse. And boys were attracted
to go on to read more of ancient literature. Parts of Greek
plays were read ; they are read still in English schools ; there
are books of selections from Greek tragedies and comedies
prepared for the English schoolboy. Ask old gentlemen
what Greek and Latin books they remember with most
pleasure, and ten to one they will answer 'the books
of selections from prose and verse.' And how much
pleasanter it must have been for the teacher to vary his
reading with his pupils instead of trudging on year after
56 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
year over the same road. And if pleasanter, how much
better he must have taught !
'Oh,' but you will say, 'we are teaching what the
colleges require ! ' I reply : that answer might have done
once upon a time, but it will serve its purpose no longer.
Look at the changes in the college admission requirements
during the past twenty years. Many of them are in
answer to the demands of secondary schools. In these
days of organizations of teachers of organizations such
as yours, for instance you may depend upon it that
changes which you agree upon as good, and for which you
can give strong reasons, are pretty sure to be adopted. I
would not, then, have you love Caesar less, or Xenophon
less, but I would have you love Greek and Latin literature
more, and I would have you make your pupils love it a
great deal more. To be sure, this means more work for
a time for some teachers who have not familiarized them-
selves sufficiently with the literature, but what of that?
We are all workers, and there stretches before us the many
weeks some people think the too many weeks of the
summer vacation. I don't know how it is with you, but
with me that is about the only period in the year when I
have any time for new work or for the review of old
time to sit under a tree with a pipe and get introduced to
an ancient author whom I have never met before ; or time
to feel about me once more the charm of the immortals
whom I learned to know long ago. And we must take
some of that time, or some other time, to consider the
question why we teach the Classics at all. The old answers
to this question will no longer serve. We can no longer
contend that the acquisition of two dead languages and a
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 57
certain knowledge of the contents of works composed over
two thousand years ago, are the best preparation which all
boys and girls can have for all the demands of life. But
neither is any subject, no matter how modern, an adequate
preparation for all the demands of life. Nobody could
hold such a view of Physics or Psychology or Philosophy
or Mathematics, and there is no longer any reason why it
should be held of Classics. Two or three hundred years
ago, this was not the case. Men went to school to the
ancients as their best teachers in all matters, and the men
of those days were not mistaken. When the Greek and
Roman literatures were rediscovered after the Dark Ages
and people began to read about the ancients, they found
themselves inferior to those ancients in very many points
of civilization and learning. They felt like children before
their teachers ; or rather, they had for the ancients a feeling
of veneration which few children, I am afraid, have for
their teachers to-day. They looked upon the ancients as
endowed with the profoundest sort of learning, which had
been handed down from one nation to another, from Egyptians
to Greeks, from Greeks to Romans. They were dazzled by
the great productions of Greece and Rome as compared
with the barren centuries immediately preceding themselves.
And it is wonderful how long this respectful attitude to-
wards the ancients survived. It survived long after great
world-changing inventions such as gunpowder or printing;
long after epoch-making discoveries such as that of oxygen
and of the circulation of the blood ; and long after the
composition of modern literatures. Shakspere and Bacon
came and went ; Descartes and Leibnitz lived and died ; a
new world was discovered in America; and still people
$8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
talked as if the ancients were in some mysterious way a
higher order of beings, superior in everything to moderns.
This opinion prevailed until half way through the nineteenth
century, but nobody would seek to defend it now.
I remember that Professor F. D. Allen 1 once said that
in former times men approached the ancients 'on their
knees.' We no longer assume this attitude. We do not
study Greek and Latin because we think that the ancients
were blessed with a higher civilization than our own, and
we cannot pretend that this study affords more than a par-
tial training for life. The overidealization of the ancients
has perhaps done more real harm to the cause of classical
studies than any other factor. You remember how the
Athenians got tired of hearing Aristides called ' the Just,'
and voted for his ostracism. So it was that men wearied
of hearing that the ancients and their literature were infi-
nitely superior to everything modern, until at last it is
asserted in some quarters that the Classics have not even a
disciplinary value in the education of young pupils. This
notion is of course as mistaken as the other, and the
people who put it forward are generally people who
know little or nothing about the manner in which classi-
cal studies are pursued at the present time. The fact is,
as I have said, that our attitude has wholly changed.
Classical studies have in recent times shared in the great
progress made in all studies. We now look upon the an-
cients as men like ourselves ; they were human, therefore
they often erred. We are not afraid to find fault with
what is feeble or even really mistaken in ancient litera-
1 From one of his unpublished lectures I have drawn much of the latter
half of the preceding paragraph.
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 59
ture. Formerly, all ancient writers, not merely the great-
est, were venerated ; but we no longer think of applying
the same standards of comparison to compositions of dif-
ferent periods or by different kinds of men or by the same
man at different times in his life. While every scholar
knows that almost all our forms of modern literature are
based upon the Greek, and while it is universally admitted
that in some literary forms the Greeks were gifted far
beyond any modern people, yet, on the other hand, there
are works in Greek which are merely trivial or even con-
temptible. Again, take the matter of civilization ; nobody
should pretend that the Greek civilization was superior to
ours in all respects. If we could take a train and travel
to ancient Athens, I think that we should find ourselves
on the whole pretty uncomfortable there. To be sure,
many beautiful things, far surpassing what we see in
modern cities, would be all about us; but, on the other
hand, we should miss many appliances for physical com-
fort which we have gained through modern invention and
which we have come to think of as among the necessaries
of life. And more than this, it can scarcely be doubted
that the ancient Athenians were vastly our inferiors in
private morality, in humanity, and in regard for law. But
the comparison of civilizations of different nations and
ages is an extremely dangerous thing, if we try to say
that one is higher than the other. This is because civili-
zation is not determinable mathematically. To one man
civilization may mean clean streets, to another it may
mean sculpture. We need to understand the man and
his surroundings before we can postulate anything about
his position in the scale of civilization.
60 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
It is in this spirit that at the present time scholars are
more and more approaching the ancients and their litera-
ture. We come to them wishing to understand them
rather than to lavish upon them fulsome praise or to
blame them for the lack of attributes which they could not
possibly possess. I am reminded here of another saying
of Professor Allen. He once remarked: 'We think of
the Greeks and Romans as ancients ; but when they were
alive, they thought themselves as modern as anybody.'
This is the true spirit which ought to actuate us ; to try to
understand the ancients as men of like clay with ourselves,
and to recognize in their literature the outgrowth of influ-
ences, and to seek to learn what these influences were.
But we must not be content with this. If a teacher has
not tried to show his pupils not merely the influence of
Virgil's own times upon Virgil, but also Virgil's influence
on the history of poetic literature that has followed, he
has not done his duty to that great author ; he has left him
as an isolated phenomenon. If a teacher has not tried to
show his pupils that it is the influence of living thought
that gives rise to what we call rules of syntax, not rules of
syntax that govern the expression of living thought, he
well deserves the opprobrious epithet of gerund-grinder.
If you reflect over what I have said about syntactical
points to-day, you will see that the former is the line from
which I have approached them. Thus it may appear that
perhaps after all there has been a certain unity in what I
have termed my 'rambling remarks.' Possibly you may
recognize in them a kind of plea for the liberal literary
study of the Classics. Not literary study in the sense of
that definition which I once heard : ' literary study ; yes ;
THE TEACHER OF THE CLASSICS 6 1
that's where you all sit round and somebody reads the
Greek out loud, and then you all say fine ! ' Not this at
all but that general literary study which must be based
upon the understanding of three things : first, the influ-
ences of time and surroundings which led the author to
write what he has written ; secondly, what was the au-
thor's message to his contemporaries ; thirdly, what ought
to be his message to us. If we have no time for the
study and teaching of these principles, let us consider
whether we have not been devoting too much time to
other things : to syntax, for instance, studied for the mere
sake of syntax, for the sake of mere categories, a sort of
pigeonholing, of which a great deal too much is done to-day
in this land ; or to reading at sight, for the sake of a
facility which will lead to nothing but the passing of an
examination ; or to the marking of quantity, particularly
of 'hidden quantity,' with which boys should seldom, if
ever, be troubled. If we have been mistaken in these or
in other ways, it is never too late to change our methods.
For, depend upon it, the salvation of the study of the
Classics is in nobody's hands but our own.
THE REAL PERSIUS 1
' Innocuos censura potest permittere lusus '
FEW literary men, either in ancient or in modern times,
have been blessed with so spotless a reputation as that
of Persius. And yet how slight is the evidence on which
it rests! This evidence consists of only a few words,
written we cannot be sure by whom or when. They are
found in the Vita of our manuscripts, and are as follows :
fuit morum lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, format pulchrae
. . . futffrugt, pudicus.
Upon these words are based the flattering eulogies
which we read in every modern commentary on the poet.
Yet with the usual blindness of commentators, a most
significant passage in the same Vita has remained all but
unnoticed, a passage which, if approached in the true
spirit of philological investigation, proves to be the key
to the understanding of the poet's whole life, and opens a
door through which scholars can pass to explore anew for
a true estimate of his character. And where is this esti-
mate to be sought ? Dr. O. W. Holmes (who, as sharing
the double mission of physician and poet, is, as we shall
soon see, the fittest authority to cite in this connection) has
in his Life of Emerson pointed out that no man writes
other than his own experience. With this golden prin-
ciple in mind, we approach the writings of Persius, and
1 From the Harvard Monthly, 1898, xxvi, 47 ff.
62
THE REAL PERSIUS 63
the feeble farthing candle of the Vita straightway burns
dim indeed beside the electric search light which breaks
forth from the poems themselves. In an instant the poet
appears in his true colors, as a broken-down bon vivant,
a libertine, in short a wanton of the deepest dye.
The passage in the Vita which gives the investigator
his first trace of the truth is as follows :
Decessit vttio stomachi anno aetatis xxx.
This is surely a most remarkable statement, and yet
how the molish, bat-like commentators have obscured its
real meaning ! Even from a pen like that of Otto Jahn
could flow such stuff as this : ' iuvenem indefesso studio
laborantem immatura mors abstimsit' (Prolegomena, p.
XLV). And this is all ! With his finger on the clue, he
fails to follow it up. Or was it perfidy ? Did he fear to
lift the veil and show us his idol as he really was ? But
such an inquiry may be reserved for a dissertation de Per-
fidia Doctorum. I shall not be deterred by any such fear,
but shall boldly enter upon the quest of the truth. And
truth forbids me, in this age of octogenarian scholars, and
in this vicinity, to believe, as Jahn would have me, that
the stomach 1 of a young man was ever so much injured
by study that he died. We shall soon see that Persius
met with no such Utopian end.
But one word more before we come to the poet's own
works. Every student of pedagogics, from Quintilian
down, has recognized what a lasting impression, for good
1 1 cast aside for the time and reserve for another opportunity the tempt-
ing conjecture that the writer of the Vita (probably some drowsy monk) was
translating from the Greek and mistook errata, mouth., for stomachus, stomach.
If there is anything in this, it may be that Persius was murdered for his free-
dom of speech probably by Nero.
6 4 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
or ill, is made upon a boy by his earliest teacher. Now
who was the earliest teacher of Persius? None other
than the infamous Remmius Palaemon, a creature so
abandoned that even an old libertine like Tiberius and a
half-witted imperial figurehead like Claudius united in de-
claring him unfit, in spite of his learning, to be an in-
structor of youth. 1 Jahn himself does not conceal this
truth ; he calls Palaemon a man immodicae luxuriae.
But what says Conington ? Perfidy again ! He writes :
'The silence with which Persius passes over this part
of his experience may perhaps be regarded as significant '
(the italics are mine). Significant of what, trifler ? One
must be an augur not to laugh at such a Delphic utter-
ance as this. But ' silence ' ? We shall see that Persius
is very far from silent on what he learned from this
wretch.
I approach now Persius's own works, being careful to
use the latest German text, the third edition of Bucheler.
The very first line of the prologue 2 is striking :
Nee font e labra prolui caballino.
Persius is often enigmatic, but here his riddle is easy to
read. These words clearly mean (under the figure of a
horse-trough) ' I never took a drink of water in my life.'
Was he not a drinker then ? On this, see 5, 166,
Ebrius ante fores extincta cum face canto.
And we know even the kind of wine that he preferred ;
cf. 3, i ff. :
1 Suet. Gramm. 23.
8 Striking, too, may be the fact that the wily Bucheler now calls the pro-
logue an epilogue in order to tuck it away out of sight at the end of the
satires.
THE REAL PERSIUS 6$
iam clarum mane fenestras
intrat et angustas extendit lumine rimas.
Stertimus^ indomitum quod despumare Falernum.
A truly disgusting picture to be drawn of himself by
one so young ! But he was as crazy for food as for
drink; and, turning again to the prologue, we find per-
haps the most shameless deification of the appetite known
in the poetry of any land or time (vs. 10),
Magister artis ingenique largitor,
VENTER.
This then was the Master he worshiped not Cor-
nutus, who by the way seems to have been led astray by
his pupil. Of the great philosopher I wish to speak with
reverence, but it cannot be denied that he yielded and fell.
Else, there is no meaning in these words of the young
epicure addressed to the sage (5, 41 f.) :
Tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles
et tecum primas epulis decerpere nodes.
Obviously they feasted together all day and the first
part of the night. But what immediately follows ?
Vnum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo
atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa.
Here opus refers to the eating described in the forego-
ing, to eating, the real work of Persius; but requiem,
etc., give another repulsive picture. Replete with food,
the gray-haired philosopher and the prematurely bald 2
1 It will not do to argue from his use of the plural that he speaks here of
Romans in general and not of himself. The ' Plural of Modesty ' (used to
this day by editors) is so well known in Latin as to make references to the
grammars unnecessary. Persius's frequent use of it is perhaps his sole claim
to the title of pudicus homo, given him in the Vita.
2 Cf. I, 9, cum ad canitiem et nostrum istud vivere triste asptxi.
66 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
young scholar (scholar, 1 forsooth !) sink back side by side
(pariter) to sleep off 2 the effects of their gormandizing.
But their sleep is short. They awake soon and, doubt-
less in the middle of the night, take a modest snack (yere-
cunda mensa, what is now called a 'night lunch ').
Gluttony inevitably leads to selfishness ; hence we find
Persius crying (6, 22} :
Vtar ego, utar,
nee rhombos idea libertis ponere lautus,
wherein he plainly says that he will not waste good food
upon his dependants. Gluttony, too, leads one to mock at
economy ; and so we find him ridiculing a gentleman who
kept up the simple meals of the Republic (4, 30) :
tunicatum cum sale mordens
caepe,
This old worthy munched his onions with their jackets
on and cared for no sauce but salt ; Persius must have
salads and relishes: recusem cenare sine undo (6, 15); et
piper et pernae, Marsi monumenta clientis (3, 75 ) ; evidently
his poor country tenants were forced to send pepper and
gammons to their rich landlord. He mocks also at philo-
sophic studies in comparison with the pleasures of the table
(3,85):-
hoc est quod palles ? cur guts non prandeat hoc estf
One throat is not enough for our gourmand ; he wants a
hundred (5, 26):
Ego centenas ausim deposcere fauces.
1 That Persius hated study is clear from 3, 44, where he tells us that he
used to pretend to have sore eyes in order to get excused from work at
school.
2 Cf. 3i 59. oscitat hesternum.
THE REAL PERSIUS 6/
An unthinking reader might be deceived in the interpre-
tation of this verse by the beginning of the same Satire :
Vatibus hie mos est , . .
centum or a et linguas optare . . .
But to the researcher after truth this is interesting only
as the sole instance in which Persius seems to be shamed
into pretending that his own gluttony was a vice common
to poets in general.
So much for one vice. Of the other, and the more fatal,
it is not my purpose to speak at length. The obscenity of
Persius is well known. The best way to find the worst
passages is to turn to Conington's edition, which contains
the Latin text on the left-hand pages, on the right a trans-
lation into English prose. By way of calling attention to
the passages now in question, the translator has left blank
spaces on the right-hand page where translations would
ordinarily stand. The plan succeeds admirably, and even
a novice in Latin will find no difficulty in discovering at
once the coarsest passages in the poems.
We have seen what Persius's practice was. Let us now
hear some of his preaching :
Indulge genio, carparmus dukia (5, 151).
What could be more typically Epicurean ?
Messe tenus propria vive et granarta, fas est,
emole (6, 25),
that is, live up to your income, and don't save anything.
A friend's birthday comes round, and suggests only an op-
portunity for drinking (funde me rum, 2, 3). What does
the discharged soldier (5, 74) receive as the reward of his
6 8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
valorous deeds ? Not honor and glory, but a truly Persian l
recompense, something to eat :
Emerutt, scabiosum tesserulafar
possidet.
Now we find the poet giving advice to a young fellow
who has lived an idle life. What is he to do ? Study ?
Far from it ! But (5, 1 36) :
tolle recens primus piper ex sitiente camelo.
And finally he gives us the gist of all his philosophy, his
summum bonum, in the words (4, 17) :
Summa boni est 2 uncta vixisse patella.
And this is the man who has been called a stoic ! 8
But the day of retribution came, as it always comes to the
man whose god is his belly. The abused organ revolts and
the epicure admits (i, 47) :
neque enim mihi cornea fibra * est.
Accordingly he resolves to diet himself and gives orders
to his cook (5, 161) :
Dave, citOj hoc credos iubeo,finire dolor es
praeteritos meditor crudus.
It is clear from hoc credas iubeo that this was not the
first time that he had so resolved. But this time, says he,
/ mean it. In the second of these verses I have altered the
1 One thinks of the prophetic utterance of Horace (i, 38, i) :
PERSICOS odi, puer, apparatus.
8 Interpunctionem correxi.
8 The Classical Department actually advertises a course on Seneca and Per-
sius as Stoics a pretty pair.
4 It is obvious to the investigator that fibra is here to be taken in its literal
sense, and that a good old-fashioned East Indian liver complaint is referred to.
The scholiasts and commentators of course try to explain the word metaphori-
cally, of the liver as the seat of passion !
THE REAL PERSIUS 69
punctuation and restored crudus in its proper case. The
Mss. and vulg. have
* Praeteritos meditor? crudum Chaerestratus unguent
abrodens
which is nonsense. Many men have bitten off their finger-
nails, but nobody ever cooked his finger-nails before eating
them away. The epithet crudum ' raw ' is therefore ab-
surdly needless. It is, in fact, an epitheton ornans, and,
as the learned Professor Gildersleeve has well observed, 1
Persius scarcely ever uses epitheta ornantia. We must
therefore restore crudus and take it in the sense of before
digestion, a sense in which Persius actually uses it in I, 51,
crudiproceres. It is then evident that Persius formed his
resolution, like many other gourmands, immediately after
dinner. In pursuance of it, he gives orders for the prepa-
ration of a frugal meal, and that, too, though a holiday is
approaching (6, 69) :
Mihifesta luce coquatur
urtica et fissa fumosum sinciput aure.
He gives up nuts, for in every age they have been recog-
nized as indigestible (nucibus relictis, I, 10). But it is
all too late, and now he thinks superstitiously of his neg-
lected gods, those awful Etruscan divinities to whom
his pious mother, Fulvia Sisenna, had taught him to pray.
But they do not answer his prayer. Alas! he sighs (2,
42):
grandes patinae tuccetaque crassa
adnuere his super os -uetuere,
In passing, it may be remarked that it is probable that
1 See his edition, p. 74.
^o ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Persius offered these prayers himself ; that is, he did not
have recourse to the mediation of a priest. We may infer
this in two ways : first, in the same Satire he inveighs
against the venality of priests (vs. 69) ; secondly, Persius
had clearly had enough of women, and it is well known
that all priests in Rome were women. This custom was
due to a law laid down at an early period, namely, in the
famous S. C. deBacch., where we read: SACERDOS NEQVIS
VIR ESSEX.
And so, as prayers were of no avail, Persius was driven
to the last resource of the ancients, the doctor. As a
rule, the Romans distrusted physicians ; hence we find in
Virgil (Aeti. 12, 46) the significant words, aegrescit me-
dendo, ' he gets sicker as the cure goes on.' But Persius,
in spite of this prejudice, was led to consult one because he
had an intimate friend in the profession, as we know from
the old Vita, where we read : usus est apud Cornutum duo-
rum convictu doctissimorum et sanctissimorum vironim,
acriter tune philosophantium, Claudi Agathurni medici Lace-
daemonii et Petroni Aristocratis Magnetis.
He went first probably to Agathurnus (for the other, as
we shall see, was not a regular physician), and asked for a
physical examination in the following words (3, 88) :
Inspice, nescio quidtrepidat mihi pectus et aegris
faucibus exsuperat gravis halitus, inspice sodes.
The good physician prescribed the rest cure 1 (iussus
requiescere, 3, 90), and Persius followed his prescription for
two days, but (3, 90) :
1 One of our modern medical men seems to lay claim to this as his dis-
covery !
THE REAL PERSIUS /I
Postquam
tertia compositas vidit nox currere venas,
de motor e domo 1 modice sitiente lagoena
lenia loturo sibi Surrentina rogavit?
The result of the debauch that ensued was of course
another visit to the doctor, who cried out at once, heus, bone,
tu palles ! (3, 94). Persius described his symptoms again,
and perhaps it was on this occasion that he added sum
petulanti splene (i, 12), and lapidosa cheragra fecerit articu-
los veteris ramalia fagi (5, 58), and turgescit vitrea bills,
findor (3, 8). Realizing that it was a serious case indeed
Agathurnus looked him over carefully again, and gave his
verdict. He began by asking Persius to feel his own pulse
and to take his own temperature, tange, miser, venas et
pone in pectore dextram (3, 107). He next showed him that
his skin was so diseased that a cry of pain followed the
merest touch : dicas cute perditus 'ohe / ' (i, 23). His bile,
too, was disordered: acri bile tumet (2, 13; cf. 3, 8), and
calido sub pectore mascula bilis intumuit (5, 144). The
patient was also too fat : fibris increvit opimum pingue (3,
32) ; and enormously swollen with a dropsy : pinguis aquali-
cus propenso sesquipide extet (i, 57). There were sores in
his mouth : tenero latetulcus in ore putre (3, 113). But the
real trouble lay much deeper, and the friendly doctor, wish-
ing to spare his patient a shock, broke the bad news grad-
ually to him. He began in a philosophic strain (the reader
will have observed the \ffnsnpkUosopkantium applied to him
in the Vita), crying out (4, 23) :
1 Conington absurdly renders 'from a great house ' ; but of course Per-
sius merely asked his major-domo for the wine.
2 Reading rogavit with cod. P, rather than rogabis of a and Bucheler.
- 2 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ut nemo in sese temptat descenders, nemo !
and, gravely shaking his head, warned Persius not to seek
for the trouble outside: nee te quaesiveris extra (i, 7);
adding ego te intus et in cute novi (3, 30). Then coming
closer to the point, he said : belle hoc excute totum ; quid
non intus habet? (i, 49). Here belle is to be interpreted
as meaning ' belly.' It is true that the word often means
' bravo !' but when we compare Gothic balg-s, Old Irish
bole, bolg(saccus, uter), and Gallic bulque(sacculus\ there is
perhaps no doubt that we have in this passage the unique
survival in literature of a Latin belle in the sense of venter.
It was probably a plebeian term. Everybody knows that
Persius preferred the verba togae to the more polished
language of the day.
Finally the doctor, considering that he had sufficiently
prepared his patient, ended his diagnosis with the fatal
words, ilia subter caecum vulnus habes (4, 43). After this
appalling catalogue of diseases the thoroughly unmanned
poet could only stammer out a request for a prescription
or method of cure. But the doctor's sad answer was (3, 63)
Elkborum frustra cum iam cutis aegra tumebit,
which we can interpret only as meaning that his skill was
of no avail and that the disease was mortal.
It is possible that the poet was not satisfied with this
single verdict and that he consulted another physician.
Coupled with the name of Agathurnus, we saw in the Vita
that of another friend of Persius who is called Petronius
Aristocrates Magnes. It can hardly be without a reason
that this man is culled out by the biographer from Persius's
host of friends. And why should anybody but a medical
THE REAL PERSIUS 73
man be named in the same breath with a person who was
certainly of that despised profession ? This Petronius was
doubtless a physician, and to the careful student the words
of the text show it clearly. What is the meaning of
Magnes ? The commentators, in their usual invertebrate
fashion, explain it as meaning that Petronius was a
Magnesian ! But how should PERSIUS, the haughty Etrus-
can noble, be intimate with a Magnesian ? It is all but
certain that we have here no trousered Asiatic, but a second
physician, an eclectic, in short, a Magnetic Healer ! We
know from Pliny (N. H. 36, 130) that the magnetic treat-
ment was no modern invention, but one familiar 1 to the
ancients. He speaks of it as curing among others a dis-
ease called epiphorae. Whether it was ever successfully
applied in antiquity to a case like that of Persius, we do not
know ; but we may be sure that Petronius would leave un-
tried no skill for the sake of his friend. 2 We have no
reason to suppose that his efforts were successful.
The poet therefore was convinced that he was doomed
that there was no possible cure for him : vetat hoc na-
tura medendi (5, 101). At this crisis some sparks of his
ancestral vigor revived, and he resolved that, if he must
die, his death should be noble. He shut himself up, there-
fore, and began to write his legacy to posterity (scribimns
inclusi grande aliquid, i, 13). No longer does he write, in
1 Familiar, else Pliny would not have heard of it.
2 It may be interesting here to note that the Mss. do not give this physi-
cian's name as I have printed it above (following the conjecture of Pithoeus).
They read Petroni aristotegratis Afagnes. The second name is obviously
corrupt ; but the syllables gratis may perhaps belong to Magnes, signifying
that this healer treated his patients for nothing, in contrast to the fees re-
quired by the regular school.
74
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
his more youthful strain, the dramatic praetexta, the trivial
hodoeporicon, or vers de socittt like his skit on the elder
Arria. All these, as the Vita expressly tells us, were among
his earlier works. But the Satires were not composed until
his last days. This accounts for the moral lessons which
they contain. They are real sermons, based on his own
sad experience of the vulgar and fatal vices of gluttony and
libertinism to which the Romans of the Empire were so
given. If they show us the man as he really was, in his
habit as he lived, they may be said to form one of the most
precious and curious of the cryptogrammatic biographies
which we possess.
REMARKS ON THE WATER SUPPLY OF
ANCIENT ROME 1
THE Commissioner of Water Supply of the City of New
York, in his report for the year 1900, remarked that
the question of 'public water supply transcends every
other subject and object of municipal government in im-
portance and in immediate effect on every human being of
whatever condition of life.' Whether the Commissioner
was aware that he was merely amplifying the Pindaric
apicrrov fiev vSap may be matter for doubt; not so the truth
which he expressed, for with it everybody will agree.
What is true now of the life of a modern municipality in
so fundamental a concern must in great part have been
true of the life of an ancient municipality, and therefore it
behooves all students of ancient Roman life to consider
what can be learned of the water supply of ancient Rome.
Not to go into this subject in details, I shall at present con-
fine myself to the consideration of the amount of public
water supply available in Rome down to the end of the
first century A.D.
Our authority on this point is of course that honest and
painstaking official, Frontinus, who became water commis-
sioner in the year 97 A.D., and who was, to judge from his
own writings, the model of what a public official ought to
1 From the Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1902,
3-37-
75
~g ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
be. Justly, therefore, he has been compared to the late
Colonel Waring by Professor Bennett, in a recent excursion
from the somewhat arid, though still, I think, potential plains
of syntax into the definiteness of an article in the Atlantic.
But Professor Bennett is not the only American who has
written on Frontinus. Mr. Clemens Herschel, a well-known
hydraulic engineer, published two years ago a volume in-
valuable for our topic. It contains a facsimile of the manu-
script of Frontinus on the Aqueducts of Rome (here
published for the first time), an excellent English transla-
tion, and an explanatory commentary written from the
point of view of the modern engineer. Both classical
scholars and practical engineers owe a debt of gratitude to
Mr. Herschel, who is, I believe, the only one of his fraternity
who has shown during the last hundred years an intelligent
interest in the ancient history of his profession.
In the course of his book Mr. Herschel endeavors to
make a conservative estimate of the amount of water sup-
plied daily to the Romans by the nine aqueducts, the last
of which was completed in 52 A.D. It would indeed be
very interesting if we could learn this amount, so that we
could compare the water supply of ancient Rome with
that of our own great cities. But unfortunately it is, I
think, impossible to arrive at any figures which shall even
approximate to exactness. This statement is entirely at
odds with those which are to be found in modern hand-
books on antiquities. For example, in Smith's Dictionary of
Greek and Roman Antiquities (i, p. 150) we are told that
the supply amounted to 332 million gallons a day; in
Middleton's Remains of Ancient Rome (ii, p. 349), to about
340 million ; in Lanciani's Ruins and Excavations of Rome
THE WATER SUPPLY OF ANCIENT ROME 77
(p. 58), to about 423 million ; and these are fair samples
of the figures which are given in the French and German
books. Now, what would such supplies amount to per
capita (to use the term of modern water reports) of the
population ? We cannot be certain about the number of
inhabitants of ancient Rome ; but if we accept the estimate
of a million for the time of Augustus, we should have from
about 330 to 420 gallons a day as the per capita rate ; or,
if we suppose that the population had grown to a million
and a half by Vespasian's time, 1 we should have a per
capita rate of from 220 to 280 gallons a day. As either of
these estimates gives a much greater allowance than that
made by any modern system of water supply, the books
regularly go on to explain that this large allowance was
made necessary by the constantly running public foun-
tains, the private fountains, the great public pools and baths,
the provision for sham naval fights, etc. But I am in-
clined to think, on a priori grounds, that the requirements
of ancient Rome were not greater than those of a modern
metropolis perhaps even not so great. Consider, for in-
stance, our hotels and apartment houses, great and small
in how many different public rooms, including lavatories
and latrinae, is water constantly running. And so in the
great business blocks and public buildings. The running
water in all these is to be compared with that in the public
fountains of Rome ; for our public fountains are still com-
paratively few, although the number is larger now than
formerly. Consider also the water used for street sprink-
ling, for mechanical and manufacturing purposes, by rail-
1 For the various theories and estimates, with references to the literature
of the subject, see Friedlaender, Sittengeschichte Roms, i 6 , pp. 58-70.
78 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
road, gas, and electric light companies, breweries and
sugar refineries, etc. Many new industries unknown to
Rome are gathered in our cities, and the old industries are
still going on under higher developments. I find, there-
fore, no defense in the supposed larger requirements of
ancient Rome for the enormous per capita rate which the
statements in the handbooks imply. And so on this ground
alone I should doubt these statements.
Mr. Herschel also doubts them, but on other grounds.
He points out that they must necessarily be based on the
figures found in Frontinus, who gives the water supply of
each aqueduct in quinariae. But the quinaria is a variable
unit and therefore absolutely unscientific. It shows us
nothing about the volume, for it is merely the measure of
the area of a cross section of water in a pipe of a certain
arbitrary size (known to us, but not necessary to specify
here). As Mr. Herschel remarks, the volume cannot thus
be measured ; for it depends not only on the size of the
pipe but on the velocity of the current moving in it ; and
this in turn on the answer to the question whether the water
is discharged into free air, into still water, or into flowing
water. It depends also upon the " head," that is, upon
the depth of the basin from which it is drawn, and
likewise upon the length of the pipe itself and its decliv-
ity. Now all these are points which Frontinus alto-
gether ignores, if indeed in his day he could have had
any but the vaguest ideas about the causes and effects
of the velocity of a stream in a pipe. And further, he
uses his unit quinaria of the same pipe both at its intake
and its delivery, although the velocity was presumably not
the same at these two points. Obviously it is impos-
THE WATER SUPPLY OF ANCIENT ROME 79
sible to reach any exact figures about volume from such
data as he gives.
Whence come then the figures given in our handbooks?
They appear to be based, as Mr. Herschel remarks, upon
a calculation put forth very cautiously by a French savant,
De Prony, in iSi/. 1 He tried to find the value of the
quinaria by comparing it with the unit employed in Rome
in his own day, and reached the conclusion that it was
about 56 cubic metres, or 15,000 gallons (American) in 24
hours. Now as the total number of quinariae delivered
every day by the nine aqueducts was, according to Fron-
tinus, 14,018, this would give about 200 million gallons as
the daily supply of ancient Rome. But De Prony deliber-
ately based his estimate on two assumptions : first, assum-
ing that the head acting on the quinaria was equal to its
length ; secondly, assuming that the quinaria was discharg-
ing into free air. But neither of these assumptions have
we the right to make certainly not the latter, for the
quinariae did not discharge into free air, but out of the de-
livery tanks into the pipes that ran to buildings, fountains,
etc. Still, De Prony's principle has been adopted and his
figures in details amplified until we get in our books the
vast number which I have cited.
Observing these fallacies, Mr. Herschel has tried to get
a better idea of the amount of Roman water supply from
some more recent investigations made by Colonel Blumen-
stihl, an engineer. 2 His method was as follows: he
1 Mem. de Vlnstitut: Acad. des Sciences, Math., et Phys., ii, p. 417.
2 Brevi Notizie sulP Acqua Pia : 1872. Lanciani himself approved the
method of these investigations in his large Italian work on the aqueducts, /
Commentarii di Frontino, p. 362.
g ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
measured the actual velocity of the Aqua Marcia at the
present time at a point near its intake, and found it to be
3j feet per second. At about this point Frontinus says
that it had 4690 quinariae. The proper calculation readily
shows that a quinaria pipe running at this rate per second
was discharging about 9250 gallons. But the term qui-
naria was, as we have seen, used by Frontinus of the amount
of water at other points in the aqueduct, at its point of
discharge, for instance. The term, therefore, was employed
of water flowing with less velocity for example, at the
rate of two feet or even of one foot per second. In other
words, as Mr. Herschel remarks, the value of a quinaria
might range from about 9000 gallons in 24 hours to about
2500 gallons. Taking a liberal average (say 6000 gallons),
he calculates that the total of 14,018 quinariae delivered
daily by the nine aqueducts may have amounted to about
84 million gallons a day. And this amount was, according
to Mr. Herschel, the maximum of Roman water supply.
He goes on, however, to observe that, according to Fron-
tinus, a good deal of water was either wasted by leakage
along the route or diverted by being drawn off illegally
by individuals before it reached the distributing points in
Rome. But the figures given by Frontinus are exclusive
of such wastes and thefts. This is a fact which Mr. Her-
schel seems not to have observed when he proceeds to re-
duce his 84 million gallons by more than one-half in order
to find the actual supply minus these thefts and leakages.
If, now, we accept the estimate of 84 millions, and sup-
pose that this supplied a million people, we get a per
capita rate of 84 gallons a day; or for a million and a
half of people, 56 gallons a day. It must be remembered
THE WATER SUPPLY OF ANCIENT ROME
8l
that this estimate is almost purely conjectural, for it de-
pends only upon the actually measured velocity of a single
aqueduct near its point of intake. Still, it is obviously
more trustworthy than the figures which we find in our
handbooks, and it may therefore be compared with the
water supplies of several cities in the United States. The
figures for these are taken from reports kindly furnished
to me, either in print or letter, by the water commis-
sioners of the various cities, and are for the year 1901,
except in the case of Chicago, which is for 1900. They
represent actual consumption, not possible supply, which
could not be given in all cases. The figures for Rome
represent supply. But the discrepancy makes no differ-
ence to my argument, for it will be seen that in all but
two cases the per capita consumption in the modern cities
is greater than the per capita supply of 84 gallons esti-
mated for Rome. The figures are as follows :
CITY.
AVERAGE DAILY CON-
SUMPTION IN GALLONS.
PER CAPITA CONSUMP-
TION IN GALLONS.
Cambridge
7. C 2O.Q76
8o.7
Borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. . .
Baltimore
97,OOO,OOO
56,000,000
83
IOO
Boston
IOI.dQ2.OOO
1 2O
Boroughs of Manhattan and
The Bronx, N.Y
Chicago
275,000,000
^22.(;QQ.63O
134
161
Philadelphia
27O.Q7C.4.C3
21 1. Q
From these figures we see that in the city of Cam-
bridge l and the borough of Brooklyn the per capita con-
1 With a population of 93,000 the only city on the list having less than
half a million people.
82 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
sumption is less than the 84 gallons of supply estimated
for Rome. In passing we observe that Brooklyn, with a
population of 1,166,000 (or about that which is generally
estimated for Rome), has a consumption 1 almost exactly
equal to Mr. Herschel's estimate of the Roman supply.
We note further that the consumption of Boston is nearly
one half as much again as the supply of Rome ; the con-
sumption of the boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx is
more than half as much again ; the consumption of Chicago
is nearly twice as great ; and finally the consumption of
Philadelphia is more than two and a half times the supply
of Rome. If the population of Rome is taken at a million
and a half, the excess of per capita rate in favor of modern
cities will be vastly greater. Now the result of these com-
parisons is just what I should, on my a priori grounds, have
expected to reach ; namely, that the water supply of ancient
Rome was not so great as that which a large city in modern
times requires.
We must not forget, however, that this conclusion is
based upon conjectures about the amount of supply and
the number of inhabitants of Rome. But it may also be
reached, I believe, without any conjecture at all in an en-
tirely different manner ; that is, by showing that the pub-
lic water supply in modern cities has increased from time
to time in greater proportion than the supply of Rome
increased. I have drawn up from Frontinus a table
which shows the comparative increase of Roman water
supply with the building of the different aqueducts.
Necessarily it is expressed in quinariae, but this does not
1 The water commissioner, however, reports that the available supply is
wholly inadequate to the demand.
THE WATER SUPPLY OF ANCIENT ROME
affect my purpose. The table gives also the dates at
which the aqueducts were built.
AQUEDUCT.
DATB.
SUPPLY IN
quinariat.
TOTAL SUPPLY.
Appia
312 B.C.
7O4
7O4
Anio Vetus
272-269
1 44-1 4O
1610
IQT;
23H
424Q
Tepula
I2C
445
46Q4
44
803
C4Q7
Vin?o .
TQ
2CO4
8OOI
Alsietina ......
Augustan
3Q2
8-3.ni.
Claudia
3852 A.D.
28l2 1
I I.2Oi;
Anio Novus
38-1:2 A.D.
28l ^ 1
1 4.0l8
From this table it appears that it had not been found
necessary to double the supply between the time of
Cicero, who died in 43 B.C., and the completion of the
Claudian and New Anio aqueducts in 52 A.D., a period of
95 years, including the Augustan age with all its grandeur
and development. After the building of these two aque-
ducts it was almost tripled. But take the city of New
York. The consumption in 1860 was 54 million gallons;
in 1900, after a period of only 40 years, it had become 255
million, or 4.7 times as much. I am careful here to com-
pare only the present borough of Manhattan with what
was the old city of New York. In the same period the
per capita consumption has doubled. The year 1860 is
the earliest for which figures could be furnished to me
by the New York Commissioner of Water Supply. For
1 We know the amount supplied by these two aqueducts together, but not
by each singly.
8 4 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Boston we can go back farther, and it appears that since
1850, in the period of 51 years, the per capita consump-
tion has increased nearly 2.9 times (from 42 gallons to
120). In Baltimore and Philadelphia, in the 50 years
from 1852 to 1902, the per capita consumption has in-
creased 7.1 and 6.3 times respectively (from 14 to 100
gallons, and from 33 T 8 ^ to 211.9 gallons). Chicago (but
this is of course a most peculiar case) had in 1854 a per
capita consumption of 8.9 gallons, which had risen in
1900 to 161 gallons. During the last thirty years it has
increased 2.2 times.
It appears, therefore, that we cannot trust our books on
antiquities, and that until other evidence is produced we
should believe that the Roman uses for water, and conse-
quently the water supply, were less than those of a modern
metropolis.
2KHNAQ, 2KHNGQ, SKriNOQ
A CONTRIBUTION TO LEXICOGRAPHY 1
THE verbs o-Kijvda), a-Krjveo), o-tcrjvoQ) have never, to my
knowledge, been fully examined. In this article it is
proposed (i) to collect all the forms which occur, both of
the simple verbs and of their compounds ; (2) to assign
each form to its proper present; (3) to discuss the
meanings.
The collection of forms discloses an interesting fact.
The words are confined to a few authors, and of 69 forms
which occur in classical Greek, there are 59 in Xenophon.
The other classical authors who use these words are
Aeschylus (once), Aristophanes (once), Thucydides (three
times in the Mss., but probably really twice), Demosthe-
nes (once), Plato (four times). The words are not found
in Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle, or in
the orators, except in the single passage of Demosthenes. 2
In late authors, lexicographers and grammarians, I find
44 additional forms, as well as two others in inscriptions,
a total of 1 1 5 forms in all.
The assignment of the different forms to their proper
presents is no easy task. One difficulty arises from the
1 From the American Journal of Philology, 1892, xiv, 71-84; ibid. p. 382.
2 These statements are based upon the special lexicons to Homer and the
tragedians, Dunbar's Concordance to Aristophanes, Essen's Index to Thu-
cydides, Paulsen's to Hesiod, the Index Graecitatis in Reiske's Orators, Ast's
Lexicon Platonicum, the Index to the Berlin Aristotle, Keller's Index to the
Hellenica, and on my own examination of the other works of Xenophon.
85
86 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
uncertainty of origin attaching to the contracted forms.
In fact, when they are considered as mere forms, the only
one in the authors which necessarily presupposes a cncijvdm
is 9, -wnjvoQtyxu. But the following might be formed
from either -da or -em: tnajv^ffown, crfCTjvrjcreiv, (nciyvrjcroiev,
ea-K^vrja-av, o-tcrjvijo-dfAevos, eo-fcrjvr)Tai, etc.; the following
from -4a> or -dm : o-Krjvov/Aev, , em or dm the subjv. -a-Krjvwa-i.
Observing that no form calls necessarily for a-Kijveco, one
might be inclined to say that there is no such word. Still,
Thomas Magister recognizes it in the following passage
(337, 1 8 Ritschl):
Kal (TKrjvr) Kal (ncr/voipa Trapa rg deia ypcufrfj ol prfrope;
Be a-Ktjvrjv pdvov ypdfovaLv. /cal a-fcrjvdco a-tcrjvS) fwvov Trap"
eKeivrj Trapa Se royrot? (rtcrjveco o-Krjvm ws eTri7ro\v, aTraf Be
teal crKrjvdo) O-KTJVW. 'A/oto-retS?;? ev e/Juo-ro/cXei ' Trap avrov
rov ddvarov e Se ove^woo-a), ef o Kal (ncrjvcDfjia, Kal TO
a-Krjv^aw, ct(f> oi> ot crtcrjvijTai, Siafopav e^ova-iv fyavepdv. It
is evident that we must inquire into the distinction of
meaning among the different presents before attempting
to assign the doubtful forms to their proper verbs.
As the verbs are denominatives, a consideration of the
substantives formed from the same root may be useful.
The chief is cr/cijvij. This word means literally no more
than a shelter. It denotes in usage something temporary,
as a hut, booth, or tent, but these not necessarily intended
for soldiers. The same may be said of 07071/05, a-Kijvco^a,
cf. Karao-KrivaHns, etc. Of course the words are common
enough in the sense of a soldier's tent. But we find them
also applied to shops and public inns (Becker-Goll, Chari-
kles, ii, 196), to temporary dwellings for new settlers pro-
vided by the old inhabitants of a town (C. I. G. 3137,
B. 57 = Ditt. Syll. 171, 57), to the theatre building (Ar.
Pac. 731, Xen. Cyr. 6, i, 54). But above all other civil
uses, the o-icrjvtf, a-Kijvot, or a-K^vcofjua was most frequently
employed at religious festivals and general assemblies,
including the great games, in fact at every Travrfyvpis.
The case is stated in a nutshell by Foucart (sur Lebas,
Voyage Archtol. i, p. 170):
' Les lois religieuses des Grecs ne permettaient pas
d'61ever des habitations permanentes dans les enceintes
sacrees. Du reste elles auraient et6 insuffisantes pour la
foule que les solennit^s attiraient. Tout le monde cam-
paient?
This is not the moment to enlarge upon the ancient
88 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
'camp meeting.' It is enough for the present purpose to
say that it was a familiar idea to the Greeks. 1
One more substantive formed from the root ovea must be
considered, because in Xenophon it has a peculiar mean-
ing. This is avcrKTjvia. Its proper meaning is of course
a dwelling in the same tent, and the corresponding word
avcricrivos would mean tent-companion (Thuc. 7, 75, 4). But
in Xenophon a-va-Krjvia frequently means a feeding together.
Trieber, in his Forschungen zur spartanischen Verfassungs-
geschichte, p. 2 1 ff ., has shown how this came about. The
words o-va-a-iTiov and cnWiTo? are ordinarily employed in
this second sense. But Trieber points out (p. 15) that
o-vo-criTiov in Sparta was the name of a small division of
the troops, and that hence Xenophon, in his Lacedaemo-
nian State, cannot use it to signify a feeding together, and
substitutes for it o-vaKrjvta, and for o-vo-airos uses o-vcncrjvos.
Trieber adds that Hippodamus (ap. Stob. Flor. 43, 93) used
9)
oa), ein Zelt u. s. w. errichten, = a-Kijvdco ; omp^trjiw, =
These are all the general remarks upon the
verbs which I have seen.
What Curtius says (ibid., p. 355) about the interchange
and the meaning of verbs in -dot, -ea>, and -o'a> shows how
difficult and how often impossible it is to learn the mean-
ings of the different kinds by having recourse to etymo-
logical formulae. But in speaking of verbs in -da he says
that they come from noun-stems in a, and get their mean-
ings from these nouns, generally denoting the exercise of
some activity or the existence of some state. Taking
a-KTivao-dai, the only form which necessarily presupposes a
verb in -aw, we might say that it comes from cncrjvdo),
meaning to tent, to encamp (cf . a-fav&ovdo), to sling, apia-rdat,
to breakfast, reXevrdo), to end). If we found no active
form we might say that in this verb the active was never or
only rarely used, and might compare fiaf^avdofuu^ a-raB^da*,
If we found active forms we might say that both
9O ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
active and middle or passive were used in the same sense,
and might compare >ireipda>. In this case we should have
the right to say that the doubtful forms a-Kijvija-a}, ea-K^vr)-
a-av, etc., might be from a-tcrjvda) as well as from a-Krjveco. If,
however, we examined the passages in which the doubtful
middle or passive forms occurred and found that in all, or
practically all, there was a peculiar meaning, and that this
was not the military meaning found in the substantives,
but the religious, and that the reverse was the case with
the doubtful active forms, we might be inclined to say that
we were dealing with two distinct verbs, one in -da>, the
other in -e&>, and that these verbs were carefully distin-
guished in usage. For instance, cf. Thuc. I, 89, 3, ev at?
avrol e where the spy on Pausanias is spoken of as a-icrjvr)-
crafjievov 8nr\f)V Sia^pdy/jLari, Ka\v/3r)V ; this is rendered
' having prepared for shelter a hut divided by a partition.'
This passage has frequently been suspected on the ground
that the verb (variously called by editors a-Kr)vei8' avrat '(
jjpKei rrapa T<*9 o^Oa? cncr)vijcrBai rov rrarpos. Neither of
them necessarily supposes a military use of the word,
although the first certainly looks in that direction. It will
be remembered that Thomas Magister (see above, p. 86)
took this form from (ncrjveco. It is perhaps rather hard on
him to use his words towards proving the existence of a
o-Krjve'co and then to suggest that he was wrong in taking
this particular form from that verb. Still, we shall find
that the real crtcrjveco is active and intransitive, and is con-
fined to the military sense. In Aristides the verbs, here
perfect, not present, mean no more than to dwell (cf. the
perf. eV/e7?w/AeVo9, below, p. 98), the present meaning take
up one's dwelling.
Next is the form ea-Kijvrjfjulvoi in Aristophanes (Ach. 69).
The scholiast here says : /ee/eXmu TO pfj/jia arro T^9 rrpcor^
r&v Trepicnrconevcov. el yap fy arro 7^9 rptrrj^ fy av 8ia
rov co, a)? Kexpvcrcopevoi. 1 That is, he appears to take the
form to be from -dco. It is passive, and means sheltered,
screened, the reference being to the covered carriages used
1 The form in -6w was the commonest of the three in usage (see p. 103) ;
hence this warning scholion..
A CONTRIBUTION TO LEXICOGRAPHY 93
in Persia. Blaydes compares O-KIJV^ in Aesch. Pers. 1000;
Plut. Them. 26.
The pluperfect occurs in Thuc. 2, 52, 3, ra re lepck ev ofc
eaKijvijvro veicpwv TrXe'a 771^. Here (and in 2, 17, I 1 ) the
meaning is not that persons were quartered actually in
the temple buildings, but lepd means the sacred precincts
about the temples, in which people actually camped out at
festivals, and ea-K^vrjvro is used in the religious sense (cf. I,
89, 3, where ea-Kijvija-av is used in the military sense).
This completes my collection of middle and passive
forms, and it appears that Liddell and Scott were right in
referring them all to -ao), but not exact in the meaning
assigned to the present. It will be observed that not
one of them necessarily suggests the military meaning of
07071/77. In Hesychius, however, we find in Schmidt's
editions o-Krjv&jnet tnfarmpoi. \eyovrcu Be xal a-Krjvanat.
We have seen that the active of a-Kijvdo) might be transi-
tive ; here it appears to be intransitive. But the manu-
script has a-Krjvovref, and Schmidt followed Musurus in
reading a-Krjvwvrei. Now, the form o-Kijvovres may be
Doric for ), (cf. Kpardvres, Koa-fjLovre;,
Blass-Kiihner, Ausf. Gram., p. 202); or, if we read or
-6w (ibid., p. 205). We are therefore dealing here with a
dialectic form of -&> or -oco, and not with -o&> at all.
It is worth noting that of the ten classical occurrences
of the verbs outside of Xenophon, seven have already been
treated. I shall next examine O-KIJVOO). Of verbs in -oo>,
Curtius (ibid.} says that in the majority of cases they are
1 ol df iroXXol rd rt tpTjfJM TTJS T6Xews $Ki)(rav na.1 ri ZepA Kol rit r;pfa
, KT\.
94 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
formed from adjectival o-stems, and that they have a
causative or factitative meaning, so that we can translate
them to make something. With this class we are evi-
dently not dealing now. He adds, ' along with these go
others which come from substantives, and have a similar
meaning, that of bring about something, provide with some-
thing, e.g. ffTefavda.' On this principle a-Krjvom should be
formed from a-Krjvof and be transitive, meaning provide
with a shelter, make tent, put into camp. I find only one
trace of this causative sense, and that in Plutarch, paKpav
cnreaK'qvwKei ra &ra r&v povv&v, 2, p. 334 B. But in its
ordinary usage the verb is not causative. Rutherford
(Babrius, p. 25) speaks of this and compares ISpow, piydw,
and ftfio-oo). Even the causative VTTVOW has sometimes an
intr. meaning ; cf. also o/iotow, Trpoo-opoioo), e^iadco, tcarop-
06o>, %77/3oo>. Among other verbs in -o&>, KVK\6co is not
causative. Another, fiiou, is not causative, and it is very
often found with the cognate ace. fttov. Somewhat like
this is the well-known place in Aesch. Bum. 634, rj, crvv rrj jvvaiKi Senrveiv, avOis 8e Kal Trap* e/zot
o-e a-Krjvovv crvv rot? 0-045 re Kal e/iot? i\oi(T(0, -ecrtcr/vciHre, ecrKijvcoo'av, -eGKijvaMrav, GKT)-
96 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
v&aai, -tTKrjv&o-ai, oveTjiwo-as, -aavT<;,
-eKevai, Synesius, Migne Ixvi, p. 1179; in Diod.
Sic. 14, 32, fj,TaaKr)vovv means remove.
I come next to the four cases in late authors in which
a-tcrivoa) takes an accusative. One has already been men-
tioned, the only passage in which the verb is causative
(Plut. 2, p. 334, B, see above, p. 94). In Polyaenus, 7,
21, 6, we find Trpoo-eTroirjo-aTO a-TparoTreSeveiv, ra? pev fteyi-
o-ra? Kal v^XoTara? a-fcrjvas Kara irpoffmirov o-fcrjvtoo-as, he
pretended to encamp, pitching the biggest and highest tents
in front. In classical authors the phrase would be er/c^m?
TTTjfacr&u, so far as we can judge from Hdt. 6, 12 and
[Andoc. 33, 9] l (cf. o-KrjVOTrrjyia, (ncijvoTrrjyea)}, or tr/c^va?
20TO0&U, cf. Xen. Cyr. 8, 5, 3. Polyaenus used the phrase
on the principle of cognate accusatives. Perhaps he was
influenced by the Latin use of tendere; though tentoria
tendere does not occur in the authors, we have iubet prae-
torium tendi, Caes. B. C. 3, 82. Cf. also the cognate
1 In Plat. Legg. 817 C, (T/ciyvAs TTT} Carres, the reference is to a tent or booth
set up by actors in a tragedy.
9 8
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
accusative in Aesch. Eum. 634 (above, p. 94). The next
accusative is in Aelian ( V. H. 3, 14), irpoo-era^e ra Ka7rrj\ela
eVt TWV rei'x&v Biaa-KrjVcoQijvai, he ordered shops to be set up
along the wall, where the object has become subject of the
infinitive. Last we have in Plutarch (Cam. 31), ftiafrftevov
aicrjvovv epenrta, forcing them to inhabit ruins. Here is the
result of the post-classical use of crKrjvow in the sense of take
up one's abode. It has become as transitive a verb as ot/cew.
Out of the 25 passages to be examined there remains
one in which occurs the form earierivwpevos, Aristid. ii, p.
277 Dind., O/AOU roi? vavrais ea-Kijwofievos. Here we might
have expected eo-Krjvrjpevos (see p. 92). Thomas Magister
quoted this passage for the very reason that we have in it
an unusual form, one he says found nowhere else napa
rot? p^ropa-t. The fact, which will become more evident
as we go on, that oTCT/yoeo was by far the commonest verb
in late Greek, may account for its usage here. Or its
existence may be due to the principle of analogy; the
verb crKrjvoQ) ought to be causative ; it really is so used in
one passage in Plutarch ; hence the perf . pass, might
be thought to mean provided with a tent, i.e. tent (cf. the
passives of yv^voco, %o\6, and it appears that in the very great
majority of cases (33-3, omitting the five places where the
verb takes an accusative and omitting also eove^w/AeW)
the verb has what I have spoken of as its proper
meaning. It will also be observed that the military sense
predominates with this word (26-16). This was far from
being the case with the verb in -da>.
A CONTRIBUTION TO LEXICOGRAPHY 99
Examining next the forms which might come from either
-eo) or -o&>, I find that they occur 33 times. In seven of
these the primary meaning is encamp ; five of the seveif
are military, and I do not hesitate to refer all seven to
crtcrjvdo), viz. eaKijvovv, Xen. A. 3, 4, 35 ; Cyr. 2, I, 25 ;
Arrian, A. i, 3, 6; 3, 29, 4; Josephus, B.J. 3, 7, 17. The
sixth is in Plutarch (2, p. 627 A). The words here are :
fjirj paicpov OVTWS aTroa-icrjvov TWV ZSiwv, don't settle so far
afield from where you belong. I should be inclined here to
amend the accent and read the active airovX\.o^oot ftr/vet tfBr) TOJ ^et/u.ww Trapao-fcrjvovvres, where the
idea resembles abiding, not taking up one's abode.
Next there are five passages in which I cannot decide
between a-Krjvea) and a-tcrjvdw. Four are military, and the
meaning may be either encamp or be in camp, viz. e
IO Q ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Xen. A. I, 4. 95 4, 8, 25; 6, 4, 7; ovn/z/oiWe?, 4, 4, 14.
The fifth is an instance of the ' camp meeting ' use. In
the description of the festivities held in the re/ievo? which
Xenophon dedicated to Artemis (A. 5, 3, 9) occur the
words Trapeze 8e 77 0eo? rofc o-tcijvova-i a\iTa K. r. \. Here
ffKTjvovan may mean to those who were wont to camp out
or to those who were camping out.
Finally, out of the thirty-three, there are twelve pas-
sages, all in Xenophon, in which the verb has the 'feed-
ing* sense. I have already mentioned (p. 95) that this
notion was attached to Xenophon's use of a-tcrjvda) in two
passages. Therefore, a form doubtful in itself, but which
means to feed, should be ascribed to o-Krjvda) ; one which
means be feeding should be ascribed to a-K-ijvew. Out of
the twelve I give to a-Krjvoco the forms a-va-Krjvovo-i, R. L. 13,
i; Hellen. 5, 3, 20; efo> o-tcijvotev, R. L. 15, 4; OIKOI C- 3> 2 > 2 5 J Hellen. 3, 2, 8; o-va-/cr)voiv, C. 2,
2, i ; o-KrjvovvTas, 1 Hellen. 7, 4, 36. Three forms remain,
compounds of Sid. The meaning of all is leave the table
(i.e. eat through to the end), and all may be assigned to
Curtius points out that at a very early period they differed
from forms in -ao> by being intransitive. We saw that
we might have expected a-Krjvda) to denote the exercise
of some activity or the existence of some state; but we
found no certain active form of a-/crjvda) in the authors.
We did find a-icrjvdcrBat, etc., and, from the peculiarity of its
usage, argued that crKyvav, had it occurred, might have
been found to have the transitive meaning of shelter. If
we find, therefore, forms such as oveT/z/Tjo-a) and e'ovcT^cra,
which might come equally well from -oo> or -eta, and if
these forms are intransitive, we might refer them to
(TKTjvea>. The following are all such forms that I have
found : -cr/c^i^cro), -crKijvtjaeTe, a/crjvijcrova-i, a-Ktjvijaoiev, CTKT]-
vijaeiv, ecTKrivrfae, ecrfcijvija'av, -ea'fcijvrjcrai', GK,r\vr\crai, - and -o'oo that Xenophon says in A. 4, 4, 8
eSoe Siao-fcrjvria-ai, but in 4, 4, IO e'So/cet OVK dcr^aXe? elvat,
$ia 4 33; 7 4 II 5 Hellen. 4, 2, 23; a-tcrjvrja-ai, A. 6, 5, 21 ;
-(r/crjvrja-ai, A. 3, 4, 32 ; 4, 4, 8 ; -aKTqvrjvavres, A. 4, 5, 29 ;
Hellen. 4, 5, 2.
Finally, there remains the only verbal which I have
found, Siao-KrjvrjTeov, Xen. A. 4, 4, 14. In spite of the lack
of an aorist passive or of any other passive form of o-Krjvea),
this verbal must be assigned to Siaa-Kijveo) on account of
the use of this verb just above in the aorist active in the
A CONTRIBUTION TO LEXICOGRAPHY 103
sense of encamp apart (4, 4, 8). This completes my
examination of the forms of overjz/e'o). They occur 39 times,
of which 3 1 are Attic, 4 in late authors, and 4 in gramma-
rians (Eust. and Thorn. Mag.).
I have been unable, in the case of five forms (p. 99), to
decide between -ea> and -oo>. The Hesychian o-fcrjvwvres
was left doubtful also (p. 93). One other form, hitherto
unmentioned, I must leave undecided. A Phocian inscrip-
tion (Foucart, B. C. H. viii, p. 215 = Collitz, Sammlung:
Die lokrischen und phokischen Inschr., 1531) runs as fol-
lows : ev rot favatceiot, Ovovra crtcavev [7] vvaiica [ft]?/ Trapi-
/ie[v]. The meaning is evidently 'a sacrificer may pitch
his tent in the Anakeion ; women not admitted.' Here
the form atcavev may represent either (r/caveiv, Att. o-Krjvelv
(e =), or fftcavav, Att: fficrjvav (e=7, then a-icavY)v; cf. eVi-
Tifjirjv, Wescher- Foucart, 304; oprjv, Blass-Kuhner, p. 205).
If it represents a-Krjvav, it is the only active form of this
verb ; if it represents a-Krjv^lv, it is the only place in which
the present of this verb means pitch a tent, encamp.
I see no way of settling this question, but even if it could
be settled it would throw no light on the usage of the
forms in Attic Greek. In fact, G. Meyer, Gr. 6r. 2 , p. 51,
says ' phokisch a-Kavrjv = Att. O-KTJVOVV, (cf . also Roberts,
Grk. Epigr., p. 232).
In the following table the occurrence of the forms is
summarized :
-ao)
Doubtful
Total.
Attic.
Late.
Lex and Gram.
Insc
9
7
2
...
...
39
60
31
26
4
2 5
4
8
I
7
5
...
i
I
"5
69
3i
13
2
IO4
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
In closing, something may be said on the general usage
of o-Kijveat and (Ttcrjvoo) in the military sense. In this sense
the verbs in the Classics are almost Xenophontic. It will
not do to say that the rarity of occurrence in other authors
is due to the unimportance of the camp in ordinary Greek
campaigns, and that there is nothing surprising in finding
the word so often in Xenophon, where camping is con-
stantly mentioned in the long expeditions which he de-
scribes. The Greek camp was, to be sure, unimportant,
compared to the Roman (Droysen, Kriegsalt., pp. 88, 139,
184); still, camping is spoken of not infrequently. But
the regular word used is a-rparoTreSevco and its compounds.
Thus, Thucydides uses this word (the simple verb) 27
times (Essen), Xenophon himself 29 times in the Hellenica
(Keller), and 16 times in the Anabasis. As an example of
late Greek I have noted 32 occurrences in Arrian's Anaba-
sis (he used a-Krjvoco twice and o-tcrjve'co once). Its com-
pounds, especially of Kara, are very common. There is,
of course, this difference in meaning, that a-rparoTreSevco
cannot be used of one man, while trKijvea) or a-icrjvoa) may be
used of one or of many. Thus, I have observed only
two cases of a-rparoTreBeva) in the singular in the Anabasis
(2, 2, 15 ; 7, 2, 11), but these are no real exceptions, as the
subject is a king or general and of course the troops are
included (cf. Polyaen. 7, 21, 6). It might seem, however,
that eo-rparoTre-
&VT, A. 7, 6, 24, but /j,g, 3, 5, I (cf. 4, 5, 1 1 ; 4, 8,
19). In 2, 2, 1 6 and 17 Karea-Kijvijcrav and la-rparo'TreSev-
dvTai, and then it seems hardly possible to keep T&V
KIV&VVWV. There is a strong temptation to strike out these
two words and to read 6Vo> yap 01 TOLOVTOI elaiv ejrai-
TKararoi, ical aTropaiTaroi, rocrovrw Trdwres aurou? favyovcri
, ' the more culpable and hard to deal with (for
used of accusers in just this sense, cf. Plat.
Apol. 1 8 D) such men are, so much the more all avoid
them.' The rhythm of the sentence would then be a little
1 In Xen. Anab. 2, i, 5, I follow Hug in reading viraLnov.
I0 8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
better; but for the absolute use of eVat'no? (without a
genitive or adverbial modifier) the only parallel is Thuc. 5,
65, quoted above ; and there en-amo? is active.
Or. 12 : The new Aristotle On the Constitution of Athens
seems to me to make it clear that the twelfth oration was
delivered by Lysias at the evOvvat of Eratosthenes, and not
at a trial for murder. When Lysias returned to Athens
from exile, he found there the very man through whose
agency his brother Polemarchus had been delivered over
to the Thirty for execution. Eratosthenes had not gone
to Eleusis under the terms of the amnesty (stated in Arist.
Resp. Ath. 39); for, once there, he could not have been
brought back to answer such a charge as Lysias had to
make. Even if past murders are included under the pro-
vision in Resp. Ath. 39, rat,ei(r0e, and this has ever
since been the received reading. Although
might easily engender (palaeographically)
still probably X is correct: it is the more difficult and
expressive reading, and it is also correct in syntax. The
aorist tense is, as usual, used to denote simple occurrence ;
they were not to be allowed to pass a single advantageous
decree. The future tense with eVSeefc denotes the continu-
ing state into which they were to be thrown. How carefui
Lysias is in his use of the aorist in the dependent moods
has already been shown in a note to Lysias 16, 6 in the
appendix to my edition. As for the combination of both
subjunctive 1 and future indicative within the same sen-
tence in object clauses, cf. Xen. Symp. 8, 25 (cited by
Goodwin, M. T. 339): ov yap OTTW? TrXetWo? ato?
eirtfJieXeiTai, a\\* OTTO)? auro? cm TrXetora wpala
So, too, in Aeschines 3, 64 needless levelling has been at
work in the change of OTTW? pr) Treptfieivrjre to OTTO)? /AT; Trepi-
(teveire because two clauses containing future indicatives
follow. Weber (Entwick. der Absichtssatze, p. 42) gets
rid of the example by bowing to Weidner's dictum that,
1 For the subjunctive after a secondary tense, cf. Lys. I, 29 and Aesch. 3,
64, below.
II2 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
in such combinations of the aor. subjv. and fut. ind.,
the aorist with OTTO? M always follows and never pre-
cedes. Weber has, however, already accepted the change
to <^r)(f>iei(r0e in Lysias (p. 23), and later on (p. 86) he
reads, with Mehler, yev^a-erai in the passage in Xeno-
phon.
Or. I2,6o: fuarOao-dfJbevoi Se Trdvras av6p<0Trow eir o\e0pq>
TT)? TToXeeo? Kal o\a? Tro'Xet? eirdyovrei Kal Te\vro)vrev frapovrcov Aristotle may mean what was
left of this garrison, or he may mean Lysander and Libys
with their forces, or both. Lysias is evidently speaking
loosely of what was done under the two Tens. For /j,ia-6a>-
o-dfjievoi cannot truthfully be used of the second, nor TroXei?
TrdyovT<; of the first ; while the words AaKeSaifiovtovs Kal
TWV a-v/j,fj,d^a)v . . . Trda-ai belong properly to the expedi-
tion of Pausanias, who was not summoned by either Ten
so far as we know (least of all by the first !). Finally, the
following words, ov StaXXdgat a\\' aTroXeicrat irapefftcevd-
ZOVTO can refer only to the first Ten, the second hav-
ing actually begun to negotiate before Pausanias arrived.
Hence the second may well be included under the
ayaBot (Trap(TKvdovTO rrjv iro\iv el /AT) 81 avSpas a
These avfyet, according to the editors of Lysias, were
the avowed or secret friends of Athens in Argos, Thebes,
Corinth and elsewhere, as well as all who were jealous of
Lysander. But the patriots of Peiraeus too are meant,
and now we must add the second Ten and their supporters
in the aaru.
Or. 12, 65 : In speaking of the Trp6j3ov\oi Lysias says
that Theramenes a-Tparrjyb^ VTT avTwv rjpeOrj ; but it does
not appear from any author that the 7rp6/3ov\oi had power
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
to fill any of the offices. Theramenes, one of the Four
Hundred, was nominated and chosen general by the Four
Hundred themselves ; Arist. ibid., 30.
Or. 12, 77 : rot? elpti^vo^ rpOTrois VTT CJJLOV aurot? atrto?
On the unusual order editors have compared Dem. 19,
174, rrjv ftev ypafaicrav eTnaroK^v VTT' e/u,oO. See also Froh-
berger's critical note in his large edition. Lysias has the
substantive following the participle in 13, 43, ra? yeyevr)-
fteVa? v\dp-
aireveyKeiv TOU? iTnrevcravraf;, iva ra? Karao-Tcio-eis
Trap' avr&v.
Here the Ms. has avairpdrr^rai, and the vulgate before
Scheibe was avaTrpaTrijre. Of recent editors only Jebb and
Shuckburgh retain the vulgate, but they seem to me to be
right, for it is near the reading of the Ms., and in its tense
(G., M. T. 87) it denotes the repeated number of cases
which would arise after the report of the phylarchs had
once for all (cnreveyicelv, aorist) been made. Lysias is very
careful in observing this distinction between the present
and the aor. subjv. or opt. The final clauses cited from
him by Weber (Entwick. der Absichtssatze, p. 160 ff.) all
bear out the rule in G., M. T. (save the only apparent
NOTES ON LYSIAS 1 15
exceptions in which etSrjre and e-n la-rrjade appear). This
is particularly well illustrated in 12, 72 and 32, 22, where
both tenses are used in the same sentence. Fuhr reads
avaTrpdgTjTe (schedae Brulart), cf. Harp. s. v. Kardcrra-
rj cnroBe^eiav TOW e^ozra? ra? /carcwTa-
v\dp%a)v a7reve%dijvai, the participle iTnreva auras could
not be dative, in spite of its nearness to the imper-
sonal, on account of the preceding e'/ceiWr. 62, I, Anm. 3) that
eo-ri very rarely occurs with this word, holds good
for Lysias. 'A.vdyicr) occurs twelve times ; with eVrt
twice, 13, 92 and 44 (but in the latter there is no inf.);
without eo-rt' seven times, 4, 8; 10, 5; 12, i; 19, I and 23;
22, 7; 26, 6; with r\v twice, 13, 79; 33, 4; with yeyevrjrai
once, 32, i. Only hi the last passage is the dative
used with the phrase, and it is inserted between avdyKrj
and its verb. Cf. the usage of Andocides, noted in the
Studies, ii, p. 57.
U 6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Or. 16, IO: real Trpbs roi/? aXXou? aTravra? ovreo?
ware fArjSeTrcaTTOTe fioi TT/JO? eva fiySev eytc\r)[JLa yeve'adai.
The phrase /*ot . . . \&glomus in Horace? 2 That either of these poets made
a blunder ? Rather that each was following the pronun-
ciation in vogue in his own day. Now what are the facts
Only ebullio, not ebullo, is found in the authors outside of Persius, and it is
used metaphorically (cf. Sen. Apoc, 4 ; 2 ; Petr. 42 ; 62 ; Cic. Tusc. 3, 42 ;
Fin. 5, 80 ; Apul. Met. 2, 30, p. 128 ; Tert. Idol. 3 ; cf. ad Scap. 3). When
we find the phrase animam ebullire in Seneca and in Petronius, the odds are
heavily in favor of the same verb in Persius. But of course there is no intrin-
sic reason why ebullo may not also have been in use, although we do not find
it in the remains of Latin literature.
1 See Christ, Metrik? p. 32 ; Miiller, de R. M?, p. 299 ff. ; Lachmann
ad Lucr. 3, 917. Instances of synezesis in Persius are pituita, 2, 57;
tenuia, 5, 93; deinde, 4, 8 ; 5, 143. Note also the Pompeian verse (C/Z.
iv, 813),
Otiosis locus non hie est. discede morator.
2 Cf. Stolz, Hist. Gramm. der Lot. Spr., i, p. 226; Muller, de R. M.*
p. 436 &
I2 8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
about rudere f Virgil and Ovid have u short, while Per-
sius has it long. Between the deaths of Ovid and Persius
there are only two years less than there were between the
deaths of Lucretius and Horace, forty-five in the one
case, forty-seven in the other. This is ample time for the
pronunciation to have changed. 1 The fourth passage is
5 57
hie campo indulge^ hunc alea decoquit, ilk.
Here Bieger admits that ictus and caesura (penthemimeral
at that!) are some excuse for -et ; and well he may, par-
ticularly considering that this may be a survival of original
long -et ; cf. subiit, 2, 55, and my note in the Classical
Review, 1889, xiii, p. 10. This is hardly the sort. of thing
to charge up severely against one who was such an imi-
tator of Horace, who has the license a dozen times. It is
unlikely that Persius would have observed the fact that the
license is not admitted in the Epodes and Epistles ; enough
for him that it was employed by most of the great poets
from Ennius down. It is scarcely to be called a metrical
fault, but it was perhaps an error of taste ; for the license
began to find disfavor under Augustus and it is almost
obsolete in the Silver Age. 2
In the remaining six of Bieger's ten passages the diffi-
culties are not in themselves metrical but syntactical.
Scott, as we have seen (p. 126), felt that Bieger's citation
of these did nothing towards proving his point, but Bieger
would probably contend that the poet could not swing the
1 It may also be thought that Virgil and Ovid were following the ' dic-
tionary ' pronunciation, Persius that of everyday life ; cf. Quint. 1,6,21 and 27.
2 On it, see Christ, Metrik? p. 200 ; Muller, de R. M. 2 , p. 396 ff., especially
p. 405 ft The latter indeed admits metuts in vi, 26, but here P reads metuas.
NOTES ON PERSIUS 1 29
metre freely enough, being so hampered by its require-
ments that he forced the laws of language in his anxiety
to fulfil the bare necessities of the metre. The first two
cases occur in the same sentence, 3, 28 f.,
an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis
Stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime duds
Censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas f
With this passage Bieger might have compared I, 123,
audaci quicumque adflate Cratino
Iratum Eupolidem praegrandi cum sene palles.
For all three belong together. On the last, Gildersleeve
remarks : ' Persius, like some other Roman poets, goes
beyond reasonable bounds in the use of the vocative as
predicate. The Greeks were cautious and in Virgil the
vocative may be detached and felt as such, 1 but not here,
nor in 3, 28.' The examples generally cited here in sup-
port of Persius's usage (Virg. Aen. 2, 283 ; 9, 485 ; Hor.
S. 2, 6, 20; Tib. i, 7, 53) do not, with one exception
(Juv. 6, 277) supply us with anything so harsh as Persius's
uses of the vocative as predicate in a relative clause.
Bieger's next case also occurs in the same sentence. It is
the collocation -ve . . . vel, in support of which, in spite of
the pages that have been written, nothing satisfactory has
been said. 2 If the text is correct (a and P do not here
1 So it may in Pers. 4, 124.
2 The fullest note is to be found in HauthaPs edition of 1837, p. 188 ff.
Biicheler in his third edition thinks it worth while to explain thus : " vel
quod censor tibi cognatus est vel quod ipse es eques." This is far from being
new, for though Gildersleeve ascribes it to Pretor and Stocker to Farnaby, and
though both Pretor and Farnaby, like Biicheler and, years before, Lubinus, as
well as J. B. Mayor {Classical Review, 1888, xii, p. 85), put it forth without
a hint that it was not original, the fact is that it is the explanation of Valentinus
(1578) and that the suggestion for it comes from Badius Ascensius (1499).
130
ADDRESSES AXD ESSAYS
agree) the superfluous particle was tucked in carelessly as
the needed extra syllable. The fourth of Bieger's six is
5, 1 14, where he says of liberque ac sapiens : ' absurdum est
que . . . ac, quoniam hoc toto loco ostendere studet poeta
idem esse sapientem fieri et liberum.' The sequence -que
. . . ac (or atq2te) is certainly rare though it is found (the
grammars and the dictionary to the contrary) earlier than
Virgil in poetry and Livy in prose; cf. Lucr. 5, 31 and
Munro's note, also Varro ap. Non. p. 75, 20. But Bieger's
line of criticism might as well be applied to Virg. Georg. I,
182, saepe exigmis mus Sub terris posuitque domos atque
horrea fecit. Or the idea in ac may be ' and so,' ' and
thus,' in both passages. A better passage for Bieger's
purpose would have been 2, ^2,frontemque atque uda labella,
where the rare combination seems certainly to be used for
the metre. Bieger's fifth passage is i, 60, wherein the
subjunctive sitiat has already been defended (p. 125). His
sixth is 4, 2, where the ' historical ' present to Hit in a rela-
tive clause is exceedingly harsh, in spite, as Gildersleeve
remarks, of all the examples and all the commentators.
But this is no reason for saying that Persius had not
facility in writing verse, unless we are to bring the same
charge against Virgil and Horace (see the examples cited
by Jahn).
Our examination of the ten passages cited by Bieger
shows that, whatever may be thought of the poet's taste in
the choice of language, there is very little in them upon
which to base against him a wholesale accusation of met-
rical ignorance or even of infelicity. 1 Consequently the
1 I am, however, far from asserting the converse, that Persius was a skilful
metrician. Witness, for example, his harsh elisions of monosyllables (i, 51;
NOTES ON PERSIUS I$I
two passages which led to Bieger's argument are not to be
defended on the ground which he takes. They were 3, 66
and 5, 134. For the hiatus in the former,
discite, o miseri, et causas cognoscite rerum,
there is no exact parallel. Passages containing proper
names should not be taken into account, nor those in
which ictus falls on the unelided syllable. It seems
strange to cite Virg. Eel. 2, 53, addam cerea pruna: honos
erit huic quoque porno, and Aen. I, 405, et vera incessu patuit
dea. ille ubi matrem, and hence to believe that on account
of the pause in the sense after discite the hiatus may
stand. For there is certainly as much of a pause after
miseri ; and yet that word is elided, in spite of the ictus.
With Miiller(< R. M?, p. 371) and Bucheler (Rh. Mus.,
I. .) I believe that this hiatus is not to be left in our text,
and that we must take our choice between the readings of
the inferior manuscripts disciteque or discite et, as being,
either of them, more like Persius than the io of Earth or
the vos of Guyet.
We come finally to a more vered question, 5, 134. Here
a P give
et quid agam ? rogas ? en saperdas advehe Ponto.
The scholiast too seems to have read rogas, which must, of
course, be taken as a pyrrhic. The inferior manuscripts
help us out of the difficulty with rogitas saperdas or rogitas
en saperdam. The reading rogitas is the vulgate, found
(before 1886) in all the editions that I have examined
except in the Venetian of 1482. But in this, the commen-
tary (by Fontius) has rogitas for a lemma, so that rogas in
66 ; 131 ; 4, 14 ; 33) and his admission of elisions in the fifth foot (14 times,
see Eskuche, Rh. Mus., 1890, xlv, p. 236 ff., 385 ff.).
132 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
the text may be a misprint. Biicheler (Rh. Mus. I. c. and
in his apparatus to his edition of 1886 where he printed
rogas) suggested rtigan, comparing min, I, 2 and vm, 1 6, 63.
But in his third edition (1893) he has this note on rogas :
'num corripuit poeta rogas more prisco ac volgari? cf.
scholion.' Why not ? The verse is highly dramatic,
divided, in fact, between two speakers. And rogas seems to
belong to the class of iambic words which were frequently
used in verse as pyrrhics because people pronounced them
so in everyday conversation. 2 The principle is familiar
enough. We find it working in Persius, for example, in
putd, 4, 9; videsis, I, 108 ; cf. void, 5, 84, 87; veto, I, 112;
qneo, 5, 133. When, for example, we find ave in Ov. Am.
2, 6, 62 we know that we have not to do with any mere
metrical license, for Quintilian (i, 6, 21) expressly tells us
that the word was universally pronounced with 2. But the
shortening of the ultima was not confined to iambic words ;
cf. accedo, 6, 55 ; nescid, 3, 88 ; dixero, Hor. 5. I, 4, 104;
mentis, S. I, 4, 93 ; quomodo, S. I, 9, 43 ; ergo, Ov. H. 5, 59 ;
salve", possibly in Mart, u, 108, 4. But it is true that
before final s the long quantity was very persistent and
instances of shortening are rare. We find mantis, Plaut.
Mil. 325; habte, Aul. 187; possibly virgines, Enn. Ann.
102 M., and Plaut. Pers. 845 (unless we take it as virgnes
in both). The phenomenal paltis in Hor. A. P. 65 is much
1 Here P has vis.
2 Cf. Lindsay, The Latin Language, p. 210, 'This shortening was not a
mere metrical license but reflected the actual pronunciation,' and Keller,
Grammatische Aufsatze, p. 264, who thinks that the ''rule ' of breves breviantes
worked, chiefly at any rate, only in familiar words which were in constant
use. Thus he distinguishes between doml, ' at home,' and the true genitive
d~bmi.
NOTES ON PERSIUS 133
debated. Of actual -ds we have enic&s, Plaut. Rud. 944 ;
inton&s and claudds in hexameters in an inscription of the
third century, CIL viii, 4635. Doubtless other instances
might be picked up. But for actual rog&s I know only
CIL i, 1454, on one of the sortes:
Qur petis postempus consilium f quod rogas, non est,
and on a hexameter (?) like this little can be based. In
Plaut. Bacch. 980 a foot is lacking, and Ritschl inserted
hem before rogas. Still, I think one can scarcely doubt
that many people said rog&s. The question is whether it
is likely that Persius would have admitted it into his verse.
When I think of the shortenings which he did admit, and
reflect how many words and phrases there are in his 650
verses which seem to be taken directly from the dialect of
the people, from slang, and even from a lower language
still, I am strongly tempted to believe that he wrote rog&s
here. 1 On the other hand, the reading rogitas of the infe-
rior manuscripts cannot be impeached (as some have at-
tempted) on the ground that this verb is a frequentative
and therefore out of place here. Passage after passage
might be cited, from Plautus (e.g. Pseud. 1163) down, in
which rogito serves as a mere synonym of rogo. Further,
a glance over Jahn's index will show Persius's fondness
for verbs of the frequentative formation. Kiister (de A.
Persii FL elocutione quaestiones, p. 6) cites eleven verbs
1 To speak only of words, not phrases, cf. agaso, 5, 76; baro, 5, 138;
cackinno, I, 12 ; calo, 5, 95 ; palpo, 5, 176 ; aristae, 3, 115 ; bullire, 3, 34;
canthus, 5, 71 ; centussis, 5, 191 ; cevere, I, 87 ; cirrati, I, 29 ; ebulliat, 2,
10 ; exossatus, 6, 52 ; gurgulio, 4, 38 ; inmeiare, 6, 73 ; iunix, 2, 47 ;
lallare, 3, 18 ; mamma, 3, 1 8 ; pappare, 3, 17 ; patrare, \, 1 8 ; popa, 6, 74 ;
saperda, 5, 134; sartago, I, 80; scloppw, 5, 13; tressis, 5, 76; trossitlus, I,
82 ; tucceta, 2, 42.
134
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
occurring in twenty passages. In but a few of them can
the real meaning of the frequentative be distinguished.
Against rogitas, then, we can say only that it is the easier
reading, found in inferior manuscripts.
2, I. Hunc, Macrine, diem nnmera meliore lapillo,
Qui tibi labentis apponet candidus annos.
Here P and half a dozen of the inferior manuscripts
have apponet, the variant apponat stands in G by a correc-
tion, and all the other manuscripts (including a) have
apponit. This is one of the ' twenty passages in which
Bieger (p. 48) believes that P is inferior to a ; he thinks
apponet a pure blunder. This is a strange verdict, particu-
larly as coming from one whose me'tier it is to find the
best in P whenever he possibly can. It seems as if Bieger
must have been influenced by tradition ; for it is a fact
that the future apponet had, when Bieger wrote, been
adopted by only two editors of consequence Pithou in
1590 (naturally, as he was the owner of P) and Schrevel in
his edition of 1648 and later reprints. In 1893 it was
revived by Biicheler in his latest edition, possibly on the
principle that it is the reading of P though rejected by
P's defender.
I think it the right reading. For i) it is undoubtedly
the ' lectio difficilior ' ; 2) it is supported by such futures
as are found in relative clauses like Hor. C. I, 9, 15, quern
fors dierum cumque dabit lucro Appone, Mart. 2, 32, 8, sit
liber, dominus qui volet esse metis, and Pers. 1,91, verum nee
node paratum Plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querella.
ON THE WORD PETITOR 1
THE warning \ha.\. petitor in the sense of 'candidate for
office ' does not occur in classical prose has long stood
in the principal authorities on usage. Thus, in the sixth
edition of the Antibarbarus, Schmalz summarizes what is to
be found in earlier editions and in the lexicon of Georges as
follows : ' Petitor wird in klass. Prosa nur in gerichtlicher
Beziehung gebraucht von dem, der auf etwas Anspruch
macht; besonders ist es ein Kldger in einem Privatpro-
zesse. Bei Hor. Od. 3, i, 11, ferner bei Scip. Afr. in
Macrob. Sat. 3, 14, 7, sowie N. KL bei Sueton. (lul. Caes.
23) bedeutet es Bewerber um ein Amt, welcher Kl. candi-
datus hiess, vgl. Bagge z p. 39.' Harper's Lexicon says of
the word in its political sense, ' not in Cicero.'
Nevertheless, petitor, ' candidate for office,' is found in
Cicero twice: i) Mur. 44, petitorem ego, praesertim con-
sulatus, magna spe, magno animo, magnis copiis et in forum
et in campum deduct volo. 2) Plane. 7, his levioribus
comitiis diligentia et gratia petitorum honos paritur.
The passages escaped the compilers of the old lexicons
to Cicero (hence probably the statements in the Antibar-
barus and our lexicons), although of course they are to be
1 This and the next four notes are from the Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology, 1901, xii, 232 ff.
2 The reference is to Bagge's de Eloc. Suetonii, where he merely sends us
back to Krebs and to Georges.
I3 6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
found in Merguet. Neither have the editors of Horace
used either passage, although the first well illustrates
descendat in campum petitor.
Cicero's brother Quintus also made use of petitor in our
sense four times in his Commentariolum Petitionis ( 18,
25, 42, 45). It would be strange enough if petitor, 'candi-
date/ were actually lacking in classical prose, considering
how common are peto, petitio, and competitor, referring to
office seeking. In general usage, however, it was pushed
out by candidatus (no doubt originally election slang),
which is often employed by Cicero, and indeed just before
and just after our first passage ; and by his brother twice
(ibid., 31 and 44). The old-fashioned term was still
understood, we see, in the time of Suetonius ; but Macro-
bius, after quoting the passage from Scipio in which it
occurred, felt it necessary to explain to his readers that it
meant candidatus (ibid., 8).
It may be mentioned here, for the sake of adding to the
record, that in the Lex Coloniae Genetivae of B.C. 44 (CIL
ii 5439> ch. 132) we have the curious double expression
petitor candidatus three times and candidatus petitor once.
This looks much like that adjectival use of candidatus
which is said to occur only in poetry and in post-Augustan
prose (see the Lexicon). It seems to describe the office-
seeker after he has entered his name as a regular can-
didate. My friend Professor A. A. Howard informs
me that in Suetonius, Aug. 10, candidattim se ostendit,
according to his own collations the Parisinus 6116
(S. xii) has Candida turn petitorem and the Parisinus 5801
(S. xii) petitorem in the margin and candidatum in the
text. These Mss. represent two different classes, and in
QVIN WITH THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN QUESTIONS 137
view of the inscription just cited I think it possible
that something is to be said for the double expression
in Suetonius.
ON ^T/^WITH THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN
QUESTIONS 1
THE use of quin with the subjunctive in direct questions
has been passed with scant notice by authors of gram-
mars and collectors of statistics. Hence in Lane's Latin
Grammar, 1982, I was led to write as if quin were found
but once in this usage : PL Mil. 426 an example drawn
from Kienitz, de quin particulae ap. pr. scr. lat. usu, p. 4.
This is in fact the stock example ; cf. Liibbert, Jenaer Lift.
Zeit. 1879, p. 65. Since then I have met with other occur-
rences, and it may be worth while to print them here.
1 ) Plaut. Mil. 426, Sc. me rogas hem qtii sim f PH. quin
ego hoc rogem quod nesciam ? Here, as Kienitz observes,
no other mood could stand ; cf. Ter. Andr. 749, MY. satin
samt's qui me id rogites f DA. quern igitur rogem qui hie
neminem alium videnm ?
2) Ter. Phorm. 1015, ego, Nausistrata, esse in hac re
culpam meritum non nego ; sed ea quin sit ignoscenda ?
Dziatzko suggested in a note that this quin clause might
be nothing but a direct question (thus getting rid of numer-
ous forced explanations), and he is now followed by Elmer
in his note and by Hauler in his text and note. None of
them, however, cite parallels with quin, confining them-
selves to subj unctives with cur non and quidni.
1 Since this was published Professor Sonnenschein has cited other exam-
ples in the Classical Review, 1902, xvi, 167 ff.
I3 8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
3) Ter. Eun. 811, TH. quid nunc agimusf GN. quin
redeamus? Here D 2 and G, according to Fabia, read
redimus, which might of course stand (so Kienitz, p. 4,
though no recent editor), but there seems no strong reason
for such a change nor for the colon of our printed editions,
instead of which I have written the second interrogation
mark. It must be noted, however, that in A we have quin
corrected to quid by the ' corrector antiquissimus ' or A 2 of
Hauler and Kauer, a hand which they consider not much
later than A itself. If we accept this correction we must
read with Fleckeisen 2 : quid? redeamus : etc.
4) Lucretius i, 798,
quin potius tali natura praedita quaedam
corpora constituas, ignem si forte crearint,
posse eadem demptis paucis paudsque tributis,
or dine mutato et motu, facer e aeris auras,
sic alias aliis rebus mutarier omnis f
5) Tac. Ann. 4, u, quin potius ministrum veneri excru-
ciaret, auctorem exquireret, insita denique etiam in extraneos
cunctatione et mom adversum unicum et nullius ante flagitii
compertum uteretur?
The next two examples are fragments, so that we cannot
be certain that the sentences were independent questions ;
still, they have every appearance of being such. Hence
I append the question mark.
6) Lucil. ap. Non. 426, 5,
quin potius vitam degas sedatu 1 quietam,
quant tu antiquiu 1 quant facer e hoc fecisse viderist
7) Lucil. ap. Non. 300, 27,
quin totum purges, devellas me atque deuras,
exultes et sollicites f
QVIN WITH THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN QUESTIONS 139
So far there can be, I think, little doubt of the readings.
The next two are much less certain.
8) Cic. Rep. 6, 14, quin tu aspicias ad te venientem Pau-
lum patremf Here the Palimpsest and Macrobius fail us,
but the other Mss. of the Somnium read aspicias. Editors
since Halm print his emendation aspicis. Munro, however,
in his note to Lucr. i, 798, lends the weight of his deliber-
ate judgment to the subjunctive. It ought perhaps to be
added that below in 1 5 we have quid moror in terris ?
quin hue ad vos venire propero?
9) Cic. Legg. i, 14, QUINT, quid enim agam potius aut
in quo melius hunc consumam diem? MARC, quin igitur
ad ilia spatia nostra sedisque pergamus? Here codd. A B 2
give the subjunctive (though Vahlen notes that the a in A
seems due to a correction). Editions since Halm have
pergimus. The emendation is distasteful. The indicative
with quin generally gives an impatient tone to the ques-
tion, which often becomes practically a command or an
exhortation to the speaker himself; cf. Rep. 6, 15, cited
above. But a polite suggestion is in place here, and that
seems indicated by the dubitative nature of the subjunc-
tive. Still it is curious that, just as in the Republic, so here
in the Laws we have in the immediate neighborhood of
our passage an undoubted case of quin with the indicative,
13, quin igitur ista ipsa explicas nobis his subsicivis, ut
ats, temporibus et conscribis de iure cwili subtilius quam
ceteri ?
140
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
QUINTILIAN'S QUOTATIONS FROM HORACE
FOR the reading intonsis capillis in Hor. C. i, 12, 41,
Quintilian is our only ancient authority. Against him
all the Mss. of Horace, as well as Servius and Charisius,
give incomptis capillis. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the majority of the editors (e.g. Bentley, Keller, Orelli-
Hirschfelder, Miiller, Wickham) read the latter. But
Kiessling and Smith follow Quintilian, rightly as I believe.
Without entering into other reasons for this reading (on
which cf. the two editors just mentioned), I wish merely to
show that Quintilian deserves respect as an authority en
the text of Horace. The attempt seems worth while
because Keller, in his note on the passage in the Epile-
gomena, calls Quintilian' s reading false and refers to his
note on C. I, 13, 2. There he is dealing with misquota-
tions of Horace by the grammarians, and cites one each
from Priscian, Victorinus, Flavius Caper, Charisius and
Diomede, two from Servius, and our passage from Quin-
tilian. All of these he considers errors due to the habit of
quoting from memory. Now, although everybody knows
that misquotations are made by very many writers and in
all times and languages, yet Keller's dictum here seems a
little too sweeping. It is uttered as if he had not taken
sufficient account of the memories of individuals, and as if
he had not stopped to inquire whether Quintilian and the
other writers mentioned were really alike in their methods
of quoting from Horace. To examine the works of all of
them would perhaps be a long task, but it is not difficult to
find Quintilian' s record in this matter.
He quotes Horace twenty-four times and refers to pas-
QUINTILIAN'S QUOTATIONS FROM HORACE 141
sages, without quoting them, three times. The references
may be found so conveniently in Meister's edition, p. 346,
that I omit them here. In only four of these does Quin-
tilian's evidence 1 differ from that of our Mss. of Horace.
The first is the passage already cited. The second is
A. P. 311, where nobody doubts that, as against the present
tense in codd. B and C, Quintilian (i, 5, 2) is right with
sequentur, agreeing as he does with the other Mss. and
with Porphyrio. The third is 6". I, 4, n, where Quintilian
10, I, 94, has: ab Horatio dissentio y qui Lucilium fluere
lutulentum et esse aliguid quod tollere possis putat. Here
the Mss. and editions of Horace give :
cum fluer et lutulentus, erat quod tollere velles.
The only real difference lies in the word possis, because
it is evident that the passage appears in Quintilian as a
paraphrase and that the other changes are due to his use
of putat to introduce it. The fact that esse aliquid fits in
metrically with quod tollere possis is possibly a mere acci-
dent, so that we cannot feel certain that Quintilian thought
that he was quoting these two words. The fourth passage
is Ep. i, i, 73 f., which reads thus in Horace :
olim quod volpes aegroto cauta leoni
respondzt, referam.
Quintilian, 5, n, 20, speaking of the use of fables, has:
et Horatius ne in poemate quidem humilem generis huius
usum putavit in illis versibus :
quod dixit wipes aegroto cauta koni.
Here we certainly seem to have a slip of the memory ;
but here and in the use of possis in the third passage are
1 Omitting, of course, mere orthographical variants, like classes and classis.
142
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
the only places in which we can convict Quintilian of this
fault. Therefore, until an equally good record can be
made out for the grammarians mentioned, we should be
slow to class him among them. He either had a good
memory for Horace, or else he usually verified his
quotations.
ON CICERO, QVINCT. 13
qua in re ita diligens erat quasi ei qui magna fide socie-
tatem gererent arbitrium pro socio condemnari solerent.
A MUCH discussed and emended passage. Long inter-
prets thus : he was as active in this business (i.e. in cheating
his partner) as if those who acted as honest partners were
usually convicted instead of the (dishonest) partner. But
with this explanation the word arbitrium is unnecessary,
and indeed some of the older editors omitted it as a gloss.
Others read ad arbitrium or ad arbitrum, ' before the arbi-
ter ' ; and Landgraf per arbitrum (see p. 44 of his de Cic.
elocutione in or. pro Q. et pro R. Am. conspicud). Emenda-
tion, however, is unnecessary, for we are dealing here with
legal language, in which the use of the double accusative
with condemnare (i.e. aliquem aliquid) was common; see
Stolz and Schmalz, Lat. Gr. 3 , p. 233. In our sentence the
accusative of the penalty, arbitrium, is retained with the
passive voice ; cf . Gaius 4, 32, tantam pecuniam condemne-
tur. Cicero says then: 'as if men who acted as honest
partners were usually condemned to arbitrium pro socio,'
this is, were obliged to go before an arbitrator on a ques-
tion of partnership, for defrauding a partner. This expla-
nation is borne out by Rose. Com. 25, quae cum ita sint, cur
143
non arbitrum pro socio adegeris Q. Roscium quaero. The
same phrase arbitrum adigere with the accusative of a
person occurs in Off. 3, 66, and without such an accusative
in Top. 43. Hence we may suppose that the passage in
pro Quinctio, if not strictly a legal formula, was modelled
on, or suggested by the certainly legal formula arbitrum
adigere. Audi pro socio is legal phraseology for *in a part-
nership question ' : cf . Rose. Com. above and Fl. 43 ; Dig.
17, tit. 2.
ON THE DATE OF THE ORATION PRO
ROSCIO COMOEDO
THE question of the year in which this speech was
delivered has been much discussed and remains unde-
termined. Probably 77 or 76 B.C. is ordinarily preferred.
The latter (first suggested by Fabricius) was favored by
Teuffel (cf. Teuffel-Schwabe, i 6 , 179, 3); it or 77 (Fer-
raci, Orelli, Klotz) is supported by Landgraf (de Ciceronis
elocutione, etc., p. 47 if.) ; and 76 has recently been defended
by W. Sternkopf (Jahrb. fur Cl. Phil. 1895, p. 41 ff.),
although he believes that either 74 or 73 is also possible.
On the other hand, the year 68, fixed by Manuzio, had the
support of Drumann (v, p. 346 ff.), and Schanz adopts it
(Gesch. der Rom. Lift. i a , p. 249) ; A. Mayr has very lately
proposed and defended 66 B.C. ( Wiener St. 1900, p. 115 ff.)-
C. A. Schmidt, in his useful edition of our speech, Leipzig,
1839, p. 13 (the last edition, except Long's, with a commen-
tary), argued briefly that the date was not earlier than 68
and might be any one of the next few years.
The question is interesting biographically ; for if we
adopt 77 or 76 we are still in the period of Cicero's youth,
I4 4 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
before he began to hold public office, although after his
return from his studies in Asia. In 68, however, he had
already been quaestor and aedile, and had impeached
Verres ; in 66 he was praetor, advocated the Manilian law,
and defended Cluentius. Without entering fully into the
arguments which have led the scholars just mentioned to
their conclusions, let us see what information about the
date can be gleaned from the speech itself.
1) It is a fair inference that the great career of Roscius
the actor, which ended only with his death in 62 B.C., was
now drawing near its close ; cf. 23, decem his annis proxi-
mis HS sexagiens honestissime consequi poluit: noluit.
Laborem quaestus recepit, quaestum laboris reiecit ; populo
Romano adhuc servire non destitit, sibi servire iam pridem
destitit. The same section contains an allusion to the
popularity of the dancer Dionysia and the great sums
which she was earning at the time, with the statement by
Cicero that Roscius, if he wished, could be earning even
more. The only other mention of Dionysia is found in
Gellius i, 5, 3, from which it seems likely that in the year
62 (when Cicero and Hortensius defended Sulla) she was
a popular personage.
2) From 42 we learn that Flavius, whose killing of
the slave of Roscius and Fannius had led to the case in
which our speech was delivered, had long been dead is
lam pridem est mortuus. It appears later, however, that
iam pridem cannot here refer to a period of much more
than two years (see p. 145). But in its context iam pridem
is not an exaggeration ; two years dead is dead long ago
when the question is one of looking vainly to a dead man
for evidence.
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 145
3) After the killing of the slave, his owners, who had
expected to make money out of his gains as an actor,
brought suit against Flavius. Just as the suit was ready
to be tried, Roscius concluded a settlement with Flavius.
This settlement took place, according to the reading of all
our Mss., fifteen years before the delivery of our speech :
37 abhinc annis xv. Of the time of this settlement is
also used the expression iam pridem (38), and the adjec-
tive vetus (39). They are contrasted with mine, nova, and
recens, used in the same sections of a proceeding next to
be mentioned.
4) Fannius claimed that he, as the partner of Roscius,
was entitled to a share of what Roscius received from
Flavius under the settlement. Roscius denied this and
the question came before an arbiter. Under his advice
a compromise was effected between them. This com-
promise took place three full years before the delivery
of our speech (amplius triennium, 8 ; triennio amplius, 9 ;
abhinc triennium, 37). It is this compromise which is
called nova in 38, recens in 39, and of which nunc is used
in 38.
Summarizing what we have learned thus far, we see
that the compromise was of three years' standing, that a
much longer time intervened between it and the earlier
settlement, and that Flavius had died so long ago that iam
pridem could be used of the event which cut Cicero off
from the possibility of calling him as a witness. These
facts do not help us at all towards fixing any particular
date. Toward this we have, so far, only the inference
that the speech was delivered in the last years of Roscius,
who died in 62 B.C.
I4 6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
5) After the settlement between Flavius and Roscius,
the original suit against Flavius was continued by Fannius
and finally won by him ( 41 f.). This end came after the
compromise which had been effected between Roscius and
his partner Fannius (ibid?). The index in this suit was
Cluvius, called an eques (42, 48), but otherwise unknown
to us. The fact that Sulla deprived the equites of the
privilege of acting as indices in 81 B.C. and that this privi-
lege was not restored to them until the Aurelian Law of
70 B.C. seems to show that Cluvius could not have ren-
dered his decision during the intervening period. It is
true that some have supposed that Sulla's law did not
refer to the judges in private suits such as the one in
question (cf. Bethmann-Hollweg, Der rom. Civilprocess,
ii, p. 805 ; Keller, Der rom. Cimlprocess, 10). If this
were so, we should not be helped at all towards a date by
the mention of the knighthood of Cluvius. But as Mayr
(p. 117) points out, 1 there is not the slightest evidence for
a distinction between public and private suits in this mat-
ter, and he further adds that there is on record no case
wherein a knight acted as a judge which we can certainly
ascribe to the period between the Cornelian and Aurelian
laws. It follows, therefore, that Cluvius gave the decision
either before (or in) the year 8 1 or after (or in) the year 70.
And inasmuch as his verdict was given after the compro-
mise between Fannius and Roscius, which was reached
three years before our speech was delivered, and further
as Cicero's oratorical career began not earlier than 82 B.C.
and probably in 8i, 2 and was interrupted by his two years
1 So also, apparently, Mommsen, Strafrecht, p. 209 f.
Cf. Brut. 311, 312, 328.
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 147
in Asia (79-77 B.C.), we get for the first time something
definite towards fixing the date of the speech. The next
point affords us something more definite still.
6) Under the settlement mentioned above, Roscius re-
ceived from Flavius a certain estate. The value of it was
among the important topics treated in our speech, and in
33 Cicero says : accepit enim agrum temporibus eis cum
iacerent pretia praediorum ; qui ager neque villam habuit
neque ex ulla parte fuit cultus ; qui nunc multo pluris est
quam tune fuit. Neque id est mirum : turn enim propter
rei publicae calamitates omnium possessiones erant incertae,
nunc deum immortalium benignitate omnium fortunae sunt
certae ; turn erat ager incultus sine tecto, nunc est cultissi-
mus cum optima -villa.
From this passage we learn two things : first, that the
estate passed into Roscius's hands at a time when the
value of lands was low, and (this and is important) when
the misfortunes of the Commonwealth caused all men to
feel uneasy about their holdings ; second, that a consider-
able time must have elapsed since Roscius had received
the estate, because it came to him as utterly uncultivated
land without buildings, whereas now it was in the highest
state of cultivation and had on it a very handsome villa.
Under the second head we get no immediate helps towards
a date for the speech, but only further reason for believing
that it was delivered long after the troubles between Ros-
cius and Fannius with Flavius began. Under the first
head, however, we are led at once to look for a crisis affect-
ing the value of lands. This crisis must be searched for not
earlier than the fifteenth year preceding 82 or 8 1 B.C. (the
beginning of Cicero's career) and not later than the fif-
I4 8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
teenth year before the death of Roscius in 62 B.C., that
is to say, between the years 97 and 77.
Within these twenty years the Marsic War might at first
seem to be the period for which we are in search, and
indeed Sternkopf (p. 47) holds that Cicero is referring
to it. This war broke out towards the close of 91, and
was brought to an end in 88; fifteen years later would
give us a choice between 76, 74, or 73, for the delivery of
our speech. 1 Two objections, however, may be advanced
against any of these dates. The first is that Cluvius the
eques would thus be found rendering a verdict within the
prohibited period (see p. 146). The second and the more
important (since some may still hold the view that Cluvius
might have acted in a private suit) is that we have no evi-
dence of any such general depreciation of the value of
lands and of any such universal financial anxiety during
the Marsic War as Cicero describes in 33. If Cicero
had stopped with the words cum iacerent pretia praediorum,
we might think that he was referring to land in Etruria
(for, as we shall soon see, it is probable that the piece of
land which Roscius received from Flavius was situated
there) ; but he says also omnium possessiones erant incertae.
And there is no allusion elsewhere in the authors to any
such general state of uncertainty during the Marsic War.
But within our period of twenty years there was another
crisis, namely, that caused by the Sullan proscriptions
which began towards the end of 82 and extended into the
middle of 81. This was a reign of terror which, so far as
it concerned matters of property and titles to it, perfectly
corresponded to the account given by Cicero in 33. The
1 The year 75 is barred out by Cicero's absence in Sicily.
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 149
state of things described in the speech for Roscius of
Ameria makes this evident ; cf . also with Landgraf Para-
dox. 46, qui expulsiones vicinorum, qui latrocinia in agris
. . . qui possessiones vacuas, qui proscriptions locupletium,
qui cladis municipiorum, qui illam Sullani temporis mes-
sem recordetur, and Sail. Cat. 51, 33, uti quisque domum aut
villam, postremo vas aiit vestimentum alicuius concupiverat,
dabat operam ut is in proscriptorum numero esset. To
Landgraf 's citations we may add pro Caecina n, fttndum
in agro Tarquiniensi vendidit temporibus illis difficillimis
solutionis, which likewise contains an allusion to the Sullan
period ; cf. also 95 of the same speech, where he uses
calamitas reipublicae as in our speech. Nor does Land-
graf refer to the fact that Etruria (Flavius, from whom
Roscius received the estate, lived, like the man of pro
Caec., in Tarquinii, 32) was a special centre of fighting
and disturbance at the time ; in Rose. Am. 20 we find
Volterrae still holding out after the submission of Rome
herself. We have, therefore, abundant evidence to lead us
to adopt the year 81 as the period referred to in 33.
And this will bring us fifteen years later with Mayr to
66 B.C. as the date of our speech, to 70 or 69 (amplius tri-
ennium, 8, abhinc triennium> 37) as the date of the
compromise, and to some time very soon after the com-
promise to the verdict of Cluvius, who is thus found acting
as a judge after the Aurelian Law gave him the right. The
year 66 is in fact the only one which without any forcing
fits all the circumstances described in the speech, and it is
a year in which we know that Cicero was active, since in it
he delivered the speeches de Imp. Pomp., pro Cluentio, pro
Fundanio, and pro Gallio. Pompey had just cleared the
ISO
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
sea of pirates, and on that element as well as on land it
might be said with truth nunc omnium fortunae sunt
certae (33).
Only two obstacles stand in the way of the general
adoption of this date, one of them more than three hun-
dred years old, the other a little over twenty. Neither of
these, I think, ought to make us abandon the date which
we have reached, I trust, by the natural method of pro-
cedure and on rational grounds.
The first obstacle need not detain us long. It is the
emendation v or iv for xv in the expression abhinc annis xv
(37), which stood in the vulgate for centuries down to the
text of Klotz, and which, though not printed in the Teub-
ner or Tauchnitz texts, has th j support of many scholars,
including Drumann 1 and Landgraf. 2 In his first edition
Lambinus changed xv to v, but in his second he read iv
with Hotman whose reasons for the change he approved.
Hotman's note is as follows : ' manifestum mendum. Le-
gendum opinor iv id est quatuor. Primum quod iam supra
nomen hoc IDDD HS de quo haec controversia est nonnisi
ab hinc quadriennium a Fannio in adversaria relatum
dicat. Scribit enim amplius triennium. Deinde quod
modo repromissionem ab hinc triennium factam confirmet,
quam satis constat non multo post Roscii transactionem
factam esse. Postremo tamdiu prolatam esse rem mihi
certe non fit verisimile.' Long ago Klotz and Schmidt
1 Who thought that the allusion in 33 was to the time of Spartacus; but
I know of no other passage which points to a disturbed condition of land
values and titles at that time.
2 Whose adoption of the year 77 or 76 as the date of the speech must
oblige him to accept the emendation, since he thinks that the allusion in 33
is to the time of Sulla.
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 151
saw that this emendation was based on mere feeling, not
on any sound argument. Hotman did not feel that the
case against Flavius could have been left undecided for so
many years as are required by the reading xv ; and he
felt that Roscius's settlement with Flavius could not have
taken place very long before his compromise with Fannius.
His feeling is of no consequence in the face of the fact
that the Ms. reading is a possible one and in face of the
language used by Cicero in 33. For, as Baron 1 remarks,
no writer would talk in this strain about a period of only
four years.
The second obstacle lies in Landgraf's investigation of
the language and style of the speech, from which he draws
the conclusion that it must be placed in 77 or 76, soon
after Cicero's return from Asia, since it resembles more
closely his earlier than his later works and yet differs
enough from the earliest to show that it belongs to a kind
of transition period. In a brief answer to Landgraf, Mayr
(p. 1 19) points to the fact that our speech is only a frag-
ment and that its 56 sections cannot properly be compared
with the 253 sections of the certainly early speeches pro
Quinct. and Rose. Am. He adds: 'turn si huiusce aetatis
scriptorum in singulis libris dicendi usum respicimus, nonne
eos a consuetudine sua nonnumquam discedere invenimus ?
Non hie vel illic post longius quoddam temporis inter-
vallum ad eum, quern antea adamaverant, loquendi usum
inscii vel etiam inviti relabuntur ? Certe non is sum, qui
talia, qualia supra allata sunt, argumenta spernenda esse
censeam, sed si ea pugnant cum gravioribus, quae ex rebus
1 Der Process gegen den Schauspieler Roscius. In Zeitschr. der Savigny-
Stiftungfur Rechtsgtschichtc, 1 880, i, 2, p. 118.
152
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ipsis petita sunt, haec illis anteferre non dubito.' And he
concludes with the remark that the case of Roscius Comoe-
dus was not an important one, and that consequently
Cicero was not likely to have spent much toil upon the
speech, so that we need not be surprised if he sometimes
falls back into methods of expression which he had aban-
doned in his greater works. These reasonings by Mayr
seem sound, but I hardly think that they are needed, for I
am more than inclined to doubt whether Landgraf has
actually shown that the language used in this speech really
does point to the early period.
Before considering Landgraf's points in detail, a general
warning may be in place. If we take up the first volume
of Cicero's orations and read them in the order in which
they are printed, we feel, as soon as we begin the Divinatio
in Caecilium, that we are in a different literary atmosphere
from that of the pro Quinct., Rose, Am,, and Rose. Com.
But is not this a misleading feeling, due to the fact that in
the Divinatio we are suddenly relieved from the technical
details of which those works are so full? Perhaps this
absence of the difficulties caused by technicalities makes
one fancy that the Divinatio is written in much better
Latin than is really to be found in it. However this may
be, we must not think that either it or the Verrines repre-
sent Cicero at his best in oratorical style; for these
speeches resemble those of his early period much more
nearly than they resemble the great speeches of his prime,
the pro Sestio for example. The Verrines are in fact
treated by Hellmuth * as belonging to the earlier period
and he finds in them much in common with the earlier
1 Ada Sem, Phil. Erlang. i, 1877.
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 153
speeches, e.g. redundancy, union of synonyms, parono-
masia, alliterations, all recalling the style of earlier Latin
or the language of the comic poets. Still, all these charac-
teristics are found to a less degree in the Verrines than
before, so that they exhibit a certain advance in the direc-
tion of a purer prose style and less inequality. They are,
therefore, called by Thomas 1 'la derniere oeuvre de jeu-
nesse de Cic6ron et la premiere production de sa maturiteV
If public orations like the Verrines must occupy this
middle ground, is there anything surprising in rinding a
return to it in a speech written a few years later for an
unimportant private suit like that of Roscius ? But to
return to the points which Landgraf makes : they are five
in number.
i) Examples of the Asian style consisting of the joining
together of pairs of synonymous words. Landgraf cites
oro atque obsecro (20), pravum et perversum (30), planius
atqite apertius (43), locupletes et pecuniosos (44), irasci et
suscensere (46), consistere et commorari (48), ductum et
conflatum (48), callidus et versutus (48), resistere et repug-
nare (51). Here are nine pairs and to them we may add
three others : copia et facilitate (2), conclusa et comprehensa
(15), sanctos et religiosos (44), a total of twelve in all.
This means an average occurrence of one pair in about
every 4| sections of the oration ; but in the 253 sections of
the pro Quinct. and Rose. Am. there are, according to
Landgraf 's count (p. 48), 127 pairs or one in every two
sections This great difference in proportion, which it
does not seem to have occurred to Landgraf to calculate,
ought at once to make us suspect the truth of his state'
1 Ciceron: Verrines, Introd., p. 32.
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ment, * totius orationis habitus prioribus similior est quam
posterioribus.' Let us turn to two of the later orations,
selecting the two which we know were delivered in 66 B.C.,
the Imp. Pomp, and the pro Cluentio. Examining the first
fifty-six sections in each (the number of sections in our
fragment), we find at least 14 pairs of synonyms in the
former and 1 5 in the latter, as follows : Imp. Pomp. :
deposci atque expeti (5), excitare atque inflammare (6),
necandos trucidandosque (7), pulsus superatusque (8), re-
fressos ac retardatos (13), ornatas atque instructas (20),
superatam atque depress am (21), terrore ac metu (23), varia
et diversa (28), superatos prostratosque (30), attenuatum
atque imminutum (30), vitam ac spiritum (33), imperio ac
potestati ($$), meminisse et commemorare (47); in the pro
Cluentio : convicta atque damnata (7), finis atque exitus (7),
portum ac perfugium (7), expulsa atque exturbata(\), effre-
natam et indomitam (15), squalore et sordibus (18), vi ac
necessitate (19), breviter strictimque (29), initio ac funda-
mento (30), indicia et vestigia (30), blanditiis et adsenta-
tionibus (36), compertum atque deprehensum (43), infesta
atque inimica (44), comperta manifesteque deprehensa (48),
aperta et manifesta (54). From this examination it must
be apparent that in the matter of the joining of pairs of
synonyms Landgraf 's view is quite mistaken ; for the fact
is that herein our oration resembles more closely the two
which were delivered in 66 B.C. than the two delivered
before Cicero's journey to Asia. More striking is Land-
graf 's observation that whereas in the pro Quinct. and Rose.
Am. the word used to connect such synonyms is atque
(82 times) or ac (45 times), in the Rose. Com. it is et, except
in 20 and 43, where atque appears, while ac is never
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 155
used. 1 Noting that in the certainly later orations Cicero
employs atque, ac, and et indiscriminately, Landgraf argues
that Cicero had become conscious of his ' Asian ' fault of
coupling synonyms, and that in his struggle against it in
the Rose. Com. he purposely employed et instead of atque
(ac) which had been his habit. But this observation of
Landgraf's is rather curious than practical, and the con-
clusion which he deduces from it cannot be trusted. This
is obvious the moment we note that in the first 56
sections of Imp. Pomp, we have, in the examples given
above, nine occurrences of atque (ac) to only two of et,
almost exactly the reverse of the figures in the Rose. Com.
where are ten of et and two of atque. On Landgraf's
principle we should see in the Imp. Pomp, (if we had only
the first 56 sections of it) a return to Asianism !
2) Landgraf next notes Cicero's use of the phrases tan-
turn laborem capere and paullulum compendii facere in 49,
and points out that both phrases are found in Plautus and
Terence and that Cicero does not later employ them in the
orations. But Landgraf here fails to observe that there is
a very good reason why Cicero should employ these collo-
quialisms in our passage. He is not speaking in his own
person, but is giving us an imaginary dialogue, in a truly
comic vein, between Roscius and Cluvius. The colloquial
color is just what is wanted, and it proves nothing at all
about Cicero's usual style at the time and consequently
nothing about the date of the speech, in which it occurs
as a mere accident of treatment. Further, tantum labo-
rem capere (for the commoner tantum laborem suscipere) is
pretty closely paralleled in Verr. 5, 37, nequaquam capio
"Lfraudis ac furti in 26 looks very like a case of synonyms coupled by ac.
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
tantum voluptatis quantum et sollicitudinis et laboris ; and
finally, in the De Officiis 3, 63, Cicero allows himself to say
tantum se negat facturum compendii. Neither of these
usages, therefore, need surprise us in the colloquial passage
in our oration.
3) The superlative novissimus occurs in 30, qui ne in
novissimis quidem erat histrionibus, ad primes pervenit
comoedos. The word has a familiar sound to us because
Caesar uses it so often, but, as Landgraf notes, it is found
nowhere else in the works of Cicero, and indeed Gellius
(10, 21 ) remarks that Cicero never used it at all. Hence
we might be inclined to think that the word in our Mss.
was due to a gloss ; but if it is allowed to stand as a a7ra
I do not see how it points to the year 76 rather than to
ten years later. Varro tells us that his master Aelius Stilo
condemned the word, and that within his recollection it was
avoided by senes. This information comes from Varro's
Lingua Latina (6, 59 ; Gell. ibid.}, and yet we find Varro
himself using novissimus half a dozen years later in his
Res Rusticae (i, 2, u), showing that he had got rid of his
master's prejudice. Cicero also was an admiring pupil of
Aelius Stilo (cf. Brut. 205 ff.), and it seems rather more
likely that he would have departed from the teachings of
that philologian in a later than in an earlier work. At any
rate, there is nothing 'Asian' nor poetical in novissimus,
and these are the two factors on which Landgraf chiefly
relies to prove that the language of the Rose. Com. points
to an early date.
4) 5) The adverb extemplo (8) and the phrase exspecto
quam mox (i and 44) seem certainly to be drawn from the
early poets. The former occurs nowhere else in Cicero's
DATE OF THE ORATION PRO ROSCIO COMOEDO 157
writings except in his Aratea ; l the latter is found only
here and in Inv. 2, 85. Landgraf might have gone even
further and noted that in I of our speech we have a
perfect septenarius:
exp^cto quam mox Cha^rea hac oratione utatur.
If this occurred in the proem of an oration, it would
indeed be astonishing ; but our fragment is wholly without
a proem, and possibly it may be that we have here either
a quotation or an adaptation from some play, suggested,
of course, by the name Chaerea, which seems to occur only
here before imperial times except in the Eunuchus. But
I should not wish to press this point, and of course neither
quoted nor accidental verses prove anything towards a
date. Regarding extemplo and exspecto quam mox as mere
words, however, and as words used by the early poets, the
question arises whether, because Cicero used them only
here, we are therefore to set an early date to the oration.
It is certainly true that in the pro Quinct. and the Rose.
Am. we find a considerable number of such traces of Cic-
ero's reading in the early poets, and that those speeches
belong to his most youthful period. But in our speech we
are dealing with a very small number, in fact with only
two, and the evidence is too limited to prove anything at
all. This is obvious the moment we begin to apply such
a test to orations which we know do not belong to that
youthful period. For instance, the Verrines fall ten years
later, in 70 B.C., and yet here we find Plautine and Teren-
tian words such as abitus (3, 125), a substantive which does
not, according to the new Thesaurus, occur again in prose
1 In Att. 13, 47 extemplo is no doubt part of the quotation.
158 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
until Pliny the Elder ; the verb ablego four times (2, 73 ;
74 ; 79; 5, 82; and in three of these, by the way, joined
to a synonym by atque or -que\ and nowhere else in the
orations, nor, save for a couple of sporadic cases, again in
prose until Livy. Eighteen years after the Verrines we
find in the pro Milone the Plautine abnuo (100), its only
use in the orations. A few years before this, the pro
Caelio (56 B.C.) yields us cum adulescentiae cupiditates de-
ferbuissent (43), which seems suggested by Ter. Ad. 152
sperabam iam defervisse adulescentiam. This rare verb
deferveo is found once again in the same speech (77), and
elsewhere in the orations only in that one of the year 66,
a part of which we have examined above for another pur-
pose, the pro Cluentio (108). In view of all this we have
a right to say that the occurrence of extemplo and exspecto
quam mox in the Rose. Com. does not prove that the speech
belongs to the early period.
To conclude, then, the obstacles raised by the arguments
of Landgraf are by no means sufficient to cause me to
turn aside, to emend the numeral xv, or to adopt the date
of 76 for the oration. The year 66 is the earliest upon
which a natural interpretation of the fragment will allow
us to fix.
ON THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 1
DURING the last ten years the question of the date and
the authorship of 'Vitruvius de Architectura ' has
been revived after a long slumber. In 1896, Professor J. L.
Ussing published a treatise in Danish, in which his object
was to show that the writer of that work was not an archi-
tect, but an amateur who lived about the middle of the third
century of our era, and who was a mere compiler, draw-
ing chiefly from Varro. Two years later, in 1898, this
treatise, much enlarged, was translated into English and
carefully revised by the author, and in this form it was
published in London by the Royal British Institute of
Architects under the title Observations on Vitruvius de
Architectura Libri Decem, with special regard to the time
at which this work was written. To prove his point,
Ussing made use of two kinds of arguments, the first being
based upon the language and style, and the second upon
the subject-matter of the work. Both the original Danish
and the translation into English have attracted the atten-
tion of classical students and architects in no small degree.
Still more recently a French scholar, M. Victor Mortet,
has written a series of articles entitled Recherches Critiques
sur Vitruve et son CEuvre in the Revue Archtologique
1 From the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
1906, xli, 467-502.
159
l6o ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
(1902, pp. 39-81; 1904, pp. 222-233; 382-393) in which
he holds that our author wrote during the reign of the
Emperor Titus. His arguments depend almost altogether
upon the contents of the work, not upon its language and
style, which he does not treat in any detail.
In fact, it is to the nature of the contents of Vitruvius
that attention has been almost entirely directed by those
who have written upon the subject of his date. Scholars
who have examined the question are familiar in this con-
nection with the names of Newton, Hirt, Schultz, Osann,
Detlefsen, Diels, Oehmichen, Thiel, Degering, and others
to whose writings there is no need of further reference
here. To be sure, Praun in his Bemerkungen zur Syntax
des Vitruv, Bamberg, 1885, and Eberhard in his two pro-
grammes De Vitruvii genere dicendi, I> Pforzheim, 1887,
and II, Durlach, 1888, have made careful and valuable
studies in the language of Vitruvius, but neither of them
endeavored to show anything about his date, accepting
the common view that he wrote under Augustus. 1 Con-
sequently when Ussing made use of arguments based
upon language and style he was opening an almost new
field, although for his collection of examples he relied
chiefly upon Praun. His use of these arguments seems
to have had a considerable effect upon scholars known
personally to me ; further, his conclusion was accepted by
Lanciani (Bullettino Communale, 1899, p. 24, n. 2); and it
led Wolfflin to the statement that the case must be consid-
1 Such was also the attitude of Richardson in his article in the Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, 1890, i, 153 ff. The dissertation of Stock, De
Vitruvii sermone, Berlin, 1888, is of no value for our purposes. The treatises
of H. Ulrich, De Vitritvii copia verborum, I, Frankenthal, 1883, and II,
Schwabach, 1885, I know only from the review in Wolfflin's Archiv, i, 126.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS l6l
ered as once more reopened for further discussion (Arckiv,
x, 301). This dictum caused Degering in his article on
Etruscan temples (Gott. Nackrichten, Phil.-Hist. Kl., 1897,
2, 137) to think that Ussing might possibly be in the right,
although recently (Rhein. Mus. 1902, Ivii, p. 8) he has
supported the contrary view on grounds of subject-matter.
But neither he nor any one of the reviewers l of Ussing's
treatise has published a detailed study of Ussing's linguis-
tic and stylistic arguments with a view to determining
whether they really do furnish evidence of a late date of
composition. It seems worth while, therefore, to examine
them closely, and this I propose to do in the following
article. Ussing's contention is that the phenomena to
which he draws attention 'point to the decadence of
the Latin language and to its transition to the Romance
tongues.' I shall inquire whether these phenomena or
traces of them are found in republican Latin writers and
in the Augustan and Silver ages.
But before beginning this inquiry three observations are
necessary. In the first place, we must never forget that
in ' Vitruvius de Architectura ' we are dealing with a work
which, if it was composed before the end of the Augustan
age, is absolutely unique in its kind. We have no other
prose work on a technical or scientific subject (unless we
include agriculture among such subjects) written in Latin
as early as this period, and we have no other treatise on
architecture, either in Greek or in Latin, coming down to
us from antiquity. And even in other fields than science,
1 The chief of these are to be found in Berl. Phil. IVoch., 1897, 773 ff -
(by Krohn); Revue de Philologie, xxi, 118 ff. ; Bursian's Jahresbericht, 1901,
cviii, 118 ff. (by W. Schmidt); Journal Royal Institute of British Architects,
3 d Ser., 1899, 149 ff. (by Brown) ; Athenaeum, 1897, 586.
T 62 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
the amount of Latin prose of the Augustan age that has
survived to us is really quite small, so that for all these
reasons a standard or norm of comparison for the prose of
that age is hard to obtain. But secondly, I am not con-
cerned in this article to distinguish too exactly between
the prose of the Augustan and that of the Silver age, nor
to show that 'Vitruvius de Architectura ' was composed
under Augustus rather than under Titus. Ussing argues
that it is a work of the third century. If I can show that
the linguistic and stylistic peculiarities upon which he re-
lies are found in the writings of the republic and early
empire, it will be enough for my present purpose. The
decision between the time of Augustus and the time of
Titus is a different matter, and whether it is to be reached
by means of arguments drawn from the language or from
the subject-matter 1 does not at this moment concern me,
although it will, I hope, be treated before long in another
article. Thirdly, the whole gist of the linguistic part of
Ussing's argument seems to consist in his belief that if a
writer lived in the ' classical period ' his style must there-
fore be 'classic.' This is a pure assumption, and it is
confuted by all actual experience. Thus, a man to-day
may be an excellent architect or may excel in other tech-
nical and scientific pursuits, and he may have received a
good general education, yet he may not be able to ex-
press himself in writing with polish, or with freedom,
clearness, or even always with mere correctness. Very
many such men are among the writers to-day. Why
should we think that there were no such men living and
writing in the classical period of Latin literature ? We
1 For a few notes on this, see below, p. 225 fi.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 163
know that there were such men. It is enough to compare
the correspondents of Cicero with Cicero himself, the
authors of the Bellum Africum and Bellum Hispaniense
with Caesar, to read what is known of the involved and
affected style of the great patron of literature, Maecenas,
and to remember that Vergilium ilia felicitas ingenii in
oratione soluta reliquit (Sen. Contr. 3, praef . 8, p. 243 K).
Having made these observations, we are ready to proceed
to the consideration of Ussing's criticisms.
He thus begins (p. 4): 'One of the peculiarities which
occur especially in the authors of the later period of the
empire, where they wanted to write nicely and philosophi-
cally, is the frequent use of abstract nouns, even in the
plural. So also Vitruvius.' Nobody would be found to
deny that abstracts are common in late Latin, but what is
omitted from Ussing's statement is for us the important
fact, viz. : that the common use of abstracts began long
before the later period of the empire. On this point, see
Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., 8 p. 430 : ' In der Sprache des
Volkes waren die Subst. abstr. gerade nicht unbeliebt, wie
ein Blick auf dem Wortschatz des Plautus zeigt ; aber
immerhin ist erst mit Cicero und zwar infolge seiner philo-
sophischen Studien eine Bereicherung eingetreten.' Thus,
to illustrate, I may take a single example: the abstract
repugnantia appears first in Cicero's philosophical writings
(T. D. 4, 23; 29; Off. 3, 17; 34); and it is used in the
contemporary Second Philippic, 19 (see Sihler ad loc.\
In the quotation from Schmalz I have italicized certain
words because I think it worth observing that Cicero was
dealing with Greek ideas and Greek sources at the time
when he felt the need of enriching Latin with new ab-
1 64 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
stracts. May not this in large measure account for the
great number of abstracts in Vitruvius ? But not alto-
gether, for it appears that the Scriptores Rei Rusticae,
even the earliest from Cato and Varro to Columella, ex-
hibit a liking for abstracts l which, in these truly Roman
writers, cannot be attributed to exigencies due to the use
of Greek sources. The fact is that as new ideas called for
expression in Latin prose, the avoidance of abstract sub-
stantives in the expression of them was often really a tour
de force, and only the best writers struggled very hard to
avoid them or, when they used them, apologized for their
use. 2 And finally the frequent employment of abstracts
in the correspondence of Cicero shows that they were also
common in the colloquial language of the educated and
used as a briefer form of expression of thought than that
which the master reserved for his greater works. 3
Ussing proceeds : ' Among abstract nouns which appear
only in his writings I will mention ignotitia (64, 4 4 ), inde-
centia (174, 9), pervolitantia (232, 3), nascentia (232, 17),
crescentia (238, 14; 23; 239, 3), commensus = mensura (15,
25; 31,3; 65, 25; 103, 21 ; 134, ii).' Of these, it may
in the first place be remarked that Ussing's statement is
not exact, for three of them do appear in other writers :
ignotitia, Gell. 16, 13, 9; indecentia, Gael. Aurel. Chron. 3,
8 (p. 254, Vicat); nascentia, see Ronsch, Itala u. Vulgata,
1 See Cooper, Word Formation in the Sermo Plebeius, p. 2, and the lists,
PP- 5-5-
2 Cooper, ibid., p. xxxiii f.
3 Cf. Stinner, de eo quo Cicero in Epistolis usus est sermone, p. 7, and such
an array as that in Cooper, p. 6, where we have 24 abstracts in -tio occurring
earliest in Cicero's letters.
4 For convenience, I have changed Ussing's references to the pagination of
Rose.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 1 65
p. 50. To be sure these are late writers, but let us, before
concluding that the occurrence, say of ignotitia, in Vitru-
vius is a proof that the work which goes under his name
is a late production, inquire what other abstracts there are
which he could have used in the sense of ' ignorance ' ?
There are four, ignomntia, ignoratio, inscientia, and insci-
tia. But all of these are new contributions to the enrich-
ment of the language made, so far as we know, in the time
of Cicero or by him. The first, as we know, did not please
him and it is usually avoided (Schmalz, Antibarbarus? i,
p. 6 1 8). Vitruvius does not use any one of the four,
but has instead once ignotitia, a violation of the rules of
composition (the only one of this sort in Vitruvius), but
paralleled by insatietas (Plaut), intemperies (Plaut., Cic.),
invaletudo (Cic.), inreligio (Auct. ad Herenn.). Of course
I am aware that the last two have been emended away,
yet see Wolfflin, Archiv, iv, p. 403. And ignotitia is not
surprising in a writer who has notitia three times (5, 12;
7 r 35 !33 2 7) i n the sense of 'knowledge.' The second
abstract, indecentia, would be surprising if the truth were,
as one might gather from the Lexicon and from Schmalz
(ibid., p. 660), that indecens first appears in the Silver age.
But Vitruvius has it only three lines below (174, 12), and
why is he led to employ these words ? Because he is
employing them technically in an anecdote illustrative of
sins against propriety (decor) in art (173, 19), propriety,
which with him is one of the six component elements of
true architecture (n, 12 ff.), and a subject to which he
frequently alludes. 1 In thinking of decor he forms inde-
1 Praun, Syntax des Vitruv, p. 43, has also urged that in the whole anec-
dote Vitruvius is following a Greek source.
!66 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
centia as naturally as Cicero, thinking of dolor, forms indo-
lentia (Fin. 2, 11). The third abstract, nascentia, occurs
in the context non e nascentia sed ex conceptione genethlio-
logiae rationes explicatas, where Vitruvius is referring to
those astrologers who based horoscopes not on the moment
of birth but on that of conception. Here the Greek techni-
cal terms were yevecris or e/cref t9 and o-uXX^i/rt? ; cf . Sext.
Emp. p. 737, 1 8 Bk. : rrjv Se yeve9. See
also Hippolytus, Ref. Haer. 4, 3. Another word for 'birth'
in this connection was a7roTei9 (Sext. Emp. p. 737, 7), and
the simple reft? was also used (ibid., p. 739, 12). Vitru-
vius's conceptio is obviously a translation of a\}\\-r\^r^ and
it was thus used by Cicero (Div. 2, 50). For yeveo-is or
aTToref t? what should he have used ? This is a question
which seems not to have occurred to those who would
blame him for using nascentia. Cicero does indeed avoid
the use of a single abstract and has the somewhat clumsy
phrases ortus eius qui nascatur (Div. 2, 89), ortus nascen-
tium {Div. 2, 91 ; see also Div. 2, 92 ; 94). For the Augus-
tan period we have no evidence, so far as I am aware,
unless it be found in Vitruvius. In Censorinus we have
genesis (Nat. D. 13), in Tertullian genitura (De Anima,
25 fin.}. Pliny also employs both of these words, yet not
in connection with astrology (N. H. 36, 19; 18, 202), and
Augustine uses genitura like Pliny (Civ. D. 5, 3). Sue-
tonius has genitura several times: once in the general
sense of ' birth ' (Nero, 6), otherwise meaning ' horoscope '
or ' nativity ' ; he also has genesis at least twice in this sense,
(cf. Petronius 39). For this Tertullian (Idol. 9) has nati-
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 1 67
vitatem. Thus it appears that except in Vitruvius we know
of no early abstract used for ' birth ' in connection with the
horoscope, and that the late writers who have occasion to
speak of it do not use nascentia. Its occurrence in Vitru-
vius, therefore, cannot be taken as evidence of late author-
ship, but quite the reverse, for a late writer would have
used genitura or genesis. There remain the three l abstracts
cited by Ussing which are really not found elsewhere than
in Vitruvius. The first, pervolitantia, is the expression by
an abstract of the idea expressed by pervolitat (219, 10),
both employed of the revolution of the mundus or cae-
lum. Abstracts in -antia occur before Vitruvius's time :
e.g. fiagrantia (Plaut, Cic.), incogitantia (Plaut.), errantia
(Ace.), vatiantia (Lucr.). The second, crescentia, is used
three times, twice to denote the increasing length of the
hours on a dial (238, 14 ; 239, 3), and once of the increas-
ing length of days (238, 23). Both are employed techni-
cally and in their contexts are no more objectionable than
Cicero's indolentia mentioned above. Of the third ab-
stract, Ussing uses the expression l commensus = mensural
But this seems to be a misapprehension. Vitruvius has
mensura fourteen times, always in the simple meaning of
' measure ' (see Nohl's Index), but commensus he employs
ten times (ibid.), and never in that simple sense, but
always with the idea of comparative or proportionate meas-
urement, just as Cicero employs the verb commetior in
Tim. 33 : siderum ambitus . . . inter se numero commetiun-
tur ; cf. Inv. i, 39: nam saepe oportet commetiri cum tern-
pore negotium. Thus we have in Vitruvius a new abstract
employed as a technical term, and its appearance ought to
1 Of course he might have cited others : see Cooper's lists.
!68 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
be no surprise at any period in an author who has so much
to say on the subject of the importance of proportionate
measurements as has Vitruvius. 1
Continuing his remarks about abstracts, Ussing says:
' Striking plurals are conscriptiones (103, 24 ; 155, 10), enidi-
tiones (2, 18; 36, 23), scientiae (10, 24: 62, 23; 233, 2),
sollertiae (158, 12).' Here we need only remark that con-
scriptiones occurs in Cicero, Cluent. 191, and scientiae in
Cicero, D. O. i, 61 ; C. M. 78, conscientiae'vn. Cic., R. A. 67.
In the last two passages in Cicero the plurals are no doubt
influenced by other plurals in the passage (C. M. 78 : tot
artes, tot scientiae, tot inventa ; R. A. 67 : suae malae cogita-
tiones conscientiaeque animi terrenf), and the same may be
observed in the Vitruvian usages of this plural and of
enuf&wnef&nd sollertiae^ ; cf. the similar use of ernditiones
in Cell. praef. 3. But why delay over such a point? The
use of the plural of abstracts, though great in late authors,
is no proof of the late authorship, for it is found at all
periods : 'besonders bei Plautus in verhaltnissmassig grosser
Zahl ; in klass. Zeit erweitert sich dieselbe wesentlich durch
Cicero ' (Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., 3 p. 431). Seneca (Ep. 1 14,
19) criticises the plural famas in Sallust and his imitator
Arruntius. See also a list of the plurals used by Mela, in
Zimmermann, De Pomponii Melae sermone, p. v ff.
Neither is a late date assured by the usage to which
Ussing next draws attention ; ' Sometimes these abstract
nouns retain so much of their verbal character that the
1 See also on symmetria, p. 170, n. I.
* It must also be observed that sollertiae in 158, 12, means 'instances of
skill'; cf. Cic. Q. F.i, i, 39: iracundiae, and 40: avaritiae. The whole
passage is misunderstood by the translators. It means ' by compiling from an-
tiquity remarkable instances of the skill shown by genius.'
THE LANGUAGE OF V1TRUVIUS 169
author finds it sufficient to add only est instead of factum
est, as in cum fuerit fundamentorum ad solidum depressio
(15, 19), and cum erit moenium c onto cando rum explicatio
(20, 24).' See Schmalz again, p. 430, where this use is
shown to be not foreign to Cicero, and cf. also Cic. Pis.
84 (accessio), Rab. 4 (consensio), Cat. I, 32 (consensio).
Ussing's next point appears to be based upon a misunder-
standing. He says : ' One of the words frequently occurring
in Vitruvius is symmetria ; according to Nohl's Index, it is
found about a hundred times. At the time of Pliny this
word is still a stranger to the Latin language ; comp. Hist.
Nat. 34, 65 : non habet Latinum nomen symmetria. Pliny
no doubt appreciated his own Latin style, but he does not
carry his purifying tendencies so far as to exclude every
foreign word, if it was generally adopted in the language ;
his apology testifies to the fact that such was not the case
with symmetria.' Here, as I observed, Ussing seems not to
understand Pliny's meaning. He was writing of Lysippus
and of the greater grace and freedom from bulkiness which
this sculptor exhibited in the bodies of his statues, ' by
which they were made to seem taller.' Then he adds :
non habet Latinum nomen symmetria qtiam diligentissime
custodit, that is : ' there is no Latin word for that symmetry
which he observed so carefully.' What Pliny says is there-
fore no condemnation of the use of the word symmetria,
which indeed he himself employs in three other passages
(34, 58 : in symmetria diligentior, a comparison of Myron
and Polyclitus ; 35, 67: Parrha sin s primus symmetrian pic-
turae dedit ; 35, 128: Euphranor primus videtur usurpasse
symmetrian}, but a definite statement that when a Latin
writer is talking about ' symmetry,' he must use the Greek
170
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
word. Now ' symmetry ' is one of the very points upon which
Vitruvius most insists in every department of the architect's
profession. Near the opening of his work, he mentions it
as one of the six components of good architecture (n, 12),
and soon afterwards he devotes ten lines to a definition of
what it is (12, 14). Having done this, even the earliest of
Latin prose writers would be fully entitled to employ the
word as often as he chose. If it is not found earlier than
Vitruvius, this is simply because of the accident that there
is no Latin work extant in which there was so much
occasion to speak of ' symmetry ' in the technical sense. 1
Leaving the subject of abstracts, Ussing next takes up
another topic in which he is equally unfortunate. ' Not
infrequently,' he says, ' words are found in a different con-
nection and different signification from that of the classical
authors. Thus notitia in the sense of "renown " (63, 6 ;
!33 6), ponere "put forth " (64, 30), and anteponere "put
forth at first" (33, 4 and 10); dignum est f or operae pretium
(46, 6) ; similar things are quoted from Vopiscus, Lactan-
tius, and Augustinus ; necessitate necessario (246, 3).'
By the phrase ' classical authors ' Ussing must, for the sake
of his argument, be taken as meaning authors writing in
the classical period, no matter what their reputation for
style or lack of it may be. Therefore we are entitled to
point to notitia meaning ' renown ' in Nepos, Dion, 9 : Hi
propternotitiam suntintromissi. In poetry it is found thus
in Ovid, Pont. 3, i, 50; 4, 8, 48. Ussing's example of
ponere, in the sense of ' put forth,' disappears, since it is an
1 It may be worth observing that Vitruvius employs his new formation com-
mensus in contexts along with symmetria, as if perhaps he felt that the Greek
term needed some help from Latin : see 15, 25; 31, 3; 134, u; 138, 23 and 27.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 171
emendation for exponere, adopted by Rose in his first edition
but rightly abandoned in his second. As for his example
of anteponere, it should be written as two words, ante ponere
(so Rose 2 ; cf. Cic. Fam. i, 9, 21 : ut paulo ante posui\ and
the Vitruvian employment oipono in these two places should
be compared with the common colloquial usage of it, as for
example in Cic. Fin. 2, 31 ; Legg. 2, 6; Livy 10, 9, 12.
For the use of the impersonal dignum est in the sense of
operae pretium, it would not be difficult to find examples (cf.
for instance Plaut. Ps. 1013, and, with indignum, Sail. hig.
79, i), but the real peculiarity in the Vitruvian usage is
that ut with the subjunctive follows, the whole sentence be-
ing : quae si prope tirbem essent, dignum esset ut ex his
officinis omnia opera perficerentur. This impersonal usage
does not indeed seem to occur before the very late authors
mentioned by Ussing (cf. Drager, ii, 258). A very similar
employment of the personal digna is, however, found in
Livy 24, 1 6, 19 : digna res visa ut, etc., where of course
the relative construction would be as impossible as in the
Vitruvian sentence. 1 Finally, of necessitate used in the
sense of necessario, it must be admitted that this cannot be
paralleled in or before classical times, and that the em-
ployment of the ablative of an abstract instead of an adverb
is one of the characteristics of African Latin (Sittl, die
lokalen Verschiedenheiten der lateinischen Sprache, p. 107).
It has in fact been observed that many stylistic peculiarities
that are found in the African writers occur also in Vitru-
vius (Praun, p. 13, n.). However, if the ablative of any
abstract is allowable instead of an adverb it would surely
1 For the great variety of constructions with dignus in Vitruvius, see below
p. 214 ff.
172
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
be necessitate ; cf . Caesar's qua necessitate adductus, B. G.
6, 12, 5, qua necessitate permotus, B. C. 3, 24, 4, with the
pleonastic necessitate coactus of Bell. Afr. 55, 2 (cf. 21, I ;
24, 4), which is like necessario coacti in Ter. y4d?r. 632 ;
/fe//. ///>. 24, 2 ; 32, i. This pleonasm with necessitas is
common in Vitruvius.
Ussing's next remark, as he himself seems to be con-
scious, is of no value as proof of late authorship : ' In a
few instances videtur\s> meant to signify placet: magnitu-
dines balinearum videntur fieri pro copia hominum (126,
n); itaque minime fistulis plumbeis aqua duci videtur
(210, 13). In other places Vitruvius correctly adds opor-
tere, so that the omission might perhaps rather be called
a peculiarity of style in the author, as in primo volumine
putavi . . . exponere (36, 23).' But this use of videtur
cannot be called a peculiarity of Vitruvius nor evidence of
late authorship, for the passive of video in the sense of
placet or So/ceZ occurs three times in the Bellum Africum
(5 ; 25, i, 42, i). Of putavi exponere it might be thought
that as the verb oportere has occurred in the foregoing
sentence and as it occurs again in the following sentence,
its omission with putavi may be excused without danger of
misunderstanding. Or perhaps we have here a use analo-
gous to that of cogito in the sense of ' intend ' followed by
the infinitive, found frequently in the letters as well as in
other works of Cicero. 1 However, as Ussing himself ob-
serves, the usage may be attributed to the author himself
rather than to the habits of a late period of Latinity to
which it has not been shown to belong.
Ussing's next observations would be very striking in-
1 See Stinner, p. 54 f.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 173
deed, if they were found to bear examination ; but this is
not the case. ' Shall we consider it merely accidental that
the word narrare, which was generally used during the
classical period, does not occur at all in Vitruvius, who
only uses memorare ; or that the verb ire (without prefix)
appears but once, whereas we frequently find vadere, which
in Cicero means " to depart," and only in Virgil and Ovid
signifies " to go," thence entering into the later prose and
subsequently into the Romance languages, entirely super-
seding the genuine Latin word ? ' The first of these ob-
servations is misleading. It is true that Vitruvius never
uses the verb narro (in any form), but on the other hand
he never uses the active voice of the verb memoro. He
has the verb twelve times, always in the passive. Once it
is used absolutely : mors eius . . . varie memoratur (i$$, 3).
Five times it is used with a personal subject and the active
infinitive: is memoratur dixisse (62, 17; cf. 161, 18; 280,
18; 42, 27; 43, 6). Six times it is used with a personal
subject and the passive infinitive : inventio sic memoratur
esse facta (86, 21; cf. 177, 2; 199, 19; 231, 15; 272, 22;
156, 5). Now suppose that narratur or narrantur were
found in these eleven passages : we should at once be told
that here was evidence of late authorship, for this is a
usage which, beginning with Livy, is found in the Plinys,
and is prevalent in late Latin (Schmalz, Antibarbarus? s.v.
narrare}. That it does not occur in Vitruvius, therefore,
is significant of an early period, if it is significant at all.
But his use of the passive of memoro is classical, though
rare: cf. Cic. V. 4, 107: ^^b^ ea gesta esse memorantur. It
appears to be nothing more than a bigger word for dicitur,
and Praun (p. 7) remarks : ' Vitruv hat wohl nach Art der
174
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Halbgebildeten den landlaufigen Ausdruck vermieden, um
durch ein selteneres Wort seiner Rede ein schoneres Ko-
lorit zu geben.' Next let us examine the case of vado and
ire. To begin with, it is not true that ' only in Virgil and
Ovid ' does vado signify ' to go.' For cf. Ennius, A. 281 M. ;
vadunt solida vi ; A. 591 : ingenti vadit cursu; Auct. He-
renn. 2, 29 : cum feras bestias videamus alacres et erectas
vadere ; Catullus 63, 31 : vaga vadit (sc. Attis); 63, 86:
(led) vadit /remit refringit virgulta pede vago ; Sallust, lug.
94, 6 : Romani instare, fundere ac plerosque tantum modo
sauciare, dein super occisorum corpora vadere ; Cic. T. D.
i, 97 : vadit enim in eundem carcerem atque in eundem
paucis post annis scyphum Socrates. In all these passages
we find vado used in the sense of 'go' rather than 'depart,'
but the ' going ' indicated in them is something more than
is meant by the everyday sense of that word ; for some-
thing rather more grand is intended. The English 'move '
would be a better translation. Here it is interesting to
compare with the Ciceronian passage Livy 2, 10, 5, where
of Horatius Codes he says : vadit inde in primum aditum
pontis, and Weissenborn-M tiller notes: 'er geht mit ge-
waltigem Schritte, paicpa /3t/3a 95 5 Thiele, Himmelbilder 55). Of the Vitruvian usage
of temperate (in itself a perfectly good Ciceronian adverb)
with the genitive, three things are to be remarked : first,
that it cannot be used as evidence of late authorship, be-
cause no late author is cited as employing it ; second, that
it is not in meaning the equivalent of pariim, for in 57, 4
the words umoris temperate are followed by parum terreni
(cf. also 45, 20); third, that the genitive with temperate
is evidently due to the influence of the other perfectly regular
genitives with minus, parum, minimun, multum t which are
found in the contexts of the four passages under consideration.
dumquc ex maxima fastigio aliter ad extrema deiectos, cum Pompeius alienum
exercitum fugeret, Lepidus suum. Editions here with manuscripts cited in
them have aliter aliterque. Some good reason for the reading in the The-
saurus will, I suppose, be given by Gercke, who made the excerpts from this
work of Seneca's for it, in his forthcoming edition of the Q. N. But it seems
to me that, with this reading, the passage is erroneously placed in the The-
saurus under the caption aliter et {-que}. Another use of aliter in the sense
of ' differently ' is found in Pomp. Mela I, 57 : multo aliter a ceteris agunt.
r 82 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Still speaking of adverbs, Ussing continues : ' iuxta =
secundum, " according to," 10, 23 : iuxta necessitate. The
same occurs in Justinus and later. Trans without an
object, " on the other side," 220, I : circumacta trans locis
patentibus ex obscuris egreditur ad lucem, elsewhere in
clerical authors, cf. Arckiv, iv, p. 248. Trans contra,
"opposite to," 219, 7 and 225, 13, as in Aurelius Victor
and Boethius, cf. Archiv, v, p. 319 ff.' The context in
which the strange phrase iuxta necessitatem occurs, is as
follows : cum . . . ratio propter amplitudinem rei permittat
non iuxta necessitatem summas sed etiam mediocres scien-
tias habere disciplinarum. This is certainly a badly ex-
pressed sentence, and we may observe the usage of permitto
with the infinitive as found in Livy, later historians and
ecclesiastical writers, which would be stamped as vulgar
did it not occur once in Cicero ( Verr. 5, 22), and also an
accumulation of plurals of abstracts such as a polished
writer would have avoided. The phrase iuxta necessitatem
occurs nowhere else to my knowledge, but the word neces-
sitas is a favorite one with Vitruvius (27 times, according
to Nohl's Index; cf. especially the phrase ad necessitatem
in 260, 21 and 266, 3), and the use of iuxta in the sense
of ' conformably to,' ' as the result of,' ' gemass,' besides
here, is found first, not in Justinus, but in Livy 39, 9, 6 :
huic consuetude iuxta vicinitatem cum Aebutio fuit (see
Schmalz, Lat. Gramm.? p. 263). In Vitruvius the phrase
must mean, 'of necessity,' 'necessarily,' but to say just
what it modifies is a difficult matter. 1 In his observation
1 Generally it has been taken with summas, but, so taken, Vitruvius would
be saying that an architect need not possess ' necessarily the highest,' but only
a moderate knowledge of all the arts and sciences which he has mentioned in
3-16. What follows, however, would seem to show that he feels that
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 183
about trans, Ussing has certainly pointed to a misuse of
that word which is not found elsewhere before the ecclesi-
astical writers. This preposition was originally a participle
(Thielmann, Archiv, iv, 248), not an adverb like other
prepositions, and we have no early parallel of its employ-
ment as an adverb, though we might expect to find it in
the less careful writers from analogy with the adverbial
use of other prepositions. In Vitruvius, trans contra seems
to be a translation of Karavrifcpv, especially in 219, 7,
where he had in mind the pseudo- Aristotelian de mundo, 2,
or a similar account of the Tro'Xot. It may also be observed
that Vitruvius uses intra as an adverb half a dozen times
(see Nohl's Index), a usage commonly called post-Augus-
tan, but found in Bell. Hisp. 35, 2 (Kohler, Act. Erlang. i,
p. 400) ; also adversus five times as an adverb, found
thus in prose not elsewhere before Nepos ( Thesaurus, s. v.
p. 85 1, 48 ff.). And we must be slow to stamp trans contra
practically the architect cannot be expected to have even a moderate amount
of knowledge of them all. The reading of S is perhaps, therefore, worth
consideration, especially in view of Degering's estimate of the value of this
manuscript {Berl. Phil. Woch., 1900, p. 9 ff.); for here we find iuxta necessi-
tatem standing not before sum mas but before mediocres: non summas sed
etiam iuxta necessitatem mediocres. And we may go further, for my friend
Professor A. A. Howard has suggested that a second non appears to be lack-
ing in the clause sed . . . mediocres. If Vitruvius was written in lines of from
17 to 20 letters, like Livy, perhaps here originally stood:
NONSVMMASSEDETIAM
NONIVXTANECESSITATEM
MEDIOCRESSCIENTIAS
Then the accidental omission of the second line by the scribe of the archetype
of our manuscripts and its insertion in the margin might give rise to the
differences found in HG on the one hand, and S c on the other. The restora-
tion of this second non gives to the passage the meaning which Eberhard (de
Vitruvii genere dicendi, I, p. 9) desired to find in it, though with his reading
this would not be possible.
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
as a necessarily late doublet, lest we meet with the fate of
that 'grammaticus haud incelebri nomine' in Gellius (19,
10), who sneered at praeterpropter only to be confounded by
learning that it had been used by Ennius, Cato, and Varro.
Next Ussing turns to prepositions, saying: 'In the use
of prepositions we are struck by several peculiarities which
indicate the dissolution of the language : ab, indicating the
cause, "because of," in 58, I : ab pondere umoris non habent
rigorem . . . ab lentitudine firmas recipiunt catenationes ;
59, 6 : ab suci vehementi amaritate ab carie aut tinea non
nocetur. Ab t "compared with," has been no doubt cor-
rectly substituted by Rose for ad in 142, 2 : non enim
atria minora ab maioribus easdem possunt habere sym-
metriarum rationes, a habit which Wolfflin in Archiv, vii,
p. 125, has proved to exist in the ancient Latin translations
of the Bible, Itala, and Vulgata, and which is analogous to
the use of other prepositions such as prae, super or supra,
ultra' These criticisms may be briefly dismissed. A
glance at the Thesaurus, s. v. ab, pp. 33-34, will be enough
to show that the use of this preposition to denote cause is
no evidence of the ' dissolution of the language,' unless
the language began to dissolve with Lucretius, Varro, Livy,
and the Augustan poets. The other criticism, about ab,
1 compared with,' is taken from Praun (p. 79), who, by an
oversight foreign to his usually careful work, has misinter-
preted the passage. There is no idea of comparison here,
for ab maioribus does not depend upon minora. The sen-
tence means : ' In the case of smaller atriums the sym-
metrical proportions cannot be the same as in larger.'
See the Thesaurus, s. v. ab, p. 39, 55.
' Ad is placed instead of the dative or parallel with it, as
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 185
in 91, 3 : metopae quae proximae ad angular es triglyphos
fiunt ; 182,4 : hae regiones sunt proximae ad septentrionem
(equally by Euodius in Augustine, Ep, 158, 2: ad finem
mtae proximits} ; 147, I : lavationi rusticae ministratio non
erit longe, but soon after : ad olearios fructus commoda erit
ministratio. Equally in 256, 16 : ita hortis ad inrigandum
vel ad salinas ad temperandum praebetur aquae multitudo ;
25 1, 1 8 : ut ad solvendum non esset, in lieu of the generally
applied solvendo. " On the whole," Praun observes on
p. 65, " the preposition ad with the gerund or the gerun-
dive has extended its sphere at the expense of the other
constructions, the genitive, the dative, and in with the
ablative." ' The use of/mrnvMtf with ad and the accusa-
tive is found much earlier than Euodius ; cf . Varro, L. L.
6, 8 : ad nos versum proxi mum est solstitium ; Lucr. 2, 135 :
(ea corpora quae} proxima sunt ad viris principiorum ;
Pliny, N. H. 2, 64 : ad terrae centrum humillimae atque
proximae. We have also proprius ad in Cicero, Fin. 4, 64.
It must not be thought that this is the only construction
with proximus found in Vitruvius. He has the simple
dative twenty-one times, and ad with the accusative only
three times (add 135, n to Ussing's examples). In his
second set of examples under this head of the use of ad,
Ussing (following Praun, p. 89) seems to think that we
have two constructions with ministratio erit, first the
dative and then ad and the accusative. But this latter
belongs to commoda, and the construction is that which is
found twice on the preceding page (146, 6: ad omnes res
commoda; 146, 14: ad usum commoda}. Though else-
where rare, yet we have in Caes. B. C. 3, 100, 3 : tempore
anni commodiore usus ad navigandum, and in Ovid, F. 2,
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
288 : nee satis ad cursus commoda vestis erat. It cannot
therefore be held to be a sign of the ' dissolution of the
language.' In the third set of examples (256, 16) Ussing
with Praun (p. 64) seems to have taken hortis as a dative,
and to have thought that with praebetur we have both a
dative and an accusative with ad. But it seems far more
probable, if not certain, that we have here two locative
constructions : hortis, ' in gardens ' (for Vitruvius's use of
the locative ablative of many appellatives, see Nohl, Anal.
Vitr., p. 10, and observe that only eight lines below our
passage he has the locative ablative locis with praebendum,
256, 24 : sin autem magis altis locis erit praebendum), and
ad salinas, ' at saltworks.' It is true that I do not find the
locative phrase ad salinas in any other writer, but this is
mere accident, for it is an expression which belongs in the
class of other locative phrases with ad cited in the Thesau-
rus, p. 522 f. 1 And Vitruvius has this use of ad else-
where: e.g. ad villas (148, 9), ad circtim, ad campum, ad
portum (30, 12 f.). It is worth noting that by another
accident ad campum (sc. Martiuni) seems not to occur
elsewhere in literature, but that it is found in the Monu-
mentum Ancyranum, 2, 40. The variation in the locative
expressions, from hortis to ad salinas is Vitruvian : see e.g.
the considerable variety in 30, 7-22 ; also in gymnasia . . .
foro (174, 10); ad villas . . . in urbe (148, 9-1 1); in mon-
tibus aut ad ipsos monies (188, 18). Next, Ussing's fourth
example under this head, ut ad solvendiim non esset, pre-
sents the unique ad solvendum instead of the common
dative solvendo (found for instance in Cic. Phil. 2, 4 ; Off.
1 Cf. also Livy's circa Romanas salinas 7, 19, 8 ; also ad g allinas, Plin.
N. H. 15, 137; Suet. Galba I.
THE LANGUAGE OF VTTRUVIUS 1 87
2, 79; Att. 13, 10, 3; Fam. 3, 8, 2; and in the jurists).
What should be inferred from this ? That our Vitruvius
is a late writer ? Not at all, for no late writer is cited as
using ad solvendum. It is a peculiarity in Vitruvius and
nothing more. Of the same sort is that peculiarity in
Cicero's letters when he uses twice esse ad scribendum (A if.
! J 9 95 Fam. 12, 29, 2) instead of the common scribendo
adesse (for which see the Thesaurus, s. v. assum, 918,
43 ff., and Cicero himself in the second passage just
cited). And a glance at the context of Vitruvius shows
why he used the peculiar ad solvendum. It runs thus :
Sic Paeonius ducendo et reducendo pecuniam contrivit ut
ad solvendum non esset. Obviously the usual dative sol-
vendo was avoided for fear of obscurity on account of
ducendo and reducendo. Finally, with Praun's general
observation cited by Ussing, we need not trouble ourselves
here, for of course Praun never meant it to be taken as
evidence of the late authorship of Vitruvius.
'Zte instead of the simple ablative in I, 16 : parenti tuo
de eo fueram notus. Likewise e in 3, 22 : circini usum, e
quo maxime facilius aedificiorum expediunturdescriptiones*
But causal de is in itself no proof of recent authorship,
and the use of it as denoting ' den Erkenntnisgrund ' is one
of Drager's categories (i, p. 630) illustrated by him with
examples from Plautus and Cicero, to which may be added
Auct. Herenn. 4, 44, res tota parva de parte cognoscitur.
Furthermore, in the passage cited from Vitruvius, the
simple eo could hardly have been written without danger
of obscurity on account of parenti tuo. The use of e with
the ablative instead of a simple instrumental, may seem
lumbering and awkward in 3, 22 ; but that it was not
1 88 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
unknown to the classical period is obvious from its appear-
ance in Cicero, Rep. 2, 58 : exaere alieno commota civitas,
as well as several times in Bell. Afr. as cited by Kohler,
Act. Erlang. i, p. 439. See also Pomp. Mela, 2, 21.
Passing next to conjunctions, Ussing says : ' With regard
to conjunctions, Drager (ii, p. 153) has already pointed
out that aut and sive are used quite indiscriminately by
Vitruvius. A critic in the Athenaeum, Jan. i, 1898, says:
"the misuse of aut or sive is no great matter." I had not
expected this declaration from " a skilled reader." Most
Latin scholars would have the contrary view.' But the
remark of the critic in the Athenaeum must not be judged
apart from its context. He does not mean that the con-
fusion of aut and sive is no great matter as a point of
style, or that it would be found in a polished writer. His
whole contention is that one should expect to find such errors
in unpolished writers, and that consequently this error can-
not be used in settling the date of Vitruvius. And this con-
tention is borne out by the facts found in the Thesaurus in
the treatment of the use of aut. Drager, also, in the pas-
sage cited by Ussing, shows how the Elder Pliny employs
aut and sive as synonyms, so that this confusion cannot be
held to be evidence of very recent authorship. And for the
Vitruvian employment of aut . . . sive or sive . . . aut in
the same sentence, parallels are quoted from the Aetna, from
Manilius and from Celsus in the Thesaurus (s. v. aut, p. 1 571,
1 1 ff ., and 78 ; cf . the somewhat similar seu . . . aut in Plautus,
Ps. 543, cited on p. 1570, 56), with the following general
remark on such combinations in prose writers, p. 1571, 55 :
' increbrescunt apud eos qui poetarum sermonem etiam
alias imitantur et apud minus cultos (Vitr. Cels.).'
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 189
Ussing proceeds : ' Equally unclassical is the use of
negatives in sentences consisting of two alternatives.
The word neve does not occur in Vitruvius. He always
puts ne . . . neque instead of ne . . . neve, as 5, 16: ne sit
cupidus neque in muneribus accipiendis habeat animum
occupatum. As for negations, it is also to be observed
that he likes to place them foremost in the sentence. He
says non putavi praetermittendum (i, 14) instead of putavi
non praetermittendum; non puto dubium esse (124, i), etc.
This is done occasionally in other authors, but in Vitruvius
very frequently. A striking example is 48, 22 : non enim
quae stint e molli caemento subtili facie venustatis, non eae
possunt esse in vetustate non ruinosae! With regard to
Ussing's first point, it is sufficient to quote Schmalz, Lat.
Gram.? p. 358: ' Selten ist die Ankniipfung mit nee statt
mit neve ; bei Cicero wird nee nach ne nie angetroffen
(vgl. C. F. W. Muller zu Cic. Off. i, 91), auch nicht bei
Caesar und Sail, aber bei Nepos, bei Vitruv., und Sen.
Phil., welche neve gar nicht kennen, bei Liv., Flor., nach
Liv. vereinzelt, haufig bei Dichtern, so schon bei Plaut,
bei Verg., Hor., Ov. u. a.' It is obvious that we have here
what may be called a distinct division on a point of style.
Though the Ciceronian must be taken to be the better, yet
we see that late authorship cannot be proved from the
other usage. On the second point, the setting of nega-
tives foremost in the sentence, no evidence is presented
that this was a habit of late authors. In phrases like non
putavi praetermittendum, Praun, who cites (p. 27) eleven
occurrences of it in Vitruvius, holds that the attaching of
the negative to ptito is the Greek idiomatic use as in ov
077/u. He might have compared OVK oto/tot, ov i/o/i/o>,
190 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
etc. ; see Ktihner-Gerth, Gr. Gramm. ii, p. 180. And
W. Schmidt in Jahresbericht Altertumsw., 1901, cviii,p.
119, draws attention to Caesar, B. G. 2, 31, 2 : qui ad hunc
modum locuti : non se existimare Romanes sine ope divina
bellum gerere. But I think it probable that this position of
non was, in the less polished speech, commoner than is
usually supposed, for it appears not only in the Bellum
Africum 59, i: Non arbitror esse praetermittendum quem-
admodum, etc., and 84, i : Non videtur esse praetermit-
tendiim de, etc., but also there is a similar use in the
eighth book of the Gallic War, by Hirtius, 48, 10: quod
ego non existimavi mihi esse faciendum, propterea quod, etc.
Finally, in Ussing's last example we have in non enim
quae . . . non eae possunt nothing but the rhetorical figure
of anadiplosis, found (to compare great things with small)
in Demosthenes 9, 31 : a\A,' ov% virep 3>i\t7nrov /cat &v
eiceivos Tr/aarret vvv, oi>x ofrno? e%ovcrn/. And the recurrence
of non once again in non ruinosae may be compared with
Cic. Fam. 13, 18, 2 : non potest mihi non summe esse iucun-
dum (see also Drager i, p. 135). Neither of these usages
is any proof of late authorship.
Taking up a new topic, Ussing says : ' It is a well-known
fact that in the Silver age the conjunction num is gradu-
ally replaced by an, and later on disappears entirely from
the language. In Vitruvius num does not exist at all,
neither do we find (the single) an, ne, nor nonne. The
only particle by which he introduces a dependent inter-
rogative clause is si, e.g. 53, 14: si est firma probatur ; cf.
32, 4; quaesiit si essent agri ; 133, 20: quaerebant si honeste
essent educati ; 156, 20: quaesiit si quern novissent ; 183,
10: de aqua . . . quibusque rebus si erit salubris et idonea
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 19 1
prvbetur expUcabo. Only in double clauses we find utrum
. . . an, as 18, 26 : dubit antes utrnm morbo an pabuli vitio
laesa essent. But si occurs equally, cf. 53, 12 : de ipsa au-
tem testa, si sit optima sen vitiosa ad structuram, statim
nemo potest iudicare ; 173, 17: neque animadvertunt si quid
eorum fieri potest necne. Si in this sense already occurs
in Plautus ; so we do not wonder that it is found in Vitru-
vius, but we wonder that it is the only interrogative con-
junction he knows, as it is the only one which has migrated
into the Romance languages. Whether this si is due origi-
nally to an influence from the Greek language, I dare not
decide.' The examples for this paragraph are taken by
Ussing from Praun (p. 74 f.), but the inferences drawn
from them by these two scholars are different. Ussing
holds that the almost exclusive use of si in indirect questions
instead of other particles is evidence of late authorship;
Praun, that such was ' die Richtung der Volksprache ' in
the classical period. This phenomenon of the almost ex-
clusive use of si with which Ussing concludes his para-
graph is really the only point in it that has any force, for
the preceding details are unimportant Thus, there is noth-
ing surprising in the absence of num from Vitruvius, since
it is not found in Catullus, Tibullus, or Pliny the Elder
(Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., s p. 360). On the other hand, num
does not ' entirely disappear ' from late authors, for it is
found in an indirect question in Orosius I, 19, 9. Boethius
has numne (Herm. Sec. p. 46, line 12, Meiser), and Arnobius
has numquid 46 times (Schmalz, ibid.\ The word nonne
in indirect questions is exclusively Ciceronian (Schmalz,
p. 361). As for -ne, Caesar and Sallust have it only half
a dozen times each, whereas Tacitus has it nearly thirty
IQ2 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
times, so that nothing about the date can be argued from
its absence from Vitruvius. We should not be surprised
at missing an in Vitruvius in the simple indirect question
with quaere or other verbs meaning ' ask,' because it is not
commonly found in the ante-classical or classical period
except in connection with sc io and verbs of doubting ( The-
saurus, s. v. an, p. 7 ff.). What then is left of Ussing's
observation ? Nothing but eight examples in which si is
said to be used in indirect questions in Vitruvius (seven
quoted by Ussing, to which add 162, 17: quaeratur solum
si sit perpetuo solidum}. But a closer examination of these
examples will show that half of them may be eliminated at
once. I mean the two with probari and those with ani-
madvertere and iudicare. In all of these except one (53,
12) we have the indicative in the clause with si, and none
are indirect questions but all are conditional protases used
instead of indirect questions (see Praun, pp. 70 and 72 on
the two examples with probari'). This leaves only the
four cases with quaero, which certainly cannot be called
into evidence for late authorship, since quaero si is found
in the Augustan period, for instance in Propertius (2, 3, 5)
and Livy (29, 25,8; 39, 50, 7). The only truthful observa-
tion, therefore, which can be made about Vitruvius' s habits
in expressing indirect questions is that he seldom employs
the ' sentence-question ' : and only in the phrase quaero si.
Ussing next passes to Hellenisms: 'The most ancient
Roman authors not unfrequently borrowed words from
Greek to express ideas or to name objects for which their
own language lacked words, but they did not borrow forms
or constructions. The age of Cicero and Augustus tried
1 For other kinds of indirect questions in him, see Praun, p. 75 f.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 193
to remove the Greek words and to keep the language pure,
but these attempts did not entirely succeed, and in the
Silver age we find repeatedly that where it became neces-
sary to use Greek words, the authors liked to show their
knowledge in retaining the Greek flexions, as os in the
nominative instead of us, u in the genitive, etc. In the
course of time such Hellenisms increased, and the great
number of them which occur in Vitruvius also help to
indicate the period when he lived.' Here the confession
of Ussing, that the attempts of Cicero and Augustus to
remove Greek words and to keep the language pure ' did
not entirely succeed ' is fatal to his argument. We must
remember that we are dealing with an author who stands
alone in his kind. It is true that Ennius, Plautus, and
Terence, when they used Greek words, generally Latinized
them in form, but we know that Accius preferred to retain
the Greek terminations (Varro, L. L. 5, 21; cf. 10, 70),
and we see that Lucilius, Catullus, and Varro as well as
the Augustan poets employed many Greek forms, while
the number of Greek words in Bell. Afr., Bell. Hisp., Cel-
sus, Pliny the Elder, and Petronius shows that we have
not to wait until late Latinity for the appearance of this
tendency. I need say nothing of Cicero's letters, which
in spite of his own dictum in the Tusculans (i, 15), sets
me Graece loqui in Latino sermone non plus solere quam in
Graeco Latine, prove that ' Greek words and phrases were
the argot of literary Rome.' 1 If Cicero uses Greek as
'part of the terminology of rhetoric and politics, not
merely calling it in to supply a deficiency in the Latin
language but dropping into it when he might as easily
1 Tyrrell, Correspondence of Cicero, I, p. 66.
194 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
have used Latin,' we ought not to be surprised at finding
Vitruvius doing the same in treating a subject on which
not many Romans had written before him. When we
find Greek terminations in Vitruvius, we must remember
that Cicero wrote tyrannida in Att. 14, 14, 2, though tyran-
nidem in Off. 3, 90, and that this Greek ending is not con-
fined to letters to Atticus, but is found in hebdomada in
Fam. 1 6, 9, 3. And in Or. 191 we have paeana, though
paeanem stands in D. 0. I, 251. Neither should it be
thought that Vitruvius uses only Greek terminations for
Greek words. For example : Nohl's Index to Vitruvius
gives under the letters a, b t and c, 973 words (excluding
proper nouns and adjectives, and Greek words quoted as
such, like id afiarov vocitari iusserunf). Of these 973
words, 101 are adopted from Greek, including of course
forms of such words as athleta, barbarus, basilica, camera,
centaurus, chorda, which were fully naturalized in the Latin
of the classical period. Now of these 101 words it appears
that 71 are used by Vitruvius with Latin terminations. Of
the remaining thirty, eighteen are technical terms belong-
ing to the vocabulary of architecture, and hence naturally
Greek, such as amphithalamos (nom.), baseos (gen.), cathe-
toe (nom.). This leaves of the 101 words, only twelve
untechnical terms in which Vitruvius employs Greek ter-
minations. They are : acroasin (Cicero and Varro have
acroasi\ aethera (Cic.), agrammatos, amusos, aniatrolo-
getos, arctoe (Cic.), arithmeticen, arteriace (Plin., Cels.),
asty, abl. (Ter. and Nepos have astit), catacecaumeniten
(Plin. has catacecaumenitae}, colossicotera, cratera, ace.
(Virg., Ov.). Therefore, of the 101 words only seven are
found in Vitruvius with Greek terminations which are not
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 195
similarly found in other authors, the latest of whom is
Pliny, and these seven are all unusual words, all but one
in fact (acroasis) making their appearance in Latin for the
first time in Vitruvius. This examination, therefore, in-
complete as it is, may probably serve to show that Hel-
lenisms in terminations are no more common in Vitruvius
than in writers of the classical period.
' He uses Greek words not only when he may possibly
quote from a Greek source, but also in his own argumen-
tations, and connected with Greek flexions, as 132, 27:
philologis et philotechnis rebus; 247, 19: collossicotera ; 8,
14 : aniatrologetos. He does not even seem afraid of -ois
instead of -is, as pentadorois, 39, 7.' In the first of these
examples we have a word not found elsewhere, philotechnis.
It is not difficult of interpretation and seems a natural
term to connect with philologis. To Vitruvius philologia
means ' literature ' or ' literary studies ' in a wide sense
(156, 7; 157, 20; 203, 14); so it did to Cicero (Att. 2, 17, i).
And just as to Cicero there was within philologia such a
thing as re'xyoko^ia (Att. 4, 16, 3 : reliqui libri Te%vo\oi\6T%voi (lovers of art} and Tpa sunt. Other such comparatives are 7roXm:a>-
repa (Att. 14, 14, l), $i\o\oy(i)Tepa (Att. 13, 12, 3), etcreve-
a-repov and faXocrTopiyorepov (Att. 13, 9, i). Caesar also
used them, as we see from Cic. Q. F. 2, 15 (16), 5 : reliqua
ad quendam locum paOv/j-orepa : hoc enim utitur (sc. Cae-
sar] verbo. The word aniatrologetos (8, 14) is also a a7ra
(cf. larpo\o/9(H9, quae privata
TTpaScopois struuntur. I print the passage as Rose gives
it. The manuscripts have only Latin letters. 1 For TTCV-
Ta&/J0i5 and rerpaSmpois they give pentadoros HS, penta-
toros G ; tetradoros GS, tetradoro H. If Vitruvius himself
used Latin letters here, it is obvious that he may have
written pentadoris and tetradoris with Latin terminations,
so that in either case nothing is left of Ussing's argument,
since even Cicero does not hesitate to treat a Greek dative
like a Latin ablative (cf. Att. 5, 21, 14 : de evSofjLv%(p probo
idem quod tu).
'A characteristic Hellenism is the use of the genitive
corresponding to the comparative than, as 105, 23 : supe-
riora inferiorum fieri contractiora ; 22, 2 : ut ne longius sit
alia ab alia sagittae missionis. This Grecism is found in
Apuleius, as in Met. 3, 1 1 : statuas et imagines dignioribus
meique maioribus reservare suadeo ; 2 De Dogm, Plat. 1,9:
1 This is also frequently the case in cod. M of Cicero's letters to Atticus,
where our editions give Greek letters; see Tyrrell and Purser to Att. 2, 20, I
and 14, 3, 2.
2 The reading here of met depends upon the ' manus recentissima ' of cod.
F (Vliet, p. xiii). The manuscripts themselves have meis, and Vliet reads
meritis.
198 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
animam . . . omnium gignentium esse seniorem. In Ter-
tullian, Apol. 40 : maiorem Asiae et Africae terram ; in the
Latin translations of Irenaeus and Hermes Pastor; very
frequently in the oldest Latin translation of the Bible
(Itala), as I Maccab. 6, 27 : maiora horum facient. The
Vulgate here has the regular construction : maiora quam
haec, and mostly so, but occasionally the genitive has been
retained ; comp. Wolfflin, Archiv, vii, p. 1 17 ff. The above-
mentioned reviewer in the Athenaeum says that this " slip-
shod Greek genitive is not avoided by Plautus and Ennius."
I should have been much obliged to him for indicating the
places. I thought I knew my Plautus pretty well, but I
have never found it.' Here we should have the strongest
evidence of late authorship which we have thus far reached
if we could really feel sure that Vitruvius used the Greek
construction of the genitive of comparison. That he did
so, seems to have been doubted by no recent writer on the
subject of this genitive, and it is defended either on the
ground that he was following Greek sources (Wolfflin,
Archiv, vii, 118; Sittl, die lokalen Verschiedenheiten, p.
1 14), or by pointing to traces of this use in even earlier
writers. These traces were of course what the reviewer in
the Athenaeum had in mind, and that he is somewhat
unjustly treated by Ussing will be granted by anybody
who will take the trouble to read Schmalz, Lat. Gramm.?
p. 253, n. i. Even Wolfflin, in the very article cited by
Ussing, points to these traces in Plautus. But in Vitru-
vius it must be confessed that we have no longer 'traces,'
and that, if we take the passages as they are usually
taken, without further investigation, the real Greek geni-
tive of comparison is found in him for the first time in
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 199
Latin. 1 Is it, however, certain that the two passages cited
by Ussing 2 are properly taken ? The first of them must be
seen in full before it can be studied. It runs thus : Ergo
si natura nascentium ita postulat, recte est constitutum et
altitudinibus et crassitudinibus superiora inferiorum fieri
contractiora. Now in an earlier sentence Vitruvius had
written uti firmiora sint inferiora superioribus (75, 16).
Here is the usual ablative of comparison. Why does he
not employ it in our passage ? He purposely avoids it,
I think, because after altitudinibus and crassitudinibus
another ablative, inferioribus, would be awkward and per-
haps obscure. So in Sail. H. 2, 37 : vir gravis et nulla
arte cuiquam inferior, another ablative instead of the dative
is inconceivable. But it does not follow that in Vitruvius
inferiorum is a genitive of comparison. Every careful
reader must already have seen that we are dealing with a
brachylogy, and that altitudinibus et crassitudinibus are to
be taken a second time so that inferiorum does not depend
upon contractiora. In first drawing attention to this ex-
ample, Praun did not cite it completely, but omitted the
two ablatives, and in this mangled condition it has since
been quoted as a case of the genitive of comparison
which it is not. There remains then only one case to be
considered (22, 2), and here I do not believe that Vitruvius
1 1 cannot accept Varro, R. R. 2, 5, 10, cited by Schmalz, as a certain
case. See Keil's note on it.
2 A third, cited by Praun (p. 79) and Wolfflin (Archiv. vii, 118), is not a
genitive of comparison as has already been noted by Nohl ( Wochenschrift f.
kl. Phil, iii, p. 563). It is 231, I : Ad anguis inferius ventris sub caudam
subiectus est cenfaurus, which means ' Beneath the Snake's belly, under its
tail, lies the Centaur '; cf. Aratus 447; oiJpr; 8 jcp^oarcu virtp afrrov /cecratfpoto.
Here ad inferius ad inferior em par tern ventris ,' for the use of ad, see the
Thesaurus, s. v. p. 519, 23 ; 525, 6-36.
200 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
wrote sagittae missionis but rather sagittae missioned
Errors in writing the genitive in -is instead of the ablative
in -e or -i are not uncommon in the manuscripts of Vitru-
vius, especially where another genitive precedes. Thus we
find rationis (2, 23) for ratione, where sollertiae precedes
in the manuscripts. We have also solis orbis for solis
orbi (224, 28) ; decussis for decussi, where additis precedes
(67, 13). And we also find the plural in -es for the abla-
tive singular, as: necessitates for necessitate (54, 14), partes
for parte (94, 29), frontis for fronte (82, 12), and frontes
for fronts, where ornationis precedes (119, 17). So it
appears that there is little or no good evidence that Vitru-
vius used the genitive of comparison at all.
Ussing next observes : ' It has often been said that
Vitruvius " translated largely from the Greek." I am not
sure that he has translated more than the chapters of
Athenaeus which will be mentioned below. 2 He seems
more likely to have drawn his knowledge from Latin
sources, but his style is appreciably influenced by Greek.
1 As it was printed by Schneider. Perhaps, as the codd. have sagitta
emissionis, we should keep the longer word as in 283, 18: sagittae emissio-
nem, reading it, however, in the ablative with the earliest printed editions.
2 Here Ussing is referring to pages 29-41 of his article where, accepting
the view of Diels that this Athenaeus Mechanicus was a post-classical writer,
he argues that Vitruvius, drawing from him, must be even later, and rejects
Thiel's theory of a common source for both in Agesistratus (whom, however,
Rose 2 has indicated for Vitruvius, 275, 16). How unsuccessful Ussing is in
this argument has been shown by Schmidt (JSurstan's Jahresbericht, 1901,
viii, p. 120). In another part of Ussing's book (p. 28) there is a very just
observation which he would have done well to bear in mind throughout : ' As
if it were possible to write about the very same things without occasionally
using the same words ; or as if there must not necessarily be found a simi-
larity in those who proceeded from the same school, and had drawn their
knowledge from the same book.' A principle of common sense which
'source-hunters' often ignore!
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 2OI
Among these influences we will mention his preference
for non minus (ovSev rja-aov} instead of item; cf. 103, 24;
187, 12; 218, 7, etc. Further, the superfluous use of
etiam (/cat') in comparisons, as 216, 4 : aequo pondere quo
etiam fuerat corona. Equally the striking omission of the
demonstrative pronoun before the relative, as 30, 6 : aedi-
bus sacris quorum deorum maxime in tutela civitas videtur
esse, and 30, 1 1 : Hercnli in quibus civitatibus non sunt
gymnasia; and the still more striking attraction of the
relative in 34, 27 : spatio relicto quanta arborum longitu-
dines patiuntur? This paragraph does not seem quite
apropos of the argument, for it merely suggests Greek
sources for certain usages in Vitruvius without indicating
that they are found in late Latin. I am not aware that
non minus in the sense of item is so found. It appears to
be like nee minus as used in Varro, R. R. I, 13, 3 ; 3, I, 6 ;
Propertius i, 3, 5. 1 The 'superfluous etiam (a/)' calls
for no further comment here; and for the substantive
standing in the relative clause without a demonstrative in
the main clause, as well as for the attraction of the rela-
tive, see Schmalz's Lat Gramm., 3 pp. 372 and 373. These
usages are not evidence of late authorship.
Neither is there such ev'dence in the following para-
graph : ' In the Syntax of Vitruvius, one of the things that
attract our attention is his way of expressing measures.
He often uses the regular construction with the accusative,
as latitudine maior quampedes xx ; but he equally employs
1 Non minus in this sense is found more than thirty times in Vitruvius ;
besides he has non minus etiam nine times (cf. nee non etiam, Varro, R. R. I,
i, 6 ; 2, 10, 9 ; 3, 16, 26 ; and Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., 8 p. 351, on such
pleonasms in uncultivated style).
202 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
the genitive, a construction which also appears in more
ancient authors, as Varro ap. Pliny, N. H. 36, 92 : pyrami-
des . . . imae latae pedum quinum septuagenum t altae cente-
num quinquagenum ; Columella 2, 10, 26: areas latas
pedum denum, longas pedum quinquagenum facito ; Plin.
N. H. 1 8, 140; 36, 7. Thus Vitruvius 77, 9: uti lata et
longa sit columnae crassitudinis unius et dimidiae ; cf. 77,
18; ICX), 24; 94, 14; 205, 20; 207, 25, etc. But instead
of this genitivus qualitatis, Vitruvius also uses the abla-
tive; cf. 39, i: longum sesquipede, latum pede ; 94, 28:
crassitudines extenuentur his rationibus uti si octava parte
erunt quae sunt in fronte, hae jiant x parte' To these
examples of the ablative may be added J 1 70, i : alte cir-
citer pedibus tribus ; 99, 24: altae dimidia parte; 99, 26:
altam suae crassitudinis dimidia parte. But they cannot
be taken as evidence of very late authorship, for Columella
has this ablative in 5, 9, 3 : digitis quatuor alte ; Arb. i, 6 :
tribus pedibus alte ; and both the genitive and ablative in
3> : 3> 5 : quidam dupondio et dodrante altum sulcum, latum
pedum quinque faciunt.
Coming next to locative constructions, Ussing says : ' A
similar wavering is found in the local determinations.
Country names are put in tha ablative without preposi-
tions, as 43, 27: Achaia Asia; 134, 14: aliter Aegypto,
a liter Hispania, non eodem mo do Ponto ; 182, 3: Ponto et
Gallia; 176, 15 ff., frequently. Even the genitive appears,
1 It is the more necessary to present these additional cases because the two
which Ussing cites are not very convincing. The second lacks any adjective
like longus, latus, or altus, and is therefore an ordinary genitive of quality ;
the first is easily emended away, as pede in 278, 7, is now emended to pedem,
and, as in Plin. 35, 171, longum sesquipedem is now read instead of the older
reading sesquipede of the inferior manuscripts.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS
203
59, 3 : Cretae et Africae. Names of towns in the ablative
instead of the genitive, 49, 8: Arretio ; 101, 22: Sunio ;
195, 19: Zacyntho. This harmonizes with the use of eo
instead of ibi, 120, 16 : eo tragici et comici actores in scaena
peragunt ; 284, II : arboribus excisis eoque conlocatis. (If
the same is found in Cicero's Ep. ad Brutum i, 2, i, it may
as well be considered as a testimony against the genuine-
ness of these epistles.)' A full collection of Vitruvius's
use of country names in the ablative without a preposition
has been published by Nohl in his Analecta Vitruviana,
p. 9. From this it appears that twenty-one names are thus
used. 1 This is a large number, but the usage itself cannot
be accepted as proof of late authorship because we find in
Virgil Ponto (Eel. 8, 95 f.), Latio (A. i, 265 ; 6, 67), Lycia
(A. 12, 344), Italia (A. i, 263), and in Pliny, Hispania
(N. H. 8, 226), and Aegypto (13, 56; 18, 123; 19, 79). 2
For the rest, Vitruvius uses also the regular construction
of in with the ablative in the case of twenty-five country
names, some being the same as those which he has used
without the preposition. When Ussing remarks, 'Even
the genitive appears,' he must mean the ' locative,' for
there would be nothing surprising in the employment of a
true genitive construction. I do not believe that the true
locative of any country name is found in Vitruvius, since
I think that all the forms which seem to be such may be
explained on other grounds, just as the apparent locatives
of country names in Pliny have been explained away. 3
Only six cases call for consideration. Of these, Astae(igo,
1 For Lucania, however (198, 9), Lucanis of the manuscripts should be
retained; see below, p. 221.
2 Cf. Funaioli, Archiv, xiii, 327 ff. Funaioli, Archiv, xiii, 581 f.
204 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
14) and Phrygiae (196, 14) are chorographic genitives
(see Schmalz, Lat. Gr., s 234 f.), such as are found in Cae-
sar, Livy, and Pliny. In 195, 15, Aethiopiae is now read
Aethiopia, but, if the manuscript reading is kept, we have
a genitive depending on lacus. In 198, 8, Boeotiae (a geni-
tive) has been emended to Boeotia on account of the fol-
lowing ablatives. In the example cited by Ussing, Cretae
et Africae (59, 3), one of two explanations may be given.
Although the name Cretae is generally treated like that of
a country and consequently appears in Cicero with in and
the ablative, yet as an island it is used in the locative by
Varro (R. R. I, 7, 6) and Virgil (A. 3, 162). If Vitruvius
used it thus, then the following Africae is an assimilation
for concinnity, like Sallust's Romae Numidiaeque (J. 33, 4).
But both Cretae and Africae may be genitives depending
on regionibus, for the whole sentence reads : nascuntur
autem eae arbores maxime Cretae et Africae et nonmillis
Syriae regionibus. There remains only 200, 24 : sunt
autem etiam fontes uti vino mixti, quemadmodum est unus
Paphlagoniae, ex quo, etc. Here Paphlagoniae is to be
taken as a genitive. But even if locatives of country
names were actually found in Vitruvius, we could parallel
them from the classical period, since we have Peloponnesi
in Varro (R. R. 2, 6, 2), Chersonesi in Nepos (i, 2, 4), and
Galliae in Hirtius (B. G.8, i, 2). 1 As for names of towns
in the ablative instead of the locative, Nohl's treatment
(Analecta, p. 10) is not exact, for he does not distinguish
between towns and islands. The names of towns actually
thus used by Vitruvius are Arretio, Chio (283, 3, where the
1 Here I think that Galliae must certainly be taken as a locative on
account of rebus gestis Alexandriac just below. Still, see Archiv, xiii, 331.
THE LANGUAGE OF VlTRUVIUS 205
word murum shows that the town is meant), Halicarnasso,
Lyncesto, Paraetonio, Sunio, Tarso, Teo, Teano, that is,
nine in all. 1 It is true that this misuse becomes common
in late Latin (Archiv, xiii, 315 f.), but still we find occur-
rences of it early enough to show that in Vitruvius the
phenomenon is due to his lack of finish, and that it cannot
be taken as evidence of late authorship. Thus, Cato has
Venafro (R. R, 135, i), and Varro has Amiterno (L. L. 6, 5).
On the whole, with regard to these three categories we
must treat them as errors of style, just as Pliny's frequent
use of in with the ablative of a town name (Archiv, xiii,
337) is treated. Nobody thinks of stigmatizing the Nat-
ural History as a piece of late workmanship because of
them, particularly in view of the practice of the Emperor
Augustus, who used prepositions with names of towns in
order to avoid obscurity (Suet. Aug. 86). We come next
to Ussing's remark about the use of eo. Here it is not
necessary to try to defend Vitruvius by means of the dis-
puted passage in Cicero, Ep. ad Brutum, nor even to refer
to the undisputed erroneous use of eo in Celsus 8, 9, I :
ibi pus proximum erit eoque tiri debebit. It is enough to
show that Vitruvius's use is correct. This has been done
for 1 20, 1 6, by Rose, in a footnote in his second edition,
where he refers to perago used twice with ad and the accu-
sative on a later page. In 284, 1 1, eo is due to the mean-
ing of conlocatis, which here does not mean simply 'to
place,' but rather ' to bring together ' ; consequently eo is
properly used, as are in and the accusative in Plaut.
Men. 986 : in tabernam vasa et servos conlocavi, a construc-
1 For the passages, see Nohl. On the other hand, Vitruvius has the loca-
tive of stems in -o- six times, and always in stems in -a-.
206 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
tion found also in Vitruvius himself, 272, 9 : in eos cuneoli
ferrei . . . conlocantur. Of course Vitruvius has also the
other use of conloco, with in and the ablative, or with ibi or
ubi, examples of which may readily be found in Nohl's
Index. With these two uses with conloco may be com-
pared the same two with coaceruo ; for instance, Bell. Afr.
91, 2: eo coacervatis, and Cic. R. A. 133: coacervari una
in domo. As for the proper meaning of eo (' thither,' not
' there ') Vitruvius is perfectly aware of it, and so employs
it in seven other passages. 1
Passing now to other topics Ussing says : ' Noceri is
constructed personally in the passive voice, 45, 22 : neque
ab ignis vehementia nocentur ; 59, 7; larix ab carte aut
tinea non nocetur. Similarly Apuleius, de Dogmate Pla-
tonis, 2, 17.' These two examples are not sufficent evi-
dence of late authorship, for Vitruvius always uses this
verb properly in the active voice (six times absolutely and
eight times with the dative z case), and also has it once
impersonally in the passive (59, 14). The two examples
are rather to be treated among those violations of regular
usage which crop out here and there even in the best
writers. It is true that I know of no similar case of noceri
before Ulpian, Dig. 43, 19, 3, 2 ; for Sen. Ira, 3, 5, 4, cited
by Neue (FormnUekrt iii, 5), is not a personal use, and
Nepos, 7, 4, 2, is open to doubt. But for examples of
other verbs which take the dative in the active voice and
which occur occasionally in the personal use in the passive,
1 He has eo loci also twice correctly. If he has it twice besides in the
sense of ibi (233, 17 ; 235, 14), so have Cicero (Sest. 68) and Pliny (N. H.
II, 136).
2 If the work were late we might expect to find the accusative ; see Kiihner,
Lat. Gr., II, p. 76, $fin.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 2O?
cf. crederetur, Cic. R. A. 103 and credorused thus by Ovid,
Tr. 3, 10, 35, and M. 7, 98; obstrepi, Cic. Marc. 9;
antecelluntur, Auct. Herenn. 2, 48 ; invideor, Hor. A. P.
56; imperor, Hor. Ep. i, 5, 21; and the numerous instances
of the passive participle Qifersuadeo, Wb'lfflin, Rhein, Mus.
xxxvii, 115 f.
' Est causa cognoscere, 59, 17, instead of cognoscendi is a
construction now and then occurring in the poets; cf.
Madvig, Lat. Gr. 419. It has been noticed that the
genitive of the gerund is very rare in Vitruvius, whereas
the ablative is exceedingly frequent; cf. Praun, p. 57 ff.
It is, as we know, the ablative form which passes into the
Romance languages Italian and Spanish.' There is
nothing in est causa cognoscere that points to late author-
ship, for nothing like it is cited in any other author, late
or early. The peculiarity of it does not consist hi the con-
struction used with the word causa, for the infinitive with
this word occurs in poets (Verg. A. 10, 90; Tib. 3, 2, 30;
Lucan 5, 464), and for the general principle involved see
Schmalz, Lat. Gramm.? p. 293. The peculiarity lies in
the -meaning of the word causa, for, as Praun has remarked
(p. 20), est causa here is equivalent to operae pretium, and
no parallel for this, early or late, is cited. It must there-
fore be considered as a peculiarity of the author. 1 With
regard to the rest of Ussing's paragraph, two observations
should be made. First, that the rare use of the genitive
of the gerund in Vitruvius (only five occurrences, Praun,
p. 57 f.) is partly due to the fact that he never uses it with
an adjective or with causa or gratia (Praun, ibid.). But
with adjectives this construction is very rare in old Latin,
1 Rose 2 emends to tattsam.
2O8 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
not common in the classical writers, and of slow growth
before Tacitus, who greatly developed it (Lane, Lat.
Gramm. 2258 ; Schmalz, 8 p. 304). See also Praun's
remarks (p. 65) on the use of the gerund or gerundive
construction with ad, instead of in the genitive, as found
in writings of less formal and polished style. Secondly,
regarding the prevalence of the ablative construction in
Vitruvius, this is the commonest of all the gerund and
gerundive constructions at all periods. Praun (p. 59) cites
Valerius Maximus as a special lover of it, so that we need
not come down to late Latin to find it. Even the modal
use, which is such a favorite with Vitruvius, is found, once
in Cicero, and examples occur in Caelius, Sallust, and the
Bellum Hispaniense, until finally Ovid and Livy made it
common (Schmalz, 3 p. 305).
Next there follows in Ussing a long paragraph which I
do not think it worth while to reproduce here. It deals
with the undoubted fact that in Vitruvius the mood em-
ployed in indirect questions is very apt to be the indica-
tive. 1 After referring to this usage in Plautus, Ussing
says : ' No classical prose writer would indulge in putting
the indicative in a dependent clause which really expresses
a reflection or a doubt.' He does not say that late writers
do so, but of course it is well known that such is the fact
(for instance, see the literature cited in Sittl, Die lokalen
Verschiedenhciten, p. 134), and his argument therefore is
that this phenomenon in Vitruvius is evidence of late au-
thorship. In this paragraph Ussing says nothing about
the appearance, here and there, of this indicative in several
1 The fullest collections are to be found in Praun, p. 71 ff., and Richardson,
Harvard Stiidies in Cl. Phil., 1890, i, p. 157.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 209
prose writers who not only belong to the ' classical period '
but who are also so strict in their standards of style that
they are entitled themselves to be called ' classics.' That
is, Ussing adopts the attitude of those earlier generations
of scholars who, from the time of Lambinus down to near
the present day, did not scruple to emend away all offenses
against the strict norm of classical style. Such is not the
attitude of most scholars now; individualities in writers
are recognized, and departures from the strict norm are
often welcomed, rather than rejected, as indications either
that the literary language had not yet attained to exact-
ness in following rules or that the writer in question is em-
ploying the phraseology of colloquial speech, which then,
as always, was less careful than the literary style. In this
spirit we ought to consider the appearance of the indica-
tive in indirect questions in Vitruvius. The best general
statement with regard to this employment of the mood has
been made by Schmalz (Lat. Gramm.? p. 359)- The
usage crops out in the Auctor ad Herennium, in Varro, in
Cicero's early writings and his letters, and in letters to him.
It is avoided by the historians though not by the poets of
the Augustan age, and it is found in Petronius and Pliny the
Elder. The closest parallels to the indicative in clauses
expressing ' a reflection or a doubt ' as in Vitruvius, are to be
found in the seven examples cited by Marx from the Auctol
ad Herennium in his edition of that book, p. 176 f.
In Ussing's next paragraph there is but one sentence
that calls for attention : ' It is certainly unclassical to em-
ploy the subjunctive in an indefinite relative clause, as
158, 5 : quorum utrum ei accident, merenti digna constitit
: While the subjunctive in this use probably does
2IO ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
not occur in the classical period, yet it is found not infre-
quently in the Elder Pliny (Frobeen, Quaestiones Pli-
nianae, p. 33), so that, if it were found in Vitruvius, the
phenomenon would be no proof of late authorship. But
in fact, I do not believe that acciderit is a subjunctive.
The truth probably is that constitit comes not from
consto (as Nohl takes it in his Index), but from consisto,
the perfect of which is not infrequently used in a present
sense. For this use, see the grammars of Kiihner (ii,
p. 95) and Lane ( 1607), and for numerous examples,
Munro's note to Lucretius i, 420, where he cites Cicero's
letters, the two Senecas, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. This
present meaning of constitit makes accident allowable as a
future perfect. Of course, however, the really remarkable
thing in the sentence is the employment of utrum where
there is a choice of more than two things (see the context).
For this use I know of no parallel, early or late.
Ussing's last observation is as follows. 'Finally we
shall briefly mention the position of the words. We have
already noticed the inclination to put the negation fore-
most in the sentence. Similarly the auxiliaries, esse> posse,
and velle, etc., are preferably placed before the infinitive
to which they belong, as 10, 10: ut possint . . . disciplinas
penitus habere no fas; 91, 5 : qui metopas aequales volunt
facere. In sum, the governing verb is very often put
before its object, whether a word or a whole sentence.'
And he begins his summary, which immediately follows,
with this sentence : ' These features and many others point
to the decadence of the Latin language and to its transi-
tion to the Romance tongues.' As for this argument, I
am not aware that sufficient collections have ever been
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 211
made regarding the position of the auxiliary verbs to
warrant the use of it in fixing the date of a literary work.
This was the reason why Sittl published nothing on the
order of words in his treatise on the African writers, where
he says : ' Die Beobachtung der Wortstellung ergibt eben-
falls viel interessantes, aber da hier iiber die nichtafri-
kanische Literatur fast keine Beobachtungenvorliegen,
wage ich es vorlaufig noch nicht, unseren Provinzialen
etwas zu vindizieren ' (Die lokalen Verschiedenheiten, p.
135). If now we examine the case of volo in Vitruvius,
we find him placing it 22 times before the infinitive and 6
times after the infinitive. But the Auctor ad Herennium
has it 42 times before and 18 times after (see Marx's
Index) ; in the Bellum Africum the use is equally divided,
seven of each (WolrHin's Index); so in Varro's Menippe-
ans, four of each (Riese's Index), while in his Res Rusticae
it stands first 22 times and after the infinitive 33 times.
With regard to possum, Lupus has observed that in Nepos
the infinitive very often follows it and other verbs (Der
Sprachgebrauch des Nepos, p. 191). In Vitruvius, the verb
possum is used with the infinitive 300 times (Nohl's Index).
But in exactly half of these, there is a negative attached
to possum, and it is this expression of impossibility which
Vitruvius prefers to place before the infinitive. He has
126 instances of it thus placed and in only 24 does it fol-
low the infinitive. Of the other 1 50 cases where there is no
negative with possum, the infinitive precedes 76 times and
follows 74 times. In view of such varieties, I do not see
how the position of these auxiliaries can be used in dis-
cussing the date of Vitruvius until their position in other
authors has been carefully studied.
212 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Thus the linguistic and stylistic phenomena noted by
Ussing have been examined, and in summarizing them it
appears that there are only a very few which cannot be
paralleled either exactly or in principle during the Re-
publican, Augustan, or Silver ages of Roman literature.
These few are : the impersonal use of dignum est ut (p.
171), necessitate as an adverb (p. 171), forte meaning 'per-
haps' (p. 181), and trans as an adverb (p. 183). And
something has been said in explanation of all these except
the last. The many heads of Ussing's indictment are
therefore reduced to the minimum. But what if it be
argued that, although instances of the several phenomena
may be found in various authors of the earlier time, yet
since they are not all found in any one author except
Vitruvius, this accumulation of them in him points to late
authorship ? The answer to this cumulative argument is
that it begs the whole question. For, as I have pointed
out above (p. 161), no other technical treatise written in
the better age is extant, and therefore we are not entitled
to say that such treatises did not abound in examples of the
phenomena which appear in Vitruvius. As for the resem-
blances between the language of Vitruvius and that of the
Romance nations, Krohn 1 has already observed that these
are a priori only natural. Latin was not transmitted to
Romance lands by the polished works of Cicero, but by
the every-day writings and the colloquial speech of people
like Vitruvius, professional men, publicani, business men,
and soldiers. The resemblances, therefore, are not neces-
sarily evidence of late authorship. In conclusion, I may
add that it seems improbable that anybody who thinks that
1 Berl. Phil, Woch., 1897, p. 774.
THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS 213
Vitruvius is like the late Latin authors, can have actually
read him through with much care. They, whatever their
faults of grammar and style, are smooth and easy reading
by comparison with him. He has all the marks of one
unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful
task. A forgery or a late compilation of an earlier work
would presumably proceed from a hand used to literary
performances.
NOTES ON VITRUVIUS 1
(i) On the Text
2, praef. 2(31, 24): cogitationes et formas dignas tuae
claritati.
HERE the MSS. have the dative with dignus. Wesseling
(Obs. Var. p. 68) emended to the genitive claritatis,
and Rose in both his editions has followed, in spite of Wolff -
lin's protest. 2 It is true that the genitive with dignus is
not unknown: cf. Balbus ap. Cic. Att. 8, 15 A, i; Verg.
A. 12, 649 (with indignus); Tac. A. 15, 14; to say nothing
of the disputed passage in Plaut. Trin, 1153 (Nonius for
the genitive, but the MSS. of Plautus for the ablative).
Still the dative also is found as follows: Plaut. Poen. 256:
diem . . . dignum Veneri (emended to the ablative by
Ritschl and so Leo); Sail. Or. Phil. 20: decernite digna
nomini (where Maurenbrecher, i, 77, 20, emends to the
ablative) ; Cod. Theod. 9, 28, I : quoniam nee condigna cri-
mini ultio est ; CGL. ii, 305, 12 : eTraivov afto? laudi dig-
nus. See also Schmalz, Lat. Gramm.? p. 249, who cites
from late Latin examples of this dative in Commodian,
Vopiscus, and Arnobius, as well as passages in Apuleius,
Jerome, and Cyprian, where the form leaves the question
of genitive or dative doubtful. To these last may be added
the Pompeian dignus rei publicae(CIL. iv, 566; 702; 768),
1 From the Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 1906, xvii, 1-14.
2 Rhein. Mus. xxxvii, p. 115.
2I 4
NOTES ON VITRUVIUS 215
and note also the usage of Priscillian (Archiv, iii, p. 317).
As a good warrant for the dative with dignus, Wolfflin
suggests the use of decet with the dative in early Latin ;
cf. Sommer, p. 241, ' dig-nus aus *dec-nos zu decet.' We
may now examine the constructions which actually do
accompany dignus in Vitruvius apart from this passage.
The word is used certainly once as a mere attributive
adjective: 83, 15, dignam et utilissimam rem ; and prob-
ably this should be the explanation of 158, 6: merenti
digna constitit poena, for the dative merenti here belongs
to the whole following phrase and not to digna alone.
Then we have the impersonal dignum est once with an ut
clause in 46, 6 : dignum esset ut . . . perficerentur, a con-
struction found with dignus used personally in Plautus,
Livy, and Quintilian (Schmalz, p. 406). Once the neuter
dignum is found personally with the passive infinitive, in
212, 14: id enim magis erat institui dignum. We have
the neuter dignum used impersonally with the passive
infinitive in Livy, 8, 26, 6: quibus dignius credi est; cf.
Cic. Quinct. 95 : indignum est a pari vinci. But in Vitru-
vius the verb erat has a neuter subject expressed, so that
the usage resembles dignus or digna (fern.) with the pas-
sive infinitive, noted as not found in prose before the Silver
Age by Schmalz (p. 281 f.) and Drager (ii, 331 f.). It may
be remarked in passing that dignum est with a passive
infinitive is (understanding the infinitive as originally a
dative) a support for the dative case with dignus, and here
again the connection of dignus with decet is suggested by
Plaut. Poen. 258 : mine me decet donari cado vini veteris ? l
1 1 owe this to Professor Minton Warren, who also points out that it is
even conceivable that the dative was the original case used with dignus, and
2l6 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Again, Vitruvius has the impersonal dignum est with the
active infinitive, 237, 7: sed titi fuerint ea exquisita, dig-
num est studiosis agnoscere ; cf. Plaut. Ps. 1013: salutem
scriptam dignumst dignis mittere ; Verg. A, 6, 173 : si
credere dignum. I have no examples of this use in prose
before Gellius (see Drager, ii, 332) for dignum, but for in-
digmim, cf . Sail. lug. 79, I : non indignum videtur egregium
f acinus commemorare. Whether in Vitruvius studiosis is
dative or ablative, I see no way of deciding. Finally,
Vitruvius has a personal use, in the masculine gender, of
digniores with the active infinitive, 134, I : ipsos potius dig-
niores esse ad suam voluntatem quam ad alienam pecuniae
consumere summam. I can cite no prose parallel for this
before Plin. Pan. 7: dignus alter eligi, alter eligere ; cf.
Apul. M. i, 8: tu dignus es extrema sustinere ; but in
poetry the usage seems to appear first in Catullus 68, 131:
concedere digna; and that it was familiar to Horace appears
from Ep. I, 10, 48 : tortum digna sequi potius quam ducere
funem, and (with indignus) from Ep. I, 3, 35 : indigni fra-
ternum rumpere foedus (i.e. quos non decet}\ cf. also A. P.
231. The commentators speak of this construction as
modelled on the Greek idiom with afto 14(198, 9): sunt enim Boeotia flumina Cephisos et
Me las, Lucanis Crathis, Troia Xanthus.
Here editions have always had Lucania or Lucaniae,
although the manuscripts give only Lucanis. The latter
is the correct form for the name of this district in the early
and Augustan period, as has been shown for other authors
by Wolfflin, Archiv, xii, 332. It should be restored in
Vitruvius.
9, praef. 16 (217, 23): Itaque qui litterarum iucunditati-
bus instinctas habent wentes.
Here Rose in both editions reads intinctas with the late
manuscripts, while the best manuscripts give instinctas.
The reading of Rose seems very improbable. It is true
that nowhere else in Vitruvius do we find a form from
instinguo, and that we do find forms from intinguo (or
intingo) five times without any variants (see Nohl's Index}.
But in none of these five is the verb used metaphorically ;
it is always employed literally, in connection with water,
in Vitruvius, and I am not aware of a metaphorical use
of it in any other author. On the other hand, if we read
instinctas here, we find it in its usual sense, of which any
lexicon will afford examples.
9, 3, i (227, i): deinde e geminis cum iniit ad cancrum,
qui brevissimum tenet caeli spatium.
Here Barbari, followed by Marini, emended brevissi-
mum to longissimum, and Reber changed qui to quo, thus
222 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
making sol and not cancer the subject of tenet, and giving
the reading quo longissimum tenet caeli spatium as adopted
in both of Rose's editions. These scholars were all influ-
enced by the passage below in 3, where of the course of
the sun in Capricorn it is said : brevissimum caeli percurrit
spatium. It does not seem necessary, however, to make
the two passages correspond by insisting on sol as the
subject of both. If we keep qui in the first, referring to
Cancer, and retain also brevissimum, we find that Vitru-
vius is speaking not, as in 3, of the length of the day,
but of the size of Cancer, which in fact occupies the
shortest parallel within the Zodiac (that is, in modern ter-
minology, the section from it to the pole is shortest)
' the shortest space in heaven,' as Vitruvius says. On the
small size of this sign, cf. Hipparchus, p. 126, 12 Manitius:
Kaddjrep evOews 6 fiev KdpicLvos ovSe TO rptrov ftepos eTre^et
TO Sco&eicaTrjiJLopiov. And observe also what Eudoxus (Ars
Astron. ed. Blass, p. 18, col. ix), in speaking of the courses
of the planets, moon, and sun, says about Cancer : ov yap
ry ISia Staoratret trepL^epovrai irepl rov pevovra TrdXov, dAA*
J)Tav fj,ev & Ka/m'i/a), ev ry e\a%i 3); a l so f a temple in Syracuse which he does not
name (215, 12), and of temples in Ionia (85, 15). This
accounts for eleven occurrences. Then he has extra
NOTES ON VITRUVIUS
229
murum Veneris, Volcani, Martis fana conlocari, etc., in the
passage where he is quoting from the Etruscan sacred
books on the position of temples (30, 1 5). The other four
passages are still more general : in them the word is plu-
ral and no divinity is mentioned (13,24; 15, 13; 59, i;
172, 17). In our place, therefore, I have no doubt that he
means a temple of Apollo in some Greek city, 1 and it
seems probable that the city was Ephesus, for the words
ex eisdem lapidicinis refer to the quarries which he has
just mentioned twice in connection with the fanum Dianae
at Ephesus (249, 27; 251, i). The second of these reads:
non enim plus sunt ab lapidicinis ad fanum milia passuum
octOy nee ullus est clivus sed perpetuus campus. Then our
passage forms the next sentence : nostra vero memoria cum
colossici Apollinis infano, etc. Here it seems probable to
me that in fano means 'in the temple of Apollo ',' not 'in
the temple of Ephesian Diana,' as Biirchner, following
others before him, holds in his recent article on Ephesus
in Pauly-Wissowa (p. 2812). There is no real evidence
for this latter view, since Pliny's words, {Myron) fecit et
Apollinem quern ab triumviro Antonio sublatum restituit
Ephesiis divus Augustus (34, 58), do not necessarily refer
to the Artemision. Apollo was worshiped under seven
different titles at Ephesus (Biirchner, ibid. p. 2804) ; per-
haps this statue was in the temple of Apolla Pythius on
the harbor (Athenaeus, 361 e). It is tempting, but of
course would be erroneous, to think that Vitruvius's anec-
dote about the making of a new pedestal for the colossal
1 Jordan, Hermes, xiv, 577, observes that in Cicero and his contemporaries
fanum is used of Greek or other foreign temples, but not of temples in the
city of Rome.
230 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Apollo is to be coupled with the passage of Pliny which
has just been cited, and to conclude that nostra memoria
refers to the time of Augustus. This is still more tempt-
ing when we remember that in the Res Gestae, 4, 49,
Augustus says : in templis omnium ci-vitatium provinciae
Asiae victor ornamenta reposui ; cf. Strabo, 14, i, 14, p.
637 (three colossal statues by Myron plundered from
Samos by Antony, two of which, Athene and Heracles,
were returned by Augustus, and the third, Zeus, placed
on the Capitol) ; and for other acts of restitution, see Dio
Cass. 51, 17; Strabo, 13, I, 30, p. 595. But there is noth-
ing in all this to warrant an actual conviction that Augus-
tus or any other emperor had to do with the particular
affair which Vitruvius describes.
(4) Templum and Aedes
Since I have spoken of the use of fanum in Vitruvius,
showing how carefully he employs the word, it may be
worth while to note that he is equally correct in his use
of templum?- He has the word thirteen times (exclusive
of three passages in which the plural of it denotes the
architectural members, the 'purlines'). It happens that
he never applies it to any definite Roman temple. In
seven passages it is used in the wider sense of a conse-
crated place set apart for a god or gods, a perfectly cor-
rect use, 2 although in no one of these passages is there
any distinct reference to the Roman inauguratio. That he
1 Besides Jordan's article on templum, fanum, and acdts already cited
{Hermes, xiv, 567 ff.), there is a later treatment by Bouche-Leclercq in Da-
remberg et Saglio, ii, 2, p. 973 ff. But neither of these scholars deals with
Vitruvius.
2 See the Thesaurus, s.v. atdes, p. 911, 58.
NOTES ON VITRUVIUS 231
had in mind the original difference between such a conse-
crated space and the building in it is clear from 85, 13:
earn terrae regionem appellaverunt loniam, ibique deorum
immortalium templa constituentes coeperunt fana aedificare,
et primum Apollini Panionio aedem, etc.; similarly 13, 23
and 84, 21, in both of which templum andfanum are used.
For this sense of templum, the other four passages are 30,
25 ; 70, ii ; 124, 27 ; 185, 5. Five times the word denotes
a building or buildings, but in only one of them is a dis-
tinct building specified, 161, 13, where templum refers
to the temple at Eleusis. The others are 76, 17; 96, 9 ;
99, 23; 122, 21. Finally he has the word in the meta-
phorical phrase ad summtim templum architecture, ' to the
heights of the holy ground of architecture ' (7, 20).
The word aedes is naturally far commoner in Vitruvius
than either famim or templum. It is used of temple build-
ings always, 1 as is proper (Thesaurus, s.v., p. 911, 61), not
of the consecrated space. In the singular we have it thus
32 times; in the plural 17 times without a modifier, and
26 times with sacrae. Besides these he applies it to a
score of definite temples, both Greek and Roman. The
Roman temples are the Marian temple of Honor and Vir-
tus (69, 19; 161, 21), and the temples of Quirinus (70, 4),
Apollo and Diana (71, 13), Luna (116, 21), Flora (179, 12),
Jupiter and Faunus on the Island (69, n); and in Colonia
lulia Fanestris the temples of Jupiter (107, 4) and of Au-
gustus (107, 3), if Augusti be the correct reading. To
some of these temples the technical word templum might
1 Except once (145, 19) where the context makes it perfectly clear that
aedibus means dwelling houses. This should have been quoted in the The-
saurus, p. 908, 82 ff., among the rare examples of the plural aedes, meaning
more than one house. Vitruvius also has cava aedium three times.
232 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
no doubt have been correctly applied, for instance, to the
first two in the list. But we must remember that aedes
was the general term for all buildings devoted to the gods
(Marquardt, Staatsverw? iii, p. 154), and that while Cicero
uses templum of the temple of Quirinus (Legg. I, 3), Au-
gustus has aedem Quirini in his Res Gestae, 4, 6. In that
work it has been observed that he never uses templum of
any definite Roman divinity except in the cases of Apollo
Palatinus and Mars Ultor (see Jordan, cited above, p. 229,
and Mommsen, Res G., p. 78).
The words fanum, templum, and aedes, therefore, are
used by Vitruvius in a manner perfectly in accord with
that of the Augustan age.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 1
THAT the Latin treatise on architecture, extant under the
name of Vitruvius in manuscripts of the ninth, tenth,
eleventh, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries, is a genuine work,
and that it was first published in the earlier half of the
Augustan age, 2 are two propositions which ought no longer
to be doubted. The theory that it is a forgery of the third,
fourth, or even of a later century a theory propounded
originally by Schultz 3 and supported much later by
Ussing 4 has never been seriously entertained by many
scholars, and it has been recently refuted on the grounds
both of subject-matter 6 and of language. 6 The ascription
of the work to the time of the Emperor Titus is a much
older idea. Suggested at first, apparently, in the seven-
teenth century, 7 it was discussed but rejected by the Span-
1 From the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
1909, xliv, 149-175.
2 Cf. Degering, Berl. Phil Woch., 1907, xxvii, 1292 ff. After the printing
of this article had begun, I received L. Southerner's dissertation, Vitruvius
und seine Zeit, Tubingen, 1908. I have added a few remarks upon it in foot-
notes on pages 238, 244, and 269.
8 First in his letter to Goethe in 1829, published in Rhein. Mus., 1836, iv,
329; reprinted by his son, together with a much longer argument, in Unter-
suchung iiber das Zeitalter des . . . Vitruvius, Leipzig, 1856.
4 In Danish in 1896; more fully in English: Observations on Vitruvius,
published in London by the Royal Institute of British Architects, in 1898.
5 See especially Degering, Rhein. Mus., 1902, Ivii, 8 ff.; Krohn, Berl. Phil.
Woch., 1897, xvii 773 ff-5 and Schmidt, Bursian's Jahresbericht, 1901, cviii,
iiSff.
Hey in Archiv f. Lat. Lex., 1907, xv, 287 ff. ; Degering, Berl. Phil.
Woch., 1907, xxvii, 1566 ff.; Nohl, Woch. Kl. Phil., 1906, xxiii, 1252 ff.
7 See Perrault's Vitruve, ed. 1673, note to Vitr. I, pr. I.
233
234 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ish translator Ortiz; 1 it was supported by the English
translator Newton 2 towards the end of the eighteenth,
and it has been revived at the beginning of the twentieth
century in a series of learned articles by M. Victor Mortet. 3
But what Degering has said 4 of the arguments of the
last of these scholars applies equally well to the arguments
of them all ; many, taken by themselves, may show that
our Vitruvius might possibly have been written in the
Flavian period, but not one of them shows that it must
have been written at that time, and none of them show
that it could not have been written in the Augustan age.
On the other hand, strong evidence is not wanting that
this work was produced early in the Augustan age, and
that it could not have been produced later. Some of this
evidence I have myself offered ; 6 more is to be found in
the writers whom I have already cited ; and some new
evidence I may present upon another occasion.
But in spite of it all, the preface which stands at the
very opening of the work seems at first thought to contain
words and ideas which belong only to a time when the
Roman Empire had been established for a considerable
1 Madrid, 1787, preface.
2 London, 1791, Vol. i, p. ix.
8 Rev. Archeologique, Ser. iii, 1902, xli, 39 ff. ; Ser. iv, 1904, iii, 222 ff.,
382 ff.; iv, 265 ff.; 1906, v, 268 ff.; 1907, ix, 75 ff.; x, 277 ff.; 1908, xi, 101 ff.
These articles contain much useful material for the study of Vitruvius.
* Berl. Phil. Wock., ibid. 1468.
6 See above, pp. 225 ff. But M. Mortet {Rev, Phil., 1906, xxxi, 66) has
rightly observed that nothing can be proved from Vitr. 243, 18, which I had
formerly quoted as evidence that Vitruvius could not have written after 22 B.C.
For we do not know that Vitruvius was speaking only of the city of Rome in
this passage. In the municipalities, aediles continued to serve as curatorcs
ludorum long after praetors superseded them in Rome.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 235
period and when more than one emperor had already
occupied the throne. In translations into modern lan-
guages, as well as in such commentaries as those of New-
ton, Schultz, Ussing, and Mortet, these words and ideas
are so represented or expounded that the difficulty of
applying them to an earlier age has seemed well-nigh in-
superable to many scholars, and not merely to those who
are approaching the critical study of Vitruvius for the first
time. If, however, we are convinced that the earlier part
of the Augustan age is a date which suits the rest of the
work, it is obvious that this difficulty cannot be insuperable.
To solve it we must rid ourselves of all those shades of
meaning in language and all those novelties of thought
which were imperial growths, and we must ask ourselves
at every point whether the words and ideas in question are
such as might well have been used by one who was
brought up under the Republic and who wrote soon after
its fall. If they are such, we must explain and translate
them accordingly, and so the difficulty will disappear. In
the present article, therefore, I propose to comment upon
the preface line by line, and then to give an English trans-
lation of it. Having been engaged during the past six
or seven years upon a translation (still unfinished) of the
whole of Vitruvius, I have often had occasion to think
of the points in question, and so perhaps I am not un-
qualified to deal with them. At the same time I am sub-
mitting a specimen of my methods to the criticism of
scholars, for I do not intend to be so diffuse in my com-
mentary when I come to publish my translation.
For the convenience of readers of this article, I begin
by printing the Latin text from Rose's second edition,
236 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
setting in the margin the page and line of his first edition,
to which commentaries always now refer.
TEXT
Cum divina tua mens et numen, imperator Caesar, im-p.i,i
perio potiretur orbis terrarum invictaque virtute cunctis ho-
stibus stratis, triumpho victoriaque tua cives gloriarentur et
gentes omnes subactae tuum spectarent nutum populusque
Romanus et senatus liberatus timore amplissimis tuis cogi- 5
tationibus consiliisque gubernaretur, non audebam, tantis oc-
cupationibus, de architectura scripta et magnis cogitationibus
explicata edere, metuens ne non apto tempore interpellans
subirem tui animi offensionem. cum vero attenderem te non
solum de vita communi omnium curam publicaeque rei con- 10
stitutione habere sed etiam de opportunitate publicorum aedi-
hciorum, ut civitas per te non solum provinciis esset aucta,
verum etiam ut maiestas imperii publicorum aedificiorum
egregias haberet auctoritates, non putavi praetermittendum
quin primo quoque tempore de his rebus ea tibi ederem. ideo 15
quod primum parenti tuo de eo fueram notus et eius virtutis
studiosus. cum autem concilium caelestium in sedibus in-
P. 2, i mortalitatis eum dedicavisset et imperium parentis in tuam
potestatem transtulisset, idem studium meum in eius memoria
permanens in te contulit favorem. itaque cum M. Aurelio
et P. Minidio et Gn. Cornelio ad apparationem ballistarum
5 et scorpionum reliquorumque tormentorum refectionem fui
praesto et cum eis commoda accepi. quae cum primo mihi
tribuisti, recognitionem per sororis commendationem servasti.
cum ergo eo beneficio essem obligatus ut ad exitum vitae
non haberem inopiae timorem, haec tibi scribere coepi quod
10 animadverti multa te aedificavisse et nunc aedificare, reliquo
quoque tempore et publicorum et privatorum aedificiorum pro
amplitudine rerum gestarum ut posteris memoriae tradantur
curam habiturum. conscripsi praescriptiones terminatas, ut
eas attendens et ante facta et futura qualia sint opera per
15 te posses nota habere. namque his voluminibus aperui omnes
disciplinae rationes.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 237
COMMENTARY
I. divina tua mens et numen: 'your divine intelligence
and will.' It may be asked whether a writer of the earlier
Augustan period would speak of or to the ruler in such
language. 1 But the use of the adjective divinus and the
substantive numen does not necessarily convey imperial
ideas of deification or of the ' divinity that doth hedge a
king.' In fact both words are applied to living Romans
in republican Latin. Thus Cicero, speaking to Julius
Caesar face to face, used the phrase tua divina virtus
{Marc. 26) ; of Pompey he has homo divina quadam mente
(Mil. 21), and Pompei divino consilio (Imp. P. 10); he
speaks of the ancestors of the Romans as homines divina
mente et consilio praeditos (L. A. 2. 90), and calls Marius
and Africanus each a divinum hominem (Sest. 50; Arch.
16; Mur. 75). They were then dead, but to the living
Octavian he was still more complimentary : cf. Phil. 5, 43,
hunc divinum adulescentem ; 13, 19, Caesaris incredibilis
ac divina virtus ; 5, 23, C. Caesar divina animi magni-
tudine ; 3, 3, adulescens, paene potius puer, incredibili ac
divina quadam mente atque virtute. And he does not
withhold the adjective, with a celestial addition, from the
men of certain legions when he says caelestis divinasque
legiones (Phil. 5, 28). As for numen, that it does not nec-
essarily imply actual deification or imperial ideas is clear
from Cicero again, as where he is speaking to the Roman
people : numen vestrum aeque mihi grave et sanctum ac
1 See Wolfflin in Arckw fur Lat. Lex., 1896, x, 301, where in comment-
ing on Ussing's first article he says : " Beispielsweise muss man zu bestimmen
suchen ob der Vf., wenn er unter Augustus lebte, den Kaiser in der Vorrede
anreden konnte mit den Worter divina tua mens et numen.
238 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
deorum immortalium in omni vita futurum (Post Red. 1 8,
cf. 25, cum vobis qui apud me deorum immortalium vim
et numen tenetis); and similarly Phil. 3, 32, magna vis
est, magnum numen unum et idem sentientis senatus. In
these passages numen implies no more than in Lucretius,
3, 144, cetera par animae . . . ad numen mentis mom enque
movetur. It means no more than 'will,' although it is a
very strong word to use in that sense; cf. Paul. Fest. 172,
numen quasi nutus dei ac potestas. In view of all this a writer
of the earlier part of the Augustan age may well have applied
divina mens et numen to the all-powerful ruler, and we need
not here raise the question whether he was already receiving
divine worship. In another passage (233, 4) Vitruvius
uses the phrase divina mens of the intelligence of learned
men who could predict changes in the weather ; he has it
also four times referring to "divine Providence " (138, 10;
184, 17; 218, 19; 231, 1 8); and the adjective divinus is
applied to qualities of the gods in two other places (185, 7;
245, 6). He does not use the word numen except in our
passage.
imperator Caesar: Here two questions come up for con-
sideration : (i) whether Augustus, after he had received
that name, was addressed by any other ; (2) whether there
is any English word by which imperator in this passage
can be properly translated. As for the first question, it
is generally believed that Vitruvius was aware that the
name Augustus 1 had been bestowed, and this leads
1 This belief rests on the usual interpretation of 107, 3, pronai aedis Au-
gusti, where the name seems to be recognized. But Sontheimer (see above,
note i) holds that we have here merely the adjective augusti agreeing with
pronai, and that consequently the phrase means something like ' a majestic
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS
239
Ussing l to assert that an inferior like Vitruvius could not
have avoided addressing him by that name. To this it might
be rejoined that perhaps the use of the name did not at once
become common, and that the absence of it here in Vitru-
vius points to a date soon after the name was conferred in
27 B. c. But we need not have recourse to this argument;
for what are the facts about the use of this name by per-
sons who were speaking or writing to Augustus and em-
ploying, as Vitruvius does, the vocative case ? The answer
is that we know very little about the matter, 2 for we have
very little evidence upon which to base a conclusion. We
know that Valerius Messala once addressed him in the
temple-pro naos.' He thinks that there was no 'temple' built at the rear
of this pronaos, but that the structure consisted of a pronaos only, containing
the tribunal. This theory is attractive, but I have not yet had time fully to
weigh it. Some objections, which may not be insuperable, readily suggest
themselves. But in this article I need only say that the disappearance of the
name Angusti would strengthen my arguments in support of this preface as
an early production. As for the reading angusti, found in cod. S (in general,
as Degering, Berl. Phil. Woch., 1900, xx, 9 ff., has shown, of the same inde-
pendent value as H and G), I cannot accept this reading in spite of Krohn's
remarks in Berl. Phil. Woch. t l897,xvii, 781. It is improbable that Vitruvius
should have spoken of a temple here without naming the divinity to whom it
was dedicated. Cod. H, which I have seen, and Cod. G, of which I have a
photograph of this page, both have augusti. Cod. E does not contain the
passage. The reading angusti is, however, found in several of the late manu-
scripts. In Florence I have seen it in Codd. Laur., 30, II ; 12; 13; also in
Cod. XVII, 5, of the Bibl. Naz. Centrale (though here the corrector gives
augusti) ; and in Venice in Cod. Marc. CCCCLXIII. Of these five manu-
scripts, the first three belong to the class of H (lacuna in 2, 18) and the
other two to the class of G and S. On the other hand, Cod. Laur. 30, 10,
which Degering (ibid.) says comes directly from S, has augusti. It does
indeed belong to the class of G and S. In Rome I observed that Cod. Urb.
293 and also the Vallicellanus (both of the G and S class) have augusti.
1 Observations, p. IO.
2 It has been briefly treated by Friedlander, S.-G., II, 557 (sixth edition),
but he does not include Ovid and Propertius in his examination.
240 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Senate with the words Caesar Auguste (Suet. Aug. 58).
We find Auguste once in Horace in a formal public ode (4,
14, 3), but Caesar in an ode equally formal and public, and
published at the same time as the other (4, 15, 4). In
view of this, what is to be thought of Ussing's contention
that in one of his Epistles (2, i, 4), Horace as an intimate
friend may quite suitably use Caesar, his family name ?
If we turn to Propertius, we find Anguste twice (3, 10, 15 ;
5> 6, 38), and never Caesar in the vocative. This might
seem to support Ussing's theory. But we must not forget
Ovid. In the longest poem of the Tristia he has Auguste
once (2,509), but Caesar in vocative five times (27; 209;
3 2 3 5 55 1 5 S^o). He uses Auguste in only one other pas-
sage in his works (M. I, 204), but he has Caesar in the
vocative seven times besides those already mentioned in
the Tristia (F. 2, 637; Tr. 3, i, 78; 5, 5, 61, all three in
prayers, which are formal things; Tr. 4, 2, 47; 5, n, 23;
P. 2, 7, 67; 4, 9, 128). This is all the evidence that I
have been able to find. 1 It is little enough, and it includes
only one prose example, but we must remember how small
is the amount of Augustan prose that has survived to us.
In view of it all, we are not entitled to criticise Vitruvius
for using Caesar instead of Auguste. Elsewhere he ad-
dresses his patron six times with the vocative Caesar (n,
i; 83, 18; 104, 22; 133, 6; 158, 8; 218, 13), and five
times with the vocative imperator ($2, 22; 64, 16; 83, 13;
103, i ; 243, 19). In our preface he combines the two in
imperator Caesar. His patron had been an imperator ever
1 It may be interesting to note that Martial addresses the reigning em-
peror of his day as Auguste nine times and as Caesar fifty-one times; ct.
Friedlander's edition, ii, index, p. 371.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 241
since 43 or 42 B.C. (cf. Cic. Phil. 14, 28, and 37 ; OIL. 9,
2142), and long after the name Augustus was given to him
his inscriptions regularly begin with the words imperator
Caesar. It seems perfectly natural that he should be ad-
dressed in this way by one who had served in the army.
But can the word imperator as thus used be translated into
English? I think not. If we employ 'emperor,' it
carries with it later Roman and modern ideas. And even
if it did not, 'emperor Caesar' in the vocative is not
idiomatic English. Nobody would say ' Emperor William '
to the Kaiser, though we use the phrase when we -peak
about him. The word 'general' sometimes suits an im-
perator of the republican period, but by no means always,
since its scope is too narrow. And to print 'General
Caesar ' here would certainly be an absurdity. The word
imperator, therefore, cannot be translated here, but must
be transliterated like other Roman titles, such as ' consul '
and ' praetor.'
2. imperio orbis terrarum : ' the right to command the
world.' There is nothing necessarily 'imperial' in this
expression, anymore than in Ad Herenn. 4, 13, cited below
on imperium transtulisset (2, i); cf. Vitruvius, 138, II,
cited below on potiretur. And the word imperium, aside
from its technical sense when applied to a high military
official (cf. Cic. Phil. 5, 45, demus imperium Caesari, sine
quo res militaris administrari, teneri exercitus, helium geri
non potesf), had also the general meaning of ' right to rule,'
'supreme power,' from Plautus down. Cf. Plaut Men.
1030, iubeo hercle, siquid imperist in te mihi: Caes. B. G.
7, 64, 8, civitati imperium totius provinciae pollicetur; Cic.
Font. 12, sub populi Romani imperium ceciderunt.
242 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
potiretur: 'engaged in acquiring.' This is a true im-
perfect in sense, as in 31, 7, cum Alexander rerum potire-
tur, though in 161, 13, cum Demetrius Phalereus Athenis
rerum potiretur, it has no doubt a completed meaning.
With orbis terrarum imperium it occurs also in 138, 11,
ita divina mens cimtatem populi Romani egregia tempe-
rataque regionem conlocavit, uti orbis terrarum imperii
potiretur. True imperfects are also gloriarentur (line 3),
spectarent (4), and gubernaretur (6) in our preface, like the
main verb audebam (6). For such imperfect subjunctives
combined with the imperfect indicative, where the cum
clause, coincident in time, is circumstantial, cf. Vitr. 156,
26; 250, 16; 251, 14 and 21; 283,9; Cic. D.N. i, 59,
Zenonem cum Athenis ess em t audiebam frequenter ; Fin.
2, 6 1, Decius cum se devoveret, . . . cogitabatf The cir-
cumstances to which Vitruvius refers are of course the
struggle with Caesar's murderers, and then with Antony,
ending with Actium, the conquest of Egypt, the days of
formal triumphs in Rome, and the beginning of the rule
of Octavian there. This passage shows that Vitruvius's
work could not have been published before August 13-15
(the days of the triple triumph) in 29 B.C.
4. tuum spectarent nutum: 'awaiting your nod,' 'your
beck and call.' Vitruvius has nutus elsewhere only in its
literal sense (33, 22), but this metaphorical sense is com-
mon enough in republican writers ; cf. Cic. Parad. 5, 39,
quern nutum locupletis orbi senis non observat ; Q. F. I, I,
22, tot urbes tot civitates unius hominis nutum intuentur.
The verb specto, though common in Vitruvius, is found
only here in this particular sense, but it may be paralleled
from Cicero; cf. Verr. 2, 33, cum iudex . . . voluntatem
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 243
spectaret ems, etc. ; Q. F. i, i, 35, non legem spectare cen-
soriam ; RA. 22, omnes in unum spectent.
populusque Romanus et senatus: for this unusual order
cf. Cic. Fam. 15, 2, 4; Sail. Jug. 41, 2 ; and Weissenborn
on Liv. 7, 31, 10. Vitruvius has elsewhere the usual order
(20, 17; 176, 17).
5. cogitationibus : ' conceptions,' so in Vitr. 34, 9 ; 103, i ;
161, 3 ; 216, 24. Somewhat similarly ' ideas,' 31, 7 and 23 ;
36, 9; 156, i; 'notions,' 103, 20; 'devices,' 137, 12; 138,
9; other shades of meaning are 'consideration,' 215, 20;
'reflection,' i, 7; 12,4 and 5; 'deliberation,' 15, 2; 269,
9; 'power of thought,' 36, 4; 132, n; and in the phrase
cogitatio scripturae, 263, 9, like our 'thread of the dis-
course.' On Vitruvius's use of the plural of this and
other abstracts I have written elsewhere. 1
6. tantis occupationibus : 'in view of your serious em-
ployments.' The phrase may be either an ablative abso-
lute (so with Rose's punctuation) or a dat. incommodi.
With most commentators I take occupationibus as referring
to Augustus, though Schneider refers it to Vitruvius.
7. de architectural scripta et magnis cogitationibus expli-
cata : ' my writings and long-considered ideas on architec-
ture,' or literally ' things written and set forth with long
reflection.' For cogitatio in this sense, cf. 12, 5, cogitatio
est cura, studii plena et industriae mgilantiaeque, effectus
propositi cum voluptate. For magnis, ' great ' in the sense
of 'much/ 'long' (not 'grand' or 'important'), cf. 214, 7,
quod magno labore fabri normam facientes perducere pos-
sunt, ' the result which carpenters reach very laboriously
with their squares.' This is like the vulgar use shown in
1 Language of Vitruvius, see above, p. 168.
244 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Bell. Hisp. 12, magnum tempus consumpserunt ; cf. Justin,
n, 10, 14, magno post tempore (see Schmalz, Antibarba-
rus, s.v. magnus). Somewhat similar are magno negotio in
Caes. B. G. 5, n, 2 (cf. Bell. Alex. 8), and magna industria,
Sail. Hist. 4, 2 M. The phrase de architectura . . . expli-
cata does not necessarily signify that Vitruvius's book was
finished before the time indicated in the next sentence, and
that it was merely slightly revised before being dedicated
to his patron and published. 1 If there is any particular
force beyond the natural logic of the Latin language to
be attached to the perfect tenses of scripta and explicata,
Vitruvius may refer merely to his preliminary collections
and studies, and perhaps especially to what he elsewhere
sometimes calls commentariiy the notes and abstracts
made by himself and other architects in the course of their
professional studies; cf. 3, 17, litteras architectum scire
oportet uti commentariis memoriam firmiorem efficcre pos-
sit ; 132, 27, philologis et philotechnis rebus commentario-
rumque scripturis me delectans. With regard to magnis
cogitationibus , Ussing and Mortet 2 are troubled because
they take magnis in the sense of ' grand ' or ' lofty,' and
feel that Vitruvius would be presumptuous in applying
much the same language to his own thoughts and to those
of Augustus (cf. amplissimis tuis cogitationibus just above).
1 This is the theory of Krohn, Berl. Phil. Woch., 1897, xvii, 773 f., and
Dietrich, Quaestionum Vitr. Specimen, answered by Degering, Berl. Phil.
Woch., 1907, xxvii, 1372. Sontheimer (see above, p. 233, note 2) revives it in a
somewhat different form, holding that the work was ready in 32 B.C., but that
publication was delayed until some time between August of the year 29 and
January of the year 27, when it was published with the addition of the pref-
aces to the various books, but without any other additions.
2 Rev, Arch., 1902, xli, 46.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 245
Mortet therefore proposes to take magnis cogitationibus
with edere in the same construction (presumably dative)
as tantis occupationibus, and he translates as follows : ' Je
n'osais pas mettre au jour pour vous mes Merits sur 1'archi-
tecture a cause de vos si grandes occupations, ni vous sou-
mettre mes commentaires sur cet art, alors que vous avez
de grands soucis de gouvernement.' But strange as Vitru-
vius may often be in his methods of expressing himself, I
know of no other passage in his whole work that is so dis-
torted in arrangement as this one would be if we accept
the explanation of Mortet, who indeed does not pretend to
have found any parallel for it. His other explanation,
that perhaps et before magnis means ' even,' is not happier
nor is either explanation necessary.
10. publicize rei constitutione : 'the establishment of
public order ' ; cf . Cic. Marc. 27, hie restat acfus, in hoc
elaborandum est, ut rem publicam constituas.
11. de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum : 'public
buildings intended for purposes of utility.' Here oppor-
tunitate must be interpreted by Vitruvius's own definition
of the word in 15, 9 ff.: publicorum autem distributions
sunt ires, e quibus est una defensionis, altera religionis,
tertia opportunitatis. . . . Opportunitatis communium lo-
corum ad usum publicum dispositio, uti portus fora porticus
balineae theatra inambulationes ceteraque quae isdem rationi-
bus in publicis locis designantur, that is : ' there are three
classes of public buildings, the first for defensive, the
second for religious purposes, and the" third for purposes
of utility. . . . Under utility, the provision of meeting
places for public use, such as harbors, markets, colonnades,
baths, theatres, promenades, and all other similar arrange-
246 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ments in public places.' With this compare the use of the
same word in 128, 22, and 134, 9.
12. utcivitas . . . auctoritates: ' so that not only should
the State have been enriched with provinces by your
means, but that the greatness of its power might likewise
be attended with distinguished authority in its public
buildings.' Here civitas, the main subject, is thrust for-
ward, and maiestas imperil, 'the greatness of its power,'
refers to it. This phrase does not mean 'the majestic
empire,' nor does it necessarily convey any other idea in-
consistent with republican times, for it is found in Cicero,
R. A, 131, Sullam, cum solus rem publicam gubernaret im-
perique maiestatem quam armis receperat, iam legibus confer-
maret. For another example of maiestas referring literally
to size, cf. Vitr. 52, 18, in ea autem maiestate urbis et
civium infinita frequentia.
provinciis esset aucta : If strictly interpreted, the com-
pleted tense esset aucta seems to show that the provinces
had already been added, while the following haberet may in-
dicate that the buildings were not yet finished. Egypt became
a province in 30 B.C., and Cyprus in 27 B.C., while Moesia
was at least an administrative district as early as 29 B.C. 1
14. auctoritates: Here Mortet 2 has this note: 'Vitruve
revient a plusieurs reprises, a propos d'6difices, sur ce qu'il
appelle des modeles d'architecture, auctoritas, auctoritates
aedificii, c'est-a-dire conformes aux regies de 1'art et aux
meilleures traditions architectoniques (Voy. 1' Index de
1 On all these, see Marquardt, Rom. Staatsverw.? i, pp. 439, 391, 302.
The existence of Galatia and Pamphylia as provinces cannot be certified be-
fore 25 B.C. (Marquardt, ibid., 358, 375).
3 Rev. Arch., 1902, xli, 58, n. I.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 247
Nohl, v auctoritas}: That is to say, he would render
publicorum aedificiorum egregias auctoritates by some such
phrase as ' unsurpassed models of public buildings.' J
But I have carefully examined all the occurrences cited in
Nohl's Index, and do not find one in which the word
means 'a model' or 'models.' It occurs twenty times
besides here. In nine, it is applied to scholars or archi-
tects or to their writings, and it signifies their ' influence '
or 'authority' (2, 26; 3, 3; n, 9; 62, 25; 63, 8; 103, 4
and 5 ; 173, 19; 218, 12). In one, it refers to the severe
dignity of a certain kind of music (in, 18). In the other
ten passages it refers to buildings, and denotes their dignity
or imposing effect (e.g., 72, 22, conservavit auctoritatem to-
tiusoperis, and cf. 12, 25 ; 72, I ; 73, I ; 81, 1 1 ; 107, 26 ; 154,
17; 161, 15; 162,4; I 75 5)- So Turnebus, Advers. 1195,
45, explains our passage by ' dignitates et pulchritudines!
non putavi: On this phrase I have already written else-
where. 2 Schmalz, in a private letter to me, compares the
Ciceronian use of nego, nolo, veto (Acad. 2, 121 ; Mur. 59;
Off- i, 30), where the negative idea does not really belong
to the main verb.
15. de his rebus ea: 'my writings on this theme.'
Here ea refers to scrip ta et explicata in line 7, though the
identity should not be too closely pressed ; nor should his
rebus be thought of as referring only to publicorum aedifici-
orum, since it includes also the ideas expressed in opportu-
nitate and egregias auctoritates. Hence it must be rendered
generally, as I have suggested in the phrase 'this theme.'
1 Marini in his note to the passage had already rendered the word by
exempla, without citing any parallels.
8 Language of Vitruvius, see above, p. 189.
248 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
ideo quod: For this phrase used at the beginning of a
sentence like a particle of inference, cf. Vitr. 88, 21. I do
not know any other exact parallel.
16. parenti tuo : i.e. Julius Caesar, here and two lines
below, called the parens of the person to whom Vitruvius
writes, while in 203, 13, the word pater*- is used of him.
But nothing is to be argued seriously from the different
words, 2 since fortunately Augustus himself in the Monu-
mentum Ancyranum calls his adoptive father both parens
(i, 10) and pater (2, 24; 3, 7; 4, 14). It may be conven-
ient to assemble here the other passages in which Vitruvius
refers to Julius Caesar. There are two of them. In one
he calls him divus Caesar (59, 18); four lines further im-
perator (59, 22), and a little below simply Caesar (60, 4).
In that passage he is relating an anecdote about a cam-
paign in the Alps. In the other passage, where he is
giving examples of pycnostyle temples, we find the clause
quemadmodum est divi lulii et in Caesaris foro Veneris (70,
1 8). Both these passages, therefore, like the words which
follow in the preface which we are studying, show that
Vitruvius wrote after the deification of Julius, which took
place by decree not long after his death (Plut. Caes. 67;
cf. CIL. i, 626; 9, 2628).
1 Retaining, as I think we must, the reading patre Caesare ; so Mortet,
Rev. Arch., 1902, xli, 69; Degering, Berl. Phil. Woch., 1907, xxvii, 1468,
instead of Rose's emendation patre Caesari. The word patre is inserted here
by Vitruvius for fear that readers should think he meant the living Caesar
(Augustus) ; so Cicero, Phil., 5, 49, utinam C. Caesari, patri dico, contigisset,
etc.; ibid. 39, Pompeio enim patre.
2 Though Degering (I.e.), arguing against Mortet's hypothesis, suggests
that parens is a more appropriate term for the adoptive father and uncle of
Augustus than for the actual father of Titus.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 249
de eo : The singular eo is used rather loosely here after
ea and his rebus, but ' that thing ' can mean nothing except
architecture, so that there is no danger of confusion here
any more than in Cic. Att. 9, 10, 10, perlegi omnes tuas (lit-
teras) et in eo acquievi. As for the use of causal de,
I have defended it against Ussing's strictures in another
place. 1
fueram notus: On this use of fueram with the pf. partc.,
see Landgraf, Hist. Gramm., Heft i, 220 ff., who says that
it is found ten times in Vitruvius against seven occurrences
of the regular formation with eram.
eius virtutis studiosus : This awkwardness of the de-
pendence of one genitive (eius} upon another (virtutis) is
found elsewhere in Vitruvius : cf. a leone transiens in vir-
ginem progrediensque ad sinum vestis eius (227, 9); timore
eorumfortitudiniseffectus, 'for fear of the effect of their
courage ' (three genitives ! 5, 7). The expression 'devoted
to his virtus,' though logically correct in Latin, means in
idiomatic English, ' devoted to him on account of his virtus?
and in this way I have rendered it. In cod. S, cod. Es-
tensis, 2 and in eight codd. of Marini, as well as in the
Venetian edition of 1497, the word erat stands between
virtutis and studiosus. If this meant anything, it would
mean that Julius Caesar ' was interested in the excellence
of architecture ' (eius referring to eo, and cf. 64, 15, nostrae
scientiae virtu tern}. But studiosus is resumed just below
(2, 2) by idem studium meum, so that the reading erat
hardly deserves further attention. The word virtutis in
this clause is not to be confined to military valor (as in i,
^Language of Vitruvius, see above, p. 187.
2 See Sola, Riv. d. Bibliottche, 1900, xi, 35 ff.
250 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
2), nor to moral worth, but is used in a much more general
sense; hence I have rendered it by 'great qualities.'
17. concilium caelestium: cf. Cic. Off. 3, 25, Herculem
quern hominum fama in concilia caelestium collocavit. But
as Schneider notes : ' satis dextre adulatur Octaviano Vitru-
vius, dum patrem non a Romanis inter deorum numerum
relatum, sed ab ipso deorum concilio allectum et dedicatum
fuisse ait.' Vitruvius uses caelestes as a substantive again
in 102, 22; cf. Cic. Phil. 4, 10.
Page 2, I. imperium parentis in tuam potestatem trans-
tulisset: 'transferred your father's power to your hands.'
Here Mortet 1 has this observation : ' La maniere dont
Vitruve parle de la translation de la dignite imperiale ap-
pelle aussi une remarque qui n'est pas sans interet Ce
n'est pas a Auguste, pensons-nous avec W. Newton, que
Vitruve aurait parld d'une translation r6guliere de 1'empire.
Le langage de 1'auteur de la Preface s'applique a une
^poque ou Ton 6tait deja habitu6 a des changements
r^guliers dans la premiere fonction de 1'Etat: Auguste ne
1'aurait point toleYe" pour des raisons politiques qu'il est
facile de comprendre.' But it is a pure assumption that
Vitruvius is speaking of ' a regular transmission of the em-
pire,' and the very use of the word ' empire ' in this con-
nection is a part of the difficulty created, as I have
suggested above, by modern commentators, and not really
existing in the Latin of Vitruvius. I have already pointed
out (in my note on I, 2) the republican meaning of impe-
rium. Julius Caesar had imperium, and we know that
Octavian received it in 43 or 42 B.C. (see on i, i). The
language of our preface is therefore no more ' imperial '
1 Rev. Arch., 1902, xli, 47.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 2$ I
than is the language of the unknown republican orator in
Ad Herennium, 4, 13; imperium orbis terrae . . . ad se
transferre ; cf. Caes. B. G. 7, 63, 5, ut ipsis summa imperi
transdatur. The verb transfero was the regular one to use
of transfers of power ; cf. Cic. L. A. 2, 54, earum rerum
omnium potestatem ad decemviros esse trans latam ; Mur. 2,
cum omnis deorum immortalium potestas aut translata sit
ad vos ; and Mon. Ancyr. 6, 15, rempublicam ex mea potes-
tate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli.
When we get down to Tacitus we do indeed find : suscepere
duo manipulares imperium populi Romani transferendum,
et trans tulerunt (H. i, 25). But there was nothing ' regu-
lar ' in this transfer !
2. idem studium meum in eius memoria permanens:
We should not separate these words as does Mortet, 1 who
punctuates thus: idem studium meum, in eius memoria ,
permanens in te, contulit favorem, and translates, ' Le
meme zele que j'avais de sons temps, subsistant envers
vous, m'a apport6 votre faveur.' He compares 63, 12,
aeterna memoria ad posteritatem sunt permanentes. But
I believe that the idea which Vitruvius was struggling to
express was this : ' While Caesar was among us, I was
devoted to his person ; now that he is gone, my devotion
continuing unchanged as I remembered him,' etc. He
expresses it obscurely, but for a somewhat similar use of
in memoria, cf. Cic. Aft. 9, 1 1 A, 3, pius . . . in maximi
beneficii memoria, ' loyal as I remember my extreme obli-
gation ' ; and for the mere syntax of permanens with in
and the ablative, cf. for instance Cic. Fam. 5, 2, 10, ut in
mea erga te voluntate permanerem, and Quint. 3, 4, 4, mihi
1 Rev. Arch., 1902, xli, 49.
2$2 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
in ilia vetere persuasione permanenti. Ussing 1 renders
the phrase thus : ' this ardor of mine in clinging to his
memory ' ; but even if in memoria is really Latin in
this sense (which may be doubted), it is surely not in
accordance with the usage of Vitruvius. He has the
word memoiia sixteen times besides here. In six passages
it denotes literally the faculty of memory (3, 18; 7, 23 ; 10,
10 ; 103, 22; 104, ii ; 157, 12). In five, it refers to the
future, to the record which one is to leave for pos-
terity, as in the phrase posteris memotiae tradi (cf. 2, 12 ;
4, 22; 63, 12; 155, ii and 19). Once it means 'fame'
(63, 1 8); twice we have the common nostra memoria, 'in
our time* (162, 7; 251, 3), and once post nostra memo-
riam (218, 4). 2 Finally there is a peculiar usage of the
plural, probably in the sense of ' history ' (217, 20). It is
obvious that the idea of ' remembering ' and of ' memory '
in the literal sense is the prevalent meaning in Vitruvius,
and so I have taken it in our passage.
3. in te contulit favorem: Schneider has this note :
* displicet in sermone Vitruvii favor, quern is transtulit ad
filium, cum potius ex nostrorum hominum sensu petere ab
Octaviano deberet, ut is in memoria patris permanens ad
Vitruvium favorem transferret.' And Ussing 3 translates :
' This ardor of mine has transferred its favor to thee,' and
then he remarks upon the idea as 'coarse and out of taste.'
These criticisms seem based upon a mistaken notion of the
meaning of the Latin word favor. It is not at all a com-
1 Observations, p. 9.
2 These last three occurrences really afford no support to Mortet's strange
interpretation of in eius memoria.
3 Observations, pp. 9 f.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 253
mon word, particularly in republican Latin. It is not
found in Ennius, Plautus, Terence, Caesar, or Nepos.
Cooper 1 speaks of it as one of the seven substantives in
-or that are found in Cicero and not in earlier writers. In
its meaning it is very restricted ; indeed, it is almost tech-
nical until well on in the imperial period, and the English
word ' favor ' is consequently an exceedingly unfortunate
one to employ in the translation of it. In republican and
early imperial times it appears to be confined to the the-
atrical and political spheres, in which it denotes the
'applause' or 'support' which is given to an actor or
to a politician by his well wishers. Cicero uses it only
four times. In Rose. Com. 29, speaking of the actor
Panurgus, he says : quam enim spem et expectationem, quod
studium et quern favorem secum in scaenam attulit Panur-
gus, quod Rosci fuit discipulus. Qui diligebant hunc, illi
favebant. And in Sest. 115, in a passage where he is
speaking of expressions of popular opinion at theatrical
or other shows, we find : qui rumore et, ut ipsi loquuntur,
favore populi tenetur et ducitur. Here the use of the tech-
nical term favore is excused by ut ipsi loquuntur. And
similarly in the very significant quotation by Quintilian
(8, 3, 34) from a lost letter of Cicero's we have 'favorem '
et ' urbanum' Cicero nova credit. Nam et in epistula ad
Brutum eum, inquit amorem et eum, ut hoc verbo utar,
favorem in consilium advocabo. Obviously Cicero is here
transferring the theatrical usage of the word to the politi-
cal sphere. 2 And the same is true of the fourth passage
1 Word Formation in tlie Sermo Plebeius, 25.
2 See Holden in his edition of Pro Sestio, 115, where he gives a note by
Reid. And for further illustration, cf. Hor. Ep. 2, I, 9; C. 4, 8, 26; Verg. A.
5. 343-
254 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
in which he employs it, Legg. 2, n, quae (leges) sunt varie
et ad tempus discriptae populis, favore magis qtiam re
legum nomen tenent. This same idea is found in the
author who is the next to employ the word, Sallust : cf .
J. 13, 7, in gratiam et favorem nobilitatis; J. 73, 4, generis
humilitas favorem addiderat (said of Marius). So in Livy,
who perhaps has the word only once, we find regimen
totius magistrates penes Appium erat favore plebis (3,
33, 7). And finally I may cite Veil. Pat. 2, 54, 2, ingens
partium eius (Pompei} favor bellum excitaverat Africa-
num; cf. also 2, 43, 3; 89, i; 92,4. In none of these
authors is there anything like the condescending tone
which is often implied by the English word ' favor ' or the
German ' Gunst,' and which is what gives offense to
Ussing and Schneider. But we may go further and
observe that the same restricted interpretation will usually
hold good in republican Latin for the related words fautor
and faveo. The theatrical sense of fautor (in the form
favitor) comes out very clearly three times in the prologue
to the Amphitruo of Plautus (67; 78; 79). 1 It denotes a
political supporter in Cic. Fam. i, 9, n, cuius (Pompei}
dignitatis ego ab adulescentia fautor; cf. 10, 12, 5> -dtf.
I, 1 6, n. In the orations of Cicero it occurs nine times
in this sense: e.g. nobilitatis fautor (R. A. 16); fautores
Antoni(Phil. 12, 2). So Sallust, H. 3, 88 (M.), Pompeius
. . . sermone fautorum similem fore se ere dens Alexandro;
cf. J. 15, 2, fautores legatorum. And Livy uses it in the
sense of 'partisans' in i, 48, 2, clamor ab utrisque fau-
toribus oritur. The verb faveo occurs earlier than either
1 In two fragments of Lucilius we have not enough of the context to assure
us of the exact meaning of the word. But see Marx on frag. 269 f., and cf. 902.
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 255
favor or fautor. It is found in Naevius (ap. Non. 205,
27), but here we have not context enough to help us to its
meaning. In another fragment (ap. Front. Ep. ii, 10, p.
33 Nab.), which begins regum filiis linguis faveant, the
verb seems already to convey the idea of 'support.' This
comes out clearly in Ennius, Ann. 291 (Vahlen), Romanis
luno coepit placata favere; and the theatrical usage seems
to me to appear in Ann. 419, matronae moeros complent
spectare faventes. In Terence, Eun. 916, illi faveo virgini
is said by a 'supporter' (though not political) of the
maiden in question, and in Andr. Prol. 24, favete, adeste
aequo animo, we have again the theatrical meaning of
'applaud.' But when we reach the classical period, the
political meaning is very prominent. Caesar uses the verb
five times, and always in this sense: e.g. B. C. 2, 18, 6,
provinciam omnem Caesaris rebus favere cognoverat (cf.
i, 7, i; i, 28, i ; B. G. 6, 7, 7; i, 18, 8). See also Cicero,
Fam. 12, 7, i, favebam et rei publicae, cui semper favi, et
dignitati tuae (cf. 10. i, 3, and 3, 2; Att. 12, 49, i). And
in his orations, Cicero employs the verb some twenty-five
times in this sense: 1 e.g. Sest. 21, omnes boni semper
nobilitati favemus; cf. Plane. 18. Sallust uses faveo in
the political sense in Cat. 1 7, 6, iuventus pleraque Catilinae
inceptis favebant; cf. 48, i; J. 85, 5. Finally I may cite
Veil. Pat. 2, 26, 2, faventis (ace. pi.) Sullae partibus. In
view of all this, I think that it should be granted that
when Vitruvius uses the word in our passage, 3 he is think-
ing of this technical political sense. He had served under
1 In the theatrical sense he employs it (as well as the substantive favor)
in R. C., 29, which I have already quoted (p. 253).
z He has it nowhere else, nor faveo, nor fautor.
256 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
Julius Caesar and was devoted (studiosus) to him. When
Caesar was gone, 'my devotion, continuing unchanged as
I remembered him (idem studium meum in eius memoria
permanens), bestowed its support upon you (in te contulit
favor em)? This is a literal translation of the passage.
Vitruvius may take a clumsy way of saying 'inclined me
to support you,' but certainly no statesman to-day or in
antiquity would see anything coarse or out of taste in an
author's recalling the fact that, at a critical period, he had
lent that statesman his support. And this interpretation
of the passage involves no distortion of the plain intent of
the Latin; for the construction and meaning of in te contu-
lit favorem is illustrated by Cic. Fam. 1 3, 50, 2, in me
officia et studia Brundisi contulisti; cf. Att. i, i, 4; Fam.
10, i, 3; 15, 2, 8. 1 The usage of Vitruvius himself offers
us no exact parallel, 2 but many examples similar to those
which I have cited are given in the new Thesaurus, s.v.
confero (184, 30-72) under the lemma 'beneficia sim. in
aliquem conferre.' 8 There is, however, an entirely
1 Mortet, Rev. Arch., 1902, xli, 50, has this note: 'La vraie forme
classique serait ici conciliavit et 1'on attendrait mSme plut8t a attulit qu'a
contulit? But the difference between contulit and attulit is excellently shown
by Cic. Fam. 10, 5, I, itaque commemoratio tua paternae necessitudinis bene-
volentiaeque eius quam erga me a pueritia contulisses, ceterarumque rerum
. . . incredibilem mihi laetitiam attulerunt. However, Mortet is supporting
a different translation for our passage, of which I shall speak later (p. 257).
2 The nearest is 159, 12, quibus felicitas maximum summumque coniulit
munus, where we have the dative instead of in and the accusative. Else-
where Vitruvius has the verb five times in the literal sense of ' bring together'
(33,5; 43, 10; 158,12; 168, 14; 280, li); once meaning 'compare' (157,
13) ; and once each in the common phrases se conferre (105, 26) and sermonen
conferre (218, 7).
3 Our passage is not included here, but is wrongly, as I believe, placed
under the lemma ' potestatem, honores, sim. deferre' (182, 30).
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 357
different interpretation of in te contulit favorem which
should be mentioned here, although I consider it erro-
neous. It has the support of Newton, Gwilt, Reber, and
Mortet. Newton translates: 'procured me thy favor';
Gwilt: 'has been the cause of your goodwill towards me';
Reber: 'mir auch Deine Gunst erworben hat'; Mortet:
'm'apport votre faveur.' It will be observed that these
versions, all practically the same, are probably due in the
first instance to that misconception of the meaning of the
word favorcm to which I have already referred. But
even taking favorem in its correct sense and extending it
a little so as to apply to Augustus's ' support ' of Vitruvius,
I do not see how in te contulit favorem can mean 'ac-
quired ' or ' procured me thy support.' There are some
examples of the use of confero gathered in the Thesaurus
(175, 1 6 ff.) under the lemma 'iungendo efficere aliquid,
componere, acquirere,' but, after a careful examination of
them, I do not find one which confirms that meaning here,
and to adopt it would oblige us to take te as ablative, not
accusative, which in this context seems impossible. Marini
evidently felt this strongly, for he emended in te to in me.
At first thought, the following itaque might seem logically
to call for this interpretation. Perhaps it would, if itaque
fui praesto must be rendered 'hence I have been appointed'
(Gwilt, cf . Terquem, p. 76) ; but there is nothing of this sort
necessarily implied in praesto. Vitruvius merely says : ' I
became one of your supporters, and hence I was ready,' etc.
Aurelio . . . Minidio . . . Cornelia: These men cannot
be identified with any persons otherwise known to us. The
nomina Aurelius and Cornelius were of course common
under the republic, but the gens Minidia is elsewhere
258 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
known, so far as I am aware, only from a tombstone found
at Ostia (CIL. 14, 1356), and presumably of the imperial
period. There is no Ms. evidence for the reading Numisio
substituted in our passage by Schneider, Stratico, and
some earlier editors in order to identify the college of
Vitruvius with the architect of the theatre of Herculaneum
(CIL. 10, 1446).
4. ad apparationem . . . fui praesto : For the meaning
and the syntax of praesto with ad and accusative, cf . Cic.
Fam. 4, 8, I, ad omnia quae tui velint ita sim praesto ;
Deiot. 24, non solum ad hospitium sed ad periculum etiam
atque ad aciem praesto fuit ; and for# !4> *4
turn quasi mutua recognitione facta. This meaning of the
substantive is found also in the verb recognosco; cf. Cic.
Fam. 12, 12, i, and T. D. i, 57; and particularly Livy 5,
1 6, 7, receptis agrorum suorum spoliis Romam revertuntur.
Biduum ad recognoscendas res datum dominis ; tertio incog-
nita sub hasta veniere. But it is at once clear that this
meaning of recognitio will not suit the passage in Vitruvius,
where there is no question of the renewal of an acquaint-
ance between him and Augustus. We must therefore seek
another meaning, and we find at once that, except in Gellius,
it conveys but one idea, that of an investigation, inspec-
tion, or review. Thus Livy has it in 42, 19, \,pcr recogni-
tionem Postumi consults magnapars agri Campani rccuperata
1 Unless the reading of inferior codd. be accepted in Verr, 4, no.
266 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
in publicum erat (cf. 42, i. 6, senatui placuit L. Postumium
consulem ad agrum publicum a private terminandtim in Cam-
paniaw. ire). Similarly of an inspection of clothing and
tools in Coll. n, i, 21, and of the equites in Suet. Claud.
1 6. Seneca has it of self-examination (recognitionem sui,
Ira 3, 36, 2). The elder Pliny, in his celebrated account of
the habits of the ants (N. H. n, 109), says that they have
regular times on which they meet and inspect together the
stock which they have gathered : et quoniam ex diverse
convehunt altera alterius ignara, certi dies ad recognitionem
mutuam nundinis dantur. Here the context shows that
recognitionem does not mean a recognition of the ants by
each other, and as ants live a community life it does not
signify the identification or ' knowing again ' of individual
property, as in the Livian passage (5, 16, 7) already quoted.
This same idea of an investigation or inquiry survived in
low Latin ; cf . Du Cange (ed. Favre), s.v., where we find
that the word was used in charters to denote inquiries into
cases of disputed lands (cf. Livy 42, 19, i, quoted above).
These are the only meanings of recognitio which I have
found in ancient Latin. Although Vitruvius does not use
the word elsewhere, yet he has the participle recognoscentes
once (213, 1 1 ), where, after speaking of the useful discov-
eries made by great men, he adds : quae recognoscentes
necessario his tribui honores oportere homines confitebuntur,
'on reviewing these discoveries, people will admit that
honors ought to be bestowed upon them.' In this sense,
recognosco, though a less technical word, is often a synonym
of recenseo, as a glance at any good lexicon will show.
This is well illustrated by Columella, n, i, 20, turn etiam
per ferias instrumentum rusticum (vilicus) recognoscat et
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 267
saepius inspiciat ferramenta as compared with 11, i, 21,
tarn vestem servitionim quam, tit dixi,ferramenta bis debebit
singulis mensibus recensere, Nam frequens recognitio nee
impunitatis spent nee peccandi locum praebet. Now in
the passage in our preface, to what does recognitio refer ?
Obviously to commoda, for Vitruvius says : ' after originally
bestowing these upon me, you continued (servasti, see
below) your recognitio ' which can only mean ' your re-
cognitio of these commoda' It is natural to suppose that
the Roman ruler reviewed or revised at intervals the list of
persons who were receiving commoda, and that at such
times suggestions for additions to the list might be made.
Persons whose names were in the list might well be de-
scribed as recogniti, just as recensi was used of persons in
the list of those who received corn at the public cost; cf.
Suet. Caes. 41, in demortiiorum locum ex Us qui recensi non
essent. And the act of setting a name in the list would
thus, by a slight extension of meaning, be expressed by the
word recognitio. But as Vitruvius had at some earlier time
(primo) received commoda, the act in his case was a renewal,
and this to his mind may have been further indicated by
the prefix re- in recognitio, especially as contrasted with
prime. And we may perhaps also compare the common
phrase found in the diplomata of discharged soldiers:
descriptum et recognitum ex tabula aenea, etc. (Dessau,
Inscr. Lat. i, 1986 ff.). Our whole sentence, then, may
best be rendered : 'After your first bestowal of these upon
me, you continued to renew them on recommendation of
your sister.'
sororis : Octavia, the sister of Augustus, died in 1 1 B.C.
(Liv. Per. 140; Dio C. 54, 35> We know that she had
268 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
influence with her brother ; cf . her successful appeal for
the proscribed husband of Tanusia (Dio C. 47, 7). A book
was dedicated to her by Athenodorus, son of Sandon
(cf. Plut. Popl. 17, 'A#77PoS&>/>09 6 SaySwvo? ev r7> I 5 l > 2 > I 59 2I )>
and of the use of conscriptio, 'treatise,' three times (103,
14; 104,4; 1 SS> IO )- Cf. also Cic. Top. 5, itaque haec,
cum mecum libros non haberem, memoria repetita in ipsa
navigatione conscripsi tibique ex itinere misi; Verr. 2, 122,
leges conscribere ; Brut. 46, praecepta conscribere (and so
Vitr. 5, 28; 159, 21).
praescriptiones terminatas : ' definite rules ' ; cf . ' be-
stimmte Vorschriften ' (Reber). Vitruvius always uses
praescriptio in this sense: cf. 62, 8; 121, 23; 204, 13;
280, 10. In all these passages he promises success to
those who follow the 'rules.' See also his use of the
verb praescribo in 5, 19 and 83, 17; also Cic. Acad. 2, 140,
praescriptionem naturae; T.D.4, 22,praescriptione rationis.
The verb termino appears in only one other place in
Vitruvius, 64, 20, terminavi finitionibus, ' I have defined
the limits ' ; but cf. Cic. Fin. I, 46, ipsa natura divitias
. . . et parabiles et terminatas. Further light on the mean-
ing of the verb may be got from the use of the substantive
THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS 271
terminatio, which occurs thirteen times in Vitruvius. In
five of these it means ' limits.' (36, 2^,finire terminationi-
bus, cf. 64, 20, terminavi finitionibus just quoted above ;
28,8; 67,20; 112,6; 113,21); 'end' in 103, 13; 'ter-
minating point,' 135, 21 ; 'boundary,' 203, 5; 232, 2;
'departments,' 12, 8; 'extremities,' in, 2; 'rules' or
'laws,' 155, 16; 'scope,' 32, 28.
1 6. disciplinae : 'art,' used of architecture in 133, 26;
160, 9; of other arts in 6, 20; 10, 11, and 14; 36, 6; 224,
23-
TRANSLATION
While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar,
were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world,
and while your fellow-citizens, when all their enemies had
been laid low by your invincible valor, were glorying in
your triumph and victory, while all foreign nations were
in subjection awaiting your beck and call, and the Roman
people and senate, released from their alarm, were begin-
ning to be guided by your most noble conceptions and
policies, I hardly dared, in view of your serious employ-
ments, to publish my writings and long-considered ideas
on architecture, for fear of subjecting myself to your dis-
pleasure by an unseasonable interruption. But when I
saw that you were giving your attention not only to the
welfare of society in general and to the establishment of
public order, but also to the providing of public buildings
intended for purposes of utility, so that not only should the
State have been enriched with provinces by your means, but
that the greatness of its power might likewise be attended
with distinguished authority in its public buildings, I
thought that I ought to take the first opportunity to lay
2/2 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
before you my writings on this theme. For in the first
place it was this subject which made me known to your
father, to whom I was devoted on account of his great
qualities. After the council of heaven gave him a place
in the dwellings of immortal life and transferred your
father's power to your hands, my devotion continuing
unchanged as I remembered him inclined me to support
you. And so with Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius,
and Gnaeus Cornelius, I was ready to supply and repair
ballistae, scorpiones, and other artillery, and I have re-
ceived rewards for good service with them. After your
first bestowal of these upon me, you continued to renew
them on the recommendation of your sister.
Owing to this favor I need have no fear of want to the
end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I
began to write this work for you, because I saw that you
have built and are now building extensively, and that in
future also you will take care that our public and private
buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the
side of your other splendid achievements. I have drawn
up definite rules to enable you, by observing them, to have
personal knowledge of the quality both of existing build-
ings and of those which are yet to be constructed. For in
the following books I have disclosed all the principles of
the art.
OCCASIONAL VERSES 2 73
GREX SPECTATORIBVS S 1
O ALVETE, o domini, graves magistri,
O Doctrina satis et super repleti.
Salvete, o comites laboriosi,
Et quantum est comitum otiosiorum.
Conlegi venerabiles alumni
Salvete, o 'iuvenes senesque salsi.
Vos salvere boni hospites iubemus,
Eruditi homines ineruditi.
Matronae nitidae puellulaeque
Salvete, o decus aureum theatri.
Spectatoribus omnibus salutem !
Vobis fabula palliata agetur.
Adeste aequo animo, favete linguis,
Neve parcite nos iuvare plausu.
1 From the programme for the production of Phormio at Harvard, April
19, 1894.
273
2/4
ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS
D M
FRANCISCI IACOBI CHILD 1
MUSIS qui fuerit deditus aureis,
non vanis moriens planctibus indiget;
dulcem nam socium Pierides domo
dulces accipiunt sua.
Ergo qua proprius vatibus est honor
sedem Tu quoque habes, vatibus intimus,
sellers ipse lyrae prisca Britannicae
terris carmina pandere.
Te clarum studiis, Te sapientia
cantabunt alii, non ego grandia:
o carum caput, o sollicitam fidem,
vocem pauperibus bonam.
Nobis heu miseris candidus occidit
at non ille miser, quern vocat inclutus
UNAM qui cecinit, maximus et senex
et vates sine compari.
O quales comites, quantaque gaudia!
expectatus earn pervenit ad plagam
qua ventus Zephyri spirat amabilis
et campi redolent rosis.
1 From the Harvard Graduate? Magazine, 1896, v, 2IO.
OCCASIONAL VERSES 2 7$
ANA6HMATIKON l
Xcupe, vrdrep pey' dpio-re, Kal evpeveays raSe
Kapjrbv crol (frepoftev (r&v airo
yap ere i\ijv veapol %epl
evavdfj yaiav aifc6/j0a.
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