Noctesatticae
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng1
8.1.p633
8.1.p633
Whether the expression
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hesterna nocte,
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for
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last night,
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is right or wrong, and what the grammarians have said about those words; also that the decemvirs in the
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Twelve Tables
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1
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used
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nox
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for
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noctu,
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meaning
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by night.
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2
8.2.p634
8.2.p634
TEN words pointed out to me by Favorinus which, although in use by the Greeks, are of foreign origin and barbarous; also the same number given him by me which, though of general and common use by those who speak Latin, are by no means Latin and are not to be found in the early literature.
8.3.p635
8.3.p635
IN what terms and how severely the philosopher Peregrinus in my hearing rebuked a young Roman of equestrian rank, who stood before him inattentive and constantly yawning.
8.3.p636
8.3.p636
. . . and saw him continually yawning and noticed the degenerate dreaminess expressed in his attitude of mind and body.
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1
8.4.p637
8.4.p637
THAT Herodotus, that most famous writer of history, was wrong in saying
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1
8.4.p637
that the pine alone of all trees never puts forth new shoots from the same roots, after being cut down; and that he stated as an established fact
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2
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about rainwater and snow a thing which had not been sufficiently investigated.
8.5.p638
8.5.p638
ON the meaning of Virgil's expression
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caelum stare pulvere
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1
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and of Lucilius'
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pectus sentibus stare.
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2
8.6.p639
8.6.p639
THAT when a reconciliation takes place after trifling offences, mutual complaints are useless; and Taurus' discourse on that subject, with a quotation from the treatise of Theophrastus; and what Marcus Cicero also thought about the love arising from friendship, added in his own words.
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1
8.7.p640
8.7.p640
WHAT we have learned and know of the nature and character of memory from Aristotle's work entitled
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Peri\ Mnh/mhs
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or
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On Memory;
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and also some other examples, of which we have heard or read, about extraordinary powers of memory or its total loss.
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1
8.8.p641
8.8.p641
MY experience in trying to interpret and, as it were, to reproduce in Latin certain passages of Plato.
8.9.p642
8.9.p642
How Theophrastus, the most eloquent philosopher of his entire generation, when on the point of making a brief speech to the people of Athens, was overcome by bashfulness and kept silence; and how Demosthenes had a similar experience when speaking before king Philip.
8.10.p643
8.10.p643
A DISCUSSION that I had in the town of Eleusis with a conceited grammarian who, although ignorant of the tenses of verbs and the exercises of schoolboys, ostentatiously proposed abstruse questions of a hazy and formidable character, to impress the minds of the unlearned.
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8.10.p644
Would wish a lying scoundrel.
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1
8.11.p645
8.11.p645
THE witty reply of Socrates to his wife Xanthippe, when she asked that they might spend more money for their dinners during the Dionysiac festival.
8.12.p646
8.12.p646
ON the meaning of plerique omnes, or almost all, in the early literature; and on the probable Greek origin of that expression.
8.13.p647
8.13.p647
THAT eupsones, a word used by the people of Africa, is not Phoenician, but Greek.
8.14.p648
8.14.p648
A HIGHLY entertaining discussion of the philosopher Favorinus with a tiresome person who held forth on the double meaning of certain words; also some unusual expressions from the poet Naevius and from Gnaeus Gellius; and further, some investigations of the derivation of words by Publius Nigidius.
8.15.p649
8.15.p649
How the poet Laberius was ignominiously treated by Gaius Caesar, with a quotation of Laberius' own words on that subject.
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1
8.15.p650
8.15.p650
A pleasant and remarkable story from the books of Heracleides of Pontus.
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1