Attic Nights

of flutes, he found in some book written about music, where reference had already been made to the passages of Thucydides and Herodotus. He supplied the words of these [authors] from the texts themselves, just as in § 16 from Cicero, without the origin of the entire argumentation being revealed. Likewise, the words in VI 3, 49 clearly show that Tiro besides Cato had been inspected by him, nor do I deny him credibility when he asserts in XVIII 7 that he provided examples from Favorinus, provided you substitute Verrius as the true source in Favorinus's place.

Indeed, these things which I have set forth above, which can now be posited as established, we owe to the acuity and subtlety of two men in particular, who, having followed Dirksen—who had gone before in a certain part—reached the same end through different works and have established this [point] the more firmly. I mean Mercklin and Kretzschmer, in whose footsteps Ruske followed with ample enough profit, and Froehde with less. ¹) Those who succeeded them labored on slippery and nearly exhausted ground, so that the profit that resulted does not always correspond to the genius and labor expended. Thus, certainly, there was no lack of acuity, but there was a lack of fortune for Beck, who contended that a part of the chapters was derived from Pliny's books On Doubtful Language. This thesis can neither be clearly confirmed, however sharply it may have been proposed, nor—what I would concede—can it be clearly refuted ²); but I fear that there are few who would dare to inhabit a building constructed with weak beams, besides the builder of the house himself. In a similar way, Nettleship can rarely prove to us the things he thinks he has worked out, if he forces new and almost unknown authors into the series of sources, such as Cornelius Epicadus or those similar to Octavius Avitus, or Asconius's book against the detractors of Virgil. Against whom I shall now oppose this one thing ³). Although he does not always name his sources in their proper place, it must be established that Gellius never drew his material from an author who does not appear in one or another place in the entire work. As in XVIII 14...