Complete Works, Vol. III

they said. From which L. Crassus the orator testifies that he was accustomed to hear his mother-in-law Laelia in such a way that he seemed to himself to be hearing Plautus or Naevius, which matter most evidently eliminates all doubt, so that we do not doubt that the ancients were all accustomed to speak Latin indiscriminately. I have reported this more copiously because there has been no small altercation on this matter in our own times among learned men. Indigena indigenous/native, however, to return to the point, is opposed to a stranger, and signifies one born from within, not a foreigner, not an immigrant, but a vernacular, proper, and as it were peculiar person.

Ibid. AERUMNALI LABORE with laborious toil.] difficult, troublesome. For aerumnae hardships/labors signify burdensome toils. "Our ancestors," as M. Tullius i.e., Cicero is the author in Book 2 of De Finibus On the Ends of Good and Evil, "named labors that should not be fled from, aerumnae." Whence the labors of Hercules are called aerumnae. Plautus in Persa: "He overcame with his own hardships the hardships of Hercules." Ausonius:

The first hardship of labor tolerated at Cleonae.

The same M. Tullius in Tusculan Disputations 4 says: "Aerumna, he says, is a laborious sorrow." They called aerumnulae small hardships (by way of a diminutive) furculae forked poles, by which travelers carried their bound-up baggage; because C. Marius brought their use back, they were afterwards called Muli Mariani Mules of Marius. It is worth the effort in this place to note in passing certain things about the Muli Mariani that are worth knowing and not unworthy of recounting, which we read in Frontinus, who in Book 4 of Strategemata Military Stratagems writes these things: "C. Marius, for the sake of cutting down the impediments by which an army's column is most burdened, placed the soldiers' vessels and provisions, adapted into bundles, onto forks, under which there would be both a manageable load and an easy rest. Whence it was also drawn into a proverb: Muli Mariani." Plutarch in Life of Marius reports another cause of this proverb, who also mentions that Marius the commander carried the same things and undertook the same burdens in military matters that he commanded of his soldiers. Wherefore, since the soldiers willingly underwent the labors and orders of the commander after these things, they were called Muli Mariani. Even today the common people, in my opinion, having derived the origin from here, call men caballos Marianos Marian horses who, walking on their own feet, pretend in a theatrical spectacle to be sitting and riding on a horse.

Ibid. NULLO MAGISTRO PRAEEUNTE with no teacher leading the way.] without a doctor. He implies he learned just as if he had been autodidaktos self-taught. For thus it is said by a Greek word, one who has himself as his teacher. Such was Manilius, the Roman Senator of old, whom Pliny reported to have been noble in the greatest doctrines with no teacher. Divine Augustus also boasts in Book 4 of his Confessions that he had read and understood books of liberal arts by himself alone, without a teacher. "The Aristotelian predicaments also," he says, "which they call Categories, I read and understood alone." There was also Syllanion the sculptor, noble with no teacher.

Ibid. EXOTICI SERMONIS of exotic speech.] He calls the Roman language an exoticum sermonem, as if it were foreign and introduced, and deservedly strange to him, since he himself, being an African by nation, had learned to "atticize" to imitate Greek style, and had tasted the strident Barbarism in his native land with childish lips. For exoticus signifies foreign and external, a Greek word indeed, but very commonly used among the Latins. Hence in Pliny and Plautus we find unguenta exotica exotic perfumes; in Gellius, vinum exoticum exotic wine for foreign and alien.

Ibid. FORENSIS forensic/of the forum.] Either Roman, which orators use in the forum. Whence also "forensic eloquence" and, in Sidonius, forenses tabulae forensic tablets; and in Cicero, forenses literae forensic letters, which we use in the forum. Or external, derived from this adverb foris outside; the Roman language is meant entirely. In Livy, forensis factio et turba the forensic faction and crowd is understood as lowly, sordid, and insincere, which Fabius separated from the whole people and converted into four tribes, calling them the urban ones.

Pag. 10. IPSA IMMUTATIO the change itself.] As if he had now begun to write in Latin for the first time, when previously he had used Greek speech. Hence in On the God of Socrates he says: "Our oration has 'atticized' enough."

Ibid. DESULTORIAE SCIENTIAE of desultory knowledge.] With a certain decent translation he calls it desultoriam scientiam leaping/fickle knowledge, playful and voluptuous, as if leaping down from a former, more severe study; just as desultorii equi vaulting horses are called, from which men gifted with agility of body would suddenly leap down. Concerning which, read what we have annotated in the first commentary of Suetonius, narrating this: "Most noble youths drove the desultory horses." Re-read those things also which we wrote in the fourth commentary of Propertius, regarding that verse:

He who casts a light weight with an alternating horse.

Where we taught that a desultor vaulter is designated, one who keeps vaulting horses and exercises that nimble jumping trans-leaping. Martianus also used almost the same translation as Appuleius: "Decently," he says, "he rejoiced in nimble desultory lightness." Add to that which is handed down by Cassiodorus, that vaulting horses were found by which the ministers of the Circus announce that the teams are about to exit. The sense will therefore be this: As vaulters leap from horse to horse, so I leap from the Greek language and science into the Roman. Desultory science can also be said conveniently regarding the story of the ass, in which he leaps from man to ass and is turned—namely, more prone to beastly morals; soon he is reformed from ass to man, when, having left behind the shackles of pleasures, he emerges, led by reason, onto the path of virtue and presents himself as a true man. But a true man is the mind. Among writers who are transformed into beasts, these things can be referred to this understanding. That proverb "to fall from an ass," which some contend to glue to this place—which Aristophanes mentions—seems to me by no means to fit.