Attic Nights, Vol. II

4 non. By Hercules, Nigidius has varied and gracefully laid out so many opinions on the same matter, as if he were saying something different each time.

XII

5 Because the philosopher Chrysippus says that every word is ambiguous and doubtful, while Diodorus, on the contrary, thinks that no word is ambiguous.

1 Chrysippus original: "p. 254 Bag.": Page 254 of the edition by Baguet says that every word is ambiguous by nature, since from the same word two or more 2 10 meanings can be understood. But Diodorus, who had the nickname Cronus, says: "No word is ambiguous, nor does anyone speak or think of anything ambiguous, nor ought anything to be seen as spoken otherwise than what the one who speaks feels he is saying. But when I," he says, "felt one thing and you understood another, it may seem to have been spoken obscurely rather than ambiguously; for the nature of an ambiguous word ought to have been such that he who speaks it says two or more things. But no one says two or more things who feels that he is saying one thing."

XIII

What Titus Castricius thought about the words and a certain sentiment of C. Gracchus; and how he showed it to be without any real substance.

1 In the presence of Titus Castricius, a teacher of the art of rhetoric and a man of grave and firm judgment, a speech of C. Gracchus against P. Popilius was being read. 2 In the beginning of that speech, the words are arranged 3 more carefully and rhythmically than the custom of the older orators allows. These words, as I said, are composed thus original: "ORF² p. 238": Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, 2nd ed., p. 238: "The things which you have eagerly sought and desired through these years, if you rashly reject them, it cannot be avoided but that you will be said to have either eagerly sought them long ago or now rashly rejected them."