XIII. It would be tedious to
mention all the different men who have spent the whole of their life over chess
or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the sun. They are not
unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no one
will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on
useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great
number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number
of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first,
whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of
this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret
soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar. But
now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also.
In the last few days I heard someone telling who was the first Roman general to
do this or that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus
was the first who had elephants led in his triumph. Still, these matters, even
if they add nothing to real glory, are nevertheless concerned with signal
services to the state; there will be no profit in such knowledge, nevertheless
it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject. We
may excuse also those who inquire into this—who first induced the Romans to go
on board ship. It was Claudius, and this was the very reason he was surnamed
Caudex, because among the ancients a structure formed by joining together
several boards was called a caudex, whence also the Tables of the Law are
called codices,27 and, in the ancient fashion, boats that carry
provisions up the Tiber are even to-day called codicariae. Doubtless this too
may have some point—the fact that Valerius Corvinus was the first to conquer
Messana, and was the first of the family of the Valerii to bear the surname
Messana because be had transferred the name of the conquered city to himself,
and was later called Messala after the gradual corruption of the name in the
popular speech. Perhaps you will permit someone to be interested also in
this—the fact that Lucius Sulla was the first to exhibit loosed lions in the
Circus, though at other times they were exhibited in chains, and that javelin-throwers
were sent by King Bocchus to despatch them? And, doubtless, this too may find
some excuse—but does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the
first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting
criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one
who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders28 of old
for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill
human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not
enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by
animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into
oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous
of an act that was nowise human.29 O, what blindness does great
prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched
human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming
war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before
the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. he
then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man,
betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest
slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname30
was.
But to return to the point from which I have digressed, and to show that some
people bestow useless pains upon these same matters—the man I mentioned related
that Metellus, when he triumphed after his victory over the Carthaginians in
Sicily, was the only one of all the Romans who had caused a hundred and twenty
captured elephants to be led before his car; that Sulla was the last of the
Roman's who extended the pomerium,31 which in old times it was
customary to extend after the acquisition of Italian but never of provincial,
territory. Is it more profitable to know this than that Mount Aventine,
according to him, is outside the pomerium for one of two reasons, either
because that was the place to which the plebeians had seceded, or because the
birds had not been favourable when Remus took his auspices on that spot—and, in
turn, countless other reports that are either crammed with falsehood or are of
the same sort? For though you grant that they tell these things in good faith,
though they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still whose
mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? Whose passions will they restrain?
Whom will they make more brave, whom more just, whom more noble-minded? My
friend Fabianus used to say that at times he was doubtful whether it was not
better not to apply oneself to any studies than to become entangled in these.
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