legarat Tadius, neu dicta repone1 paterna, "faenoris accedat merces, hinc exime sumptus,' "quid reliqum est ?" reliqum? nunc nunc inpen sius ungue, ungue, puer, caules! mihi festa luce coquatur urtica et fissa fumosum sinciput aure, ut tuus iste nepos olim satur anseris extis, omne latus mundi, ne sit praestantior alter ... 70 75 80 1 repone L and old edd. Büch. has neu dicta "pone paterna 66 sumptus." quid reliqum est?" Housm. suggests neu dic ita, "pone paterna. . . reliqum est. reliqum? and explains, "Do not say 'state what you inherited, add interest, subtract expenditure, and see how much is left.' Left, quotha?" (l.c. p. 31). ita then means "as follows." Büch. takes pone to mean "invest." 1 Cappadocian slaves, being tall, were much prized as litter-bearers. ask where is the sum that Tadius left me long ago, and don't serve up to me your paternal saws:-"Let interest accrue on your capital, and take your expenses out of that." "Yes, and what will be left?" "Left," do you ask? Here, boy, drench the cabbage with oil, and d-n the expense! Am I to have my holiday dinner off nettles and a smoked pig's cheek with his ear split through, in order that some day or other your young ne'er-do-weel may regale himself on a goose's liver? . . . Am I to be reduced to a thread-paper while his belly is to wag with fat like that of a priest? 15 Go, sell your soul for gain; buy and sell; ransack cunningly every corner of the earth, let no one outstrip you in patting fat Cappadocian1 slaves in their pen; turn every coin into two. "Done already," you say; with a threefold, fourfold, ay, and a tenfold increase." 2 Mark the point at which I am to stop, and the finisher of your heap, Chrysippus, will have been found! 66 3 2 Ruga is a "" crease, or "fold," so that redire decies in rugam expresses exactly "a ten-fold increase." Many editors have wrongly explained the word as the fold or sinus in the toga, and so = a purse.' 66 Referring to the well-known Sorites, the fallacy of the heap: Dum cadat elusus ratione ruentis acervi (Hor. Epp. II. i. 47). The analogous fallacy demonstrating the impossibility of motion was met by the famous "solvitur ambulando." D D |