Hoffman
34.10
Or perhaps you thought that you had very cleverly discovered how to craft a
claim that I had sought these two sea creatures, the seacock and angelfish
for magical charms. In fact, learn the Latin names for the things which I
have severally named so you can accuse me anew based upon proper
information. But bear in mind that the argument that lewd sea creatures
were sought for erotic practices will be as ridiculous as if you should say
that a seabrush was sought in order to comb hair or a hawk fish in order to
catch birds or a boar fish in order to hunt boar or a sea skull in order to
raise the dead. So I am answering this part of your suit as stupidly as it
was absurdly composed: I did not seek these maritime trifles and lowtide
nonsense neither for a price nor for free.
35
What's more, I even address this point: that you didn't know what you were
alleging was sought by me. For the bulk of these trifles that you have
named are found on every beach in clumps and heaps, and without anyone's
effort they are thrown up on the shore with the slightest passage of
current. So why don't you also say that I at the same time paid the price
and sought through the agency of a great number of fishmongers a conch with
a striated shell, a smoothly worn stone, and, on top of that, crabs claws,
urchin shells, cuttlefish tentacles, and, to top it off, splinters, straw,
pieces of rope, and worm-eaten oyster shells, and finally slime and algae,
all the other refuse of the sea which is cast up all over the beaches by
winds, spat out by the ocean, churned up by storm, and left behind by the
calm weather? For suspicions can no less easily be matched to the items I
mentioned based on the connotations of the words. You claim that the clam
and sea cucumber can be taken from the sea for erotic purposes on account
of the double entendre of their names: how much less could a stone from
the same shore be related to the bladder, a pot to probate, a crab to
cancer, algae to the ague. You, Claudius Maximus, are truly an
exceedingly patient man of really admirable courtesy inasmuch as you've
endured for too blasted/damned long the arguments of these men here; for my
part, while these things were being stated by those men as if they were
serious and convincing, I began to laugh at those men's naivet=E9, and to
admire your patience.
36
But let Aemilianus be educated as to why I know about so many fish, and why
I don't want to be ignorant of these as I have been up till now, since he
has shown such concern for my affairs. Although he is already in the
waning years of advanced old age, nevertheless, if it makes sense, let him
learn a new trick at this obviously late and tardy day; let him read the
works of the old philosophers so he can see finally that I am not the first
to have investigated these things, but that already some time ago my
ancestors, I mean Aristotle and Theophrastus and Eudemus and Lyco, and the
rest of Plato's lesser followers, who have left behind a great many books
about the reproduction of animals, and their manner of living, and their
parts, and every difference. Thank goodness the case has been prosecuted
in your court, Maximus, since you as shown by your learning have obviously
read Aristotle's "On the Generation of Animals," "On the Anatomy of
Animals," "On the Science of Animals," multi-volumed tomes, and beyond
that, the countless "Problems" of the same author, and of the other
exponents of the same school among whom various things of the sort have
been considered. Now if to write about these matters which they researched
with such care was a source of glory and honor for those men, why would it
be shameful for us to do research, especially when I shall strive to write
out more elegantly and concisely these same things in Greek and Latin, and
in every case to either find out what has been overlooked or expand on what
was inadequate? If it's worthwhile, allow a few things to be read from my
works on magic so that Aemilianus knows that I research and carefully
investigate more than he thinks. Please take one of my Greek books, which
my friends and supporters by chance happen to have here - one on natural
history - and particularly the part where the topic focuses most on the
species of fish. Meanwhile, while this man looks for the passage, I shall
state an anecdote of some relevance to our situation.
37
The poet, Sophocles, was a Euripides' competitor and outlived him, for he
lived to extreme old age, when he was accused for that reason by his very
own son of senility, as if he was already losing his mind because of his
age, it is said that he offered as evidence his Oedipus at Colonus, the
most outstanding of tragedies, which he happened to be writing then at that
time, and that he read it to the judges and didn't add anything else to his
defense, except that they should confidently judge him guilty of senility,
if the old man's poetry displeased them. In that situation I take it that
all the judges stood up for such a poet and complimented him with wonderful
praise on account of the brilliance of his defense and the drama of his
eloquence, and they were not at all far from instead finding the accuser
guilty of senility!
Have you found the book? Thank you. Give it here and let's see whether my
work can be of use to me too in the courtroom. Read a bit form the
beginning and then some about fish. But you meanwhile, while he's reading,
stop the clock.
38
Most of what you have heard, Maximus, you had surely read in the old
philosophers. And remember that these books were written by me about fish
alone: which of them reproduce through intercourse, which are born from the
mud, how often and at what time of year the females and males of each
species are in heat, by means of what organs and forces nature has
distinguished those which give live birth and those which produce eggs -
for that's how I refer in Latin to what the Greeks call zootoka and ootoka
- and, so I don't get too sidetracked by the reproduction of animals,
concerning the difference and manner of living and limbs and life cycles
and all the other many things which are important to know, to be sure, but
are inappropriate to a courtroom. I'll have even a few things from my
works written in Latin which are relevant to this same field of science, in
which you'll notice that I have not only compiled things that are
infrequently known, but even names that are most obscure to Romans and
totally unknown until today as far as I know; but these names have through
my effort and interest arrived from the Greeks so that they have yet been
counterstruck as Roman currency. So, Aemilianus, have your patrons tell us
where they have read these words that have been uttered in Latin. I'll
just talk about sea creatures and not the other animals unless I should
touch upon interspecies differences that are common to across genera. So
listen to what I am going to say. You'll soon shout that I am reciting
magical names in the Egyptian or Babylonian rite: selacheia, malaceia,
malkostraca, chondracantha, ostracoderma, carcharodonta, amphibia,
lepidota, pholidota, dermoptera, stegnopoda, monere, sunagelstica - I could
even go on; but it's pointless to spend the day with these things, so that
I'll have time to return to the other matters. Meanwhile these things that
I said, repeat in Latin just a few of the ones that were enumerated by me.
39
So how do you think it is for a philosopher who isn't unrefined and
ignorant in accordance with the rashness of the Cynic but who is mindful
that he belongs to the Platonic school, do you think that it is shameful
for him to know those things or not, to overlook them or focus on them, to
know how much natural order is in even those things or to believe one's
mother and father about the immortal gods? Quintus Ennius wrote the "Good
Eats" in verse; he enumerated countless types of fish which he obviously
knew intimately. I have remembered a few verses; let me say them:
Just as the burbot is best of all fish in Clupea,
so the muscles of Aenum taste great as do the many hardy oysters of Abydus.
There's the scallop of Mytilene and near Charadrum, on the border of Ambraci=
a.
At Brundisium I recommend, and definitely get it, if it's big, the sargus.
Take note that the best boar fish is at Tarentum,
Make sure at Surrentum that you buy the sargus, and the blue-shark at Cumae.
Why have I overlooked the parrott-wrasse, that's practically the brain of
Jove on high,
(The ones caught in the land of Nestor are good and big)
What about the melanura, wrasse, wrasse, and the umbrina?
There's the Corcyran octopus, rich sea-skulls, bass, purple fish,
shellfish, and, of course, sweet urchins.
He elaborated on still others in many verses and where on earth each of
them was, how they best taste when roasted or stewed, but he is not
attacked by educated men, no indeed, still less should I attacked, who
write down in Greek and Latin with suitable and elegant words things which
are known to very few.
40
I've addressed this point sufficiently, so consider something else. For
what of it if I neither being uninterested in nor ignorant of medicine
look for a given medicine in fish? Just as a great many remedies have
obviously been seeded and sewn in everything else by the same gift of
nature, so there are even a few to be found among fish. Do you think it
more the business of a magician than a doctor to know remedies and to
search for them, or, to take it a step further, more than a philosopher who
will use them not for profit but for good. The doctors of old in
particular knew spells as cures for wounds, as Homer, the most reliable
source for all antiquity, states, when he portrays the blood flowing from
Ulysses' wound as stopping because of a spell. For nothing that is done
for the sake of bringing health is criminal. "But," he says, "to what end,
if not evil, did you dissect the fish that Themison your slave brought to
you?" As if I hadn't a little earlier said that I write about the anatomy
of all animals, about their manner, and number, and cause, and that I
carefully research Aristotle's books on anatomy and make them more
complete. And I am absolutely amazed by the fact that you "know" that one
minuscule fish was examined by me, considering I have on top of that
examined already a great many, wherever they happened to be available,
especially considering that I did none of this the least bit covertly but
entirely in the open so that anyone, even an outsider, could stand by as a
judge, this being the technique and practice of my teachers who said that a
free and gracious man ought to show his mind with his face wherever he
goes. I even showed this fish small that you've called a sea hare, small
as it was, to the many people who were there; nor yet do I have any notion
what they would call it, unless I investigate the matter a bit more
carefully, because I have not even found a description of this fish among
the old philosophers, though it is the rarest of all fish and most
certainly worth recording. In fact, that fish is unique , as far as I
know, since it was in every other respect boneless, yet it had twelve
bones shaped like the knuckle bones of a pig conjoined and connected within
its belly. It goes without saying that Aristotle would never have failed
to commit this to writing, since he recorded as an important fact that the
heart of the hake, alone of all fish, is located in the middle of its
stomach. The accuser says: "You have dissected a fish." Who would say
that this is a charge against a philosopher, when it has not been one
against a butcher or a cook? "You dissected a fish." Is it because it was
uncooked? Is that your complaint? If I cooked it and I made a close
search of its stomach and prepared its liver, just as the said young child,
Sicinius Pudens, learns with his own meals at your house, you wouldn't
think it necessary to make an accusation of this; yet it is a greater crime
for a philosopher to eat his fish rather than dissect them. Is it
acceptable for seers to closely examine livers, but not for a philosopher
to contemplate them, though he knows that he is a diviner of all animals, a
vicar of all gods? Or is this your accusation against me? The fact that
Maximus and I hold Aristotle in esteem? well, unless you purge the
libraries of his books and wrench them from the hands of scholars, you
can't accuse me of anything. But I have almost said more than I ought to
have on this matter.
Now consider elsewhere how they contradict themselves. They claim that my
wife was obtained through magic arts and sea charms at that very time that
I was - and they won't contradict me - in the Mediterranean mountains of
Gaetulia, where fish will be found thanks to Deucalion's flood waters. But
I am thankful that they don't know I've read Theophrastus' book "On Biting
Animals" and Nicander's "Chrestomathy of Animals". Otherwise they would
have alleged that I was guilty even of poisoning. But in truth I have
obtained some knowledge of this subject from my reading and emulation of
Aristotle, with no less a personage than Plato encouraging me, who said
that he who investigates those things, ametameleton paidian en bio paizein.
42
Now since the fish of these fellows have been sufficiently laid in the
open, learn of something that is just as stupid, but far more hollow and
wickedly conceived. They themselves also knew that the fish ploy was a
waste and would come to nothing, and, moreover, that its novelty made it
absurd (for who has heard it said that fish are typically scaled and boned
for black magic?), and that instead something else concerning matter far
more widely known and already credible would have to be invented.
Therefore, in accordance with the dictates of common opinion and rumor,
they related that some boy, after he had been bewitched by a spell and
potential critics had been disposed of, in a hidden location, in the
company of a small altar, a lamp, and a few sympathetic witnesses, after he
had been subject to a charm, collapsed, and subsequently came to, no
longer aware of himself....