Ausonius, vol 1 hugh g evelyn white (translator)

?f r THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D T E PAGE, Lirr.D AUSONIUS I W H.'D ROUSE, Lirr.D AUSONIUS tW^ksJ WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY HUGH G EVELYN WHITE, SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF IN WADHAM M.A COLLEGE, OXFORD TWO VOLUMES I LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK G P PUTNAM'S SONS : : MC11XIX PR UZl AUSONIUS Menander sapientem vocavit? quid ipsum Menandrum ? quid comicos omnes, quibus severa vita est et laeta materia ? quid etiam Maronem Parthenien causa dictum pudoris, qui in octavo Aeneidos, cum describeret coitum Veneris atque Vulcani, crep.viav decenter immiscuit ? corum de summissis nam in quid gregem ? a.la-\po- in tertio Georgi- maritis nonne obsce- significationem honesta verborum traiislatione velavit et ? si quid in nostro ioco aliquorum hominum condemnat, de Vergilio arcessitum severitas vestita sciat igitur cui hie ludus noster legerit, aut ignoscat aliter 392 cum non legerit, obliviscatur, aut etenim tabula de nuptiis est haec sacra non constant placet, non ne oblitus et, velit iiolit, A NUPTIAL CENTO " the Wise " ? What of Menander himself? What of all the comic poets, whose lives were strict for all What also of the broad humour of their subjects Maro, called Parthenias (the Maidenly) because of his modesty, who in the eighth book of the Aeneid, when describing the intercourse of Venus and Vulcan, has gravely introduced a mixed element of lofty obscenity? And again, in the third book of the Georgia* on cattle-breeding, has he not veiled an indecent meaning under an innocent metaphor? And if the primly-draped propriety of certain folk condemns aught in my playful piece, let them know that it is taken out of Virgil So anyone who disapproves of this farce of mine should not read it, or once he has read it, let him forget it, or if he has not forgotten it, let him pardon it For, as a matter of fact, it is the story of a wedding, and, like it or dislike it, the rites are exactly as I have described cp tarn Donatus, Vita probum appellaretur Aen 22 vita et ore et ammo ut Neapoli Parthenias vulgo 404 ff Georg iii 123 ff Virgilii, fuisse constat viii : 393 APPENDIX THE puzzle here described in the Preface to the Cento 374) is the loculus Archemedius, of which Caesius Bassus (de lustris, p 271, ed Keil) gives the following account: "loculus ille Archemedius qui quattuordecim eboreas lamellas, quarum varii anguli sunt, in quadratam formam inclusas habet, componentibus nobis aliter atque (p aliter modo galeam, modo sicam, alias columnam, alias navem Marius figurat et innumerabiles efficit species." Victorinus (Ars Gramm iii 1, pp 100 f., ed Keil) also describes the loculus as consisting of fourteen pieces, "mine quadratis, nunc triangulis, nunc ex utraque The puzzle, then, consisted in a rectangle divided up into fourteen triangular or quadrilateral specie." figures From another source we learn the principle on which There is extant in Arabic a this division was effected work entitled "The book of Archimedes on the division of the figure Stomaschion into fourteen figures which " stand in direct ratio to it The method (sc the whole) of division there set forth is as follows : Take at E a parallelogram From ABGD E draw EZ at BG (Fig 1) and bisect right angles to BG, and also The poem of Ennodius, de Ostomachio Eburneo (Carm ii ed Hartel) is not enlightening A fragmentary and incomplete Greek text (from a both are given by Heiberg palimpsest MS.) is also extant in his second edition of Archimedes' \vorks (Teubner, 1913), ii pp 416 ff The Arabic is unpointed, and the vowels therefore uncertain the Greek title is 2To/mx