Book 16
6
ON my return from Greece I put in at Brundisium. There a dabbler in the Latin language, who had been called from Rome by the people of Brundisium, was offering himself generally to be tested. I also went to him for the sake of amusement, for my mind was weary and languid The result of seasickness; cf. Plaut. Rud. 510, animo male fit. Contine, quaeso, caput. from the tossing of the sea. He was reading in a barbarous and ignorant manner from the seventh book of Vergil, in which this verse occurs: vii. 93. An hundred woolly sheep (bidentes) he duly slew, and he invited anyone to ask him anything whatever which one wished to learn. Then I, marvelling at the assurance of the ignorant fellow, said: Will you tell us, master, why bidentes are so called? Bidentes, said he, means sheep, and he called them 'woolly,' to show more clearly that they are sheep. I replied: We will see later whether only sheep are called bidentes, as you say, and whether Pomponius, the writer of Atellanae, An early farce, of Oscan origin, named from the town of Atella. The Atellanae were first given literary form by L. Pomponius of Bononia (Bologna) and Novius, in the time of Sulla. was in error in his Transalpine Gauls, when he wrote this: v. 51, Ribbeck3. O Mars, if ever I return, I vow To sacrifice to thee with two-toothed (bidenti) boar. But now I asked you whether you know the reason for this name. And he, without a moment's hesitation, but with the greatest possible assurance, said: Sheep are called bidentes, because they have only two teeth. Where on earth, pray, said I, have you seen a sheep that by nature had only two teeth? For that is a portent and ought to be met with expiatory offerings. Then he, greatly disturbed and angry with me, cried: Ask rather such questions as ought to be put to a grammarian; for one inquires of shepherds about the teeth of sheep. I laughed at the wit of the blockhead and left him.
