Book 18
4
Then the fellow, realizing by this time that he was being laughed at, pleaded an engagement and made off But we afterwards learned from Apollinaris that the term rani was properly applied, not as in common parlance to those who were foolish or dull or silly, but, as the most learned of the ancients had used them, to liars, deceivers, and those who cleverly devised light and empty statements in place of those which were true and earnest. But that those were called stolidi who were not so much foolish and witless as austere, churlish and disagreeable, such men as the Greeks called moxqhroi/, ugly fellows, and fortikoi/, common or vulgar folk. He also said that the roots and derivations of these words were to be found in the books of Nigidius. Fr. 45, Swoboda. Vanus is related to vacare and vacuus; Eng. want; stolidus to stolo, dullard, from the root stel-, stand, be stiff. Having sought for these words and found them, with examples of their earliest meanings, I made a note of them, in order to include them in the notes contained in these Nights, and I think that I have already introduced them somewhere among them. viii. 14.
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That Quintus Ennius, in the seventh book of his Annals, wrote quadrupes eques, and not quadrupes equus, as many read it.
