Book 19
13
That what we call pumiliones the Greeks term na/noi.
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CORNELIUS FRONTO, Festus Postumius, and Sulpicius Apollinaris chanced to be standing and talking together in the vestibule of the Palace; The palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill at Rome. and I, being near by with some companions, eagerly listened to their conversations on literary subjects. Then said Fronto to Apollinaris: I pray you, Sir, inform me whether I was right in forbearing to call men of excessively small stature nam and in preferring the term pumiliones; for I remembered that the latter word appears in the books of early writers, while I thought that nam was vulgar and barbarous. It is true, replied Apollinaris, that the word nam is frequent in the language of the ignorant vulgar; yet it is not barbarous, but is thought to be of Greek origin; for the Greeks called men of short and low stature, rising but little above the ground, na/noi, or 'dwarfs,' using that word by the application of a certain etymological principle corresponding with its meaning, That is, a short word for short people. The derivation of na/nos, from which nam comes, is uncertain. Pumilio is connected by some with pugmali/wn. = pugmai=os, thumbing; cf. Lat. pugnus: by others with peter and probes. and if my memory is not at fault,said he,it occurs in the comedy of Aristophanes entitled (Olka/des, Frag. 427, Kock. or The Cargo Boats.
