Book 2
22
This is what Favorinus recounted to us at his own table at the time I mentioned, with extreme elegance of diction and in a delightful and graceful style throughout. But as to his statement that the wind which blows from the land of Gaul is called circius, Marcus Cato in his Origins Fr. 93, Peter. calls that wind, not circius, but cercius. For writing about the Spaniards who dwell on this side the Ebro, he set down these words: But in this district are the finest iron and silver mines, also a great mountain of pure salt; the more you take from it, the more it grows. The cercius wind, when you speak, fills your mouth; it overturns an armed man or a loaded wagon.
22
In saying above that the e)thsi/ai blow from one or another quarter of the heavens, although following the opinion of many, I rather think I spoke hastily. Gellius, as he sometimes does elsewhere, refers to Favorinus' statement as if it were his own. Gronovius' proposed change to dixit and dixerit is unnecessary. For in the second book of Publius Nigidius' treatise On Wind are these words: Fr. 104, Swoboda. Both the e)thsi/ai and the annual south winds follow the sun. We ought therefore to inquire into the meaning of follow the sun.
23
A discussion and comparison of passages taken from the comedy of Menander and that of Caecilius, entitled Plocium.
