Book 3
14
Now the point of all this argument, which Varro sets forth acutely, it is true, but somewhat obscurely, is this: dimidiatum is equivalent to dismediatum, and means divided into two parts, and therefore dimidiatum cannot properly be used except of the thing itself that is divided; dimidium, however, is not that which is itself divided, but is one of the parts of what has been divided. Accordingly, when we wish to say that we have read the half part of a book or heard the half part of a play, if we say dimidiam fabulam or dimidium librum, we make a mistake; for in that case you are using dimidium of the whole thing which has been halved and divided. Therefore Lucilius, following this same rule, says: 1342, Marx. With one eye and two feet, like halved pig, and in another place: 1282 f., Marx. why not? To sell his trash the huckster lauds (The rascal!) half a shoe, a strigil split. Again in his twentieth book it is clearer still that Lucilius carefully avoids saying dimidiam horam, but puts dimidium in the place of dimnidiam in the following lines: 570, Marx. At its own season and the self-same time, The half an hour and three at least elapsed, At the fourth hour again. The meaning is very uncertain. Marx thinks that the reference is to the quartam ague, "the attacks of which regularly subside at the same time (eandem ad quartam horam.), after a minimum duration of three hours and a half.' Lucilius refers, not to the fourth hour of the day (non diei horam dicit), but to every fourth hour of the period of illness (totius temporis spatii quo aegrotus cubat febri correptus). Dumtaxat is to be taken with the numeral, as in Plaut. Truc. 445. For ad quartam he cites Seneca, Nat. Quaest. iii. 16. 2, quartana ad horam venit, and Suet. Aug. lxxxvii, 1, ad Kalendas Graecas soluturos. For while it was natural and easy to say three and a half elapsed, he watchfully and carefully shunned an improper term. From this it is quite clear that not even half an hour can properly be said, but we must say either a halved hour or the halt part of an hour. And so Plautus as well, in the Bacchides, 1189. writes half of the gold, not the halved gold, and in the Aulularia, 291. half of the provisions, not the halved provisions, in this verse: He bade them give him half of all the meats; But in the Menaechmi he has the halved day, not half, as follows: 157. Down to the navel now the halved day is dead. Marcus Cato, too, in his work On Farming, writes: De Agr. 151. Sow cypress seed thick, just as flax is commonly sown. Over it sift earth from a sieve to the depth of a halved finger. Then smooth it well with a board, with the feet, or with the hands. He says a halved finger, not a half. For we ought to say half of a finger, but the finger itself should be said to be halved. Marcus Cato also wrote this of the Carthaginians: p. 56, fr. 3, Jordan. They buried the men halfway down (dimidiatos) in the ground and built a fire around them; thus they destroyed them. In fact, no one of all those who have spoken correctly has used these words otherwise than in the way I have described.
