Book 3
18
I have had a line of Laberius copied also, in which that word is used; I read it in a mime entitled Stricturae: v. 88, Ribbeck3, who reads: sine lingua caput peddrii senténtias, and gives other versions. The aye-man's vote is but a tongueless head. I have observed that some use a barbarous form of this word; for instead of pedarii they say pedanii.
19
Why, according to Gavius Bassus, a man is called parcus and what he thought to be the explanation of that word; and how, on the contrary, Favorinus made fun of that explanation of his.
19
AT the dinners of the philosopher Favorinus, after the guests had taken their places and the serving of the viands began, a slave commonly stood by his table and began to read something, either from Grecian literature or from our own. For example, one day when I was present the reading was from the treatise of the learned Gavius Bassus On the Origin of Verbs and Substantives. In it this passage occurred: Frag. 6, Fun. Parcus is a compound word, made up of par arcae, that is 'like a strong-box;' for just as all valuables are put away in a strong-box and preserved and kept under its protection, just so a man who is close and content to spend little keeps all his property guarded and hidden away, as in a strong-box. For that reason he is called parcus, as if it were par arcus. That is, he is like a strong-box.
