Book 5
21
There was present when he said this a very audacious critic of language, who had read very little and that of the most ordinary sort; this fellow had some trifling instruction in the art of grammar, which was partly ill-digested and confused and partly false, and this he used to cast like dust into the eyes of any with whom he had entered into discussion. Thus on that occasion he said to my friend: You were incorrect in saying pluria; for that form has neither justification nor authorities. Thereupon that friend of mine rejoined with a smile: My: good sir, since I now have leisure from more serious affairs, I wish you would please explain to me why pluria and compluria—for they do not differ-are used barbarously and incorrectly by Marcus Cato, Fr. 24, Peter. Quintus Claudius, Fr. 90, Peter. Valerius Antias, Fr. 65, Peter. Lucius Aelius, Fr. 48, Fun. Publius Nigidius, Frag. 64, Swoboda. and Marcus Varro, whom we have as endorsers and sanctioners of this form, to say nothing of a great number of the early poets and orators. And the fellow answered with excessive arrogance: You are welcome to those authorities of yours, dug up from the age of the Fauns and Aborigines, but what is your answer to this rule? No neuter comparative in the nominative plural has an i before its final a; for example, meliora, maiora, graviora. Accordingly, then, it is proper to say plura, not pluria, in order that there be no i before final a in a comparative, contrary to the invariable rule.
