Book 1
6.36
But those who collected such derivations in book form, put their names on the title page; and Gavius thought himself a perfect genius when he identified caelibes, bachelors, with caelites, gods, on the ground that they are free from a heavy load of care, and supported this opinion by a Greek analogy: for he asserted that ἠΐθεοι young men, had a precisely similar origin. Modestus is not his inferior in inventive power: for he asserts that caelibes, that is to say unmarried men, are so called because Saturn cut off the genital organs of Caelus. Aelius asserts that pituita, phlegm, is so called quia petat uitam, because it attacks life.
6.37
But we may pardon anyone after the example set by Varro. de Lingua Lat. v. 34 and 76. For he tried to persuade Cicero, to whom he dedicated his work, that a field was called eager because something is done in it ( agitur ), and jackdaws graculos because they fly in flocks (gregatim ), in spite of the obvious fact that the first word is derived from the Greek, the latter from the cry of the bird in question.
