Kitap 11
16
WE have frequently observed not a few names of things which we cannot express in Latin by single words, as in Greek; and even if we use very many words, those ideas cannot be expressed in Latin so aptly and so clearly as the Greeks express them by single terms. Lately, when a book of Plutarch had been brought to me, and I had read its title, which was Peri\ Polupragmosu/nhs, a man who was unacquainted with Greek letters and words asked who the author was and what the book was about. The name of the writer I gave him at once, but I hesitated when on the point of naming the subject of the work. At first indeed, since it did not seem to me that it would be a very apt interpretation if I said that it was written De Negotiositale or On Busyness, I began to rack my brains for something else which would render the title word for word, as the saying is. But there was absolutely nothing that I remembered to have read, or even that I could invent, that was not to a degree harsh and absurd, if I fashioned a single word out of multitudo, or multitude, and negotium, or business, in the same way that we say multiiugus (manifold), multicolorus (multicoloured) and multiformius (multiform). But it would be no less uncouth an expression than if you should try to translate by one word polufili/a (abundance of friends), polutropi/a (versatility), or polusarki/a (fleshiness). Therefore, after spending a brief time in silent thought, I finally answered that in my opinion the idea could not be expressed by a single word, and accordingly I was preparing to indicate the meaning of that Greek word by a phrase.
