Kitap 19
10
I REMEMBER that I once went with Julius Celsinus the Numidian to visit Cornelius Fronto, who was then seriously ill with the gout. When we arrived and were admitted, we found him lying on a Greek couch, and sitting around him a large number of men famous for learning, birth or fortune. By his side stood several builders, who had been summoned to construct some new baths and were exhibiting different plans for baths, drawn on little pieces of parchment. When he had selected one plan and specimen of their work, he inquired what the expense would be of completing that entire project. And when the architect had said that it would probably require about three hundred thousand sesterces, one of Fronto's friends said, And another fifty thousand, more or less (praeterpropter). Then Fronto, interrupting the conversation which he had begun to hold about the expense of the baths, and looking at the friend who had said that another fifty thousand would be needed praeterpropter, asked him what that word meant. And the friend replied: 'That word is not my own, for you may hear many men using it; but what the word means you must ask from a grammarian, not from me; and at the same time he pointed out a grammarian of no little fame as a teacher at Rome, who was sitting there with them. Then the grammarian, surprised by the uncertainty about a familiar and much used word, said: We inquire about something which does not at all deserve the honour of investigation, for this is some utterly plebeian expression or other, better known in the talk of mechanics than in that of cultivated men.
