Kitap 6
3.51
Such ambiguity may even go so far as to present all the appearance of a riddle, witness the jest that Cicero made at the expense of Pletorius, the accuser of Fonteius: His mother, he said, kept a school while she lived and masters after she was dead. magister may mean a schoolmaster or a receiver ( magister bonorum )placed in charge of the goods to be sold. The phrase here has the same suggestion as having the bailiffs in the house. This passage does not occur in the portions of the pro Fonteio which survive. The explanation is that in her lifetime women of infamous character used to frequent her house, while after her death her property was sold. (I may note however that ludus, is used metaphorically in the sense of school, while magisiri is used ambiguously.)
3.52
A similar form of jest may be made by use of the figure known as metalepsis, See VII. vi. 37. Substitution is the nearest translation. as when Fabius Maximus complained of the meagreness of the gifts made by Augustus to his friends, and said that his congiaria were heminaria: for congiarium congiarium is derived from congius a measure equal to about 6 pints. It was employed to denote the largesse of wine or oil distributed to the people. Fabius coined the word henminaritm from hemina, the twelfth part of the congius. Fabius was consul in 10 B.C. and a friend of Ovid. implies at once liberality and a particular measure, and Fabius put a slight on the liberality of Augustus by a reference to the measure.
