REMAINS OF FRONTO
"You are quit indeed of the disease, but of defect in diction you are not quit. For Gaius Caesar, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius, he who was dictator for life, from whom the family and designation of the Caesars are derived and still continue, a man of preeminent genius and distinguished beyond all his contemporaries for purity of style, in those books which he wrote to Cicero On Analogy,[1] holds that arenae is a faulty locution, in that arena is never used in the plural any more than caelum or triticum;[2] but his opinion is that quadrigae, on the other hand, although a single chariot is a single team of horses yoked together, should always be spoken of in the plural number, just as arma and moenia and comitia and inimicitiae: unless, my most brilliant of poets, you have anything to say to the contrary that shall clear you and prove that you were not in fault."
3. "As to caelum," said the other, "and triticum, I do not deny that they should always be used in the singular number; nor as to arma and moenia and comitia that they should be regarded as invariably plural words: about inimicitiae and quadrigae, however, we will consider later; and possibly as to the latter I shall bow to the authority of the ancients. But what grounds has C. Caesar for supposing that inimicitia was not used by the ancients and cannot be used by us, just as much as scientia and impotentia and iniuria? since Plautus, the glory of the Latin tongue, has used delicia also in the singular number for deliciae:
My darling, says he, my delight.[3]
- ↑ De Bello Parthico, ad fin.
- ↑ Verg. Ecl. v. 36, Georg. i. 317, uses hordeum (barley) in the plural, and is taken to task by Bavius, a rival poet, who says he might as well say tritica (wheats).
- ↑ Plautus, Poen. I. ii. 152.
