Cum dixi ficus, rides quasi barbara verba.
Et dici ficos, Caeciliane, iubes.
Dicemus ficus, quas scimus in arbore nasci,
Dicemus ficos, Caeciliane, tuos.
(To Caecilianus.—When I have said ficus, you laugh, Caecilianus, as though I had committed a solecism, and declare ficos should be the word. We will say ficus, meaning the figs that we know grow on the tree, but your figs, Caecilianus, we will call ficos).
Now too we shall understand the medico ridente (the doctor grinning) in the following passage of Juvenal (II. 12):
Sed podice laevi
Caeduntur tumidae, medico ridente, mariscae.
(But from your smooth posterior are cut, the doctor grinning the while, the bloated swellings). Just as it admits of no doubt that in the passage of Horace[274]:
Nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi