[1720] The frigidarium was not only the "cold bath" (Bekker's Gallus, p. 385), but was also applied to a cool cellar or pantry for keeping provisions fresh.
[1721] All the commentators seem to give up this line in despair. Colustrum is properly the first milk that comes after parturition; which, as being apt to curdle, was esteemed unwholesome, and produced an attack called "Colustratio." Schoenbeck supposes that the inhabitants of this "Hibera insula," wherever it was, used fomenta and colustra as medical remedies. Mart., xiii., Ep. 38.
[1722] Posticum, Nonius makes equivalent to Sella. Gerlach, however, thinks "cella" the correct reading here. The pistrinum was the name both for the bake-house and the mill for grinding the corn. Vid. Bekker's Gallus, p. 265.
[1723] Gigeria are the entrails of poultry: these were sometimes served with a kind of stuffing or forcemeat called insicia. The word occurs only in Lucilius, Petronius, and Apicius.
[1724] Scaliger connects this Fragment with lib. vii., Fr. 22, and reads, "Hic est Macedo: si lorum longui' flaccet, Læna manu lacrymas mutoni absterget amicâ."
[1725] Bua was the word taught by Roman nurses to children, equivalent to our "pap." "Potio posita parvulorum." Varro. Hence Vinibuæ for vinolentæ.
BOOK IX.
ARGUMENT.
The subject of the ninth book is known from several notices in the old grammarians.[1726] It is said to have contained strictures on the orthography of the ancient writers; some emendations of the verses of Accius and Ennius (with especial reference to the former, who is said to have always used double vowels to express a long syllable), and a mention of the double genius, who, according to the notion of Euclides the Socratic, attends upon each individual of the human race. The exact connection of this latter topic with the foregoing, is not at present evident to us. It appears that this book had anciently the title of "Fornix" as the work of Pomponius on a cognate subject was called "Marsyas." Van Heusde supposes that it took its name from the Fabian arch on the Via Sacra, and that its subject resembled the ninth of Horace's first book of Satires. The poet, in his walk along the Via Sacra, meets with a troublesome fellow near the arch of Fabius, who pesters him with a speech which he is about to deliver, as defendant in a cause, and which he wishes Lucilius to look over and correct; and that this furnishes the poet with the groundwork for a discussion on several points in grammar, orthography, and rhetoric. With this view Gerlach so far agrees, as to suppose the subject of both Horace's and Lucilius's Satires to have been similar; especially since many similar phrases and sentiments occur in both; but he considers a detailed disquisition on single letters and syllables inconsistent with a desultory conversation, or with a cursory criticism of an oration, and considers it better to confess one's ignorance honestly than indulge in vain-glorious conjecture. Particularly, since many other Fragments of this book have come down to us, wholly irreconcilable with this view of the subject; some referring to avarice, others to the Salii; which, though they might certainly be incidentally mentioned, imply too diversified a subject to be definitely circumscribed within so limited an outline, as Van Heusde conjectures.