“[p. 305] the custom,” says he, “to dress becomingly in the forum, at home to cover their nakedness. They paid more for horses than for cooks. The poetic art was not esteemed. If anyone devoted himself to it, or frequented banquets, he was called a 'ruffian.'” This sentiment too, of conspicuous truthfulness, is to be found in the same work: 1 “Indeed, human life is very like iron. If you use it, it wears out; if you do not, it is nevertheless consumed by rust. In the same way we see men worn out by toil; if you toil not, sluggishness and torpor are more injurious than toil.”
III
[3arg] The nature and degree of the variety of usage in the particle pro; and some examples of the differences.WHEN I have leisure from legal business, and walk or ride for the sake of bodily exercise, I have the habit sometimes of silently meditating upon questions that are trifling indeed and insignificant, even negligible in the eyes of the uneducated, but are nevertheless highly necessary for a thorough understanding of the early writers and a knowledge of the Latin language. For example, lately in the retirement of Praeneste, 2 as I was taking my evening walk alone, I began to consider the nature and degree of variety in the use of certain particles in the Latin language; for instance, in the preposition pro. For I saw that we had one use in “the priests passed a decree in the name of their order,” and another in “that a witness who had been called in ”
