[p. 445]
The moon makes oysters fat, sea-urchins full,Furthermore, those same things which grow as the moon waxes grow less as it wanes. The eyes of cats also become larger or smaller according to the same changes of the moon. This too," said he, βis much more greatly to be wondered at, which I read in the fourth book of Plutarch's Commentary on Hesiod: 2 ' The onion grows and buds as the moon wanes, but, on the contrary, dries up while the moon waxes. The Egyptian priests say that this is the reason why the people of Pelusium do not eat the onion, because it is the only one of all vegetables which has an interchange of increase and decrease contrary to the waxing and waning of the moon.'β
And bulk and substance to the mussels adds? 1
IX
[9arg] A passage in the Mimiambi of Gnaeus Matius, in which Antonius Iulianus used to delight; and the meaning of Marcus Cato in the speech which he wrote on his own uprightness, when he said: βI have never asked the people for garments.βANTONIUS JULIANUS used to say that his ears were soothed and charmed by the newly-coined words of Gnaeus Matius, a man of learning, such as the following, which he said were written by Matius in his Mimiambi: 3
Revive your cold love in your warm embrace,
Close joining lip to lip like amorous dove (columbulatim).
