[p. 441] And he does not omit to tell what the nature of the dessert ought to be. For he uses these words: “Those sweetmeats (bellaria) are sweetest which are not sweet; 1 for harmony between delicacies and digestion is not to be counted upon.” That no one may be puzzled by the word bellaria which Varro uses in this passage, let me say that it means all kinds of dessert. For what the Greeks called πέμματα or τραγήματα, our forefathers called bellaria. 2 In the earlier comedies 3 one may find this term applied also to the sweeter wines, which are called Liberi bellaria, or “sweetmeats of Bacchus.”
XII
[12arg] That the tribunes of the commons have the right to arrest, but not to summon.IN one of the letters of Ateius Capito we read 4 that Antistius Labeo was exceedingly learned in the laws and customs of the Roman people and in the civil law. “But,” he adds, “an excessive and mad love of freedom possessed the man, to such a degree that, although the deified Augustus was then emperor and was ruling the State, Labeo looked upon nothing as lawful and accepted nothing, unless he had found it ordered and sanctioned by the old Roman law.” He then goes on to relate the reply of this same Labeo, when he was summoned by the messenger of a tribune of the commons. He says: “When the tribunes of the commons had been appealed to by a woman against Labeo and had sent to him at ”
