[p. 303] questions was this: of what tense the verbs scripserim, legerim and venerim are, perfect or future, or both. When these questions had been put in the order that I have mentioned, and had been discussed and explained by the several guests on whom the lots fell, we were all presented with crowns and books, except for the one question about the verb verant. For at the time no one remembered that the word was used by Quintus Ennius in the thirteenth book of his Annals in the following line: 1
Do seers speak truth (verant), predicting life's extent?Therefore the crown for this question was presented to Saturn, the god of that festival.
III
[3arg] What the orator Aeschines, in the speech in which he accused Timarchus of unchastity, said that the Lacedaemonians decided about the praiseworthy suggestion of a most unpraiseworthy manAESCHINES, the most acute and sagacious of the orators who gained renown in the Athenian assemblies, in that cruel, slanderous and virulent speech in which he severely and directly accused Timarchus of unchastity, says that a man of advanced years and high character, a leader in that State, once gave noble and distinguished counsel to the Lacedaemonians. “The people of Lacedaemon,” he says, 2 “were deliberating as to what was honourable and expedient in a matter of great moment to their State. ”