474 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



not the case with symmetria.' 1 — Here, as I observed, Ussing seems not 

 to understand Pliny's meaning. He was writing of Lysippus and of the 

 greater grace and freedom frombulkiness which this sculptor exhibited in 

 the bodies of his statues, ' by which they were made to seem taller.' Then 

 he adds : non kabet Latinum nomen symmetria quam diligentissime custodit, 

 that is : ' there is no Latin word for that symmetry which he observed so 

 carefully.' What Pliny says is therefore no condemnation of the use of 

 the word symmetria, which indeed he himself employs in three other 

 passages (34, 58 : in symmetria diligentior, a comparison of Myron and 

 Polyclitus ; 35, 67: Parrhasius primus symmetrical picturae dedit; 35, 

 128 : Fjiiphranor primus videtur usurpasse symmetrian), but a definite 

 statement that when a Latin writer is talking about ' symmetry,' he must 

 use the Greek word. Now ' symmetry ' is one of the very points upon 

 which Vitruvius most insists iu every department of the architect's pro- 

 fession. Near the opening of his work, he mentions it as one of the six 

 components of good architecture (11, 12), and soon afterwards he devotes 

 ten lines to a definition of what it is (12, 14). Having done this, even 

 the earliest of Latin prose writers would be fully entitled to employ the 

 word as often as he chose. If it is not found earlier than Vitruvius, this 

 is siniply because of the accident that there is no Latin work extant in 

 which there was so much occasion to speak of ' symmetry ' in the technical 

 sense. 12 



Leaving the subject of abstracts, Ussing next takes up another topic 

 in which he is equally unfortunate. ' Not infrequently,' he says, ' words 

 are found in a different connection and different signification from that 

 of the classical authors. Thus notitia in the sense of "renown " (63, 6 ; 

 133, 6), ponere "put forth " (64, 30), and antepoaere "put for:h at first" 

 (33, 4 and 10); dignum est for opercte pretium (46, 6); similar things 

 are quoted from Vopiscus, Lactantius, and Augustinus ; necexsitate = 

 necessario (246, 3).' — By the phrase 'classical authors' Ussing must, for 

 the sake of his argument, be taken as meaning authors writing in the 

 classical period, no matter what their reputation for style or lack of it 

 may be. Therefore we are entitled to point to notitia meaning ' renown ' 

 in Nepos, Dion, 9 : Hi propter notitiam sunt intromissi. In poetry it is 

 found thus in Ovid, Pont. 3, 1, 50 ; 4, 8, 48. Ussing's example of 

 ponere, in the sense of 'put forth,' disappears, since it is an emendation 

 for exponere, adopted by Rose iu his first edition but rightly abandoned 



12 It may be worth observing that Vitruvius employs his new formation 

 commensus in contexts along with symmetria, as if perhaps he felt that the Greek 

 term needed some help from Latin : see 15, 25; 31, 3; 134, 11; 138, 23 and 27. 



