Note 1, 6 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS

6, 7. elevet: ‘reject as light.’ The figure is taken from weighing, doubtless a common trope in the schools.—examen: (filum, ligula) is the ‘index, tongue, or needle’ which is said to be inprobum, ‘faulty,’ ‘wilful,’ ‘untoward,’ because it does not move freely or accurately on its pivot.—trutina: (Gr. τρυτάνη, a word of doubtful etymology and loose application, means here ‘a balance,’ ‘a pair of scales,’ not, as the scholiast says, the foramen, ‘fork’ or ‘cheeks,’ in which the examen plays.—castiges = percutias (Schol.) of the tap given to a hitching balance. Gesner, s.v., regards castigare here as equivalent to conpescere (5, 100), a view which has a good deal in its favor. The notion is not ‘do not correct the popular standard,’ but ‘do not try to get an exact result by the popular standard (for your guidance).’ Hermann (Lect. Pers., II., 9) follows those who understand the examen and trutina of different instruments: Noli examen tuum in populi trutina castigare.* So Pretor, who translates: ‘Do not try to correct the erring tongue of your delicate balance by applying to it a pair of ordinary scales.’—nec te quaesiveris extra: (te) ‘Nor look for yourself (what you can find only in yourself) outside of yourself.’ ‘Be your own norm.’ Others arrange: nec quaesiveris extra te, ‘Nor ask any opinion but your own.’

* No satisfactory treatment of this subject is accessible to me. The Greek and Latin dictionaries are wildly at variance with one another and with the authorities. Examen seems to have been originally the strap by which the beam was suspended—not from AG, but from AP. See Isidor., Orig., 16, 23, and comp. amentum (ammentum). Add Lucil., 16, 14 (L. Müller). Eustathius’s τρυτάνη ἐπὶ ζογοῦ ἡ τειρομένη τῷ βάρει τῶν ὄγκων points to the pivot (knife-edge) as the first meaning of trutina.