Griphus Ternarii Numeri

pr. Ausonius to Symmachus. There lay hidden among my trifles an ignoble little book; and would that it had stayed hidden, and not perished, like the shrew-mouse, by its own betrayal! When I, like Euclio's cock, had dug it out from the squalor of its papery dust, I shook it out and read it again; and, like a greedy money-lender, I preferred to seize the bad coin rather than to bury it. Then, thinking to myself — not that Catullian phrase, but something more unmusical and truer — I did not seek long; for you presented yourself, whom I, if I had the power of choosing out of all, would always have chosen, the one man. And so I have sent you these frivolities, emptier than Sicilian trifles, that, when you are doing nothing, you may read them, and, that you may not be doing nothing, defend them. This trifling little book, then — long mangled, indeed, by a private but a common reading — will at last come into your hands. You will either, like Aesculapius, restore it to life, or, like Plato with Vulcan's help, free it from disgrace, if it ought not to come to fame. The matter of this little ineptitude was this: on a campaign — which time, as you know, is a time of military licence — an invitation was made at my table; not that one from Rubrius's banquet, that we should drink in the Greek fashion, but that one from Flaccus's ode, in which, because of the midnight and the new moon and Murena's augurship, the astonished bard calls for thrice three cups. This passage about the number three our familiar poetic itch began at once to carve out: and since the contagion of that disease is easy, would that the itch might migrate to you too, and that, the dye of your correction being added, you might press on the sponge that may finish the imperfect work of the ill-foaming horse. And, that you may not be ignorant that I am boastful, the little verses begun during luncheon I finished before suppertime — that is, while I was drinking, and a little before I drank. Let there be a reckoning, then, in proportion to the matter and the time; but do you too read this very thing a little more cheerful and more diluted with wine; for it is unjust for an abstemious reader to judge a poet who is ill-sobered. Nor does it escape me that there will be someone who will condemn this jest of ours with keen nostrils and wrinkled brow, and will deny that I have touched all things that pertain to the numbers three and nine. Him, that he speaks truly, I shall admit; that he speaks justly, I shall deny: for, if he is a good man, let him think that the things I have omitted were not forgotten by me, but passed over. Next, whatever he is, let him reflect within himself how many of these he would not have found, if he himself had sought them; let him know too that I neither used all that I dug out, nor abused some that offered themselves. For how many things about the number three do I knowingly neglect! The tenses and persons, the genders and degrees, the nine natural metres with the trimeters, the whole of grammar and music and the books of medicine, the thrice-great Hermes, and the first lover of philosophy, and the numbers of Varro, and whatever the profane crowd is ignorant of. Finally — which is easy — when he himself has found out many things, let him compare himself and me: a busy man with an idle one, a man who has lunched with an abstemious one, my jest and play with his diligence and slander. For one man can find more than another: no one finds all. But if to anyone I shall seem obscure too, you will defend me before him thus: first, that little poems of this kind, unless they are obscure, are bound to be nothing; next, that the nature of numbers is not a bulrush, that they should be without a knot; finally, if I shall be obscure even to you, to whom nothing is either unread or not understood, then indeed I am happy — I shall attain what I aimed at, that you should ask after me, that you should miss me, that you should think of me. Farewell.

1. The Riddle of the Number Three. Drink thrice, or as many times three: such is the mystic law, whether for one who drinks three, or for one who multiplies three by three, to weave the cube from nine uneven threes. The right of three is the same as that of thrice three: all things are in these — the form of a begun human being and the completion of a full birth; and that end of fate which holds the last of nine times nine. Three brothers, begotten of Ops; three sisters, born in order, of the female sex — Vesta, Ceres, and Juno. Hence Jove's thunderbolts are three-forked, hence Cerberus, hence the trident, and the threefold egg of Helen with her brothers. Thrice the new purple filled the spindles of Nestor, and the crow, three times more long-lived than that age; whom, gathering the generations in nine triple courses, the bronze-footed stags surpass three times Nestor's span, three of whose ages the bird of Phoebus (the raven) outlives, whom nine times older the bird of the Ganges goes before — the bird whose temples are radiant in their cinnamon nest (the Phoenix). Threefold is Hecate, three the faces of the maiden Diana; three the Graces, three the Fates, threefold the voice, threefold the elements, three the Sirens in Trinacria; all things by threes: three winged ones, three half-goddesses, three half-girls, bidden, three times three, to contend with the Muses for the palm, singing with mouth, hand, breath, with the boxwood pipe, with the lyre-string, with the voice. Three the parts of philosophy, three the Punic wars, three-month the turns of the years and of the sky, and through the shadow of night the threefold watches; thrice the late sentinel, when Mars is caught, sings the bright signs of the coming dawn. And he who, conceived in the evening of a tripled night (Hercules), fixed four times three rich spoils to his trophies. And the lyric bards are of the number of the Memnosynes (Muses), three of whom alone the right hand of Phoebus once held; but Cithaeron three times consecrated three of them in bronze, by the religion of the fathers, who feared to have scorned the six. The triple three-night festivals were celebrated in the Tarentine games, such as the triennial rites at Thebes for twice-born Bacchus. The first three battles of the Thracian gladiators, in three wars in order, the sons of Junius sent as offerings to their father's tomb. She too (the Sphinx), seeking marriages through three riddles — what was two-footed and four-footed and three-footed, all alone — terrified Aonia: a bird, a lion, a three-formed maiden — the Sphinx, with the wings of a bird, the feet of a beast, the face of a girl. Three partnerships gleam in the Tarpeian temple. Three kinds of arts make human dwellings: he who lays the stones for the walls, he who lays the beams on the roof, and he who adorns the plastering with the final touch. Hence the cask of Bromius (wine-measure) and hence the Sicilian medimnus: the practice of measuring unfolds the one by three, the other by twice three. In physics, three first things: God, the world, the form given; a triple of all kinds — begetter, begettress, begotten. Through three kinds of triangles the rule runs: equilateral, or with equal legs, or unequal in all. The perfect number coalesces into three parts, so that the same, by the assembled triple, is dissolved through thrice three. Three, the first, has an even, an odd, and a middle; but it alone, as it divides three, so also divides five and seven; and, set in the whole number under the point of the centre, it marks off the solid thirds as the cube proceeds, sundering the equal parts from the odd by its triple; and a triple middle is in even numbers, when of four and six and twice four the same navel (omphalos) is distinguished. Threefold law, which the four times three Tables (the Twelve Tables) ratified: the sacred, the private, and that which is the common property of the people anywhere. A triple kind of interdicts: "from which I shall have been driven by force," or "in which of two places it shall have been," or "of whose goods." Threefold liberty, and threefold the diminution of civil status. Threefold the kind of speaking: the sublime, the moderate, and that of a slender thread. Threefold too the manner of healing, whose names are by reason, or by method, or by experience; and medicine is threefold: to preserve, to prevent, to cure. Three the cultivations of the orators: that which Rhodes, ruled by its Colossus, and you, Attic Athens, loved; and that which prose of Asia drew from the stages to the stern benches, imitating in lawsuits the numbers of the choruses. Hence the tripods of Orpheus, because they are three — earth, water, flame. A triple consideration for the stars: position, distance, form. And music, both the measure and the mother of melodies, is threefold: mingled in books, secret in the stars, made common in the theatres. Martial Rome is threefold: in cavalry, plebs, and senate; by this number the tribes, and the tribunes of the sacred mount. Three squadrons of the knights, three names of the nobler sort. Three are the names for the lyre-strings, three the names for the month. The Geryons are threefold, threefold the framing of the Chimaera; Scylla is threefold, made of three — dog, maiden, fish. The Gorgons and the Harpalycae and the Furies are in a band of three; and the three prophetic Sibyls, of a common name, whose fatal songs are three books, which the cultivation of thrice five men preserves. Drink thrice. Three is the number above all things; three is the one God. Here too, lest the game run by with an inert number, let it have ten times three threes and ten times nine.