Kitap 9
1.3
and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son’s dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said: Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you neither knew nor had read this line, For no report is wholly false?Hesiod, Works and Days, 763. And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this, Fly from the island, worst of all mankind,Odyss. X. 72. either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this discourse quieted the tumult.
Question II. WHAT IS THE REASON THAT ALPHA IS PLACED FIRST IN THE ALPHABET, AND WHAT IS THE PROPORTION BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF VOWELS AND SEMI-VOWELS? AMMONIUS, HERMEAS, PROTOGENES, PLUTARCH, ZOPYRION.
2.1
IT being the custom of the Muses’ feast to draw lots, and those that were matched to propose curious questions to one another, Ammonius, fearing that two of the same profession might be matched together, ordered, without drawing lots, a geometrician to propose questions to a grammarian, and a master of music to a rhetorician.
