On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Leofranc Holford-Strevens wrote (in part): > > To the English reader _facetus_ is a 'faux ami': it implied not > schoolboyishness but polished elegance; not always even humour; cf. > Quintilian 6.3.20: "Facetum quoque non tantum citca ridicula opinor > consistere; neque enim diceret Horatius facetum carminis genus concessum > esse Vergilio. Decoris hanc magis et excultae cuiusdam elegantiae > appellationem puto. Ideoque in epistulis Cicero haec Bruti refert uerba: > "ne illi sunt pedes faceti ac +deliciis ingredienti mollius+ [text > corrupt, but reference is to mincing gait]." Quod conuenit cum illo > Horatiano "molle atque facetum". It is allied to _urbanitas_; cf. > Catullus 36. 19 'pleni ruris et inficetiarum', 22. 14 'idem infaceto est > infacetior rure'. To be sure a sense of humour is not excluded (see > Fordyce on Catullus 43. 8), but 'hoc etiam animaduertendum est, non esse > omnia ridicula faceta' (Cicero, _De oratore_ 2. 251). > > In Horace, if 'facetum' is to be translated 'witty', let it be in the > eighteenth-century sense rather than the twentieth.
I'd be glad to hear more on this, but I'm not sure the evidence you've cited satisfies me. The fact that not all birds are chickens does not mean that chickens are not birds. And the Quintilian quote is from a longer passage where he is talking about various types of humor. In this view, when Quintilian contrasts "facetus" with "ridiculus" he is contrasting two different types of humor, as opposed to contrasting what is humorous with what is non humorous, e.g. "iocum vero id accipimus quod est contrarium serio" (Quintilian, I.O., 6.3.21). JMP ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
