[37]
But we may pardon anyone
after the example set by Varro.1 For he tried to
persuade Cicero, to whom he dedicated his work,
that a field was called eager because something is
done in it (agitur), and jackdaws graculos because
they fly in flocks (gregatim), in spite of the obvious
fact that the first word is derived from the Greek,
the latter from the cry of the bird in question.
1 de Lingua Lat. v. 34 and 76.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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