“[p. 211] senior and that form by itself is naught, but almost everyone says adsentior. Sisenna alone used to say adsentio (I agree) in the senate, but later many followed his example, yet could not prevail over usage.” But Varro himself in other books wrote a good deal in defence of analogy. Therefore his utterances on the subject are, as it were, common-places, 1 to cite now against analogy and again also in its favour.
XXVI
[26arg] Discourses of Marcus Fronto and the philosopher Favorinus on the varieties of colours and their Greek and Latin names: and incidentally, the nature of the colour spadix.WHEN the philosopher Favorinus was on his way to visit the exconsul Marcus Fronto, who was ill with the gout, he wished me also to go with him. And when there at Fronto's, where a number of learned men were present, a discussion took place about colours and their names, to the effect that the shades of colours are manifold, but the names for them are few and indefinite, Favorinus said: "More distinctions of colour are detected by the eye than are expressed by words and terms. For leaving out of account other incongruities, your simple colours, red (rufus) and green viridiss), have single names, but many different shades. And that poverty in names I find more pronounced in Latin than in Greek. For the colour red Rufuss) does in fact get its name from redness, but although fire is one kind of red, blood
