[p. 429]
II
[2arg] The meaning of the word siticines in a speech of Marcus Cato's.THE word siticines is found in a speech of Marcus Cato entitled Let not a Former Official retain his power, when his Successor arrives. 1 He speaks of siticines, liticines and tubicines. But Caesellius Vindex, in his Notes on Early Words, declares that he knows that liticines played upon the lituus, or “clarion,” and tibicines on the tuba, or “trumpet,” but, being a man of conscientious honesty, he says that he does not know what instrument the siticines used. But I have found in the Miscellanies of Ateius Capito 2 that those were called siticines who played in the presence of those who were “laid away” (sitos), that is, who were dead and buried; and that they had a special kind of trumpet on which they played, differing from those of the other trumpeters.
III
[3arg] Why the poet Lucius Accius in his Pragmatica said that sicinnistae was a “nebulous word.”THOSE whom the vulgar call sicinistae, persons who speak more accurately have called sicinnistae with a double n. For the sicinnium was an ancient form of dance. Moreover, those who now stand and sing formerly danced as they sang. Lucius Accius used this word in his Pragmatica, and says that sicinnistae are so called by a “nebulous” (nebuloso) term, using the word “nebulous,” I suppose, because the reason for the term sicinnium was obscure.
