Laudator Temporis Acti

Edward Lear (1812-1888), The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, ed. Vivien Noakes (London: Penguin Books, 2002), p. 372:

There was an Old Person of Sestri,
Who sate himself down in the vestry;
When they said, 'You are wrong!' — he merely said 'Bong!'
That repulsive Old Person of Sestri.

Robert Burns (1759-1796), "A Dream," lines 30-31, with glosses borrowed from The Canongate Burns:

But Facts are chiels that winna ding,
    And downa be disputed.

chiels: fellows
winna ding: will not be upset
downa: cannot

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1368-1369 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

We must talk about these things on the basis of firm knowledge. Guesswork is one thing, firm knowledge is another.

σάφ᾿ εἰδότας χρὴ τῶνδε μυθεῖσθαι πέρι·
τὸ γὰρ τοπάζειν τοῦ σάφ᾿ εἰδέναι δίχα.

William Cobbett (1762-1835), Rural Rides, ed. George Woodcock (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 366 (Malmsbury, Wiltshire, September 11, 1826):

They feel the facts; but they wish to disguise them, because they know that they have been one great cause of the country being in its present impoverished and dilapidated state. They know that the people look at them with an accusing eye: and they wish to put as fair a face as they can upon the state of things.

Gary A. Rendsburg, "The Mock of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50.3 (July, 1988) 414-417 (at 416):

Nor is this the only reference to Baal and excrement in ancient literature. Marvin Pope¹¹ has called attention to the rabbinic description of ceremonial defecation in the cult of Baal Peor (see b. ᶜAbod. Zar. 44b; b. Sanh. 60b; m. Sanh. 7:6 [cited by Pope], as well as Sipre 131; y. Sanh. 10:2,28d). Pope's caution on whether this detail stems "from direct knowledge of the pagan cult" or "from play on one of the meanings of the word pᶜr" is admirable. Now, however, recognition of the allusion to excrement in 1 Kgs 18:27 may tilt the scales in favor of Pope's former suggestion (notwithstanding the assumption that Baal worship took on different manifestations in different locales, that is to say, that the worship of Baal on Mt. Carmel need not a priori have been the same as the worship of Baal at Baal Peor in Transjordan). We may even reverse the thinking of Pope's latter suggestion and propose that 1he name Baal Peor is to be derived from (pᶜr) "excrete."<sup>12

11</sup> M.H. Pope, "A Divine Banquet at Ugarit," The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays. Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring (ed. J.M. Efird; Durham, NC: Duke University, 1972) 196-97.

¹² For this meaning see F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906) 822.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

William Cobbett (1762-1835), Rural Rides, ed. George Woodcock (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 376 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, September 12, 1826):

The people seem to have been constantly well off. A pig in almost every cottage sty; and that is the infallible mark of a happy people.

Related post: The Swineherd.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1448-1451 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

Ah, if only some fate could swiftly come—not a painful one, nor one that left us long bedridden—that would bring us eternal, unending sleep...

φεῦ, τίς ἂν ἐν τάχει μὴ περιώδυνος
μηδὲ δεμνιοτήρης
μόλοι τὸν αἰεὶ φέρουσ᾿ ἂν ἡμῖν        1450
μοῖρ᾿ ἀτέλευτον ὕπνον...

"Some fate" in English, but in the Greek 13 words separate τίς from μοῖρα, a good example of hyperbaton.

I don't have access to A.M. Devine and Laurence D. Stephens, Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

From Kevin Muse:

Literally τίς is an interrogative adjective, modifying, as you say, μοῖρα, the whole thing being a question with a potential optative—"What fate might/ could come....?" But the upshot is that it is a wishful thought, and so the translators opt to translate τίς as indefinite, though it is accented and not enclitic, and they render the optative as one of wish. I see that Smyth cites this passage as an example of a potential optative used to express a wish at § 1832.

Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.81-84 (tr. William H. Race):

Great risk does not take hold of a cowardly man. But since men must die, why would anyone sit in darkness and coddle a nameless old age to no use, deprived of all noble deeds?

ὁ μέγας δὲ κίν-
δυνος ἄναλκιν οὐ φῶτα λαμβάνει·
θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον
γῆρας ἐν σκότῳ καθήμενος ἕψοι μάταν,
ἁπάντων καλῶν ἄμμορος;

W.J. Verdenius ad loc.: Ge. = Douglas E. Gerber, Pindar's Olympian One: A Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).

Homer, Odyssey 7.40-41 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. George E. Dimock):

...for Athene, the dread goddess, did not allow it...

                                          ... οὐ γὰρ Ἀθήνη
εἴα ἐυπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεός...

In Dimock's revision, Athena's epithet ἐυπλόκαμος ("with lovely hair, fair-tressed" in the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, "of the beautiful plaited hair" in the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos) isn't translated. Here is Murray's original translation, before Dimock's revision:

.. for fair-tressed Athene, the dread goddess, would not suffer it...

It sometimes feels like revisions introduce as much error as they remove.

I see that Emily Wilson translates ἐυπλόκαμος as "pigtailed" here. At 5.126 she translates the same adjective, applied to Demeter, as "with cornrows in her hair." Both choices seem grotesque to me.

Labels: typographical and other errors