Laudator Temporis Acti

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974), "England Not My England," The Condemned Playground. Essays: 1927-1944 (London: Routledge, 1945), pp. 196-210 (at 209-210):

I leant against a long wall underneath a window, when suddenly a voice began to thunder from inside. "Very important. Causal conjunctions. We went very deeply into this last week. Read it out." "Causal conjunctions," quavered a choir of young voices. "Quippe, qui, and quoniam take the indicative." "Quippe, qui, and quoniam," bellowed the usher, interrupting them, "take the indicative." The rasping voice sounded like the cry of a wild animal, as if one had passed on the top of a bus by the Zoo, but the uncouth language blended perfectly with the summer scene outside. "Take this down—take it down, will you," the roar continued. "Conjectus est in carcerem—he was thrown into prison—quod patrem occidisset—on the grounds that he had killed his father—qui eo tempore—who at that time was flying into Italy—in Italiam refugiebat. RE-FU-GI-EBAT," he thundered, and the pedagogic rhythms floated out into the sun and along the dusty hedgerows. "Conjectus est in carcerem," mumbled the scribbling pupils; "quippe, qui, and quoniam," they chanted; "causal conjunctions," till the words were lost above the Isle of Purbeck, a drone above the drone of bees.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, Book I, Chapter 1 (Proem), § 4:

And the question of questions now is: What part of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and nourish us again?

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), "The Prioress's Tale," Canterbury Tales VII.536:

I kan but smal gramere.

I.e.:

I understand grammar only a little.

Frederick II, letter to D'Alembert (June 22, 1780; tr. Thomas Holcroft):

The writings of Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, have survived the destruction of the Capitol, and of Rome itself; they subsist and have been translated into all languages, and will subsist, while there shall be men in the world who think, read, and delight in knowledge. Such will be the fate of the works of Voltaire. To him I make my morning orisons; to him I say—Divine Voltaire, Ora pro nobis! Let but Calliope, Melpomene, or Urania, enlighten and inspire me, and my saint will equal your Saint Denis. My saint, instead of troubling the world, aided oppressed innocence, as much as he had the power; and, more than once, put fanaticism to shame, and made judges blush at their iniquity! He would have reformed the world, could it have been reformed.

Les écrits de Virgile, d'Horace & de Cicéron ont vu détruire le Capitole, Rome même; ils subsistent, on les traduit dans toutes les langues, & ils resteront tant qu'il y aura dans le monde des hommes qui pensent, qui lisent & qui aiment à s'instruire. Les ouvrages de Voltaire auront la même destinée; je lui fais tous les matins ma prière, je lui dis: Divin Voltaire, ora pro nobis! Que Calliope, que Melpomène, qu'Uranie m'éclairent & m'inspirent! mon saint vaut bien votre S. Denis. Mon saint, au-ieu de troubler l'univers, a soutenu l'innocence opprimée autant qu'il étoit en lui, il a fait rougir plus d'une fois le fanatisme, & les juges de leurs iniquités; il auroit corrigé le monde, s'il eût été corrigible.

Related posts:

• Saint Epicurus
• Saint Socrates

Jonathan Swift, letter to Charles Ford (March 8, 1709):

I am grown so hard to please, that I am offended with every unexpected Face I meet where I visit, and the least Tediousness or Impertinence gives me a Shortness of Breath, and a Pain in my Stomack. Among all the Diversions you mention among you, I desire to know whether a Man may be allowed to sitt alone among his Books, as long as he pleases.

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974), "Illusions of Likeness," The Condemned Playground. Essays: 1927-1944 (London: Routledge, 1945), pp. 41-46 (at 41-42):

The last ten years have witnessed a welcome decay in pedantic snobbery about dead languages. A knowledge of Greek is no longer the hallmark of a powerful intellectual caste, who visit with Housmanly scorn any solecism from the climbers outside it. The dons who jeer at men of letters for getting their accents wrong command no more sympathy than doctors who make fun of psychiatrists or osteopaths; the vast vindictive rages which scholars used to vent on those who knew rather less than themselves seem no longer so admirable, like the contempt which those people who at some time learned how to pronounce Buccleuch and Harewood have for those who are still learning. The don-in-the-manger is no longer formidable. There was a time when most people were ashamed to say that The Oxford Book of Greek Verse required a translation. That time is over. We shall not refer to it again except to say that if people as teachable as ourselves couldn't be taught enough Greek in ten years to construe any piece unseen, as we can with French, or with any other modern language, then that system by which we were taught should be scrapped, and those stern nincompoops by whom we were instructed should come before us, like the burghers of Calais, in sackcloth and ashes with halters round their necks.

Theodore Ziolkowski, "Uses and Abuses of Horace: His Reception since 1935 in Germany and Anglo-America," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12.2 (Fall, 2005) 183-215 (at 184-185):

This was the culture that also produced Wilfred Owen's virulent antiwar poem, "Dulce Et Decorum Est" (1917), which takes as its title and subtext the familiar lines from Horace's Second Roman Ode (3.2.13) proclaiming the sweet propriety of death for one's country—a sentiment that Owen calls "The old Lie."⁷ Two years earlier, required to write a school essay on the same passage, the seventeen-year-old Bertolt Brecht ridiculed "the emperor's chubby court-jester" ("des Imperators feister Hofnarr") who had run away at Philippi, and slighted his poem as "applied propaganda" ("Zweckpropaganda").⁸ And in the opening section of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920)—"Ode pour l'élection de son sepulchre iv"—Ezra Pound denounced war, lamenting those who, misled by spurious motives, die "pro patria, / non 'dulce' non 'et decor'" (sic).⁹

7. The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, ed. C. Day Lewis (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963), 55.

8. O. Müllereisert, "Augsburger Anekdoten um Bert Brecht," in Erinnerungen an Brecht, zusammengestellt von H. Witt (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam jun., 1964), 18; cited here by Peter Witzmann, "Bertolt Brecht, Beim Lesen des Horaz," Das Altertum 14 (1968): 55-64.

9. As recently as 1957/58, students at the University of Munich demanded (successfully!) that the same quotation be removed from a decorative window in the main hall of the university. See Werner Suerbaum, Q. Horatii Flacci Disiecti Membra Poetae (University of Munich, 1993), Beiheft 1:24. For further examples see Martin M. Winkler, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori? Classical Literature in the War Film," International Journal of the Classical Tradition 7 (2000): 177-214.

Plato, Republic 1.2 (328d-e; Socrates to Cephalus; tr. Paul Shorey):

I enjoy talking with the very aged. For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must some time fare—what it is like—is it rough and hard going or easy and pleasant to travel.

χαίρω γε διαλεγόμενος τοῖς σφόδρα πρεσβύταις· δοκεῖ γάρ μοι χρῆναι παρ᾽ αὐτῶν πυνθάνεσθαι, ὥσπερ τινὰ ὁδὸν προεληλυθότων ἣν καὶ ἡμᾶς ἴσως δεήσει πορεύεσθαι, ποία τίς ἐστιν, τραχεῖα καὶ χαλεπή, ἢ ῥᾳδία καὶ εὔπορος.

Horace, Satires 1.1.92-94 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

In short, set bounds to the quest of wealth, and as you increase your means let your fear of poverty lessen, and when you have won your heart's desire, begin to bring your toil to an end...

denique sit finis quaerendi, cumque habeas plus,
pauperiem metuas minus et finire laborem
incipias, parto quod avebas...

92 cumque codd.: quoque Muretus

Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 460 with note on p. 475:

The case of Sophronius, bishop of Tella (fifth century), is truly amazing, even though, as a supporter of Nestorius, he may be classified as a heretic.¹⁰ The magical experiments of this dignitary of the Church were described by two presbyters and two deacons before the "Robber Synod" of Ephesus in 449 and denounced by the assembled clergy. Someone had stolen a sum of money from the bishop. He gathered the suspects and first made them swear on the Gospel that they were innocent. Then he forced them to undergo the "cheese-sandwich oracle" (tyromanteia). The sandwiches were offered, and the bishop attached a conjuration to a tripod. In principle, the thief would have been unable to eat, but apparently all the suspects ate with a good appetite. So the bishop insisted on another oracle, the phialomanteia: he consulted a spirit that was supposed to appear in a dish into which water and oil had been poured. This method finally revealed the thief.

10. See G. Luck, in Ankarloo and Clark, Witchcraft, pp. 155–56.

Georg Luck, "Witches and Sorcerers in Classical Literature," in Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, edd., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 91-156 (at 155):

In a chapter entitled 'Die geheimen Praktiken eines syrischen Bischofs', E. Peterson (Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis, Herder 1959, pp. 222-45) deals with a fascinating testimony which has been overlooked by many historians of witchcraft in antiquity. It is found in the records, written in Syriac, of the so-called Robber Synod of Ephesus, 449. Here, Sophronius, the Bishop of Tella is accused not only of being a heretic, but also of being a magician and an astrologer.

The Bishop had lost a sum of money while traveling. He rounded up some suspects and made them first swear on the Gospel that they were innocent. Then he forced them to undergo the 'cheese-sandwich' test (tyromanteia).

In a note (p. 334, n. 2) Peterson documents how often people went to consult magicians when they had lost money or had been the victims of theft. Apuleius (Apologia 42) had read in Varro that Nigidius Figulus, the famous occultist, thanks to his gift of clairvoyance, once apprehended a thief, and Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus 11, tells a similar story of the great Neoplatonist who had a special gift of emblepein, 'visionary intuition'.

As the cheese-sandwiches were offered, the Bishop attached the following spell to a tripod: 'Lord Iao, Bringer of Light, deliver the thief I am looking for,' observing the suspects, because the one who was unable to eat his sandwich must be the thief. The test was inconclusive (apparently all the suspects ate their sandwiches). The Bishop next tried phialomanteia. He poured water and oil into a bowl. We must assume that either Sophronius himself or a medium then conjured up a daemon or a ghost (of a biaiothanatos, i.e. a murder victim or a suicide) and asked who the culprit was. This operation was successful.

Peterson's book is unavailable to me, but cf. S.G.F. Perry, The Second Synod of Ephesus, Together with Certain Extracts Relating to it, from Syriac MSS. preserved in the British Museum...English Version (Dartford: The Orient Press, 1881), pp. 191-193 (notes omitted):

Once upon a time as he was travelling, he happened to lose a considerable amount of gold; and when his suspicion rested on certain persons and he had made them take an oath upon the Evangelists (in the matter), not satisfied with this he, further, testing them by the ordeal of bread and cheese like the heathen, compelled them to eat. And, when he still did not find (the money), he prepared himself (and used) a divining Cup; affirming that "the money is to be found with such and such a persona whose name is so and so, and who is clothed in such and such a way." And many times the Daemons, wishing to confirm him in the imposture, pointed out the thief, not because they wanted to convict him (the thief), but because they were eager to plunge (overwhelm) the Bishop in ruin.

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. τυρόμαντις:

one who divines from cheese, ARTEM. 2.69.

Artemidorus 2.69 just lists cheese-diviners in a list of types of charlatans, without any more details.

Papyri Graecae Magicae V.200-212, tr. W.C. Grese, in Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; rpt. 1996), p. 104:

Take a tripod and place it on an earthen altar, offer myrrh, frankincense, and a frog's tongue. Take unsalted winter wheat and goat-cheese, and give to each 8 drams of winter wheat and 8 drams of cheese while saying the following formula (inscribe this name and glue it underneath the tripod): "Master IAŌ, light-bearer, / hand over the thief whom I see." If one of them does not swallow what was given to him, he is the thief.

The Greek, from Karl Preisendanz, ed., Papyri Graecae Magicae, Vol. I (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1928), p. 188 (vertical line separators omitted):

λαβὼν τρίποδα ἐπίθεϲ ἐπὶ βωμὸν γήϊνον, ἐπίθυε ζμύρναν καὶ λίβανον καὶ γλῶτταν βατράχου, καὶ λαβὼν ϲελίγνιον ἄναλον καὶ τυρὸν αἴγειον δίδου ἑκάϲτῳ ϲελιγνίου δραχμὰϲ η΄, τυροῦ δραχμὰϲ η΄ ἐπιλέγων τὸν ἑξῆϲ λόγον. ἐπίγραφε δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα καὶ ὑποκόλληϲον τῷ τρίποδι. ῾Δέϲποτα Ἰάω, φωϲφόρε, παράδοϲ φῶρ’, ὃν ζητῶ’. ἐὰν δέ τιϲ αὐτῶν μὴ καταπίῃ τὸ δοθὲν αὐτῷ, αὐτόϲ ἐϲτιν ὁ κλέψαϲ.

Ovid, Tristia 3.3.13-14 (tr. Arthur Leslie Wheeler):

Aweary I lie among these far-away peoples in this far-away place,
and thoughts come to me in my weakness of everything that is not here.

lassus in extremis iaceo populisque locisque,
    et subit adfecto nunc mihi, quicquid abest.

Ch'ü Yüan (343-278 BC), "Battle," tr. Arthur Waley, A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), pp. 39-40:

"We grasp our battle-spears: we don our breast-plates of hide.
The axles of our chariots touch: our short swords meet.
Standards obscure the sun: the foe roll up like clouds.
Arrows fall thick: the warriors press forward.
They menace our ranks: they break our line.
The left-hand trace-horse is dead: the one on the right is smitten.
The fallen horses block our wheels: they impede the yoke-horses!"

They grasp their jade drum-sticks: they beat the sounding drums.
Heaven decrees their fall: the dread Powers are angry.

The warriors are all dead: they lie on the moor-field.
They issued but shall not enter: they went but shall not return.
The plains are flat and wide; the way home is long.
Their swords lie beside them: their black bows, in their hand.
Though their limbs were torn, their hearts could not be repressed.
They were more than brave: they were inspired with the spirit of "Wu."¹
Steadfast to the end, they could not be daunted.
Their bodies were stricken, but their souls have taken Immortality —
Captains among the ghosts, heroes among the dead.

¹ I.e., military genius.

Herodotus 9.122.2 (tr. A.D. Godley):

Let us now remove out of the little and rugged land that we possess and take to ourselves one that is better.

γῆν γὰρ ἐκτήμεθα ὀλίγην καὶ ταύτην τρηχέαν, μεταναστάντες ἐκ ταύτης ἄλλην σχῶμεν ἀμείνω.

Demosthenes, For the Liberty of the Rhodians 25 (tr. J.H. Vince):

There are some among you, Athenians, who are very clever at pleading the rights of others against you, and I would just give them this piece of advice—to find something to say for your rights against others, so that they themselves may set the example of doing what is proper; since it is absurd for a man to lecture you about rights when he is not doing what is right himself, and it is not right that a citizen should have given his attention to all the arguments against you and to none in your favour.

εἰσὶ δέ τινες, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, παρ᾿ ὑμῖν δεινότατοι τὰ δίκαια λέγειν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἄλλων πρὸς ὑμᾶς, οἷς παραινέσαιμ᾿ ἂν ἔγωγε τοσοῦτον μόνον, ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ζητεῖν τὰ δίκαια λέγειν, ἵν᾿ αὐτοὶ τὰ προσήκοντα πρῶτοι φαίνωνται ποιοῦντες· ὡς ἔστ᾿ ἄτοπον περὶ τῶν δικαίων ὑμᾶς διδάσκειν αὐτὸν οὐ δίκαια ποιοῦντα· οὐ γάρ ἐστι δίκαιον ὄντα πολίτην τοὺς καθ᾿ ὑμῶν λόγους, ἀλλὰ μὴ τοὺς ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐσκέφθαι.

Alfred Gudeman compiled Imagines Philologorum: 160 Bildnisse aus Zeit von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: B.G Teubner, 1911). But I can't find any photographs of Gudeman himself, only this caricature:


The caricature appeared in a University of Pennsylvania college yearbook, accompanied by a satirical article, "A Glimpse at Gudeman," which I found on ancestry.com, downloaded, and transcribed (the "[sic]" is my own insertion):

'Tis a balmy morn in early spring. The scent of sprouting grass and Freshmen is in the air. College hall is alive with the babble of many youthful members of society seeking instruction at the fountainheads of knowledge, but as yet the "Crystal Palace of the Muses" (second floor west) is silent and deserted, and the gentle zephyrs, laden with the perfumed odors of medical hall play at their own sweet will through the open windows. Before long, however, the ponderous hands of the college clock (for details as to which wonderful piece of machinery apply of Shorty McGrath) indicate that the fateful hour of 11 is approaching, and at precisely five minutes before the hour the peace and quiet of the "palace" are disturbed by a pitter-patter of diminutive feet outside in the vulgar hallway. The knob turns, the glass door opens, and there enters the daintiest little Dutch philologist in all the world, Alfred Gudeman, Ph.D. Ah, the very gently-curving man, like Falstaff, with "something of a round belly;" his face is full, and, I regret to say, voluptuous (due to his continual reading of "Gudeman's Expurgated Passages of the Classics"); his head is very round and shiny, save where a few sparse black hairs are plastered stiffly upon his pate with odoriferous bear's grease. He wears a celluloid collar, spotlessly clean, and a blue cross cravat with white stripes, which J.H. Langstroth one day discovered was likewise celluloid, thereby explaining the hitherto unsolved mystery of "How I wear the same cravat continuously for two consecutive years?"

It goes without saying that his spotless shirt is of the same material. As already suggested, "he hath an excellent stomach," which is well protected against the stilettos of its enemies by what appears at first sight to be a large plate of brass a foot and a half long by half a foot broad, but which is really nothing but a specially-made and disgracefully-large badge of Phi Beta Kappa, which he purchased at Columbia for the price of two years' leg-pulling, much to the discredit of this otherwise honorable institution.

"Gutsy" (for so he is universally known among his loving pupils) walks at once with dainty tread to his desk, and, pulling out of the drawer a copy of Tacitus, opens at the lesson and sits like the spider, ready to pounce upon the first unwary fly that enters his parlour. Presently the bell rings and the fly enters, in the shape of Merzbacher, who was never known to be a minute late for any hour since he entered college. The pair at once "start it up," regardless of the rest of the class, who gradually stroll in amid great confusion and many complimentary shouts of "O Goody," "You dirty toad," etc., etc., from behind the glass partition. In about five minutes, when the class is comfortably seated and the door closed, a terrible noise of thundering footsteps is heard in the hall, and Gerhard and Brinton, in frantic haste, chagrined at the thought of losing a word of the lesson, burst into the room like a cyclone and immediately make a dive for the only unoccupied chair, which stands in the far corner of the room. (Ask Gerhard why it was the only one.) Both arrive at the same time, which causes complications. "Gutsy" is compelled to notice the disturbance, and rushes up and down the room, waving his hands and exclaiming: "Gemmen, these are the most uproarious actions that ever occurred within these walls. I shall resort to the most severe measures. The clean shall be informed of this, gemmen," etc., etc. Gerhard knows his man, however, and saves the day by accusing Professor Gibbons of having removed the other chair, and by immediately bringing in one from Schwatt's room, and thus harmony protem is restored and recitation begins again.

"Mistah Mills, begin—Est in insula Oceani castum nemus, dicatumque in eo vehiculum veste contectum."

Mills (reading at sight)—"There is a grove cast in the island of Oceani, and there is said to be in it a wagon covered with a vest."

Gutsy—Very good, Mr. Mills, you are showing many signs of improvement. Mistah Kriebel, will you go on? Mox vehiculum et vestis, et, si, credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur.

Kriebel (a little shaky)—Soon the wagon and the vest, and, if you will believe it, the goddess herself are washed in secreted milk."

The class bursts into a roar. Jim Langstroth waves his arms about his head and slaps his thighs with great noise, while Gudey gives a prolonged "Tee-hee-hee-hee," and when quiet is at last obtained, viciously asks Kriebel if he has ever seen a goddess washing herself in "secreted milk." Wilbur blushes scarlet, which greatly tickles Gutsy, who, after explaining that "secrete [sic] lacu" means a "hidden lake," proceeds to translate the next passage himself, tinder the impression that it requires a scholar's judgment, and oh, the "hash" (a favorite word of his in translating—query, why?) he makes of it. Behold a sample exhibition of the result of his critical and philological acumen.

Gudey—"You may, ah, perceive, gemmen, that I have, ah, introduced a few emendations into this passage, which, ah, I blush for modesty, have never suggested before. Teuffelschwabewarich was, indeed, on the right track, but he died before he arrived at the remarkably simple and scholarly interpretation which it has, ah, fallen to my lot to present to you. I have examined seven thousand eight hundred and four similar passages in Tacitus, and have come to the unmistakable conclusion that whenever our author uses the word "facile" he meant to use "difficile," and wherever he has used the word "non," he meant to omit it. You will find a full discussion of this subject in my forthcoming monologue in the Americana-Germanica, of which you will all please procure copies and—"

But, alas, at this point poor Gudey's interesting "monologue" is cut short by a disturbance in the back part of the room, where it appears that Brinton has just succeeded in tying Gerhard firmly to his chair with a piece of clothes line. Gerhard resents the deprival of his liberty of action with loud shouts, and is immediately ordered to leave the room, which he at once proceeds to do with the greatest pleasure and alacrity, taking the chair with him. In fact, the situation grows quite dramatic, and peace is only restored by the severing of the ropes and the peremptory dismissal of Gerhard to the dean's office. Brinton soon follows, despite the efforts of Gutsy to restrain him, and they have scarce reached the stairs when the bell rings and the class is dismissed.

But now, gentle reader, let us drop for a moment the curtain of our imagination; let us imagine that stately Clio and the shade of Tacitus have left the "Muses palace," and that their places have been taken by Euterpe and the sweetly-piping Theocritus. Let us then fly thither on the wings of our fancy and visit for a moment more our old friend Gutsy. Things are pretty much the same as ever, but, alas, there is no Gerhard—ergo, there is little jollity. Merzbacher now cavils at pleasure over the weird constructions, which Gudey manufactures to excuse his many "lapsi linguae." Levett upsets his repeated "only occurrence of this word in all literature, gemmen," by numerous quotations containing the word in question. Brinton tickles him by reading the expurgated passages from his edition of 1610 (P.S. All expurgations, according to Gutsy, are needless, and generally contain "the pith of the whole passage"). Langstroth angers him by stating his opinion in a loud voice that the "bee" could not have stung Cupid on each finger, because, to his "positive knowledge," a bee can "sting once, and once only," and causes him to reply with the severest sarcasm: "Ah! Mr. Langstroth, but you must remember that this is a Theocritean bee."

This reply so worries Jim Langstroth that in revenge he resorts to his old trick of opening the door and rushing violently into the hall under pretense that he had heard some one knock, only to return with great noise five minutes later and spend another five in shutting the door, opening the window and getting fixed to his seat.

Thus it was that the hard hours with Gudey were whiled (?) away, and what would otherwise have been a very bitter pill was comfortably coated with the sugar of amusement.

Gudeman taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1893 to 1901. The students mentioned (James Yeates Brinton, Arthur Howell Gerhard, Elias Wilbur Kriebel, James W. Langstroth, Walker Moore Levett, Isadore Merzbacher, Coleman Sellers Mills) were all members of the class of 1898.

On Gudeman's sad life and death see Donna W. Hurley, "Alfred Gudeman, Atlanta, Georgia, 1862 — Theresienstadt, 1942," Transactions of the American Philological Association 120 (1990) 355-381.

Thijs Porck, "Old age as a prefiguration of Hell: Senescence in early medieval England," Dutch Anglo-Saxonist:

An anonymous Anglo-Saxon homilist wrote:

Him amolsniað and adimmiað þa eagan, þe ær wæron beorhte and gleawe on gesihðe. And seo tunge awistlað, þe ær hæfde getinge spræce and gerade. And ða earan aslawiað, þa þe ær wæron ful swifte and hræde to gehyrenne fægere dreamas and sangas. And þa handa awindað, þa ðe ær hæfdon ful hwæte fingras. And þæt feax afealleð, þe ær wæs fæger on hiwe and on fulre wæstme. And þa teð ageolwiað, þa ðe wæron ær hwite on hiwe. And þæt oreð stincð and afulað, þe ær wæs swete on stence.[8]

[His eyes weaken and become dim, that had been bright and keen of sight. And his tongue hisses, which had possessed fluent and skilful speech. And his ears become sluggish, which had been very swift and quick to hear beautiful stories and songs. And his hands bend, that had possessed fully active fingers. And his hair falls out, that had been fair in colour and in full abundance. And his teeth turn yellow, that had been white in appearance. And his breath, which had been sweet of smell, stinks and turns foul.]

[8] Wulfstan; Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. A. S. Napier (Berlin, 1883), hom. 30, p. 147, ll. 23–31, p. 148, ll. 1–7.

Adolf Harnack (1851-1930), The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, tr. James Moffatt, Vol. I (London: Williams and Norgate, 1908), pp. 422-423:

As inscriptions and writings testify, Christians in East and West alike made an exclusive or almost exclusive use of the old pagan names in their environment till after the middle of the third century, employing, indeed, very often names from pagan mythology and soothsaying. We find Christians called Apollinaris, Apollonius, Heraclius, Saturninus, Mercurius, Bacchylus, Bacchylides, Serapion, Satyrus, Aphrodisius, Dionysius, Hermas, Origen, etc., besides Faustus, Felix, and Felicissimus. "The martyrs perished because they declined to sacrifice to the gods whose names they bore"!

Now this is remarkable! Here was the primitive church exterminating every vestige of polytheism in her midst, tabooing pagan mythology as devilish, living with the great personalities of the Bible and upon their words, and yet freely employing the pagan names which had been hitherto in vogue!

The entire discussion on pp. 422-430 is worth reading. See also M. Depauw and W. Clarysse, "How Christian was Fourth Century Egypt? Onomastic Perspectives on Conversion," Vigiliae Christianae 67.4 (2013) 407-435.

Cicero, Academica 2.127 (tr. H. Rackham):

There is delight in the mere investigation of matters at once of supreme magnitude and also of extreme obscurity; while if a notion comes to us that appears to bear a likeness to the truth, the mind is filled with the most humanizing kind of pleasure.

indagatio ipsa rerum cum maximarum tum etiam occultissimarum habet oblectationem; si vero aliquid occurrit quod veri simile videatur, humanissima completur animus voluptate.

Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals of Foreign Nations, praef. 2 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

But such critics will for the most part be men unfamiliar with Greek letters, who will think no conduct proper which does not conform to their own habits.

sed hi erunt fere qui expertes litterarum Graecarum nihil rectum, nisi quod ipsorum moribus conveniat, putabunt.

Cicero, On Divination 2.24.51 (tr. W.A. Falconer):

But indeed, that was quite a clever remark which Cato made many years ago: "I wonder," said he, "that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees another soothsayer."

vetus autem illud Catonis admodum scitum est, qui mirari se aiebat quod non rideret haruspex haruspicem cum vidisset.

Arthur Stanley Pease ad loc.:

For the remark cf. N.D. 1, 71: mirabile videtur quod non rideat haruspex cum haruspicem viderit (where the lack of ascription to Cato may indicate that the remark had become more or less proverbial). Similarly Diogenes the Cynic, according to Diog. 1. 6, 24: ὅταν (sc. ἴδῃ) ... ὀνειροκρίτας καὶ μάντεις καὶ τοὺς προσέχοντας τούτοις ... οὐδὲν ματαιότερον νομίζειν ἀνθρώπου; Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs, 31: "Mais qui fut celui qui inventa cet art (i.e., divination)? Ce fut le premier fripon qui rencontra un imbécile."

Jean-Léon Gérome, Les deux augures

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894), Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. I (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867), p. 1:

It often seems to me as if History was like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do not suit our purpose.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius (London: Bristol Classical Paperbacks, 2004), p. 15 (footnote omitted):

Extraction of the relevant detail is Suetonius' characteristic method. Sometimes we get the impression of a large card-index system at work, reducing the sources to an endless series of one sentence items that can be reshuffled and redeployed at will. It would be interesting to know more about the technology behind the writing of the Caesars. We should pause before assuming that Suetonius actually had at his disposal anything so useful as a card-index. There is no evidence that antiquity had developed such systems. Scroll-form was normal for books; even library catalogues and the official records of imperial transactions were, to our knowledge, kept in scrolls rather than files. The philologist had to rely on a prodigious memory and much verbatim learning of texts in order to recall the passages where a given word occurred; naturally it also helped to be able to lean on those who had already done the donkey-work. The chances are that Suetonius worked from sources in scroll-form without the prop of an index and had to rely on memory to an extent no modern research student could expect to have to do. If there are imprecisions, errors and omissions in his material, this is a factor to be borne in mind.

Related post: Index System.

Herodotus 9.72 (tr. Andrea L. Purvis):

Those were the men who won the greatest fame at Plataea. For Kallikrates died away from the battle; he had come to the camp as the most handsome man of the Hellenes at that time, not only among the Lacedaemonians, but among all the other Hellenes, too. What happened was that while Pausanias was conducting the pre-battle sacrifices, Kallikrates was sitting at his assigned post when he was wounded in his side by an arrow. So as the others fought, he had been carried out of the ranks, and while he struggled against death he said to Arimnestos, a Plataean, that he did not mind dying for Hellas, but regretted that he had not struck a blow or performed any feats to show his worth, though he had been eager to do so.

οὗτοι μὲν τῶν ἐν Πλαταιῇσι ὀνομαστότατοι ἐγένοντο. Καλλικράτης γὰρ ἔξω τῆς μάχης ἀπέθανε, ἐλθὼν ἀνὴρ κάλλιστος ἐς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν τότε Ἑλλήνων, οὐ μοῦνον αὐτῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων· ὅς, ἐπειδὴ ἐσφαγιάζετο Παυσανίης, κατήμενος ἐν τῇ τάξι ἐτρωματίσθη τοξεύματι τὰ πλευρά. καὶ δὴ οἳ μὲν ἐμάχοντο, ὃ δ’ ἐξενηνειγμένος ἐδυσθανάτεέ τε καὶ ἔλεγε πρὸς Ἀρίμνηστον ἄνδρα Πλαταιέα οὐ μέλειν οἱ ὅτι πρὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀποθνήσκει, ἀλλ’ ὅτι οὐκ ἐχρήσατο τῇ χειρὶ καὶ ὅτι οὐδέν ἐστί οἱ ἀποδεδεγμένον ἔργον ἑωυτοῦ ἄξιον προθυμευμένου ἀποδέξασθαι.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), Treatise on the Gods (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), pp. 23-24:

[T]he new trade of priestcraft had attractions that were plainly visible to any bright and ambitious young man. It carried an air of pleasing novelty; there was daring in it, and thrills therewith; it made for popularity and a spacious and lazy life; dignity belonged to it; above all, it seemed easy. To be sure, we may assume that the first practitioner hastened to spread the word that there was vastly more to it than appeared on the surface — that under his facile whoops and gyrations glowed a peculiar inward illumination, highly refined in its nature and hard to achieve.

James Howard Kunstler, World Made by Hand (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), p. 56:

Ellen Weibel brought a ham and Jane Ann several bottles of her wine, and Eric Laudermilk brought jugs of new ale, and my neighbor Lucy Myles brought her sausage, and several women brought "pudding," a savory staple of our tables made from leftover bread scraps, which we no longer throw away, mixed with anything else you have around, say bacon, squash, kale, chestnuts—like Thanksgiving stuffing. There was samp, which used to be called "polenta" in the upscale restaurants of yesteryear, cornmeal grits doctored up with cheese, mushrooms, or what have you. Maggie Furnival brought a buckwheat pilaf, Nancy Deaver a barley pilaf. There was, of course, corn bread, our staple. Donna Russo brought two coffee cakes made, she said, with the last of their wheat flour. And insofar as it was June, we had plenty of fresh greens, spinach cooked with bacon and green onions, radishes, rocket and lettuce salad, peas with mint. Elsie DeLong brought new beets. Katie Zucker brought honey cakes made of ground butternut meal. Annie Larmon brought fresh cream from their farm and whipped it up for the cakes. Felix Holyrood, who ran the leading cider mill in Washington County, brought a keg of his powerful "scrumpy," which was stronger than beer.

Russell Lee (1903-1986), Getting ready to serve the barbeque
dinner at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair (Library of Congress)

Myles Burnyeat, Introduction to Bernard Williams, The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006; rpt. 2008), p. xix (on Eduard Fraenkel and E.R. Dodds):

Less well known is Fraenkel's reaction on first encountering Dodds, when he came to read a paper in Oxford. Fraenkel said to the then Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray, whom Dodds would in due course succeed, that he would like to study under that man for a year.<sup>12

12</sup> This information comes from a letter to the then Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in which Murray recommends that Dodds be appointed his successor. The carbon copy is among Murray's papers in the Bodleian Library (MS. Gilbert Murray 77, fols. 138-140).

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

John Hill Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume, Vol. II (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1846), p. 368 (letter to Hugh Blair and others, April 6, 1765):

There is a very remarkable difference between London and Paris; of which I gave warning to Helvétius, when he went over lately to England, and of which he told me, on his return, he was fully sensible. If a man have the misfortune, in the former place, to attach himself to letters, even if he succeeds, I know not with whom he is to live, nor how he is to pass his time in a suitable society. The little company there that is worth conversing with, are cold and unsociable; or are warmed only by faction and cabal; so that a man who plays no part in public affairs becomes altogether insignificant; and, if he is not rich, he becomes even contemptible. Hence that nation are relapsing fast into the deepest stupidity and ignorance. But, in Paris, a man that distinguishes himself in letters, meets immediately with regard and attention.

Hume actually wrote (emphasis added):

Hence that Nation are relapsing fast into the deepest Stupidity, Christianity & Ignorance.

See The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, Vol. I: 1727-1765 (1932; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 498.