Laudator Temporis Acti

Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (New York: Basic Books, 2023), p. 3:

As these indirect tributes recognize, the Iliad itself is something we could not possibly now compose. It is at least 2600 years old, but it is beyond our ability. It remains overwhelming. It makes us marvel, sometimes smile and often cry. Whenever I read it, it reduces me to tears. When I leave it and return to everyday life, it changes the way in which I look on the world.

Id., p. 7 (they = readers of his book):

I hope they will proceed to such a reading or even to learning Homeric Greek: it becomes possible within two years to read long stretches of the Iliad in Greek and catch its force and flow.

Plautus, Persa 553-560 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

SAGARISTIO
What about what you’ve seen? How did the city appear to be fortified with its wall?
GIRL
If its inhabitants have a good character, I consider it beautifully fortified. If perfidy and embezzlement and greed have gone into exile from this city, fourth envy, fifth corruption, sixth vilification, seventh perjury—
TOXILUS
(still aside) Hear, hear!
GIRL
—eighth carelessness, ninth injustice, and tenth wickedness, which is most difficult of all to tackle: a city from which these are absent will be fortified sufficiently with a simple wall; where they are present, a hundredfold wall is too little to preserve its contents.

SAGARISTIO
quid id quod vidisti? ut munitum muro tibi visum oppidum est?
VIRGO
si incolae bene sunt morati, id pulchre moenitum arbitror.
perfidia et peculatus ex urbe et avaritia si exulant,        555
quarta invidia, quinta ambitio, sexta optrectatio,
septumum periurium—
TOXILUS
                                       eugae!
VIRGO
                                                   —octava indiligentia,
nona iniuria, decumum, quod pessumum aggressu est, scelus:
haec unde aberunt, ea urbs moenita muro sat erit simplici;
ubi ea aderunt, centumplex murus rebus servandis parum est.        560

I don't have access to E. Woytek, T. Maccius Plautus, Persa. Einleitung, Text und Kommentar (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1982).

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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, "A Rejoinder," Philosophical and Theological Writings, tr. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 95-109 (at 98):

If God held fast in his right hand the whole of truth and in his left hand only the ever-active quest for truth, albeit with the proviso that I should constantly and eternally err, and said to me: ‘Choose!’, I would humbly fall upon his left hand and say: ‘Father, give! For pure truth is for you alone!’

Wenn Gott in seiner Rechten alle Wahrheit, und in seiner Linken den einzigen immer regen Trieb nach Wahrheit, obschon mit dem Zusatze, mich immer und ewig zu irren, verschlossen hielte und spräche zu mir: Wähle! Ich fiele ihm mit Demut in seine Linke und sagte: Vater, gieb! Die reine Wahrheit ist ja doch nur für dich allein!

Bryan Hainsworth, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume III: Books 9-12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; rpt. 2000), pp. 6-7:

A true hapax legomenon seems to present a special problem for those who believe that the techniques of composition used in the Homeric poems are mainly those of oral poetry. The techniques of oral poetry are generic and formular, the hapax legomenon by definition is not. It may not even bear any relation of sound, sense, or form to the formular part of the diction, and it would be gratuitous and implausible to claim that more than a handful make their sole appearances by chance. On the contrary, hapax legomena, being an aspect of the vitality of the Kunstsprache, and of the willingness of ἀοιδοί to experiment with their lexicon, must be accommodated in any satisfactory account of Homeric diction.⁵ Here then the question is how hapax legomena can be deployed in a sentence otherwise made up of formular elements by a composer who relies heavily on such elements. When it is put in that way the problem posed by a hapax legomenon for the singer is not radically different from that posed by an otherwise unused grammatical form of a regular part of his lexicon. The unique grammatical form will indeed bring with it the verbal associations of the regular forms, but since the associated words and phrases would be built around the particular metrical shape of the regular forms they are likely to be as much a hindrance as a help in handling the unusual form.

The scale of the problem presented by true hapax legomena and by many uniquely occurring grammatical forms is quite serious. The printed text of the Iliad is made up of some 111,500 words, i.e. segments of text marked off by verse-ends or spaces, or about 63,000 if particles, pronouns, and prepositions are ignored. Many of these 'words' are repeated, but about 11,000, or more than one in six, are found once only. About 2,000 of them according to M. Pope are true hapaxes, lexical items occurring just once in the poem.<sup>6

5</sup> See M.M. Kumpf, Four Indices of the Homeric Hapax Legomena (Hildesheim 1984) for statistics, N.J. Richardson in Bremer, HBOP 165-84, for argument, Edwards, vol. v 53-5. Edwards concludes his discussion of hapax legomena with these words: '[Homer] was also completely at ease in employing in his verse words which are not only non-formular but which must be considered (on our limited evidence) foreign to the usual epic vocabulary.' M. Pope, CQ 35 (1985) 1-8, draws attention to new coinages in Homer.

⁶ 'Word' is used here as a publisher might speak of a 'book of 80,000 words'. The composer's vocabulary or lexicon of course is very much shorter: ἔγχος is one entry in the lexicon but supplies 205 'words' to the text of the Iliad. Statistics are mine. I am indebted to the Revd A.Q. Morton, formerly of the University of Edinburgh, for making available to me computerized word-lists and indices.

HBOP = Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry, edd. J.M. Bremer, I.J.F. de Jong, and J. Kalff (Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner Publishing Co., 1987).

Plautus, Mostellaria 941-942 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Unless perhaps you've been made a new magistrate, since you're taking care of others' business, asking about it, spying on it, and listening to it.

                      nisi forte factu's praefectus novos,
qui res alienas procures, quaeras, videas, audias.

A reference to the γυναικονόμοι (gynaeconomi) according to William Scott Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens: An Historical Essay (London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1911), p. 45, n. 2.

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Ted Hill, Pushing Limits (2017; rpt. Minneapolis: Wise Ink, 2020), pp. 42-43 (at West Point):

Surviving the Honor Code often depended on luck, since even trivial violations were grounds for dismissal. Just at the end of our Plebe year ordeal, a good friend of mine from Los Angeles, an excellent scholar and champion rope climber, had been convicted of saying he had shined his shoes when he had not. Awakened from a nap to hand deliver a message to another division, he stumbled out into the corridor with the message. In the hallway an upperclassman challenged him with "Did you shine your shoes before you left your room, mister?" In a daze he gave the standard answer "Yes, sir!" when in fact he had not. In a state of shock, he soon admitted as much. It was never a question of whether his shoes were shiny — they were — but just what he had said. He was on a Greyhound bus back to the outside world within twenty-four hours.

I graduated from a school with a strict honor code, administered by students without faculty or staff involvement. There was only one penalty for an infraction — expulsion. Most of the expulsions (one or two per semester on average, as I recall) were for cheating, a few for stealing. Cheating is reportedly so common at colleges and universities today that, if all cheaters were expelled, hardly any students would be left.

Homer, Iliad 1.3-5 (tr. William Wyatt):

...and sent down to Hades so many valiant souls
of warriors, and made the men themselves to be the spoil for dogs
and birds of every kind...

πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι...

5 πᾶσι codd.: δαῖτα Zenodotus

Homer, Iliad Book One. Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Simon Pulleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 121:

Athenaeus (I 12F) tells us that Zenodotus read δαῖτα for πᾶσι in line 5. The fact that all the MSS read πᾶσι does not guarantee its authenticity, because they all date from a much later period, and if πᾶσι is a corruption, it could have got into the tradition quite early. The reading δαῖτα is very attractive because two passages in tragedy that appear to be modelled on these lines also contain the word δαῖτα (Eur. Hec. 1077, Ion 505-6). That Aesch. Suppl. 801 has ὄρνισι δεῖπνον also suggests that the author was familiar with a text which had δαῖτα, not πᾶσι. If we read δαῖτα with τεῦχε, we have a striking image of a banquet being prepared for the birds. There has been some discussion as to whether δαίς in the Iliad ever refers to animals eating. At 24.43. we hear of a lion who εἶσ᾿ ἐπὶ μῆλα βροτῶν, ἵνα δαῖτα λάβῃσιν. As punctuated here, δαῖτα must refer to the lion's dinner. However, our papyri and MSS contain very little by way of punctuation marks, so that the choice is often left to the reader. If the comma were placed before βροτῶν, then δαῖτα would refer to the humans. The line can be taken either way. It is none the less worth noting that the almost synonymous word δεῖπνον is used of horses at 2.383. But even if Homer did not normally use δαίς when speaking of animals, it is still possible that he intended its use at 1.5 as a striking metaphor. The reading δαῖτα provides us with a noun to balance ἑλώρια, instead of the insipid adjective πᾶσι, so that the overall phrase has a chiastic shape (ABBA), 'carrion for the dogs, for the birds a meal'. An even more powerful objection to πᾶσι is that not all birds eat carrion.

Emily Wilson in her translation adopted the reading δαῖτα:

...and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds...

In addition to the parallels cited by Pulleyn, see R. Renehan, "New Evidence for the Variant in Iliad 1.5," American Journal of Philology 100.4 (Winter, 1979) 473-474.

From Christopher Brown:

I have long thought that δαῖτα is preferable to πᾶσι. It is worth noting that in the Gesamtkommentar Latacz supports Zenodotus' text. In fact, it is one of the few places where his translation is at variance with the version of West's Teubner that is printed opposite it ("… und sie selbst zum Fraße werden ließ für Hunde / und für Vögel zum Bankett …").

[....]

Zenodotus has often been judged to be 'subjective' on issues of text (see M. van der Valk, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad [Leiden 1964] 2.66-68; K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur Textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von Ephesos [Berlin and New York 1977] 42 with n. 22; West is also dismissive, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad [Munich and Leipzig 2001] 173), but that doesn't mean that he was always wrong.

Gregory Nagy, "The Name of Achilles: Questions of Etymology and 'Folk-Etymology'," Illinois Classical Studies 19 (1994) 3-9 (at 9):

Palmer once called attention to "the first rule of etymology," attributed to Franz Skutsch: "Look for Latin etymologies first on the Tiber."<sup>35

35</sup> L.R. Palmer, "The Language of Homer," in A.J.B. Wace and F.H. Stubbings (eds.), A Companion to Homer (London 1963) 90-91; cf. Palmer (above, note 1) 187.

The other reference to Palmer is L.R. Palmer, The Interpretation of Mycenaean Greek Texts (Oxford 1963)

Jerome, Letters 22.17.2 (to Eustochium; Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, p. 165; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):

Read much and learn as much as possible. Let sleep creep upon you with a book in your hand, and let the sacred page catch your head as you nod.

crebrius lege et disce quam plurima. tenenti codicem somnus obrepat et cadentem faciem pagina sancta suscipiat.

Emmanuel Benner (1836-1896), Marie-Madeleine au désert (Strasbourg, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, inv. no. 55.974.0.163):

W.H.D. Rouse, Lucian's Dialogues Prepared for Schools with Short Notes in Greek (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. iv-v:

Many teachers believe that looking up words in a dictionary is good for the learner; these also will be able to use this book. It may not be out of place, however, to ask those who believe this whether they have any reason for their belief. I do not know that any one has made any systematic inquiry into the use of the dictionary, to find out how long it takes beginners to look up words and what their minds are doing while they are looking them up. I cannot pretend to have done this systematically; but the few inquiries we have made in this school, go to show that to look up words takes a very long time for the beginner, even when he has not a dictionary with many meanings to the word, but a special vocabulary with only one or two meanings. It certainly distracts his attention, and he has to resume the thread of his thought before he can fit in his new word, which also takes time. My own state of mind in looking up new words is quite clear to me: it is a blank, out of which emerges now a word expressive of exasperation, now the address of a friend forgotten and puzzled over, or other flotsam of the subconsciousness. If it were so that all this time the new word should be impressing itself on the memory, well and good; but it does not seem to be so, and if not, here is another of the time-wasting devices which have become sacred in schools.

Horace, Epistles 1.6.56-57 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

If he who dines well, lives well, then—'tis daybreak, let's be off,
whither the palate guides us.

si bene qui cenat bene vivit, lucet, eamus
quo ducit gula.

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W.H.D. Rouse (1863-1950), Machines Or Mind? (London: W. Heinemann, 1912), p. 13:

A grown man, a trained mind, can learn Greek in three months; if he has known it before, in less. And what a world that will open to him!

Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, April 20, 1825 (Eckermann's words; tr. Ritchie Robertson):

I couldn't possibly say where the youth of today gets gets the strange idea that it is somehow born with accomplishments that have hitherto taken years of study and personal experience to acquire. But what I can say is this: the view we hear so often expressed in Germany now — that one can happily skip the whole business of gradual self-development — inspires little hope of future masterpieces.

Ich will nicht untersuchen, woher unserer jetzigen Jugend die Einbildung gekommen, daß sie dasjenige als etwas Angeborenes bereits mit sich bringe, was man bisher nur auf dem Wege vieljähriger Studien und Erfahrungen erlangen konnte, aber so viel glaube ich sagen zu können, daß die in Deutschland jetzt so häufig vorkommenden Äußerungen eines alle Stufen allmählicher Entwickelung keck überschreitenden Sinnes zu künftigen Meisterwerken wenige Hoffnung machen.

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Three Hostages, chapter IV:

Hideous, and yet comic too; for the spectacle of these feverish cranks toiling to create a new heaven and a new earth and thinking themselves the leaders of mankind, when they were dancing like puppets at the will of a few scoundrels engaged in the most ancient of pursuits, was an irony to make the gods laugh.

Jerome, Letters 21.13.2 (to Pope Damasus; Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, p. 121; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):

The food of demons is drunkenness, luxury, fornication, and all the sins. These are persuasive and lascivi­ous; they soothe the senses with pleasure; and immediately upon their appearance they provoke a man to use them.

daemonum cibus est ebrietas, luxuria, fornicatio et universa vitia. haec blanda sunt et lasciva et sensus voluptate demulcent statimque, ut apparuerint, ad usum sui provocant.

Id. 21.13.4 (CSEL, vol. 54, p. 122):

The food of the demons is the songs of poets, secular wisdom, the display of rhetorical language. These delight all with their sweetness; but while they captivate the ears with fluent verses of charming rhythm, they penetrate the soul as well and bind the inmost affections. But when they have been read with the greatest enthusiasm and effort, they afford their readers nothing more than empty sound and the hubbub of words. No satisfaction of truth, no refreshment of justice is found. They who are zealous for these things continue to hunger for truth, to lack virtue.

daemonum cibus est carmina poetarum, saecularis sapientia, rhetoricorum pompa verborum. haec sua omnes suavitate delectant et, dum aures versibus dulci modulatione currentibus capiunt, animam quoque penetrant et pectoris interna devinciunt. verum ubi cum summo studio fuerint ac labore perlecta, nihil aliud nisi inanem sonum et sermonum strepitum suis lectoribus tribuunt: nulla ibi saturitas veritatis, nulla iustitiae refectio repperitur. studiosi earum in fame veri, in virtutum penuria perseverant.

Theognis 1155-1156 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

I do not crave or pray for wealth, but may I
live from modest means, suffering no ill.

οὐκ ἔραμαι πλουτεῖν οὐδ᾿ εὔχομαι, ἀλλά μοι εἴη
    ζῆν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀλίγων μηδὲν ἔχοντι κακόν.

Greek Anthology 10.113 is similar.

Tibullus 1.1.25 (tr. J.P. Postgate):

May it now be mine to live for myself, to live contented with my little.

iam mihi, iam possim contentus vivere parvo.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.19.3 (tr. Christopher P. Jones):

Damis's Scrap Book was composed for this purpose, that he wished nothing about Apollonius to go unknown, but even his asides and random remarks to be recorded. It is worth noting the retort he made to a man who criticized this pursuit. Some lazy and malevolent creature ridiculed him, saying that he was right to put down everything that constituted the sayings and opinions of the Master, but in collecting such trifling things he was acting like a dog that feeds on the scraps fallen from a dinner. Damis replied, "If the gods have dinners and the gods take food, they must certainly have attendants to make sure that even the scraps of ambrosia do not go to waste."

Ἡ γοῦν δέλτος ἡ τῶν ἐκφατνισμάτων τοιοῦτον τῷ Δάμιδι νοῦν εἶχεν· ὁ Δάμις ἐβούλετο μηδὲν τῶν Ἀπολλωνίου ἀγνοεῖσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ εἴ τι καὶ παρεφθέγξατο ἢ εἶπεν, ἀναγεγράφθαι καὶ τοῦτο. καὶ ἄξιόν γε εἰπεῖν, ἃ καὶ πρὸς τὸν μεμψάμενον τὴν διατριβὴν ταύτην ἀπεφθέγξατο. διασύροντος γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀνθρώπου ῥᾳθύμου τε καὶ βασκάνου, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ὀρθῶς ἀναγράφειν φήσαντος, ὁπόσαι γνῶμαί τέ εἰσι καὶ δόξαι τοῦ ἀνδρός, ταυτὶ δὲ τὰ οὕτω μικρὰ ξυλλεγόμενον παραπλήσιόν που τοῖς κυσὶ πράττειν τοῖς σιτουμένοις τὰ ἐκπίπτοντα τῆς δαιτός, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Δάμις "εἰ δαῖτες" ἔφη "θεῶν εἰσι καὶ σιτοῦνται θεοί, πάντως που καὶ θεράποντες αὐτοῖς εἰσιν, οἷς μέλει τοῦ μηδὲ τὰ πίπτοντα τῆς ἀμβροσίας ἀπόλλυσθαι."

John Buchan (1875-1940), Mr. Standfast, chapter XV (Launcelot Wake speaking):

I hate more than I love. All we humanitarians and pacifists have hatred as our mainspring. Odd, isn't it, for people who preach brotherly love? But it's the truth. We're full of hate towards everything that doesn't square in with our ideas, everything that jars on our ladylike nerves.