Thursday, December 02, 2004
Faint Praise
Thucydides 4.84.2 (on the Spartan Brasidas, tr. Benjamin Jowett):
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For a Lacedaemonian he was not a bad speaker.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
For a Lacedaemonian he was not a bad speaker.
Michael Gilleland is an antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon.