Monday, August 24, 2015
Adagia
Thanks to the very generous reader who gave me a birthday present—Adagia, Id est: Proverbiorum, Paroemiarum et Parabolarum Omnium, Quae apud Graecos, Latinos, Hebraeos, Arabes, &c. in usu fuerunt, Collectio absolutissima in locos communes digesta (Francofurti: Sumptibus Iohannis Pressii Viduae, 1646). It's a beautiful book. Old as I am now, my hands shake too much to take a good photograph, so here instead is a photograph of the title page taken from Google Books:
There is a suitable birthday quotation on p. 456, col. 2, from Euripides' Aeolus:
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There is a suitable birthday quotation on p. 456, col. 2, from Euripides' Aeolus:
φεῦ φεῦ, παλαιὸς αἶνος ὡς καλῶς ἔχει·In the translation of Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp:
γέροντες οὐδέν ἐσμεν ἄλλο πλὴν ψόφος
καὶ σχῆμ᾽, ὀνείρων δ᾽ ἕρπομεν μιμήματα·
νοῦς δ᾽ οὐκ ἔνεστιν, οἰόμεσθα δ᾽ εὖ φρονεῖν.
ψόφος Hirzel: ὄχλος codd.
Oh, alas, how true the ancient saying is: we old men are nothing but noise and mere shapes, and we move as imitations of dreams; there is no intelligence in us, yet we think we have good sense.
