Laudator Temporis Acti

LS: Now let us read page 5, bottom, and the note. We cannot read the whole note.

Mr. Reinken: "Tender, anxious mother, I appeal to you. You can remove this young tree from the highway and shield it from the crushing force of social conventions. Tend and water it ere it dies."

LS: No, not "of social conventions" "of human opinions," he says. I admit these are almost equivalent terms for Rousseau, but the translator should not take liberties. I mean, "opinions humaines" is as easy to translate from French into English as "conventions sociales." In a good society, the translator would receive a public spanking, because there is no excuse for that; but such well-ordered societies cannot be expected, because it would require a complete change in the publishing business, and this is beyond human power, surely.

C'est à toi que je m'adresse, tendre et prévoyante mère, qui sus t'écarter de la grande route, et garantir l'arbrisseau naissant du choc des opinions humaines! Cultive, arrose la jeune plante avant qu'elle meure.

Rainbearing maidens,
let us visit the gleaming land of Pallas, to see the ravishing country
of Cecrops with its fine men,
where ineffable rites are celebrated, where
the temple that receives initiates
is thrown open during the pure mystic festival;²²
and where there are offerings to the heavenly host,
temples with lofty roofs and statues,
most holy processions for the Blessed Ones,
well-garlanded victims for the gods, and feasts
in all seasons;
and with spring comes the grace of Bromius,²³
the rivalry of melodious choruses
and the deep toned music of pipes.

²²The Eleusinian Mysteries.
²³"The Noisy," a poetic title for Dionysus; the festival envisioned here is the City Dionysia with its dramas.

παρθένοι ὀμβροφόροι,
ἔλθωμεν λιπαρὰν χθόνα Παλλάδος, εὔανδρον γᾶν        300
Κέκροπος ὀψόμεναι πολυήρατον·
οὗ σέβας ἀρρήτων ἱερῶν, ἵνα
μυστοδόκος δόμος
ἐν τελεταῖς ἁγίαις ἀναδείκνυται·
οὐρανίοις τε θεοῖς δωρήματα,        305
ναοί θ᾿ ὑψερεφεῖς καὶ ἀγάλματα,
καὶ πρόσοδοι μακάρων ἱερώταται
εὐστέφανοί τε θεῶν θυσίαι θαλίαι τε
παντοδαπαῖσιν ὥραις,        310
ἦρί τ᾿ ἐπερχομένῳ Βρομία χάρις
εὐκελάδων τε χορῶν ἐρεθίσματα
καὶ μοῦσα βαρύβρομος αὐλῶν.

O maiden bringers of rain
Let us arise and go where sunlight-smitten glow
The lovely walls of Pallas and the proud Cecropidae;
Where the rites none dare reveal again
Are wrought in mystery,
And pilgrims throng the hallowed portals,
And shrines of the Gods with gifts are dressed,
And temples tower, with their carved Immortals,
Amid processions of the blest,
With wreaths and revels and offerings burning
Through all the round of the circling year;
And Bromius graces the spring returning,
And music of choirs sets the senses yearning,
And droning of pipes delights the ear.

There is certainly no place in the world where a man may travel with greater pleasure and advantage than in Italy. One finds something more particular in the face of the country, and more astonishing in the works of nature, than can be met with in any other part of Europe. It is the great school of music and painting, and contains in it all the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, both ancient and modern. It abounds with cabinets of curiosities, and vast collections of all kinds of antiquities.

In my view, the best way to remove oneself from the modern world is to immerse oneself, so far as possible, in the ancient sources, and to rely on them to help us understand the ancient customs and beliefs that have long since fallen out of use.

Hear how he clears the points o' Faith
    Wi' rattlin an' thumpin!
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath,
    He's stampan, an' he's jumpan!
His lengthen'd chin, his turn'd up snout,
    His eldritch squeel an' gestures,
O how they fire the heart devout,
    Like cantharidian plaisters
            On sic a day!

History-writing today has passed into an Alexandrian age, where criticism has overpowered creation. Faced by the mountainous heap of the minutiae of knowledge and awed by the watchful severity of his colleagues, the modern historian too often takes refuge in learned articles or narrowly specialized dissertations, small fortresses that are easy to defend from attack. His work can be of the highest value; but it is not an end in itself. I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destiny of man.

In the second place it will be found very odd if I spend my time quibbling over nits or censuring trivialities ... I have decided nevertheless that I should ignore such mockery, and comment on even small errors. For the more one uses reason to criticise things, the more one can show how hard it is to be perfectly exact. Moreover, by taking the idea of perfect exactitude to the utmost degree, we oblige authors to be more guarded and to examine everything with maximum care. Man is only too accustomed to being on the wrong side of the rules set before him. So if he is to get as close as possible to the point of perfection we must require him to deviate from it as little as he can. Moreover, as this work can be of service to those who want a historical dictionary of utmost accuracy, towards which it is exceedingly important to aim, I have had to go into detail with a particular sort of precision, and even make digressions. It is not out of inclination that I deal in quibbles, but from choice and I ought to be thanked for it, since it is a way of sacrificing oneself to the good of one's neighbour. This is not a path to glory; it is done to bring others to a factual exactitude and that is a great sacrifice, is it not?

En second lieu l'on trouvera fort étrange, que je m'amuse à censurer de petites choses, où le manque d'exactitude est comme insensible ... J’ay jugé neanmoins qu’il fal[l]oit mepriser ces railleries, et remarquer jusqu'aux moindres fautes, car plus on critique de choses avec raison, plus on montre combien il est difficile d'être parfaitement exact. Or en portant si haut l'idée de la parfaite exactitude, on engage les auteurs à être plus sur leurs gardes, et à examiner tout avec un extréme soin. L'homme n'est que trop accoutumé à demeurer au deçà des regles; il faut donc les reculer le plus qu'on peut, si l'on veut qu’il joigne de près le point de la perfection. Outre cela cet ouvrage pouvant servir à ceux qui voudront composer un dictionaire historique bien correct, à quoy il seroit très-nécessaire qu'on travaillât, j'ay dû descendre dans le détail avec quelque sorte de précision, et si l'on veut même, avec un peu de chicanerie. Ce n’est point par inclination que je vetille, c'est par choix, et l'on m'en devroit tenir compte, puisque c'est en quelque maniere se sacrifier à l’utilité de son prochain. On prend une route qui n'est pas celle de la loüange, et on le fait pour ramener les autres à la veritable justesse: n'est-ce pas un grand sacrifice?

For my part, says Cynthio, I am so far from Mr. Dryden's opinion in this particular, that I fancy Persius a better poet than Lucan; and that, had he been engaged on the same subject, he would at least in his expressions and descriptions have outwrit the Pharsalia. He was, indeed, employed on subjects that seldom led him into any thing like description, but where he has an occasion of showing himself, we find very few of the Latin poets that have given a greater beauty to their expressions. His obscurities are, indeed, sometimes affected, but they generally arise from the remoteness of the customs, persons, and things he alludes to: as satire is for this reason more difficult to be understood by those that are not of the same age with it, than any other kind of poetry. Love verses and heroics deal in images that are ever fixed and settled in the nature of things, but a thousand ideas enter into satire, that are as changeable and unsteady as the mode or the humours of mankind.

I told myself that, considering the difficulties, I had managed to find out a wonderful amount in a very few days. It only shows what a man can do with the slenderest evidence if he keeps chewing and chewing on it.

Varro wrote forty-one books of "Antiquities" which he divided into "Human Things" and "Divine Things," assigning twenty-five books to the former and sixteen to the latter. "Human Things" he divided into four parts of six books each, taking up in turn the persons who act, the places, the times and the actions. That is, in the first six books he writes about men, in the next six about places, in the next six about times, and finishes the work in the last six by writing about things. Four times six are twenty-four, but at the head of these books he placed a single book to discuss in a general way all the matters that follow. Again in the treatment of "Divine Things" the same plan is followed, as far as it is applicable to the rites performed for the gods. For men, in certain places, at certain times, perform certain sacred rites. These four topics which I have named, Varro discussed in three books each. In the first three he writes about men, in the next about places, in the third about times, and in the fourth about sacred rites, thus presenting the reader in this case also with a very neat distinction between those who perform, where and when they perform, and what they perform.

Quadraginta et unum libros scripsit antiquitatum; hos in res humanas divinasque divisit, rebus humanis viginti quinque, divinis sedecim tribuit, istam secutus in ea partitione rationem ut rerum humanarum libros senos quattuor partibus daret. Intendit enim qui agant, ubi agant, quando agant, quid agant. In sex itaque primis de hominibus scripsit, in secundis sex de locis, sex tertios de temporibus, sex quartos eosdemque postremos de rebus absolvit. Quater autem seni viginti et quattuor fiunt. Sed unum singularem, qui communiter prius de omnibus loqueretur, in capite posuit. In divinis identidem rebus eadem ab illo divisionis forma servata est, quantum adtinet ad ea quae diis exhibenda sunt. Exhibentur enim ab hominibus in locis et temporibus sacra. Haec quattuor, quae dixi, libris complexus est ternis: nam tres priores de hominibus scripsit, sequentes de locis, tertios de temporibus, quartos de sacris, etiam hic, qui exhibeant, ubi exhibeant, quando exhibeant, quid exhibeant, subtilissima distinctione commendans.

As soon as an emperor had done any thing remarkable, it was immediately stamped on a coin, and became current through his whole dominions. It was a pretty contrivance, says Cynthio, to spread abroad the virtues of an emperor, and make his actions circulate. A fresh coin was a kind of a gazette, that published the latest news of the empire.

The secret of his power was I believe also the source of his greatness as a historian. It was not his extraordinary learning (of which even Fraenkel was said to be afraid), or his ability to range over the whole of European history. It was his refusal to distinguish between scholarship and life; history was not a discipline to be practised in working hours in an institutional environment according to certain rules: it was a way of life, to be pursued with the same passionate commitment as life itself.

Shall we not pass a law that, in the first place, no children under eighteen may touch wine at all, teaching that it is wrong to pour fire upon fire either in body or in soul, before they set about tackling their real work, and thus guarding against the excitable disposition of the young? And next, we shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation, but that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire.

ἆρ᾿ οὐ νομοθετήσομεν πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς παῖδας μέχρι ἐτῶν ὀκτωκαίδεκα τὸ παράπαν οἴνου μὴ γεύεσθαι, διδάσκοντες ὡς οὐ χρὴ πῦρ ἐπὶ πῦρ ὀχετεύειν εἴς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχήν, πρὶν ἐπὶ τοὺς πόνους ἐγχειρεῖν πορεύεσθαι, τὴν ἐμμανῆ εὐλαβούμενοι ἕξιν τῶν νέων· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο οἴνου μὲν δὴ γεύεσθαι τοῦ μετρίου μέχρι τριάκοντα ἐτῶν, μέθης δὲ καὶ πολυοινίας τὸ παράπαν τὸν νέον ἀπέχεσθαι· τετταράκοντα δὲ ἐπιβαίνοντα ἐτῶν, ἐν τοῖς ξυσσιτίοις εὐωχηθέντα, καλεῖν τούς τε ἄλλους θεοὺς καὶ δὴ καὶ Διόνυσον παρακαλεῖν εἰς τὴν τῶν πρεσβυτῶν τελετὴν ἅμα καὶ παιδιάν, ἣν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐπίκουρον τῆς τοῦ γήρως αὐστηρότητος ἐδωρήσατο [τὸν οἶνον] φάρμακον ὥστ᾿ ἀνηβᾷν ἡμᾶς, καὶ δυσθυμίας λήθῃ γίγνεσθαι μαλακώτερον ἐκ σκληροτέρου τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἦθος, καθάπερ εἰς πῦρ σίδηρον ἐντεθέντα τηκόμενον, καὶ οὕτως εὐπλαστότερον εἶναι;

To give wine to youths is like adding fire to a fire already prepared with matchwood. Young adults should take it in moderation. But elderly persons may take as much as they can tolerate.

The truth is, and the reader has discovered it by this time if he did not know it beforehand, that I have no inkling of Überlieferungsgeschichte. And to the sister science of Quellenforschung I am equally a stranger: I cannot assure you, as some other writer will assure you before long, that the satires of Juvenal are all copied from the satires of Turnus. It is a sad fate to be devoid of faculties which cause so much elation to their owners; but I cheer myself by reflecting how large a number of human beings are more fortunate than I. It seems indeed as if a capacity for these two lines of fiction had been bestowed by heaven, as a sort of consolation-prize, upon those who have no capacity for anything else.

I touch with reluctance, as Gibbon might say, and dispatch with impatience, an idle yet pretentious game in which Lucan's less serious critics find amusement, and which they call Ueberlieferungsgeschichte, because that is a longer and nobler name than fudge.

This paper violates the most sacred canon of historical scholarship by omitting footnotes, those bastions of learning and irrefutable proof that the author has ventured no opinion which cannot immediately be tracked down to its sources.

• Footnotes and Marginalia
• A Long Footnote
• Apology for Extensive Annotation
• The Subject of Notes
• Text and Commentary
• Footnotes and Parentheses
• Footnotes
• The Sauce and the Fish
• Tendencies Within Classical Commentaries

For honest men are scarce; hardly so numerous as the gates of Thebes, or the mouths of the enriching Nile. We are living in a ninth age; an age more evil than that of iron—one for whose wickedness Nature herself can find no name, no metal from which to call it.

rari quippe boni: numera, vix sunt totidem quot
Thebarum portae vel divitis ostia Nili.
nona aetas agitur peioraque saecula ferri
temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
nomen et a nullo posuit natura metallo.

Has that friend of yours already made you believe that he is a good man? And yet it is impossible in so short a time for one either to become good or be known as such. Do you know what kind of man I now mean when I speak of "a good man"? I mean one of the second grade, like your friend. For one of the first class perhaps springs into existence, like the phoenix, only once in five hundred years.

iam tibi iste persuasit virum se bonum esse? atqui vir bonus tam cito nec fieri potest nec intellegi. scis quem nunc virum bonum dicam? huius secundae notae. nam ille alter fortasse tamquam phoenix semel anno quingentesimo nascitur.

What is man? A vessel that the slightest shaking, the slightest toss will break. No mighty wind is needed to scatter you abroad; whatever you strike against, will be your undoing. What is man? A body weak and fragile, naked, in its natural state defenceless, dependent upon another's help, and exposed to all the affronts of Fortune; when it has practised well its muscles, it then becomes the food of every wild beast, of everyone the prey; a fabric of weak and unstable elements, attractive only in its outer features, unable to bear cold, heat, and toil, yet from mere rust and idleness doomed to decay; fearful of the foods that feed it, it dies now from the lack of these, and now is burst open by their excess; filled with anxiety and concern for its safety, it draws its very breath on sufferance, keeping but a feeble hold upon it—for sudden fear or a loud noise that falls unexpectedly upon the ears will drive it forth—and fosters ever its own unrest, a morbid and a useless thing.

quid est homo? quolibet quassu vas et quolibet fragile iactatu. non tempestate magna, ut dissiperis, opus est; ubicumque arietaveris, solveris. quid est homo? imbecillum corpus et fragile, nudum, suapte natura inerme, alienae opis indigens, ad omnis fortunae contumelias proiectum; cum bene lacertos exercuit, cuiuslibet ferae pabulum, cuiuslibet victima, ex infirmis fluidisque contextum et lineamentis exterioribus nitidum, frigoris, aestus, laboris impatiens, ipso rursus situ et otio iturum in tabem, alimenta metuens sua, quorum modo inopia deficit, modo copia rumpitur; anxiae sollicitaeque tutelae, precarii spiritus et male haerentis, quem pavor repentinus aut auditus ex improviso sonus auribus gravis excutit; sollicitudinis semper sibi nutrimentum, vitiosum et inutile.

For people wishing to learn Greek there is nothing more suitable, nothing better to read. And that is not simply my opinion, but that of Theodore Gaza, a man of much learning in all fields. When he was asked which Greek author should be read assiduously by people wishing to learn Greek, he replied, "Only Aristophanes," because he was very witty, rich, erudite and pure in his Attic language.

Graece discere cupientibus nihil aptius, nihil melius legi potest, non meo solum iudicio, quod non magnifacio, sed etiam Theodori Gazae, viri undecunque doctissimi, qui, interrogatus quis ex Graecis auctoribus assidue legendus foret Graecas literas discere volentibus, respondit: 'Solus Aristophanes,' quod esset sane quam acutus, copiosus, doctus et merus Atticus.

Another writer capable of moving the Byzantines to anger was Lucian, whose occasional scornful comments on the early Christians earned him equally scornful epithets from the orthodox reader. The ancient and medieval commentaries on his essays are found to contain no less than thirty-nine terms of abuse directed against him.³ Yet the essays remained firm favourites with Byzantine readers of all periods.

³ H. Rabe, Scholia in Lucianum (Leipzig 1906) 336.

Shun tried to cede the empire to Shan Quan, but Shan Quan said, "I stand in the midst of space and time. Winter days, I dress in skins and furs; summer days, in vine cloth and hemp. In spring, I plow and plant—this gives my body the labor and exercise it needs; in fall, I harvest and store away—this gives my form the leisure and sustenance it needs. When the sun comes up, I work; when the sun goes down, I rest. I wander free and easy between heaven and earth, and my mind has found all that it could wish for. What use would I have for the empire? What a pity that you don’t understand me!"

Emperor Constantius Augustus and Julian Caesar to Julianus.²

In the distinguished order of the decuries³ which bears the name of either copyists or fiscal clerks or tax assessment clerks, by no means shall any person obtain a place of the first order, unless it is established that he excels in the practice and training of the liberal studies and that he is so polished in the use of letters that words proceed from him without the offense of imperfections, and it is Our will that all men shall be so informed. Moreover, in order that its rewards may not be denied to literature, which is the greatest⁴ of all the virtues, if any man should appear to be worthy of the first place on account of his studies and his skill in the use of words, Our provision shall make him of more honorable rank ... or Your Sublimity shall report his name to Us, so that We may deliberate as to the kind of high rank that should be conferred upon him.

Given on the sixth day before the kalends of March at Constantinople: February 24 (25). Received on the ides of May at Rome in the year of the ninth consulship of Constantino Augustus and the second consulship of Julian Caesar.—May 15, 357; 360.⁵

2 His official position is unknown.
3 Guilds of clerical workers in the imperial service, found primarily in Rome.
4 the teacher, G.
5 The tenth consulship of Constantius Augustus and the third consulship of Julian Caesar (360), since Constantius was not in Constantinople in 357 and did not arrive there before 359/360, G.

Imp. Constantius a. et Iulianus caes. ad Iulianum.

In decuriarum ordine insigni, cui librariorum vel fiscalium sive censualium nomen est, nequaquam aliquis locum primi ordinis adipiscatur nisi is, quem constiterit studiorum liberalium usu adque exercitatione pollere et ita esse litteris expolitum, ut citra offensam vitii ex eodem verba procedant: quod cunctis volumus intimari. Ne autem litteraturae, quae omnium virtutum maxima est, praemia denegentur, eum, qui studiis et eloquio dignus primo loco videbitur, honestiorem faciet nostra provisio sublimitate ... tuave eius nomina indicante, ut deliberemus, quae in eum dignitas deferenda sit.

Dat. VI kal. mar. Constantinopoli; accepta id. mai. Romae Constantio a. VIIII et Iuliano caes. II conss. (357 [360] febr. 24).

One cannot read the narrative without recalling Oxenstjerna's saying to his son: "My son, as you grow older, you will be astonished to discover what imbeciles run the world."<sup>1

1</sup> In A New Dictionary of Quotations, under the rubric "Government," Mencken gives this saying as "You do not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed (An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur)," and then adds: "Commonly ascribed to BISHOP AXEL OXENSTJERNA, Chancellor of Sweden (1583–1654), but Büchman says in Geflügelte Worte that it probably originated with Pope Julius III, who said to a Portuguese monk: 'If you knew with how little expenditure of sense the world is governed, you would wonder.'"

Anne Boleyn is said to have been perplexed by the fact that she understood French perfectly when speaking it to herself, but not otherwise. The same thing — mutatis mutandis — may be true of emenders...

My study of Greek began in August, 1925, after I had taken my A.B. in Political Science at Berkeley. In October I decided upon a classical career and that fall I went through Smith's Latin Lessons by myself (under Roger Jones's supervision) and then began German in January and Hebrew the following August (under William Popper, a great teacher). Later I learned French and Italian without attending classes (before 1925 I had studied only Spanish). In May, 1928, I received the M.A. degree in Greek, just two years and nine months after learning the Greek alphabet.

Or look at Hatred, its rarer active forms of murder, assault, violence, cruelty; its more universal, and in their aggregate hardly less injurious forms of envy, spite, scandal, uncharitableness, innuendo, depreciation, slander, malice, whispering, backbiting—multiform developments of one base passion, multiform names for one base thing. Thousands of men, for instance, get their living by writing anonymously. The anonymous is to them an invisible ring whereby they can, with impunity, often even unsuspected, speak of others all words that may do hurt. It is as an impregnable shield, from behind whose shelter they can shower arrow-flights of falsehoods, sneers, misrepresentations, disparagements at their defenceless victims. They can tarnish the merits of an opponent. They can obliterate the services of a rival. They can gild the follies of a partisan. They can secretly blight the hopes of a nominal friend. They can give a false aspect to fair reasonings, a foolish appearance to just opinions. They can sneer away honest reputations, and push empty pretensions into prominence. They can abuse the good, and belaud the bad. They can be as false, as hollow, as malignant as many such writers daily show themselves to be.

Where does learning begin? Where does learning end? I say: Its order begins with reciting the classics, and ends with studying ritual. Its purpose begins with becoming a well-bred man, and ends with becoming a sage. If you truly accumulate effort for a long time, then you will advance. Learning proceeds until death and only then does it stop. And so, the order of learning has a stopping point, but its purpose cannot be given up for even a moment. To pursue it is to be human, to give it up is to be a beast.

Where does learning begin and where does it end? I say that as to program, learning begins with the recitation of the Classics and ends with the reading of the ritual texts; and as to objective, it begins with learning to be a man of breeding, and ends with learning to be a sage. If you truly pile up effort over a long period of time, you will enter into the highest realm. Learning continues until death and only then does it cease. Therefore we may speak of an end to the program of learning, but the objective of learning must never for an instant be given up. To pursue it is to be a man, to give it up is to become a beast.

This is only a tiny proportion of the crimes that Gallicus,²⁷ guardian of Rome, hears continuously from the morning star until the sun sets! If you want to understand the behaviour of humankind, a single courthouse is enough. Spend a few days there and then dare to call yourself unlucky, after you've come away.

²⁷ Gaius Rutilius Gallicus, City Prefect under Domitian.

haec quota pars scelerum, quae custos Gallicus Vrbis
usque a lucifero donec lux occidat audit?
humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti
sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et        160
dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris, aude.

Una domus: what place is here meant?

jedes beliebige einzelne Haus.

...any one house...

Look, for instance, at the world of disease and pain. You need not go far to look. One house will suffice you to see the wretchedness of the human race.<sup>2

2</sup> "Humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti,
Sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et
Dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris aude."
                                              —Juv. Sat. xiii.159.

He had a great respect for authority in science or letters, and would quote Quintilian in support of his own preference for limited views: Ad cognoscendum genus humanum sufficit una domus:* 'For exploring human nature one household is large enough.'

* Probably a confused memory, mine or my father's, of Juvenal, Satire XIII, 159-160...

either the office or private house, used as an office, of Gallicus: not (as Friedl.), any private house taken at random.

Surely, here 'domus' is not, as it is usually explained, the private house of Ponticus [sic]; it is the police court where he sits from morning till night...

Not his [Gallicus'] house, but his office, by the temple of Tellus (RE 22.2519, Lanciani Bull. del Commissione Archeol. di Roma 20, 1892, 19); cf. Demosth. 21.85 τὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων οἴκημα.

There was also a story that Lepreüs contended with Heracles that he was as good a trencherman. Each killed an ox at the same time and prepared it for the table. It turned out, even as Lepreüs maintained, that he was as powerful a trencherman as Heracles.

ἐλέγετο δὲ καὶ ὡς πρὸς Ἡρακλέα ἐρίσειεν ὁ Λεπρέος μὴ ἀποδεῖν τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἐσθίων· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἑκάτερος βοῦν αὐτῶν ἐν ἴσῳ τῷ καιρῷ κατέσφαξε καὶ εὐτρέπισεν ἐς τὸ δεῖπνον, καὶ ἦν ὥσπερ καὶ ὑφίστατο ὁ Λεπρέος φαγεῖν οὐκ ἀδυνατώτερος τοῦ Ἡρακλέους.

According to legend, when Heracles set out for Triphylia, a district of Elis, he had a competition in gluttony with Lepreus, the son of Pyrgeus, as Hesiod [fragment 265 Merkelbach-West] says in The Wedding of Ceyx; and after each one had killed an ox for his meal, Lepreus turned out to be not at all slower or less ready to eat. But after dinner they came to blows because of each one’s resentment at his rival's virtue, and Lepreus fell victim to Heracles' force.

fama est Herculem in Triphyliam regionem Eleorum profectum habuisse controversiam de voracitate cum Lepreo Pyrgei filio, ut inquit Hesiodus in Ceycis nuptiis; atque cum uterque bovem in epulas occidisset, Lepreus nihilo fuit tardior aut imparatior edendo inventus. sed cum post epulas ventum esset ad pugnam ob indignationem aemulae virtutis, Lepreus cecidit ob vim Herculeam.

Heracles is also represented as having an eating-contest with Lepreus, after Lepreus challenged him, and as winning.

εἰσάγεται δὲ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς καὶ Λεπρεῖ περὶ πολυφαγίας ἐρίζων ἐκείνου προκαλεσαμένου, καὶ νενίκηκεν.

At Astydamia's request Heracles gave up his dislike of Lepreus. But they were overcome by a youthful spirit of quarrelsomeness, and competed with each other in throwing the discus, in bailing out water, in seeing who could first consume a bull for dinner. In all these matters Lepreus was defeated.

δεηθείσης δὲ τῆς Ἀστυδαμείας διαλύεται τὴν πρὸς τὸν Λεπρέα ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἔχθραν. φιλονεικία δ᾿ οὖν αὐτοῖς ἐμπίπτει νεανικὴ καὶ ἐρίζουσιν ἀλλήλοις περὶ δίσκου καὶ ὕδατος ἀντλήσεως καὶ τίς καταδειπνήσει ταῦρον πρότερος· καὶ ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις ἡττᾶται Λεπρεύς.

Eurydice, daughter of Sirras, dedicated this (statue probably of Hermes) to her city's Muses, because she had in her soul a longing for knowledge. The happy mother of sons growing up, she laboured to learn letters, the recorders of the spoken word.

Εὐρυδίκη Ἵρρα πολιῆτισι τόνδ' ἀνέθηκε
    Μούσαις εὐκταῖον ψυχῇ ἑλοῦσα πόθον.
γράμματα γὰρ μνημεῖα λόγων μήτηρ γεγαυῖα
    παίδων ἡβώντων ἐξεπόνησε μαθεῖν.

1 Ἵρρα πολιῆτισι Wilamowitz, "Lesefrüchte, CLXIX," Hermes 54.1 (Jan., 1919) 71-72; Σίρρα πολιῆτισι Adolf Wilhelm, "Ein Weihgedicht der Grossmutter Alexanders des Grossen," Mélanges Henri Grégoire (Brussels, 1949 = Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves, 9), Vol. 2, pp. 625–633, rpt. Kleine Schriften, II.iv (Vienna, 2002), pp. 627–635: πολιῆτις Ω, ἱεραπολιῆτις Μ²Π
2 Μούσαις εὐκταῖον Wilamowitz; ἐμ Μούσαις εὐκτὸν Wilhelm: Μούσαις εὔιστον codd.

The civilized mind is naturally critical: bred by the interaction of various studies, criticism is the peculiar mark of high civilization. But criticism is itself a composite thing: restlessness of intellect is a part of it, but so is a wariness against delusion: curiosity and suspicion are both necessary elements.

There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect.

ἡδονὴ δὲ καὶ φθεγγομένης ἐπῆν τῷ ἤχῳ· καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν, ὥσπερ ὄργανόν τι πολύχορδον, εὐπετῶς τρέπουσα καθ᾿ ἣν βούλοιτο διάλεκτον ὀλίγοις παντάπασι δι᾿ ἑρμηνέως ἐνετύγχανε βαρβάροις, τοῖς δὲ πλείστοις αὐτὴ δι᾿ αὑτῆς ἀπεδίδου τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, οἷον Αἰθίοψι, Τρωγλοδύταις, Ἑβραίοις, Ἄραψι, Σύροις, Μήδοις, Παρθυαίοις. πολλῶν δὲ λέγεται καὶ ἄλλων ἐκμαθεῖν γλώττας, τῶν πρὸ αὐτῆς βασιλέων οὐδὲ τὴν Αἰγυπτίαν ἀνασχομένων παραλαβεῖν διάλεκτον, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ τὸ μακεδονίζειν ἐκλιπόντων.

• Multilingualism
• Ancient Polyglots
• A Polyglot
• Job Application

Even the slightest occasions of pleasure that I can come upon, I seize.

Jusques aux moindres occasions de plaisir que je puis rencontrer, je les empoigne.

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bough
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.        5
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood        10
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

In 1869 all candidates for admission to the Fourth Class (first year) of the College of Letters had to pass a satisfactory examination in Latin Grammar, four books of Caesar, Aeneid I–VI, six orations of Cicero, Greek Grammar, and three books of Xenophon's Anabasis (besides examinations in algebra, geometry, English Grammar, geography, and United States history). These represented high-school studies; the University did not offer primary courses in Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, and Xenophon.

There is no curse so terrible but it is brought down by man upon man. There is a book by Dicaearchus on "The Destruction of Human Life." He was a famous and eloquent Peripatetic, and he gathered together [fragment 24 Wehrli] all the other causes of destruction—floods, epidemics, famines, and sudden incursions of wild animals in myriads, by whose assaults, he informs us, whole tribes of men have been wiped out. And then he proceeds to show by way of comparison how many more men have been destroyed by the assaults of men—that is, by wars or revolutions—than by any and all other sorts of calamity.

nulla tam detestabilis pestis est, quae non homini ab homine nascatur. est Dicaearchi liber de interitu hominum, Peripatetici magni et copiosi, qui collectis ceteris causis eluvionis, pestilentiae, vastitatis, beluarum etiam repentinae multitudinis, quarum impetu docet quaedam hominum genera esse consumpta, deinde comparat, quanto plures deleti sint homines hominum impetu, id est bellis aut seditionibus, quam omni reliqua calamitate.

Dicaearchus evidently collected material to confirm such statements as Arist. Pol. 1253a31: ὥσπερ γὰρ καὶ τελεωθὲν βέλτιστον τῶν ζῴων ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ χωρισθὲν νόμου καὶ δίκης χείριστον πάντων. χαλεπωτάτη γὰρ ἀδικία ἔχουσα ὅπλα; and MM 1203a22: ἐπεὶ πότερος ἂν πλείω κακὰ ποιήσειεν λέων ἢ Διονύσιος ἢ Φάλαρις ἢ Κλέαρχος ἤ τις τούτων τῶν μοχθηρῶν; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι οὗτοι; ἡ γὰρ ἀρχὴ ἐνοῦσα φαύλη μεγάλα συμβάλλεται, ἐν δὲ θηρίῳ ὅλως οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρχή; cf. Sen. Ep. 103.1: rari sunt casus, etiamsi graves, naufragium facere, vehiculo everti: ab homine homini cotidianum periculum; Plin. Nat. 7.5; Wehrli ad Dicaearch. fr. 24; Martini, RE 5.1 (1903), 557.40 ff.

• Man
• Meditation on a Cock Fight
• Man's Greatest Enemy
• Lupus Est Homo Homini
• Homo Homini Daemon

The most memorable and haunting of the episodes is surely Altera iam teritus bellis civilibus aetas — Another age is crushed with civil wars, with its beautiful, despairing solution and its vision of the fall of Rome.

Labels: typographical and other errors

But the life of mortals is wholly trouble, and there is no rest from toil. Anything we might love more than life is hid in a surrounding cloud of darkness, and we show ourselves unhappy lovers of whatever light there is that shines on earth because we are ignorant of another life, and the world below is not revealed to us. We are aimlessly borne along by mere tales.

πᾶς δ' ὀδυνηρὸς βίος ἀνθρώπων
κοὐκ ἔστι πόνων ἀνάπαυσις.        190
ἀλλ' ὅ τι τοῦ ζῆν φίλτερον ἄλλο
σκότος ἀμπίσχων κρύπτει νεφέλαις.
δυσέρωτες δὴ φαινόμεθ᾿ ὄντες
τοῦδ' ὅ τι τοῦτο στίλβει κατὰ γῆν
δι' ἀπειροσύνην ἄλλου βιότου        195
κοὐκ ἀπόδειξιν τῶν ὑπὸ γαίας,
μύθοις δ' ἄλλως φερόμεσθα.

191-197 versus delendos suspicatur Barrett ("fort. recte" Diggle)
191 τοῦ ζῆν] τούτου Σ Ar. Ran. 1082

Yet all man's life is but ailing and dim,
And rest upon earth comes never.
But if any far-off state there be,
Dearer than life to mortality;
The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof,
And mist is under and mist above.
And so we are sick for life, and cling
On earth to this nameless and shining thing.
For other life is a fountain sealed,
And the deeps below us are unrevealed,
And we drift on legends for ever!

Myron Eells was the missionary here. People didn't like him very well. He was collecting Klallam words from some Klallam Indians who were visiting here one time. I had to translate for him. So he would ask them for words like father, mother, house, dog, and so on. And those people didn't think much of Eells, so they would give him all sorts of dirty, nasty words, and he would write them down in a book. Then he would try to use some of these words, thinking he was talking Indian, and people would just about bust trying to keep from laughing.

Of the minor difficulties of Father Juan de Ugarte, a former professor of philosophy who was sent to take charge at San Javier, Clavijero writes: "At the beginning [the natives] were very restless at the time of the Catechism. Often bursting out into loud laughter. He noticed that the principal reason for the mockery was his mistakes in speaking the language, and that some of the Indians, when he consulted them about the words or pronunciation, intentionally answered him with absurdities in order to have something to laugh at in the Catechism and for that reason, from then on, he asked only children about the language, for they were more sincere."

[Father Pierre] Biard's greatest difficulty was with the Micmac language. Young Biencourt was his best interpreter, and on common occasions served him well; but the moment that religion was in question he was, as it were, stricken dumb, the reason being that the language was totally without abstract terms. Biard resolutely set himself to the study of it, a hard and thorny path, on which he made small progress, and often went astray. Seated, pencil in hand, before some Indian squatting on the floor, whom with the bribe of a mouldy biscuit he had lured into the hut, he plied him with questions which he often neither would nor could answer. What was the Indian word for Faith, Hope, Charity, Sacrament, Baptism, Eucharist, Trinity, Incarnation? The perplexed savage, willing to amuse himself, and impelled, as Biard thinks, by the Devil, gave him scurrilous and unseemly phrases as the equivalent of things holy, which, studiously incorporated into the father's Indian catechism, produced on his pupils an effect the reverse of that intended.

At the outset, he had proffered his aid to Le Jeune in his study of the Algonquin; and, like the Indian practical jokers of Acadia in the case of Father Biard, palmed off upon him the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he was interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws.

To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.

I am obliged to you for sending me your petition, but I am returning it without signature. I confess I am attached to the current forms of words, and <I> also I am what you have often heard of but perhaps not often seen, a real conservative, who thinks change an evil in itself.

We should not imitate the young when their thoughts are like these.

                     τοὺς νέους γὰρ οὐ μιμητέον
φρονοῦντας οὕτως.

One should be forgiving: if youth makes someone's heart stiff with pride and he utters folly, pretend not to hear him.

                                    χρὴ δὲ συγγνώμην ἔχειν·
εἴ τίς σ᾿ ὑφ᾿ ἥβης σπλάγχνον ἔντονον φέρων
μάταια βάζει, μὴ δόκει τούτου κλυεῖν.

We should not imitate the old when their thoughts are like these.

One should be forgiving: if old age makes someone's heart stiff with pride and he utters folly, pretend not to hear him.

The greater part of Jackson's life was spent not in the studious seclusion of a university but in a remote village in the wilds of Cumberland, where he managed his mother's farm, his reading and writing being of necessity done on his return from the day's work. He was further inhibited by having no public library to which to go for new editions or books of reference, and by the fact that his own texts and commentaries were neither very numerous nor always up to date; yet he has produced a collected body of emendations the like of which, at least for brilliance and ingenuity, has not seen the light of day since the publication of Madvig's Adversaria and Cobet's Variae and Novae Lectiones more than a century ago.

A staunch defender of the traditional curriculum was Arthur W. Ryder, who came to Berkeley as Instructor in Sanskrit and German in January, 1906. He was in this respect even more conservative than Merrill: Ryder would have pretty much limited the university curriculum to Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Study of history, philosophy, physics, for example, and of languages such as Sanskrit, Hebrew, German, and French would be entered upon only after thorough grounding in the basics as a sort of reward for serious study. As for psychology, sociology, and the like, he dismissed them out of hand as not worth damning. Ryder especially loved Latin ("a man's language," he said), and once said that he had loved Caesar's Gallic Wars from the very first sentence. In later years he limited his reading in ancient languages mostly to Sanskrit and Latin (and in modern to English and French). It was not that he disliked Greek; he was glad to see young men go into Greek studies (he did much to help and encourage Harold Cherniss and me); but he had decided that he could not perfect himself in all three ancient languages, and so he limited himself to the two that he liked most. Certainly he read little Greek in later years, and yet he could recite long passages from Greek tragedy.

Ryder graduated from Harvard and took his Ph.D. in Germany, and then worked with C.R. Lanman on Sanskrit texts for the Harvard Oriental Series before coming to Berkeley. Perhaps it was this experience that turned him against scholarly writing. He did none after 1906. As he told it, he had observed a feature of Sanskrit drama and had mentioned it to a Sanskritist (perhaps Lanman), who was impressed and urged him to write it up in an article. Ryder set out to do so and then reflected that to anyone who knows Sanskrit the point is obvious, and to anyone who does not, it would be meaningless; hence he never wrote the article. To him most scholarship was concerned with trivialities, and so he especially enjoyed translating an epigram in the Panchatantra in these words:

Scholarship is less than sense;
    Therefore seek intelligence.

For him reading and knowing great books were what Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek are all about.

Ryder loved the civilization of India, its literature, religions, philosophies; he even had good words for the caste system—but he never went to India. As a young man he wanted very much to go there; but, when older, he apparently no longer wanted to make the effort. One could say that his life rippled inwards: he limited himself more and more, dropping one interest after another. If a new book on war by Liddell Hart came out, he would buy it and read it—but otherwise he would say, citing Emerson (whom he admired), "Whenever a new book is published, I read an old one." And so Ryder read Dickens's novels, Boswell's Johnson, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall over and over again. Death came to him, as he would have wished, suddenly as he was teaching Sanskrit (an advanced class of just one student, on March 21, 1938), when he was just sixty-one years old. An Italian Sanskritist said after a conversation with him, "Ten men like that would make a civilization."

• Arthur William Ryder
• A Lover of Good Books

It was [William A.] Merrill's practice to read a certain amount every day in some (usually) previously unread text. Thus in time he read about all Latin literature. But for all his profound knowledge of Latin he once made an embarrassing mistake. He had the task of composing the Latin inscription for the arch of the bridge that crosses Strawberry Creek into Faculty Glade, and he began it HANC PONTEM, which was cut in the stone. At once his error was pointed out, and someone said that this was the only feminine bridge in the world. Merrill defended the gender as written, having found feminine pons in some late ancient or early medieval writings (perhaps in Hisperica Famina, which has female bridges). But as the last act of his administration (so I have heard) Benjamin Ide Wheeler had the A of HANC changed to V. The repair is still visible.

Merrill was a convinced conservative in everything. He used to say that the founding fathers had not established a democracy but a republic. For him our government, society, and schools were steadily getting worse. The weakening of Greek and Latin in school and college curricula was a major example of the loss of standards, a symptom of general decline. If he had lived another half-century, he would not have changed his mind; rather he would have thought his worst fears confirmed.

The class of 1910, with the generous cooperation of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, will soon have erected a memorial footbridge over Strawberry Creek north of the Faculty Club. The bridge will be of concrete, from plans drawn by John Bakewell '93, and Arthur Brown, Jr., '96. On the walk of the South Drive a Roman arch will be built, from which nine steps will lead to an arched bridge across the creek. On the south side of the creek nine steps will descend to the path. Professor W. A. Merrill has written the following inscription which will be placed over the portal:

HANC PONTEM DONO DEDIT CLASSIS STUDENTIUM
QUAE IN ANNO MDCCCCX FORAS EXIT NE MEMORIA
SUA APUD POSTEROS PEREAT IMPENSIS SUBVENIT
PHOEBE APPERSON HEARST.

Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,        15
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,        20
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
'There is no joy but calm!'—
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?        45
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?        50
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence—ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.        110
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,        115
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

• A Fool
• Laziness as a Good Quality
• On Laziness
• To Loaf
• Kayf
• Slackers
• Planet of the Apes
• Ode to Indolence
• The More Idle, the More Deserving
• Work and Leisure
• Praise of Laziness
• Lazy Man's Song
• Exquisite Pregnant Idleness
• How Can I Work?
• Dolce Far Niente
• Weekdays of Unfreedom
• The Dreary Vacuum of Idleness
• Idleness and Business
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
• Idleness
• Futile Work
• Otium Cum Dignitate

In this wider sense, I would think of philology not so much as an academic discipline with a clearly defined object and proper methods of investigation, but rather as an attitude. It is precisely what the etymology of the word declares, "love of the word": an appreciative attraction to verbal documents that seeks to understand their meaning, starting with the surface and penetrating to whatever depths are possible, but also alert to the fact that a given text comes from and is shaped by a specific time and place that usually is significantly different from that of the observer.

To these and a host of other contemporary critical questions and approaches to literature, philology continues to serve as a handmaiden, furnishing the material basis on which they must stand. Handmaidens are proverbially humble and modest; and however fascinating, even all-consuming for its practitioner, the quest for an elusive etymology or textual variant may become, in the larger scheme of humanistic scholarship and the pursuit of the examined life it certainly has its limitations. At the same time, scholarship is not an absolute monarchy but a republic, in which the handmaiden, while doing her job of preparing the necessities of life — intelligible texts and tools for their understanding — will also remain constantly watchful and critical of the nobility. To order the disciplines devoted to the understanding of literary texts hierarchically, in the shape of a pyramid with paleography at the base and semiotics at the apex, is tempting but dangerous, because such a model allows the semiotician as well as the literary critic in the middle ranges to remain above and aloof from the concerns of philology. Not just an ancillary discipline, philology is an attitude of respect for the datum, for the facts of the text and its contexts, which should be cultivated at all levels of our enterprise to understand and appraise.

Philology thus holds not only a material value, in that it provides the raw materials for understanding, but equally a disciplinary one, by continuously demanding that the intellectual systems built by interpreters or theoreticians be tested against and anchored in the realities of the subject matter.

But as I have defined it, "love of the word" that seeks understanding is a lasting concern of the intellectual life and as such stands above the currents of fashion. This is not to denigrate the many -isms that strut for a while; not only do they play their part in the ongoing performance of intellectual exploration, but they occasionally refine and enrich the more basic work of philologists by developing new "optics," thus sharpening our sights and adding new dimensions of awareness. Yet respect for the facts, for the concrete realities of the text, is and must remain basic.

In May 1941 Watt joined the Inter-Services Topographical Department, then based in Oxford, as a temporary civilian officer, Admiralty; the department had been set up by Admiral J.H. Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, who had been appalled by the lack of geographical information in the bungled Norwegian campaign in the spring of 1940. It was the duty of the civilian officer to coordinate and edit the data about beaches, roads, and possible airfields collected by the representatives of the three services. Watt commonly worked a twelve-hour day, and sometimes into the night as well when information was needed for plans that were not necessarily executed (perhaps they included some of Churchill's rasher inspirations). Classical scholars were thought suitable for such research as they were used to collating defective scraps of evidence, their pedantic exactitude was seen to be worthwhile when lives were at stake, and they had a reputation at that time for writing concisely and clearly...

Apart from anything else, Richmond can take the credit for bringing into the critical apparatus the lessons of P, which like FL descends from the Petrarchan manuscript...

Labels: typographical and other errors

Sheep go in flocks for three reasons: First, because they are of a gregarious temper, and love to be together: Secondly, because of their cowardice; they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly, because the common run of them are dull of sight, to a proverb, and can have no choice in roads; sheep can in fact see nothing; in a celestial Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tankard, would discern only that both dazzled them, and were of unspeakable glory. How like their fellow-creatures of the human species! Men, too, as was from the first maintained here, are gregarious; then surely faint-hearted enough, trembling to be left by themselves; above all, dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are we seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at all; and after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistaking them for suns! Foolish Turnip-lanterns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither know we, except by blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when grass is bitter and scant, we know it,—and bleat and butt: these last two facts we know of a truth and in very deed.—Thus do Men and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for most part each following his neighbor, and his own nose.

When Captain Leigh Fermor, working with the Cretan resistance in the 1939 war, captured General Kreipe and carried him off to a cave in the Cretan mountains, the General was at first not unnaturally nervous of the villainous appearance of his captors, but the next morning was a brilliant one, and they all crowded together to the cave mouth. You could see the snow on every peak in the White Mountains blazing with sunlight, and eagles floating in the clear blue sky. Captain Leigh Fermor was entranced, and murmured to himself the first stanza of Horace's Soracte poem, 'Vides ut alta stet nive candidum...' The General heard him, and continued the poem in Latin to the end. The link held of course, and they became friends from that moment. There is something about this story, some resonance of the past — it could have happened after all in 1643 and not 1943 — that suggests that was the last moment of the old Europe.

I have adored Horace in the simplest manner since I was fifteen, and as undiscerning about poetry as anyone else, but he keeps pace with our years as he does with the ages of the world. Without being deep oneself, one can see the depth in him, and he is one of the very few poets who always leave one feeling wiser, better and more relaxed, with no diminution of energy or of appetite. Whether this has to do with his paganism, or what paganism may mean to him, is one of the avenues we shall explore, but there is no doubt that for three or four hundred years now Horace, with Plutarch, has seemed to offer an alternative to official Christianity, an alternative all the more palatable for the greatness and immediacy of his poetry. Now that I am old I find him greater than ever...

Classical scholars are sometimes resistant to new approaches and retain a literalist bias, an unfortunate holdover from the positivism and scientism that sparked the necessary and important philological, historical, and textual achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

May it be thus or better, to pass the time with cheerful hearts in festive pleasure free of cares; and may malevolent spirits, accursed old age, and death's finality be kept far away.

ὧδ᾿ εἶναι καὶ ἄμεινον, ἐύφρονα θυμὸν ἔχοντας
    νόσφι μεριμνάων εὐφροσύνως διάγειν
τερπομένους· τηλοῦ δὲ κακὰς ἀπὸ κῆρας ἀμῦναι
    γῆράς τ᾿ οὐλόμενον καὶ θανάτοιο τέλος.

765 εἶναι καὶ: εἴη κεν Ahrens, ἐύφρονα: ὁμόφρονα Brunck

Subaudi εὐχόμεθα.

Just so you know...
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57 Cochleae vita
A snail's life

Κοχλίου βίος, A snail's life. Said of those who live frugally and on little, or have withdrawn from business and are aloof from the activities of commercial daily life. The creature from whom the metaphor has been taken is well known. Plutarch in his essay 'On Love of Wealth': 'You are beset by many troubles, you torture and upset yourself when you live a snail's life because of your stinginess.'¹ We have quoted elsewhere from the Two Captives of Plautus about how snails 'live on their own juice ... when it is hot weather.'²

1 Plutarch Moralia 525D-E De cupiditate divitiarum

2 Plautus Captivi 78-83, quoted in Adagia II viii 80 They live on their own juice. Erasmus' version of the title of Plautus' play is common in early editions.

Κοχλίου βίος, id est Cochleae vita. De iis qui parce parvoque vivunt aut contracti a negociis luceque forensi semoti. Notum est animal unde sumpta est metaphora. Plutarchus in libello Περὶ τῆς φιλοπλουτίας: Σὺ δὲ τοσαῦτα πράγματα συνέχεις καὶ ταράττεις καὶ στροβεῖς σεαυτόν, κοχλίου βίον ζῶν διὰ τὴν μικρολογίαν, id est Tu vero tantum molestiarum sustines turbans et torquens teipsum, cum ob parsimoniam cochleae vitam vivas. De cochleis quae, cum caletur, succo victitant suo, alias retulimus ex Plautina Captivi duo.

PETRVS. Sed tu mihi videre cochleae vitam agere.
IODOCVS. Qui sic?
PETRVS. Quia perpetuo domi lates, nec vsquam prorepis. Non secus atque claudus sutor, iugiter domi desides. Tu tibi domi situm contrahis.

Peter But you seem to me to live a snail's life.
Jodocus How so?
Peter Because you always hide at home and never come out. You're no different from a crippled cobbler, forever sitting at home. You'll grow musty sitting at home.

Nos, mi Ammoni, iam menses aliquot plane cochleae vitam viuimus; domi contracti conditique mussamus in studiis.

We have been living, my dear Ammonius, for some months a snail's life. We shrink and hide ourselves indoors, and are busy as bees in study.

I've often said that all of man's unhappiness comes from one thing: not knowing how to remain calmly in one room.

And for this purpose I would not avoid their company; I would observe them close up, and enjoy their fun and festivities within the limitations of my age. If I did not live among them (as I could not without spoiling their gatherings by being fretful as old men are and a slave to my infirmities, and without also doing violence to the rules and ways of living that I should then have), I should at least want to live near them in a part of my house, not the most showy but the most comfortable. Not like a dean of the church of Saint Hilary at Poitiers whom I saw, some years ago, so cut off by his gloomy disagreeableness that when I entered his room it had been twenty-two years since he had gone one step out of it; and yet he was free and easy in all his functions, except for a cold that was going down into his stomach. Hardly once a week would he permit anyone to come in to see him; he kept himself always locked up in his chamber alone, except that a servant, who only came in and went out, brought him something to eat once a day. His occupation was to walk around and read some book (for he had a certain knowledge of letters); moreover, he was obstinately set on dying in this routine, as he did soon after.

Translate, study, read — time wasted. Walk, contemplate, meditate, create!

Traducir, estudiar, leer: Tiempo perdido. ¡Pasear, contemplar, meditar, crear!

—when you are shoved out of the way by men who earn legacies by night work, men who are raised to the skies by what is now the royal road to highest advancement—a rich old woman's snatch? Proculeius gets one-twelfth but Gillo eleven-twelfths: each heir gets a share of inheritance to match his performance.

cum te summoveant qui testamenta merentur
noctibus, in caelum quos evehit optima summi
nunc via processus, vetulae vesica beatae?
unciolam Proculeius habet, sed Gillo deuncem,        40
partes quisque suas ad mensuram inguinis heres.

when you are thrust on one side by men who earn legacies by nightly performances, and are raised to heaven by that now royal road to high preferment—the favours of an aged and wealthy woman? Each of the lovers will have his share; Proculeius a twelfth part, Gillo eleven parts, each in proportion to the magnitude of his services.

Sometimes an explicit word is replaced by a word which strictly designates a neighbouring part without sexual significance. Of words in this category inguen was the most common, and the most readily interchangeable with the uoces propriae for the sexual organs.

I have shown earlier that the sexual organs may be referred to by the name of a nearby part of no sexual significance (pp. 47ff.). A use of uesica (lit. 'bladder') at Juv. 1.39 ('in caelum quos euehit optima summi / nunc uia processus, uetulae uesica beatae') seems to be of the same type: Juvenal may deliberately have failed to make a distinction between the bladder / urethra and the vagina (for the position of the uesica note Cels. 4.1.11 'in feminis (uesica) super genitale earum sita est').

As Courtney says, the sense is "each inheriting a share proportionate to the size of his penis". Explaining the point of a joke is a thankless task, all the more so when it is as filthy and tasteless as this one. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is a bit more to it than that. Besides the comic (and comically precise) exaggeration — a disproportion of 11:1 is far beyond anything likely to be found in nature — Juvenal surely expects us to be amused by the idea that someone so preternaturally ill-endowed as Proculeius can make a living as a gigolo,² despite his lack of the most basic qualification for the job.<sup>3

2</sup> Perhaps not a very good living, unless the estate is large enough to make even a one-twelfth share substantial.

³ Of course, he may have other talents, but the text suggests that the unnamed uetula thinks that size is everything when it comes to lovers.

But first we must lay down some principles. And this to begin with: that a knowledge of some foreign language, ancient or modern, is the bare irreducible minimum for anyone who desires to be educated in any true sense of the term, and that for him who would have a liberal education two are required. Such a one would own the treasure which Ennius, the father of Roman poetry, described when he said, with a grip upon reality not always observable in modern professors of education, that he had three souls, because he could speak Latin, Greek, and Oscan.

Is there anyone who, if he could, would not wish to read Dante in the original? Well, if he knows Latin, he need only acquaint himself with the not very numerous changes which Latin has undergone in Italy since the Roman age, and I will promise him that he shall be able to read the third canto of the 'Inferno' in a day. I will promise it, I say, for I did it in half a day myself.

Such literature surely is not dead; it is for all times surely real and alive. Because it deals, not with what is transitory, superficial, or material, but with what is permanent, essential, and spiritual; because it deals with that universal humanity which neither custom, fashion, nor soi-disant progress can ever change, the same on the Tiber as on the Thames, the same whether those who the moment embody it are carried in litters, or are conveyed in taxicabs or, it may be, on aeroplanes. Should we not say that our Scottish friends showed their insight into the truth of things when they named professorships of Latin professorships of 'Humanity'?