Laudator Temporis Acti

Ah, poor wretch, not in your thoughts is death,
that yet surely draws near you.

ἆ δείλ', οὐδέ τί τοι θάνατος καταθύμιός ἐστιν,
ὃς δή τοι σχεδὸν εἶσι.

Students at The Boston Public Latin School of the 1960s were expected to keep up with their lessons, learning Latin enough to translate without the use of a crib. Accordingly, cribs were always a matter of high drama and trepidation, as they were the ultimate contraband. The cheating student, tearing out the day's translation and laying it into his Cicero or Virgil, would rise to recite. Stammering his way through, he trembled, responding n-nothing to the master's (pointing) What's that you've got there? There was no greater punishment than that for the use, or even possession, of a crib: the student's parents summoned to the headmaster, suspension or disciplinary censure following (two censures in a school year and you were out). For it was not simply cheating, it was treason—a betrayal of the core educational values and good citizenship embodied in the study of Latin at the Latin School. The severity of the sanction, the opprobrium, kept us well studied and respectful.

Having destroyed a deceitful image of demonic Artemis,
    Demeas set up this sign of truth,
honouring both God the driver-away of idols, and the cross,
    that victorious, immortal symbol of Christ.

[Δαίμ]ονος Ἀρτέμιδος καθελὼν ἀπατήλιον εἶδος
    Δημέας ἀτρεκίης ἄνθετο σῆμα τόδε,
εἰδώλων ἐλατῆρα θεὸν σταυρόν τε γερέρων,
    νικοφόρον Χριστοῦ σύνβολον ἀθάνατον.

But the obstacle and the difficulty is,
that these Reformers make
a great issue out of everything.
(A blessing it would be if nobody
ever needed them.) They examine
and inquire about the slightest little thing,
and they set their mind immediately on radical reforms,
demanding that these be executed without delay.

Ὅμως τὸ πρόσκομμα κ' ἡ δυσκολία
εἶναι ποῦ κάμνουνε μιὰ ἱστορία
μεγάλη κάθε πρᾶγμα οἱ Ἀναμορφωταὶ
αὐτοί. (Εὐτύχημα θα ἦταν ἄν ποτὲ
δὲν τοὺς χρειάζονταν κανείς.) Γιὰ κάθε τί,
γιὰ τὸ παραμικρὸ ρωτοῦνε κ' ἐξετάζουν,
κ' εὐθὺς στὸν νοῦ τους ριζικὲς μεταρρυθμίσεις βάζουν,
μὲ τὴν ἀπαίτησι νὰ ἐκτελεσθοῦν ἄνευ ἀναβολής.

By this means they talked together across a whole Continent, and conveyed their Thoughts to one another in an Instant over Cities or Mountains, Seas or Desarts.

Go to Room 18 in the British Museum in London and you will find yourself in front of the Parthenon Marbles, taken from Greece by Lord Elgin in the nineteenth century. The astonishingly lifelike statues are, today, in a sorry state: many are mutilated or missing limbs. This, it is often assumed, was the fault of Lord Elgin's clumsy workmen or fighting during the Ottoman occupation. And indeed some of this was — but not all. Much was the work of zealous Christians who set about the temple with blunt instruments, attacking the 'demonic' gods, mutilating some of the finest statuary Greece had ever produced.¹

The East Pediment fared particularly badly. Hands, feet, even whole limbs have gone — almost certainly smashed off by Christians trying to incapacitate the demons within. The vast majority of the gods have been decapitated — again, almost certainly the work of Christians. The great central figures of the Pediment, that would have shown the birth of Athena, were the most sacred — and thus to the Christians the most demonic. They therefore suffered most: it is likely that they were pushed off the Pediment and smashed on the ground below, their fragmented remains ground down and used for mortar for a Christian church.

The same tale is told by objects in museums and archaeological sites across the world. Near the Marbles in the same museum is a basalt bust of Germanicus. Two blows have hacked off his nose and a cross has been cut in his forehead. In Athens, a larger-than-life statue of Aphrodite has been disfigured by a crude cross carved on her brow; her eyes have been defaced and her nose is missing.² In Cyrene, the eyes have been gouged out of a life-sized bust in a sanctuary of Demeter, and the nose removed; in Tuscany a slender statue of Bacchus has been decapitated. In the Sparta Archaeological Museum, a colossal statue of the goddess Hera looks blindly out, her eyes disfigured by crosses. A beautiful statue of Apollo from Salamis has been castrated and then struck, hard, in the face, shearing off the god's nose. Across his neck are scars indicating that Christians attempted to decapitate him but failed. In Palmyra Museum there stood, at least until the city's recent occupation by Islamic State, the mutilated and reconstructed figure of the once-great figure of Athena that had dominated a temple there. A huge dent in her once-handsome face was all that remained when her nose was smashed off. A recent book on the Christian destruction of statues focussing just on Egypt and the Near East runs to almost three hundred pages, dense with pictures of mutilation.³

1. Pollini (2007), 212ff.
2. Trombley (2008), 152; Kaltsas (2002), [fig.] 510.
3. It is Troels Myrup Kristensen's brilliant Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (2013).

• John Pollini, "Christian Destruction and Mutilation of the Parthenon," Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 122 (2007) 207–228
• Frank R. Trombley, "The Destruction of Pagan Statuary and Christianization (Fourth–Sixth Century CE)," in The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power, edd. Y.Z. Eliav et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 143–164
• Nikolaos Kaltsas, Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, tr. D. Hardy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002)

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

sic rerum summa novatur
semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt:
augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.

In modern Rome, in the spring, if you want to buy an artichoke, a carciofo (also good Italian for 'blockhead'), you carry off from your chosen market stall a delectable little jewel, neatly trimmed and edible in all its parts:¹ the outer leaves have been removed, the base trimmed, and the choke, anyway very small in a young carciofo, has also been removed. Steam, dress, eat. In Britain, however, the patient feeder removes a couple of leaves from the cooked artichoke (a large, mature specimen, inevitably), dips them in vinaigrette and sucks off a tiny quantity of succulent flesh from the base of the leaves. As you proceed towards the centre, the quantity does increase, noticeably. But then progress comes to a complete halt, as you have to detach every trace of the inedible choke (ital., 'barba', beard). Now at last you have reached the delectable 'heart'. A quarter of a century ago, I thought that this long, slow struggle was not bad as a metaphor for our struggle to reach the heart of a difficult passage in the Aeneid. It still seems not bad at all.

¹ What happens in the supermarket I simply do not know.

He rails against the present, while he has nothing but praise
For the fortunes of his father — yes, those were the good old days!

et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis.

And when he compares times present with times
past, he often praises his father's good luck.

Si quid mali, in Pyrrham
If there's anything bad, on Pyrrha's head

Εἴ τι κακόν, εἰς Πύρραν, If there's anything wrong, on Pyrrha's head — we must understand 'be it' or 'let it fall,' or something of the kind. In this way, if they feared some impending evil, they sought to avoid it by turning it aside, and prayed that it might fall on their enemy's head. Hence too that form of words well known in both Greek and Latin authors, 'May this befall our enemies.' Ovid:¹ 'Would that such parties might befall our foes.' Again, in book three of the Art of Love: 'May cause of such foul shame befall my foes'; in book three of the Fasti: 'Would that that colour might befall my foes'; in book two of the Elegies: 'Sleep in an empty bed befall my foes! And let my foes live such a Spartan life!' and again in book three: 'Such cause for shame befall my enemies!' Virgil² too in book three of the Georgics: 'May the gods send good men a better fate, And send that error on our enemies!' and in the eighth Aeneid, speaking of Mezentius: 'May the gods keep this in store for him and for his race.' Propertius:³ 'May a cold-blooded wench await my foes!' And Horace⁴ in the Odes: 'Let enemies' wives and children feel / The gathering south-wind's angry roar.' And Terence⁵ in the Heautontimorumenos, that is, the old self-tormentor 'Oh dear! I do beseech you, let that be for your enemies,' and again in the Eunuchus: 'Would that all those who wish me ill were in the same plight.'

The traditional origin of the proverb is as follows. In old days the people of Pyrrha were intensely unpopular with all their neighbours, with the result that if they ever saw trouble threatening, they sought to avoid it by praying that it might fall on the Pyrrhaeans instead, saying 'On Pyrrha's head be it!'

[Notes]

In 1508 this stood after what is now III ii 7; it was moved here in 1515. The basis is a translation of Zenobius 4.2.

1 Ovid] Heroides 15.217, already used in II iii 11 and added in 1515 to III ii 78; Ars amatoria 3.247; Fasti 3.494; Amores 2.10.16-17 in reverse order; 3.11.16. The first of these is of 1508, the other four of 1533.

2 Virgil] Georgics 3.513; Aeneid 8.484, both of 1533

3 Propertius] 3.8.20, added in 1533

4 Horace] Odes 3.27.21-2 (trans Conington); this is of 1508, and had already appeared in II iii 11.

5 Terence] Heautontimorumenos 1015, added in 1517/8 with the title of the play given in Latin. In 1533 Erasmus inserted the usual form of it, and appended Eunuchus 655.

Εἴ τι κακόν, εἰς Πύρραν, id est Si quid mali, in Pyrrham, subaudiendum 'recidat' aut 'abeat' aut eiusmodi quidpiam. Ad hunc modum malum, si quod timeretur, deprecabantur abominantes et in hostium caput imprecantes. Vnde et illa figura Graecis pariter ac Latinis scriptoribus familiaris: Hostibus nostris hoc eueniat. Ouidius:

Hostibus eueniant conuiuia talia nostris.

Idem in tertio De arte amandi:

Hostibus eueniat tam foedi causa pudoris.

Idem libro tertio Fastorum:

Eueniat nostris hostibus ille color.

Idem libro secundo Elegiarum:

Hostibus eueniat vacuo dormire cubili.
    Hostibus eueniat vita seuera meis.

Idem libro tertio Elegiarum:

Eueniat nostris hostibus ille pudor.

Rursum Vergilius libro iii. Georg.:

Dii meliora piis erroremque hostibus illum.

Idem in viii. Aeneidos de Mezentio: Dii capiti illius generique reseruent.

Propertius:

Hostibus eueniat lenta puella meis.

Et Horatius in Odis:

Hostium vxores puerique caecos
Sentiant motus orientis austri.

Et Terentius in Heauton timorumeno, in Sene seipsum excruciante: Au, obsecro te, isthuc inimicis siet. Idem in Eunucho: Vtinam sic sint qui mihi male volunt.

Originem prouerbii tradunt huiusmodi: Quondam Pyrrhaeos, quotquot erant finitimi, graui odio persequebantur; vnde si quod malum aliquando videretur impendere, id abominantes precabantur, vt in Pyrrhaeos auerteretur, dicentes εἰς τὴν Πυρραίων, id est in Pyrrhaeorum regionem.

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

Quand je pense à tous les livres qu'il me reste à lire, j'ai la certitude d'être encore heureux.

With the funeral dirge is mingled the wail that children raise when they first see the borders of light; and no night ever followed day, or dawn followed night, that has not heard mingled with their sickly wailings the lamentations that attend upon death and the black funeral.

                             miscetur funere vagor
quem pueri tollunt visentes luminis oras;
nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.

What we call wisdom is the moroseness of our humours and our distaste for things as they are now. But in truth we do not so much give up our vices as change them — for the worse, if you ask me. Apart from silly tottering pride, boring babble, prickly unsociable humours, superstition and a ridiculous concern for wealth when we have lost the use of it, I find that there are more envy and unfairness and malice; age sets more wrinkles on our minds than on our faces. You can find no souls — or very few — which as they grow old do not stink of rankness and of rot.

Nous appellons sagesse, la difficulté de nos humeurs, le desgoust des choses presentes: mais à la verité, nous ne quittons pas tant les vices, comme nous les changeons: et, à mon opinion, en pis. Outre une sotte et caduque fierté, un babil ennuyeux, ces humeurs espineuses et inassociables, et la superstition, et un soin ridicule des richesses, lors que l'usage en est perdu, j'y trouve plus d'envie, d'injustice et de malignité. Elle nous attache plus de rides en l'esprit qu'au visage: et ne se void point d'ames, ou fort rares, qui en vieillissant ne sentent l'aigre et le moisi.

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

Well, it is certainly the law that when drops of gore flow to the ground, they demand other blood; for slaughter cries out for a Fury who comes from those who perished before to bring further ruin upon ruin.

ἀλλὰ νόμος μὴν φονίας σταγόνας
χυμένας εἰς πέδον ἄλλο προσαιτεῖν
αἷμα· βοᾷ γὰρ λοιγὸς Ἐρινὺν
παρὰ τῶν πρότερον φθιμένων ἄτην
ἑτέραν ἐπάγουσαν ἐπ᾿ ἄτῃ.

400 ἀλλὰ νόμος Turnebus, μὴν West: ἀλλ᾿ ἄνομος μὲν M
402 λοιγὸς Ἐρινὺν Schütz: λοιγὸν ἐρινὺς M
403 πρότερον Portus: προτέρων M

They were different, fearfully different, these Greeks, whose voices we could still hear and (at a pinch) understand. What had we in the vast, sprawling suburbs of Sydney with the gardens and the poinsettias and jacarandas, that would deserve their envy rather than their contempt?

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

Writing. The most difficult part is to take hold of the pen, dip it in the ink, and hold it firm over the paper.

Ecrire. Le plus difficile, c'est de prendre la plume, de la tremper dans l'encre et de la tenir ferme au-dessus du papier.

                              ELECTRA
And is this a righteous thing for me to ask of the gods?
                              CHORUS
How could it not be—to return your enemy evil for evil?

                              ΗΛΕΚΤΡΑ
καὶ ταῦτά μοὔστιν εὐσεβῆ θεῶν πάρα;
                              ΧΟΡΟΣ
πῶς δ᾿ οὔ, τὸν ἐχθρόν γ᾿ ἀνταμείβεσθαι κακοῖς;

Labels: typographical and other errors

[A.P.] Treweek recalled that 'his scholarly achievements were very strong, but of narrow interest. He found faults in Greek texts where there were none. He couldn't read a page without finding mistakes — so much so that at times he was referred to as a textual pervert.'<sup>140

140</sup> Sunday Express, 26 April 1970.

To become familiar with Byzantine popular thought it is essential to remember that the East Roman Christian knew and believed his New Testament; he read it or heard it read in church; it became a part of his life. Thus for the modern student the most useful introduction to Byzantine thought is perhaps to re-read the New Testament.

God does not believe in our God.

Dieu ne croit pas à notre Dieu.

The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness, and restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night. They relate, in solemn and pathetic strains, that the temples were converted into sepulchres, and that the holy places, which had been adorned by the statues of the gods, were basely polluted by the relics of Christian martyrs. "The monks" (a race of filthy animals, to whom Eunapius is tempted to refuse the name of men) "are the authors of the new worship, which, in the place of those deities who are conceived by the understanding, has substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves. The heads, salted and pickled, of those infamous malefactors, who for the multude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignominious death; their bodies, still marked by the impression of the lash, and the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of the magistrate; such" (continues Eunapius) "are the gods which the earth produces in our days; such are the martyrs, the supreme arbitrators of our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs are now consecrated as the objects of the veneration of the people."

Next, into the sacred places they imported monks, as they called them, who were men in appearance but led the lives of swine, and openly did and allowed countless unspeakable crimes. But this they accounted piety, to show contempt for things divine. For in those days every man who wore a black robe and consented to behave in unseemly fashion in public, possessed the power of a tyrant, to such a pitch of virtue had the human race advanced! All this however I have described in my Universal History. They settled these monks at Canobus also, and thus they fettered the human race to the worship of slaves, and those not even honest slaves, instead of the true gods. For they collected the bones and skulls of criminals who had been put to death for numerous crimes, men whom the law courts of the city had condemned to punishment, made them out to be gods, haunted their sepulchres, and thought that they became better by defiling themselves at their graves. "Martyrs" the dead men were called, and "ministers" of a sort, and "ambassadors" from the gods to carry men's prayers,—these slaves in vilest servitude, who had been consumed by stripes and carried on their phantom forms the scars of their villainy. However these are the gods that earth produces!

Accordingly, the most important point to stress is that we should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go. And yet there is nothing that brings greater trouble on us than the fact that we conform to rumour, thinking that what has won widespread approval is best, and that, as we have so many to follow as good, we live by the principle, not of reason, but of imitation. What follows from this is that men are piled high, one on top of another, as they rush to their ruin.

Just as it happens that in a great crowd of humanity that is crushed together, when the people jostle against each other, no one falls without dragging someone else down with him, and the ones in front bring destruction on the ones behind, so you may see the same thing happening throughout all of life. No one who goes astray affects himself alone, but rather will be the cause and instigator of someone else going astray; it is harmful to attach oneself to the people in front, and, so long as each one of us prefers to trust someone else's judgement rather than relying on his own, we never exercise judgement in our lives but constantly resort to trust, and a mistake that has been passed down from one hand to another takes us over and spins our ruin. It is the example of others that destroys us: we will regain our health, if only we distance ourselves from the crowd.

nihil ergo magis praestandum est, quam ne pecorum ritu sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non quo eundum est, sed quo itur. atqui nulla res nos maioribus malis implicat, quam quod ad rumorem componimur, optima rati ea, quae magno adsensu recepta sunt, quodque exempla nobis multa sunt, nec ad rationem sed ad similitudinem vivimus. inde ista tanta coacervatio aliorum super alios ruentium.

quod in strage hominum magna evenit, cum ipse se populus premit — nemo ita cadit, ut non et alium in se adtrahat, primique exitio sequentibus sunt —, hoc in omni vita accidere videas licet. nemo sibi tantummodo errat, sed alieni erroris et causa et auctor est; nocet enim applicari antecedentibus et, dum unusquisque mavult credere quam iudicare, numquam de vita iudicatur, semper creditur versatque nos et praecipitat traditus per manus error. alienis perimus exemplis; sanabimur, separemur modo a coetu.

No one will ever stop me from being moved when I look at a field, when I walk up to my knees through oats that spring up behind me. What thought is as fine as this blade of grass?

I don't give a straw for "my country" as a whole: my local country moves me to tears. The German emperor cannot take this blade of grass from me.

Jamais personne ne m'empêchera d'être ému quand je regarde un champ, quand je marche jusqu'aux genoux dans une avoine qui se redresse derrière moi. Quelle pensée est aussi fine que ce brin d'herbe?

Je me moque de la grande patrie: la petite toujours m'impressionne jusqu'aux larmes. L'empereur allemand ne m'ôterait pas ce brin d'herbe.

• This Is My Home
• Near and Dear
• Parochialism
• One World
• Local Attachment
• Patriotism
• Insularity
• Le Patriotisme de Clocher
• Home Sweet Home

'Well, now,' said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, 'that sort o' coarse touch that's so upsetting to Ann's feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't.'

[H]e told another Trinity fellow, T.C. Nicholas, that if all the text of Herodotus were to disappear he could reproduce it by heart.<sup>66

66</sup> Howarth, p184.

Whereas many benefits can accrue to people with a serious interest in education from speaking Greek, it has been jointly determined by the three of us, Aldus the Roman, John the Cretan and thirdly myself, Scipione Forteguerri, to pass a law that they should not speak to each other except in Greek. If any of us, whether deliberately or without thinking, talks in another language, forgetting this law or for some other reason, he shall be fined one small coin for each occasion on which he happens to do this. But there shall not be a penalty for solecism, unless someone does that too deliberately.

Labels: typographical and other errors

The county motto is "dolorem et dolor liberum" which is Latin for "pain and suffering are free" which was an epigram of the first century BC Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero and a favorite saying of one of the county's founders.

Labels: typographical and other errors

DEDICATION.
TO
the Red-Headed Cerberus, regardant between the Pont Royal and
the Petit-Pont; to the Frothing Vorticist; to the Harpy behind
the Little Grille; to the Bilious but Gaitered Platonic; to
the Surgical, Hairy, yet invisible Troll of the Dieppois; to
the Stout Love-Child of the Pierides who Believes Aquinas
to be a Mineral-Water; to the Bouncing Benthamite of
Bloomsbury who is Unaware of the Medieval; to That
Other, the Cramoisy One; to the Dodging Lutheran
of the Rue de Grenelle; to the Pythoness of Bays-
water; to the Commandant of Infantry who Babbled
of the Grand-Orient; to the Lady with the Hard
Grey Eyes; to the Levantine of London who Did
Not Think Poetry Would Do; to the Military
Character who Sacked the Lot; and to all pratt-
ling Gablers, sycophant Varlets, forlorn Snakes,
blockish Grutnols, fondling Fops, doddi-
pol Joltheads, slutch Calf-Lollies, cods-
head Loobies, jobernol Goosecaps,
grout-head Gnat-Snappers, noddie-
peak Simpletons, Lob-Dotterels,
and ninniehammer
Flycatchers,
THIS,
IN DERISION.

As the dedicatory language makes clear, the derogatory connotation of "blackguards both" is negated in the affirmation of an avant-garde which includes both himself and Ezra Pound. Thus the "slings and arrows" become epithets of highest praise. Lewis's elaborate, Vergilian, Henrysonian characterization of Pound on the dedication page of his study exemplifies the chaffing owed by one avant-garde "good fella" to another, an intemperance studied from Villon and Dunbar and made new in the context of Vorticist assaults on academic self-satisfaction.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Don't get drunk or trust your neighbour; there's the kernel of good sense.

νᾶφε καὶ μέμνασ᾽ ἀπιστεῖν· ἄρθρα ταῦτα τᾶν φρενῶν.

Labels: typographical and other errors

For to what shall we appeal? What can we find more certain than the senses themselves, to mark for us truth and falsehood?

quo referemus enim? quid nobis certius ipsis
sensibus esse potest, qui vera ac falsa notemus?

There was a time, not so long ago, when the stupid and uneducated aspired to be thought intelligent and cultured. The current of aspiration has changed its direction. It is not at all uncommon now to find intelligent and cultured people doing their best to feign stupidity and to conceal the fact that they have received an education. Twenty years ago it was still a compliment to say of a man that he was clever, cultivated, interested in the things of the mind. To-day 'highbrow' is a term of contemptuous abuse.

A man who is exclusively interested in the things of the mind will be quite happy (in Pascal's phrase) sitting quietly in a room. A man who has no interest in the things of the mind will be bored to death if he has to sit quietly in a room.

What is un-Greek in Christianity. The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods above them as masters and themselves below them as servants, as did the Jews. They saw, as it were, only the reflection of the most successful specimens of their own caste, that is, an ideal, not a contrast to their own nature. They felt related to them, there was a reciprocal interest, a kind of symmachia. Man thinks of himself as noble when he gives himself such gods, and puts himself into a relationship similar to that of the lesser nobility to the higher. Whereas the Italic peoples have a regular peasant religion, with continual fearfulness about evil and capricious powers and tormentors. Where the Olympian gods retreated, there Greek life too grew gloomier and more fearful.

Christianity, on the other hand, crushed and shattered man completely, and submerged him as if in deep mire. Then, all at once, into his feeling of complete confusion, it allowed the light of divine compassion to shine, so that the surprised man, stunned by mercy, let out a cry of rapture, and thought for a moment that he carried all of heaven within him. All psychological inventions of Christianity work toward this sick excess of feeling, toward the deep corruption of head and heart necessary for it. Christianity wants to destroy, shatter, stun, intoxicate: there is only one thing it does not want: moderation, and for this reason, it is in its deepest meaning barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble, un-Greek.

Das Ungriechische im Christenthum.— Die Griechen sahen über sich die homerischen Götter nicht als Herren und sich unter ihnen nicht als Knechte, wie die Juden. Sie sahen gleichsam nur das Spiegelbild der gelungensten Exemplare ihrer eigenen Kaste, also ein Ideal, keinen Gegensatz des eigenen Wesens. Man fühlt sich mit einander verwandt, es besteht ein gegenseitiges Interesse, eine Art Symmachie. Der Mensch denkt vornehm von sich, wenn er sich solche Götter giebt, und stellt sich in ein Verhältniss, wie das des niedrigeren Adels zum höheren ist; während die italischen Völker eine rechte Bauern-Religion haben, mit fortwährender Aengstlichkeit gegen böse und launische Machtinhaber und Quälgeister. Wo die olympischen Götter zurücktraten, da war auch das griechische Leben düsterer und ängstlicher.—

Das Christenthum dagegen zerdrückte und zerbrach den Menschen vollständig und versenkte ihn wie in tiefen Schlamm: in das Gefühl völliger Verworfenheit liess es dann mit Einem Male den Glanz eines göttlichen Erbarmens hineinleuchten, so dass der Ueberraschte, durch Gnade Betäubte, einen Schrei des Entzückens ausstiess und für einen Augenblick den ganzen Himmel in sich zu tragen glaubte. Auf diesen krankhaften Excess des Gefühls, auf die dazu nöthige tiefe Kopf- und Herz-Corruption wirken alle psychologischen Erfindungen des Christenthums hin: es will vernichten, zerbrechen, betäuben, berauschen, es will nur Eins nicht: das Maass, und desshalb ist es im tiefsten Verstande barbarisch, asiatisch, unvornehm, ungriechisch.

Shortly after arriving at Trinity at the start of Michaelmas Term 1930, Powell was found by Henry Jamieson, his fellow Edwardian, sitting on packing cases in his room reading a Greek text. 'Come and have some tea‚' Jamieson said. 'Thank you very much‚' Powell replied, 'but I came here to work.'<sup>1

1</sup> Sunday Times, 5 February 1956.

The thought that I am thirty breaks my heart. A whole dead life behind me. Ahead of me, an opaque stretch in which I see nothing. I feel old, and sad as an old man.

Cette idée que j'ai trente ans me navre. Toute une vie morte derrière moi. Devant, une vie opaque où je ne vois rien. Je me sens vieux, triste comme un vieux.

• Verses for a 68th Birthday Card
• Motto for a 65th Birthday Card
• Birthday Celebrations
• Ideas for Birthday Card Greetings
• Motto for a Birthday Card
• Birthday Greetings

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

L'horreur des bourgeois est bourgeoise.

For as hounds very often find by their scent the leaf-hidden resting-place of the mountain-ranging quarry, when once they have hit upon certain traces of its path, so will you be able for yourself to see one thing after another in such matters as these, and to penetrate all unseen hiding-places, and draw forth the truth from them.

namque canes ut montivagae persaepe ferai
naribus inveniunt intectas fronde quietes,        405
cum semel institerunt vestigia certa viai,
sic alid ex alio per te tute ipse videre
talibus in rebus poteris caecasque latebras
insinuare omnis et verum protrahere inde.

404 ferai Q corr.: ferare OQ: ferarum O corr.

Say that I consider the Writings of Confucius, and Ovid's Metamorphoses the only safe guides in religion. This doesn't repudiate 'The G<oodly> F<ere>'. Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on to him. As well blame me for ... for all the bunk in vers libre.

Christianity as practised resumes itself into one commandment dear to all officials, American Y.M.C.A., burocrats, etc., 'Thou shalt attend to thy neighbor's business before attending to thine own.'

In your footnote you ought to point out that I refuse to accept ANY monotheistic taboos whatsoever. That I consider the Metamorphoses a sacred book, and the Hebrew scriptures the record of a barbarian tribe, full of evil.

I remember, as sharply as Keats recalled first looking into Chapman's Homer, the moment — it must have been in 1927 — when I opened my first German book. Here was the language I had dreamt of but never knew existed: sharp, hard, strict but with words which were romance in themselves, words in which poetry and music vibrated together.

The happiest and most glorious hours of my life with books have been with German books.

Now my mind, aquiver, yearns to wander;
now my joyous feet grow strong with eagerness.

iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.

8 vigescunt codd.: virescunt Ellis

laeti OGR : uiae MS 120 s. XVI : laeto dub. Schwabe 1866 in app.

What readers has the Divine Comedy now? A few poets, a few lovers of poetry, a few strayed cross-word puzzlers, and, for the rest, a diminishing band of culture-fans and erudition-snobs. These last feel as triumphantly superior in their exclusive learning as would the social snob if, alone of all his acquaintance, he had met the Prince of Wales, or could speak of Mr. Michael Arlen by his pet name.

55 pulchra, citissima, fortia, libera, deliciosa
118 inresolubilis, invariabilis, intemerata
312 provehit, excitat, auget, identitat, efficit, unit
364 frigore, grandine, carne, libidine, morte, timore
529 lumina, tempora, frons, labra, pectora, viscera, mammae
658 dilaniabitur, excruciabitur, arripietur
772 irreparabilis, irrevocabilis, officiosus
789 pulcher, amabilis, irreparabilis, unicus, aptus
878 dat, rapit, it, fremit, opprimitur, premit, uritur, urit
1017 seditionibus, illuvionibus, igne, procellis
1018 lite, libidine, fraude, gravedine, sanguine, bellis

• Some Lines in Lucretius
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Sidonius
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton: Some Greek Examples
• Another Greek Example of Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• More Examples of Asyndeton Filling Hexameters
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Corippus
• Twelve Gods
• Seven Cities
• A Hexameter Consisting of Nouns in Asyndeton
• More Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton: Dracontius
• Zopyrus' Victims
• A Latin Hexameter Consisting of Adjectives in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: More Greek Examples
• A Sojourn in the Country
• Destruction
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: A Horatian Example

The revolutionary of that model is generally a failure who hasn't been able to succeed in anything within the ordinary framework of Society by the normal and legal means which it has established, so he tells himself that by dragging Society into the mud, he will be able to profit from the resulting mess. He is quite a pretentious being, with a very high idea of himself, who, on beginning life, expected to reach the top immediately, at one stroke, thanks to his abilities, his eloquence and various other things of that kind. He perceived presently that, as far as the top is concerned, he is no more than the tram conductor or the street-sweeper. He concludes from this that there is no justice, or, if there is, it doesn't favour him—like everything else. They're fools, but fools who haven't much more courage than the bourgeois—and, good God! that's little enough.

It's ideas that give a man courage, and your revolutionaries are as gifted with ideas as my boot. They have spite, bitterness—but that doesn't get one very far. I saw them during the war; I have talked with them and tried to find something in them; it was pathetic.

There were six of them, the best and bravest of the hero's companions. Turning back from his post in the bows, Odysseus was in time to see them lifted, struggling, into the air, to hear their screams, the desperate repetition of his own name. The survivors could only look on, helplessly, while Scylla 'at the mouth of her cave devoured them, still screaming, still stretching out their hands to me in the frightful struggle.' And Odysseus adds that it was the most dreadful and lamentable sight he ever saw in all his 'explorings of the passes of the sea.' We can believe it; Homer's brief description (the too poetical simile is a later interpolation) convinces us.

Later, the danger passed, Odysseus and his men went ashore for the night, and, on the Sicilian beach, prepared their supper—prepared it, says Homer, 'expertly.' The Twelfth Book of the Odyssey concludes with these words: 'When they had satisfied their thirst and hunger, they thought of their dear companions and wept, and in the midst of their tears sleep came gently upon them.'

A strange error, as the quotations appear to be Huxley's own translation.

The essay was published twice in Spring 1931, once in the Virginia Quarterly, and a shorter version in The Spectator.

http://www.vqronline.org/issues/7/2/spring-1931 http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/21st-march-1931/9/tragedy-and-the-whole-truth

The Spectator version is more accurate "The story in the XIIth Book of the Odyssey ends with these words..." That is, the story of Charybdis and Scylla ended with those words, not the XIIth book of the Odyssey.

The Spectator version appears to be a trimmed version of the first, no doubt prepared by Huxley himself. Perhaps Huxley's error was pointed out to him immediately after publication of the first version. Or perhaps the Spectator version is Huxley's original statement. Another vexing textual question in Homeric scholarship.

Labels: typographical and other errors

He used often to exclaim what he had heard from someone, either a Jew or a Christian, and always remembered, and he also had it announced by a herald whenever he was disciplining anyone, "What you do not wish that a man should do to you, do not do to him." And so highly did he value this sentiment that he had it written up in the Palace and in public buildings.

clamabatque saepius, quod a quibusdam sive Iudaeis sive Christianis audierat et tenebat, idque per praeconem, cum aliquem emendaret, dici iubebat, "quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris." quam sententiam usque adeo dilexit ut et in Palatio et in publicis operibus praescribi iuberet.

praescribi Hermann Peter: perscribi PΣ

Wrecche mon wy artou proud,
þat art of herth I-maked?
hydyr ne browtestou no schroud,
bot pore þou come & naked.
Wen þi soule is faren out,
þi body with erthe y-raked,
þat body þat was so ronk and loud,
Of alle men is i-hated.

Wretched man, why are you proud,
you who are made of earth?
You brought no garment here,
but came poor and naked.
When your soul has gone out,
and your body is covered over with earth,
that body that was so confident and loud-mouthed
is hated by all men.

I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with wood dust, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood—certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation—which these books arouse in a genuine collector.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, which suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or of those who in order to acquire books became criminals. These are the very areas in which any order is nothing more than a hovering above the abyss. "The only exact knowledge there is," said Anatole France, "is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books." And indeed, if there is a counterpart to the confusion of a library, it is the order of its catalogue.

Thus, the life of a collector manifests a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order.

Habent sua fata libelli. These words may have been intended as a general statement about books. So books like The Divine Comedy, Spinoza's Ethics, and The Origin of Species have their fates. A collector, however, interprets this Latin saying differently. For him, not only books but also copies of books have their fates. And in this sense, the most important fate of a copy is its encounter with him, with his own collection. I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth.

Now I am on the last half-emptied crate, and it is way past midnight. Other thoughts fill me than the ones I am talking about—not thoughts but images, memories. Memories of the cities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich, Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel, Paris; memories of Rosenthal's sumptuous rooms in Munich, of the Danzig Stockturm, where the late Hans Rhaue was domiciled, of Süssengut's musty book cellar in North Berlin; memories of the rooms where these books had been housed, of my student's den in Munich, of my room in Bern, of the solitude of lseltwald on the Lake of Brienz, and finally of my boyhood room, the former location of only four or five of the several thousand volumes that are piled up around me. O bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of leisure! No one has had less expected of him and no one has had a greater sense of well-being than the man who has been able to carry on his disreputable existence in the guise of Spitzweg's "Bookworm." For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector—and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be—ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to things. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected before you one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones; and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.

The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.

L'idéal du calme est dans un chat assis.

• Prince of the City of Books
• Pangur Ban
• A Scholar and His Cat
• Cats
• Feline Dedicatees of Scholarly Books
• More Feline Dedicatees of Books

But avoid all books of the heathen. For what hast thou to do with strange sayings or laws or lying prophecies, which also turn away from the faith them that are young? For what is wanting to thee in the word of God, that thou shouldst cast thyself upon these fables of the heathen? If thou wouldst read historical narratives, thou hast the Book of Kings; but if wise men and philosophers, thou hast the Prophets, wherein thou shalt find wisdom and understanding more than that of the wise men and philosophers; for they are the words of the one God, the only wise. And if thou wish for songs, thou hast the Psalms of David; but if (thou wouldst read of) the beginning of the world, thou hast the Genesis of the great Moses; and if laws and commandments, thou hast the glorious Law of the Lord God. All strange (writings) therefore, which are contrary (to these), wholly avoid.

Gentiles autem libros penitus ne tetigeris. Quid enim tibi est cum alienis uerbis uel legibus aut pseudoprofetis, quae facile leuioribus hominibus errorem praestant? Nam quid tibi deest in uerbo Dei, ut ad illas gentiles fabulas [as]pergas? Si uis storias † legere, discurre et habes † Regnorum; si autem sofistica et poetica, habes Profetas, in quibus totius poetiae et sofistiae maiorem † narrationem † inuenies, quoniam domini, qui solus est, sapientia et sonitus sunt. Si uero canticorum desideras, habes Psalmos; si autem initium generationis mundi, habes Genesim; aut si leges et praecepta, habes gloriosam domini legem. Ab omnibus igitur his tam alienis et diabolicis scribturis fortiter te abstine.

               EIDLLA EW [DNA?] NROBLLA ERAEW

[NIEMAND'S TRANSLATION: We are all born and we all die]

(NIMMERWAHR, 1868) Niemand's suggested emendation, as well as his translation based on it, will plainly not do; among other things, the plain uninterpretability of the text, which alone constitutes its significance, is thereby beclouded.

(SCHWARTZWEISS, 1869) Significance, indeed! "Sing if-"icance, only an easy transposition away, puts Nimmerwahr's whole flimsy matter more accurately. Mere lyrical hypothesis gets us nowhere.

(NIRGENDSWO, 1869) The text is quite clear, and if seemingly "uninterpretable" (thus Nimmerwahr!), only because it is merely so much a commonplace as to be trivial. Niemand's conjecture is, of course, quite sound.

(STILLSCHWEIGEND, 1870) Sound? Sound!!!??? A ridiculous suggestion, all the more dangerous in that it invites the ill-considered judgment to agree with the reductively positive Schwartzweiss, who is, as always, incapable of grasping critical nuance.

(LINDSAY-WOLSEY, 1902) There is something uncanny about Niemand's suggested syllable, which represents, after all, the only intelligible morpheme in the inscription; it is, in the Eastwest dialect, the word for "life." Niemand of course knew nothing of this, and his suggestion is as worthless as is the controversy it has elicited. Still, the very fact that he should have introduced it, sheds some ironic light not on the "meaning" of the text but on the meaning of the conditions generating its mode of reception.

(QUACKENBUSH, 1973) The very power of this fragment to elicit such particularly heavy and humorless debate from nineteenth-century German scholars usually known for their light-handedness and grace in controversy is in some way a function of the resonance of its assertion, particularly in view of the fact that it is now believed to be impossible to assert just what that assertion might be. I am reminded of how ...

(BERTOLDO, 1974) Quackenbush leads us—ha! ha!—into a quackmire. The text says what it says; the English translation from Niemand will do as well as any.

(PETERSCHREIER, 1988) Merely to quote this sentiment [Niemand's "We are all born and we all die." Ed.] is outrageous. We??? This means, as usual, humans, and the whole utterance manifests the worst sort of species-ism. The assertion is an affront to other species who can't be said to "know" that they will die. It is a slippery slope from boasting of the ultimate human knowledge to asserting, vilely, mankind's hegemony over "the garden of Creation."

(VRUN-LÜGNER, 1990) As we now know, Niemand went wrong in not realizing that the inscription falls into two parts that are actually in two different dialects; EIDLLA EW is in the lingua franca of the North, and NROBLLA ERAEW in the form used for inscriptions in the South. Whatever the words may mean, each "half" is a paraphrase of the other. Each says the same thing. Whether, at some level, Niemand's erroneous translation might be a tautology is not for us to consider.

Culture, as Emmanuel Berl has pointed out in one of his brilliantly entertaining pamphlets, is like the sum of special knowledge that accumulates in any large united family and is the common property of all its members. 'Do you remember Aunt Agatha's ear trumpet? And how Willie made the parrot drunk with sops in wine? And that picnic on Loch Etive, when the boat upset and Uncle Bob was nearly drowned? Do you remember?' And we all do; and we laugh delightedly; and the unfortunate stranger, who happens to have called, feels utterly out of it. Well, that (in its social aspect) is Culture. When we of the great Culture Family meet, we exchange reminiscences about Grandfather Homer, and that awful old Dr. Johnson, and Aunt Sappho, and poor Johnny Keats. 'And do you remember that absolutely priceless thing Uncle Virgil said? You know. Timeo Danaos ... Priceless; I shall never forget it.' No, we shall never forget it; and what more, we shall take good care that those horrid people who have had the impertinence to call on us, those wretched outsiders who never knew dear mellow old Uncle V., shall never forget it either. We'll keep them constantly reminded of their outsideness. So pleasurable to members of the Culture Family is this rehearsal of tribal gossip, such a glow of satisfied superiority does it give them, that the Times finds it profitable to employ some one to do nothing else but talk to us every morning about our dear old Culture-Aunties and Uncles and their delightful friends.

18. Bonaventura, On Removing the Word Not from the Ten Commandments, and adding it to the Apostles' Creed.

21. The Judges' Handbook, containing the many confessions of poisoners given to Justice Manwood, and used by him afterwards in wiping his buttocks, and in examining his evacuations; now recovered from his servants, and gathered together for his own use, by John Hele.

23. Cardano, On the nothingness of a fart.

18. Bonaventura de particula Non a decalogo adimenda, et Symbolo Apostolorum adiicienda.

21. Manuale justiciariorum, continens plurimas confessiones veneficarum Manwoodo judici exhibitas, et ab illo abstergendis postea natibus, et evacuationibus adhibitas; nunc a servulis suis redemptae, et in usum suum collectae sunt a Io. Helo.

23. Cardanus de nullibietate crepitus.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

So far as I know, the first reference to that besetting vice of the literate, reading in bed, occurs in an unpublished letter from the latter part of the [12th] century.<sup>21

21</sup> Manuel Karantenos, letter to Constantine Kaloethes, Head of Patriarchal School and later Metropolitan of Madytus, in Vienna MS. phil. gr. 321, fol. 224.

... born for his belly and his pleasures ...

... natus abdomini et voluptatibus ...

... man obeying his belly rather than God ...

... homo ventri magis obediens quam deo ...

For that whirlpool, that wastrel born for his belly and not for virtue or renown ...

nam ille gurges atque helluo, natus abdomini suo, non laudi et gloriae ...

ex homine hunc natum dicas

ex homine codd.: abdomini Bentley

The beginning and root of every good thing is the pleasure of the belly; both wise things and refined things have reference to this.

ἀρχὴ καὶ ῥίζα παντὸς ἀγαθοῦ ἡ τῆς γαστρὸς ἡδονή· καὶ τὰ σοφὰ καὶ τὰ περιττὰ ἐπὶ ταύτην ἔχει τὴν ἀναφοράν.

We are not called to save the nation or get crowned by it for wisdom; what is called for, my dear Timocrates, is to eat and drink wine, gratifying the belly without harming it.

οὐδὲν δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν οἶνον, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως.

The prying republic of which a great school consists, soon found me out: there was no shifting the blame any longer upon other people's shoulders,—no good-natured maid to take upon herself the enormities of which I stood accused in the article of bread and butter, besides the crying sin of stolen ends of puddings, and cold pies strangely missing. The truth was but too manifest in my looks,—in the evident signs of inanition which I exhibited after the fullest meals, in spite of the double allowance which my master was privately instructed by my kind parents to give me. The sense of the ridiculous, which is but too much alive in grown persons, is tenfold more active and alert in boys. Once detected, I was the constant butt of their arrows,—the mark against which every puny leveller directed his little shaft of scorn. The very Graduses and Thesauruses were raked for phrases to pelt me with by the tiny pedants. Ventri natus,—Ventri deditus,—Vesana gula,—Escarum gurges,—Dapibus indulgens,—Non dans froena gulae,—Sectans lautae fercula mensae, resounded wheresoever I past. I lead a weary life, suffering the penalties of guilt for that which was no crime, but only following the blameless dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams.

[W]e classical scholars are notoriously slow-witted.

Do not, therefore, wholly follow the rules of Latin style, that is, the Quadriga of Messius,⁴¹ when you are convinced of the authority of ancient codices; for upon occasion it is advantageous to overlook the idioms of human speech and to observe instead the criterion of divine communication.

⁴¹ Arusianus Messius (ca. A.D. 395). His work is so called (= "the four-horse team") because it contains examples of style taken from Terence, Vergil, Cicero, and Sallust.

Regulas igitur elocutionum Latinorum, id est quadrigam Messii, omnimodis non sequaris, ubi tamen priscorum codicum auctoritate convinceris; expedit enim interdum praetermittere humanarum formulas dictionum, et divini magis eloquii custodire mensuram.

In rem est pro utile est, Sal. Catil. (20,1) in rem fore credens, Ter. And. (III 3,14) si in rem est.

"Soon," he said, "we shall have no need of soldiers." What else is this than saying: "Soon there will not be a Roman soldier? Everywhere the commonwealth will reign and will rule all in safety. The entire world will forge no arms and will furnish no rations, the ox will be kept for the plough and the horse be bred for peace, there will be no wars and no captivity, in all places peace will reign, in all places the laws of Rome, and in all places our judges."

"brevi," inquit, "milites necessarios non habebimus." quid est aliud dicere: Romanus iam miles erit nullus? ubique regnabit, omnia possidebit secura res publica. orbis terrarum non arma fabricabitur, non annonam praebebit, boves habebuntur aratro, equus nascetur ad pacem, nulla erunt bella, nulla captivitas, ubique pax, ubique Romanae leges, ubique iudices nostri.

possidebit Salmasius: possidebimus PΣ
boves habebuntur aratro Salmasius: vobis habebuntur atra P, vobis Σ

When he had waged innumerable wars and had obtained peace he stated that in a short time soldiers woud not be necessary.

hic cum bella innumera gessisset, pace parata dixit brevi milites necessarios non futuros.

For this reason, when all those regions had been recovered and pacified, it is reported that he stated that in a short time soldiers would be unnecessary.

qua causa receptis omnibus pacatisque dixisse proditur brevi milites frustra fore.

Jesus Christ, blessed son of holy Mary, guide and companion of life, excellent judge, avenger of Uriah, come to the assistance of poor scholars, you who have pity on the poor, who suffer the strong to fall ill and who heal the sick. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, penetrating into our inmost thoughts, govern us. Son of Mary, light of the sea, O Christ, with supernal power, take away from us the persecutions of the world, visit the humble lodgings of harried students, the firstborn of Egypt, thou who dost shine in the glory of the clergy. The poor scholar is overcome by study, not deprived of virtue; moreover, the rich man, who does not study and who lives in his high houses, gives poor scholars the heehaws and even blows. I eat sparingly in my little room, not high up in a castle; I have no silver money, nor do the Fates give me estates. Beets, beans, and peas are here looked upon as fine dishes, and we joke about meat which is not on our menu for a very good reason. The size of the bottle of wine on the table depends on the burse which is never large, and which is the weekly statement of expenditure made on oath. Intellectual virtue becomes potent only when it is followed by active or customary virtue which deserves reward because it leads to good works. This scholastic life is the highest form of life; it gives boys such a cleansing of mind and of body that these erstwhile dummies can explain the causes of eclipses of sun and moon, what keeps the sea within bounds, by what force the earth is rent asunder in earthquakes, whence come hail, snow, rain, and lightning, and what makes the days long in summer and short in winter.

For all things arrive at one single horrible Charybdis,
great excellences and wealth alike.

πάντα γὰρ μίαν ἱκνεῖται δασπλῆτα Χάρυβδιν,
αἱ μεγάλαι τ᾿ ἀρεταὶ καὶ ὁ πλοῦτος.

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Surprisingly the Latin occupation of Constantinople and the Aegean did not contribute significantly to the knowledge of the classics in the west. There were signs of an interest in Greek manuscripts on the part of a few exceptional scholars like William, a monk of St Denys who brought codices from Constantinople in 1167, but teachers and manuscripts in Greek were in short supply in the west in the twelfth century. Those involved in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 were not classical scholars; their concern was for precious metals and reliquaries and clearly libraries were not spared in their search for loot. Byzantine scholars of the late twelfth century like Eustathios of Thessalonika, Michael Choniates and John Tzetzes, a schoolmaster from Constantinople, had all read texts which disappeared forever in 1204, like works by Callimachus and Hipponax. Manuscript hunters from Italy did not tour the Aegean until the fifteenth century, but a modest start was made from a quite unexpected quarter, namely the diocese of Lincoln in England. When he became bishop in 1235 Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253) was just getting into his stride as a Greek scholar. Both the chronicler Matthew Paris and the friar Roger Bacon described how the bishop gathered scholars and texts around him to assist in his translations of Greek theological works and, later, Aristotle's Nichomachaean Ethics. John of Basingstoke (d. 1252), who had visited Athens in the early thirteenth century, was made archdeacon of Leicester within months of his election. It may well have been he who stimulated the sending to foreign parts for scholars. Bacon stated that there were many Greeks in England and France at this time but only a very few who taught Greek correctly. Two of these 'veri Graeci' were in the Grosseteste circle — Robert Graecus and a magister Nicholas Graecus who seems to have been a clerk connected with the Abbey of St Albans which presented him to the church of Datchet (Bucks.) in 1239 and who in 1246 became a canon in Lincoln. Apart from the translation work, the 'Parcioarium', a Graeco-Latin lexicon, which made much use of the Suda in the bishop's translation, might also be attributed to this circle. It survives today in the College of Arms and was described by the late M.R. James as a monument to the study of Greek in thirteenth century England. Grosseteste did something to remedy the lack of teachers and books and his coincidence in time with the Latin occupation of the Aegean should not be dismissed lightly. He certainly inspired Roger Bacon (c. 1214-92), who regarded him as a pioneer in Greek studies, to produce a Greek grammar in the 1270s and to emphasise the importance of the Greek Fathers to theological studies, but both men were ahead of their times.

This interest [in Greek history] did not extend to the preservation of ancient statuary about which attitudes were ambivalent. The magnificent group of gilded bronze horses were brought back to grace the facade of the basilica of San Marco but the bronze statues of pagan deities were melted down for small change. As Professor Setton has emphasized, the first aesthetic eulogy of a classical site from a western pen was written by Pedro IV of Aragon in 1388 when he described the Acropolis as 'the most precious jewel there is in the world' (la plus richa joya qui al mont sia). The king had never seen the Acropolis but was clearly moved by the accounts of those of his subjects like John Boyl who had.