Laudator Temporis Acti

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 17.19.5-6 (tr. John C. Rolfe):

Moreover, that same Epictetus, as we also heard from Favorinus, used to say that there were two faults which were by far the worst and most disgusting of all, lack of endurance and lack of self-restraint, when we cannot put up with or bear the wrongs which we ought to endure, or cannot restrain ourselves from actions or pleasures from which we ought to refrain. Therefore, said he, if anyone would take these two words to heart and use them for his own guidance and regulation, he will be almost without sin and will lead a very peaceful life. These two words, he said, are ἀνέχου (bear) and ἀπέχου (forbear).

Praeterea idem ille Epictetus, quod ex eodem Favorino audivimus, solitus dicere est duo esse vitia multo omnium gravissima ac taeterrima, intolerantiam et incontinentiam, cum aut iniurias quae sunt ferendae non toleramus neque ferimus, aut a quibus rebus voluptatibusque nos tenere debemus, non tenemus. Itaque, inquit, si quis haec duo verba cordi habeat eaque sibi imperando atque observando curet, is erit pleraque inpeccabilis vitamque vivet tranquillissimam. Verba haec duo dicebat: ἀνέχου et ἀπέχου.

Wendy W. Roworth, "Salvator Rosa's Self-Portraits: Some Problems of Identity and Meaning," The Seventeenth Century 4.2 (Fall, 1989) 117-148 (at 117, with notes on 144).

Filippo Baldinucci, one of Rosa's biographers, noted the artist's 'filosofico umore' and that the artist was called 'famous painter of moral subjects' by his Florentine friend Jacopo Salviati.³ Salviati had been inspired by Rosa's allegorical painting on the theme Moral Philosophy, (Fig. 1) in which a scowling, elderly philosopher shows a seated female personification of Moral Philosophy the mirror of self-knowledge. This woman, who resembles in dress and pose Durer's Melencolia I, points to a skull inscribed with the words 'Sustine et Abstine' (Bear and Forbear), a phrase taken from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose works were much admired by Rosa.<sup>4

3</sup> F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professmi del disegno da Cimabue in qua (Florence, 1773; Florence 1847), V, 78.

⁴ Salerno, L'opera completa, p.92, no. 97; R.W. Wallace, 'The Genius of Salvator Rosa', Art Bulletin, 47 (1965), 478; Roworth, 'Pictor Succensor', pp.247ff.

Unfortunately, Roworth's Fig. 1 is a horrible reproduction, at least in my copy of the article. Here is a slightly better reproduction, in which I can see the skull, but not the inscription:


Rosa's painting is in Bolzano, at the Palazzo Enzenberg.

The motto also appears (in Latin) above the head of Bernard in Filippino Lippi's Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard:


Here is a detailed view of the relevant part of Lippi's painting: