Laudator Temporis Acti

Lucian, The Downward Journey 5 (tr. A.M. Harmon, with his note):

HERMES. Clotho, do you want us to get the unmourned aboard next?

CLOTHO. You mean the old people? Yes, for why should I bother now to investigate what happened before the flood?¹ All of you who are over sixty go in now. What's this? They don't heed me, for their ears are stopped with years. You will probably have to pick them up and carry them in, too.

HERMES. Here you are again, three hundred and ninety-eight, all tender and ripe and harvested in season.

CHARON. Good Lord, yes! They're all raisins now!

¹ Literally, "before Euclid," the Athenian archon of 403 B.C., the year in which the democracy was restored and the misdeeds of the oligarchy obliterated by a general amnesty.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. βούλει, ὦ Κλωθοῖ, τοὺς ἀκλαύστους ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐμβιβασώμεθα;

ΚΛΩΘΩ. τοὺς γέροντας λέγεις; οὕτω ποίει. τί γάρ με δεῖ πράγματα ἔχειν τὰ πρὸ Εὐκλείδου νῦν ἐξετάζουσαν; οἱ ὑπὲρ ἑξήκοντα ὑμεῖς πάριτε ἤδη. τί τοῦτο; οὐκ ἐπακούουσί μου βεβυσμένοι τὰ ὦτα ὑπὸ τῶν ἐτῶν. δεήσει τάχα καὶ τούτους ἀράμενον παραγαγεῖν.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. ἰδοὺ πάλιν οὗτοι δυεῖν δέοντες τετρακόσιοι, τακεροὶ πάντες καὶ πέπειροι καὶ καθ ̓ ὥραν τετρυγημένοι.

ΧΑΡΩΝ. νὴ Δί', ἐπεὶ ἀσταφίδες γε πάντες ἤδη εἰσί.

398 — literally 400 less 2.

Quoted by Erasmus, Adages II viii 67 (Viri senis astaphis calvaria, Ἀνδρὸς γέροντος ἀσταφὶς τὸ κρανίον). See also Suda A 4223 (vol. I, p. 389 Adler).