Laudator Temporis Acti

Diodorus of Sinope, fragment 2 Kassel and Austin, lines 35-40 (Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. V, pp. 28-29; tr. S. Douglas Olson):

When someone burps in their direction
after he eats radishes or rotten sheatfish,
they insist he's had violets and roses for lunch.
And if the host is lying on a couch with one of them
and lets a fart, the other guy leans over to sniff it and begs to be told:
"Where do you get that incense from?"

                                    οἷς ἐπειδὰν προσερύγῃ
ῥαφανῖδας καὶ σαπρὸν σίλουρον καταφαγών,
ἴα καὶ ῥόδα φασὶν αὐτὸν ἠριστηκέναι.
ἐπὰν δ' ἀποπάρδῃ μετά τινος κατακείμενος
τούτων, προσάγων τὴν ῥῖνα δεῖθ' αὑτῷ φράσαι·
"πόθεν τὸ θυμίαμα τοῦτο λαμβάνεις;"

The same, tr. Charles Burton Gulick:

When a patron, after eating radishes or a stale sheat-fish, belches in their faces, the flatterers say that he must have lunched on violets and roses. And when the patron breaks wind as he lies next to one of these fellows, the latter applies his nose and begs him to tell him, "Where do you buy that incense?"

Cf. the euphemistic translation of C.D. Yonge:

So that if any one should eat a radish,
Or stinking shad, they'd take their oaths at once
That he had eaten lilies, roses, violets;
And that if any odious smell should rise,
They'd ask where you did get such lovely scents.

Labels: noctes scatologicae