Laudator Temporis Acti

The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Edited by Lester J. Cappon (1959; rpt. Chapel Hill:The University of North Carolina Press, 1987), p. 29 (letter of Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 6. 1785):

Whilst I am writing the papers of this day are handed me. From the publick Advertiser I extract the following. "Yesterday morning a messenger was sent from Mr. Pitt to Mr. Adams the American plenipotentiary with notice to suspend for the present their intended interview" (absolutely false). From the same paper:

"An Ambassador from America! Good heavens what a sound! The Gazette surely never announced any thing so extraordinary before, nor once on a day so little expected. This will be such a phœnomenon in the Corps Diplomatique that tis hard to say which can excite indignation most, the insolence of those who appoint the Character, or the meanness of those who receive it. Such a thing could never have happened in any former Administration, not even that of Lord North. It was reserved like some other Humiliating circumstances to take place

Sub Jove, sed Jove nondum
Barbato—————" ²⁹

29. "Under Jove, but Jove not yet barbaric."

The editor in his footnote mistranslated the Latin tag from Juvenal 6.15-16. For "barbaric" read "bearded," i.e. when Jupiter was still young (thus, in the earliest time).

Related post: Barbarians and Beards.

Labels: typographical and other errors