Laudator Temporis Acti

I recognized your letter, just as men recognize the children of their friends by the parents' likeness appearing in them.

ἐπέγνων σου τὴν ἐπιστολήν, ὥσπερ οἳ τοὺς τῶν φίλων παῖδας ἐκ τῆς ἐπιφαινομένης αὐτοῖς ὁμοιότητος πρὸς τοὺς τεκόντας ἐπιγινώσκουσι.

• Children Who Resemble Their Fathers
• Like Father, Like Son
• Consequences of Keeping or Breaking an Oath
• Family Resemblance
• The Likeness of Children to Parents

My wanderer’s staff’s fresh-hewn again
And the day is breaking
And my way I’m taking
Over the hills, through wood and glen:
And as birds that sing
As they flutter in the trees,
As they fly and take their ease,
Or as grapes in morning sun
Feel their golden joy begun,
So too my dear old sinful Adam, given
New strength from heaven,
Feels the autumn or the spring
Like an unlost ardour burning,
Eden’s first delight returning.

Well, old Adam, tell your moral teacher
That you’re really not so bad a creature,
For you still give thanks and praise
And sing with loving heart and true,
As if creation were for ever new,
To the good Maker who preserves your days.
May He grant it so
That the whole of life may be
(Though sweating slightly as I go)
A morning walk like this for me!

Am frischgeschnittnen Wanderstab,
Wenn ich in der Frühe
So durch die Wälder ziehe,
Hügel auf und ab:
Dann, wie′s Vögelein im Laube
Singet und sich rührt,
Oder wie die goldne Traube
Wonnegeister spürt
In der ersten Morgensonne:
So fühlt auch mein alter, lieber
Adam Herbst- und Frühlingsfieber,
Gottbeherzte,
Nie verscherzte
Erstlings-Paradieseswonne.

Also bist du nicht so schlimm, o alter
Adam, wie die strengen Lehrer sagen:
Liebst und lobst du immer doch,
Singst und preisest immer noch,
Wie an ewig neuen Schöpfungstagen,
Deinen lieben Schöpfer und Erhalter!
Möcht′ es dieser geben
Und mein ganzes Leben
Wär′ im leichten Wanderschweiße
Eine solche Morgenreise!

When, leaning on my freshly cut walking staff
In the morning
I pass through the forests like this,
Uphill and down:
Then, just as the songbird in the leaves
Sings and stirs,
Or as the golden grapes
Feel spirits of bliss
In the first morning sun:
Thus does my dear old Adam³⁹
Feel autumn and spring fever,
The divinely inspirited,
Never-trifled-away
Pristine bliss of Paradise.

And so you are not as evil, O old
Adam, as the severe theologians say;
Just as on eternally new days of Creation,
You still love and praise,
You still sing and glorify
Your dear Creator and Sustainer.
If He grants it,
My whole life
Would be such a morning journey
In the light perspiration of travel!

39 That is, man’s primal nature, unrectified by religion.

Some of the pagans who opposed the new religion were well intentioned. They were not devils incarnate. And they insisted that the Greco-Roman world was sustained by certain long-standing traditions. In contrast with these traditions, Christianity appeared to them to be simple anarchism, the cult of a naïve group of mystics who expected the world to come to an end at any moment, and who therefore cared nothing about the duties and responsibilities involved in administering a civilized community—public health, and education, and taxation, and commerce, and national defense, and day-to-day social progress. They pointed to the fact that Rome, as it came closer and closer to accepting Christianity, had been growing weaker and weaker under the attacks of the barbarians: some of them said that Christianity meant the abandonment of the will to live.

In any case I think that we two shall not part company
until we taste one another's fists...

πάντως οὐκέτι νῶι διακρινέεσθαι ὀίω
πρὶν χειρῶν γεύσασθαι...

Dionysius was a Greek God
The first Olympics were in Greece. Makes sense to me.
But of course if you always feel aggrieved and it makes you feel better think what you like.

Dionysius, the god of wine and chaos, as Eucharist.

De (heidense) Goden hebben zich verzameld op de Olympus voor een feestmaal. Apollo is herkenbaar door de stralenkrans van de zon, Bacchus (Dionysius) door de druiven, Neptunus (Poseidon) door zijn drietand, Diana (Artemis) door het maantje, Venus (Aphrodite) door Cupido.

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Goya warned us that "the dream of reason produces monsters"; and the dream of enlightened reason, more specifically, produces the most emetic aberrations. France was a chosen nation, perhaps the most blessed by artistic genius; but it rejected the gift it had received, to end up being what it is today (as we will soon be too), a multicultural dunghill, a vomitorium where nihilism and ugliness, frivolity and vileness, inanity and sordidness sing a proud epithalamium. Even their most agonizingly lucid minds — I am thinking, for example, of Houellebecq — can do nothing but kick rabidly among the detritus, because — as the poet said — clarity always comes from the sky. And, where heaven has been denied, one can only light up with the flames of hell. The secular grandeur of French culture first entered a phase of pompous and decadent tumescence, then filled with worms and putrefaction, and finally poured fetidly over the world, like a bursting sack of pus.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris could be presented before the court of History (pardon the capital letter) as the closing ceremony of "Western civilization" (which was never a true civilization, but a parasitism of apostates on the ruins of the extinct Christian civilization). Their pretended transgression was nothing but gaudy buffoonery ... Their proud exhibition of "queerness" was like a living painting by Bosch, swarming with monsters and chimeras that grope from the chasms of eternal damnation. A punishment that the rain anticipated, tarnishing the whole grisly coven.

Among the egregious lumps of vomit, none as striking as a burlesque representation of Leonardo's "Last Supper", a sort of catwalk of the grotesque that, in the end, blasphemed against the Eucharist, with the exaltation of a bluish and nauseating Dionysus. Why, among all religions, does this mob only feel hatred towards the Catholic religion? For the simple reason that intimately, there in the pestilent chasms where they writhe, they recognize it as true. I confess that this bleak fact has saved me on many occasions, when my faith was on the verge of being snuffed out.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Or don't you know that ... once they were immigrants without a country or parents; they have been established as a plague upon the whole world; nothing human or divine prevents them from robbing and exterminating allies and friends, people far away and nearby, the impoverished and the powerful.

an ignoras ... convenas olim sine patria, parentibus, pesti conditos orbis terrarum, quibus non humana ulla neque divina obstant quin socios amicos, procul iuxta sitos, inopes potentisque trahant excindant.

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 to 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.

After them came the swineherd,
driving three boars which were the best in all his herd.

                                         ἐπὶ δέ σφισιν ἦλθε συβώτης
τρεῖς σιάλους κατάγων, οἳ ἔσαν μετὰ πᾶσιν ἄριστοι.

E.B. Gilleland of Gunn City., Mo., sold a nice lot of hogs yesterday.

For they do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them, nor do they eat at their tables or wear their clothes, but they ruin one man first, then hunt a second, using the other as bait. For the savage practice spreads like fire, growing by the ruin and destruction of those who fall into it, consuming one after another. And the money-lender who fans and feeds this fire to the ruin of many men gains nothing, except that from time to time he can take his account-books and read how many men he has sold out, how many he has driven from their homes, and, in general, the sources from which his hoard of money, rolling in and piling up, has made such gains.

οὔτε γὰρ ἀγροὺς οὓς ἀφαιροῦνται τῶν χρεωστῶν γεωργοῦσιν, οὔτ᾽ οἰκίας αὐτῶν, ἐκβαλόντες ἐκείνους, οἰκοῦσιν, οὔτε τραπέζας παρατίθενται οὔτ᾽ ἐσθῆτας ἐκείνων· ἀλλὰ πρῶτός τις ἀπόλωλε, καὶ δεύτερος κυνηγετεῖται ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου δελεαζόμενος. νέμεται γὰρ ὡς πῦρ τὸ ἄγριον αὐξόμενον ὀλέθρῳ καὶ φθορᾷ τῶν ἐμπεσόντων, ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου καταναλίσκον ὁ δὲ τοῦτο ῥιπίζων καὶ τρέφων ἐπὶ πολλοὺς δανειστὴς οὐδὲν ἔχει πλέον ἢ διὰ χρόνου λαβὼν ἀναγνῶναι πόσους πέπρακε καὶ πόσους ἐκβέβληκε καὶ πόθεν που κυλινδόμενον καὶ σωρευόμενον διαβέβηκε τὸ ἀργύριον.

• Augustine Against Usury
• Something Knavish
• Financial Instruments
• Usury

As when a man near a great glowing fire turns to and fro a sausage, full of fat and blood, anxious to have it quickly roast; so to and fro Odysseus tossed, and pondered how to lay hands upon the shameless suitors, he being alone, and they so many.

ὡς δʼ ὅτε γαστέρʼ ἀνὴρ πολέος πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο,
ἐμπλείην κνίσης τε καὶ αἵματος, ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα
αἰόλλῃ, μάλα δʼ ὦκα λιλαίεται ὀπτηθῆναι,
ὣς ἄρʼ ὅ γʼ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα ἑλίσσετο, μερμηρίζων
ὅππως δὴ μνηστῆρσιν ἀναιδέσι χεῖρας ἐφήσει
μοῦνος ἐὼν πολέσι.

The comparison here between O.'s restless tossing and rolling on his bed and the way in which a haggis or black pudding (see on 18, 44) is turned (on a spit) when being roasted over a fire, is vivid and apt. Some literary snobs have found it uncourtly, even uncouth, and have tried to excise it or explain it away (e.g. Mme Dacier's attempt to prove that O. is compared to the man who is roasting, not to the pudding: see further in Pierron). Those who find a touch of burlesque in it are also, I think, wrong: H., as Bothe emphasizes, is aiming above all, at ἐνάργεια, vividness, here: he is not bound by the Augustan canons of taste nor daunted by the principle expressed (as many think) in Horace's warning (Ars Poetica 128): Difficile est propria communia dicere. On the other hand he is not bound necessarily to call a spade a spade either: cp. on 17, 300.

You don't know how much power a leather pouch has,
and a day's ration of lupin seeds, and to care for nothing.

οὐκ οἶσθα, πήρα δύναμιν ἡλίκην ἔχει
θέρμων τε χοῖνιξ καὶ τὸ μηδενὸς μέλειν.

I therefore pardon the modern poet if he follows ancient things, if he employs ancient language and style and manner, if he also uses ancient fables, etc., if he seems to be following ancient opinions, if he prefers ancient customs, usages, and events, if he impresses upon his poetry the character of another age, if he seeks in short either to be in spirit and temperament ancient, or to seem such. I pardon the modern poet and modern poetry when they do not seem to be, are not contemporary with this century, since to be contemporary with this century is or essentially entails not being a poet, and not being poetry.

Perdóno dunque se il poeta moderno segue le cose antiche, se adopra il linguaggio e lo stile e la maniera antica, se usa eziandio le antiche favole ec., se mostra di accostarsi alle antiche opinioni, se preferisce gli antichi costumi, usi, avvenimenti, se imprime alla sua poesia un carattere d’altro secolo, se cerca in somma o di essere, quanto allo spirito e all’indole, o di parere antico. Perdóno se il poeta, se la poesia moderna non si mostrano, non sono contemporanei a questo secolo, poiché esser contemporaneo a questo secolo, è, o inchiude essenzialmente, non esser poeta, non esser poesia.

The plebs, whatever happens, are treated like conquered people and this will get worse, as long as the few are more eager to hold on to their tyranny than you are to regain your freedom.

plebes, quodcumque accidit, pro victis est et in dies magis erit, si quidem maiore cura dominationem illi retinuerint, quam vos repetiveritis libertatem.

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives

Have you money? Do not borrow, for you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay.

ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἀπορεῖς. οὐκ ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἐκτίσεις.

In the meantime you, after the fashion of cattle, offer yourselves, a great throng, to be controlled and exploited by mere individuals, after having been stripped of all that your forefathers left you, except for the fact that by your ballots you now play a direct role in designating masters for yourselves, just as formerly you did protectors.

interim more pecorum vos, multitudo, singulis habendos fruendosque praebetis, exuti omnibus quae maiores reliquere, nisi quia vobismet ipsi per suffragia, ut praesides olim, nunc dominos destinatis.

A professor who was studying James Joyce with a class of graduate students thought they needed a little more humor, and a little more sense of the irrational. So he introduced a 'distinguished visiting scholar' to lecture to them. The man stood up very solemnly, and began:

The style of James Joyce presents many difficulties peculiar to itself. Among these surely the most complex and vilpurt is the sentence-rhythm. A slow and careful worker like Joyce, who always entwendered to promin the sound of ordinary speech, and nevertheless hennepe mousa with other significances (both turp and stal), was bound to create a mixed, and sometimes (although I say this with reservations) a perkinstic effect.

Fiendish. They say he went on like that for twenty minutes, while the professor stood at the back of the classroom and watched his students struggling to take notes.

If you now feel I am an old-fashioned dodo—it just can't be helped.

This night, of course, is understood to belong to the day that follows it, which we call the Lord's; and obviously he had to rise again at night, because by his resurrection he also lighted up our darkness; nor was it for nothing that a short while ago³ we were singing to him, You will light my lamp, Lord; my God, you will light up my darkness (Ps 18:28).

3. Paulo ante, in the course of the vigil. But some texts read tanto ante, "so long before," referring back to the time of the psalmist. This looks very like a copyist's correction; I somehow don't think Augustine was capable of uttering the ugly and slightly ridiculous sound of tanto ante.

Nox quippe ista ad consequentem diem, quem dominicum habemus, intellegitur pertinere. Et utique nocte resurgere debuit, quia sua resurrectione et tenebras nostras illuminavit: neque enim ei frustra paulo ante cantatum est: Tu inluminabis lucernam meam domine: deus meus, inluminabis tenebras meas.

And in this conversation, Cotta used to tell me, these three former consuls discussed developments they found deplorable in such inspired fashion, that no evil subsequently fell upon our community that they had not seen hanging over it, even at that time.

quo quidem sermone multa divinitus a tribus illis consularibus Cotta deplorata et commemorata narrabat, ut nihil incidisset postea civitati mali, quod non impendere illi tanto ante vidissent.

He would not have decided upon the Saturnalia for us and would not have proclaimed the day of ruin and destruction for the Republic so far ahead.

non ille nobis Saturnalia constituisset neque tanto ante exitii ac fati diem rei publicae denuntiavisset.

So the flaw interposed which on the Kalends of January you had already foreseen, and so long before predicted.

id igitur obvenit vitium, quod tu iam Kalendis Ianuariis futurum esse provideras et tanto ante praedixeras.

It is surely most out of place for Plotius the perfumer to send his own special messengers with full particulars to Balbus so long in advance, while Vestorius does not send me news even by my messengers.

quid minus probandum quam Plotium unguentarium per suos pueros omnia tanto ante Balbo, illum mi ne per meos quidem?

The world is a prison where solitary confinement is preferable.

Die Welt ist ein Gefängnis, in dem Einzelhaft vorzuziehen ist.

And as a bitch stands over her tender whelps
growling, when she sees a man she does not know, and is eager to fight,
so his heart growled within him in his wrath at their evil deeds...

ὡς δὲ κύων ἀμαλῇσι περὶ σκυλάκεσσι βεβῶσα
ἄνδρʼ ἀγνοιήσασʼ ὑλάει μέμονέν τε μάχεσθαι,
ὥς ῥα τοῦ ἔνδον ὑλάκτει ἀγαιομένου κακὰ ἔργα...

If your friend had been born in Parthia, he would have begun, when a child, to bend the bow; if in Germany, he would forthwith have been brandishing his slender spear; if he had been born in the days of our forefathers, he would have learned to ride a horse and smite his enemy hand to hand. These are the occupations which the system of each race recommends to the individual,—yes, prescribes for him.

si in Parthia natus esset, arcum infans statim tenderet; si in Germania, protinus puer tenerum hastile vibraret; si avorum nostrorum temporibus fuisset, equitare et hostem comminus percutere didicisset. haec singulis disciplina gentis suae suadet atque imperat.

Finally, the enemy was now routed everywhere. The open field was a ghastly spectacle: pursuit, flight; death, capture; horses and men suffering; and many, who could neither flee because of their wounds nor endure to be still, now struggled to rise and immediately collapsed. In the end, everything, everywhere you looked, was strewn with weapons, armour, corpses, and between them the ground drenched in blood.*

drenched in blood: ancient sources report that Jugurtha and Bocchus lost 90,000 men in the second of two battles with Marius (Orosius 5.15.8) and speak of the death of many tens of thousands of Libyans (Diodorus 36.1).

denique hostes iam undique fusi. tum spectaculum horribile in campis patentibus: sequi fugere, occidi capi; equi atque viri afflicti, ac multi vulneribus acceptis neque fugere posse neque quietem pati, niti modo ac statim concidere; postremo omnia qua visus erat constrata telis armis cadaveribus, et inter ea humus infecta sanguine.

No one will be doing anything out of poverty, because everyone will have all the necessities:
bread, salt fish, barley-cakes, cloaks, wine, garlands, chickpeas.

οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν πενίᾳ δράσει· πάντα γὰρ ἕξουσιν ἅπαντες,
ἄρτους, τεμάχη, μάζας, χλαίνας, οἶνον, στεφάνους, ἐρεβίνθους.

[T]his short list neatly demonstrates now Athenians thought of the good things of life in terms of consumables, not of possessions that last (cf. Davidson passim, esp. 213-249); every item on it, except "warm cloaks" (khlainai, cf. 416), is something whose enjoyment lasts, at most, for the duration of a banquet. On the other hand, they are not luxuries either; even the fish (on which see Davidson 3-35) are only in "slices", not the whole large fish that a gourmet would seek to buy (cf. Ach. 880-894, Wasps 493, Peace 810-3. Eupolis fr. 160), and all the other items are the plainest of everyday fare and are indeed included in the provision initially made for the citizens of Plato's ideal state (Rep. 372a-d), which Glaucon complains is fit only for pigs.

For where you find men honouring the gods, disciplining themselves for war and practising obedience, you may be sure that there everything will be full of good hope.

ὅπου γὰρ ἄνδρες θεοὺς μὲν σέβοιντο, τὰ δὲ πολεμικὰ ἀσκοῖεν, πειθαρχεῖν δὲ μελετῷεν, πῶς οὐκ εἰκὸς ἐνταῦθα πάντα μεστὰ ἐλπίδων ἀγαθῶν εἶναι;

You know how firm my strength is, how unyielding—
I shall keep your secret as close as hard stone or iron!

οἶσθα μὲν οἷον ἐμὸν μένος ἔμπεδον, οὐδʼ ἐπιεικτόν·
ἕξω δʼ ὡς ὅτε τις στερεὴ λίθος ἠὲ σίδηρος.

The whole of life, my friend, is amazingly easy to blame, since it has nothing outstanding or great and impressive, but everything small, weak, short-lived, and mixed up with great pains.

εὐκατηγόρητος πᾶς ὁ βίος θαυμαστῶς, ὦ μακάριε, καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχων περιττὸν οὐδὲ μέγα καὶ σεμνόν, ἀλλὰ πάντα σμικρὰ καὶ ἀσθενῆ καὶ ὀλιγοχρόνια καὶ ἀναμεμειγμένα λύπαις μεγάλαις.

Seen from the outside, ancient history can thus give the impression of stretching unduly the scope of the few available ancient sources. That is not inexact. But it is precisely this ceaseless return to the same sources that constitutes the interest of ancient history. For this rumination makes one think. Whether they have a classical education or not, all Westerners have the impression that they know the Greek and Roman world. In fact, that is not so at all. The volume of documents is infinitely smaller than that of other periods of history, and often even the evidence on a particular issue is limited to a few pages of exploitable sources. But how do our colleagues who have an endless mass of sources work? Are they not also forced to make choices? Does the only difference not lie in the fact that scholars of the Classics cannot make choices? Their corpus of sources is largely pre-established, but fortunately not entirely. Despite the limits that restrict their freedom of movement, every time researchers take a closer look they discover something new that no one before them had seen in its entirety. All in all, their situation is fairly similar to that in which ethnologists find themselves when they return to visit a tribe that has already been studied by a predecessor, and find it very different to their colleague’s descriptions of it. This is how ancient history constitutes a science in the making and not a museum of received ideas. By its way of proceeding, it puts out a warning that can be beneficial to all. It highlights the dangers stemming from the impression of familiarity that a culture close to us gives, and denounces the facileness of superficial syntheses. In their daily lives, teachers, researchers and citizens alike operate with general ideas which are often, let’s admit, exaggerated or at least approximate, because these are inspired by emotion, ideological choices or even intellectual laziness. From this point of view, ancient history has the virtue of encouraging mistrust, and erudition is assigned a mission that is not limited to filling in footnotes.

He used to declare that the heavy-armed soldier ought to have his body trained not only by athletic exercises but by military drill as well. For this reason he always showed a repugnance towards fat men, and one such man he expelled from the army, saying that three or four shields would scarce serve to protect his belly, because of which he could not see a thing below it.

τῶν δὲ ὁπλιτῶν δεῖν ἀπέφαινεν εἶναι τὸ σῶμα γεγυμνασμένον οὐκ ἀθλητικῶς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ στρατιωτικῶς· διὸ καὶ τοῖς πολυσάρκοις ἐπολέμει, καί τινα τοιοῦτον ἀπήλασε τῆς στρατιᾶς εἰπὼν ὅτι μόλις αὐτοῦ σκέπουσι τὴν γαστέρα ἀσπίδες τρεῖς ἢ τέσσαρες, δι᾽ ἣν οὐχ ἑώρακεν αὑτοῦ τὸ αἰδοῖον.

What is willing!— We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of its room, and then says: 'I will that the sun shall rise'; and at him who cannot stop a wheel, and says: 'I will that it shall roll'; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling, and says: 'here I lie, but I will lie here!' But, all laughter aside, are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression: 'I will'?

Was ist Wollen!— Wir lachen über Den, welcher aus seiner Kammer tritt, in der Minute, da die Sonne aus der ihren tritt, und sagt: „ich will, daß die Sonne aufgehe“; und über Den, welcher ein Rad nicht aufhalten kann und sagt: „ich will, daß es rolle“; und über Den, welcher im Ringkampf niedergeworfen wird und sagt: „hier liege ich, aber ich will hier liegen!“ Aber, trok allem Gelächter! Machen wir es denn jemals anders als einer von diesen Dreien, wenn wir das Wort gebrauchen: „ich will“?

Life is like a day-long watch, and the length of life is like one day, as it were, on which having seen the light we pass on our trust to the next generation.

τὸ ζῆν ἔοικε φρουρᾷ ἐφημέρῳ τό τε μῆκος τοῦ βίου ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, ᾗ ἀναβλέψαντες πρὸς τὸ φῶς παρεγγυῶμεν τοῖς ἐπιγιγνομένοις ἑτέροις.

Living is like a day's watch, and the length of life as a single day, so to speak, in which, as we look up at the light, we hand over our duties to others who come after.

Living is like a day-long sentry duty, and the whole length of life is like a single day, as it were, during which no sooner have we raised our eyes toward the light than we pass on the baton to other people who come after us.

Wise counsel is more effective in dealing with an enemy than mindless aggression based on brute force.

ὅστις γὰρ εὖ βουλεύεται πρὸς τοὺς ἐναντίους κρείσσων ἐστὶν ἢ μετʼ ἔργων ἰσχύος ἀνοίᾳ ἐπιών.

“Innocence”: that is their name for the ideal state of stupefaction; “blessedness”: the ideal state of sloth; “love”: the ideal state of the herd animal that no longer wants to have enemies. Therewith one has raised everything that debases and lowers man to an ideal.

„Unschuld“: so heissen sie den Idealzustand der Verdummung; „Seligkeit“: den Idealzustand der Faulheit; „Liebe“: den Idealzustand des Heerdenthiers, das keinen Feind mehr haben will. Damit hat man Alles, was den Menschen erniedrigt und herunterbringt, in's Ideal erhoben.

              Human beings live for only a short time,
and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts,
all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter
while he lives; and when he is dead all men make fun of him.
But when a man is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless,
the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely
to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent.

       ἄνθρωποι δὲ μινυνθάδιοι τελέθουσιν.
ὃς μὲν ἀπηνὴς αὐτὸς ἔῃ καὶ ἀπηνέα εἰδῇ,
τῷ δὲ καταρῶνται πάντες βροτοὶ ἄλγε᾽ ὀπίσσω        330
ζωῷ, ἀτὰρ τεθνεῶτί γ᾽ ἐφεψιόωνται ἅπαντες·
ὃς δ᾽ ἂν ἀμύμων αὐτὸς ἔῃ καὶ ἀμύμονα εἰδῇ,
τοῦ μέν τε κλέος εὐρὺ δὶα ξεῖνοι φορέουσι
πάντας ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώπους, πολλοί τέ μιν ἐσθλὸν ἔειπον.

No doubt, the dog is loyal. But should we therefore follow its example? It is loyal to man, not to dog.

Kein Zweifel, der Hund ist treu. Aber sollen wir uns deshalb ein Beispiel an ihm nehmen? Er ist doch dem Menschen treu und nicht dem Hund.

On a pelike in the Vatican, an oil seller fills a small jug from a large pelike that sits on the floor beside him (Fig. 6). A custo­mer or co-worker sits opposite him and seems to be playing with the dog. Such scenes of banausoi, though not very numerous, do several times occur on pelikai, in part to illustrate the uses to which the shape was put (Shapiro forthcoming). Stretching from one figure to the other is the opening line of an impromptu hymn:

ὦ Ζεῦ πάτερ, αἴθε πλούσιος γεν<οίμαν>

“O Zeus, would that I might become rich!”

The metre is again Aeolic and the invocation to Zeus reminiscent of skolia like the one on Euphronios’ krater, only the sentiment somewhat less lofty. In fact the diction recalls even more closely another type of skolion of which Athenaeus records two examples. One reads:

εἴθε λύρα καλὴ γενοίμην ἐλεφαντίνα
καί με καλοὶ παῖδες φέροιεν Διονύσιον
ἐς χορόν

“Would that I might become a lovely ivory lyre, and that beautiful boys might take me to the chorus of Dionysos.”

In the context of the oil merchant’s shop on the Vatican pelike, the verse turns the scene into a gentle parody of the symposium, in which two working stiffs daydream of being leisured aristocrats. The painter’s sense of humor perhaps reflects a feeling of kinship or empathy with his fellows in the oil business, who must have had close ties to the pottery industry. The humor in fact extends to the reverse of the pot (Fig. 7). In a different vignette, which may be only loosely related to the first (the setting has moved outdoors), the oil merchant, who has perhaps been accused of shortchanging a customer, exclaims:

ἤδη μὲν ἤδη πλέο<ν>, παραβέβακεν

“It’s already full. It’s spilling over!”

Although the wording probably captures a typical speech pattern of colloquial Attic Greek, at the same time it appears to be metrical, based on a succession of cretics, usually considered a Doric metre (West, 1982: 54-55). The use of a Doric form with long alpha in the final word would be consistent with this. Possibly the doricisms reflect the non-aristocratic status of the speakers.

It is the mark of little men to like only what they know; one step beyond, and they feel the black cold of chaos.

The League of Delos was founded because of a dispute about booty and its purpose was to get more booty.

Even as the weak and timid doves flee before an eagle, even as a young lamb quails at the sight of a wolf, so shuddered the Sabine women when they beheld these fierce warriors making towards them. Every one turned pale, terror spread throughout the throng, but it showed itself in different ways. Some tore their hair; some swooned away; some wept in silence; some called vainly for their mothers; some sobbed aloud; others seemed stupefied with fear; some stood transfixed; others tried to flee. Nevertheless, the Romans carry off the women, sweet booty for their beds, and to many of them, terror lends an added charm.

Ut fugiunt aquilas, timidissima turba, columbae,
    Ut fugit invisos agna novella lupos:
Sic illae timuere viros sine more ruentes;
    Constitit in nulla qui fuit ante color.
Nam timor unus erat, facies non una timoris:
    Pars laniat crines, pars sine mente sedet;
Altera maesta silet, frustra vocat altera matrem:
    Haec queritur, stupet haec; haec manet, illa fugit;
Ducuntur raptae, genialis praeda, puellae,
    Et potuit multas ipse decere timor.

O the prowess we showed of old in choruses
and the prowess we showed in battle
and the superb manly prowess we showed just in
precisely this respect [indicating their phalli]!
That was of the past, of the past; now it
is gone, and truly this bloom of hair on us
is whiter than a swan.
But even from these remnants
we must summon up youthful strength;
for I think that my old age
is superior to a whole lot of youngsters
with their ringlets,
their styles and their buggery.

ὦ πάλαι ποτ᾽ ὄντες ἡμεῖς ἄλκιμοι μὲν ἐν χοροῖς,        1060
ἄλκιμοι δ᾽ ἐν μάχαις,
καὶ κατ᾽ αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο μόνον
ἄνδρες ἀλκιμώτατοι·
πρίν ποτ᾽ ἦν πρὶν ταῦτα, νῦν δ᾽
οἴχεται, κύκνου τ᾽ πολι-
ώτεραι δὴ αἵδ᾽ ἐπανθοῦσιν τρίχες.        1065
ἀλλὰ κἀκ τῶν λειψάνων δεῖ τῶνδε ῥώμην
νεανικὴν σχεῖν· ὡς ἐγὼ τοὐμὸν νομίζω
γῆρας εἶναι κρεῖττον ἢ πολλῶν κικίννους
νεανιῶν καὶ σχῆμα κεὐρυπρωκτίαν.        1070

1063 ἀλκιμώτατοι Bentley: μαχιμώτατοι codd.
1067 σχεῖν Reisig: ἔχειν codd.
1070 κεὐρυπρωκτίαν Kuster: κηὐρυπρωκτίαν codd.

Truth is from the same city as the gods,
she alone lives with the gods.

Ἀλάθεια θεῶν ὁμόπολις
μόνα θεοῖς συνδιαιτωμένα.

θεῶν codd: βροτῶν Bergk

The first thing, I believe, for mankind is education. For whenever anyone does the beginning of anything correctly, it is likely that the end also will be right. As one sows, so can one expect to reap. And if in a young body one sows a noble education, this lives and flourishes through the whole of his life, and neither rain nor drought destroys it.

πρῶτον, οἶμαι, τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶ παίδευσις· ὅταν γάρ τις πράγματος κἂν ὁτουοῦν τὴν ἀρχὴν ὀρθῶς ποιήσηται, εἰκὸς καὶ τὴν τελευτὴν ὀρθῶς γίγνεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ τῇ γῇ οἷον ἄν τις τὸ σπέρμα ἐναρόσῃ, τοιαῦτα καὶ τὰ ἔκφορα δεῖ προσδοκᾶν· καὶ ἐν νέῳ σώματι ὅταν τις τὴν παίδευσιν γενναίαν ἐναρόσῃ, ζῇ τοῦτο καὶ θάλλει διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου, καὶ αὐτὸ οὔτε ὄμβρος οὔτε ἀνομβρία ἀφαιρεῖται.

Political and economic affairs are not worthy of being the enforced concern of society's most gifted spirits: such a wasteful use of the spirit is at bottom worse than having none at all. They are and remain domains for lesser heads, and others than lesser heads ought not to be in the service of these workshops: better for the machinery to fall to pieces again! But as things now stand, with everybody believing he is obliged to know what is taking place here every day and neglecting his own work in order to be continually participating in it, the whole arrangement has become a great and ludicrous piece of insanity.

Alle politischen und wirthschaftlichen Verhältnisse sind es nicht werth, dass gerade die begabtesten Geister sich mit ihnen befassen dürften und müssten: ein solcher Verbrauch des Geistes ist im Grunde schlimmer, als ein Nothstand. Es sind und bleiben Gebiete der Arbeit für die geringeren Köpfe, und andere als die geringen Köpfe sollten dieser Werkstätte nicht zu Diensten stehen: möge lieber die Maschine wieder einmal in Stücke gehen! So wie es aber jetzt steht, wo nicht nur Alle täglich darum glauben wissen zu müssen, sondern auch Jedermann alle Augenblicke dafür thätig sein will und seine eigene Arbeit darüber im Stiche lässt, ist es ein grosser und lächerlicher Wahnsinn.

A few years later, in 1939, another helmet was found on the west bank of the mouth of the Guadalete River, specifically in a place called La Corta, nowadays displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Jerez de la Frontera. It was classified under the Stufe II type which was dated in the beginning of the 7th century BC and was considered to have been made in Greece itself, particularly in the Peloponnese. Taking into consideration the still preserved rings, it must have been covered with an eye-catching plume as usual in this type of pieces. We can appreciate a series of perforations intended either to be hung on a wall or, as seems more acceptable, to sew a fur lining to make it more comfortable to wear and reduce as far as possible the impact on the warrior's head in case the helmet received a blow during the fight. An interesting fact is the presence of a larger hole on its right side that initially was interpreted as evidence of a wound caused by a weapon that ended the life of its possessor, but we would most likely associate it to a ritual disablement before being thrown to water.

Hey there, what are you doing? Not taking a shit, are you?

οὗτος τί ποιεῖς; οὔτι που χέζεις;

He was well built, with strong, sturdy limbs, and the expression of one who was straining. Apropos of which a witty fellow, when Vespasian asked him to make a joke on him, replied rather cleverly: "I will, when you have finished relieving yourself."

statura fuit quadrata, compactis firmisque membris, vultu veluti nitentis: de quo quidam urbanorum non infacete, siquidem petenti, ut et in se aliquid diceret: "dicam," inquit, "cum ventrem exonerare desieris."

Use lettuce and use soft mallows:
for you have the look, Phoebus, of one who is taking a hard crap.

utere lactucis et mollibus utere malvis:
     nam faciem durum, Phoebe, cacantis habes.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

A lightning rod atop a church tower is the strongest conceivable vote of no confidence against dear God.

Ein Blitzableiter auf einem Kirchturm ist das denkbar stärkste Mißtrauensvotum gegen den lieben Gott.

Here on earth, in short, the life of fools becomes a hell.

hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.

fools: i.e. non-Epicureans; the poet appropriates from the Stoics the claim that sapientia is to be found only within his own school, whereas all outside it are stulti; cf., e.g., V 10, where Epicurus' philosophy is hailed as sapientia. stultorum makes clear that all the earthly torments alluded to in the passage are self-inflicted, and can be avoided by embracing the Epicurean moral code...

[T]he closest tie that binds men together is a shared experience of a common literary tradition. Men who eat the same kinds of food or wear the same styles of clothing or live in the same kinds of climate understand one another better than men who do not. But those who understand one another most fully are those who have read the same books.

But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others...

When the sunshine comes with the spring combined,
Then flowerets sprout by night and day;
When the moon sets out on its beamy way,
Then bright little stars swim along behind.
When a singer looks into two beautiful eyes,
Then out of his heart bales of songs arise.—
    But songs and stars and flowers by the ton,
    Or eyes and moons and springtime sun,
    No matter how much you like such stuff,
    To make a world they're just not enough.

Wenn der Frühling kommt mit dem Sonnenschein,
Dann knospen und blühen die Blümlein auf;
Wenn der Mond beginnt seinen Strahlenlauf,
Dann schwimmen die Sternlein hintendrein;
Wenn der Sänger zwei süße Aeuglein sieht,
Dann quellen ihm Lieder aus tiefem Gemüth;
Doch Lieder und Sterne und Blümelein,
Und Aeuglein und Mondglanz und Sonnenschein,
Wie sehr das Zeug auch gefällt,
So macht's doch noch lang keine Welt.

When spring comes with sunshine the little flowers bud and bloom; when the moon begins its shining course the little stars swim behind; when the minstrel sees two sweet little eyes, songs spring from the depths of his being; — but songs and stars and little flowers, and little eyes and moonlight and sunshine, however much this stuff pleases, it is nowhere near being the whole world.

The poem marks a stage in the development of Heine's revolt against Romanticism...

They say I am vulgar and uneducated because I do know how to set an elegant dinner table and I do not have an actor or a cook worth more than my foreman.

But I’m pleased to confess that this is true, citizens. For I have learned from my parents and other righteous men that elegance is for women, labour is for men; that good men ought to have more glory than wealth; that armour is the true ornament, not furniture.

Well, then, let them always do what they enjoy, what they consider valuable: let them fall in love, get drunk, continue to do in old age what they did as young men—attend banquets, remain dedicated to their belly and the shameful parts of their body. Let them leave to us the sweat and the dust and other such things; to us these things are sweeter than banquets.

sordidum me et incultis moribus aiunt, quia parum scite convivium exorno neque histrionem ullum neque pluris preti coquum quam vilicum habeo.

quae mihi lubet confiteri, Quirites; nam ex parente meo et ex aliis sanctis viris ita accepi, munditias mulieribus, viris laborem convenire, omnibusque bonis oportere plus gloriae quam divitiarum esse; arma, non supellectilem decori esse.

quin ergo quod iuvat, quod carum aestumant, id semper faciant: ament potent, ubi adulescentiam habuere, ibi senectutem agant, in conviviis, dediti ventri et turpissimae parti corporis; sudorem, pulverem et alia talia relinquant nobis, quibus illa epulis iucundiora sunt.

"Yet even so tell me of thy stock from whence thou art;
for thou art not sprung from an oak of ancient story, or from a stone."<sup>1

1</sup> The phrase appears to be a quotation from older folk-poetry. The meaning here is: "You have not a merely casual origin, as though you were sprung from an oak or a stone; you have human ancestors; tell me of them." The phrase recurs in Il. xxii.126 ; Hesiod, Theog. 35 ; and in Plato, Apol. 34 D, and Repub. 544 D.

ἀλλὰ καὶ ὥς μοι εἰπὲ τεὸν γένος, ὁππόθεν ἐσσί.
οὐ γὰρ ἀπὸ δρυός ἐσσι παλαιφάτου οὐδ᾽ ἀπὸ πέτρης.

I mean, let me tell you how many things he can't do. He can't die, he can't sin, he can't lie, he can't be deceived or mistaken; so many things he can't do, and if he could do them he wouldn't be almighty.

Nam ego dico quanta non possit: non potest mori, non potest peccare, non potest mentiri, non potest falli; tanta non potest, quae si posset, non esset omnipotens.

Lady, no mortal man on the endless earth could have cause
to find fault with you; your fame goes up into the wide heaven,
as of some king who, as a blameless man and god-fearing,
and ruling as lord over many powerful people,
upholds the way of good government, and the black earth yields him
barley and wheat, his trees are heavy with fruit, his sheepflocks
continue to bear young, the sea gives him fish, because of
his good leadership, and his people prosper under him.

ὦ γύναι, οὐκ ἄν τίς σε βροτῶν ἐπ᾽ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν
νεικέοι: ἦ γάρ σευ κλέος οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἱκάνει,
ὥς τέ τευ ἢ βασιλῆος ἀμύμονος, ὅς τε θεουδὴς
ἀνδράσιν ἐν πολλοῖσι καὶ ἰφθίμοισιν ἀνάσσων        110
εὐδικίας ἀνέχῃσι, φέρῃσι δὲ γαῖα μέλαινα
πυροὺς καὶ κριθάς, βρίθῃσι δὲ δένδρεα καρπῷ,
τίκτῃ δ᾽ ἔμπεδα μῆλα, θάλασσα δὲ παρέχῃ ἰχθῦς
ἐξ εὐηγεσίης, ἀρετῶσι δὲ λαοὶ ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ.

A close resemblance exists between the old Teutonic and the Homeric kingship which is explained partly by the similarity of life and of historical circumstances, but is partly due to the common origin of the Greek and the Teutonic races. The kings of the Swedes and of the Burgundians were held responsible for the luck of their people whether in the matter of victory, weather, or good crops. It is related that the Swedes sacrificed their king if the crops failed, and the Burgundian kings were deposed if the luck of the war or the crops failed.¹ Even among the Anglo-Saxons and other peoples kings were deposed, though the reasons are not specified. There is a faint trace of this very primitive conception in a passage in Homer,² in which it is said of a king, who, fearing the gods, rules over many and mighty men, maintaining right, that the black earth bears crops of wheat and barley, the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, the sea gives fishes, and the people prosper under him. The old idea has been deflected and modernized by the reference to the righteousness of the king as the cause of the abundant supply, but at the bottom there is the old primitive conception of the power of the king to influence the course of Nature and the luck of his people³ which has been so brilliantly exposed by Frazer.

¹ Ammianus Marc., xxviii, 5.14.
² Od. xix, vv. 109.
³ H. Meltzer, "Ein Nachklang des Königsfetischismus bei Homer," Philologus, lxii, 1903, pp. 481.

Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,
And your barbecues of great oxen,
And the tall women, walking your streets, in gilt clothes,
With their perfume in little alabaster boxes?
Where are the works of your home-born sculptors?

Time’s tooth is into the lot, and war’s and fate’s too.
Envy has taken your all
Save your douth and your story.

ὦ πόλι, πῆ σέο κεῖνα τὰ τείχεα, πῆ πολύολβοι
    νηοί; πῆ δὲ βοῶν κράατα τεμνομένων;
πῆ Παφίης ἀλάβαστρα, καὶ ἡ πάγχρυσος ἐφεστρίς;
    πῆ δὲ Τριτογενοῦς δείκελον ἐνδαπίης;
πάντα μόθος χρονίη τε χύσις καὶ Μοῖρα κραταιὴ
    ἥρπασεν, ἀλλοίην ἀμφιβαλοῦσα τύχην.
καί σε τόσον νίκησε βαρὺς φθόνος· ἀλλ᾽ ἄρα μοῦνον
    οὔνομα σὸν κρύψαι καὶ κλέος οὐ δύναται.

Where are those walls of thine, O city, where thy temples full of treasure, where the heads of the oxen thou wast wont to slay? Where are Aphrodite’s caskets of ointment and her mantle all of gold? Where is the image of thy own Athena? Thou hast been robbed of all by war and the decay of ages, and the strong hand of Fate, which reversed thy fortunes. So far did bitter Envy subdue thee; but thy name and glory alone she cannot hide.

HOMAGE TO QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENTIS CHRISTIANUS
                              (Ex libris Graecæ).

Quò tua nunc abiêre, vrbs, mœnia? quò pretiosa
    Fana, & cæsorum tot capita alta boum?
Quò Veneris bene olens alabastrum, atque aurea vestis?
    Quò nunc indigenæ Palladis effigies?
Omnia tempus edax, bellúmque, inuictáque fata
    Abripuêre, alia sorte dedêre frui.
Inuidia ò quantum nocuit tibi! sed tua nusquam
    Celari virtus, nec tua fama potest.

Labels: typographical and other errors

The compassionate Christian.— The reverse side of Christian compassion for the suffering of one's neighbour is a profound suspicion of all the joy of one's neighbour, of his joy in all that he wants to do and can.

Der mitleidige Christ.— Die Kehrseite des christlichen Mitleidens am Leiden des Nächsten ist die tiefe Beargwöhnung aller Freude des Nächsten, seiner Freude an Allem, was er will und kann.

• Let's Stop Somebody from Doing Something!
• Right Thinkers
• Foolish
• A Prying Busybody of a God
• Against Busybodies and Nosey Parkers
• Recipe for a Happy Life
• Most Hateful of All Names
• Mind Your Own Business
• Our Masters
• Omnipotent Moral Busybodies
• Minding Other People's Business
• Seeking to Make All the World Like Himself
• A Prying Busybody
• Nosey Parker

During the American invasion of Canada in 1775, a certain Charles Racine, my 16-year-old 4th great-grandfather, was driving his cattle southward when he encountered the American invaders in the Richelieu Valley and was taken prisoner. Why the Americans seized Racine is unknown. It would take little imagination to devise that the Americans chose to “requisition” Racine’s cattle, that the latter took exception, and found himself arrested.

After serving time as a prisoner of war, the Americans gave Charles the choice of joining their cause or remaining a prisoner. He opted for the former and officially enlisted on December 16, 1777, becoming a Private in Captain M. Gilbert’s regiment of foot under Colonel Moses Hazen. Congress had given Hazen the commission to raise a regiment in Canada, which, since it was not part of any State’s militia, came to be known as Congress’ Own.

[....]

With Hazen’s regiment, Private Charles Racine, along with many other Canadiens, participated in some of the most storied events of the American Revolution. Congress’ Own was at Valley Forge, took part in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown in the Philadelphia campaign, and was present at the climactic siege at Yorktown. Racine served for the duration of the war and mustered out on June 30, 1783.

Charles Racine (1759-1827)
Prudent Racine (1807-1881)
Philibert Racine (1845-1900, aka Philip Root)
Grace Albina Racine (1868-1947)
Eddie Paiement (1895-1971), my grandfather

The wine must have your brains; or else always
you are such a man in your mind, a babbler of nonsense.

          ἦ ῥά σε οἶνος ἔχει φρένας, ἤ νύ τοι αἰεὶ
τοιοῦτος νόος ἐστίν, ὃ καὶ μεταμώνια βάζεις.

There is a law at Ceos that those who are extremely elderly invite each as if going to a party or to a festival with sacrifices, meet, put on garlands and drink hemlock. This they do when they become aware that they are incapable of performing tasks useful to their country, and that their judgment is by now rather feeble owing to the passing of time.

Νόμος ἐστὶ Κείων, οἱ πάνυ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς γεγηρακότες, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ξένια παρακαλοῦντες ἑαυτοὺς ἢ επί τινα ἑορταστικὴν θυσίαν, συνελθόντες καὶ στεφανωσάμενοι πίνουσι κώνειον, ὅταν ἑαυτοῖς συνειδῶσιν ὅτι πρὸς τὰ ἔργα τὰ τῇ πατρίδι λυσιτελοῦντα ἄχρηστοί εἰσιν, ὑποληρούσης ἤδη τι αὐτοῖς καὶ τῆς γνώμης διὰ τὸν χρόνον.

Closing one's ears to lamentation.— If we let ourselves be made gloomy by the lamentation and suffering of other mortals and cover our own sky with clouds, who is it who will have to bear the consequences of this gloom? These other mortals, of course, and in addition to the burdens they bear already! We can offer them neither aid nor comfort if we want to be the echo of their lamentation, or even if we are merely always giving ear to it — unless, that is, we had acquired the art of the Olympians and henceforth edified ourselves by the misfortunes of mankind instead of being made unhappy by them.

Die Ohren vor dem Jammer zuhalten.— Wenn wir uns durch den Jammer und das Leiden der anderen Sterblichen verdüstern lassen und unsern eigenen Himmel mit Wolken bedecken, wer hat dann die Folgen dieser Verdüsterung zu tragen? Eben doch die anderen Sterblichen, und zu allen ihren Lasten noch hinzu! Wir können weder hülfreich noch erquicklich für sie sein, wenn wir das Echo ihres Jammers sein wollen, ja auch wenn wir immer nur nach ihm hin unser Ohr richten, — es sei denn, dass wir die Kunst der Olympier erlernten und uns fürderhin am Unglück der Menschen erbauten, anstatt daran unglücklich zu werden.

So, too, when the generous Affections have become wellnigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness, and all manner of godlike magnanimity, are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim ‘Benevolence’ to all the four winds, and have Truth engraved on their watch-seals: unhappily with little or no effect. Were the Limbs in right walking order, why so much demonstrating of Motion? The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us, or without first deceiving himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie there as a perpetual lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through every fibre, conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if it were made of glass, and durst not touch or be touched: in the shape of work, it can do nothing; at the utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling, keep itself alive.

But you're so incredibly arrogant and rigid-minded—
I suppose you think you're a great and powerful fellow
because those you consort with are mean and common?

ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ ὑβρίξεις, καί τοι νόος ἐστὶν ἀπηνής·
καί πού τις δοκέεις μέγας ἔμμεναι ἠδὲ κραταιός,
οὕνεκα πὰρ παύροισι καὶ οὐκ ἀγαθοῖσιν ὁμιλεῖς.

Every scrap of Latin Lord Edgecumbe heard at the Encænia at Oxford he translated ridiculously; one of the themes was Ars Musica: he Englished it, Bumfiddle.

• Water Music
• Trumpet Solo
• How to Be an Entrepreneur
• A Musical Instrument
• Roland le Pettour
• A Resonating Fundament
• Rectal Music

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

Often a man is zealous of merit, seeking gain, a man whom divinity on purpose leads astray into great wickedness, and easily makes what is bad seem to him to be good, and what is worthwhile seem to be bad.

σπεύδει ἀνὴρ κέρδος διζήμενος, ὅντινα δαίμων
    πρόφρων εἰς μεγάλην ἀμπλακίην παράγει,
καί οἱ ἔθηκε δοκεῖν, ἃ μὲν ἦι κακά, ταῦτ' ἀγάθ' εἶναι        405
    εὐμαρέως, ἃ δ' ἂν ἦι χρήσιμα, ταῦτα κακά.

For the Trojans, men say, are men of war,
hurlers of the spear, and drawers of the bow,
and drivers of swift horses, such as most quickly
decide the great strife of equal war.

καὶ γὰρ Τρῶάς φασι μαχητὰς ἔμμεναι ἄνδρας,
ἠμὲν ἀκοντιστὰς ἠδὲ ῥυτῆρας ὀϊστῶν
ἵππων τ᾽ ὠκυπόδων ἐπιβήτορας, οἵ κε τάχιστα
ἔκριναν μέγα νεῖκος ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο.

263 κε codd.: τε Monro

"Here is your son, is it not so? He is like you" — and laying his hand on Jean's head, who clung to his father's coat-tails in wonder at the red waist-coat and the sing-song voice, he asked if the child learned his lessons well, if he was growing up to be a clever man, if he would not soon be beginning Latin.

"That noble language," he added, "whose inimitable monuments have often made me forget my misfortunes.

"Yes, sir, I have often breakfasted on a page of Tacitus and supped on a satire of Juvenal."

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«Voici votre fils, n'est-il pas vrai? Il vous ressemble.» Et posant la main sur la tête de Jean, qui, pendu à la veste de son père, s'étonnait de ce gilet rouge et de ce parler chantant, il demanda si l'enfant apprenait bien ses leçons, s'il devenait un savant, s'il n'étudierait pas bientôt la langue latine.

«Cette noble langue, ajouta-t-il, dont les monuments inimitables m'ont fait si souvent oublier mes infortunes.

«Oui, monsieur, j'ai souvent déjeuné d'une page de Tacite et soupé d'une satire de Juvénal.»

Equo senescenti minora cicela admove
On ageing horses set a lighter brand

Ἵππῳ γηράσκοντι τὰ μείονα κείκελα ἐπίβαλλε, Apply the lighter brand to an ageing horse. The lesson of this adage is that, when a man's powers begin to fail through old age, he should be given some degree of rest and respite from his labours; as his strength decreases, so his load of work should be reduced and his leisure lengthened. Taken, they say, from cavalry-horses, to which a lighter trisippion was applied as they grew old. A trisippion was a sort of small wheel, a public branding-iron, which used to be heated in the fire and applied to a horse's jaws. Zenodotus shows that this proverb was found in Crates the comic poet, in his Samians. It looks like a hexameter line, provided that you read κύκλ’ ἐπίβαλλε;¹ for κείκελα I have not yet found in any ancient author except Zenodotus. The trisippion is mentioned by Hesychius,² and the keikelon seems to have been something not unlike it.

52 Zenobius 4.11, citing Crates, the Old-Comedy poet frag 30; in Suidas 1586 no source is named. The last three sentences are of 1526.
1 κύκλ’] This is indeed the accepted reading now.
2 Hesychius] T 1632. The word is trysippion.

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Equo senescenti minora cicela admove

Ἵππῳ γηράσκοντι τὰ μείονα κείκελα ἐπίβαλλε, id est Equo senescenti minora cicela admoue. Admonet adagium, vbi vires per aetatem fatiscunt, respirationem ac refocillationem quandam a laboribus dandam et decrescente robore minuendos labores, augendam remissionem. Ductum aiunt ab equis militaribus, quibus senescentibus leuiusτρισίππιον admouebant; est autem τρισίππιον ceu rotula quaedam, publica nota, quae igni candefacta malis equorum imprimi consueuit. Zenodotus ostendit prouerbium extitisse apud Cratetem comicum in Samiis. Videtur carmen heroicum, si tantum legas κύκλ’ ἐπίβαλλε. Nam κείκελα nondum reperi apud vllum autorem praeterquam apud Zenodotum. Trisippii meminit Hesychius. Videtur autem κείκελον aliquid esse non dissimile trisippio.