Laudator Temporis Acti

Erasmus, Adagia II viii 52 (tr. R.A.B. Mynors, with his notes):

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.

---

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.

On Crates, fragment 33 Kassel-Austin (ἵππῳ γηράσκοντι τὰ μείονα κύκλ’ / ἐπίβαλλε), see Serena Perrone, Cratete. Introduzione, Traduzione e Commento (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019 = Fragmenta Comica, 2), pp. 173-176.