Laudator Temporis Acti

The term Anglo-Saxon has been removed from a University’s module titles to tackle “nationalist narratives”.

The University of Nottingham offers leading courses in Anglo-Saxon history and literature and is the only university in the country to offer a Viking Studies course.

But in a move to “decolonise the curriculum”, professors have renamed a masters course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies as Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.

A module within the programme titled “Research Methods in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies” has also had the “Anglo-Saxon” term removed in favour of “Early Medieval English”.

It follows a similar move in the United States, where academics in particular have campaigned against the term “Anglo-Saxon” because it suggests a distinct, native Englishness.

The terminology of “Early mediaeval England” is the preferred replacement for “Anglo- Saxon” by academics concerned that the latter has become a phrase used by racists surrounding white identity.

These have largely been based in the US, where the term has been used to describe those descended from white early settlers.

The university has also said it is seeking to “problematize the term ‘Viking’” in its tuition.

An English literature module “A Tale of Seven Kingdoms: Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age England from Bede to Alfred the Great” was also renamed “Early mediaeval England from Bede to Alfred the Great”.

It comes amid concerns over the connections of “race, empire, Nazism” to Norse culture and mythology.

The Nazis made use of Norse runic figures in their iconography, including the stylised “S” figures of the SS.

The move follows a pledge made in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests to decolonise the curriculum, a term denoting a move away from Western-centred material and the dominance of “white voices” in academia.

And so it goes on. Perhaps England itself, OE Ænglaland, land of the Angles, will be next to be "problematized". What might be an acceptable alternative? Perhaps 'land of the many peoples', or in Old English ‘monigra folca land’, Mongreland for short. Let the witanegemot decide it.

• Anglo-Saxon
• Use of a Forbidden Ethnonym

Belloc liked to aver that you belonged to the flower of the bourgeoisie if you knew the maiden names of your four great-grandmothers.

August 21. — In the Bois de Boulogne. To see all these great trees fall under the axe, with the quiverings of men wounded to death; to see these [sic, read there], where a green curtain was spread, this mass of sharpened stakes, shining whitely, this sinister harrow — you feel a hatred of the Prussians rising in your heart; they are the cause of these violations of nature.

21 août. — Au bois de Boulogne. À voir sous la cognée tomber ces grands arbres, avec des vacillements de blessés à mort, à voir là, où c’était un rideau de verdure, ce champ de pieux aigus, luisant blanc, cette herse sinistre, il vous monte de la haine au cœur pour ces Prussiens, qui sont cause de ces assassinats de la nature.

Labels: arboricide

Now there is another thing book writers do in their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say "my thanks are due to such and such" all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats!

Who can fully break out of bondage?
Only one who scorns the fickle gods,
who looks without gloom at gloomy Styx,
looks upon dark Acheron’s face,
and has courage to set an end to life:
such a one is a match for kings, for gods.
How wretched to be unschooled in dying!

solus servitium perrumpet omne
contemptor levium deorum,        605
qui vultus Acherontis atri,
qui Styga tristem non tristis videt
audetque vitae ponere finem:
par ille regi, par superis erit.
o quam miserum est nescire mori!        610

Once, twice and three times true!—People lie unspeakably often, but afterwards they do not remember it and on the whole do not believe it.

Einmal, zweimal und dreimal wahr!—Die Menschen lügen unsäglich oft, aber sie denken hinterher nicht daran und glauben im Ganzen nicht daran.

For a shame is this even for men that are yet to be to hear of, if we shall not take vengeance on the slayers of our sons and our brothers. To me surely life would then no more be sweet; rather would I die at once and be among the dead.

λώβη γὰρ τάδε γ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι,
εἰ δὴ μὴ παίδων τε κασιγνήτων τε φονῆας
τισόμεθ᾽. οὐκ ἂν ἐμοί γε μετὰ φρεσὶν ἡδὺ γένοιτο        435
ζωέμεν, ἀλλὰ τάχιστα θανὼν φθιμένοισι μετείην.

Those who travel about England for their pleasure, or, for that matter, about any part of Western Europe, rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of history; for history adds to a man, giving him, as it were, a great memory of things—like a human memory, but stretched over a far longer space than that of one human life. It makes him, I do not say wise and great, but certainly in communion with wisdom and greatness.

May no such misfortune ever befall me as would cause me to forget the ties of nature, and be set at enmity with my own kindred.

μηδὲ γὰρ γένοιτό τι τοιοῦτο παθεῖν μηδέν, ὅ με τῆς φύσεως ἐπιλαθέσθαι καὶ ἐκπολεμωθῆναι πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους ποιήσει.

‘You have all the right in the world,’ said Thorir, ‘to help people with what is yours, but not with what is mine.’

A person hated by a master is guilty by fiat, not by trial.

ubi dominus odit, fit nocens, non quaeritur.

The sense was correctly explained by Ascensius: 'fit nocens cui ille nocere uult, licet nihil commiserit, quia non quaeritur, i.e. non fit quaestio aut inquisitio legitima.' For fieri nocentem cp. Cic. Pis. 99 te ... metuentem uidebo ne reus fias, Sall. Jug. 35.7 fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex iure gentium Bomilcar, Sen. Med. 498f., Oed. 1019 nemo fit fato nocens. Our passage may be the source of HO 43ff. nec potest [sc. Alcides] fieri nocens. It has been suggested that fit nocens here is to be taken impersonally, 'one is declared guilty' (so Zwierlein, Gnomon xli (1969) 768); the constructions of this type cited by grammarians, however, are not similar enough to be convincing, cf. Wackernagel, Vorlesungen 1.111ff., P. Lejay, Rev. Phil. xl (1916) 155ff. Further, the other cases of fieri nocentem cited above all involve personal subjects. Only Düring has attempted to remove the syntactical oddity by emendation, and his sit nocens non quaeritur ( = non quaeritur an sit nocens) merely replaces it with another (see below on 404a, to which Düring appeals). One should perhaps think instead of reading fis (which might easily have been accommodated to the third person verbs nearby) or, alternatively, quem dominus odit fit nocens. The corruption is harder to explain in the second case, but ubi is a plausible Flickwort (cf. Oed. 517 etc.). (It is possible that nocens is subject, not complement, of fit: 'a criminal is made, not sought'; but this distinction does not stress the arbitrary use of power which Aegisthus is denouncing. Where fieri is so distinguished from nascor, as in Plin. N.H. 17.1 quae arte et humanis ingeniis fiunt uerius quam nascuntur, 35.30, Sen. Ira 2.10.6, Thy. 313f. ne mali fiant times? | nascuntur, Tert. Apol. 18.4, it denotes a conscious effort which is out of place here.)

We, of course, shared the night nursery, and we soon invented games together, some of which were distracting, not to say maddening, to grown-up people. One was an imaginary language in which even the word "Yes" was a trisyllable, namely: "Sheepartee," and the word for "No" was even longer and more complicated, namely: "Quiliquinino." We used to talk this language, which was called "Sheepartee," and which consisted of unmitigated gibberish, for hours in the nursery, till Hilly, Grace, and Annie could bear it no longer, and Everard came up one evening and told us the language must stop or we should be whipped.

Many whose actions are most disgraceful practise the best utterances.

πολλοὶ δρῶντες τὰ αἴσχιστα λόγους ἀρίστους ἀσκέουσιν.

Hence, whenever we take into our hands a letter from you, we first of all observe its length, and love it in proportion as it goes beyond the average in size. Then, as we read it, we take delight in every word that meets our eyes; but as we approach the end, we are sad.

ὥστε ὅταν λάβωμεν εἰς χεῖρας τὴν ἐπιστολήν σου, πρῶτον μὲν τὸ μέτρον αὐτῆς ἐπισκοποῦμεν, καὶ τοσοῦτον αὐτὴν ἀγαπῶμεν, ὅσῳπερ ἂν περισσεύῃ τῷ πλήθει. ἔπειτα διεξίοντες, τῷ μὲν ἀεὶ προστυγχάνοντι τοῦ λόγου χαίρομεν, τῷ τέλει δὲ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς προσεγγίζοντες, δυσχεραίνομεν.

Now in the morning Mass you do all that the race needs to do and has done for all these ages where religion was concerned; there you have the sacred and separate Enclosure, the Altar, the Priest in his Vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierarchic tongue, and all that your nature cries out for in the matter of worship.

To understand pre-Christian religious attitudes requires a great imaginative effort, and those who make it are commonly regarded as impostors by those who cannot. The intimate association of the gods with the fabric of ordinary Greek life is something which might be better understood by a Papuan than by a bishop, and perhaps best of all by the medieval Christian, whose humour was full of casual blasphemy²¹ and prompt to interweave the comic and the tremendous.²² The fact is that the Greek gods had human pleasures and understood laughter; at the right time and place they could take a joke.<sup>23

21</sup> P. Lehmann, Die Parodie im Mittelalter, München, 1922, pp. 39-40, 55-6, 208.

²² E.g. the persistent intrusion of comic elements in the Alsfeld Passion Play (ed. R. Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters vols. 2-3, Stuttgart, n.d.: cf. P. Scherer, Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, Berlin, 1883, pp. 247-8) or the comic treatment of Noah and his family in The Chester Pageant of the Deluge (ed. E. Rhys in Everyman and Other Interludes, London 1909); cf. G. Murray, Aristophanes, Oxford, 1933, p. 2.

²³ Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hellenen, Berlin, 1931, vol. 1, p. 43 and vol. 2, pp. 96-8; H. Kleinknecht, Die Gebetsparodie in der Antike, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1937, pp. 116-22.

And what else of Livy? Why, to conclude with: Livy having set it down in his histories that such and such things were certainly done, has, of course, been the butt of all our new criticism. He said that the French came over into Italy from the N.W., which is where you would expect them to come from. They still come over from that direction to-day. 'The Turinian Passes and the Doria' — for who (in the face of all the surroundings, the Ticino fighting, the proceeding onwards to the site of Milan) would accept the 'Juliae' reading? Eh? Thou nineteenth-century doubter? Thou Boche? Thou Pre-historic Ass? But our moderns are careful to explain that the French did nothing of the sort, but came over from the Germanies and by the Brenner and to the east thereof. In this, therefore, Livy is our brother, for he also is subject to being set right by dwarfs and to suffering the fantasies of fools.

[6] There the Alps stood over against them; and I for one do not wonder that they seemed insuperable, for as yet no road had led across them—as far back at all events as tradition reaches—unless one chooses to believe the stories about Hercules. [7] While they were there fenced in as it were by the lofty mountains, and were looking about to discover where they might cross, over heights that reached the sky, into another world, superstition also held them back, because it had been reported to them that some strangers seeking lands were beset by the Salui. [8] These were the Massilians, who had come in ships from Phocaea. The Gauls, regarding this as a good omen of their own success, lent them assistance, so that they fortified, without opposition from the Salui, the spot which they had first seized after landing. They themselves crossed the Alps through the Taurine passes and the pass of the Duria; [9] routed the Etruscans in battle not far from the river Ticinus, and learning that they were encamped in what was called the country of the Insubres, who bore the same name as an'Haeduan canton, they regarded it as a place of good omen, and founded a city there which they called Mediolanium.

[6] Alpes inde oppositae erant; quas inexsuperabiles visas haud equidem miror nulladum via, quod quidem continens memoria sit, nisi de Hercule fabulis credere 7 libet, superatas. [7] Ibi cum velut saeptos montium altitudo teneret Gallos circumspectarentque quanam per iuncta caelo iuga in alium orbem terrarum transirent, religio etiam tenuit quod allatum est advenas quae rentes agrum ab Saluum gente oppugnari. [8] Massilienses erant ii, navibus a Phocaea profecti. Id Galli fortunae suae omen rati adiuvere ut quem primum in terram egressi occupaverant locum patientibus Saluis communirent. Ipsi per Taurinos saltus <saltum>que Duriae Alpes transcenderunt; [9] fusisque acie Tuscis haud procul Ticino flumine, cum in quo consederant agrum Insubrium appellari audissent, cognominem Insubribus, pago Haeduorum, ibi omen sequentes loci condidere urbem; Mediolanium appellarunt.

8 saltumque Duriae Alpes scripsi, Madvigii uestigiis insistens qui saltus uallemque Duriae Alpes luculenter diuinauit: saltusque iuriae Alpes H (fort. recte si Duriae pro iuriae corriges): saltusque iuliae alte alpis PE?: saltusquae iuliae alte alpis FB (alpes F²): saltusque iuliae alta alpis Up: saltusque iuliae alpis Vorm. MOE² uel E³DLA (alpes M¹ uel M²): saltusque iulie alpes A²: saltusque inuiae Alpis Rhenan.

Sed restat dubitatio in nomine loci, quo Alpes Galli transierunt. Nam neque Alpem singulari numero Livius aut quisquam prosæ orationis scriptor dixit, ex quo sequitur Alpis accusativum esse, et Iuliæ Alpes longissime ab iis locis, de quibus agitur, distant. Itaque multa excogitata sunt, quæ substituerentur; sed ea omnia aut alia habent incommoda (— velut inviæ regionis significatio et prorsus post ea, quæ paulo ante dicta sunt, supervacanea est et nihil ad locum definiendum pertinet —) aut a codicum vestigiis longe discedunt, pleraque utroque in genere reprehenduntur. Quoniam nemo per populum aliquem Alpes transcendere recte dicitur, nedum, qui e Gallia veniat, per Taurinos, qui ab oriente Alpium habitant, necessario per Taurinos saltus coniungenda sunt. Itaque excidisse videtur nomen alterum ante que. In codicibus, qui momentum faciunt, (et fere ceteris quoque) id est, quod præscripsi, nisi quod P habet Iuliæ alte Alpis, litterarum geminatione ortum, H1 autem iuriæ Alpis, in quo veri vestigium servatum esse puto; Livium enim scripsisse suspicor: per Taurinos saltus vallemque Duriæ Alpes transcenderunt. Vallem significat Duriæ fluminis, per quam ab Alpibus Centronicis (le mont Cenis) ad Padum descenditur. Strabo IV p. 203 Duriam septentrionalem significare videtur, quoniam cum Salassis coniungit, sed quod Centrones commemorat et Druentiam e Gallica parte adversam e regione esse scribit, aperte ad meridianum amnem pertinet. Ea autem via Gallos transgressos esse, omnes consentiunt.

I took him into my own house and well entertained him
with proper hospitality, since there was abundance
in the house, and gave him presents of friendship, as was becoming.
I gave him seven talents of well-wrought gold, and I gave him
a mixing bowl made all of silver, with flowers wrought on it,
and twelve mantles to be worn single, as many blankets,
as many handsome cloaks, also the same number of tunics,
and aside from these four comely women, whose skill in handiwork
was without fault; and he could choose the ones that he wanted.

τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ πρὸς δώματ᾽ ἄγων ἐῢ ἐξείνισσα,
ἐνδυκέως φιλέων, πολλῶν κατὰ οἶκον ἐόντων,
καί οἱ δῶρα πόρον ξεινήϊα, οἷα ἐῴκει.
χρυσοῦ μέν οἱ δῶκ᾽ εὐεργέος ἑπτὰ τάλαντα,
δῶκα δέ οἱ κρητῆρα πανάργυρον ἀνθεμόεντα,        275
δώδεκα δ᾽ ἁπλοΐδας χλαίνας, τόσσους δὲ τάπητας,
τόσσα δὲ φάρεα καλά, τόσους δ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσι χιτῶνας,
χωρὶς δ᾽ αὖτε γυναῖκας, ἀμύμονα ἔργα ἰδυίας,
τέσσαρας εἰδαλίμας, ἃς ἤθελεν αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι.

People who think their daily lives too empty and monotonous easily become religious: this is understandable and forgivable; however, they have no right to demand religiosity from those whose daily life does not pass in emptiness and monotony.

Leute, welchen ihr tägliches Leben zu leer und eintönig vorkommt, werden leicht religiös: diess ist begreiflich und verzeihlich, nur haben sie kein Recht, Religiosität von Denen zu fordern, denen das tägliche Leben nicht leer und eintönig verfliesst.

Old sir, there is in you no lack of expertness in tending
your orchard; everything is well cared for, and there is never
a plant, neither fig tree nor yet grapevine nor olive
nor pear tree nor leek bed uncared for in your garden.

ὦ γέρον, οὐκ ἀδαημονίη σ᾽ ἔχει ἀμφιπολεύειν
ὄρχατον, ἀλλ᾽ εὖ τοι κομιδὴ ἔχει, οὐδέ τι πάμπαν,        245
οὐ φυτόν, οὐ συκέη, οὐκ ἄμπελος, οὐ μὲν ἐλαίη,
οὐκ ὄγχνη, οὐ πρασιή τοι ἄνευ κομιδῆς κατὰ κῆπον.

Apples

• Horse Apple
• Red June
• Grimes Golden
• Early Harvest
• Red Delicious
• Roman Beautiful
• Maiden Blush
• Transparant 
• Winter Banana
• Mammoth Blacktwig
• Arkansas Black
• Wine Sap
• Duchess
• Crabapple

Peaches

• Family Favorite
• Elberta
• Carmen
• Indian Peach
• Belle of Georgia

Plums

• Blue Damson
• Wild Goose

Tragical to think of: Every new generation is born to us direct out of Heaven; white as purest writing paper, white as snow;—everything we please can be written on it;—and our pleasure and our negligence is, To begin blotching it, scrawling, smutching and smearing it, from the first day it sees the sun: towards such a consummation of ugliness, dirt, and blackness of darkness, as is too often visible. Woe on us; there is no woe like this,—if we were not sunk in stupefaction, and had still eyes to discern or souls to feel it!

Just fancy, all these dumb and irrational animals those ever so great wise men made into gods for themselves! I was criticizing you when you were worshiping the image of a man; what am I to do with you, when you worship the image of a dog, the image of a snake, the image of a crocodile? Yes, they ended up with that sort of thing. The higher they were carried up to the heights in their search, the deeper they were plunged into the depths in their fall. What falls from a height, after all, sinks all the deeper.

Omnia quippe ista muta animalia et irrationabilia, illi quasi magni sapientes, deos sibi fecerunt. Reprehendebam, quando adorabas imaginem hominis: quid tibi faciam, quando adoras imaginem canis, imaginem colubri, imaginem crocodili? Pervenerunt usque ad ista. Quantum quaerentes in superna evecti sunt, tantum cadentes in profunda demersi sunt. Altius enim mergitur, quod de alto cadit.

Any spot for which a man's forebears have bled and died will forever be his homeland. Remember that.

I’m fed up with your talk.

taedet tui sermonis.

Then was it known that some god was their helper;
for straightway rushing on through the halls in their fury
they slew men left and right, and therefrom rose hideous groaning,
as heads were smitten, and all the floor swam with blood.

γνωτὸν δ᾽ ἦν ὅ ῥά τίς σφι θεῶν ἐπιτάρροθος ἦεν·
αὐτίκα γὰρ κατὰ δώματ᾽ ἐπισπόμενοι μένεϊ σφῷ
κτεῖνον ἐπιστροφάδην, τῶν δὲ στόνος ὤρνυτ᾽ ἀεικὴς
κράτων τυπτομένων, δάπεδον δ᾽ ἅπαν αἵματι θῦεν.·        185

Yet again, Livy is the father of those (good luck to them!) who write, and write, and write, and write, and write, and write, and write—and then go on writing. Whether he was compelled to do so or simply did it from wantonness, I know not; but, at any rate, he did it, and in this way may be regarded as the ancestor of those Fathers of the Church who produced so gigantic a volume of volumes that one would think they did nothing but dictate—which was, indeed, the case. Yes, even in their sleep.

Surely also Livy must have dictated. Had it become the fashion by his time? I don't know. At any rate, if he was not too prolix in style (and some say he was; God knows: I do not), he was exceedingly productive of thousands of words. I hope he got his price. This man Livy (I am beginning to grow enthusiastic) shovelled out work by the ton, and another literary fellow living a little after his time complained that his library was not large enough to house the total Livy. Take heart, therefore, you my fellow hacks, and when men jeer at you for writing and still writing, answer over your right shoulder: "Livy," and turn to the task again.

The mighty forest of syntax opened up its glades to exploration, adorned with its three monumental trees—the sturdy Accusative and Infinitive, the graceful Ablative Absolute, and the banyan-like and proliferating Ut and the Subjunctive. Beneath their roots lurked a horrid scrubby tangle of words beginning with u, q and n, and a nasty rabbit-warren of prepositions. There was also a horrid region, beset with pitfalls and mantraps, called Oratio Obliqua, into which one never entered without a shudder, and where, starting off from a simple Accusative and Infinitive, one tripped over sprawling dependent clauses and bogged one’s self down in the consecution of tenses, till one fell over a steep precipice into a Pluperfect Subjunctive, and was seen no more.

Who does not know history's first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?

nam quis nescit primam esse historiae legem ne quid falsi dicere audeat; deinde ne quid veri non audeat; ne quae suspicio gratiae sit in scribendo; ne quae simultatis?

But these schools may assume the merit of teaching all that they pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek languages: they deposit in the hands of a disciple the keys of two valuable chests; nor can he complain, if they are afterwards lost or neglected by his own fault. The necessity of leading in equal ranks so many unequal powers of capacity and application, will prolong to eight or ten years the juvenile studies, which might be despatched in half that time by the skilful master of a single pupil. Yet even the repetition of exercise and discipline contributes to fix in a vacant mind the verbal science of grammar and prosody: and the private or voluntary student, who possesses the sense and spirit of the classics, may offend, by a false quantity, the scrupulous ear of a well-flogged critic.

The Marist Brothers College, a Roman Catholic institution, conducted by French Fathers, provides classes in both English and French. It had 120 pupils in 1920 and 150 in 1925. There are four classes in the English Department, the lowest for children of nine years and the highest for children of fifteen. There are two classes in French, one for children of about ten years and the other for children of about thirteen. There are eight male teachers and two extra for Latin and Piano, engaged locally from local residents. The College has three terms a year, one of four and two of three month's duration. Summer vacation is two months, Christmas ten days and Easter ten days. There is no understanding with other institutions abroad to admit without examination. The fees range between $30 and $40 per term.

For there are many who scheme for wicked advantage.

πολλοὶ γὰρ κακὰ κέρδεα βουλεύουσιν.

Right schools were never more desirable than now. Nor ever more unattainable, by public clamouring and jargoning, than now.

They could see their bodies, they couldn't see their souls. But they could only see the body from the soul. I mean, they saw with their eyes, but inside there was someone looking out through these windows. Finally, when the occupant departs, the house lies still; when the controller departs, what was being controlled falls down; and because it falls down, it's called a cadaver, a corpse. Aren't the eyes complete in it? Even if they're open, they see nothing. There are ears there, but the hearer has moved on; the instrument of the tongue remains, but the musician who used to play it has withdrawn.

Videbant corpus, animam non videbant. Sed corpus nisi de anima non videbant. Videbant enim per oculum, sed intus erat qui per fenestras aspiciebat. Denique discedente habitatore, iacet domus: discedente qui regebat, cadit quod regebatur: et quoniam cadit, cadaver vocatur. Nonne ibi oculi integri? Etsi pateant, nihil vident. Aures adsunt; sed migravit auditor: linguae organum manet; sed abscessit musicus qui movebat.

TERT. resurr. 18,8 adeo cam est, quae morte subruitur, ut exinde a cadendo cadaver enuntietur (SERV. Aen. 6,481 caduci mortui, a cadendo: unde et cadavera dicta. SERV. auct. Aen. 11,143. HIER. in Matth. 24,28 I. 540. AUG. civ. 20,10 p. 432,29 D. 20,21 p. 461,24 D. AUG. serm. 241,2. AUG. quaest. hept. 3,20 p. 248,17. AUG. quaest. lev. 20,2. GREG. M. moral. 31,53. ISID. diff. 1,522. ISID. orig. 11,2,35).

First they bathed and put on their tunics,
and the women arrayed themselves, and the divine minstrel
took the hollow lyre and aroused in them the desire
of sweet song and goodly dance.
So the great hall resounded all about with the tread
of dancing men and of fair-girdled women.

πρῶτα μὲν οὖν λούσαντο καὶ ἀμφιέσαντο χιτῶνας,
ὅπλισθεν δὲ γυναῖκες· ὁ δ᾽ εἵλετο θεῖος ἀοιδὸς
φόρμιγγα γλαφυρήν, ἐν δέ σφισιν ἵμερον ὦρσε
μολπῆς τε γλυκερῆς καὶ ἀμύμονος ὀρχηθμοῖο.        145
τοῖσιν δὲ μέγα δῶμα περιστεναχίζετο ποσσὶν
ἀνδρῶν παιζόντων καλλιζώνων τε γυναικῶν.

In all this I have perhaps wearied you with my prattling and my idle talk, being afflicted with a sort of dullness of wit (for you see I have been praising myself, as Astydamas⁴ did).

⁴ An Athenian tragic poet of the middle of the fourth century B.C. He wrote a laudatory inscription to be carved upon a pedestal of a bust of himself which the people had voted in his honour, and Philemon the comic poet gibed at him in the line, σαυτὴν ἐπαινεῖς ὥσπερ Αστυδάμας ποτέ, "You praise yoursewlf, as Astydamas once did." See Philemon, frag. 190 (Kock), and Suidas, s.v. σαυτὸν ἐπαινεῖς.

ταῦτα ἴσως κατηδολέσχησά σου καὶ κατελήρησα, παθών τι βλακώδες· ἐπῄνεσα γὰρ ἐμαυτὸν ὥσπερ Αστυδάμας.

• Democritus on Self-Praise
• Delusions of Grandeur
• Praise of Ourselves
• Self-Praise

But there is more than that about ‘Tite-Live,’ as they call him over the water. There is the virile simplicity, the straightforwardness of his pen: very different from his successor, Tacit. There is the jolly jingoism of the fellow in which any honest man must, should and shall revel.

I had a long discussion some seven years ago, lasting far into the night, with the headmaster of one of the great public schools. The discussion turned upon a subject on which I was put down for a debate at the Cambridge Union that autumn—I forget for the moment whether for or against—to wit, ‘Whether the teaching of false history be not necessary to the State.’ Livy had no doubts. He was for the legend, first, last and all the time. He felt it in his bones that the greatness of Rome was to be supported by as much pro-Roman legend as he could manage—and he never faltered. He had the religion of patriotism—and I have known worse:

‘Et si cui populo licere oportet consecrare origines suas et ad Deos referre Auctores, ea belli gloria est populo Romano ut cum suum conditorisque sui parentem Martem potissimum ferat tam et hoc gentes humane patiantur aequo animo quam imperium patiuntur.’

If any people ought to be allowed to consecrate their origins and refer them to a divine source, so great is the military glory of the Roman People that when they profess that their Father and the Father of their Founder was none other than Mars, the nations of the earth may well submit to this also with as good a grace as they submit to Rome’s dominion.

The Bible itself has, in all changes of theory about it, this as its highest distinction, that it is the truest of all Books;—Book springing, every word of it, from the intensest convictions, from the very heart’s core, of those who penned it. And has not that been a “successful” Book? Did all the Paternoster-Rows of the world ever hear of one so “successful”! Homer’s Iliad, too, that great Bundle of old Greek Ballads, is nothing of a Fiction; it is the truest a Patriotic Balladsinger, rapt into paroxysm and enthusiasm for the honour of his native Country and native Parish, could manage to sing. To ‘sing,’ you will observe; always sings,—pipe often rusty, at a loss for metre (flinging-in his γε, μὲν, δὲ); a rough, laborious, wallet-bearing man; but with his heart rightly on fire, when the audience goes with him, and ‘hangs on him with greed’ (as he says they often do). Homer’s Iliad I almost reckon next to the Bible; so stubbornly sincere is it too, though in a far different element, and a far shallower.

Inasmuch as you're an old man, I think you're insane.

γέρων ἀνὴρ ὢν οὐχ ὑγιαίνειν μοι δοκεῖς.

You are both an old man and a fool.

καὶ σὺ γέρων εἶ καὶ μωρός.

Then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies of the slain,
and they, stretched all around him on the hard floor,
lay one upon the other; the sight would have warmed thy heart with cheer.

εὗρον ἔπειτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα μετὰ κταμένοισι νέκυσσιν
ἑσταόθ᾽· οἱ δέ μιν ἀμφί, κραταίπεδον οὖδας ἔχοντες,
κείατ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν· ἰδοῦσά κε θυμὸν ἰάνθης.

Varnish, varnish; if a thing have grown so rotten that it yawns palpable, and is so inexpressibly ugly that the eyes of the very populace discern it and detest it,—bring out a new pot of varnish, with the requisite supply of putty; and lay it on handsomely. Don’t spare varnish; how well it will all look in a few days, if laid on well! Varnish alone is cheap and is safe; avoid carpentering, chiselling, sawing and hammering on the old quiet House;—dry-rot is in it, who knows how deep; don’t disturb the old beams and junctures: varnish, varnish, if you will be blessed by gods and men! This is called the Constitutional System, Conservative System, and other fine names; and this at last has its fruits,—such as we see. Mendacity hanging in the very air we breathe; all men become, unconsciously or half or wholly-consciously,—liars to their own souls and to other men’s; grimacing, finessing, periphrasing, in continual hypocrisy of word, by way of varnish to continual past, present, future misperformance of thing:—clearly sincere about nothing whatever, except in silence, about the appetites of their own huge belly, and the readiest method of assuaging these. From a Population of that sunk kind, ardent only in pursuits that are low and in industries that are sensuous and beaverish, there is little peril of human enthusiasms, or revolutionary transports, such as occurred in 1789, for instance. A low-minded pecus all that; essentially torpid and ignavum, on all that is high or nobly human in revolutions.

The first thing that so arises in my mind, my ignorant mind, is the soft, suffused air of delight evoked by the word ‘Livy.’ It is one of the very few left of those idiomatic English names, transformed from the Latin, which we can still boast.

Our fathers used to call Cicero ‘Tully,’ and we still talk of Ovid and of Virgil and of Horace. But for the most part the Latin names have broken back upon our tradition and have re-established themselves. It is an evil and the symptom of an evil; for an idiomatic form given to classical names betrays a familiar and intimate knowledge with the work for which they stand: makes them part of the furniture of an English house.

Dear nurse, the gods have made thee mad, they who can
make foolish even one who is full wise,
and set the simple-minded in the paths of understanding;
it is they that have marred thy wits, though heretofore thou wast sound of mind.

μαῖα φίλη, μάργην σε θεοὶ θέσαν, οἵ τε δύνανται
ἄφρονα ποιῆσαι καὶ ἐπίφρονά περ μάλ᾽ ἐόντα,
καί τε χαλιφρονέοντα σαοφροσύνης ἐπέβησαν·
οἵ σέ περ ἔβλαψαν· πρὶν δὲ φρένας αἰσίμη ἦσθα.

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

ἔχοντες δὲ διατροφὰς καὶ σκεπάσματα, τούτοις ἀρκεσθησόμεθα.

What Paul means by “contentment/self-sufficiency” is described with an informal condition.⁴⁴ It boils down to the basics of life, “food”⁴⁵ and “clothing.”⁴⁶ On the other side of the conditional thought stands another term in the domain of self-sufficiency: “if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”⁴⁷ Thus Paul fills out his self-sufficiency concept.

This interpretation of “contentment” in terms of the essential items of life can be found in Jewish and Greek literature.⁴⁸ It had also found a place in the Jesus tradition (Matt 6:25; Luke 12:22) and church writings (Heb 13:5), and Paul may be more closely in touch with its adaptation in and through the early Christian movement.

In any case, in explanation of the proverbial saying in v. 7, Paul’s interpretation of contentment/self-sufficiency provides his perspective on material living. What he endorses is not poverty, but, as Marshall and Stott aptly point out, a simple lifestyle.⁴⁹

44. For the adverbial participle (here ἔχοντες, “having”) expressing condition, see BDF §418.2.2.

45. Gk. διατρoφή (only here in the NT); LXX 1 Macc 6:49; Josephus, Antiquities 2.88; BDAG.

46. Gk. σκέπασμα (“clothing,” as in Aristotle, Politics 1336a; Philo, That the Worse Is Wont to Attack the Better 19, or “shelter,” as in Aristotle, Metaphysics 1043a); in the context of this discussion of self-sufficiency, “clothing” (TNIV/NIV, NRSV) is the better sense.

47. Gk. ἀρκέω (fut. indic. pass.: “to be content”; Luke 3:14; Heb 13:5; cf. 2 Cor 12:9; LXX 2 Macc 5:15; 4 Macc 6:28); Josephus, Life, 244; for the term in philosophical thought, see G. Kittel, TDNT 1:464-66 (esp. 465); possibly imperatival in force (Kelly, 137; Roloff, 336).

48. Gen 28:20; Sir 29:21; Plutarch, Moralia 155D; see further Dibelius and Conzelmann, 85; see also references to αὐτάρκεια above.

49. Marshall, 649; Stott, 153.

By the common methods of discipline, at the expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax: and not long since I was possessed of the dirty volumes of Phaedrus and Cornelius Nepos, which I painfully construed and darkly understood. The choice of these authors is not injudicious.

The Lives of Cornelius Nepos, the friend of Atticus and Cicero, are composed in the style of the purest age: his simplicity is elegant, his brevity copious: he exhibits a series of men and manners; and with such illustrations, as every pedant is not indeed qualified to give, this classic biographer may initiate a young student in the history of Greece and Rome.

The use of fables or apologues has been approved in every age from ancient India to modern Europe: they convey in familiar images the truths of morality and prudence; and the most childish understanding (I advert to the scruples of Rousseau) will not suppose either that beasts do speak, or that men may lie. A fable represents the genuine characters of animals, and a skilful master might extract from Pliny and Buffon some pleasing lessons of natural history, a science well adapted to the taste and capacity of children. The Latinity of Phaedrus is not exempt from an alloy of the Silver age; but his manner is concise, terse and sententious: the Thracian slave discreetly breathes the spirit of a freeman; and when the text is sound, the style is perspicuous. But his fables, after a long oblivion, were first published by Peter Pithou from a corrupt manuscript. The labours of fifty editors confess the defects of the copy, as well as the value of the original; and a schoolboy may have been whipped for misapprehending a passage which Bentley could not restore, and which Burman could not explain.

These dead were destroyed by divine fate and their own
dastardly acts: they honored no mortals on this earth,
either high or low, of those that came among them,
and so through their wanton deeds they met a sorry end.

τούσδε δὲ μοῖρ᾽ ἐδάμασσε θεῶν καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα·
οὔ τινα γὰρ τίεσκον ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ὅτις σφέας εἰσαφίκοιτο·        415
τῷ καὶ ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ἀεικέα πότμον ἐπέσπον.

Knowing him how? From the things he made. Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air, amply spread around everywhere, question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays, question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land, that fly in the air; their souls hidden, their bodies evident; the visible bodies needing to be controlled, the invisible souls controlling them; question all these things. They all answer you, "Here we are, look; we're beautiful."

Unde cognoscentes? Ex his quae fecit. Interroga pulchritudinem terrae, interroga pulchritudinem maris, interroga pulchritudinem dilatati et diffusi aeris, interroga pulchritudinem coeli, interroga ordinem siderum, interroga solem fulgore suo diem clarificantem, interroga lunam splendore subsequentis noctis tenebras temperantem, interroga animalia quae moventur in aquis, quae morantur in terris, quae volitant in aere; latentes animas, perspicua corpora; visibilia regenda, invisibiles regentes: interroga ista, Respondent tibi omnia: Ecce vide, pulchra sumus.

Self-restraint is to mind one's own business.

σωφροσύνη ἂν εἴη τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν.

σωφροσύνη ἂν εἴη τὸ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν.

Now the choice has been set before you, either to fight me
or run, if any of you can escape death and its spirits.
But I think not one man will escape from sheer destruction.

νῦν ὑμῖν παράκειται ἐναντίον ἠὲ μάχεσθαι
ἢ φεύγειν, ὅς κεν θάνατον καὶ κῆρας ἀλύξῃ·
ἀλλά τιν᾽ οὐ φεύξεσθαι ὀΐομαι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον.

Shortly after his consecration as archbishop, Clemens publicly announced that on the first of April he would deliver a sermon in church. When the time came he climbed solemnly into the pulpit, bowed ceremoniously, made the sign of the cross, then suddenly shouted, "April fool!" and hastened out, shaking with mirth, amid a mocking tucket of trumpets and rattle of drums.

In this life you cannot be happy. Nobody can. You're seeking a good thing, but this earth just isn't the region for the good thing you're seeking. What are you seeking? A happy life. Well, it isn't to be found here.

If you were looking for gold in a place where it isn't to be found, someone who knows it's not to be found there would tell you, "What are you digging for? What are you messing up the ground for? You're making a hole you can go down, not one where you can find anything." What are you going to answer the person giving you this warning?

"I'm looking for gold."

"I'm not telling you," he says, "that what you're looking for is nothing. It's a good thing you're looking for, but it isn't to be found where you're looking."

So also, when you say, "I want to be happy," it's a good thing you're looking for, but it's not to be found here.

In hac vita beatus esse non potes. Nemo potest. Bonam rem quaeris, sed terra ista non est regio eius rei quam quaeris. Quid quaeris? Beatam vitam. Sed non est hic. Aurum si quaereres in eo loco ubi non est, ille qui novit quia non est ibi, non tibi diceret: Quid fodis? quid terram sollicitas? Fossam facis quo descendas, non ubi aliquid invenias. Quid es responsurus admonenti te? Aurum quaero. Et ille: Non tibi dico: Nihil est quod quaeris, bonam rem quaeris, sed non est ubi quaeris. Sic et tu quando dicis: Beatus esse volo, bonam rem quaeris, sed non est hic.

So many men so many minds, every one has his point of view.

quot homines tot sententiae: suos quoique mos.

For every thousand living souls, there are as many thousand tastes.

quot capitum vivunt, totidem studiorum / milia.

After all, men have not all the same tastes and likes.

denique non omnes eadem mirantur amantque.

There are as many characters in human hearts as there are shapes in the world.

pectoribus mores tot sunt, quot in orbe figurae.

orbe codd.: ore Bentley

There are a thousand types of humankind, and their experience of life is variegated—they each have their own desires and no single prayer fits every life.

mille hominum species et rerum discolor usus;
velle suum cuique est nec voto vivitur uno.

But in the human race one always finds
As many bodies, just so many minds.

ἡμῶν δ' ὅσα καὶ τὰ σώματ' ἐστὶ τὸν ἀριθμὸν
καθ' ἑνός, τοσούτους ἔστι καὶ τρόπους ἰδεῖν.

11 καθ' ἑνός codd.: καθ' ἕνα Meineke

Καθ' ἑνός is nonsense and Meineke suggested 'nonne καθ' ἕνα scribendum?' no doubt meaning it to go with what follows. The point is that, whereas all the animals of a species are alike, in the human race there are as many characters as individuals. Quot homines, tot ingenia. You find, taking men one by one (καθ' ἕνα) that each is different. Cf. the καθ' ἕνα in Philemon's remark on the nuisance of friendly questions as to how you are (M. 4, 15: Κ. 2, 490 [= fragment 47 Kassel and Austin]):

πολὺ μεῖζον ἐστὶ τοῦ κακῶς ἔχειν κακὸν
τὸ καθ ἕνα πᾶσι τοῖς ἐπισκοπουμένοις
δεῖν τὸν κακῶς ἔχοντα πῶς ἔχει λέγειν.

It's terrible when someone who's stupid thinks he's intelligent.

δεινὸν δ’ ὅταν τις μὴ φρονῶν δοκῇ φρονεῖν.

The Christian ought not to speak in a light vein. He ought not to make merry or tolerate merry-makers.

ὅτι οὐ δεῖ εὐτράπελα φθέγγεσθαι. ὅτι οὐ δεῖ γελᾷν οὐδὲ γελοιαστῶν ἀνέχεσθαι.

• Heraclitus the Agelast
• No Tittering
• Against Monastic Laughter
• Now Hear About Laughter
• No More Laughing, No More Fun
• Stop Laughing
• Don't Laugh
• Crassus Agelastus
• Did Adam Laugh Before the Fall?
• Against Laughter
• Agelasts
• Did Christ Ever Laugh?

This room gives off a smell for which our language has no special word; it can only be described as a boarding house smell. It smells stuffy, mouldy, rancid; it is chilly, clammy to breathe, permeates one's clothing; it leaves the stale taste of a room where people have been eating; it stinks of backstairs, scullery, workhouse. It could only be described if some process were invented for measuring the quantity of disgusting elementary particles contributed by each resident, young or old, from his own catarrhal and sui generis exhalations.

Cette première pièce exhale une odeur sans nom dans la langue, et qu'il faudrait appeler l'odeur de pension. Elle sent le renfermé, le moisi, le rance; elle donne froid, elle est humide au nez, elle pénètre les vêtements; elle a le goût d'une salle où l'on a dîné; elle pue le service, l'office, l'hospice. Peut-être pourrait-elle se décrire si l'on inventait un procédé pour évaluer les quantités élémentaires et nauséabondes qu'y jettent les atmosphères catarrhales et sui generis de chaque pensionnaire, jeune ou vieux.

It is wine that wounds thee, honey-sweet wine, which works harm to others too, if one takes it in great gulps, and drinks beyond measure.

οἶνός σε τρώει μελιηδής, ὅς τε καὶ ἄλλους
βλάπτει, ὃς ἄν μιν χανδὸν ἕλῃ μηδ᾽ αἴσιμα πίνῃ.

In brief, ours is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble along, thou insane scramble of a world, with thy pope’s tiaras, king’s mantles and beggar’s gabardines, chivalry-ribbons and plebeian gallows-ropes, where a Paul shall die on the gibbet and a Nero sit fiddling as imperial Cæsar; thou art all right, and shalt scramble even so; and whoever in the press is trodden down, has only to lie there and be trampled broad:—Such at bottom seems to be the chief social principle, if principle it have, which the Poor-Law Amendment Act has the merit of courageously asserting, in opposition to many things. A chief social principle which this present writer, for one, will by no manner of means believe in, but pronounce at all fit times to be false, heretical and damnable, if ever aught was!

This life, certainly, is miserable enough. Can anyone be unaware of that, can there be anyone who doesn't admit it? How much we have to put up with, how much we undergo in this life that we don't want to! Quarrels, disagreements, trials, mistaken judgments about one another, so that sometimes, unawares, we embrace an enemy, go in fear of a friend; where there's hunger, there's nakedness, there's cold, there's heat, there's weariness, there's illness, there's jealousy. Certainly this life is miserable enough.

Certe ista misera est: quis hoc nesciat, quis non fateatur? Quanta habemus, quanta patimur, quae nolumus, in ista uita! Rixae, dissensiones, temptationes, ignorantia cordis nostri in inuicem, ita ut aliquando nescientes amplectamur inimicum, timeamus amicum: ubi fames, ubi nuditas, ubi frigora, ubi aestus, ubi lassitudines, ubi aegritudines, ubi zelotipiae. Certe misera est haec uita.

Against Eunomius, the Heretic¹

He who says that it is possible to attain to a knowledge of things really existing has, no doubt, directed his process of thought by some method and orderly procedure having its inception in his actual knowledge of existing things, and, after he has trained himself by the comprehension of objects rather insignificant and easily understood, he has simply advanced his perceptive faculty to the apprehension of that which is beyond all understanding.

Let him, therefore, who boasts that he has arrived at a knowledge of things actually existing explain the nature of the most trifling of visible objects. Let him expound the nature of the ant. Is its life sustained by breath and respiration? Is its body provided with bones? Is its framework braced with sinews and ligaments? Is the position of the sinews held secure by the covering of muscles and glands? Is the marrow stretched along the spinal vertebrae from the front of the head to the tail? Does it give the stimulating force to the members which have motion by its covering of sinewy membrane? Does it have a liver and a gall bladder near the liver; also kidneys, a heart, arteries and veins, membranes and cartilage? Is it hairless or covered with hair? Has it an uncloven hoof, or feet divided into toes? How long does it live? What is its manner of reproduction? How long is the period of gestation? And how is it that all ants are not merely crawling insects, nor all winged, but some belong to those which travel on the ground and others fly through the air? To begin with, therefore, let him who boasts of the knowledge of things actually existing explain the nature of the ant. Then let him investigate in the same manner the nature of the power which surpasses every intellect. But, if you have not yet, by your investigation, understood the nature of the smallest ant, how can you boast that the incomprehensible power of God is clear to your mind?

1 Eunomius was the hishop of Cyzicus against whose Liber Apologeticus St. Basil wrote his Adversus Eunomium. However, this letter is similar almost word for word to a passage in the tenth book of St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise against Eunomius written in 380 or 381. F. Diekamp, 'Ein angehlicher Brief des hl. Basilius gegen Eunomius,' Theologische Quartalschrift 77 (1895) 277-285, considers it the work of St. Gregory. Bessières, op. cit. 349, also thinks that it is not by St. Basil.

If you want to write invective and have found a subject who thoroughly deserves it, first, get mad; while furious, boil up the ideas and the crushing descriptions and the lava-flow of invective. Then calm down. Cool off. Reduce them to some form which will overwhelm your opponent: either a single phrase, or a double blast of heat, or an overpowering flow of rhetoric which will shrivel him to a cinder.

Yet I laugh, and am glad with a witless mind.

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ γελόω καὶ τέρπομαι ἄφρονι θυμῷ.

'In our time the destiny of man presents its
meanings in political terms.' — THOMAS MANN.

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.

There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,
Wealth—Vice—Corruption,—Barbarism at last.

Not predestined for knowledge.— There is a stupid humility that is not at all rare, and those afflicted with it are altogether unfit to become devotees of knowledge. As soon as a person of this type perceives something striking, he turns on his heel, as it were, and says to himself: "You have made a mistake. What is the matter with your senses? This cannot, may not, be the truth." And then, instead of looking and listening again, more carefully, he runs away from the striking thing. as if he had been intimidated, and tries to remove it from his mind as fast as he can. For his inner canon says: "I do not want to see anything that contradicts the prevalent opinion. Am I called to discover new truths? There are too many old ones, as it is."

Nicht zur Erkenntniss vorausbestimmt.— Es giebt eine gar nicht seltene blöde Demüthigkeit, mit der behaftet man ein für alle Mal nicht zum Jünger der Erkenntniss taugt. Nämlich: in dem Augenblick, wo ein Mensch dieser Art etwas Auffälliges wahrnimmt, dreht er sich gleichsam auf dem Fusse um und sagt sich: „Du hast dich getäuscht! Wo hast du deine Sinne gehabt! Diess darf nicht die Wahrheit sein!“—und nun, statt noch einmal schärfer hinzusehen und hinzuhören, läuft er wie eingeschüchtert dem auffälligen Dinge aus dem Wege und sucht es sich so schnell wie möglich aus dem Kopfe zu schlagen. Sein innerlicher Kanon nämlich lautet: „Ich will Nichts sehen, was der üblichen Meinung über die Dinge widerspricht! Bin ich dazu gemacht, neue Wahrheiten zu entdecken? Es giebt schon der alten zu viele.“

Finally he stretched out his hand with the palm upwards, and then, turning it downwards, declared that he would overturn the city in the same way.

τέλος ὑπτίαν τὴν χεῖρα δείξας, εἶτ᾽ αὖθις καταστρέψας ἠπείλησε τοιαύτην οὖσαν αὐτῷ τὴν πόλιν τοιαύτην ποιήσειν.

Look not thou on beauty's charming,—
Sit thou still when kings are arming,—
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,—
Speak not when the people listens,—
Stop thine ear against the singer,—
From the red gold keep thy finger,—
Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,—
Easy live and quiet die.

Prose, for example, was for him simply less enchanting than verse: he once claimed that reading Plato gave him a headache, and it is not easy to know exactly what sort of joke that was.

I have eyes and I have ears, and I have both my feet,
and a mind inside my breast which is not without understanding.

εἰσί μοι ὀφθαλμοί τε καὶ οὔατα καὶ πόδες ἄμφω
καὶ νόος ἐν στήθεσσι τετυγμένος οὐδὲν ἀεικής.

Nothing, after all, is so certain for anyone and everyone as death. Start at the beginning. People are conceived; perhaps they come to birth, perhaps they don't. They are born; perhaps they grow up, perhaps they don't. Perhaps they go to school, perhaps they don't; perhaps they marry, perhaps they don't; perhaps they'll have children, perhaps they won't; perhaps they'll have good ones, perhaps they'll have bad ones; perhaps they'll have good wives or husbands, perhaps bad ones; perhaps they'll be rich, perhaps they'll be poor; perhaps they will be of no account, perhaps they will be highly honored. Among all the other things, can this be said about them: "Perhaps they'll die, perhaps they won't"? So, every single person born falls into a disease, from which nobody born can escape. They all die of it, in the way in which one is in the habit of saying, "He's got dropsy, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it; he's riddled with elephantiasis, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it." So: "He's riddled with birth, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it."

Nihil enim tam certum est homini quam mors. Incipe ab initio. Conceptus est homo Nihil tam certum in utero: forte nascitur, forte non nascitur. Iam natus est: forte crescit, forte non crescit: forte discit literas, forte non discit literas: forte ducit uxorem, forte non ducit: forte habebit filios, forte non habebit: forte bonos habebit, forte malos habebit: forte bonam uxorem habebit, forte malam habebit: forte diues erit, forte pauper erit: forte ignobilis erit, forte honoratus erit. Numquid inter haec potest dici, Forte morietur, forte non morietur? Ergo omnis homo natus aegritudinem incidit, de qua nullus euadet natus. Moritur inde, quo modo solet dici. Ydrops est: necesse est moriatur, nemo inde euadet. Elefantiosus est: necesse est moriatur, nemo inde euadet. Natus est: necesse est moriatur, nemo inde euadet.

You used to write us little enough, but now you do not write even that little; and if your brevity keeps increasing with the time, it seems likely to become complete speechlessness. Therefore return to your old custom, for I shall never again find fault with you for practising Laconic brevity on me by letter. Nay, even your little letters, seeing that they are tokens of magnanimity, I shall value highly. Only write to me.

ἔγραφες ἡμῖν πρότερον μὲν ὀλίγα, νῦν δὲ οὐδὲ ὀλίγα· καὶ ἔοικεν ἡ βραχυλογία προϊοῦσα τῷ χρόνῳ παντελὴς γίνεσθαι ἀφωνία. ἐπάνελθε τοίνυν ἐπὶ τὸ ἔθος, ὡς οὐκ ἔτι σοι μεμψόμεθα λακωνίζοντι πρὸς ἡμᾶς διὰ γραμμάτων· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ μικρὰ γράμματα, σύμβολα ὄντα τῆς μεγάλης σου διαθέσεως, πολλοῦ ἄξια ποιησόμεθα. μόνον ἐπίστελλε ἡμῖν.

I have not heard from you for a long time, and you say you have nothing to write about. Well, you can at least write that—or else simply the phrase our elders used to start a letter with: "If you are well, well and good; I am well." That will do for me—it is all that matters. Don't think I am joking; I mean it. Let me know how you are; if I don't know I can't help worrying a lot.

olim mihi nullas epistulas mittis. nihil est, inquis, quod scribam. at hoc ipsum scribe, nihil esse quod scribas, vel solum illud unde incipere priores solebant: "si vales, bene est; ego valeo." hoc mihi sufficit; est enim maximum. ludere me putas? serio peto. fac sciam quid agas, quod sine sollicitudine summa nescire non possum. vale.

"Only if you repent will God show you grace — that would strike a Greek as ridiculous and annoying. He would say: "Maybe slaves feel that way."

„Nur wenn du bereuest, ist Gott dir gnädig“ — das ist einem Griechen ein Gelächter und ein Aergerniss: er würde sagen „so mögen Sclaven empfinden“.

Father Zeus, no god beside is more baleful than you are.
You have no pity on men, once you yourself have created
them; you bring them into misfortune and dismal sufferings.

Ζεῦ πάτερ, οὔ τις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος·
οὐκ ἐλεαίρεις ἄνδρας, ἐπὴν δὴ γείνεαι αὐτός,
μισγέμεναι κακότητι καὶ ἄλγεσι λευγαλέοισιν.

201-3. Zeus ‘begets’ (γείνεαι) men metaphorically, as in the stock formula that calls him πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, ‘father of men and gods’. But more may be implied by the combination of ὀλοώτερος and γείνεαι both said of the chief deity. W. Burkert (personal corresp., 1 Nov. 1989) suggests that this may be the first Greek testimony for the antithesis γίγνεσθαι-ὄλλυσθαι, and finds in the Greek wording an echo of a proverbial expression ‘do not destroy what you have created’, addressed to a chief divinity in a number of Mesopotamian and Old Testament texts: Enuma Elish 1,45 (Tiamat to her husband Apsu), ‘Why should we, what we have created, destroy?’; ‘Enlil, my master, do not destroy what you have created’ in a Babylonian fable (W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford, 1960), 190-1); Job 10:8 (Job to Yahweh), ‘Your hands have formed and made me; and yet you do destroy me’; Psalms 138:8, ‘What your hands have made, do not forsake’.

203. μισγέμεναι: the infinitive is governed by οὐκ ἐλεαίρεις, with the sense ‘you don’t pity men their mixing with ill fortune and dreadful suffering’. ἄνδρας is first object of ἐλεαίρεις and then subject of μισγέμεναι.

Consider, then, all over Greece, the ways of politicians.
While poverty is all they have, they treat their cities justly.
Yet once they’ve filched the public funds, their justice disappears:
They plot against the masses then and try to harm the people.

σκέψαι τοίνυν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν τοὺς ῥήτορας, ὡς ὁπόταν μὲν
ὦσι πένητες, περὶ τὸν δῆμον καὶ τὴν πόλιν εἰσὶ δίκαιοι,
πλουτήσαντες δ' ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν παραχρῆμ' ἄδικοι γεγένηνται,
ἐπιβουλεύουσί τε τῷ πλήθει καὶ τῷ δήμῳ πολεμοῦσιν.

As soon as they had had their fill and regaled themselves on your property, they came to regard themselves as not being part of the Athenian community. Once they get rich, they hate you, and make plans to be no longer your servants but your rulers; fearing for their ill-gotten gains, they are ready to occupy strongholds, establish an oligarchy, and do everything to put you in a state of the utmost danger day after day.

οὕτως, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ἐπειδὴ τάχιστα ἐνεπέπληντο καὶ τῶν ὑμετέρων ἀπέλαυσαν, ἀλλοτρίους τῆς πόλεως αὑτοὺς ἡγήσαντο. ἅμα γὰρ πλουτοῦσι καὶ ὑμᾶς μισοῦσι, καὶ οὐκέτι ὡς ἀρξόμενοι παρασκευάζονται ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ὑμῶν ἄρξοντες, καὶ δεδιότες ὑπὲρ ὧν ἀφῄρηνται ἕτοιμοί εἰσι καὶ χωρία καταλαμβάνειν καὶ ὀλιγαρχίαν καθιστάναι καὶ πάντα πράττειν ὅπως ὑμεῖς ἐν τοῖς δεινοτάτοις κινδύνοις καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἔσεσθε.

So there's nothing praiseworthy about just keeping awake, because burglars too keep awake; but with the intention of taking advantage of sleeping husbands, and getting at their wives under the pimping cover of night.⁴ The practitioners of magic arts also keep awake; but with the intention of serving demons, and committing abominations with their help. It would take too long, and be quite unnecessary to run through all the reasons vicious people have for keeping awake. But let me also refer you to a number of perfectly innocent reasons for doing so, craftsmen keep awake, so do farmers, sailors, fishermen, travelers, merchants, managers of all sorts of businesses, judges, counselors, buyers and sellers of literary learning, persons in authority, persons under authority, people engaged in any kind of trade or industry in which human life can be spent; but all with the intention of ensuring that the earth is inhabited more conveniently and decently by inhabitants who are going to pass on with the speed of light.⁵

4. Lenocinante nocte, a telling phrase. It is very odd that he should ascribe this aim to burglars, latrones. I think he must have inadvertently left out a phrase or two, having perhaps first learned his sermon by heart—this would support my hunch of an early date. He must surely have originally intended to say that burglars keep awake with the intention of burgling, and adulterers—or perhaps pimps, lenones—with the intention of seducing other men's wives. But, no doubt being himself rather sleepy, he jumped from the first "with the intention of," eo fine ut, to the second. Or it could be that the eye of a copyist jumped from latrones; sed eo fine ut ... to lenones; sed eo fine ut ... See Sermon 223J, note 2, below.

5. He actually says celeritate vaporea. But "with the speed of steam" would sound ridiculous in English—even though "with the speed of light" is perhaps just a little too quick for what Augustine had in mind.

Non ergo uigilare laudabile est. Nam uigilant et latrones; sed eo fine ut insidiantes somno maritorum ad eorum coniuges lenocinante nocte perueniant. Vigilant et magicarum artium sectatores; sed eo fine ut daemonibus seruiant et eorum auxilio nefanda committant. Longum est et non necessarium omnium sceleratorum commemorare uigilias. Sed, ut de quibusdam uigiliis etiam innocentibus loquar, uigilant opifices, agricolae, nautae, piscatores, uiatores, mercatores, quarumque rerum administratores, iudices, causidici, litterarum emptores et uenditores, potestate praediti, potestatibus subditi, et quidquid est artium uel industriae quo humana uita transigitur; sed eo fine ut terra ab [a]duenis suis celeritate uaporea transituris vel commodius vel decentius incolatur.