Laudator Temporis Acti

As to the senate, he ceased not to encourage it in opposing the law: they must go down into the Forum, when the day should arrive for voting on it, in no other spirit than that of men who realized that they had to fight for hearth and home, for the temples of their gods, and for the soil of their birth.

senatum vero incitare adversus legem haud desistebat: ne aliter descenderent in forum, cum dies ferendae legis venisset, quam ut qui meminissent sibi pro aris focisque et deum templis ac solo in quo nati essent dimicandum fore.

aris focisque: 28.42.11, often appealed to by Cicero in patriotic outbursts of emotion (Phil. 2.72; in Catil. 4.24; cf. Sallust, Catil. 52.3, 59.5; see Otto, Sprichwörter s.v.). Strictly both arae and foci refer to domestic worship (Nisbet on de Domo 1)—'the altars on the hearth of the house'. There is no evidence of separate altars in private houses distinct from the hearths.

When asked why he had decided to enlist in the Artists' Rifles in 1915, Edward Thomas stopped, picked up a pinch of earth, and said, 'Literally, for this.'<sup>58

58</sup> Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (Oxford, 1958; repr. 1979), p. 154.

• Things Worth Fighting For (Cicero)
• Battle Cry

As I follow events, there's a skunk been let loose in the world, and the odour of it is going to make life none too sweet till it is cleared away. It wasn't us that stirred up that skunk, but we've got to take a hand in disinfecting the planet. See?

I've never, on any day, laughed as much,
nor do I think I will laugh more during all the rest of my life.

numquam ecastor ullo die risi adaeque,
neque hoc quod relicuom est plus risuram opinor.

Thus one sees, when the fine months return,
our ladies of Blois or Orleans, or Tours, or Amboise,
walking along the banks where Loire sings
with her breaking wavelets; on the green banks,
pacing two by two, their breasts displayed,
their neckwear loosened, they tread the
enamelled Spring grass as they follow the river.

Ainsy qu'on voit au retour des beaux moys
Se promener ou nos Dames de Blois
Ou d'Orléans, ou de Tours, ou d'Amboise,
Dessus la grève ou Loire se degoise
A flot rompu; elles sur le bord vert
Font deux à deux au tétin decouvert,
Au collet lasche, et joignant la rivière
Foulent l'émail de l'herbe printanière.

It's like Sparta: they're expelling foreigners, and punches have started flying pretty thick and fast all over town.

                   ὥσπερ ἐν Λακεδαίμονι
ξενηλατοῦσι καὶ κεκίνηνταί τινες.
πληγαὶ συχναὶ κατ᾿ ἄστυ.

1013 ξενηλατοῦσι Elmsley: ξενηλατοῦνται codd.: ξενηλατοῦμεν Dindorf
κεκίνηνταί codd.: κἀκκεκίνηνταί Blaydes
1014 πληγαὶ συχναὶ codd.: πληγαῖς συχναῖς Luck

One entered the château from the village side, under the view of two towers, part of a medieval defensive system which served Louis de Ronsard as a quarry for his new buildings. The Middle Ages had based their architecture on fear, not on display. Even in the new Renaissance manor, fear showed its blind face. The outer wall of La Possonnière had few apertures or none at all; there was no need to tempt an enemy with a crossbow or a blazing torch. One passed into the interior court through a low, wide gate surmounted by a Gothic arch and by a single story with its rooms.

One stood then in a rectangular space, securely walled on four sides. The forbidding face of the exterior was not needed here. The builder could indulge his fancy, and make a home for happy people in security. On the north side rose the main building, the quarters of the Ronsard family. It was, and is today, a graceful and comely structure, ornamented with the Italian elegance Louis de Ronsard loved. Enormous windows, symbols of Renaissance enlightenment, open to the southern sun. The grace of the façade is marred, but the charm of incongruousness is enhanced, by a pentagonal medieval tower, out-topping the roof-line, and bearing, beneath its crown, a richly ornamented Renaissance window. The old tower peers abroad like an ancient bedizened patrician of Antonio Moro or Titian.

At the base of the tower opens a narrow door giving access to the spiral staircase contained within. Over the door is an elaborately carved Italian lintel, with the inscribed dedication of the house: VOLVPTATI ET GRATIIS, to pleasure and the Graces. A shield, a part of the decoration, bears the arms of the Ronsards, three entwined fish called rosses, the English red-eye or rudd.

The high window in the tower has the inscription: DOMÎ OCUL. LONGE SPEC., for Domini oculus longe speculatur, the master's eye sees far. Between two of the windows of the facade is carved a wild rose bush, licked by flames, to signify ronce ard, the brambles burn, a punning derivation of the master's name. Elsewhere on the facade the eye catches the words: AVANT PARTIR, before we depart; and RESPICE FINEM, look to the end; and VERITAS FILIA TEMPORIS, truth the daughter of time; and DNE CONCERVA ME, God save me. Here was matter for a child to spell and meditate upon.

The east side of the courtyard was formed by one or those natural, nearly perpendicular walls common in the Vendômois, where ancient streams have cut and quarried the soft tufa underlying all the region. In this yielding stone Louis, or some Ronsard before him, dug a series of eight caves. Each is marked by an appropriate motto. The first is surcharged, LA BVANDERIE BELLE, the pretty laundry; the second, LA FOVRIERE, the hay-loft, with two hay-bundles grossly carved; the third, VVLCANO ET DILIGENTIAE, to Vulcan and diligence, with three kettles to make the meaning clear; the fourth, VINA BARBARA, vins ordinaires, or possibly, wines from afar, superior wines; the fifth, a jug and two glasses, and CVI DES VIDETO, look well to whom thou givest, an ungenerous motto for the storage-place of delicacies; the sixth, CVSTODIA DAPVM, the food-cellar; the seventh, mysteriously, SVSTINE ET ABSTINE, bear and forbear, Epictetus's counsel, perhaps addressed ironically to prisoners whom the cavern quartered; and the eighth, TIBI SOLI GLORIA, to Thee alone the glory, the sign of a chapel or oratory.

The south side of the court consisted of farm-buildings, which have now disappeared. In the southwest angle stood a small chapel. The west side was closed by a crenelated wall, with a continuous step along its top, for communication or for defense.

Of the interior of the manor-house, not much has survived an outrageous century, from about 1750 to 1850, when the building served as farmers' quarters. There is the noble fireplace of the great hall, all carved stone up to the lofty ceiling, and the masterpiece of Louis de Ronsard's Italian sculptors. Viol and lute, the attributes of poetry, enclose the main panel, which represents the burning wild rose bushes of the Ronsards. Out of the flame emerges the family shield, and the confident device: NON FALVNT FVTVRA MERENTEM, the future shall not fail the well-deserving. Above, a stone banner sown with fleurs-de-lis, surrounding the shield of France. And over all, the escutcheons of forty families allied to the master's line.

In the room which was apparently Louis de Ronsard's office and study is another carven fireplace, with cupids, stars, suns, heraldic beasts, viols, and lutes, and the device: NYQVIT NYMIS, dog-Latin for the ancient rule, nothing in excess.

Faugh, faugh! It stinks when you speak.

fy fy! foetet tuos mi sermo.

O Zeus!
Can't you leave me,
unless you want me
to vomit today?

ὦ Ζεῦ,
potin a med abeas,
nisi me vis
vomere hodie?

From the earliest representations in Roman art, a horse-whip (scutica) is a standard attribute of Sol. The scutica typically consists of an arm-length rod to which a single cord, or leather thong, is attached at one end. The whip logically refers to Sol’s role as charioteer of the solar chariot, and as such also occurs when Sol is represented as a standing figure or as a bust. The whip is not unique to Sol, as it is also is an attribute of Luna, but no other deities have a whip as a standard part of their iconography. Thus, when any other male deity is depicted with a whip, this often can be taken as a reference to Sol.

As I came into Flavigny I saw at once that it was a place on which a book might easily be written, for it had a church built in the seventeenth century, when few churches were built outside great towns, a convent, and a general air of importance that made of it that grand and noble thing, that primary cell of the organism of Europe, that best of all Christian associations — a large village.

I say a book might be written upon it, and there is no doubt that a great many articles and pamphlets must have been written upon it, for the French are furiously given to local research and reviews, and to glorifying their native places; and when they cannot discover folk-lore they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it.

Flavigny then, I say (for I seem to be digressing), is a long street of houses all built together as animals build their communities. They are all very old, but the people have worked hard since the Revolution, and none of them are poor, nor are any of them very rich. I saw but one gentleman's house, and that, I am glad to say, was in disrepair. Most of the peasants' houses had, for a ground floor, cavernous great barns out of which came a delightful smell of morning — that is, of hay, litter, oxen, and stored grains and old wood; which is the true breath of morning, because it is the scent that all the human race worth calling human first meets when it rises, and is the association of sunrise in the minds of those who keep the world alive: but not in the wretched minds of townsmen, and least of all in the minds of journalists, who know nothing of morning save that it is a time of jaded emptiness when you have just done prophesying (for the hundredth time) the approaching end of the world, when the floors are beginning to tremble with machinery, and when, in a weary kind of way, one feels hungry and alone: a nasty life and usually a short one.

To return to Flavigny. This way of stretching a village all along one street is Roman, and is the mark of civilisation. When I was at college I was compelled to read a work by the crabbed Tacitus on the Germans, where, in the midst of a deal that is vague and fantastic nonsense and much that is wilful lying, comes this excellent truth, that barbarians build their houses separate, but civilised men together. So whenever you see a lot of red roofs nestling, as the phrase goes, in the woods of a hillside in south England, remember that all that is savagery; but when you see a hundred whitewashed houses in a row along a dead straight road, lift up your hearts, for you are in civilisation again.

[1] It is well known that none of the German tribes live in cities, that even individually they do not permit houses to touch each other: they live separated [2] and scattered, according as spring-water, meadow, or grove appeals to each man: they lay out their villages not, after our fashion, with buildings contiguous and connected; everyone keeps a clear space round his house...

[1] nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis notum est, ne pati quidem inter se iunctas sedes. colunt discreti [2] ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit. vicos locant non in nostrum morem conexis et cohaerentibus aedificiis: suam quisque domum spatio circumdat...

Leopold and Wolfgang by sheer chance arrived too late to take the seats reserved for them on one of the temporary scaffoldings, which collapsed as soon as they had been given a place among courtiers on a balcony. More than fifty people were killed.

But in matters of so great antiquity I should be content if things probable were to be received as true: this story, more fit to be displayed on the stage, that delights in wonders, than to be believed, it is worth while neither to affirm nor to refute.

sed in rebus tam antiquis si quae similia veri sint pro veris acci­piantur, satis habeam: haec ad ostentationem scaenae gaudentis miraculis aptiora quam ad fidem neque adfirmare neque refellere est operae pretium.

Personally I am content, as a historian, if in things which happened so many centuries ago probabilities are accepted as truth; this tale, which is too much like a romantic stage-play to be taken seriously, I feel is hardly worth attention either for affirmation or denial.

But in matters of such antiquity, I would be content if things that are like the truth are taken as being true. These events are more appropriate to be displayed on the stage, which rejoices in miracles, than to be believed. Nor is there any return for the effort of affirming or refuting them.

“Have you read all of Nietzsche?”

He was looking at the bookcase right behind the man. All of Nietzsche’s works, including the famous Thus Spoke Zarathustra, along with collections of his letters, were lined up inside the glass case.

“I like Nietzsche, too,” he added.

“There are people all over the world who claim to like Nietzsche,” replied the man, without lifting his head from his book. “However, there are very few people who say this after having read all his work. They’ve seen the odd quotation or some watered-down, abridged version. They try Nietzsche on for size like some fashionable overcoat. Are you one of those, too?”

The learner who attacks the play with this commentary will find unfailing help by the way and acquire much information before his journey's end. The old miserable experiences of the classical student who wants to understand what he reads, his lonely fights with difficulties whose presence the editor has never apprehended, his fruitless quest of a meaning in notes where the editor has rendered Greek nonsense into English nonsense and gone on his way rejoicing, are not repeated.

When Mr. Tucker's [approximately 200] conjectures are not palaeographically improbable they are apt to be causeless and even detrimental. Among the axioms assumed in the preface are the following: 'the reading in the text must hold its place until such cause to the contrary can be shewn as will satisfy a rigidly impartial tribunal. The onus probandi lies entirely with the impugner of the text.' 'The conditions of dispossession are these. It must either be proved that the reading is an impossibility, or else that in point of grammar it is so abnormal, or in point of relevance so manifestly inappropriate, as to produce a thorough conviction that the MS. is in error.' I for my part should call this much too strict; but these are Mr. Tucker's principles. His practice is something quite different: in practice no word, however good, is safe if Mr. Tucker can think of a similar word which is not much worse.

Here I have given proofs enough of the disasters which attend us when we desist from the pursuit of truth to follow after our own inventions. Thus much it was necessary to say, because the many students who will I hope resort to this edition for help and instruction must be warned that they will find not only what they seek but also a good deal which they are not to believe. The book however in spite of its faults the most useful edition of the Supplices we have. The purely explanatory part of the commentary does not contain very much that is absolutely new, and this is well; for it is really a far more venturesome thing, if critics would but understand it, to propose a new rendering than a new reading.

We know nothing in reality; for truth lies in an abyss.

ἐτεῇ δὲ οὐδὲν ἴδμεν· ἐν βυθῷ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια.

So my youth has reached its end!
I've no store of strength to spend,
My head is white, my teeth are black;
Thin red water in my veins
Warms me little, nor sustains
Sinews dissolute and slack.

Adieu, my lyre; adieu, my dears,
Darling girls of careless years,
Adieu; my frolic days have fled,
And after all youth's jubilee,
There's nothing now will comfort me
But a good fire, and wine, and bed.

Ma douce jouvence est passée,
Ma première force est cassée;
J'ai la dent noire et le chef blanc;
Mes nerfs sont dissous, et mes veines,
Tant j'ai le corps froid, ne sont pleines
Que d'une eau rousse en lieu de sang.

Adieu ma lyre! adieu fillettes,
Jadis mes douces amourettes!
Adieu, je sens venir ma fin;
Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse
Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse
Que le feu, le lit et le vin.

• Ronsard, Odes IV.13
• Ronsard, Odes 4.13

KINGS OF MACEDON: Antigonos II Gonatas, 277-239 BCE, AE16. 3.63g, 16mm. Obv: Helmeted head of Athena right. Rev: Pan right, erecting trophy to right; B-A across upper field, monogram of Antigonos between legs. Moushmov 7308. Lovely depiction of Athena. The introduction of the Pan types under Antigonos II is much discussed. The most popular view is that Antigonos wished to associate himself with the expulsion of the Gauls from Greece after their massive invasion in 279 BCE, an event that carried huge significance for his contemporaries. Antigonos wished to be seen as "the shield of Greece" rather than its overlord. The story went that Pan helped rout the Gauls at Delphi by instilling in them an unreasoning fear (thus the word "panic"). Antigonos certainly participated in the expulsion of Gallic forces from Greece, especially at Lysimacheia. Another possible connection is with the confusion and fear that helped Antigonos defeat Pyrrhos's Gallic forces in a battle that ended the contest for Macedon's throne with the death of Pyrrhos himself. Pyrrhos's Gauls had desecrated royal tombs at Aegae, and Pyrrhos had betrayed Argos where the battle took place; so Antigonos could again portray himself as the saviour of Hellas. Whatever the exact reason for the Pan types, it's clear that Pan experienced a surge of popularity in the third century BCE and that Antigonos regarded the god as his patron.

I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East...

Life and the world's too fragmented for me!
A German professor can give me the key.
He puts life in order with skill magisterial,
Builds a rational system for better or worse;
With nightcap and dressing-gown scraps as material
He chinks up the holes in the Universe.

Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben!
Ich will mich zum deutschen Professor begeben.
Der weiß das Leben zusammenzusetzen,
Und er macht ein verständlich System daraus;
mit seinen Nachtmützen und Schlafrockfetzen
Stopft er die Lücken des Weltenbaus.

The evils which afflict us are well known, even if we do not now mention them, for long since have they been re-echoed through the whole world. The teachings of the Fathers are scorned; the apostolic traditions are set at naught; the fabrications of innovators are in force in the churches; these men, moreover, train themselves in rhetorical quibbling and not in theology; the wisdom of the world takes first place to itself, having thrust aside the glory of the Cross. The shepherds are driven away, and in their places are introduced troublesome wolves who tear asunder the flock of Christ. The houses of prayer are bereft of those wont to assemble therein; the solitudes are filled with those who weep. The elders weep, comparing the past with the present; the young are more to be pitied, since they know not of what they have been deprived.

γνώριμα δὲ τὰ θλίβοντα ἡμᾶς, κἂν ἡμεῖς μὴ λέγωμεν· εἰς πᾶσαν γὰρ τὴν οἰκουμένην λοιπὸν ἐξήχηται. καταπεφρόνηται τὰ τῶν πατέρων δογματα· ἀποστολικαὶ παραδόσεις ἐξουδένωνται· νεωτεροποιῶν3 ἀνθρώπων ἐφευρέματα ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις ἐμπολιτεύεται· τεχνολογοῦσι λοιπόν, οὐ θεολογοῦσιν, οἱ ἄνθρωποι· ἡ τοῦ κόσμου σοφία τὰ πρωτεῖα φέρεται, παρωσαμένη τὸ καύχημα τοῦ σταυροῦ. ποιμένες ἀπελαύνονται, ἀντεισάγονται δὲ λύκοι βαρεῖς, διασπῶντες τὸ ποίμνιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. οἶκοι εὐκτήριοι ἔρημοι τῶν ἐκκλησιαζόντων· αἱ ἐρημίαι πλήρεις τῶν ὀδυρομένων. οἱ πρεσβύτεροι ὀδύρονται, τὰ παλαιὰ συγκρίνοντες τοῖς παροῦσιν· οἱ νέοι ἐλεεινότεροι, μὴ εἰδότες οἵων ἐστέρηνται.

[1] A vast throng went out, and filled the camp. Then the dictator, after taking the auspices, came forth and commanded the troops to arm. [2] "Under thy leadership,” he cried, "Pythian Apollo, and inspired by thy will, I advance to destroy the city of Veii, and to thee I promise a tithe of its spoils. [3] At the same time I beseech thee, Queen Juno, that dwellest now in Veii, to come with us, when we have gotten the victory, to our City—soon to be thine, too—that a temple meet for thy majesty may there receive thee."

[1] ingens profecta multitudo replevit castra. tum dictator auspicato egressus cum edixisset ut arma milites caperent, [2] "tuo ductu" inquit, Pythice Apollo, tuoque numine instinctus pergo ad delendam urbem Veios tibique hinc decimam partem praedae voveo. [3] te simul, Iuno regina, quae nunc Veios colis, precor, ut nos victores in nostram tuamque mox futuram urbem sequare, ubi te dignum amplitudine tua templum accipiat."

Grand Velas Riviera Maya is undoubtedly a Grande Dame of the Mexican Caribbean. The all-suite hotel, a 2021 World's Best Awards winner, is known for its spectacular beachfront, onsite mangroves and cenobites, and some of the largest suites in the region.

I suppose that the author meant "mangroves and cenotes". But we are surely entering a new AI dark age when even the dictionaries are spoiled. This is the sort of nonsense example that the mindless copyists put into the Etymologicum Magnum.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Gods, like dogs, will only answer to their names. Living as we do in an age in which numbers (national health numbers, bank account numbers, telephone numbers etc.) identify people more easily than names, it is hard for us to understand the power which more primitive people attribute to names. But a trivial example of the survival of this idea is given by Ronald Knox when he points out how boys at school often try to conceal their Christian names and prefer to be called by a nick-name, because to reveal your Christian name is to give other boys a hold over you.¹ The same idea lies behind the Gnat’s advice to Alice to lose her name: ‘For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out “Come here—”, and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn’t be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn’t have to go, you know.’

¹ Pastoral Sermons, p. 37.

We did verses once a week. A little later most of these were done in the house by a boy called Malcolm, who had the talent for dictating verses, on any subject, while he was eating his breakfast, with the necessary number of mistakes and to the exact degree of badness needed for the standard of each boy, for if they were at all too good my tutor would write on them, "Who is the poet?" In return for this I did the French for him and a number of other boys. Latin verses both then, and until I left Eton, were the most important event of the week's work. When one's verses had been done and signed by one's tutor one gave a gasp of relief. Sometimes he tore them up and one had to do them again. I was a bad writer of Latin verse. The kind of mistakes I made exasperated my tutor to madness, especially when I ventured on lyrics which he implored me once never to attempt again. In spite of the trouble verses gave one, even when they were partly done by someone else, one preferred doing them to a long passage of Latin prose, which was sometimes a possible alternative. It is a strange fact, but none the less true, that boys can acquire a mechanical facility for doing Latin verse of a kind, with the help of a gradus, without knowing either what the English or the Latin is about.

The subjects given for Latin verse, what we called sense for verses, were sometimes amusing. The favourite subject from the boys' point of view was Spring. It was a favourite subject among the masters, too. It afforded opportunities for innumerable clichés, which were easy to find. One of the masters giving out sense for verses used to say: "This week we will do verses"—and then, as if it were something unheard of—"on Spring. Take down some hints. The grass is green, sheep bleat, sound of water is heard in the distance—might perhaps get in desilientis aquæ."

The same master said one day, to a boy who had done some verses on Charles II., "Castus et infelix is hardly an appropriate epithet for Charles II." Once we had a lyric on a toad. "Avoid the gardener, a dangerous man," was one of the hints which I rendered:

"Fas tibi sit bufo custodem fallere agelli."

Small favours at the right time are greatest to the recipients.

μικραὶ χάριτες ἐν καιρῷ μέγισται τοῖς λαμβάνουσι.

You ought to make yourself of a different stamp from the multitude.

dissimilem te fieri multis oportet.

From these many notorious instances of the priests' conduct, I conclude they are not to be relied on in any one thing relating to religion, but that every man must think freely for himself.

But to this it may be objected that the bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying as thinking; and if every man thought it his duty to think freely, and trouble his neighbour with his thoughts (which is an essential part of freethinking), it would make wild work in the world. I answer; whoever cannot think freely may let it alone if he pleases by virtue of his right to think freely; that is to say, if such a man freely thinks that he cannot think freely, of which every man is a sufficient judge, why then he need not think freely unless he thinks fit.

LAC. Danged, an' there ever waur a bonnier lassie!
ATH. Hanged if I ever saw so sweet a creature!

ΛΑΚ. οὔπα γυναῖκ᾽ ὄπωπα χαϊωτεραν.
ΑΘ. ἐγὼ δὲ κύσθον γ᾽ οὐδέπω καλλίονα.

SPARTANS
I've never seen a nobler woman anywhere.
ATHENIANS
Nor I one with such prettily jointing hips.

In the evenings the Lower boys did their work in pupil room. Boys in fifth form, when they were slack, did the same as a punishment, and this was called penal servitude. While they prepared their lessons or did their verses, my tutor would be taking older boys in what was called private; this in our case meant special lessons in Greek. One night these older boys were construing Xenophon, and a boy called Rashleigh could not translate the phrase, "Τοὺς πρὸς ἐμὲ λέγοντας."¹ My tutor repeated it over and over again, and then appealed to us Lower boys. I knew what it meant, but when I was asked I repeated exactly what Rashleigh had said, like one hypnotised, much to my tutor's annoyance.

Sometimes when my tutor was really annoyed he would say: "Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think what a ghastly fool you are?" Another time he said to a boy: "You've no more manners than a cow, and a bad cow, too." When the word δύναμαι occurred in Greek, my tutor made a great point of distinguishing the pronunciation of δύναμαι and δυνάμει. δύναμαι he pronounced more broadly. When we read out the word δύναμαι we made no such distinction, and he used to say, "Do you mean dunamy or dunamai?" It was our great delight to draw this expression from him, and whenever the word δύναμαι occurred we were careful to accent the last syllable as slightly as possible. It never failed.

¹ I have looked up the reference and miraculously found it. My memory after thirty-three years is correct. The phrase occurs in Xenophon's Anabasis, Book II.v.27.

Other important or interesting readings from the edition of the Benedictines have also been included in the critical apparatus. One probably important fact has been noted in the process of this work: the Benedictine editors frequently quoted readings as found only in the earlier editions (editi antiqui), and apparently without any MS. authority, but our collation of E has shown most of these readings to exist also in that MS.

Labels: typographical and other errors

There was a rush to the walls, and the women, drawn from their houses by the general consternation, betook themselves to prayer in the temples, and besought the gods to ward off destruction from the houses and shrines of the City and from the walls of Rome, and to turn that panic against Veii, if the sacred rites had been duly renewed and the portents expiated.

concursumque in muros est et matronarum, quas ex domo conciverat publicus pavor, obsecrationes in templis factae, precibusque ab dis petitum, ut exitium ab urbis tectis templisque ac moenibus Romanis arcerent Veiosque eum averterent terrorem, si sacra renovata rite, si procurata prodigia essent.

Veiosque codd.: Veiisque Gronovius

The prayer is of a familiar type—an ἀποπομπή by which the supplicant prays that evil may be directed elsewhere; cf. Catullus 63.92 with Kroll's note; Orph. Hymn. 3.12, 11.21.

Although he remained clean-shaven, Mommsen’s hair was always shoulder-length and untidy, turning grey and finally white, resembling a witch or a wizard, as his critics observed. Possibly through the fame of Mommsen, wild hair in old age became a recognizable badge of an eccentric professor or genius, cultivated later by Einstein and generations of academics ever since.

In other ways too, Mommsen seemed the very model of a modern academic. He was very thin and generally graceless in movement. He had a high forehead, a straight slightly aquiline nose and deep-set piercing eyes, beneath very dark eyebrows. His eyes were described both as pale blue and as almost black. He looked fearsomely clever; all people who met him agreed on this. He had great presence, and he was quick and dogmatic in giving opinions in a high-pitched voice. Throughout his adult life, he wore thick oval wire-rimmed glasses, which he pushed up onto the top of his head for close reading. He dressed formally, often in a bow tie, although his clothes were reported as being too big for him and looking slept in, like the Bücherwurm in that fictional painting by Spitzweg. Mommsen was immediately recognizable. Even the tram conductors in Berlin pointed him out with awe to visitors when he was seen in the street.

There are legends of eccentricities, doubtless exaggerated or even invented, like many student fables of their professors, such as that he put a baby in the wastepaper basket to stop it crying and that he did not remember his own children’s names. A credible anecdote was told by his daughter. He always welcomed visitors at home in the ground-floor reception room in a formal tailcoat. One day in 1858 or 1859, he emerged to greet an important guest wearing the coat but having forgotten to change out of his yellow slippers. This became an often-repeated family joke for the rest of his life. If it does not seem especially funny to us now, it does tell us something of his Biedermeier world of middle-class respectability and convention, and how academia was the exception, forgiven or even admired for failing to conform.

My strength of body is decayed, my sight and hearing dulled, memory fails me, and the vigour of my mind is impaired.

vires corporis adfectae, sensus oculorum atque aurium hebetes, memoria labat, vigor animi obtunsus.

What's the point of fighting a battle of words with beasts like these?

τί τοῖσδε σαυτὸν ἐς λόγον τοῖς θηρίοις ξυνάπτεις;

My heart is heavy—sad the present;
I think back to the olden days
When all the world was still so pleasant
And people went their peaceful ways.

Now, helter-skelter, elbows shove us,
Pressure and stress on every side!
Dead is the good Lord God above us,
And down below the devil's died.

Everything goes in churlish fashion,
A rotten, tangled, cold affair;
And but for a little love and passion
There'd be no surcease anywhere.

Das Herz ist mir bedrückt, und sehnlich
Gedenke ich der alten Zeit;
Die Welt war damals noch so wöhnlich,
Und ruhig lebten hin die Leut’.

Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben,
Das ist ein Drängen! eine Not!
Gestorben ist der Herrgott oben,
Und unten ist der Teufel tot.

Und alles schaut so grämlich trübe,
So krausverwirrt und morsch und kalt,
Und wäre nicht das bißchen Liebe,
So gäb’ es nirgends einen Halt.

My heart is crushed with grief, for sadly
    I think of old times, clean of strife,
When all the world went far from badly,
    And people lived a normal life.

But now the world seems madly driven;
    Scrambling to pull and push ahead!
    Dead is the good Lord up in Heaven,
And down below the devil's dead.

All things, with this eternal shoving,
    Become a gray and sodden brawl;
And if it were not for a little loving
    There'd be no rest for us at all.

My heart is sad and filled with longing
I think of the past;
the world was then so comfortable
and everyone lived so peacefully.

And everything is now as if displaced.
Such crowding! such need.
Lord God is dead above,
And below the devil is dead.

And everything looks so peevishly sad,
so confusing, so rotten, so cold,
And if it were not for the bit of love,
there would not be a foothold anywhere.

This anecdote is contained in the following extract of a letter from Randolph to Cecil, dated at St. Andrew's, the 7th of April 1562, in the Paper Office:— "The Queen readeth daily, after her dinner, instructed by a learned man Mr. George Bowhannan, somewhat of Lyvie."— This transaction did honour to both parties: to Mary, in thus employing her leisure: to Buchanan, in having such a scholar to instruct, in the beauties of Livy.

Does not Roman liberty consist in the glorious privilege of snapping our fingers at the Senate and magistrates, and looking with contempt upon law, tradition, established ordinance, and military discipline?

ea demum Romae libertas est, non senatum, non magistratus, non leges, non mores maiorum, non instituta patrum, non disciplinam vereri militiae.

Aubrey de Sélincourt manages to extract "the glorious privilege of snapping our fingers at" and "look with contempt upon" from only two words in the Latin (non … vereri). Quite a feat. A ratio 1 to 6.

                   And let them love one another
as before, and let wealth and peace abound.

                                τοὶ δ᾽ ἀλλήλους φιλεόντων
ὡς τὸ πάρος, πλοῦτος δὲ καὶ εἰρήνη ἅλις ἔστω.

Indeed they are like quack-salvers seeking employment, since they desire that there should always be some disease in the body politic, that there may be something which you may call them in to cure.

sic hercule tamquam artifices improbi opus quaerunt; quippe semper aegri aliquid esse in re publica volunt, ut sit ad cuius curationem a vobis adhibeantur.

The second of the god's names, titinus, has also been brought into connection with an Italic cult of fertility by function of the phallus.²¹ The nearly unique evidence stems from the scholiast on a word in Persius' first Satire:

tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena
ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum
intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.²²

The comment runs: "ingentes Titos dicit Romanos senatores aut a Tito Tatio rege Sabinorum aut certe a membri virilis magnitudine dicti titi. titos scholasticos quod sint vagi neque uno magistro contenti et in libidinem proni sicut aves quibus comparantur, nam titi columbae sunt agrestes." The first explanation can be attributed to the fact that in some way the three ancient tribes of the Ramnes, Luceres, and Titienses still served as senatorial divisions,²³ and that this division was thought to have descended from the followers of Tatius. The second explanation, appropriate to Persius' intent, uniquely provides knowledge of the word titus "penis." The afterthought on the wandering scholars and the wild dove is not applied to Persius' words. Nevertheless, the bird called titus is more important than all the lexical items because it is the oldest from the viewpoint of semantics and of the surviving evidence. In etymologizing the names of various priesthoods, Varro wrote: "sodales Titii <ab avibus titis> dicti quas in auguriis certis observare soient."²⁴ Elsewhere the writer has argued that the Sodales Titii took their name from the Curia Titia and that the Curia Titia took its name from the wild dove.²⁵ In a word, both the priests and the political division derive their names from the dove. Certain authors would combine Titinus with titus "penis," and thus extend the phallic cult. Moreover, the Sodales Titii are brought into the same combination in order to provide a priesthood for Mutinus Titinus and, not so incidentally, to recreate the history of the obscure priesthood.²⁶ The premisses of the arguments are slight. As Poucet points out, several animals in many languages yield names for genital parts, and not all such genital names yield the titles of priesthoods.²⁷ It is quite possible that Titinus is derived directly from titus "dove."

The name of the bird precedes the name of the penis. Italian offers the best parallel with uccello, defined even in dictionaries for Italian high school students as "penis" after the original "bird" (a diminutive of L. avis).<sup>28

21</sup> The principal discussions of the deity, besides Poucet's (above, n. 14) are K. Vahlert RE 16 (1933), cols. 979-87, G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer² (Munich, 1912), pp. 169 and 243-44, Κ. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1960), p. 69, G. Radke, Die Götter Altitaliens = Fontes et Commentationes 3 (1965), pp. 225-26 and 305. Also, see S. Weinstock RE 6A2 (1937), cols. 1538-40 on the Sodales Titii.
²² Pers. Sat. 1.19-21.
²³ Palmer, op. cit., p. 217.
²⁴ LI. 5.85. The restoration of the text is as certain as can be. Cf, Serv. on Verg. Ecl. 1.57 (and Philarg. ad loc.): "palumbes" columbae quas vulgus tetas vocat.
²⁵ Palmer, op. cit., pp. 93-95.
²⁶ See the works cited in note 21.
²⁷ Poucet, op. cit., pp. 386-87; see below.
²⁸ Poucet amusingly lists a few modern usages. Without attempting to grace them with such lexical citation as Poucet gives, I can add the English "cock" and "pussy."