Laudator Temporis Acti

It's a wretched business
to start digging a well only when thirst has got you by the throat.

                                                  miserum est opus
igitur demum fodere puteum, ubi sitis faucis tenet.

To administer medicines to diseases which have already developed and to suppress revolts which have already developed is comparable to the behavior of those persons who begin to dig a well after they have become thirsty, and of those who begin to cast weapons after they have already engaged in battle. Would these actions not be too late?

Some one had been reading aloud for a very long time, and when he was near the end of the roll pointed to a space with no writing on it. "Cheer up, my men," cried Diogenes; "there's land in sight."

μακρά τινος ἀναγινώσκοντος καὶ πρὸς τῷ τέλει τοῦ βιβλίου ἄγραφον παραδείξαντος "θαρρεῖτε," ἔφη, "ἄνδρες· γῆν ὁρῶ."

Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.

ideo amicis avide fruamur, quia quamdiu contingere hoc possit, incertum est.

A terrible year succeeded, whether owing to the unseasonable weather or to man's depravity. The consuls were Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Gaius Valerius.

foedus insequens annus seu intemperie caeli seu humana fraude fuit, M. Claudio Marcello C. Valerio consulibus.

Most people, he would say, are so nearly mad that a finger makes all the difference. For, if you go along with your middle finger stretched out, some one will think you mad, but, if it’s the little finger, he will not think so.

τοὺς πλείστους ἔλεγε παρὰ δάκτυλον μαίνεσθαι· ἐὰν οὖν τις τὸν μέσον προτείνας πορεύηται, δόξει μαίνεσθαι, ἐὰν δὲ τὸν λιχανόν, οὐκέτι.

Socrates.— If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason, and when Montaigne and Horace will be employed as forerunners and signposts to an understanding of this simplest and most imperishable of intercessors. The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him; at bottom they are the modes of life of the various temperaments confirmed and established by reason and habit and all of them directed towards joy in living and in one's own self; from which one might conclude that Socrates' most personal characteristic was a participation in every temperament.— Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

Sokrates.— Wenn alles gut geht, wird die Zeit kommen, da man, um sich sittlich-vernünftig zu fördern, lieber die Memorabilien des Sokrates in die Hand nimmt als die Bibel, und wo Montaigne und Horaz als Vorläufer und Wegweiser zum Verständnis des einfachsten und unvergänglichsten Mittler-Weisen, des Sokrates, benutzt werden. Zu ihm führen die Strassen der verschiedensten philosophischen Lebensweisen zurück, welche im Grunde die Lebensweisen der verschiedenen Temperamente sind, festgestellt durch Vernunft und Gewohnheit und allesamt mit ihrer Spitze hin nach der Freude am Leben und am eignen Selbst gerichtet; woraus man schliessen möchte, dass das Eigentümlichste an Sokrates ein Anteilhaben an allen Temperamenten gewesen ist.— Vor dem Stifter des Christentums hat Sokrates die fröhliche Art des Ernstes und jene Weisheit voller Schelmenstreiche voraus, welche den besten Seelenzustand des Menschen ausmacht. Überdies hatte er den grösseren Verstand.

Downcast face, serious eyes, a voice without riotousness,
a humble mind, scant food, clothing without adornment,
proper faith, brief sleep, short-lived anger, perpetual meditation,
a modest life, a working hand, study without trifling,
saintly reading, fear of death, compunction of heart,
saintly love, pious activity, a mind unknowing of taint,
disregard of praise for oneself, contempt of honors,
no love of property, pious concern for his people:
these qualities befit a monk, these are sure indications;
therefore let money and a packed purse be far from a monk.

Frons demissa, graves oculi, uox absque tumultu,
mens humilis, cibus exiguus, uestis sine cultu,
recta fides, sopor, ira breuis, meditatio iugis,
uita pudica, manus operans, studium sine nugis,
lectio sancta, timor mortis, compunctio cordis,        5
sanctus amor, pietatis opus, mens nescia sordis,
laudis despectus proprie, contemptus honorum,
proprietatis amor nullus, pia cura suorum:
ista decent monachum, sunt hec pronostica certa;
ergo sit a monacho procul es et bursa referta.        10

It is to us ever a painful sight to see the rustic virtues rudely thrown aside by the intrusion of what are termed improvements. A railroad is certainly a capital invention for the traveller, but it may be questioned if it is of any other benefit than that of pecuniary convenience to the places through which it passes. How many delightful hamlets, pleasant villages, and even tranquil county towns, are losing their primitive characters for simplicity and contentment, by the passage of these fiery trains, that drag after them a sort of bastard elegance, a pretension that is destructive of peace of mind, and an uneasy desire in all who dwell by the way-side, to pry into the mysteries of the whole length and breadth of the region it traverses!

Labels: Luddism

Promoted to assistant professor in 1947 and to associate professor with tenure in 1952, Reinhold's reputation was as a teacher/scholar, not a political activist. His colleagues were thus stunned to hear the crusading anti-Communist radio reporter Walter Winchell (1897-1972) ask on the air one day in 1956, «Why is there a Communist in the Brooklyn College Classics Department with the initials M.R.?» When the president of Brooklyn College, Harry Gideonse (1901-1985) heard of Winchell's report, he felt he had to ask Reinhold certain questions. Rather than answer those questions and possibly implicate friends, Reinhold quietly resigned.

For ten years (1955-1965) he worked in the New York advertising agency of his brother, Louis Reinhold (1911-2002), publishing the study guides from his Brooklyn College courses and such make-work items as Barron's 'Teen-Age Summer Guide' (1960, 3^rd ed. 1965).

Using Latin names for plants may be racist, the University of Michigan has warned, in guidance to prevent the influence of colonial “power structures” on visitors.

A strategy document for the university’s botanical gardens and arboretum warns against using the traditional combination of an English name and Latin name on plaques next to its plants, amid concerns they could erase “other forms of knowing”.

The University of Michigan, which has been criticised for its expansive diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies, has spent more than $250 million on inclusivity initiatives since 2016.

As part of its plan to ensure “foundational change at every level”, the college has created a series of strategic plans for every aspect of its work, including the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum.

A “strategic plan” issued last year, first reported on Wednesday by The New York Times, warned that horticultural bosses were “deeply enmeshed within interlocking systems of domination” and used “linguistic and representational practices that are, generally, complicit in the continued erasure of non-dominant relationships to ‘nature’”.

The document states: “When botanical gardens and arboreta display Latin taxa, English ‘common name’, and perhaps a brief scientific description, what other ways of knowing are not only missing but actively erased?”

It references an academic article that warns that botany is “deeply intertwined with the histories of colonialism, racism, and imperialism”.

Botanical gardens generally display plants with two names, their “common name” in English, and a Latin name using the binomial system popularised by Carl Linnaeus, an 18th-century Swedish biologist.

The college’s strategy document pledges that the arboretum will use its collections “to not simply respond to the complexities of our shifting socio-cultural landscape, but… to lead cultural institutions with living collections toward more self-critical, just, and equitable futures”.

However, photographs posted online by the university’s arboretum show that some plants are still displayed with their Latin names, despite the DEI guidance.

The institution’s website boasts that it is “more than a collection of plants” but a “force for social and ecological resilience”.

The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.

A cant name for an inhabitant of Illinois.

Get fuddled day and night, live like Greeks,
buy girls and set 'em free, feed
parasites, go in for fancy catering!

dies noctesque bibite, pergraecamini,
amicas emite, liberate: pascite
parasitos: opsonate pollucibiliter.

I choose to drink my wine, to have my love affairs, to bring home girls.

lubet potare, amare, scorta ducere.

Drink, live like Greeks,
eat, gorge yourselves, kill the fatted calf!

                   bibite, pergraecamini,
este, effercite vos, saginam caedite.

Finally Claes employs the described structures "to support or to correct the reading of the received text" (131), e.g., 1.9, favoring qualecumque quod <est>, patrona uirgo and ruling out patroni ut ergo (Bergk, Fordyce, Goodwin), which Gould once favored in a talk at Yale, causing Clausen to mutter, "My learned colleague has a penchant for readings that are hispid and uncouth"...

Labels: typographical and other errors

In one respect Mods went beyond anything offered at Glasgow: the questions set on some of the prepared books dealt predominantly with textual criticism. Candidates were presented with short extracts or ‘gobbets’ from these authors, and invited to consider the various readings with arguments for and against; to conclude that the crux was insoluble and deserving of the obelus might be taken as a sign of precocious perspicacity. The direction of scholars’ studies depends on early influences more than one likes to admit, and all his life Watt was to be superb at doing gobbets, though as time went on he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods.

...he described the Lateinische Grammatik of Hofmann and Szantyr as an exciting book...

Few knew of his love of English as well as Latin poetry: as a young man he had learned by heart the whole of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, much of the anthology of longer poems known as The English Parnassus, and (like Macaulay) all of Paradise Lost, so that fifty years later when given a line he could continue; this was an astonishing achievement even for the days when learning poetry was thought to have more educational value than writing about it. In Latin he knew by heart all of Lucretius and Virgil and much else besides, which he could declaim with an exuberant feeling for the power of rhythm and poetic language; if delayed on a station platform on the way to one of his numerous committees he would recite silently to himself.

He walked round the burnt city of Troy, now only a famous name, and searched for the mighty remains of the wall that Apollo raised. Now barren woods and rotting tree-trunks grow over the palace of Assaracus, and their worn-out roots clutch the temples of the gods, and Pergama is covered over with thorn-brakes: the very ruins have been destroyed.

circumit exustae nomen memorabile Troiae
magnaque Phoebei quaerit vestigia muri.        965
iam silvae steriles et putres robore trunci
Assaraci pressere domos et templa deorum
iam lassa radice tenent, ac tota teguntur
Pergama dumetis: etiam periere ruinae.

Mr. Gliddon, at one period, for example, could not make the Egyptian comprehend the term “politics,” until he sketched upon the wall, with a bit of charcoal, a little carbuncle-nosed gentleman, out at elbows, standing upon a stump, with his left leg drawn back, his right arm thrown forward, with the fist shut, the eyes rolled up toward Heaven, and the mouth open at an angle of ninety degrees.

Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left.

When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars were open to any interested party, and you could sit at the feet of the greats. Unforgettable gatherings of everyone from undergraduates to professors would discuss the big questions late into the night.

Cambridge’s historic strength came through respecting students’ abilities and giving them freedom to pursue their studies how they wished, but with some important restrictions. The so-called ‘supervision system’ is the beating heart of this: each week students (especially in the arts, humanities and social sciences) are sent away to read up and write on a single question. The challenge is to take a position, craft an argument, and be prepared to defend it during an hour’s discussion with an expert in the field. Under such scrutiny students learn where the inconsistencies of their position lie and develop the intellectual humility and adaptability that are the lifeblood of academic research.

It is fundamentally through this process that Cambridge evolved to become one of the best universities in the world. This is why its contribution to the arts and sciences outstrips any other institute of higher education.

Cambridge students’ performance is measured by examination — which, crucially, was for centuries a public matter. The results, posted as class lists on Senate House, were also published in the press. When Agnata Ramsay topped the Classical Tripos in 1887, for instance, it was news that shocked and delighted the nation.

A few years ago, Cambridge’s class lists became private. University administrators alleged grounds of ‘data protection’, after a minority of students campaigned under the banner of ‘our grade, our choice’. What was first an opt-out for students soon became uniform policy. No longer can undergraduates discover who did best (or worst) in their cohort, their subject, their college — even academics are given limited access to results, based upon their role. The desire to save students personal embarrassment has thus snuffed out much of the competitive spirit of the university. (The unofficial ranking of overall college performances, the Tompkins table, still circulates quietly, but only because a senior tutor leaks the data.)

Now even the fate of examinations hangs in the balance. There is a strong push, from students, administrators and a clutch of academics, to reduce or remove the traditional closed-book exam, which tested knowledge, ingenuity and (where appropriate) rhetoric under the real pressures of time and circumstance. Not only have many exams become open-book exercises to be carried out from students’ rooms, but there has been a marked increase in coursework. Naturally this is less stressful for students, but few see the irony of having their final academic grade being based upon earlier, i.e. less learned, versions of themselves. Meanwhile, the university has no clue whatsoever about how to deal with the rampant use of illegitimate, but increasingly undetectable, AI software.

For students, the risks have never been lower. Grade inflation is rampant in Cambridge, as elsewhere in the sector. A third-class performance, let alone a failure, is almost impossible in most subjects, as students can either intermit for the year and take the exams again, or avoid them on health grounds and be given an effective pass. When I came to Cambridge, students would be removed from the university for lack of attainment; it is now unheard of for students to be sent down for insufficient academic performance.

These changes reflect a bigger shift: for various reasons declarations of disability have spiked dramatically. Over the past 15 years, disability at Cambridge has increased more than fivefold, and is now declared by some 6,000 students (roughly one in four). The two major areas of growth have been ‘mental health conditions’ and ‘specific learning difficulties’. Many students register anxiety as the cause, yet the university and the NHS have neither the bandwidth nor the incentive to stress-test the claims. In four years, the number of students with ADHD has doubled, and is now approaching a thousand. As a result, the university’s Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre has gone into overdrive, mandating changes in teaching and examination across the board.

Whatever the truth behind the much-discussed ‘mental health crisis’, it has ushered in developments that disrupt university life. Many students are now excused from writing essays and permitted to submit bullet points; deadlines are extended, and regularly missed without penalty; extra time is given for all examinations.

The pace of change over the past decade has been astonishing, driven on by three forces: an administrative class that wants to minimise complaints, a subset of academics who actively resent the no-nonsense traditions of the university, and a proportion of students who will take the easiest path proffered. The result is a steady infantilisation of education, whereby challenging workloads are reduced, and robust criticism of bad writing and bad thinking is avoided. And now there is the prospect of the intense eight-week term being divided in two by a ‘recovery week’.

An even sadder development is that lectures now have to be filmed and made available online after the event. This constrains both lecturer and student materially: the experience in the room is compromised by the unknowably large third party who can watch whenever they want. Since ever fewer students now attend lectures, the very esprit de corps of the cohort is fading, and one of the university’s most special environments is threatened.

For those in the humanities and social sciences, there is a steady narrowing of knowledge and lowering of requirements. Set texts and supervision reading lists have been circumscribed: almost never are students tasked with reading a full book within the week. In some faculties abstract (and absurd) quotas of pages to be set for reading have been imposed. So-called ‘content warnings’ are mandated for courses: anything supposed to portend possible controversy, such as animal sacrifice in Homer’s Iliad, or religious conflict in Late Antique Rome, needs explicit flagging in advance. And if someone says they don’t want to confront such a topic, the department quietly excuses them. The net decline of standards cannot be ignored.

The entire success of Cambridge is predicated on admitting the brightest and best students. Yet, despite this truism, a particular obsession has fallen recently on applicants’ school backgrounds — unless they are foreigners. Cambridge, like many other universities, has imposed its own self-willed targets for increasing the proportion of state-school pupils. There was no clear rationale behind the numbers chosen, but they operated with a ratchet effect: when a figure dreamt up by committee was not just met but overshot, the new figure was then treated as the baseline against which ‘we must do better’.

From 2013 to 2023 the proportion of UK state-school admissions rose from 61 per cent to 73 per cent. This increase was made possible by undeniable discrimination against another group of students — those who, whether through a choice made by their parents or a scholarship won by their talents, attended fee-paying schools. It is one of the few green shoots that Cambridge’s current vice-chancellor, Deborah Prentice, recently paused this freewheeling process that placed politics ahead of talent.

In a similar spirit, the university boasts that it is more ‘inclusive’ by the year, but there is no clarity about what the goal is. No one has made the case that box-ticking protocols materially improve the academic activity or excellence of the cohort. Instead, there is a complete lack of curiosity about what ‘diversity’ actually means, and about why there is over- as well as under-representation of certain ethnic groups in the university. Other than increasing raw numbers — 39 per cent of undergraduate students at Cambridge are ‘non-white’, compared to 22 per cent a decade ago — there is no coherent sense of what is being aimed for.

For centuries the Cambridge college was based on fellowship. At its best, this is a wonderful thing. It is a remarkably flat structure, where peer trusts and respects peer. All high-table conversation is necessarily interdisciplinary, and those who remember the old traditions know that politics and academic gossip are to be eschewed. At times in my 16 years as a Fellow of Christ’s and Queens’, instances of true communion were possible, and made everything else worthwhile. The high-table culture is now greatly diluted — by a sharp decline in academics dining in the evening, and a steady drop at lunch; by not just the rapid expansion of the size of college fellowships, but also the co-option of many members from other categories, including graduate students; and by the undermining of that deep sense of communal responsibility for the institution.

The character of the college as a micro-community of academics is being doubly subverted: from within, by the rapid growth of bureaucratic roles taken up by professional administrators, and from without, by a university seeking to centralise control and elide differences among the colleges. The more uniform the overall environment becomes, the more rapidly it will suffer from the bad decisions inevitably yet to be made.

‘The content of this letter is extremely important, so please read it carefully.’ It isn’t often that the university speaks to its employees in this way. This was a follow-up email from the former pro-vice-chancellor for strategy and planning, David Cardwell. He wanted academics to complete his Time Allocation Survey by tabulating how many hours were spent across a vast suite of possible activities. It is characteristic of contemporary Cambridge that the strongest rhetoric it can muster is directed toward this self-serving bureaucratic exercise. Cardwell rubbed shoulders with four other pro-vice-chancellors, all enjoying a salary that is several multiples of the typical university academic, and surpasses the Prime Minister’s. There’s one for education and (as if the brief need be bigger) environmental sustainability; one for community and engagement; one for innovation; and one for research.

All of this is new: until 1992, the role of vice-chancellor was covered in short stints by the Heads of House, who paused their college governance while the rest of Cambridge got on with what they were here to do. Now we have not only career administrators at the helm, but their five deputies, for an annual cost of around £1.5 million. All the while, the university fails to find the money to keep important subjects alive, such as the centuries-old study of millennia-old Sanskrit.

As for our age-old titles — of lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor — these were replaced with American titles so as to be ‘more intelligible’ to a global audience. One of the university’s historic strengths has been that academic departments, and indeed colleges, operate as relatively horizontal structures, with only a small number of individuals having the temporary authority to steer what others do. To conjure up a world of ‘assistant professors’ and ‘associate professors’, who in fact have no supporting relationship to ‘the professors’, makes a mockery of that venerable system.

There is, unsurprisingly, a major disengagement of academics from the university’s growing central administration. It was telling that a few years ago the authorities silently closed down the University Combination Room, the 14th-century hall in which academics could freely convene outside their individual colleges.

Although in theory Cambridge academics are self-governing, the move to online voting, with minimal announcement, allows for many university policies to be driven through by those who want them enacted. Occasional victories are still possible, when the academic community is given the time and space to be heard. In late 2020, the Regent House voted overwhelmingly against an overbearing anti-free-speech policy wheeled out from the top. Our then vice-chancellor, a short-sighted and thin-skinned lawyer named Stephen Toope, would later mock this striking outcome as the confected result of an extra-mural conspiracy led by the Telegraph.

With morale low, and time at a premium, many senior academics steer clear of teaching as much as possible, especially in science and tech, where the lures of the lab and of business ventures are far stronger. The outcome, across all subjects, is a proliferation of graduate-level supervisors. Despite their genuine skill, this development is steadily severing the pipeline of world-leading scholars fostering the brightest students.

More alarmingly, there is a deeper-seated loss of trust in what the essential character of the institution is: elite, selective, competitive, rigorous. I have even heard academic colleagues agonise about whether it is ultimately ethical or appropriate that some students do better than others in examinations — academics doubting the very principle of grading by degrees.

The cleverest students sense that they are part of a faded spectacle, and I feel for them. They have neither the voice nor the medium to express that regret. Their own JCR committees face ever-declining levels of student engagement, as their (usually uncontested) ‘officers’ pivot to promote less relevant topics. Students vent their frustrations through the anonymous ‘confession’ pages on Facebook, where countless staff members lurk in the hope of gauging what decisions to make to pacify the most unhinged student protests.

All this I say of Cambridge. But these issues go right across the university sector, if somewhat less obviously in Oxford. By my reckoning, between the 74 colleges of England’s two ancient universities, there remain nine or ten sound institutions. I hope they dig their respective heels in and preserve the great traditions before they are irrevocably lost. Alphabetically, I think of: Christ’s, Corpus Christi (Ox), Jesus (Ox), Lincoln, Magdalene (Cam), Oriel, New, Pembroke (Cam), Peterhouse, and Trinity (Cam).

For the situation won’t get any better in the near term. The public need to trust and respect the elite academic institutions they fund; but that respect is waning, as stories continue to reveal politicised teaching, grade inflation, authoritarian campus policies and lurid, even laughable, research grants. The ambitions of our whole education system are ultimately pegged to the achievements at the very pinnacle of academia. If Cambridge can’t resist decline, who can?

‘Nobody does that’ is what most colleagues, friends and family said when I handed in my resignation. That may be, but the university I leave behind with sadness is certainly not the one I entered.

In Greek, homerizein, “to Homerize,” after all can mean “to lie.”

Ὁμηρίδδειν (ὁμηριάδειν cod.)· ψεύδεσθαι, Hsch. (Dor. for Ὁμηρίζω).

Let me prove myself in the saddle!
Stay in your huts and tents! And
joyfully I'll ride far, far away, with
only the stars above my head.

The constellations he has placed
to guide you over land and sea; so
you can take delight in them
with a constant upward gaze.

Laßt mich nur auf meinem Sattel gelten!
Bleibt in euren Hütten, euren Zelten!
Und ich reite froh in alle Ferne,
Ueber meiner Mütze nur die Sterne.

Er hat euch die Gestirne gesetzt
Als Leiter zu Land und See,
Damit ihr euch daran ergötzt,
Stets blickend in die Höh.

The comic poet Turpilius,² speaking of the exchange of letters, says: “It is the only thing which makes the absent present.” Though made in a bit of fiction, the remark is not untrue. For what is there so present, to put it that way, when we are absent from each other, as to be able to speak to and to hear those you love through correspondence? Take even those primitive Italian people whom Ennius calls the casci³ who, as Cicero states in his books on rhetoric,⁴ hunted their food like wild animals: before papyrus and parchment came into use, they used to exchange conversation through notes hewed into wood or the bark of trees. Hence men called the bearers of these “board-bearers,” and the writers of them “bark-users,” from their use of the hark of trees.⁵ Under how great obligation then are we, living in a world civilized by the arts, not to discontinue a practice afforded themselves by men living in a state of stark savagery and, to an extent, ignorant of human ways!

² Of whom only some few titles and fragments survive; floruit 130 B.C.

³ Cf. Ennius, Annales 24: “quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.” Cascus = “old,” “very old,” “primeval.”

⁴ Cf. Cicero, De invent. rhetorica 1.2.

⁵ Letter carriers were called tabellarii, the name deriving from tabula, a “plank,” “board,” “writing tablet.” Scribes were called librarii, this deriving from liber, the "inner bark” or “rind” of a tree, “paper,” “parchment,” “book.”

Turpilius comicus tractans de vicissitudine litterarum: 'sola', inquit, 'res est, quae homines absentes praesentes faciat'. nec falsum dedit, quamquam in re non vera, sententiam. quid enim est, ut ita dicam, tam praesens inter absentes, quam per epistulas et adloqui et audire quos diligas? nam et rudes illi Italiae homines, quos cascos Ennius appellat, qui sibi, ut in Rhetoricis Cicero ait, victu fero vitam requirebant, ante chartae et membranarum usum aut in dedolatis ex ligno codicellis aut in corticibus arborum mutua epistularum adloquia missitabant; unde et portitores earum tabellarios et scriptores a libris arborum librarios vocavere. quanto igitur nos expolito iam artibus mundo id non debemus omittere, quod sibi praestiterunt, apud quos erat cruda rusticitas et qui humanitatem quodammodo nesciebant!

He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly.

ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ ὡς ὅταν μὲν ἴδῃ κυβερνήτας ἐν τῷ βίῳ καὶ ἰατροὺς καὶ φιλοσόφους, συνετώτατον εἶναι τῶν ζῴων νομίζειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον· ὅταν δὲ πάλιν ὀνειροκρίτας καὶ μάντεις καὶ τοὺς προσέχοντας τούτοις ἢ τοὺς ἐπὶ δόξῃ καὶ πλούτῳ πεφυσημένους, οὐδὲν ματαιότερον νομίζειν ἀνθρώπου.

D(is) M(anibus) // Iulio Achilleo / v(iro) p(erfectissimo) ex prox(imis) mem(oriae) / CC ludi magni qui / vixit annis XLVII / m(ensibus) X Aurelia Maxi/mina co(n)iux eius // marito dulcissimo

As the inscription on his sarcophagus proudly proclaims, Iulius Achilleus had been Procurator in charge of the Ludus Magnus, Rome’s most important gladiatorial barracks, where men were trained for death in the nearby Colosseum. The position carried great power and status — and also wealth, if the size of his coffin is any guide. It is the largest and most elaborate pastoral/bucolic sarcophagus yet discovered. Horses prance beside bulls while goats nibble on leaves, rams butt heads, and ewes rest placidly: a multiregister marvel, with some of the lushest effects of surface texture to be found in the third century. (The contrast between sleekly polished horses and bulls and shaggily drilled sheep and goats is especially delightful.)

Bucolic scenes never present the gritty realities of ancient pastoral life, of course — ceaseless tending of the flocks, baking in ferocious summer heat, freezing in winter, at the mercy of the elements and uncertain food supplies, miserable accommodations, a life of wretched poverty – but instead serve up a sanitized fantasy of rustic life designed to indulge the pampered yearnings of elite city-dwellers eager for scenes of tranquility. Of course we know this, just as the coffins’ carvers knew it, and doubtless those who commissioned and bought them knew too. Yet how effectively the imagery still works. Here we are given three shepherds hard at work, as Rome’s well-off liked to imagine them. One sits before his straw hut (it arches up behind him, following the curve of his own back), gently milking one of his ewes. A second shepherd, higher up/further back, uses a curved knife to whittle a throwing stick; listen closely and you can almost hear him whistling while he works. And a third is busily doing nothing at all: seated on a rock, he rests his elbow on his stick, hand held up to his chin in a classic gesture of languid contemplation. He is lost in placid thought, his eyes softly focused, if we could see them but a little closer, on his own quiet musings. These are the faces of pastoral tranquility, of idyllic bliss. And not just those of the shepherds, but the animals as well. Sheep turn to smile at each other while nimble goats nibble on green leaves and cattle happily chew away.

Philosophy is but dry bread: men will not live upon it, however wholesome: they require the succulent food and exciting cup of Religion.

"And this then is the Roman Wall," said he, scrambling up to a height which commanded the course of that celebrated work of antiquity: "What a people! whose labours, even at this extremity of their empire, comprehended such space, and were executed upon such a scale of grandeur! In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labours of Vauban and Coehorn, while this wonderful people's remains will even then continue to interest and astonish posterity! Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language; and our modern labours, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their fragments."

"It is strange," said he, "that we weed out the darnel from the corn and the unfit in war, but do not excuse evil men from the service of the state."

ἄτοπον ἔφη τοῦ μὲν σίτου τὰς αἴρας ἐκλέγειν καὶ ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ τοὺς ἀχρείους, ἐν δὲ πολιτείᾳ τοὺς πονηροὺς μὴ παραιτεῖσθαι.

These particulars, even though the memory of every religious and secular usage has been wiped out by men's preference of the new and outlandish to the ancient and homebred, I have thought it not foreign to my purpose to repeat, and in the very words in which they were formulated and handed down.

haec, etsi omnis divini humanique moris memoria abolevit nova peregrinaque omnia priscis ac patriis praeferendo, haud ab re duxi verbis quoque ipsis, ut tradita nuncupataque sunt, referre.

The question being put, how can students make progress, he replied, "By pressing hard on those in front and not waiting for those behind."

ἐρωτηθεὶς πῶς ἂν προκόπτοιεν οἱ μαθηταί, ἔφη, "ἐὰν τοὺς προέχοντας διώκοντες τοὺς ὑστεροῦντας μὴ ἀναμένωσι."

But if you lag behind, or with vigour push on ahead,
I neither wait for the slow nor press after those who hurry on before.

               quod si cessas aut strenuus anteis,
nec tardum opperior nec praecedentibus insto.

Rise up now, and with fresh strength confront the weary enemy, remembering your country and your parents, your wives and your children, remembering the consul who lies dead that you may conquer.

"Consurgite nunc" inquit "integri adversus fessos, memores patriae parentumque et coniugum ac liberorum, memores consulis pro vestra victoria morte occubantis."

After all, what were you, man? Everyman, notice how you were born; even if you were born a noble, you were born naked. What's nobility, anyway? At birth, poor and rich are equally naked. Or perhaps because you were born a noble, you can live as long as you like? You came in when you didn't know, you go out when you don't want to. Finally, let the graves be examined, and the bones of the rich told apart.

Quid enim eras, homo? Omnis homo, attende quid natus es: etsi nobilis natus es, nudus natus es. Quid est nobilitas? Nativitas pauperis et divitis aequalis est nuditas. An forte quia nobilis natus es, quantum vis vivis? Quando nescisti, intrasti: quando non vis, exis. Postremo sepulcra inspiciantur, et ossa divitum agnoscantur.

I dreamed a dream: I'm God himself,
All Heaven kneels to me,
The angels sit around my throne
And praise my poetry.

I eat the finest cakes and sweets
That golden coin can get,
And drink expensive wines to boot
And never run up a debt.

Sometimes I wish me down on earth
For boredom makes me sick,
And were I not the Lord himself
I might have been Old Nick.

"You lanky angel, Gabriel,
Go stretch your legs a bit,
Go find my good old friend Eugene
And bring him where I sit.

"Look for him not in college halls
But near a Tokay case;
Look for him not in Hedwig's Church
But Ma'mselle Meyer's place."

The angel spreads his wings and soars
Down to the lower sphere,
And finds my friend and picks him up
And brings the scamp up here.

"Yes, lad, I am Lord God himself,
Earth trembles 'neath my sway!
I always told you, didn't I,
I'd make the top some day.

"I pass a miracle every hour
That you would revel in,
And just for fun, today I'll beam
A blessing on Berlin.

"The paving stones in every street
Will split and open wide,
And every stone will have a fresh
And tasty oyster inside.

"The oysters will be sprinkled by
A shower of lemon juice,
And down the street the best Rhine wine
Will flow as through a sluice."

The joyful Berliners rush out
To gulp a bite to eat;
The judges of the District Court
Are swilling from the street.

How glad the poets are to see
This heaven-sent food supply!
The ensigns and lieutenants too
Are lapping the gutters dry.

The ensigns and lieutenants are
The smartest in their way:
They know that miracles like this
Don't come along every day.

When a small coffer was brought to him, which those in charge of the baggage and wealth of Dareius thought the most precious thing there, he asked his friends what valuable object they thought would most fittingly be deposited in it. And when many answered and there were many opinions, Alexander himself said he was going to deposit the Iliad there for safe keeping.

κιβωτίου δέ τινος αὐτῷ προσενεχθέντος, οὗ πολυτελέστερον οὐδὲν ἐφάνη τοῖς τὰ Δαρείου χρήματα καὶ τὰς ἀποσκευὰς παραλαμβάνουσιν, ἠρώτα τοὺς φίλους ὅ τι δοκοίη μάλιστα τῶν ἀξίων σπουδῆς εἰς αὐτὸ καταθέσθαι· πολλὰ δὲ πολλῶν λεγόντων αὐτὸς ἔφη τὴν Ἰλιάδα φρουρήσειν ἐνταῦθα καταθέμενος.

Janus, Jupiter, Father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona, Lares, divine Novensiles, divine Indigites, ye gods in whose power are both we and our enemies, and you, divine Manes, — I invoke and worship you, I beseech and crave your favour, that you prosper the might and the victory of the Roman People of the Quirites, and visit the foes of the Roman People of the Quirites with fear, shuddering, and death...

Iane Iuppiter Mars pater Quirine Bellona Lares Divi Novensiles Di Indigetes Divi quorum est potestas nostrorum hostiumque Dique Manes vos precor veneror veniam peto oroque uti populo Romano Quiritium vim victoriam prosperetis, hostesque populi Romani Quiritium terrore formidine morteque adficiatis...

oroque Forchhammer: feroque codd.

A machine by which knitted goods are cleaned, napped, and surfaced. It consists essentially of a roller on which the goods are stretched and brushed with a card or teazel, to remove specks, burs, seeds, etc., to raise the nap, and restore the softness and pliancy of which the fabric has been deprived by washing.

He used constantly to say to his friends and pupils, whenever or wherever he happened to be lecturing, "As sight takes in light from the surrounding air, so does the soul from mathematics."

συνεχὲς εἰώθει λέγειν πρός τε τοὺς φίλους καὶ τοὺς φοιτῶντας αὐτῷ, ἔνθα ἂν καὶ ὅπου διατρίβων ἔτυχεν, ὡς ἡ μὲν ὅρασις ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀέρος λαμβάνει τὸ φῶς, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων.

esp. the mathematical sciences, Archyt.1,3 tit.; τρία μ., i.e. arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, acc. to Pl.Lg.817e, cf. Phld. Ind.Sto.66; later τὰ τέσσαρα μ. （ἁρμονική being added) Theol.Ar.17.

I am now having a chat with your letter, I embrace it, it speaks to me. It is the only thing here that understands Latin. Here in your aging days you must either learn to talk a barbarous language or else remain silent.⁶ As often as the familiar handwriting brings back to me your dear faces, so often am I no longer here, or else you are here. Do believe my love, that it is speaking the truth: in this case too, as I write this letter, you are here with me.

⁶ hic enim aut barbarus seni sermo discendus est aut tacendum est. Jerome gives a small sample of this “barbarous language” in his Vita Pauli 6.—Note the use here of the word seni, “for an old man” (“in your aging days”). If Jerome was born around the middle of the century, say between 345 and 350, and this letter was written in 375 or 376, then Jerome at this time was at the most thirty or thirty-one years old. References by Jerome to his age, evidently at times exaggerated, have complicated determination of a chronology. On the date of Jerome’s birth, cf. Cavallera 2.1—12. Cf. also n. 1 to Letter 14 below.

nunc cum vestris litteris fabulor, illas amplexor, illae mecum loquuntur, illae hic tantum Latine sciunt. hic enim aut barbarus seni sermo discendus est aut tacendum est. quotiensque carissimos mihi vultus notae manus referunt inpressa vestigia, totiens aut ego hic non sum aut vos hic estis. credite amori vera dicenti: et cum has scriberem, vos videbam.

Another [monk] in an old cistern (called in the country dialect of Syria Gubba) kept himself alive on five dried figs a day.

alter in cisterna veteri — quam gentili sermone Syri "gubbam" vocant — quinque caricis per singulos dies sustentatur.

hoc autem Latinus lector intelligat, ut semel dixisse sufficiat, "lacum" non "stagnum" sonare iuxta Graecos, sed "cisternam", quae sermone Syro et Hebraico "gubba" appellatur.

Three things he declared to be indispensable for education: natural endowment, study, and constant practice.

τριῶν ἔφη δεῖν παιδείᾳ, φύσεως, μαθήσεως, ἀσκήσεως.

For whenever the curse of desolation lays hold on a city,
religion grows sickly and there is no will to honour the gods.

ἐρημία γὰρ πόλιν ὅταν λάβῃ κακή,
νοσεῖ τὰ τῶν θεῶν οὐδὲ τιμᾶσθαι θέλει.

He called old age the harbour of all ills; at least they all take refuge there.

τὸ γῆρας ἔλεγεν ὅρμον εἶναι τῶν κακῶν· εἰς αὐτὸ γοῦν πάντα καταφεύγειν.

The ravages, of course, began long before the war. The invention of the internal-combustion engine may be regarded with justice as the greatest single disaster in the history of mankind. Not only has it destroyed the security of England and made wholesale death and mutilation familiar things; it has also destroyed the beauty of England, killed quiet, and, with quiet, dignity. Take, for example, the case of Sussex. Who would have thought, as we wandered years ago through the Weald in spring and saw that incredible profusion of primroses and wild daffodils, or in summer through the empty spaces of the high downs, that these things upon which we had been nourished in childhood and had grown to rely upon in manhood, turning to them again and again for rest and refreshment of the spirit, would in our time be destroyed, dying before we ourselves should die? Yet so it is. First, the railways scattered their scurf of 'resorts' along the coast and accumulated little ganglions of vulgarity around their stations, as an alien body thrust into the flesh accumulates a zone of inflamed tissue around its place of entry; but the county as a whole remained inviolate. Then came the cars. The south and south-east of England were brought within the range of daily accessibility from the centre, with the result that London burst like a bomb and scattered its debris far and wide over the faces of Surrey and Kent, and presently over that of Sussex. With the coming of the car the peace of the county was broken, its traditions destroyed, its power to refresh and reinvigorate the spirit, a power which depended in part upon its emptiness and its peace, impaired. Its inhabitants bought gramophones and grew basely rich; its roads became maelstroms of traffic along which cars hurled their inert occupants to the coast, its valleys came out in a rash of angry pink; every hilltop had its villa, every village its multiple store, while the sacred peace of the downs was broken by the snorts of motor-bicycles and the hoots of straining cars. If the horde of invaders had derived benefit from their defilements, the case though bad would have been bearable. In fact, however, the majority of those who rifled beauty were unaware of what they did. Walking, just before the war, on Amberley Down, I came upon a small Austin perched upon its highest point, outraging the sight of all beholders. I approached, intending to draw the attention of the occupants to the beneficent but unobserved law which forbids a car to park itself more than fifteen yards from the highway (see the Road Traffic Act 1930). Within it sat a young man and his girl. Their backs were to the view, their windows shut. Were they engaged in the fulfilment of a function intelligible, if there misplaced? They were not. They were sitting stolidly, side by side, listening to the fat-stock prices over the wireless.

• Born Too Late
• A Gloomy Milestone
• What is the Advantage of Locomotion?
• Jouyl
• A Bionic Roach
• No Respect for Mechanical Genius
• American Culture
• Going for the Sake of Going

Labels: Luddism

Lawrence did not know Italian sufficiently well, nor did he have enough time to do justice to the original. As a result, his Verga is full of oddities. He misunderstood or misread many Italian words, so that "a picnic in the country" became "the ringing of the bells," a "fiancée" became a "wife," a "mother" a "midwife," a "hard bed on the ground" a "hard biscuit," a "storeroom" a "millstone," a "rump" a "group"; the olive trees instead of "fading gradually in the twilight," "fumed upon the twilight," etc. He translated southern Italian idioms literally, and thus the common expressions meaning "they had spent a fortune" and "as happy as a king" became "they had spent the very eyes out of their head" and "as happy as an Easter Day."

There will come an epoch late in time
when Ocean will loosen the bonds of the world
and the earth lie open in its vastness,
when Tethys will disclose new worlds
and Thule not be the farthest of lands.

venient annis saecula seris,
quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
nec sit terris ultima Thule.

Farnaby reports that Abraham Oertel (the sixteenth-century Flemish geographer) regarded this passage as a prophecy by a Spaniard of the discovery of America by his fellow countrymen. Thinking on the same lines Ferdinand Columbus wrote in the margin of his copy of Seneca's tragedies 'haec prophetia expleta est per patrem meum Christoforum Colon almirantem anno 1492' (Damsté, Mnem. 46 (1918), 134).

A jolly life has the frog, my lads. No care has he
for one to pour out his drink, for he has it by him unstinted.

εὐκτὸς ὁ τῶ βατράχω, παῖδες, βίος· οὐ μελεδαίνει
τὸν τὸ πιεῖν ἐγχεῦντα· πάρεστι γὰρ ἄφθονον αὐτῷ.

When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its curtain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the town, and through one uneven place I saw houses. Many men were walking in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in and out of the little opening in a hive.

During those years several New York banks refused to do business with democrats, and a parson refused at the font to christen a child Thomas Jefferson.

It is a misfortune to be born into a position in society from which there is no possibility of escape, however uncongenial this inescapable position may be to the victim's temperament, gifts, and consequent inclinations. This misfortune is a rare one. There are few stations in life that have held everyone that has been born into them as their life-long prisoner. One prisoner in a thousand, or one in a million at least, has succeeded in breaking his way out of even the most cramping and most crushing original confinement. At least one person, out of the many born into this position, will have found his position uncongenial enough, and will have had importunate enough incompatible ambitions, to have nerved him to make the necessary effort of will for breaking out, hard and painful though the act of self-liberation may have been.

Perhaps the only social position from which escape is impossible for those born into it is royalty; for this continues to haunt its victim psychologically even if he has managed to extricate himself from it officially. A royal personage who, so long as he has remained officially royal, has been longing to enjoy the satisfactions and amenities of private life, is apt to find, if and when he has had his way, that he now misses the servitude that was so irksome to him so long as he was officially subject to it. He now discovers, too late, that, unconsciously, he had been wishing to have the best of both worlds; and he has actually got the worst of both as an ironical result of his apparently successful fight to win his freedom. Moreover, the royal personage who is free to divest himself of his royalty officially is relatively fortunate. Even this limited degree of self-liberation can be attained by a royal personage only in a society that has become so orderly, or that has reduced royalty to so insignificant a social role, that, in this society, it has ceased to be dangerous either to wear a crown or to doff one. In most societies, at most times and places, the wearer of a crown has been holding a wolf by the ears.

In the present-day Western World, to be royal has ceased to be dangerous, yet royalty continues to be awkward for inheritors of it who are irked by it.

Also that it was provided in other plebiscites that no one might hold the same office twice within ten years...

item aliis plebi scitis cautum ne quis eundem magistratum intra decem annos caperet...

Mayst thou sleep in nettles.

ἐν κνίδαισι καθεύδοις.

Three kappas [are] worst — Kappadokia, Krete and Kilikia.

τρία κάππα κάκιστα· Καππαδοκία, Κρήτη καὶ Κιλικία.

Liars achieve that they are not believed even when they tell the truth.

mendaces faciunt ut nec vera dicentibus credatur.

To the question, "What do people gain by telling lies?" his answer was, "Just this, that when they speak the truth they are not believed."

ἐρωτηθεὶς τί περιγίνεται κέρδος τοῖς ψευδομένοις, "ὅταν," ἔφη, "λέγωσιν ἀληθῆ, μὴ πιστεύεσθαι."

As a rule we do not believe a liar even when he tells the truth.

cum mendaci homini ne verum quidem dicenti credere soleamus.

“We Germans,” civilization’s literary man says in a manifesto that appeared at the turn of the years 1917–18, “now that we have grown up to democracy, have the greatest experience of all before us. A nation does not reach self-government without learning much about human nature and without managing life with more mature organs. The play of social forces lies in nations that govern themselves in full public view with the individuals educating one another and learning about each other. But if we act now at home, the barriers abroad will also soon fall; European distances will become shorter, and we will see our fellow nations as family members travelling the same paths. As long as we persisted in the national status quo, they seemed to us to be enemies—doomed because they did not also persist. Has not every revolution come just before the end? Was it not ruin to try to realize ideas in battles and crises? This destiny shall now be ours as well . . .”

What unspeakably painful resistance rises up in my inner being before this hostile gentleness, before all this beautifully stylized unpleasantness? Should one not laugh? After all, is not every sentence, every word in it, false, translated, basically mistaken, grotesque self-deception—the confusion of the wishes, instincts, and needs of a novelist who has been spiritually naturalized in France with German reality? “This destiny shall now be ours as well!” A sublime and brilliant but basically Latinized literary man who long ago renounced every feeling for the particular ethos of his people, yes, who even ridicules the recognition of such a special national ethos as bestial nationalism, and who opposes it with his humanitarian-democratic civilization and “social” internationalism.

Soon it will be fifty years since Dostoyevsky, who had the eyes to see, asked almost incredulously: “Can it be true that cosmopolitan radicalism has already taken roots in Germany, too?” This is a way of asking that is equivalent to astonished confirmation, and the idea of cosmopolitan, or more correctly, international radicalism, itself contradicts the protestation that it is a “mirage” of our present enemies that the national democracies could ever unite into an intellectually unified European or world democracy. By “cosmopolitan radicalism,” Dostoyevsky meant that intellectual tendency that has the democratic civilization-society of “mankind” as its goal; la république sociale, démocratique et universelle; the empire of human civilization. A mirage of our enemies? But mirage or not: those who see this mirage hovering before them must definitely be enemies of Germany, for it is certainly true that a union of the national democracies into a European, a world democracy, would leave nothing of the German character: the world democracy, the imperium of civilization, the “society of mankind,” could have a character that would be more Latin or more Anglo-Saxon—the German spirit would dissolve and disappear in it, it would be obliterated, it would no longer exist.

From his childhood Dante had been familiar with the image of Lucifer in the mosaic decoration of the cupola of the Baptistery in Florence. Work on these mosaics began in the first half of the thirteenth century and continued during Dante’s early years. The design on the cupola consists of an apocalyptic vision of Christ in majesty presiding over the Last Judgement, the angelic hierarchy, events from the Old and New Testaments and scenes of damnation, arranged symmetrically in rectangular segments and culminating in a central triple-octagonal ornamentation. The image of Lucifer dominates a tumultuous scene in which souls of the damned are tormented by demons. Lucifer himself is a grotesque monster, horned and bearded, munching a soul whose legs and buttocks dangle from his mouth. From his ears protrude two snakes, also munching two souls, who dangle face forwards. Lucifer clenches other souls in his hands, held ready for the continuation of his meal. His feet are clamped on yet another two, and demons force others towards him and towards other snakes. A crude representation of his insides shows a soul being digested and about to be excreted. The devouring is thus represented as endlessly continuous.

[3] There is no disgrace in making concessions to one’s own people — as Dorian does to Dorian or Chalcidian to others of their kin — since we are all of us neighbours and share one island home and one name as Sicilians. We shall no doubt have our wars in future when occasion arises, and we shall no doubt then make peace again by conferring amongst ourselves. [4] But when foreigners invade we would always be wise to act together to repel them, since if any one of us is harmed we are all endangered; and never again in future should we bring in allies or peace-makers from outside.

[3] οὐδὲν γὰρ αἰσχρὸν οἰκείους οἰκείων ἡσσᾶσθαι, ἢ Δωριᾶ τινὰ Δωριῶς ἢ Χαλκιδέα τῶν ξυγγενῶν, τὸ δὲ ξύμπαν γείτονας ὄντας καὶ ξυνοίκους μιᾶς χώρας καὶ περιρρύτου καὶ ὄνομα ἓν κεκλημένους Σικελιώτας· οἳ πολεμήσομέν τε, οἶμαι, ὅταν ξυμβῇ, καὶ ξυγχωρησόμεθά γε πάλιν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς λόγοις κοινοῖς χρώμενοι· [4] τοὺς δὲ ἀλλοφύλους ἐπελθόντας ἁθρόοι αἰεί, ἢν σωφρονῶμεν, ἀμυνούμεθα, εἴπερ καὶ καθ᾽ ἑκάστους βλαπτόμενοι ξύμπαντες κινδυνεύομεν· ξυμμάχους δὲ οὐδέποτε τὸ λοιπὸν ἐπαξόμεθα οὐδὲ διαλλακτάς.

The society in which we are now living has two determining characteristics: it is a technological and a democratic society. The stress that it places on scientific applications on the one hand and on the manifestations of popular opinion on the other, imposes on every member of the society the obligation to become and to remain literate, i.e. to cultivate the capacity to read and to write the language that is in use for these partly cultural, partly political operations. The upshot of this requirement is that suspicion and contempt attach themselves necessarily to the illiterate person, and his economic possibilities are correspondingly limited. This estimate of the sociological situation in modern states is not exaggerated. Here is a typical statement of the current point of view: "The dimensions of illiteracy throughout the world and its grave economic, social, cultural, and political con sequences point up the need to find practical means for the eradication of this brake on human progress and welfare ..."¹⁾

Graeco-Roman Egypt presents us with the spectacle of a society very different in kind, living on quite other presuppositions and with purposes remote from those of our day. That society was both pre-technological and pre-democratic. We shall find that it made a large place for illiteracy. The illiterate person was able to function in a broad variety of occupations, to be recognized as a respectable member of his class, to attain financial success, to hold public office, to associate on equal terms with his literate neighbors.

1) L.H. Hughs, Innovator (Univ. Mich. School of Education) 6, No. 7, 1975, 8. Indicative of modern concern with world literacy is the series published by Unesco under the title "Literacy:, beginning with the report for 1965-7 (Paris).

This summary enables us to recognize three main categories of writers for the illiterate: (1) relatives, preferably close relatives, but when these were lacking, more remote connections; (2) business associates or colleagues in government service; and finally (3) professional scribes, who might or might not have personal knowledge of their clients. Of these, the first group is by far the most striking because it shows illiteracy operating as a centripetal force in an ancient non-technological society. The special needs that stemmed from wide spread illiteracy confirmed the traditional rules that governed the selection of kyrioi or male "guardians" as well as the selection of guardians for minor children. These were kept as far as possible within the family. Illiteracy similarly promoted domestic cooperation, what we should be inclined to call family solidarity. This is nowhere seen more clearly than in the frequency with which illiterate fathers and mothers supplemented their own lack with the literate capacities of their sons.

The conversation ended with an exchange of stories among the soldiers. One of them told me a story about a priest. He wondered whether I knew what a priest meant, and to make it plain he said: "A priest, you know, is a man who always lies."

But indeed, that was quite a clever remark which Cato made many years ago: "I wonder," said he, "that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees another soothsayer."

vetus autem illud Catonis admodum scitum est, qui mirari se aiebat quod non rideret haruspex haruspicem cum vidisset.

Certainly these people have a benediction upon them, granted them for their simple lives and their justice. Their eyes are fearless and kindly. They are courteous, straight, and all have in them laughter and sadness. They are full of songs, of memories, of the stories of their native place; and their worship is conformable to the world that God made. May they possess their own land, and may their influence come again from Italy to save from jar, and boasting, and ineptitude the foolish, valourless cities, and the garish crowds of shouting men. . . . And let us especially pray that the revival of the faith may do something for our poor old universities.

It was now that I regretted the early years which had been wasted in sickness or idleness, or more idle reading, that I condemned the perverse method of our schoolmasters who, by first teaching the mother language, might descend with so much ease and perspicuity to the origin and etymology of a derivative idiom. In the nineteenth year of my age I determined to supply this defect, and the lessons of Pavilliard again contributed to smooth the entrance of the way, the Greek alphabet, the grammar and the pronunciation according to the French accent. As he possessed only such a stock as was requisite for an ecclesiastic, our first book was St John’s Gospel, and we should probably have construed the whole of the New Testament had I not represented the absurdity of adhering to the corrupt dialect of the Hellenist Jews. At my earnest request we presumed to open the Iliad; and I had the pleasure of beholding, though darkly and through a glass, the true image of Homer, whom I had long since admired in an English dress. After my tutor, conscious of his inability, had left me to myself I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled, and from the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus. Yet in my residence at Lausanne I had laid a solid foundation, which enabled me in a more propitious season to prosecute the study of Grecian literature.

There is, in fact, profound peace and tranquillity; war has ceased, there are no wanderings of peoples, no civil strifes, no despotisms, nor other maladies and ills in Greece requiring many unusual remedial forces.

πολλὴ γὰρ εἰρήνη καὶ ἡσυχία, πέπαυται δὲ πόλεμος, καὶ πλάναι καὶ στάσεις οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ τυραννίδες, οὐδ᾽ ἄλλα νοσήματα καὶ κακὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὥσπερ πολυδυνάμων φαρμάκων χρῄζοντα καὶ περιττῶν.

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.

So you there, greedy man, money-grubber, looking for profit from any source, whether honest or shady makes no difference to you, you are amassing for yourself a great deal of mud. You're collecting mud, and you aren't in the least worried about sticking in it, material, earthly things are so dear to you.

O tu avare homo adquisitor, undecumque sive honeste sive turpiter lucra conquirens, congeris ad te multum lutum; lutum colligis, et ne ibi haereas non pertimescis, cara sunt tibi terrena.

All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted nuisance, of ancient standing, should not be abated without some caution.

We are not made of wood or stone, and the things which connect themselves with our hearts and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away without our missing them.

There was never a commander who more endeared himself to his men by cheerfully sharing all their duties with the meanest of the soldiers.

non alias militi familiarior dux fuit omnia inter infimos militum haud gravate munia obeundo.

Whatever hardship the emperor imposed on the troops, he inflicted with equal severity on himself; their labour, their diet, their sleep were measured by the inflexible rules of discipline; and, without despising the enemy, they were taught to repose an implicit confidence in their own valour and the wisdom of their leader.

But it is tempting to associate this heroic tale of one woman’s stand against an invading would-be rapist with the circumstances surroung the successive waves of Viking raiders who scoured and spoiled and eventually settled great swathes of Anglo-Saxon England from 793 until the generation after the Beowulf manuscript was written, when indeed Anglo-Saxon England was ruled by the Danish King Cnut.

The chant was based on The Book of Isaiah, chapter 9, verse 6, in whose Latin the last phase is magni consilii Angelus. In The Dream, the Tree of Life, spanning the universe, is looked on by ‘holy spirits, men on earth and all this glorious creation’. Now this phase is a clear reminiscence of a New Testament text, St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, verse 10, which says that, when God exalted Christ who had been obedient unto death, ‘at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, on heaven and on earth and under the earth’.

Similar cosmic imagery lies behind the celebration of Christmas on 25 December, the Winter Solstice in the Roman calendar and the ancient Mithradatic Roman feast of Sol Invictus, the unconquered Sun: at the darkest time of the year, Christ the ‘Light of the World’ was seen to make a triumphal entry into the world where darkness had reigned up to then.

At Whitby, Cædmon’s initial tests concerned the versification of ‘discourse relating to sacred history or doctrine’ (quaedam sacrae historiae sive doctinae sermo). Entering the monastery, Hild had Cædmon instructed in the cycle of sacred history (iussutque illum seriem sacrae historiae doceri), from Creation to Judgement.

Edgar was King Alfred’s great-grandson and in due course he became known as ‘the Peacemaker’(Pacifus).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Then, besides, there is nothing in poetry more serviceable to language than that the ideas communicated, by being bound up and interwoven with verse, are better remembered and kept firmly in mind. Men in those days had to have a memory for many things.

ἔτι τοίνυν οὐδὲν ἀπὸ ποιητικῆς λόγῳ χρησιμώτερον ὑπάρχει τοῦ δεθέντα μέτροις τὰ φραζόμενα καὶ συμπλακέντα μᾶλλον μνημονεύεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖσθαι. τοῖς μὲν οὖν τότε πολλὴν ἔδει μνήμην παρεῖναι.

No, granted, I am not a knight of the times, nor am I a “leader,” and I do not want to be. I do not love “leaders,” and I do not love “teachers,” either, for example, “teachers of democracy.” But least of all do I love and respect those small, empty people who have good noses and who live from knowing what is going on and from following the right scent, those servile and conforming vermin of the times who, with incessant announcements of their contempt for all those who are less quick and mobile, trot alongside the new; or also the fops and up-to-date people, those intellectual swells and elegant ones who wear the most recent ideas and catchwords just as they wear their monocles: for example, “spirit,” “love,” “democracy,”—so that one can hardly hear this jargon today without being disgusted. All of these people, the conformers as well as the snobs, enjoy the freedom of their nothingness.

Nein, zugegeben, ich bin kein Ritter der Zeit, bin auch kein ›Führer‹ und will es nicht sein. Ich liebe nicht ›Führer‹, und auch ›Lehrer‹ liebe ich nicht, zum Beispiel ›Lehrer der Demokratie‹. Am wenigsten aber liebe und achte ich jene Kleinen, Nichtigen, Spürnäsigen, die davon leben, daß sie Bescheid wissen und Fährte haben, jenes Bedienten- und Läufergeschmeiß der Zeit, das unter unaufhörlichen Kundgebungen der Geringschätzung für alle weniger Mobilen und Behenden dem Neuen zur Seite trabt; oder auch die Stutzer und Zeitkorrekten, jene geistigen Swells und Elegants, welche die letzten Ideen und Worte tragen, wie sie ihr Monokel tragen: zum Beispiel ›Geist‹, ›Liebe‹, ›Demokratie‹, — so daß es heute schon schwer ist, diesen Jargon ohne Ekel zu hören. Diese alle, die Heulenden sowohl wie die Snobs, genießen die Freiheit ihrer Nichtigkeit.

A quotation without a reference is like a geological specimen of unknown locality.

I find my students by and large fairly pig ignorant even about their own culture and region. Scottish schoolchildren I gather have never heard of Sir Walter Scott (https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/sir-walter-scott-comeback-for-school-lessons-d5kmstrdp). Millions of brains, better otherwise employed, are being daily fried with trivia and tik-tok nonsense, creating a lobotomized generation of coofs and ninnies, likely to spawn an even viler brood. Damnosa quid …?

This was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue, Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but evincing, even from his cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were encouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, "might wag his pow in a pu'pit yet." With an ambitious view to such a consummation, they pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, eat dry bread and drank cold water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some grotesque habits of swinging his limbs, and screwing his visage while reciting his task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his school-companions. The same qualities secured him at college a plentiful share of the same sort of notice. Half the youthful mob "of the yards" used to assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson, (for he had already attained that honoured title,) descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his Lexicon under his arm, his long mis-shapen legs sprawling abroad, and keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder-blades, as they raised and depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which seemed his constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the professor were totally inadequate to restrain the inextinguishable laughter of the students, and sometimes unequal to repress his own. The long sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more distinctly, all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and tattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against a poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodgings, where, for eighteen-pence a-week, he was allowed the benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour, permission to study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages, he attained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and some acquaintance with the sciences.