Thursday, October 31, 2024
Too Late
Plautus, Mostellaria 379-380 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):
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It's a wretched businessRobert H. Brophy, "'Digging a Well after You Are Thirsty': A Plautine and Chinese Proverb," Classical World 72.7 (April-May, 1979) 421-422, adduces a passage from Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, tr. Ilza Veith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 105 (I.2):
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?See also Lillian B. Lawler, "A Classicist in Far Cathay," Classical Journal 31.9 (June, 1936) 534-548 (at 546).
