Friday, November 01, 2024

 

The March of Time

Horace, Epistles 2.2.55-56 (tr. C. Smart):
The advancing years rob us of every thing:
they have taken away my mirth, my gallantry, my revelings, and play.

singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes;
eripuere iocos, venerem, convivia, ludum.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 3.451-454 (tr. W.H.D. Rouse, rev. Martin F. Smith):
Afterwards, when the body is now wrecked with the mighty strength of time, and the frame has succumbed with blunted strength, the intellect limps, the tongue babbles, the intelligence totters, all is wanting and fails at the same time.

post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, <labat> mens,
omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt.

453 labat add. Lachmann (vagat Palmer, meat Merrill)

 

Those in Power Were Ruling Like Tyrants

Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.6 (392 BC; tr. Carleton L. Brownson):
They saw, however, that those who were in power were ruling like tyrants, and perceived that their state was being put out of existence, inasmuch as boundary stones had been removed and their fatherland was called Argos instead of Corinth; and, while they were compelled to share in the rights of citizenship at Argos, for which they had no desire, they had less influence in their state than aliens. Some of them, accordingly, came to the belief that life under such conditions was not endurable; but if they endeavoured to make their fatherland Corinth again, even as it had been from the beginning, and to make it free, and not only pure of the stain of the murderers, but blest with an orderly government, they thought it a worthy deed, if they could accomplish these things, to become saviours of their fatherland, but if they could not do so, to meet a most praiseworthy death in striving after the fairest and greatest blessings.

ὁρῶντες δὲ τοὺς τυραννεύοντας, αἰσθανόμενοι δὲ ἀφανιζομένην τὴν πόλιν διὰ τὸ καὶ ὅρους ἀνασπᾶσθαι καὶ Ἄργος ἀντὶ Κορίνθου τὴν πατρίδα αὐτοῖς ὀνομάζεσθαι, καὶ πολιτείας μὲν ἀναγκαζόμενοι τῆς ἐν Ἄργει μετέχειν, ἧς οὐδὲν ἐδέοντο, ἐν δὲ τῇ πόλει μετοίκων ἔλαττον δυνάμενοι, ἐγένοντό τινες αὐτῶν οἳ ἐνόμισαν οὕτω μὲν ἀβίωτον εἶναι· πειρωμένους δὲ τὴν πατρίδα, ὥσπερ ἦν καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς, Κόρινθον ποιῆσαι καὶ ἐλευθέραν ἀποδεῖξαι καὶ τῶν μὲν μιαιφόνων καθαράν, εὐνομίᾳ δὲ χρωμένην, ἄξιον εἶναι, εἰ μὲν δύναιντο καταπρᾶξαι ταῦτα, σωτῆρας γενέσθαι τῆς πατρίδος, εἰ δὲ μὴ δύναιντο, τῶν γε καλλίστων καὶ μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ὀρεγομένους ἀξιεπαινοτάτης τελευτῆς τυχεῖν.
See, e.g., Donald Kagan, "Corinthian Politics and the Revolution of 392 B.C.," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 11.4 (October, 1962), 447-457, and John Buckler, "A Note on Diodorus 14.86.1," Classical Philology 94.2 (April, 1999) 210-214.

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