Laudator Temporis Acti

Telemachus inhaled

Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος

• 213 careful
• 230 moodily
• 306 brooding
• 345 sullen
• 388 his mind alert and focused
• 412 soberly

What I admired most in Lindsay was his noble and entirely unselfish attitude to scholarship. He was the only man I have known who was genuinely pleased when he was convincingly shown to have been wrong; because that meant an advance in scholarship.

While curling smokes from village-tops are seen,
And the fleet shades glide o'er the dusky green.

Even now the housetops yonder are smoking
and longer shadows fall from the mountain heights.

et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant
maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.

I also attended a seminar on Greek epigraphy with Hiller v. Gaertringen, a son-in-law of Wilamowitz. One day he said: "If you can't see anything on the stone, and if you can't feel anything with your fingers, you must use your finest instrument, your tongue." With that he handed us a piece of stone. It went round the table, and we, all the four of us, solemnly licked the stone.

Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.

quisnam igitur liber? sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus,
quem neque pauperies neque mors neque vincula terrent,
responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores        85
fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus,
externi ne quid valeat per leve morari,
in quem manca ruit semper Fortuna.

His reading finished, Monsieur Bergeret replaced the pamphlet upon the table.

"These old books," he said, "amuse and divert our minds, they make us forget the present day."

"That is true," replied Monsieur Goubin.

---

M. Bergeret posa le feuillet sur sa table. Il avait terminé sa lecture.

Ces vieux livres, dit-il, amusent et divertissent l'esprit. Ils nous font oublier le temps présent.

En effet , dit M. Goubin.

You will have to be content with death,
so why make your life a misery?

Du sollst mit dem Tode zufrieden sein,
Warum machst du dir das Leben zur Pein?

Cast away complaint and be not troubled, for how brief is the time thou dwellest here compared with all the life that follows this! Ere thou breedest worms and art cast into the tomb torment not thy soul, as if it were damned while thou still livest.

Ῥίπτε γόους, μὴ κάμνε, πόσον χρόνον ἐνθάδε μίμνων,
    ὡς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὅλον τὸν μετὰ ταῦτα βίον.
πρὶν τοίνυν σκώληκα βαλεῖν τύμβοις τε ῥιφῆναι,
    μὴ δαμάσῃς ψυχὴν ζῶν ἔτι κρινομένην.

There has lately come to my mind (if so desired the word may be used with quotations) the recipe by which any aspiring young poet may become an ultramodern in his versifying as his ambition may require — may even attain to the "Dial" school. The thing is simple enough; take any thought of no importance, preferably one concerning one's own phases of nauseation, and state it as awkwardly and obscurely as possible. Voila! Cummings and Eliot!

Ah, but in the old days, Charon, you know what men they were that came, all of them brave, and most of them covered with blood and wounded; but now we get a few poisoned by a wife or a son, or with their legs and bellies all puffed out with rich living, a pale miserable lot, all of them, quite unlike the old ones.

πλὴν ἀλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν παλαιοί, ὦ Χάρων, οἶσθα οἷοι παρεγίγνοντο, ἀνδρεῖοι ἅπαντες, αἵματος ἀνάπλεῳ καὶ τραυματίαι οἱ πολλοί· νῦν δὲ ἢ φαρμάκῳ τις ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀποθανὼν ἢ ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ ὑπὸ τρυφῆς ἐξῳδηκὼς τὴν γαστέρα καὶ τὰ σκέλη, ὠχροὶ ἅπαντες καὶ ἀγεννεῖς, οὐδὲν ὅμοιοι ἐκείνοις.

• Pale Women and Dark Men
• Perusta Solibus
• Pale Skin
• Pallor
• Umbrellas
• White Lead

If I caught him reading a newly published book, save by way of penance, it would go hard with him. Of our modern education he should have enough to read the ancients: Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and that lot—custodians of most of what is worth knowing.

But their lies weren’t without practical advantage to you, Alexander.

Ἀλλὰ τὸ ψεῦδος αὐτῶν οὐκ ἄχρηστόν σοι, ὦ Ἀλέξανδρε, πρὸς τὰ πράγματα ἐγένετο.

Your monster of the deep, my dear Nereids, the one of you sent against Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, didn’t harm the girl, as you've been thinking it would, but is now dead itself.

Τὸ κῆτος ὑμῶν, ὦ Νηρεΐδες, ὃ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Κηφέως θυγατέρα τὴν Ἀνδρομέδαν ἐπέμψατε, οὔτε τὴν παῖδα ἠδίκησεν, ὡς οἴεσθε, καὶ αὐτὸ ἤδη τέθνηκεν.

Labels: typographical and other errors

God's earth, this great shining room,
they darken to a vale of misery,
thereby at once revealing
what miserable wretches they are themselves.

Der Gotteserde lichten Saal
Verdüstern sie zum Jammertal;
Daran entdecken wir geschwind,
Wie jämmerlich sie selber sind.

The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth.

Papist or Protestant, or both between,
Like good Erasmus in an honest mean,
In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

Indeed, there is no danger, no danger whatsoever, that requires more anxious vigilance than allowing any man to become stronger than the people. Let no man be delivered, and let no man be destroyed, merely because this man or that so desires; let him who is delivered or destroyed by the evidence of facts be entitled to receive from this court the verdict that is his due. That is the democratic principle.

οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔσθ' ὅ τι τῶν πάντων μᾶλλον εὐλαβεῖσθαι δεῖ ἢ τὸ μείζω τινὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἐᾶν γίγνεσθαι. μή μοι σῳζέσθω μηδ ἀπολλύσθω μηδείς, ἐὰν ὁ δεῖνα ἢ ὁ δεῖνα βούληται, ἀλλ' ὃν ἂν τὰ πεπραγμένα σῴζῃ καὶ τοὐναντίον, τούτῳ τῆς προσηκούσης ψήφου παρ' ὑμῶν ὑπαρχέτω τυγχάνειν· τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι δημοτικόν.

By Zeus the Savior...

νὴ τὸν Δία τὸν σωτῆρα...

22,
101, 106, 111, 134, 144, 165, 187,
202,
356, 359,
400, 410, 444,
551, 566,
613, 657,
704, 706, 712, 715,
848, 863, 870, 889, 890,
905, 920, 971,
1008, 1010, 1021, 1028,
1102, 1116,
1202

My future program will be calm disapproval of human institutions in general, including all forms of government, most laws and customs, and all contemporary literature; enthusiastic belief in the Darwinian theory, intolerance of intolerance, and war upon every man with a mission ... human suffering and human injustice in all their forms to be contemplated with a merely curious interest, as one looks into an anthill.³⁸

38. "Working for an Empress," Works, l350-351. Fatout, Devil's Lexicographer, 109.

IPHIGENIA. Can a foreign country become our homeland?
ARKAS. It is your homeland has grown foreign to you.
IPHIGENIA. Therefore my heart bleeds and cannot heal.

IPHIGENIE. Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS. Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE. Das ist’s, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.

But even such prescriptions pale beside many of those receiving sanction from the distinguished chemist Robert Boyle in his Medicinal Experiments of 1692, one of the most popular family handbooks of the period. Among other recipes more palatable, one for sore throat, as common an ailment among children then as now, proposes "a drachm of white dog's turd" worked up with honey of roses into "a linctus, to be very slowly let down the throat." Another—"For Convulsions, especially in Children"—requires ground dried earthworms fortified with "a pretty number of grains of ambergrease" to moderate the stench. A third—"For the Cholic and diverse other Distempers"—features an infusion made of "four or five balls of fresh stone-horse dung" steeped in a pint of white wine, to be drunk "from a quarter to half a pint" at a dose. Easily the Mount Everest and Mona Lisa among these unappealing remedies is the following, used "To clear the Eyes, even of films": Take human fecal matter "of good Colour and consistence," dry it slowly "till it be pulverable," then reduce it "into an impalpable powder, which is to be blown once, twice, or thrice a day ... into the patient's Eyes."

Labels: noctes scatologicae

What applies to Christianity applies to the Stoics as well. To be a Christian or a Stoic is unfitting for a free human being.

Was vom Christentum gilt, gilt von den Stoikern: freien
    Menschen geziemet es nicht, Christ oder Stoiker sein.

From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy—
From any kind of vice, or folly,
Bias, propensity or passion
That is in prevalence and fashion,
Save one, the sufferer or lover
May, by the grace of God, recover:
Alone that spiritual tetter,
The zeal to make creation better,
Glows still immedicably warmer.
Who knows of a reformed reformer?

It is well known that Caelius, the orator, was very hot-tempered. A client of rare forbearance was, as the story goes, once dining with Caelius in his chamber, but it was difficult for him, having got into such close quarters, to avoid a quarrel with the companion at his side; so he decided that it was best to agree with whatever Caelius said and to play up to him. Caelius, however, could not endure his compliant attitude, and cried out, "Contradict me, that there may be two of us!"

Caelium oratorem fuisse iracundissimum constat. cum quo, ut aiunt, cenabat in cubiculo lectae patientiae cliens, sed difficile erat illi in copulam coniecto rixam eius cum quo cohaerebat effugere; optimum iudicavit quidquid dixisset sequi et secundas agere. non tulit Caelius adsentientem et exclamavit: "dic aliquid contra, ut duo simus!"

Don't walk the highway.

τάς λεωφόρους μὴ βαδίζειν.

For this city is no longer mine.

πόλις γὰρ οὐκέτ᾽ ἔστιν ἥδε μοι.

The civilian reader must not suppose when he reads accounts of military operations in which relative position of the forces are defined, as in the foregoing passages, that these were matters of general knowledge to those engaged. Such statements are commonly made, even by those high in command, in the light of later disclosures, such as the enemy's official reports. It is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anything about the disposition of the enemy's forces—except that it is unamiable—or precisely whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, they can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass. It may be said, generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what is going on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all until he learns it afterward.

Drink, may you live well always.

πίε, ζήσαις καλῶς ἀεί.