Laudator Temporis Acti

Good husband and huswife now chiefly be glad,
things handsome to have, as they ought to be had.
They both do provide, against Christmas do coom,
to welcome their neighbor, good chere to have soom.
Good bread and good drinke, a good fier in the hall,
brawne, pudding and souse, and good mustard withall.
Biefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best,
pig, veale, goose and capon, and Turkey well drest:
Chese, apples and nuttes, iolly Caroles to here,
as then, in the countrey is counted good chere.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre.

ἃ γὰρ δεῖ μαθόντας ποιεῖν, ταῦτα ποιοῦντες μανθάνομεν, οἷον οἰκοδομοῦντες οἰκοδόμοι γίνονται καὶ κιθαρίζοντες κιθαρισταί.

Hence it seems impossible that a man can be a builder if he has never built, or a harpist if he has never played a harp; because he who learns to play the harp learns by playing it, and similarly in all other cases.

διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ ἀδύνατον εἶναι οἰκοδόμον εἶναι μὴ οἰκοδομήσαντα μηδέν, ἢ κιθαριστὴν μηθὲν κιθαρίσαντα· ὁ γὰρ μανθάνων κιθαρίζειν κιθαρίζων μανθάνει κιθαρίζειν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι.

The peculiar form of the Greek sacrificial ritual is of very great antiquity and post-Mycenaean at one and the same time, and not without connection to the East: the communal meat meal of men combined with a burnt offering to the gods, primarily of the inedible parts and the bones. For this reason the fire altar which stands open to the sky⁶² is the most essential part of the sanctuary. This is not an exchange of gifts celebrated by a hierarchical society of gods, king, priests, and commoners: together on the same level, men and women stand here about the altar, experience and bring death, honour the immortals, and in eating affirm life in its conditionality: it is the solidarity of mortals in the face of the immortals. This amounts to a negation of the Mycenaean organization: no king stands higher than all others, no priest can appropriate the sacral portions for himself. From the corporate beginning of the equality of men in contrast to the divine, the path could lead on through aristocracy to democracy and humanity. Nourished by numerous currents of tradition, the Greek experience here found its particular path into the future.

62 Sanctuaries for the sacrifice of oxen in the open air are found as early as Myrtou-Pighades and Ayia Irini on Cyprus (see nn. 7 and 21), and Ayia Triada on Crete (n. 17), then on Samos (n. 56) and on Lindos (E. Dyggve, Lindos III, 1960, 457–66); characteristic of these open-air altars are wheel-made terracotta votive bulls, cf. Nicholls, n. 22.

Our sad decay in church and state
    Surpasses my descriving...

The Church is in ruins, the State is in jars...

But Justice shines out
in smoky hovels,
and honours the righteous man:
gold-spangled abodes
where hands are not clean
she quits with eyes
averted, and goes to pious ones,
not revering with praise
the might of wealth if it is counterfeit.
She directs all things to their end.

Δίκα δὲ λάμπει μὲν ἐν
δυσκάπνοις δώμασιν,
τὸν δ᾿ ἐναίσιμον τίει·        775
τὰ χρυσόπαστα δ᾿ ἔδεθλα σὺν
πίνῳ χερῶν παλιντρόποις
ὄμμασι λιποῦσ᾿ ὄσια †προσέβα
τοῦ† δύναμιν οὐ σέβουσα πλού-        780
του παράσημον αἴνῳ·
πᾶν δ᾿ ἐπὶ τέρμα νωμᾷ.

775 τίει H.L. Ahrens: τίει βίον f
776 ἔδεθλα Auratus: ἐσθλὰ f
779-780 προσέβα τοῦ f: προσέβατο Verrall: προσέμολε Thiersch

Labels: typographical and other errors

There was an Old Person of Sestri,
Who sate himself down in the vestry;
When they said, 'You are wrong!' — he merely said 'Bong!'
That repulsive Old Person of Sestri.

But Facts are chiels that winna ding,
    And downa be disputed.

We must talk about these things on the basis of firm knowledge. Guesswork is one thing, firm knowledge is another.

σάφ᾿ εἰδότας χρὴ τῶνδε μυθεῖσθαι πέρι·
τὸ γὰρ τοπάζειν τοῦ σάφ᾿ εἰδέναι δίχα.

They feel the facts; but they wish to disguise them, because they know that they have been one great cause of the country being in its present impoverished and dilapidated state. They know that the people look at them with an accusing eye: and they wish to put as fair a face as they can upon the state of things.

Nor is this the only reference to Baal and excrement in ancient literature. Marvin Pope¹¹ has called attention to the rabbinic description of ceremonial defecation in the cult of Baal Peor (see b. ᶜAbod. Zar. 44b; b. Sanh. 60b; m. Sanh. 7:6 [cited by Pope], as well as Sipre 131; y. Sanh. 10:2,28d). Pope's caution on whether this detail stems "from direct knowledge of the pagan cult" or "from play on one of the meanings of the word pᶜr" is admirable. Now, however, recognition of the allusion to excrement in 1 Kgs 18:27 may tilt the scales in favor of Pope's former suggestion (notwithstanding the assumption that Baal worship took on different manifestations in different locales, that is to say, that the worship of Baal on Mt. Carmel need not a priori have been the same as the worship of Baal at Baal Peor in Transjordan). We may even reverse the thinking of Pope's latter suggestion and propose that 1he name Baal Peor is to be derived from (pᶜr) "excrete."<sup>12

11</sup> M.H. Pope, "A Divine Banquet at Ugarit," The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays. Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring (ed. J.M. Efird; Durham, NC: Duke University, 1972) 196-97.

¹² For this meaning see F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906) 822.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

The people seem to have been constantly well off. A pig in almost every cottage sty; and that is the infallible mark of a happy people.

Ah, if only some fate could swiftly come—not a painful one, nor one that left us long bedridden—that would bring us eternal, unending sleep...

φεῦ, τίς ἂν ἐν τάχει μὴ περιώδυνος
μηδὲ δεμνιοτήρης
μόλοι τὸν αἰεὶ φέρουσ᾿ ἂν ἡμῖν        1450
μοῖρ᾿ ἀτέλευτον ὕπνον...

Literally τίς is an interrogative adjective, modifying, as you say, μοῖρα, the whole thing being a question with a potential optative—"What fate might/ could come....?" But the upshot is that it is a wishful thought, and so the translators opt to translate τίς as indefinite, though it is accented and not enclitic, and they render the optative as one of wish. I see that Smyth cites this passage as an example of a potential optative used to express a wish at § 1832.

Great risk does not take hold of a cowardly man. But since men must die, why would anyone sit in darkness and coddle a nameless old age to no use, deprived of all noble deeds?

ὁ μέγας δὲ κίν-
δυνος ἄναλκιν οὐ φῶτα λαμβάνει·
θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον
γῆρας ἐν σκότῳ καθήμενος ἕψοι μάταν,
ἁπάντων καλῶν ἄμμορος;

...for Athene, the dread goddess, did not allow it...

                                          ... οὐ γὰρ Ἀθήνη
εἴα ἐυπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεός...

.. for fair-tressed Athene, the dread goddess, would not suffer it...

Labels: typographical and other errors

When they first began such philosophy they were called boskoi [grazers] because they had no homes, ate neither bread nor meat and drank no wine, but dwelt constantly in the mountains, continually praising God with prayers and hymns according to the law of the Church. At the usual meal hours they would each take a sickle and wander in the mountains, feeding off wild plants as if they were grazing.

τούτους δὲ καὶ βοσκοὺς ἀπεκάλουν, ἔναγχος τῆς τοιαύτης φιλοσοφίας ἄρξαντας. ὀνομάζουσι δὲ ὧδε αὐτοὺς, καθότι οὔτε οἰκήματα ἔχουσιν, οὔτε ἄρτον οὔτε ὄψον ἐσθίουσιν, οὔτε οἶνον πίνουσιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὄρεσι διατρίβοντες, ἀεὶ τὸν Θεὸν εὐλογοῦσιν ἐν εὐχαῖς καὶ ὕμνοις κατὰ θεσμὸν τῆς ἐκκλησίας. τροφῆς δὲ ἡνίκα γένηται καιρὸς, καθάπερ νεμόμενοι, ἅρπην ἔχων ἕκαστος, ἀνὰ τὸ ὄρος περιϊόντες, τὰς βοτάνας σιτίζονται.

Among the aims which Wilamowitz prescribed for the critic of Greek tragedy were these two: to learn as much Greek as Hermann and Elmsley, and to feel as much pleasure in eradicating a superfluous conjecture as in making a necessary one.¹ How many entrenched conjectures still await expulsion from our texts?<sup>2

1</sup>Einleitung 254.

² Cf. Shackleton Bailey, Philol. 108 (1964) 106.

was die philologie im ganzen in dem halben jahrhundert zugelernt hat. das erste und vornehmste ist also, dass wir wieder so viel griechisch lernen, wie Hermann und Elmsley konnten. aber wenn wir uns das können anzueignen versuchen, dürfen wir uns nicht damit begnügen, es als kunst zu üben, sondern müssen uns dessen was wir wissen und können selbst bewusst werden und es für andere zur darstellung bringen. wir müssen selber verstehen und anderen erklären. das erste erfordert, dass wir vorab das besser wissen wollen ablegen, unser urteil der überlieferung willig ergeben, und, wenn wir anstossen, zunächst nicht ihr sondern uns mistrauen. wir sollen das verständnis herausheben, nicht hineintragen. das gilt von dem einzelnen worte, das gilt in tausendfältiger variation von dem individuellen dichterischen gedanken und seinem ausdrucke im einzelnen verse, im einzelnen chorlied, im ganzen drama.

Labels: typographical and other errors

(a) δορίαλλος or δόριλλος in Ar. (quote) is used of the female genitals, to insult the tragedian Dorillus.⁹⁵

(b) δορύαλλος: the female genitals . . . referring to the tragedian Doryllus:

         the women fence off their pussy shelleys

⁹⁵ Or possibly Dorilaos; punning in any case on περίαλλος (loins).

(a) Etymologicum Genuinum AB

δορίαλλος· λέγεται καὶ δόριλλος. Ἀριστοφάνης· αἱ—φράγνυνται. ἔστι δὲ τὸ γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον, ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορίλλου.

(b) Hesychius δ 2230

δορύαλλος· τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν μόριον . . . ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τοῦ τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορύλλου·

        αἱ <δὲ> γυναῖκες τὸν δορίαλλον φράγυνυνται

Many twenty-first century librarians are nothing but crypto-misobiblists, never happier than when they're maliciously culling their stock and stamping WITHDRAWN on whatever is of proven quality and worth, which is then quietly consigned to the dumpster or the charity shop. Well-stocked shelves are anathema to this race of poisonous elves.

For in you two the line of your sires is not lost, but you are of the race of men that are sceptered kings, fostered by Zeus; for no commoner could beget such sons as you.

... οὐ γὰρ σφῷν γε γένος ἀπόλωλε τοκήων,
ἀλλ᾿ ἀνδρῶν γένος ἐστὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων
σκηπτούχων, ἐπεὶ οὔ κε κακοὶ τοιούσδε τέκοιεν.

62–64 ath. Zenodotus, Aristophanes Byzantius, Aristarchus

As I declared when I first dealt with a god, one must believe in him in order to understand him; Frickenhaus on Greek soil felt much the same way, and with pleasure I quote his words: "One cannot be a historian of religion without reproducing the belief in the old gods in one's heart."

Wie ich, als ich zuerst von einem Gotte handelte, ausgesprochen habe, man müsse an ihn glauben, um ihn zu verstehen, hat ganz ähnlich Frickenhaus auf hellenischem Boden empfunden, und ich setze gern seine Worte her „man kann nicht Religionshistoriker sein, ohne den Glauben an die alten Götter in seinem Herzen nachzuschaffen“.

He whom they call Redeemer has put them in fetters: in fetters of false values and delusive words. Would that someone would yet redeem them from their Redeemer!

Der, welchen sie Erlöser nennen, schlug sie in Banden: — In Banden falscher Werthe und Wahn-Worte! Ach dass Einer sie noch von ihrem Erlöser erlöste!

For Revelations he was dependent on a single copy borrowed from Reuchlin, which lacked the last six verses...

Labels: typographical and other errors

But as for me, the gods themselves undid my bonds
full easily...

αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ δεσμὸν μὲν ἀνέγναμψαν θεοὶ αὐτοὶ
ῥηϊδίως...