Laudator Temporis Acti

O wretched sons of men! Why do you get weapons and bring slaughter on one another? Cease from that, give over your toiling, and in mutual peace keep safe your cities. Short is the span of life, so it would be best to run its course as lightly as we may, free from trouble.

                                       ὦ ταλαίπωροι βροτῶν,
τί κτᾶσθε λόγχας καὶ κατ᾽ ἀλλήλων φόνους
τίθεσθε; παύσασθ᾽, ἀλλὰ λήξαντες πόνων        950
ἄστη φυλάσσεθ᾽ ἥσυχοι μεθ᾽ ἡσύχων.
σμικρὸν τὸ χρῆμα τοῦ βίου· τοῦτον δὲ χρὴ
ὡς ῥᾷστα καὶ μὴ σὺν πόνοις διεκπερᾶν.

[M]y distrust of all lexicons and translations is increasing.

It is not unusual to discover that when we suppose ourselves to have risen superior to what generations of our predecessors found overwhelmingly significant and self-evident, we are in reality describing our own impoverishment of imagination or of vision.

As for what he got from his campaigning, he used to spend it on horses, or armour, or the ransoming of captives; but his own property he sought to increase by agriculture, which is the justest way to make money. Nor did he practise agriculture merely as a side issue, but he held that the man who purposed to keep his hands from the property of others ought by all means to have property of his own.

τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐκ τῶν στρατειῶν προσιόντα κατάνλισκεν εἰς ἵππους καὶ ὅπλα καὶ λύσεις αἰχμαλώτων, τὸν δὲ οἶκον ἀπὸ τῆς γεωργίας αὔξειν ἐπειρᾶτο δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν χρηματισμῶν, οὐδὲ τοῦτο ποιούμενος πάρεργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ προσήκειν οἰόμενος οἰκεῖα κεκτῆσθαι τὸν ἀλλοτρίων ἀφεξόμενον.

But suppose the lawgiver finds a man who's beyond cure — what legal penalty will he provide for this case? He will recognize that the best thing for all such people is to cease to live — best even for themselves. By passing on they will help others, too: first, they will constitute a warning against injustice, and secondly they will leave the state free of scoundrels.

ὃν δ᾽ ἂν ἀνιάτως εἰς ταῦτα ἔχοντα αἴσθηται νομοθέτης, δίκην τούτοισι καὶ νόμον θήσει τίνα; γιγνώσκων που τοῖς τοιούτοις πᾶσιν ὡς οὔτε αὐτοῖς ἔτι ζῆν ἄμεινον, τούς τε ἄλλους ἂν διπλῇ ὠφελοῖεν ἀπαλλαττόμενοι τοῦ βίου, παράδειγμα μὲν τοῦ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοῖς ἄλλοις γενόμενοι, ποιοῦντες δὲ ἀνδρῶν κακῶν ἔρημον τὴν πόλιν.

At the exhibition of the bull the sacred herald is to pray, with the priest and priestess, the stephanophorus, the boys and girls, the military officers, the cavalry officers, the stewards, the secretary of the council, the auditor and the general, for the safety of the city and the land, the women and children and all the inhabitants of the city and the land, for peace and wealth and bearing of grain and all other fruits and possessions.

καὶ ἐν τῶι ἀναδείκνυσθαι τὸν ταῦρον κατευ-
χέσθω ὁ ἱεροκῆρυξ μετὰ τοῦ ἱέρεω καὶ τῆς ἱερείας καὶ
τοῦ στεφανηφόρου καὶ τῶμ παίδων καὶ τῶν παρθένων
καὶ τῶμ πολεμάρχων καὶ τῶν ἱππάρχων καὶ τῶν οἰ-
κονόμων καὶ τοῦ γραμματέως τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ    25
ἀντιγραφέως καὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ὑπέρ τε σωτηρί-
ας τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τῆς χώρας καὶ τῶμ πολιτῶν
καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ τέκνων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν κατοικούν-
των ἔν τε τῆι πόλει καὶ τῆι χώραι ὑπέρ τε εἰρήνης καὶ
πλούτου καὶ σίτου φορᾶς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων καρπῶν πάν-    30
τῶν καὶ τῶν κτηνῶν.

Maybe he had too much Aeschylus in his mind and had κτήνη τὰ δημιοπληθῆ (Ag. 129, vid. Fraenkel ad loc.) in mind.

It behooves me to mention Old English feoh (cognate with Latin pecus) which often has a sense indeterminate between livestock in the flesh and (metonymically derived) wealth and possessions.

• Goods and Chattels
• Wealth in Cattle

Labels: typographical and other errors

Since they were boys Jack and Warnie had been amused by their father's 'low' Irish pronunciation of 'potatoes' as 'p'daytas'. As a result, Mr Lewis was nicknamed 'The P'dayta' or 'The P'daytabird'. The term came to be applied to anyone displaying the characteristics of their father, in particular an ignorant dogmatism. Jack eventually discovered this characteristic in himself: 'I'm afraid I must be a P'dayta,' he wrote to Warnie on 2 August 1928, 'for I made a P'daytism the other day: I began talking about the world and how it was well explored by now and, said I "We know there are no undiscovered islands." It was left for Maureen to point out the absurdity' (CL I, p. 777).

In order to have a sure compass always in hand for finding our bearings in life, and in order to view life always in the proper light without ever going astray, nothing is more useful than to accustom oneself to regarding this world as a place of penance, hence as a prison, a penal colony as it were, a labour camp as it was already called by the oldest philosophers (according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III, c. 3, p. 399). Among the Christian fathers Origen formulated it with commendable boldness (see Augustine, The City of God, XI, ch. 23).

Um allezeit einen sichern Kompass, zur Orientierung im Leben, bei der Hand zu haben, und um dasselbe, ohne je irre zu werden, stets im richtigen Lichte zu erblicken, ist nichts tauglicher, als dafs man sich angewöhne, diese Welt zu betrachten als einen Ort der Busse, also gleichsam als eine Strafanstalt, a penal colony, ein ἐργαστήριον), wie schon die ältesten Philosophen sie nannten (Clem. Alex. Strom. L. III, c. 3, p. 399) und unter den christlichen Vätern Origenes es mit lobenswerter Kühnheit aussprach (Augustin. de civit. Dei, L. XI, c. 23).

There should be a great Reader in large print, made up of bits and fragments — anecdotes, verses, scenes from the dramatists, fragments of Plutarch, Homer and Herodotus. And the boys should be encouraged to read in this book small bits at a time, and easy bits first. And the teacher should be satisfied when the sense is understood and should push the boys on to read and to read, and not to bother about the grammar. Enough grammar will filter into them by degrees to make them understand the constructions — and what else is grammar for? Let the tutor have no ambition to make the boys write Greek. The desire to write Greek is an exotic thing. If a boy has it, let him be encouraged, of course; but let it not be forced upon the next boy. As a matter of fact, the best way to learn to write any language is to read plenty of it; to learn fragments by heart, and fill the mind with the sound of it; then to write it by ear; and thereafter to work up the grammar in correcting what has been written. This is the way to learn French or German; why not Greek? Language is a thing of the ear, and is most easily learned by the ear, and in quantities. Let the children have more Greek, and ever more Greek, and let grammar and critical analysis be kept for dessert. When one thinks of the thousands of teachers who are obliged to plod year after year through the same portions of Xenophon and Virgil and through the same scenes of Homer, just because of the fear of the Learned World lest the boys should learn the wrong kind of Greek — when one sees the stunting of intelligence, the deadening of interest that must come from such a process — one does not wonder at the decay of Greek in our universities. We have been doing what is hard; we ought to do what is easy.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Leo IV, Pope, was a native of Rome, and succeeded Sergius II in 847. He was hastily elected, and consecrated without waiting for the consent of the emperor Lotharius, because Rome was then threatened by the Saracens, who occupied part of the duchy of Benevento, and who a short time before had landed on the banks of the Tiber, and plundered the basilica of St. Peter's on the Vatican, which was outside of the walls. Leo's consecration, however, was undertaken with the express reservation of the emperor's rights, and when, in order to prevent a recurrence of the violence of the Saracens, Leo undertook to surround the basilica and the suburb about it with walls, the emperor sent money to assist in the work. The building of this Roman suburb occupied four years, and it was named after its founder, Civitas Leonina. Leo also restored the town of Porta, on the Tiber, near its mouth, settling there some thousands of Corsicans, who had run away from their country on account of the Saracens. Towers were built on both banks of the river, and iron chains drawn across to prevent the vessels of the Saracens from ascending to Rome. The port and town of Centum Cellae being forsaken on account of the Saracens, Leo built a new town on the coast, about twelve miles distant from the other, which was called Leopolis; but no traces of it remain now, as the modern Civita Vecchia is built on or near the site of old Centum Cellae.

Leo's immediate task was the defence of Rome against the Saracens and the repair of the damage inflicted by them in 846. With extraordinary energy he strengthened the city walls and, reviving plans of Leo III, constructed new walls, with financial help from Emperor Lothair I (840-55), on the right bank of the Tiber, bringing St Peter's, hitherto exposed to enemy attack, within the defensive system and creating the 'Leonine city'. These new defences were solemnly dedicated on 27 June 852. In 849 he organized the fleets of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta and defeated the Muslims in a decisive sea-battle just outside Ostia. In 854 he rebuilt Centumcellae, destroyed by them, on a more secure site, naming it Leopolis (today Civitavecchia), while at Porto he settled Corsican refugees as a defensive garrison.

[T]he unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments of the Roman forum.

The city's pregnant, Kurnos, and I fear
She'll bear a violent leader of civil war;
The people still have sense, but those in charge
Are turning, stumbling into evil ways.

Κύρνε, κύει πόλις ἥδε, δέδοικα δὲ μὴ τέκῃ ἄνδρα
    ὑβριστήν, χαλεπῆς ἡγεμόνα στάσιος·
ἀστοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἔθ' οἵδε σαόφρονες, ἡγεμόνες δέ
    τετράφαται πολλὴν εἰς κακότητα πεσεῖν.

It may be asked, At what point should the reading for pleasure begin? It should begin at about the second lesson, when some entertaining sentence or verse should be learned — as the Lorelei is learned on the first day of German. A little of the language should be put in alive into the child's mind each day; and the grammar should then come behind and sweep up, and explain; it should be kept as a necessary utensil. This relationship should be maintained throughout life; and the attention should be kept on the meanings which occur in sentences and verses, rather than on the shadows of them which the grammars have worked out. The reason why the cart is put before the horse in classical education is that the grammarians through whose admirable labors it is that we possess the classics at all, have always been interested in the cart. It has been their province to study out a rule; and they have interposed this rule between us and the language. They have done it with the best intentions.

There is another circumstance which largely accounts for our inherited misteaching of Latin and Greek. The learned world has been digging out the classics for the last four hundred years; and the ideals of the learned world are accurate scholarship and scientific precision. It is probably right that the learned world should have such ideals — or should have had them during this epoch. And yet accurate scholarship and scientific precision are illusions in the case of language, and there is no scholar living who could write a page of Greek without making ludicrous errors errors of the sort that the Anglo-Indian makes in writing English, which he has learned from books. If even Mr. Mackail or Gilbert Murray or Nauck, that great, horrible mythic monster — should spend a whole day in dove-tailing phrases which they had fished out of Plato or Thucydides to make an essay of, the chances are that any Athenian would laugh five times to the page over the performance.

One question will I spare thee, lest I provoke thy laughter;
the foe that each of them encountered in the fray,
the spear from which each received his death-wound.
These be idle tales alike for those who hear
or him who speaks, that any man amid the fray,
when clouds of darts are hurtling before his eyes,
should declare for certain who each champion is.
I could not ask such questions,
nor yet believe those who dare assert the like;
for when a man is face to face with the foe, he scarce
can see even that which 'tis his bounden duty to observe.

ἓν δ᾽ οὐκ ἐρήσομαί σε, μὴ γέλωτ᾽ ὄφλω,
ὅτῳ ξυνέστη τῶνδ᾽ ἕκαστος ἐν μάχῃ
ἢ τραῦμα λόγχης πολεμίων ἐδέξατο.
κενοὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν τ᾽ ἀκουόντων λόγοι
καὶ τοῦ λέγοντος, ὅστις ἐν μάχῃ βεβὼς        850
λόγχης ἰούσης πρόσθεν ὀμμάτων πυκνῆς
σαφῶς ἀπήγγειλ᾽ ὅστις ἐστὶν ἁγαθός.
οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην οὔτ᾽ ἐρωτῆσαι τάδε
οὔτ᾽ αὖ πιθέσθαι τοῖσι τολμῶσιν λέγειν·
μόλις γὰρ ἄν τις αὐτὰ τἀναγκαῖ᾽ ὁρᾶν        855
δύναιτ᾽ ἂν ἑστὼς πολεμίοις ἐναντίος.

Boys and girls must dance together at an age when plausible occasions can be found for their doing so, in order that they may have a reasonable look at each other; and they should dance naked, provided sufficient modesty and restraint are displayed by all concerned.

τῆς οὖν τοιαύτης σπουδῆς ἕνεκα χρὴ καὶ τὰς παιδιὰς ποιεῖσθαι χορεύοντάς τε καὶ χορευούσας κόρους καὶ κόρας, καὶ ἅμα δὴ θεωροῦντάς τε καὶ θεωρουμένους μετὰ λόγου τε καὶ ἡλικίας τινὸς ἐχούσης εἰκυίας προφάσεις, γυμνοὺς καὶ γυμνὰς μέχριπερ αἰδοῦς σώφρονος ἑκάστων.

Now I suppose I will have to hear again that my philosophy is disconsolate, just because I speak according to the truth, but the people want to hear that God the Lord has done everything right. Go to church and leave the philosophers in peace! At least do not demand that they arrange their doctrines according to your training and background; that is what the scoundrels do, the philosophasters — from them you can order whatever doctrines you like.

Da werde ich wohl wieder vernehmen müssen, meine Philosophie sei trostlos; eben nur weil ich nach der Wahrheit rede, die Leute aber hören wollen, Gott der Herr habe Alles wohlgemacht. Geht in die Kirche und laßt die Philosophen in Ruhe. Wenigstens verlangt nicht, daß sie ihre Lehren eurer Abrichtung gemäß einrichten sollen: das thun die Lumpe, die Philosophaster: bei denen könnt ihr euch Lehren nach Belieben bestellen.

Then, if you care to hear of him in battle—for there also he must have his due—on the day of the fight in which I gained my prize for valour from our commanders, it was he, out of the whole army, who saved my life: I was wounded, and he would not forsake me, but helped me to save both my armour and myself.

εἰ δὲ βούλεσθε ἐν ταῖς μάχαις· τοῦτο γὰρ δὴ δίκαιόν γε αὐτῷ ἀποδοῦναι· ὅτε γὰρ ἡ μάχη ἦν, ἐξ ἧς ἐμοὶ καὶ τἀριστεῖα ἔδοσαν οἱ στρατηγοί, οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἐμὲ ἔσωσεν ἀνθρώπων ἢ οὗτος, τετρωμένον οὐκ ἐθέλων ἀπολιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ συνδιέσωσε καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ αὐτὸν ἐμέ.

[H]e was the first man who dared to uproot and transform an order of things established everywhere, a usage inherited from their fathers, their constitutional privilege and right as the friends and the allies of Rome.

Now herein, Verres, my first step as prosecutor is to demand why you made any sort of change in a system so long and so regularly maintained. Did your powerful brain detect some fault in it? Were your understanding and your judgement superior to those of all the able and distinguished men who governed the province before you?

hic primus instituta omnium, consuetudinem a maioribus traditam, condicionem amicitiae, ius societatis convellere et commutare ausus est.

qua in re primum illud reprehendo et accuso, cur in re tam vetere, tam usitata quicquam novi feceris. ingenio aliquid assecutus es? tot homines sapientissimos et clarissimos, qui illam provinciam ante te tenuerunt, prudentia consilioque vicisti?

Beauty asked: 'Why must I perish, oh Zeus?'
'Why, I gave beauty', answered the god, 'only to perishable things.'

Warum bin ich vergänglich, o Zeus? so fragte die Schönheit.
    Macht' ich doch, sagte der Gott, nur das Vergängliche schön.

In play, love, music, books, I joy,
In town and country; and, indeed, there 's nought,
E'en to the luxury of sober thought, —
The sombre, melancholy mood, —
But brings to me the sovereign good.

J'aime le jeu, l'amour, les livres, la musique,
La ville et la campagne, enfin tout ; il n'est rien
Qui ne me soit souverain bien,
Jusqu'au sombre plaisir d'un coeur mélancolique.

Voting is compulsory for all in every election, and anyone who fails in his duty and is denounced to the authorities should be fined fifty drachmas and get the reputation of being a scoundrel.

χειροτονείτω δὲ πᾶς πάντα· ὁ δὲ μὴ 'θέλων, ἐὰν εἰσαγγελθῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ζημιούσθω πεντήκοντα δραχμαῖς πρὸς τῷ κακὸς εἶναι δοκεῖν.

When I made this discovery, I determined to learn Greek, or at any rate to read Greek by the light of every facility except literature — a little of it anyway  — a play, half a play, a speech, a couplet — something that was in itself the thing I sought, and not a rendering of it. I had recourse to the garret of memory and there I found a small seedbag of moldy Greek, and with this I began experiments. On reëxamining the first readers and easy grammars which my whole generation had been put through, it seemed to me that they were admirable primers. None need be better. Then why did I not know Greek? The reason was that I had never followed up the beginnings. I had never read a page of Greek out of natural curiosity, nor had I ever seen anyone else do such a thing as to read Greek for pleasure. If anyone will read ten pages of English in the manner in which the schoolboy is taught Greek, he will see why Greek is dropped by the boy as soon as possible. Let anyone analyze ten pages of English, answer grammatical questions upon it, let him be asked to parse and give the parts of irregular verbs, to distinguish between varieties of subjunctive, and he will begin to loathe English literature.

Yet I see that the gods' ways are different from those of mortals.

διάφορα πολλὰ θεῶν βροτοῖσιν εἰσορῶ.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

Book-learning is endless, life is short, and obstacles are many. We should keep to what is essential, like swans extracting milk from water.

Since verbal science has no final end,
Since life is short, and obstacles impend,
Let central facts be picked and firmly fixed,
As swans extract the milk with water mixed.

Your Majesty, it is true that life is short, and it is beset by many obstacles. Knowledge knows no bounds, and it takes years to acquire it. Therefore, it is held that the essentials of knowledge have to be extracted and grasped, just as the noble bird, the swan, extracts the milk from the water it is mixed in.

To enjoy a book like that thoroughly I find I have to treat it as a sort of hobby and set about it seriously. I begin by making a map on one of the end leafs: then I put in a genealogical tree or two. Then I put a running headline at the top of each page: finally I index at the end all the passages I have for any reason underlined. I often wonder—considering how people enjoy themselves developing photos or making scrap-books—why so few people make a hobby of their reading in this way. Many an otherwise dull book which I had to read have I enjoyed in this way, with a fine-nibbed pen in my hand: one is making something all the time and a book so read acquires the charm of a toy without losing that of a book.

In early youth we sit in front of our impending course of life like children at the theatre, in cheerful and tense expectation of the things to come. How fortunate that we do not know what is actually to come. For to anyone who knows, children at times would seem like innocent delinquents who are not condemned to death, to be sure, but to life, and have not yet heard the terms of their sentence. — Nevertheless everyone wishes himself an old age, thus a state of which it can be said: 'Today it is bad and it will get worse every day — until the worst arrives.'

In früher Jugend sitzen wir vor unserm bevorstehenden Lebenslauf, wie die Kinder vor dem Theatervorhang, in froher und gespannter Erwartung der Dinge, die da kommen sollen. Ein Glück, daß wir nicht wissen, was wirklich kommen wird. Denn wer es weiß, dem können zu Zeiten die Kinder vorkommen wie unschuldige Delinquenten, die zwar nicht zum Tode, hingegen zum Leben verurtheilt sind, jedoch den Inhalt ihres Urtheils noch nicht vernommen haben. — Nichtsdestoweniger wünscht Jeder sich ein hohes Alter, also einen Zustand, darin es heißt: „es ist heute schlecht und wird nun täglich schlechter werden, — bis das Schlimmste kommt.”

Caesar's Commentaries is the dullest book in Latin. It is like making a road to read it. It is not a book; it is a stone-crushing machine. The teacher, a two-dollar-a-day man, stands beside the machine and runs it. And this is the Classics.

Whatever its specific immediate effect, Caesar's neat, formulaic, and seductively simple Latinity surely contributed to his elevation to classic status (obtained in the Renaissance, not since relinquished). But, just as surely, it alone cannot account for the fascination engendered in intellectuals as diverse in interests, epochs, and cultures as Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, and Johann Gottfried Herder. At least as important was a simplicity of a different (and more troubling) kind, effected by his rhetoric of stringency: it transforms disorderly realities on far-flung western-European grounds and largest-scale sanguinary mayhem inflicted and suffered by the hundreds of thousands into seemingly rational and ineluctable moves in a game of wits on the board of Gallia omnis. In so removing the war from the contingencies of the “there and then,” it elevates it to a timeless tale of superior power, as told in the third person by an Olympian observer by the name of Caesar, whose formulaic narrative, in plot as well as language, generates a beguiling sense of familiarity. And, to turn to the final aspect of Caesar’s classic, the rational swiftness of the writing appears but a mirror of the forceful swiftness of the warring: Caesar’s narrative "march[es] along, orderly as a legion." [F. E. Adcock Caesar as Man of Letters 1956:71]. The same mind, it seems, imposes order on the fields of battle and the accounts of battle; its style is its image.

Ye cities likewise, though ye might by parley end your mischief,
yet ye choose the sword instead of reason to settle all disputes.

πόλεις τ᾿, ἔχουσαι διὰ λόγου κάμψαι κακά,
φόνῳ καθαιρεῖσθ᾿, οὐ λόγῳ, τὰ πράγματα.

Hot bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for breakfast; soup and hot meat, vegetables, dumplings, gravy, brown bread and white, huckleberry pudding, chocolate cake and buttermilk for dinner; muffins, tea, sausage rolls, blackberries and cream, and doughnuts for supper—that's the kind of menu I had been preparing three times a day for years.

Best of all not to force the gods,
but to be content with one's lot. Desire for the impossible
makes many lose what they have now.

πάντων ἄριστον μὴ βιάζεσθαι θεούς,
στέγειν δὲ μοῖραν· τῶν ἀμηχάνων δ᾿ ἔρως
πολλοὺς ἔθηκε τοῦ παρόντος ἀμπλακεῖν.

For domestic and public purposes, and all professional skills, no single branch of a child's education has such an enormous range of applications as mathematics; but its greatest advantage is that it wakes up the sleepy ignoramus and makes him quick to understand, retentive and sharp-witted; and thanks to this miraculous science he does better than his natural abilities would have allowed.

πρός τε γὰρ οἰκονομίαν καὶ πρὸς πολιτείαν καὶ πρὸς τὰς τέχνας πάσας ἓν οὐδὲν οὕτω δύναμιν ἔχει παίδειον μάθημα μεγάλην, ὡς ἡ περὶ τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς διατριβή· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, ὅτι τὸν νυστάζοντα καὶ ἀμαθῆ φύσει ἐγείρει καὶ εὐμαθῆ καὶ μνήμονα καὶ ἀγχίνουν ἀπεργάζεται, παρὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἐπιδιδόντα θείᾳ τέχνῃ.