Laudator Temporis Acti

Plautus, Persa 773 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Good health to me, good health to you.

bene mihi, bene vobis.

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Diogenes Laertius, 6.2.44 (on Diogenes the Cynic; tr. R.D. Hicks):

He would often insist loudly that the gods had given to men the means of living easily, but this had been put out of sight, because we require honeyed cakes, unguents and the like. Hence to a man whose shoes were being put on by his servant, he said, "You have not attained to full felicity, unless he wipes your nose as well; and that will come, when you have lost the use of your hands."

ἐβόα πολλάκις λέγων τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίον ῥᾴδιον ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν δεδόσθαι, ἀποκεκρύφθαι δ' αὐτὸν ζητούντων μελίπηκτα καὶ μύρα καὶ τὰ παραπλήσια. ὅθεν πρὸς τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ οἰκέτου ὑποδούμενον, "οὔπω," εἶπε, "μακάριος εἶ, ἂν μή σε καὶ ἀπομύξῃ· τοῦτο δ' ἔσται πηρωθέντι σοι τὰς χεῖρας."

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Island of Sheep, chapter I:

I experienced what was rare with me — a considerable dissatisfaction with life. Lombard had been absorbed into the great, solid, complacent middle class which he had once despised, and was apparently happy in it. The man whom I had thought of as a young eagle was content to be a barndoor fowl. Well, if he was satisfied, it was no business of mine, but I had a dreary sense of the fragility of hopes and dreams.

It was about myself that I felt most dismally. Lombard’s youth had gone, but so had my own. Lombard was settled like Moab on his lees, but so was I. We all make pictures of ourselves that we try to live up to, and mine had always been of somebody hard and taut who could preserve to the last day of life a decent vigour of spirit. Well, I kept my body in fair training by exercise, but I realized that my soul was in danger of fatty degeneration. I was too comfortable. I had all the blessings a man can have, but I wasn’t earning them. I tried to tell myself that I deserved a little peace and quiet, but I got no good from that reflection, for it meant that I had accepted old age. What were my hobbies and my easy days but the consolations of senility? I looked at my face in the mirror in the carriage back, and it disgusted me, for it reminded me of my recent companions who had pattered about golf. Then I became angry with myself. ‘You are a fool,’ I said. ‘You are becoming soft and elderly, which is the law of life, and you haven’t the grit to grow old cheerfully.’ That put a stopper on my complaints, but it left me dejected and only half convinced.

Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, Book Three (Galatians 5.7–6.18), Preface (Patrologia Latina, vol. 26, col. 400; tr. Thomas P. Scheck):

If someone is looking for eloquence, or if someone delights in declamations, he has in the two languages Demosthenes and Tullius (Cicero), Polemon and Quintilian. The church of Christ has not been gathered from the Academy and the Lyceum, but from the common rabble.

Si quis eloquentiam quaerit, vel declamationibus delectatur, habet in utraque lingua Demosthenem et Tullium, Polemonem et Quintillianum. Ecclesia Christi non de Academia, et Lyceo, sed de vili plebecula congregata est.

I don't have access to Giacomo Raspanti, ed., S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars I: Opera Exegetica, 6: Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 77A).

Livy 9.4.10 (tr. B.O. Foster):

I do indeed confess that it is glorious to die for one's country.

equidem mortem pro patria praeclaram esse fateor.

Horace, Odes 3.2.13 (tr. Niall Rudd):

It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, March 22, 1831 (tr. Ritchie Robertson):

'Niebuhr was right,' said Goethe, 'when he saw a new age of barbarism coming. It's already here, and we are right in the middle of it; for what else is barbarism, if not a refusal to acknowledge excellence?'

»Niebuhr hat Recht gehabt,« sagte Goethe, »wenn er eine barbarische Zeit kommen sah. Sie ist schon da, wir sind schon mitten darinne; denn worin besteht die Barbarei anders als darin, daß man das Vortreffliche nicht anerkennt?«

Theocritus 10.30 (tr. A.S.F. Gow):

Goat follows after the moon-clover, wolf after goat,
crane after plough, and I for thee am mad.

    ἁ αἲξ τὰν κύτισον, ὁ λύκος τὰν αἶγα διώκει,
ἁ γέρανος τὤροτρον, ἐγὼ δ’ ἐπὶ τὶν μεμάνημαι.

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Livy 9.2.10-11 (tr. B.O. Foster):

At this they came to a halt, without any command, and a stupor came over the minds of all, and a strange kind of numbness over their bodies; and looking at one another — for every man supposed his neighbour more capable of thinking and planning than himself — they stood for a long time motionless and silent.

sistunt inde gradum sine ullius imperio, stuporque omnium animos ac velut torpor quidam insolitus membra tenet, intuentesque alii alios, cum alterum quisque compotem magis mentis ac consilii ducerent, diu immobiles silent.

Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (New York: Basic Books, 2023), p. 152 (note omitted):

Among this uncertainty, one life-long expert, Sinclair Hood, has championed a bold alternative: Troy VIIb.2, a level which also shows a few signs of burning by fire.

Id., p. 153:

Despite its difficulties, an attractive aspect of Stuart Hood’s theory, that the end of Troy VIIb.2 inspired the Greek tale of the Trojan war, is that it occurred when the Hittite empire had already disappeared.

His name was Sinclair Hood.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Homer, Iliad Book One. Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Simon Pulleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 140-141 (on line 55 θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη = goddess white-armed Hera):

That Hera is white-armed is, of course, part of the formulaic tradition. It does not belong exclusively to Hera; it is used of Helen at 3.121 and of Andromache at 24.723. When Athene transforms Odysseus back to his usual form, the poet says that his skin took on its usual dark colour (μελαγχροιής, Od. 16.175). This distinction between pale women and dark men was an aesthetic one in Homer; Greek vase-painting of the eighth and seventh centuries shows women’s skin as white and that of men as reddish-brown. [Later sources say that having white skin was unusual and the result either of the use of cosmetics (Xen. Oec. 10 .2) or of deliberately staying indoors (Eur. Bacch. 457).] No doubt upper-class men valued paleness in their women since it showed they did not have to engage in outdoor manual work.

Chapter 29 of Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (New York: Basic Books, 2023), has the title "White-Armed Women".

Thanks to Eric Thomson for drawing my attention to Joseph Russo's commentary on Homer, Odyssey 18.196:

[W]hiteness is the conventional attribute of women’s skin, both in the Homeric world and later in the archaic and classical periods. Homer repeatedly uses the epithet λευκώλενος of Hera, Andromache, Helen, Arete, Nausicaa, and various female attendants; and the arms of Aphrodite and of Penelope are white in the conventional formula πήχεε λευκώ (Il. v 314, Od. xxiii 240). Greek vase painting of the eighth and seventh centuries represents women’s skin as white and men’s as reddish-brown: see J.D. Beazley and B. Ashmole, Greek Sculpture and Painting to the End of the Hellenistic Period (Cambridge, 1932), 6-7, 23; J.D. Beazley, The Development of Attic Black Figure (Berkeley, 1951), 1; E. Buschor, Griechischen Vasen (Munich, 1940), 67; E. Irwin, Colour Terms in Greek Poetry (Toronto, 1974), 112-14. It should be noted that this stereotyping begins as early as Minoan palace painting. M. Treu, op. cit. 52, 75-6, stresses that white skin for women and dark skin for men (cf. Od. xvi 175) are aesthetic ideals in Homeric epic; but he notes that white skin is often attributed to heroes also, citing Jax, op. cit. 31-2, n. 131, who suggests, no doubt rightly, that in such cases the poet is emphasizing the vulnerability of the hero’s skin.

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Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, July 9, 1827 (tr. Ritchie Robertson):

Goethe laughed. 'Yes,' he said, 'how very true that is! The only way to deter brutish behaviour is to behave even more brutishly. I recall an incident from my earlier years, when you occasionally came across an aristocrat who was a really nasty piece of work. We were at table, in very distinguished company and in the presence of ladies, when a rich nobleman used very coarse language, to the discomfort and annoyance of all who had to listen to him. Words of reproof would have been wasted on him. So a determined worthy sitting opposite him, taking the view that actions speak louder than words, promptly — and very loudly — committed an act of gross impropriety which shocked everybody, including the boorish aristocrat, with the result that he felt chastened and didn't open his mouth again. From then onwards the conversation took a much lighter and more amusing turn, to the relief of all those present; and everyone was grateful to that determined gentleman for his outrageous audacity, given the excellent effect it had.'

Goethe lachte. »Ja,« sagte er, »es ist so. Eine Roheit kann nur durch eine andere ausgetrieben werden, die noch gewaltiger ist. Ich erinnere mich eines Falles aus meiner frühern Zeit, wo es unter den Adeligen hin und wieder noch recht bestialische Herren gab, daß bei Tafel in einer vorzüglichen Gesellschaft und in Anwesenheit von Frauen ein reicher Edelmann sehr massive Reden führte zur Unbequemlichkeit und zum Ärgerniß aller, die ihn hören mußten. Mit Worten war gegen ihn nichts auszurichten. Ein entschlossener ansehnlicher Herr, der ihm gegenübersaß, wählte daher ein anderes Mittel, indem er sehr laut eine grobe Unanständigkeit beging, worüber alle erschraken und jener Grobian mit, sodaß er sich gedämpft fühlte und nicht wieder den Mund aufthat. Das Gespräch nahm von diesem Augenblick an eine anmuthige heitere Wendung zur Freude aller Anwesenden, und man wußte jenem entschlossenen Herrn für seine unerhörte Kühnheit vielen Dank in Erwägung der trefflichen Wirkung, die sie gethan hatte.«

What exactly was the act of gross impropriety? Two noisy possibilities come to mind. Also, was Goethe himself the determined gentleman sitting opposite?

Augustine, Sermons 302.2 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 1386; tr. Edmund Hill):

What this short life is like, well is there any need to describe it? We all experience how distressing, how full of complaints it is; beset by trials and temptations, full of fears, feverish with all kinds of greed, subject to accidents; grieving when things go badly, smugly self-satisfied when they go well; cock-a-hoop over profits, in agony over losses. And even when cock-a-hoop over profits, it's in dread of losing what it has gained; the man dreading being investigated on their account, who before he had anything was never subjected to investigation. True unhappiness, false happiness. The person at the bottom of the heap longs to climb to the top, the person at the top dreads sliding down to the bottom. The have-nots envy the haves; the haves despise the have-nots. And who can find the words to unfold how extensively and conspicuously ugly this life is?

Qualis sit brevis haec vita, quid describere opus est? Experti sumus quam aerumnosa, quam querelosa; circumdata temptationibus, plena timoribus; ardens cupiditatibus, subdita casibus; in adversis dolens, in prosperis tumens; lucris exsultans, damnis excrucians. Et in ipsis lucris exsultatione trepidat, ne quod acquisivit, amittat; ne propter hoc quaeratur, qui antequam haberet non quaerebatur. Vera infelicitas, mendosa felicitas. Humilis cupit ascendere, sublimatus timet descendere. Qui non habet, invidet habenti; qui habet, contemnit non habentem. Et quis explicet verbis huius vitae tantam et tam conspicuam foeditatem?

Massimo Mazzotti, "The flavour of mechanisation," Aeon:

By the 5th century BCE, Thucydides felt he knew what separated civilisation from barbarism: the ability to graft the olive tree.

I'm not aware of any such statement by Thucydides.

Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (New York: Basic Books, 2023), p. 3:

As these indirect tributes recognize, the Iliad itself is something we could not possibly now compose. It is at least 2600 years old, but it is beyond our ability. It remains overwhelming. It makes us marvel, sometimes smile and often cry. Whenever I read it, it reduces me to tears. When I leave it and return to everyday life, it changes the way in which I look on the world.

Id., p. 7 (they = readers of his book):

I hope they will proceed to such a reading or even to learning Homeric Greek: it becomes possible within two years to read long stretches of the Iliad in Greek and catch its force and flow.