Laudator Temporis Acti

Bernard Knox (1914-2010), Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979; rpt. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 130, with notes on p. 154:

But we must remember that for Sophocles and his contemporaries, gods and men were not judged by the same standards.³⁷ The Christian ideal, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect,"³⁷ would have made little or no sense to an Athenian, whose deepest religious conviction would have been most clearly expressed in opposite terms: "Do not act like a god."

37. cf. Σ on [Ajax] 79 σκληρὸν μὲν τὸ λέγειν ἐπεγγελᾶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀλλὰ θεός ἐστιν οὐκ εὐλαβουμένη τὸ νεμεστητόν. Lesky (Die Tragische Dichtung, p. 110) puts it well: "Die Sophrosyne ist bei Sophokles nicht Sache der Götter, die Menschen haben sie zu wahren."

38. Matthew 5:48.

Homer, Odyssey 14.193-198 (Odysseus, in disguise, to Eumaeus; tr. Peter Green):

I only wish that we two had enough supplies of food
and sweet wine, here in your hut, enough to last a while,
that we could feast on in silence, while others did the work:
easily then could I take up the space of a whole year
and still not have finished the tale of my heartfelt sufferings—
sum total of all that by the gods' will I've endured.

εἴη μὲν νῦν νῶϊν ἐπὶ χρόνον ἠμὲν ἐδωδὴ
ἠδὲ μέθυ γλυκερὸν κλισίης ἔντοσθεν ἐοῦσι,
δαίνυσθαι ἀκέοντ᾽, ἄλλοι δ᾽ ἐπὶ ἔργον ἕποιεν·        195
ῥηϊδίως κεν ἔπειτα καὶ εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἅπαντα
οὔ τι διαπρήξαιμι λέγων ἐμὰ κήδεα θυμοῦ,
ὅσσα γε δὴ ξύμπαντα θεῶν ἰότητι μόγησα.

Richard Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods: The Search for Classical Greece (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 290-291:

It was in the last season that the archaeologist Carl Schuchardt came to work with him [Carl Humann] at Pergamum, and his account brings the forty-seven-year-old archaeologist vividly to life. If he knew he was no scholar or connoisseur, he knew too what his own value was.

'Are you a philologist?' was his greeting to Schuchardt. The latter, sensing a trap, hastily assured the older man he was an archaeologist. This was as well, when he heard Humann's definition of a philologist — 'a man with two left hands who when he comes here falls off the fortifications'. It was indeed not long before Schuchardt fell over and hurt his knee; you may imagine he kept quiet about it.

John Adams, letter to Thomas to Jefferson (November 21, 1794):

I have spent my Summer so deliciously in farming that I return to the old Story of Politicks with great Reluctance. The Earth is grateful. You find it so, I dare say. I wish We could both say the Same of its Inhabitants.

Homer, Iliad, Books 1-12. With an English Translation by A.T. Murray. Revised by William F. Wyatt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 = Loeb Classical Library, 170), pp. 400-401 (9.89-90):

Ἀτρεΐδης δὲ γέροντας⁷ ἀολλέας ἦγεν Ἀχαιῶν
ἐς κλισίην, παρὰ δέ σφι τίθει μενοεικέα δαῖτα.

⁷ γέροντας: ἀριστέας Aristarchus

But the son of Atreus led the counselors of the Achaeans all together to his hut, and set before them a feast to satisfy the heart.

The critical apparatus implies, at least to me, that Aristarchus read ἀριστέας instead of γέροντας. But in fact he read ἀριστέας instead of ἀολλέας. See, e.g., M.L. West's Teubner edition of the Iliad (vol. 1, p. 255), and Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, vol. II: Scholia ad Libros E-I Continens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), p. 417.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Plutarch, Should Old Men Take Part in Affairs of State? 5 (Moralia 786a-b; tr. Harold North Fowler):

For granted that nature seeks in every way pleasure and enjoyment, old men are physically incapacitated for all pleasures except a few necessary ones, and not only

Aphroditê with old men is wroth,

as Euripides [fragment 23 Kannicht, line 2] says, but their appetites also for food and drink are for the most part blunted and toothless, so that they can, if I may say so, hardly whet and sharpen them. They ought to prepare for themselves pleasures in the mind, not ignoble and illiberal ones like that of Simonides, who said to those who reproached him for his avarice that, since old age had deprived him of all other pleasures, he was comforting his declining years with the only one left, the pleasure of gain.

καὶ γὰρ εἰ ζητεῖ πάντως ἡ φύσις τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ χαίρειν, τὸ μὲν σῶμα τῶν γερόντων ἀπείρηκε πρὸς πάσας, πλὴν ὀλίγων τῶν ἀναγκαίων, τὰς ἡδονάς, καὶ οὐχ "ἡ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γέρουσιν ἄχθεται" μόνον, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς περὶ πόσιν καὶ βρῶσιν ἐπιθυμίας ἀπημβλυμμένας τὰ πολλὰ καὶ νωδὰς κατέχοντες μόλις οἷον ἐπιθήγουσι καὶ χαράττουσιν· ἐν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ παρασκευαστέον ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἀγεννεῖς οὐδ᾽ ἀνελευθέρους, ὡς Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας αὐτῷ φιλαργυρίαν, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων ἀπεστερημένος διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἡδονῶν ὑπὸ μιᾶς ἔτι γηροβοσκεῖται τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ κερδαίνειν.

Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.49-52 (tr. C.M. Bowra):

God reaches, as soon as thought, his ends:
God, who can catch the winged eagle
And overtakes the dolphin in the sea.
He can bring down any whose heart is high,
And to others he will give unaging splendour.

θεὸς ἅπαν ἐπὶ ἐλπίδεσσι τέκμαρ ἀνύεται,
θεός, ὃ καὶ πτερόεντ᾿ αἰετὸν κίχε, καὶ θαλασσαῖον παραμείβεται
δελφῖνα, καὶ ὑψιφρόνων τιν᾿ ἔκαμψε βροτῶν,
ἑτέροισι δὲ κῦδος ἀγήραον παρέδωκ᾿.

Homer, Odyssey 14.156-157 (Odysseus, in disguise, speaking; tr. A.T. Murray):

For hateful in my eyes as the gates of Hades
is that man, who, yielding to stress of poverty, tells a deceitful tale.

ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσι
γίγνεται, ὃς πενίῃ εἴκων ἀπατήλια βάζει.

Sophocles, Philoctetes 108-109 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):

NEOPTOLEMUS
Do you not think it disgraceful to tell lies?
ODYSSEUS
Not if the lie brings us salvation!

ΝΕΟΠΤΟΛΕΜΟΣ
οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἡγῇ δῆτα τὸ ψευδῆ λέγειν;
ΟΔΥΣΣΕΥΣ
οὔκ, εἰ τὸ σωθῆναί γε τὸ ψεῦδος φέρει.

Augustine, Sermons 169.7 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 919; tr. Edmund Hill):

Those of you who have anticipated the solution in your minds, please think of yourselves as fast walkers traveling the road with slower people. Let your speed be held in check a little, in order not to leave your slower companion behind.

Qui praevenistis intellectu expositionem, arbitramini vos tamquam veloces in via cum tardioribus ambulare. Celeritas aliquantum reprimatur, ne comes tardior deseratur.

Aristophanes, Knights 710-721 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson, slightly revised):

PAPHLAGON
I’ll haul you before Demos and get justice from you!        710
SAUSAGE SELLER
And I’ll haul you, and outslander you!
PAPHLAGON
But Demos doesn’t listen to anything you say, you creep,
whereas I can make a fool of him as much as I want.
SAUSAGE SELLER
You’re pretty sure you’ve got Demos in your pocket.
PAPHLAGON
Right; I know the sort of tidbits he likes.        715
SAUSAGE SELLER
Sure, you feed him, just like the nannies: badly!
You chew some food and feed him a morsel,
after you’ve bolted down three times as much yourself.
PAPHLAGON
And what’s more, by god, thanks to my dexterity
I can make Demos expand and contract.        720
SAUSAGE SELLER
Even my arsehole can do that trick!

ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἕλξω σε πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἵνα δῷς μοι δίκην.        710
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
κἀγὼ δὲ σ᾿ ἕλξω καὶ διαβαλῶ πλείονα.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἀλλ᾿, ὦ πόνηρε, σοὶ μὲν οὐδὲν πείθεται·
ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἐκείνου καταγελῶ γ᾿ ὅσον θέλω.
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
ὡς σφόδρα σὺ τὸν δῆμον σεαυτοῦ νενόμικας.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἐπίσταμαι γὰρ αὐτὸν οἷς ψωμίζεται.        715
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
κᾆθ᾿ ὥσπερ αἱ τίτθαι γε σιτίζεις κακῶς·
μασώμενος γὰρ τῷ μὲν ὀλίγον ἐντίθης,
αὐτὸς δ᾿ ἐκείνου τριπλάσιον κατέσπακας.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
καὶ νὴ Δί᾿ ὑπό γε δεξιότητος τῆς ἐμῆς
δύναμαι ποιεῖν τὸν δῆμον εὐρὺν καὶ στενόν.        720
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
χὠ πρωκτὸς οὑμὸς τουτογὶ σοφίζεται.

Cf. Benjamin Bickley Rogers' euphemistic rendering of line 721:

I can do that with many things, I trow.

Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948), The Anatomy of Bibliomania (London: The Soncino Press, 1932), p. 167 (Part VIII: "Of the Uses of Books," § V: "Their Belligerent Usefulness"):

Whether they have proved successful as armour or not, they are no despicable munitionment of war in other respects. As weapons they have done their bit, most effectively, as when Dr. Johnson knocked Osborne down with a folio, because that notorious bookseller had blamed his learned and diligent employee for negligence. The historic volume, so Sir Leslie Stephen records, a copy of Biblia Graeca Septuaginta, 1594, was in the possession of a Cambridge bookseller as late as the year 1812. Few will dispute with Stephen when he urges that so desirable an association copy should have been placed in some safe author’s museum.² Another instance of the use of books as weapons is recorded by Anthony Trollope, whose father often knocked him down with a great Folio Bible as a punishment for youthful idleness.³ As missiles they are widely appreciated, lending themselves as they do both by reason of their size and shape to sudden precipitation at an offending head. Another Johnson, William (Cory), used them in this manner. He threw a book at any boy in his class at Eton who was either flagrantly unoccupied or suspiciously absorbed;⁴ and it is reported that William Morris hurled a fifteenth-century quarto (which was so precious that he would allow no one to touch it) at the head of a person who had irritated him, and with such force that in the course of its militant career it knocked the panel out of a door.

² L. Stephen, Johnson. 27. ³ Autobiography. World’s Classics Ed. 14. ⁴ In Lit. Anec. of 19th Cent. ii, 400.

"Man Arrested for Easter Bible Belting of Walgreens Worker, Cops Say," The Smoking Gun (April 2, 2024):

On Easter, the manager of a Walgreens store suffered a Bible belting “because she was being rude,” according to a customer who is now facing a felony battery charge.

Police say Peter Owens, 35, went to the pharmacy Sunday evening to purchase a pair of headphones. While at the Clearwater, Florida business, Owens got into a “verbal altercation” with an employee over the headphones, according to a criminal complaint.

When Nicole Merck, the 36-year-old store manager, approached Owens ... and asked him to leave the Walgreens, “Peter used the brown Bible in his hand and struck Nicole in the face one time before he exited the store.”

After the alleged Bible battery, cops located Owens and took him into custody. After being read his rights, Owens reportedly admitted to striking Merck “in the face one time with his Bible because she was being rude to him.”

“Peter stated he did not mean to hit her,” Officer Ryan Wall reported.

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• Bible Thumpers
• Samuel Johnson as Bible Thumper
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Demosthenes 19.69 (On the Dishonest Embassy; tr. C.A. Vince and J.H. Vince):

Could any men be more wicked or more lost to all sense of shame?

πῶς ἂν ἄνθρωποι κακίους ἢ μᾶλλον ἀπονενοημένοι τούτων γένοιντο;

On ἀπονενοημένοι see Theophrastus, Characters 6 ("The Man Who Has Lost All Sense").

David Abulafia, "'Anglo-Saxon' isn't racist. It's a source of English pride," The Telegraph (10 May 2024):

A heritage worth celebrating: the Sutton Hoo helmet in the British Museum CREDIT: Martin Beddall/Alamy
No one who visits the Sutton Hoo gallery at the British Museum ever forgets the magnificent artistry of our Anglo-Saxon predecessors. We may think of the fourth to the 10th centuries as a “Dark Age”, ruled by crude barbarism and economic collapse, but the gold and bejewelled treasures they left behind are utterly spellbinding — in their way as good as anything produced by the Roman conquerors who came before.

Which is why it is regrettable that a distinguished journal that dominates the study of Anglo-Saxon history — simply and inoffensively entitled Anglo-Saxon England — is to be renamed by its no less reputable publisher, Cambridge University Press, under the bland new title Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.

Many believe it is due to the hue and cry about the term “Anglo-Saxon” in the US, where white supremacists have mobilised it as a variant of the term “Aryan”.

If that is the reason for the change, then as a historian I must protest. For a start, the term “Anglo-Saxon” is not a racial label, but a cultural one. Many English people are the product of a fusion between the Angle, Saxon, and Jute settlers, and the native Britons; the invaders coming from a wide arc of coastline stretching from the Netherlands to Jutland. Anglo-Saxon Britain was no apartheid state, but one fundamentally of rapid synthesis.

Indeed, the language we speak today was one noticeable product: just under half of the words we use remain of Anglo-Saxon origin. The Anglo-Saxon interpretation of Christianity, too, lives with us still: the Sutton Hoo treasures indicate Christianity was making inroads by the early seventh century, not long after the Jutish king of Kent accepted baptism from the first archbishop of Canterbury. Christian art of this period features stunning iconography derived from the pagan religions that came before.

Thereafter, Anglo-Saxon culture flourished in a myriad of ways: English monasteries produced startlingly beautiful manuscripts and Anglo-Saxon literature flowered, including rich alliterative poetry; the cultural ties extended to the royal courts in France and Germany.

King Alfred is the only English king to be known as “the Great”, not just for holding his own against Danish invaders but for his patronage of learning. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged, divided and merged again, but out of their rivalries rose a large and wealthy kingdom, rich in wool sent to the looms of Flanders, and therefore highly attractive to waves of Viking raiders, followed in 1066 by William, duke of Normandy, himself of Viking descent.

The desirability of this kingdom reflects the high standard of artistic production, learning and prosperity that by the 11th century had few rivals in northern Europe. Its legacy has been extremely powerful. For if we dispense with the Anglo-Saxons, what happens to the name of England, the country of the Angles, or Essex and Sussex, territories of the Saxons? Can we talk any longer of the Anglophone countries? It is telling that even today Russian propaganda mockingly refers to us Britons as Anglosaksy, thinking it a term of derision. Such an insult makes one quite proud.

Any suggestion of broad ethnic or cultural cohesiveness inevitably generates suspicion in an academic world, where the fantasies of Critical Race Theory find racism under every ancient stone. Yet that is to forget that, even at the time, peoples saw each other as distinct cultures, with unique traits and practices.

Cambridge University Press would do well to acknowledge that its headquarters are in East Anglia. Instead of erasing the term “Anglo-Saxon”, it is far better to accept that our forebears oversaw a flourishing and fascinating period of this island’s history. It deserves a proper name, and it already has one.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.56.141 (tr. H. Rackham):

And just as architects relegate the drains of houses to the rear, away from the eyes and nose of the masters, since otherwise they would inevitably be somewhat offensive, so nature has banished the corresponding organs of the body far away from the neighbourhood of the senses.

atque ut in aedificiis architecti avertunt ab oculis naribusque dominorum ea quae profluentia necessario taetri essent aliquid habitura, sic natura res similes procul amandavit a sensibus.

Arthur Stanley Pease ad loc.:

for the thought cf. Off. 1, 126-127: quae partes autem corporis ad naturae necessitatem datae aspectum essent deformem habiturae atque foedum eas contexit atque abdidit. hanc naturae tam diligentem fabricam imitata est hominum verecundia, etc.; Xen. Mem. 1, 4, 6: ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ ἀποχωροῦντα δυσχερῆ, ἀποστρέψαι τοὺς τούτων ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀπενεγκεῖν ᾗ δυνατὸν προσωτάτω ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθήσεων [cf. Plut. De cap. ex Inim. 10, p. 91 f; [Longin.] 43, 5]; Plat. Tim. 45 a; Varr. Menipp. 430 Bücheler: retrimenta cibi qua exirent per posticum vallem feci; Sen. N.Q. 1, 16, 7; Apul. De Plat. 1, 13; Corp. Herm. 5, 6: τίς ὁ τὰ τιμιώτατα εἰς τὸ φανερὸν ἐκτυπώσας καὶ τὰ αἰσχρὰ κρύψας; Lact. De Opif. 7,7; Ambr. Exam. 6, 72; Cyril. Hieros. Cat. 4, 22; Hier. Adv. Iovin. 1, 36; Aug. C. lulian. Op. imperf. 4, 37; C. Iulian. Pelag. 5, 33: quod in nostro corpore loca digestionis Balbus remota dixit a sensibus, ideo verum est quoniam sensus nostros ea quae digerimus non alliciunt sed offendunt; propterea pars qua egeruntur naturaliter aliis partibus altrinsecus prominentibus occultatur; Isid. Etym. 11, 1, 105; Michael Ephes. in Part. An. 4, p. 76, 34-36 Hayduck; Melet. De Nat. Hom. (Cramer, Anecd. Oxon. 3, 107-108): καθάπερ καὶ οἱ πόλεων τινῶν ἐπιμελούμενοι, ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀμάρρας καὶ ῥύακας παρασκευάζουσιν εἰς λίμνας ἢ ποταμοὺς ἢ θαλάσσας τὰ συναγόμενα πέμποντες περιττά. Cf. also an analogous case in Aristot. Part. An. 4, 5, 681 b 26-28. Posidonius may here be attacking, on the grounds of nature's own creations, the offensive tenets and practices of the Cynics; cf. I. Heinemann, Poseidonios' metaphys. Schr. 2 (1928), 212; also M. Pohlenz, Ant. Führertum (1934), 75-76, with remarks on αἰδώς. On his general inclination to modesty and even euphemism cf. K. Reinhardt, Poseidonios (1921), 254, who remarks upon his omission from the discussion of refe­rence to the reproductive organs.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Bacchylides, Victory Odes 5.50-55 (tr. Richard C. Jebb):

Happy is he to whom the god has granted a portion of honours, and a life of opulence, with enviable fortune: for no mortal man is blest in all things.

ὄλβιος ᾧτινι θεὸς        50
μοῖράν τε καλῶν ἔπορεν
σύν τ᾽ ἐπιζήλῳ τύχᾳ
ἀφνεὸν βιοτὰν διάγειν· οὐ
γάρ τις ἐπιχθονίων
πάντα γ᾽ εὐδαίμων ἔφυ.        55

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J.J. Ingalls, quoted in Daniel W. Wilder, Annals of Kansas (Topeka: Geo. W. Martin, Kansas Publishing House, 1875), p. 263 (May 10, 1861; on James H. Lane):

It would be hard to give a rational and satisfactory analysis of the causes of Gen. Lane's popularity as an orator. Destitute of all graces of the art, he possesses but few even of its essentials; he writhes himself into more contortions than Gabriel Ravel in a pantomime; his voice is a series of transitions from the broken scream of a maniac to the hoarse rasping gutturals of a Dutch butcher in the last gasp of inebriation; the construction of his sentences is loose and disjointed; his diction is a pudding of slang, profanity and solecism; and yet the electric shock of his extraordinary eloquence thrills like the blast of a trumpet; the magnetism of his manner, the fire of his glance, the studied earnestness of his utterance, find a sudden response in the will of his audience, and he sways them like a field of reeds shaken in the wind.