Laudator Temporis Acti

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), Apoteosis de Santo Tomás de Aquino (Seville, Museo de Bellas Artes): Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Harvard Art Museums, inv. no. 1994.8 (1st-3rd century AD): British Museum, inv. no. 1772,0307.182 (7th century BC): British Museum, inv. no. 1824,0473.1 (1st-2nd century AD): All are bronze figurines.

Aristophanes, Wealth 802-818 (Cario, a slave, speaking; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

Gentlemen, how nice it is to live happily, especially when there are no household expenses. A heap of goods has befallen our house, though we’ve done nothing bad! Yes, getting wealthy this way is mighty nice. Our grain tub’s filled with white barley, our casks with dark fragrant wine, and all our purses are full of gold and silver like you wouldn’t believe. Our well’s full of olive oil, our jars are brimming with perfume, and the attic with figs. Our saucers, dishes, and pots have turned to bronze, and those worn-out fish platters are silvery to behold. Our kitchen’s suddenly turned to ivory. We slaves pitch pennies with gold staters, and in our luxury we no longer use stones to wipe our bottoms, but cloves of garlic every time.

ὡς ἡδὺ πράττειν, ὦνδρές, ἐστ᾿ εὐδαιμόνως,
καὶ ταῦτα μηδὲν ἐξενεγκόντ᾿ οἴκοθεν.
ἡμῖν γὰρ ἀγαθῶν σωρὸς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν
ἐπεισπέπαικεν οὐδὲν ἠδικηκόσιν.        805
οὕτω τὸ πλουτεῖν ἐστιν ἡδὺ πρᾶγμα δή.        805a
ἡ μὲν σιπύη μεστή ᾿στι λευκῶν ἀλφίτων,
οἱ δ᾿ ἀμφορῆς οἴνου μέλανος ἀνθοσμίου.
ἅπαντα δ᾿ ἡμῖν ἀργυρίου καὶ χρυσίου
τὰ σκευάρια πλήρη ᾿στίν, ὥστε θαυμάσαι.
τὸ φρέαρ δ᾿ ἐλαίου μεστόν· αἱ δὲ λήκυθοι        810
μύρου γέμουσι, τὸ δ᾿ ὑπερῷον ἰσχάδων.
ὀξὶς δὲ πᾶσα καὶ λοπάδιον καὶ χύτρα
χαλκῆ γέγονε· τοὺς δὲ πινακίσκους τοὺς σαπροὺς
τοὺς ἰχθυηροὺς ἀργυροῦς πάρεσθ᾿ ὁρᾶν.
ὁ δ᾿ ἱπνὸς γέγον᾿ ἡμῖν ἐξαπίνης ἐλεφάντινος.        815
στατῆρσι δ᾿ οἱ θεράποντες ἀρτιάζομεν
χρυσοῖς· ἀποψώμεσθα δ᾿ οὐ λίθοις ἔτι,
ἀλλὰ σκοροδίοις ὑπὸ τρυφῆς ἑκάστοτε.

See Brian A. Sparkes, "Aristophanes' Wealth 802–18," Mediterranean Archaeology 17 (2004) 231-236.

Cf. the slight euphemism in Benjamin Bickley Rogers' translation of the end of this passage:

And we the servants, play at odd-or-even
With golden staters; and to cleanse us, use
Not stones, but garlic-leaves, so nice we are.

Related posts:

• Ancient Tersive Materials
  
• Ancient Tersive Materials Again
  
• Sponge on a Stick
  
• Sponges, Moss, and Stones
• Sponge on a Stick
  
• Pebbles, Shards, and Grass Dry and Wet

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), Confessions of an English Opium Eater (London: Dent, 1960; rpt. 1967 = Everyman's Library, 223), pp. 235-236:

Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil. But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed whenever the obscuring daylight itself shall have withdrawn.

Suitable for the start of drinking (Vergil, Aeneid 1.734, tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

May Bacchus, giver of joy, be near ...

adsit laetitiae Bacchus dator ...

adsis 'alii' ap. Serv.

Servius on Vergil, Aeneid 1.734 (vol. I, p. 301 of Editio Harvardiana):

alii 'adsis' legunt, secundum quos Bacchus aut antiptosis est aut antiquus vocativus, ut (XII 192) socer arma Latinus habeto. bene autem addidit dator laetitiae, quia est et dator furoris.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Democratic Vistas, in his Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: The Library of America, 1962),  pp. 929-994 (at 953, quoting "a foreigner"):

"I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public office in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got in by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have noticed, more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes."

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1331-1334 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

All mortals have by nature an insatiable appetite for success; and no one bans it and keeps it away from houses at which fingers are pointed, saying "Don't come in here any more!"

τὸ μὲν εὖ πράσσειν ἀκόρεστον ἔφυ
πᾶσι βροτοῖσιν· δακτυλοδείκτων δ᾽
οὔτις ἀπειπὼν εἴργει μελάθρων,
"μηκέτ᾿ ἐσέλθῃς", τάδε φωνῶν.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Man and the Snake," The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: The Library of America, 2011), pp. 160-166 (at 165):

Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. The scientist was in rare good humor.

"I have just obtained, by exchange with another collector," he said, "a splendid specimen of the ophiophagus."

"And what may that be?" the lady inquired with a somewhat languid interest.

"Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance! My dear, a man who ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know Greek, is entitled to a divorce. The ophiophagus is a snake which eats other snakes."