Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), The Black Arrow, Book 4, Chapter 4:

Where whining mendeth nothing, wherefore whine?

Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.33-34 (tr. William H. Race):

For various streams bearing
pleasures and pains come at various times upon men.

ῥοαὶ δ᾿ ἄλλοτ᾿ ἄλλαι
εὐθυμιᾶν τε μέτα καὶ πόνων ἐς ἄνδρας ἔβαν.

ῥοαὶ codd.: πνοαὶ Robert Parker

My ethnic background, according to DNA analysis (click once or twice to enlarge):

Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.15-17 (tr. Anthony Verity):

But when some deed has been done, right or wrong,
not even Time the father of all things can undo its outcome.

                             τῶν δὲ πεπραγμένων
ἐν δίκᾳ τε καὶ παρὰ δίκαν ἀποίητον οὐδ᾿ ἄν
Χρόνος ὁ πάντων πατὴρ
δύναιτο θέμεν ἔργων τέλος.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for directing my attention to Thomas D. Seymour, ed., Selected Odes of Pindar (Boston: Ginn, Heath, & Co., 1882), p. 90:

15. τῶν δὲ κτλ.: construe τέλος ἔργων τῶν ἐν δίκᾳ τε καὶ παρὰ δίκαν πεπραγμένων. This is periphrastic for τὰ ἐν δίκᾳ κτλ. πεπραγμένα.

16. ἐν δίκᾳ κτλ.: cf. Terence, Adelphi V 9:33 iusta, iniusta, prorsus omnia. — The emphasis is on παρὰ δίκαν as is shown by v. 18 λάθα δὲ πότμῳ, κτλ.

17. χρόνος: time produces all things (ὁ πάντων πατήρ) yet it can destroy nothing. The Greeks often refer to the immutability of the past. Hom. Ι 249 οὐδέ τι μῆχος | ῥεχθέντος κακοῦ ἔστ ̓ ἄκος ἔσσεται. Simonides fr. 69 τὸ γὰρ γεγενημένον οὐκέτ ̓ ἄρεκτον ἔσται. Agatho fr. 5 μόνου γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεὸς στερίσκεται, | ἀγένητα ποιεῖν ἅσσ ̓ ἂν ᾖ πεπραγμένα. Time is often personified. See on Ol. I 33; Pyth. I 46. So also in Shakespeare Two Gent. of Verona, III 1 Time is the nurse and breeder of all good. Soph. Εl. 179 χρόνος γὰρ εὐμαρὴς θεός.

If Seymour's suggestion (on line 15) that πεπραγμένων and ἔργων go together is accepted, then there are two instances of hyperbaton in this sentence:

• πεπραγμένων ... ἔργων (15 words intervening)
• ἀποίητον ... τέλος (9 words intervening)

See Franz Dornseiff, Pindars Stil (Berlin: Weidmann, 1921), p. 107.

See also William H. Race, "Framing Hyperbata in Pindar's Odes," Classical Journal 98.1 (October-November, 2002) 21-33.

Related post: Death Wish.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: The Library of America, 2011), p. 560 (from The Devil's Dictionary):

METROPOLIS, n. A stronghold of provincialism.

Id., "One Kind of Officer," p. 96:

As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the self-complacency of aristocracies is most frankly plebeian.

Walter Burkert (1931-2015), Greek Religion, tr. John Raffan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985; rpt. 2001), p. 81, with note on p. 379:

After Aeschylus it was imagined how Apollo himself had purified Orestes at Delphi with a pig sacrifice. Vase paintings give an idea of the procedure, similar to that used for the purification of the Proitides: the piglet is held over the head of the person to be purified and the blood must flow directly onto the head and hands.⁶⁰

60 Esp. the bell-krater Louvre K. 710, Harrison (1) 228, JHS 89 (1969) Pl.2.1. The purification of the Proitides: krater from Canicattini AK 13 (1970) Pl.30.2. That the purification in Delphi does not rest on local cult practice, but only on Aesch. Eum. 282 f. is emphasized by R.R. Dyer, JHS 89 (1969) 38–56.

Louvre K. 710, from Dyer, Plate II, fig. 1: Another view of the krater:

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), "Il Tramonto della Luna," lines 44-50 (tr. Jonathan Galassi):

The eternal gods invented—
great work of immortal minds—
the worst of all afflictions:
old age, in which desire is unfulfilled
and hope extinguished,
the fonts of pleasure withered,
pain ever greater, and with no more joy.

D'intelletti immortali
Degno trovato, estremo        45
Di tutti i mali, ritrovàr gli eterni
La vecchiezza, ove fosse
Incolume il desio, la speme estinta,
Secche le fonti del piacer, le pene
Maggiori sempre, e non più dato il bene.        50

The same (tr. Geoffrey L. Bickersteth):

The eternals Gods designed—
Of immortal intellect
A worthy find—the extremest of all woes,
Old age, that still unchecked
Desire might linger on, when hope had died,
The springs of joy be dried, sorrow not less
But more, and still no hint of happiness.

---

From Eric Thomson:

Among recent Italians to stare the worst of afflictions in the face is Norberto Bobbio, here in a speech he gave on receiving an honorary degree in 1994, when he was 83 (Old Age and Other Essays (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001) p. 8, endnotes omitted):

[O]ur literature has a long rhetorical tradition of treatises exalting the virtues and pleasures of old age, stretching from Cicero's De senectute, written in 44 BC when the author was 62, to Elogio della vecchiaia by Paolo Mantegazza, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century when he was 64. These works are nothing less than a literary genre that provides both an apologia for old age and a belittlement of death. Cicero discusses the subject in accordance with the classical model of contempt for death. Youth itself is no stranger to death. Besides, what is there to worry about when my soul will survive my body? 'Nature has given us this dwelling-place in which to stop for shelter, not to live in forever. Magnificent will be the day when I will depart for that divine meeting-place and assembly of souls, leaving behind this disorderly throng.' The positivist and Darwinian Mantegazza dispensed with troubled thoughts of death more briskly and prosaically: 'There is simply no need to think about it.' Why torment yourself with thoughts of death? Besides, death is nothing more than a return to nature into which all things come together. It goes without saying that I find this eulogistic genre nauseating.