Laudator Temporis Acti

It's interesting to read about natural farming, mad cow disease, liquefied waste, and other agricultural topics from the perspective of a genuine family farmer, Dave Haxton. His quirky and stimulating opinions on other subjects are well worth reading as well.

In the twenty-first century a fondness for Kipling's poetry is the mark of someone with hopelessly jingoistic and antediluvian tastes. I'm fond not only of Kipling but of his near contemporary and soul mate Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), author of these stirring lines:

To set the cause above renown,
  To love the game beyond the prize,
To honour, while you strike him down,
  The foe that comes with fearless eyes;
To count the life of battle good,
  And dear the land that gave you birth,
And dearer yet the brotherhood
  That binds the brave of all the earth . . .

Newbolt wrote two paraphrases of the Roman poet Martial, reproduced below with the Latin originals.

---

Martial 5.20:

Bernard, if to you and me
  Fortune all at once should give
Years to spend secure and free,
  With the choice of how to live,
Tell me, what should we proclaim
Life deserving of the name?

Winning some one else's case?
  Saving some one else's seat?
Hearing with a solemn face
  People of importance bleat?
No, I think we should not still
Waste our time at others' will.

Summer noons beneath the limes,
  Summer rides at evening cool,
Winter's tales and home-made rhymes,
  Figures on the frozen pool---
These would we for labours take,
And of these our business make.

Ah! but neither you nor I
  Dare in earnest venture so;
Still we let the good days die
  And to swell the reckoning go.
What are those that know the way,
Yet to walk therein delay?

---

Si tecum mihi, care Martialis,
securis liceat frui diebus,
si disponere tempus otiosum
et verae pariter vacare vitae:
nec nos atria nec domos potentum
nec litis tetricas forumque triste
nossemus nec imagines superbas;
sed gestatio, fabulae, libelli,
campus, porticus, umbra, Virgo, thermae,
haec essent loca semper, hi labores.
Nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque
soles effugere atque abire sentit,
qui nobis pereunt et inputantur.
Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur?

---

Martial 10.23:

To-day, my friend is seventy-five;
  He tells his tale with no regret;
  His brave old eyes are steadfast yet,
His heart the lightest heart alive.

He sees behind him green and wide
  The pathway of his pilgrim years;
  He sees the shore, and dreadless hears
The whisper of the creeping tide.

For out of all his days, not one
  Has passed and left its unlaid ghost
  To seek a light for ever lost,
Or wail a deed for ever done.

So for reward of life-long truth
  He lives again, as good men can,
  Redoubling his allotted span
With memories of a stainless youth.

---

Iam numerat placido felix Antonius aevo
  Quindecies actas Primus Olympiadas
praeteritosque dies et tutos respicit annos
  nec metuit Lethes iam propioris aquas.
nulla recordanti lux est ingrata gravisque;
  nulla fuit, cuius non meminisse velit.
Ampliat aetatis spatium sibi vir bonus: hoc est
  vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided two cases concerning the display of the Ten Commandments on government property, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky and Van Orden v. Perry. Writing the majority opinion in the latter case, Chief Justice Rehnquist introduced the figure of a pagan god, Janus:

Our cases, Januslike, point in two directions in applying the Establishment Clause. One face looks toward the strong role played by religion and religious traditions throughout our Nation's history . . . . The other face looks toward the principle that governmental intervention in religious matters can itself endanger religious freedom. This case, like all Establishment Clause challenges, presents us with the difficulty of respecting both faces.

Here is a Roman coin showing the two faces of Janus, whom the Romans described as biceps (two-headed) or bifrons (two-faced).

The name of our first month, January, comes from the god Janus. Maybe the name of the month should be changed, because it favors one religion (Roman paganism) over others and might therefore violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The French actually did this, during their Revolution, in an attempt to extirpate all traces of religion from their calendar. Our January spans what used to be the French months of Nivôse and Pluviôse (Snowy and Rainy).

A.P. Herbert, Uncommon Law (1935), Rex v. Venables and Others (a fictitious case), after Mr. Wick has used the terms neesee of kairtiorahree (nisi of certiorari), ooltrah weerayze (ultra vires), day yooray (de jure), pahree pahsoo (pari passu), preemah fakiay (prima facie), yoos waynahndee et piscahndee (jus venandi et piscandi), soob poynah (sub poena), and noan possoomooss (non possumus) in court:

Mr. Wick: My Lord, I pronounce the Latin tongue as I was taught at school.

The Lord Chief Justice: Exactly. You are not to be blamed, Mr. Wick. But I am bound to make it clear to you, to the rest of your gallant generation and to the generations that come after, that His Majesty's judges will not permit the speaking of the Latin tongue after that fashion in the King's Courts. I cannot hear you, Mr. Wick, for the very good reason that I cannot understand you. We are using different languages. It might be possible to establish communication between us by the use of an interpreter. I see no necessity for that expensive and protracted process, though I am tempted to compel the attendance of one of your pastors and masters to discharge the office of interpreter and witness the unhappy plight to which they have brought you. It is not for me at my time of life to learn a new language; it is not for the King's judges to remodel their diction according to the whims of pedagogues or the habits of the Junior Bar. The bitter conclusion is, Mr. Wick, that you must go away and learn to pronounce the Latin tongue correctly, according to the immemorial practice of your profession.

I hope that these observations will be communicated by you to the particular pedagogues responsible for your predicament and by the newspapers to the general world of education. It may have been hoped in the schools that by catching and corrupting a few generations of the young it would be possible to force this lisping, hybrid, artificial baby-talk upon the learned professions. That hope must have been moribund for many years, and it gives me pleasure now to sign its certificate of death.

In the legal profession, above all others, the Latin tongue is a living force, a priceless aid to precision of thought, to verbal economy and practical efficiency. Any knowing business man who mocks the study of the 'dead' languages has only to sit in our Courts for an hour or two to learn how far from dead the Latin language is; and if he still regards its use as the elegant foible of a number of old fogies I hope that he will try to translate into a few brief businesslike words such common phrases as a priori, de jure, ultra vires, ex parte, status quo and many others. We have taken these words from Rome, as we have taken much of her law, and made them English. I do not believe that the wisest scholars can surely say how Julius Caesar pronounced his name, and I care nothing if they can. For if I had abundant proof that the general answered to Yooliooss Kayzar I should not say that an act of the Chimney Magna justices was ooltrah weerayze. It is safe to prophesy that these hateful sounds will never proceed from the lips of an English judge, however many innocent boys are instructed to make them at school.

The same may be said of all the professions in which the 'dead' languages are not merely the toys of pedagogoes but the constant tools of practical men. I suffer from lumbago; I grow geraniums; I go to the cinema. And when my doctor diagnoses loombahgo, my gardiner cultivates gerahniooms, or my cook enjoys herself at the kyneemah I shall begin to think that the pedagogues are making headway.

As for the political world, the numerous Latin words in current political usage are sufficiently mystifying to the man-in-the-tavern without our attempting to make him pronounce them as some good don believes they may have been pronounced by Cicero or Horace. Even the mocking business man is not ashamed to draw his dividends at so much per centum; but not all the pedants of Arabia will induce him to draw them pair kentoom.

It follows, I think, that a system of teaching Latin which runs contrary to the practical use of Latin wherever Latin is practically employed is wrong and ought to be abandoned. This has been said before; but it is time for it to be said by one of His Majesty's judges. For our profession more than any other employs the naked Latin word as it was written by the Romans; and we alone are in a position to enforce our will upon this matter by guiding the speech of those who practise before us.

Mr. Wick, I am sorry for you. I look forward to seeing you before me again, cured of the horrible habits your professors taught you, and able to take that place in the ranks of your profession which your talents evidently deserve. Meanwhile, through your unhappy person, I issue, in the name of His Majesty's judges, this edict to the educationists ('What', as Mr. Haddock has so ably said, 'a word!'): The New Pronunciation is dead and must be buried.

Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960), Broadmindedness:

How narrow his vision, how cribbed and confined!
    How prejudiced all of his views!
How hard is the shell of his bigoted mind!
    How difficult he to excuse!

His face should be slapped and his head should be banged;
    A person like that ought to die!
I want to be fair, but a man should be hanged
    Who's any less liberal than I.

Benjamin Franklin King (1857-1894), The Pessimist:

Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash 't is gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.

Nothing to sing but songs,
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst,
Nothing to have but what we've got;
Thus thro' life we are cursed.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.

Francis Parkman, Pioneers Of France In The New World, part II (Samuel de Champlain and His Associates), chap. VI (Jesuits in Acadia):

The French met six canoes full of warriors descending the Kennebec, and, as neither party trusted the other, the two encamped on opposite banks of the river. In the evening the Indians began to sing and dance. Biard suspected these proceedings to be an invocation of the Devil, and "in order," he says, "to thwart this accursed tyrant, I made our people sing a few church hymns, such as the Salve, the Ave Maris Stella, and others. But being once in train, and getting to the end of their spiritual songs, they fell to singing such others as they knew, and when these gave out they took to mimicking the dancing and singing of the Armouchiquois on the other side of the water; and as Frenchmen are naturally good mimics, they did it so well that the Armouchiquois stopped to listen; at which our people stopped too; and then the Indians began again. You would have laughed to hear them, for they were like two choirs answering each other in concert, and you would hardly have known the real Armouchiquois from the sham ones."

Here is a photograph of the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taken by my father, who was stationed there in 1941:

In her book Animals on the Other Side, psychic Sylvia Browne shares her insights about animals in the afterlife and answers questions like:

• Does my pet miss me?
  
• Did he know I loved him?
  
• Can she come back to visit me?
  
• Do snakes and bugs live on the Other Side, too?
  

To the last question she answers:

All God's creatures exist on the Other Side with only one exception. The only living things I have never seen at Home are insects. I am not sure exactly why that is, but I have never seen a spider, fly, or any other type of insect...

Far be it from me to disparage eyewitness testimony, but frankly I'm surprised. Asked what his scientific studies revealed about the nature of God, J.B.S. Haldane replied, "An inordinate fondness for beetles." There are about 450,000 known species of beetles on earth, but none in heaven, according to Browne.

When she passes over once and for all, let's hope Browne doesn't encounter an afterlife like that described by Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment (part IV, chapter 1):

"I don't believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.

Svidrigailov sat lost in thought.

"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort," he said suddenly.

"He is a madman," thought Raskolnikov.

"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that."

Donald Fell murdered his mother, Debra Fell, and her friend Charles Conway. Then he kidnapped a stranger, Terry King, took her across the state line, and beat her to death while she prayed. His accomplice, Robert Lee, hanged himself in prison.

Too bad Fell didn't hang himself, was not felo de se. Because he crossed a state line in the commission of his crime, Fell is being tried in U.S. District Court. Vermont doesn't have a death penalty, but the feds do.

Donald Fell has an aptronym, a name that suits his character.

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913), s.v. fell as an adjective:

[OE. fel, OF. fel cruel, fierce, perfidious; cf. AS. fel (only in comp.) OF. fel, as a noun also accus. felon, is fr. LL. felo, of unknown origin; cf. Arm. fall evil, Ir. feal, Arm. falloni treachery, Ir. & Gael. feall to betray; or cf. OHG. fillan to flay, torment, akin to E. fell skin. Cf. Felon.]

1. Cruel; barbarous; inhuman; fierce; savage; ravenous.

True to his name, Donald Fell is a cruel, barbarous, inhuman, fierce, savage felon.

Fell has another meaning and another derivation, just as apt in a grisly way. Webster's, s.v. fell as a transitive verb:

[imp. & p. p. Felled (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Felling.] [AS. fellan, a causative verb fr. feallan to fall; akin to D. vellen, G. fällen, Icel. fella, Sw. fälla, Dan. fælde. See Fall, v. i.]

To cause to fall; to prostrate; to bring down or to the ground; to cut down.

True to his name, Donald Fell felled his victims.

Alan Finder, "Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said," New York Times (June 24, 2005):

With a steep rise in the number of foreign graduate students in the last two decades, undergraduates at large research universities often find themselves in classes and laboratories run by graduate teaching assistants whose mastery of English is less than complete.

The issue is particularly acute in subjects like engineering, where 50 percent of graduate students are foreign born, and math and the physical sciences, where 41 percent of graduate students are, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools, an association of 450 schools.

Long ago I took a course on Logic Circuit Design, taught by a gentleman from India. He was a regular faculty member, not a graduate teaching assistant. His English was satisfactory, except that I was puzzled by one word, repeated over and over -- rezpah. He would say "two rezpah five" or "four rezpah two," and I didn't have the foggiest idea what he meant. Finally he started writing on the blackboard, and the fog dissipated -- rezpah meant "raised to the power." "Two rezpah five" was two to the fifth power (thirty-two), "four rezpah two" was four squared (sixteen), etc.

Rick Brannan has a good post about Greek lexicography at ricoblog.

I would just emphasize that you should always be skeptical about what you read, even in standard, authoritative lexica. One of my favorite misleading generalities is a pronouncement by W. Foerster in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel, English translation, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, 1965), p. 287: "The name borne by Jesus is in the first instance an expression of His humanity .... It is by this name that He is discussed among the people. This is the name by which He is addressed." If you read the Gospels in Greek and start collecting examples, you'll soon find that Jesus is hardly ever addressed by his name.

Most of the books Rick mentions have a New Testament slant. I would add two with a classical emphasis, by a gentleman and scholar, Robert Renehan: Greek Lexicographical Notes I (Göttingen, 1975) and II (Göttingen, 1982).

I treasure some signed offprints that Professor Renehan sent me years ago and the encouragement he gave me. I never had the privilege of meeting him in person. The publications listed on his web page are only a small sample of his vast oeuvre.

Rick also doesn't mention another one of my favorite books, Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (1880; rpt. Grand Rapids, 1948), perhaps because it's so old. Despite its age, this is a treasure trove of information about ancient Greek vocabulary. Renehan and Trench actually read the authors they cite. We have it too easy today, with our electronic texts and dictionaries. We spend too much time surfing the Web and too little time sitting at our desks trying to read ancient texts in the original languages.

There are also two very useful English-Greek dictionaries available on the Web:

• S.C. Woodhouse, English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language (1910)
  
• G.M. Edwards, An English-Greek Lexicon (1914; rpt. 1930).

There's a neat synonym for curmudgeon in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773) -- grumbletonian. It would be a good blog name, and is still available on Blogger. Goldsmith apparently did not invent the word, though.

Here are some quotable quotes from She Stoops to Conquer:

• I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
  
• There was a time, indeed, I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself.

Goldsmith proved himself a bona fide grumbletonian in his poem The Logicians Refuted:

Logicians have but ill defin'd
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglecius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove with great precision,
With definition and division,
'Homo est ratione praeditum',--
But for my soul I cannot credit 'em;
And must in spite of them maintain,
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature;
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason-boasting mortals' pride;
And that brute beasts are far before 'em,
'Deus est anima brutorum'.

Who ever knew an honest brute
At law his neighbour prosecute,
Bring action for assault and battery,
Or friend beguile with lies and flattery?

O'er plains they ramble unconfin'd,
No politics disturb their mind;
They eat their meals, and take their sport,
Nor know who's in or out at court;
They never to the levee go
To treat as dearest friend, a foe;
They never importune his grace,
Nor ever cringe to men in place;
Nor undertake a dirty job,
Nor draw the quill to write for B--b.
Fraught with invective they ne'er go
To folks at Pater-Noster-Row;
No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
No pick-pockets, or poetasters,
Are known to honest quadrupeds;
No single brute his fellow leads.
Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
Nor cut each others' throats, for pay.

Of beasts, it is confess'd, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape;
Like man he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his ruling passion;
But both in malice and grimaces
A courtier any ape surpasses.
Behold him humbly cringing wait
Upon a minister of state;
View him soon after to inferiors,
Aping the conduct of superiors;
He promises with equal air,
And to perform takes equal care.
He in his turn finds imitators;
At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters,
Their master's manners still contract,
And footmen, lords and dukes can act.
Thus at the court both great and small
Behave alike--for all ape all.

Walt Whitman also viewed animals as superior to humankind, in Song of Myself 32:

I think I could turn and live with animals,
  they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied,
  not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
  nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Edward Cook traces a line from a Bob Dylan song back to Dante, and thence even further back to Vergil.

In Vergil, the tree that bleeds when cut grows out of the body of Trojan King Priam's son Polydorus, murdered by his host Polymestor upon news that Troy had fallen.

Aeneas and his men perform funeral rites for Polydorus (Vergil, Aeneid 3.62-68, tr. Theodore C. Williams):

But fit and solemn funeral rites were paid
to Polydorus. A high mound we reared
of heaped-up earth, and to his honored shade
built a perpetual altar, sadly dressed
in cypress dark and purple pall of woe.
Our Ilian women wailed with loosened hair;
new milk was sprinkled from a foaming cup,
and from the shallow bowl fresh blood out-poured
upon the sacred ground. So in its tomb
we laid his ghost to rest, and loudly sang,
with prayer for peace, the long, the last farewell.

ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens
aggeritur tumulo tellus; stant Manibus arae
caeruleis maestae vittis atraque cupresso,
et circum Iliades crinem de more solutae;
inferimus tepido spumantia cymbia lacte
sanguinis et sacri pateras, animamque sepulcro
condimus et magna supremum voce ciemus.

See also Vergil, Aeneid 5.75-78 (tr. Williams):

Then in th' attendant throng conspicuous,
with thousands at his side, the hero moved
from place of council to his father's tomb.
There on the ground he poured libation due,
two beakers of good wine, of sweet milk two,
two of the victim's blood.

ille e concilio multis cum milibus ibat
ad tumulum magna medius comitante caterva.
hic duo rite mero libans carchesia Baccho
fundit humi, duo lacte novo, duo sanguine sacro.

Vergil thus traces back to mythological times the custom of offering liquids to the dead. J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 51-52, gives archaeological evidence of the custom:

Graves, whether for inhumation or cremation, with holes or pipes through which food and drink could be poured down directly on to the burial (profusio), so as to reach the remains, are a not uncommon feature of cemeteries in very diverse areas of the Roman world. For example, in the necropolis excavated under St Peter's in Rome, several instances have come to light. In Tomb F, inset into the border of a mosaic pavement, is a series of small, square marble slabs each pierced with a hole for pouring sustenance down to the dead beneath .... Another child's inhumation burial, this time at Syracuse and with the bones laid directly in the earth under tiles set gable-wise, was connected with the surface by a vertical terracotta pipe, closed at the top by a movable stone stopper.

In The Thirsty Dead, I discussed a similar Greek custom.

If you don't placate the dead in this way, they're apt to become restless. George Romero's movie Land of the Dead opens Friday. I hope it's as funny as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The scene with zombies riding the escalator at the mall in Dawn of the Dead is hilarious. I think of it whenever I'm unlucky enough to find myself among the zombie-like shoppers at Minnesota's own Mall of America.

If someone asked you who was the first Christian emperor, you'd probably say Constantine. Are you sure?

Eugene Ehrlich wrote a book entitled Amo, Amas, and More: How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and the Astonishment of Others (New York: Harper & Row, 1985). Despite its cheesy subtitle, it's not a bad book. I did find one howler in it, though, on p. 106, s.vv. diem perdidi:

Paul's disciple Titus, emperor of Rome, having passed an entire day without performing a good deed, is reported to have said, Diem perdidi, literally, "I have lost a day."

Paul did have a follower named Titus, and there was a Roman emperor named Titus, but they were definitely not one and the same.

The Latin phrase appears in Suetonius' Life of Titus 8.1 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

On another occasion, remembering at dinner that he had done nothing for anybody all that day, he gave utterance to that memorable and praiseworthy remark: "Friends, I have lost a day."

atque etiam recordatus quondam super cenam, quod nihil cuiquam toto die praestitisset, memorabilem illam meritoque laudatam vocem edidit: "Amici, diem perdidi."

The Maverick Philosopher explains what sorites is. The name of the rhetorical device I was trying to recall yesterday is klimax (ladder, cf. English climax) in Greek, scala (ladder) or gradatio (series) in Latin.

Here is an example from Demosthenes, On the Crown 179 (tr. C.A. and J.H. Vince):

I did not speak without moving, nor move without serving as ambassador, nor serve without convincing the Thebans.

Quintilian 9.54-57 (tr. H.E. Butler) cites the example from Demosthenes, along with some others:

[54] Gradation, which the Greeks call climax, necessitates a more obvious and less natural application of art and should therefore be more sparingly employed. [55] Moreover, it involves addition, since it repeats what has already been said and, before passing to a new point, dwells on those which precede. I will translate a very famous instance from the Greek. "I did not say this, without making a formal proposal to that effect, I did not make that proposal without undertaking the embassy, nor undertake the embassy without persuading the Thebans." [56] There are, however, examples of the same thing in Latin authors. "It was the energy of Africanus that gave him his peculiar excellence, his excellence that gave him glory, his glory that gave him rivals." Calvus again writes, "Consequently this means the abolition of trials for treason no less than for extortion, for offences covered by the Plautian law no less than for treason, for bribery no less than for those offences, and for all breaches of every allow no less than for bribery," etc. [57] It is also to be found in poets, as in the passage in Homer describing the sceptre which he traces from the hands of Jupiter down to those of Agamemnon, in the following from one of our own tragedians:

"From Jove, so runs the tale, was Tantalus sprung,
From Tantalus Pelops, and of Pelops' seed
Sprang Atreus, who is sire of all our line."

[54] Gradatio, quae dicitur climax, apertiorem habet artem et magis adfectatam, ideoque esse rarior debet. [55] Est autem ipsa quoque adiectionis: repetit enim quae dicta sunt, et priusquam ad aliud descendat in prioribus resistit. cuius exemplum ex Graeco notissimo transferatur: "non enim dixi quidem haec, sed non scripsi, nec scripsi quidem, sed non obii legationem, nec obii quidem legationem, sed non persuasi Thebanis". [56] Sunt tamen tradita et Latina: "Africano virtutem industria, virtus gloriam, gloria aemulos comparavit". Et Calvi: "non ergo magis pecuniarum repetundarum quam maiestatis, neque maiestatis magis quam Plautiae legis, neque Plautiae legis magis quam ambitus, neque ambitus magis quam omnium legum". [57] +Est+ invenitur apud poetas quoque, ut apud Homerum de sceptro, quod a Iove ad Agamemnonem usque deducit, et apud nostrum etiam tragicum: "Iove propagatus est, ut perhibent, Tantalus, ex Tantalo ortus Pelops, ex Pelope autem satus Atreus, qui nostrum porro propagat genus".

[Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herrenium 4.25.34, also defines gradatio. I can't find a translation on the Web, so here's my own tentative translation:

Gradatio is the figure of speech whereby you don't go down to the next word before climbing back up to the previous one, in this manner:

"As for the other things that a hope of freedom entails, if something pleases these men, it is lawful for them; what is lawful, is possible; what is possible, they dare; what they dare, they do; and what they do, is it not troublesome to you?"

Likewise: "I did not share this sentiment, and I did not make this recommendation; I did not make this recommendation, and I myself did not start to do it; I did not start to do it, and I did not finish it; I did not finish it, and I did not approve of it."

Likewise: "It was the energy of Africanus that gave him his peculiar excellence, his excellence that gave him glory, his glory that gave him rivals."

Likewise: "Rule over Greece belonged to the Athenians; the Athenians were overpowered by the Spartans; the Spartans were surpassed by the Thebans; the Thebans were conquered by the Macedonians, who in a short time subdued Asia in war and added it to the Greek empire."

Gradatio est, in qua non ante ad consequens verbum descenditur, quam ad superius ascensum est, hoc modo:

"Nam quae reliqua spes manet libertatis, si illis et quod libet, licet; et quod licet, possunt; et quod possunt, audent; et quod audent, faciunt; et quod faciunt, vobis molestum non est?"

Item: "Non sensi hoc, et non suasi; neque suasi, et non ipse facere coepi; neque facere coepi, et non perfeci; neque perfeci, et non probavi."

Item: "Africano virtutem industria, virtus gloriam, gloria aemulos conparavit."

Item: "Imperium Graeciae fuit penes Athenienses, Atheniensium potiti sunt Spartiatae, Spartiatas superavere Thebani, Thebanos Macedones vicerunt, qui ad imperium Graeciae brevi tempore adiuncxerunt Asiam bello subactam."

There are many Biblical examples of this figure of speech, including:

• Wisdom of Solomon 6.17-20: For the very true beginning of her [wisdom] is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love; And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption; And incorruption maketh us near unto God: Therefore the desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom.
  
• Romans 5.3-5: And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
  
• Romans 8.29-30: For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
  
• Romans 10.14-15: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
  
• James 1.15: Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
  
• 2 Peter 1.5-7: And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
  

St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 4.7.11 (tr. J.F. Shaw), explicitly attaches the names klimax, scala, and gradatio to Romans 5.3-5:

For who would not see what the apostle meant to say, and how wisely he has said it, in the following passage: "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us"? Now were any man unlearnedly learned (if I may use the expression) to contend that the apostle had here followed the rules of rhetoric, would not every Christian, learned or unlearned, laugh at him? And yet here we find the figure which is called in Greek klimax and by some in Latin gradatio, for they do not care to call it scala (a ladder), when the words and ideas have a connection of dependency the one upon the other, as we see here that patience arises out of tribulation, experience out of patience, and hope out of experience.

Quis enim non videat quid voluerit dicere et quam sapienter dixerit Apostolus: Gloriamur in tribulationibus, scientes quia tribulatio patientiam operatur, patientia autem probationem, probatio vero spem, spes autem non confundit; quia caritas Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per Spiritum Sanctum qui datus est nobis? Hic si quis, ut ita dixerim, imperite peritus artis eloquentiae praecepta Apostolum secutum fuisse contendat, nonne a Christianis doctis indoctisque ridebitur? Et tamen agnoscitur hic figura, quae klimax graece, latine vero a quibusdam est appellata gradatio, quoniam scalam dicere noluerunt, cum verba vel sensa connectuntur alterum ex altero; sicut hic ex tribulatione patientiam, ex patientia probationem, ex probatione spem connexam videmus.

I have not seen the article by Henry Albert Fischel on "The Uses of Sorites (Climax, Gradatio) in the Tannaitic Period," in Hebrew University College Annual 44 (1973) 119-151.

Help! There seems to be one rhetorical device common to the following passages, but I can't think of its name.

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.15.43 (tr. J.E. King):

Furthermore too every good thing is joyful; now what is joyful deserves credit and esteem; moreover what can be so described is also glorious; now if glorious it is assuredly praiseworthy; moreover what is praiseworthy is surely also right; what is good therefore is right.

atque etiam omne bonum laetabile est; quod autem laetabile, id praedicandum et prae se ferendum; quod tale autem, id etiam gloriosum; si vero gloriosum, certe laudabile; quod laudabile autem, profecto etiam honestum; quod bonum igitur, id honestum.

Paul, Romans 8.16-17:

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

Shepherd of Hermas 16.7 (tr. Lightfoot, Harmer, and Holmes):

Their powers are controlled by one another, and they follow one another, in the order in which they were born. From Faith is born Self-Control; from Self-Control, Sincerity; from Sincerity, Innocence; from Innocence, Reverence; from Reverence, Knowledge; and from Knowledge, Love. Their works, therefore, are pure and reverent and divine.

J.E. King (in his Loeb translation of Tusculan Disputations) says it's an example of sorites, but that's a philosophical term, and I thought there was another name.

Some of the ancients were credulous about bird omens, and others were skeptical. Xenophon was notoriously superstitious, and his credulity extended to bird omens. In this passage from his Anabasis (6.1.23, tr. Carleton L. Brownson), he speaks of himself in the third person:

Moreover, he recalled that when he was setting out from Ephesus to be introduced to Cyrus, an eagle screamed upon his right; it was sitting, however, and the soothsayer who was conducting him said that while the omen was one suited to the great rather than to an ordinary person, and while it betokened glory, it nevertheless portended suffering, for the reason that other birds are most apt to attack the eagle when it is sitting; still, he said, the omen did not betoken gain, for it is rather while the eagle is on the wing that it gets its food.

In Homer's Iliad (12.195-250, tr. Samuel Butler), Polydamas is superstitious about a bird omen, and Hector is skeptical:

While they were busy stripping the armour from these heroes, the youths who were led on by Polydamas and Hector (and these were the greater part and the most valiant of those that were trying to break through the wall and fire the ships) were still standing by the trench, uncertain what they should do; for they had seen a sign from heaven when they had essayed to cross it -- a soaring eagle that flew skirting the left wing of their host, with a monstrous blood-red snake in its talons still alive and struggling to escape. The snake was still bent on revenge, wriggling and twisting itself backwards till it struck the bird that held it, on the neck and breast; whereon the bird being in pain, let it fall, dropping it into the middle of the host, and then flew down the wind with a sharp cry.

The Trojans were struck with terror when they saw the snake, portent of aegis-bearing Jove, writhing in the midst of them, and Polydamas went up to Hector and said, "Hector, at our councils of war you are ever given to rebuke me, even when I speak wisely, as though it were not well, forsooth, that one of the people should cross your will either in the field or at the council board; you would have them support you always: nevertheless I will say what I think will be best; let us not now go on to fight the Danaans at their ships, for I know what will happen if this soaring eagle which skirted the left wing of our with a monstrous blood-red snake in its talons (the snake being still alive) was really sent as an omen to the Trojans on their essaying to cross the trench. The eagle let go her hold; she did not succeed in taking it home to her little ones, and so will it be with ourselves; even though by a mighty effort we break through the gates and wall of the Achaeans, and they give way before us, still we shall not return in good order by the way we came, but shall leave many a man behind us whom the Achaeans will do to death in defence of their ships. Thus would any seer who was expert in these matters, and was trusted by the people, read the portent."

Hector looked fiercely at him and said, "Polydamas, I like not of your reading. You can find a better saying than this if you will. If, however, you have spoken in good earnest, then indeed has heaven robbed you of your reason. You would have me pay no heed to the counsels of Jove, nor to the promises he made me -- and he bowed his head in confirmation; you bid me be ruled rather by the flight of wild-fowl. What care I whether they fly towards dawn or dark, and whether they be on my right hand or on my left? Let us put our trust rather in the counsel of great Jove, king of mortals and immortals. There is one omen, and one only -- that a man should fight for his country. Why are you so fearful? Though we be all of us slain at the ships of the Argives you are not likely to be killed yourself, for you are not steadfast nor courageous. If you will not fight, or would talk others over from doing so, you shall fall forthwith before my spear."

---

The contrast between superstition and skepticism is likewise stark in a pair of passages from Plutarch's Lives, although here it is not a question of bird omens but of eclipses. Nicias, like Xenophon, was superstitious, and delayed withdrawal from Syracuse because he was disturbed by a lunar eclipse (Plutarch, Life of Nicias 23, tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

But just as everything was prepared for this and none of the enemy were on the watch, since they did not expect the move at all, there came an eclipse of the moon by night. This was a great terror to Nicias and all those who were ignorant or superstitious enough to quake at such a sight. The obscuration of the sun towards the end of the month was already understood, even by the common folk as caused somehow or other by the moon; but what what it was that the moon encountered, and how, being at the full, she should on a sudden lose her light and emit all sorts of colors, this was no easy thing to comprehend.

The first man to put in writing the clearest and boldest of all doctrines about the changing phases of the moon was Anaxagoras. But he was no ancient authority, nor was his doctrine in high repute. It was still under seal of secrecy, and made its way slowly among a few only, who received it with a certain caution rather than with implicit confidence.

Men could not abide the natural philosophers and "visionaries," as they were then called, for that they reduced the divine agency down to irrational causes, blind forces, and necessary incidents. Even Protagoras had to go into exile, Anaxagoras was with difficulty rescued from imprisonment by Pericles, and Socrates, though he had nothing whatever to do with such matters, nevertheless lost his life because of philosophy.

It was not until later times that the radiant repute of Plato, because of the life the man led, and because he subjected the compulsions of the physical world to divine and more sovereign principles, took away the obloquy of such doctrines as these, and gave their science free course among all men. At any rate, his friend Dion, although the moon suffered an eclipse at the time when he was about to set out from Zacynthus on his voyage against Dionysius, was in no wise disturbed, but put to sea, landed at Syracuse, and drove out the tyrant.

However, it was the lot of Nicias at this time to be without even a soothsayer who was expert. The one who had been his associate, and who used to set him free from most of his superstition, Stilbides, had died a short time before. For indeed the sign from Heaven, as Philochorus observed, was not an obnoxious one to fugitives, but rather very propitious; concealment is just what deeds of fear need, whereas light is an enemy to them.

And besides, men were wont to be on their guard against portents of sun and moon for three days only, as Autocleides has remarked in his "Exegetics"; but Nicias persuaded the Athenians to wait for another full period of the moon, as if, forsooth, he did not see that the planet was restored to purity and splendor just as soon as she had passed beyond the region which was darkened and obscured by the earth.

When a solar eclipse frightened the men under his command, Pericles (a friend of the philosopher Anaxagoras) was quick to chide their foolishness. Plutarch, Life of Pericles 35.1-2 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin) tells the story:

Desiring to heal these evils, and at the same time to inflict some annoyance upon the enemy, he manned a hundred and fifty ships of war, and, after embarking many brave hoplites and horsemen, was on the point of putting out to sea, affording great hope to the citizens, and no less fear to the enemy in consequence of so great a force. But when the ships were already manned, and Pericles had gone aboard his own trireme, it chanced that the sun was eclipsed and darkness came on, and all were thoroughly frightened, looking upon it as a great portent.

Accordingly, seeing that his steersman was timorous and utterly perplexed, Pericles held up his cloak before the man's eyes, and, thus covering them, asked him if he thought it anything dreadful, or portentous of anything dreadful. "No," said the steersman. "How then," said Pericles, "is yonder event different from this, except that it is something rather larger than my cloak which has caused the obscurity?" At any rate, this tale is told in the schools of philosophy.

Sauvage Noble reports a bird omen.

Servius (on Vergil's Aeneid 1.398) distinguishes between augurium and auspicium:

Augurium is intentional and is revealed by specific birds, auspicium is accidental and is shown by any bird.

augurium petitur et certis avibus ostenditur, auspicium qualibet avi demonstratur et non petitur.

Since Sauvage Noble didn't set out to find a bird omen and wasn't feeding the sacred chickens, his sighting comes under the heading of auspicium.

English augury is derived from Latin augurium, auspices and auspicious from auspicium. In Latin auspicium (bird divination) comes from auspex (bird seer), itself from avis (bird) and specio (look). Greek equivalents to auspex are oionistes, oionomantis, oionopolos, and oionoskopos, all from oionos (bird), and orneomantis and ornithoskopos, both from ornis (bird, cf. English ornithology = the study of birds).

There is much useful information on bird divination in William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), pp. 174-179, s.v. augurium.

Bird omens fall into two categories, according to Cicero, On Divination 1.53.120 (tr. William Armistead Falconer, an aptronym in this context!):

The Divine Will accomplishes like results in the case of birds, and causes those known as alites, which give omens by their flight, to fly hither and thither and disappear now here and now there, and causes those known as oscines, which give omens by their cries, to sing now on the left and now on the right.

eademque efficit in avibus divina mens, ut tum huc, tum illuc volent alites, tum in hac, tum in illa parte se occultent, tum a dextra, tum a sinistra parte canant oscines.

Eagles and hawks are alites, crows and ravens oscines. What Sauvage Noble saw was one of the alites.

I recently came across a curious misprint for augur, in a translation of the Didache (3.4), from The Apostolic Fathers. Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2nd edition. J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer, Editors and Translators. Michael W. Holmes, Editor and Revisor (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 253:

My child, do not be an auger [sic], since it leads to idolatry.

Sauvage Noble has been reading Ennius's Annals. There is a fragment on divination by birds from that poem, preserved in Cicero, On Divination 1.48.107.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implicito, II, 88:

For the myth of a past golden age, present day humanity substitutes the myth of a future plastic age.