Laudator Temporis Acti

In an earlier post, I wondered about the ancient Greek word for freckles and confessed my inability to understand a passage from Plutarch's Life of Sulla. Neil O'Sullivan comes to the rescue and informs me that there are at least two possible words for freckles in Greek, πέρκωμα (pérkōma) and ἔφηλις (éphēlis).

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. πέρκωμα:

dusky spot on the face, Hsch. (pl.).

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ἔφηλις:

A. rivet, burr or clinch to secure a nail, Ph.Bel.63.50, IG11(2).165.13 (Delos, iii B.C.).

II. in pl., rough spots which stud the face (from ἧλος), or, acc. to others, freckles (from ἥλιος), Hp.Prorrh.2.23, Alim.20, Mul.2.215, Thphr.HP9.20.3, Sor.1.44 (sg.), etc.: acc. pl. ἐφήλεις Dsc.1.123.

As Neil points out, Greek éphēlis resembles Latin felix, thus giving rise to Plutarch's remark that "his surname was given him because of his complexion."

I just received a postcard in the mail from Turkey, with handwriting suspiciously like this one. It says:

Dear Mr. Gilleland:

The Patriarch of Constantinople is a fan of your blog & is writing you in sincerest appreciation. Here is a picture of a mosaic from Byzantium for your enjoyment.

If both the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople have the same handwriting and appear to be the same person, does that mean the Great Schism is now ended?

I suspect that the person who mailed this postcard is the same wag who expressed his desire to form an organization named Opus Deae (i.e. Opus Veneris), to counteract Opus Dei.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (October 26, 1858, recording a conversation with George Minott):

He says that some call the stake-driver "belcher-squelcher," and some "wollerkertoot." I used to call them "pump-er-gor΄." Some say "slug-toot."

This mystified me, until I realized that Thoreau and Minott were talking about a bird, a sort of heron, the American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), and not a device to pound fence posts into the ground.

Botaurus presumably comes from Latin bos (ox) and taurus (bull), and must refer to the bittern's booming call. Lentiginosus means freckled or spotted (Val. Max. 1.7.6 ext.: vir lentiginosi oris), from lentigo (freckles), itself from lens (lentil). English lens also comes from Latin lens, because the glass is lentil-shaped.

Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary and Edwards' English-Greek Lexicon don't give any ancient Greek equivalents for English freckles. Maybe no ancient Greeks had freckles. I don't have a Greek text of Plutarch's Life of Sulla, which mentions his unusual complexion (2.1., tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

His personal appearance, in general, is given by his statues; but the gleam of his gray eyes, which was terribly sharp and powerful, was rendered even more fearful by the complexion of his face. This was covered with coarse blotches of red, interspersed with white. For this reason, they say, his surname was given him because of his complexion, and it was in allusion to this that a scurrilous jester at Athens made the verse: "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal."

This doesn't sound quite like freckles, and the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla Felix was a Roman, not a Greek. I don't understand "his surname was given him because of his complexion." The dictator is supposed to be the first to have the name Felix, but what do Felix or Sulla have to do with a spotty face? The name Sulla was already associated with the gens Cornelia before the time of the dictator. Mulberry (μόρον in Greek, morum in Latin) gives no help.

But back to bitterns. Bradford Torrey (who was later to edit Thoreau's journals) wrote an article, "The 'Booming' of the Bittern," The Auk: A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology 6.1 (January 1889) 1-8.

Bitterns are said to be secretive and reclusive, and I don't think I've ever seen or heard one. They are also said to prefer beaver-created wetlands. A little corner of my woodlot in Maine is perennially wet and inhabited by beavers, although wetland seems a rather grandiose name for it.

Google returned no hits for wollerkertoot, a situation I hope this post will remedy.

William Hazlitt, On Wit and Humour:

In this sense Aesop was the greatest wit and moralist that ever lived. Ape and slave, he looked askance at human nature, and beheld its weaknesses and errors transferred to another species. Vice and virtue were to him as plain as any objects of sense. He saw in man a talking, absurd, obstinate, proud, angry animal; and clothed these abstractions with wings, or a beak, or tail, or claws, or long ears, as they appeared embodied in these hieroglyphics in the brute creation. His moral philosophy is natural history. He makes an ass bray wisdom, and a frog croak humanity. The store of moral truth, and the fund of invention in exhibiting it in eternal forms, palpable and intelligible, and delightful to children and grown persons, and to all ages and nations, are almost miraculous. The invention of a fable is to me the most enviable exertion of human genius: it is the discovering a truth to which there is no clue, and which, when once found out, can never be forgotten. I would rather have been the author of Aesop's Fables, than of Euclid's Elements!

William Hazlitt, On a Sun-Dial:

Horas non numero nisi serenas -- is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. 'I count only the hours that are serene.' What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind -- to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip for our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting!

Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective writes about auto-antonyms. His English example is cleave, meaning both "separate" and "adhere." There are actually two different words spelled cleave in English, each with a different etymology. Posts at Balashon which might interest students of ancient Greek include those on the words bible and lishkah.

Anatoly Liberman, the Oxford Etymologist, has an interesting post on tautological compounds like henbane and ragamuffin and (easier to see) pathway. I just learned that Liberman is a resident not of Oxford, but of Minnesota. His article "Gone with the Wind: More Thoughts on Medieval Farting," Scandinavian Studies (1996), is on my list of things to read.

Finally, Laura Gibbs at Bestiaria Latina Blog writes entertainingly about English words derived from the Greek word for rainbow.

Goethe, Römische Elegien, V (tr. A.S. Kline):

I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:
The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly.
Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients
With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight.
But at night Love keeps me busy another way:
I become half a scholar but twice as contented.
And am I not learning, studying the shape
Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?
Then I know marble more: thinking, comparing,
See with a feeling eye: feel with a seeing hand.
If my darling is stealing the day's hours from me,
She gives me hours of night in compensation.
We're not always kissing: we often talk sense:
When she's asleep, I lie there filled with thought.
Often I've even made poetry there in her arms,
Counted hexameters gently there on my fingers
Over her body. She breathes in sweetest sleep,
And her breath burns down to my deepest heart.
Amor trims the lamp then and thinks of the times
When he did the same for his three poets of love.

Froh empfind ich mich nun auf klassischem Boden begeistert,
Vor- und Mitwelt spricht lauter und reizender mir.
Hier befolg ich den Rat, durchblättre die Werke der Alten
Mit geschäftiger Hand, täglich mit neuem Genuß.
Aber die Nächte hindurch hält Amor mich anders beschäftigt;
Werd ich auch halb nur gelehrt, bin ich doch doppelt beglückt.
Und belehr ich mich nicht, indem ich des lieblichen Busens
Formen spähe, die Hand leite die Hüften hinab?
Dann versteh ich den Marmor erst recht: ich denk und vergleiche,
Sehe mit fühlendem Aug, fühle mit sehender Hand.
Raubt die Liebste denn gleich mir einige Stunden des Tages,
Gibt sie Stunden der Nacht mir zur Entschädigung hin.
Wird doch nicht immer geküßt, es wird vernünftig gesprochen,
Überfällt sie der Schlaf, lieg ich und denke mir viel.
Oftmals hab ich auch schon in ihren Armen gedichtet
Und des Hexameters Maß leise mit fingernder Hand
Ihr auf den Rücken gezählt. Sie atmet in lieblichem Schlummer,
Und es durchglühet ihr Hauch mir bis ins Tiefste die Brust.
Amor schüret die Lamp' indes und gedenket der Zeiten,
Da er den nämlichen Dienst seinen Triumvirn getan.

In the third line, Goethe is probably recalling Horace's advice (Ars Poetica 268-269, tr. John Conington): "Make Greece your model when you write, / And turn her volumes over day and night" (vos exemplaria Graeca / nocturna versate manu, versate diurna). The "three poets of love" (seinen Triumvirn) in the last line are the Roman elegaic poets Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid.

Charles Péguy:

Homer is fresh this morning, and nothing is perhaps as stale as today's newspaper.

Homère est nouveau ce matin et rien n'est peut-être aussi vieux que le journal d'aujourd'hui.

The Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1865), p. 343:

For God's sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards--I am sorry for the Greeks--I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Bagdad is oppressed--I do not like the present state of the Delta--Thibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy?

Luke 12.4:

Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

But they that kill the body in fact have much more that they can do after that. For one thing, they can mutilate the corpse, as Achilles tried to do to Hector's dead body in the penultimate book of the Iliad, by dragging it behind his chariot around Patroclus' tomb.

Or someone can deny burial to a corpse, as Creon decreed that no one was to bury Polyneices, in Sophocles' Antigone. Similarly, in Sophocles' Ajax, Menelaus and Agamemnon tried to prevent Teucer from burying Ajax.

In Plato's Laws, some types of criminals are denied burial, such as parricides and witches (9.873 B-C and 10.909 C, tr. A.E. Taylor):

If a man be found guilty of such homicide, that is, of slaying any of the aforesaid [father, mother, brother, child], the officers of the court with the magistrates shall put him to death and cast him out naked, outside the city at an appointed place where three ways meet. There, all the magistrates, in the name of the state, shall take each man his stone and cast it on the head of the corpse as in expiation for the state. The corpse shall then be carried to the frontier and cast out by legal sentence without sepulture.

At death he [the witch] shall be cast out beyond the borders without burial, and if any free citizen has a hand in his burial, he shall be liable to a prosecution for impiety at the suit of any who cares to take proceedings.

Even after burial, a corpse can be maltreated, as Cambyses insulted the corpse of Amasis (Herodotus 3.16.1, tr. George Rawlinson):

After this Cambyses left Memphis, and went to Sais, wishing to do that which he actually did on his arrival there. He entered the palace of Amasis, and straightway commanded that the body of the king should be brought forth from the sepulchre. When the attendants did according to his commandment, he further bade them scourge the body, and prick it with goads, and pluck the hair from it, and heap upon it all manner of insults.

Cf. Jeremiah 8.1-2:

At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.

Disinterment is also a punishment in Plutarch's Life of Solon (12.3, tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

Myron of Phlya conducted the prosecution, and the family of Megacles was found guilty. Those who were alive were banished, and the bodies of the dead were dug up and cast forth beyond the borders of the country.

There is also a danger to corpses from witches, who exhume the bones of the dead to use as ingredients in their potions. See e.g. Horace, Satires 1.8.20-22 (tr. Christopher Smart, a statue of Priapus is speaking):

These I can not by any means destroy nor hinder, but that they will gather bones and noxious herbs, as soon as the fleeting moon has shown her beauteous face.

Only a few philosophers thought what happened to a corpse didn't matter, such as Epictetus (4.7.31-32, tr. W.A. Oldfather):

"But your head will be taken off." And does the tyrant's head always stay in its place, and the heads of you who obey him? "But you will be thrown out unburied." If the corpse is I, then I shall be thrown out; but if I am something different from the corpse, speak with more discrimination, as the fact is, and do not try to terrify me. These things are terrifying to children and to fools.

Anecdotes also survive about the philosophers Diogenes and Theodorus and their lack of concern about what would happen to their bodies after death.

Much more could be said on this theme. There are many more passages like those cited above. There are lots of relevant ancient inscriptions, too, along the lines of Shakespeare's "curst be he that moves my bones."

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (January 2, 1859):

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, -- Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham's rule, -- I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially, your truest poetical sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat. The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk, -- turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively, -- but so the beautiful walkers are not made.

I subscribe to A.Word.A.Day. As an added bonus, once a week there arrives in my inbox "A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages." AWADmail Issue 214 (June 18, 2006) ended with this quotation:

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

This set off my bullshit detector. After all, if there was ever "a man who uses a great many words to express his meaning," that man was Samuel Johnson.

I don't pretend to have read every word Johnson wrote, or every word his biographers record him as saying. Nevertheless, in the words I have read, I don't remember seeing this quotation. I was glad to see my skepticism reinforced at The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page: Apocrypha, compiled by Frank Lynch, who says:

Haven't found this one yet, but it's not encouraging. Searches on phrases like "great many words," "bad marksman," and "handful and throws" aren't showing any hits... In fact, the only place I can find him using the word "marksman" is as a word in his Dictionary; the quotations he uses to support his definition are completely different from this one. The phrase "single stone" also only appears in his Dictionary, but in completely different contexts.

For searching, Lynch uses "Primary Source Media's CD-ROM of Johnson's works (which also includes Boswell, Piozzi, Hawkins, Burney, Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies,' O.M. Brack's 'Early Biographies,' et al -- it's extremely comprehensive)."

Most modern books on writing adopt as an article of faith what I call the brevity fetish, e.g. William Zinsser, On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction:

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.

In a clever post, Bill Vallicella showed that Zinsser's own sentence could be reduced from 54 to 39 words with no change in meaning.

Some of my favorite authors are those who are anything but brief, whose writings are expansive and leisurely. Like Montaigne and Johnson.

George Santayana, Persons and Places, chap. 6 (Avila):

Was not this the festival of the summer solstice? Did not the summer sun and the June roses fill it with light and fragrance? Was not everybody happy and gaily dressed? Did not tapestries and damasks hang from the balconies, or where they were lacking, at least some gay coverlet or shawl or tablecloth? Did not gold thread and tinsel shine everywhere from vestments and banners? Were not the sun's rays doubly reflected from the golden monstrance that seemed to imitate them? And as the Host approached, borne high in a silver shrine amid lights and flowers, did not doves let loose from some window soar and circle in the upper air, while handfuls of rose-leaves fluttered down like snowflakes on the procession? And the Host itself, the mystic center of all this joy, what was it but the bread of life, white wheaten bread sublimated into the pure principle of eternal happiness?

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (August 9, 1858):

The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office-holders, though they may be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, inasmuch as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society.

Robert Ogilvie's Horae Latinae. Studies in Synonyms and Syntax (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1901) is a study of the distinctions between Latin synonyms. It tells you, for example, what the differences are between sperare and optare, iucundus and gratus, carere and egere. The book is the fruit of wide, independent reading of Latin literature, especially the chief prose authors (Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Livy; to a lesser extent Seneca), and is useful for those interested in keeping alive the vanishing art of Latin prose composition.

It is out of print, of course, and the rare used copy is usually very expensive. It is one of those books I wish would show up in Project Gutenberg. Here is a sample from Horae Latinae, s.vv. drink and drunk:

DRINK
Bibere, to drink, generally, whether to quench one's thirst, or in reference to customary moderate convivial drinking; potare, to drink to excess, to tipple.

Tus. 5,34 Darius in fuga, cum aquam turbidam bibisset, negavit se umquam bibisse iucundius.
Fin. 2,3 estne, inquam, sitienti in bibendo voluptas?
Verr. 1,26 fit sermo inter eos et invitatio, ut Graeco more biberetur.
Pl. Rud. 361 periit potando (he has drunk himself to death).
Phil. 2,27 totos dies potabatur.
Sall. C. 11 ibi primum insuevit exercitus populi Romani potare.

Potum, or potatum, is used instead of bibitum. He is going
to drink, poturus or potaturus est.

DRUNK
Ebrius, drunk, intoxicated. Ebriosus, addicted to drinking, drunken. A person may be "ebrius," drunk, on a particular occasion, without incurring the imputation of being "ebriosus," a drunkard.

Sen. Ep. 83 plurimum interesse concedes inter ebrium et ebriosum.
Mil. 24 servos Milonis apud se ebrios factos (had got drunk in his house).
Fam. 9,17,1 ex quo vel sobrio vel certe ex ebrio scire posses.
Deiot. 9 Deiotarum saltantem quisquam aut ebrium vidit umquam?
Fat. 5 hunc scribunt ipsius familiares ebriosum fuisse.

Emily Dickinson:

To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

Aesop, Fable 185 Chambry (tr. Olivia and Robert Temple):

A dog was crossing a river holding a piece of meat in its mouth. Catching sight of his reflection in the water, he believed that it was another dog who was holding a bigger piece of meat. So, dropping his own piece, he leaped into the water to take the piece from the other dog. But the result was that he ended up with neither piece -- one didn't even exist and the other was swept away by the current. This fable applies to the covetous.

Κύων κρέας ἔχουσα ποταμὸν διέβαινε· θεασαμένη δὲ τὴν ἑαυτῆς σκιὰν κατὰ τοῦ ὕδατος, ὑπέλαβεν ἑτέραν κύνα εἶναι μεῖζον κρέας ἔχουσαν. Διόπερ ἀφεῖσα τὸ ἴδιον ὥρμησεν ὡς τὸ ἐκείνης ἀφαιρησομένη. Συνέβη δὲ αὐτῇ ἀμφοτέρων στερηθῆναι, τοῦ μὲν μὴ ἐφικομένῃ, διότι οὐδὲ ἦν, τοῦ δὲ, ὅτι ὑπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ παρεσύρη. Πρὸς ἄνδρα πλεονέκτην ὁ λόγος εὔκαιρος.

For a list of adaptations and translations of this fable, see here. Jonathan Swift's translation of this fable into Latin could be added to the list:

Ore cibum portans catulus dum spectat in undis,
Apparet liquido praedae melioris imago:
Dum speciosa diu damna admiratur, et altè
Ad latices inhiat, cadit imo vortice praeceps
Ore cibus, nec non simulacrum corripit unà.
Occupat ille avidus deceptis faucibus umbram;
Illudit species, ac dentibus aëra mordet.

Dave Haxton at MacRaven links to a horror story about families in Ohio who refuse to claim bodies from funeral homes, because they don't want to pay the costs of burial.

In a more civilized time and place (ancient Athens), there was a law regulating this sort of thing, quoted by Demosthenes 43.57-58 (tr. A.T. Murray):

And when persons die in the demes and no one takes them up for burial, let the Demarch give notice to the relatives to take them up and bury them, and to purify the deme on the day on which each of them dies. In the case of slaves he shall give notice to their masters, and in the case of freemen to those possessing their property; and if the deceased had no property, the Demarch shall give notice to the relatives of the deceased. And if, after the Demarch shall have given notice, the relatives do not take up the body, the Demarch shall contract for the taking up and burial of the body, and for the purification of the deme on the same day at the lowest possible cost. And if he shall not so contract, he shall be bound to pay a thousand drachmae into the public treasury. And whatsoever he shall expend, he shall exact double the amount from those liable; and if he does not exact it he shall himself be under obligation to repay it to the demesmen.

George Santayana, Persons and Places, chap. X:

In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war.

William Annis and others are blogging about their oldest books. My oldest classics book is Caji Silii Italici Punicorum libri septemdecim ad optimas editiones collati. Praemittitur notitia literaria. Studiis Societatis Bipontinae. Editio accurata (Biponti: Ex Typographia Societatis, MDCCLXXXIV). That's Silius Italicus' Punica (Zweibrücken, 1784). According to Wikipedia, "At the ducal printing office at Zweibrücken the fine edition of the classics known as the Bipontine Editions was published (1799 sqq.)." I think that's a mistake for 1779.