Laudator Temporis Acti

H.C. Beeching, To My Totem, motto (from Vergil, Eclogues 1.1) plus lines 1-4:

"Sub tegmine fagi."

Thy name of old was great:
What though sour critics teach
The beech by the Skaian gate
Was not, alas, a beech...

One of the "sour critics" was Anonymous, who wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine 3 (June 1835) 566, footnote:

The φηγὸς of Homer should not be translated the beech-tree, as Cowper and Pope have done. It is an oak, and we doubt whether the beech is to be found at all in the plains of Troy.

See, e.g., Alexander Pope's translation of Iliad 6.237-241 (Pope's lines 296-301):

Meantime the guardian of the Trojan state,
Great Hector, enter'd at the Scaean gate.
Beneath the beech-tree's consecrated shades,
The Trojan matrons and the Trojan maids
Around him flock'd, all press'd with pious care
For husbands, brothers, sons, engag'd in war.

Ἕκτωρ δ᾽ ὡς Σκαιάς τε πύλας καὶ φηγὸν ἵκανεν,
ἀμφ᾽ ἄρα μιν Τρώων ἄλοχοι θέον ἠδὲ θύγατρες
εἰρόμεναι παῖδάς τε κασιγνήτους τε ἔτας τε
καὶ πόσιας· ὃ δ᾽ ἔπειτα θεοῖς εὔχεσθαι ἀνώγει
πάσας ἑξείης· πολλῇσι δὲ κήδε᾽ ἐφῆπτο.

Liddell and Scott define Greek φηγός (transliteration phēgós) as Valonia oak (scientific name Quercus macrolepis). Lewis and Short define the cognate Latin word fagus as beech-tree (scientific name Fagus silvatica).

The mistake of Pope and Cowper can be attributed to dictionaries, e.g. Clavis Homerica (Rotterdam: Leers, 1662) p. 184, which translated Greek φηγός into Latin as fagus, a mistake repeated in other dictionaries into the 19th century.

The same Clavis derived φηγός from φαγεῖν, "quia olim homines fructibus arboreis victitabant," i.e. "because once upon a time men used to feed on mast," an etymology often accepted by modern scholars, e.g. by the aptly-named Edward S. Forester, "Trees and Plants in Homer," Classical Review 50 (July 1936) 97-104 (at 98).

But most reputable etymologists today posit separate Proto-Indo-European roots for φηγός (from bhāgo- = beech tree) and φαγεῖν (from bhag- = divide, share, get a share, i.e. of food, hence eat).

From Proto-Indo-European bhāgo- (beech tree) we get not only English beech, but also book and the buck- in buckwheat.

From Proto-Indo-European bhag- (share, get a share, eat) are derived the English prefix phago-, the suffixes -phage, -phagia, -phagous, -phagy (all via Greek φαγεῖν, e.g. dysphagia = difficulty swallowing), and baksheesh (via Persian).

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who paraphrases Richard Bentley—"It's a pretty tree, Mr. Pope, but you mustn't call it a 'beech'."

Related posts:

• Patulae Recubans Sub Tegmine Fagi
  
• Appointment With a Beech Tree

Labels: etymology

I'm indebted to Karl Maurer for what follows (I've added the Latin stanza by stanza with his translation).

---

Michael, that's a charming poem by Honorato Fascitelli that you posted last Thursday — but does not the translation by Aldington seem rather horribly loose? E.g. he wholly omits the third stanza (perhaps because it is hard* and he didn't understand it), and in the last stanzas he seems wholly to miss the point. Here's what sense I seem to make of it:

(1) Sacred Citron-trees of the grove of Annia, and sacred Spring running on bright feet through the Grove, and Shrine that the gentle Headland has on its sacred hill,

Annii nemoris sacra
Citria, & liquido sacer
Fons fluens pede per nemus,
Quodque colle habet in sacro
    Mollis acta sacellum:    5

(2) and you, Rustic Gods and Goddesses sprung from Juppiter, to whom the cool Grove and the Spring on the ridge, and the illustrious Altar have been fitly dedicated,—

Vosque agrestia numina,
Dii deaeque genus Jovis
Frigidum quibus est nemus,
Fonsque jugis, & inclyta
    Ara rite dicata:    10

(3) if fitly in a bristling Grove, where the Spring is far distant, hanging over the sea, any altar dedicated above a steep hill catches you!—

Rite si nemore horrido
Fonte seposito procul
Imminens pelago capit
Ulla vos super arduo
    Ara colle dicata:    15

(4) how aggrieved and complaining I leave you, how gladly and happily I revisit you! and in divine leisure, rejoice to hide myself in your tender breast!

Quam relinquo dolens querens,
Quam reviso volens lubens
Vos ego! & tenerum in sinum,
Dia ad otia, gaudeo
    Memet abdere vestrum!    20

(5) whether I delight in hiding under the leaves of the black grove and, in flowing brief tunic, in chilling at the light breath of the West wind,

Sive sub nemoris nigri
Delitere comis juvat
Et fluente brevi in tuni-
ca ad vagi Zephyri levem
    Frigerarier auram:    25

(6) or in loitering by cool hollows of the sweetly babbling spring, and with now this, now that, slow hand in pushing the water that entices sleep.**

Sive dulce loquaculi
Fontis ad gelidos specus
Sessitare, & aquam hac & hac
Somnuli illecebram manu
    Usque pellere lenta.    30

(7) Then I would weary [gravem], now of strolling with a garrulous lute, now of descrying from the ridge of the hill the sails of a thousand passing ships,

Tum modo spatiarier
Garrula cithara gravem:
Collis e specula modo
Mille cernere puppium
    Vela praetereuntum:    35

(8) when with heavy heat the Dogstar rages on land and sea, or when the Great Bear is free from burning Hyperion, struck by frost and gloomy darkness.

Cum calore Canis gravi
Terra & aequore perfurit
Fervidoque Hyperione
Arctos icta vacat gelu,
    Tristibusque tenebris.    40

* The third stanza is hard; but seems to me a kind of parenthesis, qualifying 10 ‘rite dicata’. (I.e., “If one can call ‘fitly dedicated' any altar dedicated in such a place”.)

** ‘somnuli’ seems an objective genitive with ‘illecebra’.

Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, chapter 12 (describing Max Gottlieb):

But poverty kept him from fulfillment of his summer longing to sit beneath the poplars by the Rhine or the tranquil Seine, at a table on whose checkered cloth were bread and cheese and wine and dusky cherries, those ancient and holy simplicities of all the world.

Robinson Jeffers, The Silent Shepherds:

What's the best life for a man?
— Never to have been born, sings the choros, and the next best
Is to die young. I saw the Sybil at Cumae
Hung in her cage over the public street —
What do you want, Sybil? I want to die.
Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo...
You have got your wish. But I meant life, not death.
What's the best life for a man? To ride in the wind. To ride horses and herd cattle
In solitary places above the ocean on the beautiful mountain, and come home hungry in the evening
And eat and sleep. He will live in the wild wind and quick rain, he will not ruin his eyes with reading,
Nor think too much.
                                         However, we must have philosophers.
I will have shepherds for my philosophers,
Tall dreary men lying on the hills all night
Watching the stars, let their dogs watch the sheep. And I'll have lunatics
For my poets, strolling from farm to farm, wild liars distorting
The country news into supernaturalism—
For all men to such minds are devils or gods—and that increases
Man's dignity, man's importance, necessary lies
Best told by fools.
                                         I will have no lawyers nor constables:
Each man guard his own goods: there will be man-slaughter,
But no more wars, no more mass-sacrifice. Nor I'll have no doctors,
Except old women gathering herbs on the mountain,
Let each have her sack of opium to ease the death-pains.

That would be a good world, free and out-doors.
But the vast hungry spirit of the time
Cries to his chosen that there is nothing good
Except discovery, experiment and experience and discovery: to look truth in the eyes,
To strip truth naked, let our dogs do our living for us
But man discover.
                                         It is a fine ambition,
But the wrong tools. Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.

In lines 2-3, Jeffers recalls Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, in which the chorus sings (1224-1238, tr. R.C. Jebb):

Not to be born is, past all prizing, best; but, when a man hath seen the light, this is next best by far, that with all speed he should go thither, whence he hath come.

For when he hath seen youth go by, with its light follies, what troublous affliction is strange to his lot, what suffering is not therein? - envy, factions, strife, battles and slaughters; and, last of all, age claims him for her own, - age, dispraised, infirm, unsociable, unfriended, with whom all woe of woe abides.

μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νι-
κᾷ λόγον· τὸ δ᾽, ἐπεὶ φανῇ,
βῆναι κεῖθεν ὅθεν περ ἥ-
κει πολὺ δεύτερον, ὡς τάχιστα.
ὡς εὖτ᾽ ἂν τὸ νέον παρῇ
κούφας ἀφροσύνας φέρον,
τίς πλαγὰ πολύμοχθος ἔ-
ξω; τίς οὐ καμάτων ἔνι;
φθόνος, στάσεις, ἔρις, μάχαι
καὶ φόνοι· τό τε κατάμεμπτον ἐπιλέλογχε
πύματον ἀκρατὲς ἀπροσόμιλον
γῆρας ἄφιλον, ἵνα πρόπαντα
κακὰ κακῶν ξυνοικεῖ.

Sophocles in turn echoes Theognis 425-428 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

The best lot of all for man is never to have been born nor seen the beams of the burning Sun; this failing, to pass the gates of Hades as soon as one may, and lie under a goodly heap of earth.

Πάντων μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον
μηδ᾽ ἐσιδεῖν αὐγὰς ὀξέος ἠελίου·
φύντα δ᾽ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι
καὶ κεῖσθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον.

In lines 3-6 Jeffers refers to Petronius, Satyricon 48 (tr. Michael Heseltine):

Yes, and I myself with my own eyes saw the Sibyl hanging in a cage; and when the boys cried at her: 'Sibyl, Sibyl, what do you want?' 'I would that I were dead,' she used to answer.

nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.

Frederic Remington,
Mounted Cowboy
in Chaps with Race Horse
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• Merry It Is and Quiet
  
• Indoors
  
• Life Outdoors

[H.C. Beeching], Pages from a Private Diary (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), p. 119 (on a visit to a bookshop):

Folios, quartos, dumpy duodecimos, seemed to be putting out forlorn hands to me, and entreating that I should end their exile and let them co-exist with some co-appurtenant on my happy shelves. And here at home I am conscious, as never before, of great gaps; lacunae valde deflendae. But that way madness lies! I suppose every one has a grain of malice in his composition somewhere, and if he is a book-collector it is apt to show itself there; perhaps as harmless a vent as it can take.

Johannes Jelgerhuis (1770-1836),
De winkel van boekhandelaar Pieter Meijer Warnars
op de Vijgendam te Amsterdam

[H.C. Beeching], Pages from a Private Diary (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), p. 12:

At luncheon, Miss A., the Scotch governess, asked me if I liked buns. I replied that I liked them if they were made with sultana raisins and not currants. She blushed, and explained that she meant the poet "Buns." This, it seems, is the patriotic manner of pronouncing Burns.

[H.C. Beeching], Pages from a Private Diary (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), p. 28:

I have long meditated keeping an album myself of another sort, a commonplace book, what Milton calls a "topick-folio." This is one of those resolutions that come with every first of January, and too often go with it; though a very fat volume lying here on the table has its first few pages filled with the harvest of several new beginnings. Laziness has something to do with the irresolution; the habit of reading in the Balfour position perhaps more; more still the conviction at the moment that if a passage is very good there is small risk of forgetting it (a terrible mistake!); but most of all that paralysing sentence in Marcus Aurelius, "No longer delude thyself; thou wilt never read thine own notes, nor the extracts from books which thou wast reserving for thy old age" (iii. 14).

Thomas Babington Macaulay, letter to Thomas Flower Ellis (February 8, 1835):

I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion quite astonishing to myself. I have never felt anything like it. I was enraptured with Italian during the six months which I gave up to it; and I was little less pleased with Spanish. But, when I went back to the Greek, I felt as if I had never known before what intellectual enjoyment was. Oh that wonderful people! There is not one art, not one science, about which we may not use the same expression which Lucretius has employed about the victory over superstition, "Primum Graius homo—."

I think myself very fortunate in having been able to return to these great masters while still in the full vigour of life, and when my taste and judgment are mature. Most people read all the Greek that they ever read before they are five and twenty. They never find time for such studies afterwards till they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of the language is in a great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered. Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature, are ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man, whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accustomed to historical researches, and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But what a poet! The Medea, the Alcestis, the Troades, the Bacchae, are alone sufficient to place him in the very first rank. Instead of depreciating him, as I have done, I may, for aught I know, end by editing him.

William Michael Harnett, Music and Literature

John Clare, The Fens, lines 83-98:

And muse and marvel where we may
Gain mars the landscape every day
The meadow grass turned up and copt    85
The trees to stumpy dotterels lopt
The hearth with fuel to supply
For rest to smoke and chatter bye
Giving the joy of home delights
The warmest mirth on coldest nights    90
And so for gain that joys repay
Change cheats the landscape every day
No tree no bough about it grows
That from the hatchet can repose
And the orison stooping smiles    95
Oer treeless fens of many miles
Spring comes and goes and comes again
And all is nakedness and fen

85 copt (copped) = put into heaps or haycocks
86 dotterels = pollard trees

George Clausen, The End of a Winter's Day

Labels: arboricide

Miguel de Unamuno:

There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas. Ideas bring ideophobia, and the consequence is that people begin to persecute their neighbors in the name of ideas. I loathe and detest all labels, and the only label that I could now tolerate would be that of ideoclast or idea-breaker.

Quoted by Walter Starkie in the introduction to Miguel de Unamuno, Our Lord Don Quixote, tr. Anthony Kerrigan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. xv.

Greek Anthology 6.108 (Myrinus, tr. W.R. Paton):

Ye Pans, keepers of the high mountains, ye jolly horned dancers, lords of grassy Arcady, make Diotimus rich in sheep and goats, accepting the gifts of his splendid sacrifice.

ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ἔφοροι, κεραοὶ χοροπαῖκται,
  Πᾶνες, βουχίλου κράντορες Ἀρκαδίης,
εὔαρνον θείητε καὶ εὐχίμαρον Διότιμον,
  δεξάμενοι λαμπρῆς δῶρα θυηπολίης.

For such a short poem, this contains several unusual locutions, according to A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), vol. II, p. 320. In what follows I've put the words in dictionary lemma form:

1 χοροπαίκτης: sporting in the choral dance, dancing merrily. Hapax legomenon.
2 Πᾶνες: Pans. The only plural occurrence in the Greek Anthology.
βούχιλος: rich in fodder, cattle-feeding. Elsewhere only in Aeschylus, Suppliant Women 540.
κράντωρ: ruler. Elsewhere only in Euripides, Andromache 508, and Greek Anthology 6.116.6 (Samius).
3 εὔαρνος: rich in sheep. Elsewhere only in Greek Anthology 7.657.9 (Leonidas).
εὐχίμαρος: rich in goats. Hapax legomenon.
4 θυηπολία: a sacrificing. Rare, first in Apollonius of Rhodes 1.1124.

---

Bronze statuette of Pan, from the Temple of Artemis at Lousoi in Arcadia, 5th century B.C. (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikenabteilung, inv. no. Misc. 8624):


Another view of the same:


Winifred Lamb, Ancient Greek and Roman Bronzes (London: Methuen, 1929; rpt. Chicago: Argonaut, Inc., 1969), pp. 153-154:

Our account of Arcadian bronzes may be concluded by a description of the goat-headed Pan from Lousoi at Berlin...A creature of the wilds, he stands shading his eyes with one hand: the other may have held a pedum or short crook: his right leg is advanced as though he is ready to leap forward. He has a beautiful fringe of hair down his back: the hair on his body and eyelashes are most carefully engraved. Much care has also been expended on the modelling of the head, muzzle and hands: between the horns is a hole, in which some ornament could have been inserted. The surface shews flaws from defective casting: one hole, in the right shoulder, has been filled in, but not the others. The work is that of a skilled and practiced hand, evidently not that of an Arcadian, but nowhere else, save perhaps in the Homeric Hymn to Pan, has the spirit of Arcadia been so fitly embodied.

Pan is shielding his eyes to look at something in the distance. I haven't seen Ines Jucker, Der Gestus des Aposkopein. Ein Beitrag zur Gebärdensprache in der antiken Kunst (Zurich: Juris-Verlag, 1956).

Honorato Fascitelli (1502-1564), Carmina XXIII (De Annia Villa), lines 1-40, tr. Richard Aldington in Medallions in Clay (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921), p. 92 (titled The Villa Annia):

Sacred citron-trees of the grove of Annia, sacred spring rippling through the wood, shrine of the quiet sea-beach upon the hill, and you, forest gods and goddesses of the race of Zeus—sadly do I leave you and most joyfully return.

I delight to flee away to god-like idleness in your breast. Either I lie hid beneath the dark tresses of the grove, and in short loose tunic grow cool from the breath of the wavering West-Wind; or beside the murmuring of the rill I sit long and long above its cool mirror, sleepily splashing the alluring water with languid fingers. Sorrow drifts away to the sound of the trembling lute. From the height I watch the mirrored sails of a thousand passing ships. And the Dog-star burns hot over land and sea, and Arctos with his frosts and dreary clouds flies from Hyperion.

The Latin, from Jacobi...Sannazarii...Poemata...Item Gabrielis Altilii et Honorati Fascitelli Carmina Quae Exstant, 2nd ed. (Patavii: Josephus Cominus, 1731), pp. 292-293:

Annii nemoris sacra
Citria, & liquido sacer
Fons fluens pede per nemus,
Quodque colle habet in sacro
    Mollis acta sacellum:    5

Vosque agrestia numina,
Dii deaeque genus Jovis
Frigidum quibus est nemus,
Fonsque jugis, & inclyta
    Ara rite dicata:    10

Rite si nemore horrido
Fonte seposito procul
Imminens pelago capit
Ulla vos super arduo
    Ara colle dicata:    15

Quam relinquo dolens querens,
Quam reviso volens lubens
Vos ego! & tenerum in sinum,
Dia ad otia, gaudeo
    Memet abdere vestrum!    20

Sive sub nemoris nigri
Delitere comis juvat
Et fluente brevi in tuni-
ca ad vagi Zephyri levem
    Frigerarier auram:    25

Sive dulce loquaculi
Fontis ad gelidos specus
Sessitare, & aquam hac & hac
Somnuli illecebram manu
    Usque pellere lenta.    30

Tum modo spatiarier
Garrula cithara gravem:
Collis e specula modo
Mille cernere puppium
    Vela praetereuntum:    35

Cum calore Canis gravi
Terra & aequore perfurit
Fervidoque Hyperione
Arctos icta vacat gelu,
    Tristibusque tenebris.    40

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), The Woodman and the Nightingale:

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;—      5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,      10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale      15

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness

Of the circumfluous waters,—every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,      20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave

Which is its cradle—ever from below      25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,      30

Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!—and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,      35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.

...


And so this man returned with axe and saw      40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene      45

With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops

Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;—      50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,

Make a green space among the silent bowers,      55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion—and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,      60

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain      65
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.

...


The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.      70

[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; the remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]

Edwin Frederick Holt, Redbourne Church,
Hertfordshire, with Lumber Wagon
and Labourers in Country Costume

Labels: arboricide

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 52 (tr. Walter Kaufmann):

Another sign of the theologian is his incapacity for philology. What is here meant by philology is, in a very broad sense, the art of reading well—of reading facts without falsifying them by interpretation, without losing caution, patience, delicacy, in the desire to understand. Philology as ephexis in interpretation —whether it is a matter of books, the news in a paper, destinies, or weather conditions, not to speak of “the salvation of the soul."

Ein andres Abzeichen des Theologen ist sein Unvermögen zur Philogie. Unter Philologie soll hier, in einem sehr allgemeinen Sinne, die Kunst, gut zu lesen, verstanden werden,—Tatsachen ablesen können, ohne sie durch Interpretation zu fälschen, ohne im Verlangen nach Verständnis die Vorsicht, die Geduld, die Feinheit zu verlieren. Philologie als Ephexis in der Interpretation: handle es sich nun um Bücher, um Zeitungs-Neuigkeiten, um Schicksale oder Wetter-Tatsachen,—nicht zu reden vom "Heil der Seele."

Ephexis is ἔφεξις, defined by Liddell-Scott-Jones (sense II) as "checking, stopping," with only a single citation—"IG12(9).207.10 (Eretria)," an inscription apparently translated into French by Brigitte Le Guen, Les associations de technites dionysiaques à l'époque hellénistique, I: Corpus documentaire (Nancy, 2001), pp. 41-56 (unavailable to me). The word comes from ἐπέχω, defined by Liddell-Scott-Jones (sense IV) as "hold back, keep in check." In this passage from Nietzsche, perhaps "restraint" would be a suitable translation.

In the preface to Daybreak (Morgenröte, tr. R.J. Hollingdale), Nietzsche says that the essence of philology is reading slowly:

It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading....For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow — it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book: — this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.

Man ist nicht umsonst Philologe gewesen, man ist es vielleicht noch das will sagen, ein Lehrer des langsamen Lesens....Philologie nämlich ist jene ehrwürdige Kunst, welche von ihrem Verehrer vor Allem Eins heischt, bei Seite gehn, sich Zeit lassen, still werden, langsam werden —, als eine Goldschmiedekunst und -kennerschaft des Wortes, die lauter feine vorsichtige Arbeit abzutun hat und Nichts erreicht, wenn sie es nicht lento erreicht. Gerade damit aber ist sie heute nötiger als je, gerade dadurch zieht sie und bezaubert sie uns am stärksten, mitten in einem Zeitalter der "Arbeit", will sagen: der Hast, der unanständigen und schwitzenden Eilfertigkeit, das mit Allem gleich "fertig werden" will, auch mit jedem alten und neuen Buche: — sie selbst wird nicht so leicht irgend womit fertig, sie lehrt gut lesen, das heisst langsam, tief, rück- und vorsichtig, mit Hintergedanken, mit offen gelassenen Türen, mit zarten Fingern und Augen lesen.

Excerpts from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

Chapter 9:

Our senator was a statesman, and of course could not be expected to cry, like other mortals; and so he turned his back to the company, and looked out of the window, and seemed particularly busy in clearing his throat and wiping his spectacle-glasses, occasionally blowing his nose in a manner that was calculated to excite suspicion, had any one been in a state to observe critically.

Chapter 12:

As to Tom, he was thinking over some words of an unfashionable old book, which kept running through his head, again and again, as follows: "We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come; wherefore God himself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city." These words of an ancient volume, got up principally by "ignorant and unlearned men," have, through all time, kept up, somehow, a strange sort of power over the minds of poor, simple fellows, like Tom. They stir up the soul from its depths, and rouse, as with trumpet call, courage, energy, and enthusiasm, where before was only the blackness of despair.

Chapter 12:

And he took out his pocket-book, and began adding over his accounts, a process which many gentlemen beside Mr. Haley have found a specific for an uneasy conscience.

Chapter 13:

Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placid forehead, on which time had written no inscription except peace on earth, good will to men; and beneath shone a large pair of clear, honest, loving brown eyes: you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

Chapter 14:

Having learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure,—nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing to each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,—

"Let—not—your—heart—be—troubled. In—my—Father's—house—are—many—mansions. I—go—to—prepare—a—place—for—you."

Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as full of honest grief as poor Tom's,—perhaps no fuller, for both were only men;—but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope, and look to no such future reunion; and if he had seen them, ten to one he would not have believed,—he must fill his head first with a thousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of translation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so evidently true and divine that the possibility of a question never entered his simple head. It must be true; for, if not true, how could he live?

As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin from learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain way-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him more than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been his custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children, in particular by young Master George; and, as they read, he would designate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the passages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his heart. His Bible was thus marked through, from one end to the other, with a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment seize upon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out what lay between them;—and while it lay there before him, every passage breathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment, his Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the promise of a future one.

Chapter 15:

There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she exacts love, to the uttermost farthing.

Chapter 15:

The good mother inquired, anxiously, "if Orleans wasn't an awful wicked place," saying, "that it seemed to her most equal to going to the Sandwich Islands, or anywhere among the heathen."

Chapter 15:

The great sin of sins, in her eye—the sum of all evils—was expressed by one very common and important word in her vocabulary—"shiftlessness. Her finale and ultimatum of contempt consisted in a very emphatic pronunciation of the word "shiftless;" and by this she characterised all modes of procedure which had not a direct and inevitable relation to accomplishment of some purpose then definitely had in mind. People who did nothing, or who did not know exactly what they were going to do, or who did not take the most direct way to accomplish what they set their hands to, were objects of her entire contempt; a contempt shown less frequently by anything she said than by a kind of stony grimness, as if she scorned to say anything about the matter.

Chapter 16:

"Religion!" said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him. "Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath."

Chapter 21:

And Mr. Shelby, not knowing any other way of enforcing his ideas, raised his voice; a mode of arguing very convenient and convincing, when a gentleman is discussing matters of business with his wife.

Chapter 22:

"Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You know nothing about these things," said Marie; "besides, your talking makes my head ache."

Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not exactly suit her.

Chapter 23:

They were always abusing each other's opinions and practices, and yet never a whit the less absorbed in each other's society; in fact, the very contrariety seemed to unite them.

Chapter 23:

"Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?"

"Oh, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many such things; but, then nobody ever thinks of doing them—you know, Eva, nobody does."

Chapter 24:

Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child's gradually decaying health and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying out two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was a victim. It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever was or could be so great a sufferer as herself; and, therefore she always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her could be sick. She was always sure in such a case that it was nothing but laziness or want of energy; and that if they had had the suffering she had, they would soon know the difference.

Chapter 28:

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,—still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,— pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

Chapter 28:

"We does for the Lord when we does for his critturs," said Tom.

"Good theology, Tom; better than Dr. B. preaches, I dare swear," said St. Clare.

I've posted most of the following epigrams separately over the years, but A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), vol. II, p. 324, mention all of them together, and I thought it would be handy to see them side by side.

Greek Anthology 9.43 (Parmenion of Macedonia, tr. W.R. Paton):

The simple covering of my cloak is enough for me; and I, who feed on the flowers of the Muses, shall never be the slave of the table. I hate witless wealth, the nurse of flatterers, and I will not stand in attendance on one who looks down on me. I know the freedom of scanty fare.

Ἀρκεῖ μοι χλαίνης λιτὸν σκέπας, οὐδὲ τραπέζαις
  δουλεύσω, Μουσέων ἄνθεα βοσκόμενος.
μισῶ πλοῦτον ἄνουν, κολάκων τροφόν, οὐδὲ παρ' ὀφρὺν
  στήσομαι· οἶδ' ὀλίγης δαιτὸς ἐλευθερίην.

Greek Anthology 9.110 (Alpheius of Mitylene, tr. W.R. Paton):

I crave not for deep-soiled fields nor wealth of gold such as was Gyges.' I love a self-sufficient life, Macrinus. The saying "naught in excess" pleaseth me exceedingly.

Οὐ στέργω βαθυληίους ἀρούρας,
οὐκ ὄλβον πολύχρυσον, οἷα Γύγης.
αὐτάρκους ἔραμαι βίου, Μακρῖνε·
τὸ Μηθὲν γὰρ ἄγαν ἄγαν με τέρπει.

Greek Anthology 9.234 (Crinagoras, tr. W.R. Paton):

How long, wretched soul, upborne by empty hopes nigh to the cold clouds, shalt thou build dream upon dream of wealth? Naught falls of its own accord into the possession of man. Pursue the gifts of the Muses, and leave these dim phantoms of the mind to fools.

Ἄχρι τεῦ, ἆ δείλαιε, κεναῖς ἐπὶ ἐλπίσι, θυμέ,
  πωτηθεὶς ψυχρῶν ἀσσοτάτω νεφέων
ἄλλοις ἄλλ' ἐπ' ὄνειρα διαγράψεις ἀφένοιο;
  κτητὸν γὰρ θνητοῖς οὐδὲ ἓν αὐτόματον.
Μουσέων ἀλλ' ἐπὶ δῶρα μετέρχεο, ταῦτα δ' ἀμυδρά
  εἴδωλα ψυχῆς ἠλεμάτοισι μέθες.

Greek Anthology 10.113 (anonymous, tr. W.R. Paton):

I do not wish or pray to be wealthy, but I would live on a little, suffering no evil.

Οὐκ ἐθέλω πλουτεῖν, οὐκ εὔχομαι· ἀλλά μοι εἴη
  ζῆν ἐκ τῶν ὀλίγων μηδὲν ἔχοντα κακόν.

During my childhood, my brother and sisters often brought home trophies awarded for their various accomplishments in school and on the playing field. The black sheep of the family (as I fancied myself), I was the only one who never brought home a trophy. In school, I was a failure, literally—I graduated at the bottom third of my high school class. The only sport I played was tennis, and my school didn't have a tennis team in my day. I joked self-consciously about my failure to win any trophies, and one Christmas my mother gave me, as a consolation prize, a small trophy purchased at the local sporting goods store. The trophy represented a naked man holding a torch aloft, and the inscription read "Number 1."

Later in life, in the early 1990's, when I worked as a senior software engineer (aka elderly computer programmer) at a Bell-Northern Research lab just outside Atlanta, Georgia, I did win two minor, but satisfying, victories.

The first victory was in an informal chess tournament among company employees. My opponent in the final round was a native of Russia, which takes its chess seriously, and knowledge of that fact made my win all the sweeter.

Shortly before my second victory, the company announced an "adjustment" in its benefits package. In other words, employees would henceforth pay more of a share for the benefits they received, while the benefits themselves would be reduced. Soon thereafter, the company sponsored its annual Halloween costume party. My costume was a simple one. I took an old, torn shirt, and made additional cuts through it with a pair of scissors. Then I wrote "Slashed Benefits" in large letters on two pieces of cardboard, which I hung front and back around my neck, attached with pieces of string, over the torn shirt.

The Halloween costume contest took place in the company cafeteria. There were no judges. Instead, an applause meter measured the applause which greeted each contestant as he (most of the employees were men) entered the cafeteria in costume. A deafening chorus of hand clapping, foot stomping, cheers, and whistles met my appearance as "Slashed Benefits."

I won that year's Halloween costume contest, which was the last one ever held in that lab. Local company management banned all such contests from then on, and I received a black mark for my stunt in my next performance review.

---

I don't usually like to talk much about myself on this blog, but I thought my children might some day enjoy reading this story about their stodgy father.

Presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan (9% individual flat tax, 9% national sales tax, 9% business flat tax) has recently attracted much attention. I think we the people should focus rather on implementation of the 4-4-4 plan outlined by Helen and Scott Nearing in The Maple Sugar Book (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), pp. 238-239 (a passage in which the Nearings explain the reasons why they abandoned the city for the country):

Sixth, we wanted, in one sense most important of all, to make a living in about half of our working time—say four or five hours a day—so that we would be freed from the livelihood problem and enabled to devote the other half of our time to teaching, writing, music, travel. We had frequently read and heard theoretical advocacies of such a daily time schedule: four hours for bread labor, four hours for one's vocation, and four hours for social intercourse, but we had seldom seen it practiced in our acquisitive society.* We have succeeded better than we dared to hope, in putting such a formula into practice, but subject to minor modifications. There are times during the year, such as the syrup-making weeks, when we work eight or ten or twelve hours a day. These we balance with at least an equal number of weeks when we do no bread labor whatsoever. During the balance of the year, we succeed moderately well in carrying out the daily 4-4-4 formula.

* In a letter to General Koscuisko in February 26, 1810, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I am retired to Monticello where ... I enjoy a repose to which I have been long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to correspondence. From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give to society and recreation with my neighbors and my friends; and from candle light to early bed-time, I read." The Writings of Thomas Jefferson Washington: Memorial Association, 1907. Vol. XII. P. 369.

This admirable plan reminds me of an anonymous poem from the Greek Anthology (10.43, tr. W.R. Paton, with his note), which recommends a slightly longer work day:

Six hours are most suitable for labour, and the four that follow, when set forth in letters,¹ say to men "Live."

¹ The letters of the alphabet were used as figures: ΖΗΘΙ (meaning "live") is 7,8,9,10.

Ἓξ ὧραι μόχθοις ἱκανώταται· αἱ δὲ μετ' αὐτὰς
  γράμμασι δεικνύμεναι ΖΗΘΙ λέγουσι βροτοῖς.

If elected President, I pledge to work tirelessly (but no more than 4 hours a day) to promote nationwide adoption of the 4-4-4 plan.

George Orwell, in his essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, wrote, "The toad, unlike the skylark and the primrose, has never had much of a boost from poets." One exception is Ralph Hodgson, Lines:

No pitted toad behind a stone
  But hoards some secret grace;
The meanest slug with midnight gone
  Has left a silver trace.

No dullest eyes to beauty blind,
  Uplifted to the beast,
But prove some kin with angel kind,
  Though lowliest and least.

In the penultimate line, "kind" is a noun (with "angel kind" cf. "mankind"), not an adjective.

Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962), Quarter-Day:

Death asked: the debtor bit his lip
  And offered something on account;
Death smiled and took a closer grip:
  The debtor paid the full amount.