Laudator Temporis Acti

Lewis Theobald (1688-1744), in The Censor, No. 5 (Wednesday, April 20, 1715) 29-30, quoted by Richard Foster Jones in Lewis Theobald: His Contribution to English Scholarship, with Some Unpublished Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), p. 49:

I am so profess'd an Admirer of Antiquity, that I am never better pleas'd with the Labours of my Contemporaries, than when they busy themselves in retrieving the sacred Monuments of their Fore-fathers from Obscurity and Oblivion....We Lovers of Antiquity have our Foibles of this Nature, which we keep up with a very innocent Superstition. For my own Part, the Shelves of my Study are filled with curious Volumes in all sorts of Literature, that preserve the Fragments of great and venerable Authors. These I consider as so many precious Collections from a Ship-wreck of inestimable Value; comforting my self for the loss of the general Cargo, by the greater Price and Esteem that ought to be set upon the injur'd Remains. In opposite Columns to these stand the Restorers of ancient Learning, who are continually snatching delicious Morsels from the Mouth of Time, and forcing that general Robber to a Restitution of his ill-gotten Goods.

[Thomas Newcomb], from Bibliotheca: A Poem. Occasion'd by the Sight of a Modern Library. With Some Very Useful Episodes, and Digressions (London: J. Morphew, 1712), rpt. in A Select Collection of Poems, Vol. III (London: J. Nichols, 1780), pp. 19-74 (at 60-62):

Bentley immortal honour gets,
By changing Que's for nobler Et's:
From Cam to Isis see him roam,
To fetch stray'd Interjections home;
While the glad shores with joy rebound,
For Periods and lost Comma's found:
Poor Adverbs, that had long deplor'd
Their injur'd rights, by him restor'd!
Smil'd to survey a rival's doom,
While they possess'd the envied room;
And, hissing from their rescued throne
Th' usurper's fate, applaud their own.
The Roman nymphs, for want of notes
More tender, strain'd their little throats,
Till Bentley, to relieve their woes,
Gave them a sett of Ah's and Oh's:
More musically to complain,
And warble forth their gentle pain.
The suffering fair no more repine,
For vowels now to sob and whine;
In softest air their passion try,
And, without spoiling metre, die:
With Interjections of his own,
He helps them now to weep and groan;
That, reading him, no lover fears
Soft vehicles for sighs and tears.
Instructed by his learned code,
What makes a Jig, or forms an Ode,
We view what various beauties meet,
To leave each fragrant line so sweet;
How Horace' lines our passions keep
Awake, and Bentley's lull asleep.
No verse can moan a limping foot,
But he applies his plaster to't:
With pious care binds up the sore,
And kindly bids it hop no more!
While, with his helping comments nigh,
Instead of crutches to apply
To crazy verse (which envious Time
Had weaken'd both in sense and rhyme);
For a lame Muse's surgeon meet,
Instead of legs, sets broken feet.

For the medical metaphor cf. e.g. Bentley's own words in his edition of Phaedrus and Publilius Syrus (Cambridge: Cornelius Crownfield, 1726):

Quod Phaedri fabulas & Publii Syri Sententias huic Terentii editioni subjunxerim; ea partim causa est, quod hi soli praeter Plautum & fragmenta quaedam aliorum nunc extent, qui eadem qua Terentius Licentia in Senariis sint usi; partim quod hi tres pari conditione Liberti et Peregrini, in non ita dissimili argumento Comoediis Mimis & Apologis, omnia Italorum ingenia facile superaverint; partim quod post egregias plurimorum operas adhuc incurata restarent non pauca ab indoctis Librariis inflicta vulnera, quibus ipse mihi videbar posse medicari.

Related post: Richard Bentley.

A.C. Swinburne (1837-1909), from "The Nympholept":

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime
That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood,
Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time,
Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood,
When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.
The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme:
The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good.

A.C. Swinburne, letter to A.H. Bullen (May 16, 1888):

I am sorry to hear that you are spending any part of your valuable time on Horace, or any one who may have wasted any part of his in translating that writer. I should as soon think of doing Moore into Greek anapaests, or Tupper into Greek elegiacs (I fancy he would read like Theognis or Tyrtaeus) as of turning Horace into English. My dislike of him—dating from schooldays—is one of the very few points on which I find myself in sympathy with Byron.

Swinburne is referring to Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Stanza 77:

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart,
Yet fare thee well—upon Soracte's ridge we part.

Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650), "Against a Rich Man Despising Povertie," in The Poems of Phineas Fletcher, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, Vol. III (Printed for Private Circulation, 1869), pp. 225-226:

If well thou view'st us with no squinted eye,
No partiall judgement, thou wilt quickly rate
Thy wealth no richer then my povertie;
My want no poorer then thy rich estate:
    Our ends and births alike; in this as I;        5
    Poore thou wert born, and poore again shalt die.

My little fills my little-wishing minde:
Thou having more then much, yet seekest more:
Who seeks, still wishes what he seeks, to finde;
Who wishes, wants; and who so wants, is poore:        10
    Then this must follow of necessitie;
    Poore are thy riches, rich my povertie.

Though still thou gett'st yet is thy want not spent,
But as thy wealth, so growes thy wealthy itch:
But with my little I have much content;        15
Content hath all; and who hath all, is rich:
    Then this in reason thou must needs confesse,
    If I have little, yet that thou hast lesse.

2 partiall = opposite of impartial
3, 4, 8 then = than
13 spent = used up, exhausted


José de Ribera (1591-1652), An Old Usurer

A friend sent me two quotations from Goethe, "one curmudgeonly and the other euphoric," on a postcard after visiting the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome on December 28, 2012.

Goethe, Italian Journey (November 5, 1786; tr. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer):

I find it a difficult and melancholy business, I must confess, separating the old Rome from the new, but it has to be done and I can only hope that, in the end, my efforts will prove well worthwhile. One comes upon traces both of magnificence and of devastation, which stagger the imagination. What the barbarians left, the builders of Modern Rome have destroyed.

Gestehen wir jedoch, es ist ein saures und trauriges Geschäft, das alte Rom aus dem neuen heraus zu klauben, aber man muss es denn doch tun und zuletzt eine unschätzbare Befriedigung hoffen. Man trifft Spuren einer Herrlichkeit und einer Zerstörung, die beide über unsere Begriffe gehen. Was die Barbaren stehen ließen, haben die Baumeister des neuen Roms verwüstet.

Goethe, letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (November 17, 1786; my translation):

Aqueducts, baths, theater, amphitheater, circus, temple! And then the palaces of the emperors, the tombs of the great — with these images I have nourished and strengthened my spirit.

Wasserleitungen, Bäder, Theater, Amphitheater, Rennbahn, Tempel! Und dann die Palläste der Kayser, die Gräber der Großen — Mit diesen Bildern hab' ich meinen Geist genährt und gestärckt.

At the end of the postcard:

Goethe didn't live long enough to witness all of the destruction by Barbaren and Baumeister, but neither bevy of wreckers has managed to blight seriously the euphoria of visitors to Rome, me among them.

Thanks very much, my friend.

---

Ian Jackson comments:

On your "Postcard from Rome", Goethe's remark "Was die Barbaren stehen ließen ..." is presumably an echo of the famous 17th-century pasquinade on Maffeo Barbarini (Pope Urban VIII)'s appropriation of bronze spolia from the Pantheon: "Quod non fecerunt barbari, Barbarini fecerunt".

P.G. Patmore (1786-1855), My Friends and Acquaintance: Being Memorials, Mind-Portraits, and Personal Recollections of Deceased Celebrities of the Nineteenth Century (London: Saunders and Otley, 1854), vol. I, pp. 16-17:

The truth then is, that [Charles] Lamb was what is by no means so uncommon or so contradictory a character as the unobservant may deem it: he was a gentle, amiable, and tender-hearted misanthrope. He hated and despised men with his mind and judgment, in proportion as (and precisely because) he loved and yearned towards them in his heart; and individually, he loved those best whom everybody else hated, and for the very reasons for which others hated them. He generally through life had two or three especial pets, who were always the most disagreeable people in the world — to the world. To be taken into Lamb's favour and protection you had only to get discarded, defamed, and shunned by everybody else; and if you deserved this treatment, so much the better! If I may venture so to express myself, there was in Lamb's eyes a sort of sacredness in sin, on account of its sure ill consequences to the sinner; and he seemed to open his arms and his heart to the rejected and reviled of mankind in a spirit kindred at least with that of the Deity.

Letter from Cyril Jackson to Robert Peel (January 28, 1810), in Charles Stuart Parker, ed., Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers, 2nd ed., Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1899), p. 28:

Now remember what I say. Give the last high finish to all that you now possess by the continual reading of Homer. Let no day pass without your having him in your hands. Elevate your own mind by the continual meditation of the vastness of his comprehension and the unerring accuracy of all his conceptions. If you will but read him four or five times over every year, in half a dozen years you will know him by heart, and he well deserves it.

Theognis 337-340 (tr. M.L. West):

Zeus grant I may repay my friends, who are so kind,
    Cyrnus, and even more my enemies.
I'd feel then like a god on earth, could I but get
    revenge before my appointed death-day comes.

Ζεύς μοι τῶν τε φίλων δοίη τίσιν, οἵ με φιλεῦσιν,
    τῶν τ᾽ ἐχθρῶν μεῖζον, Κύρνε, δυνησόμενον.
χοὔτως ἄν δοκέοιμι μετ᾽ ἀνθρώπων θεὸς εἶναι
    εἴ μ᾽ ἀποτεισάμενον μοῖρα κίχῃ θανάτου.

J.W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from The Greek Anthology. Edited with a Revised Text, Introduction, Translation, and Notes (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890), pp. 46-47 (from Introduction, § IX):

In revulsion from the immense accumulation of material wealth in this period, a certain refined simplicity was then the ideal of the best minds, as it was afterwards in the early Roman Empire, as it is in our own day. The charm of the country was, perhaps for the first time, fully realised; the life of gardens became a passion, and hardly less so the life of the opener air, of the hill and meadow, of the shepherd and hunter, the farmer and fisherman. The rules of art, like the demands of heaven, were best satisfied with small and simple offerings. 'The least of a little'³ was sufficient to lay before gods who had no need of riches; and as the art of the epigrammatist grew more refined, the poet took pride in working with the slightest materials. The husbandman lays a handful of corn-ears before Demeter, the gardener a basket of ripe fruit at the feet of Priapus; the implements of their craft are dedicated by the carpenter and the goldsmith; the young girl and the aged woman offer their even slighter gift, the spindle and distaff, the reel of wool, and the rush-woven basket.⁴ A staff of wild-olive cut in the coppice is accepted by the lord of the myriad-boughed forest; the Muses are pleased with their bunch of roses wet with morning dew.⁵ The boy Daphnis offers his fawnskin and scrip of apples to the great divinity of Pan;⁶ the young herdsman and his newly-married wife, still with the rose-garland on her hair, make prayer and thanksgiving with a cream cheese and a piece of honeycomb to the mistress of a hundred cities, Aphrodite with her house of gold.⁷ The hard and laborious life of the small farmer was touched with some-[p. 47]thing of the natural magic that saturates the Georgics; 'rich with fair fleeces, and fair wine, and fair fruit of corn,' and blessed by the gracious Seasons whose feet pass over the furrows.¹ On the green slope Pan himself makes solitary music to the shepherd in the divine silence of the hills.² The fancy of three brothers, a hunter, a fowler, and a fisherman, meeting to make dedication of the spoils of their crafts to the country-god, was one which had a special charm for epigrammatists; it is treated by no less than nine poets, whose dates stretch over as many centuries.³ Sick of cities, the imagination turned to an Arcadia that thenceforth was to fill all poetry with the music of its names and the fresh chill of its pastoral air; the lilied banks of Ladon, the Erymanthian water, the deep woodland of Pholoë and the grey steep of Cyllene.⁴ Nature grew full of a fresh and lovely divinity. A spirit dwells under the sea, and looks with kind eyes on the creatures that go up and down in its depths; Artemis flashes by in the rustle of the windswept oakwood, and the sombre shade of the pines makes a roof for Pan; the wild hill becomes a sanctuary, for ever unsown and unmown, where the Spirit of Nature, remote and invisible, feeds his immortal flock and fulfils his desire.<sup>5

3</sup> Ibid. [Anth. Pal.] vi.98, ἐκ μικρῶν ὀλίγιστα.
⁴Ibid. vi. 98, 102; 103, 92; 174, 247.
⁵ Ibid. vi.3, 336.
⁶ Ibid. vi.177.
⁷ Ibid. vi.55; cf. vi.119, xii.131.

[p. 47]

¹ Anth. Pal. vi.31, 98.
² App. Plan. 17; cf. Lucret. v.1387.
³ Anth. Pal. vi.11-16, and 179-187. The poets are Leonidas of Tarentum, Alcaeus of Messene, Antipater of Sidon, Alexander, Julius Diocles, Satyrus, Archias, Zosimus and Julianus Aegyptius.
⁴ Anth. Pal. vi.111, App. Plan. 188: compare Song iii. in Milton's Arcades.
⁵ Anth. Pal. x.8; vi.253, 268; vi.79.

Aristophanes, Clouds 1005-1008 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

No, down to the Academy you shall go, and under the sacred olive trees you shall crown yourself with white reed and have a race with a decent boy your own age, fragrant with woodbine and carefree content, and the catkins flung by the poplar tree, luxuriating in spring's hour, when the plane tree whispers to the elm.

ἀλλ᾽ εἰς Ἀκαδήμειαν κατιὼν ὑπὸ ταῖς μορίαις ἀποθρέξει
στεφανωσάμενος καλάμῳ λευκῷ μετὰ σώφρονος ἡλικιώτου,
μίλακος ὄζων καὶ ἀπραγμοσύνης καὶ λεύκης φυλλοβολούσης,
ἦρος ἐν ὥρᾳ, χαίρων ὁπόταν πλάτανος πτελέᾳ ψιθυρίζῃ.

Plutarch, Life of Cimon 13.8 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

He was the first to beautify the city with the so‑called "liberal" and elegant resorts which were so excessively popular a little later, by planting the market-place with plane trees, and by converting the Academy from a waterless and arid spot into a well watered grove, which he provided with clear running-tracks and shady walks.

πρῶτος δὲ ταῖς λεγομέναις ἐλευθερίοις καὶ γλαφυραῖς διατριβαῖς, αἳ μικρὸν ὕστερον ὑπερφυῶς ἠγαπήθησαν, ἐκαλλώπισε τὸ ἄστυ, τὴν μὲν ἀγορὰν πλατάνοις καταφυτεύσας, τὴν δ᾽ Ἀκαδήμειαν ἐξ ἀνύδρου καὶ αὐχμηρᾶς κατάρρυτον ἀποδείξας ἄλσος ἠσκημένον ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ δρόμοις καθαροῖς καὶ συσκίοις περιπάτοις.

David Gill, "Paton, William Roger (1857–1921), epigraphist and classical scholar," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

'Paton spoke Greek and French to his wife, German to the children's governess, English to me, Turkish to the servants, Latin and Gaelic to his children' (Myres, 10).

The reference is to J.N.L. Myres, Commander J.L. Myres, RNVR: the Blackbeard of the Aegean (1980).

A poem by Ryōkan (1758-1831), tr. Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel:

It's not that I don't care
To mingle with others
Only that I'm better
At amusing myself

The same, tr. Misao Kodama and Hikosaku Yanagishima:

I am not escaping from the world,
But what I like best is
To enjoy myself alone
Without mingling in the crowd.

Romanization:

yononaka ni majiranu to niwa aranedomo
    hitoriasobi zo ware wa masareru

Richard de Bury (1287-1345), Philobiblon 17.219-221 (tr. Eric Thomson):

[219] You will perhaps see some pig-headed youth lounging lazily over his studies, who when the winter frost is sharp, has a dripping nose from the biting cold, and doesn't take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief until he has drenched the book in front of him with the foul discharge. If only it was a cobbler's apron he had on his lap instead of a book! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth, black as pitch, with which he marks any passage that takes his fancy. He distributes a vast array of straws in various places, inserted to stick out, so that the ends may remind him of what his memory can't retain. These straws, since the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes them out, first distend the book and prevent it from being closed normally, and at length, being carelessly consigned to oblivion, they rot.

[220] He isn't afraid to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or slosh a cup over it; and because he has no alms-purse at hand he drops into books whatever bits and pieces are left over. With his ceaseless chattering, he never wearies of arguing with his companions, and while he puts forward a legion of arguments void of any concrete sense, he drenches the book lying half-open in his lap with his spluttering saliva. Why go on? He soon has his arms folded and is leaning forward to rest his head on the book; a brief spell of study induces a long nap; and then, by way of repairing the resulting wrinkles, he twists back the margin of the pages, causing not inconsiderable damage to the book.

[221] Now the rains are over and gone, and the flowers have appeared on our soil. Then the scholar we have been describing, a neglecter rather than an inspector of books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and four-leaf clovers. Then he will use his wet hands, clammy with sweat, to leaf through the volumes; then he will whack the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger wrapped in ancient dirty leather will go through the page line by line; then at the first flea-bite the sacred book is tossed aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so impregnated with the dust that has found its way inside, that it resists any efforts to close it.

The Latin:

[219] Videbis fortassis iuvenem cervicosum, studio segniter residentem, et dum hiberno tempore hiems alget, nasus irriguus frigore comprimente distillat, nec prius se dignatur emunctorio tergere, quam subiectum librum madefecerit turpi rore; cui utinam loco codicis corium subderetur sutoris! Unguem habet fimo fetente refertum, gagati simillimum, quo placentis materiae signat locum. Paleas dispertitur innumeras, quas diversis in locis collocat evidentur, ut festuca reducat quod memoria non retentat. Hae paleae, quia nec venter libri digerit nec quisquam eas extrahit, primo quidem librum a solita iunctura distendunt, et tandem negligenter oblivioni commissae putrescunt.

[220] Fructus et caseum super librum expansum non veretur comedere, atque scyphum hinc inde dissolute transferre; et quia non habet eleemosynarium praeparatum, in libris dimittit reliquias fragmentorum. Garrulitate continua sociis oblatrare non desinit, et dum multitudinem rationum adducit a sensu physico vacuarum, librum in gremio subexpansum humectat aspergine salivarum. Quid plura? statim duplicatis cubitis reclinatur in codicem et per breve studium soporem invitat prolixum, ac reparandis rugis limbos replicat foliorum, ad libri non modicum detrimentum.

[221] Jam imber abiit et recessit et flores apparuerunt in terra nostra. Tunc scholaris quem describimus, librorum neglector potius quam inspector, viola, primula atque rosa necnon et quadrifolio farciet librum suum. Tunc manus aquosas et scatentes sudore volvendis voluminibus applicabit. Tunc pulverulentis undique chirothecis in candidam membranam impinget et indice veteri pelle vestito venabitur paginam lineatim. Tunc ad pulicis mordentis aculeum sacer liber abicitur, qui tamen vix clauditur infra mensem, sed sic pulveribus introiectis tumescit quod claudentis instantiae non obedit.

Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1950), Part XIX (The Misfortunes of Books), Section III (Neglect and Misusage), pp. 417-426, discusses this passage (at 422).

Related post: Pet Peeve.

Not the President of the United States, but the President of Uruguay, José Mujica.

Simon Romero, "After Years in Solitary, an Austere Life as Uruguay’s President," New York Times (January 4, 2013):

He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo's outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.

In a deliberate statement to this cattle-exporting nation of 3.3 million people, Mr. Mujica, 77, shunned the opulent Suárez y Reyes presidential mansion, with its staff of 42, remaining instead in the home where he and his wife have lived for years, on a plot of land where they grow chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.

Visitors reach Mr. Mujica’s austere dwelling after driving down O'Higgins Road, past groves of lemon trees. His net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage. He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.

....

Quoting the Roman court-philosopher Seneca, Mr. Mujica said, "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor."

....

Finally, Mr. Mujica's eyes lit up as he remembered a passage from "Don Quixote," in which the knight-errant imbibes wine from a horn and dines on salted goat with his goatherd hosts, delivering a harangue against the "pestilence of gallantry."

"The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain," said Mr. Mujica. "Probably,” he added, "they were the richest."

The Seneca quotation comes from one of his letters to Lucilius (2.6):

non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.

Hat tip: Arsen Darnay.

Gayle Osterberg, "Update on the Twitter Archive At the Library of Congress" (January 4, 2013):

In April 2010, the Library and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms.

The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date.

This month, all those objectives will be completed. We now have an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets and growing. The volume of tweets the Library receives each day has grown from 140 million beginning in February 2011 to nearly half a billion tweets each day as of October 2012.

What would Adams and Jefferson think?

Roger Cohen, "Thanks for Not Sharing," New York Times (December 6, 2012):

Now I was determined to get through 2012 without doing a peevish column, not wishing to appear cantankerous or curmudgeonly, determined to be sunny and youthful as the times demand, but everyone has a tipping point. Mine occurred when I came across this tweet from Claire:

“Have such a volcanically deep zit laying roots in my chin that it feels like someone hit me with a right cross.”

Good to know, Claire.

I was just recovering from that when I found Deanna tweeting that she had “picked up pet food” and was heading to “the dreaded consult on colon stuff. The joys of turning 50.” As for Kate she let the world know the status of her labor: “Contractions 3 minutes apart and dilated at 2 cm.”

Social media does not mean that you have to be that social.

Now these tweets of Claire, Deanna, and Kate are preserved for the benefit of future generations at the Library of Congress.

Greek text from Jean-Claude Decourt, Inscriptions de Thessalie, I: Les cités de la vallée de l'Énipeus (Paris-Athènes: École Française d'Athènes, 1995 = Études Epigraphiques, 3), pp. 90-94, no. 73 (the apparatus is mine, abbreviated from Decourt's):

                                           Θεός.                                        1
Χαίρετε τοὶ πα̣[ριόντες, ἅπ]α̣[ς] θῆλύς τε καὶ ἄρσην,
ἄνδρες τε ἠδὲ γυναῖκες ὁμῶς παῖδες τε κόραι τε·
χωρόν δ' εἰς ἱερὸν Νύμφαις καὶ Πανὶ καὶ Ἑρμῆι,        4
Ἀπόλλωνι ἄνακτι καὶ Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ ἑταίραις,
Χίρωνος τ' ἄντρον καὶ Ἀσκλαπιοῦ ήδ' Ὑγιείας·
τούτων ἐστὶ τ[ά]δ̣', ὦνα Πάν, ἱαρώτατ' ἐν αὐτῶι
ἔμφυτα καὶ πίνακες καὶ ἀγάλματα δῶρα τε πολλ[ά]·        8
ἄνδρα δ' ἐποιήσα(ν)τὰ ἀγαθὸν Παντάκλεα Νύμφαι
τῶνδ' έπιβαινέμεναι χώρων καὶ ἐπίσσκοπον εἶναι,
ὅσπερ ταῦτ' ἐφύτευσε καὶ [ἐ]ξεπονήσατο χερσσίν,
ἀντίδοσαν δ' αὐτῶι βίον ἄφθονον ἤματα πάντα·        12
Ἡρακλέης μὲν ἔδωκ' ἰσχύν ἀρετὴν τε κράτος τε,
ὧιπερ τούσδε λίθους τύπτων ἐπόησ' ἀναβαίνε[ιν],
Ἀπόλλων δὲ δίδωσι καὶ υἱὸς τοῦ[δ]ε Ἑρμῆς
αἰῶν' εἰς τὸν ἄπαντα ὑγίειαν καὶ βίον ἐσθλόν,        16
Πὰν δὲ γέλωτα καὶ εὐφροσύνην ὕβριν τε δικαίαν,
Χίρων δ' αὐτῶι δῶκε σοφόν τ̣' ἔ̣μεν[αι] καὶ ἀοιδόν.
Ἀλλὰ τύχαις ἀγαθαῖς ἀναβαίνετ[ε], θύετε Πανί̣,
εὔχεσθε, εὐφραίνεσθε· κακῶν δ .... ἁπάν[των]        20
ἐνθάδ' ἔνεστ', ἀγαθῶν δὲ [λάχος?] πολέμοιό [τε λῆξις?].

2 πα̣[ριόντες, ἅπ]α̣[ς]: προσιόντες, ἅπας W. Peek
20 in lac. ἐπίλησις suppl. W. Peek
21 λάχος D. Comparetti; λῆξις Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum I (1923) 248

My translation:

                             God.                                     1
Welcome visitors, every female and male,
husbands and wives, sons and daughters alike,
to a spot sacred to Nymphs and Pan and Hermes,        4
Lord Apollo and Heracles and companions,
to the cave of Chiron and Asclepius and Hygieia;
to them belong, o Lord Pan, these most holy things here,
plants and tablets and statues and many gifts;        8
the Nymphs appointed a good man, Pantalkes,
to walk over these places and to be overseer;
he made these plants grow and he toiled with his hands;
they gave him in return a bountiful livelihood for all his days;        12
Heracles gave him might, excellence, and strength,
with which he cut these stones and made them rise up,
and Apollo and his son Hermes give him
health and a noble livelihood forever,         16
and Pan gives him laughter and good cheer and righteous outrageousness,
and Chiron made him to be wise and a bard.
But with good fortune go up, sacrifice to Pan,
pray, make merry; oblivion of all evil        20
is in this place, and a share of good, and cessation of strife.

There are also English translations in W.R. Connor, "Seized by the Nymphs: Nympholepsy and Symbolic Expression in Classical Greece," Classical Antiquity 7.2 (October 1988) 155-189 (at 163); Jennifer Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 17; and Corinne Ondine Pache, A Moment's Ornament: The Poetics of Nympholepsy in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 53-54.

The prepositional phrase in lines 4-6 (χωρόν δ' εἰς ἱερὸν ... Χίρωνος τ' ἄντρον) needs a verb of motion to complete the sense. Decourt translates the beginning of the inscription as "Réjouissez-vous passants," then, after a stop (raised dot at the end of line 3), "vous qui venez en un lieu consacré ... vous qui venez à la grotte de Chiron." "Vous qui venez," however, isn't in the Greek. It's true that in ancient inscriptions a very  common feature is an address to passers-by, but perhaps here the address is not to those who merely pass by the shrine, but to those who enter or visit it. For πα̣ριόντες ... εἰς see Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. πάρειμι, sense III: "pass on, esp. in the sense of entering." If this interpretation is adopted, there should be a comma at the end of line 3, instead of a raised dot. Connor, Larson, and Pache all read προσιόντες, not πα̣ριόντες.

In line 17, ὕβριν ... δικαίαν is an unexpected phrase, because hubris is normally unjust, not just. Larson's  "righteous unrestraint" captures the Greek well.

The Greek text of the inscription in Pache's book has some typographical errors, e.g. ἀνδρα in line 9, ένθαδ' in line 21.

This is an attractive inscription at the entrance of a shrine, welcoming all visitors. No "procul, o procul este profani" here.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Tempest-Tost (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd., 1951), p. 196:

"Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge."
"Certainly."
"You say that a man's first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?"
"Of course."
"Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."

Related post: The Value of Useless Knowledge.

Hat tip: St. Izzy by the River.

Horace Walpole, letter to George Montagu (November 21, 1765):

What has one to do, when one grows tired of the world, as we both do, but to draw nearer and nearer, and gently waste the remains of life with the friends with whom one began it! Young and happy people will have no regard for us and our old stories, and they are in the right: but we shall not tire one another; we shall laugh together....I must tell you, I desire to die when I have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen or heard anything serious, that was not ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, all are to me but impostors in their various ways. Fame or interest are their objects—and after all their parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanac, and believes the stars but so many farthing candles, created to prevent his falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational being, and I am sure an honester than any of them—Oh, I am sick of visions and systems, that shove one another aside, and come over again, like the figures in a moving picture! Rabelais brightens up to me as I see more of the world; he treated it as it deserved, laughed at it all, and (as I judge from myself) ceased to hate it; for I find hatred an unjust preference.

Jean Georges Vibert, Reading Rabelais

al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868), "In Praise of Books," in The Life and Works of Jāḥiẓ: Translations of Selected Texts, by Charles Pellat. Translated from the French by D.M. Hawke (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 130-132:

A book is a receptacle filled with knowledge, a container crammed with good sense, a vessel full of jesting and earnestness. It can if you wish be more eloquent than Sahbān Wā'il, or less talkative than Bāqil: it will amuse you with anecdotes, inform you on all manner of astonishing marvels, entertain you with jokes or move you with homilies, just as you please. You are free to find in it an entertaining adviser, an encouraging critic, a villainous ascetic, a silent talker or hot coldness.

....

Moreover, have you ever seen a garden that will go into a man's sleeve, an orchard you can take on your lap, a speaker who can speak of the dead and yet be the interpreter of the living? Where else will you find a companion who sleeps only when you are asleep, and speaks only when you wish him to?

....

You denigrate books, whereas to my mind there is no pleasanter neighbour, no more fair-minded friend, no more amenable companion, no more dutiful teacher, no comrade more perfect and less prone to error, less annoying or importunate, of a sweeter disposition, less inclined to contradiction or accusation, less disposed to slander or backbiting, more marvellous, cleverer, less given to flattery or affectation, less demanding or quarrelsome, less prone to argument or more opposed to strife, than a book.

I know no companion more prompt to hand, more rewarding, more helpful or less burdensome, and no tree that lives longer, bears more abundantly or yields more delicious fruit that is handier, easier to pick or more perfectly ripened at all times of the year, than a book.

I know no animal product that despite its youth, the short time that elapsed since its birth, its modest price and its ready availability brings together so much excellent advice, so much rare knowledge, so many works by great minds and keen brains, so many lofty thoughts and sound doctrines, so much wise experience or so much information about bygone ages, distant lands, everyday sayings and demolished empires, as a book.

....

For all its smallness and lightness, a book is the medium through which men receive the Scriptures, and also government accounts. Silent when silence is called for, it is eloquent when asked to speak. It is a bedside companion that does not interrupt when you are busy but welcomes you when you have a mind to it, and does not demand forced politeness or compel you to avoid its company. It is a visitor whose visits may be rare, or frequent, or so continual that it follows you like your shadow and becomes a part of you.

A book is a companion that does not flatter you, a friend that does not irritate you, a crony that does not weary you, a petitioner that does not wax importunate, a protégé that does not find you slow, and a friend that does not seek to exploit you by flattery, artfully wheedle you, cheat you with hypocrisy or deceive you with lies.

A book, if you consider, is something that prolongs your pleasure, sharpens your mind, loosens your tongue, lends agility to your fingers and emphasis to your words, gladdens your mind, fills your heart and enables you to win the respect of the lowly and the friendship of the mighty. You will get more knowledge out of one in a month than you could acquire from men's mouths in five years—and that at a saving in expense, in arduous research by qualified persons, in standing on the doorsteps of hack teachers, in resorting to individuals inferior to you in mortal qualities and nobility of birth, and in associating with odious and stupid people.

A book obeys you by night and by day, abroad and at home; it has no need of sleep, and does not grow weary with sitting up. It is a master that does not fail you when you need him and does not stop teaching you when you stop paying him. If you fall from grace it continues to obey you, and if the wind sets fair for your enemies it does not turn against you. Form any kind of bond or attachment with it, and you will be able to do without everything else; you will not be driven into bad company by boredom or loneliness.

Even if its kindness to you and its benevolence towards you consisted merely in saving you from the tedium of sitting on your doorstep watching the passers-by—with all the aggravations that posture entails: civilities to be paid, other people's indiscretions, the tendency to meddle in things that do not concern you, the proximity of the common people, the need to listen to their bad Arabic and their mistaken ideas and put up with their low behaviour and their shocking ignorance—even if a book conferred no other advantage but this, it would be both salutary and profitable for its owner.

Salomon Koninck (1609-1656), The Hermit
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.