Laudator Temporis Acti

Euripides, Children of Heracles. Hippolytus. Andromache. Hecuba. Edited and Translated by David Kovacs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995 = Loeb Classical Library, 484), pp. 54-55 (Children of Heracles 466-467):

τί γὰρ γέροντος ἀνδρὸς Εὐρυσθεῖ πλέον
θανόντος;

for what profit does Eurytheus have in the death of an old man?

Id., pp. 102-103 (Children of Heracles 969):

χρῆν τόνδε μὴ ζῆν μηδ᾿ ἔτ᾿ εἰσορᾶν φάος.

Eurytheus ought not to live and look any more on the light of the sun.

In both passages read Eurystheus, not Eurytheus. The typographical errors persist in the Digital Loeb Classical Library. In the Greek at line 969 Eurystheus isn't actually named (τόνδε = this one, this fellow).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560), Les Regrets 19, lines 5-11 (tr. Richard Helgerson):

I wander alone on the Latin shore, longing for France, and longing, too, for my old friends, my richest treasure, and for my pleasant Angevin home.

I miss the woods and the ripening fields, the vines, the gardens, and the meadows turning green through which my river runs...

Je me pourmene seul sur la rive Latine,
La France regretant, & regretant encor
Mes antiques amis, mon plus riche tresor,
Et le plaisant sejour de ma terre Angevine.

Je regrete les bois, & les champs blondissans,
Les vignes, les jardins, & les prez verdissans
Que mon fleuve traverse...

La rive Latine is the bank of the Tiber, and mon fleuve is the Loire.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), "The Colloquy of Monos and Una," Tales (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845), pp. 100-109 (at 102):

Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease.

Related post: Man's Filth.

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Island of Sheep, chapter XII:

That library was the pleasantest room in the house, and it was clearly Haraldsen's favourite, for it had the air of a place cherished and lived in. Its builder had chosen to give it a fine plaster ceiling, with heraldic panels between mouldings of Norland symbols. It was lined everywhere with books, books which had the look of being used, and which consequently made that soft tapestry which no collection of august bindings can ever provide. Upstairs the bedrooms were large and airy, with bare oak floors, and not too much furniture, but with all modern comforts.

What struck me especially was that everything was of the best and probably of high value. It seemed queer to be contemplating a siege in a treasure house.

'The treasures were my father's,' said Haraldsen. 'Myself I do not want possessions. Only my books.'

John Hollander (1929-2013), "An Old-Fashioned Song," Tesserae and Other Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 3:

(Nous n'irons plus au bois)

No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over.

No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
And you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.

We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Labels: arboricide

Thomas Saunders Evans (1816-1889), Latin and Greek Verse. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. Joseph Waite (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1893), pp. ii-iii (from Waite's Memoir):

When he was nine years old, he was sent for tuition to an uncle, the Rev. George Evans, Vicar of Ruyton, near Oswestry. He too was a sound scholar, a man of vigorous intellect, and a strict disciplinarian. His nephew was drilled by him into a thorough acquaintance with the Eton Latin and Greek grammars and made to learn by heart a portion of Vergil every day, in the repetition of which he committed a false quantity only at the risk of a flogging. Finding that his uncle was sensitive to an east wind, which as long as it lasted would postpone lessons to a later hour, he tied down the church weathercock so as to point fixedly eastward. The persistent immobility of the vane aroused suspicion, which led not only to a solution of the mystery but to the chastisement of the culprit. This uncle laid the foundations of his scholarship and first introduced him to his favorite Vergil. The impressions left by the two years he spent at Ruyton never faded from his memory and the manner in which he recalled them showed how observant he must have been as a boy. His quaint descriptions of the antique church-services, the high-backed pews, the pictures of Moses and Aaron in the chancel, the old-world congregation, the manners, speech, and rustic costume of the country-people, sounded like some of the best passages of Fielding's novels. He used to say:—'The world has turned a sharp corner since then.'

Id., p. vi:

Mr Evans, before he left the school [Shrewsbury] had filled several manuscript volumes in which Latin and Greek words and idioms are carefully tabulated with their nearest English equivalents. He used to say in his architectural phraseology:—'Words are the bricks of language. With them we must build,'—and he always insisted emphatically on what seems to be very much overlooked, that a copious and exact vocabulary is one of the very first requisites for a scholar.

Id., pp. xii-xiii:

He said modestly at a later date:—'I had no pretensions to scholarship until I reached the age of twenty-seven. It was then I commenced to read and think for myself, carefully analysing the meaning of words and the grammatical structure of the dead languages.'

Id., p. xxv (from a letter of Edward White Benson to Waite):

His perfect simplicity of nature, absence of mind and thoroughness of conviction came out in his first answer to a stranger, who, in reply to some simple observation of his, said 'Ah, I am an Agnostic.' With large bright eyes turned full on him, Evans slowly replied, 'Are you indeed? Is not that a very silly thing to be?'

Id., p. xliv:

He was intolerant of agnosticism, and having been asked in the presence of one who professed that no-creed what 'agnostic' meant, he said:—'The term explains itself. It means an ignoramus.'

Id., p. l:

From some of the Latin poets, whom he otherwise admired, he was repelled by their impurity. He expostulated with a distinguished editor of one of them for not having resorted to expurgation. On receiving the answer that this could not be done 'in justice to the poet,' he rejoined—'In justice to the poet it ought to have been done.'

Hat tip: Joel Eidsath.

Catullus 52 (tr. Peter Green):

What's left, Catullus? Why not die right here and now?
That pustule Nonius occupies a curule chair,
Vatinius falsely swears by his own consulship.
What's left, Catullus? Why not die right here and now?

Quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?
sella in curuli struma Nonius sedet,
per consulatum peierat Vatinius:
quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?

Johannes Vahlen, Opuscula Academica, Pars I (Leipzig: B.G Teubner, 1908), p. 216, compares Euripides, fragment 293 (tr. Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp):

I'd gladly die; for it's not worth people's living when they see bad men unjustly privileged.

θνῄσκοιμ᾿ ἄν· οὐ γὰρ ἄξιον λεύσσειν φάος
κακοὺς ὁρῶντας ἐκδίκως τιμωμένους.

I.e. unjustly honored, unjustly holding office.


William Gropper, Politician on the Floor

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Complete Richard Hannay Stories (Ware: Wordsworth, 2010), p. 649 (from chapter 8 of the novel The Three Hostages; describing a nightclub):

We paid five shillings apiece for a liqueur, found a table and took notice of the show. It seemed to me a wholly rotten and funereal business. A band, looking like monkeys in uniform, pounded out some kind of barbarous jingle, and sad-faced marionettes moved to it. There was no gaiety or devil in that dancing, only a kind of bored perfection. Thin young men with rabbit heads and hair brushed straight back from their brows, who I suppose were professional dancing partners, held close to their breasts women of every shape and age, but all alike in having dead eyes and masks for faces, and the macabre procession moved like automata to the bands' rhythm. I dare say it was all very wonderful, but I was not built by Providence to appreciate it.

Image of the paragraph:


Note the error—bands' for band's. The error is not Buchan's, because Buchan did not write the paragraph as printed. What is printed is a bowdlerization of the original, done silently in the name of political correctness and cultural sensitivity. The "Complete and Unabridged" claim on the back cover of the book is misleading. Here the censor did his job imperfectly and introduced an error in the course of his meddling. God only knows what other liberties were taken with Buchan's text.

Related post: Pollution of the Airwaves.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Po Chü-i (772-846), "Old Age," tr. Arthur Waley, More Translations from the Chinese (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.), p. 61:

(Addressed to Liu Yü-hsi, who was born in the same year)
                                    (A.D. 835)

We are growing old together, you and I;
Let's ask ourselves, what is age like?
The dull eye is closed ere night comes;
The idle head, still uncombed at noon.
Propped on a staff, sometimes a walk abroad;
Or all day sitting with closed doors.
One dares not look in the mirror's polished face;
One cannot read small-letter books.
Deeper and deeper, one's love of old friends;
Fewer and fewer, one's dealings with young men.
One thing only, the pleasure of idle talk,
Is great as ever, when you and I meet.

Euripides, Children of Heracles 179-180 (tr. David Kovacs):

Who can decide a plea or judge a speech until he has heard a clear statement from both sides?

τίς ἂν δίκην κρίνειεν ἢ γνοίη λόγον,
πρὶν ἂν παρ' ἀμφοῖν μῦθον ἐκμάθῃ σαφῶς;

Related post: Both Sides of the Story.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Parochial and Plain Sermons 5.3 (Unreal Words):

Again, there cannot be a more apposite specimen of unreality than the way in which judgments are commonly formed upon important questions by the mass of the community. Opinions are continually given in the world on matters, about which those who offer them are as little qualified to judge as blind men about colours, and that because they have never exercised their minds upon the points in question. This is a day in which all men are obliged to have an opinion on all questions, political, social, and religious, because they have in some way or other an influence upon the decision; yet the multitude are for the most part absolutely without capacity to take their part in it. In saying this, I am far from meaning that this need be so,—I am far from denying that there is such a thing as plain good sense, or (what is better) religious sense, which will see its way through very intricate matters, or that this is in fact sometimes exerted in the community at large on certain great questions; but at the same time this practical sense is so far from existing as regards the vast mass of questions which in this day come before the public, that (as all persons who attempt to gain the influence of the people on their side know well) their opinions must be purchased by interesting their prejudices or fears in their favour;—not by presenting a question in its real and true substance, but by adroitly colouring it, or selecting out of it some particular point which may be exaggerated, and dressed up, and be made the means of working on popular feelings. And thus government and the art of government becomes, as much as popular religion, hollow and unsound.

Origen, Against Celsus 4.23 (tr. Henry Chadwick):

After this he continues as usual by laughing at the race of Jews and Christians, comparing them all to a cluster of bats or ants coming out of a nest, or frogs holding council round a marsh or worms assembling in some filthy corner, disagreeing with one another about which of them are the worse sinners.

μετὰ ταῦτα συνήθως ἑαυτῷ γελῶν τὸ Ἰουδαίων καὶ Χριστιανῶν γένος πάντας παραβέβληκε νυκτερίδων ὁρμαθῷ ἢ μύρμηξιν ἐκ καλιᾶς προελθοῦσιν ἢ βατράχοις περὶ τέλμα συνεδρεύουσιν ἢ σκώληξιν ἐν βορβόρου γωνίᾳ ἐκκλησιάζουσι καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφερομένοις, τίνες αὐτῶν εἶεν ἁμαρτωλότεροι.

With ἐκκλησιάζουσι, could Celsus be alluding to ἐκκλησία (ecclesia), a word used of the synagogue of the Jews and the church of the Christians? Similarly συνεδρεύουσιν seems to recall συνέδριον (the Jewish Sanhedrin). It would be too far-fetched, however, to conjecture προσελθοῦσιν for προελθοῦσιν and to connect it with προσήλυτος (proselyte, a word derived from προσέρχομαι). As for the sinning contest, Paul declared himself winner (1 Timothy 1.15: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief).

Related post: A Puddle of Mere Slime.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), "The Painter of Modern Life," XI (tr. P.E. Charvet; I changed "natures teaches" to "nature teaches"):

Most wrong ideas about beauty derive from the false notion the eighteenth century had about ethics. In those days, Nature was taken as a basis, source and prototype of all possible forms of good and beauty. The rejection of original sin is in no small measure responsible for the general blindness of those days. If, however, we are prepared merely to consult the facts that stare us in the face, the experience of all ages, and the Gazette des Tribunaux, we can see at once that nature teaches nothing or nearly nothing; in other words, it compels man to sleep, drink, eat and to protect himself as best he can against the inclemencies of the weather. It is nature too that drives man to kill his fellow-man, to eat him, to imprison and torture him; for as soon as we move from the order of necessities and needs to that of luxury and pleasures, we see that nature can do nothing but counsel crime. It is this so-called infallible nature that has produced parricide and cannibalism, and a thousand other abominations, which modesty and nice feeling alike prevent our mentioning. It is philosophy (I am referring to the right kind), it is religion that enjoins upon us to succour our poor and enfeebled parents. Nature (which is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest) tells us to knock them on the head. Review, analyse everything that is natural, all the actions and desires of absolutely natural man: you will find nothing that is not horrible. Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation. Crime, which the human animal took a fancy to in his mother's womb, is by origin natural. Virtue, on the other hand, is artificial, supernatural, since in every age and nation gods and prophets have been necessary to teach it to bestialized humanity, and since man by himself would have been powerless to discover it. Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.

La plupart des erreurs relatives au beau naissent de la fausse conception du XVIII^e siècle relative à la morale. La nature fut prise dans ce temps-là comme base, source et type de tout bien et de tout beau possibles. La négation du péché originel ne fut pas pour peu de chose dans l'aveuglement général de cette époque. Si toutefois nous consentons à en référer simplement au fait visible, à l’expérience de tous les âges et à la Gazette des Tribunaux, nous verrons que la nature n'enseigne rien, ou presque rien, c'est-à-dire qu'elle contraint l'homme à dormir, à boire, à manger, et à se garantir, tant bien que mal, contre les hostilités de l'atmosphère. C'est elle aussi qui pousse l'homme à tuer son semblable, à le manger, à le séquestrer, à le torturer; car, sitôt que nous sortons de l'ordre des nécessités et des besoins pour entrer dans celui du luxe et des plaisirs, nous voyons que la nature ne peut conseiller que le crime. C'est cette infaillible nature qui a créé le parricide et l'anthropophagie, et mille autres abominations que la pudeur et la délicatesse nous empêchent de nommer. C'est la philosophie (je parle de la bonne), c'est la religion qui nous ordonne de nourrir des parents pauvres et infirmes. La nature (qui n'est pas autre chose que la voix de notre intérêt) nous commande de les assommer. Passez en revue, analysez tout ce qui est naturel, toutes les actions et les désirs du pur homme naturel, vous ne trouverez rien que d'affreux. Tout ce qui est beau et noble est le résultat de la raison et du calcul. Le crime, dont l'animal humain a puisé le goût dans le ventre de sa mère, est originellement naturel. La vertu, au contraire, est artificielle, surnaturelle, puisqu'il a fallu, dans tous les temps et chez toutes les nations, des dieux et des prophètes pour l'enseigner à l'humanité animalisée, et que l'homme, seul, eût été impuissant à la découvrir. Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité; le bien est toujours le produit d'un art.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), "My Mental Development," Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 9-22 (at 10; on his grandmother):

She had that indifference to money which is only possible to those who have always had enough of it.

Hesiod, Works and Days 719-721 (tr. M.L. West):

The tongue's best treasure among men is when it is sparing, and its greatest charm is when it goes in measure. If you speak ill, you may well hear greater yourself.

γλώσσης τοι θησαυρὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἄριστος
φειδωλῆς, πλείστη δὲ χάρις κατὰ μέτρον ἰούσης·
εἰ δὲ κακὸν εἴπῃς, τάχα κ᾿ αὐτὸς μεῖζον ἀκούσαις.

John Buchan (1875-1940), Mr. Standfast (Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton Limited, 1919), p. 9:

I climbed through great beech-woods, which seemed in the twilight like some green place far below the sea, and then over a short stretch of hill pasture to the rim of the vale. All about me were little fields enclosed with walls of grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the splash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in the tops of the beeches.

In that moment I had a kind of revelation. I had a vision of what I had been fighting for, what we all were fighting for. It was peace, deep and holy and ancient, peace older than the oldest wars, peace which would endure when all our swords were hammered into ploughshares. It was more; for in that hour England first took hold of me. Before my country had been South Africa, and when I thought of home it had been the wide sun-steeped spaces of the veld or some scented glen of the Berg. But now I realised that I had a new home. I understood what a precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly and comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The freedom of an acre of her soil was cheaply bought by the blood of the best of us.

Poem by Wang Wei (701-761), tr. David Hinton:

You just came from my old village
so you know all about village affairs.

When you left, outside my window,
was it in bloom—that winter plum?

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Philosophical Essays (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910), pp. 60-61:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food 2.18.3 (tr. Glenn W. Most):

... and thus Hesiod [fragment 322 Merkelbach-West], praising the custom of ancient sacrifices, quite rightly said,

howsoever the city performs sacrifice, ancient custom is the best.

... καὶ τὸν Ἡσίοδον οὖν εἰκότως τὸν τῶν ἀρχαίων θυσιῶν νόμον ἐπαινοῦντα εἰπεῖν·

ὥς κε πόλις ῥέζῃσι, νόμος δ' ἀρχαῖος ἄριστος.

My watchword: νόμος δ' ἀρχαῖος ἄριστος.

John Buchan (1875-1940), Greenmantle (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, ©1916), p. 228:

"The world, as I see it, has become too easy and cushioned. Men have forgotten their manhood in soft speech, and they have imagined that the rules of their smug civilisation were the laws of the universe....When mankind is smothered with shams and phrases and painted idols a wind blows out of the wilds to cleanse and simplify life. The world needs space and fresh air. The civilisation we have boasted of is a toy-shop and a blind alley, and I hanker for open country."

This confounded nonsense was well received.