Laudator Temporis Acti

John Adams, letter to John Jay (June 2, 1785, quoting Adams' speech to George III):

I think myself more fortunate than all my fellow-citizens, in having the distinguished honor to be the first to stand in your Majesty's royal presence in a diplomatic character; and I shall esteem myself the happiest of men, if I can be instrumental in recommending my country more and more to your Majesty's royal benevolence, and of restoring an entire esteem, confidence, and affection, or, in better words, the old good nature and the old good humor between people, who, though separated by an ocean, and under different governments, have the same language, a similar religion, and kindred blood.

Adams' phrase "the same language, a similar religion, and kindred blood" recalls Herodotus 8.144.2 (tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt):

Again, there is the Greek nation — the common blood, the common language; the temples and religious ritual; the whole way of life we understand and share together — indeed, if Athens were to betray all this it would not be well done.

αὖτις δὲ τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐὸν ὅμαιμόν τε καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι ἤθεά τε ὁμότροπα, τῶν προδότας γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίους οὐκ ἂν εὖ ἔχοι.

Related post: One United People (on John Jay and the same passage from Herodotus).

D.S. Blondheim, "A Parallel to Aucassin et Nicolette VI, 26," Modern Language Notes 24.3 (March, 1909) 73-74 (at 73, bracketed material in original):

To the parallels to the interesting passage in Aucassin et Nicolette (VI, 26, ed. Suchier), in which Aucassin declares his preference of hell to heaven, there should be added the following story about Niccolò Machiavelli, quoted by Bayle (Dictionaire [sic] historique et critique, ed. Des Maizeaux, Amsterdam, 1734, vol. IV, p. 14, n. L) from the Jesuit Etienne Binet (Du Salut d'Origène, Paris, 1629, pp. 359-361): "On arriue à ce detestable poinct d'honneur, où arriua Machiauel sur la fin de sa vie: car il eut cette illusion peu deuant que rendre son esprit. Il vit vn tas de pauures gens, comme coquins, deschirez, affamez, contrefaits, fort mal en ordre, & en assez petit nombre, on luy dit que c'estoit ceux de Paradis, desquels il estoit escrit, Beati pauperes, quoniam ipsorum est regnum coelorum. Ceux-cy estans retirez, on fit paroistre vn nombre innombrable de personnages pleins de grauité & de majesté, on les voyoit comme vn Senat, où on traitoit d'affaires d'estat, & fort serieuses, il entrevid Platon, Aristote, Seneque, Plutarque, Tacite, & d'autres de cette qualité. Il demanda qui estoient ces Messieurs là si venerables, on luy dit que c'estoient les damnez, & que c'estoient des ames reprouuées du Ciel, Sapientia huius saeculi, inimica est Dei. Cela estant passé, on luy demanda desquels il vouloit estre. Il respondit, qu'il aymoit beaucoup mieux estre en enfer auec ces grands esprits, pour deuiser auec eux des affaires d'Estat, que d'estre auec cette vermine de ces belistres qu'on luy auoit fait voir. Et a tant il mourut, & alla voir comme vont les affaires d'Estat de l'autre monde."

Another form of the story is mentioned by Bayle as occurring in the Epistolae of François and Jean Hotman. It is as follows: "Wolphius nuper Augustae mortuus, in suis Commentariis in Tuscul. quas anno superiore mihi donavit, Machiavellum scelerum, impietatum et flagitiorum magistrum appellat, ac testatur illum quodam loco scripsisse, sibi multo optabilius esse post mortem ad Inferos et diabolos detrudi, quàm in coelum ascendere. Nam hic nullos reperturum, nisi mendiculos et misellos quosdam Monachos, Heremitas, Apostolos; illic victurum se cum Cardinalibus, cum Papis, Regibus et Principibus" [Letter of François Hotman, December 28, 1580, in Francisci et Joannis Hotomanorum ... Epistolae, Amstelaedami, 1700].

See the English translation of Bayle's Dictionary, Vol. VII (London: John Bettenham, 1738), p. 311 (notes omitted):

They arrive at that detestable point of honour, which Machiavel reached a little before his death: for when he was just a dying he was seized with the following fancy. He saw a small company of poor scoundrels, all in rags, quite starved, ill-favoured, and in short in a very bad plight. He was told that these were the inhabitants of Paradise, of whom it is written, Beati pauperes, quoniam ipsorum est regnum coelorum. After these were retired, an infinite number of grave majestick personages appeared: they seemed sitting in senate, where they were canvassing of very important state affairs; there he saw Plato, Seneca, Plutarch, Tacitus, and others of the like characters. When he demanded who those venerable gentlemen were, he was informed that they were the damned, the souls of the reprobated, Sapientia hujus saeculi inimica est Dei. After this he was asked to which of those companies he would choose to belong. He answered he would much rather choose to be in hell with those great genius's, to converse with them about affairs of state, than be condemned to the company of such lousy scoundrels as they had presented to him before. With that he expired, and went to see how political affairs proceed in the other world." Spizelius gives us the substance of the same story; but it is otherwise related by some. They pretend that Machiavel in some one of his works, says, he would rather be sent to hell after his death, than go to Paradise; for, he adds, I should find nothing in heaven but a parcel of beggars, poor Monks, Hermits, and Apostles; but in hell I shall live with Popes, Cardinals, Kings and Princes. Francis Hotman testifies that this account is to be met with in Wolfius's comment upon Cicero's Tusculan questions...

Related post: The Choice Between Heaven and Hell.

Vergil, Aeneid 7.162-165 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G.P. Goold):

Outside the city, boys and youths in their early bloom practise horsemanship, or break in teams amid the dust, or bend eager bows, or hurl with their arms tough darts, and challenge each other to race or box.

ante urbem pueri et primaevo flore iuventus
exercentur equis domitantque in pulvere currus,
aut acris tendunt arcus aut lenta lacertis
spicula contorquent, cursuque ictuque lacessunt.

Cf. John Milton, Of Education:

The Exercise which I commend first, is the exact use of their Weapon, to guard and to strike safely with edge, or point; this will keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well in breath, is also the likeliest means to make them grow large and tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage, which being temper'd with seasonable Lectures and Precepts to them of true Fortitude and Patience, will turn into a native and heroick valour, and make them hate the cowardise of doing wrong. They must be also practiz'd in all the Locks and Gripes of Wrastling, wherein English men were wont to excell, as need may often be in fight to tugg or grapple, and to close.

[....]

[T]hey are by a sudden alarum or watch word, to be call'd out to their military motions, under skie or covert, according to the season, as was the Roman wont; first on foot, then as their age permits, on Horseback, to all the Art of Cavalry; That having in sport, but with much exactness, and daily muster, serv'd out the rudiments of their Souldiership in all the skill of Embattelling, Marching, Encamping, Fortifying, Besieging and Battering, with all the helps of ancient and modern stratagems, Tacticks and warlike maxims, they may as it were out of a long War come forth renowned and perfect Commanders in the service of their Country.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), "The Young Author," line 25:

The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise...

Tertullian, Apology 7.8-12 (tr. T.R. Glover):

[8] Everybody knows the nature of Rumour. It is in your literature:

Rumour, a curse, and swiftest of all curses.^a

Why is Rumour a curse? Because she is swift? Because she is an informer? Or because she is generally a liar? Why, Rumour, even when she does bring a bit of truth, does not quite escape from her vice of lying; she subtracts from the Truth, adds to it, alters it.

[9] What? Surely the terms of her existence are that she only survives while she lies, and only lives so long as she fails to prove her tale. When she has proved it, she ceases to be Rumour; and, as if she had completed her task of telling, she gives us fact; and, after that, it is fact that is held, and fact it is called;

[10] nor does anybody say, for example, "They say this occurred at Rome," or "Rumour is that so and so is assigned the province," but "He has been assigned the province" and "This did occur in Rome."

[11] Rumour, a synonym for the uncertain, has no place where there is certainty. Would anybody believe Rumour, except the unthinking? The wise man does not believe uncertainty. It lies with everybody to reflect that, however widely Rumour has been put about, with whatever assurance it has been contrived, it must necessarily have originated at some moment with some single person who started it.

[12] After that it creeps through ramifications of tongues and ears; and something wrong in the little seed, whence it sprang, so obscures all else in the rumour, that no one reflects whether that first mouth sowed the lie, as often happens, from an envious nature, from wanton suspicion, or from that mere pleasure in lying which with some people is no new thing but inborn in them.

^a Virgil, Aen. iv.174.

---

[8] Natura famae omnibus nota est. Vestrum est:

Fama malum qua non aliud velocius ullum.

Cur malum fama? quia velox? quia index? an quia plurimum mendax? quae ne tunc quidem, cum aliquid veri adfert, sine mendacii vitio est, detrahens, adiciens, demutans de veritate.

[9] Quid? quod ea illi condicio est, ut non nisi cum mentitur perseveret et tamdiu vivit quamdiu non probat, siquidem, ubi probavit, cessat esse et quasi officio nuntiandi functa rem tradit, et exinde res tenetur, res nominatur.

[10] Nec quisquam dicit verbi gratia, Hoc Romae aiunt factum, aut, Fama est illum provinciam sortitum, sed, Sortitus est ille provinciam, et, Hoc factum est Romae.

[11] Fama, nomen incerti, locum non habet ubi certum est. An vero famae credat nisi inconsideratus? Quia sapiens non credit incerto. Omnium est aestimare, quantacunque illa ambitione diffusa sit, quantacunque asseveratione constructa, quod ab uno aliquando principe exorta sit necesse est.

[12] Exinde in traduces linguarum et aurium serpit, et ita modici seminis vitium cetera rumoris obscurat, ut nemo recogitet, ne primum illud os mendacium seminaverit, quod saepe fit aut ingenio aemulationis aut arbitrio suspicionis aut non nova sed ingenita quibusdam mentiendi voluptate.

The Digital Loeb Classical Library has a mistake in the Latin (§ 8, tune for tunc):

Labels: typographical and other errors

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers. With an English Translation by R.D. Hicks, Vol. II (1925; rpt. London: Heinemann, 1931 = Loeb Classical Library, 185), p. 95 (6.5.90-91, on Crates of Thebes, with Hicks' note):

At Thebes he was flogged by the master of the gymnasium—another version being that it was by Euthycrates and at Corinth; and being dragged by the heels, he called out, as if it did not affect him^a:

Seized by the foot and dragged o'er heaven's high threshold:

[91] Diocles, however, says that it was by Menedemus of Eretria that he was thus dragged. For he being handsome and being thought to be intimate with Asclepiades the Phliasian, Crates slapped him on the side with a brutal taunt; whereupon Menedemus, full of indignation, dragged him along, and he declaimed as above.

^aHom. Il. i.591.

The Greek, id., p. 94:

ἐν Θήβαις ὑπὸ τοῦ γυμνασιάρχου μαστιγωθείς—οἱ δέ, ἐν Κορίνθῳ ὑπ᾿ Εὐθυκράτους—καὶ ἑλκόμενος τοῦ ποδὸς ἐπέλεγεν ἀφροντιστῶν,

ἕλκε ποδὸς τεταγὼν διὰ βηλοῦ θεσπεσίοιο.

[91] Διοκλῆς δέ φησιν ἑλχθῆναι αὐτὸν ὑπὸ Μενεδήμου τοῦ Ἐρετρικοῦ. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ εὐπρεπὴς ἦν καὶ ἐδόκει χρησιμεύειν Ἀσκληπιάδῃ τῷ Φλιασίῳ, ἁψάμενος αὐτοῦ τῶν μηρῶν ὁ Κράτης ἔφη, "ἔνδον Ἀσκληπιάδης." ἐφ᾿ ᾧ δυσχεράναντα τὸν Μενέδημον ἕλκειν αὐτόν, τὸν δὲ τοῦτο ἐπιλέγειν.

Thanks very much to Bill Thayer (per litteras and on his web site) for pointing out that Hicks omitted the actual taunt from his translation (an omission that persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library). Bill translates as follows:

For since he was good-looking and people thought he was being used (sc. for intercourse) by Asclepiades the Phliasian, Crates grabbed him by the thighs and said, "In there, Asclepiades!"

Related post: Diogenes Laertius Expurgatus.

Plautus, Amphitryon 633-636 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Aren't the enjoyments in the course of one's life and age few compared with what's disagreeable? Yes, this is everyone's lot, this is the gods' will: grief should follow enjoyment as its companion, yes, and there should immediately be more discomfort and trouble if anything good has happened.

satin parva res est voluptatum in vita atque in aetate agunda
praequam quod molestum est? ita quoiqu' comparatum est
in aetate hominum;
ita dis est placitum,
voluptatem ut maeror comes consequatur:
quin incommodi plus malique ilico assit, boni si optigit quid.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Mandragola, beginning of the canzone between Acts 4 and 5 (tr. Allan Gilbert):

Oh sweet night, oh holy
and quiet hours of night,
you that couple yearning lovers;
in you all pleasures join,
so you are the only cause that renders souls blessed.

Oh dolce notte, oh sante
ore notturne e quete,
ch'i disïosi amanti accompagnate;
in voi s'adunan tante
letizie, onde voi siete
sole cagion di far l'alme beate.

Lillian B. Lawler (1898-1990), "A Stroll in a Corpus Index," Classical Journal 22.6 (March, 1927), pp. 438-449 (at 438; the volume is IX, covering Calabria, Apulia, Samnium, the Sabine Territory, and Picenum):

One can conceive of a great many things vastly more exciting than the index of a volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, especially as it presents itself to the casual observer. Lists, lists, lists; columns, words, cabalistic symbols; capitals, italics, numerals; poor, disjointed combinations of letters, some of them attaining to the dignity of a half-word, more of them hopeless wrecks, with all traces of their identity gone — a dry enough aggregation, in all conscience! And yet concealed in it all lies an incredible amount of curious and interesting information.

Id. (at 442, on cognomina):

Others were named for personal characteristics (258 names). Of these, the 131 names denoting physical peculiarities are interesting and varied, especially those derived from names of parts of the body. The feet (Plantanus), the beard (Barba), the teeth (Dentio), the mouth (Bucco), the head (Capito), the heart (Corellius), the hip (Coxsa), the back (Tergus), the forehead (Fronto), the lips (Labeo), the breast (Mamulla), the nose (Naso), sinews (Nerva), the eye (Ocella), the shoulder (Scapula), the legs (Sura, Valgus, Vatinianus), veins (Varex), the stomach (Ventrio) — all these are well represented. Names denoting the hair (or lack of it! — cf. Calvenus and Glabrio) are particularly numerous: Cincinnata, Crispus, Flavianus, Fulvius, Rufus, Russinus, Rutilus, Subincanus, Villus, etc. Many of these, in turn, are color-names — cf. English Gold and Gould, Grey, Whitehead, and "Reddy," and German Roth. Other names denoted general physical appearance, e. g., Curvus, Macer, Venusus. In this group there are also a few color-names — Albulus, Albinus, Candidus (English White and Whiteman); Aterianus, Nigella, Niger (English Black); Fuscus, Fuscinilla (English Brown); Pullo, Pullus (English Grey). Names denoting size were likewise frequent — Celsus, Latus, Longanicus, Magnilla, Maximilla, Paullus, etc. (English Little, Longfellow, Small, Stout). Still others were names the roots of which imply characteristic activity of some sort. In some cases these verge closely on mental traits (e. g., Vemens and Violentilla). Names implying haste, or a great deal of activity in general, are common here: Activa, Agilis, Celer, Strenuus, Vibrio. Others are Dexter, Mordax, Scaeva, Sollers. Other individuals bore names denoting their age (Iunior, Perpetuus, Pupilla, Senio, Vetus), or their physical condition (Potens, Salutaris, Satur, Valens, Vitalis).

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), On Ambition 55-57 (tr. Allan Gilbert):

Oh human spirit insatiable, arrogant,
crafty, and shifting, and above all else
malignant, iniquitous, violent, and savage...

O mente umana insaziabil, altera,
subdola e varia, e sopra ogni altra cosa
maligna, iniqua, impetuosa e fera...

Id., 157-159:

Wherever you turn your eyes, you see
the earth wet with tears and blood,
and the air full of screams, of sobs, and sighs.

Dovunche gli occhi tu rivolti, miri
di lacrime la terra e sangue pregna
e l'aria d'urla, singulti e sospiri.

Tertullian, Apology 6.9 (tr. T.R. Glover):

Where is the religious awe, where is the veneration owed by you to your ancestors? In dress, habit of life, furniture, feeling, yes! and speech, you have renounced your great-grandfathers!

ubi religio, ubi veneratio maioribus debita a vobis? habitu, victu, instructu, sensu, ipso denique sermone proavis renuntiastis.

Homer, Iliad 8.146 (Diomedes to Nestor; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Yes, old sir, all this you have said is fair and orderly.

ναὶ δὴ ταῦτά γε πάντα, γέρον, κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπες.

Take heed, ye whippersnappers.

Vergil, Aeneid 7.107-111 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G.P. Goold):

Aeneas, his chief captains, and fair Iülus
lay their limbs to rest under the boughs of a high tree,
and spread the feast; they place cakes of meal on the grass
beneath the food—Jove himself inspired them—
and they crown the wheaten base with fruits of the field.

Aeneas primique duces et pulcher Iulus
corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altae,
instituuntque dapes et adorea liba per herbam
subiciunt epulis (sic Iuppiter ipse monebat)        110
et Cereale solum pomis agrestibus augent.

Nicholas Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 7: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 114 (on line 109):

liba Technically a cake of far, oil and honey, used in offerings (so Serv. here and cf. Cato, Agr. 75; 'Opferkuchen' to Wissowa, passim): the size of small buns (Ryberg (615), 40 and pl. X, carried by the Aen. of the Ara Pacis, when about to sacrifice the sow), when used in such contexts and clearly not what V. has in mind here. 'Pizza' cries J. Ades (CJ 64 (1968/9), 268), 'chapatis' retorts Gransden (Virgil's Iliad (Cambridge 1984), 51), 'focaccia' asserts Ranucci (EV 3, 876f.). 'Pitta' counters Braun, cit.; at least he knows (as do I, as a regular consumer) what emmer bread tastes and looks like (not, indeed like pitta!). Bakery aside (not to mention emmer soup, still a delectable staple in rural Umbria), V. uses an archaising adj. and a noun from the lexicon of sacred offerings (a dozen instances in Ov. F., e.g.) for an item of quite different appearance (and 'pitta' will do very well for flat bread on which food is heaped) on an initially non-ritual occasion.

Braun is Thomas Braun, "Barley cakes and emmer bread," in Food in Antiquity, ed. John Wilkins, et al. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), pp. 25-37.

James E.G. Zetzel, in his harsh review of Horsfall, Classical Philology 96.4 (October, 2001) 438-442 (at 440), objected to this note, among others, as unnecessary. Ades' suggestion seems to have been made half tongue in cheek. See:

• John I. Ades, "Vergil (Or Aeneas) et Pizza," Classical Journal 64.6 (March, 1969) 268
• John I. Ades, "The Pizza Plot," Classical Outlook 49.10 (June, 1972) 112-114
• Stephen Bertman, "The Half-Baked Theory of Pizza," Classical Outlook 50.8 (April, 1973) 88-89

I confess that pizza crossed my mind when I reread this passage recently — I knew that tomatoes were unknown to the ancient Romans, but I wondered if olives could count among pomis agrestibus. Neither Horsfall nor the Oxford Latin Dictionary answers this question. Pace Zetzel, I wish that Horsfall's commentary was even more expansive and listed, for example, all foods considered by the Romans to be poma. I think, in answer to my own question, that the Romans considered the olive to be a berry (baca) rather than a fruit (pomum). Indeed, in the Georgics, Vergil seems to explicitly distinguish olives from fruit. Describing olive cultivation at Georgics 2.40-425, he goes on to say in line 426, poma quoque, i.e. besides olives, fruits as well.

R.G.M. Nisbet (1925-2013), quoted by Nicholas Horsfall in Virgil, Aeneid 7: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. ix:

Learning is what you get by wearing out the seat of your trousers in the Bodleian.

Chaucer, Clerk's Tale 116-126, from Canterbury Tales:

And thenketh, lord, among youre thoghtes wyse
How that oure dayes passe in sondry wyse,
For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde,
Ay fleeth the tyme, it nyl no man abyde.
And thogh youre grene youthe floure as yit,        120
In crepeth age alwey as stille as stoon,
And deeth manaceth every age, and smyt
In ech estaat, for ther escapeth noon;
And al so certein as we knowe echoon
That we shul deye, as uncerteyn we alle        125
Been of that day, whan deeth shal on us falle.

Modernized by Nevill Coghill:

                                                   Invoke
Your wisdom, ponder carefully and see
How variously days pass; the seasons flee
Away in sleeping, waking, roaming, riding.
Time passes on and there is no abiding.
Still in the flower of your youth's delights
Age creeps upon you, silent as a stone.
Death menaces all ages and he smites
The high and low, the known and the unknown;
We see for certain, are obliged to own
That we must die, but we are ignorant all
Of when the hour's to come, the blow to fall.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Tertullian, Apology 1.4-5 (tr. T.R. Glover):

For what could be more unjust than for men to hate a thing they do not know, even though it really deserves hatred? It can only deserve hatred when it is known whether it does deserve it. But so long as nothing at all is known of its deserts, how can you defend the justice of the hatred? That must be established, not on the bare fact of its existence, but on knowledge. When men hate a thing simply because they do not know the character of what they hate, what prevents it being of a nature that does not deserve hate at all?

Quid enim iniquius, quam ut oderint homines quod ignorant, etiam si res meretur odium? Tunc etenim meretur, cum cognoscitur an mereatur. Vacante autem meriti notitia, unde odii iustitia defenditur, quae non de eventu, sed de conscientia probanda est? Cum ergo propterea oderunt homines, quia ignorant quale sit quod oderunt, cur non liceat eiusmodi illud esse, quod non debeant odisse?

John E.B. Mayor in his commentary ad loc. cites Epistle to Diognetus 5.17 (here in Bart D. Ehrman's translation):

And those who hate them cannot explain the cause of their enmity.

καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ἔχθρας εἰπεῖν οἱ μισοῦντες οὐκ ἔχουσιν.

Henry Eliot, letter to his brother T.S. Eliot (September 12, 1935):

The President of this Republic is not free. He cannot, like the humblest citizen, take his ease in his inn, shoot off his mouth, and curse Congress to his heart's content. He has to 'watch his step.'

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Herodotus 4.191.3 (tr. A.D. Godley):

For the eastern region of Libya, which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the river Triton; but the land westward of this, where dwell the tillers of the soil, is exceeding mountainous and wooded and full of wild beasts. In that country are the huge snakes and the lions, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the dog-headed men and the headless that have their eyes in their breasts, as the Libyans say, and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous.

ἡ μὲν γὰρ δὴ πρὸς τὴν ἠῶ τῆς Λιβύης, τὴν οἱ νομάδες νέμουσι, ἐστὶ ταπεινή τε καὶ ψαμμώδης μέχρι τοῦ Τρίτωνος ποταμοῦ, ἡ δὲ ἀπὸ τούτου τὸ πρὸς ἑσπέρην ἡ τῶν ἀροτήρων ὀρεινή τε κάρτα καὶ δασέα καὶ θηριώδης· καὶ γὰρ οἱ ὄφιες οἱ ὑπερμεγάθεες καὶ οἱ λέοντες κατὰ τούτους εἰσὶ καὶ οἱ ἐλέφαντές τε καὶ ἄρκτοι καὶ ἀσπίδες τε καὶ ὄνοι οἱ τὰ κέρεα ἔχοντες καὶ οἱ κυνοκέφαλοι καὶ οἱ ἀκέφαλοι οἱ ἐν τοῖσι στήθεσι τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχοντες, ὡς δὴ λέγονταί γε ὑπὸ Λιβύων, καὶ οἱ ἄγριοι ἄνδρες καὶ γυναῖκες ἄγριαι, καὶ ἄλλα πλήθεϊ πολλὰ θηρία ἀκατάψευστα.

Some call Herodotus the Father of Lies, rather than the Father of History, but recent sightings confirm the existence of dog-headed men, e.g. deacon Anthony DiIenno preaching at St. Rose of Lima Church in Eddystone, Pennsylvania:


and models at the 2018 Men's Fashion Week in Paris:

Anonymous, On Riches 12.2 (my translation):

Get rid of the rich man and you won't find a poor man. Let no one possess more than is necessary, and everyone will have as much as is necessary. For the few rich men are the cause of the many poor men.

Tolle divitem et pauperem non invenies. Nemo plus, quam necessarium est, possideat, et, quantum necessarium est, omnes habebunt. Pauci enim divites pauperum sunt causa multorum.

The Latin text of the Pelagian treatise De Divitiis can be found in C.P. Caspari, ed., Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzten Jahrhunderten des kirchlichen Alterthums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters (Christiana: Mallingsche Buchdruckerei, 1890), pp. 25-67 (this passage on p. 48). The following are unavailable to me:

• B.R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 171–211 (English translation of the treatise)
• Andreas Kessler, Reichtumskritik und Pelagianismus. Die pelagianische Diatribe de Divitiis: Situierung, Lesetext, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1999)
• Santo Toscano, Tolle Divitem: Etica, società e potere nel De divitiis (Catania: Edizioni del Prisma, 2006)

Related posts:

• Mma Potokwane and Saint Jerome
• St. Jerome on Wealth and Poverty

Richard Bowring, In Search of the Way: Thought and Religion in Early-Modern Japan, 1582-1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 228-229:

But perhaps his most famous essay is On farting (Hōhiron 放屁論) of 1744. This was occasioned by his discovery that someone in Edo was making a living by an exhibition of farting. This Japanese flatulist had a fantastically wide repertoire of melodies, his genius lying in his ability to conjure up all sorts of sounds, animal noises, and music for plays; a cornucopia of soundscapes. In this sense he had created another language. Gennai describes one of his performances and then sets up an argument with a strict Confucian who, not surprisingly, brands the whole business as immoral and beneath contempt. It breaks the rules of propriety without which society cannot function and should be condemned because it does not edify but merely entertains. On the contrary, argues Gennai, defending the performer as a true artist. It is not shocking but an object lesson in how to be an entrepreneur. By taking something as utterly useless and common as a fart and then making the best of a special ability to control flatulence at will, the man is making money from nothing and should be praised for sheer creativity. Making money out of thin air, he is precisely the kind of person Japan needs to dig itself out of economic difficulties, in obvious contrast to Confucian scholars who produce hot air but do nothing with it. The argument is serious but undercut, as ever, by cynicism. The new language, capable of producing ideas and images from a man's arse, is ultimately just air and as incapable as any other language of pinning down reality.

Related posts:

• A Musical Instrument
• Roland le Pettour
• A Resonating Fundament
• Rectal Music

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Labels: noctes scatologicae