Laudator Temporis Acti

The rot had set in, the slow spiral of disharmony and disintegration had started to sap the foundations of the Roman ethos, the civic ethos which linked together, in firm religious union, civic sense, civic order, and the public happiness and social well-being which flowed from and shaped a comforting sense of wholeness. The idea of an individual and private religious field of understanding and operation was literally shocking to the Roman — perturbing even, for it bred sects which categorically refused to have anything to do with the formal worship of the people. 'You refuse to go to our shows and processions,' writes the outraged Minucius Felix in his Octavius, 'You are never present at our public banquets, you shrink in disgust from our sacred games . . .' When Tacitus writes that the Christians were 'the enemies of mankind,' he was thinking of their explicit denial of everything which for the Roman spelt truth in practically a scientific sense. It was what made the world go round! For them there was no fact of human behaviour which was not distinguished by a profound piety. To share the behaviour of Jews and Christians — it was unthinkably dangerous: it might stop the grass growing or the sun rising on the morrow. Quite apart from the fact that their behaviour was unctuous and self-righteous beyond belief, they believed themselves the chosen race, chosen by the monotheistic projection they worshipped, having duly warned all and sundry that this phantom was 'a jealous god and would tolerate no other to compete with him.' What a contrast to the tolerant, easy-going pluralism of Roman pantheism with its generous outlines, its gods and goddesses who were ever-present, in every communal activity, and as familiar to the devout public as film stars are today. They attested to the prime link with Mother Nature, not a withdrawal from it into a snobbish seclusion of sectarianism, each believer with his or her private and exclusive version of God.

Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him, for he was beginning to realise that he was the creature of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers.

He read industriously, as he read always, without criticism, stories of cruelty, deceit, ingratitude, dishonesty, and low cunning. Actions which would have excited his horror in the life about him, in the reading passed through his mind without comment, because they were committed under direct inspiration of God.

The dead languages were taught with such thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of Homer or Virgil in after life without a qualm of boredom; and though in the common room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested that mathematics were of increasing importance, the general feeling was that they were a less noble study than the classics. Neither German nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the form-masters; they could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English.

Lice are ectoparasites (parasites living on our skin rather than under it), and ectoparasites are remarkably species-specific; each kind of bird or mammal has its very own louse and flea species living on it because each is an island with regard to the others. However, even though any one nonhuman mammal species has the dubious honor of hosting only one of each louse or flea species, humans are unique: we have three species of lice. They are head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis); body lice (Pediculus humanus corporis), which live primarily in clothing; and pubic lice (Pthirus pubis).

Astronomers, aware that their means of cognition, light, is subject to the laws they are trying to deduce from what it tells them, have deduced that the cosmos itself contains such zones of impenetrable darkness. They call them black holes, and explain how, in them, gravitational force is too great, for light cannot escape, so that we can never see into them, only calculate their existence from the behaviour of light near their edge. History has its black holes. I do not mean the massive, natural ephemerality of most human thoughts and actions, in which those remembered or recorded form rare exceptions, stars in a black sky. I mean categories of thought and action innately antithetical to record, which hide from it as from an enemy. Among many examples of which historians have become aware is sacramental confession to a priest. If the penitent's words were recorded or remembered his sins would be put behind him less effectively. It is easy to think of other examples.

In the European Middle Ages, suicide is one. In searching for it, that is to say, we have to expect a historical black hole, and look for events in the act of vanishing into it.

For it is fine to die in the front line,
   a brave man fighting for his fatherland,
and the most painful fate's to leave one's town
   and fertile farmlands for a beggar's life,
roaming with mother dear and aged father,        5
   with little children and with wedded wife.
He'll not be welcome anywhere he goes,
   bowing to need and horrid poverty,
his line disgraced, his handsome face belied;
   every humiliation dogs his steps.        10
This is the truth: the vagrant is ignored
   and slighted, and his children after him.
So let us fight with spirit for our land,
   die for our sons, and spare our lives no more.

τεθνάμεναι γὰρ καλὸν ἐνὶ προμάχοισι πεσόντα
   ἄνδρ᾽ ἀγαθὸν περὶ ᾗ πατρίδι μαρνάμενον,
τὴν δ᾽ αὐτοῦ προλιπόντα πόλιν καὶ πίονας ἀγροὺς
   πτωχεύειν πάντων ἔστ᾽ ἀνιηρότατον,
πλαζόμενον σὺν μητρὶ φίλῃ καὶ πατρὶ γέροντι        5
   παισί τε σὺν μικροῖς κουριδίῃ τ' ἀλόχῳ.
ἐχθρὸς μὲν γὰρ τοῖσι μετέσσεται, οὕς κεν ἵκηται
   χρησμοσύνῃ τ᾽ εἴκων καὶ στυγερῇ πενίῃ,
αἰσχύνει τε γένος, κατὰ δ᾽ ἀγλαὸν εἶδος ἐλέγχει,
   πᾶσα δ᾽ ἀτιμίη καὶ κακότης ἕπεται.        10
εἰ δ' οὕτως ἀνδρός τοι ἀλωμένου οὐδεμί' ὤρη
   γίνεται οὔτ' αἰδὼς, οὐδ' ὀπίσω γένεος,
θυμῷ γῆς πέρι τῆσδε μαχώμεθα καὶ περὶ παίδων
   θνήσκωμεν ψυχέων μηκέτι φειδόμενοι.

Twenty years ago, I was for a time a graduate student at Princeton. In a seminar I was forced to attend that I think was entitled Variations of the Romantic Self (now you see why they had to force me), we read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and after we reached the line that reads, "The water, like a witch's oils, / Burnt green, and blue and white," the professor said, Here we have to pay particular attention to the symbolism, for the obvious reason that the sea cannot look like that.

Yes it can, I said. Of course it can. How do you mean? some epicene students asked, though not in those words. They must have asked this question in snaky, coily, slimy words, of which any ten in a row would put me to sleep like a tank truck full of chloroform. The sea sometimes looks like that, I said, and sometimes writers forswear symbolism and ingenuity for the sake of description and conveyance, which is a perfectly fine thing to do, for the world is a miraculous and beautiful place. But the sea, they maintained, does not glow. Oh yes it does, I insisted, and proceeded to describe the bioluminescence of the Sargasso Sea. I don't think they knew much science and they seemed to be unacquainted with bioluminescence. How did I know about this? I've seen it, I reported. Where? In the Sargasso Sea; I was a sailor in the British Merchant Navy. Come to think of it, just like the ancient mariner! It was the season of hurricanes and we had diverted the ship into the doldrums to escape a storm . . .

There was once a discipline, taught in books and assigned to professionals, whose aim was to conjure dead people to life and make them speak. It was called necromancy. Its function has long passed to historians, whose method is now the only one recognized.

Last, the diverse production of cereals, fruits, olives, vines, and livestock virtually ensures the grower self-sufficiency—autarkeia, the Greeks' cherished economic and social sense of independence—both for the immediate needs of the family and the wider requirements of the farm itself. Bread and gruel from barley and wheat; fresh, dried, and juiced products from deciduous fruit trees; cooking oil, soap, and cured fruit from olives; raisins, grapes, and wine from the vine; vegetables and greens out of the garden; meat, cheese, milk, hides, and wool from livestock—having all these allows Laertes to exist quite apart from the palace below. Similarly, most lubricants and lighting oil (olives), fertilizer (manure, legumes), cooking fuel, and even some farming implements (local woods), are also obtainable without need for outside barter, much less purchase. Everything from grape stakes to stove wood to building materials could be fabricated from trees, reeds, mud bricks, and clays available in the countryside.⁴⁹

49. For autarkeia, see Sallares 297-300; Campell and Sherrard 323-24; Osborne 1987: 17-18. For more specific examples of self-sufficiency in Greece, see Foxhall and Forbes 66; Boardman 1977: 192; Amouretti 1986: 177-196; McDonald and Rapp 54-57. "A farm," the comic playwright Philemon makes his rustic say, "supplies every human want, wheat, oil, wine, figs, and honey" (fr. 105 Kock). Such bounty, Timocles says, is not a farm, "but a crown" (Timocles fr. 36 Kock).

A most fitting possession for men is a farm;
For what nature asks, a farm provides with care:
Wheat, oil, wine, figs, honey.
Silver plate and purple dye are
Well suited for the stage, but not for life.

διακαιότατον κτῆμ' ἐστὶν άνθρώποις άγρός·
ὧν ἡ φύσις δεῖται γὰρ ἐπιμελῶς φέρει,
πυρούς, ἔλαιον, οἶνον, ἰσχάδας, μέλι.
τὰ δ' ἀργυρώματ' ἐστὶν ἥ τε πορφύρα
εἰς τοὺς τραγῳδοὺς εὔθετ', οὐκ εἰς τὸν βίον.

FARMER Honey and oil and figs both dried and green.
B A cornucopia, not a farm, you mean.

ΓΕΩΡΓΟΣ σῦκ', ἔλαιον, ἰσχάδας, μέλι.
B σὺ μὲν εἰρεσιώνην, οὐ γεωργίαν λέγεις.

branch of olive or laurel wound round with wool and hung with fruits, dedicated to Apollo and borne about by singing boys at the Πυανόψια and Θαργήλια, while offerings were made to Helios and the Hours, and afterwards hung up at the house-door.

The classical humanism that was just coming into vogue at the end of the fourteenth century became the center of the university curriculum in the sixteenth century and remained so until the beginning of our own century; it became obsolescent for us over fifty years ago—about as many years as the Old Humanism had been obsolescent in Chaucer's time. But it is not yet obsolete. All those editions with scientific-looking textual notes, all those philological disquisitions (and dissertations) line the shelves of libraries; there are still Classics Departments in our colleges, and classical scholars, and a smattering of students who can read Latin and Greek. It is only that where once Classics was the essence of a university education, it is now a specialized eccentricity, like playing the krummhorn.

To regain the ancient view of the world! The Moira really above everything, the gods the representatives of real powers! To become one of the ancients!

Die antike Weltbetrachtung wieder gewinnen! Wirklich die Moira über allem, die Götter Repräsentanten wirklicher Mächte! Antik werden!

And facts, like everything else, go out of fashion. In the 1960s it was reckoned a fact that "the drought of March," referred to in the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales, was a purely rhetorical convention drawn from the literature of Mediterranean countries where March is a dry month; England, hardly ever dry, certainly suffers no droughts in March. It was one of the best facts going, and it produced a corollary fact, that Chaucer's poetry, like all medieval poetry, is bookish and conventional—we must not expect actualities in it. These facts were printed in textbooks and taught in universities; I taught them myself, alas. Then it occurred to one scholar that March in England may be dry in some places; to another that weather may have changed since Chaucer's day; and to another that the word "drought" in Middle English meant not total lack of rain but only dryness. Actually, Chaucer lived in the "Little Ice Age," which came over Europe early in his century and lasted until the end of the seventeenth century. It brought a shorter growing season. March was dry, in some places still is. Farmers counted on this relatively dry period for planting; it was, a folklorist discovered, as proverbial in England among farmers as in Mediterranean countries among poets, and so were April showers. Realism, banished from the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales for a decade or so, was permitted reentry. The drought of March became a fact again.

For I'm going first to my own house, in order to visit
my household, my dear wife, my infant son—who knows
if I'll ever come safely home to them again,
or whether the gods will destroy me at the hands of the Achaians?

καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν οἶκον δὲ ἐλεύσομαι ὄφρα ἴδωμαι
οἰκῆας ἄλοχόν τε φίλην καὶ νήπιον υἱόν.
οὐ γὰρ οἶδ᾽ εἰ ἔτι σφιν ὑπότροπος ἵξομαι αὖτις,
ἦ ἤδη μ᾽ ὑπὸ χερσὶ θεοὶ δαμόωσιν Ἀχαιῶν.

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.
All may be well; but, if God sort it so,
'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect.

For:
Alexandria
Pepper
Lucy
Diotima
and
Cleo

I will restrain my desire to personally thank all of the pets I've ever had, and all of the sparrows and squirrels who have dined at my feeder over the years, for sharing my life and for making me think. Instead I will settle for dedicating this book to just a few of them, the cats who have been the home companions of my adult life.

• More Feline Dedicatees of Books
• Feline Dedicatees of Scholarly Books
• Prince of the City of Books (Anatole France)
• Pangur Ban (Irish poem)
• Cats (poem by Baudelaire)

The only acute pain that I can recall suffering because of my family's poverty was the intense humiliation I felt when I discovered, as an adolescent, that most people lived another way and that there was something shameful, so far as others were concerned, about the way we lived. I was embarrassed to invite my friends to our house, which I had thought cozy and warm until I was made to see it as dirty and bare.

Bread was the issue over which we children voiced our new-found shame. Ours was home baked, using wheat raised and ground on the farm, leavened with home-cultured yeast, and sweetened with honey made by the bees we kept at the bottom of our garden. It was fabulous bread; almost every year it won my mother a purple ribbon at the Chippewa County fair. The slicing of the first loaf in a new batch, still steaming, its sweet, nutty aroma filling the kitchen, was one of the sacred rituals of our household.

But my sisters and I, driven by the collapse of rural society out of our local school and into the consolidated town school, had tasted the allure of a new world. We had acquired the preference of the age for anything manufactured over anything homemade. We suddenly coveted boughten bread, contrived from flour so denuded of its essence that its only nutrients came from artificial additives. We were no longer content to eat hick bread. "Wonder Bread builds strong bodies seven ways," we said, proud of our familiarity with modern advertising slogans. We yammered and complained, I am ashamed to confess, until Mother finally gave up baking bread, and we began to eat, like modern folk, a factory substitute.

The moment when airship travel is invented and introduced is favourable to socialism because it changes all concepts of landed property. Man is everywhere and nowhere; he is uprooted. We must safeguard ourselves by means of societies, with strict mutual commitments and the exclusion of all those who are not committed. Otherwise all will take to the air and settle somewhere else if they cannot pay or do not wish to keep a commitment.

Der Moment, in welchem die Luftschifffahrt erfunden und eingeführt wird, ist günstig für den Socialismus, denn der verändert alle Begriffe von Boden-Eigenthum. Der Mensch ist überall und nirgends, er wird entwurzelt. Man muß durch Gesellschaften sich sicherstellen, in strenger gegenseitiger Verpflichtung und Ausschließung aller Nichtverpflichteten. Sonst geht alles in die Lüfte und läßt sich anderswo nieder, wenn er nicht zahlen kann, nicht Verpflichtung halten mag.

I pray in high hope to Zeus and the other gods to drive out from here these dogs borne by the fates...

εὔχομαι ἐλπόμενος Διί τ᾽ ἄλλοισίν τε θεοῖσιν
ἐξελάαν ἐνθένδε κύνας κηρεσσιφορήτους...

εὔχομαι ἐλπόμενος: ἔλπομαι εὐχόμενος Zenodotus

Unfortunately, the merits of a scholar are measured by publications, and the merits of these publications are measured by their bulk. This is perhaps inevitable when decisions are made by committees of experts who do not read, or if they read, do not understand, the works of those who come before them for judgment. This development has coincided—I think coincided is the right word—with the neocolonial expansion of the social sciences into whole areas, indeed continents, which were once peacefully cultivated by philologists and historians, and with the increasing use of techniques of research and exposition which are at once extravagant and arcane. This has often meant that works are unread because they are unreadable, uncomprehended because they are incomprehensible. Both qualities are believed to conceal vast learning and great profundity.