Laudator Temporis Acti

Juvenal 15.70-71 (tr. Peter Green):

Today the earth breeds a race of degenerate
weaklings, who stir high heaven to laughter and loathing.

terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos;
ergo deus, quicumque aspexit, ridet et odit.

Edward Courtney ad loc.:

70 MALOS The view of progressive degeneration put forward in Six init. after Hesiod; cf. e.g. Hor. Odes 3.6.45–8, Sen. De Ben. 1.10; hence DEUS ODIT.

PUSILLOS Cf. Pliny NH 7.73–4 (cf. on 65), Gellius 3.10; Empedocles fr. 77 Diels–Kranz, and, perhaps influenced by him, the Epicureans (Lucr. 5.925 sqq. with Bailey p. 976), who attributed it to the exhaustion of the earth (Lucr. 2.1150 sqq.; so also Sen. Ep. 90.44; opposed by Pliny Ep. 6.21.1, where see Sherwin-White); that is probably the point of infantibus magnis 6.9. Their smallness is why DEUS RIDET, cf. 13.170–3. Many instances are recorded of the exhumation of large bones, probably in fact mammoth bones, supposed to be of the heroes (F. Pfister Reliquienkult (1912) 507, Frazer on Paus. 1.35.7).

Robert H.F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 164, n. 12 (with studiosus corrected to studiosos, thanks to Kenneth Haynes):

According to Platina (an understandably hostile witness), Paul II 'had such a hatred and contempt for humanistic studies that he applied the collective label of "Heretics" to those who followed that course' (Humanitatis...studia ita oderat & contemnabat: ut eius studiosos uno nomine hæreticos appellaret). See De uita Christi: ac Pontificum omnium (Venice, 1479), fol. [238]^r.

Tacitus, Annals 2.88.4 (tr. J.C. Yardley):

We, who praise the deeds of antiquity, have little interest in those of recent times.

vetera extollimus, recentium incuriosi.

The Annals of Tacitus. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Henry Furneaux, 2nd ed. rev. by H.F. Pelham and C.D. Fisher, Vol. I: Books I-VI (1896; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 385:

A similar protest against indiscriminate admiration of antiquity is found in 3.55, 6. The sentiment of Velleius (2.92, 4), 'praesentia invidia praeterita veneratione prosequimur, et his nos obrui illis instrui credimus,' is transferred by Hobbes (Leviathan, conclusion) from the judgement of actions to that of literature: 'The praise of ancient authors, proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living': cp. Dial. 18.

Tacitus, Annals 3.55.6 (tr. J.C. Yardley):

And not everything was better in our ancestors' days, either — our own age, too, has produced many instances of excellence and artistic merit deserving to be imitated by posterity.

nec omnia apud priores meliora, sed nostra quoque aetas multa laudis et artium imitanda posteris tulit.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972), The Spirit of Romance, rev. ed. (1952; rpt. New York: New Directions, 1968), p. 15:

    Ovid—urbane, sceptical, a Roman of the city—writes, not in a florid prose, but in a verse which has the clarity of French scientific prose.
    "Convenit esse deos et ergo esse credemus."
    "It is convenient to have Gods, and therefore we believe they exist"; and with all pretence of scientific accuracy he ushers in his gods, demigods, monsters and transformations.

Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.637:

expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus.

Related post: Poundian Latinity.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Charlotte Higgins, "Forget Boris Johnson—the classics are for the working classes too," Prospect Magazine (January 28, 2020):

Classics and class have the same root. That is, the verb clamare, to call out. "Classis" meant a group of people "called out," for example by means of a census for military service; and in the late 2nd century AD, the Roman writer Aulus Gellius referred to the greatest authors as scriptores classici, "classic writers"—as opposed to second-rate authors, scriptores proletarii. We now have classic books, classic cars, classic films, and so on—those called out for greatness. But the classics of the classics, the top of the drawer, the best of the best, are always smugly supposed to be "the" classics: Latin and Greek, and the worlds associated with them.

Classics is derived from Latin classicus and class from Latin classis, but are classicus and classis derived from clamare? Apparently not in a direct line. The most that can be said is that classis might be derived from calare and that calare and clamare share a common ancestor.

Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1991), p. 134:


Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. rev. Jacques André (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 125 (classicus, classis):


Id., s.v. clāmō:

Même racine que dans calō...

Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 118 (classis):


de Vaan, p. 117 (clamo):


de Vaan, pp. 84-85 (calo):


Hat tip: Jim K.

Labels: etymology

Seneca, On Consolation to his Mother Helvia 6.2-4 (tr. John W. Basore):

[2] "To be deprived of one's country is intolerable," you say. But come now, behold this concourse of men, for whom the houses of huge Rome scarcely suffice; most of this throng are now deprived of their country. From their towns and colonies, from the whole world, in fact, hither have they flocked. Some have been brought by ambition, some by the obligation of a public trust, some by an envoy's duty having been laid upon them, some, seeking a convenient and rich field for vice, by luxury, some by a desire for the higher studies, some by the public spectacles; some have been drawn by friendship, some, seeing the ample opportunity for displaying energy, by the chance to work; some have presented their beauty for sale, some their eloquence for sale — [3] every class of person has swarmed into the city that offers high prizes for both virtues and vices. Have all of them summoned by name and ask of each: "Whence do you hail?" You will find that there are more than half who have left their homes and come to this city, which is truly a very great and a very beautiful one, but not their own. [4] Then leave this city, which in a sense may be said to belong to all, and travel from one city to another; everyone will have a large proportion of foreign population.

[2] "carere patria intolerabile est." aspice agedum hanc frequentiam, cui vix urbis immensae tecta sufficiunt; maxima pars istius turbae patria caret. ex municipiis et coloniis suis, ex toto denique orbe terrarum confluxerunt. alios adduxit ambitio, alios necessitas officii publici, alios imposita legatio, alios luxuria opportunum et opulentum vitiis locum quaerens, alios liberalium studiorum cupiditas, alios spectacula; quosdam traxit amicitia, quosdam industria laxam ostendendae virtuti nancta materiam; quidam venalem formam attulerunt, quidam venalem eloquentiam — [3] nullum non hominum genus concucurrit in urbem et virtutibus et vitiis magna pretia ponentem. iube istos omnes ad nomen citari et "unde domo" quisque sit quaere. videbis maiorem partem esse, quae relictis sedibus suis venerit in maximam quidem ac pulcherrimam urbem, non tamen suam. [4] deinde ab hac civitate discede, quae veluti communis potest dici, omnes urbes circumi; nulla non magnam partem peregrinae multitudinis habet.

In general see Laurens E. Tacoma, Moving Romans: Migration to Rome in the Principate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Hesiod, Works and Days 729-732 (tr. Thomas Cooke):

When you would have your urine pass away,
Stand not upright before the eye of day;
And scatter not your water as you go,
Nor let it, when you're naked, from you flow:
In either case 'tis an unseemly sight:
The gods observe alike by day and night:
The man that we devout and wise may call
Sits in that act, or streams against a wall.

μήτ' ἐν ὁδῷ μήτ' ἐκτὸς ὁδοῦ προβάδην οὐρήσῃς
μηδ' ἀπογυμνωθείς· μακάρων τοι νύκτες ἔασιν·        730
ἑζόμενος δ' ὅ γε θεῖος ἀνήρ, πεπνυμένα εἰδώς,
ἢ ὅ γε πρὸς τοῖχον πελάσας ἐυερκέος αὐλῆς.

Pliny, Letters 1.6.2-3 (to Tacitus; tr. Betty Radice):

Don't look down on mental activity of this kind, for it is remarkable how one's wits are sharpened by physical exercise; the mere fact of being alone in the depths of the woods in the silence necessary for hunting is a positive stimulus to thought. So next time you hunt yourself, follow my example and take your notebooks along with your lunch-basket and flask; you will find that Minerva walks the hills no less than Diana.

non est quod contemnas hoc studendi genus; mirum est ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur; iam undique silvae et solitudo ipsumque illud silentium quod venationi datur, magna cogitationis incitamenta sunt. proinde cum venabere, licebit auctore me ut panarium et lagunculam sic etiam pugillares feras: experieris non Dianam magis montibus quam Minervam inerrare.

See Judith Hindermann, "Orte der Inspiration in Plinius' Epistulae," Museum Helveticum 66.4 (December, 2009) 223-231 (at 229).

Primo Levi (1919-1987), The Periodic Table, tr. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), p. 60:

I thought of another moral, more down to earth and concrete, and I believe that every militant chemist can confirm it: that one must distrust the almost-the-same (sodium is almost the same as potassium, but with sodium nothing would have happened), the practically identical, the approximate, the or-even, all surrogates, and all patchwork. The differences can be small, but they can lead to radically different consequences, like a railroad's switch points; the chemist's trade consists in good part in being aware of these differences, knowing them close up, and foreseeing their effects. And not only the chemist's trade.

Io pensavo ad un'altra morale, piú terrena e concreta, e credo che ogni chimico militante la potrà confermare: che occorre diffidare del quasiuguale (il sodio è quasi uguale al potassio: ma col sodio non sarebbe successo nulla), del praticamente identico, del pressapoco, dell'oppure, di tutti i surrogati e di tutti i rappezzi. Le differenze possono essere piccole, ma portare a conseguenze radicalmente diverse, come gli aghi degli scambi; il mestiere del chimico consiste in buona parte nel guardarsi da queste differenze, nel conoscerle da vicino, nel prevederne gli effetti. Non solo il mestiere del chimico.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), "The Church that was at Antioch," Limits and Renewals (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1932), pp. 89-114 (at 90):

'It's in the blood. The same with men as horses.'

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd rev. ed. (London: John Murray, 1874), p. 617:

Man scans with scrupulous care the character of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them, but when it comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care.

Ben Edwin Perry (1892-1968), "The Early Greek Capacity for Viewing Things Separately," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 68 (1937) 403-427 (at 403):

If modern habits of mind were the same as those of the pre-Socratic Greeks, we should not often err in the interpretation of their literature and thought; but since the psychological differences between them and us are considerable, it frequently happens that modern critics, too much influenced by their own patterns of thought, either find something in early Greek literature that is not there, or else are puzzled and even disappointed by not finding there something which they feel ought to be there. Since this is so, it behooves us as interpreters to keep in view at all times, and in many different connections, those particular characteristics of the early Greek mind which can be recognized as such, and which stand in contrast to modern ways of thinking.

Id. (at 425):

In the matter of drawing inferences and of associating or not associating one idea or image with another, there are, as it seems to me, three distinct ways of looking at things, the first two of which, in the order below mentioned, are especially characteristic of the Greek mind in the fifth century and earlier: 1. Two or more things (or ideas) that might be logically or otherwise connected with each other are each viewed separately, and the beholder or narrator is aware of only one at a time—parataxis in various forms. 2. Two things are viewed in juxtaposition or contrast, each of which in some way denies the other, while the onlooker, though intellectually pleased or even deeply moved by the spectacle, nevertheless remains aloof and impartial in his attitude, being affected for the time being far more by the objective reality of things (θεωρία) than by any sympathy, however natural, for one of the two things in conflict—irony, the antithetic style, the intellectual detachment of Thucydides. 3. The spectator, turned partisan, judges one of two things in terms of the other, or with reference to a preconceived system or sentiment, or by pure logic— philosophy instead of nature as the guide to truth.

Edward Littleton (1698-1733), "A Letter from Cambridge to a young Gentleman at Eton School," lines 35-56, in A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands, Vol. VI. (London: Printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763), pp. 290-294 (at 291-292):

No more majestic Virgil's heights,        35
Nor tow'ring Milton's loftier flights,
Nor courtly Flaccus's rebukes,
Who banters vice with friendly jokes,
Nor Congreve's life, nor Cowley's fire,
Nor all the beauties that conspire        40
To place the greenest bays upon
Th' immortal brows of Addison;
Prior's inimitable ease,
Nor Pope's harmonious numbers please;
Homer indeed (for critics shew it)        45
Was both philosopher, and poet,
But tedious philosophic chapters
Quite stifle my poetic raptures,
And I to Phoebus bade adieu
When first I took my leave of you.        50

Now algebra, geometry,
Arithmetic, astronomy,
Optics, chronology, and statics,
All tiresome parts of mathematics;
With twenty harder names than these        55
Disturb my brain, and break my peace.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), "In the Interests of the Brethren," Debits and Credits (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1926), pp. 57-82 (at 61):

'All Ritual is fortifying. Ritual's a natural necessity for mankind. The more things are upset, the more they fly to it. I abhor slovenly Ritual anywhere.'

Henry Peacham (c. 1576-c. 1643), The Compleat Gentleman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 54 (from Chapter VI):

Affect not as some doe, that bookish Ambition, to be stored with bookes and have well furnished Libraries, yet keepe their heads empty of knowledge: to desire to have many bookes, and never to use them, is like a child that will have a candle burning by him, all the while he is sleeping.

Extract from De Expugnatione Lyxboniensi (On the Siege of Lisbon) (1147), in James A. Brundage, The Crusades. A Documentary Survey (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1962) p. 101:

While we kept watch, meanwhile, under their walls through the days and nights, they [the Moorish defenders of Lisbon] heaped derision and many insults upon us. They considered us worthy of a thousand deaths, especially since they thought that we spurned our own things as vile and lusted after others' goods as precious. Nor did they recall doing us any injury, save that if they had anything of the best quality in their possession we might consider them unworthy of having it and judge it worthy of our possession. They taunted us with the many children who were going to be born at home while we were gone and said that our wives would not be anxious about our deaths, since home was well supplied with little bastards. They promised that any of us who survived would go home miserable and poverty-stricken and they mocked us and gnashed their teeth at us. They also continuously attacked Blessed Mary, the mother of God, with insults and with vile and abusive words, which infuriated us. They said that we venerated the son of a poor woman with a worship equal to that due to God, for we held that he was a God and the Son of God, when it is apparent that there is only one God who began all things that have begun and that he has no one coeval with him and no partaker in his divinity.... They attacked us with these and similar calumnies. They showed to us, moreover, with much derision the symbol of the cross. They spat upon it and wiped the feces from their posteriors with it. At last they urinated on it, as on some despicable thing, and threw our cross at us….

De Expugnatione Lyxboniensi, f.12v:

Dum interim per dies et noctes excubaremus sub eorum muris, derisiones atque improperia multa nobis ingerebant, mille nos mortibus dignos judicantes, quippe qui nostra fastidientes quasi vilia, aliena quasi pretiosa concupisceremus, nec aliam se nobis injuriam fecisse commemorant, nisi quod nos si quid optimi penes eos haberetur, possessione nostra dignum aestimaremus, ipsosque indignos habendi judicaremus, prolemque domi nascituram multiplicem nobis absentibus improperabant, nec ob id de obitu nostro curae uxoribus nostris fore, satis cum sibi domi spuria suppeteret progenies. Sed et si qui ex nobis superforent, miseros et inopes repatriandum promittebant, et subsannantes dentibus in nobis fremebant. Conviciis insuper et verbis contumeliosis et probris Beatam Mariam matrem Domini incessanter afficiebant, indignantes nobis, quod filium paupris muleieris tanto quasi Deum veneraremur obsequio, Ipsum dicentes Deum Deique filium, cum unum Deum solum a quo omnia quae initia habent coepta sunt, constet esse, nec aliquem coaevum et divinitatis Suae habere participem; […] Haec et his similia adversum nos calumniantes obtrectabant, crucis insuper signum cum magna irrisione ostentare nostris, atque in illam exspuentes, foeditatis suae posteriora extergebant ex illa; sicque demum micturientes in illam quasi opprobrium quoddam, crucem nostram nobis projiciunt… .

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who also sends this photograph of Lisbon's Praça do Comercio, taken minutes ago:

Roger Scruton (1944-2020), I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009; rpt. London: Continuum, 2010), pp. 176-178:

Plato. There is a dialogue of Plato to suit every wine. A fine claret will take you at a leisurely pace through The Republic, while with the Phaedrus a light rosé would be more appropriate, and only a bone-dry Manzanilla would do justice to the Philebus. The Laws would benefit from a robust Burgundy, giving courage and permission to the inevitable desire to skip. When it comes to the sublime Symposium, by contrast, something light and semi-sweet will help you to capture some of the gaiety of the company, and to drink to each of the participants as they rise to speak.

[....]

Aristotle. Readers of the Metaphysics will understand when I say that plain water is the only conceivable accompaniment. To swallow the driest book ever written you need plenty of liquid, and an attitude of Spartan detachment as you fight down the words. Before moving on to the Prior Analytics a ginger biscuit might be suitable. Only with the Nicomachean Ethics do things lighten up a bit, and here, because the argument is absolutely vital to the concept of virtuous drinking as I have been advancing it, I would recommend a celebratory glass or two. My best experience of the Ethics came, in fact, with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the Beringer Estate in California — one of those original Californian wineries that have been a by-word for craftsmanship both before and after Prohibition.

Cicero. Not exactly a philosopher, though a jolly good bloke, who had much to say about the life of virtue, and whose creative ability to make himself hated ought to serve as an example to us all. His careful sentences, with their burden of dignified thought, are prime claret material, and should be approached after dinner, with a glass or two of Pauillac, where the poet Ausonius once had a villa. The great Ch. Lynch-Bages 1959 could not be better used, by anyone fortunate enough to have a bottle remaining. But while on the subject of Ausonius, how about the equally great 1959 from Ch. Ausone?

Primo Levi (1919-1987), The Periodic Table, tr. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), pp. 30-31:

I liked P. I liked the sober rigor of his classes; I was amused by the disdainful ostentation with which at the exams he exhibited, instead of the prescribed Fascist shirt, a comic black bib no bigger than the palm of a hand, which at each of his brusque movements would pop out between his jacket's lapels. I valued his two textbooks, clear to the point of obsession, concise, saturated with his surly contempt for humanity in general and for lazy and foolish students in particular: for all students were, by definition, lazy and foolish; anyone who by rare good luck managed to prove that he was not became his peer and was honored by a laconic and precious sentence of praise.

A me P. era simpatico. Mi piaceva il rigore sobrio delle sue lezioni; mi divertiva la sdegnosa ostentazione con cui esibiva agli esami, in luogo della camicia fascista prescritta, un buffo bavaglino nero, grande un palmo, che ad ognuno dei suoi movimenti bruschi gli usciva fuori dei risvolti della giacca. Apprezzavo i suoi due testi, chiari fino all'ossessione, stringati, pregni del suo arcigno disprezzo per l'umanità in generale e per gli studenti pigri e sciocchi in particolare: perché tutti gli studenti, per definizione, erano pigri e sciocchi; chi, per somma ventura, riusciva a dimostrargli di non esserlo, diventava un suo pari, e veniva onorato con una laconica e preziosa frase d'encomio.

Professor P. was Giacomo Ponzio (1870-1945).

W. Jackson Bate (1918-1999), "The Crisis in English Studies," Harvard Magazine 85.1 (September-October 1982) 46-53 (at 49):

If you took a Ph.D. here in English as late as the 1930s, you were suddenly shoved — with grammars written in German — into Anglo-Saxon, and Middle Scots, plus Old Norse (Icelandic), Gothic, Old French, and so on. I used to sympathize with the Japanese and Chinese students who had come here to study literature struggling with a German grammar to translate Gothic into English! William Allan Neilson, the famous president of Smith College, had been a professor of English here for years. Forgiveably, he stated that the Egyptians took only five weeks to make a mummy, but the Harvard English Department took five years.

Herodotus 9.122 (tr. Robin Waterfield):

[1] This Artayctes, the one who was crucified, was the descendant of Artembares, who was the author of a certain proposal which the Persians passed on to Cyrus for ratification. The proposal went like this:

[2] 'Since Zeus has given sovereignty to the Persians and to you in particular, Cyrus, now that you have done away with Astyages, let's emigrate from the country we currently own, which is small and rugged, and take over somewhere better. There are plenty of countries on our borders, and plenty further away too, any one of which, in our hands, will make us even more remarkable to even more people. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for people with power to do. Will we ever have a better opportunity than now, when we rule over so many peoples and the whole of Asia?'

[3] Cyrus was not impressed with the proposal. He told them to go ahead—but he also advised them to be prepared, in that case, to become subjects instead of rulers, on the grounds that soft lands tend to breed soft men. It is impossible, he said, for one and the same country to produce remarkable crops and good fighting men.

[4] So the Persians admitted the truth of his argument and took their leave. Cyrus' point of view had proved more convincing than their own, and they chose to live in a harsh land and rule rather than to cultivate fertile plains and be others' slaves.

[1] τούτου δὲ Ἀρταΰκτεω τοῦ ἀνακρεμασθέντος προπάτωρ Ἀρτεμβάρης ἐστὶ ὁ Πέρσῃσι ἐξηγησάμενος λόγον τὸν ἐκεῖνοι ὑπολαβόντες Κύρῳ προσήνεικαν λέγοντα τάδε.

[2] "ἐπεὶ Ζεὺς Πέρσῃσι ἡγεμονίην διδοῖ, ἀνδρῶν δὲ σοὶ Κῦρε, κατελὼν Ἀστυάγην, φέρε, γῆν γὰρ ἐκτήμεθα ὀλίγην καὶ ταύτην τρηχέαν, μεταναστάντες ἐκ ταύτης ἄλλην σχῶμεν ἀμείνω. εἰσὶ δὲ πολλαὶ μὲν ἀστυγείτονες πολλαὶ δὲ καὶ ἑκαστέρω, τῶν μίαν σχόντες πλέοσι ἐσόμεθα θωμαστότεροι. οἰκὸς δὲ ἄνδρας ἄρχοντας τοιαῦτα ποιέειν· κότε γὰρ δὴ καὶ παρέξει κάλλιον ἢ ὅτε γε ἀνθρώπων τε πολλῶν ἄρχομεν πάσης τε τῆς Ἀσίης;"

[3] Κῦρος δὲ ταῦτα ἀκούσας καὶ οὐ θωμάσας τὸν λόγον ἐκέλευε ποιέειν ταῦτα, οὕτω δὲ αὐτοῖσι παραίνεε κελεύων παρασκευάζεσθαι ὡς οὐκέτι ἄρξοντας ἀλλ᾽ ἀρξομένους· φιλέειν γὰρ ἐκ τῶν μαλακῶν χώρων μαλακοὺς γίνεσθαι· οὐ γὰρ τι τῆς αὐτῆς γῆς εἶναι καρπόν τε θωμαστὸν φύειν καὶ ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς τὰ πολέμια.

[4] ὥστε συγγνόντες Πέρσαι οἴχοντο ἀποστάντες, ἑσσωθέντες τῇ γνώμῃ πρὸς Κύρου, ἄρχειν τε εἵλοντο λυπρὴν οἰκέοντες μᾶλλον ἢ πεδιάδα σπείροντες ἄλλοισι δουλεύειν.

See Nancy Demand, "Herodotus and Metoikesis in the Persian Wars," American Journal of Philology 109.3 (Autumn, 1988) 416-423 (at 419-420).

Primo Levi (1919-1987), The Periodic Table, tr. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), p. 24:

What were we able to do with our hands? Nothing, or almost nothing. The women, yes—our mothers and grandmothers had lively, agile hands, they knew how to sew and cook, some even played the piano, painted with watercolors, embroidered, braided their hair. But we, and our fathers?

Our hands were at once coarse and weak, regressive, insensitive: the least trained part of our bodies. Having gone through the first fundamental experiences of play, they had learned to write, and that was all. They knew the convulsive grip around the branches of a tree, which we loved to climb out of a natural desire and also (Enrico and I) out of a groping homage and return to the origins of the species; but they were unfamiliar with the solemn, balanced weight of the hammer, the concentrated power of a blade, too cautiously forbidden us, the wise texture of wood, the similar and diverse pliability of iron, lead, and copper. If man is a maker, we were not men: we knew this and suffered from it.