Laudator Temporis Acti

Oh, my country, bless the training that from cot to castle runs —
The pitfall of the stranger but the bulwark of thy sons —
Measured speech and ordered action, sluggish soul and unperturbed,
Till we wake our Island-Devil — nowise cool for being curbed!

An earlier attempt by Pisistratus to honour Apollo Pythios with a temple had fallen foul of the populace—if we believe the explanation offered by lexicographers of the proverb 'it would have been better to shit in the Pythion'. Only thus, it is said, could the impotent people express their odium for the tyrant. He responded by threatening offenders with death, and indeed carrying out the penalty in one obdurate case: whence the proverb, used of those 'suffering through their own fault'. How much actual history may lie behind the story we can scarcely say. The younger Pisistratus, at all events, later dedicated an altar in the sanctuary, which still survives.<sup>20

20</sup> The most circumstantial testimonium (for others see J.P. Lynch in Studies Presented to Sterling Dow, GRBS 10, 1984, 177-79) is Paroem. Graec. I.406-407, no. 66 (from the Bodleian codex, on the value of which see W. Bühler, Zenobii Athoi Proverbia, Göttingen 1987, 126): the victim was a metic, the people hated Pisistratus because of the 10% tax (a learned detail, cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 16.4-5). Suda, Photius s.v. Πύθιον say merely that Pisistratus founded the sanctuary (a reflection of the more elaborate story, or its origin?); a 'temple' in the sanctuary is mentioned only by the sources for the excretion story, and has not been traced archaeologically (L.H. Jeffery's reference, Archaic Greece, London 1976, 97, to 'the traces of a little temple in the precinct' is obscure to me). Cf. Judeich, Topographie, 386, n. 5 (who suspects that the whole tradition is merely spun out of the younger Pisistratus' dedication); Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary, 100-103. The altar: Thuc. 6.54.6; IG I³.948 (M/L 11, CEG 305).

65 In Pythii templo cacare
To shit in the temple of Delphi

᾿Εν Πυθίου χέσαι, To shit in the temple of Delphi. This was said of someone who committed some abominable and perilous act, for the tyrant Pisistratus, having built the temple, inscribed a notice that no one should empty his bowels in the precinct, and imprisoned a foreigner who was caught in the act.

65 Apostolius 7.17. Cf. Suda E 1428.

Ἐν Πυθίου χέσαι, id est In Pythii templo cacare dicebatur qui rem nefariam et periculosam faceret, quod Pisistratus tyrannus extructo templo inscripserat, ne quis inibi ventrem exoneraret; et advenam quendam deprehensum e medio sustulit.

It would have been better to relieve oneself in the Pythion: i.e. to take a risk. For when certain people were so contemptuous of Apollo as to relieve themselves in his temple-precinct, Peisistratus enacted a law, that anyone caught doing this would die. But when his notice [to this effect] was laughed at and still more were doing this, he stationed guards. An offender was caught, and Peisistratus ordered them to bind him and flog him by the roadside, while announcing 'after his punishment this man will die, because he despised the notice'. And when [the man] had been killed, the episode had such an impact on the Athenians that even now they refer to those who are in a bad way or suffering punishment because of some sin they have committed [by saying] 'it would have been better to relieve oneself in the Pythion.'

Ἐν Πυθίῳ κρεῖττον ἦν ἀποπατῆσαι: οἷον κινδυνεῦσαι. καταφρονούντων γάρ τινων Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ἐν τῷ τεμένει αὐτοῦ ἀποπατούντων Πεισίστρατος ἔγραψε νόμον, τὸν ἁλόντα ἐπὶ τούτῳ θνήσκειν. καταγελώντων δὲ τοῦ γράμματος καὶ πλειόνων μᾶλλον τοῦτο ποιούντων ἔστησε φύλακας. ληφθέντος δέ τινος ἐκέλευσε δήσαντας αὐτὸν παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν μαστιγοῦν, κηρύσσοντας: ὅδ' ἁνὴρ κολασθεὶς ἀποθανεῖται, ὅτι ὀλιγωρεῖ τοῦ γράμματος. κτανθέντος δέ, οὕτω ἐνέδυ τὸ γενόμενον τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὥστε ἔτι νῦν τοὺς κακοπαθοῦντας ἢ τιμωρίαις ἐνεχομένους διά τινα αὐτῶν πλημμέλειαν ἐπιλέγειν: ἐν Πυθίῳ κρεῖττον ἦν αὐτὸν ἀποπατῆσαι.

Labels: noctes scatologicae, typographical and other errors

It is an easy thing for one whose foot
is on the outside of calamity
to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

ἐλαφρόν, ὅστις πημάτων ἔξω πόδα
ἔχει, παραινεῖν νουθετεῖν τε τὸν κακῶς
πράσσοντ᾿.

Advice? When did men ever heed it? Wise
Words merely freeze to death in ears of stone.
Deeds self-discredited as soon as done
Still teach the headstrong nothing.

Was Rat! Hat Rat bei Menschen je gegolten?
Ein kluges Wort erstarrt im harten Ohr.
So oft auch Tat sich grimmig selbst gescholten,
Bleibt doch das Volk selbstwillig wie zuvor.

...Rudely but greatly begat they the framing of State and Shire.
Rudely but deeply they laboured, and their labour stands till now...

With a comment from Henry Riley in his inestimable Dictionary of Classical Quotations:

Also, I love this translation from 1753 with its semantic shift of 'sensible' and the quaint euphemism 'inconveniencies':

The reek of goats makes crowded feasts unpleasant.

nimis arta premunt olidae convivia caprae.

nimis arta ... conuiuia resumes the modest note of the opening; H.'s dining room is as small as its furniture. premunt 'oppress' (OLD 8); H. offers a tactful caution in a sententious line, so that his friend does not pack in too many extras.

olidae, first here, perhaps as metrically handier than olens or foetidus, is not uncommon in later prose so may have had colloquial tone. caprae 'rank smell', a unique metaphorical use of the fem., encouraged by the use of caper and hircus (TLL VI 3.19-23). Despite pre-dinner bathing, perfume and the alipilus, sweaty armpits remained a nuisance, esp. noticeable since Romans shared the couches on which they reclined (cf. iungatur 26).

Many of the men who have written about the Middle Ages have made one or the other of two kinds of judgment about the life of those times. Some have looked on it as a wretched state of misery and oppression. To others it has seemed a kind of Gothic idyll. These judgments of the past are likely to be linked with judgments of the present. If you look upon the present as an age of high fulfillment of the possibilities of the human race, you take the first attitude toward the Middle Ages: the men of the Middle Ages were wretched in so far as they had no experience of life as it is lived in a modern democracy. If you look upon the present age as an age of social disorganization, you take the second attitude: the men of the Middle Ages were happy in that they all were the children of a universal Church. One reason why the two judgments differ is that they are concerned with different sets of facts. Certainly the physical conditions of a husbandman's life were hard, but nothing is more commonplace or more often forgotten than the words: "Man does not live by bread alone."

Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language.

So Phoibos Apollo spoke, and picked the child up to carry him. But just then the powerful Argus-slayer made up his mind and, as he was home aloft in Apollo’s arms, he emitted an omen, a menial servant of the belly, an unruly messenger;²⁹ and after it he promptly sneezed. On hearing that, Apollo dropped glorious Hermes on the ground.

²⁹ A fart.

ὣς ἄρ' ἔφη, καὶ παῖδα λαβὼν φέρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων.
σὺν δ' ἄρα φρασσάμενος τότε δὴ κρατὺς Ἀργειφόντης
οἰωνὸν προέηκεν ἀειρόμενος μετὰ χερσίν,
τλήμονα γαστρὸς ἔριθον, ἀτάσθαλον ἀγγελιώτην.
ἐσσυμένως δὲ μετ' αὐτὸν ἐπέπταρε· τοῖο δ' Ἀπόλλων
ἔκλυεν, ἐκ χειρῶν δὲ χαμαὶ βάλε κύδιμον Ἑρμῆν.

For prophetic farts see e.g. Ar. Eq. 639, Daniel (1985: 129–30) on SEG 34.1051 (sixth century CE). They are a comic fantasy; Aristotle says ὁ πταρμὸς … σημεῖον οἰωνιστικὸν καὶ ἱερὸν μόνον τῶν πνευμάτων (HA 1.11 492b7–8).

As I was pondering this prayer, some bugger validated it by farting on my lucky side.

                           ταῦτα φροντίζοντί μοι
ἐκ δεξιᾶς ἐπέπαρδε καταπύγων ἀνήρ.

Sneezing too, which is the exit of a collected volume of breath, takes place through the nose. Sneezing is the only sort of breath which has divinatory significance and is supernatural.

• A Savior Goddess? (on Daniel's article, cited by Oliver Thomas above)
• Gastromancy
• Scatomancy
• The Spirit of Prophecy
• Matshishkapeu

Labels: noctes scatologicae

As everyone knows, Greek religion was not a 'religion of the book'. No doubt it acquired its distinctive stamp before writing was thought of. But it persisted as a religion 'not of the book' through something like a millennium of literacy. (And it had passed through an earlier literate phase in the Mycenaean period.) In this area, it seems, social factors prevented the 'technology of communication' from exercising a really decisive influence.⁴⁶

The city used writing to record publicly its commitment, financial and so moral, to the cult of particular gods. What mattered about this declaration was that it could be seen to have been made, even if not all Athenians had the skill, and fewer still the interest, to read the dry and difficult inscriptions. Writing was not, by contrast, used to build up a complicated specialized corpus of ritual knowledge. We stressed earlier the crucial importance of the fact that 'sacred laws' (not a Greek term) are a subsection of the whole law-code of a community, not an independent category resting on a different authority. They are so, of course, because of the indissoluble unity of 'church and state' in Greece, powers that could never be at odds because they could never be clearly distinguished. A crucial aspect of this integration of religion in Greece is the ordinariness of the priests; they were ordinary in many ways, but above all in lacking all pretension to distinctive learning. Elaborate ritual texts are the hallmark of a more specialized priesthood and a more autonomous religious order than those of Greece.⁴⁷

The amateur status of the Greek priesthood was not affected in any way by the advent of the art of writing. One does not picture the priestess of an Athenian public cult with a book in her hand. The famous sixth-century marble sculptures of 'seated scribes' from the acropolis are generally held to represent not priests but, significantly, 'treasurers' or similar officials, bound to give account of the sacred monies in their care. When the religious book begins to appear, it is rather the mark of marginal figures, the wandering initiators and purifiers and prophets, who in the phrase of the Derveni papyrus 'make a craft out of rites'.⁴⁸ Lacking a position in the civic religious structure, they naturally need to display credentials of other kinds. The association between bookishness and irregularity is at its clearest in Orphism.⁴⁹ Both in social and religious terms Orphism is profoundly unorthodox; and it displays several characteristics of a 'religion of the book', being indeed transmitted through a 'hubbub of books'.⁵⁰ The only books of public cult, by contrast, are the calendars inscribed for all to view (though few to read) on wood or stone.<sup>51

46</sup> On this issue contrast J. Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge 1987), 59-77, and G.E.R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom (Berkeley 1987), 70-78.

⁴⁷ Cf. Goody, Logic of Writing, 16-22.

⁴⁸ Col. xvi 3-4 (ZPE 47, 1982, after p. 300). On such books see Burkert, Mystery Cults, 70-72, who cites inter alia Dem. 18.259 (street mysteries) and Ar. Av. 974-89 (an oracle-monger); add Isoc. 19.5-6, books on prophecy used by wandering seers (cf. e.g. the pseudo-Hesiodic prophetic works, R. Merkelbach and M.L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea, Oxford 1967, p. 157); note too Plut. Arist. 27.4 on a πινάκιον ὀνειροκριτικόν.

⁴⁹ Cf. M. Detienne, L'écriture d'Orphée (Paris 1989), 101-15.

⁵⁰ Characteristics: e.g. a universal, non-local perspective; asceticism; ritual formulas that aspired to be standard throughout the Greek world (cf. R. Janko, CQ NS 34, 1984, 89-100). Cf. Goody, Logic of Writing, 1-44, esp. 10-16. 'Hubbub of books': Pl. Resp. 364e; cf. West, Orphic Poems, ch. 1.

⁵¹ On the sense in which books are alien to the ethos of the democracy see Loraux in Detienne ed., Les savoirs de l'écriture, 126-29.

I know my poor weak intellects, most noble Lord, and how scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Comprehending few things, and those imperfectly, I say only what others have said before, wise men and holy; and if, by passing through my heart into the wide world around me, it pleaseth God that this little treasure shall have lost nothing of its weight and pureness, my exultation is then the exultation of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of Verulam, cometh from above.

'I believe that the Goths spoke like that,' said Eusthenes, 'and if God wished us to speak through our backsides we should speak like that too.'

Je croy (dist Eustenes) que les Gothz parloient ainsi. Et, si Dieu vouloit, ainsi parlerions nous du cul.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

A cessation of activity, a quiescence from impulse and opinion and, as it were, their death, is no evil. Turn now to consider the stages of thy life—childhood, boyhood, manhood, old age—each step in the ladder of change a death. Is there anything terrible here? Pass on now to thy life under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy father, and finding there many other alterations, changes, and cessations, ask thyself: Is there anything terrible here? No, nor any in the ending and quiescence and change of the whole of life.

ἐνεργείας ἀπόληξις, ὁρμῆς, ὑπολήψεως παῦλα καὶ οἷον θάνατος, οὐδὲν κακόν. μέτιθι νῦν ἐπὶ ἡλικίαν, οἷον τὴν παιδικήν, τὴν τοῦ μειρακίου, τὴν νεότητα, τὸ γῆρας· καὶ γὰρ τούτων πᾶσα μεταβολὴ θάνατος. μήτι δεινόν; μέτιθι νῦν ἐπὶ βίον τὸν ὑπὸ τῷ πάππῳ, εἶτα τὸν ὑπὸ τῇ μητρί, εἶτα τὸν ὑπὸ τῷ πατρί· καὶ ἄλλας δὲ πολλὰς διαφορὰς καὶ μεταβολὰς καὶ ἀπολήξεις εὑρίσκων, ἐπερώτα σεαυτόν· μήτι δεινόν; οὕτως τοίνυν οὐδὲ ἡ τοῦ ὅλου βίου λῆξις καὶ παῦλα καὶ μεταβολή.

Skamandrios, Strophios's son, well trained in the chase,
Meneläos, son of Atreus, took down with his sharpened spear,        50
fine hunter though he was, one whom Artemis herself
taught to shoot all wild things that the mountain woodlands nourish.
Yet of no avail to him now was Artemis the archer,
nor the skilled bowmanship in which he once excelled,
but Atreus's son Meneläos, that famous spearman,        55
plunged, as he fled before him, a spear into his back
between the shoulder blades, drove it through to his chest.
He slumped down face first, and his armor rattled upon him.

υἱὸν δὲ Στροφίοιο Σκαμάνδριον αἵμονα θήρης
Ἀτρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἕλ᾽ ἔγχεϊ ὀξυόεντι        50
ἐσθλὸν θηρητῆρα· δίδαξε γὰρ Ἄρτεμις αὐτὴ
βάλλειν ἄγρια πάντα, τά τε τρέφει οὔρεσιν ὕλη·
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμ᾽ Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα,
οὐδὲ ἑκηβολίαι ᾗσιν τὸ πρίν γε κέκαστο·
ἀλλά μιν Ἀτρεΐδης δουρικλειτὸς Μενέλαος        55
πρόσθεν ἕθεν φεύγοντα μετάφρενον οὔτασε δουρὶ
ὤμων μεσσηγύς, διὰ δὲ στήθεσφιν ἔλασσεν,
ἤριπε δὲ πρηνής, ἀράβησε δὲ τεύχε᾽ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ.

dub. sens., perh. eager, Σκαμάνδριον αἵμονα θήρης Il. 5.49; expl. by Gramm. as = δαίμων, for δαήμων, skilful, cf. EM 251.13. II. (αἷμα) bloody, E. Hec. 90, dub. l. in A. Supp. 847 (lyr.).

At Çatal Hüyük it is starkly, and even brutally, explicit. The divine reality which dominated the minds of these people and which they worshipped in their small shrines was—the very fact of life and death; these felt as the deeds of ruthless and unaccountable powers; death pictured in the shape of enormous vultures over headless (that is, dead) human bodies; opposing them, the goddess appears in one, ever-recurring shape, namely, in the act of giving birth. Her progeny is the bull, the essential begetter. His emblem, large actual bucrania, is everywhere, in astounding numbers, asserting his power to overcome death; in two of the shrines, moreover, his large image, cut out of the plaster, dominates one of the walls. The begetter and the parturient: these two are constantly undoing the work of the vultures—whose prey is the perishable flesh, and no more. When they have done their part, the lasting bones are gathered and buried under the floors of the houses; the males under the bed of the father, women and children underneath the mother's.

This custom bespeaks an intimate communion between the living and the dead. The dead underneath are ever present with the living; the living have risen from there, for a time; soon to rejoin them. The horror of dying remains unabated, but the power of life constantly regenerated embraces even this terror. A sentiment of the unity of life and death stands out in a crude but powerful symbolism. From many walls protrude models of the female breast moulded over the heads of beasts which signify death; such as boar's tusks, the beaks of vultures, the snouts of weasels and foxes. 'Media vita in morte sumus' or, rather: death encompassed by the nurturing vis vitalis. In one of the shrines human bones, significantly, were found scattered underneath this symbol.

Our interpretation cannot entirely divest itself of terms more or less abstract; in fact, though, the very power of these representations bespeaks the concreteness of this ancient experience. There is not really any thought of vis vitalis, but breasts and beak; no 'concept of fertility', but the act and fact of birth; no 'symbol of death', but horrid vultures feeding on bodies. The miracle of life, unending with eruption and destruction, stands out as the content and boundary of this religion.

As steals the morn upon the night,
And melts the shades away:
So Truth does Fancy's charm dissolve,
And rising Reason puts to flight
The fumes that did the mind involve,
Restoring intellectual day.

[1] Besides, surely we if anyone have the right to level complaints against our neighbours, especially when such large differences are at stake — and ones to which you are quite insensitive in our view. You seem never once to have analysed these Athenians, to see just what sort of people you are going to be up against nor how totally different they are from yourselves.

[2] They are natural innovators, quick to have ideas and then to put their plans into action. Your instinct on the other hand is to keep things as they are, not to make any new decisions and not even to take the minimum action necessary.

[3] Then again, they are bold beyond their means, they run risks beyond reason and stay sanguine in times of trouble; your way, on the other hand, is to do less than your power allows, to distrust even your surest judgements and never to expect deliverance from dangers.

[4] In truth, they never shrink from action while you always hesitate; they are always abroad while you never leave home. They expect to gain something by being away, you expect that by venturing out you might harm even what you have.

[5] In any military success they press their advantage to the limit, in defeat they fall back as little as possible.

[6] Their bodies they disown and sacrifice to the service of the state, but their minds are very much their own in acting on her behalf.

[7] And if they fail to go and achieve something they have planned on doing they believe they have been deprived of what was already theirs, while if they succeed in getting what they went for they count that a small gain compared with future prospects; and should they actually fail in some venture they redirect their hopes to make good the loss elsewhere. For them alone to hope for something is to have it, such is their speed in executing their plans. they count that a small gain compared with future prospects; and should they actually fail in some venture they redirect their hopes to make good the loss elsewhere. For them alone to hope for something is to have it, such is their speed in executing their plans.

[8] This, then, is their life-long labour, in hardship and in danger. They scarcely enjoy what they have because they are always after getting more; the only holiday they can imagine is in doing what they feel they must, and they think of idle leisure as a greater disaster than irksome toil.

[9] In sum, you could rightly say that they are born neither to enjoy any peace themselves nor to allow it to others.

---

[1] καὶ ἅμα, εἴπερ τινὲς καὶ ἄλλοι, νομίζομεν ἄξιοι εἶναι τοῖς πέλας ψόγον ἐπενεγκεῖν, ἄλλως τε καὶ μεγάλων τῶν διαφερόντων καθεστώτων, περὶ ὧν οὐκ αἰσθάνεσθαι ἡμῖν γε δοκεῖτε οὐδ᾿ ἐκλογίσασθαι πώποτε πρὸς οἵους ὑμῖν Ἀθηναίους ὄντας καὶ ὅσον ὑμῶν καὶ ὡς πᾶν διαφέροντας ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσται.

[2] οἱ μέν γε νεωτεροποιοὶ καὶ ἐπινοῆσαι ὀξεῖς καὶ ἐπιτελέσαι ἔργῳ ἃ ἂν γνῶσιν, ὑμεῖς δὲ τὰ ὑπάρχοντά τε σῴζειν καὶ ἐπιγνῶναι μηδὲν καὶ ἔργῳ οὐδὲ τἀναγκαῖα ἐξικέσθαι.

[3] αὖθις δὲ οἱ μὲν καὶ παρὰ δύναμιν τολμηταὶ καὶ παρὰ γνώμην κινδυνευταὶ καὶ ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς εὐέλπιδες· τὸ δὲ ὑμέτερον τῆς τε δυνάμεως ἐνδεᾶ πρᾶξαι τῆς τε γνώμης μηδὲ τοῖς βεβαίοις πιστεῦσαι τῶν τε δεινῶν μηδέποτε οἴεσθαι ἀπολυθήσεσθαι.

[4] καὶ μὴν καὶ ἄοκνοι πρὸς ὑμὰς μελλητὰς καὶ ἀποδημηταὶ πρὸς ἐνδημοτάτους· οἴονται γὰρ οἱ μὲν τῇ ἀπουσίᾳ ἄν τι κτᾶσθαι, ὑμεῖς δὲ τῷ ἐξελθεῖν καὶ τὰ ἑτοῖμα ἂν βλάψαι.

[5] κρατοῦντές τε τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξέρχονται καὶ νικώμενοι ἐπ᾿ ἐλάχιστον ἀναπίπτουσιν.

[6] ἔτι δὲ τοῖς μὲν σώμασιν ἀλλοτριωτάτοις ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως χρῶνται, τῇ δὲ γνώμῃ οἰκειοτάτῃ ἐς τὸ πράσσειν τι ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς·

[7] καὶ ἃ μὲν ἂν ἐπινοήσαντες μὴ ἐπεξέλθωσιν, οἰκείων στέρεσθαι ἡγοῦνται, ἃ δ᾿ ἂν ἐπελθόντες κτήσωνται, ὀλίγα πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα τυχεῖν πράξαντες, ἢν δ᾿ ἄρα του καὶ πείρᾳ σφαλῶσιν, ἀντελπίσαντες ἄλλα ἐπλήρωσαν τὴν χρείαν· μόνοι γὰρ ἔχουσί τε ὁμοίως καὶ ἐλπίζουσιν ἃ ἂν ἐπινοήσωσι διὰ τὸ ταχεῖαν τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν ποιεῖσθαι ὧν ἂν γνῶσιν.

[8] καὶ ταῦτα μετὰ πόνων πάντα καὶ κινδύνων δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ αἰῶνος μοχθοῦσι, καὶ ἀπολαύουσιν ἐλάχιστα τῶν ὑπαρχόντων διὰ τὸ αἰεὶ κτᾶσθαι καὶ μήτε ἑορτὴν ἄλλο τι ἡγεῖσθαι ἢ τὸ τὰ δέοντα πρᾶξαι ξυμφοράν τε οὐχ ἧσσον ἡσυχίαν ἀπράγμονα ἢ ἀσχολίαν ἐπίπονον·

[9] ὥστε εἴ τις αὐτοὺς ξυνελὼν φαίη πεφυκέναι ἐπὶ τῷ μήτε αὐτοὺς ἔχειν ἡσυχίαν μήτε τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ἐᾶν, ὀρθῶς ἂν εἴποι.

Of all the life that raged so violently,
Of all the blood that flowed in rivers here,
What has survived, what traces persevere?
Two or three burial mounds are all we see...

And on them oak-trees, fully-grown meanwhile,
Sprawl confidently; there, with branches stirring,
They stand in lofty majesty, not caring
Whose bones, whose memory their roots defile.

For Nature has no knowledge of the past —
Our phantom years do not concern or touch her;
And faced with her we dimly see at last
Ourselves as a mere fantasy of Nature.

When each has played its futile part in turn,
She gathers in her children to her bosom,
Where all without distinction come to learn
The healing stillness of that all-engulfing chasm.

Tyutchev gives final expression to his fundamental point of view in a poem written not long before his death. Do the oaks, he asks, that grow on ancient barrows, that spread their branches and grow grand and speak with their leaves—do they care into whose dust and memory they are plunging their long roots? "Nature knows nothing of the past: our lives to her are alien and phantoms; and, standing in her presence, we dimly apprehend that we ourselves are but part of her revery. Indiscriminately, one by one, when they are done with their futile exploit, she welcomes all her children into her fathomless depths that swallow and reconcile all."

A plate signed by Epiktetos, which was found at Vulci and is now in the British Museum, illustrates the art of the simple tondo image at its most impressive [77]. Two garlanded revellers make their way home after a party. The younger man pipes their way, while the older feels the strain of the partying. The circular field, re-echoed in the artist's signature, which runs clockwise from the right hand to the left foot of the older reveller, and by the curved back of that reveller himself, is skilfully employed to emphasize the rolling progress of the older man. The younger man's sobriety is brought out by his upright pose, and reinforced by the vertical lines of the case for his pipes, which hangs from his shoulder, and by the way he holds the pipes up. The profiles are clean, the balance delicate, and the physical forms suggested with great economy of line. Although in other works Epiktetos shows an interest in twisted poses and oblique views, here the bodies are made substantial by the simplest of means, the showing of one arm or one thigh behind the other, the genitals appearing behind the line of the leg, the gathering of drapery.

The Emperor Maximilian, the great-grandfather of the present King Philip, was a monarch fully endowed with great advantages; among others, he was singularly handsome. One of his humours was flat contrary to that of princes who, to get through important business, make a throne of their lavatory: he never allowed a valet such intimacy as to see him on his privy. He would even hide away to pass water, being as scrupulous as a maiden about uncovering, for a doctor or anyone else, those parts which are customarily kept hidden. I myself, so shameless in speech, have nevertheless in my complexion a touch of such modesty: except when strongly moved by necessity or pleasure I rarely let anyone's eyes see those members or those actions which our customs ordain to be hidden. I find this all the more constraining in that I do not think it becoming in a man, above all in one of my calling. But Maximilian became so scrupulous that he expressly commanded in his will that linen drawers should be tied on him when he was dead. He should have added a codicil saying that the man who pulled them on ought to be blindfold!

[Luther E.] Jones, a neat young man who was invariably well scrubbed, with his hair carefully slicked down, was reserved, almost prim, in physical matters. "Any kind of coarseness or crudeness just disgusted him," a friend says. Johnson began summoning Jones to take dictation from him while he was sitting on the toilet. "At first," [Gene] Latimer says, "L.E. attempted to stand away from the door, but Johnson insisted he stand right over him. L.E. would stand with his head averted, and take dictation." As both Latimer and Jones understood, the tactic was a "method of control"—employed to humiliate Jones, and make him acknowledge who was boss. Years later, Richard Goodwin, a speechwriter who had just begun working for Johnson, was summoned to the President's bathroom in the White House. Watching Johnson, "apparently in the midst of defecation," staring at him "intently, looking for any sign of embarrassment," and "lowering his tone, forcing me to approach more closely," while "calculating my reaction," Goodwin realized that he was being given a kind of "test." Goodwin passed—and so had many of the staff members to whom Johnson had given the same test during his years in the House of Representatives.

Labels: noctes scatologicae