Laudator Temporis Acti

Erasmus, Adages I vi 16 (tr. R.A.B. Mynors, with his notes):

Ne sutor ultra crepidam
Let the cobbler stick to his last

Close to this is Ne sutor ultra crepidam, Let the cobbler stick to his last — let no one, that is, attempt to judge of matters which are far removed from his own skill and calling. This adage took its rise from Apelles, the famous painter, of whom Pliny,¹ book 35 chapter 10, tells the following story: 'When his work was finished, he would expose it in the porch to the view of passers-by, hiding behind the picture to listen to their comments on its faults, because he thought the public a more strict critic than himself; and they say that he was criticized by a cobbler for painting one loop too few on the inner side of a pair of sandals. Next day, finding his criticism had been attended to, the man went proudly on to criticize the drawing of a leg; and Apelles looked out indignantly and told him when passing judgment to stick to his last. These words became proverbial.' So much for Pliny. There is a similar story in Athenaeus:² Stratonicus the lyre-player said to a smith who was arguing with him about music 'Can't you see that you're not sticking to your hammer?' His nephew's³ remark in his Letters points the same way, that no one can judge a work of art properly unless he too is an artist. And Aristotle's⁴ saying in the first book of the Ethics that everyone is a proper judge of the things he knows about. Also what he wrote in the second book of the Physics of a blind man disputing about colours — words which have become proverbial among academics of our own day for disputing on subjects of which a man knows nothing. To the same opinion we may refer what Fabius Pictor⁵ says in Quintilian, that the arts would be fortunate if none but artists were their critics.

Collectanea no 153 gave the first Pliny quotation only, with one divergence from the true text which is now corrected, so that Erasmus probably went back to the original when compiling the Chiliades. Otto 462; Suringar 142; Tilley c 480 Let not the cobbler go beyond his last.

1 Pliny] Naturalis historia 35.85

2 Athenaeus] 8.351a, added in 1533, so that 'his nephew' in the next sentence refers back to Pliny.

3 His nephew's] Pliny the Younger Letters 1.10.4

4 Aristotle] Ethica Nicomachea 1.3 (1094b27); Physica 2.1 (192a7). The words 'of our own day' were added in 1515. Cf Tilley M 80 A blind man should judge no colours.

5 Fabius Pictor] The early Roman annalist, whose works are lost, must owe his presence here to some confusion. The quotation comes from Jerome Letters 66.9.2, who ascribes it to Fabius, by which he must mean not the annalist but Quintilian (Fabius Quintilianus), just as Erasmus so often does. In Jerome's Comm. in Esaiam, in the prologue to book 16, he gives it to 'the eminent stylist,' which points the same way. Possibly an echo of Quintilian 12.10.50; no one seems to have found any other source.

Erasmus in his Latin:

Ne sutor ultra crepidam

Huic finitimum est illud Ne sutor ultra crepidam, id est Ne quis de his judicare conetur, quae sint ab ipsius arte professioneque aliena. Quod quidem adagium natum est ab Apelle, nobilissimo pictore. De quo Plinius libro XXXV cap. X scribit in hunc modum: Idem perfecta opera proponebat in pergula transeuntibus atque post ipsam tabulam latens vitia, quae notarentur, auscultabat, vulgum diligentiorem judicem quam se praeferens. Feruntque a sutore reprehensum, quod in crepidis una intus pauciores fecisset ansas. Eodem postero die superbe ob emendationem pristinae admonitionis cavillante circa crus, indignatum prospexisse, denuntiantem, ne supra crepidam sutor judicaret. Quod et ipsum in proverbium venit. Hactenus Plinius. Huic simillimum est, quod refert Athenaeus: Stratonicus citharoedus fabro secum de musica contendenti, Non sentis, inquit, te ultra malleum loqui? Eodem pertinet, quod hujus nepos in epistolis scripsit de artificio non recte judicare quemquam, nisi et ipsum artificem. Quodque primo Moralium libro dixit Aristoteles earum rerum unumquemque judicem esse idoneum, quarum sit eruditus. Et quod idem scripsit libro secundo Naturalium caecum disputare de coloribus. Quae verba jam inter nostri temporis scholasticos in proverbium abierunt, quoties quispiam de rebus ignotis disputat. Ad eandem sententiam referendum, quod ait Fabius Pictor apud Quintilianum felices futuras artes, si soli artifices de iis judicarent.

See also Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), #1600, pp. 1179-1180.

American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd ed.:

last³ (lăst) n. A block or form shaped like a human foot and used in making or repairing shoes.

Related post: Sutor Ne Ultra Crepidam.

Inscriptiones Graecae XIV 1857 (Rome, Via Nomentana, Basilica of St. Agnese, 2nd century AD) = Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae III 1274 = Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Vol. I: Grab-Epigramme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), p. 187, # 721 (my translation):

I was unceasingly cheerful, I laughed and played and revelled,
and I merrily gladdened everyone's spirit in songs,
I caused no one pain, and I did not utter abusive words,
but I lived a friend of the Muses, of Bromius and the Paphian;
from Asia I came: I lie here on Italian soil,
being a youth among the perished. My name was Menophilos.

εὐφρανθεὶς συνεχῶς, γελάσας παίξας τε τρυφήσας,
καὶ ψυχὴν ἱλαρῶς πάντων τέρψας ἐν ἀοιδαῖς,
οὐδένα λυπήσας, οὐ λοίδορα ῥήματα πέμψας,
ἀλλὰ φίλος Μουσῶν, Βρομίου Παφίης τε βιώσας,
ἐξ Ἀσίης ἐλθὼν Ἰταλῇ χθονὶ ἐνθάδε κεῖμαι        5
    ἐν φθιμένοις νέος ὤν, τοὔνομα Μηνόφιλος.

The first five verses of the Greek contain a series of aorist participles, which I translated as a series of clauses in the past tense. In line 4, Bromius is Dionysus, and the Paphian is Aphrodite.

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, chapter 2 (tr. James E. Woods):

Children and grandchildren observe in order to admire, and they admire in order to learn and develop what heredity has stored within them.

Kinder und Enkel schauen an, um zu bewundern, und sie bewundern, um zu lernen und auszubilden, was erblicherweise in ihnen vorgebildet liegt.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, quoted in Sarah Collier, "Further strike action possible as latest walkout cripples rail services again," Evening Standard (June 25, 2022):

It's quite odd. The people who are running this country are brought up on a diet of Latin and Greek and our members are brought up on a diet of getting up at ungodly times to run the transport system. I think there's a bit of disconnect there. If we had people who were used to doing work we might get a better deal out of them.

A.J. Houle, quoted in Donald Gilmore, Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006), p. 58:

These are exciting times here. You may form some idea of them when I tell you that I never lie down without taking the precaution to fasten my door, and fix it in such a way that if it is forced open, it can be opened only wide enough for one person to come in at a time. I have my rifle, revolver, and old home-stocked pistol where I can lay my hand on them in an instant, besides a hatchet & axe.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI 2547a (Chiusi, 3rd century A.D.) = Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres 900 (vol. I, p. 168, "Clusii in coemeterio Catharinae"; my translation):

So long as you shall live, man, live; for after death there is nothing. All things stay behind, and man is this which you see.

dum vibes, homo, vibe; nam post mortem nihil est. omnia remanent et hoc est homo quod vides.

Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (1935; rpt. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), p. 320:

[T]he Christianity and the antiquity of this last have alike been doubted.

Lattimore's remark is just a copy of Ernst Diehl, ILCV, loc. cit.:

sunt qui ut de homine christiano tituli auctore, ita de tituli ipsius origine antiqua iure dubitent.

Cf. Martial 1.15 and 8.44.1-2.

Euripides, Hecuba 864-867 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

There is not in the world a single man free;
for he is a slave either to money or to fortune,
or else the people in their thousands or the fear of public prosecution
prevents him from following the dictates of his heart.

οὐκ ἔστι θνητῶν ὅστις ἔστ᾽ ἐλεύθερος·
ἢ χρημάτων γὰρ δοῦλός ἐστιν ἢ τύχης,        865
ἢ πλῆθος αὐτὸν πόλεος ἢ νόμων γραφαὶ
εἴργουσι χρῆσθαι μὴ κατὰ γνώμην τρόποις.

Justina Gregory ad loc.:

864 ... ἐλεύθερος: Like ἰσονομία (291-92n, cf. 804-5n), ἐλευθερία was a defining feature of Athenian ideology. The concept of political freedom developed in the wake of the Persian Wars as a metaphorical extension of the traditional antithesis between personal freedom and enslavement (K. Raaflaub, Die Entdeckung der Freiheit [Munich 1985] 313-27). Hecuba plays on the various senses—personal and political, literal and metaphorical—of "free," reversing the categories that actually apply and portraying Agamemnon as a frightened slave and herself as the one in power.

865 ἢ ... ἢ: Hecuba's first two examples refer to private constraints on the individual. [For enslavement to money cf. εἰς τὸ κέρδος παρὰ φύσιν δουλευτέον, Phoen. 395. For enslavement to fate cf. τῇ τύχῃ δουλευτέον, HF 1357.]

866 πλῆθος αὐτὸν πόλεος ... νόμων γραφαὶ: Hecuba's last two examples refer to civic constraints on the individual. Majority rule and written law were the foundation-stones of Athenian democracy. [Cf. Arist. Pol. 1317b5 for τὸ πλῆθος ... εἶναι κύριον and Supp. 433-34 for written law as safeguarding equality.] Hecuba has invoked democratic principles when it suited her argument (291, 799-805), but here she reverts to an aristocratic perspective (254-57n) and depicts majority rule and written law as limiting individual freedom of action.

867 "prevent him from following his inclination according to his will." μή is a "redundant" negative with an infinitive depending on a verb of negative meaning (Smyth §2739). [Normally preceding the infinitive, it is here displaced metri gratia. Hecuba's remark alludes to the competing demands of individual liberty and majority rule under a democratic system. For "doing whatever one wishes" (τὸ ὅ τι ἂν βούληταί τις ποιεῖν) as a hallmark of political freedom see Arist. Pol. 1310a32; also Thuc. 2.37.2 and 7.69.2.]

John E. Woods, interviewed by Judith Moore, "Thomas Mann translator John Woods in Mission Hills," San Diego Reader (August 14, 1997):

Literary translating is about literature, it's about being very, very skilled in your native language. Not only do you need to know the second language, and I mean know it well, but you have to love and work with and understand your own language. You have to know how to make it sing and dance. Being bilingual certainly is a leg up, but that doesn't create a literary text. There are a lot of people out there who are bilingual. They think, "Well, I ought to be able to translate something." And the publishing houses know that there's this vast pool of workers out there, and so they farm the stuff out in piecework. The results are haphazard. Some great and wonderful translations are produced, and some that are not so great and wonderful.

[....]

Every German publishing house has editors who go over every translation, comparing it word for word, with the original. I don't know of any publishing house that does that anymore in this country.

[....]

I've made lots of horrible mistakes. One in fact that Helen Wolff didn't catch, in a small book by Günter Grass called Show Your Tongue, about a year he spent in Calcutta, India. And somewhere he uses the word "Schuppen," which can mean the "scales of a fish" or "dandruff." And in a moment of average inattention, I chose dandruff — and it should have been the scales of a fish. That sort of thing happens, it just happens. You're working fast, you go back and check, but it never registers, and suddenly the translation is there forever in black and white.

One of the things you learn, particularly in this job, is that there is no such thing as perfection in this existence. And you learn to live with that. It will never be perfect. Any translation can be made better both aesthetically and in terms of accuracy, and that's why you correct four and five times yourself, and that's why somebody else should look at it too. Because it will never be as good as it truly ought to be.

Related post: Elaborate Defence of Howlers.

Hat tip: Mike Johnson (via Kevin Muse).

Erik Moltke, "The Kensington Stone," tr. John R.B. Gosney, Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 13.4 (July, 1952) 33-37 (at 35):

To show how every Scandinavian scholar regards the inscription I will quote what Professor Jon Helgason, professor in Icelandic at the University of Copenhagen, said to me when he read my first article on the Kensington Stone: "In my opinion the inscription on the Kensington Stone is such that no philologist with any self-respect could in any decency write about it; any more than an archaeologist would trouble to publish a grave-find of the Iron Age if he found a telephone book under the urn." In my heart of hearts I agree with Jon Helgason.

Such sentiments may have scared off many a professional linguist from writing in defense of the genuineness of the inscription. At least two philologists did publish extensive defenses of its authenticity, however:

• S.N. Hagen, "The Kensington Runic Inscription," Speculum 25 (1950) 321–356
• Robert A. Hall Jr., The Kensington Rune-Stone Is Genuine (Columbia: Hornbeam Press, Incorporated, 1982)

Hall was a Romance linguist who candidly admitted (p. 1), "I am not a Scandinavianist, nor even a Germanist." Hagen, on the other hand, was an expert in those areas. Because Hagen is comparatively obscure, I decided to collect some information on his life and work. He is not mentioned at all in Theodore C. Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1968), or in David M. Krueger, Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

Here is a transcription of Hagen's obituary in the Lancaster New Era newspaper (February 19, 1966), with the title "Dr. Hagen Dies, Retired Prof":

Dr. Sivert N. Hagen, ninety-three, professor emeritus of English at Franklin and Marshall College, died at 11:50 a.m. Friday in General Hospital after an illness of 15 months.

He taught at the University of Iowa, Vanderbilt University, and Gettysburg College, before coming to F&M as the chairman of the English Department in 1924. He retired from F&M in 1944 and was named professor emeritus.

He was born in Mylan, Minn., and was a son of the late Niles K. and Kari Einerson Hagen. His wife, Nertha Marie Borge Hagen, died in 1958. The couple had been married 58 years.

Dr. Hagen, who lived at 558 W. Lemon St., graduated from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa in 1896 and received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1900.

He was a member of St. John's Lutheran Church and the Sphinx Club, both of Lancaster; the Clio Society; Phi Beta Kappa; the Linguistic Society of America and the Modern Language Assn. of the United States.

Surviving are two sons, Sigurd B., Philadelphia, and Olaf E., Closter, N.J.; two daughters, Agatha, wife of Jerome Cosgrove, Glen Cove, N.Y.; and Mrs. Hildegarde Sheidegger, Baltimore, Md.; two grand-children and one great-grandson.

For "Mylan, Minn." read "Milan, Minn.," a town in Chippewa County, Minnesota.

The following photograph accompanied the obituary: Here is a transcription of Hagen's obituary in the New York Times (February 20, 1966), with the title "Sivert Hagen, Philologist, Dies; Called Kensington Stone Real":

Prof. Sivert Nielsen Hagen, philologist, who made an intensive study of the Kensington rune stone found near Kensington, Minn., in 1898 died Friday in Lancaster, Pa. He was 93 years old.

The Kensington stone is believed to describe an exploration journey made by 8 Swedes and 22 Norwegians from Vinland in 1362. The stone had been pronounced a forgery by 19th-century scholars soon after its discovery. In a philogical analysis published in the July, 1950, issue of Speculum, the journal of the Mediaeval Academy of America, Dr. Hagen concluded that the stone was authentic. The philologist made his study of the inscriptions at the urging of the late Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the explorer and author.

Born Near Kensington

The rune stone was found on the farm of Olof Ohman, about three miles northeast of Kensington. The stone, which was found during a land-clearing operation, was covered by six inches of soil and was enmeshed in the roots of a poplar or aspen, which had grown around it. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1948.

Kensington is 60 miles from Dr. Hagen's birthplace. The future philologist received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1896 from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and a doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University in 1900. That year, he became an instructor in English at the State University of Iowa, where he remained until 1905, when he joined Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Hagen taught at Gettysburg College from 1916 to 1924 and then joined Franklin and Marshall College as a professor of English. He retired in 1944.

In his translation of the rune stone, Dr. Hagen contended that an the words and forms had been in use at the time mentioned in the inscription. He said that certain words and forms used in the inscription were not rediscovered or identified by scholars until long after the stone had been found.

Dr. Hagen is survived by two sons Sigurd B. of Philadelphia and Olaf E. of Closter, N.J.; two daughters Mrs. William J. Cosgrove of Glen Cove, L.I., and Mrs. William Scheudegger of Baltimore; two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

See also W. Norman Brown, Johns Hopkins Half-Century Directory (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1926), p. 144:

Hagen, Sivert Nielsen [g 97-99, Fel 99-00 PhD (Engl)] AB Luther 96; Instr Engl Iowa State 00-05; Instr, Asst Prof Engl, Ger Vanderbilt 06-16; Prof Engl Gettysburg 16-24; Prof Engl Franklin and Marshall 24——. Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster Pa.

Hagen's Ph.D. dissertation was on The Norse Loan Words in the York Mystery Plays, probably directed by James Bright (1852-1926). Besides the article on the Kensingston stone, his articles include:

• "The Origin and Meaning of the Name Yggdrasill," Modern Philology 1.1 (June, 1903) 57-69
• "Mūspilli," Modern Philology 1.3 (January, 1904) 397-408
• "Classical Names and Stories in the Bēowulf," Modern Language Notes 19.3/4 (March-April, 1904) 65-74, and 19.6 (June, 1904) 156-165
• "On the Origin of the Term Edda," Modern Language Notes 19.5 (May, 1904) 127-134, reviewed favorably by G. Neckel, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 50.3 (1908) 159-161
• "ON. Nornir 'Fates'," Modern Language Notes 39.8 (December, 1924) 466-469
• "The Skodborg Runic Inscription," Acta Philologica Scandinavica 20 (1949) 339-344 (non vidi)

Hagen's papers are in the manuscript collection of the Norwegian-American Historical Association, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, according to the Guide to Manuscripts Collections of the Norwegian-American Historical Association (Northfield: The Association, 1979), p. 40.

I'm unqualified to take a stand on the controversy surrounding the Kensington Stone, but I do find the arguments by Harold Edwards, "The Kensington Runestone: Geological Evidence of a Hoax," Minnesota Archaeologist 77 (2020) 6-40, to be persuasive. Among many other anomalies, Edwards points out that the 202 lb. stone is of a type that "does not match any sandstones found in the glacial deposits in western Minnesota, let alone around the Ohman farm," but rather resembles flagstones that started to be imported to Minnesota from Pennsylvania and New York in the 1880s (pp. 16-17).

"De proprietatibus gentium," in Theodor Mommsen, ed., Chronica Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., Vol. II (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894 = Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi XI), pp. 389-390 (simplified by the omission of manuscript variants, etc.).

Forma Prima: De proprietatibus gentium (p. 389):

1. sapientia Graecorum.
2. forcia Gotthorum.
3. consilia Chaldeorum.
4. superbia Romanorum.
5. ferocitas Francorum.
6. ira Britanorum.
7. libido Scottorum.
8. duritia Saxonum.
9. cupiditas Persarum.
10. invidia Iudaeorum.
11. pax Aethioporum.
12. commercia Gallorum.

Forma Secunda: De vitiis gentium (pp. 389-390):

1. invidia Iudeorum.
2. perfidia Persarum.
3. astutia Aegyptiorum.
4. fallatia Grecorum.
5. sevitia Sarracenorum.
6. levitas Chaldeorum.
7. varietas Afrorum.
8. gula Gallorum.
9. vana gloria Langobardorum.
10. crudelitas Unorum.
11. inmunditia Suavorum.
12. ferocitas Francorum.
13. stultitia Sasonorum.
13a. hebetudo Bavariorum.
14. luxuria Guasconum.
15. libido Scottorum.
16. vinolentia Spanorum.
17. duritia Pictorum.
17a. libido Suevorum.
19. ira Brittanorum.
20. spurticia Sclavorum.
21. rapacitas Normanorum.

De bonis naturis gentium (p. 390):

1. Hebreorum prudentia.
2. Persarum stabilitas.
3. Aegyptiorum sollertia.
4. Grecorum sapientia.
5. Romanorum gravitas.
6. largitas Longobardorum.
7. sobrietas Gotthorum.
8. Chaldeorum sagacitas.
9. Afrorum ingenium.
10. Gallorum firmitas.
11. Francorum fortitudo.
12. Saxonorum instantia.
13. Wasconorum agilitas.
14. Scottorum fidelitas.
15. Pictorum magnanimitas.
16. Spanorum argutia.
17. Brittanorum hospitalitas.

Id.:

Tullius Marcus dixit:

Grecus irascitur ante causam,
Francus in causam,
Romanus post causam.
Francus gravis.
Romanus levis.
Afrus versipellis.

Id.:

Tullii Marci hoc:

Callidus, Afer, eris semper, Romane, disertus,
   semper, Galle, piger, semper, Hibere, celer.

Translation of two of these lists by Andrew Gillett, "The Mirror of Jordanes: Concepts of the Barbarian, Then and Now," in Philip Rousseau, ed., A Companion to Late Antiquity (Malden: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 392-408 (at 393):

The Weaknesses of Peoples

The jealousy of the Jews
The perfidy of the Persians
The evasiveness of the Egyptians
The deceit of the Greeks
The savagery of the Saracens
The fickleness of the Chaldeans
The inconsistency of the Africans
The gluttony of the Gauls
The bragging of the Lombards
The cruelty of the Huns
The uncleanliness of the Sueves
The ferocity of the Franks
The stupidity of the Saxons
The indulgence of the Gascons
The lustfulness of the Scots
The inebriation of the Spaniards
The harshness of the Picts
The wrath of the Britons
The squalor of the Slavs

The Good Aspects of Peoples

The Hebrews' foresight
The Persians' constancy
The Egyptians' ingenuity
The Greeks' wisdom
The Romans' dignity
The Lombards' liberality
The Goths' soberness
The Chaldeans' wisdom
The Africans' wit
The Gauls' steadfastness
The Franks' fortitude
The Saxons' perseverance
The Gascons' agility
The Scots' faithfulness
The Picts' broadmindedness
The Spaniards' cleverness
The Britons' hospitality

Related posts:

• Hatreds
• Racial Antipathy
• National Characteristics
• Xenophobia
• Something to Offend Everyone
• The English Class System

Calvert Watkins (1933-2013), How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 70:

Poetry and poets were not a "frill" in Indo-European society but a necessity of life, a necessary condition for existence.

Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae III 1281 (my translation):

Life is good, but short; the light is sweet,
but it is left behind; revel so long as you can,
for here eternal night awaits you.
Maturus and Magna made this for their well-deserving foster father Narcissus.

χρηστὸς ὁ βίος, ἀλ[λ'] ὀλίγος· γλυκὺν τὸ φῶς,
ἀλλὰ καταλείπεται· τρύφησον ὡς δύνῃ,
ἐνθάδε γάρ σε περιμένει ν[ὺξ] αἰώνιος.
Maturus et Magna Narcisso nut<r>itori b(ene) m(erenti) f(e)c(e)r(unt).

I can only see Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae. Curavit L. Moretti. Fasciculus III (1142-1490) (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica, 1979), p. 140, in Google Books' snippet view, which shows this before the inscription:

1281 Ad S. Agnatem: Marini, Vatic. 9073 f. 9: 9086 f. 198 qui ex Suaresio expilavit (cfr. Ferrua, Riv. Arch. Crist. 33 [1957] p. 212 sq.) Litterae εϲω traduntur; verba plerumque punctis divisa. Periisse videtur.

and this after the inscription:

In fine uniuscuiusque versus trochaeos (quorum ultimum catalepticum) audire credas. — Narcissus nutritor, id est ὁ θρέψας, fuit Maturi atque Magnae. — V.1: cfr. GVI 456a, χρηστὸν βίον βραχὺν ἰδοῦσα. — V.2: τρύφησον ὡς δύνῃ, cfr. ad nr. 1159. — V.3: νὺξ αἰώνιος, cfr. supra 411.9. — Totum carmen quodammodo Catull. 5 sapit: nobis .. cum semel occidit brevis lux / nox est perpetua una dormienda.

There is a translation of the Greek portion by H. Gregory Snyder, "The Discovery and Interpretation of the Flavia Sophe Inscription: New Results," Vigiliae Christianae 68 (2014) 1-59 (at 41):

Pleasant is life, but short; sweet, the light,
but left behind. Make merry while you may,
For here, eternal night awaits you.

Goethe, Faust, Part II, lines 11745-11748 (tr. Stuart Atkins):

What you find alien,
be sure to avoid it;
what hurts your inward self,
you must reject it.

Was euch nicht angehört,
Müsset ihr meiden,
Was euch das Innre stört,
Dürft ihr nicht leiden.

Athenaeus 4.129f (tr. S. Douglas Olson):

He who drinks the most will also be the happiest.

ὁ πλεῖστα πίνων πλεῖστα κεὐφρανθήσεται.

---

Thanks to Eric Thomson for the corollary (Horace, Odes 1.18.3-4; tr. Niall Rudd):

For the gods have ordained thay everything should be hard for the abstemious, and there is no other way to dispel the worries that gnaw the heart.

siccis omnia nam dura deus proposuit neque
mordaces aliter diffugiunt sollicitudines.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F, II (On Translation):

Yet in those days all the enemies of the Enemy revered what was ancient, in language no less than in other matters, and they took pleasure in it according to their knowledge. The Eldar, being above all skilled in words, had the command of many styles, though they spoke most naturally in a manner nearest to their own speech, one even more antique than that of Gondor. The Dwarves, too, spoke with skill, readily adapting themselves to their company, though their utterance seemed to some rather harsh and guttural. But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong.

Pseudo-Epicharmus, fragment 279, preserved in Diogenes Laertius 3.16 (tr. R.D. Hicks, modified):

It is no wonder then that we talk thus
and are pleased with ourselves and think
we are fine folk. For to a dog a dog
appears the fairest of things, and an ox to an ox,
an ass to an ass the fairest, and verily a pig to a pig.

θαυμαστὸν οὐδὲν ἁμὲ ταῦθ᾽ οὕτω λέγειν
καὶ ἁνδάνειν αὐτοῖσιν αὐτοὺς καὶ δοκεῖν
καλὼς πεφύκειν· καὶ γὰρ ἁ κύων κυνὶ
κάλλιστον εἶμεν φαίνεται καὶ βοῦς βοΐ,
ὄνος δ᾽ ὄνῳ κάλλιστον, ὗς δέ θην ὑί.

Text and apparatus from R. Kassel et C. Austin, edd., Poetae Comici Graeci, I: Comoedia Dorica, Mimi, Phlyaces (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), p. 163: See Sara Tosetti, Analisi linguistica dei frammenti 'ex Alcimo' di Epicarmo e la tradizione degli Pseudepicharmeia (diss. Venezia, Università Ca' Foscari, 2013), pp. 113-118.

Related posts:

• People of the Same Stock
• Incompatibility
• Flocking Together
• Birds of a Feather Flock Together
• Like Is Dear to Like
• Akin and Alike
• Worlds Apart

C.S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves (June 22, 1930):

Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood—they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.

Inscriptiones Graecae XII 4 (Cos, 2nd-3rd century A.D.; my translation):

Here lies a servant of the Nymphs, Chrysogonos by name,
saying to every passerby: drink, you see the end.
83 years.

οὔνομα Χρυσόγονος Νυνφῶν λάτρις ἐνθάδε κεῖτα[ι],
    παντὶ λέγων παρόδῳ· πεῖνε, βλέπις τὸ τέλος.
ἐτῶν πγ'.

1 Νυνφῶν Herzog: ΝΟΝΥΦΩΝ lapis: μακάρων dub. Peek

Photograph of the inscription, from Rudolf Herzog, Koische Forschungen und Funde (Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung / Theodor Weicher, 1899), Tafel VI, 2: I don't have access to Mario Segre, Iscrizioni di Cos, Vols. 1: Testo and 2: Tavole (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1993 = Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente, 6). Mario Segre died at Auschwitz at the age of 39 in 1944, with his wife and young son.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Part 3: The Return of the King (VI.6: Many Partings):

...the tree grows best in the land of its sires..

Livy 38.17.13 (tr. Evan T. Sage):

Whatever grows in its own soil has greater excellence; transplanted to another soil, its nature being modified to suit that in which it grows, it loses its virtue.

est generosius, in sua quidquid sede gignitur; insitum alienae terrae in id quo alitur, natura vertente se, degenerat.

Related posts:

• Stability and Mobility
• Domi Manere Oportet
• Oikos Philos, Oikos Aristos
• Small Houses
• Staying Put
• My Native Hills
• More on Aglaus of Psophis
• Staying at Home
• Lottites
• To Be Happy At Home
• Aglaus of Psophis
• Here

Tacitus, Histories 3.7.2 (tr. Clifford H. Moore):

An act long desired was now received with delight and given a flattering interpretation beyond its deserts, when Antonius [Primus] gave orders that in all the towns Galba's statues, which had been thrown down in the disorders of the times, should again be honoured. His real motive was that he believed that it would dignify Vespasian's cause if this were accounted an approval of Galba's principate and a revival of his party.

desiderata diu res interpretatione gloriaque in maius accipitur, postquam Galbae imagines discordia temporum subversas in omnibus municipiis recoli iussit Antonius, decorum pro causa ratus, si placere Galbae principatus et partes revirescere crederentur.