Laudator Temporis Acti

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), Report to Greco, tr. P.A. Bien (1965; rpt. London: Faber & Faber, 1972), pp. 134-138:

I used to get up at dawn. The morning star would be dripping onto the earth, a light mist hovering over Hymettus. A cool breeze icicled my face. Larks ascended songfully into the air and vanished in the light. One Sunday in springtime I remember seeing two or three blossoming cherry trees in a red, recently ploughed field. Happiness filled my heart. At that very moment the sun rose, gleaming as on the day it first emerged from God’s hands. The Saronic Gulf beamed; Aegina, in the distance, filled with roses in the morning light. Two crows, their wings vibrating like bowstrings, flew by on my right—a good omen.

On one side, white-maned waves like Homeric horses, long-sweeping, refreshing verses of Homer; on the other, Athena’s oil-and light-filled olive, and Apollo’s laurel, and Dionysus’s wonderworking grape all wine and song. And the dry, frugal earth, its stones tinted rose-red by the sun, the mountains flapping bluishly in mid-air, steaming in the light, peacefully, restfully sunning themselves, all naked, like athletes.

I marched, and as I marched, I felt that the entire earth and sky were journeying with me. All the surrounding miracles penetrated me. I blossomed, laughed, vibrated in my turn like a bowstring. How my soul vanished on that Sunday, faded songfully into the morning light, just like the lark!

I climbed to the top of a hill and gazed out over the narrow rose-colored beaches, the sea, the faintly outlined islands. What joy that was! Greece with her virgin body, how she swims through the waves and lifts herself above them, the sun falling upon her like a bridegroom! How she has tamed stones and water, rid herself of matter’s inertia and coarseness, and conserved only the essence!

I was roaming in order to become acquainted with Attica, or so I thought. But I was really roaming in order to become acquainted with my soul. I wished to find it and come to know it in trees, mountains, and solitude—but in vain. My heart did not bound with joy, a sure sign that I had not found what I was seeking.

Only once, one day at noon, did I believe I found it. I had journeyed all alone to Sounion. It was summer already, and the resin flowed from the slit bark of the pine trees, filling the air with balm. A grasshopper landed on my shoulder and sat there; for some time we traveled together. My whole body smelled like a pine, I had become a pine. Then, as I emerged from the pine forest, I saw the white columns of the temple of Poseidon, and between them the hallowed sea, a deep scintillating blue. My knees gave way beneath me; I halted. This is beauty, I thought to myself. This is the Wingless Victory, the summit of joy; man can reach no higher. This is Greece.

So great was my joy that for a moment, viewing Greece’s beauty, I believed that my two wounds had healed and that this world, even though ephemeral—precisely because ephemeral—possessed value. I believed I was wrong in my attempt to divine the future crone behind the young girl’s face; rather, I should re-create and resurrect in the face of the crone the freshness and youth of the girl who no longer existed.

The Attic landscape is truly fascinating in an inexpressible, penetrating way. Here in Attica one feels that everything is subordinated to a rhythm which is simple, sure, and balanced. Everything here possesses an aristocratic grace and ease: the frugal, arid land, the graceful curves of Hymettus and Pentelicus, the silver-leafed olive trees, the slender ascetic cypresses, the playful glare of rocks in the sun, and above all the buoyant, diaphanous, completely spiritual light which dresses and undresses all things.

The Attic landscape determines the lineaments of the ideal man: handsomely well built, taciturn, freed from superfluous wealth; powerful, but capable on the other hand of restraining his power and imposing limits on his imagination. Sometimes the Attic landscape reaches the borders of austerity. But it does not cross them; it stops at a cheerful, good-natured seriousness. Its grace does not degenerate into romanticism, nor, by the same token, its power into asperity. All is finely balanced and measured. Even its virtues do not run to excess, do not break the human mean, but stop at a point beyond which, if they proceeded further, they would become either cruelly inhuman, or divine. The Attic landscape does not swagger, does not indulge in rhetoric, does not degenerate into fits of melodramatic swooning; it says what it has to say with a calm, virile forcefulness. By the simplest means possible it formulates the essential.

But now and again in the midst of this seriousness there is a smile—two or three silver-branched olive trees on a completely arid slope, some refreshingly green pines, oleanders at the edge of a dry, brilliantly white riverbed, a tuft of wild violets between blazing blue-black stones. All opposites join together, mix, and are reconciled here, creating the supreme miracle, harmony.

How did this miracle happen? Where did the grace find so much seriousness, the seriousness so much grace? How was the power able to avoid abusing its force? All this must constitute the Greek miracle.

There came moments, as I roamed through Attica, when I had a premonition that this land could become the highest lesson in civility, nobility, and strength.

After each of my wanderings through the Attic countryside, at first without knowing why, I climbed the Acropolis to view and review the Parthenon. This temple is a mystery to me. I can never see it the same way twice; it seems to change constantly, come to life, undulate while remaining motionless, play games with light and the human eye. But when, after longing to see it for so many years, I confronted it for the very first time, it appeared immobile to me, the skeleton of a primordial beast, and my heart did not bound like a young calf. (Throughout my life this has served me as the infallible sign. When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.) The first time I stood in front of the Parthenon, my heart did not bound. The building seemed a feat of the intellect—of numbers, geometry—a faultless thought enmarbled, a sublime achievement of the mind, possessing every virtue—every virtue except one, the most precious and beloved: it failed to touch the human heart.

I felt that the Parthenon was an even number such as two or four. Even numbers run contrary to my heart; I want nothing to do with them. Their lives are too comfortably arranged, they stand on their feet much too solidly and have not the slightest desire to change location. They are satisfied, conservative, without anxieties; they have solved every problem, translated every desire into reality, and grown calm. It is the odd number which conforms to the rhythm of my heart. The life of the odd number is not at all comfortably arranged. The odd number does not like this world the way it finds it, but wishes to change it, add to it, push it further. It stands on one foot, holds the other ready in the air, and wants to depart. Where to? To the following even number, in order to halt for an instant, catch its breath, and work up fresh momentum.

This sober enmarbled rationality was unpleasing to youth’s rebellious heart, which wants to crush everything old and remake the world anew. An excessively prudent dotard it was, who desired with his counsels to give excessively short rein to the heart’s impulsion. Turning my back on the Parthenon, I submerged myself in the superb view which extended as far as the sea. The sun stood at the zenith; it was noontime, the culminant hour, devoid of shadows or any play of light; austere, sublime, perfect. I looked at the blazing, brilliantly white city, the hallowed sea sparkling around Salamis, the surrounding mountains which were sunning themselves, bare and contented. Submerged in this vision, I forgot the Parthenon which stood behind me.

But after each new return from Attica’s olive groves and the Saronic Gulf, the hidden harmony, casting aside its veils one by one, slowly, gradually revealed itself to my mind. Each time I climbed the Acropolis again, the Parthenon seemed to be swaying slightly, as in a motionless dance—swaying and breathing.

This initiation lasted for months, perhaps years. I do not remember the exact day when I stood completely initiated before the Parthenon and my heart bounded like a young calf. This temple that towered before me, what a trophy it was, what a collaboration between mind and heart, what a supreme fruit of human effort! Space had been conquered; distinctions between small and large had vanished. Infinity entered this narrow, magical parallelogram carved out by man, entered leisurely and took its repose there. Time had been conquered as well; the lofty moment had been transformed into eternity.

I allowed my gaze to creep over the warm, sun-nourished marble. It touched the stones and rummaged through them like a hand, uncovering the hidden mysteries; it clung to them and refused to depart. I saw the seemingly parallel columns imperceptibly incline their capitals one toward the other so that concertedly, with tenderness and strength, they might sustain the sacred pediments entrusted to them. Never have undulations created lines so irreproachably straight. Never have numbers and music coupled with such understanding, such love.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Bacchante: See the Sotheby's catalogue entry for this painting.

Colin Leach, "Classics at Oxford in the 1950s," Classics for All (1 Apr 2019):

Eduard Fraenkel was holding his (packed) weekly class on Greek lyric metres in early 1952, and was taking us through the first chorus of the Agamemnon. On a whim, he asked a student in the front row to read a few lines. All went well until αἴλινον αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ δ᾽ εὖ νικάτω, when the last word came out, decisively, as an anapaest. The class burst into a howl of derision.

[....]

The central importance of textual criticism was slow to wane: my 'Green-and-Yellow' edition of Philoctetes by T.B.L. Webster (1970) devotes 10 pages to the transmission of the text and the relevant MSS (by Pat Easterling); my much larger edition in the same series by S.L. Schein (2013) dismisses the subject in under a page.

[....]

I return to Fraenkel. In addition to his weekly lecture on Virgil, his Greek metre class, and a small class on Ernout's Recueil (of pre-classical Latin authors), there was also his justly famous weekly 2-hour seminar in Corpus, which others have described—most memorably in Stephanie West's description of those attending as 'rabbits caught in the eye of a stoat'. It was indeed fearsome, and dons were among those as scared as the graduates or undergraduates.

[....]

It must have been 30 years later in one of the years when I was myself examining for the Ireland and Craven Scholarships that I asked the candidates (only six out of the announced eight had turned up), after the Greek prose paper, 'What is the perfect tense of λαμβάνω?'. Not one of them knew it. Their intelligence was at worst no less than that of my pupils in the 1950s, but their knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the Greek language was incomparably poorer. My generation could have answered that question at the age of 13, at the latest.

Aristophanes, Frogs 465-466 (tr. Stephen Halliwell):

You nauseating, shameless, audacious man,
You're loathsome—more than loathsome—as loathsome as hell!

ὦ βδελυρὲ κἀναίσχυντε καὶ τολμηρὲ σὺ
καὶ μιαρὲ καὶ παμμίαρε καὶ μιαρώτατε...

Kenneth Dover ad loc.:

Both lines lend themselves splendidly to declamation as 'rising trikola'; cf. 204 n. They repeat—exactly in M P20^ac U VSI, which have καὶ τολμηρὲ κἀναίσχυντε σὺ, almost exactly in the other MSS—the words with which Hermes greets Trygaios' arrival on Olympos in Pax 182 f. βδελυρός and μιαρός, 'foul', 'vile', 'filthy', express violent adverse reaction, whatever the nature of the conduct condemned; they go together in Eq. 304, μιαρός and ἀναίσχυντος in Pax 362, and τολμηρός and βδελυρός in Ach. 287.

See also Jasper Donelan, "Comedy and Insults in the Athenian Law-Courts," in Sophia Papaioannou and Andreas Serafim, edd., Comic Invective in Ancient Greek and Roman Oratory (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), pp. 25-41 (at 28-30 on μιαρός and βδελυρός). I don't see the lines in the Index Locorum of Deborah Kamen, Insults in Classical Athens (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). The Greek is worth memorizing, to have ready at hand when needed.

From Eric Thomson:

For βδελυρός, the LSJ has 'disgusting, loathsome, blackguardly'. I like 'blackguardly' and am sorry about its near total demise. After all, the world has no shortage of blackguards, nor of bounders, scoundrels, caitiffs & dastards.

Related post: The Eloquence of Abuse.

Pseudo-Heraclitus, Epistles 7.1-2 (tr. David R. Worley):

They know, Hermodorus, that I helped you draft the laws, and they want to drive me out, but they will not before I have refuted them for having decreed unjustly that "The man who does not laugh, and every misanthrope, must leave the city before sundown." They want to make this a law. But there is no one who does not laugh, Hermodorus, except Heraclitus; consequently, they can drive me away. (2) O you men, don't you want to learn why I never laugh? It is not because I hate men but because I hate their wickedness. Write your law in this way: "If anyone hates wickedness, he must leave the city" and I shall be the first to leave.

ἴσασί με, Ἑρμόδωρε, συντεχνιτεύσαντά σοι τοὺς νόμους, κἀμὲ ἐλάσαι βούλονται , ἀλλ' οὐ πρότερον ἢ ἐλέγξαι αὐτούς, ὅτι ἄδικα ἐγνώκασι. τὸν μὴ γελῶντα καὶ πάντα μισανθρωποῦντα πρὸ ἡλίου δύνοντος ἐξιέναι τῆς πόλεως, τοῦτο νομοθετεῖν βουλεύονται, οὐδεὶς δ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ μὴ γελῶν, Ἑρμόδωρε, ἢ Ἡράκλειτος, ὥστ᾿ ἐμὲ ἐλαύνουσιν. (2) ὦ ἄνθρωποι, οὐ θέλετε μαθεῖν, διὰ τί ἀεὶ ἀγελαστῶ; οὐ μισῶν ἀνθρώπους, ἀλλὰ κακίαν αὐτῶν. οὕτω γράψατε τὸν νόμον, "εἴ τις μισεῖ κακίαν, ἐξίτω τῆς πόλεως," καὶ πρῶτος ἔξειμι.

See id. 7.5-10 (too long to post here, especially when I have to enter the Greek manually).

Related posts:

• No Tittering
• Against Monastic Laughter
• Now Hear About Laughter
• No More Laughing, No More Fun
• Stop Laughing
• Don't Laugh
• Crassus Agelastus
• Did Adam Laugh Before the Fall?
• Against Laughter
• Agelasts
• Did Christ Ever Laugh?

Paul MacKendrick, Roman France (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972), p. 43 (on Gergovie):

In 1862 the site was called Merdogne — which might be euphemistically be translated as "Smellville."

Bijan Omrani, Caesar's Footprints. A Cultural Excursion to Ancient France: Journeys Through Roman Gaul (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017), pp. 91-92:

On the slope some distance below the top of the plateau, the road passes through the village of Gergovia. In its lower reaches there are capillary-winding culs-de-sac; its centre is ancient and stone-built. Large barn dwellings stand like cattle in a stall along a narrow, winding main thoroughfare. Honey-coloured lintels are carved with dancetty coats of arms staring out into the street. A Romanesque church sits on a promontory above a small and irregular village square. Cockerels squawk. Two boys play at a fountain, lashing the water with sticks. Above, a plaque records the visit in 1862 of Napoleon III, great searcher for Caesar and the Gauls in France. The plaque records not just the emperor’s visit, but also his munificence. The name of Gergovia had been lost to the village generations before his visit. By then, it rejoiced in the name of Merdogne — 'Shit-hole'. By his command, the older and more dignified name was to be restored in the modern French form of Gergovie.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights praef. 19 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

For those, however, who have never found pleasure nor busied themselves in reading, inquiring, writing and taking notes, who have never spent wakeful nights in such employments, who have never improved themselves by discussion and debate with rival followers of the same Muse, but are absorbed in the turmoil of business affairs — for such men it will be by far the best plan to hold wholly aloof from these "Nights" and seek for themselves other diversion.

erit autem id longe optimum, ut qui in lectitando, percontando,​ scribendo, commentando, numquam voluptates, numquam labores ceperunt, nullas hoc genus vigilias vigilarunt neque ullis inter eiusdem Musae aemulos certationibus disceptationibusque elimati sunt, sed intemperiarum negotiorumque pleni sunt, abeant​ a "Noctibus" his procul, atque alia sibi oblectamenta quaerant.

Reinhold Merkelbach and Josef Stauber, edd., Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, Bd. 3: Der „Ferne Osten“ und das Landesinnere bis zum Tauros (München: K.G. Säur, 2001), p. 172, no. 16/04/04 (from Apameia in Phrygia, 3rd century A.D.): Transcription of the Greek followed by my translation:

τὸ ζῆν ὁ ζήσας καὶ θανὼν ζῇ τοῖς φίλοις,
ὁ κτώμενος δὲ πολλὰ μὴ τρυφῶν σὺν τοῖς φίλοις
οὗτος τέθνηκε περιπατῶν καὶ ζῇ νεκρ[ός·]
ἐγὼ δὲ ἐτρύφησα Μηνογένης ὁ κὲ Εὐσταθής,
μετέδωκ[α] ἐμαυτοῦ πάντα τῇ ψυχῇ καλά·
ἀμάχως ἐβίωσα μετὰ φίλων κὲ συνγενῶν,        5
μηδέποθ' ὑπούλως ἢ δολίως λαλῶν τινι.
οὗτος ὁ βίος μοι γέγονεν, ὅταν ἔζων ἐγώ·
ἐς πάντα δ' ηὐτύχησα, ἐμαυτὸν πιστεύσας θεῷ,
τὸ δ' ὀ[φ]ειλόμενον ἀπέδωκα τῇ φύσι τέλος.        10

Ῥοῦφος ἐπύησα Μηνογένει μου γλυκυτάτῳ πατρὶ
κὲ Παύλει Μ[η]νογένου φιλάνδρῳ μέχ<ρ>ι τέλους.

He who has lived his life lives on for his friends even after he has died;
but he who possesses much without enjoying it with his friends,
that one is the walking dead and a living corpse.
I, Menogenes, also known as Eustathes, enjoyed myself,
I gave a share of all good things to my soul,
I lived without strife with my friends and relatives,
never speaking to anyone in a hollow or deceptive way.
Such was my life when I lived;
in all things I was fortunate; having entrusted myself to god,
I gave back to nature the end I owed.

I, Rufus, made this for my most dear father(-in-law)
Menogenes and for Menogenes' daughter Paula, who loved her husband until the end.

Viktor Schultze, Altchristliche Städte und Landschaften, II: Kleinasien, 1. Hälfte (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1922), p. 405, regards the inscription as anti-Christian, but I'm not convinced:

Die bewußte Gegensätzlichkeit gegen das Christentum tritt deutlich hervor; Anspielungen auf neutestamentliche Stellen sind unverkennbar, z. B. Matth. 6, 19 ff.; Luk. 12, 19 ff.; Jak. 5,5; 1.Tim. 3, 3; Tit. 3, 2 (ἄμαχος); 2. Kor. 11, 13 (δόλιος). Vor allem aber tritt die absichtliche Gegenüberstellung hervor in dem stark betonten ἐμαυτὸν πιστεύσας θεῷ, womit der Heide das Vertrauen auf eine göttliche Weltleitung auch für sich in Anspruch nimmt.

Likewise W.M. Ramsay, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Vol. I, Part II: West and West-Central Phrygia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), p. 477, so maybe I'm wrong:

The chief interest of the inscr. lies in the first ten lines, the composition of Menogenes himself. Menogenes Eustathes was an epicurean in philosophy, and the lines express his views on life, in a tone very similar to no. 232, and like it bearing the stamp of anti-Christian feeling. The Christian spirit which objected to free enjoyment of life for self and friends is stigmatized as 'death in life.'

---

Gonzalo Jerez Sánchez asks (in an email):

In Εὐσταθής shouldn't it be Εὐστάθης? Should it come from Εὐστάθιος οr directly from εὐσταθής, Gk personal names have usually recessive accent (cf. Φαῖδρος < φαιδρός, Λάμπρος < λαμπρός, in the very inscription Μηνογένης < μηνογενής).

On this tendency see Philomen Probert, Ancient Greek Accentuation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 298.

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 52:

Rawdon Crawley, though the only book which he studied was the Racing Calendar, and though his chief recollections of polite learning were connected with the floggings which he received at Eton in his early youth, had that decent and honest reverence for classical learning which all English gentlemen feel, and was glad to think that his son was to have a provision for life, perhaps, and a certain opportunity of becoming a scholar.

Id.:

He tried to look knowing over the Latin grammar when little Rawdon showed him what part of that work he was "in." "Stick to it, my boy," he said to him with much gravity, "there's nothing like a good classical education! Nothing!"

Stephen Vincent Benét, "The Last of the Legions," in his Selected Works, Vol. 2: Prose (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1942), pp. 430-444 (at 442):

When we were back in our billets, Agathocles spoke to me.

"The general is pleased with you," he said. "He saw that they tried to bribe you, but you were not bribed. If you had been bribed, he would have had your head."

"Do I care for that?" I said, a little wildly. "What matters one head or another? But if Rome falls, something ends."

He nodded soberly, without coughing. "It is true," he said. "You had nothing but an arch, a road, an army and a law. And yet a man might walk from the east to the west because of it — yes, and speak the same tongue all the way. I do not admire you, but you were a great people."

"But tell me," I said, "why does it end?"

He shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "Men build and they go on building. And then the dream is shaken — it is shaken to bits by the storm. Afterwards, there follow darkness and the howling peoples."

Thucydides 8.47.2 (tr. Charles Forster Smith):

For the Athenian soldiers at Samos perceived that he had great influence with Tissaphernes, partly because Alcibiades sent word to the most influential men among them to make mention of him to the best people and say that he wished to come home on condition of there being an oligarchy and not the villainous mob-rule that had banished him...

ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ᾔσθοντο αὐτὸν ἰσχύοντα παρ' αὐτῷ οἱ ἐν τῇ Σάμῳ Ἀθηναίων στρατιῶται, τὰ μὲν καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου προσπέμψαντος λόγους ἐς τοὺς δυνατωτάτους αὐτῶν ἄνδρας ὥστε μνησθῆναι περὶ αὐτοῦ ἐς τοὺς βελτίστους τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὅτι ἐπ' ὀλιγαρχίᾳ βούλεται καὶ οὐ πονηρίᾳ [οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ] τῇ αὐτὸν ἐκβαλούσῃ κατελθὼν...

οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ secl. van Herwerden

In his Greek text (Loeb Classical Library) Smith adopts van Herwerden's deletion of οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ, but in his translation he seems to include it ("villainous mob-rule," a sort of hendiadys for οὐ πονηρίᾳ οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ). I don't see the passage discussed in Karl Maurer, Interpolation in Thucydides (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995 = Mnemosyne, Suppl., 150), but see A.W. Gomme et al. ad loc. (vol. V, p. 107):

Many edd. follow Herwerden in deleting οὐδὲ δημοκρατίᾳ as a gloss, and the phrase is stronger without these words.

Pseudo-Heraclitus, Epistles 6.2 (tr. David R. Worley):

These men are impious, Amphidamas, because they pretend to skills they do not have and treat things they do not understand. They murder men, and in the name of science do a grave injustice to both nature and science. It is a disgrace to admit to ignorance, but it is a greater shame to claim knowledge when one in fact does not possess it.

οὗτοι ἀσεβοῦσιν, Ἀμφιδάμα, καταψευδόμενοι τεχνῶν ἃς οὐκ ἔχουσι, καὶ θεραπεύοντες ἃ μὴ ἴσασι, καὶ ἀποκτιννύντες ἀνθρώπους, δι' ὀνόματος τέχνης ἀδικοῦντες καὶ φύσιν καὶ τέχνην. αἰσχρόν ἐστιν ὁμολογεῖν ἄγνοιαν, αἴσχιον ἐπιστήμην οὐκ ἔχοντα.

The last sentence has 8 words in Greek, 25 in the English translation.

---

Thanks very much to Guillermo Almeida Arce for pointing out a typographical error in the Greek, which I fixed.

Excerpts from Robert Frost, "Build Soil—A Political Pastoral," in his Complete Poems (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 421-430:

I may be wrong, but, Tityrus, to me
The times seem revolutionary bad.

[....]

It's hard to tell which is the worse abhorrence
Whether it's persons pied or nations pied.

[....]

Let those possess the land and only those,
Who love it with a love so strong and stupid
That they may be abused and taken advantage of
And made fun of by business, law, and art,
They still hang on.

[....]

I bid you to a one-man revolution—
The only revolution that is coming.

[....]

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any.
Join the United States and join the family—
But not much in between unless a college.

Inscriptiones Graecae XIV 2130 (Rome, 2nd-3rd century A.D.), tr. John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), p. 148:

To the chthonic gods:
Be careful, as long as you live, how you are to be well buried,
And live as you would wish to live. For below you are able
Neither to light a fire nor to dine well.
I tell you this who has experienced all these things,
No one who has died is raised from here.

Θ(εοῖς) Κ(αταχθονίοις).
φρόντιζ', ἕως ζῇς, πῶς καλῶς ταφήσεε,
καὶ ζῆσον ὡς ζήσοις· κάτω γὰρ οὐκ ἔχις
οὐ πῦρ ἀνάψε, οὐδὲ διπνῆσε καλῶ[ς].
ἐγὼ λέγω σοι ταῦτα ἅπαντα πιράσας·
ἐντεῦθεν οὐθὶς ἀποθανὼν ἐγίρε[ται].

ἐγίρε[ται] suppl. Kiessling

ἀνάψε = ἀνάψαι, διπνῆσε = δειπνῆσαι.

Also in Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Vol. I: Grab-Epigramme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), p. 409 (number 1367), and Luigi Moretti, Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae, Vol. III (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia Antica, 1979), pp. 241–242 (number 1406; non vidi).

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 548 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth):

Long since have I found silence an antidote to harm.

πάλαι τὸ σιγᾶν φάρμακον βλάβης ἔχω.

Pseudo-Crates, Epistles 18 (tr. Ronald F. Hock):

Accustom yourselves to wash with cold water, to drink only water, to eat nothing that has not been earned by toil, to wear a cloak, and to make it a habit to sleep on the ground. Then the baths will never be closed to you, the vineyards and flocks fail, the fish shops and couch shops go broke, as they will to those who have learned how to wash with hot water, to drink wine, to eat without having toiled, to wear purple clothing, and to rest on a couch.

ἐθίζεσθε ψυχρῷ λούεσθαι καὶ πίνειν ὕδωρ καὶ ἐσθίειν μὴ ἀνιδρωτὶ καὶ ἀμπέχεσθαι τρίβωνα καὶ κατατρίβεσθαι ἐπὶ γῆς, καὶ οὐδέποτε ὑμῖν κλεισθήσεται τὰ βαλανεῖα, αἱ δ' ἄμπελοι καὶ τὰ πρόβατα ἀφορήσει καὶ τὰ ὀψοπώλια καὶ κλινοπώλια πενητεύσει ὥσπερ τοῖς μεμαθηκόσι θερμῷ μὲν λούεσθαι, πίνειν δ' οἶνον καὶ ἐσθίειν μὴ πονήσαντας καὶ ἀμπέχεσθαι ἁλουργῆ καὶ ἀναπαύεσθαι ἐπὶ κλίνης.

Note the close parallelism, e.g. ψυχρῷ λούεσθαι ... τὰ βαλανεῖα ... θερμῷ μὲν λούεσθαι, etc.

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, chapter 5 (Settembrini speaking; tr. James E. Woods):

"Analysis is good as a tool of enlightenment and civilization — to the extent that it shakes stupid preconceptions, quashes natural biases, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, to the extent that it liberates, refines, and humanizes — it makes slaves ripe for freedom. It is bad, very bad, to the extent that it prevents action, damages life at its roots, and is incapable of shaping it. Analysis can be very unappetizing, as unappetizing as death, to which it may very well be linked — a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy."

«Die Analyse ist gut als Werkzeug der Aufklärung und der Zivilisation, gut, insofern sie dumme Überzeugungen erschüttert, natürliche Vorurteile auflöst und die Autorität unterwühlt, gut, mit anderen Worten, indem sie befreit, verfeinert, vermenschlicht und Knechte reif macht zur Freiheit. Sie ist schlecht, sehr schlecht, insofern sie die Tat verhindert, das Leben an den Wurzeln schädigt, unfähig, es zu gestalten. Die Analyse kann eine sehr unappetitliche Sache sein, unappetitlich wie der Tod, zu dem sie denn doch wohl eigentlich gehören mag, — verwandt dem Grabe und seiner anrüchigen Anatomie . ..«

Inscriptiones Graecae XIV 2424 = Carmina Epigraphica Graeca 400 (Antipolis, 5th century B.C.), tr. Paul Friedländer and Herbert B. Hoffleit, Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), p. 43:

I am the Delighter, minister of the holy goddess Aphrodite;
to those who have placed me here may Cypris render joy.

Τέρπων εἰμὶ θεᾶς θεράπων σεμνῆς Ἀφροδίτης·
τοῖς δὲ καταστήσασι Κύπρις χάριν ἀνταποδοίη.

The stone, the so-called Galet de Terpon or Galet d'Antibes, from Jean-Claude Decourt, Inscriptions grecques de la France (Lyon: Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2004), Plate XVII, Figure 90: See Decourt pp. 104-108 (inscription number 84).

Another photograph, from the Musée d'Histoire et d'Archéologie d'Antibes: There is an excellent discussion of the inscription in William D. Furley, "Life in a line: a reading of dedicatory epigrams," in Manuel Baumbach et al., edd., Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 151-166 (at 156-159).

Anthony J. Marshall, "Symbols and Showmanship in Roman Public Life: The Fasces," Phoenix 38.2 (1984) 120-141 (at 138):

In Rome itself the strong feelings which the lower social orders focused upon the fasces may be traced in their group activity, our most reliable guide to the attitudes of the voiceless man in the street who falls below the social range reflected in literature. The smashing of a magistrate's fasces by a hostile mob determined to nullify his authority graphically demonstrates that ordinary Romans saw them as basic symbols of the authority set over them. The violence of such destruction may also indicate continuing resentment at these former instruments of patrician repression with their lingering potential for the act of execution. The fact that the rods were actually smashed in political riots rather than just stolen or defaced suggests also a popular feeling that it was only the spoiling of their practical effectiveness which would end the political power associated with them.<sup>76

76</sup> Asc. Corn. p. 58, ch. 51; Livy 2.55.9, 3.49.4; Cass. Dio 38.6.3. Cf. Mommsen, Staatsr. 1.377; Samter 2005; Kübler 511.

Livy 2.55.9 (tr. B.O. Foster):

The lictors were roughly handled and their rods were broken, while the consuls themselves were driven out of the Forum into the Curia, with no means of knowing how far Volero might use his victory.

violatis lictoribus, fascibus fractis, e foro in curiam compelluntur, incerti quatenus Volero exerceret victoriam.

Livy 3.49.4 (tr. B.O. Foster):

The decemvir's lictor now made a rush at Valerius and Horatius; his rods were broken by the mob.

Valerium Horatiumque lictor decemviri invadit: franguntur a multitudine fasces.

Dio Cassius 38.6.3 (tr. Earnest Cary):

But when he [Bibulus] appeared above and attempted to speak in opposition to Caesar he was thrust down the steps, his fasces were broken to pieces, and the tribunes as well as others received blows and wounds.

ὡς δὲ ἄνω τε ἐγένετο καὶ ἀντιλέγειν ἐπειρᾶτο, αὐτός τε κατὰ τῶν ἀναβασμῶν ἐώσθη καὶ αἱ ῥάβδοι αὐτοῦ συνετρίβησαν, πληγάς τε καὶ τραύματα ἄλλοι τε καὶ οἱ δήμαρχοι ἔλαβον.

Asconius, Commentary on Cicero, Pro Cornelio de maiestate 58c (tr. R.G. Lewis):

The consul C. Piso, on vehemently protesting that this was an outrage, and asserting that the tribunician right of veto was being subverted, was greeted with a torrent of abuse from the people. And when he ordered the arrest by his lictors of those who were shaking their fists at him, his fasces were broken and stones were hurled at the consul even from the furthest fringes of the contio.

quod cum improbe fieri C. Piso consul vehementer quereretur tollique tribuniciam intercessionem diceret, gravi convicio a populo exceptus est; et cum ille eos qui sibi intentabant manus prendi a lictore iussisset, fracti eius fasces sunt lapidesque etiam ex ultima contione in consulem iacti.

See T. Corey Brennan, The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 78-80.

Pseudo-Crates, Epistles 14 (tr. Ronald F. Hock):

Accustom yourselves to eat barley cake and to drink water, and do not taste fish and wine. For the latter, like the drugs of Circe, make old men bestial and young men effeminate.

ἐθίζεσθε ἐσθίειν μᾶζαν καὶ πίνειν ὕδωρ,  ἰχθύος δὲ καὶ οἴνου μὴ γεύεσθε· ταῦτα γὰρ τοὺς μὲν γέροντας ἀποθηριοῖ ὥσπερ τὰ παρὰ τῆς Κίρκης φάρμακα, τοὺς δὲ νέους ἀποθηλύνει.