Laudator Temporis Acti

Terence, Andria 804-805 (Crito and Mysis; tr. John Sargeaunt):

CRI And you others? how do you get on here? pretty well?

MYS So so, Sir: as the saying is, we do as we can since we can't as we would.

CRI quid vos? quo pacto hic? satine recte?

MYS                                                             nosne? sic:
ut quimus, aiunt, quando ut volumus non licet.

Sidney G. Ashmore on line 805:

A proverb, as aiunt (= "as the saying runs") shows. Cf. the fuller id quod aiunt and quod aiunt in Phorm. 506 and 768. Among the fragments of Menander (Mein. vol. iv. p. 84) the line appears with slight variation: ζῶμεν γὰρ οὐχ ὡς θέλομεν, ἀλλ ' ὡς δυνάμεθα; and among those of Caecilius are the words (Ribbeck, Com. Lat. Rel. p. 56), uiuas ut possis, quando non quia ut uelis.

In modern numbering this is Menander, fragment 47 Kassel and Austin.

Matthew 13:35 in Kenichi Tamoto, ed., The Macregol Gospels or The Rushworth Gospels. Edition of the Latin text with the Old English interlinear gloss transcribed from Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Auctarium D. 2. 19 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013), p. 43 (on fol. 22r): Relevant entries in Bosworth-Toller:

bealcan to emit, utter, pour out; eructare :-- Dæg ðam dæge bealceþ word dies diei eructat verbum, Ps. Spl. 18, 2. v. bealcettan.

bealcettan, belcettan, bealcan; p. te; pp. ted To belch, utter, send forth, emit; eructare, dicere, emittere :-- Swéte to bealcetenne pleasant to belch, Bt. 22, 1; Fox 76, 32. Bealcetteþ heorte mín word gód eructat cor meum verbum bonum, Ps. Spl. 44, 1. Bealcettaþ weleras míne lofsang eructabunt labia mea hymnum, Ps. Spl. 118, 171.

rocettan, roccettan; p. te To eructate, utter; eructare :-- Roketto ɫ bilketto forþ ða ðe áhýded wérun eructabo abscondita, Mt. Kmbl. Rush. 13, 35. Roccetteþ eructuat, Ps. Surt. 18, 3 : eructuavit, 44, 2. Rocetaþ eructabunt, 118, 171. Bylcetteþ, roccetteþ eructuat, i. a corde emittit, Wrt. Voc. ii. 144, 13. Bleów ɫ roccette ructabat, 96, 1.

Related post: I Will Belch Forth Things That Have Been Hidden.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Chaeremon, fragment 21 (tr. Thomas Sims):

There is nothing among mankind that
is not found out in time by those who search for it.

οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις, ὅ τι
οὐκ ἐν χρόνῳ ζητοῦσι γ’ ἐξευρίσκεται.

Terence, Heauton Timorumenos 675 (tr. John Barsby):

There's nothing so hard to find that it can't be tracked down if you look for it.

nil tam difficilest quin quaerendo investigari possiet.

---

Looking further, I find the following collection of parallels in A.C. Pearson, ed., The Fragments of Sophocles, Vol. III (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1917), p. 56:

Homer, Odyssey 7.307 (tr. Emily Wilson):

We humans on this earth / are apt to be suspicious.

δύσζηλοι γάρ τ᾽ εἰμὲν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων.

Cambridge Greek Lexicon s.v. δύσζηλος, sense 1:

(of persons) perh., apt to put a bad construction on things, suspicious Od.

A.T. Murray translates δύσζηλοι as quick to anger. Likewise W. Walter Merry and James Riddell in their commentary. The word occurs only here in Homer.

A.F Garvie ad loc.:

The epithet does not become common until late Greek. Even ζῆλος and ζηλόω are not used in Il. or Od. LSJ translate 'exceeding jealous', which corresponds with the meaning of ζῆλος (-όω) after H.; cf. h. Dem. 168, 223, h. Ap. 100. But jealousy hardly fits the context of Alcinous' anger at his daughter's breach of propriety. If ζηλόω and φθονέω (for which see 6.68n.) are already synonymous, 'grudging' is a better translation. Cf. 5.118 ζηλήμονες, the only other occurrence in H. of a word from this family, where Calypso complains that the gods grudge (ἀγάασσθε) that goddesses should sleep with men. Merry and Riddell explain '(-ζέω), quick to anger, touchy', and it may have been thus understood by A.R. 4.1089 λίην γὰρ δύσζηλοι ἑαῖς ἐπὶ παισὶ τοκῆες. But the derivation from ζέω, 'boil', 'seethe', is dubious.

William Billings (1746-1800), "Chester," The Singing Master's Assistant, or, Key to Practical Music (Boston: Draper and Folsom, 1778), number 12 (click once or twice to enlarge): 1.
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.

2.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join’d,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin’d.

3.
When God inspir’d us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc’d,
Their ships were Shatter’d in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.

4.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet’rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen’rals yield to beardless Boys.

5.
What grateful Off’ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev’ry Chord.

---

A spirited rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7S_07E-9CA.

Psalms 78:2, from https://biblehub.com/text/psalms/78-2.htm: Brown-Driver-Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1953; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 615, s.v. נָבַע, sense 3 (with Psalm 78:2 listed under this meaning on p. 616):

fig., usually of speech, pour forth, emit, belch forth.

LXX Ps 77(78):2:

Terence, Andria 425-427 (tr. John Barsby):

You can't trust anyone in anything!
It's quite true what they say:
every man looks to his own interest rather than his neighbour's.

nullane in re esse quoiquam homini fidem!
verum illud verbumst, volgo quod dici solet,
omnis sibi malle melius esse quam alteri.

Euripides, Medea 86 (tr. David Kovacs):

Each man loves himself more than his neighbor.

πᾶς τις αὑτὸν τοῦ πέλας μᾶλλον φιλεῖ.

Menandri Sententiae 814, p. 80 Jaekel (my translation):

No one loves another more than himself.

φιλεῖ δ ̓ ἑαυτοῦ πλεῖον οὐδεὶς οὐδένα.

See W.A. Heidel, "Charity That Begins at Home," American Journal of Philology 30.2 (1909) 196-198, to which I owe the Greek parallels. See also P.R. Coleman-Norton, "Philosophical Aspects of Early Roman Drama," Classical Philology 31.4 (October, 1936) 320-337 (self-interest on p. 333).

Related posts:

• Self-Love
• Looking Out for Number One

Joseph Edward Harry (1863-1949), Greek Tragedy: Emendations, Interpretations and Critical Notes, Vol. I: Aeschylus and Sophocles (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933), p. xii:

The greatest encouragement I received from Gilbert Murray and from my friends and colleagues at the Sorbonne—Croiset, Girard, and Haussoullier. To their kind words and heartening letters I owe more than to anything else, for they stimulated me to continue in the delicate but gigantic task of constituting the text of the "Great Three" and of publishing an annotated edition of the supreme dramatic artists of the world. To do this properly, I was obliged to transcribe the thirty-three plays in my own handwriting, so as to become more familiar with the style, syntax, and vocabulary of each, and to leave ample space for my corrections of the text and for marginal notes. That Demosthenes copied Thucydides eight times is probably fiction; but we know that Charles Nodier copied the whole of Rabelais three times in manuscript, in order to learn something about the use of his native tongue.

Id., p. xv:

The sharp criticism of those working in the same field and the biting sarcasm, not to say snappishness, in which a few of the viri docti eique haud ignobiles in England and Germany, and sometimes in America, are wont to indulge, is out of place in the sphere of classical scholarship; it savors too much of the savants that Rabelais liked to satirize: "Dost thou think thou'rt in the wilderness of your foolish university, wrangling and bawling among the idle wandering searchers and hunters after truth?" Courage of conviction is not incompatible with urbanity of good breeding.

Augustine, Sermons 112.7 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 647; tr. Edmund Hill, with his notes):

We for our part have perceived nothing about the Lord at all through these outer senses; we have heard with our hearing, and believed with our hearts;¹⁵ and what we have heard didn't come from his own mouth but from the mouths of his preachers, from the mouths of those who were already dining with him, and inviting us to join them by belching their appreciation.¹⁶

15. See Rom 10:8.17.

16. So if Augustine liked to think of his own preaching as a kind of belching, who are we to demur?

Nos nihil istis exterioribus sensibus a Domino percepimus; auditu audivimus, corde credidimus; et ipsum auditum non ab illius ore, sed ab ore praedicatorum eius, ab ore illorum qui iam cœnabant et nos ructando invitabant.

Cf. LXX Ps. 44(45).1 ἐξηρεύξατο ἡ καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαθόν (Vulg. eructavit cor meum verbum bonum), and Alexander Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 128:

eruct(u)o (= κατασκεδάννυμι), give forth, bring forth; utter, declare.

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, s.v. eructo (5,2.827): Related posts:

• Belching of John the Evangelist
• A Sign of Appreciation

Sophocles, Electra 395-396 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):

ELECTRA
Do not try to teach me to be disloyal to my own!
CHRYSOTHEMIS
It is not that that I am trying to teach you, but to yield to those in power.

ΗΛΕΚΤΡΑ
μή μ᾿ ἐκδίδασκε τοῖς φίλοις εἶναι κακήν.
ΧΡΥΣΟΘΕΜΙΣ
ἀλλ᾿ οὐ διδάσκω· τοῖς κρατοῦσι δ᾿ εἰκαθεῖν.

396 εἰκαθεῖν Elmsley: εἰκάθειν codd.

Note the compound/simplex verbal iteration (ἐκδίδασκε...διδάσκω), unmentioned by P.J. Finglass and J.C. Kamerbeek in their commentaries. See

• Calvert Watkins, "An Indo-European Construction in Greek and Latin," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 (1966) 115-119
• Robert Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism: A Reader (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 77-85
• Robert Renehan, Studies in Greek Texts: Critical Observations to Homer, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes and other Authors (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 11-27
• James Noel Adams, "Iteration of Compound Verb with Simplex in Latin Prose," Eikasmos 3 (1992) 295-298
• James Diggle, Euripidea: Collected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 84, n. 64 (on Euripides' Suppliant Women 811-812)
• Jeffrey Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; rpt. 2001), pp. 438-443

Homer, Odyssey 7.112-132 (tr. A.T. Murray):

But without the courtyard, hard by the door, is a great orchard
of four acres, and a hedge runs about it on either side.
Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant,
pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit,         115
and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives.
Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails
in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and ever
does the west wind, as it blows, quicken to life some fruits, and ripen others;
pear upon pear waxes ripe, apple upon apple,         120
cluster upon cluster, and fig upon fig.
There, too, is his fruitful vineyard planted,
one part of which, a warm spot on level ground,
is being dried in the sun, while other grapes men are gathering,
and others, too, they are treading; but in front are unripe grapes        125
that are shedding the blossom, and others that are turning purple.
There again, by the last row of the vines, grow trim garden beds
of every sort, blooming the year through,
and therein are two springs, one of which sends its water throughout all the garden, while the other, over against it, flows beneath the threshold of the court         130
toward the high house; from this the townsfolk drew their water.
Such were the glorious gifts of the gods in the palace of Alcinous.

ἔκτοσθεν δ᾽ αὐλῆς μέγας ὄρχατος ἄγχι θυράων
τετράγυος· περὶ δ᾽ ἕρκος ἐλήλαται ἀμφοτέρωθεν.
ἔνθα δὲ δένδρεα μακρὰ πεφύκασι τηλεθόωντα,
ὄγχναι καὶ ῥοιαὶ καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι        115
συκέαι τε γλυκεραὶ καὶ ἐλαῖαι τηλεθόωσαι.
τάων οὔ ποτε καρπὸς ἀπόλλυται οὐδ᾽ ἀπολείπει
χείματος οὐδὲ θέρευς, ἐπετήσιος· ἀλλὰ μάλ᾽ αἰεὶ
Ζεφυρίη πνείουσα τὰ μὲν φύει, ἄλλα δὲ πέσσει.
ὄγχνη ἐπ᾽ ὄγχνῃ γηράσκει, μῆλον δ᾽ ἐπὶ μήλῳ,        120
αὐτὰρ ἐπὶ σταφυλῇ σταφυλή, σῦκον δ᾽ ἐπὶ σύκῳ.
ἔνθα δέ οἱ πολύκαρπος ἀλωὴ ἐρρίζωται,
τῆς ἕτερον μὲν θειλόπεδον λευρῷ ἐνὶ χώρῳ
τέρσεται ἠελίῳ, ἑτέρας δ᾽ ἄρα τε τρυγόωσιν,
ἄλλας δὲ τραπέουσι· πάροιθε δέ τ᾽ ὄμφακές εἰσιν        125
ἄνθος ἀφιεῖσαι, ἕτεραι δ᾽ ὑποπερκάζουσιν.
ἔνθα δὲ κοσμηταὶ πρασιαὶ παρὰ νείατον ὄρχον
παντοῖαι πεφύασιν, ἐπηετανὸν γανόωσαι·
ἐν δὲ δύω κρῆναι ἡ μέν τ᾽ ἀνὰ κῆπον ἅπαντα
σκίδναται, ἡ δ᾽ ἑτέρωθεν ὑπ᾽ αὐλῆς οὐδὸν ἵησι        130
πρὸς δόμον ὑψηλόν, ὅθεν ὑδρεύοντο πολῖται.
τοῖ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐν Ἀλκινόοιο θεῶν ἔσαν ἀγλαὰ δῶρα.

Joshua T. Katz, "The importance of Homer," The New Criterion (February 2024):

I believe in reading original texts when possible—please, go learn Greek and Latin and other foreign languages if you don't already know them—but there is no doubt that a good translation, with just the right turn of phrase, can be illuminating even to someone who does not need it.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 36-39 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth):

For the rest I'm dumb; a great ox stands upon my tongue—yet the house itself, could it but speak, might tell a tale full plain; since, for my part, of mine own choice I have words for such as know, and to those who know not I've lost my memory.

τὰ δ' ἀλλὰ σιγῶ· βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ μέγας
βέβηκεν· οἶκος δ' αὐτός, εἰ φθογγὴν λάβοι,
σαφέστατ' ἂν λέξειεν· ὡς ἑκὼν ἐγὼ
μαθοῦσιν αὐδῶ κοὐ μαθοῦσι λήθομαι.

John Ferguson, A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972; rpt. 1973), pp. 76-77:

He says, in picturesque language (36), "There's an ox on my tongue." He means, as the Greek commentator Zenobius tells us, that, as money talks, so also money (stamped with the image of the ox that represented wealth, as the Latin pecunia) can buy silence.

John Ferguson, Aeschylus, The Oresteia (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1979), p. 26:

A Greek commentator tells us that the ox signifies money. stamped with the image of the ox which represented wealth, i.e. money makes him hold his tongue. The English word 'pecuniary' comes from a Latin word of similar derivation. (I personally trust the Greek commentator against those modern scholars who reject his evidence and think that it is a homely proverb.)

In his sneer against "modern scholars" Ferguson probably had in mind Eduard Fraenkel, who in his commentary on Agamemnon (vol. II, p. 23) said:

The attempt at an explanation (βοῦς = money) found in Pollux 9.61, in the Paroemiographi (Diogenianus 3.48, i.223 Leutsch-Schneidcwin; cf. the passage quoted in their note), in Hesychius s.v. βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσηι (in the second place), and in Schol. BD on Homer Φ 79, is fatuous.

Likewise Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. , sense VIII:

wrongly expld. by Zen. 2.70, etc., of bribery with coins bearing type of ox.

Related post: An Ox on My Tongue.

Hat tip: Carl-Robert Boström.

Roger Shattuck, "Starting from Scratch," The American Scholar 69.4 (Autumn 2000) 47-56 (at 51-52):

It has taken me forty-plus years of teaching to discover that the best way for me to begin a literature course, undergraduate or graduate, is to have the students copy a passage (or take it from dictation), read it aloud, paraphrase it, and then read the paraphrase aloud.

Homer, Odyssey 7.32-33 (tr. A.T. Murray):

For the men here endure not stranger-folk,
nor do they give kindly welcome to him who comes from another land.

οὐ γὰρ ξείνους οἵδε μάλ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἀνέχονται,
οὐδ᾽ ἀγαπαζόμενοι φιλέουσ᾽ ὅς κ᾽ ἄλλοθεν ἔλθῃ.

Augustine, Sermons 112.3 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, cols. 644-645; tr. Edmund Hill):

Now there are people, far removed from the faith, given to earthly concerns, of a materialistic cast of mind; they refuse to believe anything but what they can perceive with these five senses of the body. Indeed it is in its senses that they posit the standards for all truth. "I," he says, "don't believe anything except what I can see. There you have the sum of my knowledge, there you have my science. It's white, it's black. It's round, it's square, it's this or that color; I perceive it, I know it, I grasp it; nature herself teaches me. It's a voice, my senses tell me it's a voice. It sings well, sings badly, is pleasant, is hoarse. I perceive it, I know it, it has reached me. It smells nice, smells nasty; I sense it, I know it. This is sweet, this is bitter, this salty, this insipid; what more you can tell me, I don't know. I perceive by touch what is hard, what is soft, what is smooth, what is rough, what's hot, what's cold. What more are you going to show me?"

Sunt autem homines remoti a fide, terrenis dediti, carnalibus occupati; nolunt credere aliquid, nisi quod isto sensu corporis quinquepartito percipiunt. In eius vero sensibus totius veritatis sibi regulas ponunt. Non, inquit, credo ego, nisi quod video; ecce quod novi, ecce quod scio. Album est, nigrum est, rotundum est, quadrum est, sic vel sic coloratum est; novi, scio, teneo; natura ipsa me docet. Non cogor credere, quod mihi non potest ostendere. Vox est: sentio, quia vox est; bene cantat, male cantat, suavis est, raucus est; novi, scio, pervenit ad me. Bene olet, male olet: sentio, scio. Hoc dulce est, hoc amarum; hoc salsum, hoc fatuum est; quid mihi plus dicas, nescio. Tangendo novi, quid durum sit, quid molle sit, quid lene sit, quid asperum sit, quid caleat, quid frigeat; quid mihi plus demonstraturus es?

Related post: No, Plato, No.

James Hankins, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023), p. 34, with note on p. 354:

Around this time, when he was still living in Tranchedini’s villa, Patrizi wrote a poem expressing his desire for a quiet life and an end to political involvements. The poem, entitled “De vita quieta,” was dedicated to Goro Lolli, now Pius II’s private secretary.

Este procul, miserae ciuilis praelia rixae,
urbibus exitium magnis extremaque labes!
Sit procul ambitio rabidaeque insomnia mentis,
dum studet optatos tribuat plebecula fasces
atque soporiferae per saeua silentia noctis
murmure sollicito repetit discrimina rerum.

Away with the strife of wretched civic quarrels,
The ultimate corruption and ruin of great cities!
Away with ambition and the nightmares of a rabid mind
Scheming for the rabble to give it the power it longs for,
And through the fierce stillness of sleep-bearing night
Seeks crisis after crisis, driven by their agitated cries.⁵⁰

50. Poem. 3.3; the text is in Avesani 1968, 63.

Avesani = Avesani, Rino. 1968. “Epaeneticorum ad Pium II Pont: Max. libri V.” In Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Papa Pio II: Atti del convegno per il quinto centenario della morte, e altri scritti, edited by Domenico Maffei, 15–97. Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati.

James J. O'Donnell, Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace (1998; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 4-5:

Jerome once ran across a Greek word in a text, and wrote to a friend that he remembered seeing that word only twice elsewhere, once in scripture, once in an apocryphal religious work. As it happens, he was correct: the three passages he knew are the only places (still) where we know that word to have been used in the written legacy of Greek literature. Hearing that story, I marvel at the powers of Jerome's memory, knowing that as a modern scholar with some similar interests in scripture and translation, I would never dare to say such a thing. I attribute this to the distractedness of my education, as well as my inability to read and retain everything that I would like to, but, at bottom, I have a suspicion that in those days people trained their memories to be better than ours are and that weakling reliance on the printed word has sapped our powers of memory.

Another way of looking at it is to say that Jerome's advantage over me lies in the emptiness of his textual memory, not its fullness. He did not have whole ranges of synapses cluttered with lyrics from popular songs of thirty years ago, and other ranges filled with the commands needed to use word processing software already a decade old and obsolete, nor yet again banks of memory taken up with a flood of paperback fiction and nonfiction read on trains, in bed, and on idle Sunday afternoons. If you have read many fewer words in your life, and perhaps read those fewer words over and over again, surely it is easier to remember more of them.

William M. Calder III, "C.M. Bowra on W.S. Barrett: An Unpublished Testimonium," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005) 213–217, at n. 6 on p. 215, quoting a remark by Joshua Whatmough to his students in a class on Greek dialectal inscriptions:

Forgive me if I do not remember your names. To remember them would cause me to forget something more important.

Sophocles, Electra 339-340 (Chrysothemis to her sister Electra; tr. Richard C. Jebb):

But if I am to live in freedom, our rulers must be obeyed in all things.

                                       εἰ δ᾽ ἐλευθέραν με δεῖ
ζῆν, τῶν κρατούντων ἐστὶ πάντ᾽ ἀκουστέα.

J.C. Kamerbeek ad loc.:

ἐλευθέραν implies that in her opinion Electra lives the life of a δούλη (which outwardly she does); her notion of ἐλευθερία is limited to the possibility of enjoying the material advantages of a princess.

Cf. Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.1 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.

ἐλεύθερός ἐστιν ὁ ζῶν ὡς βούλεται, ὃν οὔτ᾽ ἀναγκάσαι ἔστιν οὔτε κωλῦσαι οὔτε βιάσασθαι, οὗ αἱ ὁρμαὶ ἀνεμπόδιστοι, αἱ ὀρέξεις ἐπιτευκτικαί, αἱ ἐκκλίσεις ἀπερίπτωτοι.

P.J. Finglass on Chrysothemis' words:

Augustine, Sermons 109.1 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 636; tr. Edmund Hill):

We are at constant risk from accidents. We would have less to fear from accidents if we were made of glass. What could be more fragile than a glass vessel? And yet it can be preserved and last for centuries. Glass, after all, even though it is liable to accidents, doesn't have to fear old age and fever. So we are even more fragile and weak; because on the one hand our fragility is threatened every day by the accidents which never stop happening in human affairs; and on the other hand, even if no accidents occur, time marches on; you may avoid a fatal blow, will you avoid your final exit? You may avoid things happening to you from without, can you fend off what starts from within? In a word, now your innards may breed tapeworms, now any kind of disease may suddenly attack you; finally, however long you may be spared, old age comes along eventually, and there is nowhere to shunt it off to.

Inter casus ambulamus. Si vitrei essemus, minus casus timeremus. Quid fragilius vase vitreo? Et tamen servatur, et durat per saecula. Etsi enim casus vitreo vasi timentur, senectus ei et febris non timetur. Nos ergo fragiliores et infirmiores sumus: quia et casus omnes qui non cessant in rebus humanis, fragilitate utique nostra quotidie formidamus; et si ipsi casus non accedant, tempus ambulat: vitat homo ictum, numquid vitat exitum? vitat quae extrinsecus eveniunt, numquid quod intus nascitur pellitur? Denique nunc lumbricos gignunt interiora, nunc morbus quilibet subito occupat: postremo quantumvis homini parcatur, novissime senectus cum venerit, non est quo differatur.

Roman glass cup (Turin, Museo di Antichità, no. 3302)