Laudator Temporis Acti

Finally, because Hilarion found that one of the brothers who lived about five miles away from him was excessively careful and anxious in tending his little garden and had saved a little money, he had driven him from his sight. The brother wanted to be reconciled with the old man and so he came often to the brothers, especially to Hesychius, of whom Hilarion was very fond. One day, then, he brought with him a basket of green peas just as they were in their pods. Hesychius placed the basket on the table in the evening, but the old man cried out, saying that he could not bear the smell, and asked where it came from. When Hesychius answered that a brother had brought the monks the first fruits of his little garden, Hilarion said, 'Do you not notice this foul smell and the stink of greed in these peas? Throw them to the cattle, throw them to the brute animals, and see whether they will eat them.' When Hesychius put them in the manger as he had been told, the cattle were terrified and mooed more loudly than usual; they broke the ropes tethering them and stampeded off in all directions. For the old man had a spiritual gift which enabled him, from the smell of bodies or clothes or other things anyone had touched, to recognize which demon or vice was holding that person in its grip.

Denique unum de fratribus in quinto fere a se milliario manentem, quia comperiebat hortuli sui nimis cautum timidumque custodem, et pauxillum habere nummorum, ab oculis abegerat. Qui volens sibi reconciliari senem, frequenter veniebat ad fratres, et maxime ad Hesychium, quo ille vehementissime delectabatur. Quadam igitur die ciceris fascem virentis, sicut in herbis erat detulit. Quem cum Hesychius posuisset in mensa ad vesperum, exclamavit senex, se putorem ejus ferre non posse, simulque unde esset rogavit. Respondente autem Hesychio, quod frater quidam primitias ageli sui fratribus detulisset. Non sentis, inquit, putorem teterrimum, et in cicere fœtere avaritiam? Mitte bubus, mitte brutis animalibus, et vide an comedant. Quod cum ille juxta præceptum in præsepe posuisset, exterriti boves et plus solito mugientes, ruptis vinculis in diversa fugerunt. Habebat enim senex hanc gratiam, ut ex odore corporum vestiumque, et earum rerum quas quis tetigerat, sciret cui dæmoni, vel cui vitio subjaceret.

The Fathers were profoundly moved by the vicissitudes of human fortune, considering how that great and opulent people, famed for its luxury and pride, of whom a little while before its neighbours had sought assistance, was become so broken in spirit as to yield itself up with all its possessions to the dominion of another.

commoti patres vice fortunarum humanarum, si ille praepotens opibus populus, luxuria superbiaque clarus, a quo paulo ante auxilium finitimi petissent adeo infractos gereret animos ut se ipse suaque omnia potestatis alienae faceret.

Art was their great subject, and I am afraid they found me pretty heavy going. It was their fashion never to admire anything that was obviously beautiful, like a sunset or a pretty woman, but to find surprising loveliness in things which I thought hideous.

I’ve been naive enough to fall for the blurb accompanying “une nouvelle édition des Essais (Bordeaux: Robert Laffont, 2019)… établie par Bernard Combeaud”, the text of which is “non pas ‘modernisée' et encore moins ‘traiduite’ en français moderne mais rajeunie et refraîchie, pour rendre enfin accessible … etc.’. Mendacious tosh. I loathe the sort of nannying editors that, to take a random sample, substitutes ‘vaillance’ for the ‘vertu’ the author wrote. A footnote would do, or an unobtrusive glossary such as furnish Chaucer editions, but tinkering and tampering with Montaigne’s text is beyond the pale. We don’t do the same with Francis Bacon as far as I know, and who’s afraid of the odd lexical puzzle, or a preconsonantal <s> or <c> lost in Modern French orthography? Anathema sit.

Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only nervousness, it is also a kind of wickedness. Such people come to no good. I have three of them now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor.

And, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? Why the greatest personages stammer or have St. Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you. It is the punishment of their intellectual pride, than which no sin is more offensive to the angels.

By gods and heroes and your own fathers, whoever you happen to be who possesses this land now and whoever will possess it later and everyone coming here, do not ever ruin the building of this monument or the stones or the mound or the columns or the statues over them; whoever disturbs any body of the ones resting in it or destroys any part of the monument either by having demolished or shattered or knocked it off, or having obliterated any of the letters inscribed on it, may his fatherland not be a home to him, may earth not bear fruit, may sea not be sailed, may women not give birth naturally, but may every evil man perish evilly, both himself root and branch and his children's children and his race and name and house's hearth and fathers' graves, with [these] pursuing and driving him: Helios who looks upon all things, and Olympian Zeus, and Pluto, and Demeter's daughter, and the hounds of Artemis Hecate, and the Furies, and Daeira, and Chthonian Hermes, and Imprecation eldest of spirits, and as many other gods as have care and consideration for good souls; the same curse [is] also upon the first person or persons, whoever commands another or initiates a resolution or recommends a resolution or assists with hands to disturb or take down any of these things; but to the one who guards over the place and honors and strengthens the ordinances, to him be many things and good things, both to himself and his fatherland and his house and his memory hereafter and his descendants.

πρὸς θεῶν καὶ ἡρῴων τῶν τε σεαυτοῦ πατέρων, ὅστις ὢν τυγχάνεις ὁ τὸν χῶρον τοῦτον νῦν τε ἔχων καὶ ὅστις ἔπειτα ἕξεις καὶ πᾶς ὁ δεῦρο ἰών, μή ποτε λυμήνῃ τοῦδε τοῦ σήματος ἢ τῇ δωμήσει τῶν λίθων ἢ τ̣ῶ χώματι τοῖς τε κίοσιν καὶ τοῖς ἐπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνδριᾶσιν· ὅστις δὲ ἢ σῶμα κεινήσειέ τι τῶν ἐν αὐτῶι κειμένων ἢ καθέλοι τι συνχέας ἢ συνθραύσας ἢ ἀποκρούσας τοῦ μνήματος ἢ ἐκκολάψας τι τῶν ἐπιγραμμάτων, τούτωι μὴ πατρὶς οἰκοῖτο, μὴ γῆ καρπὸν ἐκφέροι, μὴ πλέοιτο θάλασσα, μὴ γυναῖκες τίκτοιεν κατὰ φύσιν, κακὸς δὲ κακῶς ἀπόλοιτο πᾶς τε αὐτὸς πρόριζος καὶ παῖδες παίδων καὶ γένος καὶ ὄνομα καὶ οἴκου ἑστία καὶ τάφοι πατέρων, μετιόντων αὐτὸν καὶ ἐλαυνόντων Ἡλίου τε τοῦ πάντα ἐφορῶντος καὶ Διὸς Ὀλυμπίου, Πλούτωνός τε καὶ τῆς Δήμητρος Κόρης, τῶν τε Ἀρτέμιδος Ἑκάτης κυνῶν Ἐρινύων τε καὶ Δαείρας καὶ Ἑρμοῦ Χθονίου καὶ Ἀρᾶς τῆς πρεσβυτάτης δαιμόνων, ὁπόσοις τε ἄλλοις θεῶν ἐπιμέλειά τε καὶ φροντὶς ψυχῶν ἀγαθῶν· καὶ ἐπὶ πρώτωι δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ πρώτοις ἡ αὐτὴ ἀρὰ ὅστις ἢ ἑτέρωι προστάξειεν ἢ γνώμης ἄρξειεν ἢ γνώμηι συμβάλοιτο ἢ χερσὶν ὑπουργήσειεν κεινηθῆναί τι τούτων ἢ καθαιρεθῆναι· τῶι δὲ κατὰ χώραν φυλάττοντι καὶ τιμῶντι τὰ νενομισμένα καὶ αὔξοντι, πολλὰ καὶ ἀγαθὰ εἶναι τούτωι καὶ αὐτῶι καὶ πατρίδι καὶ οἴκωι καὶ τῆι ἔπειτα μνήμηι καὶ ἐκγόνοις.

I never suffered a difficult or corrupt passage to escape till I had viewed it in every light of which it was susceptible; though often disappointed, I always consulted the most learned of ingenious commentators...

I understood what a precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly and comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The freedom of an acre of her soil was cheaply bought by the blood of the best of us.

You will hear everything you regard as sacred laughed at and condemned, and every kind of nauseous folly acclaimed, and you must hold your tongue and pretend to agree.

[11] Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? [12] Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

[11] μήτι ἡ πηγὴ ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς ὀπῆς βρύει τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ τὸ πικρόν; [12] μὴ δύναται, ἀδελφοί μου, συκῆ ἐλαίας ποιῆσαι ἢ ἄμπελος σῦκα; οὔτε ἁλυκὸν γλυκὺ ποιῆσαι ὕδωρ.

12 οὕτως οὐδεμια πηγὴ ἁλυκὸν καὶ RP

Hence, good does not spring from evil, any more than figs grow from olive-trees. Things which grow correspond to their seed; and goods cannot depart from their class. As that which is honourable does not grow from that which is base, so neither does good grow from evil.

non nascitur itaque ex malo bonum, non magis quam ficus ex olea. ad semen nata respondent, bona degenerare non possunt. quemadmodum ex turpi honestum non nascitur, ita ne ex malo quidem bonum.

For how can a vine be moved to act, not like a vine, but like an olive, or again an olive to act, not like an olive, but like a vine? It is impossible, inconceivable.

πῶς γὰρ δύναται ἄμπελος μὴ ἀμπελικῶς κινεῖσθαι, ἀλλ' ἐλαικῶς, ἢ ἐλαία πάλιν μὴ ἐλαικῶς, ἀλλ' ἀμπελικῶς; ἀμήχανον, ἀδιανόητον.

Cicero in Latin and Xenophon in Greek are indeed the two ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar, not only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable lessons which may be applied almost to every situation of public and private life. Cicero's epistles may in particular afford the models of every form of correspondence, from the careless effusions of tenderness and friendship to the well-guarded declaration of discreet and dignified resentment.

I have noticed wherever I have been that in proportion as men are remote and have little to distract them, in that proportion they produce a great crop of peculiar local names for every stream, reach, tuft, hummock, glen, copse, and gully for miles around; and often when I have lost my way and asked it of a peasant in some lonely part I have grown impatient as he wandered on about "leaving on your left the stone we call the Nuggin, and bearing round what some call Holy Dyke till you come to what they call Mary's Ferry" . . . and so forth. Longshoremen and the riparian inhabitants of dreadful and lonely rivers near the sea have just such a habit, and I have in my mind's eye now a short stretch of tidal water in which there are but five shoals, yet they all have names, and are called "The House, the Knowle, Goodman's Plot, Mall, and the Patch."

"Why are you standing there, my men?" he exclaimed. "You have no Latin or Sabine foe to deal with, whom you may overcome in fight and transform from an enemy into an ally; we have drawn the sword against wild beasts, and we must have their blood or yield them ours."

"quid stas, miles?" inquit; "non cum Latino Sabinoque hoste res est, quem victum armis socium ex hoste facias; in beluas strinximus ferrum; hauriendus aut dandus est sanguis."

Peoples pass on,
names fade away,
dark oblivion spreads its night-enfolding wings
over whole generations.

Völker verrauschen,
Namen verklingen,
Finstre Vergessenheit
Breitet die dunkelnachtenden Schwingen
Über ganzen Geschlechtern aus.

In my French and Latin translations I adopted an excellent method, which from my own success I would recommend to the imitation of students. I chose some classic writer, such as Cicero and Vertot, the most approved for purity and elegance of style. I translated, for instance, an epistle of Cicero into French, and after throwing it aside till the words and phrases were obliterated from my memory, I re-translated my French into such Latin as I could find, and then compared each sentence of my imperfect version with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman orator. A similar experiment was made on some pages of the Revolutions of Vertot; I turned them into Latin, returned them after a sufficient interval into my own French, and again scrutinized the resemblance or dissimilitude of the copy and the original. By degrees I was less ashamed, by degrees I was more satisfied with myself, and I persevered in the practice of these double translations, which filled several books, till I had acquired the knowledge of both idioms, and the command at least of a correct style.

Eunuchs are regularly described with a rather extensive language of negation that defines them in terms of what they are not. These adjectives of negation are readily apparent in Greek because they all begin with the alpha privative prefix. Eunuchs are beardless (ἀγένειος), low-born (ἀγεννής), fruitless or unable to bear fruit (ἄκαρπος), unmanly (ἄνανδρας  [sic, read ἄνανδρος]), ignorant of war (ἀπειροπόλεμος), not working (ἀργός or ἀεργός), sickly (ἀσθενής), unsuckled or unweaned (ἄθηλος), unwilling to share (ἀμετάδοτος), not gentle, cruel (ἀπηνής), insatiable (ἀπροσκορής), dishonored (ἄτιμος), unworthy (ἄχρηστος). Theophylaktos of Ohrid is aware of this negative rhetoric and specifically lists negative charges leveled against eunuchs. They are labeled as ill-omened (ἀπαίσιος οἰωνός), disorderly (ἄκοσμος), undignified (ἄσεμνος), and unsociable (ἀκοινώνητος).

εἰκότως οὖν ἄθηλοι, ἄνανδροι [cod. al. ἄνανδρες], ἀνδρόγυνοι, σιδηροκατάδικοι καὶ γυναικομανεῖς προσηγορεύθησαν.

Labels: typographical and other errors

She maintains a fervent belief that no one can possibly function well in modern society without learning Old English.

And if there be need also of witnesses, slaves will not stand forth, nor any disreputable and utterly accursed race of eunuchs,—yes, I mean just that—a race, neither feminine nor masculine, woman-mad, envious, of evil wage, quick to anger, effeminate, slaves to the belly, money-mad, coarse, grumbling about their dinner, fickle, stingy, ready to accept anything, disgusting, crazed, jealous—and yet why say more?—at their very birth doomed to the knife! How then can these possess true judgment, whose very feet are twisted? They are chaste without reward—thanks to the knife; and they rave with passion without fruition—thanks to their own lewdness.

εἰ δὲ καὶ μαρτύρων χρεία, οὐ δοῦλοι στήσονται, οὐδὲ εὐνούχων γένος ἄτιμον καὶ πανώλεθρον· τοῦτο δὴ τοῦτο, ἄθηλυ, ἄνανδρον, γυναικομανές, ἐπίζηλον, κακόμισθον, ὀξύθυμον, θηλυδριῶδες, γαστρίδουλον, χρυσομανές, ἀπηνές, κλαυσίδειπνον, εὐμετάβλητον, ἀμετάδοτον, πάνδοχον, ἀπροσκορές, μανικὸν καὶ ζηλότυπον· καὶ τί γὰρ ἔτι εἰπεῖν; σὺν αὐτῇ τῇ γενέσει σιδηροκατάδικον. πῶς οὖν τούτων γνώμη ὀρθή, ὧν καὶ οἱ πόδες στρεβλοί; οὗτοι σωφρονοῦσι μὲν ἄμισθα διὰ σιδήρου· μαίνονται δὲ ἄκαρπα δι᾿ οἰκείαν αἰσχρότητα.

It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation absurd, that except in experimental sciences, which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have been published on every subject of learning may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction. Were this principle true in its utmost latitude, I should only infer that the offices and salaries which are become useless ought without delay to be abolished. But there still remains a material difference between a book and a professor: the hour of the lecture enforces attendance; attention is fixed by the presence, the voice, and the occasional questions of the teacher; the most idle will carry something away; and the more diligent will compare the instructions which they have heard in the school, with the volumes which they peruse in their chamber. The advice of a skilful professor will adapt a course of reading to every mind and every situation; his learning will remove difficulties, and solve objections: his authority will discover, admonish, and at last chastise the negligence of his disciples; and his vigilant enquiries will ascertain the steps of their literary progress. Whatsoever science he professes, he may illustrate in a series of discourses, composed in the leisure of his closet, pronounced on public occasions, and finally delivered to the press.

Sadness, you see, is just like dung. Dung dumped in what isn't its proper place is filth; dung dumped in what isn't its place makes a house filthy; dumped in its proper place it makes a field fertile.

Tristitia enim sic est, quomodo stercus. Stercus non loco suo positum immunditia est. Stercus non loco suo positum immundam facit domum; loco suo positum fertilem facit agrum.

So it's a foul, an ugly time, but let it be the ugliness of dung in the field, not in the house. Let the sorrow be for sins, not for greedy desires cheated and disappointed. It's a foul, ugly time, but if used well a fertile time. What could be more foul than a field spread with farmyard muck? The field was beautiful before it received its cartload of muck from the dunghill. The field was first reduced to ugliness, in order to attain to fruitfulness. So the ugliness of this time is a sign, but let this ugliness be for us a time of fertility.

Ideo foedum tempus, sed foeditas ista stercoris sit in agro, non in domo. Maeror sit de peccatis, non de cupiditatibus fraudatis. Foedum tempus, sed, si bene utatur, fertile tempus. Quid foedius agro stercorato? Pulcher fuit ager, antequam cophinum haberet stercoris. Perductus est prius ager ad foeditatem, ut veniret ad ubertatem. Foeditas ergo huius temporis signum est, sed nobis sit ista foeditas tempus fertilitatis.

And those who blame the middle-class for their conventions in such matters, and who profess to be above the care for cleanliness and clothes and social ritual which marks the middle-class, are either anarchists by nature or fools who take what is but an effect of their wealth for a natural virtue.

I say it roundly; if it were not for the punctiliousness of the middle-class in these matters all our civilisation would go to pieces. They are the conservators and the maintainers of the standard, the moderators of Europe, the salt of society.