Laudator Temporis Acti

Your cubicle wall or refrigerator door could probably use a Roman calendar for the month of October, with the words "Beam me up, Scotty!" in Latin. Before printing, go to Internet Explorer, File, Page Setup..., set paper size to Letter, orientation to Portrait, all margins to 0.25 inches, and remove headers and footers. Courtesy of the Cambridge School Classics Project.

Chapter 13, pp. 465-519, of Nicholas A. Basbane's A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), is entitled The Blumberg Collection. Blumberg is biblioklept Stephen Carrie Blumberg, a fellow St. Paul resident, about my age, who served four and a half years in prison in the 1990s for stealing about 20 million dollars' worth of books from academic libraries. His psychiatric evaluation revealed "overconcern with things of the past," as well as "inability to deal with what is going on in the present" (p. 497), both traits that I share in spades.

I've received more than one email message recently with this tag at the end:

If you agree, pass this on. If not, delete it.

I hardly ever forward email messages, especially partisan political ones, but on the other hand I don't necessarily disagree with all messages I delete.

Today is the Roman festival of Fontanalia, devoted to fountains and springs. Some think it was for this festival that Horace wrote his exquisite Ode 3.13:

O Bandusian spring, clearer than glass, worthy of sweet wine and flowers too, tomorrow you'll receive the gift of a kid goat, whose head, swollen with horns newly grown, gives promise of love and battles; in vain: for this offspring of a playful flock will stain your ice-cold waters with his crimson blood. The harsh season of the blazing Dog Star is powerless to affect you. You grant welcome coolness to oxen weary of the plow and to the wandering herd. You too will become one of the famous springs, when I sing of the oak tree perched upon your hollow rocks, whence your babbling waters leap forth.

O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro,
dulci digne mero non sine floribus,
  cras donaberis haedo,
    cui frons turgida cornibus

primis et venerem et proelia destinat;
frustra: nam gelidos inficiet tibi
  rubro sanguine rivos,
    lascivi suboles gregis.

Te flagrantis atrox hora Caniculae
nescit tangere, tu frigus amabile
  fessis vomere tauris
    praebes et pecori vago.

Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium,
me dicente cavis impositam ilicem
  saxis unde loquaces
    lymphae desiliunt tuae.

This was too bloodthirsty a poem for some nineteenth century souls to stomach. In his poem An Evening Walk (lines 72-85), William Wordsworth (1770-1850) accused Horace of being a "ruthless minister of death" because of his intention to sacrifice the kid goat. The English poet Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), in some Latin verses addressed Ad Haedum (To a Goat) published in the collection Dry Sticks Fagoted (1858), wrote: "You will be safe with me, little goat! Your blood will not flow for any Bandusia" (per me salvus es, haedule! / nulli Bandusiae cruor / manabit tuus). And Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son, Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), who was a poet in his own right, wrote an odd poetic meditation on Horace's ode, in which he regarded the pagan Horace as a kind of anima naturaliter christiana, who never would have slain the kid in fact: "He never did the thing / Which he was constrain'd to sing."

On a lighter note, here's a good parody of Horace's ode by my favorite Horatian translator, Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960), in which the Bandusian spring becomes a soda fountain:

Worthy of flowers and syrups sweet,
  O fountain of Bandusian onyx,
To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat
  Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.

A kid whose budding horns portend
  A life of love and war -- but vainly!
For thee his sanguine life shall end --
  He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.

And never shalt thou feel the heat
  That blazes in the days of Sirius,
But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,
  And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.

Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,
  Be thou immortal by this Ode (a
Not wholly metricious thing),
  Bandusian fount of ice-cream soda!

In his learned travelogue Old Calabria (1915), British writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952) devoted an entire chapter to his search for the actual location of The Bandusian Fount.

Samuel Johnson, Rambler 68 (Saturday, November 10, 1750):

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours, which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises, which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

At the Unemployed Philosophers Guild you can buy a set of four philosopher finger puppets, featuring Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. You can also buy Nietzsche "Will to Power" energy bars and a Nietzsche "Eternal Return" watch.

Among the treasures at St. Louis University's Latin Teaching Materials web site, you can find Shakespeare's sonnets translated into Latin by Alfred Thomas Barton. Here is Sonnet 73, first in Shakespeare's English, then in Barton's Latin:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth from the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In me, care, potes velut anni noscere tempus
  Lutea cum pendens arbore rara coma est,
Vel potius cum nulla, at frigore nuda tremiscunt
  Bracchia, nuper avis templa canora sono.
Tale meae videas lumen pallere diei
  Pallet ad occiduas vespere quale plagas;
Quod nox furva brevi totum, mors altera, tollit
  Omniaque obsignans inde secuta quies.
Dispicias in me tantum vitale caloris
  In cinere est quantum relliquiisque foci,
Qua rubet exiguo languescens igne favilla
  Ab nutrimentis interitura suis.
Illa vides, et amas auctis affectibus omne
  Vnde recedendum post breve tempus erit.

Keith Burgess-Jackson recently reprinted one of his old journal entries about friendship:

It is important to me to have one or two close male friends -- friends with whom to share secrets, discuss music and politics, and participate in sports. I feel more comfortable around men than women, so it is natural that men provide my closest friends. In fact, come to think of it, this is probably a typical feeling among males in this country, married or unmarried. We all need close friends of the same sex.

Although I'm by nature a loner, I once had a close friend like that. We used to play chess, grouse about work, swap books, and perform music together.

It was the kind of friendship Augustine talks about in his Confessions (4.8.13, tr. Albert C. Outler):

There were other things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to discourse and jest with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to read pleasant books together; to trifle together; to be earnest together; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man might do with himself, and even through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught.

alia erant, quae in eis amplius capiebant animum, colloqui et corridere et vicissim benevole obsequi, simul legere libros dulciloquos, simul nugari et simul honestari, dissentire interdum sine odio tamquam ipse homo secum atque ipsa rarissima dissensione condire consensiones plurimas, docere aliquid invicem aut discere ab invicem.

Kitty Burns Florey celebrates the joy of diagramming sentences in Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. This was a part of English class (pardon me, I meant "Language Arts") when I was a lad, although English grammar never made much sense to me until I learned some Latin.

Thanks to Fr. Jim Tucker at Dappled Things for the link.

Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 32.2 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

To the governors who recommended burdensome taxes for the provinces, he wrote in answer that it was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it.

praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit boni pastoris esse tondere pecus, non deglubere.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936), well-known for his elegant, wistful poetry, was also a classical scholar of international renown. His parody "Fragment of a Greek Tragedy" is amusing to those who have tried to slog through the Greek of the ancient Athenian tragedians, as well as to those who have read Greek tragedy in translation. It starts out thus:

O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

David M. Johnson gives the full text with some useful notes. I would like to see a full-blown scholarly commentary on Housman's spoof, replete with parallel passages from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. I also wish someone would translate Housman's English into ancient Greek verse. David Kovacs, who is so adept at detecting lacunae in Euripides and filling them, would be a good man for the job.

C.S. Lewis, Introduction to Athanasius, On The Incarnation:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

Ovid, Tristia 2.348:

One cannot teach what one knows hardly anything about.

quodque parum novit, nemo docere potest.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "De tragicorum Graecorum fragmentis commentatio," Index scholarum aestivum (Gottingae, 1893), p. 33:

Christian literature cannot rightly be understood or judged without Greek literature, and neither can Greek literature without Christian literature.

Neque sine Graecis Christianae neque sine Christianis Graecae litterae recte aut intellegi aut aestimari possunt.

This quotation occurs in Julian Barnes' novel Flaubert's Parrot:

Me and my books, in the same apartment. Like a gherkin in its vinegar.

Many of the quotations in that novel are actually Flaubert's own words, and this one has a Flaubertian ring to it, but I can't find the original in Flaubert himself. Googling "cornichon" etc. did no good.

Nietzsche (tr. Walter Kaufman), Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, V, 369:

No one knows a child less well than its parents do. (Niemand kennt ein Kind schlechter als seine Eltern.)

The reverse is also true -- no one knows a man and woman less well than their child. Add this (Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, III, section Von den drei Bösen, 2) and the circle of misunderstanding is nearly complete:

Who can comprehend how strange man and woman are to each other? (Wer begriff es ganz, wie fremd sich Mann und Weib sind!)

Happy birthday to blog The Charlock's Shade, now one year old. Among his reflections on the occasion is this:

One of the positive things about blogging is the fact that you are able to verify your complete insignificance and total lack of any talent, not only locally, we already knew that, but globally as well.

Keith Burgess-Jackson calls Microsoft Windows his Gratification #19. I'd call it my Curse #666.

The Latin word "peccavi" means "I have sinned." There is a possibly apocryphal story that Charles James Napier (1782-1853), after his military victories at Mlani and Dubba in 1843, sent the one-word message "Peccavi" (I have sinned, i.e. I have Sind) to announce his conquest. Sind is part of what is now Pakistan.

Once the modern-day Saracens have succeeded in overrunning Eurabia completely, Napier's statue in Trafalgar Square will doubtless be pulled down. London's mayor Ken Livingstone actually proposed doing it a few years ago.

Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (1959; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 37:

In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which springs from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.

Nick Coleman, of the Star Tribune (a local newspaper), on bloggers:

Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.

Bloggers don't know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square -- without editors, correction policies or community standards. And so their tripe is often as vicious as it is vacuous.

Rogueclassicism reprints a job announcement for a Latinist in Miami University's Department of Classics . The announcement says, "Qualifications in such areas as cultural studies, film studies, Women's Studies are desirable." What the heck do film studies have to do with Latin? Is the goal to titillate and pander to undergraduates, or to educate them? If I were posting a job announcement for a Latinist, I would say, "Submit two cover letters in Latin, one in the style of Cicero, the other in the style of Seneca." That would narrow the field.

K.J. Dover, in his paper on "Language and Character in Aristophanes," in Greek and the Greeks. Collected Papers, Volume I: Language, Poetry, Drama (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 236-248, cites passages from the Athenian playwright where the language is especially appropriate or fitting for the character who utters it. Some of the examples involve dialect or bad Greek spoken by foreigners, and others suit the age or social standing of the speakers in one way or another. Dover doesn't cite the scholia to Aristophanes, but some of them mention the same phenomenon (tr. W.G. Rutherford):

• On Acharnians 211: The poet is quite consistent and altogether perfect in the way in which he reproduces the temper and the style of conversation of old men -- their temper in their irritability, and their style of conversation in the reminiscences of their past life. To us Nestor seems to talk in much the same way.
  
• On Ecclesiazusae 999 (ma ten Aphroditen = by Aphrodite): Being a courtesan, the hag uses this oath.
  
• On Clouds 236 (he phrontis helkei = the thought draws): Strepsiades ought to have said 'the soil draws,' but being a clodhopper he does not take in what is meant, and turns the expression upside down, so making the meaning unintelligible.
  
• On Clouds 257: Strepsiades is a boor and puts Athamas for Phrixus. It was not Athamas but Phrixus who was killed. As a boor Strepsiades might be expected not to know the legends, and he puts the one for the other.
  
• On Clouds 639: Strepsiades answers like a farmer. He takes the question to be of farm weights and measures.
  
• On Clouds 1206: Like the rustic that he is, Strepsiades makes a mistake in the vocative (of his own name).
  
• On Frogs 950: Euripides is also attacked in comedy for assigning quite unsuitable words to his various characters without making any distinction between them.
  
• On Thesmophoriazusae 1083 (lalis = you say): Spelt without the epsilon. The Scythian speaks Greek as a foreigner.
  

These comments in the scholia to Aristophanes are all the more interesting in the light of Plutarch's criticism of Aristophanes for failing to make distinctions of this sort (Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander 853d, tr. H.N. Fowler):

Moreover, in his diction there are tragic, comic, pompous, and prosaic elements, obscurity, vagueness, dignity, and elevation, loquacity and sickening nonsense. And with all these differences and dissimilarities his use of words does not give to each kind its fitting and appropriate use; I mean, to a king his dignity, to an orator his eloquence, to a woman her artlessness, to an ordinary man his prosaic speech, to a market-lounger his vulgarity; but he assigns to his characters as if by lot such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is son or father, a rustic or a god, or an old woman or a hero.

Nietzsche, The Will to Power (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):

§ 881 (1887-1888):

With all the tensions of the past three hundred years, for example, we have not yet reattained the man of the Renaissance, and the man of the Renaissance, in turn, is inferior to the man of antiquity.

§ 957 (1885):

For in the world of antiquity there reigned a different, more lordly morality than today; and the man of antiquity, raised in this morality, was a stronger and deeper man than the man of today -- he alone has hitherto been "the man that has turned out well."

Over at The Charlock's Shade, there is a short account of John Aubrey (1626-1697), famous for his Brief Lives. If the Internet were all it's cracked up to be, the Brief Lives would be available unabridged in cyberspace.

Here's a tantalizing sample, from Aubrey's life of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604:

This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his return the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

Some claim that De Vere is the real author of Shakespeare's plays.

Horace, Epistles 1.11.29-30:

What you seek is right here, it's in East Podunk, if you keep your equanimity.

quod petis, hic est, / est Vlubris, animus si te non deficit aequus.

W.H.D. Rouse, Chanties in Greek and Latin, 2nd ed. (1930):

Gellia atque Gellius
viam petunt in Alpes.
urceos manu tenent
aqua nova replendos.

ecce Gellius prior
cadit caputque frangit,
quem secuta Gelliast
subinde se revertens.

mater ut videt malum
silens utrumque curat.
namque uterque vapulat
bibitque uterque acetum.

A more or less literal translation:

Jill and Jack make their way into the Alps. In their hands they hold pails to be filled with fresh water. Behold, Jack falls first and breaks his head. Jill follows him, tumbling herself right after. When their mother sees the trouble, without a word she takes care of both of them. For both get a whipping and both drink vinegar.

Finally here's one of many English versions:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got and home he ran,
As fast as he could caper.
There his mother bound his head,
With vinegar and brown paper.

After their introduction into Australia in 1859, rabbits became an ecological disaster, a plague of almost Biblical proportions. A series of articles, not for the squeamish, by Karl Kruszelnicki gives some background (part 1, part 2, part 3).

The same thing happened in ancient Carpathus (or Karpathos, modern Scarpanto), an island about 30 miles southwest of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea:

• Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.11.14 (tr. John Henry Freese): If a man, for instance, introduces into his house something from which he expects to benefit, but afterwards finds himself injured instead, it is as the Carpathian says of the hare; for both have experienced the same misfortunes.
  
• Hesychius (tr. J.M. Edmonds), commenting on Archilochus fragment 248 West: A proverb in the form 'the man of Carpathus the hare,' supply 'introduced'; there being no hares on the island, the people introduced them, and they became so numerous that their corn and vines were damaged.
  
• Suda (tr. David Whitehead): They say that the Karpathians, being islanders, brought in a hare, because they did not have [any] in their territory. But the hares became numerous and ruined their agriculture. So the proverb is applied to those devising something to their own detriment.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977), II, 451:

To be unaware of the putrefaction of the modern world is a symptom of contagion by it.

In the days before blood and DNA tests for paternity, a child who obviously resembled his father was prized:

• Hesiod, Works and Days 235 (when justice flourishes): Women bear children resembling their fathers.
  
• Theophrastus, Characters 5 (The Complaisant Man, tr. R.C. Jebb): Then, when he is asked to dinner, he will request the host to send for the children; and will say of them, as they come in, that they are as like their father as figs.
  
• Catullus 61.221-225: May he look like his father Manlius and be easily recognized by all who don't know him and prove with his face his mother's virtue (sit suo similis patri / Manlio et facile insciis / noscitetur ab omnibus / et pudicitiam suae / matris indicet ore).
  
• Horace, Odes 4.5.23: Mothers who have just given birth are praised for children resembling [their fathers] (laudantur simili prole puerperae).
  
• Dio Cassius 56.3 (supposedly from a speech delivered by the Emperor Augustus, tr. Ian Scott-Kilvert): Is it not a joy to acknowledge a child who possesses the qualities of both parents, to tend and educate a being who is both the physical and spiritual image of yourself, so that, as it grows up, another self is created?
  
• Martial 6.27.3-4: You have a daughter who is marked with paternal resemblance of face, witness of her mother's virtue (est tibi, quae patria signatur imagine vultus, / testis maternae nata pudicitiae).
  
• G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca 243b (an inscription from Pergamum, 2nd century A.D.), line 5: You bore me children, all resembling me.
  
• Buecheler and Lommatzsch, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 387, lines 9-10 (restoration conjectural): I have three sons, resembling their father, born from one wife (nam patri similes uno de coniuge nati / tres sunt).
  

On the other hand, children who didn't look at all like their fathers were suspect:

• Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 111 (quoting an Amphictyonic oath): And may their wives not bear children resembling the fathers, but freaks.
  
• Theocritus 17.43-44 (tr. C.S. Calverley): She that loves not bears sons, but all unlike / Their father: for her heart was otherwhere.
  
• Martial 6.39 describes in great detail the seven "children" of husband Cinna and wife Marulla, none of whom looks like the supposed father.
  
• Lucilius, Greek Anthology 11.215 (tr. W.R. Paton): Eutychus the painter was the father of twenty sons, but never got a likeness even among his children.

Last night Mrs. Laudator and I went to a concert by the always splendid St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. My peeve is the custom of putting a piece of discordant contemporary music in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable program, in this case Schnittke in company with Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. If the entire concert were devoted to Schnittke and his ilk, hardly anyone would buy a ticket, so they resort to this contemptible subterfuge in order to "educate" us Philistines and expose us to contemporary music. It reminds me of the trick described by Lucretius 1.936-939:

When physicians try to give bitter medicines to children, first they smear the rim of the cup with the sweet golden liquid of honey, in order to deceive the unsuspecting children.

sed vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur.

At the end of the Schnittke piece, the score calls for most of the musicians to march offstage and stop playing, while the conductor and a couple of musicians remain. Finally, all of the musicians stop playing, while the conductor keeps on conducting in silence. Many years ago I played in the University of Maine orchestra, directed by the late Clayton Hare, who liked to tipple on occasion. At one concert, Hare was conducting under the influence and we came to the end of a piece. He kept waving his arms for several more seconds. We weren't playing Schnittke.

Montaigne, Essais II, 17 (tr. E.J. Trechmann):

Whether it be perhaps that my continual intercourse with the habits of mind of the ancient writers, and the picture I have formed of those richly-endowed minds of the past, have put me out of humour with others, and with myself; or that we do in truth live in an age which produces only very indifferent things, the fact remains that I see nothing worthy of any great admiration.

A l'adventure que le commerce continuel que j'ay avec les humeurs anciennes, et l'idée de ces riches ames du temps passé, me dégouste, et d'autruy, et de moy-mesme: ou bien qu'à la verité nous vivons en un siecle qui ne produict les choses que bien mediocres: Tant y a que je ne connoy rien digne de grande admiration.

Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, tr. N. Ampoux (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), p. 646:

One torrid day, Tolstoy saw a mosquito land on Chertkov's bald pate and smacked it. The disciple looked reproachfully up at his master: "What have you done, Leo Nikolayevich? You have killed a living creature! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Be the first on your block to collect a full set of philosopher action figures!

Thoreau, Journals, January 27, 1855:

One is educated to believe, and would rejoice if the rising generation should find no occasion to doubt, that the State and the Church are on the side of morality, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Harvard College was partly built by a lottery. My father tells me he bought a ticket in it. Perhaps she thus laid the foundation of her Divinity School. Thus she teaches by example. New England is flooded with the "Official Schemes of the Maryland State Lotteries," and in this that state is no less unprincipled than in her slaveholding. Maryland, and every fool who buys a ticket of her, is bound straight to the bottomless pit. The State of Maryland is a moral fungus. Her offense is rank; it smells to heaven.

There is no slavery in Maryland today, but there is still a lottery. I'd wager they don't use this quotation from Thoreau in their advertising.

Euripides, Suppliants 238-245 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

For there are three ranks of citizens; the rich, a useless set, that ever crave for more; the poor and destitute, fearful folk, that cherish envy more than is right, and shoot out grievous stings against the men who have aught, beguiled as they are by the eloquence of vicious leaders; while the class that is midmost of the three preserveth cities, observing such order as the state ordains.

Some modern editors follow Wecklein in regarding these lines as an interpolation.

The Maverick Philosopher asks my opinion of Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), a book which I have criticized previously (here and here). On the whole I find it a delightful book, fun to browse, and chock-full of quirky, off-beat insights into the English language. I highly recommend it to any language lover. I recently discovered in it an amusing synonym for curmudgeon: smellfungus, defined as "a discontented person, a grumbler and fault-finder," a word coined by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), who spelled it smelfungus.

As with any large book (the Encyclopedia is 822 pages long), there are bound to be errors and misprints. Since I find some of the more serious errors a springboard for blogging, I'll continue to point them out as I detect them.

In response to my discussion about loving or hating enemies, Horace Jeffery Hodges points out a web page containing a list of Greek and Latin parallels to Jesus' command that we should love our enemies and do good to those who harm us. The list comes from F. Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), a book which I have not seen. Here is one example, from Seneca's treatise On Anger (De Ira) 2.34.5:

Someone gets angry with you. Challenge him with kindness in return. Enmity immediately tumbles away when one side lets it fall.

irascetur aliquis: tu contra beneficiis provoca; cadit statim simultas ab altera parte deserta.

Not listed (at least on the web page) is Plato, Crito 49b (tr. B. Jowett):

SOCRATES. Then we must do no wrong?
CRITO. Certainly not.
SOCRATES. Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all?
CRITO. Clearly not.

If you want to be depressed, read these answers by Saudis to a TV interviewer's questions "Would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with a Jew?" and "If a child asks you 'Who are the Jews?' what would you answer?"

I'm sure the answers would be quite different if Jews were asked "Would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with an Arab?" and "If a child asks you 'Who are the Arabs?' what would you answer?"

Thanks to my old and dear friend Jim K. for the link.

The Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, says, "If I remember my Latin, Si vis pacem, bellum paratum: if you want peace be prepared for war." It's rare to catch Homer nodding or Bill forgetting, but the usual form of the quotation is si vis pacem, para bellum. The Web is full of claims that Vegetius said this, but what Vegetius actually said (book 3, preface) was qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (who wishes peace, let him prepare for war). Similar expressions are:

• Plato, Laws 829a: The citizens ought to practise war -- not in time of war, but rather while they are at peace.
  
• Cicero, Philippics 7.6.19: If we want to enjoy peace, we must wage war; if we avoid war, we will never enjoy peace (si pace frui volumus, bellum gerendum est; si bellum omittimus, pace numquam fruemur).
  
• Cicero, De Officiis 1.11.35: Wars must be undertaken for this reason, that we may live in peace without harm (suscipienda quidem bella sunt ob eam causam, ut sine iniuria in pace vivatur).
  
• Livy 6.18.7: Just show war; you'll have peace (ostendite modo bellum; pacem habebitis).
  
• Nepos, Life of Epaminondas 5.4: Peace is produced by war (paritur pax bello).
  

The Maverick Philosopher's excellent post ends with a clever twist on the hippie mantra "Give peace a chance" -- "Sometimes we need to give war a chance."

Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), p. 284, gives the following explanation of the origin of the word expedite:

An old story that no one has been able to prove or disprove holds that the Latin word expedire, the ancestor of expedite, derives from the name of St. Expeditus, a soldier in the Roman Army before being martyred at Melitene, Armenia, in the fourth century. St. Expeditus, it seems, was the advocate of urgent causes. The O.E.D. merely says that the Latin word expedire means "to free a person's feet (ped) from fetters, to help forward, to dispatch, send off."

It's quite easy to prove that Latin expedire does not derive from the name of a fourth century A.D. St. Expeditus. The word occurs in the earliest Latin writers, for example in numerous passages of Plautus, a writer who died in the second century B.C. I don't know where Hendrickson got his old story, but it's arrant nonsense.

In Liddell and Scott's Greek lexicon you can find the following onomatopoeic words:

• bauzo (to cry bau bau, to bark, cf. Latin baubor)
  
• be (the cry of sheep)
  
• gru (the sound a pig makes, cf. Latin grunnio)
  

They are not so different from English bow-wow, baa, grunt.

One Greek animal sound that doesn't sound familiar, at least to my ear, is brekekekex koax koax, from Aristophanes' Frogs (line 209 and elsewhere). K.J. Dover in his commentary says that "initial br- appears in many Greek words denoting the production of sound" and also that final -x is "a Greek spelling convention for the representation of sounds." He concludes that "brekekekex seems thus to embody two non-representational conventions." Apparently the Marsh Frog, Rana ridibunda, does make a sound somewhat like brekekekex with br- and -x removed.

One wishes that the notes of the Roman emperor Geta (died 212 A.D.) on animal sounds had survived. Aelius Spartianus, Life of Geta 5.4-5, in the Historia Augusta (tr. Anthony Birley), says:

He made a habit of propounding problems to grammarians, asking them to say what sounds different animals make, for example: lambs bleat, pigs grunt, doves coo, bears growl, lions roar, leopards snarl, elephants trumpet, frogs croak, horses neigh, bulls bellow -- and he would confirm these from old writers.

familiare illi fuit has quaestiones grammaticis proponere, ut dicerent, singula animalia quomodo vocem emitterent, velut: agni balant, porcelli grunniunt, palumbes minurriunt, ursi saeviunt, leones rugiunt, leopardi rictant, elefanti barriunt, ranae coaxant, equi hinniunt, asini rudunt, tauri mugiunt, easque de veteribus adprobare.

Here are a few bibliographical references on Greek and Latin animal sounds that I've collected over the years:

• Paul Kretschmer, "Συς und andere lautnachahmende Wörter," Glotta 13 (1924) 132-138
  
• Karl Kunst, "mugire und rugire," Glotta 14 (1925) 109-113
  
• J.H.H. Schmidt, Handbuch der lateinischen und griechischen Synonymik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1889), pp. 157-162 (Stimmen der Säugetiere) and 162-166 (Stimmen der Vögel, Lurche und Kerfe)
  
• Bruno Snell, "Das I-Ah des goldenes Esel," Hermes 70 (1935) 355-356
  
• W.B. Stanford, The Sounds of Greek (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), ch. V (Mimesis in Words), pp. 98-121, esp. 102-103
  
• Wilhelm Wackernagel, Voces Variae Animantium (diss. Basel, 1867)
  

---

David Rohrbacher comments:

I say with regret that Geta's work on animal sounds almost certainly never existed, but is a joke by the scampy author of the largely-fraudulent Historia Augusta (see Ronald Syme, Emperors and Biography, page 62; on the fraudulence of the HA, see Peter White, The Authorship of the Historia Augusta, Journal of Roman Studies 57 (1967) 115-33, and fuller and up-to-date treatment in Andre Chastagnol, Histoire Auguste (1994)). The (single) author of the HA, writing in the late fourth century, was probably a grammarian, and the point of the passage is a parody of the kind of nit-picking questions with which grammarians grappled (as seen, e.g., in Aulus Gellius.)

He also adds some more articles:

• C.E. Finch, "Suetonius' catalogue of animal sounds in codex Vat. Lat. 6018,"American Journal of Philology 90 (1969) 459-463
  
• Dale Thomas Benediktson, "Polemius Silvius' Voces varie animancium and related catalogues of animal sounds," Mnemosyne 53 (2000) 71-79
  

Isaiah 3.16-23:

[16] Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: [17] Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. [18] In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, [19] The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, [20] The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, [21] The rings, and nose jewels, [22] The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, [23] The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.

One would think that Isaiah had observed modern-day fashion models on the runway, "with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go." Or maybe in verse 16 he was using the prophetic present tense, and under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost he actually foresaw the contestants on America's Next Top Model. The only details he omits are the pouts and scowls. Zion could be Paris or Milan or New York, the capitals of the fashion industry.

The round tires in verse 18 aren't of the Firestone variety, but hats, and the cauls in the same verse are cowls. Likewise the glasses in verse 23 aren't Gianfranco Ferré shades at $300 per pair, but mirrors. Tablets in verse 20 are probably amulets.

Cicero, De Officiis 3.1.1 (tr. Walter Miller):

Cato, who was of about the same years, Marcus, my son, as that Publius Scipio who first bore the surname of Africanus, has given us the statement that Scipio used to say that he was never less idle than when he had nothing to do and never less lonely than when he was alone.

P. Scipionem, Marce fili, eum, qui primus Africanus appellatus est, dicere solitum scripsit Cato, qui fuit eius fere aequalis, numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset.

Some states by law allow intoxication as a defense to a criminal charge, although there seems to be a recent trend among legislatures to repeal such statutes where they are on the books.

At least one ancient Greek lawmaker would have viewed such a defense as ludicrous. Diogenes Laertius 1.4.76 (tr. R.D. Hicks) writes about Pittacus:

Among the laws which he made is one providing that for any offence committed in a state of intoxication the penalty should be doubled; his object was to discourage drunkenness, wine being abundant in the island [Mitylene].

A conference entitled "Regarding Michael Jackson: Performing Racial, Gender, and Sexual Difference Center Stage" was held last week at Yale University. Tenured professors who pretend to be scholars actually write papers on that freak and sit around in their tweed suits on panels solemnly discussing his oeuvre and influence.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.43-46) Jesus said:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

Most ancient Greeks before the time of Christ would have regarded this notion as utterly preposterous. Among them it was a commonplace of morality, indeed almost the very essence of justice, that one should benefit one's friends and harm one's enemies. Denys L. Page, in his commentary on Euripides' Medea 809-810, quotes Lessing:

Moral excellence in ancient Greece consisted no less in unremitting hatred of your foes than in unalterable love toward your friends.

Here is a selection of passages from Greek literature on the topic:

• Hesiod, Works and Days, 353-354 (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White): Be friends with the friendly, and visit him who visits you. Give to one who gives, but do not give to one who does not give.
  
• Theognis 869-872 (tr. J.M. Edmonds): May the great wide brazen sky fall upon me -- that dread of earthborn men -- if I aid not such as love me, and become not a pain and great grief unto such as hate.
  
• Archilochus, fragment 23 West, lines 14-15: I know how to love the one who loves me and hate the enemy.
  
• Archilochus, fragment 126 West: One important thing I know, how to repay with terrible evils the one who mistreats me.
  
• Solon, fragment 13 West (a prayer to the Muses, lines 5-6, tr. J.M. Edmonds): Make me, I pray you, sweet to my friends and sour to my foes, to these a man reverend to behold, to those a man terrible.
  
• Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.83-85 (tr. William H. Race): Let me befriend a friend, but against an enemy, I shall, as his enemy, run him down as a wolf does, stalking now here, now there, on twisting paths.
  
• Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 122-123 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth): ELECTRA. And is this a righteous thing for me to ask of Heaven? CHORUS. Righteous? How not? To requite an enemy evil for evil!
  
• Sophocles, Antigone 641-644 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones): This is why men pray that they may beget and keep in their houses obedient offspring, so that they may requite the enemy with evil and honour the friend as they honour their father.
  
• Euripides, Medea 807-810 (tr. David Kovacs): Let no one think me weak, contemptible, untroublesome. No, quite the opposite, hurtful to foes, to friends kindly. Such persons live a life of greatest glory.
  
• Euripides, Heracles 585-586 (tr. David Kovacs): It is in your nature, my son, to be loving to your friends and to hate your enemies.
  
• Euripides, Ion 1046-1047 (tr. David Kovacs): But when a man wants to harm an enemy, no law stands in the way.
  
• Lysias 9.20 (tr. W.R.M. Lamb): I considered it ordained that one should harm one's enemies and serve one's friends.
  
• Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.6.35 (tr. E.C. Marchant): A man's virtue consists in outdoing his friends in kindness and his enemies in mischief.
  
• Xenophon, Anabasis 1.9.11 (tr. Carelton L. Brownson): It was manifest also that whenever a man conferred any benefit upon Cyrus or did him any harm, he always strove to outdo him; in fact, some people used to report it as a prayer of his that he might live long enough to outdo both those who benefited and those who injured him, returning like for like.
  
• Xenophon, Hiero 2.2 (tr. E.C. Marchant): You are rich in power to harm enemies and reward friends.
  
• Plato, Republic 1.7.332d (tr. B. Jowett): Justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.

Polybius 1.14.4-5 (tr. W. R. Paton) allows an exception to the rule only in the person of the historian who is bound to be impartial:

In other relations of life we should not perhaps exclude all such favouritism; for a good man should love his friends and his country, he should share the hatreds and attachments of his friends; but he who assumes the character of a historian must ignore everything of the sort, and often, if their actions demand this, speak good of his enemies and honour them with the highest praises while criticizing and even reproaching roundly his closest friends, should the errors of their conduct impose this duty on him.

Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843), II, 7 (The Canvassing):

Besides it [an election] is a most important social act; nay, at bottom, the one important social act. Given the men a People choose, the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is given. A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy; a valet or flunkey people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, thinking them heroes, and is not happy.

Past and Present and Future might be a better title for Carlyle's prescient book.

Hesiod, Theogony, 98-103 (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White):

For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all; but the gifts of the goddesses soon turn him away from these.

Eric Gill, The Lord's Song: A Sermon (1934):

But sin is an unpopular word among us. We have thrown away free will. We do not like to be held responsible. We like to be treated as animals, as automatons. When the psychologist says, "it is heredity, it is early environment, it is a complex," we applaud. When Augustine says "it is sin," we deride.

William Scott Ferguson, Greek Imperialism (1913), lecture 2 (Athens: An Imperial Democracy), reminds us about the extent of citizen participation in dramatic performances in ancient Athens:

In the hundred years of the empire close to two thousand plays of picked quality were written and staged in Athens, while during the same time from five to six thousand new musical compositions were made and presented. It is estimated that upwards of two thousand Athenians had to memorize the words and practice the music and dance figures of a lyric or dramatic chorus every year. Hence, a normal Athenian audience must have been composed in large part of ex-performers, a fact which students of Sophocles and Aristophanes would do well to bear constantly in mind.

This memorization later proved useful to some Athenians, as we read in this passage from Plutarch's Life of Nicias (tr. J. Dryden) which describes the fate of Athenian captives after the disastrous Sicilian Expedition:

Several were saved for the sake of Euripides, whose poetry, it appears, was in request among the Sicilians more than among any of the settlers out of Greece. And when any travellers arrived that could tell them some passage, or give them any specimen of his verses, they were delighted to be able to communicate them to one another. Many of the captives who got safe back to Athens are said, after they reached home, to have gone and made their acknowledgments to Euripides, relating how that some of them had been released from their slavery by teaching what they could remember of his poems, and others, when straggling after the fight, been relieved with meat and drink for repeating some of his lyrics. Nor need this be any wonder, for it is told that a ship of Caunus fleeing into one of their harbours for protection, pursued by pirates, was not received, but forced back, till one asked if they knew any of Euripides's verses, and on their saying they did, they were admitted, and their ship brought into harbour.

Xenophon, Symposium 3.5 (tr. O.J. Todd), mentions another feat of memorization:

"My father was anxious to see me develop into a good man," said Niceratus, "and as a means to this end he compelled me to memorize all of Homer; and so even now I can repeat the whole Iliad and the Odyssey by heart."

Ancient Greeks memorized Euripides and Homer. Modern Americans memorize the lyrics to Gilligan's Island.

Montaigne, Essais III, 13:

We dignify our stupidities when we put them in print.

Nous mettons en dignité nos sottises, quand nous les mettons en moule.

To paraphrase:

We dignify our stupidities when we hit the Publish Post button in Blogger.

In this week's issue of The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, there is an article about a former employee who embezzled money from the newspaper. The following sentence appears in the article:

Such instances come as startling breeches of trust, legal authorities acknowledge.

The only startling breeches of trust (or startling breeches you can trust) known to me are these, which help to conceal breaches of decorum.

Did the newspaper lose so much money to the embezzler that it can't afford a proofreader? Most computerized spell-checkers won't correct a breach of orthography like that committed by The Catholic Spirit.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.

Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum (How Women Should Dress) 2.6.3:

The more old age strives to be concealed, the more it will be exposed.

senectus cum plus occultari studuerit, plus detegetur.

Tertullian's words apply equally to men, who can be every bit as vain about their appearance as women.

Seneca, Epistulae Morales 123.6:

Among the reasons for our misfortunes is the fact that we live in imitation of others. We are not formed by reason, but led astray by custom. If only a few people did a thing, we would not wish to imitate it, but when more people start to do it, we follow suit, as if the act were more honorable because more popular. An error, when it has become common, has the status of something proper with us.

inter causas malorum nostrorum est quod vivimus ad exempla, nec ratione componimur sed consuetudine abducimur. quod si pauci facerent nollemus imitari, cum plures facere coeperunt quasi honestius sit quia frequentius, sequimur; et recti apud nos locum tenet error ubi publicus factus est.

One of the strengths of Seneca as a moral teacher is that he so often includes himself in the indictment of folly and wrongdoing, by using the first person plural (we, us, our) rather than the second person (you, your). If this passage started out "Among the reasons for your misfortunes is the fact that you live in imitation of others" and continued in the same vein, it would sound too much like preaching and carping.

Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked (New York: Arbor House, 1985), p. 355:

When God enters politics he turns into his opposite. Always has. Always will.

Perhaps Burgess should have said, "When God is dragged into politics." Here are two recent examples, one from the left and the other from the right.

James C. Moore, author of Bush's Brain, said at a Texas Faith Network conference:

If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ. I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat.

Rick Blauvelt (not a teen-ager), announcing the formation of a Teen-Age Republicans chapter in Renville County, Minnesota, wrote these words, published in the Bird Island Union newspaper:

This group will be a grass-roots movement to learn about how America got started, the difference between Republicans and Democrats, why the nation is split, why God is detested by our opponents and will be a force for the Republican Party in Renville County, not to be ignored.

Examples could be multiplied on either side. It's almost enough to make one want to sign the Sojourners' God Is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat. petition. Although I don't endorse everything in the petition, I do agree with this statement:

We believe that sincere Christians and other people of faith can choose to vote for President Bush or Senator Kerry - for reasons deeply rooted in their faith.

I'm also sick of hearing thinly disguised political sermons at Mass on Sunday. Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 138-139, quotes Lincoln as saying about Phineas Densmore Gurley (minister of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church):

I like Gurley. He don't preach politics. I get enough of that through the week, and when I go to church, I like to hear the gospel.

Amen, Brother Lincoln!

Some might find these clever parodies of the Ten Commandments blasphemous, but I don't. To those who profess to be Christians, they're salutary reminders of the dangers of hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would tax himself to worship two?
God's image nowhere shalt thou see,
Save haply in the currency.
Swear not at all; since for thy curse
Thine enemy is not the worse.
At church on Sunday to attend
Will help to keep the world thy friend.
Honor thy parents; that is, all
From whom promotion may befall.
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
Adultery it is not fit
Or safe, for women, to commit.
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When 'tis so lucrative to cheat.
False witness not to bear be strict;
And cautious, ere you contradict.
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Sanctions the keenest competition.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The New Decalogue:

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.
Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.
Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.
Thy hand from Sunday work be held --
Work not at all unless compelled.
Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.
Kill not -- death liberates thy foe
From persecution's constant woe.
Kiss not thy neighbor's wife. Of course
There's no objection to divorce.
To steal were folly, for 'tis plain
In cheating there is greater pain.
Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have "heard it said."
Who stays to covet ne'er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), p. 125:

How is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?

Martin Gardner, The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1985), p. 187:

Hundreds of Dr. Matrix's notes give anagrams on biblical names and phrases. "Naomi" (Ruth 1), widowed and bereft of her sons, becomes "I moan." For "ten commandments" the anagram is "Can't mend most men." For "silver and gold" (Deut. 17:17) it is "grand old evils." For "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23) it is "High fees owed Satanist."

There are even notes on puns. "And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him" (1 Kings 13:27). Dr. Matrix professes to find a defense of cigarette smoking in "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel" (Gen. 24:64).

It's a few years old, but this essay on tattoos by Theodore Dalrymple is still worth reading. A sample:

One cannot but feel sorrow for people who think that by permanently disfiguring themselves they are somehow declaring their independence or expressing their individuality. The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man's existence.

Anthony Daniels is the real name of the pseudonymous Theodore Dalrymple, a fact useful in tracking down the scattered online essays of this extraordinary doctor and writer.

Words to live by, by Don Marquis (1878-1937), suitable for framing. Hang one on your cubicle wall at work, for the edification of passers-by.

Mark Pattison, Memoirs of an Oxford Don (1885; rpt. London: Cassell, 1988), p. 40:

Such was my simplicity that I believed that no one went to college but those who were qualified, and anxious, to study.

Ralph McInerny, Lying Three (New York: Vanguard, 1979), pp. 33-34:

He continued to read the daily office in Latin, hoping it was not prideful eccentricity. Latin provided a connective thread in his priesthood, enabling him to track back through the years to the young subdeacon who had taken on the obligation to recite the breviary every day, reading from its seasonal compilations of psalms, passages from the Old and New Testaments, and the Fathers. And the beautiful hymns. He loved it. He derived an aesthetic as well as a spiritual satisfaction from mumbling the familiar words. Latin words. In English they lost something, something not merely aesthetic and sentimental. Roger Dowling had no objections to the new vernacular liturgy. It was right for people to pray in their own language. Latin was known by only a few and had perhaps constituted a legal barrier. But, dear God, the caliber of the English now used was itself a barrier. Ah, well. He himself could continue to pray in Latin.

The Latin Mass was never as much of a barrier as people now pretend. My grandmother, who didn't go to school beyond eighth grade, had no problem following the priest's and altar boys' words in her missal, which had Latin and French on facing pages. She knew exactly what they were mumbling up there.

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, 5.4.8-12:

"Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est:
Fear not to kill the King; 'tis good he die."
But read it thus, and that's another sense:
"Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est:
Kill not the King; 'tis good to fear the worst."

In his treatise on the Athenian Constitution (55.3), Aristotle lists the questions posed to prospective archons during their official scrutiny (dokimasia):

• Who is your father?
  
• What is your father's deme?
  
• Who is your father's father?
  
• Who is your mother?
  
• Who is your mother's father?
  
• What is your mother's father's deme?
  
• Do you have an Ancestral [Patroos] Apollo and a Courtyard [Herkeios] Zeus?
  
• Where are these shrines?
  
• Do you have family tombs?
  
• Where are these tombs?
  
• Do you treat your parents well?
  
• Do you pay your taxes?
  
• Have you performed your military service?
  

I suppose none of these questions will be asked during the presidential debates this year, except perhaps the last one.

Walter A. Raleigh (1861-1922), Wishes of an Elderly Man Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914:

I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Enoch Soames, Esq., has favored us with his Guide to Dressing Like an Adult. Unfortunately, I doubt that my manservant will be able to find a muted glenurquhart plaid, a foulard, and a straw boater at my church's upcoming jumble sale.

Dennis Mangan's moving tribute to his great-grandparents put me in mind of these words from Kierkegaard's Works of Love: Some Christians Reflections in the Form of Discourses, II, 9 (tr. Howard and Edna Hong):

The work of love in remembering the dead is thus a work of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. Therefore go out and practise it; remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully.

From T.S. Eliot's poem Little Gidding:

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
  To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
  First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
  But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
  As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
  At human folly, and the laceration
  Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
  Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
  Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
  Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
  Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

Arno Karlen, Napoleon's Glands and Other Essays in Biohistory (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1984), p. 45:

The law of lazy repetition lies behind much inherited error, and it flourishes when specialists reach into other specialties. A historian, trained to question even firsthand accounts with a trial lawyer's skepticism, may worshipfully buy what any doctor says on a medical point. A doctor, trained to demand laboratory proofs, may regurgitate the silliest historical summary he finds because its author had an advanced degree. Each knows the complex rigors of his own field; yet his very respect for expertise may make him credulous in other fields. Instead of rechecking and seeking verifications, he repeats the first "authority" he reads or even off-the-cuff opinions and second-hand summaries.

In his record of Socrates' trial (Apology 39c, tr. B. Jowett), Plato records how the philosopher, condemned to death, referred to the common belief that the final words of someone about to die had special meaning:

And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.

We see a similar belief in other ancient writings, for example at Homer, Iliad 24.743-745 (tr. R. Lattimore), where Andromache in her lament for her husband Hector, killed in battle, says:

You did not die in bed, and stretch your arms to me, nor tell me some intimate word that I could remember always, all the nights and days of my weeping for you.

Andromache's lament is not all that different from Tacitus' words about his father-in-law (Agricola 45.4-5):

In addition to the grief at a lost parent, this increased the sorrow of me and his daughter, the fact that we were not able to sit by him in his sickness, to care for him in his decline, to get our fill of looking at him and embracing him. We would surely have received his last wishes and words to fix deeply in our hearts.

sed mihi filiaeque eius praeter acerbitatem parentis erepti auget maestitiam, quod adsidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu complexuque non contigit. excepissemus certe mandata vocesque, quas penitus animo figeremus.

We actually have the very last words of Socrates, recorded by Plato (Phaedo 118a, tr. B. Jowett):

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

These last words, commanding animal sacrifice, are disappointing to some. Asclepius was a Greek god of medicine and healing. In his commentary on this passage, John Burnet says, "Socrates hopes to awake cured like those who are healed by enkoimesis (incubatio) in the Asklepieion at Epidaurus." In other words, Socrates hoped that death would cure him of what Alexander Pope called "this long Disease, my Life." The temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus was the Lourdes of antiquity. Those wishing to be cured slept overnight in the sanctuary. In his very useful Database of Greek Animal Sacrifice, Robert Simms (a former classmate of mine) lists sacrifices to Asclepius recorded in ancient inscriptions. Roosters aren't among them, but in his fourth Mime Herondas has a woman say that she sacrificed a rooster to Asclepius because she couldn't afford the customary cow or sow.

But back to famous last words. The seven last words (actually seven last utterances) of Christ are these:

1. Luke 23.34: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
2. Luke 23.43: "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise."
3. John 19.26-27: "Woman, behold thy son...Behold thy mother."
4. Mark 15.34 (Matthew 27.46): "God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
5. John 19.28: "I thirst."
6. John 19.30: "It is finished."
7. Luke 23.46: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
   

Composers have often set these seven last words of Christ, in Latin, to music.

In his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius records some famous last words, of which the most notable are:

• Life of Julius Caesar 82.2: "You too, my child?" Caesar said this in Greek, as "Kai su, teknon;". The words are usually rendered in Latin as "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?").
• Life of Vespasian 23.4: "Alas, I guess I am becoming a god" (vae, puto, deus fio).

Pliny the Younger, Letters 3.16, tells the story of Caecinius Paetus, guilty of a failed conspiracy against the emperor Claudius. His wife Arria plunged a dagger into her breast and handed it to her husband with the words, "It doesn't hurt, Paetus" (Paete, non dolet).

Many ancient Greek and Roman writers remarked on the insatiable nature of greed. Other desires can be satisfied, but no matter how much the greedy man acquires, it is never enough.

Theognis 227-229 = Solon, fragment 13.71-73 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

And as for wealth, there's no end set clearly down; for such as have to-day the greatest riches among us, these have twice the eagerness that others have, and who can satisfy all?

Theognis 1157-1160 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

Riches and skill are ever the most irresistible of things to man; for thou canst not surfeit thy heart with riches, and in like manner he that is most skilled shunneth not skill, but desireth it and cannot have his fill.

Aristotle, Politics 2.4.11 (1267b, tr. H. Rackham):

The baseness of human beings is a thing insatiable, and though at the first a dole of two obols is enough, yet when this has now become an established custom, they always want more, until they get to an unlimited amount; for appetite is in its nature unlimited, and the majority of mankind live for the satisfaction of appetite.

Theocritus 16.64-65:

Farewell, whoever is such, and may his supply of money be endless, and may desire for more ever take hold of him.

Cicero, Paradoxes of the Stoics 1.6:

For the thirst of desire is never filled or satisfied, but those who have these luxuries are tortured not only by the wish to get more but also by the fear of losing what they already have.

neque enim umquam expletur nec satiatur cupiditatis sitis, neque solum ea qui habent libidine augendi cruciantur sed etiam amittendi metu.

Sallust, On the Conspiracy of Catiline 11.3:

Greed involves the pursuit of money, which no wise man has desired. As if dipped in evil poisons it weakens the body and the manly soul. It is always without limit, insatiable, and it is diminished neither by excess or deficit.

avaritia pecuniae studium habet, quam nemo sapiens concupivit: ea quasi venenis malis inbuta corpus animumque virilem effeminat, semper infinita, insatiabilis est, neque copia neque inopia minuitur.

Horace, Odes 3.16.17-18:

Worry and hunger for greater things accompany money as it grows.

crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam / maiorumque fames.

Horace, Epistles 2.2.147-148:

The more you've amassed, the more you desire.

quanto plura parasti, / tanto plura cupis.

Seneca, On Benefits 2.27.3 (tr. John Basore):

Nor does greed suffer any man to be grateful; for incontinent hope is never satisfied with what is given and, the more we get, the more we covet; and just as the greater the conflagration from which the flame springs, the more fiercer and more unbounded is its fury, so greed becomes much more active when it is employeed in accumulating great riches.

non patitur aviditas quemquam esse gratum; nunquam enim improbae spei, quod datur, satis est. et maiora cupimus, quo maiora venerunt, multoque concitatior est avaritia in magnarum opum congestu collocata, ut flammae infinito acrior vis est, quo ex maiore incendio emicuit.

Juvenal 14.139:

The love of money grows in proportion as one's income.

crescit amor nummi, quantum ipsa pecunia crevit.

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The English word dropsy comes from Greek hydrops, itself from hydor = water. The medical term edema is more commonly used nowadays for this affliction, which consists of swelling due to accumulation of excess fluid. Jesus cured a man suffering from dropsy, according to Luke 14.1-6:

And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things.

The view was prevalent in ancient medicine that sufferers from dropsy were always thirsty, and that drinking did nothing to alleviate their thirst and in fact made their condition worse. Naturally this led to a comparison between avarice (a disease of the soul) and dropsy (a disease of the body). In both cases, what the sufferer wanted (more water or more possessions) only aggravated the problem.

Aristippus, quoted by Plutarch, On Love of Wealth 524b (tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson):

If a man eats and drinks a great deal, but is never filled, he sees a physician, inquires what ails him, what is wrong with his system, and how to rid himself of the disorder; but if the owner of five couches goes looking for ten, and the owner of ten tables buys up as many again, and though he has lands and money in plenty is not satisfied but is bent on more, losing sleep and never sated by any amount, does he imagine that he does not need someone who will prescribe for him and point out the cause of his distress?

Stobaeus 3.10.45 (on Diogenes the Cynic):

He used to liken greedy men to those suffering from dropsy. For the latter, although filled with liquid, still desired to drink.

Teles, On Poverty and Wealth (p. 39 Hense):

If anyone wishes to free himself or another from want and poverty, let him not seek possessions for himself. For, as Bion says, it is as if someone wishing to stop a dropsy patient's thirst, were not to cure the dropsy but furnish the patient with fountains and rivers.

Polybius 13.2.2 (concerning Scopas the Aetolian, tr. W.R. Paton):

He was unaware that as in the case of a dropsy the thirst of the sufferer never ceases and is never allayed by the administration of liquids from without, unless we cure the morbid condition of the body itself, so it is impossible to satiate the greed for gain, unless we correct by reasoning the vice inherent in the soul.

Horace, Odes 2.2.13-16:

Who curbs a greedy soul may boast
More power than if his broad-based throne
Bridged Libya's sea, and either coast
  Were all his own.

Indulgence bids the dropsy grow;
Who fain would quench the palate's flame
Must rescue from the watery foe
  The pale weak frame.

latius regnes avidum domando
spiritum quam si Libyam remotis
Gadibus iungas et uterque Poenus
  serviat uni.

crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops
nec sitim pellit, nisi causa morbi
fugerit venis et aquosus albo
  corpore languor.

Ovid, Fasti 1.211-216 (tr. J.G. Frazer):

Riches have grown and with them the frantic lust for wealth, and they who have the most possessions still crave for more. They strive to gain that they may waste, and then to repair their wasted fortunes, and thus they feed their vices by ringing the changes on them. So he whose belly swells with dropsy, the more he drinks, the thirstier he grows.

creverunt et opes et opum furiosa cupido,
  et, cum possideant plurima, plura petunt.
quaerere ut absumant, absumpta requirere certant,
  atque ipsae vitiis sunt alimenta vices:
sic quibus intumuit suffusa venter ab unda,
  quo plus sunt potae, plus sitiuntur aquae.

Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia 11.3:

But the exiled man desires a table setting gleaming with golden bowls, silver famous for being crafted by ancient smiths, bronze that is precious in the crazed imagination of a few people, a crowd of slaves that would bankrupt even a wealthy establishment, bloated livestock forced to grow even fatter, and precious stones from all over the world. Even if all these things are heaped up, they will never fill a soul incapable of being filled, no more than any amount of liquid will be enough to satisfy him whose desire arises not from any lack but from the heat of his blazing innards. For that is not thirst but rather a disease.

sed desiderat aureis fulgentem vasis supellectilem et antiquis nominibus artificum argentum nobile, aes paucorum insania pretiosum et servorum turbam quae quamvis magnam domum angustet, iumentorum corpora differta et coacta pinguescere et nationum omnium lapides: ista congerantur licet, numquam explebunt inexplebilem animum, non magis quam ullus sufficiet umor ad satiandum eum cuius desiderium non ex inopia sed ex aestu ardentium viscerum oritur; non enim sitis illa sed morbus est.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1949; rpt. New York: Dover, 1983), p. 78:

It went against the grain with me to do a thing in secret that I would not do in public.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861), chapter 27:

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Throughout high school, at any rate.

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952; rpt. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1986), p. 259:

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. In the personages of other times and alien cultures we recognize our all too human selves and yet are aware, as we do so, that the frame of reference within which we do our living has changed, since their day, out of all recognition, that propositions which seemed axiomatic then are now untenable and that what we regard as the most self-evident postulates could not, at an earlier period, find entrance into even the most boldly speculative mind.

In Incorrectness Is Dangerous, John Ray cites some examples of liberal intolerance of conservative bumper stickers. If this story is accurate, it's a shocking example of conservative intolerance of liberal bumper stickers:

Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high. Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"

Note: Apparently Gaddis' name is really Geddes.

Some wag composed this doggerel, which Latin students are fond of chanting:

Latin is a language,
Dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans,
Now it's killing me.

Marc Antoine Muret (1526-1585), aka Muretus, thought differently. In his Orationes, vol. 2, no. 22, included in A. Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta (saec. xv-xx) (Rome, 1951), he wrote:

Therefore those languages that depend on the whim of the ignorant multitude die each day, and are born each day. But those languages that the usage of learned men has rescued from the slavery of the crowd not only are alive, but have in a certain way achieved immortality and immutability.

Illae igitur linguae quotidie moriuntur, quotidie nascuntur, quae pendent ex libidine imperitae multitudinis: quas autem ex populi servitute eruditorum usus vindicavit, illae non vivunt tantum, sed immortalitatem quodammodo et immutabilitatem adeptae sunt.

St. Augustine, On the Trinity (De Trinitate) 1.5.8:

We are caught up by the love of seeking out the truth.

rapimur amore indagandae veritatis.

Henri Troyat, Chekhov, tr. M.H. Heim (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986), p. 288:

When we're young, we all chirp fervently like sparrows on a dung-heap, but we're old by the time we reach forty, and we start thinking of death.

Beowulf 581-588, tr. Seamus Heaney:

Now I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth, that bears comparison. I don't boast when I say that neither you nor Breca were ever much celebrated for swordsmanship or for facing danger on the field of battle.

David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Scribner, 1996), mentions some techniques of cryptography used by the ancient Greeks and Romans in chapter 2 (The First 3,000 Years), especially pp. 80-84 and notes on p. 1003. We'll look at some primary sources for three of these techniques:

• Caesar's cipher
  
• The Spartan skytale
  
• Polybius' square
  

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Suetonius describes Julius Caesar's simple cipher in his Life of Julius Caesar 56 (tr. J. C. Rolfe):

There are also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the latter, if he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others.

extant et ad Ciceronem, item ad familiares domesticis de rebus, in quibus, si qua occultius perferenda erant, per notas scripsit, id est sic structo litterarum ordine, ut nullum verbum effici posset: quae si qui investigare et persequi velit, quartam elementorum litteram, id est D pro A et perinde reliquas commutet.

Here's how Caesar's cipher works with our modern alphabet:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC

If you want to encrypt a message, you substitute the letters in the bottom row for the ones in the top row (D for A, E for B, etc.), and when you want to decrypt a message, you substitute the letters in the top row for those in the bottom row (A for D, B for E, etc.). MIKE encoded would be PLNH.

Aulus Gellius (17.9.1-5) gives some further details:

There are books of epistles of Gaius Caesar to Gaius Oppius and Balbus Cornelius, who administered Caesar's affairs in his absence. In some passages in these epistles are found single letters of the alphabet not joined together into syllables, letters which you might suppose were arranged randomly; for no words can be formed from these letters. However there was a secret agreement among these men concerning a change in the placement of letters of the alphabet, in such a way that one letter took the place and name of another in what was written, but in reading each position and meaning was restored; which letter was written for which was agreed upon ahead of time among those who devised this cipher. There is even a rather ingeniously written treatise by the grammarian Probus concerning the secret meaning of letters in the composition of Caesar's epistles.

libri sunt epistularum C. Caesaris ad C. Oppium et Balbum Cornelium, qui res eius absentis curabant. in his epistulis quibusdam in locis inveniuntur litterae singulariae sine coagmentis syllabarum, quas tu putes positas incondite; nam verba ex his litteris confici nulla possunt. erat autem conventum inter eos clandestinum de commutando situ litterarum, ut in scripto quidem alia aliae locum et nomen teneret, sed in legendo locus cuique suus et potestas restitueretur; quaenam vero littera pro qua scriberetur, ante is, sicuti dixi, conplacebat, qui hanc scribendi latebram parabant. est adeo Probi grammatici commentarius satis curiose factus de occulta litterarum significatione in epistularum C. Caesaris scriptura.

Caesar's successor Augustus used a similar cipher, according to Suetonius, Life of Augustus 88 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

Whenever he wrote in cipher, he wrote B for A, C for B, and the rest of the letters on the same principle, using AA for X.

quotiens autem per notas scribit, B pro A, C pro B ac deinceps eadem ratione sequentis litteras ponit; pro X autem duplex A.

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The Spartans had a clever method of secret writing known as a skytale. Plutarch gives a clear description of it in his Life of Lysander 19.4-7 (tr. John Dryden):

When the Ephors send an admiral or general on his way, they take two round pieces of wood, both exactly of a length and thickness, and cut even to one another; they keep one themselves, and the other they give to the person they send forth; and these pieces of wood they call Scytales. When, therefore, they have occasion to communicate any secret or important matter, making a scroll of parchment long and narrow like a leathern thong, they roll it about their own staff of wood, leaving no space void between, but covering the surface of the staff with the scroll all over. When they have done this, they write what they please on the scroll, as it is wrapped about the staff; and when they have written, they take off the scroll, and send it to the general without the wood. He, when he has received it, can read nothing of the writing, because the words and letters are not connected, but all broken up; but taking his own staff, he winds the slip of the scroll about it, so that this folding, restoring all the parts into the same order that they were in before, and putting what comes first into connection with what follows, brings the whole consecutive contents to view round the outside.

Aulus Gellius also describes the skytale at 17.9.6-15, but he adds nothing new, so there is no point in translating or transcribing his description. He uses the Latin word surculus (shoot, branch) for the Greek skytale. Thucydides (1.131.1, talking about the Spartan Pausanias, who was a contemporary of Themistocles) mentions the skytale in passing, so we know that it was in use as early as the 480s B.C.

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Polybius' square or checkerboard is actually a cryptographic modification of a semaphore signalling system. Since Polybius' description is somewhat convoluted, it's advantageous to look at the adaptation before the original. In the following square we use our modern alphabet and combine I and J. In a similar scheme, we could add the 10 digits and use a 6 by 6 square. Polybius had one slot left over, since the Greek alphabet has only 24 letters.



If we want to encrypt a word, we select its coordinates in the square. For example, MIKE becomes 32 24 25 15. One advantage of this cipher is that it uses only 5 different symbols (in pairs) to encode 25 characters. Prisoners have sometimes used the Polybius square to communicate by knocking on walls.

Now Polybius' description of his semaphore system of signalling by fire (10.45.6-10.47.1, tr. W.R. Paton) might be easier to understand:

The most recent method, devised by Cleoxenus and Democleitus and perfected by myself, is quite definite and capable of dispatching with accuracy every kind of urgent messages, but in practice it requires care and exact attention. It is as follows: We take the alphabet and divide it into five parts, each consisting of five letters. There is one letter less in the last division, but this makes no practical difference. Each of the two parties who are about signal to each other must now get ready five tablets and write one division of the alphabet on each tablet, and then come to an agreement that the man who is going to signal is in the first place to raise two torches and wait until the other replies by doing the same. This is for the purpose of conveying to each other that they are both at attention. These torches having been lowered the dispatcher of the message will now raise the first set of torches on the left side indicating which tablet is to be consulted, i.e. one torch if it is the first, two if it is the second, and so on. Next he will raise the second set on the right on the same principle to indicate what letter of the tablet the receiver should write down.

Upon their separating after coming to this understanding each of them must first have on the spot a telescope with two tubes, so that with the one he can observe the space on the right of the man who is going to signal back and with the other that on the left. The tablets must be set straight up in order next the telescope, and there must be a screen before both spaces, as well the right as the left, ten feet in length and of the height of a man so that by this means the torches may be seen distinctly when raised and disappear when lowered. When all has been thus got ready on both sides, if the signaller wants to convey, for instance, that about a hundred of the soldiers have deserted to the enemy, he must first of all choose words which will convey what he means in the smallest number of letters, e.g. instead of the above "Cretans a hundred deserted us," for thus the letters are less than one half in number, but the same sense is conveyed. Having jotted this down on a writing-tablet he will communicate it by the torches as follows: The first letter is kappa. This being in the second division is on tablet number two, and, therefore, he must raise two torches on the left, so that the receiver may know that he had to consult the second tablet. He will now raise five torches on the right, to indicate that it is kappa, this being the fifth letter in the second division, and the receiver of the signal will note this down on his writing tablet. The dispatcher will then raise four torches on the left as rho belongs to the fourth division, and then two on the right, rho being the second letter in this division. The receiver writes down rho and so forth. This device enables any news to be definitely conveyed.

Many torches, of course, are required, as the signal for each letter is a double one.

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These techniques of secret writing are of course rudimentary compared to the sophisticated methods in use today, but they nonetheless cast an interesting light on the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Walter Pater, Essay on Style:

Different classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very various demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not only scholars, but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it, as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world.

Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Products of the Perfected Civilization. Selected Writings, tr. W.S. Merwin (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 231:

M. de Lassay, a very gentle man but with a great knowledge of society, said that one must swallow a toad every morning, when one had to go out into the world, so as not to find anything more disgusting during the day.

Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. & tr. Daniel Breazeale (1979; rpt. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1991), p. 127:

Greek antiquity provides the classical set of examples for the interpretation of our entire culture and its development. It is a means for understanding ourselves, a means for regulating our age -- and thereby a means for overcoming it.

Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849)

Chapter 10:

She must give up taking French lessons. The language, he observed, was a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most of the works it boasted were bad and frivolous, highly injurious in their tendency to weak female minds.

Chapter 31:

You read French. Your mind is poisoned with French novels. You have imbibed French principles.

Isocrates, To Demonicus 18:

If you are a lover of learning [philomathes], you will be very learned [polymathes].

The quotation in Greek is inscribed over the portal to Shrewsbury School.

From my own experience, I know that the protasis of Isocrates' sentence can be true and the apodosis false.

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), chapter 5:

But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with "Master Pinch, Grove House Academy," inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged within -- what happiness did they suggest!

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), Spring XVII:

It is a joy to go through booksellers' catalogues, ticking here and there a possible purchase.