Laudator Temporis Acti

The Oxford Etymologist discusses that unjustly maligned adjective niggardly, and Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective investigates the history of the Greek word keration (whence English carat).

Fred Reed has some provocative remarks on boys and girls in school. He mentions that his high school principal was nicknamed Chrome Dome. My high school algebra teacher had the same nickname.

Fr. Jim Tucker at Dappled Things explains why he blogs.

Back after a month's silence, Outer Life describes himself in a way that reminds me eerily of myself:

Some people are friendly, attracted to other people. Others are charismatic, attracting other people. I am neither. Wood in a world of magnets.

Theodore Dalrymple writes on Hobbesian Soccer.

From Norman Douglas' Good-bye to Western Culture:

Curry is India's gift to mankind; her contribution to human happiness. Curry atones for all the fatuities of the 108 Upanishads.

At Kenneth Lay's funeral,

The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared.

From a letter to the editor of the Lewiston, Maine, Sun Journal:

We were sitting next to a Somali family for the fireworks when one member of that family asked what the fireworks were for. When someone said, "America's birthday, our independence," one of the Somali children said, "Screw America."

God bless America, I say.

David Warren criticizes a proposal to get rid of St. George as the patron of England and replace him with St. Alban. St. George is "potentially offensive to Muslims," whom we must be very careful not to offend. Warren's essay is a good piece of writing, especially the last paragraph.

Keith Burgess-Jackson claims:

We have nothing to learn from Europeans. Nothing.

Jan. 11 (to John Newton):

He calls Christ his Brother and God his Father in a style of familiarity that seems to bespeak no small share of spiritual pride and vanity.

Feb. 8 (to John Newton):

You will suppose me a politician; but in truth I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the newspaper; and when I have laid it down, I feel myself more interested in the success of my early cucumbers, than in any part of this great and important subject.

March 7 (to William Bull):

Can a man be a good Christian that goes without breeches?

June 3 (to William Bull):

Tobacco was not known in the golden age. So much the worse for the golden age. This age of iron, or lead, would be insupportable without it; and therefore we may reasonably suppose that the happiness of those better days would have been much improved by the use of it.

June 17 (to John Newton):

A man thinks he is fighting for Christ, and he is fighting for his own notions.

Sept. 29 (to William Unwin):

One generation blows bubbles, and the next breaks them.

Oct. 6 (to John Newton):

Angels descend from Heaven to publish peace between man and his Maker; the Prince of Peace himself comes to confirm and establish it, and war, hatred, and desolation are the consequence. Thousands quarrel about the interpretation of a book which none of them understand. He that is slain dies firmly persuaded that the crown of martyrdom expects him; and he that slew him is equally convinced that he has done God service. In reality they are both mistaken, and equally unentitled to the honour they arrogate to themselves.

Oct. 20 (to Joseph Hill):

I have nothing to say on political subjects, for two reasons: first, because I know none that at present would prove very amusing, especially to you who love your country; and, secondly, because there are none that I have the vanity to think myself qualified to discuss.

Nov. 10 (to William Unwin):

But I have observed in your two last letters somewhat of a dejection and melancholy, that I am afraid you do not sufficiently strive against. I suspect you of being too sedentary. "You cannot walk." Why you cannot is best known to yourself. I am sure your legs are long enough, and your person does not overload them. But I beseech you ride, and ride often. I think I have heard you say, you cannot even do that without an object. Is not health an object? Is not a new prospect, which in most countries is gained at the end of every mile, an object? Assure yourself that easy chairs are no friends to cheerfulness, and that a long winter spent by the fireside is a prelude to an unhealthy spring. Every thing I see in the fields is to me an object, and I can look at the same rivulet, or at a handsome tree, every day of my life, with new pleasure. This indeed is partly the effect of a natural taste for rural beauty, and partly the effect of habit; for I never in all my life have let slip the opportunity of breathing fresh air, and of conversing with nature, when I could fairly catch it. I earnestly recommend a cultivation of the same taste to you, suspecting that you have neglected it, and suffer for doing so.

Dec. 15 (to John Newton, on flying in hot air balloons):

Should the point be carried, and man at last become as familiar with the air as he has long been with the ocean, will it in its consequences prove a mercy, or a judgement? I think, a judgement. First, because if a power to convey himself from place to place, like a bird, would have been good for him, his Maker would have formed him with such a capacity. But he has been a groveller upon the earth for six thousand years, and now at last, when the close of this present state of things approaches, begins to exalt himself above it. So much the worse for him. Like a truant schoolboy, he breaks his bounds, and will have reason to repent of his presumption. -- Secondly, I think it will prove a judgement, because with the exercise of very little foresight, it is easy to prognosticate a thousand evils which the project must necessarily bring after it; amounting at last to the confusion of all order, the annihilation of all authority, with dangers both to property and person, and impunity to the offenders.

Greg Kindall sends a modern English example of asyndetic privative adjectives, from Ogden Nash's The Caterpillar (see the last three words):

I find among the poems of Schiller
No mention of the caterpillar,
Nor can I find one anywhere
In Petrarch or Baudelaire,
So here I sit in extra session
To give my personal impression.
The caterpillar, as it's called,
Is often hairy, seldom bald;
It looks as if it never shaves;
When it walks, it walks in waves;
And from the cradle to the chrysalis
It's utterly speechless, songless, whistleless.

I've never read Ave Ogden! Nash in Latin, translated by James C. Gleeson and Brian N. Meyer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), but I wonder if The Caterpillar is included and, if so, how the last line is rendered.

---

Update: Dave Lull informs me that Ave Ogden! does not include a translation of The Caterpillar.

Aristophanes, Wasps 163 (tr. Alan Sommerstein):

By Poseidon, Philocleon, never.

μὰ τὸν Ποσειδῶ, Φιλοκλέων, οὐδέποτέ γε.

Sommerstein (Warminster, Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1983) ad loc. (pp. 166-167):

[I]n Ar. slaves (with the exception of the domineering Paphlagon in Knights) do not address their owners by name, but they may so address other free men (Ach. 949, 1085) and Philocleon is no longer Xanthias' owner (see on 69 and 87). A century later in Menander we find slaves addressing by name not only their former masters (Sik. 364, 368, 377, 381, 385) but even their actual masters (Dysk. 247; Sam. 192; Sik. 135, 142) without any hint that this is presumptuous.

Cf. Servius on Vergil's Aeneid 12.652:

For it is an insult to address a superior by his name.

nam contumelia est nomine suo superiorem vocare.

According to the critical apparatus of Douglas M. MacDowell's edition of Aristophanes' Wasps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), the attribution of line 163 to the slave Xanthias is actually a conjecture by Beer.

MacDowell in his commentary on line 143 (ἄναξ Πόσειδον), p. 150, has an interesting comment on addresses to gods in Aristophanes:

When ἄναξ or ὦ ᾽ναξ precedes a god's name in an exclamation, it marks surprise or annoyance at a sight or event which is unwelcome or unpleasant; cf. Akh. 84, Peace 180, 238, Birds 277, 295, Lys. 296, Wealth 438 (all of which have Ἄπολλον or Ἡράκλεις; there are no other instances in Ar. of ἄναξ Πόσειδον as an exclamation). When Poseidon is invoked in admiration, ἄναξ is always omitted; cf. ὦ Πόσειδον in Knights 144, Peace 564, Frogs 491, 1430.

For more on ancient forms of address, see here.

Thoreau, Journals (October 29, 1857):

We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth, or perhaps inheriting it or getting it by other accident, having recourse, for relaxation after excessive toil or as a mere relief to their idle ennui, to artificial amusements, rarely elevating and often debasing. I think that men generally are mistaken with regard to amusements. Every one who deserves to be regarded as higher than the brute may be supposed to have an earnest purpose, to accomplish which is the object of his existence, and this is at once his work and his supremest pleasure; and for diversion and relaxation, for suggestion and education and strength, there is offered the never-failing amusement of getting a living — never-failing, I mean, when temperately indulged in. I know of no such amusement — so wholesome and in every sense profitable, — for instance, as to spend an hour or two in a day picking some berries or other fruits which will be food for the winter, or collecting driftwood from the river for fuel, or cultivating the few beans or potatoes which I want. Theatres and operas, which intoxicate for a season, are as nothing compared to these pursuits. And so it is with all the true arts of life. Farming and building and manufacturing and sailing are the greatest and wholesomest amusements that were ever invented (for God invented them), and I suppose that the farmers and mechanics know it, only I think they indulge to excess generally, and so what was meant for a joy becomes the sweat of the brow. Gambling, horse-racing, loafing, and rowdyism generally, after all tempt few. The mass are tempted by those other amusements, of farming, etc. It is a great amusement, and more profitable than I could have invented, to go and spend an afternoon hour picking cranberries. By these various pursuits your experience becomes singularly complete and rounded. The novelty and significance of such pursuits are remarkable. Such is the path by which we climb to the heights of our being; and compare the poetry which such simple pursuits have inspired with the unreadable volumes which have been written about art.

Who is the most profitable companion? He who has been picking cranberries and chopping wood, or he who has been attending the opera all of his days? I find when I have been building a fence or surveying a farm, or even collecting simples, that these were the true paths to perception and enjoyment. My being seems to have put forth new roots and to be more strongly planted. This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness. If, as a poet or a naturalist, you wish to explore a given neighborhood, go and live in it, i.e. get your living in it. Fish in its streams, hunt in its forests, gather fuel from its water, its woods, cultivate the ground, and pluck the wild fruits, etc., etc. This will be the surest and speediest way to those perceptions you covet. No amusement has worn better than farming. It tempts men just as strongly to-day as in the day of Cincinnatus. Healthily and properly pursued, it is not a whit more grave than huckleberrying, and if it takes any airs on itself as superior there's something wrong about it.

I have aspired to practice in succession all the honest arts of life, that I may gather all their fruits. But then, if you are intemperate, if you toil to raise an unnecessary amount of corn, even the large crop of wheat becomes as a small crop of chaff.

If our living were once honestly got, then it would be time to invent other amusements.

Thoreau, Journals (September 28, 1857):

I see that E. Wood has sent a couple of Irishmen, with axe and bush-whack, to cut off the natural hedges of sumach, Roxbury waxwork, grapes, etc., which have sprung up by the walls on this hill farm, in order that his cows may get a little more green. And they have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! The botanist and lover of nature has, perchance, discovered some rare tree which has sprung up by a farmer's wall-side to adorn and bless it, sole representative of its kind in these parts. Strangers send for a seed or a sprig from a distance, but, walking there again, he finds that the farmer has sent a raw Irishman, a hireling just arrived on these shores, who was never there before -- and, we trust, will never be let loose there again, -- who knows not whether he he is hacking at the upas tree or the Tree of Knowledge, with axe and stub-scythe to exterminate it, and he will know it no more forever. What is trespassing? This Hessian, the day after he was landed, was whirled twenty miles into the interior to do this deed of vandalism on our favorite hedge. I would as soon admit a living mud turtle into my herbarium. If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.

---

Thoreau, Journals (October 12, 1857):

This is what those scamps did in California. The trees were so grand and venerable that they could not afford to let them grow a hair's breadth bigger, or live a moment longer to reproach themselves. They were so big that they resolved they should never be bigger. They were so venerable that they cut them right down. It was not for the sake of the wood; it was only because they were very grand and venerable.

---

Thoreau, Journals (October 20, 1857):

Melvin says that Sted sold the principal log of one of those pasture oaks to Garty for ten dollars and got several cords besides. What a mean bribe to take the life of so noble a tree!

Lucretius 5.222-227 (tr. W.H.D Rouse, rev. Martin Ferguson Smith):

Then further the child, like a sailor cast forth by the cruel waves, lies naked upon the ground, speechless, in need of every kind of vital support, as soon as nature has spilt him forth with throes from his mother's womb into the regions of light, and he fills all around with doleful wailings -- as is but just, seeing that so much trouble awaits him in life to pass through.

tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequumst
cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.

In line 223 there is an example of asyndetic privative adjectives (infans, indigus).

Philip Larkin, Toads:

Why should I let the toad work
  Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
  And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
  With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
  That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
  Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts -
  They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
  With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines -
  They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
  Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
  No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
  To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
  That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
  Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
  And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
  My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
  All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
  One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
  When you have both.

William Cowper, Letter to William Unwin (June 12, 1785):

John, once the Little, but now almost the Great, and promising to be altogether such in time, make yourself master of the Iliad and of the Odyssey as soon as you can, and then you will be master of two of the finest poems that ever were composed by man, and composed in the finest language that ever man uttered.

I recently wrote about mistreatment of corpses after burial. Since then a couple of related items have come to my attention.

The first is J.H.M. Strube, "Cursed be he that moves my bones," in Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink, edd. Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 33-59, a study of ancient Greek funerary imprecations, defined as "curses that are clearly and publicly written on the gravestone by the owner of the tomb (who does not conceal his identity) to warn any potential wrongdoer that evil will befall him in case he should violate the grave in defiance of the legitimate prohibitions to do so."

The second is a poem by William Cowper entitled Stanzas on the Late Indecent Liberties Taken with the Remains of the Great Milton. The poem itself is less interesting than the note attached to it:

This shocking outrage took place in 1790 whilst the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, was repairing. The overseers (for the sake of gain) opened a coffin supposed to be Milton's, found a body, extracted its teeth, cut off its hair, and left the remains to the grave-diggers, who exhibited them for money to the public.

There is a contemporary account of this outrage available on the World Wide Web, A Narrative of the Disinterment of Milton's Coffin in the Parish-Church of St Giles, Cripplegate on Wednesday, 4th of August, 1790, and of the treatment of the corpse, during that, and the following day, from which these are extracts:

Mr. Fountain told me, that he pulled hard at the teeth, which resisted, until some one hit them a knock with a stone, when they easily came out. There were but five in the upper-jaw, which were all perfectly sound and white, and all taken by Mr. Fountain; he gave one of them to Mr. Laming: Mr. Laming also took one from the lower-jaw; and Mr. Taylor took two from it. Mr. Laming told me, that he had at one time a mind to bring away the whole under-jaw with the teeth in it; he had it in his hand, but tossed it back again.....Elizabeth Grant, the grave-digger, and who is servant to Mrs. Hoppey, therefore now took possession of the coffin; and, as its situation, under the common-council-men's pew, would not admit of its being seen without the help of a candle, she kept a tinder-box in the excavation, and, when any persons came, struck a light, and conducted them under the pew; where, by reversing the part of the lid which had been cut, she exhibited the body, at first for 6d. and afterwards for 3d. and 2d. each person. The workmen in the church kept the doors locked to all those who would not pay the price of a pot of beer for entrance, and many, to avoid that payment, got in at a window at the west end of the church, near to Mr. Ascough's counting-house.

I guess the workmen in the church thought that "malt does more than Milton can / to justify God's ways to man."

Laura Gibbs at Bestiaria Latina Blog collects proverbs in which the Latin word umbra (shadow, shade) appears. From umbra are derived a number of English words, such as penumbra, somber, sombrero, umbrage, and umbrella.

We use the umbrella to protect ourselves from the rain (French parapluie, German Regenschirm) and also from the sun (French parasol, German Sonnenschirm). But the ancients seem to have used it almost exclusively to shade themselves from the sun. The Greeks called the umbrella σκιάδειον, σκιάδιον, or σκιαδίσκη, the Romans umbraculum or umbella. Embedded in all of these Greek and Latin words are roots denoting shade.

In some respects, the ancients would have seen nothing odd about the following picture:


First, although it's not raining, Michael Jackson is using an umbrella to shield himself from the sun, on the advice (it is said) of his dermatologist. This was also the chief use of the umbrella among the ancients, for protection against the sun.

Second, Michael Jackson is not himself carrying the umbrella. One of his lackeys is holding it for him. Similarly, in ancient times, if you were rich and powerful enough to have an umbrella, you were probably rich and powerful enough to have a slave or some other social inferior hold it over you, as the following passages suggest:

Aelian, Varia Historia 6.1 (tr. N.G. Wilson):

The Athenians committed another excess. Having had good fortune they failed to exploit their luck sensibly. They obliged the daughters of resident aliens to carry parasols to shade their own girls in processions, and similarly the wives for their own wives, while the men had to carry the trays with offerings.

Pausanias 7.22.6 (tr. W.H.S. Jones):

Before you enter the city [Triteia] is a tomb of white marble, well worth seeing, especially for the paintings on the grave, the work of Nicias. There is an ivory chair on which is a young and beautiful woman, by whose side is a handmaid carrying a sunshade.

Martial 11.73.6 (a curse, tr. D.R. Shackleton-Bailey):

Lygdus, may you carry a one-eyed mistress' sunshade.

But in another respect the ancient Greeks and Romans would have found this an odd picture, because Michael Jackson is a man, and it was considered effeminate for men to use umbrellas, as the following fragment of Anacreon preserved by Athenaeus 12.534 a-b shows:

He is carrying an ivory umbrella, / like women do.

σκιαδίσκην ἐλεφαντίνην φορεῖ / γυναίξιν αὕτως.

The explanation for this is, I think, simple. It was the ideal for an ancient Greek woman to have a pale complexion, but for a man to be sun-burned. Women were supposed to stay inside much of the time, men outside. Women were supposed to wear clothes, whereas men were practically naked for some outdoor activities (athletics, farming, etc.). Umbrellas helped women keep their skin pale, and therefore a man who used an umbrella to protect his skin would end up not tanned (as a manly fellow should look), but pale (like a woman).

A passage from Xenophon's Agesilaus (1.28, tr. E.C. Marchant) makes the point:

Moreover, believing that contempt for the enemy would kindle the fighting spirit, he gave instructions to his heralds that the barbarians captured in the raids should be exposed for sale naked. So when his soldiers saw them white because they never stripped, and fat and lazy through constant riding in carriages, they believed that the war would be exactly like fighting with women.

For more on pale skin among the ancient Greeks, see here.

William Cowper, Letter to Samuel Rose (March 29, 1788):

I know so little of the world as it goes at present, and labour generally under such a depression of spirits, especially at those times when I could wish to be most cheerful, that my own share in every conversation appears to me to be the most insipid thing imaginable.

Papyri Graecae Magicae VII.185-186 (tr. Roy Kotansky):

To get an erection when you want: Grind up a pepper with some honey and coat your "thing."

Sounds like the laugh of Curly from the Three Stooges, but it's really a series of Latin and Greek words, some of which have been in the news lately:

	nix	nox	nux	nyx
Greek	night?	-	night	night
Latin	snow	night	nut	-

Kaare Aksnes, Chairman of the International Astronomical Union's Division III Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature, Two new Pluto moons named by the IAU:

The two small Pluto moons with temporary designations S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, discovered in mid-May 2005 with the Hubble Space Telescope (Weaver et. al., IAUC 8625), have now been named respectively Hydra and Nix by the IAU.

In Greek mythology Nyx was the goddess of darkness and the night, a very appropriate name for a moon orbiting Pluto - the god of the underworld. To avoid confusion with the asteroid (3908) Nyx, the Egyptian spelling Nix was chosen. Hydra is the serpent with nine heads that guarded the underworld.

Some people transliterate Greek upsilon as y, others as u, so Greek Νύξ is normally transliterated Nyx or Nux. Stephen Carlson has this to say about upsilon and iota in Egyptian papyri:

When did upsilon start unrounding to the sound of an iota? Egyptian papyri from the 2nd and 3rd centuries show a confusion of U and I, so this indicates that around that time, possibly a bit earlier, is when the U started converging to I, and that probably is a regional variation.

Pluto now has three known moons, Charon (discovered in 1978), Hydra, and Nix. Pluto is of course the god of the underworld, and Charon is the ferryman who transports the dead across the River Styx. The Hydra is among the beasts stationed at hell's gate, according to Vergil, Aeneid 6.285-289 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

And many monstrous forms besides of various beasts are stalled at the doors, Centaurs and double-shaped Scyllas, and the hundredfold Briareus, and the beast of Lerna [Hydra], hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flame, Gorgons and Harpies, and the shape of the three-bodied shade [Geryon].

multaque praeterea variarum monstra ferarum,
Centauri in foribus stabulant Scyllaeque biformes
et centumgeminus Briareus ac belua Lernae
horrendum stridens, flammisque armata Chimaera,
Gorgones Harpyiaeque et forma tricorporis umbrae.

Govert Schilling, Pluto's Twins Get Their Names, writes:

Nyx was the goddess of night and the mother of Charon, the boatsman who takes souls across the River Styx and into Pluto's grasp.

Perhaps there is some ancient author who says that Nyx is Charon's mother, but I can't track one down. Hesiod (Theogony 211-225, tr. H.G. Evelyn-White) lists the children of Nyx, and Charon isn't among them:

And Night bore hateful Doom and black Fate and Death, and she bore Sleep and the tribe of Dreams. And again the goddess murky Night, though she lay with none, bare Blame and painful Woe, and the Hesperides who guard the rich, golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious Ocean. Also she bore the Destinies and ruthless avenging Fates, Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who give men at their birth both evil and good to have, and they pursue the transgressions of men and of gods: and these goddesses never cease from their dread anger until they punish the sinner with a sore penalty. Also deadly Night bore Nemesis (Indignation) to afflict mortal men, and after her, Deceit and Friendship and hateful Age and hard-hearted Strife.

But Nyx has her dwelling in the underworld, according to Hesiod (Theogony 748), and therefore has as good a claim as any to be one of Pluto's moons.

Montaigne, Essays 1.21 (tr. Donald M. Frame):

The organs that serve to discharge the stomach have their own dilations and compressions, beyond and against our plans, just like those that are destined to discharge the kidneys. To vindicate the omnipotence of our will, St. Augustine alleges that he knew a man who commanded his behind to produce as many farts as he wanted, and his commentator Vives goes him one better with another example of his own time, of farts arranged to suit the tone of verses pronounced to their accompaniment; but all this does not really argue any pure obedience in the organ; for is there any that is more indiscreet or tumultuous? Besides, I know one so turbulent and unruly, that for forty years it has kept its master farting with a constant and unremitting wind and compulsion, and is thus taking him to his grave.<sup>2

2</sup>Here the 1595 edition adds: "Add would God I knew only from the history books how many times our stomach, by refusing one single fart, brings us to the gates of a very anguished death; and that the Emperor who gave us the liberty to fart anywhere had given us the power to." Suetonius reports that the Emperor Claudius had contemplated such a decree as this.

I don't have access to Vives, but here are the other passages mentioned by Montaigne.

Augustine, City of God 14.24 (tr. Marcus Dodds):

Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing.

nonnulli ab imo sine pudore ullo ita numerosos pro arbitrio sonitus edunt, ut ex illa etiam parte cantare videantur.

I don't have a critical edition of Augustine's City of God, but there seems to be some disagreement about the text of this passage among the online editions. I see sine pudore ullo (without any shame), sine paedore ullo (without any stink) and sine putore illo (without any stink) as variants. For more on those with this God-given talent, see here.

Suetonius, Life of Claudius 32 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

He is even said to have thought of an edict allowing the privilege of breaking wind quietly or noisily at table, having learned of a man who ran some risk by restraining himself through modesty.

dicitur etiam meditatus edictum, quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi, cum periclitatum quendam prae pudore ex continentia repperisset.

In an earlier post, I wondered about the ancient Greek word for freckles and confessed my inability to understand a passage from Plutarch's Life of Sulla. Neil O'Sullivan comes to the rescue and informs me that there are at least two possible words for freckles in Greek, πέρκωμα (pérkōma) and ἔφηλις (éphēlis).

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. πέρκωμα:

dusky spot on the face, Hsch. (pl.).

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ἔφηλις:

A. rivet, burr or clinch to secure a nail, Ph.Bel.63.50, IG11(2).165.13 (Delos, iii B.C.).

II. in pl., rough spots which stud the face (from ἧλος), or, acc. to others, freckles (from ἥλιος), Hp.Prorrh.2.23, Alim.20, Mul.2.215, Thphr.HP9.20.3, Sor.1.44 (sg.), etc.: acc. pl. ἐφήλεις Dsc.1.123.

As Neil points out, Greek éphēlis resembles Latin felix, thus giving rise to Plutarch's remark that "his surname was given him because of his complexion."

I just received a postcard in the mail from Turkey, with handwriting suspiciously like this one. It says:

Dear Mr. Gilleland:

The Patriarch of Constantinople is a fan of your blog & is writing you in sincerest appreciation. Here is a picture of a mosaic from Byzantium for your enjoyment.

If both the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople have the same handwriting and appear to be the same person, does that mean the Great Schism is now ended?

I suspect that the person who mailed this postcard is the same wag who expressed his desire to form an organization named Opus Deae (i.e. Opus Veneris), to counteract Opus Dei.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (October 26, 1858, recording a conversation with George Minott):

He says that some call the stake-driver "belcher-squelcher," and some "wollerkertoot." I used to call them "pump-er-gor΄." Some say "slug-toot."

This mystified me, until I realized that Thoreau and Minott were talking about a bird, a sort of heron, the American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), and not a device to pound fence posts into the ground.

Botaurus presumably comes from Latin bos (ox) and taurus (bull), and must refer to the bittern's booming call. Lentiginosus means freckled or spotted (Val. Max. 1.7.6 ext.: vir lentiginosi oris), from lentigo (freckles), itself from lens (lentil). English lens also comes from Latin lens, because the glass is lentil-shaped.

Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary and Edwards' English-Greek Lexicon don't give any ancient Greek equivalents for English freckles. Maybe no ancient Greeks had freckles. I don't have a Greek text of Plutarch's Life of Sulla, which mentions his unusual complexion (2.1., tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

His personal appearance, in general, is given by his statues; but the gleam of his gray eyes, which was terribly sharp and powerful, was rendered even more fearful by the complexion of his face. This was covered with coarse blotches of red, interspersed with white. For this reason, they say, his surname was given him because of his complexion, and it was in allusion to this that a scurrilous jester at Athens made the verse: "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled o'er with meal."

This doesn't sound quite like freckles, and the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla Felix was a Roman, not a Greek. I don't understand "his surname was given him because of his complexion." The dictator is supposed to be the first to have the name Felix, but what do Felix or Sulla have to do with a spotty face? The name Sulla was already associated with the gens Cornelia before the time of the dictator. Mulberry (μόρον in Greek, morum in Latin) gives no help.

But back to bitterns. Bradford Torrey (who was later to edit Thoreau's journals) wrote an article, "The 'Booming' of the Bittern," The Auk: A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology 6.1 (January 1889) 1-8.

Bitterns are said to be secretive and reclusive, and I don't think I've ever seen or heard one. They are also said to prefer beaver-created wetlands. A little corner of my woodlot in Maine is perennially wet and inhabited by beavers, although wetland seems a rather grandiose name for it.

Google returned no hits for wollerkertoot, a situation I hope this post will remedy.

William Hazlitt, On Wit and Humour:

In this sense Aesop was the greatest wit and moralist that ever lived. Ape and slave, he looked askance at human nature, and beheld its weaknesses and errors transferred to another species. Vice and virtue were to him as plain as any objects of sense. He saw in man a talking, absurd, obstinate, proud, angry animal; and clothed these abstractions with wings, or a beak, or tail, or claws, or long ears, as they appeared embodied in these hieroglyphics in the brute creation. His moral philosophy is natural history. He makes an ass bray wisdom, and a frog croak humanity. The store of moral truth, and the fund of invention in exhibiting it in eternal forms, palpable and intelligible, and delightful to children and grown persons, and to all ages and nations, are almost miraculous. The invention of a fable is to me the most enviable exertion of human genius: it is the discovering a truth to which there is no clue, and which, when once found out, can never be forgotten. I would rather have been the author of Aesop's Fables, than of Euclid's Elements!

William Hazlitt, On a Sun-Dial:

Horas non numero nisi serenas -- is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. 'I count only the hours that are serene.' What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind -- to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip for our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting!

Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective writes about auto-antonyms. His English example is cleave, meaning both "separate" and "adhere." There are actually two different words spelled cleave in English, each with a different etymology. Posts at Balashon which might interest students of ancient Greek include those on the words bible and lishkah.

Anatoly Liberman, the Oxford Etymologist, has an interesting post on tautological compounds like henbane and ragamuffin and (easier to see) pathway. I just learned that Liberman is a resident not of Oxford, but of Minnesota. His article "Gone with the Wind: More Thoughts on Medieval Farting," Scandinavian Studies (1996), is on my list of things to read.

Finally, Laura Gibbs at Bestiaria Latina Blog writes entertainingly about English words derived from the Greek word for rainbow.

Goethe, Römische Elegien, V (tr. A.S. Kline):

I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:
The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly.
Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients
With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight.
But at night Love keeps me busy another way:
I become half a scholar but twice as contented.
And am I not learning, studying the shape
Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?
Then I know marble more: thinking, comparing,
See with a feeling eye: feel with a seeing hand.
If my darling is stealing the day's hours from me,
She gives me hours of night in compensation.
We're not always kissing: we often talk sense:
When she's asleep, I lie there filled with thought.
Often I've even made poetry there in her arms,
Counted hexameters gently there on my fingers
Over her body. She breathes in sweetest sleep,
And her breath burns down to my deepest heart.
Amor trims the lamp then and thinks of the times
When he did the same for his three poets of love.

Froh empfind ich mich nun auf klassischem Boden begeistert,
Vor- und Mitwelt spricht lauter und reizender mir.
Hier befolg ich den Rat, durchblättre die Werke der Alten
Mit geschäftiger Hand, täglich mit neuem Genuß.
Aber die Nächte hindurch hält Amor mich anders beschäftigt;
Werd ich auch halb nur gelehrt, bin ich doch doppelt beglückt.
Und belehr ich mich nicht, indem ich des lieblichen Busens
Formen spähe, die Hand leite die Hüften hinab?
Dann versteh ich den Marmor erst recht: ich denk und vergleiche,
Sehe mit fühlendem Aug, fühle mit sehender Hand.
Raubt die Liebste denn gleich mir einige Stunden des Tages,
Gibt sie Stunden der Nacht mir zur Entschädigung hin.
Wird doch nicht immer geküßt, es wird vernünftig gesprochen,
Überfällt sie der Schlaf, lieg ich und denke mir viel.
Oftmals hab ich auch schon in ihren Armen gedichtet
Und des Hexameters Maß leise mit fingernder Hand
Ihr auf den Rücken gezählt. Sie atmet in lieblichem Schlummer,
Und es durchglühet ihr Hauch mir bis ins Tiefste die Brust.
Amor schüret die Lamp' indes und gedenket der Zeiten,
Da er den nämlichen Dienst seinen Triumvirn getan.

In the third line, Goethe is probably recalling Horace's advice (Ars Poetica 268-269, tr. John Conington): "Make Greece your model when you write, / And turn her volumes over day and night" (vos exemplaria Graeca / nocturna versate manu, versate diurna). The "three poets of love" (seinen Triumvirn) in the last line are the Roman elegaic poets Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid.

Charles Péguy:

Homer is fresh this morning, and nothing is perhaps as stale as today's newspaper.

Homère est nouveau ce matin et rien n'est peut-être aussi vieux que le journal d'aujourd'hui.

The Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1865), p. 343:

For God's sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards--I am sorry for the Greeks--I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Bagdad is oppressed--I do not like the present state of the Delta--Thibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy?

Luke 12.4:

Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

But they that kill the body in fact have much more that they can do after that. For one thing, they can mutilate the corpse, as Achilles tried to do to Hector's dead body in the penultimate book of the Iliad, by dragging it behind his chariot around Patroclus' tomb.

Or someone can deny burial to a corpse, as Creon decreed that no one was to bury Polyneices, in Sophocles' Antigone. Similarly, in Sophocles' Ajax, Menelaus and Agamemnon tried to prevent Teucer from burying Ajax.

In Plato's Laws, some types of criminals are denied burial, such as parricides and witches (9.873 B-C and 10.909 C, tr. A.E. Taylor):

If a man be found guilty of such homicide, that is, of slaying any of the aforesaid [father, mother, brother, child], the officers of the court with the magistrates shall put him to death and cast him out naked, outside the city at an appointed place where three ways meet. There, all the magistrates, in the name of the state, shall take each man his stone and cast it on the head of the corpse as in expiation for the state. The corpse shall then be carried to the frontier and cast out by legal sentence without sepulture.

At death he [the witch] shall be cast out beyond the borders without burial, and if any free citizen has a hand in his burial, he shall be liable to a prosecution for impiety at the suit of any who cares to take proceedings.

Even after burial, a corpse can be maltreated, as Cambyses insulted the corpse of Amasis (Herodotus 3.16.1, tr. George Rawlinson):

After this Cambyses left Memphis, and went to Sais, wishing to do that which he actually did on his arrival there. He entered the palace of Amasis, and straightway commanded that the body of the king should be brought forth from the sepulchre. When the attendants did according to his commandment, he further bade them scourge the body, and prick it with goads, and pluck the hair from it, and heap upon it all manner of insults.

Cf. Jeremiah 8.1-2:

At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves: And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.

Disinterment is also a punishment in Plutarch's Life of Solon (12.3, tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

Myron of Phlya conducted the prosecution, and the family of Megacles was found guilty. Those who were alive were banished, and the bodies of the dead were dug up and cast forth beyond the borders of the country.

There is also a danger to corpses from witches, who exhume the bones of the dead to use as ingredients in their potions. See e.g. Horace, Satires 1.8.20-22 (tr. Christopher Smart, a statue of Priapus is speaking):

These I can not by any means destroy nor hinder, but that they will gather bones and noxious herbs, as soon as the fleeting moon has shown her beauteous face.

Only a few philosophers thought what happened to a corpse didn't matter, such as Epictetus (4.7.31-32, tr. W.A. Oldfather):

"But your head will be taken off." And does the tyrant's head always stay in its place, and the heads of you who obey him? "But you will be thrown out unburied." If the corpse is I, then I shall be thrown out; but if I am something different from the corpse, speak with more discrimination, as the fact is, and do not try to terrify me. These things are terrifying to children and to fools.

Anecdotes also survive about the philosophers Diogenes and Theodorus and their lack of concern about what would happen to their bodies after death.

Much more could be said on this theme. There are many more passages like those cited above. There are lots of relevant ancient inscriptions, too, along the lines of Shakespeare's "curst be he that moves my bones."

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (January 2, 1859):

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, -- Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham's rule, -- I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially, your truest poetical sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat. The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk, -- turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively, -- but so the beautiful walkers are not made.

I subscribe to A.Word.A.Day. As an added bonus, once a week there arrives in my inbox "A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages." AWADmail Issue 214 (June 18, 2006) ended with this quotation:

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

This set off my bullshit detector. After all, if there was ever "a man who uses a great many words to express his meaning," that man was Samuel Johnson.

I don't pretend to have read every word Johnson wrote, or every word his biographers record him as saying. Nevertheless, in the words I have read, I don't remember seeing this quotation. I was glad to see my skepticism reinforced at The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page: Apocrypha, compiled by Frank Lynch, who says:

Haven't found this one yet, but it's not encouraging. Searches on phrases like "great many words," "bad marksman," and "handful and throws" aren't showing any hits... In fact, the only place I can find him using the word "marksman" is as a word in his Dictionary; the quotations he uses to support his definition are completely different from this one. The phrase "single stone" also only appears in his Dictionary, but in completely different contexts.

For searching, Lynch uses "Primary Source Media's CD-ROM of Johnson's works (which also includes Boswell, Piozzi, Hawkins, Burney, Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies,' O.M. Brack's 'Early Biographies,' et al -- it's extremely comprehensive)."

Most modern books on writing adopt as an article of faith what I call the brevity fetish, e.g. William Zinsser, On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction:

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.

In a clever post, Bill Vallicella showed that Zinsser's own sentence could be reduced from 54 to 39 words with no change in meaning.

Some of my favorite authors are those who are anything but brief, whose writings are expansive and leisurely. Like Montaigne and Johnson.

George Santayana, Persons and Places, chap. 6 (Avila):

Was not this the festival of the summer solstice? Did not the summer sun and the June roses fill it with light and fragrance? Was not everybody happy and gaily dressed? Did not tapestries and damasks hang from the balconies, or where they were lacking, at least some gay coverlet or shawl or tablecloth? Did not gold thread and tinsel shine everywhere from vestments and banners? Were not the sun's rays doubly reflected from the golden monstrance that seemed to imitate them? And as the Host approached, borne high in a silver shrine amid lights and flowers, did not doves let loose from some window soar and circle in the upper air, while handfuls of rose-leaves fluttered down like snowflakes on the procession? And the Host itself, the mystic center of all this joy, what was it but the bread of life, white wheaten bread sublimated into the pure principle of eternal happiness?

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (August 9, 1858):

The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office-holders, though they may be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, inasmuch as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society.

Robert Ogilvie's Horae Latinae. Studies in Synonyms and Syntax (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1901) is a study of the distinctions between Latin synonyms. It tells you, for example, what the differences are between sperare and optare, iucundus and gratus, carere and egere. The book is the fruit of wide, independent reading of Latin literature, especially the chief prose authors (Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Livy; to a lesser extent Seneca), and is useful for those interested in keeping alive the vanishing art of Latin prose composition.

It is out of print, of course, and the rare used copy is usually very expensive. It is one of those books I wish would show up in Project Gutenberg. Here is a sample from Horae Latinae, s.vv. drink and drunk:

DRINK
Bibere, to drink, generally, whether to quench one's thirst, or in reference to customary moderate convivial drinking; potare, to drink to excess, to tipple.

Tus. 5,34 Darius in fuga, cum aquam turbidam bibisset, negavit se umquam bibisse iucundius.
Fin. 2,3 estne, inquam, sitienti in bibendo voluptas?
Verr. 1,26 fit sermo inter eos et invitatio, ut Graeco more biberetur.
Pl. Rud. 361 periit potando (he has drunk himself to death).
Phil. 2,27 totos dies potabatur.
Sall. C. 11 ibi primum insuevit exercitus populi Romani potare.

Potum, or potatum, is used instead of bibitum. He is going
to drink, poturus or potaturus est.

DRUNK
Ebrius, drunk, intoxicated. Ebriosus, addicted to drinking, drunken. A person may be "ebrius," drunk, on a particular occasion, without incurring the imputation of being "ebriosus," a drunkard.

Sen. Ep. 83 plurimum interesse concedes inter ebrium et ebriosum.
Mil. 24 servos Milonis apud se ebrios factos (had got drunk in his house).
Fam. 9,17,1 ex quo vel sobrio vel certe ex ebrio scire posses.
Deiot. 9 Deiotarum saltantem quisquam aut ebrium vidit umquam?
Fat. 5 hunc scribunt ipsius familiares ebriosum fuisse.

Emily Dickinson:

To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

Aesop, Fable 185 Chambry (tr. Olivia and Robert Temple):

A dog was crossing a river holding a piece of meat in its mouth. Catching sight of his reflection in the water, he believed that it was another dog who was holding a bigger piece of meat. So, dropping his own piece, he leaped into the water to take the piece from the other dog. But the result was that he ended up with neither piece -- one didn't even exist and the other was swept away by the current. This fable applies to the covetous.

Κύων κρέας ἔχουσα ποταμὸν διέβαινε· θεασαμένη δὲ τὴν ἑαυτῆς σκιὰν κατὰ τοῦ ὕδατος, ὑπέλαβεν ἑτέραν κύνα εἶναι μεῖζον κρέας ἔχουσαν. Διόπερ ἀφεῖσα τὸ ἴδιον ὥρμησεν ὡς τὸ ἐκείνης ἀφαιρησομένη. Συνέβη δὲ αὐτῇ ἀμφοτέρων στερηθῆναι, τοῦ μὲν μὴ ἐφικομένῃ, διότι οὐδὲ ἦν, τοῦ δὲ, ὅτι ὑπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ παρεσύρη. Πρὸς ἄνδρα πλεονέκτην ὁ λόγος εὔκαιρος.

For a list of adaptations and translations of this fable, see here. Jonathan Swift's translation of this fable into Latin could be added to the list:

Ore cibum portans catulus dum spectat in undis,
Apparet liquido praedae melioris imago:
Dum speciosa diu damna admiratur, et altè
Ad latices inhiat, cadit imo vortice praeceps
Ore cibus, nec non simulacrum corripit unà.
Occupat ille avidus deceptis faucibus umbram;
Illudit species, ac dentibus aëra mordet.

Dave Haxton at MacRaven links to a horror story about families in Ohio who refuse to claim bodies from funeral homes, because they don't want to pay the costs of burial.

In a more civilized time and place (ancient Athens), there was a law regulating this sort of thing, quoted by Demosthenes 43.57-58 (tr. A.T. Murray):

And when persons die in the demes and no one takes them up for burial, let the Demarch give notice to the relatives to take them up and bury them, and to purify the deme on the day on which each of them dies. In the case of slaves he shall give notice to their masters, and in the case of freemen to those possessing their property; and if the deceased had no property, the Demarch shall give notice to the relatives of the deceased. And if, after the Demarch shall have given notice, the relatives do not take up the body, the Demarch shall contract for the taking up and burial of the body, and for the purification of the deme on the same day at the lowest possible cost. And if he shall not so contract, he shall be bound to pay a thousand drachmae into the public treasury. And whatsoever he shall expend, he shall exact double the amount from those liable; and if he does not exact it he shall himself be under obligation to repay it to the demesmen.

George Santayana, Persons and Places, chap. X:

In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war.

William Annis and others are blogging about their oldest books. My oldest classics book is Caji Silii Italici Punicorum libri septemdecim ad optimas editiones collati. Praemittitur notitia literaria. Studiis Societatis Bipontinae. Editio accurata (Biponti: Ex Typographia Societatis, MDCCLXXXIV). That's Silius Italicus' Punica (Zweibrücken, 1784). According to Wikipedia, "At the ducal printing office at Zweibrücken the fine edition of the classics known as the Bipontine Editions was published (1799 sqq.)." I think that's a mistake for 1779.

The erudite E.J. Moncada writes:

Re: your BUMF, 6/11/06, I was not able to recall anything in Swift dealing with the subject matter, but perhaps something from his friend Pope can make up for it:

Verses to be prefixed before B. Linton's New Miscellany

...Their books are useful to a few,
A scholar or a wit or two;
Lintot's for general use are fit,
For some folks read, but all folks sh___.

And Robert Burton in his Democritus to the Reader (Anat. Mel.) writes about the profusion of printed matter: non tam refertae bibliothecae quam cloacae and also adds Martial's (XII, lxi, seemingly a recollection of Catullus 36. 1, but used differently) Scribunt carmina quae legunt cacantes.

And to continue this specialized attack on "carmina," Magister Bernhard Federleser says in his letter to Magister Ortwin Gratius, "ego bene merdarem in vestram poetriam" (Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, Pt. I, iii.)

To return to the Catullan expression/idea, we find no less a one than John Milton in his Second Defense addressing his adversary More (Alexander): "tuam ergo tam bellam pro nostro populo oratiunculam, ne charta omnino pereat, in Annales Volusi suadeo inseres."

Later, S.T. Coleridge, in speaking of Warton’s edition of Milton's Minor Poems, says "The paper seems too bad for such respectable publishers as the Robinsons who did not deal in this charta cacatilis (sic)."

Not directly associated with topic, I thought this might be of interest to you, a remark by Norman Shapiro (Verbatim 18 (2) 1991) about how the French demonstrate a readiness to create words from letter abbreviations, "...the word pécu 'toilet paper' (from PQ, itself a punnish abbreviation of papier cul which has also come to mean a pompous piece of writing, with the corresponding verb, pécufier)."

Eugene Field, A Plea for the Classics:

A Boston gentleman declares,
  By all the gods above, below,
That our degenerate sons and heirs
  Must let their Greek and Latin go!
Forbid, O Fate, we loud implore,
  A dispensation harsh as that;
What! wipe away the sweets of yore;
  The dear "Amo, amas, amat"?

The sweetest hour the student knows
  Is not when poring over French,
Or twisted in Teutonic throes,
  Upon a hard collegiate bench;
'T is when on roots and kais and gars
  He feeds his soul and feels it glow,
Or when his mind transcends the stars
  With "Zoa mou, sas agapo"!

So give our bright, ambitious boys
   An inkling of these pleasures, too --
A little smattering of the joys
  Their dead and buried fathers knew;
And let them sing -- while glorying that
  Their sires so sang, long years ago --
The songs "Amo, amas, amat,"
  And "Zoa mou, sas agapo"!

1. Amo, amas, amat = the Latin conjugation "I love, you love, he/she loves"
   
2. kai, gar = common Greek words meaning "and" and "for"
   
3. Zoa mou, sas agapo = a fragment of Greek meaning "My life, I love thee"

---

Neil O'Sullivan writes:

Field had some Latin, but it looks like not much Greek. Why else would he have thought that a scrap of Byron's bad modern Greek was actually something ancient?

E.J. Moncada identifies the source of the Greek as Byron's Maid of Athens.

Chris Weimer at Thoughts on Antiquity, in a post on Elitism, Dilettantism, and Hypocrisy, summarizes a recent biblioblogontroversy. Here are the main events:

1. James D. Tabor writes a book entitled Jesus Dynasty.
   
2. Michael Turton writes a negative review of Tabor's book.
   
3. Jim West attacks Turton as a dilettante unqualified to review Tabor's work.
   
4. Turton deletes his review, apologizes to Tabor, and shuts down his own blog.
   
5. Various other bloggers weigh in.

I have nothing to add to my earlier remarks on academic credentials. But I recently read some sensible comments on the subject by Michael Drout, in a post entitled Who is Really a Scholar, which bear repeating:

And it is important that we in academia continually remind ourselves that it is the work not the credential or the institution that really matters.

Sophocles, fragment 410 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):

No one is without troubles, and he who has the least is the most fortunate.

ἄμοχθος γὰρ οὐδεὶς· ὁ δ᾽ ἥκιστ᾽ ἔχων
μακάρτατος.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says that bumf, also spelled bumph, is short for bum-fodder, and defines it as "toilet-paper; hence, paper (esp. with contemptuous implication), documents collectively." OED s.v. bum defines bum-fodder as "worthless literature" and refers to Latin anitergium.

Anitergium, presumably from anus (arse) and tergeo (wipe), apparently does not occur in classical Latin. Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis, says it is a made-up word:

vox ficta, ut facitergium, cujus notio satis patet. Petrus Damiani lib. I. Epist. 9. Materias congerebat, quibus ad requisita naturae necessaria Fratribus anitergia ministraret.

Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania, Part XIX (The Misfortune of Books), III (Neglect and Misusage), discusses the use of books as toilet-paper:

But abuse more direct and deliberate has been as common in most times, from their use as packing or tinder to the indignity of sanitary necessity, for although Gargantua discommends paper, and books as such are not named in his famous torcheculatif,² their use in this wise is historically established and has become a byword in French coprology. Avisez-y, doctes: parce que souvent d'espice, ou des mouchoirs du cul.³ There are those also, as that old English aphorist,⁴ who go so far as to class the writer of abundance of Books with the begetter of abundance of Children, as a Benefactor of the Publick, because he furnishes it with Bumfodder and Soldiers. I must perforce be indefinite in such a record, so shall only add one instance in which Carew Hazlitt tells us that not so long since a copy of Caxton's Recuyell of the Hystoryes of Troye was found hanging up in a water-closet at Harrogate, sold to a dealer in Manchester for thirty pounds.⁵ Many times rashly and unadvisedly are good books destined to an indignity which might be deemed infamous and ridiculous for even a newspaper, and if I were disposed to enlarge this theme, here might easily be recalled many unsavoury tales from our own early literature, and I would go on with it, but as Grangousier advised Gargantua, it is a dull theme, so to wander on would be no joke, the curious in such business may look for more in Thomas Dekker, his Gul's Horn-Booke, Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, Swift, etc.

² Rabelais. I, xiii. ³Beroalde de Verville, Le Moyen de Parvenir. xvi. ⁴Laconics, or New Maxims. (1701) 118. ⁵ Book-Collecting. (1904) 124.

Because I am "curious in such business" and "disposed to enlarge this theme," which is far from "dull" to me, I've tried to track down the passages mentioned by Jackson. I had no luck with Swift, but here are Dekker and Dryden.

Thomas Dekker, Gull's Horn-Book, chapter 5:

You shall sharpen the wits of all the eating gallants about you, and do them great pleasure to ask what pamphlets or poems a man might think fittest to wipe his tail with.

John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe, lines 100-101:

From dusty shops neglected authors come,
Martyrs of Pies, and Reliques of the Bum.

In addition, here is a passage from John Oldham, A Satyr. The Person of Spencer is brought in, Dissuading the Author from the Study of Poetry, and shewing how little it is esteem'd and encourag'd in this present Age:

Then who'll not laugh to see th' immortal Name
To vile Mundungus made a Martyr flame?
And all thy deathless Monuments of Wit,
Wipe Porters Tails, or mount in Paper-Kite?

For more on this subject, see here.

Donald R. Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World (1987; rpt. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989), p. 32:

Where once Classics was the essence of a university education, it is now a specialized eccentricity, like playing the krummhorn.

John Burroughs, The Secret of Happiness:

Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are kept busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Happiness comes most to persons who seek her least, and think least about her. It is not an object to be sought; it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it. How important is health to happiness, yet the best promoter of health is something to do.

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

A man does not want much time to think about himself. Too much thought of the past and its shadows overwhelms; too much thought of the present dissipates; too much thought of the future unsettles.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, chap. 8:

His jovial purple cheeks bristled with white hairs; and like Virgil's Silenus, who, his face smeared with the juice of berries, discoursed of Olympian Gods to the innocent shepherds of Sicily, he talked to Stevie of domestic matters and the affairs of men whose sufferings are great and immortality by no means assured.

This is an allusion to Vergil, Eclogues 6.13-26 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

Proceed, Pierian maids! The lads Chromis and Mnasyllos saw Silenus lying asleep in a cave, his veins swollen, as ever, with the wine of yesterday. Hard by lay the garlands, just fallen from his head, and his heavy tankard was hanging by its well-worn handle. Falling on him — for oft the aged one had cheated both of a promised song — they cast him into fetters made from his own garlands. Aegle joins their company and seconds the timid pair — Aegle, fairest of the Naiads — and, as now his eyes open, paints his face and brows with crimson mulberries. Smiling at the trick, he cries: "Why fetter me? Loose me, lads; enough that you have shown your power. Hear the songs you crave; you shall have your songs, she another kind of reward."

Most of the rest of the eclogue is devoted to the songs of Silenus.

---

Chap. 9:

And across the length of the table covered with brown oil-cloth Winnie, his wife, talked evenly at him the wifely talk, as artfully adapted, no doubt, to the circumstances of this return as the talk of Penelope to the return of the wandering Odysseus. Mrs Verloc, however, had done no weaving during her husband's absence.

This is an allusion to Homer's Odyssey, especially 2.89-110 (tr. Samuel Butler):

For it is now the third year and the fourth will soon pass, since she has been deceiving the hearts of the Achaeans in their breasts. To all she offers hopes, and has promises for each man, sending them messages, but her mind is set on other things. And she devised in her heart this guileful thing also: she set up in her halls a great web, and fell to weaving — fine of thread was the web and very wide; and straightway she spoke among us: "Young men, my wooers, since goodly Odysseus is dead, be patient, though eager for my marriage, until I finish this robe — I would not that my spinning should come to naught — a shroud for the lord Laertes, against the time when the fell fate of grievous death shall strike him down; lest any of the Achaean women in the land should be wroth with me, if he, who had won great possessions, were to lie without a shroud." So she spoke, and our proud hearts consented. Then day by day she would weave at the great web, but by night would unravel it, when she had let place torches by her. Thus for three years she by her craft kept the Achaeans from knowing, and beguiled them; but when the fourth year came as the seasons rolled on, even then one of her women who knew all told us, and we caught her unravelling the splendid web. So she finished it against her will, perforce.

---

Chap. 9:

He turned away his heavy eyes, saying huskily: "Well, let him come along, then," and relapsed into the clutches of black care, that perhaps prefers to sit behind a horseman, but knows also how to tread close on the heels of people not sufficiently well off to keep horses — like Mr Verloc, for instance.

This is an allusion to Horace, Odes 3.1.38-40 (tr. Christopher Smart):

Nor does gloomy [atra = black] care depart from the brazen-beaked galley, and she mounts [sedet = sits] behind the horseman.

Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements (1957; rpt. New York: Harper, 1961), pp. 318-319:

For what the propheta offered to his followers was not simply a chance to improve their lot and to escape from pressing anxieties — it was also, above all, the prospect of carrying out a divinely ordained mission of stupendous, unique importance. This phantasy quickly came to enthrall them in their turn. And what followed then was the formation of a group of a peculiar kind, a true prototype of a modern totalitarian party: a restlessly dynamic and utterly ruthless group which, obsessed by the apocalyptic phantasy and filled with the conviction of its own infallibility, set itself infinitely above the rest of humanity and recognised no claims save that of its own supposed mission. And finally this group might — though it did not always — succeed in imposing its leadership on the great mass of the disoriented, the perplexed and the frightened.

A boundless, millennial promise made with boundless, prophet-like conviction to a number of rootless and desperate men in the midst of a society where traditional norms and relationships are disintegrating — here, it would seem, lay the source of that peculiar subterranean fascism which subsisted as a perpetual menace to the structure of medieval society. It may be suggested that here, too, lies the source of the giant fanaticisms which in our day have convulsed the world.

The following poem appears in Susan Paxson, A Handbook for Latin Clubs (Boston: D.C. Heath & Company, 1916), with this introductory remark: "The Journal of Education commends this ingenious poem, written in seven languages — English, French, German, Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Italian — as one of the best specimens of Macaronic verse in existence, and worthy of preservation by all collectors."

In tempus old a hero lived,
  Qui loved puellas deux;
He no pouvait pas quite to say
  Which one amabat mieux.
Dit-il lui-meme un beau matin,
  "Non possum both avoir,
Sed si address Amanda Ann,
  Then Kate y yo have war.
Amanda habet argent coin,
  Sed Kate has aureas curls;
Et both sunt very agathae
  Et quite formosae girls."
Enfin the joven anthropos,
  Philoun the duo maids,
Resolved proponere ad Kate
  Devant cet evening's shades,
Procedens then to Kate's domo,
  Il trouve Amanda there,
Kai quite forgot his late resolves,
  Both sunt so goodly fair,
Sed smiling on the new tapis,
  Between puellas twain,
Coepit to tell suo love a Kate
  Dans un poetique strain.
Mais, glancing ever et anon
  At fair Amanda's eyes,
Illae non possunt dicere
  Pro which he meant his sighs.
Each virgo heard the demi-vow,
  Con cheeks as rouge as wine,
Ed offering, each, a milk-white hand,
  Both whispered, "Ich bin dein."

No author is named. Tony Augarde, The Oxford Book of Word Games (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984; rpt. 1986), pp. 182-183, prints the first four lines and says they were "quoted in W.T. Dobson's Poetical Ingenuities (1882)." Several possible corrections come to mind, but I've left the poem as I found it.

Essays by Theodore Dalrymple in the New English Review:

• From Melting Pot to Stir-Fry
  
• Diary of a Journey through Europe, I, II, III, IV, V, VI

John 21.25:

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

Ἔστιν δὲ καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ ἃ ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, ἅτινα ἐὰν γράφηται καθ᾽ ἕν, οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸν οἶμαι τὸν κόσμον χωρῆσαι τὰ γραφόμενα βιβλία.

Diogenes Laertius 6.69 (on Diogenes the Cynic, tr. R.D. Hicks):

Many other sayings are attributed to him, which it would take long to enumerate.

ἀναφέρεται δὲ καὶ ἄλλα εἰς αὐτόν, ἃ μακρὸν ἂν εἴη καταλέγειν πολλὰ ὄντα.

The always interesting Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence has an especially interesting post on The Things You Find in Books!

Because almost all the books I buy are used, I sometimes find objects in them. Never any money, alas, but also never any cigarette butts. The fragrance of a previous owner's pipe tobacco perfumes the pages of some of my books. In older books I not infrequently find pressed flowers or tree leaves, which I leave undisturbed. Once in a while I find letters, including some letters to and from Ben Ames Williams (1889-1953) in a translation of Victor Hugo's book on Shakespeare, and recently a very moving billet-doux, which it would be too voyeuristic to quote.

I share Patrick's dislike for marginalia and underlining in books. I erased notes and underscores by the late Gordon Messing in my secondhand copy of Jasper Griffin's Homer on Life and Death. Despite Messing's stature as a scholar, there was nothing in the notes worth keeping. At least Messing's notes were in pencil, although they were on virtually every page.

I'm not a violent man by nature, but I could throttle the swine who disfigure library books with their inane scribbles. The inventor of yellow markers, too, deserves a place in the lowest circle of the bibliomaniac's hell.

I'm more indulgent towards the owner's name inside the front cover. My copy of J.D. Duff's commentary on Juvenal is inscribed:

U.C.N.W.
Austin M. Thomas
Treborth Hall Farm
Bangor, N.W.
5.1.31

The rest of the book is in pristine condition.

Occasionally I make light pencil marks in the books I own, a tick in the margin next to something interesting, or a list of page numbers inside the back cover. If my books survive my death (rather than ending up in a landfill), it will be an easy matter for the next owner to get rid of my pencil marks.

I was also interested to learn that Patrick has "backup" copies of works like Tristram Shandy. I have three copies of the "little Liddell," one for the study, one for the bedroom, and one for the living room. I need only one more, for the bathroom. Even if I don't need a duplicate of a favorite book, I sometimes buy one anyway if the price is right. I figure I can give it a good home, where it will be appreciated and well cared for.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, III: Schopenhauer as Educator, § 5 (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):

There are spirits all around us, every moment of our life wants to say something to us, but we refuse to listen to these spirit-voices. We are afraid that when we are alone and quiet something will be whispered into our ear, and so we hate quietness and deafen ourselves with sociability.

Es geht geisterhaft um uns zu, jeder Augenblick des Lebens will uns etwas sagen, aber wir wollen diese Geisterstimme nicht hören. Wir fürchten uns, wenn wir allein und stille sind, dass uns etwas in das Ohr geraunt werde, und so hassen wir die Stille und betäuben uns durch Geselligkeit.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, IV: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, § 5 (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):

Alone with themselves! — the idea of this makes modern souls quake, it is their kind of terror and fear of ghosts.

Mit sich selber! — dieser Gedanke schüttelt die modernen Seelen, das ist ihre Angst und Gespensterfurcht.

Terry Lindvall, Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C.S. Lewis (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), p. 216, discussing names suited to occupations in Prince Caspian:

A deadly dull Telmarine academic author is named Pulverulentus Siccus, a sly Latin equivalent of the words dust, slow, and dry.

So far as I know, the suffix -lentus in pulverulentus has nothing to do with the adjective lentus (pliant, flexible; slow, sluggish). See Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, § 245:

Adjectives meaning full of, prone to, are formed from noun-stems with the suffixes — -ōsus, -lēns, -lentus.

Examples from which English words are derived include corpulentus, crapulentus, fraudulentus, opulentus, somnulentus, truculentus, and turbulentus.

Pulverulentus Siccus, author of Grammatical garden or the Arbour of Accidence pleasantlie open'd to Tender Wits, is a sly Latin equivalent of Dr. Jonas Dryasdust, the fictitious character to whom Sir Walter Scott dedicated some of his novels.

Dryasdust would be a good name for a pedantic, nit-picking blog (like this one).

Gypsy Scholar muses on plagiarism, which reminds me of an episode from my past.

I was accused of cheating during my freshman year of college, in a music appreciation class, one of those classes with hundreds of students. The instructor, for an examination question, played a piece of music we had not studied, and asked us to write about it.

The music was the second movement of Brahms' fourth symphony. This symphony was one of a few recordings I happened to own. I had listened to it dozens of times, until I knew it almost by heart.

In my answer to the examination question I identified the piece of music, mentioned that the melody was written in the Phrygian mode, and repeated some other things I remembered from the record jacket.

Everyone else except me got a graded examination back. I got a summons to see the instructor, who accused me of having hired someone else (a music major presumably) to take the examination in my place.

The instructor was skeptical of my explanation and made me write another examination in his office, under his watchful eye.

When he was a schoolboy at Malvern College, C.S. Lewis wrote 'Carpe Diem' after Horace, based not on Horace's Ode 1.11, where the phrase carpe diem appears, but on Horace's Ode 2.3. Here are Lewis' poem, Horace's Latin, and finally another English version by John Addington Symonds.

---

C.S. Lewis:

When, in haughty exultation, thou durst laugh in
    Fortune's face,
Or when thou hast sunk down weary, trampled in
    The ceaseless race,

Dellius, think on this I pray thee — but the
    Twinkling of an eye,
May endure thy pain or pleasure; for thou knowest
    Thou shalt die,

Whether on some breeze-kissed upland, with a
    Flask of mellow wine,
Thou hast all the world forgotten, stretched be-
    Neath the friendly pine,

Or, in foolish toil consuming all the springtime
    Of thy life,
Thou hast worked for useless silver and endured
    The bitter strife,

Still unchanged thy doom remaineth. Thou art
    Set towards thy goal,
Out into the empty breezes soon shall flicker
    Forth thy soul.

Here then by the plashing streamlet fill the
    Tinkling glass I pray,
Bring the short lived rosy garlands, and be
    Happy — FOR TODAY.

---

Horace:

Aequam memento rebus in arduis
servare mentem, non secus in bonis
    ab insolenti temperatam
    laetitia, moriture Delli,

seu maestus omni tempore vixeris
seu te in remoto gramine per dies
    festos reclinatum bearis
    interiore nota Falerni.

Quo pinus ingens albaque populus
umbram hospitalem consociare amant
    ramis? Quid obliquo laborat
    lympha fugax trepidare rivo?

Huc vina et unguenta et nimium brevis
flores amoenae ferre iube rosae,
    dum res et aetas et Sororum
    fila trium patiuntur atra.

Cedes coemptis saltibus et domo
villaque, flavus quam Tiberis lavit,
    cedes, et exstructis in altum
    divitiis potietur heres.

Divesne prisco natus ab Inacho
nil interest an pauper et infima
    de gente sub divo moreris,
    victima nil miserantis Orci;

omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
versatur urna serius ocius
    sors exitura et nos in aeternum
    exilium impositura cumbae.

---

John Addington Symonds:

In trouble keep your courage high
    And calm, but yet in happier fate
    Be not with rapture too elate —
For one day, Dellius, you must die.

Whether through dreary days you pine,
    Or on the far sequestered grass
    Luxurious holidays you pass
Quaffing your old Falernian wine:

I know the spot — by poplar pale
    And lofty pines a friendly shade
    With intertwining branches made;
And hard by struggles through the vale

The winding water: — there we'll set
    Wines and rich perfumes; boys shall bring
    Roses, too briefly blossoming;
While youth and Fortune smile, while yet

Their dark threads spin the sisters three.
    Ah me! your parks, your pleasant home
    Washed by the Tiber's tawny foam
You'll leave; and all your wealth shall be

But for your heir. If rich and one
    Of Inachus' old line and name,
    Or poor and basest born, the same
Your doom to Orcus pitying none.

To the grim ferry all must go;
    Our lots are cast into one urn,
    And soon or late comes out our turn
For endless banishment below.

Anatoly Liberman, the Oxford Etymologist, writes:

There can be no doubt about the origin of ka-ka, poop, and a good many similar bathroom words.

I have often pondered the linguistic origin of ka-ka, which I spell caca. This was the word for excrement that we used in our family when I was a lad. It also meant anything dirty or filthy, not to be put in the mouth. My mother's native language was French, although we spoke English at home, and I suspect she was the one who introduced this word into our family circle.

This suspicion of French origin was reinforced on my one and only trip to France, where caca was almost the first French word I heard, in the mouth of a little boy on the train from Luxembourg to France, who asked his mother if he could faire caca. Louis Chaffurin, Dictionnaire Français-Anglais (Paris: Larousse, 1928), defines caca thus:

Excrement, dirt; faire caca, to go to stool.

The little boy was asking his mother if he had her permission to go to stool.

A brief digression on stool. The Online Etymology Dictionary (s.v.) says:

O.E. stol "seat for one person," from P.Gmc. *stolaz (cf. O.Fris. stol, O.N. stoll, O.H.G. stuol, Ger. Stuhl "seat," Goth. stols "high seat, throne"), from PIE *sta-lo-, locative of base *sta- "to stand" (cf. Lith. pa-stolas "stand," O.C.S. stolu "stool;" see stet). Originally used of thrones (cf. cynestol "royal seat, throne"); change of meaning began with adoption of chair from Fr., which relegated stool to small seats without arms or backs, then "privy" (1410) and thence to "bowel movement" (1533).

In English, cucking stools are "chairs formerly used for the punishment of scolds, witches, prostitutes and dishonest tradesmen." Cucking is from a Middle English word cognate with caca, viz. cukken = defecate.

One dishonest tradesman I would like to see sentenced to the cucking stool is Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron and now convicted felon. There is a little-known connection between Enron and the by-products of human digestion. Enron originated with the merger of InterNorth of Omaha and Houston Natural Gas in 1986. The first choice for the corporate name was Enteron, until someone looked in the dictionary and realized that enteron means "alimentary canal, digestive tract," perhaps not the best name for a company selling natural gas.

Another English word possibly cognate with caca is poppycock, about which the Online Etymology Dictionary says:

1865, probably from Du. dialect pappekak, from M.Du. pappe "soft dung" (see pap) + kak "dung," from L. cacare "to excrete."

When I learned Latin, I discovered to my delight that the verb meaning "to defecate" was cacō, cacāre, and wondered if there was any etymological connection to caca. Apparently there is. J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), has an appendix on the Vocabulary Relating to Bodily Functions (pp. 231-250). One of the bodily functions discussed is defecation (pp. 231-244) and one of the vocabulary items under defecation is cacō and its derivatives (pp. 231-233). Adams says (p. 232):

Caco survives in all of the Romance languages.

J. Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v. kakka- (p. 521), refers not only to Latin cacō, but also to related words in Armenian, Greek, Middle Irish, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Russian, and New High German. The Greek words appear, as we would expect, in Aristophanes:

• κακκάω = defecate, at Clouds 1384 and 1390
• κάκκη = ordure, dung, at Peace 162

It is both funny and touching to consider that this homely word has been passed on from mother (traditionally the toilet trainer) to child for millennia, ever since the days of proto-Indo-European.

---

Dennis Mangan writes:

The Aztec word for "cocoa" was "cacahuatl". Apparently the Spaniards were impressed by the correspondence between the word and cocoa's appearance, which so resembles "caca".

John Gould, Europe on Saturday Night: The Farmer and His Wife Take a Tour (Camden: Down East Books, 1968), p. 99, writing about the Danube River, says:

It flows on and on with romance and traffic, accumulating waltzes and kuck as it goes.

Kuck doesn't appear in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979). In Maine, I have heard people refer to the equipment used to clean septic tanks as the kucka-sucka.

The first two entries under the letter c in Bosworth and Toller's An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898) are these:

cac, es; m? Dung, excrement; stercus, foria, merda, Som. Ben. Lye. [Plat. kak, kakk: Dut. kak, m: Kil. kack: Ger. kack, m: Dan. kag, m. f: Grk. κάκκη: Lat. cacare: Grk. κακκάω.]

cac-hús, es; n. A privy; latrina, Som. Ben. Lye. [Kil. kack-huys.]