Laudator Temporis Acti

Euripides, Heracles 673-677 (tr. David Kovacs):

I shall not cease mingling
the Graces and the Muses,
a union most sweet.
May I never live a Muse-less life!
Ever may I go garlanded!

οὐ παύσομαι τὰς Χάριτας
ταῖς Μούσαις συγκαταμει-
γνύς, ἡδίσταν συζυγίαν.
μὴ ζῴην μετ᾽ ἀμουσίας,
αἰεὶ δ᾽ ἐν στεφάνοισιν εἴην.

Inscriptiones Graecae II² 10998 = Carmina Epigraphica Graeca 489 Hansen = Griechische Vers-Inschriften 1637 Peek (Acharnae in Attica, early 4th century B.C.):

Ares loved the brave, Commendation esteemed them,
    and Youth did not hand them over to Old Age for maltreatment.
Among these was Glauciades: keeping foes away from his fatherland
    he came to Persephone's all-receiving chamber.

τὸς ἀγαθὸς ἔστερξεν Ἄρης, ἐφίλησε δ' ἔπαινος
    καὶ γήραι νεότης οὐ παρέδωχ' ὑβρίσαι·
ὧγ καὶ Γ[λ]αυκιάδης δηίος ἀπὸ πατρίδος ἔργων
    ἦλθ' ἐπ[ὶ] πάνδεκτον Φερσεφόνης θάλ<α>μον.

When Wilamowitz quoted this epigram (in his commentary on Euripides, Herakles, line 638), he capitalized Ἔπαινος, Γήρᾳ, and Νεότης, as if they were personifications of abstractions, and so I've capitalized them in my translation.

Maybe there's an explanation of the accusative plural forms τὸς ἀγαθὸς (line 1) and δηίος (line 3) in Leslie Threatte, The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, II: Morphology (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), § 11.041 "ο ~ ου in Greek words" (pp. 218 ff.), but the book is unavailable to me.

There's a Latin translation of the epigram in Ed. Cougny, Epigrammatum Anthologia Palatina cum Planudeis et Appendice Nova Epigrammatum Veterum ex Libris et Marmoribus, Vol. III (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1890), p. 109 (no. 127):

Bonos dilexit Mars, amavitque laus
    et senectuti juventus non tradidit contumelia afficiendos:
unde et Glauciades hostes a patria arcens
    ivit in omnia-recipientem Proserpinae thalamum.

For a free rendering in English verse, see Arthur Pott (1865-1920), "War Songs Old and New," United Empire. The Royal Colonial Institute Journal VI.3 (March 1915) 196-205 (at 200):

Honour and War have ever sought
    To make the brave their own
Ere Time could set their might at nought
    Or youth be overthrown.

He fought to keep his country free
    And this his worth attests—
He dwells with dark Persephone
    Her of the many guests.

Mimnermus, fragment 1, lines 5-10 (tr. M.L. West) reminds us of the maltreatment that old age has in store for those who outlive their youth:

                                     But when painful age
    comes on, that makes a man loathsome and vile,
malignant troubles ever vex his heart;
    seeing the sunlight gives him joy no more.
He is abhorred by boys, by women scorned;
    so hard a thing God made old age to be.

                                      ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ
    γῆρας, ὅ τ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,
αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
    οὐδ᾽ αὐγὰς προσορῶν τέρπεται ἠελίου,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν·
    οὕτως ἄργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.

G.P. Goold, review of P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum quas Henricus Dörrie ... edidit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), in Gnomon 46 (1974) 475-484 (at 482):

No editor of classical texts nowadays has the sense or courage to ban the obelus: imagine a road-repairer who insisted on keeping holes in a highway or a music conductor who silenced his orchestra whenever doubt arose about the composer's intentions. Let us return to the old-fashioned practice of editing texts lectorum in usum.

C.F.H. Bruchmann, Epitheta Deorum quae apud Poetas Graecos Leguntur (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1893), has a few pages (pp. 185-189) devoted to Greek poetic epithets of Pan, but Latin epithets for the god fill less than one page in Jesse Benedict Carter, Epitheta Deorum quae apud Poetas Latinos Leguntur (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1902), p. 81.

The list of Latin epithets for Pan would be even shorter, if it weren't for the fact that most of them come from a single poem, in Poetae Latini Minores, ed. E. Baehrens, Vol. III (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1881), p. 170, also in Anthologia Latina, edd. F. Buecheler and A. Riese, Pars I, Fasc. II, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1906), p. 158 (no. 682). The poem consists entirely of a series of vocatives (48 in all) addressed to Pan:

Rustice lustrivage capripes cornute bimembris
Cinyphie hirpigena pernix caudite petulce
Saetiger indocilis agrestis barbare dure
Semicaper villose fugax periure biformis
Audax brute ferox pellite incondite mute        5
Silvicola instabilis saltator perdite mendax
Lubrice ventrisonax inflator stridule anhele
Hirte hirsute biceps fallax niger hispide sime
Scabrens ariole spurce bruticle fatucle!

2 hirpigena: hircigena dubitanter A. Riese
7 ventrisonax E. Baehrens: ventisonax codd.
8 hispide sime L. Mueller: hispidissime codd.
9 scabrens E. Baehrens: scrans codd.; ariole W.A.B. Hertzberg: aridus iole codd.; bruticle E. Baehrens: brutiole vel bruciole codd.; fatucle W.A.B. Hertzberg: fatude vel fataucle codd.

A tentative English translation:

Rustic, forest-wandering, goat-footed, horned, with two sets of limbs,
Cinyphian, wolf-born, quick, with a tail, butting with horns,
Bristle-bearing, untamed, wild, barbarous, hard,
Half-goat, shaggy, fleet, lying, two-shaped,
Bold, irrational, fierce, covered with a hide, uncouth, silent,        5
Forest-dwelling, changeable, leaping, wanton, untruthful,
Slippery, belly-speaking, cheek-puffing, whistling, wheezing,
Hairy, hirsute, two-headed, deceitful, black, prickly, snub-nosed,
Scabby, prophetic, unclean, brutish, fate-speaking!

A few remarks on this curious poem:

1 bimembris: Pan is said to have two sets of limbs, because he's half man, half goat in appearance. Cf. biformis (line 4) and perhaps also biceps (line 8).

2 Cinyphian means from the region of the river Cinyps in Libya. Vergil, Georgics 3.312, mentions the Cinyphians in connection with goats.

2 caudite: According to J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 35-37, cauda = penis is firmly attested only in Horace, and so Adams rejects a sexual meaning for codatus in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV.6240, from Pompeii: Cn(aeum) Helvium / Sabinum aed(ilem) d(ignum) r(ei) p(ublicae) o(ro) v(os) f(aciatis) Masculus cum codatis ubiq(ue). But could caudite have such a meaning here? Pan was notoriously randy and was often pictured in art with his membrum virile showing. On the other hand, he was also pictured with a goat's tail.

2 hirpigena: The Sabine word for wolf is hirpus. By some accounts, Pan was descended from Lykaon ("Wolfman"). See Edwin L. Brown, "The Lycidas of Theocritus' Idyll 7," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981) 59-100 (at 66-68). If Riese's conjecture hircigena is adopted, it would mean goat-born. Cf. ignigena (fire-born, of Bacchus), nubigena (cloud-born, of the Centaurs), nymphigena (nymph-born, of Achilles), etc.

7 If Baehrens' ventrisonax is read, could it mean flatulent? Among gods known to have broken wind are Pan's father Hermes, Priapus, Dionysus, and Lamia: see Noctes Scatologicae: Divine Flatulence and Holy Ordures.

7 inflator stridule anhele: These epithets refer to Pan's playing on his musical instrument, the Pan pipes.

9 Servius on Vergil, Aeneid 7.47 (my translation): There is a certain god named Fatulcus, whose wife is Fatua. They are identical with Faunus and Fauna. Moreover, Faunus and Fauna are so called from prophesying, i.e. fate-speaking. From the same root we say that people are fatuous who speak thoughtlessly (quidam deus est Fatuclus. huius uxor est Fatua. idem Faunus et eadem Fauna. dicti autem sunt Faunus et Fauna a vaticinando, id est fando, unde et fatuos dicimus inconsiderate loquentes).

I don't have access to Gerald Kölblinger, "Versus Panos und De rustico," Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 8 (1973) 7-27, or to Scevola Mariotti, "Versus Panos (Anth. Lat. 682 Riese), 9" in Mnemosynum. Studi in onore di Alfredo Ghiselli (Bologna: Patron, 1989), pp. 411-413.

Samuel Butler (1774–1839), Christian Liberty. A Sermon, Preached at St. Mary's, Before his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, (Chancellor of the University) and the University of Cambridge, at the Installation, June 30, 1811 (Shrewsbury: W. Eddowes, 1811), p. 29:

Now when pretensions to the peculiar and exclusive approbation of God are thus set up by any sect, and when the common accidents of life are interpreted into deliverances for those who belong to that sect, and judgments against those who differ from it, we surely have a decisive proof before us, that the effects of superstition on mankind are in all ages nearly the same, and that whether the subject of it be a Catholic or a Calvinist, a Pharisee or a Puritan, its tendency is equally fatal to the best interests, and the highest duties, and the noblest pursuits, and the most generous feelings, and the most enlarged conceptions of the human mind.

British Library, Harley 7322, fol. 136v (14th century?), from Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London: Early English Text Society, 1866; rpt. 1903), pp. 255-256:

Þe lif of þis world
Ys Reuled wiþ wynd,
Wepinge, derknesse, a[n]d steriynge;
Wiþ wind we blowen,
Wiþ wind we lassun.        5
Wiþ weopinge we comen,
Wiþ weopinge we passun.
Wiþ steriinge we byginnen,
Wiþ steriinge we enden;
Wiþ drede we dwellen,       10
Wiþ drede we wenden.

2 reuled: ruled
3 derknesse: Douglas Gray, A Selection of Religious Lyrics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 147, emends to drede, I think (the book is unavailable to me). Furnivall comments ad loc. "'derknesse' probably for 'drednesse.' The Latin has Flatum, Fletum, Motum, Metum." I haven't been able to locate the Latin poem. Or does he mean that these are glosses in the manuscript?
3, 8, 9 steriynge, steriinge: "Disturbance of mind or feelings" (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. stirring, n., sense 4.c, citing this poem)
4 blowen: bloom, flourish, increase
5 lassun: lessen
11 wenden: "To go off, away, or out; to depart" (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. wend, v.¹, sense 10.a; or perhaps sense 11.a: "To depart by death")

Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 185:

And the occasions for banqueting, or for the presentation of gifts to the banquet fund, were, not surprisingly, those that most directly affected the collective life of the social group. So that when a newcomer bought a house in the wijk, for example, a sum proportionate to the purchase price was given to the treasurer for entertainment laid on by the neighborhood. There were lying-in feasts, birth feasts, baptismal feasts, churching feasts, feasts when infants were swaddled and another when boys were breeched, birthday feasts and saints’ days feasts (not necessarily the same), feasts on beginning school and beginning apprenticeship, betrothal feasts, wedding feasts, feasts on setting up house, feasts for departing on long journeys and feasts for homecoming, wedding anniversary feasts and co-option (to a municipal regency or the board of a charitable institution) feasts, feasts on the inauguration of a lottery and the conclusion of its draw, feasts on the return of a grand cargo or the conclusion of a triumphant peace, on the restoration of a church, the installation of a window or organ or organ loft or pulpit and on the setting of a family gravestone in its floor, feasts on recovering from sickness, feasts at funerals and burials and the reading of a testament, even jokmaalen, feasts of inversion when master and mistress would act the part of servants and wait on their own retainers.

Pieter Brueghel, The Peasant Wedding

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1848), pp. vii-viii:

We are ashamed to say, that we know less of Greek, in one sense of the word, than we did when young, and are obliged to look out more words in the dictionary; for to a dictionary we are still forced to resort, though we love the language next to Italian, and hold it in higher admiration. But then we know our ignorance better than we did at that time; are more aware of beauties to be enjoyed, and nice meanings to be discovered; and the consequence is, that whenever we undertake to translate a passage from Greek, we take our love on one side of us, and our dictionary on the other, and before we set about it, make a point of sifting every possible meaning and root of meaning, not excepting those in words the most familiar to us, in order that not an atom of the writer's intention may be missed. We do not say, of course, that we always succeed in detecting it; but it is not for want of painstaking.

Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), The Elder Brother, Act I, Scene 2 (speakers are Andrew, Cook, and Butler):

And. Unload part of the Library, and make room for th'other dozen of Carts; I'le straight be with you.
Cook. Why, hath he more Books?
And. More than ten Marts send over.
But. And can he tell their names?
And. Their names! he has 'em as perfect as his Pater Noster; but that's nothing, h'as read them over leaf by leaf three thousand times; but here's the wonder, though their weight would sink a Spanish Carrock, without other Ballast, he carrieth them all in his head, and yet he walks upright.
But. Surely he has a strong brain.
And. If all thy pipes of Wine were fill'd with Books, made of the Barks of Trees, or Mysteries writ in old motheaten Vellam, he would sip thy Cellar quite dry, and still be thirsty: Then for's Diet, he eats and digests more Volumes at a meal, than there would be Larks (though the Sky should fall) devoured in a month in Paris. Yet fear not Sons o'the Buttery and Kitchin, though his learn'd stomach cannot be appeas'd; he'll seldom trouble you, his knowing stomach contemns your Black-jacks, Butler, and your Flagons; and Cook, thy Boil'd, thy Rost, thy Bak'd.
Cook. How liveth he?
And. Not as other men do, few Princes fare like him; he breaks his fast with Aristotle, dines with Tully, takes his watering with the Muses, sups with Livy, then walks a turn or two in Via Lactea, and (after six hours conference with the Stars) sleeps with old Erra Pater.
But. This is admirable.

Ausonius, Epistles 6.19-34 (to Paulinus; tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White):

For I am weary at the sight of throngs of people, the vulgar brawls at the cross-roads, the narrow lanes a-swarm, and the broadways belying their name for the rabble herded there. Confused Echo resounds with a babel of cries: "Hold!" — "Strike!" — "Lead!" — "Give!" — "Look out!" Here is a mucky sow in flight, there a mad dog in fell career, there oxen too weak for the waggon. No use to steal into the inner chamber and the recesses of your home: the cries penetrate through the house. These, and what else can shock the orderly, force me to leave the walled city and seek again the sweet peace of the retired country and the delights of trifling seriously; and there you may arrange your own hours and have the right to do nothing or else what you will.

Nam populi coetus et compita sordida rixis
    fastidientes cernimus        20
angustas fervere vias et congrege volgo
    nomen plateas perdere.
turbida congestis referitur vocibus echo:
    "Tene, feri, duc, da, cave!"
sus lutulenta fugit, rabidus canis impete saevo        25
    et impares plaustro boves.
nec prodest penetrale domus et operta subire:
    per tecta clamores meant,
haec et quae possunt placidos offendere mores,
    cogunt relinqui moenia,        30
dulcia secreti repetantur ut otia ruris,
    nugis amoena seriis;
tempora disponas ubi tu tua iusque tuum sit,
    ut nil agas vel quod voles.

W. Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913), Offspring of Thought in Solitude: Modern Essays (London: Reeves & Turner, 1884), pp. 83-84:

As for Fielding and that school, we have a fancy for reading them in the old editions, as Lamb had a fancy for Sir Thomas Browne in folio. The stiff crackling paper, the elderly-faced type, the short paragraphs, and the well-thumbed old calf bindings, seem proper to the subject and to the author, if not part of them both. Somebody has lately advertised Tom Jones in one foolscap book at a couple of shillings. We would rather not see it. It is in our eyes an abominable desecration. This is not Fielding's Tom Jones. It is enough to imagine the thin damp paper, the close packed page, the blurred cramped printing, the cropped edges, and the act-drop cover! We cannot think this is our Parson Adams. Our Tom Jones is too good to be reprinted at a steam-press, and sold at railway-stations.

Oxford, Bodleian Library Eng. poet. e.1 (SC 29734), f. 41v (late 15th century):

Bring us in good ale, and bring us in good ale,
Fore our blessed Lady sak, bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no browne bred, for that is made of brane;
Nor bring us in no whit bred, for therein is no game:
But bring us in good ale.        5

Bring us in no befe, for ther is many bones;
But bring us in good ale, for that goth downe at ones,
And bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no bacon, for that is passing fat;
But bring us in good ale, and give us inought of that,        10
And bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no mutton, for that is ofte lene;
Nor bring us in no tripes, for they be seldom clene:
But bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no egges, for there ar many shelles;        15
But bring us in good ale, and give us nothing elles,
And bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no butter, for therein ar many heres;
Nor bring us in no pigges flesh, for that will mak us bores:
But bring us in good ale.        20

Bring us in no podinges, for therein is all gotes blod;
Nor bring us in no venison, for that is not for our good:
But bring us in good ale.

Bring us in no capon's flesh, for that is ofte der;
Nor bring us in no dokes flesh, for they slobber in the mer:        25
But bring us in good ale.

4 game: some editors emend to gane = gain
7 ones: once
18 heres: hairs
19 bores: boars
21 podinges: puddings
21 gotes: goats'
25 dokes: ducks'
25 slobber: "To feed in a slabbering or slovenly manner" (OED)
25 mer: lake, pond, pool

Scottish poet Arthur Johnston (c.1579-1641), "Against One Who Jibed at a Fat Paunch," in Musa Latina Aberdonensis. Arthur Johnston, Vol. I: The Parerga of 1637, ed. William Duguid Geddes (Aberdeen: Printed for the New Spalding Club, 1892), pp. 307-311 (followed by my English translation):

This jocular poem is a fine specimen of Johnston's lighter quill. The occasion, whether personal to himself or to a friend, is unknown.

                                                             ARGUMENT.
You snarling scarecrow, Zoilus, why this attack on one's fair rotundity? Why point me out with the finger? If we praise the quadrupeds for being sleek and fat, why not men as well? 'Tis a mistake to think fatness and gluttony go together. Alcides [Hercules] is not styled fat, nor yet Homer; and yet the one ate heavily, the other liked his wine. Overfed frames grow lean, just as the willow is a thin tree though it drinks for ever, while the oak grows fat and strong on driest ridges. Where there is good lining to the bones, there is also a pleasing disposition; witness the ox or lamb; for, if you feed well the boar, he drops the thunder of his tusks. 'Tis lean scarecrow creatures that are given to deceit or rapine, as witness the dog, the lynx, tiger, hawks, and eagle. The fat man has a cheerful face, with no carking cares, and loves peace; the lean man is sourfaced, given to cunning, and loves battles and broils. As for activity, I grant, fat folks are not so agile. But agility of body is no sign of power: the judge sits sedate; the steersman sits at the helm; the general gazes quietly around and surveys the battle. So with the spirit dwelling in us fat men; itself unmoved, it moveth all. We can use, for fleetness, the keel or the wheel: but to purchase simplicity at the cost of one's obesity is a price too dear. No fear of the mind growing fat and feeble. Think of Galba and Nero: what contrasts they in mind and body! A fat [Pope] Leo outshone in genius the sons of Athens. And, look you, there is the goddess of wisdom. Does she not love the fatness of the olive? Feats of strength I leave to others of the strong. The stadium and race-course call for them; my haunts are the Forum, seats of learning, churches. Even in Venus's service the fat man is not behind. Who can find apples on a dry stock? Away, then, Zoilus, with your sneers and scowls.

ADVERSUS OMASOMASTIGA.

Zoile, cui macies exsanguis detegit ossa,
    Foedat et arentes plurima ruga genas;
Pinguis aqualiculi molem cur dentibus atris
    Impetis, et rostro tam petulante feris?
Huius ad aspectum cur nasum sannio crispas        5
    Turpiter, et risu pectus inane quatis?
Si nitidus, si sum totus teres atque rotundus,
    Ecquid me digito, decolor umbra, notas?
Cur si pinguis equus, nitidus laudatur et agnus,
    Pinguibus et nitidis non licet esse viris?        10
Fallitur ingluvie quisquis pinguescere ventres
    Autumat, aut nimio membra tumere mero.
Nemo vel Alciden, vel pinguem dixit Homerum,
    Vinosus tamen hic, ille gulosus erat.
Corpora pasta nimis macrescunt saepe, nec hausta        15
    Plus satis in ventrem crescere vina sinunt.
Mole salix parva est, immani quercus, at illa
    Propter aquas, siccis nascitur ista iugis.
Si qua fides medicis, quem sic adolescere cernis,
    Sanguinis aerii luxuriatur ope.        20
Purior e venis per totos diditur artus
    Halitus, et iusta corpora mole beat.
Hinc quibus omentum superat venterque iecurque
    Tenditur, ingenium mitius esse vides.
Nil bove praepingui, nil est mansuetius agno,        25
    Efficit et mites sola sagina feras.
Bile carent omni, quibus est abdomen, agrestes,
    Et sua, si pascis, fulmina ponit aper.
Nec pecus ex rapto vivit, quod turget omaso,
    Nullaque cum sociis pro dape bella gerit.        30
Nec struit insidias, nec, quamvis laedere tentes,
    Calcitrat, aut nulla vindicat arte nefas.
At quibus informis macies depascitur artus,
    Effera sunt, irae dedita, plena dolis.
Hoc canis ingenio est, et lynx, et pessima tigris,        35
    Accipitresque truces, ales et ipse Iovis.
Horum, crede mihi, mores imitatur, et artes,
    Quisquis ab Iapeto stemma parente trahit.
Frons hilaris pingui est; macies quem turpat anilis,
    Nescio quid durae tetricitatis habet.        40
Ille nec ambit opes, nec tristibus aestuat iris,
    Aut odiis; mens huic sordida felle tumet.
Ille nec invidia squalet, nec pallet amore;
    Decolor est isti nigraque tota cutis.
Candida mens pingui est, macilento callida, pacem        45
    Alter amat, cupit hic iurgia, bella, neces.
Pinguibus obiicitur proiecti sarcina ventris,
    Vitaque, segnities quam comitatur, iners.
Non ita sunt agiles, fateor, praepinguibus artus,
    Sed tamen id laudem quod mereatur habet.        50
Qui populo dant iura, sedent, animusque sedendo
    Fit sapiens, motus est quoque meta quies.
Adspice naucleros: hic tempestate coorta
    Vela legit, nimias egerit alter aquas.
Pervolat antennas pars haec, pars illa rudentes        55
    Explicat, in mediis cursitat una foris.
Arduus ad clavum rector sedet ipse quietus,
    Astraque prospectans dirigit arte ratem.
Quique praeest bello, iubet illum scandere muros
    Ocius, hunc alacri sumere tela manu.        60
Ipse suas spectans acies tota agmina nutu
    Circumagit, sunt haec munia sola ducis.
Nos quoque, quos ventris detentos pondere cernis,
    Haec gerimus, quae gens emaciata nequit.
Est Deus in nobis; immobilis ille, quod infra est,        65
    Quaeque supra spectas sidera, mente regit.
Afer equus capreaeque leves sunt cursibus apti,
    Munia debentur nobiliora viris.
Re poscente tamen, naturam vincimus arte,
    Nec ventris nimium pinguibus obstat onus.        70
Sunt volucres nobis, quae findant aequora, puppes,
    Et rapidis ferimur, quo lubet ire, rotis.
Ardua nec pingui res esset, ponere ventrem,
    Quidquid et inceptis posse nocere putas.
Omnia qui tandem vincit, labor improbus, alvi        75
    Stringere luxuriem posset, et atra fames.
Hinc neque mendico venter protuberat ulli,
    Ventre nec agrestes turgidiore vides.
Durius at morbo est, genium sic plectere; tanti
    Squalorem et maciem, vix puto, sanus emet.        80
Sed neque tu mergi nobis abdomine mentem,
    Pingue nec ingenium pinguibus esse puta.
Quis neget ingenio Galbam cessisse Neroni,
    Ventrosus tamen hic audiit, ille macer.
Vicit et ingenio pinguis Leo Cecrope natos,        85
    Cum populi mentes molliit arte truces.
Quae favet ingeniis, auctor Dea pinguis olivae est;
    Fallor? an exsuccos diligat illa viros?
Qui macer est, iactat vires: ad fortia fortis
    Ergo eat, et patriam vomere verset humum.        90
Robora vel silvis, vel caecis aera cavernis
    Eruat, aequoreas vel rate findat aquas.
Brachia det luctae, validos vel caestibus artus
    Induat, aut funda grandia saxa rotet.
Quaerat Olympiaco gens haec in pulvere laurum,        95
    Aut lauru si quid maius Olympus habet.
Ista decent validos. Nobis sunt publica cura
    Munia, nos poscunt templa, Lycea, forum.
Virgineas colimus populi sine viribus artes,
    Quasque iubent Musae, quasque Minerva sequi.        100
Vita quidem pingui brevis est; agnoscimus ultro,
    Sed fatuum est vitae de brevitate queri.
Vita genus stadii est, et plenum fluctibus aequor,
    Cernis et hic durus quae mala carcer habet.
Dic, quis ad Elei metam dum tendit anhelus,        105
    Se cursu socios antevolasse dolet?
Navita nec moeret, ventis si pulsa secundis,
    Spe citius portum fessa carina subit.
Nec cito te quereris tractum de carceris umbra,
    Aut nimium propera vincla soluta manu.        110
Sola Venus superest, qua nos superamur ab illis,
    Qui maciem tanta religione colunt.
Quantula laus haec est? Veneri si debita laus est,
    Te laudabilior cum cane taurus erit.
Sed nec aqualiculo Veneris restinguitur ulli        115
    Flamma, nec in pingui corpore friget amor.
Nitimur exemplis regum; cui plurima cervix
    Pinguis erat, Claudi quanta libido fuit?
Ventrosusque Nero simul, et cervicis opimae,
    Mille lupas fertur, mille iniisse mares.        120
Quam genuit pater inter aquas, humore refertos
    Et succi plenos, mater Amoris amat.
Poma quis enasci sperat de stipite sicco?
    Quemve potest laticem fundere dura silex?
Pone supercilium iam tandem, Zoile, parce        125
    Rodere naturae luxuriantis opus.
Si quid habes mentis, pingui nil pulchrius alvo,
    Et nil strigosa turpius esse puta.

3. Pinguis aqualiculi.] From Persius, I. 57.
35. Linx.] So in ed. '37. Properly "lynx," as after the Greek λύγξ.
65. Immobilis ille.] Aristotelian principle "The Primum Mobile must be itself unmoved".
85. Pinguis Leo.] Pope Leo X.

My translation (not in verse, but following the Latin line by line as closely as possible):

Zoilus, pale thinness covers your bones,
    and many a wrinkle disfigures your withered cheeks;
why with your black teeth do you attack the huge bulk of a fat paunch,
    and do you strike with such an aggressive beak?
At the sight of my paunch, you buffoon, why do you wrinkle your nose        5
    in an unsightly way and shake your empty breast with laughter?
If I am sleek, if I am smooth and roly-poly,
    why do you point me out with your finger, you faded shadow?
If a fat horse is praised, and a sleek lamb,
    why don't you allow men to be fat and sleek?        10
He is mistaken who claims that bellies grow fat with gluttony,
    or that limbs swell with too much wine.
No one called Hercules or Homer fat,
    although the one was a wine-bibber, the other a glutton.
Often over-fed bodies grow thin, and wines drunk dry         15
    don't allow the belly to swell more than enough.
The willow is of a small size, the oak of a great size, but the former
    grows next to water, the latter on dry ridges.
If doctors can be trusted, the person whom you see become fat
    Owes his quick growth to the help of airy blood.        20
Purer air from the veins spreads through all the limbs
    and enriches bodies with a proper size.
Hence those men whose guts swell, whose belly and liver
    stretch, you see have a mild temper.
Nothing is tamer than a very fat cow or lamb,        25
    and ample feed alone makes wild beasts gentle.
Critters in the field are without anger, if they have a paunch,
    and if you feed a boar, it abandons its attacks.
An animal with swollen guts doesn't live off plunder,
    and doesn't wage war with its fellows over food.        30
It doesn't lay traps, and although you try to do it harm,
    it doesn't kick or avenge a wrong by wiles.
On the other hand, if unsightly thinness wastes away the limbs of beasts,
    they are savage, given to anger, full of tricks.
A dog has this character, and a lynx, and a most wicked tigress,        35
    and fierce hawks, and even Jove's bird, the eagle.
Believe me, whoever is descended from Father Iapetus
    imitates the character and ways of these beasts.
The fat man wears a cheerful expression; he whom old-womanish thinness disfigures
    possesses a sort of harsh offensiveness.        40
The former doesn't solicit riches, isn't agitated by gloomy anger,
    or hatred; the latter's unclean mind is puffed up with venom.
The former doesn't bristle with envy, isn't pale with lust;
    The latter doesn't have a normal color, all his skin is black.
The fat man's mind is innocent, the thin man's is crafty;        45
    the one loves peace, the other quarrels, wars, murders.
The burden of a protruding belly obstructs fat men,
    and their life is idle, accompanied by inactivity.
I admit, the limbs of the very fat aren't nimble,
    yet that has a glory which it perhaps deserves.        50
Those who are legislators are seated, and with sitting the mind
    becomes wise; rest also is the goal of motion.
Consider ship captains: when a storm has arisen one
    draws in his sails, another bails out the overflowing waters.
Some fly through the sail-yards, others uncoil the ropes,        55
    one runs back and forth on the gangways.
The calm captain sits high up at the helm,
    watches the stars, and steers his ship with skill.
The general orders that soldier to mount the city walls
    speedily, this soldier to take up his weapons with quick hand.         60
He himself, watching his troops, with a nod turns the whole army
    around—this is the sole duty of a general.
We too, whom you see hindered with a heavy belly,
    we accomplish things that skinny folk can't.
God is within us; unmoved Himself, what is below        65
    and the stars you see above, He rules with his mind.
The Numidian horse and fleet goats are suited to running,
    but nobler duties are men's obligations.
Nevertheless, when occasion demands, we overcome our nature with art,
    and the belly's burden isn't too much of an obstacle to us fat men.         70
We have swift ships to part ocean's waves,
    and we are carried on speedy wheels wherever we wish to go.
Nor would it be a difficult thing for a fat man to shed weight
    and whatever else you think is a hindrance to action.
Hard work, which finally overcomes all, could        75
    hold in check the gut's gluttony, as could dismal hunger.
For this reason no beggar's belly bulges,
    nor do you see peasants with an inflated belly.
But worse than sickness is it to punish appetite so; at such a price
    I hardly think that anyone in his right mind would buy filth and thinness.        80
Don't think for a minute that our minds are drowned in fat,
    and that fat men have dull wits.
Who would deny that Galba was inferior to Nero in wit,
    although Nero had a reputation as fat, Galba as thin.
In the matter of wit, fat Leo surpassed the natives of Athens,        85
    when he tamed the savage minds of the people.
The goddess who smiles on wits is the one who invented the plump olive.
    Am I wrong? Does she love sapless men?
The skinny fellow boasts of his strength; then as a strong man let him
    perform feats needing strength and turn the ancestral soil with the plow.        90
Let him uproot trees in the forest, or dig up metal in dark caves,
    or cleave ocean's waters in a ship.
Let him give his arms to wrestling, or clothe his mighty limbs
    with boxing gloves, or whirl huge stones with a sling shot.
Let skinny folk seek the laurel crown in Olympic dust,        95
    or any greater prize which Olympus offers.
Such tasks are suitable for strong men. Public duties are
    our concern—religion, education, law demand the likes of us.
Lacking strength, we pursue the maidenly arts,
    those which the Muses and Minerva bid us follow.        100
A fat man's life is short, to be sure; we are the first to recognize it,
    but it is foolish to complain about the shortness of life.
Life is a sort of race, and the sea is full of waves,
    and you see what evils this hard prison holds.
Tell me, does the panting athlete who races toward the Olympic goal-post        105
    regret that he ran faster than his competitors?
The sailor doesn't grieve that his ship, impelled by favorable winds,
    reaches harbor quicker than he expected.
Nor should you complain that you were rescued quickly from prison's darkness
    or that your chains were removed by too quick a hand.        110
Only love's pleasure remains, in which we are bested by those
    who revere thinness with such great zeal.
How feeble a boast is this? If praise is due to sexual activity,
    a bull or a dog will deserve greater praise than you.
But even love's flame is not extinguished by a paunch,        115
    and passion doesn't grow cold in a fat body.
We rely on royal precedent; Claudius had a big fat neck,
    and how immense was his sexual desire?
Big-bellied Nero, with a thick neck,
    is said to have penetrated a thousand wanton women, a thousand men.        120
Cupid's mother, whom her father begat amidst waters, loves
    exceedingly those who are crammed with moisture and full of sap.
Who hopes that fruits can sprout forth from a withered tree trunk?
    Or can hard flint pour forth water?
At long last, Zoilus, put aside your sneering;        125
    stop criticizing the product of fruitful Nature.
If you have any sense, realize that nothing is more beautiful than a fat belly,
    and nothing is more ugly than a thin one.

In the title Adversus Omasomastiga, the hybrid Latin-Greek noun omasomastix, from omāsum = tripe, paunch and μάστιξ (mastix = whip, scourge), is apparently a hapax legomenon. Cf. Homeromastix, nickname of the ancient Greek grammarian Zoilus.

There is a list of "Likenesses" in Nicola Royan, "Johnston, Arthur (c.1579–1641), poet," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography—the only one I've seen is a portrait by George Jamesone, (c.1629), in which Johnston doesn't seem at all corpulent, although it's hard to tell, because the portrait isn't full-length:


In the opinion of Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Arthur Johnston "holds among the Latin poets of Scotland the next place to the elegant [George] Buchanan."

Thanks to Karl Maurer for several suggestions and corrections. Any remaining infelicities or errors are mine.

To illustrate line 85, Eric Thomson sends a photograph of a statue of Pope Leo X, with the comment: "Is he giving a blessing I wonder, or calling the waiter?"


Related posts:

• Hail, Hail, Plump Paunch!
• Slim

Lewis Theobald (1688-1744), in The Censor, No. 5 (Wednesday, April 20, 1715) 29-30, quoted by Richard Foster Jones in Lewis Theobald: His Contribution to English Scholarship, with Some Unpublished Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), p. 49:

I am so profess'd an Admirer of Antiquity, that I am never better pleas'd with the Labours of my Contemporaries, than when they busy themselves in retrieving the sacred Monuments of their Fore-fathers from Obscurity and Oblivion....We Lovers of Antiquity have our Foibles of this Nature, which we keep up with a very innocent Superstition. For my own Part, the Shelves of my Study are filled with curious Volumes in all sorts of Literature, that preserve the Fragments of great and venerable Authors. These I consider as so many precious Collections from a Ship-wreck of inestimable Value; comforting my self for the loss of the general Cargo, by the greater Price and Esteem that ought to be set upon the injur'd Remains. In opposite Columns to these stand the Restorers of ancient Learning, who are continually snatching delicious Morsels from the Mouth of Time, and forcing that general Robber to a Restitution of his ill-gotten Goods.

[Thomas Newcomb], from Bibliotheca: A Poem. Occasion'd by the Sight of a Modern Library. With Some Very Useful Episodes, and Digressions (London: J. Morphew, 1712), rpt. in A Select Collection of Poems, Vol. III (London: J. Nichols, 1780), pp. 19-74 (at 60-62):

Bentley immortal honour gets,
By changing Que's for nobler Et's:
From Cam to Isis see him roam,
To fetch stray'd Interjections home;
While the glad shores with joy rebound,
For Periods and lost Comma's found:
Poor Adverbs, that had long deplor'd
Their injur'd rights, by him restor'd!
Smil'd to survey a rival's doom,
While they possess'd the envied room;
And, hissing from their rescued throne
Th' usurper's fate, applaud their own.
The Roman nymphs, for want of notes
More tender, strain'd their little throats,
Till Bentley, to relieve their woes,
Gave them a sett of Ah's and Oh's:
More musically to complain,
And warble forth their gentle pain.
The suffering fair no more repine,
For vowels now to sob and whine;
In softest air their passion try,
And, without spoiling metre, die:
With Interjections of his own,
He helps them now to weep and groan;
That, reading him, no lover fears
Soft vehicles for sighs and tears.
Instructed by his learned code,
What makes a Jig, or forms an Ode,
We view what various beauties meet,
To leave each fragrant line so sweet;
How Horace' lines our passions keep
Awake, and Bentley's lull asleep.
No verse can moan a limping foot,
But he applies his plaster to't:
With pious care binds up the sore,
And kindly bids it hop no more!
While, with his helping comments nigh,
Instead of crutches to apply
To crazy verse (which envious Time
Had weaken'd both in sense and rhyme);
For a lame Muse's surgeon meet,
Instead of legs, sets broken feet.

For the medical metaphor cf. e.g. Bentley's own words in his edition of Phaedrus and Publilius Syrus (Cambridge: Cornelius Crownfield, 1726):

Quod Phaedri fabulas & Publii Syri Sententias huic Terentii editioni subjunxerim; ea partim causa est, quod hi soli praeter Plautum & fragmenta quaedam aliorum nunc extent, qui eadem qua Terentius Licentia in Senariis sint usi; partim quod hi tres pari conditione Liberti et Peregrini, in non ita dissimili argumento Comoediis Mimis & Apologis, omnia Italorum ingenia facile superaverint; partim quod post egregias plurimorum operas adhuc incurata restarent non pauca ab indoctis Librariis inflicta vulnera, quibus ipse mihi videbar posse medicari.

Related post: Richard Bentley.

A.C. Swinburne (1837-1909), from "The Nympholept":

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime
That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood,
Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time,
Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood,
When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.
The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme:
The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good.

A.C. Swinburne, letter to A.H. Bullen (May 16, 1888):

I am sorry to hear that you are spending any part of your valuable time on Horace, or any one who may have wasted any part of his in translating that writer. I should as soon think of doing Moore into Greek anapaests, or Tupper into Greek elegiacs (I fancy he would read like Theognis or Tyrtaeus) as of turning Horace into English. My dislike of him—dating from schooldays—is one of the very few points on which I find myself in sympathy with Byron.

Swinburne is referring to Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Stanza 77:

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touch'd heart,
Yet fare thee well—upon Soracte's ridge we part.

Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650), "Against a Rich Man Despising Povertie," in The Poems of Phineas Fletcher, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, Vol. III (Printed for Private Circulation, 1869), pp. 225-226:

If well thou view'st us with no squinted eye,
No partiall judgement, thou wilt quickly rate
Thy wealth no richer then my povertie;
My want no poorer then thy rich estate:
    Our ends and births alike; in this as I;        5
    Poore thou wert born, and poore again shalt die.

My little fills my little-wishing minde:
Thou having more then much, yet seekest more:
Who seeks, still wishes what he seeks, to finde;
Who wishes, wants; and who so wants, is poore:        10
    Then this must follow of necessitie;
    Poore are thy riches, rich my povertie.

Though still thou gett'st yet is thy want not spent,
But as thy wealth, so growes thy wealthy itch:
But with my little I have much content;        15
Content hath all; and who hath all, is rich:
    Then this in reason thou must needs confesse,
    If I have little, yet that thou hast lesse.

2 partiall = opposite of impartial
3, 4, 8 then = than
13 spent = used up, exhausted


José de Ribera (1591-1652), An Old Usurer

A friend sent me two quotations from Goethe, "one curmudgeonly and the other euphoric," on a postcard after visiting the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome on December 28, 2012.

Goethe, Italian Journey (November 5, 1786; tr. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer):

I find it a difficult and melancholy business, I must confess, separating the old Rome from the new, but it has to be done and I can only hope that, in the end, my efforts will prove well worthwhile. One comes upon traces both of magnificence and of devastation, which stagger the imagination. What the barbarians left, the builders of Modern Rome have destroyed.

Gestehen wir jedoch, es ist ein saures und trauriges Geschäft, das alte Rom aus dem neuen heraus zu klauben, aber man muss es denn doch tun und zuletzt eine unschätzbare Befriedigung hoffen. Man trifft Spuren einer Herrlichkeit und einer Zerstörung, die beide über unsere Begriffe gehen. Was die Barbaren stehen ließen, haben die Baumeister des neuen Roms verwüstet.

Goethe, letter to Karl Ludwig von Knebel (November 17, 1786; my translation):

Aqueducts, baths, theater, amphitheater, circus, temple! And then the palaces of the emperors, the tombs of the great — with these images I have nourished and strengthened my spirit.

Wasserleitungen, Bäder, Theater, Amphitheater, Rennbahn, Tempel! Und dann die Palläste der Kayser, die Gräber der Großen — Mit diesen Bildern hab' ich meinen Geist genährt und gestärckt.

At the end of the postcard:

Goethe didn't live long enough to witness all of the destruction by Barbaren and Baumeister, but neither bevy of wreckers has managed to blight seriously the euphoria of visitors to Rome, me among them.

Thanks very much, my friend.

---

Ian Jackson comments:

On your "Postcard from Rome", Goethe's remark "Was die Barbaren stehen ließen ..." is presumably an echo of the famous 17th-century pasquinade on Maffeo Barbarini (Pope Urban VIII)'s appropriation of bronze spolia from the Pantheon: "Quod non fecerunt barbari, Barbarini fecerunt".

P.G. Patmore (1786-1855), My Friends and Acquaintance: Being Memorials, Mind-Portraits, and Personal Recollections of Deceased Celebrities of the Nineteenth Century (London: Saunders and Otley, 1854), vol. I, pp. 16-17:

The truth then is, that [Charles] Lamb was what is by no means so uncommon or so contradictory a character as the unobservant may deem it: he was a gentle, amiable, and tender-hearted misanthrope. He hated and despised men with his mind and judgment, in proportion as (and precisely because) he loved and yearned towards them in his heart; and individually, he loved those best whom everybody else hated, and for the very reasons for which others hated them. He generally through life had two or three especial pets, who were always the most disagreeable people in the world — to the world. To be taken into Lamb's favour and protection you had only to get discarded, defamed, and shunned by everybody else; and if you deserved this treatment, so much the better! If I may venture so to express myself, there was in Lamb's eyes a sort of sacredness in sin, on account of its sure ill consequences to the sinner; and he seemed to open his arms and his heart to the rejected and reviled of mankind in a spirit kindred at least with that of the Deity.

Letter from Cyril Jackson to Robert Peel (January 28, 1810), in Charles Stuart Parker, ed., Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers, 2nd ed., Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1899), p. 28:

Now remember what I say. Give the last high finish to all that you now possess by the continual reading of Homer. Let no day pass without your having him in your hands. Elevate your own mind by the continual meditation of the vastness of his comprehension and the unerring accuracy of all his conceptions. If you will but read him four or five times over every year, in half a dozen years you will know him by heart, and he well deserves it.

Theognis 337-340 (tr. M.L. West):

Zeus grant I may repay my friends, who are so kind,
    Cyrnus, and even more my enemies.
I'd feel then like a god on earth, could I but get
    revenge before my appointed death-day comes.

Ζεύς μοι τῶν τε φίλων δοίη τίσιν, οἵ με φιλεῦσιν,
    τῶν τ᾽ ἐχθρῶν μεῖζον, Κύρνε, δυνησόμενον.
χοὔτως ἄν δοκέοιμι μετ᾽ ἀνθρώπων θεὸς εἶναι
    εἴ μ᾽ ἀποτεισάμενον μοῖρα κίχῃ θανάτου.

J.W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from The Greek Anthology. Edited with a Revised Text, Introduction, Translation, and Notes (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890), pp. 46-47 (from Introduction, § IX):

In revulsion from the immense accumulation of material wealth in this period, a certain refined simplicity was then the ideal of the best minds, as it was afterwards in the early Roman Empire, as it is in our own day. The charm of the country was, perhaps for the first time, fully realised; the life of gardens became a passion, and hardly less so the life of the opener air, of the hill and meadow, of the shepherd and hunter, the farmer and fisherman. The rules of art, like the demands of heaven, were best satisfied with small and simple offerings. 'The least of a little'³ was sufficient to lay before gods who had no need of riches; and as the art of the epigrammatist grew more refined, the poet took pride in working with the slightest materials. The husbandman lays a handful of corn-ears before Demeter, the gardener a basket of ripe fruit at the feet of Priapus; the implements of their craft are dedicated by the carpenter and the goldsmith; the young girl and the aged woman offer their even slighter gift, the spindle and distaff, the reel of wool, and the rush-woven basket.⁴ A staff of wild-olive cut in the coppice is accepted by the lord of the myriad-boughed forest; the Muses are pleased with their bunch of roses wet with morning dew.⁵ The boy Daphnis offers his fawnskin and scrip of apples to the great divinity of Pan;⁶ the young herdsman and his newly-married wife, still with the rose-garland on her hair, make prayer and thanksgiving with a cream cheese and a piece of honeycomb to the mistress of a hundred cities, Aphrodite with her house of gold.⁷ The hard and laborious life of the small farmer was touched with some-[p. 47]thing of the natural magic that saturates the Georgics; 'rich with fair fleeces, and fair wine, and fair fruit of corn,' and blessed by the gracious Seasons whose feet pass over the furrows.¹ On the green slope Pan himself makes solitary music to the shepherd in the divine silence of the hills.² The fancy of three brothers, a hunter, a fowler, and a fisherman, meeting to make dedication of the spoils of their crafts to the country-god, was one which had a special charm for epigrammatists; it is treated by no less than nine poets, whose dates stretch over as many centuries.³ Sick of cities, the imagination turned to an Arcadia that thenceforth was to fill all poetry with the music of its names and the fresh chill of its pastoral air; the lilied banks of Ladon, the Erymanthian water, the deep woodland of Pholoë and the grey steep of Cyllene.⁴ Nature grew full of a fresh and lovely divinity. A spirit dwells under the sea, and looks with kind eyes on the creatures that go up and down in its depths; Artemis flashes by in the rustle of the windswept oakwood, and the sombre shade of the pines makes a roof for Pan; the wild hill becomes a sanctuary, for ever unsown and unmown, where the Spirit of Nature, remote and invisible, feeds his immortal flock and fulfils his desire.<sup>5

3</sup> Ibid. [Anth. Pal.] vi.98, ἐκ μικρῶν ὀλίγιστα.
⁴Ibid. vi. 98, 102; 103, 92; 174, 247.
⁵ Ibid. vi.3, 336.
⁶ Ibid. vi.177.
⁷ Ibid. vi.55; cf. vi.119, xii.131.

[p. 47]

¹ Anth. Pal. vi.31, 98.
² App. Plan. 17; cf. Lucret. v.1387.
³ Anth. Pal. vi.11-16, and 179-187. The poets are Leonidas of Tarentum, Alcaeus of Messene, Antipater of Sidon, Alexander, Julius Diocles, Satyrus, Archias, Zosimus and Julianus Aegyptius.
⁴ Anth. Pal. vi.111, App. Plan. 188: compare Song iii. in Milton's Arcades.
⁵ Anth. Pal. x.8; vi.253, 268; vi.79.

Aristophanes, Clouds 1005-1008 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

No, down to the Academy you shall go, and under the sacred olive trees you shall crown yourself with white reed and have a race with a decent boy your own age, fragrant with woodbine and carefree content, and the catkins flung by the poplar tree, luxuriating in spring's hour, when the plane tree whispers to the elm.

ἀλλ᾽ εἰς Ἀκαδήμειαν κατιὼν ὑπὸ ταῖς μορίαις ἀποθρέξει
στεφανωσάμενος καλάμῳ λευκῷ μετὰ σώφρονος ἡλικιώτου,
μίλακος ὄζων καὶ ἀπραγμοσύνης καὶ λεύκης φυλλοβολούσης,
ἦρος ἐν ὥρᾳ, χαίρων ὁπόταν πλάτανος πτελέᾳ ψιθυρίζῃ.

Plutarch, Life of Cimon 13.8 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

He was the first to beautify the city with the so‑called "liberal" and elegant resorts which were so excessively popular a little later, by planting the market-place with plane trees, and by converting the Academy from a waterless and arid spot into a well watered grove, which he provided with clear running-tracks and shady walks.

πρῶτος δὲ ταῖς λεγομέναις ἐλευθερίοις καὶ γλαφυραῖς διατριβαῖς, αἳ μικρὸν ὕστερον ὑπερφυῶς ἠγαπήθησαν, ἐκαλλώπισε τὸ ἄστυ, τὴν μὲν ἀγορὰν πλατάνοις καταφυτεύσας, τὴν δ᾽ Ἀκαδήμειαν ἐξ ἀνύδρου καὶ αὐχμηρᾶς κατάρρυτον ἀποδείξας ἄλσος ἠσκημένον ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ δρόμοις καθαροῖς καὶ συσκίοις περιπάτοις.

David Gill, "Paton, William Roger (1857–1921), epigraphist and classical scholar," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

'Paton spoke Greek and French to his wife, German to the children's governess, English to me, Turkish to the servants, Latin and Gaelic to his children' (Myres, 10).

The reference is to J.N.L. Myres, Commander J.L. Myres, RNVR: the Blackbeard of the Aegean (1980).

A poem by Ryōkan (1758-1831), tr. Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel:

It's not that I don't care
To mingle with others
Only that I'm better
At amusing myself

The same, tr. Misao Kodama and Hikosaku Yanagishima:

I am not escaping from the world,
But what I like best is
To enjoy myself alone
Without mingling in the crowd.

Romanization:

yononaka ni majiranu to niwa aranedomo
    hitoriasobi zo ware wa masareru

Richard de Bury (1287-1345), Philobiblon 17.219-221 (tr. Eric Thomson):

[219] You will perhaps see some pig-headed youth lounging lazily over his studies, who when the winter frost is sharp, has a dripping nose from the biting cold, and doesn't take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief until he has drenched the book in front of him with the foul discharge. If only it was a cobbler's apron he had on his lap instead of a book! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth, black as pitch, with which he marks any passage that takes his fancy. He distributes a vast array of straws in various places, inserted to stick out, so that the ends may remind him of what his memory can't retain. These straws, since the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes them out, first distend the book and prevent it from being closed normally, and at length, being carelessly consigned to oblivion, they rot.

[220] He isn't afraid to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or slosh a cup over it; and because he has no alms-purse at hand he drops into books whatever bits and pieces are left over. With his ceaseless chattering, he never wearies of arguing with his companions, and while he puts forward a legion of arguments void of any concrete sense, he drenches the book lying half-open in his lap with his spluttering saliva. Why go on? He soon has his arms folded and is leaning forward to rest his head on the book; a brief spell of study induces a long nap; and then, by way of repairing the resulting wrinkles, he twists back the margin of the pages, causing not inconsiderable damage to the book.

[221] Now the rains are over and gone, and the flowers have appeared on our soil. Then the scholar we have been describing, a neglecter rather than an inspector of books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and four-leaf clovers. Then he will use his wet hands, clammy with sweat, to leaf through the volumes; then he will whack the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger wrapped in ancient dirty leather will go through the page line by line; then at the first flea-bite the sacred book is tossed aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so impregnated with the dust that has found its way inside, that it resists any efforts to close it.

The Latin:

[219] Videbis fortassis iuvenem cervicosum, studio segniter residentem, et dum hiberno tempore hiems alget, nasus irriguus frigore comprimente distillat, nec prius se dignatur emunctorio tergere, quam subiectum librum madefecerit turpi rore; cui utinam loco codicis corium subderetur sutoris! Unguem habet fimo fetente refertum, gagati simillimum, quo placentis materiae signat locum. Paleas dispertitur innumeras, quas diversis in locis collocat evidentur, ut festuca reducat quod memoria non retentat. Hae paleae, quia nec venter libri digerit nec quisquam eas extrahit, primo quidem librum a solita iunctura distendunt, et tandem negligenter oblivioni commissae putrescunt.

[220] Fructus et caseum super librum expansum non veretur comedere, atque scyphum hinc inde dissolute transferre; et quia non habet eleemosynarium praeparatum, in libris dimittit reliquias fragmentorum. Garrulitate continua sociis oblatrare non desinit, et dum multitudinem rationum adducit a sensu physico vacuarum, librum in gremio subexpansum humectat aspergine salivarum. Quid plura? statim duplicatis cubitis reclinatur in codicem et per breve studium soporem invitat prolixum, ac reparandis rugis limbos replicat foliorum, ad libri non modicum detrimentum.

[221] Jam imber abiit et recessit et flores apparuerunt in terra nostra. Tunc scholaris quem describimus, librorum neglector potius quam inspector, viola, primula atque rosa necnon et quadrifolio farciet librum suum. Tunc manus aquosas et scatentes sudore volvendis voluminibus applicabit. Tunc pulverulentis undique chirothecis in candidam membranam impinget et indice veteri pelle vestito venabitur paginam lineatim. Tunc ad pulicis mordentis aculeum sacer liber abicitur, qui tamen vix clauditur infra mensem, sed sic pulveribus introiectis tumescit quod claudentis instantiae non obedit.

Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1950), Part XIX (The Misfortunes of Books), Section III (Neglect and Misusage), pp. 417-426, discusses this passage (at 422).

Related post: Pet Peeve.

Not the President of the United States, but the President of Uruguay, José Mujica.

Simon Romero, "After Years in Solitary, an Austere Life as Uruguay’s President," New York Times (January 4, 2013):

He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo's outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.

In a deliberate statement to this cattle-exporting nation of 3.3 million people, Mr. Mujica, 77, shunned the opulent Suárez y Reyes presidential mansion, with its staff of 42, remaining instead in the home where he and his wife have lived for years, on a plot of land where they grow chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.

Visitors reach Mr. Mujica’s austere dwelling after driving down O'Higgins Road, past groves of lemon trees. His net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage. He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.

....

Quoting the Roman court-philosopher Seneca, Mr. Mujica said, "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor."

....

Finally, Mr. Mujica's eyes lit up as he remembered a passage from "Don Quixote," in which the knight-errant imbibes wine from a horn and dines on salted goat with his goatherd hosts, delivering a harangue against the "pestilence of gallantry."

"The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain," said Mr. Mujica. "Probably,” he added, "they were the richest."

The Seneca quotation comes from one of his letters to Lucilius (2.6):

non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.

Hat tip: Arsen Darnay.

Gayle Osterberg, "Update on the Twitter Archive At the Library of Congress" (January 4, 2013):

In April 2010, the Library and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms.

The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date.

This month, all those objectives will be completed. We now have an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets and growing. The volume of tweets the Library receives each day has grown from 140 million beginning in February 2011 to nearly half a billion tweets each day as of October 2012.

What would Adams and Jefferson think?

Roger Cohen, "Thanks for Not Sharing," New York Times (December 6, 2012):

Now I was determined to get through 2012 without doing a peevish column, not wishing to appear cantankerous or curmudgeonly, determined to be sunny and youthful as the times demand, but everyone has a tipping point. Mine occurred when I came across this tweet from Claire:

“Have such a volcanically deep zit laying roots in my chin that it feels like someone hit me with a right cross.”

Good to know, Claire.

I was just recovering from that when I found Deanna tweeting that she had “picked up pet food” and was heading to “the dreaded consult on colon stuff. The joys of turning 50.” As for Kate she let the world know the status of her labor: “Contractions 3 minutes apart and dilated at 2 cm.”

Social media does not mean that you have to be that social.

Now these tweets of Claire, Deanna, and Kate are preserved for the benefit of future generations at the Library of Congress.

Greek text from Jean-Claude Decourt, Inscriptions de Thessalie, I: Les cités de la vallée de l'Énipeus (Paris-Athènes: École Française d'Athènes, 1995 = Études Epigraphiques, 3), pp. 90-94, no. 73 (the apparatus is mine, abbreviated from Decourt's):

                                           Θεός.                                        1
Χαίρετε τοὶ πα̣[ριόντες, ἅπ]α̣[ς] θῆλύς τε καὶ ἄρσην,
ἄνδρες τε ἠδὲ γυναῖκες ὁμῶς παῖδες τε κόραι τε·
χωρόν δ' εἰς ἱερὸν Νύμφαις καὶ Πανὶ καὶ Ἑρμῆι,        4
Ἀπόλλωνι ἄνακτι καὶ Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ ἑταίραις,
Χίρωνος τ' ἄντρον καὶ Ἀσκλαπιοῦ ήδ' Ὑγιείας·
τούτων ἐστὶ τ[ά]δ̣', ὦνα Πάν, ἱαρώτατ' ἐν αὐτῶι
ἔμφυτα καὶ πίνακες καὶ ἀγάλματα δῶρα τε πολλ[ά]·        8
ἄνδρα δ' ἐποιήσα(ν)τὰ ἀγαθὸν Παντάκλεα Νύμφαι
τῶνδ' έπιβαινέμεναι χώρων καὶ ἐπίσσκοπον εἶναι,
ὅσπερ ταῦτ' ἐφύτευσε καὶ [ἐ]ξεπονήσατο χερσσίν,
ἀντίδοσαν δ' αὐτῶι βίον ἄφθονον ἤματα πάντα·        12
Ἡρακλέης μὲν ἔδωκ' ἰσχύν ἀρετὴν τε κράτος τε,
ὧιπερ τούσδε λίθους τύπτων ἐπόησ' ἀναβαίνε[ιν],
Ἀπόλλων δὲ δίδωσι καὶ υἱὸς τοῦ[δ]ε Ἑρμῆς
αἰῶν' εἰς τὸν ἄπαντα ὑγίειαν καὶ βίον ἐσθλόν,        16
Πὰν δὲ γέλωτα καὶ εὐφροσύνην ὕβριν τε δικαίαν,
Χίρων δ' αὐτῶι δῶκε σοφόν τ̣' ἔ̣μεν[αι] καὶ ἀοιδόν.
Ἀλλὰ τύχαις ἀγαθαῖς ἀναβαίνετ[ε], θύετε Πανί̣,
εὔχεσθε, εὐφραίνεσθε· κακῶν δ .... ἁπάν[των]        20
ἐνθάδ' ἔνεστ', ἀγαθῶν δὲ [λάχος?] πολέμοιό [τε λῆξις?].

2 πα̣[ριόντες, ἅπ]α̣[ς]: προσιόντες, ἅπας W. Peek
20 in lac. ἐπίλησις suppl. W. Peek
21 λάχος D. Comparetti; λῆξις Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum I (1923) 248

My translation:

                             God.                                     1
Welcome visitors, every female and male,
husbands and wives, sons and daughters alike,
to a spot sacred to Nymphs and Pan and Hermes,        4
Lord Apollo and Heracles and companions,
to the cave of Chiron and Asclepius and Hygieia;
to them belong, o Lord Pan, these most holy things here,
plants and tablets and statues and many gifts;        8
the Nymphs appointed a good man, Pantalkes,
to walk over these places and to be overseer;
he made these plants grow and he toiled with his hands;
they gave him in return a bountiful livelihood for all his days;        12
Heracles gave him might, excellence, and strength,
with which he cut these stones and made them rise up,
and Apollo and his son Hermes give him
health and a noble livelihood forever,         16
and Pan gives him laughter and good cheer and righteous outrageousness,
and Chiron made him to be wise and a bard.
But with good fortune go up, sacrifice to Pan,
pray, make merry; oblivion of all evil        20
is in this place, and a share of good, and cessation of strife.

There are also English translations in W.R. Connor, "Seized by the Nymphs: Nympholepsy and Symbolic Expression in Classical Greece," Classical Antiquity 7.2 (October 1988) 155-189 (at 163); Jennifer Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 17; and Corinne Ondine Pache, A Moment's Ornament: The Poetics of Nympholepsy in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 53-54.

The prepositional phrase in lines 4-6 (χωρόν δ' εἰς ἱερὸν ... Χίρωνος τ' ἄντρον) needs a verb of motion to complete the sense. Decourt translates the beginning of the inscription as "Réjouissez-vous passants," then, after a stop (raised dot at the end of line 3), "vous qui venez en un lieu consacré ... vous qui venez à la grotte de Chiron." "Vous qui venez," however, isn't in the Greek. It's true that in ancient inscriptions a very  common feature is an address to passers-by, but perhaps here the address is not to those who merely pass by the shrine, but to those who enter or visit it. For πα̣ριόντες ... εἰς see Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. πάρειμι, sense III: "pass on, esp. in the sense of entering." If this interpretation is adopted, there should be a comma at the end of line 3, instead of a raised dot. Connor, Larson, and Pache all read προσιόντες, not πα̣ριόντες.

In line 17, ὕβριν ... δικαίαν is an unexpected phrase, because hubris is normally unjust, not just. Larson's  "righteous unrestraint" captures the Greek well.

The Greek text of the inscription in Pache's book has some typographical errors, e.g. ἀνδρα in line 9, ένθαδ' in line 21.

This is an attractive inscription at the entrance of a shrine, welcoming all visitors. No "procul, o procul este profani" here.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Tempest-Tost (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd., 1951), p. 196:

"Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge."
"Certainly."
"You say that a man's first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?"
"Of course."
"Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."

Related post: The Value of Useless Knowledge.

Hat tip: St. Izzy by the River.

Horace Walpole, letter to George Montagu (November 21, 1765):

What has one to do, when one grows tired of the world, as we both do, but to draw nearer and nearer, and gently waste the remains of life with the friends with whom one began it! Young and happy people will have no regard for us and our old stories, and they are in the right: but we shall not tire one another; we shall laugh together....I must tell you, I desire to die when I have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen or heard anything serious, that was not ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, all are to me but impostors in their various ways. Fame or interest are their objects—and after all their parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanac, and believes the stars but so many farthing candles, created to prevent his falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational being, and I am sure an honester than any of them—Oh, I am sick of visions and systems, that shove one another aside, and come over again, like the figures in a moving picture! Rabelais brightens up to me as I see more of the world; he treated it as it deserved, laughed at it all, and (as I judge from myself) ceased to hate it; for I find hatred an unjust preference.

Jean Georges Vibert, Reading Rabelais

al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868), "In Praise of Books," in The Life and Works of Jāḥiẓ: Translations of Selected Texts, by Charles Pellat. Translated from the French by D.M. Hawke (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 130-132:

A book is a receptacle filled with knowledge, a container crammed with good sense, a vessel full of jesting and earnestness. It can if you wish be more eloquent than Sahbān Wā'il, or less talkative than Bāqil: it will amuse you with anecdotes, inform you on all manner of astonishing marvels, entertain you with jokes or move you with homilies, just as you please. You are free to find in it an entertaining adviser, an encouraging critic, a villainous ascetic, a silent talker or hot coldness.

....

Moreover, have you ever seen a garden that will go into a man's sleeve, an orchard you can take on your lap, a speaker who can speak of the dead and yet be the interpreter of the living? Where else will you find a companion who sleeps only when you are asleep, and speaks only when you wish him to?

....

You denigrate books, whereas to my mind there is no pleasanter neighbour, no more fair-minded friend, no more amenable companion, no more dutiful teacher, no comrade more perfect and less prone to error, less annoying or importunate, of a sweeter disposition, less inclined to contradiction or accusation, less disposed to slander or backbiting, more marvellous, cleverer, less given to flattery or affectation, less demanding or quarrelsome, less prone to argument or more opposed to strife, than a book.

I know no companion more prompt to hand, more rewarding, more helpful or less burdensome, and no tree that lives longer, bears more abundantly or yields more delicious fruit that is handier, easier to pick or more perfectly ripened at all times of the year, than a book.

I know no animal product that despite its youth, the short time that elapsed since its birth, its modest price and its ready availability brings together so much excellent advice, so much rare knowledge, so many works by great minds and keen brains, so many lofty thoughts and sound doctrines, so much wise experience or so much information about bygone ages, distant lands, everyday sayings and demolished empires, as a book.

....

For all its smallness and lightness, a book is the medium through which men receive the Scriptures, and also government accounts. Silent when silence is called for, it is eloquent when asked to speak. It is a bedside companion that does not interrupt when you are busy but welcomes you when you have a mind to it, and does not demand forced politeness or compel you to avoid its company. It is a visitor whose visits may be rare, or frequent, or so continual that it follows you like your shadow and becomes a part of you.

A book is a companion that does not flatter you, a friend that does not irritate you, a crony that does not weary you, a petitioner that does not wax importunate, a protégé that does not find you slow, and a friend that does not seek to exploit you by flattery, artfully wheedle you, cheat you with hypocrisy or deceive you with lies.

A book, if you consider, is something that prolongs your pleasure, sharpens your mind, loosens your tongue, lends agility to your fingers and emphasis to your words, gladdens your mind, fills your heart and enables you to win the respect of the lowly and the friendship of the mighty. You will get more knowledge out of one in a month than you could acquire from men's mouths in five years—and that at a saving in expense, in arduous research by qualified persons, in standing on the doorsteps of hack teachers, in resorting to individuals inferior to you in mortal qualities and nobility of birth, and in associating with odious and stupid people.

A book obeys you by night and by day, abroad and at home; it has no need of sleep, and does not grow weary with sitting up. It is a master that does not fail you when you need him and does not stop teaching you when you stop paying him. If you fall from grace it continues to obey you, and if the wind sets fair for your enemies it does not turn against you. Form any kind of bond or attachment with it, and you will be able to do without everything else; you will not be driven into bad company by boredom or loneliness.

Even if its kindness to you and its benevolence towards you consisted merely in saving you from the tedium of sitting on your doorstep watching the passers-by—with all the aggravations that posture entails: civilities to be paid, other people's indiscretions, the tendency to meddle in things that do not concern you, the proximity of the common people, the need to listen to their bad Arabic and their mistaken ideas and put up with their low behaviour and their shocking ignorance—even if a book conferred no other advantage but this, it would be both salutary and profitable for its owner.

Salomon Koninck (1609-1656), The Hermit
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Dear Mike,

I showed your posting on the many uses of Greek newspaper to an old college friend, of an Irish family that has been (as she says) Catholic since the seventh century. She tells me that her father, William Gilmartin, used to subscribe to the Jewish Community Bulletin, a San Francisco weekly newspaper. It came in the mail, and the Jewish postman, Mr. Stern, naturally noticed. After a few years, he happened to see Mr. Gilmartin while delivering that week's copy and praised him for his wonderfully ecumenical spirit. Her father hadn't the heart to tell him that the Jewish Community Bulletin was exactly the size of his parrot's cage, and was bought expressly for the purpose of lining the bottom. The publication schedule was just right for a weekly change of paper. The newspaper went straight from the mailbox to the floor of the cage. He didn't even need to unfold it. Fortunately, neither he nor the parrot were still alive when the Bulletin became an e-paper a few years ago.

As ever,

Ian Jackson

Greek Anthology 9.151 (Antipater), a prose translation by W.R. Paton (1857–1921):

Where is thy celebrated beauty, Doric Corinth? Where are the battlements of thy towers and thy ancient possessions? Where are the temples of the immortals, the houses and the matrons of the town of Sisyphus, and her myriads of people? Not even a trace is left of thee, most unhappy of towns, but war has seized on and devoured everything. We alone, the Nereids, Ocean's daughters, remain inviolate, and lament, like halcyons, thy sorrows.

Another prose translation, by J.W. Mackail (1859-1945):

Where is thine admired beauty, Dorian Corinth, where thy crown of towers? where thy treasures of old, where the temples of the immortals, where the halls and where the wives of the Sisyphids, and the tens of thousands of thy people that were? for not even a trace, O most distressful one, is left of thee, and war has swept up together and clean devoured all; only we, the unravaged sea-nymphs, maidens of Ocean, abide, halcyons wailing for thy woes.

The Greek:

Ποῦ τὸ περίβλεπτον κάλλος σέο, Δωρὶ Κόρινθε;
  ποῦ στεφάναι πύργων; ποῦ τὰ πάλαι κτέανα;
ποῦ νηοὶ μακάρων; ποῦ δώματα; ποῦ δὲ δάμαρτες
  Σισύφιαι λαῶν θ᾽ αἱ ποτε μυριάδες;
οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδ᾽ ἴχνος, πολυκάμμορε, σεῖο λέλειπται,
  πάντα δὲ συμμάρψας ἐξέφαγεν πόλεμος.
μοῦναι ἀπόρθητοι Νηρηίδες Ὠκεανοῖο
  κοῦραι σῶν ἀχέων μίμνομεν ἁλκυόνες.

A verse translation by Edward Dodwell (1776-1832):

Where is thy grandeur, Corinth! shrunk from sight,
Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height;
Thy god-like fanes and palaces! Oh where
Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair!
Relentless war has pour'd around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall!

By Henry Wellesley (1794-1866):

Where are thy splendours, Dorian Corinth, where
  Thy crested turrets, thy ancestral goods,
The temples of the blest, the dwellings fair,
  The high-born dames, the myriad multitudes?
There's not a trace of thee, sad doomed one, left,
By rav'ning war at once of all bereft.
We, the sad Nereids, offspring of the surge,
Alone are spared to chant thy halcyon dirge.

By Goldwin Smith (1823–1910):

Where, Corinth, are thy glories now,
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There's not a ruin left to tell,
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.

By John Addington Symonds (1840-1893):

Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
  Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
  The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
  Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
  All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
Bare to the night. The elemental powers
Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
  Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
  Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
  These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.

By Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer (1841-1917):

Where is thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, where
  The crown of towers, which of old was thine?
The halls once crowded by the brave and fair,
  The throng which flocked to many a gorgeous shrine?
Thy beauty's wrecked. It ne'er can rise again,
  'Tis wasted by the stern, relentless foe,
And only we, the Nymphs from out the main,
  Abide, like halcyons, wailing o'er thy woe.

By F.L. Lucas (1894-1967):

Where are the towers that crowned thee, high-throned between thy waters?
  Thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, thy fame of ancient days?
Thy temples of the Blessed, thy palaces, thy daughters
  Far-sprung from ancient Sisyphus, thy myriad-trodden ways?
Not a trace, not a trace, unhappy, hast thou left behind in falling—
  All has been seized and ravened by the wild throat of war:
We only, Ocean's children, still hover calling, calling,
  The sea-birds of thy sorrows, along thy lonely shore.

By Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982):

Where is your famous beauty,
Corinth of the Dorians?
Where is your crown of towers?
Where are your ancient treasures?
Where are the temples of the
Immortals, and where are the
Houses and the wives of the
Lineage of Sisyphos,
All your myriad people?
Most unhappy city, not
A trace is left of you. War
Has seized and eaten it all.
Only the inviolate
Sea nymphs, the daughters of the
Ocean, remain, crying like
Sea birds over your sorrows.