Laudator Temporis Acti

In the third book of the Iliad, Paris (or Alexander, as he is also known) puts himself forward as champion of the Trojans. But when on the Greek side Menelaus steps forth to accept the challenge, Paris shrinks back in fright, like a man suddenly encountering a snake. Paris' brother Hector chides him (3.39-57; tr. Peter Green):

Wretched Paris, so handsome, so mad for women, seducer,
I wish you had never been born or had died unmarried!        40
Yes, that I'd prefer: far better than being left with you
as this object of other men's ridicule and contempt.
Oh, they'll snigger aloud, indeed, will the long-haired Achaians,
and say, here's a leading man who gets to be champion
on good looks alone, without strength or courage in his heart.        45
Were you such a one when in your seafaring vessels
you sailed the deep, with the trusty comrades you'd mustered,
consorted with foreigners, brought back a beautiful woman
from a far-off land, the child of warrior spearmen,
a great grief to your father, your city, your whole nation:        50
a delight to our enemies, to yourself a cause of shame?
So will you not, then, confront the warlike Menelaös,
find out the kind of man whose lusty bedmate you've taken?
No help for you from the lyre, or the gifts of Aphrodītē,
or your hair or your good looks, when you're laid low in the dust.        55
The Trojans are arrant cowards: otherwise by now
you'd be wearing a shower of stones for all your evil deeds.

Δύσπαρι, εἶδος ἄριστε, γυναιμανές, ἠπεροπευτά,
αἴθ᾿ ὄφελες ἄγονός τ᾿ ἔμεναι ἄγαμός τ᾿ ἀπολέσθαι.        40
καί κε τὸ βουλοίμην, καί κεν πολὺ κέρδιον ἦεν
ἢ οὕτω λώβην τ᾿ ἔμεναι καὶ ὑπόψιον ἄλλων.
ἦ που καγχαλόωσι κάρη κομόωντες Ἀχαιοί,
φάντες ἀριστῆα πρόμον ἔμμεναι, οὕνεκα καλὸν
εἶδος ἔπ᾿, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἔστι βίη φρεσὶν οὐδέ τις ἀλκή.        45
ἦ τοιόσδε ἐὼν ἐν ποντοπόροισι νέεσσι
πόντον ἐπιπλώσας, ἑτάρους ἐρίηρας ἀγείρας,
μιχθεὶς ἀλλοδαποῖσι γυναῖκ᾿ εὐειδέ᾿ ἀνῆγες
ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης, νυὸν ἀνδρῶν αἰχμητάων,
πατρί τε σῷ μέγα πῆμα πόληί τε παντί τε δήμῳ,        50
δυσμενέσιν μὲν χάρμα, κατηφείην δὲ σοὶ αὐτῷ;
οὐκ ἂν δὴ μείνειας ἀρηίφιλον Μενέλαον;
γνοίης χ᾿ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν παράκοιτιν·
οὐκ ἄν τοι χραίσμῃ κίθαρις τά τε δῶρ᾿ Ἀφροδίτης,
ἥ τε κόμη τό τε εἶδος, ὅτ᾿ ἐν κονίῃσι μιγείης.        55
ἀλλὰ μάλα Τρῶες δειδήμονες. ἦ τέ κεν ἤδη
λάινον ἕσσο χιτῶνα κακῶν ἕνεχ᾿ ὅσσα ἔοργας.

This reminds me of Archilochus, fragment 114 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

I have no liking for a general who is tall, walks with a swaggering gait, takes pride in his curls, and is partly shaven. Let mine be one who is short, has a bent look about the shins, stands firmly on his feet, and is full of courage.

οὐ φιλέω μέγαν στρατηγὸν οὐδὲ διαπεπλιγμένον
οὐδὲ βοστρύχοισι γαῦρον οὐδ᾿ ὑπεξυρημένον,
ἀλλά μοι σμικρός τις εἴη καὶ περὶ κνήμας ἰδεῖν
ῥοικός, ἀσφαλέως βεβηκὼς ποσσί, καρδίης πλέως.

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), "Christian Morality," Unpopular Opinions (1946; rpt. London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), pp. 9-12 (at 11):

Perhaps if the Churches had had the courage to lay their emphasis where Christ laid it, we might not have come to this present frame of mind in which it is assumed that the value of all work and the value of all people are to be assessed in terms of economics. We might not so readily take for granted that the production of anything (no matter how useless or dangerous) is justified so long as it issues in increased profits and wages; that so long as a worker is well paid, it does not matter whether his work is worthwhile in itself or good for his soul; that so long as a business deal keeps on the windy side of the law, we need not bother about its ruinous consequences to society or the individual. Or at any rate, now that we have seen the chaos of bloodshed that follows upon economic chaos, we might at least be able to listen with more confidence to the voice of an untainted and undivided Christendom. Doubtless it would have needed courage to turn Dives from the church door along with Mary Magdalen. (Has any prosperously fraudulent banker, I wonder, ever been refused communion on the grounds that he was, in the words of the English Prayerbook, "an open and notorious evil liver"?) But lack of courage, and appeasement in the face of well-organized iniquity, do nothing to avert catastrophe or to secure respect.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Blithedale Romance, chapter XXI:

Human nature, in my opinion, has a naughty instinct that approves of wine, at least, if not of stronger liquor. The temperance-men may preach till doom's day; and still this cold and barren world will look warmer, kindlier, mellower, through the medium of a toper's glass; nor can they, with all their efforts, really spill his draught upon the floor, until some hitherto unthought-of discovery shall supply him with a truer element of joy. The general atmosphere of life must first be rendered so inspiriting that he will not need his delirious solace. The custom of tippling has its defensible side, as well as any other question. But these good people snatch at the old, time-honored demijohn, and offer nothing—either sensual or moral—nothing whatever to supply its place; and human life, as it goes with a multitude of men, will not endure so great a vacuum as would be left by the withdrawal of that big-bellied convexity. The space, which it now occupies, must somehow or other be filled up. As for the rich, it would be little matter if a blight fell upon their vineyards; but the poor man—whose only glimpse of a better state is through the muddy medium of his liquor—what is to be done for him? The reformers should make their efforts positive, instead of negative; they must do away with evil by substituting good.

Millicent Bell's note, in the Library of America edition of Hawthorne's Novels (1983), p. 1266:

This considerable passage, a defense of drinking, is deleted in the Morgan manuscript and absent from all printed editions until the Centenary, which restores it.

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), "Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia," lines 21-38 (tr. Jonathan Galassi):

Little old white-haired man,
weak, half naked, barefoot,
with an enormous burden on his back,
up mountain and down valley,
over sharp rocks, across deep sands and bracken,        25
through wind and storm,
in burning, freezing weather,
runs on, running till he's out of breath,
crosses rivers, wades through swamps,
falls and climbs and rushes on        30
ever faster, no rest or relief,
battered, bloodied; till at last he comes
to where his way
and all his effort led him:
terrible, immense abyss        35
into which he falls, forgetting everything.
This, O virgin moon,
is human life.

The Italian:

Vecchierel bianco, infermo,
Mezzo vestito e scalzo,
Con gravissimo fascio in su le spalle,
Per montagna e per valle,
Per sassi acuti, ed alta rena, e fratte,        25
Al vento, alla tempesta, e quando avvampa
L'ora, e quando poi gela,
Corre via, corre, anela,
Varca torrenti e stagni,
Cade, risorge, e piú e piú s'affretta,        30
Senza posa o ristoro,
Lacero, sanguinoso; infin ch'arriva
Colà dove la via
E dove il tanto affaticar fu volto:
Abisso orrido, immenso,        35
Ov'ei precipitando, il tutto obblia.
Vergine luna, tale
È la vita mortale.

The same, tr. Geoffrey L. Bickersteth:

A hoary, weak, old man,
Half-clothed, with naked feet,
A load exceeding heavy on his shoulders,
O'er hill, o'er dale, o'er boulders
Sharp-pointed and deep desert-sand and brambles,        25
In wind and storm, beneath the raging heat
And later when 'tis chill,
Runs, runs on, never still;
O'er pools and torrents scrambles
Breathless; falls, rises, more and more doth haste,        30
Without pause, without rest,
Mangled and bleeding; till at length he comes
Where is the limit set
Unto his journey and so great distress:
A gulf, dread, bottomless,        35
Wherein he plunges and doth all forget.
Moon-maiden, such the way
We mortals live our day.

Related post: What Is Life?

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), "The English Language," Unpopular Opinions (1946; rpt. London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), pp. 89-97 (at 95):

There are pedants, God mend their ears, who, having read some cheap-jack, rule-of-thumb, cramp-wit folly in a sixpenny text-book, would like to break our free idiom to the bit of an alien fashion. These are not the Latinists (who know better), but the Latinisers; they remember the Latin bones of language, and will have them dry bones. These are the pinching misers, who will hoard their gold, but will not put it out to gain. Of such are the dreary little men who write to the papers protesting—in the teeth of Chaucer, Bacon, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, the English Bible, Milton, Burton, Congreve, Swift, Burke, Peacock, Ruskin, Arnold and the whole tradition of English letters—that a sentence must not end with a preposition. This is no matter of syntax; it is a matter of idiom; and the freedom to handle our prepositions is among the most glorious in our charter of liberties.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 8.11824 = Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 7457 (Mactar, Tunisia, 3rd century A.D.), tr. Tim G. Parkin and Arthur J. Pomeroy, Roman Social History: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 39-40 (line numbers added in brackets by me):

I was born into a poor dwelling and of a poor father, who had no property or household. [5] From the time of my birth, I lived in the country looking after my business; there was no time off in the countryside and none for me at any time. And when the time of year had brought forth the grain ready for harvest, then I was the first reaper of the stalks. When the sickle-bearing gangs of men had made their way to the fields, [10] whether heading for The Nomads of Cirta or The Fields of Jupiter, as harvester I preceded them all, first into the fields, leaving the packed bands behind my back. I reaped twelve harvests under the raging sun, and afterwards became a work gang leader instead of a labourer. [15] We led the gangs of harvesters for eleven years and our band cut down the Numidian fields. This effort and my frugal lifestyle brought success and made me master of a household and gained me a house, and my home itself lacks nothing. [20] And my life gained the rewards of office: I was myself enrolled among the conscript councillors. Elected by the order [of the decurions], I had a seat in the order's temple and, starting out as a humble country boy, I too became censor. I produced children and saw them grow into young men and saw their children too. [25] In accord with our services in life, we have enjoyed years of fame, which no bitter tongue has hurt with any reproach. People, learn to pass your lives without giving reason for reproach. The man who has lived without deceit has earned meeting his death in such a manner.

The Latin (first two fragmentary lines omitted):

paupere progenitus lare sum parvoq(ue) parente
   cuius nec census neque domus fuerat.
ex quo sum genitus, ruri mea vixi colendo;        5
   nec ruri pausa nec mihi semper erat.
et cum maturas segetes produxerat annus,
   demessor calami tunc ego primus eram.
falcifera cum turma virum processerat arvis,
   seu Cirtae Nomados seu Iovis arva petens,        10
demessor cunctos anteibam primus in arvis,
   pos(t) tergus linquens densa meum gremia.
bis senas messes rabido sub sole totondi,
   ductor et ex opere postea factus eram.
undecim et turmas messorum duximus annis,        15
   et Numidiae campos nostra manus secuit.
hic labor et vita parvo con(ten)ta valere
   et dominum fecere domus et villa paratast,
et nullis opibus indiget ipsa domus.
   et nostra vita fructus percepit honorum;        20
inter conscriptos scribtus et ipse fui.
   ordinis in templo delectus ab ordine sedi,
   et de rusticulo censor et ipse fui.
et genui et vidi iuvenes carosq(ue) nepotes.
vitae pro meritis claros transegimus annos        25
   quos nullo lingua crimine laedit atrox.
discite, mortales, sine crimine degere vitam.
   sic meruit, vixit qui sine fraude, mori.

F.B. Cornford (1874-1943), Microcosmographia Academica (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1908), page number unknown (librum non vidi):

The Principle of Sound Learning is that the noise of vulgar fame should never trouble the cloistered calm of academic existence. Hence, learning is called sound when no one has ever heard of it; and 'sound scholar' is a term of praise applied to one another by learned men who have no reputation outside the University, and a rather queer one inside it. If you should write a book (you had better not), be sure that it is unreadable; otherwise you will be called 'brilliant' and forfeit all respect.

University printing presses exist, and are subsidised by the Government for the purpose of producing books which no one can read; and they are true to their high calling. Books are the sources of material for lectures. They should be kept from the young; for to read books and remember what you read well enough to reproduce it is called 'cramming', and this is destructive of all true education. The best way to protect the young from books is, first, to make sure that they shall be so dry as to offer no temptation; and, second, to store them in such a way that no one can find them without several years' training. A lecturer is a sound scholar, who is chosen to teach on the ground that he was once able to learn. Eloquence is not permissible in a lecture; it is a privilege reserved by statute for the Public Orator.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), The Elgin Marbles. Should they be returned to Greece? with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1997), p. x:

In towns and villages all over Greece, and in Greek tavernas all over the world, the spirit of phylloxenia prevails and no British guest is allowed to pay his or her bill.

For phylloxenia read philoxenia (hospitality).

Hat tip: Ian Jackson, who notes that the error suggests that "C.H. is more familiar with pre-phylloxera Bordeaux than with the Greek language." Hitchens' first wife (to whom he was still married in 1987, when the first edition of the book appeared) was Greek.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), "Strawberry," Wild Fruits, ed. Bradley P. Dean (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), pp. 10-17 (at p. 15, with editor's note on p. 289):

In the vicinity of Bangor, as I am told, they are found at the roots of grass where it is up to your knees, and they are smelled before they are seen, in hot weather—also on mountains whence you see the Penobscot fifteen miles off and the white sails of a hundred schooners flapping. There, sometimes, where silver spoons and saucers are scarce but everything else is plentiful, they empty countless quarts into a milk pan, stir in cream and sugar, while the party sits around with each a big spoon.

as I am told: Thoreau was probably told this by his cousin, George Thatcher, who lived in Bangor, Maine.

I grew up "in the vicinity of Bangor," just across the Penobscot River from Bangor, in fact. Behind our house was an unimproved area we called "The Field," bordered by four streets—Washington Street, Eastern Avenue, Chamberlain Street, State Street—and partially bisected by Holyoke Street. Someone owned it, I suppose, but to us it was the village commons, and we had the usufruct of it.

We neighborhood boys, without adult supervision, mowed part of the knee-high grass for a baseball field in the summer, and in the winter, where the field sloped downwards towards Holyoke and Washington Streets, we went sledding after school until it was too dark to see. I once threw a snowball at a passing car, and when the driver got out and chased me, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me into the safety of the field.

Wild strawberries grew in abundance in the field, and I spent many hours in late spring and early summer on my hands and knees, picking them. Most of those I picked went immediately into my mouth, not into my pail, but enough were saved so that my mother (who let nothing go to waste) could make strawberry jam, in quantities sufficient to last us until the following year. Some of the berries we ate with milk and sugar for breakfast, but most became jam.

The field no longer exists in the form in which I knew it. New streets now run through it, and it is filled with houses.

Id., p. 17:

But let us not call it by the mean name of "strawberry" any longer because in Ireland or England they spread straw under their garden kinds. It is not that to the Laplander or the Chippewayan; better call it by the Indian name of heart-berry, for it is indeed a crimson heart which we eat at the beginning of summer to make us brave for all the rest of the year, as Nature is.

Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.13.12 (on old men; tr. John Henry Freese):

They live in memory rather than in hope; for the life that remains to them is short, but that which is past is long, and hope belongs to the future, memory to the past. This is the reason of their loquacity; for they are incessantly talking of the past, because they take pleasure in recollection.

Thanks to the generous reader who sent me a copy of Thoreau's Wild Fruits

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (June 16?, 1838):

The Unbelief of the age is attested by the loud condemnation of trifles. Look at our silly religious papers. Let a minister wear a cane, or a white hat, go to a theatre, or avoid a sunday school, let a school book with a Calvinistic sentence or a sunday schoolbook without one, be heard of, & instantly all the old grannies squeak & gibber & do what they call sounding an alarm, from Bangor to Mobile. Alike nice & squeamish is its ear; you must on no account say "stink" or "damn."

The old grannies, of whatever age and sex, are still squeaking, gibbering, and sounding the alarm today. Only the forbidden words and deeds have changed.

Phaedrus 4.20 (tr. Ben Edwin Perry):

He who brings aid to the wicked afterwards suffers for it.
A man picked up a venomous serpent benumbed by the cold
and warmed it in his bosom, showing pity to his own cost;
for when the serpent revived he immediately killed the man.
When another serpent asked him why he did this,        5
he replied: "To teach men not to be good to those who are no good."

Qui fert malis auxilium, post tempus dolet.
Gelu rigentem quidam colubram sustulit
sinuque fovit, contra se ipse misericors;
namque, ut refecta est, necuit hominem protinus.
hanc alia cum rogaret causam facinoris,        5
respondit "Ne quis discat prodesse improbis."

Babrius 143 (tr. Ben Edwin Perry):

A farmer picked up a viper that was almost dead from the cold, and warmed it. But the viper, after stretching himself out, clung to the man's hand and bit him incurably, thus killing (the very one who wanted to save him). Dying, the man uttered these words, worthy to be remembered: "I suffer what I deserve, for showing pity to the wicked."

Ἔχιν γεωργὸς ἐκπνέοντ᾿ ὑπὸ ψύχους
λαβὼν ἔθαλπεν· ἀλλ᾿ ἐκεῖνος ἡπλώθη
τῇ χειρὶ προσφύς, καὶ δακὼν ἀνιήτως
ἔκτεινεν [αὐτὸν τὸν θέλοντ᾿ ἀνστῆσαι.]†
θνῄσκων δὲ μῦθον εἶπεν ἄξιον μνήμης·        5
"δίκαια πάσχω τὸν πονηρὸν οἰκτείρας."

Aesop 82 Chambry (my translation):

A farmer in winter time found a serpent stiff with cold. After pitying the serpent and picking it up, he placed it beneath his garment's fold. The serpent, warmed up and reverting to its nature, struck and killed its benefactor. As he was dying, the man said, "I'm getting what I deserve for having taken pity on a wicked creature."

Γεωργός τις χειμῶνος ὥρᾳ ὄφιν εὑρὼν ὑπὸ κρύους πεπηγότα, τοῦτον ἐλεήσας καὶ λαβὼν ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔθετο. Θερμανθεὶς δὲ ἐκεῖνος καὶ ἀναλαβὼν τὴν ἰδίαν φύσιν ἔπληξε τὸν εὐεργέτην καὶ ἀνεῖλε· θνῄσκων δὲ ἔλεγε· Δίκαια πάσχω, τὸν πονηρὸν οἰκτείρας.

This is what happens to those who obey Matthew 5.44:

Do good to them that hate you.

Adam Makkai, "Meeting Tibor and the Wlassics Family," In remembrance of Tibor Wlassics, savio gentil (Charlottesville: The Graduate Students of the Department of Italian, University of Virginia, 1999), pp. 1-2 (bracketed material in original):

(7) Just a few weeks before the National Uprising of 1956 his father, Dr. Géza Wlassics, who instilled in Tibor the love of Dante and that of the Italian language, commits suicide in deep depression. We roam the streets of Budapest for many nights reciting poetry to one another and dream of a better world.

(8) Not knowing what happened to him, I stumble across him at midnight in the Stefanskirche in Vienna in early December of 1956. When I ask him what he brought with him, he answers: "One white shirt, and the Dramas of Sophokles [in Hungarian translation by János Arany, Hungary's Goethe (1817-1882)], after all, what else does a gentleman need?" This becomes proverbial among Hungarian literati in the West.

In the title of the Gedenkschrift, the phrase savio gentil comes from the description of Vergil in Dante's Inferno 7.3—quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe (that noble sage, who knew everything).

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Blithedale Romance, chapter XX (Zenobia to Coverdale):

"Oh, this stale excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. "I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute one's self in its awful place—out of these, and other motives as miserable as these, comes your idea of duty!"

Dear Mike,

I was reading Hubert Bost and Antony McKenna’s edition of Les “Éclaircissements” de Pierre Bayle (Paris, Champion, 2010) last night. These are the four articles he added to the second edition (1702) of his Dictionnaire historique et critique in response to criticism from the Walloon Church of Rotterdam. His subjects are Atheists, Manicheans, Pyrrhonians and Obscenities. Under Obscenities, Bayle writes:

La perfection d’une histoire est d’être desagréable à toutes les sectes & à toutes les nations: car c’est une preuve que l’auteur ne flate ni les unes ni les autres, & qu’il a dit à chacune ses véritez. Il y a beaucoup de lecteurs qui se fâchent à un tel point lorsqu’ils rencontrent certaines choses, qu’ils déchirent le feuillet ou qu’ils écrivent à la marge tu as menti, coquin, & tu meriterois les étrivieres. (Bost & McKenna, p. 101).

An historical work attains perfection when it manages to annoy every sect and every nation: for that proves that the author has flattered neither side, and has told home truths to each. There are many readers who become so annoyed when they read certain remarks that they tear out the page or write in the margin you have lied, you rogue, and deserve a thrashing.

He adds a footnote to that last sentence:

J’ai vu de telles choses écrites à la main à la marge de quelques livres.

I have seen such things written by hand in the margins of some books.

I need hardly tell you that “You are lying” is an essential element in the vocabulary of Odium Theologicum. A heresiarch is not merely carelessly and innocently mistaken in his views, but willfully and sinfully leading the faithful into error. My rough sense is that Odium Philologicum, as practiced by the “the gladiators of literature” in the 16th and 17th century, was more inclined to apply the verb “lie” to a scholar’s personal conduct rather than to his philological errors, at least in classical philology — sacred philology was naturally quite another matter.

Since the days of Bentley (and Bayle) there has been no finer exponent of Odium Philologicum than Housman. I do not suggest that he ever read Bayle’s Éclaircissements, but he was certainly familiar with old editions of the classics, and may well have come across contemporary marginalia similar to those recorded by Bayle, found their style and sentiments congenial, and not bothered to reflect on how appropriate they might be for revival two centuries later.

“You lie” appears, on the evidence of the surviving annotated books, to have been Housman’s favorite marginal excoriation, followed closely by “liar”. By Paul Naiditch’s count, “you lie” occurs 273 times merely in the books from Housman’s library published during his Cambridge career. He gives a list of the appearances of “you lie” and “liar” in an appendix to Additional Problems in the Life and Writings of A. E. Housman (Los Angeles, Sam: Johnson’s, 2005), pp. 174-9, along with such variants as “impudent liar”, “you liar” and “damned liar”. Naiditch adds:

The words “you lie” are extremely harsh; they were one of Housman’s favourite censures; psychologically, since he employed the word “lie” at times when a simple “false” would have sufficed, his use is of considerable importance; for to affirm that one lies is to attack morality, where to say that one is mistaken is to attack competence. (Additional Problems, p. 63).

As ever,

Ian [Jackson]

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), "Hymn in Contemplation of Sudden Death," Op. I (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916), pp. 39-40:

Lord, if this night my journey end,
I thank Thee first for many a friend,
The sturdy and unquestioned piers
That run beneath my bridge of years.

And next, for all the love I gave
To things and men this side the grave,
Wisely or not, since I can prove
There always is much good in love.

Next, for the power thou gavest me
To view the whole world mirthfully,
For laughter, paraclete of pain,
Like April suns across the rain.

Also that, being not too wise
To do things foolish in men's eyes,
I gained experience by this,
And saw life somewhat as it is.

Next, for the joy of labour done
And burdens shouldered in the sun;
Nor less, for shame of labour lost,
And meekness born of a barren boast.

For every fair and useless thing
That bids men pause from labouring
To look and find the larkspur blue
And marigolds of a different hue;

For eyes to see and ears to hear,
For tongue to speak and thews to bear,
For hands to handle, feet to go,
For life, I give Thee thanks also.

For all things merry, quaint and strange,
For sound and silence, strength, and change,
And last, for death, which only gives
Value to every thing that lives;

For these, good Lord that madest me,
I praise Thy name; since, verily,
I of my joy have had no dearth
Though this night were my last on earth.

To be read at my memorial service.

J.K. Annand (1908-1993), "Snaw," Selected Poems 1925-1990 (Edinburgh: James Thin / The Mercat Press, 1992), p. 52:

Es ist ein Schnee gefallen Anon. 16th century

It's snawin cats and dugs,
Winter's owre early,
Hailstanes blatter my lugs
The road is smoorit fairly.

My gavel-end is sindert
My hous has growne auld
My ruif-tree is nou flindert
My room is owre cauld.

Ach lassie, show some pitie,
I'm dowie, and I pyne.
Tak me to your hert
And fleg the winter hyne.

This is a translation of the first three stanzas of a lyric from the song book of Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), now in the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (Cgm 810, f. 146^r). For the collection see Martin Kirnbauer, "Liederbuch des Hartmann Schedel," Historisches Lexikon Bayerns.

The German, from Rochus von Liliencron, ed., Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530 (Berlin: W. Spemann, [1885] = Deutsche National-Litteratur, Bd. 13), p. 209 (# 64):

Es ist ein schne gefallen
und ist es doch nit zeit,
man wirft mich mit den pallen,
der weg ist mir verschneit.

Mein haus hat keinen gibel
es ist mir worden alt,
zerbrochen sind die rigel,
mein stüblein ist mir kalt.

Ach lieb, laß dichs erparmen
daß ich so elend pin,
und schleuß mich in dein arme!
so vert der winter hin.

Here is an image of the manuscript page, from http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00079055/image_299:


For a discussion of the folksong see Lucia Mor, "...Und ist es doch nit czeit: La percezione dell'individualità in un Volkslied del XV secolo," Aevum 72.3 (Settembre-Dicembre 1998) 671-684.

The German folksong reminds me of a famous English one (British Museum, Royal Appendix MS. 58, fol. 5):

Westron wynde when wyll thow blow
the smalle rayne downe can Rayne
Cryst yf my love were in my Armys
And I yn my bed Agayne.

Thanks to Ian Jackson for introducing me to J.K. Annand.

Related post: The Old Sappho.

Helen B. Cruickshank (1886-1975), "To An Aberdeen Poet Who Writes Solely In English," in David McCordick, ed., Scottish Literature in the Twentieth Century: An Anthology (Dalkeith: Scottish Cultural Press, 2002), pp. 252-253 (line numbers added):

What ails ye at yer mither tongue?
Hae ye forgot the tang o' it?
The gurly guttrals, malmy soonds,
The dirly words, the sang o' it?
An wad ye cuist it a awa,        5
Like bauchles on a midden-heid?
Man, think agen afore ye sell
Yer saul tae saft-like English leid.

Wad ye forget the ballad-speik,
Melodeon's chord and fiddle's clink,        10
Forsweir yer grandad's wey o' life,
Swap uisge-beatha for Kola drink?
Say 'Shinty is too rough a game
And cricket's more my cup of tea.'
Weel, hyne awa fae Aiberdeen,        15
For feich, ye'e owre genteel for me!

The "wey o' life" and language of my Scottish ancestors are too distant and mysterious for me to understand at first sight, so I need some notes:

3 gurly: rough; malmy: soft, mellow
4 dirly: thrilling?
6 bauchles: old shoes
8 leid: language
16 feich: exclamation of disgust, cf. faugh

Related posts:

• The Mother Tongue
• Muttersprache
• Our National Language
• We are Born Inside a Language

Hartmut Erbse (1915-2004), "Xenophon's Anabasis," in Vivienne J. Gray, ed., Xenophon: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 476-501 (at 476-477):

Whoever sets out to speak about Xenophon's Anabasis runs the risk of arousing unpleasant memories in the audience. The very fact that each of them had to cover every parasang of Cyrus the Younger's march through the rocky mountain ranges and desert plains of the Near East as a student in high school means that they do not think back with fondness on the prosaic chronicle of an unsuccessful incident of minor historical importance. The stereotypical sentence beginning ἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαύνει ['thence he marched'], which is engraved on every reader's memory, appropriately heralds the dryness of an account which may well be conducive to the acquisition of Greek syntax, but which excludes from the outset any of the stirring of enthusiasm or feelings of engagement that are aroused through contact with the great works of world literature in a receptive heart. This disfavour also predominates in academia: Xenophon's works, and not least the Anabasis, are believed to have been well enough studied in one's school years and so, being apparently unproblematic and unimaginative, are left, without reluctance, to the care of school-teachers. Those who discard this learned view however, and reread the short work in their later years will be somewhat surprised. As long as the old prejudices have been shed, they will immediately realize that a rather special side of the Greek character is being revealed here, an aspect that should seize our interest due to its very one-sidedness.

Related posts:

• I Hated Greek
• Greek Texts for the Beginner

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Introduction to The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine, Cantica II: Purgatory (1955; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 29:

Every generation of readers is liable to fasten upon the poet of another age its own peculiar associative obsessions; and there are nearly always hooks in his work on which such associations can plausibly be hung.

John Betjeman (1906-1984), "Saint Cadoc," second stanza:

Somewhere the tree, the yellowing oak,
Is waiting for the woodman's stroke,
Waits for the chisel saw and plane
To prime it for the earth again
    And in the earth, for me inside,
    The generous oak tree will have died.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946), Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, Book I, Chapter II, §4:

Dimly he perceived the thing that had happened to him — how the great, stupid machine of retail trade had caught his life into its wheels, a vast, irresistible force which he had neither strength of will nor knowledge to escape. This was to be his life until his days should end. No adventures, no glory, no change, no freedom.

Essays and Tales, by John Sterling, Collected and Edited, with a Memoir of His Life, by Julius Charles Hare, Vol. I (London: John W. Parker, 1848), p. v (from Hare's "Sketch of the Author's Life"):

He used to relate that, when he was about nine years old, he was much struck by his master's telling him that the word sincere was derived from the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to mean pure, not vampt up. This explanation, he said, gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory, as having first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as in other things: nor was it the worse for this purpose from having been drawn from the practice of Monmouth Street, rather than of the primeval upholsterers of ancient Italy.

The etymology is bogus. See Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Latine. Histoire des Mots, 4th ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 627, and Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 565.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Letter by John Sterling, quoted in Essays and Tales, by John Sterling, Collected and Edited, with a Memoir of His Life, by Julius Charles Hare, Vol. I (London: John W. Parker, 1848), pp. ccii-cciii (an anecdote about the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen):

Did you ever hear the story of his being at a party at Bunsen's, whose house was on the Capitoline Hill, on the site of the Temple of Olympian Jove, and where the conversation, as often under Bunsen's guidance, took a very Christian turn, till Thorwaldsen remarked through the window, commanding a noble prospect of Rome, the modern city, the planet Jupiter in great glory, and filling his glass exclaimed: Well! Here's in honour of the ancient Gods.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Tenney Frank (1876-1939), Vergil: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922), p. 156 (footnote omitted):

The Copa should be read in the arbor of an osteria at Sorrento or Capri to the rhythm of the tarantella where the modern offspring of Vergil's tavern-maid are still plying the arts of song and dance upon the passerby.

Related posts:

• Where to Read Vergil's Bucolics
• Where to Read Sir Thomas Browne
• Where to Read

Wikipedia article on Hartmut Erbse:

The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctorate in 1940.

There is no entry for E.C. Marchant (1874-1960) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and so far as I can tell there was no necrology for him in any of the classical periodicals. Thanks very much to Alan Crease, who sent me Marchant's obituary from the Times (June 20, 1960):

Mr. E. C. Marchant, for many years Sub-Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and a well-known classical scholar, died yesterday at his home at Oxford at the age of 95. He was a man of vigorous mind, unmethodical as an administrator (though with a gift for rapid improvisation), with a lively humour, a shrewd appreciation of human nature, and a devotion to the classics which made him in his day a notable Oxford personality. His keenness of mind remained with him well after his ninetieth birthday.

It was a delight to his friends when visiting the shrunken figure, huddled in shawls, to observe the bright eyes and darting comments which showed how close was the touch he still kept with the affairs of his college and university. Edgar Cardew Marchant was born in 1864, the son of John Marchant, solicitor, and from Christ's Hospital went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge.

He was an assistant master at St. Paul's School from 1887 to 1891, in the great days of Dr. Walker's High Mastership, and after a brief return to Peterhouse with a fellowship he took over in 1894 part of the classical work of the upper eighth at St. Paul's. The single-minded ruthlessness of a regime designed to produce first-class classical scholars was something which, like others subjected to it, he admired without being blinded to its defects. Injuries received in a riding accident forced him to resign in 1899, but he became a fellow of Lincoln in 1901 and was sub-rector from 1907 to 1937, returning again to the sub-rectorship from 1942 to 1947.

During all these years he worked tirelessly, particularly on Xenophon (of whose works he edited the Oxford Classical Text), on Thucydides, and on his teaching. He examined frequently in the public schools where he made the first contacts with some of his ablest pupils. In 1914 he married Miss Ethel Winifred Mallet, and moving out of college he began to develop the interest in gardening that was to become his chief hobby in later life. He sometimes took a despondent view of classical studies when he saw the decline from those standards that had been reached at St. Paul's in the last decade of the nineteenth century. But he battled vigorously in their cause, and his teaching had an accuracy, lucidity, and simplicity which made it a model of its kind.

His temperament was mercurial, but company infallibly revived him and he had a buoyancy and vivacity which made him an entertaining companion. And beneath his gaiety there was a true human understanding and a practical sympathy to which his pupils owed much. One of his gifts was an alto voice which made him in great demand for many years at concerts at school or college, and a telegram received from Wells Cathedral Choir on his ninetieth birthday gave him special pleasure.

Homer, Iliad 12.233-234 (Hector to Polydamas; tr. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt):

But if you are really saying this in earnest,
then indeed the gods themselves have surely destroyed your senses...

εἰ δ᾿ ἐτεὸν δὴ τοῦτον ἀπὸ σπουδῆς ἀγορεύεις,
ἐξ ἄρα δή τοι ἔπειτα θεοὶ φρένας ὤλεσαν αὐτοί...

Aristophanes, Lysistrata 574-578 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

Imagine the polis as a fleece just shorn. First, put it in a bath and wash out all the sheep dung; spread it on a bed and beat out the riff-raff with a stick, and pluck out the thorns; as for those who clump and knot themselves together to snag government positions, card them out and pluck off their heads.

πρῶτον μὲν ἐχρῆν, ὥσπερ πόκον, ἐν βαλανείῳ
ἐκπλύναντας τὴν οἰσπώτην ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ἐπὶ κλίνης        575
ἐκραβδίζειν τοὺς μοχθηροὺς καὶ τοὺς τριβόλους ἀπολέξαι,
καὶ τούς γε συνισταμένους τούτους καὶ τοὺς πιλοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς
ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀρχαῖσι διαξῆναι καὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς ἀποτῖλαι.

Dante, Purgatorio 16.82-83 (tr. Thomas Okey):

Therefore, if the world to-day goeth astray,
in you is the cause, in you be it sought...

Però, se 'l mondo presente disvia,
in voi è la cagione, in voi si cheggia...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, I.4 (tr. Thomas P. Whitney):

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, ed. R.D. Dawe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 4 (from the editor's Introduction):

But is conventional piety manifest in Oedipus Rex? The question is not one to be solved one way or the other by the time-dishonoured process of selectively accumulating quotations with which to bolster one's case.

E.G. Stanley, "Unideal Principles of Editing Old English Verse," Proceedings of the British Academy 70 (1984) 231-273 (at 273):

We should feel happiest as editors when we have demonstrated that a manuscript reading, spurned and excised by previous editors, deserves to stand in the text. A Rettung is worth more than a palmary emendation.

Homer, Iliad 24.1-2 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, in the Loeb Classical Library):

Then was the assembly broken up, and the men scattered, each man to go to his own ship.

Λῦτο δ᾿ ἀγών, λαοὶ δὲ θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας ἕκαστοι
ἐσκίδναντ᾿ ἰέναι.

In the first line the translation omits θοὰς (swift), modifying νῆας (ships).

Homer, Iliad 24.178-180 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, in the Loeb Classical Library):

A herald may attend you, an older man, to guide the mules and the light-running wagon, and to carry back to the city the dead, him whom Achilles slew.

κῆρύξ τίς τοι ἕποιτο γεραίτερος, ὅς κ᾿ ἰθύνοι
ἡμιόνους καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐύτροχον, ἠδὲ καὶ αὖτις
νεκρὸν ἄγοι προτὶ ἄστυ, τὸν ἔκτανε δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

In line 180 the translation omits δῖος (goodly, noble), modifying Ἀχιλλεύς (Achilles).

The epithets were missing in Murray's original translation, and they are still missing in Wyatt's revision.

Labels: typographical and other errors

M.L. West (1937-2015), The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1997; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 261:

The Greek poet who portrays people in distress has a considerable range of cries of woe that he can put into their mouths, as the translator of a tragedy finds to his embarrassment: his petty stock of Ohs and Ahs and Alases is soon overdrawn.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Notes on Virginia, Query XVII:

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Id.:

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.

Dante, Purgatorio 11.100-108 (tr. Dorothy L. Sayers, with her note):

A breath of wind — no more — is earthly fame,        100
   And now this way it blows and that way now,
   And as it changes quarter, changes name.

Ten centuries hence, what greater fame hast thou,
   Stripping the flesh off late, than if thou'dst died
   Ere thou wast done with gee-gee and bow-wow?        105

Ten centuries hence — and that's a briefer tide,
   Matched with eternity, than one eye-wink
   To that wheeled course Heaven's tardiest sphere must ride.

l. 105: ere thou wast done with "gee-gee" and "bow-wow": (lit. "with pappo and dindi" — baby-talk for "food" and "money"): "while you were still in the nursery".

Non è il mondan romore altro ch'un fiato        100
   di vento, ch'or vien quinci e or vien quindi,
   e muta nome perché muta lato.

Che voce avrai tu più, se vecchia scindi
   da te la carne, che se fossi morto
   anzi che tu lasciassi il 'pappo' e 'l 'dindi',        105

pria che passin mill'anni? ch'è piu corto
   spazio all'etterno, ch'un muover di ciglia
   al cerchio che più tardi in cielo è torto.

The same, tr. John Sinclair:

The world's noise is but a breath of wind which comes now this way and now that and changes name because it changes quarter.

What more fame shalt thou have if thou put off thy flesh when it is old than if thou hadst died before giving up pappo and dindi,

when a thousand years are past, which is a shorter space to eternity than the twinkling of an eye to the slowest-turning circle in the heavens?

The same, tr. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander:

Worldly fame is nothing but a gust of wind,        100
first blowing from one quarter, then another,
changing name with every new direction.

Will greater fame be yours if you put off
your flesh when it is old than had you died
with pappo and dindi still upon your lips        105

after a thousand years have passed? To eternity,
that time is shorter than the blinking of an eye
is to one circling of the slowest-moving sphere.

Homer, Iliad 21.106-113 (Achilles to Lycaon; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are.
Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal?
Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,        110
and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime
when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also
either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the bowstring.

ἀλλὰ φίλος θάνε καὶ σύ· τί ἦ ὀλοφύρεαι οὕτως;
κάτθανε καὶ Πάτροκλος, ὅ περ σέο πολλὸν ἀμείνων.
οὐχ ὁράᾳς οἷος καὶ ἐγὼ καλός τε μέγας τε;
πατρὸς δ᾽ εἴμ᾽ ἀγαθοῖο, θεὰ δέ με γείνατο μήτηρ·
ἀλλ᾽ ἔπι τοι καὶ ἐμοὶ θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κραταιή·        110
ἔσσεται ἢ ἠὼς ἢ δείλη ἢ μέσον ἦμαρ
ὁππότε τις καὶ ἐμεῖο Ἄρῃ ἐκ θυμὸν ἕληται
ἢ ὅ γε δουρὶ βαλὼν ἢ ἀπὸ νευρῆφιν ὀϊστῷ.

The same, tr. Peter Green:

So, friend, you too must die: why then lament thus?
Patroklos too is dead, a far better man than you are.
Can't you see what I'm like, how handsome and tall I am?
A fine father sired me, the mother who bore me was a goddess—
Yet over me too hang death and all-mastering destiny:        110
A day will come when, at dawn, or noon, or evening,
my life too will be forfeit to someone in battle,
by a flighted spear or an arrow shot from the bowstring.

The same, tr. Alexander Pope:

Die then, my friend! what boots it to deplore?
The great, the good Patroclus is no more!
He, far thy better, was foredoom'd to die,
And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?
Seest thou not me, whom nature's gifts adorn,
Sprung from a hero, from a goddess born?
The day shall come (which nothing can avert)
When by the spear, the arrow, or the dart,
By night, or day, by force, or by design,
Impending death and certain fate are mine!

The same, tr. William Cowper:

Die therefore, even thou, my friend! What mean
Thy tears unreasonably shed and vain?
Died not Patroclus. braver far than thou?
And look on me—see'st not to what a height
My stature towers, and what a bulk I boast?
A King begat me, and a Goddess bore.
What then! A death by violence awaits
Me also, and at morn, or eve, or noon,
I perish, whensoe'er the destined spear
Shall reach me, or the arrow from the nerve.

The same, tr. William Cullen Bryant:

                                     Die thou, then; and why
Shouldst thou, my friend, lament? Patroclus died,
And greatly he excelled thee. Seest thou not
How eminent in stature and in form
Am I, whom to a prince renowned for worth
A goddess mother bore; yet will there come
To me a violent death at morn, at eve,
Or at the midday hour, whenever he
Whose weapon is to take my life shall cast
The spear or send an arrow from the string.

Dante, Purgatorio 5.12-16 (tr. Dorothy L. Sayers):

                                           What does it matter
   To thee what they are whispering over there?
Follow thou me, and let the people chatter;
   Stand as a tower stands firm in time of trouble,
   Nor bends its head, though winds may bawl and batter.

The same, tr. John Sinclair:

What is it to thee what they whisper there? Come after me and let the people talk. Stand like a firm tower that never shakes its top for blast of wind.

The Italian:

   Che ti fa ciò che quivi si pispiglia?
Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti:
   sta come torre ferma, che non crolla
   già mai la cima per soffiar di venti.

Corpus Hermeticum 2.12, tr. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation with Notes and Introduction (1992; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 11:

"What is the incorporeal, then?"

"Mind as a whole wholly enclosing itself, free of all body, unerring, unaffected, untouched, at rest in itself, capable of containing all things and preserving all that exists, and its rays (as it were) are the good, the truth, the archetype of spirit, the archetype of soul."

I don't have access to Corpus Hermeticum, Tome I: Poimandrès - Traités II-XII. Texte établi par A.D. Nock, traduit par A.-J. Festugière (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1946), but here is the Greek as preserved by Stobaeus 1.18.3, in Ioannis Stobaei Anthologii Libri Duo Priores, ed. Curt Wachsmuth (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), p. 159:


Note the series of asyndetic, privative adjectives ἀπλανής. ἀπαθής, ἀναφής.

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Blithedale Romance, chapter IX:

I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been enough expressed. But it impressed me, more and more, that there was a stern and dreadful peculiarity in this man, such as could not prove otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of those who should be drawn into too intimate a connection with him. He was not altogether human. There was something else in Hollingsworth besides flesh and blood, and sympathies and affections, and celestial spirit.

This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wisdom, to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep no friend, unless he make himself the mirror of their purpose; they will smite and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if you take the first step with them, and cannot take the second, and the third, and every other step of their terribly straight path. They have an idol, to which they consecrate themselves high-priest, and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious; and never once seem to suspect — so cunning has the devil been with them — that this false deity, in whose iron features, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected upon the surrounding darkness. And the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism.

Thucydides 3.82.2 (tr. C.F. Smith):

For in peace and prosperity both states and individuals have gentler feelings, because men are not then forced to face conditions of dire necessity; but war, which robs men of the easy supply of their daily wants, is a rough schoolmaster and creates in most people a temper that matches their condition.

ἐν μὲν γὰρ εἰρήνῃ καὶ ἀγαθοῖς πράγμασιν αἵ τε πόλεις καὶ οἱ ἰδιῶται ἀμείνους τὰς γνώμας ἔχουσι διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐς ἀκουσίους ἀνάγκας πίπτειν· ὁ δὲ πόλεμος ὑφελὼν τὴν εὐπορίαν τοῦ καθ᾿ ἡμέραν βίαιος διδάσκαλος καὶ πρὸς τὰ παρόντα τὰς ὀργὰς τῶν πολλῶν ὁμοιοῖ.

F.O. Matthiessen, "The Education of a Socialist," in Paul M. Sweezy and Leo Huberman, edd., F.O. Matthiessen (1902-1950): A Collective Portrait (New York: Henry Schuman, 1950), pp. 3-20 (at 5-6):

It is appalling how much can get left out of an American education. It was not until I had begun to be an instructor at Harvard that I read Francis Parkman's history, and found that Starved Rock and the Illinois River where I had gone canoeing near my grandfather's house was the scene of the most vivid pages in La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. La Salle had simply been the name of my grandfather's town. That it was also the name of a French explorer was lodged somewhere abstractly in my memoy, but I had not had the irreplaceable experience of sharing, as a boy, in a rich consciousness of history. No school that I attended went at all imaginatively into the American past.

The dams of isolation that block the flow of a living culture are often erected unwittingly. Not until the death of Charles Griffes, in the flu epidemic of 1919, did I begin to realize that this shy bird-like little man who directed the choir and gave music lessons at Hackley was also a composer. In the barren atmosphere of a conventional boys' school, that was apparently not assumed to be a matter of interest. Yet, many years later, I read in Griffes' biography the record of his loneliness and frustration. In the winter of my last year at school, Charles Griffes, at the end of another corridor in the same building, was reading Dostoevsky and Flaubert. Even if I was not ready for them at sixteen, there is an unforgivable wastage in any institution where the important things are not mentioned, and where communication withers through disuse.

A good deal of everyone's later education consists of compensating for what he missed, and of having to unlearn what he was taught.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Homer, Iliad 20.244-255 (Aeneas addressing Achilles; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

But come, let us no longer stand here talking of these things
like children, here in the space between the advancing armies.        245
For there are harsh things enough that could be spoken against us
both, a ship of a hundred locks could not carry the burden.
The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there
of every kind, the range of words is wide, and their variance.
The sort of thing you say is the thing that will be said to you.        250
But what have you and I to do with the need for squabbling
and hurling insults at each other, as if we were two wives
who when they have fallen upon a heart-perishing quarrel
go out in the street and say abusive things to each other,
much true, and much that is not, and it is their rage that drives them.        255

ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε μηκέτι ταῦτα λεγώμεθα νηπύτιοι ὣς
ἑσταότ᾽ ἐν μέσσῃ ὑσμίνῃ δηϊοτῆτος.        245
ἔστι γὰρ ἀμφοτέροισιν ὀνείδεα μυθήσασθαι
πολλὰ μάλ᾽, οὐδ᾽ ἂν νηῦς ἑκατόζυγος ἄχθος ἄροιτο.
στρεπτὴ δὲ γλῶσσ᾽ ἐστὶ βροτῶν, πολέες δ᾽ ἔνι μῦθοι
παντοῖοι, ἐπέων δὲ πολὺς νομὸς ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα.
ὁπποῖόν κ᾽ εἴπῃσθα ἔπος, τοῖόν κ᾽ ἐπακούσαις.        250
ἀλλὰ τί ἢ ἔριδας καὶ νείκεα νῶϊν ἀνάγκη
νεικεῖν ἀλλήλοισιν ἐναντίον ὥς τε γυναῖκας,
αἵ τε χολωσάμεναι ἔριδος πέρι θυμοβόροιο
νεικεῦσ᾽ ἀλλήλῃσι μέσην ἐς ἄγυιαν ἰοῦσαι
πόλλ᾽ ἐτεά τε καὶ οὐκί· χόλος δέ τε καὶ τὰ κελεύει.        255

This is part of Aeneas' "verbose arguments against prolixity" (Mark W. Edwards in his commentary).

John Herington (1924-1997), "Foreward" to D.S. Carne-Ross, Pindar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. ix:

"It would be a pity," said Nietzsche, "if the classics should speak to us less clearly because a million words stood in the way." His forebodings seem now to have been realized. A glance at the increasing girth of successive volumes of the standard journal of classical bibliography, L'Année Philologique, since World War II is enough to demonstrate the proliferation of writing on the subject in our time. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the studies listed will prove on inspection to be largely concerned with points of detail and composed by and for academic specialists in the field. Few are addressed to the literate but nonspecialist adult or to that equally important person, the intelligent but uninstructed beginning student; and of those few, very few indeed are the work of scholars of the first rank, equipped for their task not merely with raw classical erudition but also with style, taste, and literary judgment.

It is a strange situation. On one side stand the classical masters of Greece and Rome, those models of concision, elegance, and understanding of the human condition, who composed least of all for narrow technologists, most of all for the Common Reader (and, indeed, the Common Hearer). On the other side stands a sort of industrial complex, processing those masters into an annually growing output of technical articles and monographs.

J.A. Willis, "The 'Silvae' of Statius and Their Editors," Phoenix 20.4 (Winter 1966) 305-324 (at 322):

The volume of metaclassics is very great. What Schadewaldt alone has written about Homer far exceeds in volume what Homer wrote about the siege of Troy; a year's output on the Dyscolus dwarfs the whole surviving work of Menander into insignificance; no very large bookcase would be needed to hold all the texts of Greek and Latin writers from Homer to the end of paganism, yet to house the books written on them since 1850 would tax the largest of reading-rooms. Most sinister of all is the growth of periodical publications, of which roughly 200 are noted in L'Année Philologique. New ones are constantly being born; old ones are very tenacious of life.

E.C. Marchant (1864-1960), Greek Reader, Vol. I. Selected and Adapted with English Notes from Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's Griechisches Lesebuch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), p. iii:

By a lucky accident I escaped the Hecuba and Alcestis when I was beginning Greek; but a course of parasangs inspired in me a hatred of Xenophon so intense that it took me twenty years to forgive him. Whatever estimate be formed of Xenophon's merits as a writer, it is, I think, certain that he cannot stand the ordeal of being spelt out line by line and sentence by sentence. He is tolerable only when he is read quickly, as he wrote. As for Euripides, even if the words are intelligible to a young learner, what is he to make of the feeling? What's Hecuba to him? And whom should we pity the most — the heroine or the poet, or the beginner who wonders what on earth they are at and heartily hates them both?

Tibor Wlassics (1936-1998), "Endpaper," Lectura Dantis 3 (Fall, 1988):

Consider the translator's sudden delight in finding his version (though quite 'literal') coincident with something mysteriously preestablished in the «target» language. «Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa...». The rough alliterative Saxon monosyllables take off and begin to murmur a wooden tune of their own, laboriously assuming the solemn cadences of the most solemn text in the English language: the Hymn to Light. Did blind Milton recall Dante's first sight of Hell when forging his rough pair of adjectives for the Primeval Chaos, «the rising world of waters dark and deep»? Chaucer probably did when singing of «Of Pluto's Kingdom dark and deep below». But «oscura e profonda» keeps sending echoes even more recent, incongruously so; the snows of New Hampshire appear, a nightly woodscape, a horse with a little bell: «The woods are lovely, dark and deep...». Frost would never have dreamt of it, but (since words can never completely leave behind their contexts) those promises to keep and the still hours-long ride into the night get vaguely tinged by a new, vicarious, anxiety ^__ harking back, through Milton's violoncello and Chaucer's basson, to the double bass of «oscura e profonda» which accompanied the Pilgrim's astonished glance into the Chasm.

[Aristotle,] Oeconomica 2.2.7 (1347 a-b; tr. G. Cyril Armstrong):

On one occasion the people of Lampsacus were expecting to be attacked by a large fleet of triremes. The price of barley meal being then four drachmae for a bushel and a half, they instructed the retailers to sell it at six drachmae. Oil, which was at three drachmae for six pints, was to be sold at four drachmae and a half, and wine and other commodities at a proportionate increase. In this way the retailer got the original price, while the State took the addition and filled its treasury.

Λαμψακηνοὶ δὲ προσδοκίμων οὐσῶν τριήρων πολλῶν πρὸς αὐτούς, ὄντος μεδίμνου τῶν ἀλφίτων τετραδράχμου, προσέταξαν τοῖς ἀγοραίοις πωλεῖν ἑξάδραχμον, καὶ τοῦ ἐλαίου τὸν χοᾶ ὄντα δραχμῶν <τριῶν>, τεττάρων καὶ τριωβόλου, τοῦ τε οἴνου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὡσαύτως. τὴν μὲν οὖν ἀρχαίαν τιμὴν ἐλάμβανεν ὁ ἰδιώτης, τὸ δὲ πλέον ἡ πόλις, καὶ εὐπόρησε χρημάτων.

<τριῶν> add. Boeckh

George Santayana (1863-1952), Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922), p. 124:

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text.

Santayana's own scrawled comments, from the margins of books in his personal library, have now been collected in two volumes by John McCormick (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).

Related posts:

• A Long Footnote
• Apology for Extensive Annotation
• The Subject of Notes
• Text and Commentary
• Footnotes and Parentheses
• Footnotes
• The Sauce and the Fish
• Tendencies Within Classical Commentaries

Byron (1788-1824), "Beppo. A Venetian Story," stanza XLIV:

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
    Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
    With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
    That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural
Which we're oblig'd to hiss and spit and sputter all.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), A Vindication of Natural Society: or, a View of the Miseries and Evils arising to Mankind from every Species of Artificial Society:

The nearer we approach to the Goal of Life, the better we begin to understand the true Value of our Existence, and the real Weight of our Opinions. We set out much in love with both; but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw away the Tales along with the Rattles of our Nurses; those of the Priest keep their Hold a little longer; those of our Governors the longest of all. But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another; and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life, shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons.

Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991), p. 62:

Younger faculty, Carson said, tend to reject the idea of a canon. "What's one generation's standard canonical text is the next generation's pulp," Carson said. "How many people read the poetry of Virgil, or the orations of Cicero?" He permitted himself a chuckle.

Tibor Wlassics (1936-1998), "Endpaper," Lectura Dantis 11 (Fall, 1992):

«How many people read the poetry of Virgil?» chuckles Professor Clayborne Carson of Stanford U. ^__ Lectorcule! will you deride us? Late at night, as it is; alone in our book room; hesitantly at first, more and more firmly then, we raise, high in the air, a hand.

Petrarch, Canzoniere 128, lines 97-112 (tr. James Wyatt Cook):

My lords, regard the way time flies and how,
Just so, life swiftly flees,
And ever at our backs, death follows on.
Now you are here, but of that parting think:        100
For naked and alone
Must be the soul that treads that doubtful path.
In passing through this vale,
Consent to put aside disdain and hate—
Those gales contrary to a life serene—        105
The time you use to grieve
Those others, spend on some more fitting work
Of hand or else of wit:
Some commendation fine,
Some edifying study undertake:        110
Thus, down here one rejoices
And finds the road to heaven open wide.

Signor', mirate come 'l tempo vola,
et sí come la vita
fugge, et la morte n'è sovra le spalle.
Voi siete or qui; pensate a la partita:        100
ché l'alma ignuda et sola
conven ch'arrive a quel dubbioso calle.
Al passar questa valle
piacciavi porre giú l'odio et lo sdegno,
vénti contrari a la vita serena;        105
et quel che 'n altrui pena
tempo si spende, in qualche acto piú degno
o di mano o d'ingegno,
in qualche bella lode,
in qualche honesto studio si converta:        110
cosí qua giú si gode,
et la strada del ciel si trova aperta.

The same, tr. Robert M. Durling:

Lords: see how time flies and how life flees, and how Death is at our backs. You are here now; think of your departure, for the soul must go naked and alone to that perilous path. As you pass through this valley, let it please you to conquer hatred and anger, winds contrary to a tranquil life; and that time which you now spend in giving others pain, let it be converted to some more worthy action of hand or intellect, to some lovely praise, some virtuous study: thus down here one may be happy and find open the road to Heaven.

B.L. Gildersleeve (1831-1924), "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 19.4 (1898) 461-467 (at 465):

[N]othing requires more mature scholarship or riper judgment than the preparation of an edition for beginners.

Tibor Wlassics (1936-1998), "Endpaper," Lectura Dantis 7 (Fall, 1990):

If you are addicted to calling a source «intertextuality» or a plot «narratological strategies» or a puff «self-referentiality» you're in trouble: the MBAs (yes, them, with their in-terms-of and bottom line) are grabbing at your skolarese. It came even to this: the ratatouille in my neighborhood eatery boasts, on the greasy menu, of a «subtle subtext of garlic» ^__ and even we know that that is the closure of that misprision. Before our «Dantisti americani» exhibit withdrawal symptoms, we will produce from a failing memory the Gymnasium ditties of Latin and Greek grammar rules. Intertext, you said? Preposition cum accusativo. How did the versicles go? Ante apud ad adversum / circum circa citra cis / contra erga extra infra / inter intra iuxta ob... Well, how about an apudtext (l'appotesto)? How does a citratext, a iuxtatext, a mysterious ergatext grab you? Maybe a Kafkaesque cistext? A multicultural obtext? Circumtextuality for the ambientalist Dantologue... And there is more: inter intra iuxta ob / penes pone post und praeter / prope propter per secundum / supra versus ultra trans... Let's have propetexts for the philologically minded! Und Posttexte und Praetertexte... L'ultratexte to deconstruct? Transtextuality for the so disposed? ^__ There is stuff here to stuff everyone's curricula.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Bernard Knox (1914-2010), "Preface to the New Edition," Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. ix-xiv (at ix-x):

The polemical tone of the original Preface, for example, seemed to suggest (though it was not my intention) that I was accusing my fellow classicists of "exclusive technicality" (I had been dismayed by the appearance of an article, extended over two successive issues of a periodical, entitled "The Carrot in Classical Antiquity").

I suspect, although I cannot be certain, that Knox's memory was slightly at fault, and that he was actually referring to the following two articles by Alfred C. Andrews, which appeared in successive issues of Classical Philology:

• Alfred C. Andrews, "Celery and Parsley as Foods in the Greco-Roman Period," Classical Philology 44.2 (April, 1949) 91-99
• Alfred C. Andrews, "The Carrot as a Food in the Classical Era," Classical Philology 44.3 (July, 1949) 182-196

It is a mark of how eccentric my interests are that, in an old notebook from graduate school, I jotted down references to these two articles. They don't dismay me. I'm more apt to read articles of this sort than any article or book with the words "gender" or "intertextuality" in the title.

Alfred C. Andrews was probably Alfred Carleton Andrews (1904-1970), about whom I can find very little information. He was Assistant Professor of Latin at the University of Vermont and later taught in the Department of Classics at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He isn't listed in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. Ward W. Briggs, Jr. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), despite the fact that he received a Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 1931).

Strabo 14.5.14 (describing civil unrest at Tarsus; tr. Horace Leonard Jones):

Finding the city in this plight, Athenodorus for a time tried to induce both Boethus and his partisans to change their course; but since they would abstain from no act of insolence, he used the authority given him by Caesar, condemned them to exile, and expelled them. These at first indicted him with the following inscription on the walls: "Work for young men, counsels for the middle-aged, and flatulence for old men"; and when he, taking the inscription as a joke, ordered the following words to be inscribed beside it, "thunder for old men," someone, contemptuous of all decency and afflicted with looseness of the bowels, profusely bespattered the door and wall of Athenodorus' house as he was passing by it at night. Athenodorus, while bringing accusations in the assembly against the faction, said: "One may see the sickly plight and the disaffection of the city in many ways, and in particular from its excrements."

τοιαύτην δὲ τὴν πόλιν καταλαβὼν ὁ Ἀθηνόδωρος, τέως μὲν ἐπεχείρει λόγῳ μετάγειν κἀκεῖνον καὶ τοὺς συστασιώτας· ὡς δ᾿ οὐκ ἀπείχοντο ὕβρεως οὐδεμιᾶς, ἐχρήσατο τῇ δοθείσῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ ἐξέβαλεν αὐτούς, καταγνοὺς φυγήν. οἱ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν κατετοιχογράφησαν αὐτοῦ τοιαῦτα·

ἔργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, πορδαὶ δὲ γερόντων.

ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἐκεῖνος ἐν παιδιᾶς μέρει δεξάμενος ἐκέλευσε παρεπιγράψαι "—βρονταὶ δὲ γερόντων," καταφρονήσας δέ τις τοῦ ἐπιεικοῦς, εὔλυτον τὸ κοιλίδιον ἔχων, προσέρρανε πολὺ τῇ θύρᾳ καὶ τῷ τοίχῳ, νύκτωρ παριὼν τὴν οἰκίαν. ὁ δὲ τῆς στάσεως κατηγορῶν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, τὴν νόσον τῆς πόλεως, ἔφη, καὶ τὴν καχεξίαν πολλαχόθεν σκοπεῖν ἔξεστι, καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐκ τῶν διαχωρημάτων.

The graffito was a parody of a Greek proverb (tr. Glenn W. Most):

Deeds are of the young, counsels of the middle-aged, prayers of the old.

ἔργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, εὐχαὶ δὲ γερόντων.

See Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), #1081, pp. 795-796.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), "Von den Mitleidigen," Also sprach Zarathustra II (tr. Walter Kaufmann):

As long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin.

Seit es Menschen giebt, hat der Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut: Das allein, meine Brüder, ist unsre Erbsünde!

Neal Pollack, writing tongue-in-cheek in Salon (screen shot captured today):


In text form:

It's not our style to hide our pens and our keyboards in the face of an illiterate mob. We will continue to speak truth to justice even as we consolidate our power. As I wrote in my 1964 National Review essay "The Courage of the Elites," "We have read our Herod and our Thucydides, our Aristophanes and our Homer. We have memorized the speeches of Prince Hal. We must carry forth our ideals, bow ties straightened, onward toward the precipice of freedom." I read lots of books in college, and I was pleased to let everyone know that fact.

Pollack was precocious. Although not born until 1970, by 1964 he had already attended college and was working as a journalist. Ancient historians must mourn the loss of Herod's works, as they do Livy's missing books.

I also see "Herod and Thucydides" mentioned by Michael Salewski, "Ninety Years after Jutland: Reflections," in Jutland: World War I's Greatest Naval Battle, edd. Michael Epkenhans et al. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), pp. 363-378 (at 366).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Anacreon, fragment 100 = Greek Anthology 7.226, tr. C.M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides, 2nd rev. ed. (1961; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 270:

Strong Agathon, who died for Abdera, was mourned at his pyre by the whole of the city; for Ares, who loves blood, never in the eddy of hateful battle slew such a young man as he was.

Ἀβδήρων προθανόντα τὸν αἰνοβίην Ἀγάθωνα
    πᾶσ᾿ ἐπὶ πυρκαϊῆς ἥδ᾿ ἐβόησε πόλις·
οὔ τινα γὰρ τοιόνδε νέων ὁ φιλαίματος Ἄρης
    ἠνάρισε στυγερῆς ἐν στροφάλιγγι μάχης.

Goethe, Italian Journey (Naples; May 29, 1787; tr. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer):

Several days in the year and especially the Christmas holidays are famous for their orgies of gluttony. At such times a general cocagna is celebrated, in which five hundred thousand people vow to outdo each other. The Toledo and other streets and squares are decorated most appetizingly; vegetables, raisins, melons and figs are piled high in their stalls; huge paternosters of gilded sausages, tied with red ribbons, and capons with little red flags stuck in their rumps are suspended in festoons across the streets overhead. I was assured that, not counting those which people had fattened in their own homes, thirty thousand of them had been sold. Crowds of donkeys laden with vegetables, capons and young lambs are driven to market, and never in my life have I seen so many eggs in one pile as I have seen here in several places.

Not only is all this eaten, but every year a policeman, accompanied by a trumpeter, rides through the city and announces in every square and at every crossroad how many thousand oxen, calves, lambs, pigs, etc., the Neapolitans have consumed. The crowd show tremendous joy at the high figures, and each of them recalls with pleasure his share in this consumption.

---

Es sind verschiedne Tage im Jahr, besonders die Weihnachtsfeiertage, als Schmausfeste berühmt; alsdann feiert man eine allgemeine Cocagna, wozu sich fünfhunderttausend Menschen das Wort gegeben haben. Dann ist aber auch die Straße Toledo und neben ihr mehrere Straßen und Plätze auf das appetitlichste verziert. Die Butiken, wo grüne Sachen verkauft werden, wo Rosinen, Melonen und Feigen aufgesetzt sind, erfreuen das Auge auf das allerangenehmste. Die Eßwaren hängen in Girlanden über die Straßen hinüber; große Paternoster von vergoldeten, mit roten Bändern geschnürten Würsten; welsche Hähne, welche alle eine rote Fahne unter dem Bürzel stecken haben. Man versicherte, daß deren dreißigtausend verkauft worden, ohne die zu rechnen, welche die Leute im Hause gemästet hatten. Außer diesem werden noch eine Menge Esel, mit grüner Ware, Kapaunen und jungen Lämmern beladen, durch die Stadt und über den Markt getrieben, und die Haufen Eier, welche man hier und da sieht, sind so groß, daß man sich ihrer niemals so viel beisammen gedacht hat.

Und nicht genug, daß alles dieses verzehret wird: alle Jahre reitet ein Polizeidiener mit einem Trompeter durch die Stadt und verkündet auf allen Plätzen und Kreuzwegen, wieviel tausend Ochsen, Kälber, Lämmer, Schweine u. s. w. der Neapolitaner verzehrt habe. Das Volk höret aufmerksam zu, freut sich unmäßig über die großen Zahlen, und jeder erinnert sich des Anteils an diesem Genusse mit Vergnügen.

Keith Preston (1884-1927), "The Classics in a Nutshell," Splinters (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1921), p. 106:

(Modern reader's library)

        VERGIL'S AENEID

Aeneas, with his little boy,
Slid down the fire escape from Troy.
He took the household bric-a-brac
He took his father pick-a-back.
His wife Creusa he forgot
(Although he loved her quite a lot).
She perished in the fire, poor dame!
He often thought of his old flame.

From Troy he sailed the raging tide, O!
To Carthage where he fell for Dido;
Then left her cold and went to hell
Came through and married very well.
No one had ever thought him bad,—
He was so sweet to his old dad.

Keith Preston (1884-1927), "Red Books and Night Lights," Splinters (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1921), pp. 18-19:

Reading in bed as a fine art. The rules of the cult gleaned by a careful study of the best modern essays.

That reading in bed is a rite with a ritual,
    Those couch-cognoscenti our essayists teach;
Ye novices, learn from us aesthetes habitual
    The bed written rules that the essayists preach.
Retire to your room with the paraphernalia,
    Some hoary old volume, your brier and pouch,
And garbing yourself in nocturnal regalia,
    Then kindle the candle that stands by the couch.

For bed books, no new books we essayists handle;
    For night lights, no bright lights are known to the game—
A second-hand book by a flickering candle,
    A tattered old tome by a tremulous flame.
We cling to the candle, so human, appealing;
    It weeps as it works, shedding tallowy tears;
So second-hand books touch us readers of feeling
    With lachrymose thoughts of delectable years.

How fondly we dandle in candle-lit darkness
    Fair folios veiled in voluptuous vellum,
And thrill to the mad Latin grammar of Harkness
    Or rakish old Caesar's wild Gallicum Bellum.
How dull and drab novels or newspaper colyums!
    Ye tyros, give ear to us urging instead
The old broken volumes, the vellum-bound volumes,
    The worm-eaten volumes we lug to our bed.

The translations of Euripides by Arthur Sanders Way (1847-1930) were among the worst of the old Loebs, with the sense too often marred by the intrusion of rhymes. Those by David Kovacs are among the best of the new. Here are some nit-picking observations on the translation of Orestes in Euripides, Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. Edited and Translated by David Kovacs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002 = Loeb Classical Library, 11). They're intended more as aids to my comprehension than as corrections (which it would be presumptuous of me to make).

965 (pp. 518-519):

ἰαχείτω δὲ γᾶ Κυκλωπία...

Let the Cylopean land loudly proclaim ...

For Cylopean read Cyclopean. The typographical error persists in the digital version.

1303-1307 (pp. 556-557):

καίνετε, καίνετε, θείνετ᾿ ἀπόλλυτε,
δίπτυχα δίστομα φάσγαν᾿ ἐκ χερὸς ἱέμενοι
τὰν λιποπάτριδα λιπογάμετον, ἃ πλείστους 1305
ἔκανεν Ἑλλάνων
δορὶ παρὰ ποταμὸν ὀλομένους...

Slay, slay, smite, destroy her,
plying at close range your twin double-edged swords,
slay the betrayer of country and husband, who killed
so many Greeks
by the spear at the river's edge...

In line 1307 ὀλομένους may be otiose, but it deserves to be translated—so many Greeks destroyed by the spear at the river's edge.

1344 (pp. 560-561):

ἰδού, διώκω τὸν ἐμὸν ἐς δόμους πόδα.

There, I am going quickly into the house!

More literally—I am pursuing my foot into the house.

1346 (id.):

οὐχὶ συλλήψεσθ᾿ ἄγραν;

seize your prey!

More literally a question—will you not seize your prey?

1369-1370 (pp. 564-565):

ἐκ θανάτου / πέφευγα

From the realm of death I have escaped

At first I thought that "From death I have escaped" would be simpler, but now I'm inclined to agree that there might be an ellipsis of house or something similar.

1598 (pp. 590-591):

ἆ ἆ, μηδαμῶς δράσῃς τάδε.

Ah, ah, don't!

More fully—Ah, ah, by no means do these things.

1626 (pp. 598-599):

Φοῖβός

Apollo

Euripides could have written Apollo, but he wrote Phoebus.

1691 (pp. 604-605):

ὦ μέγα σεμνὴ Νίκη

Victory

More fully—Most august Victory.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Martin Chuzzlewit, ed. Margaret Cardwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 545-546 (Chapter XXXIV):

"Why Cook! what are you thinking of so steadily?" said Martin.

"Why I was a thinking, sir," returned Mark, "that if I was a painter and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?"

"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose."

"No," said Mark. "That wouldn't do for me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like a Ostrich, for its putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it—"

"And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!" said Martin. "Well, Mark. Let us hope so."

Hat tip: Lee Pratsch.

Derek Mahon, "Everything is Going to be All Right," Selected Poems (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 54:

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart;
the sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Read aloud by the poet here.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

George Santayana (1863-1952), Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922), pp. 62-63:

What, then, is there left, if Dickens has all these limitations? In our romantic disgust we might be tempted to say, Nothing. But in fact almost everything is left, almost everything that counts in the daily life of mankind, or that by its presence or absence can determine whether life shall be worth living or not; because a simple good life is worth living, and an elaborate bad life is not. There remains in the first place eating and drinking; relished not bestially, but humanly, jovially, as the sane and exhilarating basis for everything else. This is a sound English beginning; but the immediate sequel, as the England of that day presented it to Dickens, is no less delightful. There is the ruddy glow of the hearth; the sparkle of glasses and brasses and well-scrubbed pewter; the savoury fumes of the hot punch, after the tingle of the wintry air; the coaching-scenes, the motley figures and absurd incidents of travel; the changing sights and joys of the road. And then, to balance this, the traffic of ports and cities, the hubbub of crowded streets, the luxury of shop-windows and of palaces not to be entered; the procession of the passers-by, shabby or ludicrously genteel; the dingy look and musty smell of their lodgings; the labyrinth of back-alleys, courts, and mews, with their crying children, and scolding old women, and listless, half-drunken loiterers. These sights, like fables, have a sort of moral in them to which Dickens was very sensitive; the important airs of nobodies on great occasions, the sadness and preoccupation of the great as they hasten by in their mourning or on their pressing affairs; the sadly comic characters of the tavern; the diligence of shopkeepers, like squirrels turning in their cages; the children peeping out everywhere like grass in an untrodden street; the charm of humble things, the nobleness of humble people, the horror of crime, the ghastliness of vice, the deft hand and shining face of virtue passing through the midst of it all; and finally a fresh wind of indifference and change blowing across our troubles and clearing the most lurid sky.

In the Orthodox tradition, today is the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers. Here is the apolytikion for the day:

O Commanders of the Heavenly Host, we the unworthy beseech you, that through your entreaties you will fortify us, guarding us in the shelter of the wings of your ethereal glory, even as we fervently bow before you crying: "Deliver us from all danger, as Commanders of the Powers on high!"

Τῶν οὐρανίων στρατιῶν Ἀρχιστράτηγοι, δυσωποῦμεν ὑμᾶς ἡμεῖς οἱ ἀνάξιοι, ἵνα ταῖς ὑμῶν δεήσεσι τειχίσητε ἡμᾶς, σκέπῃ τῶν πτερύγων, τῆς ἀΰλου ὑμῶν δόξης, φρουροῦντες ἡμᾶς προσπίπτοντας, ἐκτενῶς καὶ βοώντας· Ἐκ τῶν κινδύνων λυτρώσασθε ἡμᾶς, ὡς Ταξιάρχαι, τῶν ἄνω Δυνάμεων.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.