Laudator Temporis Acti

Let's doff our shirts, because a man's got to smell like a man from the word go, and shouldn't be all wrapped up like souvlaki.

ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐξωμίδ᾿ ἐκδυώμεθ᾿, ὡς τὸν ἄνδρα δεῖ
ἀνδρὸς ὄζειν εὐθύς, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἐντεθριῶσθαι πρέπει.

For several years 'A man's gotta smell like a man' was the advertising slogan for an American men's cologne.

In the past, at any rate throughout the Protestant centuries, the idea of rebellion and the idea of intellectual integrity were mixed up. A heretic — political, moral, religious, or aesthetic — was one who refused to outrage his own conscience. His outlook was summed up in the words of the Revivalist hymn:

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone;
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known.

To bring this hymn up to date one would have to add a "Don't" at the beginning of each line.

Something about the composition of the Cité antique is revealed to us by two letters from Fustel published by L. Halkin in Mélanges Bidez, Volume I, 1934, pp. 465-74. A German scholar who for a long time had been Professor of Law at Liège and had now retired to Stuttgart, L.A. Warnkoenig, had said that he would be willing to review the Cité antique in a German periodical. He did in fact publish a long and admiring review in Jahrbücher der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft 11, 1865, pp. 81-94. Fustel thought it expedient to explain to him the method he had used in writing the book. He stated without false modesty that 'his type of mind was such that he could not be content with details'. His method had been the comparative one. By comparing the Rig-Veda with Euripides, the laws of Manu with the Twelve Tables or Isaeus and Lysias, he had arrived at the conclusion of a remote community of beliefs and institutions among Indians, Greeks and Italic peoples. He had not troubled to read what the moderns had written. Indeed he had imposed upon himself the principle of not reading them, and in particular of not reading the works of Mommsen, until he had almost finished his book. He insists on this independence from modern authors also in the reply to Morel, where the books of Becker and Marquardt are specified among those not read. It is nonetheless clear that these claims only go to demonstrate that Fustel was fully informed about contemporary historical research and made a distinction, for instance, between Marquardt and Mommsen. If the Cité antique is haughtily devoid of references to modern authors while revealing an enviable familiarity with classical texts, one must deduce from this not simple ignorance, but intentional disregard: the same disregard that led Hegel to ignore Niebuhr's critical method and that made Bachofen (with certain exceptions) indifferent to Mommsen's methods. The attitude they have in common is one which repudiates modern criticism of the sources in order to preserve the sources' data. In his inaugural lecture at Strasbourg in 1862 Fustel declared: 'I then resolved to have no masters on Greece other than the Greeks themselves, nor on Rome than the Romans.' Even more explicitly, in fragments published after his death: 'I would rather be mistaken in the manner of Livy than that of Niebuhr; and in the manner of Gregory of Tours than that of Mr Sohm.' And he added more generally about his adversaries: 'They put themselves up as critics because they have no critical spirit' (Revue Synthèse Hist. 2, 1901, pp. 249-50, 257-8). Later, in writing, or rather in rewriting the Histoire des Institutions politiques de l'ancienne France, Fustel confessed with regret that he had had to yield to the new fashion of presenting all the scholarly material (Histoire, I, La Gaule Romaine, 1891, p. iv n.).

The year 1905 was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Fustel de Coulanges, the historian and author of La Cité Antique.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Tackle them! Hit them! Smash them!
Call them names, the nastier the better!

οὐχ ἕλξετ᾿, οὐ παιήσετ᾿, οὐκ ἀράξετε,
οὐ λοιδορήσετ᾿, οὐκ ἀναισχυντήσετε;

Won't you tackle them, won't you hit them, won't you smash them,
won't you call them names, won't you behave impudently?

The second person of the future may express a concession or permission; and it often expresses a command.

• Be quiet!
• Will you be quiet?
• Won't you be quiet?

It takes a lot of naïveté to believe that it helps to shout and scream in the world, as if one's fate would thereby be altered. Take what comes and avoid all complications. In my early years, when I went to a restaurant, I would say to the waiter: A good cut, a very good cut, from the loin, and not too fat. Perhaps the waiter would scarcely hear what I said. Perhaps it was even less likely that he would heed it, and still less that my voice would penetrate into the kitchen, influence the chef — and even if all this happened, there perhaps was not a good cut in the whole roast. Now I never shout anymore.

Aldous Huxley, in praising Lear's fantasies as a sort of assertion of freedom, has pointed out that the "They" of the limericks represent common sense, legality and the duller virtues generally. "They" are the realists, the practical men, the sober citizens in bowler hats who are always anxious to stop you doing anything worth doing. For instance:

There was an Old Man of Whitehaven,
Who danced a quadrille with a raven;
But they said, "It's absurd
To encourage this bird!"
So they smashed that Old Man of Whitehaven.

To smash somebody just for dancing a quadrille with a raven is exactly the kind of thing that "They" would do.

No study of Lear would be complete without at least a few remarks on "They" of the Nonsense Rhymes. "They" are the world, the man in the street; "They" are what the leader-writers in the twopenny press would call all Right-Thinking Men and Women; "They" are Public Opinion. The Nonsense Rhymes are, for the most part, nothing more nor less than episodes selected from the history of that eternal struggle between the genius or the eccentric and his fellow-beings. Public Opinion universally abhors eccentricity. There was, for example, that charming Old Man of Melrose who walked on the tips of his toes. But "They" said (with their usual inability to appreciate the artist), "It ain't pleasant to see you at present, you stupid old man of Melrose." Occasionally, when the eccentric happens to be a criminal genius, "They" are doubtless right. The Old Man with a Gong who bumped on it all the day long deserved to be smashed. (But "They" also smashed a quite innocuous Old Man of Whitehaven merely for dancing a quadrille with a raven.) And there was that Old Person of Buda, whose conduct grew ruder and ruder; "They" were justified, I dare say, in using a hammer to silence his clamour. But it raises the whole question of punishment and of the relation between society and the individual.

SOCRATES. But what things is the disagreement about, which causes enmity and anger? Let us look at it in this way. If you and I were to disagree about number, for instance, which of two numbers were the greater, would the disagreement about these matters make us enemies and make us angry with each other, or should we not quickly settle it by resorting to arithmetic?

EUTHYPHRO. Of course we should.

SOCRATES. Then, too, if we were to disagree about the relative size of things, we should quickly put an end to the disagreement by measuring?

EUTHYPHRO. Yes.

SOCRATES. And we should, I suppose, come to terms about relative weights by weighing?

EUTHYPHRO. Of course.

SOCRATES. But about what would a disagreement be, which we could not settle and which would cause us to be enemies and be angry with each other? Perhaps you cannot give an answer offhand; but let me suggest it. Is it not about right and wrong, and noble and disgraceful, and good and bad? Are not these the questions about which you and I and other people become enemies, when we do become enemies, because we differ about them and cannot reach any satisfactory agreement?

EUTHYPHRO. Yes, Socrates, these are the questions about which we should become enemies.

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Ἔχθραν δὲ καὶ ὀργάς, ὦ ἄριστε, ἡ περὶ τίνων διαφορὰ ποιεῖ; ὧδε δὲ σκοπῶμεν. ἆρ’ ἂν εἰ διαφεροίμεθα ἐγώ τε καὶ σὺ περὶ ἀριθμοῦ, ὁπότερα πλείω, ἡ περὶ τούτων διαφορὰ ἐχθροὺς ἂν ἡμᾶς ποιοῖ καὶ ὀργίζεσθαι ἀλλήλοις, ἢ ἐπὶ λογισμὸν ἐλθόντες περί γε τῶν τοιούτων ταχὺ ἂν ἀπαλλαγεῖμεν;

ΕΥΘΥΦΡΩΝ. Πάνυ γε.

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Οὐκοῦν καὶ περὶ τοῦ μείζονος καὶ ἐλάττονος εἰ διαφεροίμεθα, ἐπὶ τὸ μέτρον ἐλθόντες ταχὺ παυσαίμεθ’ ἂν τῆς διαφορᾶς;

ΕΥΘΥΦΡΩΝ. Ἔστι ταῦτα.

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Καὶ ἐπί γε τὸ ἱστάναι ἐλθόντες, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, περὶ τοῦ βαρυτέρου τε καὶ κουφοτέρου διακριθεῖμεν ἄν;

ΕΥΘΥΦΡΩΝ. Πῶς γὰρ οὔ;

ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ. Περὶ τίνος δὲ δὴ διενεχθέντες καὶ ἐπὶ τίνα κρίσιν οὐ δυνάμενοι ἀφικέσθαι ἐχθροί γε ἂν ἀλλήλοις εἶμεν καὶ ὀργιζοίμεθα; ἴσως οὐ πρόχειρόν σοί ἐστιν. ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ dλέγοντος σκόπει, εἰ τάδε ἐστὶ τό τε δίκαιον καὶ τὸ ἄδικον καὶ καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακόν. ἆρα οὐ ταῦτά ἐστιν, περὶ ὧν διενεχθέντες καὶ οὐ δυνάμενοι ἐπὶ ἱκανὴν κρίσιν αὐτῶν ἐλθεῖν ἐχθροὶ ἀλλήλοις γιγνόμεθα, ὅταν γιγνώμεθα. καὶ ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι πάντες;

ΕΥΘΥΦΡΩΝ. Ἀλλ’ ἔστιν αὕτη ἡ διαφορά, ὦ Σώκρατες, καὶ περὶ τούτων.

Bene qui latuit bene dixit, wrote Ovid. To live well is to live unnoticed.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Something is very wrong and all men are mild lunatics engaged in petty pursuits that seem to them very important while an absurdly logical force keeps them at their futile jobs ...

You must also take some thought of your ancestors and not be negligent of the piety due to them.

χρὴ δὲ καὶ τῶν προγόνων ποιήσασθαί τινα πρόνοιαν καὶ μὴ παραμελῆσαι μηδὲ τῆς περὶ ἐκείνους εὐσεβείας.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee ...

He loved books and wrote of them: "If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances."

The tendency to treat classical Attic as a linguistic norm and later Greek as degenerate or perverted gathered strength in the early Roman Empire and reached its zenith in the second century A.D., when many Greeks indulged in cultural nostalgia to such a point as to believe that it was in some way better to use the vocabulary and morphology of half a millennium earlier than to realize the literary potentiality of the language which they actually spoke. Their effort to project themselves into the past linguistically was not matched by a comparable effort to see the world through the eyes of classical Athens; 'Atticism' at its worst was rather like a superstition that one's brain will work better if it is encased in an antique hairstyle and hat.

In the course of the same winter the Athenians, following the custom of their fathers, celebrated at the public expense the funeral rites of the first who had fallen in this war. The ceremony is as follows. The bones of the departed lie in state for the space of three days in a tent erected for that purpose, and each one brings to his own dead any offering he desires. On the day of the funeral coffins of cypress wood are borne on wagons, one for each tribe, and the bones of each are in the coffin of his tribe. One empty bier, covered with a pall, is carried in the procession for the missing whose bodies could not be found for burial. Any one who wishes, whether citizen or stranger, may take part in the funeral procession, and the women who are related to the deceased are present at the burial and make lamentation. The coffins are laid in the public sepulchre, which is situated in the most beautiful subaurb of the city; there they always bury those fallen in war, except indeed those who fell at Marathon; for their valour the Athenians judged to be preëminent and they buried them on the spot where they fell. But when the remains have been laid away in the earth, a man chosen by the state, who is regarded as best endowed with wisdom and is foremost in public esteem, delivers over them an appropriate eulogy. After this the people depart. In this manner they bury; and throughout the war, whenever occasion arose, they observed this custom.

Ἐν δὲ τῷ αὐτῷ χειμῶνι Ἀθηναῖοι τῷ πατρίῳ νόμῳ χρώμενοι δημοσίᾳ ταφὰς ἐποιήσαντο τῶν ἐν τῷδε τῷ πολέμῳ πρώτων ἀποθανόντων τρόπῳ τοιῷδε. τὰ μὲν ὀστᾶ προτίθενται τῶν ἀπογενομένων πρότριτα σκηνὴν ποιήσαντες, καὶ ἐπιφέρει τῷ αὐτοῦ ἕκαστος ἤν τι βούληται· ἐπειδὰν δὲ ἡ ἐκφορὰ ᾖ, λάρνακας κυπαρισσίνας ἄγουσιν ἅμαξαι, φυλῆς ἑκάστης μίαν· ἔνεστι δὲ τὰ ὀστᾶ ἧς ἕκαστος ἦν φυλῆς. μία δὲ κλίνη κενὴ φέρεται ἐστρωμένη τῶν ἀφανῶν, οἳ ἂν μὴ εὑρεθῶσιν ἐς ἀναίρεσιν. ξυνεκφέρει δὲ ὁ βουλόμενος καὶ ἀστῶν καὶ ξένων, καὶ γυναῖκες πάρεισιν αἱ προσήκουσαι ἐπὶ τὸν τάφον ὀλοφυρόμεναι. τιθέασιν οὖν ἐς τὸ δημόσιον σῆμα, ὅ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοῦ καλλίστου προαστείου τῆς πόλεως καὶ αἰεὶ ἐν αὐτῷ θάπτουσι τοὺς ἐκ τῶν πολέμων πλήν γε τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι· ἐκείνων δὲ διαπρεπῆ τὴν ἀρετὴν κρίναντες αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν τάφον ἐποίησαν. ἐπειδὰν δὲ κρύψωσι γῇ, ἀνὴρ ᾑρημένος ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως ὃς ἂν γνώμῃ τε δοκῇ μὴ ἀξύνετος εἶναι καὶ ἀξιώσει προήκῃ, λέγει ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἔπαινον τὸν πρέποντα· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο ἀπέρχονται. ὧδε μὲν θάπτουσιν· καὶ διὰ παντὸς τοῦ πολέμου, ὁπότε ξυμβαίη αὐτοῖς, ἐχρῶντο τῷ νόμῳ.

They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A mouse, a little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.

What has so far been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said, "Woe unto those who laugh here"? Did he himself find no reasons on earth for laughing? Then he searched very badly. Even a child could find reasons here. He did not love enough: else he would also have loved us who laugh. But he hated and mocked us: howling and gnashing of teeth he promised us.

Welches war hier auf Erden bisher die größte Sünde? War es nicht das Wort dessen, der sprach: »Wehe denen, die hier lachen!« Fand er zum Lachen auf der Erde selber keine Gründe? So suchte er nur schlecht. Ein Kind findet hier noch Gründe. Der — liebte nicht genug: sonst hätte er auch uns geliebt, die Lachenden! Aber er haßte und höhnte uns, Heulen und Zähneklappern verhieß er uns.

Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.

οὐαί, οἱ γελῶντες νῦν, ὅτι πενθήσετε καὶ κλαύσετε.

Seek out your ancient mother.

antiquam exquirite matrem.

The world is asking France to be and to remain a Latin civilisation, so that the world may be saved.

Le monde demande à la France d'être et de rester une civilisation latine — pour que le monde soit sauvé.

In France alone will you find true democracy, the love of moderation, true classical clarity of expression and thought. You will find neither vast fortunes nor dire poverty, neither idleness nor unemployment. You'll find people who have been taught well, given a good education, who are polite, hard working, sober, a social life where ostentation has no play, a standard of culture to be found nowhere else in the world and a life whose amenities are ample rewards even for the poorest.

As in the dark ages, the spark of the classical tradition, the tradition of the Arts, erudition, thought, found refuge in the abbeys of the remotest valleys of Provence. Today the sacred fire trembles in the hands of a France threatened on all its borders by hordes whose aim it is to bring back to the world the sadistic follies, the drunken madness, the murderous manias, the intolerance, the darkness and all the bloody insanity of the Middle Ages.

En France seule, vous trouverez la vraie démocratie, un véritable esprit de modération, la vraie clarté classique d'expression et de pensée. Vous n'y trouverez ni très grandes fortunes ni grande pauvreté, ni oisiveté, ni chômage. Vous y trouverez une population instruite, bien élevée, polie, laborieuse, sobre, une vie sociale où l'ostentation ne joue aucun rôle, une culture générale telle que le monde n'en avait jamais vue, une vie dont les aménités sont, même pour les plus pauvres, une récompense suffisante.

Et, comme à l'âge des ténèbres, l’étincelle de la tradition classique, de la tradition des arts, des lettres, l’érudition, de la pensée s'est cachée dans les abbayes perdues au fond des vallons de la Provence[. A]ujourd’hui, le feu sacré tremble dans les mains d'une France menacée sur toutes ses frontières par des hordes qui ont pour but de faire renaître dans le monde les folies sadiques, l'ébriété, les manies assassines, l'intolérance, l'obscurcissement, toute l'insanité sanglante du moyen âge.

For, if France should fall to those barbarous and barbarising invaders, it would not only be your children and the children of your grand-children that the plagues of famine and fire and the pestilence of a dark night would attack, it would be yourselves!

Car, si la France tombait devant les envahisseurs barbares et barbarisants, ce ne serait pas que vos enfants et les enfants de vos petits-enfants qui succomberaient sous les fléaux de la famine, du feu, et la pestilence d'une nuit éternelle de l'âme. Ce serait vous-mêmes!

In Eleusis, moreover, he out-wrestled Cercyon the Arcadian and killed him; and going on a little farther, at Erineüs, he killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him, and therefore sacrificed Busiris, wrestled Antaeus to death, slew Cycnus in single combat, and killed Termerus by dashing in his skull.

It is from him, indeed, as they say, that the name "Termerian mischief" comes, for Termerus, as it would seem, used to kill those who encountered him by dashing his head against theirs. Thus Theseus also went on his way chastising the wicked, who were visited with the same violence from him which they were visiting upon others, and suffered justice after the manner of their own injustice.

Ἐν δὲ Ἐλευσῖνι Κερκύονα τὸν ἐξ Ἀρκαδίας καταπαλαίσας ἀνεῖλε· καὶ μικρὸν προελθὼν Δαμάστην ἐν Ἐρινεῷ1 τὸν Προκρούστην, ἀναγκάσας αὑτὸν ἀπισοῦν τοῖς κλιντῆρσιν ὥσπερ τοὺς ξένους ἐκεῖνος. ἔπραττε δὲ ταῦτα μιμούμενος τὸν Ἡρακλέα. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οἷς ἐπεβουλεύετο τρόποις ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς προεπιχειροῦντας, ἔθυσε τὸν Βούσιριν καὶ κατεπάλαισε τὸν Ἀνταῖον καὶ τὸν Κύκνον κατεμονομάχησε καὶ τὸν Τέρμερον συρρήξας τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπέκτεινεν.

ἀφ᾿ οὗ δὴ καὶ τὸ Τερμέρειον κακὸν ὀνομασθῆναι λέγουσι· παίων γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τῇ κεφαλῇ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ὁ Τέρμερος ἀπώλλυεν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ Θησεὺς κολάζων τοὺς πονηροὺς ἐπεξῆλθεν, οἷς μὲν ἐβιάζοντο τοὺς ἄλλους, ὑπ᾿ ἐκείνου καταβιαζομένους, ἐν δὲ τοῖς τρόποις τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀδικίας τὰ δίκαια πάσχοντας.

What each man did, he suffers: the crime recoils on its perpetrator, and the criminal is plagued by the precedent he set.

quod quisque fecit, patitur; auctorem scelus
repetit, suoque premitur exemplo nocens.

To the dreamers of immortality. — So you want this lovely consciousness of yourself to last forever? Is that not immodest? Are you not mindful of all the other things which would then be obliged to endure you to all eternity, as they have endured you up to now with a more than Christian patience? Or do you think to inspire them with an everlasting sense of pleasure at your existence? A single immortal man on earth would be enough to drive everything else on earth to a universal rage for death and suicide out of satiety with him! And you earth-dwellers, with your petty conception of a couple of thousand little minutes, want to burden eternal existence with yourselves everlastingly! Could anything be more importunate! Finally: let us be indulgent towards a being of a mere seventy years! — he has not been able to imagine the 'everlasting boredom' he himself would experience — he has not had enough time to do so!

An die Träumer der Unsterblichkeit. — Diesem schönen Bewußtsein eurer selbst wünscht ihr also ewige Dauer? Ist das nicht schamlos? Denkt ihr denn nicht an alle andern Dinge, die euch dann in alle Ewigkeit zu ertragen hätten, wie sie euch bisher ertragen haben mit einer mehr als christlichen Geduld? Oder meint ihr, ihnen ein ewiges Wohlgefühl an euch geben zu können? Ein einziger unsterblicher Mensch auf der Erde wäre ja schon genug, um alles andere, das noch da wäre, durch Überdruß an ihm in eine allgemeine Sterbe- und Aufhängewut zu versetzen! Und ihr Erdenbewohner mit euren Begriffelchen von ein paar Tausend Zeitminütchen wollt dem ewigen allgemeinen Dasein ewig lästig fallen! Gibt es etwas Zudringlicheres! — Zuletzt: seien wir milde gegen ein Wesen von siebenzig Jahren! — es hat seine Phantasie im Ausmalen der eignen »ewigen Langenweile« nicht üben können, — es fehlte ihm an der Zeit!

The country Parson is full of all knowledge. They say it is an ill Mason that refuseth any stone: and there is no knowledge but, in a skilful hand, serves either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge. He condescends even to the knowledge of tillage, and pastorage, and makes great use of them in teaching, because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not. But the chief & top of his knowledge consists in the book of books, the storehouse and magazene of life and comfort, the holy Scriptures. There he sucks, and lives. In the Scriptures he finds four things; Precepts for life, Doctrines for knowledge, Examples for illustration, and Promises for comfort: These he hath digested severally.

For you do not exonerate him from the charges, but only declare that some others have done the same things, inventing thus a very easy refuge for all criminals. Why, if it is not easy to find a crime which has not yet been committed, and if we should consider that those who have been found guilty of one or another of these crimes have done nothing so very wrong, whenever others are found to have perpetrated the same offences, should we not be providing ready-made pleas in exculpation of all criminals and be granting complete licence for those who are bent on villainy?

οὐ γὰρ ἀπολύεις αὐτὸν τῶν αἰτιῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀποφαίνεις ὡς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τινὲς ταὐτὰ πεποιήκασι, ῥᾳθυμοτάτην τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν εὑρίσκων καταφυγήν. εἰ γὰρ τῶν μὲν ἀδικημάτων μὴ ῥᾴδιον εὑρεῖν ὃ μήπω τυγχάνει γεγενημένον, τοὺς δ᾿ ἐφ᾿ ἑκάστοις αὐτῶν ἁλισκομένους μηδὲν ἡγοίμεθα δεινὸν ποιεῖν, ὅταν ἕτεροι ταὐτὰ φαίνωνται διαπεπραγμένοι, πῶς οὐκ ἂν καὶ τὰς ἀπολογίας ἅπασι ῥᾳδίας ποιήσαιμεν, καὶ τοῖς βουλομένοις εἶναι πονηροῖς πολλὴν ἐξουσίαν παρασκευάσαιμεν;

    'Had he and I but met
    By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
    Right many a nipperkin!

    'But ranged as infantry,
    And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
    And killed him in his place.

    'I shot him dead because —
    Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
    That's clear enough; although

    'He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
    Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
    No other reason why.

    'Yes; quaint and curious war is!
    You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
    Or help to half-a-crown.'

Early one morning another man and I had gone out to snipe at the Fascists in the trenches outside Huesca. Their line and ours here lay three hundred yards apart, at which range our aged rifles would not shoot accurately, but by sneaking out to a spot about a hundred yards from the Fascist trench you might, if you were lucky, get a shot at someone through a gap in the parapet. Unfortunately the ground between was a flat beet-field with no cover except a few ditches, and it was necessary to go out while it was still dark and return soon after dawn, before the light became too good. This time no Fascists appeared, and we stayed too long and were caught by the dawn. We were in a ditch, but behind us were two hundred yards of flat ground with hardly enough cover for a rabbit. We were still trying to nerve ourselves to make a dash for it when there was an uproar and a blowing of whistles in the Fascist trench. Some of our aeroplanes were coming over. At this moment a man, presumably carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained from shooting at him. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely to hit a running man at a hundred yards, and also that I was thinking chiefly about getting back to our trench while the Fascists had their attention fixed on the aeroplanes. Still, I did not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had come here to shoot at "Fascists"; but a man who is holding up his trousers isn't a "Fascist", he is visibly a fellow creature, similar to yourself, and you don't feel like shooting at him.

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that "the facts" existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as "the truth" exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as "science". There is only "German science", "Jewish science" etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, "It never happened" — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.

When I think of antiquity, the detail that frightens me is that those hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs civilization rested generation after generation have left behind them no record whatever. We do not even know their names. In the whole of Greek and Roman history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two, or possibly three. One is Spartacus and the other is Epictetus. Also, in the Roman room at the British Museum there is a glass jar with the maker's name inscribed on the bottom, "Felix fecit". I have a vivid mental picture of poor Felix (a Gaul with red hair and a metal collar round his neck), but in fact he may not have been a slave; so there are only two slaves whose names I definitely know, and probably few people can remember more. The rest have gone down into utter silence.

The damned impertinence of these politicians, priests, literary men, and what not who lecture the working-class Socialist for his "materialism"! All that the working man demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn't leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against "materialism" would consider life liveable without these things.

To prepare for her first Communion, her mother sends her to a convent for a short retreat. Before sending her off, she gives her some chocolate and a banana, an extraordinary luxury. The nuns tell her to leave everything on the altar, as a gift to Jesus. "A little while later I crept into the church to see whether Baby Jesus had eaten the banana and chocolate, but there was nothing left. Not even the banana peel or the chocolate wrapper. This made me suspicious. I left the church, went down a hallway, and there, on the balustrade, was a nun eating my banana."

I seek not what his soul desires.
      He dreads not what my spirit fears.
Our Heavens have shown us separate fires.
      Our dooms have dealt us differing years.

Our daysprings and our timeless dead
      Ordained for us and still control
Lives sundered at the fountain-head,
      And distant, now, as Pole from Pole.

Yet, dwelling thus, these worlds apart,
      When we encounter each is free
To bare that larger, liberal heart
      Our kin and neighbours seldom see.

(Custom and code compared in jest —
      Weakness delivered without shame —
And certain common sins confessed
      Which all men know, and none dare blame.)

E'en so it is, and well content
      It should be so a moment's space,
Each finds the other excellent,
      And — runs to follow his own race!

By Poseidon, that's a very good point.

νὴ τὸν Ποσειδῶ ταῦτά γέ τοι καλῶς λέγεις.

For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a "twilight," though this lie is told. Instead: one day they laughed themselves to death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods themselves — the word: "There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!" An old grim-beard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, "Is not just this godlike that there are gods but no God?"

Mit den alten Göttern ging es ja lange schon zu Ende: – und wahrlich, ein gutes fröhliches Götter-Ende hatten sie! Sie »dämmerten« sich nicht zu Tode — das lügt man wohl! Vielmehr: sie haben sich selber einmal zu Tode — gelacht! Das geschah, als das gottloseste Wort von einem Gotte selber ausging — das Wort: »Es ist ein Gott! Du sollst keinen andern Gott haben neben mir!« — ein alter Grimm-Bart von Gott, ein eifersüchtiger, vergaß sich also: — Und alle Götter lachten damals und wackelten auf ihren Stühlen und riefen: »Ist das nicht eben Göttlichkeit, daß es Götter, aber keinen Gott gibt?«

• Don't Laugh
• Did Christ Ever Laugh?

An American observer, so the story goes, once expressed surprise at the way in which Margaret Thatcher dominated the British cabinet. He was advised to read P.G. Wodehouse on Bertie Wooster and his aunts. Comedy tells. And Dionysius of Syracuse, so another story went, once asked Plato to explain to him the nature of Athenian political life. Plato responded by sending him a work of Aristophanes.¹

1 Life of Aristophanes (Proleg. XXVIII 46–9, p. 135 Koster); Riginos 1976: 176-8.

φασὶ δὲ καὶ Πλάτωνα Διονυσίῳ τῷ τυράννῳ βουληθέντι μαθεῖν τὴν Ἀθηναίων πολιτείαν πέμψαι τὴν Αριστοφάνους ποίησιν, [τὴν κατὰ Σωκράτους ἐν Νεφέλαις κατηγορίαν,] καὶ συμβουλεῦσαι τὰ δράματα αὐτοῦ ἀσκηθέντα μαθεῖν αὐτῶν πολιτείαν.

And they say that when Dionysius the tyrant wanted to learn about the polity of the Athenians, Plato sent him the poetry of Ar. [the accusation against Socrates in Clouds] and advised him to study the plays if he would learn their polity.

Poor folk suffer when the mighty quarrel.
A frog looking out from a marsh upon a combat between two bulls,
exclaimed: "Alas, what great destruction is verging upon us!"
Being asked by another frog why he said this,
since those bulls were contending for the sovereignty of the herd
and, as cattle, lived their lives at a distance from the frogs, he replied:
"Granted that their range is remote from ours, and that their species is different,
nevertheless, whichever of them is driven from the lordship of the meadow, and takes to flight,
will come to the secret recesses of our marsh
and will tread us down and crush us with his hard hoofs.
Thus their fury has something to do with our own safety."

Humiles laborant ubi potentes dissident.
Rana in palude pugnam taurorum intuens,
"Heu, quanta nobis instat pernicies" ait.
interrogata ab alia cur hoc diceret,
de principatu cum illi certarent gregis        5
longeque ab ipsis degerent vitam boves,
"Sit statio separata ac diversum genus;
expulsus regno nemoris qui profugerit
paludis in secreta veniet latibula,
et proculcatas obteret duro pede.        10
ita caput ad nostrum furor illorum pertinet."

Imagine a number of men in fetters, all condemned to death, and some killed daily in the sight of the rest, and those who are left, reading their own fate in that of their fellows, waiting their turn, looking at each other in gloom and despair. That is a picture of man's state.

Qu'on s'imagine un nombre d'hommes dans les chaisnes, et tous condamnez à la mort, dont les uns estant chaque jour égorgez à la veue des autres, ceux qui restent voyent leur propre condition dans celle de leurs semblables, et, se regardant les uns et les autres avec douleur et sans espérance, attendent à leur tour. C'est l'image de la condition des hommes.

We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a "case" with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.

Well then, if you treat us as gods
you'll have the benefit of prophets, muses,
breezes, seasons—winter, mild summer,
stifling heat. And we won't run off and
sit up there preening among the clouds, like Zeus,
but ever at hand we'll bestow on you,
your children, and your children's children
healthy wealthiness, happiness, prosperity, peace,
youth, hilarity, dances, festivities,
and birds' milk.

ἢν οὖν ἡμᾶς νομίσητε θεούς,
ἕξετε χρῆσθαι μάντεσι, μούσαις,
αὔραις, ὥραις, χειμῶνι, θέρει        725
μετρίῳ, πνίγει· κοὐκ ἀποδράντες
καθεδούμεθ᾿ ἄνω σεμνυνόμενοι
παρὰ ταῖς νεφέλαις ὥσπερ χὠ Ζεύς·
ἀλλὰ παρόντες δώσομεν ὑμῖν
αὐτοῖς, παισίν, παίδων παισίν,        730
πλουθυγίειαν, βίον, εἰρήνην,
νεότητα, γέλωτα, χορούς, θαλίας
γάλα τ᾿ ὀρνίθων.

Labels: typographical and other errors

"Old Sol says he hasn't much conversation. Conversation! O Lord! He never talks. The other day I had been yarning under the bridge with one of the engineers, and he must have heard us. When I came up to take my watch, he steps out of the chart-room and has a good look all round, peeps over at the sidelights, glances at the compass, squints upward at the stars. That's his regular performance. By-and-by he says: 'Was that you talking just now in the port alleyway?' 'Yes, sir.' 'With the third engineer?' 'Yes, sir.' He walks off to starboard, and sits under the dodger on a little campstool of his, and for half an hour perhaps he makes no sound, except that I heard him sneeze once. Then after a while I hear him getting up over there, and he strolls across to port, where I was. 'I can’t understand what you can find to talk about,' says he. 'Two solid hours. I am not blaming you. I see people ashore at it all day long, and then in the evening they sit down and keep at it over the drinks. Must be saying the same things over and over again. I can't understand.'"

• Mumchance's the Word
• Men of Few Words
• Acanthian Cicada
• Taciturn in Seven Ancient Languages
• Character of a Taciturn Person
• Silent in Seven Languages
• Unfit for the Society of the Living
• Burton's Characters
• Unit of Taciturnity: The Dirac
• Ich bin ein Boeotier
• The Merest Statue of a Man
• One of the Most Ungregarious of Beings
• Small Talk
• Penury of Words
• Portrait of a Shy Man

A man bought a partridge and let him run around in the house, for he was fond of the creature. Immediately the bird began to clamour loudly in his usual style, went through all the house and ended at the hearth. The wily cat ran up to him and said: "Who are you? Where do you come from?" "I'm a partridge," he replied, "just recently bought." "And I," said the cat, "have been around here a long time. My mother, the mouse-slayer, gave birth to me inside this house. But I keep my mouth shut and sleep by the hearth; why is it that you, who come here lately purchased, as you say, are making yourself so free and crowing so loudly?"

Πέρδικά τις πριάμενος ἐντρέχειν οἴκῳ
ἀφῆκεν· ἡδέως γὰρ εἶχε τοῦ ζῴου.
κἀκεῖνος εὐθὺς κλαγγὸν ἐξ ἔθους ᾄδων
πᾶσαν κατ᾿ αὐλὴν ἄχρι βημάτων ᾔει.
γαλῆ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡπίβουλος ὡρμήθη        5
καὶ πρῶτον εἶπε "τίς μὲν εἶ, πόθεν <δ᾿> ἥκεις;"
ὁ δ᾿ "ἠγόρασμαι" φησί "προσφάτως <πέρδιξ>."
"ἐγὼ χρόνον τοσοῦτον ἐνθαδὶ τρίβω
καὶ μ᾿ ἔνδον ἔτεκεν ἡ μυοκτόνος μήτηρ,
ἀλλ᾿ ἡσυχάζω καὶ πρὸς ἑστίην εὕδω·        10
σὺ δ᾿ ἄρτι πως ὠνητός, ὡς λέγεις, ἥκων
παρρησιάζῃ" φησί "καὶ κατακρώζεις;"

Up till about 1930 nearly all "cultivated" people loathed the U.S.A., which was regarded as the vulgarizer of England and Europe. The disappearance of this attitude was probably connected with the fall of Latin and Greek from their dominant position as school subjects. The younger intellectuals have no objection to the American language and tend to have a masochistic attitude towards the U.S.A., which they believe to be richer and more powerful than Britain. Of course it is exactly this that excites the jealousy of the ordinary patriotic middle class. I know people who automatically switch off the radio as soon as any American news comes on, and the most banal English film will always get middle-class support because "it's such a relief to get away from those American voices". Americans are supposed to be boastful, bad-mannered and worshippers of money....

                                                              [To us] Zeus
has given the task, from youth to old age, of winding
the skein of grim war, till we perish, every last man!

                                                                     Ζεὺς
ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν
ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄφρα φθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος.

But in fact, they thought, virtue is not advanced by written laws but by the habits of every-day life; for the majority of men tend to assimilate the manners and morals amid which they have been reared. Furthermore, they held that where there is a multitude of specific laws, it is a sign that the state is badly governed; for it is in the attempt to build up dikes against the spread of crime that men in such a state feel constrained to multiply the laws.

Those who are rightly governed, on the other hand, do not need to fill their porticoes with written statutes, but only to cherish justice in their souls; for it is not by legislation, but by morals, that states are well directed, since men who are badly reared will venture to transgress even laws which are drawn up with minute exactness, whereas those who are well brought up will be willing to respect even a simple code.

ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐκ ἐκ τούτων τὴν ἐπίδοσιν εἶναι τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν καθ᾿ ἑκάστην τὴν ἡμέραν ἐπιτηδευμάτων· τοὺς γὰρ πολλοὺς ὁμοίους τοῖς ἤθεσιν ἀποβαίνειν, ἐν οἷς ἂν ἕκαστοι παιδευθῶσιν. ἔπειτα τά γε πλήθη καὶ τὰς ἀκριβείας τῶν νόμων σημεῖον εἶναι τοῦ κακῶς οἰκεῖσθαι τὴν πόλιν ταύτην· ἐμφράγματα γὰρ αὐτοὺς ποιουμένους τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων πολλοὺς τίθεσθαι τοὺς νόμους ἀναγκάζεσθαι.

δεῖν δὲ τοὺς ὀρθῶς πολιτευομένους οὐ τὰς στοὰς ἐμπιπλάναι γραμμάτων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἔχειν τὸ δίκαιον· οὐ γὰρ τοῖς ψηφίσμασιν ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἤθεσι καλῶς οἰκεῖσθαι τὰς πόλεις, καὶ τοὺς μὲν κακῶς τεθραμμένους καὶ τοὺς ἀκριβῶς τῶν νόμων ἀναγεγραμμένους τολμήσειν παραβαίνειν, τοὺς δὲ καλῶς πεπαιδευμένους καὶ τοῖς ἁπλῶς κειμένοις ἐθελήσειν ἐμμένειν.

I never read the proclamations of generals before battle, the speeches of fuehrers and prime ministers, the solidarity songs of public schools and left-wing political parties, national anthems, Temperance tracts, papal encyclicals and sermons against gambling and contraception, without seeming to hear in the background a chorus of raspberries from all the millions of common men to whom these high sentiments make no appeal.

In the Roman tradition of slavery, slaves were not born, they were made. The child of a slave did not inherit that status.

People are brought under our power as slaves either by the civil law or by the jus gentium. This happens by civil law if someone over twenty years of age allows himself to be sold with a view to sharing in the price. By the jus gentium, people become slaves on being captured by enemies or by birth to a female slave.

servi autem in dominium nostrum rediguntur aut iure civili aut gentium: iure civili, si quis se maior viginti annis ad pretium participandum venire passus est. iure gentium servi nostri sunt, qui ab hostibus capiuntur aut qui ex ancillis nostris nascuntur.

Later I would understand that modern people the world over are obsessed with the importance of "going somewhere" and "doing something" with your life. The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn't count for much.

My grandfather was, quite simply, one of the great forgotten silent majority of people who live, work, love, and die without leaving much written trace that they were ever here. He was, and we his descendants remain, essentially nobodies as far as anyone else is concerned. But that's the point. Landscapes like ours were created by and survive through the efforts of nobodies.

My father can hardly spell common words but has an encyclopaedic knowledge of landscape. I think it makes a mockery of the conventional idea of who is and isn't intelligent. Some of the smartest people I have ever known are semi-illiterate.

My grandmother once scolded me for idleness when she caught me reading in her house. The gist of it was that there couldn't possibly be so little else of value to do on the farm that I could justify reading a book in daylight hours. Books were considered a sign of idleness at best and dangerous at worst.

She didn't really understand new things like TV. She barely even tried. She lived in a world that died sometime in the 1970s and 1980s. A world that felt like it stretched from the beginning of time until then, where a woman was judged on her cooking, her house, and her garden. She didn't understand the emerging new world of the 1980s, our world, of books, money, computers, credit cards, and holidays. She lived with an unquestioned belief that these things were aberrations, foolishness, and fleeting fancies, the rubbish of now.

And Peleus the aged was telling his own son, Achilleus,
to be always best in battle and pre-eminent beyond all others.

Πηλεὺς μὲν ᾧ παιδὶ γέρων ἐπέτελλ᾽ Ἀχιλῆϊ
αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων.

Motto on seal of Boston College.

Usually translated 'Always eat breakfast' (ex ἀριστάω).

Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is, "lie low, go slow, and keep cool." He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies.

• Song of the Slackers
• A Fool
• Laziness as a Good Quality
• On Laziness
• To Loaf
• Kayf
• Slackers
• Planet of the Apes
• Ode to Indolence
• The More Idle, the More Deserving
• Work and Leisure
• Praise of Laziness
• Lazy Man's Song
• Exquisite Pregnant Idleness
• How Can I Work?
• Dolce Far Niente
• Weekdays of Unfreedom
• The Dreary Vacuum of Idleness
• Idleness and Business
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
• Idleness
• Futile Work
• Otium Cum Dignitate

So ingrained in our nature is our hostility to them that even in the matter of our stories we linger most fondly over those which tell of the Trojan and the Persian wars, because through them we learn of our enemies' misfortunes; and you will find that our warfare against the barbarians has inspired our hymns, while that against the Hellenes has brought forth our dirges; and that the former are sung at our festivals, while we recall the latter on occasions of sorrow.

Moreover, I think that even the poetry of Homer has won a greater renown because he has nobly glorified the men who fought against the barbarians, and that on this account our ancestors determined to give his art a place of honour in our musical contests and in the education of our youth in order that we, hearing his verses over and over again, may learn by heart the enmity which stands from of old between us and them, and that we, admiring the valour of those who were in the war against Troy, may conceive a passion for like deeds.

οὕτω δὲ φύσει πολεμικῶς πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἔχομεν, ὥστε καὶ τῶν μύθων ἥδιστα συνδιατρίβομεν τοῖς Τρωικοῖς καὶ Περσικοῖς, δι᾿ ὧν ἔστι πυνθάνεσθαι τὰς ἐκείνων συμφοράς. εὕροι δ᾿ ἄν τις ἐκ μὲν τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ὕμνους πεποιημένους, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας θρήνους ἡμῖν γεγενημένους, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς ᾀδομένους, τῶν δ᾿ ἐπὶ ταῖς συμφοραῖς ἡμᾶς μεμνημένους.

οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὴν Ὁμήρου ποίησιν μείζω λαβεῖν δόξαν, ὅτι καλῶς τοὺς πολεμήσαντας τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐνεκωμίασε, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο βουληθῆναι τοὺς προγόνους ἡμῶν ἔντιμον αὐτοῦ ποιῆσαι τὴν τέχνην ἔν τε τοῖς τῆς μουσικῆς ἄθλοις καὶ τῇ παιδεύσει τῶν νεωτέρων, ἵνα πολλάκις ἀκούοντες τῶν ἐπῶν ἐκμανθάνωμεν τὴν ἔχθραν τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν πρὸς αὐτούς, καὶ ζηλοῦντες τὰς ἀρετὰς τῶν στρατευσαμένων τῶν αὐτῶν ἔργων ἐκείνοις ἐπιθυμῶμεν.

At the time of his death, Palgrave, after veering round from one religion to another, had settled down—for the time being, no doubt—to atheism. Somebody nevertheless tried to console the infidel's last moments by calling in a Catholic priest, who said to him in the course of his exhortations: 'Ah, if you could see how a Christian believer dies—' 'Haven't I seen it!' whispered the dying man. 'Perhaps you don't know that I was a Jesuit confessor myself for twenty years.' Se non è vero, etc.

Assuredly it is not ancestral custom for immigrants to set themselves over the sons of the soil, or the recipients of benefits over their benefactors, or refugees over those who gave them asylum.

οὐ δή που πάτριόν ἐστιν ἡγεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐπήλυδας τῶν αὐτοχθόνων, οὐδὲ τοὺς εὖ παθόντας τῶν εὖ ποιησάντων, οὐδὲ τοὺς ἱκέτας γενομένους τῶν ὑποδεξαμένων.

Let my spear lie idle for spiders to entangle in their webs; and may I dwell peacefully with grey old age, singing my songs, my grey head crowned with garlands, after hanging a Thracian shield upon Athena's columned halls; and may I unfold the voice of the tablets in which the wise are celebrated.

κείσθω δόρυ μοι μίτον ἀμφιπλέκειν ἀράχναις·
μετὰ δ᾿ ἡσυχίας πολιῷ γήρᾳ συνοικῶν
ᾄδοιμι κάρα στεφάνοις πολιὸν στεφανώσας,
Θρῃκίαν πέλταν πρὸς Ἀθάνας
περικίοσιν ἀγκρεμάσας θαλάμοις,
δελτῶν τ᾿ ἀναπτύσσοιμι γῆ-
ρυν ᾇ σοφοὶ κλέονται.

2 συνοικῶν Cropp: συνοικοίην or -είην Stobaeus: σύνοικος Page

If the hope of immortality was ever fanciful, it is for writers of today. Too many books appear each day, whether good or bad or mediocre, which necessarily causes those of the previous day to be forgotten; even if they were excellent. All places for immortality in this respect are already occupied. By this, I mean that the ancient classical writers will keep the place they have acquired, or at least it is likely they will not die so fast. But to acquire a place now, to increase the number of immortals, I think is no longer possible. [4270] The destiny of books today is like that of those insects called ephemerals (éphémères): certain species live a few hours, some one night, others 3 or 4 days; but it is always only a matter of days. In truth, we of today are travellers and pilgrims on the earth: our time is truly short: we are here for one day: the morning in flower, the evening faded, or dried up: destined also to outlive our own fame, and living longer than we are remembered. Today it can be said more truly than ever before: "Οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν" [even as are the generations of leaves, so also are those of men] (Iliad 6, l. 146.)

Se mai fu chimerica la speranza dell'immortalità, essa lo è oggi per gli scrittori. Troppa è la copia dei libri o buoni o cattivi o mediocri che escono ogni giorno, e che per necessità fanno dimenticare quelli del giorno innanzi; sian pure eccellenti. Tutti i posti dell'immortalità in questo genere, sono già occupati. Gli antichi classici, voglio dire, conserveranno quella che hanno acquistata, o almeno è credibile che non morranno così tosto. Ma acquistarla ora, accrescere il numero degl'immortali; oh questo io non credo che sia più possibile. [4270] La sorte dei libri oggi, è come quella degl'insetti chiamati efimeri (éphémères): alcune specie vivono poche ore, alcune una notte, altre 3 o 4 giorni; ma sempre si tratta di giorni. Noi siamo veramente oggidì passeggeri e pellegrini sulla terra: veramente caduchi: esseri di un giorno: la mattina in fiore, la sera appassiti, o secchi: soggetti anche a sopravvivere alla propria fama, e più longevi che la memoria di noi. Oggi si può dire con verità maggiore che mai: Oἵη περ ϕύλλων γενεὴ, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν (Iliad. 6. v.146.)

The Golden Ass forms no part of the regular school curriculum but I suppose all schoolboys are familiar with it; at least I hope they are; if not in the original, then in a crib.

You are aware of Verres' foul and wicked character: conceive, if you can, a man who can match him in every branch of unspeakable indulgence in every kind of vileness: that man will be the famous Apronius, who proclaims himself by his life, nay, by his very shape and countenance, a vast devouring human morass, replete with all manner of villainies and abominations. It is he who was Verres' right-hand man in his debaucheries, in his sacrilegious robberies, in his filthy carouses: and to such sympathy and affection does similarity of character give rise that Apronius, whom all others regarded as an uncouth savage, appeared to Verres an agreeable and cultivated person. Everyone else loathed him and shunned the sight of him: Verres could not live without him. Others could not drink in the same room with him: Verres would drink out of the same cup with him, and the disgusting smell of the man's breath and body, which we are told not even animals could endure, to him, and to him alone, seemed sweet and pleasant.

Verris mores improbos impurosque nostis; fingite vobis aliquem, si potestis, qui in omnibus isti rebus par ad omnium flagitiorum nefarias libidines esse possit; is erit Apronius ille, qui, ut ipse non solum vita sed corpore atque ore significat, immensa aliqua vorago est et gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium. hunc in omnibus stupris, hunc in fanorum expilationibus, hunc in impuris conviviis principem adhibebat; tantamque habet morum similitudo coniunctionem atque concordiam ut Apronius, qui aliis inhumanus ac barbarus, isti uni commodus ac disertus videretur; ut, quem omnes odissent neque videre vellent, sine eo iste esse non posset; ut, cum alii ne conviviis quidem isdem quibus Apronius, hic isdem etiam poculis uteretur; postremo ut odor Apronii taeterrimus oris et corporis, quem, ut aiunt, ne bestiae quidem ferre possent, uni isti suavis et iucundus videretur.

Some few of us are born centrifugal. The herd-system and team-life, congenial to many, went against my grain. A mildewy scriptural odour pervaded the institution — it reeked of Jeroboam and Jesus; the masters struck me as supercilious humbugs; the food was so vile that for the first day or two after returning from holidays I could not get it down.

Amongst the large numbers of Rights of Man which the nineteenth century, in its wisdom, so often enumerates with complacency, two quite important ones have been forgotten, namely our right to contradict ourselves, and our right to quit this life.

Parmi l'énumération nombreuse des droits de l'homme que la sagesse du XIXe siècle recommence si souvent et si complaisamment, deux assez importants ont été oubliés, qui sont le droit de se contredire et le droit de s'en aller.

For we did not become dwellers in this land by driving others out of it, nor by finding it uninhabited, nor by coming together here a motley horde composed of many races; but we are of a lineage so noble and so pure that throughout our history we have continued in possession of the very land which gave us birth, since we are sprung from its very soil and are able to address our city by the very names which we apply to our nearest kin; for we alone of all the Hellenes have the right to call our city at once nurse and fatherland and mother.

ταύτην γὰρ οἰκοῦμεν οὐχ ἑτέρους ἐκβαλόντες οὐδ᾿ ἐρήμην καταλαβόντες οὐδ᾿ ἐκ πολλῶν ἐθνῶν μιγάδες συλλεγέντες, ἀλλ᾿ οὕτω καλῶς καὶ γνησίως γεγόναμεν, ὥστ᾿ ἐξ ἧσπερ ἔφυμεν, ταύτην ἔχοντες ἅπαντα τὸν χρόνον διατελοῦμεν, αὐτόχθονες ὄντες καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς αὐτοῖς, οἷσπερ τοὺς οἰκειοτάτους, τὴν πόλιν ἔχοντες προσειπεῖν· μόνοις γὰρ ἡμῖν τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὴν αὐτὴν τροφὸν καὶ πατρίδα καὶ μητέρα καλέσαι προσήκει.

[A]nother English characteristic ... is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official — the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the "nice cup of tea". The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker.

When Xerxes wrote again, "Hand over your arms," he wrote in reply, "Come and take them."

πάλιν δὲ τοῦ Ξέρξου γράψαντος, "πέμψον τὰ ὅπλα," ἀντέγραψε, "μολὼν λάβε."

Thinking back to those pesky exceptions we learn for the accentuation of thematic aorist imperatives in first-year Greek, I wonder whether the accentuation μολὼν λάβε in the Loeb is correct. The TLG, after the Teubner, has μολὠν λαβέ. The grammarians (e.g., Herodian, Choeroboscus) suggest that λάβε was the usual pronunciation in Koine (cf. also Epictetus Discourses 3.22), and that λαβέ would have been an Attic pronunciation (cf. Smyth 424b). What would the Spartans have said? The accent on the theme vowel was the older form, as Michael Weiss, in his chapter "Morphology and Word Formation" in A Companion to Ancient Greek Language (Blackwell 2010) p. 114 writes: "Thematic aorists are characterized by a zero-grade root and thematic endings. Before the assignment of recessive accent to finite verbal forms the thematic vowel bore the accent. This pattern survives exceptionally in the imperatives ἰδέ, λαβέ, ἐλθέ and regularly in the participle (λιπών) and infinitive (λιπεῖν)." What would a Spartan have said? Had the accent shifted back in Doric by the time this was originally uttered? What would Plutarch have preferred to say?

Labels: typographical and other errors

But someone who settles in one city from another
is like a bad peg fixed in a piece of wood:
he's a citizen in name, but not in reality.

ὅστις δ᾿ ἀπ᾿ ἄλλης πόλεος οἰκήσῃ πόλιν,
ἁρμὸς πονηρὸς ὥσπερ ἐν ξύλῳ παγείς,
λόγῳ πολίτης ἐστί, τοῖς δ᾿ ἔργοισιν οὔ.

My musical gods are Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Corelli and Scarlatti, and the old English composers. I find in music all the alleged consolations of religion, but it is becoming more difficult to hear since the B.B.C. adopted the idiotic method of counting heads in the matter and of substituting a quantity of jazz and some pretentious cacophony for their old programmes. Modern developments of discord are no doubt due to two wars and general unhappiness. I venture to say that Corelli's Christmas music reflects a higher civilisation than the music which is now called modern and which reeks of industrialisation.

I do not wish to denigrate religion. Like Lord Melbourne, I feel a great respect for the Church so long as it does not unduly interfere with private life.

When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not 46 million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning — all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.

The revisers' ideal of 'faithfulness' in translation was a meticulous word-for-word reproduction of the Greek text in English words, using the same English word for a given Greek word whenever possible, leaving no Greek word without translation into a corresponding English word, following the order of the Greek words rather than the order natural to English, and attempting to translate the articles and the tenses with a precision alien to English idiom. The result is that the Revised Version is distinctly 'translation English'. It was unnecessary, for example, to change the third petition of the Lord's Prayer to read, 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth'. Or to change the statement concerning Jesus in Mark i.28, 'And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee', to read, 'And the report of him went out straightway everywhere into all the region of Galilee round about'.

καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἡ ἀκοὴ αὐτοῦ εὐθὺς πανταχοῦ εἰς ὅλην τὴν περίχωρον τῆς Γαλιλαίας.

You're not a woman by birth nor yet do you count as a man.

οὔτε γὰρ γυνὴ πέφυκας οὔτ᾿ ἐν ἀνδράσιν σύ γ᾿ εἶ.