Laudator Temporis Acti

Even a comparatively remote and unimportant town like Timgad, in North Africa, possesses public buildings and monuments finer than those of many a modern city of vastly superior wealth and population. It had its theatres and amphitheatres in which free spectacles were provided for the entertainment of the people. It had porticoes and basilicas where the citizens could attend to public business or idle away their leisure time. It had baths and gymnasia, libraries and lecture halls, and temples which were not, like our churches, destined solely for religious worship, but were the centre of civic ceremonial and public festivities. There has probably never been an age in which the opportunities for living an enjoyable and civilized existence were so widely diffused. For the ancient city was not, like the average modern town, a factory, or a place of business; it existed for the enjoyment of its citizens and it was the centre of an active communal life, lived in public and at the public expense.

The flocks of birds have flown high and away,
A solitary cloud goes off calmly alone.
We look at each other and never get bored—
Just me and Ching-t'ing Mountain.

The rediscovery of the Middle Ages by the Romantics is an event of no less importance in the history of European thought than the rediscovery of Hellenism by the Humanists. It meant an immense widening of our intellectual horizon. To Boileau and Pope and their contemporaries the Middle Ages were simply a gap in the history of culture. They had no eyes for the beauty of medieval art and no ears for the melody of medieval verse. All this was restored to us by the Romantics. They went to the Middle Ages not in order to prove a case or to justify their political or religious beliefs, but because they found in them something utterly different from the world that they knew—the revelation of a new kind of beauty.

Where beth they, beforen us weren,
Houndes ladden and havekes beren,
And hadden feld and wode?
The riche levedies in hoere bour,
That werenden gold in hoere tressour,
With hoere brighte rode?

Eten and drounken and maden hem glad;
Hoere lif was all with gamen ilad:
Men keneleden them beforen.
They beren hem well swithe heye,
And, in a twinkling of an eye,
Hoere soules weren forloren.

Where is that lawing and that song,
That trailing and that proude yong,
Tho havekes and tho houndes?
All that joye is went away,
That wele is comen to weylaway,
To manye harde stoundes.

Hoere paradis hy nomen here,
And now they lien in helle ifere:
The fuir it brennes evere;
Long is 'ay!' and long is 'ho!'
Long is 'wy!' and long is 'wo!'
Thennes ne cometh they nevere.

Where are they who lived before us,
who led hounds and carried hawks,
and owned field and wood?
The great ladies in their chambers,
who wore gold in their head-bands
and whose faces shone?

They ate and drank and entertained themselves;
their life was spent wholly in pleasure:
men kneeled before them.
They carried themselves most proudly,
and, in the twinkling of an eye,
their souls were utterly lost.

Where is that laughter and that singing,
that trailing of garments, and that proud gait,
those hawks and those hounds?
All that joy has vanished,
that happiness has turned to misery
and many hard times.

They took their paradise here,
and now they lie in hell together:
the fire burns without end;
long lasts their 'ah!' and long their 'oh!'
long their 'alas! and long their 'woe!'—
they shall never come out of that place.

Few realise how much of controversial war and tumult can be covered by an obscure hobby. The fighting spirit has almost taken refuge in hobbies as in holes and corners of the earth; and left the larger public fields singularly dull and flat and free from real debate. It might be imagined that the Daily Wire was a slashing paper and the Review of Assyrian Excavation was a mild and peaceful one. But in truth it is the other way. It is the popular paper that has become cold and conventional, and full of clichés used without any conviction. It is the scholarly paper that is full of fire and fanaticism and rivalry.

Man (says our anonymous chronicler; and you already know by experience that he had rather a strange taste in similes, but bear with this one for it is likely to be the last), man, as long as he is in this world, is like an invalid lying on a more or less uncomfortable bed who sees other beds around him which look outwardly smooth, level, and better made, and imagines he would be very happy on them. But if he succeeds in changing, scarcely is he lying on the new bed than he begins, as his weight sinks in, to feel a piece of flax pricking into him here, and a lump pressing into him there; so that, in fact, he is more or less back where he started. And for this reason, adds our anonymous chronicler, we should think more of doing well rather than of faring well, and we will end by faring better too. This simile is somewhat far-fetched, laboured, and very seventeenth-century; but it is true in the main.

L'uomo (dice il nostro anonimo: e già sapete per prova che aveva un gusto un po' strano in fatto di similitudini; ma passategli anche questa, che avrebbe a esser l'ultima), l'uomo, fin che sta in questo mondo, è un infermo che si trova sur un letto scomodo più o meno, e vede intorno a sè altri letti, ben rifatti al di fuori, piani, a livello: e si figura che ci si deve star benone. Ma se gli riesce di cambiare, appena s'è accomodato nel nuovo, comincia, pigiando, a sentire qui una lisca che lo punge, lì un bernoccolo che lo preme: siamo in somma, a un di presso, alla storia di prima. E per questo, soggiunge l'anonimo, si dovrebbe pensare più a far bene, che a star bene: e così si finirebbe anche a star meglio. È tirata un po' con gli argani, e proprio da secentista; ma in fondo ha ragione.

Someone used to say that coming into this life, we are like a man who lies down on a hard bed. He feels uncomfortable in it, cannot keep still, he tosses and turns a hundred times. In various ways he endeavors to smoothe out, to soften, etc., the bed, always trying and hoping to be able to rest and get to sleep until, not having slept or feeling rested at all, the hour comes when he has to get up. Such and for a similar reason is our restlessness in life, our natural and justified discontent with every state; the efforts and exertions, etc., of a thousand different kinds to make ourselves comfortable and to soften this bed of ours a little; hopes of happiness or at least of some repose, and death which arrives before our hopes come to anything.

Il tale diceva che noi venendo in questa vita, siamo come chi si corica in un letto duro e incomodo, che sentendovisi star male, non vi può star quieto, e però si rivolge cento volte da ogni parte, e proccura in vari modi di appianare, ammollire ec. il letto, cercando pur sempre e sperando di avervi a riposare e prender sonno, finché senz'aver dormito né riposato vien l'ora di alzarsi. Tale e da simil cagione è la nostra inquietudine nella vita, naturale e giusta scontentezza d'ogni stato; cure, studi ec. di mille generi per accomodarci e mitigare un poco questo letto; speranza di felicità o almen di riposo, e morte che previen l'effetto della speranza.

If it is right for me to reverence with prayers the goddess in darkness and yourself, lord of those who dwell in night, Aidoneus, Aidoneus,^a I pray that the stranger may arrive at the plain of the dead that holds all below and at the house of Styx without pain and with no grievous fate! For after many futile troubles have beset him, once more a just god would be exalting him.

O goddesses of earth,^b and you, form of the invincible beast which, fame ever tells us, have your bed and growl from your cave in the gates passed through by many strangers, a guardian not to be subdued in Hades!^c I pray, child of Earth and Tartarus,^d that he may walk clear when the stranger comes to the plains of the dead below. On you I call, who are eternal sleep!

^a A name for Hades; the names of Hades and Persephone, and other chthonic powers, were not often spoken.
^b Demeter and Persephone were the chief goddesses of earth, but other powers, such as the Erinyes, might also be in mind. [But cf. Jebb ad loc.: "schol.Ἐρινύες. Hardly Demeter and Persephone (683), who would not be thus associated with the fell Cerberus."]
^c Cerberus.
^a Death.

εἰ θέμις ἐστί μοι τὰν ἀφανῆ θεὸν
καὶ σὲ λιταῖς σεβίζειν,
ἐννυχίων ἄναξ, Αἰδωνεῦ
Αἰδωνεῦ, λίσσομαι        1560
ἐπιπόνως μήτ᾿ ἐπὶ βαρυαχεῖ
ξένον ἐξανύσαι
μόρῳ τὰν παγκευθῆ κάτω νεκρῶν πλάκα
καὶ Στύγιον δόμον.
πολλῶν γὰρ ἂν καὶ μάταν        1565
πημάτων ἱκνουμένων
πάλιν σφε δαίμων δίκαιος αὔξοι.

ὦ χθόνιαι θεαί, σῶμά τ᾿ ἀνικάτου
θηρός, ὃν ἐν πύλαισι
ταῖσι πολυξένοις εὐνᾶσθαι        1570
κνυζεῖσθαί τ᾿ ἐξ ἄντρων
ἀδάματον φύλακα παρ᾿ Ἀίδᾳ
λόγος αἰὲν ἔχει.
τόν, ὦ Γᾶς παῖ καὶ Ταρτάρου, κατεύχομαι
ἐν καθαρῷ βῆναι        1575
ὁρμωμένῳ νερτέρας
τῷ ξένῳ νεκρῶν πλάκας·
σέ τοι κικλήσκω τὸν αἰὲν ὕπνον.

I call upon Persephone, queen of the dead,
And upon Hades, king of night, I call;
Chain all the Furies up that he may tread
The perilous pathway to the Stygian hall
And rest among his mighty peers at last,
For the entanglements of God are past.

Nor may the hundred-headed dog give tongue
Until the daughter of Earth and Tartarus
That even bloodless shades call Death has sung
The travel-broken shade of Oedipus
Through triumph of completed destiny
Into eternal sleep, if such there be.

• R.D Dawe, "Conjectures on Oedipus at Colonus," Illinois Classical Studies 19 (1994) 65-72 (at 68-69)
• C.W. Willink, "Critical Studies in the Cantica of Sophocles: III. Electra, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus," Classical Quarterly 53.1 (May, 2003) 75-110 (at 107-109)

Probably neither of these things would have come about had I not had to travel to Switzerland for a cure in 1944. It was then strictly forbidden to take books across the frontier. Only in Davos did I discover that Nestle (thin-paper edition) had made the journey with me in my coat pocket. This was all I had when I began to occupy the time of my convalescence with some serious work. That was a great blessing. For when I now sought to penetrate more deeply into Acts, I was not led astray by any secondary literature which was primarily interested in Luke's sources. So I came quite independently to the question what the author of Acts had wanted to say to his readers through the varied scenes of his book, and I sought myself to become his reader.

And I have not yet said anything of those Egyptians who shiver with fear at the trivial physical experience of flatulence.<sup>1

1</sup> Cf. Minucius Felix, XXVIII, 9 'Idem Aegyptii cum plerisque vobis non magis Isidem quam ceparum acrimonias metuunt, nec Serapidem magis quam strepitus per pudenda corporis expressos contremescunt.' Jerome, Comm. in Isai. XIII, 46 (Migne, P.L. XXIV, 467 A): '... ut taceam de formidoloso et horribili cepe et crepitu ventris inflati, quae Pelusiaca religio est.' Clem. Hom. X, 16; Clem. Recog. V, 20; Theophilus, ad Autol. I, 10. For the onion cf. Pliny, N.H. XIX, 101; Plutarch ap. Gellius, N.A. XX, 8, 7; Mor. 353F; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. VI, 10. Discussion in T. Hopfner, Plutarch über Isis und Osiris (Monographien des Archiv Orientálni IX, Prague, 1940), I, pp. 71-2; A.B. Cook, Zeus II (1925), PP. 986-7.

Καὶ οὔπω λέγω περὶ τῶν τὰς τοῦ σώματος φλυαρίας ἐν φύσαις φριττόντων τῶν Αἰγυπτίων.

You are right about φλυαρία "chattering". But the flatulence is the phrase ἐν φύσαις from ἡ φῦσα "bellows", which in the plural means "flatus".

• The God Fart
• More on the God Fart
• The Worship of Disgraceful Noises

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Hear my prayer, Kourotrophos, and grant that this woman
refuse the love and bed of younger men:
let her fancy be taken by old men grey at the temples,
whose vigor is blunted away, though their hearts still hanker.

κλῦθί μοι εὐχομένωι, Κουροτρόφε, δὸς δὲ γυναῖκα
τήνδε νέων μὲν ἀνήνασθαι φιλότητα καὶ εὐνήν,
ἣ δ᾿ ἐπιτερπέσθω πολιοκροτάφοισι γέρουσιν,
ὧν ὥρη μὲν ἀπήμβλυνται, θυμὸς δὲ μενοινᾶι.

At dawn I wandered to visit a famous mountain.
The mountain was far, set in blue mists of sky,
Its swelling vapors covered a hundred miles,
And I just arrived as the sun went down.
I heard a bell's sound at valley's mouth,
By wood's edge recognized incense in air.
So staff in hand, I sought my old friend,
Ungirthing my saddle, halted my mount for a while.
By the gate of stone a sheer ravine falls off sharply,
And the path through bamboo grew darker, deeper.
Dharma's companion rejoices meeting me,
In speculative discussion we do not sleep.
All my life I have yearned for true reclusion,
Days on end sought wonders beyond this world:
Here old peasants enter their fields at dawn,
And mountain monks return to their temples at night.
Clear sounds come from pine-shaded springs,
Mossy walls filled with ancient truths.
I will lodge on this mountain forever—
I and the world are done with each other.

On a morning ramble I visit a great mountain,
The mountain far away in the empty azure.
Billowing mist spreads over a hundred leagues;
As the sun goes down I reach my goal at last.
At the valley's mouth I hear a bell sound;
By the wood's edge scent a breath of incense.
Leaning on my staff, I seek an old friend;
Having loosened the saddle, give my mount a rest.
The stone gate is hard by a chasm's brink;
A bamboo-lined path winds through the forest depths.
I enjoy meeting with a "Companion in the Law";¹
In "Pure Talk"² we stay up until dawn.
All my life I have respected true reclusion,
For days on end sought spiritual mysteries.
An old rustic goes to his fields at dawn;
A mountain monk returns to his temple in the evening.
There are many pure notes in pines and streams;
These moss-grown walls are wrapped in a feeling of antiquity.
How I would like to retire to this very mountain,
"Casting off both self and world alike."

1. Someone who pursues a religious, usually Buddhist, life.
2. Abstruse, witty discourse that is often associated with Taoists.

In all popular tumults there are always a certain number of men who, either from excited passions, or fanatical conviction, or evil intentions, or just from a cursed taste for disorder, do all they can to push things as far as possible: they propose and support the wildest suggestions, and fan the flames whenever they begin to languish: they want the riot to burst all bounds and restraint.

Ne' tumulti popolari c'è sempre un certo numero d'uomini che, o per un riscaldamento di passione, o per una persuasione fanatica, o per un disegno scellerato, o per un maledetto gusto del soqquadro, fanno di tutto per ispinger le cose al peggio; propongono o promovono i più spietati consigli, soffian nel fuoco ogni volta che principia a illanguidire: non è mai troppo per costoro; non vorrebbero che il tumulto avesse nè fine nè misura.

Besides, if one may digress, it is well to hear the question addressed to a class by the eminent biblical critic and Hebraist Ferdinand Hitzi, "Have you a Septuagint?" One also does well to stay for Hitzig's own answer: "If not, sell all you have and buy one."

Welchen Werth Hitzig in dieser Beziehung den LXX schon für Studirende und ihre exegetischen Uebungen beilegte, geht aus der scherzhaften Aeusserung hervor, mit welcher er die alttestamentlichen Interpretirübungen im theologischen Seminar zu Heidelberg zu eröffnen pflegte: „Meine Herren, haben Sie eine Septuaginta? wenn nicht, so verkaufen Sie Alles, was Sie haben, und kaufen sich eine Septuaginta!“

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

• Priorities
• Mentellé the Hungarian
• Books or Clothes?

'How can you tell,' persisted Renzo, when he saw him reappear, 'that they're decent folk when you don't know them?'

'By their actions, my dear chap; one tells a man by his actions. People who drink their wine without criticizing it, pay their bills without haggling, don't quarrel with the other customers, and if they've got to put a knife in someone, go and wait for him outside—away from the inn, so's the poor landlord keeps out of it—those are the decent folk.'

"Come potete sapere," riattaccò Renzo, quando lo vide ricomparire, "che siano galantuomini, se non li conoscete?"

"Le azioni, caro mio: l'uomo si conosce all'azioni. Quelli che bevono il vino senza criticarlo, che pagano il conto senza tirare, che non metton su lite con gli altri avventori, e se hanno una coltellata da consegnare a uno, lo vanno ad aspettar fuori, e lontano dall'osteria, tanto che il povero oste non ne vada di mezzo, quelli sono i galantuomini."

But as it is, you will soon be enfolded by hostile, merciless old age, which attends men in the time to come, accursed, wearisome, abhorred by the gods.

νῦν δὲ σὲ μὲν τάχα γῆρας ὀμοίιον ἀμφικαλύψει
νηλειές, τό τ᾿ ἔπειτα παρίσταται ἀνθρώποισιν,
οὐλόμενον καματηρόν, ὅ τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ.

An ancient biographer of Hadrian relays just one sentiment about the wall: qui barbaros Romanos divideret, "that it should divide Romans from barbarians."

Labels: typographical and other errors

This mode of sacrifice do thou keep, thou and thy company;
by this observance let thy children's children in purity stand fast.

hunc socii morem sacrorum, hunc ipse teneto;
hac casti maneant in religione nepotes.

When plants and trees are flowering or putting out new growth, no axes may be taken into the hills and forests, for they would destroy life and injure the growing things. When fish and other water creatures are breeding, no nets or poisons may be used in the lakes, for they would destroy life and injure the growing things. The farmers plow in spring, weed in summer, reap in fall, and store away in winter. Because they do each at the proper season, there is a never-ending supply of grain and the people have more than enough to eat. Because the lakes and rivers are watched over carefully and closed off at the proper time, there is an ever-increasing supply of fish and other water creatures and the people have more than they can use. Because the felling of trees and cutting of brush is done only at the proper time, the hills are never denuded and yet the people have all the wood they need. These are the measures of a sage king.

Whoever you know of mankind that shoulder the heaviest load
of grief, to them I might liken myself in my sorrows.

οὕς τινας ὑμεῖς ἴστε μάλιστ’ ὀχέοντας ὀιζὺν
ἀνθρώπων, τοῖσίν κεν ἐν ἄλγεσιν ἰσωσαίμην.

In such circumstances their range of movement was less extensive, and their chances of waging war on their neighbours were less easy; and on this account they were greatly distressed, for they were men that longed for war.

his rebus fiebat ut et minus late vagarentur et minus facile finitimis bellum inferre possent; qua ex parte homines bellandi cupidi magno dolore adficiebantur.

For it is one of the advantages of this world that people can hate and be hated without knowing each other.

Giacché è uno de' vantaggi di questo mondo, quello di poter odiare ed esser odiati, senza conoscersi.

Without exception, every man and woman had to master the practical skills: archery; spearing; setting nets and traps; making canoes, tools, shelters, and medicines; curing meat and vegetables; tanning hides and making clothing; understanding animals; and knowing the properties of plants and their parts.

But by day he would sit on the rocks and the sands,
racking his heart with tears and groans and griefs,
and he would look out over the unresting sea, shedding tears.

ἤματα δ᾿ ἂμ πέτρῃσι καὶ ἠιόνεσσι καθίζων
δάκρυσι καὶ στοναχῇσι καὶ ἄλγεσι θυμὸν ἐρέχθων
πόντον ἐπ᾿ ἀτρύγετον δερκέσκετο δάκρυα λείβων.

O. haunted the lonely sea-shore not for any Byronic sentiments but, like any ship-wrecked mariner, in the hopes of sighting a ship.

Where does learning begin and where does it end? I say that as to program, learning begins with the recitation of the Classics and ends with the reading of the ritual texts; and as to objective, it begins with learning to be a man of breeding, and ends with learning to be a sage. If you truly pile up effort over a long period of time, you will enter into the highest realm. Learning continues until death and only then does it cease. Therefore we may speak of an end to the program of learning, but the objective of learning must never for an instant be given up. To pursue it is to be a man, to give it up is to become a beast.

In Aristophanes we have a sarcastic caricature of what could happen in this torch-race. In the Frogs Aeschylus is represented in the Other World as accusing Euripides of being responsible for producing a generation of Athenians of whom 'no one is able to carry a torch any longer through lack of athletic training'. Dionysus supports this charge with a reminiscence: 'No indeed, by Jove, and at the Panathenaia I split myself laughing when a slow fellow was running, doubled up, white and flabby, left behind and in a terrible state. Then the men from the Kerameikos [the workmens' quarter through which the course went] in the gates were butting him on the belly and ribs and flanks and buttocks. When he was beaten on the road he gave a fart, blew out his torch and fled.' The episode is perhaps not all mischievous fantasy and is certainly a corrective to any romantic and sentimental notion of classical Greeks who were all perfect athletes.<sup>30

30</sup> Ar. Ra. 1089 ff.

μὰ Δί᾿ οὐ δῆθ᾿, ὥστ᾿ ἐπαφηυάνθην
Παναθηναίοισι γελῶν, ὅτε δὴ        1090
βραδὺς ἄνθρωπός τις ἔθει κύψας
λευκός, πίων, ὑπολειπόμενος
καὶ δεινὰ ποιῶν· κᾆθ᾿ οἱ Κεραμῆς
ἐν ταῖσι πύλαις παίουσ᾿ αὐτοῦ
γαστέρα, πλευράς, λαγόνας, πυγήν,        1095
ὁ δὲ τυπτόμενος ταῖσι πλατείαις
ὑποπερδόμενος
φυσῶν τὴν λαμπάδ᾿ ἔφευγεν.

Close your gate fast, yearn not to leave.
Keep yourself far from worldly cares ever,
Take this as the best policy—
I urge you, go home to your old cottage.
Sing drunkenly of wine taken in field-huts,
Chuckle, reading the books of ancients.
This is right for a whole lifetime—
Don't suffer writing a "Master Emptiness."

"Master Emptiness" ... was the fu of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju that won him fame in the court of Han Wu-ti. Wang Wei is, of course, playing on the title, suggesting the vanity of public fame.

Shutting the gate, I don't want to go out,
I have long been estranged from worldly business,
I take this as a long-term plan,
So I also advise you to return to your old abode,
Singing drunken praises of country-brewed wine,
Reading with amusement books by men of old,
Enjoy your life like this,
Don't bother to present a "Zixu".

[2] We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God's service in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, [3] so that no one would be unsettled by these trials.

καὶ ἐπέμψαμεν Τιμόθεον, τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν καὶ συνεργὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, εἰς τὸ στηρίξαι ὑμᾶς καὶ παρακαλέσαι ὑπὲρ τῆς πίστεως ὑμῶν [3] τὸ μηδένα σαίνεσθαι ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσιν ταύταις.

σαίνεσθαι vel sim. codd.: ἀσαίνεσθαι H. Venema (coll. Hsch. ἀσαίνων = ὑβρίζων, λυπῶν): σαλεύεσθαι T. Beza & R. Bentley: παθαίνεσθαι A.D. Knox (Journal of Theological Studies 25 [1924] 290-291)

[I.] prop. of dogs, wag the tail, fawn ....

II. metaph. of persons, fawn, cringe ....

III.[1.] c. acc. pers., fawn upon ....

2. fawn on, pay court to, greet ....

3. gladden, esp. with hope or conviction ....

4. beguile, cozen, deceive ....

5. in 1 Ep.Thess.3.3, σαίνεσθαι ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσι seems to mean to be shaken, disturbed; "σαινόμενοι τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐδάκρυον" D.L. 8.41 (or in signf. III.4); σαίνεται: κινεῖται, σαλεύεται, ταράττεται, Hsch.; but cf. σιαίνω.

cause loathing or disgust to a person ....

[T]here has recently come to light a clear and unambiguous instance of σαίνω meaning 'perturb mentally'. Among the theological papyri discovered in the find at Tura near Cairo in 1941 there is included the minutes of a discussion between Origen and a bishop Heraclides with others. The text is edited by M. Jean Scherer: Entretien d'Origène avec Héraclide et les évêques ses collègues sur le Père, le Fils, et l'Âme (Publications de la Société Fouad I de Papyrologie: Textes et Documents IX), Cairo, 1949. (See the review by Mr. G.W.H. Lampe in the Journal, April 1950.) After Origen has dealt with all the questions arising from the case of Heraclides, whose orthodoxy had seemed so doubtful to some of the community, he remarks (p. 140, line 5): τὰ μὲν περὶ πίστεως, ὅσα ἔσηνεν ἡμᾶς, συνεξετάσθη. 'All the questions about the faith which disturbed us have been examined.'

There is nothing to suggest that Origen may have been influenced by the New Testament.

[3] It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; [4] that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable ...

[3] τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, ὁ ἁγιασμὸς ὑμῶν, ἀπέχεσθαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τῆς πορνείας, [4] εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι ἐν ἁγιασμῷ καὶ τιμῇ ...

[I.1.] vessel or implement of any kind

2. inanimate object, thing

II. τὸ ς. the body, as the vessel of the soul, a metaph. clearly expressed in 2 Ep.Cor.4.7, ἔχομεν δὲ τὸν θησαυρὸν τοῦτον ἐν ὀστρακίνοις σκεύεσιν, cf. 1 Ep.Thess.4.4, 1 Ep.Pet. 3.7.

III. = αἰδοῖον, AP l.4.243 (Antist.), Ael. NA 17.11.

IV. sarcophagus ....

Also probable for 1 Th 4:4 is 'penis' (so Antistius [I a.d.] in Anthol. Plan. 4, 243; Aelian, NA 17, 11; cp. the euphemistic Lat. 'vasa' in this sense: Plautus, Poenulus. 863; s. MPoole, Synopsis Criticorum Ali. Sacrae Script., rev. ed. 1694, V col. 908; on sim. usage at Qumran s. TElgvin, NTS 43, '97, 604–19; NAB [1970] renders guarding his member [difft. rev. ed. of NAB, 1986]. Cp. KDonfried, NTS 31, '85, 342). In such case κτᾶσθαι must mean someth. like 'gain control of', etc.—DELG. M-M. EDNT. TW.

I'm drunk—my joy is boundless—
In every way better than not being drunk:
Each time I move it's a dance,
Each time I speak it's a poem.

I never knew such an idle man as I am. When I go in to Empson or Ellis his tables are always covered with books and papers. I can not stick at any thing for above a day or two. I mustered industry enough to teach myself Italian. I wish to speak Spanish. I know I could master the difficulties in a week, and read any book in the language at the end of a month, but I have not the courage to attempt it. If there had not been really something in me, idleness would have ruined me.

The real poetic advantage of an inflected language is of another kind. An inflected language implies that the nature of a thing is determined by its relations to other things, so that a change in its relations causes a change in its nature. In so far as poetry is concerned with emotions, this seems a more natural poetic attitude than that implied by an uninflected language, for I certainly feel myself to be a different person when I am kicking from the one I am when I am being kicked. Further, since the form of a word itself expresses its syntactical relations, it is possible for the poet by his choice of word order to obtain a double set of relations, those of syntax and those of neighborhood.

Every English poet must regret that his language makes it impossible for him to secure effects such as these of Horace:

       Nunc et campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem sussuri
composita repetantur hora

nunc et latentis proditor intumo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
    pignusque dereptur lacertis
    aut digito male pertinaci

Labels: typographical and other errors

There is a story told of A.S. Peake writing a Greek word on the blackboard of his Manchester classroom, and one of his students saying, 'You needn’t write it down, Doctor; we know Greek.' To which he replied, 'I wish I did.'

With the Croom Robertson fellowship ... he had sufficient to support himself at the University of Vienna, where he went to do postgraduate research under Paul Kretschmer. Kretschmer was Professor of Indo-European Philology and an expert on the development of the Greek language. During his year Bruce studied Greek, Indo-European and the Hittite language. We should note at this point his mastery of a wide range of languages; apart from the expected command of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, as a book reviewer he later handled titles in Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. And on one occasion during a Manchester faculty meeting. R.P.C. Hanson, then Professor of Theology and an authority on St. Patrick, was arguing that students did not need to to know the biblical languages; in support of his case, he argued that although he taught a course on Patrick, he did not know Middle Irish. Bruce responded "Well, I do!"

East of the walls of Lo-yang
    the flowers of peach and plum,
Flying here, flying away,
    into whose yard falling now?
And the young girls of Lo-yang
    grieve for their loveliness,
Walking they meet the fallen flowers
    and sigh their long-drawn sighs.
This year as the flowers fall
    their loveliness is changing.
Next year when the flowers bloom,
    who will still be here?
For I have seen cypress and pine
    smashed apart to kindling,
And heard that fields of mulberries
    have changed into the sea.
Those of the past will never again
    be east of Lo-yang's walls,
But people today still must face
    the winds that bring down flowers.
Every year, year after year,
    the flowers are always alike;
Year after year, every year,
    the people are not the same.
I send these words to boys in their prime,
    youths with glowing faces.
Have pity on one already dying,
    A white-haired old man.
The white hair of the old man
    is truly worthy your pity—
A while ago his face glowed too,
    a handsome young man.
You princelings, young noblemen
    beneath the flowering trees,
Clear singing, exquisite dancing
    before the falling flowers,
The Chamberlain's pool terrace,
    patterned as rich brocade,
And tower and hall of General Liang
    bear murals of the gods.
Then one morning lie down sick,
    no one knows your name,
And the pleasures of the springtime
    linger beside another.
Eyebrows gracefully curving—
    how long can they endure?
In an instant crane-white hair,
    tangled all like silk.
Look now to where from ancient days
    were lands of song and dancing.
Now nothing more than the brown of dusk
    and the lament of sparrows.

When a despot is killed or a dynasty destroyed less is achieved than some expect. After the initial transports of newly won liberation men look around and discover that the system abides—and most of the people.

I answered him: 'Ciacco, thy distress so weighs on me that it bids me weep. But tell me, if thou canst, what the citizens of the divided city shall come to and whether any there is just, and tell me the cause of such discord assailing it.'

Io li rispuosi: 'Ciacco, il tuo affanno
    mi pesa sì, ch'a lagrimar mi 'nvita;
    ma dimmi, se tu sai, a che verranno
li cittadin de la città partita;
    s'alcun v'è giusto; e dimmi la cagione
    per che l'ha tanta discordia assalita.'

Curious effect, here in the sanatorium, on Easter Sunday, when the people in this (the most expensive) block of "chalets" mostly have visitors, of hearing large numbers of upper-class English voices. I have been almost out of the sound of them for two years, hearing them at most one or two at a time, my ears growing more & more used to working-class or lower-middle class Scottish voices. In the hospital at Hairmyres, for instance, I literally never heard a "cultivated" accent except when I had a visitor. It is as though I were hearing these voices for the first time. And what voices! A sort of over-fedness, a fatuous self-confidence, a constant bah-bahing of laughter about nothing, above all a sort of heaviness & richness combined with a fundamental ill-will — people who, one instinctively feels, without even being able to see them, are the enemies of anything intelligent or sensitive or beautiful. No wonder everyone hates us so.

But we on our part, thus visiting you, have come as suppliants to your knees, in the hope that you will give us entertainment, or in some other manner be generous to us, as is the due of strangers. Do not deny us, good sir, but reverence the gods; we are your suppliants; and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and strangers—Zeus, the strangers' god—who walks in the footsteps of reverend strangers.

      ἡμεῖς δ᾿ αὖτε κιχανόμενοι τὰ σὰ γοῦνα
ἱκόμεθ᾿, εἴ τι πόροις ξεινήιον ἠὲ καὶ ἄλλως
δοίης δωτίνην, ἥ τε ξείνων θέμις ἐστίν.
ἀλλ᾿ αἰδεῖο, φέριστε, θεούς· ἱκέται δέ τοί εἰμεν,
Ζεὺς δ᾿ ἐπιτιμήτωρ ἱκετάων τε ξείνων τε,        270
ξείνιος, ὃς ξείνοισιν ἅμ᾿ αἰδοίοισιν ὀπηδεῖ.

Easy to know—the law of this floating life;
hard to deflect a single being from it:
when waters are deep, fish are at their happiest,
where groves flourish, birds find their roost.
Old, feeble, I'm content to be poor and sickly,
wouldn't know how to deal with abundance.
Autumn winds blow over my armrest and cane;
I don't disdain fern sprouts from the northern mountain.¹

1. A reference to the ancient sages Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who chose to live off the fern sprouts of Mt. Shouyang rather than compromise their principles.

Easy to recognize the pattern in this life adrift—
you can't make a single creature go against its nature.
Where the water is deep, the fish have the utmost joy;
birds knows to return where the woods are most leafy.
Aging and infirm, I accept poverty and sickness,
in prominence and glory there are judgments to be made.
The autumn wind blows on my cane and armrest,
I do not weary of north mountain's wild beans.

We may talke what we please of Lilies, and Lions Rampant, and Spread-Eagles in Fields d'Or, or d'Argent; But if Heraldry were guided by Reason, a Plough in a field Arable, would be the most Noble and Antient Armes.

I am one of these men who are always interested in trivialities.

Let us destroy, let us deny, let us annihilate politics, since it divides us and arms us against one another ...

Tuons, renions, anéantissons la politique, puisqu'elle nous divise et nous arme les uns contre les autres ...

"Now, Mr. Sawyer!" screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Raddle, "are them brutes going?"

"They're only looking for their hats, Mrs. Raddle," said Bob; "they are going directly."

"Going!" said Mrs. Raddle, thrusting her nightcap over the banisters just as Mr. Pickwick, followed by Mr. Tupman, emerged from the sitting-room. "Going! What did they ever come for?"

Yet death, that's common to all, not the gods themselves
can ward off even from a man they love, whenever
the dire fate of pitiless death has once got hold of him.

ἀλλ᾿ ἦ τοι θάνατον μὲν ὁμοίιον οὐδὲ θεοί περ
καὶ φίλῳ ἀνδρὶ δύναται ἀλαλκέμεν, ὁππότε κεν δὴ
μοῖρ᾿ ὀλοὴ καθέλῃσι τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο.

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
    Within this region I subsist,
    Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.

It is the land that freemen till,
    That sober-suited Freedom chose,
    The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,
    A land of just and old renown,
    Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent:

Where faction seldom gathers head,
    But by degrees to fullness wrought,
    The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
    Opinion, and induce a time
    When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;

Tho' Power should make from land to land
    The name of Britain trebly great—
    Tho' every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand—

Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth,
    Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
    And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
      When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder        5
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
      Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,        10
May these loved and loving faces
      Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather        15
      Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
      Till to delight        20
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
      In other days.

The following stanza of Mr de la Mare's 'Fare well' first met my eyes, thus printed, in a newspaper review.

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,        10
May these loved and loving faces
      Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather        15
      Posies once mine.

I knew in a moment that Mr de la Mare had not written rustling, and in another moment I had found the true word. But if the book of poems had perished and the verse survived only in the review, who would have believed me rather than the compositor? The bulk of the reading public would have been perfectly content with rustling, nay they would sincerely have preferred it to the epithet which the poet chose. If I had been so ill-advised as to publish my emendation, I should have been told that rustling was exquisitely apt and poetical, because hedgerows do rustle, especially in autumn, when the leaves are dry, and when straws and ears from the passing harvest-wain (to which 'harvest' is so plain an allusion that only a pedant like me could miss it) are hanging caught in the twigs; and I should have been recommended to quit my dusty (or musty) books and make a belated acquaintance with the sights and sounds of the English countryside. And the only possible answer would have been ugh!

But we are not told what the true word was—"rusting," in fact. The attitude here exemplified is well documented and familiar. We have all met people who, because they themselves have suffered or been excessively imposed upon, feel the need to compensate by dominating and manipulating others, if only in trivial ways, and the silly power games that Housman here plays with his readers fall squarely within this class. Paul Naiditch suggests that Housman wrote this passage and others like it in order "to let the reader take his own measure, and then, if need be, to confess to himself that the melancholy truth stares him in the face" ([2], p. 152), namely, the truth that he is no critic. This is right, so long as the emphasis falls on the latter part of the sentence: Housman was less interested in educating his readers than in crushing them.

[Y]our reference to the use of “rustling” in the American edition of de la Mare’s Collected Poems, 1901-1918, Volume 1 (Henry Holt 1920) piqued my curiosity. I have a copy of the English edition of the same collection, which was published by Constable in 1920 under the title Poems 1901 to 1918, Volume 1. I checked, and the line reads “May the rusting harvest hedgerow” in the Constable edition (page 250). Comparing the American and English editions on the Internet Archive, it appears that the Holt edition may have been re-set, rather than simply being a re-binding of the Constable sheets for the American edition. Hence, it would appear that someone at Holt decided that “rusting” was “incorrect,” and changed it to “rustling.”

The use of “rusting” in the Constable edition is consistent with Constable’s 1918 edition of Motley and Other Poems, the collection in which “Fare Well” first appeared (to my knowledge) in book form. I have a copy of the 1918 Holt edition of Motley and Other Poems, and “rusting” is used there as well.

Finally, “rusting” is also used in The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare, which was published by Faber and Faber in 1979.

Thus at length we see both by this and other places, that there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel, but must bee read with limitations and distinctions, to bee rightly understood; for Christ gives no full comments or continued discourses, but as Demetrius the Rhetoritian phrases it, speakes oft in Monosyllables, like a maister scattering the heavenly grain of his doctrine like pearls heere and there, which requires a skilfull and laborious gatherer, who must compare the words he findes, with other precepts, with the end of every ordinance, and with the generall analogie of Evangelick doctrine: otherwise many particular sayings would bee but strange repugnant riddles ...

Commands too are always terse and brief, and every master is monosyllabic to his slave ...

καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐπιτάσσειν σύντομον καὶ βραχύ, καὶ πᾶς δεσπότης δούλῳ μονοσύλλαβος ...

I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.

For younger people are always thoughtless.

αἰεὶ γάρ τε νεώτεροι ἀφραδέουσιν.

You are of good blood, dear child, that you speak thus.

αἵματός εἰς ἀγαθοῖο, φίλον τέκος, οἷ᾿ ἀγορεύεις.

• Father to Daughter
• A Man's Prayer for His Son
• Pride
• My Son

        Theirs was a greatness
        Got from their Grandsires —
        Theirs that so often in
        Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

                                  swa him geæþele wæs
from cneomægum,    þæt hi æt campe oft
wiþ laþra gehwæne    land ealgodon,
hord and hamas.

It seems that the ancient Romans, like the Greeks, abhorred the taking of interest on loans as something knavish, and hard on the poor, and leading to contention and enmity; and by the same kind of reasoning the Persians considered lending as having itself a tendency to deceit and lying.

ἀποστραφῆναι γάρ μοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ πάλαι Ῥωμαῖοι, καθάπερ Ἕλληνες, τὸ δανείζειν ὡς καπηλικὸν καὶ βαρὺ τοῖς πένησι καὶ δύσερι καὶ ἐχθροποιόν, ᾧ λόγῳ καὶ Πέρσαι τὸ κίχρασθαι ὡς ἀπατηλόν τε καὶ φιλοψευδές.

• Usury
• Financial Instruments

I want to be read by less and less people; I have no interest in the life of the masses, nor in the intentions of the existing governments of the world. I hope and believe that the whole civilised world will be wiped out in the next hundred years or so. I believe that man can exist, and in an infinitely better, larger way, without "civilisation".

• Gómez Dávila on Writing for Oneself
• Few, One, or None
• Few, One, or None Revisited
• Write the Book You Want To Read
• An Audience of One
• Tolkien on Writing for Oneself
• To Write for Oneself
• Soliloquies
• Mihi et Musis
• Says I to Myself
• A Garbled Footnote
• For the Sole Benefit of the Performer

Then indeed with rejoicing did Agamemnon set foot on his native land, and laying hold of his land he kissed it, and many were the hot tears that streamed from his eyes, for welcome to him was the sight of his land.

ἦ τοι ὁ μὲν χαίρων ἐπεβήσετο πατρίδος αἴης
καὶ κύνει ἁπτόμενος ἣν πατρίδα· πολλὰ δ᾽ ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ
δάκρυα θερμὰ χέοντ᾽, ἐπεὶ ἀσπασίως ἴδε γαῖαν.

• Back Home Again! (T'ao Ch'ien)
• Homecoming (Joachim Du Bellay)
• Home Sweet Home (Homer, Theognis, Marcantonio Flaminio)
• Home Sweet Home (Catullus)

The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.

A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them nowadays—when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who cares a damn for his grandchildren? Nor does anybody plant a quince, a mulberry or a medlar. But these are garden trees which you can only be expected to plant if you have a patch of ground of your own. On the other hand, in any hedge or in any piece of waste ground you happen to be walking through, you can do something to remedy the appalling massacre of trees, especially oaks, ashes, elms and beeches, which has happened during the war years.

Even an apple tree is liable to live for about 100 years, so that the Cox I planted in 1936 may still be bearing fruit well into the twenty-first century. An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all one's obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.

• Planting Trees
• A Pious Man
• More on a Pious Man
• An Octogenarian Plants a Tree
• A Disinterested Spirit
• The Long View
• Do Not Laugh At My Folly
• Factura Nepotibus Umbram

Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

But I think that because he was weary of war, weary of power, weary of Rome, he finally fell in love with rural life.

ἀλλά μοι δοκεῖ κόρον τε πολέμων καὶ κόρον ἀρχῆς καὶ κόρον ἄστεος λαβὼν ἐπὶ τέλει καὶ ἀγροικίας ἐρασθῆναι.

This way, Lord Bacchus crowned with ivy,
do personally be our leader:
and with revels I will hymn you,
who love the dance!
Euius, you Noisemaker,
son of Zeus and Semele,
who enjoy the dances
of Nymphs at their charming songs
as you ramble over the mountains—
Euius, Euius, euoi!—
striking up the dances all night long;
and all around you their cries
echo on Cithaeron,
and the mountains shady
with dark leaves and the rocky
valleys reverberate.
And all around you ivy tendrils
twine in lovely bloom.

ἡγοῦ δέ γ᾿ ὧδ᾿ αὐτὸς σύ,
κισσοφόρε Βακχεῖε
δέσποτ᾿· ἐγὼ δὲ κώμοις
σε φιλοχόροισι μέλψω.

Εὔιε, ὦ Διὸς σὺ        990
Βρόμιε, καὶ Σεμέλας παῖ,
χοροῖς τερπόμενος
κατ᾿ ὄρεα Νυμφᾶν
ἐρατοῖς ἐν ὕμνοις,
ὦ Εὔι᾿ Εὔι᾿, εὐοῖ,
<παννύχιος> ἀναχορεύων.

ἀμφὶ δὲ σοὶ κτυπεῖται        995
Κιθαιρώνιος ἠχώ,
μελάμφυλλά τ᾿ ὄρη
δάσκια πετρώδεις
τε νάπαι βρέμονται·
κύκλῳ δὲ περί σε κισσὸς
εὐπέταλος ἕλικι θάλλει.        1000

990 Εὔιε, ὦ Διὸς σὺ Enger: εὔιον ὦ Διόνυσε R
994 suppl. Coulon (ἡδόμενος Austin)

Come, the Lord of wine and pleasure,
Evoi, Bacchus, lead us thou!
Yea, for Thee we adore!
Child of Semele, thee
With thy glittering ivy-wreaths,
Thee with music and song
Ever and ever we praise.
Thee with thy wood-nymphs delightedly singing,
    Evoi! Evoi! Evoi!
Over the joyous hills the sweet strange melody ringing.
    Hark! Cithaeron resounds,
    Pleased the notes to prolong;
    Hark! the bosky ravines
    And the wild slopes thunder and roar,
    Volleying back the song.
    Round thee the ivy fair
    With delicate tendril twines.

River slopes, already midmonth of spring;
under the blossoms, bright mornings again.
I look up, eager to watch the birds;
turn my head, answering what I took for a call.
Reading books, I skip the hard parts;
faced with wine, I keep my cup filled.
These days I've gotten to know the old man of Emei.¹
He understand this idleness that is my true nature.

————————————————

1. Emei is a famous mountain southwest of Chengdu.

On the river floodplain it is already mid-spring,
under the flowers once again a clear morning.
I raise my face, avid to watch the birds,
I turn my head, mistakenly to answer someone.
When I read, I pass over the hard words,
with ale before me, full pots are frequent.
Recently I've gotten to know an old fellow from Emei,
he understands that my indolence is my true nature.

What headstrong, what pitiless, what unbridled barbarity is this you display! Is it for this that you have visited our city? — to subvert that city's laws and traditions ... ?

quae est ista tam impotens, tam crudelis, tam immoderata inhumanitas? idcirco in hanc urbem venisti ut huius urbis iura et exempla corrumperes ... ?

To show how these things came about I have written and compiled this narrative, which is well worth the study of those who wish to know the measureless ambition of men, their dreadful lust of power, their unwearying perseverance, and the countless forms of evil.

ταῦτα δ᾽ ὅπως ἐγένετο, συνέγραψα καὶ συνήγαγον, ἀξιοθαύμαστα ὄντα τοῖς ἐθέλουσιν ἰδεῖν φιλοτιμίαν ἀνδρῶν ἄμετρον καὶ φιλαρχίαν δεινὴν καρτερίαν τε ἄτρυτον καὶ κακῶν ἰδέας μυρίων.

Be yours this fruit, take the produce of my night-watches:
my midnight oil burns in the service of your delight.

sit tuus hic fructus, vigilatas accipe noctes:
    obsequitur studio nostra lucerna tuo.

Second month spent by now, third month arrives;
old age creeps up, how many more springs will I see?
But cease thinking of endless matters beyond my ken—
first let me drink up the cups allowed me in this life!

Do you see how the villagers, outspread o'er the well-worn turf,        15
offer their yearly vows and begin the regular altar-worship?
Temples reek of wine; the hollow drums resound to the hands;
the Maenalids^a lead the youthful ring-dances amid the holy rites;
joyful sounds the pipe; from the elm hangs the he-goat doomed to sacrifice,
and with neck already stripped lays his vitals bare.        20
Surely then the offspring of to-day fight with no doubtful hazard?^b
Surely the blockish herd denies not to these times the realms of gold?^c
The days of Saturn have returned with Justice the Maid:^d
the age has returned in safety to the olden ways.
With hope unruffled does the harvester garner all his corn-ears;        25
the Wine-god betrays the languor of old age; the herd wanders on the lea;
we reap with no sword, nor do towns in fast-closed walls
prepare unutterable war: there is not any woman who, dangerous in her motherhood,
gives birth to an enemy.^e Unarmed our youth
can dig the fields, and the boy, trained to the slow-moving plough,        30
marvels at the sword hanging in the abode of his fathers.

^a Maenalus in Arcadia was especially associated with Pan.

^b i.e. the present generation has no handicap in the struggle of life: there is no conflict between man and nature, because the Golden Age has returned.

^c The very cattle must own that the blessings of the Golden Age belong to the present era.

^d Line 23 imitates Virg. Ecl. iv.6, iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

^e No foeman can be born, as war is at an end.

cernis ut attrito diffusus cespite pagus        15
annua vota ferat sollennesque incohet aras?
spirant templa mero, resonant cava tympana palmis,
Maenalides teneras ducunt per sacra choreas,
tibia laeta canit, pendet sacer hircus ab ulmo
et iam nudatis cervicibus exuit exta.        20
ergo nunc dubio pugnant discrimine nati
et negat huic aevo stolidum pecus aurea regna?
Saturni rediere dies Astraeaque virgo
tutaque in antiquos redierunt saecula mores.
condit secura totas spe messor aristas,        25
languescit senio Bacchus, pecus errat in herba,
nec gladio metimus nec clausis oppida muris
bella tacenda parant; nullo iam noxia partu
femina quaecumque est hostem parit. arva iuventus
nuda fodit tardoque puer domifactus aratro        30
miratur patriis pendentem sedibus ensem.

15 cespite pagus Baehrens: cortice fagus E
16 inchoet Baehrens: imbuet E: imbuat Hagen: induat Peiper
21 nunc Baehrens: num E
22 tutaque Baehrens: totaque E

In my nineteenth year, after my father's death, I betook myself to Paris from love of Greek, believing that they who know not Greek, know nothing. After attending the learned lectures of Adrian Turnebus for two months, I found I was throwing all my work away, because I had no foundation. I secluded myself, therefore, in my study, and, shut in that grinding-mill, sought to learn, self-taught, what I had not been able to acquire from others. Beginning with a mere smattering of the Greek conjugations, I procured Homer, with a translation, and learned him all in twenty-one days. I learned grammar exclusively from observation of the relation of Homer's words to each other; indeed, I made my own grammar of the poetic dialect as I went along. I devoured all the other Greek poets within four months. I did not touch any of the orators or historians until I had mastered all the poets.

Anno aetatis meae decimonono Lutetiam post obitum patris petii literarum Graecarum amore, quas qui nescirent, omnia nescire putabam. Postquam menses duos operam Adriano Turnebo dedissem, quia destitutus aliis praesidiis operam omnem in eius doctissimo auditorio ludebam, in musaeum me abdidi, & in illo pistrino inclusus, quod ex aliis non potueram, me magistro discere experiebar. Igitur vix delibatis coniugationibus Graecis, Homerum cum interpretatione arreptum vno & viginti diebus totum didici: poeticae vero dialecti vestigiis insistens Grammaticam mihi ipse formavi: neque vllam aliam didici, quam quae mihi ex analogia verborum Homericorum obseruata fuit. Reliquos vero poetas Graecos omnes intra quatuor menses deuoraui. Neque vllum oratorem, aut historicum prius attigi, quam poetas omnes tenerem.

The whole world is full of impudence and brass.

ὡς ἅπαντ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐστὶ τόλμης ἔργα κἀναισχυντίας.

How everything is full of impudence and shamelessness!

One bend of the clear river crooks the village in its flow;
long summer days, river village, all activity stilled.
Swallows from the bridge come and go as they please,
gulls on the water friendlier, more fearless than ever.
My aging wife rules a sheet of paper, fashioning us a chessboard;
the boys hammer a needle, making it into a fishhook.
With all these ailments, all I require is medicine;¹
of humble station, what more could I ask?

————————————————

1. "I've an old friend who supplies me with rations of rice;" is an alternate reading given in one version of the text.

A hundred years ago, Charles Kingsley described science as "making nasty smells in a laboratory". A year or two ago a young industrial chemist informed me, smugly, that he "could not see what was the use of poetry". So the pendulum swings to and fro, but it does not seem to me that one attitude is any better than the other.

Be content with your present lot, but seek a better one.

Taunt no man with his misfortune; for fate is common to all and the future is a thing unseen.

στέργε μὲν τὰ παρόντα, ζήτει δὲ τὰ βελτίω.

μηδενὶ συμφορὰν ὀνειδίσῃς· κοινὴ γὰρ ἡ τύχη καὶ τὸ μέλλον ἀόρατον.

βελτίω Γ, Stobaeus: βέλτιστα ΕΖ

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.