Laudator Temporis Acti

From an exhaustive study on Mesopotamian ^LUALAN.ZU by Römer we see that the Akkadian word for "jesters" is probably of Anatolian origin. He disguises himself like a woman or a king, thus holding kings as well as religious persons up to public ridicule; he is "Imitator" and "Persiflator", i.e. satirizer. He deals with tamed bears, billy goats and appears as tightrope-walker (Seiltänzer) and glutton (Vielfrass); he sits on chamber pots and lets off farts. He pretends to eat unimaginable foods. The scope of his activities is very wide.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

A hanger-on jolly well ought to be a poor Cynic;¹⁷
he should have a flask, a scraper, a bowl, flat shoes, a cloak,
and a wallet, and in it a little support
to sustain his own life only.

¹⁷ The Cynic school of philosophy, founded by Diogenes of Sinope, aimed at freeing man from unnecessary desires. Cynics were often proverbially poor, like the hangers-on of comedy; but unlike hangers-on the Cynics tried to be self-sufficient.

cynicum esse egentem oportet parasitum probe:
ampullam, strigilem, scaphium, soccos, pallium,
marsuppium habeat, inibi paullum praesidi        125
qui familiarem suam uitam oblectet modo.

It jolly well behooves a parasite to be a poverty-stricken cynic—
let him have a flask, strigil, cup, sandals, cloak,
and a purse garrisoned with next to nothing
for the sole delectation of his very own household.

ληκύθιον στλεγγίδα ποτήριον ἐμβάδας τριβώνιον πήραν

Satchel, barley-meal, cloak, staff, cup — this was the scanty kit of the Cynic. But he thought it was excessive. For seeing a rustic drinking with cupped hands, he said, "Why, cup, do I carry you, a superfluous thing?"

pera, polenta, tribon, baculus, scyphus, arta supellex
    ista fuit Cynici, set putat hanc nimiam.
namque cavis manibus cernens potare bubulcum
    'cur, scyphe, te', dixit, 'gesto supervacuum?'

• Self-Sufficiency
  
• Omnia Mea Mecum Porto
  
• Use Your Memory

For the morning accounts for a third of the work:
morning forwards the journey, forwards the job,
morning, whose appearance puts many a man
on the road, and sets the yoke on many an ox.

ἠὼς γὰρ ἔργοιο τρίτην ἀπομείρεται αἶσαν,
ἠώς τοι προφέρει μὲν ὁδοῦ, προφέρει δὲ καὶ ἔργου,
ἠώς, ἥτε φανεῖσα πολέας ἐπέβησε κελεύθου        580
ἀνθρώπους πολλοῖσί τ᾽ ἐπὶ ζυγὰ βουσὶ τίθησιν.

One-third of work is Dawn's own share to ask,
Dawn lights the path, Dawn offers you the task,
Dawn shows herself, and sets men on their way;
Dawn yokes the oxen at the break of day.

One maxim of my old friend the late W.G. Rutherford was, 'Always suspect a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον'...

A liberal admixture of verses adds further spice: G. can turn his hand not only to elegiacs and hexameters (Virgilian, Lucretian and Horatian), but also to hendecasyllables, senarii, scazons, iambic and trochaic septenarii, Alcaics, and Asclepiads. And I have little to fault in his metrical technique, though it might have been wise to avoid violation of diaeresis in an iambic septenarius, interlinear elision in senarii, and monosyllabic 'ain' in elegiacs.

There were just two routes they could take from home...

erant omnino itinera duo, quibus itineribus domo exire possent...

When Caesar realized he was being led on and the date when grain must be rationed to the soldiers was pressing...

ubi se diutius duci intellexit et diem instare quo die frumentum militibus metiri oporteret...

[I]n a relative clause, the relative pronoun is sometimes pleonastically followed by the noun to which it refers, which normally occurs in the main clause.⁵⁹ This lengthy form of expression is again restricted in the speech of old people in Terence, especially to that of Lucius Ambivius in the prologues of Heautontimoroumenos and Hecyra (two out of three examples): Heaut. 20–1 habet bonorum exemplum, quo exemplo sibi licere [id] facere and Hec. 10–11 sinite exorator sim eodem ut iure uti senem liceat quo iure sum usus adulescentior. The last example is spoken by Micio at Ad. 854 i ergo intro, et quoi reist, ei rei [hilarum] hunc sumamus diem.

⁵⁹ Cf. K-S 569.

While Leland [Stanford] personifies the American success story, [David Starr] Jordan typifies a certain heroic image of science that became powerful in tandem with that story. This new science defined itself by its separateness from all other modes of understanding—by its reductionism, instrumentalism, utilitarianism, and pragmatism. It had no time for Greek or Latin, literature or history, speculations or interpretations, or any idea without immediate industrial and economic application. It had little time for books: "Study nature not books" was one of Jordan's mottoes.

[....]

Jordan's mode of science and Leland's mode of business were twin expressions of an aspiring industrial class that envisioned itself elbowing aside a senescent elite mumbling in Greek and Latin.

the fact that I breathe the breath of music and give pleasure (if I do give pleasure) is all of your doing.

quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.

spiro in line 24 is generally taken by recent editors and commentators (though not by all readers) as meaning in effect 'I have inspiration.' But this value for the word does not appear to be exemplified elsewhere. On the other hand a well-attested value of spiro is 'be alive': e.g., Propertius 4.7.11 uocem misit adhuc spirantis (Cynthia's ghost); Ovid Heroides 5.29 cum Paris Oenone poterit spirare relicta ... (in Paris' vow of fidelity cut on a tree); Cicero Mil. 91 qui ab (against) eo spirante forum putant potuisse defendi, cuius non restiterit cadaveri curia. A natural meaning of line 24 is thus 'that I live and please (if indeed I please) is your doing.' And this meaning is both explained and confirmed by Ovid Tristia 4.10.121-22, where Ovid also, like Horace here, is thanking his Muse: tu mihi, quod rarum est, uiuo sublime dedisti / nomen, ab exequiis quod dare fama solet. Martial echoes the sentiment in 3.95.7-8 notumque per oppida nomen / non expectato dat mihi fama rogo.

Now that our foes are vanquished and our citizens safe, our state tranquil, peace assured, and the war brought to a triumphant termination, with our army and garrisons intact, I do thank thee, Jupiter, for thy kindly aid, and to all the other denizens of heaven do I offer thanks for that I have wreaked such glorious vengeance on mine enemy.

hostibus victis, civibus salvis, re placida, pacibus perfectis,
bello exstincto, re bene gesta, integro exercitu et praesidiis,
quom bene nos, Iuppiter, iuvisti, dique alii omnes caelipotentes,
eas vobis gratis habeo atque ago, quia probe sum ultus meum inimicum.

caelipotentes: The adjective is found only here.

sit nisi caelipotens aquilonum conditor idem?

So the mistake, it may be argued, is theirs, and our conception of the Middle Ages is right. This would be so if, to understand the spirit of an age, it sufficed to know its real and hidden forces and not its illusions, its fancies, and its errors. But for the history of civilization every delusion or opinion of an epoch has the value of an important fact.

And even political history itself, under penalty of neglecting actual facts, is bound to take illusions, vanities, follies, into account. There is not a more dangerous tendency in history than that of representing the past as if it were a rational whole and dictated by clearly defined interests.

Bulephorus Quite so. But tell me, Nosoponus, surely you don't spend the whole night on one letter?

Nosoponus What do you mean, one letter? I feel the Muses have accepted my devotions if a winter's night produces one single period.

Bulephorus So you write a great long letter on this rather insignificant topic?

Nosoponus No, indeed, I write a very short one, you can be sure of that, not longer than six periods.

Bulephorus So naturally six nights will be enough to complete it?

Nosoponus As if it were enough to write things once! You must reshape what you've written ten times, check it against your word-lists ten times, in case some tiny illegitimate word has slipped past your guard. Then you have to check it again for figures of speech and idioms, and finally for rhythms and word order.

Bulephorus That really is doing the job thoroughly.

Nosoponus My dear fellow, even that's not enough. When you've worked it over as carefully as you can, you must put it aside for several days so that in the interval your affection for your brain-child may cool off, and you read your own words as if they were somebody else's. It's at this point that you exercise really severe criticism. This is where we have that strict impartial judgment, ἀδέκαστος 'immune to bribery,' as the Greeks call it, where the author ceases to be a parent and becomes an Areopagite. At this point one very often takes one's eraser and rubs it all out.

BVL. Quidni? Verum age Nosopone. Num tota nox vni datur epistolae?

NOSOP. Quid mihi narras vnam? Musis pulchre videor litasse, si periodum vnicam absoluerit nox hyberna.

BVL. Ita ne de re tam non magna, tam prolixas scribis litteras?

NOSOP. Imo perbreues, ne sis insciens, vt quae sextam periodum non excedant.

BVL. Quin igitur sex noctes sufficiunt his absoluendis?

NOSOP. Quasi satis scripsisse semel. Decies refingendum quod scripseris: decies ad indicem exigendum, ne qua forte dictiuncula te fefellerit adulterina. Rursus altera superest examinatio de tropis ac formulis, postrema de numeris et compositione.

BVL. Hoc nimirum est opus absoluere.

NOSOP. Ne id quidem satis ô bone. Dehinc quod elaboratum est cura, quanta potest maxima, seponendum est in aliquot dies, vt ex interuallo, refrigerato iam inuentionis amore, velut aliena legas, quae tua sunt. Hic demum grauis agitur censura: Hoc seuerum, incorruptum, et, vt Graeci vocant, ἀδέκαστον iudicium, vbi qui scripsit ex parente fit Areopagites. Hic saepenumero fit, vt verso stilo, nihil relinquas.

• Rewriting
• Revise and Rewrite

Lucky is he who can learn the roots of the universe,
Has mastered all his fears and fate's intransigence
And the hungry clamour of hell.
But fortunate too the man who is friends with the country gods—
Pan and old Silvanus and the sisterhood of nymphs:
The fasces have no power to disturb him, nor the purple
Of monarchs, nor civil war that sets brother at brother's throat,
Nor yet the scheming Dacian as he marches down from the Danube,
Nor the Roman Empire itself and kingdoms falling to ruin.
He has no poor to pity, no envy for the rich.
The fruit on the bough, the crops that the field is glad to bear
Are his for the gathering: he spares not a glance for the iron
Rigour of law, the municipal racket, the public records.
Other men dare the sea with their oars blindly, or dash
On the sword, or insinuate themselves into royal courts:
One ruins a whole town and the tenements of the poor
In his lust for jewelled cups, for scarlet linen to sleep on;
One piles up great wealth, gloats over his cache of gold;
One gawps at the public speakers; one is worked up to hysteria
By the plaudits of senate and people resounding across the benches:
These shed their brothers' blood
Merrily, they barter for exile their homes beloved
And leave for countries lying under an alien sun.
But still the farmer furrows the land with his curving plough:
The land is his annual labour, it keeps his native country,
His little grandsons and herds of cattle and trusty bullocks.

felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas        490
atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum
subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari:
fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.
illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum        495
flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres,
aut coniurato descendens Dacus ab Histro,
non res Romanae perituraque regna; neque ille
aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti.
quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia rura        500
sponte tulere sua, carpsit, nec ferrea iura
insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit.
sollicitant alii remis freta caeca, ruuntque
in ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum;
hic petit excidiis urbem miserosque penatis,        505
ut gemma bibat et Sarrano dormiat ostro;
condit opes alius defossoque incubat auro;
hic stupet attonitus rostris, hunc plausus hiantem
per cuneos geminatus enim plebisque patrumque
corripuit; gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,        510
exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant
atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem.
agricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro:
hic anni labor, hinc patriam parvosque nepotes
sustinet, hinc armenta boum meritosque iuvencos.        515

Having myself lived through a couple of world wars and having read a certain amount of history, I am no longer disposed to take very seriously the professions of "war aims" that nations make. I think that it is a serious deficiency on the part of historians and political writers that they so rarely interest themselves in biological and zoological phenomena. In a recent Walt Disney film showing life at the bottom of the sea, a primitive organism called a sea slug is seen gobbling up smaller organisms through a large orifice at one end of its body; confronted with another sea slug of an only slightly lesser size, it ingurgitates that, too. Now, the wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of the sea slug. It is true that among the animals other than man it is hard to find organized aggression of the kind that has been developed by humanity. There are perhaps only the army ants which have mastered a comparable technique. But baboons travel in gangs; small birds will gang up on an owl; bees will defend a hive. The anthropoid gorilla, it seems, is now one of the least pugnacious of mammals: he lives in a family tree and does not molest the homes of others; but there is evidence that primitive man had to fight to defend his home. In any case, all animals must prey on some form of life that they can capture, and all will eat as much as they can. The difference in this respect between man and the other forms of life is that man has succeeded in cultivating enough of what he calls "morality" and "reason" to justify what he is doing in terms of what he calls "virtue" and "civilization." Hence the self-assertive sounds which he utters when he is fighting and swallowing others: the songs about glory and God, the speeches about national ideals, the demonstrations of logical ideologies. These assertions rarely have any meaning—that is, they will soon lose any meaning they have had—once a war has been got under way.

non edepol minis trecentis cara est.

She wouldn't expensive at three hundred minas.

Labels: typographical and other errors

While the animals graze I pass the time playing my flute and lying in the shade of a rock or a tree. All the herd boys like me have flutes—we make them ourselves out of thick bamboo stems and when we make a good one we keep it for ever. I can do bird-songs on my flute, too, and you can have a wonderful time doing that, getting the birds to answer you one after another. I play herd songs a lot of the time, and when I meet another herdboy we play part songs. I can sing hundreds of verses of songs—I love them—and I've learnt dozens and dozens from other herdboys I've met in the mountains. The songs go on for ever, and there's as many verses as grains of sand on the seashore. One learns more every day and makes up more every day—I could sing right through the night until dawn without repeating a verse twice.

The songs are beautiful, but a lot of them are pretty dirty—if I'm singing the evening when there's a lot of contadini coming home from work and they hear me singing those ones they tell my father and he tells me off.

[....]

Then there's songs you in alternate verses with someone you can hear but most times can't see. These arc called botta e risposta. We herds don't often meet each other in the mountains—each of us takes his animals to different places because there's not enough grass to go round, but we can play games together even if we're far apart. You hear the voice of another herd singing far away and you wait for the right moment and answer him. If he hears you start up alternate verses like this:

I sing: Who are you that singing up there?
You sound like a yapping puppy.

and he answers: And who are you wailing away down there?
You sound as if you had toothache in every tooth.

I: You know nothing about singing—
You'd better go and learn at school in Palermo.

He: You say I don't know how to sing—
You'd better go to school at Monreale.

I: Don't you come round here again—
Everyone says you're a cretin.

He: It's you that's got to quit this valley—
Everyone knows about you.

I: When you were born behind my door
I thought you were a still-born bitch-pup.

He: When you were born in the middle of my street
There was an awful stink of dung.

[....]

But that would be too short for a real botta e risposta; I've left out a hundred verses in the middle. If one of us stopped as soon as that the other would think he'd had an accident. Sometimes I've sung a botta for the whole night—one's voice sounds better at night. We don't take offence at what we sing to each other—if we did we wouldn't sing them, or else we'd go and beat each other up. If you're clever enough you can invent new verses, but you have to make them rhyme properly.

Come to my jubilee:
I've passed the fifty-year mark.

All my good time has gone away:
Come to my jubilee.

My body's a total wreck.        5
Farewell! Remember me!
Come to my jubilee:
I've passed the fifty-year mark.

---

Venez a mon jubilé:
J'ay passé la cinquantaine.

Tout mon bon temps est alé:
Venez a mon jubilé.

Mon corps est tout affolé.        5
Adieu! de moy vous souviengne!
Venez a mon jubilé:
J'ay passé la cinquantaine.

• Inscription for a 30th Birthday Card
• Verses for a 68th Birthday Card
• Motto for a 65th Birthday Card
• Birthday Celebrations
• Ideas for Birthday Card Greetings
• Motto for a Birthday Card
• Birthday Greetings

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Look at the generations of old ...

ἐμβλέψατε εἰς ἀρχαίας γενεὰς ...

RHADAMANTHUS. For every wicked deed that each of you has done in his life he bears an invisible mark on his soul.

CYNISCUS. Here I am naked, so seek out the marks you mention.

RHADAMANTHUS. The man is altogether free from marks, except for these three or four, very faint and uncertain.

ΡΑΔΑΜΑΝΘΥΣ. ὁπόσα ἄν τις ὑμῶν πονηρὰ ἐργάσηται παρὰ τὸν βίον, καθ' ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἀφανῆ στίγματα ἐπὶ τῆς ψυχῆς περιφέρει.

ΚΥΝΙΣΚΟΣ. ἰδού σοι γυμνὸς παρέστηκα· ὥστε ἀναζήτει ταῦτα ἅπερ σὺ φὴς τὰ στίγματα.

ΡΑΔΑΜΑΝΘΥΣ. καθαρὸς ὡς ἐπίπαν οὑτοσὶ πλὴν τούτων τριῶν ἢ τεττάρων ἀμαυρῶν πάνυ καὶ ἀσαφῶν στιγμάτων.

Oral tradition has a fine sound to it. It seems to promise knowledge new and true, delicate and important. Occasionally, it is as good as its promise. But, in essence, oral tradition is not in itself superior to a written account. The format of a story does not guarantee its truth. Plainly, oral or written, published or unpublished, the tale is the product of men, and men are fallible. Obviously, then, it becomes men, who also are historians or biographers, to scrutinise their data narrowly and to evaluate it with suspicious care. It is no part of their business to rake it into their house unsorted.

Who wouldn't prefer to be celebrated by posterity as a Ciceronian rather than as a saint?

Quis enim non malit apud posteros celebrari Ciceronianus quam sanctus?

Time of mourning and of temptation,
Age of weeping, of envy and of torment,
Time of feebleness and of damnation,
Age leading near to completion.
Time full of horror, that does everything falsely,        5
Age mendacious, full of pride and envy,
Time without honor and without true judgement,
Age that shortens life in sadness.

Time without respect, time of ruin,
Age fraudulent, everything goes disloyally,        10
Time in error, near to conclusion,
Time thieving, full of rapacity,
Time, look at your heart, come to repentance,
Age sinful, for your faults cry mercy,
Time seductive, seek salvation,        15
Age that shortens life in sadness.

Time without sweetness and of cursing,
Age that embraces every vice in rottenness,
Time of folly, see your punishment,
Age flattering, wise is he who repents:        20
Time, the anger of the high judge comes down,
Age, your soul won't find refuge with the judge,
Time fraudulent, change your direction,
Age that shortens life in sadness.

---

Temps de doleur et de temptacion,
Aages de plour, d'envie et de tourment,
Temps de langour et de dampnacion,
Aages meneur pres du definement.
Temps plains d'orreur qui tout fait faussement,        5
Aages menteur, plain d'orgueil et d'envie,
Temps sanz honeur et sanz vray jugement,
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

Temps sanz cremeur, temps de perdicion,
Aage tricheur, tout va desloiaument,        10
Temps en erreur, pres de finicion,
Aage robeur, plain de ravissement,
Temps, voy ton cuer, vien a repentement;
Aage pecheur, de tes maulx merci crie;
Temps seducteur, impetre sauvement,        15
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

Temps sanz douçour et de maleiçon,
Aage en puour qui tout vice comprant,
Temps de foleur, voy ta pugnicion,
Aage flateur, saige est qui se repent:        20
Temps, la fureur du hault juge descent,
Aage, au jugeur t'ame ne fuira mie:
Temps barateur, mue ton mouvement,
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

These shields, now suspended here as a gift to Athena Itonis,
Pyrrhus the Molossian took from valiant Gauls,
after defeating the entire army of Antigonus; which is no great wonder;
for now, as well as in olden time, the Aeacidae are brave spearmen.

τοὺς θυρεοὺς ὁ Μολοσσὸς Ἰτωνίδι δῶρον Ἀθάνᾳ
    Πύρρος ἀπὸ θρασέων ἐκρέμασεν Γαλατᾶν,
πάντα τὸν Ἀντιγόνου καθελὼν στρατόν. οὐ μέγα θαῦμα·
    αἰχμηταὶ καὶ νῦν καὶ πάρος Αἰακίδαι.

We, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed.

It is not easy nowadays to use the word “paganism” in discussing religious beliefs, simply because it has no clear meaning. It is usually defined by what it is not, and in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean context that meant neither Jewish nor Christian. The word “pagan” (paganus) evokes a Latin word for a rustic or country person, and it is certainly true that many local cults, such as those that worship trees, springs, and other natural features, would explain such a designation. But in Greek the early Christian word for pagan (ethnikos) pointed simply to ethnic or national differences. It was formed from ethnos (nation), a word much like goy in Hebrew, which meant “nation” in the Bible but later changed to designate any non-Jew, and the Septuagint translation of the Bible into Greek naturally facilitated this change. Greek ethnikos was then literally matched by the Latin equivalent gentilis, and both eventually came, like goy, as well as the English Gentile, to designate non-Jews.⁴

Meanwhile, ethnikos in the sense of pagan gave way in later Christian texts to hellēn (Greek) because after Constantine the cultivation of classical Greek culture was generally linked to pagan Greek religion — neither Christian nor Jewish. But hellēn, although an increasingly common word for paganism in later Greek, never wholly lost its connection with Hellenism, and this could be profoundly embarrassing for a Christian like Gregory of Nazianzus, who had been educated in classical Greek learning.⁵ In general, the word “polytheism” is infinitely preferable to paganism because, unlike paganism, it has a precise meaning, which is the worship of many gods.

Surprisingly it took scholars of the modern era a long time to come to the banal realization that pagan cults that were indisputably polytheist often showed a hierarchy of gods, with a supreme god such as Jupiter or Zeus over all. Consequently this realization has inspired a flood of attempts to legitimate something called “pagan monotheism” or even “soft monotheism.”⁶ But no one familiar with Greek cults could possibly imagine that the pre-Christian Greeks were monotheists, even if in later antiquity various unnamed gods were occasionally perceived as parts (merē) of a single god. That is most famously shown in the so-called Tübingen Theosophy, from which one oracle appears on an inscription at Oenoanda in Anatolia.⁷ But such thinking arose from the philosophical reflections of later Platonism, and ideas of this kind shared their roots with Christian theology as it spread throughout the Roman Empire. These ideas may have actually been influenced by Platonism, since paganism and Christianity had much more fruitful interaction than is sometimes imagined. It is hardly a secret that many of the Church Fathers, like Gregory of Nazianzus, were steeped in the works of Plato. The recently fashionable attention to pagan monotheism, traces of which can undoubtedly be found, as the Tübingen Theosophy shows, is limited in its application. Paganism that was polytheist did not die, and it goes without saying that there can be no such absurdity as polytheist monotheism, nor even soft monotheism.

4. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Paul and the Invention of the Gentiles,” Jewish Quarterly Review 105 (2015): 1–41. This thorough and important analysis might have been clearer if the author had avoided discussing the issue by reference to the English “Gentile,” which obviously Paul did not use. Rosen-Zvi rightly highlights the sense of ethnos in relation to goy, but Paul’s ethnê, which included barbarians (Rom. 1:14), can be more inclusive than Gentile. Paul sometimes conveys the idea of Gentile by hellēn (Greek), as in Romans 1:16, 2:9, and 2:10.

5. See Gregory of Nazianzus’s indignation over Julian’s appropriation of Greek learning in Orat. 4: A. Kurmann, Gregor von Nazianz, Oratio 4 gegen Julian, Ein Kommentar (Basel: Reinhardt, 1988).

6. Pagan monotheism owes its prominence in current scholarship to the publication of Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, ed. P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). For pre-Islamic Arab paganism, see G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and P. Crone, “The Religion of the Qur’ānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57 (2010): 151–200.

7. Louis Robert, “Un oracle gravé à Oenoanda,” CRAI (1971): 597–619, reprinted in Opera Minora Selecta (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989), 5:617–639.

And by Heaven I see already that everything is splendid here with you, for that all should have equal rank and nobody be any better than his neighbour is more than pleasant, to me at least. And I infer that there is no dunning of debtors here and no paying of taxes, and above all no freezing in winter or falling ill or being thrashed by men of greater consequence. All are at peace, and the tables are turned, for we paupers laugh while the rich are distressed and lament.

καὶ νὴ Δί' ἤδη καλὰ τὰ παρ' ὑμῖν πάντα ὁρῶ· τό τε γὰρ ἰσοτιμίαν ἅπασιν εἶναι καὶ μηδένα τοῦ πλησίον διαφέρειν, ὑπερήδιστον ἐμοὶ γοῦν δοκεῖ. τεκμαίρομαι δὲ μηδ' ἀπαιτεῖσθαι τὰ χρέα τοὺς ὀφείλοντας ἐνταῦθα μηδὲ φόρους ὑποτελεῖν, τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, μηδὲ ῥιγοῦν τοῦ χειμῶνος μηδὲ νοσεῖν μηδ' ὑπὸ τῶν δυνατωτέρων ῥαπίζεσθαι. εἰρήνη δὲ πᾶσι καὶ πράγματα ἐς τὸ ἔμπαλιν ἀνεστραμμένα· ἡμεῖς μὲν οἱ πένητες γελῶμεν, ἀνιῶνται δὲ καὶ οἰμώζουσιν οἱ πλούσιοι.

And, on my word, things begin to look well already. Equal rights for all, and no man better than his neighbour; that is hugely to my liking. And from what I can learn there is no collecting of debts in this country, and no taxes; better still, no shivering in winter, no sickness, no hard knocks from one's betters. All is peace. The tables are turned: the laugh is with us poor men; it is the rich that make moan, and are ill at ease.

HERMES. Clotho, do you want us to get the unmourned aboard next?

CLOTHO. You mean the old people? Yes, for why should I bother now to investigate what happened before the flood?¹ All of you who are over sixty go in now. What's this? They don't heed me, for their ears are stopped with years. You will probably have to pick them up and carry them in, too.

HERMES. Here you are again, three hundred and ninety-eight, all tender and ripe and harvested in season.

CHARON. Good Lord, yes! They're all raisins now!

¹ Literally, "before Euclid," the Athenian archon of 403 B.C., the year in which the democracy was restored and the misdeeds of the oligarchy obliterated by a general amnesty.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. βούλει, ὦ Κλωθοῖ, τοὺς ἀκλαύστους ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐμβιβασώμεθα;

ΚΛΩΘΩ. τοὺς γέροντας λέγεις; οὕτω ποίει. τί γάρ με δεῖ πράγματα ἔχειν τὰ πρὸ Εὐκλείδου νῦν ἐξετάζουσαν; οἱ ὑπὲρ ἑξήκοντα ὑμεῖς πάριτε ἤδη. τί τοῦτο; οὐκ ἐπακούουσί μου βεβυσμένοι τὰ ὦτα ὑπὸ τῶν ἐτῶν. δεήσει τάχα καὶ τούτους ἀράμενον παραγαγεῖν.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. ἰδοὺ πάλιν οὗτοι δυεῖν δέοντες τετρακόσιοι, τακεροὶ πάντες καὶ πέπειροι καὶ καθ ̓ ὥραν τετρυγημένοι.

ΧΑΡΩΝ. νὴ Δί', ἐπεὶ ἀσταφίδες γε πάντες ἤδη εἰσί.

It is dangerous for the believer to believe what is not true.

ἦ δεινόν, ᾧ δοκεῖ γε, καὶ ψευδῆ δοκεῖν.

To think that thinking men should think so wrongly!

Creon has pronounced the Guard guilty on mere δόξα, without proof. The Guard says, 'It is grievous that, when a man does harbour suspicions (ᾧ δοκεῖ γε), those suspicions should at the same time (καὶ) be false.' γε means that, in such a matter, hasty δόξα should be avoided altogether. It is always bad to assume a man guilty without proof; it is worse when the rash assumption is also erroneous. Cp. δόκησις ἀγνώς, 'a blind suspicion' (O.T. 681), and ib. 608 γνώμῃ δ᾽ ἀδήλῳ μή με χωρὶς αἰτιῶ. Eur. Bacch. 311 μηδ᾽ ἢν δοκῇς μέν, (ἡ δὲ δόξα σου νοσεῖ,) | φρονεῖν δόκει τι.—Nauck supposes a play on two senses of δοκεῖν, ᾧ δοκεῖ (or, as he reads, δοκῇ) having been suggested by ἔδοξε τῷ δήμῳ, etc.: ''Tis monstrous that he who decides should have false views.' But, even if the absolute ᾧ δοκεῖ could be thus used, the colloquial frequency of δοκεῖ (μοι ποιεῖν τι) in Aristophanes suffices to show that ᾧ δοκεῖ could not, to an Athenian ear, have suggested 'the ruler' or 'the judge': it would have seemed to mean merely one who 'proposes,' not 'disposes.'—Schütz makes δοκεῖν depend on δοκεῖ: ''Tis grievous when a man is resolved to believe even what is false' (if only he wishes to believe it). A bold speech for the Guard to Creon; nor does it satisfy either γε or καί.

History, for me, has always been something more than a discipline—more than a set of problems to be solved, a narrative to be put together from bits and pieces of evidence about the past. It is, rather, a perpetual awareness of living beside an immense, strange country whose customs must be treated by the traveler from the present with respect, as often very different from our own; and whose aspirations, fears, and certitudes, though they may seem alien to us and to have turned pale with the passing of time, must be treated as having once run in the veins of men and women in the past with all the energy of living flesh and blood.

Rezina may well taste 'like pure turpentine which has been strained through the socks of a bishop,' as someone wrote to me; but it is to be recommended most warmly. You should make a real effort with it, but be warned that it is never as good bottled as it is fresh from the blue cans of the Athenian Plaka. It is a perfect adjunct for food which is oil-cooked, and sometimes with oil not too fresh. Its pungent aroma clears the mind and the palate at one blow. Yet it is mild and you can drink gallons without a hangover; nor does it ever provoke the disgusting, leaden sort of drunkenness that gin does — but rather, high spirits and wit. If you drink rezina you will live forever, and never be a trial to your friends or to waiters.

[4] People of a splenetic habit believed that he cured their ailment; he would sacrifice a white cock, and, while the patient lay flat upon his back, would press gently with his right foot against the spleen. Nor was any one so obscure or poor as not to get this healing service from him if he asked it. [5] The king would also accept the cock after he had sacrificed it, and this honorarium was most pleasing to him. It is said, further, that the great toe of his right foot had a divine virtue, so that after the rest of his body had been consumed, this was found to be untouched and unharmed by the fire.

[4] τοῖς δὲ σπληνιῶσιν ἐδόκει βοηθεῖν, ἀλεκτρυόνα θύων λευκόν, ὑπτίων τε κατακειμένων τῷ δεξιῷ ποδὶ πιέζων ἀτρέμα τὸ σπλάγχνον. οὐδεὶς δὲ ἦν πένης οὐδὲ ἄδοξος οὕτως ὥστε μὴ τυχεῖν τῆς ἰατρείας δεηθείς. [5] ἐλάμβανε δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα θύσας, καὶ τὸ γέρας τοῦτο ἥδιστον ἦν αὐτῷ. λέγεται δὲ τοῦ ποδὸς ἐκείνου τὸν μείζονα δάκτυλον ἔχειν δύναμιν θείαν, ὥστε μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος κατακαέντος ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἄθικτον ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς εὑρεθῆναι.

Imagining his father in his mind's eye, if perhaps he might arrive from somewhere

ὀσσόμενος πατέρ᾽ ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσίν, εἴ ποθεν ἐλθὼν

His animus is directed at the suitors and not at his father, who is described as ἐσθλόν in a way that suggests that this is how Telemachus sees him.

Labels: typographical and other errors

But what is right and just never will I leave unpoken; for honour bids a true man guard the freedom of speech fostered in Athen's citizens and the town of Theseus.

ὅμως τό γ' ὀρθὸν καὶ δίκαιον οὔποτε
σιγῇ παρήσω· τὴν γὰρ ἐντεθραμμένην
ἀστοῖς Ἀθάνας τῇ τε Θησέως πόλει
καλὸν φυλάξαι γνησίως παρρησίαν.

That last week of September 1938, excruciating though it proved at every moment to our strained nerves, enjoyed a singular outward beauty. September went down in a slanting golden sun, touching our familiar landscapes with a light so rich and mellow as to preclude all suggestion of irony. It seemed, indeed, inconceivable that devastation should fall suddenly on such a scene. Looking across at the harmless sunlit hills, the mind rejected the conception of violence. Men might be digging trenches in their gardens, and reason encouraged them to do so; but still some deep old stupid optimism lurked, telling them that this was only a precautionary measure, not really (not in the last resort) necessary. They joked as they dug, and it was hard to tell whether their joking or their digging was the more sincere. We dug a trench in the orchard here — a most inadequate trench which would certainly have fallen in at the first heavy rain, a most unscientifically constructed trench, which expressed the instinct to burrow into the friendly earth rather than any calculated attempt to provide a four or five years strong shelter against the attack of an efficient foe. Not that, out in the country as we are, danger seemed very likely; but one never knows, thinking of Spanish villages and the swoop of machine-guns. So one must make provision. This sudden hasty burrowing into the earth struck one as truly horribly uncivilised: man seeking refuge from man under the peacefully ripening apples and pears of September — man turning himself into a frightened furtive threatened creature like a rabbit or a mole. Human dignity fell crashing from its unique state: it dug, it tunnelled, it hid itself away in the last desperate attempt to protect its vulnerable body. Shocking, and yet necessary. How wrong and foolish that such a necessity should arise between man and man. What would a visitor from another world, a more co-operative world, have felt about my rough trench dug hastily in the orchard? Mars approaches, only thirty-six million miles away instead of forty-five, accompanied by two small moons, smaller than ours, more rapid in their flight; and we beneath the red planet cower between walls of yellow clay. There are indeed times when absurdity can appear more tragic than high tragedy; and so I thought when, visiting a rich man's garden, I came upon an elaborately revetted dug-out concealed among the rhododendrons.

BUYER. What is the matter, man? Why are you laughing?

DEMOCRITUS. Dost thou need to ask? Because to me it seemeth that all your affairs are laughable, and yourselves as well.

BUYER. What, are you laughing at us all, and do you think nothing of our affairs?

DEMOCRITUS. Even so; for there is nothing serious in them, but everything is a hollow mockery, drift of atoms, infinitude.

BUYER. No indeed, but you yourself are a hollow mockery in very truth and an infinite ass. Oh, what effrontery! Will you never stop laughing?

ΑΓΟΡΑΣΤΗΣ. τί ταῦτα, ὦ οὗτος; τί γελᾷς;

ΔΗΜΟΚΡΙΤΟΣ. ἐρωτᾷς; ὅτι μοι γελοῖα πάντα δοκέει τὰ πρήγματα ὑμέων καὶ αὐτοὶ ὑμέες.

ΑΓΟΡΑΣΤΗΣ. πῶς λέγεις; καταγελᾷς ἡμῶν ἁπάντων καὶ παρ᾿ οὐδὲν τίθεσαι τὰ ἡμέτερα πράγματα;

ΔΗΜΟΚΡΙΤΟΣ. ὧδε ἔχει· σπουδαῖον γὰρ ἐν αὐτέοισιν οὐδέν, κενεὰ δὲ πάντα καὶ ἀτόμων φορὴ καὶ ἀπειρίη.

ΑΓΟΡΑΣΤΗΣ. οὐ μὲν οὖν, ἀλλὰ σὺ κενὸς ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ ἄπειρος. ὢ τῆς ὕβρεως, οὐ παύσῃ γελῶν;

[1] But what he did in the establishment of a library deserves warm praise. He got together many books, and they were well written, and his use of them was more honourable to him than his acquisition of them. His libraries were thrown open to all, and the cloisters surrounding them, and the study-rooms, were accessible without restriction to the Greeks, who constantly repaired thither as to an hostelry of the Muses, and spent the day with one another, in glad escape from their other occupations. [2] Lucullus himself also often spent his leisure hours there with them, walking about in the cloisters with their scholars, and he would assist their statesmen in whatever they desired. And in general his house was a home and prytaneium for the Greeks who came to Rome.

[1] σπουδῆς δ᾽ ἄξια καὶ λόγου τὰ περὶ τὴν τῶν βιβλίων κατασκευήν, καὶ γὰρ πολλὰ καὶ γεγραμμένα καλῶς συνῆγεν, ἥ τε χρῆσις ἦν φιλοτιμοτέρα τῆς κτήσεως, ἀνειμένων πᾶσι τῶν βιβλιοθηκῶν, καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὰς περιπάτων καὶ σχολαστηρίων ἀκωλύτως ὑποδεχομένων τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὥσπερ εἰς Μουσῶν τι καταγώγιον ἐκεῖσε φοιτῶντας καὶ συνδιημερεύοντας ἀλλήλοις, ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων χρειῶν ἀσμένως ἀποτρέχοντας. [2] πολλάκις δὲ καὶ συνεσχόλαζεν αὐτὸς ἐμβάλλων εἰς τοὺς περιπάτους τοῖς φιλολόγοις καὶ τοῖς πολιτικοῖς συνέπραττεν ὅτου δέοιντο· καὶ ὅλως ἑστία καὶ πρυτανεῖον Ἑλληνικὸν ὁ οἶκος ἦν αὐτοῦ τοῖς ἀφικνουμένοις εἰς Ῥώμην.

I am certain of this, that no one has died who was not going to die at some time, and the end of life reduces the longest life to the same condition as the shortest. When something has once ceased to exist, there is no more question of better or worse, longer or shorter. What does it matter by what kind of death life is brought to an end? When man's life is ended he does not have to die again. Among the daily chances of this life every man on earth is threatened in the same way by innumerable deaths, and it is uncertain which of them will come to him. And so the question is whether it is better to suffer one in dying or to fear them all in living.

hoc scio, neminem fuisse mortuum qui non fuerat aliquando moriturus. finis autem vitae tam longam quam brevem vitam hoc idem facit. neque enim aliud melius et aliud deterius, aut aliud maius et aliud brevius est, quod iam pariter non est. quid autem interest, quo mortis genere vita ista finiatur, quando ille cui finitur iterum mori non cogitur? cum autem unicuique mortalium sub cotidianis vitae huius casibus innumerabiles mortes quodam modo comminentur, quamdiu incertum est quaenam earum ventura sit: quaero utrum satius sit unam perpeti moriendo an omnes timere vivendo.

There are a thousand ways of sudden death.

leti mille repente viae.

Sooner or later death awaiteth all.

longius aut propius mors sua quemque manet.

In general, he is accommodating to live with, satisfactory to drink with, and handy to accompany an amorous and profligate master when he riots about town with a flute-girl. Moreover, he is a connoisseur in pastries and a highly expert cook: in short, a Professor of Luxury. He was educated in Athens, and entered service in Sicily, at the court of the tyrants, with whom he enjoyed high favour. The sum and substance of his creed is to despise everything, make use of everything and cull pleasure from every source.

τὸ μὲν ὅλον, συμβιῶναι δεξιὸς καὶ συμπιεῖν ἱκανὸς καὶ κωμάσαι μετὰ αὐλητρίδος ἐπιτήδειος ἐρῶντι καὶ ἀσώτῳ δεσπότῃ· τὰ ἄλλα δὲ πεμμάτων ἐπιστήμων καὶ ὀψοποιὸς ἐμπειρότατος, καὶ ὅλως σοφιστὴς ἡδυπαθείας. ἐπαιδεύθη μὲν οὖν ̓Αθήνησιν, ἐδούλευσε δὲ καὶ περὶ Σικελίαν τοῖς τυράννοις καὶ σφόδρα εὐδοκίμει παρ' αὐτοῖς. τὸ δὲ κεφάλαιον τῆς προαιρέσεως, ἁπάντων καταφρονεῖν, ἅπασι χρῆσθαι, πανταχόθεν ἐρανίζεσθαι τὴν ἡδονήν.

It's futile to abuse the shade of a dead man.
It's proper to punish the living, not the dead.

κενὸν θανόντος ἀνδρὸς αἰκίζειν σκιάν·
ζῶντας κολάζειν, οὐ θανόντας εὐσεβές.

κενὸν Nauck: καινὸν codd.

Death is the end of their quarrels for men; and this is easy for everyone to understand. For who will inflict pain on a lofty crag by wounding it with a spear, and who on a corpse by dishonouring it, if these felt nothing of what they underwent?

θάνατος γὰρ ἀνθρώποισι νεικέων τέλος
ἔχει· μαθεῖν δὲ πᾶσίν ἐστιν εὐμαρές.
τίς γὰρ πετραῖον σκόπελον οὐτάζων δορὶ
ὀδύναισι δώσει, τίς δ' ἀτιμάζων νέκυν,
εἰ μηδὲν αἰσθάνοιντο τῶν παθημάτων;

• No More That They Can Do?
• Cadaver Trial

But I ain't agoin' to love 'em,
    Now that is sarten sure.
And I don't want no pardon
    For what I was and am;
I won't be reconstructed,
    And I don't care a dam.

For most men think themselves robbed of their wealth if they are prevented from displaying it, and that display of it is made in the superfluities, not in the necessaries of life. This, we are told, is what most astonished Ariston the philosopher, namely, that those possessed of the superfluities of life should be counted happy, rather than those well provided with life's necessary and useful things.

πλούτου γὰρ ἀφαίρεσιν οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι τὴν κώλυσιν αὐτοῦ τῆς ἐπιδείξεως, ἐπιδείκνυσθαι δὲ τοῖς περιττοῖς, οὐ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις. ὃ δὴ καὶ μάλιστά φασι τὸν φιλόσοφον Ἀρίστωνα θαυμάζειν, ὅτι τοὺς τὰ περιττὰ κεκτημένους μᾶλλον ἡγοῦνται μακαρίους ἢ τοὺς τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ χρησίμων εὐποροῦντας.

The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press.

sub uno igne aurum rutilat palea fumat, et sub eadem tribula stipulae comminuuntur frumenta purgantur, nec ideo cum oleo amurca confunditur quia eodem preli pondere exprimitur.

Exposed to the same fire gold grows red but chaff smokes, and under the same threshing-sledge the straw is broken to pieces but the grain separated, nor is the oil of olives intermixed with the mash because it is extracted by weight of the same press.

For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they have issued from the same press.

Let me tell you, Hermes, what I think men and the whole life of man resemble. You have noticed bubbles in water, caused by a streamlet plashing down—I mean those that mass to make foam? Some of them, being small, burst and are gone in an instant, while some last longer and as others join them, become swollen and grow to exceeding great compass; but afterwards they also burst without fail in time, for it cannot be otherwise. Such is the life of men; they are all swollen with wind, some to greater size, others to less; and with some the swelling is short-lived and swift-fated, while with others it is over as soon as it comes into being; but in any case they all must burst.

ἐθέλω δ᾽ οὖν σοι, ὦ Ἑρμῆ, εἰπεῖν, ᾧτινι ἐοικέναι μοι ἔδοξαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ ὁ βίος ἅπας αὐτῶν. ἤδη ποτὲ πομφόλυγας ἐν ὕδατι ἐθεάσω ὑπὸ κρουνῷ τινι καταράττοντι ἀνισταμένας; τὰς φυσαλλίδας λέγω, ἀφ᾽ ὧν συναγείρεται ὁ ἀφρός· ἐκείνων τοίνυν τινὲς μὲν μικραί εἰσι καὶ αὐτίκα ἐκραγεῖσαι ἀπέσβησαν, αἱ δ᾽ ἐπὶ πλέον διαρκοῦσι: καὶ προσχωρουσῶν αὐταῖς τῶν ἄλλων αὗται ὑπερφυσώμεναι ἐς μέγιστον ὄγκον αἴρονται, ἔπειτα μέντοι κἀκεῖναι πάντως ἐξερράγησάν ποτε: οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε ἄλλως γενέσθαι. τοῦτό ἐστιν ὁ ἀνθρώπου βίος· ἅπαντες ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἐμπεφυσημένοι οἱ μὲν μείζους, οἱ δὲ ἐλάττους· καὶ οἱ μὲν ὀλιγοχρόνιον ἔχουσι καὶ ὠκύμορον τὸ φύσημα, οἱ δὲ ἅμα τῷ συστῆναι ἐπαύσαντο· πᾶσι δ᾽ οὖν ἀπορραγῆναι ἀναγκαῖον.

Your post today reminded me of one of the most famous lines in Japanese literature, from 1212 A.D., which I share for curiosity's sake:

Kamo no Chōmei, An Account of My Hut (tr. Donald Keene):

The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration: so in the world are man and his dwellings.

ゆく河の流れは絶えずして、しかももとの水にあらず。よどみに浮かぶうたかたは、かつ消えかつ結びて、久しくとどまりたるためしなし。世の中にある人と栖と、又かくのごとし。

When reviling an obese man he said, "What use could the state possibly make of a body like that? Why, from gullet to groin there is nothing but belly."

τὸν δὲ ὑπέρπαχυν κακίζων "ποῦ δ᾽ ἄν," ἔφη, "σῶμα τοιοῦτόν τῇ πόλει γένοιτο χρήσιμον, οὗ τὸ μεταξὺ λαιμοῦ καὶ βουβώνων πᾶν ὑπὸ τῆς γαστρὸς κατέχεται;"

The censors used to take his horse from a man who was too fat and corpulent, evidently because they thought that so heavy a person was unfit to perform the duties of a knight. For this was not a punishment, as some think, but the knight was relieved of duty without loss of rank. Yet Cato, in the speech which he wrote On Neglecting Sacrifice, makes such an occurrence a somewhat serious charge, thus apparently indicating that it was attended with disgrace. If you understand that to have been the case, you must certainly assume that it was because a man was not looked upon as wholly free from the reproach of slothfulness, if his body had bulked and swollen to such unwieldy dimensions.

nimis pingui homini et corpulento censores equum adimere solitos, scilicet minus idoneum ratos esse cum tanti corporis pondere ad faciendum equitis munus. non enim poena id fuit, ut quidam existimant, sed munus sine ignominia remittebatur. tamen Cato, in oratione quam de sacrificio commisso scripsit, obicit hanc rem criminosius, uti magis videri possit cum ignominia fuisse. quod si ita accipias, id profecto existimandum est non omnino inculpatum neque indesidem visum esse, cuius corpus in tam inmodicum modum luxuriasset exuberassetque.

The meal had taken up the whole of the round oak table by the fire—a thick steak of home-cured ham overlapping the plate with two fresh eggs nestling on its bosom, a newly baked loaf with the knife sticking in it, a dish of farm butter, some jam, a vast pot of tea and a whole Wensleydale cheese, circular, snow white, about eighteen inches high.

I could remember eating unbelievingly for a long time and finishing with slice after slice of the moist, delicately flavoured cheese. The entire meal had cost me half a crown.

He censured his fellow citizens for choosing the same men over and over again to high office. "You will be thought," said he, "not to deem your offices worth much, or else not to deem many men worthy of your offices."

ἐπετίμα δὲ τοῖς πολίταις τοὺς αὐτοὺς αἱρουμένοις πολλάκις ἄρχοντας. "δόξετε γάρ" ἔφη "ἢ μὴ πολλοῦ τὸ ἄρχειν ἄξιον ἢ μὴ πολλοὺς τοῦ ἄρχειν ἀξίους ἡγεῖσθαι."

The greater number of those who have expressed their opinions before me have deplored the lot of the commonwealth in finished and noble phrases; they have dwelt upon the horrors of war, the wretched fate of the conquered, the rape of maidens and boys, children torn from their parents' arms, matrons subjected to the will of the victors, temples and homes pillaged, bloodshed and fire; in short arms and corpses everywhere, gore and grief.

plerique eorum qui ante me sententias dixerunt conposite atque magnifice casum rei publicae miserati sunt. quae belli saevitia esset, quae victis acciderent enumeravere: rapi virgines pueros, divelli liberos a parentum conplexu, matres familiarum pati quae victoribus conlubuissent, fana atque domos spoliari, caedem incendia fieri, postremo armis cadaveribus, cruore atque luctu omnia conpleri.

HERMES. But do you see the masses, Charon, the men voyaging, fighting, litigating, farming, lending money, and begging?

CHARON. I see that their activities are varied and their life full of turmoil; yes, and their cities resemble hives, in which everyone has a sting of his own and stings his neighbour, while some few, like wasps, harry and plunder the meaner sort. But what is that crowd of shapes that flies about them unseen?

HERMES. Hope, Fear, Ignorance, Pleasure, Covetousness, Anger, Hatred and their like. Of these, Ignorance mingles with them down below and shares their common life, and so do Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Stupidity, Doubt, and Covetousness; but Fear and Hope hover up above, and Fear, swooping down from time to time, terrifies them and makes them cringe, while Hope, hanging overhead, flies up and is off when they are most confident of grasping her, leaving them in the lurch with their mouths open, exactly as you have seen Tantalus served by the water down below.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. τὴν δὲ πληθὺν ὁρᾷς, ὦ Χάρων, τοὺς πλέοντας αὐτῶν, τοὺς πολεμοῦντας, τοὺς δικαζομένους, τοὺς γεωργοῦντας, τοὺς δανείζοντας, τοὺς προσαιτοῦντας;

ΧΑΡΩΝ. ὁρῶ ποικίλην τινὰ τὴν διατριβὴν καὶ μεστὸν ταραχῆς τὸν βίον καὶ τὰς πόλεις γε αὐτῶν ἐοικυίας τοῖς σμήνεσιν, ἐν οἷς ἅπας μὲν ἴδιόν τι κέντρον ἔχει καὶ τὸν πλησίον κεντεῖ, ὀλίγοι δέ τινες ὥσπερ σφῆκες ἄγουσι καὶ φέρουσι τὸ ὑποδεέστερον. ὁ δὲ περιπετόμενος αὐτοὺς ἐκ τἀφανοῦς οὗτος ὄχλος τίνες εἰσίν;

ΕΡΜΗΣ. ἐλπίδες, ὦ Χάρων, καὶ δείματα καὶ ἄγνοιαι καὶ ἡδοναὶ καὶ φιλαργυρίαι καὶ ὀργαὶ καὶ μίση καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. τούτων δὲ ἡ ἄγνοια μὲν κάτω συναναμέμικται αὐτοῖς καὶ συμπολιτεύεται, καὶ νὴ Δία καὶ τὸ μῖσος καὶ ὀργὴ καὶ ζηλοτυπία καὶ ἀμαθία καὶ ἀπορία καὶ φιλαργυρία, ὁ φόβος δὲ καὶ αἱ ἐλπίδες ὑπεράνω πετόμενοι ὁ μὲν ἐμπίπτων ἐκπλήττει ἐνίοτε καὶ ὑποπτήσσειν ποιεῖ, αἱ δ᾽ ἐλπίδες ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αἰωρούμεναι, ὁπόταν μάλιστα οἴηταί τις ἐπιλήψεσθαι αὐτῶν, ἀναπτάμεναι οἴχονται κεχηνότας αὐτοὺς ἀπολιποῦσαι, ὅπερ καὶ τὸν Τάνταλον κάτω πάσχοντα ὁρᾷς ὑπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος.

A) Malchio son/slave of Nikon: his eyes, hands, fingers, arms, nails, hair, head, feet, thigh, belly, buttocks, navel, chest, nipples, neck, mouth, cheeks, teeth, lips, chin, eyes, forehead, eyebrows, shoulder-blades, shoulders, sinews, guts, marrow (?), belly, cock, leg, trade, income, health, I do curse in this tablet.

B) Rufa the public slave: her hands, teeth, eyes, arms, belly, breasts, chest, bones, marrow (?), guts, ....., mouth, feet, forehead, nails, fingers, womb, navel, cunt, vulva (?), groins: Rufa the public slave I do curse in this tablet.

A) Malcio Nicones oculos, manus, dicitos, bracias, uncis, capilo, caput, pedes, femus, venter, natis, umlicus, pectus, mamilas, collus, os, bucas, dentes, labias, me[nt]us, oclus, fronte, supercili, scaplas, umerum, nervias, ossu, merilas (?), venter, mentula, crus, quastu, lucru, valetudines, defico in as tabelas.

B) Rufa Pulica, manus, detes, oclos, bracia, venter, mamila, pectus, osu, merilas, venter, .... crus (?) os, pedes, frontes, uncis, dicitos, venter, umlicus, cunus, ulvas (?), ilae, Rufas Pulica de[f]ico in as tabelas.

A curse may begin with a heading consisting of the name of the victim in the nominative, standing outside the syntax of the rest of the tablet.

The reading of the beginning of B, l. 7 has proven somewhat controversial: while Borsari read quas il(l)ae (B, l. 7, as did I during my autopsy, with an interpunct separating the words), Audollent (and later Gager 1992: no. 80, Solin 1995: 571, Versnel 1998: 223, Urbanová 2019: 428) proposed the reading [v]ulva(m). Furthermore, Cimarosti (2005: 452f., notes 14 and 2) reads quasil(l)a{e}(ria), a reference to the slave's duties, while Kropp (2008: no. 1.4.2/3) reads qua<e>stum. While the latter two readings do not take into account the interpunct that divides the two words, the first proposal, ([v]ulva(m)), is impossible for several reasons. First (and most importantly), it ignores the fact that that same corner is preserved in full, which means that the text is also fully preserved and, consequently, that the reconstruction of [v] is artificial. In addition, the ul that should be following the imaginary [v], presents some palaeographical problems: compare this l with the ones found in the rest of the text (which never have a horizontal stroke on top of the vertical stroke). Thus, the reading quas · il(l)ae (B, l. 7) is secure. That said, it is a matter of debate how quas should be analysed: it could either be taken as qua(e)s[tum] (cf. A, l. 9) or the relative pronoun, though its gender does not agree with the immediate antecedents.

For six weeks or so, I've been on a roll with my commentary on Odyssey XI. But six to eight hours can pass without my noticing. And at the end, I'm lucky if I've moved on by one Greek word.

Sea, earth, heaven, gods, your protection!

mare, terra, caelum, di vostram fidem!

[I]t is sometimes asked, why we should stir the ashes of that ancient feud, why we should not bury the past in its own grave, and turn to the living issues of the present and the future. To this question, comrades, we return the answer, with a voice loud as seven thunders, because it is history, because it is our history, and the history of our dead heroes who shall not go without their fame.

Νευρὴν μὲν μαζῷ πέλασεν, τόξῳ δὲ σίδηρον (Iliad, Δ. 123). How concise—how just—how beautiful is the whole picture! I see the attitudes of the archer—I hear the twanging of the bow.
λίγξε βιὸς, νευρὴ δὲ μέγ' ίαχεν, ἆλτο δ ̓ ὀϊστός.

He stripped away the lid of the quiver, and took out an arrow
feathered, and never shot before, transmitter of dark pain.
Swiftly he arranged the bitter arrow along the bowstring,
and made his prayer to Apollo the light-born, the glorious archer,
that he would accomplish a grand sacrifice of lambs first born        120
when he came home again to the city of sacred Zeleia.
He drew, holding at once the grooves and the ox-hide bowstring
and brought the string against his nipple, iron to the bowstave.
But when he had pulled the great weapon till it made a circle,
the bow groaned, and the string sang high, and the arrow, sharp-pointed,        12S
leapt away, furious, to fly through the throng before it.

αὐτὰρ ὁ σύλα πῶμα φαρέτρης, ἐκ δ᾽ ἕλετ᾽ ἰὸν
ἀβλῆτα πτερόεντα μελαινέων ἕρμ᾽ ὀδυνάων·
αἶψα δ᾽ ἐπὶ νευρῇ κατεκόσμει πικρὸν ὀϊστόν,
εὔχετο δ᾽ Ἀπόλλωνι Λυκηγενέϊ κλυτοτόξῳ
ἀρνῶν πρωτογόνων ῥέξειν κλειτὴν ἑκατόμβην        120
οἴκαδε νοστήσας ἱερῆς εἰς ἄστυ Ζελείης.
ἕλκε δ᾽ ὁμοῦ γλυφίδας τε λαβὼν καὶ νεῦρα βόεια·
νευρὴν μὲν μαζῷ πέλασεν, τόξῳ δὲ σίδηρον.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ κυκλοτερὲς μέγα τόξον ἔτεινε,
λίγξε βιός, νευρὴ δὲ μέγ᾽ ἴαχεν, ἆλτο δ᾽ ὀϊστὸς        125
ὀξυβελὴς καθ᾽ ὅμιλον ἐπιπτέσθαι μενεαίνων.

Would it be regarded as sane and laudable for a man to travel the Soudan trying to sell fountain-pens, or Greenland offering to teach double-entry bookkeeping or counterpoint? Coming closer, would the judicious pity or laugh at a man who opened a shop for the sale of incunabula in Little Rock, Ark., or who demanded a living in McKeesport, Pa., on the ground that he could read Sumerian? In precisely the same way it seems to me to be nonsensical for a man to offer generally some commodity that only a few rare and dubious Americans want, and then weep and beat his breast because he is not patronized. One seeking to make a living in a country must pay due regard to the needs and tastes of that country. Here in the United States we have no jobs for grand dukes, and none for Wirkliche Geheimräte, and none for palace eunuchs, and none for masters of the buck-hounds, and none (any more) for brewery Todsaufer—and very few for oboe players, metaphysicians, astrophysicists, assyriologists, water-colorists, stylites and epic poets. There was a time when the Todsaufer served a public need and got an adequate reward, but it is no more. There may come a time when the composer of string quartettes is paid as much as a railway conductor, but it is not yet. Then why practice such trades—that is, as trades? The man of independent means may venture into them prudently; when he does so, he is seldom molested; it may even be argued that he performs a public service by adopting them. But the man who has a living to make is simply silly if he goes into them; he is like a soldier going over the top with a coffin strapped to his back. Let him abandon such puerile vanities, and take to the uplift instead, as, indeed, thousands of other victims of the industrial system have already done. Let him bear in mind that, whatever its neglect of the humanities and their monks, the Republic has never got half enough bond salesmen, quack doctors, ward leaders, phrenologists, Methodist evangelists, circus clowns, magicians, soldiers, farmers, popular song writers, moonshine distillers, forgers of gin labels, mine guards, detectives, spies, snoopers, and agents provocateurs. The rules are set by Omnipotence; the discreet man observes them. Observing them, he is safe beneath the starry bed-tick, in fair weather or foul. The boobus Americanus is a bird that knows no closed season—and if he won’t come down to Texas oil stock, or one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, pedagogical, literary, or economic.

He (i.e. Diogenes) used to say that all the tragic curses had fallen upon him; he was, at any rate,

Cityless, homeless, bereft of fatherland,
a beggar, a vagrant, getting a living day by day.

εἰώθει δὲ λέγειν ⟨πάσας⟩ τὰς τραγικὰς ἀρὰς αὐτῷ συνηντηκέναι· εἶναι γοῦν

ἄπολις, ἄοικος, πατρίδος ἐστερημένος,
πτωχός, πλανήτης, βίον ἔχων ἐφήμερον.

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives

But A.E. Housman, giving up Greek in order to specialize in Latin because he 'could not attain to excellence in both,' giving up Propertius, who wrote about love, for Manilius, who did not even deal with human beings, turning away from the lives of the Romans to rivet his attention to the difficulties of their texts, can only flatten out small German professors with weapons which would have found fit employment in the hands of a great reformer or a great satirist. He is the hero of The Grammarian's Funeral—the man of learning who makes himself impressive through the magnitude, not the importance, of his achievement. After all, there was no need for another Bentley.

It is only in the Latin verses—said to have been called by Murray the best since the ancient world—which Housman prefixed to his Manilius, in his few translations from Latin and Greek, and in his occasional literary essays, that the voice of the Shropshire Lad comes through—that voice which, once sped on its way, so quickly pierced to the hearts and the minds of the whole English-speaking worlcf and which went on vibrating for decades, disburdening hearts with its music that made loss and death and disgrace seem so beautiful, while poor Housman, burdened sorely forever, sat grinding and snarling at his texts.

Plunge it in the deep, it emerges all the finer; wrestle with it, amid loud applause it will throw a previously unbeaten champion, and then go on to fight battles for its wives to tell of.

merses profundo: pulchrior evenit:
luctere: multa proruet integrum
    cum laude victorem geretque
        proelia coniugibus loquenda.

68 coniugibus codd.: carminibus Peerlkamp: Pieriis Hunt: postgenitis Maas: cum fidibus Delz

[T]he commentators say 'wives' or 'widows.' But may not the picture be of husband and wife, at table or over the fire, talking about past campaigns (see Ovid Her. i.30)? Just as reges can mean 'king and queen,' so coniuges can mean 'man and wife.'

And to prove themselves duly inspired, they not only shared their wine flask with the escort of dirty Greek peasant boys but condescended so far as to address them in their own tongue as Plato would have spoken it had Plato learned Greek at Harrow. Whether they were just or not shall be left for others to decide; but the fact that Greek words spoken on Greek soil were misunderstood by Greeks destroys at one blow the whole population of Greece, both men and women and children. At such a crisis one word came aptly to their lips; a word that Sophocles might have spoken, and that Plato would have sanctioned; they were 'barbarian'. To denounce them thus was not only to discharge a duty on behalf of the dead but to declare the rightful inheritors, and for some minutes the marble quarries of Pentelicus thundered the news to all who might sleep beneath their rocks or haunt their caverns. The spurious people was convicted; the dusky garrulous race, loose of lip and unstable of purpose who had parodied the speech and pilfered the name of the great for so long was caught and convicted.

Jebb was not an eccentric; he was a Knight, an M.P., a friend of Tennyson, and, as a scholar, not so distinguished as his contemporaries thought but still distinguished. His idea of lecturing was to read out in a monotonous inaudible voice from a notebook or proofsheets strings of references which nobody would look up and which would not have profited them if they had.

CHARON. Is that gold, the bright substance that shines, the pale yellow substance with a cast of red? This is the first time that I have seen it, though I am always hearing of it.

HERMES. That is it, Charon, the name that they sing of and fight for.

CHARON. Really I don't see what good there is about it, except perhaps for one thing, that its bearers find it heavy.

HERMES. You do not know how many wars there have been on account of it, how many plots, perjuries, murders, imprisonments, trading ventures, and enslavements.

ΧΑΡΩΝ.Ἐκεῖνο γάρ ἐστιν ὁ χρυσός, τὸ λαμπρὸν ὃ ἀποστίλβει, τὸ ὕπωχρον μετ᾿ ἐρυθήματος; νῦν γὰρ πρῶτον εἶδον, ἀκούων ἀεί.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. Ἐκεῖνο, ὦ Χάρων, τὸ ἀοίδιμον ὄνομα καὶ περιμάχητον.

ΧΑΡΩΝ. Καὶ μὴν οὐχ ὁρῶ ὅ τι τὸ ἀγαθὸν αὐτῷ πρόσεστιν, εἰ μὴ ἄρα ἕν τι μόνον, ὅτι βαρύνονται οἱ φέροντες αὐτό.

ΕΡΜΗΣ. Οὐ γὰρ οἶσθα ὅσοι πόλεμοι διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἐπιβουλαὶ καὶ λῃστήρια καὶ ἐπιορκίαι καὶ φόνοι καὶ δεσμὰ [καὶ πλοῦς μακρὸς] καὶ ἐμπορίαι καὶ δουλεῖαι;

καὶ πλοῦς μακρὸς del. Spath

Men continually read the classics less—for what use are they in a foreign restaurant?—and of those who so read them fewer are of the sort to either understand or enjoy Horace. Scholarship has of late become very serious and solemn. Ceaselessly busied about manuscripts, emendations, epigraphy, folk-lore, archaeology and the like, or labouring wearily through Teutonic treatises, classical students now know little of that slippered ease without which the genial old poet wholly refuses intimacy. He claims to sit with you in the snuggery and by the fireside. There and then only he will make himself thoroughly at home, and there no one talks with a more pleasant wit or tells a story better than this fat, sleek-skinned little gentleman, whose words flow so easily, whose eye twinkles so goodhumouredly, who is so polished, so modest, and, above all, so wise.