Laudator Temporis Acti

When they first began such philosophy they were called boskoi [grazers] because they had no homes, ate neither bread nor meat and drank no wine, but dwelt constantly in the mountains, continually praising God with prayers and hymns according to the law of the Church. At the usual meal hours they would each take a sickle and wander in the mountains, feeding off wild plants as if they were grazing.

τούτους δὲ καὶ βοσκοὺς ἀπεκάλουν, ἔναγχος τῆς τοιαύτης φιλοσοφίας ἄρξαντας. ὀνομάζουσι δὲ ὧδε αὐτοὺς, καθότι οὔτε οἰκήματα ἔχουσιν, οὔτε ἄρτον οὔτε ὄψον ἐσθίουσιν, οὔτε οἶνον πίνουσιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὄρεσι διατρίβοντες, ἀεὶ τὸν Θεὸν εὐλογοῦσιν ἐν εὐχαῖς καὶ ὕμνοις κατὰ θεσμὸν τῆς ἐκκλησίας. τροφῆς δὲ ἡνίκα γένηται καιρὸς, καθάπερ νεμόμενοι, ἅρπην ἔχων ἕκαστος, ἀνὰ τὸ ὄρος περιϊόντες, τὰς βοτάνας σιτίζονται.

Among the aims which Wilamowitz prescribed for the critic of Greek tragedy were these two: to learn as much Greek as Hermann and Elmsley, and to feel as much pleasure in eradicating a superfluous conjecture as in making a necessary one.¹ How many entrenched conjectures still await expulsion from our texts?<sup>2

1</sup>Einleitung 254.

² Cf. Shackleton Bailey, Philol. 108 (1964) 106.

was die philologie im ganzen in dem halben jahrhundert zugelernt hat. das erste und vornehmste ist also, dass wir wieder so viel griechisch lernen, wie Hermann und Elmsley konnten. aber wenn wir uns das können anzueignen versuchen, dürfen wir uns nicht damit begnügen, es als kunst zu üben, sondern müssen uns dessen was wir wissen und können selbst bewusst werden und es für andere zur darstellung bringen. wir müssen selber verstehen und anderen erklären. das erste erfordert, dass wir vorab das besser wissen wollen ablegen, unser urteil der überlieferung willig ergeben, und, wenn wir anstossen, zunächst nicht ihr sondern uns mistrauen. wir sollen das verständnis herausheben, nicht hineintragen. das gilt von dem einzelnen worte, das gilt in tausendfältiger variation von dem individuellen dichterischen gedanken und seinem ausdrucke im einzelnen verse, im einzelnen chorlied, im ganzen drama.

Labels: typographical and other errors

(a) δορίαλλος or δόριλλος in Ar. (quote) is used of the female genitals, to insult the tragedian Dorillus.⁹⁵

(b) δορύαλλος: the female genitals . . . referring to the tragedian Doryllus:

         the women fence off their pussy shelleys

⁹⁵ Or possibly Dorilaos; punning in any case on περίαλλος (loins).

(a) Etymologicum Genuinum AB

δορίαλλος· λέγεται καὶ δόριλλος. Ἀριστοφάνης· αἱ—φράγνυνται. ἔστι δὲ τὸ γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον, ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορίλλου.

(b) Hesychius δ 2230

δορύαλλος· τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν μόριον . . . ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τοῦ τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορύλλου·

        αἱ <δὲ> γυναῖκες τὸν δορίαλλον φράγυνυνται

Many twenty-first century librarians are nothing but crypto-misobiblists, never happier than when they're maliciously culling their stock and stamping WITHDRAWN on whatever is of proven quality and worth, which is then quietly consigned to the dumpster or the charity shop. Well-stocked shelves are anathema to this race of poisonous elves.

For in you two the line of your sires is not lost, but you are of the race of men that are sceptered kings, fostered by Zeus; for no commoner could beget such sons as you.

... οὐ γὰρ σφῷν γε γένος ἀπόλωλε τοκήων,
ἀλλ᾿ ἀνδρῶν γένος ἐστὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων
σκηπτούχων, ἐπεὶ οὔ κε κακοὶ τοιούσδε τέκοιεν.

62–64 ath. Zenodotus, Aristophanes Byzantius, Aristarchus

As I declared when I first dealt with a god, one must believe in him in order to understand him; Frickenhaus on Greek soil felt much the same way, and with pleasure I quote his words: "One cannot be a historian of religion without reproducing the belief in the old gods in one's heart."

Wie ich, als ich zuerst von einem Gotte handelte, ausgesprochen habe, man müsse an ihn glauben, um ihn zu verstehen, hat ganz ähnlich Frickenhaus auf hellenischem Boden empfunden, und ich setze gern seine Worte her „man kann nicht Religionshistoriker sein, ohne den Glauben an die alten Götter in seinem Herzen nachzuschaffen“.

He whom they call Redeemer has put them in fetters: in fetters of false values and delusive words. Would that someone would yet redeem them from their Redeemer!

Der, welchen sie Erlöser nennen, schlug sie in Banden: — In Banden falscher Werthe und Wahn-Worte! Ach dass Einer sie noch von ihrem Erlöser erlöste!

For Revelations he was dependent on a single copy borrowed from Reuchlin, which lacked the last six verses...

Labels: typographical and other errors

But as for me, the gods themselves undid my bonds
full easily...

αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ δεσμὸν μὲν ἀνέγναμψαν θεοὶ αὐτοὶ
ῥηϊδίως...

We the philologists, dry as dust, who stick to the letter and analyse grammatical subtleties, we also happen to be perverse enough to love the ideals we serve with all our heart.

Wir Philologen, die trocknen Schleicher, die am Buchstaben haften und grammatischen Haarspaltereien nachhängen, haben nun einmal auch die Verkehrtheit, daß wir mit ganzem Herzen die Ideale lieben, denen wir dienen.

People do not want to know too much about us. That is their business, and for many of us the feeling is mutual. But they also do not want to know anything about the ideals we have devoted our life to because we believe in them. That cannot leave us indifferent. Not because of our ideals: they are divine and they have proved that earthly power does not prevail against them, let alone the wild shouting of the modern mob of educators.

Die Leute wollen von uns ja wenig wissen; das ist ihre Sache und beruht für viele auf Gegenseitigkeit. Aber sie wollen auch von den Idealen nichts wissen, denen wir doch deshalb unser Leben gewidmet haben, weil wir an sie glauben. Das kann uns nicht gleichgiltig sein. Keineswegs wegen unserer Ideale; die sind ja göttlich und haben bewiesen, daß irdische Macht ihnen nichts anhaben kann, geschweige das wüste Geschrei des modernen Bildungspöbels.

In Ar. (the head) is called a pot:

so that you don't get your pot cracked with a stick

(ἡ κεφαλὴ) καλεῖται . . . παρὰ δὲ Ἀριστοφάνει σκάφιον·

ἵνα μὴ καταγῇς τὸ σκάφιον πληγεὶς ξύλῳ

How did we come to these corrupted times?
Bitter fate, why give us life,
or else why not an earlier death,
when you see our country
enslaved by profane foreigners...?

Perchè venimmo a sì perversi tempi?
Perchè il nascer ne desti o perchè prima
Non ne desti il morire,
Acerbo fato? onde a stranieri ed empi
Nostra patria vedendo ancella e schiava...?

How came our times to be thus out of joint?
Why were we born or why, ere such a day,
Not deal us merciful death,
O bitter Fate, that dost our land appoint
To be the slave of impious foreigners...?

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.

Ich beschwöre euch, meine Brüder, bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt denen nicht, welche euch von überirdischen Hoffnungen reden! Giftmischer sind es, ob sie es wissen oder nicht.

Verächter des Lebens sind es, Absterbende und selber Vergiftete, deren die Erde müde ist: so mögen sie dahinfahren!

Coartatio Erroris Principium Sapientiae

The restriction of error is the beginning of wisdom.

Classical education in the English public schools consists of casting sham pearls before real swine.
                                                                                     Author unidentified

The whole crowd shouts out and clatters arms in the way they do for someone whose speech they approve.

conclamat omnis multitudo et suo more armis concrepat, quod facere in eo consuerunt cuius orationem approbant.

                          The patriots haunt
Dark tavern corners talking politics,
Get up their projects, bet and curse and yawn,
And booze it up for the welfare of the country.

                           Die Patrioten liegen
In dunkeln Schenken und politisieren,
Und subskribieren, wetten, fluchen, gähnen,
Und saufen auf das Wohl des Vaterlands.

Soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered...

ἦμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς...

'Rosy-fingered', as Eustathius explains, probably refers to the spreading crimson rays of the rising sun. The suggestion that being an Oriental lady she would have her finger-nails dyed red is too far-fetched.

• 2.1 The early Dawn was born; her fingers bloomed
• 3.404 When newborn Dawn appeared with rosy fingers
• 3.491 When rosy-fingered Dawn came bright and early
• 4.306 Soon Dawn was born, her fingers bright with roses
• 4.431 When Dawn appeared, her fingers bright with flowers
• 4.576 When early Dawn appeared and touched the sky with / blossom
• 5.228 When vernal Dawn first touched the sky with flowers
• 8.1 Soon Dawn appeared and touched the sky with roses
• 9.152 When early Dawn shone forth with rosy fingers
• 9.170 But when the rosy hands of Dawn appeared
• 9.307 Early the Dawn appeared, pink fingers blooming
• 9.437 When early Dawn revealed her rose-red hands
• 9.560 Then when rose-fingered Dawn came, bright and early
• 10.187 Then the roses of Dawn's fingers / appeared again
• 12.8 When Dawn came, / born early, with her fingertips like petals
• 12.316 When rosy-fingered Dawn / appeared
• 13.18 Then Dawn was born again; her fingers / bloomed
• 15.189 When rosy-fingered Dawn / the early-born appeared
• 17.1 When newborn Dawn appeared with hands of flowers
• 19.428 When early Dawn, / the newborn child with rosy hands appeared

When Dawn appeared, early risen and rosy-fingered

Hesiod, who is also a Bœotian, is admirable for the purity of his life and soundness of his precepts, but there is hardly a trace of poetry in his ploughed field.

I find in all his writings but one verse worth transcribing, and that only for the melody:

In a soft meadow and on vernal flowers.¹

¹ Hes., Theog., 279.

ἐν μαλακῷ λειμῶνι καὶ ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν.

The master's mullet will be one sent from Corsica or the Tauromenian cliffs, since our own sea has been totally ransacked to the point of exhaustion, since gluttony rages, the delicatessens raking the nearest waters with nonstop nets—and we don't let the Tyrrhenian fish grow to size.

mullus erit domini quem misit Corsica vel quem
Tauromenitanae rupes, quando omne peractum est
et iam defecit nostrum mare, dum gula saevit,
retibus adsiduis penitus scrutante macello        95
proxima, nec patimur Tyrrhenum crescere piscem.

It is practice and experience that hold supremacy in the crafts, and there is no branch of learning in which one is not taught by his own mistakes.

usus et experientia dominantur in artibus, neque est ulla disciplina, in qua non peccando discatur.

I'm nothing but a skeleton-thing of bones;
My words are nothing but cold puffs of wind
That blow through dried-up ribs with rattling noises.
The wise little man that lives inside my head
Has gone away, and there within my skull
A spider spins its quiet web in peace.

Ich bin nur noch ein knöchrichtes Skelett;
Und was ich sprech', ist nur ein kalter Windstoß,
Der klappernd zieht durch meine trocknen Rippen.
Das kluge Männlein, das im Kopf mir wohnte,
Ist ausgezogen, und in meinem Schädel
Spinnt eine Spinn' ihr friedliches Gewebe.

It is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counsellor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives—in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment.

I don't know what else will convince you, Menelaus, if you won't believe your own eyes.

οὐκ οἶδα, ὦ Μενέλαε, ᾥτινι ἂν ἄλλῳ πιστεύσειας τοῖς σεαυτοῦ ὀφθαλμοῖς ἀπιστῶν.

The things we learn of by sight and hearing, those do I prefer.

ὅσων ὄψις ἀκοὴ μάθησις, ταῦτα ἐγὼ προτιμέω.

Eyes are more exact witnesses than ears.

ὀφθαλμοὶ τῶν ὤτων ἀκριβέστεροι μάρτυρες.

Κτησίας ὁ Κτησιόχου ὁ Κνίδιος, ὃς3 συνέγραψεν περὶ τῆς Ἰνδῶν χώρας καὶ τῶν παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἃ μήτε αὐτὸς εἶδεν μήτε ἄλλου ἀληθεύοντος ἤκουσεν.

[…]

γράφω τοίνυν περὶ ὧν μήτε εἶδον μήτε ἔπαθον μήτε παρ᾿ ἄλλων ἐπυθόμην, ἔτι δὲ μήτε ὅλως ὄντων μήτε τὴν ἀρχὴν γενέσθαι δυναμένων. διὸ δεῖ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας μηδαμῶς πιστεύειν αὐτοῖς.

One of them is Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus, of Cnidos, who wrote a great deal about India and its characteristics that he had never seen himself nor heard from anyone else with a reputation for truthfulness.

[…]

I am writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with nor learned from others—which, in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist. Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them.

• Believing One's Own Eyes
• Trust Your Senses

I do not remember what books we read, except that we did Euripides' "Medea," and used Wordsworth's "Greek Grammar," which, by way of rendering obscurius per obscurum, was written in Latin. It remains to me to this day the ideal of all that is hideous and hateful in learning.

Middle and Junior Part were set to learn a most portentous amount of Wordsworth's Greek Grammar, all in Latin! Some 50 pages of this horrible book had to be learnt by heart, all by rote, without any attempt to apply the rules! I still shudder at the sight of page 75: "Multa sunt verba quae Futuro Activo carent,—sic ἄδω cano ἄσομαι" followed by 48 other verbs, which have only a Futurum Medium, none of which we had ever seen, or were likely to see. A more preposterous waste of effort, or one more calculated to disgust us with the Greek language, it is difficult to imagine.

The good old Yorkshire custom of sending a present at pig-killing time to neighbours is in full life in Holderness. Holderness, however, differs somewhat from other parts of the country. In the neighbourhood of the city of York, for instance, it is always "pig-fry" which is sent—that is, a taste of liver, "leets" (or lungs), heart, etc., the whole neatly covered with a bit of the diaphragm. This part of the business also obtains in Holderness, but here there is an additional present sent later on. This second present consists of cooked, or at any rate prepared, articles, and generally includes a mince pie, a link or two of sausage, a bit of black-pudding, a "standin' pie" (pork raised pie), with some times a bit of "chine." The whole stock of articles sent, prepared or unprepared, is spoken of as "pig-cheer." The liberality of the cottager on such occasions is very remarkable.

• Martinmas
• Nulla Dies Sine Suilla
• Ham
• Pork Products
• Culture and Civilization

How wonderful would it be to live together in these
Rough fields, in a homely cottage, hunting the deer with our bows,
Herding a flock of kids with green marsh-mallow switches!

o tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura
atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos,
haedorumque gregem viridi compellere hibisco!

This fellow's ignorant and barbaric!

ἅνθρωπος ἀμαθὴς οὑτοσὶ καὶ βάρβαρος.

A βάρβαρος is someone who does not know Greek, and thus by definition an idiot.

In most cities the majority is composed of the ignorant, the idle, and the profligate. In most cities, after a time, there are enough of bad citizens to subvert good laws.

I shall humour you and explain what you wish as best I can, not however as if I were the Pythian Apollo making statements to be regarded as certain and unalterable, but following out a train of probabilities as one poor mortal out of many. For further than likelihood as I see it I cannot get. Certainty will be for those who say such things can be known and who claim wisdom for themselves.

geram tibi morem et ea, quae vis, ut potero, explicabo, nec tamen quasi Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quae dixero, sed ut homunculus unus e multis, probabilla coniectura sequens. ultra enim quo progrediar quam ut verisimilla videam non habeo. certa dicent ii, qui et percipi ea posse dicunt et se sapientes esse profitentur.

Zephyr returns, and with sweet accents
enchants the air and awakens the waves,
and murmuring his way through green leaves
he invites the meadow flowers to dance to his tune.

With garlanded hair, Phyllis and Cloris
sing joyful love songs so dear to them,
while from high hills and deep valleys
the echoing caves redouble their music.

Dawn rises more lovely in the sky, and the sun
pours down gold yet brighter, embellishing
the sky-blue mantle of Thetis with purer silver.

Alone I wander through lonely and deserted woods,
and, as my fortune demands, now weep, now sing
the brightness of two lovely eyes and my torment.

---

Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti
l'aer fa grato e'il pié discioglie a l'onde
e, mormoranda tra le verdi fronde,
fa danzar al bel suon su'l prato i fiori.

Inghirlandato il crin Fillide e Clori
note temprando lor care e gioconde
e da monti e da valli ime e profonde
raddoppian l'armonia gli antri canori.

Sorge più vaga in ciel l'aurora, e'l sole,
sparge più luci d'or; più puro argento
fregia di Teti il bel ceruleo manto.

Sol io, per selve abbandonate e sole,
l'ardor di due belli occhi e'l mio tormento,
come vuol mia ventura, hor piango hor canto.

Of the other duets from this period, 'Zefiro torna, e di soavi accenti' (in the 1632 Scherzi madrigali) is deservedly famous. The poem is not the usual one by Petrarch, which Monteverdi had set in Book VI. It is a sort of 'parody' in the sixteenth century sense, by Ottavio Rinuccini and, most important, keeps the same contrast between joyful nature and the lover abandoned to his doleful thoughts. Monteverdi sets this as a chaconne, using an ostinato bass pattern very popular about this time:

The form is a difficult one. The shortness of the bass pattern (compared with others such as the romanesca) means short phrase-lengths which can become tiresome,  and the harmonies are not easily varied enough for an extended piece. Monteverdi conquers these problems magnificently. His first paragraph lasts a dozen bars, as each voice replies with a variant of the initial theme; and then the sweetness of the breeze, slightly syncopated, is expressed by a succession of pure consonances. There are gentle roulades for the murmuring waves, pictorial motifs for the valleys and mountains (complete with the echo device), in fact all the imagery of 'Ecco mormorar l'onde' in the form of a duet. Then, as the lover speaks of his plight, a piece of recitative with dissonances is ushered in with a great chromatic change, brought to a peaceful end as the lover sings praise of his lady's eyes in an ornamental, sonorous passage with trills and scales in thirds. The technical mastery of the piece is astonishing. Out of conventional features — the ostinato bass, the by now customary division into speech-rhythm recitative and dance-rhythm aria, echo music and so on — Monteverdi builds up a vivid picture, and one which proves him to be a composer by no means semper dolens.

For pleasant it is at a feast and rich banquet
to tell delightful tales, when men have had enough of feasting...

ἡδὺ [μέν] ἐστ ̓ ἐν δαιτὶ καὶ εἰλαπίνῃ τεθαλυίῃ
τέρπεσθαι μύθοισιν, ἐπὴν δαιτὸς κορέσωνται,,,

For Nature is unfeeling: the sun shines on the evil and on the good, and the criminal as well as the best of men sees the brightness of the moon and the stars.

Denn unfühlend
Ist die Natur:
Es leuchtet die Sonne
Über Bös' und Gute,
Und dem Verbrecher
Glänzen, wie dem Besten
Der Mond und die Sterne.

For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

In 1937 I was in Paris and decided to call on Jean [sic] Marouzeau, Professor of course at the Sorbonne. He had very little time for me, because, as he told me proudly, he was off to Spitsbergen the next morning. He was not a very impressive-looking man, but he was a remarkable scholar (although I find some of his books a little dull), and above all he was a wonderful organizer. Where would we be without L'année philologique? But he put his organizing ability to even more practical use. He was in fact the head and organizer of the French Resistance in Paris. One day a pamphlet, through an error signed M., fell into the hands of the Germans. Being somewhat suspect already he was arrested. Fortunately a German officer, who was a classical scholar, succeeded in persuading the people in charge that as a classical scholar Marouzeau was obviously harmless and innocent; and so he was released.

But I consort with long-haired things
    In velvet collar-rolls,
Who talk about the Aims of Art,
    And “theories” and “goals,”
And moo and coo with women-folk
    About their blessed souls.

But that they call “psychology”
    Is lack of liver pill,
And all that blights their tender souls
    Is eating till they’re ill,
And their chief way of winning goals
    Consists of sitting still.

Of all those who dwell between the Euxine Sea and the Pillars of Atlas and look on the light of the sun, I honor those who reverence my power, but I lay low all those who think proud thoughts against me. For in the gods as well one finds this trait: they enjoy receiving honor from mortals.

ὅσοι τε Πόντου τερμόνων τ᾽ Ἀτλαντικῶν
ναίουσιν εἴσω, φῶς ὁρῶντες ἡλίου,
τοὺς μὲν σέβοντας τἀμὰ πρεσβεύω κράτη,        5
σφάλλω δ᾽ ὅσοι φρονοῦσιν εἰς ἡμᾶς μέγα.
ἔνεστι γὰρ δὴ κἀν θεῶν γένει τόδε·
τιμώμενοι χαίρουσιν ἀνθρώπων ὕπο.

if indeed the gods are pleased to receive from men respect and worship, and repay these with favours.

εἰ δὴ τιμώμενοι χαίρουσιν οἱ θεοὶ καί θαυμαζόμενοι ὑπ᾿ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀντὶ τούτων χάριτας ἀποδιδόασιν.

Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: "What bad habit have you cured to-day? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better?" Anger will cease and become more controllable if it finds that it must appear before a judge every day. Can anything be more excellent than this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day?

faciebat hoc Sextius, ut consummato die, cum se ad nocturnam quietem recepisset, interrogaret animum suum: "quod hodie malum tuum sanasti? cui vitio obstitisti? qua parte melior es?" desinet ira et moderatior erit, quae sciet sibi cotidie ad iudicem esse veniendum. quicquam ergo pulchrius hac consuetudine excutiendi totum diem?

Labels: typographical and other errors

I once heard him conversing in Russian with a visitor and said to him: "I didn't know, Arnaldo, that fluent Russian was one of your numerous accomplishments." "Languages were created for communication," he replied, "I refuse to let them be a barrier."

As a matter of fact, whenever any event of greater note or importance occurs, the Gauls shout it abroad through fields and districts and then others take it up in turn and pass it on to their next neighbours; as happened on this occasion. For deeds done at Cenabum at sunrise were heard of before the end of the first watch in the borders of the Arverni, a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles.

nam ubicumque maior atque illustrior incidit res, clamore per agros regionesque significant; hunc alii deinceps excipiunt et proximis tradunt, ut tum accidit. nam quae Cenabi oriente sole gesta essent, ante primam confectam vigiliam in finibus Arvernorum audita sunt, quod spatium est milium passuum circiter centum LX.

He was a wonderful chessplayer. I thought I was reasonably good myself, but every time we played he had me tied up in knots after half a dozen moves. It was many years later that I got rid of the feeling of inferiority which that gave me. It was when Prof. Penrose,⁶⁷ the father of the British chessmaster, told me that old players would sometimes wonder what had become of young Rose, who had drawn with Capablanca or whoever it was. And when they were told that he had become a Professor of Classics, they would say: "What a pity!"

⁶⁷ Not identified.

Your Skutsch anecdote reminded me that the great physicist Roger Penrose is the son of Lionel Penrose the psychiatrist, geneticist, and chess theorist. That must be the one Skutsch talked to about H J Rose. Roger's brother became a chess master.

[A]n enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful.

Telemachus inhaled

Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος

• 213 careful
• 230 moodily
• 306 brooding
• 345 sullen
• 388 his mind alert and focused
• 412 soberly

What I admired most in Lindsay was his noble and entirely unselfish attitude to scholarship. He was the only man I have known who was genuinely pleased when he was convincingly shown to have been wrong; because that meant an advance in scholarship.

While curling smokes from village-tops are seen,
And the fleet shades glide o'er the dusky green.

Even now the housetops yonder are smoking
and longer shadows fall from the mountain heights.

et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant
maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.

I also attended a seminar on Greek epigraphy with Hiller v. Gaertringen, a son-in-law of Wilamowitz. One day he said: "If you can't see anything on the stone, and if you can't feel anything with your fingers, you must use your finest instrument, your tongue." With that he handed us a piece of stone. It went round the table, and we, all the four of us, solemnly licked the stone.

Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.

quisnam igitur liber? sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus,
quem neque pauperies neque mors neque vincula terrent,
responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores        85
fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus,
externi ne quid valeat per leve morari,
in quem manca ruit semper Fortuna.

His reading finished, Monsieur Bergeret replaced the pamphlet upon the table.

"These old books," he said, "amuse and divert our minds, they make us forget the present day."

"That is true," replied Monsieur Goubin.

---

M. Bergeret posa le feuillet sur sa table. Il avait terminé sa lecture.

Ces vieux livres, dit-il, amusent et divertissent l'esprit. Ils nous font oublier le temps présent.

En effet , dit M. Goubin.

You will have to be content with death,
so why make your life a misery?

Du sollst mit dem Tode zufrieden sein,
Warum machst du dir das Leben zur Pein?

Cast away complaint and be not troubled, for how brief is the time thou dwellest here compared with all the life that follows this! Ere thou breedest worms and art cast into the tomb torment not thy soul, as if it were damned while thou still livest.

Ῥίπτε γόους, μὴ κάμνε, πόσον χρόνον ἐνθάδε μίμνων,
    ὡς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὅλον τὸν μετὰ ταῦτα βίον.
πρὶν τοίνυν σκώληκα βαλεῖν τύμβοις τε ῥιφῆναι,
    μὴ δαμάσῃς ψυχὴν ζῶν ἔτι κρινομένην.

There has lately come to my mind (if so desired the word may be used with quotations) the recipe by which any aspiring young poet may become an ultramodern in his versifying as his ambition may require — may even attain to the "Dial" school. The thing is simple enough; take any thought of no importance, preferably one concerning one's own phases of nauseation, and state it as awkwardly and obscurely as possible. Voila! Cummings and Eliot!

Ah, but in the old days, Charon, you know what men they were that came, all of them brave, and most of them covered with blood and wounded; but now we get a few poisoned by a wife or a son, or with their legs and bellies all puffed out with rich living, a pale miserable lot, all of them, quite unlike the old ones.

πλὴν ἀλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν παλαιοί, ὦ Χάρων, οἶσθα οἷοι παρεγίγνοντο, ἀνδρεῖοι ἅπαντες, αἵματος ἀνάπλεῳ καὶ τραυματίαι οἱ πολλοί· νῦν δὲ ἢ φαρμάκῳ τις ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀποθανὼν ἢ ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ ὑπὸ τρυφῆς ἐξῳδηκὼς τὴν γαστέρα καὶ τὰ σκέλη, ὠχροὶ ἅπαντες καὶ ἀγεννεῖς, οὐδὲν ὅμοιοι ἐκείνοις.

• Pale Women and Dark Men
• Perusta Solibus
• Pale Skin
• Pallor
• Umbrellas
• White Lead

If I caught him reading a newly published book, save by way of penance, it would go hard with him. Of our modern education he should have enough to read the ancients: Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and that lot—custodians of most of what is worth knowing.

But their lies weren’t without practical advantage to you, Alexander.

Ἀλλὰ τὸ ψεῦδος αὐτῶν οὐκ ἄχρηστόν σοι, ὦ Ἀλέξανδρε, πρὸς τὰ πράγματα ἐγένετο.

Your monster of the deep, my dear Nereids, the one of you sent against Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, didn’t harm the girl, as you've been thinking it would, but is now dead itself.

Τὸ κῆτος ὑμῶν, ὦ Νηρεΐδες, ὃ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Κηφέως θυγατέρα τὴν Ἀνδρομέδαν ἐπέμψατε, οὔτε τὴν παῖδα ἠδίκησεν, ὡς οἴεσθε, καὶ αὐτὸ ἤδη τέθνηκεν.

Labels: typographical and other errors

God's earth, this great shining room,
they darken to a vale of misery,
thereby at once revealing
what miserable wretches they are themselves.

Der Gotteserde lichten Saal
Verdüstern sie zum Jammertal;
Daran entdecken wir geschwind,
Wie jämmerlich sie selber sind.

The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth.

Papist or Protestant, or both between,
Like good Erasmus in an honest mean,
In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

Indeed, there is no danger, no danger whatsoever, that requires more anxious vigilance than allowing any man to become stronger than the people. Let no man be delivered, and let no man be destroyed, merely because this man or that so desires; let him who is delivered or destroyed by the evidence of facts be entitled to receive from this court the verdict that is his due. That is the democratic principle.

οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔσθ' ὅ τι τῶν πάντων μᾶλλον εὐλαβεῖσθαι δεῖ ἢ τὸ μείζω τινὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἐᾶν γίγνεσθαι. μή μοι σῳζέσθω μηδ ἀπολλύσθω μηδείς, ἐὰν ὁ δεῖνα ἢ ὁ δεῖνα βούληται, ἀλλ' ὃν ἂν τὰ πεπραγμένα σῴζῃ καὶ τοὐναντίον, τούτῳ τῆς προσηκούσης ψήφου παρ' ὑμῶν ὑπαρχέτω τυγχάνειν· τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι δημοτικόν.

By Zeus the Savior...

νὴ τὸν Δία τὸν σωτῆρα...

22,
101, 106, 111, 134, 144, 165, 187,
202,
356, 359,
400, 410, 444,
551, 566,
613, 657,
704, 706, 712, 715,
848, 863, 870, 889, 890,
905, 920, 971,
1008, 1010, 1021, 1028,
1102, 1116,
1202

My future program will be calm disapproval of human institutions in general, including all forms of government, most laws and customs, and all contemporary literature; enthusiastic belief in the Darwinian theory, intolerance of intolerance, and war upon every man with a mission ... human suffering and human injustice in all their forms to be contemplated with a merely curious interest, as one looks into an anthill.³⁸

38. "Working for an Empress," Works, l350-351. Fatout, Devil's Lexicographer, 109.

IPHIGENIA. Can a foreign country become our homeland?
ARKAS. It is your homeland has grown foreign to you.
IPHIGENIA. Therefore my heart bleeds and cannot heal.

IPHIGENIE. Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS. Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE. Das ist’s, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.

But even such prescriptions pale beside many of those receiving sanction from the distinguished chemist Robert Boyle in his Medicinal Experiments of 1692, one of the most popular family handbooks of the period. Among other recipes more palatable, one for sore throat, as common an ailment among children then as now, proposes "a drachm of white dog's turd" worked up with honey of roses into "a linctus, to be very slowly let down the throat." Another—"For Convulsions, especially in Children"—requires ground dried earthworms fortified with "a pretty number of grains of ambergrease" to moderate the stench. A third—"For the Cholic and diverse other Distempers"—features an infusion made of "four or five balls of fresh stone-horse dung" steeped in a pint of white wine, to be drunk "from a quarter to half a pint" at a dose. Easily the Mount Everest and Mona Lisa among these unappealing remedies is the following, used "To clear the Eyes, even of films": Take human fecal matter "of good Colour and consistence," dry it slowly "till it be pulverable," then reduce it "into an impalpable powder, which is to be blown once, twice, or thrice a day ... into the patient's Eyes."

Labels: noctes scatologicae

What applies to Christianity applies to the Stoics as well. To be a Christian or a Stoic is unfitting for a free human being.

Was vom Christentum gilt, gilt von den Stoikern: freien
    Menschen geziemet es nicht, Christ oder Stoiker sein.

From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy—
From any kind of vice, or folly,
Bias, propensity or passion
That is in prevalence and fashion,
Save one, the sufferer or lover
May, by the grace of God, recover:
Alone that spiritual tetter,
The zeal to make creation better,
Glows still immedicably warmer.
Who knows of a reformed reformer?

It is well known that Caelius, the orator, was very hot-tempered. A client of rare forbearance was, as the story goes, once dining with Caelius in his chamber, but it was difficult for him, having got into such close quarters, to avoid a quarrel with the companion at his side; so he decided that it was best to agree with whatever Caelius said and to play up to him. Caelius, however, could not endure his compliant attitude, and cried out, "Contradict me, that there may be two of us!"

Caelium oratorem fuisse iracundissimum constat. cum quo, ut aiunt, cenabat in cubiculo lectae patientiae cliens, sed difficile erat illi in copulam coniecto rixam eius cum quo cohaerebat effugere; optimum iudicavit quidquid dixisset sequi et secundas agere. non tulit Caelius adsentientem et exclamavit: "dic aliquid contra, ut duo simus!"

Don't walk the highway.

τάς λεωφόρους μὴ βαδίζειν.

For this city is no longer mine.

πόλις γὰρ οὐκέτ᾽ ἔστιν ἥδε μοι.

The civilian reader must not suppose when he reads accounts of military operations in which relative position of the forces are defined, as in the foregoing passages, that these were matters of general knowledge to those engaged. Such statements are commonly made, even by those high in command, in the light of later disclosures, such as the enemy's official reports. It is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anything about the disposition of the enemy's forces—except that it is unamiable—or precisely whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, they can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass. It may be said, generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what is going on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all until he learns it afterward.

Drink, may you live well always.

πίε, ζήσαις καλῶς ἀεί.

'It is a bad business', Eduard cried, 'that we cannot nowadays learn anything that will last a lifetime. Our forefathers stuck to the teaching they were given when they were young, but we have to unlearn everything every five years if we are not to go completely out of fashion.'

„Es ist schlimm genug“, rief Eduard, „daß man jetzt nichts mehr für sein ganzes Leben lernen kann. Unsre Vorfahren hielten sich an den Unterricht, den sie in ihrer Jugend empfangen; wir aber müssen jetzt alle fünf Jahre umlernen, wenn wir nicht ganz aus der Mode kommen wollen“.

While Germanos the chief prelate was baptizing Leo's successor (in both his evil and his rule) Constantine [V], the boy because he was so young, gave a terrible, foul-smelling harbinger: he defecated in the holy font, as say those who were accurate eyewitnesses.¹⁷⁸ This made the patriarch Germanos prophetically say, "This is a sign that in the future great evil shall befall the Christians and the church because of him."

178. This is the origin of the derisive title Kopronymos ("Dung-name").

Labels: noctes scatologicae

[These] men — how very like unto a fart [they are!]

...Homines crepitui quam simillimi ventris...

Labels: noctes scatologicae

In youth you are free to sleep all night with an age-mate
and satisfy your craving for lovemaking;
you may carouse and sing with a piper.
No other pleasure compares with these
for men and women. What are wealth and respect to me?
Pleasure combined with good cheer surpasses everything.

ἐν δ᾿ ἥβῃ πάρα μὲν ξὺν ὁμήλικι πάννυχον εὕδειν,
    ἱμερτῶν ἔργων ἐξ ἔρον ἱέμενον·
ἔστι δὲ κωμάζοντα μετ᾿ αὐλητῆρος ἀείδειν·        1065
    οὐδέν τοι τούτων ἄλλ᾿ ἐπι τερπνότερον
ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξί. τί μοι πλοῦτός τε καὶ αἰδώς;
    τερπωλὴ νικᾷ πάντα σὺν εὐφροσύνῃ.

You do not shame your ancestry.

προγόνους οὐ καταισχύνεις σέθεν.

[41] In what terms to describe the coast of Campania taken by itself, with its blissful and heavenly loveliness, so as to manifest that there is one region where nature has been at work in her joyous mood! And then again all that invigorating healthfulness all the year round, the climate so temperate, the plains so fertile, the hills so sunny, the glades so secure, the groves so shady! Such wealth of various forests, the breezes from so many mountains, the great fertility of its corn and vines and olives, the glorious fleeces of its sheep, the sturdy necks of its bulls, the many lakes, the rich supply of rivers and springs flowing over all its surface, its many seas and harbours and the bosom of its lands offering on all sides a welcome to commerce, the country itself eagerly running out into the seas as it were to aid mankind. I do not speak of the character and customs of its people, its men, the nations that its language and its might have conquered. [42] The Greeks themselves, a people most prone to gushing self-praise, have pronounced sentence on the land by conferring on but a very small part of it the name of Great Greece!

[41] qualiter Campaniae ora per se felixque illa ac beata amoenitas, ut palam sit uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturae! iam vero tanta ea vitalis ac perennis salubritas, talis caeli temperies, tam fertiles campi, tam aprici colles, tam innoxii saltus, tam opaca nemora, tam munifica silvarum genera, tot montium adflatus, tanta frugum vitiumque et olearum fertilitas, tam nobilia pecudi vellera, tam opima tauris colla, tot lacus, tot amnium fontiumque ubertas totam eam perfundens, tot maria, portus, gremiumque terrarum commercio patens undique et tamquam iuvandos ad mortales ipsa avide in maria procurrens.  neque ingenia ritusque ac viros et lingua manuque superatas commemoro gentes. [42] de ea iudicavere Grai, genus in gloriam suam effusissimum, quotam partem ex ea appellando Graeciam Magnam!

Whosoever throws refuse into the street shall pay a fine of fifty-one drachmas.

ὃς ἂν βάλλῃ τὰ ἐκκαθάρματα ἄνωθεν τῆς ὀδοῦ μίαν καὶ πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς ὠφέλετο τῷ θέλοντι πρ[ῆ]χ[σαι.

Anyone who throws the dirty waters after the sacrifice from the top of the street shall owe fifty-one drachmas to the person who will prosecute him.

This appears to be a sign. There is a rule about throwing rubbish above a road with a penalty of fifty-one drachmas (lines 1-10), but it allows volunteers to impose the fine (lines 10-12).

Not being able to refute my arguments,
you chatter at random and exert yourself to no purpose.

καὶ σύ γ᾽ ἐλέγξαι μ᾽ οὔπω δύνασαι περὶ τούτου,
ἀλλὰ φλυαρεῖς καὶ πτερυγίζεις.        575

Such personal or State commissions to architects and sculptors are an important feature of Archaic Greece. The artist is hired to do a job, to please or impress mortals or divinities. 'Art for art's sake' was an unnecessary conception.

Go your ways, and honor Peace, fairest of goddesses.

ἴτε νυν καθ᾽ ὁδόν, τὴν καλλίστην
θεῶν Εἰρήνην τιμῶντες.

fairest of deities, Peace: the ancient commentator sees this as a comment on the prolongation of the war (cf. 772 n.). However, Euripides had praised Peace in the same terms before 422 B.C. (Cresphontes fr. 71 Austin); cf. also Supp. 1188 ff. On Peace as a goddess cf. Dodds on Ba. 419-20 and my n. on Hes. Th. 902.

Then we came to the top of a ridge and a grand panorama unfolded before us: Naples in all its glory, rows of houses for miles along the flat coast line of the Gulf, promontories, headlands, cliffs, then the islands and, beyond them, the sea. A breathtaking sight!

A horrible noise, more a screaming and howling for joy than a song, startled me out of my wits. It came from the boy who was standing behind me. I turned on him furiously. He was a good-natured lad, and this was the first time he had heard a harsh word from either of us.

For a while he neither moved nor spoke; then he tapped me on the shoulder, thrust his right arm between Kniep and myself, pointed with his forefinger and said: "Signor, perdonate! Questa è la mia patria!" which means: "Sir, forgive me. This is my native land!" And so I was startled for the second time. Poor northerner that I am — something like tears came into my eyes.

---

Nun erreichten wir eine Höhe; der größt e Anblick tat sich vor uns auf. Neapel in seiner Herrlichkeit, die meilenlange Reihe von Häusern am flachen Ufer des Golfs hin, die Vorgebirge, Erdzungen, Felswände, dann die Inseln und dahinter das Meer war ein entzückender Anblick.

Ein gräßlicher Gesang, vielmehr Lustgeschrei und Freude — geheul des hinten aufstehenden Knaben erschreckte und störte mich. Heftig fuhr ich ihn an; er hatte noch kein böses Wort von uns gehört, er war der gutmütigste Junge.

Eine Weile rührte er sich nicht, dann klopfte er mir sachte auf die Schulter, streckte seinen rechten Arm mit aufgehobenem Zeigefinger zwischen uns durch und sagte: Signor, perdonate! questa è la mia patria! Das heißt verdolmetscht: Herr, verzeiht! ist das doch mein Vaterland! Und so war ich zum zweiten Male überrascht. Mir armen Nordländer kam etwas Tränenartiges in die Augen!

Be eager for learning, even if it comes from the snout of a hog.

Maybe, but all I know is that he scares the pants off me.

οὐκ οἶδ᾿· ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἐκεῖνον ὀρρωδῶ πάνυ.

New York, for example, like London, seems to be a Cloacina of all the depravities of human nature.

I have again begun my German and do half an hour every morning before beginning my other work. I am still at Novalis — you will wonder how I have not finished it long ago, and even to myself I seem to have been reading it almost all my life. As I go at about the pace of a schoolboy translating Caesar I expect it will last me for the rest of my days. (I am like the man in the story. 'Why not buy a book?' 'Oh I have one already.')

My tendency to look at the world through the eyes of the painter whose pictures I have seen last has given me an odd idea. Since our eyes are educated from childhood on by the objects we see around us, a Venetian painter is bound to see the world as a brighter and gayer place than most people see it. We northerners who spend our lives in a drab and, because of the dirt and the dust, an uglier country where even reflected light is subdued, and who have, most of us, to live in cramped rooms — we cannot instinctively develop an eye which looks with such delight at the world.

Meine alte Gabe, die Welt mit Augen desjenigen Malers zu sehen, dessen Bilder ich mir eben eingedrückt, brachte mich auf einen eignen Gedanken. Es ist offenbar, daß sich das Auge nach den Gegenständen bildet, die es von Jugend auf erblickt, und so muß der venezianische Maler alles klarer und heiterer sehn als andere Menschen. Wir, die wir auf einem bald schmutzkotigen, bald staubigen, farblosen, die Widerscheine verdüsternden Boden, und vielleicht gar in engen Gemächern leben, können einen solchen Frohblick aus uns selbst nicht entwickeln.

The art of mosaic, which gave the Ancients their paved floors and the Christians the vaulted Heaven of their churches, has now been degraded to snuff boxes and bracelets. Our times are worse than we think.

Die Kunst, welche dem Alten seine Fußboden bereitete, dem Christen seine Kirchenhimmel wölbte, hat sich jetzt auf Dosen und Armbänder verkrümelt. Diese Zeiten sind schlechter, als man denkt.

"I think it's good to have a more representative body of texts and not just works by so-called 'old white men,'" she told DW. "It would certainly help to make the experiences, perspectives, and voices of women or people with roots outside of Germany more visible and valued, but it's also important to choose a diversity of literary genres with high quality and relevance regardless of the author."

In every activity one man is worse, another better.
No one on his own is skilled in everything.

ἔστιν ὁ μὲν χείρων, ὁ δ᾿ ἀμείνων ἔργον ἕκαστον·
    οὐδεὶς δ᾿ ἀνθρώπων αὐτὸς ἅπαντα σοφός.

CHREMYLUS
I honoured the gods and did what was right, and yet I was none the less poor and unfortunate.
CARIO
I know it but too well.
CHREMYLUS
Others amassed wealth — the sacrilegious, the demagogues, the informers, indeed every sort of rascal.
CARIO
I believe you.

ΧΡΕΜΥΛΟΣ
ἐγὼ θεοσεβὴς καὶ δίκαιος ὢν ἀνὴρ
κακῶς ἔπραττον καὶ πένης ἦν.
ΚΑΡΙΩΝ
                                                         οἶδά τοι.
ΧΡΕΜΥΛΟΣ
ἕτεροι δ᾿ ἐπλούτουν, ἱερόσυλοι, ῥήτορες        30
καὶ συκοφάνται καὶ πονηροί.
ΚΑΡΙΩΝ
                                                        πείθομαι.

BIGOT, n.: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

It's so obvious, even a blind man could see it: in our age, the key to real success is to avoid every wholesome practice.
     
                               δῆλον ὁτιὴ καὶ τυφλῷ
γνῶναι δοκεῖ τοῦθ᾿, ὡς σφόδρ᾿ ἐστὶ συμφέρον
τὸ μηδὲν ἀσκεῖν ὑγιὲς ἐν τῷ νῦν γένει.

50 γένει γρV: βίῳ R: ἔτει V: χρόνῳ Π1 γρV cett.

in the present state of the world: lit. "in the present race (genos)", i.e. in this last and worst of the five Hesiodic ages of the world with their five different human races (gold, silver, bronze, heroic, iron: Works and Days 109-201), the fifth of which is developing towards a state in which "there will be no gratitude for a man who keeps his oath [cf. 61 below] or for a good or honest man, but rather they will honour a man who does outrageous evil; the only justice will be violence, and there will be no shame" (ibid. 190-3). Cf. Critias fr. trag. 21 "there is no justice in the present genos", Men. Thph. F 1.14-15 "If a man is good, well-born, really noble, it's no help to him in the present genos". The true reading genei (dative case of genos) is preserved only as a marginal variant in V; it seems to have been early corrupted into the nonsensical etei "year" (V in text), of which khronōi "time" (most mss., and a fifth-century papyrus) and biōi "life" (R) arc attempted corrections. R's reading (for which cf. Men. Kolax 1) gives good sense, but does not help to explain how the other readings arose.

What is Classical philology? The best point of reference for an American audience may be this: it looks a lot like textualist and originalist approaches to constitutional interpretation. Classical philology, as we were trained to do it, is the attempt to understand a text as it was produced in its historical context, with as few anachronistic preconceptions as possible. The Classical philologist unpacks each word or phrase by comparing it with other uses of the word or phrase in a given author's corpus — and in the broader corpus of texts to which that author would have been exposed.

What characterizes a good library and makes it easier for one to take its measure is as much the books that are not there, that are not worthy of it and that not only would not add anything to it but would spoil it, as the books that are there. In the same way a good museum and, a fortiori, a good art gallery, which has less space at its disposal, establishes its quality as much by the works that one does not see there, that it is out of the question that one should see there, as by those that hang on its walls. It is sad to say and dull to recall that each of us has at his disposal, as I have said before, a narrowly circumscribed time on earth, and all our efforts and all our care will do nothing to render this time infinitely extendable. And I do not regret having elsewhere proposed, as one of the possible definitions of culture, "the clear awareness of the preciousness of time." The cultivated man never has too much time; in fact, he never has enough time to read, see, hear, know, learn, understand, and love.

Nature made thee a fool, to think thou knowest better than the god.

σκαιὸς πέφυκας τοῦ θεοῦ πλείω φρονῶν.

The violence of newspaper talk at that time, both on the part of editors and anonymous correspondents, cannot fail to impress the modern reader even though he be inured to political invective....The political tricks of the day — name-calling, allegations of guilt by association, and the like — were so similar to those employed within present memory that twentieth-century demagogues of either the right or left would have felt very much at home, no doubt, if translated to the late eighteenth century.

Yesterday I threw up.

χθὲς ἤμεσα.

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.

"In other words, a much-edited text with revisions superimposed on earlier versions – a text layered like an archaeological dig."

That the Pléiade poets are not currently a part of the core curriculum of American colleges and universities should not be surprising. Students of French literature are familiar with them, of course, but this is a dismal time for the study of literature and what Walter Pater said of them—in praise—in The Renaissance suggests the reason for their present neglect: he refers to "the qualities, the value, of the whole Plead [sic, read Pleiad] school of poetry, of the whole phase of taste from which that school derives—a certain silvery grace of fancy, nearly all the pleasure of which is in the surprise at the happy and dexterous way in which a thing slight in itself is handled."

That "silvery grace of fancy" is not much in fashion now among academics. It is "elitist." It assumes a knowledge of and a love for the classics. To put it more clearly and aggressively, these were poets of aristocratic elegance, mannered and civilized, whose playful performances were intended as diversions for themselves and like-minded friends from whom they could expect a level of cultural poise and sophistication that students and some faculty members these days cannot provide.