Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Renehan, "The Michigan Alcidamas-Papyrus: A Problem in Methodology," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 75 (1971) 85-105 (at 93):

Three fundamental principles may be stated here:

    (i) A word which survives only in postclassical authors, if it is of rare occurrence even there and if there is an obvious reason why it would not be of common occurrence at any period, should not be used as evidence for dating.
    (ii) In general, a word which occurs often, and exclusively in post-classical authors is significant. A word which occurs chiefly in post-classical authors is less good evidence but, under certain conditions, may be used with some probability. A word which is adequately attested for the classical period, no matter how frequent its occurrences later, should not be used as evidence for a late date. All that is here set down is subject to the obvious principle that
    (iii) In employing statistics a certain minimal sampling is necessary before probable results of any validity can be obtained.

Id., p. 100:

[W]e should remind ourselves that the greater bulk of classical Greek has perished and that therefore our knowledge of classical Greek diction is imperfect. The use of linguistic evidence to date a document is a valid procedure, but it has its limitations which should be recognized.

More useful reminders (id., pp. 89-90):

I remind the reader that it is the exception and due to special circumstances (say, the coinage of a new philosophical or medical term or of a new poetic compound) when the oldest extant example of a word is in fact the oldest actual occurrence of that word. I further remind the reader that it is the exception when the oldest actual occurrence of a word is a written occurrence at all and not rather an oral one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Success," Society and Solitude (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870), pp. 251-278 (at 276):

Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1 pr. 8 (tr. M. Winterbottom):

Look at our young men: they are lazy, their intellects asleep; no-one can stay awake to take pains over a single honest pursuit. Sleep, torpor and a perseverance in evil that is more shameful than either have seized hold of their minds.

torpent ecce ingenia desidiosae iuventutis nec in unius honestae rei labore vigilatur; somnus laguorque ac somno ac languore turpior malarum rerum industria invasit animos.

Theognis 815-816 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

An ox that setteth his strong hoof upon my tongue restraineth me from blabbing albeit I know.

βοῦς μοι ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ κρατερῷ ποδὶ λὰξ ἐπιβαίνων
   ἴσχει κωτίλλειν καίπερ ἐπιστάμενον.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 36-39 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth):

For the rest I'm dumb; a great ox stands upon my tongue—yet the house itself, could it but speak, might tell a tale full plain; since, for my part, of mine own choice I have words for such as know, and to those who know not I've lost my memory.

τὰ δ' ἀλλὰ σιγῶ· βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ μέγας
βέβηκεν· οἶκος δ' αὐτός, εἰ φθογγὴν λάβοι,
σαφέστατ' ἂν λέξειεν· ὡς ἑκὼν ἐγὼ
μαθοῦσιν αὐδῶ κοὐ μαθοῦσι λήθομαι.

Strattis, fragment 72 Kassel-Austin = 67 Kock (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

A great ox treads upon (me).

βοῦς ἐμβαίνει μέγας.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.11.27 (talking about Pythagoras; tr. F.C. Conybeare):

[H]e was the first of mankind to restrain his tongue, inventing a discipline of silence described in the proverbial phrase, "An ox sits upon it."

γλῶττάν τε ὡς πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων ξυνέσχε βοῦν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ σιωπῆς εὑρὼν δόγμα.

Julian, Orations 7.217d-218a (tr. Wilmer Cave Wright):

But I was impelled I know not how to rave with his own sacred frenzy when I spoke like this of the attributes of great Dionysus; and now I set an ox on my tongue: for I may not reveal what is too sacred for speech.

ἀλλὰ ταῦτα ὲν ἀμφὶ τὸν μέγαν Διόνυσον οὐκ οἶδ' ὅπως ἐπῆλθέ μοι βακχεύοντι μανῆναι· τὸν βοῦν ἐπιτίθημι τῇ γλώττῃ· περὶ τῶν ἀρρήτων γὰρ οὐδὲν χρὴ λέγειν.

Synesius, Letters 154 (tr. Augustus Fitzgerald):

These are the two types of men who have falsely accused me with occupying myself in trivial pursuits, one of them because I do not talk the same sort of nonsense as they do, the other because I do not keep my mouth shut, and do not keep the 'bull on my tongue', as they do.

ἄμφω με τούτω τὼ γένη διαβεβλήκατον, ὡς ἐπὶ τοῖς οὐδενὸς ἀξίοις ἐσπουδα κότα· τὸ μὲν ὅτι μὴ ταὐτὰ φλυαρῶ, τὸ δὲ ὅτι μὴ τὸ στόμα συγκλείσας ἔχω καὶ βοῦν τὸν ἐκείνων ἐπὶ τῆς γλώττης τίθεμαι.

Suda β 460 Adler (tr. Catherine Roth):

An ox on the tongue: [sc. A proverbial phrase] in reference to those who are not able to speak freely: either because of the strength of the animal, or because there was an ox stamped on the Athenian coin which those who spoke freely had to pay.

βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώττης· ἐπὶ τῶν μὴ δυναμένων παρρησιάζεσθαι· ἢ διὰ τὴν ἰσχὺν τοῦ ζῴου. ἢ διὰ τὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων νόμισμα βοῦν ἔχειν ἐγκεχαραγμένον, ὅπερ ἐκτίνειν ἔδει τοὺς παρρησιαζομένους.

Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1 pr. 2 (tr. M. Winterbottom):

But by now old age has made me regret the loss of many of my faculties. It has dimmed my eyesight, dulled my hearing, made my strong muscles tired: but among these things I mention it is memory, of all parts of the mind the most vulnerable and fragile, that old age first assaults.

sed cum multa iam mihi ex me desideranda senectus fecerit, oculorum aciem retuderit, aurium sensum hebetaverit, nervorum firmitatem fatigaverit, inter ea quae rettuli memoria est, res ex omnibus animi partibus maxime delicata et fragilis, in quam primam senectus incurrit.

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886), "The True Philosophy," Poems (Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1882), p. 52:

I'd have you use a wise philosophy,
In this, as in all matters, whereupon
Judgment may freely act; truth ever lies
Between extremes; avoid the spendthrift's folly
As you'd avoid the road of utter ruin;
For wealth, or at the least, fair competence,
Is honor, comfort, hope, and self-respect;
All, in a word, that makes our human life
Endurable, if not happy: scorn the cant
Of sentimental Dives, wrapped in purple,
Who over jewelled wine-cups and rich fare,
Affects to flout his gold, and prattles loosely
Of sweet content that's found in poverty:
As for the miser, he's a madman simply,
One who the means of all enjoyment holds,
Yet never dares enjoy: no, no, Anselmo,
Use with a prudent, but still liberal hand
That store the gods have given you; thus, my friend,
'Twixt the Charybdis of a churlish meanness,
And the swift Scylla of improvident waste,
You'll steer your bark o'er smooth, innocuous seas,
And reach at last a peaceful anchorage.

Sophocles, Antigone 1165-1171 (tr. R.C. Jebb):

For when a man hath forfeited his pleasures, I count him not as living,—I hold him but a breathing corpse. Heap up riches in thy house, if thou wilt; live in kingly state; yet, if there be no gladness therewith, I would not give the shadow of a vapour for all the rest, compared with joy.

                                          τὰς γὰρ ἡδονὰς        1165
ὅταν προδῶσιν ἄνδρες, οὐ τίθημ᾽ ἐγὼ
ζῆν τοῦτον, ἀλλ᾽ ἔμψυχον ἡγοῦμαι νεκρόν.
πλούτει τε γὰρ κατ᾽ οἶκον, εἰ βούλει, μέγα
καὶ ζῆ τύραννον σχῆμ᾽ ἔχων· ἐὰν δ᾽ ἀπῇ
τούτων τὸ χαίρειν, τἄλλ᾽ ἐγὼ καπνοῦ σκιᾶς        1170
οὐκ ἂν πριαίμην ἀνδρὶ πρὸς τὴν ἡδονήν.

William M. Calder III, "Nuda Veritas: William Abbott Oldfather on Classics at Columbia," Illinois Classical Studies 18 (1993) 359-378 (at 363):

He held that no one had the bona fides to write about ancient literature or thought until he had published at least one critical index verborum and a critical text "from the ground up" of one Latin and of one Greek author.

Cicero, On the Commonwealth 1.17.27 (tr. Clinton Walker Keyes):

Only such a man, finally, can say of himself what my grandfather Africanus used to say, according to Cato's account—that he was never doing more than when he was doing nothing, and never less alone than when alone.

qui denique, ut Africanum avum meum scribit Cato solitum esse dicere, possit idem de se praedicare, numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset.

Cicero, On Duties 3.1.1 (tr. Walter Miller):

Cato, who was of about the same years, Marcus, my son, as that Publius Scipio who first bore the surname of Africanus, has given us the statement that Scipio used to say that he was never less idle than when he had nothing to do and never less lonely than when he was alone. An admirable sentiment, in truth, and becoming to a great and wise man. It shows that even in his leisure hours his thoughts were occupied with public business and that he used to commune with himself when alone; and so not only was he never unoccupied, but he sometimes had no need for company. The two conditions, then, that prompt others to idleness — leisure and solitude—only spurred him on.

P. Scipionem, M. fili, eum, qui primus Africanus appellatus est, dicere solitum scripsit Cato, qui fuit eius fere aequalis, numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset. magnifica vero vox et magno viro ac sapiente digna; quae declarat illum et in otio de negotiis cogitare et in solitudine secum loqui solitum, ut neque cessaret umquam et interdum colloquio alterius non egeret. ita duae res, quae languorem afferunt ceteris, illum acuebant, otium et solitudo.

For the history of the saying, see a series of articles all with the title "Never Less Alone Than When Alone" and all published in Modern Language Notes:

• Albert S. Cook, 24.2 (February, 1909) 54-55
• Edward A. Allen, 24.4 (April, 1909) 123
• W.F. Brewer, 24.7 (November, 1909) 226
• Henry Noble MacCracken, 25.1 (January, 1910) 28-29
• John Livingston Lowes, 25.3 (March, 1910) 96
• Lane Cooper, 26.7 (November, 1911) 232
• John Richie Schultz, 34.2 (February, 1919) 122
• John S.P. Tatlock, 34.7 (November, 1919) 441

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (October, 1842):

This feeling I have respecting Homer & Greek, that in this great empty continent of ours stretching enormous almost from pole to pole with thousands of long rivers and thousands of ranges of mountains, the rare scholar who under a farmhouse roof reads Homer and the Tragedies adorns the land. He begins to fill it with wit, to counterbalance the enormous disproportion of the unquickened earth. He who first reads Homer in America is its Cadmus & Numa, and a subtle but unlimited benefactor.

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886), "The Axe and Pine," Poems (Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1882), p. 264:

All day, on bole and limb the axes ring,
And every stroke upon my startled brain
Falls with the power of sympathetic pain;
I shrink to view each glorious forest-king
Descend to earth, a wan, discrownèd thing.
Ah, Heaven! beside these foliaged giants slain,
How small the human dwarfs, whose lust for gain
Hath edged their brutal steel to smite and sting!
Hark! to those long-drawn murmurings, strange and drear!
The wail of Dryads in their last distress;
O'er ruined haunts and ravished loveliness
Still tower those brawny arms; tones coarsely loud
Rise still beyond the greenery's waning cloud,
While falls the insatiate steel, sharp, cold and sheer!

Labels: arboricide

Ernest Renan (1823-1892), "L'Ecclésiaste: étude sur l'age et le caractère du livre," Revue des deux mondes 49 (1882) 721-752 (at 743; my translation):

A man reads badly when he reads kneeling down.

[O]n lit mal, quand on lit à genoux.

Donald Richie (1924-2013), The Inland Sea (1971; rpt. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2002), p. 165 (discussing Oyamazumi on Omishima):

It is a series of low buildings among trees. Space in a shrine is horizontal and not, as in a cathedral, vertical. In a church, space is confined. It must struggle upward, having no place else to go. In a shrine, space is spread. There are no high walls, no tight enclosures. The space is a grove and this grove seems so endless that it might be the world itself.

The sky seems low, near. There are long expanses of lawn or grove among the buildings. One is not enclosed, nor is one directed. One is liberated, and almost always alone.

Shrine prayer, as I have said, is not communal prayer. It is solitary prayer. It is not a state—it is a function. It lasts only a minute or so and it is spontaneous. One does not enter, as in churches, or descend, as in mosques. The way to the shrine is through a grove, along a walk, through nature itself, nature intensified. Through these trees, over this moss, one wanders to shrines.

This casual, unremarked acceptance of nature speaks to something very deep within us. It speaks directly to our own nature, more and more buried in this artificial and inhuman century. Shinto speaks to us, to something in us which is deep, and permanent.

Certainly we feel—which is to say, recognize—more here than in smiling Buddhism with its hopeful despair, more than in fierce man-made Islam with its heavenly palaces on earth, more than in the strange and worldly tabernacles of the Hebrews or in the confident, vaunting, expectant Christian churches.

This religion, Shinto, is the only one that neither teaches nor attempts to convert. It simply exists, and if the pious come, that is good, and if they do not, then that too is good, for this is a natural religion and nature is profoundly indifferent.

Alexis, fragment 222 Kassel-Austin = 219 Kock (from his play The Tarentines; tr. Charles Burton Gulick, slightly revised, with his note):

We are doing none of our neighbours any harm. Don't you know that what, to amuse ourselves, we call "life" is but a name, a coaxing flattery of our human lot? Whether anybody will say that my judgement is good or bad I cannot tell you; but this, at least, I have made up my mind to on careful study: that all the doings of men are out-and-out crazy, and that we who for the time being are alive are only getting an outing, as though let loose^a from death and darkness to keep holiday, to amuse ourselves and to enjoy this light which we can see. And the man who laughs and drinks the most, and holds fast to Aphrodite, during the time he is set free, and to such gifts as Fortune offers, after he has had a most pleasant holiday can depart for home.

^a i.e. set free to enjoy a vacation; ἀποδημίας and πανήγυριν suggest the practice of going abroad to attend a great national festival. What Fortune offers is a contribution to the picnic (ἔρανος).

Here is an anonymous verse rendering of the same, from "A Glance at the Noctes of Athenaeus," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine No. CCXXVII, Vol. XXXVI (October, 1834) 431-457 (at 457):

Do you not know that by the term call'd life,
We mean to give a softer tone to ills
That man is heir to? Whether I judge right
Or wrong in this, I'll not presume to say—
Having reflected long and seriously,
To this conclusion I am brought at last,
That universal folly governs all;
For in this little life of ours, we seem
As strangers that have left their native home.
We make our first appearance from the realms
Of death and darkness, and emerge to light,
And join th' assembly of our fellow-men—
They who enjoy themselves the most, and drink,
And laugh, and banish care, or pass the day
In the soft blandishments of love, and leave
No joy untasted, no delight untried
That innocence and virtue may approve,
And this gay festival afford, depart
Cheerful, like guests contented, to their home.

The Greek:

                                                οἳ τῶν πέλας
οὐδέν᾽ ἀδικοῦμεν οὐδέν. ἆρ᾽ οὐκ οἶσθ᾽ ὅτι
τὸ καλούμενον ζῆν τοῦτο διατριβῆς χάριν
ὄνομ᾽ ἐστίν, ὑποκόρισμα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης
μοίρας; ἐγὼ γάρ, εἰ μὲν εὖ τις ἢ κακῶς
φήσει με κρίνειν, οὐκ ἔχοιμ᾽ ἄν σοι φράσαι·
ἔγνωκα δ᾽ οὖν οὕτως ἐπισκοπούμενος
εἶναι μανιώδη πάντα τἀνθρώπων ὅλως,
ἀποδημίας δὲ τυγχάνειν ἡμᾶς ἀεὶ
τοὺς ζῶντας, ὥσπερ εἰς πανήγυρίν τινα
ἀφειμένους ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου καὶ τοῦ σκότους
εἰς τὴν διατριβὴν εἰς τὸ φῶς τε τοῦθ᾽ ὃ δὴ
ὁρῶμεν. ὃς δ᾽ ἂν πλεῖστα γελάσῃ καὶ πίῃ
καὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἀντιλάβηται τὸν χρόνον
τοῦτον ὃν ἀφεῖται, καὶ Τύχης ἐράνου τινός,
πανηγυρίσας ἥδιστ᾽ ἀπῆλθεν οἴκαδε.

I don't have access to the Greek text in Rudolf Kassel and Colin Austin, edd., Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. II (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991), or to the notes on this fragment by W. Geoffrey Arnott in Alexis, The Fragments: A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 624-635.

Related posts:

• The Tarentines
• Respite

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (July 6, 1841):

Lidian says that the only sin which people never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (June 7, 1841):

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Plato, Hippias Major 291 d-e (Hippias speaking; tr. W.R.M. Lamb):

I say, then, that for every man and everywhere it is most beautiful to be rich and healthy, and honored by the Greeks, to reach old age, and, after providing a beautiful funeral for his deceased parents, to be beautifully and splendidly buried by his own offspring.

λέγω τοίνυν ἀεὶ καὶ παντὶ καὶ πανταχοῦ κάλλιστον εἶναι ἀνδρί, πλουτοῦντι, ὑγιαίνοντι, τιμωμένῳ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἀφικομένῳ εἰς γῆρας, τοὺς αὑτοῦ γονέας τελευτήσαντας καλῶς περιστείλαντι, ὑπὸ τῶν αὑτοῦ ἐκγόνων καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ταφῆναι.

περιστείλαντι: περιστέλλω is the techical term for dressing a corpse, on which custom see Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Death (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985; rpt. 1988), pp. 24-26 and note ("Funeral garments") on p. 139. Liddell-Scott-Jones say that in this passage it means simply "bury," but I doubt whether the primary sense ("dress, clothe, wrap up") was ever lost sight of.

Lamb didn't translate ἀεὶ; I would add it, e.g. "I say, then, that always and for every man and everywhere..."

Herodas, Mimes 3.22-23 (tr. I.C. Cunningham):

He does not even know how to recognize the letter A, if one does not shout the same thing at him five times.

ἐπίσταται δ' οὐδ' ἄλφα συλλαβὴν γνῶναι
ἢν μή τις αὐτῷ ταὐτὰ πεντάκις βώσῃ.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (July 6, 1840):

Whenever I read Plutarch or look at a Greek vase I am inclined to accept the common opinion of the learned that the Greeks had cleaner wits than any other people in the Universe. But there is anything but Time in my idea of the antique. A clear and natural expression by word or deed is that which we mean when we love and praise the antique. In society I do not find it; in modern books seldom; but the moment I get into the pastures I find antiquity again. Once in the fields with the lowing cattle, the birds, the trees, the waters and satisfying outlines of the landscape, and I cannot tell whether this is Tempe, Thessaly and Enna, or Concord and Acton.

Montaigne, Essais I, 57 (tr. E.J. Trechmann):

I consider that our minds are developed as far as they are likely to be at twenty and as promising as they can ever be.

Quant à moy j'estime que nos ames sont desnoüées à vingt ans, ce qu'elles doivent estre, et qu'elles promettent tout ce qu'elles pourront.