Laudator Temporis Acti

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Penitent (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), p. 37:

I bought a newspaper, and as I turned the pages I found everything there that I wanted to escape from: wars, glorification of revolution, murders, rapes, politicians' cynical promises, lying editorials, acclaim of stupid books, dirty plays and films. The newspaper paid tribute to every possible kind of idolatry and spat at truth. According to the editors, if the voters would only choose the President they recommended, and put into effect this or the other reform, all would be right with the world.

Tacitus, Germania 19 (tr. William Peterson):

Good habits have more force with them than good laws elsewhere.

plusque ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges.

Tacitus, Annals 3.27 (tr. J.C. Yardley):

Laws were most numerous when the state was most corrupt.

corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.

[John Wesley,] Queries Humbly Proposed to the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Count Zinzendorf (London: J. Robinson and T. James, 1755), pp. 29-30:

Do you own or disown that Hymn? (I shrink at repeating such words)

"Member full of Mystery
Which holily gives and chastly receives
The conjugal Ointments for Jesus' sake;
Mayst thou be blessed and anointed?"

And that to our Saviour, "May thy first holy Wound anoint me for the conjugal Business, on that Member of my Body which is for the Benefit of my Wife? — The rest I cannot repeat. Were ever such Words put together before, from the Foundation of the World?

This seems to refer to Zinzendorf's Gedichte number 2010, stanzas 8-9:

Und geheimnißvolles glied! das die ehelichen salben Jesus halben heilig gibt und keusch empfäht im gebet, in dem von dem Erz-erbarmen selbst erfundenen umarmen, wenn man kirchen-saamen sä't;

Sey gesegnet und gesalbt mit dem blut, das unserm manne dort entranne: fühle heisse zärtlichkeit, zu der seit, die fürs Lamms gemahlin offen, seit der speer hineingetroffen, das object der eheleut.

Ovid addresses his membrum virile in less flattering terms in Amores 3.7.69-72 (tr. G.P. Goold):

Lie down there, you shamefaced creature, worthless part of me: I have been tricked by promises like this before. You deceive your master; through you I have been caught defenceless, and suffered a painful and humiliating reverse.

quin istic pudibunda iaces, pars pessima nostri?
    sic sum pollicitis captus et ante tuis.
tu dominum fallis; per te deprensus inermis
    tristia cum magno damna pudore tuli.

Encolpius also castigates his membrum virile for its impotence in Petronius, Satyricon 132. See Gareth Schmeling, A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 507:

The mentula of course cannot reply, but we do find a speaking penis at Horace Serm. 1.2.68-70. On the motif of literary addresses of a man to his penis: G. Salanitro (1971-2) 448; Adams (1982) 30 calls it an 'implicit personification', as does Richlin (1992a) 116; Ovid Am. 3.7.69; Priapea 83.14-45; AP 5.47, 12.216, 232. On 'Klage über Impotenz', see Höschele (2006) 129-35; Holzberg (2005).

Here are some excerpts from Edward Gibbon, A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Introduction:

Perhaps it may be necessary to inform the Public, that not long since an Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published by Mr. Davis. He styles himself a Bachelor of Arts, and a Member of Baliol College in the University of Oxford. His title-page is a declaration of war, and in the prosecution of his religious crusade, he assumes a privilege of disregarding the ordinary laws which are respected in the most hostile transactions between civilized men or civilized nations. Some of the harshest epithets in the English language are repeatedly applied to the historian, a part of whose work Mr. Davis has chosen for the object of his criticism. To this author Mr. Davis imputes the crime of betraying the confidence and seducing the faith of those readers, who may heedlessly stray in the flowery paths of his diction, without perceiving the poisonous snake that lurks concealed in the grass. Latet anguis in herbâ.

[....]

I have never affected, indeed I have never understood, the stoical apathy, the proud contempt of criticism, which some authors have publicly professed. Fame is the motive, it is the reward, of our labours; nor can I easily comprehend how it is possible that we should remain cold and indifferent with regard to the attempts which are made to deprive us of the most valuable object of our possessions, or at least of our hopes.

[....]

The reasons which justified my silence were obvious and forcible: the respectable nature of the subject itself, which ought not to be rashly violated by the rude hand of controversy; the inevitable tendency of dispute, which soon degenerates into minute and personal altercation; the indifference of the Public for the discussion of such questions as neither relate to the business nor the amusement of the present age. I calculated the possible loss of temper and the certain loss of time, and considered, that while I was laboriously engaged in a humiliating task, which could add nothing to my own reputation, or to the entertainment of my readers, I must interrupt the prosecution of a work which claimed my whole attention, and which the Public, or at least my friends, seemed to require with some impatience at my hands.

[....]

Every animal employs the note, or cry, or howl, which is peculiar to its species; every man expresses himself in the dialect the most congenial to his temper and inclination, the most familiar to the company in which he has lived, and to the authors with whom he is conversant; and while I was disposed to allow that Mr. Davis had made some proficiency in Ecclesiastical Studies, I should have considered the difference of our language and manners as an unsurmountable bar of separation between us. Mr. Davis has over-leaped that bar, and forces me to contend with him on the very dirty ground which he has chosen for the scene of our combat.

[....]

The defence of my own honour is undoubtedly the first and prevailing motive which urges me to repel with vigour an unjust and unprovoked attack; and to undertake a tedious vindication, which, after the perpetual repetition of the vainest and most disgusting of the pronouns, will only prove that I am innocent; and that Mr. Davis, in his charge, has very frequently subscribed his own condemnation.

[....]

Perhaps, before we separate, a moment to which I most fervently aspire, Mr. Davis may find that a mature judgment is indispensably requisite for the successful execution of any work of literature, and more especially of criticism. Perhaps he will discover, that a young student, who hastily consults an unknown author, on a subject with which he is unacquainted, cannot always be guided by the most accurate reference to the knowledge of the sense, as well as to the sight of the passage which has been quoted by his adversary.

VIII (on Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 8.14):

Let him examine the chapter on which he founds his accusation. If in that moment his feelings are not of the most painful and humiliating kind, he must indeed be an object of pity!

IX:

I disdain to add a single reflection; nor shall I qualify the conduct of my adversary with any of those harsh epithets, which might be interpreted as the expressions of resentment, though I should be constrained to use them as the only words in the English language, which could accurately represent my cool and unprejudiced sentiments.

XI:

Nothing but the angry vehemence with which these charges are urged, could engage me to take the least notice of them. In themselves they are doubly contemptible; they are trifling, and they are false.

XII:

The Writer who aspires to the name of Historian, is obliged to consult a variety of original testimonies, each of which, taken separately, is perhaps imperfect and partial. By a judicious re-union and arrangement of these dispersed materials, he endeavours to form a consistent and interesting narrative. Nothing ought to be inserted which is not proved by some of the witnesses; but their evidence must be so intimately blended together, that as it is unreasonable to expect that each of them should vouch for the whole, so it would be impossible to define the boundaries of their respective property.

XVI:

My readers, if any readers have accompanied me thus far, must be satisfied, and indeed satiated, with the repeated proofs which I have made of the weight and temper of my adversary's weapons. They have, in every assault, fallen dead and lifeless to the ground: they have more than once recoiled, and dangerously wounded the unskilful hand that had presumed to use them.

XVII:

I cannot profess myself very desirous of Mr. Davis's acquaintance; but if he will take the trouble of calling at my house any afternoon when I am not at home, my servant shall show him my library, which he will find tolerably well furnished with the useful authors, ancient as well as modern, ecclesiastical as well as profane, who have directly supplied me with the materials of my History.

XX:

The historian must indeed be generous, who will conceal, by his own disgrace, that of his country, or of his religion. Whatever subject he has chosen, whatever persons he introduces, he owes to himself, to the present age, and to posterity, a just and perfect delineation of all that may be praised, of all that may be excused, and of all that must be censured. If he fails in the discharge of his important office, he partially violates the sacred obligations of truth, and disappoints his readers of the instruction which they might have derived from a fair parallel of the vices and virtues of the most illustrious characters.

[....]

Juvenal might have read his satire against women in a circle of Roman ladies, and each of them might have listened with pleasure to the amusing description of the various vices and follies, from which she herself was so perfectly free. The moralist, the preacher, the ecclesiastical historian, enjoy a still more ample latitude of invective; and as long as they abstain from any particular censure, they may securely expose, and even exaggerate, the sins of the multitude.

[....]

Before I return these sheets to the press, I must nor forget an anonymous pamphlet, which, under the title of A Few Remarks, etc. was published against my History in the course of the last summer. The unknown writer has thought proper to distinguish himself by the emphatic, yet vague, appellation of A GENTLEMAN: but I must lament that he has not considered, with becoming attention, the duties of that respectable character. I am ignorant of the motives which can urge a man of a liberal mind, and liberal manners, to attack without provocation, and without tenderness, any work which may have contributed to the information, or even to the amusement, of the Public. But I am well convinced, that the author of such a work, who boldly gives his name and his labours to the world, imposes on his adversaries the fair and honourable obligation of encountering him in open day-light, and of supporting the weight of their assertions by the credit of their names. The effusions of wit, or the productions of reason, may be accepted from a secret and unknown hand. The critic who attempts to injure the reputation of another, by strong imputations which may possibly be false, should renounce the ungenerous hope of concealing behind a mask the vexation of disappointment, and the guilty blush of detection.

[....]

It would be an endless discussion (endless in every sense of the word), were I to examine the cavils which start up and expire in every page of this criticism, on the inexhaustible topic of opinions, characters, and intentions. Most of the instances which are here produced, are of so brittle a substance that they fall in pieces as soon as they are touched...

Aristophanes, Clouds 700-705 (tr. Jeffery Henderson):

Now think and contemplate,
twirl yourself every way
and concentrate; and whenever you hit a dead end,
quickly jump to another
line of thought; and let sweet-spirited sleep
be remote from your eyes.

φρόντιζε δὴ καὶ διάθρει
πάντα τρόπον τε σαυτὸν
στρόβει πυκνώ-
σας. ταχὺς δ', ὅταν εἰς ἄπορον
πέσῃς, ἐπ' ἄλλο πήδα
νόημα φρενός· ὕπνος δ᾿ ἀπέ-
στω γλυκύθυμος ὀμμάτων.

The same, tr. Cyril Bailey:

Ponder and think with a resolute brain.
Twisting and turning and twisting again!
If in a puzzle you happen to stick,
Hop like a flea to a different trick.
Sleep the consoler be far from thy brow.

M.W. Humphreys ad loc.:

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Reflections on the Revolution in France, in his Works, Vol. IV (London: Francis & John Rivington, 1852), p. 280:

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

H.J. Massingham, "Samuel Rockall," in A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham (1888-1952) (Hartland: Green Books, 1988), pp. 70-77 (at 71-72):

The true craftsman controls and executes all the processes of his craft from raw originals to the finished product, no matter how many they be. He is thus divided by a cleavage absolute from the one-man-one-bolt system of modern, minutely subdivided industry. That is why the rural master-man remains by the law of his being close to nature. He is not merely surrounded by nature; he not only takes his tools and materials from nature, but he repeats the ordered unfoldings of nature from the seed to the flower, from the grain to the ear, from alpha to omega. This is the secret of good craftsmanship and the condition of its blossoming, that the man shall take the fruits of the earth from the hands of nature, and with his own hands transform them into the final form he destines for them, to be at once useful for the needs of his fellows and pleasurable to their eyes.

G.W. Bowersock, "Ronald Syme—A Brief Tribute," in T.J. Luce and A.J. Woodman, edd., Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. xiii-xv (at xiv):

He supervised only a half-dozen doctoral candidates in his long career, and those of us fortunate enough to be in that number have long recognized that what we most owed to Syme was the steady support to grow in our own way and the luminous example of learning and dedication he set for us. Syme was never a destructive critic. He wrote no notes on thesis drafts. He simply discussed the work in a civilized and collegial colloquy during long walks in Christ Church meadow. Even when he had to correct a plain mistake, he found a generously oblique way to do it. Once at a tender age I was unaware that St. Jerome and Hieronymus were not actually two different people. When Syme perceived my error, he said to me quietly and tactfully, "unicus uir."

This is a footnote to Bold Theories About Tacitus. A.N. Sherwin-White, "Tacitus and the Barbarians," in his Racial Prejudice in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 33-61, expresses doubt about the Tacitean authorship of the treatise Germania, at p. 34:

In Tacitus' historical books, and in the Germania, if its author is in truth Tacitus, there is a change of attitude due to the passage of time.

Id., p. 42. n. 1:

If the authorship of the Germania is not to be doubted, the difference of emphasis is all the more remarkable.

Sherwin-White (passim) refers to "the author of the Germania" or "the author." He gives no reason for his doubt and cites no other authorities. The only other scholar known to me who subscribes to this theory is Leo Wiener, Contributions Towards a History of Arabico-Gothic Culture, Vol. III: Tacitus' Germania & Other Forgeries (Philadelphia: Innes & Sons, 1920).

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According to https://blogger.googleblog.com/2020/05/a-better-blogger-experience-on-web.html:

We'll be moving everyone to the new interface over the coming months. Starting in late June, many Blogger creators will see the new interface become their default, though they can revert to the old interface by clicking "Revert to legacy Blogger" in the left-hand navigation. By late July, creators will no longer be able to revert to the legacy Blogger interface.

Because of this forced change, I am now having problems composing and publishing blog posts. If I can no longer use the legacy Blogger interface that I've been using since 2004, I may stop blogging altogether, or else move this blog to a different platform.

William Golding, "The Hot Gates," The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), pp. 3-12 (at 11-12):

I came to myself in a great stillness, to find I was standing by the little mound. This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of the violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.

Climbing to the top of that mound by the uneven, winding path, I came on the epitaph, newly cut in stone. It is an ancient epitaph though the stone is new. It is famous for its reticence and simplicity — has been translated a hundred times but can only be paraphrased:

'Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here.'

The Greek, from Herodotus 7.228:

ὦ ξεῖν᾿, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
    κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

Michael Clarke, "Semantics and Vocabulary," in Egbert J. Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 120-133 (at 120):

I do not really know Ancient Greek, nor do any of the contributors to this Companion. To claim knowledge of a language, you must be a member of its speech-community, open to the possibility that the categories of its grammar and vocabulary may mold and be molded by the structures of your thoughts and worldview. This cannot happen if we engage with the language only in a library. Knowledge of language depends on acquaintance; knowledge by description is not enough.

This leads to an uncomfortable paradox. If I learnt enough Arabic or Chinese to order a meal in a restaurant, and if I went to Riyadh or Beijing and did so, I would have a better claim on that language than I have on Homer's mother tongue after many years of daily engagement with his words.

I know only one person capable of ordering a meal in Ancient Greek. On the one occasion when he took me and his charming wife and daughters to a restaurant, however, he did not speak Ancient Greek. You know who you are, my friend.

I once speculated that in the recognition scene of Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 205-210 (cf. Euripides, Electra 532-537), Electra saw in the footprints of her brother Orestes some "distinctive, recognizable gait, for example, the pressure of toe and heel, the distance between the steps, the direction of the toes, etc....Perhaps Electra and Orestes shared a distinctive gait learned in early childhood from their father Agamemnon." I recently came across a passage in Apuleius' Metamorposes (2.2) which mentions the similarity in gait between a mother and son (tr. E.J. Kenney):

But she looked at me and said: 'Yes, he's his sainted mother Salvia all over — it shows in his breeding and modesty. And his looks — it's uncanny, he couldn't be more like her: moderately tall, slim but muscular, nice complexion, a natural blond, simple hairstyle, eyes grey but alert and bright, really like an eagle's, a blooming countenance, a graceful but unaffected walk.'

at illa optutum in me conversa: 'en', inquit 'sanctissimae Salviae matris generosa probitas, sed et cetera corporis execrabiliter ad regulam sunt congruentia: inenormis proceritas, succulenta gracilitas, rubor temperatus, flavum et inadfectatum capillitium, oculi caesii quidem, sed vigiles et in aspectu micantes, prorsus aquilini, os quoquoversum floridum, speciosus et immeditatus incessus.'

Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda, Chapter I:

I had picked up a good deal of pleasure and a good deal of knowledge. I had been to a German school and a German university, and spoke German as readily and perfectly as English; I was thoroughly at home in French; I had a smattering of Italian and enough Spanish to swear by. I was, I believe, a strong, though hardly fine swordsman and a good shot. I could ride anything that had a back to sit on; and my head was as cool a one as you could find, for all its flaming cover.

The Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas (Père), Vol. II, tr. A.F. Davidson (London: W.H. Allen Co. Limited, 1891), pp. 26-27:

"I must first know what you can do."

"Oh, nothing very great."

"Come, come! you know something of Mathematics?"

"No, General."

"You have, at any rate, some ideas of Algebra—Geometry—Physics?"

He paused between each word, and at each word I felt a fresh blush rising to my face, and the perspiration trickling faster and faster from my forehead. It was the first time that I had been brought thus face to face with my own ignorance.

"No, General," I stammered out, "I know nothing of any of those."

"Do you know Latin or Greek?"

"Latin—a little; Greek—not at all."

"Can you speak any living language?"

"Italian."

"Do you understand the keeping of accounts?"

"Not in the least."

I was on the rack, and he himself was visibly suffering for me.

"Oh, General!" I cried, in tones which seemed to make a strong impression on him, "my education is utterly deficient, and—shame on me for it—it is to-day and from this moment that I see it for the first time. Ah, but I will make it up, I give you my word, I will and some day—some day—I will answer 'Yes' to all the questions which I have now answered with 'No.'"

"But meanwhile, my friend, have you anything to live on?"

"Nothing—nothing! General," I replied, overwhelmed by the consciousness of my helplessness.

The General looked at me with profound commiseration.

"And yet," he said, "I do not like to abandon you."

"No, General; for you would not be abandoning me only! I am a dunce and an idler, it is true; but my mother who counts on me—my mother whom I promised to get myself a post—my mother should not be punished for my ignorance and idleness."

"Give me your address," he said; "I will think over what can be done for you. There, write it at this desk."

He handed me the pen he had just been using. I took the pen, looked at it—the ink was not yet dry upon it—and then, shaking my head, I gave it back to him.

"No," I said, "I will not write with your pen; it would be a profanation."

"What a child you are!" he said, with a smile; "stay, here is an unused one."

I began to write, the General looking on at me. Barely had I written my name when he clapped his hands together, and exclaimed:

"We are saved!"

"Saved! Why? how?"

"You write a capital hand."

I dropped my head. I could no longer bear the load of my shame. "A capital handwriting"—that was all I possessed! This hall-mark of incapacity—how exactly it suited me! "A capital handwriting!" So one day I might succeed in becoming a copying-clerk; this was my future! Gladly would I have cut off my right arm.

H.J. Massingham, "Coke of Norfolk," in A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham (1888-1952) (Hartland: Green Books, 1988), pp. 122-124 (at 124):

There is an uneasy suspicion abroad to-day that "progress" is "a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Yet this is too pessimistic: progress does mean something, and what I take it to mean is a sudden longing, in the midst of confusion and tribulation, for the good things, the kind traditions, the old rhythms of life that the age has wantonly thrown away in pursuit of the power and the wealth that turn to dust as soon as in the hand.

Aristophanes, Clouds 628-631 (tr. Benjamin Bickley Rogers):

Never, no never have I seen a clown
So helpless, and forgetful, and absurd!
Why if he learns a quirk or two he clean
Forgets them ere he has learnt them.

οὐκ εἶδον οὕτως ἄνδρ᾿ ἄγροικον οὐδαμοῦ
οὐδ᾿ ἄπορον οὐδὲ σκαιὸν οὐδ᾿ ἐπιλήσμονα,
ὅστις σκαλαθυρμάτι᾿ ἄττα μικρὰ μανθάνων
ταῦτ᾿ ἐπιλέλησται πρὶν μαθεῖν.

631 ταῦτ᾿ codd.: πάντ᾿ Blaydes

H.J. Massingham, "Boredom," in A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham (1888-1952) (Hartland: Green Books, 1988), p. 175:

I have yet to meet a bored countryman. Worried, yes, anxious, continually persecuted by ignorant officials, overworked, even despairing, bitterly cynical about the future, even resolved to leave the land because of bad conditions if he is a labourer, of insecurity if he is a farmer, of crushing taxation if he is a good squire. But boredom is not a word that can be found in the true countryman's dictionary. Why? Because except on the most highly mechanized farms all countrymen follow ill or well Voltaire' s maxim of cultivating their gardens. They take, that is to say, pleasure in and exert skill on their jobs. But when, say, 90 per cent of modern workers have been deprived by the machine of skill and interest and pleasure in their daily work, they are suffering from the disgraceful sin of being bored. This explains at once why, when they are released from the boredom of their daily work, they depend upon the mechanical hedonism of being amused by others. But it does not release them from the disgraceful sin of being bored. This is the nemesis of modern urban civilization which has all but killed rural England: it is delivered over to the disgraceful sin of being bored.

Related post: Work.

Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish," Unpopular Essays (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1921), pp. 95-145 (at 95):

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.

Id. (at 100):

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious—for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes.

Id. (at 114):

Every powerful emotion has its own myth-making tendency. When the emotion is peculiar to an individual, he is considered more or less mad if he gives credence to such myths as he has invented. But when an emotion is collective, as in war, there is no one to correct the myths that naturally arise. Consequently in all times of great collective excitement unfounded rumors obtain wide credence.

Id. (at 122):

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

Id. (at 129):

When one reads of the beliefs of savages, or of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, they seem surprising by their capricious absurdity. But beliefs that are just as absurd are still entertained by the uneducated even in the most modem and civilized societies.

Id. (at 136):

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

Id. (at 136-137):

A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.

Id. (at 143):

Obloquy is, to most men, more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the prevailing opinion.

Inscriptiones Graecae IX,1 521 (Acarnania, possibly Anactorium, 6th century B.C.?), tr. Paul Friedländer and Herbert B. Hoffleit, Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), p. 74 (number 64, Greek as printed there):

This monument by the road shall be called Procleida's, who died fighting for his own land.

Προκλείδας τόδε σᾶμα κεκλήσεται ἐνγὺς ὁδοῖο,
   ὃς περὶ τᾶς αὐτῶ γᾶς θάνε βαρνάμενος.

αὐτῶ = αὐτοῦ, βαρνάμενος = μαρνάμενος. On phrases resembling θάνε βαρνάμενος see Nathan T. Arrington, "Inscribing Defeat: The Commemorative Dynamics of the Athenian Casualty Lists," Classical Antiquity 30.2 (October, 2011) 179-212 (at 187-188, esp. 188):

In each case the present participle marnamenoi is coupled with a verb for dying in the aorist to describe how the men died: with courage. The value placed on fighting until the very end of one's life recalls the rhetoric of manhood evoked in epic poetry, such as Kallinos' admonition, "Let each one, with his last breath, hurl his spear."<sup>62

62</sup> Kallin. fr. 1 (West), 5: καί τις ἀποθνήσκων ὕστατ᾿ ἀκοντισάτω.

Peter Allan Hansen, ed., Carmina Epigraphica Graeca Saeculorum VIII–V a. Chr. n., (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), pp. 77-78:


See also Jesper Svenbro, Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 36-37.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XVI:

By embracing the faith of the Gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostacy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind.

Related post: Who Is the Apostate?

Abraham Lincoln, "Address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois: The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions" (January 27, 1838), in his Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858 (New York: The Library of America, 1989), pp. 28-37:

We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their's was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

[....]

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times.

[....]

By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.

[....]

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.