Laudator Temporis Acti

Paul Shorey, ed., Plato, The Republic, Vol. I: Books I-V (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), p. 211 (note on 3.3.388e):

The ancients generally thought violent laughter undignified. Cf. Isocrates Demon. 15, Plato Laws 732 C, 935 B, Epictetus Encheirid. xxxiii.4, Dio Chrys. Or. 33.703 R. Diogenes Laertius iii.26, reports that Plato never laughed excessively in his youth. Aristotle's great-souled man would presumably have eschewed laughter (Eth. iv.8, Rhet. 1389 b 10), as Lord Chesterfield advises his son to do.

Chaeremon, fragment 37 (tr. M.J. Cropp):

No one who is wise grieves over small things.

οὐδεὶς ἐπὶ σμικροῖσι λυπεῖται σοφός.

Quintilian 12.3.12 (tr. H.E. Butler):

For philosophy may be counterfeited, but eloquence never.

philosophia enim simulari potest, eloquentia non potest.

A.D. Nuttall, Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 5:

...theo-logia as a term, "God-reasoning," appears to be Abelard's invention...

The word occurs several times in Augustine's City of God (e.g. 6.5, quoting Varro). See also Jordanes, Getica 11.71 (p. 74 Mommsen).

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.2.33 (tr. H. Rackham):

These and similar varieties of the human race have been made by the ingenuity of Nature as toys for herself and marvels for us. And indeed who could possibly recount the various things she does every day and almost every hour?

haec atque talia ex hominum genere ludibria sibi, nobis miracula ingeniosa fecit natura. ex singulis quidem quae facit in dies ac prope horas, quis enumerare valeat?

Athenaeus 2.35d, tr. S. Douglas Olson, Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters, Books I-III.106e (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006 = Loeb Classical Library, 204), p. 203:

The tragic poet Chaeremon (TrGF 71 F 15) claims that wine provides those who consume it with

laughter, wisdom, a quick wit, sound judgment.

Greek text with note from Olson, p. 202:

Χαιρήμων δὲ ὁ τραγῳδὸς παρασκευάζειν φησὶ τὸν οἶνον τοῖς χρωμένοις

γέλωτα, σοφίαν, εὐμαθίαν⁴, εὐβουλίαν.

⁴ εὐμαθίαν Wagner: ἀμαθίαν CE

The note has it backwards. In reality, the manuscripts of Athenaeus read εὐμαθίαν, and ἀμαθίαν is the conjecture, made by Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner in Fragmenta Euripidis (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1846), p. 130:

Sed intolerabilis est anapaestus in quarto pede, qui facile removeri potest, si pro εὐμαθίαν scribitur ἀμαθίαν. Nam corruptela etiam sententiae inesse videtur: Chaeremo haud dubie dicere voluit (cf. fgm. sequ.), aliam esse in aliis hominibus vini efficacitatem; itaque primum risum, deinde ejus contrarium sapientiam commemoravit. Postea vero duo verba sequuntur, quae fere eandem vim habent, quorum alterum igitur, si recte Chaeremonis mentem perspeximus, emendandum est.

August Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1856), p. 611 (apparently independently):

εὐμαθίαν libri, ἀμαθίαν scripsi.

In his second edition (1889), p. 787, Nauck gave credit to Wagner for the conjecture.

The mistake persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library. Perhaps it arose from Bruno Snell and Richard Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. 222, who say "εὐμαθίαν: Wagner."

If Wagner's conjecture is adopted, the meaning of the fragment (tr. M.J. Cropp) is:

laughter, wisdom, foolishness, good counsel.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XLI (533 AD):

[T]he war was preceded, according the practice of civilized nations, by the most solemn protestations that each party was sincerely desirous of peace.

Carcinus II, fragment 7 (tr. M.J. Cropp):

Many men find silence a prescription against troubles;
and this belongs especially to a self-controlled temper.

πολλοῖς γὰρ ἀνθρώποισι φάρμακον κακῶν
σιγή· μάλιστα δ' ἐστὶ σώφρονος τρόπου.

Related post: Safety in Silence.

Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Club of Queer Trades (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1905), p. 241:

"Bosh," answered Grant. "I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one."

Bhartṛhari, The Vairāgya-śatakam: Or, The Hundred Verses on Renunciation, 2nd ed. (Mayavati: The Advaita Ashram, 1921), p. 32 (number 50):

Now a child for a while and then a youth of erotic ways, a destitute now for a while and then very wealthy, just like an actor, man makes at the end of his role—when diseased in all limbs by age and wrinkled all over the body—his exit behind the scene that veils the abode of Yama (death).

Other translations are available on Shreevatsa's very useful web site on Bhartṛhari.

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), "Under Ben Bulben," V:

Irish poets learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

Homer, Odyssey I. Edited with an Introduction, Translation, Commentary, and Glossary by Simon Pulleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 132 (on line 88):

ἰθάκηνδ᾽ ἐσελεύσομαι. As between this and the MS variant ἰθάκην ἐσελεύσομαι, the form with -δε is to be preferred after ἐλεύσομαι (cf. Od. 17.52, Il. 6.365). ἰθάκηνδε ἐλεύσομαι is possible at the caesura (S.R. West 1988: 86) but has no MS attestation, being a conjecture of Ahrens.

I see no reason for the lower-case initial iotas here with the proper name Ithaca. Read Ἰθάκηνδ᾽, Ἰθάκην, and Ἰθάκηνδε.

I noticed another misprint on p. 65 (translation of line 63):

In reply to her spoke Zeus, the gather of clouds:

For gather read gatherer (a good example of haplography).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Ronald Syme, "Diet on Capri," in his Roman Papers, VI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 409-420 (at 411-412):

'Siser' is reported from Varro onwards, three times in poetry (Horace, the Moretum, Columella, Book X) with three more in Columella, eight in Pliny. Therefore of some significance for classical scholars. None the less, little care or curiosity has obtained.

A familiar passage in Horace proves instructive. 'Siser' occurs in the first course of the banquet of Nasidienus, along with radishes, horseradishes, and others, 'qualia lassum pervellunt stomachum' (Sat. ii 8, 8 ff.). The German commentary has 'Rapunzel', with no doubts expressed.¹⁵ That is to say, French 'raiponce', English 'rampion'. It may be for this reason that OLD was content with 'perhaps rampion', offering no alternative (fasc. vii, 1980).

Rampion, a name not often on the lips of men, must be banished forthwith and for ever. It is soft and sweet and miserable, merely 'Campanula rapunculus'.¹⁶ By contrast, Umbelliferae, that potent and odorous family with flavours owed to essential oils, which goes all the way from parsley by parsnips to fennel and hemlock.

English translators and commentators on Columella and Pliny likewise conform to the notorious 'déformation professionelle' of classical philology (that is, 'psittacosis'). They bring up another unfamiliar word to vex the innocent reader, namely 'skirret', vouchsafing no kind of elucidation.¹⁷

Yet they were on the right track. The skirret is the water parsnip, sevium sisarium, 'formerly much cultivated in Europe for its esculent tubers'.¹⁸ Further, it may perhaps be held identical with Pliny's 'siser erraticum' commended on medical grounds (xx 34 f.).

But enough. In the year 1958 a masterly demonstration established the parsnip himself.¹⁹ To be ignored only at dire peril.<sup>20

15</sup> Kiessling-Heinze (1957). And Villeneuve translated it as 'raiponce' (Budé, 1951).

¹⁶ According to OED 'very rare in England'. The Italian name is 'rampanzolo'.

¹⁷ In annotation on NH xix 62, the Loeb edition (1950) stated that 'siser' may be the parsnip, but in 90 and 93 it is translated as 'skirret'; and in 88 the parsnip is 'pastinaca'. Again, in Columella's poem (x 114), 'siser' appears as 'Skirwort', to be registered as 'skirwort' four times in the Index (Loeb, vol. iii, 1955). Further, the comprehensive Loeb Index of plants (compiled by W.H.S. Jones) did not help: probably not che skirret 'but rather the parsnip, peucedanum sativum, or the carrot, Daucus carota' (vol. iii (1956), 538).

¹⁸ OED. In French 'chenis'; not to be confused with 'chervil', of the same family, which is 'cerfolium'.

¹⁹ A.C. Andrews, 'The Parsnip as a Food in the Classical Era', CP liii (1958), 155 ff. He had previously dealt with celery and parsley, CP xliv (1949), 91 ff. and with the carrot, ibid. 182 ff.

²⁰ André was in favour long ago, op. cit. (1956), 395: 'probablement le panais (Pastinaca sativa)'. And no hesitation in his note on NH xix 90 (Budé, 1964), duly citing A.C. Andrews.

André = Jacques André, Lexique des termes de botanique en latin (Paris: Klincksieck, 1956).

Latin siser is etymologically related to Greek σίσαρον = parsnip.

On psittacosis see:

• A Lazy Lot
• Three Things
• Scholarly Psittacism
• The Law of Lazy Repetition

Hesiod, Works and Days 373-374 (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White):

Do not let a flaunting woman coax and cozen and deceive you: she is after your barn.

μὴ δὲ γυνή σε νόον πυγοστόλος ἐξαπατάτω
αἱμύλα κωτίλλουσα, τεὴν διφῶσα καλιήν.

Flaunting is a euphemism. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon defines πυγοστόλος as "(of a woman) clothed in a way that draws attention to her arse, fancy-arsed."

The same, tr. A.E. Stallings:

Don't let a woman mystify your mind
With sweet talk and the sway of her behind —
She's just after your barn.

M.L. West ad loc.:

Stephanie W. Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer's Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in Ancient India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1006), p. 3:

Ancient India remains the province of the philologists—among whom I am proud to number myself. It can only be approached through its texts, and the philological methods employed to investigate these texts may, to the outsider, appear to approach the status of a mystery religion, to be even more esoteric than the contents of the texts they study. As a philologist, a practitioner of this cult, I am certain that the intricacies of the method are necessary. But I also regret the result: that the knowledge we gain too often remains walled off from the rest of the scholarly community, that the process of gaining it is so consuming that we often lack the energy to communicate it to others—and that others will not invest their energy in attending to the unfamiliar details that must be grasped in order to understand the whole.

Diogenes Laertius 2.8.98 (on Theodorus; tr. R.D. Hicks):

He considered joy and grief to be the supreme good and evil, the one brought about by wisdom, the other by folly.

τέλος δ᾽ ὑπελάμβανε χαρὰν καὶ λύπην· τὴν μὲν ἐπὶ φρονήσει, τὴν δ᾽ ἐπὶ ἀφροσύνῃ.

Peter Brown, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), pp. 59-60:

The teachers who guided us in this brisk forced march of learning were a mixed bunch. Private schools such as Aravon were human bird sanctuaries. Some teachers were local figures. They held part-time teaching assignments as a form of outdoor relief (welfare). Mr. Monk Gibbon (known as "Gubb-Gubb") was one such gentleman down on his luck. He was a travel writer, who later wrote a Batsford travel book on the baroque churches of Austria. He was also a poet; and not only was he a poet—he was also a cousin of W.B. Yeats. As we have seen, he was permanently aggrieved that his distinguished relative had not included any of his poems in the famous Oxford Book of Modern Verse.

Monk Gibbon made a point of coming to Aravon only on Fridays. It was known why he did so. As a Protestant school, we refused to eat fish on Fridays, as the Catholics did. Instead, Irish stew was served for lunch. And the Friday Irish stew was the best meat dish of the week. Well-fed, Monk Gibbon would then proceed to conduct what he considered to be a Latin lesson.

Latin [he told us] is all about endings. Yes: that's it ... endings. Nominative ending and accusative ending.

Brown! Hit Cornish!

This was a bad turn for the lesson to take. Cornish, who sat beside me, was a boy of conker toughness. Such a blow would not remain unavenged after class. Knowing that I would sign my own death warrant by striking him, I gave Cornish a hesitant tap.

There you are! [Monk Gibbon continued] Brownus hits Cornishum. That's it. Nominative Brownus. Accusative Cornishum. There you have it!

Wherewith the poet wrapped his thick tweed coat more tightly around him, placed his feet on the stove that warmed the classroom, and settled down into his armchair as if for a good sleep. It was not, perhaps, the best introduction to a classical tongue.

Claudius, quoted in Suetonius, Life of Claudius 40.1 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

Who can live without a snack?

quis potest sine offula vivere?

Jessamy Calkin, "'I made a pilgrimage to see Britain's greatest trees – all 2,700 of them'. Martin Hügi is walking from Land's End to John O'Groats on a mission to visit our country's oldest trees," The Telegraph (11 June 2023):

When I catch up with Hügi a couple of weeks later, he is in Wiltshire (478 trees and 402 miles in), enjoying the hospitality of Wyndham's Oak, the oldest tree in Dorset.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Pausanias 6.26.5 (tr. W.H.S. Jones):

But the image of Heracles, most devoutly worshipped by the inhabitants, is merely the male member upright on the pedestal.

τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ δὲ τὸ ἄγαλμα, ὃν οἱ ταύτῃ περισσῶς σέβουσιν, ὀρθόν ἐστιν αἰδοῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ βάθρου.

Loeb Classical Library edition, vol. III, pp. 158-159: For Heracles read Hermes. The error persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library.

Labels: typographical and other errors