Laudator Temporis Acti

Ancient and Medieval Coins Canada. Auction 3. 24 July 2021, number 476:

KINGS OF MACEDON: Antigonos II Gonatas, 277-239 BCE, AE16. 3.63g, 16mm. Obv: Helmeted head of Athena right. Rev: Pan right, erecting trophy to right; B-A across upper field, monogram of Antigonos between legs. Moushmov 7308. Lovely depiction of Athena. The introduction of the Pan types under Antigonos II is much discussed. The most popular view is that Antigonos wished to associate himself with the expulsion of the Gauls from Greece after their massive invasion in 279 BCE, an event that carried huge significance for his contemporaries. Antigonos wished to be seen as "the shield of Greece" rather than its overlord. The story went that Pan helped rout the Gauls at Delphi by instilling in them an unreasoning fear (thus the word "panic"). Antigonos certainly participated in the expulsion of Gallic forces from Greece, especially at Lysimacheia. Another possible connection is with the confusion and fear that helped Antigonos defeat Pyrrhos's Gallic forces in a battle that ended the contest for Macedon's throne with the death of Pyrrhos himself. Pyrrhos's Gauls had desecrated royal tombs at Aegae, and Pyrrhos had betrayed Argos where the battle took place; so Antigonos could again portray himself as the saviour of Hellas. Whatever the exact reason for the Pan types, it's clear that Pan experienced a surge of popularity in the third century BCE and that Antigonos regarded the god as his patron.

Other images of the coin: I own one of these coins, a gift from my son. See Die antiken Münzen Nord-Griechenlands, Bd. III, Abt. 2 = Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Münzen von Makedonia und Paionia (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1935), p. 187 (Antigonos Gonatas, number 6, with Plate XXXIV, 4-6). I don't have access to Andreas E.Furtwängler, "Beobachtungen zur Chronologie antigonidischer Kupfermünzen im 3. Jh. v. Chr.," Obolos 7 (2004) 277-290.

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Thirty-Nine Steps, chapter I:

I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East...

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Die Heimkehr LVIII, from Buch der Lieder (tr. Hal Draper):

Life and the world's too fragmented for me!
A German professor can give me the key.
He puts life in order with skill magisterial,
Builds a rational system for better or worse;
With nightcap and dressing-gown scraps as material
He chinks up the holes in the Universe.

Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben!
Ich will mich zum deutschen Professor begeben.
Der weiß das Leben zusammenzusetzen,
Und er macht ein verständlich System daraus;
mit seinen Nachtmützen und Schlafrockfetzen
Stopft er die Lücken des Weltenbaus.

Basil of Caesarea, Letters 90 (tr. Roy J. Deferrari):

The evils which afflict us are well known, even if we do not now mention them, for long since have they been re-echoed through the whole world. The teachings of the Fathers are scorned; the apostolic traditions are set at naught; the fabrications of innovators are in force in the churches; these men, moreover, train themselves in rhetorical quibbling and not in theology; the wisdom of the world takes first place to itself, having thrust aside the glory of the Cross. The shepherds are driven away, and in their places are introduced troublesome wolves who tear asunder the flock of Christ. The houses of prayer are bereft of those wont to assemble therein; the solitudes are filled with those who weep. The elders weep, comparing the past with the present; the young are more to be pitied, since they know not of what they have been deprived.

γνώριμα δὲ τὰ θλίβοντα ἡμᾶς, κἂν ἡμεῖς μὴ λέγωμεν· εἰς πᾶσαν γὰρ τὴν οἰκουμένην λοιπὸν ἐξήχηται. καταπεφρόνηται τὰ τῶν πατέρων δογματα· ἀποστολικαὶ παραδόσεις ἐξουδένωνται· νεωτεροποιῶν3 ἀνθρώπων ἐφευρέματα ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις ἐμπολιτεύεται· τεχνολογοῦσι λοιπόν, οὐ θεολογοῦσιν, οἱ ἄνθρωποι· ἡ τοῦ κόσμου σοφία τὰ πρωτεῖα φέρεται, παρωσαμένη τὸ καύχημα τοῦ σταυροῦ. ποιμένες ἀπελαύνονται, ἀντεισάγονται δὲ λύκοι βαρεῖς, διασπῶντες τὸ ποίμνιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. οἶκοι εὐκτήριοι ἔρημοι τῶν ἐκκλησιαζόντων· αἱ ἐρημίαι πλήρεις τῶν ὀδυρομένων. οἱ πρεσβύτεροι ὀδύρονται, τὰ παλαιὰ συγκρίνοντες τοῖς παροῦσιν· οἱ νέοι ἐλεεινότεροι, μὴ εἰδότες οἵων ἐστέρηνται.

Basil's lament sounds like it could have been written yesterday.

Livy 5.21.1-3 (396 BC; tr. B.O. Foster):

[1] A vast throng went out, and filled the camp. Then the dictator, after taking the auspices, came forth and commanded the troops to arm. [2] "Under thy leadership,” he cried, "Pythian Apollo, and inspired by thy will, I advance to destroy the city of Veii, and to thee I promise a tithe of its spoils. [3] At the same time I beseech thee, Queen Juno, that dwellest now in Veii, to come with us, when we have gotten the victory, to our City—soon to be thine, too—that a temple meet for thy majesty may there receive thee."

[1] ingens profecta multitudo replevit castra. tum dictator auspicato egressus cum edixisset ut arma milites caperent, [2] "tuo ductu" inquit, Pythice Apollo, tuoque numine instinctus pergo ad delendam urbem Veios tibique hinc decimam partem praedae voveo. [3] te simul, Iuno regina, quae nunc Veios colis, precor, ut nos victores in nostram tuamque mox futuram urbem sequare, ubi te dignum amplitudine tua templum accipiat."

This is the earliest known example of evocatio, i.e., "A ritual by which, in the course of war, a Roman general would attempt to deprive the enemy of divine protection, by formally offering their protecting deity a new home and cult at Rome" (Mary Beard, Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. evocatio).

See Clifford Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 128-148. I don't have access to Gabriella Gustafsson, Evocation [sic] Deorum: Historical and Mythical Interpretations of Ritualised Conquests in the Expansion of Ancient Rome (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2000 = Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Religionum, 16).

Meagan Drillinger, "11 Best All-inclusive Resorts for Foodies," Travel + Leisure (July 7, 2024):

Grand Velas Riviera Maya is undoubtedly a Grande Dame of the Mexican Caribbean. The all-suite hotel, a 2021 World's Best Awards winner, is known for its spectacular beachfront, onsite mangroves and cenobites, and some of the largest suites in the region.

Merriam-Webster, Online Dictionary, s.v. cenobite (click once or twice to enlarge): Hat tip: Joel Eidsath, who comments:

I suppose that the author meant "mangroves and cenotes". But we are surely entering a new AI dark age when even the dictionaries are spoiled. This is the sort of nonsense example that the mindless copyists put into the Etymologicum Magnum.

Labels: typographical and other errors

R.M. Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 24:

Gods, like dogs, will only answer to their names. Living as we do in an age in which numbers (national health numbers, bank account numbers, telephone numbers etc.) identify people more easily than names, it is hard for us to understand the power which more primitive people attribute to names. But a trivial example of the survival of this idea is given by Ronald Knox when he points out how boys at school often try to conceal their Christian names and prefer to be called by a nick-name, because to reveal your Christian name is to give other boys a hold over you.¹ The same idea lies behind the Gnat’s advice to Alice to lose her name: ‘For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out “Come here—”, and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn’t be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn’t have to go, you know.’

¹ Pastoral Sermons, p. 37.

Maurice Baring (1874-1945), The Puppet Show of Memory (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1923), pp. 90-91 (at Eton):

We did verses once a week. A little later most of these were done in the house by a boy called Malcolm, who had the talent for dictating verses, on any subject, while he was eating his breakfast, with the necessary number of mistakes and to the exact degree of badness needed for the standard of each boy, for if they were at all too good my tutor would write on them, "Who is the poet?" In return for this I did the French for him and a number of other boys. Latin verses both then, and until I left Eton, were the most important event of the week's work. When one's verses had been done and signed by one's tutor one gave a gasp of relief. Sometimes he tore them up and one had to do them again. I was a bad writer of Latin verse. The kind of mistakes I made exasperated my tutor to madness, especially when I ventured on lyrics which he implored me once never to attempt again. In spite of the trouble verses gave one, even when they were partly done by someone else, one preferred doing them to a long passage of Latin prose, which was sometimes a possible alternative. It is a strange fact, but none the less true, that boys can acquire a mechanical facility for doing Latin verse of a kind, with the help of a gradus, without knowing either what the English or the Latin is about.

The subjects given for Latin verse, what we called sense for verses, were sometimes amusing. The favourite subject from the boys' point of view was Spring. It was a favourite subject among the masters, too. It afforded opportunities for innumerable clichés, which were easy to find. One of the masters giving out sense for verses used to say: "This week we will do verses"—and then, as if it were something unheard of—"on Spring. Take down some hints. The grass is green, sheep bleat, sound of water is heard in the distance—might perhaps get in desilientis aquæ."

The same master said one day, to a boy who had done some verses on Charles II., "Castus et infelix is hardly an appropriate epithet for Charles II." Once we had a lyric on a toad. "Avoid the gardener, a dangerous man," was one of the hints which I rendered:

"Fas tibi sit bufo custodem fallere agelli."

Democritus, fragment 94 (tr. Kathleen Freeman):

Small favours at the right time are greatest to the recipients.

μικραὶ χάριτες ἐν καιρῷ μέγισται τοῖς λαμβάνουσι.

The British Museum has three bronze coins from Pella in Macedonia, 168 BC. On the obverse is the head of Poseidon facing right; on the reverse is a standing bull facing right with ΠEΛ above and ΛHΣ below.

Here are illustrations of the three coins in the collection.

British Museum 1866-1201.954: British Museum 1935-0619.41: British Museum 1994,0915.10: Here is another image of the same coin, from a dealer: From another dealer: I have a coin that looks very much like these (including the monograms in front of and between the bull's legs), a gift from my son.

See Die antiken Münzen Nord-Griechenlands, Bd. III, Abt. 2 = Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Münzen von Makedonia und Paionia (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1935), p. 94 (Pella, 5, with Plate XVIII, 29).

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 25.7 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

You ought to make yourself of a different stamp from the multitude.

dissimilem te fieri multis oportet.

Jonathan Swift, "Mr. Collins's Discourse of Freethinking; Put into Plain English by Way of Abstract," in his Works, vol. II (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1859), pp. 193-200 (at 197):

From these many notorious instances of the priests' conduct, I conclude they are not to be relied on in any one thing relating to religion, but that every man must think freely for himself.

But to this it may be objected that the bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying as thinking; and if every man thought it his duty to think freely, and trouble his neighbour with his thoughts (which is an essential part of freethinking), it would make wild work in the world. I answer; whoever cannot think freely may let it alone if he pleases by virtue of his right to think freely; that is to say, if such a man freely thinks that he cannot think freely, of which every man is a sufficient judge, why then he need not think freely unless he thinks fit.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1157-1158 (tr. Benjamin Bickley Rogers):

LAC. Danged, an' there ever waur a bonnier lassie!
ATH. Hanged if I ever saw so sweet a creature!

ΛΑΚ. οὔπα γυναῖκ᾽ ὄπωπα χαϊωτεραν.
ΑΘ. ἐγὼ δὲ κύσθον γ᾽ οὐδέπω καλλίονα.

The same (tr. Jack Lindsay):

SPARTANS
I've never seen a nobler woman anywhere.
ATHENIANS
Nor I one with such prettily jointing hips.

On κύσθος see Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 130 (# 107).

Maurice Baring (1874-1945), The Puppet Show of Memory (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1923), pp. 89-90 (at Eton):

In the evenings the Lower boys did their work in pupil room. Boys in fifth form, when they were slack, did the same as a punishment, and this was called penal servitude. While they prepared their lessons or did their verses, my tutor would be taking older boys in what was called private; this in our case meant special lessons in Greek. One night these older boys were construing Xenophon, and a boy called Rashleigh could not translate the phrase, "Τοὺς πρὸς ἐμὲ λέγοντας."¹ My tutor repeated it over and over again, and then appealed to us Lower boys. I knew what it meant, but when I was asked I repeated exactly what Rashleigh had said, like one hypnotised, much to my tutor's annoyance.

Sometimes when my tutor was really annoyed he would say: "Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think what a ghastly fool you are?" Another time he said to a boy: "You've no more manners than a cow, and a bad cow, too." When the word δύναμαι occurred in Greek, my tutor made a great point of distinguishing the pronunciation of δύναμαι and δυνάμει. δύναμαι he pronounced more broadly. When we read out the word δύναμαι we made no such distinction, and he used to say, "Do you mean dunamy or dunamai?" It was our great delight to draw this expression from him, and whenever the word δύναμαι occurred we were careful to accent the last syllable as slightly as possible. It never failed.

¹ I have looked up the reference and miraculously found it. My memory after thirty-three years is correct. The phrase occurs in Xenophon's Anabasis, Book II.v.27.

Saint Basil, The Letters. With an English Translation by Roy J. Deferrari, vol. II (London: William Heinemann, 1928 = Loeb Classical Library, 215), p. xi (Prefatory Note):

Other important or interesting readings from the edition of the Benedictines have also been included in the critical apparatus. One probably important fact has been noted in the process of this work: the Benedictine editors frequently quoted readings as found only in the earlier editions (editi antiqui), and apparently without any MS. authority, but our collation of E has shown most of these readings to exist also in that MS.

"Editi antiqui" is an odd enough expression for earlier editions (sc. libri, I assume), but even worse is the repeated presence in Deferrari's critical apparatus of "editi antiqi" (e.g. pp. 110, 112, 114, etc., a hundred or so examples, according to Google Books). These misprints persist in the Digital Loeb Classical Library.

Print edition, p. 110: Digital edition, p. 110:

Labels: typographical and other errors

Livy 5.18.11-12 (tr. B.O. Foster):

There was a rush to the walls, and the women, drawn from their houses by the general consternation, betook themselves to prayer in the temples, and besought the gods to ward off destruction from the houses and shrines of the City and from the walls of Rome, and to turn that panic against Veii, if the sacred rites had been duly renewed and the portents expiated.

concursumque in muros est et matronarum, quas ex domo conciverat publicus pavor, obsecrationes in templis factae, precibusque ab dis petitum, ut exitium ab urbis tectis templisque ac moenibus Romanis arcerent Veiosque eum averterent terrorem, si sacra renovata rite, si procurata prodigia essent.

Veiosque codd.: Veiisque Gronovius

R.M. Ogilvie ad loc.:

The prayer is of a familiar type—an ἀποπομπή by which the supplicant prays that evil may be directed elsewhere; cf. Catullus 63.92 with Kroll's note; Orph. Hymn. 3.12, 11.21.

Actually, the prayer is an example of ἐπιπομπή, not ἀποπομπή.

Richard Wünsch (1869-1915) first used the terms apopompē (ἀποπομπή) and epipompē (ἐπιπομπή) to describe two different ways of banishing evil. See his "Zur Geisterbannung im Altertum," Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau = Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 13/14 (1911) 9-32. Wünsch used apopompē to mean simply driving away evil, epipompē to mean driving away evil onto someone or something else or to some other specific location. A classic example of epipompē can be found in the Gospels (Matthew 8.30-32, Mark 5.11-13, Luke 8.32-33), when Jesus, in performing an exorcism, drove demons into a herd of pigs. All other exorcisms in the Gospels are examples of apopompē.

In the passage from Livy quoted above, the women don't just pray for panic to be driven away, but rather to be driven against a specific location, namely Veii. Hence epipompē, not apopompē.

Christopher De Hamel, The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts (New York: Penguin Press, 2023), pp. 392-393:

Although he remained clean-shaven, Mommsen’s hair was always shoulder-length and untidy, turning grey and finally white, resembling a witch or a wizard, as his critics observed. Possibly through the fame of Mommsen, wild hair in old age became a recognizable badge of an eccentric professor or genius, cultivated later by Einstein and generations of academics ever since.

In other ways too, Mommsen seemed the very model of a modern academic. He was very thin and generally graceless in movement. He had a high forehead, a straight slightly aquiline nose and deep-set piercing eyes, beneath very dark eyebrows. His eyes were described both as pale blue and as almost black. He looked fearsomely clever; all people who met him agreed on this. He had great presence, and he was quick and dogmatic in giving opinions in a high-pitched voice. Throughout his adult life, he wore thick oval wire-rimmed glasses, which he pushed up onto the top of his head for close reading. He dressed formally, often in a bow tie, although his clothes were reported as being too big for him and looking slept in, like the Bücherwurm in that fictional painting by Spitzweg. Mommsen was immediately recognizable. Even the tram conductors in Berlin pointed him out with awe to visitors when he was seen in the street.

There are legends of eccentricities, doubtless exaggerated or even invented, like many student fables of their professors, such as that he put a baby in the wastepaper basket to stop it crying and that he did not remember his own children’s names. A credible anecdote was told by his daughter. He always welcomed visitors at home in the ground-floor reception room in a formal tailcoat. One day in 1858 or 1859, he emerged to greet an important guest wearing the coat but having forgotten to change out of his yellow slippers. This became an often-repeated family joke for the rest of his life. If it does not seem especially funny to us now, it does tell us something of his Biedermeier world of middle-class respectability and convention, and how academia was the exception, forgiven or even admired for failing to conform.

Hat tip: Alan Crease.

Livy 5.18.4 (P. Licinius Calvus speaking; tr. B.O. Foster):

My strength of body is decayed, my sight and hearing dulled, memory fails me, and the vigour of my mind is impaired.

vires corporis adfectae, sensus oculorum atque aurium hebetes, memoria labat, vigor animi obtunsus.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata 468 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

What's the point of fighting a battle of words with beasts like these?

τί τοῖσδε σαυτὸν ἐς λόγον τοῖς θηρίοις ξυνάπτεις;

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Die Heimkehr XXXIX, from Buch der Lieder (tr. Hal Draper):

My heart is heavy—sad the present;
I think back to the olden days
When all the world was still so pleasant
And people went their peaceful ways.

Now, helter-skelter, elbows shove us,
Pressure and stress on every side!
Dead is the good Lord God above us,
And down below the devil's died.

Everything goes in churlish fashion,
A rotten, tangled, cold affair;
And but for a little love and passion
There'd be no surcease anywhere.

Das Herz ist mir bedrückt, und sehnlich
Gedenke ich der alten Zeit;
Die Welt war damals noch so wöhnlich,
Und ruhig lebten hin die Leut’.

Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben,
Das ist ein Drängen! eine Not!
Gestorben ist der Herrgott oben,
Und unten ist der Teufel tot.

Und alles schaut so grämlich trübe,
So krausverwirrt und morsch und kalt,
Und wäre nicht das bißchen Liebe,
So gäb’ es nirgends einen Halt.

The same (tr. Louis Untermeyer):

My heart is crushed with grief, for sadly
    I think of old times, clean of strife,
When all the world went far from badly,
    And people lived a normal life.

But now the world seems madly driven;
    Scrambling to pull and push ahead!
    Dead is the good Lord up in Heaven,
And down below the devil's dead.

All things, with this eternal shoving,
    Become a gray and sodden brawl;
And if it were not for a little loving
    There'd be no rest for us at all.

A somewhat more literal version, by Sander L. Gilman:

My heart is sad and filled with longing
I think of the past;
the world was then so comfortable
and everyone lived so peacefully.

And everything is now as if displaced.
Such crowding! such need.
Lord God is dead above,
And below the devil is dead.

And everything looks so peevishly sad,
so confusing, so rotten, so cold,
And if it were not for the bit of love,
there would not be a foothold anywhere.