Laudator Temporis Acti

Though here on earth men differ, in the grave
There's no distinction; all alike they have.
Then must the Conqueror with the captive spred
On one bare earth, as in the common bed;
The all commanding Generall hath no span        5
Of ground allowd, more than a common man.
Folly with Wisedome hath an equall share,
The foul, and faire, to like dust changed are.
This is, of all mortality, the end:
Thersites now with Nereus dares contend;        10
And with Achilles he hath equall place,
That living, durst not look him in the face.
The servant with his Master, and the maid,
Stretch'd by her Mistress; both their heads are laid
Upon an equal pillow; subjects keep        15
Courts, with Kings equal, & as soft they sleep,
Lodging their heads upon a turfe of grasse,
As they on Marble, or on figur'd brasse.

An ivy wreath is also used to separate two lines of verse on another grave stone with a slightly gruesome but moralising tone. A representation of a skeleton is carved in relief below the inscription, which reads:

εἰπεῖν τίς δύναται | σκῆνος λιπόσαρκον | ἀθρήσας,
εἴπερ Ὕλας | ἢ Θερσείτης ἦν, ὦ ‖ παροδεῖτα;

Who can say, having looked at a fleshless corpse,
whether it was Hylas or Thersites, passer-by?

Hylas was a beautiful youth who set off with Herakles to accompany the Argonauts. He disappeared en route for, having been sent off to get water, he was seized by the nymphs on account of his beauty (Apollodorus 1.9.19). Thersites on the other hand was 'the ugliest man who went to Troy', according to Homer (Iliad 2.216). The implication of the epigram is that the fair and the ugly were equal in death.

But where there's honour and success,
They raise my hackles, I confess.
I'd lift what's low, put down what's high,
Make wry things straight and straight things wry:
That's the one thing that comforts me,
That's how I want the world to be!

Doch, wo was Rühmliches gelingt,
Es mich sogleich in Harnisch bringt.
Das Tiefe hoch, das Hohe tief,
Das Schiefe grad, das Grade schief,
Das ganz allein macht mich gesund,
So will ich's auf dem Erdenrund.

More than any other art, comedy is tied to the realities of its own time and place. Although that fact makes it fascinating from a historical point of view, its sole purpose, in portraying ephemeral events and personalities, is to represent certain aspects of their eternal humanity which are overlooked by loftier types of poetry like epic and tragedy. The philosophy of poetry which was developed in the fourth century defined tragedy and comedy as fundamentally opposite and complementary expressions of the same primitive human instinct for imitation. It asserted that tragedy, and all the other types of high poetry which succeeded the epic, sprang from the inclination of noble minds to imitate great men, notable deeds and famous lives; while it explained the origin of comedy by the irresistible imitative urge of commoner natures—or, as we should put it, by the impulse of the ordinary man, with his realistic and critical outlook—to ape bad, blameworthy, and contemptible things.¹ The famous scene in the Iliad which holds up the vulgar and hideous agitator Thersites to the malicious laughter of the mob—a rare comedy among the many tragedies in Homeric poetry—is a true piece of popular comedy; for it caters to the instincts of the mob. So also, in the divine farce which the enamoured Ares and Aphrodite are forced to play against their will, the Olympians themselves become a laughing audience at a comedy.

If even the mighty gods could laugh and be laughed at in this frankly comic way, the Greeks obviously felt that every human being, and every being with human attributes, had not only the power of feeling heroic emotion and serious dignity, but the ability and the need to laugh. Later Greek philosophy defined man as the only animal capable of laughter,² though he was usually described as a talking or thinking animal; thereby they placed laughter on the same plane with thought and speech, as an expression of intellectual freedom.

1. Arist. Poet. 2, 1448a1; 4, 1448b24.
2. Arist. Part. An. III, 10, 673a8, 28.

Thou crusty botch of nature, what's the news?

What a strange and enigmatic breed we are! Presently we shall be flying in space, but at the same time we are threatening to blow up the base of this voyage into space, namely our own planet. We conquer space and time with our machines, but these machines also appear to be conquering us. We change the face of the earth, but on our own faces are the same old runes of guilt, suffering, and death. Despite everything we have created, we are still the same as the men of old: Cain and Abel, Achilles and Thersites, Siegfried and Hagen.

I am a rascal; a scurvy, railing knave; a very filthy rogue.

...he has not so much brain as ear-wax...

Those closest to the gods in Homer are not the poor and the meek, but the strong and the powerful; the godless one, i.e. the one who is shunned by the gods, upon whom they do not bestow any gifts, is Thersites.