Laudator Temporis Acti

Over at The Charlock's Shade, there is a short account of John Aubrey (1626-1697), famous for his Brief Lives. If the Internet were all it's cracked up to be, the Brief Lives would be available unabridged in cyberspace.

Here's a tantalizing sample, from Aubrey's life of Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604:

This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his return the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

Some claim that De Vere is the real author of Shakespeare's plays.

Horace, Epistles 1.11.29-30:

What you seek is right here, it's in East Podunk, if you keep your equanimity.

quod petis, hic est, / est Vlubris, animus si te non deficit aequus.

W.H.D. Rouse, Chanties in Greek and Latin, 2nd ed. (1930):

Gellia atque Gellius
viam petunt in Alpes.
urceos manu tenent
aqua nova replendos.

ecce Gellius prior
cadit caputque frangit,
quem secuta Gelliast
subinde se revertens.

mater ut videt malum
silens utrumque curat.
namque uterque vapulat
bibitque uterque acetum.

A more or less literal translation:

Jill and Jack make their way into the Alps. In their hands they hold pails to be filled with fresh water. Behold, Jack falls first and breaks his head. Jill follows him, tumbling herself right after. When their mother sees the trouble, without a word she takes care of both of them. For both get a whipping and both drink vinegar.

Finally here's one of many English versions:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got and home he ran,
As fast as he could caper.
There his mother bound his head,
With vinegar and brown paper.

After their introduction into Australia in 1859, rabbits became an ecological disaster, a plague of almost Biblical proportions. A series of articles, not for the squeamish, by Karl Kruszelnicki gives some background (part 1, part 2, part 3).

The same thing happened in ancient Carpathus (or Karpathos, modern Scarpanto), an island about 30 miles southwest of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea:

• Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.11.14 (tr. John Henry Freese): If a man, for instance, introduces into his house something from which he expects to benefit, but afterwards finds himself injured instead, it is as the Carpathian says of the hare; for both have experienced the same misfortunes.
  
• Hesychius (tr. J.M. Edmonds), commenting on Archilochus fragment 248 West: A proverb in the form 'the man of Carpathus the hare,' supply 'introduced'; there being no hares on the island, the people introduced them, and they became so numerous that their corn and vines were damaged.
  
• Suda (tr. David Whitehead): They say that the Karpathians, being islanders, brought in a hare, because they did not have [any] in their territory. But the hares became numerous and ruined their agriculture. So the proverb is applied to those devising something to their own detriment.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977), II, 451:

To be unaware of the putrefaction of the modern world is a symptom of contagion by it.

In the days before blood and DNA tests for paternity, a child who obviously resembled his father was prized:

• Hesiod, Works and Days 235 (when justice flourishes): Women bear children resembling their fathers.
  
• Theophrastus, Characters 5 (The Complaisant Man, tr. R.C. Jebb): Then, when he is asked to dinner, he will request the host to send for the children; and will say of them, as they come in, that they are as like their father as figs.
  
• Catullus 61.221-225: May he look like his father Manlius and be easily recognized by all who don't know him and prove with his face his mother's virtue (sit suo similis patri / Manlio et facile insciis / noscitetur ab omnibus / et pudicitiam suae / matris indicet ore).
  
• Horace, Odes 4.5.23: Mothers who have just given birth are praised for children resembling [their fathers] (laudantur simili prole puerperae).
  
• Dio Cassius 56.3 (supposedly from a speech delivered by the Emperor Augustus, tr. Ian Scott-Kilvert): Is it not a joy to acknowledge a child who possesses the qualities of both parents, to tend and educate a being who is both the physical and spiritual image of yourself, so that, as it grows up, another self is created?
  
• Martial 6.27.3-4: You have a daughter who is marked with paternal resemblance of face, witness of her mother's virtue (est tibi, quae patria signatur imagine vultus, / testis maternae nata pudicitiae).
  
• G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca 243b (an inscription from Pergamum, 2nd century A.D.), line 5: You bore me children, all resembling me.
  
• Buecheler and Lommatzsch, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 387, lines 9-10 (restoration conjectural): I have three sons, resembling their father, born from one wife (nam patri similes uno de coniuge nati / tres sunt).
  

On the other hand, children who didn't look at all like their fathers were suspect:

• Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 111 (quoting an Amphictyonic oath): And may their wives not bear children resembling the fathers, but freaks.
  
• Theocritus 17.43-44 (tr. C.S. Calverley): She that loves not bears sons, but all unlike / Their father: for her heart was otherwhere.
  
• Martial 6.39 describes in great detail the seven "children" of husband Cinna and wife Marulla, none of whom looks like the supposed father.
  
• Lucilius, Greek Anthology 11.215 (tr. W.R. Paton): Eutychus the painter was the father of twenty sons, but never got a likeness even among his children.

Last night Mrs. Laudator and I went to a concert by the always splendid St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. My peeve is the custom of putting a piece of discordant contemporary music in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable program, in this case Schnittke in company with Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. If the entire concert were devoted to Schnittke and his ilk, hardly anyone would buy a ticket, so they resort to this contemptible subterfuge in order to "educate" us Philistines and expose us to contemporary music. It reminds me of the trick described by Lucretius 1.936-939:

When physicians try to give bitter medicines to children, first they smear the rim of the cup with the sweet golden liquid of honey, in order to deceive the unsuspecting children.

sed vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur.

At the end of the Schnittke piece, the score calls for most of the musicians to march offstage and stop playing, while the conductor and a couple of musicians remain. Finally, all of the musicians stop playing, while the conductor keeps on conducting in silence. Many years ago I played in the University of Maine orchestra, directed by the late Clayton Hare, who liked to tipple on occasion. At one concert, Hare was conducting under the influence and we came to the end of a piece. He kept waving his arms for several more seconds. We weren't playing Schnittke.

Montaigne, Essais II, 17 (tr. E.J. Trechmann):

Whether it be perhaps that my continual intercourse with the habits of mind of the ancient writers, and the picture I have formed of those richly-endowed minds of the past, have put me out of humour with others, and with myself; or that we do in truth live in an age which produces only very indifferent things, the fact remains that I see nothing worthy of any great admiration.

A l'adventure que le commerce continuel que j'ay avec les humeurs anciennes, et l'idée de ces riches ames du temps passé, me dégouste, et d'autruy, et de moy-mesme: ou bien qu'à la verité nous vivons en un siecle qui ne produict les choses que bien mediocres: Tant y a que je ne connoy rien digne de grande admiration.

Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, tr. N. Ampoux (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), p. 646:

One torrid day, Tolstoy saw a mosquito land on Chertkov's bald pate and smacked it. The disciple looked reproachfully up at his master: "What have you done, Leo Nikolayevich? You have killed a living creature! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Be the first on your block to collect a full set of philosopher action figures!

Thoreau, Journals, January 27, 1855:

One is educated to believe, and would rejoice if the rising generation should find no occasion to doubt, that the State and the Church are on the side of morality, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Harvard College was partly built by a lottery. My father tells me he bought a ticket in it. Perhaps she thus laid the foundation of her Divinity School. Thus she teaches by example. New England is flooded with the "Official Schemes of the Maryland State Lotteries," and in this that state is no less unprincipled than in her slaveholding. Maryland, and every fool who buys a ticket of her, is bound straight to the bottomless pit. The State of Maryland is a moral fungus. Her offense is rank; it smells to heaven.

There is no slavery in Maryland today, but there is still a lottery. I'd wager they don't use this quotation from Thoreau in their advertising.

Euripides, Suppliants 238-245 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

For there are three ranks of citizens; the rich, a useless set, that ever crave for more; the poor and destitute, fearful folk, that cherish envy more than is right, and shoot out grievous stings against the men who have aught, beguiled as they are by the eloquence of vicious leaders; while the class that is midmost of the three preserveth cities, observing such order as the state ordains.

Some modern editors follow Wecklein in regarding these lines as an interpolation.

The Maverick Philosopher asks my opinion of Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), a book which I have criticized previously (here and here). On the whole I find it a delightful book, fun to browse, and chock-full of quirky, off-beat insights into the English language. I highly recommend it to any language lover. I recently discovered in it an amusing synonym for curmudgeon: smellfungus, defined as "a discontented person, a grumbler and fault-finder," a word coined by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), who spelled it smelfungus.

As with any large book (the Encyclopedia is 822 pages long), there are bound to be errors and misprints. Since I find some of the more serious errors a springboard for blogging, I'll continue to point them out as I detect them.

In response to my discussion about loving or hating enemies, Horace Jeffery Hodges points out a web page containing a list of Greek and Latin parallels to Jesus' command that we should love our enemies and do good to those who harm us. The list comes from F. Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), a book which I have not seen. Here is one example, from Seneca's treatise On Anger (De Ira) 2.34.5:

Someone gets angry with you. Challenge him with kindness in return. Enmity immediately tumbles away when one side lets it fall.

irascetur aliquis: tu contra beneficiis provoca; cadit statim simultas ab altera parte deserta.

Not listed (at least on the web page) is Plato, Crito 49b (tr. B. Jowett):

SOCRATES. Then we must do no wrong?
CRITO. Certainly not.
SOCRATES. Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all?
CRITO. Clearly not.

If you want to be depressed, read these answers by Saudis to a TV interviewer's questions "Would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with a Jew?" and "If a child asks you 'Who are the Jews?' what would you answer?"

I'm sure the answers would be quite different if Jews were asked "Would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with an Arab?" and "If a child asks you 'Who are the Arabs?' what would you answer?"

Thanks to my old and dear friend Jim K. for the link.

The Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, says, "If I remember my Latin, Si vis pacem, bellum paratum: if you want peace be prepared for war." It's rare to catch Homer nodding or Bill forgetting, but the usual form of the quotation is si vis pacem, para bellum. The Web is full of claims that Vegetius said this, but what Vegetius actually said (book 3, preface) was qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (who wishes peace, let him prepare for war). Similar expressions are:

• Plato, Laws 829a: The citizens ought to practise war -- not in time of war, but rather while they are at peace.
  
• Cicero, Philippics 7.6.19: If we want to enjoy peace, we must wage war; if we avoid war, we will never enjoy peace (si pace frui volumus, bellum gerendum est; si bellum omittimus, pace numquam fruemur).
  
• Cicero, De Officiis 1.11.35: Wars must be undertaken for this reason, that we may live in peace without harm (suscipienda quidem bella sunt ob eam causam, ut sine iniuria in pace vivatur).
  
• Livy 6.18.7: Just show war; you'll have peace (ostendite modo bellum; pacem habebitis).
  
• Nepos, Life of Epaminondas 5.4: Peace is produced by war (paritur pax bello).
  

The Maverick Philosopher's excellent post ends with a clever twist on the hippie mantra "Give peace a chance" -- "Sometimes we need to give war a chance."

Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), p. 284, gives the following explanation of the origin of the word expedite:

An old story that no one has been able to prove or disprove holds that the Latin word expedire, the ancestor of expedite, derives from the name of St. Expeditus, a soldier in the Roman Army before being martyred at Melitene, Armenia, in the fourth century. St. Expeditus, it seems, was the advocate of urgent causes. The O.E.D. merely says that the Latin word expedire means "to free a person's feet (ped) from fetters, to help forward, to dispatch, send off."

It's quite easy to prove that Latin expedire does not derive from the name of a fourth century A.D. St. Expeditus. The word occurs in the earliest Latin writers, for example in numerous passages of Plautus, a writer who died in the second century B.C. I don't know where Hendrickson got his old story, but it's arrant nonsense.

In Liddell and Scott's Greek lexicon you can find the following onomatopoeic words:

• bauzo (to cry bau bau, to bark, cf. Latin baubor)
  
• be (the cry of sheep)
  
• gru (the sound a pig makes, cf. Latin grunnio)
  

They are not so different from English bow-wow, baa, grunt.

One Greek animal sound that doesn't sound familiar, at least to my ear, is brekekekex koax koax, from Aristophanes' Frogs (line 209 and elsewhere). K.J. Dover in his commentary says that "initial br- appears in many Greek words denoting the production of sound" and also that final -x is "a Greek spelling convention for the representation of sounds." He concludes that "brekekekex seems thus to embody two non-representational conventions." Apparently the Marsh Frog, Rana ridibunda, does make a sound somewhat like brekekekex with br- and -x removed.

One wishes that the notes of the Roman emperor Geta (died 212 A.D.) on animal sounds had survived. Aelius Spartianus, Life of Geta 5.4-5, in the Historia Augusta (tr. Anthony Birley), says:

He made a habit of propounding problems to grammarians, asking them to say what sounds different animals make, for example: lambs bleat, pigs grunt, doves coo, bears growl, lions roar, leopards snarl, elephants trumpet, frogs croak, horses neigh, bulls bellow -- and he would confirm these from old writers.

familiare illi fuit has quaestiones grammaticis proponere, ut dicerent, singula animalia quomodo vocem emitterent, velut: agni balant, porcelli grunniunt, palumbes minurriunt, ursi saeviunt, leones rugiunt, leopardi rictant, elefanti barriunt, ranae coaxant, equi hinniunt, asini rudunt, tauri mugiunt, easque de veteribus adprobare.

Here are a few bibliographical references on Greek and Latin animal sounds that I've collected over the years:

• Paul Kretschmer, "Συς und andere lautnachahmende Wörter," Glotta 13 (1924) 132-138
  
• Karl Kunst, "mugire und rugire," Glotta 14 (1925) 109-113
  
• J.H.H. Schmidt, Handbuch der lateinischen und griechischen Synonymik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1889), pp. 157-162 (Stimmen der Säugetiere) and 162-166 (Stimmen der Vögel, Lurche und Kerfe)
  
• Bruno Snell, "Das I-Ah des goldenes Esel," Hermes 70 (1935) 355-356
  
• W.B. Stanford, The Sounds of Greek (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), ch. V (Mimesis in Words), pp. 98-121, esp. 102-103
  
• Wilhelm Wackernagel, Voces Variae Animantium (diss. Basel, 1867)
  

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David Rohrbacher comments:

I say with regret that Geta's work on animal sounds almost certainly never existed, but is a joke by the scampy author of the largely-fraudulent Historia Augusta (see Ronald Syme, Emperors and Biography, page 62; on the fraudulence of the HA, see Peter White, The Authorship of the Historia Augusta, Journal of Roman Studies 57 (1967) 115-33, and fuller and up-to-date treatment in Andre Chastagnol, Histoire Auguste (1994)). The (single) author of the HA, writing in the late fourth century, was probably a grammarian, and the point of the passage is a parody of the kind of nit-picking questions with which grammarians grappled (as seen, e.g., in Aulus Gellius.)

He also adds some more articles:

• C.E. Finch, "Suetonius' catalogue of animal sounds in codex Vat. Lat. 6018,"American Journal of Philology 90 (1969) 459-463
  
• Dale Thomas Benediktson, "Polemius Silvius' Voces varie animancium and related catalogues of animal sounds," Mnemosyne 53 (2000) 71-79
  

Isaiah 3.16-23:

[16] Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: [17] Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. [18] In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, [19] The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, [20] The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, [21] The rings, and nose jewels, [22] The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, [23] The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.

One would think that Isaiah had observed modern-day fashion models on the runway, "with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go." Or maybe in verse 16 he was using the prophetic present tense, and under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost he actually foresaw the contestants on America's Next Top Model. The only details he omits are the pouts and scowls. Zion could be Paris or Milan or New York, the capitals of the fashion industry.

The round tires in verse 18 aren't of the Firestone variety, but hats, and the cauls in the same verse are cowls. Likewise the glasses in verse 23 aren't Gianfranco Ferré shades at $300 per pair, but mirrors. Tablets in verse 20 are probably amulets.

Cicero, De Officiis 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.

P. Scipionem, Marce 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.