Laudator Temporis Acti

Mary Boykin Chesnut, Diary (February 28, 1861):

In the drawing-room a Mrs. Saxon abused South Carolina until she found I was a South Carolinian and took it back. She spoke of her letters being printed, but she used "incredible" for "incredulous," and "was" for "were." A fine writer she must have been.

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Mary Boykin Chesnut, Diary (August 27, 1861):

Today I saw a letter from a girl crossed in love. Her parents object to the social position of her fiancé; in point of fact, they forbid the banns. She writes: "I am misserable." Her sister she calls a "mean retch." For such a speller, a man of any social status would do. They ought not to expect so much for her. If she wrote her "pah" a note I am sure that "stern parient" would give in.

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Seen or heard recently:

• "Athiest" for "atheist."
  
• "Definately" and "definetly" for "definitely."
  
• "Hurricane situation" for "hurricane."
  
• "Incidences" for "incidents."
  
• "Reticent to" for "reluctant to."

I sometimes think that sensitivity to these things is a curse, like an over-keen nose assailed at all times and in all places by foul odors.

A.E. Housman, inaugural lecture, University College, London, 1892:

The faculty of learning is ours that we may find in its exercise that delight which arises from the unimpeded activity of any energy in the groove nature meant it to run in. Let a man acquire knowledge not for this or that external and incidental good which may chance to result from it, but for itself; not because it is useful or ornamental, but because it is knowledge, and therefore good for man to acquire. 'Brothers,' says Ulysses in Dante, when with his old and tardy companions he had left Seville on the right hand and Ceuta on the other, and was come to that narrow pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks to hinder man from venturing farther: 'Brothers, who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this brief vigil of your senses that remains, experience of the unpeopled world behind the sunset. Consider of what seed ye are sprung: ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.' For knowledge resembles virtue in this, and differs in this from other possessions, that it is not merely a means of procuring good, but is good in itself simple: it is not a coin which we pay down to purchase happiness, but it has happiness indissolubly bound up with it.

***
It is the glory of God, says Solomon, to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Kings have long since abdicated that province; and we students are come into their inheritance: it is our honour to search out the things which God has concealed. In Germany at Easter time they hide coloured eggs about the house and the garden that the children may amuse themselves in hunting after them and finding them. It is to some such game of hide-and-seek that we are invited by that power which planted in us the desire to find out what is concealed, and stored the universe with hidden things that we might delight ourselves in discovering them. And the pleasure of discovery differs from other pleasures in this, that is shadowed by no fear of satiety on the one hand or of frustration on the other. Other desires perish in their gratification, but the desire of knowledge never: the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. Other desires become the occasion of pain through dearth of the material to gratify them, but not the desire of knowledge: the sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read we shall never come to the end of our story-book. So long as the mind of man is what it is, it will continue to exult in advancing on the unknown throughout the infinite field of the universe; and the tree of knowledge will remain for ever, as it was in the beginning, a tree to be desired to make one wise.

The Dante quotation is from the Inferno, 26.112-120:

"O frati", dissi "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza."

The Solomon quotation is from Proverbs 25.2.

W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, chap. LXXXVII:

"Jane, your nose wants blowing."

"I haven't got a hanky, daddy."

"Tut, tut, child," he answered, as he produced a vast, brilliant bandana, "what do you suppose the Almighty gave you fingers for?"

Henry David Thoreau, Natural History of Massachusetts:

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

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Henry David Thoreau, Walking:

In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.

Francis Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, part II (Champlain and His Associates), chap. VI (Jesuits in Acadia):

Biard's greatest difficulty was with the Micmac language. Young Biencourt was his best interpreter, and on common occasions served him well; but the moment that religion was in question he was, as it were, stricken dumb, the reason being that the language was totally without abstract terms. Biard resolutely set himself to the study of it, a hard and thorny path, on which he made small progress, and often went astray. Seated, pencil in hand, before some Indian squatting on the floor, whom with the bribe of a mouldy biscuit he had lured into the hut, he plied him with questions which he often neither would nor could answer. What was the Indian word for Faith, Hope, Charity, Sacrament, Baptism, Eucharist, Trinity, Incarnation? The perplexed savage, willing to amuse himself, and impelled, as Biard thinks, by the Devil, gave him scurrilous and unseemly phrases as the equivalent of things holy, which, studiously incorporated into the father's Indian catechism, produced on his pupils an effect the reverse of that intended.

---

Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, chap. IV (Le Jeune and the Hunters):

At the outset, he had proffered his aid to Le Jeune in his study of the Algonquin; and, like the Indian practical jokers of Acadia in the case of Father Biard, palmed off upon him the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he was interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws.

With admirable thoroughness Peter Kirby examined supposed parallels (miraculous prison escapes, spur kicking proverb) between the Acts of the Apostles and Euripides' Bacchae. I will glean the stubble, with the help of commentaries on the Bacchae.

E.R. Dodds (on Bacchae 45) thought that the author of Acts "had probably read the play." In addition to the prison escapes and the "kick against the pricks" proverb, Dodds noted the presence in both texts of the comparatively rare words θεομαχέω (theomachéo, verb, fight against god) and θεομάχος (theomáchos, adjective, fighting against god).

In Acts, the adjective occurs in Gamaliel's advice (5.38-39):

And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God [θεομάχοι].

In Bacchae, the verb occurs three times, first in the prologue spoken by Dionysus (lines 43-46, tr. E.P. Coleridge):

Now Cadmus gave his sceptre and its privileges to Pentheus, his daughter's child, who wages war 'gainst my divinity [θεομαχεῖ], thrusting me away from his drink-offerings, and making no mention of me in his prayers.

Teiresias also uses the verb when arguing with Pentheus, at lines 322-325 (tr. Coleridge):

Wherefore I and Cadmus, whom thou jeerest so, will wreath our brows with ivy and join the dance; pair of grey beards though we be, still must we take part therein; never will I for any words of thine fight against heaven [θεομαχήσω].

Finally Agave says about her son Pentheus (lines 1255-1256, tr. Coleridge):

But he can do naught but wage war with gods [θεομαχεῖν].

At first I thought this argument had some merit, because my old (1872) Liddell-Scott gives no more examples of these words. But the 1940 edition of Liddell-Scott-Jones gives other examples, from Hippocrates, Menander, the Septuagint, Plutarch, Arrian, Lucian, etc. Peter Kirby has access to a copy of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae CD-ROM. Perhaps it would reveal yet more examples.

Kirby also missed a few parallels to the spur kicking proverb, included in the commentaries of Dodds (1960) and Sandys (1880) on Bacchae 795:

• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 324-326 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth): οὔκουν ἔμοιγε χρώμενος διδασκάλῳ / πρὸς κέντρα κῶλον ἐκτενεῖς, ὁρῶν ὅτι / τραχὺς μόναρχος οὐδ᾽ ὑπεύθυνος κρατεῖ. (Therefore take me as thy teacher and kick not against the pricks, seeing that a harsh ruler [Zeus] now holds sway who is accountable to none.)
  
• Euripides, fr. 604: πρὸς κέντρα μὴ λάκτιζε τοῖς κρατοῦσί σου (kick not against the pricks [imposed by] those who rule over you).
  
• Fr. iamb. adesp. 13 Diehl: ἵππος ὄνῳ· πρὸς κέντρα μὴ λακτιζέτω (horse to donkey: let him not kick against the pricks). This sounds like a fable, although I haven't found a fable that fits. This fragment is not in M.L. West's Iambi et Elegi Graeci.
  
• Terence, Phormio 77-78 (wrongly 776 Dodds, tr. Henry Thomas Riley): inscitiast, advorsum stimulum calces (this is folly to kick against the spur). Probably from Terence's lost Greek original (Apollodorus' Epidikazomenos).
  

I would add Ammianus Marcellinus 18.5.1: ne contra acumina calcitraret (lest he kick against the pricks). It is noteworthy that Ammianus, although he wrote in Latin, was a native Greek speaker. This seems to be primarily a Greek proverb.

These additional parallels only strengthen Kirby's sensible conclusion that the proverb is widespread and that its presence in Acts 26.14 does not prove dependence on Bacchae.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, To J.W.:

Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand:
'T will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!

Emerson's phrase cynic bark is pregnant with meaning. Dogs bark, and cynic comes from Greek kynikós (κυνικός, dog-like), itself from kýon (κύων, dog).

A.E. Housman, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism (address to the Classical Association, August 4, 1921):

Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain; and it hardly possible to step aside from the pursuit of truth without falling a victim either to your stupidity or else to your vanity. Stupidity will then attach you to received opinions, and you will stick in the mud; or vanity will set you hunting for novelty, and you will find mare's nests. Added to these snares and hindrances there are the various forms of partisanship: sectarianism, which handcuffs you to your own school and teachers and associates, and patriotism, which handcuffs you to your own country. Patriotism has a great name as a virtue, and in civic matters, at the present stage of the world's history, it possibly still does more good than harm; but in the sphere of intellect it is an unmitigated nuisance.

William Hazlitt, A Farewell to Essay-Writing (London Weekly Review, March 29, 1828):

Food, warmth, sleep, and a book: these are all I at present ask -- the ultima Thule of my wandering desires.

Cf. Anatole France, La rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (tr. Jos. A.V. Stritzko):

If there are two kinds of furniture I hold in high esteem, they are the bed and the table. The table, filled up by turns with erudite books and succulent dishes, serves as support to the nourishment both of body and spirit; the bed propitious for sweet repose as well as for cruel love.

Il y a deux meubles que je tiens en haute estime, c'est le lit et la table. La table qui, tour à tour chargée de doctes livres et de mets succulents, sert de support à la nourriture du corps et à celle de l'esprit; le lit, propice au doux repos comme au cruel amour.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), From Moschus:

Ah! When the mallow in the croft dies down,
  Or the pale parsley or the crisped anise,
Again they grow, another year they flourish;
  But we, the great, the valiant, and the wise,
Once covered over in the hollow earth,
  Sleep a long, dreamless, unawakening sleep.

This is from Moschus' Lament for Bion. Andrew Lang (1844-1912) rendered the same lines in prose thus:

Ah me, when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring in another year; but we men, we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence; a right long, and endless, and unawakening sleep.

Since Bion lived later than Moschus, modern scholars attribute the lament not to Moschus but to an unnamed disciple of Bion.

Seneca, in his treatise De Clementia (On Mercy) addressed to Nero, contrasts the isolation of the leader with the freedom of movement enjoyed by the ordinary citizen (1.8.2, 4, tr. John W. Basore):

It is possible for me to walk alone without fear in any part of the city I please, though no companion attends me, though I have no sword at my house, none at my side; you, amid the peace you create, must live armed. You cannot escape from your lot; it besets you, and, whenever you leave the heights, it pursues you with its magnificence....Our movements are noticed by few; we may come forth and retire and change our dress without the world being aware; you can no more hide yourself than the sun.

The Emperor Nero chafed against his forced isolation:

• Tacitus, Annals 13.25 (tr. Church and Brodribb): In the consulship of Quintus Volusius and Publius Scipio, there was peace abroad, but a disgusting licentiousness at home on the part of Nero, who in a slave's disguise, so as to be unrecognized, would wander through the streets of Rome, to brothels and taverns, with comrades, who seized on goods exposed for sale and inflicted wounds on any whom they encountered, some of these last knowing him so little that he even received blows himself, and showed the marks of them in his face.
  
• Suetonius, Life of Nero 26 (tr. J.C. Rolfe): Although at first his acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty were gradual and secret, and might be condoned as follies of youth, yet even then their nature was such that no one doubted that they were defects of his character and not due to his time of life. No sooner was twilight over than he would catch up a cap or a wig and go to the taverns or range about the streets playing pranks, which however were very far from harmless; for he used to beat men as they came home from dinner, stabbing any who resisted him and throwing them into the sewers. He would even break into shops and rob them, setting up a market in the Palace, where he divided the booty which he took, sold it at auction, and then squandered the proceeds. In the strife which resulted he often ran the risk of losing his eyes or even his life, for he was beaten almost to death by a man of the senatorial order, whose wife he had maltreated. Warned by this, he never afterwards ventured to appear in public at that hour without having tribunes follow him at a distance and unobserved.
  
• Dio Cassius 61.8.1-2 (tr. Earnest Cary): He indulged in many licentious deeds both at home and throughout the city, by night and by day alike, though he made some attempt at concealment. He used to frequent the taverns and wandered about everywhere like a private citizen. In consequence, frequent blows and violence occurred, and the evil even spread to the theatres, so that the people connected with the stage and the horse-races paid no heed either to the praetors or to the consuls, but were both disorderly themselves and led others to act likewise. And Nero not only failed to restrain, even by words, but actually incited them the more; for he delighted in their behaviour and used to be secretly conveyed in a litter into the theatre, where, unseen by the rest, he could watch what was going on.
  
• Dio Cassius 61.9.2 (tr. Earnest Cary): Secretly, however, he carried on nocturnal revels throughout the entire city, insulting women, practising lewdness on boys, stripping the people whom he encountered, beating, wounding, and murdering. He had an idea that his identity was not known, for he used various costumes and different wigs at different times; but he would be recognized both by his retinue and by his deeds, since no one else would have dared commit so many and so serious outrages in such a reckless manner.

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Miriam T. Griffin, Nero: The End of a Dynasty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 111, tried to interpret Nero's behavior in a favorable light:

Should we rather see in this practice the estimable desire of a young ruler, normally escorted everywhere by guardsman and lictors, to find out for himself what his people really thought?

She compared Shakespeare's Prince Hal, and we might add Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. If that were truly Nero's motivation in gadding about incognito, it would be a praiseworthy motivation.

Modern heads of state, no less than ancient ones, are isolated from those they govern. I can think of one in particular, who never meets with his ordinary fellow citizens unless they have been screened in advance to ensure their ideological purity; who spends his time surrounded by professional athletes and wealthy campaign contributors; who doesn't have the magnanimity to meet with his critics; who lives in a cocoon.

How different the behavior of our first Republican president! Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, volume 2 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1939), p. 236, tells an interesting anecdote. Chided by Major General Charles G. Halpine for wasting his time receiving ordinary citizens as visitors to the White House, Lincoln replied:

I feel--though the tax on my time is heavy--that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official--not to say arbitrary--in their ideas, and are apter and apter with each passing day to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity. Now this is all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions of all who claim to have business with me twice each week, and every applicant for audience has to take his turn, as if waiting to be shaved in the barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of more or less importance, and all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which at the end of two years I must return.

Lincoln was truly a man of the people. Others just pretend to be.

Rogueclassicism points to a cartoon in which a character asks, "What's the Greek term for 'root beer'?"

Sauvage Noble takes up the challenge and suggests νίτρον (nítron), soda, although he recognizes that this is actually sodium carbonate or soda ash, not the sodium bicarbonate or baking soda which when combined with vinegar produces carbon dioxide gas, the bubbles in our soda pop.

I would suggest πομφολυγηρά ἐκ ῥίζων πόσις (pompholygerá ek rhízon pósis), bubbly drink from roots. The ancient Greek for beer is ἐκ κριθῶν μέθυ (ek krithôn méthy), alcoholic drink from barley.

There is probably a modern Greek expression for root beer, but I don't know what it is.

Cervantes, Don Quixote, Prologue (tr. Walter Starkie):

All you have to do is to drag in some trite phrases and tags of Latin that you know by heart or at least that cost you little trouble to look up -- for instance, when dealing with liberty and captivity, to introduce

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro

and in the margin cite Horace or whoever said it. If you should deal with the power of death, come in with

Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Regumque turres.

If you are writing of friendship and the love that God commands you to have for your enemy, come to the point at once with Holy Scripture, which you can readily do with a tiny bit of research by repeating no less than the Word of God Himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you are dealing with the subject of evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. If on the fickleness of friends, you have Cato, who will supply you with this distich:

Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos,
Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.

With these meagre scraps of Latin and the like, you may perhaps be taken for a scholar.

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Part of the humor of this advice is that Cervantes (intentionally?) misattributes some of his quotations. Non bene etc. is not from Horace but from Walter of England, Fables of Aesop 54.25. Donec eris etc. is not from Cato, but from Ovid, Tristia 1.9.5-6. The translator, Walter Starkie, also in a footnote misattributes Pallida mors etc. to Horace, Odes LIV 13-14; it should be Horace, Odes 1.4.13-14.

W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, chap. 9:

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), p. 16:

The question asked by Tacitus when the well-to-do citizens of ancient Rome began fleeing the troubles of the city by retreating behind the walls of their guarded villas -- "Who will guard the guards?" -- is still a good one.

Tacitus didn't ask the question; Juvenal did. Juvenal didn't ask it when the wealthy retreated into their gated communites; he asked it about those who were supposed to keep watch over potentially adulterous wives.

The question occurs twice in Juvenal's misogynistic sixth satire, once at lines 347-348 (deleted by M. Maas) and once at lines 31-32 of the Oxford fragment discovered by E.O. Winstedt. Here is Wendell Clausen's Oxford Classical Text of both passages, accompanied by G.G. Ramsay's Loeb translation.

346-352:

[audio quid ueteres olim moneatis amici,
'pone seram, cohibe.' sed quis custodiet ipsos
custodes? cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor.]
iamque eadem summis pariter minimisque libido,
nec melior silicem pedibus quae conterit atrum
quam quae longorum uehitur ceruice Syrorum.

I hear all this time the advice of my old friends--"Put on a lock and keep your wife indoors." Yes, but who will ward the warders? The wife arranges accordingly and begins with them. High or low their passions are all the same. She who wears out the black cobble-stones with her bare feet is no better then she who rides [in a litter] upon the necks of eight stalwart Syrians.

O.29-O.34:

                                                          noui
consilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,
'pone seram, cohibe'. sed quis custodiet ipsos
custodes, qui nunc lasciuae furta puellae
hac mercede silent? crimen commune tacetur.
prospicit hoc prudens et ab illis incipit uxor.

I know well the advice and warnings of my old friends--"Put on a lock and keep your wife indoors." Yes, but who is to ward the warders? They get paid in kind for holding their tongues as to their young lady's escapades; participation seals their lips. The wily wife arranges accordingly and begins with them.

Norris freely admits elsewhere in her book (pp. 9, 37) that she's no scholar. And if we were only allowed to quote authors whom we ourselves have actually read, then quotation would be effectively outlawed or at least drastically curtailed.

But Riverhead Books is a division of the venerable firm G.P. Putnam's Sons, who boast that they have been publishers since 1838. Where were the editors, proofreaders, and fact checkers? Or, to paraphrase Juvenal, Who will edit the editors themselves? Who will proofread the proofreaders themselves? Who will fact check the fact checkers themselves?

I recently discussed crappy names on this blog. Since then some other interesting examples have popped up.

Edward Cook, at Ralph the Sacred River, writes about "negative meanings in the names of supposedly bad folk":

One might mention, among several examples from the Hebrew Bible, the name Jezebel, Heb. iyzevel, probably originally containing a reference to zevul, "prince," a title of Baal. But the wicked queen's name was pronounced so as to recall the word zevel, "dung."

There's another example from the Near East in The Thousand and One Nights (Night 892, tr. Richard F. Burton):

And he called aloud to his youngest son, saying, "O Fasyan, surnamed Salh al-Subyan, go forth, O my son, to do battle with thy sister and take of her the blood-wreak for thy brothers and fall on her, come what may; and whether thou gain or thou lose the day; and if thou conquer her, slay her with foulest slaughter!"

Burton glosses Fasyan as "The Breaker of Wind (faswah - a fizzle, a silent crepitus)" and Salh al-Subyan as "son of Children's dung."

David Briggs, in an article for the Cleveland Plain Dealer entitled More inclusive prayer book, hymnal is applauded by Lutheran assembly, writes:

Then, after two hours of debate, delegates gave sustained applause for the approval of work on the new book that attempts to be open to different cultures and new musical styles. It will offer alternatives such as "Holy Eternal Majesty, Holy Incarnate Word, Holy Abiding Spirit" for the male-dominated Trinitarian image of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" in prayers during Sunday services.

Yet another example of political correctness stamping out tradition. This curmudgeon still prefers "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" to "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

While they're at it, why don't they jettison that old-fashioned word "Trinity"? How about something more modern and catchy, like "Holy Trio" or "Three Amigos"?

Sylvain Sauvage, 1888-1948, was a French book illustrator. His parents, wittingly or not, gave him a very interesting name. Both Sylvain and Sauvage are derived from Latin silva (forest). Sylvain comes from Silvanus, a deity presiding over woods. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the history of savage and sauvage thus:

c.1300, "wild, undomesticated, untamed" (of animals and places), from O.Fr. sauvage, salvage "wild, savage, untamed," from L.L. salvaticus, alteration of silvaticus "wild," lit. "of the woods," from silva "forest, grove."

Google gives examples of similar names, e.g. Sylvia Savage and Sylvie Sauvage.

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The title of this blog post uses silva in a slightly different sense, meaning a miscellany or hodge-podge. The use of silva as a title has the sanction of ancient tradition. Suetonius, De Grammaticis 24.5 (tr. J.C. Rolfe, on Marcus Valerius Probus), says:

He published a few slight works on divers minute points, and also left a good sized "Grove of Observations on our Early Language."

nimis pauca et exigua de quibusdam minutis quaestiunculis edidit; reliquit autem non mediocrem silvam observationum sermonis antiqui.

On the Greek equivalent of silva (hyle) as a book title see Suetonius, De Grammaticis 10.4-5 (tr. J.C. Rolfe, on Lucius Ateius Philologus):

He seems to have assumed the title Philologus, because like Eratosthenes, who was first to lay claim to that surname, he regarded himself as a man of wide and varied learning. And that he was such is evident from his commentaries, though very few of them survive; but he gives some idea of their number in a second letter to the aforesaid Hermas: "Remember to recommend my Hyle to others; as you know, it consists of material of every kind, collected in eight hundred books."

Philologi appellationem assumpsisse videtur quia sicut Eratosthenes, qui primus hoc cognomen sibi vindicavit, multiplici variaque doctrina censebatur. Quod sane ex commentariis eius apparet, quanquam paucissimi exstent; de quorum tamen copia sic altera ad eundem Hermam epistula significat: "Hylen nostram aliis memento commendare, quam omnis generis coegimus, uti scis, octingentos in libros."

Quintilian (10.3.17, tr. H.E. Butler) also seems to recognize silva as a book title:

On the other hand, there is a fault which is precisely the opposite of this, into which those fall who insist on first making a rapid draft of their subject with the utmost speed of which their pen is capable, and write in the heat and impulse of the moment. They call this their rough copy [silvam].

diversum est huic eorum vitium qui primo decurrere per materiam stilo quam velocissimo volunt, et sequentes calorem atque impetum ex tempore scribunt: hanc silvam vocant.

Silva was the inspiration for the title of Ben Jonson's posthumously published Timber: or, Discoveries; made upon men and matter: as they have flowed out of his daily readings; or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times. Jonson explained his title in a Latin note, which I have translated as follows:

Forest of objects and opinions, called hyle, as it were, from the manifold matter and variety contained herein. For as we commonly call a countless crowd of trees growing at random a forest, so also the ancients used to call Forests (Timber-trees) those books in which little treatises on various and diverse subjects had been heaped haphazardly together.

Sylva rerum et sententiarum quasi Ὓλη dicta a multiplici materia et varietate in iis contenta. Quemadmodum enim vulgo solemus infinitam arborum nascentium indiscriminatim multitudinem Sylvam dicere: ita etiam libros suos in quibus variae et diversae materiae opuscula temere congesta erant, Sylvas appellabant antiqui: Timber-trees.

If Marcus Valerius Probus, Lucius Ateius Philologus, or Ben Jonson were alive today, perhaps they would be publishing their lucubrations in blogs entitled Silva Observationum Sermonis Antiqui, Hyle, or Timber.

Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year (1953; rpt. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987), November 22:

The three great disaster inventions, so far as bringing death to wildlife is concerned, have been gunpowder, the modern match and the gasoline engine.

Jim Dawson, Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart (Berkeley: TenSpeed Press, 1999), p. 21:

First there's crepitate (to fart), from the Latin crepitare (to rattle) and crepitus ventris (a fart, literally crackling wind)...

Dawson's translation of crepitus ventris is incorrect in two respects: (1) he makes crepitus an adjective, when in fact it's a noun, and (2) ventris has nothing to do with wind -- it's the genitive singular of venter (belly, stomach). The phrase means "a crackling (rattling, rumbling) of the stomach," not "crackling wind." It might be OK to translate English breaking wind idiomatically in Latin as crepitus ventris, provided that we recognize that the literal Latin phrase has no wind in it. Crackling wind in Latin would be crepitans ventus.

Although they share the same first four letters, Latin ventus (wind) and venter (belly) are etymologically unrelated. For the root of ventus, see Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch, pp. 81-84, and Calvert Watkins, Indo-European Roots, s.v. we-. For the root of venter, see Pokorny, pp. 1104-1105, and Watkins, s.v. udero-.

The phrase crepitus ventris occurs in Suetonius' Life of Claudius 32 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

He is even said to have thought of an edict allowing the privilege of breaking wind quietly or noisily at table, having learned of a man who ran some risk by restraining himself through modesty.

dicitur etiam meditatus edictum, quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi, cum periclitatum quendam prae pudore ex continentia repperisset.

A similar phrase, strepitus ventris, occurs in Suetonius' Life of Lucan 2 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

He was recalled from Athens by Nero and made one of his intimate friends, besides being honored with the quaestorship; but he could not keep the emperor's favor. For, piqued because Nero had suddenly called a meeting of the Senate and gone out when he was giving a reading, with no other motive than to throw cold water on the performances, he afterwards did not refrain from words and acts of hostility to the princeps, which are still notorious. Once for example in a public privy, when he relieved his bowels with an uncommonly loud noise, he shouted out this half-line of the emperor's, while those who were there for the same purpose took to their heels: "You might suppose it thundered 'neath the earth."

revocatus Athenis a Nerone cohortique amicorum additus atque etiam quaestura honoratus, non tamen permansit in gratia. siquidem aegre ferens, recitante se subito ac nulla nisi refrigerandi sui causa indicto senatu recessisse, neque verbis adversus principem neque factis exstantibus post haec temperavit, adeo ut quondam in latrinis publicis clariore cum strepitu ventris emissi hemistichium Neronis magna consessorum fuga pronuntiarit: "sub terris tonuisse putes."

For the comparison of thunder with breaking wind, see also Aristophanes, Clouds 382-394 (tr. anon.):

STREPSIADES. But you have not yet told me what makes the roll of the thunder?

SOCRATES. Have you not understood me, then? I tell you, that the Clouds, when full of rain, bump against one another, and that, being inordinately swollen out, they burst with a great noise.

STREPSIADES. How can you make me credit that?

SOCRATES. Take yourself as an example. When you have heartily gorged on stew at the Panathenaea, you get throes of stomach-ache and then suddenly your belly resounds with prolonged rumbling.

STREPSIADES. Yes, yes, by Apollo! I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first it's but a little gurgling, pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds.

SOCRATES. Well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. Shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder?

STREPSIADES. And this is why the names are so much alike: crap [πορδή, pordé] and clap [βροντή, bronté].