Laudator Temporis Acti

Ben Jonson, Volpone, or The Fox, Act 2, Scene 1:

You that would last long, list to my song,
Make no more coil, but buy of this oil.
Would you be ever fair and young?
Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue?
Tart of palate? quick of ear?
Sharp of sight? of nostril clear?
Moist of hand? and light of foot?
Or, I will come nearer to't,
Would you live free from all diseases?
Do the act your mistress pleases;
Yet fright all aches from your bones?
Here's a med'cine, for the nones.

A panacea is a "cure-all." Nowadays, instead of the "oil" in Volpone, you'd need a whole pharmacopeia, including:

• Aquafresh or Sensodyne (to be "stout of teeth")
  
• Flonase or Nasalcrom (to be "of nostril clear")
  
• Pond's Dry Skin Cream or Neutrogena's New Hands (to be "moist of hand")
  
• Viagra or Levitra (to "do the act your mistress pleases")
  
• Boniva or Fosamax (to "fright all aches from your bones")

In part I, chapter X of Cervantes' Don Quixote, the knight of the woeful countenance is suffering from a wound to his ear, and his squire offers some lint and ointment to dress the wound:

"All that might be well dispensed with," said Don Quixote, "if I had remembered to make a vial of the balm of Fierabras, for time and medicine are saved by one single drop."

"What vial and what balm is that?" said Sancho Panza.

"It is a balm," answered Don Quixote, "the receipt of which I have in my memory, with which one need have no fear of death, or dread dying of any wound."

British scientists recently proposed their own version of the balm of Fierabras, called the Polypill, a combination of six different drugs, for people over 55. The scientists claim that the PolyPill would reduce the number of deaths by heart attack and stroke by eighty percent, thereby saving 200,000 lives each year in the United Kingdom alone.

Charles Asbury Stephens (1844-1931), from my native state of Maine, was a prolific writer of children's stories for The Youth's Companion. He was also a doctor, and his medical writings include Long Life: The Occasional Review of an Investigation of the Intimate Causes of Old Age and Organic Death, with a Design to Their Alleviation and Removal (1896), Natural Salvation: The Message of Science, Outlining the First Principles of Immortal Life on the Earth (1906), and Immortal Life: How It Will Be Achieved (1920), based on research conducted at his laboratory in Norway, Maine. Stephens lived a long life, but ultimately was unable to cure himself of the disease of mortality.

The research goes on apace. Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon studies worms in hopes of discovering genes that regulate aging. She hopes that she'll still be alive at age 150. The Methusaleh Foundation sponsors the Methusaleh Mouse Prize, "designed to further the development of truly effective anti-aging interventions." The first winner, a mouse named GHR-KO 11C, lived 1819 days (the average life span of a mouse is about two years).

Far be it from me to belittle the heroic efforts of these scientists to prolong human life. Were it not for them, some people near and dear to me wouldn't be alive today. But the quest for some human invention to achieve everlasting life is a will-o'-the-wisp. The ancient Greeks thought the attempt was not only foolish and doomed to failure, but also ill-advised. Euripides, in his play The Suppliants (lines 1109-1111, tr. E.P. Coleridge), almost seems to be prophesying about the scientists of our day when he says:

Them too I hate, whoso desire to lengthen out the span of life, seeking to turn the tide of death aside by philtres, drugs, and magic spells.

The elegaic poet Callinus (tr. J.M. Edmonds) writes:

By no means may a man escape death, nay not if he come of immortal lineage. Oftentime, it may be, he returneth safe from the conflict of battle and the thud of spears, and the doom of death cometh upon him at home.

The Greeks doubted whether everlasting life would be an unmixed blessing even if it were possible, and expressed these doubts in the myth of Tithonus, who had eternal life but not eternal youth. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (lines 218-238, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White) describes his fate:

So also golden-throned Eos rapt away Tithonus who was of your race and like the deathless gods. So she went to ask the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that he should be deathless and live eternally; and Zeus bowed his head to her prayer and fulfilled her desire. Too simple was queenly Eos; she thought not in her heart to ask youth for him and to strip him of the slough of deadly age. So while he enjoyed the sweet flower of life he lived rapturously with golden-throned Eos, the early-born, by the streams of Ocean, at the ends of the earth; but when the first grey hairs began to ripple from his comely head and noble chin, queenly Eos kept away from his bed, though she cherished him in her house and gave him rich clothing. But when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.

Christians have their own panacea, their own balm of Fierabras. In the words of Ignatius (Epistle to the Ephesians 20.2, tr. J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer, rev. Michael W. Holmes), they find it by

breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ.

Gervais Clark writes:

I read a post on your blog regarding mnemonic Latin rhymes. I learnt one as a child, but can sadly not remember it. The rhyme started like this:

hic and ille
this and that
went to buy a cricket bat
omnis all
brought the ball
...

I was wondering whether you had come across it.

This rhyme is unfamiliar to me. Please send me an email, dear readers, if you remember more of it.

Related posts:

• Latin Prepositions
  
• Mnemonics

Homer, Iliad 1.494-516 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

                    Nor did Thetis forget the entreaties
of her son, but she emerged from the sea's waves early
in the morning and went up to the tall sky and Olympos.
She found Kronos' broad-browed son apart from the others
sitting upon the highest peak of rugged Olympos.
She came and sat beside him with her left hand embracing
his knees, but took him underneath the chin with her right hand
and spoke in supplication to lord Zeus son of Kronos:
'Father Zeus, if ever before in word or action
I did you favour among the immortals, now grant what I ask for.
Now give honour to my son short-lived beyond all other
mortals. Since even now the lord of men Agamemnon
dishonours him, who has taken away his prize and keeps it.
Zeus of the counsels, lord of Olympos, now do him honour.
So long put strength into the Trojans, until the Achaians
give my son his rights, and his honour is increased among them.'
  She spake thus. But Zeus who gathers the clouds made no answer
but sat in silence a long time. And Thetis, as she had taken
his knees, clung fast to them and urged once more her question:
'Bend your head and promise me to accomplish this thing,
or else refuse it, you have nothing to fear, that I may know
how much I am the most dishonoured of all gods.'

In Ingres' 1811 painting of this scene, Thetis grasps Zeus' chin with her left hand and clasps his knees with her right hand:


But in Homer, she grasps Zeus' chin with her right hand and clasps his knees with her left hand.

F.S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 43-44:

Greek gestures and words differ from Roman and Hebrew ones, which happen to resemble one another. Greek gestures begin with the knee clasp (prominent in Homer and tragedy) and include touching other parts of the body, extending hands to the supplicandus but not touching him, and depositing boughs on altars. Roman and Hebrew gestures begin with falling low, which also avoids contact with the supplicandus, and include donning mourning dress as well as extending hands.

Naiden's book also contains useful appendices listing Acts of Supplication in Greek Authors (1a, pp. 301-338) and Latin Authors (1b, pp. 339-364). I don't know if these lists are intended to be exhaustive, but Euripides, Hypsipyle, fr. 757.57-60 (tr. M.J. Cropp), could be added to the Euripidean examples on pp. 315-316:

O, by your knees I fall in supplication, Amphiaraus, and by your chin and your Apolline art, for you have come here just in time amidst my troubles: save me, for I am dying because of my service to you.

ὦ πρός σε γονάτων ἱκέτις, Ἀμφιάρεω, πίτνω,
κ]αὶ πρὸς [γ]ενείο[υ τ]ῆς τ᾽ Ἀπόλλωνος τέχνης,
κ]αιρὸν γὰρ ἥκεις τοῖς ἐμοῖσιν ἐν κακοῖς,
ῥ]ῦσαί με· διὰ γὰρ σὴν ἀπόλλυμαι χάριν.

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (translator unknown).

Book III:

So little master of my understanding when alone, let any one judge what I must be in conversation, where to speak with any degree of ease you must think of a thousand things at the same time: the bare idea that I should forget something material would be sufficient to intimidate me. Nor can I comprehend how people can have the confidence to converse in large companies, where each word must pass in review before so many, and where it would be requisite to know their several characters and histories to avoid saying what might give offence. In this particular, those who frequent the world would have a great advantage, as they know better where to be silent, and can speak with greater confidence; yet even they sometimes let fall absurdities; in what predicament then must he be who drops as it were from the clouds? it is almost impossible he should speak ten minutes with impunity.

In a tete-a-tete there is a still worse inconvenience; that is; the necessity of talking perpetually, at least, the necessity of answering when spoken to, and keeping up the conversation when the other is silent. This insupportable constraint is alone sufficient to disgust me with variety, for I cannot form an idea of a greater torment than being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint; but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a violent inclination: and endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as speedily as possible, I hastily gabble a number of words without ideas, happy when they only chance to mean nothing; thus endeavoring to conquer or hide my incapacity, I rarely fail to show it.

Book V:

Nothing more contracts the mind, or engenders more tales, mischief, gossiping, and lies, than for people to be eternally shut up in the same apartment together, and reduced, from the want of employment, to the necessity of an incessant chat. When every one is busy (unless you have really something to say), you may continue silent; but if you have nothing to do, you must absolutely speak continually, and this, in my mind, is the most burdensome and the most dangerous constraint. I will go further, and maintain, that to render company harmless, as well as agreeable, it is necessary, not only that they should have something to do, but something that requires a degree of attention.

Knitting, for instance, is absolutely as bad as doing nothing; you must take as much pains to amuse a woman whose fingers are thus employed, as if she sat with her arms crossed; but let her embroider, and it is a different matter; she is then so far busied, that a few intervals of silence may be borne with. What is most disgusting and ridiculous, during these intermissions of conversation, is to see, perhaps, a dozen over-grown fellows, get up, sit down again, walk backwards and forwards, turn on their heels, play with the chimney ornaments, and rack their brains to maintain an inexhaustible chain of words: what a charming occupation!

Book XII:

When alone, I have never felt weariness of mind, not even in complete inaction; my imagination filling up every void, was sufficient to keep up my attention. The inactive babbling of a private circle, where, seated opposite to each other, they who speak move nothing but the tongue, is the only thing I have ever been unable to support. When walking and rambling about there is some satisfaction in conversation; the feet and eyes do something; but to hear people with their arms across speak of the weather, of the biting of flies, or what is still worse, compliment each other, is to me an insupportable torment.

Javier Álvarez at Edad de Oro prints a poem on sleep by Fernando de Herrera. I wish someone would translate it into English. I don't have the skill to do it, but the scholar and gentleman who translated this sonnet by Quevedo does:

Retired to the peace of this deserted place
Together with a few but learned books
I live in conversation with those passed away,
And with my eyes listen to the dead.

If not always understood, the books are ever open.
They either correct or fertilize my ideas.
And in silent contrapuntal music
To life's sleep, they speak, awake.

Great souls which death makes absent,
The learned press, the avenger of the years' insults,
Frees, O great Don Joseph!

In irrevocable flight the hour flees,
But that hour is reckoned best
Which in reading and study betters us.

---

Dennis at Campus Mawrtius coins misomophyly to mean "hatred of one's own race," improving on an old suggestion of mine.

---

Conrad H. Roth at Varieties of Unreligious Experience, in a learned disquisition on The Bat, also coins a new word, mammiptera.

He doesn't discuss the etymology of bat itself, which the Online Etymology Dictionary gives as:

"flying rodent," c.1575, a dialect alteration of M.E. bakke, which is prob. rel. to O.Sw. natbakka, O.Dan. nathbakkæ "night bat," and O.N. leðrblaka "leather flapper," so orig. sense is likely "flapper." The shift from -k- to -t- may have come through confusion with bakke "nocturnal insect," from L. blatta "moth." O.E. word for the animal was hreremus, from hreran "to shake."

Apparently there is no connection between bat and bate:

c.1300, "to contend with blows or arguments," from O.Fr. batre, from L.L. battere, from L. batuere (see batter (v.)). In falconry, "to beat the wings impatiently and flutter away from the perch." Figurative sense of "to flutter downward" attested from 1590.

---

Nicholas at Nestor's Cup surveys ancient execution techniques, a timely topic in light of recent executions here and abroad that did not go as smoothly as expected.

In addition to being an accomplished Greek scholar, Nicholas is a stonemason. Much as I enjoy and learn from his posts on ancient Greek, I wish he'd also write something about stonemasonry. I'm reading Charles McRaven's Building with Stone (North Adams: Storey Books, 1989), and I look with new interest on the stonework I see around town. Yesterday I drove by the elegant Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis.

There is a magazine about stonemasonry entitled Stonexus. The Table of Contents of Number VI (Spring/Summer 2006) lists a section called Miscellanae. Better a misprint on paper than in stone, I suppose. It should be Miscellanea. Don't let the Google hits for Miscellanae persuade you otherwise.

According to Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War, edited by Ward W. Briggs Jr. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), p. 111, n. 19, Gildersleeve's tombstone is defaced by a mistake in the Greek, which is a quotation from the tragic poet Aeschylus meaning "Life's bivouac is over." The stonecutter engraved an English V instead of a Greek upsilon.

I don't have access to Briggs' book now, and I can't find the source of the Aeschylean quotation.

Update -- Professor David Whitehead writes:

Briggs's chapter on Gildersleeve in Briggs & Calder (eds.) Classical Scholarship: a biographical encyclopedia, gives the reference [but doesn't mention the mason's error]: fr.265 Nauck, preserved by Hesychius from the lost play Phrygians -- διαπεφρούρηται βίος.

---

I always enjoy Brandon's poems at Siris. His latest collection includes "A Graduate Student Reflects on Footnotes," with the great line "And many more have been led into folly by footnotes than by strange women."

Brandon also posts his favorite poem by Robert Burns. My vote goes to For a' That and a' That, especially this stanza:

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

Coof (fool) is a delightful term of abuse, one that deserves wider circulation.

Dave Lull draws my attention to Peter Stothard's Gentle sex and free money, which starts out:

List the twelve things we need in order to be happy.

And which is the poem most often translated into English from another language?

Stothard goes on to discuss Martial 10.47. I doubt that it is "the poem most often translated into English from another language," but it is indeed popular, as the list provided by Stothard shows. One of the translations in his list is by Ben Johnson. I can't find it on the Internet, so I've transcribed it from George Parfitt's edition of Ben Johnson: The Complete Poems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). The original Latin by Martial follows:

The things that make the happy life, are these,
Most pleasant Martial; substance got with ease,
Not laboured for, but left thee by thy sire;
A soil, not barren; a continual fire;
Never at law; seldom in office gowned;
A quiet mind; free powers; and body sound;
A wise simplicity; friends alike-stated;
Thy table without art, and easy-rated;
Thy night not drunken, but from cares laid waste;
No sour, or sullen bed-mate, yet a chaste;
Sleep, that will make the darkest hours swift-paced;
Will to be, what thou art; and nothing more:
Nor fear thy latest day, nor wish therefore.

Vitam quae faciant beatiorem,
iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
res non parta labore sed relicta;
non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
prudens simplicitas, pares amici;
convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
nox non ebria sed soluta curis;
non tristis torus et tamen pudicus;
somnus qui faciat breves tenebras:
quod sis esse velis nihilque malis;
summum nec metuas diem nec optes.

Related Posts:

• Recipes for Happiness
  
• Translation of Martial 10.47 by Mildmay Fane
  
• Translation of Martial 10.47 by Henry Howard

The OED Online Word of the Day for Jan. 24, 2007 was agony. The first two definitions are:

• Anguish of mind, sore trouble or distress, a paroxysm of grief.
  
• Intensity or paroxysm of pleasure.

If grief and pleasure are considered opposites, then agony is an an auto-antonym, or word that can mean the opposite of itself.

Related posts:

• Auto-Antonyms (Latin sacer, English wold)
  
• Auto-Antonym (Urdu lāg)
  
• An Auto-Antonym? (ἀφυπνόω)
  
• Snob
  
• Two Greek Auto-Antonyms (γενέτης and γενέτειρα)
  

Aurelian Isaïcq writes:

There is too a misanthropic quatrain from Michelangelo Buonarroti (Rima 247). For some reason I prefer the German translation (available at Gutenberg) to Symonds'. I also remember Shakespeare’s (similarly lack of) sleep sonnets xxvii and xxviii.

Rima 247:

Caro m'è 'l sonno, e più l'esser di sasso,
mentre che 'l danno e la vergogna dura;
non veder, non sentir m'è gran ventura;
però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.

John Addington Symonds (1878):

Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
So long as ruin and dishonour reign;
To bear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain;
Then wake me not, speak in an undertone!

Sophie Hasenclever:

Schlaf ist mein Glück; so lange Schmach und Kummer
Auf Erden dauern, besser Stein zu bleiben,
Nicht sehn, nicht hören bei so schnödem Treiben.
Sprich leise drum und stör' nicht meinen Schlummer.

XXVII

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
  Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
  For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

XXVIII

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarr'd the benefit of rest?
When day's oppression is not eas'd by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress'd,
And each, though enemies to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.
  But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
  And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger.

In response to yesterday's post on sleep, Javier Álvarez writes:

There are some remarkable Spanish and Italian texts about sleep and insomnia. Apart from a composition by Quevedo, quoted in Sonnets to Morpheus, I recommend you to read this sonnet of Giovanni della Casa. Unfortunately, I could not find the text of Fernando de Herrera's "Ode to Sleep" in the Internet. It is worth reading. Maybe I'll post it soon in Edad de Oro.

If you follow the link to della Casa's beautiful sonnet, you'll find an English translation by Laurie Stras. Among other Italian poems translated by Stras I see the anonymous Il dolce sonno (Sweet sleep).

Buce of Palookaville, author of Underbelly, also writes:

Re sleep, seems to me that no one beats Shax, in many places but particularly Henry IV:

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?

The words immediately following in Henry IV are perhaps more familiar: "Then, happy low, lie down! / Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Roughly contemporary with Shakespeare is Sir Philip Sidney, who addressed this sonnet to sleep (Astrophel and Stella, XXXIX):

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Finally, Benedetto Accolti wrote an Ode to Sleep, printed in Latin Writings of the Italian Humanists. Selections by Florence Alden Gragg (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), pp. 353-354. I can't find a translation, and I don't have time or energy to translate it myself, but here is the Latin:

Nox ruit et caelum fuscis invecta quadrigis
  umbrosam molli frigore opacat humum
atque adeo curis hominum genus omne repulsis
  languida concepto membra sopore levat.
Nulla tamen fessam reparant oblivia mentem
  et refugis nostras tu quoque, Somne, preces.
Somne, animi requies, curarum, Somne, levamen,
  huc ades et sanctum fer, taciturne, pedem,
imbutumque gerent lethaeo gurgite ramum,
  fac rore immadeant tempora victa levi.
Curarum obstantes demum propelle catervas
  et mihi securo sit tua dona sequi,
ut neque me eversi tangant incommoda saecli
  nec removent tristes tempora saeva metus.
Ipse tibi floresque feram casiamque recentem,
  dulce sonans facili qua fugit unda pede,
et tibi, purpurea insurgat cui vertice crista,
  ales dissecto gutture tinguet humum.
Nunc tua defessos tandem vis alliget artus,
  dum iuvat et caelo lucida signa cadunt.

Quintilian (3.7.28, tr. H. Butler) says, "Panegyrics have been composed on sleep and death." Here's a sonnet on sleep by Wordsworth:

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
  One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
  Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky —
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
  Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
  Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
  And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
  Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
  Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

John G. Fitch, commentary on Seneca, Hercules Furens 1065ff.:

Addresses and prayers to Sleep include Hom. Il. 14.233ff. (by Hera), Eur. Or. 211ff. (by Orestes), Soph. Phil. 827ff. (a choral ode), Hymn. Orph. 85, Ov. Met. 11.623ff. (by Iris), Stat. Silv. 5.4 (by the poet himself), Theb. 10.126ff. (by Iris), Val. Fl. 8.70ff. (by Medea), Sil. 10.343ff. (by Juno).

Related posts:

• Sleep and Death as brothers
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Sophocles' Philoctetes
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Euripides' Orestes
  
• Insomniac's prayer from Seneca's Hercules Furens
  
• Paean to sleep in Carmina Burana
  
• Sonnet on sleep by Keats

See also Michael Hendry's web pages on Sonnets to Morpheus.

The image of the Wheel of Fortune is trite. Euripides, Trojan Women 1203-1206 (tr. David Kovacs), has an more interesting comparison:

That man is a fool who imagines he is firmly prosperous and is glad. For in its very nature fortune, like a crazed man, leaps now in one direction, now in another, and the same man is never fortunate forever.

θνητῶν δὲ μῶρος ὅστις εὖ πράσσειν δοκῶν
βέβαια χαίρει· τοῖς τρόποις γὰρ αἱ τύχαι,
ἔμπληκτος ὡς ἄνθρωπος, ἄλλοτ' ἄλλοσε
πηδῶσι, κοὐδεὶς αὐτὸς εὐτυχεῖ ποτε.

Cf. Poseidon's criticism of Athena (earlier in the same play, 67-68) for switching her favor from Greeks to Trojans:

But why do you leap about so, now with one character, now with another? Why hate and love whomever you choose so excessively?

τί δ' ὧδε πηδᾷς ἄλλοτ' εἰς ἄλλους τρόπους
μισεῖς τε λίαν καὶ φιλεῖς ὃν ἂν τύχῃς;

The same word for leap (πηδάω) occurs in both passages.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (May 6, 1858):

There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed.

Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 26-27:

The earliest surviving version of this ancient Greek myth of origins is the Theogony of Hesiod. It tells of how the original Golden Age declined to Silver and thence to Bronze and finally to the Iron of the present.

Bate is correct in naming Hesiod, but it is in the Works and Days (lines 106-201), not in the Theogony, that Hesiod relates the myth of origins and the ages of men. The Iron Age (Works and Days 182-201, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White) is no myth but reality:

The father will not agree with his children, nor the children with their father, nor guest with his host, nor comrade with comrade; nor will brother be dear to brother as aforetime. Men will dishonour their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them, chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the cost their nurture, for might shall be their right: and one man will sack another's city. There will be no favour for the man who keeps his oath or for the just or for the good; but rather men will praise the evil-doer and his violent dealing. Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man, speaking false words against him, and will swear an oath upon them. Envy, foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face, will go along with wretched men one and all. And then Aidôs and Nemesis, with their sweet forms wrapped in white robes, will go from the wide-pathed earth and forsake mankind to join the company of the deathless gods: and bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.

From Seneca's tragedies (tr. John G. Fitch):

Medea 19-20:

For the bridegroom I have a worse prayer in store: may he live.

Mihi peius aliquid, quod precer sponso manet:
vivat.

Thyestes 245-248:

ASSISTANT: Let him die by the sword and spew out his hateful life.
ATREUS: You talk about punishment's conclusion: I want the punishment! Slaying is for a lenient tyrant; in my kingdom death is something people pray for.

SATELLES: Ferro peremptus spiritum inimicum expuat.
ATREVS: De fine poenae loqueris; ego poenam volo.
perimat tyrannus lenis: in regno meo
mors impetratur.

Agamemnon 996:

ELECTRA: Is anything worse than death?
AEGISTHUS: Life, if you wish to die.

ELECTRA: Mortem aliquid ultra est? AEGISTHVS: Vita, si cupias mori.

Mad Hercules 1316-1317:

This labour must be added to the Herculean labours: to live.

Eat ad labores hic quoque Herculeos labor:
vivamus.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Aug. 9, 1858):

You say that you have travelled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique?

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Aug. 9, 1858):

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are nine hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as the first.

Anthony Trollope, The Claverings, chap. 8 (The House in Onslow Crescent):

"You don't believe that he's idle by disposition? Think of all that he has done already."

"That's just what is most against him. He might do very well with us if he had not got that confounded fellowship; but having got that, he thinks the hard work of life is pretty well over with him."

"I don't suppose he can be so foolish as that, Theodore."

"I know well what such men are, and I know the evil that is done to them by the cramming they endure. They learn many names of things — high-sounding names, and they come to understand a great deal about words. It is a knowledge that requires no experience and very little real thought. But it demands much memory; and when they have loaded themselves in this way, they think that they are instructed in all things. After all, what can they do that is of real use to mankind? What can they create?"

"I suppose they are of use."

"I don't know it. A man will tell you, or pretend to tell you — for the chances are ten to one that he is wrong — what sort of lingo was spoken in some particular island or province six hundred years before Christ. What good will that do any one, even if he were right? And then see the effect upon the men themselves! At four-and-twenty a young fellow has achieved some wonderful success, and calls himself by some outlandish and conceited name — a double first, or something of the kind. Then he thinks he has completed everything, and is too vain to learn anything afterward. The truth is, that at twenty-four no man has done more than acquire the rudiments of his education. The system is bad from beginning to end. All that competition makes false and imperfect growth. Come, I'll go to bed."

What would Harry have said if he had heard all this from the man who dusted his boots with his handkerchief?

William Cowper, The Conversation 91-118:

Oh thwart me not, Sir Soph, at every turn,
Nor carp at every flaw you may discern;
Though syllogisms hang not on my tongue,
I am not surely always in the wrong;
'Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
Not that all freedom of dissent I blame;
No, — there I grant the privilege I claim.
A disputable point is no man's ground,
Rove where you please, 'tis common all around.
Discourse may want an animated No,
To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
The mark at which my juster aim I take,
Is contradiction for its own dear sake.
Set your opinion at whatever pitch,
Knots and impediments make something hitch;
Adopt his own, 'tis equally in vain,
Your thread of argument is snapp'd again;
The wrangler, rather than accord with you,
Will judge himself deceived, — and prove it too.
Vociferated logic kills me quite,
A noisy man is always in the right;
I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare,
And when I hope his blunders are all out,
Reply discreetly, "To be sure — no doubt."

A song by John Clare (dated March 3, 1847) contains an example of asyndetic privative adjectives starting at the third word of the third line of the third stanza (italicized below):

I would not be a wither'd leaf
Twirled in an autumn sky
Mine should not be a life so brief
To fade and fall and die

Nor would I be a wither'd flower
Whose stalk was broke before
The bud showed bloom in springs young hour
Heart sicken'd at the core

But I would be a happy thought
With thy sweet sleep to lie
And live unknown, unseen, unsought
And keep my lonely joy

Yes I would be a ray of light
In the apple of thy eye
And watch o'er thee the live long night
In beauty, and in joy

There is no need to posit any literary influences. But we do know that Clare was familiar with Milton's Paradise Lost, which contains several examples of asyndetic privative adjectives (listed here). See Jonathan Bate, John Clare: A Biography (2003), chap. 5:

Clare said that Thomson's The Seasons and Milton's Paradise Lost formed his foundation in poetry. He discovered them early in life and read through them again and again until he was at least thirty.

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (April 2, 1852):

It appears to me that, to one standing on the heights of philosophy, mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of sight altogether; that man is altogether too much insisted on. The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe. That is the egotism of the race.

What is this our childish, gossiping, social literature, mainly in the hands of the publishers? When another poet says the world is too much with us, he means, of course, that man is too much with us. In the promulgated views of man, in institutions, in the common sense, there is narrowness and delusion. It is our weakness that so exaggerates the virtues of philanthropy and charity and makes it the highest human attribute. The world will sooner or later tire of philanthropy and all religions based on it mainly. They cannot long sustain my spirit. In order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by and behold a universe in which man is but as a grain of sand.

I am sure that those of my thoughts which consist, or are contemporaneous, with social personal connections, however humane, are not the wisest and widest, most universal. What is the village, city, State, nation, aye the civilized world, that it should concern a man so much? the thought of them affects me in my wisest hours as when I pass a woodchuck's hole. It is a comfortable place to nestle, no doubt, and we have friends, some sympathizing ones, it may be, and a hearth, there; but I have only to get up at midnight, aye to soar or wander a little in my thought by day, to find them all slumbering.

Look at our literature. What a poor, puny, social thing, seeking sympathy! The author troubles himself about his readers, -- would fain have one before he dies. He stands too near his printer; he corrects the proofs. Not satisfied with defiling one another in this world, we would all go to heaven together. To be a good man, that is, a good neighbor in the widest sense, is but little more than to be a good citizen. Mankind is a gigantic institution; it is a community to which most men belong. It is a test I would apply to my companion, -- can he forget man? can he see this world slumbering?

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite. It is not a chamber of mirrors which reflect me. When I reflect, I find that there is other than me. Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy. The universe is larger than enough for man's abode. Some rarely go outdoors, most are always at home at night, very few indeed have stayed out all night once in their lives, fewer still have gone behind the world of humanity, seen its institutions like toadstools by the wayside.

This reminds me of what the poet Robinson Jeffers called Inhumanism:

The first part of The Double Axe was written during the war and finished a year before the war ended, and it bears the scars; but the poem is not primarily concerned with that grim folly. Its burden, as of some previous work of mine, is to present a certain philosophical attitude, which might be called Inhumanism, a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence.