Laudator Temporis Acti

On the curse of immortality, Phil Flemming wrote in an email:

The topic has long obsessed me for reasons I do not fully understand.

Perhaps at our age we begin to get a taste of what Tithonian Immortality would be like if death did not mercifully intervene. We extrapolate our daily losses into an unlimited future when already we think "how little is left of me!" Our vision dims, our ears grow deaf, our palate dulls. A passion for anything (except money) eludes us. We find ourselves living that stereotype of an old man which Aristotle outlines in Rhet. II.13---and we know things can only get worse.

The Epicureans especially spend a lot of time trying to quell the fear of death. I am surprised they never said, "Just look at the opposite, look at what will become of you if you do not die." Epictetus' favorite phrase is "the door stands open" if life becomes too odious. Tithonus tried the door and it was locked. Lots of old people with strokes and terrible chronic conditions find themselves sampling Tithonian immortality as death refuses to come.

They finally lock Tithonus in a closet, do they not, while Eos and her new beau cavort. Only an occasional groan is heard.

Phil seems to be right about the Epicureans. At least I find no references to Tithonus in the indices to Lucretius and to Usener's Epicurea. After I sent Phil a link to Atul Gawande, The Way We Age Now, The New Yorker (April 30, 2007), he replied:

That sort of story just drives me crazy these days. "We just fall apart" with chapter and verse. Tell me about it!

Doesn't it feel like we are unwilling subjects in an insane medical experiment called (Tithonian) Life Extension? We are being kept alive longer, not because we can enjoy life longer, but so we can watch ourselves falling apart day by day piece by piece.

I run by an expensive nursing home most mornings. It has some kind of Graeco-Roman statuary in its courtyard. If it isn't, it ought to be a statue of Tithonus.

I propose Life Limitation. 55 and you are done, for most people. Let medical science refocus all its efforts and resources on giving us 55 good years and to hell with the rest. As it is, the ideal and objective seems to be a macabre kind of Tithonian senescence, with all of us kept breathing on life support until we are at least 100.

There is a scientifically proven way to avoid all the miseries of old age: die early.

When I see younger people back-loading their life with heavy-duty savings and retirement plans, I tell them: You are not going to like being 65 if you are unlucky enough to last that long. Live now, spend the money now, have fun now, instead of saving to pay for an old age you'll despise. Front-load your life and just don't live too long.

Phil adds a postscript:

Not that I don't make egregious orthographic errors all the time, but I see you discreetly corrected "bow" to "beau". Eos' new paramour, if I remember correctly, was named Toxophilos. So I punned VERY OBSCURELY "bow". You see what a classical education does for you: the world thinks you are an illiterate.

Toxophilos = bow lover, one fond of archery.

Homer, Iliad 13.288-291 (Idomeneus speaking to Meriones, tr. Samuel Butler):

If you were struck by a dart or smitten in close combat, it would not be from behind, in your neck nor back, but the weapon would hit you in the chest or belly as you were pressing forward to a place in the front ranks.

εἴ περ γάρ κε βλεῖο πονεύμενος ἠὲ τυπείης
οὐκ ἂν ἐν αὐχέν᾽ ὄπισθε πέσοι βέλος οὐδ᾽ ἐνὶ νώτῳ,
ἀλλά κεν ἢ στέρνων ἢ νηδύος ἀντιάσειε
πρόσσω ἱεμένοιο μετὰ προμάχων ὀαριστύν.

A wound in the back is generally disgraceful, because it means that the man struck was fleeing, and it is shameful to flee in battle. Examples in the Iliad include 5.38-42 (Agamemnon slays Odius), 11.446-448 (Odysseus slays Socus), 16.307-311 (Patroclus slays Areïycus), 17.578-579 (Menelaus slays Podes), and 20.487-489 (Achilles slays Areïthous).

By contrast, a wound in the chest or belly is honorable, because it means that the wounded man was facing his foe and fighting bravely when struck.

Richard Janko, in his commentary on books 13-16 of the Iliad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), cites two fragments of Tyrtaeus as parallels to 13.288-291.

Tyrtaeus 11.17-20 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

For pleasant it is in dreadful warfare to pierce the midriff of a flying man, and disgraced is the dead that lieth in the dust with a spear-point in his back.

ἀργαλέον γὰρ ὄπισθε μετάφρενόν ἐστι δαΐζειν
  ἀνδρὸς φεύγοντος δηίῳ ἐν πολέμῳ·
αἰσχρὸς δ' ἐστὶ νέκυς κατακείμενος ἐν κονίῃσι
  νῶτον ὄπισθ' αἰχμῇ δουρὸς ἐληλάμενος.

Tyrtaeus 12.23-28 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

Moreover he that falleth in the van and losest dear life to the glory of his city and his countrymen and his father, with many a frontwise wound through breast and breastplate and through bossy shield, he is bewailed alike by young and old, and lamented with sore regret by all the city.

αὐτὸς δ' ἐν προμάχοισι πεσὼν φίλον ὤλεσε θυμόν,
  ἄστυ τε καὶ λαοὺς καὶ πατέρ' εὐκλείσας,
πολλὰ διὰ στέρνοιο καὶ ἀσπίδος ὀμφαλοέσσης
  καὶ διὰ θώρηκος πρόσθεν ἐληλάμενος.
τὸν δ' ὀλοφύρονται μὲν ὁμῶς νέοι ἠδὲ γέροντες,
  ἀργαλέῳ δὲ πόθῳ πᾶσα κέκηδε πόλις.

Vergil alludes to this same idea at Aeneid 11.55-56 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

Yet not shall thine eyes, Evander, look on one routed with shameful wounds.

at non, Evandre, pudendis / volneribus pulsum aspicies.

"Shameful wounds" would be those inflicted in the back of the body. Turnus with a spear cast dealt Evander's son Pallas a fatal blow in front (Aeneid 10.482-485, tr. Fairclough):

But with quivering stroke the point tears through the centre of the shield, with all its plates of iron, all its plates of brass, all the bull-hide's overlaying folds; then pierces the corslet's barrier and the mighty breast.

  at clipeum, tot ferri terga, tot aeris,
quem pellis totiens obeat circumdata tauri,
vibranti cuspis medium transverberat ictu
loricaeque moras et pectus perforat ingens.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, tr. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 40:

To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.

In classical mythology, who was immortal but did not want to be? Perhaps Eos' consort Tithonus, who was granted immortality but not eternal youth. Certainly the nymph Juturna in Vergil's Aeneid 12.879-884 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough), who lamented:

Wherefore gave me he [Jove] life eternal? Why of the law of death am I bereaved? Now surely could I end such anguish, and pass at my poor brother's [Turnus'] side amid the shadows! I immortal! Nay, will aught of mine be sweet to me without thee, my brother? O what deepest earth can gape enough for me, and send me down, a goddess, to the nethermost shades?

quo vitam dedit aeternam? cur mortis adempta est
condicio? possem tantos finire dolores
nunc certe, et misero fratri comes ire per umbras!
immortalis ego? aut quicquam mihi dulce meorum
te sine, frater, erit? o quae satis ima dehiscat
terra mihi, Manisque deam demittat ad imos?

The Maine School for Feeble-Minded was founded in 1908. Over the years its name changed, to Pownal State School and later to Pineland Hospital and Training Center. By the time it closed its doors in 1996, it was officially called Pineland: A Comprehensive Center for the Developmentally Disabled. Unofficially (according to my mother, who grew up in a nearby town), the locals called it the Snakepit. In a history of the school, Richard S. Kimball, Pineland's Past: The First One Hundred Years (Portsmouth: Peter E. Randall, 2001), p. xiii, quotes the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus:

History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of human power in the world.

Kimball may have obtained the quotation from Guy Davenport, The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art (New York: Counterpoint, 1996), p. 4:

"History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea," said Heraclitus two and a half millennia earlier, "and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world."

The closest I can find to this is Heraclitus, fragment 52 (tr. John Burnet, from Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.4):

αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.

Time is a child playing draughts; the kingly power is a child's.

I don't know where the sandcastle and the sea came from, although one possible source is Nietzsche's discussion of Heraclitus in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (tr. Marianne Cowan):

In this world only play, play as artists and children engage in it, exhibits coming-to-be and passing away, structuring and destroying, without any moral additive, in forever equal innocence. And as children and artists play, so plays the ever-living fire. It constructs and destroys, all in innocence. Such is the game that the aeon plays with itself. Transforming itself into water and earth, it builds towers of sand like a child at the seashore, piles them up and tramples them down.

---

Dave Lull writes:

I found this fragment cited thusly: Herakleitos and Diogenes, pt. 1, fragment 24, trans. by Guy Davenport (1976):

http://www.poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Heraclitus

I think this may be referring to GD's Herakleitos & Diogenes, or to an earlier article by him:

Herakleitos & Diogenes. Translated from the Greek, by Guy Davenport. Bolinas, CA: Grey Fox Press, 1979. (Grey Fox Press Books) paperbound edition.

Acknowledgement (verso title page): "'Herakleitos: The Extant Fragments' was published in Contemporary Literature in Translation No. 23 (Spring 1976), and reprinted in The American Poetry Review Vol. 7, No 1 (January/February 1978)

http://www.geocities.com/chuck_ralston/07_dav-bkpam-Herakleitos-Diogenes.htm

Thomas De Quincey, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets:

Listen to a Whig, or to a Tory, and you will suppose that the great bulk of society range under his banner; all, at least, who have any property at stake. Listen to a Radical, and you will suppose that all are marshalled in the same ranks with himself, unless those who have some private interest in existing abuses, or have aristocratic privileges to defend. Yet, upon going extensively into society as it is, you find that a vast majority of good citizens are of no party whatsoever, own no party designation, care for no party interest, but carry their good wishes by turns to men of every party, according to the momentary purpose they are pursuing.

I first read Baudelaire's sonnet Recueillement when I was an undergraduate at the University of Maine, in a French class taught by Olga Wester Russell. Here is Francis Scarfe's translation, followed by the original.

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still. You longed for evening, and look, it is falling now. A dusky atmosphere enfolds the city, to some men bringing peace, to others care.

While the base herd of mortals, beneath the lash of pleasure, that pitiless torturer, sets out to reap remorse in slavish entertainment, my sorrow, give me your hand, come this way, far from them.

See where the bygone years are leaning from the balconies of heaven, in their faded robes of yesteryear; where Regret, with a smile on her lips, rises from the fountain's depths;

where the dying sun falls asleep beneath an arch; and, like a long shroud drifting from the East, listen, my darling, O listen to the gentle night's approach.

---

Sois sage, ô ma Douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille.
Tu réclamais le Soir; il descend; le voici:
Une atmosphère obscure enveloppe la ville,
Aux uns portant la paix, aux autres le souci.

Pendant que des mortels la multitude vile,
Sous le fouet du Plaisir, ce bourreau sans merci,
Va cueillir des remords dans la fête servile,
Ma Douleur, donne-moi la main; viens par ici,

Loin d'eux. Vois se pencher les défuntes Années,
Sur les balcons du ciel, en robes surannées;
Surgir du fond des eaux le Regret souriant;

Le soleil moribond s'endormir sous une arche,
Et, comme un long linceul traînant à l'Orient,
Entends, ma chère, entends la douce Nuit qui marche.

Mac Daniel, "Air traffic controller's 'bathroom break' delays three planes," Boston Globe (April 11, 2007):

Two Southwest Airlines flights were forced to circle Manchester-Boston Regional Airport last Friday when the lone air traffic controller had to go to the bathroom.

Federal Aviation Administration officials said another controller was in the tower at the time but was not certified to land the planes, forcing flights from Chicago and Orlando, Fla., to delay their landings by 18 minutes. In addition, a medical flight carrying lungs to a New Jersey airport had its takeoff delayed by what FAA log books referred to as a bathroom break.

My brother is an emergency (911) telephone operator in a small town, and sometimes he has to work alone. When he is the only operator on duty, he cannot leave his post under any circumstances. At such times, he keeps a sort of chamberpot under his desk.

But 18 minutes does seem like a long time. Even with a good book to keep me company, I don't think I've ever lingered 18 minutes on the pot.

The gastrointestinal problems of the air traffic controller reminded me of an anecdote from the life of Aesop, found in Ben Edwin Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), Appendix, No. 380 = Vita Aesopi 67 (tr. L.W. Daly):

Xanthus said to him (Aesop), "Can you tell me why it is that when we defecate we look often at our own droppings?" Aesop: "Because long ago there was a king's son, who, as a result of the looseness of his bowels and his loose way of living, sat there for a long time relieving himself -- for so long that before he knew it he had passed his own wits. Ever since then, when men relieve themselves, they look down for fear that they, too, have passed their wits. But don't you worry about this. There's no danger of you passing your wits, for you don't have any."

This fable gives new meaning to the slang expression "shit for brains".

Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), pp. 127-128:

In the year 194/5, "Stratonicos, son of Euangelos, in ignorance cut down an oak of Zeus of the Twin Oak Trees and because of Stratonicos's lack of faith, Zeus summoned up his own power." He almost killed the offender, who "recovered from great danger and made this dedication by way of thanks"; "and I proclaim, let no one belittle Zeus's powers nor cut down an oak again."

On p. 703, n. 13, Fox cites "T.A.M. V. 179 B with F. Petzl (1978) 253." F. Petzl is a mistake for Georg Petzl, and the reference is to his "Inschriften aus der Umgebung von Saittai (I)," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 30 (1978) 249-273, which I have not seen. T.A.M. is Tituli Asiae Minoris. Here is the inscription:

μέγας Ζεὺς ἐγ διδύμων δρυ-
ῶν. Στρατόνεικος Εὐανγέ-
λου διὰ τὸ ἀγνοεῖν αὐτὸν Δι-
ὸς Διδυμείτου ἔκκοψε δρῦ-
ν, κὲ ἀναζητήσας ὁ θεὸς τὴν
ἰδίαν δύναμιν διὰ τὸ ἀπιστῖν
αὐτὸν κατέθηκεν ΟΛΟΔΟΥΜΕ
ἰσοθανάτους, καὶ σωθεὶς ἐγ
μεγάλου κινδύνου εὐχαρισ-
τῶν ἀνέθηκεν· παρανγέλ-
λω δέ, αὐτοῦ τὰς δυνάμις μή
τίς ποτε κατευτελήσι καὶ
κόψει δρῦν. ἔτους σοθʹ, μη(νὸς) Πα-
νήμου ηιʹ.

Related posts:

• Erysichthon in Ovid
  
• Erysichthon in Callimachus

These are miscellaneous notes to myself on solitude.

A Greek word for "loner" is μονότροπος (monótropos). Liddell & Scott s.v.:

living alone, solitary, νεανίας E.Andr.281 (lyr.), cf. LXX Ps.67(68).6: title of plays by Phrynichus, Anaxilas, and Ophelio; ἄφιλοι καὶ ἄμικτοι καὶ μ. Plu.2.479c; μ. βίος Phld.Ir.p.49 W., Ph.1.551, Plu. Pel.3; μ. λῃστής J.BJ2.21.1; μ. ζῷα Gal.UP1.2.

J.M. Edmonds translated a fragment from Phrynicus' play Monotropos as follows (accurate despite the rhymes):

I'm called the Solitary, and the life
I lead is Timon's, without mate or wife,
Sour-visaged, quick to anger, ill to meet,
Averse to talk, wise in my own conceit.

Persius 4.52: tecum habita (live with yourself). I haven't seen Pierre Courcelle, "Habitare secum selon Perse et selon Grégoire le Grand," Revue des études anciennes 69 (1967) 266-279.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 105.6: nihil tamen aeque proderit quam quiescere et minimum cum aliis loqui, plurimum secum (nothing will be so advantageous as to keep still and speak very little with others, very much with oneself).

Montaigne 1.39 (On Solitude, tr. E.J. Trechmann):

We must reserve a little back-shop, all our own, entirely free, wherein to establish our true liberty and principal retreat and solitude. In this retreat we should keep up our ordinary converse with ourselves, and so private, that no acquaintance or outside communication may find a place there.

Rousseau, Emile, Book I (tr. Barbara Foxley):

Men are not made to be crowded together in ant-hills, but scattered over the earth to till it. The more they are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of over-crowded cities. Of all creatures, man is the least fitted to live in herds. Huddled together like sheep, men would very soon die. Man's breath is fatal to his fellows. This is literally as well as figuratively true.

Mankato, Minn. (Associated Press):

A jail guard has been suspended after allegedly thumping an inmate with a Bible.

James Lee Sheppard, 56, has been charged with two gross misdemeanors for allegedly swatting a Blue Earth County Jail inmate with the book, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against steel bars on Feb. 8, according to the criminal complaint.

A video shows a guard entering the cell of inmate Jeremy Hansen, 26. The guard then takes Hansen's Bible and strikes him in the side of the face with the book.

Compare this passage from one of Erasmus' Colloquies (Cyclops, or The Gospel Bearer, tr. Craig R. Thompson):

Cannius. Then why do you insist you love the Gospel?

Polyphemus. I'll tell you. A certain Franciscan in our neighborhood kept babbling from the pulpit against Erasmus' New Testament. I met the man privately, grabbed him by the hair with my left hand, and punched him with my right. I gave him a hell of a beating; made his whole face swell. What do you say to that? Isn't that promoting the Gospel? Next I gave him absolution by banging him on the head three times with this very same book, raising three lumps, in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Cannius. The evangelical spirit, all right! This is certainly defending the Gospel with the Gospel.

---

Ca. Unde igitur declaras te amare Evangelium?

Po. Dicam. Franciscanus quidam apud nos non desinebat e suggesto deblaterare in Novum Testamentum Erasmi: conveni hominem privatim, laevam inieci capillis, dextra pugilem egi, suggillavi illum magnifice, totamque faciem tuber reddidi. Quid ais? non est hoc favere evangelio? Deinde absolvi illum a commissis, hoc ipso codice ter in verticem impacto, fecique tria tubera, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Ca. Satis quidem evangelice. Istuc nimirum est Evangelium Evangelio defendere.

Kinky Friedman, Cowards Kick Away Another Piece of America's Soul (on Don Imus), ad fin.:

I believe New York will miss its crazy cowboy and America will miss the voice of a free-thinking independent-minded, rugged individualist. I believe MSNBC will lose many viewers and CBS radio many listeners.

Too bad for them. That's what happens when you get rid of the only guy you've got who knows how to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth.

Compare Herodotus 1.136.2 (on the Persians, tr. Aubrey De Sélincourt):

The period of a boy's education is between the ages of five and twenty, and they are taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

παιδεύουσι δὲ τοὺς παῖδας ἀπὸ πενταέτεος ἀρξάμενοι μέχρι εἰκοσαέτεος τρία μοῦνα, ἱππεύειν καὶ τοξεύειν καὶ ἀληθίζεσθαι.

Excerpts from William Hazlitt, On Pedantry:

He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man.

....

Learning and pedantry were formerly synonymous; and it were well when they were so. Can there be a higher satisfaction than for a man to understand Greek, and to believe that there is nothing else worth understanding?

....

It may be considered as a sign of the decay of piety and learning in modern times, that our divines no longer introduce texts of the original Scriptures into their sermons. The very sound of the original Greek or Hebrew would impress the hearer with a more lively faith in the sacred writers than any translation, however literal or correct.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal (Oct. 5, 1856):

It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most. I think I would rather watch the motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, -- watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully, -- than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves we report in either case, and perchance we shall report a more restless and worthless self in the latter case than in the first.

John Burroughs, Phases of Farm Life:

Indeed, all the ways and doings of cattle are pleasant to look upon, whether grazing in the pasture, or browsing in the woods, or ruminating under the trees, or feeding in the stall, or reposing upon the knolls. There is virtue in the cow; she is full of goodness; a wholesome odor exhales from her; the whole landscape looks out of her soft eyes; the quality and the aroma of miles of meadow and pasture lands are in her presence and products. I had rather have the care of cattle than be the keeper of the great seal of the nation. Where the cow is, there is Arcadia; so far as her influence prevails, there is contentment, humility, and sweet, homely life.

James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Sept. 22, 1773):

He said, he could never get the meaning of an Erse song explained to him. They told him, the chorus was generally unmeaning. 'I take it,' said he, 'Erse songs are like a song which I remember: it was composed in Queen Elizabeth's time, on the Earl of Essex; and the burthen was

"Radaratoo, radarate, radara tadara tandore."'

'But surely,' said Mr M'Queen, 'there were words to it, which had meaning.' JOHNSON. 'Why, yes, sir, I recollect a stanza, and you shall have it:

"O! then bespoke the prentices all,
Living in London, both proper and tall,
For Essex's sake they would fight all.
Radaratoo, radarate, radara, tadara, tandore."'

When Mr M'Queen began again to expatiate on the beauty of Ossian's poetry, Dr Johnson entered into no further controversy, but, with a pleasant smile, only cried, 'Ay, ay; Radaratoo, radarate.'

(Footnote omitted). Johnson's retort "Radaratoo, radarate" reminds me a bit of a passage from Chekhov's story The Two Volodyas:

"Here, you are a clever man, Volodya," said Sofya Lvovna. "Show me how to do what Olga has done. Of course, I am not a believer and should not go into a nunnery, but one can do something equivalent. Life isn't easy for me," she added after a brief pause. "Tell me what to do .... Tell me something I can believe in. Tell me something, if it's only one word."

"One word? By all means: tarara-boom-dee-ay."

I also recently encountered some nonsense syllables in Cato, On Agriculture 160 (tr. W.D. Hooper and H.B. Ash):

Any kind of dislocation may be cured by the following charm: Take a green reed four or five feet long and split it down the middle, and let two men hold it to your hips. Begin to chant: "motas uaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter" and continue until they meet. Brandish a knife over them, and when the reeds meet so that one touches the other, grasp with the hand and cut right and left. If the pieces are applied to the dislocation or the fracture, it will heal. And none the less chant every day, and, in the case of a dislocation, in this manner, if you wish: "huat haut haut istasis tarsis ardannabou dannaustra."

Nonsense syllables like this are of course common in magical charms, especially in ancient curse tablets and magical papyri. For more examples, see the notes by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III for a course on Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World (scroll down to EPHESIA GRAMMATA).

Related post: Gibberish.

---

Buce of Palookaville, author of Underbelly, adds ducdame from Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 5):

JAQUES
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame:
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.
AMIENS
What's that 'ducdame'?
JAQUES
'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle.

Andrew MacGillivray writes in an email:

For speakers of British English, nappy is, or least used to be, also ‘strong ale, beer’ ( the etymology seems to be 'fuzzy' > 'cloudy' or 'frothy' liquid), as in John Clare's 'And while I have sixpence left, I'll spend it In cheering nappy' and the opening lines of Burns' Tam O Shanter:

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearin' late,
An' folk begin to tak' the gate;
While we sit bousin' at the nappy,
An' gettin' fou an' unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, an' stiles,
That lie between us an' our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gath'rin' her brows like gath'rin' storm,
Nursin' her wrath to keep it warm.

So nappy-headed, in the context of Don Imus, would suggest a kind of befuddled alcoholic ranting (perhaps with a bit of foaming at the mouth). But I wonder if anyone called Don Imus needs much context? With a little Spanish and Latin, doesn’t the name tell all – Don Nadir, Mr. Lowest-of-the-Low, Mr. Plumb-the-Depths?

Spanish don means "sir, mister"; Latin imus (superlative of inferus) means "lowest".

I'm so insulated from the outside world that I'd never even heard of Don Imus before the recent kerfuffle. At first I didn't understand the insult he directed at the women basketball players from Rutgers University, either. I mistakenly thought that the nappy in nappy-headed referred to a diaper, and that nappy-headed was therefore similar to the derogatory terms towel-head and rag-head.

Some people claim that hair is called nappy because it looks like its wearers just woke up from a nap. That is bogus. Here are the relevant entries from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

nap (n.): "downy surface of cloth," 1440, from M.Du. or M.L.G. noppe "nap, tuft of wool," probably introduced by Flem. cloth-workers. Cognate with O.E. hnappian "to pluck," ahneopan "pluck off," O.Swed. niupa "to pinch," Goth. dis-hniupan "to tear."

nappy (adj.): "downy," 1499, from nap (n.). Meaning "fuzzy, kinky," used in colloquial or derogatory ref. to the hair of black people, is from 1950.

Herodotus, in his catalogue of foreign fighters in Xerxes' army, includes the Ethiopians (7.70.1, tr. Aubrey De Sélincourt) and mentions their hair:

The eastern Ethiopians -- for there were two sorts of Ethiopians in the army -- served with the Indians. These were just like the southern Ethiopians, except for their language and their hair: their hair is straight, while that of the Ethiopians in Libya is the crispest and curliest in the world.

Frank M. Snowden Jr., who died just a couple of months ago at the age of 95, was the preeminent expert on blacks in classical times. His writings on the subject include:

• Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970)
  
• "Iconographical Evidence on the Black Populations in Greek and Roman Antiquity," in J. Vercoutter et al., The Image of the Black in Western Art, I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Morrow, 1976), pp. 229-232
  
• "Aithiopes," in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, I (Zurich: Artemis, 1981), pp.413-419
  
• Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983)

A synonym of the adjective nappy is woolly. A secondary meaning of woolly is "lacking sharp detail or clarity; blurry; fuzzy: woolly thinking." In this sense, one could say that Don Imus (who sports a rather bold head of hair himself) is woolly-headed. And because woolly is nappy, one could also call him nappy-headed. As we used to say when we were children and someone insulted us, "Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

Edwin Way Teale, North with the Spring (1951; rpt. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1957), pp. 266-267:

The birds of Monticello provide one of the outstanding memories of a naturalist's visit. The trees provide another. Here, rooted where Thomas Jefferson had planted them in the eighteenth century, stood ancient tulips, lindens, copper beeches, sugar maples, European larches. Here were noble trees, patriarchs that brought to mind Sir Thomas Browne's observation of long ago: "Generations pass while some trees stand and old families last not three oaks."

In beginning one of his Socratic dialogues, Plato wrote: "Scene: Under a plane tree ..."

Under a tree ... That phrase recurs frequently in the history of human thought. Thinkers as diverse and as far removed as Gautama beneath his Bo tree in the Far East and Ralph Waldo Emerson under a New England pine have been associated with trees. "He spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." So the Book of Kings in the Bible describes King Solomon, whose wisdom was proverbial in his time.

Under a tree ... that phrase recurs frequently not just in the history of human thinking, but also in the history of human drinking. Horace (Ode 2.3.9-12) asks:

To what end do the tall pine and the white poplar delight with their branches to join their hospitable shade? Why does the fleeting water fret its quivering way along the winding stream?

Quo pinus ingens albaque populus
umbram hospitalem consociare amant
  ramis? Quid obliquo laborat
    lympha fugax trepidare rivo?

The answer to the questions "To what end" and "Why" do these pleasant surroundings exist, is obviously "For our enjoyment." Few pleasures can compare with drinking wine beneath a shade tree on soft grass beside a babbling brook. W.Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegaic Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), p. 126, says that "In the older Greek poets wine and song were glorified as the restorers of life and spirit in trouble and danger," whereas "In the Latin poets wine is glorified rather as a bond of companionship, and as affording relief from the monotony of existence; and the enjoyment of it is more often associated with bright weather and the grace and freshness of trees and running water than with rain and tempest."

Here is a sampler of passages from ancient literature extolling the pleasures of lolling or drinking under the shade of a tree.

Plato, Phaedrus 230 b-c (tr. R. Hackforth):

Upon my word, a delightful resting place, with this tall, spreading plane, and a lovely shade from the high branches of the agnos. Now that it's in full flower, it will make the place ever so fragrant. And what a lovely stream under the plane tree, and how cool to the feet! Judging by the statuettes and images I should say it's consecrated to Achelous and some of the nymphs. And then too, isn't the freshness of the air most welcome and pleasant, and the shrill summery music of the cicada choir! And as crowning delight the grass, thick enough on a gentle slope to rest your head on most comfortably.

Horace, Ode 1.1.19-22:

There is one who doesn't scorn cups of old Massic wine, who doesn't scorn to steal a vacation from business hours, stretching his limbs out now beneath the green shrub, now by the gentle fountain-head of a holy stream.

est qui nec veteris pocula Massici
nec partem solido demere de die
spernit, nunc viridi membra sub arbuto
stratus nunc ad aquae lene caput sacrae.

Horace, Ode 2.7.17-20:

Therefore give to Jove the sacrificial feast you owe, and put your battle-wearied body beneath my laurel tree, and don't spare the bottles saved for you.

ergo obligatam redde Iovi dapem,
longaque fessum militia latus
depone sub lauru mea nec
parce cadis tibi destinatis.

Horace, Ode 2.11.13-17:

Why don't we lie beneath the tall plane tree or the pine tree just as we are, and crown our white hair with fragrant roses and anoint ourselves with Syrian perfume, and drink, while we may?

cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu iacentes sic temere et rosa
canos odorati capillos,
dum licet, Assyriaque nardo
potamus uncti?

Horace, Epode 2.23-28:

It is a pleasure to lie now beneath an old oak tree, now on the firm grass. In the meantime streams flow between their tall banks, birds twitter in the forest, and fountains plash with dripping waters, which invites soft sleep.

libet iacere modo sub antiqua ilice,
modo in tenaci gramine.
labuntur altis interim ripis aquae,
queruntur in silvis aves,
fontesque lymphis obstrepunt manantibus,
somnos quod invitet levis.

Eric Thomson writes in an email:

Ardent taphophile that I am, I couldn't read Post Mortem without thinking of a small act of restorative justice performed four years ago in a Soho cemetery. No 'damnatio memoriae' for Hazlitt, thank goodness. The original engraved encomium actually mentions his Lucretian 'On the Fear of Death' essay (which, incidentally, I wonder if he would have written if he hadn't, like Arnold, lost two chidren in infancy).

The act of justice was the restoration in 2003 of a memorial inscription which was removed from Hazlitt's grave in 1870 as being too provocative:

Here rests
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Born April 10, 1778, Died 18 September, 1830
He lived to see his deepest wishes gratified
as he has expressed them in his Essay,
'on the Fear of Death'.
Viz.:
'To see the downfall of the Bourbons.
And some prospect of good to mankind':
(Charles X
was driven from France 29th July, 1830).
'To leave some sterling work to the world':
(He lived to complete his 'Life of Napoleon').
His desire
That some friendly hand should consign
Him to the grave was accomplished to a
Limited but profound extent; on
These conditions he was ready to depart,
And to have inscribed on his tomb,
'Grateful and Contented'.
He was
The first (unanswered) Metaphysician of the age.
A despiser of the merely Rich And Great:
A lover of the People, poor or oppressed:
A hater of the Pride and Power of the Few,
As opposed to the happiness of the Many;
A man of true moral courage,
Who sacrificed Profit and present Fame
To Principle,
And a yearning for the good of Human Nature.
Who was a burning wound to an Aristocracy,
That could not answer him before men,
And who may confront him before their maker.
He lived and died
The unconquered champion
Of
Truth, Liberty, and Humanity,
'Dubitantes opera legite'.
This stone
Is raised by one whose heart is
With him, in his grave.

I couldn't find the Latin tag Dubitantes opera legite in any ancient author. It means, "You who doubt, read his works."

Eric also writes:

I love the way Hazlitt probes, in 'our room is not unfrequently thought ...', the earliest Old English sense of 'rum' as unpartitioned space (which underlies [the Latin] cognate 'rus'); it seems to be the corporeal space that death obliges us to vacate, but he also manages to give a hint of room as coffin; our death doesn't leave much of a 'gap' > the wound doesn't gape but quickly heals, tomb doesn't gape but is quickly shovelled in.

There is also an eerily prescient quality to Hazlitt's sentence, "Nay, our room is not unfrequently thought better than our company." When Hazlitt died, his landlady shoved his body out of sight under a bed, so that she could show his room to prospective renters without upsetting them.

William Hazlitt, On the Fear of Death:

We do not leave so great a void in society as we are inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our own importance, and partly to console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the gap is not so great; the wound closes up sooner than we should expect. Nay, our room is not unfrequently thought better than our company. People walk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, the world seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our delight and amusement, because it contributed to them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime. The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at the month's end! It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon after we quit this mortal stage: we are scarcely noticed while we are on it. It is not merely that our names are not known in China -- they have hardly been heard of in the next street.

No, this isn't about Seneca's one comic work, the Apocolocyntosis. Instead, it's about a couple of unintentionally funny passages from the Senecan tragedies. At least they're funny to me, with my perhaps perverted sense of humor. Translations are by John G. Fitch.

Hercules Oetaeus 181-184
In ancient tragedy, grief-stricken women often express their grief by beating their breasts. There is a rare medical condition called polymastia (or polymazia), in which a woman has an extra breast. Ann Boleyn, one of Henry VIII's wives, had this condition.

At any rate, Iole in Hercules Oetaeus wishes she had more than two breasts, the better to express her mourning:

What shall I mourn? What grieve for last?
I want to weep for all together,
but my sex did not grant me breasts enough
to resound with blows worthy of my fate.

Note: some scholars think Seneca did not write Hercules Oetaeus.

Phaedra 1256-1268
Hippolytus' father is Theseus, and his step-mother is Phaedra. Phaedra falls in love with Hippolytus, who does not reciprocate. Scorned, Phaedra falsely accuses Hippolytus of rape. Theseus begs the god Poseidon to destroy Hippolytus. Poseidon answers Theseus' prayer, and causes a bull to emerge from the sea to frighten Hippolytus' horses, which are drawing a chariot on the sea shore. Hippolytus falls from the chariot and gets tangled in the reins. The horses drag him to his death. There is nothing funny in all that.

But when Theseus learns the truth, he mourns Hippolytus' death and tries to reassemble the torn pieces of his body. This passage reminds me of someone trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle:

Arrange in order, father, his torn body's sundered limbs, put back in place the straying parts. This is the place for his strong right hand; here must be set his left hand, skilled in controlling the reins -- I recognize the signs of his left side. How great the part still lacking for my tears! Trembling hands, be firm for this sad service; eyes, be dry, check your copious tears, while the father is portioning out limbs to his son and fashioning his body. What is this ugly formless thing, that multiple wounds have severed on every side? What part it may be is uncertain, but it is part of you. Here, set it down here, in an empty place if not in its proper place.

In Seneca's defence, most scholars think that his plays were meant only to be recited or read, not acted on the stage.