Laudator Temporis Acti

In Port-Royal, vol. 5 (Paris: Hachette, 1878), p. 257, Saint-Beuve attributes the following sentence to Thomas à Kempis, Imitatio Christi:

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

In all things I have searched for rest, and nowhere have I found it except in a corner with a book.

George Gissing repeats the attribution in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1903), p. 51, and so does Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose (1980), tr. William Weaver (1983; rpt. New York: Warner Books, 1984), p. 5.

But I have searched everywhere in the Imitatio, and nowhere have I found this sentence.

Homer, Iliad 3.1-7 (tr. Samuel Butler):

When the companies were thus arrayed, each under its own captain, the Trojans advanced as a flight of wild fowl or cranes that scream overhead when rain and winter drive them over the flowing waters of Oceanus to bring death and destruction on the Pygmies, and they wrangle in the air as they fly; but the Achaeans marched silently, in high heart, and minded to stand by one another.

Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), Indian Boyhood (1902; rpt. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971), p. 77:

I am sorry to say that we were merciless toward the birds. We often took their eggs and their young ones. My brother Chatanna and I once had a disagreeable adventure while bird-hunting. We were accustomed to catch in our hands young ducks and geese during the summer, and while doing this we happened to find a crane's nest. Of course, we were delighted with our good luck. But, as it was already midsummer, the young cranes—two in number—were rather large and they were a little way from the nest; we also observed that the two old cranes were in a swampy place near by; but, as it was moulting-time, we did not suppose that they would venture on dry land. So we proceeded to chase the young birds; but they were fleet runners and it took us some time to come up with them.

Meanwhile, the parent birds had heard the cries of their little ones and come to their rescue. They were chasing us, while we followed the birds. It was really a perilous encounter! Our strong bows finally gained the victory in a hand-to-hand struggle with the angry cranes; but after that we hardly ever hunted a crane's nest. Almost all birds make some resistance when their eggs or young are taken, but they will seldom attack man fearlessly.

Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year (1953; rpt. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987), p. 160 (Aug. 21):

Our minds, as well as our bodies, have a need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and wind and rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfume of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among trees.

Cf. George Borrow, Lavengro:

"What is your opinion of death, Mr Petulengro?" said I, as I sat down beside him.

"My opinion of death, brother, is when a man dies, he is cast into the earth, and his wife and child sorrow over him. If he has neither wife nor child, then his father and mother, I suppose; and if he is quite alone in the world, why, then, he is cast into the earth, and that is an end of the matter."

"And do you think that is the end of man?"

"There's an end of him, brother, more's the pity."

"Why do you say so?"

"Life is sweet."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! - There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1986; rpt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 169, translates part of a Greek inscription from Lycia in Asia Minor:

Self-born, untaught, motherless, unshakeable,
Giving place to no name, many-named, dwelling in fire,
Such is God; we are a portion of God, his angels.
This, then, to the questioners about God's nature
The god replied, calling him all-seeing Ether; to him, then, look
And pray at dawn, looking out to the east.

George Ewart Bean, Journeys in Northern Lycia 1965-1967 = Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften [DAW], 104. Ergänzungsbände zu den Tituli Asiae Minoris, 4 (Vienna, 1971), prints the relevant portion of this inscription as follows:

[α]ὐτοφυής, ἀδί-
δακτος, ἀμήτωρ,
ἀστυφέλικτος,
οὔνομα μὴ χω-
ρῶν, πολυώνυμος,
ἐν πυρὶ ναίων.
τοῦτο θεός, μεικρὰ
δὲ θεοῦ μερὶς ἄνγε̣-
λοι̣ ἡμεῖς. τοῦτο πευ-
θομένοισι θεοῦ πέ-
ρι ὅστις ὑπ̣ά̣ρχ̣ε̣ι
Α̣ἰ[θ]έ̣[ρ]α πανδερ̣κ̣[ῆ]
[θε]ὸν ἔννεπεν, εἰς
ὃν ὁρῶντας εὔχεσθ’ ἠῴ-
ους πρὸς ἀντολίην ἐσορῶ[ν]-
  τα̣[ς].

I have not seen Bean's book, but rely on the Packard Humanities Institute's Searchable Greek Inscriptions for my knowledge of it and for the Greek text above.

The phrase ἀδίδακτος, ἀμήτωρ, ἀστυφέλικτος (adidaktos, amētōr, astupheliktos = untaught, motherless, unshakeable) in the inscription is an example of a series of asyndetic, privative adjectives. "Asyndetic" means not joined by conjunctions, and "privative" means altering the meaning of a term from positive to negative, by means of a prefix (e.g. a-, non-, un-) or suffix (e.g. -less).

This rhetorical device is sometimes used to describe God, by specifying what He is not, rather than what He is (the so-called "via negativa," or "negative way"). In the New Testament at Hebrews 7.3 we see this technique:

Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.

ἀπάτωρ, ἀμήτωρ, ἀγενεαλόγητος, μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν μήτε ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων.

Note the privative adjective ἀμήτωρ (amētōr = motherless) in Hebrews, which also appears in the inscription from Lycia.

Bob Thompson, Imperial Washington: The Author of 'Are We Rome?' Takes In the Sights And Similarities, Washington Post (June 30, 2007), on Cullen Murphy:

He wants to point out the Roman fasces -- bundles of sticks bound with straps -- sculpted into the arms of Honest Abe's chair.

By the time they were used here, the fasces had become an innocent symbol associated with the old Roman republic, which the Founding Fathers greatly admired, and they'd lost the ax that often accompanied the sticks and straps. But "what they really were," Murphy says, "was a portable kit for flogging and decapitation," menacingly paraded in advance of Roman consuls.

Here is Daniel Chester French's statue of Lincoln, showing the fasces on the chair:

On the reverse of the following Roman coin from 83 B.C. you can see the fasces in the middle, with the axe head protruding to the left halfway up:The Mercury dime (minted in the United States from 1916 to 1945) also had the fasces on the reverse, with the axe head at top left:

The Mercury dime was replaced in 1946 by the Roosevelt dime, which had the more peaceful olive branch on the reverse (to the left of the torch, with a matching oak branch on the right):

A modern word derived from Latin fasces? Fascism.

Hat tip: Jim K.

Aristophanes, Peace 41-42:

οὐκ ἔσθ᾽ ὅπως / τοῦτ᾽ ἔστι τὸ τέρας οὐ Διὸς καταιβάτου.

*καταιβάτου R (σκ- ^ac?): σκαταιβάτου Meineke

Text and critical apparatus are from S. Douglas Olson, Aristophanes: Peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). In his Loeb edition of Aristophanes, Jeffrey Henderson translates, "I can't but think this prodigy's from Zeus of the Thunder Crap."

According to Liddell & Scott, καταιβάτης (kataibatēs) is "a name of Zeus as descending in thunder and lightning." Besides the passage from Aristophanes, they cite inscriptions with this epithet, which is therefore a genuine cult title.

But Henderson's translation also recalls Meineke's conjecture σκαταιβάτου for καταιβάτου. I don't find σκαταιβάτης (skataibatēs) in Liddell & Scott, at least not in the online editions at Perseus and Archimedes.

J. Van Leeuwen, in his edition of Aristophanes' Peace (Leyden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1906), prints σκαταιβάτου instead of καταιβάτου. In his commentary Van Leeuwen says not to worry too much about the exact meaning of σκαταιβάτης, although he gives qui per stercus vadit ("who walks through dung") as a possibility.

S. Douglas Olson ad loc. (pp. 75-76) writes:

Whether one reads καταιβάτου or σκαταιβάτου (< σκῶρ, σκατός, 'dung') is in one sense irrelevant, since the joke depends on the latter being heard in either case (cf. Threatte i.529 for the gemination of σ before κ). It none the less seems more likely that σ was added to R by the copyist (perhaps from a superlinear note) and then erased than that it fell out everywhere else. For the pun, cf. adesp. com. fr. 83 ὦ Βδεῦ δέσποτα.

The comic fragment cited by Olson appears in context in Richard Janko, Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II (London: G. Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1984; rpt. with new preface 2002), V, 5 (pp. 32-33):

<πέμπτον κατὰ παρῳδίαν ὡς τὸ> 'ὦ Βδεῦ δέσποτα' ἀντὶ τοῦ 'ὦ Ζεῦ'.

<Fifth, from parody, such as> 'O Clod Almighty' instead of 'O God'.

In his attempt to preserve the homoeoteleuton, Janko's translation obscures the meaning somewhat. Βδεῦ does not mean "clod." Liddell & Scott say:

βδεῦ, (βδέω) comic parody on Ζεῦ, ὦ Βδεῦ δέσποτα Com.Adesp.28.

Βδεῦ (Bdeu, rhyming with Zeu, the vocative of Zeus) is thus derived from the verb βδέω = fart, and "O Lord Fart" would be a more literal translation.

Here are the discussions of this passage in Janko's commentary.

Pp. 180-181:

a's example, Βδεῦ for Ζεῦ, is letter-substitution rather than the insertion of a syllable; cf. the παρὰ γράμμα σκῶμμα at Rhet. III 11.1412a28ff., discussed along with παραπεποιημένα, which may mean paronyms. Plutarch cites a pun from Aristophanes on Λαμίας/Ταμίας as a paronym (Mor. 853b) and a's example may belong here, since the symmetry of changes to the beginnings and ends of words by addition and subtraction, and the middles in exallage, handsome as it is, omits substitutions of this type, and A. does not explicitly exclude them from exallage (cf. Rutherford 444f., Lane Cooper 236f.). But I prefer to retain the symmetry, and hesitantly assign the example to the lost heading 'parody' restored from Tzetzes, since A. and Theophrastus in their examples apply paronymy to changes affecting whole syllables.

P. 183:

ὦ Βδεῦ δέσποτα is paralleled in Aristoph. Lys. 940, where Bentley proposed Βδεῦ from a against Ζεῦ in the codices. This rightly won little favour, and P. Hibeh 6.25 (Com. Adesp. Nov. 258.25 Austin) has ὦ Ζεῦ δέσποτα also; the phrase is clearly a cliché (cf. also Aristoph. Birds 835 ὦ νεοττὲ δέσποτα; Ach. 247; Wasps 389). Thus a has another unknown comic fragment. The joke should derive from Old or Middle Comedy, as it presupposes the pronunciation of ζ as [zd], which tended to be replaced by [z] in Attic from the mid fourth century, cf. Threatte Gramm. Attic Inscr. I 547, Allen Vox Graeca² 54ff. A. was interested in the pronunciation of zeta (Metaph. I 9.993a5). The mild obscenity is not beyond his sense of humour, cf. Rhet. III 3.1406b15.

I am indebted to E.J. Moncada for drawing my attention to the pun in Aristophanes.

I'm always on the lookout for illustrations of the ancient idea that evil cannot be destroyed but, at best, moved from one place to another. I just found a good example in a 2nd century A.D. inscription from Pergamum, most accessible on the Web in Georg Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta (Berlin: Reimer, 1878), no. 1035, on pp. 450-452. The idea occurs in lines 26-29 of the metrical part of the inscription (p. 451):

                                                    λοί[β]ῃ [δ]’ ἐφ’ ἑκάστῃ
σπένδοντες [λοιμο]ῖο παρ’ ἀθανάτων ἄκος ἐσθλὸν
αἰτέετε, [ὡ]ς τηλουρὸν ἐς ἐχ[θ]ο[δ]α[π]ῶν χθόνα φωτῶν
ἐκτόπιος προνέοιτ[ο].

I can't find a translation, so here's my own attempt:

With each drink-offering, as you pour the libation, request from the immortals a good remedy against plague, that it go forth away from this place to a distant land of foreign men.

The inscription is a response by the oracle of Apollo at Claros to a question about how to get rid of a plague.

Related posts:

• The Gadarene Swine
  
• Clytemnestra's Prayer
  
• Parallels
  
• Fixed Quantities

Dennis Mangan asks, What class do you belong to? No matter how hard you try, it's difficult to escape your roots. Here is a description of the town where I grew up (from an October 2006 article in the Bangor Daily News, no longer available on the Web):

Smaller Brewer, across the Penobscot River from Bangor, evolved in a much different manner.

Like Bangor, Brewer's early years revolved around the lumber industry, namely shipbuilding. Brewer was famous for making bricks and then paper, all of which lent Brewer a reputation as a rowdy mill town.

"Brewer was where the poor people lived," Brewer Economic Development Director D'Arcy Main-Boyington said this week. "The [company] owners lived in Bangor, and the workers lived in Brewer."

Brewer still is working to shake off its blue-collar roots.

I contributed my small part to Brewer's reputation for rowdiness. My 2nd grade teacher at Washington Street School, Mrs. Libhart, wrote a note to my mother which said in part:

Recently I have had to speak to him about rough play and loud shouting both in classroom and outdoors. I'm sure he is being influenced by two or three of the other boys who are very rough and get him started.

I'm the tall one in this photograph of local rowdies:

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 2, Sect. 2, Memb. 4:

Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden in Holland, was mewed up in it all the year long: and that which to thy thinking should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. I no sooner (saith he) come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness.

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is the butt of laughter and mockery because he referred to Demosthenes in a speech as Dame Osthenes. The name Demosthenes comes from two Greek roots:

• dēmos (δῆμος) = people (cf. Democritus)
  
• sthenos (σθένος) = strength (cf. Cleisthenes and Eratosthenes)

---

As a curmudgeon and student of etymology, I was interested to hear what Anatoly Liberman, the Oxford Etymologist, had to say about the etymology of curmudgeon:

Walter W. Skeat compared curmudgeon with Lowland Scots murgeon “mock, grumble” and mudgeon “grimace.” Both words fit the idea of a peevish, disgruntled man well. Not improbably, curmudgeon was first applied to an unpleasant, unsociable person and by extension to someone who stays away from jovial company for fear of being robbed or asked to help the less fortunate. Some light on the origin of mudgeon falls from the history of the verb mooch, which has been attested in numerous variants, including mouch, motch, and modge. It is, naturally, modge that is closest to mudgeon. (The voicing of -ch is the same as in hotchpotch versus hodge-podge and in Greenwich, pronounced greenidge.) The root of mooch and its variants occurs in words of several languages, for instance, in meucheln “murder (treacherously)” (German) and muchier “conceal, lurk” (Old French, still known in some modern dialects). Cognates have been found in Old Irish and Latin. Similar Italian words (mostly regional) appear to have been borrowed from Germanic, and the same may be true of French mouche “to spy” and mouchard “police informer, stoolie.” In English, Hamlet’s miching, the first part of the cryptic phrase miching malicho “sneaking mischief,” belongs with mooch and mouch, and so do, possibly, mug “waylay and rob” and mugger in hugger-mugger. Wherever one of those nouns, adjectives, and verbs turns up, it refers to secret, underhand dealings. There seems to have been a large group of words, part of international slang or underworld cant, designating actions that shirked the light of day.

Cur- in curmudgeon is a reinforcing prefix, widely known in sound imitative words (kerbang, kerbunk, kerplank, kerwallop) and in words like kerfuffle “disorder, flurry.” They occur with numerous spelling variants, the most common of them being ca-, as in kit and caboodle. The original curmudgeon was, it appears, a big “mudgeon,” whatever the exact meaning of mudgeon might be (“someone with an ugly mug”? “a grumbler sitting on his wealth, a penny pincher”?).

---

I've known for a long time that vermicelli meant "little worms," but I only recently learned that another type of pasta, lasagna, also has somewhat unsavory etymological connections.

The Online Etymology Dictionary s.v. lasagna says:

1760, from It. (pl. is lasagne), from V.L. *lasania, from L. lasanum "a pot," from Gk. lasanon "pot with feet, trivet."

But Greek λάσανα (plural) also has another meaning, according to Liddell & Scott:

night-stool, Hp.Fist. 9, Cratin.49 (cj. Mein. for λαχάνοις), Pherecr.88, Eup.224, Ar.Fr. 462: also in sg., like Lat. lasanum, Hp.Superf.8, AP11.74.8 (Nicarch.):—
hence λᾰσᾰνοφόρος, ὁ, slave who had charge of the night-stool, Plu.2.182c, 360d:—
also λᾰσᾰνίτης [ῑ] δίφρος BGU1116.25 (i B.C.).

Those who grew up with modern conveniences might not know that a night-stool is a chamber pot, a portable vessel used in a bedroom as a toilet.

Latin lasanum is rarely attested, occurring only at Horace, Satires 1.6.109, and Petronius 41.9. In Petronius it clearly means chamber pot. I have not seen B.L. Ullman, "Horace Serm. I.6.115 and the History of the Word Laganum," Classical Philology 7.4 (Oct. 1912) 442-449.

This blog received an R rating because of the presence of the following words in the past week: hell (4x), death (2x), and murder (1x). R means "restricted -- under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian."

When I entered in a URL for the past month, my rating got even worse (NC-17) because of these words: death (20x), dead (6x), cum (5x), hell (4x), pain (3x), murder (2x). NC-17 means "no one 17 and under admitted."

I guess I'll have to cut back on those obscene Latin prepositions and subordinate conjunctions. Expect more posts on puppy dogs and teddy bears, too.

Jacqueline Haney drew my attention to Tom Lehrer's song Oedipus Rex:

From the Bible to the popular song,
There's one theme that we find right along;
Of all ideals they hail as good,
The most sublime is motherhood.

There was a man though, who it seems,
Once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother and she loved him,
And yet his story is rather grim.

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex,
You may have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's index
'Cause he loved his mother.

His rivals used to say quite a bit
That as a monarch he was most unfit.
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother.

Yes, he loved his mother like no other,
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is.

When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out, one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.

So be sweet and kind to mother,
Now and then have a chat.
Buy her candy or some flowers,
Or a brand new hat.
But maybe you had better let it go at that.

Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex
And you may end up like Oedipus.
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex.

Related posts:

• Poor Little Oedipus Rex
  
• Pindar and Pelops

Dear Dr Gilleland,

Your recent post with the re-telling of Oedipus' tale led me to dig out a short poem I wrote in my student years when I was struggling to grasp the logic of Pindar's first Olympian. For what it is worth, and since you might enjoy it, here it is:

On First Reading Pindar's First Olympian

Tantalus, a nasty swine,
Invited all the gods to dine,
And then, that he might test their wits,
Served up his Pelops, chopped to bits.

The gods were wise and did not eat,
Save Ceres, fond of shoulder-meat;
Poor Pelops, short one of his pieces
Received an ivory prosthesis.

Now, Pindar did not like the story
Finding the banquet somewhat gory;
'Twere better if the youth were snatched
By Neptune, fond of pretty chaps.

Let no foul myth the gods demean!
We must re-write the sordid scene!
So Pelops, once by a god digested,
Is better now by a god molested.

Behold! He rises from the pot
With gleaming shoulder newly got.
But whence? The provenance is unclear.
I find the business rather queer.

Yours sincerely,

Rev. Gerard Deighan.

---

Underbelly (via email) directs my attention to the oratorio Oedipus Tex by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele). The aria "Howdy There" from the oratorio contains these lines:

I had some trouble coming into town.
There are things a man cannot take lying down.
I was riding through the gulch which ain't too big
When I met some fellas in a double rig.
They said "Step Aside" and I said "How about you?"
Ain't no one tells this cowboy what to do,
So me I wouldn't budge and they just sat
Until I shot 'em all and that was that.

From Newman Levy, Theatre Guyed (hat tip to Underbelly):

List to the story of Oedipus Rex,
Poor little, misunderstood little Oedipus,
Victim of sad maladjustment of sex,
Poor little Oedipus Rex.

When Oedipus was but a babe,
(So runs the tale historical),
His doting dad betook the lad
(A custom that those ancients had)
To interview the oracle.

Because in Greece,
In Ancient Greece
They'd never start a thing or cease,
Commence a war or make a peace
Unless they asked the oracle.

The pythoness upon the throne
Said sadly and oracular,
"This lad, ha ha! will kill his pa
And after that he'll wed his ma,
A sad life, but spectacular."

When Oedipus's dad heard that,
The Theban King Laïus,
"It's up to me," he said, said he,
"To circumvent that prophecy
And find a way to free us.

"I'm off that oracle for life.
From now," he said, "all bets off.
She thinks she's slick; I know a trick
To make that Delphic dame look sick.
I'll show her where she gets off."

And so he called a servant in,
A faithful old attendant.
"I hesitate to flirt with fate,
So please," he said, "assassinate
My helpless young descendant."

The servant had a tender heart,
Considering his station.
"Although, oh, King, it's hard to bring
Myself," he said, "to do this thing,
I'll murder your relation."

Instead he took the babe away,
A puny undergrown child,
And gave him to a shepherd who
Exclaimed, "I'll take that brat from you
And rear him as my own child."

So Oedipus to man's estate
Grew up, a rustic peasant.
No thought of care intruded there,
For, of his future unaware,
His life was gay and pleasant.

One day while strolling down a road,
An unfrequented byway,
An unknown guy came driving by
Who socked our hero in the eye
And shoved him off the highway.

He straightway raised his staff and smote
The man who'd rudely kicked him,
Quite unaware that then and there
Upon that public thoroughfare
His father was his victim.

Nearby his home there dwelt a sphinx
Who filled the land with terror;
Half girl half bird who put absurd
Conundrums to the passing herd,
And ate them when in error.

When Oedipus, a puzzle fan,
Was told the tale distressing
He said, "Methinks I'll put a jinx
Upon that riddle-asking sphinx.
I'm very good at guessing."

So to the sphinx he went and said,
"I'm fit as any fiddle.
Go do your stuff. However tough
I'll solve the question quick enough
Come on! Let's hear your riddle!"

The sphinx then gave a sphinx-like leer
And murmured "Here's my query-"
Without a fuss Young Oedipus
Replied, "The answer's thus and thus.
That ought to hold you, dearie."

The monster gave a shriek and died
'Mid widespread jubilation.
"The sphinx is dead!" the people said,
"Let's make this bright young lad the head
Of this here Theban nation."

And thus he rose to royal rank,
And wed the consort regal,
But cruel fate, I hate to state,
Had made the lad his mother's mate,
A marriage quite illegal.

Now came a dire and dreadful plague
With devastating quickness,
And all in Thebes, both Greeks and Heebs
Were smitten with the Heebie-jeebs,
A most appalling sickness.

The oracle exclaimed, "Ha, ha!
I'm sorry for to scold you,
This plague is sent for punishment.
You're harboring a guilty gent.
Don't say I never told you."

And so at last the truth's revealed.
The luckless monarch cries out,
"Though Doctor Freud be overjoyed
I must confess I'm quite annoyed."
With that he puts his eyes out.

Thus ends the story of Oedipus Rex,
Poor little, misunderstood little Oedipus,
Victim of sad maladjustment of sex,
Poor little Oedipus Rex.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 2, Sect. 2, Memb. 4:

To be at leisure without books is another Hell, and to be buried alive.

Related posts:

• Hell on Earth
  
• What Is Hell?

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Phil O. Vance does some detective work and writes in an email:

Schopenhauer quoted Seneca as follows: otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura (Leisure without literature is death and, for man, like being buried alive). Robert Burton must have borrowed it almost verbatim from Seneca, unacknowledged. Seneca's words are in Epistulae, 82. Schopenhauer's quote is in Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life," Ch. II, "What a Man Is," (Oxford University Press page 339).

Professor David Whitehead in an email writes on special laws:

The constitution of classical Athens made provision for special circumstances in which there could be a so-called nomos ep' andri: see Andocides 1.87 and Demosthenes 24.59. (Demosth. 23.86 and 46.12 give truncated versions that miss this point.) For modern comment see M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Assembly (1987) 87: 'A law (nomos) was in principle a rule binding on all Athenians. Occasionally, however, the Athenians might resort to ad hominem legislation and allow the nomothetai to pass a nomos relating to a named individual (nomos ep' andri). But then the people's decision to appoint a panel of nomothetai had to be ratified by a quorum of 6,000 voting by ballot.' As far as I am aware, however, there are no clearcut examples of this in the record.

Here are the first two passages cited.

Andocides 1.87 (tr. K.J. Maidment):

"No law shall be directed against an individual without applying to all citizens alike, unless an Assembly of six thousand so resolve by secret ballot."

μηδὲ ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ νόμον ἐξεῖναι θεῖναι, ἐὰν μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις, ἐὰν μὴ ἑξακισχιλίοις δόξῃ κρύβδην ψηφιζομένοις.

Demosthenes 24.59 (tr. J.H. Vince):

"Nor shall it be lawful to propose a law applying to a particular man, unless the same be applicable to all Athenian citizens, except by the votes of not less than six thousand citizens voting in the affirmative by ballot."

It forbids the introduction of any law that does not affect all citizens alike,--an injunction conceived in the true spirit of democracy. As every man has an equal share in the constitution generally, so this statute asserts his equal share in the laws.

μηδὲ νόμον ἐξεῖναι ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ θεῖναι, ἐὰν μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις τιθῇ ἐὰν μὴ ψηφισαμένων μὴ ἔλαττον ἑξακισχιλίων οἷς ἂν δόξῃ κρύβδην ψηφιζομένοις.

οὐκ ἐᾷ νόμον ἀλλ' ἢ τὸν αὐτὸν τιθέναι κατὰ τῶν πολιτῶν πάντων, καλῶς καὶ δημοτικῶς λέγων. ὥσπερ γὰρ τῆς ἄλλης πολιτείας ἴσον μέτεστιν ἑκάστῳ, οὕτω καὶ τούτων ἴσον μετέχειν ἕκαστον ἀξιοῖ.

For some reason Vince neglected to translate κρύβδην (secretly) in the last part of the first sentence.

Edward Thomas, The Huxter:

He has a hump like an ape on his back;
He has of money a plentiful lack;
And but for a gay coat of double his girth
There is not a plainer thing on the earth
This fine May morning.

But the huxter has a bottle of beer;
He drives a cart and his wife sits near
Who does not heed his lack or his hump;
And they laugh as down the lane they bump
This fine May morning.

Here are some recent writings by Theodore Dalrymple:

• Avanti, Dr. Kevorkian!
  
• Breaking Away
  
• Global Warning
  
• How the West Was Lost

On Monday night the NewHour with Jim Lehrer reported on Churches Providing Sanctuary for Illegal Immigrants, in particular Adalberto Methodist Church in Chicago, which is providing sanctuary to Elvira Arellano and her son Saul. Arellano has been in the United States illegally for 10 years, and in 2003 she was convicted of using a false Social Security number. Facing deportation to Mexico, she sought sanctuary at Adalberto Church:

Arellano said she and her son, Saul, will stay in hiding for as long as necessary, that God is on their side.

By coincidence this week I read Ulrich Sinn, "Greek Sanctuaries as Places of Refuge," originally published in Nanno Marinatos and Robin Hägg, edd. Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches (London: Routledge, 1993), and reprinted in Richard Buxton, ed. Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 155-179 (tr. Judith Binder).

Sinn's very interesting survey covers a number of topics, including the difference between asylum in general and protection in sanctuaries in particular; the temporary nature of the protection; the obligation of representatives of the holy space to act as intermediaries in resolving whatever problem caused the suppliant to seek refuge in the first place; the rite of supplication; the role of the priests; the consequences of violation of sacred immunity by political authorities; the prominence of protection in sanctuaries in literature, especially tragedy; and how and where suppliants were housed.

Despite the general acceptance of the practice in ancient Greece, there were dissenting voices, one of which is heard in Euripides, Ion 1312-1319 (tr. David Kovacs):

Ah, it is monstrous how bad and unintelligent are the laws the god has made for mortals! He ought not to let the wicked sit at his altar but drive them away. It is not right for an evil hand to touch the gods but only a righteous one. Those who are wronged should be given a seat: just and unjust should not come to the same place and receive the same treatment from the gods.

φεῦ.
δεινόν γε, θνητοῖς τοὺς νόμους ὡς οὐ καλῶς
ἔθηκεν ὁ θεὸς οὐδ' ἀπὸ γνώμης σοφῆς:
τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀδίκους βωμὸν οὐχ ἵζειν ἐχρῆν,
ἀλλ' ἐξελαύνειν: οὐδὲ γὰρ ψαύειν καλὸν
θεῶν πονηρὰν χεῖρα: τοῖσι δ' ἐνδίκοις --
ἱερὰ καθίζειν, ὅστις ἠδικεῖτ', ἐχρῆν:
καὶ μὴ 'πὶ ταὐτὸ τοῦτ' ἰόντ' ἔχειν ἴσον
τόν τ' ἐσθλὸν ὄντα τόν τε μὴ θεῶν πάρα.

---

On March 15, 2007 in the United States House of Representatives Luis Gutiérrez introduced a bill "for the relief of Elvira Arellano" (H.R. 1557), which provides in pertinent part that "Elvira Arellano shall be eligible for issuance of an immigrant visa or for adjustment of status to that of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence."

The United States Constitution apparently does not bar special laws enacted to benefit individuals, but some state constitutions do, for example Minnesota's Constitution, Article XII, Section 1, which states that "The legislature shall pass no local or special law ... granting to any private corporation, association, or individual any special or exclusive privilege, immunity or franchise whatever ...."

I don't know the origin of such prohibitions against special laws, but I recently read something that suggests that the idea goes back a long way, in Pseudo-Heraclitus, Epistles 7 (to Hermodorus, tr. David R. Worley) = Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 200-201:

I hear that the Ephesians are about to introduce a most illegal law against me; for no law is directed against an individual--only a legal judgment is.

Πυνθάνομαι Ἐφεσίους μέλλειν εἰσηγεῖσθαι νόμον κατ᾽ ἐμου ἀνομώτατον· οὐδεὶς γὰρ νόμος ἐφ᾽ ἑνός, ἀλλὰ κρίσις.

I might translate ἐφ᾽ ἑνός as "at an individual," that is, in reference to an individual, without implying that the law is for or against, rather than "against an individual." Of course κατ᾽ ἐμου is clearly "against me," in this particular instance.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.49 (tr. George Long):

Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.

Ὅμοιον εἶναι τῇ ἄκρᾳ, ᾗ διηνεκῶς τὰ κύματα προσρήσσεται· ἡ δὲ ἕστηκε καὶ περὶ αὐτὴν κοιμίζεται τὰ φλεγμήναντα τοῦ ὕδατος.