Laudator Temporis Acti

Erasmus (1466-1536), Convivium Religiosum (tr. Craig R. Thompson):

And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of saints includes many not in our calendar.

Et fortasse latius se fundit spiritus Christi, quam nos interpretamur, et multi sunt in consortio sanctorum, qui non sunt apud nos in catalogo.

Petrarch (1304-1374), On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others 32 (tr. David Marsh):

But see what a small amount is even the greatest knowledge granted to a single mind! In any case, isn't the knowledge granted to one intellect still very small, whatever its amount? Indeed, human knowledge is as nothing compared with human ignorance, not to mention God's knowledge.

Alioquin quantulum, queso, est, quantumcunque est, quod nosse uni ingenio datum est? Imo, quam nichil est scire hominis, quisquis sit, si, non dicam scientie Dei, sed sui ipsius ignorantie comparetur!

Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980), Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year (July 18):

As I gaze down on this algae-bordered puddle, a kind of despair envelops me. What are the algae of the green border? I don't know. What are the little flies landing and taking off? I don't know. What are the small plants thrusting up through the water? I don't know. The vistas of my ignorance seem boundless. How much that I see I do not recognize; how much that I observe I do not understand! In this despairing and humbled mood, I traverse the meadows and return home. In the study of nature, we never exhaust the possibilities of an area; the area exhausts the possibilities in us.

Related post: Erudition.

Homer, Iliad 20.131 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt):

Dangerous are the gods when they appear in manifest form.

χαλεποὶ δὲ θεοὶ ϕαίνεσθαι ἐναϱγεῖς.

Leaf and Bayfield ad loc.:

'are terrible when they show themselves openly': lit. are hard (to face or endure) for (with regard to) appearing visible.

Callimachus, Hymns 5.101-102 (tr. A.W. Mair):

Whosoever shall behold any of the immortals, when the god himself chooses not, at a heavy price shall he behold.

ὅς κε τιν᾿ ἀθανάτων, ὅκα μὴ θεὸς αὐτὸς ἕληται,
    ἀθρήσῃ, μισθῷ τοῦτον ἰδεῖν μεγάλῳ.

Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel III.2 (tr. Michael A. Screech):

From corn when 'tis yet but grass you can make a lovely green sauce: it is easily concocted and readily digested; it enlivens your brain, gladdens your animal spirits, delights your sight, whets your appetite, flatters your taste-buds, steels your heart, tickles your palate, clarifies your complexion, tones up your muscles, tempers the blood, lightens the diaphragm, freshens up the liver, unbungs the spleen, comforts the kidneys, settles the bladder, limbers up the spondyls, voids the ureters, dilates the spermatic vessels, tightens up the genital sinews, purges the bladder, swells the genitals, retracts the foreskin, hardens the glans and erects the member; it improves the belly and makes you break wind, fart, let off, defecate, urinate, sneeze, hiccup, cough, gob, spew, yawn, dribble snot, breathe deep, breathe in, breathe out, snore, sweat, and get your gimlet up, together with hundreds of other extraordinary benefits.

De bled en herbe vous faictez belle saulce verde, de legiere concoction, de facile digestion, laquelle vous esbanoist le cerveau, esbaudist les espritz animaulx, resjouist la veue, ouvre l'appetit, delecte le goust, assere le coeur, chatouille la langue, faict le tainct clair, fortifie les muscles, tempere le sang, allegre le diaphragme, refraischist le foye, desoppile la ratelle, soulaige les roignons, assouplist les reins, desgourdist les spondyles, vuide les ureteres, dilate les vases spermacticques, abbrevie les cremasteres, expurge la vessie, enfle les genitoires, corrige le prepuce, incruste le balane, rectifie le membre: vous faict bon ventre, bien rotter, vessir, peder, fianter, uriner, esternuer, sangloutir, toussir, cracher, vomiter, baisler, mouscher, haleiner, inspirer, respirer, ronfler, suer, dresser le virolet, et mille autres rares adventaiges.

Is the difference between vessir and peder in Rabelais' French the same as the difference between vissire and pedere in Latin, i.e., between farting silently and audibly? See J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (1982; rpt. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 249.

Related post: Panacea.

Frederic W. Farrar (1831-1903), Eternal Hope: Five Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey, November and December, 1877 (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1894), pp. 65-66 (from Sermon III):

Thomas of Aquinum lent his saintly name to what I can only call the abominable fancy that the bliss of the saved may be all the more keen because they are permitted to gaze on the punishment of the wicked.<sup>1

1</sup> "Unumquodque ex comparatione contrarii magis cognoscitur ... et ideo ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte videant!"—St. Thom. Aquin. Summa Theol. iii. Suppl. Qu. 94, art. I.

Compare the language of Peter Lombard:—"Egredientur ergo electi ad vivendum impiorum cruciatus, quos videntes non dolore afficientur, sed laetitia satiabuntur, visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate."—Sentent. iv. dist. 5, 9.

Strange influence of system and dogma! Can any one with a heart, any man worthy of the name of Christian, any man worthy of the name of man, fully realise the meaning of such words with a soul unblinded by prejudice and unsteeled by custom, without calling it inhuman language, and wondering that any could have uttered it who thought that they were preaching a gospel of infinite love?

The quotation from Peter Lombard is incorrect. For "ad vivendum" read "ad videndum." Here are translations.

Thomas Aquinas (tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province):

Now everything is known the more for being compared with its contrary...Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.

Peter Lombard (tr. Giulio Silano, adapted by me):

The elect shall go out to see the tortures of the impious. In seeing them, they shall not be stricken with sorrow; but they shall be filled with rejoicing, after seeing the ineffable calamity of the impious.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Anthony Grafton, Foreword to Michael A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. x:

Rumor has it that he uses the huge volumes of the 1703-1706 Leiden edition of Erasmus's complete works as his bedtime reading.

Barbara C. Bowen, Enter Rabelais, Laughing (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), p. 69:

The humanists most read today are of course those, like Erasmus, Thomas More, and Rabelais, who were also deeply interested in humanity as a subject, but we should not therefore assume that all humanists thought of man as their central subject; many were far more interested in restoring lost iota subscripts, or in explaining anomalous uses of the past perfect subjunctive.

Eustache Deschamps (1340-1406), "Balade sur les différentes manières de manger" (tr. David Curzon and Jeremy Fiskin):

I was dispirited, saddened, troubled, by
the spiteful gossip, all the malice, I
was hearing at a royal reception where
I banqueted with many people nearby.
I'd never seen such grimaces as played        5
across the faces of those eating there.
When I saw them, joy came to my aid:
I never saw such faces as these people made.

One looked just like a pig, a roadside sow,
so vigorously did he chomp his lips;        10
one used his teeth to saw his food in strips,
another moved his forehead and his brow;
one scowled; one twisted up his face somehow,
another managed to get his beard splayed;
one acted like a sheep, another like a cow;        15
I never saw such faces as these people made.

As I kept looking at them I became
awe-struck, since they seemed demons as they chewed;
I didn't see two people eat the same:
one chew was like a mouse, another lewd.        20
It gave more laughs than any other game
to watch the ways in which they stuffed down food.
Take a good look! I swear the joy won't fade.
I never saw such faces as these people made.

Envoy
Prince, a man who's sad won't find a thing to beat        25
watching a group of people as they eat.
He won't find better ways to overcome dull care;
he'll be astonished at the grimaces displayed,
of which I got a generous helping there:
I never saw such faces as these people made.        30

---

Tristes, pensis, mas et mornes estoye
Par mesdisance et rappors de faulx dis
A une court royal ou je dinoye,
Ou pluseurs gens furent a table assis;
Maiz oncques mais tant de nices ne vis        5
Que ceulx firent que l'en veoit mengier.
D'eulx regarder fu de joye ravis:
Oncques ne vis gens ainsi requinier.

Li uns sembloit truie enmi une voye,
Tant mouvoit fort ses baulifres toudiz;        10
L'autre faisoit de ses dens une soye,
L'autre mouvoit le front et les sourcis;
L'un requignoit, l'autre torcoit son vis,
L'autre faisoit sa barbe baloier,
L'un fait le veel, l'autre fait la brebis:        15
Oncques ne vis gens ainsi requignier.

D'eulx regarder trop fort me merveilloye,
Car en machant sembloient ennemiz;
Faire autel l'un com l'autre ne veoie,
L'un machoit gros, l'autre comme souriz;        20
Je n'oy oncques tant de joye ne ris
Que de veoir leurs morceaulx ensacher.
Or y gardez, je vous le jure et diz:
Oncques ne vis gens ainsi requignier.

L'envoy
Princes, qui est courroussez et pensis        25
Voist gens veoir qui sont a table mis:
Mieulx ne porra sa tristesse laissier;
Des grimaces sera tous esbahis
Que chascun fait; j'en fu la bien servis:
Oncques ne vis gens ainsi requignier.        30

David Mallet (1705-1765), "Of Verbal Criticism," lines 15-40:

In error obstinate, in wrangling loud,        15
For trifles eager, positive, and proud;
Deep in the darkness of dull authors bred,
With all their refuse lumber'd in his head,
What every dunce from every dunghill drew
Of literary offals, old or new,        20
Forth steps at last the self-applauding Wight,
Of points and letters, chaff and straws, to write:
Sagely resolv'd to swell each bulky piece
With venerable toys, from Rome and Greece;
How oft, in Homer, Paris curl'd his hair;        25
If Aristotle's Cap were round or square;
If in the cave, where Dido first was sped,
To Tyre she turn'd her heels, to Troy her head.

Such the choice anecdotes, profound and vain,
That store a Bentley's and a Burman's brain:        30
Hence, Plato quoted, or the Stagyrite,
To prove that flame ascends, and snow is white:
Hence, much hard study without sense or breeding,
And all the grave impertinence of reading.
If Shakespear says, the noon-day sun is bright,        35
His Scholiast will remark, it then was light;
Turn Caxton, Winkin, each old Goth and Hun,
To rectify the reading of a pun.
Thus, nicely trifling, accurately dull,
How one may toil, and toil —— to be a fool!        40

There is a pair of asyndetic, privative adjectives (ἄϕθαϱτος, ἀποίητος) in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6.5.39 = Ernst von Dobschütz, Das Kerygma Petri kritisch untersucht (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1893), pp. 18-19 (fragment 2a):

ὅτι δὲ οὐ κατ' ἐπίγνωσιν ἴσασι τὸν θεόν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ περίφρασιν Ἑλλήνων οἱ δοκιμώτατοι, Πέτρος ἐν τῷ Κηρύγματι λέγει· "Γινώσκετε οὖν ὅτι εἷς θεός ἐστιν, ὃς ἀρχὴν πάντων ἐποίησεν, καὶ τέλους ἐξουσίαν ἔχων" καί "ὁ ἀόρατος, ὃς τὰ πάντα ὁρᾷ, ἀχώρητος, ὃς τὰ πάντα χωρεῖ, ἀνεπιδεής, οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐπιδέεται καὶ δι' ὅν ἐστιν, ἀκατάληπτος, ἀέναος, ἄφθαρτος, ἀποίητος, ὃς τὰ πάντα ἐποίησεν λόγῳ δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ [τῆς γνωστικῆς γραφῆς] τουτέστι τοῦ υἱοῦ."

Translation in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. II: Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p. 38 (notes omitted):

And that the most notable of the Greeks know (about) God not by positive knowledge, but (only) by roundabout expression, Peter says in the 'Preaching':

Recognize now that there is one God who created the beginning of all things and who has the power to set an end;

and

the Invisible who sees all things; the Incomprehensible who comprehends all things; the One who needs nothing, of whom all things stand in need and for whose sake they are; the Inconceivable, the Everlasting, the Imperishable, the Uncreated, who has made all things by the word of his power [from the gnostic writing], that is his Son.

The English definite articles ("the Imperishable, the Uncreated") somewhat obscure the asyndeton. More literally, "Imperishable, Uncreated". At first glance the passage contains what looks like a series of four asyndetic privative adjectives (ἀκατάληπτος, ἀέναος, ἄφθαρτος, ἀποίητος), but ἀέναος isn't privative — it's from ἀεί + νάω, i.e., ever-flowing.

Related post: Via Negativa.

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives

J.N. Bremmer, "Symbols of Marginality from Early Pythagoreans to Late Antique Monks," Greece & Rome 39.2 (October, 1992) 205-214 (at 207-208, with notes on 213-214):

Besides their poverty-stricken look, Pythagoreans could be recognized by their sombre countenances. Their joyless facial expressions are in line with the report that the great Master himself never laughed either.¹¹ Allowing laughter only in moderation is not often mentioned, but it is noteworthy that Chaeremon, when describing Egyptian priests — already Reitzenstein saw in this description similarities to Pythagoreans — remarks that they rarely laugh and when they do never go beyond a smile.¹² We find the same restriction among early Christian monks.¹³ In the Life of Pachomius we meet the story of the boy Silvanus who is rebuked by Pachomius for his boisterous laughter (V. Pach. Φ 104), and when one of Pachomius' monks is about to visit another monastery, he is warned not to take offence at laughter (V. Pach. Φ 121); again, in the Life of St. Melania (c. 23), we hear that Melania instructs her sisters to laugh only in moderation. Melania's one-time friend, Jerome, was more severe and opposed laughter and jocularity, like the Fathers in general.¹⁴ One will therefore not be surprised that it is reported of Abba Pambo (372), in the fourth century, that he never laughed.

St. Anthony, according to Athanasius, also never laughed nor grieved (V. Anton. 14). The passage has been taken almost word-for-word from Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras (c. 35), and in its turn inspired Sulpicius Severus in his biography of St. Martin (c. 27.1). In these instances, however, laughter has become one item in a long list of emotions which the saint, in Stoic apatheia, was able to transcend; they are thus not exactly comparable.

Laughing boisterously is a letting oneself go, a temporary total relaxation. It is therefore a physical expression eminently opposed to a striving to keep all of life under control. Hence it should not cause surprise if social groups which attempt to keep in check all sorts of physical expression such as eating, sleeping, and sexuality, also, and particularly, object to laughter.

11. Pythagoreans: Alexis fr. 197 Kock. Plato, too, is portrayed as a grouch by the comic poet Amphis (fr. 13 Kock) — perhaps in analogy to the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras: Diog. Laert. 8.20; for Porphyry VP 35, see below. Naturally, the misanthrope Timon was also depicted as never laughing: Phrynichus F 19 Kassel-Austin.

12. Chaeremon FGH 618 F 6 = fr. 10 van der Horst, cp. Reitzenstein (see n. 3), 43-5; P.W. van der Horst, Chaeremon: Egyptian Priest and Stoic Philosopher (Leiden, 1987²), pp. 16-23 (text and translation), 56-61 (extensive commentary). In his Porphyry-edition (Budé 1982, 154), E. des Places draws a comparison between Pythagoras and Plato's advice (Laws 732c) to laugh in moderation; see also G.J. de Vries, 'Laughter in Plato's Writings', Mnemosyne IV (1985), 378-81.

13. For the medieval monks laughter was similarly problematic: I.M. Resnick, '"Risus monasticus". Laughter and Medieval Monastic Culture', Rev. Bénédictine 97 (1987), 90-100.

14. N. Adkin, 'The Fathers on Laughter', Orpheus NS 6 (1985), 149-52.

On avoidance of laughter in early Christianity see Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 475-519, and cf. Goethe, Faust, prologue in heaven, lines 277-278 (Mephistopheles speaking to God; tr. Walter Kaufman):

My pathos would be sure to make you laugh,
Were laughing not a habit you've unlearned.

Mein Pathos brächte dich gewiß zum Lachen,
Hättst du dir nicht das Lachen abgewöhnt.

By contrast, the Greek gods did laugh. See Paul Friedländer, "Lachende Götter," Antike 10 (1934) 209-226, rpt. in his Studien zur antiken Literatur und Kunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), pp. 3-18 (unavailable to me).

On supposed avoidance of laughter by Osiris, see Synesius, Egyptians, or On Providence 1.2 (90 D), tr. Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 341 (Osiris = Aurelian, Typhos = Caesarius):

In addition, Osiris never even once gulped his drink or so roared with laughter that it convulsed his whole body, as Typhos did constantly.

ἀλλ' οὐδὲ χανδόν ποτε Ὄσιρις ἔπιεν οὔτε ἐξεκάγχασεν ὡς εἶναι τὸν γέλωτα βρασμὸν ὅλου τοῦ σώματος ἅπερ Τυφὼς ἔδρα τε ὁσημέραι.

Related posts:

• Crassus Agelastus
• Did Adam Laugh Before the Fall?
• Against Laughter
• Agelasts
• Did Christ Ever Laugh?

Amphis, fragment 8 (tr. S. Douglas Olson):

Drink! Have fun! Life's mortal, and our time on earth's limited;
whereas death's immortal, once you're dead.

πῖνε, παῖζε· θνητὸς ὁ βίος, ὀλίγος οὑπὶ γῇ χρόνος·
ἀθάνατος ὁ θάνατός ἐστιν, ἂν ἅπαξ τις ἀποθάνῃ.

Is this the fragment behind Tony Harrison's quatrain "after Amphis"?

One glass and no refill
is life for men,
so keep on pouring till
Death says when.

Tsu Yung, aka Zu Yong (699-746), "Mister Su's Country Retreat," tr. Red Pine:

Your country retreat is such a quiet place
I think of retiring each time I come
the Chungnan Mountains fill your doors and windows
the Feng River brightens your trees and garden
your bamboos bend with winter-long snow
your courtyard is dark before dusk
beyond the sound and reach of man
I sit and listen to the birds of spring

The same, tr. Fu Huisheng:

Your villa lies in such a secluded place,
I want to be a hermit when it comes into my eyes.
The Zhongnan Mountain is off the windows,
Past the garden and bamboo forest the Feng River flows.
Over bamboo leaves still remain last winter snows,
Before the sun sets, twilight upon courtyard it bestows.
It's still and tranquil beyond human noises,
Sitting idly, I listen to spring birds in different voices.

Lucilius, fragment 75 Marx (tr. E.H. Warmington):

Good living to you, you gluttons, you guzzlers, good living to you, you bellies!

vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventris!

Related post: Hail, Hail, Plump Paunch!

Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, letter to his mother (November 1802), in Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Vol. I (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1888), pp. 150-151:

I am in despair about Boyse. He hath committed a crime (by report), the greatest, the most foolish, that man can be guilty of—a crime which will imbitter the remainder of his life, and render him odious and contemptible in my eyes for ever. How can I write it that it may not strike you with horror! He hath done what is shameful for very young, or very old men, and ridiculous for men of middle age to do—he hath married a wife. I shall never be able to abide him more, with his dear rib, and filthy squalling devils of children.

Homer, Iliad 13.729-734 (tr. Peter Green):

Never will you be able to master all things yourself:
on one man heaven bestows expertise in warfare,        730
on another in dancing, or in singing and playing the lyre,
while in yet another man's breast far-seeing Zeus implants
a clever mind, from which many people get benefit,
and many he saves, but he knows it most clearly himself.

ἀλλ᾽ οὔ πως ἅμα πάντα δυνήσεαι αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι.
ἄλλῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκε θεὸς πολεμήϊα ἔργα,        730
ἄλλῳ δ᾽ ὀρχηστύν, ἑτέρῳ κίθαριν καὶ ἀοιδήν,
ἄλλῳ δ᾽ ἐν στήθεσσι τιθεῖ νόον εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς
ἐσθλόν, τοῦ δέ τε πολλοὶ ἐπαυρίσκοντ᾽ ἄνθρωποι,
καί τε πολέας ἐσάωσε, μάλιστα δὲ καὐτὸς ἀνέγνω.

Richard Janko, commentary on line 731:


Related post: Gifts Differing According to the Grace That is Given to Us.

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. As Recorded by Lucien Price (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), p. 175 (Price speaking; footnote omitted):

"Kirsopp Lake once remarked in my presence that his father, a physician, being asked late in life what had done the most in his lifetime to relieve human suffering, answered, 'Anaesthesia and the decay of Christian theology.' That was in 1922."

Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 174-179 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

I am annoyed and depressed at all the city's affairs. For I see that she constantly employs scoundrels as her leaders. Even if one of them turns virtuous for one day, he'll turn out wicked for ten. You look to another one? He'll make even worse trouble.

                                     ἄχθομαι δὲ καὶ φέρω
τὰ τῆς πόλεως ἅπαντα βαρέως πράγματα.        175
ὁρῶ γὰρ αὐτὴν προστάταισι χρωμένην
ἀεὶ πονηροῖς. κἄν τις ἡμέραν μίαν
χρηστὸς γένηται, δέκα πονηρὸς γίγνεται.
ἐπέτρεψας ἑτέρῳ· πλείον᾿ ἔτι δράσει κακά.

This is where we find ourselves now.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. As Recorded by Lucien Price (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), pp. 56-57:

As for the value of studying the language in the original, I think most of the good can be got out of translations. As a young man I read the New Testament in the original. The Greek, as Greek, was quite beneath contempt and the translation into early seventeenth-century English is far superior. Ninety per cent of good old Herodotus can be got in translation, and sixty or seventy per cent of Thucydides. Even the sainted Plato doesn't lose so much. I have to teach several of his best Dialogues to successive classes of students, and I often ask myself what value there is to the ideas in them that would justify a man for the labour of going to get up the language. It being forty years since I read Greek fluently I now take a Loeb translation with the English on a parallel page, but with the help of Liddell and Scott's lexicon I can generally tell where old Jowett is making a fool of himself, which is about every other sentence....

Panyassis, fragment 12 Kinkel = 16 Bernabé = 19 West (tr. M.L. West):

Come on, friend, drink! This too is a virtue,
to drink the most wine at the banquet
in expert fashion, and to encourage your fellow.
It's just as good to be sharp in the feast as in battle,
busy amid the grievous slaughter, where few men        5
are brave and withstand the furious fight.
I should count his glory equal, who
enjoys being at the feast, and encourages other folk to as well.
A man doesn't seem to me to be really alive, or to live
the life of a hardy mortal, if he        10
sits out the party restraining his appetite for the wine: he's an idiot.
Wine is as much of a blessing as fire for us on earth:
a good shield against harm, accompaniment to every song,
for it has in it a delightful element of the festive, of luxury,
of dancing, of entrancing love,        15
and a refuge from care and depression.
So you must take the toasts at the feast and
drink merrily, and not sit costive like a vulture
after you have fed your face, oblivious of good cheer.

ξεῖν᾿, ἄγε δὴ καὶ πῖν᾿· ἀρετή νύ τίς ἐστι καὶ αὕτη,
ὅς κ᾿ ἀνδρῶν πολὺ πλεῖστον ἐν εἰλαπίνῃ μέθυ πίνῃ
εὖ καὶ ἐπισταμένως, ἅμα τ᾿ ἄλλον φῶτα κελεύῃ.
ἶσον δ᾿ ὅς τ᾿ ἐν δαιτὶ καὶ ἐν πολέμῳ θοὸς ἀνήρ,
ὑσμίνας διέπων ταλαπενθέας, ἔνθά τε παῦροι        5
θαρσαλέοι τελέθουσι μένουσί τε θοῦρον ἄρηα.
τοῦ κεν ἐγὼ θείμην ἶσον κλέος, ὅς τ᾿ ἐνὶ δαιτί
τέρπηται παρεὼν ἅμα τ᾿ ἄλλον λαὸν ἀνώγῃ.
οὐ γάρ μοι ζώειν γε δοκεῖ βροτὸς οὐδὲ βιῶναι
ἀνθρώποιο βίον ταλασίφρονος, ὅστις ἀπ᾿ οἴνου        10
θυμὸν ἐρητύσας μείνηι πότον, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεόφρων.
οἶνος γὰρ πυρὶ ἶσον ἐπιχθονίοισιν ὄνειαρ,
ἐσθλὸν ἀλεξίκακον, πάσης συνοπηδὸν ἀοιδῆς.
ἐν μὲν γὰρ θαλίης ἐρατὸν μέρος ἀγλαΐης τε,
ἐν δὲ χοροιτυπίης, ἐν δ᾿ ἱμερτῆς φιλότητος,        15
ἐν δέ τε μενθήρης καὶ δυσφροσύνης ἀλεωρή.
τώ σε χρὴ παρὰ δαιτὶ δεδεγμένον εὔφρονι θυμῷ
πίνειν, μηδὲ βορῆς κεκορημένον ἠΰτε γῦπα
ἧσθαι πλημύροντα, λελασμένον εὐφροσυνάων.

See

• Victor J. Matthews, Panyassis of Halikarnassos: Text and Commentary (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), pp. 74 ff.
• Tilman Krischer, "Panyassis und die Elegische Dichtung: Typologische Bemerkungen zu F 12," Hermes 102.2 (1974) 157-164
• Peter Roth, "Zu Panyassis F 12-14," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 134.3/4 (1991) 238-252