Laudator Temporis Acti

George Will, "Referenda Delenda Est," National Review (January 13, 2019).

Referendum delendum est, or Referenda delenda sunt, but not, please, the ungrammatical Referenda delenda est, even if you want the reader to recall Carthago delenda est.

Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.6.16 (Socrates to Glaucon; tr. E.C. Marchant):

Don't you see how risky it is to say or do what you don't understand?

ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾷς, ὡς σφαλερόν ἐστι τὸ ἃ μὴ οἶδέ τις, ταῦτα ἢ λέγειν ἢ πράττειν;

Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), "Servants," And Even Now (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1921), pp. 163-185 (at 185):

...I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed.

George Orwell (1903-1950), "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic 5 (September-October, 1946) 5-21, rpt. in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968), pp. 205-223 (at 216):

We are right to think of Swift as a rebel and iconoclast, but except in certain secondary matters, such as his insistence that women should receive the same education as men, he cannot be labelled "left". He is a Tory anarchist, despising authority while disbelieving in liberty, and preserving the aristocratic outlook while seeing clearly that the existing aristocracy is degenerate and contemptible.

Hat tip: Patrick Kurp.

H.R. Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), "Twice Martyred: The Engish Jesuits and Their Historians," Historical Essays (London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1963), pp. 113-118 (at 116-117):

For what is the technique of these new manipulators of devoted lives? The basic principles are simple. First, there is the distorting background. Nowadays, to carry conviction, a historian must document, or appear to document, his formal narrative, but his background, his generalisations, allusions, comparisons remain happily free from this inconvenience. This freedom is very useful: against an imaginary background even correctly stated facts can be wonderfully transformed. If Elizabethan government, for instance, is regularly described as 'totalitarian', if priests are sent to 'concentration-camps', if Catholic plots are darkly compared with the burning of the Reichstag, then an image is created which, though undocumented, dominates the mere detail for which alone the author takes responsibility. Moreover, such a background does not even need imagination. Pedestrian apologists who play for safety can construct it very effectively by mere omission. Just as Fr. Philip Hughes has contrived to write a portentous three-volume history of that 'immensely harmful' movement, the English Reformation, in which the great religious movement for reform of the Church is unobserved and such details as the burning of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley are never explicitly mentioned, so Fr. Devlin, in his new biography of Robert Southwell,¹ contrives never to make clear the interesting and relevant fact that throughout Southwell's mission England and Spain were at war. This is a remarkable achievement. Needless to say, it greatly helps his argument. The argument, it may be added, can do with such help.

The second principle of this new technique is more positive. It is the principle of unequal scholarship: the scrupulous straining at small historical gnats which diverts attention from the silent digestion of large and inconvenient camels. How choosily these Jesuit historians nibble when the matter is of no great significance (thus winning tributes to their scholarship from lay reviewers), and yet what enormous gulps they take when no one — they think — is looking! How learnedly Fr. Caraman, for instance, annotates those minor recusant gentry, tracing their manors, their marriages and their movements; and yet, when it comes to a significant point — say, Sir Robert Cecil's attitude to the Spanish claims — he unhesitatingly gives us an answer which, though convenient to him, can be blown sky-high by mere reference to the sources. How learnedly Fr. Devlin refutes his own misquotation from Professor Conyers Read (whose name he regularly mis-spells); and yet, when a document is inconvenient, he summarily declares it first a probable, then, by an inconspicuous transition, a known forgery! Whenever the Jesuits are involved in controversy, their version of the facts, we are told, is 'the only accurate account', 'far closer to the truth' than any other, contemporary or modern. On the Babington Plot, for instance, through whose intricacies Fr. Devlin has led the grateful Fr. Caraman, modern scholars receive 'serious reproach' for accepting 'a whole edifice of lies ... in violation of the known truth' — i.e. what a Jesuit said was the truth.

¹Christopher Devlin, S.J., The Life of Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr (London 1956).

Walter Ralegh (1554–1618), "Nature That Washed Her Hands in Milk," lines 31-36:

Oh cruel time which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days.

Hugh Latimer (1487-1555), "Last Sermon Preached Before Edward the Sixth," Sermons (London: J.M. Dent & Co., 1906), pp. 206-244 (at 213):

Speak against covetousness, and cry out upon it. Stand not ticking and toying at the branches nor at the boughs, for then there will new boughs and branches spring again of them; but strike at the root, and fear not these giants of England, these great men and men of power, these men that are oppressors of the poor; fear them not, but strike at the root of all evil, which is mischievous covetousness.

Id. (at 215):

The poorest ploughman is in Christ equal with the greatest prince that is. Let them, therefore, have sufficient to maintain them, and to find them their necessaries. A plough-land must have sheep; yea, they must have sheep to dung their ground for bearing of corn; for if they have no sheep to help to fat the ground, they shall have but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make their veneries or bacon of: their bacon is their venison, for they shall now have hangum tuum, if they get any other venison; so that bacon is their necessary meat to feed on, which they may not lack. They must have other cattle as horses to draw their plough, and for carriage of things to the markets; and kine for their milk and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their rents. These cattle must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest must needs fail them: and pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in, and inclosed from them.

Id. (at 239-240):

And he said unto all the audience, Videte et cavete ab avaritia; "See and beware of covetousness." Why so? Quia non in abundantia cujusquam vita ejus est ex his quae possidet; "For no man's life standeth in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." We may have things necessary, and we may have abundance of things; but the abundance doth not make us blessed. It is no good argument, Quo plus quisque habet, tanto beatius vivit; "The more riches that a man hath, the more happily and the more blissfully he liveth." For a certain great man, that had purchased much lands, a thousand marks by year, or I wot not what; a great portion he had: and so on the way, as he was in his journey towards London, or from London, he fell sick by the way; a disease took him, that he was constrained to lie upon it. And so being in his bed, the disease grew more and more upon him, that he was, by his friends that were about him, godly advised to look to himself, and to make him ready to God; for there was none other likelihood but that he must die without remedy. He cried out, "What, shall I die?" quoth he. "Wounds! sides! heart! Shall I die, and thus go from my goods? Go, fetch me some physician that may save my life. Wounds and sides! Shall I thus die?" There lay he still in his bed like a block, with nothing but, "Wounds and sides, shall I die?" Within a very little while he died indeed; and then lay he like a block indeed. There was black gowns, torches, tapers, and ringing of bells; but what is become of him, God knoweth, and not I.

But hereby this ye may perceive, that it is not the abundance of riches that maketh a man to live quietly and blissfully. But the quiet life is in a mediocrity. Mediocres optime vivunt: "They that are in a mean do live best." And there is a proverb which I read many years ago, Dimidium plus toto; "The half sometimes more than the whole." The mean life is the best life and the most quiet life of all. If a man should fill himself up to the throat, he should not find ease in it, but displeasure; and with the one half he might satisfy his greedy appetite. So this great riches never maketh a man's life quiet, but rather troublous.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval (July 12, 1816), in The Complete Jefferson, ed. Saul K. Padover (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1943), p. 291:

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Id., p. 292:

Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure. It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables [of mortality] inform us, that, within that period, two-thirds of the adults then living are now dead. Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority.

Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address (referring to those Indians who refused to abandon a nomadic life in favor of a settled, agricultural one), in The Complete Jefferson, p. 455:

These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their physical, moral, or political condition, is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety, and knowledge full of danger; in short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and bigotry; they, too, have their anti-philosophers, who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendency of habit over the duty of improving our reason, and obeying its mandates.

Hyperides, Funeral Oration 43 (tr. J.O. Burtt):

And furthermore, if death means non-existence, they have been released from sickness and from grief, and from the other ills which vex our human life...

πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, εἰ μέν ἐστι τὸ ἀποθανεῖν ὅμοιον τῷ μὴ γενέσθαι, ἀπηλλαγμένοι εἰσὶ νόσων καὶ λύπης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν προσπιπτόντων εἰς τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον...

Pindar, Nemean Odes 1.53-54 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

That which is close to home afflicts all alike,
but a heart soon goes free of grief
over a stranger's unhappiness.

τὸ γὰρ οἰκεῖον πιέζει πάνθ᾿ ὁμῶς·
εὐθὺς δ᾿ ἀπήμων κραδία
κᾶδος ἀμφ᾿ ἀλλότριον.

Theognis 655-656 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

We all share your pain, Cyrnus, in your misfortune,
but grief for another is short-lived.

σύν τοι, Κύρνε, παθόντι κακῶς ἀνιώμεθα πάντες·
    ἀλλά τοι ἀλλότριον κῆδος ἐφημέριον.

Ernest Renan (1823-1892), Saint Paul, tr. Ingersoll Lockwood (New York: G.W. Carleton, 1869), p. 141 (note omitted):

A nothing, a tree, a flower, a lizard, a tortoise, giving rise to the recollection of a thousand metamorphoses sung by the poets; a thread of water; a little hollow in the rock, which they term a nymph's cave; a well with a cup on the curb-stone; a strait of the sea, so narrow that the butterflies cross it and still navigable for the largest vessels, as at Poros; orange-trees, cypresses, of which the shade extends upon the sea; a little forest of pines in the midst of rocks; — are sufficient in Greece to produce the contentment awakened by beauty. Walking in the gardens at night, listening to the locusts, sitting in the moonlight while playing the flute, going to the mountain for water and taking with them a little roll of bread, a fish, and a cyathus of wine, which is drunk while singing; in family festivities, hanging a crown of leaves over their door, or going with flowers in their hats; on public fête days, carrying the thyrsus ornamented with leaves; passing whole days in dancing, playing with tame goats, — such are Greek pleasures, the pleasures of a race, poor, economical, eternally young, inhabiting a beautiful country, finding their fortune in themselves and in the gifts which the gods have made them.

Un rien, un arbre, une fleur, un lézard, une tortue, provoquant le souvenir de mille métamorphoses chantées par les poëtes; un filet d'eau, un petit creux dans le rocher, qu'on qualifie d'antre des nymphes; un puits avec une tasse sur la margelle, un pertuis de mer si étroit que les papillons le traversent et pourtant navigable aux plus grands vaisseaux, comme à Poros; des orangers, des cyprès dont l'ombre s'étend sur la mer, un petit bois de pins au milieu des rochers, suffisent en Grèce pour produire le contentement qu'éveille la beauté. Se promener dans les jardins pendant la nuit, écouter les cigales, s'asseoir au clair de lune en jouant de la flûte; aller boire de l'eau dans la montagne, apporter avec soi un petit pain, un poisson et un lécythe de vin qu'on boit en chantant; aux fêtes de famille, suspendre une couronne de feuillage au-dessus de sa porte, aller avec des chapeaux de fleurs; les jours de fêtes publiques, porter des thyrses garnis de feuillages; passer des journées à danser, à jouer avec des chèvres apprivoisées, voilà les plaisirs grecs, plaisirs d'une race pauvre, économe, éternellement jeune, habitant un pays charmant, trouvant son bien en elle-même et dans les dons que les dieux lui ont faits.

Herodotus 2.166.2-167.2 (on the Kalasyries; tr. Robin Waterfield):

They are not allowed to practise any trade either and are trained solely in military activities, with son succeeding father.

I cannot say for certain whether or not this is another thing the Greeks learnt from Egypt, because I see that the Thracians, Scythians, Persians, Lydians, and almost every non-Greek people also regard those who learn a trade and their descendants as the lowest stratum of society, as opposed to those who have nothing to do with artisanship and especially those who concentrate on warfare.

However that may be, all the Greeks have adopted this attitude, with artisans coming in for the most contempt in Lacedaemon, and the least in Corinth.

οὐδὲ τούτοισι ἔξεστι τέχνην ἐπασκῆσαι οὐδεμίαν, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἐς πόλεμον ἐπασκέουσι μοῦνα, παῖς παρὰ πατρὸς ἐκδεκόμενος.

εἰ μέν νυν καὶ τοῦτο παρ᾿ Αἰγυπτίων μεμαθήκασι οἱ Ἕλληνες, οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως κρῖναι, ὁρέων καὶ Θρήικας καὶ Σκύθας καὶ Πέρσας καὶ Λυδοὺς καὶ σχεδὸν πάντας τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀποτιμοτέρους τῶν ἄλλων ἡγημένους πολιητέων τοὺς τὰς τέχνας μανθάνοντας καὶ τοὺς ἐκγόνους τούτων, τοὺς δὲ ἀπαλλαγμένους τῶν χειρωναξιέων γενναίους νομιζομένους εἶναι, καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἐς τὸν πόλεμον ἀνειμένους·

μεμαθήκασι δ᾿ ὦν τοῦτο πάντες οἱ Ἕλληνες καὶ μάλιστα Λακεδαιμόνιοι. ἥκιστα δὲ Κορίνθιοι ὄνονται τοὺς χειροτέχνας.

There is an error in the Greek text of 2.167.2 in the Digital Loeb Classical Library (ὄνοται should be ὄνονται). Here is a screen capture of the mistake:


See Alan B. Lloyd, Herodotus, Book II. Commentary 99-182 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), pp. 196-199.

Labels: typographical and other errors

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883), p. 18 (Carlyle to Emerson, August 12, 1834):

"Not till we can think that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loving us, does this waste Earth become a peopled Garden."

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Book VII, Chapter V (tr. Thomas Carlyle):

The world is waste and empty, when we figure only towns and hills and rivers in it: but to know of some one here and there, whom we accord with, who is living with us even in silence, makes this earthy ball a peopled garden.

Die Welt ist so leer, wenn man nur Berge, Flüsse und Städte darin denkt, aber hie und da jemand zu wissen, der mit uns übereinstimmt, mit dem wir auch stillschweigend fortleben, das macht uns dieses Erdenrund erst zu einem bewohnten Garten.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America, Part II, Book IV, Chapter VI (tr. Henry Reeve):

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Après avoir pris ainsi tour à tour dans ses puissantes mains chaque individu et l'avoir pétri à sa guise, le souverain étend ses bras sur la société tout entière; il en couvre la surface d'un réseau de petites règles compliquées, minutieuses et uniformes, à travers lesquelles les esprits les plus originaux et les âmes les plus vigoureuses ne sauraient se faire jour pour dépasser la foule; il ne brise pas les volontés, mais il les amollit, les plie et les dirige; il force rarement d'agir, mais il s'oppose sans cesse à ce qu'on agisse; il ne détruit point, il empêche de naître; il ne tyrannise point, il gêne, il comprime, il énerve, il éteint, il hébète, et il réduit, enfin, chaque nation à n'être plus qu'un troupeau d'animaux timides et industrieux, dont le gouvernement est le berger.

J'ai toujours cru que cette sorte de servitude, réglée, douce et paisible, dont je viens defaire le tableau, pourrait se combiner mieux qu'on ne l'imagine avec quelques-unes des formes extérieures de la liberté, et qu’il ne lui serait pas impossible de s'établirà l'ombre même de la souveraineté du peuple.

Owen Daugherty, "'Traditional masculinity' deemed 'harmful' by American Psychological Association," The Hill (January 10, 2019; emphasis added):

The report claims that adhering to the practice of "masculinity ideology” can hinder the development of adolescent boys by "suppressing emotions and masking distress."

The APA notes a bevy of statistics to emphasize that "traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful."

I prefer Pindar, fragment 42 (tr. William H. Race):

... do not display to strangers what toil
we are bearing; this at least I shall tell you:
one must show one's portion
of noble and pleasant things openly
to all the people; but if any heaven-sent,        5
unbearable trouble befalls men,
it is fitting to hide it in darkness.

... ἀλλοτρίοισιν μὴ προφαίνειν, τίς φέρεται
μόχθος ἄμμιν· τοῦτό γέ τοι ἐρέω·
καλῶν μὲν ὦν μοῖράν τε τερπνῶν
ἐς μέσον χρὴ παντὶ λαῷ
δεικνύναι· εἰ δέ τις ἀνθρώ-        5
ποισι θεόσδοτος ἀτλάτα κακότας
προστύχῃ, ταύταν σκότει κρύπτειν ἔοικεν.

Related posts:

• Letting It Out, versus Keeping It In
• It is Unmanly to Complain
• Complaining
• On Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip
• Grosse Seelen Dulden Still
• Hiding Troubles
• Nietzsche on Emotional Incontinence
• Buckled Lips
• Emotional Incontinence
• Euripidea
• Hostile Laughter
• Hostile Laughter in Euripides' Medea
• Icy Laughter
• Notes to Myself
• On Concealing One's Misfortunes
• Quotations about Complaints

Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 528-529:

Even in the aftermath of the second attack and the new beating that they administered to the Catholic bishop, they still did not kill him. What happened next was something different. His attackers chose instead to drag him up flights of stairs to the top of a nearby high tower and, once they got him to the top of it, they threw him off its height. In other words, they hoped that he might perish by precipitation. And this is the way that the Catholic martyrology presents his suffering: as a precipitation.

Very fortunately for Maximianus, a large mound of human excrement had accumulated at the bottom of the tower. Apparently the town's people and travelers relieved themselves at the base of its walls. The deep heap of human ordure broke the force of Maximianus' plunge from the tower.⁹³ He survived the fall. Fading in and out of consciousness over the next hours, Maximianus barely clung to life. By another good stroke of fortune, there occurred one of those little human dramas that reveal something of daily routines in a late antique town. Later that same night, a poor man, a pauper, and his wife happened to be passing by the tower in the dark. The man made a detour off the road in order to defecate. Apparently, it was known that such acts of personal relief were performed at the foot of this particular tower. (With all that the practice suggests about ordinary sanitary conditions in rural towns like Bagaï.) When the man got to the pile of shit in order to relieve himself, he found the half-dead Catholic bishop of Bagaï on top of it. Immediately recognizing who the man was, he shouted to his wife who, obedient to the normal canons of shame, was waiting for him back on the main road. He called out to her to come quickly and to bring the lantern that she was carrying to light their way in the night (another item that allows us to picture this dimly-lit scene in miniature). The two of them then shouldered the body of the wounded bishop and carried him to their home — "Out of pity," remarks Augustine, "or because they hoped for a small reward."

⁹³ Aug. Contra Cresc. 3.43.47 (CSEL 52: 454): "rursus inruentibus violenter extortus est graviusque mulcatus et de excelsa turri noctu praecipitatus subter cinere stercoris molliter iacebat exceptus, sensu amisso vix extremum spiritum tenens." This is a dirty equivalent of the death of the dissident martyr Marculus who lands softly on the rocks beneath his precipitation: see ch. 16, pp. 751–53.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Roger L'Estrange, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists, 5th ed. (London: Printed for R. Sare et al., 1708), p. 425 (no. 398—Boys and Frogs)

A Company of Waggish Boys were watching of Frogs at the side of a Pond, and still as any of 'em put up their Heads, they'd be Pelting them down again with Stones. Children (says one of the Frogs) you never Consider, that though this may be Play to you, 'tis Death to us.

Joseph Addison, Spectator No. XXIIII (Tuesday, March 27, 1711), repeats this, citing L'Estrange.

Antoine Houdar de la Motte, One Hundred New Court Fables, tr. Robert Samber (London: Printed for E. Curll, 1721), pp. 231-232:

In Frogland the People lived in Peace, grumbling and croaking as they pleased. While the Frogs were in this happy State, a Company of Boys came down to the Marsh, to disturb their Quiet and Tranquility.

Hark ye, my Lads, says one of them, I have found out a very pretty Play, an innocent War. He that throws his Stone the farthest shall be our King. Done, said they, agreed, and to it they went.

The Stones flew like Hail, every one had a mind to be Conqueror, Children, you see, are like Men, they love Honour. The whole Marsh was covered with Stones in a moment, and the poor Frogs had no Place to retire to. One had his Shoulder put out of joint, another complained he had his Ribs broken, this (to speak in the Language of the Greek Poet) received a Contusion in the Place where the Neck joyns to the Breast, and that died of a great Wound in his Chine.

At last the stoutest of them lifting up his Head, Hark ye, my Masters, says he, for God's sake move a little farther off for your Diversions; chuse a King at a gentler Play than this. This is no Play for us, your Pastimes cost us our Lives; shall we, O Princes, be always Frogs in your Opinion?

In French, from Antoine Houdar de la Motte, Fables nouvelles (Paris: Grégoire Dupuis, 1719), pp. 149-151 (Livre III, Fable V—Les Grenoüilles et les Enfans):

A Vous le dé, Messieurs les Princes;
Vous vous picquez de nobles scntimens.
Vous voulez batailler, conquerir des Provinces:
Ce sont là vos amusemens.
Mais sçavez-vous bîen que nous sommes
Les victimes de ces beaux jeux?
Bon, il n'en coûte que des hommes,
Dites-vous. N'est-ce rien? Vous comptez bien les sommes;
Mais pour les jours des malheureux,
C'est zero: Belle Arithmetique
Qu'introduit vôtre politique!

Des Grenoüilles vivoient en paix,
Barbotant, coassant au gré de leur envie.
Une troupe d'enfans sur les bords du marais
Vint troubler cette douce vie.
Ça, dit l'un d'eux, j'imagine entre nous
Un jeu plaisant, une innocente guerre.
Qui lancera plus loin sa pierre,
Sera nôtre Roi. Tope. Ils y consentent tous.
Pierres voient soudain. Chacun veut la victoire,
L'enfant n'est-il pas homme? Il aime aussi la gloire.
Bien-tôt tout le marais est couvert de cailloux;
Et Grenoüilles pour fuir n'ont pas assez de trous.
L'une a dans le moment l'épaule fracassée;
L'autre se plaint d'une côte enfoncée;
Celle-ci, comme eût dit le Chantre d'Ilion,
Reçoit une contusion
Dans l'endroit où le col se joint à la poitrine;
Celle-là meurt d'un grand coup sur l'échine.
Enfin la plus brave de là
Leve la tête, & dit: Messieurs, holà;
De grace allez plus loin contenter vôtre envie;
Choisissez-vous un maître à quelque jeu plus doux.
Ceci n'est pas un jeu pour nous;
Vos plaisirs nous coûtent la vie.

Rois, serons-nous toûjours des Grenoüilles pour vous?

Cf. Joachim Camerarius, Fabulae Aesopicae (Leiden: Apud Ioan. Tornaesium, 1579), p. 401 (number 417—Ranae et Puer):

Lascivus puer ad stagnum conspicatus ranas exerentes capitula de aquis, per lusum saxis illas appetebat déque illis iugulabat multas. Tum una, Iste quidem puer, inquit, ut videtis, ludit: nostrae autem sorores moriuntur.

Thanks very much to Laura Gibbs for help.

Aristophanes, Birds 375-380 (tr. Benjamin Bickley Rogers):

Yet to clever folk a foeman very useful hints may show;
Thus, that foresight brings us safety, from a friend we ne'er should know,
But the truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.
Hence it is that, all the Cities, taught by foe, and not by friend,
Learn to build them ships of battle, and their lofty walls extend;
So by this, a foeman's, teaching children, home, and wealth defend.

ἀλλ᾿ ἀπ᾿ ἐχθρῶν δῆτα πολλὰ μανθάνουσιν οἱ σοφοί.        375
ἡ γὰρ εὐλάβεια σῴζει πάντα. παρὰ μὲν οὖν φίλου
οὐ μάθοις ἂν τοῦθ᾿, ὁ δ᾿ ἐχθρὸς εὐθὺς ἐξηνάγκασεν.
αὐτίχ᾿ αἱ πόλεις παρ᾿ ἀνδρῶν ἔμαθον ἐχθρῶν κοὐ φίλων
ἐκπονεῖν θ᾿ ὑψηλὰ τείχη ναῦς τε κεκτῆσθαι μακράς·
τὸ δὲ μάθημα τοῦτο σῴζει παῖδας, οἶκον, χρήματα.        380

H.R. Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), "The Dark Ages," Historical Essays (London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1963), pp. 12-17 (at 15):

Nobody can like the Church in those days. It was intolerant and obscurantist, and did not improve with time. St. Augustine read the classics — like Marx, the Founding Father was himself a humanist: the old bigot could weep over Dido, and puritanism struggled in his soul with light. His contemporary St. Jerome with difficulty overcame his taste for Cicero. But he overcame it in the end, and once the insidious spirit of humanity had been beaten down, no quarter was shown: it was crushed. St. Augustine organised the rabble in Africa, reducing doctrine to rhythmical slogans wherewith to drown the voice of opposition. St. Cyril organised a blackshirt claque to applaud his oratory in Alexandria. St. Gregory, the Stalin of the early Church, banned all profane learning as offensive and abominable. Truly they were no saints, those terrible old ideologues, past whose history Mr. Dawson so discreetly slides; and what was the solemn liturgy, which he so extols but a narcotic formulary?

Id., p. 16:

So too, no doubt, our new ideologues view our present state, and their liberal fellow-travellers console themselves with an ultimate respectability. Doctrine — unintelligible, reversible, but indubitable; inexorable discipline; insistent propaganda; missionaries and local cells; the cult of saints; a mind-drowning liturgy — all the old machinery has become familiar again.

[Euripides,] Rhesus 510-511 (tr. David Kovacs):

No brave man deigns to kill the enemy by stealth but fights face to face.

οὐδεὶς ἀνὴρ εὔψυχος ἀξιοῖ λάθρᾳ
κτεῖναι τὸν ἐχθρόν, ἀλλ᾿ ἰὼν κατὰ στόμα.

Almut Fries ad loc.:

While epic saw some merit in ambushes and the men who executed them (Il. 13.276–91, Od. 14.468–506), traditional warrior ethics demanded meeting the enemy 'face to face', κατὰ στόμα (408–10a n.). Regarding Odysseus, note especially Antisth. Ai. 5 νῦν δ᾽ οὐκ ἔστιν ὃ διαφέρει πλέον ἐμοῦ καὶ τοῦδε. ὃ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅ τι ἂν δράσειε φανερῶς, ἐγὼ δὲ οὐδὲν ἂν λάθρᾳ τολμήσαιμι πρᾶξαι and, outside war, Phil. 88–91 (Neoptolemus) ἔφυν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐκ τέχνης πράσσειν κακῆς, / … / ἀλλ᾽ εἴμ᾽ ἑτοῖμος πρὸς βίαν τὸν ἄνδρ᾽ ἄγειν / καὶ μὴ δόλοισιν.

Antisthenes, Ajax 5 (tr. Susan Prince):

But as it is, there is nothing that differs more than I and this man. For there is nothing that he would act out publicly, whereas I would not dare to do anything in secret.

Sophocles, Philoctetes 88-91 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):

It is my nature to do nothing by treacherous plotting; that is my nature, and it was also my father’s nature. But I am ready to take the man by force and not by cunning.

Edward Everett (1794-1865), "Address," in Revised Report Made to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, Relative to the Soldiers' National Cemetery, at Gettysburg (Harrisburg: Singerly & Myers, 1867), pp. 198-231 (at 230):

The bonds that unite us as one people—a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law, (the four great ties that hold the societies of men together;) common national and political interests; a common history; a common pride in a glorious ancestry; a common interest in this great heritage of blessings; the very geographical features of the country; the mighty rivers that cross the lines of climate and thus facilitate the interchange of natural and industrial products, while the wonder-working arm of the engineer has levelled the mountain-walls which separate the East and West, compelling your own Alleghenies, my Maryland and Pennsylvania friends, to open wide their everlasting doors to the chariot-wheels of traffic and travel; these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious and transient.

Related posts:

• Men of One Country
• Common Bonds
• One United People