Laudator Temporis Acti

Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.

State super vias, et videte, et interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona, et ambulate in ea: et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris.

A fifth-century BC oracular inscription from the temple of Zeus Epikoinios in the Greek city of Salamis on the island of Cyprus is written on a shard of pottery, employing Cypriot letters to express Greek words.⁴⁶ Two distinct sections or areas of writing are legible. There is a short piece of prose: 'Decision of the god. I completely forbid this: the little creek must flow', written around the edge of one side of the ostrakon. There is also a longer piece of writing, written in neat lines of verse:

I admire this zeal of yours, and yet, while I am gracious,
With lightning I strike my enemies down.
Through the rivulets of the stream
I receive sweet water for my cattle
and pastures in the springtime.
I am angered by this request,
which the one who is asking seeks.

Consequently, it would seem that the ostrakon represents the decision of the god in response to an oracular enquiry, the answer expressed quite clearly in prose, and then with an elaboration on the god’s decision, expressed more fully but in verse this time, and explaining his ruling. Our enquirer must have asked if a stream could be altered in some way: perhaps dammed, or even redirected. Apparently it flowed by or even through the sanctuary of Zeus Epikoinios, and therefore it was clearly a matter for the god, whose permission needed to be sought for any such change.

46 The inscription resides in the British Museum: 97.4–1.1538. Hesychios knew of the deity, and explained the word Epikoinios with the gloss 'Zeus in Salamis'. Meister 1909: 3–25 (Greek text: 7–8, with two plates after p.30; an exhaustive word by word commentary) is still the main discussion; see also Amandry 1950: 166–68; Masson 1961: no 318, pp. 316–18; Rosenberger 2001: 173. The second last line of the inscription is a little difficult to translate.

• Richard Meister, "Ein Ostrakon aus dem Heiligtum des Zeus Epikoinios im kyprischen Salamis," Abhandlungen der philologisch historischen Klasse der koniglich sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 27.9 (1909) 303-332
• Pierre Amandry, La mantique apollinienne à Delphes. Essai sur le fonctionnement de l'Oracle (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1950 = Bibliothèque des Écoles Franchises d'Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 170), pp. 166–168 (unavailable to me)
• Olivier Masson, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques. Recueil critique et commenté (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1961 = École française d'Athènes. Études chypriotes, 1), pp. 316–318 (unavailable to me)
• Veit Rosenberger, Griechische Orakel: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), p. 173, with note on p. 190

It is risky to give a dagger to a madman and power to a rogue.

ἐπισφαλὲς μαινομένῳ δοῦναι μάχαιραν καὶ μοχθηρῷ δύναμιν.

Against the slanderers of nature.— I find those people disagreeable in whom every natural inclination immediately becomes a sickness, something that disfigures them or is downright infamous: it is they that have seduced us to hold that man's inclinations and instincts are evil. They are the cause of our great injustice against our nature, against all nature. There are enough people who might well entrust themselves to their instincts with grace and without care; but they do not, from fear of this imagined "evil character" of nature. That is why we find so little nobility among men; for it will always be the mark of nobility that one feels no fear of oneself, expects nothing infamous of oneself, flies without scruple where we feel like flying, we freeborn birds. Wherever we may come there will always be freedom and sunlight around us.

Gegen die Verleumder der Natur.— Das sind mir unangenehme Menschen, bei denen jeder natürliche Hang sofort zur Krankheit wird, zu etwas Entstellendem oder gar Schmählichem,—diese haben uns zu der Meinung verführt, die Hänge und Triebe des Menschen seien böse; sie sind die Ursache unserer grossen Ungerechtigkeit gegen unsere Natur, gegen alle Natur! Es giebt genug Menschen, die sich ihren Trieben mit Anmuth und Sorglosigkeit überlassen dürfen: aber sie thun es nicht, aus Angst vor jenem eingebildeten "bösen Wesen" der Natur! Daher ist es gekommen, dass so wenig Vornehmheit unter den Menschen zu finden ist: deren Kennzeichen es immer sein wird, vor sich keine Furcht zu haben, von sich nichts Schmähliches zu erwarten, ohne Bedenken zu fliegen, wohin es uns treibt—uns freigeborene Vögel! Wohin wir auch nur kommen, immer wird es frei und sonnenlicht um uns sein.

One thing consoles me: this time has not been altogether wasted. I have even added a little to my hoard of gold, that is, to my knowledge of literature to which I apply myself every day, for I have plenty of time to read.

Id me consolatur, quod tempus non omnino effluit, quin aliquid addam ad cumulum lucri, litterarum scilicet studia, quibus quotidie vaco: est enim mihi otium satis ad legendum.

[4] Even literary pursuits, the most becoming thing for a gentleman to spend money upon, are only justifiable as long as they are kept within bounds. What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owner can hardly read through in a lifetime? A student is overwhelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through many.

[5] Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria: some would have praised this library as a most noble memorial of royal wealth, like Titus Livius, who says that it was "a splendid result of the taste and attentive care of the kings." It had nothing to do with taste or care, but was a piece of learned luxury, nay, not even learned, since they amassed it, not for the sake of learning, but to make a show, like many men who know less about letters than a slave is expected to know, and who uses his books not to help him in his studies but to ornament his dining-room. Let a man, then, obtain as many books as he wants, but none for show.

[6] "It is more respectable," say you, "to spend one's money on such books than on vases of Corinthian brass and paintings." Not so: everything that is carried to excess is wrong. What excuses can you find for a man who is eager to buy bookcases of ivory and citrus wood, to collect the works of unknown or discredited authors, and who sits yawning amid so many thousands of books, whose backs and titles please him more than any other part of them?

[7] Thus in the houses of the laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators and historians stacked upon bookshelves reaching right up to the ceiling. At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath. I would excuse them straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall-furniture.

---

[4] studiorum quoque quae liberalissima impensa est tam diu rationem habet, quam diu modum. quo innumerabiles libros et bybliothecas, quarum dominus vix tota vita indices perlegit? onerat discentem turba, non instruit, multoque satius est paucis te auctoribus tradere, quam errare per multos.

[5] quadraginta milia librorum Alexandriae arserunt; pulcherrimum regiae opulentiae monimentum alius laudaverit, sicut T. Livius, qui elegantiae regum curaeque egregium id opus ait fuisse. Non fuit elegantia illud aut cura, sed studiosa luxuria, immo ne studiosa quidem, quoniam non in studium sed in spectaculum comparaverant, sicut plerisque ignaris etiam puerilium litterarum libri non studiorum instrumenta sed cenationum ornamenta sunt. paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in apparatum.

[6] "honestius," inquis, "hoc se impensae quam in Corinthia pictasque tabulas effuderint." vitiosum est ubique, quod nimium est. quid habes, cur ignoscas homini armaria e citro atque ebore captanti, corpora conquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum et inter tot milia librorum oscitanti, cui voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique?

[7] apud desidiosissimos ergo videbis quicquid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenus exstructa loculamenta; iam enim inter balnearia et thermas bybliotheca quoque ut necessarium domus ornamentum expolitur. ignoscerem plane, si studiorum nimia cupidine erraretur. nunc ista conquisita, cum imaginibus suis discripta sacrorum opera ingeniorum in speciem et cultum parietum comparantur.

[I]t is uniformly when parties have run highest and the strife has been deadliest that people have been most forward to stake their existence and every thing belonging to them, on some unintelligible dogma or article of an old-fashioned creed. Half the wars and fightings, martyrdoms, persecutions, feuds, antipathies, heartburnings in the world have been about some distinction, 'some trick not worth an egg'—so ready are mankind to sacrifice their all to a mere name!

egg (A) Something small and worthless. 'Not worth an egg(shell)' is proverbial (Tilley, E95, see Cor 4.4.21: 'Some trick not worth an egg'). The egg is 'Shakespeare's frequent measure of insignificance' (Holland, Cor, 332).

The ability of grim and elderly persons to make friends is limited by the fact that they tend to be cross-grained and take small pleasure in society.

ἐνν δὲ τοῖς στρυφνοῖς καὶ πρεσβυτικοῖς ἧττον γίνεται ἡ φιλία, ὅσῳ δυσκολώτεροί εἰσι καὶ ἧττον ταῖς ὁμιλίαις χαίρουσιν.

We are driven by fate, and must yield to fate.
No anxious fretting can alter
the threads from that commanding spindle.
All that we mortal beings endure,
all that we do, comes from on high;
Lachesis secures the decrees of her distaff,
things that are spun by her harsh hands.
Everything travels on a path cut for it,
and the first day decides the last.
Not even a god can change events
which run in a woven series of causes.
Each person's commanding thread of life
continues unchanged by any prayer.

Fatis agimur: cedite fatis.        980
non sollicitae possunt curae
mutare rati stamina fusi.
quidquid patimur mortale genus,
quidquid facimus venit ex alto
servatque suae decreta colus        985
Lachesis dura revoluta manu.
omnia secto tramite vadunt,
primusque dies dedit extremum.
non illa deo vertisse licet,
quae nexa suis currunt causis.        990
it cuique ratus
prece non ulla mobilis ordo.

Although his first publication was an edition of Cicero’s Pro Flacco, he delighted in saying that the chief reason to learn Latin was to read the apparatus criticus at the bottom of Greek texts.

They are throwing their weight about in this city which they hate, among men whose sight they dislike, and in a state for whose destruction they lacked not the will but the strength.

in hac igitur urbe se iactant quam oderunt, apud eos quos inviti vident, in ea re publica ad quam opprimendam non animus eis, sed vires defuerunt?

• Duties of Foreigners and Resident Aliens
• Rules for Refugees
• Visitors from Abroad

It is hard to go without one's dinner through sheer distress, but harder still to go without one's breakfast. Upon the strength of that first and aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to face the difficulties before one, and to dare the worst: but to be roused out of one's warm bed, and perhaps a profound oblivion of care, with golden dreams (for poverty does not prevent golden dreams), and told there is nothing for breakfast, is cold comfort for which one's half-strung nerves are not prepared, and throws a damp upon the prospects of the day. It is a bad beginning. A man without a breakfast is a poor creature, unfit to go in search of one, to meet the frown of the world, or to borrow a shilling of a friend. He may beg at the corner of a street—nothing is too mean for the tone of his feelings—robbing on the highway is out of the question, as requiring too much courage, and some opinion of a man's self. It is, indeed, as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age, expresses it, 'the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a man,' to learn, the first thing after he rises in the morning, or even to be dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea, or butter in the house, and that the baker, the grocer, and butter-man have refused to give any farther credit. This is taking one sadly at a disadvantage. It is striking at one's spirit and resolution in their very source,—the stomach—it is attacking one on the side of hunger and mortification at once; it is casting one into the very mire of humility and Slough of Despond.

Although the earliest Greek manuscript of the work dates from the thirteenth century AD, even in their fragmentary state Greek papyri from Egypt provide an indication that there were quite extensive lists of interpretations available. Dating to the third century AD, the earliest papyrus begins with the entry:

[A twitching of] the left buttock means joy: for the slave, something beneficial; for the virgin, blame will fall on the widow for strife [this is somewhat difficult to understand; there may be an allusion here the ancient reader would have recognised]; for the soldier, promotion.

This is in fact a more elaborate version of two short entries in Melampous' Twitchings, which indicate that twitching of either buttock means prosperity...

Dined Wilkes, gay.

WILKES. "Never a moment in my life low-spirited."

BOSWELL. "What shall I do to get life over?"

WILKES. "While there's all ancient and modern learning and all arts and sciences, enough for life if three thousand years."

BOSWELL. "Fate and free will?"

WILKES. "Let 'em alone."

WILKES. "I'm always happy. I thank God for good health, good spirits, and the love of books."

The result, as Georges Deyverdun and Edward Gibbon, the most acid of Boswell's reviewers, remarked, was "that kind of erudition which costs little and is worth less."

Thrice blest indeed the animal creation
That such things don't need their consideration!
They never try themselves for doing their will,
Nor suffer other adventitious ill;
Each kind's passed nature's bill straight into law:
But human life's a life not worth a straw;
Our laws have made us slaves of fantasies,
Our forebears' slaves and our posterity's;
Whate'er we aim at, evil's what we hit,
And we can always find excuse for it.

ὦ τρισμακάρια πάντα καὶ τρισόλβια
τὰ θηρί', οἷς οὐκ ἔστι περὶ τούτων λόγος·
οὔτ᾿ εἰς ἔλεγχον οὐδἐν αὐτῶν ἔρχεται,
οὔτ' ἄλλο τοιοῦτ' οὐδέν ἐστ' αὐτοῖς κακὸν
ἐπακτόν, ἣν δ' ἂν εἰσενέγκηται φύσιν
ἕκαστον, εὐθὺς καὶ νόμον ταύτην ἔχει.
ἡμεῖς δ' ἀβίωτον ζῶμεν ἄνθρωποι βίον·
δουλεύομεν δόξαισιν, εὑρόντες νόμους,
προγόνοισιν, ἐγγόνοισιν, οὐκ ἔστ' ἀποτυχεῖν
κακοῦ, πρόφασιν δ' ἀεί τιν' ἐξευρίσκομεν.

Labels: typographical and other errors

                                    Where there is no shame,
no concern for the law, no righteousness, goodness, loyalty,
rule is unstable.

                          Ubi non est pudor
nec cura iuris sanctitas pietas fides,
instabile regnum est.

The two friends hardly noticed the "Wha wants me?" Man, walking along High Street with a chaise percée for needy passers-by. The floppy overcoat he wore, though not fashionable, was practical, providing a modicum of privacy to his clients.³

3. Donald Campbell, Edinburgh: A Cultural History (Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2003), 42–43.

In Edinburgh, the capital city, whither you are going, they have not a private forica; but, as their houses, which are incredibly high, consist of eight or ten distinct families, each of which possesses an intire floor, so, at every stair's-head, you may see a great tub, called a cogue, that is the receptacle-general of the nastiness of a whole family; for all disembogue here promiscuously, both males and females, masters and mistresses, with their servants, without the least restraint of modesty or shame. When this is competently full, two lusty fellows, by the help of a cowl-staff, carry it by night to a window, and, after crying, 'Geud peeple, leuk to yar selles there,' out they throw it; he, that comes by, has great cause to bless his stars, if he comes off with piss. It may be, at high noon, and in the principal street, you shall meet a tattered wretch, with a monstrous cloke, and a close-stool under it, bawling out, 'Wha wants me?' For a half-penny you may be accommodated, and covered, whilst you are so.

Labels: noctes scatologicae