Laudator Temporis Acti

En tibi, egregie Lector, novum Indicem librorum prohibitorum ex praecepto sanctissimi domini nostri Jeff Bezos pontificis maximi diligentissime recognitum et publicatum.

• Geisel, Theodor Seuss. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
• —— If I Ran the Zoo
• —— McElligot's Pool
• —— On Beyond Zebra!
• —— Scrambled Eggs Super!
• —— The Cat's Quizzer

Variae profecto atque innumerabiles sunt inimicorum calliditates artesque nocendi: sed cum primis est plena periculorum intemperantia scribendi, disseminandique in vulgus quae prave scripta sunt. Nihil enim cogitari potest perniciosius ad inquinandos animos per contemptum religionis perque illecebras multas peccandi. Quamobrem tanti metuens mali, et incolumitatis fidei ac morum custos et vindex Ecclesia Amazoniana, maturrime intellexit, remedia contra eiusmodi pestem esse sumenda: ob eamque rem id perpetuo studuit, ut homines, quoad in se esset, pravorum librorum lectione, hoc est pessimo veneno, prohiberet.

Aristophanes, fragment 581, lines 1-10 (tr. S. Douglas Olson):

(A.) In mid-winter you'll see cucumbers, grapes, fruit of all kinds,
garlands of violets— (B.) Also a blinding duststorm, I expect!
(A.) The same man will be selling thrushes, pears, honey-comb, olives,
beestings, after-birth pudding, swallow-figs, cicadas, still-born kids;
and you'd see harvest-baskets pouring out a mix of figs and myrtle-berries as thick as snow.
(B.) So they're going to sow gourds along with their turnips,
with the result that no one knows what time of year it is any more?
(A.) Isn't this the best possible situation—
if a person can buy whatever he wants anytime of year?
(B.) No—it's the greatest disaster possible!
Because otherwise they wouldn't desire things or spend their money.

(A.) ὄψει δὲ χειμῶνος μέσου σικυούς, βότρυς, ὀπώραν,
στεφάνους ἴων <(Β.) οἶμαι δὲ καὶ> κονιορτὸν ἐκτυφλοῦντα.
(Α.) αὑτὸς δ᾿ ἀνὴρ πλωλεῖ κίχλας, ἀπίους, σχαδόνας, ἐλάας,
πυόν, χόρια, χελιδόνας, τέττιγας, ἐμβρύεια.
ὑρίσους δ᾿ ἴδοις ἂν νειφομένους σύκων ὁμοῦ τε μύρτων.        5
(Β.) ἔπειτα κολοκύντας ὁμοῦ ταῖς γογγυλίσιν ἀροῦσιν,
ὥστ᾿ οὐκέτ᾿ οὐδεὶς οἶδ᾿ ὁπηνίκ᾿ ἐστι τοὐνιαυτοῦ;
(Α.) <ἆρ᾿ οὐ> μέγιστον ἀγαθόν, εἴπερ ἔστι δι᾿ ἐνιαυτοῦ
του τις ἐπιθυμεῖ λαβεῖν; (Β.) κακὸν μὲν οὖν μέγιστον·
εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἦν, οὐκ ἂν ἐπεθύμουν οὐδ᾿ ἂν ἐδαπανῶντο.        10

R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. III 2: Aristophanes, Testimonia et Fragmenta (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 298-299:
See the commentary in S. Douglas Olson, Broken Laughter. Select Fragments of Greek Comedy. Edited with Introduction, Commentary, and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 105-107.

Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981), pp. 159-160, with note on p. 295:

Under the category of demons the Byzantines included a wide variety of spirits, each one of whom had a defined function or location. At the most primitive level we find the maleficent spirits of nature who hardly belong to the Christian view of things. A particularly detailed prayer of exorcism falsely attributed to St Basil gives the following enumeration of them:

Take fright, leave, flee, depart, O unclean demon . . . wherever you happen to be, . . . whether you have the form of a serpent or the face of a beast or are like a vapor or like a bird, . . . whether you appear in the morning or at noon or at midnight or at some other untimely hour or at dawn, . . . whether you are in the sea or in a river or under the earth or in a well or by a cliff or in a ditch or in a lake or in a bed of reeds or in a forest ... or in a grove or in a thicket or in a tree or in a bird or in thunder or on the roof of a bath or in a pool of water, whether we know or do not know whence you have come . . . depart to a waterless, desert and untilled land where no man dwells.²⁰

20 J. Goar, Euchologion sive rituale graecorum (Paris, 1647), 30-1.

Richard Wünsch (1869-1915) first used the terms apopompē (ἀποπομπή) and epipompē (ἐπιπομπή) to describe two different ways of banishing evil. See his "Zur Geisterbannung im Altertum," Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau = Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 13/14 (1911) 9-32. Wünsch used apopompē to mean simply driving away evil, epipompē to mean driving away evil onto someone or something else or to some other specific location. In this prayer of exorcism attributed to St. Basil we see an example of epipompē.

Luigi Cornaro (1467?-1566), The Art of Living Long, tr. anon. (Milwaukee: William F. Butler, 1914), pp. 66-67 (from the First Discourse, composed at age 83):

And now, since some sensual and unreasonable men pretend that long life is not a blessing or a thing to be desired, but that the existence of a man after he has passed the age of sixty-five cannot any longer be called a living life, but rather should be termed a dead one, I shall plainly show they are much mistaken; for I have an ardent desire that every man should strive to attain my age, in order that he may enjoy what I have found and what others, too, will find — to be the most beautiful period of life. For this purpose I wish to speak here of the pastimes and pleasures which I enjoy at this advanced season of life. I desire, in this manner, openly to bear witness to all mankind — and every person who knows me will testify to the truth of what I say — that the life which I am now living is a most vital one, and by no means a dead one; and that it is deemed, by many, a life as full of happiness as this world can give.

Those who know me well will give this testimony, in the first place, because they see, and not without the greatest admiration and amazement, how strong I am; that I am able to mount my horse without assistance; and with what ease and agility I can not only ascend a flight of stairs, but also climb a whole hill on foot. They also see how I am ever cheerful, happy, and contented — free from all perturbations of the soul and from every vexatious thought; instead of these, joy and peace have fixed their abode in my heart, and never depart from it. Moreover, my friends know how I spend my time, and that it is always in such a manner that life does not grow tedious to me; they see that there is no single hour of it that I am not able to pass with the greatest possible delight and pleasure.

---

Ora perchè alcuni uomini sensuali e non ragionevoli dicono che non è bene vivere lungamente, e che come passa l'età di 65 anni, non si può chiamar vita viva, ma vita morta; perché molto s’ingannano, come dimostrerò, (essendo il desiderio mio, che tutti cerchino di pervenire alla mia età, perché godino ancora essi della più bella che si possa vivere), voglio in questo luogo narrare quali sieno ora i miei passatempi, ed il gusto ch'io prendo in questa mia etade della vita: per far viva fede ad ognuno di quello che medesimamente faranno tutti quelli che mi conoscono, cioè, che la vita che ora io vivo è vita vivissima, e non morta; e tale che da molto è tenuta felice, per questa felicità che si può avere in questo mondo.

E questa fede faranno prima perchè vedono, e non senza grandissima loro ammirazione, la mia prosperità, e come monto da me a cavallo senza vantaggiò alcuno, e come ascendo non una scala sola, ma tutto un colle a piè gagliardamente; poi come io sono allegro, piacevole e contento, e libero dalle perturbazioni dell'animo, o da ogni nojoso pensiero. In vece de'quali stanziano nel mio cuore sempre gioja e pace, sì che indi mai non si dispartono. Oltre a ciò, sanno come passo il mio tempo, sicché non mi rincresce la vita, perché io non abbia da passarla a tutte l'ore con mio sommo diletto e piacere.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), Vanity Fair, Chapter II:

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981), p. 140, with notes on p. 294 (on Leo the Mathematician):

Among Leo's academic colleagues only Cometas is otherwise attested: we know that he prepared a new edition of Homer, probably one transliterated into the minuscule script.²⁸ Leo himself took some part in editing the text of Plato and possessed several scientific manuscripts including a Ptolemy and a Euclid. He appears to have dabbled in astrology and to have made predictions. One of his students, a certain Constantine the Sicilian, was so shocked by Leo's teaching that he consigned him posthumously to Hell, where he would burn for all eternity along with his fellow-pagans — Plato and Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus, Homer, Hesiod, Aratus and the whole damned lot of them.²⁹

28 Anthol. Palatina, xv. 36-8. Cf. R. Aubreton, 'La translittération d'Homère,' Byzantion, xxxix (1969), 13-34.

29 P. Matranga, Anecdota graeca (Rome, 1850), 555-6.

Seneca, On the Happy Life 20.3 (tr. Aubrey Stewart):

I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all mankind.

ego terras omnis tamquam meas videbo, meas tamquam omnium.

Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris 2.1.701-706 (their, them, they = the gods; tr. Roy Pascal):

If by their grace a man does deeds of joy,
Rescues his loved ones from disaster,
If he expands his realm, secures his frontiers,
And sees old enemies take flight or fall,
Then he may give them thanks! For they
Have granted him life's first and last delight.

Wenn sie dem Menschen frohe Tat bescheren,
Dass er ein Unheil von den Seinen wendet,
Dass er sein Reich vermehrt, die Grenzen sichert,
Und alte Feinde fallen oder fliehn;
Dann mag er danken! denn ihm hat ein Gott
Des Lebens erste, letzte Lust gegönnt.

Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981), p. 83, with note on p. 290:

So [Theodore] Ptochoprodromos learnt his letters, but to what avail? His cupboard contained nothing but piles of paper and he had nothing to eat. And so he compares his poverty to the plenty of his neighbours. The worker in gold thread has his larder full of bread and wine, of cooked tunny and dried mackerel. The shoemaker, when he wakes up in the morning, sends his boy to purchase tripe and Vlach cheese, and only after he has breakfasted on these delicacies does he start work. At dinner-time he lays aside his last and his tools and bids his wife serve a meal of three dainty courses. With obsessional attention to what everyone has to eat, Ptochoprodromos compares himself to the practitioners of other professions, even the lowliest—the tailor who happens to be a houseowner, the bakery assistant, the yogurt vendor, the itinerant seller of clothes and pepper-grinders, the butcher. All of them have a full stomach. What then is the use of Homer and Oppian?⁵²

52 D.-C. Hesseling and H. Pernot (eds.), Poèmes prodromiques en grec vulgaire (Amsterdam, 1910), 72ff.

This reminds me of Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana (New York, 1856), p. 300:

At the house of the same gentleman I introduced Cogan to Porson, saying, "This is Mr. Cogan, who is passionately fond of what you have devoted yourself to,—Greek."

Porson replied, "If Mr. Cogan is passionately fond of Greek, he must be content to dine on bread and cheese for the rest of his life."

Gian Biagio Conte, Ope Ingenii: Experiences of Textual Criticism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), p. 20:

I remember that when Eduard Fraenkel held his seminars at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, he used to say to us, every now and then, with a smile: "A philologist is always happy when he finds a parallel".¹⁵ He spoke Italian very well, but, in an error caused by the German eine Parallele, he got the gender of the word wrong in Italian (… "when he finds a parallel bar"); and we, too, smiled in amusement at his mistake.

15 See the recordings of two seminars (on Ajax and Philoctetes) interspersed with exuberant exclamations and witty, learned obiter dicta in Due seminari romani di Eduard Fraenkel, with an introduction by L.E. Rossi, Sussidi Eruditi 28, Edizioni di Storia e Letter., Rome 1977.

Catullus 63.50-61 (tr. David Mulroy):

Land of our fathers, creator of life, land of my birth,        50
land that I fled (fatal mistake!) like a fugitive slave
deserting his lords, steering my path to the forests of Ida
to live in the region of snow and the cold stables of beasts,
visiting animals’ hidden retreats, brimming with madness,
where do I reckon you lie, fatherland, how can I see you?        55
My eye by itself struggles to fasten its gaze on your shores
during my soul’s fleeting remissions from furious madness.
Am I to be torn from my home, kept in these faraway places?
Lost to my friends, parents, and country, and all that I own.
Gone from the forum and the wrestling ground, tracks and gymnasia?        60
What absolute misery! Spirit, repent over and over!

patria o mei creatrix, patria o mea genetrix,        50
ego quam miser relinquens, dominos ut erifugae
famuli solent, ad Idae tetuli nemora pedem,
ut apud nivem et ferarum gelida stabula forem
et earum operta adirem furibunda latibula,
ubinam aut quibus locis te positam, patria, reor?        55
cupit ipsa pupula ad te sibi derigere aciem,
rabie fera carens dum breve tempus animus est.
egone a mea remota haec ferar in nemora domo?
patria, bonis, amicis, genitoribus abero?
abero foro, palaestra, stadio et gyminasiis?        60
miser a miser, querendum est etiam atque etiam, anime.

54 operta vel opaca L. Mueller, amica Muretus: omnia codd.

C.J. Fordyce ad loc.:

Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris 1.3.351-355 (tr. Roy Pascal):

Happy are they who gladly remember their ancestors;
Whose delight it is to please the hearer
With tales of their deeds and greatness, and in quiet joy
See themselves linked to a noble chain.

Wohl dem, der seiner Väter gern gedenkt,
Der froh von ihren Taten, ihrer Größe,
Den Hörer unterhält und still sich freuend
Ans Ende dieser schönen Reihe sich
Geschlossen sieht!

Walter Scott, The Antiquary, chapter IX:

"There was always some idle story of the room being haunted by the spirit of Aldobrand Oldenbuck, my great-great-great-grandfather—it’s a shame to the English language that, we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently."

Thanks to Eric Thomson for the quotation from Scott.

Guy de Maupassant, letter to Gustave Flaubert (July 5, 1878; tr. Roger Pearson):

From time to time I have such a clear perception of the pointlessness of everything, of the unthinking malice of creation, of the emptiness that lies ahead (whatever form the future may take) that I am filled with a sad indifference towards all things and I just want to sit in a corner and stay there, devoid of hope and free from all vexation.

Il me vient par moments des perceptions si nettes de l'inutilité de tout, de la méchanceté inconsciente de la création, du vide de l'avenir (quel qu'il soit) que je me sens venir une indifférence triste pour toutes choses et que je voudrais seulement rester tranquille, tranquille dans un coin, sans espoirs et sans embêtements.

Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981), pp. 67-68, with notes on p. 289:

Another symptom of disintegration was urban violence. It may be argued, of course, that riots were nothing new and that in the previous two centuries there had been no lack of food riots, religious riots and theatre riots. There was, however, from the reign of Anastasius onwards an escalation of violence which centred more and more on the hippodrome. The two main factions, the Blues and the Greens, regularly came to blows and then went on to commit arson. The list of these disturbances is very long and some of them resulted in enormous damage, like the great pogrom at Antioch in 507 and the famous Nika riot at Constantinople (532) which is said to have left thirty thousand corpses and reduced the centre of the city to ashes. When Antioch had been almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 526 with an alleged death-toll of 250,000, the warring factions became reconciled, but only for a short time.¹⁷ Especially chilling (if, doubtless, somewhat exaggerated) is the account given by Procopius of the hippodrome thugs who, he alleges, were given complete licence by the Emperor Justinian to rob and kill, rape women and extort money, with the result that respectable citizens no longer dared to go out after dark.¹⁸ In the light of our own experience we have no trouble in visualizing those bands of youths with long beards and moustaches, with dangling hair, dressed in deliberately barbaric fashion, who engaged in gang warfare when they were not waylaying innocent people. We also have no difficulty in believing what all the Byzantine sources tell us, namely that this was mindless hooliganism and nothing more. As has recently been demonstrated,¹⁹ the Blues and the Greens had no political objectives, no explicit class grievances or religious identification. But while hooliganism has no philosophy, no one will deny that it is a symptom — be it of urban decay or a loss of values or an overly dull and regimented society.

17 Malalas, Chronographia, CSHB, 422.

18 Procopius, Secret History, vii.

19 A. Cameron, Circus Factions (Oxford, 1976).

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 516-517 (Volume 1, Part II, chapter 1, tr. Thomas P. Whitney):

Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can't we seem to grasp that simple teaching? Can't we understand that with property we destroy our soul?

So let the herring keep warm in your pocket until you get to the transit prison rather than beg for something to drink here. And did they give us a two-day supply of bread and sugar? In that case, eat it in one sitting. Then no one will steal it from you, and you won't have to worry about it. And you'll be free as a bird in heaven!

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.

Look around you—there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this and then separate once and for all. Put your ear to their quiet humming and the steady clickety-clack beneath the car. After all, it is the spinning wheel of life that is clicking and clacking away there.

Hat tip: Joel Eidsath.

Related posts:

• Self-Sufficiency
  
• Omnia Mea Mecum Porto
  
• Riches and Poverty

Francis Hastings Doyle (1810-1888), "The Private of the Buffs," The Return of the Guards and Other Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883), pp. 95-96 (line numbers added):

"Some Seiks, and a private of the Buffs, having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown on a dunghill." — See China Correspondent of the "Times."

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
    He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
    Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,        5
    He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
    And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
    Bewildered, and alone,        10
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
    He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
    Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through him        15
    Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish¹ hop-fields round him seem'd,
    Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam'd,
    One sheet of living snow;        20
The smoke, above his father's door,
    In gray soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
    Doom'd by himself, so young?

Yes, honour calls!—with strength like steel        25
    He put the vision by.
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
    An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
    With knee to man unbent,        30
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
    To his red grave he went.

Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed;
    Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,        35
    The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe ring—
    A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,
    Because his soul was great.        40

¹ The Buffs, or East Kent Regiment.

J.P. Entract, "A Postscript to 'The Private of the Buffs'," Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol. 41, No. 165 (March, 1963) 42-46 (at 45, bracketed material added):

Moyes was neither a "Kentish Man" nor a "Man of Kent" [cf. line 17] but a Scot. Although the connection of the regiment with Kent (for recruiting purposes) dates from 1782, there is no record of their being stationed in the county during Moyes's period of service. The depot at Canterbury was not established until the 1870s.

[....]

He was no "lad" [line 28] but a man of 32, with fifteen years' service and the Crimea medal, who had only recently lost the responsible rank of Colour-Serjeant. In this connection, it may be that the climate was beginning to take its toll, as it has done to many others in the "outposts of Empire."

Some additional notes:

Seiks = Sikhs

Line 6: Elgin = James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China and the Far East during the 2nd Opium War

Line 39: Sparta's king = Leonidas, who fell with the 300, fighting against the Persians at Thermopylae (480 BC)

Doyle's poem used to appear often in anthologies, e.g. in Henry Van Dyke, ed., Poetry: Idyls and Stories in Verse (Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1924 = The Pocket University, XI), pp. 284-285 — see also Asa Don Dickinson, "The Guide to Daily Reading," in The Guide to Reading (Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1925 = The Pocket University, XXIII), pp. 79-161 (at 153, under December 1). But it seems to have fallen out of favor today. William Robertson Smith Stott (1878-1939),
Private John Moyse, The 3rd (East Kent, The Buffs) Regiment of Foot,
refusing to kow-tow before the Tartar Mandarin Tsan-koo-lin-sin, 1860
(National Army Museum, Accession Number 2001-04-329-1)
That was then, this is now:

Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris 1.2.75-78 (tr. David Luke):

ARCAS. Do you feel orphaned and in exile here?
IPHIGENIA. Can a strange land become our native soil?
ARCAS. And yet your own land has grown strange to you.
IPHIGENIA. That is why my heart bleeds and cannot heal.

ARKAS. Scheinst du dir hier vertrieben und verwaist?
IPHIGENIE. Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS. Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE. Das ist's, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.

Cyril Mango (1928-2021), Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981), p. 30, with note on p. 286:

As far as we can judge, the main links of solidarity were two: regional and religious. People identified themselves with their village, their city or their province much more than they did with the Empire. When a person was away from home he was a stranger and was often treated with suspicion. A monk from western Asia Minor who joined a monastery in Pontus was 'disparaged and mistreated by everyone as a stranger'.³³ The corollary to regional solidarity was regional hostility. We encounter many derogatory statements concerning 'the cunning Syrian' who spoke with a thick accent, the uncouth Paphlagonian, the mendacious Cretan. Alexandrians excited ridicule at Constantinople. Armenians were nearly always described in terms of abuse. Even demons, as we shall see in Chapter 7, had strong feelings of local affiliation and did not want to consort with their fellows from the next province.

33 John Climacus, Scala paradisi, PG lxxxviii, 721.

Id., p. 162:

These naively reported incidents prompt a number of observations. We may note, first, the strong local feeling exhibited by the demons: those of Gordiane considered themselves tougher than those of Galatia; the demons that hailed from Cappadocia refused to let themselves be confined at Germia, and their plea was considered reasonable by St Theodore.

Related posts:

• Native Soil
• Patria Chica
• Provincialism
• A Blade of Grass
• This Is My Home
• Near and Dear
• Parochialism
• One World
• Local Attachment
• Patriotism
• Insularity
• Le Patriotisme de Clocher
• Home Sweet Home

George Eliot, letter to Sara Hennell (October 28, 1865):

But it seems to me much better to read a man's own writing than to read what others say about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the "others" third-rate.

Related posts:

• Ancient and Modern Books
• A Piece of Advice
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• What to Read
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Demosthenes 4.40-41 (tr. J.H. Vince):

But you, Athenians, possessing unsurpassed resources—fleet, infantry, cavalry, revenues—have never to this very day employed them aright, and yet you carry on war with Philip exactly as a barbarian boxes. The barbarian, when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.

So you, if you hear of Philip in the Chersonese, vote an expedition there; if at Thermopylae, you vote one there; if somewhere else, you still keep pace with him to and fro. You take your marching orders from him; you have never framed any plan of campaign for yourselves, never foreseen any event, until you learn that something has happened or is happening.

ὑμεῖς δ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, πλείστην δύναμιν ἁπάντων ἔχοντες, τριήρεις, ὁπλίτας, ἱππέας, χρημάτων πρόσοδον, τούτων μὲν μέχρι τῆς τήμερον ἡμέρας οὐδενὶ πώποτ᾽ εἰς δέον τι κέχρησθε, οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἀπολείπετε, ὥσπερ οἱ βάρβαροι πυκτεύουσιν, οὕτω πολεμεῖν Φιλίππῳ. καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνων ὁ πληγεὶς ἀεὶ τῆς πληγῆς ἔχεται, κἂν ἑτέρωσε πατάξῃ τις, ἐκεῖσ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ χεῖρες· προβάλλεσθαι δ᾽ ἢ βλέπειν ἐναντίον οὔτ᾽ οἶδεν οὔτ᾽ ἐθέλει.

καὶ ὑμεῖς, ἂν ἐν Χερρονήσῳ πύθησθε Φίλιππον, ἐκεῖσε βοηθεῖν ψηφίζεσθε, ἂν ἐν Πύλαις, ἐκεῖσε, ἂν ἄλλοθί που, συμπαραθεῖτ᾽ ἄνω κάτω, καὶ στρατηγεῖσθ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου, βεβούλευσθε δ᾽ οὐδὲν αὐτοὶ συμφέρον περὶ τοῦ πολέμου, οὐδὲ πρὸ τῶν πραγμάτων προορᾶτ᾽ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν ἢ γεγενημένον ἢ γιγνόμενόν τι πύθησθε.

T. Gwatkin ad loc. (click once or twice to enlarge):