Laudator Temporis Acti

C.M. Bowra, excerpts from "Gold Dancing in the Air," quoted in Leslie Mitchell, Maurice Bowra: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 40-42:

Bell-beat of wild duck overhead
Vultures wheeling to pick the dead.

A pile of peat to feed the fire
Carcasses pinned on shell-shot wire.

Siesta on a grassy mound
Gas crawling over blood-drenched ground.

Parapets stacked with mouldy dead
To keep the wine in the wine glass red.

Boys bayoneted in the night
To keep official buttons bright.

Death on the ramparts, black with cold
Death in the squelching, watery mould.

Death dizzying in the riddled sky,—
Torn bodies left alone to die.

A people lashed to a wheel of fire
To satisfy a fool's desire.

Fields sliced to shreds and cities sacked
To keep a mothy creed intact.

Lithe bodies full of sap shot down
To gild the glory on a crown.

To slaughter pits the victims go
Gorging a ghastly triumph-show.

Bronze amour on the evening clouds
Shines in the face of muttering crowds.

Cold blasts that freeze the speaker's breath
Blow sharp as vengeance, cold as death.

Snow settling on the pavement stones
Wraps the flesh closer round the bones,

Freezes the vagrant, watery mood
Into an iron certitude,

Chilling the tongue that calls on Christ
For honour to be sacrificed.

[....]

A king sits in a golden crown—
Pull the man down, pull the man down.

Obsequious lackeys hang around—
Lock them in cellars underground.

Women with jewels in their hair,
Throw their pearls for swine to wear.

A sleek financier clothed in fur—
Hang him for a murderer.

Bird-like youths upon the wing—
Cage them up and make them sing.

Powdered girls with ruby lips
Learn to come to closer grips.

Parsons bent on knees to pray
Cheer Barabbas home today.

Soldiers shooting with God's will
Make game for other men to kill.

Schoolmasters who trade in lies
Tongueless try to moralize.

Philanderers who dream and dope—
The sharp kiss of the hangman's rope.

Marionettes who dream and sup
Machine-guns quickly fold you up.

Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza, chapter II:

There ought to be some way of dry-cleaning and disinfecting words. Love, purity, goodness, spirit—a pile of dirty linen waiting for the laundress.

Thucydides 7.68.2 (tr. Jeremy Mynott):

That they are our enemies, and the worst of enemies, you all know: they came to our land to enslave us; and had they succeeded they would have inflicted the most terrible suffering on our men, gross indignities on our women and children, and on the city as a whole the ultimate brand of shame.

ὡς δὲ ἐχθροὶ καὶ ἔχθιστοι, πάντες ἴστε, οἵ γε ἐπὶ τὴν ἡμετέραν ἦλθον δουλωσόμενοι, ἐν ᾧ, εἰ κατώρθωσαν, ἀνδράσι μὲν ἂν τἄλγιστα προσέθεσαν, παισὶ δὲ καὶ γυναιξὶ τὰ ἀπρεπέστατα, πόλει δὲ τῇ πάσῃ τὴν αἰσχίστην ἐπίκλησιν.

A.W. Gomme et al. ad loc.:

he means that, as happened at Melos (v.116.4), the men would have been killed, the women and children enslaved, and the site of the city would have passed into alien hands (cf. 64.1 n.); the αἰσχίστη ἐπίκλησις is probably ἀνάστατος (cf. vi.76.2).

ἀνάστατος is an adjective, meaning "removed, driven out, ruined...devastated, destroyed...emptied, left bare" (Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek).

Aristotle, fragment 668 Rose (tr. Aaron J. Kachuck):

The more of a solitary and lonely man I am, the more I become a lover of myths.

ὅσῳ γὰρ αὐτίτης καὶ μονώτης εἰμί, φιλομυθότερος γέγονα.

J. Michael Waller, "The Biden Administration’s 'Disinformation' Board Is A Tool Straight From Soviet Russia's KGB," The Federalist (May 9, 2022):

"Disinformation" is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seems to support Waller's claim (mismatched parentheses in online original):

perhaps < Russian dezinformacija (1949, in S. I. Ožegov Slovar' russkogo jazyka, allegedly < French, although French désinformation is not recorded until 1954 (Quemada, Matériaux (1971) II. 53)

The earliest English example cited in the OED is dated 1955.

If you search for "disinformation" in Google Books with a custom date range (e.g. 1500-1900, or 1900-1950), you will get dozens of hits. But a spot check of these Google Books hits indicates that they are all bogus. I could not verify a single genuine example within those date ranges. By the way, I wish Google Books would bring back its "Sort by Date" feature.

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Update: To Wikipedia, s.v. Disinformation, I owe this example from a Kansas newspaper, the Medicine Lodge Cresset (February 17, 1887), p. 3: Thanks to Mike Zim for drawing my attention to a yet earlier example, from The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi, March 25, 1875), p. 4: Related post: First Occurrence.

Homer, Iliad 24.128-132 (Thetis to Achilles; tr. Peter Green):

My child, how long will you go on eating your heart out
with weeping and lamentation, thinking neither of food
nor of bed? A good thing it is to lie with a woman,
to make love: for you've not long to live—even now, already,
death and all-mastering destiny are there beside you.

τέκνον ἐμὸν τέο μέχρις ὀδυρόμενος καὶ ἀχεύων
σὴν ἔδεαι κραδίην μεμνημένος οὔτέ τι σίτου
οὔτ᾽ εὐνῆς; ἀγαθὸν δὲ γυναικί περ ἐν φιλότητι        130
μίσγεσθ᾽· οὐ γάρ μοι δηρὸν βέῃ, ἀλλά τοι ἤδη
ἄγχι παρέστηκεν θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κραταιή.

128 ἐμὸν - 131 μίσγεσθ᾽ om. Y
130-132 ath. Aristarchus

Henry Adams, letter to Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (April 11, 1862):

I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.

M.L. West, The Making of the Odyssey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. vii-viii:

I make more reference to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship, and less to more recent work, than is fashionable. Many contemporary writers on Homer seem to cite nearly everything they have read, but to have read little that is more than thirty or forty years old. There is much intelligent and valuable criticism to be found in the older literature, and I have tried to seek it out and to give credit for significant insights where it is due. These are ghosts who deserve their sip of blood (or ink) so that their voice can be heard again. Or as Friedrich Hebbel put it in his Requiem,

Seele, vergiß sie nicht,
   Seele, vergiß nicht die Toten!

Sieh, sie umschweben dich,
Schauernd, verlassen,
Und in den heiligen Gluten,
Die den Armen die Liebe schürt,
Atmen sie auf und erwarmen,
Und genießen zum letzten Mal
Ihr verglimmendes Leben.

Translation of Hebbel, by Richard Stokes:

Soul, forget them not!
forget not the dead!

See, they hover around you,
Shuddering, forsaken,
And in the holy ardour
Which love rouses in the poor,
They breathe once more and take on warmth
And enjoy for one last time
Their fading life.

Related post: Blood for the Ghosts.

Aristophanes, Birds 1271-1273 (tr. Stephen Halliwell):

O Peisetairos! Blessed! O wisest of men!
Illustrious! Most wise! Most brilliant too!
O three-times-blessed! [faltering] What's next?

ὦ Πισθέταιρ᾽ ὦ μακάρι᾽ ὦ σοφώτατε,
ὦ κλεινότατ᾽ ὦ σοφώτατ᾽ ὦ γλαφυρώτατε,
ὦ τρισμακάρι᾽ ὦ — κατακέλευσον.

Critical apparatus from N.G. Wilson's edition in the Oxford Classical Texts series: There is no discussion of this passage in N.G. Wilson, Aristophanea: Studies on the Text of Aristophanes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Nan Dunbar (student edition) ad loc.:

This string of vocatives has (not surprisingly) caused confusion in the paradosis, and edd. disagree whether the repetition of ὦ σοφώτατ᾽ (1271, 1272) is a scribal error, having in one or other line ousted something else from the text, or Ar.'s device to make the herald's greeting sound too excited and spontaneous to be polished. The question is complicated by uncertainty over the meaning of imper. κατακέλευσον in 1273; in Σ it is variously glossed by σιωπὴν κήρυξον, 'call for silence', and παύσασθαι παρακέλευσαί μοι, 'tell me to stop', implying that the herald himself cannot think how to end his stream of ὦ + voc., although running out of superlatives. Both explanations see a reference to orders given by boatswains to rowers. As the only other ex. of the verb in class. Gr., at Ra. 207 κατακέλευε δή (Dionysos to Charon when beginning to row), seems from Charon's response to mean give the tempo to rowers, the herald here could be appealing to Peis. either to steady his (already faltering) rhythm by providing more vocatives, or helpfully to give him the cue to end the greetings and begin his message. On either interpretation Ar. himself probably indicated the herald's limited resources by the inelegant repetition of ὦ σοφώτατ᾽ in 1271-2. Alternatively the herald may be asking Peis. to order silence from the excited Chorus, who have begun to flutter about and utter cries when the herald carrying a golden crown begins to pour out praises of Peis.; in that case Peis. does so by a wordless gesture while asking the herald for his message. But even then the repeated ὦ σοφώτατ᾽, although comically artless, would not be strange: his σοφία (cf. 1274-5) is the stated reason for mankind's honouring Peis. With ὦ τρισμακ. beginning 1273, not 1272, its reinforcement of the initial ὦ μακάρι᾽ aptly shows the herald's effort to create a climax just before he decides that he must stop. The encomiastic vocatives piled up here mix congratulation of Peis. on his triumph (over the Olympians) with praise of the mental powers which have produced it. ὦ μακάρι᾽ . . . ὦ τρισμακάρι᾽. 'Blessedness' is normally reserved for the gods, and exceptionally predicated of humans at some peak of good fortune, e.g. on marrying (1721-2n.), winning an athletic victory (Pi. P. 5.20-1), or having outstanding offspring (Nu. 1206-8). The congratulation on his σοφία (cf. Nu. 1206-7) prepares for the citation explaining the award of the golden crown (1274-5n.). ὦ γλαφυρώτατε. The adj., lit. smooth, occurs first here of mental qualities, presumably = subtle, astute, from its regular association with σοφός vel sim. ὦ κατακέλευσον. For ὦ + imper. cf. 661 n.; for ὦ κατακέλευσον see above on 1271-3.

Søren Kierkegaard, "Short and Sharp," no. 5, The Instant, no. 6 (August 23, 1855), tr. Walter Lowrie, in Kierkegaard's Attack upon "Christendom" 1854-1855 (1944; rpt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 183, with note on p. 298:

It is related of a Swedish priest³⁵ that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, "Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie."

³⁵ In the fifteenth century this story was told of a friar at Naples, who on Good Friday had harrowed the congregation by his description of the Lord's Passion, and seeing them in tears had tried to comfort them by the reflection that "all this was a long time ago, so let us hope it is not true."

Isocrates, Helen 5 (tr. David Mirhady, slightly modified):

It is much better to conjecture reasonably about useful things than to have precise knowledge of what is useless, and to be a little ahead in important matters is better than to excel in small matters that are no help in life.

πολὺ κρεῖττόν ἐστι περὶ τῶν χρησίμων ἐπιεικῶς δοξάζειν ἢ περὶ τῶν ἀχρήστων ἀκριβῶς ἐπίστασθαι, καὶ μικρὸν προέχειν ἐν τοῖς μεγάλοις μᾶλλον ἢ πολὺ διαφέρειν ἐν τοῖς μικροῖς καὶ τοῖς μηδὲν πρὸς τὸν βίον ὠφελοῦσιν.

Leslie Mitchell, Maurice Bowra: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 9, with note on p. 321:

He told Paddy Leigh Fermor that he would always be grateful that his parents had raised no objection to his learning Latin and Greek, 'though they themselves had seen nothing in it'.³²

32. C.M. Bowra to P. Leigh Fermor, 15 Nov. [?]; Bowra MSS.

Related post: Appalling and Horrifying.

Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.16.5-8 (tr. Mary Francis McDonald):

[5] That, in truth, will be an abominable and detestable time, when life will be pleasant for no man. Cities shall be torn up from their foundations, and men will perish, not only by fire and sword, but also by the constant earthquakes and floods, frequent sicknesses, and prevailing hunger.

[6] The air will be vitiated and become corrupt and pestilential; now from unseasonable rains, again from unusual dryness. At one time it will be too hot, at another too cold. Nor will the earth give any profit to man: no plant, no tree, no vine will bear anything, and although they will have given very great hope in flower, they will deceive in fruit.

[7] The springs also, along with rivers, will grow dry, so that there will not even be a supply of drinking water on hand, and the waters will be changed into blood or bitterness.

[8] On account of this, the animals on the land will fail and so will the birds in the air and the fish in the sea.

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[5] tum vero detestabile atque abominandum tempus existet, quo nulli hominum sit vita iucunda. eruentur funditus civitates atque interibunt non modo ferro atque igni, verum etiam terrae motibus adsiduis et eluvie aquarum et morbis frequentibus et fame crebra.

[6] aer enim vitiabitur et corruptus ac pestilens fiet modo importunis imbribus modo inutili siccitate, nunc frigoribus nunc aestibus nimiis, nec terra homini dabit fructum; non seges quidquam, non arbor, non vitis feret, sed cum in flore spem maximam dederint, in fruge decipient.

[7] fontes quoque cum fluminibus arescent, ut ne potus quidem suppetat, et aquae in sanguinem aut amaritudinem mutabuntur.

[8] propter haec deficient et in terra quadrupedes et in aere volucres et in mari pisces.

Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), The Language of the Third Reich. LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook, tr. Martin Brady (2000; rpt. London: Continuum, 2006), p. 69:

There was an old grammar school joke which was handed down from generation to generation; now that Greek is taught in only a handful of secondary schools it has probably died out. The joke ran as follows: how did the German word Fuchs (fox) evolve from the Greek word for fox, alopex ( ἀλώπηξ)? Through the sequence alopex, lopex, pex, pix, pax, pucks, Fuchs.

Es gab einen alten Gymnasialwitz, der sich von Generation zu Generation forterbte; jetzt, da nur noch in den wenig- sten Mittelschulen Griechisch gelehrt wird, dürfte er ausgestorben sein. Der Witz hieß: Wie ist das deutsche Wort Fuchs aus dem gleichbedeutenden griechischen alopex ( ἀλώπηξ) entstanden? In dieser Entwicklungsreihe: alopex, lopex, pex, pix, pax, pucks, Fuchs.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Waste Books D.173 (tr. Clare Haworth-Maden):

He has written eight volumes. He would surely have done better to plant eight trees, or produce eight children.

Acht Bände hat er geschrieben. Er hätte gewiß besser getan, er hätte 8 Bäume gepflanzt oder 8 Kinder erzeugt.

Robert Conquest, "The Abomination of Moab," Encounter (May 1970) 56-64 (at 58):

Criticism nowadays all too often tends to resemble phrenology—a sophisticated methodology with an erudite jargon, dealing with material on the face of it closely connected with the subject, but in reality almost totally irrelevant to the main questions. This would not matter, perhaps, were it not usually in the service of the vicious or absurd. As Housman remarked in another context:

The old unscientific days are everlasting; they are here and now; they are renewed perennially by the ear which takes formulas in, and the tongue which gives them out again....

Hat tip: John O'Toole.

Euripides, Hippolytus 104 (tr. W.S. Barrett):

Each has his likes, in gods and men alike.

ἄλλοισιν ἄλλος θεῶν τε κἀνθρώπων μέλει.

F.A. Paley ad loc.:

The sense is, 'As some care for one person and not for another, so it is with men's feelings towards the gods.' Schol. οὐ πάντες τοὺς αὐτοὺς θεοὺς σέβομεν, οὐδὲ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀγαπῶμεν. ἀλλ᾿ ἄλλοι μὲν τόνδε, ἄλλοι δὲ τόνδε. ὁμοίως δὲ κἀγὼ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν σέβω, ἄλλοι δὲ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην.

My translation of the scholium:

We don't all worship the same gods, nor do we all love the same men. But some this one, others that one. In the same way, I worship Artemis, others Aphrodite.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos, edd. Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper (New York: New York Review Books, 2013), p. 82:

How the Bulgars hated the Byzantines, just as their descendants abominate the modern Greeks today — and how abundantly the hatred is returned! With what relish, in the Church of the Forty Martyrs, Gatcho translated the inscriptions commemorating the victory of Ivan Asen over the Byzantine host and the capture of Theodore Comnene! The hatred is epitomized on either side by the act of one Byzantine emperor, Basil the Bulgar-slayer, who totally blinded a captured Bulgarian army of ten thousand men, leaving a single eye to each hundredth soldier so that the rest might grope their way home to the czar: a spectacle so atrocious that the czar, when the pathetic procession arrived, died of grief and shock. This dark mediaeval deed is still a source of sombre pride to fierce rustic enemies of Bulgaria in Greece and, to judge by history, the Bulgars have been attempting to redress the balance ever since. For one reason or another, the Bulgars have always detested all their neighbours. They have their hate to keep them warm.

C.M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1957), pp. 76-77, with note on p. 204:

A third characteristic of Athenian democracy was freedom of speech. This was regarded as fundamental and interpreted in a generous manner. The Athenians had almost no laws of libel or slander, and their political debates were as candid and vituperative as their private and forensic quarrels. They seem to have welcomed a remarkable degree of outspokenness, and to have felt that it was part of the game to vilify one's opponents. In politics, of course, this had its dangers, when demagogues like Cleon and Hyperbolus carried the assembly of citizens with them by the crude violence of their words, and we can understand why they provoked answers in a like spirit, as when Andocides says of Hyperbolus: 'I am ashamed to mention the name of Hyperbolus; his father is a branded slave, who up to the present day works in the public mint; he himself is a foreigner, a barbarian, and a lampmaker.'²⁸ More surprising is the unlimited licence allowed to comedy, which stuck at nothing in deriding public characters. Aristophanes makes unbridled fun of philosophers like Socrates, generals like Lamachus, politicians like Cleon, and poets like Euripides. This fun is reckless, scurrilous, and often ill-natured. His Socrates is a verminous charlatan, his Lamachus a preposterous fire-eater, his Cleon a violent and revengeful crook, his Euripides a conceited and touchy exhibitionist. In these caricatures there must be an element of truth, since otherwise they would fail to make their full effect. Aristophanes was not frightened by any influence or reputation and knew exactly where to plant a wound. No modern society, however democratic, would allow such licence, and it is a notable tribute to the self-assurance of the Athenians, that even in anxious times of war they were able to tolerate and enjoy it. It had of course the virtue that it was a safety-valve for emotions which might otherwise have taken more violent forms than mere words. Athenian democracy may sometimes have suffered from it, but the assumption that it was indispensable to a civilized community was in the main a source of strength. A people which can laugh at itself is well armed against many catastrophes.

28. Fr. 5 Blass.

The fragment from Andocides:

Περὶ Ὑπερβόλου λέγειν αἰσχύνομαι, οὗ ὁ μὲν πατὴρ ἐστιγμένος ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐν τῷ ἀργυροκοπείῳ δουλεύει τῷ δημοσίῳ, αὐτὸς δὲ ξένος ὢν καὶ βάρβαρος λυχνοποιεῖ.

Artemis Cooper, Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David (1999; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 2011), chapter 5 (page number unknown):

In later life she often admitted, quite simply, that she had been in love with Norman Douglas. This was hardly surprising, for one of the strongest loves is that of a disciple for a teacher, and Norman was the best teacher Elizabeth ever had. She admired his rigorous scholarship and broad learning, and everything he said or did struck a chord in her. Much of what he taught her she already knew, on an instinctive level: what Norman did was to express, develop and refine the principles which she wanted to guide her life. Look for what is true and authentic; see things as they are; be constantly vigilant against the pretentious and the sham; above all, please yourself and take the consequences.

He was also, to the core of his being, a Darwinist and an atheist. He did not believe in loving one's neighbour, and loathed any system of thought that advocated either complete equality, or complete submission. Fascism and Communism both wanted to turn people into termites, and were therefore to be abhorred. Democracy was also dangerous because he believed it to be based on a fallacy — to him, people were anything but equal.

Id. (note omitted):

Shortly before they were due to leave, Norman gave Elizabeth a copy of Old Calabria. 'Old-fashioned stuff, my dear,' he said as he presented it. 'Heavy going. I don't know whether you'll be able to get through it.' On the flyleaf he wrote 'Always do as you please, and send everybody to Hell, and take the consequences. Damned good Rule of Life. N.'