Laudator Temporis Acti

Jessica Riskin, "A Poisonous Legacy," The New York Review of Books (June 22, 2023):

While Leland [Stanford] personifies the American success story, [David Starr] Jordan typifies a certain heroic image of science that became powerful in tandem with that story. This new science defined itself by its separateness from all other modes of understanding—by its reductionism, instrumentalism, utilitarianism, and pragmatism. It had no time for Greek or Latin, literature or history, speculations or interpretations, or any idea without immediate industrial and economic application. It had little time for books: "Study nature not books" was one of Jordan's mottoes.

[....]

Jordan's mode of science and Leland's mode of business were twin expressions of an aspiring industrial class that envisioned itself elbowing aside a senescent elite mumbling in Greek and Latin.

Hat tip: Jim K.

Horace, Odes 4.3.24 (tuum = the Muse Melpomene's; tr. Niall Rudd):

the fact that I breathe the breath of music and give pleasure (if I do give pleasure) is all of your doing.

quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.

I don't see "the breath of music" in the Latin.

W.A. Camps, "Critical and Exegetical Notes," American Journal of Philology 94.2 (Summer, 1973) 131-146 (at 144-145):

spiro in line 24 is generally taken by recent editors and commentators (though not by all readers) as meaning in effect 'I have inspiration.' But this value for the word does not appear to be exemplified elsewhere. On the other hand a well-attested value of spiro is 'be alive': e.g., Propertius 4.7.11 uocem misit adhuc spirantis (Cynthia's ghost); Ovid Heroides 5.29 cum Paris Oenone poterit spirare relicta ... (in Paris' vow of fidelity cut on a tree); Cicero Mil. 91 qui ab (against) eo spirante forum putant potuisse defendi, cuius non restiterit cadaveri curia. A natural meaning of line 24 is thus 'that I live and please (if indeed I please) is your doing.' And this meaning is both explained and confirmed by Ovid Tristia 4.10.121-22, where Ovid also, like Horace here, is thanking his Muse: tu mihi, quod rarum est, uiuo sublime dedisti / nomen, ab exequiis quod dare fama solet. Martial echoes the sentiment in 3.95.7-8 notumque per oppida nomen / non expectato dat mihi fama rogo.

Annamaria Taliercio, "L'interpretazione di Hor. Carm. IV 3 24 quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est," Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale 40.1/2 (1998) 313-319, doesn't mention Camps.

Plautus, Persa 753-756 (tr. Paul Nixon):

Now that our foes are vanquished and our citizens safe, our state tranquil, peace assured, and the war brought to a triumphant termination, with our army and garrisons intact, I do thank thee, Jupiter, for thy kindly aid, and to all the other denizens of heaven do I offer thanks for that I have wreaked such glorious vengeance on mine enemy.

hostibus victis, civibus salvis, re placida, pacibus perfectis,
bello exstincto, re bene gesta, integro exercitu et praesidiis,
quom bene nos, Iuppiter, iuvisti, dique alii omnes caelipotentes,
eas vobis gratis habeo atque ago, quia probe sum ultus meum inimicum.

For parallels with prayers of thanksgiving uttered by triumphant Roman generals see Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus, tr. Tomas Drevikovsky and Francis Muecke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 163-165, and Paul J. Burton, "Warfare and Imperialism in and Around Plautus," in George Fredric Franko and Dorota Dutsch, edd., A Companion to Plautus (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), pp. 301-316 (at 306-308). I don't have access to Erich Woytek's commentary on this play (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1982).

Joseph Matthew Conlon, Persa: Introduction and Commentary (diss. Princeton University, 2016), p. 318:

caelipotentes: The adjective is found only here.

But Thesaurus Linguae Latinae s.v. caelipotens (3:75) also cites Prudentius, Apotheosis 660:

sit nisi caelipotens aquilonum conditor idem?

For some conjectures that no one seems to mention see Louis Havet, Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1911), p. 237 (click once or twice to enlarge):

J. Huizinga (1872-1945), The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman (1924; rpt. London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 55:

So the mistake, it may be argued, is theirs, and our conception of the Middle Ages is right. This would be so if, to understand the spirit of an age, it sufficed to know its real and hidden forces and not its illusions, its fancies, and its errors. But for the history of civilization every delusion or opinion of an epoch has the value of an important fact.

Id., p. 91:

And even political history itself, under penalty of neglecting actual facts, is bound to take illusions, vanities, follies, into account. There is not a more dangerous tendency in history than that of representing the past as if it were a rational whole and dictated by clearly defined interests.

Erasmus, Ciceronianus (LeClerc I 978; tr. Betty I. Knott):

Bulephorus Quite so. But tell me, Nosoponus, surely you don't spend the whole night on one letter?

Nosoponus What do you mean, one letter? I feel the Muses have accepted my devotions if a winter's night produces one single period.

Bulephorus So you write a great long letter on this rather insignificant topic?

Nosoponus No, indeed, I write a very short one, you can be sure of that, not longer than six periods.

Bulephorus So naturally six nights will be enough to complete it?

Nosoponus As if it were enough to write things once! You must reshape what you've written ten times, check it against your word-lists ten times, in case some tiny illegitimate word has slipped past your guard. Then you have to check it again for figures of speech and idioms, and finally for rhythms and word order.

Bulephorus That really is doing the job thoroughly.

Nosoponus My dear fellow, even that's not enough. When you've worked it over as carefully as you can, you must put it aside for several days so that in the interval your affection for your brain-child may cool off, and you read your own words as if they were somebody else's. It's at this point that you exercise really severe criticism. This is where we have that strict impartial judgment, ἀδέκαστος 'immune to bribery,' as the Greeks call it, where the author ceases to be a parent and becomes an Areopagite. At this point one very often takes one's eraser and rubs it all out.

BVL. Quidni? Verum age Nosopone. Num tota nox vni datur epistolae?

NOSOP. Quid mihi narras vnam? Musis pulchre videor litasse, si periodum vnicam absoluerit nox hyberna.

BVL. Ita ne de re tam non magna, tam prolixas scribis litteras?

NOSOP. Imo perbreues, ne sis insciens, vt quae sextam periodum non excedant.

BVL. Quin igitur sex noctes sufficiunt his absoluendis?

NOSOP. Quasi satis scripsisse semel. Decies refingendum quod scripseris: decies ad indicem exigendum, ne qua forte dictiuncula te fefellerit adulterina. Rursus altera superest examinatio de tropis ac formulis, postrema de numeris et compositione.

BVL. Hoc nimirum est opus absoluere.

NOSOP. Ne id quidem satis ô bone. Dehinc quod elaboratum est cura, quanta potest maxima, seponendum est in aliquot dies, vt ex interuallo, refrigerato iam inuentionis amore, velut aliena legas, quae tua sunt. Hic demum grauis agitur censura: Hoc seuerum, incorruptum, et, vt Graeci vocant, ἀδέκαστον iudicium, vbi qui scripsit ex parente fit Areopagites. Hic saepenumero fit, vt verso stilo, nihil relinquas.

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Vergil, Georgics 2.490-515 (tr. C. Day Lewis):

Lucky is he who can learn the roots of the universe,
Has mastered all his fears and fate's intransigence
And the hungry clamour of hell.
But fortunate too the man who is friends with the country gods—
Pan and old Silvanus and the sisterhood of nymphs:
The fasces have no power to disturb him, nor the purple
Of monarchs, nor civil war that sets brother at brother's throat,
Nor yet the scheming Dacian as he marches down from the Danube,
Nor the Roman Empire itself and kingdoms falling to ruin.
He has no poor to pity, no envy for the rich.
The fruit on the bough, the crops that the field is glad to bear
Are his for the gathering: he spares not a glance for the iron
Rigour of law, the municipal racket, the public records.
Other men dare the sea with their oars blindly, or dash
On the sword, or insinuate themselves into royal courts:
One ruins a whole town and the tenements of the poor
In his lust for jewelled cups, for scarlet linen to sleep on;
One piles up great wealth, gloats over his cache of gold;
One gawps at the public speakers; one is worked up to hysteria
By the plaudits of senate and people resounding across the benches:
These shed their brothers' blood
Merrily, they barter for exile their homes beloved
And leave for countries lying under an alien sun.
But still the farmer furrows the land with his curving plough:
The land is his annual labour, it keeps his native country,
His little grandsons and herds of cattle and trusty bullocks.

felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas        490
atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum
subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari:
fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.
illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum        495
flexit et infidos agitans discordia fratres,
aut coniurato descendens Dacus ab Histro,
non res Romanae perituraque regna; neque ille
aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti.
quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia rura        500
sponte tulere sua, carpsit, nec ferrea iura
insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit.
sollicitant alii remis freta caeca, ruuntque
in ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum;
hic petit excidiis urbem miserosque penatis,        505
ut gemma bibat et Sarrano dormiat ostro;
condit opes alius defossoque incubat auro;
hic stupet attonitus rostris, hunc plausus hiantem
per cuneos geminatus enim plebisque patrumque
corripuit; gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,        510
exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant
atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem.
agricola incurvo terram dimovit aratro:
hic anni labor, hinc patriam parvosque nepotes
sustinet, hinc armenta boum meritosque iuvencos.        515

Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962; rpt. 1963), pp. xi-xii:

Having myself lived through a couple of world wars and having read a certain amount of history, I am no longer disposed to take very seriously the professions of "war aims" that nations make. I think that it is a serious deficiency on the part of historians and political writers that they so rarely interest themselves in biological and zoological phenomena. In a recent Walt Disney film showing life at the bottom of the sea, a primitive organism called a sea slug is seen gobbling up smaller organisms through a large orifice at one end of its body; confronted with another sea slug of an only slightly lesser size, it ingurgitates that, too. Now, the wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of the sea slug. It is true that among the animals other than man it is hard to find organized aggression of the kind that has been developed by humanity. There are perhaps only the army ants which have mastered a comparable technique. But baboons travel in gangs; small birds will gang up on an owl; bees will defend a hive. The anthropoid gorilla, it seems, is now one of the least pugnacious of mammals: he lives in a family tree and does not molest the homes of others; but there is evidence that primitive man had to fight to defend his home. In any case, all animals must prey on some form of life that they can capture, and all will eat as much as they can. The difference in this respect between man and the other forms of life is that man has succeeded in cultivating enough of what he calls "morality" and "reason" to justify what he is doing in terms of what he calls "virtue" and "civilization." Hence the self-assertive sounds which he utters when he is fighting and swallowing others: the songs about glory and God, the speeches about national ideals, the demonstrations of logical ideologies. These assertions rarely have any meaning—that is, they will soon lose any meaning they have had—once a war has been got under way.

Plautus, Persa 668, in Plautus, The Merchant. The Braggart Soldier. The Ghost. The Persian. Edited and translated by Wolfgang de Melo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011 = Loeb Classical Library, 163), pp. 532-533:

non edepol minis trecentis cara est.

She wouldn't expensive at three hundred minas.

Add be after wouldn't. The mistake persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Gavin Maxwell (1914-1969), The Ten Pains of Death (London: Longmans, 1959), pp. 46-50 (quoting a Sicilian cowherd named Nenè; notes omitted):

While the animals graze I pass the time playing my flute and lying in the shade of a rock or a tree. All the herd boys like me have flutes—we make them ourselves out of thick bamboo stems and when we make a good one we keep it for ever. I can do bird-songs on my flute, too, and you can have a wonderful time doing that, getting the birds to answer you one after another. I play herd songs a lot of the time, and when I meet another herdboy we play part songs. I can sing hundreds of verses of songs—I love them—and I've learnt dozens and dozens from other herdboys I've met in the mountains. The songs go on for ever, and there's as many verses as grains of sand on the seashore. One learns more every day and makes up more every day—I could sing right through the night until dawn without repeating a verse twice.

The songs are beautiful, but a lot of them are pretty dirty—if I'm singing the evening when there's a lot of contadini coming home from work and they hear me singing those ones they tell my father and he tells me off.

[....]

Then there's songs you in alternate verses with someone you can hear but most times can't see. These arc called botta e risposta. We herds don't often meet each other in the mountains—each of us takes his animals to different places because there's not enough grass to go round, but we can play games together even if we're far apart. You hear the voice of another herd singing far away and you wait for the right moment and answer him. If he hears you start up alternate verses like this:

I sing: Who are you that singing up there?
You sound like a yapping puppy.

and he answers: And who are you wailing away down there?
You sound as if you had toothache in every tooth.

I: You know nothing about singing—
You'd better go and learn at school in Palermo.

He: You say I don't know how to sing—
You'd better go to school at Monreale.

I: Don't you come round here again—
Everyone says you're a cretin.

He: It's you that's got to quit this valley—
Everyone knows about you.

I: When you were born behind my door
I thought you were a still-born bitch-pup.

He: When you were born in the middle of my street
There was an awful stink of dung.

[....]

But that would be too short for a real botta e risposta; I've left out a hundred verses in the middle. If one of us stopped as soon as that the other would think he'd had an accident. Sometimes I've sung a botta for the whole night—one's voice sounds better at night. We don't take offence at what we sing to each other—if we did we wouldn't sing them, or else we'd go and beat each other up. If you're clever enough you can invent new verses, but you have to make them rhyme properly.

Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406), "Invitation à son jubilé de cinquantaine," Oeuvres complètes, Vol. IV (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1884), p. 116 (my translation):

Come to my jubilee:
I've passed the fifty-year mark.

All my good time has gone away:
Come to my jubilee.

My body's a total wreck.        5
Farewell! Remember me!
Come to my jubilee:
I've passed the fifty-year mark.

---

Venez a mon jubilé:
J'ay passé la cinquantaine.

Tout mon bon temps est alé:
Venez a mon jubilé.

Mon corps est tout affolé.        5
Adieu! de moy vous souviengne!
Venez a mon jubilé:
J'ay passé la cinquantaine.

Id., vol. X (1901), p. 4, s.v. Afoler, cites this poem for the meaning endommager.

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Declaration of Independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Is "when" now?

Ecclesiasticus 2:10 (KJV):

Look at the generations of old ...

ἐμβλέψατε εἰς ἀρχαίας γενεὰς ...

Lucian, The Downward Journey 24 (tr. A.M. Harmon):

RHADAMANTHUS. For every wicked deed that each of you has done in his life he bears an invisible mark on his soul.

CYNISCUS. Here I am naked, so seek out the marks you mention.

RHADAMANTHUS. The man is altogether free from marks, except for these three or four, very faint and uncertain.

ΡΑΔΑΜΑΝΘΥΣ. ὁπόσα ἄν τις ὑμῶν πονηρὰ ἐργάσηται παρὰ τὸν βίον, καθ' ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἀφανῆ στίγματα ἐπὶ τῆς ψυχῆς περιφέρει.

ΚΥΝΙΣΚΟΣ. ἰδού σοι γυμνὸς παρέστηκα· ὥστε ἀναζήτει ταῦτα ἅπερ σὺ φὴς τὰ στίγματα.

ΡΑΔΑΜΑΝΘΥΣ. καθαρὸς ὡς ἐπίπαν οὑτοσὶ πλὴν τούτων τριῶν ἢ τεττάρων ἀμαυρῶν πάνυ καὶ ἀσαφῶν στιγμάτων.

This reminds me of the milk bottle illustration of venial sins from the Baltimore Catechism:

P.G. Naiditch, Problems in the Life and Writings of A.E. Housman (Beverly Hills: Krown & Spellman, 1995), p. 35:

Oral tradition has a fine sound to it. It seems to promise knowledge new and true, delicate and important. Occasionally, it is as good as its promise. But, in essence, oral tradition is not in itself superior to a written account. The format of a story does not guarantee its truth. Plainly, oral or written, published or unpublished, the tale is the product of men, and men are fallible. Obviously, then, it becomes men, who also are historians or biographers, to scrutinise their data narrowly and to evaluate it with suspicious care. It is no part of their business to rake it into their house unsorted.

Erasmus, Ciceronianus (LeClerc I 974; tr. Betty I. Knott):

Who wouldn't prefer to be celebrated by posterity as a Ciceronian rather than as a saint?

Quis enim non malit apud posteros celebrari Ciceronianus quam sanctus?

Photograph taken by my brother at Kezar Lake in Lovell, Maine:

Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406), "Contre le temps présent," Oeuvres complètes, Vol. I (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1878), pp. 113-114 (my translation):

Time of mourning and of temptation,
Age of weeping, of envy and of torment,
Time of feebleness and of damnation,
Age leading near to completion.
Time full of horror, that does everything falsely,        5
Age mendacious, full of pride and envy,
Time without honor and without true judgement,
Age that shortens life in sadness.

Time without respect, time of ruin,
Age fraudulent, everything goes disloyally,        10
Time in error, near to conclusion,
Time thieving, full of rapacity,
Time, look at your heart, come to repentance,
Age sinful, for your faults cry mercy,
Time seductive, seek salvation,        15
Age that shortens life in sadness.

Time without sweetness and of cursing,
Age that embraces every vice in rottenness,
Time of folly, see your punishment,
Age flattering, wise is he who repents:        20
Time, the anger of the high judge comes down,
Age, your soul won't find refuge with the judge,
Time fraudulent, change your direction,
Age that shortens life in sadness.

---

Temps de doleur et de temptacion,
Aages de plour, d'envie et de tourment,
Temps de langour et de dampnacion,
Aages meneur pres du definement.
Temps plains d'orreur qui tout fait faussement,        5
Aages menteur, plain d'orgueil et d'envie,
Temps sanz honeur et sanz vray jugement,
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

Temps sanz cremeur, temps de perdicion,
Aage tricheur, tout va desloiaument,        10
Temps en erreur, pres de finicion,
Aage robeur, plain de ravissement,
Temps, voy ton cuer, vien a repentement;
Aage pecheur, de tes maulx merci crie;
Temps seducteur, impetre sauvement,        15
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

Temps sanz douçour et de maleiçon,
Aage en puour qui tout vice comprant,
Temps de foleur, voy ta pugnicion,
Aage flateur, saige est qui se repent:        20
Temps, la fureur du hault juge descent,
Aage, au jugeur t'ame ne fuira mie:
Temps barateur, mue ton mouvement,
Aage en tristour qui abrege la vie.

Greek Anthology 6.130 (by Leonidas; also preserved by Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 26.5, and Pausanias 1.13.3; tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

These shields, now suspended here as a gift to Athena Itonis,
Pyrrhus the Molossian took from valiant Gauls,
after defeating the entire army of Antigonus; which is no great wonder;
for now, as well as in olden time, the Aeacidae are brave spearmen.

τοὺς θυρεοὺς ὁ Μολοσσὸς Ἰτωνίδι δῶρον Ἀθάνᾳ
    Πύρρος ἀπὸ θρασέων ἐκρέμασεν Γαλατᾶν,
πάντα τὸν Ἀντιγόνου καθελὼν στρατόν. οὐ μέγα θαῦμα·
    αἰχμηταὶ καὶ νῦν καὶ πάρος Αἰακίδαι.

Brave doesn't occur in the Greek. W.R. Paton translates the last line as "Now, as of old, the sons of Aeacus are warriors."

See Denver Graninger, Cult and Koinon in Hellenistic Thessaly (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 52-54.

J. Huizinga (1872-1945), The Waning of the Middle Ages, tr. F. Hopman (1924; rpt. London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 9:

We, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed.

G.W. Bowersock, The Crucible of Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 35-37, with notes on pp. 169-170:

It is not easy nowadays to use the word “paganism” in discussing religious beliefs, simply because it has no clear meaning. It is usually defined by what it is not, and in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean context that meant neither Jewish nor Christian. The word “pagan” (paganus) evokes a Latin word for a rustic or country person, and it is certainly true that many local cults, such as those that worship trees, springs, and other natural features, would explain such a designation. But in Greek the early Christian word for pagan (ethnikos) pointed simply to ethnic or national differences. It was formed from ethnos (nation), a word much like goy in Hebrew, which meant “nation” in the Bible but later changed to designate any non-Jew, and the Septuagint translation of the Bible into Greek naturally facilitated this change. Greek ethnikos was then literally matched by the Latin equivalent gentilis, and both eventually came, like goy, as well as the English Gentile, to designate non-Jews.⁴

Meanwhile, ethnikos in the sense of pagan gave way in later Christian texts to hellēn (Greek) because after Constantine the cultivation of classical Greek culture was generally linked to pagan Greek religion — neither Christian nor Jewish. But hellēn, although an increasingly common word for paganism in later Greek, never wholly lost its connection with Hellenism, and this could be profoundly embarrassing for a Christian like Gregory of Nazianzus, who had been educated in classical Greek learning.⁵ In general, the word “polytheism” is infinitely preferable to paganism because, unlike paganism, it has a precise meaning, which is the worship of many gods.

Surprisingly it took scholars of the modern era a long time to come to the banal realization that pagan cults that were indisputably polytheist often showed a hierarchy of gods, with a supreme god such as Jupiter or Zeus over all. Consequently this realization has inspired a flood of attempts to legitimate something called “pagan monotheism” or even “soft monotheism.”⁶ But no one familiar with Greek cults could possibly imagine that the pre-Christian Greeks were monotheists, even if in later antiquity various unnamed gods were occasionally perceived as parts (merē) of a single god. That is most famously shown in the so-called Tübingen Theosophy, from which one oracle appears on an inscription at Oenoanda in Anatolia.⁷ But such thinking arose from the philosophical reflections of later Platonism, and ideas of this kind shared their roots with Christian theology as it spread throughout the Roman Empire. These ideas may have actually been influenced by Platonism, since paganism and Christianity had much more fruitful interaction than is sometimes imagined. It is hardly a secret that many of the Church Fathers, like Gregory of Nazianzus, were steeped in the works of Plato. The recently fashionable attention to pagan monotheism, traces of which can undoubtedly be found, as the Tübingen Theosophy shows, is limited in its application. Paganism that was polytheist did not die, and it goes without saying that there can be no such absurdity as polytheist monotheism, nor even soft monotheism.

4. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Paul and the Invention of the Gentiles,” Jewish Quarterly Review 105 (2015): 1–41. This thorough and important analysis might have been clearer if the author had avoided discussing the issue by reference to the English “Gentile,” which obviously Paul did not use. Rosen-Zvi rightly highlights the sense of ethnos in relation to goy, but Paul’s ethnê, which included barbarians (Rom. 1:14), can be more inclusive than Gentile. Paul sometimes conveys the idea of Gentile by hellēn (Greek), as in Romans 1:16, 2:9, and 2:10.

5. See Gregory of Nazianzus’s indignation over Julian’s appropriation of Greek learning in Orat. 4: A. Kurmann, Gregor von Nazianz, Oratio 4 gegen Julian, Ein Kommentar (Basel: Reinhardt, 1988).

6. Pagan monotheism owes its prominence in current scholarship to the publication of Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, ed. P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). For pre-Islamic Arab paganism, see G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and P. Crone, “The Religion of the Qur’ānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57 (2010): 151–200.

7. Louis Robert, “Un oracle gravé à Oenoanda,” CRAI (1971): 597–619, reprinted in Opera Minora Selecta (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989), 5:617–639.