Laudator Temporis Acti

George Chalmers, The Life of Thomas Ruddiman (London: John Stockdale, 1817), p. 320, note d:

This anecdote is contained in the following extract of a letter from Randolph to Cecil, dated at St. Andrew's, the 7th of April 1562, in the Paper Office:— "The Queen readeth daily, after her dinner, instructed by a learned man Mr. George Bowhannan, somewhat of Lyvie."— This transaction did honour to both parties: to Mary, in thus employing her leisure: to Buchanan, in having such a scholar to instruct, in the beauties of Livy.

Livy 5.6.17 (speech of Appius Claudius; tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt):

Does not Roman liberty consist in the glorious privilege of snapping our fingers at the Senate and magistrates, and looking with contempt upon law, tradition, established ordinance, and military discipline?

ea demum Romae libertas est, non senatum, non magistratus, non leges, non mores maiorum, non instituta patrum, non disciplinam vereri militiae.

From Eric Thomson:

Aubrey de Sélincourt manages to extract "the glorious privilege of snapping our fingers at" and "look with contempt upon" from only two words in the Latin (non … vereri). Quite a feat. A ratio 1 to 6.

Homer, Odyssey 24.485-486 (tr. A.T. Murray):

                   And let them love one another
as before, and let wealth and peace abound.

                                τοὶ δ᾽ ἀλλήλους φιλεόντων
ὡς τὸ πάρος, πλοῦτος δὲ καὶ εἰρήνη ἅλις ἔστω.

Livy 5.3.6 (speech of Appius Claudius; tr. B.O. Foster):

Indeed they are like quack-salvers seeking employment, since they desire that there should always be some disease in the body politic, that there may be something which you may call them in to cure.

sic hercule tamquam artifices improbi opus quaerunt; quippe semper aegri aliquid esse in re publica volunt, ut sit ad cuius curationem a vobis adhibeantur.

Robert E.A. Palmer, "On Mutinus Titinus: A Study in Etruscan-Roman Religion and Topography,", in his Roman Religion and Roman Empire: Five Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974), pp. 187-206 (at 191-192, with notes on 271):

The second of the god's names, titinus, has also been brought into connection with an Italic cult of fertility by function of the phallus.²¹ The nearly unique evidence stems from the scholiast on a word in Persius' first Satire:

tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena
ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum
intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.²²

The comment runs: "ingentes Titos dicit Romanos senatores aut a Tito Tatio rege Sabinorum aut certe a membri virilis magnitudine dicti titi. titos scholasticos quod sint vagi neque uno magistro contenti et in libidinem proni sicut aves quibus comparantur, nam titi columbae sunt agrestes." The first explanation can be attributed to the fact that in some way the three ancient tribes of the Ramnes, Luceres, and Titienses still served as senatorial divisions,²³ and that this division was thought to have descended from the followers of Tatius. The second explanation, appropriate to Persius' intent, uniquely provides knowledge of the word titus "penis." The afterthought on the wandering scholars and the wild dove is not applied to Persius' words. Nevertheless, the bird called titus is more important than all the lexical items because it is the oldest from the viewpoint of semantics and of the surviving evidence. In etymologizing the names of various priesthoods, Varro wrote: "sodales Titii <ab avibus titis> dicti quas in auguriis certis observare soient."²⁴ Elsewhere the writer has argued that the Sodales Titii took their name from the Curia Titia and that the Curia Titia took its name from the wild dove.²⁵ In a word, both the priests and the political division derive their names from the dove. Certain authors would combine Titinus with titus "penis," and thus extend the phallic cult. Moreover, the Sodales Titii are brought into the same combination in order to provide a priesthood for Mutinus Titinus and, not so incidentally, to recreate the history of the obscure priesthood.²⁶ The premisses of the arguments are slight. As Poucet points out, several animals in many languages yield names for genital parts, and not all such genital names yield the titles of priesthoods.²⁷ It is quite possible that Titinus is derived directly from titus "dove."

The name of the bird precedes the name of the penis. Italian offers the best parallel with uccello, defined even in dictionaries for Italian high school students as "penis" after the original "bird" (a diminutive of L. avis).<sup>28

21</sup> The principal discussions of the deity, besides Poucet's (above, n. 14) are K. Vahlert RE 16 (1933), cols. 979-87, G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer² (Munich, 1912), pp. 169 and 243-44, Κ. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1960), p. 69, G. Radke, Die Götter Altitaliens = Fontes et Commentationes 3 (1965), pp. 225-26 and 305. Also, see S. Weinstock RE 6A2 (1937), cols. 1538-40 on the Sodales Titii.
²² Pers. Sat. 1.19-21.
²³ Palmer, op. cit., p. 217.
²⁴ LI. 5.85. The restoration of the text is as certain as can be. Cf, Serv. on Verg. Ecl. 1.57 (and Philarg. ad loc.): "palumbes" columbae quas vulgus tetas vocat.
²⁵ Palmer, op. cit., pp. 93-95.
²⁶ See the works cited in note 21.
²⁷ Poucet, op. cit., pp. 386-87; see below.
²⁸ Poucet amusingly lists a few modern usages. Without attempting to grace them with such lexical citation as Poucet gives, I can add the English "cock" and "pussy."

Poucet = Jacques Poucet, Recherches sur la légende sabine des origines de Rome (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1967 = Université de Louvain. Recueil de Travaux d'Histoire et de Philologie, ser. 4, fasc. 37).

Palmer might have cited Hans Herter, "De Mutino Titino," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 76.4 (1927) 418-432 (at 426-427). On titus = penis see also J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 32, 44, 214.

Craig Simpson, "University cancels Anglo-Saxon ‘to decolonise’ the curriculum. Masters course renamed as academics worry term suggests ‘nationalist narratives’," The Telegraph (31 August 2024):

The term Anglo-Saxon has been removed from a University’s module titles to tackle “nationalist narratives”.

The University of Nottingham offers leading courses in Anglo-Saxon history and literature and is the only university in the country to offer a Viking Studies course.

But in a move to “decolonise the curriculum”, professors have renamed a masters course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies as Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.

A module within the programme titled “Research Methods in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies” has also had the “Anglo-Saxon” term removed in favour of “Early Medieval English”.

It follows a similar move in the United States, where academics in particular have campaigned against the term “Anglo-Saxon” because it suggests a distinct, native Englishness.

The terminology of “Early mediaeval England” is the preferred replacement for “Anglo- Saxon” by academics concerned that the latter has become a phrase used by racists surrounding white identity.

These have largely been based in the US, where the term has been used to describe those descended from white early settlers.

The university has also said it is seeking to “problematize the term ‘Viking’” in its tuition.

An English literature module “A Tale of Seven Kingdoms: Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age England from Bede to Alfred the Great” was also renamed “Early mediaeval England from Bede to Alfred the Great”.

It comes amid concerns over the connections of “race, empire, Nazism” to Norse culture and mythology.

The Nazis made use of Norse runic figures in their iconography, including the stylised “S” figures of the SS.

The move follows a pledge made in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests to decolonise the curriculum, a term denoting a move away from Western-centred material and the dominance of “white voices” in academia.

Etc.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who comments:

And so it goes on. Perhaps England itself, OE Ænglaland, land of the Angles, will be next to be "problematized". What might be an acceptable alternative? Perhaps 'land of the many peoples', or in Old English ‘monigra folca land’, Mongreland for short. Let the witanegemot decide it.

Related posts:

• Anglo-Saxon
• Use of a Forbidden Ethnonym

A.N. Wilson, Hilaire Belloc (New York: Athenaeum, 1984), p. 6:

Belloc liked to aver that you belonged to the flower of the bourgeoisie if you knew the maiden names of your four great-grandmothers.

In that respect, but in no other, I belong to the flower of the bourgeoisie — the maiden names of my four great-grandmothers are Hannah Sophia Dahmann and Malinda A. Matthews (paternal side), Grace Albina Racine and Marie Louise Benoit (maternal side).

The Journal of the de Goncourts; pages from a great diary, being extracts from the Journal des Goncourt. Edited, with introduction, by Julius West (London: T. Nelson, 191-?), p. 91:

August 21. — In the Bois de Boulogne. To see all these great trees fall under the axe, with the quiverings of men wounded to death; to see these [sic, read there], where a green curtain was spread, this mass of sharpened stakes, shining whitely, this sinister harrow — you feel a hatred of the Prussians rising in your heart; they are the cause of these violations of nature.

21 août. — Au bois de Boulogne. À voir sous la cognée tomber ces grands arbres, avec des vacillements de blessés à mort, à voir là, où c’était un rideau de verdure, ce champ de pieux aigus, luisant blanc, cette herse sinistre, il vous monte de la haine au cœur pour ces Prussiens, qui sont cause de ces assassinats de la nature.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), The Path to Rome (1902; rpt. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1916), p. x:

Now there is another thing book writers do in their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say "my thanks are due to such and such" all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats!

Seneca, Agamemnon 604-610 (tr. John G. Fitch):

Who can fully break out of bondage?
Only one who scorns the fickle gods,
who looks without gloom at gloomy Styx,
looks upon dark Acheron’s face,
and has courage to set an end to life:
such a one is a match for kings, for gods.
How wretched to be unschooled in dying!

solus servitium perrumpet omne
contemptor levium deorum,        605
qui vultus Acherontis atri,
qui Styga tristem non tristis videt
audetque vitae ponere finem:
par ille regi, par superis erit.
o quam miserum est nescire mori!        610

R.J. Tarrant ad loc.: This is how Seneca himself escaped from bondage. On his suicide see Miriam T. Griffin, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 367-388.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Daybreak (Morgenröthe, tr. Walter Kaufmann), Book IV, § 302:

Once, twice and three times true!—People lie unspeakably often, but afterwards they do not remember it and on the whole do not believe it.

Einmal, zweimal und dreimal wahr!—Die Menschen lügen unsäglich oft, aber sie denken hinterher nicht daran und glauben im Ganzen nicht daran.

Homer, Odyssey 24.433-436 (Eupeithes speaking; tr. A.T. Murray):

For a shame is this even for men that are yet to be to hear of, if we shall not take vengeance on the slayers of our sons and our brothers. To me surely life would then no more be sweet; rather would I die at once and be among the dead.

λώβη γὰρ τάδε γ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι,
εἰ δὴ μὴ παίδων τε κασιγνήτων τε φονῆας
τισόμεθ᾽. οὐκ ἂν ἐμοί γε μετὰ φρεσὶν ἡδὺ γένοιτο        435
ζωέμεν, ἀλλὰ τάχιστα θανὼν φθιμένοισι μετείην.

Murray omitted μετὰ φρεσὶν (435) in his translation, a rare slip.

See Hubert J. Treston, Poine: A Study in Ancient Greek Blood-Vengeance (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1923).

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), First and Last (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1911), p. 155:

Those who travel about England for their pleasure, or, for that matter, about any part of Western Europe, rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of history; for history adds to a man, giving him, as it were, a great memory of things—like a human memory, but stretched over a far longer space than that of one human life. It makes him, I do not say wise and great, but certainly in communion with wisdom and greatness.

Basil of Caesarea, Letters 60 (tr. Roy J. Deferrari):

May no such misfortune ever befall me as would cause me to forget the ties of nature, and be set at enmity with my own kindred.

μηδὲ γὰρ γένοιτό τι τοιοῦτο παθεῖν μηδέν, ὅ με τῆς φύσεως ἐπιλαθέσθαι καὶ ἐκπολεμωθῆναι πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους ποιήσει.

Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic Sagas. Translated with an Introduction by Gwyn Jones (1961; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 10 (from Hen-Thorir, chapter 5):

‘You have all the right in the world,’ said Thorir, ‘to help people with what is yours, but not with what is mine.’

Roman plate, 3rd-4th century A.D., from the Roman villa at El Molino de Arriba, Buniel, now in Museo de Burgos: The graffito on the plate reads DISCVS PLENVS FORMOSVS ES, i.e. "Plate, you are beautiful when full." Image without highlighting:

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Seneca, Agamemnon 280 (Aegisthus speaking; tr. John G. Fitch):

A person hated by a master is guilty by fiat, not by trial.

ubi dominus odit, fit nocens, non quaeritur.

R.J. Tarrant ad loc.:

The sense was correctly explained by Ascensius: 'fit nocens cui ille nocere uult, licet nihil commiserit, quia non quaeritur, i.e. non fit quaestio aut inquisitio legitima.' For fieri nocentem cp. Cic. Pis. 99 te ... metuentem uidebo ne reus fias, Sall. Jug. 35.7 fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex iure gentium Bomilcar, Sen. Med. 498f., Oed. 1019 nemo fit fato nocens. Our passage may be the source of HO 43ff. nec potest [sc. Alcides] fieri nocens. It has been suggested that fit nocens here is to be taken impersonally, 'one is declared guilty' (so Zwierlein, Gnomon xli (1969) 768); the constructions of this type cited by grammarians, however, are not similar enough to be convincing, cf. Wackernagel, Vorlesungen 1.111ff., P. Lejay, Rev. Phil. xl (1916) 155ff. Further, the other cases of fieri nocentem cited above all involve personal subjects. Only Düring has attempted to remove the syntactical oddity by emendation, and his sit nocens non quaeritur ( = non quaeritur an sit nocens) merely replaces it with another (see below on 404a, to which Düring appeals). One should perhaps think instead of reading fis (which might easily have been accommodated to the third person verbs nearby) or, alternatively, quem dominus odit fit nocens. The corruption is harder to explain in the second case, but ubi is a plausible Flickwort (cf. Oed. 517 etc.). (It is possible that nocens is subject, not complement, of fit: 'a criminal is made, not sought'; but this distinction does not stress the arbitrary use of power which Aegisthus is denouncing. Where fieri is so distinguished from nascor, as in Plin. N.H. 17.1 quae arte et humanis ingeniis fiunt uerius quam nascuntur, 35.30, Sen. Ira 2.10.6, Thy. 313f. ne mali fiant times? | nascuntur, Tert. Apol. 18.4, it denotes a conscious effort which is out of place here.)

Maurice Baring (1874-1945), The Puppet Show of Memory (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1923), pp. 36-37:

We, of course, shared the night nursery, and we soon invented games together, some of which were distracting, not to say maddening, to grown-up people. One was an imaginary language in which even the word "Yes" was a trisyllable, namely: "Sheepartee," and the word for "No" was even longer and more complicated, namely: "Quiliquinino." We used to talk this language, which was called "Sheepartee," and which consisted of unmitigated gibberish, for hours in the nursery, till Hilly, Grace, and Annie could bear it no longer, and Everard came up one evening and told us the language must stop or we should be whipped.

Democritus, fragment 53a (tr. Kathleen Freeman):

Many whose actions are most disgraceful practise the best utterances.

πολλοὶ δρῶντες τὰ αἴσχιστα λόγους ἀρίστους ἀσκέουσιν.

Basil of Caesarea, Letters 57 (to Meletius, Bishop of Antioch; tr. Roy J. Deferrari):

Hence, whenever we take into our hands a letter from you, we first of all observe its length, and love it in proportion as it goes beyond the average in size. Then, as we read it, we take delight in every word that meets our eyes; but as we approach the end, we are sad.

ὥστε ὅταν λάβωμεν εἰς χεῖρας τὴν ἐπιστολήν σου, πρῶτον μὲν τὸ μέτρον αὐτῆς ἐπισκοποῦμεν, καὶ τοσοῦτον αὐτὴν ἀγαπῶμεν, ὅσῳπερ ἂν περισσεύῃ τῷ πλήθει. ἔπειτα διεξίοντες, τῷ μὲν ἀεὶ προστυγχάνοντι τοῦ λόγου χαίρομεν, τῷ τέλει δὲ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς προσεγγίζοντες, δυσχεραίνομεν.

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