Laudator Temporis Acti

Plautus, Mostellaria 495 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Sometimes you really are incredibly stupid.

interdum inepte stultus es.

Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, February 22, 1824 (tr. Ritchie Robertson):

'At bottom, people are only comfortable with the condition in which, and for which, they were born. Unless some great enterprise takes you abroad, you are much better off staying at home.'

»Denn imgrunde ist dem Menschen nur der Zustand gemäß, worin und wofür er geboren worden. Wen nicht große Zwecke in die Fremde treiben, der bleibt weit glücklicher zu Hause.«

I often wish I'd never left the small town where I grew up.

Related posts:

• Native Soil
• Stability and Mobility
• Domi Manere Oportet
• Oikos Philos, Oikos Aristos
• Small Houses
• Staying Put
• My Native Hills
• More on Aglaus of Psophis
• Staying at Home
• Lottites
• To Be Happy At Home
• Aglaus of Psophis
• Here

Walter of Châtillon, Alexandreis 5.301 (ed. Marvin L. Colker, p. 133; my translation):

Wanting to avoid Charybdis, you fall into Scylla.

Incidis in Scillam cupiens uitare Caribdim.

See Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), pp. 520-522 (#668).

Stone Lake: The Poetry of Fan Chengda (1126-1193), tr. J.D. Schmidt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 106 ("A song to please a god"):

Pigs' trotters fill the platters, wine fills the cups;
A cool breeze sighs, when the god approaches.
They hope the god will come cheerfully and leave cheerfully, too;
Young boys bow low to welcome him, little girls dance.
Old men brandish incense sticks, smiling as they talk:
"This year farmers' lives will definitely be better than last.
Last year we had to sell our clothes to pay the rent and taxes;
But this year we'll have plenty of clothes to wear for the autumn thanksgiving!"

Plautus, Mostellaria 169 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Lovers don't love a woman's dress, but its stuffing.

non vestem amatores amant mulieris, sed vestis fartim.

Id. 289:

A beautiful woman will be more beautiful naked than dressed in purple.

pulchra mulier nuda erit quam purpurata pulchrior.

Theognis 591-594 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

One must endure what the gods give mortal men and calmly bear both lots, neither too sick at heart in bad times nor suddenly rejoicing in good times, until the final outcome is seen.

τολμᾶν χρὴ τὰ διδοῦσι θεοὶ θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσιν,
    ῥηϊδίως δὲ φέρειν ἀμφοτέρων τὸ λάχος,
μήτε κακοῖσιν ἀσῶντα λίην φρένα, μήτ᾿ ἀγαθοῖσιν
    τερφθῇς ἐξαπίνης πρὶν τέλος ἄκρον ἰδεῖν.

Id. 657-658:

Don't be too vexed at heart in hard times or rejoice too much in good times, since it is the mark of a noble man to endure everything.

μηδὲν ἄγαν χαλεποῖσιν ἀσῶ φρένα μηδ᾿ ἀγαθοῖσιν
    χαῖρ᾿, ἐπεὶ ἔστ᾿ ἀνδρὸς πάντα φέρειν ἀγαθοῦ.

Horace, Odes 2.10.13-15 (tr. C.E. Bennett):

Hopeful in adversity, anxious in prosperity, is the heart that is well prepared for weal or woe.

sperat infestis, metuit secundis
alteram sortem bene praeparatum
pectus.

Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, November 3, 1823 (tr. Ritchie Robertson):

'Indeed,' said Goethe. 'What could be more important than the subject matter? All the art theory in the world is nothing without that. No amount of talent will help you if the subject is no good. This is the problem with all modern art: today's artists don't have any worthy subjects. We're all affected by this; I myself can't escape my own modernity.'

»Ja,« sagte Goethe, »was ist auch wichtiger als die Gegenstände, und was ist die ganze Kunstlehre ohne sie. Alles Talent ist verschwendet, wenn der Gegenstand nichts taugt. Und eben weil dem neuern Künstler die würdigen Gegenstände fehlen, so hapert es auch so mit aller Kunst der neueren Zeit. Darunter leiden wir alle; ich habe auch meine Modernität nicht verleugnen können.«

Jerome, Letters 13.1 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, pp. 42-43; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):

John the apostle and evangelist says in his Epistle [1 John 3.15]: Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. And he is right. Since murder has its origin in hatred, whosoever hates, even though he has not yet struck a blow with the sword, is nevertheless a murderer at heart.

Ioannes idem apostolus et evangelista in epistula sua ait: quicumque odit fratrem suum, homicida, et recte. cum enim homicidium ex odio saepe nascatur, quicumque odit, etiam si necdum gladio percusserit, animo tamen homicida est.

1 John 3.15:

πᾶς ὁ μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἐστίν, καὶ οἴδατε ὅτι πᾶς ἀνθρωποκτόνος οὐκ ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐν αὐτῷ μένουσαν.

Plautus, Mostellaria 149-156 (Philolaches speaking; tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

My heart aches since I know how I am now and how I used to be.
None of the young men worked harder than me
*** in athletics:
I lived joyfully with the discus, javelins, the ball, running, weapons, and riding.
With my thrift and self-discipline I was an example for others:
all the best sought a model in me.
Now that I'm worthless I’ve found this state through my own character.

cor dolet quom scio ut nunc sum atque ut fui,
quo neque industrior de iuuentute erat        150
*** arte gymnastica:
disco, hastis, pila, cursu, armis, equo
victitabam volup,
parsimonia et duritia discipulinae aliis eram,
optumi quique expetebant a me doctrinam sibi.        155
nunc, postquam nihili sum, id vero meopte ingenio repperi.

151 ***: <quisquam nec clarior> Ussing

On line 153 see Federico Biddau, "Manipolazioni semantiche nella Mostellaria," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 161.3/4 (2018) 295-313 (at 310):

Si può quindi ben comprendere la colorita liquidazione che Acidalio 1607, 226 riservò alla lettura del Lambino³¹, e con essa a quelle simili, preferendo inserire un haud prima di volup. Qualcosa di simile hanno poi proposto Ritschl 1852 (in apparato: Nec minus suo animo uictitabat uolup), Bugge 1873 (hau uictitabam uolup), e Ussing 1880 (Meo animo haud uictitabam uolup): insomma, Filolachete direbbe che allora "non faceva una vita piacevole". E però anche questa osservazione meramente negativa, nel momento in cui il giovane ripercorre con grande rimpianto le glorie e la stima di un tempo, sembra stonata e fuori luogo.

31) "Scio Lambini interpretationem: vixisse duriter, & tamen iucundè. Sed interpretatio est Lambini, qui prorsus hìc Lambinus" (fr. lambin = 'poltrone').

Metrical scheme of the passage according to Cesare Questa, ed., Titi Macci Plauti Cantica (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 1995), p. 259: Plautus, Bacchides 430-432 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

There they'd train themselves by running, wrestling, throwing the spear and the discus, boxing, playing ball, and jumping, rather than with a prostitute or kisses. There they'd spend their lives, not in dark dens.

ibi cursu, luctando, hasta, disco, pugilatu, pila,
saliendo sese exercebant magis quam scorto aut saviis:
ibi suam aetatem extendebant, non in latebrosis locis.

Phocylides, fragment 7 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

If thou desirest riches, see that thou hast a fertile farm;
for a farm, they say, is a horn of Amalthea.

χρηίζων πλούτου μελέτην ἔχε πίονος ἀγροῦ·
ἀγρὸν γάρ τε λέγουσιν Ἀμαλθείης κέρας εἶναι.

William Smith, Classical Dictionary, s.v. Amalthea:

Amalthea was a nymph, daughter of Oceanus, Helios, Haemonius, or of the Cretan king Melisseus, who fed Zeus with the milk of a goat. When this goat broke off one of her horns, Amalthea filled it with fresh herbs and gave it to Zeus, who placed it among the stars. According to other accounts Zeus himself broke off one of the horns of the goat Amalthea, and gave it to the daughters of Melisseus, and endowed it with the wonderful power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish. This is the story about the origin of the celebrated horn of Amalthea, commonly called the horn of plenty or cornucopia, which was used in later times as the symbol of plenty in general.

Theognis 257-260 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

I am a fine, prize–winning horse, but I carry a man who is utterly base, and this causes me the greatest pain. Often I was on the point of breaking the bit, throwing my bad rider, and running off.

ἵππος ἐγὼ καλὴ καὶ ἀεθλίη, ἀλλὰ κάκιστον
    ἄνδρα φέρω, καί μοι τοῦτ᾿ ἀνιηρότατον.
πολλάκι δὴ ᾿μέλλησα διαρρήξασα χαλινὸν
    φεύγειν ὠσαμένη τὸν κακὸν ἡνίοχον.        260

T. Hudson-Williams, The Elegies of Theognis and Other Elegies Included in the Theognidean Sylloge (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1910), pp. 193-194:

It is, however, just possible that our elegy had a political meaning; then ἵππος would signify a state ruled by а κακός (oг κακοί), cf. 681.

J.M. Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, Vol. I (1931; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961 = Loeb Classical Library, 258), p. 259, n. 5:

the horse may be a city ruled by a bad man

Dorothea Wender, tr. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days. Theognis: Elegies (London: Penguin Books, ©1973), p. 160, n. 11:

An enigma, or riddle poem, of which Theognis wrote several. One possible solution is that the horse and rider are a city and her tyrant.

I'm not aware of any detailed discussion of this interpretation. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to me. Most scholars think that the lines refer to a woman (e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche, De Theognide Megarensi § 11: amica nobili genere) or to an actual horse.

Jerome, Letters 10.1.2 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, p. 36; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):

For how few pass beyond the age of a hundred years, or attain to it without regretting the attainment—even as Scripture bears witness in the book of Psalms [90.10]: The days of our life are threescore years and ten, and if it is long, fourscore; what is more of them is labor and sorrow!

quotus enim quisque aut centenariam transgreditur aetatem aut non ad eam sic pervenit, ut pervenisse paeniteat, secundum quod in libro Psalmorum Scriptura testatur: dies vitae nostrae septuaginta anni, si autem multum, octoginta; quidquid reliquum est, labor et dolor?

Jack Malvern, "'Brat' is Collins's word of the year," The Times (November 1, 2024):

"Brat" has its origins in the 15th century, when Chaucer used it to mean a cloak of coarse cloth, and by the early 16th century it came to refer to an unwanted child.

Eric Thomson sent me the link. He comments:

Chaucer's 15th century amounted to fewer than 300 days.

Brat, or brat n.1 at least, appears in a triple gloss in the 10th century Lindisfarne Gospels (Matthew 5:40 et ei qui vult tecum iudicio contendere et tunicam tuam tollere remitte ei et pallium = And if a man will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him), so its history in English is five centuries earlier.

Oxford English Dictionary s.v. brat, n.1:

Horace, Epistles 2.2.55-56 (tr. C. Smart):

The advancing years rob us of every thing:
they have taken away my mirth, my gallantry, my revelings, and play.

singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes;
eripuere iocos, venerem, convivia, ludum.

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 3.451-454 (tr. W.H.D. Rouse, rev. Martin F. Smith):

Afterwards, when the body is now wrecked with the mighty strength of time, and the frame has succumbed with blunted strength, the intellect limps, the tongue babbles, the intelligence totters, all is wanting and fails at the same time.

post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, <labat> mens,
omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt.

453 labat add. Lachmann (vagat Palmer, Hermathena 4.8 [1882] 264; vagat vel vacat Everett, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 7 (1896) 31; meat Merrill, American Journal of Philology 21.2 [1900] 183-184; natat Orth, Helmántica 11 (1960) 311)

See Marcus Deufert, Kritischer Kommentar zu Lukrezens De rerum natura (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 158-159, who suggested fugit.

Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.6 (392 BC; tr. Carleton L. Brownson):

They saw, however, that those who were in power were ruling like tyrants, and perceived that their state was being put out of existence, inasmuch as boundary stones had been removed and their fatherland was called Argos instead of Corinth; and, while they were compelled to share in the rights of citizenship at Argos, for which they had no desire, they had less influence in their state than aliens. Some of them, accordingly, came to the belief that life under such conditions was not endurable; but if they endeavoured to make their fatherland Corinth again, even as it had been from the beginning, and to make it free, and not only pure of the stain of the murderers, but blest with an orderly government, they thought it a worthy deed, if they could accomplish these things, to become saviours of their fatherland, but if they could not do so, to meet a most praiseworthy death in striving after the fairest and greatest blessings.

ὁρῶντες δὲ τοὺς τυραννεύοντας, αἰσθανόμενοι δὲ ἀφανιζομένην τὴν πόλιν διὰ τὸ καὶ ὅρους ἀνασπᾶσθαι καὶ Ἄργος ἀντὶ Κορίνθου τὴν πατρίδα αὐτοῖς ὀνομάζεσθαι, καὶ πολιτείας μὲν ἀναγκαζόμενοι τῆς ἐν Ἄργει μετέχειν, ἧς οὐδὲν ἐδέοντο, ἐν δὲ τῇ πόλει μετοίκων ἔλαττον δυνάμενοι, ἐγένοντό τινες αὐτῶν οἳ ἐνόμισαν οὕτω μὲν ἀβίωτον εἶναι· πειρωμένους δὲ τὴν πατρίδα, ὥσπερ ἦν καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς, Κόρινθον ποιῆσαι καὶ ἐλευθέραν ἀποδεῖξαι καὶ τῶν μὲν μιαιφόνων καθαράν, εὐνομίᾳ δὲ χρωμένην, ἄξιον εἶναι, εἰ μὲν δύναιντο καταπρᾶξαι ταῦτα, σωτῆρας γενέσθαι τῆς πατρίδος, εἰ δὲ μὴ δύναιντο, τῶν γε καλλίστων καὶ μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ὀρεγομένους ἀξιεπαινοτάτης τελευτῆς τυχεῖν.

See, e.g., Donald Kagan, "Corinthian Politics and the Revolution of 392 B.C.," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 11.4 (October, 1962), 447-457, and John Buckler, "A Note on Diodorus 14.86.1," Classical Philology 94.2 (April, 1999) 210-214.

Plautus, Mostellaria 379-380 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

It's a wretched business
to start digging a well only when thirst has got you by the throat.

                                                  miserum est opus
igitur demum fodere puteum, ubi sitis faucis tenet.

Robert H. Brophy, "'Digging a Well after You Are Thirsty': A Plautine and Chinese Proverb," Classical World 72.7 (April-May, 1979) 421-422, adduces a passage from Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, tr. Ilza Veith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 105 (I.2):

To administer medicines to diseases which have already developed and to suppress revolts which have already developed is comparable to the behavior of those persons who begin to dig a well after they have become thirsty, and of those who begin to cast weapons after they have already engaged in battle. Would these actions not be too late?

See also Lillian B. Lawler, "A Classicist in Far Cathay," Classical Journal 31.9 (June, 1936) 534-548 (at 546).