Laudator Temporis Acti

Thucydides 7.5.2-4 (tr. Jeremy Mynott):

[2] When Gylippus thought the moment was right he began the assault. The armies engaged in hand-to-hand fighting in the area between the walls, where the Syracusan cavalry were of no use. [3] The Syracusans and their allies were defeated, and after they had collected their dead under truce and the Athenians had raised a trophy, Gylippus called the army together and addressed them. He said that the fault was his, not theirs: he had drawn them up too close to the walls and had thus deprived them of the benefit of their cavalry and javelin-throwers; and he would now lead them out again. [4] He told them to bear in mind that in terms of physical resources they were not outmatched, and in terms of spirit it was unthinkable that men who were Peloponnesians and Dorians should not expect as a right to overcome a group of Ionians, islanders and other assorted rabble and drive them from the land.

[2] ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἔδοξε τῷ Γυλίππῳ καιρὸς εἶναι, ἦρχε τῆς ἐφόδου: καὶ ἐν χερσὶ γενόμενοι ἐμάχοντο μεταξὺ τῶν τειχισμάτων, ᾗ τῆς ἵππου τῶν Συρακοσίων οὐδεμία χρῆσις ἦν. [3] καὶ νικηθέντων τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ τῶν ξυμμάχων καὶ νεκροὺς ὑποσπόνδους ἀνελομένων καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων τροπαῖον στησάντων, ὁ Γύλιππος ξυγκαλέσας τὸ στράτευμα οὐκ ἔφη τὸ ἁμάρτημα ἐκείνων, ἀλλ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ γενέσθαι: τῆς γὰρ ἵππου καὶ τῶν ἀκοντιστῶν τὴν ὠφελίαν τῇ τάξει ἐντὸς λίαν τῶν τειχῶν ποιήσας ἀφελέσθαι· νῦν οὖν αὖθις ἐπάξειν. [4] καὶ διανοεῖσθαι οὕτως ἐκέλευεν αὐτοὺς ὡς τῇ μὲν παρασκευῇ οὐκ ἔλασσον ἕξοντας, τῇ δὲ γνώμῃ οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ἐσόμενον εἰ μὴ ἀξιώσουσι Πελοποννήσιοί τε ὄντες καὶ Δωριῆς Ἰώνων καὶ νησιωτῶν καὶ ξυγκλύδων ἀνθρώπων κρατήσαντες ἐξελάσασθαι ἐκ τῆς χώρας.

Petronius (?), Poems 1 (tr. Michael Heseltine):

Every man shall find his own desire; there is no one thing which pleases all: one man gathers thorns and another roses.

inveniet quod quisque velit: non omnibus unum est
    quod placet: hic spinas colligit, ille rosas.

Related post: Individual Differences.

Augustine, Confessions 7.20 (tr. Henry Chadwick):

I prattled on as if I were expert...

garriebam plane quasi peritus...

Plautus, Menaechmi 753-760 (tr. Paul Nixon):

Yes, I'll step out, I'll step along as ... fast as my age permits and the occasion demands. (halting) But I know well enough how ... easy it is for me. For I've lost my nimbleness ... the years have taken hold of me ... it's a heavy body I carry ... my strength has left me. Ah, old age is a bad thing—a bad piece of freight! Yes, yes, it brings along untold tribulations when it comes; if I were to specify them all, it would be a long, long story.

ut aetas mea est atque ut hoc usus facto est
gradum proferam, progrediri properabo.
sed id quam mihi facile sit hau sum falsus.        755
nam pernicitas deserit: consitus sum
senectute, onustum gero corpus, vires
reliquere: ut aetas mala est! mers mala ergo est.
nam res plurumas pessumas, quom advenit, fert,
quas si autumem omnis, nimis longus sermo est.        760

758 ergo codd.: aegro Gratwick

From a recent blog post:

Montaigne devotes a brief essay to a pair of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, "Of Democritus and Heraclitus." The former is reputed to have been a misanthrope, perhaps a melancholic. The latter was known as "the laughing philosopher."

Screen capture: This is incorrect. Democritus (the former) was the laughing philosopher, Heraclitus (the latter) was the weeping philosopher.

Related post: Democritus and Heraclitus.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Averil Cameron, Transitions: A Historian's Memoir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), p. 56 (on Geoffrey de Ste Croix):

De Ste Croix was driven by a hatred of Christianity. He used to talk about his list of the most evil influences in world history, with Plato, St Paul and Augustine topping the list.

Related post: Greatest Enemy of the Human Race?

Euripides, Andromache 642-643 (tr. David Kovacs):

From trivial causes the tongue brings about great quarrels for men.

σμικρᾶς ἀπ' ἀρχῆς νεῖκος ἀνθρώποις μέγα
γλῶσσ' ἐκπορίζει.

Plautus, Casina. The Casket Comedy. Curculio. Epidicus. The Two Menaechmuses. Edited and Translated by Wolfgang de Melo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011 = Loeb Classical Library, 61), pp. 84-85 (Casina 683; Lysidamus and Pardalisca speaking):

LYS                         perii hercle ego miser!
PAR                                                              dig<nus es>.

LYS Poor me, I'm dead!
PAR (aside) Serves you right.

There is no critical apparatus for this line in de Melo's edition. The supplement is due to Friedrich Leo, ed., Plauti Comoediae, vol. I (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), p. 254.

Averil Cameron, Transitions: A Historian's Memoir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024), p. 56 (on C.E. Stevens):

He loved to sprinkle howlers into his tutorial teaching (for instance the false claim that Julius Caesar had gone to Ireland) and unsuspecting pupils would repeat them in examination papers unaware that the examiners already knew them well. He also kept a barrel of beer in his rooms at Magdalen. After Schools (the final examination in Greats) he would entertain his finalists and throw half crowns to whoever had included one of his howlers in their Roman history paper.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Augustine, Sermons 361.11 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, cols. 1604-1605; tr. Edmund Hill):

Where, after all, does the earth get its richness from, if not from the rotting of earthy things? Those who cultivate the countryside are well aware of this; and those who don't, because they always live in town, should certainly know, from the gardens near the town, with what diligent care the worthless off-scourings of the city are kept, by whom they are even bought for a price, where they are carried to. Certainly all this could be thought by people with no experience to be worthless rubbish, void of any further use. And is anyone ready to spare a glance for a lump of dung? What people shrink from glancing at, they take great care to save.

So what seemed to have been already used up and thrown away goes back into the richness of the earth, the richness into sap, the sap into the root. And what passes from the earth into the root wanders up by invisible channels into the trunk, is distributed through the branches, passes from the branches into the seeds, from seed into fruit and leaves. There you are—what you shuddered at in the putrefaction of dung, you admire in the fruit and the greenery of the tree.

Unde enim terra pinguificatur, nisi de putredine terrenorum? Attendunt haec qui agrum colunt; et qui non colunt, quia in urbe semper vivunt, de hortis certe vicinis urbi cognoscant contemptibilia quaeque purgamenta civitatis quibus studiis serventur, a quibus etiam pretio comparentur, quo portentur. Certe iam contemptibilia, exinanita omni utilitate, ab inexpertis possent putari. Et quis dignatur stercus intueri? Quod intueri homo horret, servare curat.

Illud ergo quod consumptum iam et abiectum videbatur, redit in pinguedinem terrae, pinguedo in succum, succus in radicem; et quod de terra in radicem transit, invisibilibus accessibus migrat in robur, distribuitur per ramos, a ramis in germina, a germine in fructus et folia. Ecce quod horrebas in putredine stercoris, in arboris fecunditate et viriditate miraris.

Cicero, On the Agrarian Law I 4.7 (tr. John Henry Freese):

Does any coin ever seem so carefully hidden that the authors of this law have not smelt it out?

numquisnam tam abstrusus usquam nummus videtur, quem non architecti huiusce legis olfecerint?

Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.169 (speech of Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus; tr. Louis Feldman):

For myself, though I cannot recall the former age of liberty because I was born after that era, yet, as I insatiably steep myself in our present liberty, I count those enviable who were born and brought up in it; and I hold worthy of honour not less than the gods these men here who at this late date and at this stage of our lives, have treated us to one sip of liberty that we may know its taste.

ἐμοὶ δὲ τῆς μὲν πρότερον ἐλευθερίας ἀμνημονεῖν ἔστι διὰ τὸ κατόπιν αὐτῆς γεγονέναι, τῆς δὲ νῦν ἀπλήστως πιμπλαμένῳ μακαριστούς τε ἡγεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐγγενηθέντας καὶ ἐντραφέντας αὐτῇ καὶ τῶν θεῶν οὐδὲν μειόνως ἀξίους τιμῆς τούσδε τοὺς ἄνδρας, οἳ ὀψὲ γοῦν κἀν τούτῳ τῆς ἡλικίας ἡμᾶς γεύσαντας αὐτῆς.

Id. 19.172:

Past history I know from tradition, but from the evidence of my own eyes I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.

ἐγὼ γὰρ τὰ παλαιὰ οἶδα ἀκοῇ παραλαβών, οἷς δὲ ὄψει ὁμιλήσας ᾐσθόμην, οἵων κακῶν τὰς πολιτείας ἀναπιμπλᾶσιν αἱ τυραννίδες, κωλύουσαι μὲν πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν καὶ τοῦ μεγαλόφρονος ἀφαιρούμεναι τὸ ἐλεύθερον, κολακείας δὲ καὶ φόβου διδάσκαλοι καθιστάμεναι διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ τῶν νόμων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ τῇ ὀργῇ τῶν ἐφεστηκότων καταλιπεῖν τὰ πράγματα.

Id. 19.180:

This tyranny was fostered by nothing but indolence and our failure to speak in opposition to any of its wishes.

καὶ τέτροφε τὴν τυραννίδα οὐδὲν ἕτερον πλὴν ἥ τε ἀργία καὶ τὸ πρὸς οὐδὲν τῶν ἐκείνῃ θελομένων ἀντιλογίᾳ χρώμενον