Laudator Temporis Acti

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 12, § 156 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

In order to have a sure compass always in hand for finding our bearings in life, and in order to view life always in the proper light without ever going astray, nothing is more useful than to accustom oneself to regarding this world as a place of penance, hence as a prison, a penal colony as it were, a labour camp as it was already called by the oldest philosophers (according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III, c. 3, p. 399). Among the Christian fathers Origen formulated it with commendable boldness (see Augustine, The City of God, XI, ch. 23).

Um allezeit einen sichern Kompass, zur Orientierung im Leben, bei der Hand zu haben, und um dasselbe, ohne je irre zu werden, stets im richtigen Lichte zu erblicken, ist nichts tauglicher, als dafs man sich angewöhne, diese Welt zu betrachten als einen Ort der Busse, also gleichsam als eine Strafanstalt, a penal colony, ein ἐργαστήριον), wie schon die ältesten Philosophen sie nannten (Clem. Alex. Strom. L. III, c. 3, p. 399) und unter den christlichen Vätern Origenes es mit lobenswerter Kühnheit aussprach (Augustin. de civit. Dei, L. XI, c. 23).

John Jay Chapman (1862-1933), Memories and Milestones (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1915), pp. 120-122:

There should be a great Reader in large print, made up of bits and fragments — anecdotes, verses, scenes from the dramatists, fragments of Plutarch, Homer and Herodotus. And the boys should be encouraged to read in this book small bits at a time, and easy bits first. And the teacher should be satisfied when the sense is understood and should push the boys on to read and to read, and not to bother about the grammar. Enough grammar will filter into them by degrees to make them understand the constructions — and what else is grammar for? Let the tutor have no ambition to make the boys write Greek. The desire to write Greek is an exotic thing. If a boy has it, let him be encouraged, of course; but let it not be forced upon the next boy. As a matter of fact, the best way to learn to write any language is to read plenty of it; to learn fragments by heart, and fill the mind with the sound of it; then to write it by ear; and thereafter to work up the grammar in correcting what has been written. This is the way to learn French or German; why not Greek? Language is a thing of the ear, and is most easily learned by the ear, and in quantities. Let the children have more Greek, and ever more Greek, and let grammar and critical analysis be kept for dessert. When one thinks of the thousands of teachers who are obliged to plod year after year through the same portions of Xenophon and Virgil and through the same scenes of Homer, just because of the fear of the Learned World lest the boys should learn the wrong kind of Greek — when one sees the stunting of intelligence, the deadening of interest that must come from such a process — one does not wonder at the decay of Greek in our universities. We have been doing what is hard; we ought to do what is easy.

I corrected dotes to anecdotes.

Labels: typographical and other errors

John M'Clintock and James Strong, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. V (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1891), p. 360:

Leo IV, Pope, was a native of Rome, and succeeded Sergius II in 847. He was hastily elected, and consecrated without waiting for the consent of the emperor Lotharius, because Rome was then threatened by the Saracens, who occupied part of the duchy of Benevento, and who a short time before had landed on the banks of the Tiber, and plundered the basilica of St. Peter's on the Vatican, which was outside of the walls. Leo's consecration, however, was undertaken with the express reservation of the emperor's rights, and when, in order to prevent a recurrence of the violence of the Saracens, Leo undertook to surround the basilica and the suburb about it with walls, the emperor sent money to assist in the work. The building of this Roman suburb occupied four years, and it was named after its founder, Civitas Leonina. Leo also restored the town of Porta, on the Tiber, near its mouth, settling there some thousands of Corsicans, who had run away from their country on account of the Saracens. Towers were built on both banks of the river, and iron chains drawn across to prevent the vessels of the Saracens from ascending to Rome. The port and town of Centum Cellae being forsaken on account of the Saracens, Leo built a new town on the coast, about twelve miles distant from the other, which was called Leopolis; but no traces of it remain now, as the modern Civita Vecchia is built on or near the site of old Centum Cellae.

Even Gibbon praised him — see Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. H.H. Milman, Vol. V (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1900), p. 315:

[T]he unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments of the Roman forum.

This map shows the location of the Leonine wall (west, left): Some of the Leonine wall still remains.

Theognis 1081-1084 (tr. Dorothea Wender):

The city's pregnant, Kurnos, and I fear
She'll bear a violent leader of civil war;
The people still have sense, but those in charge
Are turning, stumbling into evil ways.

Κύρνε, κύει πόλις ἥδε, δέδοικα δὲ μὴ τέκῃ ἄνδρα
    ὑβριστήν, χαλεπῆς ἡγεμόνα στάσιος·
ἀστοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἔθ' οἵδε σαόφρονες, ἡγεμόνες δέ
    τετράφαται πολλὴν εἰς κακότητα πεσεῖν.

John Jay Chapman (1862-1933), Memories and Milestones (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1915), pp. 118-120:

It may be asked, At what point should the reading for pleasure begin? It should begin at about the second lesson, when some entertaining sentence or verse should be learned — as the Lorelei is learned on the first day of German. A little of the language should be put in alive into the child's mind each day; and the grammar should then come behind and sweep up, and explain; it should be kept as a necessary utensil. This relationship should be maintained throughout life; and the attention should be kept on the meanings which occur in sentences and verses, rather than on the shadows of them which the grammars have worked out. The reason why the cart is put before the horse in classical education is that the grammarians through whose admirable labors it is that we possess the classics at all, have always been interested in the cart. It has been their province to study out a rule; and they have interposed this rule between us and the language. They have done it with the best intentions.

There is another circumstance which largely accounts for our inherited misteaching of Latin and Greek. The learned world has been digging out the classics for the last four hundred years; and the ideals of the learned world are accurate scholarship and scientific precision. It is probably right that the learned world should have such ideals — or should have had them during this epoch. And yet accurate scholarship and scientific precision are illusions in the case of language, and there is no scholar living who could write a page of Greek without making ludicrous errors errors of the sort that the Anglo-Indian makes in writing English, which he has learned from books. If even Mr. Mackail or Gilbert Murray or Nauck, that great, horrible mythic monster — should spend a whole day in dove-tailing phrases which they had fished out of Plato or Thucydides to make an essay of, the chances are that any Athenian would laugh five times to the page over the performance.

Euripides, Suppliant Women 846-856 (tr. Edward P. Coleridge):

One question will I spare thee, lest I provoke thy laughter;
the foe that each of them encountered in the fray,
the spear from which each received his death-wound.
These be idle tales alike for those who hear
or him who speaks, that any man amid the fray,
when clouds of darts are hurtling before his eyes,
should declare for certain who each champion is.
I could not ask such questions,
nor yet believe those who dare assert the like;
for when a man is face to face with the foe, he scarce
can see even that which 'tis his bounden duty to observe.

ἓν δ᾽ οὐκ ἐρήσομαί σε, μὴ γέλωτ᾽ ὄφλω,
ὅτῳ ξυνέστη τῶνδ᾽ ἕκαστος ἐν μάχῃ
ἢ τραῦμα λόγχης πολεμίων ἐδέξατο.
κενοὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν τ᾽ ἀκουόντων λόγοι
καὶ τοῦ λέγοντος, ὅστις ἐν μάχῃ βεβὼς        850
λόγχης ἰούσης πρόσθεν ὀμμάτων πυκνῆς
σαφῶς ἀπήγγειλ᾽ ὅστις ἐστὶν ἁγαθός.
οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην οὔτ᾽ ἐρωτῆσαι τάδε
οὔτ᾽ αὖ πιθέσθαι τοῖσι τολμῶσιν λέγειν·
μόλις γὰρ ἄν τις αὐτὰ τἀναγκαῖ᾽ ὁρᾶν        855
δύναιτ᾽ ἂν ἑστὼς πολεμίοις ἐναντίος.

Plato, Laws 6.771e-772a (tr. Trevor J. Saunders):.

Boys and girls must dance together at an age when plausible occasions can be found for their doing so, in order that they may have a reasonable look at each other; and they should dance naked, provided sufficient modesty and restraint are displayed by all concerned.

τῆς οὖν τοιαύτης σπουδῆς ἕνεκα χρὴ καὶ τὰς παιδιὰς ποιεῖσθαι χορεύοντάς τε καὶ χορευούσας κόρους καὶ κόρας, καὶ ἅμα δὴ θεωροῦντάς τε καὶ θεωρουμένους μετὰ λόγου τε καὶ ἡλικίας τινὸς ἐχούσης εἰκυίας προφάσεις, γυμνοὺς καὶ γυμνὰς μέχριπερ αἰδοῦς σώφρονος ἑκάστων.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 12, § 156 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

Now I suppose I will have to hear again that my philosophy is disconsolate, just because I speak according to the truth, but the people want to hear that God the Lord has done everything right. Go to church and leave the philosophers in peace! At least do not demand that they arrange their doctrines according to your training and background; that is what the scoundrels do, the philosophasters — from them you can order whatever doctrines you like.

Da werde ich wohl wieder vernehmen müssen, meine Philosophie sei trostlos; eben nur weil ich nach der Wahrheit rede, die Leute aber hören wollen, Gott der Herr habe Alles wohlgemacht. Geht in die Kirche und laßt die Philosophen in Ruhe. Wenigstens verlangt nicht, daß sie ihre Lehren eurer Abrichtung gemäß einrichten sollen: das thun die Lumpe, die Philosophaster: bei denen könnt ihr euch Lehren nach Belieben bestellen.

Antonio Canova (1757-1822), "Socrates Saves Alcibiades at the Battle of Potidaea," at Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca: Plato, Symposium 220d-e (Alcibiades speaking; tr. W.R.M. Lamb):

Then, if you care to hear of him in battle—for there also he must have his due—on the day of the fight in which I gained my prize for valour from our commanders, it was he, out of the whole army, who saved my life: I was wounded, and he would not forsake me, but helped me to save both my armour and myself.

εἰ δὲ βούλεσθε ἐν ταῖς μάχαις· τοῦτο γὰρ δὴ δίκαιόν γε αὐτῷ ἀποδοῦναι· ὅτε γὰρ ἡ μάχη ἦν, ἐξ ἧς ἐμοὶ καὶ τἀριστεῖα ἔδοσαν οἱ στρατηγοί, οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἐμὲ ἔσωσεν ἀνθρώπων ἢ οὗτος, τετρωμένον οὐκ ἐθέλων ἀπολιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ συνδιέσωσε καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ αὐτὸν ἐμέ.

R.G. Bury ad loc.: Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Cicero, Against Verres II 3.6.15-3.7.16 (tr. L.H.G. Greenwood):

[H]e was the first man who dared to uproot and transform an order of things established everywhere, a usage inherited from their fathers, their constitutional privilege and right as the friends and the allies of Rome.

Now herein, Verres, my first step as prosecutor is to demand why you made any sort of change in a system so long and so regularly maintained. Did your powerful brain detect some fault in it? Were your understanding and your judgement superior to those of all the able and distinguished men who governed the province before you?

hic primus instituta omnium, consuetudinem a maioribus traditam, condicionem amicitiae, ius societatis convellere et commutare ausus est.

qua in re primum illud reprehendo et accuso, cur in re tam vetere, tam usitata quicquam novi feceris. ingenio aliquid assecutus es? tot homines sapientissimos et clarissimos, qui illam provinciam ante te tenuerunt, prudentia consilioque vicisti?