Laudator Temporis Acti

From Eric Thomson:

Vercelli Book, Homily XV, f.85r:

And the holy Peter goes with [them] and bears the keys of hell in his hand. Oh, my brothers, what great sorrow and great lamentation and great sighing and weeping can be heard there, and furthermore, gnashing of teeth, and the loudest mournful cry, and the most sorrowful voice, and the most sorrowful lamentation and groaning! And then the devils drive the sinful and miserable souls into the torments of hell, and they themselves go in with them. And then Saint Peter turns away from the door of hell, and he locks the door of hell afterward. The wretched souls will then be in eternal hell and in everlasting torment, and the devils with them. And then Saint Peter turns away from the door of hell. And then he throws the key full of care over his back into hell. This he does because he cannot look upon the great pain, and upon the great lamentation, and the great weeping that the wretched souls suffer with the devils in the torments of hell. Alas, my brothers, how great and how loud will be the clang when that key falls into hell.

⁊ ꞅe halga petrus gæð mid ⁊ bereð hellecægan on handa: eala broðor mine hwæt ðær mæg gehyran micel sorh ⁊ mycel wanung ⁊ mycel ſworetung ⁊ mycel wóp ⁊ to ða gristbitung ⁊ þone hludestan sarigcerm ⁊ þone sarigestan stefn. ⁊ þone sarigestan wanunge. ⁊ granunge. ⁊ þonne drifað ða deofla þa ꞅynfullan ꞅawla ⁊ þa dreorigan in helle witu ⁊ hie sylfe gað mid in on þa helle. ⁊ þōn wendeð sc̄s petrus þanon fram þære helle dura ⁊ he be luceð þa helle duru syðþan. þa earman sawla bioð in ða ecan helle ⁊ in ða écan cwylmnesse. ⁊ ða deofla mid him. ⁊ þonne wendeð him sc̄s petrus þanon fram þære helle dura. ⁊ he ðonne weorpeð ða cearfullan cæge ofer bæc in on þa helle. ðis he deð forðam þe he ne mæg locian on ðæt mycle sár ⁊ onðam myclan wanunge ⁊ on ðam myclan wope. þe þa earman ꞅawla dreogað mid ðam deoflum in helle tintrego. Eala broðor mine, hu mycel ⁊ hu hlud bið se cnyll þonne seo cæge fealleð in ða helle.

Curiously enough, "how great and how loud will be the clang/ hu mycel ⁊ hu hlud bið se cnyll (> Mod. Eng. ‘knell’)" is accompanied in the vellum folio by what reminds me of nothing so much as a perforated eardrum.

Homer, Odyssey, tr. Daniel Mendelsohn (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2025), p. 58 (from "A Note on the Translation"):

On the other hand, there are times when I do relax the diction. I have no qualms about using contractions, for example, to soften a line, or to give a sense of intimacy between characters in dialogue....To Father Zeus, by contrast, I never give contractions.

Mendelsohn's translation of 13.140 (p. 271; Zeus speaking to Poseidon):

Come, come, Shaker of Earth, Mighty One—look what you've said!

What is "you've" if not a contraction of "you have"? By putting this contraction into the mouth of Zeus, Mendelsohn breaks his own rule.

Related posts:

• No Accounting for Taste
• A Puzzle
• Stopper
• Significant Searfaring Names

Cicero, On Old Age 19.67 (tr. William Armistead Falconer):

And yet is there anyone so foolish, even though he is young, as to feel absolutely sure that he will be alive when evening comes?

quamquam quis est tam stultus, quamvis sit adulescens, cui sit exploratum se ad vesperum esse victurum?

J.G.F. Powell ad loc.:

cui sit exploratum ... victurum Cf. Fin. 2.92 an id exploratum cuiquam potest esse, quomodo se hoc habiturum sit corpus, non dico ad annum, sed ad vesperum?, §74 and note; Simonides fr. 6.1 Diehl (16 Page); Eur. Alc. 783-4; Philodemus, De morte 37.23ff. (Gigante, Ricerche filodemee² 181, 193); Pap. Herc. 1251, col. 16.1 (W. Schmid, Studia Herculanensia fasc. 1, Leipzig 1939).

Philodemus, On Death 37.18-27 (tr. W. Benjamin Henry):

Now to be caught unawares when death comes, as something unexpected and incredible is happening, is foolish, but it occurs in the case of most people, as they do not know that every man, even if he should be stronger than the Giants, is transient in relation to life and death, and (that) it is uncertain not only what will happen tomorrow, but also what will happen in the immediate future...

                                          τὸ τοίνυν συν-
α[ρ]πάζεσθα[ι] θανάτου προσπίπτον-
τ[ο]ς, ὡς ἀπροσ[δ]οκήτου τινὸς καὶ παρα-
δόξου συνα[ν]τῶντο[ς], ἠλί[θιο]ν [μέ]ν
ἐ[σ]τ̣ι̣, γίνετα[ι δ]ὲ περὶ τοὺς πλείστ[ου]ς,
ἀγνοοῦντας ὅτι πᾶς ἄνθρωπος, κ[ἂ]ν
ἰσχυρότερος ἧ<ι> τῶν Γιγάντων, ἐφ[ήμ]ε-
ρός [ἐσ]τι πρὸς ζωὴν καὶ [τε]λευτὴν, καὶ
ἄδ[η]λόν ἐ[σ]τ̣ι̣ν οὐ τὸ αὔ[ρι]ον μόν[ο]ν,
ἀλλὰ καὶ [τ]ὸ [αὐ]τίκα δή...

Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 1.9.20-21 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

Why shall one man envy another? Why shall he admire those who have great possessions, or those who are stationed in places of power, especially if they be both strong and prone to anger? For what will they do to us? As for what they have power to do, we shall pay no heed thereto; as for the things we care about, over them they have no power. Who, then, will ever again be ruler over the man who is thus disposed?

διὰ τί ἄλλος ἄλλῳ φθονήσει; διὰ τί πολλὰ κεκτημένους θαυμάσει ἢ τοὺς ἐν δυνάμει τεταγμένους, μάλιστ᾿ ἂν καὶ ἰσχυροὶ ὦσιν καὶ ὀργίλοι; τί γὰρ ἡμῖν ποιήσουσιν; ἃ δύνανται ποιῆσαι, τούτων οὐκ ἐπιστρεψόμεθα· ὧν ἡμῖν μέλει, ταῦτα οὐ δύνανται. τίς οὖν ἔτι ἄρξει τοῦ οὕτως διακειμένου;

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 21, § 249 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

Dilettantes, dilettantes! This is what those who pursue knowledge or art out of love for them and joy in them, ‘for their pleasure’, are disparagingly called by those who are in it for profit, because they are delighted only by the money that can be earned through them. This disparagement is based on their wretched conviction that no one would seriously engage in something unless need, hunger or some other such craving spurred them on. The public is of the same spirit and therefore the same opinion; this explains their general respect for the ‘professionals’ and their mistrust of dilettantes. In truth, on the other hand, for the dilettante a subject is his end, but for the professional man as such it is merely the means; but only he will pursue something with total seriousness who has a direct stake in it and who occupies himself with it out of love, and pursues it ‘with love’. Mankind’s greatest achievements have always flowed from such men, not from paid servants.

Dilettanten, Dilettanten! — so werden Die, welche eine Wissenschaft oder Kunst, aus Liebe zu ihr und Freude an ihr, per il loro diletto, treiben, mit Geringschätzung genannt von Denen, die sich des Gewinnes halber darauf gelegt haben; weil sie nur das Geld delektirt, das damit zu verdienen ist. Diese Geringschätzung beruht auf ihrer niederträchtigen Ueberzeugung, daß Keiner eine Sache ernstlich angreifen werde, wenn ihn nicht Noth, Hunger, oder sonst welche Gier dazu anspornt. Das Publikum ist des selben Geistes und daher der selben Meinung: hieraus entspringt sein durchgängiger Nespekt vor den „Leuten vom Fach" und sein Mißtrauen gegen Dilettanten. In Wahrheit hingegen ist dem Dilettanten die Sache Zweck, dem Manne vom Fach, als solchem, bloß Mittel; nur Der aber wird eine Sache mit ganzem Ernste treiben, dem unmittelbar an ihr gelegen ist und der sich aus Liebe zu ihr damit beschäftigt, sie con amore treibt. Von Solchen, und nicht von den Lohndienern, ist stets das Größte ausgegangen.

Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 1.9.19 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

As soon as you have fed your fill to-day, you sit lamenting about the morrow, wherewithal you shall be fed.

ὅταν χορτασθῆτε σήμερον, κάθησθε κλάοντες περὶ τῆς αὔριον, πόθεν φάγητε.

Matthew 6:11 (KJV):

Give us this day our daily bread.

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον.

Frederic Van der Meer (1904-1994), Augustine the Bishop (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961), p. 139, with notes on p. 612:

He knew the rich, their bad taste, the self-indulgence which ultimately made them its slaves, and their meanness, which often far exceeded that of poorer men. He knew what their houses looked like from the inside, with their golden ceilings, marble statues, couches of ivory with soft cushions upon them, their innumerable hangings and their curtains of silk, and the crowds of musicians that would be gathered before their doors on any occasion that offered a pretext—a birthday, a banquet or a wedding.⁵⁸ He had seen those pretentious monuments beside the road⁵⁹—those tall mausoleums which caused Jerome to ask whether corpses really needed silk and marble before they could lie down and rot in comfort.⁶⁰ And he asks his hearers whether they could tell a rich man's bones from those of a poor one if they could see them under the ground. Where, then, is rank? Augustine tells men that they should reflect on the state in which they were born: it is one of nakedness, and the nakedness of the rich is the same as the nakedness of the poor.⁶¹

58. SE 51, 5; IP, 41, 9.

59. IP, 48, 1, 13; DCM, 2, 4 (marmoreum tumulum).

60. Vita Pauli, 17; cf. 12 (PL 23, 29-30 and 26).

61. SE, 289, 6; Ps lxxii.13.

SE = Sermones; IP = Enarrationes in Psalmos; DCM = De Cura pro Mortuis Gerenda; PL = Patrologia Latina.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 21, § 247 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

For most scholars by far their pursuit of knowledge is a means, not an end; for this reason they will never achieve anything great in it, because what is required here is that the individual who practises in a field of knowledge regard it as an end and everything else, even his very existence, merely as a means. For everything that someone practises not for its own sake he practises only halfway, and true excellence in works of any kind can only be attained by that which is produced for its own sake and not as a means to further ends. Likewise only those will rise to the level of new and great insights who have the achievement of their own knowledge as the immediate object of their studies, and are unconcerned about anyone else's. But scholars as a rule study for the purpose of being able to teach and write, which is why their head resembles a stomach and bowels from which food emerges undigested. And this is the very reason why their teaching and writing will be of little use. For you cannot nourish others with undigested waste, but only with milk that has been secreted from one's own blood.

Den bei Weitem allermeisten Gelehrten ist ihre Wissenschaft Mittel, nicht Zweck. Darum werden sie nie etwas Großes darin leisten; weil hiezu erfordert ist, daß sie Dem, der sie treibt, Zweck sei und alles Andere, ja, sein Dasein selbst, nur Mittel. Denn Alles, was man nicht seiner selbst wegen treibt, treibt man nur halb, und die wahre Vortrefflichkeit kann, bei Werken jeder Art, nur Das erlangen, was seiner selbst wegen hervorgebracht wurde und nicht als Mittel zu ferneren Zwecken. Eben so wird zu neuen und großen Grundeinsichten nur Der es bringen, der zum unmittelbaren Zweck seiner Studien Erlangung eigener Erkenntniß hat, unbekümmert um fremde. Die Gelehrten aber, wie sie in der Regel sind, studieren zu dem Zweck, lehren und schreiben zu können. Daher gleicht ihr Kopf einem Magen und Gedärmen, daraus die Speisen unverdaut wieder abgehn. Eben deshalb wird auch ihr Lehren und Schreiben wenig nützen. Denn Andere nähren kann man nicht mit unverdauten Abgängen, sondern nur mit der Milch, die aus dem eigenen Blute sich abgesondert hat.