Laudator Temporis Acti

Babrius 85 (tr. Laura Gibbs):

During the war of the dogs and the wolves, the dog-assembly chose an Achaean to be their commander. Although he was an expert in the art of war, the commander waited and delayed. With fierce threats, the dogs urged him to advance and to engage in battle but the commander explained, 'Here is the reason why I delay and act with caution! One must always make plans with an eye to the future. All of the enemy whom I have seen are wolves, members of the same breed, whereas some of us are dogs from Crete, some are Molossian hounds, some are Acarnanians, others are Dolopians, while others boast of being from Cyprus or Thrace. Still others come from other places — what need is there to go on at length? We are not even the same colour, as the wolves are: some of us are black, some are grey, some are red with white-spotted chests, and some of us are white all over. How can I lead troops who are so lacking in unity to fight against an enemy who all resemble each other in every possible way?'

Κυσίν ποτ' ἔχθρα καὶ λύκοις συνειστήκει.
κύων δ' Ἀχαιὸς ᾑρέθη κυνῶν δήμῳ
στρατηγὸς εἶναι. καὶ μάχης ἐπιστήμων
ἔμελλεν, ἐβράδυνεν. οἱ δ' ἐπηπείλουν,
εἰ μὴ προάξει, τὴν μάχην τ' ἐνεργήσει.        5
"ἀκούσατ'" εἶπεν "οὗ χάριν διατρίβω,
τί δ' εὐλαβοῦμαι· χρὴ δ' ἀεὶ προβουλεύειν.
τῶν μὲν πολεμίων τὸ γένος ὧν ὁρῶ πάντων
ἕν ἐστιν· ἡμῶν δ' ἦλθον οἱ μὲν ἐκ Κρήτης,
οἱ δ' ἐκ Μολοσσῶν εἰσιν, οἱ δ' Ἀκαρνάνων,        10
ἄλλοι δὲ Δόλοπες, οἱ δὲ Κύπρον ἢ Θρᾴκην
αὐχοῦσιν, ἄλλοι δ' ἄλλοθεν — τί μηκύνω;
τὸ χρῶμα δ' ἡμῖν οὐχ ἕν ἐστιν ὡς τούτοις,
ἀλλ' οἱ μὲν ἡμῶν μέλανες, οἱ δὲ τεφρώδεις,
ἔνιοι δὲ πυρροὶ καὶ διάργεμοι στήθη,        15
ἄλλοι δὲ λευκοί. πῶς ἂν οὖν δυνηθείην
εἰς πόλεμον ἄρχειν" εἶπε "τῶν ἀσυμφώνων
πρὸς τοὺς ὅμοια πάντ' ἔχοντας ἀλλήλοις;"

Related post: A Motley Crew.

C.S. Lewis, letter to his father (July 19? 1915):

However, this I suppose is part of the curse inherited from our first parents: my private opinion is that after the words 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread' [Genesis 3:19] another clause has dropped out from the original text, running 'In the exasperation of thy souls shalt thou attend social functions'.

Here is the end of book 2 (lines 430-434) of Homer's Odyssey in Daniel Mendelsohn's new translation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2025), followed by the Greek:

Once they had bound fast the tackle on the swift-running, black-hulled ship
They set out two-handled jars that were filled to the brim with wine
And poured libations out to the deathless gods everlasting—
Above all to the daughter of Zeus, she of the bright owl-eyes.
All through the night and into the dawn the ship cut her way.

δησάμενοι δ᾽ ἄρα ὅπλα θοὴν ἀνὰ νῆα μέλαιναν
στήσαντο κρητῆρας ἐπιστεφέας οἴνοιο,
λεῖβον δ᾽ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖς αἰειγενέτῃσιν,
ἐκ πάντων δὲ μάλιστα Διὸς γλαυκώπιδι κούρῃ.
παννυχίη μέν ῥ᾽ ἥ γε καὶ ἠῶ πεῖρε κέλευθον.

As I construe the English in line 433, "she of the bright owl-eyes" is in apposition to "the daughter of Zeus" (i.e. Athena), and "the daughter of Zeus" is the object of the presposition "to". But "she of the bright owl-eyes" is a nominative phrase, and how, therefore, can it be the object of a preposition? That, to me, is the puzzle. Probably I'm just too obtuse to understand. After all, Mendelsohn's grasp of English and Greek is obviously superior to mine, and what looks to me like a grammatical error must have some explanation. I just can't see it.

Mimnermus, fragment 1, line 1 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):

What life is there, what pleasure without golden Aphrodite?

τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;

Horace, Epistles 1.6.65-66 (tr. Colin Macleod):

If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and play
there's no enjoyment, live for love and play.

si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore iocisque
nil est iucundum, vivas in amore iocisque.

"Show Us Your Shelf: Library Special," Antigone (June, 2026), including Elon Musk's bookshelf.

George Bancroft, letter to Francis Lieber (October 29, 1862), quoted by Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), p. 25 (our President = Abraham Lincoln):

How can we reach our President with advice? He is ignorant, self-willed, and is surrounded by men some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself. So we have the dilemma put to us, What to do, when his power must continue two years longer and when the existence of our country may be endangered before he can be replaced by a man of sense. How hard, in order to save the country, to sustain a man who is incompetent.

After posting Honoring the God yesterday, I came across W.K.C. Guthrie (1906-1981), The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950; rpt. 1956), p. 88 (on Hermes):

[W]e shall align ourselves firmly with Professor Nilsson when he declares, "The name is one of the few that are etymologically transparent and means 'he of the stone-heap'."¹ Hermes then is an ancient god of the countryside, named by the Greeks from the ἕρμα, also called ἑρμαῖον which was a cairn or heap of stones. These cairns served as landmarks, and can already be seen as such in Homer, where Eumaios, describing to Telemachos how he has seen a ship, indicates his position by saying, "I had reached that point above the city where there is a ἑρμαῖος λόφος² "A hill of Hermes"? Yes, but also "a mound in the form of a cairn". The Etymologicum Magnum defines ἑρμαῖον as "heap of stones, and in general stones by the wayside", and the scholiast on the passage in the Odyssey explains the ἑρμαῖος λόφος in the same way, and adds that the same name was given to Roman milestones.³ To explain the connexion of Hermes with the cairns, the Greeks characteristically invented an aetiological myth. When Hermes killed Argos, he was brought to trial by the gods. They acquitted him, and in doing so each threw his voting-pebble (ψῆφος) at his feet. Thus a heap of stones grew up around him.³ In fact he must simply have been the daemon or spirit of the stone-heaps themselves, about which there were several more or less superstitious beliefs.

¹ Rose, Hbk. Gr. Myth. 146, Boisacq, Dict. Etym. de la Langue Grecque, 282, n. 3, Nilsson, Hist. Gr. Rel. 109. See also J. Chittenden in Hesperia, xvi (1947), 94, 95, to whom further reference will be made.

¹ Od. xvi, 471.

³ Text in Farnell, Cults, v, 67.

⁴ Etym. Magn. s.v. ἑρμαῖον.

Id., p. 94:

What then of Hermes' Greek name? I have never been able to see any difficulty in the supposition that the Greeks, finding and paying homage to a friendly and helpful spirit of the country to which they had come, gave him their own title or nickname, which in this case Mrs. Chittenden translates as "Old Heapy".

Mrs. Chittenden = Jacqueline Chittenden, "The Master of Animals," Hesperia 16.2 (1947) 89-114 (at 113).

Babrius 48 (tr. Robin Waterfield):

A square-cut statue of Hermes had been placed by the side of a road, supported by a pile of stones at its base. A dog came up and said, "To begin with, Hermes, I salute you. But then I'd like to anoint you. I can't walk past a deity without doing so, and especially you, the god of wrestling." And the statue said, "I'll thank you not to come and lick off the oil with which I'm already coated, and not to piss on me either. That's all the honor I need from you."

Ἐν ὁδῷ τις ἑρμῆς τετράγωνος εἱστήκει,
λίθων δ' ὑπ' αὐτῷ σωρὸς ἦν. κύων τούτῳ
εἶπεν προσελθών "χαῖρε πρῶτον, Ἑρμεία·
ἔπειτ' ἀλεῖψαι βούλομαί σε, μηδ' οὕτω
θεὸν παρελθεῖν, καὶ θεὸν παλαιστρίτην."
ὁ δ' εἶπεν "ἤν μου τοῦτο μὴ 'πιλιχμήσῃς
τοὔλαιον ἐλθών, μηδέ μοι προσουρήσῃς,
χάριν εἴσομαί σοι· καὶ πλέον με μὴ τίμα.

Related post: Commit No Nuisance.