Laudator Temporis Acti

Donald Lateiner, review of James H. Dee, Epitheta hominum apud Homerum = The epithetic phrases for the Homeric heroes: a repertory of descriptive expressions for the human characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2000), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2001.01.14:

To my mind, it is a miracle that in a world afflicted by Attention Deficit Disorder anyone would labor over, publish, distribute, or purchase six hundred pages dissecting descriptors in two lengthy, three thousand year old poems that barely ten thousand human beings can read in their eclectic, original idiolect, one never spoken by a single soul.

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), Autobiography (London: The Bodley Head, 1934), pp. 85-86:

A longing for a lair, for a cave, for a fortress, for any hidden domain, which cannot be disturbed, is still deep in my nature. It is doubtless for this reason that I have always wanted to live in narrow quarters, a little house in the country or in a single room in the city, and I have a positive detestation of large houses. This feeling of being safe and snug in a hidden retreat, while the world passes by outside and cannot reach you, is very dear to me. I have always loved that passage in Scott’s poem about the hunted stag:

"There, close-couched, while the thickets shed
Cold dews and wild flowers on his head,
He heard the baffled dogs in vain
Rave through the hollow pass amain
Chiding the rocks …"

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Homer, Odyssey 8.111-119 (tr. Daniel Mendelsohn):

Up went Akróneôs Top-Ship, Okýalos Quick-Sea, the Paddler,
Sea-Man Nauteús and Aft-Deck, Beach-Man, Eretmeús the Rower,
Deep-Sea Ponteús and Fore-Deck, Full-Speed and All-Aboard,
And Amphíalos Sea-Girt, the son of Many-Ships, child of Sea-Wright;
Up stood Eurýalos Broad-Sea, the equal of Ares, that plague on mortals—
The son of Naúbolos the Sounder, who in looks and physique surpassed
All of the other Phaiêkians after handsome Laodámas.
There arose as well three children of handsome Alkínoös:
Laodámas and Hálios Sea-Lad, and godlike Klytónêos Ship-Fame.

ὦρτο μὲν Ἀκρόνεώς τε καὶ Ὠκύαλος καὶ Ἐλατρεύς,
Ναυτεύς τε Πρυμνεύς τε καὶ Ἀγχίαλος καὶ Ἐρετμεύς,
Ποντεύς τε Πρωρεύς τε, Θόων Ἀναβησίνεώς τε
Ἀμφίαλός θ᾽, υἱὸς Πολυνήου Τεκτονίδαο·
ἂν δὲ καὶ Εὐρύαλος, βροτολοιγῷ ἶσος Ἄρηϊ,        115
Ναυβολίδης, ὃς ἄριστος ἔην εἶδός τε δέμας τε
πάντων Φαιήκων μετ᾽ ἀμύμονα Λαοδάμαντα.
ἂν δ᾽ ἔσταν τρεῖς παῖδες ἀμύμονος Ἀλκινόοιο,
Λαοδάμας θ᾽ Ἅλιός τε καὶ ἀντίθεος Κλυτόνηος.

Yes, the Phaeacians were a seafaring folk, and yes, most of the names in this passage are redende Namen, significant names. But I cannot help regarding Mendelsohn's translation here as grotesque, freakish, and extremely distracting. To my mind, the proper way to indicate the meaning of the names would be in the Introduction, or the Notes and Commentary, or the Glossary of Proper Nouns, not in this outlandish manner.

In addition, the treatment of some names is inconsistent — Εὐρύαλος, for example, appears as both "Eurýalos Broad-Sea" here and in line 140, but simply as "Eurýalos" in line 158.

I'm aware that W.H.D. Rouse and Robert Fitzgerald did something similar.

W.H.D. Rouse:

Young champions were found in plenty: Topship and Quicksea and Paddler, Seaman and Poopman, Beacher and Oarsman, Deepsea and Lookout, Goahead and Upaboard; there was Seagirt the son of Manyclipper Shipwrightson; there was Broadsea, the very spit of bloody Arês himself, and Admiraltidês, the finest man in stature and strength after the admirable Laodamas. And there were three sons of Alcinoös, Laodamas, and deep-sea Halios, and Clytoneos of naval renown.

Robert Fitzgerald:

[A]nd many a young athlete now came forward
with seaside names like Tipmast, Tiderace, Sparwood,
Hullman, Sternman, Beacher and Pullerman,
Bluewater, Shearwater, Runningwake, Boardalee,
Seabelt, son of Grandfleet Shipwrightson;
Seareach stepped up, son of the Launching Master,
rugged as Ares, bane of men: his build
excelled all but the Prince Laódamas;
and Laódamas made entry with his brothers,
Halios and Klytóneus, sons of the king.

I prefer Peter Green's straightforward translation:

Up got Akroneōs, Ōkyalos and Elatreus,
Nauteus and Prymneus, Anchialos and Eretmeus,
Ponteus and Prōreus, Thoōn and Anabēsineōs,
with Amphialos, the son of Polynēos, Tektōn's son;
up, too, Euryalos, peer of man-killing Arēs,
Naubolos’ son, the best in looks and stature—
bar only peerless Laodamas—of all the Phaiakians;
and up got the three sons of matchless Alkinoös:
Laodamas, Halios, and godlike Klytonēos.

See Hans von Kamptz, Homerische Personennamen: Sprachwissenschaftliche und historische Klassifikation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1982), p. 28.

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Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), The Poems of François Villon. New Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1977), pp. 36-37 (Le Testament, lines 159-160) with note on p 227:

Valere pour vray le baudit
Qui fut nommé le Grant a Romme.

This is vouched for by Valerian
Who was called "The Great" in Rome.

Valerian: Valerian Maximus. However, the story isn't from his writing but from Jean de Salisbury's Policraticus. It also appears in Augustine's City of God and the Jouvencel of J. de Bueil.

For Valerian read Valerius. An unfortunate blemish in a fine translation.

Labels: typographical and other errors

C.S. Lewis, letter to his father (March 31, 1928):

In the mean time I spend all my mornings in the Bodleian: and the evenings in trying, for the hundredth time, to get a real working knowledge of the German language, since in my present occupation I find my ignorance of it up against me at every turn. For example, the only history of mediaeval Latin literature is in German. The authoritative edition of an old French poem I shall have to read is in German. And so on. But I am making progress.

The "history of mediaeval Latin literature" is probably Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (München: Beck, 1911).

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), "On the Pleasure of Hating":

[T]here is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal. Do we not see this principle at work everywhere? Animals torment and worry one another without mercy: children kill flies for sport: every one reads the accidents and offences in a newspaper as the cream of the jest: a whole town runs to be present at a fire, and the spectator by no means exults to see it extinguished. It is better to have it so, but it diminishes the interest; and our feelings take part with our passions rather than with our understandings. Men assemble in crowds, with eager enthusiasm, to witness a tragedy: but if there were an execution going forward in the next street, as Mr. Burke observes, the theatre would be left empty. A strange cur in a village, an idiot, a crazy woman, are set upon and baited by the whole community. Public nuisances are in the nature of public benefits. How long did the Pope, the Bourbons, and the Inquisition keep the people of England in breath, and supply them with nicknames to vent their spleen upon! Had they done us any harm of late? No: but we have always a quantity of superfluous bile upon the stomach, and we wanted an object to let it out upon. How loth were we to give up our pious belief in ghosts and witches, because we liked to persecute the one, and frighten ourselves to death with the other! It is not the quality so much as the quantity of excitement that we are anxious about: we cannot bear a state of indifference and ennui: the mind seems to abhor a vacuum as much as ever nature was supposed to do. Even when the spirit of the age (that is, the progress of intellectual refinement, warring with our natural infirmities) no longer allows us to carry our vindictive and headstrong humours into effect, we try to revive them in description, and keep up the old bugbears, the phantoms of our terror and our hate, in imagination. We burn Guy Fawkes in effigy, and the hooting and buffeting and maltreating that poor tattered figure of rags and straw makes a festival in every village in England once a year. Protestants and Papists do not now burn one another at the stake: but we subscribe to new editions of Fox's Book of Martyrs; and the secret of the success of the Scotch Novels is much the same — they carry us back to the feuds, the heart-burnings, the havoc, the dismay, the wrongs, and the revenge of a barbarous age and people — to the rooted prejudices and deadly animosities of sects and parties in politics and religion, and of contending chiefs and clans in war and intrigue. We feel the full force of the spirit of hatred with all of them in turn. As we read, we throw aside the trammels of civilization, the flimsy veil of humanity. "Off, you lendings!" The wild beast resumes its sway within us, we feel like hunting animals, and as the hound starts in his sleep and rushes on the chase in fancy, the heart rouses itself in its native lair, and utters a wild cry of joy, at being restored once more to freedom and lawless, unrestrained impulses.

Augustine, Letters 137.1.3 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 44, pp. 99-100; to Volusianus; tr. Peter Brown):

For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures.

tanta est enim christianarum profunditas litterarum, ut in eis quotidie proficerem, si eas solas ab ineunte pueritia usque ad decrepitam senectutem maximo otio, summo studio, meliore ingenio conarer addiscere.

I don't see "in discovering their treasures" in the Latin. Brown's translation appears in his Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 263.

C.S. Lewis, letter to his father (November 22, 1923):

I have got quite recently ONE pupil, tho’ not through Poynton. He is a youth of eighteen who is trying to get a Classical scholarship. I am to coach him in essay writing and English for the essay paper and general papers which these exams always include. I fear we shall win no laurels by him. I questioned him about his classical reading: our dialogue was something like this:—

SELF: ‘Well Sandeman, what Greek authors have you been reading?’
SAND (cheerfully): ‘I never can remember. Try a few names and I’ll see if I can get on to any.’
SELF (a little damped:) ‘Have you read any Euripides?’
SAND: ‘No.’
SELF: ‘Any Sophocles?’
SAND: ‘Oh yes.’
SELF: ‘What plays of his have you read?’
SAND (after a pause): ‘Well—the Alcestis.
’ SELF (apologetically): ‘But isn’t that by Euripides?’
SAND (with the genial surprise of a man who finds £1 where he thought there was a 10/-note): ‘Really. Is it now? By Jove, then I HAVE read some Euripides.’

Frederic Van der Meer (1904-1994), Augustine the Bishop (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961), p. xv:

Yet even the genius is somewhat forbidding, for Augustine the genius is hidden away in eleven great folios of strangely scintillating Latin, a fitting subject for the scholar and especially for those industrious human bees, the philologists.