Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 352.7 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, col. 15575; tr. Edmund Hill):

Tell me, though, when you pardon someone from your heart, what are you losing? When you pardon the person who sins against you, what will you have less of in your heart? It's from there, you see, that you are forgiving, but you're not giving anything away. On the contrary, indeed, a kind of wave of charity was sweeping over your heart, and so to say welling up from an inner spring; you nurse hatred against your brother, you have blocked up the source. So not only do you lose nothing when you pardon, but you are watered more abundantly than ever. Charity is not limited at all; you place a stone of offense there, and you're limiting yourself. "I'll get my own back, I'll get my revenge, I'll show him, I'll do it." You're all steamed up, you're wearing yourself out, when by granting him pardon you could be without a care in the world, live without a care in the world, pray without a care in the world.

Dic mihi, cum ignoscis de corde, quid perdis? Cum ignoscis ei qui peccat in te, quid minus habebis in corde tuo? Inde enim dimittis, sed nihil amittis. Immo vero unda quaedam caritatis ibat in corde tuo, et tamquam de vena interiore manabat: tenes odium contra fratrem, obturasti fontem. Non solum ergo nihil perdis, cum ignoscis; sed abundantius irrigaris. Caritas non angustatur. Ponis ibi lapidem offensionis, et tu tibi facis angustias. Vindicabo me, ulciscar me, ego illi ostendam, ego faciam: aestuas, laboras, cui licet ignoscendo esse securum, securum vivere, securum orare.

Ramsay MacMullen (1928-2022), Roman Social Relations. 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (1974; rpt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 26:

[T]he peasant too seldom speaks for himself. We would like to hear him say, "Here is where I fit in, these are my feelings toward my neighbors or toward outsiders, such-and-such are the groups in which I feel at home, or depend on, or compete against; my prospects, my condition, my social heritage, are thus-and-so." Instead, either he has left us only brief mentions of the externals of his life, or appears through the eyes of observers quite alien to him: the literate, or rather the literary, classes. They are not likely to have understood the peasant. Though he supported their own ease and cultivation, he was as silent, motionless, and far below them as the great tortoise on which, in Indian mythology, the whole world ultimately rests.

Id., p. 27:

That returns us to the central characteristic of villages—their conservatism. They and their population hovered so barely above subsistence level that no one dared risk a change. Conservatism in its root sense, simply to hang on to what one had, was imposed by force of circumstances. People were too poor, they feared to pay too heavy a price, for experiment of any kind. So the tortoise never moved, it never changed its ways.

Josephus, Jewish Wars 7.180-181 (tr. H. St. J. Thackeray):

In the ravine which encloses the town on the north, there is a place called Baaras, which produces a root bearing the same name. Flame-coloured and towards evening emitting a brilliant light, it eludes the grasp of persons who approach with the intention of plucking it, as it shrinks up and can only be made to stand still by pouring upon it certain secretions of the human body.

τῆς φάραγγος δὲ τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἄρκτον περιεχούσης τὴν πόλιν Βαάρας ὀνομάζεταί τις τόπος, <ὃς> φύει ῥίζαν ὁμωνύμως λεγομένην αὐτῷ. αὕτη φλογὶ μὲν τὴν χροίαν ἔοικε, περὶ δὲ τὰς ἑσπέρας σέλας ἀπαστράπτουσα τοῖς ἐπιοῦσι καὶ βουλομένοις λαβεῖν αὐτὴν οὐκ ἔστιν εὐχείρωτος, ἀλλ᾿ ὑποφεύγει καὶ οὐ πρότερον ἵσταται, πρὶν ἄν τις οὖρον γυναικὸς ἢ τὸ ἔμμηνον αἷμα χέῃ κατ᾿ αὐτῆς.

For "certain secretions of the human body" the Greek has οὖρον γυναικὸς ἢ τὸ ἔμμηνον αἷμα, i.e., a woman's urine or menstrual blood.

Plautus, Casina 5-6 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

I think people who drink old wine are wise,
and so are those who enjoy watching old plays.

qui utuntur vino vetere sapientis puto
et qui lubenter veteres spectant fabulas.

Related posts:

• Give Me the Old
• Proverbs on the Preference for Old Things

Menander, fragment 602 Kassel and Austin (tr. Maurice Balme):

If you, young master, when your mother bore
You, were the only one of all mankind
Born on the understanding that you should
Do what you wanted all your life, always
Enjoying happiness, and one of the gods
Had granted this to you, then you'd be right
To be upset; for god has done you wrong,
Deceiving you. But if you breathe the air
That all men share, to quote a tragic phrase,
On the same terms as all of us, then you
Must bear these troubles better and be more
Alive to reason. This is the real point:
You are a man; no creature suffers change
From pride to humbleness quicker than him.
That's fair. By nature feeblest of all things,
He manages the greatest of affairs.
So when he fails, he shatters in his fall
Much that is good. But you, young master, have
Not lost outstanding goods; your present ills
Are only moderate. And so you must endure
What is, presumably, a middling pain.

εἰ γὰρ ἐγένου σύ, τρόφιμε, τῶν ἄλλων μόνος,
ὅτ' ἔτικτεν ἡ μήτηρ σ', ἐφ' ᾧ τε διατελεῖς
πράσσων ἃ βούλει καὶ διευτυχῶν ἀεί,
καὶ τοῦτο τῶν θεῶν τις ὡμολόγηκέ σοι,
ὀρθῶς ἀγανακτεῖς· ἔστι γάρ σ' ἐψευσμένος,        5
ἄτοπόν τε πεποίηκ'. εἰ δ' ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς νόμοις
ἐφ' οἷσπερ ἡμεῖς ἔσπασας τὸν ἀέρα
τὸν κοινόν, ἵνα σοι καὶ τραγικώτερον λαλῶ,
οἰστέον ἄμεινον ταῦτα, καὶ λογιστέον.
τὸ δὲ κεφάλαιον τῶν λόγων, ἄνθρωπος εἶ,        10
οὗ μεταβολὴν θᾶττον πρὸς ὄγκον καὶ πάλιν
ταπεινότητα ζῷον οὐθὲν λαμβάνει.
καὶ μάλα δικαίως· ἀσθενέστατον γὰρ ὂν
φύσει μεγίστοις οἰκονομεῖται πράγμασιν,
ὅταν πέσῃ δέ, πλεῖστα συντρίβει καλά.        15
σὺ δ' οὔθ' ὑπερβάλλοντα, τρόφιμ', ἀπώλεσας
ἀγαθά, τὰ νυνί τ' ἐστὶ μέτριά σοι κακά,
ὥστ' ἀνὰ μέσον που καὶ τὸ λυπηρὸν φέρε.

Critical apparatus from Poetae Comici Graeci, edd. R. Kassel et C. Austin, Vol. VI 2: Menander: Testimonia et Fragmenta apud Scriptores Servata (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), p. 311:

Ramsay MacMullen (1928-2022), Roman Social Relations. 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (1974; rpt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 14, with note on p. 151:

Nothing was wasted in the ancient world: not an abandoned baby, not the cloth that kept the ragpicker in business, not the empty fisherman's shack on the beach, not even the grains of barley in horse manure on the streets. There were always people poor enough to fight over another's leavings.⁵⁰

50 Sarcinator, Serv., Aen. 12.13; cf. Matt. 9.16; abandoned shack an object of litigation, Dig. 1.8.5 f.; barley grains salvaged from dung, Büchler, op. cit. (above, note 9) 22 and 30; on exposure of children to be made slaves, below, chapter 4 n. 8.

Büchler = Adolf Büchler, The Economic Conditions of Judaea After the Destruction of the Second Temple (London: Jews' College, 1912), p. 22:

In Ma'on in the south of Judaea, several hours' distance from Hebron, R. Joḥanan b. Zakkai saw a Jewish girl picking up grains of barley from the dung of horses (Mekhil. on Ex. 19, 1, 61 a)...

Id., p. 30:

One of the wealthiest men of Jerusalem before its destruction,¹ Nakdimon b. Gorjon, most probably perished during the siege of the capital. After the catastrophe his daughter is found by R. Joḥanan b. Zakkai and his disciples starving and picking grains of barley from horses' dung,² and, when questioned by the rabbi, explained that the money of her father and her father-in-law was all gone.

¹ His wealth and his position are described in ARN, XVII, 33 a, VI, 16a, b; 2 ARN, XIII, 16a; Kethub., 66 b, bottom.

² Sifrê Deut., 305, 130 a; Kethub., 66 b; ARN, XVII, 33 a; Bacher, Tannaiten, I, 42. R. Eleazar b. Ṣadok met her in Akko in abject poverty, Tos. Kethub., V, 10; jer., V, 30 b, 76 ff., b. 67 a.

Augustine, Sermons 352.6 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, col. 1555; tr. Edmund Hill):

So what then, my dearest friends, if these things are now crystal-clear? It wasn't to cheat us, but to give us some innocent fun that they were first locked up in obscurity. They wouldn't be grasped, you see, with such pleasure, if they were rendered cheap by being laid out in the open.

Quid ergo, carissimi, si patent haec? Non ad fraudem, sed ad iucunditatem clausa erant. Neque enim tam dulciter caperentur, si prompta vilescerent.

Ramsay MacMullen (1928-2022), Roman Social Relations. 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (1974; rpt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 3-4 (note omitted):

Anyone who sketches his mental picture of country life from Vergil's Eclogues must plainly re-do its outlines to match real truth. The shepherd was not his own man but hired to guard someone else's flocks, or a slave: and that someone else might be removed from him by an immense distance, physically, as an absentee landlord, socially, by a wealth that spread its possessions across whole ranges of hills, and administratively, by the interposition of bailiffs, overseers, and lessees. Rustic swains had indeed nothing to sing about. Their world was as poverty-stricken and ignored as it was dangerous. And while Vergil's Lycidas and Tityrus contended only for priority as poets, their living models had to confront each other, village or city officials, outraged farmers, or brigands, in struggles that knew no end.

Plautus, Curculio 452:

nugas blatis.

Id. 604:

nugas garris.

Pausanias 1.5.4 (tr. W.H.S. Jones):

But there is no way for a mortal to overstep what the deity sees fit to send.

ἀλλ᾿ οὐδεὶς πόρος ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπῳ παραβῆναι τὸ καθῆκον ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ.

Augustine, Sermons 351.5 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 39, col. 1541; tr. Edmund Hill):

How many other sins there are, whether in talking about other people's affairs and business, which don't concern you; or in futile cackling and laughter, seeing that it is written, The fool raises his voice in laughter, while the wise man will scarcely laugh even silently (Sir 21:20). Or there's the greedy and unrestrained appetite for food, which is properly prepared out of the need to keep body and soul together, the proof of excess being the next day's indigestion. Or there are the wrong-headed maneuvers in commerce to buy things cheap and sell them dear. It would be tedious to list all the things that anyone can observe with more certainty and reprehend in himself, if he is not careless about looking into the mirror of the divine scriptures. Although none of them, taken singly, are felt to inflict a mortal wound, like murder and adultery and sins like that; still when they all pile up like a suppurating rash, the more they are, they can kill, or so disfigure our appearance, that they cut us off from the chaste embraces of that bridegroom who is the fairest in form among the sons of men (Ps 45:2), unless they are dried up by the medicine of daily repentance.

Quam multa sunt alia peccata, sive in loquendo de rebus et negotiis alienis, quae non ad te pertinent; sive in vanis cachinnationibus, cum scriptum sit: Stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam, sapiens autem vix tacite ridebit; sive in ipsis escis, quae ad necessitatem sustentandae huius vitae praeparantur, avidior atque immoderatior appetitus, saepe excessum modum postridiana cruditate contestans: sive in vendendis et emendis rebus caritatis et vilitatis vota perversa. Piget cuncta colligere, quae quisque in se ipso certius comprehendit atque reprehendit, si divinarum Scripturarum speculum non neglegenter attendat. Quae quamvis singula non lethali vulnere ferire sentiantur, sicuti homicidium et adulterium, vel cetera huiusmodi: tamen omnia simul congregata velut scabies, quo plura sunt necant, aut nostrum decus ita exterminant, ut ab illius sponsi speciosi forma prae filiis hominum castissimis amplexibus separent, nisi medicamento quotidianae paenitentiae desiccentur.

When I was a boy, a gentleman in our neighborhood had a reputation for being a skinflint. A story circulated that when his son swallowed a nickel, he searched through the excrement until he recovered the coin. My brother also recalls this story.

I was reminded of this story recently when I read Josephus, Jewish Wars 5.420-421 (tr. H. St. J. Thackeray):

The people, however, were incited to desert; and selling for a trifling sum, some their whole property, others their most valuable treasures, they would swallow the gold coins to prevent discovery by the brigands, and then, escaping to the Romans, on discharging their bowels, have ample supplies for their needs.

ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐκινήθη πρὸς αὐτομολίαν. καὶ οἱ μὲν τὰς κτήσεις ἐλαχίστου πωλοῦντες, οἱ δὲ τὰ πολυτελέστερα τῶν κειμηλίων, τοὺς μὲν χρυσοῦς, ὡς μὴ φωραθεῖεν ὑπὸ τῶν λῃστῶν, κατέπινον, ἔπειτα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους διαδιδράσκοντες, ὁπότε ενέγκαιεν εὐπόρουν πρὸς ἃ δέοιντο.

The incident in Josephus had a horrible sequel. Two thousand of the Jews who escaped were disembowelled by Syrians who learned about the swallowed coins (5.550-552).

Labels: noctes scatologicae