Laudator Temporis Acti

Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.215-216 (tr. Frank Justus Miller):

Now I have need of juices by whose aid old age may be renewed
and may turn back to the bloom of youth and regain its early years.

nunc opus est sucis, per quos renovata senectus
in florem redeat primosque recolligat annos.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), excerpt from "The Genius of the Crowd," The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1988), page number unknown:

Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS

Corpus Parisinum 342 (tr. Denis Searby):

New wine, new friend. When it grows old, you shall drink it with pleasure.

Οἶνος νέος φίλος νέος· ἐὰν δὲ παλαιωθῇ, µετ' εὐφροσύνης πίεσαι αὐτόν.

Related post: Proverbs on the Preference for Old Things.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 23, § 273 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

The thinking minds, the people of proper judgement and the people who are serious about things are all only exceptions; everywhere in the world the scum are the rule, and they are always at hand and busily at work to corrupt and 'unimprove' in their way anything said by thinkers after mature consideration. Therefore whoever wants to inform himself about a subject should beware of reaching for the latest books on it, in the assumption that the sciences always make progress and that during the writing of these new books older ones had been used. They probably have been, but the question is how. The writer often does not thoroughly understand the older writers, but does not want to simply use their text word for word and therefore transmogrifies and butchers what they said far better and more clearly, since they wrote from their own vivid knowledge of the subject. Often he omits the best they have produced, their most striking explanations of the subject, their most felicitous observations, because he does not recognize their values and he does not feel how pregnant they are. He finds only the shallow and insipid agreeable. — It has happened frequently that an older, exquisite book has been supplanted by newer, worse books written for money but pretentiously promoted and acclaimed by the authors' cronies.

Die denkenden Köpfe, die Menschen von richtigem Urtheil und die Leute, denen es Ernst mit der Sache ist, sind alle nur Ausnahmen; die Regel ist überall in der Welt das Geschmeiß: und dieses ist stets bei der Hand und emsig bemüht, das von jenen nach reiflicher Ueberlegung Gesagte auf seine Weise zu verschlimmbessern. Daher hüte sich wer über einen Gegenstand sich belehren will, sogleich nur nach den neuesten Büchern darüber zu greifen, in der Voraussetzung, daß die Wissenschaften immer fortschreiten, und daß bei Abfassung derselben die ältern benutzt worden seien. Das sind sie wohl; aber wie? Der Schreiber versteht oft die ältern nicht gründlich, will dabei doch nicht geradezu ihre Worte gebrauchen, verballhornt und verhunzt daher das von ihnen sehr viel besser und deutlicher Gesagte; da sie aus eigener und lebendiger Sachkenntniß geschrieben haben. Oft läßt er das Beste, was sie herausgebracht haben, ihre treffendesten Erklärungen der Sache, ihre glücklichsten Bemerkungen, wieder fallen; weil er deren Werth nicht erkennt, das Prägnante derselben nicht fühlt. Ihm ist nur das Platte und Seichte homogen. Schon oft ist ein älteres, vortreffliches Buch durch neuere, schlechtere, des Geldes wegen abgefaßte, aber pretentiös auftretende und durch die Kamaraden angepriesene verdrängt worden.

Charles Issawi, quoted in Bernard Lewis, Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), page number unknown (chapter 10):

There are five ages of professors—tireless, tiring, tiresome, tired and retired...

Corpus Parisinum 246 (tr. Denis Searby):

Nothing is more wretched than a ruler who does not in any way benefit his subjects.

Ἄρχοντος µηδὲν τοὺς ἀρχοµένους ὠφελοῦντος οὐδὲν ἀθλιώτερον.

Robert Burton (1577-1640), Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. 2, Memb' I, Subs. 6 (vol. 1, pp. 215-216 of the Everyman edition):

So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our fathers' defaults: in so much that, as Fernelius truly saith, "It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for humankind, if only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry." An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land; he will not rear a bull or an horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum! and how careful then should we be in begetting of our children! In former times some countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that, if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times. Heretofore in Scotland, saith Hect. Boethius, "if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be progagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance, having some such disease, she were found to be with child, she with her brood were buried alive: and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted." A severe doom, you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is. For now by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous infirmity or other. When no choice is had, but still the eldest must marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, be they fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust through riot, as he said, jure hæreditario sapere jubentur, they must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, parentes peremptores [our parents are our ruin]; our fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.

Related posts:

• Eugenics and Dysgenics
• Good Seed and Bad
• Breeding
• Eugenics
• Nothing in Common
• Mixed Marriages
• Of Good Stock

Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971) 80-101 (at 88):

When little girls played games in fourth-century Syria, they played at monks and demons: one, dressed in rags, would put her little friends into stitches of laughter by exorcising them.<sup>105

105</sup> H.R. 1384

H.R. 1384 = Theodoret, Historia Religiosa, in Patrologia Graeca vol. 82, col. 1384 (see Clavis Patrum Graecorum 6221). A more recent edition is Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des moines de Syrie, t. I, edd. Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1977 = Sources Chrétiennes, 234), pp. 422, 424 (Greek), 423, 425 (French), used as the basis of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, A History of the Monks of Syria, tr. R.M. Price (1985; rpt. Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2008 = Cistercian Studies Series, 88), p. 85 (9.9):

On another occasion, she brought along a cook of her household, who was troubled by an evil demon, and begged to receive his help. After praying, the man of God ordered the demon to tell the cause of his power over one of God's creatures, like some murderer or burglar standing before the judge's seat and ordered to say what he had done; so he proceeded through everything, compelled by fear to tell the truth, contrary to his wont. He declared that in Heliopolis, when the master of this domestic was once ill and the mistress was sitting by her husband because of his illness, the maidservants of the mistress of the house where they were staying were recounting the life of the monks practising philosophy at Antioch and how much strength they have against demons, and then these servants, as girls who enjoyed play, acted the part of raving demoniacs, while this domestic, putting on a goat's hair cloak, exorcised them like a monk. 'While this was being performed,' continued the demon, 'I was standing at the door. Finding these boastful remarks about monks unbearable, I decided to learn by experiment the power these servants bragged of them possessing. For this reason, leaving the maidservants, I intruded myself into this man, wanting to find out how I would be driven out by the monks. And now (he concluded) I have found out and need no further proof: at your command I shall immediately depart.' Saying this, he darted away, and the domestic recovered his freedom.

I won't transcribe the Greek text but merely note that Price's "maidservants" is παιδίσκας in Theodoret. Here is the entry for παιδίσκη in Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 1519:

παιδίσκη, -ης, ἡ [παῖς] little girl, girl, baby girl XEN. An. 4.3.11 MEN. Her. 18. Asp. 141, al. etc.; of a young woman PLUT. Cic. 41.3 || young servant, handmaid LYS. 1.12, 13.67 PHIL.² Congr. 154. al. NT Mark 14.66 etc. || prostitute HDT. 1.93.2 IS. 6.19 etc.

It's clear from Theodoret's account that 1) the person playing at being an exorcist was a male servant, a cook; 2) the servants playing at being demoniacs were females, but hardly little girls; 3) laughter, although it may well have been part of the play, isn't explicitly mentioned; and 4) the person playing the exorcist wasn't dressed in rags, but in a goat-skin cloak.

This is a rare slip on the part of a brilliant scholar.

Labels: typographical and other errors