Laudator Temporis Acti

What is malice, but a love of doing harm? What is guile but doing one thing and pretending to do another? What is flattery, but leading astray with deceitful praise? What is envy, but hatred of another's good fortune? What is fault-finding, but criticism that is more waspish than truthful?

Quid est malitia, nisi nocendi amor? Quid est dolus, nisi aliud agere et aliud simulare? Quid est adulatio, nisi fallaci laude seductio? Quid est invidia, nisi odium felicitatis alienae? Quid est detractio, nisi mordacior, quam veracior reprehensio?

By mixed marriages they are getting to look like the Sarmatians in their coarse appearance.

conubiis mixtis nonnihil in Sarmatarum habitum foedantur.

To support this opinion they pile up words, as much as each of them can; whether shouting or just stammering, they never keep quiet. Yet even when we talk to them, even if they are beaten in argument, they don't admit it.

In hanc sententiam exaggerant verba, quanta quisque potest; lingua vel sonanti, vel titubanti, non tacent: tamen et quando eis loquimur, etsi vincantur, non consentiunt.

He had no regard for truth, and none for sanctity, no fear of the gods, no reverence for an oath, no religious scruple.

nihil veri nihil sancti, nullus deum metus nullum ius iurandum nulla religio.

As a result, our community's
filled with assistant secretaries
and clownish monkeys of politicians
forever lying to the people.

κᾆτ᾿ ἐκ τούτων ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν
ὑπογραμματέων ἀνεμεστώθη
καὶ βωμολόχων δημοπιθήκων        1085
ἐξαπατώντων τὸν δῆμον ἀεί.

Beginning at about the birth of Cicero, the tendency of the empire's socioeconomic development over five centuries can be compressed into three words: fewer have more. That story would make a good book—and a big one.

Tiridates, the king of that country, who met them and gave them battle, narrowly escaped being taken alive in the engagement; for a noose was thrown round him by a distant enemy who would have dragged him off, had he not instantly cut the rope with his sword and succeeded in escaping.

Τιριδάτης δ᾿ αὐτῆς ἐβασίλευεν, ὃς ὑπαντιάσας αὐτοῖς καὶ ποιησάμενος μάχην παρὰ μικρὸν ἦλθεν ἐπ᾿ αὐτῆς ζωὸς ἁλῶναι τῆς παρατάξεως· βρόχον γὰρ αὐτῷ περιβαλών τις πόρρωθεν ἔμελλεν ἐπισπάσειν, εἰ μὴ τῷ ξίφει θᾶττον ἐκεῖνος τὸν τόνον κόψας ἔφθη διαφυγεῖν.

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.

• Loving or Hating Enemies
• Friends and Enemies
• Love and Hate

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)...

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.