Laudator Temporis Acti

Lucan, Pharsalia 2.269-273 (tr. J.D. Duff):

The part of air nearest earth is fired by thunderbolts, and the low-lying places of the world are visited by gales and long flashes of flame; but Olympus rises above the clouds. It is heaven's law, that small things are troubled and distracted, while great things enjoy peace.

fulminibus propior terrae succenditur aer,
imaque telluris ventos tractusque coruscos        270
flammarum accipiunt: nubes excedit Olympus.
lege deum minimas rerum discordia turbat,
pacem magna tenent.

Most ancient authors say the opposite, e.g. Horace, Odes 2.10.9-12 (tr. Niall Rudd):

It is more often the tall pine that is shaken by the wind; the collapse is more devastating when high towers fall, and it is the mountain peaks that are struck by lightning.

saepius ventis agitatur ingens
pinus et celsae graviore casu        10
decidunt turres feriuntque summos
        fulgura montis.

See the parallels collected by Nisbet and Hubbard for the passage from Horace:

Plato, Laws 4.715d-e (tr. Trevor J. Saunders):

CLEINIAS: By heaven, sir, you're quite right. You've the sharp eye of an old man for these things.

ATHENIAN: Yes, when we're young, we're all pretty blind to them; old age is the best time to see them clearly.

Κλεινίας. ναὶ μὰ Δία, ὦ ξένε· καθ᾽ ἡλικίαν γὰρ ὀξὺ βλέπεις.

Ἀθηναῖος. νέος μὲν γὰρ ὢν πᾶς ἄνθρωπος τὰ τοιαῦτα ἀμβλύτατα αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ ὁρᾷ, γέρων δὲ ὀξύτατα.

Plato, Laws 4.708c (tr. Trevor J. Saunders):

When a single people speaks the same language and observes the same laws you get a certain feeling of community, because everyone shares the same religious rites and so forth...

τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἕν τι εἶναι γένος ὁμόφωνον καὶ ὁμόνομον ἔχει τινὰ φιλίαν, κοινωνὸν ἱερῶν ὂν καὶ τῶν τοιούτων πάντων...

Related post: Cultural Cohesion.

ἀριστοκάρπου Σικελίας are the opening words of Bacchylides, Odes 3. Thanks to Eric Thomson for this photograph of a Sicilian lemon: These lines of Goethe also come to mind (tr. David Luke):

Do you know the land where the lemon-trees blossom, where the golden oranges glow in the dark foliage, a soft wind blows from the blue sky, and the myrtle stands silent and the bay-tree is tall? Do you know it perhaps? It is there, there that I would like to go with you, my beloved.

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
Kennst du es wohl? Dahin!
Dahin möcht’ ich mit dir,
O mein Geliebter, ziehn.

Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), Founders of the Middle Ages (1928; rpt. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1957), p. 9:

In endeavoring to ascertain the mind of the Church in regard to Pagan culture, I am assuming that the message of Christianity was clear, profound, and new. Anybody can read it in the Gospels, even, I venture to imagine, in the sources that New Testament scholars have discovered behind the first three Gospels, — writers that I must mention as canonized, since they precede the Evangelists themselves, — St. Urmarkus and St. Q.

Dear Mike,

Re: A War That does Not Concern Us, as every schoolboy used to know, ships were sent and did not return. I don't know which grisly end was worse, starvation in the latomie, or slaughter in the river:

[Thucydides 7.84.5] The Peloponnesians also came down and butchered them, especially those in the water, which was thus immediately spoiled, but which they went on drinking just the same, mud and all, bloody as it was, most even fighting to have it.

οἵ τε Πελοποννήσιοι ἐπικαταβάντες τοὺς ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ μάλιστα ἔσφαζον. καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ εὐθὺς διέφθαρτο, ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν ἧσσον ἐπίνετό τε ὁμοῦ τῷ πηλῷ ᾑματωμένον καὶ περιμάχητον ἦν τοῖς πολλοῖς.

A stretch of the Fiume Assinaro (candidate 1): And just to be on the safe side, the Tellaro (candidate 2), slightly further south: Best wishes,

Eric [Thomson]

Alan J.B. Wace and Frank H. Stubbings, edd., A Companion to Homer (London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1962), p. xxvii:

In references to the text of Homer the books of the Iliad are denoted by the Greek capital letters, those of the Odyssey by the Greek lower case letters. For the convenience of readers who may be using a text that only gives the Roman or Arabic numerals a concordance is printed below:

Thucydides 6.9.1 (Nicias speaking; tr. Charles Forster Smith):

To me, however, it seems that we ought to consider yet again this very question, whether it is best to send the ships at all, and that we ought not, on such slight deliberation about matters of great importance, at the instigation of men of alien race, to undertake a war that does not concern us.

ἐμοὶ μέντοι δοκεῖ καὶ περὶ αὐτοῦ τούτου ἔτι χρῆναι σκέψασθαι, εἰ ἄμεινόν ἐστιν ἐκπέμπειν τὰς ναῦς, καὶ μὴ οὕτω βραχείᾳ βουλῇ περὶ μεγάλων πραγμάτων ἀνδράσιν ἀλλοφύλοις πειθομένους πόλεμον οὐ προσήκοντα ἄρασθαι.

Christopher Pelling ad loc.:

From Count Harry Kessler's Diaries (published as Journey to the Abyss, The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918), translated by Laird M. Easton):

Oekoermezoe [Galicia], February 6, 1915 (on the German Eastern Front): "... Niedner says that the numerous psychoses among the officers and men coming here from the west is striking. Recently of ten newly arrived officers, three had nervous breakdowns. He spoke as well of a hospital case where a man sat in the antechamber, a common soldier, his rifle on the ground between his knees, looking at the ground, and murmuring something incomprehensible. He came up to him and asked him what he wanted. The man didn't answer, however, but only continued to murmur in the same tone. He soon noticed that something wasn't right psychologically, listened, and to his astonishment suddenly recognized that the man was reciting long passages of The Odyssey in Greek."

Hat tip: John Strang.

---

Kevin Muse draws my attention to the writing (the opening of the Odyssey in Greek) on the blackboard of the classroom in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI5xaum_HlA&t=223s.

Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi, Syracuse, inv. 50167: Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

G.P. Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1972), pp. 11-12 (click to enlarge):

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives