Laudator Temporis Acti

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.

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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

W.J. Woodhouse (1866-1937), The Composition of Homer's Odyssey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 7:

For over thirty years two Greek books, the Odyssey of Homer and the Description of Greece by Pausanias, the one from the golden springtime, the other from the mellow autumn of that ancient world, have been my loved companions, at home and on my journeyings. To read and read again the Odyssey itself has ever to me seemed more profitable, as it is indubitably more entertaining, and never more so than now, to one that is ἐπὶ γήραος οὐδῷ, than to read books written about the Odyssey. And still at each reading once more is recaptured the fascination, the exhilarating sense of discovery and adventure with which, nearly half a century ago, as a self-imposed labour of love, I first spelt out the magic lines.

Doubtless, one's knowledge must have been enriched by countless rills from forgotten sources; but the main stream flows deep and strong and untroubled from a single spring, which is the poem itself.

Id., p. 8:

If any one, retorting my own avowal, resolves to read the Odyssey itself rather than to spend time over what is here said about it, so much the better—provided only that the Odyssey be read. Should the reading of my book lead others to the divine poet—well, with that again I should be content, and more than content. For if my book does that, what other merit need it claim?

Stephanie West on Homer, Odyssey 1.113:

His name reflects his father's characteristic method of fighting; for Odysseus' skill at archery cf. viii 215 ff. (with Hainsworth's n.), xxi 393 ff., xxii 1 ff. The children of many Homeric heroes bear names which recall some aspect of their fathers' lives—Eurysaces (Ajax), Astyanax (Hector), Megapenthes (Menelaus), Iphianassa, Chrysothemis, and Laodice (Agamemnon), Pisistratus (Nestor)...

Name meanings:

• Astyanax: city's king
• Chrysothemis: golden law
• Eurysaces: broad shield
• Iphianassa: strong queen
• Laodice: people's justice
• Megapenthes: great sorrow
• Pisistratus: persuader of the army
• Telemachus: fighting from afar

See Nikoletta Kanavou, The Names of Homeric Heroes: Problems and Interpretations (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015).

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 8, § 114 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):

Really therefore a wild animal lies at the heart of every person, only waiting for the opportunity to rant and rave; it wants to hurt others and annihilate them if they should dare to block its path.

Wirklich also liegt im Herzen eines Jeden ein wildes Thier, das nur auf Gelegenheit wartet, um zu toben und zu rasen, indem es Andern wehe thun und, wenn sie gar ihm den Weg versperren, sie vernichten möchte.

Thucydides 6.14 (Nicias speaking; tr. Charles Forster Smith):

Remember that this is the part of a good governor—to benefit his country as much as possible, or willingly at least to do it no harm.

τὸ καλῶς ἄρξαι τοῦτ ̓ εἶναι, ὃς ἂν τὴν πατρίδα ὠφελήσῃ ὡς πλεῖστα ἢ ἑκὼν εἶναι μηδὲν βλάψῃ.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972), The Spirit of Romance, rev. ed. (1952; rpt. New York: New Directions, 1968), p. 5:

I have floundered somewhat ineffectually through the slough of philology, but I look forward to the time when it will be possible for the lover of poetry to study poetry—even the poetry of recondite times and places—without burdening himself with the rags of morphology, epigraphy, privatleben and the kindred delights of the archaeological or "scholarly" mind.

Plato, Laws 1.635a-b (tr. Trevor J. Saunders):

There is no disgrace in being told of some blemish — indeed, if one takes criticism in good part, without being ruffled by it, it commonly leads one to a remedy.

οὐ γὰρ τό γε γνῶναί τι τῶν μὴ καλῶν ἄτιμον, ἀλλὰ ἴασιν ἐξ αὐτοῦ συμβαίνει γίγνεσθαι τῷ μὴ φθόνῳ τὰ λεγόμενα ἀλλ᾽ εὐνοίᾳ δεχομένῳ.