Laudator Temporis Acti

Let me tell you that since my early youth and after a little experience, I became aware and convinced of the vanity of life and of the stupidity of men, who fight one another continually for pleasures that don't please and for goods that don't help; they endure and inflict on one another innumerable worries and innumerable troubles, which actually harass and injure; and thus the more they seek happiness, the farther away they get from it.

Tu dei sapere che io fino nella prima gioventù, a poche esperienze, fui persuaso e chiaro della vanità della vita, e della stoltezza degli uomini; i quali combattendo continuamente gli uni cogli altri per l'acquisto di piaceri che non dilettano, e di beni che non giovano; sopportando e cagionandosi scambievolmente infinite sollecitudini, e infiniti mali, che affannano e nocciono in effetto; tanto più si allontanano dalla felicità, quanto più la cercano.

Here where a desolate glance blows on the stones and the deathless agavae
Here where the footsteps of time are heard profoundly
Where the enormous clouds unfold sixwinged and golden
Above the metope of heaven....

Let ... the language of your naughtiness lack all restraint ...

... sint nequitiae libera verba tuae ...

It is this period that is tossed about by the most frequent and severe storms of temptation, this that is battered and overwhelmed most often by the tidal waves of the world and this age. Youth is over-confident about its strength, boastful about its handsome appearance, either aims at making a show with the glitter and gloss of temporal possessions, or is delighted at actually doing so. And thus for bad young people, whatever truth has commanded is poison, whatever the devil has suggested is food. But in fact the bitter taste of justice is the right medicine for the ulcer of youth, while the sweet taste of injustice is the bait in the mousetrap to catch its headstrong rashness.

Haec pluribus atque maioribus tentationum tempestatibus quatitur, haec fluctuum crebriore impetu saeculi exundantis operitur. Praesumit viribus, formae dignitate iactatur, pompa rerum temporalium praefulgere aut exoptat aut gaudet. Itaque iuventuti malorum venenum est quidquid veritas praecepit, esca est quidquid diabolus suggesserit: sed amaritudo iustitiae medicamentum est ulceris aetatis; dulcedo autem iniustitiae muscipula est temeritatis.

Now I am obliged to report the statements made by the Greeks, though I am not obliged to believe them all.

ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν λέγειν μὲν τὰ ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων λεγόμενα ἀνάγκη, πείθεσθαι δὲ πᾶσιν οὐκέτι ἀνάγκη.

Son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus,
where are you running, turning your back in battle like a coward?
Do not let them strike the spear in your back as you run for it.

διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ
πῇ φεύγεις μετὰ νῶτα βαλὼν κακὸς ὣς ἐν ὁμίλῳ;
μή τίς τοι φεύγοντι μεταφρένῳ ἐν δόρυ πήξῃ.        95

• Boast of L. Aemilius Paulus
• Wound Placement
• Wounds in Front versus Wounds in Back
• Location of Wounds
• Cowardice and Bravery
• Wounds, Honorable and Dishonorable
• Preserving One's Honor in Retreat
• Wounds In Front and In Back
• Facing Death

[1] Now that the Greeks had decided against following the Persian fleet any further or sailing to the Hellespont to dismantle the causeway, they proceeded to besiege the town of Andros with the intention of taking it. [2] For Themistocles had asked the Aegean islanders to provide financial support, and had started with the Andrians, but they refused. The argument Themistocles put forward to the Andrians was that the Athenians had come with two great gods in their train called Persuasion and Compulsion, and so they had really better give them some money. The Andrians replied to this by saying: ‘Of course Athens is so important and prosperous, seeing that she is so well endowed with useful gods. [3] However, there is no one on earth who is worse off for land than we are on Andros, and we have two cruel gods here, who never leave our island but are our constant and loyal companions. These gods are Poverty and Insufficiency, and since they are the gods we possess, we will not give you any money. However strong the might of Athens, it will never be stronger than Andrian impotence.’

[1] οἱ δὲ Ἓλληνες, ἐπείτε σφι ἀπέδοξε μήτ᾽ ἐπιδιώκειν ἔτι προσωτέρω τῶν βαρβάρων τὰς νέας μήτε πλέειν ἐς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον λύσοντας τὸν πόρον, τὴν Ἄνδρον περικατέατο ἐξελεῖν ἐθέλοντες. [2] πρῶτοι γὰρ Ἄνδριοι νησιωτέων αἰτηθέντες πρὸς Θεμιστοκλέος χρήματα οὐκ ἔδοσαν, ἀλλὰ προϊσχομένου Θεμιστοκλέος λόγον τόνδε, ὡς ἥκοιεν Ἀθηναῖοι περὶ ἑωυτοὺς ἔχοντες δύο θεοὺς μεγάλους, Πειθώ τε καὶ Ἀναγκαίην, οὕτω τέ σφι κάρτα δοτέα εἶναι χρήματα, ὑπεκρίναντο πρὸς ταῦτα λέγοντες ὡς κατὰ λόγον ἦσαν ἄρα αἱ Ἀθῆναι μεγάλαι τε καὶ εὐδαίμονες, αἳ καὶ θεῶν χρηστῶν ἥκοιεν εὖ, [3] ἐπεὶ Ἀνδρίους γε εἶναι γεωπείνας ἐς τὰ μέγιστα ἀνήκοντας, καὶ θεοὺς δύο ἀχρήστους οὐκ ἐκλείπειν σφέων τὴν νῆσον ἀλλ᾽ αἰεὶ φιλοχωρέειν, Πενίην τε καὶ Ἀμηχανίην, καὶ τούτων τῶν θεῶν ἐπηβόλους ἐόντας Ἀνδρίους οὐ δώσειν χρήματα· οὐδέκοτε γὰρ τῆς ἑωυτῶν ἀδυναμίης τὴν Ἀθηναίων δύναμιν εἶναι κρέσσω.

Gaiety irks the gloomy, gloom the cheerful,
speed the slow, and laziness the busy.

oderunt hilarem tristes tristemque iocosi,
sedatum celeres, agilem navumque remissi.

I firmly believe that even lizards and gnats think that the whole world was especially made for their species. So let everyone stick to his own opinion, for nobody could drive it out of his head.

[I]o tengo per fermo che anche le lucertole e i moscherini si credano che tutto il mondo sia fatto a posta per uso della loro specie. E però ciascuno si rimanga col suo parere, che niuno glielo caverebbe di capo.

For it does no harm if we should understand the same thing in two or three ways.

non enim nocet, si eandem rem duobus et tribus modis intellegamus.

Whatever is assigned to us by the terms of our birth and the blend in our constitutions, will stick with us, no matter how hard or how long the soul may have tried to master itself.

quaecumque adtribuit condicio nascendi et corporis temperatura, cum multum se diuque animus conposuerit, haerebunt.

Well, anyhow I haven't made a graven image.
                                               Country squire, after Mattins

For it is cowardly to lose the greater and to win the less.

ἀνανδρία γάρ, τὸ πλέον ὅστις ἀπολέσας
τοὔλασσον ἔλαβε.

Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.

GNOME. But how did those rascals come to an end?

SPRITE. Some by making war against each other; some by sailing and drowning; some by eating one another; some, and quite a few, by killing themselves; some by rotting in idleness; some by racking their brains over books; some by debauchery and by reveling in a thousand excesses; and, finally, some by finding all kinds of ways to act against their own nature and go to their own destruction.

GNOMO. Ma come sono andati a mancare quei monelli?

FOLLETTO. Parte guerreggiando tra loro, parte navigando, parte mangiandosi l'un l'altro, parte ammazzandosi non pochi di propria mano, parte infracidando nell'ozio, parte stillandosi il cervello sui libri, parte gozzovigliando, e disordinando in mille cose; in fine studiando tutte le vie di far contro la propria natura e di capitar male.

Winston Churchill had always been obstinately unenlightened. He was English and aristocratic, and had the bad taste not to be ashamed of his origins. His theology (though by no means elaborate) was coarse and Christian enough to allow for sin and the devil, and sufficiently Pelagian (in the English manner) to admit the possibility of salvation by works. He had always stubbornly affirmed that some things were worse than war. He thought the Empire a good thing, and said so; as good as—perhaps even better than—other people’s empires, to which, for some reason, Enlightened Opinion had never seen fit to object. He believed in History—even English history. He affronted the highbrows with vulgar outmoded virtues, such as patriotism, courage, honour, loyalty, cheerfulness and high spirits; he defied the plain, practical lowbrows by using the sort of language which a Raleigh would not have thought unbecoming. He not only was, in a symbolic and spiritual manner, a bulldog; by one of those extravagant pieces of luck so frequently showered upon the undeserving English, he looked like a bulldog—the cartoonist’s delight, an endearing mascot. He contrived to present the war, not as a cold, passionless, punitive measure to be meted out sad-eyed, to the refrain of “this hurts me more than it hurts you” (which at the time it only too obviously did), but as an adventure combining the exaltation of martyrdom with the thrill of a gorilla-hunt. He lived in the present, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew, instead of in the next era but two, according to the Gospel of St. Marx. He was unregenerate; he was unenlightened; he was England. And he never scolded. He did not tell us that we were as good as gold; he assumed it.