A fox, after looking by chance at a tragic actor's mask, remarked: "O what a majestic face is here, but it has no brains!" This is a twit for those whom Lady Luck has granted rank and renown, but denied them common sense.
Personam tragicam forte vulpes viderat:
"O quanta species" inquit "cerebrum non habet!"
Hoc illis dictum est quibus honorem et gloriam
Fortuna tribuit, sensum communem abstulit.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Fable
Phaedrus 1.7 (tr. Ben Edwin Perry):