I will proceed with my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities no less than of great. Most of those which were great once are small today; and those which in my lifetime have grown to greatness, were small enough in the old days. It makes no odds whether the cities I write of are big or little -- for in this world nobody remains prosperous for long.
"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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Saturday, November 19, 2005
Rise and Fall
Herodotus 1.5.3-4 (tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt):