Dum mortem vitare studet, vitamque tueri,
se toto vitae tempore torquet homo.
Bruta bonis fruitur praesentis bestia vitae;
dum vivit, vivit; cum moritur, moritur.
While Death to shun, Life to preserve, poor Man
Doth vex himself the space of all his span.
Brute Beasts enjoy the present Life's supply,
Living they live, and when they die, they die.
"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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Thursday, August 31, 2006
The Self-Tormentor
John Owen, Epigrams 9.44 (Heautontimoroumenos, tr. Thomas Harvey):