Now he is but dust; and of Achilles, once so great, there remains a pitiful handful, hardly enough to fill an urn. But his glory lives, enough to fill the whole round world. This is the true measure of the man; and in this the son of Peleus is still his real self, and does not know the empty Tartara.
iam cinis est, et de tam magno restat Achille
nescio quid parvum, quod non bene conpleat urnam,
at vivit totum quae gloria conpleat orbem.
haec illi mensura viro respondet, et hac est
par sibi Pelides nec inania Tartara sentit.
"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, March 13, 2014
Post Mortem
Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.615-619 (tr. Frank Justus Miller):