This is also a proverb, 'anger is the last of a man to grow old', applied to older men, since the older they are, the stronger their anger. Alcaeus [fragment 442] mentions it as being of general application.Erasmus (Adagia I vii 13) translates the proverb as "Ira omnium tardissime senescit."
τοῦτο δὲ καὶ παροιμιακῶς λέγεται, ὅτι ὁ θυμὸς ἔσχατον γηράσκει. λέγεται δὲ διὰ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους. ὅσῳ γὰρ γηράσκουσι τὸν θυμὸν ἐρρωμενέστερον ἔχουσι. καὶ Ἀλκαῖος ὡς λεγομένου κατὰ τὸ κοινὸν αὐτοῦ μιμνήσκεται.
"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, May 04, 2017
Angry Old Men
Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 954 = Suda Θ 574 (tr. David A. Campbell):