Recently I was reading some charming stories by Plautus for the sake of fleeing boredom and relaxing my mind, and thereby for a short moment with the help of the ancient poet avoided the heavy cares of life. It is certainly astonishing how many pleasant stories and elegant pieces I have found therein, and what trickery of servants, what old wives' tales, what flattery of harlots, what greed of panders, what voraciousness of parasites, what anxieties of old men, and what youthful loves.Venustissimi for vetustissimi crossed my mind, but there is no need to emend.
Nuper, dum fugiendi fastidii et relaxandi animi gratia lepidissimas fabellas apud Plautum legerem, curisque mordacibus tantillum temporis vetustissimi vatis auxilio cor furarer, mirum dictu quot ibi iocundas narrationes, quot elegantes nugas invenerim, quas serviles fallacias, quas aniles ineptias, quas meretricum blanditias, quam lenonis avaritiam, quam parasiti voraginem, quam senum solicitudinem, quos adolescentium amores.
"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, June 15, 2017
Reading Plautus
Petrarch (1304-1374), Rerum Familiarum Libri 5.14.1 (tr. Aldo S. Bernardo):