There [on Santorini] we stayed at the Hotel Atlantis, where we were the only foreigners. I got to speak with a judge on the island — he had been sending glasses of ouzo to our table, and I went over to the bar to treat him to a glass of ouzo. When he learned that I was studying the classics, he began speaking Latin — habeas corpus, mandamus, e pluribus unum. When he left the hotel, a group of amazed Greeks asked me about the judge's command of Latin. I told them that he spoke Latin that would make Cicero ashamed.
"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 04, 2017
A Compliment?
Diskin Clay, "Greek Poets and Strangers: A Memoir,"
Arion 18.3
(Winter, 2011) 123-147 (at 127-128):