Wise is the man who knows much by nature,Basil L. Gildersleeve ad loc. (the lines are 94-96 in his numbering):
while those who have acquired their knowledge
chatter in pointless confusion, just like
a pair of crows against the divine bird of Zeus.
σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ·
μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι
παγγλωσσίᾳ κόρακες ὣς ἄκραντα γαρύετον
Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον.
"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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Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Chatterers
Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.86-88 (tr. Anthony Verity):