You praise the fortune and manners of the men of old; and yet, if on a sudden some god were for taking you back to those days, you would refuse every time...
laudas
fortunam et mores antiquae plebis, et idem,
si quis ad illa deus subito te agat, usque recuses...
"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, April 13, 2021
Hypocrisy of a Laudator Temporis Acti
Horace, Satires 2.7.22-24 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):