That city can never attain to safety, in which justice and virtue are trampled under heel; while a babbler directs the state, with the goad of mischief in his hands.
οὐ γάρ ποτ' ἂν γένοιτ' ἂν ἀσφαλὴς πόλις
ἐν ᾗ τὰ μὲν δίκαια καὶ τὰ σώφρονα
λάγδην πατεῖται, κωτίλος δ᾿ ἀνὴρ λαβὼν
πανοῦργα χερσὶ κέντρα κηδεύει πόλιν.
"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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Sunday, May 02, 2021
Misrule
Sophocles, fragment 683 (tr. A.C. Pearson):