O Father of our city,pater urbis = Romulus, Gradive = Mars.
whence came such wickedness among thy Latin shepherds?
How did such a lust possess thy grandchildren, O Gradivus?
o pater urbis,
unde nefas tantum Latiis pastoribus?
unde haec tetigit, Gradive, tuos urtica nepotes?
"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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Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Degeneration
Juvenal 2.126-128 (tr. G.G. Ramsay):