Thursday, September 08, 2022

 

Three Interests

J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 42, with note on p. 267:
A healthy young man, in the Hellenistic tradition, had three commendable interests: horses, dogs and philosophy; and though philosophers were scorned by the crude soldiery and the common man in Lucilius might declare that a horse and a good warm cloak were better value as possessions than a philosopher, cultured Romans in general were not so basely materialistic.68

68. Terence, Andr. 55-7; Pers. 5, 189-91 (cf. 6, 38); Lucil. XV, 515f. Marx.
Terence, Andria 55-57 (tr. John Sargeaunt):
As for the usual doings of young men, such as interesting themselves in keeping horses or hounds, or in philosophical lectures...

quod plerique omnes faciunt adulescentuli,
ut animum ad aliquod studium adiungant, aut equos
alere aut canes ad venandum aut ad philosophos...
Persius 5.189-191 (tr. G.G. Ramsay):
If you talk in this fashion among your varicose Centurions, the hulking Pulfennius straightway bursts into a huge guffaw, and bids a clipped hundred-penny piece for a lot of a hundred Greeks.

dixeris haec inter varicosos centuriones,
continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
et centum Graecos curto centusse licetur.
Lucilius, fragment 515-516 Marx (tr. E.H. Warmington):
If you ask me, an over-cloak, a gelding, a slave, a straw-coat—I have more use for any one of these than I have for a wiseacre.

paenula, si quaeris, cantherius servus segreste
utilior mihi quam sapiens.



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