But as it is, what reason have we for wanting to live at all, unless we have these studies? For myself, even with them, I hardly want to live; if I am robbed of them, then not even hardly.
nunc autem quid est, sine his (sc. studiis) cur vivere velimus? mihi vero cum his ipsis vix, his autem detractis ne vix quidem.
"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, March 01, 2023
A Reason to Live
Cicero, Letters to His Friends 9.8.2 (to Varro; tr. W. Glynn Williams):