Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus, when somebody said that Philip in a few days had razed Olynthus to the ground, said, ‘By Heaven, he will not build another like it in many years!’
Ἀγησίπολις ὁ Κλεομβρότου, εἰπόντος τινὸς ὅτι Φίλιππος ἐν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις Ὄλυνθον κατέσκαψε, ‘μὰ τοὺς θεούς,’ εἶπεν, ‘ἄλλην τοιαύτην ἐν πολλαπλασίονι χρόνῳ οὐκ οἰκοδομήσει.’
"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, March 12, 2023
Easier to Tear Down Than to Build
Plutarch, Sayings of Spartans 3 = Moralia 208 C (tr. Frank Cole Babbitt):