The greater number of those who have expressed their opinions before me have deplored the lot of the commonwealth in finished and noble phrases; they have dwelt upon the horrors of war, the wretched fate of the conquered, the rape of maidens and boys, children torn from their parents' arms, matrons subjected to the will of the victors, temples and homes pillaged, bloodshed and fire; in short arms and corpses everywhere, gore and grief.
plerique eorum qui ante me sententias dixerunt conposite atque magnifice casum rei publicae miserati sunt. quae belli saevitia esset, quae victis acciderent enumeravere: rapi virgines pueros, divelli liberos a parentum conplexu, matres familiarum pati quae victoribus conlubuissent, fana atque domos spoliari, caedem incendia fieri, postremo armis cadaveribus, cruore atque luctu omnia conpleri.
"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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Saturday, June 24, 2023
Gore and Grief
Sallust, The War with Catiline 51.9 (Caesar speaking; tr. J.C. Rolfe):