These and similar varieties of the human race have been made by the ingenuity of Nature as toys for herself and marvels for us. And indeed who could possibly recount the various things she does every day and almost every hour?
haec atque talia ex hominum genere ludibria sibi, nobis miracula ingeniosa fecit natura. ex singulis quidem quae facit in dies ac prope horas, quis enumerare valeat?
"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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Friday, June 16, 2023
Marvels
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.2.33 (tr. H. Rackham):