"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, June 14, 2023
The Practice of Civilized Nations
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XLI (533 AD):
[T]he war was preceded, according the practice of civilized nations, by the most solemn protestations that each party was sincerely desirous of peace.