He (i.e. Diogenes) used to say that all the tragic curses had fallen upon him; he was, at any rate,Cityless, homeless, bereft of fatherland,εἰώθει δὲ λέγειν ⟨πάσας⟩ τὰς τραγικὰς ἀρὰς αὐτῷ συνηντηκέναι· εἶναι γοῦν
a beggar, a vagrant, getting a living day by day.ἄπολις, ἄοικος, πατρίδος ἐστερημένος,
πτωχός, πλανήτης, βίον ἔχων ἐφήμερον.
"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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Thursday, June 22, 2023
Tragic Curses
Diogenes of Sinope, fragment 4 (from Diogenes Laertius 6.38 etc.; tr. M.J. Cropp):