Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Iliad 8.228-235 (Agamemnon speaking; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Shame, you Argives, poor nonentities splendid to look on.
Where are our high words gone, when we said that we were the bravest?
those words you spoke before all in hollow vaunting at Lemnos
when you were filled with abundant meat of the high-horned oxen
and drank from the great bowls filled to the brim with wine, how each man
could stand up against a hundred or even two hundred Trojans
in the fighting; now we together cannot match one of them,
Hektor, who must presently kindle our ships with the hot fire.

αἰδὼς Ἀργεῖοι, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, εἶδος ἀγητοί·
πῇ ἔβαν εὐχωλαί, ὅτε δὴ φάμεν εἶναι ἄριστοι,
ἃς ὁπότ᾽ ἐν Λήμνῳ κενεαυχέες ἠγοράασθε,        230
ἔσθοντες κρέα πολλὰ βοῶν ὀρθοκραιράων
πίνοντες κρητῆρας ἐπιστεφέας οἴνοιο,
Τρώων ἄνθ᾽ ἑκατόν τε διηκοσίων τε ἕκαστος
στήσεσθ᾽ ἐν πολέμῳ· νῦν δ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἑνὸς ἄξιοί εἰμεν
Ἕκτορος, ὃς τάχα νῆας ἐνιπρήσει πυρὶ κηλέῳ.        235