The first thing, I believe, for mankind is education. For whenever anyone does the beginning of anything correctly, it is likely that the end also will be right. As one sows, so can one expect to reap. And if in a young body one sows a noble education, this lives and flourishes through the whole of his life, and neither rain nor drought destroys it.
πρῶτον, οἶμαι, τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶ παίδευσις· ὅταν γάρ τις πράγματος κἂν ὁτουοῦν τὴν ἀρχὴν ὀρθῶς ποιήσηται, εἰκὸς καὶ τὴν τελευτὴν ὀρθῶς γίγνεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ τῇ γῇ οἷον ἄν τις τὸ σπέρμα ἐναρόσῃ, τοιαῦτα καὶ τὰ ἔκφορα δεῖ προσδοκᾶν· καὶ ἐν νέῳ σώματι ὅταν τις τὴν παίδευσιν γενναίαν ἐναρόσῃ, ζῇ τοῦτο καὶ θάλλει διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου, καὶ αὐτὸ οὔτε ὄμβρος οὔτε ἀνομβρία ἀφαιρεῖται.
"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, July 10, 2024
Education
Antiphon the Sophist, fragment 60 (tr. Kathleen Freeman):