We are not called to save the nation or get crowned by it for wisdom; what is called for, my dear Timocrates, is to eat and to drink wine, gratifying the belly without harming it.
οὐδὲν δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ᾿ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ᾿ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν οἶνον, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως.
"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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Sunday, July 28, 2024
Our Duty
Metrodorus, fragment 41 Koerte, Jahrbuch für classische Philologie, Suppl. 17 (1890) 559, preserved by Plutarch, Against Colotes 16 (Moralia 1098C; tr. Benedict Einarson and Phillip H. De Lacy):