Then I found Odysseus standing among the bodies of the slain,
and they, stretched all around him on the hard floor,
lay one upon the other; the sight would have warmed thy heart with cheer.
εὗρον ἔπειτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα μετὰ κταμένοισι νέκυσσιν
ἑσταόθ᾽· οἱ δέ μιν ἀμφί, κραταίπεδον οὖδας ἔχοντες,
κείατ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν· ἰδοῦσά κε θυμὸν ἰάνθης.
"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, August 15, 2024
A Heart-Warming Sight
Homer, Odyssey 23.45-47 (Eurycleia to Penelope; tr. A.T. Murray):