These dead were destroyed by divine fate and their own
dastardly acts: they honored no mortals on this earth,
either high or low, of those that came among them,
and so through their wanton deeds they met a sorry end.
τούσδε δὲ μοῖρ᾽ ἐδάμασσε θεῶν καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα·
οὔ τινα γὰρ τίεσκον ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ὅτις σφέας εἰσαφίκοιτο· 415
τῷ καὶ ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ἀεικέα πότμον ἐπέσπον.
"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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Monday, August 12, 2024
They Deserved It
Homer, Odyssey 22.413-416 (tr. Peter Green):