[2] Have the soil of our native City and this land which we call our mother so slight a hold on us? Is our love of country confined to buildings and rafters? [3] And in truth I will confess to you — though I like not to recall the wrong you did me — that as often, during my absence, as I thought of my native place, all these objects came into my mind: the hills and the fields and the Tiber and the region familiar to my eyes, and this sky beneath which I had been born and reared. And I wish these things may rather move you now with love, Quirites, to make you abide in your own home, than afterwards, when you have left it, torment you with vain regrets.
[2] adeo nihil tenet solum patriae nec haec terra quam matrem appellamus, sed in superficie tignisque caritas nobis patriae pendet? [3] et quidem — fatebor vobis, etsi minus iniuriae vestrae meminisse iuvat — cum abessem, quotienscumque patria in mentem veniret, haec omnia occurrebant, colles campique et Tiberis et adsueta oculis regio et hoc caelum sub quo natus educatusque essem; quae vos, Quirites, nunc moveant potius caritate sua ut maneatis in sede vestra, quam postea, cum reliqueritis eam, macerent desiderio.
"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, September 19, 2024
Don't Emigrate
Livy 5.54.2-3 (speech of Camillus; tr. B.O. Foster):