He would often find fault with himself too, and one day when Ariston heard him doing this and asked, "Who is it you are scolding so?" he, laughing, said, "An old man with grey hairs and no wits."
πολλάκις δὲ καὶ ἑαυτῷ ἐπέπληττεν· ὧν ἀκούσας Ἀρίστων, "τίνι," ἔφη, "ἐπιπλήττεις;" καὶ ὃς γελάσας, "πρεσβύτῃ," φησί, "πολιὰς μὲν ἔχοντι, νοῦν δὲ μή."
"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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Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Self-Criticism
Diogenes Laertius 7.171 (on Cleanthes; tr. R.D. Hicks):