Let no such act be yours, men of Athens, but guard the laws, which are your own and above all else have made you supremely great, and do not try to do anything without their sanction.
μὴ ὑμεῖς γε, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἑαυτῶν ὄντας τοὺς νόμους, δι᾽ οὓς μάλιστα μέγιστοί ἐστε, φυλάττοντες, ἄνευ τούτων μηδὲν πράττειν πειρᾶσθε.
"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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Friday, April 25, 2025
The Laws
Xenophon, Hellenica 1.7.29 (speech of Euryptolemus; tr. Carleton L. Brownson: