Laudator Temporis Acti

ὦ μέλε παρὰ τοῖς νεωτέροις ὑπὸ γυναικῶν λέγεται μόνον, ὡς τὸ ὦ τάλαν, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς παλαιοῖς καὶ ὑπ᾿ ἀνδρῶν, ὡς ἐν Ἱππεῦσιν ᾿Αριστοφάνους (676), καὶ ἐν Μενάνδρου Συνερῶσιν (fr. 457 Kock) —

        ἄφες τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τί κόπτεις, ὦ μέλε;

σημαίνει δέ, ὦ δείλαιε, ὦ πονηρέ. ἔνιοι δέ, ὦ ἐπιμελείας ἄξιε καὶ οἷον μεμελημένε.

I am not unaware that the dangers and punishments experienced by many people have been omitted by a number of historians, wearied by the numbers involved, or else fearing to inflict on potential readers the same ennui with what they themselves found to be an overabundance of depressing material. Numerous instances have come to my notice which I feel, though they are not recorded by others, do deserve to be known.

neque sum ignarus a plerisque scriptoribus omissa multorum pericula et poenas, dum copia fatiscunt aut, quae ipsis nimia et maesta fuerant, ne pari taedio lecturos adficerent verentur: nobis pleraque digna cognitu obvenere, quamquam ab aliis incelebrata.

Just so a man once
reared in his home an infant lion,
fond of the nipple but deprived of its milk,
in its undeveloped time of life
tame, well loved by children
and a delight to the old:
it was much in his arms
like a young suckling baby,
gazing bright-eyed at his hand
and fawning when hunger pressed it.
But in time it displayed the character
inherited from its parents; it returned
thanks to its nurturers
by making, with destructive slaughter of sheep,
a feast, unbidden.

ἔθρεψεν δὲ λέοντος ἶ-
νιν δόμοις ἀγάλακτον οὕ-
τως ἀνὴρ φιλόμαστον,
ἐν βιότου προτελείοις        720
ἅμερον, εὐφιλόπαιδα,
καὶ γεραροῖς ἐπίχαρτον·
πολέα δ᾿ ἔσκ᾿ ἐν ἀγκάλαις
νεοτρόφου τέκνου δίκαν,
φαιδρωπὸς ποτὶ χεῖρα σαί-        725
νων τε γαστρὸς ἀνάγκαις.
βχρονισθεὶς δ᾿ ἀπέδειξεν ἦ-
θος τὸ πρὸς τοκέων· χάριν
γὰρ τροφεῦσιν ἀμείβων
μηλοφόνοισι σὺν ἄταις        730
δαῖτ᾿ ἀκέλευστος ἔτευξεν.

717-718 λέοντος ἶνιν Conington: λέοντα σίνιν codd.

Why do you long to drag down the man who deals with you from too lofty a height? Why do you try with all your might to crush the man who rails against you, a low and contemptible fellow, but sharp-tongued and troublesome to his betters? Why are you angry with your slave, you with your master, you with your patron, you with your client? Wait a little. Behold, death comes, who will make you equals. At the morning performances in the arena we often see a battle between a bull and a bear tied together, and when they have harried each other, an appointed slayer awaits them. Their fate is ours; we harass some one bound closely to us, and yet the end, all too soon, threatens the victor and the vanquished. Rather let us spend the little time that is left in repose and peace!

quid illum nimis ex alto tecum agentem detrahere cupis? quid illum oblatrantem tibi, humilem quidem et contemptum, sed superioribus acidum ac molestum exterere viribus tuis temptas? quid servo, quid domino, quid regi, quid clienti tuo irasceris? sustine paulum; venit ecce mors quae vos pares faciat. videre solemus inter matutina harenae spectacula tauri et ursi pugnam inter se colligatorum, quos, cum alter alterum vexarunt, suus confector expectat. idem facimus, aliquem nobiscum adligatum lacessimus, cum victo victorique finis et quidem maturus immineat. quieti potius pacatique quantulumcumque superest exigamus!

After the age of twenty-five, every man is conscious in himself of a most bitter misfortune: of the deterioration of his body, of the fading of the flower of his days, of the flight and unrecoverable loss of his cherished youth.

Passati i venticinque anni, ogni uomo è conscio a se stesso di una sventura amarissima: della decadenza del suo corpo, dell’appassimento del fiore de’ giorni suoi, della fuga e della perdita irrecuperabile della sua cara gioventù.

• Invitation to a Birthday Party
• Inscription for a 30th Birthday Card
• Verses for a 68th Birthday Card
• Motto for a 65th Birthday Card
• Birthday Celebrations
• Ideas for Birthday Card Greetings
• Motto for a Birthday Card
• Birthday Greetings

Fuge quo descendere gestis.

Indulge the fond Desire, with which You burn,
Pursue thy Flight, yet think not to return. (Philip Francis)

Well, you’re keen to be off. Goodbye. (Niall Rudd)

Off with you, down to where you itch to go. (H. Rushton Fairclough)

But off you go, down where you’re itching to go (David Ferry)

But follow your urge for a come-down (Colin MacLeod)

Vete, pues a donde tan ansiosamente deseas ir (Alfonso Cuatrecasas)

Foge para onde estás louco por descer (Frederico Lourenço)

Vai, scappa a precipizio dove hai tanta voglia (Enzo Mandruzzato)

Fuggi pur dove sogni di scendere (Luciano Paolicchi)

Va donc où tu brûles d'aller. (Ch.-M. Leconte de Lisle)

Flieh, wohin du Lust hast hinabzusteigen (Epstein)

Fuge quo avoid (10.32n.) the place to which …; the verb cannot imply dismissal yet, but it gives a warning. descendere ‘to go down (to a place of business or other activity)’ (OLD 4).

10.32 fuge magna ‘avoid (OLD 10) anything grand’, fuge echoes fugitivus 10[…].

Avoid the place you are so eager to go down to.

Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere

That man's a fool who keeps a constant watch
Over my thoughts, and quite neglects his own.

νήπιος, ὃς τὸν ἐμὸν μὲν ἔχει νόον ἐν φυλακῇσιν,
   τῶν δ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἰδίων οὐδὲν ἐπιστρέφεται.

440 ἰδίων Jacobs: κἰδιον codd.

• Let's Stop Somebody from Doing Something!
• Right Thinkers
• Foolish
• A Prying Busybody of a God
• Against Busybodies and Nosey Parkers
• Recipe for a Happy Life
• Most Hateful of All Names
• Mind Your Own Business
• Our Masters
• Omnipotent Moral Busybodies
• Minding Other People's Business
• Seeking to Make All the World Like Himself
• A Prying Busybody
• Nosey Parker

12, 24, 34, 55, 56, 67, 74, 87, 91, 95,
130, 194, 237, 360, 486, 521, 524, 559, 561, 582,
594, 609, 752, 777, 836, 837, 862, 873, 897, 900,
908, 927, 934, 970, 986, 990, 1022, 1029, 1033, 1090,
1095, 1147, 1181, 1243

And the Lacedaemonians were in no uncertainty about whom they should kill; for then at least heaven granted them an achievement such as they could never even have prayed for. For to have a crowd of enemies delivered into their hands, frightened, panic-stricken, presenting their unprotected sides, no one rallying to his own defence, but all rendering all possible assistance toward their own destruction,—how could one help regarding this as a gift from heaven? On that day, at all events, so many fell within a short time that men accustomed to see heaps of corn, wood, or stones, beheld then heaps of dead bodies.

οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὐκ ἠπόρουν τίνα ἀποκτείνοιεν: ἔδωκε γὰρ τότε γε ὁ θεὸς αὐτοῖς ἔργον οἷον οὐδ᾽ ηὔξαντό ποτ᾽ ἄν. τὸ γὰρ ἐγχειρισθῆναι αὐτοῖς πολεμίων πλῆθος πεφοβημένον, ἐκπεπληγμένον, τὰ γυμνὰ παρέχον, ἐπὶ τὸ μάχεσθαι οὐδένα τρεπόμενον, εἰς δὲ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι πάντας πάντα ὑπηρετοῦντας, πῶς οὐκ ἄν τις θεῖον ἡγήσαιτο; τότε γοῦν οὕτως ἐν ὀλίγῳ πολλοὶ ἔπεσον ὥστε εἰθισμένοι ὁρᾶν οἱ ἄνθρωποι σωροὺς σίτου, ξύλων, λίθων, τότε ἐθεάσαντο σωροὺς νεκρῶν.

                                                       ... ut ille
qui male parentem in rupis protrusit asellum
iratus: quis enim invitum servare laborat?

                                     ... like the man whose donkey
Kept pulling against being pulled back from the very
Edge of a cliff, till finally the man
Lost patience and pushed the stupid thing right over.
Why save a creature that doesn't want to be saved?

Loveliest of what I leave behind is the sunlight,
and loveliest after that the shining stars, and the moon's face,
but also cucumbers that are ripe, and pears, and apples.

κάλλιστον μὲν ἐγὼ λείπω φάος ἠελίοιο,
δεύτερον ἄστρα φαεινὰ σεληναίης τε πρόσωπον
ἠδὲ καὶ ὡραίους σικύους καὶ μῆλα καὶ ὄγχνας.

The pleasure which is afforded in many authors by the moderate difficulty you feel in reading them, and in overcoming that difficulty easily at every point, is provided in reading Isocrates by his supreme and extraordinary ease. We seem to experience the same pleasure we sense when our bodies feel right, and we want to move, and we walk briskly along a road that is not only level but paved. I do not think that such a clear and comprehensible writer is to be found in any other language as Isocrates is in Greek (where he is certainly unequaled). He is also easy for beginners in that language, which is indeed the most difficult of all languages throughout the world (except perhaps German). This is all the more remarkable when it is considered how studiously Isocrates sought out the other qualities of style, and above all how he avoided the concurrence of vowels (and this he actually succeeded in doing almost throughout), something that was certainly extremely difficult and problematical as anybody who tries to do so will discover; but which did not hinder this marvelous ease in any way.

Questa dote non si osserva negli altri autori che l’hanno, se non in quanto nel leggerli non si patisce, vale a dir non si sentono impedimenti e difficoltà. In Isocrate ella si osserva, perché non solo non si patisce leggendolo, ma per essa si prova un certo piacere. Negli altri ella è qualità negativa, in questo è positiva; ha un certo senso, un sapore proprio. Quel piacere che dà in molti autori una temperata difficoltà che si prova leggendoli, e superando facilmente quella difficoltà ad ogni passo, quel medesimo dà nel leggere Isocrate la somma e straordinaria facilità. Par di sentirvi quel gusto che si prova quando in buona disposizione di corpo, e volontà di far moto, si cammina speditamente per una strada, non pur piana, ma lastricata. Io non credo che si trovi autor così chiaro e facile in alcuna altra lingua, come è Isocrate (e certo senza compagni) nella greca. Esso è facilissimo anche ai principianti in quella lingua, che è pur la più difficile (se non prevale in ciò la tedesca) di tutte le lingue del mondo. Tanto più mirabile in questo, quanto che si sa bene con quanto studio Isocrate cercasse gli altri pregi della dicitura, e soprattutto fuggisse il concorso delle vocali; (il che egli ha fatto effettivamente e conseguito quasi da per tutto ed interamente) difficoltà certo grandissima, ed inceppamento; come ognun vedrebbe provandovisi; il quale però non ha punto impedito quella maravigliosa facilità.

May no other new pursuit arise for me
in place of excellence and learning, but ever holding on to this
may I enjoy lyre, dance, and song,
and may I have noble thoughts in company with the noble.

μήποτέ μοι μελέδημα νεώτερον ἄλλο φανείη
    ἀντ᾿ ἀρετῆς σοφίης τ᾿, ἀλλὰ τόδ᾿ αἰὲν ἔχων         790
τερποίμην φόρμιγγι καὶ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ,
    καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐσθλὸν ἔχοιμι νόον.

...we see that cultivated land is better than uncultivated, and returns better fruit by the labour of our hands...

                          ...incultis praestare videmus
culta loca et manibus melioris reddere fetus...

You may call every creature under heaven fool and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier. You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.

He did not attempt to disguise or glorify the primitive and often sordid life of the farmer. He used words and images that were kept strangers to elevated poetry in his time: dung, spittle, slime, sweat, weeds, pigs, tar. But he emphasized that, with all their difficulty and poverty, the farmers still lived a life of natural wealth, unlike the factitious wealth of city people, and of natural peace of mind.

For the first, dung, no need to stray much beyond the first four programmatic words – Quid faciat laetas segetes, on which Servius comments

[laetas] fertiles, fecundas, id est quae res terras pingues efficiat; nam segetem modo pro terra posuit: sic alibi 'horrescit strictis seges ensibus'. pingues autem efficit terras, ut paulo post dicturus est, cinis, intermissio arandi, incensio stipularum, stercoratio. unde etiam 'laetas' ait; nam fimus, qui per agros iacitur, vulgo laetamen vocatur.

“Spread a little happiness" comes to mind. Highet might have explored the agricultural understanding of laetus and felix as at the heart of farmers’ "natural wealth" and "natural peace of mind”.

Eighty lines on we have:

sed tamen alternis facilis labor, arida tantum
ne saturare fimo pingui pudeat sola neve
effetos cinerem immundum iactare per agros.
G. 1.79–81

Safe to say that the author of The Classical Tradition was well acquainted with The Dunciad so Highet might have recalled Pope’s (self-)annotation on a passage in book 2:

Though this incident may seem too low and base for the dignity of an Epic poem, the learned very well know it to be but a copy of Homer and Virgil; the very words ὄνθος and fimus are used by them, though our poet [...] has remarkably enriched and coloured his language [...]. Mr. Dryden in Mack-Fleckno, has not scrupled to mention the Morning Toast at which the fishes bite in the Thames, Pissing Alley, Reliques of the Bum, etc. but our author is more grave, and (as a fine writer says of Virgil in his Georgics) tosses about his Dung with an air of Majesty.

"This incident” being:

Full in the middle way there stood a lake,
(Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop
Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop,)
Here fortun'd Curl to slide; loud shout the band,
And Bernard! Bernard! rings thro' all the Strand.
Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewray'd[.]
(Dunciad 2.69-75)

*[sc. Elizabeth Thomas (1675-1731), known for her intestinal troubles, so “cates” are presumably last night’s semi-digested dainties in a puddle of piss]

Candidates for the others might be:

Spittle

namque aliae turpes horrent, ceu pulvere ab alto
cum venit et sicco terram spuit ore viator
aridus;
G. 4.96-98

Slime

hic demum, hippomanes vero quod nomine dicunt
pastores, lentum destillat ab inguine virus,
hippomanes, quod saepe malae legere novercae
miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba.
G. 3.280-83

Sweat

ille volat simul arva fuga, simul aequora verrens
hinc vel ad Elei metas et maxuma campi
sudabit spatia et spumas aget ore cruentas,
Belgica vel molli melius feret esseda collo.
G. 3.201-04

Weeds

intereunt segetes, subit aspera silva,
lappaeque tribolique, interque nitentia culta
infelix lolium et steriles dominantur avenae.
quod nisi et adsiduis herbam insectabere rastris … G. 1.152-55

Pigs

                                  ornusque incanuit albo
flore piri glandemque sues fregere sub ulmis.
G. 2.71–72

Tar

aut tonsum tristi contingunt corpus amurca
et spumas miscent argenti et sulfura viva
Idaeasque pices et pinguis unguine ceras
scillamque elleborosque gravis nigrumque bitumen.
G. 3.444–47

After as before Caesar's campaigns, "all Gaul was divided"—not into three, rather into thirty or a hundred clusters of kinsfolk, some large, some paltry. So also in the Greek world. Pliny (Nat. hist. 5.146f) could count 195 "peoples and tetrarchies" in Galatia alone. Every province was the same. Far from being a congregation of city-states, in the ecstatic vision of Aelius Aristides (to say nothing of descriptions to be found occasionally in modern writers), the empire was rather made up of thousands of tribes. Many and infinitely the more important ones had risen to an urban life. Others were only partly dissolved into an undifferentiated peasantry and others again arrested in a semibarbarous condition. They did not love their nation; there was none to love. They did not hate Rome. The horizons of Musones, Brisei, Garamantes, Bessi, Cietae, Mauri, Maratocupreni, Tencteri, and the rest whose strange names have appeared in this chapter surely reached no further than their neighbors' inviting fields, cattle, and houses.

I will say that by their own nature the writings which are closest to perfection normally bring more pleasure on the second reading than on the first. The opposite happens with many books that are written with no more than mediocre art and diligence but not without some extrinsic and apparent merit. These, once they are reread, are found to be much less valuable than at first reading. But if books of both kinds are read only once, they sometimes deceive even the learned and experts in such a way that the very best are rated below the mediocre. However, you must consider that nowadays even the professionals of literature have great difficulty deciding whether to read recent books a second time, especially those whose main purpose is to give pleasure. This was not the case with the ancients, due to the smaller number of books.

Dico che gli scritti più vicini alla perfezione, hanno questa proprietà, che ordinariamente alla seconda lettura piacciono più che alla prima. Il contrario avviene in molti libri composti con arte e diligenza non più che mediocre, ma non privi però di un qual si sia pregio estrinseco ed apparente; i quali, riletti che sieno, cadono dall’opinione che l’uomo ne aveva conceputo alla prima lettura. Ma letti gli uni e gli altri una volta sola, ingannano talora in modo anche i dotti ed esperti, che gli ottimi sono posposti ai mediocri. Ora hai a considerare che oggi, eziandio le persone dedite agli studi per instituto di vita, con molta difficoltà s’inducono a rileggere libri recenti, massime il cui genere abbia per suo proprio fine il diletto. La qual cosa non avveniva agli antichi; atteso la minor copia dei libri.

• Rereading
• Reading Slowly and Rereading
• Reading Books More Than Once
• Rereading

                          I

Who would care to pass his life away
    Of the Lotos-land a dreamful denizen —
Lotos-islands in a waveless bay,
                           Sung by Alfred Tennyson?

                        II

Who would care to be a dull new-comer
    Far across the wild sea's wide abysses,
Where, about the earth's 3000th summer
                         Passed divine Ulysses?

                       III

Rather give me coffee, art, a book,
    From my windows a delicious sea-view,
Southdown mutton, somebody to cook —
                       "Music?" I believe you.

                      IV

Strawberry icebergs in the summer time —
    But of elmwood many a massive splinter,
Good ghost stories, and a classic rhyme,
                        For the nights of winter.

                     V

Now and then a friend and some sauterne,
    Now and then a haunch of Highland venison:
And for Lotos-lands I'll never yearn
                      Maugre Alfred Tennyson.

He who has countless gold and silver, fields
Of corn-land, mules and horses is no more
Rich than the man who has just what he needs,
Comforts of belly and chest and feet, delight
From a boy or woman. When the time is right
And youth brings fitting pleasures, that is wealth
For mortals. No one takes his great estate
Down to the house of Hades when he goes;
No one can pay a ransom and escape
Death, grim disease, or the sad approach of age.

ἶσόν τοι πλουτοῦσιν, ὅτῳ πολὺς ἄργυρός ἐστιν
    καὶ χρυσὸς καὶ γῆς πυροφόρου πεδία        720
ἵπποι θ᾽ ἡμίονοί τε, καὶ ᾧ τὰ δέοντα πάρεστι
    γαστρί τε καὶ πλευραῖς καὶ ποσὶν ἁβρὰ παθεῖν,
παιδός τ᾿ ἠδὲ γυναικός, ὅταν καὶ τῶν ἀφίκηται,
    ὥρη, σὺν δ᾿ ἥβη γίνεται ἁρμοδία.
ταῦτ᾿ ἄφενος θνητοῖσι· τὰ γὰρ περιώσια πάντα        725
    χρήματ᾿ ἔχων οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται εἰς Ἀΐδεω,
οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἄποινα διδοὺς θάνατον φύγοι οὐδὲ βαρείας
    νούσους οὐδὲ κακὸν γῆρας ἐπερχόμενον.

It is preposterous that your ancestors faced death to save the laws from destruction, but that you do not even punish those who have offended against the laws.

πάνδεινόν ἐστι τοὺς μὲν προγόνους ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ καταλυθῆναι τοὺς νόμους ἀποθνῄσκειν τολμᾶν, ὑμᾶς δὲ μηδὲ τοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνοντας εἰς αὐτοὺς τιμωρεῖσθαι.

Time slips away, and we grow old with silent lapse of years;
there is no bridle that can curb the flying days.

tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
        et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.

771 tempora labuntur eqs.: I 65. 772 fugiunt ... dies: Das Bild der „flüchtigen Zeit“ ist sprichwörtlich: I 65. ars III 79 (Text o. V 353). Cic. Tusc. I 76 volat enim aetas. Verg. georg. III 284 sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus. OTTO, Sprichwörter 112f.

I don't suppose that the pirate did much more harm than the politician. And no pirate that I ever heard of came out of his business with a couple millions 'personal fund' for which he absolutely refused to account!

Teachers of Classics are rarus at dentibus gallinarum and we count ourselves very fortunate to have secured the services of Chris Gilham who has ensured continuity for GCSE and A Level students during Mrs Dicks’ absence. (We are, of course, now delighted to have Mrs Dicks back following her illness.)

Whether men do laugh or weep,
Whether they do wake or sleep,
Whether they die young or old,
Whether they feel heat or cold,
There is underneath the sun
Nothing in true earnest done.

All our pride is but a jest;
None are worst and none are best,
Grief and joy and hope and fear
Play their pageants everywhere;
Vain opinion all doth sway,
And the world is but a play.

Powers above in clouds do sit,
Mocking our poor apish wit,
That so lamely with such state
Their high glory imitate.
No ill can be felt but pain,
And that happy men disdain.

Along the Mincio lie the fields which Vergil knew and loved well. Still extant in them is one specially happy union — the marriage of land and water. For miles and miles along the roads and through the fields run long irrigation ditches carrying water, seldom slow-moving, almost never stagnant, usually in active motion to moisten the earth and feed the roots. At intersections near every farm the long channels of water branch off into the fields. There is usually a watergate at these junctions, a vertical wooden barrier two or three feet high, held in place by a slotted framework on each side of the channel. To water a field, the farmer and his men lift the barrier, and the ditch fills quickly, with a welcome rippling sound. After an hour or two, he can say, like Vergil's father [sic, read farmer] in the Bucolics:

Now, lads, close off the channels: the meadows have drunk enough.¹

¹ Vergil, Bucolics 3.111.

claudite iam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt.

Let us make a distinction, Serenus, if you like, between injury and insult. The former is by its nature more serious; the latter, a slighter matter — serious only to the thin-skinned — for men are not harmed, but angered by it. Yet such is the weakness and vanity of some men's minds, there are those who think that nothing is more bitter.

dividamus, si tibi videtur, Serene, iniuriam a contumelia. prior illa natura gravior est, haec levior et tantum delicatis gravis, qua non laeduntur homines sed offenduntur. tanta est tamen animorum dissolutio et vanitas, ut quidam nihil acerbius putent.

The Monotonization of the World

Monotonization of the World. The most potent intellectual impression, despite the particular satisfactions enjoyed, of every journey in recent years is a slight horror in the face of the monotonization of the world. Everything is becoming more uniform in its outward manifestations, everything leveled into a uniform cultural schema. The characteristic habits of individual peoples are being worn away, native dress giving way to uniforms, customs becoming international. Countries seem increasingly to have slipped simultaneously into each other; people's activity and vitality follows a single schema; cities grow increasingly similar in appearance. Paris has been three quarters Americanised, Vienna Budapested: more and more the fine aroma of the particular in cultures is evaporating, their colorful foliage being stripped with ever-increasing speed, rendering the steel-grey pistons of mechanical operation, of the modern world machine, visible beneath the cracked veneer.

This process has been underway for a long time: before the war [Walther] Rathenau prophesized this mechanization of existence, the dominance of technology, would be the most important aspect of our epoch. But never have the outward manifestations of our ways of life plunged so precipitously, so moodily into uniformity as in the last few years. Let us be clear about it! It is probably the most urgent, the most critical phenomenon of our time.

Symptoms. One could, to make the problem distinct, list hundreds. I will quickly select just a few of the most familiar, uncompromising examples, to show how greatly customs and habits have been monotonized and sterilized in the last decade. The most conspicuous is dance. Two or three decades ago dance was still specific to nations and to the personal inclinations of the individual. One waltzed in Vienna, danced the csardas in Hungary, the bolero in Spain, all to the tune of countless different rhythms and melodies in which both the genius of an artist and the spirit of the nation took obvious form. Today millions of people, from Capetown to Stockholm, from Buenos Aires to Calcutta, dance the same dance to the same short-winded, impersonal melodies. They begin at the same hour. Like the muezzin in an oriental country call tens of thousands to a single prayer at sundown — like those twenty words, so now twenty beats at five in the afternoon call the whole of occidental humanity to the same ritual. Never, except in certain ecclesiastical formulas and forms, have two hundred million people hit upon such expressive simultaneity and uniformity as in the style of dance practiced by the modem white race of America, Europe, and the colonies.

A second example is fashion. Never before has such a striking uniformity developed in all countries as during our age. Once it took years for a fashion from Paris to reach other big cities, or to penetrate the countryside. A certain boundary protected people and their customs from its tyrannical demands. Today its dictatorship becomes universal in a heartbeat. New York decrees short hair for women: within a month, as if cut by the same scythe, 50 or 100 million female manes fall to the floor. No emperor, no khan in the history of the world ever experienced a similar power, no spiritual commandment a similar speed. Christianity and socialism required centuries and decades to win their followings, to enforce their commandments of as many people as a modem Parisian tailor enslaves in eight days.

A third example: cinema. Once again utter simultaneity in all countries and languages, the cultivation of the same performance, the same taste (or lack of it) in masses by the hundreds of millions. The complete cancellation of any individuality, though the manufacturers gloriously extol films as national: the Nibelungen triumphs in ltaly and Max Linder from Paris in the most German, most nationalistic constituencies. Here, too, the mass instinct is stronger and more authoritarian than the thought. Jackie Coogan's triumphal appearance was a more powerful experience for our day than was Tolstoy's death twenty years ago.

A fourth example is radio. All of these inventions have a single meaning: simultaneity. Londoners, Parisians, and Viennese listen at the same second to the same thing, and the supernatural proportions of this simultaneity, of this uniformity, are intoxicating. There is an intoxication, a stimulus for the Masses, in all of these new technological miracles, and simultaneously an enormous sobriety of the soul, a dangerous seduction of the individual into passivity. Here too, as in dance, fashion, and the cinema, the individual acquiesces to a herdlike taste that is everywhere the same, no longer making choices that accord with internal being but ones that conform to the opinion of a world.

One could infinitely multiply these symptoms, and they multiply themselves from day to day on their own. The sense of autonomy in matters of pleasure is flooding the times. It will soon be harder to list the particularities of nations and cultures than the features they share in common.

Consequences. The complete end of individuality. It is not with impunity that everyone can dress the same, that all women can go out in the same clothes, the same makeup: monotony necessarily penetrates beneath the surface. Faces become increasingly similar through the influence of the same passions, bodies more similar to each other through the practice of the same sports, minds more similar for sharing the same interests. An equivalence of souls unconsciously arises, a mass soul created by the growing drive toward uniformity, an atrophy of nerves in favor of muscles, the extinction of the individual in favor of the type. Conversation, the art of speaking, is danced and sported away, theater brutalized into cinema; literature becomes the practice of momentary fashions, the "success of the season." Already, as in England books are no longer produced for people, but increasingly as the "book of the season"; instantaneous form of success is spreading which is announced simultaneously European stations, and annulled a second later. And since everything is geared to the shortest units of time, consumption increases: thus does genuine education — the patient accumulation of meaning over the course of a lifetime — become a quite rare phenomenon in our time, just like everything else that can be achieved only by individual exertion.

Origin. What is the source of this terrible wave threatening to wash all the color, everything particular out of life? Everyone who has ever been there knows: America. The historians of the future will one day mark the page following the great European war as the beginning of the conquest of Europe by America. Or, more accurately, the conquest is already rippingly underway, and we simply fail to notice it (conquered peoples are always too-slow thinkers). The European countries still find the receipt of a credit in dollars a cause for celebration. We continue to flatter ourselves with illusions of America's philanthropic and economic goals. In reality we are becoming colonies of its life, its way of life, slaves to an idea profoundly foreign to Europe: the mechanical idea.

But our economic obedience seems to me minor compared to the spiritual danger. The colonization of Europe would not be so terrible politically; to servile souls all slavery is mild and the free always know how to preserve their freedom. The genuine danger to Europe seems to me to be a matter of the spirit, of the importation of American boredom, of that dreadful, quite specific boredom that rises over there from every stone and every house on all the numbered streets. The boredom that does not, like the earlier European variety, come from calmness, from sitting on the park bench playing dominoes and smoking a pipe — a lazy waste of time indeed, but not dangerous. American boredom is restless, nervous, and aggressive; it outruns itself in its frantic haste, seeks numbness in sports and sensations. It has lost its playfulness, scurries along instead in the rabid frenzy of an eternal flight from time. It is always inventing new artifices for itself, like cinema and radio, to feed its hungry senses with nourishment for the masses, and it transforms this common interest in enjoyment into concerns as massive as its banks and trusts.

America is the source of that terrible wave of uniformity that gives everyone the same: the same overalls on the skin, the same book in the hand, the same pen between the fingers, the same conversation on the lips, and the same automobile instead of feet. From the other side of our world, from Russia, the same will to monotony presses ominously in a different form: the will to the compartmentalization of the individual, to uniformity in world views, the same dreadful will to monotony. Europe remains the last bulwark of individualism and, perhaps, of the overly taut cramp of peoples — our vigorous nationalism, despite all its senselessness, represents to some extent a fevered, unconscious rebellion, a last, desperate effort to defend ourselves against leveling. But precisely that cramped form of resistance betrays our weakness. Rome, the genius of sobriety, is already underway to wipe Europe, the last Greece in history, from the table of time.

Defense. What to do now? Storm the capitol, summon the people: "To the trenches, the barbarians are coming to destroy our world!" Cry out once more in Caesar's words, this time more earnestly: "People of Europe, preserve your most sacred possessions!" No, we are no longer gullible enough to believe that with associations, with books and proclamations, we can rise up against a world-encompassing movement of such a monstrous sort and defeat the drive to monotonization. Whatever one might write, it remains a piece of paper cast against a gale. Whatever we might write, it does not reach the soccer players and the shimmy dancers, and if it did, they would no longer understand it. In all of these things, of which I am mentioning only a few, in the cinema, in radio, in dance, in all of these new means for mechanizing humanity there is an enormous power that is not to be overcome. For they all fulfill the highest ideal of the average: to offer amusement without demanding exertion. And their insurmountable strength lies in the fact that they are unprecedentedly comfortable. The new dance can be learned by the dumbest servant girl in three hours; the cinema delights the illiterate and demands of them not a grain of education; to enjoy radio one need only take the earpiece from the table and hang it on one's head, and already there is a waltz ringing in the ear — against such comfort even the gods would fight in vain. Whoever demands only a minimum of intellectual, physical, and moral exertion is bound to triumph among the masses, for the majority is passionately in favor of such; whoever continues to demand autonomy, independence of judgment, personality — even in entertainment — would appear ridiculous against such an enormously superior power. If humanity is now letting itself be increasingly bored and monotonized, then that is really nothing other than its deepest desire. Autonomy in the conduct of one's life and even in the enjoyment of life has by now become a goal for so few people that most no longer feel how they are becoming particles, atoms in the wash of a gigantic power. So they bathe in the warm stream that is carrying them off to the trivial. As Caesar said: ruere in servitium, to rush into servitude — this passion for self-dissolution has destroyed every nation. Now it is Europe's turn: the world war was the first phase, Americanization is the second.

---

Die Monotonisierung der Welt

Monotonisierung der Welt. Stärkster geistiger Eindruck von jeder Reise in den letzten Jahren, trotz aller einzelnen Beglückung: ein leises Grauen vor der Monotonisierung der Welt. Alles wird gleichförmiger in den äußeren Lebensformen, alles nivelliert sich auf ein einheitliches kulturelles Schema. Die individuellen Gebräuche der Völker schleifen sich ab, die Trachten werden uniform, die Sitten international. Immer mehr scheinen die Länder gleichsam ineinandergeschoben, die Menschen nach einem Schema tätig und lebendig, immer mehr die Städte einander äußerlich ähnlich. Paris ist zu drei Vierteln amerikanisiert, Wien verbudapestet: immer mehr verdunstet das feine Aroma des Besonderen in den Kulturen, immer rascher blättern die Farben ab, und unter der zersprungenen Firnisschicht wird der stahlfarbene Kolben des mechanischen Betriebes, die moderne Weltmaschine, sichtbar.

Dieser Prozeß ist schon lange im Gange: schon vor dem Kriege hat Rathenau diese Mechanisierung des Daseins, die Präponderanz der Technik als wichtigste Erscheinung unseres Lebensalters prophetisch verkündet, aber nie war dieser Niedersturz in die Gleichförmigkeit der äußeren Lebensformen so rasch, so launenhaft wie in den letzten Jahren. Seien wir uns klar darüber! Es ist wahrscheinlich das brennendste, das entscheidenste Phänomen unserer Zeit.

Symptome: Man könnte, um das Problem deutlich zu machen, hunderte aufzählen. Ich wähle nur schnell ein paar der geläufigsten, die jedem gewärtig sind, um zu zeigen, wie sehr sich Sitten und Gebräuche im letzten Jahrzehnt monotonisiert und sterilisiert haben.

Das Sinnfälligste: der Tanz. Vor zwei, drei Jahrzehnten noch war er an die einzelnen Nationen gebunden und an die persönliche Neigung des Individuums. Man tanzte in Wien Walzer, in Ungarn den Csardas, in Spanien den Bolero nach unzähligen verschiedenen Rhythmen und Melodien, in denen sich der Genius eines Künstlers ebenso wie der Geist einer Nation sichtbarlich formten. Heute tanzen Millionen Menschen von Kapstadt bis Stockholm, von Buenos Aires bis Kalkutta denselben Tanz, nach denselben fünf oder sechs kurzatmigen, unpersönlichen Melodien. Sie beginnen um die gleiche Stunde: so wie die Muezzim im orientalischen Lande Zehntausende um die gleiche Stunde des Sonnenunterganges zu einem einzigen Gebet, so wie dort zwanzig Worte, so rufen jetzt zwanzig Takte um fünf Uhr nachmittags die ganze abendländische Menschheit zu dem gleichen Ritus. Niemals außer in gewissen Formeln und Formen der Kirche haben zweihundert Millionen Menschen eine solche Gleichzeitigkeit und Gleichförmigkeit des Ausdruckes gefunden wie die weiße Rasse Amerikas, Europas und aller Kolonien in dem modernen Tanze.

Ein zweites Beispiel: die Mode. Sie hat niemals eine solche blitzhafte Gleichheit gehabt in allen Ländern wie in unserer Epoche. Früher dauerte es Jahre, ehe eine Mode aus Paris in die anderen Großstädte, wiederum Jahre, ehe sie aus den Großstädten auf das Land drang, und es gab eine gewisse Grenze des Volkes und der Sitte, die sich ihren tyrannischen Forderungen sperrte. Heute wird ihre Diktatur im Zeitraume eines Pulsschlages universell. New York diktiert die kurzen Haare der Frauen: innerhalb eines Monates fallen, wie von einer einzigen Sense gemäht, 50 oder 100 Millionen weiblicher Haarmähnen. Kein Kaiser, kein Khan der Weltgeschichte hatte ähnliche Macht, kein Gebot des Geistes ähnliche Geschwindigkeit erlebt. Das Christentum, der Sozialismus brauchten Jahrhunderte und Jahrzehnte, um eine Gefolgschaft zu gewinnen, um ihre Gebote über so viele Menschen wirksam zu machen, wie ein Pariser Schneider sie sich heute in acht Tagen hörig macht.

Ein drittes Beispiel: das Kino. Wiederum unermeßliche Gleichzeitigkeit über alle Länder und Sprachen hin, Ausbildung gleicher Darbietung, gleichen Geschmackes (oder Ungeschmackes) auf Tausend-Millionen-Massen. Vollkommene Aufhebung jeder individuellen Note, obwohl die Fabrikanten triumphierend ihre Filme als national anpreisen: die Nibelungen siegen in Italien und Max Linder aus Paris in den allerdeutschesten, völkischsten Wahlkreisen. Auch hier ist der Instinkt der Massenhaftigkeit stärker und selbstherrlicher als der Gedanke. Jackie Coogans Triumph und Kommen war stärkeres Erlebnis für die Gegenwart als vor zwanzig Jahren Tolstois Tod.

Ein viertes Beispiel: das Radio. Alle diese Erfindungen haben nur einen Sinn: Gleichzeitigkeit. Der Londoner, Pariser und der Wiener hören in der gleichen Sekunde dasselbe, und diese Gleichzeitigkeit, diese Uniformität berauscht durch das Überdimensionale. Es ist eine Trunkenheit, ein Stimulans für die Masse und zugleich in allen diesen neuen technischen Wundern eine ungeheure Ernüchterung des Seelischen, eine gefährliche Verführung zur Passivität für den einzelnen. Auch hier fügt sich das Individuum, wie beim Tanz, der Mode und dem Kino, dem allgleichen herdenhaften Geschmack, es wählt nicht mehr vom inneren Wesen her, sondern es wählt nach der Meinung einer Welt.

Bis ins Unzählige könnte man diese Symptome vermehren, und sie vermehren sich von selbst von Tag zu Tag. Der Sinn für Selbständigkeit im Genießen überflutet die Zeit. Schon wird es schwieriger, die Besonderheiten bei Nationen und Kulturen aufzuzählen als ihre Gemeinsamkeiten.

Konsequenzen: Aufhören aller Individualität bis ins Äußerliche. Nicht ungestraft gehen alle Menschen gleich angezogen, gehen alle Frauen gleich gekleidet, gleich geschminkt: die Monotonie muß notwendig nach innen dringen. Gesichter werden einander ähnlicher durch gleiche Leidenschaft, Körper einander ähnlicher durch gleichen Sport, die Geister ähnlicher durch gleiche Interessen. Unbewußt entsteht eine Gleichartigkeit der Seelen, eine Massenseele durch den gesteigerten Uniformierungstrieb, eine Verkümmerung der Nerven zugunsten der Muskeln, ein Absterben des Individuellen zugunsten des Typus. Konversation, die Kunst der Rede, wird zertanzt und zersportet, das Theater brutalisiert im Sinne des Kinos, in die Literatur wird die Praxis der raschen Mode, des »Saisonerfolges« eingetrieben. Schon gibt es, wie in England, nicht mehr Bücher für die Menschen, sondern immer nur mehr das »Buch der Saison«, schon breitet sich gleich dem Radio die blitzhafte Form des Erfolges aus, der an allen europäischen Stationen gleichzeitig gemeldet und in der nächsten Sekunde abgekurbelt wird. Und da alles auf das Kurzfristige eingestellt ist, steigert sich der Verbrauch: so wird Bildung, die durch ein Leben hin waltende, geduldig sinnvolle Zusammenfassung, ein ganz seltenes Phänomen in unserer Zeit, so wie alles, das sich nur durch individuelle Anstrengung erzwingt.

Ursprung: woher kommt diese furchtbare Welle, die uns alles Farbige, alles Eigenförmige aus dem Leben wegzuschwemmen droht? Jeder, der drüben gewesen ist, weiß es: von Amerika. Die Geschichtsschreiber der Zukunft werden auf dem nächsten Blatt nach dem großen europäischen Kriege einmal einzeichnen für unsere Zeit, daß in ihr die Eroberung Europas durch Amerika begonnen hat. Oder mehr noch, sie ist schon in vollem reißenden Zuge, und wir merken es nur nicht (alle Besiegten sind immer Zu-langsam-Denker). Noch jubelt bei uns jedes Land mit allen seinen Zeitungen und Staatsmännern, wenn es einen Dollarkredit bekommt. Noch schmeicheln wir uns Illusionen vor über philanthropische und wirtschaftliche Ziele Amerikas: in Wirklichkeit werden wir Kolonien seines Lebens, seiner Lebensführung, Knechte einer der europäischen im tiefsten fremden Idee, der maschinellen.

Aber solche wirtschaftliche Hörigkeit scheint mir noch gering gegen die geistige Gefahr. Eine Kolonisation Europas wäre politisch nicht das Furchtbarste, knechtischen Seelen scheint jede Knechtschaft milde, und der Freie weiß überall seine Freiheit zu wahren. Die wahre Gefahr für Europa scheint mir im Geistigen zu liegen, im Herüberdringen der amerikanischen Langeweile, jener entsetzlichen, ganz spezifischen Langeweile, die dort aus jedem Stein und Haus der numerierten Straßen aufsteigt, jener Langeweile, die nicht, wie früher die europäische, eine der Ruhe, eine des Bierbanksitzens und Dominospielens und Pfeifenrauchens ist, also eine zwar faulenzerische, aber doch ungefährliche Zeitvergeudung: die amerikanische Langeweile aber ist fahrig, nervös und aggressiv, überrennt sich mit eiligen Hitzigkeiten, will sich betäuben in Sport und Sensationen. Sie hat nichts Spielhaftes mehr, sondern rennt mit einer tollwütigen Besessenheit, in ewiger Flucht vor der Zeit: sie erfindet sich immer neue Kunstmittel, wie Kino und Radio, um die hungrigen Sinne mit einer Massennahrung zu füttern, und verwandelt die Interessengemeinschaft des Vergnügens zu so riesenhaften Konzernen wie ihre Banken und Trusts. Von Amerika kommt jene furchtbare Welle der Einförmigkeit, die jedem Menschen dasselbe gibt, denselben Overallanzug auf die Haut, dasselbe Buch in die Hand, dieselbe Füllfeder zwischen die Finger, dasselbe Gespräch auf die Lippe und dasselbe Automobil statt der Füße. In verhängnisvoller Weise drängt von der anderen Seite unserer Welt, von Rußland her, derselbe Wille zur Monotonie in verwandelter Form: der Wille zur Parzellierung des Menschen, zur Uniformität der Weltanschauung, derselbe fürchterliche Wille zur Monotonie.

Noch ist Europa das letzte Bollwerk des Individualismus, und vielleicht ist der überspannte Krampf der Völker, jener aufgetriebene Nationalismus, bei all seiner Gewalttätigkeit doch eine gewissermaßen fieberhafte unbewußte Auflehnung, ein letzter verzweifelter Versuch, sich gegen die Gleichmacherei zu wehren. Aber gerade die krampfige Form der Abwehr verrät unsere Schwäche. Schon ist der Genius der Nüchternheit am Werke, um Europa, das letzte Griechenland der Geschichte, von der Tafel der Zeit auszulöschen.

Gegenwehr: Was nun tun? Das Kapitol stürmen, die Menschen anrufen: »Auf die Schanzen, die Barbaren sind da, sie zerstören unsere Welt!« Noch einmal die Cäsarenworte ausschreien, nun aber in einem ernsteren Sinne: »Völker Europas, wahrt eure heiligsten Güter!« Nein, wir sind nicht mehr so blindgläubig, um zu glauben, man könne noch mit Vereinen, mit Büchern und Proklamationen gegen eine Weltbewegung ungeheuerlicher Art aufkommen und diesen Trieb zur Monotonisierung niederschlagen. Was immer man auch schriebe, es bliebe ein Blatt Papier, gegen einen Orkan geworfen. Was immer wir auch schrieben, es erreichte die Fußballmatcher und Shimmytänzer nicht, und wenn es sie erreichte, sie verstünden uns nicht mehr. In all diesen Dingen, von denen ich nur einige wenige andeutete, im Kino, im Radio, im Tanze, in all diesen neuen Mechanisierungsmitteln der Menschheit liegt eine ungeheure Kraft, die nicht zu überwältigen ist. Denn sie alle erfüllen das höchste Ideal des Durchschnittes: Vergnügen zu bieten, ohne Anstrengung zu fordern. Und ihre nicht zu besiegende Stärke liegt darin, daß sie unerhört bequem sind. Der neue Tanz ist von dem plumpsten Dienstmädchen in drei Stunden zu erlernen, das Kino ergötzt Analphabeten und erfordert von ihnen nicht einen Gran Bildung, um den Radiogenuß zu haben, braucht man nur gerade den Hörer vom Tisch zu nehmen und an den Kopf zu hängen, und schon walzt und klingt es einem ins Ohr — gegen eine solche Bequemlichkeit kämpfen selbst die Götter vergebens. Wer nur das Minimum an geistiger und körperlicher Anstrengung und sittlicher Kraftaufbietung fordert, muß notwendigerweise in der Masse siegen, denn die Mehrzahl steht leidenschaftlich zu ihm, und wer heute noch Selbständigkeit, Eigenwahl, Persönlichkeit selbst im Vergnügen verlangte, wäre lächerlich gegen so ungeheure Übermacht. Wenn die Menschheit sich jetzt zunehmend verlangweiligt und monotonisiert, so geschieht ihr eigentlich nichts anderes, als was sie im Innersten will. Selbständigkeit in der Lebensführung und selbst im Genuß des Lebens bedeutet jetzt nur so wenigen mehr ein Ziel, daß die meisten es nicht mehr fühlen, wie sie Partikel werden, mitgespülte Atome einer gigantischen Gewalt. So baden sie sich warm in dem Strome, der sie wegreißt ins Wesenlose; wie Tacitus sagte: »ruere in servitium«, sich selbst in die Knechtschaft stürzen, diese Leidenschaft zur Selbstauflösung hat alle Nationen zerstört. Nun ist Europa an der Reihe: der Weltkrieg war die erste Phase, die Amerikanisierung ist die zweite.

It puzzles me why the translator changed Zweig’s Tacitus to Caesar in the next to last sentence.

Tacitus, Annals 1.7.1: at Romae ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques.

Could he have been thinking of the emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus (200-276)? That’s the only explanation I can think of. Still, it’s a crass mistake.

†per mea per conatus sum uos sumque inde exilico.†

17 per mea per conatus sum uos sumque inde exilico B, per me perconatus sum uossumque inde exilico CD, alii alia

rem eampse ecfatus sum orsusque inde exilico

mea praeconatus peruorsum inde exilico

meam praeconatus rem inde exorsus sum ilico

per me conatus summos sum index ilico

For a poet capable of almost any extravagance in coining adjectives in -fer and -ger, Ovid appears to have been remarkably sparing with adjectives in -ax. The following are securely attested in the Metamorphoses: audax, capax, edax, fallax, ferax, fugax, loquax, minax, pugnax, rapax, sagax, tenax, vivax, and vorax; all of these appear as well in the elegiacs, along with emax, mordax, procax, and salax; sequax and uerax occur once each in the double letters of the Heroides, which are probably late compositions if genuine but whose Ovidian authorship is not beyond doubt.²⁰ Virgil, though not lavish in using these adjectives, is still the probable inventor of pellax and sternax.²¹ Ovid, on the other hand, has no clear example of a new adjective of this kind; all those just listed had already appeared either in prose or verse, and usually in both.²² Perhaps formations of this kind struck him as disagreeably archaic, or else he found them stylistically inappropriate: many of the bolder experiments of this type are found in passages of comic abuse, such as Plautus' procax rapax trahax (Pers. 410) and perenniserue lurco edax furax fugax (421) or Lucilius' manus tagax (1031 M) or the pejorative term linguax attributed by Gellius to the ueteres along with locutuleius and blatero, while others appear in "low" (i.e., commercial or banausic) contexts, like Cato's precept patrem familias uendacem, non emacem esse oportet (Agr. 2.7) and Gaius' description of an ideal slave as constantem aut laboriosum aut curracem <aut> uigilacem (Dig. 21.1.18 pr.).<sup>23

20</sup> In Her. 4.46 sequacis is a variant for fugacis. This list was compiled by searching the works of Ovid currently available on compact disk for the relevant endings (-ax, -acis, etc.) and by reading through the remaining works (Heroides 16-21, Ibis, Tristia, Ex Ponto). I am grateful to Richard Thomas for encouragement and technological guidance.

²¹ Virgil seems also to have introduced uivax to elevated poetry; it occurs before him only in Afranius 251 R². I am grateful to Wendell Clausen for information on Virgilian practice and for alerting me to the work of De Nigris Mores cited in n. 19.

²² Bömer on Met. 8.839 notes that uorax is not found in Virgil, Horace, or the elegists, but does not mention the word's prominent appearances in Republican literature, cf. Catullus 29.2 and 10 impudicus et uorax et aleo, Cic. Phil. 2.67 quae Charybdis tam uorax?; both passages appear as quotations in Quintilian, and the latter was recalled by Ovid in Ib. 385 Scylla uorax Scyllaeque aduersa Charybdis.

²³ Ovid's only use of emax (Ars 1.419 f.) clearly exploits the word's commercial flavor: insitor ad dominam ueniet discinctus emacem / expediet merces teque sedente suas.

Enjoy your youth, my dear heart; soon it will be the turn of other
men, and I'll be dead and become dark earth.

ἥβα μοι, φίλε θυμέ· τάχ᾿ αὖ τινες ἄλλοι ἔσονται
    ἄνδρες, ἐγὼ δὲ θανὼν γαῖα μέλαιν᾿ ἔσομαι.

Victor Hugo and others have called Vergil a miserable sycophant who accepted a bribe to become the propagandist of a velvet-gloved tyrant. There are two counter-arguments to this. One is that Augustus was in fact a very great man, one of the few foremost builders of peace in the history of the world, who was accomplishing an all but miraculous regeneration of the whole of western civilization: Vergil, like many others, recognized his greatness, and thought himself privileged to expound his ideals. The other is that Vergil felt in himself the rising power which was to make him a supreme poet, knew that to be reduced to destitution and condemned to be a farm labourer for the rest of his life would mean the murder of a genius, and was therefore grateful to the monarch who freed not only his body but his soul from starvation.

"You doubtless know," he continued, "where the sun rises and where it sets; likewise, that if a man is to go to Greece, he must journey toward the west, while if he wishes to go to the lands of the barbarians, he must travel in the opposite direction, that is, toward the east. Now is there any one who could deceive you in this matter, by maintaining that the place where the sun rises is the one where it sets and the place where it sets is the one where it rises?"

ὑμεῖς δ᾿, ἔφη, ἴστε δήπου ὅθεν ἥλιος ἀνίσχει καὶ ὅπου δύεται, καὶ ὅτι ἐὰν μέν τις εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα μέλλῃ ἰέναι, πρὸς ἑσπέραν δεῖ πορεύεσθαι· ἢν δέ τις βούληται εἰς τοὺς βαρβάρους, τοὔμπαλιν πρὸς ἕω. ἔστιν οὖν ὅστις τοῦτο ἂν δύναιτο ὑμᾶς ἐξαπατῆσαι ὡς ἥλιος ἔνθεν μὲν ἀνίσχει, δύεται δὲ ἐνταῦθα, ἔνθα δὲ δύεται, ἀνίσχει δ᾿ ἐντεῦθεν;

• Believing One's Own Eyes
• Trust Your Senses

The same, seeing one of his friends plunged in grief, took him up to the citadel and told him to cast his eyes comprehensively around the buildings below. When he saw it was done, he said: "Now think to yourself how many mournings were under these roofs in times past and are in being today and shall dwell there in days to come; and stop bewailing the misfortunes of mortals as though they were peculiar to yourself." By that consolation he made it plain that cities are pitiful pens of human calamities.

idem, cum ex amicis quendam graviter maerentem videret, in arcem perduxit hortatusque est ut per omnes subiectorum aedificiorum partes oculos circumferret. quod ut factum animadvertit, 'cogita nunc tecum' inquit 'quam multi luctus sub his tectis et olim fuerint et hodieque versentur et insequentibus saeculis sint habitaturi, ac mitte mortalium incommoda tamquam propria deflere.' qua consolatione demonstravit urbes esse humanarum cladium consaepta miseranda.

Or do you suppose, brothers and sisters, that what counts as a city is walls, and not citizens?

An putatis, fratres, civitatem in parietibus et non in civibus deputandam?

So first they made enquiry of the god at Delphi, and when he gave his approval they sent out the settlers, drawing them from their own people and the Perioeci, and inviting volunteers from the rest of Greece to join them, but excluding Ionians, Achaeans, and some other nationalities. Three Spartans took the lead as founder-colonists: they were Leon, Alcidas, and Damagon.

πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐν Δελφοῖς τὸν θεὸν ἐπήροντο, κελεύοντος δὲ ἐξέπεμψαν τοὺς οἰκήτορας αὑτῶν τε καὶ τῶν περιοίκων, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων τὸν βουλόμενον ἐκέλευον ἕπεσθαι πλὴν Ἰώνων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν καὶ ἔστιν ὧν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν. οἰκισταὶ δὲ τρεῖς Λακεδαιμονίων ἡγήσαντο, Λέων καὶ Ἀλκίδας καὶ Δαμάγων.

He retained his British citizenship and seemed ill-suited to the 20th century. "Not for him the telephone, the gramophone, or the radio. Even the telephone stirred him to loud abuse unless it served his purpose and then was hung up."

Of the men of our time the Sun beholdeth none that is altogether good and reasonable.

οὐδένα παμπήδην ἀγαθὸν καὶ μέτριον ἄνδρα
    τῶν νῦν ἀνθρώπων ἠέλιος καθορᾷ.

For I see that no one in the world remains always free from error.

ὁρῶ γὰρ τῶν ἀνθρώπων οὐδένα ἀναμάρτητον διατελοῦντα.

Ritschl, the admired teacher of Gildersleeve and Nietzsche, was also beloved by the second-rate who needed a doctorate as the union card to secure a minor teaching post. He made the catastrophic error of substituting "what needs doing" for the important. That is, he turned research into the higher crossword. He specialized in Plautus, an author with nothing of importance to say to an educated man of intelligence...