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.
"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).
Pages
▼
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Untold Stories
Tacitus, Annals 6.7.5 (tr. J.C. Yardley):