Up to this time, O Romans, I have regarded the misfortune to my eyes as an affliction, but it now distresses me that I am not deaf as well as blind, that I might not hear the shameful resolutions and decrees of yours which bring low the glory of Rome.
πρότερον μέν ... τὴν περὶ τὰ ὄμματα τύχην ἀνιαρῶς ἔφερον, ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, νῦν δ’ ἄχθομαι πρὸς τῷ τυφλὸς εἶναι μὴ καὶ κωφὸς ὤν, ἀλλ’ ἀκούων αἰσχρὰ βουλεύματα καὶ δόγμαθ’ ὑμῶν, ἀνατρέποντα τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ κλέος.
"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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Saturday, June 13, 2026
Shameful Resolutions and Decrees
Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 19.1 (speech of Appius Claudius Caecus; tr. Bernadotte Perrin):