Laudator Temporis Acti

Pindar, Nemean Odes 3.40-42 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

The splendor running in the blood has much weight.
A man can learn and yet see darkly, blow one way, then another, walking ever
on uncertain feet, his mind unfinished and fed with scraps of a thousand virtues.

συγγενεῖ δέ τις εὐδοξίᾳ μέγα βρίθει.
ὃς δὲ διδάκτ᾿ ἔχει, ψεφεννὸς ἀνὴρ
    ἄλλοτ᾿ ἄλλα πνέων οὔ ποτ᾿ ἀτρεκεῖ
κατέβα ποδί, μυριᾶν δ᾿ ἀρετᾶν ἀτελεῖ νόῳ γεύεται.

The same (tr. Anthony Verity):

It is by inborn distinction that a man gains authority,
while he who has only been taught is a man of shadows;
he veers hither and thither, and never enters the arena with a confident step,
trying out thousands of exploits in his futile mind.

The same (tr. C.M. Bowra):

A man has much weight if glory belongs to his breed,
But whoso needs to be taught,
His spirit blows here and there in the dark,
Nor ever enters he the lists with sure foot,
Though countless the glories his futile fancy savours.

The same (tr. Anne Pippin Burnett):

Fame inborn gives weight to a man, but
one who needs teaching pants blindly after
this and that, his foot never sure
as he foolishly samples ten-thousand exploits.

Stephen Instone ad loc.:

40-2 The conclusion to be drawn from 28-39 turns out to be one of Pindar's favourite sayings, namely that success in physical struggle depends on the natural ability one has inherited rather than on any taught skills (cf. O. 2.86-8, O. 9.100-4). It is not surprising that Pindar should be drawn to this belief, since (a) many of the successful athletes for whom he wrote were themselves descendants of successful athletes (though not, it seems, Aristocleidas, since nothing is said in N. 3 about previous victories in his family), (b) success in the games requires good physique rather than brain.

The way the contrast is expressed has been tailored to the context: 'carries great weight' (βρίθει 40) suits a heavily-built pancratiast; 'with a sure foot' (ἀτρεκεῖ ποδί 42) suggests the pancratiast's need to resist being thrown; and the implied consequence of having inborn ability, namely that it will enable you to see through to the end what you set out to achieve, is clearly relevant to the victor: he has devoted himself single-mindedly to the pancration event and met with success. Lines 70-1 below resume the theme: achievement comes from putting yourself to a proper test.

41 a faint man ψεφεννὸς, not found elsewhere, is equivalent to σκοτεινός ('dark') or ἀμαυρός ('dim').

blowing now this way now that ἄλλοτ᾿ ἄλλα πνέων, lit. 'breathing different things at different times'. The man is like an inconstant, erratic wind; cf. Hes. Theog. 872-80 ('Winds blow differently at different times, and wreck ships and destroy sailors', 875-6).

The man who dabbles in lessons in this and that, with no inborn talent for any single activity, is a feeble person: he can never achieve anything or reach his goal; cf. N. 4.39-41 (on the futility of being envious): 'With envious eyes he rolls in the dark his empty thought and it falls to the ground'; P. 11.30 'The man who breathes on the ground roars unnoticed' (i.e. he who lives in obscurity may make a loud noise, but it will be futile).

See llja Leonard Pfeijffer, Three Aeginetan Odes of Pindar (Leiden: Brill, 1999 = Mnemosyne: Supplementum, 197), pp. 324-334.

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Explorations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 95-96:

I think of a jolly old philosopher named John Alexander Smith. (I spent an unforgettable year reading Aristotle's Metaphysics in a seminar with him and H.H. Joachim.) He was not a dry logic-chopper or a gloomy metaphysical brooder, but a sharp, bold, critical thinker, with some delightful personal eccentricities, such as having a huge library of whodunits, and grading each of them alpha, beta, gamma, or delta after reading it. After he grew to man's estate, he learned a new language every year of his life. He always taught himself, and he always used the same method. Choosing his language, he got hold of a translation of the Bible in it, and started to read, beginning either with the Book of Genesis, or with one of the Gospels, since he knew these books pretty well by heart. By the time he had finished one book of Scripture, he had a grasp of the general pattern of the language. After finishing one of the Testaments, he could read fluently. When he had finished the entire Bible, he could read and write the new language and could make a shot at talking it when necessary.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 252-263 (material in square brackets added):

In 1.1 Plutarch [fragment 7] relates how Pythagoras calculated Heracles' human height: since the running track at Olympia was 600 of his feet in length, and those in other cities, though also reckoned at 600 feet, were shorter than the Olympic prototype, Heracles' foot was longer than common mortals' feet in proportion as the Olympic stade exceeded others; but since there was a settled ratio between length of foot and height of body, he was also taller than other people in the proportion just established. Read in the light of Vitruvius 3.1.2, 7 (foot : stature :: 1 : 6),⁹ this makes Heracles' height 6 x 320-45 mm = 1.9227 m [= 6 ft, 3.7 in], striking but not superhuman,¹⁰ which suits well with the ancients' unquestioning belief in the heroes' historicity, if supernatural tales were discounted;¹¹ even if we infer from Varro, p. 86 Salvadore at NA 3.10.10 that Heracles was seven Olympic feet = 2.24315 m tall, that would not be quite incredible.

⁹ But see Gros 18.

¹¹ Apollod. Bibl. 2.4- 9 makes Heracles six foot tall, Herodorus (FGrH 31 F 19) seven; cf. Sol. 1.88 with Salmasius i.42^bB-D. He is μορφὰν βραχύϲ beside Antaeus at Pi. I. 3-4. 71, an ode in praise of an ill-favoured victor; the two-cubit footprint by the Dniester, Hdt. 4. 82, would imply a height of 18 feet; Luc. VH 1.7 is a joke, but giants are easily fantasized by persons ignorant of the cube-square law. For the competing conceptions of heroes as human and superhuman in stature see S(amson) Eitrem, SO 8 (1929), 53-6, Von der Mühll 12-13 (cf. NA 3.10.11 on Orestes with Ch. 16 n. 100). Six Olympic feet are 4.89 cm more than the six Byzantine feet allotted Jesus Christ by Epiphanius Monachus, De uita B. Virg. 15 (PG 120.204 c); only 5.25 feet Nicephorus Callistus, Eccl. hist. 1.40 = PG 145.748 c. At BAV Reg. lat. 572, fo. 67^r (s. xii in.) lines of 128 mm and 96 mm (so I measure them, despite Rosalind Hill, edn. of Gesta Francorum, 103) purportedly represent 1/15th of Christ's height and 1/9th of his breadth respectively; see too Rykwert 84, 86 (ill.), 418-19 n. 35.

¹¹ Veyne 52-3.

I'm especially interested in Epiphanius Monachus' statement (Holford-Strevens, n. 10) that Jesus Christ was six feet tall—my grandmother used to insist that Jesus was the only person in history who was exactly six feet tall. Others might have been a hair more or less than six feet, she said, but only Jesus was exactly that height.

Related post: How Tall Was Jesus?

[Plutarch,] On Desire and Grief 2 (tr. F.H. Sandbach):

Theophrastus, on the contrary, said that the soul's lodging in the body was an expensive one; that for a short tenancy it paid a heavy price in its pains and fears, desires and jealousies; and that its involvement with these emotions in the body gave it a better case to take to court, since it could accuse the body of mayhem for all it had been caused to forget, of forcible seizure for its detention, and of outrage for the ill-fame and vituperation it suffers through being undeservedly held responsible for the evils that befall the body.

Θεόφραστος δὲ τοὐναντίον ἔφη τῷ σώματι πολλοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνοικεῖν, ὀλίγου χρόνου βαρεῖς μισθοὺς ὑποτελοῦσαν, τὰς λύπας, τοὺς φόβους, τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, τὰς ζηλοτυπίας, αἷς συμφερομένη περὶ τὸ σῶμα δικαιότερον ἂν αὐτῷ δικάζοιτο πηρώσεως ὧν ἐπιλέλησται, καὶ βιαίων ἐφ' οἷς κατέχεται, καὶ ὕβρεως ὧν ἀδοξεῖ καὶ λοιδορεῖται, τῶν ἐκείνου κακῶν ἀναδεχομένη τὰς αἰτίας οὐ προσηκόντως.

Euripides, Orestes 823-824 (tr. David Kovacs):

This is the elaborately dressed godlessness of knaves,
and the mad behavior of fools.

τόδ᾽ αὖ κακούργων ἀσέβεια ποικίλα
κακοφρόνων τ᾽ ἀνδρῶν παράνοια.

Homer, Iliad 8.228-235 (Agamemnon speaking; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Shame, you Argives, poor nonentities splendid to look on.
Where are our high words gone, when we said that we were the bravest?
those words you spoke before all in hollow vaunting at Lemnos
when you were filled with abundant meat of the high-horned oxen
and drank from the great bowls filled to the brim with wine, how each man
could stand up against a hundred or even two hundred Trojans
in the fighting; now we together cannot match one of them,
Hektor, who must presently kindle our ships with the hot fire.

αἰδὼς Ἀργεῖοι, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, εἶδος ἀγητοί·
πῇ ἔβαν εὐχωλαί, ὅτε δὴ φάμεν εἶναι ἄριστοι,
ἃς ὁπότ᾽ ἐν Λήμνῳ κενεαυχέες ἠγοράασθε,        230
ἔσθοντες κρέα πολλὰ βοῶν ὀρθοκραιράων
πίνοντες κρητῆρας ἐπιστεφέας οἴνοιο,
Τρώων ἄνθ᾽ ἑκατόν τε διηκοσίων τε ἕκαστος
στήσεσθ᾽ ἐν πολέμῳ· νῦν δ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἑνὸς ἄξιοί εἰμεν
Ἕκτορος, ὃς τάχα νῆας ἐνιπρήσει πυρὶ κηλέῳ.        235

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game, tr. Clara and Richard Winston (1969; rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1978), p. 151 (Father Jacobus speaking):

Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.

Donald Davidson (1893-1968), "Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar," Poems 1922-1961 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966), pp. 52-55 (at 54-55):

We, too, have names that blaze on mouldering stone
And I have seen men's tears fall where they slept
And heard a shouting while I wept,
A century off yet louder in my ear
Than all that's so much magnified and near.

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Explorations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 93-94:

Friends sometimes ask me why I like learning new languages. I always feel like asking them why they do not like learning new languages, but I never do. For one thing, it would be too much like asking a tone-deaf man why he does not care for Debussy. For another, I know that many of them are actually afraid, and it would be embarrassing to expose their fear. They are timid about sounding like fools or small children while they are learning, and they are reluctant to remold their thinking and their habits of speech. I sympathize with this. Every human being has some inhibitions about learning certain new activities: skiing or dancing, diving or acting, public speaking or private thinking, all repel some of us. Then again, some people of a conservative bent believe subconsciously that there is only one language, their own; and that all others are silly monkey-talk not worth learning. They will not make the effort, any more than they would learn to bark and mew because they had a dog and a cat. This reluctance often appears when two language-groups live together on unsympathetic terms. Not many Peruvians of Spanish descent learn Quechua, the language of the conquered. Not many Englishmen learn Welsh: it was a special diplomatic effort for the present Prince of Wales to master the tongue of his princedom. Not many Jews in old Poland could speak Polish, and very few Poles knew Yiddish. I remember a British officer in Germany who, after some persuasion, though sticking in his big hooves and laying back his long hairy ears, started to learn German. When he was told that Please and Thank you were Bitte schön and Danke schön, he asked exactly what the phrases meant. 'What! what!' he grumbled when he heard. 'Pretty please and Pretty thanks? Silly bloody language, I'm damned if I learn another word of it!'

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Morgenröte, Book 4, § 306 (tr. R.J. Hollingdale, Daybreak):

Greek ideal.—What did the Greeks admire in Odysseus? Above all, his capacity for lying, and for cunning and terrible retribution; his being equal to contingencies; when need be, appearing nobler than the noblest; the ability to be whatever he chose; heroic perseverence [sic, read perseverance]; having all means at his command; possession of intellect—his intellect is the admiration of the gods, they smile when they think of it—: all this is the Greek ideal! The most remarkable thing about it is that the antithesis of appearance and being is not felt at all and is thus of no significance morally. Have there ever been such consummate actors!

Griechisches Ideal.— Was bewunderten die Griechen an Odysseus? Vor Allem die Fähigkeit zur Lüge und zur listigen und furchtbaren Wiedervergeltung; den Umständen gewachsen sein; wenn es gilt, edler erscheinen als der Edelste; sein können, was man will; heldenhafte Beharrlichkeit; sich alle Mittel zu Gebote stellen; Geist haben—sein Geist ist die Bewunderung der Götter, sie lächeln, wenn sie daran denken—: diess Alles ist griechisches Ideal! Das Merkwürdigste daran ist, dass hier der Gegensatz von Scheinen und Sein gar nicht gefühlt und also auch nicht sittlich angerechnet wird. Gab es je so gründliche Schauspieler!

Homer, Odyssey 13.242-247 (on Ithaca; tr. Peter Green):

It’s rough terrain, not fit for the driving of horses,
Yet not wholly worthless, even if lacking broad plains.
Grain grows there abundantly, wine too is a product,
there’s always rain and dew to keep it fertile, it’s good
pasture for goats and cattle, there’s also fine ground cover
of every sort, together with all-year watering-places.

ἦ τοι μὲν τρηχεῖα καὶ οὐχ ἱππήλατός ἐστιν,
οὐδὲ λίην λυπρή, ἀτὰρ οὐδ᾽ εὐρεῖα τέτυκται.
ἐν μὲν γάρ οἱ σῖτος ἀθέσφατος, ἐν δέ τε οἶνος
γίγνεται· αἰεὶ δ᾽ ὄμβρος ἔχει τεθαλυῖά τ᾽ ἐέρση·        245
αἰγίβοτος δ᾽ ἀγαθὴ καὶ βούβοτος· ἔστι μὲν ὕλη
παντοίη, ἐν δ᾽ ἀρδμοὶ ἐπηετανοὶ παρέασι.

A.M. Bowie ad loc.:

242 ἦ τοι μέν: this combination of particles is used of strong expressions of opinion (GP 389).

243 λυπρή ‘poor’, from λύπη ‘pain, poor condition’, is a hapax in Homer, like βούβοτος (246), but the presence of two such words is not a strong argument for deletion of the lines: cf. 14.10n. for a similar collocation of hapaxes in one passage. τέτυκται: the perfect of τεύχομαι regularly means no more than ‘be’ (GH ii.6; cf. 14.138, 234).

244 ἀθέσφατος ‘unlimited’; lit. ‘that which has not been stated or decided by a god’, and so ‘something that does not fit in a given order’ (Fraenkel 1923: 281–2).

W.B. Stanford ad loc.:

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), "Ode to the King. On his Irish Expedition and the Success of his Arms in General," lines 119-129 (from Stanza VII):

That Restless Tyrant, who of late
Is grown so impudently Great,        120
That Tennis-Ball of Fate;
This Gilded Meteor which flyes
As if it meant to touch the Skies;
For all its boasted height,
For all its Plagiary Light,        125
Took its first Growth and Birth
From the worst Excrements of Earth;
Stay but a little while and down again 'twill come,
And end as it began, in Vapour, Stink, and Scum.

Swift meant Louis XIV, but I can think of some modern political figures who fit the bill equally well.

Donald Davidson (1893-1968), "Lee in the Mountains," Poems 1922-1961 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966), pp. 43-46 (at 45):

And nothing else than this? Was it for this
That on an April day we stacked our arms
Obedient to a soldier's trust? To lie
Ground by heels of little men,
Forever maimed, defeated, lost, impugned?

The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Edited by Lester J. Cappon (1959; rpt. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987), p. 255 (Adams to Jefferson, May 11, 1794):

If I had Your Plantation and your Labourers I should be tempted to follow your Example and get out of the Fumum et Opes Strepitumque Romae ["the smoke, the wealth, the din of Rome"] which I abominate.

The editor doesn't identify the source of the quotation, which is Horace, Odes 3.29.12.

For the sentiment see also p. 176 (Adams to Jefferson, March 1, 1787):

If it lay in my Power, I would take a Vow, to retire to my little Turnip yard, and never again quit it.

and p. 228 (Abigail Adams to Jefferson, February 26, 1788):

I have lived long enough, and seen enough of the world, to check expectations, and to bring my mind to my circumstances, and retiring to our own little farm feeding my poultry and improveing my garden has more charms for my fancy, than residing at the court of Saint James's where I seldom meet with characters so innofensive as my Hens and chickings, or minds so well improved as my garden.

Homer, Odyssey 13.79-80 (tr. A.T. Murray):

Sweet sleep fell upon his eyelids,
an unawakening sleep, most sweet, and most like to death.

καὶ τῷ νήδυμος ὕπνος ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἔπιπτε,
νήγρετος, ἥδιστος, θανάτῳ ἄγχιστα ἐοικώς.

W.B. Stanford ad loc.: Related post: Sleep and Death.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.5.3 (1132 b 27) = Hesiod, fragment 286, line 2 Merkelbach and West (tr. W.D. Ross):

Should a man suffer what he did, right justice would be done.

εἴ κε πάθοι τά τ᾽ ἔρεξε, δίκη κ᾽ ἰθεῖα γένοιτο.

Donald Davidson (1893-1968), "The Thankless Muse and Her Fugitive Poets," Sewanee Review 66.2 (Spring, 1958) 201-228 (at 211; on Herbert Sanborn, professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University):

One could not but be awed and obedient when Dr. Sanborn strode vigorously to his desk, cloaked in all the Olympian majesty of Leipzig and Heidelberg, and, without a book or note before him, delivered a perfectly ordered lecture, freely sprinkled with quotations from the original Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, French, or Italian, which of course he would not insult us by translating.

Pindar, fragment 109 Maehler, 99.b Bowra (tr. William H. Race):

Let any townsman who would put the public good
in fair weather seek out proud Peace's
shining light,
having plucked from his mind wrathful discord,
giver of poverty, hateful nurse of children.

τὸ κοινόν τις ἀστῶν ἐν εὐδίᾳ
τιθεὶς ἐρευνασάτω μεγαλάνορος Ἡσυχίας
τὸ φαιδρὸν φάος,
στάσιν ἀπὸ πραπίδος ἐπίκοντον ἀνελών,
πενίας δότειραν, ἐχθρὰν κουροτρόφον.