Laudator Temporis Acti

Aelius Aristides, Orations 26.60 (vol. 2, p. 108 Keil; tr. James H. Oliver):

Neither sea nor intervening continent are bars to citizenship, nor are Asia and Europe divided in their treatment here. In your empire all paths are open to all. No one worthy of rule or trust remains an alien, but a civil community of the World has been established as a Free Republic under one, the best, ruler and teacher of order; and all come together as into a common civic center, in order to receive each man his due.

καὶ οὔτε θάλαττα διείργει τὸ μὴ εἶναι πολίτην οὔτε πλῆθος τὰς ἐν μέσῳ χώρας, οὐδ' Ἀσία καὶ Εὐρώπη διῄρηται ἐνταῦθα· πρόκειται δ' ἐν μέσῳ πᾶσι πάντα· ξένος δ' οὐδεὶς ὅστις ἀρχῆς ἢ πίστεως ἄξιος, ἀλλὰ καθέστηκε κοινὴ τῆς γῆς δημοκρατία ὑφ' ἑνὶ τῷ ἀρίστῳ ἄρχοντι καὶ κοσμητῇ, καὶ πάντες ὥσπερ εἰς κοινὴν ἀγορὰν συνίασι τευξόμενοι τῆς ἀξίας ἕκαστοι.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6.53.1-2 (speech of Agrippa Menenius; tr. Earnest Cary):

[1] The natives have here their wives, children, parents, and many others that are dear to them, to serve as pledges; yes, and there is their fondness for the soil that reared them, a passion that is implanted in all men and not to be eradicated; but as for this multitude which we propose to invite here, this people without roof or home, if they should take up their abode with us having none of these pledges here, in defence of what blessing would they care to face dangers, unless one were to promise to give them portions of land and some part or other of the city, after first dispossessing the present owners — things we refuse to grant to our own citizens who have often fought in their defence? And possibly they might not be content with even these grants alone, but would also insist upon an equal share of honours, of magistracies, and of all the other advantages with the patricians. [2] If, therefore, we do not grant them every one of their demands, shall we not have them as our enemies when they fail to obtain what they ask? And if we grant their demands, our country and our constitution will be lost, destroyed by our own hands.

[1] τῷ μέν τ᾽ ἐπιχωρίῳ καὶ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ γονέων καὶ πολλῶν ἄλλων σωμάτων οἰκείων ὅμηρά ἐστιν ἐνθάδε, καὶ αὐτοῦ νὴ Δία τοῦ θρέψαντος αὐτοὺς ἐδάφους ὁ πόθος, ἀναγκαῖος ὢν ἅπασι καὶ οὐκ ἐξαιρετός· ὁ δ᾽ ἐπίκλητός γε οὑτοσὶ καὶ ἐπίσκηνος ὄχλος, εἰ γένοιτο ἡμῖν σύνοικος, οὐδενὸς αὐτῷ τούτων ἐνθάδε ὄντος, ὑπὲρ τίνος ἂν ἀξιώσειε κινδυνεύειν ἀγαθοῦ, εἰ μή τις αὐτῷ γῆς τε ὑπόσχοιτο μέρη δώσειν καὶ πόλεως μοῖραν ὅσην δή τινα τοὺς νῦν κυρίους αὐτῶν ἀφελόμενος, ὧν οὐκ ἀξιοῦμεν τοῖς πολλάκις ἀγωνισαμένοις ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν πολίταις μεταδιδόναι; καὶ ἴσως ἂν οὐδὲ τούτοις ἀρκεσθείη δοθεῖσι μόνοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμῶν καὶ ἀρχῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀγαθῶν ἐξ ἴσου τοῖς πατρικίοις ἀξιώσειε μεταλαμβάνειν. [2] οὐκοῦν εἰ μὲν οὐκ ἐπιτρέψομεν ἕκαστα τῶν αἰτουμένων, ἐχθροῖς τοῖς μὴ τυγχάνουσι χρησόμεθα; εἰ δὲ συγχωρήσαιμεν, ἡ πατρὶς ἡμῖν οἰχήσεται καὶ ἡ πολιτεία πρὸς ἡμῶν αὐτῶν καταλυομένη.

Ronald Syme, "Greeks Invading the Roman Government," in his Roman Papers, IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 1-20 (at 11):

An autocrat is not omnipotent. There are facts he cannot fight against, groups and pressures he cannot resist.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6.52.1 (Agrippa Menenius speaking ironically; tr. Earnest Cary):

The commonwealth is very likely threatened with no other danger as yet than a change of inhabitants, a matter of no serious consequence; and it would be very easy for us to receive into the body politic a multitude of labourers and clients from every nation and place.

τῇ πόλει δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἤδη που κινδυνεύεται ἢ μεταβολή, πρᾶγμα οὐ χαλεπόν, κατὰ πολλήν τ᾽ ἂν ἡμῖν εὐπέτειαν ἐκ παντὸς ἔθνους καὶ τόπου θῆτά τε καὶ πελάτην ὄχλον εἰσδέξασθαι γένοιτο.

Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 11.1-2 (tr. J.W. Cohoon):

[1] I am almost certain that while all men are hard to teach, they are easy to deceive. They learn with difficulty—if they do learn anything—from the few that know, but they are deceived only too readily by the many who do not know, and not only by others but by themselves as well. For the truth is bitter and unpleasant to the unthinking, while falsehood is sweet and pleasant. [2] They are, I fancy, like men with sore eyes—they find the light painful, while the darkness, which permits them to see nothing, is restful and agreeable. Else how would falsehood often prove mightier than the truth, if it did not win its victories through pleasure?

[1] οἶδα μὲν ἔγωγε σχεδὸν ὅτι διδάσκειν μὲν ἀνθρώπους ἅπαντας χαλεπόν ἐστιν, ἐξαπατᾶν δὲ ῥᾴδιον. καὶ μανθάνουσι μὲν μόγις, ἐάν τι καὶ μάθωσι, παρ᾿ ὀλίγων τῶν εἰδότων, ἐξαπατῶνται δὲ τάχιστα ὑπὸ πολλῶν τῶν οὐκ εἰδότων, καὶ οὐ μόνον γε ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτοὶ ὑφ᾿ αὑτῶν. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀληθὲς πικρόν ἐστι καὶ ἀηδὲς τοῖς ἀνοήτοις, τὸ δὲ ψεῦδος γλυκὺ καὶ προσηνές. [2] ὥσπερ οἶμαι καὶ τοῖς νοσοῦσι τὰ ὄμματα τὸ μὲν φῶς ἀνιαρὸν ὁρᾶν, τὸ δὲ σκότος ἄλυπον καὶ φίλον, οὐκ ἐῶν βλέπειν. ἢ πῶς ἂν ἴσχυε τὰ ψεύδη πολλάκις πλέον1 τῶν ἀληθῶν, εἰ μὴ δι᾿ ἡδονὴν ἐνίκα;

George Kingsley Zipf, "Frequency of Occurrence of Words in Plautus' Aulularia, Mostellaria, Pseudolus, and Trinummus," Selected Studies of the Principle of Relative Frequency in Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), pp. 31-51 (at 31): Separate entries for homo and hominem (plus other oblique cases further down), faciam and facere, etc., are jarring to my pedantic mind, although I can understand why Zipf did it—he was counting syllables as well as words, after all. The statistics disconcert splitters (because of homonyms) as well as lumpers.

Ronald Syme, "Greeks Invading the Roman Government," in his Roman Papers, IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 1-20 (at 2):

Under the rule of the imperial Republic, the Greek lands had endured manifold disasters and tribulation, to mention only the constant drain of wealth to Italy. The matter can be illustrated by brief recourse to the balance of trade, to what are called 'invisible exports'. Italy sent out governors and soldiers, financiers and tax-gatherers, and Italy drew benefit in return, with enhanced prosperity (though not for all classes of the population). Those exports, be it added, were all too visible throughout the Eastern countries: legionaries, rapacious bankers, and the governor parading in the purple mantle of war, preceded by lictors who bore axes on their rods. The earliest Greek term for the mandatory who carries the imperium is 'a six-axe man' (ἑξαπέλεκυς). To the imperial people, by contrast, the emblems of power convey beauty as well as terror: in the phrase of the poet Lucretius, 'pulchros fasces saevasque secures'.

ἑξαπέλεκυς first occurs in Polybius (cf. Latin sexfascalis). The quotation from Lucretius comes from De Rerum Natura 5.1234.

Nowadays "fascist" is overused and practically meaningless. For the sake of variety at least, can we use "six-axe man" instead?

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), Literary Studies, Vol. III (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), p. 206:

Since the time of Carlyle, "earnestness" has been a favourite virtue in literature, and it is customary to treat this wish to twist other people's belief into ours as if it were a part of the love of truth. And in the highest minds so it may be. But the mass of mankind have, as I hold, no such fine motive. Independently of truth or falsehood, the spectacle of a different belief from ours is disagreeable to us, in the same way that the spectacle of a different form of dress and manners is disagreeable. A set of schoolboys will persecute a new boy with a new sort of jacket; they will hardly let him have a new-shaped penknife. Grown-up people are just as bad, except when culture has softened them. A mob will hoot a foreigner who looks very unlike themselves. Much of the feeling of "earnest believers" is, I believe, altogether the same. They wish others to think as they do, not only because they wish to diffuse doctrinal truth, but also and much more because they cannot bear to hear the words of a creed different from their own.

Simonides, in Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, number 523 (tr. Jenny Strauss Clay):

Not even those who once lived before us,
the demigods, sons born from our lords, the gods,
brought to completion a life without toil or decline or danger,
and arrived at old age.

†οὐδὲ γὰρ οἳ πρότερόν ποτ᾿ ἐπέλοντο,
θεῶν δ᾿ ἐξ ἀνάκτων ἐγένονθ᾿ υἷες ἡμίθεοι,
ἄπονον οὐδ᾿ ἄφθιτον οὐδ᾿ ἀκίνδυνον βίον
ἐς γῆρας ἐξίκοντο τελέσαντες.†

3 ἄφθιτον codd.: ἀφθόνητον Wilamowitz: ἄφθονον Poltera

Orlando Poltera, Simonides lyricus. Testimonia und Fragmente. Einleitung, kritische Ausgabe, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2008), pp. 411-412 (click once or twice to enlarge):

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 524-528 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth):

Oh give him goodly greeting, as is meet and right, since he hath uprooted Troy with the mattock of Zeus, the Avenger, wherewith her soil has been uptorn. Demolished are the altars and the shrines of her gods; and the seed of her whole land hath been wasted utterly.

ἀλλ' εὖ νιν ἀσπάσασθε, καὶ γὰρ οὖν πρέπει,
Τροίαν κατασκάψαντα τοῦ δικηφόρου        525
Διὸς μακέλλῃ, τῇ κατείργασται πέδον.
βωμοὶ δ' ἄιστοι καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματα,
καὶ σπέρμα πάσης ἐξαπόλλυται χθονός.

527 del. Wilhelm Gotthilf Salzmann, Observationum in Aeschyli Agamemnonem Specimen (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1823), pp. 10-11

John Dewar Denniston and Denys Page on line 527:

Some have rejected this line as an interpolation, on the grounds that (1) it interrupts the metaphor begun in 526 and continued in 528 (σπέρμα); (2) it resembles a line found elsewhere in Aeschylus (Pers. 811 βωμοὶ δ' ἄιστοι δαιμόνων θ' ἱδρύματα; (3) the Herald ought not to boast of an action so shocking to the religious feelings of the Hellenes: 'to the poet and his contemporaries the destruction of holy places by the enemy seemed an unparalleled atrocity' (Fraenkel). Of these arguments the third alone seems considerable. It must, however, be observed that Clytemnestra made it clear (338 ff.) that there was reason to fear that the army might commit just this kind of sacrilege : and here we are told that they did commit it. Without this line, the question raised by 338 ff. would be nowhere answered. Moreover it seems unlikely that the poet would allow his Herald to exaggerate so grossly as to say that the land was utterly devastated, reduced to a ploughed field, no seed left in the soil, without referring to the fact (if it was one) that the temples, altars, shrines, and the like were left intact. If nothing whatever is said about the holy places, the strength of the Herald's language is such that the Chorus is bound to infer (and so are we, who have wanted an answer to the question raised in 338 ff.) that they are included in the tale of total ruin.

Cf. Exodus 34:13 (KJV):

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves.

Related post: The Buttock of Zeus.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Cicero, On Duties 1.17.53-55 (tr. Walter Miller):

[53] Then, too, there are a great many degrees of closeness or remoteness in human society. To proceed beyond the universal bond of our common humanity, there is the closer one of belonging to the same people, tribe, and tongue, by which men are very closely bound together; it is a still closer relation to be citizens of the same city-state; for fellow-citizens have much in common—forum, temples, colonnades, streets, statutes, laws, courts, rights of suffrage, to say nothing of social and friendly circles and diverse business relations with many.

But a still closer social union exists between kindred. Starting with that infinite bond of union of the human race in general, the conception is now confined to a small and narrow circle. [54] For since the reproductive instinct is by Nature's gift the common possession of all living creatures, the first bond of union is that between husband and wife; the next, that between parents and children; then we find one home, with everything in common. And this is the foundation of civil government, the nursery, as it were, of the state. Then follow the bonds between brothers and sisters, and next those of first and then of second cousins; and when they can no longer be sheltered under one roof, they go out into other homes, as into colonies. Then follow between these, in turn, marriages and connections by marriage, and from these again a new stock of relations; and from this propagation and after-growth states have their beginnings. The bonds of common blood hold men fast through good-will and affection; [55] for it means much to share in common the same family traditions, the same forms of domestic worship, and the same ancestral tombs.

[53] gradus autem plures sunt societatis hominum. ut enim ab illa infinita discedatur, propior est eiusdem gentis, nationis, linguae, qua maxime homines coniunguntur; interius etiam est eiusdem esse civitatis; multa enim sunt civibus inter se communia, forum, fana, porticus, viae, leges, iura: iudicia, suffragia, consuetudines praeterea et familiaritates multisque cum multis res rationesque contractae.

artior vero colligatio est societatis propinquorum; ab illa enim immensa societate humani generis in exiguum angustumque concluditur. [54] nam cum sit hoc natura commune animantium, ut habeant libidinem procreandi, prima societas in ipso coniugio est, proxima in liberis, deinde una domus, communia omnia; id autem est principium urbis et quasi seminarium rei publicae. sequuntur fratrum coniunctiones, post consobrinorum sobrinorumque, qui cum una domo iam capi non possint, in alias domos tamquam in colonias exeunt. sequuntur conubia et affinitates, ex quibus etiam plures propinqui; quae propagatio et suboles origo est rerum publicarum. sanguinis autem coniunctio et benivolentia devincit homines et caritate; [55] magnum est enim eadem habere monumenta maiorum, eisdem uti sacris, sepulcra habere communia.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6.36.1 (tr. Earnest Cary):

For we are living apart from one another, as you see, and inhabit two cities, one of which is ruled by poverty and necessity, and the other by satiety and insolence; but modesty, order and justice, by which alone any civil community is preserved, remain in neither of these cities.

διῳκίσμεθα γὰρ ὡς ὁρᾶτε καὶ δύο πόλεις ἔχομεν, τὴν μὲν μίαν ὑπὸ πενίας τε καὶ ἀνάγκης ἀρχομένην, τὴν δ᾽ ὑπὸ κόρου καὶ ὕβρεως. αἰδὼς δὲ καὶ κόσμος καὶ δίκη, ὑφ᾽ ὧν ἅπασα πολιτικὴ κοινωνία σώζεται, παρ᾽ οὐδετέρᾳ μένει τῶν πόλεων.

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), Literary Studies, Vol. III (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), p. 129:

It is much in every generation to state the ancient truth in the manner which that generation requires; to state the old answer to the old difficulty; to transmit, if not discover; convince, if not invent; to translate into the language of the living, the truths first discovered by the dead.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), The Political Madhouse in America and Nearer Home (London: Constable & Co, 1933), pp. 40-41:

That is to say, financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country which has no existence. Every five dollars they count as a hundred dollars; and that means that every financier, every banker, every stockbroker, is 95 per cent. a lunatic. And it is in the hands of these lunatics that you leave the fate of your country!

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6.9.6 (tr. Earnest Cary):

Death, indeed, is decreed to all men, both the cowardly and the brave; but an honourable and a glorious death comes to the brave alone.

ἀποθανεῖν μὲν γὰρ ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις ὀφείλεται, κακοῖς τε καὶ ἀγαθοῖς· καλῶς δὲ καὶ ἐνδόξως μόνοις τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς.

ὀφείλεται = is owed. Cf. A Debt Owed. Cf. also Homer, Iliad 12.322-328 (Sarpedon speaking to Glaucon; tr. Peter Green):

Ah, my friend, if the two of us could escape from this war,
and be both immortal and ageless for all eternity,
then neither would I myself be among the foremost fighters
nor would I send you out into battle that wins men honor;
but now—since come what may the death-spirits around us
are myriad, something no mortal can flee or avoid—
let's go on, to win ourselves glory, or yield it to others.

ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε
αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ᾽ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ᾽, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην
οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν·        325
νῦν δ᾽ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ᾽ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν.

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), Literary Studies, Vol. III (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), p. 71:

Legislative Assemblies, leading articles, essay eloquence—such are good—very good,—useful—very useful. Yet they can be done without. We can want them. Not so with all things. The selling of figs, the cobbling of shoes, the manufacturing of nails,—these are the essence of life. And let whoso frameth a Constitution of his country think on these things.

D.A. Bingham, A Selection from the Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, Vol. I (London: Chapman and Hall, 1884), p. 22:

On reporting himself at Auxonne, Napoleon declared that he had twice attempted to pass the straits and had twice been driven back by stress of weather, and produced certificates to this effect. Not only were his excuses accepted, but the Chevalier de Lance, by ante-dating his return, procured him three months' pay, which was a matter of importance to the needy lieutenant, who occupied a chamber which was nearly bare, and which in the way of furniture had only a miserable bed without curtains, a table covered with books and papers, and two chairs. Brother Louis was obliged to sleep on the floor in an adjoining closet.

Twenty years later, when King Louis fled from Holland, Napoleon exclaimed to Caulaincourt: "Abdicate without warning me! Run away to Westphalia as if flying from a tyrant! My brother injure instead of aiding me! That Louis I educated on my pay of a lieutenant. God knows at the expense of what privations I found means to send money to pay my brother's schooling! Do you know how I managed? By never entering a café or going into society; by eating dry bread, and brushing my own clothes so that they might last the longer. I lived like a bear, in a little room, with books for my only friends, and when, thanks to abstinence, I had saved up a few crowns, I rushed off to the bookseller's shop and visited his coveted shelves.....These were the joys and debaucheries of my youth."

Related posts:

• Priorities
• Mentellé the Hungarian
• Books or Clothes?

Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.272-273 (tr. John Sandys):

For, even for the feeble, it is an easy task to shake a city to its foundation, but it is indeed a sore struggle to set it in its place again.

ῥᾴδιον μὲν γὰρ πόλιν σεῖσαι καὶ ἀφαυροτέροις·
ἀλλ' ἐπὶ χώρας αὖτις ἕσσαι δυσπαλὲς
    δὴ γίνεται.

Commentators compare Theognis 845-846 (tr. Dorothea Wender):

A man's good luck can easily be spoiled;
But to improve bad luck is difficult.

εὖ μὲν κείμενον ἄνδρα κακῶς θέμεν εὐμαρές ἐστιν,
    εὖ δὲ θέμεν τὸ κακῶς κείμενον ἀργαλέον.

485 ἄνδρα codd: ἄστυ Bergk

Or, if Bergk's conjecture is adopted:

A town in a good condition is easy to destroy,
but it is hard to set aright one in a bad condition.

Related post: Easier to Tear Down Than to Build.

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), Literary Studies, Vol. III (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913), p. 65:

Men won't stand being cut, being ridiculed, being detested, being despised, daily and for ever, and that for measures which their own understandings disapprove of.

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, chapter 6 (tr. James E. Woods):

Born a stranger to remote, wild nature, the child of civilization is much more open to her grandeur than are her own coarse sons, who have been at her mercy from infancy and whose intimacy with her is more level-headed. They know next to nothing of the religious awe with which the novice approaches her, eyebrows raised, his whole being tuned to its depths to receive her, his soul in a state of constant, thrilled, timid excitement.

Das Kind der Zivilisation, fern und fremd der wilden Natur von Hause aus, ist ihrer Größe viel zugänglicher als ihr rauher Sohn, der, von Kindesbeinen auf sie angewiesen, in nüchterner Vertraulichkeit mit ihr lebt. Dieser kennt kaum die religiöse Furcht, mit der je­ ner, die Augenbrauen hochgezogen, vor sie tritt und die sein ganzes Empfindungsverhältnis zu ihr in der Tiefe bestimmt, eine beständige fromme Erschütterung und scheue Erregung in seiner Seele unterhält.

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), "On Pigs as Pets," The Uses of Diversity: A Book of Essays (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1921), pp. 97-104 (at 99-100):

The actual lines of a pig (I mean a really fat pig) are among the loveliest and most luxurious in nature, the pig has the same great curves, swift and yet heavy, which see in rushing water or in rolling cloud....Now, there is no point of view from which really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves....In short, he has that fuller, subtler and more universal kind of shapeliness which the unthinking (gazing at pigs and distinguished journalists) mistake for mere absence of shape. For fatness itself is a valuable quality. While it creates admiration in the onlookers, it creates modesty in the possessor.

George Morland (1763-1804), In Front of the Sty:

[Warning: X-rated.]

Panel leg with a costumed reveller named Samon, on a tripod exaleiptron, ca. 570–560/550 B.C., in Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. 3364, from Victoria Sabetai and Christina Avronidaki, "The Six's Technique in Boiotia: Regional Experiments in Technique and Iconography," Hesperia 87.2 (April-June 2018) 311-385 (at 314, figure 1:b, photograph by I. Luckert): Id. (at 338):

Samon (Fig. 1:b) is an enigmatic character, best regarded as a costumed performer.¹⁶⁰ The figure combines the traits of a satyr and a komast, as attested by his hairy bodice with appended large genitalia and his human face without snub profile or equine ears.¹⁶¹ The kindred nature of the early satyr and the komast is iconographically confirmed in Boiotia by their simultaneous presence on two of the panel legs of a tripod exaleiptron in Athens, depicting a satyr exhibiting his phallus and a masturbating komast.¹⁶² Masturbating komasts are a feature of early Corinthian and Boiotian iconography, whereas satyrs engaged in this act are not as frequent in these fabrics.¹⁶³ Moreover, Samon's stance, bent legs, and steatopygic buttocks are reminiscent of komast dancers, which are popular across all Archaic Greek fabrics.¹⁶⁴ These figures occasionally display an obscene sexual behavior, especially in Boiotia. They are particularly preoccupied with their buttocks—exhibiting, touching, slapping, or offering them for penetration. Apparently, Samon is a masqueraded variant of the standard figure of the bottom-slapper.¹⁶⁵

160. Hedreen 1992, p. 128.

161. Samon’s drooping phallus suggests that it is an accessory to his costume, as masturbating figures usually have an erect penis. For the phallus in the comic actor’s costume, see Foley 2000, esp. pp. 277, 281–282, 286, 289–291, 296–302.

162. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 938 (Kilinski 1990, p. 19, pl. 10:3; Isler-Kerényi 2004, p. 29, fig. 12). For ithyphallic proto-satyrs assimilated to grotesque dancers, see Isler-Kerényi 2004, pp. 7–18, 27–33; for performers dressed as silens and for hairy tailless creatures resembling satyrs, see Hedreen 1992, pp. 128–130.

163. Lindblom 2011, pp. 66–67, with previous bibliography.

164. Smith 2010, esp. pp. 150–175 (Boiotia), with previous bibliography.

165. For Boiotian bottom-slappers, see Smith 2010, pp. 165–167.

Id. (at 364):

Bearded komast in the costume of a hairy ithyphallic creature holding his appended phallus or masturbating with his right hand and pushing a stick into his anus with the left; incised inscription: Samon.

Plautus, Aulularia 373-377 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

I went to the market and asked for fish. They told me it's expensive. Lamb: expensive; beef: expensive; veal, tunny, pork: expensive, everything. And they were more expensive for this reason: I didn't have money. I went away from there, angry, since I don't have the money to buy things with.

venio ad macellum, rogito pisces: indicant
caros; agninam caram, caram bubulam,
vitulinam, cetum, porcinam: cara omnia.        375
atque eo fuerunt cariora, aes non erat.
†abeo iratus illinc, quoniam† nihil est qui emam.

377 illinc iratus abeo Guyet
iratus illinc abeo Francken
abeo illim iratus Bothe
abbito...quom Lindsay
<mihi> nil Wagner

Richard Wünsch (1869-1915) first used the terms apopompē (ἀποπομπή) and epipompē (ἐπιπομπή) to describe two different ways of banishing evil. See his "Zur Geisterbannung im Altertum," Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier der Universität zu Breslau = Mitteilungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 13/14 (1911) 9-32. Wünsch used apopompē to mean simply driving away evil, epipompē to mean driving away evil onto someone or something else or to some other specific location. A classic example of epipompē can be found in the Gospels (Matthew 8.30-32, Mark 5.11-13, Luke 8.32-33), when Jesus, in performing an exorcism, drove demons into a herd of pigs. All other exorcisms in the Gospels are examples of apopompē.

There is a good example of epipompē on a 4th century A.D. silver lamella from Beyrutus (Beirut), Labanon, now in Paris, Musée du Louvre Bj 88 (Inv. M.N.D. 274), discussed by Roy Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets. The Inscribed Gold, Silver, Copper, and Bronze Lamellae. Part I: Published Texts of Known Provenance. Text and Commentary (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994 = Papyrologica Coloniensia 22/1), pp. 270-300 (number 52 = The Great Angelic Hierarchy). I quote lines 79-119 from Kotansky, p. 281 (underline added):

(79) I adjure you by the Living God in Zoar of the nomadic Zabadeans, the one who thunders and lightnings, EBIEMATHALZERÔ, a new staff (?), by the one who treads, by THESTA, by EIBRADMAS BARBLIOIS EIPSATHAÔTHARIATH PHELCHAPHIAÔN that (?) all male <demons ?> and frightening demons and all bindings-spells (flee) from Alexandra whom Zoê bore, to beneath the founts and the Abyss of Mareôrth,
(95) lest you harm or defile her, or use magic drugs on her,
(97) either by a kiss, or from an embrace, or a greeting;
(100) either with food or drink;
(101) either in bed or intercourse;
(103) either by the evil eye or a piece of clothing;
(105) as she prays (?), either on the street or abroad:
(107) or while river-bathing or a bath.
(109) Holy and mighty and powerful names, protect Alexandra from every demon, male and female,
(114) and from every disturbance of demons of the night and of the day.
(116) Deliver Alexandra whom Zoe bore, now, now; quickly, quickly.
(119) One God and his Christ, help Alexandra.

The relevant Greek phrase (lines 93-95 on p. 279, simplified) is ὑποκάτο τῶν πηγῶν καὶ τῆς ἀβύσσου Μαρεώθ.