Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Odyssey 20.25-30 (tr. George Herbert Palmer):

As when a man near a great glowing fire turns to and fro a sausage, full of fat and blood, anxious to have it quickly roast; so to and fro Odysseus tossed, and pondered how to lay hands upon the shameless suitors, he being alone, and they so many.

ὡς δʼ ὅτε γαστέρʼ ἀνὴρ πολέος πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο,
ἐμπλείην κνίσης τε καὶ αἵματος, ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα
αἰόλλῃ, μάλα δʼ ὦκα λιλαίεται ὀπτηθῆναι,
ὣς ἄρʼ ὅ γʼ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα ἑλίσσετο, μερμηρίζων
ὅππως δὴ μνηστῆρσιν ἀναιδέσι χεῖρας ἐφήσει
μοῦνος ἐὼν πολέσι.

W.B. Stanford ad loc.:

The comparison here between O.'s restless tossing and rolling on his bed and the way in which a haggis or black pudding (see on 18, 44) is turned (on a spit) when being roasted over a fire, is vivid and apt. Some literary snobs have found it uncourtly, even uncouth, and have tried to excise it or explain it away (e.g. Mme Dacier's attempt to prove that O. is compared to the man who is roasting, not to the pudding: see further in Pierron). Those who find a touch of burlesque in it are also, I think, wrong: H., as Bothe emphasizes, is aiming above all, at ἐνάργεια, vividness, here: he is not bound by the Augustan canons of taste nor daunted by the principle expressed (as many think) in Horace's warning (Ars Poetica 128): Difficile est propria communia dicere. On the other hand he is not bound necessarily to call a spade a spade either: cp. on 17, 300.

Crates of Thebes, fragment 18 in Hermann Diels, ed., Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1901), p. 223 (my translation):

You don't know how much power a leather pouch has,
and a day's ration of lupin seeds, and to care for nothing.

οὐκ οἶσθα, πήρα δύναμιν ἡλίκην ἔχει
θέρμων τε χοῖνιξ καὶ τὸ μηδενὸς μέλειν.

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Zibaldone, tr. Kathleen Baldwin et al. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), p. 1219 (Z 2946):

I therefore pardon the modern poet if he follows ancient things, if he employs ancient language and style and manner, if he also uses ancient fables, etc., if he seems to be following ancient opinions, if he prefers ancient customs, usages, and events, if he impresses upon his poetry the character of another age, if he seeks in short either to be in spirit and temperament ancient, or to seem such. I pardon the modern poet and modern poetry when they do not seem to be, are not contemporary with this century, since to be contemporary with this century is or essentially entails not being a poet, and not being poetry.

Perdóno dunque se il poeta moderno segue le cose antiche, se adopra il linguaggio e lo stile e la maniera antica, se usa eziandio le antiche favole ec., se mostra di accostarsi alle antiche opinioni, se preferisce gli antichi costumi, usi, avvenimenti, se imprime alla sua poesia un carattere d’altro secolo, se cerca in somma o di essere, quanto allo spirito e all’indole, o di parere antico. Perdóno se il poeta, se la poesia moderna non si mostrano, non sono contemporanei a questo secolo, poiché esser contemporaneo a questo secolo, è, o inchiude essenzialmente, non esser poeta, non esser poesia.

Sallust, Histories, fragment 48.27 Maurenbrecher (speech of C. Licinius Macer, 73 BC; tr. William W. Batstone):

The plebs, whatever happens, are treated like conquered people and this will get worse, as long as the few are more eager to hold on to their tyranny than you are to regain your freedom.

plebes, quodcumque accidit, pro victis est et in dies magis erit, si quidem maiore cura dominationem illi retinuerint, quam vos repetiveritis libertatem.

I noticed some examples of asyndetic privative adjectives in D.R. Jordan, "Defixiones from a Well near the Southwest Corner of the Athenian Agora," Hesperia 54.3 (1985) 205-255. A good example, a series of three adjectives with minimal and almost certain restoration, appears on p. 216, in a curse directed against a wrestler named Eutychian, which contains the wish that he be speechless, mindless, harmless (ἄλαλο[ς, ἄ]νους ἀκέραιος, line 16, i.e., ἄλαλος, ἄνους, ἀκέραιος).

This is curse Tablet ID 2 in the Thesaurus Defixionum database.

Labels: asyndetic privative adjectives

Plutarch, That We Ought Not to Borrow 6 (Moralia 829F; tr. Harold North Fowler):

Have you money? Do not borrow, for you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay.

ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἀπορεῖς. οὐκ ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἐκτίσεις.

Sallust, Histories, fragment 48.6 Maurenbrecher (speech of C. Licinius Macer, 73 BC; tr. John T. Ramsey):

In the meantime you, after the fashion of cattle, offer yourselves, a great throng, to be controlled and exploited by mere individuals, after having been stripped of all that your forefathers left you, except for the fact that by your ballots you now play a direct role in designating masters for yourselves, just as formerly you did protectors.

interim more pecorum vos, multitudo, singulis habendos fruendosque praebetis, exuti omnibus quae maiores reliquere, nisi quia vobismet ipsi per suffragia, ut praesides olim, nunc dominos destinatis.

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), A Clerk of Oxenford (1954; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 71:

A professor who was studying James Joyce with a class of graduate students thought they needed a little more humor, and a little more sense of the irrational. So he introduced a 'distinguished visiting scholar' to lecture to them. The man stood up very solemnly, and began:

The style of James Joyce presents many difficulties peculiar to itself. Among these surely the most complex and vilpurt is the sentence-rhythm. A slow and careful worker like Joyce, who always entwendered to promin the sound of ordinary speech, and nevertheless hennepe mousa with other significances (both turp and stal), was bound to create a mixed, and sometimes (although I say this with reservations) a perkinstic effect.

Fiendish. They say he went on like that for twenty minutes, while the professor stood at the back of the classroom and watched his students struggling to take notes.

With hennepe mousa cf. ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα (Homer, Odyssey 1.1).

Victor Ehrenberg, Society and Civilization in Greece and Rome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964 = Martin Classical Lectures, XVIII), p. 1:

If you now feel I am an old-fashioned dodo—it just can't be helped.

Augustine, Sermons 221.1 (tr. Edmund Hill, with his note):

This night, of course, is understood to belong to the day that follows it, which we call the Lord's; and obviously he had to rise again at night, because by his resurrection he also lighted up our darkness; nor was it for nothing that a short while ago³ we were singing to him, You will light my lamp, Lord; my God, you will light up my darkness (Ps 18:28).

3. Paulo ante, in the course of the vigil. But some texts read tanto ante, "so long before," referring back to the time of the psalmist. This looks very like a copyist's correction; I somehow don't think Augustine was capable of uttering the ugly and slightly ridiculous sound of tanto ante.

Nox quippe ista ad consequentem diem, quem dominicum habemus, intellegitur pertinere. Et utique nocte resurgere debuit, quia sua resurrectione et tenebras nostras illuminavit: neque enim ei frustra paulo ante cantatum est: Tu inluminabis lucernam meam domine: deus meus, inluminabis tenebras meas.

paulo ante seems to be printed in D.C. Lambot, ed., Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Sermones Selecti Duodeviginti (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950 = Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, 1), p. 77 (non vidi).

tanto ante is printed in G. Morin, ed., Sancti Aureli Augustini Tractatus, sive, Sermones inediti: ex codice Guelferbytano 4096 (Kempten: Kösel, 1917), p. 19, and Suzanne Poque, ed., Augustin d'Hippone, Sermons pour la Pâque (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1966 = Sources Chrétiennes, 116), p. 212, and Pío de Luis, ed., San Agustín, Sermones 184-272B (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1983), p. 230.

The only manuscript, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelf. 12 Weiss, clearly reads tanto ante (fol. 41v).

If Cicero was "capable of uttering the ugly and slightly ridiculous sound of tanto ante," as Hill put it, then surely Augustine was, too. See, e.g., the following Ciceronian examples.

On the Orator 1.7.26 (tr. James M. May and Jakob Wisse):

And in this conversation, Cotta used to tell me, these three former consuls discussed developments they found deplorable in such inspired fashion, that no evil subsequently fell upon our community that they had not seen hanging over it, even at that time.

quo quidem sermone multa divinitus a tribus illis consularibus Cotta deplorata et commemorata narrabat, ut nihil incidisset postea civitati mali, quod non impendere illi tanto ante vidissent.

Against Catiline 3.7.17 (tr. C. Macdonald):

He would not have decided upon the Saturnalia for us and would not have proclaimed the day of ruin and destruction for the Republic so far ahead.

non ille nobis Saturnalia constituisset neque tanto ante exitii ac fati diem rei publicae denuntiavisset.

Philippics 2.33.83 (tr. Walter C.A. Ker):

So the flaw interposed which on the Kalends of January you had already foreseen, and so long before predicted.

id igitur obvenit vitium, quod tu iam Kalendis Ianuariis futurum esse provideras et tanto ante praedixeras.

Letters to Atticus 13.46.3 (tr. E.O. Winstedt):

It is surely most out of place for Plotius the perfumer to send his own special messengers with full particulars to Balbus so long in advance, while Vestorius does not send me news even by my messengers.

quid minus probandum quam Plotium unguentarium per suos pueros omnia tanto ante Balbo, illum mi ne per meos quidem?

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Sprüche und Widersprüche (München: Albert Langen, Verlag für Litteratur und Kunst, 1909), p. 87 (tr. Jonathan McVity):

The world is a prison where solitary confinement is preferable.

Die Welt ist ein Gefängnis, in dem Einzelhaft vorzuziehen ist.

Homer, Odyssey 20.14-16 (tr. A.T. Murray):

And as a bitch stands over her tender whelps
growling, when she sees a man she does not know, and is eager to fight,
so his heart growled within him in his wrath at their evil deeds...

ὡς δὲ κύων ἀμαλῇσι περὶ σκυλάκεσσι βεβῶσα
ἄνδρʼ ἀγνοιήσασʼ ὑλάει μέμονέν τε μάχεσθαι,
ὥς ῥα τοῦ ἔνδον ὑλάκτει ἀγαιομένου κακὰ ἔργα...

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 36.7 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

If your friend had been born in Parthia, he would have begun, when a child, to bend the bow; if in Germany, he would forthwith have been brandishing his slender spear; if he had been born in the days of our forefathers, he would have learned to ride a horse and smite his enemy hand to hand. These are the occupations which the system of each race recommends to the individual,—yes, prescribes for him.

si in Parthia natus esset, arcum infans statim tenderet; si in Germania, protinus puer tenerum hastile vibraret; si avorum nostrorum temporibus fuisset, equitare et hostem comminus percutere didicisset. haec singulis disciplina gentis suae suadet atque imperat.

Sallust, The War Against Jugurtha 101.11 (tr. William W. Batstone, with his note):

Finally, the enemy was now routed everywhere. The open field was a ghastly spectacle: pursuit, flight; death, capture; horses and men suffering; and many, who could neither flee because of their wounds nor endure to be still, now struggled to rise and immediately collapsed. In the end, everything, everywhere you looked, was strewn with weapons, armour, corpses, and between them the ground drenched in blood.*

drenched in blood: ancient sources report that Jugurtha and Bocchus lost 90,000 men in the second of two battles with Marius (Orosius 5.15.8) and speak of the death of many tens of thousands of Libyans (Diodorus 36.1).

denique hostes iam undique fusi. tum spectaculum horribile in campis patentibus: sequi fugere, occidi capi; equi atque viri afflicti, ac multi vulneribus acceptis neque fugere posse neque quietem pati, niti modo ac statim concidere; postremo omnia qua visus erat constrata telis armis cadaveribus, et inter ea humus infecta sanguine.