Laudator Temporis Acti

Democritus, Fragment 244 (tr. Kathleen Freeman):

Do not say or do what is base, even when you are alone. Learn to feel shame in your own eyes much more than before others.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr. George Long):

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself.

Dennis Mangan mentions a duel in a Spanish novel that occurred "because the one called the other 'Lordship' instead of 'Excellency', and the other called the one 'Your Grace' instead of 'Lordship'."

This reminds me of a few epigrams by the ancient Latin poet Martial (who was from Bilbilis in Spain, by the way), especially 6.88:

This morning, Caecilianus, I accidentally greeted you by your real name and I didn't say 'my Lord'. You ask me how much my excessive freedom of speech cost me? It took a hundred small coins from me.

Mane salutavi vero te nomine casu
  nec dixi dominum, Caeciliane, meum.
quanti libertas constet mihi tanta requiris?
  centum quadrantes abstulit illa mihi.

Martial is referring to the sportula, or gift which patrons gave to clients who attended the morning levee.

In the life of St. Teresa of Avila (also from Spain) written by herself we read about similar important nuances in forms of address (37.10, tr. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez):

But just for the titles of address in a letter there's need for a university chair, so to speak, to lecture on how it's to be done. For sometimes you have to leave a margin on this side of the page, sometimes on the other; and someone who's not usually addressed as magnifico must be addressed as illustrious.

Karl Maurer (Vice President, Treasurer, Web Editor, Catholic Citizens of Illinois) extends an invitation to all members of the Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas:

Back in the 80's, a Chicago disk jockey set Comisky Park on fire and caused a riot by blowing up disco albums during a baseball game. It was dubbed "Disco Demolition." I would like to invite the members of this fine society to Chicago for Haugen Haas Demolition, at which thousands of vapid song texts would be blown to kingdom come. Any takers out there?

Baldilocks discusses two recent examples of political thuggery, one coming from the left side of the political spectrum and one from the right side.

The Roman satirist Juvenal is not the easiest Latin author to read. A commentary is useful, often essential. But his poems are filled with clever sayings, crotchety opinions, nuggets of wisdom, and curious parallels to modern life which have interest even for those with little Latin. I've culled a few of these for your amusement.

There was an immigration problem in ancient Rome, and Juvenal opposed the influx of foreigners. He wrote (3.62): The Syrian Orontes has long since flowed into the Tiber. (iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes.) We might paraphrase this in contemporary terms as: The Mexican Rio Grande has long since flowed into the Potomac.

Juvenal thought (10.80) that the degenerate Roman populace was concerned with two things only, bread and circuses (panem et circenses). A modern equivalent might be food stamps and reality TV shows.

The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison recalls Juvenal's question (6.347-348): Who will guard the guards themselves? (quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)

One of the best and pithiest statements of what we should pray for is Juvenal's phrase (10.356): a sound mind in a sound body (mens sana in corpore sano).

One could almost say that Juvenal predicted the modern craze for blogging in this sentence (7.51-52): An incurable itch to write takes hold of many people (tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes).

Surrounded by moral degeneracy, Juvenal exclaimed, "It's difficult not to write satire" (difficile est saturam non scribere, 1.30) and "Indignation creates my poetry" (facit indignatio versum, 1.79).

The corporate greed and rampant consumerism of our age are summed up in Juvenal's expression (3.183-184): Everything at Rome comes with a price tag. (omnia Romae cum pretio). Considering the power that lobbyists wield today, we might also paraphrase: Everything in Washington is for sale.

Juvenal even disapprovingly described a same-sex marriage, in a passage too long to quote (2.117-142). It wasn't an isolated incident, because his contemporaries Martial (12.42) and Tacitus (Annals 15.37) mentioned the same sort of thing.

So many modern parallels come to mind when reading Juvenal that we're almost forced to the conclusion that human nature hasn't changed all that much over the past couple of millennia.

In case this taste has whetted your appetite for more, I recommend the essay by Roger Kimball entitled Lessons from Juvenal, the lively translation of Juvenal's satires by Peter Green in the Penguin Classics series, and Gilbert Highet's book Juvenal the Satirist. And don't forget Dr. Johnson's imitations of two of the satires, the third (as London) and the tenth (as The Vanity of Human Wishes).

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson:

1747 (aetat. 38):

ADAMS. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. JOHNSON. Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

1780 (aetat. 71):

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows any thing of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.

P.D. James, A Taste for Death (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 55:

I have to endure it. But I don't have to talk about it.

Kobo Abe, The Ark Sakura, tr. J.W. Carpenter (New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 307:

The more you let others know how you really feel, the worse off you are.

Ernest Renan (1823-1892), Philosophical Dialogues, quoted by Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 43-44:

It is much to be feared that the last expression of democracy may be a social state with a degenerate populace having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble appetites of the vulgar.

St. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 1.27.28:

Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally.

Ille autem iuste et sancte vivit, qui rerum integer aestimator est. Ipse est autem qui ordinatam habet dilectionem, ne aut diligat quod non est diligendum, aut non diligat quod diligendum est, aut amplius diligat quod minus diligendum est, aut aeque diligat quod vel minus vel amplius diligendum est.

Goethe, Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries):

The man who overcomes himself frees himself.

Befreit der Mensch sich, der sich überwindet.

Leroy Quet posted the following query to the seqfan (fans of integer sequences) mailing list and also to sci.math:

Assume that the men in a men's-room wanting to relieve themselves are all rather modest about using the urinals.

They will, when other men are already using some of the urinals, each tend to use the urinal farthest from any other occupied urinal (or use one of these most-lonely urinals if there is a tie for loneliest urinal).

So, assuming we have a row of m urinals, which begin all unoccupied, how many ways are there for the men to line up at the urinals, assuming they WILL always follow the rule of using (one of) the most distant urinal(s)?

For simplicity, assume that each of the m men continues to occupy his urinal until all m urinals are occupied.

Now, mathematically, what we want is a permutation based on one of the 2 following rules:

1) Each urinal is chosen so that its closest occupied neighbor is at maximum distance.

2) Each urinal is chosen so that the product of (the distance to its left closest neighbor) and (the distance to its right closest neighbor) {or (the distance to its closest neighbor)^2
if the urinal is on the end of the row} is maximized.

Quet's post has generated much lively interest and discussion, and I'm glad that this fascinating topic is at last receiving from mathematicians the attention it deserves. Every man knows immediately what Quet is talking about. The behavior he describes is an unwritten law in men's rooms, rarely if ever violated.

Update: A correspondent draws my attention to an interactive game that tests your practical knowledge of this law. Thanks, Raymond.

Nietzsche, Morgenröthe (Daybreak), III, 175 (tr. R.J. Hollingdale):

Today we can see coming into existence the culture of a society in which commerce is as much the soul as personal contest was with the ancient Greeks and as war, victory and justice were for the Romans.

Man sieht jetzt mehrfach die Cultur einer Gesellschaft im Entstehen, für welche das Handeltreiben ebenso sehr die Seele ist, als der persönliche Wettkampf es für die älteren Griechen und als Krieg, Sieg und Recht es für die Römer waren.

In Nietzsche's day this culture was coming into existence. In ours it has triumphed completely.

I mentioned to Henry Verheggen that one of my ideas for a dream vacation was to visit Civil War battlefields. He replied:

I live outside a small 18th century town called Waterford where there was a skirmish near the Baptist church, still standing. I live on Loyalty Road, so-called because the Quakers of Waterford sided with the Union. On the other side of Catoctin Ridge from me is the site of the Balls Bluff, where Oliver Wendell Holmes was severely wounded. From my backyard, I look at the Blue Ridge mountains running in a straight line from horizon to horizon. To the north I can see the gap where the Potomac flows through at Harper's Ferry. Just north of the gap I see South Mountain, where General Garland was killed and is buried. (I am descended from the Garlands, who have been in VA since the mid 1600's.) On the other side of South Mountain is Antietam.

Martial 1.16:

There are good things, there are some mediocre things, there are more bad things which you read here: a book is not made in any other way, Avitus.

sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura
quae legis hic: aliter non fit, Avite, liber.

We could paraphrase this as:

There are good posts, there are some mediocre posts, there are more bad posts which you read here: a blog is not made in any other way, Avitus.

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), Summer IX:

But I am thinking of the Anabasis. Were this the sole book existing in Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order to read it.

Phyllis McGinley on St. Jerome:

God's angry man,
His crotchety scholar,
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller,
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of libel,
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949):

A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799):

Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four. (Zweifle an allem wenigstens einmal, und wäre es auch der Satz: zweimal 2 ist 4.)

Albert Camus (1913-1960), The Plague (1947):

There always comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two plus two equals four is punished with death. (Mais il vient toujours une heure dans l’histoire où celui qui ose dire que deux et deux font quatre est puni de mort.)

The June 24, 2004, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has an article by Dr. Markus Schuelke et al. entitled "Myostatin Mutation and Muscle Hypertrophy in a Child," about a German child born about four years ago with inactive myostatin genes. Myostatin inhibits muscle growth, and so its failure to function in this child resulted in big muscles and unusual strength. Since NEJM makes its articles available only to paid subscribers, here is a summary from another source.

This story makes me speculate, idly and wildly, whether a similar mutation might have been behind ancient Greek myths about Hercules, who as a baby killed two snakes with his bare hands. References in ancient literature to this episode abound. Two extended descriptions are:

• Pindar, Nemean Odes 1.35-50
  
• Plautus, Amphitruo 1107-1124

Some ancient art works depicting the incident which you can look at on the Web are:

• An Attic red-figure stamnos, now Louvre G 192, of about 480-470 B.C.
  
• The Hercules mosaic at Volubilis in Morocco
  
• A painting in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii
  

The Encyclopedia Britannica (1911 edition) attributes the following little poem to Henry Aldrich (1647-1710):

Si bene quid memini, causae sunt quinque bibendi;
Hospitis adventus, praesens sitis atque futura,
Aut vini bonitas, aut quaelibet altera causa.

If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink:
Good wine; a friend; because I'm dry;
Or lest I should be by and by;
Or any other reason why.