Laudator Temporis Acti

Seneca, Epistulae Morales 123.6:

Among the reasons for our misfortunes is the fact that we live in imitation of others. We are not formed by reason, but led astray by custom. If only a few people did a thing, we would not wish to imitate it, but when more people start to do it, we follow suit, as if the act were more honorable because more popular. An error, when it has become common, has the status of something proper with us.

inter causas malorum nostrorum est quod vivimus ad exempla, nec ratione componimur sed consuetudine abducimur. quod si pauci facerent nollemus imitari, cum plures facere coeperunt quasi honestius sit quia frequentius, sequimur; et recti apud nos locum tenet error ubi publicus factus est.

One of the strengths of Seneca as a moral teacher is that he so often includes himself in the indictment of folly and wrongdoing, by using the first person plural (we, us, our) rather than the second person (you, your). If this passage started out "Among the reasons for your misfortunes is the fact that you live in imitation of others" and continued in the same vein, it would sound too much like preaching and carping.

Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked (New York: Arbor House, 1985), p. 355:

When God enters politics he turns into his opposite. Always has. Always will.

Perhaps Burgess should have said, "When God is dragged into politics." Here are two recent examples, one from the left and the other from the right.

James C. Moore, author of Bush's Brain, said at a Texas Faith Network conference:

If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ. I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat.

Rick Blauvelt (not a teen-ager), announcing the formation of a Teen-Age Republicans chapter in Renville County, Minnesota, wrote these words, published in the Bird Island Union newspaper:

This group will be a grass-roots movement to learn about how America got started, the difference between Republicans and Democrats, why the nation is split, why God is detested by our opponents and will be a force for the Republican Party in Renville County, not to be ignored.

Examples could be multiplied on either side. It's almost enough to make one want to sign the Sojourners' God Is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat. petition. Although I don't endorse everything in the petition, I do agree with this statement:

We believe that sincere Christians and other people of faith can choose to vote for President Bush or Senator Kerry - for reasons deeply rooted in their faith.

I'm also sick of hearing thinly disguised political sermons at Mass on Sunday. Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 138-139, quotes Lincoln as saying about Phineas Densmore Gurley (minister of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church):

I like Gurley. He don't preach politics. I get enough of that through the week, and when I go to church, I like to hear the gospel.

Amen, Brother Lincoln!

Some might find these clever parodies of the Ten Commandments blasphemous, but I don't. To those who profess to be Christians, they're salutary reminders of the dangers of hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would tax himself to worship two?
God's image nowhere shalt thou see,
Save haply in the currency.
Swear not at all; since for thy curse
Thine enemy is not the worse.
At church on Sunday to attend
Will help to keep the world thy friend.
Honor thy parents; that is, all
From whom promotion may befall.
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
Adultery it is not fit
Or safe, for women, to commit.
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When 'tis so lucrative to cheat.
False witness not to bear be strict;
And cautious, ere you contradict.
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Sanctions the keenest competition.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The New Decalogue:

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.
Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.
Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.
Thy hand from Sunday work be held --
Work not at all unless compelled.
Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.
Kill not -- death liberates thy foe
From persecution's constant woe.
Kiss not thy neighbor's wife. Of course
There's no objection to divorce.
To steal were folly, for 'tis plain
In cheating there is greater pain.
Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have "heard it said."
Who stays to covet ne'er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), p. 125:

How is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find the strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?

Martin Gardner, The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1985), p. 187:

Hundreds of Dr. Matrix's notes give anagrams on biblical names and phrases. "Naomi" (Ruth 1), widowed and bereft of her sons, becomes "I moan." For "ten commandments" the anagram is "Can't mend most men." For "silver and gold" (Deut. 17:17) it is "grand old evils." For "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23) it is "High fees owed Satanist."

There are even notes on puns. "And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him" (1 Kings 13:27). Dr. Matrix professes to find a defense of cigarette smoking in "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel" (Gen. 24:64).

It's a few years old, but this essay on tattoos by Theodore Dalrymple is still worth reading. A sample:

One cannot but feel sorrow for people who think that by permanently disfiguring themselves they are somehow declaring their independence or expressing their individuality. The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man's existence.

Anthony Daniels is the real name of the pseudonymous Theodore Dalrymple, a fact useful in tracking down the scattered online essays of this extraordinary doctor and writer.

Words to live by, by Don Marquis (1878-1937), suitable for framing. Hang one on your cubicle wall at work, for the edification of passers-by.

Mark Pattison, Memoirs of an Oxford Don (1885; rpt. London: Cassell, 1988), p. 40:

Such was my simplicity that I believed that no one went to college but those who were qualified, and anxious, to study.

Ralph McInerny, Lying Three (New York: Vanguard, 1979), pp. 33-34:

He continued to read the daily office in Latin, hoping it was not prideful eccentricity. Latin provided a connective thread in his priesthood, enabling him to track back through the years to the young subdeacon who had taken on the obligation to recite the breviary every day, reading from its seasonal compilations of psalms, passages from the Old and New Testaments, and the Fathers. And the beautiful hymns. He loved it. He derived an aesthetic as well as a spiritual satisfaction from mumbling the familiar words. Latin words. In English they lost something, something not merely aesthetic and sentimental. Roger Dowling had no objections to the new vernacular liturgy. It was right for people to pray in their own language. Latin was known by only a few and had perhaps constituted a legal barrier. But, dear God, the caliber of the English now used was itself a barrier. Ah, well. He himself could continue to pray in Latin.

The Latin Mass was never as much of a barrier as people now pretend. My grandmother, who didn't go to school beyond eighth grade, had no problem following the priest's and altar boys' words in her missal, which had Latin and French on facing pages. She knew exactly what they were mumbling up there.

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, 5.4.8-12:

"Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est:
Fear not to kill the King; 'tis good he die."
But read it thus, and that's another sense:
"Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est:
Kill not the King; 'tis good to fear the worst."

In his treatise on the Athenian Constitution (55.3), Aristotle lists the questions posed to prospective archons during their official scrutiny (dokimasia):

• Who is your father?
  
• What is your father's deme?
  
• Who is your father's father?
  
• Who is your mother?
  
• Who is your mother's father?
  
• What is your mother's father's deme?
  
• Do you have an Ancestral [Patroos] Apollo and a Courtyard [Herkeios] Zeus?
  
• Where are these shrines?
  
• Do you have family tombs?
  
• Where are these tombs?
  
• Do you treat your parents well?
  
• Do you pay your taxes?
  
• Have you performed your military service?
  

I suppose none of these questions will be asked during the presidential debates this year, except perhaps the last one.

Walter A. Raleigh (1861-1922), Wishes of an Elderly Man Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914:

I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Enoch Soames, Esq., has favored us with his Guide to Dressing Like an Adult. Unfortunately, I doubt that my manservant will be able to find a muted glenurquhart plaid, a foulard, and a straw boater at my church's upcoming jumble sale.

Dennis Mangan's moving tribute to his great-grandparents put me in mind of these words from Kierkegaard's Works of Love: Some Christians Reflections in the Form of Discourses, II, 9 (tr. Howard and Edna Hong):

The work of love in remembering the dead is thus a work of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. Therefore go out and practise it; remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully.

From T.S. Eliot's poem Little Gidding:

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
  To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
  First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
  But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
  As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
  At human folly, and the laceration
  Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
  Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
  Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
  Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
  Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

Arno Karlen, Napoleon's Glands and Other Essays in Biohistory (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1984), p. 45:

The law of lazy repetition lies behind much inherited error, and it flourishes when specialists reach into other specialties. A historian, trained to question even firsthand accounts with a trial lawyer's skepticism, may worshipfully buy what any doctor says on a medical point. A doctor, trained to demand laboratory proofs, may regurgitate the silliest historical summary he finds because its author had an advanced degree. Each knows the complex rigors of his own field; yet his very respect for expertise may make him credulous in other fields. Instead of rechecking and seeking verifications, he repeats the first "authority" he reads or even off-the-cuff opinions and second-hand summaries.

In his record of Socrates' trial (Apology 39c, tr. B. Jowett), Plato records how the philosopher, condemned to death, referred to the common belief that the final words of someone about to die had special meaning:

And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.

We see a similar belief in other ancient writings, for example at Homer, Iliad 24.743-745 (tr. R. Lattimore), where Andromache in her lament for her husband Hector, killed in battle, says:

You did not die in bed, and stretch your arms to me, nor tell me some intimate word that I could remember always, all the nights and days of my weeping for you.

Andromache's lament is not all that different from Tacitus' words about his father-in-law (Agricola 45.4-5):

In addition to the grief at a lost parent, this increased the sorrow of me and his daughter, the fact that we were not able to sit by him in his sickness, to care for him in his decline, to get our fill of looking at him and embracing him. We would surely have received his last wishes and words to fix deeply in our hearts.

sed mihi filiaeque eius praeter acerbitatem parentis erepti auget maestitiam, quod adsidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu complexuque non contigit. excepissemus certe mandata vocesque, quas penitus animo figeremus.

We actually have the very last words of Socrates, recorded by Plato (Phaedo 118a, tr. B. Jowett):

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

These last words, commanding animal sacrifice, are disappointing to some. Asclepius was a Greek god of medicine and healing. In his commentary on this passage, John Burnet says, "Socrates hopes to awake cured like those who are healed by enkoimesis (incubatio) in the Asklepieion at Epidaurus." In other words, Socrates hoped that death would cure him of what Alexander Pope called "this long Disease, my Life." The temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus was the Lourdes of antiquity. Those wishing to be cured slept overnight in the sanctuary. In his very useful Database of Greek Animal Sacrifice, Robert Simms (a former classmate of mine) lists sacrifices to Asclepius recorded in ancient inscriptions. Roosters aren't among them, but in his fourth Mime Herondas has a woman say that she sacrificed a rooster to Asclepius because she couldn't afford the customary cow or sow.

But back to famous last words. The seven last words (actually seven last utterances) of Christ are these:

1. Luke 23.34: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
2. Luke 23.43: "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise."
3. John 19.26-27: "Woman, behold thy son...Behold thy mother."
4. Mark 15.34 (Matthew 27.46): "God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
5. John 19.28: "I thirst."
6. John 19.30: "It is finished."
7. Luke 23.46: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
   

Composers have often set these seven last words of Christ, in Latin, to music.

In his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius records some famous last words, of which the most notable are:

• Life of Julius Caesar 82.2: "You too, my child?" Caesar said this in Greek, as "Kai su, teknon;". The words are usually rendered in Latin as "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?").
• Life of Vespasian 23.4: "Alas, I guess I am becoming a god" (vae, puto, deus fio).

Pliny the Younger, Letters 3.16, tells the story of Caecinius Paetus, guilty of a failed conspiracy against the emperor Claudius. His wife Arria plunged a dagger into her breast and handed it to her husband with the words, "It doesn't hurt, Paetus" (Paete, non dolet).

Many ancient Greek and Roman writers remarked on the insatiable nature of greed. Other desires can be satisfied, but no matter how much the greedy man acquires, it is never enough.

Theognis 227-229 = Solon, fragment 13.71-73 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

And as for wealth, there's no end set clearly down; for such as have to-day the greatest riches among us, these have twice the eagerness that others have, and who can satisfy all?

Theognis 1157-1160 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

Riches and skill are ever the most irresistible of things to man; for thou canst not surfeit thy heart with riches, and in like manner he that is most skilled shunneth not skill, but desireth it and cannot have his fill.

Aristotle, Politics 2.4.11 (1267b, tr. H. Rackham):

The baseness of human beings is a thing insatiable, and though at the first a dole of two obols is enough, yet when this has now become an established custom, they always want more, until they get to an unlimited amount; for appetite is in its nature unlimited, and the majority of mankind live for the satisfaction of appetite.

Theocritus 16.64-65:

Farewell, whoever is such, and may his supply of money be endless, and may desire for more ever take hold of him.

Cicero, Paradoxes of the Stoics 1.6:

For the thirst of desire is never filled or satisfied, but those who have these luxuries are tortured not only by the wish to get more but also by the fear of losing what they already have.

neque enim umquam expletur nec satiatur cupiditatis sitis, neque solum ea qui habent libidine augendi cruciantur sed etiam amittendi metu.

Sallust, On the Conspiracy of Catiline 11.3:

Greed involves the pursuit of money, which no wise man has desired. As if dipped in evil poisons it weakens the body and the manly soul. It is always without limit, insatiable, and it is diminished neither by excess or deficit.

avaritia pecuniae studium habet, quam nemo sapiens concupivit: ea quasi venenis malis inbuta corpus animumque virilem effeminat, semper infinita, insatiabilis est, neque copia neque inopia minuitur.

Horace, Odes 3.16.17-18:

Worry and hunger for greater things accompany money as it grows.

crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam / maiorumque fames.

Horace, Epistles 2.2.147-148:

The more you've amassed, the more you desire.

quanto plura parasti, / tanto plura cupis.

Seneca, On Benefits 2.27.3 (tr. John Basore):

Nor does greed suffer any man to be grateful; for incontinent hope is never satisfied with what is given and, the more we get, the more we covet; and just as the greater the conflagration from which the flame springs, the more fiercer and more unbounded is its fury, so greed becomes much more active when it is employeed in accumulating great riches.

non patitur aviditas quemquam esse gratum; nunquam enim improbae spei, quod datur, satis est. et maiora cupimus, quo maiora venerunt, multoque concitatior est avaritia in magnarum opum congestu collocata, ut flammae infinito acrior vis est, quo ex maiore incendio emicuit.

Juvenal 14.139:

The love of money grows in proportion as one's income.

crescit amor nummi, quantum ipsa pecunia crevit.

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The English word dropsy comes from Greek hydrops, itself from hydor = water. The medical term edema is more commonly used nowadays for this affliction, which consists of swelling due to accumulation of excess fluid. Jesus cured a man suffering from dropsy, according to Luke 14.1-6:

And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things.

The view was prevalent in ancient medicine that sufferers from dropsy were always thirsty, and that drinking did nothing to alleviate their thirst and in fact made their condition worse. Naturally this led to a comparison between avarice (a disease of the soul) and dropsy (a disease of the body). In both cases, what the sufferer wanted (more water or more possessions) only aggravated the problem.

Aristippus, quoted by Plutarch, On Love of Wealth 524b (tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson):

If a man eats and drinks a great deal, but is never filled, he sees a physician, inquires what ails him, what is wrong with his system, and how to rid himself of the disorder; but if the owner of five couches goes looking for ten, and the owner of ten tables buys up as many again, and though he has lands and money in plenty is not satisfied but is bent on more, losing sleep and never sated by any amount, does he imagine that he does not need someone who will prescribe for him and point out the cause of his distress?

Stobaeus 3.10.45 (on Diogenes the Cynic):

He used to liken greedy men to those suffering from dropsy. For the latter, although filled with liquid, still desired to drink.

Teles, On Poverty and Wealth (p. 39 Hense):

If anyone wishes to free himself or another from want and poverty, let him not seek possessions for himself. For, as Bion says, it is as if someone wishing to stop a dropsy patient's thirst, were not to cure the dropsy but furnish the patient with fountains and rivers.

Polybius 13.2.2 (concerning Scopas the Aetolian, tr. W.R. Paton):

He was unaware that as in the case of a dropsy the thirst of the sufferer never ceases and is never allayed by the administration of liquids from without, unless we cure the morbid condition of the body itself, so it is impossible to satiate the greed for gain, unless we correct by reasoning the vice inherent in the soul.

Horace, Odes 2.2.13-16:

Who curbs a greedy soul may boast
More power than if his broad-based throne
Bridged Libya's sea, and either coast
  Were all his own.

Indulgence bids the dropsy grow;
Who fain would quench the palate's flame
Must rescue from the watery foe
  The pale weak frame.

latius regnes avidum domando
spiritum quam si Libyam remotis
Gadibus iungas et uterque Poenus
  serviat uni.

crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops
nec sitim pellit, nisi causa morbi
fugerit venis et aquosus albo
  corpore languor.

Ovid, Fasti 1.211-216 (tr. J.G. Frazer):

Riches have grown and with them the frantic lust for wealth, and they who have the most possessions still crave for more. They strive to gain that they may waste, and then to repair their wasted fortunes, and thus they feed their vices by ringing the changes on them. So he whose belly swells with dropsy, the more he drinks, the thirstier he grows.

creverunt et opes et opum furiosa cupido,
  et, cum possideant plurima, plura petunt.
quaerere ut absumant, absumpta requirere certant,
  atque ipsae vitiis sunt alimenta vices:
sic quibus intumuit suffusa venter ab unda,
  quo plus sunt potae, plus sitiuntur aquae.

Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia 11.3:

But the exiled man desires a table setting gleaming with golden bowls, silver famous for being crafted by ancient smiths, bronze that is precious in the crazed imagination of a few people, a crowd of slaves that would bankrupt even a wealthy establishment, bloated livestock forced to grow even fatter, and precious stones from all over the world. Even if all these things are heaped up, they will never fill a soul incapable of being filled, no more than any amount of liquid will be enough to satisfy him whose desire arises not from any lack but from the heat of his blazing innards. For that is not thirst but rather a disease.

sed desiderat aureis fulgentem vasis supellectilem et antiquis nominibus artificum argentum nobile, aes paucorum insania pretiosum et servorum turbam quae quamvis magnam domum angustet, iumentorum corpora differta et coacta pinguescere et nationum omnium lapides: ista congerantur licet, numquam explebunt inexplebilem animum, non magis quam ullus sufficiet umor ad satiandum eum cuius desiderium non ex inopia sed ex aestu ardentium viscerum oritur; non enim sitis illa sed morbus est.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1949; rpt. New York: Dover, 1983), p. 78:

It went against the grain with me to do a thing in secret that I would not do in public.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861), chapter 27:

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Throughout high school, at any rate.

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952; rpt. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1986), p. 259:

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. In the personages of other times and alien cultures we recognize our all too human selves and yet are aware, as we do so, that the frame of reference within which we do our living has changed, since their day, out of all recognition, that propositions which seemed axiomatic then are now untenable and that what we regard as the most self-evident postulates could not, at an earlier period, find entrance into even the most boldly speculative mind.

In Incorrectness Is Dangerous, John Ray cites some examples of liberal intolerance of conservative bumper stickers. If this story is accurate, it's a shocking example of conservative intolerance of liberal bumper stickers:

Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high. Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"

Note: Apparently Gaddis' name is really Geddes.

Some wag composed this doggerel, which Latin students are fond of chanting:

Latin is a language,
Dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans,
Now it's killing me.

Marc Antoine Muret (1526-1585), aka Muretus, thought differently. In his Orationes, vol. 2, no. 22, included in A. Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta (saec. xv-xx) (Rome, 1951), he wrote:

Therefore those languages that depend on the whim of the ignorant multitude die each day, and are born each day. But those languages that the usage of learned men has rescued from the slavery of the crowd not only are alive, but have in a certain way achieved immortality and immutability.

Illae igitur linguae quotidie moriuntur, quotidie nascuntur, quae pendent ex libidine imperitae multitudinis: quas autem ex populi servitute eruditorum usus vindicavit, illae non vivunt tantum, sed immortalitatem quodammodo et immutabilitatem adeptae sunt.

St. Augustine, On the Trinity (De Trinitate) 1.5.8:

We are caught up by the love of seeking out the truth.

rapimur amore indagandae veritatis.

Henri Troyat, Chekhov, tr. M.H. Heim (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986), p. 288:

When we're young, we all chirp fervently like sparrows on a dung-heap, but we're old by the time we reach forty, and we start thinking of death.

Beowulf 581-588, tr. Seamus Heaney:

Now I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth, that bears comparison. I don't boast when I say that neither you nor Breca were ever much celebrated for swordsmanship or for facing danger on the field of battle.

David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Scribner, 1996), mentions some techniques of cryptography used by the ancient Greeks and Romans in chapter 2 (The First 3,000 Years), especially pp. 80-84 and notes on p. 1003. We'll look at some primary sources for three of these techniques:

• Caesar's cipher
  
• The Spartan skytale
  
• Polybius' square
  

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Suetonius describes Julius Caesar's simple cipher in his Life of Julius Caesar 56 (tr. J. C. Rolfe):

There are also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the latter, if he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others.

extant et ad Ciceronem, item ad familiares domesticis de rebus, in quibus, si qua occultius perferenda erant, per notas scripsit, id est sic structo litterarum ordine, ut nullum verbum effici posset: quae si qui investigare et persequi velit, quartam elementorum litteram, id est D pro A et perinde reliquas commutet.

Here's how Caesar's cipher works with our modern alphabet:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC

If you want to encrypt a message, you substitute the letters in the bottom row for the ones in the top row (D for A, E for B, etc.), and when you want to decrypt a message, you substitute the letters in the top row for those in the bottom row (A for D, B for E, etc.). MIKE encoded would be PLNH.

Aulus Gellius (17.9.1-5) gives some further details:

There are books of epistles of Gaius Caesar to Gaius Oppius and Balbus Cornelius, who administered Caesar's affairs in his absence. In some passages in these epistles are found single letters of the alphabet not joined together into syllables, letters which you might suppose were arranged randomly; for no words can be formed from these letters. However there was a secret agreement among these men concerning a change in the placement of letters of the alphabet, in such a way that one letter took the place and name of another in what was written, but in reading each position and meaning was restored; which letter was written for which was agreed upon ahead of time among those who devised this cipher. There is even a rather ingeniously written treatise by the grammarian Probus concerning the secret meaning of letters in the composition of Caesar's epistles.

libri sunt epistularum C. Caesaris ad C. Oppium et Balbum Cornelium, qui res eius absentis curabant. in his epistulis quibusdam in locis inveniuntur litterae singulariae sine coagmentis syllabarum, quas tu putes positas incondite; nam verba ex his litteris confici nulla possunt. erat autem conventum inter eos clandestinum de commutando situ litterarum, ut in scripto quidem alia aliae locum et nomen teneret, sed in legendo locus cuique suus et potestas restitueretur; quaenam vero littera pro qua scriberetur, ante is, sicuti dixi, conplacebat, qui hanc scribendi latebram parabant. est adeo Probi grammatici commentarius satis curiose factus de occulta litterarum significatione in epistularum C. Caesaris scriptura.

Caesar's successor Augustus used a similar cipher, according to Suetonius, Life of Augustus 88 (tr. J.C. Rolfe):

Whenever he wrote in cipher, he wrote B for A, C for B, and the rest of the letters on the same principle, using AA for X.

quotiens autem per notas scribit, B pro A, C pro B ac deinceps eadem ratione sequentis litteras ponit; pro X autem duplex A.

---

The Spartans had a clever method of secret writing known as a skytale. Plutarch gives a clear description of it in his Life of Lysander 19.4-7 (tr. John Dryden):

When the Ephors send an admiral or general on his way, they take two round pieces of wood, both exactly of a length and thickness, and cut even to one another; they keep one themselves, and the other they give to the person they send forth; and these pieces of wood they call Scytales. When, therefore, they have occasion to communicate any secret or important matter, making a scroll of parchment long and narrow like a leathern thong, they roll it about their own staff of wood, leaving no space void between, but covering the surface of the staff with the scroll all over. When they have done this, they write what they please on the scroll, as it is wrapped about the staff; and when they have written, they take off the scroll, and send it to the general without the wood. He, when he has received it, can read nothing of the writing, because the words and letters are not connected, but all broken up; but taking his own staff, he winds the slip of the scroll about it, so that this folding, restoring all the parts into the same order that they were in before, and putting what comes first into connection with what follows, brings the whole consecutive contents to view round the outside.

Aulus Gellius also describes the skytale at 17.9.6-15, but he adds nothing new, so there is no point in translating or transcribing his description. He uses the Latin word surculus (shoot, branch) for the Greek skytale. Thucydides (1.131.1, talking about the Spartan Pausanias, who was a contemporary of Themistocles) mentions the skytale in passing, so we know that it was in use as early as the 480s B.C.

---

Polybius' square or checkerboard is actually a cryptographic modification of a semaphore signalling system. Since Polybius' description is somewhat convoluted, it's advantageous to look at the adaptation before the original. In the following square we use our modern alphabet and combine I and J. In a similar scheme, we could add the 10 digits and use a 6 by 6 square. Polybius had one slot left over, since the Greek alphabet has only 24 letters.



If we want to encrypt a word, we select its coordinates in the square. For example, MIKE becomes 32 24 25 15. One advantage of this cipher is that it uses only 5 different symbols (in pairs) to encode 25 characters. Prisoners have sometimes used the Polybius square to communicate by knocking on walls.

Now Polybius' description of his semaphore system of signalling by fire (10.45.6-10.47.1, tr. W.R. Paton) might be easier to understand:

The most recent method, devised by Cleoxenus and Democleitus and perfected by myself, is quite definite and capable of dispatching with accuracy every kind of urgent messages, but in practice it requires care and exact attention. It is as follows: We take the alphabet and divide it into five parts, each consisting of five letters. There is one letter less in the last division, but this makes no practical difference. Each of the two parties who are about signal to each other must now get ready five tablets and write one division of the alphabet on each tablet, and then come to an agreement that the man who is going to signal is in the first place to raise two torches and wait until the other replies by doing the same. This is for the purpose of conveying to each other that they are both at attention. These torches having been lowered the dispatcher of the message will now raise the first set of torches on the left side indicating which tablet is to be consulted, i.e. one torch if it is the first, two if it is the second, and so on. Next he will raise the second set on the right on the same principle to indicate what letter of the tablet the receiver should write down.

Upon their separating after coming to this understanding each of them must first have on the spot a telescope with two tubes, so that with the one he can observe the space on the right of the man who is going to signal back and with the other that on the left. The tablets must be set straight up in order next the telescope, and there must be a screen before both spaces, as well the right as the left, ten feet in length and of the height of a man so that by this means the torches may be seen distinctly when raised and disappear when lowered. When all has been thus got ready on both sides, if the signaller wants to convey, for instance, that about a hundred of the soldiers have deserted to the enemy, he must first of all choose words which will convey what he means in the smallest number of letters, e.g. instead of the above "Cretans a hundred deserted us," for thus the letters are less than one half in number, but the same sense is conveyed. Having jotted this down on a writing-tablet he will communicate it by the torches as follows: The first letter is kappa. This being in the second division is on tablet number two, and, therefore, he must raise two torches on the left, so that the receiver may know that he had to consult the second tablet. He will now raise five torches on the right, to indicate that it is kappa, this being the fifth letter in the second division, and the receiver of the signal will note this down on his writing tablet. The dispatcher will then raise four torches on the left as rho belongs to the fourth division, and then two on the right, rho being the second letter in this division. The receiver writes down rho and so forth. This device enables any news to be definitely conveyed.

Many torches, of course, are required, as the signal for each letter is a double one.

---

These techniques of secret writing are of course rudimentary compared to the sophisticated methods in use today, but they nonetheless cast an interesting light on the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Walter Pater, Essay on Style:

Different classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very various demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not only scholars, but all disinterested lovers of books, will always look to it, as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world.

Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Products of the Perfected Civilization. Selected Writings, tr. W.S. Merwin (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 231:

M. de Lassay, a very gentle man but with a great knowledge of society, said that one must swallow a toad every morning, when one had to go out into the world, so as not to find anything more disgusting during the day.

Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. & tr. Daniel Breazeale (1979; rpt. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1991), p. 127:

Greek antiquity provides the classical set of examples for the interpretation of our entire culture and its development. It is a means for understanding ourselves, a means for regulating our age -- and thereby a means for overcoming it.

Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849)

Chapter 10:

She must give up taking French lessons. The language, he observed, was a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most of the works it boasted were bad and frivolous, highly injurious in their tendency to weak female minds.

Chapter 31:

You read French. Your mind is poisoned with French novels. You have imbibed French principles.

Isocrates, To Demonicus 18:

If you are a lover of learning [philomathes], you will be very learned [polymathes].

The quotation in Greek is inscribed over the portal to Shrewsbury School.

From my own experience, I know that the protasis of Isocrates' sentence can be true and the apodosis false.

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), chapter 5:

But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with "Master Pinch, Grove House Academy," inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged within -- what happiness did they suggest!

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), Spring XVII:

It is a joy to go through booksellers' catalogues, ticking here and there a possible purchase.

The Latin adjective plagosus comes from the noun plaga (blow, strike) and the suffix -osus (full of, abounding in). Plagosus Orbilius ("Whacker" or "Flogger" Orbilius) was Horace's affectionate nickname for his old schoolmaster (Epistles 2.1.70-71).

At a recent family gathering, a relative who teaches in a junior high school mentioned a popular modern technique of discipline. School authorities telephone the parents of the offending students at work and tell them to come pick up their children from school immediately. I said that, if I were a student, I would prefer the instant application of some mild form of corporal punishment by the teacher or principal, without parental involvement.

I didn't have the good fortune to attend parochial school, but a friend who did used to tell how students in Latin class had their knuckles rapped with a ruler if they couldn't recite their conjugations and declensions properly. It was more perfunctory, ceremonial, and embarrassing than painful, he said. But to this day he can rattle off his conjugations and declensions perfectly.

This is a tried and true method of Latin instruction. In Boswell's Life of Johnson, we read:

He began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, usher, or under-master of Lichfield school, 'a man (said he) very skilful in his little way.' With him he continued two years, and then rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the headmaster, who, according to his account, 'was very severe, and wrong-headedly severe. He used (said he) to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing, as for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question; and if he did not answer it, he would beat him, without considering whether he had an opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For instance, he would call up a boy and ask him Latin for a candlestick, which the boy could not expect to be asked. Now, Sir, if a boy could answer every question, there would be no need of a master to teach him.'

...

Indeed Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. 'I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.'

Elsewhere (1775, aetat. 66) Boswell quotes Dr. Johnson as saying:

There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

Nowadays, of course, Johnson's teacher Mr. Hunter would be sued in a New York minute. What's more, in some jurisdictions he might even be guilty of a criminal offense (cf. Minnesota Statute 121A.58).

Throughout much of human history, education and punishment went hand in hand. Robert Baker Girdlestone, Synonyms of the Old Testament (1897; rpt. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), pp. 224-225, lists a dozen Hebrew words related to teaching. Here are two of them (with Hebrew characters omitted):

• In Prov. 31.1, and Ezek. 23.48, Yasar, 'to chasten' is used, a word which answers to the Greek paideuo, by which it is usually rendered, the instruction often involving chastisement.
  
• Lamad (Ass[yrian] lamadu), whence the name Talmud is derived, is frequently used; it signifies to chastise, and hence to teach, and is rendered [in Greek] didasko and manthano.

From the verb yasar is derived the noun musar, which also has the meanings chastisement or correction, as at Proverbs 3.11-12:

My son, despise not the chastening [musar] of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

Rapped knuckles were not uncommon in Roman primary schools. When Juvenal meant to say, "I'm no dummy, I went to school, I'm educated," he wrote (1.15):

Well then, I too stretched out my hand beneath the cane.

et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus.

Likewise Ovid (Amores 1.13.17) addresses Dawn as follows:

You cheat boys of their sleep and hand them over to teachers, so that their tender hands undergo cruel whips.

tu pueros somno fraudas tradisque magistris,
  ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.

A teacher wouldn't slap or strike a student with the bare hand, because that might hurt the teacher just as much as the student. Some preferred instruments of punishment in ancient times included:

• Latin ferula, Greek narthex, English cane
  
• Latin scutica or lorum, Greek himas, English strap or lash
  
• Latin flagellum, Greek mastix, English whip made of knotted rope
  

although the flagellum was too painful, a punishment of criminals rather than schoolboys. Horace mentions all three together (Satires, 1.3.119-121).

Saint Augustine seems especially to have felt the pain and injustice of corporal punishment at school. He speaks about it in heartfelt terms in several passages. In his Confessions (1.9.14) he remembered his own schooldays:

If I was lazy at learning, I was beaten. For this custom was approved by our ancestors, and many who lived before us had mapped out these sorrowful paths, over which we were compelled to pass, with additional pain and sorrow to the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we found men praying to you and we learned from them, perceiving (insofar as we were able) that you were someone great, and that even if you couldn't be detected by our senses you could still hear and help us. For as a child I began to pray to you, my help and my refuge, and in calling upon you I broke my tongue's bands, and although I was small I asked you, with emotion that wasn't small, that I not be beaten at school. And when you didn't grant my prayer, which wasn't to be attributed to my folly, my elders laughed at my bruises (a great and serious affliction to me then) and even my parents followed suit, although they wished no harm to befall me.

si segnis in discendo essem, vapulabam. laudabatur enim hoc a maioribus, et multi ante nos vitam istam agentes praestruxerant aerumnosas vias, per quas transire cogebamur multiplicato labore et dolore filiis Adam. invenimus autem, Domine, homines rogantes te et didicimus ab eis, sentientes te, ut poteramus, esse magnum aliquem, qui posses etiam non apparens sensibus nostris exaudire nos et subvenire nobis. nam puer coepi rogare te, auxilium et refugium meum, et in tuam invocationem rumpebam nodos linguae meae et rogabam te parvus non parvo affectu, ne in schola vapularem. et cum me non exaudiebas, quod non erat ad insipientiam mihi, ridebantur a maioribus hominibus usque ab ipsis parentibus, qui mihi accidere mali nihil volebant, plagae meae, magnum tunc et grave malum meum.

In his sermon On Christian Discipline (De Disciplina Christiana 11.12) he asked and answered:

Why were you beaten? Why did you endure such suffering in your childhood? To learn. To learn what? Reading and writing. Why? So that money could be obtained, or so that a position could be gained, and high rank be held.

quare vapulasti? quare tanta mala in pueritia pertulisti? ut disceres. quid disceres? litteras. quare? ut haberetur pecunia aut ut compararetur honor, et teneatur sublimitas dignitatis.

Twice in De Civitate Dei (City of God, tr. Marcus Dodds) Augustine mentions corporal punishment in schools.

21.14:

For ignorance is itself no slight punishment, or want of culture, which it is with justice thought so necessary to escape, that boys are compelled, under pain of severe punishment, to learn trades or letters; and the learning to which they are driven by punishment is itself so much of a punishment to them, that they sometimes prefer the pain that drives them to the pain to which they are driven by it. And who would not shrink from the alternative, and elect to die, if it were proposed to him either to suffer death or to be again an infant?

non enim parva poena est ipsa insipientia vel imperitia, quae usque adeo fugienda merito iudicatur, ut per poenas doloribus plenas pueri cogantur quaeque artificia vel litteras discere; ipsumque discere, ad quod poenis adiguntur, tam poenale est eis, ut nonnumquam ipsas poenas, per quas compelluntur discere, malint ferre quam discere. quis autem non exhorreat et mori eligat, si ei proponatur aut mors perpetienda aut rursus infantia?

22.22.2:

What mean pedagogues, masters, the birch, the strap, the cane, the schooling which Scripture says must be given a child, "beating him on the sides lest he wax stubborn" [Sirach 30:12], and it be hardly possible or not possible at all to subdue him? Why all these punishments, save to overcome ignorance and bridle evil desires -- these evils with which we come into the world? For why is it that we remember with difficulty, and without difficulty forget? learn with difficulty, and without difficulty remain ignorant? are diligent with difficulty, and without difficulty are indolent? Does not this show what vitiated nature inclines and tends to by its own weight, and what succor it needs if it is to be delivered? Inactivity, sloth, laziness, negligence, are vices which shun labor, since labor, though useful, is itself a punishment.

quid paedagogi, quid magistri, quid ferulae, quid lora, quid virgae, quid disciplina illa, qua Scriptura sancta dicit dilecti filii latera esse tundenda, ne crescat indomitus domarique iam durus aut vix possit aut fortasse nec possit? quid agitur his poenis omnibus, nisi ut debelletur imperitia et prava cupiditas infrenetur, cum quibus malis in hoc saeculum venimus? quid est enim, quod cum labore meminimus, sine labore obliviscimur; cum labore discimus, sine labore nescimus; cum labore strenui, sine labore inertes sumus? nonne hinc apparet, in quid velut pondere suo proclivis et prona sit vitiosa natura et quanta ope, ut hinc liberetur, indigeat? desidia, segnitia, pigritia, neglegentia, vitia sunt utique quibus labor fugitur, cum labor ipse, etiam qui est utilis, poena sit.

Although corporal punishment was a sad fact of life for most Roman schoolboys, a few authorities raised their voices in opposition to the practice. Prominent among these was Quintilian (1.3.14-17, tr. H. E. Butler):

I disapprove of flogging, although it is the regular custom and meets with the acquiescence of Chrysippus, because in the first place it is a disgraceful form of punishment and fit only for slaves, and is in any case an insult, as you will realise if you imagine its infliction at a later age. Secondly if a boy is so insensible to instruction that reproof is useless, he will, like the worst type of slave, merely become hardened to blows. Finally there will be absolutely no need of such punishment if the master is a thorough disciplinarian. As it is, we try to make amends for the negligence of the boy's paedagogus, not by forcing him to do what is right, but by punishing him for not doing what is right. And though you may compel a child with blows, what are you to do with him when he is a young man no longer amenable to such threats and confronted with tasks of far greater difficulty? Moreover when children are beaten, pain or fear frequently have results of which it is not pleasant to speak and which are likely subsequently to be a source of shame, a shame which unnerves and depresses the mind and leads the child to shun and loathe the light. Further if inadequate care is taken in the choices of respectable governors and instructors, I blush to mention the shameful abuse which scoundrels sometimes make of their right to administer corporal punishment or the opportunity not infrequently offered to others by the fear thus caused in the victims. I will not linger on this subject; it is more than enough if I have made my meaning clear. I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimised, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.

caedi vero discentis, quamlibet id receptum sit et Chrysippus non improbet, minime velim, primum quia deforme atque servile est et certe (quod convenit si aetatem mutes) iniuria: deinde quod, si cui tam est mens inliberalis ut obiurgatione non corrigatur, is etiam ad plagas ut pessima quaeque mancipia durabitur: postremo quod ne opus erit quidem hac castigatione si adsiduus studiorum exactor adstiterit. nunc fere neglegentia paedagogorum sic emendari videtur ut pueri non facere quae recta sunt cogantur, sed cur non fecerint puniantur. denique cum parvolum verberibus coegeris, quid iuveni facias, cui nec adhiberi potest hic metus et maiora discenda sunt? adde quod multa vapulantibus dictu deformia et mox verecundiae futura saepe dolore vel metu acciderunt, qui pudor frangit animum et abicit atque ipsius lucis fugam et taedium dictat. iam si minor in eligendis custodum et praeceptorum moribus fuit cura, pudet dicere in quae probra nefandi homines isto caedendi iure abutantur, quam det aliis quoque nonnumquam occasionem hic miserorum metus. non morabor in parte hac: nimium est quod intellegitur. quare hoc dixisse satis est: in aetatem infirmam et iniuriae obnoxiam nemini debet nimium licere.

Robert Fulghum quotes a woman at a Greek wedding who said to him:

If you do not join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you dance, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance? And I will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. And if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what's the sin in that? We all begin there. Come on.

I don't buy the opening premise of that argument, and I prefer Kierkegaard (preface to Philosophical Fragments):

Let no one invite me, for I do not dance.

In an email the Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, asked about the origin of the proverb "A long beard and a shabby cloak do not a philosopher make." I can't find an English source. The closest I can come is the Latin "Barba non facit philosophum, neque vile gerere pallium" (A beard doesn't make a philosopher, nor does wearing a shabby cloak), cited by Henerik Kocher, who gives the source as Bento Pereira, Florilégio dos modos de falar e adágios da língua portuguesa (Lisboa: Paulo Craesbeeck & Cia, 1655), p. 115. All of Epictetus 4.8 ("To those who hastily assume the guise of philosophers") is relevant, especially 4.8.15 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

But even those who are styled philosophers pursue their calling with means which are sometimes good and sometimes bad. For example, when they have taken a rough cloak and let their beards grow, they say, "I am a philosopher."

Also relevant is Aulus Gellius 9.2.1-4:

While we were present a certain fellow, dressed in a cloak with long hair and a beard extending all the way to his waist, approached Herodes Atticus, who was a gentlemen of consular rank, well-known for his pleasing character and eloquence in Greek. The fellow asked him for money for food. Then Herodes asked him what his profession was. With a quarrelsome look and tone of voice the fellow said that he was a philosopher and added that he was surprised why Herodes thought the question needed to be asked, since he could see with his own eyes. Herodes said, 'I see a beard and a cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher.'

ad Herodem Atticum, consularem virum ingenioque amoeno et Graeca facundia celebrem, adiit nobis praesentibus palliatus quispiam et crinitus barbaque prope ad pubem usque porrecta ac petit aes sibi dari eis artous. tum Herodes interrogat, quisnam esset. atque ille vultu sonituque vocis obiurgatorio philosophum sese esse dicit et mirari quoque addit, cur quaerendum putasset, quod videret. 'video' inquit Herodes 'barbam et pallium, philosophum nondum video.'

E.K. Rand, in Founders of the Middle Ages (1928; rpt. New York: Dover Publications, 1957), posed another puzzle about philosophers and beards. On page 115 he quoted St. Jerome:

If there is any holiness in a beard, nobody is more holy than a goat. (si ulla in barba sanctitas est, nullus sanctior est hirco.)

But in a footnote (21) on page 306 he confessed:

After having had this bon mot of St. Jerome's in my notes for years, I cannot now find it in his writings (nor, what is more, can President A.S. Pease).

Rand went on to cite:

• St. Jerome, Letters 22.28.1: But lest I seem to talk about women only, also avoid those men whom you see carrying chains, who have effeminate hair contrary to the apostle [1 Cor. 11:14], the beard of goats, a black cloak, and bare feet to withstand the cold. (sed ne tantum videar disputare de feminis, viros quoque fuge, quos videris catenatos, quibus feminei contra apostolum crines, hircorum barba, nigrum pallium, et nudi in patientiam frigoris pedes.)
  
• Erasmus, Praise of Folly 11: A beard, the symbol of philosophy, even though it's a symbol shared with goats (barba, insigne sapientiae, etiamsi cum hircis commune).

Google doesn't disclose the source of the mystery quotation from St. Jerome. Academicians at universities have access to expensive tools (e.g. the digital Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, CDs containing all of Patrologia Latina, etc.) unavailable to us poor independent scholars. Maybe one of them could solve Rand's mystery with a few clicks of the mouse.

Since writing about Barbarians and Beards, I've discovered that the article on beards by Alexander Allen in William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), pp. 196‑198, is available online. It contains many references I missed.

Over at Hypotyposeis you can read about another scholarly conundrum, the source of the so-called sausage factoid, that is, the claim that:

Both the early Church and the emperor Constantine banned sausages because they were employed -- in both obvious and more creative ways -- in the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.

Stephen C. Carlson tracked the factoid back to Charles Panati, Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Perennial Library, 1989), p. 396, but no further, since Panati eschewed documentation.

None of these little puzzles has even the slightest practical value. For me, that is an essential part of their attraction.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

Carlo Carretto, Letters From the Desert (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1972), pp. 59-60:

If God were attainable with the intelligence, how unjust it would be! It would have made easy the task of the wise and the great of this world, and would have made knowledge of God all but impossible for the little ones, the poor, and the ignorant. But God himself has found the way to be equally accessible to everybody. His revelation comes in love, in that faculty which we can all share.

I've been trying to find this quotation for several weeks, since one Sunday at Mass when I sat near a man who appeared mentally retarded. When the time came for the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, he said it loudly, fervently, and enthusiastically, the few scattered words of it that he could remember. The Psalmist (141:2) said, "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense." I don't know how God viewed it, but to me that man's prayer had the savor of finest incense.

Duncan Williams, Trousered Apes (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1972), p. 81:

Contemporary ideas need to be weighed not against others of the same period but against those of the past, and it is here that the average, modern student is defenceless. His interests and leisure reading are confined to an alarming extent to contemporary writers and thinkers who, despite their apparent individualism, are all really working in the same direction. It is ironic that the current demand at universities is for more relevance (that is to say, contemporaneity) in the curriculum. If acceded to, this will result in a still larger degree of temporal provincialism and an even more profound ignorance of the history of ideas than now prevails.

Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), has this to say about the origin of the word barbarian (p. 53):

Barba means "beard" in Latin, and when the Romans called hirsute foreigners barbarians they were strictly calling them "bearded men," though the word shortly came to mean, rightly or wrongly, "rude, uncivilized people." A barber was, of course, one who cut beards or hair. The barber pole outside barber shops today has its origins in the ancient barber's duties as a surgeon and dentist as well as a hair cutter. It was first the symbol of these professions -- a blood-smeared white rag. However, barbarian may have Greek origins.

This is misleading and incorrect. The derivation of barbarian from Latin barba is totally bogus, a folk etymology. The word barbarian is indubitably (not just possibly) Greek in origin, preceding even Homer (cf. barbarophonos at Iliad 2.867). Anyone who didn't speak Greek sounded like they were saying bar-bar, and by definition any non-Greek was a barbarian. The protest by the Stranger in Plato, Statesman 262c-d (tr. Benjamin Jowett), against this classification only shows how widespread it was:

The error was just as if some one who wanted to divide the human race, were to divide them after the fashion which prevails in this part of the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as one species, and all the other species of mankind, which are innumerable, they include under the single name of 'barbarians,' and because they have one name they are supposed to be of one species also.

The Romans adopted the word barbarus directly from Greek barbaros, and applied it by extension to anyone who was not a Greek or Roman, although every Greek worth his salt probably felt in his heart of hearts that the Romans were barbarians, too, just as today supposedly cultivated Europeans look down their noses at upstart, boorish Americans.

The Romans wore beards during certain historical periods and were clean-shaven in others. In general, they wore beards before the second century B.C. and after the 2nd century A.D. Between those two periods, a smooth chin was the rule, although younger, foppish men sometimes went bearded, and poor men often couldn't afford the two bits for a shave and a haircut.

Varro, On Agriculture 2.11, writes:

To be sure, it is said that barbers first came to Italy from Sicily in the 453rd year after the founding of Rome, as a public inscription at Ardea testifies, and that Publius Titinius Mena imported them. The statues of men of old prove that once upon a time there were no barbers, because those statues usually have long hair and beards.

omnino tonsores in Italiam primum venisse ex Sicilia dicuntur p. R. c. a. CCCCLIII, ut scriptum in publico Ardeae in litteris exstat, eosque adduxisse Publium Titinium Menam. olim tonsores non fuisse adsignificant antiquorum statuae, quod pleraeque habent capillum et barbam magnam.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.59.211, gives much the same information:

The next agreement between the two races [Greek and Roman] was in the area of barbers, but it came later to the Romans. They came to Italy from Sicily in the 454th year after the City's foundation, brought by Publius Titinius Mena, as Varro says. Before that the Romans were unshaven. Africanus the Younger first started the custom of being shaved daily. The deified Augustus always used razors.

sequens gentium consensus in tonsoribus fuit, sed Romanis tardior. in Italiam ex Sicilia venere post Romam conditam anno CCCCLIIII adducente P. Titinio Mena, ut auctor est Varro; antea intonsi fuere. primus omnium radi cotidie instituit Africanus sequens; divus Augustus cultris semper usus est.

The prolix antiquarian Aulus Gellius gives more background in that chapter of his Attic Nights (3.4) which deals with the fact "that it was the custom for Publius Africanus and other patricians of his day to shave their chin and cheeks before reaching old age:"

In the books which we read concerning the life of Publius Scipio Africanus (adopted son of Paulus), we note that, after he had celebrated a triumph over the Carthaginians and had been censor, when he was charged before the people by the tribune Claudius Asellus (whom Scipio had removed from the ranks of knights when he was censor), he didn't stop shaving his beard or wearing white, and he didn't assume the normal costume of defendants even though he was charged with a crime. But since at that time it is a fact that Scipio the Younger was less than forty years old, we were surprised that the story of the shaved beard had been recorded thus. However we learn that other patricians of that period, of the same age, also were accustomed to shave their beards, and for that reason we see many statues of the ancients fashioned thus, not only of old men but middle-aged ones as well.

Quod P. Africano et aliis tunc viris nobilibus ante aetatem senectam barbam et genas radere mos patrius fuit. In libris, quos de vita P. Scipionis Africani compositos legimus, scriptum esse animadvertimus P. Scipioni, Pauli filio, postquam de Poenis triumphaverat censorque fuerat, diem dictum esse ad populum a Claudio Asello tribuno plebis, cui equum in censura ademerat, eumque, cum esset reus, neque barbam desisse radi neque non candida veste uti neque fuisse cultu solito reorum. Sed cum in eo tempore Scipionem minorem quadraginta annorum fuisse constaret, quod de barba rasa ita scriptum esset, mirabamur. Comperimus autem ceteros quoque in isdem temporibus nobiles viros barbam in eiusmodi aetate rasitavisse, idcircoque plerasque imagines veterum, non admodum senum, sed in medio aetatis, ita factas videmus.

The beardless fashion lasted from the time of Scipio Africanus Minor (2nd century B.C.) to the reign of the emperor Hadrian (2nd century A.D.). During this era, the day when a young Roman first shaved his beard was a day of celebration, but some carried the celebration to extreme lengths. Dio Cassius
(48.34.3, tr. E. Cary) reports:

When Caesar now for the first time shaved off his beard, he held a magnificent entertainment himself besides granting all the other citizens a festival at public expense.

Dio Cassius tells a similar story about Nero (61.19, tr. E. Cary):

Later he instituted a new kind of festival called Juvenalia, or Games of Youth. It was celebrated in honour of his beard, which he now shaved for the first time; the hairs he placed in a small golden globe and offered to Jupiter Capitolinus.

In the Life of Hadrian (26.1) attributed to Aelius Spartianus in the Historia Augusta, we learn why beards became popular once again:

He was tall in stature and elegant in appearance. His hair was curled with a comb. He grew a full beard to cover natural blemishes on his face, and he had a rugged build.

statura fuit procerus, forma comptus, flexo ad pectinem capillo, promissa barba, ut vulnera, quae in facie naturalia erant, tegeret, habitudine robusta.

Philosophers were the exception to this ebb and flow of fashion. They always sported beards. It was almost part of their uniform. Pliny the Younger in his Letters (1.10.6) describes the philosopher Euphrates thus:

Add his stature, handsome face, long hair, full white beard -- although these things are accidental and empty, yet they win much reverence for him.

ad hoc proceritas corporis, decora facies, demissus capillus, ingens et cana barba; quae licet fortuita et inania putentur, illi tamen plurimum venerationis acquirunt.

The philosopher Epictetus was inordinately fond of his beard, if we can judge from the following exchange (1.2.29, tr. W.A. Oldfather):

"Come, then, Epictetus, shave off your beard." If I am a philosopher, I answer, "I will not shave it off." "But I will take off your neck." If that will do you any good, take it off.

Lucian in The Fisherman 31 (tr. Lionel Casson) points out the shallowness of this fad among philosophers for beards:

On the other hand, I noticed many who were not philosophers for the love of it but simply hungered for the public acclaim they could get out of it. In what was obvious and common and easy for anyone to ape -- I mean length of beard, impressiveness of gait, and cut of clothes -- they were a very good facsimile of men of virtue.

What these passages amply demonstrate is that the Romans did not regard a beard as a characteristic of barbarians. They recognized that growing a beard was a matter of taste, in favor during certain periods, out of favor at other times. At all times there were some who, for one reason or another, bucked the trend.

If you still suspect that there must be an etymological connection between barbarians and beards, I suggest you consult Calvert Watkins' Indo-European Roots, published as an appendix to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, under the roots baba and bhardha.

I've noticed that some of my neighbors are keeping their presidential campaign signs inside the front window, rather than out on the lawn, probably because they don't want them removed. I've even heard of bumper stickers being scraped off by those who disagree with the point of view they express.

Human nature being what it is, it shouldn't surprise us that these low, sneaking tactics are thousands of years old. A campaign poster in ancient Pompeii (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 4.3775, tr. Jo-Ann Shelton) said:

His neighbors urge you to elect Lucius Statius Receptus duovir with judicial power. He deserves the position. Aemilius Celer, his neighbor, wrote this. If you spitefully deface this, may you become very ill.

Although I myself never put up lawn signs or attach stickers to my car's bumper, I heartily approve of Aemilius Celer's curse.

Euripides, Alcestis 782-789 (tr. Moses Hadas and John McLean):

All men have to pay the debt of death, and there is not a mortal who knows whether he is going to be alive on the morrow. The outcome of things that depend on fortune cannot be foreseen; they can neither be learnt nor discovered by any art. Hearken to this and learn of me, cheer up, drink, reckon the days yours as you live them; the rest belongs to fortune.

Thoreau, Journals, October 19, 1855:

Talking with Bellew this evening about Fourierism and communities, I said that I suspected any enterprise in which two were engaged together. "But," said he, "it is difficult to make a stick stand unless you slant two or more against it." "Oh, no," answered I, "you may split its lower end into three, or drive it single into the ground, which is the best way; but most men, when they start on a new enterprise, not only figuratively, but really, pull up stakes. When the sticks prop one another, none, or only one, stands erect."

I wonder if Bellew could possibly be Adin Ballou (1803-1890), who founded the Hopedale utopian community in Massachusetts.

Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, chapter 5:

Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances. "Plato," he says, "is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet."

The passage from Macaulay is in his essay on Francis Bacon, in Critical and Historical Essays.

Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843), book III (The Modern Worker), chapter 9 (Working Aristocracy):

In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth; or altogether the shabbiest.

Eduard Mörike (1804-1875), Auf ein altes Bild:

In the summery haze of a verdant landscape,
Beside cool water, reeds and canebrake,
Look, how the innocent little child
Plays irrepressibly on the maiden's lap!
And there in the woodland blissfully,
Alas, grows already the sapling of the cross!

In grüner Landschaft Sommerflor,
Bei kühlem Wasser, Schilf und Rohr,
Schau, wie das Knäblein Sündelos
Frei spielet auf der Jungfrau Schoß!
Und dort im Walde wonnesam,
Ach, grünet schon des Kreuzes Stamm!

Hugo Wolf finished his achingly beautiful musical setting of this poem on April 14, 1888. It's on pp. 76-77 of his Complete Mörike Songs (New York: Dover Publications, 1982). According to Eric Sams, The Songs of Hugo Wolf (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 100, Wolf wrote about his composition in a letter to Edmund Lang:

My last song, which I have just finished, is without doubt the crown of all. I am still in the grip of the enchantment of the mood of this song; everything is still shimmering in green all round me.

I don't know if anyone has ever tried to identify the painting which Mörike described. Maybe there never was such a picture, except in his mind's eye. The power of his poetry is such that he makes us see it, too.

Read some refreshing and original observations on the Republican convention over at The Charlock's Shade.

My pet peeve for this month is the slang use of "I'm like" to introduce a quotation, as in:

I'm like, "Whatever."

To my old-fashioned, fastidious ear, it brands the speaker instantly as a bonehead. How it ever came to mean "I said" is a mystery.

Here is a sonnet by Andrew Lang (1844-1912) about Homer's Odyssey:

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Aegean isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again, --
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Some might find this sonnet, first published less than a hundred years ago, almost as hard to understand as Homer's Greek itself. We have lost the habit of reading or appreciating or even understanding such poetry, and we are the poorer for it.

Lang's sonnet consists of a single sentence, appropriately cast in the form of a Homeric simile. A simile compares two things or situations -- as is A, so is B. Below are two similes from Homer (tr. Richmond Lattimore).

Iliad 16.482-486 (death of Sarpedon at the hands of Patroclus):

He fell, as when an oak goes down or a white poplar, / or like a towering pine tree which in the mountains the carpenters / have hewn down with their whetted axes to make a ship-timber. / So he lay there felled in front of his horses and chariots / roaring, and clawed with his hands at the bloody dust.

Odyssey 5.488-491 (Odysseus makes a bed of leaves for himself):

As when a man buries a burning log in a black ash heap / in a remote place in the country, where none live near as neighbors, / and saves the seed of fire, having no other place to get a light / from, so Odysseus buried himself in the leaves.

In Lang's sonnet, the first part of the comparison starts with "as" in the first line, the second part with "so" in the ninth line. What are the two situations being compared? Lang is saying that just as Odysseus was glad to escape from the island of Circe, where he was held captive, to the open sea (octet, lines 1-8), so we moderns are glad to escape from our anemic contemporary poetry to the surge and thunder of Homer's Odyssey (sestet, lines 9-14).

Circe was a goddess who entrapped men and turned them into swine. Odysseus avoided that metamorphosis with the aid of a secret herb (moly) given to him by the god Hermes. The "pale of Proserpine" is the region of Proserpine (Persephone in Greek), goddess of the underworld and consort of Hades. Homer tells the story of Odysseus' sojourn on Circe's island and his visit to the underworld to get advice from the dead prophet Tiresias in books 10-12 of the Odyssey.

Lang collaborated on a prose translation of Homer's Odyssey with Samuel Henry Butcher (1850-1910). David Martin Gaunt borrowed the last line of Lang's sonnet for the title of his book Surge and Thunder: Critical Readings in Homer's Odyssey (London, Oxford University Press, 1971).

There is a marked distinction between written and spoken English, and the distinction is no less prominent in Latin. One of the few Latin authors who gives us a good idea what spoken Latin might have been like is the comic playwright Terence, six of whose comedies survive.

Terence was once at the center of the Latin curriculum. In his Handbook of Latin Literature, H.J. Rose writes:

He was universally known, because used everywhere as school-book, on account of his purity of style and easy simplicity of construction, from the end of the classical era onwards, until modern teachers, presumably in fear for their pupils' morals, substituted for him the much more difficult Latinity of Caesar, one of the most unsuitable authors for a beginner that could be imagined.

What is so unusual about Terence's elegant Latinity is that he was not a native speaker. He was a slave from Africa, as his name (Publius Terentius Afer) indicates. This phenomenon is not without parallel in more recent times. Native English writers realize to their chagrin that they will probably never write in their mother tongue as well as the foreigner Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Ukraine and christened Josef Teodore Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, wrote in English.

Terence's Latin was so pure that even in his lifetime detractors argued that a slave and a foreigner couldn't possibly have written the plays attributed to him. The noblemen Scipio and Laelius must have written them, they said. Compare those who argue even today that a commoner like Shakespeare could never have written plays that display so intimate a knowledge of court life.

Many expressions from the plays of Terence are familiar, such as:

• I'm a human being; I consider nothing human foreign to me. (homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.) Heauton Timorumenos 77
  
• There are as many opinions as men. (quot homines, tot sententiae.) Phormio 454
  
• A word to the wise is sufficient. (dictum sapienti sat est.) Phormio 541
  
• Now there is no statement that has not been uttered before. (nullumst iam dictum quod non sit dictum prius.) Eunuchus 41
  

Here are a few passages that are less well known, but that give a taste of Terence's style and subject matter.

Eunuchus 59-63:

In love all these problems are present: insults, suspicions, enmities, truces, breaking up, making up again. If you tried to deal with these uncertainties in a reasonable manner, you'd achieve no more than if you determined to go crazy in a logical way.

in amore haec omnia insunt vitia: iniuriae,
suspiciones, inimicitiae, indutiae,
bellum, pax rursum: incerta haec si postules
ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas
quam si des operam ut cum ratione insanias.

Eunuchus 812-813:

I understand the character of females: they're not in the mood when you are, they in turn are in the mood when you're not.

novi ingenium mulierum / nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.

Hecyra 198-200:

Goodness gracious, what kind of conspiracy is this! How is it that all women have exactly the same desires and dislikes, and you can't find a single one who's the slightest bit different from the others?

pro deum fidem atque hominum, quod genus est quae haec coniuratiost! / utin omnes mulieres eadem aeque studeant nolintque omnia / neque declinatam quicquam ab aliarum ingenio ullam reperias!

Hecyra 343-344:

For the man who loves someone who dislikes him, in my opinion acts foolishly on two counts. First, he undertakes a fruitless task. Secondly, he's a nuisance to her.

nam qui amat quoi odio ipsust, eum bis facere stulte duco: / laborem inanem ipsus capit et illi molestiam adfert.

Hecyra 662-663:

Do you think you can find any woman who's blameless?

censen te posse reperire ullam mulierem / quae careat culpa?

Phormio 696-697:

There's nothing, Antipho, that can't be put in a bad light by putting an adverse spin on it.

nil est, Antipho, / quin male narrando possit depravarier.

If you read only one play by Terence, I recommend Adelphoe (Brothers), which deals with a surprisingly modern theme -- contrasting views about the proper way to raise a teenager. Is leniency more appropriate, or strictness?

Matthew Arnold, in his poem Isolation (lines 29-30), wrote:

This truth -- to prove and make thine own:
  'Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.'

Nevertheless, there is something sad about the extreme degree of isolation in the case of Jim Sulkers of Winnipeg, who lay dead in his bed for two years before he was discovered.

Shakespeare, King Lear 1.2.116-130:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

Matthew 7:3-5:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Luke 6:41-42 is similar. Mote translates Greek karphos (splinter, twig), and beam translates Greek dokos (log). There are also parallels in ancient Greek and Latin literature. Horace, Satires 1.3.25-27, talks as follows about the inability to see one's own faults:

You're half-blind, your eyes are smeared with lotion, you overlook your own sins. How is it then that in the case of your friends' faults you're as clear-sighted as an eagle or a snake from Epidaurus?

cum tua pervideas oculis mala lippus inunctis,
cur in amicorum vitiis tam cernis acutum
quam aut aquila aut serpens Epidaurius?

In Petronius' Satyricon (57.7), one of Trimalchio's freedmen says to Encolpius:

You see the louse on another, you don't see the tick on yourself.

in alio pedulcum vides, in te ricinum non vides.

This idea can be traced back in another form to one of Aesop's fables (359 Halm, tr. Olivia and Robert Temple):

Once upon a time, when Prometheus created men, he hung from them two carrying-pouches. One of these contained the deficiencies of other people and was hung in front. The other contained our own faults, which he suspended behind us. The result of this was that men could see directly down into the pouch containing other people's failings, but were unable to see their own.

Babrius put the fable into Greek verse (66, tr. Ben Edwin Perry):

Prometheus was a god, but of the first dynasty. He it was, they say, that fashioned man from earth, to be the master of the beasts. On man he hung, the story goes, two wallets filled with the faults of human kind; the one in front contained the faults of other men, the one behind the bearer's own, and this was the larger wallet. That's why, it seems to me, men see the failings of each other very clearly, while unaware of those which are their own.

Note that Babrius, like Matthew, says that our own faults are more numerous or grievous than the faults of others.

Phaedrus (4.10) wrote some Latin verses on the same theme:

Jupiter placed two wallets on us:
the one filled with our own faults he put behind our backs,
the one heavy with others' faults he hung in front.
For this reason we cannot see our own sins;
as soon as others commit a crime, we judge them.

Peras imposuit Iuppiter nobis duas:
propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit,
alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem.
hac re videre nostra mala non possumus;
alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus.

The fable is mentioned in passing by other ancient authors:

• Catullus 22.21: But we don't see that part of the bag that's in back of us. (sed non videmus manticae quod in tergo est.)
  
• Horace, Satires 2.3.298-299: Whoever calls me crazy will hear as much in turn and will learn to look at what hangs from the back which he cannot survey (dixerit insanum qui me, totidem audiet atque / respicere ignoto discet pendentia tergo.)
  
• Persius 4.23-24: How no one tries to burrow into himself, no one, but the bag on the back of the fellow in front of us is seen! (ut nemo in sese temptat descendere, nemo, / sed praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo!)

In the second chapter of Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (1998; rpt. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath list the following core values of the ancient Greeks:

1. Science, research, and the acquisition of knowledge itself are to remain apart from both political and religious authority.
   
2. Military power operates under and is checked by civilian control.
   
3. Constitutional and consensual government is a Western idea.
   
4. Religion is separate from and subordinate to political authority.
   
5. Trusting neither the rich nor the poor, the Greeks of the polis have faith in the average citizen (the spiritual forerunner of our faith in the middle class).
   
6. Private property and free economic activity are immune from government coercion and interference.
   
7. The notion of dissent and open criticism of government, religion, and the military is inherent among the polis Greeks.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon, yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

A few years ago Rebecca Mead wrote a delighful portrait of Luigi Miraglia, a high school Latin teacher from a small town near Naples. I highly recommend it. It was published in the New Yorker magazine and is available on the Internet. Here is one of Miraglia's bons mots:

If Hercules were living today, one of the labors would be to drive in Naples, and another would be to find a parking spot in Naples.

Sometime in the mid 50s B.C., Catullus penned this scathing epigram (52) on the contemporary political scene:

What's your excuse, Catullus? Why not die right now?
That pimple Nonius occupies the curule chair.
Vatinius swears falsely by his consulship.
What's your excuse, Catullus? Why not die right now?

Quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?
sella in curuli struma Nonius sedet,
per consulatum perierat Vatinius:
quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?

The medical writer Celsus (5.28.7a) defines the word struma as "a swelling in which underneath some hard parts grow from pus and blood like little acorns" (tumor in quo subter concreta quaedam ex pure et sanguine quasi glandulae oriuntur). In his commentary Kenneth Quinn says that "Nonius is an excrescence on the body politic."

For some reason this summer, when I watch the Democratic and Republican conventions on the telly, this epigram of Catullus springs to mind. Are these two nincompoops really the best our country has to offer as candidates to fill the highest office in the land?

Thoreau never voted in his life. I'm tempted to imitate him in the upcoming presidential election.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments.