Laudator Temporis Acti

Libanius, Orations 30.21 (tr. A.F. Norman):

And if they prate to me of the teachings of the scriptures that they profess to obey, I will counter them with the despicable acts they have committed.

εἰ δέ μοι γράμματα λέγουσιν ἀπὸ βίβλων αἷς φασιν ἐμμένειν, ἐγὼ τὰ πράγματα ἀντιθήσω τὰ παρὰ φαῦλον ἐκείνοις πεποιημένα.

Moritz Thomsen (1915-1991), The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers (Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1990), p. 173:

I have been brought back to today by a gargantuan fart, the kind that if I had made it in high school would have got me immediately elected as class president. But it is not mine; I don't have the constitution to manufacture such monumentalities. It is the work of a newly arrived passenger to the deck who now stands at the railing of the ship peering furiously across the empty grassy spaces of the Amazon — Hedrik, a six-foot, six-inch Dutchman....

Another blast, a fart to match the greatness of the river, echoes and rolls out over the water, and though the Dutchman is fifty feet away I can only regard it as some kind of a European communication. A morning salutation?

"And a good morning to you," I call. "Was that beso, that kiss, for me?"

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Jules Renard, Journal (September 14, 1903; tr. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget):

You say I am an atheist, because we do not search for God in the same manner: or, rather, you believe you have found Him. I congratulate you. I am still searching for Him. I shall search for Him ten, twenty years, if He lends me life. I am afraid I shall not find Him: but I shall still look for Him, if He exists. He may be appreciative of my efforts.

Vous dites que je suis athée, parce que nous ne cherchons pas Dieu de la même façon; ou, plutôt, vous croyez l'avoir trouvé. Je vous félicite. Je le cherche encore. Je le chercherai dix ans, vingt ans, s'il me prête vie. Je crains de ne pouvoir le trouver: je le chercherai quand même, s'il existe. Il me saura peut-être gré de mon effort.

The French continues:

Et peut-être qu'il aura pitié de votre confiance béate, de votre foi paresseuse et un peu niaise.

I.e.:

And maybe He will take pity on your blissful confidence, your lazy and somewhat silly faith.

Robert Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism: A Reader (Cambridge: Harward University Press, 1969), pp. 54-55:

Another proverb found in Menander (frag. 59.4 Koerte), though certainly not original with him, is ἀνερρίφθω κύβος. Aristophanes (frag. 673 Kock) shows a variation of it: φράζε τοίνυν, ὡς ἐγώ σοι πᾶς ἀνέρριμμαι κύβος. There is no doubt that ἀνερρίφθω κύβος was, as Koerte calls it, a "proverbium notissimum." Appian (BC 2.35) and Plutarch (Pompey 60, Caesar 32) both state that Caesar exclaimed ἀνερρίφθω κύβος at his famous crossing of the Rubicon. Plutarch is quite explicit. In his Life of Caesar he states: τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν τοῖς εἰς τύχας ἐμβαίνουσιν ἀπόρους καὶ τόλμας προοίμιον ὑπειπὼν "Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος" ὥρμησε πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν; and in his Life of Pompey he states: καὶ τοσοῦτον μόνον Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐκβοήσας, "Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος," διεβίβαζε τὸν στρατόν. The following facts thus appear: (1) ἀνερρίφθω κύβος was a common saying uttered before (προοίμιον) undertaking a risky and doubtful venture; (2) Caesar's terse comment at the Rubicon was made (a) in Greek (b) before he crossed the stream. He was in fact quoting a Greek proverb of common currency. Suetonius, in his Divus Iulius 32, gives us the story in Latin dress; the MSS read

tunc Caesar: "eatur," inquit, "quo deorum ostenta et inimicorum iniquitas vocat. iacta alea est."

Strictly speaking the "die was not cast" until after Caesar crossed the Rubicon; iacta alea est is slightly illogical. But this distinction must not and need not be pressed. It is clear from the evidence presented above that Suetonius, who certainly knew the famous story, is here translating the Greek proverb ἀνερρίφθω κύβος; the Greek has a perfect imperative and Suetonius rendered it by a Latin perfect imperative: iacta alea esto. est of the MSS is nothing but a trivialization of the commonest sort. The rare perfect imperative corrupted to a familiar perfect indicative. Centuries ago the great Erasmus conjectured iacta alea esto; the general reluctance of editors of Suetonius to this day to print esto is incomprehensible to me. Lest there be any who, pace Plutarch, do not think that the perfect ἀνερρίφθω κύβος can be said of an act not yet begun, I give here a larger extract from the Menander fragment cited above:

A.                              οὐ γαμεῖς, ἂν νοῦν ἔχῃς,
τοῦτον καταλιπὼν τὸν βίον· γεγάμηκα γὰρ
αὐτός· διὰ τοῦτό σοι παραινῶ μὴ γαμεῖν.
B. δεδογμένον τὸ πρᾶγμ᾿· ἀνερρίφθω κύβος.
A. πέραινε, σωθείης δὲ κτλ.

Here are translations of some of the passages cited by Renehan.

Aristophanes, fragment 673 Kock = 929 Kassel and Austin (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

Tell me, then, since I'm your last cast of the dice.

Plutarch, Life of Caesar 32 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

And uttering the phrase with which men usually prelude their plunge into desperate and daring fortunes, "Let the die be cast," he hastened to cross the river.

Plutarch, Life of Pompey 60 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

And calling out in Greek to the bystanders these words only, "Let the die be cast," he set his army across.

Menander, fragment 59 Koerte = 64 Kassel and Austin, lines 1-5 (tr. Maurice Balme):

A. You will not marry, if you've any sense,
And leave your present way of life. Myself,
I'm married; that is why I tell you not to.
B. It's all decided. Let the die be cast.
A. Go on, then; and I hope you'll survive.

Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar 32 (without Erasmus' conjecture; tr. J.C. Rolfe):

Then Caesar cried: "Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the false dealing of our foes point out. The die is cast."

Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (London: Macmillan, 2017), pp. 111-112, with notes on p. 281:

Statues, the very seat of the demons themselves, suffered some of the most vicious attacks. It was not enough merely to take a statue down; the demon within it had to be humiliated, disgraced, tortured, dismembered and thus neutralized. A Jewish tractate known as the Avodah Zarah provided detailed instructions on how to properly mistreat a statue. One can desecrate a statue, it advised, by 'cutting off the tip of its ear or nose or finger, by battering it — even although its bulk be not diminished — it is desecrated'. Merely taking the statue down, or spitting at it, or dragging it about, or throwing dirt upon it, was not, the treatise warned, sufficient — though the resourceful Christian might indulge in all of these as an added humiliation to the demon within.³²

Sometimes, as was the case with the bust of Aphrodite in Athens, the statues appear to have been 'baptized', with deep crosses gouged on their foreheads. If this was a 'baptism' then it may have helped not only to neutralize the devil within, but also to vanquish any more personal demons that could arise when looking at such beautiful naked figures. A naked statue of Aphrodite was, wrote one Christian historian in disgust, 'more shameless than that of any prostitute standing in front of a brothel'³³ — and, like a prostitute, Aphrodite and her plump bottom and naked breasts might incite the demon of lust in the viewer. Far less easy to feel desire for a statue who has had a cross gouged in her head, her eyes blinded and her nose sliced from her face. Erotically appealing statues suffered more than chastely clothed ones. We can still see the consequences of this rhetoric. Today, a once-handsome Apollo missing a nose stands in this museum; a statue of Venus that stood in a bathhouse has had her nipples and mons pubis chiselled away; a statue of Dionysus has had his nose mutilated and his genitalia removed.

32. Avodah Zarah 4:5, tr. Elmslie, quoted in Trombley (2008), 156–7.
33. Theodoret Ellen, Treatment of Greek Diseases, 3.79, tr. Gazda 1981 in Kristensen (2013), 224.

In note 33, "Theodoret Ellen" makes no sense to me. Perhaps read simply Theodoret or Theodoret of Cyrus. References in the notes are to:

• Frank R. Trombley, "The Destruction of Pagan Statuary and Christianization (Fourth–Sixth Century CE)," in The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power, edd. Y.Z. Eliav et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 143–164
• Elaine K. Gazda, "A Marble Group of Ganymede and the Eagle from the Age of Augustine," pp. 125-178, in J. H. Humphrey, ed., Excavations at Carthage Conducted by the University of Michigan, Vol. 6 (Ann Arbor: The Kelsey Museum, 1981), pp. 125-178
• Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013 = Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity, XII)

"Statue of Aphrodite from the Faustina Baths at Miletos with mutilated breasts and pubic area. Archaeological Museum, Istanbul: Photo Author," from John Pollini, "The Archaeology of Destruction: Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems of Interpretation," in The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Sarah Ralph (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), pp. 241-267 (figure 13.13 on p. 262):

Labels: typographical and other errors

John Boardman, Greek Art, new rev. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), p. 9:

Isadora Duncan dancing on the steps of the Parthenon would have looked far odder to the ancient Athenian than the chorus of Cats.

Moritz Thomsen (1915-1991), The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers (Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1990), p. 11:

I am sixty-three, white haired, not very well preserved. I have become that person who is of no interest to anyone and about whom no one will have the slightest curiosity. I have become for all intents and purposes invisible.

Id., p. 17:

I have become as strange to myself as that range of mountains that I am looking at for the first time. I detect vast new capacities for impatience, resentful anger, and cynicism.

Id., p. 20:

What I know now in a sudden rush is that that old world has gone; things have changed way past my capacity to understand or accept. I am like some Rip Van Winkle who has awakened and wandered into a present that fills him with confusion and despair.

Id., p. 52:

I catch sight of a stern figure staring at me from the mirrors of storefronts. Amazed, I peer closely, for it is someone I scarcely recognize. I am not happy with his bag of flesh that so ineptly translates my qualities. No one, I decide, would want to talk to that old fart.

Klejn's commandments, from Stephen Leach, A Russian Perspective on Theoretical Archaeology: The Life and Work of Leo S. Klejn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 144-145:

1. Archaeology is not history armed with a spade, but a detective story in which the investigator has arrived at the scene a thousand years late. History is pronounced later by judges. So you must decide: to go in for one or the other.

2. Do not be similar to the historian, for whom work is already settled in two steps: collection of materials and the writing of a text. Between these two you must take the third—the research.

3. Where there is a law, there is no problem. In every set of facts do not search for laws, but for contradiction to law. Behind contradiction a problem is hidden, behind the problem a discovery.

4. State the question as a question. With nominative sentences a theme is set but not a problem. A problem is set only when it is formulated by a question. The real question begins with 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', 'whence', 'whither', 'how', and 'why'.

5. The scholarly world is not a team of friends. What is your discovery is a loss for someone else. And this someone is usually a prominent and powerful person. Therefore having made a discovery do not expect universal delight. Be ready for tough resistance, sudden attacks and a gruelling and lingering war. A scholar needs talent second and courage first.

6. Research is a threefold struggle—with the material, with adversaries and with oneself. The last part is the hardest.

7. Every scholar has a right to make mistakes—if he makes mistakes correctly.

8. If an experiment fails once, the experiment is guilty, if it fails twice, the experimenter is guilty, if three times, the theory.

9. Do not check facts with your tongue, but with your teeth: do not search for something tasty, search for something true. Indeed what you need to recognise is not raisins but gold.

10. Argue skilfully and vigorously, but remember that one does not believe your skill or your rage but your facts.

11. Beware of assumptions. Probability is a ladder with rolling steps, an escalator. Before you know it you find yourself on the next floor. Apparent means probably, probably means possibly, possibly means maybe and maybe not. But whether it was present or absent, issue from the point that it was absent rather than present.

12. Forget the phrase 'for instance'. Examples can substantiate whatever you want. There is always a counter-example for every example. An example is permissible only when it represents a generalisation.

13. Classification is like a piano, do not try to strike a chord with one finger. You need a sufficient set of concepts and terms.

14. Weigh pros and cons on the same set of scales.

15. If the complex truth does not consist of simple truths it is not a truth.

16. The scholarly position is not a chair, but redoubt. It is only a position when it is attacked and defended. Thereafter it is no longer a position but a pose. Do not confuse a position with a pose.

17. Do not hunt for a fashionable position. In the discipline, not every word said last is the last word in the discipline. Contemporaneity is not defined by the moment of a work but by the productivity of methods, completeness of materials, and cleverness of ideas.

18. Do not hope for chance and luck. The law of gravitation was created in Newton's head and not in the apple.

19. Do not suppose anything is apparent. Collect proofs as much as possible, then people will perhaps understand that your idea did not need proving.

20. Be brief. However, firstly every one of your terms should be defined, every concept reasoned, every sentence grounded, every conclusion limited, every fact accounted for, proved and measured.

21. When you substantiate, it is important what, still more important with what but most important how.

22. The crowning proof is the one which the author has ditched and allowed the reader himself to find.

23. The 'golden middle' between two extremes is only the third extreme. It must be proved especially well.

24. Do not argue until you get a frog in the throat. You cannot out-argue your adversary, no matter how right you may be. The task of every scholarly argument is not to convince your opponent but to check yourself, to believe in yourself and to gain supporters.

25. Even if a gold coin rings on a copper coin, the ring nevertheless is golden. Inequality is not a hindrance to fruitful communication.

Alan Cameron, "Wandering Poets: A Literary Movement in Byzantine Egypt," in Gregory Nagy, ed., Greek Literature, Vol. 9: Greek Literature in the Byzantine Period (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 14-54 (at 38-39; footnotes omitted):

Another aspect of the claim of the Egyptian poets of the age to the title doctus poeta is that a surprisingly large number of them seem to have had some acquaintance with Latin literature. It had always been extremely rare for Greeks to take the trouble to learn what most of them had never ceased to regard as a barbarian tongue, and in the Later Empire there were few indeed who took the trouble to learn it for any but strictly practical reasons, with a view to one of the careers where at least a smattering of Latin was still essential, the law, the army or the civil service. If Gibbon was exaggerating when he remarked that there is not one allusion to Virgil or Horace in the whole of Greek literature from Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Libanius, he was not exaggerating much. Libanius affected complete and ostentatious ignorance of Latin, and even required an interpreter to make out a letter written in that language. The emperor Julian was able to make himself understood in Latin ("Latine ... disserendi sufficiens sermo", as Ammianus patronisingly observed), but "seems guiltless of the most rudimentary acquaintance with Latin literature". But in sharp contrast to this conventional attitude, as a result of the widespread Latinisation of Egypt following the reforms of Diocletian, the study of Latin began to flourish, comparatively speaking, in fourth and fifth century Egypt. Papyri have revealed the unexpected fact that many Egyptians began in the fourth century to acquire not merely the necessary smattering of legal jargon in Latin that was required for the bar, but read a modest range of classical authors, and not only in the traditional centres of learning. The schools of Alexandria must have had quite a reputation for Latin in the fifth century, for Severus, the future patriarch of Antioch, was sent there from Sozopolis as a young man in order to study grammar and rhetoric in both Greek and Latin. Pupils battled their way through Cicero's Catilinarians with a word-for-word Greek 'crib' (fragments of which have survived), and in addition to these and other prose works, read the poets as well. The most popular poet, as might have been expected, was Virgil, who is represented by more papyri than any other Latin literary writer; several juxtalinear texts of the Aeneid have come to light in recent years, some marked with accents and symbols denoting quantity. Even the 'Silver' poets were read; Lucan was studied, and even so hard a poet as Juvenal was read with an elaborate commentary in fifth century Antinupolis. One Virgil papyrus has been found dating from as late as the sixth century, but by the second half of that century Dioscorus seems to have known no more than the odd bit of Latin jargon he had picked up in his legal studies (e.g. ἀβστινατίω) and by its close Theophylact Simocatta thought that rex was Gothic!

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Homer, Iliad 17.567-573 (tr. Caroline Alexander):

So he spoke, and the gleaming-eyed goddess Athena rejoiced
that to her of all the gods he had prayed first.
And she placed strength in his shoulders and in his knees,
and threw into his breast the boldness of a horsefly,        570
that though driven repeatedly away from a man's skin,
craves to bite, so delectable is human blood to it.
With such boldness did Athena fill him round his dark heart.

ὣς φάτο, γήθησεν δὲ θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,
ὅττί ῥά οἱ πάμπρωτα θεῶν ἠρήσατο πάντων.
ἐν δὲ βίην ὤμοισι καὶ ἐν γούνεσσιν ἔθηκε,
καί οἱ μυίης θάρσος ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἐνῆκεν,        570
ἥ τε καὶ ἐργομένη μάλα περ χροὸς ἀνδρομέοιο
ἰσχανάᾳ δακέειν, λαρόν τέ οἱ αἷμ᾽ ἀνθρώπου·
τοίου μιν θάρσευς πλῆσε φρένας ἀμφὶ μελαίνας.

H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981), pp. 75-76, with note on p. 246:

Very different were the celebrations of the next day, the 22nd [of February], the Caristia or Cara Cognatio (Dear Kindred). After establishing good relations with the dead, it was now the turn of the living members of the family to renew their mutual ties and patch up any quarrels. The day was named from the dear kinsfolk (cari). How old the custom was is uncertain. It seems such a natural development of the Parentalia that its antiquity would be reasonable, though some scholars incline to a somewhat later origin. A family meal was held, to which everyone brought his own contribution, and 'a crowd of relatives come to meet the family gods (socios deos)', all unkind or guilty members being excluded. Worship was paid to the Lares: 'give incense to the family gods (dis generis), ye virtuous ones ... and offer food that the Lares, in their girt-up robes, may feed at the platter presented to them as a pledge of the homage that they love' (Ovid, F. 2.631ff.). In every house stood images of the family or domestic Lares and many representations of them survive. The Lar is usually a youthful male figure, standing or dancing, wearing a short tunic which is girt around his waist: he is shown pouring wine from a drinking-horn into a saucer. Tibullus tells us that in early days the images of the Lares were carved in wood and stood in wooden shrines and that grapes, corn, honeycombs and cakes were offered to them; other offerings included wine, incense, flowers and even pigs. This pleasant family 'love-feast' continued to be celebrated in Christian times and was converted by the Catholic Church into a feast of St Peter (Cathedra Petri) which was still held on 22 February until at least the twelfth century AD.⁸¹

81 Caristia: Ovid, F. 2.617ff., Val. Max. 2.1.8. For a late development see Latte, RR, 274 no. 3, 339 n.2. Tibullus: 1.10.17ff.

Ovid, Fasti 2.617-638 (tr. James G. Frazer, rev. G.P. Goold):

The next day received its name of Caristia from dear (cari) kinsfolk. A crowd of near relations comes to meet the family gods. Sweet it is, no doubt, to recall our thoughts to the living soon as they have dwelt upon the grave and on the dear ones dead and gone; sweet, too, after so many lost, to look upon those of our blood who are left, and to count kin with them. Come none but the innocent! Far, far from here be the unnatural brother, and the mother who is harsh to her own offspring, he whose father lives too long, he who reckons up his mother's years, and the unkind mother-in-law who hates and maltreats her daughter-in-law. Here is no place for the brothers, scions of Tantalus, for Jason's wife, for her who gave to husbandmen the toasted seeds, for Procne and her sister, for Tereus, cruel to them both, and for him, whoe'er he be, who amasses wealth by crime. Give incense to the family gods, ye virtuous ones (on that day above all others Concord is said to lend her gentle presence); and offer food, that the Lares, in their girt-up robes, may feed at the platter presented to them as a pledge of the homage that they love. And now, when dank night invites to slumber calm, fill high the wine-cup for the prayer and say, "Hail to you! hail to thee, Father of thy Country, Caesar the Good!" and let good speech attend the pouring of the wine.

proxima cognati dixere Caristia cari,
    et venit ad socios turba propinqua deos.
scilicet a tumulis et, qui periere, propinquis
    protinus ad vivos ora referre iuvat,        620
postque tot amissos, quicquid de sanguine restat,
    aspicere et generis dinumerare gradus.
innocui veniant: procul hinc, procul impius esto
    frater et in partus mater acerba suos,
cui pater est vivax, qui matris digerit annos,        625
    quae premit invisam socrus iniqua nurum.
Tantalidae fratres absint et Iasonis uxor
    et quae ruricolis semina tosta dedit,
et soror et Procne Tereusque duabus iniquus
    et quicumque suas per scelus auget opes.        630
dis generis date tura boni (Concordia fertur
    illa praecipue mitis adesse die)
et libate dapes, ut, grati pignus honoris,
    nutriat incinctos missa patella Lares.
iamque ubi suadebit placidos nox umida somnos,        635
    larga precaturi sumite vina manu,
et "bene vos, bene te, patriae pater, optime Caesar!"
    dicite: suffuso sint bona verba mero.

Valerius Maximus 2.1.8 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):

Our ancestors also instituted a regular feast and called it "love-feast," in which none but kin by blood or marriage could take part, to the end that if any quarrel had arisen between persons so related it might be removed amid the rites of the table and the good cheer of the partakers, with harmony-wishers in attendance.

convivium etiam sollemne maiores instituerunt idque caristia appellaverunt, cui praeter cognatos et adfines nemo interponebatur, ut si qua inter necessarias personas querella esset orta, apud sacra mensae et inter hilaritatem animorum et fautoribus concordiae adhibitis tolleretur.

A festival worth reviving. See also Renata Raccanelli, "Cara cognatio: La tradizione di una festa tra propinqui," Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 53.2 (1996) 27-57.

Homer, Iliad 17.201-202 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt):

Ah, poor wretch, not in your thoughts is death,
that yet surely draws near you.

ἆ δείλ', οὐδέ τί τοι θάνατος καταθύμιός ἐστιν,
ὃς δή τοι σχεδὸν εἶσι.

Jeffrey M. Duban, The Lesbian Lyre: Reclaiming Sappho for the 21st Century (West Hoathly: Clairview, 2016), pp. xxix-xxx:

Students at The Boston Public Latin School of the 1960s were expected to keep up with their lessons, learning Latin enough to translate without the use of a crib. Accordingly, cribs were always a matter of high drama and trepidation, as they were the ultimate contraband. The cheating student, tearing out the day's translation and laying it into his Cicero or Virgil, would rise to recite. Stammering his way through, he trembled, responding n-nothing to the master's (pointing) What's that you've got there? There was no greater punishment than that for the use, or even possession, of a crib: the student's parents summoned to the headmaster, suspension or disciplinary censure following (two censures in a school year and you were out). For it was not simply cheating, it was treason—a betrayal of the core educational values and good citizenship embodied in the study of Latin at the Latin School. The severity of the sanction, the opprobrium, kept us well studied and respectful.

Inschriften von Ephesos IV 1351, tr. G.H.R Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, Vol. 4: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1979 (North Ryde: The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarie University, 1987), p. 256:

Having destroyed a deceitful image of demonic Artemis,
    Demeas set up this sign of truth,
honouring both God the driver-away of idols, and the cross,
    that victorious, immortal symbol of Christ.

[Δαίμ]ονος Ἀρτέμιδος καθελὼν ἀπατήλιον εἶδος
    Δημέας ἀτρεκίης ἄνθετο σῆμα τόδε,
εἰδώλων ἐλατῆρα θεὸν σταυρόν τε γερέρων,
    νικοφόρον Χριστοῦ σύνβολον ἀθάνατον.

An image of the inscription, from Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013 = Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity, XII), p. 10:

C.P. Cavafy (1863-1963), "In a Large Greek Colony, 200 B.C.," lines 6-13 (tr. Evangelos Sachperoglou):

But the obstacle and the difficulty is,
that these Reformers make
a great issue out of everything.
(A blessing it would be if nobody
ever needed them.) They examine
and inquire about the slightest little thing,
and they set their mind immediately on radical reforms,
demanding that these be executed without delay.

Ὅμως τὸ πρόσκομμα κ' ἡ δυσκολία
εἶναι ποῦ κάμνουνε μιὰ ἱστορία
μεγάλη κάθε πρᾶγμα οἱ Ἀναμορφωταὶ
αὐτοί. (Εὐτύχημα θα ἦταν ἄν ποτὲ
δὲν τοὺς χρειάζονταν κανείς.) Γιὰ κάθε τί,
γιὰ τὸ παραμικρὸ ρωτοῦνε κ' ἐξετάζουν,
κ' εὐθὺς στὸν νοῦ τους ριζικὲς μεταρρυθμίσεις βάζουν,
μὲ τὴν ἀπαίτησι νὰ ἐκτελεσθοῦν ἄνευ ἀναβολής.

Joseph Addison, The Guardian, No. 119 (Tuesday, July 28, 1713), in The Guardian, ed. John Calhoun Stephens (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982), pp. 398-401 (at 400):

By this means they talked together across a whole Continent, and conveyed their Thoughts to one another in an Instant over Cities or Mountains, Seas or Desarts.

Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (London: Macmillan, 2017), pp. 103-104, with notes on p. 280:

Go to Room 18 in the British Museum in London and you will find yourself in front of the Parthenon Marbles, taken from Greece by Lord Elgin in the nineteenth century. The astonishingly lifelike statues are, today, in a sorry state: many are mutilated or missing limbs. This, it is often assumed, was the fault of Lord Elgin's clumsy workmen or fighting during the Ottoman occupation. And indeed some of this was — but not all. Much was the work of zealous Christians who set about the temple with blunt instruments, attacking the 'demonic' gods, mutilating some of the finest statuary Greece had ever produced.¹

The East Pediment fared particularly badly. Hands, feet, even whole limbs have gone — almost certainly smashed off by Christians trying to incapacitate the demons within. The vast majority of the gods have been decapitated — again, almost certainly the work of Christians. The great central figures of the Pediment, that would have shown the birth of Athena, were the most sacred — and thus to the Christians the most demonic. They therefore suffered most: it is likely that they were pushed off the Pediment and smashed on the ground below, their fragmented remains ground down and used for mortar for a Christian church.

The same tale is told by objects in museums and archaeological sites across the world. Near the Marbles in the same museum is a basalt bust of Germanicus. Two blows have hacked off his nose and a cross has been cut in his forehead. In Athens, a larger-than-life statue of Aphrodite has been disfigured by a crude cross carved on her brow; her eyes have been defaced and her nose is missing.² In Cyrene, the eyes have been gouged out of a life-sized bust in a sanctuary of Demeter, and the nose removed; in Tuscany a slender statue of Bacchus has been decapitated. In the Sparta Archaeological Museum, a colossal statue of the goddess Hera looks blindly out, her eyes disfigured by crosses. A beautiful statue of Apollo from Salamis has been castrated and then struck, hard, in the face, shearing off the god's nose. Across his neck are scars indicating that Christians attempted to decapitate him but failed. In Palmyra Museum there stood, at least until the city's recent occupation by Islamic State, the mutilated and reconstructed figure of the once-great figure of Athena that had dominated a temple there. A huge dent in her once-handsome face was all that remained when her nose was smashed off. A recent book on the Christian destruction of statues focussing just on Egypt and the Near East runs to almost three hundred pages, dense with pictures of mutilation.³

1. Pollini (2007), 212ff.
2. Trombley (2008), 152; Kaltsas (2002), [fig.] 510.
3. It is Troels Myrup Kristensen's brilliant Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (2013).

References in notes 1-2 are to:

• John Pollini, "Christian Destruction and Mutilation of the Parthenon," Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 122 (2007) 207–228
• Frank R. Trombley, "The Destruction of Pagan Statuary and Christianization (Fourth–Sixth Century CE)," in The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power, edd. Y.Z. Eliav et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 143–164
• Nikolaos Kaltsas, Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, tr. D. Hardy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002)

Head of Aphrodite, with crosses carved in
forehead and chin, eyes gouged, and nose smashed
(National Archaeological Museum, Athens, inv. 1762)
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.75-79 (tr. W.H.D. Rouse, rev. Martin F. Smith):

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

sic rerum summa novatur
semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt:
augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.

Don Fowler ad loc.:

Nicholas Horsfall, The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 1:

In modern Rome, in the spring, if you want to buy an artichoke, a carciofo (also good Italian for 'blockhead'), you carry off from your chosen market stall a delectable little jewel, neatly trimmed and edible in all its parts:¹ the outer leaves have been removed, the base trimmed, and the choke, anyway very small in a young carciofo, has also been removed. Steam, dress, eat. In Britain, however, the patient feeder removes a couple of leaves from the cooked artichoke (a large, mature specimen, inevitably), dips them in vinaigrette and sucks off a tiny quantity of succulent flesh from the base of the leaves. As you proceed towards the centre, the quantity does increase, noticeably. But then progress comes to a complete halt, as you have to detach every trace of the inedible choke (ital., 'barba', beard). Now at last you have reached the delectable 'heart'. A quarter of a century ago, I thought that this long, slow struggle was not bad as a metaphor for our struggle to reach the heart of a difficult passage in the Aeneid. It still seems not bad at all.

¹ What happens in the supermarket I simply do not know.

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.1166-1167 (tr. A.E. Stallings):

He rails against the present, while he has nothing but praise
For the fortunes of his father — yes, those were the good old days!

et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis.

Literally:

And when he compares times present with times
past, he often praises his father's good luck.