Laudator Temporis Acti

Which John? The one, brothers, whom the Lord loved more than the rest, who reclined on his breast,¹⁶ who drank from his breast what he himself belched forth¹⁷ in the gospel. It's the very John who said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing (Jn 1:1-3). A great belching—but first there had been a great drinking! Do you enjoy what he belches out? See where he drank from. He was reclining on the Lord's breast. At that banquet he had drunk everything that he was to belch forth so felicitously in the gospel.

16. See Jn 13:23.
17. In English "belching" is not a nice word, and metaphorically only used of such things as chimneys belching forth smoke. But in the Latin of Augustine's time it was a nice word, possibly because belching after a meal was correct etiquette, as still today in certain Oriental cultures. I have to keep it here (though otherwise I would have translated it by something like "gushed forth"), because of his comment immediately after the quotation, where he quite obviously is presenting us with the image of a doughty pot-man belching.

Qui Ioannes? Ille, fratres, quem dominus prae ceteris diligebat, qui super pectus domini recumbebat, qui de pectore eius bibit quod in euangelio ructavit. Ipse est Ioannes qui dixit: In principio erat uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum. Hoc erat in principio apud deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil. Magna ructatio, sed prior erat magna potatio. Delectat quod ructat? Vide unde bibit. Super pectus domini discumbebat, in conuiuio illo haec omnia biberat quae in euangelio magna felicitate ructabat.

Natural wealth is complete when you have bread and water and simple covering for the body. Superfluous wealth, however, contains a boundless agony of desire in its heart.

Ὁ κατὰ φύσιν πλοῦτος ἄρτῳ καὶ ὕδατι καὶ τῇ τυχούσῃ τοῦ σώµατος σκέπῃ συµπεπλήρωται· ὁ δὲ περιττὸς κατὰ ψυχὴν ἀπέραντον ἔχει καὶ τὴν τῆς ἐπιθυµίας βάσανον.

AST comprime sis eiram.
TRVC    eam quidem hercle tu, quae solita es, comprime,
impudens, quae per ridiculum rustico suades stuprum.
AST “eiram” dixi: ut decepisti! dempsisti unam litteram.

262 eam P, meam A, eram Spengel

AST Do keep your distress in check.
TRVC No, you, who are used to doing it, keep your mistress in check,¹⁰ you shameless creature! You jokingly advise a country lad to have sex.
AST I said “distress”: how you’ve tricked me! You’ve changed one letter.

¹⁰ The word ira, “anger, distress,” originally contained the diphthong ei in its first syllable; in Plautus’ day the diphthong was still written and possibly still pronounced, though it is more likely that in pronunciation it had already developed into a closed ē. Truculentus (probably deliberately) misunderstands the word as ĕra, “mistress,” which leads to a different interpretation of comprimere: Astaphium had intended the meaning “keep in check, control,” whereas Truculentus interprets it as “keep in check, rape.” In the Latin, Astaphium goes on to say that Truculentus removed one letter (eira → era); in the translation this is rendered as “changing one letter” (distress → mistress).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Now, you see, when God's commandments are recited, they are treated by some people as a joke. Because what God has promised is not yet forthcoming, and what he threatens is not yet to be seen, what he commands is jeered at. Now, you see, what we call the good luck of this world is enjoyed by bad people too; and what we call this world's hard luck is suffered by good people too. People who only believe what they can see with their eyes and believe nothing about the future notice that the good things and bad things of this present age are indiscriminately the lot of good and bad people. If their desire is for riches, they see that both the worst of people and good people have riches. They also see, if they have a horror of poverty and the miseries of this life, that it is not only good people who are caught in the toils of these miseries but also bad people. And they say in their heart of hearts that God is neither interested in nor in control of human affairs, but has utterly abandoned us in this world as in some kind of rock-bottom dump to be the playthings of chance, and makes no provision for us whatever.

modo enim quando dicuntur praecepta Dei, quibusdam in risum veniunt. et quoniam quod promisit Deus modo non ostenditur, et quod minatur modo non videtur, quod praecipit irridetur. modo enim felicitatem quae dicitur mundi huius, habent et mali; infelicitatem quae dicitur mundi huius, habent et boni. attendunt homines qui credunt praesentia et non credunt futura, quoniam ista bona et mala praesentis saeculi promiscue habentur a bonis et malis. si divitias optant, vident habere divitias et pessimos homines et bonos homines. vident etiam, si exhorrent paupertatem et miserias huius saeculi, laborare in his miseriis non solum bonos, sed etiam malos. et dicunt in corde suo, quia res humanas Deus nec respicit nec regit, sed omnino in intimo quodam fundo mundi huius dimisit nos casibus volvi, nec aliquam providentiam exhibet nobis.

So I studied French and Italian under the tuition of the banished priest, to whose house I went regularly every evening to receive instruction. I made considerable progress in the acquisition of the two languages. I found the French by far the most difficult, chiefly on account of the accent, which my master himself possessed in no great purity, being a Norman by birth. The Italian was my favourite.

"Vous serez un jour un grand philologue, mon cher," said the old man, on our arriving at the conclusion of Dante's Hell.

"I hope I shall be something better," said I, "before I die, or I shall have lived to little purpose."

"That's true, my dear! philologist—one small poor dog."

More prolonged and less palatable to modern taste is the easing-scene in Ecc., 311-71. Here Blepyrus, husband of Praxagora, the leader of the Greek Women's Liberation Movement, comes out of the house in his wife's clothes: she has sneaked out with his clothes to attend the Ecclesia, dressed as a man. He has had a violent attack of diarrhea, and proceeds to defecate on stage, and discusses his predicament with a friend for all of 60 lines. The scene, to be sure, introduces one of the leading characters and shows the straits to which he has been reduced by his wife. But it is intolerably long and vulgar, and not (to most modern tastes) a bit funny.

Labels: noctes scatologicae, typographical and other errors

σφραγιδονυχαργοκομήτας

-αργο- (cf. 316 n.) and -κομήτας (cf. 14 n.) are plain enough. σφραγίς is 'seal' (commonly set in a ring), and ὄνυξ can mean the gem 'onyx'. This was used in signet-rings, as we see from IG ii².1338.86 (cf. i².282.128), and if that is the meaning here σφραγιδονυχαργοκομῆται are well-to-do, fashionable idlers who wear valuable rings. But they are keeping odd company, and we should consider the commoner meaning of ὄνυξ, 'fingernail'; the reference is then to unkempt creatures, like the Socratics, whose only 'seal' is the marks they can make on wax with their nails. Ar., I think, intends a pun, and Socrates can make the point clear by a gesture with his forefinger.

"seal-ring-fingernail-lazy-longhairs", i.e. wealthy people (cf. 14n.) who have possessions valuable enough to keep under seal and whose nails are unbroken because they do no hard physical labor.

He's not silent. What we have to do is hear him—but with the ears of the heart, because it's easy to hear with these ones of gristle. We ought to hear with the kind of ears the master himself was looking for when he said Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear (Mt 13:9). When he said that, were there any standing in front of him without a pair of ears on their head? They all had ears, and only a few of them had ears. They didn't all have ears to hear, that is, to obey, to take to heart.

non silet. opus est ut nos audiamus, sed aure cordis, nam facile est audire carnis. illis auribus audire debemus, quas quaerebat magister ipse cum diceret: qui habet aures audiendi audiat (Matth. XIII, 9). quis enim ante illum, quando ista dicebat, sine auribus carnis stabat? omnes aures habebant, et pauci habebant. non omnes habebant aures audiendi, hoc est, obediendi.

Contrition is an example of those many words whose meaning, though accurate enough, is poor and colourless compared with what they signify in Latin. It is a technical word for sorrow for sin. Many people, perhaps, who could well manage to be really and truly sorry for their sins, find the complicated business of making a perfect act of contrition too much for them. The Latin word means literally crushing or grinding or bruising; but the English ear, taking the metaphorical sense for the proper one, misses the metaphor completely, and metaphor is the very sap of an effective religious language. 'Make a good act of contrition while I give you absolution'; what would be wrong, except that it would be unfamiliar, with saying, 'Try and bruise your heart for your sins' (or simply 'Be really sorry for your sins'), 'while I untie you from them'?

There is a fetish here that needs exorcising, called Dignity of Language. By all means keep it where it is found in the original, as in St Leo's sermons for example, or the canon of the Mass. But not all, nor yet the greatest, religious works are written in dignified language. To impose elevated diction on St Augustine's sermons or even on the Gospels is to mistranslate them. 'Peace, be still' is a beautiful dignified phrase. But what our Lord actually said to the wind and the sea was literally 'Be gagged, be quiet'; much nearer the undignified but vigorous shut up of colloquial English. If street smells have invaded the original, do not drive them out with incense from the translation.

σιώπα, πεφίμωσο

And so we get a naive, and really rather old-fashioned, belief in progress. "Before modern scriptural studies, theologians were unable to appreciate what a gospel is" (p. 158/9). 1900 years of Christianity without anyone knowing what a gospel is! For it appears that what the gospels are was forgotten almost as soon as they were written. Why didn't the evangelists tell anyone, for God's sake? The mind boggles at the ignorance of our ancestors in the faith, generation after generation of them. Thank heaven for being born in the 20th century, the age of water-closets, jet aeroplanes, and the appreciation of what a gospel is!

Human nature is for some reason accustomed in trouble to scorn what is familiar, even though it be divine, and to admire the untried. For, believing that they are not helped by the former in their present difficulty, men expect no benefit from it in the future either; but from what is strange they hope to accomplish whatever they may desire, by reason of its novelty.

φιλεῖ γάρ πως τὸ ἀνθρώπειον ἐν ταῖς συμφοραῖς τοῦ μὲν συνήθους, κἂν θεῖον ᾖ, καταφρονεῖν, τὸ δὲ ἀπείρατον θαυμάζειν. παρ᾽ ἐκείνου μὲν γὰρ ἅτε μηδὲν ἐς τὸ παρὸν ὠφελεῖσθαι νομίζοντες οὐδὲ ἐς τὸ ἔπειτα χρηστὸν οὐδὲν προσδέχονται, παρὰ δὲ δὴ τοῦ ξένου πᾶν ὅσον ἂν ἐθελήσωσιν ὑπὸ τῆς καινοτομίας ἐλπίζουσιν.

And the mist moreover have I taken from thine eyes that afore was upon them,
to the end that thou mayest well discern both god and man.

ἀχλὺν δ᾽ αὖ τοι ἀπ᾽ ὀφθαλμῶν ἕλον, ἣ πρὶν ἐπῆεν,
ὄφρ᾽ εὖ γιγνώσκῃς ἠμὲν θεὸν ἠδὲ καὶ ἄνδρα.

For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui — moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs — the αχλυς ος πριν επηεν — and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias.

For if one is in opposition to clear-seen facts, he can never have his part in true peace of mind.

ἣν γάρ τις ᾖ μαχόμενος τοῖς ἐναργήμασιν, οὐδέποτε μὴ δυνήσεται ἀταραξίας γνησίου μεταλαβεῖν.

πάντας ταῦτα is a suggestion by the mid-18^th-century German scholar Johann Jakob Reiske (primarily an Arabist) for the manuscripts’ flat πάντα ταῦτα (all witnesses but EK, which have πάντα ταῦτα, supporting the idea that that was the original word order).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Shows safety procedures to prevent injury when working with electricity. Stresses alertness, planning, removal of potential hazards and good housekeeping.

Labels: typographical and other errors

μετα-φροντίζετε (“think differently!”) is a conjecture by Richard Bentley, the great—and famously difficult—18^th-century British classical scholar (cf. 1401 and 1418 for more of his emendations). The manuscripts have the clumsy πάνυ φροντίζετε (“really think!”; cf. 211-13n.), and Bentley’s suggestion is based on (1) the gloss μεταβουλεύεσθε in the scholia to R, the oldest manuscript of the play; (2) μέγα βουλεύεσθε (“think a big thought!”) in the quotation of the line in the Suda (an enormous 10^th-century Byzantine dictionary incorporating much older material), where MEΓA seems to represent an error for META dating back to a period when the text was still written in capital letters. LSJ omits the verb (attested nowhere else), since it had not yet been generally accepted into the text of Aristophanes when the dictionary was compiled in the late 19^th century.

Now this personality-mongering is a nuisance which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. It is not only bad literature but bad breeding. You can hardly pick up any volume by a member of this school without finding therein caricatures of some acquaintance—all unfavourably drawn and derided not with frank wit or invective or mockery or Rabelaisian laughter, but with that squeaky suburban chuckle which is characteristic of an age of eunuchs. And if they are momentarily at a loss for friends to distort, they indulge in airing their own private sensations—a mild form of exhibitionism—with a shamelessness that reminds one of nothing so much as a female dog. Questionable taste! It seems to me that even such a writing man should have some manners, some reserve, though his mentality be of the non-human order and his ethos immeasurably inferior to that of the butcher or grocer; that if he cannot respect his neighbours, he ought at least to respect himself. But he has forgotten what self-respect means; everything is grist to his mill—including himself; and it is no use appealing to his better nature, since he has no nature at all; he is a cloaca maxima for the discharge of objectionable personalities.

The ridiculous compilation known as "Who's Who" has done a good deal towards fostering this unhealthy interest in the affairs of other people. That Sir Edmund Gosse happens to write good books is no reason why the public should be informed how much he pays his scullery-maid; and what on earth does it matter to any one, save himself and his friends, what his favourite indoor amusements are—whether he prefers bridge to baccarat, or ping-pong to dominoes? Vastly offensive, this prying and rapacious meddlesomeness. But I fear we shall never have a revulsion of feeling against such snobbishly genteel hankerings. They are part of that universal levelling-down process for which the education-of-people-who-ought-never-to-be-educated is responsible.

Certainly it is an anomalous state of affairs that respectable folk should be at the mercy of a band of dirt-throwers who are coining money at their expense; it suggests that in such matters of literary ethics we might do worse than return to the more gentlemanlike standard of the Victorians, though we shall obviously never have real manners, either in literature or in society, until duelling becomes popular again. Duelling would soon put an end to these caddish arts and to several other inconveniences as well; there would be no more low-class allusions to living people in novels or newspapers or memoirs if their authors realised that by next morning they might have half a yard of cold steel in their gizzards.

The friendship of one intelligent man is better than that of all the unintelligent.

ἑνὸς φιλίη ξυνετοῦ κρέσσων ἀξυνέτων πάντων.

There are two opinions which can be put forward about it, of which either may be true, since they both fit the faith. When I say that either may be true, I mean whichever of them was intended by the writer. When we are searching the scriptures, we may of course understand them in a way in which the writer perhaps did not; but what we should never do is understand them in a way which does not square with the rule of faith, with the rule of truth, with the rule of piety. So I am offering you both opinions. There may be yet a third which escapes me. Anyway, of these two propositions, choose whichever you like.

duae autem sunt sententiae, quae hinc proferri possunt, quarum quaelibet vera sit, ambae secundum fidem sunt. quod dixi, quaenam earum vera sit, hoc dixi, quidnam eorum senserit qui scripsit. nam quando nos inquirentes scripturas sentimus aliquid quod scriptor forte non sensit, non tamen hoc sentire debemus, quod abhorreat a regula fidei, a regula veritatis, a regula pietatis. ergo ambas sententias propono. sit fortassis et tertia quae me latet. ex his autem duabus propositis, eligite quam volueritis.

The chief impression in reading Homer is freshness. Whether illusion or not, this is the classic quality. 3000 years old and still fresh.

Here we sit, huddled together like cattle in a pen, each one duly labelled as to his potential worth to the community, and controlled by a horde of guardians so increasingly large that the shepherds will presently outnumber the sheep. Blissful sight! What is everybody doing? A person who has tangled himself into so ignoble a knot as to think our present state of affairs a desirable, or respectable, or endurable one, who feels thoroughly at home among the malodorous crowd and bows the head to all its humiliating extortions and conventions—what shall be done to such a product of civilisation? Pitch him into the Empty Quarter! Deserts have their uses. The desert may yet make a man of him.

It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs.

οἰκότα μέν νυν βουλευομένοισι ἀνθρώποισι ὡς τὸ ἐπίπαν ἐθέλει γίνεσθαι· μὴ δὲ οἰκότα βουλευομένοισι οὐκ ἐθέλει οὐδὲ ὁ θεὸς προσχωρέειν πρὸς τὰς ἀνθρωπηίας γνώμας.

ὡς τὸ ἐπίπαν 'as a general rule'. The full sentence is οἰκότα βουλευομένοισι οἰκότα ἐθέλει γίνεσθαι ‘to reasonable plans reasonable success usually comes'. ἐθέλει 'is wont', cp. 7, 157 τῷ εὖ βουλευθέντι πρήγματι τελευτὴ ὡς τὸ ἐπίπαν χρηστὴ ἐθέλει ἐπιγίνεσθαι.

οὐδὲ ὁ θεὸς.....γνώμας 'but when men counsel ill heaven itself is not wont either to further human designs'.

When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we'd be discussing them three centuries later.

Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have been translated, transcribed, discussed and debated at length.

But according to a philosopher of language and mathematics, we might have been interpreting Newton's precise wording of his first law of motion slightly wrong all along.

Virginia Tech philosopher Daniel Hoek wanted to "set the record straight" after discovering what he describes as a "clumsy mistranslation" in the original 1729 English translation of Newton's Latin Principia.

Labels: typographical and other errors

The world is growing too narrow; congested, and crammed with unpleasantness and deified "masses"; we gasp for fresh air; more deserts, fewer men.

Industrialism has been raised to a bad eminence. We do well to take note of certain venerable strains in our being that call for a different environment; our teachers should recognise the inspirational value of self-communion in lonely places. There is in most of us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man ponder, or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow-creatures does not provide. The obscure anti-social or disruptive instinct to be alone, which haunts us chiefly in youth, should not be thwarted as it is; for solitude has a refining and tonic influence; there we wrestle with our thoughts and set them in order; there we nurture the imagination and sow the seeds of character. A person who hears nothing of that "subtle harmony" because his ears are belaboured day and night by the clash of other men's voices will never attain to any remarkable depth or insight. Now those places where the spirit loves to dwell are made to minister to the wants of an ever-increasing humanity, the nymphs are driven from the woodlands, and deserts irrigated, and everything scientifically explored and exploited.

When the Sidonian sophist¹ was once showing his powers at Athens, and was voicing his own praise to the effect that he was acquainted with all philosophy—but I may as well cite his very words: "If Aristotle calls me to the Lyceum, I shall go with him; if Plato calls me to the Academy, I shall come; if Zeno calls, I shall spend my time in the Stoa; if Pythagoras calls, I shall hold my tongue."² Well, Demonax arose in the midst of the audience and said: "Ho" (addressing him by name), "Pythagoras is calling you!"

¹Otherwise unknown.
² Alluding to the Pythagorean vow of silence.

Τοῦ δὲ Σιδωνίου ποτὲ σοφιστοῦ Ἀθήνησιν εὐδοκιμοῦντος καὶ λέγοντος ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ ἔπαινόν τινα τοιοῦτον, ὅτι πάσης φιλοσοφίας πεπείραται—οὐ χεῖρον δὲ αὐτὰ εἰπεῖν ἃ ἔλεγεν· Ἐὰν Ἀριστοτέλης με καλῇ ἐπὶ τὸ Λύκειον, ἕψομαι· ἂν Πλάτων ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀκαδημίαν, ἀφίξομαι· ἂν Ζήνων, ἐν τῇ Ποικίλῃ διατρίψω· ἂν Πυθαγόρας καλῇ, σιωπήσομαι. ἀναστὰς οὖν ἐκ μέσων τῶν ἀκροωμένων, Οὗτος, ἔφη προσειπὼν τὸ ὄνομα, καλεῖ σε Πυθαγόρας.

[Passennius] Paulus was giving a public reading and began by saying "You bid me, Priscus———" at which Javolenus Priscus, who was present as a great friend of Paulus, exclaimed "Indeed I don't!" You can imagine the laughter and witticisms which greeted this remark.

Is cum recitaret, ita coepit dicere: 'Prisce, iubes…'. Ad hoc Iavolenus Priscus (aderat enim ut Paulo amicissimus): 'Ego vero non iubeo.' Cogita qui risus hominum, qui ioci.

And isn't he the source of Agyrrhius' happy farts?

Ἀγύρριος δ᾿ οὐχὶ διὰ τοῦτον πέρδεται;

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Why, those who have called Diogenes [Laertius] a miserable compiler or an unqualified ass have done him too much honor. D. did not rise even to the dignity of being a copyist; he merely hired other people to copy for him, and on the strength of this literary activity took to himself the glory of authorship. In those days a man bought books as one buys wines, and decanted them as one decants wines, not without mixing vintages and blending manufactures. It was a common trick of the times to take what we should call text-books or manuals, add, cut out, change, and then publish them again under new titles as new books. Galen complains of it as Tertullian complains of it, and how justifiable these complaints were is shown by specimens of this doctoring process taken from the Laertian life of Plato, and from that part of book X which forms the setting of the Third Moral Epistle of Epicurus. In the latter case our friend, whom we will continue to call Laertius, sent to the shop a lot of 'copy,' consisting of a number of 'books' on the history of philosophy. This work belonged to a much earlier period, say to the time of Nero or the Flavii, and was addressed to some Neronian blue-stocking like Pamphila or to some of the concumbentes Graece of Juvenal. Together with this work were sent four compositions by Epicurus himself, and also a scholarly epitome of the Duties of the Sage according to Epicurus. The wild medley that ensued is what we have in our texts. But let us forgive Diogenes for the sake of the precious letters of Epicurus, without which we should be debarred from access to the esoteric discipline of the school.

For we must not conduct scientific investigation by means of empty assumptions and arbitrary principles, but follow the lead of phenomena: for our life has not now any place for irrational belief and groundless imaginings, but we must live free from trouble.

οὐ γὰρ κατὰ ἀξιώματα κενὰ καὶ νομοθεσίας φυσιολογητέον, ἀλλ ̓ ὡς τὰ φαινόμενα ἐκκαλεῖται· οὐ γὰρ ἤδη ἀλογίας καὶ κενῆς δόξης ὁ βίος ἡμῶν ἔχει χρείαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἀθορύβως ἡμᾶς ζῆν.

If a reader cannot understand a masterpiece solely by looking at it or reading it or hearing it, no amount of philology or of biographical data will help him. There is a legitimate art of biography, and were it not for the unfortunate occurrence of Ste-Beuves and their followers this art might be kept properly in its own territory. Second-rate minds of this type cannot endure the idea of any one's having a more interesting mentality than their own; they must be for ever proving that the "great author" had wash lists, tonsilitis, and carpet-slippers. The actual production of the work of art is usually the one thing which distinguishes its maker from let us say six dozen other old gentlemen with checquered waistcoats, and the only possible means for proving his temperamental and cerebral difference. But the work itself may give the skilled reader a fairly good idea of the author, and one is not in the least surprised to find that Flaubert when over fifty, impoverished himself to save a nephew-in-law from bankruptcy. It is the kind of thing a man who wrote as Flaubert wrote, would do, and René Descharmes in his Autour de Bouvard et Pécuchet (Librairie de France; 99, Bd. Raspail) has treated a subject of both literary and biographic interest, without falling into the Ste-Beuvian slough. Flaubert's last book is unfinished, and such knowledge as can be gathered regarding his state of mind while at work on it, aids in the more or less useless but by no means uninteresting conjecture as to how he would have completed it. Descharmes shows that the actions ascribed to the protagonists would have filled up at least thirty years, and this gives us the measure of how little Flaubert had revised or pulled together his separate chapters. He presumably intended his old chaps to remain at some more uniform age. Descharmes has examined their alleged reading, Amoros' gymnastics, Feinaigle's mnemotechnic, et cetera, and shows that Flaubert in no way exaggerated the probable effects of the diet.

Perhaps the chief use of such a book as Descharmes' is that it sends one back to the text, that series of island paragraphs marvellously clear and condensed. More and more we come to consider Flaubert as the great tragic writer, not the vaunted and perfect stylist. I mean that he is the tragedian of democracy, of modernity. We are not, most of us, faced with the problem of whether or no we should kill General Pershing in his bath; at most an undignified puerile desire to kick Lloyd or Woodrow dans le derrière, follows the morning editorial. More than Dostoevsky, Flaubert presents the inevitable and quotidian. A tragedy that can be avoided by a single flash of common sense, or by a momentary outbreak of the Dickensian Christmas spirit, is good only for one reading. Flaubert with his "generalization," his avoidance of the anecdotal, and accidental, has in each of his four works on temporary subjects given everyman; nothing that any character will do will alter his case; the whole thing is there and stays as long as human limitations are human limitations.

I doubt if this impression is strengthened by reading the biography of the ten years after 1870, the years during which Bouvard was written. Civilization, as Flaubert had known it, appeared to be foundering; Gautier died, as Flaubert wrote, "suffocated by modern stupidity," and Flaubert thinking of Gautier feels "as if a tide of filth" were rising around him and submerging him. This tide of immondices must be considered as messy thought, general muddle. "We pay for the long deceit in which we have lived, everything was false, false army, false politics, and false credit." "The present is abominable, and the future ferocious." So run the phrases of his correspondence.

It is better to be praised by another than by oneself.

βέλτερον ὑφ᾿ ἑτέρου ἢ ὑφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ ἐπαινέεσθαι.

• Delusions of Grandeur
• Praise of Ourselves
• Self-Praise

Great Jupiter, you save me, prosper my property,
and bring me huge and lavish prosperity,
praise, profit, pleasure, laughter, liveliness, and leisure,
a parade of dishes, provisions, parties for drinking, fullness, joy.

Iuppiter supreme, servas me measque auges opes,
maximas opimitates opiparasque offers mihi,
laudem, lucrum, ludum, iocum, festivitatem, ferias,
pompam, penum, potationes. saturitatem, gaudium.

Jupiter Supreme, you are my guardian and prosperer,
You have blessed me with superbly super sumptuosities,
Praise and profit, jokes and fun — a festival of feasting full,
Pastry on parade, potations — all the joys of partying.

Faced with restrictions and obstacles to his good intentions he encountered at court and in political circles, Goethe sighed over the discrepancy between wishing and achieving in his letter of March 6, 1780 to his Weimar friend, Carl F. von Knebel: "In youth one is confident that one can build palaces for humanity and when it comes to it, one has one's hands full to clear out their dung."

In der Jugend traut man sich zu daß man den Menschen Palläste bauen könne und wenn's um und an kömmt so hat man alle Hände voll zu thun um ihren Mist beiseite bringen zu können.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Don't picture to yourself some great big beautiful person. God is not confined in human shape. He is not contained in a place, he is not bounded by space. Don't picture God to yourself as made of gold. God is not that. God himself made the gold you want to make God of, and feeble stuff it is, being on earth. Don't put it to yourself that God is anything like what you see in the sky, whether sun or moon or stars or anything that shines and glitters in the sky. God is not that.

Non tibi facias hominem aliquem grandem et pulchrum: non circumscribitur humana forma Deus; non continetur loco, non tenetur spatio. Non tibi facias quasi aureum Deum: non hoc est Deus. Nam aurum, unde tibi vis facere Deum, Deus ipse fecit; et hoc infirmum, quia in terra. Non tibi proponas, quia aliquid tale est Deus, quale vides in coelo, vel lunam, vel solem, vel sidera vel quidquid fulget et splendet in coelo: non hoc est Deus.

... Philistides the grammarian wasted away and died of depression and distress at the loss of his books in the fire ...

... Φιλι<στ>ίδης μὲν ὁ γραμματικός, ἀπολομένων αὐτῷ τῶν βιβλίων κατὰ <τὴν> πυρκαϊάν, ἀπὸ δυσθυμίας καὶ λύπης διεφθάρη συντακείς ...

Let each one sweep in front of his own door,
And clean is each quarter of the city.
Let each one con his own lesson,
So will it stand well in the town council.

Ein jeder kehre vor seiner Thür,
Und rein ist jedes Stadtquartier.
Ein jeder übe sein' Lektion,
So wird es gut im Rate stohn.

... im Frieden der Patriotismus eigentlich nur darin besteht, daß jeder vor seiner Thüre kehre, seines Amtes warte, auch seine Lection lerne, damit es wohl im Hause stehe ...

The things needed by the body are available to all without toil and trouble. But the things which require toil and trouble and which make life disagreeable are not desired by the body but by the ill-constitution of the mind.

ὧν τὸ σκῆνος χρῄζει, πᾶσι πάρεστιν εὐμαρέως ἄτερ μόχθου καὶ ταλαιπωρίης· ὁκόσα δὲ μόχθου καὶ ταλαιπωρίης χρῄζει καὶ βίον ἀλγύνει, τούτων οὐκ ἱμείρεται τὸ σκῆνος, ἀλλ᾿ ἡ τῆς γνώμης κακοθιγίη.

All changes are very dangerous, and especially do those in governments work the greatest and most numerous evils to both individuals and states. Sensible men, therefore, choose to remain under the same forms continually, even if they be not the best, rather than by changing, now to one, now to another, to be continually unsettled.

πᾶσαι μὲν γὰρ μεταβολαὶ σφαλερώταταί εἰσι, μάλιστα δὲ αἱ ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις πλεῖστα δὴ καὶ μέγιστα καὶ ἰδιώτας καὶ πόλεις βλάπτουσι. διὸ οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεί, κἂν μὴ βέλτιστα ᾖ, ἀξιοῦσιν ἐμμένειν ἢ μεταλαμβάνοντες ἄλλοτε ἄλλα ἀεὶ πλανᾶσθαι.

But by and large there must have been very few Christians in the army when Constan­tine decided to paint the ☧ monogram on the shields of his soldiers before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The barbarians were still pagan, and so were the bulk of the peasantry, especially in the favourite recruiting grounds of the army, Gaul and Illyricum. We have, in fact, a little piece of evidence that the army which two years later, under the protection of the labarum, fought and won the war against Licinius, which was in Con­stantine’s propaganda a crusade against a pagan tyrant, was still pagan. A curious law in the Theodosian Code has preserved the acclamations of the veterans discharged after the victory. ‘Auguste Constantine, dei te nobis servent’ is what they shouted, and the offensive words were not emended to ‘Deus te nobis servet’ until Justinian re-edited the law for insertion in his Code.<sup>2

2</sup> Cod. Theod. VII.xx.2 ( = Cod. Just. XII.xlvi.1); for the date see Seeck, Regesten, p. 176.

Why do you teach me the rules and laws of the rhetoricians? What good to me are all these useless speeches? Teach me rather how to drink the gentle draught of Lyaeus, how to play with golden Aphrodite.

    τί με τοὺς νόμους διδάσκεις
καὶ ῥητόρων ἀνάγκας;
τί δέ μοι λόγων τοσούτων
τῶν μηδὲν ὠφελούντων;
    μᾶλλον δίδασκε πίνειν        5
ἁπαλὸν πῶμα Λυαίου,
μᾶλλον δίδασκε παίζειν
μετὰ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης.

Why prate to me of critic rules,
And jargon of the jangling schools?
Your learned dogmas, prithee, spare,
They're useless all—not worth my care.
I'll hear thee gladly, canst thou tell
The happy art of living well;
How best to mix the sparkling wine,
To make the mellow draught divine;
How best to please the lovely fair,
For this indeed is worth my care.

[1] Marcius came to realize that it is not enough for men who desire peace to refrain from injuring others, and that inoffensiveness without aggressiveness is not a means of safety, but the more one strives after peace the more vulnerable does one become to the mass of mankind; and he accordingly changed his policy. He saw that the desire for quiet is not effective as a safeguard unless accompanied by equipment for war; he perceived also that the satisfactions of a policy of inoffensiveness very quickly and easily ruin those who carry it too far. [2] For this reason he concluded that war afforded at once a more honourable and secure guaranty of peace, both materially and morally; and so whatever he was unable to obtain from the Latins with their consent, and without injuring them, he took away against their will by force of arms.

[1] ὅτι συνεὶς ὁ Μάρκιος ὡς τοῖς βουλομένοις εἰρηνεῖν οὐκ ἐξαρκεῖ τὸ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν, οὐδέ ἐστι τὸ ἄπραγμον ἄνευ τοῦ δραστηρίου σωτήριον, ἀλλ᾽ ὅσῳ τις αὐτοῦ ὀριγνᾶται, εὐεπιθετώτερος τοῖς πολλοῖς γίγνεται, μετεβάλετο: οὔτε γὰρ τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἡσυχίας ἰσχυρὸν πρὸς φυλακὴν ἄνευ τῶν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον παρασκευῶν ἑώρα ὄν, καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀπραγμοσύνης τάχιστα καὶ ῥᾷστα τοῖς πέρα τοῦ καιροῦ σπουδάζουσιν αὐτὴν ἀπολλύμενον ᾐσθάνετο. [2] καὶ διὰ ταῦτα καὶ καλλίω καὶ ἀσφαλεστέραν καὶ παρασκευὴν καὶ φροντίδα τῆς εἰρήνης τὸν πόλεμον νομίσας εἶναι, πάνθ᾽ ὅσα παρ᾽ ἑκόντων τῶν Λατίνων μηδέν σφας ἀδικῶν οὐκ ἠδυνήθη κομίσασθαι, παρὰ ἀκόντων στρατεύσας ἀπέλαβεν.

It is for us, then, in my opinion, to make every effort that we may never fall into the power of the barbarians, but that, if we can accomplish it, they may rather fall into our power.

ἡμῖν δέ γε οἶμαι πάντα ποιητέα ὡς μήποτε ἐπὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις γενώμεθα, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἢν δυνώμεθα ἐκεῖνοι ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν.

194 μιν We might at first hearing take this to refer to Laertes, the last person mentioned. But its true referent, which is also that of the adj. ἐμπιδήμιον in agreement, is deliberately held over until the next line (see 195 n.).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Forward this way, forward, forward, men of the place!
The city, my city, is being destroyed by violence!
Forward this way, I beg!

πρόβαθ᾽ ὧδε, βᾶτε βᾶτ᾽, ἔντοποι·
πόλις ἐναίρεται, πόλις ἐμά, σθένει·
πρόβαθ᾽ ὧδέ μοι.

• Calvert Watkins, "An Indo-European Construction in Greek and Latin," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 (1966) 115-119
• Robert Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism: A Reader (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 77-85
• Robert Renehan, Studies in Greek Texts: Critical Observations to Homer, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes and other Authors (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 11-27
• James Noel Adams, "Iteration of Compound Verb with Simplex in Latin Prose," Eikasmos 3 (1992) 295-298
• James Diggle, Euripidea: Collected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 84, n. 64 (on Euripides' Suppliant Women 811-812)
• Jeffrey Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; rpt. 2001), pp. 438-443

Now there is nothing that irritates me more than when people torment each other, especially when young people in the prime of their lives, who should be open to all joys, spoil the few good days they have with a dour mien and only find out too late that they have wasted something irretrievable.

Nun verdrießt mich nichts mehr, als wenn die Menschen einander plagen, am meisten, wenn junge Leute in der Blüte des Lebens, da sie am offensten für alle Freuden sein könnten, einander die paar guten Tage mit Fratzen verderben, und nur erst zu spät das Unersetzliche ihrer Verschwendung einsehen.

This is why the thought of Epicurus is foolish, who claims that the recalling of former goods mitigates present evils.

unde stulta Epicuri sententia est, qui asserit recordatione praeteritorum bonorum mala praesentia mitigari.

For when we are beset by distresses, we do not experience in our spirit the former pleasures in accordance with the error of Epicurus.

eo quod in angustiis constituti nequaquam uoluptatibus pristinis iuxta errorem Epicuri animo perfruantur.

• Marc Adriaen, ed., Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam Libri I-XI (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXXIII), p. 448
• Marc Adriaen, ed., Jerome, Commentariorum in Esaiam Libri XII-XVIII (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXXIII A), p. 760

Yes, and these too boast of being utterly brave, and say that they are afraid of absolutely nothing. That's because they consider that God doesn't care a snap of the fingers for human affairs, and think that there is no life to come later on, once this one is finished with. And if any adversity overtakes them in this life, they think they are fortified against it in this way, that while they cannot hold onto the pleasures of the body in the body itself, they can, all the same, think about them with the mind, and by gratifying themselves with such thoughts can preserve the bliss of bodily pleasure even against the assaults of bodily pain. Isn't love casting out fear with them too? But it's the love of the most sordid pleasure, or rather the love of the most shameful unsubstantially; because when the irruption of pain has excluded pleasure itself from the members of the body, it will remain in the mind through the deceptive and unsubstantial image of itself. And this unsubstantiality is loved so intensely, that when the unsubstantial man embraces it with all the energy of his heart, even the sharpest pain is soothed.

nam et hi fortissimos se iactant et nihil omnino timere se dicunt, quia nec quidquam deum res humanas curare arbitrantur et consumpta ista uita nullam postea credunt futuram, et si quid eis aduersitatis in hac ipsa contingit, eo se munitos existimant, quia corporis uoluptatem, cum eam in ipso corpore tenere non possunt, possunt tamen animo cogitare et ea cogitatione sese oblectando corporalis uoluptatis beatitudinem etiam contra corporalis doloris impetum custodire. numquid non et apud istos dilectio foras mittit timorem? sed dilectio sordidissimae uoluptatis, immo dilectio turpissimae uanitatis. nam cum ipsam uoluptatem de membris corporis irruens dolor excluserit, per falsam eius imaginem in animo uanitas remanebit. quae uanitas tantum amatur, ut cum eam uanus homo totis uiribus cordis amplectitur, etiam doloris saeuitia mitigetur.

The pleasant recollection of the past is a traditional Epicurean technique of achieving contentment (Epic. Ep. Men. 122; Sent. Vat. 35, 55, 75; frs. 213, 436, 437 Usener), whose practical usefulness is overtly acknowledged by Seneca at Ben. 3.4.

I will depart from this large and populous city to a sparsely inhabited and small one, in which we all know each other, and who our parents are, and what sort of upbringing and property and character and way of life we have.

ἀπαλλάξομαι τῆς μεγάλης τῆσδε καὶ πολυανθρώπου πόλεως εἰς τὴν ὀλιγάνθρωπόν τε καὶ σμικρὰν, ἐν ᾖ πάντες ἴσμεν ἀλλήλους ἐκ τίνων τε γεγόναμεν ὅπως τε παιδείας ἔχομεν καὶ κτήσεως καὶ τρόπου καὶ βίου.

I shall leave this great and populous city for that small town where we all know one another, our parentage, our education, wealth and way of life.

They attempted to take our city not only in the time of truce but also at a sacrosanct festival season. We were within our rights to take our vengeance on them, in accordance with the universally accepted law that there is no impiety in defending against an enemy who attacks...

πόλιν γὰρ αὐτοὺς τὴν ἡμετέραν καταλαμβάνοντας ἐν σπονδαῖς καὶ προσέτι ἱερομηνίᾳ ὀρθῶς τε ἐτιμωρησάμεθα κατὰ τὸν πᾶσι νόμον καθεστῶτα, τὸν ἐπιόντα πολέμιον ὅσιον εἶναι ἀμύνεσθαι...

The self-praiser soon finds a mocker.

qui se ipse laudat cito derisorem invenit.

• Praise of Ourselves
• Self-Praise

It is one of the grotesque faults of our specialised culture that one is disgraced if one ignores the latest German dissertation, but can easily get away without knowledge of St. Augustine or Machiavelli.

But I hold my own mind and think apart from other men.

δίχα δ᾽ ἄλλων μονόφρων εἰ-
μί.

Silly to grumble about misfortune when the fault's your own.

stultum est queri de adversis, ubi culpa est tua.

Furthermore, [Pierre] Hadot's standards for public comportment were as unflinching as were those of any late antique man. He had been present when the future Pope John XXIII was papal nuncio in Paris and was solemnly entertained at Saint-Sulpice. A pious layman who was serving at table poured the nuncio's wine from the wrong side. The nuncio exploded at the gaffe. Looking back to this fit of rage, Hadot concluded that John XXIII, though now beatified, may not have been a saint by ancient standards.¹⁰

10. Hadot, La philosophie comme manière de vivre, 188.

After a long and happy lunch, he turned to me and said, "You know, Professor Brown, the more I study the ancient philosophers, the less Christianity means to me."

One man they hate and another they love.

ἄλλον κ᾽ ἐχθαίρῃσι βροτῶν, ἄλλον κε φιλοίη.

And yet we have forgotten how to read: how to pause, liberate ourselves from our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and originality, in order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to us. This, too, is a spiritual exercise, and one of the most difficult.

[1] And there came into them some few deserters out of Arcadia, men that lacked sustenance and would be employed. And the Persians brought them into the king's presence, and enquired concerning the Greeks, to know what they did. And there was one Persian before all the rest who so demanded of them.

[2] And they told him that the Greeks kept the festival at Olympia and beheld contests of strong men and of horses. And he asked what the prize was for which they contended; and they told him of the crown which is given from the olive-tree. Then Tritantæchmes the son of Artabanus spake a most noble judgement, yet was esteemed base in the king's sight;

[1] for when he heard that the prize was a crown and not money, he could not endure to hold his peace but said openly: Alas, Mardonius, what manner of men hast thou brought us to fight against, who contend not for money, but for honour.

[1] ἧκον δέ σφι αὐτόμολοι ἄνδρες ἀπ᾽ Ἀρκαδίης ὀλίγοι τινές, βίου τε δεόμενοι καὶ ἐνεργοὶ βουλόμενοι εἶναι. ἄγοντες δὲ τούτους ἐς ὄψιν τὴν βασιλέος ἐπυνθάνοντο οἱ Πέρσαι περὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τί ποιέοιεν· εἷς δέ τις πρὸ πάντων ἦν ὁ εἰρωτῶν αὐτοὺς ταῦτα.

[2] οἳ δέ σφι ἔλεγον ὡς Ὀλύμπια ἄγουσι καὶ θεωρέοιεν ἀγῶνα γυμνικὸν καὶ ἱππικόν. ὁ δὲ ἐπείρετο ὅ τι τὸ ἄεθλον εἴη σφι κείμενον περὶ ὅτευ ἀγωνίζονται· οἳ δ᾽ εἶπον τῆς ἐλαίης τὸν διδόμενον στέφανον. ἐνθαῦτα εἴπας γνώμην γενναιοτάτην Τριτανταίχμης ὁ Ἀρταβάνου δειλίην ὦφλε πρὸς βασιλέος.

[3] πυνθανόμενος γὰρ τὸ ἄεθλον ἐὸν στέφανον ἀλλ᾽ οὐ χρήματα, οὔτε ἠνέσχετο σιγῶν εἶπέ τε ἐς πάντας τάδε· 'παπαῖ Μαρδόνιε, κοίους ἐπ᾽ ἄνδρας ἤγαγες μαχησομένους ἡμέας, οἳ οὐ περὶ χρημάτων τὸν ἀγῶνα ποιεῦνται ἀλλὰ περὶ ἀρετῆς.'

[20] Fellow-citizens, why are you driving us out of the city? Why do you want to kill us? We have never done you any harm. We have shared with you in the most holy religious services, in sacrifices and in splendid festivals; we have joined in dances with you, gone to school with you and fought in the army with you, braving together with you the dangers of land and sea in defence of our common safety and freedom.

[21] In the name of the gods of our fathers and mothers, of the bonds of kinship and marriage and friendship, which are shared by so many of us on both sides, I beg you to feel some shame in front of gods and men and to give up this sin against your fatherland.

[20] ἄνδρες πολῖται, τί ἡμᾶς ἐξελαύνετε; τί ἀποκτεῖναι βούλεσθε; ἡμεῖς γὰρ ὑμᾶς κακὸν μὲν οὐδὲν πώποτε ἐποιήσαμεν, μετεσχήκαμεν δὲ ὑμῖν καὶ ἱερῶν τῶν σεμνοτάτων καὶ θυσιῶν καὶ ἑορτῶν τῶν καλλίστων, καὶ συγχορευταὶ καὶ συμφοιτηταὶ γεγενήμεθα καὶ συστρατιῶται, καὶ πολλὰ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν κεκινδυνεύκαμεν καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ὑπὲρ τῆς κοινῆς ἀμφοτέρων ἡμῶν σωτηρίας τε καὶ ἐλευθερίας.

[21] πρὸς θεῶν πατρῴων καὶ μητρῴων καὶ συγγενείας καὶ κηδεστίας καὶ ἑταιρίας, πάντων γὰρ τούτων πολλοὶ κοινωνοῦμεν ἀλλήλοις, αἰδούμενοι καὶ θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους παύσασθε ἁμαρτάνοντες εἰς τὴν πατρίδα.

Oh, the troubles of mortals, and the hated diseases.

ὦ κακὰ θνητῶν στυγεραί τε νόσοι.

The archaeologist's spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:—
the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.

Where freedom has fallen, none dare freely speak.

ubi libertas cecidit, audet libere nemo loqui.

cecidit Haupt: cadit T

I know not how it is, but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general. They are like persons who have had a very weighty and impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live.

For hateful, withering old age is pickling us.

τὸ γὰρ ἀπεχθόμενον γῆρας ἁμὲ μαραῖνον ταριχεύει.

Spiritual experience is poured into a complex śāstric text, and to understand it we must turn primarily to textual tools or, to use a word perhaps no longer very popular in the contemporary American academy, to philology. Years ago, invited to deliver an Infinity Lecture at the University of Hawaii, I received a warning from my host, Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti, about not being too philological in my exposition (“You must understand, we are in a Philosophy Department”). The next day I started my lecture with a praise of philology, understood in the highest sense as a discipline that, by using paleographic, linguistic, historical, and hermeneutic tools, aims at establishing and understanding a text, (re-)placing it within its contemporary cultural parameters. As a rhetorical device to counteract the common identification of philology with something very boring, old, dusty, ugly, etc., I asked the audience whether they had ever seen the so-called Primavera (Spring) by Botticelli. Well, recent studies have shown that that beautiful and sensual young girl surrounded by flowers in the center of the painting in actual fact represents Philologia—the whole scene coming from Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Mercurii and Philologiae, a work very highly praised at the court of Lorenzo il Magnifico. In it, we meet Apollo giving advice to his brother Mercury, tired at last of his bachelor status: “Leave Goddesses aside and marry Philologia instead; she is human, agreed, but among humans she is the closest to the stars.”

I am well aware that making emendations and corrections to manuscripts is a widespread practice nowadays, perhaps even too widespread. Our ancestors aptly called the highest case of textual criticism divinatio. However, the question is “Can everybody afford divinationes?” Behind any bold emendation lies the unspoken belief: “If I cannot understand a passage, it is because the passage is corrupt.” A very risky statement, indeed . . . I remember one of my students, many years ago, whose translation into Italian of the Spandapradīpikā by Bhāgavata Utpala contained an impressive amount of corrections to the edited text: whenever he did not understand the text (which happened frequently due to his being a rather poor Sanskritist) he corrected the not-always-easy text to adapt it to his imperfect understanding. Unflinching self-consciousness and self-criticism—in other words a precise awareness of his limits—would be of substantial help to the emendor by making him at least more cautious in his job.

I saw https://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2023/08/too-late.html (digging a well after you're thirsty) and was reminded of a similar proverb in Sanskrit that imagines something even more absurd: when a house is burning down, it's too late to dig a well. :-)

A poem/epigram by Bhartṛhari uses this idea in its last line. As translated by Ryder (fairly close, with the added title being a connection made by him):

IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH

While life is vigorous and bright,
        While sickness comes not, nor decay,
While all your powers are at their height,
        While yet old age is far away,
Then, wise man, let your thoughts be turning
        To heaven's hopes and fears of hell;
For when the house is fired and burning,
        It is too late to dig a well.

yāvat svastham idaṃ śarīram arujaṃ yāvac ca dūre jarā
yāvac cendriya-śaktir apratihatā yāvat kṣayo nāyuṣaḥ |
ātma-śreyasi tāvad eva viduṣā kāryaḥ prayatno mahān
sandīpte bhavane tu kūpa-khananaṃ pratyudyamaḥ kīdṛśaḥ ||

Some more translations here: https://shreevatsa.net/bhartrhari/web/K194.html

He felt a hand on his arm. Ferdy O'Donnell.

"Would you like me to walk a bit of the way with you, Owen?"

"And why should you wish to do that?" MacCarthy asked, drawing his arm free. "I know the way. We will construe Virgil these long summer evenings, Ferdy. I am a very fine scholar."

"I know that, Owen."

"You are not. You have that low, seminary Latin. You will never see how meaning curls and curves through a line. Still, we must do our best for you. Better than nothing, Ferdy. Better than nothing."

"Much better," O'Donnell said, standing with him at the open door.

"You did not quarrel with those fellows, did you?"

"Which of them deserves to quarrel with me? They are a low lot, Ferdy, a low lot. You must hold yourself apart from that lot, now mind that. Remember Virgil. That lot in there, Virgil wouldn't have given them the sweat off his balls."

Oh, it's an awful business—waiting till thirst has you by the throat before you dig your well!

                                                  miserum est opus
igitur demum fodere puteum, ubi sitis faucis tenet.

The most eminent of his pupils was Benjamin Disraeli, who, though never in the highest form, read a considerable amount of Latin and Greek while at the school.³ If his knowledge of the languages was somewhat superficial, this was to be ascribed to his character rather than to Cogan's teaching. 'I don't like Disraeli,' said Cogan, 'I could never get him to understand the subjunctive.'

3 Monypenny, Life of Disraeli, I, p. 24 f.

Oh! joy, joy! no more helmet, no more cheese nor onions!³ No, I have no passion for battles; what I love is to drink with good comrades in the corner by the fire when good dry wood, cut in the height of the summer, is crackling; it is to cook pease on the coals and beechnuts among the embers, it is to kiss our pretty Thracian⁴ while my wife is at the bath.

³ This was the soldier's usual ration when on duty.
⁴ Slaves often bore the name of the country of their birth.

ἥδομαί γ᾽ ἥδομαι
κράνους ἀπηλλαγμένος
τυροῦ τε καὶ κρομμύων.
οὐ γὰρ φιληδῶ μάχαις,        1130
ἀλλὰ πρὸς πῦρ διέλκων μετ᾿ ἀνδρῶν ἑταίρῶν φίλων,
ἐκκέας τῶν ξύλων ἅττ᾿ ἂν ᾖ δανότατα τοῦ θέρους
ἐκπεπρεμνισμένα,        1135
κἀνθρακίζων τοὐρεβίνθου τήν τε φηγὸν ἐμπυρεύων,
χἄμα τὴν Θρᾷτταν κυνῶν
τῆς γυναικὸς λουμένης.

John [Dillon] had played a decisive role in securing a joint appointment for me in classics as well as in history. We would meet in his house on Euclid Street to discuss the cosmos of later Platonism. It was an all-embracing system that emanated, with benign inevitability, from the Wholly One—the pantelôs hen. (John's wife, Jean, would always refer irreverently to this Supreme Being, who plainly occupied a large space in the minds of John and his philosophical friends, as "the Pantyhose Hen.")

I love the truth, I want to be told the truth; I hate a liar.

ego verum amo, verum volo dici mi: mendacem odi.

It would not have been entirely unprecedented for the senate to authorise a candidate to stand for the consulship in absentia, and Caesar requested this exemption for himself . But Cato talked out the whole of the last day on which the matter could be discussed, so that no permission was given. Perhaps he invented the institution of the filibuster: certainly he slammed the door upon all hopes of the Republic and Caesar ever again co-operating in harmony.

The story goes that when Ronald Knox was six years old, he was walking on the beach one day with his seven-year-old brother, Wilfred. Gazing out upon the briny deep, Wilfred felt a philological stirring in his soul. He turned to Ronald and wondered aloud, “Ronnie, do you consider that Xenophon’s men cried ‘θάλαττα’ [thalatta, Attic dialect form for “sea”] or ‘θάλασσα’ [thalassa, non-Athenian form]?” Young Ronnie replied, in impeccably r-less English: “The latter.”

True story? No, probably not, but it’s at least ben trovato for the boy who would grow up to be dubbed “the wittiest young man in England.”

He recounts, for example, that one of the best days of his life was one “on which, in a space of nine hours, I succeeded in reading the Republic from cover to cover”—in Greek!

Do not be left behind in the house, maiden;^a
you have lately seen terrible deaths,
and many sufferings unprecedented,
and none of these things is not Zeus.

^a These words are addressed to the leader of the Chorus.

λείπου μηδὲ σύ, παρθέν᾽, ἐπ᾽ οἴκων,
μεγάλους μὲν ἰδοῦσα νέους θανάτους,
πολλὰ δὲ πήματα καὶ καινοπαθῆ,
κοὐδὲν τούτων ὅ τι μὴ Ζεύς.

"Scotland is a better country than England," said an ugly, blear-eyed lad, about a head and shoulders taller than myself, the leader of a gang of varlets who surrounded me in the play-ground, on the first day, as soon as the morning lesson was over. "Scotland is a far better country than England, in every respect."

"Is it?" said I. "Then you ought to be very thankful for not having been born in England."

"That's just what I am, ye loon; and every morning, when I say my prayers, I thank God for not being an Englishman. The Scotch are a much better and braver people than the English."

"It may be so," said I, "for what I know—indeed, till I came here, I never heard a word either about the Scotch or their country."

"Are ye making fun of us, ye English puppy?" said the blear-eyed lad; "take that!" and I was presently beaten black and blue. And thus did I first become aware of the difference of races and their antipathy to each other.

As something essentially classical, Hellenistic civilization was the opposite of those revolutionary, innovating cultures that are propelled forward by a great creative drive. It rested essentially upon the peaceful possession of an already acquired capital. It is a mistake to say, as is often said by its detractors, that it "was born with its head back to front," looking back to the past. It is not autumnal, tormented with nostalgic regrets for a vanished spring. On the contrary, it looks upon itself as firmly established in an unchanging present, in the full blaze of a hot summer sun. It knows what mighty reserves it possesses, what past masters it has. The fact that these appeared at a certain moment of time, under the influence of certain historical forces, is unimportant; what matters is that they exist and can be re-discovered in the same way, again and again, by each successive generation, can be recognized and admired and imitated. A classical culture can be defined as a unified collection of great masterpieces existing as the recognized basis of its scale of values.

How is this? You take me for a regular old Death's-head, eh?
So I seem to be such coffin contents, eh, to be living such a very long life, do I?
See here, my lad, I'm not over fifty-four,
and I'm still keen-sighted, quick-handed, and nimble-footed.

quid ais tu? itane tibi ego videor oppido Accherunticus?
tam capularis? tamne tibi diu videor vitam vivere?
nam equidem hau sum annos natus praeter quinquaginta et quattuor,
clare oculis video, pernix sum pedibus, manibus mobilis.        630

Now I, I still have some fervour and freshness in my carcass,
I'm not yet dried up for all that charms and ravishes.

et ego amoris aliquantum habeo umorisque etiam in corpore        640
necdum exarui ex amoenis rebus et voluptariis.

The whole passage (616-766) is quite remarkable. It has been called, among other things, a «full-scale Clubman's manifesto»⁵, and attempts have been made to connect it with a «gross type of Epicureanism»⁶. At the beginning of Act III, Palaestrio, Periplecomenus and Pleusicles are on the stage, but it is definitely Periplecomenus who dominates the scene, and the audience finds out a good deal about him. He is fifty-four, and his hair is white, but he is still full of vigour, and he understands the younger generation, because he remembers the time when he was young and in love. In fact, there is still some «love and juice» in him,

et ego amoris aliquantum habeo umorisque etiam in corpore (639-40).

Clearly, here is a man who enjoys the pleasures of life, an agreeable table-companion, good-natured, well-behaved, amusing. After all, he is an Ephesian, not an Apulian. He has gracious manners, dances well, is, above all, a loyal friend, hospitable and generous. He is also quite happy to live as a bachelor.

Without my going into more details, it has become clear, I think, that we have here the portrait of an accomplished Hellenistic bonvivant, the very opposite of the uncouth Soldier. In a way, this is a compendium of certain type of urbanitas. Leo (quoted in the commentary of Brix-Niemeyer-Köhler, Teubner, 1916, p. 88) called it appropriately «ein Stück neuattischen Lebens, innerlich einheitlich und aus einem Gusse». We might even go further and label the whole passage an outline of a Hellenistic «Gesellschaftsideal», valid in Athens as well as in Ephesus or Rome.

It would be tempting to interpret this text line by line and show its roots in a popularizing blend of Peripatetic and Epicurean ethics. But this is not the point of my paper⁷.

5 In her [Elaine Fantham's] review of Lothar Schaaf's book (see below), Gnomon 53, 1981, 195.

6 See below.

7 The reader who wishes to pursue this will find more material in the publications listed below: The commentary of A.O.F. Lorenz, Berlin, 1869, esp. on vv. 636-7; 638-41; 675; F. Ranke, Periplecomenus, Diss. Phil. Marburg, 1900, 65-88. (This is a useful compilation of material. The author had studied with Leo and Wilamowitz, but his main adviser was Theodor Birt); P.R. Coleman-Norton, «Philosophical Aspects of Early Roman Drama», Classical Philology 31, 1936, 331 and n. 28; C.F. Saylor, «Periplectomenus and the Organisation of the Miles Gloriosus», Eranos 75, 1977, 1-13; Elaine Fantham, «Philemon's Thesauros as a Dramatisation of Peripatetic Ethics», Hermes 105, 1977, 406-21.

... "gender-fluid" (4.301) is perhaps too redolent of contemporary jargon for ambiguus ...

Then just consider what they were like when he took them over from me, noble six-footers and not the civic shirkers, vulgarians, imps, and criminals they are now, but men with an aura of spears, lances, white-crested helmets, green berets, greaves, and seven-ply oxhide hearts.

σκέψαι τοίνυν οἵους αὐτοὺς παρ᾿ ἐμοῦ παρεδέξατο πρῶτον,
εἰ γενναίους καὶ τετραπήχεις, καὶ μὴ διαδρασιπολίτας,
μηδ᾿ ἀγοραίους μηδὲ κοβάλους, ὥσπερ νῦν, μηδὲ πανούργους,        1015
ἀλλὰ πνέοντας δόρυ καὶ λόγχας καὶ λευκολόφους τρυφαλείας
καὶ πήληκας καὶ κνημῖδας καὶ θυμοὺς ἑπταβοείους.

Repentance is for idiots. Nothing has worth beside
enduring still when dying with wrath and sword and pride.

Die Reue ist der Narren! Nur das ist Atmens wert,
Im Tod noch auszuharren beim Groll, beim Stolz, beim Schwert.

Fools but repent their actions! he is but worthy of breath,
Who, sword in hand, hot hate in heart, firmly endures till death.

But of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a freeman.

omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est agri cultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius.

This is the traditional Roman attitude, reflected in Cato's response recorded at 2.89 (cf. ad loc.), as well as at Colum. 1 praef. 10 (after considering the claims of warfare, overseas commerce, moneylending, etc.: quae si et ipsa et eorum similia bonis fugienda sunt, superest, ut dixi, unum genus liberale et ingenuum rei familiaris augendae, quod ex agricolatione contingit). But some Greek authors held similar views; cf. X. Oec. 5.17: καλῶς δὲ κἀκεῖνος εἶπεν ὃς ἔφη τὴν γεωργίαν τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν μητέρα καὶ τροφὸν εἶναι; Muson. 57.6: ἔστι καὶ ἕτερος πόρος οὐδὲν τούτου κακίων, τάχα δὲ καὶ ἀμείνων νομισθεὶς ἂν οὐκ ἀλόγως ἀνδρί γ' εὐρώστῳ τὸ σῶμα , ὁ ἀπὸ γῆς . . . This attitude led inter alia to the creation of the latifundia (on which cf. Shatzman, 36-37). Contrast Seneca's condemnation of excessive land-purchases at Ep. 89.20; cf. Griffin, 1976, 298. In calling agriculture and hunting servilia officia (Cat. 4.1) Sallust no doubt meant to be provocative; cf. Stockton, 7, n. 6; A. Cossarini, "II prestigio dell' agricoltura in Sallustio e Cicerone," Atti dell' Istitutο Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, 138 (1979-80), 355-64.

The injured man's cure for pain is his enemy's pain.

laeso doloris remedium inimici est dolor.

It's a pleasant stain that comes from an enemy's blood.

iucunda macula est ex inimici sanguine.

Depart then, Aischylos, farewell!
Your task is now to preserve our city
With good ideas. And educate
The stupid folk—no shortage of them!

ἄγε δὴ χαίρων Αἰσχύλε χώρει,
καὶ σῷζε πόλιν τὴν ἡμετέραν
γνώμαις ἀγαθαῖς καὶ παίδευσον
τοὺς ἀνοήτους· πολλοὶ δ᾽ εἰσίν.

1501 ἡμετέραν codd.: ὑμετέραν Scaliger

Then farewell, Aeschylus! Go your ways,
And save your town for happier days
By counsel wise; and a school prepare
For all the fools—there are plenty there!

The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots.