Laudator Temporis Acti

Sophocles, Oedipus the King 977-979 (Jocasta to Oedipus; tr. Richard Jebb):

What should a mortal man fear, for whom the decrees of Fortune
are supreme, and who has clear foresight of nothing?
It is best to live at random, as one may.

τί δ᾽ ἂν φοβοῖτ᾽ ἄνθρωπος ᾧ τὰ τῆς τύχης
κρατεῖ, πρόνοια δ᾽ ἐστὶν οὐδενὸς σαφής;
εἰκῆ κράτιστον ζῆν, ὅπως δύναιτό τις.

979 εἰκῇ L: εἰκῆ KA

C.M. Bowra, Sophoclean Tragedy (1944; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), pp. 207-208:

The words may easily be underestimated. Though they are not the language of complete unbelief, they show a grave irresponsibility and culpable ignorance of what the gods are. Luck was not unreal or always unworthy of respect. So long as it was associated with some higher power, it was even pious to take note of it. There is nothing wrong when Pindar calls Luck the daughter of Zeus.³ But it was a different matter to substitute the rule of Luck for that of the gods, and this is what Jocasta does. She is perilously near to denying the power of the gods altogether and displays a scepticism like that of Euripides' Talthybius:

O Zeus, what shall I say? that you regard
Mankind? Or are the gods an idle fancy
And Luck the only governor of the world?¹

or his Odysseus:

Or should we think Luck a divinity,
And everything divine less strong than she?²

Since Jocasta denies the rule of the gods, she also denies human responsibility towards them and thinks that it is best to live at random, without purpose or plan. She can be contrasted with the pious Nicias who thought it unwise to trust in Luck,³ and her real motives are well illustrated by Democritus' searching words that 'Men have made an image of Luck as an excuse for their own lack of wisdom'.⁴ By exalting Luck Jocasta defies the gods and denies her responsibilities. This is not only impious; it is imprudent. It means that she has no foresight for the fixture. Thucydides distrusts those who believe in Luck and says that we attribute to it anything that turns out contrary to our reckoning.⁵ When Jocasta says that providence or foresight is impossible and that it is best to live at random, she deprives life of order and security. She offends against religion, morality, and common prudence. The audience would expect her to be corrected, and before the scene is over she has been.

[p. 207]
³ Ol. xii.1.

[p. 208]
¹ Hec. 488-91 [including 490, omitted by Bowra]

ὦ Ζεῦ, τί λέξω; πότερά σ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὁρᾶν;
ἢ δόξαν ἄλλως τήνδε κεκτῆσθαι μάτην,
ψευδῆ, δοκοῦντας δαιμόνων εἶναι γένος
τύχην δὲ πάντα τἀν βροτοῖς ἐπισκοπεῖν;

² Cyc. 606-7

ἢ τὴν τύχην μὲν δαίμον᾽ ἡγεῖσθαι χρεών,
τὰ δαιμόνων δὲ τῆς τύχης ἐλάσσονα;

³ Thuc. v.16.

⁴ Fr. 119

ἄνθρωποι τύχης εἴδωλον ἐπλάσαντο πρόφασιν ἰδίης ἀβουλίης.

⁵ Thuc. i.140.1.

Homer, Odyssey 11.488-491 (Achilles speaking; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying.
I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another
man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on,
than be a king over all the perished dead.

μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ.
βουλοίμην κ᾽ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
ἀνδρὶ παρ᾽ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,        490
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.

W.B. Stanford ad loc.:

The θῆτες (cp. 4, 644), though they had personal freedom, often lived less comfortably, and always more precariously, than the δμῶες who were fed and housed by their masters. A θής on a poor estate was particularly hard-worked and pitiable, being often cheated by the land-owner (cp. Il. 21, 444 ff.; Keller, H.S. pp. 84-5 ; Nilsson, H.M. p. 244). Hesiod (Works 602) recommends farmers to drive them out as soon as the harvest is over. Note in this passage the typical early Greeks' attitude to existence after death. Its shadowy impotence appalled them, for they loved vigour, action, personality and the sunshine. Contrast Milton's Satan — 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'. The recurrent melancholy of all Greek literature is mainly due to this abhorrence of losing one's vital physical powers after death. The Mystery Religions and some philosophies tried to dispel it. But it met no decisive challenge till St. Paul on the Areopagus proclaimed the Resurrection of the Body (Acts 17, 32). In 489 ἐπάρουρος is ἅπαξ εἰρημένον and is best taken = ἐπὶ γῆς = 'on earth' (cp. ἄχθος ἀρούρης) as distinct from νέρθεν γῆς in 302; but L.-S.-J. and others render it as 'attached to the soil, as a serf '.

Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos s.v. ἐπάρουρος:

6th century BC black-figure drinking cup depicting scenes from the Odyssey, with nonsense words written in Greek letters, in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 99.518, Side A, with description from the Museum's web page: "Circe and the companions of Odysseus, eight figures. Circe appears in center mixing her potion for Odysseus' men. The men have animal heads and arms, but retain their human lower bodies. Eurylochus escapes the scene at far right and Odysseus enters at far left."

Side B, with description from the Museum's web page: "Odysseus in the cave of Polyphemos, seven figures. Polyphemos is the central figure, kneeling on one knee in a state of drunkenness. Odysseus' companions bring more wine from the left. Odysseus appears at right with an oinochoe containing more wine. Athena stands behind Odysseus, as his guardian."

For bibliography see the Beazley Archive, number 302569, which also gives the nonsense Greek words on side A as follows:

χνεπ(.)hχ̣(.). χ(ε)νυνι. ϝκ(.)π(ο), retr. χκ̣h(.), retr. κχ̣(.), retr. κοπν[--]. κϝνκχ(ϝ)ϝ(2), retr. κυκκ·, retr.{3}. πχγοτ. πυπhπο(.)[--]. κμϝοσπχγ. κhκνϝ(ϝ)ϝ̣ε(λ). κοεhο(α). ϝ(α)ϝ·{3}. ϝν[.]ι̣οϝπγνρ̣. πḥοϝ(π)χ(ε)χ(4) (.)πολι̣.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Donald Kagan (1932-2021), The Fall of the Athenian Empire (1987; rpt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 39:

On reflection, they decided instead to draw the ships up and shore and guard them with their soldiers until a chance of escape should occur.

For "up and" read "up on".

Id., p. 55, n. 15:

Thucydides seems to date the beginning of the suspicion against Alcibiades after the death of Chalcideus (8.24.1) and the battle of Miletus (8.25-26): Ἀλκιβιάδης μετὰ τὸν Χαλκιδέως καὶ τὴν ἐν Μιλήτῳ μάχην τοῖς Πελοποννησίοις ὕποπτος ὤν, καὶ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ἀφικομένης ἐπιστολῆς πρὸς Ἀστύοχον ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος ὥστ᾽ ἀποκτεῖναι .... "After the death of Chalcideus and the battle at Miletus Alcibiades, being an object of suspicion to the Peloponnesians and a letter having come to Astyochus from Sparta as a result of this ordering him to be killed .... he withdrew to Tissaphernes" (8.45.1).

The quotation from Thucydides is faulty—add θάνατον after Χαλκιδέως. Probably also add at least some of πρῶτον μὲν ὑποχωρεῖ δείσας παρὰ Τισσαφέρνην after the ellipsis.

---

There is no entry for Kagan, who was Sterling Professor of Classics at Yale, in the Database of Classical Scholars.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Augustine, Sermons 160.3 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 874; tr. Edmund Hill):

But this proud fellow, with his nose in the air, and his gobbling throat, and his big words, and his puffed out cheeks, he sneers at Christ crucified.

sed superbus iste, erecta cervice, tumenti gutture, elata lingua, inflatis buccis irridet Christum crucifixum.

The translation is loose, e.g. there is no nose in the Latin. It might be worthwhile rummaging around in Richard Foerster's Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini for parallels, but I'm too lazy to do it.

Pompeius Macer, fragment 1, lines 4-6 (perhaps from his Medea), in Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. Bruno Snell, rev. Richard Kannicht, vol. I, p. 313 (tr. Marinos Yeroulanos):

Play now, young spirits,
for now is your life's springtide;
worries grow as you grow.

                         παίζετ’ ὦ νέαι φρένες·
ὡς ἔστιν ὑμῖν τοῦτ’ ἔαρ παντὸς βίου,
ἥβῃ δὲ λῦπαι φροντίδες θ’ ἡβῶσ’ ὁμοῦ.

Homer, Odyssey 11.464 (tr. A.T. Murray):

And it is an ill thing to speak words vain as wind.

κακὸν δ᾽ ἀνεμώλια βάζειν.

F.L. Lucas, "To Herr Baedeker, Thanksgiving Ode," Poems, 1935 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1935), pp. 11-12 (line numbers added):

TO HERR BAEDEKER
THANKSGIVING ODE
on returning alive from the Mediterranean
HERR BAEDEKER, Herr Baedeker,
Majestic and immortal Herr,
All-highest of all cicerones,
Where lodge at last your travelled bones?
You knew the place of death and birth        5
Of every worthy on this earth,
But none knows yours, great oracle
Geographic, practical, historical;
None lays a laurel on your grave,
For all that good advice you gave        10
To the headlong and unheeding stranger—
"Cold milk can be a serious danger”,
Or "Despite romantic loathing,
Always wear flannel underclothing”,
Or "As a safeguard against chills,        15
It is more prudent in the hills
To don at night a woollen vest!”
How wise you were, the tombs attest
Of all that dared, though you forbad,
"Without an overcoat, or plaid,        20
To leave the house"; or held too light
The words—"On no account lose sight
Of a main road without a guide!
The dogs are savage!” Men have died
Like flies, because their mockery drown’d        25
Your warning cry—"Adders abound.”

Herr Baedeker, Herr Baedeker,
Ah, what a deathless character!
Ah, happy, happy, happy few
That once with wondering eyes watched you        30
Tree-like stalking across the plain,
As Birnam Wood towards Dunsinane,
With vests on vests, and coats on coats,
Perspiring, but still taking notes;
Behelmeted, bepuggareed,
Equipped for every mortal need,        35
For every pleasure, every task,
With drinking-cup and travelling-flask,
Disguised in duly blackened spectacles,
Followed by (packed in due receptacles)
Forks and "knives with folding handles",        40
Rugs and sleeping-bags and candles,
Cups, compasses, and riding-whip
(For dogs)—enough to load a ship
Or occupy a caravan—
A walking Providence, not a man!        45
Pilgrim, to you 'tis surely given
Henceforth to assign the stars in Heaven.
St John or the Blessed Damozel
Could never map Paradise half as well;
Doubtless by now you have planned beside
To supersede Dante, with a Guide        50
To Hell; and then complete the story
With a Short-cuts through Purgatory.

Thanks to my friend Eric Thomson for the following notes on Lucas' ode:

15-17, 37-43 Karl Baedeker, Greece: Handbook for Travellers (Leipsic: Karl Baedeker/London: Dual and Co., 1889) pp. xvii-xviii:

Riding-breeches are highly desirable; but if ordinary trousers are worn, buttons for riding-straps should not be forgotten. Woollen underclothing is necessary as a preventive of chills (comp. p. xxx), and it is prudent to wear a woollen vest at night. Flannel shirts are in many respects more convenient than linen ones, and they practically diminish the bulk of the luggage. For the transport of the latter on horseback, waterproof bags or wallets are much more convenient than trunks or hard leather portmanteaux. The boots should be strong and able to resist the friction of rocky mountain-paths and ruined masonry. The hat should have a brim wide enough to afford some shade from the sun, and a 'puggaree' tied round it (obtainable in Athens) will also be found acceptable. Smoke-coloured spectacles will be found a great relief to the eyes, though their use feels a little strange at first. They may be purchased from the Italian optician Labarbera, in the Rue d'Hermes, and in several other shops in Athens, but may be obtained more cheaply in England or Italy.

The traveller in the interior should also have a travelling flask and drinking cup, a knife large enough to be used in eating if necessary, candles for evening use, and a good compass. A stout cane or long riding-whip will sometimes be found useful in repelling the village and shepherds' dogs.

20-21 Karl Baedeker, Greece: Handbook for Travellers (Leipsic: Karl Baedeker/London: Dual and Co., 1889) p. xxx:

The visitor should invariably be somewhat more warmly clad than in a similar temperature at home, and he should never leave the house without an overcoat or plaid, to be donned on passing from sun-shine to shade, when sitting in a boat or carriage, and in the evening.

26 Adders abound. Karl Baedeker, Southern France from the Loire to the Italian and Spanish Frontiers, Including Corsica: Handbook for Travellers (Leipsic: Karl Baedeker/London: Dual and Co., 1891) p.137:

To the PIC DE NÉRÉ, 3¾ hrs. from LUZ, there and back 6½ hrs., delightful excursion which can be made on horseback part of the way; guide 12, horse 10 fr. (adders abound).

The oxymoron of 'delightful' and 'adders' is achieved by way of what Edward Mendleson ("Baedeker's Universe," Yale Review 74 (Spring 1985) 386-403) dubs the "Baedeker parenthesis":

One of its many functions was to juxtapose, without irony, the poetical and the practical. The best example of a Baedeker parenthesis was written not by Baedeker but by E.M. Forster in imitation of Baedeker. In Where Angels Fear to Tread, while Mrs. Herriton "was not one to detect the hidden charms of Baedeker... Philip could never read 'The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset' without a catching at the heart."

Baedeker's gravestone in the Hauptfriedhof cemetery, Koblenz.

James J. O'Donnell, Augustine, Confessions II: Commentary on Books 1-7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 34 (on 1.6.7):

A. had no system, despite what we try to make of him, but found himself following the teachings of a God who did not always make everything perfectly clear. A. managed, with great difficulty, to make his peace with the uncertainties of that condition: not all his students since have been so successful.

Democritus, fragment 93 (tr. Kathleen Freeman):

When you do a favour, study the recipient first, lest he prove a scoundrel and repay evil for good.

χαριζόμενος προσκέπτεο τὸν λαμβάνοντα, μὴ κακὸν ἀντ᾿ ἀγαθοῦ κίβδηλος ἐὼν ἀποδῷ.

Sophocles, Oedipus the King 961 (tr. R.B. Rutherford):

A little weight in the scale sends aged bodies to their rest.

σμικρὰ παλαιὰ σώματ᾽ εὐνάζει ῥοπή.

I.e. to their final rest.

Aristophanes, Knights 350 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

You fool, what an absurd idea!

ὦ μῶρε, τῆς ἀνοίας.

I understand τῆς ἀνοίας as a simple genitive of exclamation. So apparently do Carl Arne Anderson and T. Keith Dix in their commentary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), p. 114, but James Wilson Poultney, The Syntax of the Genitive Case in Aristophanes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), p. 124, says it's dependent on μῶρε, which makes no sense to me.

Homer, Odyssey 11.412-415 (Agamemnon to Odysseus; tr. A.T. Murray):

So I died by a most pitiful death, and round about me the rest of my comrades
were slain unceasingly like white-tusked swine,
which are slaughtered in the house of a rich man of great might
at a marriage feast, or a joint meal, or a rich drinking-bout.

ὣς θάνον οἰκτίστῳ θανάτῳ· περὶ δ᾽ ἄλλοι ἑταῖροι
νωλεμέως κτείνοντο σύες ὣς ἀργιόδοντες,
οἵ ῥά τ᾽ ἐν ἀφνειοῦ ἀνδρὸς μέγα δυναμένοιο
ἢ γάμῳ ἢ ἐράνῳ ἢ εἰλαπίνῃ τεθαλυίῃ.        415

Greek Anthology 10.85 (by Palladas; tr. W.R. Paton):

We are all kept and fed for death,
like a herd of swine to be slain without reason.

πάντες τῷ θανάτῳ τηρούμεθα, καὶ τρεφόμεσθα
    ὡς ἀγέλη χοίρων σφαζομένων ἀλόγως.

The same (tr. Tony Harrison):

Death feeds us up, keeps an eye on our weight
and herds us like pigs through the abattoir gate.

Gilbert Murray (1866-1957), Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), p. 102:

One cannot help wondering what Aristophanes was doing at the time of Socrates' trial in 399. Did he come forward as a witness to character, explaining how innocent had been the meaning of those twenty-four-year-old mockeries? Was he himself regarded by the extreme democrats as a suspicious character, whose support would do more harm than good? Or, again, was he away on garrison duty somewhere, and not in Athens at all? It is in cases like this that one feels the terrible incompleteness of the evidence from which we have to construct our understanding of ancient history.

F.L. Lucas, "On a Boeotian Mercenary of Alexander, Fallen in Media," Poems, 1935 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1935), p. 13:

We served the Macedonian. The Great King fled before us,
    The world was ours for winning. A grave was all my gain.
From Hellespont to Ganges we marched—could it restore us
    The freedom of our fathers, though we forged all Asia's chain?
Better than golden Susa wast thou, poor land that bore us,
    The little Vale of Thisbe than this gaunt Median Plain.

Werner Jaeger (1888-1961), Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, tr. Gilbert Highet, Vol. I (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), p. 359, with notes on p. 481:

More than any other art, comedy is tied to the realities of its own time and place. Although that fact makes it fascinating from a historical point of view, its sole purpose, in portraying ephemeral events and personalities, is to represent certain aspects of their eternal humanity which are overlooked by loftier types of poetry like epic and tragedy. The philosophy of poetry which was developed in the fourth century defined tragedy and comedy as fundamentally opposite and complementary expressions of the same primitive human instinct for imitation. It asserted that tragedy, and all the other types of high poetry which succeeded the epic, sprang from the inclination of noble minds to imitate great men, notable deeds and famous lives; while it explained the origin of comedy by the irresistible imitative urge of commoner natures—or, as we should put it, by the impulse of the ordinary man, with his realistic and critical outlook—to ape bad, blameworthy, and contemptible things.¹ The famous scene in the Iliad which holds up the vulgar and hideous agitator Thersites to the malicious laughter of the mob—a rare comedy among the many tragedies in Homeric poetry—is a true piece of popular comedy; for it caters to the instincts of the mob. So also, in the divine farce which the enamoured Ares and Aphrodite are forced to play against their will, the Olympians themselves become a laughing audience at a comedy.

If even the mighty gods could laugh and be laughed at in this frankly comic way, the Greeks obviously felt that every human being, and every being with human attributes, had not only the power of feeling heroic emotion and serious dignity, but the ability and the need to laugh. Later Greek philosophy defined man as the only animal capable of laughter,² though he was usually described as a talking or thinking animal; thereby they placed laughter on the same plane with thought and speech, as an expression of intellectual freedom.

1. Arist. Poet. 2, 1448a1; 4, 1448b24.
2. Arist. Part. An. III, 10, 673a8, 28.

Euripides, Orestes 772 (tr. Edward P. Coleridge):

A terrible thing is the mob, when it has villains to lead it.

δεινὸν οἱ πολλοί, κακούργους ὅταν ἔχωσι προστάτας.

Scholia ad loc. (tr. Donald J. Mastronarde):

Perhaps he is alluding covertly to the demagogic activities in his own time,and possibly to Cleophon. For two years before the production of Orestes he was the one who prevented a peace-treaty being concluded for the Athenians with the Lacedaemonians, as Philochorus reports.

ἴσως αἰνίττεται πρὸς τὰς καθ’ αὑτὸν δημαγωγίας, μήποτε δὲ εἰς Κλεοφῶντα. πρὸ ἐτῶν γὰρ δύο τῆς διδασκαλίας τοῦ Ὀρέστου οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ κωλύσας σπονδὰς γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίοις πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους, ὡς Φιλόχορος [FGrHist 328 F 139b Jacoby] ἱστορεῖ.

Augustine, Sermons 159.2 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 868; tr. Edmund Hill):

There are things, after all, that it is natural for us in our weakness to delight in; like food and drink which delight us when we are hungry and thirsty; like this light which delights us when it pours down on us from the sky after the sun is risen, or shines from the moon and the stars, or is kindled on earth in lamps to relieve our eyes in the dark; we are delighted by a melodious voice and a lovely ditty, delighted by a sweet smell; our sense of touch delighted too by anything to do with the pleasures of the flesh.

Delectant enim quaedam naturaliter infirmitatem nostram, ut cibus et potus delectant esurientes atque sitientes; ut nos delectat haec lux, quae de caelo funditur sole exorto, vel quae de sideribus et luna fulget, vel quae in terra accenditur luminibus consolantibus tenebras oculorum: delectat canora vox et suavissima cantilena, delectat odor bonus; delectant etiam tactum nostrum quaecumque pertinent ad carnis aliquam voluptatem.

He goes on to distinguish between licit and illicit pleasures:

And of all these things which delight our bodily senses, some are lawful. Our eyes are delighted, as I said, by these great spectacles of nature; but the eyes are also delighted by the spectacles to be seen in the theaters. The first sort are lawful, the other sort unlawful. A sacred psalm sung sweetly delights our ears, but so too do the songs of the music halls; the first sort lawfully, the second unlawfully. The scent of flowers and spicy smells delight our noses; so too does the incense on the altars of demons; the first sort lawfully, the second unlawfully. Food that is not forbidden delights the taste; so too do the banquets that follow sacrilegious sacrifices; the first sort lawfully, the second unlawfully. The embraces of husbands and wives are delightful; so too are those of harlots; the first sort lawfully, the second unlawfully. So you see, my dearest friends, that our bodily senses provide us with delights both lawful and unlawful.

Et haec omnia, quae nos delectant in sensibus corporis, aliqua licita sunt. Delectant enim, ut dixi, oculos spectacula ista magna naturae; sed delectant oculos etiam spectacula theatrorum. Haec licita, illa illicita. Psalmus sacer suaviter cantatus delectat auditum: sed delectant auditum etiam cantica histrionum. Hoc licite, illud illicite. Delectant olfactum flores et aromata, et haec Dei creatura; delectant olfactum etiam thura in aris daemoniorum. Hoc licite, illud illicite. Delectat gustum cibus non prohibitus; delectant gustum etiam epulae sacrilegorum sacrificiorum. Hoc licite, illud illicite. Delectant coniugales amplexus: delectant etiam meretricum. Hoc licite, illud illicite. Videtis ergo, carissimi, esse in istis corporis sensibus licitas et illicitas delectationes.

Hesiod, Theogony 319 (tr. M.L. West):

But she bore Chimaera, who breathed invincible fire...

ἣ δὲ Χίμαιραν ἔτικτε πνέουσαν ἀμαιμάκετον πῦρ...

West in his commentary ad loc.:

This peculiarly ungainly verse is the result of determination to combine the Chimaera's epithets πῦρ πνείουσα (fr. 43 (a) 87, cf. Il. 6.182, Pi. O. 13.90) and ἀμαιμάκετος (Il. 6.179, 16.329), which has become transferred to πῦρ in the process. Wilamdwitz is justified in calling it Hesiod's worst hexameter (Gr. Verskunst, p. 8, n. 1: it violates Hermann's Bridge, and it is the only line in early epic to combine such a violation with a final monosyllable; it also violates Meyer's First Law (p. 95); and it has an un-Homeric correption before a mute and nasal combination (p. 98).

West, Introduction to Greek Metre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 21:

A 'bridge' is the converse of a caesura: a place where word-end is avoided. Gottfried Hermann observed in 1805 that it is avoided between the two shorts of the fourth biceps.

West in Ian Morris and Barry Powell, edd., A New Companion to Homer (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 225:

Meyer's First Law states that words which begin in the first foot do not end between the shorts of the second foot, or at the end of that foot.

See Jon Solomon, "In Defense of Hesiod's 'Schlechtestem Hexameter'," Hermes 113.1 (1985) 21-30.

Sophocles, Antigone 909-912 (tr. Richard Jebb):

A husband lost, another might have been found,
and if bereft of a child, there could be a second from some other man.
But when father and mother are hidden in Hades,
no brother could ever bloom for me again.

πόσις μὲν ἄν μοι κατθανόντος ἄλλος ἦν,
καὶ παῖς ἀπ᾽ ἄλλου φωτός, εἰ τοῦδ᾽ ἤμπλακον,        910
μητρὸς δ᾽ ἐν Ἅιδου καὶ πατρὸς κεκευθότοιν
οὐκ ἔστ᾽ ἀδελφὸς ὅστις ἂν βλάστοι ποτέ.

900-928 secl. Dindorf, 904-920 Lehrs, 905-913 A. Jacob

Commentators compare Herodotus 3.119.3-6 (tr. Robin Waterfield):

[3] Intaphrenes’ wife took to coming to the doors of the palace and breaking down in tears and grief. This behaviour of hers eventually moved Darius to pity, and he sent a messenger out to her. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘King Darius permits you to choose one member of your imprisoned family to save.’

[4] She thought about it and replied, ‘If, thanks to the king, I have to choose the life of one person, out of all of them I choose my brother.’

[5] When Darius heard what her reply had been, he was surprised and sent another message to her, as follows: ‘Woman, the king would like to know what your reason was for abandoning your husband and children and deciding to save your brother’s life, when he is not as near to you as your children or as dear to you as your husband.’

[6] ‘My lord,’ she replied, ‘God willing, I may get another husband and more children, if I lose the ones I have at the moment. But my parents are dead, so there’s no way I can get another brother. That was why I said what I said.’

[3] ἡ δὲ γυνὴ τοῦ Ἰνταφρένεος φοιτῶσα ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας τοῦ βασιλέος κλαίεσκε ἂν καὶ ὀδυρέσκετο· ποιεῦσα δὲ αἰεὶ τὠυτὸ τοῦτο τὸν Δαρεῖον ἔπεισε οἰκτεῖραί μιν. πέμψας δὲ ἄγγελον ἔλεγε τάδε· "ὦ γύναι, βασιλεύς τοι Δαρεῖος διδοῖ ἕνα τῶν δεδεμένων οἰκηίων ῥύσασθαι τὸν βούλεαι ἐκ πάντων."

[4] ἣ δὲ βουλευσαμένη ὑπεκρίνετο τάδε· "εἰ μὲν δή μοι διδοῖ βασιλεὺς ἑνὸς τὴν ψυχήν, αἱρέομαι ἐκ πάντων τὸν ἀδελφεόν."

[5] πυθόμενος δὲ Δαρεῖος ταῦτα καὶ θωμάσας τὸν λόγον, πέμψας ἠγόρευε· "ὦ γύναι, εἰρωτᾷ σε βασιλεύς, τίνα ἔχουσα γνώμην, τὸν ἄνδρα τε καὶ τὰ τέκνα ἐγκαταλιποῦσα, τὸν ἀδελφεὸν εἵλευ περιεῖναί τοι, ὃς καὶ ἀλλοτριώτερός τοι τῶν παίδων καὶ ἧσσον κεχαρισμένος τοῦ ἀνδρός ἐστι."

[6] ἣ δ᾽ ἀμείβετο τοῖσιδε· "ὦ βασιλεῦ, ἀνὴρ μέν μοι ἂν ἄλλος γένοιτο, εἰ δαίμων ἐθέλοι, καὶ τέκνα ἄλλα, εἰ ταῦτα ἀποβάλοιμι· πατρὸς δὲ καὶ μητρὸς οὐκέτι μευ ζωόντων ἀδελφεὸς ἂν ἄλλος οὐδενὶ τρόπῳ γένοιτο. ταύτῃ τῇ γνώμῃ χρεωμένη ἔλεξα ταῦτα."

Aetna 270-273 (tr. J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff):

Trivial motives torture men's minds and bodies—
to have their barns overflowing, their wine-casks swelling with must,
and their haylofts rising higher, charged with the full reapings of the field.
So do ye tread the path of greed where sight reveals aught more precious.

     leves cruciant animos et corpora causae
horrea uti saturent, tumeant et dolia musto,
plenaque desecto surgant faenilia campo:
sic avidi semper, qua visum est carius, itis.

273 avidi codd.: avidis Matthiae
itis Ellis: istis vel ipsis codd.

James J. O'Donnell, Augustine, Confessions II: Commentary on Books 1-7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 20 (on 1.3.3):

There are almost 700 question marks in the text of conf.: many are explicitly 'rhetorical' ('put not to elicit information, but as a more striking substitute for a statement of contrary effect': Fowler, Modern English Usage), and most of the rest are like those in the last two sentences here, open-ended when asked, but swiftly resolved by A. This is a high frequency of interrogation, but ancient practice was more abundant in this regard than modern: in 31 OCT pages of Cic. har. resp., e.g., there are 38 question marks (about half the conf. rate), while in a comparable piece of modern expository prose, there are only 15 (less than a quarter the conf. rate).

Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), In Quest of Virgil's Birthplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 69:

On beyond, the fields luxuriate in tobacco — not a Virgilian, and not an Horatian, crop. Curious freak of history, for Horace was born for a smoke. However did he get on without one?

Augustine, Confessions 1.2.2 (tr. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, with her note):

Therefore since I too exist, why do I ask you to enter into me, when I would not exist but for your presence in me? After all, I am no longer in Hell; and yet there too you are present: for even if I go down into Hell, you are there.

quoniam itaque et ego sum, quid peto ut venias in me, qui non essem nisi esses in me? non enim ego iam inferi¹, et tamen etiam ibi es, nam etsi descendero in infernum, ades.

¹ (Reading inferi as locative) inferi S codd. Knöll Skut.: in infernis Maur: in <profundis> inferi Ver

James J. O'Donnell on inferi (electronic edition; some abbreviations expanded by me):

inferi C D G O1 S Knöll Skutella: inferis sum O2: in infernis Maurinorum editio: in <profundis> inferi Verheijen (cf. 3.6.11, 'in profunda inferi')

Interpretation is controversial:

• inferi as possessive genitive: Knauer 131, citing Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 7.1.1390.66; Pizzolato, Lectio I-II 20n65, comes to the same conclusion independently.
• as locative: Bibliothèque Augustinienne trans., 'je ne suis pas encore aux enfers.'
• nominative plural; Gibb-Montgomery: 'A. in fact does not mean merely "I am not in hell," but more boldly and pointedly "I am not, after all, hell; and even if I were, Thou wouldst still be in me—witness the Psalmist."' Pizzolato loc. cit. cites parallels for that construction (civ. 22.30, 'dies enim septimus etiam nos ipsi erimus'; conf. 13.2.3, 'fuimus . . . tenebrae' [Eph. 5.8]); and for the sense: inferi as place of the dead: vera el. 52.101, 'cavendi sunt ergo inferiores inferi, id est post hanc vitam poenae graviores'; qu. hept. 4.29 (on Num. 16.32: 'et descenderunt ipsi . . . viventes ad inferos'), 'notandum secundum locum terrenum dictos esse inferos, hoc est in inferioribus terrae partibus. varie quippe in scripturis et sub intellectu multiplici, sicut rerum de quibus agitur sensus exigit, nomen ponitur inferorum et maxime in mortuis hoc accipi solet.' Cf. also Gn. litt. 12.33.62, ep. 187.2.6.

Locative inferi seems unparalleled, but for a possible example of locative caeli see Gino Funaioli, "Der Lokativ und seine Auflösung," Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik 13 (1904) 301-372 (at 313):

Zuversichtlicher möchten wir caeli als Lokativ erklären bei Iulius Valer. Alex. 1, 8: nescius quae te impenderent humi, rimare ea quae caeli sunt; denn im griech. Originale heisst es: τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς μὴ ἐπιστάμενος τὰ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἐκζητεῖς. Im Lateinischen müssen freilich humi und in caelo im Interesse der Konzinnität ausgeglichen werden, entweder durch in humo, in caelo, wie Florus 2, 13, 91 schreibt in domo, in caelo, oder, was Valerius vorgezogen hat, durch Neubildung des Lokativs caeli, welcher sich leicht auch an terrae anlehnen konnte.

W.B. Anderson, "Livy and the Lexica," Classical Quarterly 25.1 (January, 1931) 38-48 (at 38-39):

This, of course, is a trifle, and it is introduced merely because the above meaning of adicio furnishes a suitable text for a comment, which must be made sooner or later, on the work of Forcellini, and particularly of his degenerate descendants Freund, Andrews, Lewis and Short. Forcellini is desperately imperfect, but perhaps deserves more honour for what he accomplished than blame for what he failed to do. The others have less excuse. Let Professor Short serve as their spokesman (Lewis and Short, article adjicio, II.B.): 'Constr. with acc. and inf. (only in Vell. and in the histt, after the Aug. per.).' And yet this construction is so common in Livy that the Thesaurus soon grows tired of citing examples, and contents itself with adding 'alibi persaepe.' There are scholars who, while finding much fault with the work as a whole, praise the treatment of the letter A in Lewis and Short. Let us turn back a few pages and look at another favourite word of Livy, accio. There we find one solitary example from Livy, and the word itself is characterised as 'rare'. Not even Andrews dared to say this; perhaps he had looked at Scheller's lexicon, which describes accio as 'very common.' From these two examples, which are by no means unfair specimens, it may be gathered that the early part of L.-S. is not markedly superior to the later. The student in search of trustworthy information about Livy must certainly not expect to find it in any of the dictionaries named in the first sentence of this paragraph.

See also G.B.A. Fletcher, "More Livy Not in the Lexica," Classical Quarterly 25.3/4 (July-October, 1931) 165-171.

In David Packard's computer-generated Concordance to Livy different forms of the same word (e.g. accio) may be pages, or in some cases volumes, apart, somewhat limiting its usefulness. I wonder if F.R.D. Goodyear had Packard's Concordance in mind when he wrote (The Annals of Tacitus. Books 1-6 Edited with Commentary, Vol. 1: Annals 1.1–54 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972], p. 15, n. 1):

There is much in Gerber-Greef with which one may disagree. Naturally so, for it is a scholarly work and full of controversial opinions. I esteem it the more every time I look at the wretched computerized products which now masquerade as lexica and concordances.

Aristophanes, fragment 79 Kassel and Austin (Poetae Comici Graeci III 2, p. 69, from Babylonians; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

He's afraid of his own shadow.

τὴν αὑτοῦ σκιὰν δέδοικεν.

See Fernando García Romero, "Sobre la expresión proverbial 'temer la propia sombra'," in Homenaje al profesor Juan Antonio López Férez (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2013), pp. 323-328.

Richard Doeblin, review of Appendix Vergiliana. Recognoverunt et adnotatione critica instruxerunt W.V. Clausen, F.R.D. Goodyear, E.J. Kenney, J.A. Richmond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), in Classical Philology 63.3 (July, 1968) 247-251 (at 250-251, footnote omitted):

It is my duty to come now to the gravest defect in this book, which is the incompetence of Goodyear. Goodyear's work is ignorant, mindless, and tasteless. His Ciris, as you have seen, is appalling. His Aetna, on which I shall shortly publish an article, is truly portentous in its ignorance, ugliness, and stupidity.

The eminent Latinists H.D. Jocelyn and C.O. Brink vigorously defended Goodyear in letters to the editor (with a rather anemic rejoinder by Doeblin) in "Correspondence," Classical Philology 64.2 (April, 1969) 115-116. So far as I can tell, Doeblin never followed up on his promise to review Goodyear's separate edition and commentary on Aetna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). Indeed, Doeblin (1940-1994) seems never to have published another word on any classical subject.

F.R.D. Goodyear himself could be a harsh critic—he was even once dubbed "Housman redivivus". See, for example, his dismissal of the "Swedish school" of Tacitean scholars (Einar Löfstedt, Gunnar Sörbom, Nils Eriksson), in his commentary on Tacitus' Annals, vol. I, p. 24:

Indeed I must go further: much of their work is shoddy, ill-considered, and misleading.

On Goodyear (1936-1987) see the obituaries by James Diggle, Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988) 361-372, J.B. Hall, Acta Classica 31 (1988) 5-11, and H.D. Jocelyn, Gnomon 60.8 (1988) 763-765. F.R.D. Goodyear

Stephen Halliwell, "Dover and the Public Face of Classics," in Stephen Halliwell and Christopher Stray, edd., Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), pp. 291-308 (p. 302, with note on p. 312):

In a talk he gave in St Andrews in 2000 at a celebration of his 80th birthday, he remarked, in that same lightly ironic manner, that 'Personally I find [the Sophoclean] Ajax much more familiar and more intelligible than, say, Cardinal Newman.'⁴⁹

49. From a copy of Dover's typescript in my possession.

Dear Mike:

On the lintel of a doorway in village of Mogarraz in the province Salamanca: B for V[INVM] recalls a long history of inscriptional variation, what Ernesto Parodi dubs "una penosa incertezza nell' uso del b e del v (1898, p. 177). Parodi comments that “il b iniziale sembra raramente alterato, mentre il v è scritto b con straordinaria frequenza” (p.180) and cites, among other examples culled from CIL vols. VI and XI, beginti, bixit, biatores, Bictor, boluerit, and baleas.

The phenomenon is comprehensively dealt with in J. N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Chapter X, sections 2.1 and 2.2.

References from the bibliography:

Baehrens, W. A. (1922), Sprachlicher Kommentar zur vulgärlateinischen Appendix Probi (Halle an der Saale).

Barbarino, J. L. (1978), The Evolution of the Latin /b/–/u /Merger: A Quantitative and Comparative Analysis of the B–V Alternation in Latin Inscriptions (University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 182) (Chapel Hill).

Gaeng, P. A. (1968), An Inquiry into Local Variations in Vulgar Latin, as Reflected in the Vocalism of Christian Inscriptions (University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 77) (Chapel Hill).

Gratwick, A. S. (1982), ‘Latinitas Britannica: was British Latin archaic?’, in N. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain (Leicester), 1–79.

Marichal, R. (1992), Les ostraca de Bu Njem (Assraya al Hamra, Tripoli).

Omeltchenko,W. (1977), A Quantitative and Comparative Study of the Vocalism of the Latin Inscriptions of North Africa, Britain, Dalmatia, and the Balkans (University off North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 180) (Chapel Hill).

Parodi, E. (1898), ‘Del passaggio di V in B e di certe perturbazioni delle leggi fonetiche nel latino volgare’, Romania 27, 177–240.

Politzer, R. L. (1952), ‘On b and v in Latin and Romance’, Word 8, 211–15.

Best wishes,

Eric [Thomson]

---

For the Latinless, the inscription means, "This wine gladdens the heart."

Here are more of Eric's photographs of Mogarraz, which gladdened my heart, since there is still snow on the ground where I live:

Aetna 367 (tr. J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff):

Do not let yourself be deceived by the blockish rabble's falsehood...

nec te decipiant stolidi mendacia vulgi...

Augustine, Sermons 158.4 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 864; tr. Edmund Hill):

There remains, however, the struggle with the flesh, there remains the struggle with the world, there remains the struggle with the devil.

restat tamen lucta cum carne, restat lucta cum mundo, restat lucta cum diabolo.

Is this the first occurrence of this unholy trinity? I don't have access to Siegfried Wenzel, "The Three Enemies of Man," Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967) 47–66, rpt. in his Elucidations: Medieval Poetry and Its Religious Backgrounds (Louvain: Peeters, 2010 = Synthema, 6), pp. 17-38.

---

I now see that Wenzel cites this passage on pp. 48-49.

Democritus, fragment 246 (tr. G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven):

Service abroad teaches self-sufficiency; barley-bread and a straw mattress are the pleasantest medicines for hunger and fatigue.

ξενιτείη βίου αὐτάρκειαν διδάσκει· μᾶζα γὰρ καὶ στιβὰς λιμοῦ καὶ κόπου γλυκύτατα ἰάματα.

Related posts:

• Bread and Water
• Easily Satisfied
• Wealth

R. Renehan, "Shackleton Bailey and the Editing of Latin Poetry: A Latin Classic," Classical Philology 83.4 (October, 1988) 311-328 (p. 312, n. 2):

A fond fashion has arisen of attributing "courage" to an editor who prints departures from the vulgate, and I have seen the word used in a review in connection with the present edition. Let us have done with such language. The soldier who takes his bullet in the belly and not in the back is courageous; scholars with enough independence of thought to instruct a typesetter to print this word rather than that exhibit a different quality, which may or may not be a virtue depending upon the merits of the particular case.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones, "Paul Maas," Blood for the Ghosts: Classical Influences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 215-218 (at 217-218):

Maas held strongly that it was better to make a wrong conjecture than to ignore a difficulty; he strongly upheld the value of the 'diagnostic conjecture' and the usefulness of the crux; and he was the sworn enemy of the lazy acquiescence in the anomalous or the excessive caution which many scholars dignify with the name of judgment.... His principles were exemplified in numerous conjectures and supplements whose average quality was very high indeed. At times his vigorous logic could carry him too far; but even the suggestions to which this applies had usually the value of drawing attention to a difficulty or of provoking curiosity as to why the author should have departed from his usual norm.

Homer, Odyssey 10.566-568 (tr. A.T. Murray):

So I spoke, and their spirit was broken within them,
and sitting down right where they were, they wept and tore their hair.
But no good came of their lamenting.

ὣς ἐφάμην, τοῖσιν δὲ κατεκλάσθη φίλον ἦτορ,
ἑζόμενοι δὲ κατ᾽ αὖθι γόων τίλλοντό τε χαίτας·
ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γάρ τις πρῆξις ἐγίγνετο μυρομένοισιν.

Austin Dobson (1840-1921), "A Gentleman of the Old School," Collected Poems, 9th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1914), pp. 9-13 (at 11-12):

We read—alas, how much we read!
The jumbled strifes of creed and creed
With endless controversies feed
                Our groaning tables;
His books—and they sufficed him—were
Cotton's "Montaigne," "The Grave" of Blair,
A "Walton"—much the worse for wear—
                And "Æsop's Fables."

One more,—"The Bible." Not that he
Had searched its page as deep as we;
No sophistries could make him see
                Its slender credit;
It may be that he could not count
The sires and sons to Jesse's fount,—
He liked the "Sermon on the Mount,"—
                And more, he read it.

Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus. Edited and Translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994 = Loeb Classical Library, 20), p. 345 (Oedipus Tyrannus):

221 αὐτὸ lG^γρp: αὐτός rpat
post hunc v. lacunam statuit Groeneboom; ex. gr. <πόλεως ἐπισπᾶν θανασίμους φόνου δίκας> supplere possis

The note about the lacuna is misplaced—it belongs after line 227. The mistake persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Red-figure krater by Euphronios, now in Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek 8935 (click once or twice to enlarge): The letters ΟΠΟΛΛΟΝΣΕΓΕΚΑΙΜΑΚΑΙ (retrograde) come out of the mouth of the figure on the far right, whose name is Ekphantides.

See Emily Vermeule, "Fragments of a Symposion by Euphronios," Antike Kunst 8.1 (1965) 34-39 (at 38-39):

Sir John Beazley, who prefers the poem-fragment as a skolion, suggests filling in the first verse along these lines:

ὤπολλον σέ τε καὶ μάκαιραν αἰτῶ

with a mention of Artemis and Leto in the second verse²². There are, of course, various possibilities to play with; one might also consider

ὤπολλον σέ γε καὶ μάκαιραν ἁγνάν
Λάτω τὰν δίτοκον κάσιν τε χρύσαν

using scraps of Anakreon which have no context; or, for a glyconic hymn,

ὤπολλον σέ τε καὶ μάκαι-
ραν κάσιν πότνι' Ἄρτεμι.

²² Beazley ARV² 1619. Professor D.L. Page is quite sure that no line with this beginning is preserved in the literary tradition; see his Poetae Melici Graeci (1962) 622. The line does read ΓE, not TE.

Homer, Odyssey 10.472-474 (tr. Peter Green):

Are you out of your mind? High time to think of your homeland
if it's truly your destiny to be saved and to return
to your high-roofed house and to your own native country.

δαιμόνι᾽, ἤδη νῦν μιμνήσκεο πατρίδος αἴης,
εἴ τοι θέσφατόν ἐστι σαωθῆναι καὶ ἱκέσθαι
οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον καὶ σὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.

W.B. Stanford ad loc.:

δαιμόνιος is used of a person who is doing something so abnormal or incomprehensible as to suggest supernatural influence: sometimes almost 'Are you mad?'

I don't have access to Elisabeth Brunius-Nilsson, Δαιμόνιε: An Inquiry into a Mode of Apostrophe in Old Greek Literature (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1955). See also H. Paul Brown, "A Pragmatic and Sociolinguistic Account of δαιµόνιε in Early Greek Epic," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51 (2011) 498–528.

Aristophanes, Knights 90-96 (tr. Benjamin Bickley Rogers):

And dare you rail at wine's inventiveness?
I tell you nothing has such go as wine.
Why, look you now; 'tis when men drink, they thrive,
Grow wealthy, speed their business, win their suits,
Make themselves happy, benefit their friends.
Go, fetch me out a stoup of wine, and let me
Moisten my wits, and utter something bright.

οἶνον σὺ τολμᾷς εἰς ἐπίνοιαν λοιδορεῖν;        90
οἴνου γὰρ εὕροις ἄν τι πρακτικώτερον;
ὁρᾷς, ὅταν πίνωσιν ἄνθρωποι τότε
πλουτοῦσι διαπράττουσι νικῶσιν δίκας
εὐδαιμονοῦσιν ὠφελοῦσι τοὺς φίλους.
ἀλλ᾽ ἐξένεγκέ μοι ταχέως οἴνου χοᾶ,        95
τὸν νοῦν ἵν᾽ ἄρδω καὶ λέγω τι δεξιόν.

90 ἐπίνοιαν codd.: ἀπόνοιαν Sylburg

Related posts:

• Some Effects of Wine
• Praise of Dionysus
• Wine

Kenneth Dover, ed., Plato, Symposium (1982; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. viii:

His distinctive values, attitudes, assumptions, cravings and passions are not mine, and for that reason I do not find his philosophical arguments even marginally persuasive. Much that is written about him is marked, in my view, by an uncritical enthusiasm for the abstract and immutable, as if such an enthusiasm always and necessarily afforded better access to the truth about man, nature and divinity than is afforded by a love of the particular, material and perishable. One consequence of this is that Plato is sometimes welcomed as an ally by people who would not like what they found if they attended less selectively and more precisely to what he actually says. Another consequence is that the Platonic Socrates is taken, in all seriousness, as if he were a man with a genuinely open and enquiring mind, and the quality of other Greek intellectuals, some of whom are best known to us through Plato's portrayal of them, is underrated.

Vergil, Georgics 2.475-486 (tr. L.P. Wilkinson):

As for me, above all else I would that the sweet Muses
whose devotee I am, smitten with a great desire,
should accept me and show me the stars of the sky in their courses,
the various eclipses of the sun and the travails of the moon,
whence come earthquakes, what force makes the seas swell high
to break their barriers and subside to their level again,
why winter's suns make such haste to dip beneath the Ocean,
or what it is that delays the lingering nights.
But if some sluggishness of wit denies me access to this sphere of nature,
may the countryside and the streams that water its valleys be my delight,
let me love the rivers and woods, careless of fame ...

me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,        475
quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
defectus solis varios lunaeque labores;
unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,        480
quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis
frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,
rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes,        485
flumina amem silvasque inglorius...

476 percussus MPRrγ: perculsus M²ωγ¹

Aristophanes, Knights 581-594 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

Pallas, Guardian of the city,
Lady of the most sacred
of all lands, which excels
in war, in poetry
and in power:
come hither, bringing her
who in expeditions and battles
is our helper,
Victory, the companion of our choral songs,
who strives with us against our foes.
Come hither now and show thy face;
for on us must thou
at all costs bestow
victory, now if ever.

Ὦ πολιοῦχε Παλλάς, ὦ
τῆς ἱερωτάτης ἁπα-
σῶν πολέμῳ τε καὶ ποιη-
ταῖς δυνάμει θʼ ὑπερφερού-
σης μεδέουσα χώρας,        585
δεῦρʼ ἀφικοῦ λαβοῦσα τὴν
ἐν στρατιαῖς τε καὶ μάχαις
ἡμετέραν ξυνεργὸν
Νίκην, ἣ χορικῶν ἐστιν ἑταίρα
τοῖς τʼ ἐχθροῖσι μεθʼ ἡμῶν στασιάζει.        590
νῦν οὖν δεῦρο φάνηθι· δεῖ
γὰρ τοῖς ἀνδράσι τοῖσδε πά-
σῃ τέχνῃ πορίσαι σε νί-
κην, εἴπερ ποτέ, καὶ νῦν.

583 ποιηταῖς codd.: πολίταις Bentley: πόροισιν van Herwerden
589 χορικῶν codd.: Χαρίτων Wilamowitz

In line 592 Sommerstein's "us" is more literally "these men".

Robert Alexander Neil ad loc.:

Euripides, Orestes 1155-1156 (tr. Edward P. Coleridge):

Ah! there is nothing better than a trusty friend, neither wealth nor monarchy; a crowd of people is of no account in exchange for a noble friend.

φεῦ·
οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν κρεῖσσον ἢ φίλος σαφής,
οὐ πλοῦτος, οὐ τυραννίς· ἀλόγιστον δέ τι
τὸ πλῆθος ἀντάλλαγμα γενναίου φίλου.

M.L. West ad loc.

cf. HF 11125 with Bond's n., Soph. Phil. 672 f., Men. Dysc. 81 f. Denial of wealth and monarchy as the highest goods goes back to Archil. 19, cf. Sol. 24, 33, Eur. Med. 599 f., Hipp. 1013 ff., Ion 621-32, Phoen. 549 ff., etc.

Homer, Odyssey 10.329 (Circe to Odysseus; tr. A.T. Murray):

Nay, but the mind in thy breast is one not to be beguiled.

σοὶ δέ τις ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀκήλητος νόος ἐστίν.

Alfred Heubeck ad loc.:

The line is modelled on Il. iii 63. Its authenticity has been disputed, both by Aristarchus and by modern critics, but there is no contradiction with 240, as often supposed. κηλέω is almost synonymous with θέλγω (cf. 213 n.; Odysseus' νόος remains ἀκήλητος in spite of the φάρμακα (318), unlike his companions', which Circe was able to bewitch (θέλγειν, κηλεῖν) but not destroy (it remains ἔμπεδος (240); cf. 235-42 n.).

Augustine, Sermons 156.1 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 849; tr. Edmund Hill):

The depths of meaning in the word of God are there to excite our eagerness to study, not to prevent us from understanding. If everything was locked up in riddles, there would be no clue to the opening up of obscure passages. Again, if everything was hidden, there would be nothing for the soul to derive nourishment from, and so gain the strength which would enable it to knock at the closed doors.

Verbi Dei altitudo exercet studium, non denegat intellectum. Si enim omnia clausa essent, nihil esset unde revelarentur obscura. Rursus si omnia tecta essent, non esset unde alimentum perciperet anima, et haberet vires quibus posset ad clausa pulsare.

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Explorations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 9 (on Lord Acton):

It is touching to see him beginning his inaugural lecture, not with the conventional 'Gentlemen,' but with the more modest and friendly 'Fellow students.'

Clive James (1939-2019), "Marcel Reich-Ranicki," Cultural Amnesia (2007; rpt. London: Picador, 2012), pp. 591-599 (at 597):

In a culture where the sublime has always seductively beckoned, his has been a useful corrective emphasis: a shift of direction towards talking turkey and away from Mumpitz, that useful German word for exalted twaddle.

Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), In Quest of Virgil's Birthplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 20-22, with notes on p. 157:

Moreover, we find a fruit market. A strange gleam comes into Pietro's eye as he steers towards a certain vender. Watermelons, yes, American watermelons! Not quite American, since they are not oblong, but round as a ball. The taste is identical, and most grateful after the journey of the day. The reader may not make them out in the view of the market here given, but if any doubt their existence, I can obtain a written certificate from Pietro. Watermelon is his favorite fruit. He knows when he wants it, which is always, and when and where he has had it.

As we crunch the cool and crimson liquidity, a sudden revelation occurs to me. Pietro's joy is not exceeded by my own. For I can correct all the commentators in the interpretation of a line of Virgil. In the preface to his description of that marvellous garden kept by an old man of Corycia on the banks of the Galaesus, the poet speaks of the cucumis that

                          Winding through the grass
Grows to a belly —²²

the comfortable τέλος of that vegetable's activity. Following some interpreters, I had always translated cucumis by 'cucumber.' Others call it 'gourd.' Much better is Benoist, who declares, "Ce mot désigne ici toutes plantes du même genre, de melon aussi bien que la courge." But this definition is too inclusive. Who will deny that the word means specifically 'watermelon'?²³ The truth came to me when Pietro gave us the Italian for 'watermelon,' namely cocomero. 'Cucumber' in Italian is cetriolo, quite a different affair. The watermelon is a native of Africa.²³ The learned Naudin remarks that the culture of the melon in Asia is probably as ancient as that of all other alimentary vegetables and that the Greeks and the Romans were doubtless familiar with it, though some forms may have been described as cucumbers.²⁵ Rather, let us say, cucumis in ancient as in modern Italy has never meant anything but watermelon, while in the Dark and Middle Ages, when the luscious fruit, like so many Pagan luxuries, probably disappeared, the barbarians of the North ludicrously misapplied the original name to an ignominious vegetable. The modern Italian for 'cucumber' doubtless comes from a vulgar Latin word, a degrading diminutive, citriolum, to which Classical authors like Cicero and Virgil did not condescend. The truth has been hidden all these years because no Northern editor of Virgil has ever visited the land of the poet's birth in the month when watermelons are ripe. But now a great light shines on an obscurity, a pleasant line of Virgil has acquired the dignity of epic, and American small boys, particularly those of African origin, like the watermelon itself, can now read the Georgics with some sympathy, knowing that their author, when very young, may well have put arms about the best of fruits, abstracted from his father's, or a neighbor's, garden, and have retired for a luscious revel under the shelter of a spreading beech. All this I endeavored to make clear to Pietro, now at work on his third slice, and was gratified to hear him mumble, "Si, Signore, senza dubbio."

22(21). Georgics, IV, 121:

                                           tortusque per herbam
cresceret in ventrem cucumis.

23 (21). If tortus refers to the shape of the melon, it may be the cocomero serpentino as Tenore supposes. See Conington on the passage (after Keightley). I agree, however, with those, like Conington, who understand tortus to describe the vine's meandering through the grass.

24 (21). See L.H. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture, New York, VI, (1906) 1967.

25 (21). Quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), XVIII, 98. The most recent discussion is that of R. Billiard, in L'Agriculture dans l'Antiquité d'après les Gêorgiques de Virgile (Paris, Boccard, 1928), p. 477. He inclines to believe, on grounds that appear to me inconclusive, that the melon came to Italy somewhat after Virgil's time.

There is no mention of Rand's interpretation in R.A.B. Mynors' commentary on Georgics. I don't see Vergil cited in the Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. cucumis, a strange omission. See Charles Anthon, Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850), p. 408:

The melon is meant here, not the cucumber.

Homer, Odyssey 10.72-75 (Aeolus to Odysseus; tr. A.T. Murray):

Begone from our island with speed, thou vilest of all that live.
In no wise may I help or send upon his way
that man who is hated of the blessed gods.
Begone, for thou comest hither as one hated of the immortals.

ἔρρ᾽ ἐκ νήσου θᾶσσον, ἐλέγχιστε ζωόντων·
οὐ γάρ μοι θέμις ἐστὶ κομιζέμεν οὐδ᾽ ἀποπέμπειν
ἄνδρα τόν, ὅς κε θεοῖσιν ἀπέχθηται μακάρεσσιν·
ἔρρε, ἐπεὶ ἄρα θεοῖσιν ἀπεχθόμενος τόδ᾽ ἱκάνεις.

In line 75 Murray prints ἄρα θεοῖσιν but translates the variant ἀθανάτοισιν, a rare slip. The mistake persists in George E. Dimock's revision of Murray.

---

According to Google, George E. Dimock died in Pindale, Myanmar (click once or twice to enlarge): Actually he died in Pinedale, Wyoming.

Labels: typographical and other errors

R.D. Dawe on Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 177 (LSJ definitions in square brackets added by me):

ἀμαιμάκετος is a Homeric word, of uncertain meaning, used again at Oed. Col. 127. It has been linked with words as diverse as αἷμα [blood], μάχη [battle], μῆκος [length] and μαιμάω [be very eager, quiver with eagerness], and when used of the Chimaera or her πῦρ [fire] was glossed by φοβερός [fearful], χαλεπός [difficult], ἀκαταπόνητος [inexhaustible] and ἀπροσπέλαστον [unapproachable]. Chantraine calls it 'terme poétique traditionnel et expressif dont le sens originel est ignoré de ceux qui l'utilisent'.

Cambridge Greek Lexicon:

ἀμαιμάκετος η ov (also ος ov) ep.adj. [pop.etym.: intensv.prfx., μαιμάω; also privatv.prfx., μάχομαι] (of the Chimaira, Nemean lion, Erinyes) app. formidable, awesome, irresistible Il. S. Theoc.; (of Poseidon’s trident, a spear) Pi. AR.; (of fire) Hes. S.; (of the sea) Hes. Pi.; (of the motion of the Clashing Rocks) Pi.; (of a goddess's might) Pi.; (of strife) B.; (of a ship's mast) perh. mighty or solid Od.

Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek:

ἀμαιμάκετος -η -οv [see μαιμάω?] irresistible, invincible IL. 6.179 (Chimera) PIND. P. 1.14 (sea) SOPH. O.T. 177 (fire), O.C. 127 (Furies) etc.; νεΐκος ἀ. persistent strife BACCHYL. Epin. 11.641 || strong, firm: ἱστόν ἀμαιμάκετον νηός the solid mast of the ship OD. 14.311.

Liddell-Scott-Jones:

ἀμαιμάκετος , η, ον, also ος, ον Hes.Sc.207:— irresistible, old Ep. word, also in Lyr. and Trag. (lyr.); of Chimaera, Il.6.179, 16.329; of fire vomited by her, Hes.Th.319; of fire generally, S.OT177; θάλασσα, πόντος, Hes.Sc.207, Pi.P.1.14; of ship's mast, proof against any strain, Od.14.311; of the trident, Pi.I.8(7).37; ἀ. μένος, κινηθμός, P.3.33, 4.208; νεῖκος stubborn, B.10.64; of the Furies, S.OC127; ἀ. βυθοῖς in unfathomable depths, IG3.900. [Usu. derived fr. ἀ- intens., μαιμάω, i.e. furious; but apptly. connected with ἄμαχος by Poets.]

Hans Christian Albertz in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos: Diccionario Griego–Español:

S. Douglas Olson, "Philological Notes on the Letter Lambda in a New Greek-English Dictionary: II. λασιόκωφος - λημψαπόδοσις," Hyperboreus 29.2 (2023) 299-325 (pp. 301-302, n. 3, discussing λάτρις):

It is disturbing to find words such as this still glossed "servant", suggesting voluntary paid service by free persons; cf. δοῦλος, glossed "servant, slave", in that order. For all their talk of freedom and the like, the Greeks had slaves, and large numbers of them, and they often did not treat them well. This is a conspicuous black mark on their record as a civilization — which is not to say that our own is likely to win any prizes — and lexicographic white-washing of this sort does no service to anyone.

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1976), p. 19:

The pleasures of learning are indeed pleasures. But in fact the word should be changed. The true name is happiness. There are three other types of happiness, superior to that of learning: the happiness of love fulfilled; the happiness of serving mankind; and the happiness of creation. Though it is beneath these, learning is still a great happiness, and can be a help toward the attainment of those others; and it is an essential part of a complete life. No learner has ever found that he ran short of subjects to explore. But many people who avoided learning, or abandoned it, find that life is drained dry. They spend thirty years in a club chair looking glumly out at the sand and the ocean; in a hotel lounge gossiping about the other inmates; in a porch swing waiting for somebody to drive down the road. But that is not how to live. The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning.

With the help of the gods, the Syracusans under Hiero II prepare to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily (Theocritus, Idylls 16.76-97, tr. A.S.F. Gow):

Even now beneath the setting sun the Phoenicians
that dwell in the outmost skirts of Libya tremble for fear;
even now Syracusans grip their spears by the middle
and charge their arms with shields of wicker,
while Hiero, in their midst, girds himself like the heroes of old
with crest of horsehair shadowing his helm.
Ah Zeus, our father far renowned, and Lady Athena,
and thou, Maiden, to whom, with thy mother, has fallen
the mighty city of the rich Ephyraeans by the waters of Lysimeleia,
grant that ill constraints may drive our enemies from the island over the
Sardinian sea with tidings of the death of dear ones
to children and wives, messengers easy to number from out that host.
Grant that towns which the hands of foes have wasted utterly
be peopled again by their ancient masters.
May these till fertile fields, while sheep in countless
thousands grow fat upon the pastures
and bleat over the plain, and cattle gathering
in their herds to the homestead speed the twilight traveller on his way.
May the fallows be worked for seed-time while the cicada
overhead, watching the shepherds in the sun, makes music
in the foliage of the trees. May spiders spin their
delicate webs over armour, and the cry of onset be no more even named.

ἤδη νῦν Φοίνικες ὑπ᾽ ἠελίῳ δύνοντι
οἰκεῦντες Λιβύας ἄκρον σφυρὸν ἐρρίγασιν.
ἤδη βαστάζουσι Συρακόσιοι μέσα δοῦρα
ἀχθόμενοι σακέεσσι βραχίονας ἰτεΐνοισιν·
ἐν δ᾽ αὐτοῖς ῾Ιέρων προτέροις ἴσος ἡρώεσσι        80
ζώννυται, ἵππειαι δὲ κόρυν σκεπάουσιν ἔθειραι.
αἰ γὰρ Ζεῦ κύδιστε πάτερ καὶ πότνι᾽ ᾿Αθάνα
κούρη θ᾽, ἣ σὺν ματρὶ πολυκλήρων ᾿Εφυραίων
εἴληχας μέγα ἄστυ παρ᾽ ὕδασι Λυσιμελείας,
ἐχθροὺς ἐκ νάσοιο κακὰ πέμψειεν ἀνάγκα        85
Σαρδόνιον κατὰ κῦμα, φίλων μόρον ἀγγέλλοντας
τέκνοις ἠδ᾽ ἀλόχοισιν, ἀριθμητοὺς ἀπὸ πολλῶν·
ἄστεά τε προτέροισι πάλιν ναίοιτο πολίταις,
δυσμενέων ὅσα χεῖρες ἐλωβήσαντο κατάκρας·
ἀγροὺς δ᾽ ἐργάζοιντο τεθαλότας: αἱ δ᾽ ἀνάριθμοι        90
μήλων χιλιάδες βοτάνᾳ διαπιανθεῖσαι
ἀμπεδίον βληχοῖντο, βόες δ᾽ ἀγελαδὸν ἐς αὖλιν
ἐρχόμεναι σκνιφαῖον ἐπισπεύδοιεν ὁδίταν·
νειοὶ δ᾽ ἐκπονέοιντο ποτὶ σπόρον, ἁνίκα τέττιξ
ποιμένας ἐνδίους πεφυλαγμένος ἔνδοθι δένδρων        95
ἀχεῖ ἐν ἀκρεμόνεσσιν: ἀράχνια δ᾽ εἰς ὅπλ᾽ ἀράχναι
λεπτὰ διαστήσαιντο, βοᾶς δ᾽ ἔτι μηδ᾽ ὄνομ᾽ εἴη.

83 κούρη θ᾽, ἣ σὺν ματρὶ (the Maiden with her mother) = Persephone and Demeter

Kenneth Dover (1920-2010), Marginal Comment, edd. Stephen Halliwell and Christopher Stray (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), p. 96 (chapter 9, footnotes omitted):

My tutor in ancient history was Russell Meiggs, who made no allowance at all for the fact that we had all been away from academic work for several years. In that he was right, for once excuses are allowed they begin to breed. His comments on our essays were always penetrating, sometimes brutal; it was several weeks before I wrung a word of praise from him, and the end of term before I discovered that he regarded me highly. This would have been a pleasing recompense for working a seventy-hour week, if recompense had been needed, but the intellectual excitement of immersion in the history of fifth-century Athens — the first volume of Gomme's Historical Commentary on Thucydides had just been published — was its own reward. Meiggs combined an expertise in documentary inscriptions with a down-to-earth curiosity about how things really worked, and how people really felt, in the ancient world. He had no time for the kind of solution of historical problems which shuffles the ingredients of a problem into an ingenious pattern and turns history into an intellectual game. The seed of two habits was planted in me by Meiggs more firmly than either of us realised at the time. One was: on any question in Greek history or the Greek language, go first to inscriptions and only after that to literature. The general practice among ancient historians in the English-speaking world had been to treat Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon as 'authorities' and inscriptions as an optional side-dish. I preferred to begin with the inscriptions, construct historical hypotheses to account for this stone, bearing these words, found here, and then to see how the historiography of the time fitted. Students of the Greek language mostly ignored the existence of inscriptions, and even in my own time good scholars have made untrue statements through failure to look in the right places. The second thing I learned from Meiggs was never for a moment to forget that the people whose activities I was studying were real, and that I must make every possible effort to put myself into their place.

Augustine, Sermons 142.5 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, cols. 780-781; tr. Edmund Hill):

However, your head was swollen with pride, and the very swelling made it impossible for you to come back through the narrow gate. The one who became the way cries out, Enter by the narrow door (Mt 7:13). You make an effort to enter, your swollen head prevents you; and your efforts are all the more damaging, the more your swollen condition gets in the way. The door's narrowness irritates your swollen head, and the irritation makes it swell all the more. If you go on swelling up, when will you ever get in? So you must get the swelling down, if you are keen to enter.

But how are you to get your head unswollen? You must accept the medicine of humility. To counter the swelling, you must drink a bitter, but wholesome draft; you must drink the draft of humility. Why should you constrict yourself? Your bulk doesn't let you through, a bulk that's swollen, not just big; if it's big, it's solid; if it's swollen it's just so much hot air.

Tumuerat autem superbia, et ipso tumore per angustum redire non poterat. Clamat ille, qui factus est via: Intrate per angustam portam. Conatur ingredi, impedit tumor; et tanto magis perniciose conatur, quanto magis impedit tumor. Tumidum enim vexat angustia; vexatus autem amplius tumebit. Amplius tumens, quando intrabit? Ergo detumescat, si cupit ingredi.

Unde autem detumescat? Accipiat humilitatis medicamentum. Bibat contra tumorem poculum amarum, sed salubre; bibat poculum humilitatis. Quid se artat? Non sinit moles, non magna, sed tumida; magnitudo enim soliditatem habet, tumor inflationem.

Hill changed the third person to the second.

Inscription from Tralles (1st century AD), now in Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark (Inv. 14897), Greek text from Josef Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, Bd. I: Die Westküste Kleinasiens von Knidos bis Ilion (Stuttgart; B.G. Teubner, 1998), pp. 207-208 (number 02/02/07) = Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Vol. I: Grab-Epigramme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), p. 609 (number 1955), tr. Robert A. Rohland, Carpe Diem: The Poetics of Presence in Greek and Latin Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 2:

I, the stone, am an image. Seikilos placed me here as
long-lasting sign of immortal remembrance.

As long as you're alive, shine (?), don't be sad at all;
life is short, time asks for its due.

Seikilos, son of Euterpes; during his lifetime.

εἰκὼν ἡ λίθος | εἰμί· τίθησι μὲ | Σείκιλος ἔνθα
μνήμης ἀθανάτου | σῆμα πολυχρόνιον.

ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου· |
μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ | λυποῦ·
πρὸς ὀλί|γον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν, |
τὸ τέλος ὁ χρό|νος ἀπαιτεῖ. |

Σείκιλος Εὐτέρ(που)· | ζῇ.

Translation of the song portion by M.L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 301:

While you're alive, shine, man,
don't be the least bit blue.
Life's for a little span;
Time demands its due.

Image of the stone from Stauber, p. 207 (I can't find an image at https://natmus.dk/): Modern musical notation by Armand D'Angour, in Tom Phillips and Armand D'Angour, edd., Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 69: Performance by David Creese at https://soundcloud.com/info-1488/david-creese-sings-seikilos.

Hegesippus, fragment 2 Kassel and Austin (Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. V, p. 551; tr. S. Douglas Olson):

When someone demanded that the wise Epicurus
tell him what "the Good" they're
constantly looking for is, he said it was pleasure.
Well done, best and wisest!
There's no greater good than chewing;
the Good's an attribute of pleasure.

Ἐπίκουρος ὁ σοφὸς ἀξιώσαντός τινος
εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅ τι ποτ᾿ ἐστὶ τἀγαθόν,
ὃ διὰ τέλους ζητοῦσιν, εἶπεν ἡδονήν.
εὖ γ᾿, ὦ κράτιστ᾿ ἄνθρωπε καὶ σοφώτατε·
τοῦ γὰρ μασᾶσθαι κρεῖττον οὐκ ἔστ᾿ οὐδὲ ἓν        5
ἀγαθόν· πρόσεστιν ἡδονῇ γὰρ τἀγαθόν.

3 εἶπεν Casaubon: εἰπεῖν codd.

Cf. Epicurus, fragment 409 Usener (Epicurea, pp. 278-279).