Laudator Temporis Acti

I wish it may be granted to me to satisfy my rage by violence,
so that Mycenae and Sparta may know that
Skyros also is a mother of valiant men!

θυμὸν γένοιτο χειρὶ πληρῶσαί ποτε,
ἵν᾿ αἱ Μυκῆναι γνοῖεν ἡ Σπάρτη θ᾿ ὅτι        325
χἠ Σκῦρος ἀνδρῶν ἀλκίμων μήτηρ ἔφυ.

Aus den bedeutenden Orten Mykene und Sparta kommen die Atreus-Söhne Agamemnon und Menelaos, Neoptolemos’ Heimat dagegen ist das sprichwörtlich unbedeutende, felsige (459) Skyros, dessen Wert durch die erwünschte künftige Rache erwiesen werden soll. Zur Einschätzung von Sparta und Skyros vgl. Eur. Andr. 209 f.; Zenobios, Centuria 1,32 (CPG I, p. 11).

In neither the one case nor the other would it be true to say that the gods make human beings into puppets and destroy their freedom. The proper analogy is not a puppeteer and his puppets but a grand master playing chess with a novice. The novice's freedom is complete: he may make any moves he likes. But the grand master defeats defeats him easily because he is a better chess player and can see farther ahead. Just so are the gods more powerful than mortals, and when a god wishes to destroy a man, his actions may be free but they will not achieve their intended goal. And just as a grand master might add insult to injury by announcing in advance the exact piece with which he will produce check-mate, so the gods often mock their victims by giving them accurate prophecies of future destruction, prophecies which they nevertheless cannot avoid and which may even be instrumental in their downfall.

It still strikes me with amazement when I open a book of speeches by Demosthenes and begin to hear the voice, the very syllables and cadences, of a man who died some twenty-three centuries ago. Surely it is almost miraculous that we can take up the Aeneid of Vergil, reproduced by machinery that would have astounded Vergil, on a material he had never seen, in a format he could scarcely have imagined, and after two millennia find that, undimmed by time and change, his poetry still sings, his mystical visions still transport us as they did his first readers, and the subtleties of his poetic architecture still hold secrets only half discovered.

In the presence of you all let me name the glorious gifts:
seven tripods that the fire has not touched, and ten talents of gold
and twenty gleaming cauldrons, and twelve strong horses,
winners in the race, that have won prizes by their fleetness.
Not without booty would that man be,
nor unpossessed of precious gold,
who had wealth as great as the prizes my single-hoofed horses have won for me.
And I will give seven women skilled in noble handiwork,
women of Lesbos, whom on the day when Achilles himself took well-built Lesbos
I chose out for myself from the spoil, who in beauty surpassed all the tribes of women.

ὑμῖν δ᾽ ἐν πάντεσσι περικλυτὰ δῶρ᾽ ὀνομήνω
ἕπτ᾽ ἀπύρους τρίποδας, δέκα δὲ χρυσοῖο τάλαντα,
αἴθωνας δὲ λέβητας ἐείκοσι, δώδεκα δ᾽ ἵππους
πηγοὺς ἀθλοφόρους, οἳ ἀέθλια ποσσὶν ἄροντο.
οὔ κεν ἀλήϊος εἴη ἀνὴρ ᾧ τόσσα γένοιτο,        125
οὐδέ κεν ἀκτήμων ἐριτίμοιο χρυσοῖο,
ὅσσά μοι ἠνείκαντο ἀέθλια μώνυχες ἵπποι.
δώσω δ᾽ ἑπτὰ γυναῖκας ἀμύμονα ἔργα ἰδυίας
Λεσβίδας, ἃς ὅτε Λέσβον ἐϋκτιμένην ἕλεν αὐτὸς
ἐξελόμην, αἳ κάλλει ἐνίκων φῦλα γυναικῶν.        130

In negotiations with such a character as Akhilleus any number of things could go wrong, so Agamemnon makes sure that no one could criticize him for meanness and lists his gifts publicly. For other lists of gifts, which typify what is counted as wealth in the Homeric world, cf. 8.290-1 (tripod, horses, and concubine), 24.229-34 (clothing, gold, tripods, and cups), Od. 4.128-35 (bathtubs, tripods, gold, distaff, and work-basket), 8.392-3 (clothing and gold), 9.202-5 (gold, crater, wine), 24.274-7 (gold, crater, clothing), [Hesiod] frr. 197 M-W (women, goblets) and 200 M-W (bowl, tripod, gold). To the conventional items (gold and tripods) are added such extras as the donors may be thought to have handy, here horses (124) and slaves (128).

Nothing is more difficult in the Homeric world than to distinguish — if indeed one must distinguish — between premonetary instru­ments which serve as a standard of value for exchange purposes, objects for hoarding and ostentation¹, goods that were indis­pensable for the daily life of warriors (such as metal in raw or worked form), and landed estates pure and simple. Are these premonetary signs? The ox was the standard of measure: Laertes purchased Eurycleia for the price of 20 oxen (Odyssey I, 430-1), which does not mean that oxen were a means of exchange. The list of presents which Agamemnon proposes to give to Achilles to restore their friendship includes objects which continued to be used for a long time as 'premonetary'² instruments and which as late as the fourth century in the treasures of temples served simultaneously as symbolic wealth and as money³, but it also includes captive women and cities.

1 See the admirable study by L. Gernet, 'La notion mythique de la valeur en Grèce', Journal de Psychologie 41 (1948), pp. 415-62, reproduced in Anthropologie de la Grèce ancienne, pp. 93-137, and M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, pp. 70ff.

2 Thus in Crete where a payment 'in cauldrons' is still specified in an inscription from Cnossos of the fourth or third century and where the Gortyn inscriptions regularly provide for payments in tripods or cauldrons till the end of the sixth century; see G. le Rider, Monnaies crétoises (Paris, 1966), p. 167.

3 See for example the inventory of a temple at Thespiae (beginning of the fourth century) republished by P. Roesch and J. Taillardat, in Revue de Philologie 40 (1956), pp. 70-87; one finds there side by side cauldrons, 'spit-drachmae' similar to the Spartan iron currency (below, no 56), tripods, domestic utensils, weapons, etc.

How dazzling white with drifted snow
Soracte stands! The woods below
    Are bowed to breaking with their burden;
The frozen rivers have ceased to flow.

Come, friend, let's drive away the cold:
Pile the logs high as hearth will hold,
    And bring me forth a flask of Sabine,
The strong, the mellow, the four years old.

All else entrust to heaven's will,
Which bids the battling winds be still—
    And waves grow calm, and peace possesses
The ash and cypress upon the hill.

No matter what the morrow prove:
Count each day gain the Powers above
    May grant us. Take what boyhood offers,
The fun and dancing and making love.

Leave gloom for when your hair is grey;
Youth is the time for sport and play—
    Then off to keep your tryst at twilight
And softly prattle an hour away;

Or by a tell-tale laugh to trace
The saucy charmer's hiding-place,
    And snatch a pledge from wrist or finger,
Surrendered with but a feign'd ill grace.

---

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
    silvae laborantes geluque
    flumina constiterint acuto.

Dissolve frigus ligna super foco        5
large reponens atque benignius
    deprome quadrimum Sabina,
    o Thaliarche, merum diota.

Permitte divis cetera; qui simul
stravere ventos aequore fervido        10
    deproeliantis, nec cupressi
    nec veteres agitantur orni.

Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et
quem fors dierum cumque dabit lucro
    adpone, nec dulcis amores        15
    sperne puer neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae
    lenesque sub noctem susurri
    composita repetantur hora;        20

nunc et latentis proditor intimo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
    pignusque dereptum lacertis
    aut digito male pertinaci.

Hübsche Verse, aber noch kein Gedicht.

This is a great poem.

The Wabash prophet [Tenskwatawa] is a very different character, more rogue than fool, if to be a rogue is not the greatest of all follies. He arose to notice while I was in the administration, and became of course a proper subject of enquiry for me. The enquiry was made with diligence. His declared object was the reformation of his red brethren, and their return to their pristine manner of living. He pretended to be in constant communication with the great spirit, that he was instructed by him to make known to the Indians that they were created by him distinct from the Whites, of different natures, for different purposes, and placed under different circumstances, adapted to their nature and destinies: that they must return from all the ways of the Whites to the habits and opinions of their forefathers. They must not eat the flesh of hogs, of bullocks, of sheep etc. the deer and buffalo having been created for their food; they must not make bread of wheat, but of Indian corn. They must not wear linen nor woollen, but dress like their fathers in the skins and furs of wild animals. They must not drink ardent spirits; and I do not remember whether he extended his inhibitions to the gun and gunpowder, in favor of the bow and arrow. I concluded from all this that he was a visionary, inveloped in the clouds of their antiquities, and vainly endeavoring to lead back his brethren to the fancied beatitudes of their golden age.

The enemy, however, even at this critical moment showed such determination in their bravery that when those in the front rank had fallen the men behind them stood upon the slain and continued the fight from on top of the corpses. When they were overthrown the pile of bodies grew higher, while the survivors used the heap as a vantage-point for throwing missiles at our men, or catching their spears and throwing them back. Not without good reason were they judged to be men of enormous bravery. For they had dared to cross a very wide river, climb its steep banks, and advance on extremely difficult ground: the Nervii's courage had made light of these obstacles.

at hostes etiam in extrema spe salutis tantam virtutem praestiterunt, ut, cum primi eorum cecidissent, proximi iacentibus insisterent atque ex eorum corporibus pugnarent; his deiectis et coacervatis cadaveribus, qui superessent, ut ex tumulo, tela in nostros conicerent et pila intercepta remitterent: ut non nequiquam tantae virtutis homines iudicari deberet ausos esse transire latissimum flumen, ascendere altissimas ripas, subire iniquissimum locum; quae facilia ex difficillimis animi magnitudo redegerat.

Gaselee throughout his life combined with a very retentive memory and a capacity for reading very rapidly a remarkable power of getting things done without appearing to be busy; and where another, after working into the small hours, might choose a novel or other light literature to read himself to sleep, he would take to bed some work of formidable austerity—a Gothic grammar, perhaps, or a Greek text of Gregory of Nazianzus. Fortified by a cigar and a somewhat garish blazer of undergraduate date he would resume the volume in the morning before he got up and not only read but digest it. Much that to most people would have seemed work served him for recreation, and to that fact his remarkable output is partly due.

• Bedtime Reading (Michael A. Screech)
• Bedtime Reading (Raymond William Lamb)

For permanent inspiration in the great humanities there was none to compare with the Sixth Form Master, Thomas Ethelbert Page. As a housemaster, as a schoolmaster, he was compassed about by details and difficulties with which he should never have had to cope. He had none of the technique of coaching or of cramming, but those who sat under him, as I did for three years, had the opportunity of drinking in the quintessence of scholarship. If the object of classical study is to create, not mere grammatical, syntactical or textual erudition but the deepest and broadest education, a love of spiritual greatness increasing through life — Macaulay’s scholar reading Plato with his feet on the fender: T. E. Lawrence in the desert with his sole volume, Aristophanes — then it is a tragedy that T. E. Page, one of the few who could inspire as well as teach, was not in the prime of life appointed a University Professor of Latin or of Greek or the Master of some great college. But it is a tragedy of which no sixth-form Charterhouse boy can complain, and for which some of us must always feel and express, though we never can repay, an infinite debt of gratitude.

Nevertheless, I took to wife the daughter of a wealthy house,
winning her by my merit; because I was no weakling
and not afraid of war. Now all is gone.
Yet still, when you see stubble I think you know the grain;
hardships innumerable have pressed me sore.
In those days Ares and Athene gave me courage,
and strength to break the line; and when I picked for an ambush
our bravest, sowing the seeds of evil for our foes,
my swelling heart cast not a look on death;
but charging ever foremost, I would catch upon my spear
whatever foeman showed less speed than I.

ἠγαγόμην δὲ γυναῖκα πολυκλήρων ἀνθρώπων
εἵνεκ᾽ ἐμῆς ἀρετῆς, ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἀποφώλιος ἦα
οὐδὲ φυγοπτόλεμος· νῦν δ᾽ ἤδη πάντα λέλοιπεν·
ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης καλάμην γέ σ᾽ ὀΐομαι εἰσορόωντα
γιγνώσκειν· ἦ γάρ με δύη ἔχει ἤλιθα πολλή.        215
ἦ μὲν δὴ θάρσος μοι Ἄρης τ᾽ ἔδοσαν καὶ Ἀθήνη
καὶ ῥηξηνορίην· ὁπότε κρίνοιμι λόχονδε
ἄνδρας ἀριστῆας, κακὰ δυσμενέεσσι φυτεύων,
οὔ ποτέ μοι θάνατον προτιόσσετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ,
ἀλλὰ πολὺ πρώτιστος ἐπάλμενος ἔγχει ἕλεσκον        220
ἀνδρῶν δυσμενέων ὅ τέ μοι εἴξειε πόδεσσιν.

214-15. 'Still, if you look at the straw you can see what the ear was, for I have had trouble enough and to spare' (Butler). Another agricultural Metaphor (cp. Il. 19, 222): an experienced farmer can judge from the straw or stubble alone how good the grain must have been; cp. ex stipula cognoscere aristam. Eumaeus, as a good judge of men, will recognize O.'s former prowess despite his weak and withered appearance now.

216 ff. ἔδοσαν: a plural verb between two singular subjects, a usage called the σχῆμα Ἀλκμανικόν from Alcman's fondness for it. I follow Monro in punctuating with a comma after ῥηξηνορίην (from ῥήγνυμι and ἀνήρ 'power to break through a line of warriors') and a colon after φυτεύων, on the grounds that it is not Homeric to begin a sentence with ὁπότε in the middle of a line. Then οὔ ποτέ μοι κ.τ.λ. in 219 is a kind of apodosis: '(in such a case) I never feared, etc.', repeating the statement in 216-17 in a new form: hence the Asyndeton. Monro compares 15, 317; 16, 466; 18, 278. Most of the other editors put a colon after ῥηξηνορίην and a comma after φυτεύων, taking ὁπότε κρίνοιμι κ.τ.λ. with the following clause.

221. 'Any enemy who was inferior to me in speed of foot.' Others translate 'who fled before me on foot '. ὅ τέ = ὅτε τις or εἴ τις here. Professor W.H. Porter suggests that the original may have been ὅτε τις changed to ὅτε μοι when the Digamma ceased to be felt in ϝείκω.

Most readers seem to believe that Pound is a truly scholarly writer. How deeply, how accurately, and how sensitively he knows other languages I cannot tell; but although he shows off his Greek and his Latin, his Latin is poor and his Greek is contemptible.

Pound never had more than a smattering of Greek, scarcely enough to enable him to spell Greek words correctly, either in the Greek alphabet or in our own. In Latin he knew enough to let him follow the general sense of a simple sentence, and to grasp some of the more obvious effects of sound and rhythm, but not nearly enough to permit him to understand or even to approach the greatest Roman poets, or to save him from making coarse and degrading blunders in interpreting Roman poetry. Worse than that, he would not learn. He would not admit his deficiencies and cure them through humility and industry. Nor would he shun those areas where a display of ignorance might be damaging. Where others would turn their eyes away from the sanctuary, or else enter with quiet step and bowed head, Ezra Pound charged in, shouting and singing and hiccuping, on roller skates, and rollicked around breaking the decorations and scrawling his name on the walls.

Now, if a more modest or more dedicated poet did not know Greek and yet wished to use a passage from Homer in his poetry, he would take five or six versions of Homer in languages which he did understand—English and French and Italian, for example—and by combining them and extracting their essence, he might get fairly close to the original. Or—reflecting that art is long—he would set out to learn Greek. Pound did neither. He used a line-for-line word-for-word translation from Homer’s poetic Greek into flat literal Latin prose which was published in 1538 by a hack named Andrea Divo. Whether he thought this was the best available translation, it is difficult to tell. If he did, he was quite wrong. And in any case the affectation of using a Renaissance Latin pony to help him understand a Greek poem caused him far more trouble than it was worth. Not only did Andrea Divo sometimes get Homer’s meaning wrong, but Ezra Pound sometimes got Andrea Divo’s meaning wrong. The result was a double layer of misunderstanding spread, like Cimmerian mist, between the radiant sun of Homer and Pound’s wretched readers, benighted beneath.

Do not impair pleasure in life; for by far
the best thing for man is a pleasant lifetime.

μηδ' ἀμαύρου τέρψιν ἐν βίῳ· πολύ τοι
φέριστον ἀνδρὶ τερπνὸς αἰών.

μηδ' ἀμαύρου codd.: μηδὲ μαύρου Boeckh

Biometric payment options are becoming more common in the U.S., such as Apple Face ID enabling app purchases, and Amazon's introduction of pay-by-palm technology in stores, and financial firms from JPMorgan to Mastercard embracing the technology.

My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents' interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.

Even among Greek moralists veracity is little discussed or commended.⁴⁶ I can find only one allusion to it in Epictetus (Ench. 52). Plutarch suggests that from time to time we should follow special moral exercises and for a given period refrain from sexual intercourse, wine and lying (464B)! Plato authorized his philosopher kings to deceive their subjects for their own good, and the idea was not alien to the old Stoics;⁴⁷ it does not occur to Marcus, who would speak plainly in the senate (n. 44). His attitude is more typical of the good old Roman than of Greeks; he wished to act 'as a Roman' (ii, 5). Nepos praises Atticus because 'mendacium neque dicebat neque pati poterat' (Att. 15, 1); this was characteristic of traditional Roman moral values.⁴⁸ They obtained in the circle of Marcus' early years; he recalls the truthfulness of Severus and Maximus (i, 14 f.), and from Fronto he had learned to avoid 'tyrannical hypocrisy' (i, ii). Both he and Verus told Fronto that he had taught them truthfulness,⁴⁹ and Fronto himself names love of veracity and straightforwardness as ideals.⁵⁰ Hellenistic and Imperial Roman thought on statecraft tends to be content with representing the model ruler as the virtuotus man, but it seems to be only in Roman treatments of his good qualities that truthfulness and simplicity strongly appear, perhaps first under Trajan, who is contrasted by Pliny and others with the tyrant Domitian, 'insidiossissimus princeps '.⁵¹ For Dio Marcus himself was a 'truly good man, free of all pretence' (lxxi, 34, 4).

⁴⁶ Pythagoras allegedly taught that men approximate to the gods by τὸ ἀληθεύειν (telling the truth) and conferring benefits (Ael., VH xii, 59). Other moralists of course reprehend lying (cf. n. 41; Plato, Laws 730C; 943E, cf. Alcib. 122A) as a general rule, but without Marcus' emphasis. Epictetus constantly uses πιστός of the good man, but men thought that philosophers condoned lying (iv, 6, 33).

⁴⁷ e.g. Rep. 389 B; 459 C. Cf. SVF iii, 513; 554; ii 132; but note iii, 629.

⁴⁸ 'Verus, veritas' constantly mean 'truthful, veracity' in Latin, see Forcellini's Lexicon, and are often linked with 'fides' (on which E. Fraenkel, Kl. Beiträge i, 15 ff.) and simplicitas, cf. nn. 49, 50, 55. Cf. Cic., de Offic. i, 63: 'itaque viros fortes et magnanimos, eosdem bonos et simplices, veritatis amicos minimeque fallaces esse volumus'; 109: 'veritatis cultores, fraudis inimici '; perhaps the Roman (cf. e.g. Verr. ii, 1,4; 3,144; Quinct. 10; Balb. 12), rather than the translator of Panaetius, is speaking. Cf. also 'apertus et simplex' (Fam. i, 9, 22 etc.); Pliny, ep. ii, 9,4; iv, 22,3; ix, 25,2.

⁴⁹ i, 16 H. = 49 N.: 'verum me (Marcus) dicere satius simul et audire verum me doces'; ii, 18 = 130 N.: Verus has leamed from Fronto 'prius multo simplicitatem verique amorem quam loquendi polite disciplinam'.

⁵⁰ ii, 230 H. = 235 N.: 'multa ... fideliter ... consulta ... Verum dixi sedulo, verum audivi libenter.' ii, 224 H. = 232 N.: 'Victorinum pietate mansuetudine veritate innocentia maxima '. ii, 154 H. = 135 N.: 'simplicitas, castitas, veritas, fides Romana plane, φιλοστοργία vero nescio an Romana . . ., (For the last quality cf. Med. i, 11 with 9,3; 17,7; vi, 30,1; xi, 18,4; Epict. i, 11,6; 23,3; ii, 17,38.)

⁵¹ Pliny, Pan. 1,6; 49,8; 54,5; 67,1; 84,1; 95,3; the same contrast in Mart. x, 72 with Domitian, on whom cf. Tac., Agr. 42; Suet., Dom. ii; Dio lxvii, 1; see also on Tiberius, another 'tyrant', Tac., Ann. i, 11,2; vi, 50,1; 51,3 etc.; Suet., Tib. 24,11 42,1; Dio lvii, 1. The ideal of 'veri affectus': Tac., Hist. i, 15,4. On Trajan, Dio lxviii, 5,3; 6,2; Dio Chrys. (cf. n. 45) iii, 2. Veracity and simplicity do not appear in the evidence collected by W. Schubart, 'Das Hellenistische Königsideal nach Inschr. u. Papyri', Arch. f. Pap. xii, i ff., nor in what we have of Greek treatises on monarchy by 'Ecphantus' and 'Diotogenes', probably of Roman imperial date (L. Delatte, Les Traités de la royauté. . . 1942), yet reflecting Hellenistic thought; there is one reference in Aristeas' letter, s. 206. Dio Chrysostom depicts the ideal king as truthful, sincere and simple (i, 26; ii, 26), perhaps because Trajan was so regarded. Arrian's view that a king like Ptolemy I should tell the truth (Anab. pr.) might simply represent his own (Roman?) view, but in vii, 5,2, perhaps from Ptolemy himself, he ascribes this view to Alexander.

What is joy in the world? Rejoicing in iniquity, rejoicing in infamy, rejoicing in what is dishonorable, rejoicing in what is vile. These are all the things the world rejoices in. And none of them would exist, if people didn't want them to. There are some things people do; others that are done to them, they endure even if they don't like it. So what is this world, and what is the joy of this world? I will tell you, brothers and sisters, as briefly as I can, as far as God helps me. Briefly, quickly, I'll tell you. What the world relishes is villainy that no one punishes. Let people indulge in dissolute living, in fornication, in the frivolities of the games; let them drown themselves in drink, befoul themselves with infamy—and suffer no harm: and there you have the joy of the world. Let these evil things I've listed not be chastised by famine, or by fear of war, or any other fear; not by any disease or any misfortunes at all; but let them all pass in material plenty, in bodily ease, in peace of mind—an evil mind: and again, there you have the joy of the world.

In saeculo gaudium quod est? Gaudere de iniquitate, gaudere de turpitudine, gaudere de dedecore, de deformitate. De his omnibus gaudet saeculum. Quae omnia non essent, nisi homines voluissent. Alia sunt quae faciunt homines, alia quae patiuntur, etsi nolunt, ferunt. Quid ergo est hoc saeculum, et quod est gaudium saeculi? Dico, fratres, breviter quantum possum, quantum Deus adiuvat; festinanter, breviter dico. Saeculi laetitia est impunita nequitia. Luxurientur homines, fornicentur, in spectaculis nugentur, ebriositate ingurgitentur, turpitudine foedentur, nihil mali patiantur: et videte saeculi gaudium. Ista mala quae commemoravi, non castiget fames, non belli timor, non aliquis timor, non aliquis morbus, non aliquae adversitates; sed sint omnia in rerum abundantia, in pace carnis, in securitate malae mentis: ecce videte saeculi gaudium.

Know that I am ignorant of what you are asking me about.

ὡς μηδὲν εἰδότ᾿ ἴσθι μ᾿ ὧν ἀνιστορεῖς.

Παλλάδα περσέπτολιν κλῄζω πολεμαδόκον ἁγνάν
παῖδα Διὸς μεγάλου <δαμάσιππον>

Pallas, sacker of cities, I summon, the warlike, the pure, child of great Zeus.

Pallas the sacker of cities I praise, the warlike, chaste,
horse-taming daughter of great Zeus.

While in a disgusting and noisome place that wretch was evacuating the refuse from his gluttony, he evacuated its receptacle as well; so with his inwards dissolved and ejected along with his excrement, the miserable creature instantly breathed his last and underwent this most shameful death, called to answer for his noisome blasphemy in a noisome place and slain by the tongue of the great James.

ἐν βδελυκτοῖς γὰρ καὶ δυσώδεσι χωρίοις ὁ ἀλάστωρ ἐκεῖνος τῆς ἀπλήστου τροφῆς ἐκκρίνων τὰ περιττώματα, καὶ τὰ τούτων μετὰ τούτων ἐξέκρινε δοχεῖα. οὕτω δὲ τῶν σπλάγχων αὐτοῦ διαλυθέντων καὶ σὺν τῇ κόπρῳ κεχωρηκότων, ἐξέπνευσεν ὁ δείλαιος παραχρῆμα καὶ τὸν αἴσχιστον ἐκεῖνον ὑπέμεινε θάνατον, τῆς δυσώδους αὐτοῦ βλασφημίας ἐν δυσώδεσι χωρίοις εἰσπραχθεὶς τὰς εὐθύνας καὶ διὰ τῆς Ἰακώβου τοῦ μεγάλου γλώττης δεξάμενος τὴν σφαγήν.

• Death in a Private Place
• Fournier, Vespasian, Claudius, and Elvis
• Death in the Privy
• Don't Strain Too Hard

Labels: noctes scatologicae

In questions of authenticity only negative proofs are as a rule convincing. It is often possible to show that a work or a passage displays so many incorrect, absurd, or anomalous features that, even when due allowance is made for textual corruption, it is unreasonable, on a balance of probabilities, to attribute it to its reputed author. It is rarely possible to prove authenticity with anything like even this limited degree of cogency. The most that it is usually realistic to expect is what I have called a verdict of nihil obstat: a conclusion that, on balance, a disputed work or passage contains nothing fundamentally inconsistent with its reputed authorship.

It would be shameful, by Zeus and all the gods, and unworthy of you and the city and the deeds of your ancestors, to sacrifice the rest of the Greeks into slavery for the sake of our private comfort, and I for one would rather die than make such a proposal.

αἰσχρὸν μὲν νὴ τὸν Δία καὶ πάντας θεοὺς καὶ ἀνάξιον ὑμῶν καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων τῇ πόλει καὶ πεπραγμένων τοῖς προγόνοις, τῆς ἰδίας ῥᾳθυμίας ἕνεκα τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας Ἕλληνας εἰς δουλείαν προέσθαι, καὶ ἔγωγε αὐτὸς μὲν τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἂν ἢ ταῦτ᾽ εἰρηκέναι βουλοίμην.

Men of Athens, you have abandoned the policy you inherited from your ancestors, and have been persuaded by speakers who think it an unnecessary and pointless expense to champion the Greeks and use a well-organized force to help all who are victims of injustice. You supposed that living a quiet life and neglecting your duty, but instead abandoning every place one after another and allowing others to take them, provided you with wonderful happiness and great security. As a result, another man has come forward to the post that you should have occupied and has become wealthy and powerful and the ruler of many.

ἐξέστητ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τῆς ὑποθέσεως ἐφ᾽ ἧς ὑμᾶς οἱ πρόγονοι κατέλιπον, καὶ τὸ μὲν προΐστασθαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ δύναμιν συνεστηκυῖαν ἔχοντας πᾶσι τοῖς ἀδικουμένοις βοηθεῖν περίεργον ἐπείσθητ᾽ εἶναι καὶ μάταιον ἀνάλωμ᾽ ὑπὸ τῶν ταῦτα πολιτευομένων, τὸ δ᾽ ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ διάγειν καὶ μηδὲν τῶν δεόντων πράττειν, ἀλλὰ προϊεμένους καθ᾽ ἓν ἕκαστον πάνθ᾽ ἑτέρους ἐᾶσαι λαβεῖν, θαυμαστὴν εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ πολλὴν ἀσφάλειαν ἔχειν ᾤεσθε. ἐκ δὲ τούτων παρελθὼν ἐπὶ τὴν τάξιν ἐφ᾽ ἧς ὑμῖν τετάχθαι προσῆκεν ἕτερος, οὗτος εὐδαίμων καὶ μέγας καὶ πολλῶν κύριος γέγονεν.

Merkelbach and West have succumbed to the occupational disease to which some papyrologists are notoriously prone: too often they have filled hopelessly large gaps with fragments of their own composition. Page, when editing his Loeb Greek Literary Papyri, recovered from the illness at the eleventh hour (p. viii), and this is why his collection, uncluttered by handfuls of private poetry, is so serviceable still today, more than twenty years after: Merkelbach-West were not cured, and therefore the same reservations are valid for their collection as were made by Kerényi in his review of Zimmermann's romance papyri:¹ the reader would much prefer to have in front of him a genuine fragment, however mutilated, rather than a line which is almost exclusively modern reconstruction.

¹ Cf. B. Lavagnini, Studi sul romanzo greco, Messina (1950), p. 209.

Although most would judge the edition to be a work of very high quality, Giangrande is right that M-W print some speculative supplements. Such a practice would be more of a problem in a text less formulaic than Hesiod, but at least they meticulously present the papyrological evidence. Page was writing after a period in which papyrus texts were commonly printed fully supplemented, and in some cases no typographical devices were used to identify supplements (such matters were typically relegated to an apparatus). A good example is the edition of Herodas by Headlam and Knox from 1922 (the commentary is still extremely valuable). Page himself was misled: he quotes λινέην κύπασσιν at Her. 8.31 to illustrate a linen chiton (S & A 222 n. 2), but λινέην is a highly speculative supplement by Knox. In his Teubner edition Cunnigham prints ].ν κύπα[σσ]ιν̣, and did not think that Knox’s suggestion was worth mentioning in the app. crit. at all.

For harmony makes small states great, while discord undermines the mightiest empires.

nam concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur.

The fashion persists of condemning and deploring the last epoch of the Roman Republic. It was turbulent, corrupt, immoral. And some speak of decadence. On the contrary, it was an era of liberty, vitality—and innovation. Political strife brought oratory to perfection; and the master of eloquence, in seasons of eclipse or disappointment, turned his abundant energies to refining the Latin language, which he converted into a suitable medium for theoretical disquisition. Other writers went in for verse, with new and splendid achievements of vigour or elegance.

Roman life was coming to feel to the full the liberating effects of empire and prosperity. In the aftermath of the Punic Wars, cult and ritual lapsed, and law was separated from religion (the process and agents are obscure). In various other ways good sense or chicanery were able to abate or circumvent the "antiquus rigor," the "duritia veterum." The quality of a civilisation can be estimated on various criteria. One of them is art and letters, which posterity tends to rate highly, for interested reasons. Another is the position of women in relation to husband and property. Ancient custom kept the woman in strict tutelage. Tutela was never abolished, only disregarded in practice; and women (at least of the better sort) acquired a large measure of liberty. That was not all. Divorce was easy and normal, the initiative not always coming from the husband. The classical law of marriage eschewed rigour or formality. It was perhaps the most imposing achievement of the Roman legal genius.

This liberal and humane evolution is seldom appraised as it deserves. Sallust himself is partly to blame. Not that he wasted words or regrets on the decay of religion. But he wrote in revulsion from his own time. He interpreted a process of economic change and political adjustment in terms of morals; and he fell an easy prey to conventional notions about old Roman virtue. The distortion was enhanced in the next epoch, eager to escape from the memory of recent freedom and turbulence, and complacent in its own type of felicity—that is, liberty but not licence, discipline but not despotism. Political fraud and Augustan romanticism conspired to embellish the venerable past—with unhappy consequences for historical study ever after.

A word about supplements. I began eager to fill every gap with flawless fragments of my own composition; I ended with the desire—too late—to remove all that is not either legible in the papyrus or replaceable beyond reasonable doubt. At the eleventh hour, indeed, I expelled handfuls of private poetry: yet far too much remains, hard though I tried to print nothing which is inconsistent with spaces and traces in the papyrus, and to be guided, for the sense of my supplements, by certain or probable indications provided by the legible text.

Corruption in Elections has heretofore destroyed all Elective Governments. What Regulations or Precautions may be devised to prevent it in future, I am content with you to leave to Posterity to consider. You and I shall go to the Kingdom of the just or at least shall be released from the Republick of the Unjust, with Hearts pure and hands clean of all Corruption in Elections: so much I firmly believe.

And now, comrades, we must so act that each man shall feel in his breast that he is chiefly responsible for the victory. For victory, God willing, will now give back to us country and homes, freedom and honours, children, to such as have them, and wives. Happy, indeed, are those of us who shall win the victory and live to behold the gladdest day of all! And happy also he who is slain; for no one, however rich he may be, will gain a monument so glorious.

ἀλλ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες, οὕτω χρὴ ποιεῖν ὅπως ἕκαστός τις ἑαυτῷ συνείσεται τῆς νίκης αἰτιώτατος ὤν. αὕτη γὰρ ἡμῖν, ἂν θεὸς θέλῃ, νῦν ἀποδώσει καὶ πατρίδα καὶ οἴκους καὶ ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τιμὰς καὶ παῖδας, οἷς εἰσί, καὶ γυναῖκας. ὦ μακάριοι δῆτα, οἳ ἂν ἡμῶν νικήσαντες ἐπίδωσι τὴν πασῶν ἡδίστην ἡμέραν. εὐδαίμων δὲ καὶ ἄν τις ἀποθάνῃ· μνημείου γὰρ οὐδεὶς οὕτω πλούσιος ὢν καλοῦ τεύξεται.

But we must remember that for Sophocles and his contemporaries, gods and men were not judged by the same standards.³⁷ The Christian ideal, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect,"³⁷ would have made little or no sense to an Athenian, whose deepest religious conviction would have been most clearly expressed in opposite terms: "Do not act like a god."

37. cf. Σ on [Ajax] 79 σκληρὸν μὲν τὸ λέγειν ἐπεγγελᾶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀλλὰ θεός ἐστιν οὐκ εὐλαβουμένη τὸ νεμεσητόν. Lesky (Die Tragische Dichtung, p. 110) puts it well: "Die Sophrosyne ist bei Sophokles nicht Sache der Götter, die Menschen haben sie zu wahren."

38. Matthew 5:48.

Knox was clearly using an older edition of the scholia (Papageorgius?). The more recent edition by Christodoulou prints a supplemented version of that passage: σκληρὸν μὲν τὸ λέγειν <ἥδιστον τὸ> ἐπεγγελᾶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς. He also notes that ἡδύ is another possibility (both are anonymous conjectures). The addition makes the note somewhat more pointed, I think, picking up Sophocles’ γέλως ἥδιστος. The prologue of the Ajax is an unsettling scene!

I only wish that we two had enough supplies of food
and sweet wine, here in your hut, enough to last a while,
that we could feast on in silence, while others did the work:
easily then could I take up the space of a whole year
and still not have finished the tale of my heartfelt sufferings—
sum total of all that by the gods' will I've endured.

εἴη μὲν νῦν νῶϊν ἐπὶ χρόνον ἠμὲν ἐδωδὴ
ἠδὲ μέθυ γλυκερὸν κλισίης ἔντοσθεν ἐοῦσι,
δαίνυσθαι ἀκέοντ᾽, ἄλλοι δ᾽ ἐπὶ ἔργον ἕποιεν·        195
ῥηϊδίως κεν ἔπειτα καὶ εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἅπαντα
οὔ τι διαπρήξαιμι λέγων ἐμὰ κήδεα θυμοῦ,
ὅσσα γε δὴ ξύμπαντα θεῶν ἰότητι μόγησα.

It was in the last season that the archaeologist Carl Schuchardt came to work with him [Carl Humann] at Pergamum, and his account brings the forty-seven-year-old archaeologist vividly to life. If he knew he was no scholar or connoisseur, he knew too what his own value was.

'Are you a philologist?' was his greeting to Schuchardt. The latter, sensing a trap, hastily assured the older man he was an archaeologist. This was as well, when he heard Humann's definition of a philologist — 'a man with two left hands who when he comes here falls off the fortifications'. It was indeed not long before Schuchardt fell over and hurt his knee; you may imagine he kept quiet about it.

I have spent my Summer so deliciously in farming that I return to the old Story of Politicks with great Reluctance. The Earth is grateful. You find it so, I dare say. I wish We could both say the Same of its Inhabitants.

Ἀτρεΐδης δὲ γέροντας⁷ ἀολλέας ἦγεν Ἀχαιῶν
ἐς κλισίην, παρὰ δέ σφι τίθει μενοεικέα δαῖτα.

⁷ γέροντας: ἀριστέας Aristarchus

But the son of Atreus led the counselors of the Achaeans all together to his hut, and set before them a feast to satisfy the heart.

Labels: typographical and other errors

For granted that nature seeks in every way pleasure and enjoyment, old men are physically incapacitated for all pleasures except a few necessary ones, and not only

Aphroditê with old men is wroth,

as Euripides [fragment 23 Kannicht, line 2] says, but their appetites also for food and drink are for the most part blunted and toothless, so that they can, if I may say so, hardly whet and sharpen them. They ought to prepare for themselves pleasures in the mind, not ignoble and illiberal ones like that of Simonides, who said to those who reproached him for his avarice that, since old age had deprived him of all other pleasures, he was comforting his declining years with the only one left, the pleasure of gain.

καὶ γὰρ εἰ ζητεῖ πάντως ἡ φύσις τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ χαίρειν, τὸ μὲν σῶμα τῶν γερόντων ἀπείρηκε πρὸς πάσας, πλὴν ὀλίγων τῶν ἀναγκαίων, τὰς ἡδονάς, καὶ οὐχ "ἡ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γέρουσιν ἄχθεται" μόνον, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς περὶ πόσιν καὶ βρῶσιν ἐπιθυμίας ἀπημβλυμμένας τὰ πολλὰ καὶ νωδὰς κατέχοντες μόλις οἷον ἐπιθήγουσι καὶ χαράττουσιν· ἐν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ παρασκευαστέον ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἀγεννεῖς οὐδ᾽ ἀνελευθέρους, ὡς Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας αὐτῷ φιλαργυρίαν, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων ἀπεστερημένος διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἡδονῶν ὑπὸ μιᾶς ἔτι γηροβοσκεῖται τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ κερδαίνειν.

God reaches, as soon as thought, his ends:
God, who can catch the winged eagle
And overtakes the dolphin in the sea.
He can bring down any whose heart is high,
And to others he will give unaging splendour.

θεὸς ἅπαν ἐπὶ ἐλπίδεσσι τέκμαρ ἀνύεται,
θεός, ὃ καὶ πτερόεντ᾿ αἰετὸν κίχε, καὶ θαλασσαῖον παραμείβεται
δελφῖνα, καὶ ὑψιφρόνων τιν᾿ ἔκαμψε βροτῶν,
ἑτέροισι δὲ κῦδος ἀγήραον παρέδωκ᾿.

For hateful in my eyes as the gates of Hades
is that man, who, yielding to stress of poverty, tells a deceitful tale.

ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσι
γίγνεται, ὃς πενίῃ εἴκων ἀπατήλια βάζει.

NEOPTOLEMUS
Do you not think it disgraceful to tell lies?
ODYSSEUS
Not if the lie brings us salvation!

ΝΕΟΠΤΟΛΕΜΟΣ
οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἡγῇ δῆτα τὸ ψευδῆ λέγειν;
ΟΔΥΣΣΕΥΣ
οὔκ, εἰ τὸ σωθῆναί γε τὸ ψεῦδος φέρει.

Those of you who have anticipated the solution in your minds, please think of yourselves as fast walkers traveling the road with slower people. Let your speed be held in check a little, in order not to leave your slower companion behind.

Qui praevenistis intellectu expositionem, arbitramini vos tamquam veloces in via cum tardioribus ambulare. Celeritas aliquantum reprimatur, ne comes tardior deseratur.

PAPHLAGON
I’ll haul you before Demos and get justice from you!        710
SAUSAGE SELLER
And I’ll haul you, and outslander you!
PAPHLAGON
But Demos doesn’t listen to anything you say, you creep,
whereas I can make a fool of him as much as I want.
SAUSAGE SELLER
You’re pretty sure you’ve got Demos in your pocket.
PAPHLAGON
Right; I know the sort of tidbits he likes.        715
SAUSAGE SELLER
Sure, you feed him, just like the nannies: badly!
You chew some food and feed him a morsel,
after you’ve bolted down three times as much yourself.
PAPHLAGON
And what’s more, by god, thanks to my dexterity
I can make Demos expand and contract.        720
SAUSAGE SELLER
Even my arsehole can do that trick!

ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἕλξω σε πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἵνα δῷς μοι δίκην.        710
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
κἀγὼ δὲ σ᾿ ἕλξω καὶ διαβαλῶ πλείονα.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἀλλ᾿, ὦ πόνηρε, σοὶ μὲν οὐδὲν πείθεται·
ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἐκείνου καταγελῶ γ᾿ ὅσον θέλω.
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
ὡς σφόδρα σὺ τὸν δῆμον σεαυτοῦ νενόμικας.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
ἐπίσταμαι γὰρ αὐτὸν οἷς ψωμίζεται.        715
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
κᾆθ᾿ ὥσπερ αἱ τίτθαι γε σιτίζεις κακῶς·
μασώμενος γὰρ τῷ μὲν ὀλίγον ἐντίθης,
αὐτὸς δ᾿ ἐκείνου τριπλάσιον κατέσπακας.
ΠΑΦΛΑΓΩΝ
καὶ νὴ Δί᾿ ὑπό γε δεξιότητος τῆς ἐμῆς
δύναμαι ποιεῖν τὸν δῆμον εὐρὺν καὶ στενόν.        720
ΑΛΛΑΝΤΟΠΩΛΗΣ
χὠ πρωκτὸς οὑμὸς τουτογὶ σοφίζεται.

I can do that with many things, I trow.

Whether they have proved successful as armour or not, they are no despicable munitionment of war in other respects. As weapons they have done their bit, most effectively, as when Dr. Johnson knocked Osborne down with a folio, because that notorious bookseller had blamed his learned and diligent employee for negligence. The historic volume, so Sir Leslie Stephen records, a copy of Biblia Graeca Septuaginta, 1594, was in the possession of a Cambridge bookseller as late as the year 1812. Few will dispute with Stephen when he urges that so desirable an association copy should have been placed in some safe author’s museum.² Another instance of the use of books as weapons is recorded by Anthony Trollope, whose father often knocked him down with a great Folio Bible as a punishment for youthful idleness.³ As missiles they are widely appreciated, lending themselves as they do both by reason of their size and shape to sudden precipitation at an offending head. Another Johnson, William (Cory), used them in this manner. He threw a book at any boy in his class at Eton who was either flagrantly unoccupied or suspiciously absorbed;⁴ and it is reported that William Morris hurled a fifteenth-century quarto (which was so precious that he would allow no one to touch it) at the head of a person who had irritated him, and with such force that in the course of its militant career it knocked the panel out of a door.

² L. Stephen, Johnson. 27. ³ Autobiography. World’s Classics Ed. 14. ⁴ In Lit. Anec. of 19th Cent. ii, 400.

On Easter, the manager of a Walgreens store suffered a Bible belting “because she was being rude,” according to a customer who is now facing a felony battery charge.

Police say Peter Owens, 35, went to the pharmacy Sunday evening to purchase a pair of headphones. While at the Clearwater, Florida business, Owens got into a “verbal altercation” with an employee over the headphones, according to a criminal complaint.

When Nicole Merck, the 36-year-old store manager, approached Owens ... and asked him to leave the Walgreens, “Peter used the brown Bible in his hand and struck Nicole in the face one time before he exited the store.”

After the alleged Bible battery, cops located Owens and took him into custody. After being read his rights, Owens reportedly admitted to striking Merck “in the face one time with his Bible because she was being rude to him.”

“Peter stated he did not mean to hit her,” Officer Ryan Wall reported.

• Bible Thumpers
• Samuel Johnson as Bible Thumper
• Gagged with the Gospel

Could any men be more wicked or more lost to all sense of shame?

πῶς ἂν ἄνθρωποι κακίους ἢ μᾶλλον ἀπονενοημένοι τούτων γένοιντο;

A heritage worth celebrating: the Sutton Hoo helmet in the British Museum CREDIT: Martin Beddall/Alamy
No one who visits the Sutton Hoo gallery at the British Museum ever forgets the magnificent artistry of our Anglo-Saxon predecessors. We may think of the fourth to the 10th centuries as a “Dark Age”, ruled by crude barbarism and economic collapse, but the gold and bejewelled treasures they left behind are utterly spellbinding — in their way as good as anything produced by the Roman conquerors who came before.

Which is why it is regrettable that a distinguished journal that dominates the study of Anglo-Saxon history — simply and inoffensively entitled Anglo-Saxon England — is to be renamed by its no less reputable publisher, Cambridge University Press, under the bland new title Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.

Many believe it is due to the hue and cry about the term “Anglo-Saxon” in the US, where white supremacists have mobilised it as a variant of the term “Aryan”.

If that is the reason for the change, then as a historian I must protest. For a start, the term “Anglo-Saxon” is not a racial label, but a cultural one. Many English people are the product of a fusion between the Angle, Saxon, and Jute settlers, and the native Britons; the invaders coming from a wide arc of coastline stretching from the Netherlands to Jutland. Anglo-Saxon Britain was no apartheid state, but one fundamentally of rapid synthesis.

Indeed, the language we speak today was one noticeable product: just under half of the words we use remain of Anglo-Saxon origin. The Anglo-Saxon interpretation of Christianity, too, lives with us still: the Sutton Hoo treasures indicate Christianity was making inroads by the early seventh century, not long after the Jutish king of Kent accepted baptism from the first archbishop of Canterbury. Christian art of this period features stunning iconography derived from the pagan religions that came before.

Thereafter, Anglo-Saxon culture flourished in a myriad of ways: English monasteries produced startlingly beautiful manuscripts and Anglo-Saxon literature flowered, including rich alliterative poetry; the cultural ties extended to the royal courts in France and Germany.

King Alfred is the only English king to be known as “the Great”, not just for holding his own against Danish invaders but for his patronage of learning. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged, divided and merged again, but out of their rivalries rose a large and wealthy kingdom, rich in wool sent to the looms of Flanders, and therefore highly attractive to waves of Viking raiders, followed in 1066 by William, duke of Normandy, himself of Viking descent.

The desirability of this kingdom reflects the high standard of artistic production, learning and prosperity that by the 11th century had few rivals in northern Europe. Its legacy has been extremely powerful. For if we dispense with the Anglo-Saxons, what happens to the name of England, the country of the Angles, or Essex and Sussex, territories of the Saxons? Can we talk any longer of the Anglophone countries? It is telling that even today Russian propaganda mockingly refers to us Britons as Anglosaksy, thinking it a term of derision. Such an insult makes one quite proud.

Any suggestion of broad ethnic or cultural cohesiveness inevitably generates suspicion in an academic world, where the fantasies of Critical Race Theory find racism under every ancient stone. Yet that is to forget that, even at the time, peoples saw each other as distinct cultures, with unique traits and practices.

Cambridge University Press would do well to acknowledge that its headquarters are in East Anglia. Instead of erasing the term “Anglo-Saxon”, it is far better to accept that our forebears oversaw a flourishing and fascinating period of this island’s history. It deserves a proper name, and it already has one.

And just as architects relegate the drains of houses to the rear, away from the eyes and nose of the masters, since otherwise they would inevitably be somewhat offensive, so nature has banished the corresponding organs of the body far away from the neighbourhood of the senses.

atque ut in aedificiis architecti avertunt ab oculis naribusque dominorum ea quae profluentia necessario taetri essent aliquid habitura, sic natura res similes procul amandavit a sensibus.

for the thought cf. Off. 1, 126-127: quae partes autem corporis ad naturae necessitatem datae aspectum essent deformem habiturae atque foedum eas contexit atque abdidit. hanc naturae tam diligentem fabricam imitata est hominum verecundia, etc.; Xen. Mem. 1, 4, 6: ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ ἀποχωροῦντα δυσχερῆ, ἀποστρέψαι τοὺς τούτων ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀπενεγκεῖν ᾗ δυνατὸν προσωτάτω ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθήσεων [cf. Plut. De cap. ex Inim. 10, p. 91 f; [Longin.] 43, 5]; Plat. Tim. 45 a; Varr. Menipp. 430 Bücheler: retrimenta cibi qua exirent per posticum vallem feci; Sen. N.Q. 1, 16, 7; Apul. De Plat. 1, 13; Corp. Herm. 5, 6: τίς ὁ τὰ τιμιώτατα εἰς τὸ φανερὸν ἐκτυπώσας καὶ τὰ αἰσχρὰ κρύψας; Lact. De Opif. 7,7; Ambr. Exam. 6, 72; Cyril. Hieros. Cat. 4, 22; Hier. Adv. Iovin. 1, 36; Aug. C. lulian. Op. imperf. 4, 37; C. Iulian. Pelag. 5, 33: quod in nostro corpore loca digestionis Balbus remota dixit a sensibus, ideo verum est quoniam sensus nostros ea quae digerimus non alliciunt sed offendunt; propterea pars qua egeruntur naturaliter aliis partibus altrinsecus prominentibus occultatur; Isid. Etym. 11, 1, 105; Michael Ephes. in Part. An. 4, p. 76, 34-36 Hayduck; Melet. De Nat. Hom. (Cramer, Anecd. Oxon. 3, 107-108): καθάπερ καὶ οἱ πόλεων τινῶν ἐπιμελούμενοι, ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀμάρρας καὶ ῥύακας παρασκευάζουσιν εἰς λίμνας ἢ ποταμοὺς ἢ θαλάσσας τὰ συναγόμενα πέμποντες περιττά. Cf. also an analogous case in Aristot. Part. An. 4, 5, 681 b 26-28. Posidonius may here be attacking, on the grounds of nature's own creations, the offensive tenets and practices of the Cynics; cf. I. Heinemann, Poseidonios' metaphys. Schr. 2 (1928), 212; also M. Pohlenz, Ant. Führertum (1934), 75-76, with remarks on αἰδώς. On his general inclination to modesty and even euphemism cf. K. Reinhardt, Poseidonios (1921), 254, who remarks upon his omission from the discussion of refe­rence to the reproductive organs.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Happy is he to whom the god has granted a portion of honours, and a life of opulence, with enviable fortune: for no mortal man is blest in all things.

ὄλβιος ᾧτινι θεὸς        50
μοῖράν τε καλῶν ἔπορεν
σύν τ᾽ ἐπιζήλῳ τύχᾳ
ἀφνεὸν βιοτὰν διάγειν· οὐ
γάρ τις ἐπιχθονίων
πάντα γ᾽ εὐδαίμων ἔφυ.        55

• Recipes for Happiness
• Some Euripidean Macarisms
• Beatus Vir
• Happiness
• Beatitudes

It would be hard to give a rational and satisfactory analysis of the causes of Gen. Lane's popularity as an orator. Destitute of all graces of the art, he possesses but few even of its essentials; he writhes himself into more contortions than Gabriel Ravel in a pantomime; his voice is a series of transitions from the broken scream of a maniac to the hoarse rasping gutturals of a Dutch butcher in the last gasp of inebriation; the construction of his sentences is loose and disjointed; his diction is a pudding of slang, profanity and solecism; and yet the electric shock of his extraordinary eloquence thrills like the blast of a trumpet; the magnetism of his manner, the fire of his glance, the studied earnestness of his utterance, find a sudden response in the will of his audience, and he sways them like a field of reeds shaken in the wind.

A correspondent recalls the following which he read in copies of Harper's Drawer published 70 years ago:

Motto for a tea-caddy: Tu doces (thou tea-chest).

Motto given by a wag to a newly rich tobacconist who had just acquired a carriage: Quid rides (English pronunciation). Soon the tobacconist lost his money and absconded. The wag wrote on the door of the shop: Quid fles.

An English gentleman serving clam stew to his guests found much broth and few clams. In serving the last guest he searched long for a clam. Finally he brought up from the bottom of the tureen a single bivalve and exclaimed triumphantly: De profundis clam-avi (clam 'ave I).

Nor is it possible in positions of power for vices to be concealed. Epileptics, if they go up to a high place and move about, grow dizzy and reel, which makes their disease evident, and just so Fortune by such things as riches, reputations, or offices exalts uneducated and uncultured men a little and then, as soon as they have risen high, gives them a conspicuous fall; or, to use a better simile, just as in a number of vessels you could not tell which is whole and which is defective, but when you pour liquid into them the leak appears, just so corrupt souls cannot contain power, but leak out in acts of desire, anger, imposture, and bad taste.

οὐδὲ γὰρ λαθεῖν οἷόν τε τὰς κακίας ἐν ταῖς ἐξουσίαις· ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ἐπιληπτικούς, ἂν ἐν ὕψει τινὶ γένωνται καὶ περιενεχθῶσιν, ἴλιγγος ἴσχει καὶ σάλος, ἐξελέγχων τὸ πάθος αὐτῶν, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀπαιδεύτους καὶ ἀμαθεῖς ἡ τύχη μικρὸν ἐκκουφίσασα πλούτοις τισὶν ἢ δόξαις ἢ ἀρχαῖς μετεώρους γενομένους εὐθὺς, ἑπιδείκνυσι πίπτοντας· μᾶλλον δ᾽, ὥσπερ τῶν κενῶν ἀγγείων οὐκ ἂν διαγνοίης τὸ ἀκέραιον καὶ πεπονηκός, ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν ἐγχέῃς, φαίνεται τὸ ῥέον· οὕτως αἱ σαθραὶ ψυχαὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας μὴ στέγουσαι ῥέουσιν ἔξω ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, ταῖς ὀργαῖς, ταῖς ἀλαζονείαις, ταῖς ἀπειροκαλίαις.

Meanwhile, we should all do something in proportion to our abilities. For we realize the extent to which we are adversely affected by a lack of systematic activity, of some kind of work, on long pleasure trips, when we feel quite unhappy from time to time, because, lacking an actual occupation, we are, as it were, torn out of our natural elements. To labour and fight against resistance is a human need, as digging is for moles. The stagnation produced by the contentment of a lasting pleasure would be unbearable to us. Overcoming obstacles means the full enjoyment of our existence; they might be of a material nature, as in acting and doing, or of an intellectual nature, as in learning and investigating; struggling with them and winning make us happy.

Inzwischen treibe Jeder etwas, nach Maaßgabe seiner Fähigkeiten. Denn wie nachtheilig der Mangel an planmäßiger Thätigkeit, an irgend einer Arbeit, auf uns wirke, merkt man auf langen Vergnügungsreisen, als wo man, dann und wann, sich recht unglücklich fühlt; weil man, ohne eigentliche Beschäftigung, gleichsam aus seinem natürlichen Elemente gerissen ist. Sich zu mühen und mit dem Widerstande zu kämpfen ist dem Menschen Bedürfniß, wie dem Maulwurf das Graben. Der Stillstand, den die Allgenugsamkeit eines bleibenden Genusses herbeiführte, wäre ihm unerträglich. Hindernisse überwinden ist der Vollgenuß seines Daseyns; sie mögen materieller Art seyn, wie beim Handeln und Treiben, oder geistiger Art, wie beim Lernen und Forschen: der Kampf mit ihnen und der Sieg beglückt.

Still, we mortals have no choice but to endure the sorrows
the gods send us.

ὅμως δ᾽ ἀνάγκη πημονὰς βροτοῖς φέρειν
θεῶν διδόντων.

[S]ufferings must be endured when, or because, the gods bestow them on mortals. For this common form of consolation see Garvie on Hom. Od. 6.187–90 . . . καί που σοὶ τάδ᾽ ἔδωκε [Zeus], σὲ δὲ χρὴ τετλάμεν ἔμπης, Richardson on Hom. Hy. Dem. 147f. = 216-17; cf. also Od. 3.208-9, Archil. 13.5-10, Theogn. 445-6, 591-2 τολμᾶν χρή, τὰ διδοῦσι θεοὶ θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσιν, | ῥηϊδίως δὲ φέρειν ἀμφοτέρων τὸ λάχος, Sept. 719, PV 103-5, S. Ph. 1316-17 ἀνθρώποισι τὰς μὲν ἐκ θεῶν | τύχας δοθείσας ἔστ᾽ ἀναγκαῖον φέρειν, frr. 585, 680, E. Alc. 416 ἀνάγκη τάσδε συμφορὰς φέρειν, Med. 1018, Hipp. 1433-4, HF 1228, Phoen. 382, AR 1.298-300, QS 7.54-5. Rarely is any attempt made to explain why the gods bestow misfortunes, apparently on the good and the wicked alike. The distribution of suffering and prosperity is seen, rather, as arbitrary, or at least unpredictable.

There is no question of the existence of the gods in Aristophanes. Euripides is skeptical. Euripides' acid is the acid that eats up the molten image. The acid of Aristophanes is a mild solution that merely stings and prickles, but does not destroy. Orthodoxy covered a multitude of sins then as it does now. Aristophanes was orthodox, Euripides was a rationalist, if one dare use so modern an expression. Religion being an affair of state, the Greeks were not exacting. νομίζειν θεούς is not a matter of conscientious ground of action, as Mr. Neil says in his note on the Equites, 515. That is one of those obiter dicta that are always bobbing up in commentaries. νομός is convention. Accept the gods the state provides and all is well. The trouble with the Christians under the Roman Empire was that they were so absurdly uncompromising, that they followed the direction μὴ συσχηματίζεσθε so closely. No sensible Roman could understand their attitude. A pinch of incense, a kiss of the hand would answer? What reasonable human being would object to meats offered to idols? ἱερεῖα after all is only butcher's meat.

Hear me, Battle Cry, daughter of War,
prelude to spears, to whom men offer³¹
a holy sacrifice of death on behalf of their city.

31 A scholion on Aesch. Pers. 49 reports that this comes from a dithyramb. Scholion on a Rylands papyrus. "It is the 'Pindaric figure' (schema Pindaricum) as in θύεται ἄνδρες ('men offers')."

Κλῦθ᾿ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ,
ἐγχέων προοίμιον, ᾇ θύεται
ἄνδρες ὑπὲρ πόλιος τὸν ἱρόθυτον θάνατον.

War-whoop, daughter of battle,
hear the prelude of swords,
while the men performed
for the city
the sacrificial slaughter.

To the modern mind it may seem strange, even ridiculous, that athletes should be coupled with rulers and warriors as bearers of areta. That is not how the archaic Greeks saw the matter. A victory in the games, with their strong religious associations, carried vast prestige; athletes endured arduous training of a kind that fitted them for war as well as triumph in the games. The Aeginetans, for whom Pindar wrote more odes of victory than for any other community, won the prize for valour awarded by the Greek army after Salamis; the Sicilian tyrants, whatever modern moralisers may say about their ideology, saved the Greeks of Sicily from the Carthaginians and Etruscans.

No longer will men keep a curb upon their tongues; for the people are set free to utter their thoughts at will, now that the yoke of power has been broken.

οὐδ᾽ ἔτι γλῶσσα βροτοῖσιν
ἐν φυλακαῖς· λέλυται γὰρ
λαὸς ἐλεύθερα βάζειν,
ὡς ἐλύθη ζυγὸν ἀλκᾶς.

Sure, a stellar personality is alluring, a sense of humor is essential, and inner beauty can be potent.

Theoretically, a classic is a ζῷον, not a clothes-horse, on which to hang syntactical analyses or archaeological disquisitions. Theoretically, every needless word in a commentary is an impertinence, but practically no commentator schools himself to such renunciation. Who would give up Lobeck's Ajax or for that matter Peter Burmann's Petronius?

following this ancient example

ἀρχαῖς δὲ προτέραις ἑπόμενοι

faithful to those ancient beginnings

Verily the blessed gods love not reckless deeds,
but they honour justice and the righteous deeds of men.
Even cruel foemen that set foot on the land
of others, and Zeus gives them booty,
and they fill their ships and depart for home—
even on the hearts of these falls great fear of the wrath of the gods.

οὐ μὲν σχέτλια ἔργα θεοὶ μάκαρες φιλέουσιν,
ἀλλὰ δίκην τίουσι καὶ αἴσιμα ἔργ᾽ ἀνθρώπων.
καὶ μὲν δυσμενέες καὶ ἀνάρσιοι, οἵ τ᾽ ἐπὶ γαίης
ἀλλοτρίης βῶσιν καί σφι Ζεὺς ληΐδα δώῃ,        85
πλησάμενοι δέ τε νῆας ἔβαν οἶκόνδε νέεσθαι,
καὶ μὲν τοῖς ὄπιδος κρατερὸν δέος ἐν φρεσὶ πίπτει.

For one who is falling cannot hold others up, nor can one who is ignorant teach, nor the uncultivated impart culture, nor the disorderly make order, nor can he rule who is under no rule.

οὔτε γὰρ πίπτοντός ἐστιν ὀρθοῦν οὔτε διδάσκειν ἀγνοοῦντος οὔτε κοσμεῖν ἀκοσμοῦντος ἢ τάττειν ἀτακτοῦντος ἢ ἄρχειν μὴ ἀρχομένου.

There is a well-known Punic proverb, which I will of course quote to you in Latin, because you don't all know Punic. It's an old Punic proverb: "Pestilence is begging for a penny; give it two, and let it take itself off."

Proverbium notum est punicum, quod quidem latine vobis dicam, quia punice non omnes nostis. Punicum enim proverbium est antiquum: Nummum quaerit pestilentia; duos illi da, et ducat se.

pestilentia ante ostium venit et nummum quaerit; duos illi da, et ducat se.

unum nummum quaerit pestilentia; duos illi da et ducet se.

[O]n one occasion he borrows a Punic proverb, which I confess I cannot explain, and would be obliged if anyone could tell me exactly what it means. He translates it, nummum quaerit pestilentia; duos illi da et ducat se.

Theognis divided mankind into two distinct types: the good and noble and the bad and base. The distinction is based on birth and establishes a clear and firm tie between social status and virtue. The noble alone possesses judgment (gnome) and reverence (aidos); therefore, the noble alone is capable of moderation, restraint, and justice. These are qualities enjoyed by few, and the many who are without them, who lack judgment and reverence, are necessarily shameless and arrogant. The good qualities, moreover, are acquired only by birth; they cannot be taught: "It is easier to beget and rear a man than to put good sense into him. No one has ever discovered a way to make a fool wise or a bad man good .... If thought could be made and put into a man, the son of a good man would never become bad since he would obey good counsel. But you will never make the bad man good by teaching."<sup>3

3</sup> Theognis 429-438.

It is easier to beget and rear a man than to put good sense in him. No one has yet devised a means whereby one has made the fool wise and a noble man out of one who is base. If the god had granted this power to the Asclepiads, to cure men’s baseness and muddled wits, they would be earning many a handsome fee. And if good sense could be made and placed in a man, there would never be a base son of a noble father, since he would heed words of wisdom. But you will never make the base man noble through teaching.

φῦσαι καὶ θρέψαι ῥᾷον βροτὸν ἢ φρένας ἐσθλάς
    ἐνθέμεν· οὐδείς πω τοῦτό γ' ἐπεφράσατο,        430
ᾧ τις σώφρον' ἔθηκε τὸν ἄφρονα κἀκ κακοῦ ἐσθλόν.
    εἰ δ' Ἀσκληπιάδαις τοῦτό γ' ἔδωκε θεός,
ἰᾶσθαι κακότητα καὶ ἀτηρὰς φρένας ἀνδρῶν,
    πολλοὺς ἂν μισθοὺς καὶ μεγάλους ἔφερον.
εἰ δ' ἦν ποιητόν τε καὶ ἔνθετον ἀνδρὶ νόημα,        435
    οὔποτ' ἂν ἐξ ἀγαθοῦ πατρὸς ἔγεντο κακός,
πειθόμενος μύθοισι σαόφροσιν· ἀλλὰ διδάσκων
    οὔποτε ποιήσει τὸν κακὸν ἄνδρ' ἀγαθόν.

Fulfillment is the gods' affair. Often when
a man lies helpless on the dark earth they
set him right again; often too they overturn
the ones who journey at their ease, calling up a swarm
of evils to pursue, and then a man will wander
hungrily, with madness running in his mind.

τοῖς θεοῖς τέλεια πάντα· πολλάκις μὲν ἐκ κακῶν
ἄνδρας ὀρθοῦσιν μελαίνῃ κειμένους ἐπὶ χθονί,
πολλάκις δ᾿ ἀνατρέπουσι καὶ μάλ᾿ εὖ βεβηκότας
ὑπτίους, κείνοις <δ᾿> ἔπειτα πολλὰ γίνεται κακά,
καὶ βίου χρήμῃ πλανᾶται καὶ νόου παρήορος.        5

1 θεοῖς τέλεια πάντα Hommel: θεοῖς τ᾿ εἰθεῖάπαντα cod. S: θεοῖσι ῥεῖα πάντα Wilamowitz

4 κείνοις Blaydes: κίνουσ᾽ S: κλίνουσ᾽ Valckenaer
δ' add. West

But deceitful Hope has crept into the hearts of men, children of a day. Yet the lord Apollo [, the shepherd,] said to the son of Pheres:— 'As a mortal, thou must nourish each of two

forebodings; that to-morrow's sunlight will be the last that thou shalt see; or that for fifty years thou wilt live out thy life in ample wealth. Act righteously, and be of a cheerful spirit: that is the supreme gain.'

I speak words of meaning for the wise: the depths of air receive no taint; the waters of the sea are incorrupt; gold is a joy: but for a man it is not lawful to pass by hoary

eld, and to recover the bloom of youth. Yet the radiance of manly worth wanes not with the mortal body; it is cherished by the Muse.

δολό]εσσα δ᾽ ἐλπὶς ὑπ[ὸ κέαρ δέδυκεν        75
    ἐφαμ]ερίων· ὁ δ᾽ ἄναξ [Ἀπόλλων
ὁ βουκό]λος εἶπε Φέρη[τος υἷι·
θνατὸν εὖντα χρὴ διδύμους ἀέξειν

γνώμας, ὅτι τ᾽ αὔριον ὄψεαι
    μοῦνον ἁλίου φάος,        80
χὥτι πεντήκοντ᾽ ἔτεα
ζωὰν βαθύπλουτον τελεῖς.
ὅσια δρῶν εὔφραινε θυμόν· τοῦτο γὰρ
κερδέων ὑπέρτατον.

φρονέοντι συνετὰ γαρύω· βαθὺς μὲν        85
αἰθὴρ ἀμίαντος· ὕδωρ δὲ πόντου
οὐ σάπεται· εὐφροσύνα δ᾽ ὁ χρυσός·
    ἀνδρὶ δ᾽ οὐ θέμις, πολιὸν π[αρ]έντα

γῆρας, θάλειαν αὖτις ἀγκομίσσαι
ἥβαν. ἀρετᾶ[ς γε μ]ὲν οὐ μινύθει        90
βροτῶν ἅμα σ[ώμα]τι φέγγος, ἀλλὰ
    Μοῦσά νιν τρ[έφει].

Good fortune! They were written for the health and common welfare and the noblest thought, the commandments given to Dionysius [by Zeus], granting access in sleep to his own house both to free men and women, and to household slaves. For here are the altars of Zeus Eumenes, Hestia who is seated beside him, and the other Savior Gods: Eudaimonia, Plutus, Arete, Hygiaea, Tyche Agathe, Agathos Daimon, Mneme, Charites, Nike.

To him Zeus gave commandments: To observe the purification and cleansing rites, and offer the sacrifices in accordance with ancestral rites and as now practiced. Those who enter this house [i.e., temple], both men and women, both bound and free, are to take oath before all the gods that, conscious of no guile toward man or woman, they will not [administer] an evil drug to men, nor will they learn or practice wicked charms, nor [give] any philter, or any abortive or contraceptive drug, nor [commit] robbery or murder, either carrying it out themselves or advising another or acting as witness [for his defense], nor overlook complacently those who rob [or withhold—i.e., offerings] in this house; and if anyone shall do any of these things or advise them, they will not consent or pass over it in silence, but will bring it out into the open and see that [the crime] is punished.

A man [is not to take] another woman in addition to his own wife, either a free woman or a slave who has a husband, nor is he to corrupt either a child [boy] or a virgin, nor is he to counsel another [to do so]; but if he should witness anyone [doing this], he must not hide it or keep silent. Woman and man [alike], whoever does any of the things above written, let them not enter this house. For the gods who dwell here are mighty and watch over these things and will not hold back [punishment] from those who transgress their commandments. A free woman is to be pure and is not to know bed or intercourse with any man other than her own [husband]. If she does she shall not be pure [as before], but is defiled and full of corruption within her family [i.e., she has corrupted the family line] and is unworthy to worship this god for whom these rites were established, or to offer sacrifices, or to . . . [about twelve lines are missing] to stumble upon or to see the mysteries observed. If anyone does any of these things with which the commandments here copied have to do, terrible curses from the gods will come upon those who disregard them. For God does not by any means will that these things should come to pass, nor does he desire it, but to obey [i.e., God wills that men should obey the commandments, and not be punished for disobedience].

To those who obey the gods will be gracious and will always be giving them everything good, such as the gods are wont to give to men they love. But if any transgress, they will hate such persons and will lay upon them great penalties.

These commandments were placed [here] by Agdistis, the most holy Guardian and Mistress of this house, that she might show her good will [or intentions] to men and women, bond and free, so that they might follow the [rules] written here and take part in the sacrifices which [are offered] month by month and year by year, even those, both men and women, who believe within themselves [i.e., are faithful to] this writing in which the commandments of God are written, so that those who follow the commandments may become known openly, and also those who do not.

O Zeus the Savior, graciously and favorably accept this account and ... [about eighteen lines are missing] provide a good requital, health, safety, peace, security by land and sea ... . [about twenty lines are missing] likewise.

[1] And now the second commandment of the teaching. [2] Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not engage in pederasty, do not engage in sexual immorality. Do not steal, do not practice magic, do not use enchanted potions, do not abort a fetus or kill a child that is born. [3] Do not desire what belongs to your neighbor, do not commit perjury, do not give false testimony, do not speak insults, do not bear grudges. [4] Do not be of two minds or speak from both sides of your mouth, for speaking from both sides of your mouth is a deadly trap. [5] Your word must not be empty or false. [6] Do not be greedy, rapacious, hypocriti­cal, spiteful, or haughty. Do not entertain a wicked plot against your neighbor. [7] Do not hate anyone—but re­prove some, pray for others, and love still others more than yourself.