Laudator Temporis Acti

We will first discuss the question of justice and rectitude, especially as we are seeking an alliance, for we know that neither does friendship between men prove lasting, nor does a league between states come to aught, unless they comport themselves with transparent honesty of purpose towards one another and in general are of like character and way of thinking; for differences in men's actions arise from the diversity of their convictions.

περὶ γὰρ τοῦ δικαίου καὶ ἀρετῆς πρῶτον, ἄλλως τε καὶ ξυμμαχίας δεόμενοι, τοὺς λόγους ποιησόμεθα, εἰδότες οὔτε φιλίαν ἰδιώταις βέβαιον γιγνομένην οὔτε κοινωνίαν πόλεσιν ἐς οὐδέν, εἰ μὴ μετ ̓ ἀρετῆς δοκούσης ἐς ἀλλήλους γίγνοιντο καὶ τἆλλα ὁμοιότροποι εἶεν· ἐν γὰρ τῷ διαλλάσσοντι τῆς γνώμης καὶ αἱ διαφοραὶ τῶν ἔργων καθίστανται.

We don't cry enough now a days, that's one of the things that is wrong with us. Achilles cried, Roland cried, Lancelot cried. It's in Shakespeare that characters first start apologising for tears.

The truth is I'm v. unfair to contemporaries. When it comes to the point I always ask myself why I shd. go to a bookseller and get something wh. I may like when my shelves are full of what I certainly do like already.

Moreover, he bore splendid testimony to the wisdom of Plato¹ in urging the man who would be truly rich, not to make his possessions greater, but his inordinate desires fewer; since he who puts no end to his greed, this man is never rid of poverty and want.

¹The passage cannot be determined.

λαμπρὰν τῷ Πλάτωνι μαρτυρίαν διδοὺς διακελευομένῳ μὴ τὴν οὐσίαν πλείω, τὴν δὲ ἀπληστίαν ποιεῖν ἐλάσσω τόν γε βουλόμενον ὡς ἀληθῶς εἶναι πλούσιον, ὡς ὅ γε μὴ παύων φιλοπλουτίαν, οὗτος οὔτε πενίας οὔτε ἀπορίας ἀπήλλακται.

Suppose I want to find out the correct interpretation of Plato's teaching. What I am most confident in accepting is that interpretation wh. is common to all the Platonists down all the centuries: what Aristotle and the Renaissance scholars and Paul Elmer More agree on I take to be true Platonism. Any purely modern views wh. claim to have discovered for the first time what P. meant, and say that everyone from Aristotle down has misunderstood him, I reject out of hand.

But there is something else I wd. also reject. If there were an ancient Platonic Society still existing at Athens and claiming to be the exclusive trustees of P's meaning, I shd. approach them with great respect. But if I found that their teaching in many ways was curiously unlike his actual text and unlike what ancient interpreters said, and in some cases cd. not be traced back to within 1000 years of his time, I shd. reject these exclusive claims: while still ready, of course, to take any particular thing they taught on its merits.

I do the same with Xtianity. What is most certain is the vast mass of doctrine wh. I find agreed on by Scripture, the Fathers, the Middle Ages, modern R.C.'s, modern Protestants. That is true 'catholic' doctrine. Mere 'modernism' I reject at once.

Ismenias the Theban used to exhibit both good and bad players to his pupils on the flute and say, "you must play like this one," or again, "you must not play like this one"; and Antigenidas used to think that young men would listen with more pleasure to good flute-players if they were given an experience of bad ones also.

Ἰσμηνίας ὁ Θηβαῖος ἐπιδεικνύμενος τοῖς μαθηταῖς καὶ τοὺς εὖ καὶ τοὺς κακῶς αὐλοῦντας εἰώθει λέγειν, “Οὕτως αὐλεῖν δεῖ,” καὶ πάλιν, “Οὕτως αὐλεῖν οὐ δεῖ,” ὁ δ᾿ Ἀντιγενίδας καὶ ἥδιον ᾤετο τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀκροᾶσθαι τοὺς νέους αὐλητῶν ἐὰν καὶ τῶν φαύλων πεῖραν λαμβάνωσιν.

[L]et them that scorn the tartan fear the dirk!

i.e. let those who scorn a Highlander fear a Highland mode of revenge. Although the formulation seems proverbial this is not recorded as a traditional proverb.

Sorry again. But a talk to the general public on 'Paradise Lost' would be an absolute waste of time. What's the good of telling them they'll enjoy it, when we both know they won't?

In conclusion, then, I would say that a city which is accustomed to activity would be very quickly destroyed by a change to inactivity, and that the people who live in the greatest security are those who most respect their existing character and institutions, whatever their shortcomings, in the way they manage their affairs.

παράπαν τε γιγνώσκω πόλιν μὴ ἀπράγμονα τάχιστ᾽ ἄν μοι δοκεῖν ἀπραγμοσύνης μεταβολῇ διαφθαρῆναι, καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀσφαλέστατα τούτους οἰκεῖν οἳ ἂν τοῖς παροῦσιν ἤθεσι καὶ νόμοις, ἢν καὶ χείρω ᾖ, ἥκιστα διαφόρως πολιτεύωσιν.

The principles to be observed in elementary books seem to be such as these:

I. Keep the master in view, as much as the pupils; let each sentence be either new to him, or suggestive of some heroic act, some noble character, some masterpiece of letters or of art, some pregnant law of language; let common sayings be traced to their source; many a story, supposed of recent importation from the backwoods, is hoary with the dignity of 2000 years, and proves once more, that 'there is nothing new under the sun.' In short, let each line, like the oratory of Perikles, 'leave its sting' in the hearers; at least let it convey some information not wholly trivial.

II. Let each sentence be a whole, intelligible in itself; proverbs, words of the wise, anecdotes which clothe the skeletons of history with flesh and blood, linking contemporaries indissolubly in the memory; choice flowers from the Florilegia; those lofty γνῶμαι in which the Greek literature is rich beyond all thought of rivalry, — let these form the staple of the feast. Season all with Attic salt of a lower, but not less enduring kind, tart homely gibes of Diogenes, light touches of Menander's pencil, and the broad fun of Hierokles. Who does not recall, after 30 or 40 years, the σχολαστικός carrying a brick by way of sample of his house, apt emblem of our puffing advertisements? It is of the last importance never to set before any student a whole too large for him to apprehend in one view.

By the observance of these two rules you may ensure that a boy who learns Greek only for a week, will carry away with him something of real interest.

"Once upon a time" is a rather loaded translation of "olim", I think!

(dating an incident on an occasion in the past) once (upon a time).

Labels: typographical and other errors

The Abbey of the Holy Cross is organizing, for the first time in its guesthouse, a course dedicated to Latin as the proper language of the Church’s tradition and of Christian culture: Sub Cruce scholae Latinae. The course aims to provide a living space for study, prayer, and encounter with the ancient authors who transmitted the faith and wisdom of the Christian tradition throughout the centuries. It will take place during the first week of August 2026 (from 3 to 9 August) at the Abbey Guesthouse of the Holy Cross Abbey. Registrations and inquiries may be sent to subcrucescholaelatinae@gmail.com until 15 July.

The program is intended both for students who already understand Latin and wish to begin speaking it, and for readers with experience in Latin texts who seek to deepen their engagement with classical and Christian authors.

The daily schedule will combine classes in spoken Latin, the reading of ancient and Christian texts, conversation in Latin, and optional participation in the liturgical life of the monastery, all within a monastic environment dedicated to study, fellowship, and prayer.

The course will feature specialists in Latin language and literature and will offer an authentic experience of linguistic and humanistic immersion.

Philology has fallen on hard times in the English-speaking world (much less so in continental Europe). Many college-educated Americans no longer recognize the word. Those who do often think it means no more than scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts by a nit-picking classicist, while British readers may take it as referring only to technical research into languages and language families. Professors of literature use the term to belittle a simpleminded approach to their subject, mercifully discarded long ago. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, philology was put down, kicked around, abused, and snickered at, as the archetype of crabbed, dry-as-dust, barren, and by and large pointless academic knowledge. Did I mention mind-numbingly boring? Whenever philology shows its face these days in North America or the British Isles—not often, outside of classics departments or linguistics faculties—it comes coated with the dust of the library and totters along with arthritic creakiness. One would not be startled to see its gaunt torso clad in a frock coat.

I take a less favourable view of the Humanists than you. I've never quite forgiven them for killing live Latin and erecting the mausoleum of Ciceronianism over its corpse—specially when they themselves have to fall back on that live Latin and do so without gratitude ('quod barbari nostri circumstantias vocant' says J.C. Scaliger).

In a Europe of unpaved streets and primitive sanitation, Madrid was celebrated for more than usual Spanish negligence in such matters. Visitors were eloquent in their commentaries; poems appeared with such titles as La Merdeide; and innumerable stories were current in the eighteenth century of homesick Spaniards revived in spirit by sudden whiffs of unspeakable odors.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Why should quiet ruminants as you and I have been born in such a ghastly age? Let me palliate the apparent selfishness of this complaint by asserting that there are people who, while not, of course, liking actual suffering when it falls to their own share, do really like the 'stir', the 'sense of great issues'. Lord!, how I loathe great issues. How I wish they were all adjourned sine die. 'Dynamic' I think is one of the words invented by this age which sums up what it likes and I abominate. Could one start a Stagnation party—which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place.

                                              Then there gathered
from out of Erebus the spirits of those that are dead,
brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men,
and tender maidens with hearts yet new to sorrow,
and many, too, that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears,
men slain in fight, wearing their blood-stained armour.

                                                  αἱ δ᾽ ἀγέροντο
ψυχαὶ ὑπὲξ Ἐρέβευς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων.
νύμφαι τ᾽ ἠίθεοί τε πολύτλητοί τε γέροντες
παρθενικαί τ᾽ ἀταλαὶ νεοπενθέα θυμὸν ἔχουσαι,
πολλοὶ δ᾽ οὐτάμενοι χαλκήρεσιν ἐγχείῃσιν,        40
ἄνδρες ἀρηίφατοι βεβροτωμένα τεύχε᾽ ἔχοντες.

This noble passage was condemned as spurious by Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus, on grounds of inconsistency with the later description of the ghosts approaching one by one. Luckily, whether an interpolation or not, it survived their censure, to be imitated by Virgil twice (Georgics 4, 475 ff., Aen. 6, 306 ff.) and to find echoes in Dante and Milton.

The first thing we know about this iconic Greek sweet is that it dates back to the Homeric era. In the Odyssey and in the Iliad, a sweet called ιτριον (itrion) is mentioned. A dish made of honey and sesame, it was used to give energy to Greek warriors who were battling in the Trojan War.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Nothing is harder for a modern individual to understand than ancient concepts of loyalty and treachery. Those who have read so far will be uncomfortably aware that patriotism, in our sense, is a quality more or less irrelevant to Greek civic morality during the fifth century B.C. On very exceptional occasions — the Persian Wars are a good example — patriotism could burst its normal partisan bounds, and become something we all can recognise; but in the ordinary way loyalty was to one's family clan, one's religious or political group, rather than to that comparatively recent institution the polis. What one scholar describes as our passion for "the transcendental power of Greek city-state patriotism" is largely the pursuit of a modern myth. There was seldom a time when an oligarchic group was not ready to betray a democratically controlled city — or vice versa — to the foreign enemy at the gates. As for distinguished individual traitors, there was no shortage of them either in Athens or in Sparta: Hippias and Pausanias are only the first two names that come to mind. The number of Spartan rulers who defected, collaborated, or plotted against the state would make a very impressive roll-call on its own.

[T]he world, as it is now becoming and has partly become, is simply too much for people of the old square-rigged type like you and me. I don't understand its economics, or its politics, or any dam' thing about it.

I love the reversion of a feast better than the feast itself. I delight in the analecta, the collectanea, as I may call them, of the preceding day's dinner...

But worse than any physical decline is the dementia. It doesn't remember the names of slaves or recognise the face of a friend who dined with him the previous evening or the children he fathered and raised himself.

                                                       sed omni
membrorum damno maior dementia, quae nec
nomina servorum nec voltum agnoscit amici
cum quo praeterita cenavit nocte, nec illos        235
quos genuit, quos eduxit.

'I do bethink me you were the first person we met when Sir Arthur made his successful attack upon Misticot's grave, and also that when the labourers began to flag, you, Edie, were again the first to leap into the trench, and to make the discovery of the treasure. Now you must explain all this to me, unless you would have me use you as ill as Euclio does Staphyla in the Aulularia.'

'Lordsake, sir,' replied the mendicant, 'what do I ken about your Howlowlaria?—it's mair like a dog's language than a man's.'

Odysseus, no longer hast thou steadfast might nor any valor,
such as was thine when for high-born Helen of the white arms
thou didst for nine years battle with the Trojans unceasingly,
and many men thou slewest in dread conflict,
and by thy counsel was the broad-wayed city of Priam taken.

οὐκέτι σοί γ᾽, Ὀδυσεῦ, μένος ἔμπεδον οὐδέ τις ἀλκή
οἵη ὅτ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἑλένῃ λευκωλένῳ εὐπατερείῃ,
εἰνάετες Τρώεσσιν ἐμάρναο νωλεμὲς αἰεί,
πολλοὺς δ᾽ ἄνδρας ἔπεφνες ἐν αἰνῇ δηϊοτῆτι
σῇ δ᾽ ἥλω βουλῇ Πριάμου πόλις εὐρυάγυια.

• The Dead, Then and Now
• Pale Women and Dark Men
• Perusta Solibus
• Pale Skin
• Pallor
• Umbrellas
• White Lead

But now, if my years are prolonged, I know that the frailties of old age will inevitably be realized, that my vision must be less perfect and my hearing less keen, that I shall be slower to learn and more forgetful of what I have learned.

νῦν δὲ εἰ ἔτι προβήσεται ἡ ἡλικία, οἶδ ̓ ὅτι ἀνάγκη ἔσται τὰ τοῦ γήρως ἀποτελεῖσθαι καὶ ὁρᾶν τε χεῖρον καὶ ἀκούειν ἧττον καὶ δυσμαθέστερον εἶναι καὶ ὧν ἔμαθον ἐπιλησμονέστερον.

Day by day we are surrounded by the din, and often by the violence, of those who propose to make men better and happier, and who are sure they know how to do it, if only others would have the sense to give them the necessary powers.

This week I have been reading an Elizabethan, Hall's Satires (as dull as ditchwater) and Cicero's De Legibus. The latter you might suppose to be rather a bromide, but it is perfectly delightful. It's in dialogue form, held out of doors. Isn't this nice?—'Now we have reached the island. I don't know a more charming spot. Look how the stream divides as if round the bow of a ship.' And again 'But I've another reason for liking this place which can't affect you in the same way. My brother and I are "on our native heath" here. We come of an old family hereabouts: all round here you find our sacred places, our own people, and all the relics of our forebears. You see the house as it now is, rebuilt by the care of my father, who was an invalid and spent pretty well all his life here among his books. But in this very spot, in my grandfather's time, there was a little house in the old style—like the one Curius has down in the Sabine country—and in it I was born.'

All very ordinary and obvious, of course, but, like Boswell, so full of sense and leisure and happiness. Does it occur to you that people have written of that sort of thing in almost all ages but our own? I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it may seem, really don't.

Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only be passed down to one generation, from a parent to a child. But the new law opened up citizenship to anyone born before that date who could prove they have a direct Canadian ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.

Le vingt sept août mil neuf
cent. nous, prêtre, curé, soussigné
avons baptisé Marie Aurore
Yvonne, née le même jour de
baptisme. mariage de Alphonse
Helie et de Marie Louise Benoit
de cette paroisse. Parrain
Emile Dupont. Marraine
Aurore Benoit qui ont signé
avec nous. Le père a déclaré
ne savoir signer.

    Aurore Benoit
    Emile Dupont
        J. Caron, Ptr curé

CARON (L'abbé Joseph), né à Louiseville, comté de Maskinongé, le 25 avril 1855, de Thomas Caron, cultivateur, et d'Émélie Lesieur-Désaulniers, fit ses études à Saint-Hyacinthe; fut ordonné dans sa paroisse natale par Mgr Laflèche, le 29 août 1880. Professeur, directeur des élèves, des séminaristes, et aumônier des Sœurs Sainte-Marthe au séminaire de Saint Hyacinthe (1880-1891); curé de Régina dans la Saskatchewan (1891-1894); exécuta le tour du monde en 1894; aumônier de l'hôpital des Trois-Rivières (1894-1898); depuis 1898, curé de la Pointe-du-Lac, où il a parachevé le presbytère en 1898 et l'église en 1900. Maître-ès-arts de l'université de Québec (1891).

From pulpits throughout the land they [the Christian laity] hear homilies on trade unions and industrial relations, on housing, on economics and productivity, on politics and trade—all of them subjects in which the clergy as such have no special competence and about which in consequence many of those whom they address understand a great deal more than they do. 'Why?' ask the laity. 'Surely it is to avoid having to talk to us about that which is the sole reason and justification for their calling: the doctrine and sacraments of the Church. It is their escapism.' This more and more fervent desire of the clergy to be heard talking about, and concerning themselves in, the business of the hour—and incidentally, in doing so, to be seen wearing the fashionable clothing of the hour—is the symptom of a flight from their own business.

More and more the Church—and not, so far as I see, only in England—has tried to be heard by saying and doing anything and everything but what it alone can say and do. Not surprisingly, it is heard less and less. Is it too late for it to be itself again?

Now then, my lad, you're still young, and as time goes on you'll come to adopt opinions diametrically opposed to those you hold now.

ὦ παῖ, νέος εἶ, προϊὼν δέ σε ὁ χρόνος ποιήσει πολλὰ ὧν νῦν δοξάζεις μεταβαλόντα ἐπὶ τἀναντία τίθεσθαι.

He knew that the causes of hatred and mainsprings of popularity are determined by the price of food.

gnarus et irarum causas et summa favoris
annona momenta trahi.

Everyone can easily understand that, if the men whose function it is to express beauty were to conform to the rules laid down by the self-appointed pedagogues, beauty itself would disappear from the earth, since all types, all ideas, all sensations would merge into one vast monotonous and impersonal unity, as limitless as boredom and nothingness. Variety, that indispensable condition of life, would be expunged from life. So true is it that in the manifold productions of art, there is something always new, something that will eternally escape from the rules and the analyses of the school! Surprise, which is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment produced by art and literature, derives from this very variety of forms and sensations. The self-appointed pedant, a species of tyrant-mandarin, always reminds me of an impious wretch setting himself up as God.

Tout le monde conçoit sans peine que, si les hommes chargés d'exprimer le beau se conformaient aux règles des professeurs-jurés, le beau lui-même disparaîtrait de la terre, puisque tous les types, toutes les idées, toutes les sensations se confondraient dans une vaste unité, monotone et impersonnelle, immense comme l'ennui et le néant. La variété, condition sine quâ non de la vie, serait effacée de la vie. Tant il est vrai qu'il y a dans les productions multiples de l'art quelque chose de toujours nouveau qui échappera éternellement à la règle et aux analyses de l'école! L'étonnement, qui est une des grandes jouissances causées par l'art et la littérature, tient à cette variété même des types et des sensations. — Le professeur-juré, espèce de tyran-mandarin, me fait toujours l'effet d'un impie qui se substitue à Dieu.

During the evening Ridley read to us a Swinburne ballad and, immediately after it, that ballad of Kipling’s which ends up 'You’ve finished with the flesh, my Lord'.

Nobody except me knew who the second one was by, and everyone agreed that it just killed the Swinburne as a real thing kills a sham. I then made him read 'Iron, cold iron' with the same result and later he drifted into McAndrew's Hymn. Surely Kipling must come back? When people have had time to forget 'If' and the inferior Barrack Room Ballads, all this other stuff must come into its own. I know hardly any poet who can deliver such a hammer stroke. The stories, of course, are another matter and are, I suppose, even now admitted to be good by all except a handful of Left idiots.

After years of estrangement I found myself this week going back to Horace, who has at least this advantage that a single ode makes just the right length of reading for the odd five minutes before a pupil appears, or between the last pupil and dinner. I suppose the first lines would still wake in you as they do in me a flood of reminiscence—Solvitur acris hiems—O fons Bandusiae—Vides ut alta stet nive candidum: and even the first lines of odes one never read at school such as Cum tu Lydia Telphi [sic, read Telephi].

We have ourselves seen an account of a sale of growing trees upon an estate in this district where the proceeds amounted to no less than six thousand pounds, a very large sum considering that the country was overstocked with wood, the demands for it confined to those of rural economy, and the means of transporting it extremely imperfect. There must have been a fall of large and valuable timber to have produced such a sum under such circumstances. The guardians of the noble proprietor, when they made the sale, seem to have given directions for enclosing the natural wood, with a view to its preservation. Nevertheless, about seventy or eighty years afterwards, there was scarcely in existence, upon the whole property, a twig sufficient to make a walking-stick, so effectually had the intentions of the guardians been baffled, and their instructions neglected. It may be some explanation of this wilful waste, that a stocking of goats (of all other creatures the most destructive to wood) had been put upon the ground after cutting the trees. But to speak the truth, agriculture, as Mr Shandy says of the noble science of defence, has its weak points. Those who pursue one branch of the art are apt to become bigoted and prejudiced against every thing which belongs to another, though no less essential, department. The arable cultivator, for example, has a sort of pleasure in rooting up the most valuable grass land, even where the slightest reflection might assure him that it would be more profitable to reserve it for pasture. The store-farmer and shepherd, in the same manner, used formerly to consider every spot occupied by a tree as depriving the flock of a certain quantity of food, and not only nourished malice against the woodland, but practically laboured for its destruction; and to such lamentable prejudices on the part of farmers, and even of proprietors, is the final disappearance of the natural forests of the north chiefly to be attributed. The neglect of enclosure on the side of the landlord; the permitted, if not the authorized, invasions of the farmer; the wilful introduction of sheep and cattle into the ground where old trees formerly stood, have been the slow, but effectual, causes of the denuded state of extensive districts, which, in their time, were tracts of what the popular poetry of the country called by the affectionate epithet of "the good green wood." Still, however, the facts of such forests having existed, ought now, in more enlightened times, to give courage to the proprietor, and stimulate him in his efforts to restore the silvan scenes which ignorance, prejudice, indolence, and barbarism combined to destroy.

Labels: arboricide

'These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and trophies of many a walk by night and morning through the Cowgate, the Canongate, the Bow, Saint Mary's Wynd, — wherever, in fine, there were to be found brokers and trokers, those miscellaneous dealers in things rare and curious. How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect the value I set upon the article! — how have I trembled, lest some passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall, as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise! — And then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure! — Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure as this — (displaying a little black smoked book about the size of a primer) — to enjoy their surprise and envy, shrouding meanwhile under a veil of mysterious consciousness our own superior knowledge and dexterity — these, my young friend, these are the white moments of life, that repay the toil, and pains, and sedulous attention, which our profession, above all others, so peculiarly demands!'

We are helpless in this world.
The years and months slip past
Like a swift stream, which grasps and drags us down.
A hundred pains pursue us, one by one.
Girls, with their wrists clasped round
With Chinese jewels, join hands
And play their youth away.
But time cannot be stopped,
And when their youth is gone
Their jet-black hair — black as fish's bowels —
Turns white, like a hard frost.
On their sun-browned, glowing faces,
Wrinkles are etched — by whom?
Boys, with their swords at their waists,
Clutching the hunting bow,
Mount their chestnut horses
On saddles linen-spun,
And ride on in their pride.
But is their world eternal?
He pushes back the door
Where a girl sleeps within,
Gropes to her side and lies
Arm on her jewel arm.
But how few are those nights
Before, with stick at waist,
He goes shunned and detested —
The old are always so.
We grudge life moving on
But we have no redress.
I would become as those
Firm rocks that see no change.
But I am a man in time
And time must have no stop.

Life is common to all, but merit is not. And accordingly Roman, Dahan, Sarmatian, Vandal, Hun, Gaetulian, Alamannian, Saxon, Galaulian, all walk on the same earth, all have the same sky and the same ocean bounding our world.

vivere commune est, sed non commune mereri.
denique Romanus, Daha, Sarmata, Vandalus, Hunnus,
Gaetulus, Garamans, Alamannus, Saxo, Galaula,
una omnes gradiuntur humo, caelum omnibus unum est,        810
unus et oceanus, nostrum qui continet orbem.

• Some Lines in Lucretius
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters (includes eight other examples from Prudentius)
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Sidonius
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton: Some Greek Examples
• Another Greek Example of Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• More Examples of Asyndeton Filling Hexameters
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Corippus
• Twelve Gods
• Seven Cities
• A Hexameter Consisting of Nouns in Asyndeton
• More Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton: Dracontius
• Zopyrus' Victims
• A Latin Hexameter Consisting of Adjectives in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: More Greek Examples
• A Sojourn in the Country
• Destruction
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: A Horatian Example
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters: Bernard of Cluny, De Contemptu Mundi, Book I
• A Good Land
• A Greek Hexameter Consisting of Adjectives in Asyndeton
• Trifles
• Some Hexameters in Heiric of Auxerre's Life of St. Germanus
• Volturnalem Palatualem Furinalem
• Hexameters Consisting of Nouns in Asyndeton in a Medieval Poem

A.E. Housman died ninety years ago today, on April 30, 1936, at age seventy-seven. The poet was a classical scholar who edited Juvenal, Lucan and Propertius, and is famous for his five-volume critical edition of the minor Roman poet Manilius' Astronomicon.

Fixed points are provided by Housman's letter to Macmillan offering the edition (11 December 1885 = Burnett 1.58-9: 'The collection and arrangement of materials for the commentary will naturally demand further time and labour; and I therefore judge it best that the text with its apparatus criticus should be issued separately'), and by the publication in the Journal of Philology in 1892-3 of the three papers laying out his view of 'The Manuscripts of Propertius', for this effectively marked the end of his efforts to get an edition published (Cambridge University Press having followed Oxford and Macmillan in declining to publish a book: cf. University Library, Cambridge, Pr.B.13.9.59). Yet Housman's manuscript survived the scholar himself, and Professor Sandbach told more than once the story of visiting A.S.F. Gow, Housman's colleague at Trinity, in his rooms in 1936, and finding him stoking the fire in which he was burning the famously unpublished edition.

I do not crave to lie on a couch fit for a king when I'm dead; rather, may something good be mine while I'm alive. Thorns are as good a bed for the dead as rugs. It's all the same to him whether the bed is hard or soft.

οὐκ ἔραμαι κλισμῷ βασιληΐῳ ἐγκατακεῖσθαι
    τεθνεώς, ἀλλά τί μοι ζῶντι γένοιτ᾿ ἀγαθόν.
ἀσπάθαλοι δὲ τάπησιν ὁμοῖον στρῶμα θανόντι·
    τῷ ξυνόν, σκληρὸν γίνεται ἢ μαλακόν.

1194 τὸ ξύλον ἢ codd., corr. West

• Funeral Wishes of Charles Dickens
• Funeral Wishes of Philip Whalen
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• Burial Wishes of Samuel Butler
• Burial Wishes of Richard Burton
• Burial Wishes of James Howell
• Disregard of Funeral Instructions
• My Bed of Death
• Funeral of a Lover of Horace
• Cactus Ed's Funeral Instructions
• Kierkegaard's Tomb

Old age, resistless foe, how do I loathe thy presence! Them too I hate, whoso desire to lengthen out the span of life, seeking to turn the tide of death aside by philtres, drugs, and magic spells,—folk that death should take away to leave the young their place, when they no more can benefit the world.

ὦ δυσπάλαιστον γῆρας, ὡς μισῶ σ᾽ ἔχων,
μισῶ δ᾽ ὅσοι χρῄζουσιν ἐκτείνειν βίον,
βρωτοῖσι καὶ ποτοῖσι καὶ μαγεύμασι        1110
παρεκτρέποντες ὀχετὸν ὥστε μὴ θανεῖν·
οὓς χρῆν, ἐπειδὰν μηδὲν ὠφελῶσι γῆν,
θανόντας ἔρρειν κἀκποδὼν εἶναι νέοις.

Just now you said: 'Can we not construct or make or create a society?' My answer to that is, no. I don't believe that you do create societies. I believe that this social engineering, in which a group of people—in this case without consulting or being understood, let alone supported, by the mass of their fellow countrymen—say to themselves: 'Let's change this society; let us implant in it something which is profoundly different and alien; then let us see how it goes', is criminal levity.

"Back to our caves," — Redeamus ad antra, — if we are really believers in tradition; your real conservatives are the cavemen.

From an edition so conceived I have come to expect five things: a survey of the available witnesses, reasons for using some rather than others, accurate collation, guidance on the difference between the best text that can be extracted from the witnesses and what the author seems likely to have written, and substantial progress in at least one of these four. Ideally, the first two should be combined in a historical account, because the value of a witness depends on the aims, resources, and abilities of whoever produced it; but it would be a luxury to dwell on the ideal when many editions still fall at one or more of the five hurdles.

The process of living seems to consist in coming to realise truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.

The lawgiver would, in fact, do a better job if he divided ignorance into two: (1) 'simple' ignorance, which he would treat as the cause of trivial faults, (2) 'double' ignorance, which is the error of a man who is not only in the grip of ignorance but on top of that is convinced of his own wisdom, believing that he has a thorough knowledge of matters of which, in fact, his ignorance is total.

διχῇ μὴν διελόμενος αὐτὸ ὁ νομοθέτης ἂν βελτίων εἴη, τὸ μὲν ἁπλοῦν αὐτοῦ κούφων ἁμαρτημάτων αἴτιον ἡγούμενος, τὸ δὲ διπλοῦν, ὅταν ἀμαθαίνῃ τις μὴ μόνον ἀγνοίᾳ συνεχόμενος ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξῃ σοφίας, ὡς εἰδὼς παντελῶς περὶ ἃ μηδαμῶς οἶδεν.

O wretched sons of men! Why do you get weapons and bring slaughter on one another? Cease from that, give over your toiling, and in mutual peace keep safe your cities. Short is the span of life, so it would be best to run its course as lightly as we may, free from trouble.

                                       ὦ ταλαίπωροι βροτῶν,
τί κτᾶσθε λόγχας καὶ κατ᾽ ἀλλήλων φόνους
τίθεσθε; παύσασθ᾽, ἀλλὰ λήξαντες πόνων        950
ἄστη φυλάσσεθ᾽ ἥσυχοι μεθ᾽ ἡσύχων.
σμικρὸν τὸ χρῆμα τοῦ βίου· τοῦτον δὲ χρὴ
ὡς ῥᾷστα καὶ μὴ σὺν πόνοις διεκπερᾶν.

[M]y distrust of all lexicons and translations is increasing.

It is not unusual to discover that when we suppose ourselves to have risen superior to what generations of our predecessors found overwhelmingly significant and self-evident, we are in reality describing our own impoverishment of imagination or of vision.

As for what he got from his campaigning, he used to spend it on horses, or armour, or the ransoming of captives; but his own property he sought to increase by agriculture, which is the justest way to make money. Nor did he practise agriculture merely as a side issue, but he held that the man who purposed to keep his hands from the property of others ought by all means to have property of his own.

τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐκ τῶν στρατειῶν προσιόντα κατάνλισκεν εἰς ἵππους καὶ ὅπλα καὶ λύσεις αἰχμαλώτων, τὸν δὲ οἶκον ἀπὸ τῆς γεωργίας αὔξειν ἐπειρᾶτο δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν χρηματισμῶν, οὐδὲ τοῦτο ποιούμενος πάρεργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ προσήκειν οἰόμενος οἰκεῖα κεκτῆσθαι τὸν ἀλλοτρίων ἀφεξόμενον.

But suppose the lawgiver finds a man who's beyond cure — what legal penalty will he provide for this case? He will recognize that the best thing for all such people is to cease to live — best even for themselves. By passing on they will help others, too: first, they will constitute a warning against injustice, and secondly they will leave the state free of scoundrels.

ὃν δ᾽ ἂν ἀνιάτως εἰς ταῦτα ἔχοντα αἴσθηται νομοθέτης, δίκην τούτοισι καὶ νόμον θήσει τίνα; γιγνώσκων που τοῖς τοιούτοις πᾶσιν ὡς οὔτε αὐτοῖς ἔτι ζῆν ἄμεινον, τούς τε ἄλλους ἂν διπλῇ ὠφελοῖεν ἀπαλλαττόμενοι τοῦ βίου, παράδειγμα μὲν τοῦ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοῖς ἄλλοις γενόμενοι, ποιοῦντες δὲ ἀνδρῶν κακῶν ἔρημον τὴν πόλιν.

At the exhibition of the bull the sacred herald is to pray, with the priest and priestess, the stephanophorus, the boys and girls, the military officers, the cavalry officers, the stewards, the secretary of the council, the auditor and the general, for the safety of the city and the land, the women and children and all the inhabitants of the city and the land, for peace and wealth and bearing of grain and all other fruits and possessions.

καὶ ἐν τῶι ἀναδείκνυσθαι τὸν ταῦρον κατευ-
χέσθω ὁ ἱεροκῆρυξ μετὰ τοῦ ἱέρεω καὶ τῆς ἱερείας καὶ
τοῦ στεφανηφόρου καὶ τῶμ παίδων καὶ τῶν παρθένων
καὶ τῶμ πολεμάρχων καὶ τῶν ἱππάρχων καὶ τῶν οἰ-
κονόμων καὶ τοῦ γραμματέως τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ    25
ἀντιγραφέως καὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ὑπέρ τε σωτηρί-
ας τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τῆς χώρας καὶ τῶμ πολιτῶν
καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ τέκνων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν κατοικούν-
των ἔν τε τῆι πόλει καὶ τῆι χώραι ὑπέρ τε εἰρήνης καὶ
πλούτου καὶ σίτου φορᾶς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων καρπῶν πάν-    30
τῶν καὶ τῶν κτηνῶν.

Maybe he had too much Aeschylus in his mind and had κτήνη τὰ δημιοπληθῆ (Ag. 129, vid. Fraenkel ad loc.) in mind.

It behooves me to mention Old English feoh (cognate with Latin pecus) which often has a sense indeterminate between livestock in the flesh and (metonymically derived) wealth and possessions.

• Goods and Chattels
• Wealth in Cattle

Labels: typographical and other errors

Since they were boys Jack and Warnie had been amused by their father's 'low' Irish pronunciation of 'potatoes' as 'p'daytas'. As a result, Mr Lewis was nicknamed 'The P'dayta' or 'The P'daytabird'. The term came to be applied to anyone displaying the characteristics of their father, in particular an ignorant dogmatism. Jack eventually discovered this characteristic in himself: 'I'm afraid I must be a P'dayta,' he wrote to Warnie on 2 August 1928, 'for I made a P'daytism the other day: I began talking about the world and how it was well explored by now and, said I "We know there are no undiscovered islands." It was left for Maureen to point out the absurdity' (CL I, p. 777).

In order to have a sure compass always in hand for finding our bearings in life, and in order to view life always in the proper light without ever going astray, nothing is more useful than to accustom oneself to regarding this world as a place of penance, hence as a prison, a penal colony as it were, a labour camp as it was already called by the oldest philosophers (according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III, c. 3, p. 399). Among the Christian fathers Origen formulated it with commendable boldness (see Augustine, The City of God, XI, ch. 23).

Um allezeit einen sichern Kompass, zur Orientierung im Leben, bei der Hand zu haben, und um dasselbe, ohne je irre zu werden, stets im richtigen Lichte zu erblicken, ist nichts tauglicher, als dafs man sich angewöhne, diese Welt zu betrachten als einen Ort der Busse, also gleichsam als eine Strafanstalt, a penal colony, ein ἐργαστήριον), wie schon die ältesten Philosophen sie nannten (Clem. Alex. Strom. L. III, c. 3, p. 399) und unter den christlichen Vätern Origenes es mit lobenswerter Kühnheit aussprach (Augustin. de civit. Dei, L. XI, c. 23).

There should be a great Reader in large print, made up of bits and fragments — anecdotes, verses, scenes from the dramatists, fragments of Plutarch, Homer and Herodotus. And the boys should be encouraged to read in this book small bits at a time, and easy bits first. And the teacher should be satisfied when the sense is understood and should push the boys on to read and to read, and not to bother about the grammar. Enough grammar will filter into them by degrees to make them understand the constructions — and what else is grammar for? Let the tutor have no ambition to make the boys write Greek. The desire to write Greek is an exotic thing. If a boy has it, let him be encouraged, of course; but let it not be forced upon the next boy. As a matter of fact, the best way to learn to write any language is to read plenty of it; to learn fragments by heart, and fill the mind with the sound of it; then to write it by ear; and thereafter to work up the grammar in correcting what has been written. This is the way to learn French or German; why not Greek? Language is a thing of the ear, and is most easily learned by the ear, and in quantities. Let the children have more Greek, and ever more Greek, and let grammar and critical analysis be kept for dessert. When one thinks of the thousands of teachers who are obliged to plod year after year through the same portions of Xenophon and Virgil and through the same scenes of Homer, just because of the fear of the Learned World lest the boys should learn the wrong kind of Greek — when one sees the stunting of intelligence, the deadening of interest that must come from such a process — one does not wonder at the decay of Greek in our universities. We have been doing what is hard; we ought to do what is easy.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Leo IV, Pope, was a native of Rome, and succeeded Sergius II in 847. He was hastily elected, and consecrated without waiting for the consent of the emperor Lotharius, because Rome was then threatened by the Saracens, who occupied part of the duchy of Benevento, and who a short time before had landed on the banks of the Tiber, and plundered the basilica of St. Peter's on the Vatican, which was outside of the walls. Leo's consecration, however, was undertaken with the express reservation of the emperor's rights, and when, in order to prevent a recurrence of the violence of the Saracens, Leo undertook to surround the basilica and the suburb about it with walls, the emperor sent money to assist in the work. The building of this Roman suburb occupied four years, and it was named after its founder, Civitas Leonina. Leo also restored the town of Porta, on the Tiber, near its mouth, settling there some thousands of Corsicans, who had run away from their country on account of the Saracens. Towers were built on both banks of the river, and iron chains drawn across to prevent the vessels of the Saracens from ascending to Rome. The port and town of Centum Cellae being forsaken on account of the Saracens, Leo built a new town on the coast, about twelve miles distant from the other, which was called Leopolis; but no traces of it remain now, as the modern Civita Vecchia is built on or near the site of old Centum Cellae.

Leo's immediate task was the defence of Rome against the Saracens and the repair of the damage inflicted by them in 846. With extraordinary energy he strengthened the city walls and, reviving plans of Leo III, constructed new walls, with financial help from Emperor Lothair I (840-55), on the right bank of the Tiber, bringing St Peter's, hitherto exposed to enemy attack, within the defensive system and creating the 'Leonine city'. These new defences were solemnly dedicated on 27 June 852. In 849 he organized the fleets of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta and defeated the Muslims in a decisive sea-battle just outside Ostia. In 854 he rebuilt Centumcellae, destroyed by them, on a more secure site, naming it Leopolis (today Civitavecchia), while at Porto he settled Corsican refugees as a defensive garrison.

[T]he unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads above the fragments of the Roman forum.

The city's pregnant, Kurnos, and I fear
She'll bear a violent leader of civil war;
The people still have sense, but those in charge
Are turning, stumbling into evil ways.

Κύρνε, κύει πόλις ἥδε, δέδοικα δὲ μὴ τέκῃ ἄνδρα
    ὑβριστήν, χαλεπῆς ἡγεμόνα στάσιος·
ἀστοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἔθ' οἵδε σαόφρονες, ἡγεμόνες δέ
    τετράφαται πολλὴν εἰς κακότητα πεσεῖν.

It may be asked, At what point should the reading for pleasure begin? It should begin at about the second lesson, when some entertaining sentence or verse should be learned — as the Lorelei is learned on the first day of German. A little of the language should be put in alive into the child's mind each day; and the grammar should then come behind and sweep up, and explain; it should be kept as a necessary utensil. This relationship should be maintained throughout life; and the attention should be kept on the meanings which occur in sentences and verses, rather than on the shadows of them which the grammars have worked out. The reason why the cart is put before the horse in classical education is that the grammarians through whose admirable labors it is that we possess the classics at all, have always been interested in the cart. It has been their province to study out a rule; and they have interposed this rule between us and the language. They have done it with the best intentions.

There is another circumstance which largely accounts for our inherited misteaching of Latin and Greek. The learned world has been digging out the classics for the last four hundred years; and the ideals of the learned world are accurate scholarship and scientific precision. It is probably right that the learned world should have such ideals — or should have had them during this epoch. And yet accurate scholarship and scientific precision are illusions in the case of language, and there is no scholar living who could write a page of Greek without making ludicrous errors errors of the sort that the Anglo-Indian makes in writing English, which he has learned from books. If even Mr. Mackail or Gilbert Murray or Nauck, that great, horrible mythic monster — should spend a whole day in dove-tailing phrases which they had fished out of Plato or Thucydides to make an essay of, the chances are that any Athenian would laugh five times to the page over the performance.

One question will I spare thee, lest I provoke thy laughter;
the foe that each of them encountered in the fray,
the spear from which each received his death-wound.
These be idle tales alike for those who hear
or him who speaks, that any man amid the fray,
when clouds of darts are hurtling before his eyes,
should declare for certain who each champion is.
I could not ask such questions,
nor yet believe those who dare assert the like;
for when a man is face to face with the foe, he scarce
can see even that which 'tis his bounden duty to observe.

ἓν δ᾽ οὐκ ἐρήσομαί σε, μὴ γέλωτ᾽ ὄφλω,
ὅτῳ ξυνέστη τῶνδ᾽ ἕκαστος ἐν μάχῃ
ἢ τραῦμα λόγχης πολεμίων ἐδέξατο.
κενοὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν τ᾽ ἀκουόντων λόγοι
καὶ τοῦ λέγοντος, ὅστις ἐν μάχῃ βεβὼς        850
λόγχης ἰούσης πρόσθεν ὀμμάτων πυκνῆς
σαφῶς ἀπήγγειλ᾽ ὅστις ἐστὶν ἁγαθός.
οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην οὔτ᾽ ἐρωτῆσαι τάδε
οὔτ᾽ αὖ πιθέσθαι τοῖσι τολμῶσιν λέγειν·
μόλις γὰρ ἄν τις αὐτὰ τἀναγκαῖ᾽ ὁρᾶν        855
δύναιτ᾽ ἂν ἑστὼς πολεμίοις ἐναντίος.

Boys and girls must dance together at an age when plausible occasions can be found for their doing so, in order that they may have a reasonable look at each other; and they should dance naked, provided sufficient modesty and restraint are displayed by all concerned.

τῆς οὖν τοιαύτης σπουδῆς ἕνεκα χρὴ καὶ τὰς παιδιὰς ποιεῖσθαι χορεύοντάς τε καὶ χορευούσας κόρους καὶ κόρας, καὶ ἅμα δὴ θεωροῦντάς τε καὶ θεωρουμένους μετὰ λόγου τε καὶ ἡλικίας τινὸς ἐχούσης εἰκυίας προφάσεις, γυμνοὺς καὶ γυμνὰς μέχριπερ αἰδοῦς σώφρονος ἑκάστων.

Now I suppose I will have to hear again that my philosophy is disconsolate, just because I speak according to the truth, but the people want to hear that God the Lord has done everything right. Go to church and leave the philosophers in peace! At least do not demand that they arrange their doctrines according to your training and background; that is what the scoundrels do, the philosophasters — from them you can order whatever doctrines you like.

Da werde ich wohl wieder vernehmen müssen, meine Philosophie sei trostlos; eben nur weil ich nach der Wahrheit rede, die Leute aber hören wollen, Gott der Herr habe Alles wohlgemacht. Geht in die Kirche und laßt die Philosophen in Ruhe. Wenigstens verlangt nicht, daß sie ihre Lehren eurer Abrichtung gemäß einrichten sollen: das thun die Lumpe, die Philosophaster: bei denen könnt ihr euch Lehren nach Belieben bestellen.

Then, if you care to hear of him in battle—for there also he must have his due—on the day of the fight in which I gained my prize for valour from our commanders, it was he, out of the whole army, who saved my life: I was wounded, and he would not forsake me, but helped me to save both my armour and myself.

εἰ δὲ βούλεσθε ἐν ταῖς μάχαις· τοῦτο γὰρ δὴ δίκαιόν γε αὐτῷ ἀποδοῦναι· ὅτε γὰρ ἡ μάχη ἦν, ἐξ ἧς ἐμοὶ καὶ τἀριστεῖα ἔδοσαν οἱ στρατηγοί, οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἐμὲ ἔσωσεν ἀνθρώπων ἢ οὗτος, τετρωμένον οὐκ ἐθέλων ἀπολιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ συνδιέσωσε καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ αὐτὸν ἐμέ.

[H]e was the first man who dared to uproot and transform an order of things established everywhere, a usage inherited from their fathers, their constitutional privilege and right as the friends and the allies of Rome.

Now herein, Verres, my first step as prosecutor is to demand why you made any sort of change in a system so long and so regularly maintained. Did your powerful brain detect some fault in it? Were your understanding and your judgement superior to those of all the able and distinguished men who governed the province before you?

hic primus instituta omnium, consuetudinem a maioribus traditam, condicionem amicitiae, ius societatis convellere et commutare ausus est.

qua in re primum illud reprehendo et accuso, cur in re tam vetere, tam usitata quicquam novi feceris. ingenio aliquid assecutus es? tot homines sapientissimos et clarissimos, qui illam provinciam ante te tenuerunt, prudentia consilioque vicisti?

Beauty asked: 'Why must I perish, oh Zeus?'
'Why, I gave beauty', answered the god, 'only to perishable things.'

Warum bin ich vergänglich, o Zeus? so fragte die Schönheit.
    Macht' ich doch, sagte der Gott, nur das Vergängliche schön.

In play, love, music, books, I joy,
In town and country; and, indeed, there 's nought,
E'en to the luxury of sober thought, —
The sombre, melancholy mood, —
But brings to me the sovereign good.

J'aime le jeu, l'amour, les livres, la musique,
La ville et la campagne, enfin tout ; il n'est rien
Qui ne me soit souverain bien,
Jusqu'au sombre plaisir d'un coeur mélancolique.

Voting is compulsory for all in every election, and anyone who fails in his duty and is denounced to the authorities should be fined fifty drachmas and get the reputation of being a scoundrel.

χειροτονείτω δὲ πᾶς πάντα· ὁ δὲ μὴ 'θέλων, ἐὰν εἰσαγγελθῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ζημιούσθω πεντήκοντα δραχμαῖς πρὸς τῷ κακὸς εἶναι δοκεῖν.

When I made this discovery, I determined to learn Greek, or at any rate to read Greek by the light of every facility except literature — a little of it anyway  — a play, half a play, a speech, a couplet — something that was in itself the thing I sought, and not a rendering of it. I had recourse to the garret of memory and there I found a small seedbag of moldy Greek, and with this I began experiments. On reëxamining the first readers and easy grammars which my whole generation had been put through, it seemed to me that they were admirable primers. None need be better. Then why did I not know Greek? The reason was that I had never followed up the beginnings. I had never read a page of Greek out of natural curiosity, nor had I ever seen anyone else do such a thing as to read Greek for pleasure. If anyone will read ten pages of English in the manner in which the schoolboy is taught Greek, he will see why Greek is dropped by the boy as soon as possible. Let anyone analyze ten pages of English, answer grammatical questions upon it, let him be asked to parse and give the parts of irregular verbs, to distinguish between varieties of subjunctive, and he will begin to loathe English literature.

Yet I see that the gods' ways are different from those of mortals.

διάφορα πολλὰ θεῶν βροτοῖσιν εἰσορῶ.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

Book-learning is endless, life is short, and obstacles are many. We should keep to what is essential, like swans extracting milk from water.

Since verbal science has no final end,
Since life is short, and obstacles impend,
Let central facts be picked and firmly fixed,
As swans extract the milk with water mixed.

Your Majesty, it is true that life is short, and it is beset by many obstacles. Knowledge knows no bounds, and it takes years to acquire it. Therefore, it is held that the essentials of knowledge have to be extracted and grasped, just as the noble bird, the swan, extracts the milk from the water it is mixed in.

To enjoy a book like that thoroughly I find I have to treat it as a sort of hobby and set about it seriously. I begin by making a map on one of the end leafs: then I put in a genealogical tree or two. Then I put a running headline at the top of each page: finally I index at the end all the passages I have for any reason underlined. I often wonder—considering how people enjoy themselves developing photos or making scrap-books—why so few people make a hobby of their reading in this way. Many an otherwise dull book which I had to read have I enjoyed in this way, with a fine-nibbed pen in my hand: one is making something all the time and a book so read acquires the charm of a toy without losing that of a book.

In early youth we sit in front of our impending course of life like children at the theatre, in cheerful and tense expectation of the things to come. How fortunate that we do not know what is actually to come. For to anyone who knows, children at times would seem like innocent delinquents who are not condemned to death, to be sure, but to life, and have not yet heard the terms of their sentence. — Nevertheless everyone wishes himself an old age, thus a state of which it can be said: 'Today it is bad and it will get worse every day — until the worst arrives.'

In früher Jugend sitzen wir vor unserm bevorstehenden Lebenslauf, wie die Kinder vor dem Theatervorhang, in froher und gespannter Erwartung der Dinge, die da kommen sollen. Ein Glück, daß wir nicht wissen, was wirklich kommen wird. Denn wer es weiß, dem können zu Zeiten die Kinder vorkommen wie unschuldige Delinquenten, die zwar nicht zum Tode, hingegen zum Leben verurtheilt sind, jedoch den Inhalt ihres Urtheils noch nicht vernommen haben. — Nichtsdestoweniger wünscht Jeder sich ein hohes Alter, also einen Zustand, darin es heißt: „es ist heute schlecht und wird nun täglich schlechter werden, — bis das Schlimmste kommt.”

Caesar's Commentaries is the dullest book in Latin. It is like making a road to read it. It is not a book; it is a stone-crushing machine. The teacher, a two-dollar-a-day man, stands beside the machine and runs it. And this is the Classics.

Whatever its specific immediate effect, Caesar's neat, formulaic, and seductively simple Latinity surely contributed to his elevation to classic status (obtained in the Renaissance, not since relinquished). But, just as surely, it alone cannot account for the fascination engendered in intellectuals as diverse in interests, epochs, and cultures as Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, and Johann Gottfried Herder. At least as important was a simplicity of a different (and more troubling) kind, effected by his rhetoric of stringency: it transforms disorderly realities on far-flung western-European grounds and largest-scale sanguinary mayhem inflicted and suffered by the hundreds of thousands into seemingly rational and ineluctable moves in a game of wits on the board of Gallia omnis. In so removing the war from the contingencies of the “there and then,” it elevates it to a timeless tale of superior power, as told in the third person by an Olympian observer by the name of Caesar, whose formulaic narrative, in plot as well as language, generates a beguiling sense of familiarity. And, to turn to the final aspect of Caesar’s classic, the rational swiftness of the writing appears but a mirror of the forceful swiftness of the warring: Caesar’s narrative "march[es] along, orderly as a legion." [F. E. Adcock Caesar as Man of Letters 1956:71]. The same mind, it seems, imposes order on the fields of battle and the accounts of battle; its style is its image.

Ye cities likewise, though ye might by parley end your mischief,
yet ye choose the sword instead of reason to settle all disputes.

πόλεις τ᾿, ἔχουσαι διὰ λόγου κάμψαι κακά,
φόνῳ καθαιρεῖσθ᾿, οὐ λόγῳ, τὰ πράγματα.

Hot bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for breakfast; soup and hot meat, vegetables, dumplings, gravy, brown bread and white, huckleberry pudding, chocolate cake and buttermilk for dinner; muffins, tea, sausage rolls, blackberries and cream, and doughnuts for supper—that's the kind of menu I had been preparing three times a day for years.

Best of all not to force the gods,
but to be content with one's lot. Desire for the impossible
makes many lose what they have now.

πάντων ἄριστον μὴ βιάζεσθαι θεούς,
στέγειν δὲ μοῖραν· τῶν ἀμηχάνων δ᾿ ἔρως
πολλοὺς ἔθηκε τοῦ παρόντος ἀμπλακεῖν.

For domestic and public purposes, and all professional skills, no single branch of a child's education has such an enormous range of applications as mathematics; but its greatest advantage is that it wakes up the sleepy ignoramus and makes him quick to understand, retentive and sharp-witted; and thanks to this miraculous science he does better than his natural abilities would have allowed.

πρός τε γὰρ οἰκονομίαν καὶ πρὸς πολιτείαν καὶ πρὸς τὰς τέχνας πάσας ἓν οὐδὲν οὕτω δύναμιν ἔχει παίδειον μάθημα μεγάλην, ὡς ἡ περὶ τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς διατριβή· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, ὅτι τὸν νυστάζοντα καὶ ἀμαθῆ φύσει ἐγείρει καὶ εὐμαθῆ καὶ μνήμονα καὶ ἀγχίνουν ἀπεργάζεται, παρὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἐπιδιδόντα θείᾳ τέχνῃ.