Laudator Temporis Acti

Caesar, The Gallic War. With an English Translation by H.J. Edwards (1917; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006 = Loeb Classical Library, 72), pp. 16-17 (1.11.4):

Eodem tempore [Aedui] Ambarri, necessarii et consanguinei Aeduorum, Caesarem certiorem faciunt sese depopulatis agris...

At the same time the Aedui Ambarri, close allies and kinsmen of the Aedui, informed Caesar that their lands had been laid waste...

In the Latin text Edwards indicated by square brackets that Aedui should be excised, but he included it in his translation. According to René Du Pontet's Oxford Classical Text edition, Bernhard Dinter proposed the excision, although the Budé and Teubner editions attribute the deletion to Alphonsus Ciacconius.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), The Will to Power, Book 1, § 90 (tr. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale):

Let us not be deceived! Time marches forward; we'd like to believe that everything that is in it also marches forward — that the development is one that moves forward.

The most level-headed are led astray by this illusion. But the nineteenth century does not represent progress over the sixteenth; and the German spirit of 1888 represents a regress from the German spirit of 1788.

Dass wir uns nicht täuschen! Die Zeit läuft vorwärts, wir möchten glauben, dass auch Alles, was in ihr ist, vorwärts läuft, — dass die Entwicklung eine Vorwärts-Entwicklung ist.

Das ist der Augenschein, von dem die Besonnensten verführt werden. Aber das neunzehnte Jahrhundert ist kein Fortschritt gegen das sechszehnte: und der deutsche Geist von 1888 ist ein Rückschritt gegen den deutschen Geist von 1788.

Related post: Progress.

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ὁμόπτερος (9th ed., p. 1227):

A. of or with the same plumage, κίρκος A.Supp.224, cf. Pl.Phdr.256e; οἱ ἐμοὶ ὁ. my fellow-birds, birds of my feather, Ar.Av.229: then generally, comrades, fellows, Stratt.78.         2. metaph., of like feather, closely resembling, βόστρυχος ὁ. A.Ch.174, cf. E.El.530; νᾶες ὁ. consort-ships (or, as others, equally swift), A.Pers.559 (lyr., but λινόπτεροι is prob. cj.); ἀπήνα ὁ., i.e. the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, E.Ph.328(lyr.).

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), "Detti memorabili di Filippo Ottonieri," chap. 4, Operette Morali (tr. Giovanni Cecchetti):

Sometimes he said, smiling, that those people who are accustomed to communicating continuously their thoughts and their feelings to others will cry out even when they are alone if a fly bites them or if a flower vase overturns or if it slips from their hands whereas those who are used to living by themselves and to self-restraint will not utter a sound in the company of others, even if they have an apoplectic stroke.

Diceva alle volte ridendo, che le persone assuefatte a comunicare di continuo cogli altri i propri pensieri e sentimenti, esclamano, anco essendo sole, se una mosca le morde, o che si versi loro un vaso, o fugga loro di mano; e che per lo contrario quelle che sono usate di vivere seco stesse e di contenersi nel proprio interno, se anco si sentono cogliere da un'apoplessia, trovandosi pure in presenza d'altri, non aprono bocca.

Related posts:

• Hide It in Darkness
• Letting It Out, versus Keeping It In
• It is Unmanly to Complain
• Complaining
• On Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip
• Grosse Seelen Dulden Still
• Hiding Troubles
• Nietzsche on Emotional Incontinence
• Buckled Lips
• Emotional Incontinence
• On Concealing One's Misfortunes

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Book III, § 239 (tr. Walter Kaufmann):

Joyless.— A single joyless person is enough to create constant discouragement and cloudy skies for a whole household. and it is a miracle if there is not one person like that. Happiness is not nearly so contagious a disease. Why?

Der Freudlose.— Ein einziger freudloser Mensch genügt schon, um einem ganzen Hausstande dauernden Missmuth und trüben Himmel zu machen; und nur durch ein Wunder geschieht es, dass dieser Eine fehlt!— Das Glück ist lange nicht eine so ansteckende Krankheit,—woher kommt das?

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Poets in a Landscape (1957; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2010), p. 86:

Sextus Propertius is one of the strangest of Latin poets. I remember that, when I was at college, I fell ill and was in hospital for many weeks. In order to keep my Latin from growing rusty, as soon as I began to be able to sit up and read, I asked my parents to send in a plain text of Propertius—the poems alone, without explanatory notes. I expected to read slowly and meditatively through it, without the interference of any editor, as one might read Keats or Lamartine.

Id., p. 88:

Lying in the hospital, between the daily clinical tests and the visits of the doctor and desultory games of chess with the patient in the next bed, I thought about Propertius's peculiar way of writing poetry, and read on slowly through his book, mystified in almost every poem by the jagged ideas and obscure references which nevertheless seemed to accompany genuine experience and intense emotion. No other Latin poet I had ever read had prepared me for this cabalistic type of poetry. His emotions were strange enough—in particular, his blend of strong sexual passion with something like puritanism. His style was bold, elliptical, uncom-promising, intended for a small intelligentsia. But the most difficult thing to understand, even to sympathize with, was his habit of breaking suddenly away from violent personal emotion and introducing a remote Greek myth, not even as an interesting tale to be told, but as a decoration, which every reader was apparently expected to understand and appreciate.

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), Zibaldone, tr. Kathleen Baldwin et al. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), p. 1773 (Z 4120-4121):

Not only, as I said elsewhere [→Z 646], did any barbarous century think themselves to be so, but every century thought and thinks it is the non plus ultra as far as the progress of the human mind is concerned, and that it is hard and nearly impossible for future centuries, certainly not past ones, to surpass it in knowledge of things, discoveries, etc., and especially in civilization....Likewise there is no nation or small community so barbarous or savage that [4121] it does not think it is first among nations, and its state, the most perfect, civilized, happy, and that that of all the other nations is worse the more it is different from its own. See Robertson, Storia d’America, Venice 1794, tome 2, pp. 126, 232-33. Likewise nations half or imperfectly civilized, even in Europe, etc. And it was ever thus.

Non solo, come ho detto altrove, nessun secolo barbaro si credette esser tale, ma ogni secolo si credette e si crede essere il non plus ultra dei progressi dello spirito umano, e che le sue cognizioni, scoperte ec. e massime la sua civilizzazione difficilmente o in niun modo possano essere superate dai posteri, certo non dai passati....Così non v’è nazione nè popoletto così barbaro e selvaggio che [4121] non si creda la prima delle nazioni, e il suo stato, il più perfetto, civile, felice, e quel delle altre tanto peggiore quanto più diverso dal proprio. V. Robertson Stor. d’America, Venez. 1794. t.2. p. 116. 232-33. Così le nazioni mezzo civili, o imperfette, anche in Europa ec. E così sempre fu.

From Eric Thomson:

‘Any’ in ‘any barbarous century’ belongs to the class of NPIs (negatively oriented polarity-senstive items) but is inappropriate in this context. The translators seem to have fallen into the trap of hypercorrect avoidance of what seems on the surface multiple negation but isn't. 'Not only' affects the proposition "No barbarous century thinks themselves (sic) to be so” only as far as subject-verb inversion is concerned. The absolute negator 'no' is required, just as in 'Not only is no man an island …’ (Not only is *any* man an island’). End of quibble. Zibaldone is full of quibbles.

Jeffery Henderson on Aristophanes, Lysistrata 110 (σκυτίνη ᾽πικουρία):

A play on the proverbial expression συκίνη ἐπικουρία, used of inadequate or unreliable help (so Σ): fig-wood was cheap and fragile, cf. Theokr. 10.45 σύκινοι ἄνδρες, and compare Hdt. 6.108 (of military aid) ἐπικουρίη ψυχρή, 'cold comfort'.

Arthur Palmer on Horace, Satires 1.8.1 (inutile lignum):

The wood of the fig-tree was considered useless, because it was easily broken (εὔκλαστον), Schol. on Theocr. 25.248, quoted by Schütz; hence the proverb συκίνη ἐπικουρία = 'a broken reed': so σύκινοι ἄνδρες, Theocr. 10.45, 'good-for-nothing men': γνώμη συκίνη, Luc. adv. Indoct. 6.

A.F.S. Gow on Theocritus 10.45 (σύκινοι ἄνδρες):

Theognis 115-116 (tr. J.M. Edmonds):

Many, for sure, are cup-and-trencher friends,
but few a man's comrades in a grave matter.

πολλοί τοι πόσιος καὶ βρώσιός εἰσιν ἑταῖροι,
    ἐν δὲ σπουδαίωι πρήγματι παυρότεροι.

T. Hudson-Williams ad loc.:

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), The Jew of Malta, Prologue 14-15 (spoken by Machiavel):

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), "Pericles and Aspasia," CIV, Imaginary Conversations:

What a deal of time we lose in business!

Euripides, Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. Edited and Translated by David Kovacs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002 = Loeb Classical Library, 11), pp. 396-397 (Phoenician Women 1764-1766):

ὦ μέγα σεμνὴ Νίκη, τὸν ἐμὸν
βίοτον κατέχοις
καὶ μὴ λήγοις στεφανοῦσα.

Victory, may you have my life in your charge and never cease garlanding my head!

The translation omits μέγα σεμνὴ (greatly revered), modifying Νίκη (Victory). The same lines occur at the end of Euripides' Iphigenia Among the Taurians (1497-1499) and Orestes (1691-1693). Kovacs includes the modifier in his translation of Iphigenia Among the Taurians:

O most august lady Victory, may you have my life in your charge and never cease garlanding my head!