Laudator Temporis Acti

Prudentius, Against Symmachus 2.277-316 (tr. H.J. Thomson):

If we must needs scrupulously observe and keep up all that was customary in the rude years of the nascent world, let us roll all time back on its tracks right up to the beginning, and decide to condemn step by step all that successive experience has found out in later ages.

When the world was new no cultivators brought the land into subjection. What are ploughs good for, or the useless labour of the harrow? Better to sate the belly with acorns from the oak trees.

The first men used to split their timber with wedges; let our axes be reduced in the furnace from a hot moulding into a lump of metal, the iron dripping back again into its own ore.

Slaughtered oxen used to provide clothing, and a chilly cave a little home; so let us go back to the caverns and put on shaggy wraps of unsewn skins.

Let nations that once were barbarous but had their savagery subdued and became civilised go back again to their harsh cries and their inhuman ways, returning to their former state. Let the young man, with a filial piety worthy of Scythia, fling his wrinkled old father as an offering from the bridge, for such was once the custom. Let the rites of Saturn reek with the slaughter of infants and the cruel altars resound with their weeping and wailing. Let the very race of Romulus weave huts of fragile straw (such they say was the dwelling of Remus), spread their royal couches with hay, or wear on their hairy bodies a cloak made of an African bearskin. Such things the Trinacrian or the Tuscan leader used to have.

Rome does not stay as she was long ago; she has changed as time passed, making alterations in her worship, dress, laws, and arms. She practises much that she did not practise when Quirinus was her king. Some things she has ordered for the better, some she has abandoned; she has never ceased to change her usage, and has turned long-established laws to the opposite.

Why, senator of Rome, do you bring up accustomed usages against me, when many a time a decision has not stood fast and a change of mind with regard to it has altered decrees of senate and people? Even now, whenever it is for our benefit to depart from wonted ways and reject manners of the past for a newer style, we are glad that something which was unknown before has been discovered and at last brought to light; ever by slow advances does human life grow and develop, improving by long experience.

si, quidquid rudibus mundi nascentis in annis
mos habuit, sancte colere ac servare necesse est,
omne revolvamus sua per vestigia saeclum
usque ad principium, placeat damnare gradatim
quidquid posterius successor repperit usus.

orbe novo nulli subigebant arva coloni:
quid sibi aratra volunt? quid cura superflua rastri?
ilignis melius saturatur glandibus alvus.

primi homines cuneis scindebant fissile lignum:
decoquat in massam fervens strictura secures
rursus et ad proprium restillet vena metallum.

induvias caesae pecudes et frigida parvas
praebebat spelunca domos: redeamus ad antra,
pellibus insutis hirtos sumamus amictus.

inmanes quondam populi feritate subacta
edomiti iam triste fremant iterumque ferinos
in mores redeant atque ad sua prisca recurrant.
praecipitet Scythica iuvenis pietate vietum
votivo de ponte patrem (sic mos fuit olim),
caedibus infantum fument Saturnia sacra
flebilibusque truces resonent vagitibus arae.
ipsa casas fragili texat gens Romula culmo:
sic tradunt habitasse Remum. regalia faeno
fulcra supersternant aut pelle Libystidis ursae
conpositam chlamydem villoso corpore gestent.
talia Trinacrius ductor vel Tuscus habebant.

Roma antiqua sibi non constat versa per aevum
et mutata sacris, ornatu, legibus, armis.
multa colit quae non coluit sub rege Quirino;
instituit quaedam melius, nonnulla refugit,
et morem variare suum non destitit, et quae
pridem condiderat iura in contraria vertit.

quid mihi tu ritus solitos, Romane senator,
obiectas cum scita patrum populique frequenter
instabilis placiti sententia flexa novarit?
nunc etiam quotiens solitis decedere prodest
praeteritosque habitus cultu damnare recenti,
gaudemus conpertum aliquid tandemque retectum,
quod latuit; tardis semper processibus aucta
crescit vita hominis et longo proficit usu.

Edward Taylor (1642-1729), Preparatory Meditations before my Approach to the Lord's Supper (beginning of Meditation 40):

Still I complain; I am complaining still.
  O woe is me! Was ever Heart like mine?
A Sty of Filth, a Trough of Washing-Swill,
  A Dunghill Pit, a Puddle of mere Slime,
  A Nest of Vipers, Hive of Hornets-stings,
  A Bag of Poyson, Civit-Box of Sins.

Was ever Heart like mine? So bad? black? vile?
  Is any Divell blacker? Or can Hell
Produce its match? It is the very soile
  Where Satan reads his charms and sets his spell;
  His Bowling Ally, where he sheeres his fleece
  At Nine Pins, Nine Holes, Morrice, Fox and Geese.

James Thomson (1834-1882):

Once in a saintly passion
  I cried with desperate grief,
"O Lord, my heart is black with guile,
  Of sinners I am chief."

Then stooped my guardian angel
  And whispered from behind,
"Vanity, my little man,
  You're nothing of the kind."

Cato, On Agriculture 139 (tr. W.D. Hooper and H.B. Ash):

The following is the Roman formula to be observed in thinning a grove: A pig is to be sacrificed, and the following prayer uttered: "Whether thou be god or goddess to whom this grove is dedicated, as it is thy right to receive a sacrifice of a pig for the thinning of this sacred grove, and to this intent, whether I or one at my bidding do it, may it be rightly done. To this end, in offering this pig to thee I humbly beg that thou wilt be gracious and merciful to me, to my house and household, and to my children. Wilt thou deign to receive this pig which I offer thee to this end."

Lucum conlucare Romano more sic oportet. Porco piaculo facto, sic verba concipito: "Si deus, si dea es, quoium illud sacrum est, uti tibi ius est porco piaculo facere illiusce sacri coercendi ergo harumque rerum ergo, sive ego sive quis iussu meo fecerit, uti id recte factum siet, eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo inmolando bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi domo familiaeque meae liberisque meis; harumce rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo inmolando esto."

Lewis & Short, s.v. colluco:

col-lūco (conl- ), āre, v. a. [lux],

I. to make light, to clear or thin a forest, etc.: collucare est succisis arboribus locum luce implere, Fest. s.v. sublucare, p. 348, 18 Müll. (explained in a different manner by Paul. ex Fest. p. 37, 12 ib.): lucum, Cato, R.R. 139: arborem, Col. 2, 21, 3.

The different explanation by Paul. ex Fest. p. 37, 12 Müll. is conlucare dicebant cum profanae silvae rami deciderentur officientes lumini. The paraphrase of Cato by Pliny, Natural History 17.267 (idem arbores religiosas lucosque succidi permisit sacrificio prius facto, cuius rationem precationemque eodem volumine tradidit), seems to support the meaning "cut down trees" rather than "prune branches".

Lewis & Short, s.v. interluco:

inter-lūco , āre, v. a. [lux],

I. to let the light through a tree by clearing it of its useless branches; to lop or thin a tree (Plinian): interlucata densitate ramorum, Plin. 17, 23, 35, § 214: arbores, id. 17, 12, 19, § 94.

Lewis & Short, s.v. subluco:

sub-lūco , āre, 1, v. a. [lux],

I. to trim, cut away, thin out the branches of a tree, to admit light: sublucare arbores est ramos earum supputare, et veluti subtus lucem mittere, Fest. p. 348 Müll.: arbor ... nisi a domino sublucari non potest, isque conveniendus est ut eam sublucet, Paul. Sent. 5, 6, 13; cf. colluco.

On the etymology of these verbs, see Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1951), p. 368:

De lūcus a dû exister aussi un dénominatif *lūcō, -ās (à moins que *lūcō ne soit un intensif-duratif en -ā-, du type dūcō, -ās, dont lūcus serait le substantif verbal?) qui figure dans les composés collūcāre, interlūcāre, sublūcāre, termes techniques de la langue des forestiers, dont le sens est "tailler les arbres, éclaircir (un bois)". L'étymologie est indiquée par les textes: conlucare dicebant cum profanae siluae rami deciderentur officientes lumini, P.F. 33, 21; sublucare arbores est ramos earum supputare, et ueluti subtus lucem mittere; conlucare autem, succisis arboribus lucum (locum, Lindsay) implere luce, Fest. 474, 28; cf. l'emploi de interlūcāre dans Pline 17, 94....Le mot italique *loukos (osq. lúvkei "in lūcō") signifiait étymologiquement "clairière"; on en a le correspondant exact dans v. angl. léah "prairie", v.h.a. lōh "clairière avec des arbustes"; lit. laūkas "champ" ("espace libre", par opposition à la "maison" avec son enclos), skr. lokáḥ, "espace libre" et ulokáḥ, sans doute simplification du composé *uru-lokaḥ "large espace". Ce mot indo-européen désignait l'espace libre et clair, par opposition à ce qui est boisé — le bois, le couvert, étant le grand obstacle à l'activité de l'homme.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for sending me the excerpt from Ernout and Meillet. Eric also compares German Lichtung ("clearing, glade" from Licht, "light").

Related posts:

• Identity of Opposites
  
• Lucus A Non Lucendo

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal (June 1855):

A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

Id. (August 1855):

Out upon scholars with their pale, sickly, etiolated, indoor thoughts. Give me the out-of-door thoughts of sound men,—the thoughts, all fresh, blooming, whiskered, and with the tan on!

Vergil, Georgics 3.66-68 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

Life's fairest days are ever the first to flee for hapless mortals; on creep diseases, and sad age, and suffering; and stern death's ruthlessness sweeps away its prey.

optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus
et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis.

Samuel Johnson used to quote these lines of Vergil "with great pathos." William Wordsworth cited them in a note to Descriptive Sketches in Verse, Taken During a Pedestrian Tour in the Italian, Grison, Swiss, and Savoyard Alps, lines 636-643:

Soon flies the little joy to man allow'd,
And tears before him travel like a cloud.
For come Diseases on, and Penury's rage,
Labour, and Pain, and Grief, and joyless Age,
And Conscience dogging close his bleeding way
Cries out, and leads her Spectres to their prey,
'Till Hope-deserted, long in vain his breath
Implores the dreadful untried sleep of Death.

Juan de Valdés Leal, In Ictu Oculi (Hospital de la Caridad, Seville)

Fanny Burney, letter to Samuel Crisp (March 27/28, 1777):

He is, indeed, very ill-favoured; is tall and stout; but stoops terribly; he is almost bent double. His mouth is almost continually opening and shutting as if he was chewing. He has a strange method of frequently twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands. His body is in continual agitation, see-sawing up and down; his feet are never a moment quiet; and, in short, his whole person is in perpetual motion. His dress, too, considering the times, and that he had meant to put on his best becomes, being engaged to dine in a large company, was as much out of the common road as his figure; he had a large wig, snuff-colour coat, and gold buttons, but no ruffles to his shirt, doughty fists, and black worsted stockings.

Answer.

Excerpts from Oliver Rackham, "Ecology and Pseudo-Ecology: The Example of Ancient Greece," in Graham Shipley and John Salmon, edd., Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity: Environment and Culture (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 16-43:

P. 16:

A factoid is a statement that looks like a fact, makes sense like a fact, commands the respect due to a fact, and has all the properties of a fact except that it is not true. An example is the belief that trees die when cut down and disappear for ever.

P. 17:

The first step on the road to pseudo-ecology is to confuse ecology with environment: to treat living creatures as part of the scenery of the theatre, rather than as actors in the play. Plants and animals are not a generalized nature, not the passive recipients of whatever mankind chooses to inflict on them: they are thousands of individual species, each with its own behaviour which has to be understood. An ash tree differs from a pine to much the same degree that a cat differs from a codfish. Cutting down the pine kills it, but the ash sprouts and recovers.

Pp. 17-18:

There are four opportunities for creating a pseudo-ecology of the ancient world.

(1) Not understanding the nature of evidence. Scholars easily suppose that written sources provide the only, or best, information about their periods. This cuts them off from ever knowing what was happening at times when people were not writing. Ecologists tend to be credulous and uncritical when dealing with ancient texts, and fail to understand their limitations.

(2) Projecting modern ecological fallacies on to the ancients. It is all too easy to seek in ancient philosophers confirmation of the fashionable misperceptions of the present.

(3) Being preoccupied (as many scholars are) with ancient attitudes to nature, regardless of what nature consisted of at the time or what it was the ancients were attitudinizing about....The history of nature is not the same as the history of the things that people have said about nature.

(4) Geographical over-generalization. Scholars assemble fragments of information—a scrap from Italy, a phrase in Homer, a snippet from Cyprus, a verse or two from the Bible—as if these added up to a history of Mediterranean ecology. This would not pass muster in any other branch of archaeology.

P. 20:

In Mediterranean countries, trees do not necessarily occur in the form of forests: they can constitute maquis (trees reduced to the form of shrubs) or savanna (grassland or undershrubs with scattered trees).

P. 22:

Ancient Greek authors tell us comparatively little about what Greece looked like: they assume their readers will know. Written evidence needs to be handled critically. We need to verify each piece of information: to consider whether an author was interested in describing accurately what a place looked like, and whether he was in a position to know (Rackham 1992a). Plato (Laws, 1.625 b) throws out a few remarks about roadside cypresses in Crete in the context of three aged philosophers strolling one afternoon from Knossos to the Idaean cave. In reality this is one of the most arduous journeys in all this arduous island. All we can infer is that Plato liked to give a pleasant setting to a dry philosophical discourse, but knew nothing about the topography or vegetation of Crete.

P. 28 (footnote omitted):

Scholars too often assume that ancient accounts of trees imply tall trees and forests; they forget about maquis and savanna. In reality, ancient authors may not have made the same distinction between 'forest' and 'scrub' that modern English, and especially American, writers make.

P. 28:

Deforestation is tree-felling not balanced by regrowth.

P. 29:

Nonsense multiplies. Once it has become the accepted wisdom that trees were becoming scarce in antiquity, every change in human activity is attributed to this cause, no matter how farfetched. If the guess fits your theory, you print it. Sir Arthur Evans solemnly stated that the men of Knossos took to using gypsum for door- and window-frames because they had run out of timber (Evans 1921–35, ii. 565).

P. 33:

There is an almost irresistible temptation to read modern theories into the words of ancient authors.

P. 35 (on Theophrastus):

It is from such beginnings of discernment that an interest in ecology must grow, but I find no evidence that the Greeks got very far. Too often they were bogged down in the ancient Greek vices of philosophizing from not enough data, and of not verifying such data as they did have.

P. 36:

One cannot do real ecology without knowing the plants.

P. 40:

Isaiah (11. 1–2) expresses the most cherished hopes of his nation under the allegory of the regrowth of a coppiced tree, a subject mentioned only two or three times in the vastly more extensive Greek and Roman literature: 'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.'

P. 42:

In antiquity it was not easy, in most of Greece, to do permanent damage to the landscape. The critical step in the degradation of the Greek environment was the invention of the bulldozer.

Among the many compounds of apple in the Oxford English Dictionary are these two:

apple loft n.

1569 T. BLAGUE Schole of Wise Conceytes 67 His sonne being very liberall, brought his fellowes very often into the *Apple loftes, saying: Take of these what ye will. 1740 M. DELANY Autobiogr. & Corr. (1861) II. 120 Go see what's doing in the cheese-chamber and the apple-loft. 1864 Times 8 Feb. 9/4, The lunatic we discovered in the apple loft. 1984 P. LEGG Cidermaking in Somerset 7/1 Many Somerset cider cellars have an apple loft above them, occasionally called the 'tallet'.

apple-room n.

1740 Tryal Mrs Branch 22 He went..to search for the bloody Clothes, and Ann James shew'd the *Apple-Room, where the same were put. 1824 M. R. MITFORD Our Village (1863) 1st Ser. 221 The apple-room, the pear-bin, the cheese-loft. 2002 Church Times 22 Nov. 32/3 The old apple-room is now the bookroom... My book-packed farmhouse cannot complain.

I recently came across a couple of references to apple lofts. The first was in Noah Greenberg and W.H. Auden, edd., An Anthology of Elizabethan Lute Songs, Madrigals, and Rounds (1955; rpt. New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), p. 35 (from Thomas Campian's Jacke and Jone, 2nd stanza):

Well can they judge of nappy Ale
And tell at large a Winter tale:
Climbe up to the Apple loft,
And turne the Crabs till they be soft.

The second was John Drinkwater's poem Moonlit Apples:

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.

Levi Wells Prentice, Basket of Apples
Related post: November (IV).

Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance 2.36 (tr. Richard Stoneman):

We marched on from there and came to a river. I ordered my men to pitch camp and lay aside their armour in the usual way. In the river there were trees which began to grow at sunrise and continued until the sixth hour, but from the seventh hour they shrank again until they could hardly be seen. They exuded a sap like Persian myrrh, with a sweet and noble aroma. I had cuts made in a few of them, and the sap soaked up with sponges. Suddenly the sap-collectors began to be whipped by an invisible spirit: we heard the noise of the whipping and saw the marks of the blows on their backs, but we could not see those who were beating them. Then a voice was heard, telling them neither to cut the trees nor collect the sap: "If you do not cease," it said, "the army will be struck dumb." I was afraid and gave orders not to cut or collect any more of the sap.

Leif Bergson, Der griechische Alexanderroman: Rezension β (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965 = Studia Graeca Stockholmiensia, III), p. 129:

Ἐκεῖθεν δὲ ἀναχωρήσαντες ἤλθομεν εἴς τινα ποταμόν. ἐκέλευσα οὖν παρεμβολὴν γενέσθαι καὶ καθοπλισθῆναι τῇ συνηθείᾳ τὰ στρατεύματα. ἦν δὲ ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ δένδρα καὶ ἃμα τοῦ ἡλίουἀνατέλλοντος καὶ τὰ δένδρα ηὔξανον μέχρις ὥρας ἕκτης, ἀπὸ δὲ ὥρας ἑβδόμης ἐξέλιπον ὥστε μὴ φαίνεσθαι ὅλως. δάκρυα δὲ εἶχον ὡς Περσικὴν στακτήν, πνοὴν δὲ πάνυ ἡδυτάτην καὶ χρηστήν. ἐκέλευσα οὖν κόπτεσθαι τὰ δένδρα καὶ σπόγγοις ἐκλέγεσθαι τὸ δάκρυον. αἰφνίδιον οἱ ἐκλέγοντες ἐμαστιγοῦντο ὑπὸ δαίμονος ἀοράτου. καὶ τῶν μὲν μαστιγουμένων τὸν ψόφον ἠκούομεν καὶ τὰς πληγὰς ἐπὶ τῶν νώτων ἐρχομένας ἐβλέπομεν, τοὺς δὲ τύπτοντας οὐκ ἐθεωροῦμεν. φωνὴ δέ τις ἤρχετο λέγουσα μηδὲ ἐκκόπτειν μηδὲ συλλέγειν. "εἰ δὲ μὴ παύσητε, γενήσεται ἄφωνον τὸ στρατόπεδον." ἐγὼ οὖν φοβηθεὶς ἐκέλευσα μήτε ἐκκόπτειν μήτε συλλέγειν τινὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν.

I owe the reference to Albert Henrichs, "'Thou Shalt Not Kill a Tree': Greek, Manichaean and Indian Tales," Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 16 (1979) 85-108 (at 107-108).

Related posts: St. Martin and the Pine Tree; The Geismar Oak; Bregalad's Lament; Petition of a Poplar; Cactus Ed and Arboricide; Views from the Center of Highgate Wood; Artaxerxes and Arboricide; When the Last Tree Falls; The Hamadryads of George Lane; Sorbs and Medlars; So Foul a Deed; Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Hornbeams; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; Willows; Mourning Over Trees; The Trees Are Down; Sad Ravages in the Woods; An Old Saying; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.