A.E. Housman is famous for three things: his scholarship, his poetry, and his scorn. He directed his venomous criticism at countless people over the years, but one of the early targets of his youth was Benjamin Jowett:

“The Regius Professor of Greek throughout Housman’s time was Jowett, and from the single lecture of Jowett’s which he attended, Housman came away disgusted by the Professor’s disregard for the niceties of scholarship.” [A.S.F. Gow, A.E. Housman: A Sketch (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press) p.5]

In his review of Gow’s book, G.L. Hendrickson circulates a rather embarrassing story about Jowett:

“The story is current in Oxford, I am told, that the particular offense of the Regius Professor was a false quantity, that cardinal crime of English tradition, the pronunciation of ἀκριβῶς, which from the English habit of applying Latin rules to Greek pronunciation yielded a monstrosity…” [G. L. Hendrickson, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 58, No. 4 (1937), pp. 463]

This is not the only instance of Housman’s contempt for Jowett, who produced translations of Plato’s works, as well as a large commentary on The Republic. Housman noted of Jowett’s Platonic endeavours:

“Jowett’s Plato: the best translation of a Greek philosopher which has ever been executed by a person who understood neither philosophy nor Greek.” [C.O. Brink, English Classical Scholarship (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1986), p. 130]

In a more poetical vein, the following rhyme was popularly circulated when Jowett was Master of Balliol College:

“Here come I, my name is Jowett.
All there is to know I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge!”

Benjamin Jowett by Sir Leslie Ward

My wife has a job at a remote island hospital on the weekends and we often travel with her by ferry. During the busier part of the summer it is too busy to get a vehicle on the ferry, so we took a taxi to the hospital apartment this morning. The driver had a pile of books next to the gear shaft and one was Claude Levi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind. I asked the driver what he thought of Levi-Strauss, and he said “Not much. But I do like what he says about mermaids. I have been thinking about mermaids since I lived in Montreal in 1969.”

The driver proceeded to tell me that there was a global conspiracy to hide the truth about mermaids from the rest of us: not only do they exist—and many have recently been captured alive and dead—but they leave coral spears in sharks all over the world, they can dive over 100 feet, and they are actually our ancestors. And, just in case I was interested, they don’t wear shells on their breasts.

Now, I had not ever really given much thoughts to mermaids. Sea-nymphs and the like seem like obvious analogs in Greek myth occupying a positive angle—as in Thetis and the daughters of Nereus—or a negative one as in Skylla or the Sirens. And there are transformations like those of Ino the Cadmeid into Leukothea the ‘sea-nymph’ who rescues Odysseus in Odyssey 5. But there’s more! (thanks to Wikipedia and googling the truth about mermaids).

Demetrios III Eukairos, Late 2nd, early 1st Century BCE (Derketo on back of coin)

Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5

“The following is about the interior lands. Hollow Syria contains Apamea which is divided from the tetrarchy of the Nosairis by the river Marsyas; Bambyx, which is also called Hierapolis and Mabog by the Syrians. This is where the fearsome goddess Atargatis, whom the Greeks call Dercetô, is worshipped.”

XIX. Nunc interiora dicantur. Coele habet Apameam Marsya amne divisam a Nazerinorum tetrarchia, Bambycen quae alio nomine Hierapolis vocatur, Syris vero Mabog—ibi prodigiosa Atargatis, Graecis autem Derceto dicta, colitur

Atagartis=Astarte

In the following example we find a typical motif of a figure turned into an animal because of an illicit love affair. The resulting blend imagined in this account is like the image on the coin above: fish-body with human head.

Diodorus Siculus, 2.82

“In Syria, there is a city called Askalôn and close to it is a large lake full of fish. Next to it, there is the precinct of the well-known goddess the Syrians call Dercetô. She has the head of a woman, but her body is completely fish for the following reasons. The most well-versed of the region tell the story that because Aphrodite was angry at this goddess, she filled her with love for a certain pretty youth among those sacrificing to her. After she had sex with the Syrian man, she gave birth to a daughter. Because she was ashamed for her actions, she killed the youth and exposed the child in a a deserted, rocky place. Beset by shame and grief, she threw herself into the lake and the shape of her body reformed into a fish. For this reason Syrians still abstain from the animal to this day and honor fish as gods.”

Κατὰ τὴν Συρίαν τοίνυν ἔστι πόλις Ἀσκάλων, καὶ ταύτης οὐκ ἄπωθεν λίμνη μεγάλη καὶ βαθεῖα πλήρης ἰχθύων. παρὰ δὲ ταύτην ὑπάρχει τέμενος θεᾶς ἐπιφανοῦς, ἣν ὀνομάζουσιν οἱ Σύροι Δερκετοῦν· αὕτη δὲ τὸ μὲν πρόσωπον ἔχει γυναικός, τὸ δ᾿ ἄλλο σῶμα πᾶν ἰχθύος διά τινας τοιαύτας αἰτίας. μυθολογοῦσιν οἱ λογιώτατοι τῶν ἐγχωρίων τὴν Ἀφροδίτην προσκόψασαν τῇ προειρημένῃ θεᾷ δεινὸν ἐμβαλεῖν ἔρωτα νεανίσκου τινὸς τῶν θυόντων οὐκ ἀειδοῦς· τὴν δὲ Δερκετοῦν μιγεῖσαν τῷ Σύρῳ γεννῆσαι μὲν θυγατέρα, καταισχυνθεῖσαν δ᾿ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἡμαρτημένοις τὸν μὲν νεανίσκον ἀφανίσαι, τὸ δὲ παιδίον εἴς τινας ἐρήμους καὶ πετρώδεις τόπους ἐκθεῖναι·ἑαυτὴν δὲ διὰ τὴν αἰσχύνην καὶ λύπην ῥίψασαν εἰς τὴν λίμνην μετασχηματισθῆναι τὸν τοῦ σώματος τύπον εἰς ἰχθῦν· διὸ καὶ τοὺς Σύρους μέχρι τοῦ νῦν ἀπέχεσθαι τούτου τοῦ ζῴου καὶ τιμᾶν τοὺς ἰχθῦς ὡς θεούς.

Sirens are more ornithogunaikes (bird-women) than ikhthuogunaikes (“fish-women”)

In other accounts we find an association with pigeons as well–perhaps a symbolic bleed from the association of women with birds (e.g. Sirens, Harpies etc.) and women with fish. The important thing for myth and genealogy is that this goddess becomes the mother of the famous Semiramis, a wife of King Nimrod and eventually ruler herself of Assyria). Here we get a description of mermaids closer to our own…

Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess 14

“There is an ancient story among them about the shrine of this sort. There are some who say that Semiramis the Babylonian, many of whose deeds are in Asia, built this temple but erected it for her mother, named Derketô rather than Hera. I saw an image of Derketô in Phoenicia, a wonderful sight. She is half woman—but as much of her as extends from thighs to the end of her feet was made up with a fish tail! But the statue at Hierapols is just a woman.

The explanations for this story are not really mysterious. For they believe that fish are sacred creatures—they don’t touch them—and they use the rest of the birds for food except they refrain from eating pigeons, which are also sacred. They think that Derketô and pigeons are holy for the following reasons. They think that Derketô takes the shape of a fish; and Semiramos turned into a pigeon. But I will accept that the temple in question belongs to Semiramos. I cannot believe that it is Derketô’s since even some of the Egyptians do not eat fish, and they don’t do it to please Derketô!”

     ῾Ο μὲν ὦν ἀρχαῖος αὐτοῖσι λόγος ἀμφὶ τοῦ ἱροῦ τοιόσδε ἐστίν. ἄλλοι δὲ Σεμίραμιν τὴν Βαβυλωνίην, τῆς δὴ πολλὰ ἔργα ἐν τῇ ᾿Ασίῃ ἐστίν, ταύτην καὶ τόδε τὸ ἕδος εἵσασθαι νομίζουσιν, οὐκ ῞Ηρῃ δὲ εἵσασθαι ἀλλὰ μητρὶ ἑωυτῆς, τῆς Δερκετὼ οὔνομα. Δερκετοῦς δὲ εἶδος ἐν Φοινίκῃ ἐθεησάμην, θέημα ξένον· ἡμισέη μὲν γυνή, τὸ δὲ ὁκόσον ἐκ μηρῶν ἐς ἄκρους πόδας ἰχθύος οὐρὴ ἀποτείνεται. ἡ δὲ ἐν τῇ ἱρῇ πόλει πᾶσα γυνή ἐστιν, πίστιες δὲ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῖσιν οὐ κάρτα ἐμφανέες. ἰχθύας χρῆμα ἱρὸν νομίζουσιν καὶ οὔκοτε ἰχθύων ψαύουσι· καὶ ὄρνιθας  τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους σιτέονται, περιστερὴν δὲ μούνην οὐ σιτέονται, ἀλλὰ σφίσιν ἥδε ἱρή. τὰ δὲ γιγνόμενα δοκέει αὐτοῖς ποιέεσθαι Δερκετοῦς καὶ Σεμιράμιος εἵνεκα, τὸ μὲν ὅτι Δερκετὼ μορφὴν ἰχθύος ἔχει, τὸ δὲ ὅτι τὸ Σεμιράμιος τέλος ἐς περιστερὴν ἀπίκετο. ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τὸν μὲν νηὸν ὅτι Σεμιράμιος ἔργον ἐστὶν τάχα κου δέξομαι· Δερκετοῦς δὲ τὸ ἱρὸν ἔμμεναι οὐδαμὰ πείθομαι, ἐπεὶ καὶ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίων ἐνίοισιν ἰχθύας οὐ σιτέονται, καὶ τάδε οὐ Δερκετοῖ χαρίζονται.

I can connect this to Homer too!

“Around the waters of the Kaustrios on the Asian plain…”

᾿Ασίω ἐν λειμῶνι Καϋστρίου ἀμφὶ ῥέεθρα , Il. 2.461

Schol. A  ad Il. 2.461d

“Kaüstros was the son of Penthesileia, the Amazon, who married Derketô and had Semiramis from her. Among the Syrians, Derketô is called Atargatis.”

(Porph. ?) Κάϋστρος υἱὸς Πενθεσιλείας τῆς ᾿Αμαζόνος, ὃς ἐν ᾿Ασκάλωνι ἔγημεν τὴν Δερκετὼ καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἔσχεν τὴν Σεμίραμιν. | ἡ δὲ Δερκετὼ παρὰ Σύροις καλεῖται ᾿Αταργατῖς. A

Some addenda from our friends on Twitter:

Plato, Theaetetus 191a

Soc. “For the sake of argument, imagine that there is a single chunk of wax in our minds, for some it is bigger, for some smaller, and for one the wax is clearer, while for another it is more contaminated and rather inflexible;  for others, in turn, the wax more pliable and even.”

Th. Ok….

Soc. Let us say that this is the gift of the Muses’ mother, Mnemosunê, and when we wish to recall something we have seen or heard or thought ourselves, we show this wax to our perceptions or thoughts and find the imprint, just as we find meaning in seal rings. Whatever is printed can be remembered and understood as long as its image persists. Whenever it is softened or cannot be recorded is forgotten and not understood.”

Soc. Θὲς δή μοι λόγου ἕνεκα ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἡμῶν ἐνὸν κήρινον ἐκμαγεῖον, τῷ μὲν μεῖζον, τῷ δ᾿ ἔλαττον, καὶ τῷ μὲν καθαρωτέρου κηροῦ, τῷ δὲ κοπρωδεστέρου, καὶ σκληροτέρου, ἐνίοις δὲ ὑγροτέρου, ἔστι δ᾿ οἷς μετρίως ἔχοντος.

ΘΕΑΙ.Τίθημι.

Soc. Δῶρον τοίνυν αὐτὸ φῶμεν εἶναι τῆς τῶν Μουσῶν μητρὸς Μνημοσύνης, καὶ ἐς τοῦτο, ὅ τι ἂν βουληθῶμεν μνημονεῦσαι ὧν ἂν ἴδωμεν ἢ ἀκούσωμεν ἢ αὐτοὶ ἐννοήσωμεν, ὑπέχοντας αὐτὸ ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι καὶ ἐννοίαις, ἀποτυποῦσθαι, ὥσπερ δακτυλίων σημεῖα ἐνσημαινομένους· καὶ ὃ μὲν ἂν ἐκμαγῇ, μνημονεύειν τε καὶ ἐπίστασθαι ἕως ἂν ἐνῇ τὸ εἴδωλον αὐτοῦ· ὃ δ᾿ ἂν ἐξαλειφθῇ ἢ μὴ οἷόν τε γένηται ἐκμαγῆναι, ἐπιλελῆσθαί τε καὶ μὴ ἐπίστασθαι.

Thanks to S. Raudnitz for drawing my attention to the passage from the Theaetetus

Quintilian’s Inst. Orat. 6.2

“The fictions I have been talking about pursue us when our minds are at rest as empty hopes or certain daydreams so that we imagine we are on a journey, sailing, fighting, talking to new people, or distributing wealth we do not have—and we seem not to be considering but to be doing these things. Couldn’t we transfer this vice of the mind to something useful?”

quod quidem nobis volentibus facile continget; nisi vero inter otia animorum et spes inanes et velut somnia quaedam vigilantium ita nos hae de quibus loquor imagines prosecuntur ut peregrinari navigare proeliari, populos adloqui, divitiarum quas non habemus usum videamur disponere, nec cogitare sed facere, hoc animi vitium ad utilitatem non transferemus [ad hominem]

I do believe that, along with Aristotle and Plato, Lavar Burton might disagree with Quintilian’s dismissal of fantasy:

Sir Leslie Stephen, Alexander Pope:

“Like other lads of genius, he put together a kind of play—a combination, it seems, of the speeches in Ogilby’s Iliad—and got it acted by his schoolfellows. These brief snatches of schooling, however, counted for little. Pope settled at home at the early age of twelve, and plunged into the delights of miscellaneous reading with the ardour of precocious talent. He read so eagerly that his feeble constitution threatened to break down, and when about seventeen, he despaired of recovery, and wrote a farewell to his friends. One of them, an Abbé Southcote, applied for advice to the celebrated Dr. Radcliffe, who judiciously prescribed idleness and exercise. Pope soon recovered, and, it is pleasant to add, showed his gratitude long afterwards by obtaining for Southcote, through Sir Robert Walpole, a desirable piece of French preferment. Self-guided studies have their advantages, as Pope himself observed, but they do not lead a youth through the dry places of literature, or stimulate him to severe intellectual training. Pope seems to have made some hasty raids into philosophy and theology; he dipped into Locke, and found him “insipid;” he went through a collection of the controversial literature of the reign of James II., which seems to have constituted the paternal library, and was alternately Protestant and Catholic, according to the last book which he had read. But it was upon poetry and pure literature that he flung himself with a genuine appetite. He learnt languages to get at the story, unless a translation offered an easier path, and followed wherever fancy led ‘like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods.'”

Rufinus, Epigram I (Greek Anthology 5.9)

“I, Rufinus, wish my sweetest Elpis much happiness, if indeed you can be happy without me. Oh, by your eyes! I no longer approve of this solitude-loving, single-couch separation from you! Ever with tear-soaked eyes I go to Koressos or the temple of great Artemis; but tomorrow my own country will welcome me, and I will fly to you – wishing you endless health!”

Ῥουφῖνος τῇ μῇ γλυκερωτάτῃ Ἐλπίδι πολλὰ
χαίρειν, εἰ χαίρειν χωρὶς ἐμοῦ δύναται.
οὐκέτι βαστάζω, μὰ τὰ ς᾽ ὄμματα, τὴν φιλέρημον
καὶ τὴν μουνολεχῆ σεῖο διαζυγίην
ἀλλ᾽ αἰεὶ δακρύοισι πεφυρμένος ἢ πὶ Κορησσὸν
ἔρχομαι ἢ μεγάλης νηὸν ἐς Ἀρτέμιδος.
αὔριον ἀλλὰ πάτρη με δεδέξεται: ἐς δὲ σὸν ὄμμα
πτήσομαι, ἐρρῶσθαι μυρία ς᾽ εὐχόμενος.

‘Love in Idleness’ by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Ancient memory techniques go back to oratorical training in theory, but in practice probably much further back in human history. Philostratus records the reputation of Dionysius of Miletus and his “memory-men”. But one of the most easily abused and likely misunderstood method from the ancient world is the “memory palace” (or “method of loci“), made famous by Cicero, but credited to the lyric poet Simonides.

Cicero De Oratore 2.352–355

“But, so I may return to the matter”, he said, “I am not as smart as Themistocles was as to prefer the art of forgetting to the art of memory. And So I am thankful to that Simonides of Ceos who, as they say, first produced an art of memory. For they say that when Simonides was dining at the home of a wealthy aristocrate named Scopas in Thessaly and had performed that song which he wrote in his honor—in which there were many segments composed for Castor and Pollux elaborated in the way of poets. Then Scopas told him cruelly that he would pay him half as much as he had promised he would give for the song; if it seemed right to him, he could ask Tyndareus’ sons for the other half since he had praised them equally.

A little while later, as they tell the tale, it was announced that Simonides should go outside—there were two young men at the dour who had been calling him insistently. He rose, exited, and so no one. Meanwhile, in the same space of time, the ceiling under which Scopas was having his feast collapsed: the man was crushed by the ruins a d died with his relatives. When people wanted to bury them they could not recognize who was where because they were crushed. Simonides is said to have shown the place in which each man died from his memory for their individual burials.

From this experience, Simonides is said to have learned that it is order most of call that brings light to memory. And thus those who wish to practice this aspect of the skill must select specific places and shape in their mind the matters they wish to hold in their memory and locate these facts in those places. It will so turn out that the order of the places will safeguard the order of the matters, the reflections of the facts will remind of the facts themselves, and we may use the places like wax and the ideas like letters written upon it.”

Sed, ut ad rem redeam, non sum tanto ego, inquit, ingenio quanto Themistocles fuit, ut oblivionis artem quam memoriae malim; gratiamque habeo Simonidi illi Cio quem primum ferunt artem memoriae protulisse.  Dicunt enim cum cenaret Crannone in Thessalia Simonides apud Scopam fortunatum hominem et nobilem cecinissetque id carmen quod in eum scripsisset, in quo multa ornandi causa poetarum more in Castorem scripta et Pollucem fuissent, nimis illum sordide Simonidi dixisse se dimidium eius ei quod pactus esset pro illo carmine daturum: reliquum a suis Tyndaridis quos aeque laudasset peteret si ei videretur. Paulo post esse ferunt nuntiatum Simonidi ut prodiret: iuvenes stare ad ianuam duos quosdam qui eum magnopere evocarent; surrexisse illum, prodisse, vidisse neminem; hoc interim spatio conclave illud ubi epularetur Scopas concidisse; ea ruina ipsum cum cognatis oppressum suis interiisse; quos cum humare vellent sui neque possent obtritos internoscere ullo modo, Simonides dicitur ex eo quod meminisset quo eorum loco quisque cubuisset demonstrator uniuscuiusque sepeliendi fuisse; hac tum re admonitus invenisse fertur ordinem esse maxime qui memoriae lumen afferret. Itaque eis qui hanc partem ingeni exercerent locos esse capiendos et ea quae memoria tenere vellent effingenda animo atque in eis locis collocanda: sic fore ut ordinem rerum locorum ordo conservaret, res autem ipsas rerum effigies notaret, atque ut locis pro cera, simulacris pro litteris uteremur.

thanks to S. Raudnitz for reminding me of this passage too!

This stuff is still popular: The Memory Theater of Guilio Camillo

Just in case the picture of a man’s final moment at Pompeii has inspired people this morning, Ancient Greek for (male) masturbation:

Aristophanes, Peace 290-292

“Now comes the time of for Datis’ song
The one he sang once at midday as he masturbated
“How I am pleased and I enjoy this and I am finding delight!”

ΤΡ.                Νῦν, τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖν’, ἥκει τὸ Δάτιδος μέλος.
ὃ δεφόμενός ποτ’ ᾖδε τῆς μεσημβρίας·
«῾Ως ἥδομαι καὶ χαίρομαι κεὐφραίνομαι.»

The small LSJ defines δέφω as “to soften by working by the hand, to make supple, to tan hides.” The 1902 LSJ uses Latin to explain: “sensu obscoeno, v. Lat. Masturbari.”

The Suda (delta 297) cuts to the chase on this one with “dephein: grabbing someone by the genitals. Also, “rubbing” (Dephomenos) instead of “flogging your genitals.” (Δέφειν: τὸ τοῦ αἰδοίου τινὰ ἅπτεσθαι. καὶ Δεφόμενος, ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀποδέρων τὸ αἰδοῖον). So, the active vs. middle voice is an important distinction (echoing something I have emphasized in teaching Greek: active voice is something you do to someone else, middle is what you do to yourself…).

Here’s a nice passage that shows the difference in active and passive voice:

Artemidorus, Dream Interpretation 1.78: 74-80

“I know of a certain slave who dreamed that he was masturbating his master—and he then became the teacher and nurse of his children. For he was holding his master’s genitals in his hands which was a symbol of his children. And again, I know of another who dreamed he was being jerked off by his master, and, later he was bound to a pillar and then he received many blows…”

οἶδα δέ τινα δοῦλον, ὃς ἔδοξε τὸν δεσπότην αὐτοῦ δέφειν, καὶ ἐγένετο τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ παιδαγωγὸς καὶ τροφός· ἔσχε γὰρ ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τὸ τοῦ δεσπότου αἰδοῖον ὂν τῶν ἐκείνου τέκνων σημαντικόν. καὶ πάλιν αὖ οἶδά <τινα> ὃς ἔδοξεν ὑπὸ τοῦ δεσπότου δέφεσθαι, καὶ προσδεθεὶς κίονι πολλὰς ἔλαβε πληγάς….

Most of the extant uses of this verb appear in comedy. And, not surprisingly, this means Aristophanes:

Aristophanes, Knights 23-24

ΟΙ. Β′                                               Πάνυ καλῶς.
῞Ωσπερ δεφόμενός νυν ἀτρέμα πρῶτον λέγε
τὸ μολωμεν, εἶτα δ’ αὐτο, κᾆτ’ ἐπάγων πυκνόν.

“Excellent.
Just as if you were masturbating, say it first now gently
“let us hurry” and then again pushing on, quickly.”

[Here’s a link to the whole play. Soon, one of the interlocutors stops “because the skin is irritated by masturbation.” (῾Οτιὴ τὸ δέρμα δεφομένων ἀπέρχεται, 29)]

The verb is not common, to say the least, so later commentators found it necessary to gloss it and explain Aristophanes’ joke. Through the explanations of the joke, it immediately becomes less funny, and the language used in the commentaries.

Scholia in Knights:

[1] “ ‘Just like dephomenos’: instead of “flogging your genitals” (apodérôn to aidoion). For, when men touch their genitals they don’t complete as they began, but they move more eagerly towards the secretion of semen. This plays on that, he means start small at first but then go continuously.

[2]‘dephomenos’: “having intercourse’. Flogging genitals.

[3]‘dephomenos’: They mean handling the penis. For, when men take hold of their penises they don’t move towards ejaculation the way they began, but more eagerly over time, as they are inflamed by the continuity of movement.”

 ὥσπερ δεφόμενος: ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀποδέρων τὸ αἰδοῖον. οἱ γὰρ ἁπτόμενοι τῶν αἰδοίων οὐχ ὡς ἤρξαντο, ἀλλὰ σπουδαιότερον κινοῦσι πρὸς τῇ τῆς γονῆς ἐκκρίσει. τοῦτο οὖν λέγει, ὅτι πρῶτον κατὰ μικρόν, εἶτα συνεχῶς λέγε. RVEΓ2M

δεφόμενος] ξυνουσιάζων, ἀποδέρων τὸ αἰδοῖον. M

δεφόμενος] ἤγουν τοῦ μορίου ἁπτόμενος. οἱ γὰρ ἁπτόμενοι τοῦ μορίου
πρὸς ἔκκρισιν τῆς γονῆς οὐχ ὡς ἤρξαντο κινοῦσιν ἀλλὰ σπουδαιότερον, ἐκπυρούμενοι τῇ συνεχείᾳ τῆς κινήσεως. VatLh

Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 705–709

“It is decreed that the ugly and the wretched
Get to fuck first.
Take your pleasure on the porch in the meantime
Handling your fig-leaves in the courtyard”

τοῖς γὰρ σιμοῖς καὶ τοῖς αἰσχροῖς
ἐψήφισται προτέροις βινεῖν,
ὑμᾶς δὲ τέως θρῖα λαβόντας
διφόρου συκῆς
ἐν τοῖς προθύροισι δέφεσθαι.

The Suda interprets this passage as meaning that someone is masturbating with a fig leaf. Henderson ( The Maculate Muse. New Haven 1975) explains that the “fig-leaves” are the foreskin and the “courtyard” means outside of a vagina.

And just in case one might worry about moral dimensions of masturbation, ancient philosophers have already tackled the question:

From Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes, 3.206-207

“Similarly, this seems shameful to one of the sages but not to another. For us it is wrong to marry your own mother or sister. But the Persians, especially those of them who seem to pursue wisdom, the Magi, marry their mothers just as the Egyptians marry their sisters. The poet also says: “Zeus addressed Hera, his wife and sister…”

Zeno of Citium even says that it is not strange to rub your mother’s genitals with your own, just as no one would claim it is wrong to rub any other part of her body with your hand. Chrysippus approves in his Republic of a father getting children from his daughter, a mother from her son, and a brother from his sister. Plato insisted generally that wives should be held in common. Zeno also does not disapprove of masturbation, which is shameful in our culture. We have also learned that others practice this wicked habit as if it were a good thing.”

οὕτω καὶ τῶν σοφῶν ᾧ μὲν οὐκ αἰσχρόν, ᾧ δὲ αἰσχρὸν ἐδόκει τοῦτο εἶναι. ἄθεσμον τέ ἐστι παρ’ ἡμῖν μητέρα ἢ ἀδελφὴν ἰδίαν γαμεῖν· Πέρσαι δέ, καὶ μάλιστα αὐτῶν οἱ σοφίαν ἀσκεῖν δοκοῦντες, οἱ Μάγοι, γαμοῦσι τὰς μητέρας, καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι τὰς ἀδελφὰς ἄγονται πρὸς γάμον, καὶ ὡς ὁ ποιητής φησιν,

Ζεὺς ῞Ηρην προσέειπε κασιγνήτην ἄλοχόν τε.

ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ Κιτιεὺς Ζήνων φησὶ μὴ ἄτοπον εἶναι τὸ μόριον τῆς μητρὸς τῷ ἑαυτοῦ μορίῳ τρῖψαι, καθάπερ οὐδὲ ἄλλο τι μέρος τοῦ σώματος αὐτῆς τῇ χειρὶ τρῖψαι φαῦλον ἂν εἴποι τις εἶναι. καὶ ὁ Χρύσιππος δὲ ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ δογματίζει τόν τε πατέρα ἐκ τῆς θυγατρὸς παιδοποιεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν μητέρα ἐκ τοῦ παιδὸς καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐκ τῆς ἀδελφῆς. Πλάτων δὲ καὶ καθολικώτερον κοινὰς εἶναι τὰς γυναῖκας δεῖν ἀπεφήνατο. τό τε αἰσχρουργεῖν ἐπάρατον ὂν παρ’ ἡμῖν ὁ Ζήνων οὐκ ἀποδοκιμάζει· καὶ ἄλλους δὲ ὡς ἀγαθῷ τινι τούτῳ χρῆσθαι τῷ κακῷ πυνθανόμεθα.

Sir Leslie Stephen, Alexander Pope:

“The Iliad was to be published in six volumes. For each volume Lintot was to pay 200l.; and, besides this, he was to supply Pope gratuitously with the copies for his subscribers. The subscribers paid a guinea a volume, and as 575 subscribers took 654 copies, Pope received altogether 5320l. 4s. at the regular price, whilst some royal and distinguished subscribers paid larger sums. By the publication of the Odyssey Pope seems to have [Pg 63]made about 3500l. more,[6] after paying his assistants. The result was, therefore, a total profit at least approaching 9000l. The last volume of the Odyssey did not appear till 1726, and the payments were thus spread over eleven years. Pope, however, saved enough to be more than comfortable. In the South Sea excitement he ventured to speculate, but though for a time he fancied himself to have made a large sum, he seems to have retired rather a loser than a gainer. But he could say with perfect truth that, ‘thanks to Homer,’ he ‘could live and thrive, indebted to no prince or peer alive.’ The money success is, however, of less interest to us than the literary. Pope put his best work into the translation of the Iliad. His responsibility, he said, weighed upon him terribly on starting. He used to dream of being on a long journey, uncertain which way to go, and doubting whether he would ever get to the end. Gradually he fell into the habit of translating thirty or forty verses before getting up, and then “piddling with it” for the rest of the morning; and the regular performance of his task made it tolerable. He used, he said at another time, to take advantage of the “first heat,” then correct by the original and other translations; and finally to “give it a reading for the versification only.” The statement must be partly modified by the suggestion that the translations were probably consulted before the original. Pope’s ignorance of Greek—an awkward qualification for a translator of Homer—is undeniable. Gilbert Wakefield, who was, I believe, a fair scholar and certainly a great admirer of Pope, declares his conviction to be, after a more careful examination of the Homer than any one is now likely to give, that Pope ‘collected the general purport of every passage from some of his predecessors—Dryden’ (who only translated the first Iliad), ‘Dacier, Chapman, or Ogilby.’ He thinks that Pope would have been puzzled to catch at once the meaning even of the Latin translation, and points out proofs of his ignorance of both languages and of ‘ignominious and puerile mistakes.'”

ἐλευθερία: “freedom” Chantraine: sens “libre”, par opposition à δοῦλος

αὐτονομία: “independence”

παρρησία: “freedom of speech”

Iliad 6.450-455 (Hektor to Andromakhe)

“But no grief over the Trojans weighs as heavy on me,
Not even for Hekabê herself or lord Priam or
Any of my brothers who have died in their great, fine numbers
In the dust at the hands of wicked men,
As my grief for you, when one of the bronze-dressed Akhaians
Will lead you off and steal away your day of freedom.”

ἀλλ’ οὔ μοι Τρώων τόσσον μέλει ἄλγος ὀπίσσω,
οὔτ’ αὐτῆς ῾Εκάβης οὔτε Πριάμοιο ἄνακτος
οὔτε κασιγνήτων, οἵ κεν πολέες τε καὶ ἐσθλοὶ
ἐν κονίῃσι πέσοιεν ὑπ’ ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν,
ὅσσον σεῦ, ὅτε κέν τις ᾿Αχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων
δακρυόεσσαν ἄγηται ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ ἀπούρας·

Gnomologica Vat.

“Wise Periander, when asked what freedom is, said “a good conscience”.

Περίανδρος ὁ σοφὸς ἐρωτηθεὶς τί ἂν εἴη ἐλευθερία εἶπεν· „ἀγαθὴ συνείδησις”.

Plato, Rep. 564.a4

“Excessive freedom seems to lead to nothing other than excessive slavery both in private and in public.”

῾Η γὰρ ἄγαν ἐλευθερία ἔοικεν οὐκ εἰς ἄλλο τι ἢ εἰς ἄγαν δουλείαν μεταβάλλειν καὶ ἰδιώτῃ καὶ πόλει.

Cicero, Philippic 10.20

“So glorious is the reclamation of freedom that not even death should be avoided when freedom must be regained.”

Ita praeclara est recuperatio libertatis ut ne mors quidem sit in repetenda libertate fugienda

Naevius, fr. 5-6

“I have always considered freedom more powerful than money.”

potioremque habui libertatem multo quam pecuniam.

Sallust, Second Letter to Caesar 12

“I consider freedom more precious than fame”

Libertatem gloria cariorem habeo

Cicero, Letters to Brutus 5.2

“I [said] everything for the sake of freedom: without peace, it is nothing. I used to believe that peace itself could be achieved through war and weapons.”

ego omnia ad libertatem, qua sine pax nulla est. pacem ipsam bello atque armis effici posse arbitrabar.

Livy, 24.25

“This is the nature of the crowd: it serves humbly or rules arrogantly. Freedom, which is between these two things, they cannot manage to take or keep moderately. And there is no lack of indulgent assistants of their rage, men who provoke eager and unbalanced minds to blood and murder.”

Ea natura multitudinis est: aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatur; libertatem, quae media est, nec suscipere modice nec habere sciunt; et non ferme desunt irarum indulgentes ministri, qui avidos atque intemperantes suppliciorum animos ad sanguinem et caedes inritent;

Livy, 24.29

“They were not happy with freedom unless they might also rule and be masters”

nec iam libertate contentos esse nisi etiam regnent ac dominentur

Seneca, De Vita Beata 15.7

“We were born in a  monarchy: freedom is obeying god.”

In regno nati sumus; deo parere libertas est.

Epicurus (Gnom. Vat. Epic, fr. 77)

“Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency”

Τῆς αὐταρκείας καρπὸς μέγιστος ἐλευθερία.

Epictetus, Diss 1.12.10

“What, then, is freedom insanity? May it not be so, for freedom and insanity do not overlap!”

τί οὖν; ἀπόνοιά ἐστιν ἡ ἐλευθερία; μὴ γένοιτο. μανία γὰρ καὶ ἐλευθερία εἰς ταὐτὸν οὐκ ἔρχεται

Epictetus, Diss. 2.1.22

“What is the profit of these beliefs? The very thing which is the most noble and ennobling for those who are truly educated, tranquility, lack of fear, freedom. For we must not trust the masses who say that it is only possible for the free to be educated. No, we must heed the philosophers who say that only the educated can be free.”

Τίς οὖν τούτων τῶν δογμάτων καρπός; ὅνπερ δεῖ κάλλιστόν τ’ εἶναι καὶ πρεπωδέστατον τοῖς τῷ ὄντι παιδευομένοις, ἀταραξία ἀφοβία ἐλευθερία. οὐ γὰρ τοῖς πολλοῖς περὶ τούτων πιστευτέον, οἳ λέγουσιν μόνοις ἐξεῖναι παιδεύεσθαι τοῖς ἐλευθέροις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις μᾶλλον, οἳ λέγουσι μόνους τοὺς παιδευθέντας ἐλευθέρους εἶναι.

freedom (n.)

Old English freodom “power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance;” see free (adj.) + -dom. Meaning “exemption from arbitrary or despotic control, civil liberty” is from late 14c. Meaning “possession of particular privileges” is from 1570s. Similar formation in Old Frisian fridom, Dutch vrijdom, Middle Low German vridom. Freedom-rider recorded 1961 in reference to civil rights activists in U.S. trying to integrate bus lines.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” Kris Kristofferson “Me and My Bobby McGee”

Sir Leslie Stephen, Alexander Pope:

“It is hard to understand at the present day the audacity which could lead a man so ill qualified in point of classical acquirements to undertake such a task. And yet Pope undoubtedly achieved, in some true sense, an astonishing success. He succeeded commercially; for Lintot, after supplying the subscription copies gratuitously, and so losing the cream of the probable purchasers, made a fortune by the remaining sale. He succeeded in the judgment both of the critics and of the public of the next generation. Johnson calls the Homer ‘the noblest version of poetry the world has ever seen.’ Gray declared that no other translation would ever equal it, and Gibbon that it had every merit except that of faithfulness to the original. This merit of fidelity, indeed, was scarcely claimed by any one. Bentley’s phrase—’a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer’—expresses the uniform view taken from the first by all who could read both. Its fame, however, survived into the present century. Byron speaks—and speaks, I think, with genuine feeling—of the rapture with which he first read Pope as a boy, and says that no one will ever lay him down except for the original. Indeed, the testimonies of opponents are as significant as those of admirers. Johnson remarks that the Homer ‘may be said to have tuned the English tongue,’ and that no writer since its appearance has wanted melody. Coleridge virtually admits the fact, though drawing a different conclusion, when he says that the translation of Homer has been one of the main sources of that ‘pseudo-poetic diction’ which he and Wordsworth were struggling to put out of credit. Cowper, the earliest representative of the same movement, tried to supplant Pope’s Homer by his own, and his attempt proved at least the position held in general estimation by his rival. If, in fact, Pope’s Homer was a recognized model for near a century, we may dislike the style, but we must admit the power implied in a performance which thus became the accepted standard of style for the best part of a century. How, then, should we estimate the merits of this remarkable work? I give my own opinion upon the subject with diffidence, for it has been discussed by eminently qualified critics. The conditions of a satisfactory translation of Homer have been amply canvassed, and many experiments have been made by accomplished poets who have what Pope certainly had not—a close acquaintance with the original, and a fine appreciation of its superlative beauties. From the point of view now generally adopted, the task even of criticism requires this double qualification. Not only can no man translate Homer, but no man can even criticize a translation of Homer without being at once a poet and a fine classical scholar. So far as this is true, I can only apologize for speaking at all, and should be content to refer my readers to such able guides as Mr. Matthew Arnold and the late Professor Conington. And yet I think that something remains to be said which has a bearing upon Pope, however little it may concern Homer.”

Scholiast on Aristophanes’ Peace 695-700

“Simonides seems to have been the first to adapt money-making to songs and to compose his works for pay. This is what Pindar says deceptively in his second Isthmian: “For the Muse was not then greedy or out for hire.”

The story of Simonides’ boxes is also told, that he had two boxes next to him, one empty and one full—and he used to say that the former was full of favors and the latter full of money. [Someone] else also calls him greedy, which is why Xenophanes calls him a cheapskate.”

Schol. ad loc.

ὁ Σιμωνίδης δοκεῖ πρῶτος σμικρολογίαν εἰσενεγκεῖν εἰς τὰ ᾄσματα καὶ γράψαι ᾆσμα μισθοῦ. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐν τοῖς Ἰσθμιονίκαις φησὶν αἰνιττόμενος·
. . . ἁ Μοῖσα γὰρ οὐ φιλοκερδής πω τότ᾿ ἦν οὐδ᾿ ἐργάτις . . . (2. 6).
τὸ μέντοι περὶ τῶν κιβωτῶν ἐπὶ Σιμωνίδου λεγόμενον, ὅτι παρακειμένας εἶχε δύο, τὴν μὲν κενήν, τὴν δὲ μεστήν, καὶ τὴν μὲν κενὴν χαρίτων ἔλεγεν εἶναι, τὴν δὲ μεστὴν <ἀργυρίου>, γνώριμον . . .· καὶ <. . .> μέμνηται, ὅτι σμικρολόγος ἦν· ὅθεν Ξενοφάνης (fr. 21 West) κίμβικα αὐτὸν προσαγορεύει.

Peace 695-699

Hermes: [Peace] asked what Sophokles is up to.

Trygaeus: He’s doing fine—he’s undergoing something miraculous.

H: What is that?

Tr: He is transforming from Sophokles to Simonides.

H: Simonides, how?

Tr: Because even though he is old and rotting
He’d sail on a plank to make a buck.

ΕΡ Πρῶτον δ’ ὅ τι πράττει Σοφοκλέης ἀνήρετο.
ΤΡ. Εὐδαιμονεῖ· πάσχει δὲ θαυμαστόν.
ΕΡ. Τὸ τί;
ΤΡ. ᾿Εκ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους γίγνεται Σιμωνίδης.
ΕΡ. Σιμωνίδης; πῶς;
ΤΡ. ῞Οτι γέρων ὢν καὶ σαπρὸς
κέρδους ἕκατι κἂν ἐπὶ ῥιπὸς πλέοι.

R.C. Jebb, Bentley:

“Bentley’s Paradise Lost raises an obvious question. We know that his emendations of Milton are nearly all bad. The general style of argument which he applies to Milton is the same which he applies to the classical authors. Are his emendations of these also bad? I should answer : Many of his critical emendations, especially Latin, are bad; but many of them are good in a way and in a degree for which Paradise Lost afforded no scope. It is a rule applicable to most of Bentley’s corrections, that their merit varies inversely with the soundness of the text. Where the text seemed altogether hopeless, he was at his best; where it was corrupted, but not deeply, he was usually good, though often not convincing ; where it was true, yet difficult, through some trick (faulty in itself, perhaps) of individual thought or style, he was apt to meddle overmuch. It was his forte to make rough places smooth ; his foible, to make smooth places rough. If Paradise Lost had come to Bentley as a manuscript, largely defaced by grave blunders and deeply-seated corruptions, his restoration, of it would probably have deserved applause. The fact that his edition was regarded as a proof of dotage, shows how erroneously his contemporaries had conceived the qualities of his previous work. Bentley’s mind was logical, positive, acute; wonderfully acute, where intellectual problems were not complicated with moral sympathies. Sending flashes of piercing insight over a wide and then dim field, he made discoveries ; among other things, he found probable or certain answers to many verbal riddles. His ‘faculty of divination’ was to himself a special source of joy and pride; nor unnaturally when we recall its most brilliant feats. But verbal emendation was only one phase of his work ; and, just because it was with him a mental indulgence, almost a passion, we must guard against assuming that the average success with which he applied it is the chief criterion of his power.

The faults of Bentley’s Paradise Lost are, in kind, the faults of his Horace, but are more evident to an English reader, and are worse in degree, since the English text, unlike the Latin, affords no real ground for suspicion. The intellectual acuteness which marks the Horace is present also in the notes on Paradise Lost, but seldom wins admiration, more often appears ridiculous, because the English reader can usually see that it is grotesquely misplaced. A great and characteristic merit of Bentley’s classical work, its instructiveness to students of a foreign language and literature, is necessarily absent here. And the book was got ready for the press with extreme haste. Still, the editor of Paradise Lost is not the Horatian editor gone mad. He is merely the Horatian editor showing increased rashness in a still more unfavourable field, where failure was at once so gratuitous and so conspicuous as to look like self-caricature, whilst there was no proper scope for the distinctive qualities of his genius. As to poetical taste, we may at least make some allowance for the standards of the “correct” period: let us think of Johnson’s remarks on Milton’s versification, and remember that some of Bentley’s improvements on Milton were privately admired by Pope.”

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

“By the common methods of discipline, at the expence of many tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax: and not long since I was possessed of the dirty volumes of Phaedrus and Cornelius Nepos, which I painfully construed and darkly understood. The choice of these authors is not injudicious. The lives of Cornelius Nepos, the friend of Atticus and Cicero, are composed in the style of the purest age: his simplicity is elegant, his brevity copious; he exhibits a series of men and manners; and with such illustrations, as every pedant is not indeed qualified to give, this classic biographer may initiate a young student in the history of Greece and Rome. The use of fables or apologues has been approved in every age from ancient India to modern Europe. They convey in familiar images the truths of morality and prudence; and the most childish understanding (I advert to the scruples of Rousseau) will not suppose either that beasts do speak, or that men may lie. A fable represents the genuine characters of animals; and a skilful master might extract from Pliny and Buffon some pleasing lessons of natural history, a science well adapted to the taste and capacity of children. The Latinity of Phaedrus is not exempt from an alloy of the silver age; but his manner is concise, terse, and sententious; the Thracian slave discreetly breathes the spirit of a freeman; and when the text is found, the style is perspicuous. But his fables, after a long oblivion, were first published by Peter Pithou, from a corrupt manuscript. The labours of fifty editors confess the defects of the copy, as well as the value of the original; and the school-boy may have been whipped for misapprehending a passage, which Bentley could not restore, and which Burman could not explain.”

Sir Leslie Stephen, Alexander Pope:

“We—if ‘we’ means modern writers of some classical culture—can claim to appreciate Homer far better than the contemporaries of Pope. But our appreciation involves a clear recognition of the vast difference between ourselves and the ancient Greeks. We see the Homeric poems in their true perspective through the dim vista of shadowy centuries. We regard them as the growth of a long past stage in the historical evolution; implying a different social order—a different ideal of life—an archaic conception of the world and its forces, only to be reconstructed for the imagination by help of long training and serious study. The multiplicity of the laws imposed upon the translator is the consequence of this perception. They amount to saying that a man must manage to project himself into a distant period, and saturate his mind with the corresponding modes of life. If the feat is possible at all, it requires a great and conscious effort, and the attainment of a state of mind which can only be preserved by constant attention. The translator has to wear a mask which is always in danger of being rudely shattered. Such an intellectual feat is likely to produce what, in the most obvious sense, one would call highly artificial work. Modern classicism must be fine-spun, and smell rather of the hothouse than the open air. Undoubtedly some exquisite literary achievements have been accomplished in this spirit; but they are, after all, calculated for the small circle of cultivated minds, and many of their merits can be appreciated only by professors qualified by special training. Most frequently we can hope for pretty playthings, or, at best, for skilful restorations which show learning and taste far more distinctly than a glowing imagination. But even if an original poet can breathe some spirit into classical poems, the poor translator, with the dread of philologists and antiquarians in the background, is so fettered that free movement becomes almost impossible. No one, I should venture to prophesy, will really succeed in such work unless he frankly accepts the impossibility of reproducing the original, and aims only at an equivalent for some of its aspects. The perception of this change will enable us to realize Pope’s mode of approaching the problem. The condemnatory epithet most frequently applied to him is ‘artificial;’ and yet, as I have just said, a modern translator is surely more artificial, so far as he is attempting a more radical transformation of his own thoughts into the forms of a past epoch. But we can easily see in what sense Pope’s work fairly deserves the name. The poets of an older period frankly adopted the classical mythology without any apparent sense of incongruity. They mix heathen deities with Christian saints, and the ancient heroes adopt the manners of chivalrous romance without the slightest difficulty. The freedom was still granted to the writers of the renaissance. Milton makes Phœbus and St. Peter discourse in successive stanzas, as if they belonged to the same pantheon. For poetical purposes the old gods are simply canonized as Christian saints, as, in a more theological frame of mind, they are regarded as devils. In the reign of common sense this was no longer possible. The incongruity was recognized and condemned. The gods were vanishing under the clearer light, as modern thought began more consciously to assert its independence. Yet the unreality of the old mythology is not felt to be any objection to their use as conventional symbols. Homer’s gods, says Pope in his preface, are still the gods of poetry. Their vitality was nearly extinct; but they were regarded as convenient personifications of abstract qualities, machines for epic poetry, or figures to be used in allegory. In the absence of a true historical perception, the same view was attributed to Homer. Homer, as Pope admits, did not invent the gods; but he was the ‘first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry,’ and showed his fertile imagination by clothing the properties of the elements, and the virtues and vices in forms and persons. And thus Pope does not feel that he is diverging from the spirit of the old mythology when he regards the gods, not as the spontaneous growth of the primitive imagination, but as deliberate contrivances intended to convey moral truth in allegorical fables, and probably devised by sages for the good of the vulgar.”

The following excerpt is from a satirical essay called the “Apocolocyntosis”–the “gourdification”–attributed to Seneca the Younger  (by Cassius Dio). The word is a play on “apotheosis” and the eastern convention of the dedication of imperial cults upon the death of the Caesars. The language does not seem completely Senecan to me, but Seneca seems likely from the content and the cultural capital necessary to pull this off. Regardless of authorship, the satire is hysterical.

Seneca, Apocolocyntosis 4-5

“And he spat up his soul and then he seemed to stop living. He died, moreover, while he listened to comedians, so you understand that I do not fear them without reason. His final voice was heard among people as follows. When he emitted the greater sound with that part with which he spoke more easily, he said “Oh my, I shat myself I think”. Whether or not he did this, I do not know: but he certainly fouled up the place.

The things that were done next on earth are useless to report—for you certainly know it clearly. There is no risk that the memory left by public celebration will disappear—no one forgets his own joy. What was done in heaven, you should hear—the proof will come from the author!

It was announced to Jupiter that a man of certain good size had come, really grey. I don’t know what he was threatening, since he was constantly moving his head and dragging his right foot. When they asked what country he was from he responded with a confused sound and troubled voice—they could not understand his language. He was not Greek or Roman or of any other race.

Then Jupiter sent Hercules who had wandered over the whole earth and seemed to know every nation. He ordered him to go and explore what people this man was from. Then Hercules was a bit undone by the first sight because he had not yet feared all the monsters. As he gazed upon this new kind of a thing with its uncommon step, a voice belonging to no earth-bound beast but more like something coming out of a marine monster, coarse and wordless, he thought that he had arrived at a thirteenth labor. As he looked more closely, it seemed to him to be a man. Se he went up to him and said what comes easiest to a Greek tongue. “Who are you among men and from where? Where is your city and parents?”

Et ille quidem animam ebulliit, et ex eo desiit vivere videri. Exspiravit autem dum comoedos audit, ut scias me non sine causa illos timere. Ultima vox eius haec inter homines audita est, cum maiorem sonitum emisisset illa parte, qua facilius loquebatur: “vae me, puto, concacavi me.” Quod an fecerit, nescio: omnia certe concacavit.

Quae in terris postea sint acta, supervacuum est referre. Scitis enim optime, nec periculum est ne excidant memoriae quae gaudium publicum impresserit: nemo felicitatis suae obliviscitur. In caelo quae acta sint, audite: fides penes auctorem erit. Nuntiatur Iovi venisse quendam bonae staturae, bene canum; nescio quid illum minari, assidue enim caput movere; pedem dextrum trahere. Quaesisse se, cuius nationis esset: respondisse nescio quid perturbato sono et voce confusa; non intellegere se linguam eius, nec Graecum esse nec Romanum nec ullius gentis notae. Tum Iuppiter Herculem, qui totum orbem terrarum pererraverat et nosse videbatur omnes nationes, iubet ire et explorare, quorum hominum esset. Tum Hercules primo aspectu sane perturbatus est, ut qui etiam non omnia monstra timuerit. Ut vidit novi generis faciem, insolitum incessum, vocem nullius terrestris animalis sed qualis esse marinis beluis solet, raucam et implicatam, putavit sibi tertium decimum laborem venisse. Diligentius intuenti visus est quasi homo. Accessit itaque et quod facillimum fuit Graeculo, ait:

τίς πόθεν εἰς ἀνδρῶν, πόθι τοι πόλις ἠδὲ τοκῆες;

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

“Our seminaries of learning do not exactly correspond with the precept of a Spartan king, ‘that the child should be instructed in the arts, which will be useful to the man;’ since a finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton, in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century. But these schools may assume the merit of teaching all that they pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek languages: they deposit in the hands of a disciple the keys of two valuable chests; nor can he complain, if they are afterwards lost or neglected by his own fault. The necessity of leading in equal ranks so many unequal powers of capacity and application, will prolong to eight or ten years the juvenile studies, which might be despatched in half that time by the skilful master of a single pupil. Yet even the repetition of exercise and discipline contributes to fix in a vacant mind the verbal science of grammar and prosody: and the private or voluntary student, who possesses the sense and spirit of the classics, may offend, by a false quantity, the scrupulous ear of a well-flogged critic. For myself, I must be content with a very small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school. In the space of two years (1749, 1750), interrupted by danger and debility, I painfully climbed into the third form; and my riper age was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin, and the rudiments of the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling in the sports, the quarrels, and the connections of our little world, I was still cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt; and my removal from Westminster long preceded the approach of manhood.”

Sir Leslie Stephen, Alexander Pope:

“The old gods, then, were made into stiff mechanical figures, as dreary as Justice with her scales, or Fame blowing a trumpet on a monument. They belonged to that family of dismal personifications which it was customary to mark with the help of capital letters. Certainly they are a dismal and frigid set of beings, though they still lead a shivering existence on the tops of public monuments, and hold an occasional wreath over the head of a British grenadier. To identify the Homeric gods with these wearisome constructions was to have a more serious disqualification for fully entering into Homer’s spirit than even an imperfect acquaintance with Greek, and Pope is greatly exercised in his mind by their eating and drinking and fighting, and uncompromising anthropomorphism. He apologizes for his author, and tries to excuse him for unwilling compliance with popular prejudices. The Homeric theology he urges was still substantially sound, and Homer had always a distinct moral and political purpose. The Iliad, for example, was meant to show the wickedness of quarrelling, and the evil results of an insatiable thirst for glory, though shallow persons have thought that Homer only thought to please.”

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy III. 38-55

“Now all good things dependent upon the body may be understood as we have said. Strength and size seem to confer prominence; beauty and speed bring fame; health brings pleasure. It is clear that happiness alone is sought through all of these qualities. For whatever any man seeks foremost is the very thing he believes is the greatest good. But we have then defined the greatest good as happiness, which is why each man judges the state of happiness to be the very thing he desires beyond all else.

Therfore, you have laid bare before your eyes the basic shape of human happiness: wealth, honor, power, glory and pleasure. When Epicurus examined these things, he decied that his highest good was pleasure because all others seemed to bring enjoyment to the mind. But I return to human desires: for human minds even when the memory is hazy still seeks its own good but, just like a drunk, does not know which path will lead home. Certainly how can those who struggle not to lack anything seem to do wrong?”

Iam vero corporis bona promptum est ut ad superiora referantur. Robur enim magnitudoque videtur praestare valentiam, pulchritudo atque velocitas celebritatem, salubritas voluptatem; quibus omnibus solam beatitudinem desiderari liquet. Nam quod quisque prae ceteris petit, id summum esse iudicat bonum. Sed summum bonum beatitudinem esse definivimus; quare beatum esse iudicat statum quem prae ceteris quisque desiderat.

Habes igitur ante oculos propositam fere formam felicitatis humanae—opes, honores, potentiam, gloriam, voluptates. Quae quidem sola considerans Epicurus consequenter sibi summum bonum voluptatem esse constituit, quod cetera omnia iucunditatem animo videantur afferre. Sed ad hominum studia revertor, quorum animus etsi caligante memoria tamen bonum suum repetit, sed velut ebrius domum quo tramite revertatur ignorat. Num enim videntur errare hi qui nihilo indigere nituntur?

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

“The first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to have been one of the best of the tribe: Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or the jollity of the college. But his knowledge of the world was confined to the university; his learning was of the last, rather than the present age; his temper was indolent; his faculties, which were not of the first rate, had been relaxed by the climate, and he was satisfied, like his fellows, with the slight and superficial discharge of an important trust. As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his pupil in school-learning, he proposed that we should read every morning from ten to eleven the comedies of Terence. The sum of my improvement in the university of Oxford is confined to three or four Latin plays; and even the study of an elegant classic, which might have been illustrated by a comparison of ancient and modern theatres, was reduced to a dry and literal interpretation of the author’s text.”

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

“The design of my first work, the Essay on the Study of Literature, was suggested by a refinement of vanity, the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. In France, to which my ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris: the new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d’Alembert Discours preliminaire a l’Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment. I was ambitious of proving by my own example, as well as by my precepts, that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature.”