“The gods make sport of mortals in miraculous ways and in their sleep send them dreams of marvellous kinds”
miris modis di ludos faciunt hominibus
mirisque exemplis somnia in somnis danunt
Plautus, Mercator 225-6
Month: February 2012
Homer, Iliad 2. 203-5
“There’s no way that all of us can be king; the rule of many isn’t good—there should be one leader, one king.”
οὐ μέν πως πάντες βασιλεύσομεν ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Αχαιοί·
οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη· εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω,
εἷς βασιλεύς
Odysseus harangues one of of the people but speaks differently to other leaders.
Ovid, Remedia Amoris 365
“Envy detracts even from the genius of great Homer”
ingenium magni detrectat livor Homeri
Pindar, Nemean 7.20-21
“I think that the story of Odysseus’ suffering was exaggerated by sweet-worded Homer”
ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον’ ἔλπομαι
λόγον ᾿Οδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν
διὰ τὸν ἁδυεπῆ γενέσθ’ ῞Ομηρον·
Pindar was a poet of Epinikion.
(but this line doesn’t seem to be about praise… for Homer, at least)
Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 2.9.11
Theognis, 1185-1186
“The mind and tongue are good: but they grow in few men who are masters of both”
Νοῦς ἀγαθὸν καὶ γλῶσσα• τὰ δ’ ἐν παύροισι πέφυκεν
ἀνδράσιν, οἳ τούτων ἀμφοτέρων ταμίαι.
We know lamentably little about Theognis of Megara
Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 6.6.6
“I would prefer the most unfair peace to the justest war”
iniquissimam pacem iustissimo bello anteferrem
Kypria, Fragment 17 (18W) (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists)
“Menelaus, the best thing the gods made to scatter the cares of mortal men is wine”
οἶνόν τοι, Μενέλαε, θεοὶ ποίησαν ἄριστον
θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισιν ἀποσκεδάσαι μελεδῶνας.
Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 3.1.158
Menander, Monostichoi 165
“If we have money, then we will have friends”
ἐάν ἔχωμεν χρήμαθ᾿ ἕξομεν φίλους
Menander, a comic poet