“Sport tends to give rise to heated strife and anger,
anger in turns brings savage feuds and war to the death”.
ludus enim genuit trepidum certamen et iram,
ira truces inimicitias et funebre bellum.
Month: September 2012
Xenophanes fr. 12.3-4
“[Homer and Hesoid] sound the gods’ lawless deeds:
they steal, fornicate, and deceive one another.”
ὡς πλεῖστ(α) ἐφθέγξαντο θεῶν ἀθεμίστια ἔργα,
κλέπτειν μοιχεύειν τε καὶ ἀλλήλους ἀπατεύειν.
Xenophanes of Colophon, not your average orthodox theologian…
Horace, Epistles 1.6.1-2
“‘Never be dazzled’ is about the one and only thing . . . that can make and keep a person happy”
Nil admirari prope res est una . . . solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum.
Homer, Odyssey 21.407-409
Just as a man who knows both lyre and song
easily stretches a string on a new peg
as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides
just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow
ὡς ὅτ’ ἀνὴρ φόρμιγγος ἐπιστάμενος καὶ ἀοιδῆς
ῥηϊδίως ἐτάνυσσε νέῳ περὶ κόλλοπι χορδήν,
ἅψας ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἐϋστρεφὲς ἔντερον οἰός,
ὣς ἄρ’ ἄτερ σπουδῆς τάνυσεν μέγα τόξον ᾿Οδυσσεύς.
A beautiful repose before a banquet of death…the full text.
(Horace’s metaphor isn’t here, is it?)
Horace, Ars Poetica 347
Solon, Fragment 9.5-6
“It is not easy for a man raised too high to restrain himself later.”
“λίην δ’ ἐξάραντ’ <οὐ> ῥάιδιόν ἐστι κατασχεῖν”
ὕστερον…
So says Solon, who left power in Athens (according to Plutarch, oh, and that guy Herodotus...)