How Does Learning Accents Help Your Soul?

Cicero to Atticus 31 May 45 (12.6)

“I now turn to Tyrannio. Do you really do this? Was this true? There without me? And this when I so many times did not go without you even though I had the ability. How will you make this up to me? There is one way, clearly, if you send me the book which I ask again that you should send  to me. Even if the book itself will not delight me any more than your admiration of it.

I adore the man who loves every kind of learning and I am truly happy that you cherish so refined a course of study. But this is completely you. For you are passionate to learn, the only thing which feeds the mind. But, I must ask, what impact does this ‘grave’ and ‘acute’ stuff have on the pursuit of the highest good?”

Venio ad Tyrannionem. ain tu? verum hoc fuit? sine me? at ego quotiens, cum essem otiosus, sine te tamen nolui! quo modo ergo hoc lues? uno scilicet, si mihi librum miseris; quod ut facias etiam atque etiam rogo. etsi me non magis ipse liber delectabit quam tua admiratio delectavit. amo enim πάντα φιλειδήμονα teque istam tam tenuem ϑεωρíαν tam valde admiratum esse gaudeo. etsi tua quidem sunt eius modi omnia. scire enim vis; quo uno animus alitur. sed, quaeso, quid ex ista acuta et gravi refertur ad τέλος?

Cicero seems to have his finger on a Senecan pulse here:

Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae 13

“This sickness used to just afflict the Greeks, to discover the number of oars Odysseus possessed, whether the Iliad was written before the Odyssey, whether the poems belong to the same author, and other matters like this which, if you keep them to yourself, cannot please your private mind; but if you publish them, you seem less learned than annoying.”

Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere, quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssia, praeterea an eiusdem essent auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae sive contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam iuvant sive proferas, non doctior videaris sed molestior.

Seneca, Moral Epistle 108

“But some error comes thanks to our teachers who instruct us how to argue but not how to live; some error too comes from students, who bring themselves to teachers not for the nourishing of the soul, but the cultivation of our wit. Thus what was philosophy has been turned into philology.”

Sed aliquid praecipientium vitio peccatur, qui nos docent disputare, non vivere, aliquid discentium, qui propositum adferunt ad praeceptores suos non animum excolendi, sed ingenium. Itaque quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est.