“After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell wrong)—no history, no tradition, no poetry—nothing that can give it even a passing interest. What may be left of General Grant’s great name forty centuries hence? This—in the Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, possibly:
‘URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT—popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about A. D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about A. D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote ‘Rock me to Sleep, Mother.’’
“Firmus was nevertheless of huge stature with prominent eyes, curly hair, a scarred forehead, a darker complexion on his face while most of his body was white, although it was tough and hairy, so that many used to call him a Cyclops. He used to eat a lot of meat and allegedly ate an ostrich in a day. He drank some wine and a lot of water. He was extremely strong in mind, most robust in nerves to the extent that he overcame Tritannus, whom Varro mentions. For he endured an anvil placed on his chest and struck constantly while he seemed to be rising up rather than lying down because he was face up supporting himself on his hands.
Yet, [Firmus] had a drinking competition with Aurelian’s generals when they wanted to test him. For, when a certain Burburus, one of the standard-bearers and a notable drinker, challenged him to a drinking context, he sucked down two pails of wine but was still sober after the banquet. When Burburus asked him, “Why didn’t you drink the dregs?” he responded “Fool, the earth is not drunk.” We are pursuing lighter notes here, we must speak of more important ones.”
Fuit tamen Firmus statura ingenti, oculis foris eminentibus, capillo crispo, fronte vulnerata, vultu nigriore, reliqua parte corporis candidus sed pilosus atque hispidus, ita ut eum plerique Cyclopem vocarent. carne multa vescebatur, struthionem ad diem comedisse fertur. vini non multum bibit, aquae plurimum. mente firmissimus, nervis robustissimus, ita ut Tritannum vinceret, cuius Varro meminit. nam et incudem superpositam pectori constanter aliis tundentibus pertulit, cum ipse reclinis ac resupinus et curvatus in manus penderet potius quam iaceret. fuit tamen ei contentio cum Aureliani ducibus ad bibendum, si quando eum temptare voluissent. nam quidam Burburus nomine de numero vexillariorum, notissimus potator, cum ad bibendum eundem provocasset, situlas duas plenas mero duxit et toto postea convivio sobrius fuit; et cum ei Burburus diceret, “Quare non faeces bibisti?” respondit ille, “Stulte, terra non bibitur.” levia persequimur, cum maiora dicenda sint.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (2.4.1.1):
“The country people use kitchen physic, and common experience tells us, that they live freest from all manner of infirmities, that make least use of apothecaries’ physic. Many are overthrown by preposterous use of it, and thereby get their bane, that might otherwise have escaped: some think physicians kill as many as they save, and who can tell, Quot Themison aegros autumno occiderit uno?How many murders they make in a year,quibus impune licet hominem occidere, that may freely kill folks, and have a reward for it, and according to the Dutch proverb, a new physician must have a new churchyard; and who daily observes it not?
Many that did ill under physicians’ hands, have happily escaped, when they have been given over by them, left to God and nature, and themselves; ’twas Pliny’s dilemma of old, every disease is either curable or incurable, a man recovers of it or is killed by it; both ways physic is to be rejected. If it be deadly, it cannot be cured; if it may be helped, it requires no physician, nature will expel it of itself. Plato made it a great sign of an intemperate and corrupt commonwealth, where lawyers and physicians did abound; and the Romans distasted them so much that they were often banished out of their city, as Pliny and Celsus relate, for 600 years not admitted.
It is no art at all, as some hold, no not worthy the name of a liberal science (nor law neither), as Pet. And. Canonherius a patrician of Rome and a great doctor himself, one of their own tribe, proves by sixteen arguments, because it is mercenary as now used, base, and as fiddlers play for a reward. Juridicis, medicis, fisco, fas vivere rapto, ’tis a corrupt trade, no science, art, no profession; the beginning, practice, and progress of it, all is naught, full of imposture, uncertainty, and doth generally more harm than good.
The devil himself was the first inventor of it: Inventum est medicina meum, said Apollo, and what was Apollo, but the devil? The Greeks first made an art of it, and they were all deluded by Apollo’s sons, priests, oracles. If we may believe Varro, Pliny, Columella, most of their best medicines were derived from his oracles. Aesculapius his son had his temples erected to his deity, and did many famous cures; but, as Lactantius holds, he was a magician, a mere impostor, and as his successors, Phaon, Podalirius, Melampius, Menecrates, (another God), by charms, spells, and ministry of bad spirits, performed most of their cures.”
“For comedy—which can provide a great deal to eloquence since it works through every character and feeling—I will explain soon what purpose I think it serves for students in its own place. For, once characters are safely formed, comedy is among the most important things to read. I am speaking of Menander, but I will not bar the others, for the Latin authors also provide some utility.
Students must first read texts which especially nourish the intelligence and strengthen the character. A long life will give them time for the rest of the works which are good mainly for intellectual reasons. The older Latin poets, moreover, who are mostly effective for their innate ability rather than their skill, can offer a lot—especially for building a great vocabulary. One can find a seriousness in their tragedies and in their comedies an elegance and a certain Attic nature. Their compositions are more considered, too, than modern authors who think that the only virtue of writing is its “quotability”. A high register and, if I may say, a kind of power must be found in these authors since we have now stumbled into the vices of pleasure in our manner of speaking too. And, finally, we should lean on the best orators who take from the poems of the ancients to strengthen their claims or decorate their speaking”
Comoediae, quae plurimum conferre ad eloquentiam potest, cum per omnis et personas et adfectus eat, quem usum in pueris putem paulo post suo loco dicam: nam cum mores in tuto fuerint, inter praecipua legenda erit. De Menandro loquor, nec tamen excluserim alios, nam Latini quoque auctores adferent utilitatis aliquid; sed pueris quae maxime ingenium alant atque animum augeant praelegenda: ceteris, quae ad eruditionem modo pertinent, longa aetas spatium dabit. Multum autem veteres etiam Latini conferunt, quamquam plerique plus ingenio quam arte valuerunt, in primis copiam verborum: quorum in tragoediis gravitas, in comoediis elegantia et quidam velut atticismos inveniri potest. Oeconomia quoque in iis diligentior quam in plerisque novorum erit, qui omnium operum solam virtutem sententias putaverunt. Sanctitas certe et, ut sic dicam, virilitas ab iis petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque ratione defluximus. Denique credamus summis oratoribus, qui veterum poemata vel ad fidem causarum vel ad ornamentum eloquentiae adsumunt.
Portrait of Matthaeus Platearius d.c.1161 writing “The Book of Simple Medicines”, c.1470 (Wikimedia Commons)
“I used to tell you that Cestius, because he was Greek, suffered because of a lack of Latin words though he had an abundance of ideas. Thus, whenever he dared to describe something more broadly, he often stalled especially when he attempted to imitate some great genius.
This is the issue in this controversy. For, in his story, when he was telling about how his brother was given to him, he was pleased by this lonely and sad description: “night was laid out, and everything, judges, was singing under silent stars.” Julius Montanus, who was a companion of Tiberius and an exceptional poet, was claiming that he wanted to imitate Vergil’s line: ‘it was night and all the tired animals over the earth, the races of birds and beasts, were held by a deep sleep.’ “
Soleo dicere vobis Cestium Latinorum verborum inopia hominem Graecum laborasse, sensibus abundasse; itaque, quotiens latius aliquid describere ausus est, totiens substitit, utique cum se ad imitationem magni alicuius ingeni derexerat, sicut in hac controversia fecit. Nam in narratione, cum fratrem traditum sibi describeret, placuit sibi in hac explicatione una et infelici: nox erat concubia, et omnia, iudices, canentia sideribus muta erant. Montanus Iulius, qui comes fuit , egregius poeta, aiebat illum imitari voluisse Vergili descriptionem:
nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnis,alituum pecudumque genus, sopor altus habebat
“In the first rank of these, I may well reckon up costiveness, and keeping in of our ordinary excrements, which as it often causeth other diseases, so this of melancholy in particular. Celsus, lib. 1. cap. 3, saith, It produceth inflammation of the head, dullness, cloudiness, headache, &c. Prosper Calenus, lib. de atra bile, will have it distemper not the organ only, but the mind itself by troubling of it: and sometimes it is a sole cause of madness, as you may read in the first book of Skenkius’s Medicinal Observations. A young merchant going to Nordeling fair in Germany, for ten days’ space never went to stool; at his return he was grievously melancholy, thinking that he was robbed, and would not be persuaded but that all his money was gone; his friends thought he had some philtrum given him, but Cnelius, a physician, being sent for, found his costiveness alone to be the cause, and thereupon gave him a clyster, by which he was speedily recovered.”
“The Law of the Twelve Tables commands that anyone who has conspired with an enemy against the state or handed a citizen to a public enemy, should suffer capital punishment.”
Marcianus, ap. Dig., XLVIII, 4, 3: Lex XII Tabularum iubet eum qui hostem concitaverit quive civem hosti tradiderit capite puniri.
Cicero, De Legibus 3.2
“[Cases concerning] death and citizenship must not be pursued except before the greatest assembly and those whom the censors have recorded in the rolls of the citizens.”
de capite civis nisi per maximum comitiatum ollosque, quos censores in partibus populi locasint, ne ferunto.
The death penalty is not the enactment of justice, it is the execution of vengeance when justice is impossible or not actually desired. It does not function as a deterrent. It is meted out disproportionately to people without financial and social capital, which in the United States means that people of color face capital charges and are executed at far higher rates. The moral peril is compounded by the imperfection of our criminal system where at least 1 in 25 people on death row are actually innocent. The death penalty is not part of a justice system, it is part of a vengeance system.
Note the connection in several passages between the sanctity of the state, the power to end a life, and citizenship.
Xenophon, Apology 25
“These opponents have not said that I am guilty of any of the actions for which the established penalty is death–robbing a temple, theft, enslaving someone, betraying the state…”
“Whoever raises a human being into power and thus enslaves the laws, whoever makes the state subordinate to his petty faction and transgresses what is right by doing all of this violently and stirring up civil strife, he should be considered the most inimical to the whole state.
And the kind of person who does not share these actions, but does occupy some of the most important offices of the state and either fails to observe them or does not fail but will not avenge his country because of cowardice, he should be considered as a citizen at a second degree of evil.
Let each person whose worth is small bear witness to the officers of the state by bringing this person to court for his plotting violent and unconstitutional revolution. Give them the same charges we have for temple robbery and run the trial as it is in those cases where the death penalty comes by majority vote.”
“It is right that punishments for other crimes come after them, but punishment for treason should precede the dissolution of the state. If you miss that opportune moment when those men are about to do something treacherous against their state, it is not possible for you to obtain justice from the men who did wrong: for they become stronger than the punishment possible from those who have been wronged.”
“Death is not the most extreme penalty–there are those described in Hades for offenses like this which are beyond death and are truly described, but they are useless in deterring some kinds of minds from their crimes.”
From Brill’s New Pauly on the death penalty in Greece and Rome by Gottfriend Schiemann:
“In Athens not only premeditated killing (phónos) and sedition and high treason (katálysis toû dḗmoû, prodosía ) resulted in the death penalty, but also religious offences such as desecration of the temple (hierosylía) and (cf. in particular the case against Socrates [2], 399 BC) publicly taught godlessness (asébeia). In a similar way, in Rome there was provision for the state death penalty for sedition and high treason (perduellio) by beheading (decollatio , in Greece apokephalízein) with an axe, later a sword. In the Roman Imperial period this was the typical death penalty for honestiores , but now sometimes also for homicide.”
Jacob van Maerlant, (The traitor Ganelon drawn and quartered)., Spieghel Historiael, West Flanders, c. 1325-1335
“There are those who accumulate books not from eagerness to use them, but from the desire to have them, and they possess them not as a bulwark to their minds, but as an ornament for their bedrooms. And so, passing over the others, Julius Caesar and Augustus both concerned themselves with a Roman library. For such an important task, one of them put Marcus Varro in charge of the library, and this is with all respect to Demetrius of Phalerum, who had the greatest name among the Egyptians for his librarianship; but Varro is in no way inferior to Demetrius – in fact, he is far superior. Pompeius Macer, himself an eminently learned man, was put in charge of the library by the other. Asinius Pollio, the most illustrious orator, burned with enthusiasm for a library of Greek and Latin literature, and is said to have opened the first one for the public in Rome.
But those are private things. Cato’s appetite for books was insatiable, a fact of which Cicero is a witness, and even Cicero was possessed of an ardor for purchasing books, which is attested by many of his letters to Atticus, on whom he imposed the task of purchasing them, driving him on with the greatest insistence and all the power of entreaty, as I now do to you. Indeed, if a rich reader is permitted to beg for patronage in the way of books, what do you think is permitted to the poor reader?”
Sunt enim qui libros, ut cetera, non utendi studio cumulent, sed habendi libidine, neque tam ut ingenii presidium, quam ut thalami ornamentum. Atque, ut reliquos sileam, fuit romane bibliothece cura divis imperatoribus Iulio Cesari et Cesari Augusto; tanteque rei prefectus ab altero — pace Demetrii Phalerii dixerim, qui in hac re clarum apud Egiptios nomen habet — nichil inferior, ne dicam longe superior, Marcus Varro; ab altero Pompeius Macer, vir et ipse doctissimus. Summo quoque grece latineque bibliothece studio flagravit Asinius Pollio orator clarissimus, qui primus hanc Rome publicasse traditur.
Illa enim privata sunt: Catonis insatiabilis librorum fames, cuius Cicero testis est, ipsiusque Ciceronis ardor ad inquirendos libros, quem multe testantur epystole ad Athicum, cui eam curam non segnius imponit, agens summa instantia multaque precum vi, quam ego nunc tibi. Quodsi opulentissimo ingenio permittitur librorum patrocinia mendicare, quid putas licere inopi?
Francesco Filelfo, Letter to Lorenzo Medici (Part 25)
“So Nonius Marcellus and Festus Pompeius and Caper and Diomedes and Donatus and Servius and Priscian and Phocas and Aulus Gellius and Macrobius and the other most approved authors who have taught us something about grammar are not only to be learned, but even to be learned by heart. For it is a bad sort of Latinity which does not know the meaning of words, their peculiarities, their differences, or their genders and constructions. In this matter, you must consult the ancient authors.
For indeed, I see certain people of our time who want to make a big show of themselves in the art of grammar, but have sunk into the greatest errors. Of them, Giovanni Tortelli of Arezzo seems to me to hold the chief place: when he wants to be seen to know both Greek and Latin literature, he makes it as clear as possible that he knows neither.
Therefore, you should take care that your children are full of the goods of both intellect and learning, as the riches of the greatest fortune. You’ll do perfectly well if you take care that they grow up to be just like you.
I should not of course omit what seemed correct to Quintilian, that most acute man, that one should as much as possible start with the Greek language and literature. If I might pass over the other arts and sciences, which we know have come from Greek learning, who would dare to claim themselves a professor without knowing Greek literature?
And so in turn and at the same time, in my opinion, one should study Greek and Latin literature – a practice which I have always observed in raising my own children, and which I still observe even today. I have never had cause to regret it, when I see that they have advanced so far above the common herd in the literature and speech of each language. But you will consider this in the best light according to your own wisdom.”
Quare et Nonius Marcellus et Festus Pompeius et Caper et Diomedes et Donatus et Servius et Priscianus et Phocas et Au. Gellius et Macrobius et caeteri probatissimi auctores qui aliquid de arte grammatica tradiderunt, non solum discendi sunt, verum etiam ediscendi. Nam male ea latinitas habeat, quae aut significata verborum, aut proprietates, aut differentias aut genera constructionesve ignorarit. Qua in re prisci auctores consulendi sunt.
Video enim quosdam nostrae tempestatis homines, qui cum magnum de se quiddam voluerunt in arte grammatica profiteri, in maximos errores devenerunt. E quorum numero principatum mihi tenere visus est Ioannes Tortelius arretinus, qui, cum et graecam et latinam litteraturam novisse videri vult, utranque ignoravisse apertissime declarat.
Curandum igitur tibi est, ut liberi tui aeque abundent ingenii atque doctrinae bonis ut amplissimae fortunae divitiis; quod tum cumulate feceris, si operam dabis ut tibi sint quam simillimi.
Nec illud certe praetermiserim, quod Quintiliano etiam viro acutissimo videtur, a graeco sermone, quo ad eius fieri possit, atque litteratura esse incipiendum. Ut enim caeteras artis disciplinasque praeteream, quas omnis inde fluxisse novimus, quis audeat se profiteri grammaticum graecis litteris ignoratis?
Et vicissim quidem ac simul, mea sententia, studendum est graecis atque latinis litteris, id quod ego in omnibus meis liberis et observavi antehac semper, et hoc etiam tempore observo, idque me fecisse nunquam poenituit, cum eos viderim in utraque et litteratura et oratione egregie profecisse. Sed haec tu, pro tua prudentia, perpulchre considerabis.
“For I do not think it is necessary to fight against such powers nor to get rid of the precedence taken by our highest citizens, even if it were possible; nor do I think it necessary to affix myself to a single opinion when situations change and the desires of good men change with them—no, one must change with the times. Remaining in an permanent opinion has never been praised among exceptional men for the governing of the state.
But, as in sailing it is good to get ahead of a storm even if you will not find the harbor; yet if you can make it to safe ground by changing your approach, only a fool would risk danger to hold to the course he began rather than make his destination by changing something. Thus, while all of us running the state should seek the proposition which I have often sought—peace with dignity—we should ensure not to speak the same but always to seek the same thing.”
nam neque pugnandum arbitrarer contra tantas opes neque delendum, etiam si id fieri posset, summorum civium principatum <neque> permanendum in una sententia conversis rebus ac bonorum voluntatibus mutatis, sed temporibus adsentiendum. numquam enim <in>praestantibus in re publica gubernanda viris laudata est in una sententia perpetua permansio; sed ut in navigando tempestati obsequi artis est etiam si portum tenere non queas, cum vero id possis mutata velificatione adsequi stultum est eum tenere cum periculo cursum quem coeperis potius quam eo commutato quo velis tamen pervenire, sic, cum omnibus nobis in administranda re publica propositum esse debeat, id quod a me saepissime dictum est, cum dignitate otium, non idem semper dicere sed idem semper spectare debemus.
