Category: Latin

Live Like a Philosopher!

~ Erik ~ Leave a comment

Seneca, Epistulae 104:

“If you wish to be stripped of your vices, you must withdraw from the exemplars of vice. The miser, the corrupter, the savage, the fraud – these would all harm you much if they had merely been near you, but instead they lurk inside you. Transition to better examples: live with the Catos, live with Laelius, with Tubero. If you would even like to take up quarters with the Greeks, spend some time with Socrates and Zeno: the first will teach you how to die when it is necessary, and the second before it is necessary. Live with Chrysippus and Posidonius: they will give you the knowledge of human and divine things. They will goad you on to work, and will instruct you not just to speak knowledgeably and cast off your words for the delight of the audience, but also to harden your mind and steel it against threats. There is one safe harbor in this storm-tossed and turbid life, and that is to scorn the future, to stand confidently, and to be prepared not to hide and turn your back, but to take the slings and arrows of Fortune straight to the chest.”

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Si velis vitiis exui, longe a vitiorum exemplis recedendumest. Avarus, corruptor, saevus, fraudulentus, multum nocituri si propea te fuissent, intra te sunt. Ad meliores transi: cum Catonibus vive, cum Laelio, cum Tuberone. Quod si convivere etiam Graecis iuvat, cum Socrate, cum Zenone versare: alter te docebit mori si necesse erit, alter antequamnecesse erit. Vive cum Chrysippo, cum Posidonio: hi tibi tradent humanorum divinorumque notitiam, hi iubebunt in opere esse nec tantum scite loqui et in oblectationem audientium verba iactare, sed animum indurare et adversus minas erigere. Unus est enim huius vitae fluctuantis et turbidae portus eventura contemnere, stare fidenter ac paratum tela fortunae adverso pectore excipere, non latitantem nec tergiversantem.

Teachers, Destroyers of Eloquence

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Petronius, Satyricon, 2

“By your leave, I need to say this: you teachers foremost have destroyed real eloquence. You create certain absurdities by by making your light and silly sounds so that the body of your speech weakens and falls.  Young men were not yet restrained by practice-speeches when Sophocles and Euripides used to be able to discover the words with which things ought to be said.

No shut-in professor had yet destroyed their geniuses when Pindar and the nine Lyric poets were afraid to sing Homer’s verses. And lest I use only poets for proof, I surely do not see that Plato or Demosthenes went through this kind of exercise. The grand style, as I may say, is a humble one—it is not uneven or inflated, but emerges thanks to its natural beauty.”

Pace vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. Levibus enim atque inanibus sonis ludibria quaedam excitando effecistis, ut corpus orationis enervaretur et caderet. Nondum iuvenes declamationibus continebantur, cum Sophocles aut Euripides invenerunt verba quibus deberent loqui. Nondum umbraticus doctor ingenia deleverat, cum Pindarus novemque lyrici Homericis versibus canere timuerunt. Et ne poetas [quidem] ad testimonium citem, certe neque Platona neque Demosthenen ad hoc genus exercitationis accessisse video.3 Grandis et ut ita dicam pudica oratio non est maculosa nec turgida, sed naturali pulchritudine exsurgit.

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How Much Are YOU Like Tiberius?

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Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 70

“He pursued the liberal arts of both languages most seriously. He was a follower of Messala Corvinus when it came to Latin oratory, a man whom he had observed while an adolescent. But he used to confuse his style with such excessive affectation and officiousness that he was considered more effective as an extemporaneous speaker than a prepared one.

He also wrote a lyric poem which had the title “A Lament on the Death of Lucius Caesar.” When he composed Greek poems, he imitated Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius, those poets whose writing he liked most of all, and he placed their portraits in the public libraries among the older, famous authors. For this reason, many of the learned men of the time were in a competition dedicating many books about these men to Tiberius.

Still, he took the greatest care in knowledge of the stories of myth, to the point of absurdity and silliness. For he even used to quiz the grammarians, a class of men whom, as I said, he was really preoccupied with, posing questions like: “Who was the mother of Hecuba?” “What name did Achilles have among the girls?” “What were the Sirens accustomed to singing?”

LXX. Artes liberales utriusque generis studiosissime coluit. In oratione Latina secutus est Corvinum Messalam, quem senem adulescens observarat. Sed adfectatione et morositate nimia obscurabat stilum, ut aliquanto ex tempore quam a cura praestantior haberetur. Composuit et carmen lyricum, cuius est titulus “Conquestio de morte L. Caesaris.” Fecit et Graeca poemata imitatus Euphorionem et Rhianum et Parthenium, quibus poetis admodum delectatus scripta omnium et imagines publicis bibliothecis inter veteres et praecipuos auctores dedicavit; et ob hoc plerique eruditorum certatim ad eum multa de his ediderunt.3Maxime tamen curavit notitiam historiae fabularis usque ad ineptias atque derisum; nam et grammaticos, quod genus hominum praecipue, ut diximus, appetebat, eius modi fere quaestionibus experiebatur: “Quae mater Hecubae, quod Achilli nomen inter virgines fuisset, quid Sirenes cantare sint solitae.”

 

 Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 3466 8º, Folio 37r

Homer is Wild, Vergil is a Garden, Ovid is…Ovid

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Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 417:

“And among those of the learned languages who excel in this talent, the most perfect in their several kinds are, perhaps, Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The first strikes the imagination wonderfully with what is great, the second with what is beautiful, and the last with what is strange. Reading the Iliad is like traveling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage prospects of vast deserts, wide uncultivated marshes, huge forests, misshapen rocks, and precipices. On the contrary, the Aeneid is like a well-ordered garden, where it is impossible to find out any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower. But when we are in the Metamorphoses, we are walking on enchanted ground, and see nothing but scenes of magic lying round us.

Homer is in his province when he is describing a battle or a multitude, a hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is in his elysium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer’s epithets generally mark out what is great, Virgil’s what is agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more charming than that of Venus in the first Aeneid:

As he spoke the son of Saturn bowed his dark brows, and the ambrosial locks swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled.
[trans. Butler] [Homer, Illiad, I. 528-30]

Dixit, & avertens rosea cervice refulsit:
Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
Spiravere: pedes vestis defluxit ad imos:
Et vera incessu patuit dea . . .

Thus having said, she turn’d, and made appear
Her neck refulgent, and dishevel’d hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach’d the ground.
And widely spread ambrosial scents around:
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil, Aeneid, I, 402-5]

Homer’s persons are most of them godlike and terrible: Virgil has scarce admitted any into his poem who are not beautiful, and has taken particular care to make his hero so.

. . . Lumenque juventae
Purpureum, & laetos oculis afflarat honores.

And giv’n his rolling eyes a sparkling grace,
And breath’d a youthful vigor on his face.
[trans. Dryden] [Virgil, Aeneid, I. 590-1]

In a word, Homer fills his readers with sublime ideas, and, I believe, has raised the imagination of all the good poets that have come after him. I shall only instance Horace, who immediately takes fire at the first hint of any passage in the Iliad or Odyssey, and always rises above himself when he has Homer in his view. Virgil has drawn together into his Aeneid all the pleasing scenes his subject is capable of admitting, and in his Georgics has given us a collection of the most delightful landscapes that can be made out of fields and woods, herds of cattle, and swarms of bees.

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, has shown us how the imagination may be affected by what is strange. He describes a miracle in every story, and always gives us the sight of some new creature at the end of it. His art consists chiefly in well-timing his description before the first shape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; so that he everywhere entertains us with something we never saw before, and shows monster after monster to the end of the Metamorphoses.”

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The Tragedy of the Aeneid’s Dido As Told Through Buffy GIFs

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Vergil, Aeneid 1.748–749

“Nor did unhappy Dido fail to drag out the night
With all kinds of talk as she was drinking deep of love.”

nec non et vario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido longumque bibebat amorem,

A few days ago Christian Lehmann (@buffyantiqua and a teacher at Bard High School Early College, Cleveland) told the story of Aeneas and Dido from Vergil’s Aeneid through GIFs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is not only genius which the world needs to witness for its own sake, but it also combines a few things I love: Homeric reception/myth and Buffy. (I tried to write about this once and partially failed.)

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I loved this so much that I wanted to share it with those who don’t use Twitter and Christian was kind enough to give his consent (see his work on “The 100 and Classical (Under)Worlds” too). This is a lively and fascinating retelling–it forces reconsiderations, I think, of both the Aeneid and BVTS. Also, Buffy and Spike > Buffy and Riley.

[below is my contribution: I learned this passage in high school where it was obligatory to understand that Dido was not dutiful enough and gave into passion, whereas Aeneas was oh so very pius.]

Vergil, Aeneid 4. 165-172

To the same cave came Dido and the Trojan captain
Earth first then nuptial Dido gave their sign
The lightning bolts were shining out and the Sky was a witness
to their bridal rites as the Nymphs sounded out on the mount’s highest peak
That day was the first cause of death; the first cause of evils.
For no longer was Dido cautioned by appearances or rumor
And no more was she harboring a secret love.
She calls it a marriage: with this name she cloaks her fault.

speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem
deveniunt. prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno
dant signum; fulsere ignes et conscius Aether
conubiis, summoque ulularunt vertice Nymphae.
ille dies primus leti primusque malorum
causa fuit. neque enim specie famave movetur
nec iam furtivum Dido meditatur amorem;
coniugium vocat; hoc praetexit nomine culpam.

Quintilian on Pedantry

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Quintilian, 8.3 (55)

“There is also that phenomenon which is called periergia—as I might call it, an ultimately useless carefulness in which a dilettante contrasts with a scholar the same way superstition differs from religion. So, to summarize, a word which helps neither the understanding nor the form can be said to be a mistake.”

Est etiam quae periergia vocatur, supervacua, ut sic dixerim, operositas, ut a diligenti curiosus et religione superstitio distat. Atque, ut semel finiam, verbum omne quod neque intellectum adiuvat neque ornatum vitiosum dici potest.

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Professors of Learned Praise

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Ammianus Marcellinus, Constantius et Julianus 17.11

“Once these facts were known in the court of Constantius—for it was required that Caesar should report about all of his deeds to Augustus like any inferior—everyone who previously had power in the palace and were already professors of learned praise, they were converting Julian’s correctly considered and successfully accomplished deeds into mockery, wisecracking without end like this: “This girl-goat, not a man, is getting hateful because of his victories”; they picked on Julian because he was hairy, calling him a “talking mole”, or “a purple-robed ape”, or “a Greek professor” and other similar insults.

Because they were echoing in the ears of an emperor who longed to hear these kinds of things, they were also trying to hide his virtues with shameful speeches, calling him lazy and fearful and one who dressed up his failures with polished words. This was not happening then for the first time.”

Haec cum in comitatu Constantii subinde noscerentur—erat enim necesse, tamquam apparitorem, Caesarem super omnibus gestis ad Augusti referre scientiam—omnes qui plus poterant in palatio, adulandi professores iam docti, recte consulta prospereque completa vertebant in deridiculum, talia sine modo strepentes insulse: “In odium venit cum victoriis suis capella, non homo,” ut hirsutum Iulianum carpentes, appellantesque “loquacem talpam” et “purpuratam simiam” et “litterionem Graecum,” et his congruentia plurima. Atque ut tintinnabulaprincipi resonantes, audire haec taliaque gestienti, virtutes eius obruere verbis impudentibus conabantur ut segnem incessentes et timidum et umbratilem, gestaque secus verbis comptioribus exornantem; quod non tunc primitus accidit.

Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 D 7, Folio 34v

American Vainglory

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J.E. Sandys, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Classical Learning:

“In 1499 (as we are all aware) a son of Florence, Amerigo Vespucci, took part in the discovery of Venezuela. But it is not perhaps so widely known that his graphic description of the third and most famous of his four voyages was translated into Latin by none other than Fra Giocondo himself. This translation was printed by Martin Waltzemuller at Strassburg in 1505, and also reprinted with the narrative of the three other voyages in 1507, and it is in this reprint that we find the first suggestion that the newly discovered continent should receive the name of America. In this volume Amerigo makes a vainglorious display of his classical learning in the form of quotations from Pliny, Virgil, and Aristotle.”

Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci.jpg

Yes to Vergil, No to Lucan

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J.E. Sandys, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning:

“Cicero and Virgil became the principal text-books of the Revival of Learning. Petrarch describes them in one of his poems as the ‘two eyes’ of his discourse. In his very boyhood he had been smitten with the charm of Virgil, and, even in his old age, he was still haunted by the mediaeval tradition of the allegorical significance of the Aeneid. But, unlike the mediaeval admirers of Virgil, he does not regard the Latin poet as a mysteriously distant and supernatural being; he finds in him a friend, and he is even candid enough to criticise him. Under his influence the Aeneid was accepted as the sole model that was worthy of imitation by the epic poets of the succeeding age. A German critic regards this result with regret, a regret that few, if any, will share; nor is it easy to believe that any scholar would really have preferred seeing Petrarch throw the weight of his example on to the side of any other Latin epic poet, such as Lucan.”

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Cicero: I Love Peace, Just not With Him

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Cicero, Philippics 7.3

“In this way, I am one who has always been a proponent of peace, especially within the state; even though this is true for all good men, I have still hoped for it among the first ranks. All of the effort of my work has has been in the forum, in the senate house, and in the defense of friends from dangers. From this source we have earned the greatest honors, a modest amount of wealth, and however much dignity I have.

Therefore, I, a beneficiary of peace, as you might say, who, however much of a man I am and I do not claim anything for myself, I certainly would not have been like this within civil peace. I speak dangerously and I shake a little at the thought of the way you might receive this, Senators, but I plead and I ask you, based on my own endless longing to maintain and increase your dignity, that first, even if it is unbelievable that it was said by Marcus Cicero, which is bitter or incredible to your hearing, that you will take what I say without offense and not reject it outright before I explain what I mean. And I will say often that I am a constant champion of peace but I am not looking for peace with Marcus Antonius.

I am turning to the rest of this speech with great hope, Senators, because I have made it through the most dangerous part in silence. Why then do I oppose peace? Because it is corrupt, because it is dangerous, and because it is not possible.”

Itaque ego ille qui semper pacis auctor fui cuique pax, praesertim civilis, quamquam omnibus bonis, tamen in primis fuit optabilis—omne enim curriculum industriae nostrae in foro, in curia, in amicorum periculis propulsandis elaboratum est; hinc honores amplissimos, hinc mediocris opes, hinc dignitatem si quam habemus consecuti sumus—ego igitur pacis, ut ita dicam, alumnus, qui quantuscumque sum (nihil enim mihi adrogo) sine pace civili certe non fuissem—periculose dico: quem ad modum accepturi, patres conscripti, sitis, horreo, sed pro mea perpetua cupiditate vestrae dignitatis retinendae et augendae quaeso oroque vos, patres conscripti, ut primo, etsi erit vel acerbum auditu vel incredibile a M. Cicerone esse dictum, accipiatis sine offensione quod dixero, neve id prius quam quale sit explicaro repudietis—ego ille, dicam saepius, pacis semper laudator, semper auctor, pacem cum M. Antonio esse nolo. Magna spe ingredior in reliquam orationem, patres conscripti, quoniam periculosissimum locum silentio sum praetervectus. Cur igitur pacem nolo? Quia turpis est, quia periculosa, quia esse non potest.

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No peace with me?