“Someone wouldn’t be wrong in saying that ignorance is a third cause of f*ck-ups. But a law-maker would be better in splitting this cause into two, understanding the simple one as a cause of minor mistakes. The doubled ignorance—when someone who is screwing up is held not only by ignorance but by the belief of wisdom too as if they perfectly understand all the things they know nothing about—is the cause of serious and harmful mistakes when it has power and strength.
But when present in people who are weak, doubled ignorance produces the errors of children and old people. A law-maker will consider these mere mistakes and will make laws accordingly, which will be the most lenient and full of pardon of all.”
“Lord, son of Leto, child of Zeus, I will never
Forget you when beginning or ending my song.
But I sing you first and last and in the middle too
Hear me now and grant me good things.
Lord Phoebus, when the goddess Leto first gave birth to you,
The finest of the gods, she was holding close to the palm tree
with her slight arms, next to the curve of the lake—
and all of Delos was overwhelmed with a divine scent
as the expansive earth laughed beneath,
and the see delighted in its salty depths.
Artemis, slayer of beasts, daughter of Zeus, the one
Agamemnon honored with a temple as he sailed to Troy in swift ships
Hear me as I pray to you—ward off the evil spirts of death.
It is a minor thing for you, goddess; but a big deal for me.”
Muses and Graces, daughters of Zeus, who once
Went to the marriage of Kadmos and sang this beautiful line:
“Whatever is beautiful is loved; and what isn’t beautiful isn’t loved’
That’s the line that rang from your immortal mouths.”
“A ruler’s first duty is to save the state itself. This is saved no less in refraining from what is not fitting than from pursuing what is fitting. But the one who shirks or overreaches is no longer a king or a ruler, but in fact becomes a demagogue or a despot. He fills the subjects with hatred and contempt. While the first problem seems to come from being too lenient or a concern for humanity, the second comes from self-regard and harshness.”
The transgressor who abuses the laws
Or thinks he can push around his rulers
Won’t get a slap on the back from me.
In matters small, just, or otherwise
Obey the man the city elevates.
This is the man I myself would trust
To rule well, to be willingly ruled,
And to remain a just, noble comrade
When he’s assigned his station in the storm.
No one in charge: there’s no greater evil.
It wrecks cities, turns houses upside down,
And sends spear-bearing allies scrambling.
Obeying El Jefe is life saving
For the many who get with the program.
Blaise Pascal, far-seeing moralist, where are you on this?
Pensées. Fr.326 [=66 Laf.]
It’s dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust, since they obey them only because they believe them to be just. This is why you must at the same time tell the people they must obey the laws because they are laws, just as they must obey their superiors not because they are just, but because they are their superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented, if you can make the people understand this, and make them understand that it is the correct definition of justice.
Il est dangereux de dire au peuple que les lois ne sont pas justes, car il n’y obéit qu’à cause qu’il les croit justes. C’est pourquoi il faut lui dire en même temps qu’il y faut obéir parce qu’elles sont lois, comme il faut obéir aux supérieurs non pas parce qu’ils sont justes, mais parce qu’ils sont supérieurs. Par là voilà toute sédition prévenue, si on peut faire entendre cela et que proprement (c’est) la définition de la justice.
“Pittacus’ saying doesn’t sound right
To me, even though spoken by a wise person.
He said it is hard to be good.
Only god can have that prize, it is impossible
For a human to not be bad,
When unalterable misfortune grips them.
When things are going well,
Anyone can be noble–
And anyone breaks bad in bad times.
And the people who are best?
They’re mostly the ones the gods favor.
That’s why I am not going to throw my life away
Searching out the impossible, an impractical
Empty hope–a person free of all fault,
Not a one of all those who eat the harvest of the broad earth
But if I find one, I will let you know.
For now, I praise all people who
Do nothing shameful willingly.
Not even the gods battle necessity.
I don’t love blame–it seems enough to me
For someone not to be evil, and not too untrustworthy
And to know something of the justice that keeps a city safe.
That’s a safe man–I will not fault
Him, since there’s no limit
To the parade of fools.
All things not completely mixed with shame,
Are fine indeed.”
“Child, Zeus the lound-thunderer manages every ending
And makes everything turn out the way he wants.
People don’t have any sense, but we live for the day
Just like animals in the field who know nothing
About how the god will finish each thing.
Still, hope and belief feed us all,
Making us strive for what can’t be done.
Some of us wait for the coming day, others for seasons–
But every mortal expects the new year
to make them a friend to wealth and fortune.
But begrudging old age overtakes one person before
Before they finish their race and awful sicknesses
ruin others, and then Hades sends some,
under the dark earth overcome by Ares in war.
Others die whirled about by winds
And the crashing waves of the dark sea
When they go sailing because they can’t earn a living.
Others choose to leave the light of the sun,
Fitting themselves to a noose with a miserable fate.
And so there’s nothing free of evils! Instead mortals have
Endless ways to die and unexpected disasters and pain.
If you listen to me, we wouldn’t desire troubles at all,
Nor would we disfigure ourselves by
Focusing our hearts on grief and misfortune.”
“A child, when still young and small, grows
a bulwark of teeth and loses them in his first seven years
When the god brings about the second seven years
He starts to show the signs of adolescence
In the third set of seven, his chin starts to fuzz
As his limbs thicken and skin changes color.
In the fourth seven, every one is seriously the best
In terms of strength, and men begin to show the signs of excellence.
In the fifth season, it is the time for a man to think about marriage
And to seek the generation of children afterwards.
In the six season, a man’s mind is fit for everything,
And he no longer wishes to act out in reckless deeds.
In the seventh season, and the eighth each is best
In thinking and speaking–fourteen years for both!
In the ninth season, a man can do anything, but
His speech and mind are less sharp, beneath peak excellence.
If someone completes the tenth stage and comes to the end,
his appointment with death is not out of season.”
The stages of life from infancy to old age. Woodcut from De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomeus Anglicus, 1846
I checked with my wife–a pediatric dentist–and first dentition is complete between ages 3-6. Also, we got married when I was 29 and had kids in our 30s (oops, another in our 40s). And then, in my seventh season I am definitely the best so far at speaking and thinking (and I can’t bench what I could at 25), so Solon is onto something.
This is hard to convey to someone who hasn’t read a lot of Greek poetry, but Solon is not much of a poet.
Fronto LaudesFumi et Pulveris [Ambr 249 Caesari suo Fronto. [139 a.d.]]
“Many of my readers may perhaps hate my subject from the title because it is impossible for anything serious to be made of smoke and dust. But you, thanks to your outstanding intelligence, will judge whether these words are wasted or put well.
The subject does, however, seem to ask for a few things to be written about the logic of its composition, since nothing written of this kind of thing noble enough in the Roman tongue exists except for what poets touch in comedies or farces. Anyone who tests himself at writing of this kind will select a mass of ideas and put them together closely, joining them cleverly, but without including many useless and doubled words and then make sure to end each sentence with clarity and skill.
In legal speeches, however, it goes differently because we often pay special attention to sentences ending harshly and artlessly. In this matter, we must labor differently so that nothing is left rude and out of place, instead making sure that everything is interconnected as in a robe with clear borders and ornate edges. Finally, just as the final verses in epigrams should have some kind of shine to them, a sentence should be ended with some kind of a clasp or brooch.
Pleasing the audience, however, should pursued among the first goals. For this kind of address is not composed for defense in a capital trial nor to advocate for the passing of a law, nor to exhort an army, nor to enrage a mass of people, but for delights and pleasure. Nevertheless, we must speeches we do about serious and wonderful things—the small matters must be compared and equaled to great ones. And, finally, the greatest virtue in this kind of speech is the conceit of seriousness. Stories of the gods or heroes should be interwoven where they fit. At he same time, lines of poetry which pertain applicable proverbs, and even clever fictions, as long as the fiction is added by some kind of clever argument.
The chief challenge, then, is to order the materials so that their presentation has a logical connection. This is what Plato faults Lysias for in the Phaedrus, that he has combined his thoughts so carelessly that the first one could be exchanged with the last without any kind of loss. We can only escape this danger if we organize our thoughts in categories so that we do not mix them in an indiscriminate and disordered way like those mixed dishes, but instead arrange it so that the preceding idea reaches into the next one and then shares its boundary, where the second thought begins where the first one has ended, and a sequence emerges in this way, so that we seem to step rather than jump along our way.”
Plerique legentium forsan rem de titulo contemnant, nihil <enim> serium , potuisse fieri de fumo et pulvere: tu pro tuo excellenti ingenio profecto existimabis lusa sit opera4ista an locata. 2. Sed res poscere videtur de ratione scribendi pauca praefari, quod nullum huiuscemodi scriptum Romana lingua extat satis nobile, nisi quod poetae in comoediis vel atellanis adtigerunt. Qui se eiusmodi rebus scribendis exercebit, crebras sententias conquiret, easque dense conlocabit et subtiliter coniunget, Ambr. neque verba multa geminata supervacanea | in-ferciet; tum omnem sententiam breviter et scite concludet. Aliter in orationibus iudiciariis, ubi sedulo curamus ut pleraeque sententiae durius interdum et incautius1finiantur. Sed contra istic laborandum est, ne quid inconcinnum et hiulcum relinquatur, quin omnia ut in tenui veste oris detexta et revimentis sint cincta. Postremo, ut novissimos in epigrammatis versus habere oportet aliquid luminis, sententia clavo aliquo vel fibula terminanda est.
In primis autem sectanda est suavitas. Namque hoc genus orationis non capitis defendendi nec suadendae legis nec exercitus hortandi nec inflammandae contionis scribitur, sed facetiarum et voluptatis.Ubique vero ut de re ampla et magnifica loquendum, parvaeque res magnis adsimilandae comparandaeque. Summa denique in hoc genere orationis virtus est adseveratio. Fabulae deum vel heroum tempestive inserendae; item versus congruenteset proverbia accommodata et non inficete conficta mendacia, dum id mendacium argumento aliquo lepido iuvetur.
Ambr 247 4. Cum primis autem difficile est argumenta ita disponere ut sit ordo eorum rite connexus. Quod Ambr.ille | Plato Lysiam culpat in Phaedro, sententiarum ordinem ab eo ita temere permixtum, ut sine ullo detrimento prima in novissimum locum transferantur, et novissima in primum, eam culpam ita devitabimus, si divisa generatim argumenta nectemus, non sparsa nec sine discrimine aggerata, ut ea quae per saturam feruntur, sed ut praecedens sententia in sequentem laciniam aliquam porrigat et oram praetendat; ubi prior sit finita sententia, inde ut sequens ordiatur; ita enim transgredi potius videmur quam transilire.
“There is something called divine payback.
The happy person is one
Who piously weaves to the end of his day
Without weeping.
But I am singing of the light
Of Agido–I see her
Like the sun, the sun Agido
Invites to observe us
By shining.
But the famous leader of our dance,
Does not let me praise her
Nor rebuke her at all
For she appears outstanding
On her own just as if
Someone were to place
A tall, prize winning horse
With thundering hooves,
A product of rock-covered dreams*,
Amid a grazing herd.”
*Dionysus of Sidon, in recording a comment of Herodian, suggests that what I have translated here as “rock-covered dreams” is really a syncope or metathesis of “winged” so, the strange ὑποπετριδίων ὀνείρων is equivalent to τῶν ὑποπτεριδίων. Martin West, preferring to argue for the strange, suggests that the sense of “rock-covered dreams” is that people shelter under rocks to nap during the day. As a metaphor in a choral poem, it seems more likely to me that this is a linguistic variant than a unique image.
“The fact is that if you remove the ties of goodwill from our world, no house or city can stand tall nor can even agriculture persist! If this is less intelligible, one can perceive how powerful friendship and harmony are from the impact of disagreements and disharmony. What house is so stable or what state is so strong that it cannot be upended by hatred and division?”
Quod si exemeris ex rerum natura benevolentiae coniunctionem, nec domus ulla nec urbs stare poterit, ne agri quidem cultus permanebit. Id si minus intellegitur, quanta vis amicitiae concordiaeque sit, ex dissensionibus atque discordiis percipi potest. Quae enim domus tam stabilis, quae tam firma civitas est, quae non odiis et discidiis funditus possit everti?
Plato, Euthyphro 7c
“So if we were disagreeing about whether something was bigger or smaller, we’d turn to actual measurement to resolve our disagreement?”
“If we dispute about a fact, Cato, you and I can have no disagreement! There’s no difference between what you believe and I do when we compare the facts themselves once the words have been changed.”
Si de re disceptari oportet, nulla mihi tecum, Cato, potest esse dissensio; nihil est enim de quo aliter tu sentias atque ego, modo commutatis verbis ipsas res conferamus
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