“Is the reason your letters have not come for so long because everything is going well? Or, is everything good but you are really busy? Or are you not that busy but just have barely any time for writing?
Please take this worry away from me, I can’t handle it! Do it even if you have to send a courier. I will pay the cost and top him too as long as he tells me what I want.
I am well, if to be well is to live in suspense and worry, expecting all day long and fearing that anything which can hurt a person as happened to my dearest friend.”
Plinius Iulio Serviano Suo S.
1Rectene omnia, quod iam pridem epistulae tuae cessant? an omnia recte, sed occupatus es tu? an tu non occupatus, sed occasio scribendi vel rara vel nulla? Exime hunc mihi scrupulum, cui par esse non possum, exime autem vel data opera tabellario misso. Ego viaticum, ego etiam praemium dabo, nuntiet modo quod opto. Ipse valeo, si valere est suspensum et anxium vivere, exspectantem in horas timentemque pro capite amicissimo, quidquid accidere homini potest. Vale.
“Regret for work only begun grips them and then fear of starting again and then the anxiety of a mind that can find no end—because they can neither control their desires nor serve them, the hesitation of a life which cannot make its own way and the stillness of a soul growing dull among failed schemes.
These traits grow worse when people flee toward leisure because of hatred of unsuccessful work, or they flee to private studies which a mind set on more public achievement cannot tolerate because it desires accomplishment and is restless by nature since it certainly has too little comfort in itself. Therefore, once the distractions are removed which vocations themselves offer those who run to them, the mind cannot endure home, quiet, or the walls of a room as it recoils unwillingly at being left to itself.
From this arises that boredom and displeasure and the volatility of mind that can rest nowhere—the sad and sickly tolerance of one’s own leisure. This especially is true when it is a matter of shame to admit the causes and embarrassment suppresses the torments deeper. Desires compressed in a narrow space without escape choke on one another.
This is the origin of mourning and depression and the endless fluctuations of an uncertain mind which hopes for work begun keep in suspense and the failure makes sorrowful. This is where that feeling that makes people despise their own leisure comes from and why they complain they have nothing to do; this also prompts their hateful envy of other’s success. Their sad lack of motion feeds jealousy and they want everyone to fail because they could not succeed themselves. Then from this dismissal of the success of others and their own despair, the mind is enraged against fortune—it complains of the era, and then retreats and ruminates over its trouble until it bores and shames itself.
For the human mind is naturally agile and prone to motion. It welcomes every cause of excitement and reason for being distracted from itself—even more welcome to those worse types who are worn out more freely in pursuing such diversions.”
Tunc illos et paenitentia coepti tenet et incipiendi timor subrepitque illa animi iactatio non invenientis exitum, quia nec imperare cupiditatibus suis nec obsequi possunt, et cunctatio vitae parum se explicantis et inter destituta vota torpentis animi situs. Quae omnia graviora sunt, ubi odio infelicitatis operosae ad otium perfugerunt, ad secreta studia, quae pati non potest animus ad civilia erectus agendique cupidus et natura inquies, parum scilicet in se solaciorum habens; ideo detractis oblectationibus, quas ipsae occupationes discurrentibus praebent, domum, solitudinem, parietes non fert, invitus aspicit se sibi relictum.
Hinc illud est taedium et displicentia sui et nusquam residentis animi volutatio et otii sui tristis atque aegra patientia; utique ubi causas fateri pudet et tormenta introsus egit verecundia, in angusto inclusae cupiditates sine exitu se ipsae strangulant. Inde maeror marcorque et mille fluctus mentis incertae, quam spes inchoatae suspensam habent, deploratae tristem; inde ille adfectus otium suum detestantium querentiumque nihil ipsos habere, quod agant et alienis incrementis inimicissima invidia. Alit enim livorem infelix inertia et omnes destrui cupiunt, quia se non potuere provehere; ex hac deinde aversatione alienorum processuum et suorum desperatione obirascens fortunae animus et de saeculo querens et in angulos se retrahens et poenae incubans suae, dum illum taedet sui pigetque. Natura enim humanus animus agilis est et pronus ad motus. Grata omnis illi excitandi se abstrahendique materia est, gratior pessimis quibusque ingeniis, quae occupationibus libenter deteruntur.
“For how can someone express in words what they have seen? Or how is it possible for a thing to be clear to someone who has only heard it but has not seen it? For just as sight cannot recognize sounds, so too hearing cannot sense colors. So, the speaker speaks but not a color or a thing. How can someone communicate what is not actually in their mind in speech or in any other sign which is different from the thing itself other than through a color, if a thing is seen, or a sound if something is heard?
To start, no one speaks sound or color, but words. For this reason, it is not possible to think a color but only to see it nor a sound but only to hear it. Since we accept that we know and read words, how then does someone who hears the same thing conceptualize it?”
Explosive diarrhoea can in fact be funny when you’re not the one suffering it (and for which a certain Patrocleides was the butt of at least one Aristophanic joke, see Birds 790-2, and scholia ad loc., as was Kinesias in Ecclesiazusae 329-30).
A comically-large stool also features as a joke in Blepyrus’ big entrance in Ecclesiazusae, where his neighbour comments that he ‘must be shitting a cable’ (Eccl. 351-2, ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν ἱμονιάν τιν᾽ ἀποπατεῖς trans. Barrett, Penguin) given how long he has been outside assuming the position. Compare the contemporary idiom ‘laying cable’.
Here the assumed – but in Blepyrus’ case not yet produced – bowel movement is compared to a himonia (ἱμονιά, ἡ), the (long) rope used to draw a water bucket from a well. Anyone who has played Cards Against Humanity, UK edition might also recall the choice phrase ‘curling out the perfect Cumberland Sausage’.
Good luck in the toilet
Keeping cheerful is very important when doing your business. Crouching to defecate leaves one physically exposed and temporarily out-of-action – as well as leaving the body metaphysically open to potential dangers. In much more recent times after all, Godfrey IV (‘the Hunchback’), Duke of Lower Lorraine was murdered on the loo in 1076, as was probably Edmund II (Ironside) in 1016. A graffito from Ephesus (GR 147, in Jansen, Koloski-Ostrow & Moormann (eds.), p. 174) perhaps serious, perhaps not, either way conveys good wishes to the defecator, or defecatrix:
ἀγαθὰ τῷ χέζο(ν)τι
best wishes to he who shits
OR
have a good shit!
Philippi, Archaeological site of Philippoi, Ancient Roman latrinae
Amy Coker has a PhD in Classics from the University of Manchester, UK. She taught and held research positions in University-land for the best part of a decade after her PhD, before jumping ship to school teaching (11-18 year olds) in 2018. She still manages to find time to think and write about Ancient Greek offensive words, pragmatics, and historical linguistics. She can be found on Twitter at @AECoker.
“Sea-traveling sailors with your hateful task,
Living an unenviable life on the shimmering waves,
Revere Zeus the guest-god who rules from on high.
For Zeus Xenios’ rage is great for the man who crosses him”
“Glaukos, overseer, I will place another saying in your thoughts:
Give the dogs dinner first near the courtyard’s gates.
This is better: for the dog hears first when a man
Approaches or if a wild beast dares near the fence.”
We hang on in this place where we lack everything—
Food, drink, clothes—and lay our bodies on the bare ground.
Shut out from home, we sit here despairing of rescue.
But now I see which friends are not true friends,
while the ones who are, sincerely cannot help us.
Such is the calamity for men and women.
May this never happen to those even somewhat kind to me.
(Being somewhat kind: the sure-fire test of who is a friend.)
“Children stranded near the border with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia since the end of August have been struggling with hypothermia, exhaustion, and hunger, while their mental and physical health have deteriorated from their perilous journeys and the drawn-out situation they’re facing.”
“[Until] a few weeks ago unthinkable for me as a medical professional that in the 21st century there are children and women and pregnant women in the middle of the forest in Western civilization and that they are suffering because . . . of the cold, because they don’t have drinking water, and they don’t have food.”
“This has been my belief for a long time now:
One man is born and is just to those near him
While another’s heart lusts after profit
And he is useless to the city, a heavy burden to bear,
The ‘best’ to himself…”
“Children, we are like sailors who have fled
A savage storm’s blows to touch the land
With their hand only to be pounded back
From the shore to the sea by the winds again.”
“…with his current fortune
He announces for all mortals a clear thing to learn,
Do not envy someone who seems to be lucky
Before you see them die. For each day is its own fortune.”
“Terrify this person, if you find anyone like this, with threats of death or exile. Whatever happens to me in so ungrateful a state will happen without any protest from me, not just without fighting back. For what have I accomplished or what I done or to what end have my anxieties and thoughts kept me awake all night if I have actually pursued nothing at all which puts me in a place that cannot be weakened by lapses in fortune or harm from my enemies?
Do you threaten death so I will leave the presence of people or exile so I must depart from wicked men? Death is frightening for people who lose everything along with life but not for those whose glory cannot perish. Exile is frightening to those whose homes are prescribed by a border line, not for those who believe that the whole world is just one city.
No, every bit of sorrow and misfortune oppresses you because you think you are happy and wealthy. Your desires torture you; you are in pain day and night because what you have is not enough and you worry that even this bit will not last. Your memory of wicked deeds works away at you; fear of judges and laws make your heart race. Wherever you look, the harms you have inflicted on others assail you like Furies who will not even let you breathe.”
tum tu hominem terreto, si quem eris nactus, istis mortis aut exilii minis; mihi vero quidquid acciderit in tam ingrata civitate ne recusanti quidem evenerit, non modo non repugnanti, Quid enim ego laboravi aut quid egi aut in quo evigilaverunt curae et cogitationes meae, si quidem nihil peperi tale nihil consecutus sum ut in eo statu essem quem neque fortunae temeritas neque inimicorum labefactaret iniuria? Mortemne mihi minitaris ut omnino ab hominibus, an exilium ut ab improbis demigrandum sit? Mors terribilis est eis quorum cum vita omnia exstinguuntur, non eis quorum laus emori non potest, exilium autem illis quibus quasi circumscriptus est habitandi locus, non eis qui omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducunt. Te miseriae te aerumnae premunt omnes, qui te beatum qui florentem putas; tuae libidines te torquent, tu dies noctesque cruciaris, cui nec sat est quod est et id ipsum ne non sit diuturnum times; te conscientiae stimulant maleficiorum tuorum, te metus exanimant iudiciorum atque legum; quocumque aspexisti, ut furiae sic tuae tibi occurrunt iniuriae quae te respirare non sinunt.
“I know it and you will recognize it in time
That are are neither act rightly now
Nor did you before, because in your love of your strength
You gave first place to your anger, the very thing that always ruins you.”
“We are beggars and strangers, but you are a stranger.
You and I both live thanks to the good will of others
Since we have met the same fate.
A tyrant is in our home—it is terrible—
And he laughs as he mocks us in common.”
Oedipus at Colonus, Jean-Antoine-Théodore Giroust, 1788, Dallas Museum of Art
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, “Bad Reputation”
I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation
You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation
A girl can do what she wants to do and that’s what I’m gonna do
“My Rome praises, loves, and sings my little books—
Every pocket, every hand holds me.
Look: someone turns red, yellow, is dumbstruck, looks again, and hates!
This is what I long for: now my songs have pleased even me.”
Laudat, amat, cantat nostros mea Roma libellos,
meque sinus omnes, me manus omnis habet.
Ecce rubet quidam, pallet, stupet, oscitat, odit.
Hoc uolo: nunc nobis carmina nostra placent.
Perhaps shit-talking is a trope in Roman poetry
Catullus, Carmen 83
“Lesbia talks a lot of shit about me when her husband is around
This brings the greatest pleasure to that fool.
Ass, do you know nothing? She would be sound
If she forgot us in silence—but she rants and she squawks.
She not only remembers me but—a thing sharper to touch,
She’s enraged: it’s like this, she’s burning and talks.”
Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit:
haec illi fatuo maxima laetitia est.
mule, nihil sentis? si nostri oblita taceret,
sana esset: nunc quod gannit et obloquitur,
non solum meminit, sed, quae multo acrior est res,
irata est. hoc est, uritur et loquitur.
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