“Other accounts and those like it circulate,
all contingent on twisted logic,
When nothing develops in our body for us to use–
instead, each developing thing finds the purpose we make.
There was no seeing before the light of eyes arose;
There was nothing said before the tongue began
No, the tongue’s story far preceded speech
And the ears seeded before hearing that first sound.
All these human instruments developed before a function.
There’s no way they’d have evolved for use alone.”
cetera de genere hoc inter quaecumque pretantur,
omnia perversa praepostera sunt ratione,
nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.
nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata,
nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast,
sed potius longe linguae praecessit origo
sermonem, multoque creatae sunt prius aures
quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra
ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus;
haud igitur potuere utendi crescere causa.
Votivbild von 1871 (Motiv: Augen) „Es wurde mit Dank geholfen 1871“ Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin
Valerius Maximus, Memorable Words and Deeds 9.3. Praef.
“Anger, also, or hatred may inspire great waves of emotion in human hearts. The onset of the first is faster, but the second is more lasting in the desire to cause harm. Either feeling is full of turbulence and is never violent without some self-torture because it suffers pain when it wants to cause it, anxious from its bitter obsession that it might not win vengeance.
But there are the most clear examples of the particular property of these emotions which the gods themselves have desired be evident in famous individuals through something said or done rather rashly. Think of how great Hamilcar’s hate for the Roman people was! When he was gazing at his four sons when they were boys, he used to say that he was raising lion cubs of that number for the ruin of our empire! Instead, they converted their upbringing to the destruction of their own country, as it turned out.
That is how great the hate was in a boy’s heart, but it was equally fierce in a woman’s too. For the Queen of the Assyrians, Semiramis, when it was announced to her that Babylon was in rebellion as she was having her hair done, went out right away to put down the revolt with part of her hair still undone and she did not put her hair back in order before she regained power over the city. This is why there is a statue of her in Babylon where she is shown reaching for vengeance in wild haste.”
Ira quoque aut odium in pectoribus humanis magnos fluctus excitant, procursu celerior illa, nocendi cupidine hoc pertinacius, uterque consternationis plenus adfectus ac numquam sine tormento sui violentus, quia dolorem, cum inferre vult, patitur, amara sollicitudine ne non contingat ultio anxius. sed proprietatis eorum certissimae sunt imagines, quas <di> ipsi in claris personis aut dicto aliquo aut facto vehementiore conspici voluerunt.
Quam vehemens deinde adversus populum Romanum Hamilcaris odium! quattuor enim puerilis aetatis filios intuens, eiusdem numeri catulos leoninos in perniciem imperii nostri alere se praedicabat. digna nutrimenta quae in exitium patriae suae, ut evenit, <se> converterent!
ext. In puerili pectore tantum vis odii potuit, sed in muliebri quoque aeque multum valuit: namque Samiramis, Assyriorum regina, cum ei circa cultum capitis sui occupatae nuntiatum esset Babylona defecisse, altera parte crinium adhuc soluta protinus ad eam expugnandam cucurrit, nec prius decorem capillorum in ordinem quam urbem in potestatem suam redegit. quocirca statua eius Babylone posita est, illo habitu quo ad ultionem exigendam celeritate praecipiti tetendit.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 5.2: Theophrastus 41-42
“[Theophrastus] died an old man, eighty-five years old, when he had recently retired. And this is my epigram about him:
This saying was never uttered to any mortal untrue:
Wisdom’s bow breaks when it is left unused
As long as he worked, Theophrastus was well
But once he relaxed, he immediately fell.
People report that when Theophrastus was asked by his students if he had anything to advise them, he said, “I can’t advise anything other than this: Life makes many pleasures seem real through their reputation. At the moment when we begin to live, we die! There’s nothing as useless as the love of glory.
Goodbye and may you be lucky. Give up my way of life because it requires great toil or stand to it well, for great reputation will be yours. There’s more disappointment in life than profit. But since I can’t advise you any longer, make it your business to investigate what is right to do.”
Depiction of Theophrastus on the facade of the historical building of the University of Athens. Painted in the 19th century by the Bavarian painter Karl Ral and the Polish Edward Lebietski. Date 22 May 2022, 17:01:54
Some might say that the Homeric Iliad is unfilmable and I wouldn’t disagree. (But this is over relying on the word film. I think it could be done well in a 12 to 24 part prestige television show style if anyone wants to hear me pitch it…) The truth is that few have actually tried to tell the story of our poem in any faithful way.
The Iliad is in some ways profoundly visual and the linear way its narrative unfolds lends itself to cinematic storytelling. Yet, as anyone who has cringed witnessing an adaptation of their favorite book can attest to, stories of sound and words become overdetermined when transformed to image. We each fill out the sketches of words in our minds to different extents and with varying images. A full screen full of a scene made up of sentences can be jarring and disrupting to the visions that were preexisting. So dominant is the visual mind, in fact, that a film can supplant the narrative we knew before, distorting it. Even when well done (e.g. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings) the new image can exercise a tyrany over the word that is final and alienating.
Fortunately, that is not the case with the 2004 movie Troy, a film that is neither Homer’s epic nor in any conventional sense good. I joined the smart and hilarious crew from Movies We Dig to talk about the movie after 20 years on their podcast. We try to put it in its place and time and make some sense of it. I dare say we were kinder to the film than it was/is to Homer!
If you haven’t listened to this podcast, give the crew a try. They are smart, funny, and kind. It is like hanging out with college friends but all grown up, talking about movies over a beer. I have had the good fortune of hanging out with them before, talking about O Brother, Where Art Thou and The Warriors with my real life college roommate Tim Gerolami.
Apologies for the recent lack of posts. We are on vacation. Stay tuned for upcoming posts about Homer in performance and on how epic is like a cathedral.
The art of humility display goes back centuries. The first recorded humility tweet was written thousands of years ago by a Greek woman named Helen: “Humbled that Achilles and Agamemnon would go to all that trouble!” The tradition continued in biblical times with Jesus of Nazareth: “Humbled to be the Messiah. Couldn’t have done it without Dad.” And one can find high-water moments of humility display throughout the centuries that followed, for example, from the great British general the Duke of Wellington: “Wow. A beef dish. Truly humbled.”
“They imagined that I would be a humbled person after this, when the country was actually making me prouder than I had been at any point in my life when it declared it could not live without me, a single citizen!”
abiectiore animo me futurum, cum res publica maiorem etiam mihi animum quam umquam habuissem daret cum declarasset se non potuisse me uno civi carere
Seneca, Moral Epistles 120, 21-22
“Those people I describe are like this, that kind of man Horace talks about, someone who is never the same or even really like himself. That’s how far he walks in the opposite direction. Did I mention that many are like this? It is the same way with most people. Everyone changes their plans and prayers daily. Someone wants a spouse, then only a bit of fun on the side. Someone wants to rule, then they act more officious than an enslaved person. One day, someone flexes to the point of derision, only to withdraw and shrink into more humility than those who are truly without pretense. They throw money about and then hoard it!
This is how a silly mind exposes itself. It takes this form and then another and then never looks like itself. This is, for me, the worst way to be. I do understand, it is hard to take the shape of one person alone. No one can truly be singular except for the wise person, so the rest of us try on different masks in turn. We seem sober and serious one moment and then wasteful and silly the next. We often change our roles and play a part against where we started.
For this reason, try to play the same character to the end of life’s game that you started at the beginning. Try to make people praise you. If you can’t, at least let them recognize you. Otherwise, when it comes to someone you saw yesterday, they can ask, “who is this person?” That’s how much change you allow. Goodbye!”
Homines isti tales sunt, qualem hunc describit Horatius Flaccus, numquam eundem, ne similem quidem sibi; adeo in diversum aberrat. Multos dixi? Prope est, ut omnes sint. Nemo non cotidie et consilium mutat et votum. Modo uxorem vult habere, modo amicam, modo regnare vult, modo id agit, ne quis sit officiosior servus, modo dilatat se usque ad invidiam, modo subsidit et contrahitur infra humilitatem vere iacentium, nunc pecuniam spargit, nunc rapit.
Sic maxime coarguitur animus inprudens; alius prodit atque alius et, quo turpius nihil iudico, impar sibi est. Magnam rem puta unum hominem agere. Praeter sapientem autem nemo unum agit, ceteri multiformes sumus. Modo frugi tibi videbimur et graves, modo prodigi et vani. Mutamus subinde personam et contrariam ei sumimus, quam exuimus. Hoc ergo a te exige, ut, qualem institueris praestare te, talem usque ad exitum serves. Effice ut possis laudari, si minus, ut adgnosci. De aliquo, quem here vidisti, merito dici potest: “hic qui est?” Tanta mutatio est. Vale.
Hieronymous Bosch, he Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things – Pride, 1486
“You hear me always accusing these men and incriminating them and saying directly that they have taken the money and made off with all the things of the state.”
“Are you listening? He’s incriminating himself for theft!”
audin tu? furti se alligat
Dinarchus, Against Demosthenes 113
“Athenians, you know that these men testify against your concerns and that they are common enemies of the laws and the whole state. Do not accept them, but demand that they defend themselves against the actual charges. And don’t tolerate his madness either, this man who thinks much of his rhetorical abilities and since he has clearly accepted bribes against you, he has been refuted even more as defrauding you.
Punish him as is worthy of yourselves and this state. If you do not, you will permit all those who have been implicated in a single vote and hearing–you will encourage corruption for all those in the future to act against you and the people and even if you try to prosecute those who acquitted them later, it won’t help you at all.”
“And since all aristocratic states tend towards oligarchy, the upper classes bicker over wealth–which is the kind of thing that happened in Sparta, where the estates belong to a very few–and it is possible for the ‘nobles’ to do whatever they want to and to combine their families however they’d like. This is how the state of the Locrians fell thanks to marriage with Dionysius, which never would have happened in a democracy or a well mixed aristocracy.
In particular, Aristocracies experience revolutions quietly, through incremental loosening, as I have said before in general about most constitutions, that even a small thing might be the cause of revolutions. For, whenever they alter the laws of the state a little bit, they always follow it up with a less minor change later, until they have changed the entire system.”
“As long as any person holds on to the beloved flower of youth,
Their heart is light, because they imagine many things are endless.
No one young thinks they will grow old and die.
The healthy person doesn’t spare a thought for sickness either.
Fools have minds like this, because they don’t understand
That mortals have only a short time for youth and life too.
You, learn these things and hold on to the end of your time,
Taking pleasure in the good things in your mind.”
N.B.This fragment is preserved in Stobaeus’ Extracts, under a section entitled “Concerning life, that it is brief and cheap and full of worry” ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΟΥ, ΟΤΙ ΒΡΑΧΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΤΕΛΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΦΡΟΝΤΙΔΩΝ ΑΝΑΜΕΣΤΟΣ.
