Battista Guarino, de ordine docendi et studendi XXX:
“Students should not be content simply to hear lectures from a teacher; they should also read the approved commentaries written upon these authors. They should read these works for themselves thoroughly, and note their thoughts and the strength of their words all the way to the roots, as they say. They should look for new expressions which are suited to particular occasions. It is also extremely useful to write explanations in the margins of the books, all the more so if they think that they will bring them forth ‘into the light’ someday. We are, indeed, more attentive to those things from which we hope to earn some praise. This type of exercise does wondrous work of sharpening the intellect and polishing the tongue; it produces a promptitude in writing, brings forth a more perfect knowledge of the world, it confirms the memory, and offers students something like a ready storehouse of explanation and an aid to memory.”
Johan Michael Bretschneider, Scholars in a Study
Nec sint solum a praeceptore audire contenti, sed qui in auctores commentaria scripserunt et probati sunt, eos ipsimet perlegant et radicitus, ut aiunt, sententias et vocabulorum vim annotent. Novas ipsi sententias et ad rem accomodatas exquirant. Explanationes quoque in libros scribere vehementer conducet, sed tamen magis si sperabunt eas in lucem aliquando prodituras. Attentiores enim ad ea sumus, ex quibus laudem venari studemus. Hoc exercitationis genus mirifice acuit ingenium, linguam expolit, scribendi promptitudinem gignit, perfectam rerum noticiam inducit, memoriam confirmat, postremo studiosis quasi quandam expositionum cellam promptuariam et memoriae subsidium praestat.
“Certainly those who are overcome by emotions are predisposed in this way. For their rages and desires for sex and other types of enticements obviously transform the body too and creates madness in some. Hence, we must call those who are like this the same as those who are uncontrolled.
For being about to speak words is not at all a sign of understanding. For people who are in these states of mind often recite proofs and the verses of Empedocles. But people who have just learned something will repeat the words when they don’t yet understand them. For knowledge needs to be integrated and this requires time. So, those who talk when they are uncontrolled must be considered as if they were actors reciting their lines.”
“In addition, the harsher something is by nature, the more it must be peppered with pleasures. A speech’s content is less suspicious thanks to disguise; and the audience’s pleasure aids much the speech’s credibility. Unless, of course, we believe that Cicero put it badly in his suggestion that ‘laws keep quiet among arms’ or ‘sometimes a sword is handed to us by the laws themselves.’ In these cases, the devices must be consideration as an ornament, not an impediment.”
quoque quid est natura magis asperum, hoc pluribus condiendum est voluptatibus, et minus suspecta argumentatio dissimulatione, et multum ad fidem adiuvat audientis voluptas: nisi forte existimamus Ciceronem haec ipsa male in argumentatione dixisse, ‘silere leges inter arma’, et ‘gladium nobis interim ab ipsis porrigi legibus’. In his tamen habendus is est modus ut sint ornamento, non impedimento.
“THE word `research’ as a university ideal had, indeed, been ominously spoken in Oxford by that extremely cantankerous person, Mark Pattison, some years ago; but the notion of this ideal, threatening as it did to discredit the whole tutorial and examinational system which was making Oxford into the highest of high schools for boys, was received there with anger and contempt. In Balliol, the birthplace and most illustrious home of this great system, it was regarded with especial scorn. If the prize fellowships and the fellowships of All Souls were to be no longer regarded as the legitimate reward of those who had won First Classes in the Schools; if the means they provided were not to be spent in helping ambitious young men on the first rungs of the ladder of worldly success, but used, as Mark Pattison’s ill-mannered supporters suggested, in the maintenance of researchers, ambitious of the fame of scholars, would not the whole tutorial system be deprived of one of its important features, and the university endowments be seriously abused? This ideal of endowment for research was particularly shocking to Benjamin Jowett, the great inventor of the tutorial system which it threatened. I remember once, when staying with him at Malvern, inadvertently pronouncing the ill-omened word. `Research!’ the Master exclaimed. `Research!’ he said. `A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.’ At this sweeping statement I protested; whereupon I was peremptorily told, if I knew of any such results of value, to name them without delay. My ideas on the subject were by no means profound, and anyhow it is difficult to give definite instances of a general proposition at a moment’s notice. The only thing that came into my head was the recent discovery, of which I had read somewhere, that on striking a patient’s kneecap sharply he would give an involuntary kick, and that by the vigour or lack of vigour of this `knee jerk’, as it is called, a judgement could be formed of his general state of health.
`I don’t believe a word of it,’ Jowett replied. `Just give my knee a tap.’
I was extremely reluctant to perform this irreverent act upon his person, but the Master angrily insisted, and the undergraduate could do nothing but obey. The little leg reacted with a vigour which almost alarmed me, and must, I think, have considerably disconcerted that elderly and eminent opponent of research.”
“Indeed, some things are useful for listeners and others are good for readers. A speaking narrator causes excitement with his energy and feeds our attention not only with vivid images but with the material itself. Everything comes alive and is moved and we feed on new ideas as if they are just born in charm and worry. We are hand not just on the fate of the plot but on the danger faced by those who narrate it. In addition, the voice itself, proper movement, and performance shaped as each segment will demand are the most powerful aspects of recitation and, as I may say, teacheverything equally.
When it comes to reading, the audience’s judgment can be more certain since a listener’s prejudice often turns either by their own taste or by the shouting of those who are responding to the performance. Disagreement makes us feel shame and our unacknowledged humility keeps us from trusting our own responses even though pretty terrible stuff is pleasing to the majority of people. A summoned audience, moreover, will even applaud for things they don’t like. The opposite occurs too: poor taste often can’t tell when something has been finely put.
Reading is private—it does not move through us with the force of live performance and you’re allowed to re-read often just in case you are uncertain or want to memorize it. We may return to the text and work it again the way we let our food be chewed and worked because we swallow it for easier digestion. In this way, our reading is not raw but it is ready for memory through repeated softening and preparation.”
Alia vero audientis, alia legentis magis adiuvant. Excitat qui dicit spiritu ipso, nec imagine tantum rerum sed rebus incendit. Vivunt omnia enim et moventur, excipimusque nova illa velut nascentia cum favore ac sollicitudine: nec fortuna modo iudicii sed etiam ipsorum qui orant periculo adficimur. Praeter haec vox, actio decora, accommodata ut quisque locus postulabit pronuntiandi vel potentissima in dicendo ratio, et, ut semel dicam, pariter omnia docent. In lectione certius iudicium, quod audienti frequenter aut suus cuique favor aut ille laudantium clamor extorquet. Pudet enim dissentire, et velut tacita quadam verecundia inhibemur plus nobis credere, cum interim et vitiosa pluribus placent, et a conrogatis laudantur etiam quae non placent. Sed e contrario quoque accidit ut optime dictis gratiam prava iudicia non referant.
Lectio libera est nec ut actionis impetu transcurrit, sed repetere saepius licet, sive dubites sive memoriae penitus adfigere velis. Repetamus autem et tractemus et, ut cibos mansos ac prope liquefactos demittimus quo facilius digerantur, ita lectio non cruda sed multa iteratione mollita et velut confecta memoriae imitationique tradatur.
“What then do we call retirement and what people is it right to call retired? Should we call those people retiring who have stepped away from their appropriate work and actions? For example, if someone is Athenian and it is necessary that he join the army to defend the country when the Spartans are invading Attica or because Philip or other enemies are coming but he leaves for Megara or Aigina because he does not want to join the army or risk his life—should this person be called retired?
Or if someone who has acquired great wealth leaves the city in order to avoid paying taxes? Or what if someone who is capable of healing the sick, when his friends and neighbors are ill, leaves them and goes to some other country so that he might avoid getting ill and having the work of assisting them?
Or, if some other person, when it is necessary that he perform a duty for the city, to govern, or help the governors, or to act as a guard, does not want to lose sleep but, so that he will be exempt from all of them and no one will rebuke him or stop him from drinking and sleeping and taking it easy, he goes somewhere else too. Should this person be called retired? No, it is clear that these people are fleeing and running, and there is no excuse or forgiveness for this kind of leisure and vacation.
Instead, then, perhaps we must call “retiring” those who leave unprofitable matters or wastes of time which are not their concern and who provide themselves some kind of leisure from annoying frivolity. And yet, were that the case, the person who moves from one city to another or from one place to another should to be said to “retire”. For wherever this person goes there will be many obstacles which prevent proper accomplishment.
The truth is that being around someone too much either drinking or playing games or wasting time in the kinds of harmful and disadvantageous pastimes people find everywhere are these kinds of things—hanging around every person you meet chatting on and listening to worthless ideas, blathering on about the emperor’s concerns or those of that terrible person whoever he is. For the fool is not in control of his own mind, but he is bounced and led easily around by any random excuse or meeting.”
“I had from youth up a restless desire to be always improving myself, other people, all things, all received ways of doing anything. This was a mental instinct which lay far below any adopted opinions in politics, and has been a cause of no little trouble to me. It is impossible for me to see anything done without an immediate suggestion of how it might be better done. I cannot travel by railway without working out in my mind a better time-table than that in use. On the other hand, this restlessness of the critical faculty has done me good service when turned upon myself. I have never enjoyed any self-satisfaction in anything I have ever done, for I have inevitably made a mental comparison with how it might have been better done. The motto of one of my diaries, ‘Quicquid hie operis fiat poenitet,’ may be said to be the motto of my life. The same is true of anything I may have written. I write, rewrite, revise, and then with difficulty let it go to press, seeing how much better another review would make it.”
“Although he was always ready for delivering a speech or composing a poem, and extremely well-versed in every subject, yet he often mocked, scorned, and degraded the professors of all of those subjects. Moreover, he often competed with these professors and philosophers by publishing his own books and poems. The philosopher Favorinus was once reproached by Hadrian for using a certain word, and yielded to the emperor on that point; when his friends argued that he had been wrong to yield to Hadrian on the use of a word which good authors often employed, Favorinus excited some laughter by replying, ‘Friends, you’re giving me bad advice if you won’t allow me to think that the man who has thirty legions is the most learned man of all.'”
Et quamvis esset oratione et versu promtissimus et in omnibus artibus peritissimus, tamen professores omnium artium semper ut doctior risit, contempsit, obtrivit. Cum his ipsis professoribus et philosophis libris vel carminibus invicem editis saepe certavit. Et Favorinus quidem, cum verbum eius quondam ab Hadriano reprehensum esset atque ille cessisset, arguentibus amicis, quod male cederet, Hadriano de verbo, quod idonei auctores usurpassent, risum iocundissimum movit; ait enim: “non recte suadetis, familiares, qui non patiminime illum doctiorem omnibus credere, qui habet triginta legiones.”
“Maker is an inner tree bark which comes from India, in regarding its flavor it is sufficiently sour, fragrant as well with a brief bitterness. But it also has a sweet smell similar to most Indian fragrances. The substance itself seems to come from a mixture, which is mostly of cold earth but a little bit of something warm and course—this is why it dries rather powerfully and gets sour and because of that mixes with the intestinal and dysenteric forces: it is in the third order of medicines which dry but it produces no different effect along the range of heat and cold*”
*special thanks to the first comment for useful suggestions and addressing some of my very deep ignorance about Galen
Paulus 7.3.12
“Maker is a bark which comes from India, when dry in the third stage, it is in the middle of hot and cold. It is harsh and coarse. For this reason it works into the intestinal and dysenteric [regions].”
“These are [medicines] for the wealthy: “costos, amômos, and the one called maker, which is sufficiently hot with a sour taste. The Kurêneaic juice is useful for the elimination of hardened phlegm or something of the substances which accompany this, just like lasar is.”
