Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy:

“A second cause is ignorance, and from thence contempt, successit odium in literas ab ignorantia vulgi; which Junius well perceived: this hatred and contempt of learning proceeds out of ignorance; as they are themselves barbarous, idiots, dull, illiterate, and proud, so they esteem of others. Sint Mecaenates, non deerunt Flacce Marones: Let there be bountiful patrons, and there will be painful scholars in all sciences. But when they contemn learning, and think themselves sufficiently qualified, if they can write and read, scramble at a piece of evidence, or have so much Latin as that emperor had, qui nescit dissimulare, nescit vivere, they are unfit to do their country service, to perform or undertake any action or employment, which may tend to the good of a commonwealth, except it be to fight, or to do country justice, with common sense, which every yeoman can likewise do. And so they bring up their children, rude as they are themselves, unqualified, untaught, uncivil most part. Quis e nostra juventute legitime instituitur literis? Quis oratores aut Philosophos tangit? quis historiam legit, illam rerum agendarum quasi animam? praecipitant parentes vota sua, &c. ’twas Lipsius’ complaint to his illiterate countrymen, it may be ours. Now shall these men judge of a scholar’s worth, that have no worth, that know not what belongs to a student’s labours, that cannot distinguish between a true scholar and a drone? or him that by reason of a voluble tongue, a strong voice, a pleasing tone, and some trivially polyanthean helps, steals and gleans a few notes from other men’s harvests, and so makes a fairer show, than he that is truly learned indeed: that thinks it no more to preach, than to speak, or to run away with an empty cart; as a grave man said: and thereupon vilify us, and our pains; scorn us, and all learning. Because they are rich, and have other means to live, they think it concerns them not to know, or to trouble themselves with it; a fitter task for younger brothers, or poor men’s sons, to be pen and inkhorn men, pedantical slaves, and no whit beseeming the calling of a gentleman, as Frenchmen and Germans commonly do, neglect therefore all human learning, what have they to do with it? Let mariners learn astronomy; merchants, factors study arithmetic; surveyors get them geometry; spectacle-makers optics; land-leapers geography; town-clerks rhetoric, what should he do with a spade, that hath no ground to dig; or they with learning, that have no use of it? thus they reason, and are not ashamed to let mariners, apprentices, and the basest servants, be better qualified than themselves. In former times, kings, princes, and emperors, were the only scholars, excellent in all faculties. Julius Caesar mended the year, and writ his own Commentaries,

 -media inter prealia semper,
Stellarum coelique plagis, superisque vacavit.

[“Who always, in the middle of battles, made time for the motions of the stars and sky, and other matters divine.”]

Antonius, Adrian, Nero, Seve. Jul. &c. Michael the emperor, and Isacius, were so much given to their studies, that no base fellow would take so much pains: Orion, Perseus, Alphonsus, Ptolomeus, famous astronomers; Sabor, Mithridates, Lysimachus, admired physicians: Plato’s kings all: Evax, that Arabian prince, a most expert jeweller, and an exquisite philosopher; the kings of Egypt were priests of old, chosen and from thence,—Idem rex hominum, Phoebique sacerdos: but those heroical times are past; the Muses are now banished in this bastard age, ad sordida tuguriola, to meaner persons, and confined alone almost to universities.”

Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic:

“The classical books are in general the books which have possessed for mankind such vitality of interest that they are still read and enjoyed at a time when all the other books written within ten centuries of them have long since been dead. There must be something peculiar about a book of which the world feels after two thousand years that it has not yet had enough. One would like to know what it is that produces this permanent and not transient quality of interest. And it is partly for that that we study the Classics.”

Basil Gildersleeve, Hellas and Hesperia:

“I have claimed all monosyllables with Anglo-Saxon coloring as our own, and so we have to look to the polysyllabic constituents of our speech for the Latin and Greek contributions to our thesaurus, and as the language does not belong to the scholar, but to the people, it would be a curious question how far the people feel these foreign elements of our composite speech. The man, for instance, who knows no Latin falls instinctively into the Latin strain of English when he essays the grand style. Johnsonese, as it is called, is by no means an extinct lingo, and the example of one of the most robust statesmen our times have known has left on record astounding proof of the fact that the pomp of our English Latin is not inconsistent with vigor. We choose the tallest man for a drum major, and the strongest man is chosen to flaunt the banner in the procession. From one of Mr. Cleveland’s latest compositions I cull the following delightful phrases — actuarial mystery, managerial calculation, senseless resentment, predatory acquisitiveness, demagogic appeal. We may smile, but there is a man behind these words, and those who want honest Anglo-Saxon would be puzzled to find an Anglo-Saxon substitute for ‘innocuous desuetude.’ I am deviating into Latin, it is true, but the Greek words that are imbedded in our language come largely through the Latin, and in technical language, in which Greek makes itself chiefly felt, Latin and Greek have a common cause, and alike roused rebellion on the part of Anglo-Saxon purists, who some decennia ago talked of the ‘unthoroughfaresomeness of stuff,’ instead of ‘impermeability of matter,’ and when ‘stuff’ turned out to be French, substituted for stuff ‘anwork,’ or ‘antimber.’ These are they who would revive ‘Againbite of Inwit’ for ‘remorse of conscience.’ In a book published thirty years ago. The Past, Present and Future of England’s Language, Mr. William Marshall proposed ‘farwrit’ for ‘telegram,’ ‘ligwrit’ for ‘photograph,’ ‘outstandingness’ for ‘person,’ and a lot of ‘wan’s’ besides the obsolete ‘wanhope,’ which is pretty enough. In Germany the rebellion against Greek and Latin and other foreign vocables has led to some absurd results. The German purists of my boyhood were often forced to write the “foreign” word in brackets after the “native” word to explain what the native word meant; and the war against French has been renewed of late years to the confusion of those who learned German half a century ago. The technical Greek terms that have been incorporated into German have to be used in order to explain the new-fangled German terms, and though in modern English the linguistic conscience is often offended by the dreadful compounds that are manufactured after German patterns, when it comes to technical terms, we surrender to the Greek, and one of the side-functions of the Greek professor is to lick into shape the cubs of scientific vocabulary. The old cockney joke of the manufacturer of blacking, ‘We keeps a poet,’ has its modern parallel in ‘We keeps a Grecian.'”

Note: Last year, our friend Festus published a series of posts about medieval scribal complaints. the Original, followed by “Son of Medieval Scribes’ Complaints” and then a two-part Halloween Special. Now, the Son of Medieval Scribes Rides Again! (well, against the Scribes…)

The Medieval Scribes have not died; they just took a good long snooze. It’s time to wake them up and tell them why they have a high nuisance factor sometimes for long-suffering classicists.

Let’s start with some Latin so simple that intermediate Latin students have no problem with it. The opening line of Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis (“Trimalchio’s Dinner”) from his enormous fragmentary novel, the Satyricon:

Already it was the third day. that is, the hope of free [or “open to all”] meal….

Uenerat iam tertius dies, id est expectatio liberae cenae….
Cena Trimalchionis 26.7

What is the problem? Sounds like a cheap date. A free feed. Maybe this proves that classicists have absolutely no sense of humor. Alas, while there are good reasons to suspect that, this is not the evidence.

The phrase after the comma, the free feed phrase, makes me, among others, downright queasy. Look at the “id est” which you surely seen at least occasionally, regularly if you’re an academic, in its abbreviated form “i.e.” Let’s stay with that for some ancient examples.

The second century antiquarian Aulus Gellius in his wonderful notebook Noctes Atticae (“Nights in Attica”), digressing about damned near anything, gets interested in the many taboos surrounding that venerable Roman priesthood, flamen Dialis, possibly the original priest of Jupiter. The priest was surrounded by many taboos, many of them peculiar such as…he did not work and could not be in the presence of work and thus, when he took to the streets, everyone working was ordered to stop. I can think of several undergraduates who’d be naturals for this gig. But our interest is this:

It is religiously wrong to to remove any fire from the flaminia, that is, from the flamen’s dwelling, unless for ritual uses.

Ignem e ‘flaminia’ id est flaminis Dialis domo nisi sacrum efferri ius non est
Noctes Atticae 10.15.8