Money, Wealth and Greed

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These sayings come from the Gnomologium Vaticanum

 

29 “He [Aristippos] said it was right to learn to live with a little so that we might do nothing shameful for money”

῾Ο αὐτὸς ἔφη δεῖν ἐθίζειν ἀπὸ ὀλίγων ζῆν, ἵνα μηδὲν αἰσχρὸν χρημάτων ἕνεκεν πράττωμεν.

 

120 “Aristôn the philosopher used to say that wealthy people who are cheap are like mules who carry gold and silver but eat straw.”

᾿Αρίστων ὁ φιλόσοφος τοὺς πλουσίους καὶ φειδωλοὺς ὁμοίους ἔφησεν εἶναι τοῖς ἡμιόνοις, οἵτινες χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον φέροντες χόρτον ἐσθίουσιν.

 

265 “Democritus used to say that greed is the mother-city of every wickedness”

Δημόκριτος τὴν φιλαργυρίαν ἔλεγε μητρόπολιν πάσης κακίας.

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December, Once a Month, but Now The Whole Year

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Seneca the Younger, Moral Epistle 18

“December is the month and the city is especially sweaty. Permission is given to public excess. Everything echoes with overwhelming preparation as of there were some difference between the Saturnalia and business as usual! So there is no difference and is seems to me that the man wasn’t wrong who said that December was once a month but is now a year.”

December est mensis; cum maxime civitas sudat. Ius luxuriae publicae datum est. Ingenti apparatu sonant omnia, tamquam quicquam inter Saturnalia intersit et dies rerum agendarum. Adeo nihil interest, ut non videatur mihi errasse, qui dixit olim mensem Decembrem fuisse, nunc annum.

I was reminded of this passage when I walked into the grocery store yesterday and witness a Halloween candy display in mid-July.

 

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Greek is More Important

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J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship Vol. II:

“The author’s [Guillaume Bude’s] learning was generously recognised by Scaliger, and much of the material stored in his pages was incorporated in the Greek Thesaurus of Henri Estienne. The little volume De Philologia (1530) is a plea for the public recognition of classical scholarship, in the form of a dialogue between Budaeus and Francis I. In his far more extensive work De Transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum (1534) he describes the philosophy of Greece as a preparation for Christianity, and defends the study of Greek from the current imputation of ‘ heresy ‘. His French treatise, De l’Institution du Prince, written in 1516, was not printed until 1547. He here declares that ‘every man, even if he be a king, should be devoted to philology’, which is interpreted as ‘the love of letters and of all liberal learning’. Such learning, he adds, can only be attained through Greek and Latin, and of these Greek is the more important.”

“Not to Know Greek Was to Know Nothing”

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J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship Vol. 2:

“Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540— 1609) was of Italian descent.  At Agen on the Garonne, he was the constant companion of his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger, during the last four years of that father’s life. Between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, he was required to produce daily a short Latin declamation, and also to keep a written record of the perennial flow of his father’s Latin Verse. It was thus that he acquired his early mastery of Latin. But he was already conscious that ‘not to know Greek, was to know nothing’. Hence, on his father’s death, he went to Paris to attend the lectures of Turnebus; but finding these too advanced for his purpose, he was compelled to be his own teacher. With the aid of a Latin translation, he worked through the whole of Homer in twenty-one days; and, in four months, he perused all the Greek poets.”

Our Past is Already Death’s Property

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Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 1.1:

“Act thus, my Lucilius: justify yourself, collect and save all of the time which to this point has been taken off, or stolen, or simply slipped away. Persuade yourself that the matter stands as I write: some time is stolen from us, some is drawn off, and some just flows away. The most shameful loss, though, is the one which occurs through negligence. If you wish to take note, you will see that a large part of life slips away from those who act badly, the greatest portion slips away from those who do nothing, and all of life slips away from those who are busy doing something else. What person can you cite who places a price upon his time, who takes an account of the day, who understands that he is dying every day? We are deceived in this, that we look forward to death: a large part of it has already gone by, and whatever part of our lives is in the past is death’s property now. Therefore, act as you claim to do, and embrace every hour; thus it will happen that you weigh out less of tomorrow, if you throw your hand upon today. Life runs away when it is delayed. All things, my Lucilius, are foreign to us: time alone is ours. Nature has granted us the possession of this one fleeting, slippery thing, from which she expels whoever wishes it. The stupidity of humans is so great that they allow the smallest, most worthless things (certainly, those which can be retrieved) to be added to their account when they have accomplished them, but no one thinks that he owes any debt when he receives time, though this is the one thing which no one is able to pay back readily.

You will perhaps ask how I act, I who deliver these precepts to you. I will confess honestly: as happens among the diligent partaker of luxury, I keep an account of the cost. I can not say that I have wasted nothing, but I can give an account of why and how I wasted it. I will explain the causes of my poverty. But it happens to me as to many who have been reduced to poverty through no fault of their own: all ignore him, no one helps him. What then? I do not consider a man poor if whatever is left to him seems enough to him. I advise you, though to hold on to what is yours, and do it in good time. For, as the ancients say, ‘Parsimony is too late on the ground,’ for not only is the remaining portion at the bottom the smallest, but it is also the worst. Goodbye.”

Ita fac, mi Lucili: vindica te tibi, et tempus quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut subripiebatur aut excidebat collige et serva. Persuade tibi hoc sic esse ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus. [2] Quem mihi dabis qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat, qui diem aestimet, qui intellegat se cotidie mori? In hoc enim fallimur, quod mortem prospicimus: magna pars eius iam praeterit; quidquid aetatis retro est mors tenet. Fac ergo, mi Lucili, quod facere te scribis, omnes horas complectere; sic fiet ut minus ex crastino pendeas, si hodierno manum inieceris. [3] Dum differtur vita transcurrit. Omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est; in huius rei unius fugacis ac lubricae possessionem natura nos misit, ex qua expellit quicumque vult. Et tanta stultitia mortalium est ut quae minima et vilissima sunt, certe reparabilia, imputari sibi cum impetravere patiantur, nemo se iudicet quicquam debere qui tempus accepit, cum interim hoc unum est quod ne gratus quidem potest reddere.

[4] Interrogabis fortasse quid ego faciam qui tibi ista praecipio. Fatebor ingenue: quod apud luxuriosum sed diligentem evenit, ratio mihi constat impensae. Non possum dicere nihil perdere, sed quid perdam et quare et quemadmodum dicam; causas paupertatis meae reddam. Sed evenit mihi quod plerisque non suo vitio ad inopiam redactis: omnes ignoscunt, nemo succurrit. [5] Quid ergo est? non puto pauperem cui quantulumcumque superest sat est; tu tamen malo serves tua, et bono tempore incipies. Nam ut visum est maioribus nostris, ‘sera parsimonia in fundo est’; non enim tantum minimum in imo sed pessimum remanet. Vale.

Quipping with Diogenes

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These sayings come from the Gnomologium Vaticanum

 

168 “Diogenes, after he saw a small city with big gates, said “Lock the gates so the city can’t escape!”

Διογένης θεασάμενος μικρὰν πόλιν μεγάλας πύλας ἔχουσαν ἔφη· „κλείσατε τὰς πύλας, μὴ ἡ πόλις ἐξέλθῃ”.

 

189 “When [Diogenes] was asked what is evil in life, he said “A pretty woman.”

῾Ο αὐτὸς ἐρωτηθεὶς τί κακὸν ἐν βίῳ ἔφη· „γυνὴ καλὴ τῷ εἴδει”.

 

201 “[Diogenes] to say that he had everything that happened in the tragedies: for he was a beggar, a wanderer, and he had an ephemeral life.”

῾Ο αὐτὸς ἔφη πάντα ἔχειν τὰ ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις· εἶναί τε γὰρ πτωχός, πλανήτης, βίον ἔχων ἐφήμερον·

Image result for ancient greek sleep Diogenes the Cynic

Healing the Spirit: Sayings on Doctors and Philosophy

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The following anecdotes are taken from the Gnomologium Vaticanum

 

37 “When people were asking [Aristippos] why he spent time with wretched men he said “Because doctors also minister to the sick.”

῾Ο αὐτὸς εἰπόντος τινὸς αὐτῷ, διὰ τί τοῖς μοχθηροῖς πλησιάζει, εἶπεν· „ὅτι καὶ ἰατροὶ τοῖς νοσοῦσιν.”

 

412 “Nikokles used to say that doctors are lucky because the sun shines on their successes while the earth hides their mistakes.”

῾Ο αὐτὸς τοὺς ἰατροὺς εὐτυχεῖς ἔλεγεν, ὅτι τὰς μὲν ἐπιτυχίας αὐτῶν ὁ ἥλιος ὁρᾷ, τὰς δὲ ἀποτυχίας ἡ γῆ καλύπτει.

 

289 “Erasistratos [the doctor] used to say that medicine was philosophy’s sister: one treats maladies of the spirit, the other treats those of the body.”

῾Ο αὐτὸς τὴν ἰατρικὴν τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἔφησεν ἀδελφὴν εἶναι· τὴν μὲν γὰρ τὰ ψυχικά, τὴν δὲ τὰ σωματικὰ θεραπεύειν ἀῤῥωστήματα.

 

226 “After [Demosthenes] saw that a bad wrestler was acting as a doctor he said “Now you’ve found a way you can throw everybody down!”

῾Ο αὐτὸς ἰδὼν κακὸν παλαιστὴν ἰατρεύοντα „νῦν” εἶπεν „εὕρηκας μέθοδον, δι’ ἧς πολλοὺς καταβαλεῖς”.

Image result for Ancient Greek doctor vase

Don’t Speak Latin!

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Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster:

“All this while, by mine aduise, the childe shall vse to speake no latine: For, as Cicero saith in like mater, with like wordes, loquendo, male loqui discunt [by speaking, they learn to speak badly]. And, that excellent learned man, G. Budaeus, in his Greeke Commentaries, sore complaineth, that whan he began to learne the latin tonge, vse of speaking latin at the table, and elsewhere, vnaduisedlie, did bring him to soch an euill choice of wordes, to soch a crooked framing of sentences, that no one thing did hurt or hinder him more, all the daies of his life afterward, both for redinesse in speaking, and also good iudgement in writinge.”

Teacher Says: Homer is Better than Real Life!

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Julian, Misopogon 351d:

“By Zeus and the Muses, my tutor often told me when I was still just a little boy, ‘Don’t let the vulgar mob of your peers prevail upon you to run off to the theater in eagerness to see the show. You want a horse race? There is a fine one in Homer. Go get your book and read through it. You hear them talking about dancing pantomimes? Forget them! The children dance in a more manly way among the Phaiakians. You have there the citharist Phemios and the singer Demodokos. There are plants in Homer which are more delightful to hear of than to see.”

῎Εφη δέ μοι πολλάκις, εὖ ἴστε, μὰ Δία καὶ Μούσας, ὁ παιδαγωγὸς ἔτι παιδαρίῳ κομιδῇ· «Μή σε παραπειθέτω τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἡλικιωτῶν ἐπὶ τὰ θέατρα φερόμενον ὀρεχθῆναί ποτε ταυτησὶ τῆς θέας. ῾Ιπποδρομίας ἐπιθυμεῖς; ἔστι παρ’ ῾Ομήρῳ δεξιώτατα πεποιημένη· λαβὼν ἐπέξιθι τὸ βιβλίον. Τοὺς παντομίμους ἀκούεις ὀρχηστάς; ἔα χαίρειν αὐτούς· ἀνδρικώτερον παρὰ τοῖς Φαίαξιν ὀρχεῖται τὰ μειράκια· σὺ δὲ ἔχεις κιθαρῳδὸν τὸν Φήμιον καὶ ᾠδὸν τὸν Δημόδοκον. ῎Εστι καὶ φυτὰ παρ’ αὐτῷ πολλῷ τερπνότερα ἀκοῦσαι τῶν ὁρωμένων·

 

Greek and Latin, Those Learned Tongues

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Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster:

“Yet neuerthelesse, the rudenes of common and mother tonges, is no bar for wise speaking. For in the rudest contrie, and most barbarous mother language, many be found can speake verie wiselie: but in the Greeke and latin tong, the two onelie learned tonges, which be kept, not in common taulke, but in priuate bookes, we finde alwayes, wisdome and eloquence, good matter and good vtterance, neuer or seldom a sonder. For all soch Authors, as be fullest of good matter and right iudgement in doctrine, be likewise alwayes, most proper in wordes, most apte in sentence, most plaine and pure in vttering the same.

And contrariwise, in those two tonges, all writers, either in Religion, or any sect of Philosophie, who so euer be founde fonde in iudgement of matter, be commonlie found as rude in vttering their mynde. For Stoickes, Anabaptistes, and Friers: with Epicures, Libertines and Monkes, being most like in learning and life, are no fonder and pernicious in their opinions, than they be rude and barbarous in their writinges. They be not wise, therefore that say, what care I for a mans wordes and vtterance, if his matter and reasons be good. Soch men, say so, not so moch of ignorance, as eyther of some singular pride in themselues, or some speciall malice or other, or for some priuate & perciall matter, either in Religion or other kinde of learning. For good and choice meates, be no more requisite for helthie bodies, than proper and apte wordes be for good matters, and also plaine and sensible vtterance for the best and depest reasons: in which two pointes standeth perfite eloquence, one of the fairest and rarest giftes that God doth geue to man.

Ye know not, what hurt ye do to learning, that care not for wordes, but for matter, and so make a deuorse betwixt the tong and the hart. For marke all aiges: looke vpon the whole course of both the Greeke and Latin tonge, and ye shall surelie finde, that, whan apte and good wordes began to be neglected, and properties of those two tonges to be confounded, than also began, ill deedes to spring: strange maners to oppresse good orders, newe and fond opinions to striue with olde and trewe doctrine, first in Philosophie: and after in Religion: right iudgement of all thinges to be peruerted, and so vertue with learning is contemned, and studie left of: of ill thoughtes cummeth peruerse iudgement: of ill deedes springeth lewde taulke. Which fower misorders, as they mar mans life, so destroy they good learning withall.”