H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: a-, an-:
a-, an-, not or without. Punctilious word-making requires that these should be prefixed only to Greek stems; of such compounds there are some hundreds, whereas Latin-stemmed words having any currency even in scientific use do not perhaps exceed half a dozen. There are the botanical ascapular and acaulous, the biological asexual and acaudate, and the literary amoral. This last being literary, there is the less excuse for its having been preferred to the more orthodox non-moral. Amoral is a novelty whose progress has been rapid. In 1888, the OED called it a nonce-word, but in 1933 full recognition had to be conceded. These words should not be treated as precedents for future word-making.
Never did anyone feel greater joy than I did when I read your Invective against Poggio, that endlessly garrulous shit talker. You shut the mouths of his zealous little partisans who used to mock me for preferring your writings to all of their scribbles after they read his Invective against you. I triumph over them and, as they say, return like for like; and this hurts them to no end. They marvel at your genius and your learning, and I brought them from sickness into health so that now they always have the name of Lorenzo in their mouths.
Nulla umquam maior letitia fuit quam ea quam nuper ex invectiva tua in Pogium, procacissimum hominem et maledicum accepi; quod multis Pogii studiosissimis, qui me ridebant, accepta illius in te Invectiva, quod omnium scriptis tua preferebam, os compressisti. Triumpho ego inter illos et par pari, ut aiunt, refero; quod eos vehementissime mordet. Admirantur ingenium tuum et doctrinam et ex insanis sanissimos eos feci, adeo ut Laurentium semper in ore habeant.
“What did I want? What have I gained from my good intention?” I gain even in torture; I gain the fire. Even if the fire consumes my limbs bit by bit and overcomes my whole body, even as my heart is filled up with good conscience yet still drips blood, it will be delighted by the flame whose light proves its pure intention.”
‘Quid mihi volui? Quid nunc mihi prodest bona voluntas?’” Prodest et in eculeo, prodest et in igne; qui si singulis membris admoveatur et paulatim vivum corpus circumeat, licet ipsum cor plenum bona conscientia stillet: placebit illi ignis, per quem bona fides conlucebit.
Seneca, De tranquilitate animi 15-16
“Although I should not give too much information, I am stalked by the weakness of good intention in all things. This worry, that I am slowly slipping behind or–what I fear more–that I am wavering like someone who is always just about to fall and may actually be much worse off than I can sense. We tend to look favorably upon our own affairs and this inclination impedes our judgment.
I imagine many people would have made it up that hill to wisdom if they had not already imagined they had already arrived, if they had not told themselves lies about their own character, as if they passed by everyone with eyes firmly shut. There’s no good reason to think that other people’s praise is more harmful to us than our own. Who is so daring as to tell themselves the truth?”
Ne singula diutius persequar, in omnibus rebus haec me sequitur bonae mentis infirmitas. Quin ne paulatim defluam vereor, aut quod est sollicitius, ne semper casuro similis pendeam et plus fortasse sit quam quod ipse pervideo; familiariter enim domestica aspicimus et semper iudicio favor officit.
Puto multos potuisse ad sapientiam pervenire, nisi putassent se pervenisse, nisi quaedam in se dissimulassent, quaedam opertis oculis transiluissent. Non est enim, quod magis aliena iudices adulatione nos perire quam nostra. Quis sibi verum dicere ausus est?
Know yourself – Youth between Vice and Vertu, attributed to Jacob Jordaens
“A life without parties is a long journey without inns.”
βίος ἀνεόρταστος μακρὴ ὁδὸς ἀπανδόκευτος.
Plato, Laws 653d
“Great. Now, since many of these kinds of education—which accustom us to correctly manage pleasures and pains—lose their effectiveness during life, the gods took pity on the human race because it is born to toil and assigned to us as well parties as vacations from our toil. In addition, they have also given us the Muses, Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus as party-guests so that people can straighten out their habits because they are present at the festival with the gods.”
“Certainly we have furnished our mind with the greatest reliefs from our labors, maintaining games and feasts throughout the year in public and in private living with care and finery, all those things which provide pleasure to expel our grief. Because of the greatness of our city, everything comes to us from the earth and we are lucky enough to harvest all of the goods from our own land with no less familiar pleasure than those we gather from other peoples.”
“Not too far off from Menoeceus’ grave is where people claim that Oedipus’ sons fought each other in single combat and died at each other’s hands. The battle is commemorated by a pillar on top of which is a stone shield. They also mark out the place where the Thebans claim Hera was tricked by Zeus into nursing Herakles as a child.
The whole area is called Antigone’s Drag. When she realized that she did not have the strength to carry her brother’s body, even though she wanted to, she came up with the back-up plan of dragging him. So she hauled him right up to Eteokles’ burning pure and pushed him on top.”
“Have the ancestors’ statues wear the prizes from your voice.
Put on your long Thyestes outfit in front of Domitius’ feet
Or maybe the mask of Antigone or Melanippe
And hang your lyre from a marble colossus.”
maiorum effigies habeant insignia vocis,
ante pedes Domiti longum tu pone Thyestae
syrma vel Antigones aut personam Melanippes,
et de marmoreo citharam suspende colosso.
Greek Anthology, 8.37.5-8
“You have obtained a blessed station! What about the mask
Of the girl in your hand, what play is she from?
Call her Antigone if you want or Electra–you’re not wrong either way
For both are at the peak of the playwright’s achievement.”
‘There’s some conflict in the stories about the heroine Antigone and her sister Ismene. For example, Ion claims in his dithyrambs that both sisters were burned to death in the temple of Hera by Laodamas, Eteocles’ son. Mimnermus, however, insists that Ismene was killed by Tydeus at Athena’s direction as she had sex with Periklymenos. These are the strange stories recorded about the heroines.”
F.A. Hayek. Individualism: True and False, in Individualism and Economic Order.
“Quite as important . . . are the traditions and conventions which evolve in a free society and which, without being enforceable, establish flexible but normally observed rules . . . The readiness ordinarily to submit to the products of a social process which nobody has designed and the reasons for which nobody may understand is also an indispensable condition if it is to be possible to dispense with compulsion.”
Below are three voices from Antigone: dictatorial power, submission to such power, and customs-based resistance to it.
Sophocles, Antigone. Creon to Haemon (666-672):
You must heed the man the city puts in charge–
On small matters, just things,
Things neither small nor just . . .
No evil is greater than having no one in charge.
We will die in the worst way
If, the power of custom notwithstanding,
We transgress a tyrant’s decree or power . . .
Since I’m acting under compulsion,
I will obey the men in charge.
I did not believe your proclamations,
Mortal things, had strength enough
To trump customs credited to the gods.
These customs are alive,
Not today, not yesterday, but always,
And no one knows how long ago they appeared.
“Once I add a few more things, I will complete my proposals. Beyond all other things, it is necessary that fathers, by avoiding transgressions and doing everything that is required, offer themselves as a clear example to their children, so that when looking at their father’s life as if in a mirror they may turn away from shameful deeds and words. Whoever makes the same mistakes as those for which they punish their sons become their own accusers under their sons’ names without realizing it . Men who live life poorly in every way do not possess the right to criticize their slaves, much less their sons. In addition, they could become their sons’ advisors and teachers of crime. For whenever old men behave shamefully, it is by necessity that their young are the most shameless.”
Erinna, The Distaff, fragment [Ed. pr. Vitelli-Norsa, Papiri Greci e Latini, ix. 1929, no. 1090, p. 137, Plate IV. = LCL360, 120]
“…Into the deep wave
You leapt from white horses with maddened feet–
But I hollered, “I’ve got you, friend!” And when you
Were the tortoise you ran, bouncing, through the courtyard.
I mourn deeply, mulling over these memories, poor Baukis.
These outlines of you remain here in my heart, girl,
Still warm–those pleasures we took before are fading coals.
We held on to our dolls in our bedrooms when we were girls
Pretending to be new brides without cares. Then near dawn
Your mother, who measures out the wool for the weaving women,
Came to call you to help with salting the meat.
What fear the Mormo brought us when we were small–
It had enormous ears on its head a and walked along
On four feet as it changed its face from one woman to another.
But when you went to a man’s bed, dear Baucis, then
You forgot all the things you heard from your mother when
You were small. Aphrodite cast forgetfulness over your thoughts.
So I set aside my grief for you, even as I mourn.
My feet are not unclean enough to leave this home.
I may not yet look upon a corpse or mourn with hair unbound.
For still shame’s blush overtakes me.”
According to the Suda, this is part of a larger poem.
Suda. s.v. Erinna (eta, 521)
“Erinna, Teian or Lesbian, or some say Telian. Telos is a little island near Knidos. Some believe that she was Rhodian too. She was an epic poet. She wrote The Distaff, a poem in Aeolic and Doric dialect of around 300 lines. She wrote epigrams too. She died a 19 year old virgin. Her verses were judged equal to Homer’s. She was a companion of Sappho and fromd around the same time.”
“What a pitiful overthrow of the state–so fast and twisted, so rushed! Who will have the ability to entrust these events to words in a way that they seem facts instead of fiction? Who will have the ease of mind to read them as something other than fantastic, even when they have been faithfully recorded in time?”
o miseram et in brevi tam celerem et tam variam rei publicae commutationem! quisnam tali futurus ingenio est, qui possit haec ita mandare litteris ut facta, non ficta videantur [esse]? quis erit tanta animi facilitate qui quae verissime memoria propagata fuerint non fabulae similia sit existimaturus?
A Pensioner of the Revolution, by John Neagle, The American Revolution Institute collection Note: The portrait depicts Joseph Winter, a homeless veteran living on the street in Philadelphia.
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