“There are many other examples which provide proof for this, but the clearest one of all is that from reading. In this case, if someone sets a person who is illiterate and unaccustomed to reading but not a fool and then place next to him a child who can read, give the child a book and order them to read what is written, it is clear that the man would not be able to believe that while reading one must first understand the image of each letter, then the value of its sound, and then the possible combinations with other letters, all things that require a great deal of time.
When he sees the child reading without pausing seven or five lines, he will not easily be able to believe that the child has not read the book before. He will straight out deny it if the reader observes the rhythm, the pauses, the rough breathings and the smooth breathings too. We should not bar for ourselves, then, anything which is useful because it appears to be difficult at first. No, we must use the force of habit, the means by which humans achieve all good things and even more so when it concerns the matters upon which our very safety depends.”
“You are threatening to become my enemy if I leave you ignorant of what I am doing every day. Look how straightforward I am with you when I tell you even this. I am listening to a philosopher and I am on my fifth day listening to his lectures at school, starting at two in the afternoon.
“A fine time of life for that!” you say. What’s wrong with it? What’s more foolish than not learning because you haven’t don so in a while? “What, then? Should we act like the groupies and the kids?” Well, things are pretty good for me if this alone besmirches my old age.
This school accepts people from every age. “Should we grow old just to follow the kids?” I will enter the theater as an old man or get taken to the games and refuse any bout fought to the finish without me, but I should be embarrassed at attending a philosopher’s talk? As long as you are ignorant, you have to learn. If we trust the old saying, as long as you live! And nothing fits this situation better: as long as you are alive you must keep learning how to live.”
Inimicitias mihi denuntias, si quicquam ex iis, quae cotidie facio, ignoraveris. Vide, quam simpliciter tecum vivam: hoc quoque tibi committam. Philosophum audio et quidem quintum iam diem habeo, ex quo in scholam eo et ab octava disputantem audio. “Bona,” inquis, “aetate.” Quidni bona? Quid autem stultius est quam, quia diu non didiceris, non discere? “Quid ergo? Idem faciam, quod trossuli et iuvenes?” Bene mecum agitur, si hoc unum senectutem meam dedecet. Omnis aetatis homines haec schola admittit. “In hoc senescamus, ut iuvenes sequamur?” In theatrum senex ibo et in circum deferar et nullum par sine me depugnabit ad philosophum ire erubescam?
Tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu nescias; si proverbio credimus, quamdiu vivas. Nec ulli hoc rei magis convenit quam huic: tamdiu discendum est, quemadmodum vivas, quamdiu vivas.
“However much my work, thought, and toil has added to learning and as much as the progressive consensus in those matters has sketched out and uncovered while men of repute and philosophers compete with each other in these fields, I have now articulated as much as I was able. I did not leave out anything which I knew because I was lazy, as if I looked down on or dishonored some wild beast without reason or speech.
No, here too that lust for knowledge which lives deep within me and is native there has set me afire. I am not ignorant of the fact that some of those who look keenly for money and are bewitched by honors, and power, and everything which gains a reputation may attack me if I spent my free time on these projects when I could have been primping myself and frequenting courtyards and courting wealth.
Instead, I have concerned myself with foxes and lizards and bugs and snakes and lions, with what a leopard does, how affectionate storks are to their young, how the nightingale singles sweetly, how wise an elephant is, the shapes of fishes, the migrations of cranes, the natures of serpents and the rest of the things which this carefully written composition contains and preserves.
It is not at all dear to me to be numbered among these wealthy men and to be compared to them. But if, instead, I would try and desire to join that crowd among whom wise poets and men clever at seeking out and examining the secrets of nature and the writers who approach the most extensive experience think it right to join, it is clear that I am a far better judge of the difference than these other people are. Or I would prefer to excel in a single school of knowledge than to gain the praised riches and possessions of your most wealthy people. Well, that’s enough about these things for now.”
“A summary of different arguments by Plutarch of Charoneia showing that learning is recollection
Do we think one thing because of another thing? Not unless it was known beforehand. This is a Platonic argument.
Do we supplement ideas that are missing things? This is also Platonic
Are children better at learning because they are nearer to the period before life when memory is preserved? This is an obvious approach.
Are different people more capable for different kinds of learning?
Have many people taught themselves entire art forms?
Do babies laugh while they’re sleeping when they don’t while they are awake? Indeed, many speak when asleep even though they have not yet otherwise.
Are some people frightened of silly things even though they are brave, like someone afraid of a weasel, or a rooster for no clear reason?
Is discovery not attainable otherwise? For no one would seek what we know nor for what we never knew previously and we couldn’t find what we do not know.
Is truth conversant with reality once forgetfulness has been removed? An argument based on diction.
Is Memory the mother of the Muses, since unclear memory is the reason for our examinations.”
Unhappy Dido burned from head to toe
and wandered around the city frazzled,
as might a doe struck by an arrow
when, at ease in a Cretan glade, from far off
a shepherd hunting with winged darts pierced her,
and left, unaware of what he had done.
The doe roams Dicte’s woodlands and pastures,
the lethal arrow affixed to her flank.
Now Dido tours the walls with Aeneas,
shows off Sidon’s wealth, the city half built.
She begins to speak but falters midway.
Now she hosts the same feast at each day’s end:
mad to hear again his struggles in Troy,
she implores, and hangs on his words once more.
Augustine, Confessions. I.13.
I was made to learn about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, while oblivious of my own wanderings, and to weep for dead Dido who for love took her own life. Meanwhile, amid these things, my own death far away from you, O God who is my life, I bore, in my great wretchedness, with dry eyes.
For what is more wretched than the wretch who does not pity himself but cries over the death of Dido, which came of love for Aeneas, and does not cry over his own death, which came of not loving you, O God . . . ?
Vergil
uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit
pastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrum
nescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo.
nunc media Aenean secum per moenia ducit
Sidoniasque ostentat opes urbemque paratam;
incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit;
nunc eadem labente die convivia quaerit,
Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores
exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore.
Augustine
… cogebar Aeneae nescio cuius errores, oblitus errorum meorum, et plorare Didonem mortuam, quia se occidit ab amore, cum interea me ipsum in his a te morientem, deus, vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem miserrimus.
Quid enim miserius misero non miserante se ipsum et flente Didonis mortem, quae fiebat amando Aenean, non flente autem mortem suam, quae fiebat non amando te, deus . . .?
“A person of learning always has wealth on on their own.
Simonides, who wrote exceptional lyric poems,
Thanks to this lived more easily with poverty
He began to go around the Asia’s noble cities
Singing the praise of victors for a set price.
Once he had done this to make a wealthier life
He planned to make a seaward journey home.
For it was on Ceos people claim he was born.
He climbed aboard a ship which an awful storm
And its advanced age caused to break apart in the sea.
Some grabbed their money-belts, others their valuable things,
Safeguards for their life. A rather curious man asked
“Simonides, you are saving none of your riches?”
He responded, “Everything that is mine is with me”
Few swam free, because most died weighed down by a drowning burden.
Then thieves arrived and seized whatever each man carried.
They left them naked. By chance, Clazomenae, that ancient city,
Was nearby. The shipwrecked men went that way.
There lived a man obsessed with the pursuit of poetry
Who had often read the poems of Simonides,
He was his greatest distant admirer.
Once he knew Simonides from his speech alone
He greedily brought him home, and decorated him
With clothes, money, servants. The rest were carrying
Signs asking for food. When Simonides by chance
Would see these men he reported “I said that all my things
Were with me: and you lost everything you took.”
Homo doctus in se semper divitias habet.
Simonides, qui scripsit egregium melos,
quo paupertatem sustineret facilius,
circum ire coepit urbes Asiae nobiles,
mercede accepta laudem victorum canens.
Hoc genere quaestus postquam locuples factus est,
redire in patriam voluit cursu pelagio;
erat autem, ut aiunt, natus in Cia insula.
ascendit navem; quam tempestas horrida
simul et vetustas medio dissolvit mari.
Hi zonas, illi res pretiosas colligunt,
subsidium vitae. Quidam curiosior:
“Simonide, tu ex opibus nil sumis tuis?”
“Mecum” inquit “mea sunt cuncta.”Tunc pauci enatant,
quia plures onere degravati perierant.
Praedones adsunt, rapiunt quod quisque extulit,
nudos relinquunt. Forte Clazomenae prope
antiqua fuit urbs, quam petierunt naufragi.
Hic litterarum quidam studio deditus,
Simonidis qui saepe versus legerat,
eratque absentis admirator maximus,
sermone ab ipso cognitum cupidissime
ad se recepit; veste, nummis, familia
hominem exornavit. Ceteri tabulam suam
portant, rogantes victum. Quos casu obvios
Simonides ut vidit: “Dixi” inquit “mea
mecum esse cuncta; vos quod rapuistis perit.
Wreck of a small boat in Nea Artaki, Euboea, Greece
“There are many other examples which provide proof for this, but the clearest one of all is that from reading. In this case, if someone sets a person who is illiterate and unaccustomed to reading but not a fool and then place next to him a child who can read, give the child a book and order them to read what is written, it is clear that the man would not be able to believe that while reading one must first understand the image of each letter, then the value of its sound, and then the possible combinations with other letters, all things that require a great deal of time.
When he sees the child reading without pausing seven or five lines, he will not easily be able to believe that the child has not read the book before. He will straight out deny it if the reader observes the rhythm, the pauses, the rough breathings and the smooth breathings too. We should not bar for ourselves, then, anything which is useful because it appears to be difficult at first. No, we must use the force of habit, the means by which humans achieve all good things and even more so when it concerns the matters upon which our very safety depends.”
“But, truly, the knowledge of many disciplines is pleasurable”. Ok, then, let’s keep only what is necessary from these arts. Do you think that the person who considers superficial matters equal to useful ones and for this reason makes his home a museum of expensive products is reprehensible but not the man who is obsessed with the superfluous aspects of academia? To want to know more than is enough is a kind of excessive delusion.
Why? Well, this extreme pursuit of the liberal arts makes people annoying, wordy, bad-mannered, and overly self-satisfied, even though they have not learned the basics because they pursue the useless.
The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand books. I would pity him if had only read that many useless works. In these books he searched for Homer’s homeland, the real mother of Aeneas, whether Anacreon is more licentious or just drunk, whether Sappho was promiscuous and other various questions which, if you learned them, would have been necessarily forgotten. Go on, don’t say life is long. No, when you turn to your own people too, I will show you many things which should be pruned back with an ax.”
“At enim delectat artium notitia multarum.” Tantum itaque ex illis retineamus, quantum necessarium est. An tu existimas reprendendum, qui supervacua usibus conparat et pretiosarum rerum pompam in domo explicat, non putas eum, qui occupatus est in supervacua litterarum supellectile? Plus scire velle quam sit satis, intemperantiae genus est.
Quid? Quod ista liberalium artium consectatio molestos, verbosos, intempestivos, sibi placentes facit et ideo non discentes necessaria, quia supervacua didicerunt. Quattuor milia librorum Didymus grammaticus scripsit. Misererer, si tam multa supervacua legisset. In his libris de patria Homeri quaeritur, in his de Aeneae matre vera, in his libidinosior Anacreon an ebriosior vixerit, in his an Sappho publica fuerit, et alia, quae erant dediscenda, si scires. I nunc et longam esse vitam nega. Sed ad nostros quoque cum perveneris, ostendam multa securibus recidenda.
These are themes close to the old man’s heart, elsewhere too:
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae 13
“This sickness used to just afflict the Greeks, to discover the number of oars Odysseus possessed, whether the Iliad was written before the Odyssey, whether the poems belong to the same author, and other matters like this which, if you keep them to yourself, cannot please your private mind; but if you publish them, you seem less learned than annoying.”
Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere, quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssia, praeterea an eiusdem essent auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae sive contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam iuvant sive proferas, non doctior videaris sed molestior.
Seneca, Moral Epistle 108
“But some error comes thanks to our teachers who instruct us how to argue but not how to live; some error too comes from students, who bring themselves to teachers not for the nourishing of the soul, but the cultivation of our wit. Thus what was philosophy has been turned into philology.”
Sed aliquid praecipientium vitio peccatur, qui nos docent disputare, non vivere, aliquid discentium, qui propositum adferunt ad praeceptores suos non animum excolendi, sed ingenium. Itaque quae philosophia fuit, facta philologia est.
ca. 1350 | The Morgan Library & Museum
J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (Ausonius)
“It is difficult to imagine that a man capable of writing such trifles as these (not to mention his lines on the Caesars and on celebrated cities) had some ten years previously (in 378 a.d.) filled the splendid position of praetorian praefect of the provinces of Gaul (an official whose sway extended even over Spain and the opposite coast of Africa, and over the southern part of Britain), and, in the four years between 376 and 380, had seen his father honorary praefect of lllyricum, his son and son-in-law proconsuls of Africa, and his nephew praefect of Rome. It seems as if, on his return to the scenes of his early work as a professor at Bordeaux, the praefect relapsed into the ‘ grammarian ‘, spending his time on learned trifles, which are among the least important products of scholarship, and consoling himself in his tedious task by recalling Virgil’s famous phrase: — ‘in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria’. We may regret that Ausonius does not appear to have used his great opportunities for reforming the educational system which prevailed in the schools of the Western Empire, and thus rendering a lasting service to the cause of learning; but we may allow him the credit of having possibly inspired the memorable decree promulgated by Gratian in 376, which improved the status of public instructors by providing for the appointment of teachers of rhetoric and of Greek and Latin ‘ grammar ‘ in the principal cities of Gaul, and fixing the amount of their stipends ‘. “
Pythagoras, fr. b (58D.4) 4.1.49 (Frag. 35 Wehrli)
“Generally, they believed that it was necessary to posit that there is no greater evil than anarchy, since a human being cannot naturally save themselves when no one is watching over them. This is what they used to say then about those who rule and those who are ruled.
They used to claim that those who rule must not only have knowledge but also a love of humanity and that those who are ruled must not only obey but they should love their rulers. And they also believed that people at every age should practice: children practice reading and writing and other kinds of knowledge; adolescents learn the customs and laws of the state; adults focus on the actions and politics of their communities.
They believed that the aged should spend their time exhorting people, framing rules and giving advice with all of the knowledge they have gained, not to act foolishly like babies, nor adolescents like children, nor adults like adolescents, nor should the elderly act like crazy people.”
“A summary of different arguments by Plutarch of Charoneia showing that learning is recollection
Do we think one thing because of another thing? Not unless it was known beforehand. This is a Platonic argument.
Do we supplement ideas that are missing things? This is also Platonic
Are children better at learning because they are nearer to the period before life when memory is preserved? This is an obvious approach.
Are different people more capable for different kinds of learning?
Have many people taught themselves entire art forms?
Do babies laugh while they’re sleeping when they don’t while they are awake? Indeed, many speak when asleep even though they have not yet otherwise.
Are some people frightened of silly things even though they are brave, like someone afraid of a weasel, or a rooster for no clear reason?
Is discovery not attainable otherwise? For no one would seek what we know nor for what we never knew previously and we couldn’t find what we do not know.
Is truth conversant with reality once forgetfulness has been removed? An argument based on diction.
Is Memory the mother of the Muses, since unclear memory is the reason for our examinations.”
