“They celebrate the New Year for me daily and I make the day happy and helpful with good thoughts and an open mind—for the mind is never greater than when it puts aside all useless things and has created peace by fearing nothing and has made itself rich by desiring nothing at all.”
Cotidie mihi annum novum faciunt, quem ego faustum et felicem reddo bonis cogitationibus et animi magnitudine, qui numquam maior est, quam ubi aliena seposuit et fecit sibi pacem nihil timendo, fecit sibi divitias nihil concupiscendo.
Ptolemy, Tetrabilos 2.92
“Therefore, it is simply the case that no single point is the beginning of a circle and none is the first [the solstices or equinoxes]; those who have written on them before have used any one of the four dates differently, using each on as a starting point, following their own argumentation based on the nature of each point in time. Naturally, each on of these parts has some attractive reason for why it might rightly be the beginning of the New Year”
“The most noble thing is to be just.
The best thing is to live without sickness; the sweetest is when
Someone has the ability to get what he wants each day.”
“Come on! Tell me why the new year begins in the cold
When it would be better to begin in the springtime.
That’s when everything blooms, when time renews,
And new life stretches out from the vine’s bud,
When the trees are clothed again in new leaves
And grain just starts to sprout from its seed in the ground.
Then birds warm the air’s chill with their songs
While flocks play and made life in the fields.
Then the suns rise kind and the traveling swallow
Alights to build her nest under the barn’s high beam.
Then the field gives way to the plow and finds life again–
This should have rightly been called the New Year.”
I pressed him much about this. And he did not delay
But answered with two verses in his own way:
“In winter the newest sun rises into the oldest one’s wane
And so Apollo and the year make their start the same.”
“dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annus,
qui melius per ver incipiendus erat?
omnia tunc florent, tunc est nova temporis aetas,
et nova de gravido palmite gemma tumet,
et modo formatis operitur frondibus arbor,
prodit et in summum seminis herba solum,
et tepidum volucres concentibus aera mulcent,
ludit et in pratis luxuriatque pecus.
tum blandi soles, ignotaque prodit hirundo
et luteum celsa sub trabe figit opus:
tum patitur cultus ager et renovatur aratro.
haec anni novitas iure vocanda fuit.”
quaesieram multis: non multis ille moratus
contulit in versus sic sua verba duos:
“bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis:
principium capiunt Phoebus et annus idem.”
Jacob Philipp Hackert, “Fireworks over Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome”
“They celebrate the New Year for me daily and I make the day happy and helpful with good thoughts and an open mind—for the mind is never greater than when it puts aside all useless things and has created peace by fearing nothing and has made itself rich by desiring nothing at all.”
Cotidie mihi annum novum faciunt, quem ego faustum et felicem reddo bonis cogitationibus et animi magnitudine, qui numquam maior est, quam ubi aliena seposuit et fecit sibi pacem nihil timendo, fecit sibi divitias nihil concupiscendo.
Ptolemy, Tetrabilos 2.92
“Therefore, it is simply the case that no single point is the beginning of a circle and none is the first [the solstices or equinoxes]; those who have written on them before have used any one of the four dates differently, using each on as a starting point, following their own argumentation based on the nature of each point in time. Naturally, each on of these parts has some attractive reason for why it might rightly be the beginning of the New Year”
“The most noble thing is to be just.
The best thing is to live without sickness; the sweetest is when
Someone has the ability to get what he wants each day.”
“The most noble thing is to be just.
The best thing is to live without sickness; the sweetest is when
Someone has the ability to get what he wants each day.”
Palaiophron’s post on the perils of teaching Latin when our textbooks and pedagogical traditions present issues like rape and slavery without adequate framing or criticism. This was the inspiration for his fantastic Eidolon essay.
A long quotation from C. S. Lewis where he ruminates on semiotics issues, presenting the great line “The very formula, ‘Naus means a ship,’ is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. ”
The ancient Greeks used the middle finger as an obscene gesture. This post explains why and what it means. It also encourages giving tyrants “the bird”
A kind and sympathetic reading of Polyphemos’ depiction in the Aeneid (and elsewhere)
What Can We learn from This?
None of these posts consist of what we have seen as the bread-and-butter of this site (passages from Latin and Greek we like, translated with original text often juxtaposed with other texts). That’s ok. We post a lot and the posts that aren’t just about specific passages or Latin/Greek have broader appeal.
Salacious content attracts readers. (Although the post on Ancient Viagra was less well-read than the masturbation post. Hmmmmm.) People like to read about profanity, masturbation, and feces. Given the nature of the internet, this is not surprising.
More surprising for its consistency over the past few years is how much people enjoy the “meta-sententiae”, the modern scholarly comments on the nature of scholarship and the classics (items 3 and 8). When such comments are quoted from well-known intellectuals (C. S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf, respectively), they are especially welcome. I am happy that Palaiophron’s well-thought and eloquent reflection on the difficulties of teaching and talking about classical content is so popular. It is also probably a sign of our times that the list of female authors from antiquity is popular too. We should expand it and add to it. Palaiophron’s thoughts on political correctness also provide one of the rhetorically most potent essays this site has ever witnessed. Similarly, his reading of Vergil’s depiction of Polyphemos is one of the sweetest and most sensitive literary responses on the site.
“The most noble thing is to be just.
The best thing is to live without sickness; the sweetest is when
A man has the ability to get what he wants each day.”
“Now let us dine and drink in my home
And take pleasure while we recall to one another
Our grievous pains. For a man may take pleasure even in pain,
Later, when he has suffered and come through so many things.”
“Perhaps one day it will be a joy to remember even these things”
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit
Plato, Hippias Minor 372a-c: Willingness to Learn is My Sole Good Quality
“Can you see, Hippias, that I am earnest when I say I am obsessed with questioning wise men? I probably have only this one good quality, since I exhibit others that are plainly wretched: for I stumble over facts and don’t know what they are. This is a sufficient sign of it for me, that whenever I meet one of the men famed for his wisdom or those all the Greeks recognize for their wisdom, I seem to know nothing…
And what greater sign of ignorance is there than differing from wise men? But I do have one wondrous quality that saves me: I am not ashamed to learn; no I investigate and ask questions and have much gratitude for anyone who answers—I have never deprived someone of thanks. For I have never denied that I learned something and pretended that the thing learned was some personal discovery. Instead, I praise the one who taught me because he is wise and I show off what I have learned from him.”
