“What is the Odyssey about except about love,
A woman alone, pursued by many suitors while her husband’s gone.”
aut quid Odyssea est nisi femina propter amorem,
dum vir abest, multis una petita procis?
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1406b
“Alcidamas called the Odyssey a ‘fine mirror of human life’ ”
καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον
Michael Apostolios, Proverbia 14.56
“I will make your house a wooden horse”: this means I will make it disappear. Themistokles’ groom said this. It comes from the Wooden Horse at Troy, the one Odysseus used to take the city.”
“But I think that we old men might listen happily to someone reciting the Iliad and the Odyssey well and quickly declare that they were completely victorious! Who, then, would rightly be the winner—that’s the next issue, right?”
“Homer didn’t think it right to tell where he came from, who his parents were, no even what he should be called. Nope—instead, he’s happy if we don’t know the name of whoever composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
“Since you sing of Penelope’s loom because you discovered a fine painting of it and it seems to have everything a loom requires–it is stretched well on the warp and the puffs sit beneath the threads, and the shuttle practically sings while Penelope herself weeps tears that Homer uses to melt the snow as she unmakes what she weaves–look at the spider weaving next door, to see if it does not weave Penelope and the Seres well too, even though their designs are fine and their work is barely visible.
This entryway is to a house that is not so wealthy. You might even say that it is abandoned by its owners and that the courtyard inside seems abandoned. The columns no longer raise the roof; they have dropped down and fallen. No, only spiders live here–for this animal loves to weave in peace.
Look at the threads too: as the spiders spit out their thread they hang it down to the floor–and so the painter has them climbing down or scurrying up and trying to figure out to fly, as Hesiod claims. They weave their homes in the corners: the flat ones and the hollow ones. The flat ones are good for the summer heat; they hollow they weave for the winter cold.”
“You would have outlasted the years of old Nestor,
If I had been allowed to measure your destiny’s threads.
But now, all I can manage is this: “Earth, have a light touch on his bones.
Please keep your weight aloft as if balanced.
For this we will always give you garlands, forever give you perfumes.
You will never thirst, but always be covered in flowers.”
Nestoris annosi vicisses saecula, si me
dispensata tibi stamina nente forent.
nunc ego, quod possum: “Tellus, levis ossa teneto,
pendula librato pondus et ipsa tuom.
semper serta tibi dabimus, tibi semper odores,
non umquam sitiens, florida semper eris
From the Suda
s.v. Agnoei d’arakhnê paidas hôs paideuetai: “A spider doesn’t know how she teaches her children”. This is because after she feeds them, she dies at their hands. This is a proverb about taking care of something against your own interest.”
The spider is industrious, never ceasing to build its net from a long thread drawn from its body. It is an aerial worm that takes its nourishment from the air. Its web is fragile.
“What is the Odyssey about except about love,
A woman alone, pursued by many suitors while her husband’s gone.”
aut quid Odyssea est nisi femina propter amorem,
dum vir abest, multis una petita procis?
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1406b
“Alcidamas called the Odyssey a ‘fine mirror of human life’ ”
καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον
Michael Apostolios, Proverbia 14.56
“I will make your house a wooden horse”: this means I will make it disappear. Themistokles’ groom said this. It comes from the Wooden Horse at Troy, the one Odysseus used to take the city.”
“But I think that we old men might listen happily to someone reciting the Iliad and the Odyssey well and quickly declare that they were completely victorious! Who, then, would rightly be the winner—that’s the next issue, right?”
“Homer didn’t think it right to tell where he came from, who his parents were, no even what he should be called. Nope—instead, he’s happy if we don’t know the name of whoever composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
“I don’t beg you not to mess around because you’re pretty,
But to spare miserable me the need of knowing about it.
I am not some censor who orders you to be a prude,
But only someone who asks you to try to be discreet.
Whoever can deny her mistakes, hasn’t messed up at all.
Only the admitted fault brings dishonor.
What madness it is to confess in light things done at night?
And to report openly deeds performed in secret?”
Non ego, ne pecces, cum sis formosa, recuso,
sed ne sit misero scire necesse mihi;
nec te nostra iubet fieri censura pudicam,
sed tamen, ut temptes dissimulare, rogat.
non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,
solaque famosam culpa professa facit.
quis furor est, quae nocte latent, in luce fateri,
et quae clam facias facta referre palam?
“Avoid Kharybdis and come close to Skyla.” This is similar to the saying, “I avoided it by finding a better evil”
They say about Skyla that she was a Tyrrhenian woman, something if a beast, who was a woman down to the navel but she grew dog heads beneath that point. The rest of her body was a serpent. This kind of a cerature is very silly to imagine. But here is the truth. There were the islands of the Tyrrenians, which used to raid the coasts of Sicily and the Ionian bay. There was a trirereme which had the named Skyla. That trireme used to overtake other ships often and use their food and there was many a story about it. Odysseus fled that ship. trusting a strong and favorable wind and he told this story in Corcyra to Alkinoos, how he was pursued and how he fled and what the shape of the ship was. From these stories, the myth was formed.”
“Charybdis is an obvious name for luxury and endless drinking. Homer has allegorized manifold shamelessness in Skylla, which is why she would logically have a belt of dogs, guardians for her rapacity, daring, and pugnacity. “
“But you, go away from “the smoke and the wave” and depart the ridiculous concerns of mortal life as from that fearsome Charybdis without touching it at all, don’t even, as the people say, brush it with your littlest toe.”
“For satiety seems to be becoming worn out in pleasures from the soul suffering in some way with the body, since the soul does not shirk from its pleasures. But when it is interwoven, as it is said, with the body, it suffers the same things as Odysseus, just as he was held, clinging to the fig tree, not because he desired it or delighted in it, but because he feared Charybdis lurking below him. The soul clings to the body and embraces it in this way not because of goodwill or gratitude but because it fears the uncertainty of death.
As wise Hesiod says, “the gods keep life concealed from human beings.” They have not tied the soul to the body with fleshly bonds, but they have devised and bound around the mind one cell and one guard, our uncertainty and distrust about our end. If a soul had faith in these things—“however so many await men when they die”, to quote Heraclitus—nothing would restrain it at all.”
“What is the Odyssey about except about love,
A woman alone, pursued by many suitors while her husband’s gone.”
aut quid Odyssea est nisi femina propter amorem,
dum vir abest, multis una petita procis?
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1406b
“Alcidamas called the Odyssey a ‘fine mirror of human life’ ”
καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον
Michael Apostolios, Proverbia 14.56
“I will make your house a wooden horse”: this means I will make it disappear. Themistokles’ groom said this. It comes from the Wooden Horse at Troy, the one Odysseus used to take the city.”
“But I think that we old men might listen happily to someone reciting the Iliad and the Odyssey well and quickly declare that they were completely victorious! Who, then, would rightly be the winner—that’s the next issue, right?”
“Homer didn’t think it right to tell where he came from, who his parents were, no even what he should be called. Nope—instead, he’s happy if we don’t know the name of whoever composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
Here’s a quotation [wrongly] attributed to Aristotle:
“Aristotle on Excellence: Excellence is never an accident; It is the result of high intention; sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities. “
So, if you’re on social media and decorating your virtual life with “ancient quotes” there is a pretty high chance they are nonsense masquerading as something an ancient might say. But there’s nothing remotely Aristotelian about this except for the use of words like “excellence”, “intelligent” and maybe “accident”. If that’s your criteria for making something Aristotelian, you’re better off misattributing the entire dictionary than this absurd b-school pabulum.
If you do a google search for books, this is really popular in the last decade or so, you find this in self help books, business books, etc. But if you search for 20th century, you find a variant that is not attributed to Aristotle:
Quality is never an accident; It is the result of high intention; sincere effort, intelligent and skillful execution; […]. quality represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”
There are several variants that combine various elements of these quotations. This is definitely not Aristotle: it is some bizarre love child of modern business child and the “excellence is a habit” misquotation. This is Rhetorica ad Fictum levels of fake.
Also, if you look carefully at the books data, the quote is attributed to a Willa Foster before it becomes pinterest fodder for the Aristotle hound. Here’s a discussion trying to figure out who Will A. Foster is. Some people identify the quote as coming from this William A. Foster.
The closest Aristotle gets to this is here:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105b
“It is therefore well said that a person becomes just by doing just things and prudent from practicing wisdom. And, no one could ever approach being good without doing these things. But many who do not practice them flee to argument and believe that they are practicing philosophy and that they will become serious men in this way. They act the way sick people do who listen to their doctors seriously and then do nothing of what they were prescribed. Just as these patients will not end up healthy from treating their body in this way, so most people won’t change their soul with such philosophy.”
Dealing with the fragmentary nature of the evidence for the ancient world is frustrating to say the least. Take for example the so-called inventor of satire Gaius Lucilius. Out of the thirty books of his satires we have a mere few hundred lines.
Most of these books are filled with seemingly random one-liners such as “et mercedimerae legiones,” which means “and wage-earning legions.” After reading several lines that were similar to this one, I struggled to appreciate Lucilius’ art. And even after digesting massive amounts of secondary scholarship on the satirist I found myself lost. I wrestled to figure out what was it that made reading Lucilius so frustrating. The answer was so obvious. He is in fragments. Perhaps if I understood the context of “ut iure peritus (like one skilled in law),” it would not have given me such a headache. And while not all of Lucilius’ satires are this obscure a large chunk of them are.
The frustration and puzzlement I felt reminded me of how I feel when I read a politician’s twitter. Like Lucilius, tweets can often be confusing. For example, on February 10th, 2013 Sean Spicer tweeted “whomever just unfollowed me- show yourself you coward.” I remember my high school teacher at the time sharing this in class and having more questions than I did answers. Besides the fact that I did not know who Sean Spicer was at the time. I was confused by the nature of the tweet itself.
Sean had over 400,000 followers on twitter and he could have been unfollowed by anyone of them. Apparently, Sean was not being sarcastic at the time and was legitimately upset by losing a follower. Similarly, Lucillius could have been referring to any number of wage-earning legions. Even scholars with an impressively dense breadth of knowledge on the context in which Lucilius wrote have scrambled trying to understand lines like this. In fact, it is unlikely that we will ever know Lucilius’ merry band of money-hungry legions. And poor Sean will probably never know who unfollowed him.
In Book 14 of his satires Lucilius writes that, “nemo est halicarius posterior te,” which means “No wheat-grinder is second to you.” There are a few things that frustrate the reader here. One, who is the worst miller of all time that Lucilius is referring to here? Two, it appears as though Lucilius disagrees with the common spelling of alicarius, which scholars debated over. However, the correct spelling is alicarius. So, was Lucilius just trying to be funny? Did he not know any better? The sad truth is, we will never know.
On May 31st, 2017 Donald J. Trump tweeted “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” He later claimed that this was an intentional mistake, but the truth was that he fell asleep while tweeting. It is obvious that he meant to say conference not covfefe. However, regardless of the spelling error there is still a problem with this tweet that puzzles the reader. Let us imagine that Trump had tweeted out “Despite the constant negative press conference.” There is still a lack of context that leaves the reader guessing. What happened as a result? Was he successful in some business deal? Did his approval rating go up? Did he pass a new bill? The questions that come to one’s mind are endless.
Another issue is the matter of invective. Twitter seems to be a great place for such things these days. If you scroll through Twitter at any time during the day, there is guaranteed to be some post where someone is putting someone else on blast. This is not unlike Roman satire. Lucilius for example makes a satire out of a legal despute between a certain Albicius and a man named Scaevola. In fact, this seems to be the longest fragment of Lucilius that we have recovered thus far. It reads (Lucilius 87-93). :
Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum, municipem Ponti, Tritani,
centurionum, praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque, maluisti dici. Graece
ergo praetor Athenis, id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedis, saluto: ‘chaere’, inquam,
‘Tite’. lictores, turma omnis chorusque [cohorsque Manutius]: ‘chaere, Tite’. hinc hostis
mi Albucius, hinc inimicus (Lucilius 87-93).
Albucius, you wanted to be called a Greek instead of a Roman and a Sabine, a citizen of
Pontius and Tritanus, of centurions, of illustrious and first men and of standard-bearers.
Therefore, I as a praetor salute you at Athens in Greek, when you get to me, as you
wanted “Hey, Titus,” I said. The lictors, all of the squadron and the chorus, said “Hey
Titus.” (My translation).
While reading Lucilius is frustrating, because there is so much missing, it is also addicting. I kept reading line after line for the slim chance that I would better understand the poet and his satires. On the other hand, understanding tweets like the ones I mentioned above do not require nearly as much effort. One can simply google “why did Trump say the following?” or “why did Sean Spicer freak out on Twitter?” Even if at first these tweets leave the reader confused, they can quickly find an adequate answer. Unfortunately, Lucilius and many other authors that are left in fragments will most likely remain mysterious.
If someone were to google “why did Lucilius say the following?” or “why did Lucilius insult this miller?” There would probably be tons of suggested reading that would pop up which ask similar questions. Studying the ancient world can be frustrating. Especially when dealing with authors like Lucilius who are severely fragmented. If we want to know about what is going on in today’s world, we simply have to open a browser and ask away. Though, that in itself is a tricky process.
Javal A. Coleman was born and raised in Fort Worth Texas. After receiving his Bachelors in History with a minor in Latin and Classical Studies at the University of North Texas, he married his wife who he met at UNT and moved to Austin to pursue a Phd in Classics at the University of Texas. Javal is primarily interested in the history of enslavement and more generally disenfranchised people and how law and gender contributed to their lived experience. In his free time he loves to read, play video games, and spend time with his wife and their beautiful daughter.
“Avoid Kharybdis and come close to Skyla.” This is similar to the saying, “I avoided it by finding a better evil”
They say about Skyla that she was a Tyrrhenian woman, something if a beast, who was a woman down to the navel but she grew dog heads beneath that point. The rest of her body was a serpent. This kind of a cerature is very silly to imagine. But here is the truth. There were the islands of the Tyrrenians, which used to raid the coasts of Sicily and the Ionian bay. There was a trirereme which had the named Skyla. That trireme used to overtake other ships often and use their food and there was many a story about it. Odysseus fled that ship. trusting a strong and favorable wind and he told this story in Corcyra to Alkinoos, how he was pursued and how he fled and what the shape of the ship was. From these stories, the myth was formed.”
“Charybdis is an obvious name for luxury and endless drinking. Homer has allegorized manifold shamelessness in Skylla, which is why she would logically have a belt of dogs, guardians for her rapacity, daring, and pugnacity. “
“But you, go away from “the smoke and the wave” and depart the ridiculous concerns of mortal life as from that fearsome Charybdis without touching it at all, don’t even, as the people say, brush it with your littlest toe.”
“For satiety seems to be becoming worn out in pleasures from the soul suffering in some way with the body, since the soul does not shirk from its pleasures. But when it is interwoven, as it is said, with the body, it suffers the same things as Odysseus, just as he was held, clinging to the fig tree, not because he desired it or delighted in it, but because he feared Charybdis lurking below him. The soul clings to the body and embraces it in this way not because of goodwill or gratitude but because it fears the uncertainty of death.
As wise Hesiod says, “the gods keep life concealed from human beings.” They have not tied the soul to the body with fleshly bonds, but they have devised and bound around the mind one cell and one guard, our uncertainty and distrust about our end. If a soul had faith in these things—“however so many await men when they die”, to quote Heraclitus—nothing would restrain it at all.”
“I hate you because you say awful things about me.”
μισῶ σ᾿ ὁτιὴ λέγεις με ταἰσχρά.
Naevius [=Nonius 73, 16]
“May he not inspire the deep hate of my powerful spirit.”
Ne ille mei feri ingeni atque animi acrem acrimoniam
Naevius, Incerta 34
“I hate people who mumble: so tell me what you fear clearly.”
Odi summussos; proinde aperte dice quid sit quod times.
Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 7
“Is there anyone then who hates me more than I hate myself?”
ergo quisquam me magis odit quam ego?
Aristophanes, Birds 1548
“I hate all the gods, as you well know…”
μισῶ δ᾿ ἅπαντας τοὺς θεούς, ὡς οἶσθα σύ—
Diogenes Laertius, 1.5.88
“Bias used to tell people to measure life as if they were going to live for both a long time and a short one and also to love people as if they will hate them, since most people are bad.”
“[the followers of Aristippos] used to say that mistakes should be pardoned: for people do not err willingly, but under the force of some kind of passion. And we should not hate: it is better to teach someone to change.”
