This site and its twitter feed is three years old today. We have passed from diapers (nappies in the UK!) and a liquid diet to full sentences and a different kind of liquid diet. Here are some quotations from our first few months.

The first post we ever put up:

Homer, Iliad 22.304-5

“May I not die without a fight and without glory but after doing something big for men to come to learn about”

μὴ μὰν ἀσπουδί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην,

ἀλλὰ μέγα ῥέξας τι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι.

A good one for Halloween:

Seneca, De clementia 1.1.6

“No one can wear a mask for very long; affectation soon returns to true nature”

nemo enim potest personam diu ferre, ficta cito in naturam suam recidunt

And this made an appearance again in our aggregation of Seneca quotes.

A reminder to carpere diem, but in Greek:

Semonides, Fragment 3

“We have ample time to be dead yet we live our few years badly”

πολλὸς γὰρ ἥμιν ἐστι τεθνάναι χρονος

ζῶμεν δ᾿ ἀριθμῷ παῦρα κακῶς ἔτεα

One of our many lines about friendship:

Sallust, Catilinae coniuratio 20.4

“Wanting the same thing and also not wanting the same thing: this, ultimately, is true friendship”

idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est

Proof that U2 plagiarizes:

Martial, Epigrams 12.46.2

“I can’t live with you or without you”

nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te

A necessary does of humility:

Heraclitus, Fragment 40

“Knowing much doesn’t teach you how to think.”

πολυμαθίη νόον ἔχειν οὐ διδάσκει.

Existential Angst:

Pindar, Pythian 8.95

“What is a person? What is not a person? Man is a dream of a shadow”

τί δέ τις; τί δ’ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ / ἄνθρωπος.

Pithy Rumsfeldian Response:

Tacitus, Agricola 30.4

“Every unknown is overblown”

omne ignotum pro magnifico est

Because we still don’t understand this:

Pisander, fr. 9 (Hesychius 683)

“You can’t reason with Centaurs”

νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι

Because to err is human:

Cicero, Philippics 12.5

“All men make mistakes; but it is fools who persist in them”

cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis perseverare in errore

This is for Cicero and Seneca who came to unhappy ends:

Sophocles, Electra 1007-8

“Death isn’t the most hateful thing. Worse is when someone wants to die but cannot.”

οὐ γὰρ θανεῖν ἔχθιστον, ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν θανεῖν
χρῄζων τις εἶτα μηδὲ τοῦτ᾽ ἔχῃ λαβεῖν.

A rejected motto:

Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.159

“Trivialities occupy fickle minds”

para leves capiunt animos

From a quotable but less well-known sage:

Publilius Syrus, Sententiae M.54

“A bad plan is one that can’t be changed”

malum est consilium quod mutari non potest

The eternal troll of anonymous wit:

CIL IV, 1904

“I am amazed, wall, that you have not fallen in ruins,
you who bear the weight of so many boring inscriptions.”

admiror, paries, te non cecidisse ruinis,
qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas.

Something that may or may not be true about quotation:

Horace, Ars Poetica 309

“The origin and source of good writing is good judgment”.

scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.

As good a way to start as to end:

Parmenides, fr. 6.16

“The path of all things goes backwards.”

…πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.

Thanks to everyone who has read, commented and retweeted over the past three years!

Πόλλ’ ἀγαθὰ γένοιτό ὑμῖν!

“In Attic usage, peira means a trick or contrivance; for this reason, criminals on the sea are called peiratai (pirates).”

πεῖρα γὰρ ᾿Αττικῶς δόλος καὶ τέχνη, ὅθεν καὶ πειραταὶ

οἱ κατὰ θάλατταν κακοῦργοι.

Note: The earlier sense of peira was closer to “an attempt” or “experiment.”

“What mortal home has ever prospered without a good woman…”

τίς δ’ οἶκος ἐν βροτοῖσιν ὠλβίσθη ποτὲ

γυναικὸς ἐσθλῆς χωρὶς…

Somehow, I am certain this line wasn’t so positive in its original context. But let’s take small victories where we can.

“Laws will never be tolerated well in a city without fear.”

οὐ γάρ ποτ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἂν ἐν πόλει νόμοι καλῶς

φέροιντ᾽ ἄν, ἔνθα μὴ καθεστήκῃ δέος,

“You aren’t bad but by learning from wicked men you became used to pursuing wicked things”

οὐκ εἶ κακὸς σύ, πρὸς κακῶν δ᾽ ἀνδρῶν μαθὼν

ἔοικας ἥκειν αἰσχρά:

Sophocles doesn't say that he started out good though... — Sophocles doesn’t say that he started out good though…

“Drinking under compulsion is an evil equal to thirst”

τὸ πρὸς βίαν / πίνειν ἴσον πέφυκε τῷ διψῆν κακόν

(Yes, I had a problem with the extant article τῷ. It is an articular infinitive!)

“You are like a lyre bereft of its reed.”

ὑφῃρέθη σου κάλαμος ὡσπερεὶ λύρας

(I suspect that the κάλαμος may refer to a reed pipe accompaniment rather than a part of the lyre, but I am not certain. In either case, the line seems to evoke the state of one of the women in the play who may have been the women captured after the fall of Troy.)

“No one who makes a mistake unwillingly is evil”

ἄκων δ’ ἁμαρτὼν οὔτις ἀνθρώπων κακός

So, what does that mean for unintentional harm?

(I don’t know how to replicate the assonance and alternation of vowel sounds in Englsih. So, I settled on the sense.)

“What mortal home has ever prospered without a good woman…”

τίς δ’ οἶκος ἐν βροτοῖσιν ὠλβίσθη ποτὲ

γυναικὸς ἐσθλῆς χωρὶς…

Seems rather un-Greek, right? (At least in comparison to Semonides of Amorgos!)

…And yes, for brevity sake, I edited the fragment and left out ὀγκωθεὶς χλιδῇ–which may or may not undercut the positive sense I’d like for the fragment.

And, perhaps ‘good’ is too class-neutral and gender-positive for ἐσθλῆς…