“I long to help Brutus in every way I am able. I note that you feel the same thing I do about his little speech. I don’t really get what you expect me to include in a speech that Brutus gave when he has published that one.
How can this work? Or should I write, Against the Tyrant Murdered In Accordance With the Law? Many things will be said, many things will be written by us, but in another way and a different time.”
Brutum omni re qua possum cupio iuvare; cuius de oratiuncula idem te quod me sentire video. sed parum intellego quid me velis scribere quasi a Bruto habita oratione, cum ille ediderit. qui tandem convenit? an sic ut in tyrannum iure optimo caesum? multa dicentur, multa scribentur a nobis, sed alio modo et tempore.
“People claim that among the Celts there is a drug which they call the “arrow” [toxikon]. They report that it induces so quick a death that the Celts’ hunters, whenever they have shot a deer or some other animal, rush ahead to cut off its flesh before it is penetrated completely by the drug both for the sake of using the meat and so that the animal might not rot.
They also claim that the oak tree’s bark has been found to be an antidote for the poison. But others claim that there is a leaf which that call “raven’s leaf” because they have seen ravens, once they taste the poison mentioned before and start to feel the drug’s effect, rush to this leaf and stop their suffering by eating it.”
“The god authorizes every outcome on his own expectations–
the god who races the winged eagle,
Outdoes the sea-dwelling dolphin and
Brings the arrogant mortals to their knees,
And then grants unaging glory to other people.
I need to escape the gnawing bite of bad gossip–
I have watched from afar while Archilochus,
That shit-talker, is pressed to helplessness
Thanks to hateful words.
Getting rich with luck
Is the best allotment of wisdom.”
“Hesitation is fear of future action. Agony is fear of failure and otherwise fear of worse outcomes. Shock is fear of an uncustomary surprise. Shame is fear of a bad reputation. A ruckus is fear pressing down with sound. Divine fright is fear of gods or divine power. Terror is fear of a terrible thing. A fright is fear that comes from a story.”
“Fear: flight or cowardice. Fear is expecting evil. These emotions are categorized as fear: terror, hesitation, shame, shock, commotion, anxiety. Terror is fear that brings dread. Hesitation is fear about future action. Shame is fear about a bad reputation. Shock is fear from an unusual thing. Commotion is fear from a striking sound. Anxiety is fear of an uncertain matter.”
P. Oxy. 1604 (13, 1919) = Strabo 10.3.13 + Dion. Hal. de comp. verb. 14 + Athen. 10.455BC
“Pindar, in the Dithyramb that begins “in ancient times”, mentions other previous songs to Dionysus from ancient times and later, and then changes subjects. He says “Great mother, the crashing of tambourines are ready to start. And there are also castanets to sound, and torches underneath the pale pine trees.
Dionysus in his work On Literary Composition, comments “The sigma is neither charming nor euphonic and is super annoying when it is used too much. The hissing sound seems more like a wild, irrational animal’s voice than a rational one. For this reason, many ancient poets tried to use the sound infrequently and in a limited way. Indeed, there are some who used to compose entire odes without sigmas at all! Pindar says this when he continues:
Before that time the dithryamb
Song slid along a straight path and
People sensed the letter san as suspect
Athenaeus has “When it comes to Pindar’s asigmatic ode, Clearchus claims that he composed the following, putting it in some kind of a problem in lyric poetry, since many had mocked him for not avoiding the letter because it was difficult and it made him look bad. People should keep this in mind when they consider those who criticize the asigmatic Ode by Lasos of Hermione called Centaurs or the asigmatic hymn to Demeter of Hermione also by Lasos.
“Still,” he said, “Cluvius told Lucius and Manilius he was not on sworn oath.” If he told them while sworn in, would you believe? What is the difference between a perjurer and a liar? A man who is accustomed to lying, can get used to committing perjury.
I can easily get a man to perjure himself once I am able to persuade him to lie. For once someone has departed from the truth, he is not in the habit of being constrained by greater belief from perjury than from lying. For what man who is not moved by the force of his own conscience is moved by invocation of the gods?
The reason for this is that the gods dispense the same penalty for the perjurer and the liar. The gods become enraged and punish a man not for the institution which frames the swearing of the words but because of the evil and the malice that these traps are set for another person.”
XVI. “Dicit enim,” inquit, “iniuratus Luscio et Manilio.” Si diceret iuratus, crederes? At quid interest inter periurum et mendacem? Qui mentiri solet, peierare consuevit. Quem ego, ut mentiatur, inducere possum, ut peieret, exorare facile potero. Nam qui semel a veritate deflexit, hic non maiore religione ad periurium quam ad mendacium perduci consuevit. Quis enim deprecatione deorum, non conscientiae fide commovetur? Propterea, quae poena ab dis immortalibus periuro, haec eadem mendaci constituta est; non enim ex pactione verborum, quibus ius iurandum comprehenditur, sed ex perfidia et malitia, per quam insidiae tenduntur alicui, di immortales hominibus irasci et suscensere consuerunt.
Sinon. Augustine, La Cit de Dieu, Books I-X. Paris, Ma tre Franois (illuminator); c. 1475-1480.
“A life commingled with virtue is like an eternal spring: it is clean, untroubled, drinkable and sweet, communal and wealthy, without harm and indestructible”
“Examine in yourself whether you desire to be wealthy or lucky. If you want wealth, know that it is neither good nor wholly yours. If you desire to be happy understand that it is good and under your power. One is the timely gift of chance, the other is a choice.”
“May you fall into Hades’ asshole”: [a curse]: may you die.
῞Αιδου πρωκτῷ περιπέσῃς: ἤγουν τελευτήσῃς.
Note: Even though Ancient Greek prôktos can merely mean “rear end” (as in butt), it most often means ‘anus’ in comedy and insults. Also, I wanted to use something profane and given the British/American divide on arse/ass, I decided just to go with “asshole” because it is funnier. In addition, I know that dative + peri for in the first example is not properly fall into, but “fall around, trace around, linger in” does not have the same ‘punch’.
Diogenianus (v.1 e cod. Marz. 2.42)
“I wish you’d fall into Hades’ asshole”: this is clear
῞Αιδου πρωκτῷ περιπέσοις: δῆλον.
Diogenianus (v.2 e cod. Vindob. 133, 1.97 )
“I wish you’d fall into Hades’ asshole”: Used for cursing someone
“The asshole survives the bath” [or, “Ass surpasses the bath”]. Whenever someone is not able to wash himself, but his bowels still assail him. This is a proverb used for things done uselessly.
“The asshole survives the bath”: This proverb is used for things done uselessly and done for show. For people with thick asses and potbellies are not able to wash themselves off easily.”
“It was cured by Akesias”: this is a proverb for when things are healed for the worse. Aristophanes provides the proverb in tetrameters: “Akesias healed his asshole.”
Apopatêma: this is the same as ‘dung’ Eupolis has in his Golden Age: “What is that man? Shit of a fox.” And Kratinus has in Runaway Slaves: I knocked Kerkyon out at dawn when I found him shitting in the vegetables.” We also find the participle apopatêsomenoi (“they are about to shit”) which means they are going to evacuate the feces from their bodies. But patos also means path.
Aristophanes writes “No one sacrifices the old way any more or even enters the temple except for the more than ten thousand who want to shit. So, apopatos is really the voiding of the bowels. Aristophanes also says about Kleonymous: “He went off to shit after he got he army and shat for ten months in the golden mountains? For how long was he closing his asshole? A whole turn of the moon?”
“Homer said that speech pours forth from Nestor’s lips sweeter than honey—no greater pleasure can be formed than this. But when he is about to demonstrate the greatest ability and power in Ulysses, he grants him a voice, the strength of speech “like a winter blizzard” in its force and abundance of words.
Because of this, no mortal will compete with him and men gaze at him as a god. This is the force and speed Eupolis admioes in Pericles, this force Aristophanes compares to thunderbotls. This is truly the power of speaking.”
et ex ore Nestoris dixit dulciorem melle profluere sermonem, qua certe delectatione nihil fingi maius potest: sed summam expressurus in Ulixe facundiam et magnitudinem illi vocis et vim orationis nivibus 〈hibernis〉 copia [verborum] atque impetu parem tribuit. Cum hoc igitur nemo mortalium contendet, hunc ut deum homines intuebuntur. Hanc vim et celeritatem in Pericle miratur Eupolis, hanc fulminibus Aristophanes comparat, haec est vere dicendi facultas.
Thucydides 4.103
“It was winter and it was snowing”
χειμὼν δὲ ἦν καὶ ὑπένειφεν…
Hermippus 37 (Athenaeus 650e)
“Have you ever seen a pomegranate seed in drifts of snow?”
ἤδη τεθέασαι κόκκον ἐν χιόνι ῥόας;
Pindar, Pythian 1. 20
“Snowy Aetna, perennial nurse of bitter snow”
νιφόεσσ᾿ Αἴτνα, πάνετες χιόνος ὀξείας τιθήνα
Plutarch, Moralia 340e
“Nations covered in depths of snow”
καὶ βάθεσι χιόνων κατακεχωσμένα ἔθνη
Herodotus, Histories 4.31
“Above this land, snow always falls…
τὰ κατύπερθε ταύτης τῆς χώρης αἰεὶ νίφεται
Diodorus Siculus, 14.28
“Because of the mass of snow that was constantly falling, all their weapons were covered and their bodies froze in the chill in the air. Thanks to the extremity of their troubles, they were sleepless through the whole night”
“It seems that the word onoma [name] is made up from a phrase which means that “this is what we happen to be searching for, the word”. You can recognize this very thing better when we say onomaston, for this clearly reflects that it is about “that which is search” [hon hou masma estin].
Truth [alêtheia] is similar to the rest in this: for the divine movement of existnence seems to be expressed by this utterance—a-lê-theia—as if it were divine wandering, theia – ousa – alê. But pseudos—fallacy—is the opposite of movement. For, in turn, when something is criticized and is held back and is compelled to be silent, then it is like people who are asleep, or those who kath – eudousi. The psi which is added to the beginning of the word hides the true meaning of the name.
“Say that if we do not recognize a word then it is foreign in origin. This is perhaps mostly true for some of them, and it may be impossible to discover the first words because of their antiquity. For this reason it would not at all be surprising, when words are twisted in every which way, if a really ancient Greek word would be no different from a current foreign one.”
