Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.481-2

Apologies for the recent hiatus. I’ve been ridiculously busy.

Daphne’s father is pestering her to get married.

saepe pater dixit ‘generum mihi, filia, debes.’
saepe pater dixit ‘debes mihi, nata, nepotes.’

Often her father said, ‘Daughter, you owe me a son-in-law’. Often her father said, ‘Daughter, you owe me grandchildren.’

Alcman, fragment 59a

Ἔρως με δηὖτε Κύπριδος ϝέκατι
γλυκὺς κατείβων καρδίαν ἰαίνει.

At Cypris’ command Love again pours down sweetly and warms my heart.

Anonymous, Latin Anthology 207 Reise

Cresciture, ferox ne quid tibi dorsa flagellis
conscindat coniunx, iunctis tu pedibus astas.

Cresciturus, if you don’t want your ferocious wife to rip apart your back with her scourges, you should stand up to her in a fart-fight.

Another metrical problem today. pedibus has a long e in this poem, which it shouldn’t. R. Renehan (Classical Quarterly n.s. 31 (1981), p.472) convincingly argues that this is not a mistake but a pun: with a short e the phrase would be an idiom describing intense fighting (‘foot-to-foot’ we might say, rather like ‘hand-to-hand’). But, Renehan argues, the long vowel suggests that the anonymous poet has made up a noun from the verb pēdo, to give the punning meaning I’ve attempted to capture in my version above.

Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 555

Having been caught in two traffic holdups in two days I was reminded of this passage from Philostratus about the orator and philanthropist Herodes Atticus. Philostratus has just dismissed as unfounded a story about Herodes’ part in an alleged road-rage incident involving the future emperor Antoninus Pius. Here are the brief details of what (in Philostratus’ eyes, anyway) actually happened. The scene is Mount Ida, so we are presumably to think of a narrow mountain pass.

ὠθισμὸς μὲν γάρ τις αὐτοῖς ξυνέπεσεν, ὡς ἐν δυσχωρίᾳ καὶ στενοῖς, αἱ δὲ χεῖρες οὐδὲν παρηνόμησαν, καίτοι οὐκ ἂν παρῆκεν ὁ Δημόστρατος διελθεῖν αὐτὰ ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὸν Ἡρώδην δίκῃ πικρῶς οὕτω καθαψάμενος τοῦ ἀνδρός ὡς διαβάλλειν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ ἐπαινούμενα.

For although they had a bit of pushing and shoving, as will happen in a cramped place and on narrow roads, they did not come to fisticuffs and thereby break the law. Indeed [if that had happened] Demostratus would not have omitted to recount this incident in his lawsuit against Herodes, when he so bitterly assailed the man that he attacked even those acts of his which are usually commended.

Virgil, Aeneid 1.604

After that long post the other day, here is some light relief. Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary is a joy to dip into for its cynical humour, still just as biting over a century after its publication. Here’s a little excerpt from the entry for Mind, which includes a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid.

From the Latin mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the way had displayed his motto “Mens conscia recti,” emblazoned his own shop front with the words “Men’s, women’s and children’s conscia recti.”

The full Virgilian phrase is

mens sibi conscia recti

A mind which is conscious of having done right.

I was about to discuss Bierce further, but at this point Google leads me to a Laudator Temporis Acti post on the subject, where you can read more. I’ve always assumed that the occasional dodgy Latin phrases were a deliberate joke for the cognoscenti, akin to his ludicrously named “sources” and the illustrative “quotations” of their often atrocious verse – but on reflection Laudator could well be correct in saying that they’re just failings in Bierce’s own Latin.

Suetonius, Life of Claudius 42

The Emperor Claudius died on this day in AD 54, allegedly poisoned with mushrooms administered by the dastardly Agrippina. But we had Latin yesterday here on aleator classicus, so it must be Greek today; conveniently enough the Emperor who wrote prolifically in Greek also quoted Homer often, so here is a passage from Suetonius explaining how his Guard’s daily watchword was sometimes a Homeric one.

quotiens quidem hostem vel insidiatorem ultus esset, excubitori tribuno signum de more poscenti non temere aliud dedit quam
ἄνδρ᾽ ἀπαμύνασθαι, ὅτε τις πρότερος χαλεπήνῇ.

On those occasions when he had taken vengeance on an enemy or conspirator, he would generally give this line when the Tribune of the Guard asked for the usual watchword:
Ward off the man who is the first to show his anger.

The line is used twice in Homer: at Iliad 24.369, when a disguised Hermes is advising Priam (who is taking a great risk carrying treasure across the Trojan plain), and Odyssey 21.133, where Telemachus is lamenting how cowardly he is.

Anonymous, epitaph from Hippo Regius (AE 1931, 0112)

Anyone who’s been on the internet for a while will know of Cake Wrecks, a blog which documents the most egregious examples of atrocious cake decoration. Among the most hilarious/embarrassing mistakes are the ones where a message which was clearly not the intended one ends up getting iced on the top.

This appears even to have happened with a gravestone as well. There’s a fantastic parallel for this from a Roman inscription, which I came across in the newly-published and very diverting book A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities by J.C. McKeown (highly suitable, I should say, for stocking-filling purposes). I think what I’m about to type is original scholarship, but I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows of an earlier discussion of the points I raise! Here’s the opening of the inscription, the part which McKeown quotes:

HIC IACET CORPUS PUERI NOMINANDI.

HERE LIES THE BODY OF BOY-TO-BE-NAMED.

‘Boy to be named’ sounds like a Latin version of ‘Fill in name here’. But is this the whole story? Let’s look at the rest of the inscription:

O BENEDICTE PUER, PAUCIS TE TERRA DIEBUS
INFANTEM TENUIT CAELIQUE IN REGNA REMISIT. (The stone reads CELIQUAE!)
PROPTEREA ET NATUS UT CAPERES TANTA RENATUS.

O BLESSED BOY, WITHIN A FEW DAYS HAS THE EARTH TAKEN HOLD OF YOU – AN INFANT – AND SENT YOU BACK INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN; AND FOR THIS REASON WERE YOU BORN, THAT YOU MIGHT BE REBORN AND GRASP SUCH GREAT THINGS (i.e. the Kingdom of Heaven).

These are three competently written hexameter lines. So what are we to make of the first line, which, on first sight at least, is not metrical, so is presumably not meant as part of the poem? Is this, as McKeown says, a stonecutter’s mistake – or was the child still ‘to be named’ simply because he had died before his parents had had time to name him?

Let’s look more closely at that first sentence, which could be prose but certainly bears a tolerably close resemblance to a hexameter. If the first syllable of iacet is taken as long (wrongly, but perhaps possible by considering the two letters ia as ‘a long vowel’), then we have what could easily become a hexameter (complete with a caesura in the correct place after corpus) – if the unmetrical stopgap-word nōmĭnāndī were to be replaced with a name that would fit:

hīc iā|cēt cōr|pūs ¦ pŭĕr|ī [and then ˇˇ| ˉˇˇ| ˉx or  ˉ| ˉˇˇ |ˉx or ˉ| ˉˉ |ˉx ]

But if we’re being very ingenious and speculative, is that dodgy first line deliberately put there precisely to point out that the boy lacks a name and thereby to add extra pathos to the poem? I leave you to decide!

[By the by, I wonder whether ET in line 4 isn’t a mistake; would ES NATUS be better? Possibly the following UT has prematurely got into the stonecutter’s head, a phenomenon our typing fingers are all too familiar with.]

Sappho, fragment 154

δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δέ
νύκτες, πάρα δ’ ἔρχετ’ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

The moon has set, and the Pleiades. It is midnight, and time goes by; but I sleep alone.

Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae 1.3

magni pectoris est inter secunda moderatio.

Moderation amid favourable circumstances is the mark of a great spirit.

Dio Chrysostom, Orations 9.1

An appropriate passage for the opening of the Commonwealth Games? The philosopher Diogenes visits the Isthmian games to observe human nature.

Ἰσθμίων ὄντων κατέβη Διογένης εἰς τὸν Ἰσθμιόν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐν Κορίνθῳ διατρίβων. παρετύγχανε δὲ ταῖς πανηγύρεσιν οὐχ ὧνπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ἕνεκα, βουλόμενοι θεάσασθαι τοὺς ἀθλητὰς καὶ ἵνα ἐμπλησθῶσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπισκοπῶν οἶμαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὴν ἄνοιαν αὐτῶν. ᾔδει γὰρ ὅτι φανερώτατοί εἰσιν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς καὶ ταῖς πανηγύρεσιν· ἐν δὲ πολέμῳ καὶ στρατοπέδῳ λανθάνουσι μᾶλλον διὰ τὸ κινδυνεύειν καὶ φοβεῖσθαι.

When the Isthmian Games were taking place, Diogenes went down to the Isthmus (seemingly when he was staying in Corinth). But he attended the gatherings not for the same reason as most people, who want to watch the athletes and to fill themselves with food, but so that he could observe people, I think, and their folly. For he knew that people are at their most open at festivals and gatherings, but in war and in camp they are less easily observed because of the danger and fear.