Five more quotes

1. I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. --Anon.

2. Learning is not the attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence. --Abigail Adams

3. Education is the acquisition o f the art of the utilization of language. --Alfred North Whitehead

4. Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside, El-ahrairah, where none come to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain. --Richard Adams, Watership Down

5. Ubi Romani solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. --Tacitus (Where Romans create a wasteland, they call it peace.)

"ad Lesbiam" by Catullus

VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

--Catullus

Let us live, my Clodia, and let us love,
and let us judge the all the gossip
of our harsh elders as worth a single penny!
Suns are accustomed to setting and then rising again;
When our brief light burns out,
the night is forever given over to sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, and then a second hundred,
Then thousand kisses more, and then another hundred.
Then, when we have made multiple thousands,
we will confuse them all that we not know them all,
and so no one evil is able to envy us,
when he knows how many kisses there are.

"fletus passeris lesbia" by Catullus

Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris solet incitare morsus,
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocari,
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo, ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animi levare curas!

--Catullus, ~60 B.C.E

I translated this poem in another post, but I think I can't actually post the translation. After I translated it, a few of the lines didn't make sense, so I googled the poem to find what others thought. Several pages suggested that it was considerably dirtier than I had realized, as most of the poem could have a double meaning and, in fact, makes more sense in the double meaning.

Now I'm too embarassed to post it. Now that the double meaning has been suggested, I can't unsee it. :( Dagnabbit. I still want to study Catullus, and this does seem to suggest the class this fall is going to be one long blushfest for me, but I think I'll first look over the English translations so I'll only translate the ones I won't be too embarassed to post after.

In the meantime, The Catullus Experience. As the byline suggests, "it's like being John Malkovich, but better." I knew the outlines of this story before, but this is a great way to read it. The execution isn't perfect, but the concept is fabulous.

Bibliographies for Authors of the Second Sophistic

One of life's greatest tragedies is opportunity cost.

One of the benefits of my recent class was a weekly presentation on a different author whose works we were NOT reading in class. It gave context to the author we were studying and it was great to learn what I don't know. Good thing there's a long life - there's a lot to cover. The presentations were interesting, and I suspect the most lasting contribution may be the bibliographies. If I'm ever bored and don't know what to study, I'll start here.


Below the cut are bibliographies for the following authors:

• Achilles Tatius
• Athenaeus
• Favorinus
• Fronto
• Lucian
• Macrobius
• Maximus of Tyre
• Philostratus
• Pliny the Elder
• Pliny the Younger
• Quinutus of Smyrna
• Seneca the Elder

Pliny the Elder and his Historia Naturalis

"The more I observe nature, the less prone I am to consider any statement about her to be impossible.” (Historia Naturalis 11.6)

Front page of a the second book of Historia Naturalis, from an edition printed...sometime after the advent of the printing press but before they learned about white space.

I gave a presentation on Pliny the Elder and his major work, Historia Naturalis, in class yesterday. Below is the text of my handout, which comprised most of my presentation.

I like the Elder Pliny - he's charming. He was, in fact, some of what I would like to be. He worked his whole adult life and wrote books in the evening. There is a letter he wrote to the Emperor Vespasian assuring the emperor that the large number of books coming from the Pliny Press did NOT mean that his work wasn't getting done - he simply didn't sleep much and wrote at night.

Pliny died rescuing friends and investigating the biggest natural event of his lifetime - the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. That somehow feels like a fitting end for such a naturally curious man.

Pliny the Elder: Biography
Works
Historia Naturalis
Pliny's Approach to His Work
Excerpts from Historia Naturalis
Bibliography of Secondary Sources