Loss and Gain

Just a note to say that I picked up and finished Matt Logelin's Two Kisses for Maddie at the library this week. He also has a website/blog (which reminds me to figure out enough HTML/CSS to move this blog on to Wordpress or something better in the future, when the dissertation is done).

Rather than repeat the story, I would direct you to his website and then also recommend the Liz Logelin Foundation. I am reminded that as the boys grow up, I need to do more service projects with them. I also need to earn enough to travel with them. But with one at two years and another at two months I have a couple years at least before travel memories and camping trips can be made.

The Roman Equivalent of the Dive Bar

Continuing the project of going through minor poets, Greek and Latin, I ran finished off those few other poems attributed to Hadrian. Most are familiar with the lines addressed to his dying soul, but I was never bothered to read these others. I cannot say that I missed much, but I did run into the very useful vocabulary word popīna (a dive, or low-class eatery) in a retort to a poem by Florus.

Florus' poem reads:

Ego nolo Caesar esse,
ambulare per Britannos
...
Scythicas pati pruinas

I wouldn't be Caesar,
ambling among the Britons...
exposed to Scythian frosts

Hadrian answered thus:

Ego nolo Florus esse,
ambulare per tabernas,
latitare per popinas
culices pati rotundos.

I wouldn't be Florus,
ambling among the pubs,
holed up in his dives,
exposed to fat mosquitoes.

(A taberna in Ostia)

Homer's Trojan Theater

I wish Jenny Strauss Clay's Homer's Trojan Theater had come about earlier in my graduate career, at least before I taught my Greek course on Homer. The argument is as follows:

Critical to our understanding of the Iliad’s action is the realization that its orientation of right and left remains constant throughout and is always seen from the perspective of a narrator situated in the center of the Greek camp facing the Trojan plain. (p.45)

There is a companion website that visualizes this for various passages. I will certainly be using this in future courses I teach as a very useful tool.

Only a Cough and Spit

From My Name Escapes Me:

Wednesday 7 June (1995)

...It seems a pity that the good old phrase 'living in sin' is likely to be dropped by the C of E. So many friends, happily living in sin, will feel very ordinary and humdrum when they become merely partners; or, as the Americans say, 'an item'. Living in sin has always sounded daring and exotic...

p.s. He includes on March 28th, 1995 this citation of Canon Liddon that "The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility." I find this a much more pleasant way to express what Pericles did in the opening of his funeral oration.

p.p.s. The title of this post is a phrase, new to me, but old to actors, for a small dramatic role and employed to dismiss a lack of opportunity.

Servasius: Dragons, Insults, and Filthy Lucre

As you can tell, I am cheating a bit in beginning this reading project by going through authors that do not have a large catalog. There are two poems attributed to Servasius (or Serbastus as he is called in the codex Leidensis Vossianus of Ausonius). The second is a diatribe against greed in elegiac couplets with echoes of Juvenal. Three couplets caught my eye:

First, I could not help but thing of dragons in his description of the miser:

quamlibet immenso dives vigil incubet auro,
aestuat augendae dira cupido rei. 

No matter how vast the hoard sleepless Dives lies upon,
He seethes with relentless desire of increasing his wealth.

But perhaps that is because I am reading The Hobbit aloud to my wife. Here is a choice insult for students who do poorly on their Latin:

Romani sermonis egent, ridendaque verba
frangit ad horrificos turbida lingua sonos.

They lack Latin, and their swollen tongue breaks
laughable vocabulary upon terrifying sounds.

His description of the ugliness of the miser somehow aptly describes current beauty trends:

perplexi crines, frons improba, tempora pressa,
exstantes malae deficiente gena

Mussed up locks, impudent brow, indented temples,
mouth always open with hardly any cheek.

Lies and Rhetoric

From First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea by Paul Woodruff:

Lies in politics are an old story, but do not blame them on rhetoric. Blame them on human credulity, on our tendency to believe authority. But counter them whenever possible by campaigning for open discussion. Lies act on the market of ideas as subsidies do on commodities–they undermine our ability to choose on a rational basis. (p. 189)

Free Books!

The only thing better than free books are free books that are new, hardbound, and something that you want to read. Liberty Fund recently sent these my way:

Pictured above are:

The 2 vol. collected works of Fisher Ames

Christianity and Classical Culture by Charles Cochrane

Observations upon Liberal Education by George Turnbull

Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern by Charles McIlwain