Laudator Temporis Acti

Arnaldo Momigliano, "A Medieval Jewish Autobiography," in his Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism. Edited and with an Introduction by Silvia Berti. Translated by Maura Masella-Gayley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 109-117 (at 113):

In the language of the Psalms with which he had been familiar since his early childhood Hermannus could claim that God "de stercore pauperem erexit et eum cum princibus populi sui collocavit" (see Ps. 112:7-8).

I don't have access to Gerlinde Niemeyer, ed., Hermannus quondam Judaeus, Opusculum de Conversione Sua (Weimar: Böhlau, 1963 = Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte, Bd. 4). But the Vulgate of Psalm 112(113):7-8 reads:

Suscitans a terra inopem, et de stercore erigens pauperem: ut collocet eum cum principibus, cum principibus populi sui.

Also, the edition of Hermannus' Opusculum in Patrologia Latina, vol. 170, cols. 803-836 (at 835, from cap. XXI) reads:

Ecce enim misericors et miserator Dominus de stercore pauperem erexit, et eum cum principibus populi sui collocavit.

This leads me to think that princibus in Momigliano's quotation could be a misprint for principibus.

Related post: A Modest Proposal.

Juvenal 3.58-63 (tr. Susanna Morton Braund):

The race that's now most popular with wealthy Romans—the people I want especially to get away from—I'll name them right away, without any embarrassment. My fellow-citizens, I cannot stand a Greekified Rome. Yet how few of our dregs are Achaeans? The Syrian Orontes has for a long time now been polluting the Tiber, bringing with it its language and customs, its slanting strings along with pipers, its native tom-toms too, and the girls who are told to offer themselves for sale at the Circus.

quae nunc divitibus gens acceptissima nostris
et quos praecipue fugiam, properabo fateri,
nec pudor obstabit. non possum ferre, Quirites,        60
Graecam Vrbem. quamvis quota portio faecis Achaei?
iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes
et linguam et mores et cum tibicine chordas
obliquas nec non gentilia tympana secum
vexit et ad Circum iussas prostare puellas.        65

Cf. Samuel Johnson, London, lines 91-98:

The cheated nation's happy fav'rites, see!
Mark whom the great caress, who frown on me!
London! the needy villain's gen'ral home,
The common shore of Paris and of Rome;
With eager thirst, by folly or by fate,        95
Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.
Forgive my transports on a theme like this,
I cannot bear a French metropolis.

Augustine, Sermons 304.3 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, cols. 1396-1397; tr. Edmund Hill):

So why, O man, O woman, does your head swell so? Why, carrion skin, do you stretch yourself so? Why, stinking pus, do you puff yourself up so? You rant, you lament, you get steamed up, because heaven knows who has insulted you. On what grounds do you insist on satisfaction, do you thirst with gaping jaws for revenge, and not desist from your intention, until you have avenged yourself on the one who harmed you?

Quid ergo intumescis, o homo? O pellis morticina, quid tenderis? O sanies fetida, quid inflaris? Anhelas, doles, aestuas, quia nescio quis tibi fecit iniuriam. Unde tu flagitas ultionem, sitis arenti fauce vindictam; nec prius ab intentione desistis, donec de illo qui te laeserit, vindiceris?

Diogenes Laertius 6.2.53 (on Diogenes the Cynic; tr. R.D. Hicks):

As Plato was conversing about Ideas and using the nouns "tablehood" and "cuphood," he said, "Table and cup I see; but your tablehood and cuphood, Plato, I can nowise see." "That's readily accounted for," said Plato, "for you have the eyes to see the visible table and cup; but not the understanding by which ideal tablehood and cuphood are discerned."

Πλάτωνος περὶ ἰδεῶν διαλεγομένου καὶ ὀνομάζοντος τραπεζότητα καὶ κυαθότητα, "ἐγώ," εἶπεν, "ὦ Πλάτων, τράπεζαν μὲν καὶ κύαθον ὁρῶ· τραπεζότητα δὲ καὶ κυαθότητα οὐδαμῶς·" καὶ ὅς, "κατὰ λόγον," ἔφη· "οἷς μὲν γὰρ κύαθος καὶ τράπεζα θεωρεῖται ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχεις· ᾧ δὲ τραπεζότης καὶ κυαθότης βλέπεται νοῦν οὐκ ἔχεις."

This is fragment 62 of Diogenes the Cynic in Gabriele Giannantoni, ed., Socraticorum Reliquiae, Vol. II (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1983), p. 437.

On Google, I searched for stolidius saxum, and this "AI Overview" appeared at the top of the search results:

The Latin phrase stolidius saxum translates to "stone of the stolid"

I was hoping to get back Plautus, Miles Gloriosus 1024:

nullum est hoc stolidius saxum.

In Wolfgang de Melo's translation:

No stone is more stupid than him.

Or, if we take the sentence out of context and let the pronoun hoc refer to artificial intelligence:

No stone is more stupid than it.

See A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1890), pp. 185-186, number 912.

Goethe, Faust, Part I, lines 846-851 (tr. Walter Arndt):

No, I don't like him, the new burgomaster!
Now that he's in, he just gets bolder faster.
And for the town what is he doing, pray?
Are we not worse off every day?
It's Do-what-you-are-told as never,
And fork out taxes more than ever.

Nein, er gefällt mir nicht, der neue Burgemeister!
Nun, da ers ist, wird er nur täglich dreister,
Und für die Stadt was tut denn er?
Wird es nicht alle Tage schlimmer?
Gehorchen soll man mehr als immer
Und zahlen mehr als je vorher.

The same (tr. Stuart Atkins):

No, our new burgomaster doesn't suit me!
Now he's in, he gets more high-handed every day.
And what is he doing for the city?
Aren't things getting steadily worse?
More than ever we're told what we must do,
and it all costs more than ever before.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Culture," Essays & Lectures (New York: The Library of America, 1983), pp. 1013-1034 (at 1027):

What is odious but noise, and people who scream and bewail?

Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, February 11, 1831 (tr. Ritchie Robertson):

He then spoke with admiration of a young literary scholar in Leipzig, Karl Schöne, who had written a study of the costumes in the plays of Euripides, and wore his great learning lightly, not parading it beyond what was necessary for his purposes.

'I like the way he goes straight to the heart of the matter,' said Goethe, 'while other scholars and critics of our day spend far too much time fussing over technicalities and long and short syllables.

'It's always the sign of an unproductive age when it becomes obsessed with technical detail, and likewise it's the sign of an unproductive individual when he frets about such things.'

Sodann sprach er mit großem Lobe über Karl Schöne, einen jungen Philologen in Leipzig, der ein Werk über die Costüme in den Stücken des Euripides geschrieben und, bei großer Gelehrsamkeit, doch davon nicht mehr entwickelt habe als eben zu seinen Zwecken nöthig.

»Ich freue mich,« sagte Goethe, »wie er mit productivem Sinn auf die Sache losgeht, während andere Philologen der letzten Zeit sich gar zu viel mit dem Technischen und mit langen und kurzen Silben zu schaffen gemacht haben.

Es ist immer ein Zeichen einer unproductiven Zeit, wenn sie so ins Kleinliche des Technischen geht, und ebenso ist es ein Zeichen eines unproductiven Individuums, wenn es sich mit dergleichen befaßt.«

Plautus, Miles Gloriosus 894 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

You deserve a thousand bad things.

mala mille meres.

Insulting, but not so insulting as this statement by Google's Gemini AI chatbot.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai, "Why Read Lesser Writers? Politian on Silver Latin Literature," Antigone (November, 2024):

The translator’s task here does not stop at the dictionary: you really do need to read all the Latin (or Greek) texts that Politian mentions, if you have not already done so, and take good notes, because this man is never lazy or vague in how he uses words. You must have a clear sense of what he is talking about. The only way to gain this is by reading everything that he expects you to have read — which sometimes feels like every single ancient text ever written.

No wonder translators shy away from this dismal grind. Alas, there is no way of getting around it. You cannot use American-style ‘theoretical’ gobbledygook to cover up your lack of comprehension. You must sacrifice your eyesight, posture and sanity amidst the dim light and strange smells of your local academic library, and move from your uncomfortable seat only to find copy after copy of a great many Greek and Latin books and add them to the pile on your desk. Those worryingly shabby, unhealthy-looking people who seem to have nowhere else to go, and drip from the mouth when they stare at you? Congratulations. You are one of them now.

[....]

The next time you read an accurate-sounding translation of a Neo-Latin text that seems to make coherent sense, and is written in recognisable English rather than objectionable translationese, spare a thought for the hapless wretch who has spent hours on every page, checking and double-checking both the original work and his own rendition of it, whilst knowing that perhaps half a dozen people will fully recognise the effort — and those who do will be those other lost souls who stare occasionally at one another from across the reading-room in the same cursed library, as their only relief from the work to which they have condemned themselves, for reasons no sane or normal man can fathom.

Plautus, Miles Gloriosus 677 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):

Eat, drink, enjoy yourself with me, and load yourself up with joy.

es, bibe, animo opsequere mecum atque onera te hilaritudine.

J.N. Adams and Veronika Nikitina, "Early Latin Prayers and Aspects of Coordination," in J.N. Adams et al., edd., Early Latin: Constructs, Diversity, Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 292-310 (at 306):

possibly a case of end-of-list coordination, but it is better to take eating and drinking as one unit, asyndetic, and indulging one's feelings and being joyful as a second, coordinated.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata 995-996 (Spartan herald speaking; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

All Sparta rises, and our allies
all have hard-ons. We need Pellana.

ὀρσὰ Λακεδαίμων πᾶἁ καὶ τοὶ σύμμαχοι
ἅπαντες ἐστύκαντι· Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ.

996 Πελλάνας codd.: Παλλάνας Taillardat

Aristophanes, Lysistrata. Edited with an Introduction and Commentary by Jeffrey Henderson (1987; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 187: See also Giuseppe Mastromarco, "Toponimi e immaginario sessuale nella Lisistrata di Aristofane," in S. Douglas Olson, ed., Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 69-81 (at 76-81).

---

At line 995 πᾶἁ is Laconian for πᾶσα, but I don't see it included in part V ("The Spartan Dialect," pp. xlv-l) of the Introduction to Henderson's commentary. Maybe it should be added to p. xlvii, list item 3(c): "intervocalic sigma > h." Likewise ὀρσὰ (Attic ὀρθὴ) could be added to list item 3(e), θ > σ.