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- Jeremias Grau on Five More Seneca Commentaries
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Author Archives: Michael Hendry
Latin In Odd Places
I just found out that someone calling himself both ‘logoparenthêtês’ (accents in the original) and ‘quislibet’ has translated Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” into Latin. Even those of us generally unfamiliar with Sir Mix-a-Lot’s oeuvre remember the line “I like … Continue reading
Posted in Music
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This Day In History Hagiography
Today is not only the 2,074th birthday of Publius Vergilius Maro and the feast of St. Teresa of Ávila, it is also the feast of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831-1906), Episcopalian bishop of Shanghai, a dedicated missionary who translated the … Continue reading
Great Minds Think Alike
Helmuth, Graf von Moltke (the Elder): No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Seneca (the Younger): Vetus proverbium est gladiatorem in harena capere consilium; aliquid adversarii vultus, aliquid manus mota, aliquid ipsa inclinatio corporis intuentem monet. Quid fieri soleat, … Continue reading
Johnson On Housman
From Charles Johnston, Selected Poems (London, 1985): Footnote to Housman To reach the top flight as a poet you must write an unreadable work, so obscure that your friends will forgo it and all but the bravest will shirk. Then … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Poetry, Nachleben
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Seen In The Periodical Room
In some classical journal — it may have been Mnemosyne — I recently ran across a review of a title guaranteed to confuse just about every non-classicist and some percentage of classicists, too: The Fragments of the Methodists, Volume I. … Continue reading
Posted in Greek Literature
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Dueling Quotations
Aristotle’s is well-known, the first sentence of the Metaphysics: pántes hoi ánthropoi toû eidénai orégontai phúsei. All humans by nature desire knowledge. Plato’s is less well-known, being tucked away in a complex argument in Book VII of the Republic (535e), … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
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Whatever Happened To Siculate Lunate Sigmas?
In the thirty years since I first heard of them, I’ve had the vague impression that siculate lunate sigmas, like adscript iotas for the traditional subscripts and use of capital V and small u for both vowels and consonants in … Continue reading
Posted in Formatting, Greek Literature
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Two Jokes In Chekhov
Some purely verbal jokes work equally well in many languages. Here is a paragraph of Chekhov’s one-page squib, “From a Retired Teacher’s Notebook”: The words ‘proposition’ and ‘conjunction’ make schoolgirls modestly lower their eyes and blush, but the terms ‘organic’ … Continue reading
Posted in Latin Grammar, Nachleben
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One-Word Joke
Silius Update: (9/5, 4:15pm) Since no one has ‘gotten’ it yet, here’s another version of the joke with the same answer: Baebius And here are two more, non-Classical this time, with a different, but parallel, answer: Philip Charles
Fulke Art II
Here’s another neoclassical poem from Caelica, number XCIII complete: The Augurs were of all the world admir’d, Flatter’d by consuls, honor’d by the State, Because the event of all that was desir’d, They seem’d to know, and keep the books … Continue reading
Fulke Art I
I’ve been leafing through Fulke Greville’s Caelica, partly as congenial bedtime reading, partly to try to find a favorite passage from years ago. It turns out to be lines 69-74 of poem LXXXIII: The ship of Greece, the streams and … Continue reading
Posted in Greek Literature, Nachleben, Philosophy
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Macaulay On Plato And Socrates
I am now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his works. His genius is above praise. Even where he is most absurd,–as, for example, in the Cratylus,–he shows an acuteness, and an expanse of intellect, which … Continue reading
Posted in Nachleben, Philosophy
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Schopenhauer On Books II
According to Herodotus, Xerxes wept at the sight of his enormous army to think that, of all these men, not one would be alive in a hundred years’ time; so who cannot but weep at the sight of the thick … Continue reading
Posted in - Aphorisms, Ephemerides, Philosophy
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Schopenhauer On Books I
As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made … Continue reading
Posted in - Aphorisms, Ephemerides, Philosophy
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Spooneristic Misreading
After my trip to the U.N.C. library, I’ve been leafing through Toto Notus in Orbe, Perspektiven der Martial-Interpretation (ed. Farouk Grewing, Palingenesis LXV, Stuttgart, 1998). One sentence in T. J. Leary’s paper on the Xenia and Apophoreta caused a double-take. … Continue reading
Tiny Linguistic Puzzle
One of the books in the classics section at U.N.C.’s library is Un Dialogo sul Management. What ancient author and work are the subject of this book? I will leave that as a not-too-difficult puzzle for my readers. Suggestions may … Continue reading
Posted in Greek Literature
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Martial’s Dexiocholus
The word dexiocholus, ‘lame in the right leg’, though securely attested in Martial 12.59.9, is not to be found in either the Oxford Latin Dictionary or Liddell-Scott-Jones: no doubt each editorial team thought it could safely be left to the … Continue reading
New Categories
Now that I have my library mostly unpacked, I will posting more frequently on various topics. Some of these will be classical blogules: ideas interesting enough to write up, but too small to send off to a journal. Of these … Continue reading
Posted in Announcements
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Is This A Pun?
From the picture of the book jacket on Blogographos, it appears that Harry Potter in Greek is APEIOΣ ΠOTHP. Assuming the accents match, that also means “Warlike Drinking-Cup”. Perhaps those who have dipped into the Greek version can tell me … Continue reading
Macaulay On The Greek Novel
From one of Macaulay’s Calcutta letters: I have at stray hours read Longus’s Romance and Xenophon’s Ephesiaca: and I mean to go through Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius, in the same way. Longus is prodigiously absurd; but there is often an … Continue reading
