One of three rivals in love, from a Brazilian novel set in the 1850s:
(Note: the aunt and the baroness are one and the same.)

He was a young man of about twenty-five or twenty-six. His name was Jorge. He wasn’t ugly, but artifice had ruined a little the work of nature on him. Too much attention sickens the plant, said the poet, and this maxim is not only applicable to poetry but to man as well. Jorge had a fine brown mustache, groomed and cared for with excessive dedication. His clear and lively eyes would have been more attractive if he hadn’t moved them with an affectation which was sometimes feminine. The same can be said of his manners, which would have been easy and natural if they hadn’t been so studied and measured. His words came out slow and calculated, as if to make felt all their author’s liberality. He didn’t say them like most people; each syllable was, so to speak, caressed, making it possible to see after a few minutes that he was making the entire beauty of the expression consist in this elongation of the word. His ideas could be evaluated by his manner of expressing them; they were empty, in reality, but they carried a ring of gravity which made one want to go out and amuse his ear with light and trivial things.

These were Jorge’s visible defects. There were others, and of these, the worst was a mortal sin, the seventh. The good name his father had left him and his aunt’s influence could have served him well in some good civil profession; but he preferred to vegetate uselessly, living off the wealth he had inherited from his parents, and off the hopes he had of the baroness. He had no other occupation.

Despite the defects in him, he had good qualities; he knew how to be loyal, he was generous and incapable of low deed, and he had a sincere love for his old aunt.

(Machado de Assis, The Hand & the Glove, tr. Albert I. Bagby, Jr., chapter 7)

In the second paragraph, “deadly sin” would be a better translation than “mortal sin”. I wonder who the poet of the fourth sentence is. Horace is a more likely source than most, but the words don’t ring a bell. Then again, an English translation of a Portuguese sentence translating or alluding to a Latin poet wouldn’t, necessarily.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn’t need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It’s rather like getting tenure.)

(Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 177)

The Role of Women in Thucydides would be — perhaps is — a very short book, but there are a few interesting appearances. This passage in particular caught my eye:

καὶ ὁ νεὼς τῆς Ἥρας τοῦ αὐτοῦ θέρους ἐν Ἀργει κατεκαύθη, Χρυσίδος τῆς ἱερείας λύχνον τινὰ θείσης ἡμμένον πρὸς τὰ στέμματα καὶ ἐπικαταδαρθούσης, ὥστε ἔλαθεν ἁφθέντα πάντα καὶ καταφλεχθέντα. καὶ ἡ Χρυσὶς μὲν εὐθὺς τῆς νυκτὸς δείσασα τοὺς Ἀργείους ἐς Φλειοῦντα φεύγει· οἱ δὲ ἄλλην ἱέρειαν ἐκ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ προκειμένου κατεστήσαντο Φαεινίδα ὄνομα. ἔτη δὲ ἡ Χρυσὶς τοῦ πολέμου τοῦδε ἐπέλαβεν ὀκτὼ καὶ ἔνατον ἐκ μέσου, ὅτε ἀπέφυγεν.

The same summer [423] also the temple of Hera at Argos was burnt down, through Chrysis, the priestess, placing a lighted torch near the garlands and then falling asleep, so that they all caught fire and were in a blaze before she observed it. Chrysis that very night fled to Phlius for fear of the Argives, who, following the law in such a case, appointed another priestess named Phaeinis. Chrysis at the time of her flight had been priestess for eight years of the present war and half the ninth.

(Thucydides 4.133.2-3, with Crawley’s translation)

As Gomme remarks ad loc., “she had been priestess for 56 1/2 years (ii. 2. 1), so she was presumably a very old lady”. I take it that priestesses normally served until they died, and “the law in such a case” provided for replacement of a living priestess who abandoned her post. Gomme refers to Pausanias 2.17.7 and 3.5.6 for more on Chrysis and also notes: “The shrine of Athena Alea was of especial sanctity, where illustrious persons, such as Leotychidas and Pausanias kings of Sparta, took refuge, and no state would demand extradition. Pausanias also tells us that the Argives did not destroy the statue of Chrysis in the Heraion.” Phlius was only the first stop in Chrysis’ flight to the shrine of Athena Alea in Tegea: I wonder if the roundabout journey through Phlius to Stymphalus “and thence by a very steep route to Arcadian Orchomenus” was a sly trick to evade her pursuers. If the Argives could guess that she would head for the temple in Tegea, taking the direct route would have been foolish, and a long and (in part) very steep route would have seemed unlikely for a very old lady. Then again, perhaps she hitched a ride in the first carriage or wagon she found heading out of town and only planned her next move when she got to Phlius.

In the thirty years I’ve owned the volume, I’d never noticed until now that a dozen pages of my copy of Gomme III were bound in more or less random order. I suppose it’s too late to get my money back — all $23.00 of it.