Category Archives: Nachleben

Two Greek Syllables in Edith Wharton

I have just uploaded my one published article on English literature, “Two Greek Syllables in Edith Wharton’s ‘The Pelican’”, one of her best short stories, with a bonus prelude on the mention of Quintius (?) Curtius in her very first … Continue reading

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Artemis a Model for Widows?

Like Edith Wharton (previous post), Machado de Assis has what looks very like a mythological blunder in his very first short story (first collected, in his case), “Miss Dollar”. The very handsome and affordable new translation of the Collected Stories … Continue reading

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A Crucial Difference for Some

While I’m uploading pictures, here are a couple of statues I saw at the West End Antique Mall in Richmond, Virginia last Saturday: They’re roughly half life-sized and priced at $562.50 each, though WEAM will usually knock off 10% just … Continue reading

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Gentler Remedies Are Preferable

In A Perpetual Student, Laudator Temporis Acti notes a couple of misprints. Here is the second, from a paper by Joachim Latacz on Nietzsche: By now he has already received (from Leiden) the handwritten transcription of the time by Stephanus … Continue reading

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Where’s the Party?

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Constantine Cavafy, and the 80th anniversary of the death of . . . Constantine Cavafy. I can think of many better ways to celebrate one’s 70th birthday than dying on it, … Continue reading

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Pedantry Pedantically Denounced

On a Latin play about Richard III by the master of Caius College, Cambridge (1579): . . . Legge’s was a poverty-stricken mind; his Latin versification might crimson the cheek of a preparatory schoolboy, and but for the sad fact … Continue reading

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I Wonder

When Orson Welles was filming Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight, did the crew call him Horson Welles? Behind his back, or to his face, it would have been a thoroughly Shakespearian pun.

Posted in Culture: Plays, Movies, Nachleben | 1 Comment

Horace Kippled

D. A. West, in Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem, Oxford 1995, 6-7: In Horace the tone is often elusive. Perhaps the nearest thing in English is the parody [of Odes 1.1] by Kipling in ‘A Diversity of Creatures’: There are … Continue reading

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Bad Sign

Waking up at 4:20 in the morning singing (inaudibly, I hope) Travis Tritt’s “The Whisky Ain’t Workin’ Anymore”, just the one line, but with “Nyquil” substituted for “whisky”. If you’re awake at 4:20, it’s definitely not workin’.

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Paradise Lost II

Notes from my reading of Book II: 1. Again the passage that most struck me was a classicizing bit, a simile describing Satan’s journey through Chaos (943-50): As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness With winged course ore Hill or … Continue reading

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Paradise Lost I

I started a new job two months ago, and now teach part-time at two different high schools. Oddly, I seem to have more spare time for reading now, partly because I have to get to work at the new school … Continue reading

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Quotation of the Day

Topsius, a fictional German professor of Biblical archaeology who drinks beer with his breakfast: Socrates é a semente; Platão a flôr; Aristoteles o fructo . . . E d’esta arvore, assim completa, se tem nutrido o espirito humano! (Eça de … Continue reading

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Honoring Both Sides

I don’t much care about the corruption story, but I do find it fascinating that the Romanian Minister of Agriculture is named Decebal Traian Remes. His parents obviously cared deeply about the Dacian campaigns of the late 1st and early … Continue reading

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Little-Known Fact: BBC Shakespeares

Amazon and other retailers offer four BBC Shakespeare DVD box sets, of five plays each: Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Tragedies II. The list price is $149.99 per box, and Amazon doesn’t discount them nearly as much as most of their … Continue reading

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Fielding Translates Silius

Silius Italicus doesn’t have much of a Nachleben, but here’s a translation of Punica 2.217-221 from The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, Esq., edited by James P. Browne (London, 1903), Volume XI, page 155:             A Simile from Silius Italicus Aut … Continue reading

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Dubious Historical Claim of the Day

InstaPundit links to a story from the Knoxville News about Tina, a Shire breed horse claimed to be the world’s tallest. The dubious historical claim is half a sentence: “Shires date to the Trojan War . . . .” What … Continue reading

Posted in Greek Literature, Nachleben | Tagged | 3 Comments

Worthy of the Greek Anthology

. . . and probably influenced by it. This scoptic epitaph is entitled “De Erastenes, Medico” in the cheap paperback edition in which I found it (Rimas de Lope de Vega, ed. Gerardo Diego, Madrid, 1979), “De Erásthenes Medico” (with … Continue reading

Posted in Greek Epigram, Nachleben | 2 Comments

Paeonian Oxen

Laudator Temporis Acti posts a tidbit from Rabelais about the disgusting habits of the Bonasos, or Paeonian ox, with an ancient parallel from the Elder Pliny. Here is what Pseudo-Aristotle has to say on the subject in chapter 1 of … Continue reading

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Supreme Erudition

Terry Teachout quotes some words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on his 90th birthday: And so I end with a line from a Latin poet who uttered the message more than fifteen hundred years ago: “Death plucks my ear and … Continue reading

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A Founding Father of the Oral Latin Movement?

The pseudonymous ‘Michael Blowhard’ of 2Blowhards was recommending Maupassant the week before last. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I checked out a collection of short stories, one of which turned out to be very pertinent to (of all things) Latin teaching … Continue reading

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