Classical Considerations: Useful Wisdom from Greece And Rome

CLASSICAL

CONSIDERATIONS U SEFUL WISDOM

FROM

E DITED

G REECE

AND

R OME

BY

M ARIE C ARDUCCI B OLCHAZY

Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. Wauconda, Illinois USA

Editor Marie Carducci Bolchazy Contributing Editors Andrew J. Adams L. Dale Griffith Susan Ford Wiltshire Cover Design Adam Phillip Velez Cover & Text Illustrations Thom Kapheim Classical Considerations Useful Wisdom from Greece and Rome Edited by Marie Carducci Bolchazy © 2006 Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. 1000 Brown Street Wauconda, IL 60084 USA www.bolchazy.com Printed in Canada

2006 by Friesens

ISBN-13: 978-0-86516-618-9 ISBN-10: 0-86516-618-8 —————————————————————————— Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Classical considerations : useful wisdom from Greece and Rome / edited by Marie Carducci Bolchazy. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-86516-618-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-86516-618-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Quotations, Greek. 2. Quotations, Greek--Translations into English. 3. Quotations, Latin. 4. Quotations, Latin--Translations into English. I. Bolchazy, Marie Carducci. II. Title. PN6080.C48 2006 089’.81--dc22 2005029449

C ONTENTS Introduction Classical Considerations: Useful Wisdom from Greece and Rome

vii

Fate Illustration: Fate

2–3

1

“but then the goddess Athena,” Homer

1

2

Truth, Michael W. Twomey

4

3

Freedom of Fate, Kurt Muller

6

4

I Could Cross the Street, Judy Neri

8

5

Vergil, Joe Paterno

10

6

“not ignorant of grief,” Vergil

14

7

“because today the fates are stern,” Horace

15

8

In the Spell of Integrity, Anne H. Groton

16

9

“anyone who prefers wealth,” Euripides

18

10

“O Turnus, what no god would ever dare,” Vergil

19

11

“happy is he who was able to learn,” Vergil

20

12

“the fates come in mixed order,” Seneca

21

Character Illustration: Character

22–23

13

“each person gives himself his character,” Macrobius

24

14

“he preferred being a good man,” Sallust

25

15

Achieving Aristotle: Seem What You Would Be, Benita Kane Jaro

26

“generosity once enlivened,” Pliny the Younger

29

16

 iii 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

17

Honor and Legacy, Robert Emmet Meagher

30

18

“our character will console us for our poverty,” Cicero

33

19

We Are What We Repeatedly Do, Stephen R. Covey

34

20

Living Life to the Fullest, Steve Reece

36

21

On Aristocracy, Roger Rosenblatt

38

Art Illustration: Art

40–41

22

Starry Night, Alexandra Stevenson

42

23

The Art of Living, JoAnn Polito

44

24

Safety in Numbers, Margaret A. Brucia

46

25

The Other Side, Robert Sonkowsky

48

26

“music’s a great and never-failing treasure,” Theophilus

51

War and Violence Illustration: War and Violence

52–53

27

How Sweet War Is, William H. Race

54

28

Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay

56

29

“for Ares trades the bodies for gold,” Aeschylus

59

30

To Mike Who Knows Who He Is, Margaret Richek Goldberg

60

31

Duty, Ellen Hobbs Lyle

62

32

The Power of Words, Stephanie Quinn

64

33

What Does Homer Have to Do with Softball?, Timothy F. Winters

66

34

“war springs from insignificant causes,” Thucydides

69

35

On Heroic Frogs, Neil Steinberg

70

Redemption After Suffering Illustration: Redemption After Suffering

72–73

36

Pressing On, John Breuker

74

37

Grace, Susan Ford Wiltshire

76

 iv 

CONTENTS

38

Lamentation, L. Dale Griffith

78

39

“those who are suffering even the gods will spare,” Ovid

81

40

Blessings, Keith Fahey

82

41

“from suffering learn to sympathize,” Philemon

85

42

How I Came into the World, Michael Coffey

86

43

“the thorn which produces pain,” Anonymous

90

44

“perhaps one day it will be pleasant to recall even this hardship,” Vergil

91

Time Illustration: Time

92–93

45

A Thirteen-Year-Old Considers Time, Noah Peller

94

46

Cypresses and Certainty, A. W. Godfrey

96

47

“I haven’t time to live today,” Martial

99

48

Feeding the Pigeons, Marie Carducci Bolchazy

100

49

Speed Kills—Augustus on Stress, Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr.

102

50

“time is the touchstone of men’s character,” Menander

105

51

Yes, You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover, William Murchison

106

52

“time effaces the utterance of opinion,” Cicero

108

53

“you don’t know what changes time will bring,” Menander

109

Life Lessons, Michelle Wu

110

54

About the Contributors

113

About the Editors

123

About the Artist

124

Acknowledgements

125

Bibliography

127 v

I NTRODUCTION CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS: USEFUL WISDOM FROM GREECE AND ROME Πόλις ἄνδρα διδάσκει. The city is the teacher of its people. – Simonides of Ceos In the early period of classical Athens, the poet Simonides of Ceos knew that wisdom comes from sharing ideas with each other and from those who have gone before. The city is the teacher of its people because it is the primary place where ideas are shared and transmitted. This book is such a sharing. Contributors to Classical Considerations show how the words of the ancients have connected with their contemporary understandings of the world. The full impact of the legacy from ancient Greece and Rome is felt at a personal level only when we apply the old words to the meanings of our lives. These quotations may thus be seen as comparable with the biblical parables that call us to make them our own. They invite response. The essayists here are a richly diverse group. They include not only professors and teachers, but also a psychiatrist, reporters, students, a judge, Vietnam veterans, a publisher, a minister, a football coach, and writers on an array of topics. The ancients are both like us and not like us. Their wisdom is available to us but we are also enlightened by contemporary reflections. The insight we gain from reading Homer can be enhanced by reading the morning newspaper and vice versa. Each informs and gives perspective to the other. Consider an analogy: we can see perfectly well with one eye, but with two eyes, we gain additional peripheral vision and depth perception.

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CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This collection of classical quotations with contemporary reflections upon them offers the depth perception and wider understandings that result from merging two lines of vision, the old with the new. Classical Considerations gives us two eyes—our own and those of the ancients—through which to view our heritage from Greece and Rome. Even experienced Latinists sometimes misidentify the root of “consider,” assuming it comes from sedeo, sedere, “to sit.” Rather, it means “with the stars”—cum + sidera. When we contemplate groups of stars together, we begin to see constellations in our imaginations, patterns to contemplate with attention, insight, and awe.

Susan Ford Wiltshire

 viii 

1 τὸν δ᾿ αὖτε προσέειπε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη˙ “Τηλέμαχ᾽‚ ἄλλα μὲν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ φρεσὶ σῇσι νοήσεις‚ ἄλλα δὲ καὶ δαίμων ὑποθήσεται· οὐ γὰρ ὀΐω οὔ σε θεῶν ἀέκητι γενέσθαι τε τραφέμεν τε.” But then the goddess Athena, with gleaming eyes, spoke to him: “Telemachus, you will come up with something to say from your heart, and a supernatural force will suggest the rest, as I believe you were born and brought up as the gods desired.”

In the twentieth year of his father Odysseus’ absence, young Telemachus travels in search of news about his father. Telemachus is immature for his age, and is occasionally whiny. Here he has arrived at the palace of Nestor, elderly veteran of the Trojan War. He is unsure how to approach the sage, but the goddess Athena gives him confidence, saying that he has the good will of the gods.

Homer, Odyssey, Book 3, lines 25–27 (translation and commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

1

2 Nil adeo subtile, dies quin detegat ultro.

There is nothing so subtle but time/day uncovers it of its own accord.

Hans Walther, ed., Lateinische Sprichwörter und Sentenzen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 9 vols. (Göttingen, 1963–86), no. 16664. (translation by Michael W. Twomey)

4

TRUTH When I was a Fulbright visiting professor of English literature at the University of Dresden, Germany, in 1996–97, some of my classes were in a building known as the Schumann-Bau, an imposing, fortress-like building at the edge of the campus. A German version of this proverb was inscribed over the entrance. The proverb seemed appropriate for a university. I assumed it meant that eventually, human inquiry finds the truth, no matter how complex and intricate it is. But one day in a back corridor I found an exhibit about the Schumann-Bau’s original use as a prison. In World War II, the Nazis had used the Schumann-Bau for show-trials of political enemies. In one photograph of the courtroom, cowed prisoners filled pew-like benches, which I instantly recognized as the benches in the classroom where my Shakespeare class met. In another photograph, I saw prisoners being shot by a firing squad in a courtyard. It was the courtyard below my classroom. After the war, the communist government of East Germany continued to use the Schumann-Bau as a prison, and only with the fall of the Berlin Wall had it been converted to a classroom building. Whatever the Romans may have meant by it, the proverb over the Schumann-Bau’s entrance had nothing to do with enlightenment. In the language of totalitarianism, truth is merely “subtlety,” conspiratorial lies, a threat to those in power. In the Schumann-Bau, for fifty years, the proverb was a warning to dissidents. For fifty years, truth itself had been victimized, along with the political dissidents who were executed when the “truth” about them was revealed. Ironically, the proverb that once threatened prisoners now bears witness to the atrocities of their jailers, which are now finally exposed to the full light of day.

Michael W. Twomey 5

3 Aequa lege Necessitas sortitur insignis et imos.

In impartial terms Nature assigns both high-born and low-born a fate.

Horace, Odes, Book 3, Ode 1, lines 14–15 (translation by Kurt Muller)

6

FREEDOM

OF

FATE

For many people, fate is an excuse for why we live the way we do. Fate is something we see as happening to us, rather than something we have a hand in. Fate, fortune, luck: we personify the idea that some external force determines the course of our lives. When things go our way, we say, “This is my lucky day”; when we suffer some setback, we wish ourselves “Better luck next time.” To be sure, all of us are presented with our own unique set of challenges and circumstances that we did not create and that are beyond our control. Nonetheless, all of us possess the powerful innate, albeit often latent, ability to shape our lives. Unfortunately, we often neglect to exercise this power. All mankind has the desire to make his own luck, to alter his fate. The question is, “Do we have the will?” I recently heard Mark Mathabane, a survivor of a South African ghetto and an acclaimed author, speak. Mathabane tells of reversing his fortune, of extricating himself from a life of dreadful poverty, hunger, and terror. His story epitomizes the potential in humans to decide our own fates. In spreading his message of love for our fellow man, Mr. Mathabane has turned fate on its head. Who would have dared to foresee this fate for Mr. Mathabane? We absolve ourselves of responsibility when we view ourselves as victims of fate. If we actively seek to write our own story, to do better, to do more, perhaps fate will be kind to us, too.

Kurt Muller

7

4 Spatio brevi spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Since our time is short, let’s not waste any of it expecting to live to an old age. Even while we talk, time grudgingly moves on. Live for today, counting on tomorrow for nothing.

Horace, Odes, Book 1, Ode 11, lines 6–8 (translation by Andrew J. Adams)

8

I C OULD C ROSS

THE

STREET

and be gunned down by fate’s careless trigger finger— An earthquake could seek me out and bury me in a lightning democratic instant with all the saints and murderers on my side of the street leaving the other side intact, its electric grid humming hallelujah— A killer microbe could make its home in my heart— I could fall on the subway track or slip in my kitchen and crack my brain— comic strip characters could yes they could! turn out the lights in me just as I take in spring’s honeyed breath the winy exaltation of fall— How dare I wait to kiss, to write, to call?

Judy Neri

9

5 Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris.

Of arms and a man I sing, the man who was the first (to come to Italy) from the shores of Troy.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 1, line 1 (translation by Andrew J. Adams)

 10 

VERGIL At the beginning of my senior year, this austere big brother of a priest-to-be led me to Vergil, telling me that he is known mostly for his epic poem, the Aeneid. I’ll never forget the majestic ring of the opening lines and of how we approximated them in modern English: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Of arms and the man I sing. So Vergil, and his hero Aeneas, the founder of Rome, entered my life. They helped shape everything I have since become. I don’t think anybody can get a handle on what makes me tick as a person, and certainly can’t get at the roots of how I coach football, without understanding what I learned from the deep relationship I formed with Vergil during those afternoons and later in my life. The poem actually begins at a later moment in Aeneas’ story, at a climax of Aeneas’ sea journey, the world crashing around him in a catastrophic storm. His fleet splits apart, some of his shattered ships and men sinking, some smashing into rocks and shore. Instead of his own ship landing where the fata, the fates, had promised him was his goal, on the shores of what we now call Italy, he finds himself stranded on the jungle shores of Africa, losing more of his men. “I’ve been deceived,” he cries. He’s ready to give up, craves to get out of this mission and its terrors and suffering. But he knows that his destiny, through the fata, has commanded him to get himself and the tatters of his army to Italy to start a new city. He’s exhausted, discouraged. Aeneas has to go through a great struggle with himself to renew any kind of faith in the fata, in the voices of his destiny.

 11 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

That puzzled and bothered me. If he knew he wanted to quit, how did he know he had to go on? If he lost faith in the fata, how did he know what his destiny was? So Father Bermingham had to explain some confusion over the modern meaning of the word “fate.” The word fatum in Latin means something different. It means a divine word. All through the Aeneid, Aeneas gets the messages from Jupiter, the supreme god, through Mercury or others whose voices he hears in his head. Vergil keeps harping that Aeneas—that anybody—needs to have faith and trust in that fatum. It may confuse, it may bewilder, it may contradict and frustrate all of a guy’s most precious urges. It sure as hell may seem illogical. But a fatum cannot be denied. And that’s where the deepest trouble is. Destiny, the fatum, the divine word, the inner voice, whatever you want to call it, tells you where you have to wind up and what you’re destined to do, but it doesn’t tell you how to get there or how to do it. Aeneas has to struggle and suffer—and make his own decisions. How he acts is not determined by fate. He listens, he considers. But then he must act out of free will. Aeneas cannot choose not to found Rome. He’s destined to create it. But he has to struggle with himself, inch by inch, hour by hour—play by play!—to figure out how to do it, to endure the struggle and torment of doing it, and take all the bad breaks along the way. Aeneas, as Vergil created him, was a totally new kind of epic hero. Like Homer’s heroes, he endures battles, storms, shipwrecks and the rages of the gods. But the worst storm is the one that rages within himself. He yearns to be free of his tormenting duty, but he knows that his duty is to others, to his men. Through years of hardship and peril, Aeneas reluctantly but relentlessly heeds his fata until he founds Rome.

 12 

FATE

Aeneas is not a grandstanding superstar. He is, above all, a Trojan and a Roman. His first commitment is not to himself, but to others. He is bugged constantly by the reminder, the fatum, “You must be a man for others.” He lives his life not for “me” and “I,” but for “us” and “we.” Aeneas is the ultimate team man.

Joe Paterno

 13 

6 Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.

Not ignorant of grief, I am learning how to help the unfortunate.

When Queen Dido utters these words to the wandering prince Aeneas, she has experienced the murder of her husband by her brother and she has led her people through hardships of the wilderness of North Africa. Yet instead of becoming bitter or cruel, her sad experiences teach her the importance of kindness and mercy to everyone.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 1, line 630 (translation and commentary by Thomas Fleming)

 14 

7 Non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit.

Because today the fates are stern, it will not ever be so.

Fate brought hard times upon Horace after he fought under the command of Brutus and saved himself from impending doom by fleeing the war. When he returned home he found his own father dead and his estate confiscated—he was left with nothing. Fate began to smile upon Horace after he purchased a clerkship in the quaestor’s office to pay the bills. Horace continued to practice his poetic art and came to socialize in a circle of well-known and influential figures, including Vergil and Maecenas.

Horace, Odes, Book 2, Ode 10, line 17 (commentary by Jennifer Mitten)

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8 integer vitae scelerisque purus

upstanding in life and unsullied by crime

Horace, Odes, Book 1, Ode 22, line 1 (translation by Anne H. Groton)

 16 

IN

THE

S PELL

OF I NTEGRITY

“Integer vitae scelerisque purus” is the opening line of a famous ancient poem, whose words were set to music in 1811 by a German physician, Friedrich F. Flemming. In 1875 Flemming’s tune was reused for a hymn, “Praise Ye the Triune God” (words by Elizabeth R. Charles). When I was growing up, singing in the Congregational church choir and studying Latin in school, the name of the hymn tune “Integer Vitae” intrigued me. It was not until I became a classics major in college, however, that I connected the Latin words with their author, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 bce). In the first two stanzas of the ode, the poet proclaims that nothing can harm a man who leads an honorable life: he needs no weapons to defend himself, for his character alone is enough to protect him. I like this idea enough to wish it were true. But in the last four stanzas Horace humorously undermines his lofty sentiment by claiming invulnerability for himself on far less noble grounds: while I was wandering unwarily in the woods, he says, singing about my love for my girlfriend, a wolf ran away from me, thus proving that nothing can harm a…lover. Logically, there is no particular reason why this poem should resonate with me. Yet, whenever I am lost or in perilous circumstances, the first line of Odes 1.22 invariably comes to mind, often with Flemming’s music in the background, and the words immediately put me at ease. Perhaps Horace has influenced me more than I realize. Whether or not he was serious about virtue being a guarantee of one’s safety, I cannot tell, but that notion has stayed with me for years, and “integer vitae scelerisque purus” is still my lucky charm.

Anne H. Groton

 17 

9 ὅστις δὲ πλοῦτον ἢ σθένος μᾶλλον φ λων ἀγαθῶν πεπᾶσθαι βούλεται κακῶς φρονεῖ.

Anyone who prefers wealth or power to true friendship is out of his mind.

These are the last two lines spoken by Herakles (Hercules) in the tragedy bearing his name. He knows that his death is imminent, and he appreciates the loyal friendship of Theseus, whose life Hercules had saved when Theseus was young. Hercules has known power and fame in his life, but also spells of violence and madness. At the end of his days Hercules celebrates the value of friendship.

Euripides, Herakles, lines 1425–26 (translation and commentary by Robert Meagher)

 18 

10 Turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo auderet, volvenda dies en att ulit ultro.

O Turnus, what no god would ever dare To promise, time has brought us all unasked.

Throughout the Aeneid, the goddess Juno has been putting obstacles in the way of Aeneas. At this point in the Aeneid, Aeneas and the Trojans have landed in Italy, where they have found people living there already. Turnus is one of their leaders. Juno’s messenger, Iris, has come to tell Turnus of events turning in his favor, for the time being. Aeneas is away from his camp and men, leaving them vulnerable to attack. Though this opportunity is afforded to Turnus, he ultimately does not win his struggle with Aeneas.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 9, line 6 (commentary by Peter Sipes)

 19 

11 Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus.

Happy is he who was able to learn the reason for things and put all fears and implacable fate under his feet.

Vergil is best known for his epic poem, the Aeneid. An earlier work of his is a didactic poem on farming, Georgics. The subject matter seems unlikely for a poem, dwelling on such mundane matters as animal husbandry and bee-keeping. There are many patriotic overtones and many mythological allusions in this nature-loving text, and on hearing it recited the emperor Augustus offered Vergil the commission to compose a Latin epic to glorify Rome, Roman values, and patriotism—the Aeneid.

Vergil, Georgics, Book 2, lines 490–92 (commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

 20 

12 Certo veniunt ordine Parcae.

The fates come in fixed order.

The Romans were much more superstitious than Americans (they thought left-handedness indicated divine disfavor); they also believed that there were ways of determining the future. To this end they cut open animals, observed the flight of birds, and consulted fortune-tellers and astrologers. Seneca was a versatile and prolific author and philosopher in the first century ce. His thought here is on the worthlessness of augurs and psychics.

Seneca, Hercules Furens, line 188 (translation from Latin Proverbs: Wisdom from Ancient to Modern Times, commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

 21 

13 Non ergo fortuna homines aestimabo sed moribus; sibi quisque dat mores, condicionem casus assignat.

I will not therefore estimate men according to their fortune but according to their character; each person gives himself his character but chance assigns us our status in life.

Macrobius, like many figures from antiquity, has a biography that is filled with uncertainty. We do not know whether he was Greek or African, but he definitely was not Roman, since he said so himself. What we do know is that he was writing during the late fourth and early fifth centuries ce in a Rome that was increasingly Christian. In that respect, his Saturnalia is a bit of a throwback to when paganism was the majority religion. Borrowing its structure from Plato’s Symposium, the Saturnalia has discussions of the origin of the Saturnalia holiday and the Roman calendar; a party where witticisms are swapped; and a discussion of the skills and merits of Vergil and Homer.

Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.10 (commentary by Peter Sipes)

 24 

14 Esse quam videri bonus malebat.

He preferred being a good man to looking like one.

Sallust, a Roman historian who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, wrote these words about Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, a Roman senator who lived in the last days of the Roman Republic.

Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, section 54.6 (translation and commentary by Rose Williams)

 25 

15 Compendiosam semitam ad virtutem visam esse philosophis, ut tales effici studeamus quales cupimus apparere.

The philosophers have considered it a short path to virtue, that we should study to make ourselves in reality such as we would wish to appear.

Petrarch, Epistolae de Rebus Familiaribus, Book 3, Letter 12

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ACHIEVING A RISTOTLE : S EEM WHAT YOU WOULD B E When I was a freshman in college my professor of philosophy mentioned a dictum of Aristotle’s: “Be what you would seem.” I don’t remember why; it wasn’t a course in ancient philosophy. But the phrase stuck in my ear. I thought it was true. And valuable. One of those guides to life. The only trouble was, I got it wrong. What I thought he said was, “Seem what you would be.” Seem what you would be. Well, I could do that. I hadn’t gotten very far in the world yet, but I could see that it was going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated, and it wasn’t at all clear to me that I had the qualities it was going to take. You know freshman year—if by somewhere around the end of your first midterms you don’t feel like a failure, you’ve missed the point. But to me, then, it was very personal, and I didn’t know that everyone had these doubts. So Aristotle’s advice fell on me like rain in spring. Pretend to be brave, or kind, or generous. It sounded a whole lot easier than actually having those virtues. That, I had discovered, was beyond me. And if Aristotle said to, how could it be wrong? The only fly paddling around in this avgolemono, I discovered pretty quickly, was that I had to fake goodness with some pertinacity in order to be convincing. People aren’t stupid: if one day I was generous and the next selfish, they caught on. And they didn’t think the real me was the generous one, either. Why should they? It wasn’t. I had to work at this, and hard, remembering all the time to be better than I really was. So I went along, bolstered by an occasional success. The world grew a little easier to manage; I made some progress in it. I had a job, then a boyfriend. I acquired a degree, I married. It must have been Aristotle’s advice. After all, others agreed. “Assume a virtue if you have it not,” says Hamlet to his mother. He must have read Aristotle too.

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CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

When sometime later I discovered what Aristotle really said, I was horrified. I had gotten it all wrong. It wasn’t “Seem what you would be,” it was just the opposite. “Be what you would seem.” Be what you would seem? How on earth was I going to do that? I saw all my gains, my degrees—by now I had two—my marriage, my work, all turning ghostly and fading in the dawn. Suddenly Hamlet didn’t seem much of a prop—after all, he was mad, wasn’t he? Maybe he had misunderstood too. The trouble was, it was working. So I kept it up. And maybe Hamlet wasn’t so crazy after all—“That monster, custom, is angel yet in this.” Habit helps, and nowadays most of the time I don’t have to work so hard at seeming better than I am. And though I never quite manage to deceive myself, at least I act, most of the time, up to a standard I can live with. Seem what you would be. If it’s not Aristotle, at least in the end it comes very nearly to the same thing.

Benita Kane Jaro

 28 

16 Nescit enim semel incitata liberalitas stare, cuius pulchritudinem usus ipse commendat.

Generosity once enlivened cannot stand still; practice increases its beauty.

Noted letter-writer Pliny the Younger wrote a short note to his wife’s grandfather in which he praises the man for making public improvements to his city at his own expense. Pliny was himself a philanthropist, and here he states his philosophy that giving has its own rewards.

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, Book 5, Letter 11, section 3 (commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

 29 

17 Αδ. θανῇ γε μέντοι δυσκλεής, ὅταν θάνῃς. Φε. κακῶς ἀκούειν οὐ μέλει θανόντι μοι.

Admetos: Don’t expect the world to praise you when you die, if you ever do. Pheres: What the hell do I care what people say of me after I’m dead?

Euripides, Alkestis, lines 725–26 (translation by William Arrowsmith)

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H ONOR

AND

L EGACY

I recall vividly when I first heard the quotation on the facing page. It may have been the night I first imagined I might well spend my life studying ancient literature. The inimitable and deeply missed William Arrowsmith, whose translation I have used here, was giving the Ward Phillips Lectures at Notre Dame University and was at the moment mulling over the explosive generational quarrel at the center of Euripides’ Alkestis. Arrowsmith pointed out how shocking to an ancient audience would have been the verbal savaging of a father (Pheres) by his son (Admetos), and added that Pheres too, in the words cited for this piece, morally exposes himself in the end as thoughtless and without honor. I wanted to concur at once with Arrowsmith’s words, knowingly and wholeheartedly; but, like a newborn endowed with huge ears, I would have to grow into them. The truth was that I only sort of knew or felt it mattered what people would make of me after I’m gone. Sticks and stones and all that; and if names can’t hurt me now, how can they hurt me later? It was a good question, and one to which I have given only occasional thought in the intervening years. Now, thirty-five years later, I read the concluding words of Bob Woodward’s current best-seller, Plan of Attack. Asked what he thinks people, history, will say of him after he’s gone, President George W. Bush shrugs and answers simply, “We’ll all be dead.” I find myself shocked like an ancient Greek audience. These are shameless, dishonorable words. But why? I suddenly remember Arrowsmith and Pheres. I focus on the “we.” Is this the “royal” we, or a reference to his inner circle? Regardless, I know that it fails to include my children and yours, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. This presidential “we” is too small, not only for a head of state but also for a head of family, for anyone in

 31 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

fact. And when we think small, we think without honor, without responsibility. The reason why it matters what people in the future will say of us is that they will be the ones to endure or enjoy the consequences of what we do or fail to do. They alone will recognize our footprints, our lingering fragrance or stench. They will pay our debts. They alone will know the truth about us, our worth; and not to care about all that is indeed shameful.

Robert Emmet Meagher

 32 

18 Pecuniam si cuipiam fortuna ademit, aut si alicuius eripuit iniuria, tamen dum existimatio est integra, facile consolatur honestas egestatem. If fortune or another’s crime has deprived us of our wealth, yet so long as our reputation is untarnished, our character will console us for our poverty.

Cicero, Rome’s best-known public speaker and most voluminous author, although honest, was not a modest man. He was obsessed with what his reputation would be long after he died. In 63 bce he discovered a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman government, and successfully nipped it. He bragged about this achievement the rest of his life, and often boasted of his oratorical abilities in the courtroom. Fortune and crime conspired to issue a death warrant on Cicero; he and his entourage were captured in flight. Not wishing for lives to be needlessly lost, Cicero walked up to his captors and lowered his head, which was immediately cut off. Today we forgive Cicero his foibles and admire his character.

Cicero, Pro Quinctio, section 15.49 (commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

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19 Consuetudinis magna vis est.

Great is the force of habit.

Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, Book 2, section 40

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WE A RE WHAT WE R EPEATEDLY D O Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly express our character and produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness. For our purposes, we will define a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge, in the theoretical paradigm, is the what-to-do and the why.

Stephen R. Covey

 35 

20 μύθων τε ῥητῆρʹ ἔμεναι πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων

to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds

Homer, Iliad, Book 9, line 443 (translation by Steve Reece)

 36 

L IVING L IFE

TO THE

FULLEST

As Achilles sits sulking in his tent, leaving his comrades in arms to bear the brunt of the fighting, the old man Phoenix reminds him what it means to be a true hero. “Your father sent me along,” he says, “to teach you how to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.” The phrase is perfectly balanced in Greek, with the word “to be” squarely in the middle, framed by “speaker” on the left and “doer” on the right, which is in turn framed by the conjunction “and” on both sides, which is finally framed by “of words” and “of deeds” on the outer edges. A replication of the word order in English would read (rather awkwardly): “Of words - and - a speaker - to be - a doer - and - of deeds.” The balance of the phrase, in both its form and content, impresses upon its audience that in order to live life to the fullest a true hero—or any human being for that matter—must strive for a balance between a life of contemplation and one of action. For me, as an academic, it is sometimes an inviting prospect to retreat into the secure environment of the “ivory tower” and to live a life of “thinking without acting.” On the other hand, as I observe the hustle and bustle of some of those in the “real world,” going busily about their routines, they sometimes appear to me to be living a life of “acting without thinking.” Perhaps Phoenix’s advice to Achilles still holds some value for us today; our twentyfirst–century society may be well served by some rapprochement between these extremes.

Steve Reece

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21 Non ingenerantur hominibus mores tam a stirpe generis ac seminis quam ex eis rebus quae ab ipsa natura nobis ad vitae consuetudinem suppeditantur, quibus alimur et vivimus.

Character is not so much born with us, as a consequence of heredity and descent, but is rather the growth of circumstances dependent on locality and habit, the circumstances of our life and development.

Cicero, De Lege Agraria, Speech 2, section 95

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O N A RISTOCRACY In 1993, on assignment for Vanity Fair, I went to Sudan with Sabastião Salgado, the great photographer of human suffering, to write about the “lost boys”—those who had fled their villages in the north to escape the Khartoum government soldiers. Over 100,000 of these boys had made a biblical trek through the relentless heat, the semi-desert cold, the swollen rivers. They had eluded the animals that hunted them, and they had survived disease and famine. Salgado and I came to a spot near Natt inga where about four hundred boys were beginning to set up camp. They were searching for water and building their tukuls, or huts, when we arrived—two white men who might have dropped in from Mars. But when they saw us, they stopped whatever else they were doing and made two beds for us out of kam, a very hard wood that the Nuer use for spears. They made us beds, and they made us a table, and they made sure that we, their guests, were taken care of. At night they played music on a handmade lyre, a rabala, and they gathered round us to tell folktales, by flashlight, in the cold darkness. When anyone asks me if I have ever met a true aristocrat, I tell him this story.

Roger Rosenblatt

 39 

22 κάλλιστον μὲν ἐγὼ λείπω φάος ἠελίοιο‚ δεύτερον ἄστρα φαεινὰ σεληναίης τε πρόσωπον ἠδὲ καὶ ὡραίους σικύους καὶ μῆλα καὶ ὄγχνας.

Loveliest of what I leave behind is the sunlight, And loveliest after that the shining stars, and the moon’s face, But also cucumbers that are ripe, and pears and apples.

Praxilla, Fragment (translation by Andrew J. Adams)

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STARRY N IGHT Pink color flooding the sky, I am looking through Van Gogh’s eye— an orange cornfield, solid blue sky the red and green cafe with harsh yellow light, the colors sound like the hum of lights in this room louder than any thought buzzing How does he hear sound with brush? How does he hear sunlight oppressive over the field or dark night with sharp stars that swirl like comets? I can hear the stars buzzing like the lights or humming like the crickets in the night their sound is so much easier to bear than artificial light.

Alexandra Stevenson

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23 Ars longa, vita brevis.

Art is long, life is short.

Attributed variously to Seneca, Horace, and Hippocrates.

 44 

THE A RT

OF

L IVING

My daily Latin classes begin with “Latin in the Real World.” Students share examples of Latin terminology and quotations that are used today. When we discussed Horace’s “Ars longa” quote we noted how Mona Lisa and countless works of art have outlived their creators; indeed, we noted, art often increases in value when the artist dies and continues to “appreciate” long after the creator’s demise. In addition, we thought the “long-lived” arts also include science, technology, philanthropy—everything humans do to enrich society. Moreover, the home, family, friendships, and memories an individual creates always outlive him. I have pondered and discussed this quotation many times, but it became most significant to me when I lost my brother, Richard. He was a beautiful, strong, fun-loving fifty-year-old builder and designer. He suffered a sudden backache. A week later I sat in a hospital waiting room with his son and daughter as he underwent delicate heart surgery. He didn’t survive the surgery. Today we can drive by the beautiful homes he designed and built. We can celebrate the holidays with the traditions he loved. We share memories with so many colleagues and friends who agree “Everyone loved Rich.” We watch his son work hard to develop a growing business. We watch his daughter marry and start a new family. We rejoice at the birth of her son, Richie. To this day, we mourn the loss of my brother. We miss him terribly. He was a builder: this was his art. He built beautifully designed homes, wonderful friendships, a loving family. His art lives on. His life was too short.

JoAnn Polito

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24 Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus invidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another cool thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we’ve raked in many thousands, we’ll shuffle them all up, so we can’t figure it out, or so that no wiseguy can look askance when he tallies up our jackpot of kisses.

Catullus, Carmina, Ode 5, lines 7–13 (translation by Margaret A. Brucia)

 46 

SAFETY

IN

N UMBERS

Recently one of my youngest Latin students asked me how many times I had been to Rome. “I don’t know,” I told this twelve-yearold, “I can’t count them all.” His incredulity reminded me of the days when I did know, when I derived a sense of proud satisfaction from mentally reviewing my visits to Rome in order. The first, just before my senior year in college, is as vivid to me now as it was then: the descent to Leonardo DaVinci Airport, the blast of heat and sunlight as I planted my feet firmly on Italian asphalt, my daunting visit to the Forum. The second time, unconsciously au courant in my bell-bottoms and peace beads, I was determined to make the break, to live in Rome, to lay claim to my Italian heritage. The third time, a newly minted Fulbright, an academic sponge, I couldn’t drink my fill of monuments and history. I never did become a permanent resident of Rome, although once I lived blissfully in my beloved city for a year as a research fellow and another time I spent a semester teaching at a university in Rome. For decades I took students on short trips and spent stolen weeks doing research in the summers. At an indeterminate moment, I lost track of numbers; I could no longer call up my visits for mental chronological review. They all blurred together in a warm orange glow on the easel of my mind. Then the city itself emerged as a crisply delineated entity: a trusted friend, a valued mentor, a loyal supporter. This year I am reading, again, the poetry of Catullus with my oldest students. But now I pause for a moment at poem 5, aware that my visits to Rome have been as fleeting, as lingering, as satisfying, and as personal as Catullus’s kisses. There is safety in numbers.

Margaret A. Brucia

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25 Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat terribili squalore Charon, cui plurima mento canities inculta iacet, stant lumina flamma, sordidus ex umeris nodo dependet amictus.... “at ramum hunc” (aperit ramum qui veste latebat) “agnoscas.” Tumida ex ira tum corda residunt.

Looking out over the water, unkempt and scowling, stood the master of the rust-gray ferry that carried the dead across the river; he steered it and tended its sails himself. A filthy cloak was twisted over his shoulders, an untidy white beard rambled down his chin, and above it his eyes glowed in their sockets.... [The Sibyl said to him,] “[At least] you will recognize this.” From under her robe she drew out the golden bough. At this Charon’s swollen heart subsided from anger.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 6, lines 298–301, 406–7 (translation based on Cobbold’s Aeneid)

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THE O THER S IDE When I was a boy, there was a ghost in the attic of a house in my neighborhood. We could sometimes catch sight of it in the attic window. I knew then how scary and mysterious was the world beyond the grave. But as I entered adolescence and considered myself more “manly,” I repressed the feelings behind those voyeuristic goose bumps of boyhood. I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, a town that regarded Harry Houdini, who promised his devotees he would communicate with them after his death, as one of its distinctions, but was not otherwise outstanding for its otherworldliness. Sometimes I did wonder boyishly about souls. Did they wander or visit other souls when people were asleep, in a coma, or dead? But, outwardly, I was not especially superstitious or insecure about the next world. Throughout the fourth year of my high school Latin course, however, I studied Vergil’s Aeneid, and in Book Six I descended into the dark shadows of the underworld with Aeneas and his guide, the Sibyl. When we met Charon, the ferryman who transports the souls, or “shades,” of the dead across the river Styx, I had an experience that was inexpressible then as now. Some scholars see Charon as funny, but he scares the hell out of me to this day, and he presides over the water that separates the dead from the living. The Sibyl had given Aeneas the mysterious Golden Bough. She now showed it to Charon as a “passport” and later uses it to enter Elysium. This may have suggested the sixth-century story by Romanos, the Melodist, of Jesus’ descent into Hell: the Good Thief (Dismas) accompanies Jesus, brings along the Titulus Crucis (“Title of the Cross,” “INRI”), and uses it to calm the sentinels for those released from Hell to enter Paradise.

 49 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Today I am a “Christian.” Yet Charon and his mastery over the waterways of the “pagan” next world stick with me. My baptism by water, the archangel Michael (“he who is like God”), who transports the souls of the dead across the River Jordan (as is commemorated in the African American Spiritual “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore!”), and the importance of water in other transition stories of world mythologies are somehow richer in my aging meditations, because of Charon, calmed by the Golden Bough.

Robert Sonkowsky

 50 

26 μέγας θησαυρός ἐστι καὶ βέβαιος μουσικὴ ἅπασι τοῖς μαθοῦσι παιδευθεῖσί τε.

Music’s a great and never-failing treasure to those who’ve learned and studied it in youth.

In ancient Greek society, music was at the center of important public and private affairs: wedding and funeral ceremonies, festivals and banquets, and athletic games. Although we do not know much about this Athenian comic poet, we do know he won a contest for his work in 329 bce. Only eight titles and twelve fragments of his are extant.

Theophilus, Citharoedus, Fragment (commentary by Jennifer Mitten)

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27 γλυκὺ δὲ πόλεμος ἀπείροισιν, ἐμπείρων δέ τις ταρβεῖ προσιόντα νιν καρδίᾳ περισσῶς.

A sweet thing is war to those without experience, but one of those with experience dreads its approach exceedingly in his heart.

Pindar, Fragment 110 (translation by William H. Race)

 54 

H OW SWEET WAR I S The fragment on the facing page from Pindar (fr. 110) is cited in the fifth-century ce anthology by John of Stobi under the rubric of “On War.” Half of this thought is also expressed in a shorter, more popular version: γλυκὺς ἀπείρῳ πόλεμος, “sweet is war, to one without experience.” Erasmus included a Latin version in his Adages: dulce bellum inexpertis and George Gascoigne put it into a pentameter, “How sweet war is to such as know it not.” Pindar’s longer version, however, contrasts two reactions summed up by the words at the beginning of each line: γλυκύ (“a sweet thing”), and ταρβεῖ (“he dreads”). The chiastic (criss-cross) word order brings together the last word of the first clause with the first word of the second: ἀπείροισιν / ἐμπείρων “to those without experience” / “of those with experience.” The two clauses also contrast the mass of those without experience (ἀπείροισιν) with the individual person (τις), whose experience causes emotion to be felt in his deepest organ, his heart (καρδίᾳ). Pindar’s words returned to me in the months leading up to the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Having served as an artillery officer in Vietnam (1966–67), I watched the approaching invasion with exceeding dread in my heart, for I feared the specter of our occupying army facing an unknown enemy indistinguishable from civilians. But the first half of the quotation also seemed appropriate, since the invasion was devised and championed mainly by those who had little or no experience of ground war. Sweet were the promises of easy wealth, a welcoming reception of our values, and political dominance in a troubled region. The trauma will remain for the rest of their lives in the hearts of those who went.

William H. Race  55 

28 νῡν δʹ ἐπεὶ οὐ νέομαί γε φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.

For me, there is no return to my own country.

Homer, Iliad, Book 18, line 101 (Achilles’ words after the death of Patroklos) (translation by Jonathan Shay)

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ACHILLES

IN

VIETNAM

Our culture has raised us to believe that good character stands reliably between the good person and the possibility of horrible acts. In Book 10 of The Republic, Plato sarcastically calls Homer “the best of the poets and the first of the tragedians.” Where is the tragedy in the Iliad? I have argued that the Iliad is the tragedy of Achilles’ noble character brought to ruin—moral ruin in his own terms. Prior to Agamemnon’s betrayal of “what’s right” and the death of Patroklos, Achilles possessed a highly developed social morality. Achilles’ moral unluckiness, his tragedy, was that events—simply what happened—created the desire to do things that he himself regarded as bad. The most ancient traditions of Western culture instruct us to base our self-respect on firmness of character. Many popular melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. A permanent challenge of working with those injured by combat trauma is facing the painful awareness that in all likelihood one’s own character would not have stood firm. Homer makes us witness to the weakening of Achilles’ fine character by betrayal and its subsequent destruction by bereavement. Many veterans’ narratives ask us to witness the same. This man did three Vietnam combat tours in tanks: I was eighteen years old. And I was like your typical young American boy. A virgin. I had strong religious beliefs. And I was into athletic sports. I was just a typical American boy—high school class of ’65. It was the way you were taught, like, “Whenever you’re alone, make believe God’s there with you. Would he approve of what you are doing?” Sure, I wasn’t no angel, either. I mean I had my little fistfights and stuff. But evil didn’t enter it ‘til Vietnam.  57 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

I mean real evil. I wasn’t prepared for it at all. Why I became like that? It was all evil. All evil. Where before, I wasn’t. I look back, I look back today, and I’m horrified at what I turned into. What I was. What I did. I just look at it like it was somebody else. War changes you. Strips you, strips you of all your beliefs, your religion, takes your dignity away, you become an animal. I know the animals don’t—the animal in the sense of being evil. You know, it’s unbelievable what humans can do to each other. I never in a million years thought I would be capable of doing that. Never, never, never.

Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD

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29 ὁ χρυσαμοιβὸς δ᾽ Ἄρης σομάτων καὶ ταλαντοῦχος ἐν μάχῃ δορὸς πυρωθὲν ἐξ Ἰλίου φίλοισι πέμπει βαρὺ ψῆγμα δυσδάκρυτον ἀντήνορος σποδοῦ γεμίζων λέβητας εὐθέτους.

For Ares trades the bodies for gold; he holds the balance in the battle of the spear. He sends back from Troy to their loved ones a heavy dust, wept over with many tears, shipping urns arranged with ashes in place of man.

War is a money changer who gives a mother an urn of ashes for her son. – a common paraphrase

Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lines 438–44 (translation by Andrew J. Adams)

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30 Non ergo fortuna homines aestimabo sed moribus; sibi quisque dat mores, condicionem casus assignat.

I will not therefore estimate people according to their fortune but according to their character; each person gives himself his character but chance assigns our status in life.

Macrobius, Saturnalia, Book 1, Chapter 11, line 10 (translation by Waldo E. Sweet, in Latin Proverbs: Wisdom from Ancient to Modern Times)

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TO M IKE WHO K NOWS WHO H E I S Mike Giles, a draftee, lived in the mud of Vietnam for months, fighting bugs as big as his hand, learning to kill or be killed. Every shred of civilization vanished in a brutal struggle to survive. Mike was captured by the enemy but escaped. And to forget the smell of flesh, the horror of killing, the look in children’s eyes, Mike used alcohol and heroin. There was no other way; even the napalm in the air was addictive. The army sent him back to the home he longed for, but Mike was no longer himself. For ten years, he fought addiction. Today, Mike has vanquished the devil of his addictions. He is perhaps the best-loved doorman in Chicago. He knows our names, families, interests, and problems. He visits vets who are not as fortunate as he has been. He apologizes to people from Vietnam for what he had to do. Mike knows how precious life is. Where was I when this innocent nineteen-year-old was forced to look life in the teeth? A woman born into an affluent family, I went to graduate school, became a professor, and pursued virtually uninterrupted success. I could say I was more fortunate. But if we live to gain understanding of ourselves and to confront life, then perhaps Mike was, however ironically, the more fortunate. He developed character.

Margaret Richek Goldberg

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31 Ego certe meum rei publicae atque imperatori officium praestitero.

It shall be told that I at any rate did my duty to my country and my general.

Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, Book 4, Chapter 25, section 3 (translation by Ellen Hobbs Lyle)

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D UTY Brought up at a dinner table where the favorite conversation was the War Between the States, I naturally took to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Twenty-five years later my youthful Latin studies were still part of me, but I seldom recollected them in any detail until I met a former first lieutenant. This man’s core was forged in his Vietnam service. He had that indelible bond soldiers have with each other: wry humor and choked emotion. He was not jingoistic. Nor was he a proponent of the Vietnam War, being convinced, as his service progressed, that the war was wrong, though four times he was decorated with the Bronze Star. In one incident he endured and risked enemy fire to carry a wounded man to safety. Hearing that lieutenant’s story of risking his life to save the life of another, I recalled from my studies the passage in Caesar depicting the first soldier off the ship who, in the face of death, took solace in his duty even as he resigned himself to his likely fate. That courageous first lieutenant became my husband. And several years later I gave him a gold pocket watch inscribed with the words of that ancient soldier: “Ego certe meum rei publicae atque imperatori officium praestitero.” My husband has requested that upon his death this inscription be his only memorial.

Ellen Hobbs Lyle

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32 Talibus insidiis periurique arte Sinonis Credita res, captique dolis lacrimisque coactis Quos neque Tydides nec Larissaeus Achilles Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae.

Through such traps as these, and the artfulness of Sinon’s lies, The story was believed. [The Trojans] were conquered by deception and Forced tears whom neither Diomedes, the son of Tydeus, nor Larissean Apollo, nor ten years, had defeated, nor the thousand ships.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 2, lines 195–98 (translation by Stephanie Quinn)

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THE POWER

OF

WORDS

The passage on the facing page speaks forcefully of the power of words, and the risks of that power. The story, in Book Two of the Aeneid, of Sinon deceiving the Trojans to admit the Trojan horse full of enemy Greeks alludes to other similar instances in storytelling. In Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, for example, Odysseus tells the same kind of lie as Sinon does in the Aeneid. By linking Aeneas to Odysseus, Vergil links his pious hero to a tradition of artful but potentially dangerous deception through the use of words. In his dual role as hero and story-teller Aeneas announces the cause for the fall of Troy: it is not heroic deeds that make history, but words. Knowing the truth and then telling the truth especially in times of high stress is difficult. In the events of September 11, 2001, our leaders and we confronted unfamiliar questions about how to understand the world. Why do a few hate us and many disagree with us? How could others seem to abhor ideals we cherish? Why are we their enemy? Who is our enemy? What means are effective to battle which enemy? In response to such questions, leadership resides as much in the story that explains an unfamiliar reality as it does in action itself. In the Aeneid, Sinon’s deceitful story convinced the Trojans to act, playing as it did on their assumptions, fears, and hopes. Therein, Vergil demonstrates the potentially dangerous power of words, and in so doing, teaches us to be masters of rhetoric rather than, like the Trojans, its victims. Great art creates in its audiences its own capable critics, as great leaders create capable citizens. The poet of the Aeneid teaches his readers to evaluate leaders on their use of words, the stories about reality they tell us, and their ability to teach us to be their loyal but severe critics.

Stephanie Quinn  65 

33 Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω ʹΑχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρίʹ ʹΑχαιοῖς ἄλγεʹ ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δʹ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς ῎Αϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δʹ ἐτελείετο βουλή, ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε ʹΑτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δἳος ʹΑχιλλεύς.

Wrath, Goddess, sing the dreadful wrath of Peleus’ son, Achilles. an anger which set uncountable pains upon the Achaians, and hurled so many brave souls to the depths of Hades, heroes once, but fodder now for the dogs and birds, but the will of Zeus was accomplished, when first they stood in combative conflict Atreides, the lord of men, and proud Achilles.

Homer, Iliad, Book 1, lines 1–7 (translated by Timothy F. Winters)

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WHAT D OES H OMER H AVE TO D O WITH S OFTBALL? I have always encouraged my four daughters to obtain a broad education. As a result of that, a few years ago I found myself sitting through a season of children’s softball. At one game, a mid-thirties mom, growing frustrated at her perception of unfair play by the other team, called her nine-year-old daughter to the stands. The mother was red in the face. “The next time that girl blocks the base,” she hissed, “I want you to knock her down and step on her face.” She clearly meant it. That was the last season my children played ball. Anger is such an insidious force, and right now it seems that anger is just below the surface for so many people. The opening lines of Homer’s Iliad remind us of the importance of reading and re-reading the Classics. That line recalls for us the whole terrible story of Troy, and the ramifications of lett ing one’s anger control one’s actions. Achilles is on the verge of killing Agamemnon for what amounts to an issue of pride. The vengeful anger of Achilles leads to the death of hundreds, including his own best friend. Just so with road rage, or domestic violence, or saddest of all, the playground where our children are literally killing each other. And yet, where can our children go to learn about the baleful effects of allowing anger to rule one’s actions? The first response of many adults nowadays to any situation in which they feel wronged is revenge, whether through the courts or through violence. Video games and movies often promote, and at least reflect, violence and the culture of revenge. Contemporary music is laced with references to violence. In short, if children want to understand the nature of anger and how it affects the lives of

 67 

CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

people, they have few places to go. If we want to help them come to grips with anger, we should, at a certain age, read the Iliad to them, or see that they read it. Anyone who has sat through a season of children’s softball will understand why this is so.

Timothy F. Winters

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34 ἄδηλα γὰρ τὰ τῶν πολέμων, καὶ ἐξ ὀλίγου τὰ πολλὰ καὶ δι᾽ ὀργῆς αἱ ἐπιχειρήσεις γίγνονται.

Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.

Thucydides was an Athenian aristocrat who took it upon himself to write a history of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (431–404 bce). This war, he argued, was the most important one the Greeks had waged. While Thucydides served as a general, Thucydides’ squadron failed to stabilize a city that was of key strategic importance. Consequently he was sent into exile where he had the leisure to analyze the war from many perspectives as well as document his military experiences and observations.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book 2, Chapter 11, section 4 (commentary by Jennifer Mitten)

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35 Κρίνειν οὐκ ἐπέοικε θεήϊα ἔργα βροτοῖσι.

Ill it beseems that mortals should judge divine handiwork.

Bion Smyrnaeus, Fragment

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O N H EROIC FROGS Bion is not famous, nor do great works of his survive. He was a minor Greek poet whose writings come down to us in fragments that, to be honest, aren’t wonderful poetry. But one sentence among those fragments calls across the millennia, at least to me, because it explains in a handful of words the basic reason for a good deal of the woe and suffering in the world, for the careless cruelty of the powerful against the powerless, a problem that is sadly as current now as it was two thousand years ago. “Little boys,’’ wrote Bion, “throw stones at frogs in jest; though the frogs die, not in jest, but in earnest.’’ One can scan recorded literature and not find an epigram that puts it so well. “One man’s meat is another man’s poison,’’ is too hypothetical and shopworn—one of the niceties of Bion’s quote is that almost nobody is familiar with it, and novelty is a big plus when trotting out an aphorism. The sentence begins so pleasantly, with the happy little boys and their stones, and ends so sadly in the death of the earnest frogs. They make odd heroes, these doomed Grecian amphibians, but Bion has immortalized them no less than Aristophanes did, and his saying will survive so long as we enjoy our private sport more than we think of our fellow creatures, which probably means forever.

Neil Steinberg

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36 Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito Qua tua te fortuna sinet.

You (Aeneas), do not yield to troubles but on the contrary continue to go more boldly where your fortune will allow you. For Mark P. O. Morford Vergil, Aeneid, Book 6, lines 95–96

(translation by John Breuker)

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P RESSING O N The opening of Book 6 of the Aeneid portrays a weeping Aeneas lamenting the mysterious disappearance of his faithful pilot as he and his flotilla finally near their goal, Italy’s coastline. Soon he speaks with the Sibyl, Apollo’s priestess, who prophesies wars in Italy worse than any at Troy, wrathful Juno’s continued hostility, and another foreign bride who will cause these wars. The Sibyl concludes her mysterious and foreboding message, however, with the words of encouragement cited on the facing page. For over three decades these words have had a special resonance for me when I teach this part of the epic. In July 1972, our second child was born. She was, however, anything but the anticipated healthy child, for she had hydranencephaly, an abnormality resulting in essentially no brain development. This unforeseen event filled our lives with turmoil, and the adjustment was complicated by a forthcoming move to a different school and community as well as by the prospect of writing two PhD comprehensive exams, all scheduled to occur within a month after her arrival. As I sat down to write the exam on my “special interest” area, Vergil’s Aeneid, the quoted Latin words appeared at the top of the examination. The thoughtful gesture and sensitive encouragement of my examiners struck me at the time, and I think of these men with gratitude each time I read this passage with my students. Pressing on, supported by caring friends, is the secret to overcoming trials and adversities, and divine Providence provides a comfortable pillow for life’s weary and uncertain traveler.

John Breuker

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37 στάζει δʹ ἔν θʹ ὕπνῳ πρὸ καρδίας μνησιπήμων πόνος· καὶ παρ᾽ ἄκοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν· δαιμόνων δέ που χάρις βίαιος σέλμα σεμνὸν ἡμένων.

And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god. – Edith Hamilton Even in our sleep, pain we cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our despair, against our will, wisdom comes through the awful grace of god. – Robert Kennedy

Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lines 179–83 (translation by Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way, p. 186) (paraphrase from a speech by Robert Kennedy)

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G RACE When he learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, Robert Kennedy went to an inner-city neighborhood in Indianapolis to try to comfort the horrified crowd. Quoting from memory, he spoke these words of Aeschylus. Since that awful day in April 1968, I tell my students each year about Robert Kennedy’s speech and ask them to memorize this passage. “You may not need these words for a long time,” I say. “I hope you don’t. But when you do need them—and you will—they will be there for you.” Aeschylus was there for me when my beloved brother John faced death from AIDS. At the outset I promised him that he and I together would build a brace sufficient against any wind. As I wrote about my loss on the first anniversary of John’s death, Aeschylus provided guidance for the bearing of my grief: Why, at last, in my sad loss, against my will, do I begin to sense sometimes almost as a blessing the wind at my back? Those four lines contain five or six hedges against what I call “cheap grace.” Platitudes belittle sorrow. The Greek playwrights, however, had the courage to stare grief straight in the eye without flinching. These days it is this passage from Aeschylus I send to friends who have suffered an ineffable loss.

Susan Ford Wiltshire

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38 διὸ ὀρθῶς Ἀγάθων, μόνου γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεὸς στερίσκεται͵ ἀγένητα ποιεῖν ἅσσ᾿ ἂν ἢ πεπραγμένα.

Agathon says rightly: of one thing alone is even god deprived: to make what has happened not to have happened.

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Bekker page 1139, column b, lines 5–7

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L AMENTATION My wife went into labor March 28, 1970, about to give birth to our first child. I was twenty-eight, eagerly anticipating the next adventure of life. Not realizing how quickly nine months could pass, my wife and I had delayed attending Lamaze classes that would qualify me to be present during childbirth. So I was sitting in the waiting room for fathers-to-be when the doctor came through the door and called my name. I moved toward him excitedly, but he hesitated in responding to my anticipatory joy. “Your wife has given birth.” “Boy or girl?” I inquired. “A boy,” he responded, “but we have serious problems to address immediately.” My momentary elation receded. “Your son has severe birth defects, and we must decide how to address them.” He explained that my son had miraculously drawn his first breath and could not continue to do so long without intervention. “So what must we do?” “You can choose to have me summon a team of surgeons to begin a set of highly challenging corrective surgeries in an eight to ten hour procedure.” “Or?” “Or you can request that the child be sent to the nursery to see if he will continue to draw breaths for much longer.” I was stupefied and grief-stricken. “I need to talk with my wife.” “That’s not possible right now,” the doctor responded. “We have put her under a deep anesthetic to prevent shock; she will not emerge from the anesthetic for an hour or so. We have to make a decision now.” “What do you advise?” I asked tearfully.

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“That’s not mine to say. You have to make that decision. But I will counsel you that even as we speak, hundreds of thousands of your son’s brain cells are dying from inadequate oxygenation. Even if we should succeed with the radical surgeries, you will have a seriously mentally retarded child because brain cells will go on dying during a good portion of the surgery.” I told the doctor to send my son to the nursery. I asked if we could see our child. “I wish that you would forego that right. I would want to spare you that image,” the doctor counseled. Jed died about three hours later. We never saw our son, and we were requested to donate his body to medical science so that his birth defects could be studied for the sake of the better health of future embryos. We did not have a funeral or memorial service. These many years later I am still haunted by who I was in that hour of crisis. Many persons, including a psychiatrist, have told me that I undoubtedly made the right decision: I did not choose to kill my son; I spared him the torturous life of serious mental retardation. I spared my family and society the huge costs usually incurred in the care of such children. I am willing to concur that rationally my decision was sound. But in spite of these affirmations, I know, too, in the darkest recesses of myself that in that hour of crisis, I was not guided solely by mature wisdom. My decision was dictated in significant part by my desire to distance myself from intense suffering: Do not run the risk of coping with a seriously mentally retarded child. Do not look upon a grotesquely disfigured baby. Give the body away; do not bury it or memorialize it. Begin to forget. I have looked into the face of my cowardice. In that hour, I could not wholly embrace my pain. I cheated the wholeness of life. I cheated my own faith. And God’s grace. And cheating, my psyche has reckoned with me, rarely goes undetected.

L. Dale Griffith

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39 Crede mihi, miseris caelestia numina parcunt, Nec semper laesos et sine fine premunt.

Those who are suffering even the gods will spare, And grant them at the last respite from pain.

Ovid here is optimistic about the impermanence of suffering, but in his case the last decade of his life saw no relief of his pain. Ovid was a popular poet, a socialite, and a wealthy man. His lighthearted attitude to the relations of the sexes outraged the emperor Augustus, a deeply conservative man. In 8 ce Augustus exiled Ovid for life to a place so remote that no one there spoke Latin. Here Ovid spent the rest of his days writing to his wife and friends, begging their intervention with the emperor, and expressing regret for his actions. Ovid probably thought his chances for return were improving when he heard in 14 ce that Augustus had died, but Ovid himself died in 17 ce, still in exile.

Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, Book 3, Letter 6, lines 21–22 (commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

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40 Ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostrae; ipse subibo umeris, nec me labor iste gravabit: quo res cumque cadent, unum et commune periclum, una salus ambobus erit.

Come then, dear father, mount upon my neck; I’ll bear you on my shoulders. That is not too much for me. Whatever waits for us, we both shall share one danger, one salvation.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 2, lines 707–10 (translation by Allen Mandelbaum, The Aeneid of Vergil, Book II, 11. p. 52)

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B LESSINGS In the fall of ’58 I fled my father. In early ’61 he was dead. I got the call at a bowling alley, where I was practicing for league play, not about to leave just because “something happened.” The caller, a friend of my twin sister, was too young to gloss it. “He killed himself,” she said. I ran home in tears, my skull screaming, “He’s in hell! He’s in hell!” On return to school my psychology teacher called on me. I shriveled. She insisted. And so I stood, and felt the strength of my own legs. I became more interested in school. Yet on graduation a year later I still had no clear direction. Dad’s bequest went to our oldest brother, who decided to share with us twins: payable at twenty-one, or now, if for college. I’ll try it part-time, I said. Full-time, he said. My dread became happy surprise. By sophomore year I was committed, soon raising tuition on my own, even if still unsure of my major. No hurry; I had many general requirements, including Survey of English Literature. Survey was taught by Mr. Teddy, who introduced Beowulf to his large class, including business majors and future teachers. We laughed a lot. Next semester Mr. Teddy brought Milton’s poetry to life, words that seemed impenetrable on first glance. Milton’s “advent’rous song” intensified my interest in the hellish descent, but nothing thrilled me more than the heroic failure of Orpheus, whose music brought iron tears to Hades’ cheek, and—O Eurydice! And yet, for all my attraction to the epic, I did not read the Aeneid until early 1974, when I braved a prose translation. The Sibyl’s warning to Aeneas before entering the Cave of Death became my own refrain: “Easy the descent, hard the return.” Yet my understanding was limited. Seek out your ancient father. In 1980 I

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chanced upon Allen Mandelbaum’s verse translation. Vague details became vivid, especially Anchises’ longing to die when he saw Troy in flames. Aeneas, with wife and son at his side, pleaded with his father, telling Anchises his death would only make their fate more heavy. Come then, dear father, mount upon my neck; I’ll bear you on my shoulders. That is not too much for me. Whatever waits for us, we both shall share one danger, one salvation. At last I had found exactly the right words. The self-pitying burden was instantly lighter, the sadness a blessing, and Dad and I could begin our glad ascent.

Keith Fahey

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41 Ἐκ τοῦ παθεῖν γίγνωσκει καὶ τὸ συμπαθεῖν· καί σοι γὰρ ἄλλος συμπαθήσεται παθών.

From suffering learn also to sympathize; who’s suffered thus will sympathize with you.

Philemon was a native of Syracuse or Soli in Cilicia. He was later granted Athenian citizenship and lived his life there as a prominent comic playwright during the new comedy movement. He won several contests for his famous plays and was held in higher regard than his contemporary Menander. Both writers fashioned components of their plays in imitation of Euripides. Philemon wrote 97 comedies, none of which survives; he is known only from being quoted by other authors. He died about 262 bce.

Philemon, Fabulae Incertae, Fragment (commentary by Jennifer Mitten)

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42 Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangent.

These are the tears of things and mortal things touch the mind.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 1, line 462 (translation by LeaAnn Osburn)

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H OW I C AME

INTO THE

WORLD

While my mother lay in labor, contractions straining every muscle to the point of snapping, with her legs in humiliating stirrups, my father was lying with his mistress in my mother’s bed. What must have been worse than the pain of delivering me, was the pain of knowing exactly where he was and what he was doing, that he was on top of another woman, she on her back in the excruciating sexual pleasure of illicit love making, while my mother lay on her back alone enduring the torturous combination of mothering a new life while losing the man who made it with her. Who knows what drives a man to such relentless and shameful passions? Who knows what drives a woman to carry on in spite of such anguishing irony?

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But that’s what she did, she carried on, she pushed, she strained, she brought to life even as it killed her to do it. This is how I came into the world, and I think it is not an accident, or if it is, it might as well have been part of some kind of foggy divine plan. It jump started everything else that would be true about me for good and bad: my mother, my father, his searching and failure, her pain and resilience. All of it in that synchronous moment of dual passions, of strong love and weak faithlessness, somehow birthed me to live this life and not another, with my own failure and my own pain, my own sexual searching, my own strong love of fathering children, and my own imperfect but enduring love for my wife.

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FATE

In the crucible of sex and longing and failure and love we are all born, and we try to make something out of it, something better than our beginning, something that rises above the pain of it all, something worthy of our mother’s labor.

Michael Coffey

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43 Spina gerit florem, quae gignit tacta dolorem.

The thorn which, when touched, produces pain, bears the flower.

This sentiment is about how close pleasure can be to pain, or beauty to ugliness. However, it is botanically incorrect—flowers grow from buds, not from thorns. The Greeks and Romans were mistaken about numerous matters in science (a word that neither Greek nor Latin has an equivalent for). For example, they understood human reproduction imperfectly, thought that arteries were for the circulation of air, and assumed that the heart was the repository of the emotions.

Anonymous (commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

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44 O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

You who have had to endure a rather heavy burden, a god will grant an end to this, too. Perhaps one day it will be pleasant to recall even this hardship.

The surviving Trojans were nearly drowned when their boats encountered a hurricane. Battered and bruised, they find land. Their leader, Aeneas, scouts the vicinity and shoots several deer. While cooking the venison, he orders that wine kegs be distributed, and calms the sorrowing hearts of his people by assuring them that it is in fact their destiny to found a new Troy.

Vergil, Aeneid, Book 1, lines 199, 203 (translation and commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

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45 Tempus fugit.

Time flies.

Origin of “Time Flies”—The idea was expressed by Vergil (70– 19 bce), who wrote in Georgics, Book 3, line 284: Fugit inreparabile tempus (Time is flying never to return...). From Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman.

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A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD CONSIDERS TIME Have you ever been just sitting around someplace, glanced at your watch, noted what time it was, and suddenly realized that you needed to be someplace? That happens to me all too often. Once I had a teacher give me a schedule, which was in fifteenminute increments, so I could “plan my day.” I never did complete that chart. Right now, I don’t have lots of places to go, so I figure I can wait to develop a schedule. Someday I’ll have to get a job and realize that sleep is necessary. But right now, I’m still a kid. Do I really need to be planning my life, right down to those fifteenminute increments? You know, if we were all like that, life would be boring. All the people in the world, doing things exactly when they’re supposed to, never late, never early. I’m glad I don’t have a life like that. Sure, you can’t live without any reminders, but planning it down to the quarter hour just takes all the fun out of life. Someday, I’ll plan things out, but today isn’t that day.

Noah Peller

 95 

46 Neque harum quas colis arborum te praeter invisas cupressos ulla brevem dominum sequetur.

Nor will any of those trees which you nurture follow you, the brief-lived owner, except the hated cypresses.

Horace, Odes, Book 2, Ode 14, lines 22–24

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.

Life’s brief span prevents us from beginning long-term enterprises.

Horace, Odes, Book 1, Ode 4, line 15 (translations by A. W. Godfrey)

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CYPRESSES

AND

C ERTAINTY

Roman farmers, especially the “gentlemen farmers” of the early empire, were proud of their trees and tended them carefully. Cypresses, however, sacred to Pluto, the god of the underworld, were planted in graveyards as reminders of death, which had to be faced by everyone. I consider the lines on the facing page an elegant expansion on “carpe diem” and a poignant reminder of human limitation, cautioning my self-satisfaction. When I was much younger, I had big plans but only vaguely defined. I had what I thought was an important job in a small bank and that I was destined for higher things in banking and finance. After several years, including two years in the army, I felt stifled by the entire atmosphere of “getting and spending” and the adulation extended to those who had lots of money and were unmindful of the cypresses. I took a big risk and salary cut to begin teaching, knowing it would never make me rich but that it was an honest calling which, if done well, could help me be a positive catalyst for young people. It has worked, not always easily, but after many years the intangible reward is not money but students who remain in touch. Some of them even admit that the ancients had much to teach them and remember snippets of Latin wisdom or what they learned from the Greek tragedians, historians and philosophers. As I have grown older, each day is a gift to be savored, nor is there any point to looking back to the “good old days” with nostalgia or looking expectantly to the uncharted future. Horace’s words continue to bring me up short whenever I begin to feel important or full of myself and believe what I am doing or what I have done has lasting significance. There is a finite time here on

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earth for each one of us and our achievements, and however important we may think they are at a given moment, they are destined to be short lived. Horace warns us not to expect too much but especially not to be pompous and to accept our mortality since death is common to all humans whether we be “kings or poor tenant farmers.”

A. W. Godfrey

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47 Cras vives? Hodie iam vivere, Postume, serum est: ille sapit quisque, Postume, vixit heri.

“I haven’t time to live today, Tomorrow will have to do.” He who lived life yesterday was much more wise than you!

Martial was a Spaniard who spent most of his adult life in Rome as an author and entertainer. His fame derives from fifteen hundred short limerick-like epigrams on all aspects of life. About a fifth of his poems may be considered politically incorrect today. But at times Martial can be tender or philosophical, as here when he does a variation on the “live for today” theme.

Martial, Epigrams, Book 5, Epigram 58, lines 7–8 (translation by Craig Daniels; commentary by Andrew J. Adams)

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48 Horae quidem cedunt et dies et menses et anni nec praeteritum tempus umquam revertitur.

The hours pass and the days and the months and the years, and the past time never returns.

Cicero, De Senectute, section 69 (translation by Waldo E. Sweet, in Latin Proverbs: Wisdom from Ancient to Modern Times)

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FEEDING

THE

P IGEONS

My husband Lou and I have one child, a son, now a responsible, caring adult. I was teaching full-time even when he was little, but I spent as much time as I could with him. I read to him, listened to him, hugged him, took him to the Museum of Science and Industry (on at least five consecutive Saturdays one fall), and he got to choose where we celebrated Mother’s Day (McDonald’s was his choice one year). We went to Europe with him when he was seven; counting the number of stairs in various cathedrals and feeding the pigeons in the squares were on our daily “to do” list. We loved our time with him (ok, we didn’t love EVERY minute). And the hours did pass and the days and the months and the years, and we can never have that time back: that crucial time when he was developing his self-concept, when he was developing his sense of morality, when he was learning about the world and how to read and write. During those early years, sometimes there was dust on the furniture, the ironing was never finished, and we sometimes ordered pizza for dinner. But we didn’t neglect the most important thing, the loving and care of our son. Cicero’s On Old Age speaks as directly to all of us today—those approaching old age as well as the younger—as it did to American patriots Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Long considered one of Cicero’s most engaging, charming, and readable treatises, it quite simply transcends time. Cicero steps out of the persona of the “great man” and examines, with superlative clarity, the challenges all human beings must one day face.

Marie Carducci Bolchazy

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49 Festina lente.

Make haste slowly.

Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Divus Augustus, Chapter 25, section 4

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S PEED K ILLS —AUGUSTUS

ON

STRESS

Several years ago, I suffered a medical crisis. I was in intensive care for several days. If I had not been near a first-class hospital, very likely I would have died. Suetonius was the furthest thing from my mind, but he would have the last word, a few years later. After being discharged, I enrolled in a stress reduction class, only to find myself, in a few weeks, wondering if I was working hard enough at relaxing. Was I slacking off? Was I the best in the stress class? The irony was not lost on me, but I really did not have time to do anything about it. I had to deal with all the obligations that had gone on the back burner while I had been sick. Lessons from “the event” would have to wait. At the time I was teaching honors students at Louisiana State University. They were wonderful students—bright, insightful, and full of optimism. But I noticed that they were miniature versions of myself in that they too often demanded perfection of themselves and were overly committed. I worried about them and often spoke to them about pacing themselves, once again aware of the irony of this advice coming from my mouth, the man of fourteen-hour days and seven-day work weeks. Then, one semester we read Suetonius’s life of Augustus and we happened upon his motto—which he often quoted in Greek but which is commonly cited in the Latin—“Make haste, slowly.” The students and I spoke of what it might mean. We talked of long-range goals, and patience, and self-acceptance. We discussed Augustus’s many accomplishments. And there it was. Several years after “the event,” several years after stress classes had come and gone, Augustus spoke to me over the millennia in two brief words of Latin. Work hard, but

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take the long view. Trust in the eventuality of your efforts; do not insist upon them in the moment. Think grand thoughts, but know that they do not happen overnight. Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. He began an empire that lasted centuries after he was gone.

Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr.

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50 ἤθους δὲ βάσανός ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις χρόνος.

Time is the touchstone of men’s characters.

Unfortunately, most of Menander’s writing has not survived to our time. Much of what we know of his work is passed to us as fragments or through the adaptations of other playwrights, notably the Roman playwrights, Terence and Plautus.

Menander, Monosticha (Μονόστιχα), line 219 (commentary by Peter Sipes)

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51 Dicere etiam solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non aliqua parte prodesset.

He used to say that no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, Book 3, Letter 5, section 10 (translation by William Murchison)

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YES, YOU CAN JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER So on I plunged into Swann’s Way. Great book, yes? Everyone’s always saying so. Proust and all that. Yes, great book. Certainly. Very early on, Marcel fears going to bed at night because he might wake up in the middle of the night. And let’s see what else? Oh, yes: people are supposed to piece their lives together and hawthorns blossom on the path to Swann’s house. And Marcel thinks Gilberte’s black eyes are really blue. On I plunged. Surely old Pliny knew what he was talking about. A man curious enough about Vesuvius to get up close and personal with it during the eruption, here was a serious man. Back to Proust. Swann falls for Odette. Loses her. Looks for her. Oh, the sheer excitement! Marcel’s initial point becomes clearer now: By going to bed, I might dream about Proust. On I plunged. It turns out—hold onto your hat—that Odette isn’t Swann’s type after all. End of book. End of most boring book ever written, unless a book of truly world-class tedium lies in wait for me somewhere. (Please, no!) And the “good” that Pliny had promised could be extracted from even the worst book? Well, I had to think about that. On I plunged—into real life. It dawned on me. Swann’s Way established something of immense worth. It established that I didn’t have to read the rest of Remembrance of Things Past, no matter what praise the world spoke of it. Not if I valued my sanity, I didn’t have to. Gaius Plinius Secundus—you still tell it like it is.

William Murchison

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52 Opinionis enim commenta delet dies, naturae iudicia confirmat.

Time effaces the utterance of opinion, and confirms the judgments of nature.

The above quotation is from Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, or The Nature of the Gods, a work from late in Cicero’s life. Cicero lived during the first century bce. Born into minor nobility, he spent his life working through the ranks of Roman political office, eventually reaching the top office of consul. Besides his political career, his mastery of oratory propelled him to the forefront of Roman literary figures.

Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Book 2, section 5 (commentary by Peter Sipes)

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53 οὐκ οἶδας ὡς πολλὰς μεταβολὰς ἔχει. ὃ νῦν δίδωσιν, οὐ δίδωσιν αὔριον.

You don’t know what changes [time] will bring. What he today gives, he’ll not give tomorrow.

In 1957, one of Menander’s plays was discovered on a papyrus in Egypt. Dyskolos, or The Grouch, is the only complete play of Menander’s that we have. Other plays, such as The Arbitration, The Girl from Samos, The Shorn Girl, and The Hero, we have only in fragments.

Menander, Menandri et Philistionis Sententiae, 1 (commentary by Peter Sipes)

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54 Non vitae sed scholae discimus.

We learn not for life, but for the classroom.

Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Book 17, Letter 106, section 12 (translation by Michelle Wu)

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L IFE L ESSONS In the year 64 ce, the philosopher Seneca the Younger deplored in a letter to his friend, non vitae sed scholae discimus, “we learn not for life, but for the classroom.” The former tutor to the Roman Emperor Nero was criticizing his own students for lacking the proper motivation in their approach to knowledge. Yet, in our modern society almost two thousand years later, Seneca’s complaint is still pertinent. As I approached the end of high school, faced with college applications and other important self-evaluations, I felt an unbearable pressure from teachers, parents, and classmates to choose a college major and a future occupation. Having breezed through the earlier years of high school, I now found that I had inadvertently taken the words of Seneca to the extreme. I was accustomed to passing that next test, fulfilling that next credit requirement, with little thought of what I truly enjoyed. My personal identity was buried under a mountain of classroom accolades and titles. And so, when it came time to ponder what I myself wanted to do for the rest of my life—no instructions, time limits, or due dates—I was lost. My hollow mountain fell to pieces with a seemingly easy college application essay question: “Tell us about your most important accomplishment.” For weeks I pored over my certificates and medals, unable to find anything that gave me more than a small ego boost. It was only when I stepped back from academic awards that I found my real answer. I realized that my truest sense of achievement came from learning and performing the piano part of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—not because of the audience’s applause, nor even because of the technical difficulty of the piece, but because I have always loved the song itself for playfully dodging conventional compositional rules.

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CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The mischievous musical beauty evoked my personal admiration for thinking outside traditional norms, and so it was a joy to learn Gershwin’s subtle nuances and make them my own. Every minute of practice, frustration, and delight was striving for something that genuinely mattered to me, culminating in an accomplishment that truly became part of my personal identity. Ever since that crucial self-discovery, Seneca’s words have pushed me to examine closely my motivations in learning. Indeed, I have now formed a principle of my own: vitae per scholam disco, “I learn through school for life.” School has become a place to explore my personal interests and enrich my growth. Doing well academically and professionally may be a measure of success in the eyes of others, but true fulfilment can only come from learning and developing my own passions.

Michelle Wu

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A BOUT

THE

C ONTRIBUTORS

Andrew J. Adams (See notes “About the Editors.”) Marie Carducci Bolchazy (See notes “About the Editors.”) John Breuker recently retired after teaching for forty-five years, mostly on the secondary school level and especially at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. The author of two previously published works and presenter of numerous papers on Vergilian topics is presently completing Libellus Amoris: A Transitional Introduction to Reading Latin Poetry for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. Margaret A. Brucia, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, received her doctorate in Classics from Fordham University. She recently retired from her position as a Latin teacher in Port Jefferson, New York. Now, like Proserpina, she returns to Rome in the spring to teach at Temple University’s Rome campus. Michael Coffey is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He currently serves as Associate Pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas. His particular interests in ministry include male spirituality, theology in films, Old Testament, and liturgy. He is married to Kathryn, a practicing architectural designer, and they have two beautiful sons, Colin and Liam. In his free time, Michael enjoys writing, composing music, home remodelling, and brewing beer.

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Stephen R. Covey is the co-founder and vice-chairman of FranklinCovey, a professional service firm that strives to teach organizations to lead with a principle-centered philosophy. He is the author of many acclaimed books such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. He has received seven honorary doctorate degrees and the National Fatherhood Award. Covey currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Points of Light Foundation, which organizes volunteers to aid in solving community social issues. Craig Daniels received his MA in Classics from Dalhousie University. He is currently teaching Latin through the Continuing and Distance Education Department of Acadia University. Keith Fahey is a writer whose imagination was awakened by Mr. Roy Michael Teddy of the College of Great Falls in Montana. When drafted into the Vietnam War (“the Winless War, where I played a nonheroic role”), he turned to the epic in his search for true homecoming. Then came the Apollo Moon Flights, and he and his ’68 Ford Falcon were gone. Thomas J. Fleming received his PhD in classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since 1997, he has been the president of The Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois, and since 1984 the editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. The Morality of Everyday Life, published by the University of Missouri Press in spring of 2004, is the latest of several books he has written. He has also authored numerous articles for publications such as The Spectator, The Washington Post, and The National Review. A. W. Godfrey has taught Latin for forty years at Stony Brook University. He also has been director of several compensatory education programs, including Upward Bound, Liberty Partnerships, and Teacher Opportunity Corps. At Stony  114 

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Brook, he served as president of the local teachers union and president of the faculty senate. His publications include a number of articles on various subjects in Commonweal, National Catholic Reporter, Newsday, and The New York Times. He has also published Poems in Ordinary Time. Margaret Richek Goldberg is a professor emerita at Northeastern Illinois University, where she taught in the College of Education. She is also the author of several vocabulary textbooks including The World of Words (Houghton Mifflin) and Vocabulary for Achievement (Great Source/Houghton Mifflin). L. Dale Griffith (See notes “About the Editors.”) Anne H. Groton (PhD, Michigan) is Professor of Classics at St. Olaf College and Secretary-Treasurer of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. She has published two textbooks and directed numerous student productions of ancient Roman comedy. In 1995 she received the American Philological Association’s Award for Excellence in the Teaching of the Classics. Benita Kane Jaro’s trilogy of novels about the Roman world, The Key, The Lock, and The Door in the Wall (Bolchazy-Carducci 2002), has been widely admired. A passion beginning in childhood and dominating her working life, the meeting of literature, history, science and philosophy represented by ancient studies continues to fascinate her. She lives in Maryland with her husband, and is currently at work on a novel about Ovid. Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr., is professor of Classics at The University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to this he taught at Louisiana State University, Quigley Preparatory Seminary South (Chicago), Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. He has won several teaching awards, currently  115 

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researches animals and animal lore in antiquity, and has been active in the Classical Association of the Midwest and South, the American Classical League (currently, he is the president of this organization), and the American Philological Association. Ellen Hobbs Lyle is a native Nashvillian. There she and her husband, Walter C. Kurtz, are state trial judges. Ellen attended the all girls preparatory school in Nashville, The Harpeth Hall School, where she took five years of Latin. Robert Emmet Meagher, Professor of Humanities at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, teaches comparative epic, drama, and religion. He is the author of over twenty translations, original plays, and monographs. His most recent publications include The Essential Euripides, The Meaning of Helen: In Search of an Ancient Icon, and, forthcoming, Herakles Gone Mad: Rethinking Heroism in an Age of Endless War. Jennifer Mitten first learned to embrace the wise words of the ancients through theology and interim classes at Wheaton Academy where rigorous study and independent thinking were highly encouraged. She went on to earn a BA in Latin from Monmouth College and is working toward an MA in Educational Psychology at National-Louis University. Currently Ms. Mitten works for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers and teaches Latin at St. Charles High School East and North in Illinois. Kurt Muller has a degree in Latin and Greek and has been teaching in independent schools for fourteen years. Presently Kurt is Head of Classics at Saint James School near Hagerstown, Maryland, where he teaches eighth through twelfth grades, first-year through Advanced Placement Latin. Kurt was appointed a Reader for the AP Latin Exams in 2004. He is currently writing a thesis tracing the evolution of the character of Aeneas in classical literature from the Homeric epics through Vergil’s Aeneid.  116 

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Willliam Murchison is a distinguished professor of journalism at Baylor University and a retired newspaper opinion columnist. He trained to become a college history professor before “wandering into journalism and spending thirty-eight years there.” He lives in Dallas and is considering learning classical Greek, “having squandered any chance of capitalizing on the first-rate Latin skills I used to have.” Judy Neri is a poet and writer/editor with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her work in Renaissance Humanism brought her to classical literature, and in her own writing, Horace has always been a model. She has published poems in many journals and is finishing her first book. She co-directs a literary series called Café Muse in Bethesda, Maryland. LeaAnn Osburn has taught Latin for thirty years, the last twentyfive at Barrington High School in Illinois. The author of several books for Latin teachers, she regularly gives presentations at classical conferences throughout the country. Currently, she is an editor for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. Joe Paterno is renowned as a Penn State football coach where his team won more bowl games than any other team in history. Although coaching remains his life dedication, Paterno emphasizes the value of education and the training of the mind to his players. He has won awards for his success as a coach and for his support of academia. Penn State’s chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, a classical fraternity, inducted Paterno as a member for his support in the fund for the library and his love of Vergil’s Aeneid. Noah Peller wrote the following: “Time still flies, among other things for me; I ride an off-road unicycle, which has me flying through the air making contact with the ground a fair amount, although I land some impressive stunts on occasion. I love nearly all things that involve music (I play upwards of six instruments). I also enjoy computers and Irish culture (music obviously included).”  117 

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JoAnn Polito has been teaching for forty years. She has taught in pre-school through community college. For the past eighteen years she has been teaching Latin at Beloit Memorial High School in Beloit, Wisconsin. She earned a BA from Rockford College and an MEd from the University of Illinois. Stephanie Quinn currently serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, having served in other administrative positions, for example at DePaul University in Chicago, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Quinn received her MA and PhD degrees in Classical Studies from Vanderbilt University, and her BA from the College of the City of New York. She has edited the volume, Why Vergil? A Collection of Interpretations. William H. Race is the Paddison Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His extensive work on Greek lyric poetry includes the two-volume Loeb Library edition of Pindar. Steve Reece is a professor of Classical Languages at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His special fields of interest include Homeric Studies, Linguistics, and Comparative Oral Traditions. Roger Rosenblatt is an established journalist, playwright, author, and professor. For his PBS TV essays he has won Peabody and Emmy awards, and for his Time Magazine essays he has won awards from the American Bar Association, the Overseas Press Club, and two George Polk Awards. Currently Rosenblatt is a professor of English and holds the Parsons Family Chair at Southampton College. He is married with three children and resides in New York City.

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Jonathan Shay has devoted much time and effort to promote the prevention of psychological and moral injury caused by active duty military service. He is the author of the bestselling books Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. He is recognized by medical groups, military organizations, as well as by the world of classics. Shay is currently a psychiatrist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic and Tufts Department of Psychiatry in Boston. Peter Sipes is a long-time student of the classics. After earning a degree from Rockford College with a minor in Latin, he went to work in print-shops where his keen eye for language saved many clients from typographical errors. Currently working for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, he puts his experience to use in internet marketing and the occasional bit of copywriting and proofreading. Robert Sonkowsky is a Professor Emeritus of Classics and Theater and a freelance actor. His most recent scholarly publication, “Latin Verse-Ictus and Multimodal Entrainment,” appears on-line in Electronic Antiquity , 8.2 (2005) 7–23. His most recent stage appearances have been in Minneapolis at TonyAward-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune, The Guthrie Lab Theater, and Bedlam Theater. He has combined his theatrical and scholarly interests in several published recordings of classical Latin literature available at Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers and Jeffrey Norton. Neil Steinberg is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Daily News. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Granta, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of five books and lives outside of Chicago with his wife and two sons.  119 

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Alexandra Stevenson teaches English, interrelated arts, and drawing/painting at Barrington High School in Illinois. In addition to teaching, she pursues a painting career and regularly exhibits watercolors and mixed media paintings in Chicago area galleries. Michael W. Twomey teaches Latin and medieval English literature at Ithaca College in New York. In 1996–97, he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Dresden, Germany. Rose Williams holds a BA from Baylor University and an MA from UNC Chapel Hill. She has done postgraduate work at the University of Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington, and research at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the University of Pisa on a Rockefeller Grant. She taught Latin in Abilene Public Schools from 1959–1992 and at McMurry University from 1983–1996. Her twelve published books include The Labors of Aeneas and Cicero the Patriot, published by Bolchazy-Carducci in 2003 and 2004 respectively, and Examining Vergil’s Aeneid, published by L and L Enterprises in 2005. Susan Ford Wiltshire (See notes “About the Editors.”) Timothy F. Winters is Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. He received a BA in Greek from the University of Arizona, and an MA and PhD from Ohio State University. He has taught Greek, both ancient and modern, for fifteen years. His interests include Greek epigraphy, literature, archaeology, history, and modern Greece. “A bewildered father of four girls,” he is also interested in music, theology, and good Mexican food.

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Michelle Wu is a sophomore at Harvard University. Although still exploring her interests and goals, as a former president of the National Junior Classical League and a devoted Latin student, Michelle will always have a deep attachment to the classics. She has been profoundly influenced not only by the subject matter, but also by the friends and teachers who have infused it with even deeper meaning.

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Andrew J. Adams grew up in Mooseheart and Batavia, Illinois. He received his BA in Latin and Russian at Monmouth College in Illinois in 1966, his MA in Latin at Indiana University in 1968, and his PhD in Classical Studies at Indiana University in 1975. His dissertation title was “The Nature of Martial’s Epigrams.” From 1970–2004, he taught classics at North Central College in Illinois. Since 2004 he has been in the employ of a prestigious and hallowed publishing house. Marie Carducci Bolchazy has a doctoral degree in reading education from the State University of New York. She spent thirty-five years in education, teaching at all levels, developing curricula, and evaluating educational programs. Currently working full-time at Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, owned by her husband and her, they specialize in books dealing with the ancient world. She also is the author of several books. L. Dale Griffith was the long-time chair of the English department of Barrington High School in Barrington, Illinois. Since retiring, he has been a part-time administrator at Niles North, Niles West, and Homewood-Flossmoor high schools in the Chicago suburbs. He was the founding editor of Whetstone literary magazine and a contributing editor to Bruce Cobbold’s recent translation of Vergil’s Aeneid. Susan Ford Wiltshire is Professor of Classics at Vanderbilt University. Her books include Public and Private in Vergil’s Aeneid; Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights; and Seasons of Grief and Grace. From 1997 to 2002, she served a presidential appointment on the National Council for the Humanities.  123 

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Thom Kapheim teaches art at Wheeling High School in Illinois. He regularly exhibits his pieces at galleries and has illustrated numerous books for Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. To view his artwork for The Epic of Gilgamesh and Vergil’s Aeneid, visit www.bolchazy.com and click on “galleries.”

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Permissions from the following authors and their publishers to reprint selections from their publications are gratefully acknowledged: Joe Paterno for “Vergil” Reprinted from Paterno: By the Book. Copyright 1989 by Joeseph V. Paterno and Bernard Asbell. Published by Random House, Inc., New York. Reprinted with permission from Regina Ryan Publishing Enterprises, Inc., 251 Central Park West, New York, New York 10024. Benita Kane Jaro for “Achieving Aristotle: Seem What You Would Be” Reprinted with the permission from the author, Benita Kane Jaro. No excerpt, quotation, addition, editorial change, or alteration of any description may be made to this article without the prior permission of the author in writing. © 2004–2005 Benita Kane Jaro. Stephen R. Covey for “We Are What We Repeatedly Do” Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Copyright © 1989 by Stephen R. Covey. Roger Rosenblatt for “On Aristocracy” Reprinted from Anything Can Happen: Notes on my Inadequate Life and Yours, copyright © 2003 by Roger Rosenblatt, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

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Jonathan Shay for “Achilles in Vietnam” Reprinted with permission from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Copyright © 1994 by Jonathan Shay.

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B IBLIOGRAPHY Cobbold, G. B. Vergil’s Aeneid: Hero • War • Humanity. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2005. Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. New York, N. Y.: W. W. Norton, 1993. Harbottle, Thomas Benfield, ed. Anthology of Classical Quotations. San Antonio: Scylax Press, 1897 (first edition, reprinted 1984). Mandelbaum, Allen. The Aeneid of Vergil. New York, N. Y.: Bantam Books, 1971. Sweet, Waldo E. Latin Proverbs: Wisdom from Ancient to Modern Times. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2004. (Note: In Classical Considerations, translations for which there are no citations were based on translations from Anthology of Classical Quotations.)

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