classical-scholars

"We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable, we never cease to be so, always panting for riches and never giving our souls or our bodies a moment’s peace. But those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day."

"I think I should not omit to mention the place where most of the above tales were related, I might almost say, acted. That place is our Bugiale, a sort of laboratory for fibs."

"I do not think of the priesthood as liberty, as many do, but as the most severe and oppressive form of service."

"Many points of controversy surround the reconstruction of PIE, and indeed surround any reconstruction effort. Some are methodological questions (for example, how do we distinguish archaisms from innovations?); some are philosophical (for example, what kinds of evidence are admissible in reconstruction?); some are simply differences of opinion based on the preconceptions and orientation of the investigator (for example, which is more archaic, Hittite or Sanskrit?)."

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it."

"This book fills a much-needed gap."

"Assyrian sources preserved the Lullubean word kiurum ‘god’ which can be regarded as an adoption of PII *kura- (cf. OInd sura-, Avestan süra-), the Old Indian and Old Iranian correspondents of which were still applied to denote some gods in Vedic and Avestan times."

"The residuum of truth, or at any rate the important conviction of the ancient writers, which remains after their stories are sifted, is the character of the . On this point, Strabo, , and Arrian are agreed. The manners of the Parthians had, they tell us, much that was Scythic in them. ... Their language was half-Scythic, half-. ... They armed themselves in the Scythic fashion. ... They were, in fact, Scyths in descent, in habits, in character."

"... All over Western Europe we see the barbarous races which overran and crushed the settling down into a less wild and savage life, adopting the arts as well as the of the conquered, and gradually emulating or surpassing the civilization which at their first coming they destroyed. In our own time, and before our eyes, a civilizing process is going on in Russia and in Turkey; disappears; nomadic tribes become settled ; the arts, the habits, even the dress, of neighbouring nations, are in course of adoption ; and the Muscovite and Turkic hordes are becoming scarce distinguishable from other Europeans. But, while this is the more ordinary process, or at any rate the one which most catches the eye when it roves at large over the historic field, there are not wanting indications that the process is occasionally reversed. Herodotus tells us of the , ... a Greek people, who, having been expelled from the cities on the northern coast of the , had retired into the interior, and there lived in wooden huts, and spoke a language "half Greek, half ." By the time of this people had become completely barbarous, and used the skins of those slain by them in battle as coverings for themselves and their horses. ... A gradual degradation of the is apparent in the series of their coins, which is extant ..."

"... There is an essential antagonism between European and Asiatic ideas and modes of thought, such as seemingly to preclude the possibility of Asiatics appreciating a European civilisation. The ns must have felt towards the ns much as the Mahometans of India feel towards —they may have feared and even respected them—but they must have very bitterly hated them. Nor was the rule of the such as to overcome by its justice or its wisdom the original antipathy of the dispossessed lords of Asia towards those by whom they had been ousted. The ial system, which these monarchs lazily adopted from their predecessors, the s, is one always open to great abuses, and needs the strictest superintendence and supervision. There is no reason to believe that any sufficient watch was kept over their s by the , or even any system of checks established, such as the Achæmenidæ had, at least in theory, set up and maintained. ... The Greco-Macedonian governors of provinces seem to have been left to themselves almost entirely, and to have been only controlled in the exercise of their authority by their own notions of what was right or expedient. Under these circumstances, abuses were sure to creep in ..."

"A man walking down from to passes the . If it is the evening, a dramatic performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a tragedy, or some form of comedy. If it is a musical comedy and he enters, he will see elaborate scenery and a play which may open with a prologue and which is partly composed of dialogue between the various characters, partly of songs in various sung by a chorus to the accompaniment of an orchestra. As the words in italics indicate, our imaginary passer-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home."

"The first American scholar to study in Greece was , now the distinguished and historian, of the , and an honored member of the , who passed a year in Greece just half a century ago, in 1851-52,—attending lectures in the University, and travelling through the country. Four or five years later, in 1856, he published his work on "Modern Greece," which remains the fullest account of that country ever written by an American, and contains, as we might expect from Dr. Baird, much information with regard to the monuments of antiquity."

"has nearly four million square miles ; has 1,700 ; has 700. Yet this tiny country has given us an art which we, with it and all that the world has done since it for our models, have equalled perhaps, but not surpassed. It has given us the staple of our vocabulary in every domain of thought and knowledge. Politics, tyranny, democracy, anarchism, philosophy, physiology, geology, history—these are all Greek words. It has seized and up to the present day kept hold of our higher education. It has exercised an unfailing fascination, even on minds alien or hostile. Rome took her culture thence. Young Romans completed their education in the Greek schools. Roman orators learnt their trade from Greek rhetoricians. Roman proconsuls on their way to the East stopped to spend a few days talking to the successors of Plato and Aristotle in the and . Roman aristocrats imported Greek philosophers to live in their families."

"A teacher seldom receives full recognition for his services during his lifetime, unless he lives to extreme old age. While the physician is often cheered by the gratitude of those to whom his skill has restored to health, and the clergyman receives the affectionate thanks of those whom he has guided and comforted, and the successful lawyer is supposed to be burdened with plaudits and fees,—the teacher has to do mainly with those who are too immature to understand the services which he renders and to appreciate the self-denial which is manifested in much of his care. His pupils are too little acquainted with the world to compare his acumen and his learning with those of others; they cannot sympathize with him in his ambitions and difficulties and task; they may not feel his strong desire to go on to the acquisition of new knowledge."

"Ages are not taken at their own valuation by posterity, and the achievements which they view with most complacency often appear to their successors negligible or even ridiculous. It was so in Greece. Aeschylus expected to be remembered not as a poet, but as a combatant at . speaks as if the greatness of Athens lay in its empire. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Much of which it is proud is forgotten by its successors. Whole epochs which were well satisfied with themselves are found in the sequel to matter nothing to the world, and to have made no contribution to its progress. Two hundred years hence our own age may be regarded as one that possessed, for its time, considerable material civilization but very little else, a substantial body and a soul which died from fatty degeneration,"

"Only a bold man half a century ago dared to hold that a substantial basis of fact underlay the stories of the battles before Troy,—not to speak of the wanderings of ; and archaeologists believed that had not simply idealized but also exaggerated freely the wonders of the works of art and craft to which he refers. When, little more than a third of a century ago, Dr. Schliemann began to dig for indications of early settlements on the chief Homeric sites,—first at on the shore of the , which had been held by the ancients to be the site on which Homeric Troy had stood, and then in , at and ,—many mocked just as they would have done if the enthusiastic German had sought to determine the sites of the exploits of ."

"Homer, like Milton, could not think of an army in motion without thinking of its resemblance to something else. Just before the Catalogue of the Ships, the movements of the armies are described by six detailed comparisons, B 455-483 : the brightness of their armor is compared with the gleam of fire upon the mountains ; their noisy tumult, with the clamor of s or swans on the Asian plain ; in multitude, they are as the innumerable leaves and flowers of spring-time; they are impetuous and bold as the eager flies around the farm buildings; they are marshalled by their leaders as flocks of goats by their herds; their leader () is like to Zeus, to Ares, to ,—he is preeminent among the heroes as a bull in a herd of cattle."

"His earliest ode which has come down to us is the tenth Pythian ode in honor of the victory in the long footrace of Hippocles, one of the powerful . This ode was composed when was only twenty years old, and shows that he already had some prominence, else that family would not have invited him to celebrate the victory. His earliest Olympian ode which has been preserved is the eleventh, of 484"

"Like several other interwar liberal internationalists, F. Melian Stawell was a classicist by training, set for an illustrious career at working simultaneously on the ancient Greeks and contemporary world order. Stawell is best known as the author of The Growth of International Thought, a book increasingly cited, if not read, as the first to use the term ‘international thought.’"

"A quarter of a century ago, when the were first discovered, all scholars were struck by their likeness to the works of later Greece. Even now, when the knowledge of dissimilarities in detail has obscured for many minds this broad resemblance, no one would assert that a or is impossible."

"Melian Stawell (1869-1936) begins life as a certain kind of outsider. Born into an elite Australian colonial family, she received great early encouragement in her education, had access to a home library, and studied at and then Cambridge. Henceforth her academic, political, and friendship base was in England, wher she wrote a great number of significant texts in classics, as well as Aristotle, the League of Nations, Women and Democracy, and in particular a work on the (1911) that is still highly regarded. Her work is in the Library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf at -, including The Growth of Intellectual Thought (1929), with reading annotations by ."

"When the idea of Democracy first took hold of the modern world, it brought with it to many minds the demand for the . To many minds, but not to all, and this because the strongest arguments for that independence are bound up with the fundamental conceptions of the democratic ideal, and not with the secondary advantages of a democratic state, and there are always minds on whom the second have far more influence than the first. It is probably for a similar reason that the has made so little headway in Europe during the last century. For this has been a time of detailed work in legislation, rather than of far-reaching ideas."

"... At the outset we are shown the two great armies, Greek and Trojan,—both winning our sympathy,—the one fighting for honour and justice, the other for home and country. We are shown , the fair woman who is at once the cause of the war and its prize; we are shown the two kings, in his noble endurance, in his restless activity; we are shown the two champions, and , both lovable and attractive to us, sworn enemies to one another."

"The last works of a great artist have always a peculiar interest, and when they are the works of his old age they often show a peculiar change. The greatest artists do not copy themselves: stereotyping is fatal to creation. For creation, it cannot be denied though frequently forgotten, is always the production of something new, and this is why so often it is neglected or scorned by contemporaries. The creative artists, though their work corresponds with experience, are always outstripping experience, stretching forward to something they have never fully known, entering fresh worlds only half realised. Beethoven, Rembrandt, Titian, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, all show this in various ways. There is something unearthly in their closing work, and at the same time they are more at peace with this earth than ever. Nor is this because the world appears less terrible to them than it did, but because they seem to discern something more which countervails the terror."

"... After Philo and Plato, it was little use to say that Christ was merely like God, and the Spirit that came to us like both. Only the thorough-going assertion of unity could satisfy the longings and quiet the doubts that had been raised."

"I am to archaeologists what the is to tourists. They keep coming to see if the old lady is still around. And working."

"The history of the cult of in Rome has been well investigated and is well known ... In 204 B.C. a meteorite was brought from in to Rome. It came on a ship named Salvia up the Tiber. When the ship got stuck in the shallow waters, , an aristocratic maiden, freed it and drew it upstream with her belt. This miracle is reported by Ovid (Fasti, 4, 291-348) in the time of Augustus. It is still represented on an altar in the Capitoline Museum dedicated by Claudia Syntyche, probably in the Antonine period ... The same event is represented on a medallion for , that is after death and deification in 141 A.D. by her husband the emperor ... The statue, or rather the sacred stone, representing Cybele was then brought up to the , where under lively participation by the aristocracy was dedicated to the and a temple was erected and dedicated in 191 B.C. Augustus restored this temple as he did many other temples in Rome."

"We owe our knowledge of pre-Greek art in Crete in large measure to the excavations of . The six volumes of Evans' publication of The Palace of Minos at Knossos, which appeared between 1921 and 1936, aroused a storm of enthusiasm for this marvelous civilization until then unknown. Cretan art is not only fundamentally different from but aesthetically superior to Egyptian and Oriental art. was from the beginning a close observer of this newly-discovered civilization and an important contributor to the vast literature which sprang up as a consequence of the many problems surrounding . I remember his guided tours for Fellows of the , whose director he became. They introduced us to this new civilization in the same clear and competent manner that I now find in his last book, written when he was 88 years old. … It is the best first introduction to Cretan art I know."

"I remember well the moment when I first became aware of the importance of medicinal herbs at Pompeii. It was an early summer morning in 1966 when we went into the insula (city block) across from the amphitheater to clear it of over-growth before beginning our excavations. When my workmen spotted a patch of bright green weeds, they immediately rushed to dig them up and put them with their belongings, to take home at the end of the day ... I thought it very strange, and inquired why they did this. "For fegato," they told me, "it is very good." I was to learn as I worked at Pompeii that liver (fegato) ailments were a common complaint, hence the importance of the medicine made from the herb that my workmen were gathering, the common weed known as mullein ( L.)"

"The shop-houses of the humble people who made up a large part of the population at Pompeii have been little noticed, over-shadowed as they are by the more aristocratic and much studied - houses. It is now generally recognized that Pompeii was a busy commercial town and not the resort town and playground of the wealthy Romans that earlier writers believed it to be. The many shops and workshops at Pompeii are found scattered throughout the town for the residential and business sections were not rigidly separated. In many cases the shop was simply a large room, which was open to the street when the shutters were pushed back. Frequently there was a counter facing the street, especially in food shops, so that passers-by might be served without the need to enter the shop."

"One of the very earliest uses to which the art of writing was put, along with alphabetic exercises and marks of ownership, was sexual insult and obscenity."

"The "Garden of Hercules" takes its name from the statue worshipped in the large of the garden (II.viii.6) attached to a modest house to the W of the Great Palaestra at Pompeii. This garden was partially excavated in 1953—1954, but even in previously excavated gardens it is still sometimes possible to find evidence of ancient plants. University of Maryland excavations from 1972—1974 uncovered here a garden very different from any found thus far. The soil contours, planting pattern, provisions for watering, ancient pollen and the perfume bottles found suggest that this was a commercial flower garden, the products of which were used in making the perfume or perfumed oils, and perhaps the garlands, so important in ancient Roman life. Ancient writers speak of the importance of the flower industry in ; wall paintings at Pompeii picture the procedures of making garlands and perfume; inscriptions attest to the activities of the unguentarii. This garden, however, provides the first evidence for commercial flower growing within the city."

"In epigraphy, it is a well-established principle that in restoring an inscription the shortest possible line is to be preferred. The principle is honored not so much because short lines are known to have been particularly favored (they were not) nor because the document in question is likely to have been expressed in the briefest possible terms, but in order to keep to a minimum the restored material. And for its purpose the principle is admirable, since readers of the restored inscription can be confident that, although what they read may bear comparatively little relation to the original document, at least it includes the fewest possible additional letters or words necessary to make sense of what remains to us on stone."

"It is only from the end of the 6th century that we have firm evidence for -worship anywhere; concerning his previous existence there is only a tangle of myths which seem to reflect conflicting claims and rival theories. Certainly in the Iliad Asklepios appears only as the other of the the heroes and , who both share in the fighting and are valued as physicians."

"At Pompeii not only public buildings and shops have been preserved, but hundreds of houses and gardens. There was at least one garden in almost every house, while some houses had three or four. The garden was an integral part of the house and a significant factor in its development. Only at Pompeii can domestic architecture be traced for a period of almost four hundred years. Pompeii preserves examples of the early Italic house with the garden at the rear, houses that date back to the late fourth or early third century They remind us that the hortus is old; it formed a significant part of the primitive heredium ("hereditary estate"). The hortus was primarily a kitchen garden, but I suspect that even so the ancient gardener tucked in a few flowers amid in the herbs and vegetables, as does the Italian gardener today."

"How were the philosophies of medical treatment and social rules regarding the ill manifested in the building design of medieval ? This question does not simply instigate consideration into how Islamic hospitals were constructed, but seeks to explore what social rules and understandings of diseases, the ill and treatment can be detected from the buildings themselves by examining them within their environmental, social and philosophical context. The scholarly focus on the architecture and archaeology of hospitals from this era has concentrated on describing architectural details, which are frequently devoid of interpretations related to concepts of healing, beliefs about the body, illness and hygiene prevalent at the time of their construction and use. Yet, it has been shown in more general archaeological and anthropological studies of space that people's relationships to structures are imbued with cultural rules regarding their use, design and flow of movement."

"Roman doctors did not have the same perception of germs as that in the modern West, and there is no recorded evidence of them having purposely sterilized their medical instruments. Medical historians and anthropologists have shown that there are differences in the way that medical objects have been handled in other periods and places that do not conform to modern concepts of hygiene. For example, it may be more important to bless a surgical instrument rather than clean it in order for it to be considered effective. The Roman writer Lucian also gives us the impression that some doctors did not clean or care for their tools as we might expect, when he says that he would rather have a doctor with a rusty knife than a charlatan with a gold one (Adversus Indoctum 29). Thus, archaeologists are warned that they should take care not to apply their own common-sense perceptions onto past activities."

"Although the term 'prehistory' simply indicates a period without evidence for written documents, a hierarchy was created when the subject of archaeology was in its developmental stages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this period, societies with writing were deemed to have more scholarly importance and relevance than those without a written language (Schnapp 1996). In certain respects, this division is still maintained, though there is, it is hoped, a growing awareness that societies without writing in both the past and present have rich traditions of oral histories and complex social rules. Groups without a written record should not be thought of as primitive and, therefore, less worthy of investigation ( 2007: 8)."

"In Petrarch we readily recognise a link between the mediaeval and the modern world. He was fully conscious of belonging in a peculiar sense to a transitional time. He describes himself as placed on the confines of two peoples, and as looking backwards as well as forwards ..."

"'Philology' was for a long time limited to linguistic studies, and was regarded as only including grammar, lexicography, exegesis, and textual and literary criticism; but, since the time of Wolf, it has been generally understood in a wider sence, as including the study of ancient life in all its phases, as handed down to us in the literature, the inscriptions, and the monuments, of Greece and Rome ..."

"Experimental Science is represented by Bacon, in the sixth part of the Opus Maius, as a general method for the purpose of checking the results reached by mathematical processes, and also of prompting further researches in fresh fields of inquiry. He saw its bearing and its importance as a universal method of research."

"Steaming onwards to the south-east between Methana and Ægina, we passed close under the island of Poros, with its hilly slopes clothed with groves of citron, an island which once bore the name of Calaureia, and was the scene of the death of Demosthenes. It was here that he sought sanctuary from the emissaries of Antipater in the temple of Poseidon."

"Dr. Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued. 'ADAMS. This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies ? JOHNSON. Why, Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner, and others ; and there is a Welch gentleman who has published a collection of Welch proverbs, who will help me with the Welch. ...'"

"My purpose is, by Gods assistance, to set forth the Art of painting, as in old times it hath begun, as it was promoted, as it came to that wonderfull perfection mentioned in ancient Authors. The first booke toucheth the first beginnings of Picture. The second booke propoundeth diverse meanes tending to the advancement of this Art. The third booke speaketh of the maine grounds of Art, the which being well observed by the old Artificers, made them come neerer to the height of perfection."

"Achilles—bring back the story, Goddess, of the formidable hero descended through Aeacus from thundering Jupiter, but denied His heaven, his deeds indeed famous through Homeric song, but with much more to celebrate."

"Through me is the way to the city of woe. Through me is the way to sorrow eternal. Through me is the way to the lost below."

"When the defiant boy, whose heart had never trembled, saw this girl at the head of her troop of companions he stiffened, and every bone in his body absorbed liquid fire."

"Your mission, Roman, is to rule the world. These will be your arts: to establish peace, To spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud."

"The moon has set, And the Pleiades. Midnight. The hour has gone by. I sleep alone."

"The Way is calm and wide, Not easy, not difficult. But small minds get lost. Hurrying, they fall behind.Clinging, they go too far, Sure to take a wrong turn. Just let it be! In the end, Nothing goes, nothing stays."