Paulinus, don't malign us!

Erock has been keeping the Campus going strong for all our faithful readers, while in the meantime I've been trying to re-learn how to read Latin. It may not be the best idea to do that through 5th c. Latin written in three different meters and often with little regard for the comfortable conventions of Latin syntax.

The good thing is that I've hit a stride and have pounded through more than three hundred lines today.

The bad news is that I failed to pass both the Greek and Latin sight exams. I was congratulated 'for attempting both,' which I thought a bit odd, and was told that my Menander was fine but the rest of the Greek 'not so.' After spending a semester with Plato, Lysias, Thucydides, and Gil Prose, and having never so much as glanced at a page of Menander before the exam, I found that a little difficult to understand.

But there you have it. I'm tempted to change an option on the poll. I should probably add Menander since that's apparently all I can read well enough anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, this computer in the library saves information entered in forms on web pages, and when I tried to enter a title just now one entry in the list read, '26 yo in philly burbs looking for younger guys for a lt.'

Now, I don't know what 'a lt' means (a loose time? a little tender-lovin'-care? a laser-tag tournament?) but what I do know is this: some 26 year old dude in Carpenter library is trying to meet 'younger guys.'

Not that I'm here to out anybody.

quote of the day

'"War is to men as marriage is to women." That's the only smart thing Jean-Pierre Vernant ever said. [The idea of looking at cultures from the perspective of both genders] made him immortal. But he said a lot of stupid things, too.

--R. Hamilton, 9/8/04

the runner-up:

[After translating a sentence reading, 'The sun brings the beginning of life to men.'] 'Now, that sounds like philosophy. Some people say it's water. Others say it's earth. They're smart, because that's what Hesiod says.'

--R. Hamilton, 9/8/04

more old news

rogue classicism has a nice feature detailing what events of note happened on this day in the ancient world. today, september 7, is day 3 of the ludi Romani--the site links here for an explanation of the games. here it is:

The Ludi Romani

The Ludi Romani (The Roman Games), also known as the Ludi Magni (The Great Games) was arguably the major religious festival of the Romans, although it would appear that, as time went on, the religious elements were largely overshadowed by the various competitions. These games were originally held on September 13, in honour of the Romans' patron god Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose temple was dedicated on the 13th in 509 or 507 B.C. (depending on which source you believe). Over time, the festival was expanded up to the fifth of the month and down to the ninteenth, making for over a half-a-month's worth of festivities. After Julius Caesar's assassination, another day was added (September 4) as one of the many honours decreed to him. For most of the period of the Republic, the Ludi Romani were the responsibility of the curule aediles; later Augustus would transfer their organization to the praetor.

The Opening Procession

We are fortunate that Dionysius of Halicarnassus decided to use the Ludi Romani as an exemplum to demonstrate that the Romans weren't actually barbarians, but put on festivals 'just like the Greeks'. As part of this demonstration, he describes in great detail the opening procession (7.72 ff):


*The consuls (and other magistrates) led the procession from the Capitol down through the Forum to the Circus Maximus
*They were followed by young men (perhaps the collegia of iuvenes?), both on foot and on horseback
*Then came those who were presumably going to take part in the chariot races, with some driving teams of four horses, others driving teams of two, and singles
*They were followed by those who were to take part in the athletic competitions; in the procession they wore only a loin cloth
*Next came groups of dancers, made up both of men and boys. They wore red tunics and bronze belts, a bronze crested helmet, and a sword. They also carried a spear(This is all vaguely reminiscent of the Salii; is there a connection?). They were accompanied by assorted musicians
*They were followed by men dressed as hairy satyrs and Silenoi who impersonated (with obvious rustic humour) the flashy military dancers who preceded them (the Romans had a penchant for mixing the bawdy/obscene with the solemn). They too were accompanied by assorted musicians.
*At this point the procession takes on a more religious tone, with men carrying incense and gold and silver vessels
*Penultimately there came images of the gods, which were carried on fercula (something like a stretcher) on the shoulders of other men. The gods included the 12 Olympians as well as a mix of native Italic and imported divinities (e.g. Saturn, Ops, Themis, The Fates, Mnemosyne, the Muses, the Graces. etc.)
*Finally there came the sacrificial animals.

The Sacrificial Ritual

Dionysius also relates the sacrificial ritual. The consuls presided over the ritual and the attendant priests would ritually wash their hands, then purify the oxen with clean water. The priests also sprinkled the oxen with mola salsa, which was a sort of loose (possibly very loose) cake made from spelt which had been gathered and roasted by the Vestal Virgins (this was a standard feature of most sacrifices at Rome). Attendants were then ordered to carry out the sacrifice, which was done by holding knives beneath the throats of the animals, then thumping them on the temple, which caused them to fall on the knives and be slain [note in passing: this strikes me as having the same impetus as throwing criminals from the Tarpeian rock; in effect, the victim kills themself, thus absolving the sacrificer/executioner from blood guilt]. The animals were then butchered and a piece from the 'inward parts' and from each limb was 'seasoned' with mola salsa and carried in special baskets by the priests to the altar, where it was put on fire and wine poured over them while it was burning. This, of course, was the gods' share, the smoke from which provided them with their means of survival (and maintained the pax deorum). The remainder was cut up and presumably distributed amongst the participants present.

The Ludi Scaenici

From at least 240 B.C./B.C.E. on, ludi scaenici (theatrical competitions) were an integral part of the Ludi Romani. In that year, Livius Andronicus was commissioned by the aediles to translate scenes from Greek comedy and tragedy into different metres and perform them. In the following years, it would appear that a 'Greek style' theatrical competition evolved; the participation of actors as well as folks dressed as satyrs might suggest that some of the dramas might have been more ribald than a Greek like Dionysius of Halicarnassus would have liked. By the time we reach the empire, the performances appear to have been largely confined to mime and especially pantomime (the latter being somewhat akin to a modern ballet, with the participants generally having notorious, Nureyev/Isadora Duncan-like reputations).

The Ludi Circenses

Despite the stereotypical image of Rome's national sport being feeding assorted malcontents to the lions, the only sport which really could lay claim to being 'the national sport' was chariot racing. Given that the procession of the Ludi Romani went to the Circus Maximus, with its capacity of possibly 150,000, it's not surprising that ludi circenses, a.k.a. chariot racing, formed a large part of the festivities. Outside of the thrill of the races themselves the Circus Maximus was also one of the very few venues where seating was not segregated according to sex, and if we believe the poet Ovid, it was a great place to meet and rub shoulders (literally) with future spouses and persons one intended to have a less permanent relationship with.

The other attraction with chariot-racing was gambling. Although the magistrates would have paid for horses, chariots, and drivers for the Ludi Romani, the horses and drivers were still identified by their 'stables' (the Blues, the Greens, the Reds, the Whites -- the latter two possibly being a late Republic development) and the fans were pathologically loyal to their favourite stable (to the extent that they might even bury lead 'curse tablets' to ensure their favourite would win).

Dionysius relates that the first race was a sort of mixed thing, with a race between chariots with differing numbers of horses and equipment. We also hear of races in which there were two people in the chariot, and upon crossing the finishing line, one would jump out and run another lap. There were probably numerous other variations as magistrates tried to make their particular games memorable.

Between races (the number on the 'card' seems to vary), there were often other amusements: jugglers, acrobats, etc. the sort of thing we associate with 'circuses' like Cirque de Soleil). The races at the Ludi Romani seem to have been followed by assorted athletic events, such as boxing, wrestling, and footracing. It also seems likely that the so-called Lusus Troiae, a sort of precision equestrian drill put on by the iuvenes (generally the sons of the rich and famous) was part of these festivities. This ancient version of the "Musical Ride" (a little Canadian content there) supposedly had Etruscan origins and was 'revived' by Augustus.

September 13

As mentioned previously, the festival was originally held on September 13 to commemorate the dedication of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (509 or 507 B.C.). As might be expected, even though the festival expanded in length in both directions, this was the 'high point' of the whole thing and by the late Republic, there were a number of feasts (epuli) to honour Jupiter and/or assorted divinities closely associated with him (they are somewhat confusing). The earliest such epulum, which possibly dates from 509 B.C., if not earlier, seems to be the epulum Iovi which only involved senatorial types. Later we hear of an epulum Iovi, Iunoni, Minervae (i.e. the Capitoline triad) and one in honour of Minerva alone. By the turn of the second century A.D., however, these (and other) epulones required major organization (presumably because more people were allowed to take part in some of them) and so in 196 B.C. we hear of a college of three epulones -- three special magistrates -- whose sole task was to organize such banquets. By the end of the Republic,ten such magistrates were needed.

Returning to the epulum Iovis, it was, as mentioned, confined to senatorial types. It began with a sacrifice, and for the feast that followed, images of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were set on a couch, dressed up as if they were actually participating in the feast (Jupiter reclined on a couch; Juno and Minerva sat on 'chairs', as proper Roman matrons would have done).

Down to the third century or so, we hear of another ritual being associated with this day (and probably incorporated into the festival). It was on this day when the praetor maximus (later, one of the consuls) would drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter. Supposedly this was originally done to avert plague, but it evolved into an important annual ritual -- so important that, if there wasn't a magistrate of sufficient rank to perform the ceremony a 'dictator for the hammering of the nail" might be appointed for the task. Later historians would claim to be able to count the nails and so decide when the Republic began.

The Probatio Equitum

In calendars from the Imperial period we read that on September 14, there was an 'inspection of the cavalry'. During the time of the Republic, this regularly had occurred on July 15; it had fallen into desuetude by the time of Sulla and was revived under Augustus. If the probatio equitum on September 14 was anything like the Republican version, the equites (i.e. those who were granted a state-supplied horse) would parade from the Temple of Mars (outside the walls), pass through various parts of the city, the Forum, past the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and possibly finishing at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. They would pause at the Temple of Castor and Pollus and be formally approved by the censors (in the Republic) or the emperor (in the empire). The horsemen wore their 'dress uniforms', as if coming home victorious from battle: wearing olive branches on their heads and purple robes with scarlet stripes (the trabea. They'd also wear whatever 'medals' they had won in battle. During the empire such parades had political overtones, insofar as this was one venue where their official status as an eques was confirmed in a very public way.

on this day in history

according to rogue classicism, on september 6, 1956, michael ventris, decipherer of the mycenaean language linear B, died, having driven his car at high speed into a parked truck. although trained in architecture, not philology, he made one of the most important and stunning discoveries in the history of the discipline. you can read a little bit about him here.
R.I.P.

Another change

I've made the poll more prominent and expect some votes ASAP.

With official business out of the way, I'd like simply to say that reading Late Antique Latin poetry is hell. The syntax stretches the limits of my Latin (or as Eric corrected me the other day, 'it stretches the limits of Latin') and the changes in meter in Paulinus 10 are beginning to give me a nervous tick. He moves from elegiac couplets to Iambic strophes, then alters the character of iambic lines in ways unfamiliar to me so that I wonder if I'm even scanning it correctly, and then I see he picks up with the hexameter about a hundred lines in. It's a good thing he announces early what his meters will be, and really, that's the most impressive part of the poem:

Such things, however, must be given their own place, and driven by the weightier sound of the avenging heroic (viz. hexameter). In the meantime the lighter iambic (iambic strophe) runs ahead for a short while bearing back borrowed words by a different foot. Now elegiac (couplets) wish you well, and the greeting given, as they've made the start and step for the other (metres), they're silent.

Packed in those few lines is battle imagery, and a sort of program of the events to come. I greet you in elegiacs, answer you in iambics, and fight you in epic. I just wish it was comprehensible.

Blogography

Jason remarked recently that he'd visited a blog which listed other blogs in a strict taxonomy: law blogs, literature blogs, film blogs, anthropology blogs, et al. And yet in the end they all wrote about politics.

We haven't had that problem here at the Campus, but without that political crutch posting has been spotty. So I'm challenging myself now (and hope others will follow suit, though Eric is to be commended for his excellent contributions) first to post more often, but more importantly to write meaningful posts within this blog's implied scope.

Struggling through the Epistles of Ausonius and Paulinus alone should afford enough material.

Changes at the Campus

Scroll down to see a new poll (on the left side of your screen, just past the other blogs), through which you just may be able to help me decide on a subject for my thesis.

One other piece of news: I've set up an account with SiteMeter, so I now I'll know exactly how few readers we have!

ancient and modern

did you know that '[e]very week in the London Spectator, Peter Jones compares something that has happened in the week's news with the way things were done in the ancient world'? well, he does, and you can find them here (thanks to classics in contemporary culture for the link).

i'll see your philology, and raise you a philosophy

as dennis will remember, several days ago i lamented to him regarding the following comment from allan bloom's essay 'the study of texts', which can be found in his book giants and dwarfs:

Almost all modern scholarship, beginning with classical philology, started from the assumption that its fundamental ideas were superior to those of the authors it studied and placed these authors in a context alien to them. Even such as idealist and realist, liberal and conservative are profoundly misleading although they seem to us as natural as night and day.

i was chagrined by the assertion that classical philologists, from the very inception of the discipline, saw themselves as prima facie superior to the ancients, for that, it seems, would make those scholars rather uncharitable and condescending toward their predecessors. while i am still not ready to accept this diagnosis in any holistic sense (though i am trying to keep my eyes much more open for evidence thereof), i cannot think it was mere coincidence that, almost immediately after reading bloom's words, i came across this statement in m.i. finley's book the ancient greeks (which, by clicking on the link, you may purchase for as little as $0.47) in his discussion on the dark age and the homeric poems:

Nothing can make up for the nonexistence of contemporary Greek writing, whether narrative or religious or administrative. And so we, like the Greeks, must fall back on the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here again, surprising as it may seem, we know far more than the Greeks, for not only has modern philology made its contribution....

i realize the parallel to bloom's words is not necessarily a close one --there is no use here of labels for the ancients such as 'liberal', 'conservative', or anything else, and he goes on in the same paragraph to rehabilitate the poems as more than 'merely poetic fiction'. but in spirit, perhaps there is a similarity in finley's statement to the very thing which bloom criticizes, viz., that it seems strange to say that we are more knowledgeable about the greeks' own poetry than the greeks were themselves.

chalk one up for brussels

this, via drudge, about who won the olympics, is rather interesting given our conversation last night while playing cards.

GSEMination

I'm just wondering if anyone can walk me through the implications of natality.

five man acoustical jam

dennis: per our conversation earlier today, i thought i would pass along that on the way home today, due to commercials on other stations, i flipped to 93.3, and do you know what came on shortly thereafter? that's right--tesla's version of 'signs'. your positions becomes an increasingly impenetrable citadel moment by moment...

a right angola is exactly 90 degrees

in honor of the sincere interst which dennis expressed to me yesterday regarding the US-angola basketball showdown, i decided to look up angola in the dictionary of cultural literacy. though it is not related to the typical themes of the CAMPVS, i will share it anyway. here's what it says:

'Republic in southwestern Africa on the Atlantic coast, bordered to the north and northeast by Zaire, to the east by Zambia, and to the south by Namibia. Its capital and largest city is Luanda.

'After achieving independence from Portugal in 1976, Angola was the scene of a civil war between its Marxist government, supported by the Soviet Union and Cuban troops, and a rebel organization known as UNITA, which was aided by the United States and South Africa. In 1988 the United States engineered a settlement that led to the withdrwawal of Cuban troops and to South African acceptance of black majority rule in neighboring Namibia.'

while prowling my way around the dictionary, i found myself in the 'business and economics' section. while there, i read the following definition of 'mixed economy':

'An economy that combines elements of capitalism and socialism, mixing some individual ownership and regulation. Some capitalist countries--for example, Great Britain, which has free markets but extensive governmental presence in the economy as an owner of industries and preserver of social services--have mixed economies.'

the second sentence strikes me as (oxy)moronic, since the idea of free markets is incompatible with 'extenisive governmental presence in the economy'. so i looked up their definition of 'free market':

'The production and exchange of goods and services without interference from the government or from monopolies.'

hmmm. and what do we find under 'monopoly'?

'The exclusive control by one company of a service or product.'

and if we, in our most reaganite fashion, conceive of government as a corportation or business, what do we have except a monopoly when the government is 'an owner of industries'? and since monopolies are antithetical to free markets, how can the idea of a 'mixed economy' be anything but silly doublespeak?

thus ends, for the moment, my foray into 'the dictionary of cultural literacy'.

this ain't no warrior princess

you will all enjoy merriam-webster's word-of-the-day from august 14 because of its greek roots, AND because of the 'did you know?' section which discusses new latin. thus, i present it to you:

xenophobia \zen-uh-FOH-bee-uh\ noun

: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

Example sentence:
I always thought it was odd that Gene, whose xenophobia precluded travel beyond the state border, chose to become a travel agent.

Did you know?
If you look back to the ancient Greek terms that underlie the word "xenophobia," you'll discover that xenophobic individuals are literally "stranger fearing." "Xenophobia," that elegant-sounding name for an aversion to persons unfamiliar, ultimately derives from two Greek terms: "xenos," which can be translated as either "stranger" or "guest," and "phobos," which means either "fear" or "flight." "Phobos" is the ultimate source of all English "-phobia" terms, but many of those were actually coined in English or New Latin using the combining form "-phobia" (which traces back to "phobos"). "Xenophobia" itself came to us by way of New Latin and first appeared in print in English in 1903.

Some thoughts on modern linguistics

There is nothing more distracting in modern academic prose than the overuse of quotes, or what the Brits call inverted commas.

I'll demonstrate:

There is nothing more 'distracting' in modern 'academic' prose than the 'overuse' of quotes, or what the 'Brits' call 'inverted commas.'

John Lyons's Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics abounds with inverted commas as in this sentence:

But in both Greek and Latin there are 'exceptions' to the 'sound laws.'

More often than not the author's motivation is clear, and he deserves the wrath of Dr. Fowler:

superiority. Much misplaced ingenuity in finding forms of apology is shown by writers with a sense of their own superiority who wish to safeguard their dignity and yet be vivacious, to combine comfort with elegance, to touch pitch and not be defiled. Among them are: To use an expressive colloquialism—in the vernacular phrase—if the word may be permitted—so to speak—in homely phrase—not to put too fine a point upon it—if the word be not too vulgar—as they say—to call a spade a spade—not to mince matters—in the jargon of today—or the use of depreciatory inverted commas. Such writers should make up their minds whether their reputation or their style is such as to allow of their dismounting from the high horse now and again without compromising themselves.

Lyons, like so many other academics, is too busy being superior by avoiding language that might be perceived as authoritative that his book ends up a bland soup of non-committal nonsense in which the only accepted terminology is that of contemporary theory. This has something to do with the fact that most academics today view the world as a series of binary oppositions and choose the novelty of opposing tradition in some hyper-extended effort to challenge daddy's authority. Along with this there is often necessary the fallacy of ascribing to one's opponent positions he has never taken. The shadowy tradition that modern academics are always railing against is guilty most often of intellectual hubris and the sin of certainty, yet under the dimmest light it often becomes clear that our forebears had better command of their language than modern scholars who trump up false ambiguity as a weapon.

Philologists of the past published what they termed laws (e.g. Grassmann's Law, or Rask's, which is improperly called Grimm's Law), and Lyons faults them for the presumption of truth or certainty because they themselves didn't qualify law by inverted commas. Perhaps someone should buy Lyons and his friends a dictionary. A law is not a universal and eternal truth discovered by man, but a technical formulation imposed or a general principal agreed upon by men, and is always open to modification, retraction, and replacement. That is the definition of the term, that's what it meant to the men who published laws, and that's what it will always mean in their texts even if the popular sense of the term has shifted today. (It seems to me that the inability of modern academics to understand texts written in the past few centuries makes a case for the corruption of language. But I digress.)

Lyons writes as though his predecessors actually believed in laws as active forces working in the universe rather than as models serving to illuminate phenomena. Positivists and 19th century philologists knew that. It's time to strip away from relativists the monopoly they would claim for common sense.

This is why theorists (I shouldn't call them critics -- Housman would turn in his grave) are so fond of deflated terms like truth value and senseless plurals like knowledges (a necessary consequence of the faith of the church of relativism). For them, there is no truth, and all claims to knowledge are equally valid. What matters, then, is tolerance of the 'truth value' and 'knowledges' of others while being sure not to offend. This means qualifying one's own 'truth value' and 'knowledges' by constant appeals to relativism (and yes, those are inverted commas of superiority).

Lyons even has a hard time conceding that the Latin language has a case system, putting case in inverted commas as if to say that the bourgeois Western system of classifying language is an artificial construct that is hardly representative of language as a living thing (though I suppose it will have to do), and moreover it is hardly the only or the best system of classification. Doubtless the persons (or is it peoples?) of Papua New Guinea developed a more noble and equitable system, stamped out by Anglo-Saxon oppressors.

When Lyons asserts that speech does in fact precede writing he pretends that this is a revelation. But when he says that writing is an attempt to represent speech he is showinig his prejudice and lack of understanding. Writing is not an attempt to represent speech any more than speech is an attempt to emulate writing. Writing and speech are two modes of communication, one durable the other ephemeral (excepting sound recording, which requires advanced technology and has little to do with speech as such). Writing and speech take on widely different characteristics in literate culture, and writing admits of countless specialized uses restrictive of speech. It also requires different modes of communicating the same non-lexical information (i.e. emphasis, emotional interest, tone of voice, grammatical relations, etc.). Writing and speech are different things, and language may actually be better understood through traditional writing than through speech because the lack of performative cues and clues requires the writer to use the native grammar to its fullest capacity.

This prejudice in favor of speech becomes clear when we consider sign language, which has more in common with writing than speech, and actually forms the basis for the early pictograms of many written languages. The hearing-impaired may have limited to no speech capacity yet be fully able to process and create language. Further, the primacy of sound in the study of language ignores high-level reading, or what may be truly termed silent reading, in which there is no subvocalization and no mental reproduction of the sounds represented in speech. It is possible to read and to write rapidly without the crutch of the phonetic middleman, just as one easily understands speech without visualizing the written word. The mental reproduction of sound often slows our reading and muddles our comprehension.

The insistance on sound as central to an understanding of language is at the very least immature. Sound factors so heavily in language because of its adaptability and facility, but it has little to do with the fundamental mental processes that constitute language. A community of deaf-mute individuals would be no less capable of language than anyone else, though the mode of communication would of necessity be very different.

leave your PC shoes at the door!

here is merriam-webster's word-of-the-day from august 17, which you will all find interesting, especially the etymological bit:

tartar \TAR-ter\ noun

1 capitalized : a native or inhabitant of a vast historical region in Asia and Eastern Europe roughly extending from the Sea of Japan to the Dnieper
*2 often capitalized : a person of irritable or violent temper
3 : one that proves to be unexpectedly formidable

Example sentence:
On the basketball court, Nate was a Tartar whose undisciplined behavior often got him in trouble with the referee.

Did you know?
Originally, their name was "Tatar," not "Tartar." Since at least the 1200s, the Tatar people have lived in Asia and Eastern Europe, and they were among the fiercest fighters of the Golden Horde of the Mongols. In the 13th century, they rode with Genghis Khan and became the terror of their day. Their name, "Tatar," is believed to come from Persian or a Turkic language, but in Europe it was associated with "Tartarus," the Latin name for the part of Hell reserved for the punishment of the wicked. Because of that association, English speakers began calling the Tatar people "Tartars." Over time, "tartar" came to be used for anyone considered as ferocious or violent as the Tartar warriors who had once ransacked the ancient world.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Captian Kook is aboard!

And I couldn't be more excited.

I'm so excited that I'll actually post today. And here it is ...

I was reading Cicero's First Catilinarian just now and I came across a line that I thought rocked:

"ubinam gentium sumus? in qua urbe uiuimus? quam rem publicam habemus?"

It reminded me of a line in Churchill's speech following Pearl Harbor:

"What kind of a people do they think we are?"

The story goes that people rose to their feet and applauded for five minute. Now that's what I call oratory.

100,000 chomskyites can't be wrong (or can they?)

here is an interesting factoid from steven pinker's 'the language instinct' (1994):

'Chomsky is currently among the ten most-cited writers in all of the humanities (beating out Hegel and Cicero and trailing only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, the Bible, Aristotle, Plato, and Freud) and the only living member of the top ten.'

interesting that two commies are among the ten most-cited people EVER by humanities professors.

somone tell me if their experience has been otherwise--but in scholarship on classics, i haven't come across too many references to chomsky. i've found i'm much more likely to happen upon foucault and derrida as the trendiest of all gurus to which one might nod (or, in many cases, offer obeisance).

a bit curious, i do say

i intend to have a post up here soon. but for the time being, i would just like to say that i question the timing of dennis's most recent post regarding gil prose's 'confessions'. i'm not sure WHY i question it, exactly, but, as i've been learning recently, that is of no great moment.

One more reason to develop an opium habit.

The following is an excerpt of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and it makes me want to drop out of graduate school:

My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment -- an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, etc., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, etc. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one." He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and good one," and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and, finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by -- College, Oxford; and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite master; and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to bet and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself oniy; for the two boys who jointly with myself composed the first form were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before we went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst we never condescended to open our books, until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such important matter.