Elisions in [Lactanti] Carmen De Passione Domini (Updated)

Although the De Passione Domini is a fairly short hexameter poem (80 lines), it contains a rather high frequency of elisions. Out of the poem's 80 lines, 42 of them (by my count) contain at least one elision. There are 6 lines with 2 elisions (6, 11, 36, 37, 40, 48), and 3 lines with 3 elisions (21, 35, 57), for a grand total of 53 in the poem. Here are the 3 lines with 3 elisions:

21: Pauperiem extremam et rerum inferiora secutus
35: Fige animo et testes et caeci infanda Pilati
57: Disce adversa pati et propriae invigilare saluti

For a slightly different configuration, see Manitius, Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Poesie p. 49 n. 4. A couple of these differences are due to our using different texts to calculate. For example, one of his 3 lines with 3 elisions is 56, which is line 57 in the CSEL version of the text. Again, he lists line 3 as having two elisions, whereas I have it as having one. The CSEL text reads

Respice me, me conde animo, me pectore serva.

The app. crit., on the other hand, shows a variant of in pectore instead of pectore, which would generate another elision.

One difference, though, that I can't figure out based on the app. crit. is line 48. I have this as a two-elision line, whereas Manitius does not list it among his two-elision lines:

Atque ingens lateris vulnus, cerne inde fluorem.

The only variant listed by the CSEL's app. crit. is lateri for lateris, but this doesn't effect the elisions.

The Cento Revisited

It is well-known to students of Late Antique poetry that Vergil's lines were could be dismembered, reassembled, and turned into something completely different by Christian and non-Christian Latin poets. I was unaware that the same happened to Prudentius in a subsequent age. That, however, is what Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopaedie tells me in the section on the Hamartigenia in the Prudentius article. Apparently the close of the poem (by which I assume is meant Prudentius' closing prayer, ll. 931-66) was made into a cento by a Spanish bishop named Ascaricus. Here is the sentence from the article along with the references given:

Aus dem Schluss des Gedichtes machte der spanische Bischof Ascaricus einen Cento (Fr. Buecheler Carmina lat. epigr. nr. 927. C. Weyman Rh. Mus. L 1895, 154).

Hexameter Verse/Prudentius (Updated)

Prudentius, in his Hamartigenia, is not afraid to use a fifth-foot spondee from time to time. Here are the examples I've come across so far, all with a quadrisyllabic word spanning the fifth and sixth feet:

76: una eademque tamen rota sideris indiscretis
266: ac velut artificis domini manus inperfectum
422: Postremum cuneum rex promovet Euuaeorum
713: imperio. Hoc mulier rea criminis exprobanti
859: ditibus et longo fumantibus intervallo

New books

The folks at Edgar Kent, a Canadian publishing house (apparently partnered with the University of Toronto Press), have asked me to forward the following to scholars who might be interested. The first, on Greek warfare, was written by a Marine who became a classicist, which intrigues me as a classicist whose father was a Marine. The second is by Frank Frost on Athenian historiography, which was lauded in the BMCR.

I guess there's no harm in giving them a little free publicity:

please find below details of our latest titles in Classics. We would appreciate if you would take the time to review these titles and forward this email to any scholars who may be interested in our books.



THE ATHLETES OF WAR

AN EVALUATION OF THE AGONISTIC ELEMENTS IN GREEK

WARFARE

by John C. Dayton



In this dramatically revisionist account of Greek warfare, John Dayton challenges the modern views that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy. He examines all the ancient evidence bearing on the actual conduct of war and combat among the Greeks themselves and in struggles of Greeks with barbarians from the archaic period to the fourth century, and draws on Polybius for the evidence Roman warfare bears on the conduct of battles. A thorough analysis of casualty statistics shows that Greeks suffered heavily from warfare, and that there was no “tournament-like” limitation on the harm that one party might inflict on another. He places the scholarly analyses of Greek warfare in the context of the ideologies prevalent at the time modern historians study the question, and he uses the evidence of casualty figures suffered in modern conflicts to show that the damage Greek armies inflicted on one another is comparable to the losses suffered in modern “total war.”



The conception that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy is a modern myth. The notion still exerts great cultural influence, and persists precisely because it is a myth, a durable belief in principled and ceremonial wars between Greeks that shares some elements with the belief in the peaceable savage who fights only for his own honor or in his own defense. Examining all the ancient sources that provide information on the nature and ideology of combat in the Greek world, John Dayton shows that this modern conception is thoroughly disprovable by any objective criteria. His presentation of the data also provides a basic source of information about Greek warfare and history for all studies in the future. This is a study essential to any understanding of Greek history, of which war was a constant feature.



Contents



Introduction • 1: The History of Agonism • 2: The Archaic Evidence •

3: The Fifth Century • 4: The Casualties • 5: The Fourth Century •

6: Polybius and the Roman Connection • Conclusion • Bibliography • Index



John Dayton combines military experience with classical training to provide an understanding of Greek attitudes towards war. Born in Michigan in 1966, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1987 to 1991. He studied classics at Princeton and the University of Kansas, and received his doctorate from Brown University in 2003. He was the Heinrich Schliemann Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 2000-01, and subsequently has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Massachusetts and the University of Indiana. He is currently a member of the classics faculty of the University of Calgary.



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-651-9 • $82.50 • 200 Pages



Order From:

University of Toronto Press

Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
Fax: (416) 667-7832 or toll-free 1-800-221-9985 in North America.
E-mail: publishing@utpress.utoronto.ca

Mail U.S.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------







POLITICS AND THE ATHENIANS

ESSAYS ON ATHENIAN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY



by Frank J. Frost





From the Foreword by Erich Gruen, Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics, University of California, Berkeley



“Frank Frost has been among the leading historians of archaic and classical Greece for the past four decades and more.… The articles assembled here…put on exhibit the coherence and continuity of his writing over the years on the political history of Athens in its most dramatic and productive time, the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., on the tangled historiography treating that era, and on the severe limitations as well as the exciting challenge of reconstructing it.…. One thinks particularly of ‘Pericles,’… a compelling deconstruction of Plutarch’s simplistic dichotomy of aristocrats vs. democrats which had misled more than a generation of scholars. [and] his “Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics.” These seminal articles exhibit Frank’s great strength in the dissection of historiographical traditions and the extraction of reliable evidence to rebuild the picture.… He argues for the circumstances in which stories were concocted, traces the tortuous paths that they followed, and exposes plausible reasons for their alteration and manipulation that shed as much light on the motives of the tellers as on the meaning of the tales.



“One finds this form of scrupulous scrutiny again and again in his essays… alive to the vast lacunae in our testimony but also to the potential of discovery and the value of weaving together the diverse strands that survive.… He both sobers and stimulates his readers.



Contents



Foreword • Author’s Preface • Attic Literacy and the Solonian Seisachtheia • Aspects of Early Athenian Citizenship • The Rural Demes of Attica • Solon Pornoboskos and Aphrodite Pandemos • Solon and Salamis, Peisistratos and Nisaia • Plutarch and Theseus • Toward a History of Peisistratid Athens • The “Ominous” Birth of Peisistratos • Peisistratos, the Cults, and the Unification of Attica • Faith, Authority, and History in Early Athens • Politics in Early Athens • Tribal Politics and the Civic State • The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes • The Dubious Origins of the “Marathon” • Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics • Themistocles and Mnesiphilus • Troizen and the Persian War • A Note on Xerxes at Salamis • Thucydides I. 137.2 • Some Documents in Plutarch’s Lives • Aristodemos • Phylarchus, Fragment 76 • Pericles and Dracontides • Pericles, Thucydides, Son of Melesias, and Athenian Politics before the War • A Frank Frost Bibliography



“Frank Frost has been one of the most penetrating researchers into the social and political structure of archaic Athens.…His work has always been marked by a careful evaluation of the sources and an awareness of the contemporary context… This is a valuable book. It not only brings together a group of papers important for the study of Athenian history, but it also allows us to appreciate the achievement of an important American historian of ancient Greece. Let us hope for more in the future..” J.A.S. Evans in Bryn Mawr Classical Review



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-650-0 • $82.50 • 299 Pages



Order From:

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Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
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*Please quote the title and ISBN when ordering your books.

The Cameleopard

As a great fan of the 'liger' dialogue in Napoleon Dynamite, I had to post this section on the 'cameleopard' which I just came across in Pliny the Elder while looking for something else. Both texts are copied from Perseus (Latin ed. K.F.T. Mayhoff), and I've included the notes from Perseus' English translation (ed. John Bostock and H.T. Riley).

XXXI.

harum aliqua similitudo in duo transfertur animalia. nabun aethiopes vocant collo similem equo, pedibus et cruribus bovi, camelo capite, albis maculis rutilum colorem distinguentibus, unde appellata camelopardalis, dictatoris caesaris circensibus ludis primum visa romae. ex eo subinde cernitur, aspectu magis quam feritate conspicua, quare etiam ovis ferae nomen invenit.

CHAP. 27.--THE CAMELEOPARD; WHEN IT WAS FIRST SEEN AT ROME.
There are two others[1] animals, which have some resemblance to the camel. One of these is called, by the Æthiopians, the nabun.[2] It has a neck like that of the horse, feet and legs like those of the ox, a head like that of the camel, and is covered with white spots upon a red ground; from which peculiarities it has been called the cameleopard.[3] It was first seen at Rome in the Circensian games held by Cæsar, the Dictator.[4] Since that time too, it has been occasionally seen. It is more remarkable for the singularity of its appearance than for its fierceness; for which reason it has obtained the name of the wild sheep.[5]

1 He speaks here of only one of the animals which resemble the camel; the giraffe, namely. The other, which he for the present omits, is the ostrich.

2 The description of the giraffe, here given, is sufficiently correct, but we have a more minute account of it by Dion Cassius, B. xliii. In the time of the Emperor Gordian, ten of these animals were exhibited at Rome at once; a remarkable fact, when we bear in mind that so few have been imported into Europe for many centuries past. The giraffe is figured in the mosaic at Præneste, and under it is inscribed its name, nabi.--B. It has been found that it is unable to bear the winters of Europe.

3 Its form being like that of the camel, while its spots resemble those of the leopard. Horace refers to it, when speaking of an object calculated to excite the vulgar gaze; "Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo"-- "The race of the panther mingled with the camel," Ep. B. ii.; Ep. i. 1. 195.

4 According to Dion Cassius, B. xliii., these games were celebrated A.U.C. 708.--B.

5 This comparison can only be employed to indicate the mild nature of the giraffe.--B.

"hoc opus, hic labor est"

'I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth history, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel crown upon the poets as victorious; not only of the historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable. For suppose it be granted, that which I suppose, with great reason, may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet, yet do I think, that no man is so much philophilosophos, as to compare the philosopher in moving with the poet. And that moving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this appear, that it is well nigh both the cause and effect of teaching; for who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught? And what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach. For, as Aristotle saith, it is not gnwsis but praxis must be the fruit: and how praxis can be, without being moved to practise, it is no hard matter to consider. The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the particularities, as well of the tediousness of the way and of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you from your way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive, studious painfulness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much overmastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book: since in nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil, although not in the words of art which philosophers bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit the philosophers drew it; but to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, "hoc opus, hic labor est."'

--Sir Philip Sydney, from The Defence of Poesy

Question

Does anyone know how I can convert digital pictures of the pages of a book into PDFs?

The Epic Successors of Virgil

'This is a short book on some very long poems written in the first 130 years of the Roman empire: Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, Statius' Thebaid, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, and Silius Italicus' Punica. My aim above all is to throw light on the dynamics of a tradition. Tradition is often felt negatively as a dead weight; I shall have succeeded if I encourage in my reader a sense that these monstrous poems are possessed of a restless and fertile energy and that close to the surface of their hides there is stretched an intricately sensitive nerve-system.

'In literary terms the source of this dynamism is Virgil's Aeneid. One of the greatnesses of this apparently definitive Roman epic is its ability to spawn a vigorous progeny. The successors to Virgil, at once respectful and rebellious, constructed a space for themselves through a 'creative imitation' that exploited the energies and tensions called up but not finally expended or resolved in the Aeneid.'

--Philip Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil (Cambridge University Press 1993), p. 1

Michael Choniates, a reader of Nicander

Michael Choniates was Metropolitan of Athens in the early 13th century, a learned man who loved the ancient world and wrote with sadness about the barbarous conditions to which Athens had fallen in his time. I found him through a letter he'd written which in part praised the work another man had done in making Nicander accessible to others. In the following poem (number 6) the opening is unmistakably--though metaphorically--Nicandrean:

Δράκοντι δηχθεὶς καὶ νοητοῖς σκορπίοις,
θνήσκων τε μικροῦ καὶ τὰ λοίσθια πνέων
ἀναθεωρῶ τὸν κρεμασθέντα ξύλῳ,
ὡς καὶ θανών πως ἀναβιῴην πάλιν.

'Having been bitten by a dragon and by mental scorpions, close to death and breathing my last, I reconsider the one hanging on the wood, how even having died I might somehow return to life.'

The poem continues (with two more Nicandrean images), but I'll leave it for now since I really should be getting ready for the German exam. There are a few things I have questions about (ζωὴ μόνος?), but for the most part it's clear: a prayer for everlasting life.

Ἀνάστασις γάρ ἐστι καὶ ζωὴ μόνος, (5)
ὡς ἀμνὸς αἴρων κοσμικὴν ἁμαρτίαν.
Εἰ χάλκεος γὰρ καὶ τυπικός τις ὄφις
ἑρπυστικῶν δήγμασι θανατουμένους
ἐζωοποίει προςδεδορκότας μόνον,
πῶς οὐκ ἂν αὐτὸς ἐξαναστήσεις, ἄναξ, (10)
κέντρῳ πεπληγότα με τῆς ἁμαρτίας
καὶ κείμενον δείλαιον ὡς τεθνηκότα
καὶ βλέμμ’ ἀνατείνοντα πρὸς σὲ καὶ μόνον;
Ἀλλ’, ὦ πρὸς ὕψος ἀναβὰς θεοῦ λόγε,
ὡς πάντας ἄρδην πρὸς σεαυτὸν ἑλκύσαις, (15)
ὡς αἰχμαλωτεύσειας αἰχμαλωσίαν,
ὡς αὐτὸς εἶπας καὶ Δαυὶδ ψάλλων ᾄδει,
ἕλκυσον, ἀπάλλαξον αἰχμαλωσίας
καὶ προςλαβοῦ με τὸν κακοῖς ἀπωσμένον
χερσὶ ταθείσαις σταυρικῇ διατάσει, (20)
καὶ ζωοποιῷ σῷ τριταίῳ θανάτῳ
ἔμπνευσον ἐμπνεύσαντι παλινζωίαν
ὡς πνεύματι ζῶ σήν τε νέκρωσιν φέρω
καὶ συμμετάσχω, σῶτερ, ἀειζωίας.

Naked Philosophers

I just came across the following in a section of Prudentius' Hamartigenia in which he is expounding on the wickedness of fallen man. I'm fairly certain I've never seen the italicized word before or, if I have, I don't recall it.

Inde canina foro latrat facundia toto;
hinc gerit Herculeam vilis sapientia clavam
ostentatque suos vicatim gymnosofistas,
incerat lapides fumosos idololatrix
religio et surdis pallens advolvuitur aris. (401-5)

Guess I may have to go to Pliny 7.2.2 to check it out.

Horace Manuscript Tradition

A little while ago, I put up a couple of posts on the transmission of classical texts and the Carolingian Renaissance. Recently I needed to look at Horace's second Epode and had recourse to David Mankin's commentary in the 'Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics' series. In section 7 of the introduction, he has the following to say about Horatian manuscripts:

It appears that after their publication in the late first century BC Horace's works went in and out of fashion but never ceased to be read in parts, if not the whole, of the Roman world. Nevertheless, the earlies manuscripts (MSS) containing them date only to the ninth century AD, when there may have been a kind of 'Horatian revival' at the court of Charlemagne. These MSS seem to be the ancestors of the countless others from later centuries, and are the only ones that modern scholars draw on for composition of the text.

Mirabile Dictu, Juvencus!

In Book 4, immediately after Christ has been betrayed by Judas and one of the disciples has cut off the servant's ear, Christ addresses his captors. He mentions that no one seized Him while he was teaching in the middle of the Temple itself, and closes with these words (534-5):

'...nec talia quisquam
in solum tantis circumlatrantibus ausus.'

Circumlatrantibus, weighing in with a hefty six syllables, strikes me as a very vivid word and one which gives a good sense of the enraged crowd that now seeks His blood--'not...having dared with so great a throng of barkers-around'. The savage animal tendencies point back nicely to the tone of rage and madness which Juvencus has been building and will continue to build (cf. ferocis, 511; furentis, 514; ferox, 526, furori, 545; frendens furiis, 550; furiis, 561).

Reading Lots, Thinking Little

From a lesson in my Italian textbook:

Vantasi molto il professor Clemente
Del leggere che fa continuamente
E a lui Corrado: E' ver, tanto leggete
Che tempo di pensar mai non avete.

--Gaetano Puccianti

vantasi = si vanta (vantarsi di to boast about)
mai non avete = non avete mai (non...mai never)

Late Antique Poetry and the So-called Decretum Gelasianum

The Decretum Gelasianum, after discussing God and the books that should form the Biblical Canon, goes on to discuss the Church Fathers and other extra-canonical writings that should be read for edification. Section IV begins as follows:

Et quamvis 'aliud fundamentum nullus possit ponere praeter id quod positum est, Christus Iesus', tamen ad aedificationem sancta idem Romana ecclesia post illas veteris velo novi testamenti quas regulariter superius enumeravimus etiam has suscipi non prohibet scripturas:

After a list that includes some of the big boys such as Augustine and Ambrose, we find, at the very end, some poetry. First, Sedulius:

item venerabilis viri Sedulii opus paschale, quod heroicis descripsit versibus, insigni laude praeferimus.

And then, Juvencus:

item Iuvenci nihilominus laboriosum opus non spernimus sed miramur.

I love that last bit: non spernimus sed miramur--they were amazed at him!

Some other works mentioned previously in these pages do not, however, make the cut and are accordingly blacklisted in section V:

Cetera quae ab hereticis sive scismaticis conscripta vel praedicata sunt, nullatenus recipit catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia; e quibus pauca, quae ad memoriam venerunt et a catholicis vitanda sunt, credidimus esse subdenda:

Among these is a reference to a cento that can only refer, I think, to Proba's poem:

Centonem de Christo virgilianis conpaginatum versibus.

The writer of this decree, then, must have agreed with Jerome's assessment in Ep. 53 to Paulinus.

Referring to this letter reminds me that, from my brief scan of the decree, nothing is mentioned about Paulinus of Nola, either for or agin'. Curious.

Anyway, I'm now off to read some Juvencus. Non sperno sed miror!

*An English translation of the Decretum Gelasianum can be found here.

Juvencus Texts

For anyone interested in Juvencus, there are at least two critical texts available. The first is by C. Marold (Teubner, 1886) and the second is by J. Huemer (CSEL 24, 1891). In my opinion the Huemer text is much superior, if for no other reason than that his critical apparatus dwarfs that of the Marold text, and one must frequently consult the apparatus when reading Juvencus.

Do We Really Have to Distinguish Sharply Between the Narrative Persona of an Ancient Work and its Real-life Author of the Same Name?

'...[Y]ou can use personal experience in your work without necessarily having it pour out in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. And contrariwise, a poet who is a careful and conscious artist in the Callimachean tradition can still be exercising that art of material which has been lived and not just imagined. I repeat: if he uses his own name for the protagonist in the drama, and if his readers--innocent of our type of theory--take it as the report of his own experience, then I think the onus of proof is on those who say it can't be.

'That conclusion no doubt makes me an empirico-positivist. So be it, but it is no help to me: like Erridge [a character in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time], I would not know one of those from an anarcho-syndicalist.'

--T.P. Wiseman, in 'Erridge's Answer: Response to James Zetzel' (p. 64), from The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics?, pp. 58-64. The rest of the brief essay is worth reading in tandem with Zetzel's 'Roman Romanticism and Other Fables', pp. 41-57.

The evolution of myth

The folks over at HomestarRunner.com have a new Strong Bad e-mail about myth that even includes stuff about constellations.

The mythical creature in Strongbadia? A bear holding a shark.

I don't think it's very far off.

Scholarship is hard!

Our colleagues in English are whining about the loss of original materials:

"Melville scholarship is hampered by the lack of primary evidence," Mr. Olsen-Smith laments. "So many manuscripts have been lost or destroyed, so many letters are unrecovered."

I can really relate to that because our first Nicander manuscripts date from the 13th century, a mere 1500-1600 years after the poet's floruit. If only we had his autograph and some letters to leading Hellenistic lights discussing his motivation and poetic aims.

But somehow we make do.

It is neat, though, that they're able to read the marginalia written by Melville that others later erased. Still, it's hardly a technological breakthrough (as the article suggests). We have the advantage with what's being done with charred papyri.

On the Superiority of Poetry to Philosophy and History

Sorry--this one is kind of long, but is well worth the read.

'....So that the ending end of all earthly learning being virtuous
action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that have a most
just title to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show
it rightly, the poet is worthy to have it before any other
competitors. {26}

Among {27} whom principally to challenge it, step forth the moral
philosophers; whom, methinks, I see coming toward me with a sullen
gravity (as though they could not abide vice by daylight), rudely
clothed, for to witness outwardly their contempt of outward things,
with books in their hands against glory, whereto they set their
names; sophistically speaking against subtlety, and angry with any
man in whom they see the foul fault of anger. These men, casting
largesses as they go, of definitions, divisions, and distinctions,
with a scornful interrogative do soberly ask: Whether it be
possible to find any path so ready to lead a man to virtue, as that
which teacheth what virtue is; and teacheth it not only by
delivering forth his very being, his causes and effects; but also by
making known his enemy, vice, which must be destroyed; and his
cumbersome servant, passion, which must be mastered, by showing the
generalities that contain it, and the specialities that are derived
from it; lastly, by plain setting down how it extends itself out of
the limits of a man's own little world, to the government of
families, and maintaining of public societies?

The historian {28} scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to say so
much, but that he (laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing
{29} himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose
greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of
hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick
truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago
than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world
goes than how his own wit runs; curious for antiquities, and
inquisitive of novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant in
table-talk) denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of
virtue and virtuous actions, is comparable to him. I am "Testis
temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuncia
vetustatis." {30} The philosopher, saith he, teacheth a disputative
virtue, but I do an active; his virtue is excellent in the
dangerless academy of Plato, but mine showeth forth her honourable
face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poictiers, and
Agincourt: he teacheth virtue by certain abstract considerations;
but I only bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before
you: old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-witted philosopher;
but I give the experience of many ages. Lastly, if he make the song
book, I put the learner's hand to the lute; and if he be the guide,
I am the light. Then would he allege you innumerable examples,
confirming story by stories, how much the wisest senators and
princes have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus,
Alphonsus of Aragon (and who not? if need be). At length, the long
line of their disputation makes a point in this, that the one giveth
the precept, and the other the example.

Now {31} whom shall we find, since the question standeth for the
highest form in the school of learning, to be moderator? Truly, as
me seemeth, the poet; and if not a moderator, even the man that
ought to carry the title from them both, and much more from all
other serving sciences. Therefore compare we the poet with the
historian, and with the moral philosopher; and if he go beyond them
both, no other human skill can match him; for as for the Divine,
with all reverence, he is ever to be excepted, not only for having
his scope as far beyond any of these, as eternity exceedeth a
moment, but even for passing each of these in themselves; and for
the lawyer, though "Jus" be the daughter of Justice, the chief of
virtues, yet because he seeks to make men good rather "formidine
poenae" than "virtutis amore," or, to say righter, doth not
endeavour to make men good, but that their evil hurt not others,
having no care, so he be a good citizen, how bad a man he be:
therefore, as our wickedness maketh him necessary, and necessity
maketh him honourable, so is he not in the deepest truth to stand in
rank with these, who all endeavour to take naughtiness away, and
plant goodness even in the secretest cabinet of our souls. And
these four are all that any way deal in the consideration of men's
manners, which being the supreme knowledge, they that best breed it
deserve the best commendation.

The philosopher, therefore, and the historian are they which would
win the goal, the one by precept, the other by example; but both,
not having both, do both halt. For the philosopher, setting down
with thorny arguments the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so
misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him
shall wade in him until he be old, before he shall find sufficient
cause to be honest. For his knowledge standeth so upon the abstract
and general, that happy is that man who may understand him, and more
happy that can apply what he doth understand. On the other side the
historian, wanting the precept, is so tied, not to what should be,
but to what is; to the particular truth of things, and not to the
general reason of things; that his example draweth no necessary
consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine.

Now {32} doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatsoever the
philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it,
by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done, so as he coupleth
the general notion with the particular example. A perfect picture,
I say; for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that
whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which
doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so
much as that other doth. For as, in outward things, to a man that
had never seen an elephant, or a rhinoceros, who should tell him
most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular
marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the
full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it
were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward
conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge;
but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted,
or that house well in model, should straightway grow, without need
of any description, to a judicial comprehending of them; so, no
doubt, the philosopher, with his learned definitions, be it of
virtue or vices, matters of public policy or private government,
replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom,
which, notwithstanding, lie dark before the imaginative and judging
power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking
picture of poesy.'

From Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy

On the Priority of Poetry in Language and Learning

'Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history he brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who having been the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning. For not only in time they had this priority (although in itself antiquity be venerable) but went before them as causes to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts, indeed, stony and beastly people, so among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the same kind as other arts.'

From Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy