Showing posts with label Rome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rome. Show all posts

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

'That's all, folks!'

One lecturer used to end each instalment of his lectures on Modern Greek with a simple ἀυτά!

There follow some comparanda with a different pronoun-adjective:
P.Oxy. I 119. 14-15 (2nd-3rd century CE):
ἂμ μὴ πέμψῃς οὐ μὴ φά|γω, οὐ μὴ πείνω· ταῦτα.
'If you do not send it, I won't eat, I won't drink! So there!

GVI 1959: (Rome: late 2nd-mid 3rd century CE) 
οὐκ ἤμην, γενόμην·| ἤμην, οὐκ εἰμί· τοσαῦτα·
'I was not; I was born; I was. I am not. That's yet lot!' (Or, 'That's all, folks!').

Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyrius, 84 (at the end of the account of the construction of a church on the site of a recently destroyed temple):
καὶ ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τούτων.
'That's enough about that.'.
          

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Linguistic Landscaping to the detriment of the people

The emperor Gaius Caligula published his laws so as to be illegible. For whom (for whose benefit) was this 'sign' written ?

eius modi vectigalibus indictis neque propositis, cum per ignorantiam scripturae multa commissa fierent, tandem flagitante populo proposuit quidem legem, sed et minutissimis litteris et angustissimo loco, uti ne cui describere liceret.

When taxes of this kind had been proclaimed, but not published in writing, inasmuch as many offences were committed through ignorance of the letter of the law, he at last, on the urgent demand of the people, had the law posted up, but in a very narrow place and in excessively small letters, to prevent the making of a copy.

Monday, 29 September 2014

'Peace and Safety!'

With 1 Thess. 5:3, compare: X.Cyr.7.4.5,  Psalmi Salomonis 8.18, Plu.Ant.40.7, Dio Chrysostom Orations 74.4.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Incarceration

Some quotations of note:
"Prisons are not to be warehouses for the incorrigible, but to be greenhouses to restore the redeemable."
-- Rt Rev James Jones

"We build jails for people we're afraid of and fill them with people we're mad at."
-- Pat Nolan
Read on.

A happier age:
felices proavorum atavos, felicia dicas
saecula, quae quondam sub regibus atque tribunis
viderunt uno contentam carcere Romam.
"... Rome content with just one prison."