Vintage Sibyl: Lent I 1980

Now then, O Sibyl, let me ask you a question. Is there, or is there not, such a thing as the Third Man, would you say? You see I've been having horrible nightly visions of him, and each time he is accompanied by at least two others and sometimes by an infinite stream of them, and I can't seem to tell which are real and which are only reflections and images and likenesses--they seem to roll around between being and not-being. And last night, to cap it all, he'd brought his own third bed and settled down for the night. It's all too much...
Yours formally, Plato

Dear Plato,
You seem to be suffering from a NON-IDENTITY crisis. Are you sure that this idea is not just a product of your own self-predication?

Gardies

When Gardenia (formerly Nina's) was threatened with closure in 2003, the following couplet was published apud Varsity. The first line refers to the change of name and, apparently, was written before 1950. Professor E.J. Kenney drew it to the attention of the editors of Varsity and added a pentameter.

Nina fuit quondam, qua nunc Gardenia surgit.
nunc tamen heu tristi deperit illa uice.

Farrāgo -inis f.

Farrago is the title of a journal written by Cambridge Classics students. It ran from 1966 to 1988 and features articles by many of today's most prominent scholars .

When a cache of issues was passed to the graduate community in the middle of July 2007, a great deal of excitement and joy ensued, as well as a plan to revive Farrago as a blog, which would survey the vintage material and present contemporary contributions of a similar vein.

The Latin word refers to animal fodder which consisted of a mixture of inferior grains (so OLD). It was also used figuratively to refer to a medley or hotpotch. It is perhaps best translated by the German 'mischmasch'.

Its best known occurrence is in Juvenal's description of his own project (perhaps, his 'special pigeon') in lines 85-86 of his first satire:

quidquid agunt homines, uotum, timor, ira, uoluptas,
gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago libelli est.

Nowadays libellus would have acquired the sense 'blog'.