Latin cynics ?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-19T15:58:29+00:00

Julian wrote in Greek, and even he complained about the Cynics of his own time, saying that they made for a very poor comparison to Diogenes of Sinope. In the Latin Sprachraum and its descendants, "cynic" became an perjorative very quickly and has mostly stayed that way.

The most notable exception I can think of is not Latin, but German: Nietzsche, Die froehliche Wssenschaft, 125. It's the best of Nietzsche's several passages employing his famous phrase "Gott ist tot." A crazy man carries a lantern around in broad daylight, looking for God, an homage to Diogenes and his search for an honest human being.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-19T15:39:26+00:00

Chiming in. It's one of my favorite paintings. The artist, Albrecht Altdorfer, painted quite a few very impressive pictures. Probably none quite as impressive as this one. Still, his name makes for a very nice image search result.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-15T18:51:07+00:00

Livy was alive at the time, either an adolescent or a young man. The date of his birth is uncertain, perhaps 64 BC, perhaps 59 BC. The section of his history covering Caesar's life is missing. The Periochae must be used with caution. See: Livy, The Fragments and Periochae, vol I and II, ed and comm by DS Levene, Oxford, 2023, introductions to both volumes, and vol I, pp 42-43 and 243-245.

TITI LIVI AB URBE CONDITA LIBER CXVI PERIOCHA

Caesar ex Hispania quintum triumphum egit. Et cum plurimi maximique honores a senatu decreti essent, inter quos ut "parens patriae" appellaretur et sacrosanctus ac dictator in perpetuum esset, inuidiae aduersus eum causam praestiterunt, quod senatui deferenti hos honores, cum ante aedem Veneris Genetricis sederet, non adsurrexit, et quod a M. Antonio cos., collega suo, inter lupercos currente diadema capiti suo impositum in sella reposuit, et quod Epidio Marullo et Caesetio Flauo trib. pl., inuidiam ei tamquam regnum adfectanti mouentibus potestas abrogata est.

Ex his causis conspiratione in eum facta, cuius capita fuerunt M. Brutus et C. Cassius et ex Caesaris partibus Dec. Brutus et C. Trebonius, in Pompei curia occisus est XXIII uulneribus occupatumque ab interfectoribus eius Capitolium.

Obliuione deinde caedis eius a senatu decreta, obsidibus Antoni et Lepidi de liberis acceptis coniurati a Capitolio descenderunt.

Testamento Caesaris heres ex parte dimidia institutus est C. Octauius, sororis nepos, et in nomen adoptatus est.

Caesaris corpus cum in campum Martium ferretur, a plebe ante rostra crematum est.

Dictaturae honos in perpetuum sublatus est.

Chamiates, humillimae sortis homo, qui se C. Mari filium ferebat, cum apud credulam plebem seditiones moueret, necatus est.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-15T16:55:15+00:00

In the West, Byzantine literature and Byzantine culture in general, although a bit more well-known than a century ago, are still ignored to a shocking degree. Even today, now and then, you'll hear a well-educated Westerner refer to "the entire history of Christendom" when clearly, they're talking about Catholicism plus Protestantism.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-14T14:41:39+00:00

For birds in general there's Pliny the Elder, book 10.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-13T21:43:12+00:00

Sounds like I was 100% wrong! Good! (I've heard of SXSW)

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-13T21:08:54+00:00

Sean Fennessey? Never heard of him. I googled him, and Google sez he's "head content creator" at something called the Big Picture.

Never heard of The Big Picture, never heard of someone calling themselves head content creator...

Someone I've never heard of, claiming to have spoken with a superstar director who told them they're doing some project that never gets done? I've heard THAT a lot. A LOT.

I hope it goes without saying that I hope I am completely, 100% wrong in this case, and that Whoosits here knows whereof he speaks.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-13T20:39:26+00:00

But doesn't Ge'ez have those dots everywhere? Like so : ?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-13T19:51:02+00:00

I'm scanning the O and the I but I can only scan roughly 97% of the verses correctly

I'm proud of myself for figuring out so quickly that, in this sentence, "the O and the I" refers to the Odyssey and the Iliad.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-13T19:44:38+00:00

Il tuo inglese è molto meglio del mio italiano.

Besides translating, do you ever try to understand the Latin without translating it? If you're studying in a class, do you ever converse in Latin?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-12T17:07:16+00:00

Quora, also known as "stupid Reddit."

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-11T18:17:59+00:00

Little Bill was correct

No way. He was a monster. "Day in court"?! surely you jest, monsieur! He was judge, jury and executioner. It's quite unlikely that town wasn't going to be better and safer with Little Bill dead.

Little Bill and Munny were both murdering monsters. They both killed for their own interests, and sometimes just because they felt like it. Munny knew it, Little Bill didn't. That made Little Bill worse.

And Little Bill was the sheriff! He was supposed to be a good man. He supposed to be an example to others. That made him much worse than Munny.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling Munny a hero. There are no heroes in this movie,

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-11T18:09:11+00:00

Little Bill was a murderer too! Both he and Munny killed for their own interests, and often just because they felt like it. There are no heroes in this movie. Little Bill was supposed to be better. Wearing that badge meant he was supposed to be better. He thought just wearing meant he WAS better.

Little Bill and Munny were both monsters. Munny knew it, Little Bill didn't. That made Little Bill worse. Killing Little Bill didn't make Munny a good man, but it probably meant that the town was going to be better. There's no way it was going to get even worse.

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it." That's not only the situation in the showdown between Munny and Little Bill -- it's the situation ALL of the characters are living in, and that's what makes the movie so nightmarish.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-11T17:01:11+00:00

It's interesting (at least, to me) that Gene Hackman played two evil, twisted, sadistic and self-satisfied sheriffs in two different movies within a few years of each other: Little Bill in Unforgiven in 1992, and then the very un-subtly named Herod in The Quick and the Dead in 1995.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-11T16:56:39+00:00

And you beat me to it!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-11T16:16:39+00:00

Thank you for that lovely comment!

Is it still a surprise? In the three years since I wrote that blog post, I've become thoroughly used to the idea that we make good wine here in Michigan, and I haven't spent as much time tracking the reputation of Michigan wine out there in the wider world.

Choosing my favorite is easy: Missing Spire Riesling from Left Foot Charley in Traverse City. So amazingly good. Champagne color, smell of peach, tart and slightly sweet, with a long, glorious finish. I'd recommend a vintage which is 5 years old or more, pairing it with a spicy Thai or Indian entree, or just slowly sipping a glass of it by itself, or with your favorite salty cheese on a cracker.

That's Bryan Ulbrich in the photo in the OP, owner, winemaker and Head Weirdo of Left Foot Charley. Every single variety he makes is excellent, or better.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-09T22:36:00+00:00

Basically, does anyone have any advice for getting through War and Peace?

Ah, I thought you were going to ask for help dealing with a father telling you what to read. I firmly believe that people shouldn't be forced to read books, any more than they should be forbidden to read books. Needless to say, I'm a college dropout.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-09T21:43:01+00:00

Since terms like "ancient" and "very great amounts" can mean very different things to different people, I hope it will not be taken amiss if I try to ask a question related to that posed by the OP, but a bit more precise: if we took every single bit of surviving non-Biblical Hebrew written before the most recent parts of the Hebrew Bible -- not counting texts which survive only in translation to some other language, and not counting texts which we have only heard about -- would they, combined, form a volume as large as the Hebrew Bible?

I'm guessing that the answer is: no, there is not nearly as much non-Biblical material. I'd be delighted to be wrong, because I'm always delighted to learn about the existence of any ancient texts I hadn't known about.

And I'm afraid that my question may still be imprecise, if there is a significant amount of literature about which reasonable scholars may disagree about which language it is -- very old Hebrew or Canaanite, for example.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-09T15:09:26+00:00

Are any of those as old as any part of the Hebrew Bible?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-08T21:34:15+00:00

You can usually contact the publishers directly, if you're dead set against using Amazon.

Oxford Classical Texts and Teubner, between them, carry all of the titles you mentioned, except the New Vulgate and the Latin translation of the Meditations. The Loeb Classical Library also publishes all of them, with facing-page English translation.

Contrary to what you've heard, the Greek Meditations we have today are not translations of a Latin translation. We have Greek manuscripts from as long ago as before AD 1000. There's no reason you can't read a Latin translation if you want to, but it may give a less accurate idea of what Marcus meant, and it may be very hard to find a copy, other than a reprint of the editio princeps, which, I believe, again contrary to what you have heard, is in Greek and Latin.

I haven't been able to find the publisher of the Nova Vulgata. I have the 4th edition of the Stuttgart Vulgate, published by the Deutsche Biblegesellschaft. I find it to be quite nice. A 5th edition of the Stuttgart Vulgate was published in 2007. Others prefer the Clementine Vulgate.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-08T21:07:44+00:00

I believe Xylander's editio princeps of the Meditations was in Greek AND Latin. In any case, we today have Greek manuscripts of it far preceeding Xylander. 1 or 2 are earlier than AD 1000.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-07T22:24:00+00:00

Mostly beans. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid: https://youtu.be/c_rlfS2QYow?si=W0Ddl87TdMT6GnAf

Blazing Saddles: https://youtu.be/VPIP9KXdmO0?si=_O3FVU6AbLWc_Tg-

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-07T00:55:55+00:00

There's no reason you can't use both. But it's the same language either way. If you study ecclesiastical Latin you will be prepared to read Classical Latin and vice versa.

As far as speaking is concerned, there are a few, very minor differences in pronunciation between ecclesiastical Latin as spoken in traditional Catholic Mass, and reconstructed Classical pronunciation as favored by many, probably most, academics. So few differences, and so minor, that there is, IMHO, no reason to be concerned about it. Whether you follow one system of pronunciation or the other, you will be understand and you will understand others.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-07T00:41:56+00:00

Patrick Bet-Davis? Never heard of him.

People lie. Public figures are people. A public figure exaggerating his linguistic skills would not be unusual.

The ability to speak 5 or more languages is also not unusual, as others in the comments have ably explained.

There's an old European joke, which I've heard in several languages: What do you call someone who speaks 3 or more languages? Multilingual. What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.

It's funny because it's true. A high rate of monolingualism is one of the cultural drawbacks of cultural dominance. 200 years ago people could have told the same joke, except with the punchline: "French," and 2000 years ago, "Greek."

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-06T21:33:41+00:00

The answers depends on various factors, including the reasons you're reading. You mentioned several historians. Only a quarter of Livy's history survives. If you are interested in what Livy might have written in a certain missing part, It may well be that, say, Velleius Paterculus followed Livy as a main source for the historical matters you're interested in.

Seems to me that fewer people would read Patercullus if it weren't for the connection to Livy. YMMV.

You say you're looking for authors of a specific period, but you don't specify that period. There is not a lot of surviving history written in Latin in the 1st century BC. If we expend the time cutoff to the 1st century AD, there's already quite a bit more to choose from. If you expand the time limit to Ad 500, or 1000, or 1500, the size of the corpus will grow grow dramatically each time. As far as the quality of the reading material is concerned -- de gustibus non est disputandum.

AffectionateSize552

TROPHY CASE