[B-Greek] Off-topic: source for Imperial quote
Harold R. Holmyard III
hholmyard at ont.com
Fri Jun 11 17:17:42 EDT 2004
Dear George,
Thanks. That's a neat quote.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
>I found this in Schaff _History . . ._, I, ii, ß16. "For such a monster
>the murder of one or two dozen infants in a little town was a very small
>matter, which might easily have been overlooked, or, owing to its
>connection with the Messiah, purposely ignored by the Jewish historian.
>But a confused remembrance of it is preserved in the anecdote related by
>Macrobius (a Roman grammarian and probably a heathen, about a.d. 410),
>that Augustus, on hearing of Herodís murder of "boys under two years" and
>of his own son, remarked "that it was better to be Herodís swine than his
>son."
>Macrob., Sat., ii 4: "Augustus, cum audisset, inter pueros, quos in Syria
>Herodes, rex Judaeorum, intra bimatum [perhaps taken from Matt. 2:16,
>Vulg.: a bimatu et infra]jussit interfici, filium quoque eius occisum,
>ait: melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium." It is a pun on the
>similar sounding Greek terms for sow and son (?^? and ????). Kepler
>already quoted thispassage in confirmation of Matthew.
>gfsomsel
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list