[B-Greek] Alexander Pope in Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Dec 16 15:41:32 EST 2005
On Dec 16, 2005, at 2:59 PM, CHARLES CLAYTON wrote:
> Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism has the oft misquoted lines
> A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
> Drink deep, or touch not the Pierian spring;
> There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
> And drinking largely sobers us again.
We have certainly applied that dictum here to Greek: that a crash
course of 6 weeks is nigh unto useless and a one-semester or even a
one-year course in Greek with no further application of effort or
reading in new texts is unlikely to produce a Greek scholar either.
On the other hand, there's no guarantee that many years of
industrious labor in the Hellen(ist)ic vineyard will produce a fine
vintage either.
> Do any of the Classical Greek authors have something similar in
> content or idea to this? I would like to have a more appropriate
> inscription for a Greek New Testament that will be a gift this
> Christmas for my sister-in-law.
The best inscription I know of is one that I found in the very first
GNT that was given to me -- in Latin: Te totum applica ad textum,
textum totum applica ad te, which being Englished is something like,
"Apply yourself wholly to the text, and apply the text wholly to
yourself."
You probably wouldn't want the old Archilochian saw: POLL' OID'
ALWPHX, ALL' ECINOS hEN MEGA, "The fox know lots of tricks, but the
hedgehog only one -- a big one."
Along similar lines, I've always like the Callimachean line:
AOIDE, TO MEN QUOS hOTTI PACISTON
QREYAI, THN MOUSAN D', WGAQE, LEPTALEHN.
something like: "Poet, feed your sacrificial victim to be as fat as
can be, but your Muse, good fellow, (keep) delicate/slender." i.e.
"don't publish anything that isn't first rate, and that won't be very
sizable."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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