My favorite birthday songs are both by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). The first is Sound the Trumpet (performed here by Alison Balsom, Iestyn Davies, and company), and the second is Now the Night is Chased Away (performed here by Lea Desandres,…
D.R. Shackleton Bailey (1917-2005), Propertiana (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1956), p. 16 (on Propertius 1.4.13 ingenuus color; footnote omitted): Propertius only wants to say that Cynthia had the fair complexion associated with fre…
Erasmus, Letters 103 (to Fausto Andrelini, 1499; tr. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson): For, to touch on only one point among many, there are in England nymphs of divine appearance, both engaging and agreeable, whom you would certainly pref…
Babrius 112 (tr. Laura Gibbs): A bull was bitten by a mouse. Smarting from the sting, the bull began to chase the mouse but the mouse was too quick for him and managed to hide in the depths of his mouse hole. The bull came to a halt and dug…
Galen, On Avoiding Distress 14 (tr. Sophia Xenophontos): You should thus assume that I too have become the person I am because I am by nature similar to my ancestors, and also that because I received the same education as them, I have the s…
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 17, § 191 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): No ancient German literature, Nibelungs and other such poets of the Middle Ages should be taught in gymnasi…
Galen, On Avoiding Distress 1 (tr. Sophia Xenophontos): [You also said] that you learned that when his books were lost in the fire, Philides the grammarian wasted away from depression and grief and died, and that various others were going a…
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 16, § 183 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): All this might stem from the fact that poetry by nature is untranslatable. For in it thoughts and words are…
Meleager, in Greek Anthology 12.101 (tr. Margaret Hubbard): I was unwounded by Desires, but Myiscus shot me in the heart with his eyes, and cried, 'I have caught the braggart. That supercilious sneer that imperious philosophy gave, look, I
Cicero, On Old Age 5.15 (tr. William Armistead Falconer): And, indeed, when I reflect on this subject I find four reasons why old age appears to be unhappy: first, that it withdraws us from active pursuits; second, that it makes the body we…
Homer, Odyssey 8.111-119 (tr. Daniel Mendelsohn): Up went Akróneôs Top-Ship, Okýalos Quick-Sea, the Paddler, Sea-Man Nauteús and Aft-Deck, Beach-Man, Eretmeús the Rower, Deep-Sea Ponteús and Fore-Deck, Full-Speed and All-Aboard, And Amphíal…
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), The Poems of François Villon. New Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1977), pp. 36-37 (Le Testament, lines 159-160) with note on p 227: Valere pour vray