Final Passages Flashcards
And nothing is so damaging to good morals as to hang around at some spectacle. There through pleasure, vice sneaks in more easily.
I come back more greedy, more desirous of honour, more dissolute, even more unfeeling and cruel, because I have been among people. By chance I happened to be at the spectacle at noontime, expecting some witty entertainment and relaxation, to rest men’s eyes from the gore. It was the opposite. Whatever fighting there was before was comparative mercy. Now there was pure murder, no more fooling around. …
Many people prefer this to the ordinary pairs and the fighters. Why wouldn’t they? No helmet or shield pushes the sword away. Where is the defence? Where is the skill? These things are just to delay death.
In the morning men are thrown to lions and bears, at noontime to the audience. “
Seneca
Letter
Those erstwhile players of horns, those perpetual friends
Of public arenas, noted through all the towns for their
Rounded cheeks, now mount shows themselves, and kill
To please when the mob demand it with a turned thumb
Juvenal, Satire 3, Pollice Verso
“After lunch Commodus would fight as a gladiator. The form of contest that he practiced and the armour that he used were those of the secutores, as they were called: he held the shield in his right hand and the wooden sword in his left, and indeed took great pride in the fact that he was left-handed. His antagonist would be some athlete or perchance a gladiator armed with a stick; sometimes it was a man that he himself had challenged, sometimes one chosen by the people, for in this as well as in other matters he put himself on an equal footing with the other gladiators, except for the fact that they enter the lists for a very small sum, whereas Commodus received a million sesterces from the gladiatorial fund each day.”
Cassius Dio Senator and Eye Witness
“As I frequently contemplate and call to mind the times of old, those in general seem to me, brother Quintus, to have been supremely happy, who, while they were distinguished with honours and the glory of their actions in the best days of the republic, were enabled to pursue such a course of life, that they could continue either in employment without danger, or in leisure with dignity. To myself, also, there was a time when I thought that a season for relaxation, and for turning my thoughts again to the noble studies once pursued by both of us, would be fairly allowable, and be conceded by almost every one; if the infinite labour of forensic business and the occupations of ambition should be brought to a stand, either by the completion of my course of honours (cursus honorum), or by the decline of age.”
Cicero, De Oratore - Otium cum dignitate
“For it is by a man’s pleasures – his pleasures indeed – that his sense of dignity, integrity and moderation can best be judged. For who is so dissolute that no trace of seriousness is to be found in his pastimes? Our leisure (otium) gives us away.”
Pliny, Panegyric for Emperor Trajan
“Here I am, surrounded by all kinds of noise (my lodgings overlook a Bath). Conjure up in your imagination all the sounds that make one hate one’s ears. I hear the grunts of musclemen exercising and jerking those heavy weights around; they are working hard, or pretending to. I hear their sharp hissing when they release their pent breath. If there happens to be a lazy fellow content with a simple massage I hear the slap of hand on shoulder; you can tell whether it’s hitting a flat or a hollow. If a ball-player comes up and starts calling out his score, I’m done for. Add to this the racket of a cocky bastard, a thief caught in the act, and a fellow who likes the sound of his own voice in the bath, plus those who plunge into the pool with a huge splash of water. Besides those who just have loud voices, imagine the skinny armpit-hair plucker whose cries are shrill so as to draw people’s attention and never stop except when he’s doing his job and making someone else shriek for him.”
Seneca, Letter to Lucius
“For it is silly, my dear Lucilius, and no way for an educated man to behave, to spend one’s time exercising the biceps, broadening the neck and shoulders and developing the lungs. Even when the extra feeding has produced gratifying results and you’ve put on a lot of muscle, you’ll never match the strength of the weight of a prized bull. Moreover, the more weight you put on, the more constricted and sluggish your mind becomes. You ought therefore to reduce your body and give more play to your mind.”
Seneca
“There are numerous disadvantages to being an athlete. There is first of all the laborious training, which exhausts a man’s vitality and disqualifies him from concentration and serious study. Then there is the sheer size of a training meal, enough to deprive a mind of its agility. There are the slave-coaches, dreadful men who behave like tyrants. … A perfect day for them is one in which they have had a really good sweat and, to make good the loss, take a good swig of liquor, which will sink the deeper if they have had nothing to eat. Drinking and sweating- this is the life to which those people are condemned.”
Seneca
“Sparta, we are amazed at the rules of your wrestling schools, and particularly at the young women athletes: for your girls, there is no shame in working out, naked among the men wrestling…..The Roman Woman, on the other hand, goes around in a huge crowd– you can’t get anywhere near her, can’t find out what she’s really like or find a way to talk to her. Rome, if you would adopt the rules of wrestling from Sparta, you would be even dearer to me.”
Propertius
“Who doesn’t know about the purple athlete’s cloaks, and the ladies’ wrestling ointment? Who hasn’t seen the wounds on the palus, which they’ve gouged with the rudis and beaten with the shield?…What decency can a woman show wearing a helmet, when she leaves her own sex behind? She wants to be strong like a man, but does not want to turn into a man: after all, we men have such little pleasure.”
Juvenal Satire 6
You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature’s gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of
Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue (virtus).
Juvenal Satire 10
“It was dedicated by Marcus Agrippa in front of his Baths. [The emperor] Tiberius, so much admired this statue […] and removed the Apoxyomenos to his bedroom, substituting a copy. But the people of Rome were so indignant about this that they staged a protest in the theater, shouting “Bring back the Apoxyomenos!” And so despite his passion for it, Tiberius was obliged to replace the original statue.”
Pliny the Elder
Where now the Sun’s Colossus has its closer view of the stars
And towering scaffolds loom above the street,
The hated entrance halls of that wild king once gleamed
And a single dwelling stood in all the city.
Where now the venerable mass of the Amphitheater rises
High above Rome, the pond of Nero spread.
Where now we gaze in wonder on the sudden Baths of Titus,
A haughty estate deprived the people of homes.
Where now the Claudian colonnade unfolds its spreading shade
The furthest part of the palace came to an end.
Rome has been restored to Rome, Titus, with you as her defender,
And pleasures grabbed by a tyrant return to the people.
Martial, On Spectacles 2
“The Romans used to be very suspicious of anointing, and they believed that nothing has been responsible for the slavery and softness of the Greeks as the gymnasia and palaestra, which give rise to a great deal of leisure and idleness, mischief, and pederasty, and the ruin of young men’s bodies by sleeping, strolling about, performing rhythmic exercises, and following strict diets. Influenced by these things, they have unconsciously left behind their weapons and prefer to be called not good warriors and knights, but rather nimble and beautiful athletes.”
Plutarch, Roman Questions
“As it was, the morality of their fathers, which had by degrees been forgotten, was utterly subverted by the introduction of a lax tone, so that all which could suffer or produce corruption was to be seen at Rome, and a degeneracy bred by foreign tastes was infecting the youth who devoted themselves to athletic sports, to idle loungings and low intrigues, with the encouragement of the emperor and Senate, who not only granted license to vice, but even applied a compulsion to drive Roman nobles into disgracing themselves on the stage, under the pretense of being orators and poets. What remained for them but to strip themselves naked, put on the boxing-glove, and practice such battles instead of the arms of legitimate warfare?”
Tacitus, Annales
“The stipend appointed for the victor in the Iselastic games ought not, I think, to commence till he makes his triumphant entry into his city. Nor are the prizes, at those combats which I thought proper to make Iselastic, to be extended backwards to those who were victors before that alteration took place”
emperor trajan to pliny the younger
“At Olympia a wreath of wild olive, at the Isthmus one of pine, at Nemea of parsley, at Pytho some of the God’s sacred apples, and at our Panathenaea oil pressed from the temple olives. What are you laughing at, Anacharsis? Are the prizes too small?”
Lucian, Anacharsis
“Oh dear no; your prize-list is most imposing; the givers may well plume themselves on their munificence, and the competitors be monstrous keen on winning. Who would not go through this amount of preparatory toil, and take his chance of a choking or a dislocation, for apples or parsley? It is obviously impossible for any one who has a fancy to a supply of apples, or a wreath of parsley or pine, to get them without a mud plaster on his face, or a kick in the stomach from his competitor.”
Lucian, Anacharsis
“My dear sir, it is not the things’ intrinsic value that we look at. They are the symbols of victory, labels of the winners; it is the reputation (doxa) attaching to them that is worth any price to their holders; that is why the man whose quest for fame (eukleia) leads through toil (ponos) is content to take his kicks. No pain, no fame;
he who covets fame must start with enduring hardship; when he has done that, he may begin to look for the pleasure and profit his labours are to bring.”
Lucian, Anacharsis
And do you mean to say such a number can be found to toil for a remote uncertainty of success, knowing that the winner cannot be more than one, and the failures must be many, with their bruises, or their wounds very likely, for sole reward?
Lucian, Anacharsis
Our view is not bounded by the contests, and directed to their carrying off prizes there–of course only a small proportion of them ever reach that point; no; the indirect benefit that we secure for their city and themselves is of more importance. There is another contest in which all good citizens get prizes, and its wreaths are not of pine or wild olive or parsley, but of complete human happiness (eudaimonia) , including individual freedom and political independence, wealth and repute, enjoyment of our ancient ritual, security of our dear ones, and all the choicest boons a man might ask of Heaven. It is of these materials that the wreath I tell you of is woven; and they are provided by that contest for which this training and these toils are the preparation.
Lucian, Anacharsis
“Then, as they get on, we versify, for the better impressing their memories, the sayings of wise men, the deeds of old time, or moral tales. And as they hear of worship won and works that live in song, they yearn ever more, and are fired to emulation (mimesis), that they too may be sung and marvelled at by them that come after, and have their Hesiod and their Homer.
Lucian, Anacharsis
