An Ancient Zinger
I'm currently reading Plutarch on Sparta, Penguin's translation of three of Plutarch's lives of Spartans -- not comprehensive, he wrote lives of other Spartans -- packaged with some other interesting translated materials: Xenophon's writings on Spartan society, and an anonymously compiled collection of Spartan witticisms and sayings.
Fun fact for the day: our word "laconic" comes from "Laconia", the name of the region where Sparta is located. Spartans prized concision in speech so highly that "laconic" became a byword for brevity.
Anyway, the best of the Laconisms I've read so far was by one Callicratidas, of the late 5th century B.C.:
When Lysander's friends were asking him to allow them to do away with one particular opponent of theirs in exchange for fifty talents, Callicratidas as navarch [naval commander] refused, even though he was desperate for money to provide rations for his sailors. His advisor Cleander said: 'But I would certainly have accepted if I were you.' To which Callicratidas replied: 'I would have too, if I were you.'
On a related note, when I turned to the frontispiece out of idle curiosity to see who the translator was, I was amazed to see it was none other than Richard J. A. Talbert, who, "in 1988... moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor. He currently directs an international project to produce what will be the first major classical atlas since the last century."
I still have my copy of that atlas, which I bought for my Romans class with him. Small wonder that his Plutarch on Sparta has so many excellent maps! And small world: I feel pretty confident in wagering that he is the first and last Penguin translator I'll ever read whom I've personally met.
He was such a lively, funny, goofy guy, too -- amazing to see he "gained a Double First Class Honors in Classics" at Cambridge, was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, won numerous awards, translated books for Penguin... Such a grand résumé, and yet he was still one of the best and wackiest lecturers of undergrads ever. Amazing.
Fun fact for the day: our word "laconic" comes from "Laconia", the name of the region where Sparta is located. Spartans prized concision in speech so highly that "laconic" became a byword for brevity.
Anyway, the best of the Laconisms I've read so far was by one Callicratidas, of the late 5th century B.C.:
When Lysander's friends were asking him to allow them to do away with one particular opponent of theirs in exchange for fifty talents, Callicratidas as navarch [naval commander] refused, even though he was desperate for money to provide rations for his sailors. His advisor Cleander said: 'But I would certainly have accepted if I were you.' To which Callicratidas replied: 'I would have too, if I were you.'
On a related note, when I turned to the frontispiece out of idle curiosity to see who the translator was, I was amazed to see it was none other than Richard J. A. Talbert, who, "in 1988... moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor. He currently directs an international project to produce what will be the first major classical atlas since the last century."
I still have my copy of that atlas, which I bought for my Romans class with him. Small wonder that his Plutarch on Sparta has so many excellent maps! And small world: I feel pretty confident in wagering that he is the first and last Penguin translator I'll ever read whom I've personally met.
He was such a lively, funny, goofy guy, too -- amazing to see he "gained a Double First Class Honors in Classics" at Cambridge, was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, won numerous awards, translated books for Penguin... Such a grand résumé, and yet he was still one of the best and wackiest lecturers of undergrads ever. Amazing.