#moralia

[sononatanellepocasbagliata]

"Se l'anima è malata, le parole sono i medici, purchè si blandisca il cuore al momento opportuno."

-Eschilo

[quotessentially]

From Plutarch’s Moralia

[illustratus]

The spolia opima, meaning richest spoils, is known in Roman history as the most prestigious and honourable prize that a general can earn. Only a general who kills the leader of the opposing army in single combat may be considered to have gained the spolia opima.

[heroineimages]

A husband who bars his wife from the pleasures in which he himself indulges is like a man who surrenders to the enemy and tells his wife to go on fighting.

Plutarch, Moralia

[sononatanellepocasbagliata]

Merope: "Le avversità hanno preteso da me, come compenso, ciò che io amavo di più, ma mi hanno reso saggia."

-Euripide

[sononatanellepocasbagliata]

"...E appunto si dice che le arti siano delle piccole forme d'intelligenza, o meglio delle emanazioni dell'intelligenza, delle particelle che si spandono sui bisogni della vita, com'è simboleggiato dal fuoco distribuito da Prometeo, che è sparso qua e là. E poiché l'intelligenza è spezzata e frantumata, alcune sue parti e suoi piccoli frammenti si sono sistemati in diversi posti."

- Plutarco

[sononatanellepocasbagliata]

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Why did I not remember that Plutarch, in Questiones Convivales 9.1.3.2, has not only Pompeia Magna delivering, in her tender years, the sickest burn in Roman history, but also a fucking Cassius Longinus right next to her!

"After this a great many sayings were mentioned as unseasonably spoken, it being fit that we should know such and avoid them; - as that to Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at this line, Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain, My wish had been complete; ("Iliad," iii. 428.)

and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son's dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said: Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you did not know nor had read this line, For no report is wholly false? (Hesiod, "Works and Days," 763.)

And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this, Fly from the island, worst of all mankind, ("Odyssey," x. 72.) either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this discourse quieted the tumult. "

Quoted by: https://catholiclibrary.org/library/view?docId=/Antiquities-EN/Antiquities.plutarch-symposiacs.html;chunk.id=00000185