The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

It’s Classical Allusions Day

Posted on | October 26, 2024 | No Comments

Cicero

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?
O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consilii particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero,
First Oration Against Catiline, 63 B.C.

The last time I quoted Cicero here was June 2012, in reference to the Kimberlin affair. The insolence of the Pipsqueak Pipebomber, and the very fact that he was not still in prison, was as outrageous to me as Catline’s presence in the Senate was to Cicero. When he laments the decadence of the age — “O tempora, o mores!” — what Cicero means is that, in an earlier era, Romans knew how to deal with such a criminal, who would have already been executed for sedition, given what was known of Catiline’s conspiracy: hic tamen vivit. “Yet this man lives.”

Such is the outrage any intelligent person must feel when, for the umpteenth time, we get the Trump-is-Hitler smear from MSNBC — the same MSNBC that provides a platform to Al Sharpton who, to this day, has never apologized for inciting the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom.

“How long, O Catline, do you intend to abuse our patience? How long do you think your rage can elude us? How far will you go with this unbridled audacity of yours?” This is perhaps not the best translation. Some 30 years ago, I know I had a really eloquent translation — dating back to the Victorian era, as I recall — but today when I went to find it, all I found on my bookshelf was a 1948 translation that lacked the poetic quality of the version I remembered. The original Latin has a certain cadence to it, the way Churchill’s best speeches did, and I missed that dignified cadence in the translation used by Roger Kimball in his latest column:

Whose fault was it?
That of course is going to be the overwhelming question Democrats will be asking themselves after Kamala Harris loses on November 5.
It is worth stressing that a question can also be an accusation. Cicero reminded us of this in his first oration against Catiline, which opens with more than half a dozen questions spat out like bullets from a Gatling gun. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? “How long, Catiline, will you go on exhausting our patience?” Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? “And how long will that madness of yours mock us?”
The biased circus concession that we call much of the media has an interest in drawing out the festivities surrounding an election. So in the case of Trump vs Harris, the answer to Cicero’s questions is “as long as possible” . . .

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Kimball’s scholarship is, no doubt, superior to my own, but I still miss the stately cadence of the translation I remember from decades ago. Nevertheless, it’s good to see Cicero invoked this way, to remind the 21st-century readership that, not so many years ago, a man was not considered truly educated unless he knew Latin and Greek. And along with that knowledge, of course, the educated man also acquired some knowledge of ancient history, which our Founding Fathers knew so well.

One of the worst traits of liberals is their quasi-religious faith in progress, the idea that we — the present generation — are more educated, more intelligent and morally superior to our ancestors. The beliefs and customs of the past are to be disdained as crude, primitive and backward, and nothing about our forebears is genuinely admirable, so that monuments to heroes once universally admired are toppled because our erstwhile heroes are now condemned as racist colonizers or whatever.

Studying the controversies of the distant past, such as Catline’s conspiracy and Cicero’s role in exposing it, tends to give us a better perspective on contemporary controversies, a point made in the comments earlier today by my old friend Bert the Samoan Lawyer:

We are in uncharted territory insofar as the brief history of this Republic is concerned. Viewed in the light of all of human history, however … Well, I’ll defer to Ozymandias for comment.

Heh, indeed: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”



 

Shop Electronics at Amazon

Save on Groceries and Everyday Essentials

Shop Amazon Basics

Office & School Supplies

Category: History, Intellectuals

Comments