Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 176 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-FIFTH. When Trimalchio had launched this thunderbolt, Habinnas commenced to beg him to control his anger. “There’s not one of us but goes wrong sometimes,” argued he; “we’re not gods, we’re men.” Scintilla also cried out through her tears, calling him “Gaius,” and entreating him by his guardian angel to be mollified. Trimalchio could restrain the tears no longer. “Habinnas,” he blubbered, “as you hope to enjoy your money, spit in my face if I’ve done anything wrong. I kissed him because he’s very thrifty, not because he’s a pretty boy. He can recite his division table and read a book at sight: he bought himself a Thracian uniform from his savings from his rations, and a stool and two dippers, with his own money, too. He’s worth my attention, ain’t he? But Fortunata won’t see it! Ain’t that the truth, you high-stepping hussy’? Let me beg you to make the best of what you’ve got, you shekite, and don’t make me show my teeth, my little darling, or you’ll find out what my temper’s like! Believe me, when once I’ve made up my mind, I’m as fixed as a spike in a beam! But let’s think of the living. I hope you’ll all make yourselves at home, gentlemen: I was in your fix myself once; but rose to what I am now by my own merit. It’s the brains that makes the man, all the rest’s bunk. I buy well, I sell well, someone else will tell you a different story, but as for myself, I’m fairly busting with prosperity. What, grunting-sow, still bawling? I’ll see to it that you’ve something to bawl for, but as I started to say, it was my thrift that brought me to my fortune. I was just as tall as that candlestick when I came over from Asia; every day I used to measure myself by it, and I would smear my lips with oil so my beard would sprout all the sooner. I was my master’s ‘mistress’ for fourteen years, for there’s nothing wrong in doing what your master orders, and I satisfied my mistress, too, during that time, you know what I mean, but I’ll say no more, for I’m not one of your braggarts!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SIXTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The full moon now lifted her luminous beam and the small stars Led forth, with her torch all ablaze; when the Greeks drew the bolts And poured forth their warriors, on Priam’s sons, buried in darkness And sodden with wine. First the leaders made trial of their weapons Just as the horse, when unhitched from Thessalian neck-yoke, First tosses his head and his mane, ere to pasture he rushes. They draw their swords, brandish their shields and rush into the battle. One slays the wine-drunken Trojans, prolonging their dreams To death, which ends all. Still another takes brands from the altars, And calls upon Troy’s sacred temples to fight against Trojans.” CHAPTER THE NINTIETH. Some of the public, who were loafing in the portico, threw stones at the reciting Eumolpus and he, taking note of this tribute to his genius, covered his head and bolted out of the temple. Fearing they might take me for a poet, too, I followed after him in his flight and came to the seashore, where we stopped as soon as we were out of range. “Tell me,” I demanded, “what are you going to do about that disease of yours? You’ve loafed with me less than two hours, and you’ve talked more often like a poet than you have like a human being! For this reason, I’m not at all surprised that the rabble chases you with rocks. I’m going to load my pockets with stones, too, and whenever you begin to go out of your head, I’m going to let blood out of it!” His expression changed. “My dear young man,” said he, “today is not the first time I have had such compliments showered upon me; the audience always applauds me in this fashion, when I go into the theatre to recite anything, but I’ll abstain from this sort of diet for the whole day, for fear of having trouble with you.” “Good,” I replied, “we’ll dine together if you’ll swear off crankiness for the day.” (So saying,) I gave the housekeeper the orders for our little supper (and we went straight off to the baths.) CHAPTER THE NINETY-FIRST.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  There was probably more than a grain of truth in this: there were complaints at Eisleben that Agricola drank too much. Simon Lemnius, one of Melanchthon’s most gifted students, was next to attract Luther’s wrath, putting the friendship between Luther and Melanchthon under serious strain as a result. Taking a student prank too far, he published a volume of Latin epigrams which mocked many of the prominent citizens of Wittenberg.” Everything published in the town was subject to censorship but the printer, Nikolaus Schirlentz, had thought that he was dealing with a harmless volume of poetry; he either believed Lemnius’s assurance that Melanchthon had given his approval or else his Latin did not stretch to understanding the contents. Melanchthon, as rector of the university at the time, was responsible for censorship, and when Lemnius left town, it was rumoured Melanchthon or his family had helped his star pupil to escape.” Some argued that the verses were relatively innocuous; after all, penning gently mocking poems in Latin and Greek was a hobby in which Luther and Melanchthon had often indulged. Luther, however, was enraged; he had a poster printed and attached to the church doors, a format used to offer bounties for criminals. It roundly condemned the young man, saying he deserved the death penalty.® This was not quite the same thing as advocating his execution, although according to Lemnius himself, Luther had said in public that he would not preach in the town until Lemnius had been executed. Lemnius was tried by 374 MARTIN LUTHER the university in his absence, was banished in perpetuity and his book was burnt. By any measure this was an overreaction, and perhaps what excited Luther’s rage was that Lemnius had also penned a poem of praise to the archbishop of Mainz, and this accolade to ‘that shit bishop’, as Luther called him, gained the young poet protection and patronage. ‘I won't stand anyone in Wittenberg praising that damned, accursed monk, who would like to see us all dead’, Luther thundered. Once safe in Halle, Lemnius began publishing much more scurrilous work that portrayed Luther as a lecher, a man who had married a nun; an authoritarian who made himself pope and bishop and had seized power in Wittenberg, and a boor with no respect for poetry and the arts." Like Cochlaeus before him, he castigated Luther for fomenting rebellion, and in a long response to Luther's broadsheet, accused the reformer of conniving at murder, because Beskendorf, thanks to Luther’s intervention, had not been punished severely enough for murdering his son-in-law.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Stifel duly did, acquiring a house and family all in one, while Luther now knew that the widow was cared for and the succession of another Lutheran pastor assured.* Luther's own household was a great concern as he and Katharina lived, of all places, in the former monastery at Wittenberg, and it MARRIAGE AND THE FLESH 301 48. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther, 1532. rapidly filled up with dependants. He and the last prior, Eberhard Brisger, had formally handed over the keys of the by now almost deserted building to the Elector a few months before Luther’s wedding, conferring ownership on Saxony although the newly-weds continued to live there. Seven years later, Elector Johann, Friedrich’s brother and successor, formally gifted the entire place to Luther and his descend- ants.” It was one of the largest buildings in the town at that time, and Katharina put her stamp on it by adding the ‘Luther-portal’ as a birthday present in 1540 — a Renaissance-style entry door with a stone carving of Luther's face on one side, and his trademark rose on the other.” Here Luther created a bridge between monastic community and secular household. It was not only huge — certainly bigger than the home in Mansfeld where he grew up — it also soon housed an assort- ment of guests and lodgers. By a strange irony, the Karlstadt family had been amongst the first to arrive; and like many of the other 302 MARTIN LUTHER professors at Wittenberg, Luther took in students, earning extra money by feeding and housing them. There was always an audience at his table, where the reformer would hold forth, and regale his listeners with jokes and stories.*® Hospitality was offered to visitors of all kinds, just as in the monastery. Luther valued sociability as an antidote to the melancholy he had suffered when he was a monk, and devoted considerable time to companionship. If you want any peace and quiet, Prince Georg of Anhalt was warned in 1542, don’t stay with Luther.*° Apart from the students,” there were also servants, including Luther’s long-standing manservant Wolf Sieberger, to whom the reformer wrote an epic on his penchant for bird-catching, and a series of women servants such as the exotic Rosina von Truchsess, who first claimed to be a noble nun but then admitted she was the daughter of a peasant executed in the Peasants’ War. When she became pregnant she asked one of the other maids to ‘jump on her body’ so as to abort the child, after which Luther condemned her as an ‘arch-whore, desperate tart and sack of lies’.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He was contemptuous, however, of regulations on fasting, ‘which the clergy never stuck to’, but his stance that such matters could be left to secular authority might have permitted a kind of confessional coexistence.“ Indeed, his intransigence was often not on points of detail, but on the underlying tone.® It seems that his defeat at Eck’s hands at Leipzig still rankled, and he had not forgiven his old opponent for the death of Leonhard Kaiser, repeatedly reminding Melanchthon that this was not just a matter of words but of life and death: these Catholic theologians had already killed people for their staunch support of the Reformation. The Catholics were devils, he had written to Johannes Agricola in June: “They cannot live unless they drink blood.’ Now he admonished Melanchthon, slight AUGSBURG 337 of figure and physically weak, to ‘remain firm’, “be a man’ and ‘act in a manly way’.” When debate turned to the sacrament, it appeared that the Catholic side was surprisingly willing to allow the Lutherans to give the chalice to the laity, if they also taught that receiving the sacrament in one kind — the Catholic practice of offering only the bread to the laity — was sufficient for salvation. Again it seemed agreement was possible, at least until a full Church council was held, as the offer was in line with Luther’s own position when, on his return from the Wartburg, he had attempted to moderate Karlstadt’s reforms. Nor was the issue of clerical marriage as problematic as it had first seemed: the Catho- lics were again willing to tolerate those marriages that had already taken place ‘until a council is held’. Moreover, on the fundamental issue of the Reformation, the Catholics were even apparently ready to agree that salvation is by faith and grace, not by works alone — an extraordinary concession, and an apparent victory for Augustinian theology.” Luther, however, accused the Catholics of paying lip service to the importance of faith while continuing to preach indulgences and works, and insisted Communion must be offered in both kinds. While the Catholics offered to let the Lutherans continue with their practices whilst they would continue with theirs — holding Masses for the dead, for example — Luther objected to this on the grounds that it would reintroduce the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice, which could earn the individual merits. He was happy to reintroduce compulsory confession before Mass, as long as people should not be compelled to confess absolutely every sin, as it would only burden their consciences.” This was a sore point for the Zwinglians and south Germans, who objected to the burdens of confession; but as confession had given Luther such spiritual comfort throughout his life, he wanted to retain it. When it came to the question of bishops, Luther showed a surprising willing- ness to compromise.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Lycas was greatly disturbed by this information, and flew into a rage. “So someone aboard my ship cut off his hair, did he?” he bawled, “and at dead of night, too! Bring the offenders aft on deck here, and step lively, so that I can tell whom to punish, from their heads, that the ship may be freed from the curse!” “I ordered it done,” Eumolpus broke in, “and I didn’t order it as an unlucky omen, either, seeing that I had to be aboard the same vessel: I did it because the scoundrels had long matted hair, I ordered the filth cleared off the wretches because I did not wish to even seem to make a prison out of your ship: besides, I did not want the seared scars of the letters to be hidden in the least, by the interference of the hair; as they ought to be in plain sight, for everyone to read, and at full length, too. In addition to their other misdemeanors, they blew in my money on a street-walker whom they kept in common; only last night I dragged them away from her, reeking with wine and perfumes, as they were, and they still stink of the remnants of my patrimony!” Thereupon, forty stripes were ordered for each of us, that the tutelary genius of the ship might be propitiated. And they were not long about it either. Eager to propitiate the tutelary genius with our wretched blood, the savage sailors rushed upon us with their rope’s ends. For my part, I endured three lashes with Spartan fortitude, but at the very first blow, Giton set up such a howling that his all too familiar voice reached the ears of Tryphaena; nor was she the only one who was in a flutter, for, attracted by this familiar voice, all the maids rushed to where he was being flogged. Giton had already moderated the ardor of the sailors by his wonderful beauty, he appealed to his torturers without uttering a word. “It’s Giton! It’s Giton!” the maids all screamed in unison. “Hold your hands, you brutes; help, Madame, it’s Giton!” Tryphaena turned willing ears, she had recognized that voice herself, and flew to the boy. Lycas, who knew me as well as if he had heard my voice, now ran up; he glanced at neither face nor hands, but directed his eyes towards parts lower down; courteously he shook hands with them, “How do you do, Encolpius,” he said. Let no one be surprised at Ulysses’ nurse discovering, after twenty years, the scar that established his identity, since this man, so keenly observant, had, in spite of the most skillful disguise of every feature and the obliteration of every identifying mark upon my body, so surely hit upon the sole means of identifying his fugitive! Deceived by our appearance, Tryphaena wept bitterly, believing that the marks upon our foreheads were, in truth, the brands of prisoners: she asked us gently, into what slave’s prison we had fallen in our wanderings, and whose cruel hands had inflicted this punishment. Still, fugitives whose members had gotten them into trouble certainly deserved some punishment.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-FIFTH. When Trimalchio had launched this thunderbolt, Habinnas commenced to beg him to control his anger. “There’s not one of us but goes wrong sometimes,” argued he; “we’re not gods, we’re men.” Scintilla also cried out through her tears, calling him “Gaius,” and entreating him by his guardian angel to be mollified. Trimalchio could restrain the tears no longer. “Habinnas,” he blubbered, “as you hope to enjoy your money, spit in my face if I’ve done anything wrong. I kissed him because he’s very thrifty, not because he’s a pretty boy. He can recite his division table and read a book at sight: he bought himself a Thracian uniform from his savings from his rations, and a stool and two dippers, with his own money, too. He’s worth my attention, ain’t he? But Fortunata won’t see it! Ain’t that the truth, you high-stepping hussy’? Let me beg you to make the best of what you’ve got, you shekite, and don’t make me show my teeth, my little darling, or you’ll find out what my temper’s like! Believe me, when once I’ve made up my mind, I’m as fixed as a spike in a beam! But let’s think of the living. I hope you’ll all make yourselves at home, gentlemen: I was in your fix myself once; but rose to what I am now by my own merit. It’s the brains that makes the man, all the rest’s bunk. I buy well, I sell well, someone else will tell you a different story, but as for myself, I’m fairly busting with prosperity. What, grunting-sow, still bawling? I’ll see to it that you’ve something to bawl for, but as I started to say, it was my thrift that brought me to my fortune. I was just as tall as that candlestick when I came over from Asia; every day I used to measure myself by it, and I would smear my lips with oil so my beard would sprout all the sooner. I was my master’s ‘mistress’ for fourteen years, for there’s nothing wrong in doing what your master orders, and I satisfied my mistress, too, during that time, you know what I mean, but I’ll say no more, for I’m not one of your braggarts!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In the years that followed, towns and territories would appoint evan- gelical preachers, and institute the reforms Luther had proposed: establishing schools, abolishing begging, reorganising poor relief, closing brothels and dissolving monasteries. As a result, the responsi- bilities of both secular and religious authorities would be redefined. In the process, Protestant secular rulers would also seize the chance to gain control of some of the vast wealth of the Church.* Some of the rhetoric of To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation may echo what Luther might have heard at Mansfeld or at Eisenach as his parents’ generation grumbled about hard times in the mining industry. Some sections — on brothels, finance and the law — reveal a man who looks over the monastery walls; who wants to intervene and change the secular world. This wider perspective may well have been won through the long journeys by foot he had made through central Germany on his way to Augsburg and Heidelberg; or through the men of influence he had met over the previous few years. It may also have been shaped by his discussions with Spalatin, well abreast of imperial as well as local politics. Luther now began to see it as his THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN 163 duty to take a stand on political matters: lay society was no longer the world ‘outside’, which those who entered the monastery left behind once and for all.* It was part of the parish for which Luther now had responsibility. Then, just a few months after To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther published an even more radical treatise in October 1520, this time in Latin: De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae praeludium, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.“ That month, he finally received his own official copy of the papal bull threatening excommunicaton and giving him sixty days to recant. The clock started ticking. The striking title of the treatise suggested that the Church was so corrupt that, like the Jews in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, Christians were now in exile. When the emperor's confessor read it, he was so shocked that he felt as if someone had ‘split him with a rod from head to toe’. He refused to believe that Luther had written it because it lacked his former ‘skill’.” But if he were the author, he mused, perhaps it had simply been written in a fit of rage in reaction to the bull. Had Luther simply fallen prey to anger, one of the seven deadly sins? His opponent Thomas Murner decided to translate the tract into German, because he was convinced that as soon as people read it, they would be appalled. He could hardly have made a bigger mistake.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther was furious when he read Reinhard’s account, written ‘to my infamy and Karlstadt’s glory’, even though the tone of the text was 244 MARTIN LUTHER scrupulously neutral.* But no reader could miss Luther’s contempt for Karlstadt during their meeting, capped by the gift of the valuable coin (gold, no less). And now there was no turning back: Luther’s promise to Karlstadt allowing him to publish was on public record.’ Luther made certain that the author of the pamphlet did not get away with it. Shortly afterwards, Reinhard was forced to leave his post in Jena, and when he moved to Nuremberg, he was driven from there too. Reinhard soon knuckled under, asking forgiveness, but Luther was unwilling to intervene on his behalf.* How had the former allies come to this? The answer lies in the efflor- escence of reforming ideas in the two years since Luther had returned from the Wartburg, as the movement began to go in different direc- tions beyond his control. After the defeat of the Wittenberg movement in 1522 and his own silencing, Karlstadt, who retained his post of archdeacon, had at first resumed his university position and kept a low profile. But he was isolated and treated with disdain by Melanch- thon and others. Increasingly radical, he began to take a grim view of university life, arguing that academic work and degrees generated nothing but dissension and boastfulness. “What does one seek in the higher schools than to be honoured by others?’ he asked. “Therefore, one aspires to be a master, another a doctor and then a doctor of sacred Scripture.’ University scholars ‘seek doctoral honours with such avarice and greed that they envy and persecute all other equal teaching’. All this was wrong because we ‘cannot . . . believe and trust God while we receive such honours’. This was an astonishing pronouncement by someone who had always relished disputations and the cut and thrust of debate. Now he castigated academic rituals: ‘on account of academic glory we kneel down, give money and set up festivities and costly meals to gain some clout with and earn respect from people’. Karlstadt drew the consequences and repudiated his doctoral title — although Luther studiously referred to him throughout his life as ‘Dr Karlstadt’. It was country life and rural labour that now began to attract the man who had once insisted on his noble lineage, and he increasingly spent time outside Wittenberg, purchasing his own farm in Worlitz.° THE BLACK BEAR INN 245 In yearning to be a farmer, Karlstadt was in step with the times. Peasants, so often regarded with contempt as rural boors, began to be idealised for their honest toil and simple evangelical faith.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It was a memorable sermon, lasting an hour and a half. Luther was at his most pugilistic and roundly attacked those who questioned the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He also condemned the radicals who insisted on removing all images from churches. Such people, Luther said, were driven by the spirit of Satan, and though they were few in number, their presence as sectaries was a sign that the Devil was raging.’ Jena was not territory hospitable to Luther, who was on a Visitation of the Saxon churches. Karlstadt now had his own parish in the small nearby town of Orlamiinde, where he had begun to introduce the kind of Reformation he had failed to establish in Wittenberg. His ally Martin Reinhard was the preacher at Jena, where the local printing press had also been publishing Karlstadt’s work. In fact, Karlstadt himself was among the congregation at Jena that morning, disguised as a peasant under a felt hat. He was convinced that Luther’s tirade against the ‘crazies’ was directed against him. After the sermon, he dashed off a letter to Luther proposing a meeting. Luther replied that he had no objections. A few hours later, Karlstadt — accompanied by Reinhard and Karlstadt’s brother-in-law and fellow preacher Dr Gerhard Westerburg — arrived at the Black Bear Inn where Luther was staying with his retinue of Saxon court officials? When the visitors entered the parlour, Luther motioned Karlstadt to a chair opposite him, insisting that their exchange take place in public. Karlstadt, facing the crowd of assembled dignitaries, began by objecting that Luther had attacked him in the same breath as the ‘riotous murdering spirits’ who were followers of Thomas Mintzer. 242 MARTIN LUTHER 42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognisable, and his felt hat is marked ‘S’ for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants. Miintzer, whom we will meet again later, had originally been inspired by Luther’s ideas, but developed a radical theology that called for social as well as religious change; he was starting to worry the Saxon authorities and had recently been forced to leave the town of Allstedt. Luther’s charge, Karlstadt insisted, was unjust, for although he held different views on the sacrament from Luther, he did not agree with Mintzer. ‘He who wants to . . . put me in the same pot with such murdering spirits ascribes that to me without truth and not as an honest man’, Karlstadt declared.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Reflecting on the events in 1538 shortly before he died, Eck wondered why it had all been so unpleasant: his later debates with the Swiss and south German evangelicals had been nowhere near as hostile.* Johannes Cochlaeus, writing about the disputation years later, repeatedly drew attention to Luther’s anger. When he did not get his way over who was to judge the disputation, Luther’s face was ‘wrathful’, and he was ‘overcome by anger’; and when Eck accused him of being a supporter of Hus, Luther ‘exclaimed angrily, in German, that this was a lie’.” To slip into German during an academic debate was bad form. Even Mosellanus remarked on Luther's tendency to refute his opponent ‘a little too uncaringly and more bitingly’ than was appropriate for a theologian, probably because he had come to learning late in life - a comment which may betray how much of an intellectual outsider Luther still was, and how unformed his public persona. He did not know how to look the part: Johannes Rubius described seeing him in the main square at Leipzig, clutching a posy of flowers, as if he were awaiting a lover or clutching a victory wreath.* When the debate finally ended in mid-July, Luther and Karlstadt quietly slipped out of town while Eck stayed on to relish his triumph, before leisurely returning to Ingolstadt. His only error of judgement had been to pena letter commenting on Leipzig’s ‘women of pleasure’ which, once it had been passed from hand to hand, suggested to his 138 MARTIN LUTHER enemies that his acquaintance with the ladies of Leipzig was not platonic. The universities of Paris and Erfurt were meant to judge the outcome of the debate, and all publication on the proceedings was banned until they reached their decision. Unsurprisingly, both univer- sities dragged their feet, Erfurt finally declining to give a decision at all. Paris did not reach a judgement until April 1521, when it commented not on the debate itself but on the heretical nature of all of Luther's writings.” By then it was an irrelevance. Both Eck and Luther had long since resorted to print to get their side of the story across. Luther republished his positions as he had set them out before the debate, prefacing them with his account of the proceedings.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (“Lycas,” said he, “these unfortunates upon whom you intend to wreak your vengeance, implore your compassion and) have chosen me for this task. I believe that I am a man, by no means unknown, and they desire that, somehow, I will effect a reconciliation between them and their former friends. Surely you do not imagine that these young men fell into such a snare by accident, when the very first thing that concerns every prospective passenger is the name of the captain to whom he intrusts his safety! Be reasonable, then; forego your revenge and permit free men to proceed to their destination without injury. When penitence manages to lead their fugitives back, harsh and implacable masters restrain their cruelty, and we are merciful to enemies who have surrendered. What could you ask, or wish for, more? These well-born and respectable young men be suppliant before your eyes and, what ought to move you more strongly still, were once bound to you by the ties of friendship. If they had embezzled your money or repaid your faith in them with treachery, by Hercules, you have ample satisfaction from the punishment already inflicted! Look! Can you read slavery on their foreheads, and see upon the faces of free men the brand-marks of a punishment which was self-inflicted!” Lycas broke in upon this plea for mercy, “Don’t try to confuse the issue,” he said, “let every detail have its proper attention and first of all, why did they strip all the hair off their heads, if they came of their own free will? A man meditates deceit, not satisfaction, when he changes his features! Then again, if they sought reconciliation through a mediator, why did you do your best to conceal them while employed in their behalf? It is easily seen that the scoundrels fell into the toils by chance and that you are seeking some device by which you could sidestep the effects of our resentment. And be careful that you do not spoil your case by over-confidence when you attempt to sow prejudice among us by calling them well-born and respectable! What should the injured parties do when the guilty run into their own punishment? And inasmuch as they were our friends, by that, they deserve more drastic punishment still, for whoever commits an assault upon a stranger, is termed a robber; but whoever assaults a friend, is little better than a parricide!” “I am well aware,” Eumolpus replied, to rebut this damning harangue, “that nothing can look blacker against these poor young men than their cutting off their hair at night. On this evidence, they would seem to have come aboard by accident, not voluntarily. Oh how I wish that the explanation could come to your ears just as candidly as the thing itself happened! They wanted to relieve their heads of that annoying and useless weight before they came aboard, but the unexpected springing up of the wind prevented the carrying out of their wishes, and they did not imagine that it mattered where they began what they had decided to do, because they were unacquainted with either the omens or the law of seafaring men.” “But why should they shave themselves like suppliants?” demanded Lycas, “unless, of course, they expected to arouse more sympathy as bald-pates. What’s the use of seeking information through a third person, anyway? You scoundrel, what have you to say for yourself? What salamander singed off your eyebrows? You poisoner, what god did you vow your hair to? Answer!”

• From Satyricon (1)

  And break the voluptuous slumber in which she is sunken? Or must it be fury and war and the blood-lust of daggers?” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH. “Three chieftains did fortune bring forth, whom the fury of battles Destroyed; and interred, each one under a mountain of weapons; The Parthian has Crassus, Pompeius the Great by the waters Of Egypt lies. Julius, ungrateful Rome stained with his life blood. And earth has divided their ashes, unable to suffer The weight of so many tombs. These are the wages of glory! There lies between Naples and Great Puteoli, a chasm Deep cloven, and Cocytus churns there his current; the vapor In fury escapes from the gorge with that lethal spray laden. No green in the aututun is there, no grass gladdens the meadow, The supple twigs never resound with the twittering singing Of birds in the Springtime. But chaos, volcanic black boulders Of pumice lie Happy within their drear setting of cypress. Amidst these infernal surroundings the ruler of Hades Uplifted his head by the funeral flames silhouetted And sprinkled with white from the ashes of corpses; and challenged Winged Fortune in words such as these: ‘Oh thou fickle controller Of things upon earth and in heaven, security’s foeman, Oh Chance! Oh thou lover eternally faithful to change, and Possession’s betrayer, dost own thyself crushed by the power Of Rome? Canst not raise up the tottering mass to its downfall Its strength the young manhood of Rome now despises, and staggers In bearing the booty heaped up by its efforts: behold how They lavish their spoils! Wealth run mad now brings down their destruction. They build out of gold and their palaces reach to the heavens; The sea is expelled by their moles and their pastures are oceans; They war against Nature in changing the state of creation. They threaten my kingdom! Earth yawns with their tunnels deep driven To furnish the stone for their madmen’s foundations; already The mountains are hollowed and now but re-echoing caverns; While man quarries marble to serve his vainglorious purpose The spirits infernal confess that they hope to win Heaven! Arise, then, O Chance, change thy countenance peaceful to warlike And harry the Romans, consign to my kingdom the fallen. Ah, long is it now since my lips were with blood cooled and moistened, Nor has my Tisiphone bathed her blood-lusting body Since Sulla’s sword drank to repletion and earth’s bristling harvest Grew ripe upon blood and thrust up to the light of the sunshine!’” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST. “He spake ... and attempted to clasp the right hand of Fortuna, But ruptured the crust of the earth, deeply cloven, asunder. Then from her capricious heart Fortune made answer: ‘O father Whom Cocytus’ deepest abysses obey, if to forecast The future I may, without fear, thy petition shall prosper; For no less consuming the anger that wars in this bosom, The flame no less poignant, that burns to my marrow All favors

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Happy the mother,” cried Eumolpus, “who bore such a son as you! May your fortune be in keeping with your merit! Beauty and wisdom are rarely found mixed! And that you may not think that all your words are wasted, know that you have found a lover! I will fill my verses with your praise! I will act as your guardian and your tutor, following you even when you bid me stay behind! Nor can Encolpius take offense, he loves another.” The soldier who took my sword from me did Eumolpus a good turn, too; otherwise, the rage which I had felt against Ascyltos would have been quenched in the blood of Eumolpus. Seeing what was in the wind, Giton slipped out of the room, pretending he was going after water, and by this diplomatic retreat he put an end to my fury. Then, as my anger cooled, little by little, “Eumolpus,” I said, “rather than have you entertain designs of such a nature, I would even prefer to have you spouting poetry! I am hot-tempered and you are lecherous; see how uncongenial two such dispositions must be! Take me for a maniac, humor my malady: in other words, get out quick!” Taken completely aback by this onslaught, Eumolpus crossed the threshold of the room without stopping to ask the reason for my wrath, and immediately slammed the door shut, penning me in, as I was not looking for any move of that kind then, having quickly removed the key, he hurried away in search of Giton. Finding that I was locked in, I decided to hang myself, and had already fastened my belt to the bedstead which stood alongside of the wall, and was engaged in fastening the noose around my neck, when the doors were unlocked and Eumolpus came in with Giton, recalling me to light when I was just about to turn the fatal goal-post! Giton was greatly wrought up and his grief turned to fury: seizing me with both hands, he threw me upon the bed. “If you think, Encolpius,” he shrieked, “that you can contrive to die before I do, you’re wrong! I thought of suicide first. I hunted for a sword in Ascyltos’ house: I would have thrown myself from a precipice if I had not found you! You know that Death is never far from those who seek him, so take your turn and witness the spectacle you wished to see!” So saying, he snatched a razor from Eumolpus’ servant, slashed his throat, once, twice, and fell down at our feet! I uttered a loud cry, rushed to him as he fell, and sought the road to death by the same steel; Giton, however, showed not the faintest trace of any wound, nor was I conscious of feeling any pain. The razor, it turned out, was untempered and dull and was used to imbue boy apprentices with the confidence of the experienced barber. Hence it was in a sheath and, for the reason given above, the servant was not alarmed when the blade was snatched nor did Eumolpus break in upon this farcical death scene.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The last came to a climax in 1529 when he encountered the Swiss at the colloquy of Marburg, arranged by Philip of Hesse, but there was no meeting of minds.* Luther wrote “This is my body’ in chalk 320 MARTIN LUTHER on the table where the debaters sat, and covered it over with the velvet tablecloth — as if protecting a relic — only to reveal it dramatically during the debate, to underline the importance of the biblical words. Insisting that the words “This is my body’ meant exactly what they said, he added ‘here is our text. You haven't yet managed to wring it from us, as you said you would, and we need no other.’** Where Oecolampadius and Zwingli insisted on the importance of John 6 and ‘spiritual eating’, repeating their stock phrase that the ‘flesh availeth nothing’,® Luther replied that physical eating was essential too. ‘My dearest gentlemen, because the text of my lord Jesus Christ clearly states: “Hoc est corpus meum”, truly I cannot get around it, but must confess and believe that the body of Christ is present therein’, he expostulated to Zwingli, breaking out of the Latin of debate into German (although still using Latin for the words of consecration).* When Zwingli, who to Luther’s great irritation frequently used Greek in the debate, accused him of restoring the sacrifice of the Mass yet again, Luther insisted, as at Worms, that he was ‘bound and held captive by the words of the Lord’.” As it became clear that the two sides could not agree, Luther washed his hands of them, consigning them to the judgement of God ‘who will certainly decide who is right’, at which Zwingli burst into tears.* At the end of the meeting, Oecolampadius and Zwingli, pleased that at least they had all now met in person, wanted to embrace their opponents as brothers and allow all of them to take Communion with each other; but Luther bitterly refused.» He was, however, shattered by the debate, and the ‘angel of Satan, or whoever the angel of Death is’ was attacking him so severely that he worried he might not reach home alive.® Luther’s intransigence in dealing with his opponents, and the toll it took on him, had settled into a pattern both grim and unrelenting.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Lest longer mute tongue stays that In festal jest, from Fescennine, Nor yet deny their nuts to boys, He-Concubine! who learns in fine His lordling’s love is fled. Throw nuts to boys thou idle all He-Concubine! wast fain full long With nuts to play: now pleased as thrall Be thou to swell Talasios’ throng He-Concubine throw nuts. Wont thou as peasant-girls to jape He-whore! Thy Lord’s delight the while: Now shall hair-curling chattel scrape Thy cheeks: poor wretch, ah’ poor and vile:-- He-Concubine, throw nuts.” and further on, addressing the husband: “‘Tis said from smooth-faced ingle train (Anointed bridegroom!) hardly fain Hast e’er refrained; now do refrain! O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus! We know that naught save licit rites Be known to thee, but wedded wights No more deem lawful such delights. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.” (LXI. Burton, tr.) The Christian religion strongly prohibits this love; the theologians put it among the sins which directly offend against the Holy Ghost. I have not the honor of knowing just why this thing arouses his anger so much more than anything else; doubtless there are reasons. But the wrath of this honest person has not prevented the Christians from having their “pathici,” just as they have in countries where they are authorized by the reigning deities. We have even noticed that they are the priests of the Lord and especially the monks who practice this profession most generally amongst us. The children of Loyola have acquired well-merited renown in this matter: when they painted “Pleasure” they never failed to represent him wearing trousers. Those disciples of Joseph Calasanz who took their places in the education of children, followed their footsteps with zeal and fervor. Lastly, the cardinals, who have a close acquaintance with the Holy Ghost, are so prejudiced in favor of Greek love that they have made it the fashion in the Holy City of Rome; this leads me to wonder whether the Holy Ghost has changed His mind in regard to this matter and is no longer shocked by it; or whether the theologians were not mistaken in assuming an aversion against sodomy which He never had. The cardinals who are on such familiar terms with him would know better than to give all their days over to this pleasure if He really objected to it. I shall terminate this over-long note with an extract from a violent diatribe against this love which Lucian puts into the mouth of Charicles. He is addressing Callicratidas, a passionate lover of young boys, with whom he had gone to visit the temple of Venus at Cnidus.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Those who are brought up on such a diet can no more attain to wisdom than a kitchen scullion can attain to a keen sense of smell or avoid stinking of the grease. With your indulgence, I will speak out: you--teachers --are chiefly responsible for the decay of oratory. With your well modulated and empty tones you have so labored for rhetorical effect that the body of your speech has lost its vigor and died. Young men did not learn set speeches in the days when Sophocles and Euripides were searching for words in which to express themselves. In the days when Pindar and the nine lyric poets feared to attempt Homeric verse there was no private tutor to stifle budding genius. I need not cite the poets for evidence, for I do not find that either Plato or Demosthenes was given to this kind of exercise. A dignified and, if I may say it, a chaste, style, is neither elaborate nor loaded with ornament; it rises supreme by its own natural purity. This windy and high-sounding bombast, a recent immigrant to Athens, from Asia, touched with its breath the aspiring minds of youth, with the effect of some pestilential planet, and as soon as the tradition of the past was broken, eloquence halted and was stricken dumb. Since that, who has attained to the sublimity of Thucydides, who rivalled the fame of Hyperides? Not a single poem has glowed with a healthy color, but all of them, as though nourished on the same diet, lacked the strength to live to old age. Painting also suffered the same fate when the presumption of the Egyptians “commercialized” that incomparable art. (I was holding forth along these lines one day, when Agamemnon came up to us and scanned with a curious eye a person to whom the audience was listening so closely.) CHAPTER THE THIRD.

• From Satyricon (1)

  He had not ceased speaking when a cock crowed! Alarmed at this omen, Trimalchio ordered wine thrown under the table and told them to sprinkle the lamps with it; and he even went so far as to change his ring from his left hand to his right. “That trumpeter did not sound off without a reason,” he remarked; “there’s either a fire in the neighborhood, or else someone’s going to give up the ghost. I hope it’s none of us! Whoever brings that Jonah in shall have a present.” He had no sooner made this promise, than a cock was brought in from somewhere in the neighborhood and Trimalchio ordered the cook to prepare it for the pot. That same versatile genius who had but a short time before made birds and fish out of a hog, cut it up; it was then consigned to the kettle, and while Daedalus was taking a long hot drink, Fortunata ground pepper in a boxwood mill. When these delicacies had been consumed, Trimalchio looked the slaves over. “You haven’t had anything to eat yet, have you?” he asked. “Get out and let another relay come on duty.” Thereupon a second relay came in. “Farewell, Gaius,” cried those going off duty, and “Hail, Gaius,” cried those coming on. Our hilarity was somewhat dampened soon after, for a boy, who was by no means bad looking, came in among the fresh slaves. Trimalchio seized him and kissed him lingeringly, whereupon Fortunata, asserting her rights in the house, began to rail at Trimalchio, styling him an abomination who set no limits to his lechery, finally ending by calling him a dog. Trimalchio flew into a rage at her abuse and threw a wine cup at her head, whereupon she screeched, as if she had had an eye knocked out and covered her face with her trembling hands. Scintilla was frightened, too, and shielded the shuddering woman with her garment. An officious slave presently held a cold water pitcher to her cheek and Fortunata bent over it, sobbing and moaning. But as for Trimalchio, “What the hell’s next?” he gritted out, “this Syrian dancing-whore don’t remember anything! I took her off the auction block and made her a woman among her equals, didn’t I? And here she puffs herself up like a frog and pukes in her own nest; she’s a blockhead, all right, not a woman. But that’s the way it is, if you’re born in an attic you can’t sleep in a palace I’ll see that this booted Cassandra’s tamed, so help me my Genius, I will! And I could have married ten million, even if I did only have two cents: you know I’m not lying! ‘Let me give you a tip,’ said Agatho, the perfumer to the lady next door, when he pulled me aside: ‘don’t let your line die out!’ And here I’ve stuck the ax into my own leg because I was a damned fool and didn’t want to seem fickle. I’ll see to it that you’re more careful how you claw me up, sure as you’re born, I will! That you may realize how seriously I take what you’ve done to me--Habinnas, I don’t want you to put her statue on my tomb for fear I’ll be nagged even after I’m dead! And furthermore, that she may know I can repay a bad turn, I won’t have her kissing me when I’m laid out!”

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE FIFTY-EIGHTH. Giton, who had been standing at my feet, and who had for some time been holding in his laughter, burst into an uproarious guffaw, at this last figure of speech, and when Ascyltos’ adversary heard it, he turned his abuse upon the boy. “What’s so funny, you curly-headed onion,” he bellowed, “are the Saturnalia here, I’d like to know? Is it December now? “When did you pay your twentieth? What’s this to you, you gallows-bird, you crow’s meat? I’ll call the anger of Jupiter down on you and that master of yours, who don’t keep you in better order. If I didn’t respect my fellow-freedmen, I’d give you what is coming to you right here on the spot, as I hope to get my belly full of bread, I would. We’ll get along well enough, but those that can’t control you are fools; like master like man’s a true saying. I can hardly hold myself in and I’m not hot-headed by nature, but once let me get a start and I don’t care two cents for my own mother. All right, I’ll catch you in the street, you rat, you toadstool. May I never grow an inch up or down if I don’t push your master into a dunghill, and I’ll give you the same medicine, I will, by Hercules, I will, no matter if you call down Olympian Jupiter himself! I’ll take care of your eight inch ringlets and your two cent master into the bargain. I’ll have my teeth into you, either you’ll cut out the laughing, or I don’t know myself. Yes, even if you had a golden beard. I’ll bring the wrath of Minerva down on you and on the fellow that first made a come-here out of you. No, I never learned geometry or criticism or other foolishness like that, but I know my capital letters and I can divide any figure by a hundred, be it in asses, pounds or sesterces. Let’s have a show-down, you and I will make a little bet, here’s my coin; you’ll soon find out that your father’s money was wasted on your education, even if you do know a little rhetoric. How’s this--what part of us am I? I come far, I come wide, now guess me! I’ll give you another. What part of us runs but never moves from its place? What part of us grows but always grows less? But you scurry around and are as flustered and fidgeted as a mouse in a piss-pot. Shut up and don’t annoy your betters, who don’t even know that you’ve been born. Don’t think that I’m impressed by those boxwood armlets that you did your mistress out of. Occupo will back me! Let’s go into the forum and borrow money, then you’ll see whether this iron ring means credit! Bah! A draggled fox is a fine sight, ain’t it’? I hope I never get rich and die decently so that the people will swear by my death, if I don’t hound you everywhere with my toga turned inside out. And the fellow that taught you such manners did a good job too, a chattering ape, all right, no schoolmaster. We were better taught. ‘Is everything in its place?’ the master would ask; go straight home and don’t stop and stare at everything and don’t be impudent to your elders. Don’t loiter along looking in at the shops. No second raters came out of that school. I’m what you see me and I thank the gods it’s all due to my own cleverness.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH. In a towering passion, Lycas leaped forward, “Oh you silly woman,” he shouted, “as if those scars were made by the letters on the branding-iron! If only they had really blotched up their foreheads with those inscriptions, it would be some satisfaction to us, at least; but as it is, we are being imposed upon by an actor’s tricks, and hoaxed by a fake inscription!” Tryphaena was disposed to mercy, as all was not lost for her pleasures, but Lycas remembered the seduction of his wife and the insults to which he had been subjected in the portico of the temple of Hercules: “Tryphaena,” he gritted out, his face convulsed with savage passion, “you are aware, I believe, that the immortal gods have a hand in human affairs: what did they do but lead these scoundrels aboard this ship in ignorance of the owner and then warn each of us alike, by a coincidence of dreams, of what they had done? Can you then see how it would be possible to let off those whom a god has, himself, delivered up to punishment? I am not a cruel man; what moves me is this: I am afraid I shall have to endure myself whatever I remit to them!” At this superstitious plea Tryphaena veered around; denying that she would plead for quarter, she was even anxious to help along the fulfillment of this retribution, so entirely just: she had herself suffered an insult no less poignant than had Lycas, for her chastity had been called in question before a crowd. Primeval Fear created Gods on earth when from the sky The lightning-flashes rent with flame the ramparts of the world, And smitten Athos blazed! Then, Phoebus, sinking to the earth, His course complete, and waning Luna, offerings received. The changing seasons of the year the superstition spread Throughout the world; and Ignorance and Awe, the toiling boor, To Ceres, from his harvest, the first fruits compelled to yield And Bacchus with the fruitful vine to crown. Then Pales came Into her own, the shepherd’s gains to share. Beneath the waves Of every sea swims Neptune. Pallas guards the shops, And those impelled by Avarice or Guilt, create new Gods! (Lycas, as he perceived that Tryphaena was as eager as himself for revenge, gave orders for our punishment to be renewed and made more drastic, whereupon Eumolpus endeavored to appease him as follows,) CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH.