January 14, 2004

A fitting quote

The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my day so wretchedly into small pieces!—Plautus, 200 BCE. Haven't found a confirming source, other than repetition itself. But still.

Posted at January 14, 2004 04:32 PM
Comments

The quote is from a fragment called the BOEOTIA:

PARASITVS. Vt ilium di perdant primus qui horas repperit quique adeo primus statuit hic solarium,
qui mihi comminuit misero articulatim diem!

http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/plautus/fragmenta.html

Posted by: Sean Stickle on January 16, 2004 05:15 PM

Thank you. I was hoping one of you who speak Latin would be able to place the source. Is the translation just?

Posted by: lh on January 18, 2004 10:09 AM

My Latin's hardly well-greased, but I pick out roughly that sense from it.

---L.

Posted by: LNH on January 19, 2004 10:06 AM

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