Neo-Latin Anthologies

Mark Riley first published his Neo-Latin Reader in 2016. The copy before me is from 2018, and on the copyright page it is noted that corrections were made in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Milena Minkova's Florilegium Recentioris Latinitatis was published in 2018.

Neither volume includes facing-pages translations of the Latin texts, indicating that they are intended for readers who actually intend to read them in Latin. 

Riley divides his book by genres, which range from poetry to fiction to history to science. There is even a section of jokes in Latin. I must confess that I cannot completely explain the division of the texts in Riley: it is not strictly chronological, and texts by one author sometimes appear in more than one section. But in the introductions to the texts, in English, Riley offers much of interest about the cultural backgrounds from which they arose. He also gives a lot of information about editions of the various authors, which I find good, as, presumably, readers intrigued by the selections in the anthology might want to read more by these Neo-Latin writers.

 

Petrarch is mentioned by name on the front cover of this paperback edition, where there is also a picture of his face. However, I couldn't find any works by Petrarch in the table of contents. This left me quite confused, until I saw a letter from Petrarch to Cicero in Riley's introduction to the book. 

Minkova's Florilegium, as you might already have guessed from its title, is written entirely in Latin, from the preface to the entire volume, to to the introductory remarks to each work, to the footnotes. The authors, representing a diversity of genres and subjects comparable to Riley, are presented in chronological order, from Petrarch (14th century) to Pascoli (19th-20th century). The only non-Latin material to be found between these covers, aside from the excerpted Neo-Latin authors' occasional use of phrases in Greek, is to be found in Minkova's lists of recent scholarly work pertaining to each and every author. These lists are most welcome. However, I was not able to find within them any reference to editions of the Neo-Latin authors. That's one point for Riley, imho. Like Riley's prefatory material in English, Minkova's prefaces in Latin contain a wealth of interesting and edifying information, historical, cultural and linguistic.

Reading these two fine volumes, I kept thinking of other Neo-Latin authors who deserve to be anthologized. Riley and Minkova both include much that one would expect in volumes intended to introduce recent Latin: works by Petrarch, More, Erasmus, Landival and others are in both volumes. It is no real reproach to either of these editors that I missed, for example, Ficino, Poliziano, Luther, Calvin, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Milton, Kant, Marx and Nietzsche, to name a few. Rather, it indicates that this is a very wide field, with a very great deal of material suitable for introductory anthologies.

People Can't Do Math, Green Energy Edition

Yes, some rooftop solar installers are sketchy. But some aren't. It's like many other things, you need to do some research.

Yes, some regions get less sunlight than others, which means you'll get less financial benefit from solar, all other things being equal.

 

But, if you own the house you live in, and if your financial situation allows you to get loans, and if you get a loan to pay for the installation of rooftop solar, and your savings on your electrical bill are more than the loan payments -- sorry to break it to you Bucko, but you just got free solar. Free as in, not only is it not costing you money, it's making you some money.

 

 

I'm posting this in frustration after reading a thread on asocial media in which a few of the participants were unable to grasp that, yes indeed, in some cases, for some people, solar power can be free.

 

Actually much better than free, but one mental weakness at a time.

 

I'm autistic, and one of the aspects of my neurological condition is that I'm above average at math, so I can understand how rooftop solar can be free, or how an EV can cost the owner less than ICE over 5 years, let alone 10, despite having a higher purchase price, because lower operating and maintenance costs more than make up for the higher initial price.

 

Unfortunately, another aspect of my neurological condition is that I'm not good at explaining math to morons.

 

It's extremely frustrating. People who are too dumb to grasp the importance of polluting less, would pollute less anyway, if they were smart enough to see how much money it would save them.

Our Betters

How do rulers rule? Usually with the unquestioning obedience of many followers. They don't need to be worshiped by every single one of their subjects, but they do require that a substantial portion regard them as their betters. This struck me once again during the recent public discussion of the reign of Elizabeth II of England, Etc. Yes, there were British critics of her reign, but there were enough thoroughly loyal subjects that the end of the monarchy was seldom discussed, and never, more recently than Cromwell, seemed like an impending possibility. 

Obedient followers tend to be in denial about those they follow. Take, again, the case of the British royals, and their immense wealth. You'll find a lot of people who will deny that the royal family is wealthy. 

"Well what about all those palaces, maintained at public expense?"

"Those palaces belong to the public."

"Does the public live there?"

"No."

"Can the public see the insides of those palaces?"

"Aha, yes! Sometimes we can!"

"Often?"

"Well..."

"And who decides who can actually enter one of the palaces, and how often?"

"Well..."

This tendency for people to worship rulers who take advantage, and to make excuses for them, seems fairly widespread. And not just in monarchies. In supposed democracies where everyone is supposedly equal, a handful of people at the tip of pyramid are revered, and excuses made for them. Just look at Elon Musk, and the way he is still defended by many of his fans. 

I had thought of myself as relatively free of such tendencies to meekly obey people I thought of as my "betters," until yesterday, when, in the immortal words of Tom Wolfe, "I noticed something!"  I'm not talking about Thomas Wolfe, the Murrkin novelist of whose work I've read but very little, but Tom Wolfe, investigative journalist and legendary reactionary douchebag. Those three mighty words appear near the beginning of Wolfe's book The Painted Word, whose title, you may have noticed, rhymes with that of an earlier and somewhat better book, The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.

What I noticed yesterday was that, while watching a video about Plenitude, a 3-star restaurant in a 5-star Paris hotel near the Louvre, I was thinking that the tableware looked too nice for the likes of me. I was reminded of things I was not allowed to touch because they were too nice. 

 

Then I caught myself thinking that, and I had to pause the video and hold my head in both hands. Yes, as a small child I had been told not to touch certain things because they were nice. But I'm 61 years old now.  I've been to the Louvre. I felt quite comfortable there. I thought that I thought of myself as as good as anyone else, and distinctly better than many who, like Tom Wolfe, thought themselves better than me. But here I was, thinking that some particularly swanky tableware was too nice for the scruffy likes of me. 

I don't think I've ever set foot inside a 3-star restaurant, and I'm quite sure I've never been served anything to eat or drink in one. I don't know whether or not the whole experience would even appeal to me, or whether I would find it profoundly silly, like the tires on a Bugatti which cost $100,000 a set, and have to be replaced every 2000 miles. If you drive slowly. But now I'm wondering whether I've never found out in part because the mentality of a subject, a servant, an inferior dwells within me.

Know yourself. Free your mind and your ass will follow. Don't help tyrants tyrannize you. Don't let them tell you they're better than you. Easier said than done, sometimes. This sort of thing takes work.

To-Do List

This is by no means a complete list. It mentions a few things which can be done right away, a few things which can be ramped way, way up.

 

1 electric vehicles 

1a electric unicycles 1b electric skateboards 1c electric scooters 1d electric bicycles 1e electric motorcycles 1f electric cars 1g electric trucks 1h electric trains 1i electric ships 1j electric aircraft 

2 green electricity

2a solar power 2b wind power

3 efficiency

3a smart grids 3b efficient HVAC of buildings

4 materials

4a cleaner steel 4b cleaner concrete 4c cleaner asphalt 4d recycling 4e less harmful mining 4f less plastic

 

5 plants

5a afforestation 5b reforestation 5c restoration of wetlands 5d renewable logging 5e climate-friendly agriculture

 

6 animals

6a responsible pet ownership 6b increased levels of vegetarian and vegan diets