Plato on Lyric Poets

A poet who accompanied his or her verses with music played on a lyre.

"And when the boy has learned his letters and is beginning to understand what is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of great poets, which he reads sitting on a bench at school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire to become like them. Then, again, the teachers of the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is temperate and gets into no mischief; and when they have taught him the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the poems of other excellent poets, who are the lyric poets; and these they set to music, and make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children's souls, in order that they may learn to be more gentle, and harmonious, and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action; for the life of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm."

Plato, Protagoras (4th century B.C.)

[translated by Benjamin Jowett].

Auctioneers and Architects

"If it's money he wants to earn,
he can easily learn
To twang the harp in the chorus, or toot
The accompanist's flute.
If he seems short on intellect,
Make him an auctioneer or an architect."

Martial, The Epigrams (85 AD).

Cooks

"Even were a cook to cook a fly, he would keep the breast for himself."

--Polish proverb.

Sword Swallowers

"Last night at supper I was challenged to an eating race by some people at my table and tried to swallow too large a mouthful of polenta cheese. It was so doughy and soft that it stuck half-way down my throat, blocking my windpipe, and I nearly choked to death. Yet only a few days before, at the Painted Porch in Athens, I had watched a juggler actually swallow a sharp cavalry sabre, point downwards too; after which, he collected a few coins from us bystanders and swallowed a hunting spear in the same astonishing way. We watched him tilt his head backwards with the handle sticking out from his throat into the air; and presently, believe it or not, a beautiful boy began to wriggle up that handle with such slippery movements that you might have mistaken him for the royal serpent coiled on the roughly-trimmed olive club carried by the God of Medicine; he seemed to have neither bone nor sinew in his whole body."

Apuleius, The Golden Ass (2nd Century A.D.)

[translated by Robert Graves].

Heroes and Harvesters

“In the middle of the room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm-chair stood pushed back, were spread the remains of the Badger’s plain but ample supper. Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs. It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment.”

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908).

Big Consulting Practices like Jeeve's

“Jeeve’s reputation as a counsellor has long been established among the cognoscenti, and the first move of any of my little circle on discovering themselves in any form of soup is always to roll round and put the thing up to him. And when he’s got A out of a bad spot, A puts B on to him. And then, when he has fixed up B, B sends C along. And so on, if you get my drift, and so forth. That’s how these big consulting practices like Jeeve’s grow.”

P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves (1934).

The Unlearned Bishop

"He was chaste, but unlearned, for he understood not Latin and could scarce pronounce it. When therefore, at his consecration, he should have made his formal profession, he could not read it, though he had been instructed therein for many days beforehand; and having at last arrived, with many promptings from others, at the word 'Metropolitan,' which after many gasps he yet could not pronounce, at length he said in the French tongue 'let that be taken as read!' All the bystanders were amazed, mourning that such a man should be consecrated bishop. Another time, when he was conferring Holy Orders, and could not pronounce that phrase 'in aenigmate' [I Cor. xiii, 12], he said in French to those that stood by, 'By St. Louis, the man was a clown that wrote this word!'"

Robert de Graystanes, Chronicle (1336).