Orations and Letters

OF HIERONYMUS WOLF

For more than ten years (when all my efforts seemed not only to be in vain and empty, but even, by some evil fate, to turn out quite the opposite) I have been struggling. I recall this with such bitterness of pain that I often used to sing that phrase of Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), the Roman orator whom Renaissance humanists like Wolf took as their primary model for Latin style and philosophy. to myself then, and even now I sometimes whisper it: "Lo, the place that seemed most full of rest and tranquility has produced the greatest troubles and most turbulent storms." original: "En qui locus quietis & trãquillitatis plenissimus fore videbatur, in eo maximæ molestiarum & turbulentissimæ tempestates extiterũt." Why should we not
Andromache: "Whatever need a person happens to have, that is to everyone a matter greater than the taking of Troy." original: "Ἀνδρομάχη δ' αἵ- τ' ἰδ' ὅπου τις τυγχά- νει χρείαν ἔχων· πάντ' ἐσ' ἑκάστῳ μεῖζον ἢ Τροίας ἑ- λῶν." A quote from Euripides' tragedy Andromache.

transfer that tragic grandiloquence to this comedy of ours? Since the magnitude of things is estimated not so much by their own nature as by the opinions and feelings of men. Euripides' Menelaus A character in the plays of the Greek dramatist Euripides; Wolf is citing his dramatic language to describe his own stress. certainly affirms that what each person lacks is greater than the storming of Troy; and Epictetus A Stoic philosopher (c. 50–135 CE) who taught that one should focus only on what is within their own control. denies that anything in human affairs is great, except for a mind content with its lot, and thinking about divine and human things just as right reason requires. But other things, which are commonly considered most grand, he so diminishes and thinks of as nothing, that he does not hesitate to compare a most fortified citadel to a stork's nest, a most crowded city to a heap of ants, and the slaughter and defeat of an army to the butchery of sheep and the sacrifice of bulls. So Homer is accustomed to compare the conflicts of the Greeks and Trojans to swarms of bees and flies: in which those heroes—Achilles, Ajax, Diomedes, Hector, Aeneas, and the like—what will they be but certain wasps or hornets, somewhat larger and sharper than the rest?

It is also commonly celebrated that: "Everyone's goods and evils are as great as the mind of the one who bears them." But I—who had not reached such great contempt for human affairs and such great admiration for divine ones, and perhaps, because of the thinness of my talent and the weakness of my mind, will never attain them in this life—and having a mind equal to my fortune and condition, that is, small and humble: I judged it a great evil that those things which I had established with the best zeal and (as it seemed to me) not unwise counsel, by the decision and authority of the leading men of this city, were interpreted by most in the worst way and lacked all success. I also grieved over both the small number and the ignorance of the students, the chief cause of which was the necessity—hitherto unavoidable—of premature promotion original: "intempestiuæ... translationis." Wolf complains that students were being moved from lower to higher classes before they had mastered the basics, a perennial frustration for educators. from the lower to the higher classes. "Aha!" (I said), "is it so, that you have consumed your whole life (as far as fortune and health allowed) in all the best writers, both Greek and Latin, and in almost every variety of learning, only so that you must perpetually babble among boys, nor can any progress beyond the first elements of grammar be hoped for? O ill-placed labor! O nights spent watching in vain! O empty study! O unhappy you, both in your work and in the rewards of your labors!" For I measure rewards not so much by money as by the frequency, piety, modesty, and erudition of the students, and those to whom...