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'Abhinc' in Horace.

Horace, against time hallowing all things (Epistulae 2.1):

Scrīptŏr ăb|hīnc ān|nōs cēn|tūm quī | dēcĭdĭt, | īntēr
pērfēc|tōs vĕtĕ|rēsquĕ rĕ|fērrī | dēbĕt ăn | īntēr
vīlīs | ātquĕ nŏ|vōs? Ēx|clūdāt | jūrgĭă | fīnīs.

The author who passed away a hundred years ago—should he be placed among the perfect and the ancient, or among the cheap and the modern? Let some limit bar any debate.

He goes on to argue that any such limit is untenable: if a hundred years is set as the limit, what about someone who only has ninety-nine under his belt, or is only short by a month? What merit is in that month, or the month before it, or the one before that one? The limit is to be reviled as arbitrary if we hold firmly to it, and as a slippery slope if we don’t.

I could probably have rendered excludat iurgia finis better. He seems to be having the same boundary (finis) that separates the classic from the modern also acting as a fence blocking out the arguments on the matter.

[For abhinc.]

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  1. […] among the perfect and the ancient’ as opposed to ‘the cheap and the modern’, as I have a habit of mentioning Horace said?   I mean, you may think a thousand years is a long time, but that’s just peanuts compared […]

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