Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Charles Packard studied Latin at Bowdoin College and Harvard University. After an eight-year tenure teaching Latin, he wrote several English textbooks, grades 3-12. Moving to Maine in 1987, he resumed the teaching of Latin. His translations of Caesar, Horace, and Erasmus have appeared in "The Classical Journal" and The Classical Outlook."

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The Praise of Folly

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

I'm a Hit Even Before I Say a Word

Good evening! Though I'm rated low by mortals (even fools), one basic fact remains intact wherever candor rules. The fact? It's I, just me, with my array of goddess arts, who floods with glee and ecstasy divine and human hearts. A case in point: You rocked the joint when I was introduced. Your scowling skins gave way to grins while wild applause was loosed. You quickly took a carefree look, like gods in Homer's lines, who always had the sense to add nepenthe to their wines. Yet, just before I took the floor, you seemed so inharmonious, I would have said you'd lately fled the cavern of Trophonius [The chance is slim you've heard of him: an oracle so doomy that all who went to hear him vent would exit feeling gloomy.] As sure as sun's arising stuns the daylights out of dark and spring's arrival spreads revival over stations stark, my coming here, and just my mere appearance, was enough to cancel out your prior pout and cause your cares to slough. Most speakers need, of course, to plead for hours to ease your cares. I chased your frown while walking down the aisle and up the stairs.

Let Me Explain Why I'm Here Tonight

You'll never guess why I would dress in this, a scholar's robe, when-look!-my cap's got double flaps with bells on either lobe. To learn, attend with ears that bend obliquely from your head: yes, not as you would listen to a bishop, but instead the way you turn your head to learn what hucksters have to say or cup an ear to better hear the comics in a play, as Midas heeded, rapt, the reeded ditties Pan was doing- a choice Apollo couldn't swallow (ass's ears ensuing). Here goes! I chose these clashing clothes to dramatize my mission: tonight I'll ape, right down to drape, your classic rhetorician. But I'll avoid the tricks employed by those who, paid to teach, imbue in boys a trifler's ploys and stubbornness of speech. I'd rather snag the sophist tag. The ancients, skilled in slants, by far preferred that softer word to Sophus ("Smarty-Pants"). The Sophists, at a dropping hat, declaimed about the fame of gods and men in favor then. Tonight I'll do the same. But though I'm bent, with like intent, to locomote a cheer, it's not to please a Hercules nor soothe a Solon's ear. Instead I stir to hymn a her, a most deserving she, who's earned a lyric panegyric: yes-you guessed it-me!

There's Nothing Wrong with Promoting Myself

Although I blow fortissimo, a trumpet of my own, it's not the stuff of ego-puff "The Wise" would have it known. How dumb to score some stranger more equipped to do the task! Who better than myself to scan my pros (and cons), I ask? How sad when men are paid to pen a bunch of bull-a flow of purchased lies-to eulogize some dolt they scarcely know. The "subject," dazed from being raised to godly heights and more, believes, almost, he's earned the toast he paid the poet for. These "poets," as they jot their jazz to kite a man's credentials, create a type of shameless hype the same in its essentials as painting red a raven's head or turning out the terms to give a gnat a larger hat, perhaps a pachyderm's. But me? You'll find my case the kind that fits the proverb's wrapping: "There's ample cause for self-applause if no one else is clapping." To that I'll add how shamed and sad I am to have to say that not a soul has praised my role despite my rsum. Yet, just this year, I've had to hear debaters making pleas for tyrants (two), for baldness, flu, and-worst of all-for fleas! Ungratefulness, or sloth, I guess, is why you've failed to fame me, so I'll proceed to fill the need for someone to declaim me.

This Will Be an Informal Speech

It's my caprice to speak my piece completely off the cuff, with not a whit of "form" to it, nor any stilted stuff, but so uncanned and out-of-hand you'll know it can't be true. I picked its parts to show my smarts, as common speakers do. You know the type. The scoundrels swipe some thoughts they'd read before, then sweat to craft a "working...