> I always liked this picture. [#2]
>
> http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-elvis-grammy-museum-pictures,0,3892519.photogallery
The King looks a lot like Antinous in this picture, tho' he doesn't have the ancient lad's big nose (why may perhaps give us some hint why Hadrian liked him so much).
Funny how some random image will trigger a whole cascade of idiosyncratic associations. Elvis. Antinous. Hadrian. Hadrian's famous iambic dimeters:
Animula vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nec (ut soles) dabis iocos?
Then Prudentius' iambic dimeters (belatedly seasonal):
Salvete, flores martyrum, Quos lucis ipso in limine Christi insecutor sustulit, Ceu turbo nascentes rosas. Vos prima Christi victima, Grex immolatorum tener, Aram sub ipsam simplices Palma et coronis luditis!
These are linked in my mind because I once tried to use them to get a roomful of catatonic undergraduates interested in the transition from quantitative to accentual- syllabic meter, a topic whose absorbing interest is surely felt -- keenly felt -- by every thinking being.
Is this an age thing, this Fibber McGee's closet of concatenated linkages? Every time you open the door, the whole shootin' match of intertangled ideas avalanches down on your hapless head.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com