Hi ,

My contribution was purposely limited to the philological controversy.  
But Manfred is perfectly right : this is not just a matter of  
quotation tradition, it affects the way  we behave, when we want to  
follow the respective «prescriptions»: «bene» prescribes «fairness»,  
«bonum» «panegyric».
But here again I prefer a harmonizing solution, which leads us even  
farther away from the main objective of the Nisus Forum. If we  
remember the parabole of the "black birds and the white birds"  
ingeniously devised by Tierno Bokar Salif Tal, the African Sufi sage  
of Bandiagara (Mali, 1875-1939), a well of Love and Charity --  
therefore called by many the «African Franz of Assisi", and put on  
stage by Peter Brook in 2004 as an hommage to him -- both readings,  
«bene» and «bonum»,  are white birds.  Both are spiritually  
beneficient for the sender (e.g. the Mac community) and the adressee  
(Steve Jobs, a fellow creature who  lived and died, and -- among many  
other things - did much for this community) . The cynic may stick to  
his cynicism, but the good news is: there is no way for him or her to  
escape the unfathomable law of Love.

This said, I apologize to all those who might be irritated by the  
admonishing tone of this intervention. Many points of view have been  
expressed on this issue. This one is just one of them.

Farid.



Zitat von Manfred Kropp <[log in to unmask]>:

> Thanks Farid! The two different traditions have become clear; a  
> further discussion of the Greek should be left to another moment.
> On the other hand: the practical question is: what does one accept  
> as a general rule for behaviour and acting; because it is not only a  
> question of two different traditions. If one keeps to one of the  
> respective rules practical consequences can be very different. If  
> that has become clear, the learned discussion - and my thanks to all  
> who took their time to contribute - has got a good result.
> msk
>
>
>> What we have here might just be two different quoting traditions:  
>> one Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American (see the Dictionary of foreign  
>> Terms by O. Sylvester Mawson (ed. of Roget's International  
>> Thesaurus,Pocket Edition, Bantam, 1961, p. 94) favorising «bonum»  
>> (see also the English Wikipedia); the other, German (see.  
>> Büchmann's famous "Gefügelte Worte", 34th ed., Frankfurt... 1981,  
>> 249b), favorising «bene» (see also the German Wikipedia). This  
>> divergence is perhaps due to two different translations, because  
>> the Latin is NOT the semantically faithful translation of the  
>> Greek, but rather a modulation of it. According to Büchmann's  
>> "Gefügelte Worte", the Greek original is «Tòn tethnekóta mè  
>> kakologein» «Man soll von einem Toten nichts Schlechtes reden» [one  
>> should say nothing bad of a dead]; the Latin translation turned  
>> «nothing bad» into «only good». But there are still other more  
>> divergent variants of this sentence quoted by Buechmann.
>>
>> So it seems that everybody may be happy with his version, for  
>> everybody is right within his own tradition.
>>
>> German-speaking may be interested in the following article:
>> http://www.onlinezeitung24.de/article/3545
>>
>> Farid.
>>
>>
>> Zitat von Rich Hansen <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>>> On Oct 7, 2011, at 12:27 AM, Manfred Kropp wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The "bonum" is a miscitation (cf. the not trustworthy  
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_bonum)
>>>> or deliberate alteration of
>>>> "de mortuis nil nisi bene".
>>>> Deliberate?: yes, because it changes the imperative from "being  
>>>> just and fair" in "to be a panegyric" (perhaps more fashionable  
>>>> and accepted in our times).
>>>> msk
>>>
>>> Well as the translation is from the Renaissance, at least  
>>> according to Wikipedia and not from Classical times almost  
>>> anything is possible. Also, although this certainly doesn't prove  
>>> much one way or the other, a Google search on both phrases has  
>>> bonum outnumbering bene by a good margin.
>>>
>>> While there is nothing written (and may never have been) from  
>>> Chiron himself we DO have the source in a way in "Lives of the  
>>> Emminent Philosophers" by Diogenes and I guess someone more mobile  
>>> than I could hie themselves to the Library and look in the Loeb  
>>> Library translation because what passes (after some 2500 years who  
>>> knows for sure) for the original Greek is there in his discussion  
>>> of Chiron. Not to mention searching Google books. I leave this to  
>>> someone whose Greek is bound to be better than mine.
>>>
>>> rich
>>> --
>>> Rich Hansen
>>> [log in to unmask] // [log in to unmask]
>