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June 13th.: And now I am bidden to tell of the Lesser Quinquatrus. Now
favour my undertaking, thou yellow-haired Minerva. "Why does the
flute-player march at large through the whole city? What mean the
masks? What means the long gown?" So did I speak, and thus did
Tritonia [Athena], answer me, when she had laid aside her spear –
would that I could report the very words of the learned goddess! "In
the times of your ancestors of yore, the tibicen [pipe-player] was
much employed and was always held in great honour. The tibia [pipe]
played in temples, it played at games, it played at mournful funerals.
The labour was sweetened by its reward; but a time followed which of a
sudden broke the practice of the pleasing art … The tibicines
went
into exile from the city and retired to Tibur. Plautius, then devised
a plan for their return. In order to deceive the Senate as to their
persons and their numbers, Plautius [Censor, 312 BCE] commanded that
their faces should be covered with masks; and he mingled others with
them and ordered them to wear long garments, to the end that women tibicines
might be added to the band. In that way the return of the exiles
could be best concealed … The plan was approved, and now they are
allowed to wear their new garb on the Ides and to sing merry words
to the old tunes." |
King Ludwig II of
Bavaria and Neuschwanstein |
Consider every day that you are then for the first time--as it were--beginning; and always act with the same fervour as on the first day you began.
St Anthony of Padua, who died on June 13, 1231, aged 36
I see my God. He calls me to him.
Last words of St Anthony of Padua
Antonio tienes por nombre
Lovato por mas grandessa
Que te conoscan por povre
Pero con delicadesa
(Anthony, you are called
"Wolf-cub" by way of compliment,
So people will know that though you are poor,
Yet you merit respect.)
Sung at naming ceremonies, St Anthony's Day, New Mexico, USA
Now I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.
Fanny Burney, born on June 13, 1752; Evelina, Letter 59
Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
Fanny Burney; Mr Meadows, in Cecilia, bk 4, ch. 2, 1782
… Imagination took the reins, and Reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.
Fanny Burney; Letter 67, Evelina, 1778
Far from having taken any positive step, I have not yet even formed any resolution.
Fanny Burney; Camilla, Bk 1, Ch. 13, 1796
But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment …
Fanny Burney; Cecilia, Bk IV, Ch. 11, 1782
… seldom risk their lives where an escape is without hope of recompense.
Fanny Burney; Cecilia, Bk II, Ch. 6, 1782
I am quite charmed with it.
Queen Victoria, writing after the first train ride by a British monarch, 1842
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.
William Butler Yeats, born on June 13, 1865; 'Essay'
And what rough beast its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats; 'The Second Coming'
I have spread my dreams under you feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats; 'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven'
As I grow older and older,
And totter towards the tomb,
I find I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.
Dorothy L Sayers, born on June 13, 1893; 'That's Why I Never Read Modern
Novels'
A general election recently took place in Australia. The Labour Party, which had a majority in the Lower
House – 44 seats out of 75 – was defeated. It now has only 36 seats out of 75. The majority has passed to the Liberals, but this majority is a very unstable one, because 30 of the 36 seats in the Upper House are held by Labour.
What sort of peculiar capitalist country is this, in which the workers' representatives, predominate in the Upper house and, till recently, did so in the Lower House as well, and yet the capitalist system is in no danger?
An English correspondent of the German labour press recently explained the situation, which is very often misrepresented by bourgeois writers.
The Australian Labour Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really Conservatives.
This strange and incorrect use of terms in naming par ties is not unique. In America, for example, the slave-owners of yesterday are called Democrats, and in France, enemies of socialism, petty bourgeois, are called Radical Socialists! In order to understand the real significance of parties, one must examine not their signboards but their class character and the historical conditions of each individual country.
Australia is a young British colony. Capitalism in Australia is still quite youthful. The country is only just taking shape as an independent state. The workers are for the most part emigrants from Britain. They left the country at the time when the liberal-labour policy held almost undivided sway there, when the masses of the British workers were Liberals. Even now the majority of the skilled factory workers in Britain are Liberals or semi-Liberals. This is the results of the exceptionally favourable, monopolist position enjoyed by Britain in the second half of the last century. Only now are the masses of the workers in Britain turning (but turning slowly) towards socialism.
And while in Britain the so-called Labour Party is an alliance between the non-socialist trade unions and the extremely opportunist Independent Labour Party, in Australia the Labour Party is the unalloyed representative of the non-socialist workers' trade unions.
VI Lenin on
the Australian
Labor Party; Pravda No. 134,
June 13, 1913
June
13 is
the 164th
day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (165th
in leap years),
with 201
days remaining.
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Natalis Musarum (Nativity of the Muses), ancient Greece
Greek mythology: Hesiod (Theogony, 53) tells us that the Muses are nine daughters of Mnemosyne (Memory; Greek Mνημοσυνη, pronounced ni-mo-zi-ne in four syllables, and not to rhyme with 'sign'), wife of Zeus. Their names and attributes are: Calliope (she of the fair voice), epic song and epic poetry; Clio (she that extols), history; Euterpe (she that gladdens), music and lyric song; Thalia (she that flourishes), comedy; Melpomene (she that sings), tragedy; Terpsichore (she that rejoices in the, dance), dancing; Erato (the lovely one), erotic poetry; Polymnia or Polyhymnia (she that is rich in hymns); Urania (the heavenly), astronomy.
Quinquatrus Minusculae (Lesser Quinquatrus) of the goddess Minerva, Roman Empire, kalends of June (Jun 13 - 15)
Known as
the Quinquatrus Minusculae or Quinquatrus Minores (Ovid,
Fasti,
VI.
651),
this minor festival was celebrated on the Ides of June and was a smaller
version of the Quinquatria
(March 19 - 23).
The tibicines
went through the city in procession to the temple of Jupiter's
daughter, Minerva,
goddess of thoughts, wisdom and war. In her temple on the Capitoline Hill
she was worshipped together with Jupiter and Juno, the three of them
a powerful divine triad/trinity.
The tibicines (singular
form tibicen) or tibia players
constituted one of the oldest professional music organizations in Rome and
the musicians of the state religion. The tibia, or bone pipe, was a wind
instrument with three to four holes, made from bone and with a reed
mouthpiece. It eventually evolved into a double pipe of silver, ivory, or
boxwood and may be considered the prototype of the clarinet and oboe. It was Minerva who invented these pipes.
The tibicines celebrated their own annual festival on the day of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
Named for the
tibicen piper of Rome:
Gymnorhina tibicen Australian magpie
Tibicen flammatus (a
Japanese cicada)
Feast day of Epona, Celtic
horse goddess
Epona ('mare goddess', known also as Edain) had two main celebrations: June 13 and the Festival of Epona on December 18. The latter was a Roman commemoration, the only major one in which the Romans honoured a Celtic deity. When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in the Gallic Wars (58 BCE - 49 BCE), he allowed the Gauls to retain their religion and did not discourage the Roman religion from adopting and adapting Gallic mythology to its own purposes. His cavalry adopted Epona, giving her the name Bubona, and worshipping her as the goddess of horses and cattle.
The horse was vitally important in the Celtic/Gallic world. The great chieftain of the Arverni, Vercingetorix (72 BCE - 46 BCE), who led the great Gallic revolt against the Romans in 53 - 52 BCE, in his last stand against the Roman army, sent the horses behind the lines and his army faced the Romans on foot rather than risk the slaughter of the beasts.
Lucius Apuleius (c. 124 CE - c. 180) in his Latin novel Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass, mentions Epona and provides some insight into her cultus.
In Celtic mythology, too, she was the goddess of horses and cattle, and moreover of donkeys, mules, oxen, springs and rivers. She was also a psychopomp, accompanying souls to the land of the dead. Possibly more inscriptions, statues, and shrines dedicated to this goddess have been found than those dedicated to any other Celtic deity. Throughout the Roman Empire, her statues can be found alongside other Roman gods and goddesses. She is often shown riding a horse (frequently side-saddle, or lying on the horse's back), seated with horses around her or else with foals eating out of her lap...
Read on at the Epona page at the Scriptorium
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Feast day of St 
They paid for a
sculpture of a kneeling ass to be put in the church at Padua.
