Unit 731

You've all heard of Unit 731, the infamous death camp near Harbin, where the Japanese conducted torture and human experimentation of biological weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The victims were overwhelmingly Chinese civilians.

Watch this video, courtesy of a colleague.

Unit 731 was just the tip of the iceberg. Many other camps and labs were established. What happened there was even more gruesome and barbaric than Josef Mengele's "efforts" in Auschwitz.

The world has largely ignored the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, the only exception being the Rape of Nanjing. After World War II, the Americans "excused" the perpetrators involved, in order to learn from the Japanese experience and to lay the groundwork for their own insidious biological weapons programme. The soldiers, scientists and doctors in question were never brought to justice.

To this day, the Japanese textbooks continue to whitewash this chapter of their past.

Forgiveness, reconciliation and redress of wrongs are impossible if one does not face the truth...

Read the following:

"The Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731 

Shane Green 

The noise was like the sound when a board is struck. On the frozen fields at Ping Fang, in north-east China, chained prisoners were led out with bare arms, and subjected to a current of air to accelerate the freezing process. Then came the noise. With a short stick, the arms of the prisoners would be struck to make sure their limbs had indeed frozen.

In the gruesome world of Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, experiments with frostbite on human subjects became a favourite in a macabre litany of cruelty. Throughout the 1930s and '40s, until the end of World War II, the secret unit used Manchuria as a killing field. It was a case of science gone truly mad for the greater glory of the divine Emperor and Japan.

Apart from the frostbite experiments, prisoners were infected with diseases including anthrax, cholera and the bubonic plague. To gather data, human vivisections were performed. Whole villages and towns were infected with the plague and cholera.

In the end, at least 3000 prisoners, mainly Chinese, were killed directly, with a further 250,000 Chinese left to die through the biological warfare experiments.

It is called the Asian Auschwitz and, in terms of inhumanity and horror, it certainly warrants this description. Yet there remains a fundamental difference with the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews. While Germany has shown deep contrition and remorse, the leaders of the country that spawned the evil of Unit 731 still struggle to come to grips with what occurred.
This week in a Tokyo court, the world was again reminded of Japan's inability to deal with its march across Asia. In courtroom 103, three judges of the Tokyo District Court rejected a claim for an apology and compensation by 180 Chinese, either victims or the family of victims of Unit 731.

If there was anything positive out of the decision for the Chinese, it was that for the first time, a Japanese court had acknowledged that Unit 731 and other units had engaged in "cruel and inhumane" biological warfare in China, costing many lives.

But that was it. The judges claimed there was no legal basis for the plaintiffs' claim, as all compensation issues were settled by a treaty with China in 1972.

While it had an authoritative legal ring to it, there was a deep sense of injustice around the courtroom and among supporters waiting outside. How could a court acknowledge a crime had been committed, yet fail to do anything about it?

The Chinese are planning to appeal, but regardless of what may come out of that, one positive factor to emerge from this case has been that the international community - and, indeed, the Japanese themselves - has been reminded of one of the darkest hours of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Unit 731 was the creation of a brutal psychopath, Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro. His perverted imagination was captured by the possibilities of biological and chemical warfare, and in the Japan of the 1920s and '30s, he found supporters in the increasingly nationalistic and fanatical military.

Part of his fame came from the invention of a water filter that would be used by the Japanese military in the field. Yet even this innocuous invention had a connection with the grossness of Ishii's character. He once reportedly demonstrated the effectiveness of the filter to Emperor Hirohito by urinating through it, and offering the result to the Hirohito to drink. The Emperor declined, so Ishii drank it himself.

Water purification was also to have a link with the grisly activities of Unit 731. The official cover name for the unit was the Water Purification Bureau.

This latest court case, which began in 1997, has revealed much about the operations of the unit. One of the most harrowing testimonies has come from a former member of the unit, Yoshio Shinozuka, who has declared his remorse, and has vowed to tell the truth about the atrocities committed in China.

Shinozuka revealed in horrific detail what occurred at the unit headquarters in Ping Fang, just outside Harbin in northern China. The Chinese victims were known as "logs", and it was Shinozuka's job to scrub them down before the vivisection.

"I still remember clearly the first live autopsy I participated in," he recalled. "I knew the Chinese individual we dissected alive because I had taken his blood once before for testing. At the vivisection, I could not meet his eyes because of the hate he had in his glare at me."

The victim had been infected with the plague, and was totally black. Shinozuka was reluctant to use the brush on the man's face. "Watching me, the chief pathologist, with scalpel in hand, impatiently signalled me to hurry up," he recalled. "I closed my eyes and forced myself to scrub the man's face with the deck brush. The chief pathologist listened to the man's heartbeat with his stethoscope and then the procedure started."

The case before the Tokyo court also heard from the victims, and family of the victims, in villages and towns infected by the plague and cholera between 1940 and 1942.

Peize Xue was a young boy in Jiangshan when the Japanese infected the area with cholera. He recalled how his sister's three children had been struck down: "The three little ones died such tragic deaths. They were poisoned by the Japanese army," she sobbed. "Before Shuanglan (aged eight) passed away, she asked me, lying limply on her bed, to build a small casket for her."Sixty years on, these testimonies have a powerful and revelatory impact, in part because the activities of Unit 731 and related units remained forgotten until relatively recently. It was only in 1981 that international attention refocused on these awful events when an American journalist, John W. Powell junior, published A Hidden Chapter in History, alleging an American cover-up. Since then, academics and journalists have built an impressive case that details how Ishii and other key players received immunity from prosecution in return for supplying their research to American scientists.

In his authoritative Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45, and the American Cover-up, Sheldon Harris recounts that the matter was raised only once at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal in 1946-48.

An American counsel assisting the Chinese, David N. Sutton, stunned the war crimes tribunal by saying: "The enemy . . . took our countrymen as prisoners and used them for drug experiments. They would inject various types of toxic bacteria into their bodies, and then perform experiments on how they reacted . . . this was an act of barbarism by our enemy."

According to the book, the presiding chief judge, Australia's Sir William Webb, asked: "Are you trying to tell us about a poison liquid being administered? Are you trying to provide more evidence? This is a new fact that you have presented before we judges."

The writer Sheldon Harris says that after a brief pause, Webb said: "How about letting this item go?" Sutton replied: "Well, then, I'll leave it." The issue never surfaced again, Harris writes.

Would things have been different if Allied soldiers were involved? There have always been suspicions and allegations that this happened at Camp Mukden in China, where Allied prisoners - including Australians - were held. Yet Sheldon, in his extensive research that contains many examples of the unit's activities, such as the frostbite experiments, was unable to find "substantive evidence" of this.

The immunity granted to those in Unit 731 saw the doctors involved return to mainstream Japanese society. In 1989, the now-defunct Japanese magazine Days Japan revealed how those who had escaped prosecution had gone on to take some of the most prestigious positions in the Japanese medical community.

The man who succeeded Ishii Shiro as commander of Unit 731, Dr Masaji Kitano, became head of Japan's largest pharmaceutical company, the Green Cross. Others took up posts heading university medical schools, and also worked in the Japanese healthministry.

This may in part explain the difficulty in confronting and acknowledging the activities of Unit 731, let alone compensating the victims. It is perhaps important to also distinguish between the response of the Japanese Government and the Japanese people.

Waiting in the long line this week to get into the courtroom, Kazuyo Yamane struck up a conversation. She lectures in peace studies at Japan's Kochi University, and had come to hear the decision because of a deep personal interest.

Yamane and other like-minded Japanese travelled to China in 1998 to find out more about the activities of Unit 731. "Because we didn't have any means to know what really happened, we decided to go and try to know what really happened," she says.

They spoke to people who had lost family members because of the biological warfare experiments. "We felt really guilty as Japanese," she says. As a result, the group decided to support the Chinese in their action.

Yamane believes that the Japanese Government should apologise and compensate the victims of the "terrible damage" done during the war in Asia. "That's what we citizens think. But I think there is a huge gap between the citizens and the Japanese Government.

"I think maybe now Japan is getting nationalistic, and the right-wingers are getting stronger."

In the only official comment on the day of the decision, the Japanese Justice Ministry said the court's decision verified the validity of the Japanese Government's position in refusing compensation and an apology to the victims of Unit 731.

Shane Green is The Age's Tokyo correspondent.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/28/1030508070534.html"

X'mas

Merry Christmas!

Read this text by Herbert W. Armstrong: "The plain truth about Christmas". I do not agree with  the religious undertone therein, but the author does (en)lighten those who ignore the facts about 25 December.

Of course, as an atheist, X'mas is just another holiday that I enjoy. One does/should not need special occasions to spend quality time with one's family, to eat well, or to exchange gifts.

Chomsky on imperialism

Listen to Noam Chomsky deliver the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: "The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism", at Columbia University School for International Affairs (source is here).

The Ideal And The Real

An excellent appraisal of Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice:

The Ideal And The Real | The New Republic

Books to read

Top 10: books of the decade

Published 10 December 2009

Chosen by New Statesman staff

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

The definitive post-apocalyptic novel. An unspecified disaster has befallen America, and a father and son wander unconsoled and afraid through a blasted landscape. Charting the pair's peregrinations through this "cauterised terrain", McCarthy's prose achieves a pitch of poetic intensity and terrible beauty that few,
if any, of his contemporaries could dream of matching.

The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen (2009)

Sen's magisterial critique of the dominant mode of liberal political philosophy, which chases after the chimera of an ideally just society rather than identifying existing injustices, confirmed him as the English-speaking world's pre-eminent public intellectual. By 2009, leading politicians from all sides were falling over themselves to claim Sen as their own.

Austerlitz by W G Sebald (2001)

Austerlitz was Sebald's final book; he died in a car crash shortly after it was published. Like its critically lauded predecessors, it mixes fiction and memoir in order to cast light on the darkest hours of European history in the middle of the 20th century.

The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda's Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (2006)

The 11 September 2001 attacks may have shaped the world as we now know it, but al-Qaeda remains a mysterious and misunderstood organisation. Wright's meticulously researched account of the events leading up to the attacks shed light on Osama Bin Laden and his network of followers.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)

Didion has been one of America's sharpest essayists for many decades. In The Year of Magical Thinking, an account of the year that followed her husband's sudden death in 2003, she turns her skill as a writer to the most profoundly personal and traumatic events. The result is an unmatched study of grief.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Anticipating the public's hunger for books that explain the world with a catchy-sounding theory, The Tipping Point told us why certain ideas catch on, and others don't. The Tipping Point, like Gladwell's subsequent books, sold millions of copies and launched an entire new genre.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)

Written while Smith was still a literature student at Cambridge, White Teeth announced a major new talent. Drawing on her upbringing as a mixed-race child in north London, the novel captured a certain kind of confusion and longing at the heart of post-colonial Britain as it teetered on the edge of the 21st century.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2009)

Wilkinson and Pickett's study gave scientific weight to a long-held claim of the left: that people are happier and healthier when they live in societies where wealth is distributed more equally. But the book's influence stretches across party lines and its findings are likely to shape political debate for many years to come.

No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)

This was the work that turned Klein, a Canadian journalist, into the world's foremost critic of globalisation. An investigation into corporate branding, No Logo was a rallying call for activists across the world. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand radical politics - including its failures - during the past decade.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)

In the vein of Art Spiegelman's Holocaust tale Maus or Joe Sacco's Palestine, Satrapi's memoir was a comic book with literary weight. A global bestseller that was then turned into a film, the book struck a chord with western readers in particular, desperate for human stories behind their countries' antagonistic relationship with Iran.

Chomsky on human rights

An important lecture given recently by Noam Chomsky at the LSE: "Human Rights in the New Millennium".

The allure of math

When I was young(er[?]) and untamed by the ways of the (real) world, I used to read stuff like this as a hobby... Right-o, what fun!

Actually, I still love algebra, calculus, trigonometry and geometry, number theory, set theory, chaos theory... (But do dislike arithmetic!)
Alas, I have forgotten much!

Nonetheless, formulae, equations, conjectures, proofs and theorems still encapsulate in my mind the beauty of pure abstraction and the quest for the infinite in the finite realm of being and time...

The poetry of prime numbers

Double-click on the video to enlarge and to access the next parts of this interesting programme.

Ramanujan

Remember the great film Good Will Hunting (1997), about a math genius portrayed by Matt Damon? Recall the scene where Stellan Skarsgard speaks of Ramanujan to Robin Williams?

I am currently reading about this Tamil mathematician-Wunderkind in The Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt (Bloomsbury, 2009; file size: 874 KB; print length: 496 pages):

Below is a short bio on Ramanujan by K. Srinivasa Rao (source: www.imsc.res.in/~rao/ramanujan.html):

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"Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) hailed as an all-time great mathematician, like Euler, Gauss or Jacobi, for his natural genius, has left behind 4000 original theorems, despite his lack of formal education and a short life-span. In his formative years, after having failed in his F.A. (First examination in Arts) class at College, he ran from pillar to post in search of a benefactor. It is during this period, 1903-1914, he kept a record of the final results of his original research work in the form of entries in two large-sized Note Books. These were the ones which he showed to Dewan Bahadur Ramachandra Rao (Collector of Nellore), V. Ramaswamy Iyer (Founder of Indian Mathematical Society), R. Narayana Iyer (Treasurer of IMS and Manager, Madras Port Trust), and to several others to convince them of his abilities as a Mathematician. The orchestrated efforts of his admirers, culminated in the encouragement he received from Prof. G.H. Hardy of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose warm response to the historic letter of Ramanujan which contained about 100 theorems, resulted in inducing the Madras University, to its lasting credit, to rise to the occasion thrice - in offering him the first research scholarship of the University in May 1913 ; then in offering him a scholarship of 250 pounds a year for five years with 100 pounds for passage by ship and for initial outfit to go to England in 1914 ; and finally, by granting Ramanujan 250 pounds a year as an allowance for 5 years commencing from April 1919 soon after his triumphant return from Cambridge ``with a scientific standing and reputation such as no Indian has enjoyed before''.

Ramanujan was awarded in 1916 the B.A. Degree by research of the Cambridge University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in Feb. 1918 being a ``Research student in Mathematics Distinguished as a pure mathematician particularly for his investigations in elliptic functions and the theory of numbers'' and he was elected to a Trinity College Fellowship, in Oct. 1918 (- a prize fellowship worth 250 pounds a year for six years with no duties or condition, which he was not destined to avail of). The ``Collected Papers of Ramanujan'' was edited by Profs. G.H.Hardy, P.V. Seshu Aiyar and B.M. Wilson and first published by Cambridge University Press in 1927 (later by Chelsea, 1962 ; and by Narosa, 1987), seven years after his death. His `Lost' Notebook found in the estate of Prof. G.N. Watson in the spring of 1976 by Prof. George Andrews of Pennsylvania State University, and its facsimile edition was brought out by Narosa Publishing House in 1987, on the occasion of Ramanujan's birth centenary. His bust was commissioned by Professors R. Askey, S. Chandrasekhar, G.E. Andrews, Bruce C. Berndt (`the gang of four'!) and `more than one hundred mathematicians and scientists who contributed money for the bust' sculpted by Paul Granlund in 1984 and another was commissioned for the Ramanujan Institute of the University of Madras, by Mr. Masilamani in 1994. His original Note Books have been edited in a series of five volumes by Bruce C. Berndt (``Ramanujan Note Books'', Springer, Parts I to V, 1985 onwards), who devoted his attention to each and every one of the three to four thousand theorems. Robert Kanigel recently wrote a delightfully readable biography entitled : ``The Man who knew Infinity : a life of the Genius Ramanujan'' (Scribners 1991; Rupa & Co. 1993). Truly, the life of Ramanujan in the words of C.P. Snow: ``is an admirable story and one which showers credit on nearly everyone''.

During his five year stay in Cambridge, which unfortunately overlapped with the first World War years, he published 21 papers, five of which were in collaboration with Prof. G.H. Hardy and these as well as his earlier publications before he set sail to England are all contained in the ``Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan'', referred earlier. It is important to note that though Ramanujan took his ``Note Books'' with him he had no time to delve deep into them. The 600 formulae he jotted down on loose sheets of paper during the one year he was in India, after his meritorious stay at Cambridge, are the contents of the `Lost' Note Book found by Andrews in 1976. He was ailing throughout that one year after his return from England (March 1919 - April 26, 1920). The last and only letter he wrote to Hardy, from India, after his return, in Jan. 1920, four months before his demise, contained no news about his declining health but only information about his latest work : ``I discovered very interesting functions recently which I call `Mock' theta-functions. Unlike the `False' theta-functions (studied partially by Prof. Rogers in his interesting paper) they enter into mathematics as beautifully as ordinary theta-functions. I am sending you with this letter some examples ... ''. The following observation of Richard Askey is noteworthy: ``Try to imagine the quality of Ramanujan's mind, one which drove him to work unceasingly while deathly ill, and one great enough to grow deeper while his body became weaker. I stand in awe of his accomplishments; understanding is beyond me. We would admire any mathematician whose life's work was half of what Ramanujan found in the last year of his life while he was dying''.

As for his place in the world of Mathematics, we quote Bruce C Berndt: ``Paul Erdos has passed on to us Hardy's personal ratings of mathematicians. Suppose that we rate mathematicians on the basis of pure talent on a scale from 0 to 100, Hardy gave himself a score of 25, Littlewood 30, Hilbert 80 and Ramanujan 100''. G.H.Hardy, in 1923, edited Chapter XII of Ramanujan's second Notebook on Hypergeometric series which contained 47 main theorems, many of them followed by a number of corollaries and particular cases. This work had taken him so many weeks that he felt that if he were to edit the entire Notebooks ``it will take the whole of my lifetime. I cannot do my own work. This would not be proper.'' He urged Indian authorities and G.N.Watson and B.M. Wilson to edit the Notebooks. Watson and Wilson divided the task of editing the Notebooks - Chapters 2 to 13 were to be edited by Wilson and Chapters 14 to 21 by Watson. Unfortunately, the premature death of Wilson, in 1935, at the age of 38, aborted this effort. In 1957, with monetary assistance from Sir Dadabai Naoroji Trust, at the instance of Professors Homi J Bhabha and K. Chandrasekaran, the Tata institute of Fundamental Research published a facsimile edition of the Notebooks of Ramanujan in two volumes, with just an introductory para about them. The formidable task of truly editing the Notebooks was taken up in right earnest by Professor Bruce C. Berndt of the University of Illinois, in May 1977 and his dedicated efforts for nearly two decades has resulted in the Ramanujan's Notebooks published by Springer-Verlag in five Parts, the first of which appeared in 1985. The three original Ramanujan Notebooks are with the Library of the University of Madras, some of the correspondence, papers/letters on or about Ramanujan are with the National Archives at New Delhi and the Tamil Nadu Archives, and a large number of his letters and connected papers/correspondence and notes by Hardy, Watson, Wilson are with the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. ``Ramanujan : Letters and Commentary'', by Bruce C. Berndt and Robert A. Rankin (published jointly by the American Mathematical Society and London Math. Society, 1995) is a recent publication. The Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics of the University of Madras is situated at a short distance from the famed Marina Beach and is close to the Administrative Buildings of the University and its Library. The bust of Ramanujan made by Mr. Masilamani is housed in the Ramanujan Institute. In 1992, the Ramanujan Museum was started in the Avvai Kalai Kazhagam in Royapuram. Mrs. Janakiammal Ramanujan, the widow of Ramanujan, lived for several decades in Triplicane, close to the University's Marina Campus and died on April 13, 1994. A bust of Ramanujan, sculpted by Paul Granlund was presented to her and it is now with her adopted son Mr. W. Narayanan, living in Triplicane."

Joseph Needham

I have just finished reading (the Kindle edition of) The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins, 2008; file size: 1541 KB; print length: 336 pages), on the life and times of Joseph Needham (1900-1995):

"In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous" -- New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner" -- Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.

No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair.

He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations -- including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper -- often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people.

After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.

Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great -- related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers." (Source: go to link above)

Joseph Needham's project, the ongoing series Science and Civilization in China, comprises 27 (!) volumes to date. A stunning achievement!

MacFarquhar on China

Harvard's Roderick MacFarquhar is a worthy successor to Sinologist John King Fairbank, and quite on a par with Yale's Jonathan Spence.

"Roderick MacFarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His publications include The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, The Sino-Soviet Dispute, China under Mao; Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971; The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao; the final two volumes of the Cambridge History of China (edited with the late John Fairbank); The Politics of China 2nd Ed: The Eras of Mao and Deng; and a trilogy, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was the founding editor of “The China Quarterly", and has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. In previous personae, he has been a journalist, a TV commentator, and a Member of Parliament. His most recent, jointly-authored book on the Cultural Revolution entitled Mao's Last Revolution was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2006."

(Source: http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/roderick-macfarquhar) 

For a collection of audio and video lectures by MacFarquhar, come here. Below is a very interesting talk on Mao's legacy:

 

Catullus iterum

For a more modern rendering of the Latin text, I recommend The Poems of Catullus (London: Penguin, 1966, 256 pages), the book which brought me to that Roman lyrist.

The introduction and the translation, both by Peter Whigham, a self-educated classicist, are excellent.

Below is the cover of the latest Penguin reprint, from 2004, with a description by the publisher:

"One of the most versatile of Roman poets, Catullus wrote verse of an almost unparalleled diversity and stylistic agility, from the brevity of the epigram to the sustained elegance of the elegy. This collection contains all of Catullus' extant work and includes his lyrics to the notorious Clodia Metelli - married, seductive and corrupt - charting the course from rapturous delight in a new affair to the torment of love gone sour; poems to his young friend Iuventius; and longer verse, such as the extraordinary tale of Attis, a Greek youth who castrates himself in a fit of religious ecstasy. Ranging from the tender, moving and passionate to the vicious and even obscene, these are poems of astonishingly modern force and content."

Catullus

One of my favourite poets.
A sufferer from the time of the great Ancients.
Deeper than Propertius, more enjoyable than Ovid.

"Ars boni et aequi"

Maxim from the Roman jurist Ulpian (3rd century CE): 

Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi. Iuris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere.
(Digesto, 1.1.10)

My rough translation:

"Justice is the constant and perpetual will to give to each that which is one's rightful due. The rules of law are these: live honestly, do not do harm unto others; give to each one's due."

Beyond Good and Evil

From Nietzsche's captioned Meisterwerk:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. (Aphorism 146)

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. (Aphorism 153)