aye, firstling, play up and play down

公司有重大危機，要想行銷，公關上就必須有所「揚」、有所「抑」……

Everyman's Library

Publius Vergilius Maro died in Brundisium, Roman Empire on this day in 19 BC (age 50).

"Hail, mighty firstling of the dead;
Hail and farewell for aye!"

"Salve aeternum mihi, maxime Palla,
Aeternumque vale."
--from Book XI, "Aeneid" (29–19 BC) by Virgil

In dramatic and narrative power, Virgil’s Aeneid is the equal of its great Homeric predecessors, The Iliad and The Odyssey. It surpasses them, however, in the intense sympathy it displays for its human actors–a sympathy that makes events such as Aeneas’s escape from Troy and search for a new homeland, the passion and the death of Dido, the defeat of Turnus, and the founding of Rome among the most memorable in literature. This celebrated translation by Robert Fitzgerald does full justice to the speed, clarity, and stately grandeur of the Roman Empire’s most magnificent literary work of art.

aye

 

 

 

adverb \ˈā\

Definition of AYE

:  always, continually, ever aye

 endure — W. S. Gilbert>

Variants of AYE

aye also ay \ˈā\

Definition of FIRSTLING

1

:  the first of a class or kind

2

:  the first offspring or result of something

play sth up (EMPHASIZE) phrasal verb [M]
to emphasize a particular quality or part of something, or make it seem more important than it really is, usually for your own advantage:
The official report plays up the likely benefits of the scheme, but glosses over the costs.


Microsoft Plays Up Family Appeal of Xbox

---
play sth down phrasal verb [M]
to make something seem less important or less bad than it really is:
Military spokespeople tried to play down the seriousness of the disaster.

(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 10 — As Microsoft executives played down the impact of an extensive repair program for defective Xbox 360 game machines, they announced several efforts to broaden the appeal of their machine to families.