Greek Anthology Books 10-12

ToposText · Greek Anthology · 828 sections

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§ 11.74 NICARCHUS Turn out that stone-deaf old woman, Onesimus, for God's sake, she is such a nuisance to me. If we tell her to bring soft cheeses (tyroi), she comes not with cheeses, but with fresh grains of wheat (pyroi). The other day I had a headache and asked her for rue (peganon) and she brought me an earthenware frying-pan (teganon); if I ask her for she brings me a rafter; if I say when I am hungry, “Give me some greens ” (lachanon), she at once brings a nightstool (lasanon). If I ask for vinegar (oxy), she brings me a bow (toxon), and if I ask for a bow, she brings vinegar; in fact she does not comprehend a word I say. It would disgrace me to become a crier all for the sake of the old woman, and to get up at night and practise outside the town.
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§ 11.75 On Prizefighters (75-81) LUCILIUS This Olympicus who is now such as you see him, Augustus, once had a nose, a chin, a forehead, ears and eyelids. Then becoming a professional boxer he lost all, not even getting his share of his father's inheritance; for his brother presented a likeness of him he had and he was pronounced to be a stranger, as he bore no resemblance to it.
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§ 11.76 LUCILIUS Having such a mug, Olympicus, go not to a fountain nor look into any transparent water, for you, like Narcissus, seeing your face clearly, will die, hating yourself to the death.
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§ 11.77 LUCILIUS When Ulysses after twenty years came safe to his home, Argos the dog recognised his appearance when he saw him, but you, Stratophon, after boxing for four hours, have become not only unrecognisable to dogs but to the city. If you will trouble to look at your face in a glass, you will say on your oath, “I am not Stratophon.”
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§ 11.78 LUCILIUS Your head, Apollophanes, has become a sieve, or the lower edge of a worm-eaten book, all exactly like ant-holes, crooked and straight, or musical notes Lydian and Phrygian. But go on boxing without fear; for even if you are struck on the head you will have the marks you have — you can't have more.
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§ 11.79 LUCILIUS Cleombrotus ceased to be a pugilist, but afterwards married and now has at home all the blows of the Isthmian and Nemean games, a pugnacious old woman hitting as hard as in the Olympian fights, and he dreads his own house more than he ever dreaded the ring. Whenever he gets his wind, he is beaten with all the strokes known in every match to make him pay her his debt; and if he pays it, he is beaten again.
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§ 11.80 LUCILIUS His competitors set up here the statue of Apis the boxer, for he never hurt anyone.
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§ 11.81 LUCILIUS I, Androleos, took part in every boxing contest that the Greeks preside over, every single one. At Pisa I saved one ear, and in Plataea one eyelid, but at Delphi I was carried out insensible. Damoteles, my father, and my fellow-townsmen had been summoned by herald to bear me out of the stadion either dead or mutilated. On Runners (82-86)
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§ 11.82 NICARCHUS Charmus in Arcadia in the long race with five others came in (wonderful to say, but it is a fact) seventh. “As there were six,” you will probably say, “how seventh? ” A friend of his came in his overcoat calling out “Go it, Charmus,” so that thus he ran in seventh and if he had had five more friends, Zoilus, he would have come in twelfth.
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§ 11.83 LUCILIUS Of late the great earth made everything quake, but only the runner Erasistratus it did not move from his place.
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§ 11.84 LUCILIUS None among the competitors was thrown quicker than myself and none ran the race slower. With the quoit I never came near the rest, I never was able to lift my legs for a jump and a cripple could throw the javelin better than I, I am the first who out of the five events was proclaimed beaten in all five.
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§ 11.85 LUCILIUS Marcus once running in armour went on until it was midnight, so that the course was closed on all sides; for the public servants all thought that he was one of the honorary stone statues of men in armour set up there. What happened? Why next year they opened, and Marcus came in, but a whole stadion behind.
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§ 11.86 Anonymous No one knows if Pericles ran or sat in the stadion race. Marvellous slowness! “The noise of the barrier's fall was in our ears” and another was receiving the crown and Pericles had not advanced an inch.
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§ 11.87 Chiefly on Defects of Stature (87-111) LUCILIUS The house five fathoms long had room for tall Timomachus if he always lay on the floor; but if he ever wanted to stand, his slaves had to bore a hole in the roof in the morning five feet by five.
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§ 11.88 LUCILIUS A gnat carried off little Erotion as she was playing. “What is going to happen to me?” she said, “Dost thou want me, father Zeus?”
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§ 11.89 LUCILIUS Short Hermogenes when he lets anything fall on the ground pulls it down with a halbert.
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§ 11.90 LUCILIUS Do you know, Dionysius, that little Marcus, being angry with his father, set on end a probe and hanged himself on it.
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§ 11.91 LUCILIUS Thin Stratonicus fixed on a reed a spike of corn and attaching himself to it by a hair hanged himself. And what happened? He was not heavy enough to hang down, but his dead body flies in the air above his gallows, although there is no wind.
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§ 11.92 LUCILIUS Lean Gaius, when he breathed his last yesterday, left absolutely nothing to be carried to the grave, and finally going down to Hades just as he was when alive flutters there the thinnest of the skeletons under earth. His kinsmen bore on their shoulders his empty bier, writing above it “This is the funeral of Gaius.”
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§ 11.93 LUCILIUS Lean Marcus once made a hole with his head in one of Epicurus' atoms and went through the middle of it.
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§ 11.94 LUCILIUS Lean Marcus sounding a trumpet just blew into it and went straight headforemost down it.
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§ 11.95 LUCILIUS A small mouse finding little Macron asleep one summer's day dragged him into its hole by his foot. But he in the hole, though unarmed, strangled the mouse and said, “Father Zeus, thou hast a second Heracles.”
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§ 11.96 NICARCHUS The birds of Stymphalus vexed not so the Arcadians, as those dead thrushes vexed me with their dry bones, very harpies, ten of them, a dry drachma's-worth. Out on you, wretched creatures, true bats of the fields.
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§ 11.97 AMMIANUS Build another city for the man from Stratonicea, or build another for the inhabitants of this one.
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§ 11.98 AMMIANUS Let a city first be a metropolis and then be called so, but not now when it is not even a city.
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§ 11.99 LUCILIUS As thin little Proclus was blowing the fire the smoke took him up and went off with him from here through the window. With difficulty he swum to a cloud and came down through it wounded in a thousand places by the atomies.
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§ 11.100 LUCILIUS Gaius was so very light that he used to dive with a stone or lead hung from his foot.
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§ 11.101 LUCILIUS Demetrius, fanning slight little Artemidora in her sleep, fanned her off the roof.2
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§ 11.102 AMMIANUS or NICARCHUS Thin little Diodorus once in taking a thorn out made a hole in the needle with his foot.
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§ 11.103 LUCILIUS Epicurus wrote that all the world consisted of atoms thinking, Alcimus, that an atom was the most minute thing. But if Diophantus had existed then he would have written that it consisted of Diophantus, who is much more minute than the atoms. Or he would have written that other things were composed of atoms, but the atoms themselves, Alcimus, of Diophantus.
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§ 11.104 LUCILIUS Poor Menestratus once, riding on an ant as if it were an elephant, was suddenly stretched on his back. When it trod on him and he was breathing his last, “O Envy!” he exclaimed, “thus riding perished Phaethon too.”
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§ 11.105 LUCILIUS I was looking for great Eumecius, and he was asleep with his arms stretched out under a small saucer.
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§ 11.106 LUCILIUS Chaeremon caught by a slight breeze was floating in the air, much lighter than a straw. He would soon have been swept away through the air, if he had not caught his feet in a spider's web and hung there on his back. Here he hung for five days and nights and on the sixth day came down by a thread of the web.
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§ 11.107 LUCILIUS Chaeremon fell flat on his back, struck by a poplar leaf carried by the wind, and he lies on the ground like Tityus or rather like a caterpillar, stretching on the ground his skeleton body.
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§ 11.108 Anonymous {By some attributed to Julian the Apostate) Conon is two cubits tall, his wife four. In bed, then, with their feet on a level, reckon where Conon's face is.
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§ 11.109 Anonymous Little Demetrius has not wherewith to stoop, but always lies flat on the ground trying to get up.
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§ 11.110 NICARCHUS Three thin men were competing the other day about thinness, to see which of them would be adjudged the very thinnest. The one, Hermon, exhibited great skill and went through the eye of a needle holding the thread. But Demas coming out of a hole stopped at a spider's web, and the spider spinning hung him from it. But Sosipater exclaimed, “Give me the prize, for I lose it if I am seen, since I am nothing but air.”
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§ 11.111 NICARCHUS Lean Diophantus once wishing to hang himself took a thread from a spider's web and did so.
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§ 11.112 On Physicians (112-126) NICHARCHUS Before he anoints your eyes, Demostratus, say “Adieu dear light” so successful is Dion. Not only did he blind Olympicus, but through his treatment of him put out the eyes of the portrait of himself he had.
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§ 11.113 By the same The physician Marcus laid his hand yesterday on the stone Zeus, and though he is of stone and Zeus he is to be buried today.
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§ 11.114 By the same The astrologer Diophantus told Hermogenes the doctor that he had only nine months to live, and he, smiling, said, “You understand what Saturn says will happen in nine months, but my treatment is more expeditious for you.” Having said so he reached out his hand and only touched him, and Diophantus, trying to drive another to despair, himself gave his last gasp.
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§ 11.115 By the same If you have an enemy, Dionysius, call not down on him the curse of Isis or Harpocrates or of any god who blinds men, but call on Simon and you will see what a god's power is and what Simon's is.
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§ 11.116 By the same Lord Caesar, as they tell, Eurystheus once sent down great Heracles to the house of Hades; but now Menophanes the physician has sent me. So let him be called Doctor Eurystheus and no longer Doctor Menophanes.
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§ 11.117 STRATO The physician Capito anointed Chryses' eyes then when he could see a high tower from a mile off and a man from a furlong and a quail from ten yards and a louse even from a foot. Now from a furlong he cannot see the town and from two hundred feet cannot see that the lighthouse is alight; he scarcely sees a horse from half a foot off; and as for the quail he once saw, he can't even see a large ostrich. If he manages to give him another dose, he won't ever after be able to see even an elephant standing close to him.
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§ 11.118 CALLICTER Phidon did not purge me with a clyster or even feel me, but feeling feverish I remembered his name and died.
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§ 11.119 CALLICTER Whether the doctor purged or strangled the old woman no one knows, but it was terribly sudden. The noise of the clyster was in our ears and her bier was being crowned and the rest prepared the pease-pudding.
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§ 11.120 CALLICTER Socres, promising to set Diodorus' crooked back straight, piled three solid stones, each four feet square, on the hunchback's spine. He was crushed and died, but he has become straighter than a ruler.
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§ 11.121 CALLICTER Agelaus by operating killed Acestorides, for he said, “If he had lived the poor fellow would have been lame.”
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§ 11.122 CALLICTER Alexis the physician purged by a clyster five patients at one time and five others by drugs; he visited five, and again he rubbed five with ointment. And for all there was one night, one medicine, one coffin-maker, one tomb, one Hades, one lamentation.
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§ 11.123 HEDYLUS Agis neither purged Aristagoras, nor touched him, but no sooner had he come in than Aristagoras was gone. What aconite has such natural virtue? Ye coffin-makers, throw chaplets and garlands on Agis.
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§ 11.124 NICARCHUS A. Stranger, what dost thou seek to know. B. Who are here in earth under these tombs? A. All those whom Zopyrus robbed of the sweet daylight, Damis, Aristoteles, Demetrius Arcesilaus, Sostratus, and the next ones so far as Paraetonium. For with a wooden herald's staff and counterfeit sandals, like Hermes, he leads down his patients to Hell.
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§ 11.125 Anonymous The physician Crateas and the sexton Damon made a joint conspiracy. Damon sent the wrappings he stole from the grave-clothes to his dear Crateas to use as bandages and Crateas in return sent him all his patients to bury.
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§ 11.126 Anonymous Charinus anointed my eye not with a spatula, but with a three-pronged fork, and he had a new sponge like those used for paintings. In pulling out the spatula he tore out my eye from the roots and the whole spatula remained inside. But if he anoints me twice, I shall not trouble him any more by suffering from sore eyes; for how can a man who no longer has eyes do so?
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§ 11.127 On Poets (127-137) POLLIANUS There are among the Muses too Avengers, who make you a poet, and therefore you write much and without judgment. Now, I entreat you, write still more, for no greater madness can I beseech the gods to give you than that.
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§ 11.128 By the same If I am not pleased, Florus, may I become a dactyl or a foot, one of those that you torture. Yes, I swear by the happy lot you drew in the contest, I am as pleased at your crown as if it were a joint of pork. Therefore be of good heart, Florus, and become cheerful again; in this fashion you can win the long race as well.
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§ 11.129 CEREALIUS A poet coming to the Isthmian games to the contest, when he found other poets there said he had paristhmia (mumps). He is going to start off for the Pythian games, and if he finds poets there again he can't say he has parapythia as well.
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§ 11.130 POLLIANUS I hate these cyclic poets who say “natheless eftsoon,” filchers of the verses of others, and so I pay more attention to elegies, for there is nothing I want to steal from Callimachus or Parthenius. Let me become like an “eared beast ” if ever I write “from the rivers sallow celandine.” But these epic poets strip Homer so shamelessly that they already write “Sing, O Goddess, the wrath.” "
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§ 11.131 LUCILIUS Not water in Deucalion's day when all became water, nor Phaethon who burned up the inhabitants of the earth, slew so many men as Potamon the poet and Hermogenes by his surgery killed. So from the beginning of the ages there have been these four curses, Deucalion, Phaethon, Hermogenes and Potamon.
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§ 11.132 LUCILIUS I hate, Lord Caesar, those who are never pleased with any young writer, even if he says “Sing, O Goddess, the wrath,” but if a man is not as old as Priam, if he is not half bald and not so very much bent, they say he can't write a b c. But, Zeus most high, if this really be so, wisdom visits but the ruptured.
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§ 11.133 LUCILIUS Eutychides the lyric poet is dead. Fly, ye people who dwell under earth; Eutychides is coming with odes, and he ordered them to burn with him twelve lyres and twenty-five cases of music. Now indeed Charon has got hold of you. Where can one depart to in future, since Eutychides is established in Hades too?
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§ 11.134 LUCILIUS Shall we begin, Heliodorus? Shall we play thus at these poems together? Do you wish it, Heliodorus? “Go to Assos, that swifter thou mayst reach Death's goal”; for you will see in me a master of tedious twaddle more Heliodorian than yourself.
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§ 11.135 LUCILIUS No longer, Marcus, no longer lament the boy, but me, who am much more dead than that child of yours. Make elegies, hangman, now for me, make dirges for me who am slain by this versy death. For all for the sake of that dead child of yours I suffer what I would the inventors of books and pens might suffer.
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§ 11.136 LUCILIUS No sword so maleficent was ever forged by man for sudden treacherous attack as is the undeclared war of murderous hexameters, Callistratus, that you come to wage with me. Sound the retreat on the bugle at once, for even Priam by his tears gained his foes' consent (?) to an armistice.
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§ 11.137 LUCILIUS You serve me a slice of raw beef, Heliodorus, and pour me out three cups of wine rawer than the beef, and then you wash me out at once with epigrams. If sinning against heaven I have eaten one of the oxen from Trinacria, I would like to gulp down the sea at once — but if the sea is too far from here, take me up and throw me into a well.
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§ 11.138 On Grammarians (138-140) LUCILIUS If I only think of the grammarian Heliodorus, my tongue at once commits solecisms and I suffer from impediment of speech.
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§ 11.139 By the same Zenonis keeps Menander the bearded grammar-teacher, and says she has entrusted her son to him; but he never stops at night making her practise cases, conjunctions, figures, and conjugations.
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§ 11.140 By the same To these praters, these verse-fighters of the supper table, these slippery dominies of Aristarchus' school who care not for making a joke or drinking, but lie there playing infantile games with Nestor and Priam, cast me not literally " to be their prey and spoil." To-day I don't sup on “Sing, O Goddess, the wrath.”
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§ 11.141 On Rhetors (141-152) LUCILIUS I lost a little pig and a cow and one nanny- goat, and on account of them you received your little fee, Menecles. I never had anything in common with Othryades nor do I prosecute the three hundred from Thermopylae for theft; my suit is against Eutychides, so that here how do Xerxes and the Spartans help me? I beg you just to mention me for form's sake or I will call out loud “One thing says Menecles, and another thing says the piggie.”
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§ 11.142 By the same After having studied “Far be it” and sphinx and thrice in each period, “Gentlemen of the jury,” and “Here, usher, repeat the law for me,” and “This way,” and “I put it to you,” and “two score,” and “certain alleged,” and indeed “By heaven,” and "'Sdeath," Crito is an orator and teaches numbers of children, and to these phrases he will add gru, phathi, and min.
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§ 11.143 By the same Pluto will not receive the rhetor Marcus when dead, saying, “Let our one dog Cerberus be enough here; but if thou wilt come in at any cost, declaim to Ixion, Melito the lyric poet, and Tityus. For I have no evil worse than thee, until the day when Rufus the grammarian shall come here with his solecisms.”
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§ 11.144 CEREALIUS To use magniloquent words and four or five Attic ones is not to study with proper fervour and wisdom. For not even if you say “quaked” and “clangs,” and " hisses," and “gurgled,” will you be a Homer at once. Sense should underlie literature, and its phraseology be more vulgar so that people may understand what you say.
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§ 11.145 Anonymous Sextus' picture declaims, but Sextus is silent. The picture is a rhetor and the rhetor the image of his picture.
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§ 11.146 AMMIANUS I sent Flaccus the rhetor a present of seven solecisms and received back five times two hundred. And “Now,” he says, “I send you these by the hundred, but in future when I get to Cyprus I will send them by the bushel.”
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§ 11.147 AMMIANUS Asiaticus has suddenly become an orator. Nothing incredible in that! It is only another miracle in Thebes.
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§ 11.148 LUCILIUS Flaccus the rhetor made solecisms the other day without even speaking, and when he was about to yawn at once was guilty of a barbarism, and now goes on making solecisms by signs with his hand, and I, seeing him, am tongue-tied.
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§ 11.149 Anonymous I see the very image of you, Medon the rhetor. Well, what is there surprising in that? You have arranged your dress effectively and you are silent; Nothing could be more like.
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§ 11.150 AMMIANIIS “The rhetor Athenagoras in consequence of a dream dedicated an Arcadian hat to Arcadian Hermes.” If he is a rhetor too, in a dream only, we will take it so inscribed to Hermes, but if he is a real one, let " Athenagoras dedicated this " suffice.
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§ 11.151 Anonymous This is the image of a rhetor, but the rhetor is the image of his image. How is that? He does not speak. Nothing could be more life-like.
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§ 11.152 AMMIANUS If you want, Paulus, to teach your son to be a rhetor like all these, don't let him learn his letters.
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§ 11.153 On Philosophers (153-158) LUCILIUS No one at all denies, Menestratus, that you are a cynic and bare-footed and that you are shivering. But if you shamelessly steal loaves and broken pieces on the sly, I have a stick, and they call you a dog.
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§ 11.154 By the same Everyone who is poor and illiterate does not grind corn as formerly or carry burdens for small pay, but grows a beard and picking up a stick from the cross-roads, calls himself the chief dog of virtue. This is the sage pronouncement of Hermodotus, “If anyone is penniless, let him throw off his shirt and no longer starve.”
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§ 11.155 By the same “This solid adamant of virtue, this rebuker of everyone, this fighter with the cold, with his long beard, has been caught.” “At what?” “It is not proper to say at what, but he was caught doing things that foul-mouthed people do.”
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§ 11.156 AMMIANUS Do you suppose that your beard creates brains and therefore you grow that fly-flapper? Take my advice and shave it off at once; for that beard is a creator of lice and not of brains.
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§ 11.157 AMMIANUS “Good Sir” and “Can it he?” and “Whence, sirrah, and whither? ” and “Right off ” and “Go to ” and “Quite so ” and “Hie ye ” and cloakie and little lock and beardie, and “Keep your little shoulder bare ” — that is what present-day philosophy flourishes on.
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§ 11.158 ANTIPATER The wallet laments, and the fine sturdy Heracles club of Sinopian Diogenes and the double coat, foe of the cold clouds, befouled all over with encrusted dirt, lament likewise because they are polluted by thy shoulders. Verily I take Diogenes himself to be the dog of heaven, but thou art the dog that lies in the ashes. Put off, put off the arms that are not thine The work of lions is one thing, and that of bearded goats another.
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§ 11.159 On Prophets (159-164) LUCILIUS All the astrologers as it were with one voice prophesied to my father a ripe old age for his brother. Hermoclides alone foretold his premature death, but he foretold it when we were lamenting over his corpse in the house.
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§ 11.160 By the same All those who take horoscopes from observing Mars and Saturn are deserving of one cudgelling. I shall see them perhaps at no distant date really learning what a bull can do and how strong a lion is.
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§ 11.161 By the same Onesimus the boxer came to the prophet Olympus wishing to learn if he were going to live to old age. And he said, “Yes, if you give up the ring now, but if you go on boxing, Saturn is your horoscope.”
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§ 11.162 NICARCHUS One came to ask the prophet Olympicus if he should take ship for Rhodes and how to sail there safely. And the prophet said, “First have a new ship and don't start in winter, but in summer. If you do this you will go there and back, unless a pirate catches you at sea.”
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§ 11.163 LUCILIUS Onesimus the wrestler and the pentathlete Hylas and the runner Menecles came to the prophet Olympus wishing to know which of them was going to win at the games, and he, after inspecting the sacrifice, said, “You will all win — unless anyone passes you. Sir, or unless anyone throws you. Sir, or unless anyone runs past you. Sir.”
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§ 11.164 LUCILIUS Aulus the astrologer, after making out his own nativity, said that the fatal hour had come and that he had still four hours to live. When it reached the fifth hour and he had to go on living convicted of ignorance, he grew ashamed of Petosiris and hanged himself, and there up in the air he is dying, but he is dying ignorant.
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§ 11.165 On Misers (165-173) LUCILIUS Crito the miser, when he has a pain in his stomach refreshes himself by smelling not mint, but a penny piece.
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§ 11.166 Anonymous All say you are rich, but I say you are poor, for, Apollophanes, their use is the proof of riches. If you take your share of them, they are yours, but if you keep them for your heirs, they are already someone else's.
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§ 11.167 POLLIANUS You have money, but I will tell you how it is you have nothing. You lend all; so that in order that another may have some, you have none yourself.
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§ 11.168 ANTIPHANES. Thou reckonest up thy money, poor wretch; but Time, just as it breeds interest, so, as it overtakes thee, gives birth to grey old age. And so having neither drunk wine, nor bound thy temples with flowers, having never known sweet ointment or a delicate little love, thou shalt die, leaving a great and wealthy testament, and of all thy riches carrying away with thee but one obol.
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§ 11.169 NICARCHUS Yesterday, Glaucus, Dinarchus the miser being about to hang himself, did not die, poor fellow, all for the sake of sixpence; for the rope cost sixpence, but he tried to drive a hard bargain, seeking perhaps some other cheap death. This is the very height of wretched avarice, for a man to be dying, Glaucus, and not able to die, poor fellow, all for the sake of sixpence.
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§ 11.170 NICARCHUS Phido the miser weeps not because he is dying, but because he paid thirty pounds for his coffin. Let him off this, and as there is room in it, put one of his many little children into it besides.
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§ 11.171 LUCILIUS Hermocrates the miser when he was dying wrote himself his own heir in his will, and he lay there reckoning what fee he must pay the doctors if he leaves his bed and how much his illness costs him. But when he found it cost one drachma more if he were saved, “It pays,” he said, “to die,” and stiffened himself out. Thus he lies, having nothing but an obol, and his heirs were glad to seize on his wealth.
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§ 11.172 LUCILIUS Aulus the miser drowned in the sea a child that was born to him, reckoning how much it would cost him if he kept it.
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§ 11.173 PHILIPPUS If you have lent out some of it, and give some now, and are going to give some more, you are never master of your money.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by William Roger Paton (1857-1921). Composed ca. 900 CE. Licence: public domain. Source.