Greek Anthology Books 10-12

ToposText · Greek Anthology · 828 sections

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§ 11.374 MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL Make your fleshless cheeks always smooth with white lead, Laodice (just, indeed, is the penalty you pay the people), but never open your lips wide, for who by cosmetic fraud shall fix a row of teeth in it? You have shed all the beauty you had; loveliness of limb cannot be drawn from a perennial fountain. Like a rose you flourished in the spring; now you are withered, dried by the parching summer of old age.
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§ 11.375 MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL I sneezed near a tomb and wished to hear of what I hoped, the death of my wife. I sneezed to the winds, but my wife meets with none of the misfortunes of mankind, neither illness nor death. 37G.— AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS An unhappy man, going to the rhetor Diodorus, consulted him about the following case. “My slave-girl ran away once and a certain man found her, and knowing her to be another man's servant married her to his own slave. She bore him children, and I wish to know whose slaves they legally are.” When he had considered and looked up every book, he said, twisting his eyebrows into a semicircle: “Those about whom you enquire must either be your slaves or those of the man who took your slave-girl. Seek a well-disposed judge and you will at once get a more favourable decision, at least if what you say is just.”
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§ 11.377 PALLADAS We guests had a miserable fowl to eat and were ourselves devoured by other birds. Two vultures eat Tityus under earth and four vultures eat us alive.
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§ 11.378 PALLADAS I cannot put up with a wife and with Grammar too, Grammar that is penniless and a wife who is injurious. What I suffer from both is Death and Fate. Now I have just with difficulty escaped from Grammar, but I cannot escape from this shrewish wife, for our contract and Roman law prevent it.
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§ 11.379 AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS No one has the courage to look on your grinders so that none approach your house, for if you always have the famine of Erysichthon himself you will even perhaps devour the friend you invite. Your halls will never see me enter them, for I am not going there to be kept for your belly. But if I ever do go to your house it was no great prowess of Ulysses to face the jaws of Scylla. Rather shall I be much more " all-daring " than he, if I manage to get past you who are no less fearful than the heart-chilling Cyclops.
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§ 11.380 MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL (A Reply to App. Plan. 314, which should be read first) The high-born virgin Justice, patroness of cities, does not turn her face away from gold that is associated with piety, but the very scales of Zeus with which he weighs every law of life are of solid gold. “Then did the Father hold out the scales of gold,” if thou hast not forgotten the beauties of Homer.
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§ 11.381 PALLADAS Every woman is a source of annoyance, but she has two good seasons, the one in her bridal chamber and the other when she is dead.
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§ 11.382 AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS Alcimenes lay in bed sore sick of a fever and giving vent to hoarse wheezings from his wind-pipe, his side pricking him as if he had been pierced by a sword, and his breath coming short in ill-sounding gasps. Then came Callignotus of Cos, with his never-ending jaw, full of the wisdom of the healing art, whose prognosis of pains was complete, and he never foretold anything but what came to pass. He inspected Alcimenes' position in bed and drew conclusions from his face, and felt his pulse scientifically. Then he reckoned up from the treatise on critical days, calculating everything not without his Hippocrates, and finally he gave utterance to Alcimenes of his prognosis, making his face very solemn and looking most serious: “If your throat stops roaring and the fierce attacks of pain in your side cease, and your breathing is no longer made thick by the fever, you will not die in that case of pleurisy, for this is to us a sign of coming freedom from pain. Cheer up, and summoning your lawyer, dispose well of your property and depart from this life, the mother of care, leaving to me, your doctor, in return for my good prognostic, the third part of your inheritance.”
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§ 11.383 PALLADAS So for pack-animals, too, there is sinister and good Fortune, and Saturn rules the nativities of beasts also; for ever since evil time befel this donkey, it has become a grammarian's instead of being in the alabarch's palace. But bear it patiently henceforth, donkey; for grammarians crithe (barley) has no end, but is called only cri.
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§ 11.384 PALLADAS If solitaries (monks), why so many? And if so many, how again are they solitary? O crowd of solitaries who give the lie to solitude!
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§ 11.385 PALLADAS Thy love is counterfeit and thou lovest from fear and by force. But nothing is more treacherous than such love.
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§ 11.386 PALLADAS Yesterday a certain man seeing Victory in town sour-faced, said: “Goddess Victory, what has befallen thee, then? ” But she, lamenting and finding fault with the decision, said: “Dost thou alone not know it? I have been given to Patricius.” So Victory, too, was in deep grief at being illegally caught by the sailor Patricius as if she were a breeze.
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§ 11.387 PALLADAS Everyone takes but one meal, but when Salaminus feasts us we go home and breakfast a second time.
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§ 11.388 LUCILIUS As long as you are unmarried, Numenius, everything in life seems to you the best of the best, but when a wife enters the house everything again in life seems to you at once the worst of the worst. “But I marry for the sake of having children,” says he. You will have children, Numenius, if you have money, but a poor man does not even love his children.
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§ 11.389 LUCILIUS If thou livest the long years of a stag or crow thou mayest be pardoned for amassing vast wealth, but if thou art one of mortal men, whom old age right soon assails, let not the furious desire of immeasurable possessions beset thee, lest thou destroy thy soul in insufferable torture and others use thy goods without toiling for them.
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§ 11.390 LUCILIUS If thou lovest me, love me indeed, and do me no evil, making friendship the beginning of injury. For will have children — people running after your money and wishing you to adopt them; but if poor and married, your children will be a source of trouble. I say that for all men open enmity is much better than deceptive friendship. They say, too, that for seafaring ships sunken reefs are worse than visible rocks.
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§ 11.391 LUCILIUS Asclepiades the miser saw a mouse in his house and said: “My dearest mouse, what business have you here with me? ” And the mouse said, smiling sweetly: “Fear nothing, my friend, I do not seek board with you, but residence.”
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§ 11.392 LUCILIUS Adrastus the rhetor, seating himself on the back of a winged ant, spoke as follows: “Fly, O Pegasus, thou hast thy Bellerophon.” Yes indeed the most doughty of heroes, a half-dead skeleton.
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§ 11.393 LUCILIUS There is no greater burden than a daughter, and if, Euctemon, you think it is a light one, listen to me. You have a hydrocele and I have a daughter; take her and give me a hundred hydroceles instead of one.
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§ 11.394 LUCILIUS He is really the most excellent of poets who gives supper to those who have listened to his recitation. But if he reads to them and sends them home fasting, let him turn his own madness on his own head.
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§ 11.395 NICARCHUS A fart which cannot find an outlet kills many a man; a fart also saves, sending forth its lisping music. Therefore if a fart saves, and on the other hand kills, a fart has the same power as kings.
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§ 11.396 LUCIAN You often sent me wine and I was often grateful to you, enjoying the draught of sweet nectar. But now if you love me, don't send any, for I don't wish for such wine, not having now any lettuces.
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§ 11.397 LUCIAN Artemidorus, reckoning his fortune at many times ten thousand, and spending nothing, leads the life of mules, who often, carrying on their backs a heavy and precious load of gold, only eat hay.
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§ 11.398 NICARCHUS A man, by dyeing his head, destroyed the hair itself, and his head from being very hairy became all like an egg. The dyer attained this result, that no barber now ever cuts his hair be it white or dark..
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§ 11.399 APOLLINARIUS A grammarian riding on a donkey fell off it, and, they say, lost his memory of grammar; then afterwards he led an ordinary life without any profession, not knowing a word of what he had always been teaching. But just the opposite happened to Glycon; for, having been ignorant of the vulgar tongue, not to speak of grammar, now, by riding on Libyan donkeys and often falling off them, he has suddenly become a grammarian.
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§ 11.400 LUCIAN Hail, Grammar, giver of life! Hail, thou whose cure for famine is “Sing, O goddess, the wrath”! Men should build a splendid temple to thee, too, and an altar never lacking sacrifice. “For the ways are full of thee, and the sea and its harbours are full of thee,” — Grammar, the hostess of all.
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§ 11.401 LUCIAN A physician sent me his dear son to be taught by me those elementary lessons. And when he had read “Sing the Wrath” and “imposed a thousand woes,” and the third verse that follows these, “Many strong souls he sped to Hades,” his father no longer sends him to learn from me, but on seeing me said: “All thanks to you, my friend, but the boy can learn that at home, for I speed down many souls to Hades, and for that I have no need of a grammarian.”
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§ 11.402 LUCIAN May none of the gods, Erasistratus, create for me that luxury in which you riot, monstrously eating plagues of the stomach worse than famine, such as I wish the children of my enemies might eat. I would starve again even more than I used to starve rather than gorge myself with the luxuries of your table.
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§ 11.403 LUCIAN To the Gout Goddess who hatest the poor, sole vanquisher of wealth, who ever knowest to live well, even though it is thy joy to sit on the feet of others, thou knowest how to wear felt, and thou art fond of ointments. A garland delights thee and draughts of Italian wine. These things are never found among the poor. Therefore thou fliest the brassless threshold of poverty, and delightest to come to the feet of wealth.
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§ 11.404 LUCIAN Diophantes with the hydrocele, when he wants to cross to the other side, never gets into the ferryboat, but putting all his packages and his donkey on the hydrocele, sails across hoisting a sheet. So that in vain have the Tritons glory in the waters if a man with a hydrocele can do the same.
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§ 11.405 LUCIAN Crook-nosed Nicon has an admirable nose for wine, but he can't tell quickly what it is like, for scarcely in three summer hours does he smell it himself since his nose is two hundred cubits long. O what a huge nose! When he crosses a river he often catches little fish with it.
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§ 11.406 NICARCHUS I see Nicon's hooked nose, Menippus, and it is evident that he himself is not far off. Well, he will come; let us wait all the same, for at most he is not, I suppose, more than half a mile from his nose. But it, as you see, comes on in front of him, and if we stand on a high hill we shall get a view of him too.
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§ 11.407 NICARCHUS As lean Menestratus was sitting in spring-time an ant came out and pulled him into a crevice; but a fly flew up and carried him off, just as the eagle carried Ganymede to the heavenly chamber of Zeus. He fell from the fly's hands, but not even so did he light on the earth, but is hanging by his eyelids from a spider's web.
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§ 11.408 LUCIAN You dye your hair, but you will never dye your old age, or smooth out the wrinkles of your cheeks. Then don't plaster all your face with white lead, so that you have not a face, but a mask; for it serves no purpose. Why are you out of your wits? Rouge and paste will never turn Hecuba into Helen.
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§ 11.409 GAETULICUS Four times putting her lips to the lips of the jar Silenis drank up the last dregs. Fair-haired Dionysus, she defiled thee not with water, but even as thou first didst come from the vineyard she used to quaff thee generously, holding a cup even until she went to the sands of the dead.
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§ 11.410 LUCIAN We saw at supper the great wisdom of the Cynic, that bearded beggar with the staff. To begin with he abstained from pulse and radishes, saying that virtue should not be the belly's slave. But when he saw before his eyes a snow-white sow's womb with sharp sauce, a dish that soon stole away his prudent mind, he asked for some unexpectedly, and really started eating, saying that a sow's womb does no harm to virtue.
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§ 11.411 Anonymous on an overheated Bath You should call this not a bath but rather a funeral pyre such as Achilles lit for Patroclus, or Medea's crown that the Fury set afire (?) in the bridal chamber of Glauce because of Jason. Spare me, bathman, for God's sake, for I am a man who write all the deeds of men and gods. But if it is your purpose to burn numbers of us alive, light a wooden pyre, executioner, and not a stone one.
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§ 11.412 ANTIOCHUS To paint the soul is difficulty to sketch the outward shape is easy, but in your case both are just the opposite. For Nature, bringing outside the perversity of your soul, has wrought so that it is a visible object; but as for the tumult of your person and the offensiveness of your body, how could one paint it when one does not even wish to look on it?
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§ 11.413 AMMIANUS Apelles gave us a supper as if he had butchered a garden, thinking he was feeding sheep and not friends. There were radishes, chicory, fenugreek, lettuces, leeks, onions, basil, mint, rue, and asparagus. I was afraid that after all these things he would serve me with hay, so when I had eaten some half-soaked lupins I went off.
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§ 11.414 HEDYLUS The daughter of limb-relaxing Bacchus and limb-relaxing Aphrodite is limb-relaxing Gout.
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§ 11.415 ANTIPATER or NICARCHUS Who, Mentorides, so obviously transferred your breech to the place where your mouth formerly was? For you break wind and do not breathe, and you speak from the lower storey. I wonder how your lower parts became your upper!
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§ 11.416 Anonymous Money comes into the hands of whores too. I care not. Let wretched gold that loves whores hate me.
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§ 11.417 Anonymous on an Elderly Woman annoying a Young Man Shake the acorns off another oak, Menesthion; for I do not accept wrinkled apples past their season, but have ever desired fruit in its prime like myself; so why try to see a white crow?
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§ 11.418 THE EMPEROR TRAJAN If you put your nose pointing to the sun and open your mouth wide, you will show all passers-by the time of day.
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§ 11.419 PHILO Grey hairs are more venerable together with good sense, for when they are not accompanied by sense they are rather a reproach to advanced age.
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§ 11.420 Anonymous Your grey hairs, if you keep silent, are wisdom, but if you speak they are not wisdom but hairs, like those of youth.
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§ 11.421 APOLLINARIUS If you speak ill of me in my absence you do me no injury; but if you speak well of me in my presence, know that you are speaking ill of me.
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§ 11.422 ANTIOCHUS On an Illiterate Man speaking in Public Besas, if he had any sense, would have hanged himself, but now, being such a fool, he both lives and grows rich even after his appearance in public.
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§ 11.423 HELLADIUS Dyer who dyest all things and changest them with thy colours, thou hast dyed thy poverty too, and turned out a rich man.
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§ 11.424 PISO Don't expect flowers from the land of Galatia, from whose bosom sprang the Furies, destroyers of men.
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§ 11.425 Anonymous I would have you know, Placianus, that every old woman with money is a rich coffin.
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§ 11.426 Anonymous on Opian, a hard-drinking Governor The first letter of your name is superfluous; if one takes it away you will acquire by simple means a name that suits you.
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§ 11.427 LUCIAN The exorcist with the stinking mouth cast out many devils by speaking, not by the virtue of his exorcisms, but by that of dung.
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§ 11.428 LUCIAN Why do you wash in vain your Indian body? Give up that device. You cannot shed the sunlight on dark night.
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§ 11.429 LUCIAN Acindynus wished to keep sober when all the others were drunk; therefore he was the only man who was thought to be drunk.
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§ 11.430 LUCIAN If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat with a fine beard is at once a complete Plato.
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§ 11.431 LUCIAN If you are quick at eating and tardy in running, eat with your feet and run with your mouth.
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§ 11.432 LUCIAN A fool put out the lamp when he was bitten by many fleas, saying: “You can't see me any longer.”
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§ 11.433 LUCIAN Painter, thou stealest the form only, and canst not, trusting in thy colours, capture the voice.
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§ 11.434 LUCIAN If you see a hairless head, breast, and shoulders, make no enquiries; it is a bald fool that you see.
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§ 11.435 LUCIAN It strikes me as wonderful how Bytus is a sophist, since he has neither common speech nor reason.
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§ 11.436 LUCIAN You will sooner find white crows and winged tortoises than a Cappadocian who is an accomplished orator.
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§ 11.437 ARATUS I lament for Diotimus, who sits on stones repeating Alpha and Beta to the children of Gargarus.
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§ 11.438 MENANDER Trust in (?) a Corinthian and don't make him a friend.
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§ 11.439 DIPHILUS Argos is the land of horses, but the inhabitants are wolves.
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§ 11.440 PITTACUS (?) Avoid all Megarians, for they are bitter.
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§ 11.441 PHILISCUS The Piraeus is a big nut and empty.
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§ 11.442 Anonymous Thrice I reigned as tyrant, and as many times did the people of Erechtheus expel me and thrice recall me, Pisistratus, great in council, who collected the works of Homer formerly sung in fragments. For that man of gold was our fellow-citizen, if we Athenians colonized Smyrna.
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§ 12.0 BOOK XII STRATO'S MUSA PUERILIS And what kind of man should I be, reader, if after setting forth all that precedes for thee to study, I were to conceal the Puerile Muse of Strato of Sardis, which he used to recite to those about him in sport, taking personal delight in the diction of the epigrams, not in their meaning. Apply thyself then to what follows, for “in dances,” as the tragic poet says, “a chaste woman will not be corrupted.”
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§ 12.1 STRATO “Let us begin from Zeus,” as Aratus said, and you, O Muses, I trouble not today. For if I love boys and associate with boys, what is that to the Muses of Helicon?
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§ 12.2 STRATO Look not in my pages for Priam by the altar, nor for the woes of Medea and Niobe, nor for Itys in his chamber and the nightingales amid the leaves; for earlier poets wrote of all these things in profusion. But look for sweet Love mingled with the jolly Graces, and for Bacchus. No grave face suits them.
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§ 12.3 STRATO The foreparts of boys, Diodorus, come in three types. Learn their names: Call the still untouched one “Lalou”; the one just beginning to swell “Koko”; the one already quivering to the hand, call “Lizard”; the more perfect one, you already know what you need to call it.
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§ 12.4 STRATO I delight in the prime of a boy of twelve, but one of thirteen is much more desirable. He who is fourteen is a still sweeter flower of the Loves, and one who is just beginning his fifteenth year is yet more delightful. The sixteenth year is that of the gods, and as for the seventeenth it is not for me, but for Zeus, to seek it. But if one has a desire for those still older, he no longer plays, but now seeks “And answering him back.”
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§ 12.5 STRATO I like them pale, and I also love those with a skin the colour of honey, and the fair too; and on the other hand I am taken by the black-haired. Nor do I dismiss brown eyes; but above all I love sparkling-black eyes.
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§ 12.6 STRATO The numerical value of the letters in proktos and Chrysos (gold) is the same. I once found this out reckoning up casually.
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§ 12.7 STRATO There's no tight muscle to a virgin, nor a frank kiss, nor the natural sweet exhalation of the skin, nor that sweet slutty talk, nor a full gaze, and the educated ones are worse. They're all cold behind. And the biggest problem, nowhere to put a wandering hand.
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§ 12.8 STRATO Just now, as I was passing the place where they make garlands, I saw a boy interweaving flowers with a bunch of berries. Nor did I pass by unwounded, but standing by him I said quietly, “For how much will you sell me your garland?” He grew redder than his roses, and turning down his head said, “Go right away in case my father sees you.” I bought some wreaths as a pretence, and when I reached home crowned the gods, beseeching them to grant me him.
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§ 12.9 STRATO Now thou art fair, Diodorus, and ripe for lovers, but even if thou dost marry, we shall not abandon thee.
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§ 12.10 STRATO Even though the invading down and the delicate auburn curls of thy temples have leapt upon thee, that does not make me shun my beloved, but his beauty is mine, even if there be a beard and hairs.
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§ 12.11 STRATO Yesterday I had Philostratus for the night, but was incapable, though he (how shall I say it?) was quite complaisant. No longer, my friends, count me your friend, but throw me off a tower as I have become too much of an Astyanax.
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§ 12.12 FLACCUS Just as he is getting his beard, Lado, the fair youth, cruel to lovers, is in love with a boy. Nemesis is swift.
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§ 12.13 STRATO I once found some beardless doctors, not prone to love, grinding a natural antidote for it. They, on being surprised, besought me to keep it quiet, and I said, “I am mum, but you must cure me.”
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§ 12.14 DIOSCORIDES If Demophilus, when he reaches his prime, gives such kisses to his lovers as he gives me now he is a child, no longer shall his mother's door remain quiet at night.
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§ 12.15 STRATO If a plank pinched Graphicus in the bath, what will become of me, a man? Even wood feels.
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§ 12.16 STRATO Seek not to hide our love, Philocrates; the god himself without that hath sufficient power to trample on my heart. But give me a taste of a blithe kiss. The time shall come when thou shalt beg such favour from others.
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§ 12.17 Anonymous The love of women touches not my heart, but male brands have heaped unquenchable coals of fire on me. Greater is this heat; by as much as a man is stronger than a woman, by so much is this desire sharper.
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§ 12.18 ALPHEIUS OF MYTILENE Unhappy they whose life is loveless; for without love it is not easy to do aught or to say aught. I, for example, am now all too slow, but were I to catch sight of Xenophilus I would fly swifter than lightning. Therefore I bid all men not to shun but to pursue sweet desire; Love is the whetstone of the soul.
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§ 12.19 Anonymous Though I would, I cannot make thee my friend; for neither dost thou ask, nor give to me when I ask, nor accept what I give.
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§ 12.20 JULIUS LEONIDAS Zeus is again rejoicing in the banquets of the Ethiopians, or, turned to gold, hath stolen to Danae's chamber; for it is a marvel that, seeing Periander, he did not carry off from Earth the lovely youth; or is the god no longer a lover of boys?
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§ 12.21 STRATO How long shall we steal kisses and covertly signal to each other with chary eyes? How long shall we talk without coming to a conclusion, linking again and again idle deferment to deferment? If we tarry we shall waste the good; but before the envious ones come, Phidon, let us add deeds to words.
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§ 12.22 SCYTHINUS There has come to me a great woe, a great war, a great fire. Elissus, full of the years ripe for love, just at that fatal age of sixteen, and having withal every charm, small and great, a voice which is honey when he reads and lips that are honey to kiss, and irreproachable to take inside. What will become of me? He bids me look only. Verily I shall often lie awake fighting with my hands against this empty love.
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§ 12.23 MELEAGER I am caught, I who once laughed often at the serenades of young men crossed in love. And at thy gate, Myiscus, winged Love has fixed me, inscribing on me “Spoils won from Chastity.”
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§ 12.24 TULLIUS LAUREAS If my Polemo return welcome and safe, as he was, Lord of Delos, when we sent him on his way, I do not refuse to sacrifice by thy altar the bird, herald of the dawn, that I promised in my prayers to thee. But if he come possessing either more or less of anything than he had then, I am released from my promise. — But he came with a beard. If he himself prayed for this as a thing dear to him, exact the sacrifice from him who made the prayer.
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§ 12.25 STATYLLIUS FLACCUS When I bade farewell to Polemo I prayed for him to return safe and sound to me, Apollo, promising a sacrifice of a fowl. But Polemo came to me with a hairy chin. No, Phoebus, I swear it by thyself, he came not to me, but fled from me with cruel fleetness. I no longer sacrifice the cock to thee. Think not to cheat me, returning me for full ears empty chaff.
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§ 12.26 STATYLLIUS FLACCUS If the Polemo I parted from came back to me in safety, I promised to sacrifice to thee. But now Polemo is saved for himself. It is no longer he who has come back to me, Phoebus, and arriving with a beard, he is no longer saved for me. He perhaps prayed himself for his chin to be darkened. Let him then make the sacrifice himself, as he prayed for what was contrary to all my hopes.
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§ 12.27 STATYLLIUS FLACCUS When I saw Polemo off, his cheeks like thine, Apollo, I promised to sacrifice a fowl if he came back. I do not accept him now his spiteful cheeks are bristly. Luckless wretch that I was to make a vow for the sake of such a man! It is not fair for the innocent fowl to be plucked in vain, or let Polemo be plucked, too. Lord of Delos.
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§ 12.28 NUMENIUS OF TARSUS Cyrus is Lord (cyrius). What does it matter to me if he lacks a letter? I do not read the fair, I look on him.
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§ 12.29 ALCAEUS Protarchus is fair and does not wish it; but later he will, and his youth races on holding a torch.
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§ 12.30 ALCAEUS Your leg, Nicander, is getting hairy, but take care lest the same happen to your buttocks. Then shall you know how rare lovers are. But even now reflect that youth is irrevocable.
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§ 12.31 PHANIAS By Themis and the bowl of wine that made me totter, thy love Pamphilus, has but a little time to last. Already thy thigh has hair on it and thy cheeks are downy, and Desire leads thee henceforth to another kind of passion. But now that some little vestiges of the spark are still left thee, put away thy parsimony. Opportunity is the friend of Love.

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.