Lines of Love, Wine and Song: The Muses at Work

Translated by George Theodoridis ©2001 All Rights Reserved

This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose, except for theatrical or cinematic use where permission must be sought.

Anacreon	5
Odd Sandals	5
Prayer to Dionysius	6
Water and Wine	7
Anonymous	8
Thinking Mate	8
Asclepiades	9
Tryphera	10
Bacchylides	11
Happiness	11
Ode to Hekate	11
The Test of Virtue	12
Hedylus	13
Let Us Drink	13
Ibycus	14
No Rest for Love	14
Ion of Chios	15
Untamable Child	15
Melanippides	16
Wine after Water	16
Poseidippus	17
Archianax	17
Praxilla	18
Beware	18
To Adonis	18
You Look Great	19
Sappho	20
Ode to Aphrodite	20
Abandoned	22
And as for Me	24
But I Sleep Alone	24
It Seems to Me	25
Mountain wind	26
To Her Lyre	27
On Eros	27
The Stars around The Moon	28
Sweet Apple	29
Stesichorus	30
Quinces and chariots	30
Timotheus	31
Ambrosia	31
Old Songs	32

Anacreon

(563-478BC)

Odd Sandals

(Ed 15)

Today, Eros, of the golden locks used a
purple ball to make me play
with a child.

A girl, wearing odd sandals.

But she, born in beautiful Lesbos,
looks at me, finds
fault with my
hair - it’s grey, you see!-

and
turns from me to gawk at some other child,

Another girl.

Prayer to Dionysius

(Ed 2)

Please, Dionysius!
Leader of all, whose friends are the omnipotent
Eros and the blue-eyed
Nymphs and the rosy
Aphrodite
and whose compass

is the high peaks of mountains.

Please, be kind enough to come to me and
hear my plea with a smile:

Go, God, and counsel Cleovoulos well and make him
accept my love!

Water and Wine

(Ed 75)

I

Boy! Bring water and bring wine
and bring garlands of flowers

that I may do a round or two with Eros

II

Boy! bring here a cup!
and
Boy! mix ten cups of water to five of wine
and
Boy! let me not shut my lips but let me drink
and drink and rage like
a frenzied Bacchus with
impunity.

III

Come, friends! let’s not shout and scream
like Scythian drunks
but
let us study our wine, friends
and
accompany its drinking with beautiful songs

Anonymous

(Ed 6a)

Thinking Mate

I hate a thinking, drinking mate!

Asclepiades

290BC

Nicorete and Cleophon

(Tr.166)

That sweet face of
Nicorete
much-touched by desire and
much-seen through the shutters of her window
high above us

was suddenly ravaged by
Those sweet lightning bolts of
Cleophon.
His glances, dear Cypris,
as he shot them standing by her gates

Tryphera

(Trypanis167)

Go to the market Dimitri,
to Amyntos’ stall
and
get us three sweet fish -the little, cheap ones-
and
ten clams
and
twenty four cringing shrimps -let him count them for
you himself-
and
come directly back.

Oh yeah,
And
on your way here get six garlands of roses from
Thauvorious
and
quickly dash in and invite tender-shaped
Tryphera

Bacchylides

(c450 bc)

(Ed 57)

Happiness

No mortal is happy all the time

(Ed 2)

Ode to Hekate

Hekate!
Carrier of torches,
daughter of black-loined
Night!

(Ed 25)

The Test of Virtue

Whilst gold is tested by the
Lydian stone,
Man’s virtue
and
Wisdom
are tested by
Truth

Hedylus

c 280bc

Let Us Drink

(He 5)

Let us drink, then
And
perhaps we’ll find
something new
in our wine -

some eloquent, honey-coloured word.

So come!
Fill me up with jugs of Chian wine and say,
“Go ahead, Hedylus, play!”

I hate an empty life -
empty of wine.

Ibycus

(c 560bc)

No Rest for Love

(Ed 1)

The time
for the river-watered quinces
in the gardens of the chaste virgins
and
for the blossoms beneath the shady vine shoots
to burst is
Spring

But as for
Me,
Eros leaves me no time for resting

and,

Bursting with the fires of lightning
He rushes from Aphrodite’s isle
inside northern gales
Crazed,
Scorching,
Cavernous and
Bold
and keeps a guard’s firm hold of my
heart.

Ion of Chios

(c490 bc)

(Ed 1)

Untamable Child

Untamable child
with the look of a roaring bull.

A youth and yet not a youth.

Beautiful servant of noisy loves
of mind-spinning wine

Melanippides

(c500bc)

(Ed 4)

Wine after Water

So,
All those who had never before tasted wine
fell into hating water

So,
Pretty quickly one lot of them was begging to
Die
whereas the other was stricken by a mania
to shout out words of prophecy

Poseidippus

(280BC)

Archianax

(Tr 170)

Three-year old Archianax was
distracted from his playing by the
silent image of his own form
in the well. His mother

tore

the soaked child from the water
wondering if he was still alive or which

fate

had him.
But the baby had not sinned against the Nymphs
but fell asleep upon his mother’s knees
and there he still lies in deep

sleep.

Praxilla

(c450 bc)

Beware

(Ed 4)

Beware, my friend of the
scorpion
beneath every stone

To Adonis

(Ed 1)

The most beautiful thing I miss
is the sun’s light
Second,
the bright stars
third,
the moon’s face

as well as the lovely gourds and apples’
and wild pears

NOTE: The last line (in Greek) is the famous “wrong
line.” Scholiasts and translators suggest that it is
a silly thing to include gourds (or cucumbers) and
pears in the same list of things “one misses most”
which includes sunlight, bright stars and the moon’s
face.

You Look Great

(Ed 5)

You look great through the fenestrations:
The head of a virgin
The waste of a well married woman.

Sappho

Ode to Aphrodite

(Ed 1)

Immortal Aphrodite of the splendid throne
Daughter of Zeus, weaver of snares,
Great Woman, grant me this:
Let not my spirit be harnessed by this anguish
and affliction
But come here, by me as you did once before.

On that day,
you’ve heard my distant voice and, nodding,
you left your father’s golden chambers to yoke your
two swift companion birds at your glittering chariot.

They fluttered through the spreading sky and
brought you hurriedly down here,
by me,
upon the black soil

Great woman!
With a smile on your immortal face you had asked me
then
about my sighs, what was it that made me call you
yet again?

What was it that my despairing heart wanted you to do
this time?

You asked,
“Who is it this time, Sappho? Whom do you want me
to bring you? Who, Sappho is hurting you now?”

And,
at that time, you offered, “Tell me
Sappho who she is and if she turns from you now,
soon,
by me,
she’ll be turning towards you;
and if she’s not close to you now,
soon,
by me,
she will be -
willingly or not!”

Come to me again now,
Great Woman
and
release me from this great woe;
grant me this, my heart’s greatest desire.
Against all these pains, be my ally.

Abandoned

(Ed 83)

I want to die
honestly
rather than be abandoned
tearfully

Well, I was told all sorts of things
such as,
“Oh, dear, dear Sappho, what awful things we must
endure!
Truly,
I’m leaving you against my will.”

To which I replied,
“All right, then, go ahead, abandon me
be happy!
But
remember me because I cared for no one else.

Because if you forget,
I’ll remind you
of the good things we lived through
together.

Remember the many garlands of violets
and roses I placed next to you
and
the many flower necklaces I weaved around
your soft
skin

and spread bountiful myrrh
[......]* fit for a queen

and upon the gentle mattress,
[......]* the passion you exuded

and neither the [......]*
nor the singly sacred [......]*
did we weave [......]*
from which we stayed away.

Note: [..]* Gap in the manuscript source (Lacuna)

And as for Me

(Ed 118a)

And as for me, listen to this, I love luxury: the
bright love, the sun and beauty are of one lot.

But I Sleep Alone

(Tr 62)

Midnight!

And like the hour,
The moon and the
Pleiades have gone

And I,
I sleep alone.

It Seems to Me

(Ed 2)

It seems to me he’s equal to the gods, the
man
who sits within the scope of your sweet voice
and
of your laughter which stirs the heart within my
breast

Seeing you like this,
even for a second,
stops my sighs
within.

Yet my tongue
freezes
and
beneath my skin a fire rages
and...
my eyes are empty but
my ears are full.

A torrent of sweat
and
a wild tremor
overwhelm me
and,

I’ve turned the colour of drying grass
just before death.

Mountain wind

(Ed 42b)

Just as the wind
in the mountains
blows the oaks
assunder, so did
Eros
blow my mind.

To Her Lyre

(Ed 80)

Come to me my Lyre,
Sing loudly
Divinely!

On Eros

(Ed 40-41B)

a)

Again Eros, the
sweet and
bitter God who unfastens the limbs

Again he
shakes me like a snake,
omnipotent.

b)

And you, Atthi, you’ve learnt to
hate me and ran off
to Andromeda

The Stars around The Moon

(Ed 3)

And again when
the moon
casts her brilliance all over earth
The stars
soften the blaze of their
beauty

Sweet Apple

(B93 &B94)

I

You’re
Just like the sweet apple reddening at the highest
branch
and missed by the apple pickers -
No,
They did not miss you!
They just couldn’t reach so
high.

II

And,

You’re just like the mountain
Hyacinth,
trodden by the shepherds
next to the purple
blossoms

Stesichorus

(c480bc)

(Ed 15)

Quinces and chariots

So they overflowed the king’s chariot
with quinces
and with leaves of myrtle
and with garlands of roses
and with well-wound wreaths of
violets -

more of them than ever!

Timotheus

(c400bc)

(Ed 12)

Ambrosia

Then, he topped a cup made of
ivy wood
with the dark drops of ambrosia
-froth raising-
which he then poured into twenty measures of
Bacchus’ Blood.

A brew of tears
freshly drawn from the eyes of
Nymphs

(Ed 22)

I’m coming!

I’m coming!
Why are you shouting at
me?

(Ed 24)

Old Songs

I won’t sing the old songs any more
because
my new ones are far better.
The new king is
Zeus
and the old one is
Kronos.
His rule is over long ago

and so,
Let me abandon the old
Muse

Leader of men

last updated 20-Oct-2004