It’s best when men receive a good allotment from god.
But heavy fate comes, destroying the good man
And, when set right, even making the bad man shine bright.
There are different honors for different men.
Men’s virtues are countless,
But one stands out from them all:
That a man manages what comes with a just heart.
The lyre’s voice and the clear-sounding choruses
Are not meet for grief-sowing battles,
And neither is the clang of clashing bronze for celebrations.
No, for everything men do there’s a time that’s best.
When a man’s at his best, a god is guiding him too.
Olympia’s most-high, wide-ruling one,
May you, father Zeus, for all time
Hold nothing against my words,
And while you keep this people safe from harm,
Pilot the winds of Xenephon’s fortunes.
Accept from him this ritual praise
For the garlands he brings from Pisa’s plains:
He won the pentathlon and stadion race.
No mortal man has done that before.
Two parsley wreaths also crowned him
When he appeared at the Isthmian festival.
And in Nemea it was no different.
My mother me
It was stylish in her day
To pin back your hair
With a purple headband.
That was the style.
But if a woman’s hair
Was more fair than fire
She fastened it with garlands
Made of blooming flowers.
Sappho Fr. 132
I have a lovely daughter
Who looks like golden flowers.
The beloved girl is Kleis.
I would not her
For all of Lydia . . .
That man seems to me to be a god.
That man, if it can be said, seems to transcend the gods—
The one who sits across from you, constantly
Watches you and hears
Your sweet laugh.
It snatches away all sense from unhappy me:
For once I have looked at you, Lesbia . . .
[I have] a tongue, but it is stiff;
A slight flame glides down beneath my skin;
My ears ring with their own din;
And the lights of my eyes are obscured by a twinned night.
Leisure, Catullus, is trouble for you:
You revel in leisure and have done too much.
Leisure in earlier times destroyed kings
And magnificent cities alike.
Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit
dulce ridentem, misero quod omnes
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi . . .
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.
Garry Winogrand. El Morocco. 1955. Museum of Modern Art. New York.
Jean Racine (1639-1699), in his adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis, placed the blame for Agamemnon’s moral waywardness squarely on Odysseus. In other words, Odysseus made him do it:
Racine. Iphigenia.
Agamemnon to attendant (70-78):
I wanted to disband the army.
Odysseus seemed to support my wishes;
He let that first rush of words go unchecked.
But soon he marshaled his cruel techniques:
He conjured for me honor and country;
All the people, the kings, who obey my commands;
The Asian empire promised to Greece;
And how, sacrificing the state for my daughter,
A fameless king, I’d grow old in my household.
Je voulais sur-le-champ congédier l’armée.
Ulysse en apparence approuvant mes discours,
De ce premier torrent laissa passer le cours.
Mais bientôt rappelant sa cruelle industrie,
Il me représenta l’honneur et la patrie,
Tout ce peuple, ces rois à mes ordres soumis,
Et l’empire d’Asie à la Grèce promis.
De quel front immolant tout l’État à ma fille,
Roi sans gloire, j’irais vieillir dans ma famille!
Odysseus to Agamemnon (285-296):
Think! You owe your daughter to Greece:
You’ve promised her to us, and on that promise,
Calchas, whom the Greeks consult daily,
Has foretold the return of unfailing winds.
If what comes contradicts his predictions,
Do you think Calchas will stay silent?
That you can blunt his accusations?
That Greeks will say the gods lied, and not blame you?
Deprived of their sacrifice, who knows what Greeks,
Rightly angry, in their view, might do?
Beware of forcing an enraged people,
My lord, to choose between you and the gods.
Songez-y: Vous devez votre fille à la Grèce:
Vous nous l’avez promise; et, sur cette promesse,
Calchas, par tous les Grecs consulté chaque jour,
Leur a prédit des vents l’infaillible retour.
À ses prédictions si l’effet est contraire,
Pensez-vous que Calchas continue à se taire;
Que ses plaintes, qu’en vain vous voudrez apaiser,
Laissent mentir les Dieux, sans vous en accuser?
Et qui sait ce qu’aux Grecs, frustrés de leur victime,
Peut permettre un courroux qu’ils croiront légitime?
Gardez-vous de réduire un peuple furieux,
Seigneur, à prononcer entre vous, et les Dieux.
Roland Barthes characterizes Racine’s representation of Odysseus this way:
Roland Barthes. On Racine (Editions du Seuil. 1963.105).
“He possesses the traits of what Votaire calls with admiration ‘the great politician’: the sense of collective interest, the objective appreciation of facts and their consequences, the lack of self respect; and he shrouds all his pragmatism in windbag rhetoric and continual blackmail styled as high morals [honor and country].”
“Il possède les traits de ce que Voltaire appelait avec admiration le grand politique: le sens de l’intérêt collectif, l’appréciation objective des faits et de leurs conséquences, l’absence d’amour-propre, enveloppant tout ce pragmatisme d’une rhétorique phraseuse et d’un chantage continu à la grande morale.”
Chorus:
“A man raised a lion cub in his house. The cub was motherless but needed the teat. When young, it was gentle; it liked children a lot; and it charmed the old folks. The cub was often in the man’s arms, a normal thing for a baby of nursing age. It would set its bright eyes on the man’s hand and beg for its belly’s necessities.
In time, however, the animal exhibited its parents’ character. That is to say, in return for the household’s kindness, it prepared a feast no one had asked for by slaughtering the sheep with frenzy. The house was splattered with blood. The destruction was enormous and violent. A god is to blame for a minister of Disaster having been raised in the house.”
Chorus:
Old wrong has a way of begetting new wrong
In the lives of bad people.
It happens unexpectedly,
Whenever the day marked for the birth comes.
Old wrong then begets a god
Indomitable and unyielding;
black Calamity for houses,
Profane in her audacity.
She is the image of her parents.
In contrast, Justice shines
In smoke-choked homes
and honors the upright man.
Gold-daubed mansions, unclean hands within,
These she quits, eyes averted, for pious houses.
She does not honor wealth’s tinsel might with praise.
She brings all things to their conclusion.
Odysseus and Diomedes have learned that King Rhesus, bivouacking with his Thracian contingent, has with him some especially large and handsome horses. The warriors want them:
Homer. Iliad.10.469-493.
“The two advanced through battle arms and black blood,
and pushing on, quickly reached the Thracian force.
The men, spent, were asleep on the ground. Their war gear,
so fine, lay beside them, neatly arranged
in three rows. Each man’s yoked horses stood by him.
Rhesus slept among his men, hard by his fast horses.
They were tied to the chariot’s upper rim.
Odysseus saw him first and pointed:
‘Diomedes, that’s him! And those are the horses
the guy we killed, Dolon, told us about!
Come on! Unleash your awesome force!
Don’t stand here armored for nothing. Untie the horses.
Better still, you kill the men. I’ll deal with the horses.’
He said this. Bright-eyed Athena then inspired Diomedes
with fury: left and right he killed. Awful moans came
from men struck by his sword. The earth flowed red with blood.
Just as a lion coming upon untended flocks
(whether goats or sheep) bears evil in his pounce,
Tydeus’s son coursed through the Thracian force
until he’d killed twelve.
As for artful Odysseus–
whenever Tydeus’s son struck a man with his sword,
Odysseus would drag him aside by the leg,
thinking: this is how the horses with handsome manes
will pass through with ease, their hearts not trembling
trampling on bodies. They aren’t used to that yet.”
The narcissus was Gaia’s trap for the blooming girl,
Zeus’s wish and a favor for Hades, Host of All.
Stunning, shining flower: awe at the sight of it,
for immortal gods and mortal men alike.
From one root one hundred blooms sprang up!
Sweetest fragrance! The whole wide sky above
and all the earth laughed, the briny sea swell too.
The girl was amazed; flung out her hands
to pluck the lovely charm. But earth with its wide ways
ripped open the Nysian plain. Lord Host of All,
son of many-named Cronos, sprang out with deathless steeds.
He snatched the struggling girl, and on his golden car
dragged her off wailing. With piercing voice she cried out,
called to her father, Cronos’s son, the most high and best.
