“Child, Zeus the lound-thunderer manages every ending
And makes everything turn out the way he wants.
People don’t have any sense, but we live for the day
Just like animals in the field who know nothing
About how the god will finish each thing.
Still, hope and belief feed us all,
Making us strive for what can’t be done.
Some of us wait for the coming day, others for seasons–
But every mortal expects the new year
to make them a friend to wealth and fortune.
But begrudging old age overtakes one person before
Before they finish their race and awful sicknesses
ruin others, and then Hades sends some,
under the dark earth overcome by Ares in war.
Others die whirled about by winds
And the crashing waves of the dark sea
When they go sailing because they can’t earn a living.
Others choose to leave the light of the sun,
Fitting themselves to a noose with a miserable fate.
And so there’s nothing free of evils! Instead mortals have
Endless ways to die and unexpected disasters and pain.
If you listen to me, we wouldn’t desire troubles at all,
Nor would we disfigure ourselves by
Focusing our hearts on grief and misfortune.”
“A child, when still young and small, grows
a bulwark of teeth and loses them in his first seven years
When the god brings about the second seven years
He starts to show the signs of adolescence
In the third set of seven, his chin starts to fuzz
As his limbs thicken and skin changes color.
In the fourth seven, every one is seriously the best
In terms of strength, and men begin to show the signs of excellence.
In the fifth season, it is the time for a man to think about marriage
And to seek the generation of children afterwards.
In the six season, a man’s mind is fit for everything,
And he no longer wishes to act out in reckless deeds.
In the seventh season, and the eighth each is best
In thinking and speaking–fourteen years for both!
In the ninth season, a man can do anything, but
His speech and mind are less sharp, beneath peak excellence.
If someone completes the tenth stage and comes to the end,
his appointment with death is not out of season.”
The stages of life from infancy to old age. Woodcut from De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomeus Anglicus, 1846
I checked with my wife–a pediatric dentist–and first dentition is complete between ages 3-6. Also, we got married when I was 29 and had kids in our 30s (oops, another in our 40s). And then, in my seventh season I am definitely the best so far at speaking and thinking (and I can’t bench what I could at 25), so Solon is onto something.
This is hard to convey to someone who hasn’t read a lot of Greek poetry, but Solon is not much of a poet.
Fronto LaudesFumi et Pulveris [Ambr 249 Caesari suo Fronto. [139 a.d.]]
“Many of my readers may perhaps hate my subject from the title because it is impossible for anything serious to be made of smoke and dust. But you, thanks to your outstanding intelligence, will judge whether these words are wasted or put well.
The subject does, however, seem to ask for a few things to be written about the logic of its composition, since nothing written of this kind of thing noble enough in the Roman tongue exists except for what poets touch in comedies or farces. Anyone who tests himself at writing of this kind will select a mass of ideas and put them together closely, joining them cleverly, but without including many useless and doubled words and then make sure to end each sentence with clarity and skill.
In legal speeches, however, it goes differently because we often pay special attention to sentences ending harshly and artlessly. In this matter, we must labor differently so that nothing is left rude and out of place, instead making sure that everything is interconnected as in a robe with clear borders and ornate edges. Finally, just as the final verses in epigrams should have some kind of shine to them, a sentence should be ended with some kind of a clasp or brooch.
Pleasing the audience, however, should pursued among the first goals. For this kind of address is not composed for defense in a capital trial nor to advocate for the passing of a law, nor to exhort an army, nor to enrage a mass of people, but for delights and pleasure. Nevertheless, we must speeches we do about serious and wonderful things—the small matters must be compared and equaled to great ones. And, finally, the greatest virtue in this kind of speech is the conceit of seriousness. Stories of the gods or heroes should be interwoven where they fit. At he same time, lines of poetry which pertain applicable proverbs, and even clever fictions, as long as the fiction is added by some kind of clever argument.
The chief challenge, then, is to order the materials so that their presentation has a logical connection. This is what Plato faults Lysias for in the Phaedrus, that he has combined his thoughts so carelessly that the first one could be exchanged with the last without any kind of loss. We can only escape this danger if we organize our thoughts in categories so that we do not mix them in an indiscriminate and disordered way like those mixed dishes, but instead arrange it so that the preceding idea reaches into the next one and then shares its boundary, where the second thought begins where the first one has ended, and a sequence emerges in this way, so that we seem to step rather than jump along our way.”
Plerique legentium forsan rem de titulo contemnant, nihil <enim> serium , potuisse fieri de fumo et pulvere: tu pro tuo excellenti ingenio profecto existimabis lusa sit opera4ista an locata. 2. Sed res poscere videtur de ratione scribendi pauca praefari, quod nullum huiuscemodi scriptum Romana lingua extat satis nobile, nisi quod poetae in comoediis vel atellanis adtigerunt. Qui se eiusmodi rebus scribendis exercebit, crebras sententias conquiret, easque dense conlocabit et subtiliter coniunget, Ambr. neque verba multa geminata supervacanea | in-ferciet; tum omnem sententiam breviter et scite concludet. Aliter in orationibus iudiciariis, ubi sedulo curamus ut pleraeque sententiae durius interdum et incautius1finiantur. Sed contra istic laborandum est, ne quid inconcinnum et hiulcum relinquatur, quin omnia ut in tenui veste oris detexta et revimentis sint cincta. Postremo, ut novissimos in epigrammatis versus habere oportet aliquid luminis, sententia clavo aliquo vel fibula terminanda est.
In primis autem sectanda est suavitas. Namque hoc genus orationis non capitis defendendi nec suadendae legis nec exercitus hortandi nec inflammandae contionis scribitur, sed facetiarum et voluptatis.Ubique vero ut de re ampla et magnifica loquendum, parvaeque res magnis adsimilandae comparandaeque. Summa denique in hoc genere orationis virtus est adseveratio. Fabulae deum vel heroum tempestive inserendae; item versus congruenteset proverbia accommodata et non inficete conficta mendacia, dum id mendacium argumento aliquo lepido iuvetur.
Ambr 247 4. Cum primis autem difficile est argumenta ita disponere ut sit ordo eorum rite connexus. Quod Ambr.ille | Plato Lysiam culpat in Phaedro, sententiarum ordinem ab eo ita temere permixtum, ut sine ullo detrimento prima in novissimum locum transferantur, et novissima in primum, eam culpam ita devitabimus, si divisa generatim argumenta nectemus, non sparsa nec sine discrimine aggerata, ut ea quae per saturam feruntur, sed ut praecedens sententia in sequentem laciniam aliquam porrigat et oram praetendat; ubi prior sit finita sententia, inde ut sequens ordiatur; ita enim transgredi potius videmur quam transilire.
“There is something called divine payback.
The happy person is one
Who piously weaves to the end of his day
Without weeping.
But I am singing of the light
Of Agido–I see her
Like the sun, the sun Agido
Invites to observe us
By shining.
But the famous leader of our dance,
Does not let me praise her
Nor rebuke her at all
For she appears outstanding
On her own just as if
Someone were to place
A tall, prize winning horse
With thundering hooves,
A product of rock-covered dreams*,
Amid a grazing herd.”
*Dionysus of Sidon, in recording a comment of Herodian, suggests that what I have translated here as “rock-covered dreams” is really a syncope or metathesis of “winged” so, the strange ὑποπετριδίων ὀνείρων is equivalent to τῶν ὑποπτεριδίων. Martin West, preferring to argue for the strange, suggests that the sense of “rock-covered dreams” is that people shelter under rocks to nap during the day. As a metaphor in a choral poem, it seems more likely to me that this is a linguistic variant than a unique image.
“The fact is that if you remove the ties of goodwill from our world, no house or city can stand tall nor can even agriculture persist! If this is less intelligible, one can perceive how powerful friendship and harmony are from the impact of disagreements and disharmony. What house is so stable or what state is so strong that it cannot be upended by hatred and division?”
Quod si exemeris ex rerum natura benevolentiae coniunctionem, nec domus ulla nec urbs stare poterit, ne agri quidem cultus permanebit. Id si minus intellegitur, quanta vis amicitiae concordiaeque sit, ex dissensionibus atque discordiis percipi potest. Quae enim domus tam stabilis, quae tam firma civitas est, quae non odiis et discidiis funditus possit everti?
Plato, Euthyphro 7c
“So if we were disagreeing about whether something was bigger or smaller, we’d turn to actual measurement to resolve our disagreement?”
“If we dispute about a fact, Cato, you and I can have no disagreement! There’s no difference between what you believe and I do when we compare the facts themselves once the words have been changed.”
Si de re disceptari oportet, nulla mihi tecum, Cato, potest esse dissensio; nihil est enim de quo aliter tu sentias atque ego, modo commutatis verbis ipsas res conferamus
“…Polydeukes.
I do not care that Lukaisin is among the dead*
And Enasphoros and swift-footed Sebros
The violent one….
The helmeted one…
Or Euteikhes and lord Areios
Exceptional among the Heroes.
The summoner
Great Eurotos in the chaos of Ares
And Alkon, and the best men
We will certainly not ignore them.
Yet Fate and the Way
Those most ancient ones
Overcame them all
And their untethered courage
Perished.
No human should fly to the heaven
Nor try to marry Aphrodite
The Kyprian Queen
Nor some child of Porkos, the sea-god
The Graces with loving eyes
Go to visit the house of Zeus.
A deity….
For friends…
Gives gifts…
In vain…
One went, another of them dead by arrow
Another by a marble millstone…
In Hades now…
Those people
Suffered unforgettable pain
Because they had evil plans.”
Greek, Attic; Bell-krater; Vases; Obverse, Orpheus among the Thracians; Reverse, libation scene. C 440 BCE, Painter of London E 497
*I may be obtuse or too lazy to follow it up, but I cannot make sense of the Loeb translation that takes the reconstructed οὐκ ἐγὼ]ν Λύκαισον ἐν καμοῦσιν ἀλέγω as “I do not reckon L. among the dead”. It seems atypical for the semantics of the verb and thematically unrelated to the judgment of this poem.
“Theognis of Megara, from Megara in Sicily. He lived around the time of the 59th Olympiad [ c/ 540 BCE]. He composed elegy for those who were saved from the Syracusans during the siege, around 2800 elegiac proverbs, a group of elegiac advice addressed to his lover Kyrnos, and other kinds of advisory lines. Theognis is useful because he wrote advice, but in the midst of this are interwoven foul and pederastic erotic lines too and many other things rejected by clean living.”
Theognis: This dude is Megarian, from Megara in Attica. The poet says this himself [783]. Plato didn’t acknowledge this when he claimed in Laws Book 1 that Theognis was from MEgara in Sicily. Not a few have followed Plato in this.”
“This is what Xenophon says about Theognis: “The words of Megarian Theognis: This poet has composed about nothing else except for human excellence and wickedness. This poetry is a treatise on people, as if an equestrian were to write about horses.”
“If someone praises you for as long as you see him
But lashes you with an evil tongue when you are apart,
That kind of man is not a very good friend at all.
He’s the kind who speaks smoothly with his tongue, but harbors different thoughts.
Let me have that kind of friend who knows his companion
And puts up with him when he’s mean or in a rage,
Like a brother. But you, friend, keep these things your heart
And you will remember me in future days.”
“One can survive the ruin from counterfeit silver and gold
Kurnos—and a wise person can easily discover it.
But if a dear friend’s mind is hidden in his chest
When he is false and he has a deceptive heart,
Well this the most counterfeit thing god has made for mortals
And it is the most painful thing of all to recognize.
For you cannot know the mind of a man or a woman
Before you investigate them, like an animal under a yoke—
And you cannot imagine what they are like at the right time
Since the outer image often misleads your judgment.”
“Dude, let’s be friends with each other at a distance.
With the exception of wealth, there’s too much of any good thing.
But we can be friends for a long time, just spend time with different men
Who have a better grasp of your mind.”
Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Raphael for sharing this passage on the teleology of the human ass with me. This is mostly for distraction, but it also functions as a timely reminder of some of the absurd conclusions that can arise from teleological thinking.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals 689b
“A human being is has no tail, but does have buttocks although the quadruped does not. A human being also has legs which are fleshy in the thighs and calves, while all the rest of the animals have fleshless legs—and not only those animals which have live births, but as many of the other animals who have legs—and they are covered with sinew, are bony, and full of spines.
There is one explanation, you might say, for these differences and that is that humans are the only animal to stand upright. So, nature removed some of the fleshy parts from above and transferred the weight below in order to make the upper portions of human beings easier to bear. This is why nature made human butts fleshy along with their thighs and their calves. With the same act, it made the nature of the buttocks useful for taking a break.
For it is not a problem for the rest of the quadrupeds and they do not get tired from doing that continually. This is because they have four supports holding them up, it works the same as if they are lying down.But human beings do not easily remain standing upright: our bodies need rest and need to sit down.
This is why a human being has a fleshy butt and thighs and the same reason why we don’t have tails. All the nutrition which heads that way is spent on butts and thighs. The need and use of a tail, moreover, is negated by having butts and thighs. In quadrupeds and the rest of the animals, the situation is the opposite: because they are like dwarfs, all their weight is centered in their upper parts and it is separated from the lower section. For this reason, they have no butt and have hard legs.
Sappho, fr. 1 [1 D. H. Comp. 23 (vi 114ss. Usener–Radermacher) (+P. Oxy. 2288)]
“Fine-throned, Immortal Aphrodite,
Trick-weaving child of Zeus, I beg you,
Don’t overcome my heart, Queen
With foolishness and pain
But come to me, if ever in days gone by
You heard my voice as you listened from afar
then left your father’s golden home
And came–
Once you readied your chariot and
Your beautiful swift sparrows carried you
As they flew with fast beats around the dark earth
Midway beneath the sky–
They arrived quickly. Then you, goddess,
Grinned in your deathless way
And asked what’s wrong with me now and
Why I was calling again
And what I really wanted in my little maddened heart
To happen. ‘Whom shall I cajole this time
To accept you back into her love? Who hurt you
Sappho?
If she avoids you, she’ll chase you soon enough.
If she won’t take your presents, she’ll send some soon.
If she doesn’t love you now, soon she will love
Even if she is reluctant.’
Come to me now, too! Free me from my hard
Worry. Bring to pass all the things
My heart clings to. And you–
By my ally yourself.”
Dionysus of Halicarnassus: “The elegance and beauty of this selection resides in how it fits together and the fluidity of its connections.” ταύτης τῆς λέξεως ἡ εὐέπεια καὶ ἡ χάρις ἐν τῇ συνεχείᾳ καὶ λειότητι γέγονε τῶν ἁρμονιῶν.
Attic white-ground red-figured kylix of Aphrodite riding a swan (c. 460 BCE) found at Kameiros (Rhodes)
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