“Let us drink wine happily
And toast Bacchus with songs,
That inventor of choral performances,
The lover of all music.
He shares the life of the Loves-
Kythera loves him too
Drunkenness was born thanks to him;
Grace was born thanks to him.
Grief takes a break when he’s around.
Pain goes to sleep too.
So once the drink is mixed,
Have the cute boys take it around.
Then grief has run away,
Mixed in with the wind-driven squall.
Let’s take a drink, then.
Let’s take a break from our worries.
What benefit is there from
Stressing over our pains?
How can we know the future?
Life is unclear to mortal-kind.
I want to get drunk and dance.
I want to douse myself in perfume and play
With handsome men
And pretty women too.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers: Thales 1.35-37
“These sayings are also attributed to him:
God is the oldest of all things in existence, since god* was never born.
The most beautiful thing is the universe, since it is god’s creation and it contains everything.
Mind is the fastest thing since it runs through everything.
Compulsion is the strongest thing, since it overpowers everything.
The wisest thing is time, since it uncovers all.
Thales claimed that there was no difference between death and being alive. When someone asked why he didn’t die then, he said “because it would make no difference.”
“Come on, best of the painters,
Paint! Best of the Painters,
Expert in the Rhoadian art,
Paint my girlfriend who is away
Just as I tell you to.
First, paint her hair
Soft and black as it is.
As much as the wax can handle,
Make it smell of perfume.
Then make her whole cheek
Beneath her dark hair
Her ivory forehead.
Don’t separate her eyebrows
Or let them touch
Leave them as they are
Touching almost without notice,
The dark circles of her lashes.
Make her glance true
Bright like fire, flashing
Like Athena’s gaze,
But wet like Cythera’s
Color her nose and cheeks,
Mixing milk together with rose.
Dye her lips like Persuasion’s,
Just begging for kisses.
Have all the Graces fly
Beneath her chin
Around her marble smooth neck.
Dress the rest of her
In purple robes
But leave a little skin to see
Proof of her body below.
Stop! I am looking at her.
Wax–you’ll be chatting me up soon!”
“Paint my dear Bathullos,
My boyfriend, as I instruct.
Make his hair bright–
Dark underneath,
But sun-brightened on top.
Add his curls free
Of the rest, set in a mess
As they wish.
Make his forehead crowned
With eyebrows, darker than serpents.
Leave his eyes black, fierce
Mixed with peace.
Their ferocity is from Ares
Their peace is from Cythera–
He uses them to frighten at times
And to dangle hope in others.
Give his tender cheek
And apple’s red glow–
And, if you can manage,
Add Modesty’s light blush.
I don’t know how you can make his lips
Gentle yet still compelling.
So let the wax itself
Hold it all, chatting in silence.
Below his face give him a neck
Nicer ivory than Adonis had.
Provide him with Hermes’ chest
And his two hands.
Grant him Polydeuces’ thighs
and Dionysus’ belly.
Above his tender thighs,
Thighs holding roiling fire,
Give him a sufficient penis,
Already longing for the Paphian.
Unfortunately, your art begrudges:
It is incapable of showing his
Back. That would have been nicer.
Why do I need to tell you about his feet?
Take my money, however much you say.
Record this Apollo and
Make me a Bathullos.
And if you ever visit Samos,
Paint an Apollo after my Bathyllos.”
I prize the Greek more for the movement of the words, rhythm, perhaps than for anything else. There is the POIKILOTHRON and then Catullus, ‘Collis O Heliconii,’ and some Propertius, that one could do worse than know by heart for the sake of knowing what rhythm really is. And there is the gulph between TIS O SAPPHO ADIKEI, and Pindar’s big rhetorical drum TINA THEON, TIN’ EROA, TINA D’ ANDREA KELADESOMEN, which one should get carefully fixed in the mind. I’ll explain viva voce if this metatype-phosed Greek is too unintelligible.
It is perhaps a sense of Latin that helps or seems to have helped people to a sort of superexcellent neatness in writing English — something different from French clarity. It may be merely from the care one takes in following the construction in an inflected language.
“These kind of things belong to poets; we, moreover, want to be philosophers, masters of facts not fables. And yet, these gods of poetry, if they know that these things would be ruinous for their children, would be considered to have sinned in conferring a favor.
It is just as if, according to that thing which Aristo of Chios used to say, that philosophers hurt their audiences when the things they say well are interpreted badly (for it was possible still to leave Aristippus’ school as a profligate or Zeno’s school bitter and angry).
If it is this way, and those who have heard them leave with twisted minds because they understand the philosophers’ arguments incorrectly, then it befits philosophers more to be quiet than cause their audiences harm. In this way, if people pervert the capacity for reason which was given by the gods to provide good council and used it instead for fraud and harm, then it would have been better if it had not been given to the human race at all.”
Poetarum ista sunt, nos autem philosophi esse volumus, rerum auctores, non fabularum. Atque hi tamen ipsi di poetici si scissent perniciosa fore illa filiis, peccasse in beneficio putarentur. Ut si verum est quod Aristo Chius dicere solebat, nocere audientibus philosophos iis qui bene dicta male interpretarentur (posse enim asotos ex Aristippi, acerbos e Zenonis schola exire), prorsus, si qui audierunt vitiosi essent discessuri quod perverse philosophorum disputationem interpretarentur, tacere praestaret philosophos quam iis qui se audissent nocere: sic, si homines rationem bono consilio a dis immortalibus datam in fraudem malitiamque convertunt, non dari illam quam dari humano generi melius fuit. Ut, si medicus sciat eum aegrotum qui iussus sit vinum sumere meracius sumpturum statimque periturum, magna sit in culpa, sic vestra ista providentia reprehendenda, quae rationem dederit
Nicolas-André Monsiau “The Debate of Socrates and Aspasia ” 1800
“Once, in the middle of the night,
At that time when the bear
Is already turning round the Plowman’s hand,
And all mortal peoples lie
Overcome by exhaustion,
Love stationed himself outside
The bolts of my doors and was knocking.
I said, “who’s knocking at my door?
You’ve broken up my dreams!”
And Love said, “Open up!
I am just a baby, don’t be afraid.
I am getting damp as I wander
Through this moonless night.”
I felt pity when I heard this
And immediately grabbed my lamp.
I opened the door and saw
Baby there, wearing a quiver
With arrows and a bow.
I sat him down near my hearth
And I warmed his hands with mine
And pressed the gold water from his hair.
Once he shrugged off his shivers,
He said, “Come on, let’s try this bow,
Whether its string has been ruined from getting wet.
He drew and shot true,
In the middle of my heart, like a mosquito.
He jumped up and laughed out with a smile,
“Friend, celebrate with me!
My bow is unharmed,
Although your heart will hurt for a while!
“Not falling in love hurts.
Yet falling in love hurts too.
But more painful than everything
Is to fail at loving completely.
Family means nothing to love.
Wisdom, manner are crushed.
Only money matters.
I wish the first person who loved money
Would have died.
Because of it, no brother matters
Because of it, no parents matter.
Wars, murders–because of money.
And this is worse. Those of us who love
Lose because of money.”
“I imagined I was running in a dream,,
But on my shoulders wearing wings.
Love dragged lead somehow
On his pretty feet,
As he was pursuing, almost catching me.
What does this dream want to mean?
I imagine that while I
Have been wrapped up in many
Loves and have slipped away from some
I am caught, stuck, in this one.”
Here are two lyric expressions (Sappho and Callimachus) of the Greek idea that poetry in some fashion bestows immortality, or at least compensates for the ineluctable fact of mortality.
(Milton, for all his attachment to Greek things, dismissed the desire for poetic fame as “that last infirmity of noble mind.”)
Sappho Fr. 55.
Once you die, there you will lie, forgotten.
There will be no lasting longing for you.
The Pierian roses were not your thing;
So, as a no-body in Hades’ demesne
You will move among the obscure dead–
Once, as I say, you have flown away.
Heraclitus, someone spoke of your death.
It made me cry to recall all the times
Our tête-à-têtes brought on sunset.
O my Halicarnassian friend,
You have been ashes a long long while,
But your nightingales still live!
Hades (Universal Thief) will not touch them.
“It is difficult to say how much re-reading your letter two or three times soothed my ears, which were so worn down by the noise of the rabble. Even if this letter seemed verbose to you (as I learned from its ending), I find nothing to accuse you of but terseness. And so, I looked on the final threat, in which you claimed that you would write more briefly in the future, with unwilling eyes. I would have you be more prolix. As you will – you’re the father. It is right for me to accommodate my ways to you, and not the other way around. But will the whole business not be in your hands? Or do you not know that quite often the actual event differs from the plan? Perhaps you will hear what forces even one who is eager for silence to talk. You want me to fulfill the threats which I seem to be making now?
I stand as a witness, in the first place, that I have the same opinion of you which Macrobius had of Aristotle (whether it be love or the truth which gave rise to it). That is, I hardly think that you could not know something. If something has slipped your lips which seems to be contrary to the truth, I suspect that you either have not thought it out far enough, or just as Macrobius says of Aristotle, I suspect that you are playing around.”
Dictu difficile est quantum aures meas, vulgari fessas strepitu, epystola tua bis terque relecta permulserit; que quanquam tibi verbosa videretur, ut ex fine cognovi, ego tamen in ea nil preter breviloquium accusavi. Itaque comminationem illam ultimam, quod deinceps compendiosior sis futurus, invitus aspexi; mallem prolixior. Ut libet tamen; tu pater; non te michi, sed me tibi morem gerere dignum est. Sed ita ne totum in tua manu positum erit? an ignoras quod sepe consilio dissimilis est eventus? Audies forte quod vel silentii avidum loqui cogat. Vis quod minitari videor, iam nunc rebus impleam?
Testor in primis eandem me de te opinionem gerere, quam de Aristotile Macrobius, seu illam amor, seu veritas genuerit: vix te aliquid “ignorare posse” arbitror; siquid autem vero adversum tibi excidit, aut minus providisse aut, quod de eodem ait idem, lusisse te suspicor.
“The single solace I still had has been stolen from me. My thoughts were occupied with neither the business of my friends nor the the country’s bureaucracy. Nothing was drawing me to the courts; I couldn’t even look at the Senate.
I was imagining–the truth–that I had lost every benefit of my luck and hard work. Yet when I realized that I had this in common with you and some others, I settled myself down and resolved to endure it well. Even while I did this, I had a palace where I could retreat and rest, where I could escape all my worries and defeats in conversation and kindness.
But now those injuries I thought were healed are torturing me again thanks to this heavy hit. When I retreated from public life in the past, I found safety and comfort in my home. But I cannot flee from pain at home in public service, as if it offers any relief at all. So I make myself scarce from home and the Forum the same. Neither public nor private life can offer any relief to the pain and anxiety that plague me.”
unum manebat illud solacium quod ereptum est. non amicorum negotiis, non rei publicae procuratione impediebantur cogitationes meae, nihil in foro agere libebat, aspicere curiam non poteram, existimabam, id quod erat, omnis me et industriae meae fructus et fortunae perdidisse. sed cum cogitarem haec mihi tecum et cum quibusdam esse communia et cum frangerem iam ipse me cogeremque illa ferre toleranter, habebam quo confugerem, ubi conquiescerem, cuius in sermone et suavitate omnis curas doloresque deponerem.
Nunc autem hoc tam gravi vulnere etiam illa quae consanuisse videbantur recrudescunt. non enim, ut tum me a re publica maestum domus excipiebat quae levaret, sic nunc domo maerens ad rem publicam confugere possum ut in eius bonis acquiescam. itaque et domo absum et foro, quod nec eum dolorem quem e re publica capio domus iam consolari potest nec domesticum res publica.
