“These accusers will have no shortage of other examples for you. Some will liken you to tragic actors who strut the stage like an Agamemnon Creon, or even Herakles in the flesh, only with their masks off like a Polus or Aristodemus, acting parts for cash. They get booed and chased from the stage and sometimes they even get whipped when the audience wants it.
Others will claim you’re more like the monkey that Kleopatra is known for. It was taught to dance with charm and rhythm and was as much an object of praise because it kept up this charade, parading around in a proper fashion to accompany the singers and musicians of a bridal procession.”
“Surely, no one believes that the sky is heaven; no one keeps the fast; and no one gives a shit about Jupiter. No, everyone is counting up their own stuff with their eyes closed tight.
There was a time when the long-robed women used to walk barefoot up the hill, letting their hair hang down with pure thoughts, praying to Zeus for water. And then it rained right away by the bucket! Well, it was then or never. And everyone used to return home like sodden mice. Now the gods have wrapped wool on their feet because we are not pious. The fields are….
“Please,” Echion, the rag monger, interrupts, “talk about something nicer.” The bumpkin added, “So it goes; it is what it is.” He’d lost his mottled pig. What is not there today, will be there tomorrow. That’s the way life moves on.”
nemo enim caelum caelum putat, nemo ieiunium servat, nemo Iovem pili facit, sed omnes opertis oculis bona sua computant. antea stolatae ibant nudis pedibus in clivum, passis capillis, mentibus puris, et Iovem aquam exorabant. itaque statim urceatim plovebat: aut tunc aut numquam: et omnes redibant tamquam udi mures. itaque dii pedes lanatos habent, quia nos religiosi non sumus. agri iacent—”
45. “oro te” inquit Echion centonarius “melius loquere. ‘modo sic, modo sic’ inquit rusticus; varium porcum perdiderat. quod hodie non est, cras erit: sic vita truditur
“When I [Hippocrates] was near [Democritus], he happened to be writing something eagerly and forcefully when I arrived. So I said. “First, tell me what you are writing about.” And, after he paused for a bit, said “madness.”
So I said, “But what are you writing about madness?” He responded, “What would I write except what it may be, how it afflicts human beings, and in what way it may be treated. This is why,” he continued, “I cut up all these animals you are looking at. It is not because I hate god’s works, but because I am researching the nature and the function of the bile.
For you know that the bile is the cause of madness in humans most of the time, since it appears naturally in most people, even though some have less of it and others have more. Illnesses emerge from an unbalanced amount, implying that the material is sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful.”
I added, “By Zeus, Democritus, you are speaking truthfully and prudently and this is why I think you are blessed for having achieving such a sense of peace. This has certainly not been allotted to me.”
Then he asked, “Why, Hippocrates, has it not?” I responded, “Because fields, my home, children, debts, illnesses, deaths, servants, marriages and all these kinds of things cut off any chance for it.”
At this, that man fell into his customary behavior—he laughed deeply and mocked me and then was silent for the rest of the time.”
“The thought of touching each point of an infinite series is not counting, if someone should imagine that the mind approaches infinity in this way. Perhaps this is impossible. For the movement of thought is not like the movement of things carried along in a continuous sequence. But, whatever the case, even if movement like this can happen, it is not counting. For counting needs discrete stopping points.”
“But how do we have God? For he travels on the true nature of thought and reality as it really is. Here is we we come to meet him, in the third lot counted from him. As Plato says, “from the undivided above” and from those things that are divided into bodies.
We need to imagine this portion of the soul as also divided into bodies and that it supplies itself in part as the size of the bodies in relations to how much each living thing is proportionally, since it gives itself to everything, even though it is one….”
“Achilles, dear to Zeus, had fifty ships which he led to Troy. In each of the ships there were fifty companions at the benches.” How, people ask, is it that the Poet who typically augments Achilles elsewhere, diminishes him in this passage? Is it because there is no excellence in numbers?
Aristarchus, however, says that there are fifty rowers [only] because of the phrase “on the benches”, meaning sailors as support crew. Dionysus, still, claims that the greatest number of rowers possible was 120 and that most ships had between these two numbers, so that the average amount was 86 men.”
“It would be annoying to list all the people who spent their lives pursuing board games, ball games, or sunbathing. Men whose pleasures are so busy are not at leisure. For example, no one will be surprised that those occupied by useless literary studies work strenuously—and there is great band of these in Rome now too.
This sickness used to just afflict the Greeks, to discover the number of oarsmen Odysseus possessed, whether the Iliad was written before the Odyssey, whether the poems belong to the same author, and other matters like this which, if you keep them to yourself, cannot please your private mind; but if you publish them, you seem less learned than annoying.”
Persequi singulos longum est, quorum aut latrunculi aut pila aut excoquendi in sole corporis cura consumpsere vitam. Non sunt otiosi, quorum voluptates multum negotii habent. Nam de illis nemo dubitabit, quin operose nihil agant, qui litterarum inutilium studiis detinentur, quae iam apud Romanos quoque magna manus est. Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere, quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssia, praeterea an eiusdem essent auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae sive contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam iuvant sive proferas, non doctior videaris sed molestior.
Cemetery of Ancient Thera. 3rd quarter of the 6th cent. BC Archaeological Museum of Thera. Photo A. de Graauw, May 2015.
The following poems are taken from the Greek Anthology.
Philippos, 11.321
“Grammarians, children of hateful Blame, thorn-worms
Book-monsters, whelps of Zenodotus,
Soldiers of Kallimakhos, a man you project like a shield
But do not spare from your tongue,
Hunters of grievous conjunctions who take pleasure
In min or sphin* and in asking if the Cyclops kept dogs,
May you wear out your lives, wretches, muttering over the abuse
Of others. Come sink your arrow in me!”
“Useless race of grammarians, digging at the roots of
Someone else’s poetry, luckless worms who walk on thorns,
Perverters of great art, boasting over your Erinna*,
Bitter, parched watchdogs of Kallimakhos,
Rebukes to poets, death’s shade to children learning,
Go to hell, you fleas that secretly bite eloquent men.”
“Goodbye, men whose eyes have wandered over the universe,
And you thorn-counting worms of Aristarchus.
What’s it to me to examine which paths the Sun takes
Or whose son Proteus was or who was Pygmalion?
I would know as many works whose texts are clean. But let
The dark inquiry rot away the Mega-Kallimakheis!”
“Phylarkhos claims that Thetis went to Hephaistos on Olympos so that he might create weapons for Achilles and that he did it. But, because Hephaistos was lusting after Thetis, he said he would not give them to her unless she had sex with him. She promised him that she would, but that she only wanted to try on the weapons first, so she could see if the gear he had made was fit for Achilles. She was actually the same size as him.
Once Hephaistos agreed on this, Thetis armed herself and fled. Because he was incapable of grabbing her, he took a hammer and hit Thetis in the ankle. Injured in this way, she went to Thessaly and healed in the city that is called Thetideion after her.”
“A wolf and lamb arrived at the same stream
Compelled by thirst. The wolf was standing above it,
And the lamb far below. Then with wicked jaw agape
For a bark the wolf began to argue his case:
“Why”, he asked, “did you dirty up the water that
I am drinking?” The little lamb responded in fear:
“Please, how can I have done what you have accused, wolf?
The water runs from you to my jaws.”
Rebuffed by the strength of truth, he said,
“Six months ago you maligned my name.”
The lamb responded, “But I was not yet born!”
The wolf said, “By god, then your father did me wrong.”
And he then he killed the lamb by tearing him to pieces.
This fable has been written against those men
Who oppress the innocent for trumped-up reasons.”
Ad rivum eundem lupus et agnus venerant, siti compulsi. Superior stabat lupus, longeque inferior agnus. Tunc fauce improba latro incitatus iurgii causam intulit; ‘Cur’ inquit ‘turbulentam fecisti mihi aquam bibenti?’ Laniger contra timens ‘Qui possum, quaeso, facere quod quereris, lupe? A te decurrit ad meos haustus liquor’. Repulsus ille veritatis viribus ‘Ante hos sex menses male’ ait ‘dixisti mihi’. Respondit agnus ‘Equidem natus non eram’. ‘Pater hercle tuus’ ille inquit ‘male dixit mihi’; atque ita correptum lacerat iniusta nece. Haec propter illos scripta est homines fabula qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt.
“Faith in his sense of principle provided was the foundation of his great good will and fame. For Pompey the Great was not expected—should he overcome Caesar—to put down his power in deference to the laws, but people thought he would keep his political control, smooth-talking the people with the name of consulship or dictator or some other more palatable office.
Now it was imagined that Cassius, an eager and emotional man often distracted from justice by profit, was pursuing war and adventure to create some dynasty for himself rather than freedom for his fellow citizens. For in an earlier time than that, people like Cinna, Marius, and Carbo, even though they made their own country their victory prize and source for spoils, they warred by their own confession for tyranny alone.”
“No woman can claim that she has been loved as much
Truly, as my Lesbia has been loved by me.
No promise has ever been made in as much faith
As can be found on my part in loving you.”
Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam
vere, quantum a me Lesbia amata mea est.
nulla fides ullo fuit umquam foedere tanta,
quanta in amore tuo ex parte reperta mea est.
