“Why not just entrust the lower and dirtier business to someone else, and apply yourself to your studies in that rich and lofty retreat? Let this be your business, let this be your leisure; let this be both your work and your rest. Let your waking hours and your sleep be spent in your studies. Contrive and fashion something which will be yours forever. All of your other affairs will find one master after another after you are gone, but this will never cease to be yours, if it ever comes into being. I know what spirit, what intellect I am urging on; you should just strive to be worth as much to yourself as you will appear to others if you become so to yourself. Farewell.”
“This could be you!”
3 Quin tu — tempus enim — humiles et sordidas curas aliis mandas, et ipse te in alto isto pinguique secessu studiis asseris? Hoc sit negotium tuum hoc otium; hic labor haec quies; in his vigilia, in his etiam somnus reponatur. 4 Effinge aliquid et excude, quod sit perpetuo tuum. Nam reliqua rerum tuarum post te alium atque alium dominum sortientur, hoc numquam tuum desinet esse si semel coeperit. 5 Scio quem animum, quod horter ingenium; tu modo enitere ut tibi ipse sis tanti, quanti videberis aliis si tibi fueris. Vale.
The tale I usually tell my myth students is that Helen was kidnapped as a baby by Theseus and returned fairly young as well. According to Pausanias, the Argives (and some poets) told a rather different story about her.
“Near the shrine of the Lords is the temple of Eilêthuia, set up by Helen when Theseus was passing through to the Thesprotians with Peirthoos after Aphidna was captured by the Dioskouri and Helen was being taken to Lakedaimon. Some say that she was pregnant and that she gave birth in Argos and then built the temple of Eilêthuia but that she gave the child she bore to Klytemnestra—for she was already married to Agamemnon—and that she married Menelaos after these events. The poets Euphorion of Khalkis and Alexandros of Pleurôn have written poems on this matter; before them still, Stesikhoros of Himeria also agrees with the Argives that Iphigenia was Theseus’ daughter.”
While searching for images to put into one of the Zonaras posts, I found that Chocolat Poulain used to print scenes from Roman history on their chocolate bars. This is the sort of custom which needs to be restored immediately!
Note: This may be the worst story I have ever read about Herakles
Arrian, Historia Indica, 9
“In this land, where Herakles’ daughter ruled, women come to the age of marriage when they are six years old, while the men live to be forty years at the most. There is also a story circulated about this among the Indians. They say that Herakles, who had this daughter when he was late in years, learned that his own death was near. Because he could not find any man near he considered worthy to marry his daughter, he had sex with her himself when she was seven so that he would leave a race of Indian kings descended through her. And he made this the age of marriage for those descended from her. And from that time Pandaia ruled over this whole race, which took this right from her through Herakles.
It seems to me that since Herakles did many amazing things he would have been able to make himself lover-lived so that he might have sex with his child at a more appropriate time. But if these details about the age of marriage for women there are true, then it seems that they accord in some way with the age of men who die at the oldest in their forties. For old age comes more quickly to them and death follows old age. Therefore, I guess, the peak of life blooms more rapidly, by this logic. So, a month them, men of thirty would, I guess, be like old men; twenty-somethings would be like men in their prime, and the peak of youth would come around age 15. By this logic, the age of marriage for women would appropriately come around age 7—since Megasthenes says that in this land fruit ripens more quickly than in other places and turns rotten quickly as well.”
In the fifth year of Tatius’ joint reign with Romulus, some of his kinsmen encountered some elders walking along the road from Larentum to Rome, and attempted to take from them by force the goods which they were carrying. When they did not give up the goods, but rather attempted to protect them, they were killed by Tatius’ men. Romulus then cast his vote to chastise the men who had committed this injustice, but Tatius opposed him and tried to lead him away from his purpose. This alone was the cause of the manifest rupture in their friendship. Since the kinsmen of those who were killed did not receive justice, they set upon Tatius as he was making sacrifice in the Alban Hills and killed him. They sent Romulus away with some well-wishing because they considered him a just man. The murder of Titus Tatius did not disturb the Sabines; some of them were well-disposed to Romulus, and others continued to yield to him out of fear for his power. Thereupon, a plague fell upon the city, bringing much sudden death to its inhabitants without any illness; there was moreover a lack of grain, and all of the herds and flocks became sterile. Drops of blood even rained on the city. Similar things happened in Laurentum. It seemed that a heaven-sent fury pursued these cities on account of the murder of Tatius and those ambassadords who had been killed by the Sabines. When they gave up the murderers and punished them, the terrible portents ceased.
Verb. Sap. = Verba Sapientibus = “Words to the Wise”
This is definitely an NSFW poem, even by today’s standards, such as they are. I discovered a translation, perhaps a bit free, which renders the sense and feeling of the poem better than any other known to me. The title is the translator’s; Horace’s poems do not have titles by the author. Translation from poetryintranslation.com.
Epode VIII – The Ancient Whore
Imagine asking what’s stolen my powers, you
Stinking whore, all this endless time,
When you’ve one black tooth, and when ripe old age
Furrows your brow with wrinkles,
When an ugly hole like a leathery old cow’s
Gapes between withered buttocks!
Yet that flabby chest, and those breasts, like the teats
Of a mare, can still excite me,
And that spongy belly, and those scrawny thighs,
Set on those swollen legs.
Bless you, and may masculine figures in triumph
Bear your funeral along.
Let no married woman wander about, weighed down
By rounder fruits than yours.
What if the little works of the Stoics prefer
To nest among silken pillows?
Illiterate sinews stiffen no less, do they:
Bewitched, it droops no less?
Either way to rouse it from a fastidious groin
It’s your mouth must labour hard.
Rogare longo putidam te saeculo, viris quid enervet meas, cum sit tibi dens ater et rugis vetus frontem senectus exaret hietque turpis inter aridas natis podex velut crudae bovis. sed incitat me pectus et mammae putres equina quales ubera venterque mollis et femur tumentibus exile suris additum. esto beata, funus atque imagines ducant triumphales tuom nec sit marita, quae rotundioribus onusta bacis ambulet. quid? quod libelli Stoici inter Sericos iacere pulvillos amant, inlitterati num minus nervi rigent minusve languet fascinum? quod ut superbo provoces ab inguine, ore adlaborandum est tibi.
The woman is no prize, obviously. Neither is Horace; he could be sued for “assault with a dead weapon.”
Poems about ugly anatomy was, you guessed it, an ancient literary genre, aischrologia. But despie the long tradition, Horace really outdoes himself. Note lines 5-6 which refer to the woman’s bung hole; there was a cult of Aphrodite Kallipugos (Aphrodite of the Lovely Bung Hole), and there are extant poems by various authors which praise those so endowed.
The woman was not your generic Working Girl. Line 12 imagines references the funeral masks which were collected in a special area in the mansions of the socio-economic elite.
But why belabor with an Ossa-Upon-Pelion collection of explications? If you would know more:
Commentary: Lindsay Watson, A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes (Oxford, 2003)
Vocabulary: J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London 1982)
Both have generous previews on Google Books. Watson is expensive; Adams was reprinted in a 1990 paperback still in print.
“Before daybreak, he would go to see the emperor Vespasian, who also liked to work at night, and then he would set about his assigned duty. Once he returned home, he gave the rest of his time up to study. Often, after eating (which, in the ancient way, was always light and sparing) he would lie in the summer sun if he had the leisure, and read a book which he annotated and excerpted from. He never read anything without at least making some notes: he was in the habit of saying that no book was so bad that it was not useful in at least some way. After the sun, he would wash in cold water, then eat and sleep a little bit; soon, as if it were a new day already, he would study again until dinnertime. While eating dinner, he would read and take notes in a cursory fashion. I remember that he was once reading out loud, and was asked by one of his friends to repeat what he had just recited; to this man, my uncle said, ‘Surely, you understood the meaning?’ When the friend said that he had, my uncle responded, ‘Why then did you ask me to repeat it? I have lost the time for reading ten more verses because of your interruption.’ Such was his parsimony of his time. In summer, he would leave the dinner table when it was still light out; in winter, within the first hour of night and as though he were compelled by some law.
He did all this amidst many labors, and the bustle of the city. In his retirement, the only time which he took away from his studies was in the bath-house (and when I say this, I mean the bath itself; when he was being oiled down or dried off, he would listen to or dictate something). When on the road, as though devoid of any other concerns, he had time for this alone: a secretary would be by his side with a book and some note-tablets, and this secretary would wear gloves in winter so that not even foul weather could snatch away any of his time for his studies. For this same reason, he was always carried in a chair when he was in Rome. I remember that one time, he asked me why I was walking. ‘You could have,’ he said, ‘avoided wasting these hours,’ for he thought that all time was wasted which was not spent on study.”
Ante lucem ibat ad Vespasianum imperatorem – nam ille quoque noctibus utebatur -, inde ad delegatum sibi officium. Reversus domum quod reliquum temporis studiis reddebat. Post cibum saepe – quem interdiu levem et facilem veterum more sumebat – aestate si quid otii iacebat in sole, liber legebatur, adnotabat excerpebatque. Nihil enim legit quod non excerperet; dicere etiam solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non aliqua parte prodesset. Post solem plerumque frigida lavabatur, deinde gustabat dormiebatque minimum; mox quasi alio die studebat in cenae tempus. Super hanc liber legebatur adnotabatur, et quidem cursim. Memini quendam ex amicis, cum lector quaedam perperam pronuntiasset, revocasse et repeti coegisse; huic avunculum meum dixisse: ‘Intellexeras nempe?’ Cum ille adnuisset, ‘Cur ergo revocabas? decem amplius versus hac tua interpellatione perdidimus.’ Tanta erat parsimonia temporis. Surgebat aestate a cena luce, hieme intra primam noctis et tamquam aliqua lege cogente.
Haec inter medios labores urbisque fremitum. In secessu solum balinei tempus studiis eximebatur – cum dico balinei, de interioribus loquor; nam dum destringitur tergiturque, audiebat aliquid aut dictabat. In itinere quasi solutus ceteris curis, huic uni vacabat: ad latus notarius cum libro et pugillaribus, cuius manus hieme manicis muniebantur, ut ne caeli quidem asperitas ullum studii tempus eriperet; qua ex causa Romae quoque sella vehebatur. Repeto me correptum ab eo, cur ambularem: ‘poteras’ inquit ‘has horas non perdere’; nam perire omne tempus arbitrabatur, quod studiis non impenderetur.
Herodotus (1.199) explains a bizarre ritual of mandatory religious prostitution:
“This is the most shameful of the Babylonian customs. Every native woman must once in her lifetime sit near the shrine of Aphrodite and have sex with a foreign man. There are many women who surpass the others in wealth and do not think it worthy of themselves to mingle with the others, so they are driven to the shrine in carriages while a large entourage of attendants follows them behind. Most Babylonian women, however, do it this way: They sit in the area of Aphrodite’s temple having a crown of string upon their heads. Some approach this area, and others leave. Marked-off paths lead every way through the crowd of women, past whom the foreign men go and make their pick. Once a woman sits in this spot, she does not return home before one of the foreign men throws a silver coin to her legs and copulates with her in the shrine. When the man throws the coin, he is supposed to say ‘I call upon the goddess Mulitta,’ because the Assyrians call Aphrodite Mulitta.
The size of the coin required is whatever it happens to be; it will not be rejected, because that would be unlawful, and the silver coin itself becomes sacred. The woman follows the first man who throws a coin to her, and does not spurn him, whoever he is. Once she has lain with him, she has discharged her duty to the goddess and returns home, and after this gifts are no great thing by which she may be seduced. Those who possess beauty or height are quickly released, but those who are ugly remain there for a lengthy time because they are unable to fulfill the requirements of the law. Some even remain there for three or four years. In some places in Cyprus the custom is roughly the same.”
“When Dionysus was leaving India because he had put everything in good order, he set up Spatembas as king of the land, one of his companions who was the most Bacchic. When he died, he left the kingdom to his son Bouduas—the first ruled the Indians for 52 years, the second for 20. His son Kraduas inherited the kingship. For the most part thereafter the rule passed from father to son. If a blood-heir was absent, the Indians selected kings according to who was best. Then Herakles—as the story goes he came to India and the Indians claim he was born from the earth. This Heracles is especially worshiped by the Sourasênians, an Indian people who have two great cities, Methora and Kleisobora. The passable river Iômanês flows through their land. Megasthenes claims that this Herakles wore a similar apparel to the Theban Herakles, as the Indian themselves claim. This Herakles had many male children born to him in India (for he took many wives, this Herakles) but he only had one daughter. This child’s name was Pandaia and the land in which she was born and over which Herakles gave her authority was named after her. From her father she received five hundred elephants, 4000 cavalry, and 132,000 infantrymen.
A rather select group of Indians tell this story about Herakles, that once he had crossed the whole earth and the sea destroying whatever was evil, he uncovered in the sea a new kind of female jewelry, the type which even today those merchants who come here buying and selling goods acquire eagerly, which Romans and Greeks who were very wealthy bought with even greater excitement, which they call the ocean pearl in the Indian tongue. Herakles, because he thought it was a great possession, gathered pearls from every sea and brought them to India to be jewelry for his own daughter.
Megasthenes also says that the mussel-shell is caught in nets, that they often find many shells together in the sea in the same place, just like bees. And that pearl-mussels have a king or queen just like bees. Whoever is lucky enough to catch the king, gathers together the rest of the swarm easily. If the king gets away, then it is not possible to catch the rest. Fishermen allow the flesh of the mussel to rot, but they use the shells for decoration. Among the Indians, the pearl is worth three times its weight in gold, which is also mined in India.”
“Nasica once came to Ennius’ house and the maid at the doorway told him that Ennius was not home. Nasica could perceive that she told him this at her master’s request, and that actually Ennius was inside. A few days later, Ennius came to see Nasica at his house and called out to him at the door. Nasica responded that he was not there. Ennius then exclaimed, ‘What? Do I not recognize your voice?’ Thereupon, Nasica replied, ‘You’re rather impudent – when I went to your house, I believed your maid when she said that you weren’t home, but you don’t believe me when I tell you the same thing?'”
–Cicero, de Oratore 2.68
ut illud Nasicae, qui cum ad poetam Ennium venisset eique ab ostio quaerenti Ennium ancilla dixisset domi non esse, Nasica sensit illam domini iussu dixisse et illum intus esse; paucis post diebus cum ad Nasicam venisset Ennius et eum ad ianuam quaereret, exclamat Nasica domi non esse, tum Ennius “quid? Ego non cognosco vocem” inquit “tuam?” Hic Nasica “homo es impudens: ego cum te quaererem ancillae tuae credidi te domi non esse, tu mihi non credis ipsi?”
