“We must say and acknowledge that existence is. For existence exists.
Nothing does not exist. I implore you to think about these things.
For I may keep you from the inquiry of that first path,
But then there is the next one, about which double-headed people
Who know nothing make up stories. The inability in their chests
Drives their wandering mind. They are carried about deaf
And similarly blind, thunderstruck, those clans without judgment
Who believe that existing and not existing are the same thing
And not the same thing! The path of all things turns back on itself.”
“Poverty, be brave and endure the foolish talkers.
For a multitude of sweets and pleasureless hunger overwhelm you.
Whomever the Muses taught their letters backward
Walked having chilblains under his feet
Hermokaikoxanthos prayed to father Zeus:
“Oh man-slayer: how many mortals have you assigned to Hell?”
The “backward letters” above (ἐδίδαξαν ἀριστερὰ γράμματα) is more precisely “left-side letters”, with either the pejorative sense of Latin sinister or just a general notion of wrongness. I took the comic lines below as inspiration.
Theognetus, fr. 1.7-8
“Wretch, you learned your letters backwards.
Your books have turned your life upside down.”
“Right-hand of the lord”: this phrase means influence coming from on high and good action in the holy writings. For the ancients used to call right-hand things prudent but left-hand things foolish. Sophocles writes: “You never walked to the left because of your mind, son of Telamôn.”
“20. As soon as the masses are compelled to love or hate people excessively, every excuse is sufficient for them to complete their plans.
21 But I worry that I might overlook the fact that the oft-cited saying applies to me: “who is the greater fool, the one who milks a male-goat or the one who holds the bucket* to catch it?”
For, I also seem, in reporting what is agreed upon as a lie and in dragging out the process to do something very similar. For this reason, it is pointless to talk about these things, unless someone also wants to write down dreams and examine the fantasies of someone who is awake.”
*koskinos here actually means “sieve”, which makes the whole process even more futile. I simplified to “bucket” to make it easier to understand…
“To milk a he-goat”: this is applied to those who do something incongruous and ignorant. From this we also get the saying from Diogenianus: “Who is the greater fool, the one who milks a male-goat or the one who holds the bucket to catch it?”
The following fragment is from a poem whose central conceit is a singing contest between Mt. Kithairon and Mt. Helikon. The former wins; the latter loses. Mountains leave happy and sad….
“…the Kouretes
Sheltered the sacred offspring
Of the goddess in secret
From crooked-monded Kronos
When blessed Rhea stole him
And earned great honor among
The immortal gods….”
He sang those things.
Immediately the Muses told
The gods to cast their secret
Votes into the gold-gleaming urns.
They all rose up at once.
Then Kithairôn took the greater number.
Hermes quickly announced
By shouting that he had won
His longed-for victory
And the gods decorated him
With garlands[…]
And his mind filled with joy.
But the other, Helikon,
Overcome by hard griefs,
Ripped out a smooth rock
and the mountain [shook].
He broke it from on high
Painfully into ten thousand stones…”
Ever wondered why Helen left Menelaos or why her sister cheated on Agamemnon (other than the obvious)? Ancient poetry traced it back to a sin of their father
Schol. Ad Euripides’ Orestes 249
“Stesichorus says that when Tyndareus was sacrificing to the gods he overlooked Aphrodite. For this reason, the angry goddess made his daughters thrice and twice married deserters of husbands. The segment reads like this:
“Because when Tyndareus was sacrificing to all the gods
He neglected only the gentle-giving Kyprian
She was enraged and she made the daughters of Tyndareus
Twice and thrice married deserters of husbands.”
A fragment of Hesiod agrees with this (fr. 176):
“Smile-loving Aphrodite
Was enraged when she saw them: then she hung bad fame upon them.
After that, Timandra abandoned Ekhemos and left;
She went to Phyleus who was dear to the holy gods.
And so Klytemnestra abandoned shining Agamemnon
To lie alongside Aigisthos as she chose a lesser husband;
In the same way, Helen shamed the marriage-bed of fair Menelaos…”
This passage provides an explanation for why the daughters of Tyndareus—Helen and Klytemnestra—were unfaithful: it was Aphrodite’s game from the beginning because their father did not worship her correctly. A few interesting aspects here: first, Helen is “thrice-married” because after Paris dies, she marries Deiphobus (although some accounts associate her with Theseus too). Second, Hesiod’s fragmentary poems seems to be in the process of cataloging women who leave their husbands.
The first woman in the tale is Timandra, who, according to only this passage, was a third daughter of Tyndareus who left her husband Ekhemos, a king of Arcadia. They had a son together, named Leodocus before she eloped with Phyleus. In another fragment from Hesiod (fr. 23) we learn more about the family of Tyndareus and Leda:
“After climbing into the lush bed of Tyndareus
Well-tressed Leda, as fair as the rays of the moon,
Gave birth to Timandra, cow-eyed Klytemnestra,
And Phylonoe whose body was most like the immortal goddesses.
Her…the arrow bearing goddess
Made immortal and ageless for all days.”
Later on in the same fragment –after hearing about the marriage and children of Klytemnestra—we learn about Timandra:
“Ekhemos made Timandra his blooming wife,
The man who was the lord of all Tegea and Arcadia, wealthy in sheep,
A rich man who was dear to the gods.
She bore to him Laodakos, the horse-taming shepherd of the host,
After she was subdued by golden Aphrodite.”
This section of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women seems to be mentioning only Leda’s children with Tyndareus and not those possibly fathered by Zeus (Helen, Kastor, Polydeukes). But we hear nothing of the future of Leda’s attractive daughter Phylonoe (also spelled Philonoe) other than that Artemis made her immortal. The ancient sources? Nothing at all to explain this.
Fragment 1 (Preserved in Dionysus of Halicarnassus’ On Literary Composition 23)
“Immortal Aphrodite in your elaborate throne,
Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I beseech you:
Don’t curse my heart with grief and pains
My queen—
But come here, if ever at different time
You heeded me somewhere else because you heard
My pleadings, and once you left the golden home of your father,
You came,
After you yoked your chariot. Then the beautiful, swift
Sparrows ferried you over the dark earth
By churning their wings swiftly down through the middle
Of the sky.
And they arrived quickly. But you, blessed one,
Composed a grin on your immortal face
And were asking what it was I suffered that made me
Call you.
“The things which I most wish would happen for me
In my crazy heart”. “Whom, then, do I persuade to
Return you to their love? O Sappho, who is it who
Hurt you?
For if she flees now, she will soon chase you.
If she refuses gifts, then she will give them too.
If she does not love you now, she will love you soon, even if,
She doesn’t want to.”
Come to me now, too, and free me from
my terrible worries. Whatever things my heart longs
to accomplish, you, achieve them—
be my ally.
