The following is not really a single poem but rather a collection of lines cited in Athenaeus, Plutarch and others and attributed to Cleobulina
Cleobulina fr. 3.1
“I have seen a man fashioning bronze on another man with fire
Fitting it so well that he joined them in the blood.
I saw a man stealing and deceiving violently—
To accomplish this with violence is the most just thing.
A donkey corpse struck me on the ear with its horny shin.”
These lines are poetic riddles: the first one, according to Athenaeus, is about using a cupping glass to draw blood to the surface of the skin) the last one is about a Phrygian flute (which was made from a donkey bone)
Homer, Il. 22.126-129 [Hektor talking to himself about facing Achilles]
“There’s no way from oak nor stone
To sweet-talk him, the way that a young woman and a young man
As a young man and a young woman sweet talk one another.”
”There’s no way from oak or stone to sweet-talk him” to recount a ridiculous ancient saying; it is either from the generation of humans who were in the mountains, or it is because early people said they were ash-born or from the stones of Deukalion. Or it is about providing oracles, since Dodona is an oak and Pytho was a stone. Or it means to speak uselessly, coming from the leaves around trees and the waves around stones. Or it is not possible for him to describe the beginning of the human race”
The following is not really a single poem but rather a collection of lines cited in Athenaeus, Plutarch and others and attributed to Cleobulina
Cleobulina fr. 3.1
“I have seen a man fashioning bronze on another man with fire
Fitting it so well that he joined them in the blood.
I saw a man stealing and deceiving violently—
To accomplish this with violence is the most just thing.
A donkey corpse struck me on the ear with its horny shin.”
These lines are poetic riddles: the first one, according to Athenaeus, is about using a cupping glass to draw blood to the surface of the skin) the last one is about a Phrygian flute (which was made from a donkey bone)
The following is not really a single poem but rather a collection of lines cited in Athenaeus, Plutarch and others and attributed to Cleobulina
Cleobulina fr. 3.1
“I have seen a man fashioning bronze on another man with fire
Fitting it so well that he joined them in the blood.
I saw a man stealing and deceiving violently—
To accomplish this with violence is the most just thing.
A donkey corpse struck me on the ear with its horny shin.”
These lines are poetic riddles: the first one, according to Athenaeus, is about using a cupping glass to draw blood to the surface of the skin) the last one is about a Phrygian flute (which was made from a donkey bone)
The following is not really a single poem but rather a collection of lines cited in Athenaeus, Plutarch and others and attributed to Cleobulina
Cleobulina fr. 3.1
“I have seen a man fashioning bronze on another man with fire
Fitting it so well that he joined them in the blood.
I saw a man stealing and deceiving violently—
To accomplish this with violence is the most just thing.
A donkey corpse struck me on the ear with its horny shin.”
These lines are poetic riddles: the first one, according to Athenaeus, is about using a cupping glass to draw blood to the surface of the skin) the last one is about a Phrygian flute (which was made from a donkey bone)
“Also in the first book of On Proverbs, he writes in this way: “an examination of riddles is not foreign to philosophy and the ancients made a display of their education through them. For during their drinking they used to toss riddles around not as people do now when they question one another which sexual position is the best or which or what kind of fish is tastiest or in season or which is best for eating after Arcturus rises or the pleiades or the dog star. And then as a prize they give those who answer kisses worthy of condemnation by anyone with good sense; and as a punishment to those who are defeated, they make them drink unmixed wine, a thing which is more delightful for them to drink than the cup of Health.”
“A really ancient type of logic riddle is also related to the basic nature of riddling to begin with: “What do we all teach without knowing it?” or “What is nowhere and everywhere at once?” and in addition to these “What is in the sky, on the land, and in the sea at the same time?” And this example is about words that mean more than one thing because a bear [arktos], a serpent [ophis], an eagle [aietos] and a dog [kuôn] are each in the sky, on the earth and in the sea. The answer to the question prior to that is “time”, because it is everywhere and nowhere at once because it does not inhabit any single space. And the first question is about souls: none of us know our soul, but we always show it to those we meet.”
“Diphilos in his Theseus says that once three girls from Samos were riddling while drinking at the Adonian festival. Then one of them posed a riddle to the others and asked “What is the strongest thing of all?”
One of them said, “iron” and then as proof of her argument suggested that they can dig or cut everything and use it for most things. Although she was thought well of for this answer, the second girl was saying that a blacksmith is much stronger than this since as he works he also bends even strong iron for whatever he wants to make.
And the third girl answered that a penis is the strongest of all and she explained that when someone buggers the blacksmith with it, he groans.”
An ancient scholar records an interesting fragment with the famous riddle of the Sphinx from the story of Oedipus (Scholia to Euripides Phoenician Women 46):
“It is two-footed, three-footed, and four-footed on land,
But has one voice. It alone changes its form of all the creatures
Who creep over the earth, through the sky and the sea.
But whenever it walks leaning on multiple feet,
Then its strength remains the weakest in its limbs.”
A version of this also appears in Athenaeus’Deipnosophists (10.83) with some slight changes (he says that the fragment comes from the Greek historian Asclepiades.
Phusis for phuê is a typical post-classical rendering; the superlative πλείστοισιν (“most”) instead of the comparative πλεόνεσσιν (“more, many”) doesn’t make much sense to me; and without the noun μένος (“strength,energy, fury”) in the first version, I have trouble understanding the genitive αὐτοῦ (“his”), unless “speed” (τάχος) is the subject…
This may be the oldest version of the Sphinx’s riddle available. Since it is in dactylic hexameter, some have argued that it originally comes from an epic about Oedipus (e.g. Oedipodeia). The earliness of the fragment is dubious: not only does it seem to be lacking formulae and language clear from other extant epics, but some words are clearly later (e.g. ἀλλάσσει). And, to my taste, these are particularly poor lines of hexameter. The only universally accepted fragment from the lost Oedipodeia, has better rhythm and more traditional language:
“and then [the Sphinx killed] the most beautiful and desire-inducing of all men,
the dear child of blameless Creon, shining Haemon.”
Those of you who know Sophocles might be surprised to find Haemon dead here, but the tragedians need not agree with epic!
The riddle was also a popular motif, versions of it appeared in a lost play by Aeschylus, and plays by Sophocles and Euripides. The following is my favorite picture of Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Gustave Moreau (1864):
