A gender-nonconforming veteran of the sex trade

Myrinus was a poet of the Garland of Philip, so, of the later first century BC or earlier first century AD; four of his epigrams make it into the Anthology.

Here is the Greek:

τὴν μαλακὴν Παφίης Στατύλλιον ἀνδρόγυνον δρῦν 
ἕλκειν εἰς Ἀίδην ἡνίκ᾽ ἔμελλε χρόνος, 
τἀκ κόκκου βαφθέντα καὶ ὑσγίνοιο θέριστρα, 
καὶ τοὺς ναρδολιπεῖς ἀλλοτρίους πλοκάμους, [p. 436] 
φαικάδα τ᾽ εὐτάρσοισιν ἐπ᾽ ἀστραγάλοισι γελῶσαν, 
καὶ τὴν γρυτοδόκην κοιτίδα, παμβακίδων, 
αὐλούς θ᾽ ἡδὺ πνέοντας ἑταιρείοις ἐνὶ κώμοις, 
δῶρα Πριηπείων θῆκεν ἐπὶ προθύρων.

Δρῦς in the first line means tree, commonly an oak. It is the dry- in Dryad, wood-nymph, and is cognate with δόρυ, the word for a spear, called that because it is made of wood. We might think calling someone an 'oak' implies physical strength and solidity, but this is not the only place where it is used figuratively for a man who is old and worn-out.

I dithered over μαλακὴν Παφίης. The Greek μαλακός means soft, gentle, feeble; in an erotic context it implies taking a passive role, within the default ancient paradigm that made sex an asymmetric relation of  pleasure-taking penetration by the socially more powerful partner(s). I toyed with having the second line end 'bottoming in bed' before deciding it wouldn't sit well with a notional inscriptional context, or with the delicate euphemism of 'the Paphian' (a title of Aphrodite).

This is part of a wider, open question about what sort of tone we decide to read into, and pass on from, Myrinus' original. Typically it's read as contemptuous satire, but I prefer to see the poet expressing fascination and guarded respect for Statyllius' abilities and determinedly nonconformist life. Line by line, that preference helped shape my choices as a translator, little decisions (not 'greasy', but slick and conditioned) that add up. 

6.254 (on YouTube)

MYRINUS

Statyllius the androgyne was old,

Worn to a stump by sensuality:

Passage of time was soon to haul him off

To Hades. Summer dresses, scarlet-dyed;

The wigs of human hair, kept slick with nard;

The haughty slippers from his well-turned feet;

His garderobe of cottons; and his pipes,

That breathed so sweetly for companions

In late-night antics — these he set aside,

Upon the threshold of Priapus’ shrine.

I've read that Tony Harrison made a version of this poem, and I'm trying to track it down; if it was at all like his covers of Martial in U.S. Martial (1981) he will not have gone for nuance. Harrison also did a Palladas: Poems (1975) that I've yet to see.

On a seashell, and asking questions of monuments

An unusual epigram by Theodoridas, a lyric poet and epigrammatist of the 3rd century BC. Theodoridas was from Syracuse on the eastern coast of Sicily, and the following epigram suggests a fairly local setting: Pelorias (modern Capo Peloro) is the promontory at the island's northeastern point.

The shell is a marine 'labyrinth' in the original because of its spiral shape. The Greek of the poem is unusually convoluted and comes back round on itself in near-repetition, like the shell it describes:

Εἰνάλιε λαβύρινθε, τύ μοι λέγε: τίς  ς᾽ ἀνέθηκεν 
ἀγρέμιον πολιᾶς ἐξ ἁλὸς εὑρόμενος; — 

παίγνιον ἀντριάσιν Διονύσιος ἄνθετο Νύμφαις 
（δῶρον δ᾽ ἐξ ἱερᾶς εἰμι Πελωριάδος,） 
υἱὸς Πρωτάρχου: σκολιὸς δ᾽ ἐξέπτυσε πορθμός, 
ὄφρ᾽ εἴην λιπαρῶν παίγνιον Ἀντριάδων.

Whether or not they were really used in that way (and it can sometimes be hard to tell), dedicatory poems are written as if for inscription on objects and structures in plain view: tombs by the roadside, offerings in sanctuaries, statues of victors in sport and war. Often they explicitly anticipate a passer-by or visitor who will read them aloud, and sometimes that reading-aloud becomes a dialogue between the visitor and the monument. Any such dialogue is also a monologue twice over, albeit a collaborative one. The visitor supplies both of the voices; the monument supplies all of the lines.

It is a cliché for these dialogues to open with the visitor posing questions to the monument -- what are you, why are you here, who placed you here? -- and requesting answers. The difference with a seashell is that it is an object that might speak back without needing to resort to inscription. If you hold it to your ear and listen, you will hear the sea...and maybe, just maybe, something more.

6.224 (on YouTube)

THEODORIDAS

You spiral seashell, whisper in my ear — 

Who set you here, who was the beachcomber

That took you trophy from the surging sea?

‘I am a toy for Nymphs within the cave,

And it was Dionysius set me here,

A gift from holy Cape Pelorias.

He is Prōtarchus’ son. The winding strait

Spat me upon the shore, that I might be

A toy for glistening spirits of the cave.’

Courtesans' gifts to Aphrodite, by the two Antipaters

These epigrams are by the two Antipaters, of Sidon (late 2nd century BC) and Thessalonica (late 1st century BC, an Augustan court poet). They fall within a substantial run (6.206-211) of poems notionally written to accompany thank-offerings to Aphrodite by women retiring from careers as courtesans. 

The women are moving from the care of Aphrodite 'Pandemos' (vulgar) to that of Aphrodite 'Urania' (heavenly) because they are leaving the profession to enter a new chapter in their lives as respectable married women.

6.206 (on YouTube)

ANTIPATER <OF SIDON>

These sandals that were comfy on her feet,

Labour of love of skilful shoemakers,

Bitinna gives; Philaenis brings the net

That tamed her straying hair, dyed in the blooms

Of surging sea; and as for Anticleia,

She gives her fan; the veil that hid her face,

Worked delicately as a spider-web,

Is pretty Heracleia’s; and the snake,

Her shapely ankles’ golden ornament,

Well-coiled, from she who shares her father’s name,

Our Aristoteleia. These best friends,

Alike in age, now dedicate their gifts

To Cythereia the Uranian.

Philaenis' hair-net is dyed scarlet with orchil, made from seaweed.

Poems on retiring courtesans go all the way back to literary epigram's early years, with Philetas (4th-3rd century, 6.210) and Leonidas of Tarentum (3rd century, 6.211). How often they found good husbands in real life I would not care to guess, but in the epigrams of Book 6 the trope is so firmly established that the second of my poems can play around with it. 6.208 puts the scene in an ecphrastic frame. We do not see the women in the act of dedication; instead we take it in at second-hand, through art. If the other poems in the sequence are notionally dedicatory inscriptions, 6.208 is notionally the caption to a painting.

6.208 (on YouTube)

ANTIPATER <OF THESSALONICA>

The one with sandals is Menecratis;

It is Phēmonoe who brings the cloak,

And Praxo has the cup. That is the shrine

Of Aphrodite, and her statue too.

The work is Aristomachus’, of Thrace.

All three are citizens, and courtesans;

But they have chanced to meet the Cyprian

In mellow mood, and now each one of them

Becomes the property of just one man.

 

Two trumpets for Athena Ilias

These two dedicatory epigrams are by poets of the Hellenistic age, when Greek superpowers warred on each other almost without pause.

The cult of Athena Ilias was by then already ancient, and from the fourth century BC a 'Confederation of Athena Ilias' celebrated a Panathenaic festival at Ilium (Troy), attested by coin finds (an article by Aneurin Ellis-Evans sums up what is known). Miccus is from Macedonia, and leaves his trumpet a long way from its native Italy.

6.195, by Archias, is a variant on Tymnes' poem.

6.151 (on YouTube)

TYMNES

Miccus of Pella hung this booming horn,

The war-god’s, in Athena Ilias’ shrine:

Etruscan instrument, through which that man

Many a bygone time did bellow out

The siren calls of parley and of war.

6.159 (on YouTube)

ANTIPATER OF SIDON

I am a trumpet, that in former time

Gushed forth the bloody war-song in the fight

And issued too the sweet refrain of peace.

And here I hang, your gift, Pherenicus,

To the Tritonian maid: for I have ceased

From roaring out the bellowing clarion.