6.172 (on YouTube)
ANONYMOUS
Woman of Cnidus, Porphyris, now leaves
Her double thyrsus that is like a spear,
Garlands and anklet, wearing which she raved
And footloose wandered Dionysus’ way,
An ivied fawnskin pinned across her breast.
For your own self, before your temple porch,
She sets aloft these her insigia,
Emblems of beauty and insanity.
I am particularly pleased with my version of 6.176 because I am soppy about dogs, and badly missing one dog in particular. Macedonius was a 'Consul' (Greek hupatos) at Byzantium under Justinian in the early sixth century AD; he is one of the poets whose epigrams came into the Anthology through the Cycle of his younger contemporary, Agathias.
6.176 (on YouTube)
MACEDONIUS CONSUL
This dog, and leather wallet, and this spear
With crooked barbs I hereby dedicate
To Pan and to the spirits of the trees.
But I will bring my dog back to the fold,
Alive, unharmed, that I may have my friend
To share my scraps and keep me company.
'This spear' is sigunos, a word not found in LSJ. Aristotle notes it as a Cypriot word, and I reckon Macedonius found in in Aristotle. He must have chosen it to suggest a setting on Cyprus:
‘So that the same word may obviously be at once strange and ordinary, though not in reference to the same people; sigunos, for instance, is an ordinary word in Cyprus, and a strange word with us.’ - Poetics 3.21, tr. Ingram Bywater
Perhaps Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica II.99 is the source of the word? That passage may have been more familiar than Aristotle's Poetics in the sixth century.
ReplyDeleteI'd not known about that occurrence -- what an excellent suggestion. Thank you!
Delete