5.44 (Rufinus)
The Satisfaction and her sister-ship,
The Bachelor’s Delight, are courtesans;
Their home port, Samos. All of you young men,
Steer clear of Aphrodite’s piracy:
He that they grapple onto will go down,
And taste the briny of this harbour town.
Rufinus' original pirate-courtesans are the Lembion and the Kerkourion. Their working names are cute, gender-ambiguous diminutives of two kinds of smallish, oared ships ideal for skulduggery. On the lembos, a fast, light galley favoured by pirates, see Wikipedia.
I wanted my version to work for modern readers who have never heard of a lembos. It needed some yo-ho-ho, and I was helped out by a list of famous pirate-ships on a website called allthingsboat. The Satisfaction was Henry Morgan's; the Bachelor's Delight, William Dampier's.
I am not the first translator to have had fun with Rufinus' original. Here is a version by Frederick Adam Wright (1869-1946):
The Frenchy and the Privateer
Each night you'll see upon the pier,
Or else patrolling in the town,
Gulping poor silly youngsters down.
Beware these pirate-craft, my friends —
Such skirmishes have bitter ends.
Wright was well versed in epigram: he translated Book 5 of the Anthology for Routledge (1923) and the next year came out with a Martial in collaboration with Arthur Pott for the same publisher. He also did versions of Heliodorus and Alciphron, among others, and wrote Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle — again for Routledge, again in 1923, as well as original poetry. A busy boy.
