Friday 19 February 2021

Sex pirates, by Rufinus

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.

 

 




Friday 5 February 2021

Showers of gold: two on Danae, by Parmenion

These come as a pair in the Anthology's book of erotic epigrams. Parmenion was a Macedonian whose surviving epigrams came into the anthology tradition through the Garland of Philip (first century AD).

5.33

Lord of Olympus, as a rain of gold

You visited Danäe, that the girl

Might be persuaded to it by a gift,

Not yield in terror before Kronos’ son.

5.34

Zeus had Danäe in exchange for gold,

And I have you for gold: I cannot dare

To spend more liberally than did He.