The handout for my MAPPOLA talk

Greek verse in the Roman West: Some epigrams from the Greek Anthology
Gideon Nisbet, for MAPPOLA, 24/02/21 (here is the talk this handout accompanies)

3.19

(At Cyzicus, inside the Temple of Apollonis, mother of Attalus and Eumenes: epigrams which were inscribed on the tablets set into the columns. These tablets contained narrative scenes, carved in low relief, as is set out below.)

On the nineteenth are Remus and Romulus, rescuing their mother, whose name was Servilia, from Amulius’ chastisement: for Ares had seduced her and fathered children on her; and they were exposed, and a she-wolf nursed them. When they grew to manhood, therefore, they freed their mother from her bonds, and when they had founded Rome they restored Numitor to his kingship.

In secret you brought forth this brood of boys,
For Ares, twins: Remus, and Romulus.
A she-wolf was their wet-nurse; in a cave
The creature raised them up till they were men,
Who rescued you by force from hardened woe.

5.132
PHILODEMUS

            … And if she’s
Italian, and called Flora, and can’t sing
The songs of Sappho? Perseus himself
Fell for an Indian girl: Andromeda.

6.129
LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM

Eight shields, eight helms, eight linen coats-of-mail,
As many blood-stained cleavers: all this gear
Hagnon, Euanthes’ son, mighty in war,
Offers as spoil from the Lucanians,
Athena’s now, at Coryphasium.

6.329
LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA

Another will send crystal; silver, one;
Topazes, others. All such birthday gifts
Are marks of wealth. Myself, I am content
To offer Agrippina these few lines,
In which I make each couplet count alike.
This gift is proof against all jealousy.

7.185
ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA

Italian earth holds me, a Libyan girl:
Beneath these sands near Rome I lie unwed.
Pompeia raised me like I was her own,
And set me free, and wept to lay me here.
She hoped to see my marriage-torch ablaze;
But she was thwarted, and my brand was lit
Not as we’d prayed, but by Persephone.

9.332
HADRIAN

Trajan, Aeneas’ heir, to Casian Zeus
Set up this trophy: to the king of gods,
As he is king of men. A pair of cups,
Intricate work; and this, an aurochs’ horn,
Mounted in gold that dazzles all around —
The pick of first spoils, when he tireless slew
The overbearing Getae with his spear.
But you, Stormclouded, put into his hand
The power to conclude this strife as well,
Against the Persians. Be twice happy so,
Seeing a pair of trophies raised to you:
For Getae first, and then for Arsacids

9.502
PALLADAS

I need conditum. Whence derives its name?
For it is alien to Grecian tongue.
If it is named in Roman, you must know,
For you are the most Roman of them all.
So make me some: my stomach is not right;
They tell me it’s exactly what I need.

Κονδίτου μοι δεῖ. τὸ δὲ κονδῖτον πόθεν ἔσχεν | τοὔνομα;  τῆς φωνῆς ἐστὶ γὰρ ἀλλότριον | τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων· εἰ Ῥωμαϊκῶς δὲ καλεῖται, | αὐτὸς ἂν εἰδείης, Ῥωμαϊκώτατος ὤν

9.516
CRINAGORAS

‘Each to his trade’: beneath the Alpine peaks
The shaggy bandits with their spiky hair
Pursue their larceny and still avoid
The dogs of their pursuers, by this means:
They take a kidney, rub it on themselves
Till every bit of fat is on their skin.
Its pungent odour fools the keen-nosed hounds.
You savants of Liguria, inclined
More to devise the wicked than the good.

ὑπ᾿ Ἄλπιας ἄκρας … ὦ κακὸν εὑρεῖν ῥηΐτεραι Λιγύων μήτιες

9.562
CRINAGORAS

A parrot that could talk just like a man
Escaped its wicker cage, and flew away
Into the woods on Technicolor wing.
He always sang to greet our famous chief,
Nor did the mountains bring forgetfulness
Of Caesar’s name. At once the birds began
To learn his song, competing one and all
To sing the first ‘Hail, Caesar!’ to our god.
Orpheus charmed the beasts upon the hills;
Without conductor, too, now all the birds
Gather in orchestra to sing your name.

… ἐρίζων | τίς φθῆναι δύναται δαίμονι χαῖρ᾿ ἐνέπειν. |Ὀρφεὺς θῆρας ἔπεισεν ἐν οὔρεσι· καὶ δὲ σέ, Καῖσαρ, | νῦν ἀκέλευστος ἅπας ὄρνις ἀνακρέκεται.

11.135
LUCILLIUS

Marcus, enough — leave off about ‘the boy’;
Grieve not for him, but for your reader, me,
Whom you leave stone-cold dead — deader by far
Than your ‘wee bairn’. So make me elegies,
You public hangman — sing for me your dirge,
Who lie a victim of your murderous line.
What I endure for sake of ‘the deceased’,
I wish upon whoever first devised
The book-rolls and the pens of authorship.

11.312
LUCILLIUS

This tomb contains no body, wayfarer:
Marcus the poet built it as a place
To carve his one-line epitaph, to wit:
‘Weep: Maximus, twelve years, from Ephesus.’
I saw no ‘Maximus’, but, passer-by,
Behold my poet. He should make you cry.

‘Κλαύσατε δωδεκέτη Μάξιμον ἐξ Ἐφέσου.’

12.185
STRATO

Those puffed-up boys in purple-bordered gowns,
The ones we cannot get at, Diphilus —
Like juicy figs high up on rocky crags.
The vultures and the ravens feast on them.

12.254
STRATO

Are they emerging from some holy shrine?
What is their source, this army of Desires
That shed bright beams on everything around?
Their brightness clouds my vision, gentlemen:
Which one is slave, which free? I cannot say.
A mortal man, their lord? It cannot be;
Or if a mortal, greater man by far
Than Zeus, who owned a single Ganymede,
Though mighty god. How many such has he?

Cf. Martial 9.36, tr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Loeb Classical Library):

The Phrygian boy, famed joy of the other Jupiter, had seen the Ausonian page with his hair newly shorn: ‘What your Caesar (look!) has allowed his young man, please allow yours, greatest of rulers’, said he. ‘Already the first down lies hidden by my long locks; already your Juno laughs at me and calls me a man.’ To him said the Heavenly Father: ‘Sweetest boy, not I but the case itself denies you what you ask. My Caesar has a thousand pages like yourself; the vast palace has scarcely room for so many star-like youths. But if shorn hair gives you a manly look, whom else shall I have to mix the nectar?’

Viderat Ausonium posito modo crine ministrum
   Phryx puer, alterius gaudia nota Iovis:
‘quod tuus ecce suo Caesar permisit ephebo,
   tu permitte tuo, maxime rector’ ait;
‘iam mihi prima latet longis lanugo capillis,
   iam tua me ridet Iuno vocatque virum.’
cui pater aetherius ‘puer o dulcissime’, dixit,
   ‘non ego quod poscis, res negat ipsa tibi:
Caesar habet noster similis tibi mille ministros
   tantaque sidereos vix capit aula mares;
at tibi si dederit vultus coma tonsa viriles,
   quis mihi qui nectar misceat alter erit?’

Ἐκ ποίου ναοῦ, πόθεν ὁ στόλος οὗτος Ἐρώτων,
   πάντα καταστίλβων; ἄνδρες, ἀμαυρὰ βλέπω.
τίς τούτων δοῦλος, τίς ἐλεύθερος; οὐ δύναμ᾿ εἰπεῖν.
   ἄνθρωπος τούτων κύριος; οὐ δύναται.
εἰ δ᾿ ἐστίν, μείζων πολλῷ Διός, ὃς Γανυμήδην
   ἔσχε μόνως, θεὸς ὢν πηλίκος· ὃς δὲ πόσους;