Two versions by Aldington: Meleager AP 12.49 and 12.114

On Aldington's poetic career, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-aldington. He was a writer of influence. All I have read of him is his Meleager, of which I will say: this was a man who loved his exclamation marks.

Here for instance is his version of 12.49:

Be drunk, unhappy lover, and let Bromius, giver of forgetfulness, lull your burning love!

Be drunk, fill your cup with wine and drive hateful grief from your heart!

Contrast the Loeb, which we should remember was already out there in Aldington's day:

Drink strong wine, thou unhappy lover, and Bacchus, the giver of forgetulness, shall send to sleep the flame of your love for the lad. Drink, and draining the cup full of the vine-juice drive out abhorred pain from thy heart.

It looks to me as if Aldington has leaned on the Loeb, but then, who among us has not? His version is more concise than Paton's, but he gets there by ditching important details. Only the truly desperate resort to unwatered wine, and nothing makes a man more desperate than heartsickness over a lovely boy.

His version of 12.114 also loses a significant detail, this time the fact that the poem concerns a lovely girl:

Hail to you, Morning Star, O messenger of Dawn!

May the Star of Evening come swiftly and bring back the sweet joy you stole away!

 Compare again Paton:

Star of Morning, hail, thou herald of dawn; and mayest thou quickly come again, as the Star of Eve, bringing again in secret her whom [Gr. hēn] thou takest away.

Aldington's versions give us not a boy, not a girl, but whatever romantic object may most please.

Aldington's omissions

 'Two lines have been omitted from XII.33 and XII.41' (Aldington, p.3-4).

Omitting a whole poem a simple business, or ought to be: one simply does not translate it. Aldington declares three such poems as 'obscene' (p.3) and therefore not publishable in English in his day: they are 5.208, 11.223 and 12.86.

The book 11 poem is pretty rude, and, though Aldington doesn't say so, it definitely isn't by Meleager: it's about Favorinus, the eunuch sophist of the early second century AD. Here are the Loeb versions of the other two:

I do not have a boy-mad heart. What pleasure is there, Loves, in mounting a man, if he wants to take something without giving anything? For one hand washes the other. Let a lovely wife remain for me; begone, all you men with your masculine pincers.

It is Cypris, a woman, who casts at us the fire of passion for women, but Love himself rules over desire for males. Whither shall I incline, to the boy or to his mother? I tell you for sure that even Cypris herself will say, 'The bold brat wins.'

And that's a thing worth noting, isn't it: there are Loeb versions. When Paton made the Loeb he put quite a few of its saucier poems into Latin rather than English, but these by Meleager had not been among them. These poems had been available for decades now in plain English to anyone who went into a decent bookshop. Perhaps what was obscene to Aldington is simply that these poems are explicit about some men liking boys and others liking girls -- they flag up the issue too directly.

Anyway, let us look now at those two poems where two lines (each) have been left out. Here they are, with their prosaic Loeb counterparts. Both are at p.23 in Aldington's slim volume:

Heraclitus was once beautiful, but his youth has gone. Do not let that make you insolently proud, Polyxenes; Nemesis is swift.

Heracleitus was fair, when there was a Heracleitus, but now that his prime is past, a screen of hide declares war on those who would scale the fortress. But, son of Polyxenus, seeing this, be not insolently haughty. It is not only on the cheeks that Nemesis grows.

Theron is no longer beautiful and Appollodotus whose eyes were once bright is now a burned out torch.

I do not count Theron fair any longer, nor Apollodotus, once gleaming like fire, but now already a burnt-out torch. I care for the love of women. Let it be for goat-mounting herds to press in their arms hairy minions.

Aldington prefers a Meleager who keeps quiet about body hair.