A fawnskin for Dionysus, a dog for Pan

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

Darius' bridge across the Bosporus

When Darius the Great set out to crush the nomadic Scythians he took his great army across the Hellespont on a pontoon bridge built by one Mandrocles, an engineer from the island of Samos. This was before Darius determined on subjugating the Greek city-states. The Great King was good business for lots of Greeks early in his reign.

Darius immediately rewarded Mandrocles with immense wealth, some of which the engineer spent commemorating the success of his project. He commissioned a painting of the army crossing the bridge, with Darius looking on, and dedicated it to Hera in her great sanctuary on Samos (legendarily the goddess's birthplace). An unknown poet supplied an inscription in verse:

He bridged the fishy span of Bosporus:

Now Mandrocles sets up this souvenir

Of his pontoon-work in our Hera’s shrine.

He took a coronet for his reward,

And crowned his Samians with martial fame,

When he fulfilled the will of Darius.

The epigram comes to the Anthology (6.341) through Herodotus, who gives a great account of the bridge episode at 4.87-8.

I'll next move onto some of the erotic epigrams of the Anthology, from Book 5.

Exchanging Aphrodite for Athena...and vice versa

These two mock-dedicatory epigrams are near-neighbours in Book 6 of the Anthology, and purport to record two women's changes in career and life circumstance. Effectively the women trade places. In 6.283 a formerly haughty courtesan has no choice but to exchange Aphrodite, goddess of sexual attraction, for Athena, patron goddess of weavers. In 6.285, a woman raised to the loom chucks it in and becomes a courtesan instead. I guess it is written as a satire on the type of poem represented by 6.283.

In the first poem, I take the liberty of paraphrasing the implacable divinity named in the Greek as Nemesis as 'the goddess of What Comes Around'. My excuse is that it unpacks her meaning and role in the poem more clearly for a modern audience, but really it just popped into my head and I loved how it sounded.

6.283 (on YouTube)

ANONYMOUS

She used to boast of how she ruled them all,

Those wealthy lovers; never bent a knee

Before the goddess of What Comes Around.

And now for pay she plucks the spindled wool

In meagre measures. Though she took her time,

Athena has despoiled the Cyprian.

I like to think there is a hint of condescension in the lemma of the second epigram — 'Nicarchus, apparently (dokei)', because it's the sort of thing you'd expect of a smutty satirist like him? Like Lucillius, Nicarchus was a poet known to and imitated by Martial.

6.285 (on YouTube)

NICARCHUS, APPARENTLY

Till recently, Nicarete would toil

In service to Athena at the loom,

Plying the shuttle on the web of yarn.

But then she took her basket and her spools

Out to the street along with all her gear —

Burned them in offering to the Cyprian.

‘Be off with you’, she said, ‘Starvation-wage

Of women who lack courage. All you know

Is how to kill the bloom of being young.’

And she has chosen garlands and the lyre,

That girl, and goes to parties, and enjoys

An enviable life amid good cheer.

‘A tenth of what I earn I’ll bring to you’,

She told the Cyprian; ‘Keep me in trade

And I shall render to you what is due.’

Arms for Apollo; dolls for Artemis

These two epigrams are newly translated for the blog and I enjoy the contrast that comes from pairing them. Mnasalcas was a poet of the early third century BC, so quite early in epigram's literary development; the authorship of 6.280 is unknown.

6.264 (on YouTube)

MNASALCAS

The shield of Alexander, Phylleus’ son,

I hang here as a holy offering

To lord Apollo of the golden hair.

Worn is my rim and tired by constant war,

Worn too my boss, but courage makes me shine,

Courage I earned in arming that brave man

Who set me here. From when I first was made,

I never have been worsted or outdone.

The second epigram sets its scene at the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis on Mount Taygetus, on the border between Laconia and Messenia. The two states disputed control of the site for centuries. As at Artemis' sanctuary at Brauron in Attica, the cult activities at Limnae centred on rites of passage for girls. Both populations were Dorian, and the epigram gives Doric word-forms to this young Spartan or Messenian girl leaving girlhood behind for marriage.

6.280 (on YouTube)

ANONYMOUS

Timareta is soon to wed, and leaves

Her drums, and lovely ball; the braided net

That bunched her hair; her dolls as well, for you,

Limnaean Artemis. She is a girl,

And you a maiden also, as is right.

She also leaves the clothing of those dolls.

So, Leto, hold your hand above this girl.

The daughter of Timaretus is chaste;

Chastely preserve her on her sinless way.

A gender-nonconforming veteran of the sex trade

Myrinus was a poet of the Garland of Philip, so, of the later first century BC or earlier first century AD; four of his epigrams make it into the Anthology.

Here is the Greek:

τὴν μαλακὴν Παφίης Στατύλλιον ἀνδρόγυνον δρῦν 
ἕλκειν εἰς Ἀίδην ἡνίκ᾽ ἔμελλε χρόνος, 
τἀκ κόκκου βαφθέντα καὶ ὑσγίνοιο θέριστρα, 
καὶ τοὺς ναρδολιπεῖς ἀλλοτρίους πλοκάμους, [p. 436] 
φαικάδα τ᾽ εὐτάρσοισιν ἐπ᾽ ἀστραγάλοισι γελῶσαν, 
καὶ τὴν γρυτοδόκην κοιτίδα, παμβακίδων, 
αὐλούς θ᾽ ἡδὺ πνέοντας ἑταιρείοις ἐνὶ κώμοις, 
δῶρα Πριηπείων θῆκεν ἐπὶ προθύρων.

Δρῦς in the first line means tree, commonly an oak. It is the dry- in Dryad, wood-nymph, and is cognate with δόρυ, the word for a spear, called that because it is made of wood. We might think calling someone an 'oak' implies physical strength and solidity, but this is not the only place where it is used figuratively for a man who is old and worn-out.

I dithered over μαλακὴν Παφίης. The Greek μαλακός means soft, gentle, feeble; in an erotic context it implies taking a passive role, within the default ancient paradigm that made sex an asymmetric relation of  pleasure-taking penetration by the socially more powerful partner(s). I toyed with having the second line end 'bottoming in bed' before deciding it wouldn't sit well with a notional inscriptional context, or with the delicate euphemism of 'the Paphian' (a title of Aphrodite).

This is part of a wider, open question about what sort of tone we decide to read into, and pass on from, Myrinus' original. Typically it's read as contemptuous satire, but I prefer to see the poet expressing fascination and guarded respect for Statyllius' abilities and determinedly nonconformist life. Line by line, that preference helped shape my choices as a translator, little decisions (not 'greasy', but slick and conditioned) that add up. 

6.254 (on YouTube)

MYRINUS

Statyllius the androgyne was old,

Worn to a stump by sensuality:

Passage of time was soon to haul him off

To Hades. Summer dresses, scarlet-dyed;

The wigs of human hair, kept slick with nard;

The haughty slippers from his well-turned feet;

His garderobe of cottons; and his pipes,

That breathed so sweetly for companions

In late-night antics — these he set aside,

Upon the threshold of Priapus’ shrine.

I've read that Tony Harrison made a version of this poem, and I'm trying to track it down; if it was at all like his covers of Martial in U.S. Martial (1981) he will not have gone for nuance. Harrison also did a Palladas: Poems (1975) that I've yet to see.

On a seashell, and asking questions of monuments

An unusual epigram by Theodoridas, a lyric poet and epigrammatist of the 3rd century BC. Theodoridas was from Syracuse on the eastern coast of Sicily, and the following epigram suggests a fairly local setting: Pelorias (modern Capo Peloro) is the promontory at the island's northeastern point.

The shell is a marine 'labyrinth' in the original because of its spiral shape. The Greek of the poem is unusually convoluted and comes back round on itself in near-repetition, like the shell it describes:

Εἰνάλιε λαβύρινθε, τύ μοι λέγε: τίς  ς᾽ ἀνέθηκεν 
ἀγρέμιον πολιᾶς ἐξ ἁλὸς εὑρόμενος; — 

παίγνιον ἀντριάσιν Διονύσιος ἄνθετο Νύμφαις 
（δῶρον δ᾽ ἐξ ἱερᾶς εἰμι Πελωριάδος,） 
υἱὸς Πρωτάρχου: σκολιὸς δ᾽ ἐξέπτυσε πορθμός, 
ὄφρ᾽ εἴην λιπαρῶν παίγνιον Ἀντριάδων.

Whether or not they were really used in that way (and it can sometimes be hard to tell), dedicatory poems are written as if for inscription on objects and structures in plain view: tombs by the roadside, offerings in sanctuaries, statues of victors in sport and war. Often they explicitly anticipate a passer-by or visitor who will read them aloud, and sometimes that reading-aloud becomes a dialogue between the visitor and the monument. Any such dialogue is also a monologue twice over, albeit a collaborative one. The visitor supplies both of the voices; the monument supplies all of the lines.

It is a cliché for these dialogues to open with the visitor posing questions to the monument -- what are you, why are you here, who placed you here? -- and requesting answers. The difference with a seashell is that it is an object that might speak back without needing to resort to inscription. If you hold it to your ear and listen, you will hear the sea...and maybe, just maybe, something more.

6.224 (on YouTube)

THEODORIDAS

You spiral seashell, whisper in my ear — 

Who set you here, who was the beachcomber

That took you trophy from the surging sea?

‘I am a toy for Nymphs within the cave,

And it was Dionysius set me here,

A gift from holy Cape Pelorias.

He is Prōtarchus’ son. The winding strait

Spat me upon the shore, that I might be

A toy for glistening spirits of the cave.’

Courtesans' gifts to Aphrodite, by the two Antipaters

These epigrams are by the two Antipaters, of Sidon (late 2nd century BC) and Thessalonica (late 1st century BC, an Augustan court poet). They fall within a substantial run (6.206-211) of poems notionally written to accompany thank-offerings to Aphrodite by women retiring from careers as courtesans. 

The women are moving from the care of Aphrodite 'Pandemos' (vulgar) to that of Aphrodite 'Urania' (heavenly) because they are leaving the profession to enter a new chapter in their lives as respectable married women.

6.206 (on YouTube)

ANTIPATER <OF SIDON>

These sandals that were comfy on her feet,

Labour of love of skilful shoemakers,

Bitinna gives; Philaenis brings the net

That tamed her straying hair, dyed in the blooms

Of surging sea; and as for Anticleia,

She gives her fan; the veil that hid her face,

Worked delicately as a spider-web,

Is pretty Heracleia’s; and the snake,

Her shapely ankles’ golden ornament,

Well-coiled, from she who shares her father’s name,

Our Aristoteleia. These best friends,

Alike in age, now dedicate their gifts

To Cythereia the Uranian.

Philaenis' hair-net is dyed scarlet with orchil, made from seaweed.

Poems on retiring courtesans go all the way back to literary epigram's early years, with Philetas (4th-3rd century, 6.210) and Leonidas of Tarentum (3rd century, 6.211). How often they found good husbands in real life I would not care to guess, but in the epigrams of Book 6 the trope is so firmly established that the second of my poems can play around with it. 6.208 puts the scene in an ecphrastic frame. We do not see the women in the act of dedication; instead we take it in at second-hand, through art. If the other poems in the sequence are notionally dedicatory inscriptions, 6.208 is notionally the caption to a painting.

6.208 (on YouTube)

ANTIPATER <OF THESSALONICA>

The one with sandals is Menecratis;

It is Phēmonoe who brings the cloak,

And Praxo has the cup. That is the shrine

Of Aphrodite, and her statue too.

The work is Aristomachus’, of Thrace.

All three are citizens, and courtesans;

But they have chanced to meet the Cyprian

In mellow mood, and now each one of them

Becomes the property of just one man.