Two classically allusive bath-houses, with alchemical postscript

 

A sizeable chunk of the Greek Anthology's ninth and largest book is given over to epigrams from bath-houses. They are all anonymous, which makes it hard to pin them down to particular times and places or to decide which ones are inscriptional and which literary games. Many such epigrams were definitely inscribed for real: Stephan Busch's Versus Balnearum (1999) amasses whole and fragmentary examples.

 I've not yet dived deep into Busch's material but on first glance I note various epigrams written in Greek to praise the Roman sponsors of public baths in the wealthy, Greek-speaking Eastern provinces. These then are classic thermae in the grand Roman style. Or sometimes not so grand; my next post will be about thermae that were allegedly all the more lovely for their small compass.

The bath-house poems of Book 9 give little local detail, but the world they conjure is Christian late antiquity, often in the Greek East but not necessarily exclusively so. The Maria of the second of the poems below was the wife of the Emperor Honorius (thank you, Paton) and daughter of his star general Stilicho, who thereby became his emperor's father-in-law. Honorius was son of Theodosius I and ruled 393-423. It was he who relocated the western imperial capital from Milan to Ravenna. That city would seem a likely enough setting for Maria to exercise her patronage in funding public amenity (her baths seem otherwise unattested, so let us pick whatever story we like).

As Katherine Dunbabin notes, excessive beauty risks incurring phthonos (jealousy) and the evil eye, making the poem for the Bath of Maria apotropaic. The "god of Envy" is Mōmus, a figure closely aligned with Phthonos. He is of course a pagan figure, as is the Aphrodite of 9.607. The late antique and Byzantine elite were classically educated and enjoyed striking pagan poses even as they devoutly worshipped Christ.

9.607

This water is of quality so fine
It birthed our Aphrodite Cythera;
Or else that Cytheraean entered here,
And bathed, and lent the bath her purity.

9.613

On the Bath of Maria

The god of Envy saw Maria’s Bath
And wept at seeing it: ‘I cannot stay;
As with its patron, I must go my way.’

I learned something wonderfully random while writing this post. In the middle ages, long after Honorius' Maria was dead and gone, 'Bath of Maria' became a technical term that had little to do with ancient thermae. Named for a legendary Egyptian lady alchemist, the balneum Mariae was a water-filled vessel in which magical potions might be gently warmed. We know it now in French and from watching Masterchef: it is the modern bain-marie.

The Playboy Anthology

Did you know that at the end of the 1960s Playboy Magazine published two instalments of epigrams from the Greek Anthology? An illustrated feature titled 'Ribald Classics' appeared in many issues of the magazine in that era, introducing modern readers to saucy old-timers such as Boccaccio, and had already supplied the materials for a couple of standalone paperbacks. Apparently some such versions were tinkered up by moonlighting academics under pseudonyms, but to add a touch of prestige to the 1969 and 1970 Christmas issues the editors roped in the long-established and classically educated poet, Harry Brown.

 I might write an article about it one of these days. Here in the meantime is one of Brown's adaptations, based on Philodemus AP 5.46. The original is here if you want to see it (in Paton's translation). It's a conversation between a hetaera and her potential mark; Brown's version relocates it to a modern meat-market.

Hi, chick. Hello. What's your name? What's yours? Phil O'Demus. And you are...?

Mary Jane. Nice name, doll. You here with some stud? No.

Will I do? ... all right. Done! Say, you want to blow the joint now?

I beg your pardon! I mean, find a more Active Spot.

Well ... I dunno. Where, for instance? My pad. I've stereo, soft lights,

Jack Daniel's. Well ... all right. You'll come then, M. J. ? Any time.

How's about coming right now? Heavens, you're eager. Correct, chick.

Well, I'd prefer your pad, but ... all right, that corner booth's dark.

 I'm not sure it's scholarly of me to say it, but I think Brown's a bit of a creep.

Two grieving mothers

Two mothers lament their sons who died young. These two epitaphs are from Hunter's green-and-yellow. Both are Hellenistic in date. The first was found at Alexandria; the other is from Corcyra.

 

'The Strophades, "Turning Islands", were in legend where the sons of Boreas turned around and abandoned their pursuit of the Harpies... Strabo 8.4.2 identifies them as two islands in the open sea west of the Peloponese, roughly south of Zakynthos...

'Corcyra had been identified with the Homeric Scherie, land of Alcinous and Arete, at least since the fifth century' (Hunter).

XV

Philoxenus, your mother used to throw

Her arms around your neck for love of you

When finally you came, but never more;

Never again with age-mates will you go

Up to our hallowed city, and enjoy

The shaded floor of the gymnasium.

Instead your father brought your sun-bleached bones

And laid them in this tomb, since all your flesh

Was burned at Caunus in a raging pyre.

XVI

Calliope was puddled on this tomb;

Ten thousand tears in mourning for her son,

For Alexander who was swift to die

And left no issue when she laid him here

Beneath this earth, leaving the breath of life

At twenty-seven years, a cultured man,

Famed with the bow, whom murderous pirates slew

Hard by the ocean-girded Strophades.

But go now, traveller, and bid farewell

To a good man, good Satyrus’s son,

Born from the island that Alcinoüs won.

Woodward tackles Simonides

Two more versions from one of my favourite translators, G. R. Woodward, a retired vicar and small-press aficionado with a great reputation in writing and collecting carols. These are from his Epigrammata Heroica of 1929, produced in a typicaly tiny print-run of 120 hand-numbered copies. The first poem is for the Athenian dead in the great joint Greek land victory at Plataea; the second is the most famous epigram ever written, for Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae the year before.

For Woodward's version of 16.26, the Dirphys epitaph, see this older blog post.
 

7.253

In noble death if Virtue's acme lies,
To us, of all men, Fortune gave the prize:
For, keen to robe thee, Greece, in Freedom's vest
Endow'd with ageless glory, here we rest.

7.249

Stranger, to the Spartans! saying,
Here we lie, their words obeying.

Two young heroes of Athens

These two epitaphs are among those collected in Hansen's Carmina Epigraphica Graeca. Both are from Athens in the late sixth century BC, and adorned marble bases on which stood statues of the deceased.

The first inscribed block was found where it belonged, in the ancient cemetery of the Ceramicus, the potters' quarter of Athens (hence our 'ceramic'). The second may well have begun in that same cemetery, but a century later it was carted off and built into the Themistoclean Wall near the Piraeus Gate, about a kilometer away. I make Nelo's tomb a 'mound' because in the context of burial the verb kheō means to pile up earth into a tumulus. It harks back to the heroic age, and I think the writer consciously echoes Homer and thereby seeks to associate the dead Xenophanes with the fallen heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Nelonides literally means 'Son of Nelo'; the names may have swapped back and forth, generation to generation, until Nelonides' untimely death brought the cycle to a close.

41
This is the tomb of dead Xenophanes.
His father Cleoboulus built it here
To mark his excellence and modesty.
 
(on the left side: ‘Aristion of Paros made me’)
 
42
The son of Nelo, called Nelonides,
Is buried in the mound his father raised,
A fine memorial of his character.

(as a separate inscription: 'Endoius made this one too')

A lost bronze athlete

You crafted voice of marble, tell me true:
Who set this statue here to glorify
Apollo’s altar? Panamyes, he,
Casbōllis’ son, and if you press for more,
It was the tenth such gifted to his store.

Hansen CEG 429, a verse incription from the stone base of a bronze statue, early fifth BC. The base was found built into the city wall of Halicarnassus; the statue, like so many, will have been melted down. Its metal has wandered through centuries of coins, cannons and cooking-pots, and an odd atom of it may be within spitting-distance of you right now.

 Donald Lavigne writes compellingly about this dedicatory poem and how it evokes and interacts with the statue's surroundings in the temple precinct:

 This opening up of the context, the placement of this statue and its two voices into an implied dialogue with the other monuments there suggests the importance of the relationship between the dedications as a whole—a this implies a that. It is not one dedication, but many, that actualizes the power of and honor due to the god.  Similarly, Panamyes gains honor from his individual dedication, but also, through association and competition with those other great men of Halicarnassus who are sure to have left their mark there as well.  The context actualizes the honor of the god hinted at in the epigram, which itself focuses upon the honor of Panamyes; but, both external and internal honorand are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

The Carian-named Panamyes son of Casbōllis went on to some kind of role as an official witness (Mnēmōn or 'Remembrancer') for his city; he is named on the contemporary 'Lygdamis Decree' stele, discussed by Edwin Carawan in a chapter of a volume edited by E. Anne Mackay (BMCR review here). Apollo was again the beneficiary, this time of the entire worldly goods of on any party who broke the terms of the agreement thereby promulgated. You can read an English translation of the decree here.

Readers who get it

I googled myself because I am shallow and vain. Here are some reviews of Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by non-classicist readers on goodreads. They are the favouritest reviews I've ever had.

 

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The cover will mislead you.

It is not an aesthetic, Pre-Raphaelite, typical classic poetry collection, sometimes it is pretty dumb. It is so dumb that I burst out laughing at night like nobody is alive. 

 
Of course it is about the gossip of gods, the heroic action of the semi-gods, the fight of the mortals, the decay of our body, the pathetic nature of humanity, the nobility of the saints, and gay porn. But they are all in one book (although originally it was 16 books), that's how tremendous this book is.

In fact, there are too much references and questions that I for one not sure how I can possibly finish the book with the confidence claiming I know all it says. I simply skipped all the notes as I don't think my goal is to be a Greek mythology and history expert. I'm here for the word play.

It is also surprisingly one of the most effective story tellings; some of the poems are so dramatic and complete that they could as well be the original flash fiction. It's the most surprising read of the year for me.

 

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Snapshots of an ancient world that was just like ours: replete with tourists, showoffs, and those torn up by love and grief. I’ll be honest: some of the most affecting of these are the pederastic ones; but there are excellent hetero sex and love poems here too. I also loved the dedicatory epigrams, through which tools praise the craftsmen who made or wielded them, and the epitaphs. Many of these are prefatory to, or otherwise hint at, lost works — another way in which the book opens its milieu to the modern reader. And it’s copiously rude, satirical, lowbrow.

 

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Nisbet’s translations into iambic pentameter are generally very fluent. He’s also a terrific annotator, going above and beyond in the introduction and, especially, the endnotes to really contextualise these condensed droplets of ancient human existence.

 

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but boi howdy, did it break my heart. There are some really funny poems in it and the erotic ones made me highly uncomfortable as I was on public transport, but the children ones... Just brace yourself if you don't want to read about the death of children, genuinely. Other than that I did really like this!