Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Rendered into English ProseTheocritus
General
Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Rendered into English Prose
Theocritus
Greek poetry -- Translations into English; Pastoral poetry, Greek -- Translations into English
THE woman will have this recompense for all her careful nurture of the
boy,—and why?—because she was serviceable even to the end.
XIX
_The statue of Archilochus_.
STAY, and behold Archilochus, him of old time, the maker of iambics,
whose myriad fame has passed westward, alike, and towards the dawning
day. Surely the Muses loved him, yea, and the Delian Apollo, so
practised and so skilled he grew in forging song, and chanting to the
lyre.
XX
_The statue of Pisander_.
THIS man, behold, Pisander of Corinth, of all the ancient makers was the
first who wrote of the son of Zeus, the lion-slayer, the ready of hand,
and spake of all the adventures that with toil he achieved. Know this
therefore, that the people set him here, a statue of bronze, when many
months had gone by and many years.
XXI
_The Grave of Hipponax_.
HERE lies the poet Hipponax! If thou art a sinner draw not near this
tomb, but if thou art a true man, and the son of righteous sires, sit
boldly down here, yea, and sleep if thou wilt.
XXII
_For the Bank of Caicus_.
TO citizens and strangers alike this counter deals justice. If thou hast
deposited aught, draw out thy money when the balance-sheet is cast up.
Let others make false excuse, but Caicus tells back money lent, ay, even
if one wish it after nightfall.
XXIII
_On his own Poems_. {167}
THE Chian is another man, but I, Theocritus, who wrote these songs, am a
Syracusan, a man of the people, being the son of Praxagoras and renowned
Philinna. Never laid I claim to any Muse but mine own.
BION
Πίδακος έξ ίερης ολίγη λιβας ακρον αωτον.—_Callimachus_.
BION was born at Smyrna, one of the towns which claimed the honour of
being Homer’s birthplace. On the evidence of a detached verse (94) of
the dirge by Moschus, some have thought that Theocritus survived Bion.
In that case Theocritus must have been a preternaturally aged man. The
same dirge tells us that Bion was poisoned by certain enemies, and that
while he left to others his wealth, to Moschus he left his minstrelsy.
I
THE LAMENT FOR ADONIS
_This poem was probably intended to be sung at one of the spring
celebrations of the festival of Adonis_, _like that described by
Theocritus in his fifteenth idyl_.
* * * * *
WOE, woe for Adonis, he hath perished, the beauteous Adonis, dead is the
beauteous Adonis, the Loves join in the lament. No more in thy purple
raiment, Cypris, do thou sleep; arise, thou wretched one, sable-stoled,
and beat thy breasts, and say to all, ‘He hath perished, the lovely
Adonis!’
_Woe_, _woe for Adonis_, _the Loves join in the lament_!
Low on the hills is lying the lovely Adonis, and his thigh with the
boar’s tusk, his white thigh with the boar’s tusk is wounded, and sorrow
on Cypris he brings, as softly he breathes his life away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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