Weekday Greek

 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 25-44 [Hestia], whom Poseidon and Apollo courted. But she refused and swore a great oath, touching Zeus' head, to remain a maiden all her days. Zeus gave her the fine prize instead of marriage, and she sits in the middle of the home, honored in all the gods' temples and a eldress among all mortals. These women's hearts Aphrodite cannot persuade or trick. But no one else has escaped Aphrodite. She even led Zeus' mind, the greatest, astray. Whenever she wished, she tricked him and easily made him mingle with mortal women, forgetting his sister and wife Hera. Hera is the finest in beauty among the goddess, and Cronus made her the most glorious; and Zeus, in his immortal wisdom, made her his respected wife.

Solon 10: A short time will show the citizens my "madness," when the truth comes into the middle. Solon 11: If you've suffered, don't blame the gods; you yourselves got slavery because you increased their power and gave them protection. Individually each of you walks in a fox's footsteps but together your mind is empty. You look at the tongue, not at all to a deed. Solon 13 (1-24):  1-6: Muses, hear my prayer. Give me prosperity from the gods and a good reputation among people; that I be pleasant to my friends, and bitter to my enemies.  7-10: I want to have wealth, but not unjustly. When the gods give wealth, it endures. 10-17: But the wealth men honor out of hybris, it goes unnaturally and relies on unjust deeds; like a fire it grows from a small beginning, trivial at first, in the end painful. For mortals' works don't last; Zeus oversees the end of all things, and suddenly, 17-24: like a wind scatters clouds all at once in the spring. Stirring the sea...

Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 1-29 Muse, tell me of the deeds of golden Aphrodite, who brings desire to gods, mortals, birds and beasts, everything water and land nurture; except she cannot persuade threefold hearts. The works of Aphrodite do not please Athena, whom wars and battles please and who taught workmen to make chariots and taught maidens fine works. Nor does Aphrodite tame Artemis, whom bows and choruses, groves and a city of just men please. Nor do the works of Aphrodite please Hestia, whom Kronus bore first and last, by the will of Zeus.  The opening reminds me a bit of the opening of Lucretius in its treatment of the power of Aphrodite across the natural world. But the poem quickly moves to a kind of anti-praise of Aphrodite, where it focuses on three goddesses who resist her power. Generally I think epic is kinda anti-erotic, and maybe this hymn is no different. Other than a few mentions of Aphrodite's relationship to Cyprus, this hymn so far does not emphasize location a...

Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE - 400 CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, fall 2023. The exhibit's title is misleading; the exhibit in fact covers Buddhist art in the south of India (= the mythological 'Andhra'). The exhibit's catalogue makes some claims about how this focus helps us reimagine the history of Buddhist art, which has tended to focus on the Buddhist 'heartland' in the north (Ashoka, the great stupa at Sanchi, Gandhara art).  But I think the southern focus is a bit of a bust. The exhibit itself seriously downplays the southern focus, scarcely mentioning it and rarely helping the viewer understand how this southern art differs from northern parallels (thematically, chronologically, etc.). Some southern art also is a standard part of the story of Buddhist art; for example, Partha Mitter's book on Indian art and this exhibit both give some prominence to the stupa at Amaravati.

Solon 4 1-4: The gods will not destroy our city; Athena protects it 5-10: But the senseless greed of its leaders wishes to ruin it ... 11: they grow wealthy through unjust deeds ... 12-16: they steal from holy and public things and do not respect the foundations of Justice, who silently knows the past and present and will punish in the future. 17-23: it comes to the city as an inescapable wound, bringing it to slavery; leading to youth-killing civil war. From its enemies the lovely city is consumed by those doing ill to their friends. These evils swirl in the demos 23-5: many of the poor arrive enslaved to a foreign land ... 26-29: thus a public evil comes to every house; the doors cannot hold it back, it jumps over the threshold, and it finds everyone, even if they hide in a corner.  30-1: my soul bids me to teach the Athenians of the evils of Disorder. 32-39: But Order (Eunomia) reveals all well-ordered (εὔκοσμα) things: she levels the rough, stops insolence, dims out insolence, ...

Solon 1-3 Solon 1: I came as a herald from lovely Salamis, setting a song, an adornment of words, in the council's place. Solon 2: In that case, may I trade my Athenian homeland for a Cycladic one; maybe the speech among men be: "that's an Athenian, one of those Salamis-ceders" Solon 3: Let's go to fight for Salamis, the lovely isle, and thrust off tough shame. These three fragments are thought to come from a single poem (Salamis), where Solon encouraged the Athenians to fight and claim Salamis. A bit like Tyrtaeus 5-7, and also an encouragement to conquer and subdue a neighboring territory; part of polis consolidation and expansion in the archaic period, I guess. So Solon 1-3 come from another hortatory elegy encouraging the audience to fight; what's different here is that we have the frame with the specific policy suggestion but not the emotional justification. Presumably the poem contained flashbacks and exhortation with homeric-style bits of fighting insid...

Mimnermus 12 Everyday Helius has toil without rest, when Dawn rises from Ocean into the sky. For his much-beloved bed carries him through the wave, hollow, made of gold, handled, soundly from the Hesperides to the Aethiopians. There his chariot and horses stand, which he climbs on. Goofy little poem. You can see the appeal it held for Athenaeus: contains an implicit riddle (what's the bed?), puns about ships and cups ('handled' pteros for both oars and cups, 'hollow'), and generally is pretty light. Seems quite appropriate for a sympotic context, which also loves cup and ship imagery. Still, wouldn't be Mimnermus without making the bummer point that even Helius works everyday without rest. Insofar as Mimnermus is the forerunner of love elegy, it's more like Tibullus and Propertius, with their emphases on the pain of love, than someone like Ovid. Mimnermus 14 From my elders I learned that his might wasn't like yours; they saw him routing the Lydian ranks ...

Mimnermus 2. full translation: and we, like the leaves which the many-flowered season of spring produces, as soon as it grows in the sun's rays -- like to them we delight for a short time in the flowers of youth, knowing neither good nor evil from the gods. But black Banes stand beside us, one having the end of grievous old age, the other of death. And the fruit of youth is short, as much as the sun scatters on the ground. But whenever that end of time passes by, at once it is better to die than life. For many evils come about in the soul. At one time the livelihood is consumed, and poverty's jobs are painful. Another in turn lacks children, and wanting them most of all he goes under ground into Hades. Another has soul-destroying disease. But there is nobody whom Zeus does not give many evils I think I noted before that I think there might be an intertext with this poem in Herodotus. Solon's speech to Croesus has an idea pretty similar to Mimnermus, with similar language: α...

 Mimnermus 1 1-5: What is life without golden Aphrodite? May I die when when I no longer care about secret love and sweet gifts and the bed, the flowers of youth. 6-10: When grievous old age comes (making a man shameful and ugly), cares rub him and he does not delight looking at the rays of the sun. He is hateful to boys and dishonored by women. So has god made old age. closing line with a summation of old age feels like an ending. another bleak poem preserved by Stobaeus, though the pleasures of love seem like something he might not love. line 2 τεθναίην pretty strong. The claim to want to die rather than suffer decline feels like a youthful one; reminds me of Achilles' own αὐτίκα τεθναίην in Il. 18 line 3 (κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή) is I think the best bit of the poem. Love this mini-catalogue of love, which is suggestive of a world like new comedy and Latin love elegy: gift-giving, love in secret, and the occasional opportunity for the bed.

Semonides 1. 1-2: Child, Zeus controls the end of everything and puts it where he wants. 3-10: But people lack thought and foreknowledge and live day by day like animals. Hope and faith nourish them, as they wait for tomorrow. Everything thinks Wealth will be their friend next year. 11-19: Hateful old age takes one before he gets to his goal; others diseases destroy; others Hades sends tamed by Ares; others die in the gusts and waves of the sea; others grab hanging and leave the sun's light. 20-22: So no evil is missing, but there are all kinds of fates and unforeseen sorrows. 22-4: If you should heed me, we would not love evils, nor torture ourselves dwelling on them. A compelling poem I think. It's bleak even by the standards of early Greek poetry; at least in Mimnermus it's just old age that lacks any consolation, but here all of human life is bleakly miserable. The ending is a little abrupt, and I like Frankel's suggestion (quoted in Allan) that the poem continued w...