Mimnermus 12, 14

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 on the plain of Hermus; Athena never found fault with his heart's might, whenever he rushed through the forefront. None of the enemy was better at the work of war, when he was borne in the rays of the sun.

  • Mimnermus is from Smyrna, which fought several wars with the Lydians throughout the 7th century; the Smyrnaeans defeated the Lydians and Gyges in the 660s, but the Lydians eventually destroyed Smyrna c. 600. The context is presumably Mimnermus (or an embedded speaker) remembering the successful conflict in the 660s.
  • Generally elegy looking back to a successful conflict in the previous generation reminds me of Tyrtaeus 5-7; likewise, the praise here for the successful warrior seems to bear out Tyrtaeus' promise that if you fight well you will be remembered in Tyrtaeus 12. Though the actual praise here is very generic and general, and not very memorable. 

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