Semonides 1

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 with a sympotic 'carpe diem et bibe' sentiment.
• Still, seems Stobaeus liked bleak poems (this one and Mimnermus); maybe Christian influence?
• I particularly like the idea that people 'wait' for tomorrow (sorta opposing the idea of enduring evil; there is nothing better to endure towards), and I like the vignettes of various deaths.
• Still, it's a poem that feels very familiar even if you haven't read it. A couple specific parallels: 
• generalizing statements for Zeus's power often dwell on how Zeus gives people bad things: cf. Mimnermus 2, Il. 24. Likewise the claim of human ignorance resembles Mimnermus 2.
• hope as a deceptive force a bit like Hesiod's Pandora.
• death in shipwreck recalls Archilochus 13;
• the various miserable lives of humans (this death, or that death) reminds me a bit of Horace Satires 1.1, where Horace depicts how everyone (no matter their situation) thinks somebody else has it better; some of the stock situations (storm at sea, battle) are similar to this poem.