@lionofchaeronea / lionofchaeronea.tumblr.com
-Hesiod, Theogony 416-420
Note: Sardanapalus was a legendary king of Assyria, used among Greeks and Romans as a byword for luxury and extravagance.
Will people then wish for nothing? If you want my advice, You’ll let the gods themselves weigh out what befits us, What’s useful for our affairs; for in lieu of what’s pleasing, The gods give whatever’s most apt. Humanity’s more dear To them than to itself: we, driven by the impulse Of our minds, by blind and overwhelming desire, Seek out brides and offspring; but they take note of what Children we’ll have, of what sort our wives will be. But so that you may ask something, that you may vow The innards and holy sausages of a little white pig in shrines, One ought to pray for a sound mind in a sound body. Ask for a brave spirit, one lacking fear of death, That reckons span of life last among nature’s gifts, That can bear whatever labors you like, doesn’t know how To get angry, desires nothing, and believes that Hercules’ woes, His savage labors, are greater than the love-affairs And banquets and feathery cushions of Sardanapalus.
nil ergo optabunt homines? si consilium uis, permittes ipsis expendere numinibus quid conueniat nobis rebusque sit utile nostris; nam pro iucundis aptissima quaeque dabunt di. carior est illis homo quam sibi. nos animorum inpulsu et caeca magnaque cupidine ducti coniugium petimus partumque uxoris, at illis notum qui pueri qualisque futura sit uxor. ut tamen et poscas aliquid uoueasque sacellis exta et candiduli diuina tomacula porci, orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem, qui spatium uitae extremum inter munera ponat naturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores, nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil et potiores Herculis aerumnas credat saeuosque labores et uenere et cenis et pluma Sardanapalli.
Hercules at the Crossroads, Albrecht Dürer, ca. 1498
Ovid, Metamorphoses I.512-524
“But ask after whom it is you please: I am no mountain-dweller, I’m no shepherd; I do not, hairy, keep watch here over herds And flocks. Rash one, you do not know, you do not, Whom you flee, and that is why you flee. The Delphic land obeys me, Claros too, And Tenedos, and the palace of Patara; Jupiter’s my father; through me’s revealed What will be, what has been, and what now is; Through me songs make their harmony with strings. My arrow’s sure, but there’s one arrow surer, Which has made a wound within my empty breast. Medicine’s my discovery, and I’m called Help-Bringer throughout the world – the power of herbs Has been set under me…alas for me, That love cannot be cured by any herbs, Nor are the arts that are a boon to all Any boon to him who is their lord!”
"Cui placeas, inquire tamen. Non incola montis, non ego sum pastor, non hic armenta gregesque horridus observo. Nescis, temeraria, nescis quem fugias, ideoque fugis. Mihi Delphica tellus et Claros et Tenedos Patareaque regia servit, Iuppiter est genitor; per me quod eritque fuitque estque patet; per me concordant carmina nervis. Certa quidem nostra est, nostra tamen una sagitta certior, in vacuo quae vulnera pectore fecit. Inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem dicor, et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis: ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes.”
Apollo and Daphne, Piero del Pollaiolo, 1470s
Empedocles of Acragas, fr. 350 KRS (=Plutarch, Against Colotes 1111F) Note: Empedocles’ word for “coming-to-be” is physis. Though its most common meaning in classical and later Greek is simply “nature”, its root etymology expresses the idea of growth. (Plutarch cites these lines to highlight Empedocles’ unusual use of the term.) And I shall tell you something else too: Of not a single one of mortal things Is there coming-to-be, nor is there any End made up of ruinous death. But all that exists is mixing together And separation of things mixed – Which among humans is dubbed “coming-to-be”. ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω: φύσις οὐδενὸς ἔστιν ἑκάστου θνητῶν, οὐδέ τις οὐλομένη θανάτοιο τελεύτη: ἀλλὰ μόνον μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων ἔστι, φύσις δ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖς ὀνομάζεται ἀνθρώποισι.
Cosmos, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1902
Hephaestus sets a trap for his wife Aphrodite and her lover Ares. Tapestry in the Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, Coimbra, Portugal. Photo credit: Joseolgon/Wikimedia Commons.
Empedocles, illustration by an unknown artist from Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, 1655
Xenophanes (from Thomas Stanley, The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect, illustrated with effigies of divers of them [1655])
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 3.1-13 You who first were able, out of such great darkness, To lift a light so bright, illuminating life’s good things, You it is I follow, o glory of the Greek people, And in the marks you’ve pressed I now place the fashioned Traces of my feet – not so much desirous Of vying with you, no, but rather out of love That I desire to imitate you; for how could a swallow compete With swans, or what could kids, with their shaky joints, Be able to do in a race like a horse’s mighty power? You, father, are the discoverer of things, You supply to us our ancestral precepts; from Your writings, famous one, as bees in flowering glades Taste of all things, in like fashion we ourselves devour All your golden sayings – golden, ever worthiest Of life that never ends. E tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae, te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis, non ita certandi cupidus quam propter amorem quod te imitari aveo; quid enim contendat hirundo cycnis, aut quid nam tremulis facere artubus haedi consimile in cursu possint et fortis equi vis? tu, pater, es rerum inventor, tu patria nobis suppeditas praecepta, tuisque ex, inclute, chartis, floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta, aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita.
Bust of Epicurus of Samos (342-270 BCE), founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy (the Garden), from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Roman copy after a third century BCE Greek original. Now in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. Photo credit: Sailko/Wikimedia Commons.
Adoration of the Magi, Quentin Matsys, 1526
Marble relief of Zeus. Roman-era copy (2nd cent. CE) after a Greek original of the 5th cent. BCE, partially restored. Now in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome.
The Battle of Pharsalus and the Death of Pompey, Apollonio di Giovanni, between 1455 and 1460
Homer, Iliad VI.474-481 But Hector kissed his own dear son and bounced him In his arms and spoke, offering a prayer To Zeus and the other gods: “Grant me, Zeus, And you other gods, that one day my son too, Just as I, will be outstanding among the Trojans, Superb in force like me, and that he rule Ilium with his might; and let someone At some time say, as he returns from war, ‘This fellow is far better than his father.’ And may he, after cutting down a man Of hostile mind, bear off the bloody spoils, And may his mother take delight in her heart.” αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ ὃν φίλον υἱὸν ἐπεὶ κύσε πῆλέ τε χερσὶν εἶπε δ᾽ ἐπευξάμενος Διί τ᾽ ἄλλοισίν τε θεοῖσι: Ζεῦ ἄλλοι τε θεοὶ δότε δὴ καὶ τόνδε γενέσθαι παῖδ᾽ ἐμὸν ὡς καὶ ἐγώ περ ἀριπρεπέα Τρώεσσιν, ὧδε βίην τ᾽ ἀγαθόν, καὶ Ἰλίου ἶφι ἀνάσσειν: καί ποτέ τις εἴποι πατρός γ᾽ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων ἐκ πολέμου ἀνιόντα: φέροι δ᾽ ἔναρα βροτόεντα κτείνας δήϊον ἄνδρα, χαρείη δὲ φρένα μήτηρ.
Hector bids farewell to his wife Andromache and infant son Astyanax, who reaches out to touch his helmet. Apulian red-figure column-krater, artist unknown; ca. 370-360 BCE. Found at Ruvo; now in the Museo Nazionale of the Palazzo Jatta, Ruvo di Puglia (Bari).
Ovid, Metamorphoses XV.861-870 I pray to you, gods, companions of Aeneas To whom the sword and flame gave way; to you, Native gods; to you, Quirinus, father Of the city; to you, Gradivus, father of Invincible Quirinus; to you, Vesta, Consecrated among Caesar’s household gods, And along with Caesar’s Vesta to you, Phoebus Belonging to the house; and you, Jupiter, Who hold on high Tarpeia’s citadel; And all the other gods whom it is right And pious for a bard to call by name: May that day be slow to come and later than Our age, when Augustus’ life will leave behind The world that he rules, approach the sky, And favor those who pray to him, though absent. di, precor, Aeneae comites, quibus ensis et ignis cesserunt, dique Indigetes genitorque Quirine urbis et invicti genitor Gradive Quirini Vestaque Caesareos inter sacrata penates, et cum Caesarea tu, Phoebe domestice, Vesta, quique tenes altus Tarpeias Iuppiter arces, quosque alios vati fas appellare piumque est: tarda sit illa dies et nostro serior aevo, qua caput Augustum, quem temperat, orbe relicto accedat caelo faveatque precantibus absens!
The so-called "Augustus Bevilacqua," a marble bust of Augustus wearing the corona civica, a crown of oak leaves given for saving the lives of Roman citizens. Now in the Munich Glyptothek. Photo credit: Carole Raddato.
Vergil, Aeneid VII.331-340 "Grant me, maiden begotten of Night, This labor that befits you, this service – Lest my honor or my shattered reputation Give way, or lest the party of Aeneas Be able to win Latinus round to marriage-rites Or occupy Italian territory. You can arm brothers of one mind for battle And mix households up in hatreds, You can infiltrate dwellings with blows And funeral-torches. You bear a thousand names, A thousand ways of doing harm. Shake your fertile breast: shatter peace Already settled, sow accusations That lead to war: let the young men At once wish arms, demand them, and snatch them up." 'hunc mihi da proprium, virgo sata Nocte, laborem, hanc operam, ne noster honos infractave cedat fama loco, neu conubiis ambire Latinum Aeneadae possint Italosve obsidere finis. tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres atque odiis versare domos, tu verbera tectis funereasque inferre faces, tibi nomina mille, mille nocendi artes. fecundum concute pectus, dissice compositam pacem, sere crimina belli; arma velit poscatque simul rapiatque iuventus.'
Allecto Sows Discord between Latinus and Amata, Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647)
