Out of My Hut

     Get out of my hut, you mice who hug the shadows!
     You mice will find no fodder in Leonidas's crock.
     The old man's fine with two barley loaves, if there's salt.
     My forefathers lived this way, and I heed their example.
     So why scrabble in my corners, treat-seeking
     where prandial tidbits are never spilled?
     Go on to houses that aren't so frugal
     where sustenance is yours to scuttle away with

By Leonidas (Greek Anthology 6.302)

The locust's tomb

      Passerby, the slab piled over me is low
      to the ground, nor much to see. Be that as it is,
      good man, hail Philaenis! Her singing locust
      was I, who used to crawl from thorn to thorn,
      the reedy bug she fussed over and loved
      for two whole years of my anthemic racket.
      At my death, her care lived on, and over me she reared
      this little monument to resourcefulness in song.

Leonidas of Tarentum (Greek Anthology 7.198)

Cretensis mare

Ὁ Κρὴς τὴν θάλασσαν: "A Cretan to the sea," i.e., unfamiliar with the sea or fearful of it. Strabo gives this proverb in Geography, book 10, explaining that in ancient times, the people of Crete were unsurpassed in navigation and other maritime matters through their long experience. And so "The Cretan knows nothing of the sea" became proverbial for people who feign ignorance of something they know extremely well. For Cretans are islanders. The sea girds them on every side. How could they be ignorant of it?

An alternate form of this expression is Ὁ Κρὴς [δὴ] τὸν πόντον. Aristides uses it in regard to Pericles, and Zenodotus (sic) writes that it is somewhere in Alcaeus. An analogous expression is found in Horace's epistle to Octavian: "I, when I claim not to be composing verses, / am more deceptive than a Parthian in my designs." This is because the Parthians would launch their fiercest attacks by pretending to run away.

Erasmus, Adages

To the Graces

      On spying Aristagoras, you the very Graces
          flung your gentle arms around his darling person.
      Thanks to you's the fire thrown off now by his frame, whether
          sweet talking or making silence talk with just his eyes.
      Keep him away from me? As if that would help! Like a new Zeus,
          the boy knows how to make a bolt land far from Olympus.

By Meleager of Gadara

Guest lecture by Martin Schwartz

The voice of Misunderstanding (a comic prologue)

[In a wood of Corinth there lay exposed
a baby boy and girl, 'til an old woman
passing by came to their rescue.
Unable to care for both, she took the girl's
raising upon herself] most willingly,
and gave the boy to the mistress of this house,
who was a wealthy dame devoid of children.
That's how it all began. Then, some years later,
with ills of war and Corinth's troubles
mounting, the old woman fell destitute.
Her girl, nearly grown (just now you saw her),
had attracted an impassionate suitor.
To the care of this young man, of a family
of Corinth, she committed the girl,
as though she were the mother. Already advanced
in wasting away, and looking to life's katastrophē
as a nearby thing, she disconcealed unto the girl
her fortune: to have been a foundling, found
swaddled in this cloth - and at that, produced it
to her - and identified her unsuspected brother,
reasoning that in case of need
for mortal assistance, her only natural bond
was to him, and fearing lest some mishap
befall the two through me, [the goddess Agnoia, viz.]
Misunderstanding. A rich party-boy is
how she saw the brother, and none too steady
the army officer who was the pretty young thing's suitor.
With that, she died, and [sure enough,] the officer's
just bought the house next door. Neighbor now
to her brother, the girl's revealed nothing, hating
to mar his bright outlook on what Fortune
gave him to enjoy. But chance observation
soon showed her his impetuous nature,
as well as a habit of wandering round her house
with an intent. One night at dusk she was
sending her maid out for something, when he
happened to spy her at the gates, and hastened
up to her with hugs and kisses. Knowing him
for her brother she did not flee - but the snoop who came
upon them saw, and told of how he went off saying
he wanted to see her at greater leisure, and of her tears,
standing there wailing that she wasn't free
to act that way. The upshot's blazed up to
the present moment, stoking his rage
to such a height - 'twas I who stoked it
past his nature, in order that secrets start to
open up in what follows, and everyone's true family
be revealed. So if anybody find this in bad taste
or a source of scandal, save it.
Through a god do evils turn out good.
To you who favor us with spectatorship
I bid farewell. Let what follows not be lost on you.

Menander, The Girl With Close-Cropped Hair 117-171

A simile of Empedocles

As when painters -- men about their craft
through craft instructed -- fill in upright panels
and lay their hands to multicolored substances,
in concert mixing more of some and less of others,
and arrange them into forms like unto all things,
putting forth trees and men along with women
and beasts with birds and fish nursed on water
and, superlative in honor, gods of long tenure:
Go therefore with wits ungulled into believing the source of mortal things
is any different, no matter how unutterably many come into view.
Instead, take this on divine authority for certain knowledge.

Fragment 31B21 (DK)