Asclepiades v.169

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m having trouble figuring out how this sentence works, specifically the bit in bold:

ἡδὺ θέρους διψῶντι χιὼν ποτόν, ἡδὺ δὲ ναύταις
ἐκ χειμῶνος ἰδεῖν εἰαρινὸν Στέφανον

Here is what I’ve deduced so far (but not sure if this is correct):

  1. χιων is nominative (ἡ χιων = ‘icy water’)
  2. ποτον is accusative (ὁ ποτος = ‘a draught’)
  3. You have to understand ἰδειν in the first clause, which explains why ποτον is accusative, so: ‘it is sweet for the thirsty man during summer to see a draught…’
  4. I assume the nominative χιων is therefore to be taken as a comparison i.e. ‘it is sweet for the thirsty man during summer to see a draught, like icy water…’

I’m really not sure, so help would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.

2

If you take ἡδύ with ποτόν as a neutral noun in nominative and predicate to χιών, I think the sense will be clear.

3

Many thanks! So it works like: ‘icy water is a sweet drink in the summer…’?

4

How nice to see a dialog between a Phoebus Apollo and a polemistes :smiley: .

Phoebus, I think polemistes has shone the correct light on this. Grammatically, exactly as polemistes says, and ἐστι is to be understood in the first clause, not ἰδεῖν from the second (the constructions are different anyway, ἰδεῖν is a subject infinitive). Your “icy water is a sweet drink in the summer” captures that, at least grammatically. Personally, while ‘ice/icy water’ is certainly a derivative meaning of χιών = snow, in English I prefer to translate χιών with the literal and monosyllabic ‘snow’ here, because I think it better captures the stark duality of θέρους - χιών (isn’t θέρους διψῶντι χιὼν pretty cool!).

To broaden the discussion and ask a few questions of my own, let me print the verse and its Latin translation from the only edition I have looked at, Dübner’s 1871 Paris edition w. Greek & Latin translations:

Ἡδὺ θέρους διψῶντι χιὼν ποτὸν· ἡδὺ δὲ ναύταις
. ἐκ χειμῶνος ἰδεῖν εἰαρινὸν ζέφυρον·
ἥδιον δ’ ὁπόταν κρύψῃ μία τοὺς φιλεόντας
. χλαῖνα, καὶ αἰνῆται κύπρις ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων.

Dulcis aestate sitienti nix est potio, et dulce nautis
. post hiemem videre vernum Zephyrum :
dulcius vero, quando una occulit amantes
. laena, et probatur venus ab ambobus.

Notes: (1) I wish the Textkit editor wouldn’t compress white space (Joel, am I missing anything here?). (2) Your text, Phoebus, has Στέφανον, Dübner’s ζέφυρον. Which edition are you using? (3) It is Dübner, not me, that is italicizing est, which I think makes polemistes’ point.

My questions:

(1) What is our exegesis of the last stanza? Clearly the play is between the sweet dualities, on the one hand, of θέρους χιὼν and χειμῶνος εἰαρινὸν, and the even sweeter unity of her and me (ourselves a duality) under one cloak.

(2) To get a metrical rendering, I am reading the first foot of the third line out loud as ἥδ’ ὁπό. Any comments, anyone, on the meter here? Is this amount of elision common to the genre or the period?

(3) Speaking of meter, usually as here when I consult the Dübner edition, it seems the Latin translator goes for a relatively literal translation and in the process abandons any attempt at strictly correct meter. I haven’t read the praefationes to the edition to see if the editors/translators comments on this themselves. Anyone?

Thanks, Phoebus Apollo, for letting me start off my morning with another sweet piece of Greek verse!

Randy Gibbons

5

The ῑ in ἥδιον is long here, so the line starts — —/— u u/

6

The ῑ in ἥδιον is long here, so the line starts — —/— u u/

Thanks! And I see in Smyth now that ῑ is always long in the form of the comparison ῑων, ῑον. Thanks again.

7

It’s not always long; there are some exceptions, esp. in Hom. (And it’s debated whether it should ever be short in tragedy, which has led to the occasional emendation)

8

Thanks again!

9

Hi Randy,
Not sure what your first question is, about exegesis of “the last stanza.” The epigram’s third item (2nd couplet) caps the first two (1st couplet). A is ηδυ in summer, B in winter; but C is ηδιον than either. It’s close to being a priamel in form, and it has the familiar tricolon crescendo structure. The sense seems unproblematic, with nice contrasts in the first couplet as you point out. He’s playing with very conventional motifs.
Or is it the final clause you’re asking about? Kypris probatur (is commended/approved/validated) by both lovers by the very act of their lovemaking (their κρυπταδιη φιλοτης, as Mimnermus had it).

No metrical problem in 3, as dikaip. points out. The iota is routinely long.

The Latin translation: Looks like he just translates word by word and line by line, perfectly literally, in prose. (He could have written una occultat amores for a nice clausula in 3 but avoids it.) I’d guess the translation is Dübner’s own, but I don’t know.

10

Hi Michael. I was asking for any thoughts on the second couplet, which Phoebus hadn’t quoted (not thinking it was problematic). Your reply is just what I was looking for, and thanks to you too! (I had to look up “priamel”, and my understanding of “the familiar tricolon crescendo structure” is pretty rusty at best.)

11

There’s a pleasant Latin translation by H.H. Huxley, quoted in Jerry Clack’s annotated edition of Asclepiades and Leonidas:

Dulce nives bibere est sitienti aestate; foveri
Post hiemem Zephyro, navita, dulce tibi.
Dulcius at cum palla duos legit unica amantes,
Et Veneri reddunt femina virque decus.

12

It’s the fault of HTML. The workaround is to use the CODE tag. I’ll see if I can add PRE tags for a nicer appearance.

ἰδεῖν εἰαρινὸν Στέφανον



ἰδεῖν εἰαρινὸν ζέφυρον

Which is the manuscript, and which is the editor? ἰδεῖν ζέφυρον is strange, but ἰδεῖν Στέφανον makes no sense to me (a “wreath” of some kind?).

13

It’s the constellation, the corona borealis, which in the Med presumably rises to visibility in Spring. I don’t know the manuscript tradition (the epigram may have appeared in more than one anthology?), but it looks the better reading to me.

14

the corona borealis, which in the Med presumably rises to visibility in Spring.

This must be right, just as Zephyrus (Zephyr in English poetry) is the harbinger of spring and servant of Eros. To support this, I did a little research and found that the morning rising of Stephanos appears in Euctemon’s parapegma, as taken from Geminus’ Calendarium, the text of which Wachsmuth provides in an appendix to his 1898 edition of Lydus’ de Ostentis, but unfortunately I can’t find the latter on Google Books to check it out for myself. Perhaps our resident astronomer, bedwere, knows?

(My instinct agrees with you, Michael, that Stephanos is the right reading, but Phoebus or dikaiopolis or anyone, do you have a critical apparatus you can report on? dikaiopolis, thanks for the less literal and much more pleasant Latin translation!)

15

Στέφανον codd.: Ζέφυρον Alph. Hecker, Commentationis Criticae de Anthologia Graeca Pars Prior (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1852), p. 213

And this is Ovid Fasti III.8. C F

Protinus aspicies venienti nocte Coronam
Cnosida…

So it’s a Spring constellation in the northern hemisphere.

16



What has W.R.Paton (1916-18) done with the second phrase to get;

sweet for sailors after winter’s storms to feel the Zephyr of the spring

My current signature talks about the West wind of spring, which can be felt, but back to the point, can ἰδεῖν be a general verb of perception?

17

I wonder what Hecker had against στεφανον, which seems good to me as marking the end of the stormy season, when sailing can commence (ναυταις). Star settings and risings routinely serve as markers of particular times of year, and you don’t “see” Zephyr, as Joel earlier pointed out. (Paton’s “feel” is fudge.)

Ovid’s Fasti line (well found Joel) relates to Vergil’s memorable Cnosiaque ardentis decedat stella Coronae (a “golden line”) in bk.1 of the Georgics (222), in similarly calendaric context. But in a typically Ovidian twist it’s used to refer to Corona’s March rising (as in our epigram) instead of its November setting as in Vergil.

What say Gow-Page?

18

What say Gow-Page?

They read Στέφανον without even mentioning Hecker’s conjecture. And why should they? It’s totally unnecessary and makes little sense with ἰδεῖν. Maybe H. didn’t know his astronomy.

19

His argument makes Ζέφυρον more plausible. It seems to be used in very similar contexts, and with εἰαρινόν, and its effects on sails and waves are something that can be seen. The “ἰδεῖν” would be enough justification for someone to emend it to στέφανον, I suppose.

It’s also a better poetic image in this context. It does require just a bit of mental effort to call the first sight of the Spring constellation ἡδύ, like a glass of icy water in the summer.

20

No Joel this just will not do. There can’t be any objection at all to the transmitted στεφανον once it’s recognized that it’s the constellation—the sighting of which above the horizon after winter would indeed be ηδυ ναυταις. The passages Hecker cites in defense of his ζεφυρον are quite inadequate to support the conjecture, and your saying that Zephyr’s effects can be seen is special pleading at its worst. Throughout Greek and Latin literature stars are seen, winds are not.