Callimachus Epigram 1 - τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα?

Greek Learning Greek
21

Well spotted, thank you. οἰκίον I hadn’t thought about at all so I’m particularly glad you noticed that.

After all of the above, for the purposes of my own rough translation I think something like “Keep to your own patch” would leave enough ambiguity to be both something you might say in a game and have the second meaning for the stranger.

Do you think in this case that we should treat the second occurrence (in Greek and English) as almost being in scare quotes, ‘fossilised’ from its first occurrence?

In the same way we might say:

Just as he didn’t bring up the old grievance with his friend
so you too, Dio, ‘let sleeping dogs lie’

It’s difficult because giving an English imperative a subject makes it look like an indicative.

22

After all of the above, for the purposes of my own rough translation I think something like “Keep to your own patch” would leave enough ambiguity to be both something you might say in a game and have the second meaning for the stranger.

Yes, I agree. We don’t have a good idea of how the expression fits the game of tops. κατὰ σαυτὸν, with accusative, seems to imply motion towards oneself. So a roughly equivalent English idiom that also fits the extended meaning understood by the stranger seems like a good way to translate without being excessively literal. κατὰ σαυτὸν are the important words linking the game and the marriage choice.

And quotation marks would be a good way to capture the Greek in the last line, which the entire epigram is stealthily leading up to, and which brings it into focus, coming as a surprising turn. It’s not just an anecdote from remote ancient history with a vaguely Herodotean flavor, based on an amusing double meaning: the epigram turns out to be specific, pointed, practical advice directed right here and now at Callimachus’ friend Dio (if he was a real person, and not just a name chosen for metrical convenience). Again, the important words are κατὰ σαυτὸν.

The image of spinning tops has faded from view and is no longer relevant in the last line; if it were relevant there would be something to remind us of it in lines 13-15.

By the way, thanks for the citations you unearthed, Sean.

23

Sorry, my mistake. Yours was the translation from the note, mine from Mair’s translation. Short term memory failure.

24

Thanks for all your help with this, Hylander, and to Joel and Aetos as well.

25

Short term memory failure.

At 73, I have a lot of those – going to the refrigerator and forgetting what I was after.

26

I have found this very interesting thank you.

It struck me (no (ahem) pun intended) that a Schubert lied I had listened to earlier in the week was of some relevance. Apologies if this is only of marginal interest but the tops and the boys made me think of this.

At the end of Schiller’s trilogy Wallenstein the fate of the eponymous hero’s daughter Thelka was left in the balance. Schiller wrote this poem in answer to the public’s enquiry about what happened to her and all the other loose ends left. Schubert’s first setting (D73) was made at the tender age of 16 (in 1813)which gives particular poignancy to the final line. The second (D595) was made in 1817 at the ripe old age of 20. Both are astonishing works heart rending and consoling in that inimitable Schubertian way. If you don’t know them a treat awaits you.

Thekla „Eine Geisterstimme“

Wo ich sei, und wo mich hingewendet,
Als mein flücht’ger Schatte dir entschwebt?
Hab’ ich nicht beschlossen und geendet,
Hab’ ich nicht geliebet und gelebt?

Willst du nach den Nachtigallen fragen,
Die mit seelenvoller Melodie
Dich entzückten in des Lenzes Tagen?
Nur so lang’ sie liebten, waren sie.

Ob ich den Verlorenen gefunden?
Glaube mir, ich bin mit ihm vereint,
Wo sich nicht mehr trennt, was sich verbunden,
Dort, wo keine Träne wird geweint.

Dorten Wirst auch du uns wieder finden,
Wenn dein Lieben unserm Lieben gleicht;
Dort ist auch der Vater, frei von Sünden,
Den der blut’ge Mord nicht mehr erreicht.

Und er fühlt, dass ihn kein Wahn betrogen,
Als er aufwärts zu den Sternen sah;
Den wie jeder wägt, wird ihm gewogen,
Wer es glaubt, dem ist das Heil’ge nah.

Dort gehalten wird in jenen Räumen
Jedem schönen gläubigen Gefühl;
Wage du, zu irren und zu träumen:
Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kind’schen Spiel.
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER (1759–1805)

You ask me where I am, where I turned to
when my fleeting shadow vanished.
Have I not finished, reached my end?
Have I not loved and lived?

Would you ask after the nightingales
who, with soulful melodies, delighted you in the days of spring?
They lived only as long as they loved.

Did I find my lost beloved?
Believe me, I am united with him in the place
where those who have formed a bond are never
separated, where no tears are shed.

There you will also find us again,
when your love is as our love;
there too is our father, free from sin,
whom bloody murder can no longer strike.

And he senses that he was not deluded
when he gazed up at the stars.
For as a man judges so he shall be judged;
whoever believes this is close to holiness.

There, in space, every fine, deeply-felt belief
will be consummated;
dare to err and to dream:
often a higher meaning lies behind childlike play.

27

How wonderful, I didn’t know this story. What a genius - the storytelling of the first and the strict respect for Schiller’s stanzas in the second (with everything compressed into that alternating variation on the second line!), written as if he’d lived his whole life in between the two. Thank you for sharing that.

This really is off-topic now, but a couple of years ago I bought a new washing machine only to find that it played Die Forelle whenever a cycle finished. I later discovered that people on YouTube had taken to playing duets with it - this is the best of the bunch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzBtQD3-f18 . Annoyingly the washing machine isn’t even in tune with itself!

28

Hilarious!

Graham Johnson describes listening to second version of Thelka with its high lying unearthly vocal part as making us “feel as if we in the hushed atmosphere of a seance”. The late Arleen Auger once performed the song at the Hohenems festival offstage and from a balcony. What an effect the must have been.

I find the Schiller poem itself very beautiful.

29

Although Schiller loved Greek poetry and was inspired by it (For after all, Wallenstein is modelled after Greek tragedy) and considered it the highest form of poetry, he claimed he himself could not compose in that form; he viewed Greek poetry as being “naive” in the sense that it resulted from observation and described in concrete terms the world of its poets(it’s no accident that Homer uses a lot of similes). Schiller’s own poetry and much of “modern” poetry he classified as “sentimental”, in that it was the result of contemplation, introspection, or meditation.

30

No one’s mind jumped to his more famous poem?

Schwer und bang
Tönt die Glocke!
Ja, die Gattin ist, die geringe.

Still I read the line as “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν [βέμβικα] ἔλα” in the boys’ yell. I would think that the stranger clearly takes it as “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν [γυναῖκα] ἔλα”, and Dio is supposed to fill in some other blank. To me this makes it impossible to imagine that the image of a man ἐλαύνων γυναῖκα isn’t intended to come to mind. But Hylander is taking the entire “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν” as adverbial, and ἔλα intransitively?

(Apologies to Schiller, who didn’t deserve that.)

31

He might not accept it; that was pretty low…
In case anyone’s wondering, Joel substituted “Ja, die Gattin ist, die geringe” for “Ach, die Gattin ist’s, die teure”.
gering=low, inferior (ὁλίγη), teure=dear, precious

32

Joel, ελα is not the important word. κατα σαυτον is the key here that links the boys’ cry with the marriage advice. Can you find any parallel for ελαυνειν γυναικα in the sense you’re trying to read into this poem?

I really don’t think your reading is consistent with Callimachus’ decorum. It would be more characteristic of Hipponax.

The fundamental idea here is the social equality of the marriage partners.

33

I’ll take your word on Callimachus. But I can’t resist this one parallel at least (dirtier than what I was thinking though):

Σαλαμίνιος γάρ ἐστιν ᾧ ξύνειμ’ ἐγώ—
τὴν νύχθ’ ὅλην ἤλαυνέ μ’ ἐν τοῖς στρώμασιν,
ὥστ’ ἄρτι τουτὶ θοἰμάτιον αὐτοῦ ’λαβον.

34

My goodness what a thread. Hard to believe that Joel wasn’t just trolling. The thrust of the epigram is crystal clear, although in its ainos form it’s unusually innovative even for Callimachus, and I think it’s unfortunate that it’s known as Epigram 1, as if Callimachus put it first. It’s really not the best one to read first. It could be seen as programmatic, though, as if to say Callimachus doesn’t aim at Homeric grandeur but sticks to his slighter small-scale productions, his own level. Which would be typically ironic.

I can only reinforce what Hylander has been saying. “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν (sc. βέμβικα) ἔλα” is what one boy says to another as the other’s top is driven into his own lane. The lesson: the xenos (and/or Dio) should likewise keep to his own lane and take the girl he has described as κατʼ ἐμέ.

Sean, I don’t think it’s quite “Spin your own top” so much as “Drive the (top) that’s κατὰ σαυτὸν” (lit. “that’s in accordance with yourself”)—to be re-applied, of course, to the xenos’ choice of bride.

If you want to venture further with Callimachus (and you should!) I’d recommend you start with one of the Hymns. Zeus is the first (as is his prerogative—but it’s also the shortest), Delos is the best. They all demand to be read against the backdrop of Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymnns.

35

The Hymn to Apollo is the only one I’ve read. It’s magnificent.

36

Glad to see the dead horse has been laid to rest.

I’m keen to read more Callimachus - I think we can all feel affinity with someone looking back across time and the sea at the overrunning cup of early Greek literature.

Do you think the whole of Theogony and the Homeric Hymns should be tackled first (ὁ βίος βραχύς) or could I perhaps just take a sample from both to get some sense of the intertextuality? Maybe I’ll just read them in translation (braces for impact).

Resources seem to be hard to find for Callimachus so I would be grateful for suggestions from anyone for commentaries, other secondary lit. etc.

37

There are a few Callimachus poems in Neil Hopkinson’s “A Hellenistic Antholgy” CUP 1988 which includes the Hymn to Zeus.

A complete commentary on all 6 is “Callimachus: The Hymns” Susan A Stephens OUP 2015

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Callimachus-Hymns-Susan-Stephens/dp/0199783047/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Callimachus+the+hymns&qid=1573990801&sr=8-4

This was very favourably reviewed here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2016/2016-01-36.html

There is also the Brill companion.

38

This is exactly it.

Though we might not use English word “drive” to refer to running along beating a top with a stick, or if we do it’s “drive 2.” as in “drive cattle,” rather than “drive 1.” “operate a vehicle.” In general ἐλαύνειν is unlike our word drive, and has far more of “to spur to motion with a whip/stick” than “ride along.” It was the nature of transportation in the ancient world. Things that moved were generally alive.

The sexism in this advice is casual and careless, but present enough. Try even telling mwh’s “drive” version in a mixed group and see what happens.

And is Callimachus the originator of this advice?

Pausanius: τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα· τοῦτο οἱ μὲν Πυθικὸν εἶναί φασιν ἀπόφθεγμα, οἱ δὲ Σόλωνος. ἔνιοι δὲ αὐτὸ Χείλωνα εἰπεῖν συμβουλευομένῳ τινί, εἰ πλούσιον ἕλοιτο γάμον.

Anonymous commentary on N.Ethics: ὡς ἐπὶ Πιττακὸν μὲν τὸν Μιτυληναῖον τὸ ‘χαλεπὸν ἐσθλὸν ἔμμεναι’, εἰς Χίλωνα δὲ τὸν Λάκωνα τὸ ‘τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα’.

Regardless, it seems that this is a versification of an existing story.

Hard to believe that Joel wasn’t just trolling.

I think that any observer would conclude that my Schiller post was trolling.

39

Spoke too soon.

Those two quotes are equivalent to the Suda translation I posted above which you may have missed, but thanks for posting them because the Πυθικὸν/Πιττακὸν difference shows why the translation has “Delphic utterance” rather than ‘a saying of Pittacus’.

Thank you, that’s actually very reasonably priced! The Brill companion is $250 with a 6 week delay or some nonsense so I may pop to the library for that one.

40

Do you think the whole of Theogony and the Homeric Hymns should be tackled first (ὁ βίος βραχύς) or could I perhaps just take a sample from both to get some sense of the intertextuality? Maybe I’ll just read them in translation (braces for impact).

I think the Works and Days would be more useful than the Theogony, but you probably ought to read both. They aren’t long. The Theogony, I think, is somewhat easier because the vocabulary will be more familiar. Of the Homeric Hymns, the Hymns to Demeter, Hermes and the Delian Apollo are the ones to read, if no others. The language is epic, so now that you have some Homer under your belt, all of these texts shouldn’t be too hard.

As for reading them in translation, I think that as a student of Greek (and Latin, too – the Works and Days are nearly essential preparation for Vergil’s crowning masterpiece, the Georgics), you will miss a lot that will be useful in further reading if you don’t immerse yourself in the actual language of the Greek.

But there are excellent volumes for Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days and for the Homeric Hymns in the new Loeb series, with facing translations, with some helpful notes. I used to be dead-set against using Loebs to accelerate reading, but now that I’m older, and I realize that I’ll never read everything I want to read in this life, I’ve been doing that myself with some texts, especially given the excellence of the new Loebs. (The older volumes are hit or miss: sometimes very good, other times execrable). So that’s what i would suggest. Always make sure you understand the grammar and the syntax of the Greek, but use the translation as a check on your comprehension and to spare yourself some of the tedium of looking up all the obscure words you don’t recognize in a dictionary (which, of course, you should do if you are immortal).

If you do read Hesiod, try to get your hands on West’s commentaries (in addition to the new Loebs). They’re astonishingly rich in information.

By the way, the new Loeb Hesiod, originally published in 2006, was reissued just last year in an edition revised by its editor, Glenn Most, “to take account of the textual and interpretive scholarship that has appeared since its initial publication.” Anyone have any idea why? Has there been some revolution in Hesiodic scholarship that transpired in the past 13 years, that would warrant such a hasty revision?