Archived "Quotations of the Month"

For people always applaud the most for the song that is newest to circulate among the listeners. Homer, Odyssey I.351-352. The latest news is always a standard subject of the oral poet, whether the bard of antiquity or the improvisational artist of today. In the Odyssey, Phemius (described in the quotation above) sings a song about the Trojan War to the assembled Suitors, because that was the news of the day. Illustration: Apollo, patron god of music, plays the lyre, the instrument with which the bard accompanied himself

Archived quotations of the month

Beginning with September, 2004, my home page will feature a different quotation from Classical or other literature each month, appropriate to the season or to current events. Starting in October, 2004, this page will contain "Quotations of the Month" from previous months.

Quotation for May 2008: Inflation, Roman style: Janus complains of the devaluation of the old currency in Ovid's Fasti

A one-as coin with Janus on one side, prow of a ship on the other (in Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899).

Inflation in today's news

Inflation is in the news. Food costs more, affordable housing is difficult to find, medical costs are up, college tuition is prohibitive, the dollar has lost its value internationally, and with gasoline at $4.00 a gallon, you can't go anywhere anyway. (Time to revive train travel!)

Ancient Rome suffered from its own kind of inflation. In early Rome and Latium, the oldest medium of exchange was oxen and sheep (hence the word for property or wealth, pecunia, from pecus "cattle" and our word pecuniary). A later currency consisted of unwrought copper or bronze (aes rude), and then of bronze bars marked with an image or inscription (aes signatum). Rome came late to using actual coins, compared to the Greek and Middle Eastern world. Lydia struck coins of electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) in the 7th century B.C., followed by the silver coins of the Greek cities of Aegina, Corinth, and Chalcis. (Prior to this, the Greeks used iron spits (oboloi) as currency; a handful of six of these was a drachme.)

Rome, however, seems not to have minted real coins until around 300 B.C. The earliest known coin was the copper one-as coin, which originally weighed one Roman pound, or twelve unciae (the word from which our word ounce comes). The obverse bore the image of Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings, the reverse the image of a ship's prow (see the depiction above). In 269 B.C. Rome opened her first mint, in the temple of Juno Moneta ("the Mindful One"; the epithet gives us, as a result, both the words "money" and "mint"). Silver coins were minted here after the Greek fashion, for the cities and outside trade, copper coins for the rustic countryside. Gold coins, too, were eventually introduced. But the stalwart old copper coins gradually decreased in weight, until they weighed only one uncia, and finally they were no longer minted. Over the course of the Roman republic and then the Empire, the silver and gold coins, too, underwent periodic decreases in weight, followed by periodic reforms.

Ovid's Janus complains of the loss of the old coinage

Ovid, in his entry for the month of January in the Fasti, describes his encounter with the weird old god Janus, in a passage of which we quoted a part in the Quotation of the Month for January, 2007. Janus, at first frightening with his strange double face that "alone of the gods, can look at his own back," turns out to be a genial ranconteur. Previously, we quoted his account of the arrival of the god Saturn, exiled from the celestial kingdom by Jupiter. Prior to this story, Janus rails against the devaluation of the old copper coins that bear his image, and their worn-out condition that makes his image unrecognizable! This rant, in turn, is the result of Ovid inquiring about the various kinds of offerings that are brought to Janus at his festival. Dates, figs, and honey are among the offerings, so that the year may be sweet. But money is brought, too, and money is even sweeter than honey! In the time of Saturn, life was simple, whereas now everything must be gold and jewels, and people make money for the sake of making money. We praise the old days, but find today more useful.

(Ironically, as we learn in Vergil's Aeneid, quoted for the Saturnalia in the quotation for December, 2007, the simple age of Saturn was also referred to as the "Golden Age"! These poets should get their stories straight!)

. . . "I see why sweets are given. Tell me also the reason for giving coins,
that no part of your festival escape me."
He laughed, and "How your own age deceives you," he said,
"who think that honey is sweeter than receiving a donation of coins!
Even in the reign of Saturn, I scarcely saw anyone
in whose heart profit was not sweet.
In time, the love of having things, which is now at its height, grew.
Now there is hardly any farther that it can go.
Wealth is now of more value, than in the years of olden times,
when the people were poor, and Rome was new,
when a small hut was large enough for Mars-born Quirinus,
and river sedge provided a humble bed.
Jupiter could scarcely stand upright in his narrow shrine,
and the thunderbolt in Jove's right hand was made of clay.
With foliage they used to ornament the Capitol, which they now ornament with gems,
and the senator used to pasture his own sheep.
Nor was it a shame to take one's peaceful rest on straw
and support one's head on hay.
The praetor gave judgment to the people, merely putting aside his plow,
and it was a crime to own a piece of light silver plate.

But since the Fortune of this place has raised her head,
and Rome has touched the highest gods with her crest,
wealth and the furious desire for wealth have grown,
and when people possess the most, they seek more.
. . .
Only worth is worth anything now; wealth brings honors,
wealth brings friendships; the poor man everywhere lies broken.
And yet you ask if an omen drawn from coin payment is useful,
and why the old coppers delight your palms!
They used to give coppers, now there is a better omen in gold.
Vanquished, the ancient money has given way to the new.
Golden temples delight us also, although we esteem the antique ones;
such majesty is appropriate for the god.
We praise olden days, but find our own times useful.
Yet both customs are worthy of being cultivated."

He concluded his admonitions. With calm speech, as before,
I addressed the god who bears the key:
"I have learned many things, indeed, but why is the figure of a ship
stamped on one side of the copper coin, and a two-headed figure on the other?"
"You could have recognized me in the double image," he said,
"if age had not blurred the workmanship.
That leaves the reason for the boat. By boat the sickle-bearing god [Saturn]
arrived at the Tuscan river, after roaming the globe.
I remember how Saturn was received in this land;
he had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms. . ."

(-Ovid, Fasti I.189-236)

Silver and gold Roman coins (in Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.)

Quotation for April 2008: Suggested by the curse buried under Yankee Stadium, a baleful poem by Horace

Relief of three-headed Hekate from Aegina (in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890. Hecate, a goddess associated with the uncanny, the Underworld, and crossroads, was among the divinities invoked in curses.

The Red Sox curse on Yankee Stadium

Early in April, it became known that a construction worker building the new stadium for the New York Yankees baseball team had buried a T-shirt bearing the name of the rival Boston Red Sox in the cement floor of the stadium, in order to put a curse on the Yankees. The worker later confessed that he had buried the shirt under the floor last summer, prophesying that the curse would last 30 years. The Yankee management took the curse seriously, spending $50,000 to dig up the offending garment. When last heard, the jersey was back in Boston, where it will be auctioned off for charity. Ball players are known for being superstitious, but the idea of buried curses has deep roots in Classical culture.

Ancient curse tablets

Curses, often addressed to chthonic (underground) or liminal (boundary) deities, such as Hecate, Persephone, Hermes, or Charon, scratched on lead and pierced with nails have been found at both Greek and Roman sites. Curses or spells may also have been written on materials such as papyrus, wood, or wax, but these are more perishable. A large number of lead curse tablets have been found in Athens. Many of these refer to court cases and are designed to put an evil spell on the opposing litigant. Many have also been found in Roman Britain, especially at the Roman baths in present-day Bath, England, where they tend to be aimed at thieves who stole the bathers' clothes (apparently they didn't have lockers).

We also have what might be called "literary curses." In July, 2007, we quoted a poem by Theocritus, in which a young sorceress uses magic to try to lure back a young man with whom she had a brief affair (or maybe kill him!). Below, we quote one of Horace's Epodes, in which he wishes shipwreck on another poet, named Mevius.

Burying the St. Joseph statue

Good prayers can be buried, too. Some of the buried tablets were spells buried at grave sites to help the dead to their next life, especially if the person died young or died a violent death, and some were love spells.

Today, statues of St. Joseph (patron saint of carpenters, and thus of houses) are buried by homeowners trying to sell their houses. The statue is buried upside down in the yard, then dug up when the house is sold, and displayed in a place of honor in the new home (it is suggested that the statue be buried in a plastic bag so that it doesn't get dirty). St. Joseph statue kits, with statue, plastic bag, and directions for use, are available over the Internet. The statues come in different sizes, but there is apparently no difference in their efficacy. Some real-estate agents are said to keep supplies of these statues to provide for their prospective clients.

Horace's curse upon Mevius

Our quotation of the month is an example of the "literary curse," Horace's ill wishes for a rival poet.

Mevius (who along with another bad poet, Bavius, is immortalized by Vergil's insults in Eclogue 3.90), was apparently an enemy of both Vergil and Horace. No poetry by Mevius or Bavius survives. Mevius was about to embark on a trip to Greece. Horace calls on all the hostile winds (Auster and Notus, the south winds, Eurus, the east wind, and Aquilo, the north wind) to wreck Mevius' ship. He does not call on Zephyrus, the gentle west wind. Horace's ill-omened sendoff (Epode X), translated below, was modeled on a poem by Archilochus.

Under an evil augury the ship departs,
bearing the stinking Mevius.
Auster, may you lash both her sides,
-- remember! -- with horrible waves.
Let black Eurus scatter rigging
and broken oars on the sea turned upside down.
May Aquilo rise up, mighty as when in the high mountains
he breaks the trembling oaks.
May no friendly star appear in the gloomy night
from which sad Orion sets.
Nor let him be borne on a more quiet sea
than was the Greek band of victors,
when Pallas turned her ire from burning Ilium
against Ajax' impious vessel.
O how much toil awaits your sailors,
and for you, yellow pallor
and that non-manly wailing,
and prayers to Jupiter, who turns away,
when the Ionian Sea, bellowing in wet
Notus, wrecks your ship.
But if as fat prey on the curving shore,
stretched out, you bring pleasure to the sea birds,
a libidinous goat will be sacrificed
with a lamb to the Tempest deities.

Mercury (Hermes) in his role as psychopompos, or conductor of the souls of the dead into the Underworld.

Quotation for March 2008: For the"March Madness" basketball championships, Nausicaa and her maidens play ball in the Odyssey

Athenian women filling their water pots at a public fountain and chatting (black-figured water pot (hydria), 6th cent. B.C. Paris, Louvre. (image from Rostovtzeff, History of the Ancient World, after Perrot and Chipiez.)

Festivals and games of March

The month of March 2008 has provided us with many occasions for festivals -- St. Patrick's Day, the celebrations of Purim and of Mohammed's Birthday, the Spring Equinox, and Easter. It also gives us March Madness, the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments. Since Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in 1972, women's sports, including basketball, have received more prominence, although American women have always found ways to satisfy their desire for athletic competition (as illustrated by the antique picture at the bottom of this item!)

In the Greek and Roman world, many kinds of ball games were played, by men and women, young and old. This month's quotation is from Homer's Odyssey, describing the ball game played by the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa and her handmaidens while their clothes dry on the beach -- setting them up to discover shipwrecked Odysseus in time to aid him on his return home to Ithaca.

Athena stage-manages a rescue for Odysseus

Odysseus has left Calypso's island on a stout raft that Calypso helped him build, but which the angry god Poseidon quickly turns to kindling wood. Buoyed by a magical veil given him by the goddess Ino (who used to be human herself), Odysseus swims to the rocky shore of the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians. Naked, covered with brine, and dead tired, he crawls under some bushes to sleep. The goddess Athena, his patron, always clever and vigilant, contrives a way to get him the rest of the way home. She puts a dream into the mind of Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, reminding her that she must wash her clothes, because she can expect soon to get married. Nausicaa coyly asks her father for the mule-chariot, omitting the idea of marriage but saying that she must wash her brothers' clothes. But Alcinous "understands everything" and lets her go. Nausicaa and her attendants take a picnic lunch and wine with them, and Nausicaa (a down-to-earth princess) drives the mule-chariot herself as they take the laundry to the washing-pits by the beach.

After doing the washing -- which they turn into a competition -- and eating lunch, they play a game of ball. Athena again intervenes, making Nausicaa miss her throw and send the ball into the water. The girls shriek, and Odysseus wakes up. A comic scene ensues, as Odysseus, covering his nakedness with a branch, tries to figure out where he is, and whether the girls are nymphs or mortals. Eventually he is invited to wash up and eat something, and Athena "pours charis [beauty and charm] over him," making him incredibly appealing to Nausicaa. Again being coy, Nausicaa insists that he go by himself to ask for the king's aid, rather than accompanying her -- so that gossips won't start rumors about them! Her father again gets the point, and gently scolds her for her silliness. Eventually, Odysseus tells his tale to the Phaeacians and is at last sent back home to Ithaca. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Note on mythic themes

(NOTE: In terms of epic themes, Nausicaa's ball game represents a variation on the theme of "Maidens Dancing and Picking Flowers (Interrupted by a Scary Male Figure)," one of the themes identified in my book Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns.)

Here is the story of Nausicaa's ball game.

But when they came to the beautiful stream of the river,
where the capacious washing troughs were, and plenty of good water
flowed up from beneath them, enough to clean clothes no matter how dirty,
there they unhitched the mules from the wagon,
and drove them beside the eddying river
to graze on the honey-sweet wild grass. From the wagon
they took the clothes in their arms and carried them to the black water,
and trampled them in the pits, speedily competing with each other.
But when they had washed the clothes and cleaned off all the dirt,
they spread them out in a row along the shore of the sea, where
the pebbles were washed cleanest by the waves against the land.
Having bathed and anointed themselves with rich oil,
they took their lunch by the banks of the river,
and waited for the clothes to dry by the rays of the sun.
But after she and her handmaids had enjoyed their food,
they played a game of ball, having thrown off their headgear.
White-armed Nausicaa led in the song.
Just as Artemis the archer roves over the mountains,
along the heights of Taygetus or Erymanthus,
rejoicing in the boars and swift deer,
and with her the country nymphs, daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis
sport with her, and Leto [mother of Artemis] rejoices in her heart,
and she herself holds her head and brow above all the others,
and so is easily recognized, although all are beautiful --
just so the unwed maiden stood out among her attendants.

But when she was ready to go back home,
yoking the mules and folding the beautiful clothes,
then the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, thought of something else,
how Odysseus should wake up and see the fair-faced girl,
and she would lead him to the city of the Phaeacians.
The princess threw the ball to one of her attendants,
but she missed the attendant, and threw the ball into the deep eddy.
They gave a long shout, and godlike Odysseus awoke;
sitting up, he wondered in his heart and mind,
"Oh my, to the land of what men have I come...

(Homer, Odyssey 6.85-119)

Quotation for February 2008: For Valentines' Day, a love poem by Sappho

Sappho's poems celebrate her women friends

Sappho (b. 612 B.C), the great lyric poetess from the island of Lesbos, is known to us only in a few poems preserved in other authors and in fragmentary papyri. From these remains and from glowing opinions of ancient authors, we get an idea of what we are missing: Plato (in the Phaedrus) called her "the tenth Muse." She is known for her passionate love poems to women friends, and has forever bequeathed the name of "lesbian" to all women who love women. There were, of course, other Lesbians who were not "lesbian," including her contemporary and friend, the poet Alcaeus, author of drinking songs, love songs, and odes against tyrants, reflective of the turbulent political times on Lesbos in which both of them lived.

The legend that Sappho threw herself off a cliff into the sea for love of a man named Phaon was apparently invented, but she does seem to have married and had a child. Her greatest affections and emotional attachments, however, were to a group of women friends, who perhaps formed a cult of Aphrodite and the Muses.

"Longinus," in On the Sublime (Peri hypsous; the actual author, probably of the first century A.D, is unknown), quoted the poem by Sappho that we translate below, of which he included, unfortunately, only the first four stanzas. Some lines have been supplemented by papyrus fragments. The poem describes Sappho's jealousy at seeing a man enjoying the favors of a woman whom Sappho adores. She describes in detail the physical symptoms of her emotions -- recognizable to both heterosexuals and homosexuals -- as she "falls to pieces" (to quote the song by Patsy Cline!) upon seeing the object of her desire. Longinus aptly notes that where some authors "attract the listener by their selection of elements, and others do so by the way they pack them together," Sappho "excels in both choosing and combining the most intense and striking symptoms" of love.

Here is Sappho's description:

He seems to me the equal of the gods
that man, who sits across from you,
and, near you as you sweetly speak,
listens to you,

and as you laugh your lovely laugh, a thing that
makes my heart in my breast beat wildly;
for when I see you, even briefly, my voice
refuses to come,

my tongue is broken, and a delicate
fire suddenly runs across my flesh;
there is no sight in my eyes,
and my ears hum;

sweat runs down me, a trembling
seizes me all over, and I am more green
than grass; I am little short of dying,
it would seem.

But all must be endured, since...

Sappho, No. 2 (fragmentary)

Decoration from Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: A Pastoral Romance, English translation, 19th cent., engraving after a design by the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans for an edition of 1718.

Quotation for January 2008: Women warriors in Herodotus, suggested by the candidates in the U.S. presidential election

Illustration: Nos. 17 and 18 (upper), war ship and merchant ship, about 500 B.C, from a painted vase found at Vulci in Etruria, in the British Museum; No 19 (lower), two war ships, about 500 B.C., from a painted vase by Nicosthenes found at Vulci in Etruria, in the Louvre. From Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, 1895.

Women warriors

With the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, we may have, for the first time, a woman President of the United States, and thus a female Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Ancient literature furnishes us with some colorful and outstanding women leaders, including Vergil's half-mythic Dido, Queen of Carthage; Boudicca, who led a revolt against Roman rule in Britain; and, of course, Cleopatra of Egypt. Herodotus (c. 484-430? B.C.), in his Histories, describes several very able women who led their cities in peace and war, including two queens of Babylon, Semiramis and Nitocris.

Herodotus gives the fullest account of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, his own native city, which, although at least partially Greek, was at the time a part of the Persian Empire. In his account of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, Artemisia is depicted as giving wise counsel to the Persian king Xerxes, who foolishly rejects her advice. She advises him NOT to attempt a naval battle against the Greeks. He need not take the chance, she says, as he had already taken Athens, thus attaining his principal objective. For, she says, the Greek men "are as superior at sea to your men as men are to women." It would be more advantageous to wait until the Greeks ran out of provisions, or to invade the Peloponnesus and split the Greek coalition. Xerxes, spurning her advice, nevertheless engaged the Greeks at Salamis, off the coast near Athens, causing the destruction of the Persian navy. At Salamis, commanding her own ship, Artemisia fought with valor (if perhaps with questionable ethics, as described in the quotation below). After Xerxes' defeat, she again gave wise counsel, telling him to, as we would say "declare a victory and leave." This time, he takes her advice, retreating to Persia and leaving the fight to the warlike Mardonius, who was to meet his own defeat in the final battle at Plataea, in Boeotia.

Artemisia at Salamis

In the great sea battle of Salamis (480 B.C.), in which the Athenians under Themistocles defeated the Persian navy, Artemisia performed an exploit that was either clever or ruthless, or maybe just fortuitous. Hemmed in by Greek ships on the one side and Persian and allied ships on the other, she rammed and sank one of her own allies. The Greeks thought that hers was a Greek ship that had rammed a Persian and stopped chasing her. Xerxes, on the other hand, assumed she had rammed a Greek, and uttered the famous words, "My men have become women, and my women have have become men."

As for the rest, I cannot accurately describe what part each of the barbarians or Greeks played in the battle. Concerning Artemisia, however, the following incident occurred, because of which she gained an even greater reputation with Xerxes. When the king's situation had turned into complete confusion, Artemisia's ship was pursued by an Attic vessel. Unable to flee (for before her were friendly ships, and her ship happened to be closest to the enemy), she thought of the following plan, which, when carried out, turned out to her advantage.

Pursued by the Attic ship she rammed the ship of an ally, on which were Calyndians and the Calyndian king himself, Damasithymus. Whether she had had some quarrel with this man, while they were still at the Hellespont, I cannot say, or even whether she did this on purpose, or whether it happened by chance that the Calyndian ship got in her way. And so she rammed the ship and sank it, and by good fortune she gained a double benefit. The captain of the Attic trireme, when he saw her ramming the barbarians' ship, thought that Artemisia's ship was either Greek or a barbarian ship that had deserted and was helping his side, and turned away to chase others.

By her actions it happened, on the one hand, that she escaped and was not destroyed, and on the other hand, she was even more highly esteemed by Xerxes. For it is said that the king, who was watching, observed the ship being rammed, and one of the bystanders said, "My Lord, see how well Artemisia is fighting, and that she has sunk one of the enemy's ships?" He asked whether it was truly Artemisia's deed, and they told him that they clearly recognized her ensign. They assumed that the ship that was sunk was an enemy. In addition to her other good luck, it is said that there were no survivors to accuse her. Xerxes is reported to have said, upon being told, "My men have become women, and my women men." That is what they say Xerxes said.

Herodotus Histories VIII.87-88.

Illustration: Nos. 15 and 16, two war ships in action, about 550 B.C., from a painted vase by Aristonophos found at Caere in Etruria, in the New Capitoline Museum at Rome. From Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, 1895.

Quotation for December 2007: Catullus presents his friend Cornelius (Nepos) with a gift of his poems

Illustration: The Muse Erato (muse of erotic poetry), from a wall-painting from Herculaneum, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

This is the season of gift-giving, and we offer a poem by the Roman poet Catullus (84-ca.54 B.C.), better known to us as the author of passionate poems to his girlfriend "Lesbia" (real name Clodia). In this poem he presents his collection of poems as a gift to his friend Cornelius, the historian Cornelius Nepos (ca.99-ca.24 B.C.). He thanks the older writer for having looked kindly upon some of his earlier efforts. The patrona Virgo whom he addresses is probably his Muse, although she could be a goddess, perhaps Pallas. Here is the text, in both Latin and English.

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
Arido modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi, namque tu solebas
Meas aliquid putare nugas,
Iam tum cum ausus es unus Italorum
Omne aeuum tribus explicare chartis
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli
Qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
Plus uno maneat perenne saeclo.


To whom shall I give this charming little book,
Newly polished with dry pumice?
To you, Cornelius; for you used to
Think my trifles were something,
Even when you, alone of Italians,
Dared write the history of all eras in three papyri,
Learned, by Jupiter, and labored over!
So accept this little book, such as it is,
And may it, O patron virgin,
Remain perennial, for more than one age.

(Catullus, Poem 1)

Illustration: The Muse Clio (muse of history), from a wall-painting from Herculaneum, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

Quotation for November 2007: Hesiod's advice for fall for the thrifty farmer

Illustration: detail of the so-called "Harvester Vase" from Hagia Triada, Crete. This Minoan vase (ca. 1550 B.C.) is generally supposed to represent a procession of men carrying sheaves of grain.

The farmer gets ready for winter

At this time of year, we think of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and harvest festivals to celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. Hesiod (the Old Curmudgeon!), however, had his mind on more practical matters, such as real estate and personnel decisions.

In his Works and Days (composed ca. 750 B.C., and addressed to his ne'er-do-well brother Perses, who had squandered his patrimony), Hesiod gives advice to the thrifty farmer on how to buy a home, cut wood in season to make plows and other tools, how to care for fallow land so that it will be ready for spring planting, and how to make wise choices for obtaining help around the farm: Get a woman (a slave-woman, NOT a wife!) who can help plow; hire a man of forty years, too old to be distracted; buy two oxen of nine years -- ditto -- still strong, but too mature to fight each other instead of plowing. Make good use of your time. Here are excerpts:

When the strength of the sharp sun abates
its sweaty heat, and mighty Zeus brings
autumn rains, and men's flesh becomes much
lighter -- then indeed the star Sirius
goes above the heads of men born to misery
by day only for a while, but takes more of its share of night --
at that time wood cut with iron is less worm-eaten,
the leaves fall to the ground, and it stops sprouting.
At that time, remember to cut wood, the right work for that season.
Carve out a mortar [for pounding corn] three feet wide, a pestle three cubits long,
and an axle eight feet long, for these are the most fitting [dimensions].
If it is eight feet long, you can also cut a mallet [for breaking up clods] from it.
Cut a wheel-rim of three spans for a wagon ten palms wide.
Hew a supply of bent timbers, and bring home a plow-tree when you find it,
hunting for one on the mountain or in the field,
of holm-oak. For that is the stoutest for oxen to plow with,
whenever Athena's slave, having fixed it in the stock of the plow,
has fastened it with bolts to the pole.
Have two plows ready, working on them at home,
one made all in one piece, the other fitted together; it is much better that way.
If you break one, you can hitch the other to the oxen.
Plow-poles of laurel or elm are most worm-free,
the stock should be of oak, the plow-tree of holm-oak. Get two oxen,
males of nine years, whose strength is not weakened,
having their measure of youth; they are best for working.
They will not fight in the furrow and break the plow
apart, leaving the work undone.
Let a vigorous man of forty follow them,
who gets for his dinner a loaf broken in quarters,
and will pay attention to his work and drive a straight furrow,
not gaping after his comrades, but will keep
his mind on his work. No younger man is better
at sowing the seed and avoiding double-sowing.
A younger man is distracted by the thought of his comrades.

Hesiod, Works and Days ll. 414-447.

Quotation for October 2007: Theophrastus on "The Superstitious Man," for Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos

Illustration: Tableau of skeletons on a boat ride in the Gardens of Xochimilco, Mexico City, for El Dia de los Muertos, purchased in Olvera Street, Los Angeles (photo by C.A. Sowa). See pictures of the real Gardens of Xochimilco, below.

Theophrastus' Characters: "You might be a superstitious man if . . ."

Theophrastus (ca. 370 B.C.-285 B.C.) was a respected philosopher and student of Aristotle who wrote works on such topics as botany, winds and weather, logic and metaphysics, rhetoric and politics. But he is best known today for his little book of Characters, descriptions, often very funny, of an array of character types inhabiting the Athens of his day. The work actually fits into a completely serious kind of philosophy, the division into formal categories of vices, virtues, and emotions, as exemplified by Aristotle's own Ethics. But they also belong to the comic genre, and can remind a modern audience of Jeff Foxworthy's jokes that begin "You might be a redneck if . . ."

The little vignettes of the Characters include such traits as Flattery, Idle Chatter, Boorishness, Obsequiousness, Penny-pinching, Bad Timing, Absent-mindedness, Bad Taste, Arrogance, Cowardice, and Authoritarianism. In honor of Halloween and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, we present Theophrastus' depiction of Superstition.

The superstitious man is the kind who, having washed his hands and sprinkled himself with water from a shrine, puts a sprig of laurel in his mouth and walks around like that all day. And if a weasel runs across his path, he will not proceed before someone else passes between them, or he throws three stones upon the road. If he sees a snake in his house, he invokes Sabazios, but if it is a holy snake, he immediately builds a hero shrine on that spot.

And when he passes by the stones at the crossroads, shining with oil, he pours olive oil from his flask, and falling on his knees and prostrating himself, departs. And if a mouse eats a hole in a sack of barley, he goes to the theologian to ask what he should do, and if the answer is that he should take the sack to the leatherworker to sew up the hole, he pays no attention, but goes off to perform a expiatory ceremony.

And he is wonderfully likely to purify his house frequently, claiming that Hekate has put a spell on it. And if owls hoot as he walks by, he becomes agitated and says "Athena is great!" before he goes on. And he will not walk upon a memorial or visit a corpse or a woman in childbed, but says it is best for him to not become polluted.

And on the fourth and seventh day of the month, he orders his staff to boil wine, then he goes out to buy myrtle, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes; going back inside he puts wreaths on the Hermaphrodite images all day long.

And whenever he has a dream, he goes around to the dream-interpreter, to the seers, to the diviners of birds,to ask, to which god or goddess he should pray. And every month, he goes to the hierophants of the Mysteries of Orpheus to be initiated, along with his wife, and if she has no spare time, he goes with the wet-nurse and the children. And he would seem to be among those who carefully purify themselves with seawater at the beach. And if he ever sees someone at the crossroads wreathed in garlic, he goes and takes a bath from head to toe, and calling priestesses orders that he be completely purified by the sacrifice of a sea-squill or a dog. And if he sees a madman or an epileptic he shudders and spits into his chest.

Illustrations: Postcards of the real Gardens of Xochimilco, with flower-bedecked boats.

Quotation for September 2007: Tacitus on good generals vs. bad emperors, suggested by the war in Iraq

Illustration: "Storming of a Besieged City," from Caesar's Commentaries, ed. Francis W. Kelsey, 1918.

Can good generals serve under bad emperors?

This September, we saw General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq, defend (mostly) President Bush's position on the Mideast war, as he walked the thin line between honest portrayal of the continuing mayhem and collapse of civil authority in Iraq and his duty (as he saw it) not to undercut his boss's insistence that the war is a "success" and that the U.S. is "marching to victory." Both liberals and conservatives have tended to see General Petraeus as a kind of savior, a competent and realistic military leader who would vindicate their position, either to end the war (liberals) or "win" it (conservatives). Liberals, in particular, have been vocal in their outrage that Petraeus did not flat-out repudiate the president's muddled policy. By seeming to be a tool of the conservatives' propaganda, Petraeus is in danger of joining the list of fallen idols, along with General Colin Powell before him.

The Roman historian and politician Tacitus (55?-after 115 A.D.) struggled with the same issues, as he expressed most poignantly in his biography of his father-in-law Agricola, whose "caving in" to the demands of the Emperor Domitian he defends as indicative of his courteous and practical nature. Tacitus is best known for his Annals and Histories, which chronicled events of the Roman Empire from Augustus to his own time. He was married to the daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, one of Rome's most able generals, under whom the Roman armies pacified most of Britain. (Whether this was a good or a bad thing depends, of course, on one's point of view. Boudicca's brave revolt against Rome had just been put down when Agricola arrived, and Tacitus even has one of the British leaders say "To robbery, killing, and plunder they [the Romans] give the false name of empire; where they make solitude, they call it peace" -- Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.)

The general Agricola and the emperor Domitian

Agricola had the misfortune to be governor of Britain under the Emperor Domitian, famous as one of the most cruel and capricious of Rome's rulers. While some of Domitian's excesses may or may not have been exaggerated (the gossipy Suetonius says that the young emperor spent hours shut up in his room stabbing flies), he was apparently quick to murder enemies, of whom he made many, especially among the senatorial class, whose power he curtailed. He had good reason to fear; he was eventually assassinated by conspirators who included his own wife. Agricola was among those whose popularity he feared, and the general was recalled from Britain. He was in line to be made proconsul of either Africa or Asia, but was persuaded (by not-so-veiled threats) to "request to be excused" so that he could "retire to a life of quiet and leisure." Agricola died in 93 A.D.

Tacitus survived into the more benign reigns of Nerva and Trajan, and gained the honors denied to his father-in-law, becoming proconsul of Asia toward the end of his life. His eulogy of Agricola was written in 98. A translation of a portion of Tacitus' Agricola follows. The phrase "empty boasts of liberty" refers to the nostalgic (and unrealistic, in Tacitus' opinion) desire of some for a return to the long-gone Roman Republic.

The year had now arrived, in which [Agricola] was eligible to obtain by lot the proconsulate of either Africa or Asia, and as Civica had lately been murdered [C. Vetulenus Civica Cerealis, proconsul of Asia, executed by Domitian for treason], Agricola did not lack a warning nor Domitian a precedent. Certain persons approached him, well-acquainted with the deliberations of the Emperor, to ask Agricola, as if on their own initiative, whether he intended to go to the province. At first, hiding their purpose, they praised a life of quiet and leisure, then they offered their help in case he sought approval of a request to be excused, then finally, no longer hiding their purpose, by persuading and at the same time terrifying him, they forced him to come before Domitian. The Emperor, prepared in his hypocrisy and assuming an air of arrogance, listened to his prayers that he might be excused, and when he had granted the request, allowed himself to be thanked, nor did he blush at the ill will contained in such a favor. But he did not give to Agricola the proconsular salary which he himself had granted to some governors, either offended at its not having been requested, or from conscience, lest he be seen to have bought the refusal that he had commanded.

It is human nature to hate the man whom you have injured. But Domitian's nature, hasty to anger and, because it was kept hidden, all the more implacable, was softened nevertheless by Agricola's moderation and prudence, because he did not provoke both fame and fate by stubbornness or by empty boasts of liberty. Let them know, whose habit it is to admire illegal conduct, that it is possible for great men to live under evil emperors, and that obedience and modesty, if joined with industry and vigor, can attain that point of renown, which most men, by following a dangerous career, of no use to the republic but ending in an ostentatious death, have achieved as their glory.

(Tacitus De vita Iulii Agricolae ch. 42)

Illustration: Roman soldiers, with their packs suspended from staffs on their backs, from Caesar's Gallic War, Books I-IV, ed. James B. Greenough, 1904.

Quotation for August 2007: Horace's "Journey to Brundisium" on the Appian Way, part of the ancient Roman "Interstate Highway System"

Illustration: Horace (on the right) with Maecenas (center) and Augustus (seated, on the left). From a wall painting found in the palace of Augustus on the Palatine.

Roman roads connected the Roman world

The tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis has made us aware of the importance of the infrastructure, especially the roads and bridges, that connect the far-flung parts of the United States. The Roman roads, well-engineered and paved, served the same purpose in the Roman Republic and later in the Roman Empire. Like the American Interstate highway system, the Roman roads were originally built for military purposes, designed primarily to move troops efficiently where they were needed. Like the Interstates, they also became conduits of commerce and of the dominant civilization. An unfortunate feature of the Interstate highway system is that a road in California looks just like a road in Pennsylvania or New York, with the same kind of rest stops operated by similar conglomerates. They are disconnected from their local context, but have had the further effect of bringing change and uniformity to the local culture itself.

The Roman roads were, in some ways, more like the old Route 66 (or the even older Lincoln Highway) than the limited-access Interstates, being more intimately tied to their local environment. Accommodations and amenities varied with the location and the temper of the inhabitants. Horace has left us with an account of a two-week journey that he made, perhaps in 37 B.C., from Rome to Brundisium, to attend a meeting between Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) and Antony, which was also attended by Maecenas, the influential Roman who was the patron of both Horace and Vergil. The story is told in Satires Book 1.5.

Horace's bad trip on the Appian Way

The first part of the journey, which we quote below, was begun along the Appian Way, then continued by canal through the Pontine Marshes. On this Vacation from Hell, voyagers on the mule-drawn boat are kept awake by swamp bugs and the shouting of drunken boatmen, in scenes reminiscent of the old Erie Canal. In later parts of the tale, the travelers suffer various vicissitudes, including a cook nearly burning down the dining room at an inn. Horace makes an ill-fated attempt to have sex with a girl, who fails to show up for their date. Horace falls asleep and awakes with an embarrassing wet dream. (This passage is expurgated from older textbooks!) All eventually arrive, thankfully, at Brundisium. Here, translated from the Latin, are verses 1-24:

Leaving great Rome, Aricia received me
at a modest inn. My companion was Heliodorus
by far the most learned of Greeks. Thence to Forum Appii
crammed with boatmen and malicious hucksters.
This journey we lazily divided in two, for those more highly girded
a one-day trip; the Appian Way is less painful if taken slowly.
There, because of the water, which was terrible, I
declared war on my belly, waiting with little equanimity
for my companions, who were supping. Now night prepared
to draw its shadows across the land and pour forth the constellations about the heavens.
Then slave boys start to argue with boatmen and boatmen with
slave boys: "Land your boat here!" "You've loaded three hundred!" "Hey
that's enough!" While the fare is collected, while the mule is harnessed,
a whole hour goes by. Evil gnats and swamp frogs
keep sleep away, while the drunk worthless boatman
and the mule-driver vie in singing of their
absent girlfriends. At last the driver wearies and begins
to fall asleep, and the indolent boatman ties the
traces of the mule to a rock, letting it graze, and lies there snoring.
It was daylight, when we felt the boat not
moving, until a hotheaded fellow leaped up
and beat the head and loins of both mule and boatman
with a willow cudgel. We barely landed finally at the fourth hour (10 o'clock).

Illustration: a portion of the Appian Way, from Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, 1898.

Quotation for July 2007: Theocritus provides an ancient example of magic, in honor of the Harry Potter movie and book.

(Illustration: An early twentieth century conception of a sorceress burning offerings in a tripod, as a shadowy moon floats above. From The Idylls and Epigrams of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, issued by The Bibliophile Society, 1905.)

Magic, ritual, and religion

This July, the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opened, with the final volume of J.K. Rowling's epic of the young wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, appearing later in the month. Magic was very much a part of the ancient world, and we offer an example of ancient magic by Theocritus, from his Idyll II, known as Pharmakeutria, or The Sorceress.

Magic is generally distinguished from religion, although the rituals practiced by many religions have a magical element to them. Magic comprises the use of spells, drugs, herbs, human and animal body parts, incantations, etc., all of which are supposed to influence events. The influence may be over nature (such as the weather) or human behavior (such as falling in love). Magic has been compared to science, in that the same action is always supposed to produce exactly the same result. Magic may be sympathetic, where one action produces another that is similar, as when herbs are thrown in the fire to make someone "burn" with love, or it may be contagious, where something belonging to the victim of a spell, like a strand of hair or clothing, is used.

In Homer, the great sorceress is Circe, who with her drugs and magic wand, transforms Odysseus' companions into pigs (she later is persuaded to un-pigify them). The god Hermes, also a practitioner of magic, saves Odysseus from the same fate by giving him the herb called "moly." Circe, falling in love with Odysseus, entertains him for a year, at the end of which she gives him the spells to call up the spirits of the dead and visit the Underworld. In myth and tragedy, the most famous sorceress is Medea, who puts her spells at the service of Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece, leading to her ill-starred love affair with the hero of the Argonauts. Thessalian witches were especially known for their ability to draw down the moon from the heavens.

Theocritus, born in Syracuse perhaps around 310 B.C., is known for his Idylls. The word eidullion means "little image" or vignette. These poems, in the Dorian dialect, are mostly on pastoral subjects, and were the model for Vergil's Eclogues. But Idyll II is on an urban subject. A young woman named Simaitha has fallen for a young man, Delphis, whom she has seen walking from the gymnasium, "glistening like the moon." She, sick with love, invites him to her house, where he says he has already loved her from afar. (Liar!) They "Do the Big Thing" (eprachthê ta megista) and she becomes a "non-virgin" (aparthenon). Now he never comes around, and she hears that he has a new love -- perhaps male, perhaps female. She uses magic to try to woo him back (or if that doesn't work, to kill him!).

Simaitha uses both sympathetic and contagious magic. With the help of her maid, Thestylis, she burns bay leaves in the fire to make Delphis burn with love, but she also adds a piece of fringe from his cloak. She pours libations and utters spells. She turns a magic wheel (called an iugx, after the bird (the wryneck) that witches traditionally bound to the wheel) to draw Delphis to her, providing the refrain of the poem: "Iugx, draw thou that man to my house" (iugx, helke tu tênon emon poti dôma ton andra). In the middle section of the poem, where Simaitha recounts her sad story, she uses another refrain, addressed to Selene, the Moon, "Tell me whence my love came, Lady Selene" (phrazeo meu ton erôth' hothen hiketo, potna Selana). Here are selections from the opening and closing verses of the poem:

Verses 1-42 (Beginning: she will spellbind him)

Where are my bay leaves? Come, Thestylis, where are my love charms?
Crown the bowl with the finest crimson sheeps' wool
so that I may compel with my sacrifices the cruel dear man
who, the wretch, has not come here for twelve days,
nor does he know whether I am dead or alive,
nor, strange man, has he knocked on my door.
Indeed Love and Aphrodite have left, taking his swift thoughts with them.
I shall go to Timagetus' wrestling school
tomorrow, so that I can see him and blame him for how he treats me.
But for now I will bind him with offerings. So, Selene,
shine beautifully. To you I shall sing, gentle spirit,
and for chthonian Hekate, before whom dogs tremble
as she walks among the tombs of the dead and the black blood.
Hail, frightful Hekate, accompany me
as I make a medicine no less potent than that of Circe
or of Medea or golden-haired Perimede.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Barley is consumed first in the fire. Come, sprinkle it,
Thestylis. Foolish girl, where have your wits flown?
Have I become for you abominable and an object of scorn?
Sprinkle it, saying "I sprinkle the bones of Delphis."

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Delphis has caused me grief; so I against Delphis burn
the bay leaves. And as the bay crackles, bursting suddenly
into flame and burning up, so that we see not even the ash,
so let it waste away Delphis' flesh in its fires.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

As I melt this puppet with the help of the deity,
may Myndian Delphis melt with love.
and as the bronze wheel spins by the power of Aphrodite,
may he spin around towards my door.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Now I sacrifice the bran. But you, Artemis, can move
the adamant in Hades and all else that is immovable.
Thestylis! For us the dogs are howling about the city!
The Goddess is at the crossroads. Quickly sound the bronze cymbals!

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Lo, the sea is still, and the winds are still
but the grief in my heart is not still.
For him I am all on fire, who made poor me
instead of a wife, into a bad girl and a non-virgin.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

. . .

Verses 159-166 (Conclusion: but if that doesn't work, she'll kill him! Or not.)

. . .

Now with these love-charms I will spellbind him. But if he
causes me pain, then by the Fates he will knock on the gates of Hades.
For I tell you I keep such evil drugs in a basket,
Mistress Moon, having learned their use from an Assyrian stranger.
But fare thee well, and turn your team toward the Ocean,
Lady. I shall bear my longing as I have promised.
Farewell, Selene of the shining face, and farewell all the other
stars that follow the chariot of the carefree Night.

(Illustration: from The Idylls and Epigrams of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, issued by The Bibliophile Society, 1905.)

Quotation for June 2007: A team of mules wins the Olympic contest, providing a mythic journey in Pindar's victory ode

(Illustration: a procession, with horse chariot, from a vase painting. Lithograph by de Bineteau, ca. 1840.)

A filly wins the Belmont

The filly, Rags to Riches, won the Belmont Stakes on June 9, 2007, the first female horse to win this race since 1905. We celebrate this event with a passage from Pindar's Sixth Olympian Ode, composed for the winning team, apparently female, in a mule race.

The Greeks raced both horses and mules. Pindar's Sixth Olympian celebrates the victory of a mule chariot owned by Hagesias of Syracuse, probably in 472 B.C. The poet asks the victorious mules to take him on a mythical time-journey to the ancestors of the winner. The mules would appear to be female. While the word for mule, hêmionos (literally "half-ass"!) can be either male or female, grammatically feminine words are used to describe them (keinai gar ex allân "they above all others").

Employing his usual verbal alchemy, Pindar takes us from the sweaty physical environment of the athletic contest into a magical world of gods and goddesses, of enchanted meadows and helpful snakes. The mules themselves, strong and dependable, become mythic animals, leading us on the path of song. We meet the nymph Pitane, beloved of Poseidon, who gives birth to Evadne, then we learn of Evadne herself, loved by Apollo, who amid colors of silver, dark blue, yellow, and violet, bears Iamos ("Violet"), who becomes progenitor of the Iamidai, a clan of seers, from whom Hagesias is ultimately descended. And so, as usual in Pindar, a long and enchanting road brings us back, once again to Hagesias, Olympia, and the victory celebration.

. . . O Phintis, now yoke for me the strength of the mules
Quickly, that we may set our chariot upon the clear and open road,
And I may arrive at the origins of our heroes.
For they, above all others, know how to lead us upon that path,
having won the crown at Olympia.
Now we must throw wide for them the gates of song.
For we must betake ourselves on time to Pitane beside the ford of Eurotas, this very day --

Pitane, who mingling in love with Poseidon, son of Kronos, is said
to have given birth to the child Evadne, of the violet tresses,
hiding her maidenly birth-pangs in her bosom's folds.
In the ordained month, she sent her attendants to give the babe
into the care of the hero son of Eilatus,
who ruled over the Arcadians at Phaisane,
and was allotted his home on the Alpheus.
Raised there, the girl [Evadne] first enjoyed with Apollo sweet Aphrodite's gifts . . .

. . . Laying down her purple-woven girdle
and her silver pitcher, in a dark blue thicket
she [Evadne] bore a boy whose mind was god-inspired.
Golden-haired Apollo sent to her Eileithuia [goddess of childbirth] of gentle counsel, and the Fates.

There came from her womb, through sweet pangs, Iamos,
immediately into the light. In pain,
she left him on the ground. Two grey-eyed serpents,
by the decision of the gods, nourished him with blameless
venom -- the honey of bees. . .

. . . He was hidden among the rushes in the impenetrable thicket,
his delicate body bathed in the light of yellow and deep-purple
violets [ion]; whence his mother declared that he would be known for all time
by that immortal name [Iamos]. . .

Pindar, Olympian Ode VI vv. 38-57

Quotation for May 2007: Hermes, son of Maia, steals Apollo's cattle and plays other tricks (from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes)

Hermes steals Apollo's cattle, on a Caeretan hydria in the Louvre. Photo by R. Schoder, S.J., as reproduced in C.A. Sowa, Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1984.

A trickster god sends a storm

The quotation for May is unusually late, due to the fact that some trickster god visited a severe storm on our part of Westchester County, downing trees, power lines, and phone lines, as well as gutters, siding, and roof shingles. Evangelical preachers like Jerry Falwell think that disasters like the 9/11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina are signs of God's wrath at a decadent society, doubtless relying on Old Testament parallels, but Homer and Odysseus could tell you that violent storms, lightning strikes, earthquakes, and famines are caused by the anger and feuding of such gods and goddesses as Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Demeter. This month's quotation is about a trickster god, Hermes, who was also a god of invention and messenger of the gods. It tells of his birth as son of the goddess Maia, "May."

Ovid's three explanations for the name of the month of May

Ovid, in his Fasti (Bk. V vv.1-110), provides three explanations of the name of the month of May. He asks the Muses for their opinion, and three of them give differing explanations (a sort of quirky Judgment of Paris, but here the contest is not to judge who is most beautiful, but who has the best information). Polyhymnia's tale connects the name to that of Maiestas, the goddess of Majesty. Urania disagrees, saying that the name derives from the reverence paid to the maiores, or elders. Calliope traces the name to that of Maia, one of the Pleiades, daughters of Pleione and Atlas, who became the mother of "him who hastens his journey through the air on winged foot" (i.e. Mercury, the Greek Hermes). Actually, they are all right, in a sense. The Roman goddess Maia, also called Maiesta, was a nature divinity associated with the god Volcanus; the name comes from the same root, meaning "growth" or "increase," as magnus, maior, maiestas, etc. Her name became confused with that of the Greek Maia (whose name may simply mean "mother" or "nurse"), the mother of Hermes, about whom the well-known myths are told, as in the Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes.

Hermes' exciting first day of life

The Hymn to Hermes begins with the god's birth as son of Maia and Zeus, and proceeds to the god's earliest exploits, on the day that he was born. A true Wunderkind, "Born at dawn, he played the lyre at noon, / and at evening stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo." Both trickster and inventor, like Prometheus or the American Indian Coyote, he "makes the tortoise a singer" by turning her shell into a lyre. He steals his half-brother Apollo's cattle by driving them backwards and disguising his own footprints with wicker sandals, to conceal their true direction. Apollo finds out, of course, but the brothers are reconciled at the end, when Hermes hands over the lyre to Apollo to be his instrument. Ever resourceful, Hermes invents a new instrument for himself, the Pan-pipes. Here are the opening lines of the Hymn.

Sing, Muse, of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia,
guardian of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,
the luck-bringing messenger of the immortals, whom Maia bore,
the beautiful-haired nymph, mingling in love with Zeus,
-- a shy maiden, she avoided the crowd of immortal gods,
living in a shady cave, where the son of Cronus
would lie with the beautiful-haired nymph in deepest night,
while sweet sleep held Hera of the white forearms,
and he hid from immortal gods and mortal men.
But when the intention of great Zeus was fulfilled,
and her tenth month was fixed in the heavens,
a babe was delivered into the light and noteworthy things happened.
She bore a son of many wiles, of cunning flattery,
a robber, a driver of cattle, a bringer of dreams,
a spy at night, a watcher at the door, who would soon
exhibit famous deeds among the immortal gods.
Born at dawn, he played the lyre at noon,
and at evening stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo
on the fourth day of the month, on which lady Maia bore him.

Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes vv. 1-19.

Quotation for April 2007: Daphne turns into a laurel tree in Ovid's Metamorphoses, for Arbor Day

There is a solemnity, a repose about the great trees, and the restless, ceaseless stirring of the small ones is full of mystery. So self-evident are they, so close at hand that we almost find ourselves in danger of becoming oblivious to their presence. They never intrude upon the attention; they rather pursue indomitably their own way. As landmarks of history many trees have been revered; traditions and superstitions have clustered about them while in mute eloquence they have answered the people's expectations. In England, to-day, there are oaks standing that knew the ground before its conquest by the Romans. Nothing is grander than are trees. Nothing gives of its best more freely to man. And to each one there is an individuality which having once been observed may be traced into the folk-lore of nations.

(from Alice Lounsberry, A Guide to the Trees, 1900)

Illustration: The Vale of Tempe, in Thessaly, northern Greece, frequented by Apollo and the Muses, home of Daphne, the nymph who became a laurel tree, as depicted in an old postcard.

Arbor Day, which has been celebrated since 1872, is devoted to the planting and nurturing of trees. National Arbor Day occurs on the last Friday in April, which this year falls on April 27. Not only does it promote the growing of trees for their usefulness -- to provide shade and windbreaks, to hold the soil, for fuel and building materials, as aesthetic design elements -- but like Earth Day (April 22, founded in 1970), it promotes awareness of the need to preserve the environment, and like Easter and Passover, it has the symbolic meaning of the resurgence of life over forces that would diminish it.

Daphne, fleeing Apollo, is turned into a laurel tree

Our quotation again comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which last month's story of how old King Kadmos and his wife, Harmonia, were transformed into benevolent snakes, also came. It tells the story of Daphne, the nymph beloved by Apollo, who was turned, in answer to her prayer, into a laurel tree.

Apollo and Cupid fell into an argument when Apollo saw the boy Cupid wielding a bow and arrow, which are more properly "a man's weapons." Cupid, in anger, shoots Apollo with an arrow that makes him fall in love, but shoots an arrow that makes the recipient reject love into Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, deity of the river that flows through the Vale of Tempe, a wild gorge in Thessaly. His speed outdoes her ability to flee, and she prays to her river god father to change her shape, whereupon she becomes a laurel tree. He still loves her, and promises to wear her leaves as his crown.

Since Ovid is Roman, although telling a Greek story, he has Apollo foretell that her leaves will also be worn by Roman generals, and that the laurel tree will guard the house of Augustus! As a matter of fact, two laurel trees actually stood on either side of the doors of Augustus' palace. In the quotation below, Apollo is also called by two of his other names, "Phoebus" and "Paean."

. . .
Just as the Gallic greyhound sees a hare in an empty field,
and with his paws pursues his prey, while it seeks safety,
(the one, seeming to close in, hopes that now! now!
he has made the catch, and grazes the foot-soles with extended snout,
while the other is uncertain whether it is already caught,
and snatches itself from the very bite, escaping the muzzle that touches it)
-- just so are the god and the maiden: he made swift by hope, she by fear.
But he who follows, aided by the wings of love,
is swifter, and denies her rest, hanging over the back of the fleeing maid
and breathing on the hair spread about her neck.
With her strength used up, she grew pale,
and, overcome by the labor of her rapid flight, looking upon Peneus' waves,
"Father," she said, "Help me. If rivers have divine powers,
change me, make me lose this beauty that made me too desirable!"

Scarcely is her prayer finished, than a heavy torpor occupies her limbs,
and her breast is encircled by thin bark.
Her hair grows into foliage, her arms into branches;
her foot, lately so swift, is stuck in sluggish roots.
The tree-canopy covers her face; only her radiant beauty remains.

Even like this, Phoebus loves her; with his right hand on her trunk
he feels her heart still beat beneath the new bark,
and, embracing with his arms her branches as if they were her limbs,
he kisses the wood. But the wood shrinks from his kisses.
To her the god says, "Since you cannot be my wife,
you will be my tree. My hair will always be garlanded with you,
so will my lyre, and my quiver, o laurel.
You will accompany the Roman generals, when the joyful voices
proclaim the triumph and the Capitol beholds the long processions.
At the doorposts of Augustus you will stand before the gates
as a faithful guardian, and you will watch over the oak-wreath that adorns them.
And just as my head is always young with its uncut hair,
may you also bear the honor of perpetual leaves."

Paean had finished; the laurel nodded with her newly made branches,
and her tree-canopy, like a head, seemed to move in assent.
. . .

Ovid, Metamorphoses I.533-567.

Leaves of the white oak, from A Guide to the Trees by Alice Lounsberry, illustration by Mrs. Ellis Rowan, 1900.

Quotation for March 2007: some friendly snakes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, for St. Patrick's Day and the beginning of Spring

The constellation Ophiouchus ("The Serpent Bearer"), sometimes identified with the god Asclepius. Illustration: detail from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, 1856.

Snakes in the woods and in myth

It is spring, and all sorts of living things are stirring in the trees and grass: birds, insects, mammals large and small, and in most places -- except Ireland -- snakes.

St. Patrick is supposed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. However, according to the National Zoo Web site, Ireland (along with New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Anarctica) never had snakes to begin with. These places were either under water or surrounded by water at the time snakes were developing in other parts of the world, and the myth of St. Patrick has more to do with symbolism associating snakes with paganism, which Patrick also set out to subdue.

In non-Christian civilizations, including the Classical lands of Greece, Rome and also Egypt, snakes were venerated, especially as chthonian (underground) spirits, sometimes portrayed as malevolent dragons, but often as bringers of health and renewal. Snakes "renew" themselves by shedding their skin, and rising from underground, represent restoration from death. Athena wore the protective vest called the aegis, made from goatskin (Greek aix, aigos "goat") trimmed with an edging of snakes. Snakes are associated with Asclepius, the god of healing, who was sometimes represented by a sacred snake. The herald's staff entwined with snakes (Latin caduceus, Greek kerykion) was an attribute of Hermes (Mercury), the snakes having developed out of an earlier representation of shoots of foliage. Asclepius also bears a snake-wrapped staff, and the caduceus has become the recognized symbol of medicine.

Kadmos, founder of Thebes, and his wife Harmonia (daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, that is, "War" and "Love") in old age were turned into snakes. Kadmos, son of Agenor, king of Tyre, was sent, when young, to search for his sister Europa, abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull. Arriving in Greece, he was told by the Delphic Oracle to follow a cow and found a city where it lay down. In Boeotia (the name suggests bous, "cow"), he founded a settlement. He killed the dragon guarding a spring and sowed its teeth, from which sprang up warriors, most of whom killed each other off. The remaining five became the founding nobility of the city of Thebes. Kadmos married Harmonia and gave birth to an ill-starred family. Their daughter Semele became mother of the god Dionysos by Zeus's lethal thunderbolt, a story told in the February Quotation of the Month, which remains below. Their daughter Agave, driven mad by Dionysos as a result of his mistreatment by her son, King Pentheus, killed her son, thinking that he was a lion (also told below). Their daughter Ino, also driven mad (in another long story involving the Golden Fleece), leaped off a cliff into the sea, together with her son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes were both turned into sea-gods (Leucothea and Palaemon). Kadmos, long since retired as king, and Harmonia, leave Thebes, and feeling guilt at having started it all by killing the dragon, are themselves turned into snakes. Ovid's telling of this story is the Quotation of the Month.

Cadmus and Harmonia in old age become benevolent snakes

Our quotation comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (tales of people who turned into other things -- animals, flowers, trees, etc.). His telling of the story of Cadmus (Greek Kadmos) and Harmonia, turning, at the end of their long and honored lives, into snakes, shows Ovid's characteristic combination of the silly and the poignant:

The son of Agenor did not know that his daughter and little grandson
were sea gods. Overcome by grief, by a long series of misfortunes,
and by the many signs and prodigies that he saw,
the founder left his city, as if the fortune of the place,
and not his own, oppressed him, and after long wanderings
he reached the borders of Illyria, his wife fleeing with him.
Weighed down with age and misfortunes, they consider
and go over the original fate of their house:
"Could it be that the serpent pierced by my spear was sacred"
said Cadmus, "when, having set out from Sidon,
I sowed the viper's teeth upon the earth, a new seed?
If this is what the gods care to avenge with such sure anger,
may I, I pray, as a snake, be stretched out upon my long belly."

He finished speaking, and as a snake, was extended upon his long belly.
He felt scales grow on his hardened skin
and his black body become variegated with blue spots.
He fell forward on his breast, and his legs, fused together,
little by little were attentuated into a smooth point.
His arms still remained; his remaining arms he stretched out,
and, tears flowing from his still human face,
"Come here, my wife, come, miserable one!" he said,
"While something is left of me, touch me,
take my hand, while it is a hand, while a snake does not take up all of me!"
He wanted to say more, but his tongue suddenly
was split in two, nor, as he spoke, did words
avail him, and every time he contrived to utter a complaint,
he hissed; this is the voice that Nature left him.

Striking her naked breast with her hand, his wife cried out,
"Cadmus, stay, unhappy one, and tear yourself from this monstrosity!
Cadmus, what is this? Where is your foot? Where are your shoulders and hands
and your color and appearance, and, as I speak, everything?
Why do you gods not change me into a snake as well?"
She finished speaking. He licked his wife's face
and slid between her dear breasts, as if she would recognize him there,
and embraced her, seeking the well-known neck.
Those who were present (their companions were there) were terrified,
but she stroked the slippery neck of the crested serpent,
and suddenly there were two snakes, and with intertwining folds they slid,
until they sought the refuge of the nearby woods.
Now, too, they neither flee from human beings nor wound them,
peaceful serpents, remembering what they once were.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.563-603)

And so they slither off into the grass, just a pair of old snakes, guardians of the garden . . .

Cadmus slaying the dragon, in a vase painting. (From Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890).

Quotation for February 2007, from Euripides' Bacchae, for Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras and Dionysos

New Orleans' spirit is embodied in its Mardi Gras. While New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are STILL not repaired or rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina (shame, shame, shame of a nation!), those who regard the city as a national treasure can continue to send support and cheer as the Saints ALMOST make it to the SuperBowl and Mardi Gras continues to express the city's unquenchable spirit of music and joy.

The rites of Dionysos (or Bacchus) are an ancient analog of Mardi Gras. The illustration above shows a Bacchic parade, with a satyr playing the double flute and participants flourishing the thyrsus, a staff wound with ivy and vines and topped with a pine cone.

The quotation this month is from Euripides' Bacchae. The chorus of Bacchantes, or women acolytes of Dionysos, sing of the joys of their rites of dance and song. They are depicted as having followed him from Mount Tmolus in Lydia to Thebes in Greece, where the play takes place.

Religion of ecstasy and emotion

Dionysos was a god of ecstatic and emotional religion, different from the more stately cults of other Greek gods. The word "ecstasy" (ekstasis) means "a standing apart," or being "beside oneself." It refers to a trance state, which may be reached by wild dancing or by madness, in which one may actually become unconscious or see visions. The cult appealed to both sexes, but particularly to women. Its female votaries, or Bacchantes, were also called "Maenads" (Mainades or "madwomen"). The origins of Dionysos are unknown, but the cult may have come originally from Thrace, via Macedonia, to the north of Greece. His other name, Baccchus, on the other hand, is Lydian. In Euripides, we find him associated with the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian Great Mother goddess. The god was believed to be able to change his appearance, sometimes to that of a wild animal. Masks were sometimes worn by the dancers, though these were apparently human masks. Dionysos was also the god of wine, but that is only part of the story. Great festivals of Dionysos, eventually "domesticated" and civilized, became part of the fabric of classical Greece, and were the origin of the great Athenian comedy and tragedy, the most important celebration being the Great Dionysia, in early spring. Euripides' Bacchae would have been produced at one of these festivals.

The Bacchae and a more primitive religion

The Bacchae (written after a visit by Euripides to King Archelaos of Macedonia), reveals the savage dark side of the Dionysiac religion. Dionysos is the son of Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes, by Zeus, who came to Semele in the form of a thunderbolt, which both impregnated and killed her. King Pentheus, son of Agave, another daughter of Cadmus, now rules Thebes (Cadmus is now retired). Pentheus, along with Cadmus' other daughters, Ino and Autonoe, have been disrespecting Dionysos, casting doubt on his divinity and attempting to jail his followers, who are dancing in the mountains. Dionysos takes revenge by driving the Theban women mad, and persuading Pentheus to go to the mountains to spy on them. His mother, Agave, tears him apart, thinking that he is a lion. The episode in which Agave realizes that she has killed her own son is one of the great tragic scenes.

Song of the Bacchantes

Coming from the Asian land,
leaving sacred Tmolus, I hasten to perform
the sweet labor of the Roaring One,
the toil that is not toilsome,
shouting in honor of Bacchus.
Who is in the way? Who is in the way? Who?
Indoors, too, let all stand aside,
and let each, pure of mouth, speak propitiously.
For it is in the customary way that
I shall always celebrate Dionysos.

O blessed, who favored by fortune,
knowing the mystery rites of the gods,
keeps his life pure and
merges his soul into the Bacchic revel,
and reverencing the rites
of the Great Mother Cybele,
while shaking the thyrsus
and crowned with ivy,
serves Dionysos.

. . .

O go forth, Bacchantes,
go forth, Bacchantes,
with the glitter of gold-bearing Tmolus
sing of Dionysos
accompanied by loud-roaring drums,
with "hurrah's" glorifying the "God of Hurrahs"
in Phrygian cries and shouts,
when the holy melodious flute
sounds its holy playful noise, suited
to those roaming madly to the mountain, to the mountain!
Happily, then, like a foal
with its mother in the pasture,
the Bacchante, with her leaping, moves her swift-footed limbs.

(-Euripides, Bacchae vv. 64-167)

Quotations for January 2007, from Ovid: Janus opens the year

Janus is a very old and weird Italian god. Divinity of beginnings and entrances, he is depicted with two faces, facing forwards and backwards. The name is related to ianua "door," and probably to ire "to go." He had a temple in the Forum, which served as a ceremonial gate, with two opposite entrances, which were open in time of war, shut in time of peace. The month of January is his month.

Ovid, in his Fasti or Year's Calendar, of course begins with January. The poet is musing on Janus and his strange form, when Janus himself appears, terrifying Ovid:

But what god am I to say you are, biform Janus?
For Greece has no god like you.
Tell me the reason, why alone among the celestial gods,
you see both what is behind your back and what is in front?
While I was turning this around in my mind, tablets in hand,
the house seemed to become brighter than it was before.
Then sacred Janus, astonishing in his two-headed form,
suddenly presented his double face to my eyes.
I was terrified, and I felt my hair stiffen with fear.

(-Ovid, Fasti I.89-97)

But Janus tells Ovid not to be afraid, and in fact turns out to be quite the comic as he takes Ovid around and explains various rites and customs to him.

Among other anecdotes, Janus tells how Saturn, hiding from Jupiter, was received into Italy in Janus' reign, a story that we presented for December as Vergil retells it in the Aeneid (we have left December's selection below). Janus (or rather, Ovid!) tells pretty much the same story of Saturn's utopian age as Vergil, but with a cheerful cynicism that sets it apart from Vergil's earnest official version. ("Why, even in Saturn's reign I scarcely saw a man who did not love sweet lucre!")

Times change, Janus says, but on the subject of the new, fancy gold coinage, he makes the wisecrack that his own biform visage on an old simple copper coin is almost unrecognizable with age. The old coin also depicts the arrival of Saturn.

. . . He concluded his admonitions. With calm speech, as before,
I addressed the god who bears the key:
"I have learned many things, indeed, but why is the figure of a ship
stamped on one side of the copper coin, and a two-headed figure on the other?"
"You could have recognized me in the double image," he said,
"if age had not blurred the workmanship.
That leaves the reason for the boat. By boat the sickle-bearing god [Saturn]
arrived at the Tuscan river, after roaming the globe.
I remember how Saturn was received in this land;
he had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms.
From that time, the name "Saturnian" remained long as the people's name.
The land was also called "Latium" from the god's lying hidden [latente].
But an honorable posterity pictured a ship on the copper coin,
commemorating the arrival of the god as their guest.
I myself inhabited the ground whose left side is brushed
by the placid wave of sandy Tiber.
Here, where now Rome is, uncut woods stood green,
and all this land was pasture for a few cattle.
My citadel was this hill, which in common parlance
the present age calls by my name, the Janiculum.
I reigned at the time when earth could suffer gods,
and divinities intermingled in human abodes.
The crimes of mortals had not yet put Justice to flight
(she was the last of the celestials to leave the earth) . . ."

(-Ovid, Fasti I.227-246)

Quotations for December 2006, from Catullus and Vergil, for the Saturnalia

The remains of Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, view from the Capitoline Hill. The Temple of Castor and Pollux (three remaining columns) is on the right. (From an old postcard.)

Saturn, the ancient and mysterious god

The Saturnalia, one of the precursors of Christmas, was celebrated at Rome on December 17, in honor of the god Saturn. It was known for great jollity. Slaves were treated as equals of their masters, and gifts were exchanged, especially little pottery figurines called sigillaria.

Saturn was a very ancient god, whose origins are clouded in enigma. One theory connects his name with the Latin satus "sowing," on the assumption that his festival celebrates the end of the fall planting. There was a Roman belief that Saturn was a Greek import (identified with Kronos). He was believed to have come to Latium in the reign of the god Janus, fleeing from the wrath of Jupiter, and that he brought agriculture and civilization to the Latins, who afterwards worshipped him as a god. Another theory holds that Saturn was of Etruscan origin. The temple of Saturn, located at the western end of the Forum, just below the Capitol, was one of the most ancient temples in the Forum, although the temple whose columns we see today is late, perhaps built after the fire of 284 A.D. (see the illustrations at the top and bottom of this entry).

The Golden Age

In Vergil's Aeneid, King Evander, himself an exile from Arcadia, shows Aeneas, just arrived in Italy from Troy, the future site of Rome. (Evander's own settlement is called Pallanteum, which Vergil manages to connect with the name of the Palatine Hill.) Evander describes the arrival of Saturn, whose reign was the mythic Golden Age:

Then King Evander, founder of the Roman citadel, spoke:
"The indigenous Fauns and Nymphs inhabited these woods,
and a race of men born from the trunks of the hardy oak.
They had no customs, no civilization; they did not know
how to yoke oxen or acquire wealth or save what they produced,
but the fruit of trees and the difficult livelihood of hunting nourished them.
It was Saturn who first came from heavenly Olympus,
fleeing the weapons of Jupiter, an exile who had lost his kingdom.
He united this race, untutored and dispersed among the high mountains,
gave them laws, and chose that the place be called Latium,
because it was on these shores that he had safely lain hidden [latuisset].
"Golden" is the name given to the age in which he ruled.
Thus he reigned in placid peace,
until, little by little, an inferior age of another color,
and the madness of war and greed for possessions succeeded it. . ."

(Vergil, Aeneid 8.312-327)

The Roman Forum, another view, looking toward the Capitoline Hill, with the columns of the Temple of Saturn in the middle, toward the back. The columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux are on the left. (From an old postcard, before 1907).

Quotation for November 2006, from Horace, for Veterans' Day

Roman soldiers, illustrations from Caesars' Commentaries, ed. Francis W. Kelsey, 1918.

This month's quotation is an ode on courage and patriotism by the Roman poet Horace (65-8 B.C.). It is appropriate for Veterans' Day (November 11), when we honor the soldiers of our country, past and present. The most famous words of the ode, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country") are inscribed over the west entrance to the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery.

Angustam amice pauperiem pati robustus acri militia puer condiscat et Parthos ferocis vexet eques metuendus hasta vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat in rebus. illum ex moenibus hosticis matrona bellantis tyranni prospiciens et adulta virgo suspiret: "eheu, ne rudis agminum sponsus lacessat regius asperum tactu leonem, quem cruenta per medias rapit ira caedes." dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, mors et fugacem persequitur virum, nec parcit imbellis iuventae poplitibus timodove tergo. Virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae, intaminatis fulget honoribus, nec sumit aut ponit secures arbitrio popularis aurae. Virtus, recludens immeritis mori caelum, negata temptat iter via, coetusque vulgares et udam spernit humum fugiente pinna. est et fideli tuta silentio merces: vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum volgarit arcanae, sub isdem sit trabibus fragilemque mecum solvat phaselon; saepe Diespiter neglectus incesto addidit integrum, raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede Poena claudo.

Let the youth, hardened by stern military service, learn willingly to endure the straits of deprivation and let him, as a horseman feared for his lance, harass the fierce Parthians, and may he live his life beneath the open sky in perilous situations. Looking out at him from the enemy battlements, the lady consort of the warring tyrant and the grown maiden might sigh, "Alas, let not our royal bridegroom, inexperienced in the movements of the army provoke the lion, fierce to the touch, whom rage for blood propels through the midst of the slaughter." It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country, but death also pursues the man who flees, nor does it spare the knees and timid backs of unwarlike youths. Virtue, unknowing of sordid defeat, gleams with unsullied [public] honors and neither assumes nor sets aside the [official's] axes according to the breezes of popular opinion. Virtue, opening the heavens for those who do not deserve to die, makes its way by a path denied to others, spurning the vulgar crowd and the damp earth on fleeting wing. There is a sure reward for faithful silence, too. I shall forbid the man who has divulged the rites of arcane Ceres to abide beneath the same roof or unmoor a fragile boat with me. Often Jupiter, when offended, has involved the innocent with the guilty, but rarely does Punishment desert the scoundrel, though he has a head start, and she proceeds with halting gait. (- Horace, Odes, III.2)

The grave of my ancestor Silas Angier (1737-1808), Revolutionary War veteran, in the cemetery in Fitzwilliam, NH. The gravestone is modern, probably replacing an original stone, now vanished. Some of his other descendants are in the background. (Photo by C.A. Sowa.)

Quotation for October, 2006: the rainy stars of the Hyades in autumn, from Hesiod's Works and Days

The constellations of Orion and Taurus, showing the Hyades and Pleiades in the head and shoulders of the bull, detail from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, 1856.

This month's quotation is from Hesiod's advice to farmers in the Works and Days, suggested by a stretch of soggy, rainy weather that has beset the Northeast following a blazingly clear Columbus Day weekend.

The Pleiades and Hyades are star clusters in the constellation Taurus. Their setting in late October or early November were seen as signs of rain. In mythology, the seven Pleiades and five Hyades (actually, there are many more, but most are not visible without a telescope) were nymphs, daughters of Atlas. The Hyades were portrayed as the nurses of Dionysos, or in another myth, as the brothers of Hyas, who was killed while hunting, and who cried themselves to death. The name "Hyades" probably comes from the Greek verb huo "to rain" (though the Romans thought it came from the (also Greek) hus "pig," translating the name as suculae "the Piglets.") The name "Pleiades" may be related to the verb pleo "to sail," though Hesiod's advice indicates that the Pleiades at this time herald anything but good sailing. In the Mediterranean lands, as in the American Southwest, the rainy season (and thus the growing season) begins in November and extends into the springtime.

When the Pleaides and Hyades and strong Orion
begin to set, then be mindful of ploughing
in good season. Then the year's work is put away beneath the earth.

But if a desire for stormy seafaring seizes you,
when the Pleaides, fleeing strong mighty Orion,
plunge into the misty sea,
then blasts of all kinds of winds rage.
And then you should no longer have ships on the wine-dark sea,
but remember to work the earth, as I bid you.

"Rocks of the Strophades," engraving from H.W. Williams, Select Views in Greece, 1827.

Quotation for September, 2006: The god Pluto, his planet, and his dog

Statue of the god Hades (Pluto) with his dog Cerberus, in the Villa Borghese, in an illustration from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890. In this depiction, Cerberus has only one head, not his usual three (contrast the illustration below).

Astronomers, with more snobbery than common sense, have decided that the ninth planet, Pluto, is not a planet at all, but something called a "dwarf planet." Now it seems that, since a person like the actor Peter Dinklage, who is a dwarf (and who was great in "The Station Agent") is very much a person, a dwarf planet is still a planet. Pluto is round and orbits the sun, which fits the description of a planet. It has a weird orbit, and if we want to be politically correct, perhaps we should call it a "differently abled planet," or a "special planet." In fact, several other "dwarf planets" have been identified. Let diversity reign. Astrology (which admittedly is more folklore than science) tells us that Pluto is important to the horoscopes of people born under the sign of Scorpio. I, as a Scorpio, therefore take the situation very personally. In any case, despite some hysteria from fans of Pluto, Pluto has not died. Like the Disney bloodhound of the same name, it still faithfully patrols the outer reaches of the solar system.

Pluto the planet was discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, and was named for the Greek god Pluto. The name was given by Venetia Phair, who was then an 11- year-old Oxford schoolgirl. Ms. Phair (née Burney), now 87, still lives in Surrey, England. Her great uncle Henry Madan, as it happens, gave names to Phobos and Deimos ("Fear and Terror"), the moons of Mars, the planet named for the god of War. Pluto, Mickey Mouse's dog, was named for the planet, not the other way around. The dog motif is appropriate (see below).

Pluto is the god of the Underworld, also known as Hades (in Greek mythology, Hades is the name of the god, not the Underworld itself, which is denoted by the possessive Haidou, "Hades' [place]"). He is the brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Demeter. He is famous for kidnapping Persephone, daughter of Demeter, to be his consort in the Underworld. The name Pluto (Plouton) probably comes from the word ploutos "wealth," and is sometimes explained as "giver of wealth," for the precious metals and crops that originate beneath the earth. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus, chained to a rock by Zeus for giving fire to man, is visited by the maiden Io, as she races past him. Io, a girlfriend of Zeus, has been turned by him into a cow and is pestered by a gadfly, courtesy of Hera, Zeus's jealous wife. Prometheus foretells to Io her future wanderings, including the following warning:

. . . [Beware of] the one-eyed army of the
Arimaspians, who ride on horses, and who live by the gold-flowing
stream of Pluto . . .

(- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound lines 104-106)

But Plato, in his Cratylus, in which he proposes many etymologies, some perhaps correct, some incorrect, thought it likely to be an apotropaic ("turning away [evil]") name, used to avoid uttering the real name of an abhorred entity. In the same way, many European languages (including English) call the bear by some name ("bear," "bruin") that means "the brown one," instead of the Indo-European word for the animal, which is preserved in the Greek arktos (a word that survives in the English "Arctic," for the constellation of the Great Bear). Actually, if the name Hades means "the Unseen One" or "He who Makes Invisible," this name too could be a way to avoid saying the name of Death, or Thanatos.

. . . Pluto gives wealth (ploutos), and his name means the giver of wealth, which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appear to imagine that the term Hades is connected with the invisible (aeides); and so they are led by their fears to call the God Pluto instead.

(- Plato, Cratylus 403a, Jowett translation)

Pluto's mascot is Cerberus, the fierce dog usually depicted with three heads (Hesiod, in the Theogony, gives him fifty heads!) Cerberus was friendly to all who entered the Underworld, but attacked and bit anyone attempting to leave. Heracles, as one of his Twelve Labors, brought Cerberus up from the Underworld, as illustrated by the vase painting shown below. Our last quotation is from Euripides' Alcestis. Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, is fated to die, but the god Apollo makes a deal with Death (Thanatos) that Admetus can live if he finds a substitute to die for him. All of Admetus' friends, and even his parents, refuse, but his beloved wife Alcestis agrees to die, and Admetus selfishly accepts. In this quotation, he addresses his departed wife, comparing his plight to that of the singer Orpheus, who charmed the spirits of the Underworld into releasing his dead wife, Eurydice, only to lose her when she looked back. Euripides' play ends happily, when Heracles restores Alcestis to her husband. But before this happy ending, Admetus laments:

. . . But if I had the tongue and melody of Orpheus,
so that, calling with hymns upon Demeter's daughter and her husband,
I could bring you back from Hades' house,
I would descend, and neither Pluto's dog
nor Charon with his oar, guide of souls,
would hold me back, before I brought your life once more to light.

(- Euripides, Alcestis lines 357-362)

Detail of a vase painting, Heracles and Cerberus, from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie.

Quotation for August, 2006: the god Pan and the Persians at Marathon, from Herodotos' Histories

The Persian Wars

The Persians, now known as the Iranians, are in the news again today. In antiquity, too, tensions arose between the Persians and their European neighbors over control of the eastern Mediterranean. In the early fifth century B.C. these tensions spilled over into the "Persian Wars" between the Greek states, led by Athens and Sparta, against the incursions of the Persians, first under Darius, then climactically, under Xerxes. The first part of fifth century Greek history was dominated by the Persian Wars, the last part by the Peloponnesian War between the Greek states (Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies) with an intervening period of relative peace -- and Athenian expansionism -- in between.

The battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) was the climactic battle of the first phase of the war, in which a large Persian force under Darius was defeated by an outnumbered force of Athenians and Plataeans, through an exercise of superior tactics and strategy. The second phase of the war was the larger invasion by Darius' son Xerxes. In the second phase, in the battle for the northern pass at Thermopylae ("Hot Gates," for its sulphur springs) in 480 B.C., it was the Spartans who won immortality by their bravery, leaving as their epitaph (in which the Spartans are called by their other name of Lacedaemonians) the following:

O stranger, go tell the Lacedaemonians that
we lie fallen here, obedient to their commands.

The Battle of Marathon

The Battle of Marathon did not end the Persian Wars, but it established the prestige and self-confidence of Athens, and it became part of mythology, both ancient and modern. Before the battle, the Athenians sent to Sparta, who was then their ally, for reinforcements. They sent a professional courier, a fast runner named Pheidippides (more correctly "Philippides"), who covered the 150 miles between Athens and Sparta in a remarkable two days. The Spartans were unable to send troops in time for the battle, but Pheidippides reported that as he ran through Arcadia he met the half man-half goat god Pan, who wanted the Athenians to pay him greater worship and promised in return to help them. The Athenians did build him a shrine, and Pan was said to have caused a panic -- the terror caused by Pan -- among the Persians.

After the victory at Marathon, the Athenians may have dispatched another messenger to carry the news to Athens. This man, whose identity is unknown, is often confused with Pheidippides. In any case, the Athenian army was mostly intent on marching back to Athens to head off another attack by the Persians, whose ships were seen sailing off toward the now undefended city. The Persians sailed away, and the mythic run of the nameless messenger is commemorated in the modern "marathon" of 26 miles 385 yards, the approximate distance between the beachhead at Marathon and Athens.

The truth about Pheidippides (he survived! -- and there were two different messengers!)

Pheidippides probably was not the messenger who delivered the news from Marathon to Athens (this would have been a short run for a man of his endurance), and he didn't drop dead afterward. That melodramatic touch (and the confusion between the two couriers) was a fiction perpetrated by the Victorian poet Robert Browning, whose version unfortunately survives in modern retellings. While the Battle of Marathon was a historic turning point, we should not forget the actual feat of the real Pheidippides in his run to Sparta, and his magical encounter with the weird woodland god Pan. There is more about Pan, and his ability to cause panic, in the quotation of the month for July, which is repeated below.

Herodotos' account of Philippides (Pheidippides)

Here is the description in Herodotos of Philippides' encounter with Pan:

And first, while they were still in the city [before leaving for Marathon to do battle with the approaching Persians], the generals sent to Sparta a messenger, Philippides, an Athenian, a professional long-distance courier (hemerodromos, "day-runner"). According to Philippides himself, as he reported to the Athenians on his return, when he was near Mount Parthenium, above Tegea, the god Pan accosted him. Philippides said that Pan shouted out his name, and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, when he was kindly disposed toward them and had helped them, and would help them again in the future. And so the Athenians, when their affairs were once again in good order, since they believed in the truth of the report, founded a shrine to Pan under the Acropolis, and celebrate him, in accord with his request, with yearly sacrifices and a torch race.

Herodotos Histories Book 6, 105

Quotation for July, 2006, for a summer afternoon, a warning about Pan from Theocritus' Idyll I

Statue of the god Pan, from Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.

Watch out for Pan at mid-day!

In the heat of summer, we find it convenient to emulate the Mediterraneans in taking a rest in the noonday heat, rising later to resume our work or leisure. It is a wise idea for another reason, for at that time the god Pan relaxes from hunting, and he becomes angry if disturbed. The word panic literally describes the terror that this weird woodland god can inspire. The Homeric Hymn XIX to Pan (ca. 750 B.C.) tells of his birth in Arcadia as son of the god Hermes and a nymph ("daughter of Dryops" -- the name means "Oak-face," obviously a forest divinity). The infant Pan is born with goat's feet, horns, a propensity for laughing and making noise -- and a full beard! His nurse runs away in horror, but his father Hermes, a trickster god himself who played practical jokes the same day that he was born (Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes), is delighted. Typically of the folk-etymologies of the Hymns, the poem connects the god's name with the word pan meaning "all," because he brought pleasure to all the gods. More likely, the name is related to the word for "pasture," indicative of his country roots. His chosen instrument is the Pan-pipe.

Theocritus (3rd century B.C.), from Syracuse in Sicily, wrote bucolic or pastoral poetry in a much later era, using the Doric dialect of Greek. His rustic Idylls were later the inspiration for Vergil's Eclogues. His first Idyll is a conversation between a shepherd and a goatherd. The shepherd, Thyrsus, asks the goatherd to play something on his syrinx, or Pan-pipe. But the goatherd refuses, for it is noon, and Pan will be annoyed. So instead, the shepherd recounts the story of how the herdsman Daphnis died, driven to death by Aphrodite when he spurned her attempt to make him fall in love. Below is an excerpt from the beginning of the poem:

Thyrsis (a shepherd):

Sweet is the whispering, O goatherd, of yon pine,
that makes music beside the springs. Sweetly, too,
you play your pipes. Second only to Pan, you shall win the prize.
If he wins the horned he-goat, you shall take the she-goat.
But if he takes the she-goat as a prize, to you will fall
the kid. The she-kid's meat is good, before it is old enough to milk.

. . .

I beg you, by the Nymphs, I beg you, goatherd, sit here,
by this steep hillock and the tamarisk tree,
and play your pipes. I, meanwhile, will tend your goats.

Goatherd:

It is not allowed, O shepherd, it is not allowed at noontime
to play the pipes. We fear Pan. For at that time he rests,
weary, from hunting. He is mean,
and bitter anger sits always in his nostrils.
But, Thyrsis, you know how to sing of the suffering of Daphnis,
for you approach most closely to the bucolic Muses.
Let us sit down under this elm, opposite Priapus
and the Fountain-nymphs, where the Shepherd's Seat
and the oak trees are. If you sing
as you once sang in competition with Chromis of Libya,
I will give you three milkings of a goat that has born twins
-- yet while having two kids, she can fill two extra pails --
and I will give you, besides, a deep drinking cup . . .

(-Theocritus, Idyll I, vv. 1-27, translated by C.A. Sowa)

"The Great God Pan," wood carving by Christine Cooper Angier, ca. 1935.

Quotation for June, 2006, from Book 6 of Ovid's Fasti ("The Roman Calendar")

Statue of Juno in the Vatican, from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

Our quotation for June is from Ovid's Fasti ("The Roman Calendar"). It is an excerpt from a conversation the poet has with the goddess Juno, who claims that the month of June was named for her. The goddess is in a bad mood. She is jealous over the love affairs of her husband Jupiter (Jove); she refers to Maia, goddess mother of Mercury by Jupiter, as "a concubine." She is also still smarting over the choice by Trojan Prince Paris, son of King Priam, of Venus over both her and Minerva in the famous beauty contest. Venus rewarded Paris with Helen of Troy, leading to the Trojan War. Juno wants Ovid (and the world) to know how important she is and how widely worshipped she is not just in Rome but in other Italian towns. But Ovid and Juno are joined by two other goddesses, both of whom claim that the month was named for them.

In this passage, Ovid parodies many things (he was, after all, the author of the tongue-in-cheek Amores and Ars Amatoria). He parodies the Prologue to Hesiod of Ascra's Theogony, in which Hesiod, "the teacher of plowing" (a reference to his other poem, The Works and Days) meets the Muses, who teach him to sing. Parodying the Muses' warning that "We know how to tell many lies that are like reality, but we also know, when we wish, how to speak the truth," Ovid tells us "I shall sing the truth, but some will say I lied." He also makes the incestuous relations within the family of the gods seem sublimely silly as Juno describes her relationship to Jupiter -- both wife and sister; she can't decide which makes her prouder!

We quote below the beginning of Juno's rant. She is countered by the goddess Juventas ("Youth," in Greek Hebe), wife of Hercules, who says that June was named for her, and by Concord, who claims that the name of June honors the joining (or junction) between the Italian kingdoms of Tatius and Quirinus.

Ovid wisely does not decide between his three goddesses, avoiding the mistake of Paris. For, he says, two goddesses can destroy more than one goddess can bestow.

This month, too, has a name whose origins are in doubt.
I will lay them all out; you may choose the one you like.
I shall sing the truth; but some will say I lied,
thinking that no deities were ever seen by a mortal.
There is a god within us; when it stirs us, we become warm.
This impetus contains the seeds of sacred inspiration.
It is particularly right for me to see the faces of the gods,
whether because I am a bard, or because I sing of sacred things.
There is a grove, dense with trees, a place remote
from any voice, except for the obstreperous noise of water.
There I was wondering what were the origins of the month just begun,
and was meditating on its name.
Lo, I saw the goddesses, not those whom the teacher of plowing
saw, when he followed the Ascraean sheep,
nor those whom the son of Priam judged in the valleys of watery Ida.
One of them, nevertheless, was one of these.
Of them there was one, who was the sister of her husband.
It was she (I recognized her!) who stands in Jove's citadel.
I trembled, and betrayed my feelings by my silent pallor.
Then the goddess removed the fear she had herself caused.
For she said, "O bard, founder of the Roman year,
who have dared to relate great things in slender meters,
you created for yourself the right to see the celestial divine spirit,
when it pleased you to treat the festivals in your verses.
But lest you be ignorant and be led astray by the error of the multitude,
June takes its name from my name.
It is something to have married Jove, and to be Jove's sister.
I don't know if I am prouder of him as brother, or as husband.
If my ancestry is considered, I was the first child to make Saturn
a father, being Saturn's first fated offspring.
Rome was once known as Saturnia, after my father;
for this was the first land he came to after heaven.
If it is the marriage bed that counts, I am called wife of the Thunderer,
and my temple is joined to that of Tarpeian Jove.
If they could give the name of [Jove's] concubine to the month of May,
is there something wrong with giving me a like honor? . . .
. . .

(-Ovid, Fasti, Book 6, vv. 1-36, translated by C.A. Sowa)

Quotation for May, 2006, for Memorial Day: from Pericles' Funeral Oration in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War

The Parthenon after a rare snowstorm, photo by C.A. Sowa.

On May 29, we celebrate Memorial Day, when we honor those who have died in war. The quotation for this month contains excerpts from Pericles' Funeral Oration, delivered in memory of fallen Athenians, as recreated by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War.

Pericles, the great Athenian leader, gave his oration in 431 B.C. at the end of the first year of the war, which was fought between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies. In the first part of the speech, Pericles extols the virtues of Athens, and presents a gleaming portrait of his city's view of herself, with her democracy, her bravery, and her material success. Athens is the model for every city -- the educator of all Hellas and of the world.

Sadly, little more than a year later, Pericles was dead of the plague that gripped Athens, overcrowded with refugees who streamed