Sappho, 94
...
To die is simply my only wish;
She left me alone, forsaken; weeping
Very much, and this she said to me;
Such, such wondrous woes we've endured,
Sappho, on my heart, I left you unwillingly.
This said I in response to her;
In joy may you now go and me
Remember; know how you I cherished so;
If you don't, still I would like to show you
A reminder of ...
the countless sweet and beautiful times we had;
for many wreathes of violets made
and of roses twined together, and herbs
of fennel before me you blithely placed
And many lovely garlands woven
together around your beautiful neck
Made from flowers of lovely scent.
And with much myrrh,
Costly…
And queenly you anointed yourself,
And on the softest beds
For tender girls…
You would satisfy your yearning…
Pindar, Olympian 11
There’s for men a time when of winds there is greatest
Need, and there’s a time of heavenly waters as well,
Raining children of clouds.
But if with hard work one fares well,
Honey-sung hymns,
5 Sources of future accounts,
Come to be, and a trust that's sworn for great deeds of virtue.
And unenvied to the Olympian victors
This great praise is made. And tales such
Wishes my tongue to make as a guide;
10 But, by aid divine, a man prospers
In like way with a learned mind.
Know that now, Archestratus’
son, Hagesidamus, because of your boxing
Decoration for your crown of golden olive
In sweetest songs I will sing,
15 Paying homage to the Locrian race of the West.
There the komos you may join; and this I’ll pledge–
They are, o Muses, not a guest-hating company
Nor unlearned in things of good
But highest in wisdom, and wielding the spear,
To whom you will come; and remember this — no fiery fox
20 Nor lions roaring loud will change their firm and native ethic.
Horace, Odes 1.3
So may the Goddess, power of Cyprus,
So may the brothers of Helen, gleaming glories of heaven,
And the father of the winds rule
The other winds sworn to him — save Iapyx,
You, ship, whose stock
You owe to Virgil: to Attic limits
Return safe, I beg
And preserve the half of my soul.
Oak and bronze three times
Surround that man’s heart, who fragile to the harsh
Sea sent off the ship
first: it feared not the Afric hail
At war with the winds of the north
Nor the sad Hyads, nor the fury of Notus,
Than whom there is no master of the Adriatic
stronger — he wills the waves to rise or fall;
What footfall of death feared he
Who with tearless eyes the floating marvels beheld,
Who saw the tumultuous sea and
The infamous Ceraunian cliffs?
In vain did the God detach —
Having foresight — from the ocean not to be united
The lands — if nevertheless, impious,
Citadels inviolate ships breached.
Daring everything to persevere
The human race tumbled to ruin through the forbidden:
Daring, Iapetus’ scion
Bore fire to the races of the earth in an evil deceit;
After fire from the heavenly home
Was taken, decay and a new throng of fevers
Oppressed the earth
And slow necessity
Quickened the footfall of death.
Daedalus tried the open air
With wings not granted to man;
The labor of Hercules broke across the Acheron.
Nothing to mortals is a challenge too great to bear:
The sky itself we seek in foolishness and
We don’t suffer, through our crime,
Jupiter to put away his lightning ever ready to fall.
Horace, Odes 1.7
1 Some will famous Rhodes or Mytilene extol
Or Ephesus, or Corinth’s walls between two seas,
Or Thebes by Bacchus or Delphi by Apollo
marked, or Thessalian Tempe;
5 There are those who sole work is to praise
In perpetual song the city of chaste Athena
And to place the olive plucked from all around upon their brow;
A great many may dedicate as honor to Juno,
Most deserved, Argive horses and Mycenean wealth:
10 Me not so has steadfast Sparta
Nor the plains of wealthy Larissa struck
Than the house of Albunea resonant
And headlong Anio and the groves of the Tiber, and orchards
Wet by rapid rivers.
15 As white Notus often cleanses the clouds from an obscured sky,
And the sky does not seek to brood on perpetual rains,
So you, wise remember to end
Your sadness, and the labors of life
To soften, Plancus, with wine, whether gleaming camps
20 With standards, or the dense shade of
Your Tibur will hold you. When Teucer Salamis and his father
Fled, nevertheless wet from wine
It’s said his temples he fastened with poplar crown
And spoke in this wise to his comrades sad:
25 “Wherever fortune shall bear us, kinder than my father,
We will go – o my friends, my companions,
Nothing is to be despaired with Teucer as your leader, and Teucer your guide:
For unerring Apollo has promised
A future of hope – a Salamis in a new land.
30 O you brave who by my side have endured
Worse things, my men, now with wine dispel your cares;
32 Tomorrow we shall cross the boundless sea.
Horace, Odes 1.37
Now let us drink; now with a freed foot
Let’s shake the earth; now, Salian feasts
It’s time to prepare, and the seats of the Gods
It’s time to set, my dearest friends.
’Til now it was wrong to pull the Caecuban wines
From their cellars, aged — while the Capitol
The crazed queen schemed to overthrow —
Funeral rites for our sovereignty she prepared
Defiled swarm in tow, of men with ignominy
Diseased, powerless she strove at all manner of things –
Sweet fortune made her drunk with hope.
But this lessened her fury:
Hardly one ship safe from the fires escaped
And her mind, maddened with Mareotic wine,
Caesar reduced into fears most true —
He drove her back and she from Italy flew,
He urging her the more on boats, like a hawk
Pursues soft doves, or as the hunter, swift,
Chases the hare on the snowy grounds
Of Thessaly — he would hand her over in chains
Like a deadly monster. She, more nobly
Seeking to perish, shows no feminine fear
At the sight of the two-edged glaive, nor hidden
Shores with a speedy fleet did she attempt to win –
She dared to look on her fallen queendom,
With countenance serene, bold, the noxious
Serpents she brushed, so that their venom
Black, she might in her body absorb.
Resolved to die, she was fiercer still;
By savage Liburnian ships she certainly scorned
To be taken, stripped of her high-honored title — proud,
No cast-down woman, she’d be led away in triumph.
Horace, Odes 3.5
In the sky we’ve believed that thundering Jupiter
Rules; as a God on earth will be held
Augustus, with the Britains added
To his empire, and the serious Persians.
Have the soldiers of Crassus with barbarous wives
Degraded husbands lived, and in the ranks —
O senate and your customs overturned —
Of their evil fathers-in-law grown old,
Marsians, Apuleians, with Parthian king,
Of their shields and names and allegiance of old
Forgetful, and of eternal Vesta, though
Jupiter’s shrines and the city of Rome were unharmed?
Of this the provident mind of Regulus warned,
Dissenting to the accords most
Vile, and from that example he weighed
The coming calamity for the new age
If the captured youth should fail to perish
Unpitied. “I, our standards affixed
In Punic shrines, and our arms
From soldiers without blood,” he said,
“Taken away, I’ve seen; I’ve seen the citizens’
Arms twisted behind their free backs
And the gates not held shut, and the fields,
Laid waste by our war, cultivated again.
Ransomed for gold, surely fiercer
The soldier shall return to battle: to outrage you add
Harm undue; and colors lost not again
Will wool dyed purple bring back,
And true courage, when once it has gone,
Cares not to be replaced in lesser hearts.
If a deer fights, freed from compact nets,
He will be brave,
Who to faithless enemies has entrusted himself,
And in another war he’ll crush the Carthaginians,
The one who bounds with chained-up arms can
sense, and, unmoving, has dreaded death.
This man, unschooled in how to take on life,
Peace with war confused. O shame!
O great Carthage, by Italy’s
disgraceful ruins made higher!
It’s said that his chaste wife’s kiss
And his little boys, like one lower in standing
From him he removed, and his manly
Countenance, grim, he set on the ground.
Until his failing senate with counsel he might
Make strong as author of a plan not conceived before,
And among his grieving friends
He hastened forth, an outstanding exile.
But he knew what for him the barbarous
Tormentor prepared; still in no other way
He pushed aside obstructing neighbors
And the people delaying his return,
As if the mundane matters of his clients,
Their disputes settled, he left behind,
Proceeding to the fields of Venafrum
And Spartan Tarentum.
Horace, Odes 3.30
I’ve made my monument enduring longer than bronze —
Above the regal site of pyramids it towers;
no greedy rain nor Aquilo unbridled
can raze it, nor a numberless
succession of years, nor the flight of time.
I shall not wholly die; a great part of me
Will shun Libitina: forever I, made fresh
by posterity’s praise, shall grow, while the Capitol
a Pontifex with quiet virgin shall scale.
I shall be spoken of where the violent Aufidus roars
And where Daunus poor in rivers ruled
a rustic people: from a humble place powerful I rise
the first to transfer Aeolic song to modes
Italian. Take up the lofty prize —
It’s won by your merits, and my hair with Delphic laurel
You’ll crown, willingly, high Melpomene.
Translations my own, from 2020 and 2021.
Greek and Latin text accessed from the following sources:
Sappho:
Campbell, D. A. Greek lyric. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1982.
Pindar:
Pindar. The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John Sandys, Litt.D., FBA. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1937. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0161%3Abook%3DP.%3Apoem%3D8
Horace:
Horace. Horace, Odes and Epodes. Paul Shorey and Gordon J. Laing. Chicago. Benj. H. Sanborn & Co. 1919. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0024