Galen of Pergamum was a Greek medical writer who lived in the 2nd century A.D. He wrote a huge number of books, most of which have never been translated into English. The passage translated here has been chosen to illustrate the methods that were used to collect books for the library at Alexandria. It is taken from a commentary on the "Epidemics" of Hippocrates; the original Greek text can be found in Volume XVIIa of the collected works of Galen, as edited by C.G.Kühn (1828, reprinted 1965). The numbers in red are the page numbers in that volume.
[605] What I am about to say has been said previously by Zeuxis in the first volume of his commentary on the present book [the third book of Hippocrates' Epidemics]; and perhaps it would have been better for me, as I usually do in such cases, to refer those who want to know the [full] story to that book. But since Zeuxis' commentary is no longer respected, and has become difficult to find, therefore they asked me [606] to tell the story, beginning with Mnemon.
Some say that Mnemon took the third book of the Epidemics out of the great library at Alexandria, as if he intended to read it, and then put it back after inserting these characters in it, in the same ink and similar handwriting. Others say that he brought the book [to Alexandria] from Pamphylia. Ptolemaeus the king of Egypt was so eager to collect books, that he ordered the books of everyone who sailed there to be brought to him. The books were then copied into new manuscripts. He gave the new copy to the owners, whose books had been brought to him after they sailed there, but he put the original copy in the library with the inscription "a [book] from the ships". They say that a copy of the third book of the Epidemics has been found with the inscription, "a [book] from the ships, as emended by Mnemon of Sidē". Some claim that the inscription does not say "as emended", but simply gives the name of Mnemon; because when books were taken from all the others who sailed there, [607] the servants of the king wrote down their names in the copies that were deposited in the storehouses (the servants did not place the books in the library immediately, but first they stored them away in piles in some other buildings).
This Ptolemaeus is said to have given sufficient proof of his eagerness to collect old books, by his behaviour towards the Athenians. After giving them fifteen talents of silver as a surety, he received from them the manuscripts of Sophocles and Euripides and Aeschylus, on the understanding that he would simply make new copies from the manuscripts, and then promptly return them intact. But after he had produced magnificent new copies on the finest writing material, he kept the books that the Athenians had sent to him, and sent back to them the copies that he had made. He urged them to keep the fifteen talents, and at the same time to receive new copies instead of the old books that they had sent to him. The Athenians would have had no other option, even if he had kept the old books without sending new copies to them, because when they accepted the money, they had agreed that if he kept the books, then they would keep the money; and so they accepted the new copies and kept the money.
[608] But Mnemon - whether he brought the book himself, or took it out of the library and interpolated the characters - seems to have done this as a subterfuge . . .
Callimachus was one of the most famous Greek poets of the 3rd century B.C. He was a champion of the short, polished poem as opposed to long epics, and the start of his "Aetia", translated here, is his reply to those who preferred lengthy poems.
Callimachus chose to call his opponents Telchines, mythical characters who are described by Strabo (14.2.7) as "maligners" and "sorcerers". Ovid (Met_7'365) says bluntly, "the Telchines were inhabitants of Ialysus, whose eyes defiled everything they looked on, till Jupiter in his loathing drowned them in the waters of his brother Neptune."
This passage has been preserved on a fragment of papyrus with many gaps, but much of the meaning can be restored with the help of scholia, which supply some of the names of his poetical opponents. One name is surprisingly missing: despite the tradition recorded by the Suda, of a bitter dispute between Callimachus and the epic poet Apollonius of Rhodes, scholars have concluded that Apollonius was not mentioned here in the scholia. The translation of the poem is by C.A.Trypanis (1958); the translation of the scholia is partly based on F.Nisetich (2001).
[1] {I know that} the Telchines, who are ignorant and no friends of the Muse, grumble at my poetry, because I did not accomplish one continuous poem of many thousands of lines on . . . kings or . . . heroes, but like a child I roll forth a short tale, though the decades of my years are not few. And I {say} this to the Telchines ... race, who know how to waste away your heart . . . of few lines, but bountiful Demeter by far outweighs the long . . . and of the two poems the small-scale . . . and not the Large Woman taught that Mimnermus is a delightful poet . . . let the crane, delighting in the blood of the Pygmies, {fly far} from Egypt to the land of the Thracians and let the Massagetae shoot their arrows from a great distance at {the Medes}; but poems are sweeter for being short. Begone, you baneful race of Jealousy! hereafter judge poetry by {the canons} of art, and not by the Persian chain, nor look to me for a song loudly resounding. It is not mine to thunder; that belongs to Zeus. For, when I first placed a tablet on my knees, Lycian Apollo said to me : ". . . poet, feed the victim to be as fat as possible but, my friend, keep the Muse slender. This too I bid you; tread a path which carriages do not trample; do not drive your chariot upon the common tracks of others, nor along a wide road, but on unworn paths, though your course be more narrow. For we sing among those who love the shrill voice of the cicada and not the noise of the . . . asses." Let others bray just like the long-eared brute, but let me be the dainty, the winged one. Oh, yes indeed! That I may sing living on dew-drops, free sustenance from the divine air; that I may then shed old age, which weighs upon me like the three-cornered island [Sicily] upon deadly Enceladus. But never mind! For if the Muses have not looked askance at one in his childhood, they do not cast him from their friendship when he is grey.
[Scholia Florentina] Telchines . . . grumble at my poetry:- . . . the two Dionysii . . . and Asclepiades the [son of] Sicelides and Poseidippus the . . . {and} ...yrippus the rhetorician and Ana{. .}bius and Praxiphanes of Mitylene, who criticised the slenderness of his poems and that {he did} not . . . length . . .
{of few lines}:- and he cites in comparison those poems of Mimnermus the Colophonian and Philetas the Coan, which are of a few lines only, saying that they are better than their works in many lines . . .
Two of the surviving fragments from the Memoirs of Augustus [Commentarii de vita sua] refer to the appearance of a comet at the funeral games for his adoptive father Julius Caesar, which were held in 44 B.C. Augustus clearly attached great importance to the appearance of the comet, as proof of the divine status of his adoptive father, and the episode is also described in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, right at the end of the poem [ 15'746-851 ], as the prelude to the glorious reign of Augustus.
One of the passages about the comet (Fr_6) was quoted by Pliny the Elder [ NH_2'23(93) ] and the other passage (Fr_7), which was quoted by a commentator on Vergilius known as "Servius Auctus", is translated here. The translation is based on the Latin text in "Imp. Augusti Operum Fragmenta", edited by H.Malcovati (1948).
[7] When Augustus Caesar was holding the funeral games for his father, a star appeared in the middle of the day, and Augustus declared that it was [the star] of his father. Baebius Macer said that a large star rose up in about the eighth hour of the day, and it was crowned with rays, like (?) ribbons. Some people thought that the star was an omen foretelling the [future] glory of the young Caesar but Caesar himself interpreted it as the soul of his father, and he placed a statue of him on the Capitol, with a golden crown on his head and this inscription on the base:
Καίσαρι ἡμιθέῳ ["to Caesar the demi-god"]. Vulcatius the haruspex said in an assembly that it was a comet, which portended the end of the ninth saeculum and the start of the tenth saeculum. But because he had revealed this secret against the will of the gods, he would die immediately; and he collapsed in the midst of the assembly, before he had completed his speech. This is mentioned by Augustus in the second book of his Memoirs about his life.
A translation of Dio's Roman History is available on the Lacus Curtius website. A few additional fragments are shown here. Modern scholars have allocated them to book 12 of the history.
[45] # After Claudius had made terms with the Corsicans, and the Romans had then waged war upon them and subdued them, they first sent Claudius to them, offering to surrender him, on the ground that the fault in breaking the compact lay with him and not with themselves; and when the Corsicans refused to receive him, they drove him into exile.
[46] # The Romans, after exacting more money from the Carthaginians, renewed the truce. At first, however, upon the arrival of the embassy which the latter had sent because they realized their foes' state of preparedness and also because they themselves were still occupied at that time with the war against the neighbouring tribes, they had given them no mild answer. Afterwards Hanno, a man of youthful years who used striking frankness of speech, was sent. He spoke his mind unreservedly on a number of matters, and finally exclaimed: "If you do not wish to be at peace, restore to us both Sardinia and Sicily; for with these we purchased not a temporary truce, but eternal friendship." Thus shamed, they not only became milder . . .
2 . . . and the others, lest they might in turn suffer the same injuries; so that they were very glad to delay, the one side choosing to preserve the prosperity inherited from the past, and the other to hold on at least to what it had. So far as their threats went, they were no longer keeping the peace, but when it came to deeds they still continued to deliberate about it, so that it became clear to all that whichever of the two nations first found it to its advantage to make a move would likewise be the one to begin the war. Indeed, most men abide by their compacts just so long as suits their own convenience; but in the interest of some greater advantage to themselves, they deem it safe even to break a truce.
[48] # On one occasion they sent envoys to investigate {the movements of Hamilcar, in the consulship of Marcus Pomponius and} Gaius Papirius, in spite of the fact that they had no interests in Spain as yet. Hamilcar showed them all due honour and offered them plausible explanations, declaring, among other things, that he was obliged to fight against the Spaniards in order that the money which was still owing to the Romans might be paid; for it was impossible to obtain it from any other source. The envoys were consequently embarrassed to know how to censure him.
[49] # The island of Issa surrendered itself voluntarily to the Romans. This was the first time the islanders were to make their acquaintance, but they regarded them as more friendly than those whom they had now come to dread. They reasoned that more reliance was to be placed on the unknown than on the known; for while the one, because of actual experience had with it, inspired resentment, the other, because of their anticipations, inspired good hope.
2 When the Issaeans had attached themselves to the Romans, the latter, desiring to show them some prompt and ready favour in return, so as to get the reputation of aiding such as joined their cause, and also to punish the Ardiaeans, who were annoying those who sailed from Brundisium, sent envoys to Agron, to ask for clemency for the Issaeans and at the same time to censure the king for wronging them without cause. Now these men found Agron no longer alive; he had died, leaving behind a child named Pinnes. Teuta, the wife of Agron and stepmother of Pinnes, was ruling the Ardiaeans, . . . as a result of her boldness, she gave them no respectful reply, but, woman-like, in addition to her innate recklessness, she was puffed up with vanity because of the power that she possessed; and she accordingly cast some of the ambassadors into prison and killed others for expressing themselves freely. 4 Such was her action at that time, and she actually took pride in it as if she had displayed some strength by her facile cruelty. In a very short time, however, she demonstrated the weakness of the female sex, which quickly flies into a passion through lack of judgment, and quickly becomes terrified through cowardice. 5 For just as soon as she learned that the Romans had voted for war against her she became panic-stricken, and promised to restore their men whom she held, while she tried to defend herself in the matter of the death of the others, declaring that they had been slain by some robbers. When the Romans for this reason stopped their campaign and demanded the surrender of the murderers, she once more showed her contempt, because the danger was not yet at her doors, and declaring she would not give up anybody, despatched an army against Issa. 6 # But when she learned that the consuls were at hand, she grew terrified again, abated her high spirit, and became ready to heed them in everything whatsoever. She had not yet, however, been brought fully to her senses, for when the consuls had crossed over to Corcyra, she felt imbued with new courage, revolted and despatched an army against Epidamnus and Apollonia. But after the Romans had rescued the cities and had captured ships of hers laden with treasure, she was again on the point of yielding obedience. 7 Meanwhile they mounted to a high place above the sea, and were defeated near the Atyrian hill ; and she now waited, hoping for their withdrawal, in view of the fact that it was already winter. But on perceiving that Albinus remained where he was and that Demetrius, as a result of her caprice, as well as from fear of the Romans, had transferred his allegiance, besides persuading some others to desert, she became utterly terrified and gave up her power.
[50] # The Romans were alarmed over an oracle of the Sibyl which told them that they must beware of the Gauls when a thunderbolt should fall upon the Capitol near the temple of Apollo.
2 # The Gauls became dejected on seeing that the Romans had already seized the most favourable positions. For all men, if they obtain the object of their first aim, proceed more readily toward their subsequent goals, and likewise if they fail of it, lose interest in everything else. Those of the Gallic race, however, rather more than the rest of mankind, seize very eagerly upon what they desire, and cling most tenaciously to their successes, but if they meet with the slightest obstacle, have no hope at all left for the future. In their folly they are ready to expect whatsoever they wish, and in their ardour are ready to carry out whatsoever they undertake. 3 They are men of ungoverned passion and uncontrolled impulse, and for that reason they have in these qualities no element of endurance, since it is impossible for reckless audacity to prevail for any time ; and if once they suffer a setback, they are unable, especially if any fear also be present, to recover themselves, and are plunged into a state of panic corresponding to their previous fearless daring. In brief time they rush abruptly to the very opposite extremes, since they can furnish no sound motive based on reason for either course.
4 # Aemilius on conquering the Insubres celebrated a triumph, and in it conveyed the foremost captives clad in armour up to the Capitol, making jests at their expense because he had heard that they had sworn not to remove their breastplates until they had mounted to the Capitol.
[51] # If any of the details, even the smallest, that were customary in festivals had been omitted, the ceremonies were always performed a second or a third time, and even oftener still, so far as was possible in one day, until everything seemed to have been done faultlessly.
[53] # Demetrius, encouraged by his position as guardian of Pinnes and by the fact that he had married the latter's mother Triteuta after Teuta's death, was not only proving oppressive to the natives, but was also ravaging the territory of the neighbouring tribes. So as soon as they [the consuls] heard of this, they summoned him before them, since it appeared that it was by abusing the friendship of the Romans that he was able to wrong those peoples. When he paid no heed, but actually proceeded to assail their allies, they made a campaign against him in Issa.
Translated by D.L.Page. In his introduction, Page says: "This beautiful fragment is part of Erinna's 'Distaff', a poem written in sorrow for the death of Baucis, a friend of her girlhood. Erinna herself is said to have died at the age of nineteen : and this poem, which (according to Suidas) consisted of 300 hexameters, was perhaps her only published work.".
Much more information about Erinna, along with the Greek text of this fragment and a French translation, can be found on the Chaerephon website.
. . . From white horses with madcap bound into the deep wave you leapt : "I catch you," I shouted, "my friend!" And you, when you were Tortoise, * ran leaping through the yard of the great court.
Thus I lament, unhappy Baucis, and make deep moan for you. These traces of you, dear maid, lie still glowing in my heart : all that we once enjoyed, is embers now.
We clung to our dolls in our chambers when we were girls, playing Young Wives, without a care. And towards dawn your Mother, who allotted wool to her attendant workwomen, came and called you to help with the salted meat. Oh, what a trembling the Bogy brought us then, when we were little ones! — On its head were huge ears, and it walked on all fours, and changed from one face to another!
But when you went to a man's bed, you forgot all that you heard from your Mother, dear Baucis, in babyhood : Aphrodite set oblivion in your heart. So I lament you, yet neglect your obsequies — my feet are not so profane as to leave the house, my eyes may not behold a body dead, nor may I moan with hair unbound, yet a blush of shame distracts me . . .
* This paragraph refers to the game described by Pollux ix. 125 : one girl (called the Tortoise) sat among others and spoke with them in alternate lines. At the end of the last line the Tortoise leapt up and tried to catch, or touch, one of the others - who would then take her turn as Tortoise. The last two lines are given by Pollux as : (Girls) "What was your son doing when he died?" (Tortoise) "From white horses into the sea he leapt" (on the last word the Tortoise leaps up) : hence the first line here.
Timotheus was an innovative musician who lived in the late 5th century B.C. He played a lyre with eleven strings, whereas the tradional Greek lyre had seven strings. This annoyed conservative music-lovers, especially at Sparta.
According to Satyrus, in his Life of Euripides, "When Timotheus was suffering from unpopularity in Greece because of his musical innovations, and in the depths of despair had actually made up his mind to take his own life, it it said that Euripides alone took the opposite line, and not only laughed at the audiences, but realising how great an exponent of his art Timotheus was, consoled him with the most comforting arguments possible, and went so far as to compose for him the prelude to The Persians, his victory with which put an end to Timotheus' unpopularity."
This "nome" describes the victory of the Greeks over the Persians at the battle of Salamis. It has been translated by J.M.Edmonds, who attempted to match the idiosyncratic Greek of Timotheus with some equally idiosyncratic English.
[ The beginning of the poem is lost. Four lines are quoted by later authors: ]
Fashioning for Greece the great and glorious ornament of freedom
Worship honour, the helpmate of battling valour
Ares is king; Greece fears no gold
And they hastened forward with their floating chariots bronze-empointed
* * *
[1] But neighboured by furious plashing of inter-rhythmic oars, ships against ships graved the smooth sea that is daughter of Phorcus. They had put upon their feet cornices of spearhead-like teeth, and speeding forward a-row with heads bent, swept off the foeman's pinewood arms. But if there went from them so unerring a blow as to rend his thwarts, at that spot all the crew would fall upon the enemy. Or if the daylight rushed against their sides, they plied their myriad plashing pine-laths afresh upon a slanting course. As for their victims, while, disparting their bodies this way and that, they sought to inweave their sides with hemp, some they charged and overthrew with renewed thunderbolts, others sank headlong, stripped of their glorious honour by the iron.
[20] Meanwhile the thong-bound cornel-shafted arrow-point that is forged in the fire, was let fly from the hand. and whirred its hurtling quill to fall among men's limbs ; and in solid mass sped murderous hurlstones, and coils tarred and flaming upon ox-flaying splints of wood; while thronging life went to the sacrifice beneath the spread-winged bronze-head snakes that are notched upon the bowstring — till the furrow of the emerald-tressed sea grew red with the drippings of Ares, and all was mingled pain and shrieking.
[35] Backward and forth with ours went the barbarian navy in the shining folds of the fish-wreathed bosom of Amphitrite. There now one from the plain of Hermus, a lord of the land of couriers, his legs ploughing, his arms beating the rainy tract, floated amid the buffets of the waves an islander. At last, when each and all of the ways that he sought only proved him trapped, forspent and gasping hard he called upon the divine Sea-Father saying:
* * * [ about 20 lines lost ]
[60] And as often as the breath failed him, there would break in upon him a spumy rain unblent with Bacchus and pour into the channel of his meat; and whenever the back-thrown brine seethed over from his mouth, with accents hoarse and wits distraught, in impotent anger gnashing his teeth he would storm and rage at the sea that was the despoiler of his life, saying: 'Already for all thy arrogance hast thou had thy turbulent neck bound in a hempen fetter, and now my king, mine, shall muddy thy depths with mountain-born pines and shut up thy floating plains within wandering coasts, thou frenzied thing of olden hate, faithful minion of the billow-coursing gale.' So spake he all fordone with panting, and cast forth an awful foam as his mouth spued back the deep-drawn brine.
[86] And now the barbarian host went back in flight pell-mell. With necks outstretched flew the ships, till this shoal or that brake every one, and they lost from their hands their vessel's mountain feet, and the white-shining children of their mouth leapt forth as they dashed one against another; and the sea was shingled over with swarming bodies reft of the sunlight by failure of breath, and with the same were the shores heavy laden; while others sat stark and naked on the island-beaches, and with cries and floods of tears, wailing and beating their breasts, were whelmed in mournful lamentation, and called upon the land of their fathers, saying : 'Ho, ye tree-tressed dells of Mysia, save me out of this place to whence the winds did bring us; else never shall the dust receive my body. For on the one side yawns the dire cavern of Heaven, father of Nymphs and heavy to the arm, and over against it the deeper gulf of the tempestuous sea. Take me, I pray you, where I would my master [Xerxes] had never built over the floating Helle [Hellespont] that roof of far but final traverse. For never then should I have left Tmolus and the Lydian city of Sardis, to come and fend off the Greek war god [Ares]. But now alas! where is to be found a sweet and secure refuge from death? Troy straits alone would assuage my woe, if I might but fall before the mighty black-flower-robed knees of the Mountain-Mother and clasp the fingers of those lovely arms. O gold-tressed Mother-Goddess save and deliver this trammelled life of mine, of mine, or some weapon-skilly wight will carry me off with his cut-throat steel forthwith, or else the ship-wrecker North-winds that march a-row over the billows will make an end of me with their night-freezing blast; for the wild wave has torn from off me all the woven covering of my limbs and there I shall lie for a pitiable banquet to the carrion-eating tribes of birds.'
[139] Such were their weeping lamentations. And whenever some dweller in the pasture-lands of Celaenae, bereft now of battle, was seized by an iron-haft Greek who lifted up his head by the hair, then writhing and clasping the foeman's knees he would thus inweave the Greek and Asian tongues, marring the clear-cut seal-stamp of his mouth with tracking down the Ionian speech : 'I me to thee how? and what to do? me come again nohow; and now brung me here this way my master ; no more, father, me no more come this way again to fight, but me not move; me not to you this way, me that way unto Sardis, unto Susa, home Ecbatana. My great God, Artemis, over to Ephesus will protect.'
[162] And when their hotfoot backward flight was finished, forthwith they cast the twin-cheeked javelins down, tore their faces with their nails, and rent the fine-woven Persian robe about their breasts. High-pitched now was the gamut of their Oriental dirge, and all the royal concourse rang with manifold-mourning terror when they saw what was to be. The king also, when he beheld his routed host go backward in confusion, fell on his knees and laid hands upon himself in the storm of his misfortune saying : 'Woe for the razing of homes! and alas for you, you desolating Greek ships that have destroyed a populous generation of young men, and have so done that our ships that should have carried them back home shall burn in the flaming might of furious fire, and the pains of lamentation be upon the land of Persia. O ill hap that led me to Greece! But ho! come quickly, yoke me my chariot and four and you bring out my countless wealth to the wagons, and burn my pavilions that it profit them not of my riches.'
[196] As for the others the while, they set them up trophies to be a most holy place of Zeus, and hymned the great healing-god [Paean] men cry to, beating the ground pat to the tune in the high stepped dance.
[202] But O great healer to whom we cry, exalter of a new-made Muse of the lute of gold, come thou to aid these lays of mine. For the great and noble and long-lived guide of Sparta city, that people that teems with blossoms of youth, dings me and drives me with the flare of censure, for that I dishonour the ancient music with poems young. Yet do I keep no man, be he young or old or my own compeer, from these my songs; it is the debauchers of the olden music, them keep I off, the tune- torturers who shriek as long, and shrill as loud, as any common crier. In the beginning did Orpheus son of Calliope beget the motley-musicked shell on Mount Pieria; and after him came the great Terpander, born of Aeolian Lesbos at Antissa, and yoked the Muse unto poems ten; and lo! now Timotheus opens the Muses' rich and cloistered treasure-house of song and gives the lyre new life with times and measures of eleven strings, nursling he of Miletus, the town of a twelve-walled people [the Ionians] that is chief among the Achaeans.
[237] But to this city I pray thee come, thou Far-darting Pythian with the gifts of prosperity and a peace abounding in orderliness for an untroubled people.
Attalus' home page | 16.05.13 | Any comments?