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THEODORIDAS : EPIGRAMS

Theodoridas of Syracuse was a Greek poet who lived in the second half of the 3rd century B.C..

All of his surviving epigrams are shown here, in the order that they appear scattered throughout the Greek Anthology. The labels in red at the start of each epigram are their numbers within the Anthology. The labels in green are the numbers assigned to the epigrams in the edition by A.S.F.Gow & D.L.Page, "The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams".

The translations are taken from the edition by W.R.Paton (1916-18), but have been modified to remove some of the archaic language. The translator's notes are shown in green.   Click on G to go to the Greek text of each epigram.



[6.155]   { G-P 1 }   G

Of one age are the locks and Crobylus, the locks that the four-year old boy sheared for Apollo the lyre-player, and therewith Hegesidicus' son did sacrifice a fighting cock, and a rich cheesecake. Bring Crobylus up, O Phoebus, to perfect manhood, holding your hands over his house and his possessions.


[6.156]   { G-P 2 }   G

To the Amarynthian Nymphs did Charixenus dedicate this shorn hair along with a beautiful hair-pin shaped like a cicada, all purified by holy water, together with an ox. The boy shines like a star, like a foal that has cast its first coat of down.


[6.157]   { G-P 3 }   G

Artemis, guardian of Gorgus' possessions and his land, shoot the thieves with your bow, and save your friends. Then Gorgus at your porch will sacrifice to you the blood of a she-goat from his pastures and full-grown lambs.


[6.222]   { G-P 4 }   G

The sea, disturbed under the rays of Orion, washed ashore this thousand-footed scolopendra *   on the rocks of Iapygia, and the masters of the deep-laden twenty-oared galleys dedicated to the gods this vast rib of the hideous monster.

*   scolopendra is now in Greek the bait-worm, but, unless this and the following epigram are facetious, it means here a marine monster.


[6.224]   { G-P 5 }   G

Shell, labyrinth of the deep, tell me who found you, a booty won from the grey sea, and dedicated you here. - Dionysius son of Protarchus dedicated me as a plaything for the Nymphs of the grotto. I am a gift from the holy Pelorian coast, and the waves of the winding channel cast me ashore to be the plaything of the sleek Nymphs of the grotto.


[7.282]   { G-P 19 }   G

I am the tomb of a shipwrecked man ; but set sail, stranger ; for when we were lost, the other ships voyaged on.


[7.406]   { G-P 14 }   G

Euphorion, the exquisite writer of verse, lies by these long walls of the Piraeus. Offer to the initiated singer a pomegranate or apple, or myrtle-berries, *   for in his life he loved them.

*   They were all used in the mysteries.


[7.439]   { G-P 7 }   G

Undiscerning Fate, hounding on your pack of demons that hunt life, thus you have cut off from the Aeolian youth before his time Pylius the son of Agenor. O gods, what a man lies low, the spoil of sombre Hades !


[7.479]   { G-P 16 }   G

I, the stone coffin that contain the head of Heracleitus, was once a rounded and unworn cylinder, but Time has worn me like the shingle, for I lie in the road, the highway for all sorts and conditions of men. I announce to mortals, although I have no stele, that I hold the divine dog who used to bark at the commons.


[7.527]   { G-P 8 }   G

Theodotus, cause of many tears to your kinsmen, who lamented you dead, lighting the mournful pyre, ill-fated, dead all too early, instead of joy in your marriage and your youth, to your sweet mother is left but groaning and grief.


[7.528]   { G-P 9 }   G

The daughters of Thessaly sheared their yellow locks at the spacious tomb of Phaenarete, distraught with grief for the luckless bride dead in her first childbed, and her dear Larissa and her parents were stricken with sorrow.


[7.529]   { G-P 10 }   G

Daring leads a man to Hades and to heaven ; daring laid Dorotheus, Sosander's son, on the pyre ; for while winning freedom for Phthia he was smitten midway between (?) Sekoi and Chimera.


[7.722]   { G-P 11 }   G

I weep for Timosthenes, the son of Molossus, slain in battle, dying as a foreigner on the foreign Attic soil.


[7.732]   { G-P 12 }   G

You are gone, still without a staff, Cinesias, son of Hermolas, to pay the debt you owe to Hades, in your old age but bringing him yourself still complete. So all-subduing Acheron, finding you a just debtor, shall love you.


[7.738]   { G-P 13 }   G

The Keys of Cyprus *   and the promontory of Salamis and the rude south wind destroyed you, Timarchus, with your ship and cargo, and your mourning kinsmen received but the black ashes of you, ill-fated man.

*   Some islands so called.


[9.743]   { G-P 17 }   G

These cows are Thessalian, and by the gates of Itonian Athena *   they stand, a beautiful gift, all of bronze, twelve in number, the work of Phradmon, all wrought from the spoil of the naked Illyrians.

*   Her temple was between Pherae and Larissa in Thessaly. cp. Book VI. 130.


[13.8]   { G-P 6 }   G

From the long race did the son of Aristomachus, having conquered by fleetness of foot, win this tripod of beaten brass.


[13.21]   { G-P 15 }   G

This is the tomb of Mnasalcas of Plataea, *   the writer of elegies. His Muse was a fragment torn from Simonides' page, loud-voiced but empty, a bombastic spout of dithyrambs. He is dead ; let us not cast stones at him ; but if he were alive, he would be blowing as loud as a drum beats.

*   A village near Sicyon.


[16.132]   { G-P 18 }   G

Stand near, stranger, and weep when you look on the infinite mourning of Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, who held not her tongue under lock and key ; whose brood of twelve children is laid low now on earth, these by the arrows of Phoebus, and those by the arrows of Artemis. Now, her form compounded of stone and flesh, *   she has become a rock, and high-built Sipylus groans. A guileful plague to mortals is the tongue, whose unbridled madness often gives birth to calamity.

*   Niobe, though turned to stone, still suffered and wept.


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