Your mom’s dead, I hate your sister, let’s get it on.

παρθένον δ’ ἐν ἄνθεσιν
τηλεθάεσσι λαβὼν ἔκλινα, μαλθακῇ δὲ μιν
χλαίνῃ καλύψας, αὐχὲν’ ἀγκάλῃς ἔχων,
δείματι παυσαμένην τὼς ὥστε νέβρον εἱλόμην
μαζῶν τε χερσὶν ἠπίως ἐφηψάμῃν,
ᾗπερ ἔφηνε νέον ἥβης ἐπήλυσιν χρόα·
ἅπαν τε σῶμα καλὸν ἀμφαφώμενος
λευκὸν ἀφῆκα μένος, ξανθῆς ἐπιψαύων τριχός.

Taking the girl, I laid her down among the blooming flowers
covering her with my soft cloak, holding her neck with my arm,
and when she stopped, afraid like a fawn,
I won her over, reaching for her breasts gently with my hands,
her fresh skin approaching prime age,
and when I was touching that beautiful body all over
I sent forth my white force, while I was caressing her golden hair.

Archilochus, Cologne Epode

Ἀβδηρίτης εὐνοῦχον ἰδὼν γυναικὶ ὁµιλοῦντα ἠρώτα ἄλλον, εἰ ἄρα γυνὴ αὐτοῦ ἐστι. τοῦ δὲ εἰπόντος εὐνοῦχον γυναῖκα ἔχειν µὴ δύνασθαι ἔφη· Οὐκοῦν θυγάτηρ αὐτοῦ ἐστιν.

An Abderite, seeing a eunuch chatting with a woman, asked him if she was his wife. When the eunuch answered that he couldn’t have a wife, the Abderite replied ‘So she’s your daughter’. (Philogelos 115)

Found these 1900-1901 editions of Aristophanes’ Fabulae I and II at The Strand yesterday, and had to pick them up (along with a volume of Pindar’s works). I am a sucker for books with really old notes in them.

This one even has a newspaper clipping from the early 1900’s stuck in the pages.

(Pictured: lines from Thesmophoriazusae)

Robert F. Murray, A Song of Greek Prose:

Thrice happy are those
Who ne’er heard of Greek Prose—
Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes;
For Liddell and Scott
Shall cumber them not,
Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break their repose.

But I, late at night,
By the very bad light
Of very bad gas, must painfully write
Some stuff that a Greek
With his delicate cheek
Would smile at as ‘barbarous’——faith, he well might.


I have somehow muddled through without having to write Greek prose at all. This will probably not serve me well.

(via Laudator Temporis Acti, which has the whole thing.)